From ab985ecb4cb6bcc8a65ff79aa746a1f80fa4b2f4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: tslil clingman Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2022 22:55:01 +0200 Subject: Refactor code --- srchr/corpus.txt | 212229 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 212229 insertions(+) create mode 100644 srchr/corpus.txt (limited to 'srchr/corpus.txt') diff --git a/srchr/corpus.txt b/srchr/corpus.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f53d337 --- /dev/null +++ b/srchr/corpus.txt @@ -0,0 +1,212229 @@ +ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND +Lewis Carroll +THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION . +CHAPTER I +Down the RabbitHole +Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister +on the bank, and of having nothing to do once or twice she had +peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no +pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book,' +thought Alice "without pictures or conversation?' +So she was considering in her own mind as well as she could, +for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid, whether +the pleasure of making a daisychain would be worth the trouble +of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White +Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. +There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that nor did Alice +think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to +itself, "Oh dear Oh dear I shall be late' when she thought +it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have +wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural +but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT +POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to +her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never +before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoatpocket, or a watch to +take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the +field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop +down a large rabbithole under the hedge. +In another moment down went Alice after it, never once +considering how in the world she was to get out again. +The rabbithole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, +and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a +moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself +falling down a very deep well. +Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she +had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to +wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look +down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to +see anything then she looked at the sides of the well, and +noticed that they were filled with cupboards and bookshelves +here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She +took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed it was +labelled "ORANGE MARMALADE', but to her great disappointment it +was empty she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing +somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she +fell past it. +"Well' thought Alice to herself, "after such a fall as this, I +shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs How brave they'll +all think me at home Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, +even if I fell off the top of the house' Which was very likely +true. +Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end "I +wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. +"I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let +me see that would be four thousand miles down, I think' for, +you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her +lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a VERY good +opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to +listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over "yes, +that's about the right distancebut then I wonder what Latitude +or Longitude I've got to?' Alice had no idea what Latitude was, +or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to +say. +Presently she began again. "I wonder if I shall fall right +THROUGH the earth How funny it'll seem to come out among the +people that walk with their heads downward The Antipathies, I +think' she was rather glad there WAS no one listening, this +time, as it didn't sound at all the right word "but I shall +have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. +Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?' and she tried +to curtsey as she spokefancy CURTSEYING as you're falling +through the air Do you think you could manage it? "And what +an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking No, it'll +never do to ask perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.' +Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon +began talking again. "Dinah'll miss me very much tonight, I +should think' Dinah was the cat. "I hope they'll remember +her saucer of milk at teatime. Dinah my dear I wish you were +down here with me There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but +you might catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know. +But do cats eat bats, I wonder?' And here Alice began to get +rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of +way, "Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, "Do +bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either +question, it didn't much matter which way she put it. She felt +that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she +was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very +earnestly, "Now, Dinah, tell me the truth did you ever eat a +bat?' when suddenly, thump thump down she came upon a heap of +sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over. +Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a +moment she looked up, but it was all dark overhead before her +was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in +sight, hurrying down it. There was not a moment to be lost +away went Alice like the wind, and was just in time to hear it +say, as it turned a corner, "Oh my ears and whiskers, how late +it's getting' She was close behind it when she turned the +corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen she found +herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps +hanging from the roof. +There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked +and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the +other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, +wondering how she was ever to get out again. +Suddenly she came upon a little threelegged table, all made of +solid glass there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, +and Alice's first thought was that it might belong to one of the +doors of the hall but, alas either the locks were too large, or +the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of +them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low +curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little +door about fifteen inches high she tried the little golden key +in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted +Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small +passage, not much larger than a rathole she knelt down and +looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. +How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about +among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but +she could not even get her head though the doorway "and even if +my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, "it would be of +very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish +I could shut up like a telescope I think I could, if I only +know how to begin.' For, you see, so many outoftheway things +had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few +things indeed were really impossible. +There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she +went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on +it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like +telescopes this time she found a little bottle on it, "which +certainly was not here before,' said Alice, and round the neck +of the bottle was a paper label, with the words "DRINK ME' +beautifully printed on it in large letters. +It was all very well to say "Drink me,' but the wise little +Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. "No, I'll look +first,' she said, "and see whether it's marked "poison" or not' +for she had read several nice little histories about children who +had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant +things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules +their friends had taught them such as, that a redhot poker +will burn you if you hold it too long and that if you cut your +finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds and she had +never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked +"poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or +later. +However, this bottle was NOT marked "poison,' so Alice ventured +to taste it, and finding it very nice, it had, in fact, a sort +of mixed flavour of cherrytart, custard, pineapple, roast +turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast, she very soon finished +it off. +"What a curious feeling' said Alice "I must be shutting up +like a telescope.' +And so it was indeed she was now only ten inches high, and +her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the right +size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. +First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was +going to shrink any further she felt a little nervous about +this "for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, "in my +going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be +like then?' And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is +like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember +ever having seen such a thing. +After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided +on going into the garden at once but, alas for poor Alice +when she got to the door, she found she had forgotten the +little golden key, and when she went back to the table for it, +she found she could not possibly reach it she could see it +quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her best to climb +up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery +and when she had tired herself out with trying, +the poor little thing sat down and cried. +"Come, there's no use in crying like that' said Alice to +herself, rather sharply "I advise you to leave off this minute' +She generally gave herself very good advice, though she very +seldom followed it, and sometimes she scolded herself so +severely as to bring tears into her eyes and once she remembered +trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game +of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious +child was very fond of pretending to be two people. "But it's no +use now,' thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people Why, +there's hardly enough of me left to make ONE respectable +person' +Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under +the table she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on +which the words "EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. +"Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, "and if it makes me grow larger, +I can reach the key and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep +under the door so either way I'll get into the garden, and I +don't care which happens' +She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, "Which +way? Which way?', holding her hand on the top of her head to +feel which way it was growing, and she was quite surprised to +find that she remained the same size to be sure, this generally +happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the +way of expecting nothing but outoftheway things to happen, +that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the +common way. +So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake. +CHAPTER II +The Pool of Tears +"Curiouser and curiouser' cried Alice she was so much +surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good +English "now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that +ever was Goodbye, feet' for when she looked down at her +feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so +far off. "Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on +your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I shan't +be able I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself +about you you must manage the best way you can but I must be +kind to them,' thought Alice, "or perhaps they won't walk the +way I want to go Let me see I'll give them a new pair of +boots every Christmas.' +And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. +"They must go by the carrier,' she thought "and how funny it'll +seem, sending presents to one's own feet And how odd the +directions will look +ALICE'S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ. +HEARTHRUG, +NEAR THE FENDER, +WITH ALICE'S LOVE. +Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking' +Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall in +fact she was now more than nine feet high, and she at once took +up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door. +Poor Alice It was as much as she could do, lying down on one +side, to look through into the garden with one eye but to get +through was more hopeless than ever she sat down and began to +cry again. +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said Alice, "a great +girl like you,' she might well say this, "to go on crying in +this way Stop this moment, I tell you' But she went on all +the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool +all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the +hall. +After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the +distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. +It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a +pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the +other he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to +himself as he came, "Oh the Duchess, the Duchess Oh won't she +be savage if I've kept her waiting' Alice felt so desperate +that she was ready to ask help of any one so, when the Rabbit +came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice, "If you please, +sir' The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid +gloves and the fan, and skurried away into the darkness as hard +as he could go. +Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very +hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking +"Dear, dear How queer everything is today And yesterday +things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in +the night? Let me think was I the same when I got up this +morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little +different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in +the world am I? Ah, THAT'S the great puzzle' And she began +thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age +as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of +them. +"I'm sure I'm not Ada,' she said, "for her hair goes in such +long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all and I'm +sure I can't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, +oh she knows such a very little Besides, SHE'S she, and I'm I, +andoh dear, how puzzling it all is I'll try if I know all the +things I used to know. Let me see four times five is twelve, +and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven isoh dear +I shall never get to twenty at that rate However, the +Multiplication Table doesn't signify let's try Geography. +London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, +and Romeno, THAT'S all wrong, I'm certain I must have been +changed for Mabel I'll try and say "How doth the little"' +and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, +and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and +strange, and the words did not come the same as they used to do +"How doth the little crocodile +Improve his shining tail, +And pour the waters of the Nile +On every golden scale +"How cheerfully he seems to grin, +How neatly spread his claws, +And welcome little fishes in +With gently smiling jaws' +"I'm sure those are not the right words,' said poor Alice, and +her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, "I must be Mabel +after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little +house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh ever so +many lessons to learn No, I've made up my mind about it if I'm +Mabel, I'll stay down here It'll be no use their putting their +heads down and saying "Come up again, dear" I shall only look +up and say "Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I +like being that person, I'll come up if not, I'll stay down +here till I'm somebody else"but, oh dear' cried Alice, with a +sudden burst of tears, "I do wish they WOULD put their heads +down I am so VERY tired of being all alone here' +As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was +surprised to see that she had put on one of the Rabbit's little +white kid gloves while she was talking. "How CAN I have done +that?' she thought. "I must be growing small again.' She got up +and went to the table to measure herself by it, and found that, +as nearly as she could guess, she was now about two feet high, +and was going on shrinking rapidly she soon found out that the +cause of this was the fan she was holding, and she dropped it +hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether. +"That WAS a narrow escape' said Alice, a good deal frightened at +the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in +existence "and now for the garden' and she ran with all speed +back to the little door but, alas the little door was shut +again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as +before, "and things are worse than ever,' thought the poor child, +"for I never was so small as this before, never And I declare +it's too bad, that it is' +As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another +moment, splash she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first +idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, "and in that +case I can go back by railway,' she said to herself. Alice had +been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general +conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you find +a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in +the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and +behind them a railway station. However, she soon made out that +she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine +feet high. +"I wish I hadn't cried so much' said Alice, as she swam about, +trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I +suppose, by being drowned in my own tears That WILL be a queer +thing, to be sure However, everything is queer today.' +Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a +little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was at +first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then +she remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that +it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself. +"Would it be of any use, now,' thought Alice, "to speak to this +mouse? Everything is so outoftheway down here, that I should +think very likely it can talk at any rate, there's no harm in +trying.' So she began "O Mouse, do you know the way out of +this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse' +Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse +she had never done such a thing before, but she remembered having +seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, "A mouseof a mouseto a +mousea mouseO mouse' The Mouse looked at her rather +inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little +eyes, but it said nothing. +"Perhaps it doesn't understand English,' thought Alice "I +daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the +Conqueror.' For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had +no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened. So she +began again "Ou est ma chatte?' which was the first sentence in +her French lessonbook. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the +water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. "Oh, I beg +your pardon' cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the +poor animal's feelings. "I quite forgot you didn't like cats.' +"Not like cats' cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate +voice. "Would YOU like cats if you were me?' +"Well, perhaps not,' said Alice in a soothing tone "don't be +angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah +I think you'd take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. +She is such a dear quiet thing,' Alice went on, half to herself, +as she swam lazily about in the pool, "and she sits purring so +nicely by the fire, licking her paws and washing her faceand +she is such a nice soft thing to nurseand she's such a capital +one for catching miceoh, I beg your pardon' cried Alice again, +for this time the Mouse was bristling all over, and she felt +certain it must be really offended. "We won't talk about her any +more if you'd rather not.' +"We indeed' cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end +of his tail. "As if I would talk on such a subject Our family +always HATED cats nasty, low, vulgar things Don't let me hear +the name again' +"I won't indeed' said Alice, in a great hurry to change the +subject of conversation. "Are youare you fondofof dogs?' +The Mouse did not answer, so Alice went on eagerly "There is +such a nice little dog near our house I should like to show you +A little brighteyed terrier, you know, with oh, such long curly +brown hair And it'll fetch things when you throw them, and +it'll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts of thingsI +can't remember half of themand it belongs to a farmer, you +know, and he says it's so useful, it's worth a hundred pounds +He says it kills all the rats andoh dear' cried Alice in a +sorrowful tone, "I'm afraid I've offended it again' For the +Mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and +making quite a commotion in the pool as it went. +So she called softly after it, "Mouse dear Do come back +again, and we won't talk about cats or dogs either, if you don't +like them' When the Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam +slowly back to her its face was quite pale with passion, Alice +thought, and it said in a low trembling voice, "Let us get to +the shore, and then I'll tell you my history, and you'll +understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.' +It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded +with the birds and animals that had fallen into it there were a +Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious +creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the +shore. +CHAPTER III +A CaucusRace and a Long Tale +They were indeed a queerlooking party that assembled on the +bankthe birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their +fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and +uncomfortable. +The first question of course was, how to get dry again they +had a consultation about this, and after a few minutes it seemed +quite natural to Alice to find herself talking familiarly with +them, as if she had known them all her life. Indeed, she had +quite a long argument with the Lory, who at last turned sulky, +and would only say, "I am older than you, and must know better' +and this Alice would not allow without knowing how old it was, +and, as the Lory positively refused to tell its age, there was no +more to be said. +At last the Mouse, who seemed to be a person of authority among +them, called out, "Sit down, all of you, and listen to me I'LL +soon make you dry enough' They all sat down at once, in a large +ring, with the Mouse in the middle. Alice kept her eyes +anxiously fixed on it, for she felt sure she would catch a bad +cold if she did not get dry very soon. +"Ahem' said the Mouse with an important air, "are you all ready? +This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please +"William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was +soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been +of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and +Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria"' +"Ugh' said the Lory, with a shiver. +"I beg your pardon' said the Mouse, frowning, but very +politely "Did you speak?' +"Not I' said the Lory hastily. +"I thought you did,' said the Mouse. "I proceed. "Edwin and +Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him +and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found +it advisable"' +"Found WHAT?' said the Duck. +"Found IT,' the Mouse replied rather crossly "of course you +know what "it" means.' +"I know what "it" means well enough, when I find a thing,' said +the Duck "it's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, +what did the archbishop find?' +The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on, +""found it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling to meet William +and offer him the crown. William's conduct at first was +moderate. But the insolence of his Normans" How are you +getting on now, my dear?' it continued, turning to Alice as it +spoke. +"As wet as ever,' said Alice in a melancholy tone "it doesn't +seem to dry me at all.' +"In that case,' said the Dodo solemnly, rising to its feet, "I +move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more +energetic remedies' +"Speak English' said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of +half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do +either' And the Eaglet bent down its head to hide a smile +some of the other birds tittered audibly. +"What I was going to say,' said the Dodo in an offended tone, +"was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucusrace.' +"What IS a Caucusrace?' said Alice not that she wanted much +to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that SOMEBODY +ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything. +"Why,' said the Dodo, "the best way to explain it is to do it.' +And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter +day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it. +First it marked out a racecourse, in a sort of circle, "the +exact shape doesn't matter,' it said, and then all the party +were placed along the course, here and there. There was no "One, +two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, +and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know +when the race was over. However, when they had been running half +an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called +out "The race is over' and they all crowded round it, panting, +and asking, "But who has won?' +This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of +thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon +its forehead the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, +in the pictures of him, while the rest waited in silence. At +last the Dodo said, "EVERYBODY has won, and all must have +prizes.' +"But who is to give the prizes?' quite a chorus of voices +asked. +"Why, SHE, of course,' said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with +one finger and the whole party at once crowded round her, +calling out in a confused way, "Prizes Prizes' +Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand +in her pocket, and pulled out a box of comfits, luckily the salt +water had not got into it, and handed them round as prizes. +There was exactly one apiece all round. +"But she must have a prize herself, you know,' said the Mouse. +"Of course,' the Dodo replied very gravely. "What else have +you got in your pocket?' he went on, turning to Alice. +"Only a thimble,' said Alice sadly. +"Hand it over here,' said the Dodo. +Then they all crowded round her once more, while the Dodo +solemnly presented the thimble, saying "We beg your acceptance of +this elegant thimble' and, when it had finished this short +speech, they all cheered. +Alice thought the whole thing very absurd, but they all looked +so grave that she did not dare to laugh and, as she could not +think of anything to say, she simply bowed, and took the thimble, +looking as solemn as she could. +The next thing was to eat the comfits this caused some noise +and confusion, as the large birds complained that they could not +taste theirs, and the small ones choked and had to be patted on +the back. However, it was over at last, and they sat down again +in a ring, and begged the Mouse to tell them something more. +"You promised to tell me your history, you know,' said Alice, +"and why it is you hateC and D,' she added in a whisper, half +afraid that it would be offended again. +"Mine is a long and a sad tale' said the Mouse, turning to +Alice, and sighing. +"It IS a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with +wonder at the Mouse's tail "but why do you call it sad?' And +she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so +that her idea of the tale was something like this +"Fury said to a +mouse, That he +met in the +house, +"Let us +both go to +law I will +prosecute +YOU. Come, +I'll take no +denial We +must have a +trial For +really this +morning I've +nothing +to do." +Said the +mouse to the +cur, "Such +a trial, +dear Sir, +With +no jury +or judge, +would be +wasting +our +breath." +"I'll be +judge, I'll +be jury," +Said +cunning +old Fury +"I'll +try the +whole +cause, +and +condemn +you +to +death."' +"You are not attending' said the Mouse to Alice severely. +"What are you thinking of?' +"I beg your pardon,' said Alice very humbly "you had got to +the fifth bend, I think?' +"I had NOT' cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily. +"A knot' said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and +looking anxiously about her. "Oh, do let me help to undo it' +"I shall do nothing of the sort,' said the Mouse, getting up +and walking away. "You insult me by talking such nonsense' +"I didn't mean it' pleaded poor Alice. "But you're so easily +offended, you know' +The Mouse only growled in reply. +"Please come back and finish your story' Alice called after +it and the others all joined in chorus, "Yes, please do' but +the Mouse only shook its head impatiently, and walked a little +quicker. +"What a pity it wouldn't stay' sighed the Lory, as soon as it +was quite out of sight and an old Crab took the opportunity of +saying to her daughter "Ah, my dear Let this be a lesson to you +never to lose YOUR temper' "Hold your tongue, Ma' said the +young Crab, a little snappishly. "You're enough to try the +patience of an oyster' +"I wish I had our Dinah here, I know I do' said Alice aloud, +addressing nobody in particular. "She'd soon fetch it back' +"And who is Dinah, if I might venture to ask the question?' +said the Lory. +Alice replied eagerly, for she was always ready to talk about +her pet "Dinah's our cat. And she's such a capital one for +catching mice you can't think And oh, I wish you could see her +after the birds Why, she'll eat a little bird as soon as look +at it' +This speech caused a remarkable sensation among the party. +Some of the birds hurried off at once one old Magpie began +wrapping itself up very carefully, remarking, "I really must be +getting home the nightair doesn't suit my throat' and a Canary +called out in a trembling voice to its children, "Come away, my +dears It's high time you were all in bed' On various pretexts +they all moved off, and Alice was soon left alone. +"I wish I hadn't mentioned Dinah' she said to herself in a +melancholy tone. "Nobody seems to like her, down here, and I'm +sure she's the best cat in the world Oh, my dear Dinah I +wonder if I shall ever see you any more' And here poor Alice +began to cry again, for she felt very lonely and lowspirited. +In a little while, however, she again heard a little pattering of +footsteps in the distance, and she looked up eagerly, half hoping +that the Mouse had changed his mind, and was coming back to +finish his story. +CHAPTER IV +The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill +It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again, and +looking anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something +and she heard it muttering to itself "The Duchess The Duchess +Oh my dear paws Oh my fur and whiskers She'll get me +executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets Where CAN I have +dropped them, I wonder?' Alice guessed in a moment that it was +looking for the fan and the pair of white kid gloves, and she +very goodnaturedly began hunting about for them, but they were +nowhere to be seeneverything seemed to have changed since her +swim in the pool, and the great hall, with the glass table and +the little door, had vanished completely. +Very soon the Rabbit noticed Alice, as she went hunting about, +and called out to her in an angry tone, "Why, Mary Ann, what ARE +you doing out here? Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of +gloves and a fan Quick, now' And Alice was so much frightened +that she ran off at once in the direction it pointed to, without +trying to explain the mistake it had made. +"He took me for his housemaid,' she said to herself as she ran. +"How surprised he'll be when he finds out who I am But I'd +better take him his fan and glovesthat is, if I can find them.' +As she said this, she came upon a neat little house, on the door +of which was a bright brass plate with the name "W. RABBIT' +engraved upon it. She went in without knocking, and hurried +upstairs, in great fear lest she should meet the real Mary Ann, +and be turned out of the house before she had found the fan and +gloves. +"How queer it seems,' Alice said to herself, "to be going +messages for a rabbit I suppose Dinah'll be sending me on +messages next' And she began fancying the sort of thing that +would happen ""Miss Alice Come here directly, and get ready +for your walk" "Coming in a minute, nurse But I've got to see +that the mouse doesn't get out." Only I don't think,' Alice went +on, "that they'd let Dinah stop in the house if it began ordering +people about like that' +By this time she had found her way into a tidy little room with +a table in the window, and on it as she had hoped a fan and two +or three pairs of tiny white kid gloves she took up the fan and +a pair of the gloves, and was just going to leave the room, when +her eye fell upon a little bottle that stood near the looking +glass. There was no label this time with the words "DRINK ME,' +but nevertheless she uncorked it and put it to her lips. "I know +SOMETHING interesting is sure to happen,' she said to herself, +"whenever I eat or drink anything so I'll just see what this +bottle does. I do hope it'll make me grow large again, for +really I'm quite tired of being such a tiny little thing' +It did so indeed, and much sooner than she had expected +before she had drunk half the bottle, she found her head pressing +against the ceiling, and had to stoop to save her neck from being +broken. She hastily put down the bottle, saying to herself +"That's quite enoughI hope I shan't grow any moreAs it is, I +can't get out at the doorI do wish I hadn't drunk quite so +much' +Alas it was too late to wish that She went on growing, and +growing, and very soon had to kneel down on the floor in +another minute there was not even room for this, and she tried +the effect of lying down with one elbow against the door, and the +other arm curled round her head. Still she went on growing, and, +as a last resource, she put one arm out of the window, and one +foot up the chimney, and said to herself "Now I can do no more, +whatever happens. What WILL become of me?' +Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle had now had its full +effect, and she grew no larger still it was very uncomfortable, +and, as there seemed to be no sort of chance of her ever getting +out of the room again, no wonder she felt unhappy. +"It was much pleasanter at home,' thought poor Alice, "when one +wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about +by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down that +rabbitholeand yetand yetit's rather curious, you know, +this sort of life I do wonder what CAN have happened to me +When I used to read fairytales, I fancied that kind of thing +never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one There +ought to be a book written about me, that there ought And when +I grow up, I'll write onebut I'm grown up now,' she added in a +sorrowful tone "at least there's no room to grow up any more +HERE.' +"But then,' thought Alice, "shall I NEVER get any older than I +am now? That'll be a comfort, one waynever to be an old woman +but thenalways to have lessons to learn Oh, I shouldn't like THAT' +"Oh, you foolish Alice' she answered herself. "How can you +learn lessons in here? Why, there's hardly room for YOU, and no +room at all for any lessonbooks' +And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, +and making quite a conversation of it altogether but after a few +minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen. +"Mary Ann Mary Ann' said the voice. "Fetch me my gloves +this moment' Then came a little pattering of feet on the +stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and +she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting that she +was now about a thousand times as large as the Rabbit, and had no +reason to be afraid of it. +Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it +but, as the door opened inwards, and Alice's elbow was pressed +hard against it, that attempt proved a failure. Alice heard it +say to itself "Then I'll go round and get in at the window.' +"THAT you won't' thought Alice, and, after waiting till she +fancied she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly +spread out her hand, and made a snatch in the air. She did not +get hold of anything, but she heard a little shriek and a fall, +and a crash of broken glass, from which she concluded that it was +just possible it had fallen into a cucumberframe, or something +of the sort. +Next came an angry voicethe Rabbit's"Pat Pat Where are +you?' And then a voice she had never heard before, "Sure then +I'm here Digging for apples, yer honour' +"Digging for apples, indeed' said the Rabbit angrily. "Here +Come and help me out of THIS' Sounds of more broken glass. +"Now tell me, Pat, what's that in the window?' +"Sure, it's an arm, yer honour' He pronounced it "arrum.' +"An arm, you goose Who ever saw one that size? Why, it +fills the whole window' +"Sure, it does, yer honour but it's an arm for all that.' +"Well, it's got no business there, at any rate go and take it +away' +There was a long silence after this, and Alice could only hear +whispers now and then such as, "Sure, I don't like it, yer +honour, at all, at all' "Do as I tell you, you coward' and at +last she spread out her hand again, and made another snatch in +the air. This time there were TWO little shrieks, and more +sounds of broken glass. "What a number of cucumberframes there +must be' thought Alice. "I wonder what they'll do next As for +pulling me out of the window, I only wish they COULD I'm sure I +don't want to stay in here any longer' +She waited for some time without hearing anything more at +last came a rumbling of little cartwheels, and the sound of a +good many voices all talking together she made out the words +"Where's the other ladder?Why, I hadn't to bring but one +Bill's got the otherBill fetch it here, ladHere, put 'em up +at this cornerNo, tie 'em together firstthey don't reach half +high enough yetOh they'll do well enough don't be particular +Here, Bill catch hold of this ropeWill the roof bear?Mind +that loose slateOh, it's coming down Heads below' a loud +crash"Now, who did that?It was Bill, I fancyWho's to go +down the chimney?Nay, I shan't YOU do itThat I won't, +thenBill's to go downHere, Bill the master says you're to +go down the chimney' +"Oh So Bill's got to come down the chimney, has he?' said +Alice to herself. "Shy, they seem to put everything upon Bill +I wouldn't be in Bill's place for a good deal this fireplace is +narrow, to be sure but I THINK I can kick a little' +She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and +waited till she heard a little animal she couldn't guess of what +sort it was scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close +above her then, saying to herself "This is Bill,' she gave one +sharp kick, and waited to see what would happen next. +The first thing she heard was a general chorus of "There goes +Bill' then the Rabbit's voice along"Catch him, you by the +hedge' then silence, and then another confusion of voices"Hold +up his headBrandy nowDon't choke himHow was it, old fellow? +What happened to you? Tell us all about it' +Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice, "That's Bill,' +thought Alice, "Well, I hardly knowNo more, thank ye I'm +better nowbut I'm a deal too flustered to tell youall I know +is, something comes at me like a Jackinthebox, and up I goes +like a skyrocket' +"So you did, old fellow' said the others. +"We must burn the house down' said the Rabbit's voice and +Alice called out as loud as she could, "If you do. I'll set +Dinah at you' +There was a dead silence instantly, and Alice thought to +herself, "I wonder what they WILL do next If they had any +sense, they'd take the roof off.' After a minute or two, they +began moving about again, and Alice heard the Rabbit say, "A +barrowful will do, to begin with.' +"A barrowful of WHAT?' thought Alice but she had not long to +doubt, for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came +rattling in at the window, and some of them hit her in the face. +"I'll put a stop to this,' she said to herself, and shouted out, +"You'd better not do that again' which produced another dead +silence. +Alice noticed with some surprise that the pebbles were all +turning into little cakes as they lay on the floor, and a bright +idea came into her head. "If I eat one of these cakes,' she +thought, "it's sure to make SOME change in my size and as it +can't possibly make me larger, it must make me smaller, I +suppose.' +So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find +that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small +enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house, and +found quite a crowd of little animals and birds waiting outside. +The poor little Lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held up by +two guineapigs, who were giving it something out of a bottle. +They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared but she +ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself safe in a +thick wood. +"The first thing I've got to do,' said Alice to herself, as she +wandered about in the wood, "is to grow to my right size again +and the second thing is to find my way into that lovely garden. +I think that will be the best plan.' +It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and +simply arranged the only difficulty was, that she had not the +smallest idea how to set about it and while she was peering +about anxiously among the trees, a little sharp bark just over +her head made her look up in a great hurry. +An enormous puppy was looking down at her with large round +eyes, and feebly stretching out one paw, trying to touch her. +"Poor little thing' said Alice, in a coaxing tone, and she tried +hard to whistle to it but she was terribly frightened all the +time at the thought that it might be hungry, in which case it +would be very likely to eat her up in spite of all her coaxing. +Hardly knowing what she did, she picked up a little bit of +stick, and held it out to the puppy whereupon the puppy jumped +into the air off all its feet at once, with a yelp of delight, +and rushed at the stick, and made believe to worry it then Alice +dodged behind a great thistle, to keep herself from being run +over and the moment she appeared on the other side, the puppy +made another rush at the stick, and tumbled head over heels in +its hurry to get hold of it then Alice, thinking it was very +like having a game of play with a carthorse, and expecting every +moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round the thistle +again then the puppy began a series of short charges at the +stick, running a very little way forwards each time and a long +way back, and barking hoarsely all the while, till at last it sat +down a good way off, panting, with its tongue hanging out of its +mouth, and its great eyes half shut. +This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for making her escape +so she set off at once, and ran till she was quite tired and out +of breath, and till the puppy's bark sounded quite faint in the +distance. +"And yet what a dear little puppy it was' said Alice, as she +leant against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself +with one of the leaves "I should have liked teaching it tricks +very much, ifif I'd only been the right size to do it Oh +dear I'd nearly forgotten that I've got to grow up again Let +me seehow IS it to be managed? I suppose I ought to eat or +drink something or other but the great question is, what?' +The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round +her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she did not see +anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under +the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, +about the same height as herself and when she had looked under +it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her +that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it. +She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of +the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large +caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, +quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice +of her or of anything else. +CHAPTER V +Advice from a Caterpillar +The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in +silence at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its +mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. +"Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar. +This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice +replied, rather shyly, "II hardly know, sir, just at present +at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think +I must have been changed several times since then.' +"What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. +"Explain yourself' +"I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, "because +I'm not myself, you see.' +"I don't see,' said the Caterpillar. +"I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very +politely, "for I can't understand it myself to begin with and +being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.' +"It isn't,' said the Caterpillar. +"Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet,' said Alice "but +when you have to turn into a chrysalisyou will some day, you +knowand then after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll +feel it a little queer, won't you?' +"Not a bit,' said the Caterpillar. +"Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,' said Alice +"all I know is, it would feel very queer to ME.' +"You' said the Caterpillar contemptuously. "Who are YOU?' +Which brought them back again to the beginning of the +conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar's +making such VERY short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, +very gravely, "I think, you ought to tell me who YOU are, first.' +"Why?' said the Caterpillar. +Here was another puzzling question and as Alice could not +think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in +a VERY unpleasant state of mind, she turned away. +"Come back' the Caterpillar called after her. "I've something +important to say' +This sounded promising, certainly Alice turned and came back +again. +"Keep your temper,' said the Caterpillar. +"Is that all?' said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as +she could. +"No,' said the Caterpillar. +Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else +to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth +hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking, but +at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth +again, and said, "So you think you're changed, do you?' +"I'm afraid I am, sir,' said Alice "I can't remember things as +I usedand I don't keep the same size for ten minutes together' +"Can't remember WHAT things?' said the Caterpillar. +"Well, I've tried to say "HOW DOTH THE LITTLE BUSY BEE," but it +all came different' Alice replied in a very melancholy voice. +"Repeat, "YOU ARE OLD, FATHER WILLIAM,"' said the Caterpillar. +Alice folded her hands, and began +"You are old, Father William,' the young man said, +"And your hair has become very white +And yet you incessantly stand on your head +Do you think, at your age, it is right?' +"In my youth,' Father William replied to his son, +"I feared it might injure the brain +But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, +Why, I do it again and again.' +"You are old,' said the youth, "as I mentioned before, +And have grown most uncommonly fat +Yet you turned a backsomersault in at the door +Pray, what is the reason of that?' +"In my youth,' said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, +"I kept all my limbs very supple +By the use of this ointmentone shilling the box +Allow me to sell you a couple?' +"You are old,' said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak +For anything tougher than suet +Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak +Pray how did you manage to do it?' +"In my youth,' said his father, "I took to the law, +And argued each case with my wife +And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw, +Has lasted the rest of my life.' +"You are old,' said the youth, "one would hardly suppose +That your eye was as steady as ever +Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose +What made you so awfully clever?' +"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,' +Said his father "don't give yourself airs +Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? +Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs' +"That is not said right,' said the Caterpillar. +"Not QUITE right, I'm afraid,' said Alice, timidly "some of the +words have got altered.' +"It is wrong from beginning to end,' said the Caterpillar +decidedly, and there was silence for some minutes. +The Caterpillar was the first to speak. +"What size do you want to be?' it asked. +"Oh, I'm not particular as to size,' Alice hastily replied +"only one doesn't like changing so often, you know.' +"I DON'T know,' said the Caterpillar. +Alice said nothing she had never been so much contradicted in +her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper. +"Are you content now?' said the Caterpillar. +"Well, I should like to be a LITTLE larger, sir, if you +wouldn't mind,' said Alice "three inches is such a wretched +height to be.' +"It is a very good height indeed' said the Caterpillar +angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke it was exactly three +inches high. +"But I'm not used to it' pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. +And she thought of herself, "I wish the creatures wouldn't be so +easily offended' +"You'll get used to it in time,' said the Caterpillar and it +put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again. +This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again. +In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its +mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got +down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the grass, merely +remarking as it went, "One side will make you grow taller, and +the other side will make you grow shorter.' +"One side of WHAT? The other side of WHAT?' thought Alice to +herself. +"Of the mushroom,' said the Caterpillar, just as if she had +asked it aloud and in another moment it was out of sight. +Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a +minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it and as +it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. +However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they +would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand. +"And now which is which?' she said to herself, and nibbled a +little of the righthand bit to try the effect the next moment +she felt a violent blow underneath her chin it had struck her +foot +She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but +she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking +rapidly so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. +Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot, that there was +hardly room to open her mouth but she did it at last, and +managed to swallow a morsel of the lefthand bit. +"Come, my head's free at last' said Alice in a tone of +delight, which changed into alarm in another moment, when she +found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found all she could +see, when she looked down, was an immense length of neck, which +seemed to rise like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves that lay +far below her. +"What CAN all that green stuff be?' said Alice. "And where +HAVE my shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I +can't see you?' She was moving them about as she spoke, but no +result seemed to follow, except a little shaking among the +distant green leaves. +As there seemed to be no chance of getting her hands up to her +head, she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted +to find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, +like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a +graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which +she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she +had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a +hurry a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating +her violently with its wings. +"Serpent' screamed the Pigeon. +"I'm NOT a serpent' said Alice indignantly. "Let me alone' +"Serpent, I say again' repeated the Pigeon, but in a more +subdued tone, and added with a kind of sob, "I've tried every +way, and nothing seems to suit them' +"I haven't the least idea what you're talking about,' said +Alice. +"I've tried the roots of trees, and I've tried banks, and I've +tried hedges,' the Pigeon went on, without attending to her "but +those serpents There's no pleasing them' +Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no +use in saying anything more till the Pigeon had finished. +"As if it wasn't trouble enough hatching the eggs,' said the +Pigeon "but I must be on the lookout for serpents night and +day Why, I haven't had a wink of sleep these three weeks' +"I'm very sorry you've been annoyed,' said Alice, who was +beginning to see its meaning. +"And just as I'd taken the highest tree in the wood,' continued +the Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, "and just as I was +thinking I should be free of them at last, they must needs come +wriggling down from the sky Ugh, Serpent' +"But I'm NOT a serpent, I tell you' said Alice. "I'm aI'm +a' +"Well WHAT are you?' said the Pigeon. "I can see you're +trying to invent something' +"II'm a little girl,' said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she +remembered the number of changes she had gone through that day. +"A likely story indeed' said the Pigeon in a tone of the +deepest contempt. "I've seen a good many little girls in my +time, but never ONE with such a neck as that No, no You're a +serpent and there's no use denying it. I suppose you'll be +telling me next that you never tasted an egg' +"I HAVE tasted eggs, certainly,' said Alice, who was a very +truthful child "but little girls eat eggs quite as much as +serpents do, you know.' +"I don't believe it,' said the Pigeon "but if they do, why +then they're a kind of serpent, that's all I can say.' +This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent +for a minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of +adding, "You're looking for eggs, I know THAT well enough and +what does it matter to me whether you're a little girl or a +serpent?' +"It matters a good deal to ME,' said Alice hastily "but I'm +not looking for eggs, as it happens and if I was, I shouldn't +want YOURS I don't like them raw.' +"Well, be off, then' said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it +settled down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the +trees as well as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled +among the branches, and every now and then she had to stop and +untwist it. After a while she remembered that she still held the +pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very +carefully, nibbling first at one and then at the other, and +growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until she had +succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height. +It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, +that it felt quite strange at first but she got used to it in a +few minutes, and began talking to herself, as usual. "Come, +there's half my plan done now How puzzling all these changes +are I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to +another However, I've got back to my right size the next +thing is, to get into that beautiful gardenhow IS that to be +done, I wonder?' As she said this, she came suddenly upon an +open place, with a little house in it about four feet high. +"Whoever lives there,' thought Alice, "it'll never do to come +upon them THIS size why, I should frighten them out of their +wits' So she began nibbling at the righthand bit again, and did +not venture to go near the house till she had brought herself +down to nine inches high. +CHAPTER VI +Pig and Pepper +For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, and +wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came +running out of the woodshe considered him to be a footman +because he was in livery otherwise, judging by his face only, +she would have called him a fishand rapped loudly at the door +with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, +with a round face, and large eyes like a frog and both footmen, +Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their +heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about, and +crept a little way out of the wood to listen. +The FishFootman began by producing from under his arm a great +letter, nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to +the other, saying, in a solemn tone, "For the Duchess. An +invitation from the Queen to play croquet.' The FrogFootman +repeated, in the same solemn tone, only changing the order of the +words a little, "From the Queen. An invitation for the Duchess +to play croquet.' +Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled +together. +Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into +the wood for fear of their hearing her and when she next peeped +out the FishFootman was gone, and the other was sitting on the +ground near the door, staring stupidly up into the sky. +Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked. +"There's no sort of use in knocking,' said the Footman, "and +that for two reasons. First, because I'm on the same side of the +door as you are secondly, because they're making such a noise +inside, no one could possibly hear you.' And certainly there was +a most extraordinary noise going on withina constant howling +and sneezing, and every now and then a great crash, as if a dish +or kettle had been broken to pieces. +"Please, then,' said Alice, "how am I to get in?' +"There might be some sense in your knocking,' the Footman went +on without attending to her, "if we had the door between us. For +instance, if you were INSIDE, you might knock, and I could let +you out, you know.' He was looking up into the sky all the time +he was speaking, and this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. "But +perhaps he can't help it,' she said to herself "his eyes are so +VERY nearly at the top of his head. But at any rate he might +answer questions.How am I to get in?' she repeated, aloud. +"I shall sit here,' the Footman remarked, "till tomorrow' +At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate +came skimming out, straight at the Footman's head it just +grazed his nose, and broke to pieces against one of the trees +behind him. +"or next day, maybe,' the Footman continued in the same tone, +exactly as if nothing had happened. +"How am I to get in?' asked Alice again, in a louder tone. +"ARE you to get in at all?' said the Footman. "That's the +first question, you know.' +It was, no doubt only Alice did not like to be told so. +"It's really dreadful,' she muttered to herself, "the way all the +creatures argue. It's enough to drive one crazy' +The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for +repeating his remark, with variations. "I shall sit here,' he +said, "on and off, for days and days.' +"But what am I to do?' said Alice. +"Anything you like,' said the Footman, and began whistling. +"Oh, there's no use in talking to him,' said Alice desperately +"he's perfectly idiotic' And she opened the door and went in. +The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of +smoke from one end to the other the Duchess was sitting on a +threelegged stool in the middle, nursing a baby the cook was +leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to +be full of soup. +"There's certainly too much pepper in that soup' Alice said to +herself, as well as she could for sneezing. +There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the +Duchess sneezed occasionally and as for the baby, it was +sneezing and howling alternately without a moment's pause. The +only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze, were the cook, +and a large cat which was sitting on the hearth and grinning from +ear to ear. +"Please would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, for +she was not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to +speak first, "why your cat grins like that?' +"It's a Cheshire cat,' said the Duchess, "and that's why. Pig' +She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice +quite jumped but she saw in another moment that it was addressed +to the baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on +again +"I didn't know that Cheshire cats always grinned in fact, I +didn't know that cats COULD grin.' +"They all can,' said the Duchess "and most of 'em do.' +"I don't know of any that do,' Alice said very politely, +feeling quite pleased to have got into a conversation. +"You don't know much,' said the Duchess "and that's a fact.' +Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought +it would be as well to introduce some other subject of +conversation. While she was trying to fix on one, the cook took +the cauldron of soup off the fire, and at once set to work +throwing everything within her reach at the Duchess and the baby +the fireirons came first then followed a shower of saucepans, +plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of them even when +they hit her and the baby was howling so much already, that it +was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not. +"Oh, PLEASE mind what you're doing' cried Alice, jumping up +and down in an agony of terror. "Oh, there goes his PRECIOUS +nose' as an unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very +nearly carried it off. +"If everybody minded their own business,' the Duchess said in a +hoarse growl, "the world would go round a deal faster than it +does.' +"Which would NOT be an advantage,' said Alice, who felt very +glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little of her +knowledge. "Just think of what work it would make with the day +and night You see the earth takes twentyfour hours to turn +round on its axis' +"Talking of axes,' said the Duchess, "chop off her head' +Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant +to take the hint but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and +seemed not to be listening, so she went on again "Twentyfour +hours, I THINK or is it twelve? I' +"Oh, don't bother ME,' said the Duchess "I never could abide +figures' And with that she began nursing her child again, +singing a sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a +violent shake at the end of every line +"Speak roughly to your little boy, +And beat him when he sneezes +He only does it to annoy, +Because he knows it teases.' +CHORUS. +In which the cook and the baby joined +"Wow wow wow' +While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept +tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing +howled so, that Alice could hardly hear the words +"I speak severely to my boy, +I beat him when he sneezes +For he can thoroughly enjoy +The pepper when he pleases' +CHORUS. +"Wow wow wow' +"Here you may nurse it a bit, if you like' the Duchess said +to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. "I must go and +get ready to play croquet with the Queen,' and she hurried out of +the room. The cook threw a fryingpan after her as she went out, +but it just missed her. +Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer +shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all +directions, "just like a starfish,' thought Alice. The poor +little thing was snorting like a steamengine when she caught it, +and kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again, +so that altogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much +as she could do to hold it. +As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it, +which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep +tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its +undoing itself, she carried it out into the open air. "IF I +don't take this child away with me,' thought Alice, "they're sure +to kill it in a day or two wouldn't it be murder to leave it +behind?' She said the last words out loud, and the little thing +grunted in reply it had left off sneezing by this time. "Don't +grunt,' said Alice "that's not at all a proper way of expressing +yourself.' +The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into +its face to see what was the matter with it. There could be no +doubt that it had a VERY turnup nose, much more like a snout +than a real nose also its eyes were getting extremely small for +a baby altogether Alice did not like the look of the thing at +all. "But perhaps it was only sobbing,' she thought, and looked +into its eyes again, to see if there were any tears. +No, there were no tears. "If you're going to turn into a pig, +my dear,' said Alice, seriously, "I'll have nothing more to do +with you. Mind now' The poor little thing sobbed again or +grunted, it was impossible to say which, and they went on for +some while in silence. +Alice was just beginning to think to herself, "Now, what am I +to do with this creature when I get it home?' when it grunted +again, so violently, that she looked down into its face in some +alarm. This time there could be NO mistake about it it was +neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be +quite absurd for her to carry it further. +So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to +see it trot away quietly into the wood. "If it had grown up,' +she said to herself, "it would have made a dreadfully ugly child +but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.' And she began +thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as +pigs, and was just saying to herself, "if one only knew the right +way to change them' when she was a little startled by seeing +the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off. +The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good +natured, she thought still it had VERY long claws and a great +many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect. +"Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at +all know whether it would like the name however, it only +grinned a little wider. "Come, it's pleased so far,' thought +Alice, and she went on. "Would you tell me, please, which way I +ought to go from here?' +"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said +the Cat. +"I don't much care where' said Alice. +"Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. +"so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation. +"Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, "if you only walk +long enough.' +Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another +question. "What sort of people live about here?' +"In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, +"lives a Hatter and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, +"lives a March Hare. Visit either you like they're both mad.' +"But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. +"Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat "we're all mad here. +I'm mad. You're mad.' +"How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. +"You must be,' said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here.' +Alice didn't think that proved it at all however, she went on +"And how do you know that you're mad?' +"To begin with,' said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant +that?' +"I suppose so,' said Alice. +"Well, then,' the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's +angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm +pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.' +"I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice. +"Call it what you like,' said the Cat. "Do you play croquet +with the Queen today?' +"I should like it very much,' said Alice, "but I haven't been +invited yet.' +"You'll see me there,' said the Cat, and vanished. +Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so used +to queer things happening. While she was looking at the place +where it had been, it suddenly appeared again. +"Bythebye, what became of the baby?' said the Cat. "I'd +nearly forgotten to ask.' +"It turned into a pig,' Alice quietly said, just as if it had +come back in a natural way. +"I thought it would,' said the Cat, and vanished again. +Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it +did not appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the +direction in which the March Hare was said to live. "I've seen +hatters before,' she said to herself "the March Hare will be +much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be +raving madat least not so mad as it was in March.' As she said +this, she looked up, and there was the Cat again, sitting on a +branch of a tree. +"Did you say pig, or fig?' said the Cat. +"I said pig,' replied Alice "and I wish you wouldn't keep +appearing and vanishing so suddenly you make one quite giddy.' +"All right,' said the Cat and this time it vanished quite slowly, +beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, +which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. +"Well I've often seen a cat without a grin,' thought Alice +"but a grin without a cat It's the most curious thing I ever +saw in my life' +She had not gone much farther before she came in sight of the +house of the March Hare she thought it must be the right house, +because the chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was +thatched with fur. It was so large a house, that she did not +like to go nearer till she had nibbled some more of the lefthand +bit of mushroom, and raised herself to about two feet high even +then she walked up towards it rather timidly, saying to herself +"Suppose it should be raving mad after all I almost wish I'd +gone to see the Hatter instead' +CHAPTER VII +A Mad TeaParty +There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, +and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it a +Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two +were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking +over its head. "Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,' thought Alice +"only, as it's asleep, I suppose it doesn't mind.' +The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded +together at one corner of it "No room No room' they cried +out when they saw Alice coming. "There's PLENTY of room' said +Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large armchair at one +end of the table. +"Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. +Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it +but tea. "I don't see any wine,' she remarked. +"There isn't any,' said the March Hare. +"Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Alice +angrily. +"It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being +invited,' said the March Hare. +"I didn't know it was YOUR table,' said Alice "it's laid for a +great many more than three.' +"Your hair wants cutting,' said the Hatter. He had been +looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was +his first speech. +"You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said +with some severity "it's very rude.' +The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this but all +he SAID was, "Why is a raven like a writingdesk?' +"Come, we shall have some fun now' thought Alice. "I'm glad +they've begun asking riddles.I believe I can guess that,' she +added aloud. +"Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' +said the March Hare. +"Exactly so,' said Alice. +"Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on. +"I do,' Alice hastily replied "at leastat least I mean what +I saythat's the same thing, you know.' +"Not the same thing a bit' said the Hatter. "You might just +as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat +what I see"' +"You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, "that "I +like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"' +"You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to +be talking in his sleep, "that "I breathe when I sleep" is the +same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"' +"It IS the same thing with you,' said the Hatter, and here the +conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, +while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and +writingdesks, which wasn't much. +The Hatter was the first to break the silence. "What day of +the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice he had taken his +watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking +it every now and then, and holding it to his ear. +Alice considered a little, and then said "The fourth.' +"Two days wrong' sighed the Hatter. "I told you butter +wouldn't suit the works' he added looking angrily at the March +Hare. +"It was the BEST butter,' the March Hare meekly replied. +"Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,' the Hatter +grumbled "you shouldn't have put it in with the breadknife.' +The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily then +he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again but he +could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, "It +was the BEST butter, you know.' +Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. +"What a funny watch' she remarked. "It tells the day of the +month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is' +"Why should it?' muttered the Hatter. "Does YOUR watch tell +you what year it is?' +"Of course not,' Alice replied very readily "but that's +because it stays the same year for such a long time together.' +"Which is just the case with MINE,' said the Hatter. +Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to +have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. +"I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she +could. +"The Dormouse is asleep again,' said the Hatter, and he poured +a little hot tea upon its nose. +The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without +opening its eyes, "Of course, of course just what I was going to +remark myself.' +"Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Hatter said, turning to +Alice again. +"No, I give it up,' Alice replied "what's the answer?' +"I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Hatter. +"Nor I,' said the March Hare. +Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better +with the time,' she said, "than waste it in asking riddles that +have no answers.' +"If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, "you +wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.' +"I don't know what you mean,' said Alice. +"Of course you don't' the Hatter said, tossing his head +contemptuously. "I dare say you never even spoke to Time' +"Perhaps not,' Alice cautiously replied "but I know I have to +beat time when I learn music.' +"Ah that accounts for it,' said the Hatter. "He won't stand +beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do +almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose +it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons +you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the +clock in a twinkling Halfpast one, time for dinner' +"I only wish it was,' the March Hare said to itself in a +whisper. +"That would be grand, certainly,' said Alice thoughtfully +"but thenI shouldn't be hungry for it, you know.' +"Not at first, perhaps,' said the Hatter "but you could keep +it to halfpast one as long as you liked.' +"Is that the way YOU manage?' Alice asked. +The Hatter shook his head mournfully. "Not I' he replied. +"We quarrelled last Marchjust before HE went mad, you know' +pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare, "it was at the +great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing +"Twinkle, twinkle, little bat +How I wonder what you're at" +You know the song, perhaps?' +"I've heard something like it,' said Alice. +"It goes on, you know,' the Hatter continued, "in this way +"Up above the world you fly, +Like a teatray in the sky. +Twinkle, twinkle"' +Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep +"Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle' and went on so long that +they had to pinch it to make it stop. +"Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said the Hatter, +"when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, "He's murdering the +time Off with his head"' +"How dreadfully savage' exclaimed Alice. +"And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, +"he won't do a thing I ask It's always six o'clock now.' +A bright idea came into Alice's head. "Is that the reason so +many teathings are put out here?' she asked. +"Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh "it's always +teatime, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.' +"Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice. +"Exactly so,' said the Hatter "as the things get used up.' +"But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice +ventured to ask. +"Suppose we change the subject,' the March Hare interrupted, +yawning. "I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady +tells us a story.' +"I'm afraid I don't know one,' said Alice, rather alarmed at +the proposal. +"Then the Dormouse shall' they both cried. "Wake up, +Dormouse' And they pinched it on both sides at once. +The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. "I wasn't asleep,' he +said in a hoarse, feeble voice "I heard every word you fellows +were saying.' +"Tell us a story' said the March Hare. +"Yes, please do' pleaded Alice. +"And be quick about it,' added the Hatter, "or you'll be asleep +again before it's done.' +"Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the +Dormouse began in a great hurry "and their names were Elsie, +Lacie, and Tillie and they lived at the bottom of a well' +"What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great +interest in questions of eating and drinking. +"They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a +minute or two. +"They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently +remarked "they'd have been ill.' +"So they were,' said the Dormouse "VERY ill.' +Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways +of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went +on "But why did they live at the bottom of a well?' +"Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very +earnestly. +"I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, "so +I can't take more.' +"You mean you can't take LESS,' said the Hatter "it's very +easy to take MORE than nothing.' +"Nobody asked YOUR opinion,' said Alice. +"Who's making personal remarks now?' the Hatter asked +triumphantly. +Alice did not quite know what to say to this so she helped +herself to some tea and breadandbutter, and then turned to the +Dormouse, and repeated her question. "Why did they live at the +bottom of a well?' +The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and +then said, "It was a treaclewell.' +"There's no such thing' Alice was beginning very angrily, but +the Hatter and the March Hare went "Sh sh' and the Dormouse +sulkily remarked, "If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the +story for yourself.' +"No, please go on' Alice said very humbly "I won't interrupt +again. I dare say there may be ONE.' +"One, indeed' said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he +consented to go on. "And so these three little sistersthey +were learning to draw, you know' +"What did they draw?' said Alice, quite forgetting her promise. +"Treacle,' said the Dormouse, without considering at all this +time. +"I want a clean cup,' interrupted the Hatter "let's all move +one place on.' +He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him the +March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and Alice rather +unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the +only one who got any advantage from the change and Alice was a +good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset +the milkjug into his plate. +Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began +very cautiously "But I don't understand. Where did they draw +the treacle from?' +"You can draw water out of a waterwell,' said the Hatter "so +I should think you could draw treacle out of a treaclewelleh, +stupid?' +"But they were IN the well,' Alice said to the Dormouse, not +choosing to notice this last remark. +"Of course they were', said the Dormouse "well in.' +This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse +go on for some time without interrupting it. +"They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and +rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy "and they drew +all manner of thingseverything that begins with an M' +"Why with an M?' said Alice. +"Why not?' said the March Hare. +Alice was silent. +The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going +off into a doze but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up +again with a little shriek, and went on "that begins with an +M, such as mousetraps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness +you know you say things are "much of a muchness"did you ever +see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?' +"Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, "I +don't think' +"Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter. +This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear she got +up in great disgust, and walked off the Dormouse fell asleep +instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her +going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that +they would call after her the last time she saw them, they were +trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. +"At any rate I'll never go THERE again' said Alice as she +picked her way through the wood. "It's the stupidest teaparty I +ever was at in all my life' +Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a +door leading right into it. "That's very curious' she thought. +"But everything's curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.' +And in she went. +Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the +little glass table. "Now, I'll manage better this time,' +she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, +and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went +to work nibbling at the mushroom she had kept a piece of it +in her pocket till she was about a foot high then she walked down +the little passage and THENshe found herself at last in the +beautiful garden, among the bright flowerbeds and the cool fountains. +CHAPTER VIII +The Queen's CroquetGround +A large rosetree stood near the entrance of the garden the +roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at +it, busily painting them red. Alice thought this a very curious +thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up +to them she heard one of them say, "Look out now, Five Don't go +splashing paint over me like that' +"I couldn't help it,' said Five, in a sulky tone "Seven jogged +my elbow.' +On which Seven looked up and said, "That's right, Five Always +lay the blame on others' +"YOU'D better not talk' said Five. "I heard the Queen say only +yesterday you deserved to be beheaded' +"What for?' said the one who had spoken first. +"That's none of YOUR business, Two' said Seven. +"Yes, it IS his business' said Five, "and I'll tell himit +was for bringing the cook tuliproots instead of onions.' +Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun "Well, of all +the unjust things' when his eye chanced to fall upon Alice, as +she stood watching them, and he checked himself suddenly the +others looked round also, and all of them bowed low. +"Would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, "why you are +painting those roses?' +Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a +low voice, "Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to +have been a RED rosetree, and we put a white one in by mistake +and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads +cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore +she comes, to' At this moment Five, who had been anxiously +looking across the garden, called out "The Queen The Queen' +and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon +their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice +looked round, eager to see the Queen. +First came ten soldiers carrying clubs these were all shaped +like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and +feet at the corners next the ten courtiers these were +ornamented all over with diamonds, and walked two and two, as the +soldiers did. After these came the royal children there were +ten of them, and the little dears came jumping merrily along hand +in hand, in couples they were all ornamented with hearts. Next +came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Alice +recognised the White Rabbit it was talking in a hurried nervous +manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went by without +noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying the +King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion and, last of all this +grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS. +Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on +her face like the three gardeners, but she could not remember +ever having heard of such a rule at processions "and besides, +what would be the use of a procession,' thought she, "if people +had all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn't see it?' +So she stood still where she was, and waited. +When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped +and looked at her, and the Queen said severely "Who is this?' +She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply. +"Idiot' said the Queen, tossing her head impatiently and, +turning to Alice, she went on, "What's your name, child?' +"My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,' said Alice very +politely but she added, to herself, "Why, they're only a pack of +cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them' +"And who are THESE?' said the Queen, pointing to the three +gardeners who were lying round the rosetree for, you see, as +they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs +was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether +they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or three of her +own children. +"How should I know?' said Alice, surprised at her own courage. +"It's no business of MINE.' +The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her +for a moment like a wild beast, screamed "Off with her head +Off' +"Nonsense' said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the +Queen was silent. +The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said +"Consider, my dear she is only a child' +The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave +"Turn them over' +The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot. +"Get up' said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the +three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to the +King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody else. +"Leave off that' screamed the Queen. "You make me giddy.' +And then, turning to the rosetree, she went on, "What HAVE you +been doing here?' +"May it please your Majesty,' said Two, in a very humble tone, +going down on one knee as he spoke, "we were trying' +"I see' said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the +roses. "Off with their heads' and the procession moved on, +three of the soldiers remaining behind to execute the unfortunate +gardeners, who ran to Alice for protection. +"You shan't be beheaded' said Alice, and she put them into a +large flowerpot that stood near. The three soldiers wandered +about for a minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly +marched off after the others. +"Are their heads off?' shouted the Queen. +"Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty' the soldiers +shouted in reply. +"That's right' shouted the Queen. "Can you play croquet?' +The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question +was evidently meant for her. +"Yes' shouted Alice. +"Come on, then' roared the Queen, and Alice joined the +procession, wondering very much what would happen next. +"It'sit's a very fine day' said a timid voice at her side. +She was walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously +into her face. +"Very,' said Alice "where's the Duchess?' +"Hush Hush' said the Rabbit in a low, hurried tone. He +looked anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke, and then raised +himself upon tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and +whispered "She's under sentence of execution.' +"What for?' said Alice. +"Did you say "What a pity"?' the Rabbit asked. +"No, I didn't,' said Alice "I don't think it's at all a pity. +I said "What for?"' +"She boxed the Queen's ears' the Rabbit began. Alice gave a +little scream of laughter. "Oh, hush' the Rabbit whispered in a +frightened tone. "The Queen will hear you You see, she came +rather late, and the Queen said' +"Get to your places' shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, +and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up +against each other however, they got settled down in a minute or +two, and the game began. Alice thought she had never seen such a +curious croquetground in her life it was all ridges and +furrows the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live +flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to +stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches. +The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her +flamingo she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, +comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, +but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened +out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it +WOULD twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a +puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing +and when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, +it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled +itself, and was in the act of crawling away besides all this, +there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she +wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubledup soldiers +were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the +ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very +difficult game indeed. +The players all played at once without waiting for turns, +quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs and in +a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went +stamping about, and shouting "Off with his head' or "Off with +her head' about once in a minute. +Alice began to feel very uneasy to be sure, she had not as +yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might +happen any minute, "and then,' thought she, "what would become of +me? They're dreadfully fond of beheading people here the great +wonder is, that there's any one left alive' +She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering +whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a +curious appearance in the air it puzzled her very much at +first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to +be a grin, and she said to herself "It's the Cheshire Cat now I +shall have somebody to talk to.' +"How are you getting on?' said the Cat, as soon as there was +mouth enough for it to speak with. +Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. "It's no +use speaking to it,' she thought, "till its ears have come, or at +least one of them.' In another minute the whole head appeared, +and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began an account of the +game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her. The +Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and +no more of it appeared. +"I don't think they play at all fairly,' Alice began, in rather +a complaining tone, "and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't +hear oneself speakand they don't seem to have any rules in +particular at least, if there are, nobody attends to themand +you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive +for instance, there's the arch I've got to go through next +walking about at the other end of the groundand I should have +croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it +saw mine coming' +"How do you like the Queen?' said the Cat in a low voice. +"Not at all,' said Alice "she's so extremely' Just then +she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening so +she went on, "likely to win, that it's hardly worth while +finishing the game.' +The Queen smiled and passed on. +"Who ARE you talking to?' said the King, going up to Alice, and +looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity. +"It's a friend of minea Cheshire Cat,' said Alice "allow me +to introduce it.' +"I don't like the look of it at all,' said the King +"however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.' +"I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked. +"Don't be impertinent,' said the King, "and don't look at me +like that' He got behind Alice as he spoke. +"A cat may look at a king,' said Alice. "I've read that in +some book, but I don't remember where.' +"Well, it must be removed,' said the King very decidedly, and +he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, "My dear I +wish you would have this cat removed' +The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great +or small. "Off with his head' she said, without even looking +round. +"I'll fetch the executioner myself,' said the King eagerly, and +he hurried off. +Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game +was going on, as she heard the Queen's voice in the distance, +screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three +of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and +she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in +such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or +not. So she went in search of her hedgehog. +The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, +which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one +of them with the other the only difficulty was, that her +flamingo was gone across to the other side of the garden, where +Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up +into a tree. +By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, +the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight +"but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, "as all the arches +are gone from this side of the ground.' So she tucked it away +under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for +a little more conversation with her friend. +When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to +find quite a large crowd collected round it there was a dispute +going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who +were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, +and looked very uncomfortable. +The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to +settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, +though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed +to make out exactly what they said. +The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a +head unless there was a body to cut it off from that he had +never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't going to begin +at HIS time of life. +The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be +beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense. +The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about +it in less than no time she'd have everybody executed, all round. +It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so +grave and anxious. +Alice could think of nothing else to say but "It belongs to the +Duchess you'd better ask HER about it.' +"She's in prison,' the Queen said to the executioner "fetch +her here.' And the executioner went off like an arrow. +The Cat's head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, +by the time he had come back with the Dutchess, it had entirely +disappeared so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down +looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game. +CHAPTER IX +The Mock Turtle's Story +"You can't think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old +thing' said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm affectionately +into Alice's, and they walked off together. +Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper, and +thought to herself that perhaps it was only the pepper that had +made her so savage when they met in the kitchen. +"When I'M a Duchess,' she said to herself, not in a very +hopeful tone though, "I won't have any pepper in my kitchen AT +ALL. Soup does very well withoutMaybe it's always pepper that +makes people hottempered,' she went on, very much pleased at +having found out a new kind of rule, "and vinegar that makes them +sourand camomile that makes them bitterandand barleysugar +and such things that make children sweettempered. I only wish +people knew that then they wouldn't be so stingy about it, you +know' +She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a +little startled when she heard her voice close to her ear. +"You're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you +forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that +is, but I shall remember it in a bit.' +"Perhaps it hasn't one,' Alice ventured to remark. +"Tut, tut, child' said the Duchess. "Everything's got a +moral, if only you can find it.' And she squeezed herself up +closer to Alice's side as she spoke. +Alice did not much like keeping so close to her first, +because the Duchess was VERY ugly and secondly, because she was +exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice's shoulder, +and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. However, she did not +like to be rude, so she bore it as well as she could. +"The game's going on rather better now,' she said, by way of +keeping up the conversation a little. +"'Tis so,' said the Duchess "and the moral of that is"Oh, +'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round"' +"Somebody said,' Alice whispered, "that it's done by everybody +minding their own business' +"Ah, well It means much the same thing,' said the Duchess, +digging her sharp little chin into Alice's shoulder as she added, +"and the moral of THAT is"Take care of the sense, and the +sounds will take care of themselves."' +"How fond she is of finding morals in things' Alice thought to +herself. +"I dare say you're wondering why I don't put my arm round your +waist,' the Duchess said after a pause "the reason is, that I'm +doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the +experiment?' +"HE might bite,' Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all +anxious to have the experiment tried. +"Very true,' said the Duchess "flamingoes and mustard both +bite. And the moral of that is"Birds of a feather flock +together."' +"Only mustard isn't a bird,' Alice remarked. +"Right, as usual,' said the Duchess "what a clear way you +have of putting things' +"It's a mineral, I THINK,' said Alice. +"Of course it is,' said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree +to everything that Alice said "there's a large mustardmine near +here. And the moral of that is"The more there is of mine, the +less there is of yours."' +"Oh, I know' exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this +last remark, "it's a vegetable. It doesn't look like one, but it +is.' +"I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess "and the moral of +that is"Be what you would seem to be"or if you'd like it put +more simply"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than +what it might appear to others that what you were or might have +been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared +to them to be otherwise."' +"I think I should understand that better,' Alice said very +politely, "if I had it written down but I can't quite follow it +as you say it.' +"That's nothing to what I could say if I chose,' the Duchess +replied, in a pleased tone. +"Pray don't trouble yourself to say it any longer than that,' +said Alice. +"Oh, don't talk about trouble' said the Duchess. "I make you +a present of everything I've said as yet.' +"A cheap sort of present' thought Alice. "I'm glad they don't +give birthday presents like that' But she did not venture to +say it out loud. +"Thinking again?' the Duchess asked, with another dig of her +sharp little chin. +"I've a right to think,' said Alice sharply, for she was +beginning to feel a little worried. +"Just about as much right,' said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly +and the m' +But here, to Alice's great surprise, the Duchess's voice died +away, even in the middle of her favourite word "moral,' and the +arm that was linked into hers began to tremble. Alice looked up, +and there stood the Queen in front of them, with her arms folded, +frowning like a thunderstorm. +"A fine day, your Majesty' the Duchess began in a low, weak +voice. +"Now, I give you fair warning,' shouted the Queen, stamping on +the ground as she spoke "either you or your head must be off, +and that in about half no time Take your choice' +The Duchess took her choice, and was gone in a moment. +"Let's go on with the game,' the Queen said to Alice and Alice +was too much frightened to say a word, but slowly followed her +back to the croquetground. +The other guests had taken advantage of the Queen's absence, +and were resting in the shade however, the moment they saw her, +they hurried back to the game, the Queen merely remarking that a +moment's delay would cost them their lives. +All the time they were playing the Queen never left off +quarrelling with the other players, and shouting "Off with his +head' or "Off with her head' Those whom she sentenced were +taken into custody by the soldiers, who of course had to leave +off being arches to do this, so that by the end of half an hour +or so there were no arches left, and all the players, except the +King, the Queen, and Alice, were in custody and under sentence of +execution. +Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to +Alice, "Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?' +"No,' said Alice. "I don't even know what a Mock Turtle is.' +"It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from,' said the Queen. +"I never saw one, or heard of one,' said Alice. +"Come on, then,' said the Queen, "and he shall tell you his +history,' +As they walked off together, Alice heard the King say in a low +voice, to the company generally, "You are all pardoned.' "Come, +THAT'S a good thing' she said to herself, for she had felt quite +unhappy at the number of executions the Queen had ordered. +They very soon came upon a Gryphon, lying fast asleep in the +sun. IF you don't know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture. +"Up, lazy thing' said the Queen, "and take this young lady to +see the Mock Turtle, and to hear his history. I must go back and +see after some executions I have ordered' and she walked off, +leaving Alice alone with the Gryphon. Alice did not quite like +the look of the creature, but on the whole she thought it would +be quite as safe to stay with it as to go after that savage +Queen so she waited. +The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes then it watched the +Queen till she was out of sight then it chuckled. "What fun' +said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice. +"What IS the fun?' said Alice. +"Why, SHE,' said the Gryphon. "It's all her fancy, that they +never executes nobody, you know. Come on' +"Everybody says "come on" here,' thought Alice, as she went +slowly after it "I never was so ordered about in all my life, +never' +They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the +distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and, +as they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart +would break. She pitied him deeply. "What is his sorrow?' she +asked the Gryphon, and the Gryphon answered, very nearly in the +same words as before, "It's all his fancy, that he hasn't got +no sorrow, you know. Come on' +So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with +large eyes full of tears, but said nothing. +"This here young lady,' said the Gryphon, "she wants for to +know your history, she do.' +"I'll tell it her,' said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow +tone "sit down, both of you, and don't speak a word till I've +finished.' +So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice +thought to herself, "I don't see how he can EVEN finish, if he +doesn't begin.' But she waited patiently. +"Once,' said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, "I was +a real Turtle.' +These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only +by an occasional exclamation of "Hjckrrh' from the Gryphon, and +the constant heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle. Alice was very +nearly getting up and saying, "Thank you, sir, for your +interesting story,' but she could not help thinking there MUST be +more to come, so she sat still and said nothing. +"When we were little,' the Mock Turtle went on at last, more +calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, "we went to +school in the sea. The master was an old Turtlewe used to call +him Tortoise' +"Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked. +"We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock +Turtle angrily "really you are very dull' +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple +question,' added the Gryphon and then they both sat silent and +looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At +last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, "Drive on, old fellow +Don't be all day about it' and he went on in these words +"Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe +it' +"I never said I didn't' interrupted Alice. +"You did,' said the Mock Turtle. +"Hold your tongue' added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak +again. The Mock Turtle went on. +"We had the best of educationsin fact, we went to school +every day' +"I'VE been to a dayschool, too,' said Alice "you needn't be +so proud as all that.' +"With extras?' asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously. +"Yes,' said Alice, "we learned French and music.' +"And washing?' said the Mock Turtle. +"Certainly not' said Alice indignantly. +"Ah then yours wasn't a really good school,' said the Mock +Turtle in a tone of great relief. "Now at OURS they had at the +end of the bill, "French, music, AND WASHINGextra."' +"You couldn't have wanted it much,' said Alice "living at the +bottom of the sea.' +"I couldn't afford to learn it.' said the Mock Turtle with a +sigh. "I only took the regular course.' +"What was that?' inquired Alice. +"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock +Turtle replied "and then the different branches of Arithmetic +Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.' +"I never heard of "Uglification,"' Alice ventured to say. "What is it?' +The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. "What Never +heard of uglifying' it exclaimed. "You know what to beautify is, +I suppose?' +"Yes,' said Alice doubtfully "it meanstomakeanythingprettier.' +"Well, then,' the Gryphon went on, "if you don't know what to +uglify is, you ARE a simpleton.' +Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about +it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said "What else had you +to learn?' +"Well, there was Mystery,' the Mock Turtle replied, counting +off the subjects on his flappers, "Mystery, ancient and modern, +with Seaography then Drawlingthe Drawlingmaster was an old +congereel, that used to come once a week HE taught us +Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.' +"What was THAT like?' said Alice. +"Well, I can't show it you myself,' the Mock Turtle said "I'm +too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.' +"Hadn't time,' said the Gryphon "I went to the Classics +master, though. He was an old crab, HE was.' +"I never went to him,' the Mock Turtle said with a sigh "he +taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.' +"So he did, so he did,' said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn +and both creatures hid their faces in their paws. +"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a +hurry to change the subject. +"Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle "nine the +next, and so on.' +"What a curious plan' exclaimed Alice. +"That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon +remarked "because they lessen from day to day.' +This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a +little before she made her next remark. "Then the eleventh day +must have been a holiday?' +"Of course it was,' said the Mock Turtle. +"And how did you manage on the twelfth?' Alice went on eagerly. +"That's enough about lessons,' the Gryphon interrupted in a +very decided tone "tell her something about the games now.' +CHAPTER X +The Lobster Quadrille +The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the back of one flapper +across his eyes. He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for +a minute or two sobs choked his voice. "Same as if he had a bone +in his throat,' said the Gryphon and it set to work shaking him +and punching him in the back. At last the Mock Turtle recovered +his voice, and, with tears running down his cheeks, he went on +again +"You may not have lived much under the sea' "I haven't,' said Alice +"and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster' +Alice began to say "I once tasted' but checked herself hastily, +and said "No, never' "so you can have no idea what a delightful +thing a Lobster Quadrille is' +"No, indeed,' said Alice. "What sort of a dance is it?' +"Why,' said the Gryphon, "you first form into a line along the seashore' +"Two lines' cried the Mock Turtle. "Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on +then, when you've cleared all the jellyfish out of the way' +"THAT generally takes some time,' interrupted the Gryphon. +"you advance twice' +"Each with a lobster as a partner' cried the Gryphon. +"Of course,' the Mock Turtle said "advance twice, set to +partners' +"change lobsters, and retire in same order,' continued the +Gryphon. +"Then, you know,' the Mock Turtle went on, "you throw the' +"The lobsters' shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air. +"as far out to sea as you can' +"Swim after them' screamed the Gryphon. +"Turn a somersault in the sea' cried the Mock Turtle, +capering wildly about. +"Change lobster's again' yelled the Gryphon at the top of its voice. +"Back to land again, and that's all the first figure,' said the +Mock Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice and the two creatures, +who had been jumping about like mad things all this time, sat +down again very sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice. +"It must be a very pretty dance,' said Alice timidly. +"Would you like to see a little of it?' said the Mock Turtle. +"Very much indeed,' said Alice. +"Come, let's try the first figure' said the Mock Turtle to the +Gryphon. "We can do without lobsters, you know. Which shall +sing?' +"Oh, YOU sing,' said the Gryphon. "I've forgotten the words.' +So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, every now +and then treading on her toes when they passed too close, and +waving their forepaws to mark the time, while the Mock Turtle +sang this, very slowly and sadly +""Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail. +"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my +tail. +See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance +They are waiting on the shinglewill you come and join the +dance? +Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the +dance? +Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the +dance? +"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be +When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to +sea" +But the snail replied "Too far, too far" and gave a look +askance +Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the +dance. +Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join +the dance. +Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join +the dance. +""What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied. +"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. +The further off from England the nearer is to France +Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance. +Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the +dance? +Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the +dance?"' +"Thank you, it's a very interesting dance to watch,' said +Alice, feeling very glad that it was over at last "and I do so +like that curious song about the whiting' +"Oh, as to the whiting,' said the Mock Turtle, "theyyou've +seen them, of course?' +"Yes,' said Alice, "I've often seen them at dinn' she +checked herself hastily. +"I don't know where Dinn may be,' said the Mock Turtle, "but +if you've seen them so often, of course you know what they're +like.' +"I believe so,' Alice replied thoughtfully. "They have their +tails in their mouthsand they're all over crumbs.' +"You're wrong about the crumbs,' said the Mock Turtle +"crumbs would all wash off in the sea. But they HAVE their tails +in their mouths and the reason is' here the Mock Turtle +yawned and shut his eyes."Tell her about the reason and all +that,' he said to the Gryphon. +"The reason is,' said the Gryphon, "that they WOULD go with +the lobsters to the dance. So they got thrown out to sea. So +they had to fall a long way. So they got their tails fast in +their mouths. So they couldn't get them out again. That's all.' +"Thank you,' said Alice, "it's very interesting. I never knew +so much about a whiting before.' +"I can tell you more than that, if you like,' said the +Gryphon. "Do you know why it's called a whiting?' +"I never thought about it,' said Alice. "Why?' +"IT DOES THE BOOTS AND SHOES.' the Gryphon replied very +solemnly. +Alice was thoroughly puzzled. "Does the boots and shoes' she +repeated in a wondering tone. +"Why, what are YOUR shoes done with?' said the Gryphon. "I +mean, what makes them so shiny?' +Alice looked down at them, and considered a little before she +gave her answer. "They're done with blacking, I believe.' +"Boots and shoes under the sea,' the Gryphon went on in a deep +voice, "are done with a whiting. Now you know.' +"And what are they made of?' Alice asked in a tone of great +curiosity. +"Soles and eels, of course,' the Gryphon replied rather +impatiently "any shrimp could have told you that.' +"If I'd been the whiting,' said Alice, whose thoughts were +still running on the song, "I'd have said to the porpoise, "Keep +back, please we don't want YOU with us"' +"They were obliged to have him with them,' the Mock Turtle +said "no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.' +"Wouldn't it really?' said Alice in a tone of great surprise. +"Of course not,' said the Mock Turtle "why, if a fish came +to ME, and told me he was going a journey, I should say "With +what porpoise?"' +"Don't you mean "purpose"?' said Alice. +"I mean what I say,' the Mock Turtle replied in an offended +tone. And the Gryphon added "Come, let's hear some of YOUR +adventures.' +"I could tell you my adventuresbeginning from this morning,' +said Alice a little timidly "but it's no use going back to +yesterday, because I was a different person then.' +"Explain all that,' said the Mock Turtle. +"No, no The adventures first,' said the Gryphon in an +impatient tone "explanations take such a dreadful time.' +So Alice began telling them her adventures from the time when +she first saw the White Rabbit. She was a little nervous about +it just at first, the two creatures got so close to her, one on +each side, and opened their eyes and mouths so VERY wide, but she +gained courage as she went on. Her listeners were perfectly +quiet till she got to the part about her repeating "YOU ARE OLD, +FATHER WILLIAM,' to the Caterpillar, and the words all coming +different, and then the Mock Turtle drew a long breath, and said +"That's very curious.' +"It's all about as curious as it can be,' said the Gryphon. +"It all came different' the Mock Turtle repeated +thoughtfully. "I should like to hear her try and repeat +something now. Tell her to begin.' He looked at the Gryphon as +if he thought it had some kind of authority over Alice. +"Stand up and repeat "'TIS THE VOICE OF THE SLUGGARD,"' said +the Gryphon. +"How the creatures order one about, and make one repeat +lessons' thought Alice "I might as well be at school at once.' +However, she got up, and began to repeat it, but her head was so +full of the Lobster Quadrille, that she hardly knew what she was +saying, and the words came very queer indeed +"'Tis the voice of the Lobster I heard him declare, +"You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair." +As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose +Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.' +[later editions continued as follows +When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, +And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark, +But, when the tide rises and sharks are around, +His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.] +"That's different from what I used to say when I was a child,' +said the Gryphon. +"Well, I never heard it before,' said the Mock Turtle "but it +sounds uncommon nonsense.' +Alice said nothing she had sat down with her face in her +hands, wondering if anything would EVER happen in a natural way +again. +"I should like to have it explained,' said the Mock Turtle. +"She can't explain it,' said the Gryphon hastily. "Go on with +the next verse.' +"But about his toes?' the Mock Turtle persisted. "How COULD +he turn them out with his nose, you know?' +"It's the first position in dancing.' Alice said but was +dreadfully puzzled by the whole thing, and longed to change the +subject. +"Go on with the next verse,' the Gryphon repeated impatiently +"it begins "I passed by his garden."' +Alice did not dare to disobey, though she felt sure it would +all come wrong, and she went on in a trembling voice +"I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye, +How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie' +[later editions continued as follows +The Panther took piecrust, and gravy, and meat, +While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat. +When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon, +Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon +While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl, +And concluded the banquet] +"What IS the use of repeating all that stuff,' the Mock Turtle +interrupted, "if you don't explain it as you go on? It's by far +the most confusing thing I ever heard' +"Yes, I think you'd better leave off,' said the Gryphon and +Alice was only too glad to do so. +"Shall we try another figure of the Lobster Quadrille?' the +Gryphon went on. "Or would you like the Mock Turtle to sing you +a song?' +"Oh, a song, please, if the Mock Turtle would be so kind,' +Alice replied, so eagerly that the Gryphon said, in a rather +offended tone, "Hm No accounting for tastes Sing her +"Turtle Soup," will you, old fellow?' +The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes +choked with sobs, to sing this +"Beautiful Soup, so rich and green, +Waiting in a hot tureen +Who for such dainties would not stoop? +Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup +Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup +Beauootiful Soooop +Beauootiful Soooop +Soooop of the eeevening, +Beautiful, beautiful Soup +"Beautiful Soup Who cares for fish, +Game, or any other dish? +Who would not give all else for two p +ennyworth only of beautiful Soup? +Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup? +Beauootiful Soooop +Beauootiful Soooop +Soooop of the eeevening, +Beautiful, beautiFUL SOUP' +"Chorus again' cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had +just begun to repeat it, when a cry of "The trial's beginning' +was heard in the distance. +"Come on' cried the Gryphon, and, taking Alice by the hand, +it hurried off, without waiting for the end of the song. +"What trial is it?' Alice panted as she ran but the Gryphon +only answered "Come on' and ran the faster, while more and more +faintly came, carried on the breeze that followed them, the +melancholy words +"Soooop of the eeevening, +Beautiful, beautiful Soup' +CHAPTER XI +Who Stole the Tarts? +The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when +they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about themall sorts +of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards +the Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on +each side to guard him and near the King was the White Rabbit, +with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the +other. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large +dish of tarts upon it they looked so good, that it made Alice +quite hungry to look at them"I wish they'd get the trial done,' +she thought, "and hand round the refreshments' But there seemed +to be no chance of this, so she began looking at everything about +her, to pass away the time. +Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had +read about them in books, and she was quite pleased to find that +she knew the name of nearly everything there. "That's the +judge,' she said to herself, "because of his great wig.' +The judge, by the way, was the King and as he wore his crown +over the wig, look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he +did it, he did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly +not becoming. +"And that's the jurybox,' thought Alice, "and those twelve +creatures,' she was obliged to say "creatures,' you see, because +some of them were animals, and some were birds, "I suppose they +are the jurors.' She said this last word two or three times over +to herself, being rather proud of it for she thought, and +rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew the +meaning of it at all. However, "jurymen' would have done just +as well. +The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. +"What are they doing?' Alice whispered to the Gryphon. "They +can't have anything to put down yet, before the trial's begun.' +"They're putting down their names,' the Gryphon whispered in +reply, "for fear they should forget them before the end of the +trial.' +"Stupid things' Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but +she stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, "Silence in +the court' and the King put on his spectacles and looked +anxiously round, to make out who was talking. +Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their +shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down "stupid things' +on their slates, and she could even make out that one of them +didn't know how to spell "stupid,' and that he had to ask his +neighbour to tell him. "A nice muddle their slates'll be in +before the trial's over' thought Alice. +One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This of course, +Alice could not stand, and she went round the court and got +behind him, and very soon found an opportunity of taking it +away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror it was +Bill, the Lizard could not make out at all what had become of +it so, after hunting all about for it, he was obliged to write +with one finger for the rest of the day and this was of very +little use, as it left no mark on the slate. +"Herald, read the accusation' said the King. +On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and +then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows +"The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, +All on a summer day +The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, +And took them quite away' +"Consider your verdict,' the King said to the jury. +"Not yet, not yet' the Rabbit hastily interrupted. "There's +a great deal to come before that' +"Call the first witness,' said the King and the White Rabbit +blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called out, "First +witness' +The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in +one hand and a piece of breadandbutter in the other. "I beg +pardon, your Majesty,' he began, "for bringing these in but I +hadn't quite finished my tea when I was sent for.' +"You ought to have finished,' said the King. "When did you +begin?' +The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into +the court, arminarm with the Dormouse. "Fourteenth of March, I +think it was,' he said. +"Fifteenth,' said the March Hare. +"Sixteenth,' added the Dormouse. +"Write that down,' the King said to the jury, and the jury +eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then +added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence. +"Take off your hat,' the King said to the Hatter. +"It isn't mine,' said the Hatter. +"Stolen' the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who +instantly made a memorandum of the fact. +"I keep them to sell,' the Hatter added as an explanation +"I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.' +Here the Queen put on her spectacles, and began staring at the +Hatter, who turned pale and fidgeted. +"Give your evidence,' said the King "and don't be nervous, or +I'll have you executed on the spot.' +This did not seem to encourage the witness at all he kept +shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the +Queen, and in his confusion he bit a large piece out of his +teacup instead of the breadandbutter. +Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which +puzzled her a good deal until she made out what it was she was +beginning to grow larger again, and she thought at first she +would get up and leave the court but on second thoughts she +decided to remain where she was as long as there was room for +her. +"I wish you wouldn't squeeze so.' said the Dormouse, who was +sitting next to her. "I can hardly breathe.' +"I can't help it,' said Alice very meekly "I'm growing.' +"You've no right to grow here,' said the Dormouse. +"Don't talk nonsense,' said Alice more boldly "you know +you're growing too.' +"Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace,' said the Dormouse +"not in that ridiculous fashion.' And he got up very sulkily +and crossed over to the other side of the court. +All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the +Hatter, and, just as the Dormouse crossed the court, she said to +one of the officers of the court, "Bring me the list of the +singers in the last concert' on which the wretched Hatter +trembled so, that he shook both his shoes off. +"Give your evidence,' the King repeated angrily, "or I'll have +you executed, whether you're nervous or not.' +"I'm a poor man, your Majesty,' the Hatter began, in a +trembling voice, "and I hadn't begun my teanot above a week +or soand what with the breadandbutter getting so thinand +the twinkling of the tea' +"The twinkling of the what?' said the King. +"It began with the tea,' the Hatter replied. +"Of course twinkling begins with a T' said the King sharply. +"Do you take me for a dunce? Go on' +"I'm a poor man,' the Hatter went on, "and most things +twinkled after thatonly the March Hare said' +"I didn't' the March Hare interrupted in a great hurry. +"You did' said the Hatter. +"I deny it' said the March Hare. +"He denies it,' said the King "leave out that part.' +"Well, at any rate, the Dormouse said' the Hatter went on, +looking anxiously round to see if he would deny it too but the +Dormouse denied nothing, being fast asleep. +"After that,' continued the Hatter, "I cut some more bread +andbutter' +"But what did the Dormouse say?' one of the jury asked. +"That I can't remember,' said the Hatter. +"You MUST remember,' remarked the King, "or I'll have you +executed.' +The miserable Hatter dropped his teacup and breadandbutter, +and went down on one knee. "I'm a poor man, your Majesty,' he +began. +"You're a very poor speaker,' said the King. +Here one of the guineapigs cheered, and was immediately +suppressed by the officers of the court. As that is rather a +hard word, I will just explain to you how it was done. They had +a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings +into this they slipped the guineapig, head first, and then sat +upon it. +"I'm glad I've seen that done,' thought Alice. "I've so often +read in the newspapers, at the end of trials, "There was some +attempts at applause, which was immediately suppressed by the +officers of the court," and I never understood what it meant +till now.' +"If that's all you know about it, you may stand down,' +continued the King. +"I can't go no lower,' said the Hatter "I'm on the floor, as +it is.' +"Then you may SIT down,' the King replied. +Here the other guineapig cheered, and was suppressed. +"Come, that finished the guineapigs' thought Alice. "Now we +shall get on better.' +"I'd rather finish my tea,' said the Hatter, with an anxious +look at the Queen, who was reading the list of singers. +"You may go,' said the King, and the Hatter hurriedly left the +court, without even waiting to put his shoes on. +"and just take his head off outside,' the Queen added to one +of the officers but the Hatter was out of sight before the +officer could get to the door. +"Call the next witness' said the King. +The next witness was the Duchess's cook. She carried the +pepperbox in her hand, and Alice guessed who it was, even before +she got into the court, by the way the people near the door began +sneezing all at once. +"Give your evidence,' said the King. +"Shan't,' said the cook. +The King looked anxiously at the White Rabbit, who said in a +low voice, "Your Majesty must crossexamine THIS witness.' +"Well, if I must, I must,' the King said, with a melancholy +air, and, after folding his arms and frowning at the cook till +his eyes were nearly out of sight, he said in a deep voice, "What +are tarts made of?' +"Pepper, mostly,' said the cook. +"Treacle,' said a sleepy voice behind her. +"Collar that Dormouse,' the Queen shrieked out. "Behead that +Dormouse Turn that Dormouse out of court Suppress him Pinch +him Off with his whiskers' +For some minutes the whole court was in confusion, getting the +Dormouse turned out, and, by the time they had settled down +again, the cook had disappeared. +"Never mind' said the King, with an air of great relief. +"Call the next witness.' And he added in an undertone to the +Queen, "Really, my dear, YOU must crossexamine the next witness. +It quite makes my forehead ache' +Alice watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list, +feeling very curious to see what the next witness would be like, +"for they haven't got much evidence YET,' she said to herself. +Imagine her surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top +of his shrill little voice, the name "Alice' +CHAPTER XII +Alice's Evidence +"Here' cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the +moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she +jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jurybox with +the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads +of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding +her very much of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally upset +the week before. +"Oh, I BEG your pardon' she exclaimed in a tone of great +dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, +for the accident of the goldfish kept running in her head, and +she had a vague sort of idea that they must be collected at once +and put back into the jurybox, or they would die. +"The trial cannot proceed,' said the King in a very grave +voice, "until all the jurymen are back in their proper places +ALL,' he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as +he said do. +Alice looked at the jurybox, and saw that, in her haste, she +had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing +was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable +to move. She soon got it out again, and put it right "not that +it signifies much,' she said to herself "I should think it +would be QUITE as much use in the trial one way up as the other.' +As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of +being upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and +handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write +out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed +too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open, +gazing up into the roof of the court. +"What do you know about this business?' the King said to +Alice. +"Nothing,' said Alice. +"Nothing WHATEVER?' persisted the King. +"Nothing whatever,' said Alice. +"That's very important,' the King said, turning to the jury. +They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when +the White Rabbit interrupted "UNimportant, your Majesty means, +of course,' he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and +making faces at him as he spoke. +"UNimportant, of course, I meant,' the King hastily said, and +went on to himself in an undertone, "importantunimportant +unimportantimportant' as if he were trying which word +sounded best. +Some of the jury wrote it down "important,' and some +"unimportant.' Alice could see this, as she was near enough to +look over their slates "but it doesn't matter a bit,' she +thought to herself. +At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily +writing in his notebook, cackled out "Silence' and read out +from his book, "Rule Fortytwo. ALL PERSONS MORE THAN A MILE +HIGH TO LEAVE THE COURT.' +Everybody looked at Alice. +"I'M not a mile high,' said Alice. +"You are,' said the King. +"Nearly two miles high,' added the Queen. +"Well, I shan't go, at any rate,' said Alice "besides, +that's not a regular rule you invented it just now.' +"It's the oldest rule in the book,' said the King. +"Then it ought to be Number One,' said Alice. +The King turned pale, and shut his notebook hastily. +"Consider your verdict,' he said to the jury, in a low, trembling +voice. +"There's more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,' said +the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry "this paper has +just been picked up.' +"What's in it?' said the Queen. +"I haven't opened it yet,' said the White Rabbit, "but it seems +to be a letter, written by the prisoner toto somebody.' +"It must have been that,' said the King, "unless it was +written to nobody, which isn't usual, you know.' +"Who is it directed to?' said one of the jurymen. +"It isn't directed at all,' said the White Rabbit "in fact, +there's nothing written on the OUTSIDE.' He unfolded the paper +as he spoke, and added "It isn't a letter, after all it's a set +of verses.' +"Are they in the prisoner's handwriting?' asked another of +they jurymen. +"No, they're not,' said the White Rabbit, "and that's the +queerest thing about it.' The jury all looked puzzled. +"He must have imitated somebody else's hand,' said the King. +The jury all brightened up again. +"Please your Majesty,' said the Knave, "I didn't write it, and +they can't prove I did there's no name signed at the end.' +"If you didn't sign it,' said the King, "that only makes the +matter worse. You MUST have meant some mischief, or else you'd +have signed your name like an honest man.' +There was a general clapping of hands at this it was the +first really clever thing the King had said that day. +"That PROVES his guilt,' said the Queen. +"It proves nothing of the sort' said Alice. "Why, you don't +even know what they're about' +"Read them,' said the King. +The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin, +please your Majesty?' he asked. +"Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, "and go on +till you come to the end then stop.' +These were the verses the White Rabbit read +"They told me you had been to her, +And mentioned me to him +She gave me a good character, +But said I could not swim. +He sent them word I had not gone +We know it to be true +If she should push the matter on, +What would become of you? +I gave her one, they gave him two, +You gave us three or more +They all returned from him to you, +Though they were mine before. +If I or she should chance to be +Involved in this affair, +He trusts to you to set them free, +Exactly as we were. +My notion was that you had been +Before she had this fit +An obstacle that came between +Him, and ourselves, and it. +Don't let him know she liked them best, +For this must ever be +A secret, kept from all the rest, +Between yourself and me.' +"That's the most important piece of evidence we've heard yet,' +said the King, rubbing his hands "so now let the jury' +"If any one of them can explain it,' said Alice, she had +grown so large in the last few minutes that she wasn't a bit +afraid of interrupting him, "I'll give him sixpence. I don't +believe there's an atom of meaning in it.' +The jury all wrote down on their slates, "SHE doesn't believe +there's an atom of meaning in it,' but none of them attempted to +explain the paper. +"If there's no meaning in it,' said the King, "that saves a +world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And +yet I don't know,' he went on, spreading out the verses on his +knee, and looking at them with one eye "I seem to see some +meaning in them, after all. "SAID I COULD NOT SWIM" you +can't swim, can you?' he added, turning to the Knave. +The Knave shook his head sadly. "Do I look like it?' he said. +Which he certainly did NOT, being made entirely of cardboard. +"All right, so far,' said the King, and he went on muttering +over the verses to himself ""WE KNOW IT TO BE TRUE" that's +the jury, of course "I GAVE HER ONE, THEY GAVE HIM TWO" why, +that must be what he did with the tarts, you know' +"But, it goes on "THEY ALL RETURNED FROM HIM TO YOU,"' said +Alice. +"Why, there they are' said the King triumphantly, pointing to +the tarts on the table. "Nothing can be clearer than THAT. +Then again"BEFORE SHE HAD THIS FIT" you never had fits, my +dear, I think?' he said to the Queen. +"Never' said the Queen furiously, throwing an inkstand at the +Lizard as she spoke. The unfortunate little Bill had left off +writing on his slate with one finger, as he found it made no +mark but he now hastily began again, using the ink, that was +trickling down his face, as long as it lasted. +"Then the words don't FIT you,' said the King, looking round +the court with a smile. There was a dead silence. +"It's a pun' the King added in an offended tone, and +everybody laughed, "Let the jury consider their verdict,' the +King said, for about the twentieth time that day. +"No, no' said the Queen. "Sentence firstverdict afterwards.' +"Stuff and nonsense' said Alice loudly. "The idea of having +the sentence first' +"Hold your tongue' said the Queen, turning purple. +"I won't' said Alice. +"Off with her head' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. +Nobody moved. +"Who cares for you?' said Alice, she had grown to her full +size by this time. "You're nothing but a pack of cards' +At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying +down upon her she gave a little scream, half of fright and half +of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on +the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently +brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the +trees upon her face. +"Wake up, Alice dear' said her sister "Why, what a long +sleep you've had' +"Oh, I've had such a curious dream' said Alice, and she told +her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange +Adventures of hers that you have just been reading about and +when she had finished, her sister kissed her, and said, "It WAS a +curious dream, dear, certainly but now run in to your tea it's +getting late.' So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she +ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been. +But her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her +head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of +little Alice and all her wonderful Adventures, till she too began +dreaming after a fashion, and this was her dream +First, she dreamed of little Alice herself, and once again the +tiny hands were clasped upon her knee, and the bright eager eyes +were looking up into hersshe could hear the very tones of her +voice, and see that queer little toss of her head to keep back +the wandering hair that WOULD always get into her eyesand +still as she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place +around her became alive the strange creatures of her little +sister's dream. +The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried +bythe frightened Mouse splashed his way through the +neighbouring poolshe could hear the rattle of the teacups as +the March Hare and his friends shared their neverending meal, +and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate +guests to executiononce more the pigbaby was sneezing on the +Duchess's knee, while plates and dishes crashed around itonce +more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard's +slatepencil, and the choking of the suppressed guineapigs, +filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable +Mock Turtle. +So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in +Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and +all would change to dull realitythe grass would be only +rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the +reedsthe rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep +bells, and the Queen's shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd +boyand the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and +all thy other queer noises, would change she knew to the +confused clamour of the busy farmyardwhile the lowing of the +cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle's +heavy sobs. +Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of +hers would, in the aftertime, be herself a grown woman and how +she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and +loving heart of her childhood and how she would gather about +her other little children, and make THEIR eyes bright and eager +with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of +Wonderland of long ago and how she would feel with all their +simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, +remembering her own childlife, and the happy summer days. +THE END +Project Gutenberg's The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde + Etexts From The Original Internet Information Providers +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. 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Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Illinois Benedictine College". +WRITE TO US We can be reached at +Project Gutenberg Director of Communications PGDIRCOM +Internet pgdircomvmd.cso.uiuc.edu +Bitnet pgdircomuiucvmd +CompuServe internetpgdircom.vmd.cso.uiuc.edu +Attmail internetvmd.cso.uiuc.edupgdircom +Drafted by CHARLES B. KRAMER, Attorney +CompuServe , +Internet .compuserve.com +Tel +ENDTHE SMALL PRINT FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTSVer...END +The Picture of Dorian Gray +by +Oscar Wilde +THE PREFACE +The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal +the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another +manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. +The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. +Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without +being charming. This is a fault. +Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. +For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things +mean only beauty. +There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. +Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. +The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban +seeing his own face in a glass. +The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of +Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man +forms part of the subjectmatter of the artist, but the morality +of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. +No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true +can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical +sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. +No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. +Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. +Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. +From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art +of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's +craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. +Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. +Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. +It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. +Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work +is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, +the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man +for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. +The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one +admires it intensely. +All art is quite useless. +OSCAR WILDE +CHAPTER +The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when +the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, +there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, +or the more delicate perfume of the pinkflowering thorn. +From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which +he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, +Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honeysweet and +honeycoloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed +hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs +and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted +across the long tussoresilk curtains that were stretched in front +of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, +and making him think of those pallid, jadefaced painters of Tokyo who, +through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, +seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur +of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, +or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of +the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. +The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ. +In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the fulllength +portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, +some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, +whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public +excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures. +As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully +mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed +about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, +placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his +brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake. +"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," +said Lord Henry languidly. "You must certainly send it next year +to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. +Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I +have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many +pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. +The Grosvenor is really the only place." +"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head +back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. +"No, I won't send it anywhere." +Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through +the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls +from his heavy, opiumtainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere? +My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you +painters are You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. +As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. +It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse +than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. +A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, +and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of +any emotion." +"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit it. +I have put too much of myself into it." +Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed. +"Yes, I knew you would but it is quite true, all the same." +"Too much of yourself in it Upon my word, Basil, +I didn't know you were so vain and I really can't see any resemblance +between you, with your rugged strong face and your coalblack hair, +and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory +and roseleaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you +well, of course you have an intellectual expression and all that. +But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. +Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys +the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, +one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. +Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. +How perfectly hideous they are Except, of course, in the Church. +But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at +the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, +and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. +Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, +but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite +sure of that. He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be +always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always +here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. +Don't flatter yourself, Basil you are not in the least like +him." +"You don't understand me, Harry," answered the artist. "Of course I am +not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry +to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. +There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, +the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering +steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. +The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit +at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, +they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we +all should liveundisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. +They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. +Your rank and wealth, Harry my brains, such as they aremy art, whatever it +may be worth Dorian Gray's good lookswe shall all suffer for what the gods +have given us, suffer terribly." +"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord Henry, walking across +the studio towards Basil Hallward. +"Yes, that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to you." +"But why not?" +"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell +their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. +I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing +that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. +The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. +When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. +If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, +I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance +into one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish +about it?" +"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, "not at all, my dear Basil. +You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is +that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. +I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. +When we meetwe do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go +down to the Duke'swe tell each other the most absurd stories with the most +serious faces. My wife is very good at itmuch better, in fact, than I am. +She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she +does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would +but she merely laughs at me." +"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," +said Basil Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into +the garden. "I believe that you are really a very good husband, +but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. +You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, +and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply +a pose." +"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know," +cried Lord Henry, laughing and the two young men went out into the garden +together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood in the +shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. +In the grass, white daisies were tremulous. +After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I +must be going, Basil," he murmured, "and before I go, I insist +on your answering a question I put to you some time ago." +"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. +"You know quite well." +"I do not, Harry." +"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you +won't exhibit Dorian Gray's picture. I want the real reason." +"I told you the real reason." +"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much +of yourself in it. Now, that is childish." +"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, +"every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, +not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. +It is not he who is revealed by the painter it is rather the painter who, +on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit +this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my +own soul." +Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked. +"I will tell you," said Hallward but an expression of perplexity +came over his face. +"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion, +glancing at him. +"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the painter +"and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly +believe it." +Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pinkpetalled daisy from +the grass and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand it," +he replied, gazing intently at the little golden, whitefeathered disk, +"and as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is +quite incredible." +The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilacblooms, +with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. +A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread +a long thin dragonfly floated past on its brown gauze wings. +Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, +and wondered what was coming. +"The story is simply this," said the painter after some time. +"Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know +we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time +to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. +With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, +even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. +Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, +talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, +I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. +I turned halfway round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. +When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. +A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I +had come face to face with some one whose mere personality +was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would +absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. +I did not want any external influence in my life. +You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am by nature. +I have always been my own master had at least always been so, +till I met Dorian Gray. Thenbut I don't know how to explain +it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge +of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that +fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. +I grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience +that made me do so it was a sort of cowardice. I take no +credit to myself for trying to escape." +"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. +Conscience is the tradename of the firm. That is all." +"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either. +However, whatever was my motiveand it may have been pride, +for I used to be very proudI certainly struggled to the door. +There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not +going to run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. +You know her curiously shrill voice?" +"Yes she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry, +pulling the daisy to bits with his long nervous fingers. +"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, +and people with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic +tiaras and parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. +I had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. +I believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, +at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is +the nineteenthcentury standard of immortality. Suddenly I found myself +face to face with the young man whose personality had so strangely +stirred me. We were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. +It was reckless of me, but I asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. +Perhaps it was not so reckless, after all. It was simply inevitable. +We would have spoken to each other without any introduction. +I am sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards. He, too, felt that we +were destined to know each other." +"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" +asked his companion. "I know she goes in for giving +a rapid precis of all her guests. I remember her bringing +me up to a truculent and redfaced old gentleman covered +all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, +in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible +to everybody in the room, the most astounding details. +I simply fled. I like to find out people for myself. +But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer +treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, +or tells one everything about them except what one wants +to know." +"Poor Lady Brandon You are hard on her, Harry" said Hallward listlessly. +"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded +in opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, +what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?" +"Oh, something like, 'Charming boypoor dear mother and I +absolutely inseparable. Quite forget what he doesafraid he +doesn't do anythingoh, yes, plays the pianoor is it +the violin, dear Mr. Gray?' Neither of us could help laughing, +and we became friends at once." +"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, +and it is far the best ending for one," said the young lord, +plucking another daisy. +Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is, Harry," +he murmured"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like every one +that is to say, you are indifferent to every one." +"How horribly unjust of you" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back +and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy +white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. +"Yes horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people. +I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for +their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. +A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not +got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, +and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? +I think it is rather vain." +"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I +must be merely an acquaintance." +"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance." +"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?" +"Oh, brothers I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, +and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else." +"Harry" exclaimed Hallward, frowning. +"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting +my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us +can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. +I quite sympathize with the rage of the English democracy against +what they call the vices of the upper orders. The masses feel +that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own +special property, and that if any one of us makes an ass of himself, +he is poaching on their preserves. When poor Southwark got +into the divorce court, their indignation was quite magnificent. +And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat +live correctly." +"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more, +Harry, I feel sure you don't either." +Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe +of his patentleather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. +"How English you are Basil That is the second time you +have made that observation. If one puts forward an idea +to a true Englishmanalways a rash thing to dohe never +dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. +The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one +believes it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has nothing +whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. +Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere +the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, +as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, +his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don't propose +to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. +I like persons better than principles, and I like persons +with no principles better than anything else in the world. +Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you +see him?" +"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. +He is absolutely necessary to me." +"How extraordinary I thought you would never care for anything +but your art." +"He is all my art to me now," said the painter gravely. +"I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any +importance in the world's history. The first is the appearance +of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance +of a new personality for art also. What the invention +of oilpainting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous +was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will +some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, +draw from him, sketch from him. Of course, I have done all that. +But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. +I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done +of him, or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. +There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that +the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, +is the best work of my life. But in some curious wayI wonder +will you understand me?his personality has suggested to me +an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. +I see things differently, I think of them differently. +I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. +'A dream of form in days of thought'who is it who says that? +I forget but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. +The merely visible presence of this ladfor he seems to me +little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty +his merely visible presenceah I wonder can you realize +all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me +the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it +all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection +of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body +how much that is We in our madness have separated the two, +and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that +is void. Harry if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me +You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered +me such a huge price but which I would not part with? +It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why +is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat +beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to me, +and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain +woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always +missed." +"Basil, this is extraordinary I must see Dorian Gray." +Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. +After some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray +is to me simply a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. +I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than +when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, +of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, +in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. +That is all." +"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry. +"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression +of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, +I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. +He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, +and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. +My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much +of myself in the thing, Harrytoo much of myself" +"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion +is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions." +"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create +beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. +We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form +of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. +Some day I will show the world what it is and for that reason the world +shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray." +"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. +It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, +is Dorian Gray very fond of you?" +The painter considered for a few moments. "He likes me," +he answered after a pause "I know he likes me. Of course I +flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying +things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. +As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk +of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly +thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. +Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some +one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, +a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a +summer's day." +"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry. +"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, +but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts +for the fact that we all take such pains to overeducate ourselves. +In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, +and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping +our place. The thoroughly wellinformed manthat is the modern ideal. +And the mind of the thoroughly wellinformed man is a dreadful thing. +It is like a bricabrac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything +priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. +Some day you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little +out of drawing, or you won't like his tone of colour, or something. You will +bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has +behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be perfectly +cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. +What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, +and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one +so unromantic." +"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality +of Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. +You change too often." +"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. +Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love +it is the faithless who know love's tragedies." And Lord +Henry struck a light on a dainty silver case and began +to smoke a cigarette with a selfconscious and satisfied air, +as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was +a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves +of the ivy, and the blue cloudshadows chased themselves across +the grass like swallows. How pleasant it was in the garden +And how delightful other people's emotions were +much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. +One's own soul, and the passions of one's friendsthose were +the fascinating things in life. He pictured to himself +with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed +by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had he gone to his +aunt's, he would have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, +and the whole conversation would have been about the feeding +of the poor and the necessity for model lodginghouses. Each +class would have preached the importance of those virtues, +for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. +The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, +and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. +It was charming to have escaped all that As he thought of his aunt, +an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to Hallward and said, +"My dear fellow, I have just remembered." +"Remembered what, Harry?" +"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray." +"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight frown. +"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha's. +She told me she had discovered a wonderful young man who was going +to help her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. +I am bound to state that she never told me he was goodlooking. Women +have no appreciation of good looks at least, good women have not. +She said that he was very earnest and had a beautiful nature. +I at once pictured to myself a creature with spectacles and lank hair, +horribly freckled, and tramping about on huge feet. I wish I had known it +was your friend." +"I am very glad you didn't, Harry." +"Why?" +"I don't want you to meet him." +"You don't want me to meet him?" +"No." +"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, +coming into the garden. +"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing. +The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight. +"Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker I shall be in in a few moments." +The man bowed and went up the walk. +Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," +he said. "He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt +was quite right in what she said of him. Don't spoil him. +Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. +The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. +Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art +whatever charm it possesses my life as an artist depends +on him. Mind, Harry, I trust you." He spoke very slowly, +and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against +his will. +"What nonsense you talk" said Lord Henry, smiling, and taking Hallward +by the arm, he almost led him into the house. +CHAPTER +As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the piano, +with his back to them, turning over the pages of a volume of Schumann's +"Forest Scenes." "You must lend me these, Basil," he cried. +"I want to learn them. They are perfectly charming." +"That entirely depends on how you sit today, Dorian." +"Oh, I am tired of sitting, and I don't want a lifesized portrait +of myself," answered the lad, swinging round on the musicstool +in a wilful, petulant manner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, +a faint blush coloured his cheeks for a moment, and he started up. +"I beg your pardon, Basil, but I didn't know you had any one +with you." +"This is Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian, an old Oxford friend of mine. +I have just been telling him what a capital sitter you were, +and now you have spoiled everything." +"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray," +said Lord Henry, stepping forward and extending his hand. +"My aunt has often spoken to me about you. You are one of +her favourites, and, I am afraid, one of her victims also." +"I am in Lady Agatha's black books at present," answered Dorian +with a funny look of penitence. "I promised to go to a club in +Whitechapel with her last Tuesday, and I really forgot all about it. +We were to have played a duet togetherthree duets, I believe. +I don't know what she will say to me. I am far too frightened +to call." +"Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite devoted to you. +And I don't think it really matters about your not being there. The audience +probably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the piano, +she makes quite enough noise for two people." +"That is very horrid to her, and not very nice to me," +answered Dorian, laughing. +Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, +with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp +gold hair. There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. +All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. +One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. No wonder Basil +Hallward worshipped him. +"You are too charming to go in for philanthropy, Mr. Grayfar too charming." +And Lord Henry flung himself down on the divan and opened his cigarettecase. +The painter had been busy mixing his colours and getting his brushes ready. +He was looking worried, and when he heard Lord Henry's last remark, he glanced +at him, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Harry, I want to finish this +picture today. Would you think it awfully rude of me if I asked you to +go away?" +Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray. "Am I to go, Mr. Gray?" +he asked. +"Oh, please don't, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his sulky moods, +and I can't bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell me why I +should not go in for philanthropy." +"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so +tedious a subject that one would have to talk seriously about it. +But I certainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. +You don't really mind, Basil, do you? You have often told me that you +liked your sitters to have some one to chat to." +Hallward bit his lip. "If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay. +Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself." +Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. "You are very pressing, Basil, but I +am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans. +Goodbye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. +I am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when you are coming. +I should be sorry to miss you." +"Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry Wotton goes, I shall go, too. +You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull +standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay. +I insist upon it." +"Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward, +gazing intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk +when I am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully +tedious for my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay." +"But what about my man at the Orleans?" +The painter laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about that. +Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and don't +move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says. +He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception +of myself." +Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek martyr, +and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather +taken a fancy. He was so unlike Basil. They made a delightful contrast. +And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, +"Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?" +"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. +All influence is immoralimmoral from the scientific point +of view." +"Why?" +"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. +He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. +His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things +as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, +an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life +is selfdevelopment. To realize one's nature perfectlythat is what +each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. +They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes +to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry +and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. +Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. +The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, +which is the secret of religionthese are the two things that govern us. +And yet" +"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy," +said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look had come +into the lad's face that he had never seen there before. +"And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, +and with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so +characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, +"I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully +and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to +every thought, reality to every dreamI believe that the world +would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all +the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal +to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. +But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. +The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the +selfdenial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. +Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind +and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, +for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then +but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. +The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. +Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things +it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous +laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said +that the great events of the world take place in the brain. +It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins +of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, +with your rosered youth and your rosewhite boyhood, you have had +passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you +with terror, daydreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might +stain your cheek with shame" +"Stop" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop you bewilder me. +I don't know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I +cannot find it. Don't speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me +try not to think." +For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted +lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious +that entirely fresh influences were at work within him. +Yet they seemed to him to have come really from himself. +The few words that Basil's friend had said to himwords spoken +by chance, no doubt, and with wilful paradox in them +had touched some secret chord that had never been touched before, +but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to +curious pulses. +Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. +But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather +another chaos, that it created in us. Words Mere words +How terrible they were How clear, and vivid, and cruel One could +not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them +They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, +and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. +Mere words Was there anything so real as words? +Yes there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. +He understood them now. Life suddenly became fierycoloured to him. +It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not +known it? +With his subtle smile, Lord Henry watched him. He knew the precise +psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. +He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, +and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, +a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, +he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. +He had merely shot an arrow into the air. Had it hit the mark? +How fascinating the lad was +Hallward painted away with that marvellous bold touch of his, +that had the true refinement and perfect delicacy that in art, +at any rate comes only from strength. He was unconscious of +the silence. +"Basil, I am tired of standing," cried Dorian Gray suddenly. +"I must go out and sit in the garden. The air is stifling here." +"My dear fellow, I am so sorry. When I am painting, +I can't think of anything else. But you never sat better. +You were perfectly still. And I have caught the effect I wanted +the halfparted lips and the bright look in the eyes. +I don't know what Harry has been saying to you, but he has +certainly made you have the most wonderful expression. +I suppose he has been paying you compliments. You mustn't believe +a word that he says." +"He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason +that I don't believe anything he has told me." +"You know you believe it all," said Lord Henry, looking at him with +his dreamy languorous eyes. "I will go out to the garden with you. +It is horribly hot in the studio. Basil, let us have something iced +to drink, something with strawberries in it." +"Certainly, Harry. Just touch the bell, and when Parker comes I +will tell him what you want. I have got to work up this background, +so I will join you later on. Don't keep Dorian too long. +I have never been in better form for painting than I am today. This +is going to be my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece as it stands." +Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in +the great cool lilacblossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it +had been wine. He came close to him and put his hand upon his shoulder. +"You are quite right to do that," he murmured. "Nothing can cure the soul +but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul." +The lad started and drew back. He was bareheaded, and the leaves +had tossed his rebellious curls and tangled all their gilded threads. +There was a look of fear in his eyes, such as people have when they +are suddenly awakened. His finely chiselled nostrils quivered, +and some hidden nerve shook the scarlet of his lips and left +them trembling. +"Yes," continued Lord Henry, "that is one of the great secrets of life +to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. +You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as +you know less than you want to know." +Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help +liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. +His romantic, olivecoloured face and worn expression interested him. +There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. +His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. +They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language +of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. +Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? +He had known Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them +had never altered him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life +who seemed to have disclosed to him life's mystery. And, yet, what was +there to be afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to +be frightened. +"Let us go and sit in the shade," said Lord Henry. "Parker has +brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare, +you will be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. +You really must not allow yourself to become sunburnt. It would +be unbecoming." +"What can it matter?" cried Dorian Gray, laughing, as he sat +down on the seat at the end of the garden. +"It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray." +"Why?" +"Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing +worth having." +"I don't feel that, Lord Henry." +"No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old +and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead +with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its +hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. +Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always +be so? . . . You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. +Don't frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius +is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. +It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, +or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver +shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine +right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. +You smile? Ah when you have lost it you won't smile. +. . . People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. +That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial +as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. +It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. +The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. +. . . Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. +But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only +a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. +When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you +will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, +or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that +the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. +Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. +Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. +You will become sallow, and hollowcheeked, and dulleyed. +You will suffer horribly.... Ah realize your youth +while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, +listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, +or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, +and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, +of our age. Live Live the wonderful life that is in you +Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for +new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism +that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. +With your personality there is nothing you could not do. +The world belongs to you for a season. . . . The moment I met +you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what you really are, +of what you really might be. There was so much in you that +charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. +I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is +such a little time that your youth will lastsuch a little time. +The common hillflowers wither, but they blossom again. +The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. +In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year +after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. +But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us +at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. +We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory +of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the +exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. +Youth Youth There is absolutely nothing in the world but +youth" +Dorian Gray listened, openeyed and wondering. The spray +of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came +and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble +all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. +He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things +that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, +or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we +cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies +us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield. +After a time the bee flew away. He saw it creeping into the stained +trumpet of a Tyrian convolvulus. The flower seemed to quiver, +and then swayed gently to and fro. +Suddenly the painter appeared at the door of the studio and made staccato +signs for them to come in. They turned to each other and smiled. +"I am waiting," he cried. "Do come in. The light is quite perfect, +and you can bring your drinks." +They rose up and sauntered down the walk together. Two greenandwhite +butterflies fluttered past them, and in the peartree at the corner +of the garden a thrush began to sing. +"You are glad you have met me, Mr. Gray," said Lord Henry, +looking at him. +"Yes, I am glad now. I wonder shall I always be glad?" +"Always That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. +Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make +it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference +between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a +little longer." +As they entered the studio, Dorian Gray put his hand upon Lord Henry's arm. +"In that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured, flushing at his +own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his pose. +Lord Henry flung himself into a large wicker armchair and watched him. +The sweep and dash of the brush on the canvas made the only sound +that broke the stillness, except when, now and then, Hallward stepped +back to look at his work from a distance. In the slanting beams +that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. +The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything. +After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, +looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long +time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes +and frowning. "It is quite finished," he cried at last, +and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on +the lefthand corner of the canvas. +Lord Henry came over and examined the picture. It was certainly +a wonderful work of art, and a wonderful likeness as well. +"My dear fellow, I congratulate you most warmly," he said. +"It is the finest portrait of modern times. Mr. Gray, come over +and look at yourself." +The lad started, as if awakened from some dream. +"Is it really finished?" he murmured, stepping down from the platform. +"Quite finished," said the painter. "And you have sat splendidly +today. I am awfully obliged to you." +"That is entirely due to me," broke in Lord Henry. "Isn't it, +Mr. Gray?" +Dorian made no answer, but passed listlessly in front of his +picture and turned towards it. When he saw it he drew back, +and his cheeks flushed for a moment with pleasure. A look of joy came +into his eyes, as if he had recognized himself for the first time. +He stood there motionless and in wonder, dimly conscious that Hallward +was speaking to him, but not catching the meaning of his words. +The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. +He had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compliments had seemed +to him to be merely the charming exaggeration of friendship. +He had listened to them, laughed at them, forgotten them. +They had not influenced his nature. Then had come Lord Henry +Wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning +of its brevity. That had stirred him at the time, and now, +as he stood gazing at the shadow of his own loveliness, the full +reality of the description flashed across him. Yes, there would +be a day when his face would be wrinkled and wizen, his eyes dim +and colourless, the grace of his figure broken and deformed. +The scarlet would pass away from his lips and the gold steal from +his hair. The life that was to make his soul would mar his body. +He would become dreadful, hideous, and uncouth. +As he thought of it, a sharp pang of pain struck through him +like a knife and made each delicate fibre of his nature quiver. +His eyes deepened into amethyst, and across them came a mist +of tears. He felt as if a hand of ice had been laid upon +his heart. +"Don't you like it?" cried Hallward at last, stung a little +by the lad's silence, not understanding what it meant. +"Of course he likes it," said Lord Henry. "Who wouldn't like it? +It is one of the greatest things in modern art. I will give you +anything you like to ask for it. I must have it." +"It is not my property, Harry." +"Whose property is it?" +"Dorian's, of course," answered the painter. +"He is a very lucky fellow." +"How sad it is" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon +his own portrait. "How sad it is I shall grow old, and horrible, +and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. +It will never be older than this particular day of June. +. . . If it were only the other way If it were I who was +to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old +For thatfor thatI would give everything Yes, there is +nothing in the whole world I would not give I would give my soul +for that" +"You would hardly care for such an arrangement, Basil," cried Lord +Henry, laughing. "It would be rather hard lines on your work." +"I should object very strongly, Harry," said Hallward. +Dorian Gray turned and looked at him. "I believe you would, Basil. +You like your art better than your friends. I am no more to you +than a green bronze figure. Hardly as much, I dare say." +The painter stared in amazement. It was so unlike Dorian to speak like that. +What had happened? He seemed quite angry. His face was flushed and his +cheeks burning. +"Yes," he continued, "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your +silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? +Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one +loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. +Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. +Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I +shall kill myself." +Hallward turned pale and caught his hand. "Dorian Dorian" he cried, +"don't talk like that. I have never had such a friend as you, and I shall +never have such another. You are not jealous of material things, are you? +you who are finer than any of them" +"I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. +I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. +Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes +takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it +were only the other way If the picture could change, +and I could be always what I am now Why did you paint it? +It will mock me some daymock me horribly" The hot tears +welled into his eyes he tore his hand away and, flinging himself +on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he +was praying. +"This is your doing, Harry," said the painter bitterly. +Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray +that is all." +"It is not." +"If it is not, what have I to do with it?" +"You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered. +"I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer. +"Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, +but between you both you have made me hate the finest +piece of work I have ever done, and I will destroy it. +What is it but canvas and colour? I will not let it come across +our three lives and mar them." +Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and with pallid face and +tearstained eyes, looked at him as he walked over to the deal paintingtable +that was set beneath the high curtained window. What was he doing there? +His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, +seeking for something. Yes, it was for the long paletteknife, with its thin +blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up +the canvas. +With a stifled sob the lad leaped from the couch, and, rushing over +to Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end +of the studio. "Don't, Basil, don't" he cried. "It would be murder" +"I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said the painter coldly +when he had recovered from his surprise. "I never thought you would." +"Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself. +I feel that." +"Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, +and sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself." +And he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. +"You will have tea, of course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? +Or do you object to such simple pleasures?" +"I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are +the last refuge of the complex. But I don't like scenes, +except on the stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you +I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. +It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, +but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all +though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. +You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn't +really want it, and I really do." +"If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I shall never forgive you" +cried Dorian Gray "and I don't allow people to call me a silly boy." +"You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it existed." +"And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you +don't really object to being reminded that you are extremely young." +"I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry." +"Ah this morning You have lived since then." +There came a knock at the door, and the butler entered with a +laden teatray and set it down upon a small Japanese table. +There was a rattle of cups and saucers and the hissing of a fluted +Georgian urn. Two globeshaped china dishes were brought +in by a page. Dorian Gray went over and poured out the tea. +The two men sauntered languidly to the table and examined what was +under the covers. +"Let us go to the theatre tonight," said Lord Henry. +"There is sure to be something on, somewhere. I have promised +to dine at White's, but it is only with an old friend, +so I can send him a wire to say that I am ill, or that I am +prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. +I think that would be a rather nice excuse it would have all +the surprise of candour." +"It is such a bore putting on one's dressclothes," muttered Hallward. +"And, when one has them on, they are so horrid." +"Yes," answered Lord Henry dreamily, "the costume of the nineteenth +century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only +real colourelement left in modern life." +"You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry." +"Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, +or the one in the picture?" +"Before either." +"I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry," +said the lad. +"Then you shall come and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?" +"I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do." +"Well, then, you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray." +"I should like that awfully." +The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. +"I shall stay with the real Dorian," he said, sadly. +"Is it the real Dorian?" cried the original of the portrait, +strolling across to him. "Am I really like that?" +"Yes you are just like that." +"How wonderful, Basil" +"At least you are like it in appearance. But it will never alter," +sighed Hallward. "That is something." +"What a fuss people make about fidelity" exclaimed Lord Henry. +"Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. +It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to +be faithful, and are not old men want to be faithless, and cannot +that is all one can say." +"Don't go to the theatre tonight, Dorian," said Hallward. +"Stop and dine with me." +"I can't, Basil." +"Why?" +"Because I have promised Lord Henry Wotton to go with him." +"He won't like you the better for keeping your promises. +He always breaks his own. I beg you not to go." +Dorian Gray laughed and shook his head. +"I entreat you." +The lad hesitated, and looked over at Lord Henry, who was watching +them from the teatable with an amused smile. +"I must go, Basil," he answered. +"Very well," said Hallward, and he went over and laid down his +cup on the tray. "It is rather late, and, as you have to dress, +you had better lose no time. Goodbye, Harry. Goodbye, Dorian. +Come and see me soon. Come tomorrow." +"Certainly." +"You won't forget?" +"No, of course not," cried Dorian. +"And ... Harry" +"Yes, Basil?" +"Remember what I asked you, when we were in the garden this morning." +"I have forgotten it." +"I trust you." +"I wish I could trust myself," said Lord Henry, laughing. "Come, Mr. Gray, +my hansom is outside, and I can drop you at your own place. Goodbye, Basil. +It has been a most interesting afternoon." +As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, +and a look of pain came into his face. +CHAPTER +At halfpast twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon +Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, +a genial if somewhat roughmannered old bachelor, whom the outside +world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit +from him, but who was considered generous by Society as he fed +the people who amused him. His father had been our ambassador +at Madrid when Isabella was young and Prim unthought of, +but had retired from the diplomatic service in a capricious +moment of annoyance on not being offered the Embassy at Paris, +a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled +by reason of his birth, his indolence, the good English +of his dispatches, and his inordinate passion for pleasure. +The son, who had been his father's secretary, had resigned along +with his chief, somewhat foolishly as was thought at the time, +and on succeeding some months later to the title, had set +himself to the serious study of the great aristocratic art +of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town houses, +but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, +and took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention +to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, +excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that +the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman +to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. +In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, +during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack +of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, +and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. +Only England could have produced him, and he always said +that the country was going to the dogs. His principles +were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for +his prejudices. +When Lord Henry entered the room, he found his uncle sitting in a rough +shootingcoat, smoking a cheroot and grumbling over The Times. +"Well, Harry," said the old gentleman, "what brings you out so early? +I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible +till five." +"Pure family affection, I assure you, Uncle George. I want to get +something out of you." +"Money, I suppose," said Lord Fermor, making a wry face. +"Well, sit down and tell me all about it. Young people, +nowadays, imagine that money is everything." +"Yes," murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat +"and when they grow older they know it. But I don't want money. +It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, +and I never pay mine. Credit is the capital of a younger son, +and one lives charmingly upon it. Besides, I always deal with +Dartmoor's tradesmen, and consequently they never bother me. +What I want is information not useful information, of course +useless information." +"Well, I can tell you anything that is in an English Blue Book, +Harry, although those fellows nowadays write a lot of nonsense. +When I was in the Diplomatic, things were much better. +But I hear they let them in now by examination. What can +you expect? Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning +to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, +and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad +for him." +"Mr. Dorian Gray does not belong to Blue Books, Uncle George," +said Lord Henry languidly. +"Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy +white eyebrows. +"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather, +I know who he is. He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson. +His mother was a Devereux, Lady Margaret Devereaux. +I want you to tell me about his mother. What was she like? +Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody +in your time, so you might have known her. I am very much +interested in Mr. Gray at present. I have only just +met him." +"Kelso's grandson" echoed the old gentleman. "Kelso's grandson ... Of +course.... I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her christening. +She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux, and made +all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow +a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something +of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it +happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few +months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it. +They said Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute, +to insult his soninlaw in publicpaid him, sir, to do it, paid him +and that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon. +The thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club +for some time afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I was told, +and she never spoke to him again. Oh, yes it was a bad business. +The girl died, too, died within a year. So she left a son, did she? +I had forgotten that. What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother, +he must be a goodlooking chap." +"He is very goodlooking," assented Lord Henry. +"I hope he will fall into proper hands," continued the old man. +"He should have a pot of money waiting for him if Kelso +did the right thing by him. His mother had money, too. +All the Selby property came to her, through her grandfather. +Her grandfather hated Kelso, thought him a mean dog. +He was, too. Came to Madrid once when I was there. Egad, I was +ashamed of him. The Queen used to ask me about the English noble +who was always quarrelling with the cabmen about their fares. +They made quite a story of it. I didn't dare show my face at Court +for a month. I hope he treated his grandson better than he did +the jarvies." +"I don't know," answered Lord Henry. "I fancy that the boy will be well off. +He is not of age yet. He has Selby, I know. He told me so. And . . . his +mother was very beautiful?" +"Margaret Devereux was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw, Harry. +What on earth induced her to behave as she did, I never could understand. +She could have married anybody she chose. Carlington was mad after her. +She was romantic, though. All the women of that family were. +The men were a poor lot, but, egad the women were wonderful. +Carlington went on his knees to her. Told me so himself. She laughed at him, +and there wasn't a girl in London at the time who wasn't after him. +And by the way, Harry, talking about silly marriages, what is this humbug your +father tells me about Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? Ain't English +girls good enough for him?" +"It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just now, Uncle George." +"I'll back English women against the world, Harry," said Lord Fermor, +striking the table with his fist. +"The betting is on the Americans." +"They don't last, I am told," muttered his uncle. +"A long engagement exhausts them, but they are capital at a steeplechase. +They take things flying. I don't think Dartmoor has a chance." +"Who are her people?" grumbled the old gentleman. "Has she got any?" +Lord Henry shook his head. "American girls are as clever at concealing +their parents, as English women are at concealing their past," he said, +rising to go. +"They are porkpackers, I suppose?" +"I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told +that porkpacking is the most lucrative profession in America, +after politics." +"Is she pretty?" +"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. +It is the secret of their charm." +"Why can't these American women stay in their own country? +They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women." +"It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively +anxious to get out of it," said Lord Henry. "Goodbye, Uncle George. +I shall be late for lunch, if I stop any longer. Thanks for giving me +the information I wanted. I always like to know everything about my +new friends, and nothing about my old ones." +"Where are you lunching, Harry?" +"At Aunt Agatha's. I have asked myself and Mr. Gray. +He is her latest protege." +"Humph tell your Aunt Agatha, Harry, not to bother me any more with +her charity appeals. I am sick of them. Why, the good woman thinks +that I have nothing to do but to write cheques for her silly fads." +"All right, Uncle George, I'll tell her, but it won't have any effect. +Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their +distinguishing characteristic." +The old gentleman growled approvingly and rang the bell for his servant. +Lord Henry passed up the low arcade into Burlington Street and turned his +steps in the direction of Berkeley Square. +So that was the story of Dorian Gray's parentage. +Crudely as it had been told to him, it had yet stirred him +by its suggestion of a strange, almost modern romance. +A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. +A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, +treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then +a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, +the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and +loveless man. Yes it was an interesting background. +It posed the lad, made him more perfect, as it were. Behind every +exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. +Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow. +. . . And how charming he had been at dinner the night before, +as with startled eyes and lips parted in frightened pleasure +he had sat opposite to him at the club, the red candleshades +staining to a richer rose the wakening wonder of his face. +Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. +He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow. . . . There +was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. +No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some +gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment to hear one's +own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added +music of passion and youth to convey one's temperament into +another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume +there was a real joy in thatperhaps the most satisfying +joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, +an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common +in its aims.... He was a marvellous type, too, this lad, +whom by so curious a chance he had met in Basil's studio, +or could be fashioned into a marvellous type, at any rate. +Grace was his, and the white purity of boyhood, and beauty such +as old Greek marbles kept for us. There was nothing that one +could not do with him. He could be made a Titan or a toy. +What a pity it was that such beauty was destined to fade +. . . And Basil? From a psychological point of view, +how interesting he was The new manner in art, the fresh +mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the merely +visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all +the silent spirit that dwelt in dim woodland, and walked unseen +in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryadlike and not afraid, +because in his soul who sought for her there had been wakened +that wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful things revealed +the mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, +refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though +they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect +form whose shadow they made real how strange it all was +He remembered something like it in history. Was it not Plato, +that artist in thought, who had first analyzed it? +Was it not Buonarotti who had carved it in the coloured marbles +of a sonnetsequence? But in our own century it was strange. +. . . Yes he would try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing it, +the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful portrait. +He would seek to dominate himhad already, indeed, +half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. +There was something fascinating in this son of love and +death. +Suddenly he stopped and glanced up at the houses. He found that he had +passed his aunt's some distance, and, smiling to himself, turned back. +When he entered the somewhat sombre hall, the butler told him that they +had gone in to lunch. He gave one of the footmen his hat and stick +and passed into the diningroom. +"Late as usual, Harry," cried his aunt, shaking her head at him. +He invented a facile excuse, and having taken the vacant seat +next to her, looked round to see who was there. Dorian bowed +to him shyly from the end of the table, a flush of pleasure +stealing into his cheek. Opposite was the Duchess of Harley, +a lady of admirable goodnature and good temper, much liked +by every one who knew her, and of those ample architectural +proportions that in women who are not duchesses are described +by contemporary historians as stoutness. Next to her sat, +on her right, Sir Thomas Burdon, a Radical member of Parliament, +who followed his leader in public life and in private life +followed the best cooks, dining with the Tories and thinking +with the Liberals, in accordance with a wise and wellknown rule. +The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, +an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, +however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained +once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say +before he was thirty. His own neighbour was Mrs. Vandeleur, +one of his aunt's oldest friends, a perfect saint amongst women, +but so dreadfully dowdy that she reminded one of a badly +bound hymnbook. Fortunately for him she had on the other +side Lord Faudel, a most intelligent middleaged mediocrity, +as bald as a ministerial statement in the House of Commons, +with whom she was conversing in that intensely earnest manner +which is the one unpardonable error, as he remarked once himself, +that all really good people fall into, and from which none of them +ever quite escape. +"We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry," cried the duchess, +nodding pleasantly to him across the table. "Do you think he will really +marry this fascinating young person?" +"I believe she has made up her mind to propose to him, Duchess." +"How dreadful" exclaimed Lady Agatha. "Really, some one should interfere." +"I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American +drygoods store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, looking supercilious. +"My uncle has already suggested porkpacking Sir Thomas." +"Drygoods What are American drygoods?" asked the duchess, +raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. +"American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail. +The duchess looked puzzled. +"Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady Agatha. "He never means anything +that he says." +"When America was discovered," said the Radical member +and he began to give some wearisome facts. Like all people +who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners. +The duchess sighed and exercised her privilege of interruption. +"I wish to goodness it never had been discovered at all" +she exclaimed. "Really, our girls have no chance nowadays. It is +most unfair." +"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," +said Mr. Erskine "I myself would say that it had merely +been detected." +"Oh but I have seen specimens of the inhabitants," answered the +duchess vaguely. "I must confess that most of them are extremely pretty. +And they dress well, too. They get all their dresses in Paris. +I wish I could afford to do the same." +"They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," +chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's +castoff clothes. +"Really And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" +inquired the duchess. +"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry. +Sir Thomas frowned. "I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against +that great country," he said to Lady Agatha. "I have travelled all over it +in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are extremely civil. +I assure you that it is an education to visit it." +"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" +asked Mr. Erskine plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey." +Sir Thomas waved his hand. "Mr. Erskine of Treadley has the world on +his shelves. We practical men like to see things, not to read about +them. The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are +absolutely reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing +characteristic. Yes, Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I +assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans." +"How dreadful" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute +reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. +It is hitting below the intellect." +"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red. +"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile. +"Paradoxes are all very well in their way... ." rejoined the baronet. +"Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. +Perhaps it was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. +To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities +become acrobats, we can judge them." +"Dear me" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue I am sure I never can make +out what you are talking about. Oh Harry, I am quite vexed with you. +Why do you try to persuade our nice Mr. Dorian Gray to give up the East End? +I assure you he would be quite invaluable. They would love his playing." +"I want him to play to me," cried Lord Henry, smiling, and he looked +down the table and caught a bright answering glance. +"But they are so unhappy in Whitechapel," continued Lady Agatha. +"I can sympathize with everything except suffering," +said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathize +with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. +There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy +with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, +the joy of life. The less said about life's sores, +the better." +"Still, the East End is a very important problem," remarked Sir Thomas +with a grave shake of the head. +"Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the problem of slavery, +and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves." +The politician looked at him keenly. "What change do you propose, then?" +he asked. +Lord Henry laughed. "I don't desire to change anything in England +except the weather," he answered. "I am quite content with +philosophic contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has +gone bankrupt through an overexpenditure of sympathy, I would +suggest that we should appeal to science to put us straight. +The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, +and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional." +"But we have such grave responsibilities," ventured Mrs. Vandeleur timidly. +"Terribly grave," echoed Lady Agatha. +Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. "Humanity takes itself too seriously. +It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, +history would have been different." +"You are really very comforting," warbled the duchess. +"I have always felt rather guilty when I came to see your +dear aunt, for I take no interest at all in the East End. +For the future I shall be able to look her in the face without +a blush." +"A blush is very becoming, Duchess," remarked Lord Henry. +"Only when one is young," she answered. "When an old woman +like myself blushes, it is a very bad sign. Ah Lord Henry, +I wish you would tell me how to become young again." +He thought for a moment. "Can you remember any great error +that you committed in your early days, Duchess?" he asked, +looking at her across the table. +"A great many, I fear," she cried. +"Then commit them over again," he said gravely. "To get back one's youth, +one has merely to repeat one's follies." +"A delightful theory" she exclaimed. "I must put it into practice." +"A dangerous theory" came from Sir Thomas's tight lips. +Lady Agatha shook her head, but could not help being amused. +Mr. Erskine listened. +"Yes," he continued, "that is one of the great secrets of life. +Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, +and discover when it is too late that the only things one never +regrets are one's mistakes." +A laugh ran round the table. +He played with the idea and grew wilful tossed it into +the air and transformed it let it escape and recaptured it +made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox. +The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, +and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad +music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her winestained +robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills +of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. +Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. +Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, +till the seething grapejuice rose round her bare limbs in waves +of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, +dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation. +He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, +and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was +one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give +his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination. +He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed +his listeners out of themselves, and they followed +his pipe, laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze +off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing +each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his +darkening eyes. +At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in +the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. +She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying" she cried. "I must go. +I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting +at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late he is +sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far +too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. +Goodbye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing. +I am sure I don't know what to say about your views. You must come and dine +with us some night. Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday?" +"For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess," said Lord Henry with a bow. +"Ah that is very nice, and very wrong of you," she cried "so mind you come" +and she swept out of the room, followed by Lady Agatha and the other ladies. +When Lord Henry had sat down again, Mr. Erskine moved round, +and taking a chair close to him, placed his hand upon his arm. +"You talk books away," he said "why don't you write one?" +"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. +I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely +as a Persian carpet and as unreal. But there is no literary public +in England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. +Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty +of literature." +"I fear you are right," answered Mr. Erskine. "I myself used +to have literary ambitions, but I gave them up long ago. +And now, my dear young friend, if you will allow me to call +you so, may I ask if you really meant all that you said to us +at lunch?" +"I quite forget what I said," smiled Lord Henry. "Was it all very bad?" +"Very bad indeed. In fact I consider you extremely dangerous, +and if anything happens to our good duchess, we shall all look on you +as being primarily responsible. But I should like to talk to you +about life. The generation into which I was born was tedious. +Some day, when you are tired of London, come down to Treadley and expound +to me your philosophy of pleasure over some admirable Burgundy I am +fortunate enough to possess." +"I shall be charmed. A visit to Treadley would be a great privilege. +It has a perfect host, and a perfect library." +"You will complete it," answered the old gentleman with a courteous bow. +"And now I must bid goodbye to your excellent aunt. I am due at +the Athenaeum. It is the hour when we sleep there." +"All of you, Mr. Erskine?" +"Forty of us, in forty armchairs. We are practising for an English Academy +of Letters." +Lord Henry laughed and rose. "I am going to the park," +he cried. +As he was passing out of the door, Dorian Gray touched him on the arm. +"Let me come with you," he murmured. +"But I thought you had promised Basil Hallward to go and see him," +answered Lord Henry. +"I would sooner come with you yes, I feel I must come with you. +Do let me. And you will promise to talk to me all the time? +No one talks so wonderfully as you do." +"Ah I have talked quite enough for today," said Lord Henry, smiling. +"All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, +if you care to." +CHAPTER +One afternoon, a month later, Dorian Gray was reclining in a luxurious +armchair, in the little library of Lord Henry's house in Mayfair. +It was, in its way, a very charming room, with its high panelled +wainscoting of olivestained oak, its creamcoloured frieze and ceiling +of raised plasterwork, and its brickdust felt carpet strewn with silk, +longfringed Persian rugs. On a tiny satinwood table stood a statuette +by Clodion, and beside it lay a copy of Les Cent Nouvelles, bound for +Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve and powdered with the gilt daisies +that Queen had selected for her device. Some large blue china jars +and parrottulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the small +leaded panes of the window streamed the apricotcoloured light of a summer +day in London. +Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always late on principle, +his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. +So the lad was looking rather sulky, as with listless fingers +he turned over the pages of an elaborately illustrated edition +of Manon Lescaut that he had found in one of the bookcases. The +formal monotonous ticking of the Louis Quatorze clock annoyed him. +Once or twice he thought of going away. +At last he heard a step outside, and the door opened. +"How late you are, Harry" he murmured. +"I am afraid it is not Harry, Mr. Gray," answered a shrill voice. +He glanced quickly round and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon. +I thought" +"You thought it was my husband. It is only his wife. +You must let me introduce myself. I know you quite well +by your photographs. I think my husband has got seventeen +of them." +"Not seventeen, Lady Henry?" +"Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other +night at the opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, +and watched him with her vague forgetmenot eyes. +She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if +they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. +She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion +was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. +She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. +Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going +to church. +"That was at Lohengrin, Lady Henry, I think?" +"Yes it was at dear Lohengrin. I like Wagner's music better than +anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without +other people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage, +don't you think so, Mr. Gray?" +The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips, +and her fingers began to play with a long tortoiseshell +paperknife. +Dorian smiled and shook his head "I am afraid I don't think so, +Lady Henry. I never talk during musicat least, during good music. +If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation." +"Ah that is one of Harry's views, isn't it, Mr. Gray? +I always hear Harry's views from his friends. It is the only +way I get to know of them. But you must not think I don't +like good music. I adore it, but I am afraid of it. +It makes me too romantic. I have simply worshipped pianists +two at a time, sometimes, Harry tells me. I don't know what it +is about them. Perhaps it is that they are foreigners. +They all are, ain't they? Even those that are born +in England become foreigners after a time, don't they? +It is so clever of them, and such a compliment to art. +Makes it quite cosmopolitan, doesn't it? You have never been +to any of my parties, have you, Mr. Gray? You must come. +I can't afford orchids, but I share no expense in foreigners. +They make one's rooms look so picturesque. But here is Harry +Harry, I came in to look for you, to ask you something +I forget what it wasand I found Mr. Gray here. +We have had such a pleasant chat about music. We have quite +the same ideas. No I think our ideas are quite different. +But he has been most pleasant. I am so glad I've seen +him." +"I am charmed, my love, quite charmed," said Lord Henry, elevating his dark, +crescentshaped eyebrows and looking at them both with an amused smile. +"So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old brocade +in Wardour Street and had to bargain for hours for it. Nowadays people know +the price of everything and the value of nothing." +"I am afraid I must be going," exclaimed Lady Henry, +breaking an awkward silence with her silly sudden laugh. +"I have promised to drive with the duchess. Goodbye, Mr. Gray. +Goodbye, Harry. You are dining out, I suppose? So am I. Perhaps I +shall see you at Lady Thornbury's." +"I dare say, my dear," said Lord Henry, shutting the door behind her as, +looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain, +she flitted out of the room, leaving a faint odour of frangipanni. +Then he lit a cigarette and flung himself down on the sofa. +"Never marry a woman with strawcoloured hair, Dorian," he said +after a few puffs. +"Why, Harry?" +"Because they are so sentimental." +"But I like sentimental people." +"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired +women, because they are curious both are disappointed." +"I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love. +That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, +as I do everything that you say." +"Who are you in love with?" asked Lord Henry after a pause. +"With an actress," said Dorian Gray, blushing. +Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "That is a rather commonplace debut." +"You would not say so if you saw her, Harry." +"Who is she?" +"Her name is Sibyl Vane." +"Never heard of her." +"No one has. People will some day, however. She is a genius." +"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. +They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. +Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men +represent the triumph of mind over morals." +"Harry, how can you?" +"My dear Dorian, it is quite true. I am analysing women at present, +so I ought to know. The subject is not so abstruse as I thought it was. +I find that, ultimately, there are only two kinds of women, +the plain and the coloured. The plain women are very useful. +If you want to gain a reputation for respectability, you have merely +to take them down to supper. The other women are very charming. +They commit one mistake, however. They paint in order to try and look young. +Our grandmothers painted in order to try and talk brilliantly. +Rouge and esprit used to go together. That is all over now. +As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, +she is perfectly satisfied. As for conversation, there are only five +women in London worth talking to, and two of these can't be admitted into +decent society. However, tell me about your genius. How long have you +known her?" +"Ah Harry, your views terrify me." +"Never mind that. How long have you known her?" +"About three weeks." +"And where did you come across her?" +"I will tell you, Harry, but you mustn't be unsympathetic about it. +After all, it never would have happened if I had not met you. +You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. +For days after I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. +As I lounged in the park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used +to look at every one who passed me and wonder, with a mad curiosity, +what sort of lives they led. Some of them fascinated me. +Others filled me with terror. There was an exquisite poison in the air. +I had a passion for sensations. . . . Well, one evening about seven +o'clock, I determined to go out in search of some adventure. +I felt that this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, +its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, +must have something in store for me. I fancied a thousand things. +The mere danger gave me a sense of delight. I remembered what you +had said to me on that wonderful evening when we first dined together, +about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. +I don't know what I expected, but I went out and wandered eastward, +soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black +grassless squares. About halfpast eight I passed by an absurd +little theatre, with great flaring gasjets and gaudy playbills. +A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld +in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. +He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre +of a soiled shirt. 'Have a box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw me, +and he took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. +There was something about him, Harry, that amused me. +He was such a monster. You will laugh at me, I know, but I +really went in and paid a whole guinea for the stagebox. To +the present day I can't make out why I did so and yet if I hadn't +my dear Harry, if I hadn'tI should have missed the greatest +romance of my life. I see you are laughing. It is horrid of +you" +"I am not laughing, Dorian at least I am not laughing at you. +But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. +You should say the first romance of your life. You will +always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. +A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. +That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. +Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. +This is merely the beginning." +"Do you think my nature so shallow?" cried Dorian Gray angrily. +"No I think your nature so deep." +"How do you mean?" +"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really +the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, +I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. +Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life +of the intellectsimply a confession of failure. Faithfulness +I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. +There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid +that others might pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. +Go on with your story." +"Well, I found myself seated in a horrid little private box, +with a vulgar dropscene staring me in the face. +I looked out from behind the curtain and surveyed the house. +It was a tawdry affair, all Cupids and cornucopias, like a +thirdrate weddingcake. The gallery and pit were fairly full, +but the two rows of dingy stalls were quite empty, and there was +hardly a person in what I suppose they called the dresscircle. +Women went about with oranges and gingerbeer, and there was a +terrible consumption of nuts going on." +"It must have been just like the palmy days of the British drama." +"Just like, I should fancy, and very depressing. I began to wonder +what on earth I should do when I caught sight of the playbill. +What do you think the play was, Harry?" +"I should think 'The Idiot Boy', or 'Dumb but Innocent'. +Our fathers used to like that sort of piece, I believe. +The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever +was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, +as in politics, les grandperes ont toujours tort." +"This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was Romeo and Juliet. +I must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare +done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, +in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act. +There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young +Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, +but at last the dropscene was drawn up and the play began. +Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky +tragedy voice, and a figure like a beerbarrel. Mercutio was almost +as bad. He was played by the lowcomedian, who had introduced +gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit. +They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it +had come out of a countrybooth. But Juliet Harry, imagine a girl, +hardly seventeen years of age, with a little, flowerlike face, +a small Greek head with plaited coils of darkbrown hair, eyes that were +violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. +She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. +You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, +mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could +hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. +And her voiceI never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, +with deep mellow notes that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. +Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a +distant hautboy. In the gardenscene it had all the tremulous ecstasy +that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. +There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins. +You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of +Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close +my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. +I don't know which to follow. Why should I not love her? +Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. +Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, +and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom +of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. +I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, +disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. +She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, +and given him rue to wear and bitter herbs to taste of. +She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have +crushed her reedlike throat. I have seen her in every age and in +every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. +They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. +One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. +One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them. They ride +in the park in the morning and chatter at teaparties in the afternoon. +They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable manner. +They are quite obvious. But an actress How different an actress is +Harry why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an +actress?" +"Because I have loved so many of them, Dorian." +"Oh, yes, horrid people with dyed hair and painted faces." +"Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary +charm in them, sometimes," said Lord Henry. +"I wish now I had not told you about Sibyl Vane." +"You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life +you will tell me everything you do." +"Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. +You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would come +and confess it to you. You would understand me." +"People like youthe wilful sunbeams of lifedon't commit crimes, Dorian. +But I am much obliged for the compliment, all the same. And now tell me +reach me the matches, like a good boythankswhat are your actual relations +with Sibyl Vane?" +Dorian Gray leaped to his feet, with flushed cheeks and burning eyes. +"Harry Sibyl Vane is sacred" +"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," +said Lord Henry, with a strange touch of pathos in his voice. +"But why should you be annoyed? I suppose she will belong +to you some day. When one is in love, one always begins by +deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. +That is what the world calls a romance. You know her, at any rate, +I suppose?" +"Of course I know her. On the first night I was at the theatre, +the horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over +and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. +I was furious with him, and told him that Juliet had been dead +for hundreds of years and that her body was lying in a marble +tomb in Verona. I think, from his blank look of amazement, +that he was under the impression that I had taken too much champagne, +or something." +"I am not surprised." +"Then he asked me if I wrote for any of the newspapers. +I told him I never even read them. He seemed terribly disappointed +at that, and confided to me that all the dramatic critics +were in a conspiracy against him, and that they were every +one of them to be bought." +"I should not wonder if he was quite right there. But, on the other hand, +judging from their appearance, most of them cannot be at all expensive." +"Well, he seemed to think they were beyond his means," +laughed Dorian. "By this time, however, the lights were being +put out in the theatre, and I had to go. He wanted me to try +some cigars that he strongly recommended. I declined. +The next night, of course, I arrived at the place again. +When he saw me, he made me a low bow and assured me that I +was a munificent patron of art. He was a most offensive brute, +though he had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare. +He told me once, with an air of pride, that his five bankruptcies +were entirely due to 'The Bard,' as he insisted on calling him. +He seemed to think it a distinction." +"It was a distinction, my dear Doriana great distinction. +Most people become bankrupt through having invested too +heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over +poetry is an honour. But when did you first speak to Miss +Sibyl Vane?" +"The third night. She had been playing Rosalind. +I could not help going round. I had thrown her some flowers, +and she had looked at meat least I fancied that she had. +The old Jew was persistent. He seemed determined to take me behind, +so I consented. It was curious my not wanting to know her, +wasn't it?" +"No I don't think so." +"My dear Harry, why?" +"I will tell you some other time. Now I want to know about the girl." +"Sibyl? Oh, she was so shy and so gentle. There is something of a +child about her. Her eyes opened wide in exquisite wonder when I +told her what I thought of her performance, and she seemed quite +unconscious of her power. I think we were both rather nervous. +The old Jew stood grinning at the doorway of the dusty greenroom, +making elaborate speeches about us both, while we stood looking at +each other like children. He would insist on calling me 'My Lord,' +so I had to assure Sibyl that I was not anything of the kind. +She said quite simply to me, 'You look more like a prince. +I must call you Prince Charming.'" +"Upon my word, Dorian, Miss Sibyl knows how to pay compliments." +"You don't understand her, Harry. She regarded me merely as a person +in a play. She knows nothing of life. She lives with her mother, +a faded tired woman who played Lady Capulet in a sort of magenta +dressingwrapper on the first night, and looks as if she had seen +better days." +"I know that look. It depresses me," murmured Lord Henry, +examining his rings. +"The Jew wanted to tell me her history, but I said it did not interest me." +"You were quite right. There is always something infinitely mean +about other people's tragedies." +"Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me +where she came from? From her little head to her little feet, +she is absolutely and entirely divine. Every night of my life I +go to see her act, and every night she is more marvellous." +"That is the reason, I suppose, that you never dine with me now. +I thought you must have some curious romance on hand. You have +but it is not quite what I expected." +"My dear Harry, we either lunch or sup together every day, +and I have been to the opera with you several times," said Dorian, +opening his blue eyes in wonder. +"You always come dreadfully late." +"Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play," he cried, "even if it is +only for a single act. I get hungry for her presence and when I think +of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, +I am filled with awe." +"You can dine with me tonight, Dorian, can't you?" +He shook his head. "Tonight she is Imogen," he answered, +"and tomorrow night she will be Juliet." +"When is she Sibyl Vane?" +"Never." +"I congratulate you." +"How horrid you are She is all the great heroines of the world in one. +She is more than an individual. You laugh, but I tell you she +has genius. I love her, and I must make her love me. You, who know +all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me +I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world +to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion +to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. +My God, Harry, how I worship her" He was walking up and down the room +as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was +terribly excited. +Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. How different +he was now from the shy frightened boy he had met in Basil Hallward's studio +His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame. +Out of its secret hidingplace had crept his soul, and desire had come to meet +it on the way. +"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry at last. +"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. +I have not the slightest fear of the result. You are certain to +acknowledge her genius. Then we must get her out of the Jew's hands. +She is bound to him for three yearsat least for two years and eight months +from the present time. I shall have to pay him something, of course. +When all that is settled, I shall take a West End theatre and bring +her out properly. She will make the world as mad as she has +made me." +"That would be impossible, my dear boy." +"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate artinstinct, +in her, but she has personality also and you have often told me +that it is personalities, not principles, that move the age." +"Well, what night shall we go?" +"Let me see. Today is Tuesday. Let us fix tomorrow. She plays +Juliet tomorrow." +"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock and I will get Basil." +"Not eight, Harry, please. Halfpast six. We must be there +before the curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, +where she meets Romeo." +"Halfpast six What an hour It will be like having a meattea, or reading +an English novel. It must be seven. No gentleman dines before seven. +Shall you see Basil between this and then? Or shall I write to him?" +"Dear Basil I have not laid eyes on him for a week. +It is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in +the most wonderful frame, specially designed by himself, and, +though I am a little jealous of the picture for being a whole +month younger than I am, I must admit that I delight in it. +Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't want to see him alone. +He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice." +Lord Henry smiled. "People are very fond of giving away what they +need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity." +"Oh, Basil is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit +of a Philistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that." +"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him +into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for +life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. +The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful +are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, +and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. +A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of +all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. +The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. +The mere fact of having published a book of secondrate sonnets +makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that +he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare +not realize." +"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, +putting some perfume on his handkerchief out of a large, +goldtopped bottle that stood on the table. "It must be, +if you say it. And now I am off. Imogen is waiting for me. +Don't forget about tomorrow. Goodbye." +As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he began +to think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much +as Dorian Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else +caused him not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. +He was pleased by it. It made him a more interesting study. +He had been always enthralled by the methods of natural science, +but the ordinary subjectmatter of that science had seemed to him +trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, +as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human lifethat appeared +to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there +was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched +life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could +not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous +fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid +with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons +so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. +There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them +if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great +reward one received How wonderful the whole world became to one +To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional +coloured life of the intellectto observe where they met, +and where they separated, at what point they were in unison, +and at what point they were at discordthere was a delight in that +What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for +any sensation. +He was consciousand the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into +his brown agate eyesthat it was through certain words of his, +musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul +had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. +To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made +him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till +life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, +the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. +Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, +which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. +But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed +the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, +life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, +or painting. +Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it +was yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, +but he was becoming selfconscious. It was delightful to watch him. +With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to +wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. +He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, +whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense +of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses. +Soul and body, body and soulhow mysterious they were There was +animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. +The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could +say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? +How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists +And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools +Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body +really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit +from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a +mystery also. +He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute +a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. +As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. +Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to +their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, +had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, +had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed +us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. +It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it +really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, +and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, +and with joy. +It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only +method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis +of the passions and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made +to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. +His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon +of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much +to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences, +yet it was not a simple, but rather a very complex passion. +What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood +had been transformed by the workings of the imagination, +changed into something that seemed to the lad himself to be remote +from sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous. +It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves +that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives +were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened +that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were +really experimenting on ourselves. +While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door, +and his valet entered and reminded him it was time to dress for dinner. +He got up and looked out into the street. The sunset had smitten into +scarlet gold the upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed +like plates of heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. +He thought of his friend's young fierycoloured life and wondered how it was +all going to end. +When he arrived home, about halfpast twelve o'clock, he saw a telegram +lying on the hall table. He opened it and found it was from Dorian Gray. +It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl Vane. +CHAPTER +"Mother, Mother, I am so happy" whispered the girl, burying her +face in the lap of the faded, tiredlooking woman who, +with back turned to the shrill intrusive light, was sitting +in the one armchair that their dingy sittingroom contained. +"I am so happy" she repeated, "and you must be happy, too" +Mrs. Vane winced and put her thin, bismuthwhitened hands on her +daughter's head. "Happy" she echoed, "I am only happy, Sibyl, when I +see you act. You must not think of anything but your acting. +Mr. Isaacs has been very good to us, and we owe him money." +The girl looked up and pouted. "Money, Mother?" she cried, +"what does money matter? Love is more than money." +"Mr. Isaacs has advanced us fifty pounds to pay off our debts and to get +a proper outfit for James. You must not forget that, Sibyl. Fifty pounds +is a very large sum. Mr. Isaacs has been most considerate." +"He is not a gentleman, Mother, and I hate the way he talks to me," +said the girl, rising to her feet and going over to the window. +"I don't know how we could manage without him," answered the elder +woman querulously. +Sibyl Vane tossed her head and laughed. "We don't want him +any more, Mother. Prince Charming rules life for us now." +Then she paused. A rose shook in her blood and shadowed +her cheeks. Quick breath parted the petals of her lips. +They trembled. Some southern wind of passion swept over her +and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "I love him," +she said simply. +"Foolish child foolish child" was the parrotphrase flung in answer. +The waving of crooked, falsejewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to +the words. +The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice. +Her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed +for a moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, +the mist of a dream had passed across them. +Thinlipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, +hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose +author apes the name of common sense. She did not listen. +She was free in her prison of passion. Her prince, Prince Charming, +was with her. She had called on memory to remake him. +She had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought him back. +His kiss burned again upon her mouth. Her eyelids were warm with +his breath. +Then wisdom altered its method and spoke of espial and discovery. +This young man might be rich. If so, marriage should be thought of. +Against the shell of her ear broke the waves of worldly cunning. +The arrows of craft shot by her. She saw the thin lips moving, +and smiled. +Suddenly she felt the need to speak. The wordy silence troubled her. +"Mother, Mother," she cried, "why does he love me so much? I know why I +love him. I love him because he is like what love himself should be. +But what does he see in me? I am not worthy of him. And yetwhy, I +cannot tellthough I feel so much beneath him, I don't feel humble. +I feel proud, terribly proud. Mother, did you love my father as I love +Prince Charming?" +The elder woman grew pale beneath the coarse powder that daubed +her cheeks, and her dry lips twitched with a spasm of pain. +Sybil rushed to her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. +"Forgive me, Mother. I know it pains you to talk about our father. +But it only pains you because you loved him so much. Don't look so sad. +I am as happy today as you were twenty years ago. Ah let me be happy +for ever" +"My child, you are far too young to think of falling in love. +Besides, what do you know of this young man? You don't +even know his name. The whole thing is most inconvenient, +and really, when James is going away to Australia, and I have +so much to think of, I must say that you should have shown +more consideration. However, as I said before, if he is rich +"Ah Mother, Mother, let me be happy" +Mrs. Vane glanced at her, and with one of those false +theatrical gestures that so often become a mode of second +nature to a stageplayer, clasped her in her arms. +At this moment, the door opened and a young lad with rough +brown hair came into the room. He was thickset of figure, +and his hands and feet were large and somewhat clumsy in movement. +He was not so finely bred as his sister. One would hardly +have guessed the close relationship that existed between them. +Mrs. Vane fixed her eyes on him and intensified her smile. +She mentally elevated her son to the dignity of an audience. +She felt sure that the tableau was interesting. +"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sibyl, I think," +said the lad with a goodnatured grumble. +"Ah but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she cried. +"You are a dreadful old bear." And she ran across the room and +hugged him. +James Vane looked into his sister's face with tenderness. +"I want you to come out with me for a walk, Sibyl. +I don't suppose I shall ever see this horrid London again. +I am sure I don't want to." +"My son, don't say such dreadful things," murmured Mrs. Vane, taking up +a tawdry theatrical dress, with a sigh, and beginning to patch it. +She felt a little disappointed that he had not joined the group. +It would have increased the theatrical picturesqueness of the situation. +"Why not, Mother? I mean it." +"You pain me, my son. I trust you will return from Australia in a position +of affluence. I believe there is no society of any kind in the Colonies +nothing that I would call societyso when you have made your fortune, +you must come back and assert yourself in London." +"Society" muttered the lad. "I don't want to know anything about that. +I should like to make some money to take you and Sibyl off the stage. +I hate it." +"Oh, Jim" said Sibyl, laughing, "how unkind of you +But are you really going for a walk with me? That will be nice +I was afraid you were going to say goodbye to some of your friends +to Tom Hardy, who gave you that hideous pipe, or Ned Langton, +who makes fun of you for smoking it. It is very sweet of you +to let me have your last afternoon. Where shall we go? +Let us go to the park." +"I am too shabby," he answered, frowning. "Only swell people go to the park." +"Nonsense, Jim," she whispered, stroking the sleeve of his coat. +He hesitated for a moment. "Very well," he said at last, +"but don't be too long dressing." She danced out of the door. +One could hear her singing as she ran upstairs. Her little feet +pattered overhead. +He walked up and down the room two or three times. Then he turned +to the still figure in the chair. "Mother, are my things ready?" +he asked. +"Quite ready, James," she answered, keeping her eyes on +her work. For some months past she had felt ill at ease +when she was alone with this rough stern son of hers. +Her shallow secret nature was troubled when their eyes met. +She used to wonder if he suspected anything. The silence, +for he made no other observation, became intolerable to her. +She began to complain. Women defend themselves by attacking, +just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders. +"I hope you will be contented, James, with your seafaring life," +she said. "You must remember that it is your own choice. +You might have entered a solicitor's office. Solicitors are +a very respectable class, and in the country often dine with +the best families." +"I hate offices, and I hate clerks," he replied. "But you are quite right. +I have chosen my own life. All I say is, watch over Sibyl. Don't let her +come to any harm. Mother, you must watch over her." +"James, you really talk very strangely. Of course I watch over Sibyl." +"I hear a gentleman comes every night to the theatre and goes behind +to talk to her. Is that right? What about that?" +"You are speaking about things you don't understand, James. In the profession +we are accustomed to receive a great deal of most gratifying attention. +I myself used to receive many bouquets at one time. That was when acting +was really understood. As for Sibyl, I do not know at present whether +her attachment is serious or not. But there is no doubt that the young +man in question is a perfect gentleman. He is always most polite to me. +Besides, he has the appearance of being rich, and the flowers he sends +are lovely." +"You don't know his name, though," said the lad harshly. +"No," answered his mother with a placid expression in her face. +"He has not yet revealed his real name. I think it is quite romantic +of him. He is probably a member of the aristocracy." +James Vane bit his lip. "Watch over Sibyl, Mother," he cried, +"watch over her." +"My son, you distress me very much. Sibyl is always under my special care. +Of course, if this gentleman is wealthy, there is no reason why she should +not contract an alliance with him. I trust he is one of the aristocracy. +He has all the appearance of it, I must say. It might be a most brilliant +marriage for Sibyl. They would make a charming couple. His good looks are +really quite remarkable everybody notices them." +The lad muttered something to himself and drummed on the windowpane +with his coarse fingers. He had just turned round to say something +when the door opened and Sibyl ran in. +"How serious you both are" she cried. "What is the matter?" +"Nothing," he answered. "I suppose one must be serious sometimes. +Goodbye, Mother I will have my dinner at five o'clock. Everything +is packed, except my shirts, so you need not trouble." +"Goodbye, my son," she answered with a bow of strained stateliness. +She was extremely annoyed at the tone he had adopted with her, +and there was something in his look that had made her feel afraid. +"Kiss me, Mother," said the girl. Her flowerlike lips touched the withered +cheek and warmed its frost. +"My child my child" cried Mrs. Vane, looking up to the ceiling +in search of an imaginary gallery. +"Come, Sibyl," said her brother impatiently. He hated +his mother's affectations. +They went out into the flickering, windblown sunlight and strolled +down the dreary Euston Road. The passersby glanced in wonder +at the sullen heavy youth who, in coarse, illfitting clothes, +was in the company of such a graceful, refinedlooking girl. +He was like a common gardener walking with a rose. +Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive +glance of some stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at, +which comes on geniuses late in life and never leaves the commonplace. +Sibyl, however, was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing. +Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips. She was thinking +of Prince Charming, and, that she might think of him all the more, +she did not talk of him, but prattled on about the ship in which +Jim was going to sail, about the gold he was certain to find, +about the wonderful heiress whose life he was to save from the wicked, +redshirted bushrangers. For he was not to remain a sailor, +or a supercargo, or whatever he was going to be. Oh, no A sailor's +existence was dreadful. Fancy being cooped up in a horrid ship, +with the hoarse, humpbacked waves trying to get in, and a black wind +blowing the masts down and tearing the sails into long screaming ribands +He was to leave the vessel at Melbourne, bid a polite goodbye +to the captain, and go off at once to the goldfields. Before +a week was over he was to come across a large nugget of pure gold, +the largest nugget that had ever been discovered, and bring it +down to the coast in a waggon guarded by six mounted policemen. +The bushrangers were to attack them three times, and be defeated +with immense slaughter. Or, no. He was not to go to the goldfields +at all. They were horrid places, where men got intoxicated, +and shot each other in barrooms, and used bad language. He was +to be a nice sheepfarmer, and one evening, as he was riding home, +he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off by a robber +on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of course, +she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would +get married, and come home, and live in an immense house in London. +Yes, there were delightful things in store for him. But he must +be very good, and not lose his temper, or spend his money foolishly. +She was only a year older than he was, but she knew so much more +of life. He must be sure, also, to write to her by every mail, +and to say his prayers each night before he went to sleep. +God was very good, and would watch over him. She would pray +for him, too, and in a few years he would come back quite rich and +happy. +The lad listened sulkily to her and made no answer. He was heartsick +at leaving home. +Yet it was not this alone that made him gloomy and morose. +Inexperienced though he was, he had still a strong sense +of the danger of Sibyl's position. This young dandy who was +making love to her could mean her no good. He was a gentleman, +and he hated him for that, hated him through some curious +raceinstinct for which he could not account, and which for that +reason was all the more dominant within him. He was conscious +also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother's nature, +and in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl's happiness. +Children begin by loving their parents as they grow older they +judge them sometimes they forgive them. +His mother He had something on his mind to ask of her, +something that he had brooded on for many months of silence. +A chance phrase that he had heard at the theatre, a whispered +sneer that had reached his ears one night as he waited at +the stagedoor, had set loose a train of horrible thoughts. +He remembered it as if it had been the lash of a huntingcrop +across his face. His brows knit together into a wedgelike furrow, +and with a twitch of pain he bit his underlip. +"You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim," cried Sibyl, +"and I am making the most delightful plans for your future. +Do say something." +"What do you want me to say?" +"Oh that you will be a good boy and not forget us," she answered, +smiling at him. +He shrugged his shoulders. "You are more likely to forget me than I am +to forget you, Sibyl." +She flushed. "What do you mean, Jim?" she asked. +"You have a new friend, I hear. Who is he? Why have you not told me +about him? He means you no good." +"Stop, Jim" she exclaimed. "You must not say anything against him. +I love him." +"Why, you don't even know his name," answered the lad. "Who is he? +I have a right to know." +"He is called Prince Charming. Don't you like the name. +Oh you silly boy you should never forget it. If you only saw him, +you would think him the most wonderful person in the world. +Some day you will meet himwhen you come back from Australia. +You will like him so much. Everybody likes him, and I ... +love him. I wish you could come to the theatre tonight. He +is going to be there, and I am to play Juliet. Oh how I +shall play it Fancy, Jim, to be in love and play Juliet +To have him sitting there To play for his delight +I am afraid I may frighten the company, frighten or enthrall them. +To be in love is to surpass one's self. Poor dreadful +Mr. Isaacs will be shouting 'genius' to his loafers at the bar. +He has preached me as a dogma tonight he will announce me +as a revelation. I feel it. And it is all his, his only, +Prince Charming, my wonderful lover, my god of graces. +But I am poor beside him. Poor? What does that matter? +When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window. +Our proverbs want rewriting. They were made in winter, and it is +summer now springtime for me, I think, a very dance of blossoms +in blue skies." +"He is a gentleman," said the lad sullenly. +"A prince" she cried musically. "What more do you want?" +"He wants to enslave you." +"I shudder at the thought of being free." +"I want you to beware of him." +"To see him is to worship him to know him is to trust him." +"Sibyl, you are mad about him." +She laughed and took his arm. "You dear old Jim, you talk as +if you were a hundred. Some day you will be in love yourself. +Then you will know what it is. Don't look so sulky. +Surely you should be glad to think that, though you are +going away, you leave me happier than I have ever been before. +Life has been hard for us both, terribly hard and difficult. +But it will be different now. You are going to a new world, +and I have found one. Here are two chairs let us sit down and see +the smart people go by." +They took their seats amidst a crowd of watchers. The tulipbeds +across the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust +tremulous cloud of orrisroot it seemedhung in the panting air. +The brightly coloured parasols danced and dipped like monstrous butterflies. +She made her brother talk of himself, his hopes, his prospects. +He spoke slowly and with effort. They passed words to each other +as players at a game pass counters. Sibyl felt oppressed. She could +not communicate her joy. A faint smile curving that sullen mouth +was all the echo she could win. After some time she became silent. +Suddenly she caught a glimpse of golden hair and laughing lips, +and in an open carriage with two ladies Dorian Gray drove past. +She started to her feet. "There he is" she cried. +"Who?" said Jim Vane. +"Prince Charming," she answered, looking after the victoria. +He jumped up and seized her roughly by the arm. "Show him to me. +Which is he? Point him out. I must see him" he exclaimed +but at that moment the Duke of Berwick's fourinhand came between, +and when it had left the space clear, the carriage had swept out of +the park. +"He is gone," murmured Sibyl sadly. "I wish you had seen him." +"I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, +if he ever does you any wrong, I shall kill him." +She looked at him in horror. He repeated his words. +They cut the air like a dagger. The people round began to gape. +A lady standing close to her tittered. +"Come away, Jim come away," she whispered. He followed her doggedly +as she passed through the crowd. He felt glad at what he had said. +When they reached the Achilles Statue, she turned round. +There was pity in her eyes that became laughter on her lips. +She shook her head at him. "You are foolish, Jim, utterly foolish +a badtempered boy, that is all. How can you say such +horrible things? You don't know what you are talking about. +You are simply jealous and unkind. Ah I wish you would +fall in love. Love makes people good, and what you said +was wicked." +"I am sixteen," he answered, "and I know what I am about. +Mother is no help to you. She doesn't understand how to look +after you. I wish now that I was not going to Australia at all. +I have a great mind to chuck the whole thing up. I would, if my +articles hadn't been signed." +"Oh, don't be so serious, Jim. You are like one of the heroes +of those silly melodramas Mother used to be so fond of acting in. +I am not going to quarrel with you. I have seen him, and oh to see +him is perfect happiness. We won't quarrel. I know you would never +harm any one I love, would you?" +"Not as long as you love him, I suppose," was the sullen answer. +"I shall love him for ever" she cried. +"And he?" +"For ever, too" +"He had better." +She shrank from him. Then she laughed and put her hand on his arm. +He was merely a boy. +At the Marble Arch they hailed an omnibus, which left them close +to their shabby home in the Euston Road. It was after five o'clock, +and Sibyl had to lie down for a couple of hours before acting. +Jim insisted that she should do so. He said that he would sooner +part with her when their mother was not present. She would be sure +to make a scene, and he detested scenes of every kind. +In Sybil's own room they parted. There was jealousy in the lad's heart, +and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him, +had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck, +and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and kissed her with +real affection. There were tears in his eyes as he went downstairs. +His mother was waiting for him below. She grumbled at his unpunctuality, +as he entered. He made no answer, but sat down to his meagre meal. +The flies buzzed round the table and crawled over the stained cloth. +Through the rumble of omnibuses, and the clatter of streetcabs, +he could hear the droning voice devouring each minute that was left +to him. +After some time, he thrust away his plate and put his head in his hands. +He felt that he had a right to know. It should have been told to him before, +if it was as he suspected. Leaden with fear, his mother watched him. +Words dropped mechanically from her lips. A tattered lace handkerchief +twitched in her fingers. When the clock struck six, he got up and went +to the door. Then he turned back and looked at her. Their eyes met. +In hers he saw a wild appeal for mercy. It enraged him. +"Mother, I have something to ask you," he said. Her eyes wandered +vaguely about the room. She made no answer. "Tell me the truth. +I have a right to know. Were you married to my father?" +She heaved a deep sigh. It was a sigh of relief. The terrible moment, +the moment that night and day, for weeks and months, she had dreaded, +had come at last, and yet she felt no terror. Indeed, in some measure it +was a disappointment to her. The vulgar directness of the question called +for a direct answer. The situation had not been gradually led up to. +It was crude. It reminded her of a bad rehearsal. +"No," she answered, wondering at the harsh simplicity of life. +"My father was a scoundrel then" cried the lad, clenching his fists. +She shook her head. "I knew he was not free. We loved each other +very much. If he had lived, he would have made provision for us. +Don't speak against him, my son. He was your father, and a gentleman. +Indeed, he was highly connected." +An oath broke from his lips. "I don't care for myself," +he exclaimed, "but don't let Sibyl. . . . It is a gentleman, +isn't it, who is in love with her, or says he is? +Highly connected, too, I suppose." +For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman. +Her head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands. +"Sibyl has a mother," she murmured "I had none." +The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down, +he kissed her. "I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about +my father," he said, "but I could not help it. I must go now. +Goodbye. Don't forget that you will have only one child now +to look after, and believe me that if this man wrongs my sister, +I will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog. +I swear it." +The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture +that accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem +more vivid to her. She was familiar with the atmosphere. +She breathed more freely, and for the first time for many months +she really admired her son. She would have liked to have continued +the scene on the same emotional scale, but he cut her short. +Trunks had to be carried down and mufflers looked for. +The lodginghouse drudge bustled in and out. There was the bargaining +with the cabman. The moment was lost in vulgar details. +It was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the +tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove away. +She was conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted. +She consoled herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her +life would be, now that she had only one child to look after. +She remembered the phrase. It had pleased her. Of the threat +she said nothing. It was vividly and dramatically expressed. +She felt that they would all laugh at it some day. +CHAPTER +"I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?" said Lord Henry +that evening as Hallward was shown into a little private room +at the Bristol where dinner had been laid for three. +"No, Harry," answered the artist, giving his hat and coat to +the bowing waiter. "What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope +They don't interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House +of Commons worth painting, though many of them would be the better +for a little whitewashing." +"Dorian Gray is engaged to be married," said Lord Henry, +watching him as he spoke. +Hallward started and then frowned. "Dorian engaged to be married" +he cried. "Impossible" +"It is perfectly true." +"To whom?" +"To some little actress or other." +"I can't believe it. Dorian is far too sensible." +"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, +my dear Basil." +"Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry." +"Except in America," rejoined Lord Henry languidly. "But I +didn't say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. +There is a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of +being married, but I have no recollection at all of being engaged. +I am inclined to think that I never was engaged." +"But think of Dorian's birth, and position, and wealth. +It would be absurd for him to marry so much beneath him." +"If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is +sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, +it is always from the noblest motives." +"I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don't want to see Dorian tied to some +vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect." +"Oh, she is better than goodshe is beautiful," murmured Lord Henry, +sipping a glass of vermouth and orangebitters. "Dorian says she +is beautiful, and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. +Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal +appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, +amongst others. We are to see her tonight, if that boy doesn't forget +his appointment." +"Are you serious?" +"Quite serious, Basil. I should be miserable if I thought I +should ever be more serious than I am at the present moment." +"But do you approve of it, Harry?" asked the painter, +walking up and down the room and biting his lip. "You can't +approve of it, possibly. It is some silly infatuation." +"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd +attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world +to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common +people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. +If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that +personality selects is absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray +falls in love with a beautiful girl who acts Juliet, and proposes +to marry her. Why not? If he wedded Messalina, he would be none +the less interesting. You know I am not a champion of marriage. +The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. +And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. +Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. +They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. +They are forced to have more than one life. They become more +highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy, +the object of man's existence. Besides, every experience +is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage, +it is certainly an experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will +make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, +and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a +wonderful study." +"You don't mean a single word of all that, Harry you know you don't. If +Dorian Gray's life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. +You are much better than you pretend to be." +Lord Henry laughed. "The reason we all like to think +so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. +The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are +generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession +of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. +We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, +and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that +he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. +I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, +no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. +If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. +As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other +and more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly +encourage them. They have the charm of being fashionable. +But here is Dorian himself. He will tell you more than +I can." +"My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me" +said the lad, throwing off his evening cape with its satinlined +wings and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. +"I have never been so happy. Of course, it is sudden +all really delightful things are. And yet it seems to me +to be the one thing I have been looking for all my life." +He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked +extraordinarily handsome. +"I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian," said Hallward, "but I +don't quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement. +You let Harry know." +"And I don't forgive you for being late for dinner," broke in Lord Henry, +putting his hand on the lad's shoulder and smiling as he spoke. +"Come, let us sit down and try what the new chef here is like, and then you +will tell us how it all came about." +"There is really not much to tell," cried Dorian as they took their +seats at the small round table. "What happened was simply this. +After I left you yesterday evening, Harry, I dressed, had some +dinner at that little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street you +introduced me to, and went down at eight o'clock to the theatre. +Sibyl was playing Rosalind. Of course, the scenery was dreadful +and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl You should have seen her +When she came on in her boy's clothes, she was perfectly wonderful. +She wore a mosscoloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, +slim, brown, crossgartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk's +feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. +She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all the delicate +grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your studio, Basil. +Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. +As for her actingwell, you shall see her tonight. She is simply +a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. +I forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. +I was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. +After the performance was over, I went behind and spoke to her. +As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look +that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. +We kissed each other. I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment. +It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect +point of rosecoloured joy. She trembled all over and shook +like a white narcissus. Then she flung herself on her knees +and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell you all this, +but I can't help it. Of course, our engagement is a dead secret. +She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my guardians +will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care. +I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. +I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry +and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare +taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. +I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the +mouth." +"Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right," said Hallward slowly. +"Have you seen her today?" asked Lord Henry. +Dorian Gray shook his head. "I left her in the forest of Arden +I shall find her in an orchard in Verona." +Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. +"At what particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? +And what did she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it." +"My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, +and I did not make any formal proposal. I told her that I +loved her, and she said she was not worthy to be my wife. +Not worthy Why, the whole world is nothing to me compared +with her." +"Women are wonderfully practical," murmured Lord Henry, +"much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind +we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always +remind us." +Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. "Don't, Harry. +You have annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men. +He would never bring misery upon any one. His nature is too fine +for that." +Lord Henry looked across the table. "Dorian is never annoyed with me," +he answered. "I asked the question for the best reason possible, +for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question +simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who +propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, +in middleclass life. But then the middle classes are not modern." +Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. "You are quite +incorrigible, Harry but I don't mind. It is impossible to be angry +with you. When you see Sibyl Vane, you will feel that the man +who could wrong her would be a beast, a beast without a heart. +I cannot understand how any one can wish to shame the thing +he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I want to place her on a pedestal +of gold and to see the world worship the woman who is mine. +What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. You mock at it for that. +Ah don't mock. It is an irrevocable vow that I want to take. +Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good. +When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. +I become different from what you have known me to be. +I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane's hand makes +me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, +delightful theories." +"And those are ... ?" asked Lord Henry, helping himself to some salad. +"Oh, your theories about life, your theories about love, +your theories about pleasure. All your theories, in fact, Harry." +"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," +he answered in his slow melodious voice. "But I am afraid +I cannot claim my theory as my own. It belongs to Nature, +not to me. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. +When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, +we are not always happy." +"Ah but what do you mean by good?" cried Basil Hallward. +"Yes," echoed Dorian, leaning back in his chair and looking at Lord +Henry over the heavy clusters of purplelipped irises that stood +in the centre of the table, "what do you mean by good, Harry?" +"To be good is to be in harmony with one's self," he replied, +touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, finepointed fingers. +"Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. +One's own lifethat is the important thing. As for the lives +of one's neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, +one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not +one's concern. Besides, individualism has really the higher aim. +Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. +I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is +a form of the grossest immorality." +"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays +a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter. +"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should +fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford +nothing but selfdenial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, +are the privilege of the rich." +"One has to pay in other ways but money." +"What sort of ways, Basil?" +"Oh I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in . . . well, +in the consciousness of degradation." +Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, mediaeval art +is charming, but mediaeval emotions are out of date. One can use +them in fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can +use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. +Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized +man ever knows what a pleasure is." +"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore some one." +"That is certainly better than being adored," he answered, +toying with some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. +Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. +They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something +for them." +"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to us," +murmured the lad gravely. "They create love in our natures. They have a +right to demand it back." +"That is quite true, Dorian," cried Hallward. +"Nothing is ever quite true," said Lord Henry. +"This is," interrupted Dorian. "You must admit, Harry, that women +give to men the very gold of their lives." +"Possibly," he sighed, "but they invariably want it back in such +very small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty +Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces +and always prevent us from carrying them out." +"Harry, you are dreadful I don't know why I like you so much." +"You will always like me, Dorian," he replied. "Will you have some coffee, +you fellows? Waiter, bring coffee, and finechampagne, and some cigarettes. +No, don't mind the cigarettesI have some. Basil, I can't allow you to +smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type +of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. +What more can one want? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. +I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit." +"What nonsense you talk, Harry" cried the lad, taking a light from +a firebreathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table. +"Let us go down to the theatre. When Sibyl comes on the stage you will +have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you +have never known." +"I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired +look in his eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. +I am afraid, however, that, for me at any rate, there is +no such thing. Still, your wonderful girl may thrill me. +I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Let us go. +Dorian, you will come with me. I am so sorry, Basil, but there +is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in +a hansom." +They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. +The painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. +He could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him +to be better than many other things that might have happened. +After a few minutes, they all passed downstairs. He drove off by himself, +as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little +brougham in front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him. +He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had +been in the past. Life had come between them.... His eyes darkened, +and the crowded flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. +When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown +years older. +CHAPTER +For some reason or other, the house was crowded that night, +and the fat Jew manager who met them at the door was +beaming from ear to ear with an oily tremulous smile. +He escorted them to their box with a sort of pompous humility, +waving his fat jewelled hands and talking at the top of his voice. +Dorian Gray loathed him more than ever. He felt as if he had +come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban. +Lord Henry, upon the other hand, rather liked him. +At least he declared he did, and insisted on shaking him +by the hand and assuring him that he was proud to meet a man +who had discovered a real genius and gone bankrupt over a poet. +Hallward amused himself with watching the faces in the pit. +The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight +flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of yellow fire. +The youths in the gallery had taken off their coats +and waistcoats and hung them over the side. They talked +to each other across the theatre and shared their oranges +with the tawdry girls who sat beside them. Some women +were laughing in the pit. Their voices were horribly shrill +and discordant. The sound of the popping of corks came from +the bar. +"What a place to find one's divinity in" said Lord Henry. +"Yes" answered Dorian Gray. "It was here I found her, and she is divine +beyond all living things. When she acts, you will forget everything. +These common rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures, +become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently +and watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do. +She makes them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them, +and one feels that they are of the same flesh and blood as one's self." +"The same flesh and blood as one's self Oh, I hope not" +exclaimed Lord Henry, who was scanning the occupants of the gallery +through his operaglass. +"Don't pay any attention to him, Dorian," said the painter. +"I understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. +Any one you love must be marvellous, and any girl +who has the effect you describe must be fine and noble. +To spiritualize one's agethat is something worth doing. +If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, +if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives +have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their +selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not +their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of +the adoration of the world. This marriage is quite right. +I did not think so at first, but I admit it now. +The gods made Sibyl Vane for you. Without her you would have +been incomplete." +"Thanks, Basil," answered Dorian Gray, pressing his hand. +"I knew that you would understand me. Harry is so cynical, +he terrifies me. But here is the orchestra. It is +quite dreadful, but it only lasts for about five minutes. +Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I +am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything +that is good in me." +A quarter of an hour afterwards, amidst an extraordinary turmoil of applause, +Sibyl Vane stepped on to the stage. Yes, she was certainly lovely to look at +one of the loveliest creatures, Lord Henry thought, that he had ever seen. +There was something of the fawn in her shy grace and startled eyes. +A faint blush, like the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, came to her +cheeks as she glanced at the crowded enthusiastic house. She stepped back +a few paces and her lips seemed to tremble. Basil Hallward leaped to his feet +and began to applaud. Motionless, and as one in a dream, sat Dorian Gray, +gazing at her. Lord Henry peered through his glasses, murmuring, +"Charming charming" +The scene was the hall of Capulet's house, and Romeo in his pilgrim's +dress had entered with Mercutio and his other friends. The band, +such as it was, struck up a few bars of music, and the dance began. +Through the crowd of ungainly, shabbily dressed actors, Sibyl Vane +moved like a creature from a finer world. Her body swayed, +while she danced, as a plant sways in the water. The curves of her +throat were the curves of a white lily. Her hands seemed to be made +of cool ivory. +Yet she was curiously listless. She showed no sign of joy +when her eyes rested on Romeo. The few words she had to speak +Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, +Which mannerly devotion shows in this +For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, +And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss +with the brief dialogue that follows, were spoken in a +thoroughly artificial manner. The voice was exquisite, +but from the point of view of tone it was absolutely false. +It was wrong in colour. It took away all the life from the verse. +It made the passion unreal. +Dorian Gray grew pale as he watched her. He was puzzled and anxious. +Neither of his friends dared to say anything to him. She seemed to them +to be absolutely incompetent. They were horribly disappointed. +Yet they felt that the true test of any Juliet is the balcony scene +of the second act. They waited for that. If she failed there, +there was nothing in her. +She looked charming as she came out in the moonlight. +That could not be denied. But the staginess of her acting +was unbearable, and grew worse as she went on. Her gestures +became absurdly artificial. She overemphasized everything +that she had to say. The beautiful passage +Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face, +Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek +For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight +was declaimed with the painful precision of a schoolgirl who has been +taught to recite by some secondrate professor of elocution. When she +leaned over the balcony and came to those wonderful lines +Although I joy in thee, +I have no joy of this contract tonight +It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden +Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be +Ere one can say, "It lightens." Sweet, goodnight +This bud of love by summer's ripening breath +May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet +she spoke the words as though they conveyed no meaning to her. It was +not nervousness. Indeed, so far from being nervous, she was absolutely +selfcontained. It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure. +Even the common uneducated audience of the pit and gallery lost their +interest in the play. They got restless, and began to talk loudly and to +whistle. The Jew manager, who was standing at the back of the +dresscircle, stamped and swore with rage. The only person unmoved was +the girl herself. +When the second act was over, there came a storm of hisses, +and Lord Henry got up from his chair and put on his coat. +"She is quite beautiful, Dorian," he said, "but she can't act. +Let us go." +"I am going to see the play through," answered the lad, +in a hard bitter voice. "I am awfully sorry that I have made +you waste an evening, Harry. I apologize to you both." +"My dear Dorian, I should think Miss Vane was ill," interrupted Hallward. +"We will come some other night." +"I wish she were ill," he rejoined. "But she seems to me +to be simply callous and cold. She has entirely altered. +Last night she was a great artist. This evening she is merely a +commonplace mediocre actress." +"Don't talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a more +wonderful thing than art." +"They are both simply forms of imitation," remarked Lord Henry. +"But do let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. +It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting. +Besides, I don't suppose you will want your wife to act, +so what does it matter if she plays Juliet like a wooden doll? +She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life +as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience. +There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating +people who know absolutely everything, and people who know +absolutely nothing. Good heavens, my dear boy, don't look so tragic +The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion +that is unbecoming. Come to the club with Basil and myself. +We will smoke cigarettes and drink to the beauty of Sibyl Vane. +She is beautiful. What more can you want?" +"Go away, Harry," cried the lad. "I want to be alone. Basil, you must go. +Ah can't you see that my heart is breaking?" The hot tears came +to his eyes. His lips trembled, and rushing to the back of the box, +he leaned up against the wall, hiding his face in his hands. +"Let us go, Basil," said Lord Henry with a strange tenderness in his voice, +and the two young men passed out together. +A few moments afterwards the footlights flared up and the curtain rose +on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale, +and proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable. +Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots and laughing. +The whole thing was a fiasco. The last act was played to almost +empty benches. The curtain went down on a titter and some groans. +As soon as it was over, Dorian Gray rushed behind the scenes into +the greenroom. The girl was standing there alone, with a look +of triumph on her face. Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire. +There was a radiance about her. Her parted lips were smiling over +some secret of their own. +When he entered, she looked at him, and an expression of infinite joy +came over her. "How badly I acted tonight, Dorian" she cried. +"Horribly" he answered, gazing at her in amazement. "Horribly +It was dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was. +You have no idea what I suffered." +The girl smiled. "Dorian," she answered, lingering over +his name with longdrawn music in her voice, as though it +were sweeter than honey to the red petals of her mouth. +"Dorian, you should have understood. But you understand now, +don't you?" +"Understand what?" he asked, angrily. +"Why I was so bad tonight. Why I shall always be bad. +Why I shall never act well again." +He shrugged his shoulders. "You are ill, I suppose. +When you are ill you shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous. +My friends were bored. I was bored." +She seemed not to listen to him. She was transfigured with joy. +An ecstasy of happiness dominated her. +"Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one +reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought +that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. +The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. +I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed +to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing +but shadows, and I thought them real. You cameoh, my beautiful love +and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. +Tonight, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, +the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played. +Tonight, for the first time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous, +and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false, +that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, +were not my words, were not what I wanted to say. You had brought me +something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. +You had made me understand what love really is. My love My love +Prince Charming Prince of life I have grown sick of shadows. +You are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with +the puppets of a play? When I came on tonight, I could not understand +how it was that everything had gone from me. I thought that I was going +to be wonderful. I found that I could do nothing. Suddenly it dawned +on my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard +them hissing, and I smiled. What could they know of love such as ours? +Take me away, Doriantake me away with you, where we can be quite alone. +I hate the stage. I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, +but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire. Oh, Dorian, Dorian, +you understand now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would +be profanation for me to play at being in love. You have made me see +that." +He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face. +"You have killed my love," he muttered. +She looked at him in wonder and laughed. He made no answer. +She came across to him, and with her little fingers stroked +his hair. She knelt down and pressed his hands to her lips. +He drew them away, and a shudder ran through him. +Then he leaped up and went to the door. "Yes," he cried, +"you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. +Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. +I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius +and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great +poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. +You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. +My God how mad I was to love you What a fool I have been +You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. +I will never think of you. I will never mention your name. +You don't know what you were to me, once. Why, once . . . Oh, +I can't bear to think of it I wish I had never laid +eyes upon you You have spoiled the romance of my life. +How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art +Without your art, you are nothing. I would have made +you famous, splendid, magnificent. The world would +have worshipped you, and you would have borne my name. +What are you now? A thirdrate actress with a pretty +face." +The girl grew white, and trembled. She clenched her hands together, +and her voice seemed to catch in her throat. "You are not serious, Dorian?" +she murmured. "You are acting." +"Acting I leave that to you. You do it so well," he answered bitterly. +She rose from her knees and, with a piteous expression of pain +in her face, came across the room to him. She put her hand +upon his arm and looked into his eyes. He thrust her back. +"Don't touch me" he cried. +A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet +and lay there like a trampled flower. "Dorian, Dorian, +don't leave me" she whispered. "I am so sorry I didn't act well. +I was thinking of you all the time. But I will tryindeed, I +will try. It came so suddenly across me, my love for you. +I think I should never have known it if you had not kissed me +if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love. +Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh don't go away +from me. My brother . . . No never mind. He didn't mean it. +He was in jest. . . . But you, oh can't you forgive me for +tonight? I will work so hard and try to improve. Don't be cruel +to me, because I love you better than anything in the world. +After all, it is only once that I have not pleased you. +But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown +myself more of an artist. It was foolish of me, and yet I +couldn't help it. Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me." +A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She crouched on +the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his +beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled +in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous +about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. +Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. +Her tears and sobs annoyed him. +"I am going," he said at last in his calm clear voice. +"I don't wish to be unkind, but I can't see you again. +You have disappointed me." +She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. +Her little hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be +seeking for him. He turned on his heel and left the room. +In a few moments he was out of the theatre. +Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimly +lit streets, past gaunt, blackshadowed archways and evillooking houses. +Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after him. +Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves like +monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon doorsteps, and +heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts. +As the dawn was just breaking, he found himself close to Covent Garden. +The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself +into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly +down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of +the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain. +He followed into the market and watched the men unloading their waggons. +A whitesmocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him, +wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat +them listlessly. They had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness +of the moon had entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates +of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him, +threading their way through the huge, jadegreen piles of vegetables. +Under the portico, with its grey, sunbleached pillars, loitered a troop +of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction to be over. +Others crowded round the swinging doors of the coffeehouse in the piazza. +The heavy carthorses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, +shaking their bells and trappings. Some of the drivers were lying asleep +on a pile of sacks. Irisnecked and pinkfooted, the pigeons ran about +picking up seeds. +After a little while, he hailed a hansom and drove home. +For a few moments he loitered upon the doorstep, looking round +at the silent square, with its blank, closeshuttered windows +and its staring blinds. The sky was pure opal now, +and the roofs of the houses glistened like silver against it. +From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke was rising. +It curled, a violet riband, through the nacrecoloured air. +In the huge gilt Venetian lantern, spoil of some Doge's barge, +that hung from the ceiling of the great, oakpanelled hall +of entrance, lights were still burning from three flickering jets +thin blue petals of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire. +He turned them out and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table, +passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom, +a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that, in his newborn +feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for himself and hung +with some curious Renaissance tapestries that had been discovered +stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning +the handle of the door, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil +Hallward had painted of him. He started back as if in surprise. +Then he went on into his own room, looking somewhat puzzled. +After he had taken the buttonhole out of his coat, he seemed +to hesitate. Finally, he came back, went over to the picture, +and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled +through the creamcoloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him +to be a little changed. The expression looked different. +One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. +It was certainly strange. +He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. +The bright dawn flooded the room and swept the fantastic +shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering. +But the strange expression that he had noticed in the face of +the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even. +The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round +the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after +he had done some dreadful thing. +He winced and, taking up from the table an oval glass framed +in ivory Cupids, one of Lord Henry's many presents to him, +glanced hurriedly into its polished depths. No line like that +warped his red lips. What did it mean? +He rubbed his eyes, and came close to the picture, and examined it again. +There were no signs of any change when he looked into the actual painting, +and yet there was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. It was not +a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly apparent. +He threw himself into a chair and began to think. Suddenly there flashed +across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the day +the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. +He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, +and the portrait grow old that his own beauty might be untarnished, +and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins +that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering +and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness +of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled? +Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. +And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in +the mouth. +Cruelty Had he been cruel? It was the girl's fault, not his. +He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her +because he had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. +She had been shallow and unworthy. And, yet, a feeling +of infinite regret came over him, as he thought of her lying +at his feet sobbing like a little child. He remembered with what +callousness he had watched her. Why had he been made like that? +Why had such a soul been given to him? But he had suffered also. +During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted, +he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. +His life was well worth hers. She had marred him for a moment, +if he had wounded her for an age. Besides, women were better +suited to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. +They only thought of their emotions. When they took lovers, +it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes. +Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what women were. +Why should he trouble about Sibyl Vane? She was nothing to him +now. +But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life, +and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach +him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again? +No it was merely an illusion wrought on the troubled senses. +The horrible night that he had passed had left phantoms behind it. +Suddenly there had fallen upon his brain that tiny scarlet speck +that makes men mad. The picture had not changed. It was folly to +think so. +Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile. +Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. +A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image +of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. +Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would die. +For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. +But he would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would be +to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation. +He would not see Lord Henry any morewould not, at any rate, +listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallward's +garden had first stirred within him the passion for impossible things. +He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love +her again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered +more than he had. Poor child He had been selfish and cruel to her. +The fascination that she had exercised over him would return. +They would be happy together. His life with her would be beautiful and +pure. +He got up from his chair and drew a large screen right in front +of the portrait, shuddering as he glanced at it. "How horrible" +he murmured to himself, and he walked across to the window and opened it. +When he stepped out on to the grass, he drew a deep breath. +The fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. +He thought only of Sibyl. A faint echo of his love came back to him. +He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were +singing in the dewdrenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers +about her. +CHAPTER +It was long past noon when he awoke. His valet had crept +several times on tiptoe into the room to see if he was stirring, +and had wondered what made his young master sleep so late. +Finally his bell sounded, and Victor came in softly with a cup +of tea, and a pile of letters, on a small tray of old Sevres china, +and drew back the olivesatin curtains, with their shimmering +blue lining, that hung in front of the three tall windows. +"Monsieur has well slept this morning," he said, smiling. +"What o'clock is it, Victor?" asked Dorian Gray drowsily. +"One hour and a quarter, Monsieur." +How late it was He sat up, and having sipped some tea, +turned over his letters. One of them was from Lord Henry, and had +been brought by hand that morning. He hesitated for a moment, +and then put it aside. The others he opened listlessly. +They contained the usual collection of cards, invitations to dinner, +tickets for private views, programmes of charity concerts, +and the like that are showered on fashionable young men every +morning during the season. There was a rather heavy bill +for a chased silver LouisQuinze toiletset that he had not +yet had the courage to send on to his guardians, who were +extremely oldfashioned people and did not realize that we live +in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities +and there were several very courteously worded communications +from Jermyn Street moneylenders offering to advance any sum +of money at a moment's notice and at the most reasonable rates +of interest. +After about ten minutes he got up, and throwing on an elaborate dressinggown +of silkembroidered cashmere wool, passed into the onyxpaved bathroom. +The cool water refreshed him after his long sleep. He seemed to have +forgotten all that he had gone through. A dim sense of having taken part +in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but there was the unreality +of a dream about it. +As soon as he was dressed, he went into the library and sat +down to a light French breakfast that had been laid out +for him on a small round table close to the open window. +It was an exquisite day. The warm air seemed laden with spices. +A bee flew in and buzzed round the bluedragon bowl that, +filled with sulphuryellow roses, stood before him. He felt +perfectly happy. +Suddenly his eye fell on the screen that he had placed in front +of the portrait, and he started. +"Too cold for Monsieur?" asked his valet, putting an omelette on the table. +"I shut the window?" +Dorian shook his head. "I am not cold," he murmured. +Was it all true? Had the portrait really changed? +Or had it been simply his own imagination that had made him +see a look of evil where there had been a look of joy? +Surely a painted canvas could not alter? The thing was absurd. +It would serve as a tale to tell Basil some day. It would make +him smile. +And, yet, how vivid was his recollection of the whole thing +First in the dim twilight, and then in the bright dawn, +he had seen the touch of cruelty round the warped lips. +He almost dreaded his valet leaving the room. He knew that +when he was alone he would have to examine the portrait. +He was afraid of certainty. When the coffee and cigarettes +had been brought and the man turned to go, he felt a wild desire +to tell him to remain. As the door was closing behind him, +he called him back. The man stood waiting for his orders. +Dorian looked at him for a moment. "I am not at home +to any one, Victor," he said with a sigh. The man bowed +and retired. +Then he rose from the table, lit a cigarette, and flung +himself down on a luxuriously cushioned couch that stood facing +the screen. The screen was an old one, of gilt Spanish leather, +stamped and wrought with a rather florid LouisQuatorze pattern. +He scanned it curiously, wondering if ever before it had concealed +the secret of a man's life. +Should he move it aside, after all? Why not let it stay there? +What was the use of knowing? If the thing was true, +it was terrible. If it was not true, why trouble about it? +But what if, by some fate or deadlier chance, eyes other than +his spied behind and saw the horrible change? What should he do +if Basil Hallward came and asked to look at his own picture? +Basil would be sure to do that. No the thing had to be examined, +and at once. Anything would be better than this dreadful state +of doubt. +He got up and locked both doors. At least he would be alone when he looked +upon the mask of his shame. Then he drew the screen aside and saw himself +face to face. It was perfectly true. The portrait had altered. +As he often remembered afterwards, and always with no small wonder, +he found himself at first gazing at the portrait with a feeling +of almost scientific interest. That such a change should have +taken place was incredible to him. And yet it was a fact. +Was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms that +shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas and the soul +that was within him? Could it be that what that soul thought, +they realized?that what it dreamed, they made true? +Or was there some other, more terrible reason? He shuddered, +and felt afraid, and, going back to the couch, lay there, +gazing at the picture in sickened horror. +One thing, however, he felt that it had done for him. +It had made him conscious how unjust, how cruel, he had been +to Sibyl Vane. It was not too late to make reparation for that. +She could still be his wife. His unreal and selfish love +would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed +into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward +had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, +would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience +to others, and the fear of God to us all. There were opiates +for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. +But here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. +Here was an everpresent sign of the ruin men brought upon +their souls. +Three o'clock struck, and four, and the halfhour rang its double chime, +but Dorian Gray did not stir. He was trying to gather up the scarlet +threads of life and to weave them into a pattern to find his way through +the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering. +He did not know what to do, or what to think. Finally, he went over +to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved, +imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself of madness. He covered +page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain. +There is a luxury in selfreproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no +one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, +that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that +he had been forgiven. +Suddenly there came a knock to the door, and he heard Lord Henry's +voice outside. "My dear boy, I must see you. Let me in at once. +I can't bear your shutting yourself up like this." +He made no answer at first, but remained quite still. +The knocking still continued and grew louder. Yes, it was +better to let Lord Henry in, and to explain to him the new +life he was going to lead, to quarrel with him if it became +necessary to quarrel, to part if parting was inevitable. +He jumped up, drew the screen hastily across the picture, +and unlocked the door. +"I am so sorry for it all, Dorian," said Lord Henry as he entered. +"But you must not think too much about it." +"Do you mean about Sibyl Vane?" asked the lad. +"Yes, of course," answered Lord Henry, sinking into a chair +and slowly pulling off his yellow gloves. "It is dreadful, +from one point of view, but it was not your fault. Tell me, +did you go behind and see her, after the play was over?" +"Yes." +"I felt sure you had. Did you make a scene with her?" +"I was brutal, Harryperfectly brutal. But it is all right now. +I am not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know +myself better." +"Ah, Dorian, I am so glad you take it in that way I was afraid I +would find you plunged in remorse and tearing that nice curly hair +of yours." +"I have got through all that," said Dorian, shaking his head and smiling. +"I am perfectly happy now. I know what conscience is, to begin with. +It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us. +Don't sneer at it, Harry, any moreat least not before me. I want to +be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous." +"A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian I congratulate you +on it. But how are you going to begin?" +"By marrying Sibyl Vane." +"Marrying Sibyl Vane" cried Lord Henry, standing up and looking +at him in perplexed amazement. "But, my dear Dorian" +"Yes, Harry, I know what you are going to say. Something dreadful +about marriage. Don't say it. Don't ever say things of that +kind to me again. Two days ago I asked Sibyl to marry me. +I am not going to break my word to her. She is to be my wife." +"Your wife Dorian . . . Didn't you get my letter? +I wrote to you this morning, and sent the note down by my +own man." +"Your letter? Oh, yes, I remember. I have not read it yet, Harry. +I was afraid there might be something in it that I wouldn't like. +You cut life to pieces with your epigrams." +"You know nothing then?" +"What do you mean?" +Lord Henry walked across the room, and sitting down by Dorian Gray, +took both his hands in his own and held them tightly. "Dorian," he said, +"my letterdon't be frightenedwas to tell you that Sibyl Vane +is dead." +A cry of pain broke from the lad's lips, and he leaped to his feet, +tearing his hands away from Lord Henry's grasp. "Dead Sibyl dead +It is not true It is a horrible lie How dare you say it?" +"It is quite true, Dorian," said Lord Henry, gravely. "It is in +all the morning papers. I wrote down to you to ask you not to see +any one till I came. There will have to be an inquest, of course, +and you must not be mixed up in it. Things like that make a man +fashionable in Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced. +Here, one should never make one's debut with a scandal. +One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age. +I suppose they don't know your name at the theatre? If they don't, +it is all right. Did any one see you going round to her room? +That is an important point." +Dorian did not answer for a few moments. He was dazed with horror. +Finally he stammered, in a stifled voice, "Harry, did you say an inquest? +What did you mean by that? Did Sibyl? Oh, Harry, I can't bear it +But be quick. Tell me everything at once." +"I have no doubt it was not an accident, Dorian, though it +must be put in that way to the public. It seems that as she +was leaving the theatre with her mother, about halfpast +twelve or so, she said she had forgotten something upstairs. +They waited some time for her, but she did not come down again. +They ultimately found her lying dead on the floor of her +dressingroom. She had swallowed something by mistake, +some dreadful thing they use at theatres. I don't know what +it was, but it had either prussic acid or white lead in it. +I should fancy it was prussic acid, as she seems to have +died instantaneously." +"Harry, Harry, it is terrible" cried the lad. +"Yes it is very tragic, of course, but you must not get yourself +mixed up in it. I see by The Standard that she was seventeen. +I should have thought she was almost younger than that. +She looked such a child, and seemed to know so little about acting. +Dorian, you mustn't let this thing get on your nerves. +You must come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look in at +the opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be there. +You can come to my sister's box. She has got some smart women +with her." +"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to himself, +"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat +with a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. +The birds sing just as happily in my garden. And tonight I am +to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup somewhere, +I suppose, afterwards. How extraordinarily dramatic life is +If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have +wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened actually, +and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears. +Here is the first passionate loveletter I have ever written +in my life. Strange, that my first passionate loveletter should +have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, +those white silent people we call the dead? Sibyl Can she feel, +or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I loved her once +It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me. +Then came that dreadful nightwas it really only last night? +when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke. +She explained it all to me. It was terribly pathetic. +But I was not moved a bit. I thought her shallow. +Suddenly something happened that made me afraid. +I can't tell you what it was, but it was terrible. +I said I would go back to her. I felt I had done wrong. +And now she is dead. My God My God Harry, what shall I do? +You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing +to keep me straight. She would have done that for me. +She had no right to kill herself. It was selfish of +her." +"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette +from his case and producing a goldlatten matchbox, +"the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him +so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. +If you had married this girl, you would have been wretched. +Of course, you would have treated her kindly. One can always +be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. But she would +have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent +to her. And when a woman finds that out about her husband, +she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart +bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay for. +I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have +been abjectwhich, of course, I would not have allowed +but I assure you that in any case the whole thing would have been an +absolute failure." +"I suppose it would," muttered the lad, walking up and down the room +and looking horribly pale. "But I thought it was my duty. +It is not my fault that this terrible tragedy has prevented my doing +what was right. I remember your saying once that there is a fatality +about good resolutionsthat they are always made too late. +Mine certainly were." +"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere +with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. +Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, +some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain +charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them. +They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have +no account." +"Harry," cried Dorian Gray, coming over and sitting down beside him, +"why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to? +I don't think I am heartless. Do you?" +"You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight +to be entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian," answered Lord +Henry with his sweet melancholy smile. +The lad frowned. "I don't like that explanation, Harry," he rejoined, +"but I am glad you don't think I am heartless. I am nothing of the kind. +I know I am not. And yet I must admit that this thing that has happened +does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a +wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty +of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I +have not been wounded." +"It is an interesting question," said Lord Henry, who found +an exquisite pleasure in playing on the lad's unconscious egotism, +"an extremely interesting question. I fancy that the true +explanation is this It often happens that the real tragedies +of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt +us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, +their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. +They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us +an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. +Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements +of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, +the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. +Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, +but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. +We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle +enthralls us. In the present case, what is it that has +really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you. +I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would +have made me in love with love for the rest of my life. +The people who have adored methere have not been very many, +but there have been somehave always insisted on living on, +long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me. +They have become stout and tedious, and when I meet them, +they go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman +What a fearful thing it is And what an utter intellectual +stagnation it reveals One should absorb the colour of life, +but one should never remember its details. Details are always +vulgar." +"I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian. +"There is no necessity," rejoined his companion. "Life has always +poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. +I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, +as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would not die. +Ultimately, however, it did die. I forget what killed it. +I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. +That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror +of eternity. Wellwould you believe it?a week ago, +at Lady Hampshire's, I found myself seated at dinner next +the lady in question, and she insisted on going over the whole +thing again, and digging up the past, and raking up the future. +I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. She dragged +it out again and assured me that I had spoiled her life. +I am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did +not feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she showed +The one charm of the past is that it is the past. +But women never know when the curtain has fallen. +They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest +of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. +If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have +a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. +They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. +You are more fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not +one of the women I have known would have done for me what Sibyl +Vane did for you. Ordinary women always console themselves. +Some of them do it by going in for sentimental colours. +Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, +or a woman over thirtyfive who is fond of pink ribbons. +It always means that they have a history. Others find +a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good qualities +of their husbands. They flaunt their conjugal felicity +in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins. +Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the charm +of a flirtation, a woman once told me, and I can quite +understand it. Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told +that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. +Yes there is really no end to the consolations that women find +in modern life. Indeed, I have not mentioned the most important +one." +"What is that, Harry?" said the lad listlessly. +"Oh, the obvious consolation. Taking some one else's admirer when one +loses one's own. In good society that always whitewashes a woman. +But really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the women +one meets There is something to me quite beautiful about her death. +I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. +They make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, +such as romance, passion, and love." +"I was terribly cruel to her. You forget that." +"I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, +more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. +We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, +all the same. They love being dominated. I am sure you were splendid. +I have never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how +delightful you looked. And, after all, you said something to me the day +before yesterday that seemed to me at the time to be merely fanciful, +but that I see now was absolutely true, and it holds the key +to everything." +"What was that, Harry?" +"You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines +of romancethat she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other +that if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen." +"She will never come to life again now," muttered the lad, +burying his face in his hands. +"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. +But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressingroom +simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, +as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. +The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died. +To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted +through Shakespeare's plays and left them lovelier for its presence, +a reed through which Shakespeare's music sounded richer and more +full of joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, +and it marred her, and so she passed away. Mourn for Ophelia, +if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. +Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died. +But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they +are." +There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. +Noiselessly, and with silver feet, the shadows crept in from +the garden. The colours faded wearily out of things. +After some time Dorian Gray looked up. "You have explained me +to myself, Harry," he murmured with something of a sigh of relief. +"I felt all that you have said, but somehow I was afraid of it, +and I could not express it to myself. How well you know me +But we will not talk again of what has happened. It has been +a marvellous experience. That is all. I wonder if life has still +in store for me anything as marvellous." +"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that you, +with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do." +"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? +What then?" +"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, +you would have to fight for your victories. As it is, +they are brought to you. No, you must keep your good looks. +We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that +thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot spare you. +And now you had better dress and drive down to the club. +We are rather late, as it is." +"I think I shall join you at the opera, Harry. I feel too tired +to eat anything. What is the number of your sister's box?" +"Twentyseven, I believe. It is on the grand tier. +You will see her name on the door. But I am sorry you won't +come and dine." +"I don't feel up to it," said Dorian listlessly. "But I am +awfully obliged to you for all that you have said to me. +You are certainly my best friend. No one has ever understood me +as you have." +"We are only at the beginning of our friendship, Dorian," answered Lord Henry, +shaking him by the hand. "Goodbye. I shall see you before ninethirty, +I hope. Remember, Patti is singing." +As he closed the door behind him, Dorian Gray touched the bell, +and in a few minutes Victor appeared with the lamps and drew +the blinds down. He waited impatiently for him to go. +The man seemed to take an interminable time over everything. +As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and drew it back. +No there was no further change in the picture. It had received +the news of Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself. +It was conscious of the events of life as they occurred. +The vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, +no doubt, appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk +the poison, whatever it was. Or was it indifferent to results? +Did it merely take cognizance of what passed within the soul? +He wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the change taking place +before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it. +Poor Sibyl What a romance it had all been She had often mimicked +death on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her and taken +her with him. How had she played that dreadful last scene? +Had she cursed him, as she died? No she had died for love of him, +and love would always be a sacrament to him now. She had atoned +for everything by the sacrifice she had made of her life. +He would not think any more of what she had made him go through, +on that horrible night at the theatre. When he thought of her, +it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world's stage +to show the supreme reality of love. A wonderful tragic figure? +Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and winsome +fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace. He brushed them away hastily and +looked again at the picture. +He felt that the time had really come for making his choice. +Or had his choice already been made? Yes, life had decided +that for himlife, and his own infinite curiosity about life. +Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, +wild joys and wilder sinshe was to have all these things. +The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame +that was all. +A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration +that was in store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish +mockery of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, +those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly at him. +Morning after morning he had sat before the portrait wondering at +its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times. +Was it to alter now with every mood to which he yielded? +Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden +away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had +so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair? +The pity of it the pity of it +For a moment, he thought of praying that the horrible sympathy +that existed between him and the picture might cease. +It had changed in answer to a prayer perhaps in answer to a prayer +it might remain unchanged. And yet, who, that knew anything +about life, would surrender the chance of remaining always young, +however fantastic that chance might be, or with what fateful consequences +it might be fraught? Besides, was it really under his control? +Had it indeed been prayer that had produced the substitution? +Might there not be some curious scientific reason for it all? +If thought could exercise its influence upon a living organism, +might not thought exercise an influence upon dead and inorganic things? +Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external +to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, +atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity? +But the reason was of no importance. He would never again tempt +by a prayer any terrible power. If the picture was to alter, +it was to alter. That was all. Why inquire too closely +into it? +For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. +He would be able to follow his mind into its secret places. +This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. +As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal +to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he would +still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer. +When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask +of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. +Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse +of his life would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, +he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what +happened to the coloured image on the canvas? He would be safe. +That was everything. +He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture, +smiling as he did so, and passed into his bedroom, where his valet was +already waiting for him. An hour later he was at the opera, and Lord +Henry was leaning over his chair. +CHAPTER +As he was sitting at breakfast next morning, Basil Hallward was shown +into the room. +"I am so glad I have found you, Dorian," he said gravely. +"I called last night, and they told me you were at the opera. +Of course, I knew that was impossible. But I wish you had left +word where you had really gone to. I passed a dreadful evening, +half afraid that one tragedy might be followed by another. +I think you might have telegraphed for me when you heard of it first. +I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of The Globe +that I picked up at the club. I came here at once and was +miserable at not finding you. I can't tell you how heartbroken +I am about the whole thing. I know what you must suffer. +But where were you? Did you go down and see the girl's mother? +For a moment I thought of following you there. They gave +the address in the paper. Somewhere in the Euston Road, isn't it? +But I was afraid of intruding upon a sorrow that I could +not lighten. Poor woman What a state she must be in +And her only child, too What did she say about it +all?" +"My dear Basil, how do I know?" murmured Dorian Gray, sipping some +paleyellow wine from a delicate, goldbeaded bubble of Venetian +glass and looking dreadfully bored. "I was at the opera. +You should have come on there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry's sister, +for the first time. We were in her box. She is perfectly charming +and Patti sang divinely. Don't talk about horrid subjects. +If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. +It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives reality to things. +I may mention that she was not the woman's only child. There is +a son, a charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on the stage. +He is a sailor, or something. And now, tell me about yourself and what you +are painting." +"You went to the opera?" said Hallward, speaking very slowly +and with a strained touch of pain in his voice. "You went to +the opera while Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging? +You can talk to me of other women being charming, and of Patti +singing divinely, before the girl you loved has even the quiet +of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are horrors in store +for that little white body of hers" +"Stop, Basil I won't hear it" cried Dorian, leaping to his feet. +"You must not tell me about things. What is done is done. +What is past is past." +"You call yesterday the past?" +"What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is +only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. +A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can +invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. +I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them." +"Dorian, this is horrible Something has changed you completely. +You look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, +used to come down to my studio to sit for his picture. +But you were simple, natural, and affectionate then. +You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world. +Now, I don't know what has come over you. You talk as if you +had no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry's influence. +I see that." +The lad flushed up and, going to the window, looked out for +a few moments on the green, flickering, sunlashed garden. +"I owe a great deal to Harry, Basil," he said at last, +"more than I owe to you. You only taught me to be vain." +"Well, I am punished for that, Dorianor shall be some day." +"I don't know what you mean, Basil," he exclaimed, turning round. +"I don't know what you want. What do you want?" +"I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint," said the artist sadly. +"Basil," said the lad, going over to him and putting his hand +on his shoulder, "you have come too late. Yesterday, when I +heard that Sibyl Vane had killed herself" +"Killed herself Good heavens is there no doubt about that?" +cried Hallward, looking up at him with an expression of horror. +"My dear Basil Surely you don't think it was a vulgar accident? +Of course she killed herself." +The elder man buried his face in his hands. "How fearful," +he muttered, and a shudder ran through him. +"No," said Dorian Gray, "there is nothing fearful about it. +It is one of the great romantic tragedies of the age. +As a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives. +They are good husbands, or faithful wives, or something tedious. +You know what I meanmiddleclass virtue and all that kind of thing. +How different Sibyl was She lived her finest tragedy. +She was always a heroine. The last night she played +the night you saw hershe acted badly because she had known +the reality of love. When she knew its unreality, she died, +as Juliet might have died. She passed again into the sphere of art. +There is something of the martyr about her. Her death has all +the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty. +But, as I was saying, you must not think I have not suffered. +If you had come in yesterday at a particular moment +about halfpast five, perhaps, or a quarter to six +you would have found me in tears. Even Harry, who was here, +who brought me the news, in fact, had no idea what I was +going through. I suffered immensely. Then it passed away. +I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists. +And you are awfully unjust, Basil. You come down here to console me. +That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. +How like a sympathetic person You remind me of a story +Harry told me about a certain philanthropist who spent twenty +years of his life in trying to get some grievance redressed, +or some unjust law alteredI forget exactly what it was. +Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment. +He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of ennui, and became +a confirmed misanthrope. And besides, my dear old Basil, +if you really want to console me, teach me rather to forget what +has happened, or to see it from a proper artistic point of view. +Was it not Gautier who used to write about la consolation des arts? +I remember picking up a little vellumcovered book in your +studio one day and chancing on that delightful phrase. +Well, I am not like that young man you told me of when we +were down at Marlow together, the young man who used to say +that yellow satin could console one for all the miseries of life. +I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle. +Old brocades, green bronzes, lacquerwork, carved ivories, +exquisite surroundings, luxury, pompthere is much to be got +from all these. But the artistic temperament that they create, +or at any rate reveal, is still more to me. To become +the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape +the suffering of life. I know you are surprised at my talking +to you like this. You have not realized how I have developed. +I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. +I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, +but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you must +always be my friend. Of course, I am very fond of Harry. +But I know that you are better than he is. You are not stronger +you are too much afraid of lifebut you are better. And how +happy we used to be together Don't leave me, Basil, and don't +quarrel with me. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be +said." +The painter felt strangely moved. The lad was infinitely dear to him, +and his personality had been the great turning point in his art. +He could not bear the idea of reproaching him any more. After all, +his indifference was probably merely a mood that would pass away. +There was so much in him that was good, so much in him that +was noble. +"Well, Dorian," he said at length, with a sad smile, "I +won't speak to you again about this horrible thing, after today. +I only trust your name won't be mentioned in connection with it. +The inquest is to take place this afternoon. Have they summoned you?" +Dorian shook his head, and a look of annoyance passed over his face +at the mention of the word "inquest." There was something so crude +and vulgar about everything of the kind. "They don't know my name," +he answered. +"But surely she did?" +"Only my Christian name, and that I am quite sure she never mentioned +to any one. She told me once that they were all rather curious to learn +who I was, and that she invariably told them my name was Prince Charming. +It was pretty of her. You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. +I should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses +and some broken pathetic words." +"I will try and do something, Dorian, if it would please you. +But you must come and sit to me yourself again. I can't get on +without you." +"I can never sit to you again, Basil. It is impossible" +he exclaimed, starting back. +The painter stared at him. "My dear boy, what nonsense" +he cried. "Do you mean to say you don't like what I did of you? +Where is it? Why have you pulled the screen in front of it? +Let me look at it. It is the best thing I have ever done. +Do take the screen away, Dorian. It is simply disgraceful +of your servant hiding my work like that. I felt the room looked +different as I came in." +"My servant has nothing to do with it, Basil. You don't imagine I let +him arrange my room for me? He settles my flowers for me sometimes +that is all. No I did it myself. The light was too strong on +the portrait." +"Too strong Surely not, my dear fellow? It is an admirable place for it. +Let me see it." And Hallward walked towards the corner of the room. +A cry of terror broke from Dorian Gray's lips, and he rushed +between the painter and the screen. "Basil," he said, +looking very pale, "you must not look at it. I don't wish +you to." +"Not look at my own work You are not serious. Why shouldn't I look at it?" +exclaimed Hallward, laughing. +"If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will +never speak to you again as long as I live. I am quite serious. +I don't offer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any. +But, remember, if you touch this screen, everything is over +between us." +Hallward was thunderstruck. He looked at Dorian Gray in +absolute amazement. He had never seen him like this before. +The lad was actually pallid with rage. His hands were clenched, +and the pupils of his eyes were like disks of blue fire. +He was trembling all over. +"Dorian" +"Don't speak" +"But what is the matter? Of course I won't look at it if you don't want +me to," he said, rather coldly, turning on his heel and going over towards +the window. "But, really, it seems rather absurd that I shouldn't see my +own work, especially as I am going to exhibit it in Paris in the autumn. +I shall probably have to give it another coat of varnish before that, so I +must see it some day, and why not today?" +"To exhibit it You want to exhibit it?" exclaimed Dorian Gray, +a strange sense of terror creeping over him. Was the world going to be +shown his secret? Were people to gape at the mystery of his life? +That was impossible. Somethinghe did not know whathad to be done +at once. +"Yes I don't suppose you will object to that. Georges Petit +is going to collect all my best pictures for a special exhibition +in the Rue de Seze, which will open the first week in October. +The portrait will only be away a month. I should think you could easily +spare it for that time. In fact, you are sure to be out of town. +And if you keep it always behind a screen, you can't care much +about it." +Dorian Gray passed his hand over his forehead. There were beads of +perspiration there. He felt that he was on the brink of a horrible danger. +"You told me a month ago that you would never exhibit it," he cried. +"Why have you changed your mind? You people who go in for being consistent +have just as many moods as others have. The only difference is that +your moods are rather meaningless. You can't have forgotten that you +assured me most solemnly that nothing in the world would induce you +to send it to any exhibition. You told Harry exactly the same thing." +He stopped suddenly, and a gleam of light came into his eyes. He remembered +that Lord Henry had said to him once, half seriously and half in jest, +"If you want to have a strange quarter of an hour, get Basil to tell you +why he won't exhibit your picture. He told me why he wouldn't, and it +was a revelation to me." Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret. +He would ask him and try. +"Basil," he said, coming over quite close and looking him straight +in the face, "we have each of us a secret. Let me know yours, +and I shall tell you mine. What was your reason for refusing +to exhibit my picture?" +The painter shuddered in spite of himself. "Dorian, if I told you, +you might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh +at me. I could not bear your doing either of those two things. +If you wish me never to look at your picture again, I am content. +I have always you to look at. If you wish the best work I have ever done +to be hidden from the world, I am satisfied. Your friendship is dearer +to me than any fame or reputation." +"No, Basil, you must tell me," insisted Dorian Gray. +"I think I have a right to know." His feeling of terror +had passed away, and curiosity had taken its place. +He was determined to find out Basil Hallward's mystery. +"Let us sit down, Dorian," said the painter, looking troubled. +"Let us sit down. And just answer me one question. +Have you noticed in the picture something curious?something that +probably at first did not strike you, but that revealed itself +to you suddenly?" +"Basil" cried the lad, clutching the arms of his chair with trembling +hands and gazing at him with wild startled eyes. +"I see you did. Don't speak. Wait till you hear what I have to say. +Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most +extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, +by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen +ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. +I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. +I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I +was with you. When you were away from me, you were still present +in my art.... Of course, I never let you know anything about this. +It would have been impossible. You would not have understood it. +I hardly understood it myself. I only knew that I had seen perfection +face to face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes +too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, +the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them.... +Weeks and weeks went on, and I grew more and more absorbed in you. +Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris in +dainty armour, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished +boarspear. Crowned with heavy lotusblossoms you had sat on +the prow of Adrian's barge, gazing across the green turbid Nile. +You had leaned over the still pool of some Greek woodland and seen +in the water's silent silver the marvel of your own face. +And it had all been what art should beunconscious, ideal, and remote. +One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to paint +a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume +of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own time. +Whether it was the realism of the method, or the mere wonder +of your own personality, thus directly presented to me without +mist or veil, I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it, +every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. +I grew afraid that others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, +that I had told too much, that I had put too much of myself into it. +Then it was that I resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited. +You were a little annoyed but then you did not realize all that it +meant to me. Harry, to whom I talked about it, laughed at me. +But I did not mind that. When the picture was finished, and I sat +alone with it, I felt that I was right.... Well, after a few days +the thing left my studio, and as soon as I had got rid of the intolerable +fascination of its presence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish +in imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than that you +were extremely goodlooking and that I could paint. Even now I +cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion +one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. +Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell +us of form and colourthat is all. It often seems to me that art +conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him. +And so when I got this offer from Paris, I determined to make your +portrait the principal thing in my exhibition. It never occurred +to me that you would refuse. I see now that you were right. +The picture cannot be shown. You must not be angry with me, Dorian, +for what I have told you. As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be +worshipped." +Dorian Gray drew a long breath. The colour came back to his cheeks, +and a smile played about his lips. The peril was over. +He was safe for the time. Yet he could not help feeling +infinite pity for the painter who had just made this strange +confession to him, and wondered if he himself would ever +be so dominated by the personality of a friend. Lord Henry +had the charm of being very dangerous. But that was all. +He was too clever and too cynical to be really fond of. +Would there ever be some one who would fill him with a +strange idolatry? Was that one of the things that life had +in store? +"It is extraordinary to me, Dorian," said Hallward, "that you +should have seen this in the portrait. Did you really see it?" +"I saw something in it," he answered, "something that seemed +to me very curious." +"Well, you don't mind my looking at the thing now?" +Dorian shook his head. "You must not ask me that, Basil. +I could not possibly let you stand in front of that picture." +"You will some day, surely?" +"Never." +"Well, perhaps you are right. And now goodbye, Dorian. +You have been the one person in my life who has really influenced +my art. Whatever I have done that is good, I owe to you. +Ah you don't know what it cost me to tell you all that I have +told you." +"My dear Basil," said Dorian, "what have you told me? +Simply that you felt that you admired me too much. +That is not even a compliment." +"It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. +Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. +Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words." +"It was a very disappointing confession." +"Why, what did you expect, Dorian? You didn't see anything else +in the picture, did you? There was nothing else to see?" +"No there was nothing else to see. Why do you ask? +But you mustn't talk about worship. It is foolish. You and I +are friends, Basil, and we must always remain so." +"You have got Harry," said the painter sadly. +"Oh, Harry" cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. "Harry spends +his days in saying what is incredible and his evenings in doing +what is improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead. +But still I don't think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. +I would sooner go to you, Basil." +"You will sit to me again?" +"Impossible" +"You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man +comes across two ideal things. Few come across one." +"I can't explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again. +There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own. +I will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant." +"Pleasanter for you, I am afraid," murmured Hallward regretfully. +"And now goodbye. I am sorry you won't let me look at the picture +once again. But that can't be helped. I quite understand what you feel +about it." +As he left the room, Dorian Gray smiled to himself. Poor Basil +How little he knew of the true reason And how strange it +was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, +he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from +his friend How much that strange confession explained to him +The painter's absurd fits of jealousy, his wild devotion, +his extravagant panegyrics, his curious reticences +he understood them all now, and he felt sorry. There seemed +to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured +by romance. +He sighed and touched the bell. The portrait must be hidden away +at all costs. He could not run such a risk of discovery again. +It had been mad of him to have allowed the thing to remain, +even for an hour, in a room to which any of his friends +had access. +CHAPTER +When his servant entered, he looked at him steadfastly +and wondered if he had thought of peering behind the screen. +The man was quite impassive and waited for his orders. Dorian lit +a cigarette and walked over to the glass and glanced into it. +He could see the reflection of Victor's face perfectly. +It was like a placid mask of servility. There was nothing +to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on +his guard. +Speaking very slowly, he told him to tell the housekeeper that he wanted +to see her, and then to go to the framemaker and ask him to send two of his +men round at once. It seemed to him that as the man left the room his eyes +wandered in the direction of the screen. Or was that merely his own fancy? +After a few moments, in her black silk dress, with oldfashioned thread +mittens on her wrinkled hands, Mrs. Leaf bustled into the library. +He asked her for the key of the schoolroom. +"The old schoolroom, Mr. Dorian?" she exclaimed. "Why, it is full of dust. +I must get it arranged and put straight before you go into it. It is not fit +for you to see, sir. It is not, indeed." +"I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key." +"Well, sir, you'll be covered with cobwebs if you go into it. Why, it hasn't +been opened for nearly five yearsnot since his lordship died." +He winced at the mention of his grandfather. He had hateful memories of him. +"That does not matter," he answered. "I simply want to see the place +that is all. Give me the key." +"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over +the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands. +"Here is the key. I'll have it off the bunch in a moment. +But you don't think of living up there, sir, and you so +comfortable here?" +"No, no," he cried petulantly. "Thank you, Leaf. That will do." +She lingered for a few moments, and was garrulous over some detail +of the household. He sighed and told her to manage things as she +thought best. She left the room, wreathed in smiles. +As the door closed, Dorian put the key in his pocket and looked round +the room. His eye fell on a large, purple satin coverlet heavily +embroidered with gold, a splendid piece of late seventeenthcentury +Venetian work that his grandfather had found in a convent near Bologna. +Yes, that would serve to wrap the dreadful thing in. It had perhaps +served often as a pall for the dead. Now it was to hide something that +had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself +something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. What the worm +was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. +They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They would defile +it and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. +It would be always alive. +He shuddered, and for a moment he regretted that he had not told +Basil the true reason why he had wished to hide the picture away. +Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry's influence, +and the still more poisonous influences that came from his +own temperament. The love that he bore himfor it was really love +had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. +It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born +of the senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was such +love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, +and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. +But it was too late now. The past could always be annihilated. +Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future +was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find +their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their +evil real. +He took up from the couch the great purpleandgold texture that +covered it, and, holding it in his hands, passed behind the screen. +Was the face on the canvas viler than before? It seemed to him +that it was unchanged, and yet his loathing of it was intensified. +Gold hair, blue eyes, and rosered lipsthey all were there. +It was simply the expression that had altered. That was horrible +in its cruelty. Compared to what he saw in it of censure or rebuke, +how shallow Basil's reproaches about Sibyl Vane had been +how shallow, and of what little account His own soul was looking +out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgement. A look +of pain came across him, and he flung the rich pall over the picture. +As he did so, a knock came to the door. He passed out as his +servant entered. +"The persons are here, Monsieur." +He felt that the man must be got rid of at once. He must +not be allowed to know where the picture was being taken to. +There was something sly about him, and he had thoughtful, +treacherous eyes. Sitting down at the writingtable he scribbled +a note to Lord Henry, asking him to send him round something +to read and reminding him that they were to meet at eightfifteen +that evening. +"Wait for an answer," he said, handing it to him, "and show the men in here." +In two or three minutes there was another knock, and Mr. Hubbard himself, +the celebrated framemaker of South Audley Street, came in with a +somewhat roughlooking young assistant. Mr. Hubbard was a florid, +redwhiskered little man, whose admiration for art was considerably tempered +by the inveterate impecuniosity of most of the artists who dealt with him. +As a rule, he never left his shop. He waited for people to come to him. +But he always made an exception in favour of Dorian Gray. There was +something about Dorian that charmed everybody. It was a pleasure even to +see him. +"What can I do for you, Mr. Gray?" he said, rubbing his fat freckled hands. +"I thought I would do myself the honour of coming round in person. I have +just got a beauty of a frame, sir. Picked it up at a sale. Old Florentine. +Came from Fonthill, I believe. Admirably suited for a religious subject, +Mr. Gray." +"I am so sorry you have given yourself the trouble of coming round, +Mr. Hubbard. I shall certainly drop in and look at the frame +though I don't go in much at present for religious artbut today +I only want a picture carried to the top of the house for me. +It is rather heavy, so I thought I would ask you to lend me a couple of +your men." +"No trouble at all, Mr. Gray. I am delighted to be of any service to you. +Which is the work of art, sir?" +"This," replied Dorian, moving the screen back. "Can you move it, +covering and all, just as it is? I don't want it to get scratched +going upstairs." +"There will be no difficulty, sir," said the genial framemaker, beginning, +with the aid of his assistant, to unhook the picture from the long brass +chains by which it was suspended. "And, now, where shall we carry it to, +Mr. Gray?" +"I will show you the way, Mr. Hubbard, if you will kindly follow me. +Or perhaps you had better go in front. I am afraid it is right at +the top of the house. We will go up by the front staircase, as it +is wider." +He held the door open for them, and they passed out into the hall and began +the ascent. The elaborate character of the frame had made the picture +extremely bulky, and now and then, in spite of the obsequious protests +of Mr. Hubbard, who had the true tradesman's spirited dislike of seeing a +gentleman doing anything useful, Dorian put his hand to it so as to help them. +"Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they +reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead. +"I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the door +that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his +life and hide his soul from the eyes of men. +He had not entered the place for more than four yearsnot, indeed, +since he had used it first as a playroom when he was a child, +and then as a study when he grew somewhat older. It was a large, +wellproportioned room, which had been specially built by the last +Lord Kelso for the use of the little grandson whom, for his strange +likeness to his mother, and also for other reasons, he had always +hated and desired to keep at a distance. It appeared to Dorian +to have but little changed. There was the huge Italian cassone, +with its fantastically painted panels and its tarnished +gilt mouldings, in which he had so often hidden himself as a boy. +There the satinwood bookcase filled with his dogeared schoolbooks. +On the wall behind it was hanging the same ragged Flemish tapestry +where a faded king and queen were playing chess in a garden, +while a company of hawkers rode by, carrying hooded birds on their +gauntleted wrists. How well he remembered it all Every moment +of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round. +He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible +to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away. +How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store +for him +But there was no other place in the house so secure from prying eyes as this. +He had the key, and no one else could enter it. Beneath its purple pall, +the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean. +What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see it. +Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his youth +that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer, after all? +There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame. +Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and shield him +from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in flesh +those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and +their charm. Perhaps, some day, the cruel look would have passed away from +the scarlet sensitive mouth, and he might show to the world Basil Hallward's +masterpiece. +No that was impossible. Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing +upon the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness +of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it. +The cheeks would become hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow's feet +would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible. +The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, +would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. +There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blueveined hands, +the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been +so stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. +There was no help for it. +"Bring it in, Mr. Hubbard, please," he said, wearily, turning round. +"I am sorry I kept you so long. I was thinking of something else." +"Always glad to have a rest, Mr. Gray," answered the framemaker, +who was still gasping for breath. "Where shall we put it, sir?" +"Oh, anywhere. Here this will do. I don't want to have it hung up. +Just lean it against the wall. Thanks." +"Might one look at the work of art, sir?" +Dorian started. "It would not interest you, Mr. Hubbard," +he said, keeping his eye on the man. He felt ready to leap +upon him and fling him to the ground if he dared to lift +the gorgeous hanging that concealed the secret of his life. +"I shan't trouble you any more now. I am much obliged for your +kindness in coming round." +"Not at all, not at all, Mr. Gray. Ever ready to do anything for you, sir." +And Mr. Hubbard tramped downstairs, followed by the assistant, who glanced +back at Dorian with a look of shy wonder in his rough uncomely face. +He had never seen any one so marvellous. +When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Dorian locked +the door and put the key in his pocket. He felt safe now. +No one would ever look upon the horrible thing. No eye but his +would ever see his shame. +On reaching the library, he found that it was just after +five o'clock and that the tea had been already brought up. +On a little table of dark perfumed wood thickly incrusted with nacre, +a present from Lady Radley, his guardian's wife, a pretty +professional invalid who had spent the preceding winter in Cairo, +was lying a note from Lord Henry, and beside it was a book bound +in yellow paper, the cover slightly torn and the edges soiled. +A copy of the third edition of The St. James's Gazette had been +placed on the teatray. It was evident that Victor had returned. +He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were leaving +the house and had wormed out of them what they had been doing. +He would be sure to miss the picturehad no doubt missed +it already, while he had been laying the teathings. The screen +had not been set back, and a blank space was visible on the wall. +Perhaps some night he might find him creeping upstairs and trying +to force the door of the room. It was a horrible thing to have +a spy in one's house. He had heard of rich men who had been +blackmailed all their lives by some servant who had read a letter, +or overheard a conversation, or picked up a card with an address, +or found beneath a pillow a withered flower or a shred of +crumpled lace. +He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry's note. +It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and a book +that might interest him, and that he would be at the club at eightfifteen. He +opened The St. James's languidly, and looked through it. A red pencilmark on +the fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention to the following paragraph +INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.An inquest was held this morning at the Bell Tavern, +Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of Sibyl Vane, +a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre, Holborn. A verdict +of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable sympathy was expressed +for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the giving +of her own evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the postmortem +examination of the deceased. +He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across +the room and flung the pieces away. How ugly it all was +And how horribly real ugliness made things He felt a little +annoyed with Lord Henry for having sent him the report. +And it was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil. +Victor might have read it. The man knew more than enough English +for that. +Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something. +And, yet, what did it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do +with Sibyl Vane's death? There was nothing to fear. +Dorian Gray had not killed her. +His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. +What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little, +pearlcoloured octagonal stand that had always looked to him +like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, +and taking up the volume, flung himself into an armchair and began +to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. +It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him +that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, +the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. +Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made +real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were +gradually revealed. +It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed, +simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life +trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes +of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, +as it were, in himself the various moods through which the worldspirit had +ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men +have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise +men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious +jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms, +of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes +the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. +There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids and as subtle in colour. +The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. +One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies +of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. +It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its +pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle +monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements +elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from +chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him +unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows. +Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a coppergreen +sky gleamed through the windows. He read on by its wan light +till he could read no more. Then, after his valet had reminded +him several times of the lateness of the hour, he got up, +and going into the next room, placed the book on the little +Florentine table that always stood at his bedside and began +to dress for dinner. +It was almost nine o'clock before he reached the club, where he found +Lord Henry sitting alone, in the morningroom, looking very much bored. +"I am so sorry, Harry," he cried, "but really it is entirely your fault. +That book you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time +was going." +"Yes, I thought you would like it," replied his host, rising from his chair. +"I didn't say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. +There is a great difference." +"Ah, you have discovered that?" murmured Lord Henry. +And they passed into the diningroom. +CHAPTER +For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence +of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say +that he never sought to free himself from it. He procured from +Paris no less than nine largepaper copies of the first edition, +and had them bound in different colours, so that they might suit +his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over +which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control. +The hero, the wonderful young Parisian in whom the romantic +and the scientific temperaments were so strangely blended, +became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. +And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story +of his own life, written before he had lived it. +In one point he was more fortunate than the novel's fantastic hero. +He never knewnever, indeed, had any cause to knowthat somewhat +grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still +water which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, +and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a beau that had once, +apparently, been so remarkable. It was with an almost cruel joy +and perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, +cruelty has its placethat he used to read the latter part of the book, +with its really tragic, if somewhat overemphasized, account of the sorrow +and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and the world, +he had most dearly valued. +For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, +and many others besides him, seemed never to leave him. +Even those who had heard the most evil things against him +and from time to time strange rumours about his mode of life +crept through London and became the chatter of the clubs +could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. +He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted +from the world. Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian +Gray entered the room. There was something in the purity of his +face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall +to them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished. +They wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could +have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid +and sensual. +Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and +prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture +among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so, +he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door +with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, +in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, +looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at +the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. +The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense +of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, +more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. +He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous +and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling +forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes +which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. +He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands +of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the +failing limbs. +There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless +in his own delicately scented chamber, or in the sordid +room of the little illfamed tavern near the docks which, +under an assumed name and in disguise, it was his habit +to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon +his soul with a pity that was all the more poignant because it +was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare. +That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred +in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, +seemed to increase with gratification. The more he knew, +the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more +ravenous as he fed them. +Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society. +Once or twice every month during the winter, and on each Wednesday +evening while the season lasted, he would throw open to the world +his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day +to charm his guests with the wonders of their art. His little dinners, +in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him, were noted +as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited, +as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, +with its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, +and embroidered cloths, and antique plate of gold and silver. +Indeed, there were many, especially among the very young men, who saw, +or fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray the true realization +of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford days, +a type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar +with all the grace and distinction and perfect manner of a citizen +of the world. To them he seemed to be of the company of those whom +Dante describes as having sought to "make themselves perfect +by the worship of beauty." Like Gautier, he was one for whom "the +visible world existed." +And, certainly, to him life itself was the first, the greatest, +of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but +a preparation. Fashion, by which what is really fantastic +becomes for a moment universal, and dandyism, which, in its +own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity +of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for him. +His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time +to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young +exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, +who copied him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce +the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only +halfserious, fopperies. +For, while he was but too ready to accept the position that +was almost immediately offered to him on his coming of age, +and found, indeed, a subtle pleasure in the thought that he might +really become to the London of his own day what to imperial +Neronian Rome the author of the Satyricon once had been, +yet in his inmost heart he desired to be something more than a mere +arbiter elegantiarum, to be consulted on the wearing of a jewel, +or the knotting of a necktie, or the conduct of a cane. +He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have +its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find +in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization. +The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, +been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about +passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, +and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly +organized forms of existence. But it appeared to Dorian Gray +that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, +and that they had remained savage and animal merely because +the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill +them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements +of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was +to be the dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man +moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. +So much had been surrendered and to such little purpose +There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms +of selftorture and selfdenial, whose origin was fear +and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible +than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, +they had sought to escape Nature, in her wonderful irony, +driving out the anchorite to feed with the wild animals of +the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as +his companions. +Yes there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism +that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely +puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. +It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was +never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice +of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be +experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter +as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, +as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. +But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life +that is itself but a moment. +There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, +either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost +enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, +when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible +than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks +in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, +this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose +minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white +fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. +In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners +of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring +of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth +to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from +the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared +to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from +her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, +and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, +and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. +The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers +stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the halfcut book +that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at +the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we +had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal +shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. +We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us +a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy +in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, +it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world +that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, +a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, +and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past +would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, +in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance +even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure +their pain. +It was the creation of such worlds as these that seemed to Dorian +Gray to be the true object, or amongst the true objects, of life +and in his search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful, +and possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, +he would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really +alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, +and then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his +intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference +that is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that, +indeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition +of it. +It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman +Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always +a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful +really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him +as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses +as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal +pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved +to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, +in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving +aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled, +lanternshaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, +one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread +of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, +breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins. +The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, +tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle +fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder +at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of one +of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn +grating the true story of their lives. +But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development +by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house +in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night, +or for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is +in travail. Mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things +strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, +moved him for a season and for a season he inclined to the materialistic +doctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure +in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, +or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute +dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy, +normal or diseased. Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life +seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt +keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated +from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, +have their spiritual mysteries to reveal. +And so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their manufacture, +distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums from the East. +He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart +in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, +wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, +and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets that woke +the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, +and in champak that stained the imagination and seeking often to elaborate +a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences +of sweetsmelling roots and scented, pollenladen flowers of aromatic balms +and of dark and fragrant woods of spikenard, that sickens of hovenia, +that makes men mad and of aloes, that are said to be able to expel melancholy +from the soul. +At another time he devoted himself entirely to music, and in a long +latticed room, with a vermilionandgold ceiling and walls of olivegreen +lacquer, he used to give curious concerts in which mad gipsies tore wild +music from little zithers, or grave, yellowshawled Tunisians plucked +at the strained strings of monstrous lutes, while grinning Negroes +beat monotonously upon copper drums and, crouching upon scarlet mats, +slim turbaned Indians blew through long pipes of reed or brass and charmed +or feigned to charmgreat hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. +The harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred +him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's beautiful sorrows, +and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his ear. +He collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments +that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few +savage tribes that have survived contact with Western civilizations, +and loved to touch and try them. He had the mysterious juruparis of the Rio +Negro Indians, that women are not allowed to look at and that even youths +may not see till they have been subjected to fasting and scourging, +and the earthen jars of the Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, +and flutes of human bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chile, +and the sonorous green jaspers that are found near Cuzco and give forth +a note of singular sweetness. He had painted gourds filled with pebbles +that rattled when they were shaken the long clarin of the Mexicans, +into which the performer does not blow, but through which he inhales +the air the harsh ture of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by +the sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, +it is said, at a distance of three leagues the teponaztli, that has +two vibrating tongues of wood and is beaten with sticks that are +smeared with an elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants +the yotlbells of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes +and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, +like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican +temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a description. +The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt +a curious delight in the thought that art, like Nature, has her monsters, +things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. Yet, after some time, +he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the opera, either alone +or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhauser" and seeing +in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of +his own soul. +On one occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared +at a costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, +in a dress covered with five hundred and sixty pearls. +This taste enthralled him for years, and, indeed, may be said +never to have left him. He would often spend a whole day +settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that he +had collected, such as the olivegreen chrysoberyl that turns red +by lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver, +the pistachiocoloured peridot, rosepink and wineyellow topazes, +carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous, fourrayed stars, +flamered cinnamonstones, orange and violet spinels, +and amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. +He loved the red gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone's +pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the milky opal. +He procured from Amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary size and +richness of colour, and had a turquoise de la vieille roche that was +the envy of all the connoisseurs. +He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. +In Alphonso's Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with +eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, +the Conqueror of Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan +snakes "with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs." +There was a gem in the brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, +and "by the exhibition of golden letters and a scarlet robe" +the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep and slain. +According to the great alchemist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond +rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent. +The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, +and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The garnet cast +out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her colour. +The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, +that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids. +Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly +killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The bezoar, +that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm that could +cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the aspilates, +that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any danger +by fire. +The King of Ceilan rode through his city with a large ruby in his hand, +as the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John +the Priest were "made of sardius, with the horn of the horned +snake inwrought, so that no man might bring poison within." +Over the gable were "two golden apples, in which were two carbuncles," +so that the gold might shine by day and the carbuncles by night. +In Lodge's strange romance 'A Margarite of America', it was stated +that in the chamber of the queen one could behold "all the chaste +ladies of the world, inchased out of silver, looking through fair +mirrours of chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults." +Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rosecoloured +pearls in the mouths of the dead. A seamonster had been +enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, +and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. +When the Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it away +Procopius tells the storynor was it ever found again, +though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundredweight of gold +pieces for it. The King of Malabar had shown to a certain Venetian +a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god that +he worshipped. +When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII +of France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome, +and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light. +Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and +twentyone diamonds. Richard II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand marks, +which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII, +on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a +jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other +rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." +The favourites of James I wore earrings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. +Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of redgold armour studded +with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoisestones, and a +skullcap parseme with pearls. Henry II wore jewelled gloves reaching +to the elbow, and had a hawkglove sewn with twelve rubies and fiftytwo +great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke +of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pearshaped pearls and studded +with sapphires. +How exquisite life had once been How gorgeous in its pomp and decoration +Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful. +Then he turned his attention to embroideries and to the tapestries +that performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of +the northern nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject +and he always had an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely +absorbed for the moment in whatever he took uphe was almost +saddened by the reflection of the ruin that time brought on +beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any rate, had escaped that. +Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died +many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of their shame, +but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or stained his +flowerlike bloom. How different it was with material things +Where had they passed to? Where was the great crocuscoloured robe, +on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked +by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena? Where the huge +velarium that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, +that Titan sail of purple on which was represented the starry sky, +and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by white, giltreined steeds? +He longed to see the curious tablenapkins wrought for the Priest +of the Sun, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands that +could be wanted for a feast the mortuary cloth of King Chilperic, +with its three hundred golden bees the fantastic robes that excited +the indignation of the Bishop of Pontus and were figured with +"lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, huntersall, in fact, +that a painter can copy from nature" and the coat that Charles +of Orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were embroidered +the verses of a song beginning "Madame, je suis tout joyeux," +the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold thread, +and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four pearls. +He read of the room that was prepared at the palace at Rheims for +the use of Queen Joan of Burgundy and was decorated with "thirteen +hundred and twentyone parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned +with the king's arms, and five hundred and sixtyone butterflies, +whose wings were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, +the whole worked in gold." Catherine de Medicis had a mourningbed +made for her of black velvet powdered with crescents and suns. +Its curtains were of damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, +figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the edges +with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room hung with rows +of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver. +Louis XIV had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high +in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, +was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses +from the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, +and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. +It had been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the +standard of Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt of its +canopy. +And so, for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite +specimens that he could find of textile and embroidered work, +getting the dainty Delhi muslins, finely wrought with goldthread palmates +and stitched over with iridescent beetles' wings the Dacca gauzes, +that from their transparency are known in the East as "woven air," +and "running water," and "evening dew" strange figured cloths from Java +elaborate yellow Chinese hangings books bound in tawny satins or fair blue +silks and wrought with fleursdelis, birds and images veils of lacis +worked in Hungary point Sicilian brocades and stiff Spanish velvets +Georgian work, with its gilt coins, and Japanese Foukousas, with their +greentoned golds and their marvellously plumaged birds. +He had a special passion, also, for ecclesiastical vestments, +as indeed he had for everything connected with the service +of the Church. In the long cedar chests that lined the west +gallery of his house, he had stored away many rare and beautiful +specimens of what is really the raiment of the Bride of Christ, +who must wear purple and jewels and fine linen that she may +hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering +that she seeks for and wounded by selfinflicted pain. +He possessed a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and goldthread damask, +figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set +in sixpetalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side +was the pineapple device wrought in seedpearls. The orphreys +were divided into panels representing scenes from the life +of the Virgin, and the coronation of the Virgin was figured +in coloured silks upon the hood. This was Italian work +of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, +embroidered with heartshaped groups of acanthusleaves, from +which spread longstemmed white blossoms, the details of which +were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. +The morse bore a seraph's head in goldthread raised work. +The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, +and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, +among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, +of ambercoloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, +and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with +representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, +and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems +dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with +tulips and dolphins and fleursdelis altar frontals +of crimson velvet and blue linen and many corporals, +chaliceveils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which +such things were put, there was something that quickened +his imagination. +For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, +were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, +for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too +great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked room where he had +spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his own hands the terrible +portrait whose changing features showed him the real degradation of his life, +and in front of it had draped the purpleandgold pall as a curtain. +For weeks he would not go there, would forget the hideous painted thing, +and get back his light heart, his wonderful joyousness, his passionate +absorption in mere existence. Then, suddenly, some night he would creep +out of the house, go down to dreadful places near Blue Gate Fields, +and stay there, day after day, until he was driven away. On his return +he would sit in front of the her times, with that pride of individualism +that is half the fascination of sin, and smiling with secret pleasure +at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been +his own. +After a few years he could not endure to be long out of England, +and gave up the villa that he had shared at Trouville with Lord Henry, +as well as the little white walledin house at Algiers where they +had more than once spent the winter. He hated to be separated from +the picture that was such a part of his life, and was also afraid +that during his absence some one might gain access to the room, +in spite of the elaborate bars that he had caused to be placed upon +the door. +He was quite conscious that this would tell them nothing. +It was true that the portrait still preserved, under all +the foulness and ugliness of the face, its marked likeness +to himself but what could they learn from that? He would laugh +at any one who tried to taunt him. He had not painted it. +What was it to him how vile and full of shame it looked? +Even if he told them, would they believe it? +Yet he was afraid. Sometimes when he was down at his great house +in Nottinghamshire, entertaining the fashionable young men of his +own rank who were his chief companions, and astounding the county +by the wanton luxury and gorgeous splendour of his mode of life, +he would suddenly leave his guests and rush back to town to see +that the door had not been tampered with and that the picture was +still there. What if it should be stolen? The mere thought made +him cold with horror. Surely the world would know his secret then. +Perhaps the world already suspected it. +For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him. +He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth +and social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it +was said that on one occasion, when he was brought by a friend into +the smokingroom of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another +gentleman got up in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories +became current about him after he had passed his twentyfifth year. +It was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors +in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted +with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. +His extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear +again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him +with a sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they +were determined to discover his secret. +Of such insolences and attempted slights he, of course, +took no notice, and in the opinion of most people his frank +debonair manner, his charming boyish smile, and the infinite +grace of that wonderful youth that seemed never to leave him, +were in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies, +for so they termed them, that were circulated about him. +It was remarked, however, that some of those who had been +most intimate with him appeared, after a time, to shun him. +Women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved +all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen +to grow pallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray entered +the room. +Yet these whispered scandals only increased in the eyes of many +his strange and dangerous charm. His great wealth was a certain +element of security. Societycivilized society, at least +is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those +who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that +manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, +the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession +of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation +to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, +or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life. +Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for halfcold entrees, +as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject, +and there is possibly a good deal to be said for his view. +For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same +as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. +It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as +its unreality, and should combine the insincere character +of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays +delightful to us. Is insincerity such a terrible thing? +I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply +our personalities. +Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder +at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man +as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. +To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, +a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange +legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted +with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll +through the gaunt cold picturegallery of his country house and look +at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his veins. +Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne, +in his Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, +as one who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face, +which kept him not long company." Was it young Herbert's +life that he sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous +germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own? +Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made +him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, +in Basil Hallward's studio, to the mad prayer that had so changed +his life? Here, in goldembroidered red doublet, jewelled surcoat, +and giltedged ruff and wristbands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, +with his silverandblack armour piled at his feet. +What had this man's legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanna +of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sin and shame? +Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man +had not dared to realize? Here, from the fading canvas, +smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearl stomacher, +and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand, +and her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. +On a table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. +There were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. +He knew her life, and the strange stories that were told about +her lovers. Had he something of her temperament in him? These oval, +heavylidded eyes seemed to look curiously at him. What of +George Willoughby, with his powdered hair and fantastic patches? +How evil he looked The face was saturnine and swarthy, +and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain. +Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that +were so overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the +eighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. +What of the second Lord Beckenham, the companion of the Prince +Regent in his wildest days, and one of the witnesses at +the secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert? How proud and +handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and insolent pose +What passions had he bequeathed? The world had looked upon +him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House. +The star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung +the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thinlipped woman in black. +Her blood, also, stirred within him. How curious it all seemed +And his mother with her Lady Hamilton face and her moist, +winedashed lipshe knew what he had got from her. +He had got from her his beauty, and his passion for the beauty +of others. She laughed at him in her loose Bacchante dress. +There were vine leaves in her hair. The purple spilled +from the cup she was holding. The carnations of the painting +had withered, but the eyes were still wonderful in their depth +and brilliancy of colour. They seemed to follow him wherever he +went. +Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race, +nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly +with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. +There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole +of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived +it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created +it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. +He felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures +that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous +and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious +way their lives had been his own. +The hero of the wonderful novel that had so influenced his life had +himself known this curious fancy. In the seventh chapter he tells how, +crowned with laurel, lest lightning might strike him, he had sat, +as Tiberius, in a garden at Capri, reading the shameful books +of Elephantis, while dwarfs and peacocks strutted round him and +the fluteplayer mocked the swinger of the censer and, as Caligula, +had caroused with the greenshirted jockeys in their stables and supped +in an ivory manger with a jewelfrontleted horse and, as Domitian, +had wandered through a corridor lined with marble mirrors, +looking round with haggard eyes for the reflection of the dagger +that was to end his days, and sick with that ennui, that terrible +taedium vitae, that comes on those to whom life denies nothing +and had peered through a clear emerald at the red shambles of the circus +and then, in a litter of pearl and purple drawn by silvershod mules, +been carried through the Street of Pomegranates to a House of Gold +and heard men cry on Nero Caesar as he passed by and, as Elagabalus, +had painted his face with colours, and plied the distaff among the women, +and brought the Moon from Carthage and given her in mystic marriage +to the Sun. +Over and over again Dorian used to read this fantastic chapter, +and the two chapters immediately following, in which, as in some +curious tapestries or cunningly wrought enamels, were pictured +the awful and beautiful forms of those whom vice and blood +and weariness had made monstrous or mad Filippo, Duke of Milan, +who slew his wife and painted her lips with a scarlet poison +that her lover might suck death from the dead thing he fondled +Pietro Barbi, the Venetian, known as Paul the Second, +who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, +and whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, +was bought at the price of a terrible sin Gian Maria Visconti, +who used hounds to chase living men and whose murdered +body was covered with roses by a harlot who had loved him +the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding beside +him and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto +Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, +child and minion of Sixtus IV, whose beauty was equalled only by +his debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion +of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, +and gilded a boy that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede +or Hylas Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured only by +the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, +as other men have for red winethe son of the Fiend, +as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice +when gambling with him for his own soul Giambattista Cibo, +who in mockery took the name of Innocent and into whose torpid +veins the blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor +Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta and the lord of Rimini, +whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man, +who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison +to Ginevra d'Este in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a +shameful passion built a pagan church for Christian worship +Charles VI, who had so wildly adored his brother's wife that a +leper had warned him of the insanity that was coming on him, +and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange, +could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images +of love and death and madness and, in his trimmed jerkin +and jewelled cap and acanthuslike curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, +who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his page, +and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying +in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him +could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, +blessed him. +There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them +at night, and they troubled his imagination in the day. +The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning +poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove +and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. +Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when +he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize +his conception of the beautiful. +CHAPTER +It was on the ninth of November, the eve of his own thirtyeighth birthday, +as he often remembered afterwards. +He was walking home about eleven o'clock from Lord Henry's, where he had +been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy. +At the corner of Grosvenor Square and South Audley Street, a man passed him in +the mist, walking very fast and with the collar of his grey ulster turned up. +He had a bag in his hand. Dorian recognized him. It was Basil Hallward. +A strange sense of fear, for which he could not account, came over him. +He made no sign of recognition and went on quickly in the direction of his +own house. +But Hallward had seen him. Dorian heard him first stopping +on the pavement and then hurrying after him. In a few moments, +his hand was on his arm. +"Dorian What an extraordinary piece of luck I have been +waiting for you in your library ever since nine o'clock. Finally +I took pity on your tired servant and told him to go to bed, +as he let me out. I am off to Paris by the midnight train, +and I particularly wanted to see you before I left. +I thought it was you, or rather your fur coat, as you passed me. +But I wasn't quite sure. Didn't you recognize me?" +"In this fog, my dear Basil? Why, I can't even recognize Grosvenor Square. +I believe my house is somewhere about here, but I don't feel at all certain +about it. I am sorry you are going away, as I have not seen you for ages. +But I suppose you will be back soon?" +"No I am going to be out of England for six months. +I intend to take a studio in Paris and shut myself up till I have +finished a great picture I have in my head. However, it wasn't +about myself I wanted to talk. Here we are at your door. +Let me come in for a moment. I have something to say +to you." +"I shall be charmed. But won't you miss your train?" said Dorian Gray +languidly as he passed up the steps and opened the door with his latchkey. +The lamplight struggled out through the fog, and Hallward looked +at his watch. "I have heaps of time," he answered. "The train +doesn't go till twelvefifteen, and it is only just eleven. +In fact, I was on my way to the club to look for you, when I met you. +You see, I shan't have any delay about luggage, as I have sent on my +heavy things. All I have with me is in this bag, and I can easily +get to Victoria in twenty minutes." +Dorian looked at him and smiled. "What a way for a fashionable +painter to travel A Gladstone bag and an ulster Come in, +or the fog will get into the house. And mind you don't +talk about anything serious. Nothing is serious nowadays. +At least nothing should be." +Hallward shook his head, as he entered, and followed Dorian into the library. +There was a bright wood fire blazing in the large open hearth. The lamps +were lit, and an open Dutch silver spiritcase stood, with some siphons of +sodawater and large cutglass tumblers, on a little marqueterie table. +"You see your servant made me quite at home, Dorian. He gave me +everything I wanted, including your best goldtipped cigarettes. +He is a most hospitable creature. I like him much better than +the Frenchman you used to have. What has become of the Frenchman, +by the bye?" +Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I believe he married Lady Radley's maid, +and has established her in Paris as an English dressmaker. Anglomania is +very fashionable over there now, I hear. It seems silly of the French, +doesn't it? Butdo you know?he was not at all a bad servant. +I never liked him, but I had nothing to complain about. One often +imagines things that are quite absurd. He was really very devoted to me +and seemed quite sorry when he went away. Have another brandyandsoda? Or +would you like hockandseltzer? I always take hockandseltzer myself. +There is sure to be some in the next room." +"Thanks, I won't have anything more," said the painter, +taking his cap and coat off and throwing them on the bag +that he had placed in the corner. "And now, my dear fellow, +I want to speak to you seriously. Don't frown like that. +You make it so much more difficult for me." +"What is it all about?" cried Dorian in his petulant way, +flinging himself down on the sofa. "I hope it is not about myself. +I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else." +"It is about yourself," answered Hallward in his grave deep voice, +"and I must say it to you. I shall only keep you half an hour." +Dorian sighed and lit a cigarette. "Half an hour" he murmured. +"It is not much to ask of you, Dorian, and it is entirely for your own sake +that I am speaking. I think it right that you should know that the most +dreadful things are being said against you in London." +"I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals +about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. +They have not got the charm of novelty." +"They must interest you, Dorian. Every gentleman is interested +in his good name. You don't want people to talk of you as +something vile and degraded. Of course, you have your position, +and your wealth, and all that kind of thing. But position +and wealth are not everything. Mind you, I don't believe these +rumours at all. At least, I can't believe them when I see you. +Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. +It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. +There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows +itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, +the moulding of his hands even. SomebodyI won't mention his name, +but you know himcame to me last year to have his portrait done. +I had never seen him before, and had never heard anything +about him at the time, though I have heard a good deal since. +He offered an extravagant price. I refused him. +There was something in the shape of his fingers that I hated. +I know now that I was quite right in what I fancied about him. +His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure, +bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth +I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see you +very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, +and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things +that people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say. +Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves +the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many +gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite +you to theirs? You used to be a friend of Lord Staveley. +I met him at dinner last week. Your name happened to come up +in conversation, in connection with the miniatures you have lent +to the exhibition at the Dudley. Staveley curled his lip and said +that you might have the most artistic tastes, but that you +were a man whom no pureminded girl should be allowed to know, +and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with. +I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked him what +he meant. He told me. He told me right out before everybody. +It was horrible Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? +There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. +You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, +who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You and +he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his +dreadful end? What about Lord Kent's only son and his career? +I met his father yesterday in St. James's Street. He seemed broken +with shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? +What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate with +him?" +"Stop, Basil. You are talking about things of which you know nothing," +said Dorian Gray, biting his lip, and with a note of infinite contempt +in his voice. "You ask me why Berwick leaves a room when I enter it. +It is because I know everything about his life, not because he knows +anything about mine. With such blood as he has in his veins, how could +his record be clean? You ask me about Henry Ashton and young Perth. +Did I teach the one his vices, and the other his debauchery? +If Kent's silly son takes his wife from the streets, what is that to me? +If Adrian Singleton writes his friend's name across a bill, am I his keeper? +I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral +prejudices over their gross dinnertables, and whisper about what they +call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend +that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people +they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have +distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. +And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, +lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land +of the hypocrite." +"Dorian," cried Hallward, "that is not the question. +England is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong. +That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not +been fine. One has a right to judge of a man by the effect +he has over his friends. Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, +of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness +for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. +You led them there. Yes you led them there, and yet you +can smile, as you are smiling now. And there is worse behind. +I know you and Harry are inseparable. Surely for that reason, +if for none other, you should not have made his sister's name +a byword." +"Take care, Basil. You go too far." +"I must speak, and you must listen. You shall listen. +When you met Lady Gwendolen, not a breath of scandal had ever +touched her. Is there a single decent woman in London now +who would drive with her in the park? Why, even her children +are not allowed to live with her. Then there are other stories +stories that you have been seen creeping at dawn out of dreadful +houses and slinking in disguise into the foulest dens in London. +Are they true? Can they be true? When I first heard them, +I laughed. I hear them now, and they make me shudder. +What about your countryhouse and the life that is +led there? Dorian, you don't know what is said about you. +I won't tell you that I don't want to preach to you. +I remember Harry saying once that every man who turned himself +into an amateur curate for the moment always began by saying that, +and then proceeded to break his word. I do want to preach to you. +I want you to lead such a life as will make the world respect you. +I want you to have a clean name and a fair record. +I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with. +Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent. +You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil. +They say that you corrupt every one with whom you become intimate, +and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house +for shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether +it is so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you. +I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt. +Lord Gloucester was one of my greatest friends at Oxford. +He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when she +was dying alone in her villa at Mentone. Your name was implicated +in the most terrible confession I ever read. I told him that it +was absurdthat I knew you thoroughly and that you were incapable +of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? +Before I could answer that, I should have to see your +soul." +"To see my soul" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa +and turning almost white from fear. +"Yes," answered Hallward gravely, and with deeptoned sorrow in his voice, +"to see your soul. But only God can do that." +A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man. +"You shall see it yourself, tonight" he cried, seizing a +lamp from the table. "Come it is your own handiwork. +Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the world all about +it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you. +If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it. +I know the age better than you do, though you will prate +about it so tediously. Come, I tell you. You have chattered +enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face +to face." +There was the madness of pride in every word he uttered. +He stamped his foot upon the ground in his boyish insolent manner. +He felt a terrible joy at the thought that some one else +was to share his secret, and that the man who had painted +the portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to be +burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what +he had done. +"Yes," he continued, coming closer to him and looking steadfastly +into his stern eyes, "I shall show you my soul. You shall see +the thing that you fancy only God can see." +Hallward started back. "This is blasphemy, Dorian" he cried. +"You must not say things like that. They are horrible, and they +don't mean anything." +"You think so?" He laughed again. +"I know so. As for what I said to you tonight, I said it for your good. +You know I have been always a stanch friend to you." +"Don't touch me. Finish what you have to say." +A twisted flash of pain shot across the painter's face. +He paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. +After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? +If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, +how much he must have suffered Then he straightened himself up, +and walked over to the fireplace, and stood there, looking at +the burning logs with their frostlike ashes and their throbbing cores +of flame. +"I am waiting, Basil," said the young man in a hard clear voice. +He turned round. "What I have to say is this," he cried. "You must give +me some answer to these horrible charges that are made against you. +If you tell me that they are absolutely untrue from beginning to end, +I shall believe you. Deny them, Dorian, deny them Can't you see what I +am going through? My God don't tell me that you are bad, and corrupt, +and shameful." +Dorian Gray smiled. There was a curl of contempt in his lips. +"Come upstairs, Basil," he said quietly. "I keep a diary of my life +from day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. +I shall show it to you if you come with me." +"I shall come with you, Dorian, if you wish it. I see I have missed +my train. That makes no matter. I can go tomorrow. But don't ask me +to read anything tonight. All I want is a plain answer to my question." +"That shall be given to you upstairs. I could not give it here. +You will not have to read long." +CHAPTER +He passed out of the room and began the ascent, Basil Hallward following +close behind. They walked softly, as men do instinctively at night. +The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A rising wind +made some of the windows rattle. +When they reached the top landing, Dorian set the lamp down +on the floor, and taking out the key, turned it in the lock. +"You insist on knowing, Basil?" he asked in a low voice. +"Yes." +"I am delighted," he answered, smiling. Then he added, +somewhat harshly, "You are the one man in the world who is +entitled to know everything about me. You have had more +to do with my life than you think" and, taking up the lamp, +he opened the door and went in. A cold current of air passed them, +and the light shot up for a moment in a flame of murky orange. +He shuddered. "Shut the door behind you," he whispered, +as he placed the lamp on the table. +Hallward glanced round him with a puzzled expression. +The room looked as if it had not been lived in for years. +A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old +Italian cassone, and an almost empty bookcasethat was all +that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table. +As Dorian Gray was lighting a halfburned candle that was +standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place +was covered with dust and that the carpet was in holes. +A mouse ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour +of mildew. +"So you think that it is only God who sees the soul, Basil? +Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine." +The voice that spoke was cold and cruel. "You are mad, Dorian, or playing +a part," muttered Hallward, frowning. +"You won't? Then I must do it myself," said the young man, +and he tore the curtain from its rod and flung it on the ground. +An exclamation of horror broke from the painter's lips as he saw +in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. +There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust +and loathing. Good heavens it was Dorian Gray's own face +that he was looking at The horror, whatever it was, had not yet +entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty. There was still some +gold in the thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual mouth. +The sodden eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, +the noble curves had not yet completely passed away from chiselled +nostrils and from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. +But who had done it? He seemed to recognize his own brushwork, +and the frame was his own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he +felt afraid. He seized the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. +In the lefthand corner was his own name, traced in long letters of +bright vermilion. +It was some foul parody, some infamous ignoble satire. +He had never done that. Still, it was his own picture. +He knew it, and he felt as if his blood had changed +in a moment from fire to sluggish ice. His own picture +What did it mean? Why had it altered? He turned and looked +at Dorian Gray with the eyes of a sick man. His mouth twitched, +and his parched tongue seemed unable to articulate. +He passed his hand across his forehead. It was dank with +clammy sweat. +The young man was leaning against the mantelshelf, watching him +with that strange expression that one sees on the faces of those +who are absorbed in a play when some great artist is acting. +There was neither real sorrow in it nor real joy. There was +simply the passion of the spectator, with perhaps a flicker +of triumph in his eyes. He had taken the flower out of his coat, +and was smelling it, or pretending to do so. +"What does this mean?" cried Hallward, at last. His own voice sounded +shrill and curious in his ears. +"Years ago, when I was a boy," said Dorian Gray, crushing the flower +in his hand, "you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain +of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, +who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished +a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. +In a mad moment that, even now, I don't know whether I regret +or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer. +"I remember it Oh, how well I remember it No the thing is impossible. +The room is damp. Mildew has got into the canvas. The paints I used had some +wretched mineral poison in them. I tell you the thing is impossible." +"Ah, what is impossible?" murmured the young man, going over to the window +and leaning his forehead against the cold, miststained glass. +"You told me you had destroyed it." +"I was wrong. It has destroyed me." +"I don't believe it is my picture." +"Can't you see your ideal in it?" said Dorian bitterly. +"My ideal, as you call it. . ." +"As you called it." +"There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. You were to me such +an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr." +"It is the face of my soul." +"Christ what a thing I must have worshipped It has the eyes of a devil." +"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil," cried Dorian +with a wild gesture of despair. +Hallward turned again to the portrait and gazed at it. +"My God If it is true," he exclaimed, "and this is +what you have done with your life, why, you must be worse +even than those who talk against you fancy you to be" +He held the light up again to the canvas and examined it. +The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed and as he had left it. +It was from within, apparently, that the foulness and horror +had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life +the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. +The rotting of a corpse in a watery grave was not +so fearful. +His hand shook, and the candle fell from its socket on the floor +and lay there sputtering. He placed his foot on it and put it out. +Then he flung himself into the rickety chair that was standing by +the table and buried his face in his hands. +"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson What an awful lesson" +There was no answer, but he could hear the young man +sobbing at the window. "Pray, Dorian, pray," he murmured. +"What is it that one was taught to say in one's boyhood? +'Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. +Wash away our iniquities.' Let us say that together. +The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your +repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. +I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are +both punished." +Dorian Gray turned slowly around and looked at him with teardimmed eyes. +"It is too late, Basil," he faltered. +"It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we +cannot remember a prayer. Isn't there a verse somewhere, +'Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white +as snow'?" +"Those words mean nothing to me now." +"Hush Don't say that. You have done enough evil in your life. +My God Don't you see that accursed thing leering at us?" +Dorian Gray glanced at the picture, and suddenly an uncontrollable +feeling of hatred for Basil Hallward came over him, as though +it had been suggested to him by the image on the canvas, +whispered into his ear by those grinning lips. The mad +passions of a hunted animal stirred within him, and he loathed +the man who was seated at the table, more than in his whole +life he had ever loathed anything. He glanced wildly around. +Something glimmered on the top of the painted chest that +faced him. His eye fell on it. He knew what it was. +It was a knife that he had brought up, some days before, +to cut a piece of cord, and had forgotten to take away with him. +He moved slowly towards it, passing Hallward as he did so. +As soon as he got behind him, he seized it and turned round. +Hallward stirred in his chair as if he was going to rise. +He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind +the ear, crushing the man's head down on the table and stabbing again +and again. +There was a stifled groan and the horrible sound of some one choking +with blood. Three times the outstretched arms shot up convulsively, +waving grotesque, stifffingered hands in the air. He stabbed him twice more, +but the man did not move. Something began to trickle on the floor. +He waited for a moment, still pressing the head down. Then he threw +the knife on the table, and listened. +He could hear nothing, but the drip, drip on the threadbare carpet. +He opened the door and went out on the landing. The house was +absolutely quiet. No one was about. For a few seconds he stood +bending over the balustrade and peering down into the black seething +well of darkness. Then he took out the key and returned to the room, +locking himself in as he did so. +The thing was still seated in the chair, straining over the table +with bowed head, and humped back, and long fantastic arms. +Had it not been for the red jagged tear in the neck and the clotted +black pool that was slowly widening on the table, one would have said +that the man was simply asleep. +How quickly it had all been done He felt strangely calm, and walking +over to the window, opened it and stepped out on the balcony. +The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous +peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes. He looked +down and saw the policeman going his rounds and flashing the long +beam of his lantern on the doors of the silent houses. The crimson +spot of a prowling hansom gleamed at the corner and then vanished. +A woman in a fluttering shawl was creeping slowly by the railings, +staggering as she went. Now and then she stopped and peered back. +Once, she began to sing in a hoarse voice. The policeman strolled +over and said something to her. She stumbled away, laughing. +A bitter blast swept across the square. The gaslamps flickered +and became blue, and the leafless trees shook their black iron +branches to and fro. He shivered and went back, closing the window +behind him. +Having reached the door, he turned the key and opened it. +He did not even glance at the murdered man. He felt that +the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation. +The friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which +all his misery had been due had gone out of his life. +That was enough. +Then he remembered the lamp. It was a rather curious one of +Moorish workmanship, made of dull silver inlaid with arabesques +of burnished steel, and studded with coarse turquoises. +Perhaps it might be missed by his servant, and questions would +be asked. He hesitated for a moment, then he turned back and took +it from the table. He could not help seeing the dead thing. +How still it was How horribly white the long hands looked +It was like a dreadful wax image. +Having locked the door behind him, he crept quietly downstairs. +The woodwork creaked and seemed to cry out as if in pain. +He stopped several times and waited. No everything was still. +It was merely the sound of his own footsteps. +When he reached the library, he saw the bag and coat in the corner. +They must be hidden away somewhere. He unlocked a secret press that was +in the wainscoting, a press in which he kept his own curious disguises, +and put them into it. He could easily burn them afterwards. Then he pulled +out his watch. It was twenty minutes to two. +He sat down and began to think. Every yearevery month, almost +men were strangled in England for what he had done. There had been +a madness of murder in the air. Some red star had come too close +to the earth. . . . And yet, what evidence was there against him? +Basil Hallward had left the house at eleven. No one had seen +him come in again. Most of the servants were at Selby Royal. +His valet had gone to bed.... Paris Yes. It was to Paris that +Basil had gone, and by the midnight train, as he had intended. +With his curious reserved habits, it would be months before any +suspicions would be roused. Months Everything could be destroyed long +before then. +A sudden thought struck him. He put on his fur coat and hat +and went out into the hall. There he paused, hearing the slow +heavy tread of the policeman on the pavement outside and +seeing the flash of the bull'seye reflected in the window. +He waited and held his breath. +After a few moments he drew back the latch and slipped out, +shutting the door very gently behind him. Then he began +ringing the bell. In about five minutes his valet appeared, +halfdressed and looking very drowsy. +"I am sorry to have had to wake you up, Francis," he said, stepping in +"but I had forgotten my latchkey. What time is it?" +"Ten minutes past two, sir," answered the man, looking at the clock +and blinking. +"Ten minutes past two? How horribly late You must wake me +at nine tomorrow. I have some work to do." +"All right, sir." +"Did any one call this evening?" +"Mr. Hallward, sir. He stayed here till eleven, and then he went +away to catch his train." +"Oh I am sorry I didn't see him. Did he leave any message?" +"No, sir, except that he would write to you from Paris, +if he did not find you at the club." +"That will do, Francis. Don't forget to call me at nine tomorrow." +"No, sir." +The man shambled down the passage in his slippers. +Dorian Gray threw his hat and coat upon the table and passed +into the library. For a quarter of an hour he walked up and down +the room, biting his lip and thinking. Then he took down the Blue +Book from one of the shelves and began to turn over the leaves. +"Alan Campbell, , Hertford Street, Mayfair." Yes that was the man +he wanted. +CHAPTER +At nine o'clock the next morning his servant came in with a cup of chocolate +on a tray and opened the shutters. Dorian was sleeping quite peacefully, +lying on his right side, with one hand underneath his cheek. He looked +like a boy who had been tired out with play, or study. +The man had to touch him twice on the shoulder before he woke, +and as he opened his eyes a faint smile passed across his lips, +as though he had been lost in some delightful dream. Yet he had +not dreamed at all. His night had been untroubled by any images +of pleasure or of pain. But youth smiles without any reason. +It is one of its chiefest charms. +He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate. +The mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky was bright, +and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like a morning +in May. +Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, +bloodstained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves +there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all +that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling +of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat +in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. +The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. +How horrible that was Such hideous things were for the darkness, +not for the day. +He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would sicken +or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory +than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more +than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, +greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. +But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out of the mind, +to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might strangle +one itself. +When the halfhour struck, he passed his hand across his forehead, +and then got up hastily and dressed himself with even more than his +usual care, giving a good deal of attention to the choice of his necktie +and scarfpin and changing his rings more than once. He spent a long +time also over breakfast, tasting the various dishes, talking to his +valet about some new liveries that he was thinking of getting made +for the servants at Selby, and going through his correspondence. +At some of the letters, he smiled. Three of them bored him. +One he read several times over and then tore up with a slight look +of annoyance in his face. "That awful thing, a woman's memory" +as Lord Henry had once said. +After he had drunk his cup of black coffee, he wiped his +lips slowly with a napkin, motioned to his servant to wait, +and going over to the table, sat down and wrote two letters. +One he put in his pocket, the other he handed to the valet. +"Take this round to , Hertford Street, Francis, and if Mr. Campbell +is out of town, get his address." +As soon as he was alone, he lit a cigarette and began sketching upon +a piece of paper, drawing first flowers and bits of architecture, +and then human faces. Suddenly he remarked that every face that +he drew seemed to have a fantastic likeness to Basil Hallward. +He frowned, and getting up, went over to the bookcase and took +out a volume at hazard. He was determined that he would not think +about what had happened until it became absolutely necessary that +he should do so. +When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at +the titlepage of the book. It was Gautier's Emaux et Camees, +Charpentier's Japanesepaper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. +The binding was of citrongreen leather, with a design of gilt +trelliswork and dotted pomegranates. It had been given +to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the pages, +his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, +the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavee," +with its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune." He glanced +at his own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite +of himself, and passed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas +upon Venice +Sur une gamme chromatique, +Le sein de peries ruisselant, +La Venus de l'Adriatique +Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc. +Les domes, sur l'azur des ondes +Suivant la phrase au pur contour, +S'enflent comme des gorges rondes +Que souleve un soupir d'amour. +L'esquif aborde et me depose, +Jetant son amarre au pilier, +Devant une facade rose, +Sur le marbre d'un escalier. +How exquisite they were As one read them, one seemed to be +floating down the green waterways of the pink and pearl city, +seated in a black gondola with silver prow and trailing curtains. +The mere lines looked to him like those straight lines of +turquoiseblue that follow one as one pushes out to the Lido. +The sudden flashes of colour reminded him of the gleam of +the opalandiristhroated birds that flutter round the tall +honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such stately grace, +through the dim, duststained arcades. Leaning back with +halfclosed eyes, he kept saying over and over to himself +"Devant une facade rose, +Sur le marbre d'un escalier." +The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remembered the autumn +that he had passed there, and a wonderful love that had stirred +him to mad delightful follies. There was romance in every place. +But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, +to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. +Basil had been with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret. +Poor Basil What a horrible way for a man to die +He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to forget. +He read of the swallows that fly in and out of the little +cafe at Smyrna where the Hadjis sit counting their amber +beads and the turbaned merchants smoke their long tasselled +pipes and talk gravely to each other he read of the Obelisk +in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite +in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, +lotuscovered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rosered ibises, +and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles with +small beryl eyes that crawl over the green steaming mud +he began to brood over those verses which, drawing music +from kissstained marble, tell of that curious statue that +Gautier compares to a contralto voice, the "monstre charmant" +that couches in the porphyryroom of the Louvre. But after a time +the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a horrible +fit of terror came over him. What if Alan Campbell should be +out of England? Days would elapse before he could come back. +Perhaps he might refuse to come. What could he do then? +Every moment was of vital importance. +They had been great friends once, five years before +almost inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had come suddenly +to an end. When they met in society now, it was only Dorian +Gray who smiled Alan Campbell never did. +He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no real +appreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense +of the beauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely +from Dorian. His dominant intellectual passion was for science. +At Cambridge he had spent a great deal of his time working +in the laboratory, and had taken a good class in the Natural +Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still devoted +to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his +own in which he used to shut himself up all day long, +greatly to the annoyance of his mother, who had set her +heart on his standing for Parliament and had a vague idea +that a chemist was a person who made up prescriptions. +He was an excellent musician, however, as well, and played +both the violin and the piano better than most amateurs. +In fact, it was music that had first brought him and Dorian +Gray togethermusic and that indefinable attraction that +Dorian seemed to be able to exercise whenever he wished +and, indeed, exercised often without being conscious of it. +They had met at Lady Berkshire's the night that Rubinstein +played there, and after that used to be always seen together +at the opera and wherever good music was going on. +For eighteen months their intimacy lasted. Campbell was +always either at Selby Royal or in Grosvenor Square. +To him, as to many others, Dorian Gray was the type +of everything that is wonderful and fascinating in life. +Whether or not a quarrel had taken place between them no one +ever knew. But suddenly people remarked that they scarcely +spoke when they met and that Campbell seemed always to go +away early from any party at which Dorian Gray was present. +He had changed, toowas strangely melancholy at times, appeared +almost to dislike hearing music, and would never himself play, +giving as his excuse, when he was called upon, that he was so +absorbed in science that he had no time left in which to practise. +And this was certainly true. Every day he seemed to become +more interested in biology, and his name appeared once or twice +in some of the scientific reviews in connection with certain +curious experiments. +This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every second +he kept glancing at the clock. As the minutes went by he became +horribly agitated. At last he got up and began to pace up +and down the room, looking like a beautiful caged thing. +He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curiously cold. +The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling +with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards +the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was +waiting for him there saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank +hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain +of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. +The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, +made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, +danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. +Then, suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes that blind, slowbreathing thing +crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on +in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. +He stared at it. Its very horror made him stone. +At last the door opened and his servant entered. He turned +glazed eyes upon him. +"Mr. Campbell, sir," said the man. +A sigh of relief broke from his parched lips, and the colour came +back to his cheeks. +"Ask him to come in at once, Francis." He felt that he was himself again. +His mood of cowardice had passed away. +The man bowed and retired. In a few moments, Alan Campbell walked in, +looking very stern and rather pale, his pallor being intensified by his +coalblack hair and dark eyebrows. +"Alan This is kind of you. I thank you for coming." +"I had intended never to enter your house again, Gray. But you said +it was a matter of life and death." His voice was hard and cold. +He spoke with slow deliberation. There was a look of contempt +in the steady searching gaze that he turned on Dorian. +He kept his hands in the pockets of his Astrakhan coat, and seemed +not to have noticed the gesture with which he had been greeted. +"Yes it is a matter of life and death, Alan, and to more than one person. +Sit down." +Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. +The two men's eyes met. In Dorian's there was infinite pity. +He knew that what he was going to do was dreadful. +After a strained moment of silence, he leaned across and said, +very quietly, but watching the effect of each word upon the face +of him he had sent for, "Alan, in a locked room at the top +of this house, a room to which nobody but myself has access, +a dead man is seated at a table. He has been dead ten hours now. +Don't stir, and don't look at me like that. Who the man is, +why he died, how he died, are matters that do not concern you. +What you have to do is this" +"Stop, Gray. I don't want to know anything further. +Whether what you have told me is true or not true doesn't +concern me. I entirely decline to be mixed up in your life. +Keep your horrible secrets to yourself. They don't interest me +any more." +"Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest you. +I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can't help myself. +You are the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring +you into the matter. I have no option. Alan, you are scientific. +You know about chemistry and things of that kind. You have made experiments. +What you have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs +to destroy it so that not a vestige of it will be left. Nobody saw this +person come into the house. Indeed, at the present moment he is supposed +to be in Paris. He will not be missed for months. When he is missed, +there must be no trace of him found here. You, Alan, you must change him, +and everything that belongs to him, into a handful of ashes that I may +scatter in the air." +"You are mad, Dorian." +"Ah I was waiting for you to call me Dorian." +"You are mad, I tell youmad to imagine that I would raise +a finger to help you, mad to make this monstrous confession. +I will have nothing to do with this matter, whatever it is. +Do you think I am going to peril my reputation for you? What is it +to me what devil's work you are up to?" +"It was suicide, Alan." +"I am glad of that. But who drove him to it? You, I should fancy." +"Do you still refuse to do this for me?" +"Of course I refuse. I will have absolutely nothing to do with it. +I don't care what shame comes on you. You deserve it all. +I should not be sorry to see you disgraced, publicly disgraced. +How dare you ask me, of all men in the world, to mix myself +up in this horror? I should have thought you knew more about +people's characters. Your friend Lord Henry Wotton can't have +taught you much about psychology, whatever else he has taught you. +Nothing will induce me to stir a step to help you. You have +come to the wrong man. Go to some of your friends. Don't come +to me." +"Alan, it was murder. I killed him. You don't know what he had made +me suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or +the marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended it, +the result was the same." +"Murder Good God, Dorian, is that what you have come to? +I shall not inform upon you. It is not my business. Besides, without +my stirring in the matter, you are certain to be arrested. +Nobody ever commits a crime without doing something stupid. +But I will have nothing to do with it." +"You must have something to do with it. Wait, wait a moment +listen to me. Only listen, Alan. All I ask of you is to perform +a certain scientific experiment. You go to hospitals and +deadhouses, and the horrors that you do there don't affect you. +If in some hideous dissectingroom or fetid laboratory you +found this man lying on a leaden table with red gutters scooped +out in it for the blood to flow through, you would simply look +upon him as an admirable subject. You would not turn a hair. +You would not believe that you were doing anything wrong. +On the contrary, you would probably feel that you were benefiting +the human race, or increasing the sum of knowledge in the world, +or gratifying intellectual curiosity, or something of that kind. +What I want you to do is merely what you have often done before. +Indeed, to destroy a body must be far less horrible than +what you are accustomed to work at. And, remember, it is +the only piece of evidence against me. If it is discovered, +I am lost and it is sure to be discovered unless you +help me." +"I have no desire to help you. You forget that. I am simply +indifferent to the whole thing. It has nothing to do with me." +"Alan, I entreat you. Think of the position I am in. +Just before you came I almost fainted with terror. +You may know terror yourself some day. No don't think of that. +Look at the matter purely from the scientific point of view. +You don't inquire where the dead things on which you +experiment come from. Don't inquire now. I have told you +too much as it is. But I beg of you to do this. We were +friends once, Alan." +"Don't speak about those days, Dorianthey are dead." +"The dead linger sometimes. The man upstairs will not go away. +He is sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. +Alan Alan If you don't come to my assistance, I am ruined. +Why, they will hang me, Alan Don't you understand? They will hang +me for what I have done." +"There is no good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse +to do anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ask me." +"You refuse?" +"Yes." +"I entreat you, Alan." +"It is useless." +The same look of pity came into Dorian Gray's eyes. Then he stretched +out his hand, took a piece of paper, and wrote something on it. +He read it over twice, folded it carefully, and pushed it across the table. +Having done this, he got up and went over to the window. +Campbell looked at him in surprise, and then took up the paper, +and opened it. As he read it, his face became ghastly pale and he fell +back in his chair. A horrible sense of sickness came over him. +He felt as if his heart was beating itself to death in some +empty hollow. +After two or three minutes of terrible silence, Dorian turned round and came +and stood behind him, putting his hand upon his shoulder. +"I am so sorry for you, Alan," he murmured, "but you leave me +no alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is. +You see the address. If you don't help me, I must send it. +If you don't help me, I will send it. You know what the result will be. +But you are going to help me. It is impossible for you to refuse now. +I tried to spare you. You will do me the justice to admit that. +You were stern, harsh, offensive. You treated me as no man has ever +dared to treat meno living man, at any rate. I bore it all. +Now it is for me to dictate terms." +Campbell buried his face in his hands, and a shudder passed through him. +"Yes, it is my turn to dictate terms, Alan. You know what they are. +The thing is quite simple. Come, don't work yourself into this fever. +The thing has to be done. Face it, and do it." +A groan broke from Campbell's lips and he shivered all over. +The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to him to be +dividing time into separate atoms of agony, each of which was +too terrible to be borne. He felt as if an iron ring was +being slowly tightened round his forehead, as if the disgrace +with which he was threatened had already come upon him. +The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead. +It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him. +"Come, Alan, you must decide at once." +"I cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter things. +"You must. You have no choice. Don't delay." +He hesitated a moment. "Is there a fire in the room upstairs?" +"Yes, there is a gasfire with asbestos." +"I shall have to go home and get some things from the laboratory." +"No, Alan, you must not leave the house. Write out on a sheet +of notepaper what you want and my servant will take a cab +and bring the things back to you." +Campbell scrawled a few lines, blotted them, and addressed an envelope +to his assistant. Dorian took the note up and read it carefully. +Then he rang the bell and gave it to his valet, with orders to return +as soon as possible and to bring the things with him. +As the hall door shut, Campbell started nervously, and having got up +from the chair, went over to the chimneypiece. He was shivering with +a kind of ague. For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. +A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was +like the beat of a hammer. +As the chime struck one, Campbell turned round, and looking at Dorian Gray, +saw that his eyes were filled with tears. There was something in the purity +and refinement of that sad face that seemed to enrage him. "You are infamous, +absolutely infamous" he muttered. +"Hush, Alan. You have saved my life," said Dorian. +"Your life? Good heavens what a life that is You have gone from +corruption to corruption, and now you have culminated in crime. +In doing what I am going to dowhat you force me to do +it is not of your life that I am thinking." +"Ah, Alan," murmured Dorian with a sigh, "I wish you had +a thousandth part of the pity for me that I have for you." +He turned away as he spoke and stood looking out at the garden. +Campbell made no answer. +After about ten minutes a knock came to the door, and the servant entered, +carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and +platinum wire and two rather curiously shaped iron clamps. +"Shall I leave the things here, sir?" he asked Campbell. +"Yes," said Dorian. "And I am afraid, Francis, that I have another +errand for you. What is the name of the man at Richmond who supplies +Selby with orchids?" +"Harden, sir." +"YesHarden. You must go down to Richmond at once, see Harden personally, +and tell him to send twice as many orchids as I ordered, and to have +as few white ones as possible. In fact, I don't want any white ones. +It is a lovely day, Francis, and Richmond is a very pretty place +otherwise I wouldn't bother you about it." +"No trouble, sir. At what time shall I be back?" +Dorian looked at Campbell. "How long will your experiment take, Alan?" +he said in a calm indifferent voice. The presence of a third person +in the room seemed to give him extraordinary courage. +Campbell frowned and bit his lip. "It will take about five hours," +he answered. +"It will be time enough, then, if you are back at halfpast seven, Francis. +Or stay just leave my things out for dressing. You can have the evening +to yourself. I am not dining at home, so I shall not want you." +"Thank you, sir," said the man, leaving the room. +"Now, Alan, there is not a moment to be lost. How heavy this chest is +I'll take it for you. You bring the other things." He spoke rapidly +and in an authoritative manner. Campbell felt dominated by him. +They left the room together. +When they reached the top landing, Dorian took out the key and turned it +in the lock. Then he stopped, and a troubled look came into his eyes. +He shuddered. "I don't think I can go in, Alan," he murmured. +"It is nothing to me. I don't require you," said Campbell coldly. +Dorian half opened the door. As he did so, he saw the face +of his portrait leering in the sunlight. On the floor in front +of it the torn curtain was lying. He remembered that the night +before he had forgotten, for the first time in his life, +to hide the fatal canvas, and was about to rush forward, +when he drew back with a shudder. +What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, +on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood? +How horrible it wasmore horrible, it seemed to him for the moment, +than the silent thing that he knew was stretched across the table, +the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet +showed him that it had not stirred, but was still there, as he had +left it. +He heaved a deep breath, opened the door a little wider, +and with halfclosed eyes and averted head, walked quickly in, +determined that he would not look even once upon the dead man. +Then, stooping down and taking up the goldandpurple hanging, +he flung it right over the picture. +There he stopped, feeling afraid to turn round, and his eyes +fixed themselves on the intricacies of the pattern before him. +He heard Campbell bringing in the heavy chest, and the irons, +and the other things that he had required for his dreadful work. +He began to wonder if he and Basil Hallward had ever met, and, if so, +what they had thought of each other. +"Leave me now," said a stern voice behind him. +He turned and hurried out, just conscious that the dead man +had been thrust back into the chair and that Campbell was gazing +into a glistening yellow face. As he was going downstairs, +he heard the key being turned in the lock. +It was long after seven when Campbell came back into the library. +He was pale, but absolutely calm. "I have done what you asked +me to do," he muttered "And now, goodbye. Let us never see each +other again." +"You have saved me from ruin, Alan. I cannot forget that," +said Dorian simply. +As soon as Campbell had left, he went upstairs. There was a horrible +smell of nitric acid in the room. But the thing that had been sitting +at the table was gone. +CHAPTER +That evening, at eightthirty, exquisitely dressed and wearing a large +buttonhole of Parma violets, Dorian Gray was ushered into Lady +Narborough's drawingroom by bowing servants. His forehead was throbbing +with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner +as he bent over his hostess's hand was as easy and graceful as ever. +Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part. +Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed +that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. +Those finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, +nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He himself +could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment +felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life. +It was a small party, got up rather in a hurry by Lady Narborough, +who was a very clever woman with what Lord Henry used to describe +as the remains of really remarkable ugliness. She had proved +an excellent wife to one of our most tedious ambassadors, and having +buried her husband properly in a marble mausoleum, which she +had herself designed, and married off her daughters to some rich, +rather elderly men, she devoted herself now to the pleasures +of French fiction, French cookery, and French esprit when she could +get it. +Dorian was one of her especial favourites, and she always told him +that she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. +"I know, my dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," +she used to say, "and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. +It is most fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. +As it was, our bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were +so occupied in trying to raise the wind, that I never had even a +flirtation with anybody. However, that was all Narborough's fault. +He was dreadfully shortsighted, and there is no pleasure in taking +in a husband who never sees anything." +Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, +as she explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, +one of her married daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay +with her, and, to make matters worse, had actually brought her +husband with her. "I think it is most unkind of her, my dear," +she whispered. "Of course I go and stay with them every summer +after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman like me must +have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them up. +You don't know what an existence they lead down there. +It is pure unadulterated country life. They get up early, +because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, +because they have so little to think about. There has not been +a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of Queen Elizabeth, +and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. +You shan't sit next either of them. You shall sit by me and +amuse me." +Dorian murmured a graceful compliment and looked round +the room. Yes it was certainly a tedious party. +Two of the people he had never seen before, and the others +consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those middleaged +mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies, +but are thoroughly disliked by their friends Lady Ruxton, +an overdressed woman of fortyseven, with a hooked nose, +who was always trying to get herself compromised, but was +so peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment no +one would ever believe anything against her Mrs. Erlynne, +a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp and Venetianred hair +Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy dull girl, +with one of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, +are never remembered and her husband, a redcheeked, +whitewhiskered creature who, like so many of his class, +was under the impression that inordinate joviality can atone for +an entire lack of ideas. +He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, +looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy +curves on the mauvedraped mantelshelf, exclaimed "How horrid +of Henry Wotton to be so late I sent round to him this morning +on chance and he promised faithfully not to disappoint me." +It was some consolation that Harry was to be there, and when the door opened +and he heard his slow musical voice lending charm to some insincere apology, +he ceased to feel bored. +But at dinner he could not eat anything. Plate after plate went +away untasted. Lady Narborough kept scolding him for what she +called "an insult to poor Adolphe, who invented the menu +specially for you," and now and then Lord Henry looked across +at him, wondering at his silence and abstracted manner. +From time to time the butler filled his glass with champagne. +He drank eagerly, and his thirst seemed to increase. +"Dorian," said Lord Henry at last, as the chaudfroid was being handed round, +"what is the matter with you tonight? You are quite out of sorts." +"I believe he is in love," cried Lady Narborough, "and that he is +afraid to tell me for fear I should be jealous. He is quite right. +I certainly should." +"Dear Lady Narborough," murmured Dorian, smiling, "I have not been in love +for a whole weeknot, in fact, since Madame de Ferrol left town." +"How you men can fall in love with that woman" exclaimed the old lady. +"I really cannot understand it." +"It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl, +Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry. "She is the one link between us +and your short frocks." +"She does not remember my short frocks at all, Lord Henry. +But I remember her very well at Vienna thirty years ago, +and how decolletee she was then." +"She is still decolletee," he answered, taking an olive in his long fingers +"and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an edition de luxe +of a bad French novel. She is really wonderful, and full of surprises. +Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband +died, her hair turned quite gold from grief." +"How can you, Harry" cried Dorian. +"It is a most romantic explanation," laughed the hostess. +"But her third husband, Lord Henry You don't mean to say Ferrol +is the fourth?" +"Certainly, Lady Narborough." +"I don't believe a word of it." +"Well, ask Mr. Gray. He is one of her most intimate friends." +"Is it true, Mr. Gray?" +"She assures me so, Lady Narborough," said Dorian. "I asked her whether, +like Marguerite de Navarre, she had their hearts embalmed and hung at +her girdle. She told me she didn't, because none of them had had any +hearts at all." +"Four husbands Upon my word that is trop de zele." +"Trop d'audace, I tell her," said Dorian. +"Oh she is audacious enough for anything, my dear. And what is Ferrol like? +I don't know him." +"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes," +said Lord Henry, sipping his wine. +Lady Narborough hit him with her fan. "Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised +that the world says that you are extremely wicked." +"But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows. +"It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms." +"Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, +shaking her head. +Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "It is perfectly monstrous," +he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one +behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true." +"Isn't he incorrigible?" cried Dorian, leaning forward in his chair. +"I hope so," said his hostess, laughing. "But really, +if you all worship Madame de Ferrol in this ridiculous way, +I shall have to marry again so as to be in the fashion." +"You will never marry again, Lady Narborough," broke in Lord Henry. +"You were far too happy. When a woman marries again, it is +because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, +it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck +men risk theirs." +"Narborough wasn't perfect," cried the old lady. +"If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady," +was the rejoinder. "Women love us for our defects. +If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, +even our intellects. You will never ask me to dinner again +after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough, but it is +quite true." +"Of course it is true, Lord Henry. If we women did not love you for +your defects, where would you all be? Not one of you would ever be married. +You would be a set of unfortunate bachelors. Not, however, that that +would alter you much. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, +and all the bachelors like married men." +"Fin de siecle," murmured Lord Henry. +"Fin du globe," answered his hostess. +"I wish it were fin du globe," said Dorian with a sigh. +"Life is a great disappointment." +"Ah, my dear," cried Lady Narborough, putting on her gloves, +"don't tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that +one knows that life has exhausted him. Lord Henry is very wicked, +and I sometimes wish that I had been but you are made to be good +you look so good. I must find you a nice wife. Lord Henry, don't you +think that Mr. Gray should get married?" +"I am always telling him so, Lady Narborough," said Lord Henry with a bow. +"Well, we must look out for a suitable match for him. +I shall go through Debrett carefully tonight and draw out a list +of all the eligible young ladies." +"With their ages, Lady Narborough?" asked Dorian. +"Of course, with their ages, slightly edited. But nothing must be done +in a hurry. I want it to be what The Morning Post calls a suitable alliance, +and I want you both to be happy." +"What nonsense people talk about happy marriages" exclaimed Lord Henry. +"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her." +"Ah what a cynic you are" cried the old lady, pushing back her chair +and nodding to Lady Ruxton. "You must come and dine with me soon again. +You are really an admirable tonic, much better than what Sir Andrew prescribes +for me. You must tell me what people you would like to meet, though. I want +it to be a delightful gathering." +"I like men who have a future and women who have a past," he answered. +"Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?" +"I fear so," she said, laughing, as she stood up. "A thousand pardons, +my dear Lady Ruxton," she added, "I didn't see you hadn't finished +your cigarette." +"Never mind, Lady Narborough. I smoke a great deal too much. +I am going to limit myself, for the future." +"Pray don't, Lady Ruxton," said Lord Henry. "Moderation is a fatal thing. +Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast." +Lady Ruxton glanced at him curiously. "You must come and explain that to me +some afternoon, Lord Henry. It sounds a fascinating theory," she murmured, +as she swept out of the room. +"Now, mind you don't stay too long over your politics and scandal," +cried Lady Narborough from the door. "If you do, we are sure to +squabble upstairs." +The men laughed, and Mr. Chapman got up solemnly +from the foot of the table and came up to the top. +Dorian Gray changed his seat and went and sat by Lord Henry. +Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the situation +in the House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. +The word doctrinaireword full of terror to the British mind +reappeared from time to time between his explosions. +An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory. +He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of thought. +The inherited stupidity of the racesound English common sense +he jovially termed itwas shown to be the proper bulwark +for society. +A smile curved Lord Henry's lips, and he turned round and looked at Dorian. +"Are you better, my dear fellow?" he asked. "You seemed rather +out of sorts at dinner." +"I am quite well, Harry. I am tired. That is all." +"You were charming last night. The little duchess is quite devoted to you. +She tells me she is going down to Selby." +"She has promised to come on the twentieth." +"Is Monmouth to be there, too?" +"Oh, yes, Harry." +"He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very clever, +too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. +It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet +are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, +if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, +it hardens. She has had experiences." +"How long has she been married?" asked Dorian. +"An eternity, she tells me. I believe, according to the peerage, +it is ten years, but ten years with Monmouth must have been like eternity, +with time thrown in. Who else is coming?" +"Oh, the Willoughbys, Lord Rugby and his wife, our hostess, +Geoffrey Clouston, the usual set. I have asked Lord Grotrian." +"I like him," said Lord Henry. "A great many people don't, but I find +him charming. He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed +by being always absolutely overeducated. He is a very modern type." +"I don't know if he will be able to come, Harry. He may have to go to Monte +Carlo with his father." +"Ah what a nuisance people's people are Try and make him come. +By the way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. +You left before eleven. What did you do afterwards? Did you go +straight home?" +Dorian glanced at him hurriedly and frowned. +"No, Harry," he said at last, "I did not get home till nearly three." +"Did you go to the club?" +"Yes," he answered. Then he bit his lip. "No, I don't mean that. +I didn't go to the club. I walked about. I forget what I did. +. . . How inquisitive you are, Harry You always want to know what +one has been doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing. +I came in at halfpast two, if you wish to know the exact time. +I had left my latchkey at home, and my servant had to let me in. +If you want any corroborative evidence on the subject, you can ask +him." +Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, as if I cared +Let us go up to the drawingroom. No sherry, thank you, Mr. Chapman. +Something has happened to you, Dorian. Tell me what it is. +You are not yourself tonight." +"Don't mind me, Harry. I am irritable, and out of temper. +I shall come round and see you tomorrow, or next day. +Make my excuses to Lady Narborough. I shan't go upstairs. +I shall go home. I must go home." +"All right, Dorian. I dare say I shall see you tomorrow at teatime. +The duchess is coming." +"I will try to be there, Harry," he said, leaving the room. +As he drove back to his own house, he was conscious that the sense +of terror he thought he had strangled had come back to him. +Lord Henry's casual questioning had made him lose his +nerves for the moment, and he wanted his nerve still. +Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed. He winced. +He hated the idea of even touching them. +Yet it had to be done. He realized that, and when he had +locked the door of his library, he opened the secret press +into which he had thrust Basil Hallward's coat and bag. +A huge fire was blazing. He piled another log on it. +The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was horrible. +It took him threequarters of an hour to consume everything. +At the end he felt faint and sick, and having lit some Algerian +pastilles in a pierced copper brazier, he bathed his hands and +forehead with a cool muskscented vinegar. +Suddenly he started. His eyes grew strangely bright, and he gnawed +nervously at his underlip. Between two of the windows stood a large +Florentine cabinet, made out of ebony and inlaid with ivory and blue lapis. +He watched it as though it were a thing that could fascinate and make afraid, +as though it held something that he longed for and yet almost loathed. +His breath quickened. A mad craving came over him. He lit a cigarette +and then threw it away. His eyelids drooped till the long fringed +lashes almost touched his cheek. But he still watched the cabinet. +At last he got up from the sofa on which he had been lying, +went over to it, and having unlocked it, touched some hidden spring. +A triangular drawer passed slowly out. His fingers moved instinctively +towards it, dipped in, and closed on something. It was a small +Chinese box of black and golddust lacquer, elaborately wrought, +the sides patterned with curved waves, and the silken cords hung with +round crystals and tasselled in plaited metal threads. He opened it. +Inside was a green paste, waxy in lustre, the odour curiously heavy +and persistent. +He hesitated for some moments, with a strangely immobile smile upon his face. +Then shivering, though the atmosphere of the room was terribly hot, he drew +himself up and glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes to twelve. +He put the box back, shutting the cabinet doors as he did so, and went into +his bedroom. +As midnight was striking bronze blows upon the dusky air, Dorian Gray, +dressed commonly, and with a muffler wrapped round his throat, +crept quietly out of his house. In Bond Street he found a hansom +with a good horse. He hailed it and in a low voice gave the driver +an address. +The man shook his head. "It is too far for me," he muttered. +"Here is a sovereign for you," said Dorian. "You shall have another if you +drive fast." +"All right, sir," answered the man, "you will be there in an hour," +and after his fare had got in he turned his horse round and drove +rapidly towards the river. +CHAPTER +A cold rain began to fall, and the blurred streetlamps looked ghastly +in the dripping mist. The publichouses were just closing, and dim +men and women were clustering in broken groups round their doors. +From some of the bars came the sound of horrible laughter. In others, +drunkards brawled and screamed. +Lying back in the hansom, with his hat pulled over his forehead, +Dorian Gray watched with listless eyes the sordid shame +of the great city, and now and then he repeated to himself +the words that Lord Henry had said to him on the first day +they had met, "To cure the soul by means of the senses, +and the senses by means of the soul." Yes, that was the secret. +He had often tried it, and would try it again now. +There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror +where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness +of sins that were new. +The moon hung low in the sky like a yellow skull. From time to time +a huge misshapen cloud stretched a long arm across and hid it. +The gaslamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy. +Once the man lost his way and had to drive back half a mile. +A steam rose from the horse as it splashed up the puddles. +The sidewindows of the hansom were clogged with a greyflannel mist. +"To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses +by means of the soul" How the words rang in his ears +His soul, certainly, was sick to death. Was it true that +the senses could cure it? Innocent blood had been spilled. +What could atone for that? Ah for that there was no atonement +but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was +possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp +the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that +had stung one. Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken +to him as he had done? Who had made him a judge over others? +He had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to +be endured. +On and on plodded the hansom, going slower, it seemed to him, +at each step. He thrust up the trap and called to the man +to drive faster. The hideous hunger for opium began to gnaw +at him. His throat burned and his delicate hands twitched +nervously together. He struck at the horse madly with his stick. +The driver laughed and whipped up. He laughed in answer, +and the man was silent. +The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black +web of some sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, +and as the mist thickened, he felt afraid. +Then they passed by lonely brickfields. The fog was lighter here, +and he could see the strange, bottleshaped kilns with their orange, +fanlike tongues of fire. A dog barked as they went by, +and far away in the darkness some wandering seagull screamed. +The horse stumbled in a rut, then swerved aside and broke into +a gallop. +After some time they left the clay road and rattled again +over roughpaven streets. Most of the windows were dark, +but now and then fantastic shadows were silhouetted against +some lamplit blind. He watched them curiously. They moved +like monstrous marionettes and made gestures like live things. +He hated them. A dull rage was in his heart. As they turned +a corner, a woman yelled something at them from an open door, +and two men ran after the hansom for about a hundred yards. +The driver beat at them with his whip. +It is said that passion makes one think in a circle. +Certainly with hideous iteration the bitten lips of Dorian Gray +shaped and reshaped those subtle words that dealt with soul +and sense, till he had found in them the full expression, +as it were, of his mood, and justified, by intellectual approval, +passions that without such justification would still have +dominated his temper. From cell to cell of his brain crept +the one thought and the wild desire to live, most terrible +of all man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling +nerve and fibre. Ugliness that had once been hateful +to him because it made things real, became dear to him +now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. +The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence +of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, +were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, +than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song. +They were what he needed for forgetfulness. In three days he would +be free. +Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk at the top of a dark lane. +Over the low roofs and jagged chimneystacks of the houses rose +the black masts of ships. Wreaths of white mist clung like ghostly +sails to the yards. +"Somewhere about here, sir, ain't it?" he asked huskily through the trap. +Dorian started and peered round. "This will do," he answered, +and having got out hastily and given the driver the extra fare +he had promised him, he walked quickly in the direction of the quay. +Here and there a lantern gleamed at the stern of some huge merchantman. +The light shook and splintered in the puddles. A red glare came from +an outwardbound steamer that was coaling. The slimy pavement looked +like a wet mackintosh. +He hurried on towards the left, glancing back now and then to see +if he was being followed. In about seven or eight minutes he reached +a small shabby house that was wedged in between two gaunt factories. +In one of the topwindows stood a lamp. He stopped and gave a +peculiar knock. +After a little time he heard steps in the passage and the chain +being unhooked. The door opened quietly, and he went in without +saying a word to the squat misshapen figure that flattened +itself into the shadow as he passed. At the end of the hall +hung a tattered green curtain that swayed and shook in +the gusty wind which had followed him in from the street. +He dragged it aside and entered a long low room which looked +as if it had once been a thirdrate dancingsaloon. Shrill +flaring gasjets, dulled and distorted in the flyblown mirrors +that faced them, were ranged round the walls. Greasy reflectors +of ribbed tin backed them, making quivering disks of light. +The floor was covered with ochrecoloured sawdust, trampled here +and there into mud, and stained with dark rings of spilled liquor. +Some Malays were crouching by a little charcoal stove, playing with +bone counters and showing their white teeth as they chattered. +In one corner, with his head buried in his arms, a sailor sprawled +over a table, and by the tawdrily painted bar that ran across one +complete side stood two haggard women, mocking an old man who was +brushing the sleeves of his coat with an expression of disgust. +"He thinks he's got red ants on him," laughed one of them, +as Dorian passed by. The man looked at her in terror and began +to whimper. +At the end of the room there was a little staircase, +leading to a darkened chamber. As Dorian hurried up its +three rickety steps, the heavy odour of opium met him. +He heaved a deep breath, and his nostrils quivered with pleasure. +When he entered, a young man with smooth yellow hair, who was +bending over a lamp lighting a long thin pipe, looked up at him +and nodded in a hesitating manner. +"You here, Adrian?" muttered Dorian. +"Where else should I be?" he answered, listlessly. "None of the chaps +will speak to me now." +"I thought you had left England." +"Darlington is not going to do anything. My brother paid the bill at last. +George doesn't speak to me either. . . . I don't care," he added +with a sigh. "As long as one has this stuff, one doesn't want friends. +I think I have had too many friends." +Dorian winced and looked round at the grotesque things that +lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. +The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, +fascinated him. He knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, +and what dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new joy. +They were better off than he was. He was prisoned in thought. +Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away. From time +to time he seemed to see the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. +Yet he felt he could not stay. The presence of Adrian Singleton +troubled him. He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. +He wanted to escape from himself. +"I am going on to the other place," he said after a pause. +"On the wharf?" +"Yes." +"That madcat is sure to be there. They won't have her in this place now." +Dorian shrugged his shoulders. "I am sick of women who love one. +Women who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff +is better." +"Much the same." +"I like it better. Come and have something to drink. +I must have something." +"I don't want anything," murmured the young man. +"Never mind." +Adrian Singleton rose up wearily and followed Dorian to the bar. +A halfcaste, in a ragged turban and a shabby ulster, grinned a +hideous greeting as he thrust a bottle of brandy and two tumblers +in front of them. The women sidled up and began to chatter. +Dorian turned his back on them and said something in a low voice to +Adrian Singleton. +A crooked smile, like a Malay crease, writhed across the face of one +of the women. "We are very proud tonight," she sneered. +"For God's sake don't talk to me," cried Dorian, stamping his +foot on the ground. "What do you want? Money? Here it is. +Don't ever talk to me again." +Two red sparks flashed for a moment in the woman's sodden eyes, +then flickered out and left them dull and glazed. She tossed +her head and raked the coins off the counter with greedy fingers. +Her companion watched her enviously. +"It's no use," sighed Adrian Singleton. "I don't care to go back. +What does it matter? I am quite happy here." +"You will write to me if you want anything, won't you?" said Dorian, +after a pause. +"Perhaps." +"Good night, then." +"Good night," answered the young man, passing up the steps and wiping +his parched mouth with a handkerchief. +Dorian walked to the door with a look of pain in his face. +As he drew the curtain aside, a hideous laugh broke from +the painted lips of the woman who had taken his money. +"There goes the devil's bargain" she hiccoughed, in a +hoarse voice. +"Curse you" he answered, "don't call me that." +She snapped her fingers. "Prince Charming is what you like to be called, +ain't it?" she yelled after him. +The drowsy sailor leaped to his feet as she spoke, and looked wildly round. +The sound of the shutting of the hall door fell on his ear. He rushed out as +if in pursuit. +Dorian Gray hurried along the quay through the drizzling rain. +His meeting with Adrian Singleton had strangely moved him, and he wondered +if the ruin of that young life was really to be laid at his door, +as Basil Hallward had said to him with such infamy of insult. +He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. +Yet, after all, what did it matter to him? One's days were too +brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. +Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. +The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. +One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, +destiny never closed her accounts. +There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for +what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, +as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. +Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move +to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, +and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give +rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. For all sins, +as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. +When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was +as a rebel that he fell. +Callous, concentrated on evil, with stained mind, and soul +hungry for rebellion, Dorian Gray hastened on, quickening his +step as he went, but as he darted aside into a dim archway, +that had served him often as a short cut to the illfamed place +where he was going, he felt himself suddenly seized from behind, +and before he had time to defend himself, he was thrust back +against the wall, with a brutal hand round his throat. +He struggled madly for life, and by a terrible effort wrenched +the tightening fingers away. In a second he heard the click +of a revolver, and saw the gleam of a polished barrel, +pointing straight at his head, and the dusky form of a short, +thickset man facing him. +"What do you want?" he gasped. +"Keep quiet," said the man. "If you stir, I shoot you." +"You are mad. What have I done to you?" +"You wrecked the life of Sibyl Vane," was the answer, +"and Sibyl Vane was my sister. She killed herself. I know it. +Her death is at your door. I swore I would kill you in return. +For years I have sought you. I had no clue, no trace. +The two people who could have described you were dead. +I knew nothing of you but the pet name she used to call you. +I heard it tonight by chance. Make your peace with God, +for tonight you are going to die." +Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. +"I never heard of her. You are mad." +"You had better confess your sin, for as sure as I am James Vane, +you are going to die." There was a horrible moment. Dorian did +not know what to say or do. "Down on your knees" growled the man. +"I give you one minute to make your peaceno more. I go on board +tonight for India, and I must do my job first. One minute. +That's all." +Dorian's arms fell to his side. Paralysed with terror, he did not +know what to do. Suddenly a wild hope flashed across his brain. +"Stop," he cried. "How long ago is it since your sister died? +Quick, tell me" +"Eighteen years," said the man. "Why do you ask me? +What do years matter?" +"Eighteen years," laughed Dorian Gray, with a touch of triumph in his voice. +"Eighteen years Set me under the lamp and look at my face" +James Vane hesitated for a moment, not understanding what was meant. +Then he seized Dorian Gray and dragged him from the archway. +Dim and wavering as was the windblown light, yet it served to show +him the hideous error, as it seemed, into which he had fallen, +for the face of the man he had sought to kill had all the bloom +of boyhood, all the unstained purity of youth. He seemed little more +than a lad of twenty summers, hardly older, if older indeed at all, +than his sister had been when they had parted so many years ago. +It was obvious that this was not the man who had destroyed +her life. +He loosened his hold and reeled back. "My God my God" +he cried, "and I would have murdered you" +Dorian Gray drew a long breath. "You have been on the brink of +committing a terrible crime, my man," he said, looking at him sternly. +"Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your +own hands." +"Forgive me, sir," muttered James Vane. "I was deceived. +A chance word I heard in that damned den set me on the wrong track." +"You had better go home and put that pistol away, or you may get +into trouble," said Dorian, turning on his heel and going slowly +down the street. +James Vane stood on the pavement in horror. He was trembling +from head to foot. After a little while, a black shadow +that had been creeping along the dripping wall moved out into +the light and came close to him with stealthy footsteps. +He felt a hand laid on his arm and looked round with a start. +It was one of the women who had been drinking at the bar. +"Why didn't you kill him?" she hissed out, putting haggard face +quite close to his. "I knew you were following him when you +rushed out from Daly's. You fool You should have killed him. +He has lots of money, and he's as bad as bad." +"He is not the man I am looking for," he answered, "and I want +no man's money. I want a man's life. The man whose life I want +must be nearly forty now. This one is little more than a boy. +Thank God, I have not got his blood upon my hands." +The woman gave a bitter laugh. "Little more than a boy" she sneered. +"Why, man, it's nigh on eighteen years since Prince Charming made me what +I am." +"You lie" cried James Vane. +She raised her hand up to heaven. "Before God I am telling the truth," +she cried. +"Before God?" +"Strike me dumb if it ain't so. He is the worst one that comes here. +They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face. It's nigh +on eighteen years since I met him. He hasn't changed much since then. +I have, though," she added, with a sickly leer. +"You swear this?" +"I swear it," came in hoarse echo from her flat mouth. +"But don't give me away to him," she whined "I am afraid of him. +Let me have some money for my night's lodging." +He broke from her with an oath and rushed to the corner of the street, +but Dorian Gray had disappeared. When he looked back, the woman had +vanished also. +CHAPTER +A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby Royal, +talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband, +a jadedlooking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. +It was teatime, and the mellow light of the huge, lacecovered lamp +that stood on the table lit up the delicate china and hammered +silver of the service at which the duchess was presiding. +Her white hands were moving daintily among the cups, and her full red +lips were smiling at something that Dorian had whispered to her. +Lord Henry was lying back in a silkdraped wicker chair, looking at them. +On a peachcoloured divan sat Lady Narborough, pretending to listen +to the duke's description of the last Brazilian beetle that he had +added to his collection. Three young men in elaborate smokingsuits +were handing teacakes to some of the women. The houseparty +consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to arrive on +the next day. +"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to +the table and putting his cup down. "I hope Dorian has told you about +my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea." +"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the duchess, +looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "I am quite satisfied +with my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied +with his." +"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. +They are both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. +Yesterday I cut an orchid, for my buttonhole. It was a marvellous +spotted thing, as effective as the seven deadly sins. +In a thoughtless moment I asked one of the gardeners what it +was called. He told me it was a fine specimen of Robinsoniana, +or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad truth, +but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. +Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. +My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar +realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade +should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit +for." +"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked. +"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian. +"I recognize him in a flash," exclaimed the duchess. +"I won't hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. +"From a label there is no escape I refuse the title." +"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips. +"You wish me to defend my throne, then?" +"Yes." +"I give the truths of tomorrow." +"I prefer the mistakes of today," she answered. +"You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood. +"Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear." +"I never tilt against beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand. +"That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much." +"How can you say that? I admit that I think that it is better +to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, +no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better +to be good than to be ugly." +"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the duchess. +"What becomes of your simile about the orchid?" +"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, +must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have +made our England what she is." +"You don't like your country, then?" she asked. +"I live in it." +"That you may censure it the better." +"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired. +"What do they say of us?" +"That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop." +"Is that yours, Harry?" +"I give it to you." +"I could not use it. It is too true." +"You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognize a description." +"They are practical." +"They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger, +they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy." +"Still, we have done great things." +"Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys." +"We have carried their burden." +"Only as far as the Stock Exchange." +She shook her head. "I believe in the race," she cried. +"It represents the survival of the pushing." +"It has development." +"Decay fascinates me more." +"What of art?" she asked. +"It is a malady." +"Love?" +"An illusion." +"Religion?" +"The fashionable substitute for belief." +"You are a sceptic." +"Never Scepticism is the beginning of faith." +"What are you?" +"To define is to limit." +"Give me a clue." +"Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth." +"You bewilder me. Let us talk of some one else." +"Our host is a delightful topic. Years ago he was christened +Prince Charming." +"Ah don't remind me of that," cried Dorian Gray. +"Our host is rather horrid this evening," answered the duchess, colouring. +"I believe he thinks that Monmouth married me on purely scientific principles +as the best specimen he could find of a modern butterfly." +"Well, I hope he won't stick pins into you, Duchess," laughed Dorian. +"Oh my maid does that already, Mr. Gray, when she is annoyed with me." +"And what does she get annoyed with you about, Duchess?" +"For the most trivial things, Mr. Gray, I assure you. +Usually because I come in at ten minutes to nine and tell her +that I must be dressed by halfpast eight." +"How unreasonable of her You should give her warning." +"I daren't, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. +You remember the one I wore at Lady Hilstone's gardenparty? +You don't, but it is nice of you to pretend that you do. +Well, she made if out of nothing. All good hats are made out +of nothing." +"Like all good reputations, Gladys," interrupted Lord Henry. +"Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. +To be popular one must be a mediocrity." +"Not with women," said the duchess, shaking her head "and women +rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. +We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men +love with your eyes, if you ever love at all." +"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmured Dorian. +"Ah then, you never really love, Mr. Gray," answered the duchess +with mock sadness. +"My dear Gladys" cried Lord Henry. "How can you say that? +Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an +appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is +the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does +not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. +We can have in life but one great experience at best, +and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often +as possible." +"Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?" asked the duchess +after a pause. +"Especially when one has been wounded by it," answered Lord Henry. +The duchess turned and looked at Dorian Gray with a curious +expression in her eyes. "What do you say to that, Mr. Gray?" +she inquired. +Dorian hesitated for a moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed. +"I always agree with Harry, Duchess." +"Even when he is wrong?" +"Harry is never wrong, Duchess." +"And does his philosophy make you happy?" +"I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? +I have searched for pleasure." +"And found it, Mr. Gray?" +"Often. Too often." +The duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she said, +"and if I don't go and dress, I shall have none this evening." +"Let me get you some orchids, Duchess," cried Dorian, starting to his feet +and walking down the conservatory. +"You are flirting disgracefully with him," said Lord Henry to his cousin. +"You had better take care. He is very fascinating." +"If he were not, there would be no battle." +"Greek meets Greek, then?" +"I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman." +"They were defeated." +"There are worse things than capture," she answered. +"You gallop with a loose rein." +"Pace gives life," was the riposte. +"I shall write it in my diary tonight." +"What?" +"That a burnt child loves the fire." +"I am not even singed. My wings are untouched." +"You use them for everything, except flight." +"Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for us." +"You have a rival." +"Who?" +He laughed. "Lady Narborough," he whispered. "She perfectly adores him." +"You fill me with apprehension. The appeal to antiquity is fatal +to us who are romanticists." +"Romanticists You have all the methods of science." +"Men have educated us." +"But not explained you." +"Describe us as a sex," was her challenge. +"Sphinxes without secrets." +She looked at him, smiling. "How long Mr. Gray is" she said. +"Let us go and help him. I have not yet told him the colour of +my frock." +"Ah you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys." +"That would be a premature surrender." +"Romantic art begins with its climax." +"I must keep an opportunity for retreat." +"In the Parthian manner?" +"They found safety in the desert. I could not do that." +"Women are not always allowed a choice," he answered, but hardly had +he finished the sentence before from the far end of the conservatory +came a stifled groan, followed by the dull sound of a heavy fall. +Everybody started up. The duchess stood motionless in horror. +And with fear in his eyes, Lord Henry rushed through the flapping +palms to find Dorian Gray lying face downwards on the tiled floor in a +deathlike swoon. +He was carried at once into the blue drawingroom and laid +upon one of the sofas. After a short time, he came to himself +and looked round with a dazed expression. +"What has happened?" he asked. "Oh I remember. Am I safe here, Harry?" +He began to tremble. +"My dear Dorian," answered Lord Henry, "you merely fainted. That was all. +You must have overtired yourself. You had better not come down to dinner. +I will take your place." +"No, I will come down," he said, struggling to his feet. +"I would rather come down. I must not be alone." +He went to his room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness +of gaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then +a thrill of terror ran through him when he remembered that, +pressed against the window of the conservatory, like a +white handkerchief, he had seen the face of James Vane watching him. +CHAPTER +The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most +of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, +and yet indifferent to life itself. The consciousness of +being hunted, snared, tracked down, had begun to dominate him. +If the tapestry did but tremble in the wind, he shook. +The dead leaves that were blown against the leaded panes seemed +to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild regrets. +When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailor's face peering +through the miststained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its +hand upon his heart. +But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out +of the night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him. +Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical +in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse +to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made +each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world +of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. +Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. +That was all. Besides, had any stranger been prowling round +the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. +Had any footmarks been found on the flowerbeds, the gardeners +would have reported it. Yes, it had been merely fancy. +Sibyl Vane's brother had not come back to kill him. +He had sailed away in his ship to founder in some winter sea. +From him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did not know +who he was, could not know who he was. The mask of youth had +saved him. +And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it +was to think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, +and give them visible form, and make them move before one +What sort of life would his be if, day and night, +shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, +to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat +at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep +As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, +and the air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. +Oh in what a wild hour of madness he had killed his friend +How ghastly the mere memory of the scene He saw it all again. +Each hideous detail came back to him with added horror. +Out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in scarlet, +rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at +six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will +break. +It was not till the third day that he ventured to go out. +There was something in the clear, pinescented air of that +winter morning that seemed to bring him back his joyousness +and his ardour for life. But it was not merely the physical +conditions of environment that had caused the change. +His own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish +that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. +With subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so. +Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either +slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow +loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed +by their own plenitude. Besides, he had convinced himself that +he had been the victim of a terrorstricken imagination, and looked +back now on his fears with something of pity and not a little +of contempt. +After breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden +and then drove across the park to join the shootingparty. The crisp frost +lay like salt upon the grass. The sky was an inverted cup of blue metal. +A thin film of ice bordered the flat, reedgrown lake. +At the corner of the pinewood he caught sight of Sir Geoffrey Clouston, +the duchess's brother, jerking two spent cartridges out of his gun. +He jumped from the cart, and having told the groom to take the mare home, +made his way towards his guest through the withered bracken and +rough undergrowth. +"Have you had good sport, Geoffrey?" he asked. +"Not very good, Dorian. I think most of the birds have gone to the open. +I dare say it will be better after lunch, when we get to new ground." +Dorian strolled along by his side. The keen aromatic air, +the brown and red lights that glimmered in the wood, +the hoarse cries of the beaters ringing out from time to time, +and the sharp snaps of the guns that followed, fascinated him +and filled him with a sense of delightful freedom. +He was dominated by the carelessness of happiness, by the high +indifference of joy. +Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front +of them, with blacktipped ears erect and long hinder limbs throwing +it forward, started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders. +Sir Geoffrey put his gun to his shoulder, but there was something +in the animal's grace of movement that strangely charmed Dorian Gray, +and he cried out at once, "Don't shoot it, Geoffrey. Let it live." +"What nonsense, Dorian" laughed his companion, and as the hare +bounded into the thicket, he fired. There were two cries heard, +the cry of a hare in pain, which is dreadful, the cry of a man in agony, +which is worse. +"Good heavens I have hit a beater" exclaimed Sir Geoffrey. +"What an ass the man was to get in front of the guns +Stop shooting there" he called out at the top of his voice. +"A man is hurt." +The headkeeper came running up with a stick in his hand. +"Where, sir? Where is he?" he shouted. At the same time, +the firing ceased along the line. +"Here," answered Sir Geoffrey angrily, hurrying towards the thicket. +"Why on earth don't you keep your men back? Spoiled my shooting for +the day." +Dorian watched them as they plunged into the alderclump, +brushing the lithe swinging branches aside. In a few moments +they emerged, dragging a body after them into the sunlight. +He turned away in horror. It seemed to him that misfortune +followed wherever he went. He heard Sir Geoffrey ask if the man +was really dead, and the affirmative answer of the keeper. +The wood seemed to him to have become suddenly alive with faces. +There was the trampling of myriad feet and the low buzz of voices. +A great copperbreasted pheasant came beating through the +boughs overhead. +After a few momentsthat were to him, in his perturbed state, +like endless hours of painhe felt a hand laid on his shoulder. +He started and looked round. +"Dorian," said Lord Henry, "I had better tell them that the shooting +is stopped for today. It would not look well to go on." +"I wish it were stopped for ever, Harry," he answered bitterly. +"The whole thing is hideous and cruel. Is the man ... ?" +He could not finish the sentence. +"I am afraid so," rejoined Lord Henry. "He got the whole charge of shot +in his chest. He must have died almost instantaneously. Come let us +go home." +They walked side by side in the direction of the avenue for nearly fifty +yards without speaking. Then Dorian looked at Lord Henry and said, +with a heavy sigh, "It is a bad omen, Harry, a very bad omen." +"What is?" asked Lord Henry. "Oh this accident, I suppose. +My dear fellow, it can't be helped. It was the man's own fault. +Why did he get in front of the guns? Besides, it is nothing to us. +It is rather awkward for Geoffrey, of course. It does not do to +pepper beaters. It makes people think that one is a wild shot. +And Geoffrey is not he shoots very straight. But there is no use talking +about the matter." +Dorian shook his head. "It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel +as if something horrible were going to happen to some of us. +To myself, perhaps," he added, passing his hand over his eyes, +with a gesture of pain. +The elder man laughed. "The only horrible thing in the world +is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is +no forgiveness. But we are not likely to suffer from it unless +these fellows keep chattering about this thing at dinner. +I must tell them that the subject is to be tabooed. +As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. +Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel +for that. Besides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian? +You have everything in the world that a man can want. +There is no one who would not be delighted to change places +with you." +"There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry. +Don't laugh like that. I am telling you the truth. The wretched +peasant who has just died is better off than I am. I have no +terror of death. It is the coming of death that terrifies me. +Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in the leaden air around me. +Good heavens don't you see a man moving behind the trees there, +watching me, waiting for me?" +Lord Henry looked in the direction in which the trembling gloved hand +was pointing. "Yes," he said, smiling, "I see the gardener waiting for you. +I suppose he wants to ask you what flowers you wish to have on the table +tonight. How absurdly nervous you are, my dear fellow You must come +and see my doctor, when we get back to town." +Dorian heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the gardener approaching. +The man touched his hat, glanced for a moment at Lord Henry in a +hesitating manner, and then produced a letter, which he handed +to his master. "Her Grace told me to wait for an answer," +he murmured. +Dorian put the letter into his pocket. "Tell her Grace that I am coming in," +he said, coldly. The man turned round and went rapidly in the direction of +the house. +"How fond women are of doing dangerous things" laughed Lord Henry. +"It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman +will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are +looking on." +"How fond you are of saying dangerous things, Harry In the present instance, +you are quite astray. I like the duchess very much, but I don't love her." +"And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, +so you are excellently matched." +"You are talking scandal, Harry, and there is never any basis for scandal." +"The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty," said Lord Henry, +lighting a cigarette. +"You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram." +"The world goes to the altar of its own accord," was the answer. +"I wish I could love," cried Dorian Gray with a deep note +of pathos in his voice. "But I seem to have lost the passion +and forgotten the desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. +My own personality has become a burden to me. I want to escape, +to go away, to forget. It was silly of me to come down here at all. +I think I shall send a wire to Harvey to have the yacht got ready. +On a yacht one is safe." +"Safe from what, Dorian? You are in some trouble. Why not tell +me what it is? You know I would help you." +"I can't tell you, Harry," he answered sadly. "And I dare say it +is only a fancy of mine. This unfortunate accident has upset me. +I have a horrible presentiment that something of the kind may happen +to me." +"What nonsense" +"I hope it is, but I can't help feeling it. Ah here is +the duchess, looking like Artemis in a tailormade gown. +You see we have come back, Duchess." +"I have heard all about it, Mr. Gray," she answered. "Poor Geoffrey is +terribly upset. And it seems that you asked him not to shoot the hare. +How curious" +"Yes, it was very curious. I don't know what made me say it. +Some whim, I suppose. It looked the loveliest of little +live things. But I am sorry they told you about the man. +It is a hideous subject." +"It is an annoying subject," broke in Lord Henry. "It has no psychological +value at all. Now if Geoffrey had done the thing on purpose, how interesting +he would be I should like to know some one who had committed a real murder." +"How horrid of you, Harry" cried the duchess. "Isn't it, +Mr. Gray? Harry, Mr. Gray is ill again. He is going to faint." +Dorian drew himself up with an effort and smiled. "It is nothing, Duchess," +he murmured "my nerves are dreadfully out of order. That is all. +I am afraid I walked too far this morning. I didn't hear what Harry said. +Was it very bad? You must tell me some other time. I think I must go and +lie down. You will excuse me, won't you?" +They had reached the great flight of steps that led from the conservatory +on to the terrace. As the glass door closed behind Dorian, Lord Henry turned +and looked at the duchess with his slumberous eyes. "Are you very much +in love with him?" he asked. +She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. +"I wish I knew," she said at last. +He shook his head. "Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty +that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful." +"One may lose one's way." +"All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys." +"What is that?" +"Disillusion." +"It was my debut in life," she sighed. +"It came to you crowned." +"I am tired of strawberry leaves." +"They become you." +"Only in public." +"You would miss them," said Lord Henry. +"I will not part with a petal." +"Monmouth has ears." +"Old age is dull of hearing." +"Has he never been jealous?" +"I wish he had been." +He glanced about as if in search of something. "What are you looking for?" +she inquired. +"The button from your foil," he answered. "You have dropped it." +She laughed. "I have still the mask." +"It makes your eyes lovelier," was his reply. +She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit. +Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, +with terror in every tingling fibre of his body. Life had suddenly +become too hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death +of the unlucky beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, +had seemed to him to prefigure death for himself also. +He had nearly swooned at what Lord Henry had said in a chance mood +of cynical jesting. +At five o'clock he rang his bell for his servant and gave +him orders to pack his things for the nightexpress to town, +and to have the brougham at the door by eightthirty. He +was determined not to sleep another night at Selby Royal. +It was an illomened place. Death walked there in the sunlight. +The grass of the forest had been spotted with blood. +Then he wrote a note to Lord Henry, telling him that he was going up to town +to consult his doctor and asking him to entertain his guests in his absence. +As he was putting it into the envelope, a knock came to the door, and his +valet informed him that the headkeeper wished to see him. He frowned and bit +his lip. "Send him in," he muttered, after some moments' hesitation. +As soon as the man entered, Dorian pulled his chequebook out of a drawer +and spread it out before him. +"I suppose you have come about the unfortunate accident +of this morning, Thornton?" he said, taking up a pen. +"Yes, sir," answered the gamekeeper. +"Was the poor fellow married? Had he any people dependent on him?" +asked Dorian, looking bored. "If so, I should not like them to be left +in want, and will send them any sum of money you may think necessary." +"We don't know who he is, sir. That is what I took the liberty +of coming to you about." +"Don't know who he is?" said Dorian, listlessly. "What do you mean? +Wasn't he one of your men?" +"No, sir. Never saw him before. Seems like a sailor, sir." +The pen dropped from Dorian Gray's hand, and he felt as if his +heart had suddenly stopped beating. "A sailor?" he cried out. +"Did you say a sailor?" +"Yes, sir. He looks as if he had been a sort of sailor +tattooed on both arms, and that kind of thing." +"Was there anything found on him?" said Dorian, leaning forward and looking +at the man with startled eyes. "Anything that would tell his name?" +"Some money, sirnot much, and a sixshooter. There was no name of any kind. +A decentlooking man, sir, but roughlike. A sort of sailor we think." +Dorian started to his feet. A terrible hope fluttered past him. +He clutched at it madly. "Where is the body?" he exclaimed. +"Quick I must see it at once." +"It is in an empty stable in the Home Farm, sir. The folk +don't like to have that sort of thing in their houses. +They say a corpse brings bad luck." +"The Home Farm Go there at once and meet me. Tell one of the grooms +to bring my horse round. No. Never mind. I'll go to the stables myself. +It will save time." +In less than a quarter of an hour, Dorian Gray was galloping down the long +avenue as hard as he could go. The trees seemed to sweep past him in +spectral procession, and wild shadows to fling themselves across his path. +Once the mare swerved at a white gatepost and nearly threw him. He lashed +her across the neck with his crop. She cleft the dusky air like an arrow. +The stones flew from her hoofs. +At last he reached the Home Farm. Two men were loitering in the yard. +He leaped from the saddle and threw the reins to one of them. +In the farthest stable a light was glimmering. Something seemed +to tell him that the body was there, and he hurried to the door +and put his hand upon the latch. +There he paused for a moment, feeling that he was on the brink +of a discovery that would either make or mar his life. +Then he thrust the door open and entered. +On a heap of sacking in the far corner was lying the dead body +of a man dressed in a coarse shirt and a pair of blue trousers. +A spotted handkerchief had been placed over the face. +A coarse candle, stuck in a bottle, sputtered beside it. +Dorian Gray shuddered. He felt that his could not be the hand to take +the handkerchief away, and called out to one of the farmservants to come +to him. +"Take that thing off the face. I wish to see it," he said, +clutching at the doorpost for support. +When the farmservant had done so, he stepped forward. +A cry of joy broke from his lips. The man who had been shot in +the thicket was James Vane. +He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. +As he rode home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew +he was safe. +CHAPTER +"There is no use your telling me that you are going to be good," +cried Lord Henry, dipping his white fingers into a red copper bowl +filled with rosewater. "You are quite perfect. Pray, don't change." +Dorian Gray shook his head. "No, Harry, I have done too many +dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more. +I began my good actions yesterday." +"Where were you yesterday?" +"In the country, Harry. I was staying at a little inn by myself." +"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. +There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out +of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an +easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. +One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no +opportunity of being either, so they stagnate." +"Culture and corruption," echoed Dorian. "I have known something of both. +It seems terrible to me now that they should ever be found together. +For I have a new ideal, Harry. I am going to alter. I think I +have altered." +"You have not yet told me what your good action was. +Or did you say you had done more than one?" asked his companion +as he spilled into his plate a little crimson pyramid of seeded +strawberries and, through a perforated, shellshaped spoon, +snowed white sugar upon them. +"I can tell you, Harry. It is not a story I could tell to any one else. +I spared somebody. It sounds vain, but you understand what I mean. +She was quite beautiful and wonderfully like Sibyl Vane. I think it was +that which first attracted me to her. You remember Sibyl, don't you? +How long ago that seems Well, Hetty was not one of our own class, +of course. She was simply a girl in a village. But I really loved her. +I am quite sure that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we +have been having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week. +Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The appleblossoms kept tumbling +down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone away together +this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her as flowerlike as I +had found her." +"I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you +a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. +"But I can finish your idyll for you. You gave her good advice +and broke her heart. That was the beginning of your reformation." +"Harry, you are horrible You mustn't say these dreadful things. +Hetty's heart is not broken. Of course, she cried and all that. +But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her +garden of mint and marigold." +"And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, +laughing, as he leaned back in his chair. "My dear Dorian, +you have the most curiously boyish moods. Do you think this girl +will ever be really content now with any one of her own rank? +I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter +or a grinning ploughman. Well, the fact of having met you, +and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, +and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view, +I cannot say that I think much of your great renunciation. +Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know +that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some +starlit millpond, with lovely waterlilies round her, +like Ophelia?" +"I can't bear this, Harry You mock at everything, and then +suggest the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. +I don't care what you say to me. I know I was right in acting +as I did. Poor Hetty As I rode past the farm this morning, +I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine. +Don't let us talk about it any more, and don't try to persuade +me that the first good action I have done for years, +the first little bit of selfsacrifice I have ever known, +is really a sort of sin. I want to be better. +I am going to be better. Tell me something about yourself. +What is going on in town? I have not been to the club +for days." +"The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance." +"I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," +said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine and frowning slightly. +"My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, +and the British public are really not equal to the mental +strain of having more than one topic every three months. +They have been very fortunate lately, however. They have +had my own divorcecase and Alan Campbell's suicide. +Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist. +Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster +who left for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November +was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never +arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shall +be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, +but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. +It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions +of the next world." +"What do you think has happened to Basil?" asked Dorian, +holding up his Burgundy against the light and wondering how it +was that he could discuss the matter so calmly. +"I have not the slightest idea. If Basil chooses to hide himself, +it is no business of mine. If he is dead, I don't want to think +about him. Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. +I hate it." +"Why?" said the younger man wearily. +"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis +of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays except that. +Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one +cannot explain away. Let us have our coffee in the musicroom, Dorian. +You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played +Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria I was very fond of her. The house +is rather lonely without her. Of course, married life is merely a habit, +a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. +Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of +one's personality." +Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the next room, +sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white and black +ivory of the keys. After the coffee had been brought in, he stopped, +and looking over at Lord Henry, said, "Harry, did it ever occur to you that +Basil was murdered?" +Lord Henry yawned. "Basil was very popular, and always +wore a Waterbury watch. Why should he have been murdered? +He was not clever enough to have enemies. Of course, +he had a wonderful genius for painting. But a man can +paint like Velasquez and yet be as dull as possible. +Basil was really rather dull. He only interested me once, +and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild +adoration for you and that you were the dominant motive of +his art." +"I was very fond of Basil," said Dorian with a note of sadness in his voice. +"But don't people say that he was murdered?" +"Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all probable. +I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man +to have gone to them. He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect." +"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?" +said the younger man. He watched him intently after he had spoken. +"I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character +that doesn't suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity +is crime. It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. +I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you +it is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. +I don't blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that +crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring +extraordinary sensations." +"A method of procuring sensations? Do you think, then, that a man +who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? +Don't tell me that." +"Oh anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," +cried Lord Henry, laughing. "That is one of the most important secrets +of life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. +One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner. +But let us pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had +come to such a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can't. I +dare say he fell into the Seine off an omnibus and that the conductor +hushed up the scandal. Yes I should fancy that was his end. +I see him lying now on his back under those dullgreen waters, +with the heavy barges floating over him and long weeds catching +in his hair. Do you know, I don't think he would have done much +more good work. During the last ten years his painting had gone off +very much." +Dorian heaved a sigh, and Lord Henry strolled across the room +and began to stroke the head of a curious Java parrot, a large, +greyplumaged bird with pink crest and tail, that was balancing +itself upon a bamboo perch. As his pointed fingers touched it, +it dropped the white scurf of crinkled lids over black, +glasslike eyes and began to sway backwards and forwards. +"Yes," he continued, turning round and taking his handkerchief +out of his pocket "his painting had quite gone off. +It seemed to me to have lost something. It had lost an ideal. +When you and he ceased to be great friends, he ceased to be a +great artist. What was it separated you? I suppose he bored you. +If so, he never forgave you. It's a habit bores have. +By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait +he did of you? I don't think I have ever seen it since +he finished it. Oh I remember your telling me years ago +that you had sent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid +or stolen on the way. You never got it back? What a pity +it was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it. +I wish I had now. It belonged to Basil's best period. +Since then, his work was that curious mixture of bad painting +and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called +a representative British artist. Did you advertise for it? +You should." +"I forget," said Dorian. "I suppose I did. But I never really liked it. +I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me. +Why do you talk of it? It used to remind me of those curious lines +in some playHamlet, I thinkhow do they run? +"Like the painting of a sorrow, +A face without a heart." +Yes that is what it was like." +Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, +his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an armchair. +Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano. +"'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without +a heart.'" +The elder man lay back and looked at him with halfclosed eyes. +"By the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "'what does it profit +a man if he gain the whole world and losehow does the quotation run? +his own soul'?" +The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend. +"Why do you ask me that, Harry?" +"My dear fellow," said Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows in surprise, +"I asked you because I thought you might be able to give me an answer. +That is all. I was going through the park last Sunday, and close by the +Marble Arch there stood a little crowd of shabbylooking people listening +to some vulgar streetpreacher. As I passed by, I heard the man yelling +out that question to his audience. It struck me as being rather dramatic. +London is very rich in curious effects of that kind. A wet Sunday, +an uncouth Christian in a mackintosh, a ring of sickly white faces under +a broken roof of dripping umbrellas, and a wonderful phrase flung into +the air by shrill hysterical lipsit was really very good in its way, +quite a suggestion. I thought of telling the prophet that art had +a soul, but that man had not. I am afraid, however, he would not have +understood me." +"Don't, Harry. The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, +and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. +There is a soul in each one of us. I know it." +"Do you feel quite sure of that, Dorian?" +"Quite sure." +"Ah then it must be an illusion. The things one feels +absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality +of faith, and the lesson of romance. How grave you are +Don't be so serious. What have you or I to do with the superstitions +of our age? No we have given up our belief in the soul. +Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, +tell me, in a low voice, how you have kept your youth. +You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than +you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. You are +really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming +than you do tonight. You remind me of the day I saw you first. +You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. +You have changed, of course, but not in appearance. +I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth +I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, +get up early, or be respectable. Youth There is nothing +like it. It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. +The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect +are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. +Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, +I always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. +If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, +they solemnly give you the opinions current in , +when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew +absolutely nothing. How lovely that thing you are playing is +I wonder, did Chopin write it at Majorca, with the sea weeping +round the villa and the salt spray dashing against the panes? +It is marvellously romantic. What a blessing it is +that there is one art left to us that is not imitative +Don't stop. I want music tonight. It seems to me that you +are the young Apollo and that I am Marsyas listening to you. +I have sorrows, Dorian, of my own, that even you know nothing of. +The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one +is young. I am amazed sometimes at my own sincerity. +Ah, Dorian, how happy you are What an exquisite life +you have had You have drunk deeply of everything. +You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has +been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than +the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the +same." +"I am not the same, Harry." +"Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be. +Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type. +Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. +You need not shake your head you know you are. Besides, Dorian, +don't deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. +Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly builtup +cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. +You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance +tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume +that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, +a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, +a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play +I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. +Browning writes about that somewhere but our own senses will imagine +them for us. There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes +suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life +over again. I wish I could change places with you, Dorian. The world +has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. +It always will worship you. You are the type of what the age +is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am +so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, +or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself +Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are +your sonnets." +Dorian rose up from the piano and passed his hand through his hair. +"Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going +to have the same life, Harry. And you must not say these +extravagant things to me. You don't know everything about me. +I think that if you did, even you would turn from me. You laugh. +Don't laugh." +"Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me +the nocturne over again. Look at that great, honeycoloured moon +that hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, +and if you play she will come closer to the earth. You won't? +Let us go to the club, then. It has been a charming evening, +and we must end it charmingly. There is some one at White's who wants +immensely to know youyoung Lord Poole, Bournemouth's eldest son. +He has already copied your neckties, and has begged me to introduce +him to you. He is quite delightful and rather reminds me of you." +"I hope not," said Dorian with a sad look in his eyes. +"But I am tired tonight, Harry. I shan't go to the club. +It is nearly eleven, and I want to go to bed early." +"Do stay. You have never played so well as tonight. There was something +in your touch that was wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever +heard from it before." +"It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling. +"I am a little changed already." +"You cannot change to me, Dorian," said Lord Henry. "You and I will always +be friends." +"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. +Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. +It does harm." +"My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will +soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist, +warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. +You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. +You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. +As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. +Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire +to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world +calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. +That is all. But we won't discuss literature. Come round +tomorrow. I am going to ride at eleven. We might go together, +and I will take you to lunch afterwards with Lady Branksome. +She is a charming woman, and wants to consult you about some +tapestries she is thinking of buying. Mind you come. Or shall we +lunch with our little duchess? She says she never sees you now. +Perhaps you are tired of Gladys? I thought you would be. +Her clever tongue gets on one's nerves. Well, in any case, be here at +eleven." +"Must I really come, Harry?" +"Certainly. The park is quite lovely now. I don't think there +have been such lilacs since the year I met you." +"Very well. I shall be here at eleven," said Dorian. +"Good night, Harry." As he reached the door, he hesitated +for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then he sighed +and went out. +CHAPTER +It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm and did +not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled home, +smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. +He heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." +He remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, +or stared at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now. +Half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately +was that no one knew who he was. He had often told the girl whom +he had lured to love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. +He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him +and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly. +What a laugh she hadjust like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had +been in her cotton dresses and her large hats She knew nothing, but she had +everything that he had lost. +When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. +He sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, +and began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said +to him. +Was it really true that one could never change? He felt +a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood +his rosewhite boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it. +He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with +corruption and given horror to his fancy that he had been +an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy +in being so and that of the lives that had crossed his own, +it had been the fairest and the most full of promise that +he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? +Was there no hope for him? +Ah in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had +prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, +and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth +All his failure had been due to that. Better for him that each sin +of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it. +There was purification in punishment. Not "Forgive us our sins" +but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a +most just God. +The curiously carved mirror that Lord Henry had given +to him, so many years ago now, was standing on the table, +and the whitelimbed Cupids laughed round it as of old. +He took it up, as he had done on that night of horror +when he had first noted the change in the fatal picture, +and with wild, teardimmed eyes looked into its polished shield. +Once, some one who had terribly loved him had written +to him a mad letter, ending with these idolatrous words +"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. +The curves of your lips rewrite history." The phrases came back +to his memory, and he repeated them over and over to himself. +Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on +the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. +It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth +that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life +might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him +but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? +A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, +and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had +spoiled him. +It was better not to think of the past. Nothing could alter that. +It was of himself, and of his own future, that he had to think. +James Vane was hidden in a nameless grave in Selby churchyard. +Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, +but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to know. +The excitement, such as it was, over Basil Hallward's +disappearance would soon pass away. It was already waning. +He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death +of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. +It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. +Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life. +He could not forgive him that. It was the portrait that had +done everything. Basil had said things to him that were unbearable, +and that he had yet borne with patience. The murder had +been simply the madness of a moment. As for Alan Campbell, +his suicide had been his own act. He had chosen to do it. +It was nothing to him. +A new life That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for. +Surely he had begun it already. He had spared one innocent thing, +at any rate. He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good. +As he thought of Hetty Merton, he began to wonder if the portrait in the +locked room had changed. Surely it was not still so horrible as it had been? +Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil +passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. +He would go and look. +He took the lamp from the table and crept upstairs. As he unbarred the door, +a smile of joy flitted across his strangely younglooking face and lingered +for a moment about his lips. Yes, he would be good, and the hideous thing +that he had hidden away would no longer be a terror to him. He felt as if +the load had been lifted from him already. +He went in quietly, locking the door behind him, as was +his custom, and dragged the purple hanging from the portrait. +A cry of pain and indignation broke from him. He could see +no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning +and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite. +The thing was still loathsomemore loathsome, if possible, +than beforeand the scarlet dew that spotted the hand +seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled. +Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made +him do his one good deed? Or the desire for a new sensation, +as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh? +Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do +things finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these? +And why was the red stain larger than it had been? It seemed +to have crept like a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers. +There was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing +had drippedblood even on the hand that had not held +the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess? +To give himself up and be put to death? He laughed. +He felt that the idea was monstrous. Besides, even if +he did confess, who would believe him? There was no trace +of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him +had been destroyed. He himself had burned what had been +belowstairs. The world would simply say that he was mad. +They would shut him up if he persisted in his story. +. . . Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, +and to make public atonement. There was a God who called +upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. +Nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had +told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his shoulders. +The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him. +He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror, +this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. +Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more +in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. +At least he thought so. But who could tell? . . . No. There +had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. +In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's +sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that +now. +But this murderwas it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be +burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was +only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself +that was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? +Once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. +Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. +When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes +should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. +Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been +like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would +destroy it. +He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. +He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. +It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, +so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant. +It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free. +It would kill this monstrous soullife, and without its hideous warnings, +he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture +with it. +There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible +in its agony that the frightened servants woke and crept +out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in +the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house. +They walked on till they met a policeman and brought him back. +The man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. +Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. +After a time, he went away and stood in an adjoining portico +and watched. +"Whose house is that, Constable?" asked the elder of the two gentlemen. +"Mr. Dorian Gray's, sir," answered the policeman. +They looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered. +One of them was Sir Henry Ashton's uncle. +Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the halfclad +domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. +Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing her hands. Francis was +as pale as death. +After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen +and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out. +Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force the door, +they got on the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. The windows +yielded easilytheir bolts were old. +When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid +portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all +the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor +was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. +He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. +It was not till they had examined the rings that they +recognized who it was. +End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Dorian Gray +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dracula, by Bram Stoker +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. +Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts +eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since +These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers +Title Dracula +Author Bram Stoker +Release Date October, [EBook ] +[Most recently updated August , ] +Edition +Language English +Character set encoding USASCII + START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DRACULA +Etext revised by Voltage Spike +DRACULA +by +Bram Stoker + edition +CHAPTER +Jonathan Harker's Journal + May. Bistritz.Left Munich at P.M., on st May, arriving at +Vienna early next morning should have arrived at , but train was +an hour late. BudaPesth 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. Mem. get recipe for Mina. 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 wellknown 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. Mem., +I must ask the Count all about them. +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 eggplant stuffed with +forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". Mem., +get recipe for this also. +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 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 homemade 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 cowboy hats, great baggy dirtywhite +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 selfassertion. +It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is +a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontierfor +the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovinait 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 , 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 oldfashioned, 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 +cheerylooking elderly woman in the usual peasant dresswhite +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." + MayI 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 + 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 doorcame 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. Mem., I +must ask the Count about these superstitions. +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 kindhearted, 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 themcracked 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 fellowpassengers 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 blossomapple, 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, snowcovered 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 mountaintop 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 selfsurrender of devotion to have neither eyes nor ears for the +outer world. There were many things new to me. For instance, +hayricks 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 leiterwagonthe ordinary peasants's +cartwith 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 +lancefashion 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 latelying 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 +ghostlike 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 pleasantryfor 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 fearmeaning movements which I had +seen outside the hotel at Bistritzthe 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 +harddriven 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 coalblack 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 hardlooking mouth, +with very red lips and sharplooking teeth, as white as ivory. One of +my companions whispered to another the line from Burger's "Lenore". +"Denn die Todten reiten Schnell." "For the dead travel fast." +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 the plum brandy of the country 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. +Byandby, 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 horsetamers 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, pineclad 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 +Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued + 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 fullblown 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 welllit 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 cruellooking, 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 + May.It is again early morning, but I have rested and enjoyed the +last twentyfour 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 motheaten. 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 tooflattering 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, darklooking pond +or small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear +and flows away in a fairsized 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 not 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. + 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 heI 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 watchcase +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 +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. Mem., this +diary seems horribly like the beginning of the "Arabian Nights," for +everything has to break off at cockcrow, or like the ghost of Hamlet's +father. + 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. , 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, stonemullioned, 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. + 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 motheaten. 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 illspelt love letter, and writing in my diary in +shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is the +nineteenth century uptodate 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 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 +gloomhaunted 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, honeysweet, 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 whitehot 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 +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. + 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. + 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 , +the second June , and the third June ." +I know now the span of my life. God help me + 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. + 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 . . . + 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 leiterwagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and +at the head of each pair a Slovak, with his wide hat, great +nailstudded 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 +leiterwagons 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. + 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 faraway 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 halfremembered 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 pentup 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? + 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 postdated 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 nighttime 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, tunnellike 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. + 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 pointblank, "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 +bluntclawed 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 + 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 irongrey. The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin +seemed rubyred 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 everwidening circle of +semidemons 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, +bloodstained 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 +LETTER FROM MISS MINA MURRAY TO MISS LUCY WESTENRA + 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 twopagestotheweekwithSundaysqueezed +inacorner 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, curlyhaired man??? +LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA MURRAY +, 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 +picturegalleries and for walks and rides in the park. As +to the tall, curlyhaired 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 nineand 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 + 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 lovemaking, 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 Kept in phonograph + 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. +Mem., Under what circumstances would I not avoid the pit 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 . 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 mentallyaccomplished +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 + 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 + May +Count me in every time. I bear messages which will make both +your ears tingle. +Art +CHAPTER +MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL + 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 townthe side away +from us, are all redroofed, 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 feetfolks +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 fooltalk." +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 granddaughter 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 +bellytimber 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. + 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 +outargue 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 fooltalk, lock, stock, and barrel, that's what it be and +nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' bohghosts an' barguests an' +bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women +a'belderin'. They be nowt but airblebs. They, an' all grims an' signs +an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome berkbodies 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 deathsarks, 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 selfsatisfied 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 +balmbowl 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 +bierbank, read it" +I went over and read, "Edward Spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by +pirates off the coast of Andres, April, , age ." 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 ', or Andrew +Woodhouse, drowned in the same seas in , 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 '. 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 thruffstone," 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 ,, 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 Haha But that's because ye don't gawm +the sorrowin' mother was a hellcat 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 stubblefield. 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 heartsick, 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 + 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. + 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. + 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. + 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. + JulyWe 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. + 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. + 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. + 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" + 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 lifeeating +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 BurdonSanderson'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 + 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 sleepwalkers 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. + 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 rosepink. She has lost the anemic look which she had. I +pray it will all last. + 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. + 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 +seamists 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 krokhooal, 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 +CUTTING FROM "THE DAILYGRAPH", AUGUST +PASTED IN MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL +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 holidaymakers 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 southwest in the +mild degree which in barometrical language is ranked 'No. , 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 overtopping its fellow, till in a +very few minutes the lately glassy sea was like a roaring and +devouring monster. Whitecrested 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 seafog 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 seamist 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 stormtossed +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 seafog, 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 'tophammer' 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 throughstones, 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 Drawbridge 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 , 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. + 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 , The Crescent, who this morning went aboard and took formal +possession of the goods consigned to him. +The Russian consul, too, acting for the charterparty, 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 halfbred 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 July, things so strange happening, that I shall +keep accurate note henceforth till we land. +On 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, captain. +On July at dawn entered Bosphorus. Boarded by Turkish +Customs officers. Backsheesh. All correct. Under way at + p.m. +On 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 July passed Cape Matapan. Crew dissatisfied about +something. Seemed scared, but would not speak out. +On 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 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 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. + 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. + 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. + 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. + 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. + 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. + 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. + 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. + 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 +wildeyed 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? + 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 + 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 sleepwalking, 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, grimlooking 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 + 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 sleepwalking then. +CHAPTER +MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL +Same day, 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 oldfashioned inn, with a bow +window right over the seaweedcovered 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. + 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. Dressinggown would mean house, dress outside. +Dressinggown 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 evergrowing 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 overmastering 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 swordcut +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 halfreclining +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 fishmarket 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 halfreclining 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 byandby, 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 +sleepwalking 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 safetypin 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 pinpricks, 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 +cliffpath 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. + 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. + 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. + 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 goodsized 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. + 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 sleepwalking. + 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 +safetypin. 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. + 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 tonight, and will be +due at King's Cross at 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. + August. +"Dear Sirs,We beg to acknowledge pounds received and to return +cheque of pound, s, d, 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. + 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 wanlooking. 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 +halfdreaming 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. + 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 BUDAPESTH, TO MISS WILLHELMINA MURRAY + 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 + 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 selffeeling 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 +lackluster 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?" Spiders at present are his hobby and the notebook is filling +up with columns of small figures. +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 +ironbound 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 +LETTER, MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA +BudaPesth, 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 weaklooking. 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 +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 husbandoh, 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 everloving +Mina Harker." +LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA HARKER. +Whitby, 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 September." +DR. SEWARDS DIARY + 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 fullgrown 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. + 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, 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. + 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, 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 + 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 + 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 icebrook, and +indomitable resolution, selfcommand, 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 allembracing 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 + 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 + 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 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 as she always is, 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 +overanxious unless you hear from me." +DR. SEWARD'S DIARY + 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, woebegone 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 +" September.Patient still better today." +TELEGRAM, SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM +" September.Patient greatly improved. Good appetite, sleeps +naturally, good spirits, colour coming back." +TELEGRAM, SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM +" 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 +LETTER, DR. SEWARD TO HON. ARTHUR HOLMWOOD + 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 + 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 notsofaroff 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 DIARYCONTINUED + 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 poohpoohed 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, lifegiving, healthgiving 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. + 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 + 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 + 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, catlike 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 wanlooking 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 notimprobable. 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. + 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 way 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 +LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY + 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 + 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, strongsmelling 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 selfcommand 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 + 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 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 +acomin' and arskin' of me questions about my business, and I that +grumplike that only for your bloomin' 'arfquid 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 'arfquid made that all +right. I weren't agoin' 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 acomin' 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 wellbehaved 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 atearin' 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, aimitatin' 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 +atalkin' 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' alookin' 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 acallin' 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 acomin' '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 ahuntin' 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 escapedsimply 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 +halfsovereign 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 achaffin' of ye, but the old woman here 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 agallopin' 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 +ashinin' 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 perambulatorwell, +then I shouldn't be surprised if the census is one babby the less. +That's all." +I was handing him the halfsovereign, 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 wellbehaved as that father of +all picturewolves, 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 agettin' 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 + 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 +Sent to Carfax, Sussex, as no county given, delivered late +by twentytwo hours. + 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 + 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 + 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 sleepwalking 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 heroh did usewas +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 +DR. SEWARD'S DIARY + 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 pitpat 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 standup 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 subcutaneous 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 +forestalling 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 halfwhisper. "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. + 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 +Unopened by her + 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 rooksand 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 + 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 foulmouthed 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 wellbehaved 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 Unopened by her + 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 + 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 sleepwaking, 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 +DR. SEWARD'S DIARYcont. +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, brotherprofessional 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 postmortem +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 postmortem 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 +ninetynine 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 +objectlesson 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 +muchtried 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 + 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 +sadlooking 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 cartwheel 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 DIARYCONT. + 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 husbandheart to the quick, and make my fatherheart +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 nownowife, 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 lifework, I say sadly and without hope, "FINIS". +THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 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 grubbyfaced 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, 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 +MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL + 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. + 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 + September +Confidence +"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 that was Arthur of Miss Lucy. 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 + 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 + 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 +sleepwalking, 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 sleepwalking 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 halfpast 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, wellsized, broad, and large behind the +ears. The face, cleanshaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large +resolute, mobile mouth, a goodsized 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 sleepwalking 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 overanxious. 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 halfpast eleven, and you must come to lunch +with us and see him then. You could catch the quick 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 by hand, VAN HELSING TO MRS. HARKER + September, 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 + September, 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 tonight +from Launceston and will be here at , 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 + train, which will bring you to Paddington by . 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 + 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, +strongfaced 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 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 + 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 halfpast 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 sixtynine, 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 +DR. SEWARD'S DIARYcont. +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 timediscoloured stone, and dustencrusted mortar, +and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silverplating +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 weekold 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 bodysnatcher," 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 railedoff +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. + 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, sleepwalking, 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. Not Delivered + 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 + 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. + 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 +DR SEWARD'S DIARYcont. +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 goodsized 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, waferlike 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 faraway +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 "Ssss" 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 darkhaired 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 fairhaired 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 deathrobe. +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 coldbloodedness 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, +bloodstained 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 overmuch. 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. + 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 halfpast 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 UnDeads 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, bloodcurdling 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 +mercybearing 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 our 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 +DR. SEWARD'S DIARYcont. +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 sweetfaced, 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 + 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 halfdozen 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 + 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 +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 + 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 + 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 they are 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 outbreaks 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 + 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. + 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 waybill 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 + 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 saw 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 +DR. SEWARD'S DIARY + 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 + 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, matteroffact 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 devilbegotten 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 earthhome, his +coffinhome, his hellhome, 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 manthatwas, 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 BudaPesth 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 + October, 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 farreaching +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 medicojurist 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 legironed, 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, wellbred 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 +JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL + October, 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 timeyellowed +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 twentynine 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 ironbound 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 +pellmell 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. + 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 twentyone 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 + 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 thickheaded 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 + 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 +lowspirited 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 may 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. It is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us, and how +conveniently we can imagine. 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 got 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. + October 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 +JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL + 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 +dogeared notebook, which he produced from some mysterious receptacle +about the seat of his trousers, and which had hieroglyphical entries +in thick, halfobliterated 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 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 southwest 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. + October, eveningA 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, 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 "newfangled 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 "newfangled +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 if 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. Byandby 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 + 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 wellbeing, 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 +highhorse 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 selfcontrol, 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. +" 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. , Piccadilly. The +original vendors are the executors of the late Mr. Archibald +WinterSuffield. 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 + 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 flycatching, 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 +DR. SEWARD'S DIARY + 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 crossbones 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'shead +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 +whiteclad 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 tornopen +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 earpiercing, 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 winepress 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 +JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL + 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 whitehot 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, 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 sprucelooking 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 fourwheeler drive up. Out of it, in leisurely +fashion, got Lord Godalming and Morris. And down from the box +descended a thickset working man with his rushwoven 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 +DR. SEWARD'S DIARY + 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, happylooking 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 griefwritten 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 BudaPesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, +statesman, and alchemistwhich 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 childbrain of his is working. Well for us, it is +as yet a childbrain. 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 childbrain 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, , 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 lionlike 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 heart. As it was, the point just cut the cloth of 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 +greenishyellow 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 +heartbroken 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 + 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 . . . +LaterI 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. + 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 +faraway 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 +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 earthwork 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 + 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 + October, 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 childbrain 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 + 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 th 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. + 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 everlasting 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 +DR SEWARD'S DIARY + 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 hotchpot." 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 fastfalling 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 waneyed 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 +vvoices . . . ffail mme +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 + October, Varna.We left Charing Cross on the morning of the th, +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 + 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. + 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. + 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 TH 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 + 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 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. + 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, icecold 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 + 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. + 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. + 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 + 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 willo'thewisp 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 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 childbrain 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, "Seventytwo 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 +DR. SEWARD'S DIARY + 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. + October, 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 + 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 + 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." Burgenstrasse + 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 + 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 +ENTERED IN HER JOURNAL +Ground of inquiry.Count Dracula's problem is to get back +to his own place. +a 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. +b How is he to be taken?Here a process of exclusions may +help us. By road, by rail, by water? +. By Road.There are endless difficulties, especially in +leaving the city. +x 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. +y There are, or there may be, customs and octroi officers +to pass. +z 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 +. 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. +. 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 JOURNALCONTINUED +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. Why did +I hesitate to write the word? +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 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 + 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 th 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 . . . + 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. + 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. + 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 + 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. + 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. + 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 + 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 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 +MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL + 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. + 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. + 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 fourinhand. 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 + 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 allinall 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. + 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 + 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 + 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 + 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 snowstilled +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 + 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 + END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, DRACULA +This file should be named dracu.txt or dracu.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, dracu.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, dracua.txt +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called +Pip. +I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his +tombstone and my sister Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the +blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw +any likeness of either of them for their days were long before the +days of photographs, my first fancies regarding what they were +like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of +the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a +square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character +and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I +drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. +To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, +which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were +sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine who gave up +trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal +struggle I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained +that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in +their trouserspockets, and had never taken them out in this state +of existence. +Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river +wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad +impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been +gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time +I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with +nettles was the churchyard and that Philip Pirrip, late of this +parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried +and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant +children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried and that the +dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes +and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the +marshes and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river and +that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was +the sea and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it +all and beginning to cry, was Pip. +"Hold your noise" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from +among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you +little devil, or I'll cut your throat" +A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A +man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied +round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered +in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by +nettles, and torn by briars who limped, and shivered, and glared +and growled and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me +by the chin. +"O Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do +it, sir." +"Tell us your name" said the man. "Quick" +"Pip, sir." +"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth" +"Pip. Pip, sir." +"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place" +I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat inshore among the +aldertrees and pollards, a mile or more from the church. +The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, +and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of +bread. When the church came to itself for he was so sudden and +strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the +steeple under my feet when the church came to itself, I say, I +was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread +ravenously. +"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks +you ha' got." +I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for +my years, and not strong. +"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening +shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't" +I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to +the tombstone on which he had put me partly, to keep myself upon +it partly, to keep myself from crying. +"Now lookee here" said the man. "Where's your mother?" +"There, sir" said I. +He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his +shoulder. +"There, sir" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my +mother." +"Oh" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your +mother?" +"Yes, sir," said I "him too late of this parish." +"Ha" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with +supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind +about?" +"My sister, sir Mrs. Joe Gargery wife of Joe Gargery, the +blacksmith, sir." +"Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg. +After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came +closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as +far as he could hold me so that his eyes looked most powerfully +down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his. +"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to +be let to live. You know what a file is?" +"Yes, sir." +"And you know what wittles is?" +"Yes, sir." +After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give +me a greater sense of helplessness and danger. +"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." +He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. +"Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again. +I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with +both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep +upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could +attend more." +He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church +jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in +an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these +fearful terms +"You bring me, tomorrow morning early, that file and them wittles. +You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do +it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign +concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person +sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my +words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart +and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't +alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in +comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears +the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to +himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. +It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young +man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself +up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself +comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and +creep his way to him and tear him open. I am akeeping that young +man from harming of you at the present moment, with great +difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your +inside. Now, what do you say?" +I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what +broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the +Battery, early in the morning. +"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't" said the man. +I said so, and he took me down. +"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you +remember that young man, and you get home" +"Googood night, sir," I faltered. +"Much of that" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. +"I wish I was a frog. Or a eel" +At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms +clasping himself, as if to hold himself together and limped +towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among +the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he +looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead +people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a +twist upon his ankle and pull him in. +When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man +whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for +me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made +the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, +and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself +in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the +great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for +steppingplaces when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in. +The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I +stopped to look after him and the river was just another +horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black and the sky +was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines +intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the +only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be +standing upright one of these was the beacon by which the sailors +steered like an unhooped cask upon a pole an ugly thing when +you were near it the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to +it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards +this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, +and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn +when I thought so and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to +gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked +all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of +him. But, now I was frightened again, and ran home without +stopping. +Chapter +My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than +I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the +neighbours because she had brought me up "by hand." Having at that +time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing +her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of +laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe +Gargery and I were both brought up by hand. +She was not a goodlooking woman, my sister and I had a general +impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. +Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his +smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they +seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a +mild, goodnatured, sweettempered, easygoing, foolish, dear +fellow a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness. +My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing +redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was +possible she washed herself with a nutmeggrater instead of soap. +She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, +fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square +impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. +She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach +against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see +no reason why she should have worn it at all or why, if she did +wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, every day of her +life. +Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many +of the dwellings in our country were most of them, at that time. +When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe +was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellowsufferers, +and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, +the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him +opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner. +"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And +she's out now, making it a baker's dozen." +"Is she?" +"Yes, Pip," said Joe "and what's worse, she's got Tickler with +her." +At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my +waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the +fire. Tickler was a waxended piece of cane, worn smooth by +collision with my tickled frame. +"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab at +Tickler, and she Rampaged out. That's what she did," said Joe, +slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and +looking at it "she Rampaged out, Pip." +"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always treated him as a larger +species of child, and as no more than my equal. +"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been on +the Rampage, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a +coming Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jacktowel +betwixt you." +I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, +and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the +cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She +concluded by throwing me I often served as a connubial missile +at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into +the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg. +"Where have you been, you young monkey?" said Mrs. Joe, stamping her +foot. "Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away with +fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner if +you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys." +"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, from my stool, crying +and rubbing myself. +"Churchyard" repeated my sister. "If it warn't for me you'd have +been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you +up by hand?" +"You did," said I. +"And why did I do it, I should like to know?" exclaimed my sister. +I whimpered, "I don't know." +"I don't" said my sister. "I'd never do it again I know that. I +may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since born you +were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife and him a Gargery +without being your mother." +My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately +at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed +leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful +pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering +premises, rose before me in the avenging coals. +"Hah" said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. "Churchyard, +indeed You may well say churchyard, you two." One of us, +bythebye, had not said it at all. "You'll drive me to the +churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a prrrecious +pair you'd be without me" +As she applied herself to set the teathings, Joe peeped down at me +over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and +calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the +grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his +rightside flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about +with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times. +My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our breadandbutter for +us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the +loaf hard and fast against her bib where it sometimes got a pin +into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our +mouths. Then she took some butter not too much on a knife and +spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were +making a plaister using both sides of the knife with a slapping +dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the +crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of +the plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf which +she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two +halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other. +On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my +slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful +acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I +knew Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that +my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe. +Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of breadandbutter down the +leg of my trousers. +The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this +purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up +my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a +great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the +unconscious Joe. In our alreadymentioned freemasonry as +fellowsufferers, and in his goodnatured companionship with me, it +was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices, +by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and then +which stimulated us to new exertions. Tonight, Joe several times +invited me, by the display of his fastdiminishing slice, to enter +upon our usual friendly competition but he found me, each time, +with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched +breadandbutter on the other. At last, I desperately considered +that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had best be +done in the least improbable manner consistent with the +circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just +looked at me, and got my breadandbutter down my leg. +Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my +loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, +which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much +longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all +gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and +had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when +his eye fell on me, and he saw that my breadandbutter was gone. +The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the +threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape +my sister's observation. +"What's the matter now?" said she, smartly, as she put down her +cup. +"I say, you know" muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very +serious remonstrance. "Pip, old chap You'll do yourself a +mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip." +"What's the matter now?" repeated my sister, more sharply than +before. +"If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do +it," said Joe, all aghast. "Manners is manners, but still your +elth's your elth." +By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe, +and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little +while against the wall behind him while I sat in the corner, +looking guiltily on. +"Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter," said my sister, +out of breath, "you staring great stuck pig." +Joe looked at her in a helpless way then took a helpless bite, and +looked at me again. +"You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his +cheek and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite +alone, "you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell +upon you, any time. But such a" he moved his chair and looked +about the floor between us, and then again at me "such a most +oncommon Bolt as that" +"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried my sister. +"You know, old chap," said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe, +with his bite still in his cheek, "I Bolted, myself, when I was +your age frequent and as a boy I've been among a many Bolters +but I never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you +ain't Bolted dead." +My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair saying +nothing more than the awful words, "You come along and be dosed." +Some medical beast had revived Tarwater in those days as a fine +medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard +having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At +the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as +a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling +like a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case +demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, +for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, +as a boot would be held in a bootjack. Joe got off with half a +pint but was made to swallow that much to his disturbance, as he +sat slowly munching and meditating before the fire, "because he had +had a turn." Judging from myself, I should say he certainly had a +turn afterwards, if he had had none before. +Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy but +when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden cooperates with +another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is as I can +testify a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going +to rob Mrs. Joe I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I +never thought of any of the housekeeping property as his united +to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my breadandbutter +as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small +errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh winds +made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside, +of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy, +declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until tomorrow, but +must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the young man +who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands +in me, should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should +mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart +and liver tonight, instead of tomorrow If ever anybody's hair +stood on end with terror, mine must have done so then. But, +perhaps, nobody's ever did? +It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day, +with a copperstick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I +tried it with the load upon my leg and that made me think afresh +of the man with the load on his leg, and found the tendency of +exercise to bring the breadandbutter out at my ankle, quite +unmanageable. Happily, I slipped away, and deposited that part of +my conscience in my garret bedroom. +"Hark" said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final +warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed "was that +great guns, Joe?" +"Ah" said Joe. "There's another conwict off." +"What does that mean, Joe?" said I. +Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said, +snappishly, "Escaped. Escaped." Administering the definition like +Tarwater. +While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put +my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, "What's a convict?" Joe +put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate +answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the single word +"Pip." +"There was a conwict off last night," said Joe, aloud, "after +sunsetgun. And they fired warning of him. And now, it appears +they're firing warning of another." +"Who's firing?" said I. +"Drat that boy," interposed my sister, frowning at me over her +work, "what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you'll be +told no lies." +It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should +be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she never was +polite, unless there was company. +At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the +utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the +form of a word that looked to me like "sulks." Therefore, I +naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of +saying "her?" But Joe wouldn't hear of that, at all, and again +opened his mouth very wide, and shook the form of a most emphatic +word out of it. But I could make nothing of the word. +"Mrs. Joe," said I, as a last resort, "I should like to know if +you wouldn't much mind where the firing comes from?" +"Lord bless the boy" exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't quite +mean that, but rather the contrary. "From the Hulks" +"Ohh" said I, looking at Joe. "Hulks" +Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, "Well, I told you +so." +"And please what's Hulks?" said I. +"That's the way with this boy" exclaimed my sister, pointing me +out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. "Answer +him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are +prisonships, right 'cross th' meshes." We always used that name +for marshes, in our country. +"I wonder who's put into prisonships, and why they're put there?" +said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation. +It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. "I tell you +what, young fellow," said she, "I didn't bring you up by hand to +badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise, +if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and +because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad and they +always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed" +I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went +upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling from Mrs. Joe's +thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last +words I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the +Hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun +by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe. +Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought +that few people know what secrecy there is in the young, under +terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be +terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart +and liver I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the +ironed leg I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful +promise had been extracted I had no hope of deliverance through my +allpowerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn I am afraid to +think of what I might have done, on requirement, in the secrecy of +my terror. +If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself +drifting down the river on a strong springtide, to the Hulks a +ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speakingtrumpet, as I +passed the gibbetstation, that I had better come ashore and be +hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, +even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint +dawn of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the +night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then to +have got one, I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and +have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains. +As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was +shot with grey, I got up and went down stairs every board upon the +way, and every crack in every board, calling after me, "Stop +thief" and "Get up, Mrs. Joe" In the pantry, which was far more +abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very +much alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather +thought I caught, when my back was half turned, winking. I had no +time for verification, no time for selection, no time for anything, +for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread, some rind of +cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat which I tied up in my +pockethandkerchief with my last night's slice, some brandy from a +stone bottle which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly +used for making that intoxicating fluid, Spanishliquoricewater, +up in my room diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen +cupboard, a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful +round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the pie, +but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that +was put away so carefully in a covered earthen ware dish in a +corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it, in the hope that +it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for some +time. +There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge I +unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's +tools. Then, I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the +door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, +and ran for the misty marshes. +Chapter +It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on +the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying +there all night, and using the window for a pockethandkerchief. +Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like +a coarser sort of spiders' webs hanging itself from twig to twig +and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy and the +marshmist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post +directing people to our village a direction which they never +accepted, for they never came there was invisible to me until I +was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it +dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom +devoting me to the Hulks. +The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that +instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at +me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and +dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they +cried as plainly as could be, "A boy with Somebodyelse's pork pie +Stop him" The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring +out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, "Holloa, +young thief" One black ox, with a white cravat on who even had +to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air fixed me so +obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such +an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, +"I couldn't help it, sir It wasn't for myself I took it" Upon +which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, +and vanished with a kickup of his hindlegs and a flourish of his +tail. +All this time, I was getting on towards the river but however fast +I went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed +riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was +running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for +I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an +old gun, had told me that when I was 'prentice to him regularly +bound, we would have such Larks there However, in the confusion of +the mist, I found myself at last too far to the right, and +consequently had to try back along the riverside, on the bank of +loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out. +Making my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed a +ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just +scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting +before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and +was nodding forward, heavy with sleep. +I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his +breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and +touched him on the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not +the same man, but another man +And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and had a great +iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was +everything that the other man was except that he had not the same +face, and had a flat broadbrimmed lowcrowned felt that on. All +this, I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see it in he +swore an oath at me, made a hit at me it was a round weak blow +that missed me and almost knocked himself down, for it made him +stumble and then he ran into the mist, stumbling twice as he went, +and I lost him. +"It's the young man" I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I +identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, +too, if I had known where it was. +I was soon at the Battery, after that, and there was the right +manhugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all +night left off hugging and limping waiting for me. He was awfully +cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my +face and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry, +too, that when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the +grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had +not seen my bundle. He did not turn me upside down, this time, to +get at what I had, but left me right side upwards while I opened +the bundle and emptied my pockets. +"What's in the bottle, boy?" said he. +"Brandy," said I. +He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most +curious manner more like a man who was putting it away somewhere +in a violent hurry, than a man who was eating it but he left off +to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the while, so +violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the +neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off. +"I think you have got the ague," said I. +"I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he. +"It's bad about here," I told him. "You've been lying out on the +meshes, and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too." +"I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me," said he. +"I'd do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows +as there is over there, directly afterwards. I'll beat the shivers +so far, I'll bet you." +He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, +all at once staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all +round us, and often stopping even stopping his jaws to listen. +Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing +of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, +suddenly +"You're not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?" +"No, sir No" +"Nor giv' no one the office to follow you?" +"No" +"Well," said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound +indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched +warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched +warmint is" +Something clicked in his throat, as if he had works in him like a +clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough +sleeve over his eyes. +Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled +down upon the pie, I made bold to say, "I am glad you enjoy it." +"Did you speak?" +"I said I was glad you enjoyed it." +"Thankee, my boy. I do." +I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food and I now +noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating, and +the man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the +dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon +and too fast and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, +as if he thought there was danger in every direction, of somebody's +coming to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his +mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably, I thought, or to have +anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at +the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog. +"I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him," said I, timidly +after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness +of making the remark. "There's no more to be got where that came +from." It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer +the hint. +"Leave any for him? Who's him?" said my friend, stopping in his +crunching of piecrust. +"The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you." +"Oh ah" he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. "Him? Yes, +yes He don't want no wittles." +"I thought he looked as if he did," said I. +The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny +and the greatest surprise. +"Looked? When?" +"Just now." +"Where?" +"Yonder," said I, pointing "over there, where I found him nodding +asleep, and thought it was you." +He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think +his first idea about cutting my throat had revived. +"Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat," I explained, +trembling "and and" I was very anxious to put this delicately +"and with the same reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn't +you hear the cannon last night?" +"Then, there was firing" he said to himself. +"I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that," I returned, "for +we heard it up at home, and that's further away, and we were shut +in besides." +"Why, see now" said he. "When a man's alone on these flats, with a +light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he +hears nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. +Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the +torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number +called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, +hears the orders 'Make ready Present Cover him steady, men' and +is laid hands on and there's nothin' Why, if I see one pursuing +party last night coming up in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp, +tramp I see a hundred. And as to firing Why, I see the mist +shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day But this man" he +had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my being there "did +you notice anything in him?" +"He had a badly bruised face," said I, recalling what I hardly knew +I knew. +"Not here?" exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly, +with the flat of his hand. +"Yes, there" +"Where is he?" He crammed what little food was left, into the +breast of his grey jacket. "Show me the way he went. I'll pull him +down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg Give us +hold of the file, boy." +I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man, +and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank +wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or +minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, +but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it +than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had +worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much +afraid of keeping away from home any longer. I told him I must go, +but he took no notice, so I thought the best thing I could do was +to slip off. The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee +and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient +imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him, I +stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going. +Chapter +I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to +take me up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no +discovery had yet been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was +prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of +the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen doorstep to keep +him out of the dustpan an article into which his destiny always +led him sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the +floors of her establishment. +"And where the deuce ha' you been?" was Mrs. Joe's Christmas +salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves. +I said I had been down to hear the Carols. "Ah well" observed Mrs. +Joe. "You might ha' done worse." Not a doubt of that, I thought. +"Perhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and what's the same +thing a slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear +the Carols," said Mrs. Joe. "I'm rather partial to Carols, myself, +and that's the best of reasons for my never hearing any." +Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had +retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a +conciliatory air when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her +eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and +exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross +temper. This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would +often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental +Crusaders as to their legs. +We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled +pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome +mincepie had been made yesterday morning which accounted for the +mincemeat not being missed, and the pudding was already on the +boil. These extensive arrangements occasioned us to be cut off +unceremoniously in respect of breakfast "for I an't," said Mrs. +Joe, "I an't agoing to have no formal cramming and busting and +washing up now, with what I've got before me, I promise you" +So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops +on a forced march instead of a man and boy at home and we took +gulps of milk and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug +on the dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains +up, and tacked a new floweredflounce across the wide chimney to +replace the old one, and uncovered the little state parlour across +the passage, which was never uncovered at any other time, but +passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of silver paper, which +even extended to the four little white crockery poodles on the +mantelshelf, each with a black nose and a basket of flowers in his +mouth, and each the counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe was a very +clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her +cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. +Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by +their religion. +My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously +that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working clothes, Joe +was a wellknit characteristiclooking blacksmith in his holiday +clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than +anything else. Nothing that he wore then, fitted him or seemed to +belong to him and everything that he wore then, grazed him. On the +present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe +bells were going, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday +penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have had some +general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur +Policemen had taken up on my birthday and delivered over to her, +to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I +was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in +opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and +against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I +was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to +make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me +have the free use of my limbs. +Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving +spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside, +was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had +assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of +the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my +mind dwelt on what my hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked +secret, I pondered whether the Church would be powerful enough to +shield me from the vengeance of the terrible young man, if I +divulged to that establishment. I conceived the idea that the time +when the banns were read and when the clergyman said, "Ye are now +to declare it" would be the time for me to rise and propose a +private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure that I +might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to +this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no +Sunday. +Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us and Mr. Hubble +the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble and Uncle Pumblechook Joe's uncle, +but Mrs. Joe appropriated him, who was a welltodo cornchandler +in the nearest town, and drove his own chaisecart. The dinner hour +was halfpast one. When Joe and I got home, we found the table +laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front +door unlocked it never was at any other time for the company to +enter by, and everything most splendid. And still, not a word of +the robbery. +The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, +and the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a +large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was +uncommonly proud of indeed it was understood among his +acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would +read the clergyman into fits he himself confessed that if the +Church was "thrown open," meaning to competition, he would not +despair of making his mark in it. The Church not being "thrown +open," he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the +Amens tremendously and when he gave out the psalm always giving +the whole verse he looked all round the congregation first, as +much as to say, "You have heard my friend overhead oblige me with +your opinion of this style" +I opened the door to the company making believe that it was a +habit of ours to open that door and I opened it first to Mr. +Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle +Pumblechook. N.B., I was not allowed to call him uncle, under the +severest penalties. +"Mrs. Joe," said Uncle Pumblechook a large hardbreathing +middleaged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, +and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as +if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to +"I have brought you, as the compliments of the season I have +brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry wine and I have brought you, +Mum, a bottle of port wine." +Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty, +with exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like +dumbbells. Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now +replied, "Oh, Un cle Pum ble chook This IS kind" Every +Christmas Day, he retorted, as he now retorted, "It's no more than +your merits. And now are you all bobbish, and how's Sixpennorth of +halfpence?" meaning me. +We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the +nuts and oranges and apples, to the parlour which was a change +very like Joe's change from his working clothes to his Sunday +dress. My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and +indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble +than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly +sharpedged person in skyblue, who held a conventionally juvenile +position, because she had married Mr. Hubble I don't know at what +remote period when she was much younger than he. I remember Mr +Hubble as a tough highshouldered stooping old man, of a sawdusty +fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart so that in my +short days I always saw some miles of open country between them +when I met him coming up the lane. +Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn't +robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed +in at an acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table in my +chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was +not allowed to speak I didn't want to speak, nor because I was +regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and +with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living, +had had the least reason to be vain. No I should not have minded +that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't +leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they +failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and +stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little +bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these +moral goads. +It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace +with theatrical declamation as it now appears to me, something +like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the +Third and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be +truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and +said, in a low reproachful voice, "Do you hear that? Be grateful." +"Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be grateful, boy, to them which +brought you up by hand." +Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful +presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, "Why is it that +the young are never grateful?" This moral mystery seemed too much +for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, +"Naterally wicious." Everybody then murmured "True" and looked at +me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner. +Joe's station and influence were something feebler if possible +when there was company, than when there was none. But he always +aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and +he always did so at dinnertime by giving me gravy, if there were +any. There being plenty of gravy today, Joe spooned into my plate, +at this point, about half a pint. +A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with +some severity, and intimated in the usual hypothetical case of +the Church being "thrown open" what kind of sermon he would have +given them. After favouring them with some heads of that discourse, +he remarked that he considered the subject of the day's homily, +illchosen which was the less excusable, he added, when there were +so many subjects "going about." +"True again," said Uncle Pumblechook. "You've hit it, sir Plenty of +subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their +tails. That's what's wanted. A man needn't go far to find a +subject, if he's ready with his saltbox." Mr. Pumblechook added, +after a short interval of reflection, "Look at Pork alone. There's +a subject If you want a subject, look at Pork" +"True, sir. Many a moral for the young," returned Mr. Wopsle and I +knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it "might be +deduced from that text." +"You listen to this," said my sister to me, in a severe +parenthesis. +Joe gave me some more gravy. +"Swine," pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his +fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name +"Swine were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine +is put before us, as an example to the young." I thought this +pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so +plump and juicy. "What is detestable in a pig, is more detestable +in a boy." +"Or girl," suggested Mr. Hubble. +"Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble," assented Mr. Wopsle, rather +irritably, "but there is no girl present." +"Besides," said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, "think what +you've got to be grateful for. If you'd been born a Squeaker" +"He was, if ever a child was," said my sister, most emphatically. +Joe gave me some more gravy. +"Well, but I mean a fourfooted Squeaker," said Mr. Pumblechook. "If +you had been born such, would you have been here now? Not you" +"Unless in that form," said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish. +"But I don't mean in that form, sir," returned Mr. Pumblechook, who +had an objection to being interrupted "I mean, enjoying himself +with his elders and betters, and improving himself with their +conversation, and rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been +doing that? No, he wouldn't. And what would have been your +destination?" turning on me again. "You would have been disposed of +for so many shillings according to the market price of the article, +and Dunstable the butcher would have come up to you as you lay in +your straw, and he would have whipped you under his left arm, and +with his right he would have tucked up his frock to get a penknife +from out of his waistcoatpocket, and he would have shed your +blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then. Not a bit of +it" +Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take. +"He was a world of trouble to you, ma'am," said Mrs. Hubble, +commiserating my sister. +"Trouble?" echoed my sister "trouble?" and then entered on a +fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and +all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high +places I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled +into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she +had wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go +there. +I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with +their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in +consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Roman nose so aggravated me, +during the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to +pull it until he howled. But, all I had endured up to this time, +was nothing in comparison with the awful feelings that took +possession of me when the pause was broken which ensued upon my +sister's recital, and in which pause everybody had looked at me as +I felt painfully conscious with indignation and abhorrence. +"Yet," said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the +theme from which they had strayed, "Pork regarded as biled is +rich, too ain't it?" +"Have a little brandy, uncle," said my sister. +O Heavens, it had come at last He would find it was weak, he would +say it was weak, and I was lost I held tight to the leg of the +table under the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate. +My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone +bottle, and poured his brandy out no one else taking any. The +wretched man trifled with his glass took it up, looked at it +through the light, put it down prolonged my misery. All this +time, Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the table for the pie +and pudding. +I couldn't keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of +the table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature +finger his glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, +and drink the brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were +seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to +his feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic +whoopingcough dance, and rushing out at the door he then became +visible through the window, violently plunging and expectorating, +making the most hideous faces, and apparently out of his mind. +I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn't know +how I had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow. +In my dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought back, +and, surveying the company all round as if they had disagreed with +him, sank down into his chair with the one significant gasp, "Tar" +I had filled up the bottle from the tarwater jug. I knew he would +be worse byandby. I moved the table, like a Medium of the present +day, by the vigour of my unseen hold upon it. +"Tar" cried my sister, in amazement. "Why, how ever could Tar come +there?" +But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, +wouldn't hear the word, wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously +waved it all away with his hand, and asked for hot ginandwater. +My sister, who had begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ +herself actively in getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and +the lemonpeel, and mixing them. For the time being at least, I was +saved. I still held on to the leg of the table, but clutched it now +with the fervour of gratitude. +By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp and partake of +pudding. Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding. All partook of pudding. +The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under +the genial influence of ginandwater. I began to think I should +get over the day, when my sister said to Joe, "Clean plates +cold." +I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it +to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend +of my soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I +really was gone. +"You must taste," said my sister, addressing the guests with her +best grace, "You must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and +delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook's" +Must they Let them not hope to taste it +"You must know," said my sister, rising, "it's a pie a savoury +pork pie." +The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible +of having deserved well of his fellowcreatures, said quite +vivaciously, all things considered "Well, Mrs. Joe, we'll do our +best endeavours let us have a cut at this same pie." +My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the +pantry. I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening +appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble +remark that "a bit of savoury pork pie would lay atop of anything +you could mention, and do no harm," and I heard Joe say, "You shall +have some, Pip." I have never been absolutely certain whether I +uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the bodily +hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no more, and that +I must run away. I released the leg of the table, and ran for my +life. +But, I ran no further than the house door, for there I ran head +foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets one of whom +held out a pair of handcuffs to me, saying, "Here you are, look +sharp, come on" +Chapter +The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the buttends of +their loaded muskets on our doorstep, caused the dinnerparty to +rise from table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe reentering the +kitchen emptyhanded, to stop short and stare, in her wondering +lament of "Gracious goodness gracious me, what's gone with the +pie" +The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring +at which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses. It was +the sergeant who had spoken to me, and he was now looking round at +the company, with his handcuffs invitingly extended towards them in +his right hand, and his left on my shoulder. +"Excuse me, ladies and gentleman," said the sergeant, "but as I +have mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver" which he +hadn't, "I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the +blacksmith." +"And pray what might you want with him?" retorted my sister, quick +to resent his being wanted at all. +"Missis," returned the gallant sergeant, "speaking for myself, I +should reply, the honour and pleasure of his fine wife's +acquaintance speaking for the king, I answer, a little job done." +This was received as rather neat in the sergeant insomuch that Mr +Pumblechook cried audibly, "Good again" +"You see, blacksmith," said the sergeant, who had by this time +picked out Joe with his eye, "we have had an accident with these, +and I find the lock of one of 'em goes wrong, and the coupling +don't act pretty. As they are wanted for immediate service, will +you throw your eye over them?" +Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would +necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer +two hours than one, "Will it? Then will you set about it at once, +blacksmith?" said the offhand sergeant, "as it's on his Majesty's +service. And if my men can beat a hand anywhere, they'll make +themselves useful." With that, he called to his men, who came +trooping into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms +in a corner. And then they stood about, as soldiers do now, with +their hands loosely clasped before them now, resting a knee or a +shoulder now, easing a belt or a pouch now, opening the door to +spit stiffly over their high stocks, out into the yard. +All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for I +was in an agony of apprehension. But, beginning to perceive that +the handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got +the better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a +little more of my scattered wits. +"Would you give me the Time?" said the sergeant, addressing himself +to Mr. Pumblechook, as to a man whose appreciative powers justified +the inference that he was equal to the time. +"It's just gone halfpast two." +"That's not so bad," said the sergeant, reflecting "even if I was +forced to halt here nigh two hours, that'll do. How far might you +call yourselves from the marshes, hereabouts? Not above a mile, I +reckon?" +"Just a mile," said Mrs. Joe. +"That'll do. We begin to close in upon 'em about dusk. A little +before dusk, my orders are. That'll do." +"Convicts, sergeant?" asked Mr. Wopsle, in a matterofcourse way. +"Ay" returned the sergeant, "two. They're pretty well known to be +out on the marshes still, and they won't try to get clear of 'em +before dusk. Anybody here seen anything of any such game?" +Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence. Nobody +thought of me. +"Well" said the sergeant, "they'll find themselves trapped in a +circle, I expect, sooner than they count on. Now, blacksmith If +you're ready, his Majesty the King is." +Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and cravat off, and his leather +apron on, and passed into the forge. One of the soldiers opened its +wooden windows, another lighted the fire, another turned to at +the bellows, the rest stood round the blaze, which was soon +roaring. Then Joe began to hammer and clink, hammer and clink, and +we all looked on. +The interest of the impending pursuit not only absorbed the general +attention, but even made my sister liberal. She drew a pitcher of +beer from the cask, for the soldiers, and invited the sergeant to +take a glass of brandy. But Mr. Pumblechook said, sharply, "Give him +wine, Mum. I'll engage there's no Tar in that" so, the sergeant +thanked him and said that as he preferred his drink without tar, he +would take wine, if it was equally convenient. When it was given +him, he drank his Majesty's health and Compliments of the Season, +and took it all at a mouthful and smacked his lips. +"Good stuff, eh, sergeant?" said Mr. Pumblechook. +"I'll tell you something," returned the sergeant "I suspect that +stuff's of your providing." +Mr. Pumblechook, with a fat sort of laugh, said, "Ay, ay? Why?" +"Because," returned the sergeant, clapping him on the shoulder, +"you're a man that knows what's what." +"D'ye think so?" said Mr. Pumblechook, with his former laugh. "Have +another glass" +"With you. Hob and nob," returned the sergeant. "The top of mine to +the foot of yours the foot of yours to the top of mine Ring +once, ring twice the best tune on the Musical Glasses Your +health. May you live a thousand years, and never be a worse judge +of the right sort than you are at the present moment of your life" +The sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite ready for +another glass. I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospitality +appeared to forget that he had made a present of the wine, but took +the bottle from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of handing it about +in a gush of joviality. Even I got some. And he was so very free of +the wine that he even called for the other bottle, and handed that +about with the same liberality, when the first was gone. +As I watched them while they all stood clustering about the forge, +enjoying themselves so much, I thought what terrible good sauce for +a dinner my fugitive friend on the marshes was. They had not +enjoyed themselves a quarter so much, before the entertainment was +brightened with the excitement he furnished. And now, when they +were all in lively anticipation of "the two villains" being taken, +and when the bellows seemed to roar for the fugitives, the fire to +flare for them, the smoke to hurry away in pursuit of them, Joe to +hammer and clink for them, and all the murky shadows on the wall to +shake at them in menace as the blaze rose and sank and the redhot +sparks dropped and died, the pale afternoon outside, almost seemed +in my pitying young fancy to have turned pale on their account, +poor wretches. +At last, Joe's job was done, and the ringing and roaring stopped. +As Joe got on his coat, he mustered courage to propose that some of +us should go down with the soldiers and see what came of the hunt. +Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Hubble declined, on the plea of a pipe and +ladies' society but Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if Joe would. Joe +said he was agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. Joe approved. We +never should have got leave to go, I am sure, but for Mrs. Joe's +curiosity to know all about it and how it ended. As it was, she +merely stipulated, "If you bring the boy back with his head blown +to bits by a musket, don't look to me to put it together again." +The sergeant took a polite leave of the ladies, and parted from Mr. +Pumblechook as from a comrade though I doubt if he were quite as +fully sensible of that gentleman's merits under arid conditions, as +when something moist was going. His men resumed their muskets and +fell in. Mr. Wopsle, Joe, and I, received strict charge to keep in +the rear, and to speak no word after we reached the marshes. When +we were all out in the raw air and were steadily moving towards our +business, I treasonably whispered to Joe, "I hope, Joe, we shan't +find them." and Joe whispered to me, "I'd give a shilling if they +had cut and run, Pip." +We were joined by no stragglers from the village, for the weather +was cold and threatening, the way dreary, the footing bad, darkness +coming on, and the people had good fires indoors and were keeping +the day. A few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked after +us, but none came out. We passed the fingerpost, and held straight +on to the churchyard. There, we were stopped a few minutes by a +signal from the sergeant's hand, while two or three of his men +dispersed themselves among the graves, and also examined the porch. +They came in again without finding anything, and then we struck out +on the open marshes, through the gate at the side of the +churchyard. A bitter sleet came rattling against us here on the +east wind, and Joe took me on his back. +Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where they little +thought I had been within eight or nine hours and had seen both men +hiding, I considered for the first time, with great dread, if we +should come upon them, would my particular convict suppose that it +was I who had brought the soldiers there? He had asked me if I was +a deceiving imp, and he had said I should be a fierce young hound +if I joined the hunt against him. Would he believe that I was both +imp and hound in treacherous earnest, and had betrayed him? +It was of no use asking myself this question now. There I was, on +Joe's back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the ditches +like a hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman +nose, and to keep up with us. The soldiers were in front of us, +extending into a pretty wide line with an interval between man and +man. We were taking the course I had begun with, and from which I +had diverged in the mist. Either the mist was not out again yet, or +the wind had dispelled it. Under the low red glare of sunset, the +beacon, and the gibbet, and the mound of the Battery, and the +opposite shore of the river, were plain, though all of a watery +lead colour. +With my heart thumping like a blacksmith at Joe's broad shoulder, I +looked all about for any sign of the convicts. I could see none, I +could hear none. Mr. Wopsle had greatly alarmed me more than once, +by his blowing and hard breathing but I knew the sounds by this +time, and could dissociate them from the object of pursuit. I got a +dreadful start, when I thought I heard the file still going but it +was only a sheep bell. The sheep stopped in their eating and looked +timidly at us and the cattle, their heads turned from the wind and +sleet, stared angrily as if they held us responsible for both +annoyances but, except these things, and the shudder of the dying +day in every blade of grass, there was no break in the bleak +stillness of the marshes. +The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the old Battery, +and we were moving on a little way behind them, when, all of a +sudden, we all stopped. For, there had reached us on the wings of +the wind and rain, a long shout. It was repeated. It was at a +distance towards the east, but it was long and loud. Nay, there +seemed to be two or more shouts raised together if one might +judge from a confusion in the sound. +To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were speaking under +their breath, when Joe and I came up. After another moment's +listening, Joe who was a good judge agreed, and Mr. Wopsle who +was a bad judge agreed. The sergeant, a decisive man, ordered that +the sound should not be answered, but that the course should be +changed, and that his men should make towards it "at the double." +So we slanted to the right where the East was, and Joe pounded +away so wonderfully, that I had to hold on tight to keep my seat. +It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two words +he spoke all the time, "a Winder." Down banks and up banks, and +over gates, and splashing into dykes, and breaking among coarse +rushes no man cared where he went. As we came nearer to the +shouting, it became more and more apparent that it was made by more +than one voice. Sometimes, it seemed to stop altogether, and then +the soldiers stopped. When it broke out again, the soldiers made +for it at a greater rate than ever, and we after them. After a +while, we had so run it down, that we could hear one voice calling +"Murder" and another voice, "Convicts Runaways Guard This way +for the runaway convicts" Then both voices would seem to be +stifled in a struggle, and then would break out again. And when it +had come to this, the soldiers ran like deer, and Joe too. +The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down, +and two of his men ran in close upon him. Their pieces were cocked +and levelled when we all ran in. +"Here are both men" panted the sergeant, struggling at the bottom +of a ditch. "Surrender, you two and confound you for two wild +beasts Come asunder" +Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being +sworn, and blows were being struck, when some more men went down +into the ditch to help the sergeant, and dragged out, separately, +my convict and the other one. Both were bleeding and panting and +execrating and struggling but of course I knew them both directly. +"Mind" said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged +sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers "I took him I give +him up to you Mind that" +"It's not much to be particular about," said the sergeant "it'll do +you small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself. +Handcuffs there" +"I don't expect it to do me any good. I don't want it to do me more +good than it does now," said my convict, with a greedy laugh. "I +took him. He knows it. That's enough for me." +The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the old +bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all +over. He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they +were both separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep +himself from falling. +"Take notice, guard he tried to murder me," were his first words. +"Tried to murder him?" said my convict, disdainfully. "Try, and not +do it? I took him, and giv' him up that's what I done. I not only +prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him here +dragged him this far on his way back. He's a gentleman, if you +please, this villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, +through me. Murder him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I +could do worse and drag him back" +The other one still gasped, "He tried he tried to murder me. +Bear bear witness." +"Lookee here" said my convict to the sergeant. "Singlehanded I +got clear of the prisonship I made a dash and I done it. I could +ha' got clear of these deathcold flats likewise look at my leg +you won't find much iron on it if I hadn't made the discovery that +he was here. Let him go free? Let him profit by the means as I found +out? Let him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no, +no. If I had died at the bottom there" and he made an emphatic +swing at the ditch with his manacled hands "I'd have held to him +with that grip, that you should have been safe to find him in my +hold." +The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his +companion, repeated, "He tried to murder me. I should have been a +dead man if you had not come up." +"He lies" said my convict, with fierce energy. "He's a liar born, +and he'll die a liar. Look at his face ain't it written there? Let +him turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it." +The other, with an effort at a scornful smile which could not, +however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set +expression looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the +marshes and at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker. +"Do you see him?" pursued my convict. "Do you see what a villain he +is? Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That's how he +looked when we were tried together. He never looked at me." +The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his +eyes restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a +moment on the speaker, with the words, "You are not much to look +at," and with a halftaunting glance at the bound hands. At that +point, my convict became so frantically exasperated, that he would +have rushed upon him but for the interposition of the soldiers. +"Didn't I tell you," said the other convict then, "that he would +murder me, if he could?" And any one could see that he shook with +fear, and that there broke out upon his lips, curious white flakes, +like thin snow. +"Enough of this parley," said the sergeant. "Light those torches." +As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went +down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the +first time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe's back on the brink +of the ditch when we came up, and had not moved since. I looked at +him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and +shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me, that I might +try to assure him of my innocence. It was not at all expressed to +me that he even comprehended my intention, for he gave me a look +that I did not understand, and it all passed in a moment. But if he +had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have +remembered his face ever afterwards, as having been more attentive. +The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three or +four torches, and took one himself and distributed the others. It +had been almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, and soon +afterwards very dark. Before we departed from that spot, four +soldiers standing in a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently we +saw other torches kindled at some distance behind us, and others on +the marshes on the opposite bank of the river. "All right," said +the sergeant. "March." +We had not gone far when three cannon were fired ahead of us with a +sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear. "You are +expected on board," said the sergeant to my convict "they know you +are coming. Don't straggle, my man. Close up here." +The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a separate +guard. I had hold of Joe's hand now, and Joe carried one of the +torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going back, but Joe was resolved to +see it out, so we went on with the party. There was a reasonably +good path now, mostly on the edge of the river, with a divergence +here and there where a dyke came, with a miniature windmill on it +and a muddy sluicegate. When I looked round, I could see the other +lights coming in after us. The torches we carried, dropped great +blotches of fire upon the track, and I could see those, too, lying +smoking and flaring. I could see nothing else but black darkness. +Our lights warmed the air about us with their pitchy blaze, and the +two prisoners seemed rather to like that, as they limped along in +the midst of the muskets. We could not go fast, because of their +lameness and they were so spent, that two or three times we had to +halt while they rested. +After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a rough wooden +hut and a landingplace. There was a guard in the hut, and they +challenged, and the sergeant answered. Then, we went into the hut +where there was a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a bright +fire, and a lamp, and a stand of muskets, and a drum, and a low +wooden bedstead, like an overgrown mangle without the machinery, +capable of holding about a dozen soldiers all at once. Three or +four soldiers who lay upon it in their greatcoats, were not much +interested in us, but just lifted their heads and took a sleepy +stare, and then lay down again. The sergeant made some kind of +report, and some entry in a book, and then the convict whom I call +the other convict was drafted off with his guard, to go on board +first. +My convict never looked at me, except that once. While we stood in +the hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or +putting up his feet by turns upon the hob, and looking thoughtfully +at them as if he pitied them for their recent adventures. Suddenly, +he turned to the sergeant, and remarked +"I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may prevent +some persons laying under suspicion alonger me." +"You can say what you like," returned the sergeant, standing coolly +looking at him with his arms folded, "but you have no call to say +it here. You'll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear +about it, before it's done with, you know." +"I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A man can't +starve at least I can't. I took some wittles, up at the willage +over yonder where the church stands a'most out on the marshes." +"You mean stole," said the sergeant. +"And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's." +"Halloa" said the sergeant, staring at Joe. +"Halloa, Pip" said Joe, staring at me. +"It was some broken wittles that's what it was and a dram of +liquor, and a pie." +"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?" +asked the sergeant, confidentially. +"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't you know, +Pip?" +"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner, +and without the least glance at me "so you're the blacksmith, are +you? Than I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie." +"God knows you're welcome to it so far as it was ever mine," +returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. "We don't know +what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for +it, poor miserable fellowcreatur. Would us, Pip?" +The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man's +throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and +his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landingplace made +of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which +was rowed by a crew of convicts like himself. No one seemed +surprised to see him, or interested in seeing him, or glad to see +him, or sorry to see him, or spoke a word, except that somebody in +the boat growled as if to dogs, "Give way, you" which was the +signal for the dip of the oars. By the light of the torches, we saw +the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like +a wicked Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty +chains, the prisonship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like +the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw him taken +up the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches were flung +hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with +him. +Chapter +My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been so +unexpectedly exonerated, did not impel me to frank disclosure but +I hope it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it. +I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in +reference to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted +off me. But I loved Joe perhaps for no better reason in those +early days than because the dear fellow let me love him and, as +to him, my inner self was not so easily composed. It was much upon +my mind particularly when I first saw him looking about for his +file that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and +for the reason that I mistrusted that if I did, he would think me +worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe's confidence, and of +thenceforth sitting in the chimneycorner at night staring drearily +at my for ever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue. I +morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it, I never +afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair whisker, +without thinking that he was meditating on it. That, if Joe knew +it, I never afterwards could see him glance, however casually, at +yesterday's meat or pudding when it came on today's table, without +thinking that he was debating whether I had been in the pantry. +That, if Joe knew it, and at any subsequent period of our joint +domestic life remarked that his beer was flat or thick, the +conviction that he suspected Tar in it, would bring a rush of blood +to my face. In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be +right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be +wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at that time, and I +imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this manner. Quite +an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line of action for +myself. +As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prisonship, Joe +took me on his back again and carried me home. He must have had a +tiresome journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, being knocked up, was in +such a very bad temper that if the Church had been thrown open, he +would probably have excommunicated the whole expedition, beginning +with Joe and myself. In his lay capacity, he persisted in sitting +down in the damp to such an insane extent, that when his coat was +taken off to be dried at the kitchen fire, the circumstantial +evidence on his trousers would have hanged him if it had been a +capital offence. +By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like a little +drunkard, through having been newly set upon my feet, and through +having been fast asleep, and through waking in the heat and lights +and noise of tongues. As I came to myself with the aid of a heavy +thump between the shoulders, and the restorative exclamation "Yah +Was there ever such a boy as this" from my sister, I found Joe +telling them about the convict's confession, and all the visitors +suggesting different ways by which he had got into the pantry. Mr. +Pumblechook made out, after carefully surveying the premises, that +he had first got upon the roof of the forge, and had then got upon +the roof of the house, and had then let himself down the kitchen +chimney by a rope made of his bedding cut into strips and as Mr. +Pumblechook was very positive and drove his own chaisecart over +everybody it was agreed that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, +wildly cried out "No" with the feeble malice of a tired man but, +as he had no theory, and no coat on, he was unanimously set at +nought not to mention his smoking hard behind, as he stood with +his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out which was not +calculated to inspire confidence. +This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched me, as a +slumberous offence to the company's eyesight, and assisted me up to +bed with such a strong hand that I seemed to have fifty boots on, +and to be dangling them all against the edges of the stairs. My +state of mind, as I have described it, began before I was up in the +morning, and lasted long after the subject had died out, and had +ceased to be mentioned saving on exceptional occasions. +Chapter +At the time when I stood in the churchyard, reading the family +tombstones, I had just enough learning to be able to spell them +out. My construction even of their simple meaning was not very +correct, for I read "wife of the Above" as a complimentary +reference to my father's exaltation to a better world and if any +one of my deceased relations had been referred to as "Below," I +have no doubt I should have formed the worst opinions of that +member of the family. Neither, were my notions of the theological +positions to which my Catechism bound me, at all accurate for, I +have a lively remembrance that I supposed my declaration that I was +to "walk in the same all the days of my life," laid me under an +obligation always to go through the village from our house in one +particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down by the +wheelwright's or up by the mill. +When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and until I +could assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe called +"Pompeyed," or as I render it pampered. Therefore, I was not only +oddboy about the forge, but if any neighbour happened to want an +extra boy to frighten birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, +I was favoured with the employment. In order, however, that our +superior position might not be compromised thereby, a moneybox was +kept on the kitchen mantelshelf, in to which it was publicly made +known that all my earnings were dropped. I have an impression that +they were to be contributed eventually towards the liquidation of +the National Debt, but I know I had no hope of any personal +participation in the treasure. +Mr. Wopsle's greataunt kept an evening school in the village that +is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and +unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven +every evening, in the society of youth who paid twopence per week +each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented +a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we +students used to overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified and +terrific manner, and occasionally bumping on the ceiling. There was +a fiction that Mr. Wopsle "examined" the scholars, once a quarter. +What he did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up +his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over the body of +Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on the Passions, +wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge, throwing his +bloodstained sword in thunder down, and taking the Wardenouncing +trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then, as it was +in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions, and +compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage +of both gentlemen. +Mr. Wopsle's greataunt, besides keeping this Educational +Institution, kept in the same room a little general shop. She +had no idea what stock she had, or what the price of anything in it +was but there was a little greasy memorandumbook kept in a +drawer, which served as a Catalogue of Prices, and by this oracle +Biddy arranged all the shop transaction. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle's +greataunt's granddaughter I confess myself quiet unequal to the +working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle. She +was an orphan like myself like me, too, had been brought up by +hand. She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect of her +extremities for, her hair always wanted brushing, her hands always +wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending and pulling up +at heel. This description must be received with a weekday +limitation. On Sundays, she went to church elaborated. +Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of +Mr. Wopsle's greataunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it +had been a bramblebush getting considerably worried and scratched +by every letter. After that, I fell among those thieves, the nine +figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise +themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a +purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher, on the very +smallest scale. +One night, I was sitting in the chimneycorner with my slate, +expending great efforts on the production of a letter to Joe. I +think it must have been a fully year after our hunt upon the +marshes, for it was a long time after, and it was winter and a hard +frost. With an alphabet on the hearth at my feet for reference, I +contrived in an hour or two to print and smear this epistle +"MI DEER JO i OPE U R KR WITE WELL i OPE i SHAL SON B HABELL +TEEDGE U JO AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD U JO +WOT LARX AN BLEVE ME INF XN PIP." +There was no indispensable necessity for my communicating with Joe +by letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and we were alone. But, I +delivered this written communication slate and all with my own +hand, and Joe received it as a miracle of erudition. +"I say, Pip, old chap" cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide, +"what a scholar you are An't you?" +"I should like to be," said I, glancing at the slate as he held it +with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly. +"Why, here's a J," said Joe, "and a O equal to anythink Here's a J +and a O, Pip, and a JO, Joe." +I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent than this +monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday when I +accidentally held our PrayerBook upside down, that it seemed to +suit his convenience quite as well as if it had been all right. +Wishing to embrace the present occasion of finding out whether in +teaching Joe, I should have to begin quite at the beginning, I +said, "Ah But read the rest, Jo." +"The rest, eh, Pip?" said Joe, looking at it with a slowly +searching eye, "One, two, three. Why, here's three Js, and three +Os, and three JO, Joes in it, Pip" +I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger, read him the +whole letter. +"Astonishing" said Joe, when I had finished. "You ARE a scholar." +"How do you spell Gargery, Joe?" I asked him, with a modest +patronage. +"I don't spell it at all," said Joe. +"But supposing you did?" +"It can't be supposed," said Joe. "Tho' I'm oncommon fond of +reading, too." +"Are you, Joe?" +"Oncommon. Give me," said Joe, "a good book, or a good newspaper, +and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord" he +continued, after rubbing his knees a little, "when you do come to a +J and a O, and says you, "Here, at last, is a JO, Joe," how +interesting reading is" +I derived from this last, that Joe's education, like Steam, was yet +in its infancy, Pursuing the subject, I inquired +"Didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?" +"No, Pip." +"Why didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as +me?" +"Well, Pip," said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to +his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the +fire between the lower bars "I'll tell you. My father, Pip, he +were given to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he +hammered away at my mother, most onmerciful. It were a'most the +only hammering he did, indeed, 'xcepting at myself. And he hammered +at me with a wigour only to be equalled by the wigour with which he +didn't hammer at his anwil. You're alistening and understanding, +Pip?" +"Yes, Joe." +"'Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father, +several times and then my mother she'd go out to work, and she'd +say, "Joe," she'd say, "now, please God, you shall have some +schooling, child," and she'd put me to school. But my father were +that good in his hart that he couldn't abear to be without us. So, +he'd come with a most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the +doors of the houses where we was, that they used to be obligated to +have no more to do with us and to give us up to him. And then he +took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, Pip," said Joe, +pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and looking at me, +"were a drawback on my learning." +"Certainly, poor Joe" +"Though mind you, Pip," said Joe, with a judicial touch or two of +the poker on the top bar, "rendering unto all their doo, and +maintaining equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that +good in his hart, don't you see?" +I didn't see but I didn't say so. +"Well" Joe pursued, "somebody must keep the pot a biling, Pip, or +the pot won't bile, don't you know?" +I saw that, and said so. +"'Consequence, my father didn't make objections to my going to +work so I went to work to work at my present calling, which were +his too, if he would have followed it, and I worked tolerable hard, +I assure you, Pip. In time I were able to keep him, and I kept him +till he went off in a purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions +to have had put upon his tombstone that Whatsume'er the failings on +his part, Remember reader he were that good in his hart." +Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and careful +perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it himself. +"I made it," said Joe, "my own self. I made it in a moment. It was +like striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. I never +was so much surprised in all my life couldn't credit my own ed +to tell you the truth, hardly believed it were my own ed. As I was +saying, Pip, it were my intentions to have had it cut over him but +poetry costs money, cut it how you will, small or large, and it +were not done. Not to mention bearers, all the money that could be +spared were wanted for my mother. She were in poor elth, and quite +broke. She weren't long of following, poor soul, and her share of +peace come round at last." +Joe's blue eyes turned a little watery he rubbed, first one of +them, and then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable +manner, with the round knob on the top of the poker. +"It were but lonesome then," said Joe, "living here alone, and I +got acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip" Joe looked firmly at +me, as if he knew I was not going to agree with him "your sister +is a fine figure of a woman." +I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state of doubt. +"Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world's opinions, on +that subject may be, Pip, your sister is," Joe tapped the top bar +with the poker after every word following, "a fine figure of +a woman" +I could think of nothing better to say than "I am glad you think +so, Joe." +"So am I," returned Joe, catching me up. "I am glad I think so, +Pip. A little redness or a little matter of Bone, here or there, +what does it signify to Me?" +I sagaciously observed, if it didn't signify to him, to whom did it +signify? +"Certainly" assented Joe. "That's it. You're right, old chap When +I got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how she was +bringing you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all the folks said, +and I said, along with all the folks. As to you," Joe pursued with +a countenance expressive of seeing something very nasty indeed "if +you could have been aware how small and flabby and mean you was, +dear me, you'd have formed the most contemptible opinion of +yourself" +Not exactly relishing this, I said, "Never mind me, Joe." +"But I did mind you, Pip," he returned with tender simplicity. +"When I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in +church at such times as she was willing and ready to come to the +forge, I said to her, 'And bring the poor little child. God bless +the poor little child,' I said to your sister, 'there's room for +him at the forge'" +I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round the +neck who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, "Ever the best +of friends an't us, Pip? Don't cry, old chap" +When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed +"Well, you see, Pip, and here we are That's about where it lights +here we are Now, when you take me in hand in my learning, Pip and +I tell you beforehand I am awful dull, most awful dull, Mrs. Joe +mustn't see too much of what we're up to. It must be done, as I may +say, on the sly. And why on the sly? I'll tell you why, Pip." +He had taken up the poker again without which, I doubt if he could +have proceeded in his demonstration. +"Your sister is given to government." +"Given to government, Joe?" I was startled, for I had some shadowy +idea and I am afraid I must add, hope that Joe had divorced her +in a favour of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury. +"Given to government," said Joe. "Which I meantersay the government +of you and myself." +"Oh" +"And she an't over partial to having scholars on the premises," Joe +continued, "and in partickler would not be over partial to my being +a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort or rebel, don't +you see?" +I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as +"Why" when Joe stopped me. +"Stay a bit. I know what you're agoing to say, Pip stay a bit I +don't deny that your sister comes the Mogul over us, now and +again. I don't deny that she do throw us backfalls, and that she +do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on +the Rampage, Pip," Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at +the door, "candour compels fur to admit that she is a Buster." +Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least twelve +capital Bs. +"Why don't I rise? That were your observation when I broke it off, +Pip?" +"Yes, Joe." +"Well," said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand, that he +might feel his whisker and I had no hope of him whenever he took +to that placid occupation "your sister's a mastermind. A +mastermind." +"What's that?" I asked, in some hope of bringing him to a stand. +But, Joe was readier with his definition than I had expected, and +completely stopped me by arguing circularly, and answering with a +fixed look, "Her." +"And I an't a mastermind," Joe resumed, when he had unfixed his +look, and got back to his whisker. "And last of all, Pip and this +I want to say very serious to you, old chap I see so much in my +poor mother, of a woman drudging and slaving and breaking her +honest hart and never getting no peace in her mortal days, that I'm +dead afeerd of going wrong in the way of not doing what's right by +a woman, and I'd fur rather of the two go wrong the t'other way, +and be a little illconwenienced myself. I wish it was only me that +got put out, Pip I wish there warn't no Tickler for you, old chap +I wish I could take it all on myself but this is the +upanddownandstraight on it, Pip, and I hope you'll overlook +shortcomings." +Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration of Joe from +that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been before but, +afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking +about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was +looking up to Joe in my heart. +"However," said Joe, rising to replenish the fire "here's the +Dutchclock a working himself up to being equal to strike Eight of +'em, and she's not come home yet I hope Uncle Pumblechook's mare +mayn't have set a forefoot on a piece o' ice, and gone down." +Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on +marketdays, to assist him in buying such household stuffs and +goods as required a woman's judgment Uncle Pumblechook being a +bachelor and reposing no confidences in his domestic servant. This +was marketday, and Mrs. Joe was out on one of these expeditions. +Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to the +door to listen for the chaisecart. It was a dry cold night, and +the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would +die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I +looked at the stars, and considered how awful if would be for a man +to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help +or pity in all the glittering multitude. +"Here comes the mare," said Joe, "ringing like a peal of bells" +The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was quite musical, +as she came along at a much brisker trot than usual. We got a chair +out, ready for Mrs. Joe's alighting, and stirred up the fire that +they might see a bright window, and took a final survey of the +kitchen that nothing might be out of its place. When we had +completed these preparations, they drove up, wrapped to the eyes. +Mrs. Joe was soon landed, and Uncle Pumblechook was soon down too, +covering the mare with a cloth, and we were soon all in the +kitchen, carrying so much cold air in with us that it seemed to +drive all the heat out of the fire. +"Now," said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste and excitement, +and throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders where it hung by the +strings "if this boy an't grateful this night, he never will be" +I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly +uninformed why he ought to assume that expression. +"It's only to be hoped," said my sister, "that he won't be +Pompeyed. But I have my fears." +"She an't in that line, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook. "She knows +better." +She? I looked at Joe, making the motion with my lips and eyebrows, +"She?" Joe looked at me, making the motion with his lips and +eyebrows, "She?" My sister catching him in the act, he drew the +back of his hand across his nose with his usual conciliatory air on +such occasions, and looked at her. +"Well?" said my sister, in her snappish way. "What are you staring +at? Is the house afire?" +" Which some individual," Joe politely hinted, "mentioned she." +"And she is a she, I suppose?" said my sister. "Unless you call +Miss Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you'll go so far as that." +"Miss Havisham, up town?" said Joe. +"Is there any Miss Havisham down town?" returned my sister. +"She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course he's going. +And he had better play there," said my sister, shaking her head at +me as an encouragement to be extremely light and sportive, "or I'll +work him." +I had heard of Miss Havisham up town everybody for miles round, +had heard of Miss Havisham up town as an immensely rich and grim +lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against +robbers, and who led a life of seclusion. +"Well to be sure" said Joe, astounded. "I wonder how she come to +know Pip" +"Noodle" cried my sister. "Who said she knew him?" +" Which some individual," Joe again politely hinted, "mentioned +that she wanted him to go and play there." +"And couldn't she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go +and play there? Isn't it just barely possible that Uncle +Pumblechook may be a tenant of hers, and that he may sometimes we +won't say quarterly or halfyearly, for that would be requiring too +much of you but sometimes go there to pay his rent? And +couldn't she then ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go +and play there? And couldn't Uncle Pumblechook, being always +considerate and thoughtful for us though you may not think it, +Joseph," in a tone of the deepest reproach, as if he were the most +callous of nephews, "then mention this boy, standing Prancing here" +which I solemnly declare I was not doing "that I have for ever +been a willing slave to?" +"Good again" cried Uncle Pumblechook. "Well put Prettily pointed +Good indeed Now Joseph, you know the case." +"No, Joseph," said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, while +Joe apologetically drew the back of his hand across and across his +nose, "you do not yet though you may not think it know the +case. You may consider that you do, but you do not, Joseph. For you +do not know that Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for +anything we can tell, this boy's fortune may be made by his going +to Miss Havisham's, has offered to take him into town tonight in +his own chaisecart, and to keep him tonight, and to take him with +his own hands to Miss Havisham's tomorrow morning. And Loramussy +me" cried my sister, casting off her bonnet in sudden desperation, +"here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle Pumblechook +waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door, and the boy grimed +with crock and dirt from the hair of his head to the sole of his +foot" +With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my +face was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put +under taps of waterbutts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and +towelled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was +quite beside myself. I may here remark that I suppose myself to be +better acquainted than any living authority, with the ridgy effect +of a weddingring, passing unsympathetically over the human +countenance. +When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the +stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was +trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then +delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he +were the Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he +had been dying to make all along "Boy, be for ever grateful to all +friends, but especially unto them which brought you up by hand" +"Goodbye, Joe" +"God bless you, Pip, old chap" +I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and +what with soapsuds, I could at first see no stars from the +chaisecart. But they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any +light on the questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss +Havisham's, and what on earth I was expected to play at. +Chapter +Mr. Pumblechook's premises in the Highstreet of the market town, +were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of +a cornchandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he +must be a very happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in +his shop and I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the lower +tiers, and saw the tiedup brown paper packets inside, whether the +flowerseeds and bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of +those jails, and bloom. +It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained +this speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight +to bed in an attic with a sloping roof, which was so low in the +corner where the bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being +within a foot of my eyebrows. In the same early morning, I +discovered a singular affinity between seeds and corduroys. Mr. +Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did his shopman and somehow, +there was a general air and flavour about the corduroys, so much in +the nature of seeds, and a general air and flavour about the seeds, +so much in the nature of corduroys, that I hardly knew which was +which. The same opportunity served me for noticing that Mr. +Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by looking across the +street at the saddler, who appeared to transact his business by +keeping his eye on the coachmaker, who appeared to get on in life +by putting his hands in his pockets and contemplating the baker, +who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer, who stood +at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watchmaker, always +poring over a little desk with a magnifying glass at his eye, and +always inspected by a group of smockfrocks poring over him through +the glass of his shopwindow, seemed to be about the only person in +the Highstreet whose trade engaged his attention. +Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o'clock in the parlour +behind the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and hunch of +breadandbutter on a sack of peas in the front premises. I +considered Mr. Pumblechook wretched company. Besides being possessed +by my sister's idea that a mortifying and penitential character +ought to be imparted to my diet besides giving me as much crumb +as possible in combination with as little butter, and putting such +a quantity of warm water into my milk that it would have been more +candid to have left the milk out altogether his conversation +consisted of nothing but arithmetic. On my politely bidding him +Good morning, he said, pompously, "Seven times nine, boy?" And how +should I be able to answer, dodged in that way, in a strange place, +on an empty stomach I was hungry, but before I had swallowed a +morsel, he began a running sum that lasted all through the +breakfast. "Seven?" "And four?" "And eight?" "And six?" "And two?" +"And ten?" And so on. And after each figure was disposed of, it was +as much as I could do to get a bite or a sup, before the next came +while he sat at his ease guessing nothing, and eating bacon and hot +roll, in if I may be allowed the expression a gorging and +gormandising manner. +For such reasons I was very glad when ten o'clock came and we +started for Miss Havisham's though I was not at all at my ease +regarding the manner in which I should acquit myself under that +lady's roof. Within a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham's +house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many +iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up of those +that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There was a +courtyard in front, and that was barred so, we had to wait, after +ringing the bell, until some one should come to open it. While we +waited at the gate, I peeped in even then Mr. Pumblechook said, +"And fourteen?" but I pretended not to hear him, and saw that at +the side of the house there was a large brewery. No brewing was going +on in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long long time. +A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded "What name?" To +which my conductor replied, "Pumblechook." The voice returned, +"Quite right," and the window was shut again, and a young lady came +across the courtyard, with keys in her hand. +"This," said Mr. Pumblechook, "is Pip." +"This is Pip, is it?" returned the young lady, who was very pretty +and seemed very proud "come in, Pip." +Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the +gate. +"Oh" she said. "Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?" +"If Miss Havisham wished to see me," returned Mr. Pumblechook, +discomfited. +"Ah" said the girl "but you see she don't." +She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr. +Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not +protest. But he eyed me severely as if I had done anything to +him and departed with the words reproachfully delivered "Boy +Let your behaviour here be a credit unto them which brought you up +by hand" I was not free from apprehension that he would come back +to propound through the gate, "And sixteen?" But he didn't. +My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the +courtyard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every +crevice. The brewery buildings had a little lane of communication +with it, and the wooden gates of that lane stood open, and all the +brewery beyond, stood open, away to the high enclosing wall and +all was empty and disused. The cold wind seemed to blow colder +there, than outside the gate and it made a shrill noise in howling +in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise of wind +in the rigging of a ship at sea. +She saw me looking at it, and she said, "You could drink without +hurt all the strong beer that's brewed there now, boy." +"I should think I could, miss," said I, in a shy way. +"Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, +boy don't you think so?" +"It looks like it, miss." +"Not that anybody means to try," she added, "for that's all done +with, and the place will stand as idle as it is, till it falls. As +to strong beer, there's enough of it in the cellars already, to +drown the Manor House." +"Is that the name of this house, miss?" +"One of its names, boy." +"It has more than one, then, miss?" +"One more. Its other name was Satis which is Greek, or Latin, or +Hebrew, or all three or all one to me for enough." +"Enough House," said I "that's a curious name, miss." +"Yes," she replied "but it meant more than it said. It meant, when +it was given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing else. +They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think. +But don't loiter, boy." +Though she called me "boy" so often, and with a carelessness that +was far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed +much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and +selfpossessed and she was as scornful of me as if she had been +oneandtwenty, and a queen. +We went into the house by a side door the great front entrance +had two chains across it outside and the first thing I noticed +was, that the passages were all dark, and that she had left a +candle burning there. She took it up, and we went through more +passages and up a staircase, and still it was all dark, and only +the candle lighted us. +At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, "Go in." +I answered, more in shyness than politeness, "After you, miss." +To this, she returned "Don't be ridiculous, boy I am not going +in." And scornfully walked away, and what was worse took the +candle with her. +This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, the +only thing to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked, and +was told from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found +myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No +glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressingroom, +as I supposed from the furniture, though much of it was of forms +and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped +table with a gilded lookingglass, and that I made out at first +sight to be a fine lady's dressingtable. +Whether I should have made out this object so soon, if there had +been no fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an armchair, +with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that +hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see. +She was dressed in rich materials satins, and lace, and silks +all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil +dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, +but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and +on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. +Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and halfpacked +trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, +for she had but one shoe on the other was on the table near her +hand her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not +put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and +with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a +prayerbook, all confusedly heaped about the lookingglass. +It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, +though I saw more of them in the first moments than might be +supposed. But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to +be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was +faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had +withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no +brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that +the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, +and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to +skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork +at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage +lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh +churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had +been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and +skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I +should have cried out, if I could. +"Who is it?" said the lady at the table. +"Pip, ma'am." +"Pip?" +"Mr. Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come to play." +"Come nearer let me look at you. Come close." +It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note +of the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had +stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had +stopped at twenty minutes to nine. +"Look at me," said Miss Havisham. "You are not afraid of a woman +who has never seen the sun since you were born?" +I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie +comprehended in the answer "No." +"Do you know what I touch here?" she said, laying her hands, one +upon the other, on her left side. +"Yes, ma'am." It made me think of the young man. +"What do I touch?" +"Your heart." +"Broken" +She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, +and with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards, +she kept her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them +away as if they were heavy. +"I am tired," said Miss Havisham. "I want diversion, and I have +done with men and women. Play." +I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that +she could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in +the wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances. +"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on, "and I have a sick +fancy that I want to see some play. There there" with an impatient +movement of the fingers of her right hand "play, play, play" +For a moment, with the fear of my sister's working me before my +eyes, I had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the +assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook's chaisecart. But, I felt +myself so unequal to the performance that I gave it up, and stood +looking at Miss Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged +manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken a good look at each +other +"Are you sullen and obstinate?" +"No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can't play +just now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my +sister, so I would do it if I could but it's so new here, and so +strange, and so fine and melancholy." I stopped, fearing I might +say too much, or had already said it, and we took another look at +each other. +Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at +the dress she wore, and at the dressingtable, and finally at +herself in the lookingglass. +"So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me so strange to him, so +familiar to me so melancholy to both of us Call Estella." +As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought +she was still talking to herself, and kept quiet. +"Call Estella," she repeated, flashing a look at me. "You can do +that. Call Estella. At the door." +To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house, +bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor +responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her +name, was almost as bad as playing to order. But, she answered at +last, and her light came along the dark passage like a star. +Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel from +the table, and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom and +against her pretty brown hair. "Your own, one day, my dear, and you +will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy." +"With this boy? Why, he is a common labouringboy" +I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer only it seemed so +unlikely "Well? You can break his heart." +"What do you play, boy?" asked Estella of myself, with the greatest +disdain. +"Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss." +"Beggar him," said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to +cards. +It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had +stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed +that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from +which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at +the dressingtable again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once +white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot +from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on +it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this +arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed +objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed from +could have looked so like graveclothes, or the long veil so like a +shroud. +So she sat, corpselike, as we played at cards the frillings and +trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew +nothing then, of the discoveries that are occasionally made of +bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment +of being distinctly seen but, I have often thought since, that she +must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day +would have struck her to dust. +"He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy" said Estella with disdain, +before our first game was out. "And what coarse hands he has And +what thick boots" +I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before but I +began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me +was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it. +She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, +when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong and she +denounced me for a stupid, clumsy labouringboy. +"You say nothing of her," remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she +looked on. "She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing +of her. What do you think of her?" +"I don't like to say," I stammered. +"Tell me in my ear," said Miss Havisham, bending down. +"I think she is very proud," I replied, in a whisper. +"Anything else?" +"I think she is very pretty." +"Anything else?" +"I think she is very insulting." She was looking at me then with a +look of supreme aversion. +"Anything else?" +"I think I should like to go home." +"And never see her again, though she is so pretty?" +"I am not sure that I shouldn't like to see her again, but I should +like to go home now." +"You shall go soon," said Miss Havisham, aloud. "Play the game +out." +Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost +sure that Miss Havisham's face could not smile. It had dropped into +a watchful and brooding expression most likely when all the +things about her had become transfixed and it looked as if +nothing could ever lift it up again. Her chest had dropped, so that +she stooped and her voice had dropped, so that she spoke low, and +with a dead lull upon her altogether, she had the appearance of +having dropped, body and soul, within and without, under the weight +of a crushing blow. +I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She +threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if +she despised them for having been won of me. +"When shall I have you here again?" said miss Havisham. "Let me +think." +I was beginning to remind her that today was Wednesday, when she +checked me with her former impatient movement of the fingers of her +right hand. +"There, there I know nothing of days of the week I know nothing +of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?" +"Yes, ma'am." +"Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him +roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip." +I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and +she stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she opened +the side entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that +it must necessarily be nighttime. The rush of the daylight quite +confounded me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candlelight +of the strange room many hours. +"You are to wait here, you boy," said Estella and disappeared and +closed the door. +I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard, to look at +my coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those +accessories was not favourable. They had never troubled me before, +but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask +Joe why he had ever taught me to call those picturecards, Jacks, +which ought to be called knaves. I wished Joe had been rather more +genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too. +She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. +She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the +bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a +dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, +angry, sorry I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart God +knows what its name was that tears started to my eyes. The moment +they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight in +having been the cause of them. This gave me power to keep them back +and to look at her so, she gave a contemptuous toss but with a +sense, I thought, of having made too sure that I was so wounded +and left me. +But, when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my +face in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewerylane, and +leaned my sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my forehead on +it and cried. As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard twist +at my hair so bitter were my feelings, and so sharp was the smart +without a name, that needed counteraction. +My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world +in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, +there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as +injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be +exposed to but the child is small, and its world is small, and its +rockinghorse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a +bigboned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my +babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from +the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and +violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound +conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to +bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts +and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this +assurance and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and +unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally +timid and very sensitive. +I got rid of my injured feelings for the time, by kicking them into +the brewery wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and then I +smoothed my face with my sleeve, and came from behind the gate. The +bread and meat were acceptable, and the beer was warming and +tingling, and I was soon in spirits to look about me. +To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeonhouse in +the breweryyard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some +high wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, +if there had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But, there +were no pigeons in the dovecot, no horses in the stable, no pigs +in the sty, no malt in the storehouse, no smells of grains and +beer in the copper or the vat. All the uses and scents of the +brewery might have evaporated with its last reek of smoke. In a +byyard, there was a wilderness of empty casks, which had a certain +sour remembrance of better days lingering about them but it was +too sour to be accepted as a sample of the beer that was gone and +in this respect I remember those recluses as being like most +others. +Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank garden with an +old wall not so high but that I could struggle up and hold on long +enough to look over it, and see that the rank garden was the garden +of the house, and that it was overgrown with tangled weeds, but +that there was a track upon the green and yellow paths, as if some +one sometimes walked there, and that Estella was walking away from +me even then. But she seemed to be everywhere. For, when I yielded +to the temptation presented by the casks, and began to walk on +them. I saw her walking on them at the end of the yard of casks. +She had her back towards me, and held her pretty brown hair spread +out in her two hands, and never looked round, and passed out of my +view directly. So, in the brewery itself by which I mean the +large paved lofty place in which they used to make the beer, and +where the brewing utensils still were. When I first went into it, +and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the door looking +about me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend +some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as +if she were going out into the sky. +It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing +happened to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I +thought it a stranger thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes a +little dimmed by looking up at the frosty light towards a great +wooden beam in a low nook of the building near me on my right hand, +and I saw a figure hanging there by the neck. A figure all in +yellow white, with but one shoe to the feet and it hung so, that I +could see that the faded trimmings of the dress were like earthy +paper, and that the face was Miss Havisham's, with a movement going +over the whole countenance as if she were trying to call to me. In +the terror of seeing the figure, and in the terror of being certain +that it had not been there a moment before, I at first ran from it, +and then ran towards it. And my terror was greatest of all, when I +found no figure there. +Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight +of people passing beyond the bars of the courtyard gate, and the +reviving influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, +would have brought me round. Even with those aids, I might not have +come to myself as soon as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching +with the keys, to let me out. She would have some fair reason for +looking down upon me, I thought, if she saw me frightened and she +would have no fair reason. +She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she rejoiced +that my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, and she +opened the gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out without +looking at her, when she touched me with a taunting hand. +"Why don't you cry?" +"Because I don't want to." +"You do," said she. "You have been crying till you are half blind, +and you are near crying again now." +She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon +me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook's, and was immensely relieved +to find him not at home. So, leaving word with the shopman on what +day I was wanted at Miss Havisham's again, I set off on the +fourmile walk to our forge pondering, as I went along, on all I +had seen, and deeply revolving that I was a common labouringboy +that my hands were coarse that my boots were thick that I had +fallen into a despicable habit of calling knaves Jacks that I was +much more ignorant than I had considered myself last night, and +generally that I was in a lowlived bad way. +Chapter +When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about +Miss Havisham's, and asked a number of questions. And I soon found +myself getting heavily bumped from behind in the nape of the neck +and the small of the back, and having my face ignominiously shoved +against the kitchen wall, because I did not answer those questions +at sufficient length. +If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of +other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to +be hidden in mine which I consider probable, as I have no +particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity +it is the key to many reservations. I felt convinced that if I +described Miss Havisham's as my eyes had seen it, I should not be +understood. Not only that, but I felt convinced that Miss Havisham +too would not be understood and although she was perfectly +incomprehensible to me, I entertained an impression that there +would be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as she +really was to say nothing of Miss Estella before the +contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I +could, and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall. +The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook, preyed upon +by a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen and +heard, came gaping over in his chaisecart at teatime, to have the +details divulged to him. And the mere sight of the torment, with +his fishy eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, +and his waistcoat heaving with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in +my reticence. +"Well, boy," Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in +the chair of honour by the fire. "How did you get on up town?" +I answered, "Pretty well, sir," and my sister shook her fist at me. +"Pretty well?" Mr. Pumblechook repeated. "Pretty well is no answer. +Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?" +Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of +obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my +forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, +and then answered as if I had discovered a new idea, "I mean pretty +well." +My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly at me +I had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge when Mr. +Pumblechook interposed with "No Don't lose your temper. Leave this +lad to me, ma'am leave this lad to me." Mr. Pumblechook then turned +me towards him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said +"First to get our thoughts in order Fortythree pence?" +I calculated the consequences of replying "Four Hundred Pound," and +finding them against me, went as near the answer as I could which +was somewhere about eightpence off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me +through my pencetable from "twelve pence make one shilling," up to +"forty pence make three and fourpence," and then triumphantly +demanded, as if he had done for me, "Now How much is fortythree +pence?" To which I replied, after a long interval of reflection, "I +don't know." And I was so aggravated that I almost doubt if I did +know. +Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw it out of me, +and said, "Is fortythree pence seven and sixpence three fardens, +for instance?" +"Yes" said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my ears, it +was highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt his joke, +and brought him to a dead stop. +"Boy What like is Miss Havisham?" Mr. Pumblechook began again when +he had recovered folding his arms tight on his chest and applying +the screw. +"Very tall and dark," I told him. +"Is she, uncle?" asked my sister. +Mr. Pumblechook winked assent from which I at once inferred that he +had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind. +"Good" said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. "This is the way to have +him We are beginning to hold our own, I think, Mum?" +"I am sure, uncle," returned Mrs. Joe, "I wish you had him always +you know so well how to deal with him." +"Now, boy What was she adoing of, when you went in today?" asked +Mr. Pumblechook. +"She was sitting," I answered, "in a black velvet coach." +Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another as they well +might and both repeated, "In a black velvet coach?" +"Yes," said I. "And Miss Estella that's her niece, I think +handed her in cake and wine at the coachwindow, on a gold plate. +And we all had cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind +the coach to eat mine, because she told me to." +"Was anybody else there?" asked Mr. Pumblechook. +"Four dogs," said I. +"Large or small?" +"Immense," said I. "And they fought for veal cutlets out of a +silver basket." +Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in utter +amazement. I was perfectly frantic a reckless witness under the +torture and would have told them anything. +"Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?" asked my sister. +"In Miss Havisham's room." They stared again. "But there weren't +any horses to it." I added this saving clause, in the moment of +rejecting four richly caparisoned coursers which I had had wild +thoughts of harnessing. +"Can this be possible, uncle?" asked Mrs. Joe. "What can the boy +mean?" +"I'll tell you, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook. "My opinion is, it's a +sedanchair. She's flighty, you know very flighty quite flighty +enough to pass her days in a sedanchair." +"Did you ever see her in it, uncle?" asked Mrs. Joe. +"How could I," he returned, forced to the admission, "when I never +see her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her" +"Goodness, uncle And yet you have spoken to her?" +"Why, don't you know," said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, "that when I +have been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, +and the door has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way. +Don't say you don't know that, Mum. Howsever, the boy went there to +play. What did you play at, boy?" +"We played with flags," I said. I beg to observe that I think of +myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this +occasion. +"Flags" echoed my sister. +"Yes," said I. "Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, +and Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold +stars, out at the coachwindow. And then we all waved our swords +and hurrahed." +"Swords" repeated my sister. "Where did you get swords from?" +"Out of a cupboard," said I. "And I saw pistols in it and jam +and pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all +lighted up with candles." +"That's true, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod. "That's +the state of the case, for that much I've seen myself." And then +they both stared at me, and I, with an obtrusive show of +artlessness on my countenance, stared at them, and plaited the +right leg of my trousers with my right hand. +If they had asked me any more questions I should undoubtedly have +betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning +that there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the +statement but for my invention being divided between that +phenomenon and a bear in the brewery. They were so much occupied, +however, in discussing the marvels I had already presented for +their consideration, that I escaped. The subject still held them +when Joe came in from his work to have a cup of tea. To whom my +sister, more for the relief of her own mind than for the +gratification of his, related my pretended experiences. +Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the +kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by penitence but +only as regarded him not in the least as regarded the other two. +Towards Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself a young monster, +while they sat debating what results would come to me from Miss +Havisham's acquaintance and favour. They had no doubt that Miss +Havisham would "do something" for me their doubts related to the +form that something would take. My sister stood out for "property." +Mr. Pumblechook was in favour of a handsome premium for binding me +apprentice to some genteel trade say, the corn and seed trade, +for instance. Joe fell into the deepest disgrace with both, for +offering the bright suggestion that I might only be presented with +one of the dogs who had fought for the vealcutlets. "If a fool's +head can't express better opinions than that," said my sister, "and +you have got any work to do, you had better go and do it." So he +went. +After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was washing +up, I stole into the forge to Joe, and remained by him until he had +done for the night. Then I said, "Before the fire goes out, Joe, I +should like to tell you something." +"Should you, Pip?" said Joe, drawing his shoeingstool near the +forge. "Then tell us. What is it, Pip?" +"Joe," said I, taking hold of his rolledup shirt sleeve, and +twisting it between my finger and thumb, "you remember all that +about Miss Havisham's?" +"Remember?" said Joe. "I believe you Wonderful" +"It's a terrible thing, Joe it ain't true." +"What are you telling of, Pip?" cried Joe, falling back in the +greatest amazement. "You don't mean to say it's" +"Yes I do it's lies, Joe." +"But not all of it? Why sure you don't mean to say, Pip, that there +was no black welwet coach?" For, I stood shaking my head. "But at +least there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip," said Joe, persuasively, "if +there warn't no wealcutlets, at least there was dogs?" +"No, Joe." +"A dog?" said Joe. "A puppy? Come?" +"No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind." +As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated me in +dismay. "Pip, old chap This won't do, old fellow I say Where do +you expect to go to?" +"It's terrible, Joe an't it?" +"Terrible?" cried Joe. "Awful What possessed you?" +"I don't know what possessed me, Joe," I replied, letting his shirt +sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging my +head "but I wish you hadn't taught me to call Knaves at cards, +Jacks and I wish my boots weren't so thick nor my hands so +coarse." +And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn't +been able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook who were so +rude to me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss +Havisham's who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was +common, and that I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not +common, and that the lies had come of it somehow, though I didn't +know how. +This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to +deal with, as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the +region of metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it. +"There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," said Joe, after some +rumination, "namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they +didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and +work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, Pip. That +ain't the way to get out of being common, old chap. And as to being +common, I don't make it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some +things. You're oncommon small. Likewise you're a oncommon scholar." +"No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe." +"Why, see what a letter you wrote last night Wrote in print even +I've seen letters Ah and from gentlefolks that I'll swear +weren't wrote in print," said Joe. +"I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It's +only that." +"Well, Pip," said Joe, "be it so or be it son't, you must be a +common scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope The +king upon his throne, with his crown upon his 'ed, can't sit and +write his acts of Parliament in print, without having begun, when +he were a unpromoted Prince, with the alphabet Ah" added Joe, +with a shake of the head that was full of meaning, "and begun at A +too, and worked his way to Z. And I know what that is to do, though +I can't say I've exactly done it." +There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather +encouraged me. +"Whether common ones as to callings and earnings," pursued Joe, +reflectively, "mightn't be the better of continuing for a keep +company with common ones, instead of going out to play with +oncommon ones which reminds me to hope that there were a flag, +perhaps?" +"No, Joe." +"I'm sorry there weren't a flag, Pip. Whether that might be, or +mightn't be, is a thing as can't be looked into now, without +putting your sister on the Rampage and that's a thing not to be +thought of, as being done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what is +said to you by a true friend. Which this to you the true friend +say. If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll +never get to do it through going crooked. So don't tell no more on +'em, Pip, and live well and die happy." +"You are not angry with me, Joe?" +"No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were which I +meantersay of a stunning and outdacious sort alluding to them +which bordered on wealcutlets and dogfighting a sincere +wellwisher would adwise, Pip, their being dropped into your +meditations, when you go upstairs to bed. That's all, old chap, +and don't never do it no more." +When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not +forget Joe's recommendation, and yet my young mind was in that +disturbed and unthankful state, that I thought long after I laid me +down, how common Estella would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith how +thick his boots, and how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and my +sister were then sitting in the kitchen, and how I had come up to +bed from the kitchen, and how Miss Havisham and Estella never sat +in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such common doings. I +fell asleep recalling what I "used to do" when I was at Miss +Havisham's as though I had been there weeks or months, instead of +hours and as though it were quite an old subject of remembrance, +instead of one that had arisen only that day. +That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. +But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck +out of it, and think how different its course would have been. +Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain +of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound +you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day. +Chapter +The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I +woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself +uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance +of this luminous conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. +Wopsle's greataunt's at night, that I had a particular reason for +wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged +to her if she would impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was +the most obliging of girls, immediately said she would, and indeed +began to carry out her promise within five minutes. +The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. Wopsle's +greataunt may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils +ate apples and put straws down one another's backs, until Mr +Wopsle's greataunt collected her energies, and made an +indiscriminate totter at them with a birchrod. After receiving the +charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and +buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an +alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling +that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to +circulate, Mr. Wopsle's greataunt fell into a state of coma +arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then +entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the +subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the +hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy +made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles shaped as +if they had been unskilfully cut off the chumpend of something, +more illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of +literature I have since met with, speckled all over with ironmould, +and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between +their leaves. This part of the Course was usually lightened by +several single combats between Biddy and refractory students. When +the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then +we all read aloud what we could or what we couldn't in a +frightful chorus Biddy leading with a high shrill monotonous +voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for, +what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a +certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle's greataunt, who +staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was +understood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we emerged +into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It is fair to +remark that there was no prohibition against any pupil's +entertaining himself with a slate or even with the ink when there +was any, but that it was not easy to pursue that branch of study +in the winter season, on account of the little general shop in +which the classes were holden and which was also Mr. Wopsle's +greataunt's sittingroom and bedchamber being but faintly +illuminated through the agency of one lowspirited dipcandle and +no snuffers. +It appeared to me that it would take time, to become uncommon under +these circumstances nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that +very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting +some information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the +head of moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old +English D which she had imitated from the heading of some +newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to +be a design for a buckle. +Of course there was a publichouse in the village, and of course +Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict +orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, +that evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my +peril. To the Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps. +There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long +chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which +seemed to me to be never paid off. They had been there ever since I +could remember, and had grown more than I had. But there was a +quantity of chalk about our country, and perhaps the people +neglected no opportunity of turning it to account. +It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly +at these records, but as my business was with Joe and not with him, +I merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room +at the end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen +fire, and where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle +and a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with "Halloa, Pip, old +chap" and the moment he said that, the stranger turned his head +and looked at me. +He was a secretlooking man whom I had never seen before. His head +was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he +were taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe +in his mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his +smoke away and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I +nodded, and then he nodded again, and made room on the settle +beside him that I might sit down there. +But, as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place +of resort, I said "No, thank you, sir," and fell into the space Joe +made for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing +at Joe, and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded +to me again when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg in +a very odd way, as it struck me. +"You was saying," said the strange man, turning to Joe, "that you +was a blacksmith." +"Yes. I said it, you know," said Joe. +"What'll you drink, Mr. ? You didn't mention your name, +bythebye." +Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. +"What'll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top up with?" +"Well," said Joe, "to tell you the truth, I ain't much in the habit +of drinking at anybody's expense but my own." +"Habit? No," returned the stranger, "but once and away, and on a +Saturday night too. Come Put a name to it, Mr. Gargery." +"I wouldn't wish to be stiff company," said Joe. "Rum." +"Rum," repeated the stranger. "And will the other gentleman +originate a sentiment." +"Rum," said Mr. Wopsle. +"Three Rums" cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. "Glasses +round" +"This other gentleman," observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr. +Wopsle, "is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it out. +Our clerk at church." +"Aha" said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me. "The +lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves round it" +"That's it," said Joe. +The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his pipe, put +his legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He wore a +flapping broadbrimmed traveller's hat, and under it a handkerchief +tied over his head in the manner of a cap so that he showed no +hair. As he looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning +expression, followed by a halflaugh, come into his face. +"I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a +solitary country towards the river." +"Most marshes is solitary," said Joe. +"No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gipsies, now, or tramps, or +vagrants of any sort, out there?" +"No," said Joe "none but a runaway convict now and then. And we +don't find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?" +Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, +assented but not warmly. +"Seems you have been out after such?" asked the stranger. +"Once," returned Joe. "Not that we wanted to take them, you +understand we went out as lookers on me, and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip. +Didn't us, Pip?" +"Yes, Joe." +The stranger looked at me again still cocking his eye, as if he +were expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun and said, +"He's a likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call +him?" +"Pip," said Joe. +"Christened Pip?" +"No, not christened Pip." +"Surname Pip?" +"No," said Joe, "it's a kind of family name what he gave himself +when a infant, and is called by." +"Son of yours?" +"Well," said Joe, meditatively not, of course, that it could be +in anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the +way at the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about +everything that was discussed over pipes "well no. No, he +ain't." +"Nevvy?" said the strange man. +"Well," said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogitation, +"he is not no, not to deceive you, he is not my nevvy." +"What the Blue Blazes is he?" asked the stranger. Which appeared to +me to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength. +Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that as one who knew all about +relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what +female relations a man might not marry and expounded the ties +between me and Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with +a most terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third, and +seemed to think he had done quite enough to account for it when he +added, "as the poet says." +And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, he +considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair +and poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his +standing who visited at our house should always have put me through +the same inflammatory process under similar circumstances. Yet I do +not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of +remark in our social family circle, but some largehanded person +took some such ophthalmic steps to patronize me. +All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and looked +at me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last, and +bring me down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue Blazes +observation, until the glasses of rumandwater were brought and +then he made his shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was. +It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dump show, and was +pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rumandwater pointedly +at me, and he tasted his rumandwater pointedly at me. And he +stirred it and he tasted it not with a spoon that was brought to +him, but with a file. +He did this so that nobody but I saw the file and when he had done +it he wiped the file and put it in a breastpocket. I knew it to be +Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw +the instrument. I sat gazing at him, spellbound. But he now +reclined on his settle, taking very little notice of me, and +talking principally about turnips. +There was a delicious sense of cleaningup and making a quiet pause +before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturday nights, +which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer on +Saturdays than at other times. The half hour and the rumandwater +running out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand. +"Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery," said the strange man. "I think +I've got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I +have, the boy shall have it." +He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some +crumpled paper, and gave it to me. "Yours" said he. "Mind Your +own." +I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of good +manners, and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe goodnight, and he +gave Mr. Wopsle goodnight who went out with us, and he gave me +only a look with his aiming eye no, not a look, for he shut it +up, but wonders may be done with an eye by hiding it. +On the way home, if I had been in a humour for talking, the talk +must have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted from us at the +door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home with his +mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. +But I was in a manner stupefied by this turning up of my old +misdeed and old acquaintance, and could think of nothing else. +My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves +in the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual circumstance +to tell her about the bright shilling. "A bad un, I'll be bound," +said Mrs. Joe triumphantly, "or he wouldn't have given it to the +boy Let's look at it." +I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. "But +what's this?" said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catching +up the paper. "Two OnePound notes?" +Nothing less than two fat sweltering onepound notes that seemed to +have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle +markets in the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with +them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he +was gone, I sat down on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my +sister, feeling pretty sure that the man would not be there. +Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that +he, Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the +notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put +them under some dried roseleaves in an ornamental teapot on the +top of a press in the state parlour. There they remained, a +nightmare to me, many and many a night and day. +I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the +strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the +guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of +conspiracy with convicts a feature in my low career that I had +previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread +possessed me that when I least expected it, the file would +reappear. I coaxed myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham's, +next Wednesday and in my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of +a door, without seeing who held it, and I screamed myself awake. +Chapter +At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's, and my +hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it +after admitting me, as she had done before, and again preceded me +into the dark passage where her candle stood. She took no notice of +me until she had the candle in her hand, when she looked over her +shoulder, superciliously saying, "You are to come this way today," +and took me to quite another part of the house. +The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square +basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the +square, however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her +candle down and opened a door. Here, the daylight reappeared, and I +found myself in a small paved courtyard, the opposite side of +which was formed by a detached dwellinghouse, that looked as if it +had once belonged to the manager or head clerk of the extinct +brewery. There was a clock in the outer wall of this house. Like +the clock in Miss Havisham's room, and like Miss Havisham's watch, +it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine. +We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room +with a low ceiling, on the ground floor at the back. There was some +company in the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, "You +are to go and stand there, boy, till you are wanted." "There", +being the window, I crossed to it, and stood "there," in a very +uncomfortable state of mind, looking out. +It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable corner of +the neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbagestalks, and one +box tree that had been clipped round long ago, like a pudding, and +had a new growth at the top of it, out of shape and of a different +colour, as if that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan +and got burnt. This was my homely thought, as I contemplated the +boxtree. There had been some light snow, overnight, and it lay +nowhere else to my knowledge but, it had not quite melted from the +cold shadow of this bit of garden, and the wind caught it up in +little eddies and threw it at the window, as if it pelted me for +coming there. +I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, and +that its other occupants were looking at me. I could see nothing of +the room except the shining of the fire in the window glass, but I +stiffened in all my joints with the consciousness that I was under +close inspection. +There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had +been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to +me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them +pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs +because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made +him or her out to be a toady and humbug. +They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody's +pleasure, and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite +rigidly to repress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla, very +much reminded me of my sister, with the difference that she was +older, and as I found when I caught sight of her of a blunter +cast of features. Indeed, when I knew her better I began to think +it was a Mercy she had any features at all, so very blank and high +was the dead wall of her face. +"Poor dear soul" said this lady, with an abruptness of manner +quite my sister's. "Nobody's enemy but his own" +"It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's enemy," +said the gentleman "far more natural." +"Cousin Raymond," observed another lady, "we are to love our +neighbour." +"Sarah Pocket," returned Cousin Raymond, "if a man is not his own +neighbour, who is?" +Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said checking a +yawn, "The idea" But I thought they seemed to think it rather a +good idea too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet, said gravely +and emphatically, "Very true" +"Poor soul" Camilla presently went on I knew they had all been +looking at me in the mean time, "he is so very strange Would +anyone believe that when Tom's wife died, he actually could not be +induced to see the importance of the children's having the deepest +of trimmings to their mourning? 'Good Lord' says he, 'Camilla, +what can it signify so long as the poor bereaved little things are +in black?' So like Matthew The idea" +"Good points in him, good points in him," said Cousin Raymond +"Heaven forbid I should deny good points in him but he never had, +and he never will have, any sense of the proprieties." +"You know I was obliged," said Camilla, "I was obliged to be firm. +I said, 'It WILL NOT DO, for the credit of the family.' I told him +that, without deep trimmings, the family was disgraced. I cried +about it from breakfast till dinner. I injured my digestion. And at +last he flung out in his violent way, and said, with a D, 'Then do +as you like.' Thank Goodness it will always be a consolation to me +to know that I instantly went out in a pouring rain and bought the +things." +"He paid for them, did he not?" asked Estella. +"It's not the question, my dear child, who paid for them," returned +Camilla. "I bought them. And I shall often think of that with +peace, when I wake up in the night." +The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of some +cry or call along the passage by which I had come, interrupted the +conversation and caused Estella to say to me, "Now, boy" On my +turning round, they all looked at me with the utmost contempt, and, +as I went out, I heard Sarah Pocket say, "Well I am sure What +next" and Camilla add, with indignation, "Was there ever such a +fancy The idea" +As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella +stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunting +manner with her face quite close to mine +"Well?" +"Well, miss?" I answered, almost falling over her and checking +myself. +She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood looking at her. +"Am I pretty?" +"Yes I think you are very pretty." +"Am I insulting?" +"Not so much so as you were last time," said I. +"Not so much so?" +"No." +She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped my face +with such force as she had, when I answered it. +"Now?" said she. "You little coarse monster, what do you think of +me now?" +"I shall not tell you." +"Because you are going to tell, upstairs. Is that it?" +"No," said I, "that's not it." +"Why don't you cry again, you little wretch?" +"Because I'll never cry for you again," said I. Which was, I +suppose, as false a declaration as ever was made for I was +inwardly crying for her then, and I know what I know of the pain +she cost me afterwards. +We went on our way upstairs after this episode and, as we were +going up, we met a gentleman groping his way down. +"Whom have we here?" asked the gentleman, stopping and looking at +me. +"A boy," said Estella. +He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an +exceedingly large head and a corresponding large hand. He took my +chin in his large hand and turned up my face to have a look at me +by the light of the candle. He was prematurely bald on the top of +his head, and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn't lie down but +stood up bristling. His eyes were set very deep in his head, and +were disagreeably sharp and suspicious. He had a large watchchain, +and strong black dots where his beard and whiskers would have been +if he had let them. He was nothing to me, and I could have had no +foresight then, that he ever would be anything to me, but it +happened that I had this opportunity of observing him well. +"Boy of the neighbourhood? Hey?" said he. +"Yes, sir," said I. +"How do you come here?" +"Miss Havisham sent for me, sir," I explained. +"Well Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of boys, +and you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind" said he, biting the +side of his great forefinger as he frowned at me, "you behave +yourself" +With those words, he released me which I was glad of, for his +hand smelt of scented soap and went his way downstairs. I +wondered whether he could be a doctor but no, I thought he +couldn't be a doctor, or he would have a quieter and more +persuasive manner. There was not much time to consider the subject, +for we were soon in Miss Havisham's room, where she and everything +else were just as I had left them. Estella left me standing near +the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon +me from the dressingtable. +"So" she said, without being startled or surprised "the days have +worn away, have they?" +"Yes, ma'am. Today is" +"There, there, there" with the impatient movement of her fingers. +"I don't want to know. Are you ready to play?" +I was obliged to answer in some confusion, "I don't think I am, +ma'am." +"Not at cards again?" she demanded, with a searching look. +"Yes, ma'am I could do that, if I was wanted." +"Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy," said Miss +Havisham, impatiently, "and you are unwilling to play, are you +willing to work?" +I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been +able to find for the other question, and I said I was quite +willing. +"Then go into that opposite room," said she, pointing at the door +behind me with her withered hand, "and wait there till I come." +I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she +indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely +excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire +had been lately kindled in the damp oldfashioned grate, and it was +more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke +which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air like +our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high +chimneypiece faintly lighted the chamber or, it would be more +expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, +and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible thing +in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The +most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on +it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the +clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centrepiece of some kind +was in the middle of this cloth it was so heavily overhung with +cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable and, as I looked +along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to +grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckledlegged spiders with +blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if +some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just +transpired in the spider community. +I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same +occurrence were important to their interests. But, the blackbeetles +took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a +ponderous elderly way, as if they were shortsighted and hard of +hearing, and not on terms with one another. +These crawling things had fascinated my attention and I was +watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon +my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutchheaded stick on +which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place. +"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is +where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me +here." +With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then +and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly +waxwork at the Fair, I shrank under her touch. +"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her +stick "that, where those cobwebs are?" +"I can't guess what it is, ma'am." +"It's a great cake. A bridecake. Mine" +She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said, +leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, "Come, come, +come Walk me, walk me" +I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to walk Miss +Havisham round and round the room. Accordingly, I started at once, +and she leaned upon my shoulder, and we went away at a pace that +might have been an imitation founded on my first impulse under +that roof of Mr. Pumblechook's chaisecart. +She was not physically strong, and after a little time said, +"Slower" Still, we went at an impatient fitful speed, and as we +went, she twitched the hand upon my shoulder, and worked her mouth, +and led me to believe that we were going fast because her thoughts +went fast. After a while she said, "Call Estella" so I went out on +the landing and roared that name as I had done on the previous +occasion. When her light appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, and +we started away again round and round the room. +If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our proceedings, I +should have felt sufficiently discontented but, as she brought +with her the three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen below, +I didn't know what to do. In my politeness, I would have stopped +but, Miss Havisham twitched my shoulder, and we posted on with a +shamefaced consciousness on my part that they would think it was +all my doing. +"Dear Miss Havisham," said Miss Sarah Pocket. "How well you look" +"I do not," returned Miss Havisham. "I am yellow skin and bone." +Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this rebuff and she +murmured, as she plaintively contemplated Miss Havisham, "Poor dear +soul Certainly not to be expected to look well, poor thing. The +idea" +"And how are you?" said Miss Havisham to Camilla. As we were close +to Camilla then, I would have stopped as a matter of course, only +Miss Havisham wouldn't stop. We swept on, and I felt that I was +highly obnoxious to Camilla. +"Thank you, Miss Havisham," she returned, "I am as well as can be +expected." +"Why, what's the matter with you?" asked Miss Havisham, with +exceeding sharpness. +"Nothing worth mentioning," replied Camilla. "I don't wish to make +a display of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of you more +in the night than I am quite equal to." +"Then don't think of me," retorted Miss Havisham. +"Very easily said" remarked Camilla, amiably repressing a sob, +while a hitch came into her upper lip, and her tears overflowed. +"Raymond is a witness what ginger and sal volatile I am obliged to +take in the night. Raymond is a witness what nervous jerkings I +have in my legs. Chokings and nervous jerkings, however, are +nothing new to me when I think with anxiety of those I love. If I +could be less affectionate and sensitive, I should have a better +digestion and an iron set of nerves. I am sure I wish it could be +so. But as to not thinking of you in the night The idea" Here, a +burst of tears. +The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the gentleman present, +and him I understood to be Mr. Camilla. He came to the rescue at +this point, and said in a consolatory and complimentary voice, +"Camilla, my dear, it is well known that your family feelings are +gradually undermining you to the extent of making one of your legs +shorter than the other." +"I am not aware," observed the grave lady whose voice I had heard +but once, "that to think of any person is to make a great claim +upon that person, my dear." +Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry brown +corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been made +of walnut shells, and a large mouth like a cat's without the +whiskers, supported this position by saying, "No, indeed, my dear. +Hem" +"Thinking is easy enough," said the grave lady. +"What is easier, you know?" assented Miss Sarah Pocket. +"Oh, yes, yes" cried Camilla, whose fermenting feelings appeared +to rise from her legs to her bosom. "It's all very true It's a +weakness to be so affectionate, but I can't help it. No doubt my +health would be much better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn't +change my disposition if I could. It's the cause of much suffering, +but it's a consolation to know I posses it, when I wake up in the +night." Here another burst of feeling. +Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept going +round and round the room now, brushing against the skirts of the +visitors now, giving them the whole length of the dismal chamber. +"There's Matthew" said Camilla. "Never mixing with any natural +ties, never coming here to see how Miss Havisham is I have taken +to the sofa with my staylace cut, and have lain there hours, +insensible, with my head over the side, and my hair all down, and +my feet I don't know where" +"Much higher than your head, my love," said Mr. Camilla. +"I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on account of +Matthew's strange and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has thanked +me." +"Really I must say I should think not" interposed the grave lady. +"You see, my dear," added Miss Sarah Pocket a blandly vicious +personage, "the question to put to yourself is, who did you expect +to thank you, my love?" +"Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the sort," resumed +Camilla, "I have remained in that state, hours and hours, and +Raymond is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, and what +the total inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at +the pianofortetuner's across the street, where the poor mistaken +children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a +distanceand now to be told." Here Camilla put her hand to her +throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the formation of new +combinations there. +When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss Havisham stopped me and +herself, and stood looking at the speaker. This change had a great +influence in bringing Camilla's chemistry to a sudden end. +"Matthew will come and see me at last," said Miss Havisham, +sternly, "when I am laid on that table. That will be his place +there," striking the table with her stick, "at my head And yours +will be there And your husband's there And Sarah Pocket's there +And Georgiana's there Now you all know where to take your stations +when you come to feast upon me. And now go" +At the mention of each name, she had struck the table with her +stick in a new place. She now said, "Walk me, walk me" and we went +on again. +"I suppose there's nothing to be done," exclaimed Camilla, "but +comply and depart. It's something to have seen the object of one's +love and duty, for even so short a time. I shall think of it with a +melancholy satisfaction when I wake up in the night. I wish Matthew +could have that comfort, but he sets it at defiance. I am +determined not to make a display of my feelings, but it's very hard +to be told one wants to feast on one's relations as if one was a +Giant and to be told to go. The bare idea" +Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla laid her hand upon her +heaving bosom, that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of manner +which I supposed to be expressive of an intention to drop and choke +when out of view, and kissing her hand to Miss Havisham, was +escorted forth. Sarah Pocket and Georgiana contended who should +remain last but, Sarah was too knowing to be outdone, and ambled +round Georgiana with that artful slipperiness, that the latter was +obliged to take precedence. Sarah Pocket then made her separate +effect of departing with "Bless you, Miss Havisham dear" and with +a smile of forgiving pity on her walnutshell countenance for the +weaknesses of the rest. +While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still +walked with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At +last she stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and +looking at it some seconds +"This is my birthday, Pip." +I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her +stick. +"I don't suffer it to be spoken of. I don't suffer those who were +here just now, or any one, to speak of it. They come here on the +day, but they dare not refer to it." +Of course I made no further effort to refer to it. +"On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of +decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on +the table but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have +worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth +than teeth of mice have gnawed at me." +She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood +looking at the table she in her once white dress, all yellow and +withered the once white cloth all yellow and withered everything +around, in a state to crumble under a touch. +"When the ruin is complete," said she, with a ghastly look, "and +when they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table +which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him +so much the better if it is done on this day" +She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own +figure lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too +remained quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus for a long +time. In the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that +brooded in its remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that +Estella and I might presently begin to decay. +At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but +in an instant, Miss Havisham said, "Let me see you two play cards +why have you not begun?" With that, we returned to her room, and +sat down as before I was beggared, as before and again, as +before, Miss Havisham watched us all the time, directed my +attention to Estella's beauty, and made me notice it the more by +trying her jewels on Estella's breast and hair. +Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before except that +she did not condescend to speak. When we had played some halfdozen +games, a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken down into +the yard to be fed in the former doglike manner. There, too, I was +again left to wander about as I liked. +It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall +which I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was, on +that last occasion, open or shut. Enough that I saw no gate then, +and that I saw one now. As it stood open, and as I knew that +Estella had let the visitors out for, she had returned with the +keys in her hand I strolled into the garden and strolled all over +it. It was quite a wilderness, and there were old melonframes and +cucumberframes in it, which seemed in their decline to have +produced a spontaneous growth of weak attempts at pieces of old +hats and boots, with now and then a weedy offshoot into the +likeness of a battered saucepan. +When I had exhausted the garden, and a greenhouse with nothing in +it but a fallendown grapevine and some bottles, I found myself in +the dismal corner upon which I had looked out of the window. Never +questioning for a moment that the house was now empty, I looked in +at another window, and found myself, to my great surprise, +exchanging a broad stare with a pale young gentleman with red +eyelids and light hair. +This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and reappeared +beside me. He had been at his books when I had found myself staring +at him, and I now saw that he was inky. +"Halloa" said he, "young fellow" +Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed to +be best answered by itself, I said, "Halloa" politely omitting +young fellow. +"Who let you in?" said he. +"Miss Estella." +"Who gave you leave to prowl about?" +"Miss Estella." +"Come and fight," said the pale young gentleman. +What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself the +question since but, what else could I do? His manner was so final +and I was so astonished, that I followed where he led, as if I had +been under a spell. +"Stop a minute, though," he said, wheeling round before we had gone +many paces. "I ought to give you a reason for fighting, too. There +it is" In a most irritating manner he instantly slapped his hands +against one another, daintily flung one of his legs up behind him, +pulled my hair, slapped his hands again, dipped his head, and +butted it into my stomach. +The bulllike proceeding last mentioned, besides that it was +unquestionably to be regarded in the light of a liberty, was +particularly disagreeable just after bread and meat. I therefore +hit out at him and was going to hit out again, when he said, +"Aha Would you?" and began dancing backwards and forwards in a +manner quite unparalleled within my limited experience. +"Laws of the game" said he. Here, he skipped from his left leg on +to his right. "Regular rules" Here, he skipped from his right leg +on to his left. "Come to the ground, and go through the +preliminaries" Here, he dodged backwards and forwards, and did all +sorts of things while I looked helplessly at him. +I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous but, I +felt morally and physically convinced that his light head of hair +could have had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that I had +a right to consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. +Therefore, I followed him without a word, to a retired nook of the +garden, formed by the junction of two walls and screened by some +rubbish. On his asking me if I was satisfied with the ground, and +on my replying Yes, he begged my leave to absent himself for a +moment, and quickly returned with a bottle of water and a sponge +dipped in vinegar. "Available for both," he said, placing these +against the wall. And then fell to pulling off, not only his jacket +and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a manner at once +lighthearted, businesslike, and bloodthirsty. +Although he did not look very healthy having pimples on his face, +and a breaking out at his mouth these dreadful preparations quite +appalled me. I judged him to be about my own age, but he was much +taller, and he had a way of spinning himself about that was full of +appearance. For the rest, he was a young gentleman in a grey suit +when not denuded for battle, with his elbows, knees, wrists, and +heels, considerably in advance of the rest of him as to +development. +My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every +demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if he +were minutely choosing his bone. I never have been so surprised in +my life, as I was when I let out the first blow, and saw him lying +on his back, looking up at me with a bloody nose and his face +exceedingly foreshortened. +But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with a +great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second greatest +surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back +again, looking up at me out of a black eye. +His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no +strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked +down but, he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or +drinking out of the waterbottle, with the greatest satisfaction in +seconding himself according to form, and then came at me with an +air and a show that made me believe he really was going to do for +me at last. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that +the more I hit him, the harder I hit him but, he came up again and +again and again, until at last he got a bad fall with the back of +his head against the wall. Even after that crisis in our affairs, +he got up and turned round and round confusedly a few times, not +knowing where I was but finally went on his knees to his sponge +and threw it up at the same time panting out, "That means you have +won." +He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had not proposed +the contest I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, +I go so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing, as a +species of savage young wolf, or other wild beast. However, I got +dressed, darkly wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I said, +"Can I help you?" and he said "No thankee," and I said "Good +afternoon," and he said "Same to you." +When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the +keys. But, she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had +kept her waiting and there was a bright flush upon her face, as +though something had happened to delight her. Instead of going +straight to the gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and +beckoned me. +"Come here You may kiss me, if you like." +I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have +gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But, I felt that the +kiss was given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might +have been, and that it was worth nothing. +What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what +with the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home +the light on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was +gleaming against a black nightsky, and Joe's furnace was flinging +a path of fire across the road. +Chapter +My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young +gentleman. The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale +young gentleman on his back in various stages of puffy and +incrimsoned countenance, the more certain it appeared that +something would be done to me. I felt that the pale young +gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the Law would avenge it. +Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had incurred, +it was clear to me that village boys could not go stalking about +the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into +the studious youth of England, without laying themselves open to +severe punishment. For some days, I even kept close at home, and +looked out at the kitchen door with the greatest caution and +trepidation before going on an errand, lest the officers of the +County Jail should pounce upon me. The pale young gentleman's nose +had stained my trousers, and I tried to wash out that evidence of +my guilt in the dead of night. I had cut my knuckles against the +pale young gentleman's teeth, and I twisted my imagination into a +thousand tangles, as I devised incredible ways of accounting for +that damnatory circumstance when I should be haled before the +Judges. +When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of +violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of +Justice, specially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush +behind the gate? Whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal +vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might rise in those +graveclothes of hers, draw a pistol, and shoot me dead? Whether +suborned boys a numerous band of mercenaries might be engaged +to fall upon me in the brewery, and cuff me until I was no more? It +was high testimony to my confidence in the spirit of the pale young +gentleman, that I never imagined him accessory to these +retaliations they always came into my mind as the acts of +injudicious relatives of his, goaded on by the state of his visage +and an indignant sympathy with the family features. +However, go to Miss Havisham's I must, and go I did. And behold +nothing came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to in any +way, and no pale young gentleman was to be discovered on the +premises. I found the same gate open, and I explored the garden, +and even looked in at the windows of the detached house but, my +view was suddenly stopped by the closed shutters within, and all +was lifeless. Only in the corner where the combat had taken place, +could I detect any evidence of the young gentleman's existence. +There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I covered them with +gardenmould from the eye of man. +On the broad landing between Miss Havisham's own room and that +other room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a +gardenchair a light chair on wheels, that you pushed from +behind. It had been placed there since my last visit, and I +entered, that same day, on a regular occupation of pushing Miss +Havisham in this chair when she was tired of walking with her hand +upon my shoulder round her own room, and across the landing, and +round the other room. Over and over and over again, we would make +these journeys, and sometimes they would last as long as three +hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general mention of +these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled that I +should return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and +because I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten +months. +As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked +more to me, and asked me such questions as what had I learnt and +what was I going to be? I told her I was going to be apprenticed to +Joe, I believed and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting +to know everything, in the hope that she might offer some help +towards that desirable end. But, she did not on the contrary, she +seemed to prefer my being ignorant. Neither did she ever give me +any money or anything but my daily dinner nor ever stipulate +that I should be paid for my services. +Estella was always about, and always let me in and out, but never +told me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would coldly +tolerate me sometimes, she would condescend to me sometimes, she +would be quite familiar with me sometimes, she would tell me +energetically that she hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask me +in a whisper, or when we were alone, "Does she grow prettier and +prettier, Pip?" And when I said yes for indeed she did, would +seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when we played at cards Miss +Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish of Estella's moods, +whatever they were. And sometimes, when her moods were so many and +so contradictory of one another that I was puzzled what to say or +do, Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish fondness, murmuring +something in her ear that sounded like "Break their hearts my pride +and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy" +There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of +which the burden was Old Clem. This was not a very ceremonious way +of rendering homage to a patron saint but, I believe Old Clem +stood in that relation towards smiths. It was a song that imitated +the measure of beating upon iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for +the introduction of Old Clem's respected name. Thus, you were to +hammer boys round Old Clem With a thump and a sound Old Clem +Beat it out, beat it out Old Clem With a clink for the stout +Old Clem Blow the fire, blow the fire Old Clem Roaring dryer, +soaring higher Old Clem One day soon after the appearance of the +chair, Miss Havisham suddenly saying to me, with the impatient +movement of her fingers, "There, there, there Sing" I was +surprised into crooning this ditty as I pushed her over the floor. +It happened so to catch her fancy, that she took it up in a low +brooding voice as if she were singing in her sleep. After that, it +became customary with us to have it as we moved about, and Estella +would often join in though the whole strain was so subdued, even +when there were three of us, that it made less noise in the grim +old house than the lightest breath of wind. +What could I become with these surroundings? How could my character +fail to be influenced by them? Is it to be wondered at if my +thoughts were dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the +natural light from the misty yellow rooms? +Perhaps, I might have told Joe about the pale young gentleman, if I +had not previously been betrayed into those enormous inventions to +which I had confessed. Under the circumstances, I felt that Joe +could hardly fail to discern in the pale young gentleman, an +appropriate passenger to be put into the black velvet coach +therefore, I said nothing of him. Besides that shrinking from +having Miss Havisham and Estella discussed, which had come upon me +in the beginning, grew much more potent as time went on. I reposed +complete confidence in no one but Biddy but, I told poor Biddy +everything. Why it came natural to me to do so, and why Biddy had a +deep concern in everything I told her, I did not know then, though +I think I know now. +Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home, fraught with +almost insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit. That +ass, Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the purpose +of discussing my prospects with my sister and I really do believe +to this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel, that if +these hands could have taken a linchpin out of his chaisecart, +they would have done it. The miserable man was a man of that +confined stolidity of mind, that he could not discuss my prospects +without having me before him as it were, to operate upon and he +would drag me up from my stool usually by the collar where I was +quiet in a corner, and, putting me before the fire as if I were +going to be cooked, would begin by saying, "Now, Mum, here is this +boy Here is this boy which you brought up by hand. Hold up your +head, boy, and be for ever grateful unto them which so did do. Now, +Mum, with respections to this boy" And then he would rumple my +hair the wrong way which from my earliest remembrance, as already +hinted, I have in my soul denied the right of any fellowcreature +to do and would hold me before him by the sleeve a spectacle of +imbecility only to be equalled by himself. +Then, he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical +speculations about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with +me and for me, that I used to want quite painfully to burst +into spiteful tears, fly at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. +In these dialogues, my sister spoke to me as if she were morally +wrenching one of my teeth out at every reference while Pumblechook +himself, selfconstituted my patron, would sit supervising me with +a depreciatory eye, like the architect of my fortunes who thought +himself engaged on a very unremunerative job. +In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often talked at, +while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe's perceiving that +he was not favourable to my being taken from the forge. I was fully +old enough now, to be apprenticed to Joe and when Joe sat with the +poker on his knees thoughtfully raking out the ashes between the +lower bars, my sister would so distinctly construe that innocent +action into opposition on his part, that she would dive at him, +take the poker out of his hands, shake him, and put it away. There +was a most irritating end to every one of these debates. All in a +moment, with nothing to lead up to it, my sister would stop herself +in a yawn, and catching sight of me as it were incidentally, would +swoop upon me with, "Come there's enough of you You get along to +bed you've given trouble enough for one night, I hope" As if I +had besought them as a favour to bother my life out. +We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely that +we should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when, one +day, Miss Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she +leaning on my shoulder and said with some displeasure +"You are growing tall, Pip" +I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a meditative look, +that this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I had no +control. +She said no more at the time but, she presently stopped and looked +at me again and presently again and after that, looked frowning +and moody. On the next day of my attendance when our usual exercise +was over, and I had landed her at her dressingtable, she stayed me +with a movement of her impatient fingers +"Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours." +"Joe Gargery, ma'am." +"Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?" +"Yes, Miss Havisham." +"You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come here +with you, and bring your indentures, do you think?" +I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honour to be +asked. +"Then let him come." +"At any particular time, Miss Havisham?" +"There, there I know nothing about times. Let him come soon, and +come along with you." +When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my +sister "went on the Rampage," in a more alarming degree than at any +previous period. She asked me and Joe whether we supposed she was +doormats under our feet, and how we dared to use her so, and what +company we graciously thought she was fit for? When she had +exhausted a torrent of such inquiries, she threw a candlestick at +Joe, burst into a loud sobbing, got out the dustpan which was +always a very bad sign put on her coarse apron, and began +cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not satisfied with a dry +cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbingbrush, and cleaned us +out of house and home, so that we stood shivering in the backyard. +It was ten o'clock at night before we ventured to creep in again, +and then she asked Joe why he hadn't married a Negress Slave at +once? Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling his +whisker and looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it really +might have been a better speculation. +Chapter +It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to see Joe +arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss +Havisham's. However, as he thought his courtsuit necessary to the +occasion, it was not for me tell him that he looked far better in +his working dress the rather, because I knew he made himself so +dreadfully uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and that it was +for me he pulled up his shirtcollar so very high behind, that it +made the hair on the crown of his head stand up like a tuft of +feathers. +At breakfast time my sister declared her intention of going to town +with us, and being left at Uncle Pumblechook's and called for "when +we had done with our fine ladies" a way of putting the case, from +which Joe appeared inclined to augur the worst. The forge was shut +up for the day, and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door as it was +his custom to do on the very rare occasions when he was not at +work the monosyllable HOUT, accompanied by a sketch of an arrow +supposed to be flying in the direction he had taken. +We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a very large beaver +bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of England in +plaited straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an umbrella, +though it was a fine bright day. I am not quite clear whether these +articles were carried penitentially or ostentatiously but, I +rather think they were displayed as articles of property much as +Cleopatra or any other sovereign lady on the Rampage might exhibit +her wealth in a pageant or procession. +When we came to Pumblechook's, my sister bounced in and left us. As +it was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss Havisham's +house. Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the moment she +appeared, Joe took his hat off and stood weighing it by the brim in +both his hands as if he had some urgent reason in his mind for +being particular to half a quarter of an ounce. +Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I +knew so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I +looked back at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his +hat with the greatest care, and was coming after us in long strides +on the tips of his toes. +Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by the +coatcuff and conducted him into Miss Havisham's presence. She was +seated at her dressingtable, and looked round at us immediately. +"Oh" said she to Joe. "You are the husband of the sister of this +boy?" +I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself +or so like some extraordinary bird standing, as he did, +speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open, +as if he wanted a worm. +"You are the husband," repeated Miss Havisham, "of the sister of +this boy?" +It was very aggravating but, throughout the interview Joe +persisted in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham. +"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe now observed in a manner that was at +once expressive of forcible argumentation, strict confidence, and +great politeness, "as I hup and married your sister, and I were at +the time what you might call if you was anyways inclined a single +man." +"Well" said Miss Havisham. "And you have reared the boy, with the +intention of taking him for your apprentice is that so, Mr. +Gargery?" +"You know, Pip," replied Joe, "as you and me were ever friends, and +it were looked for'ard to betwixt us, as being calc'lated to lead +to larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made objections to the +business such as its being open to black and sut, or suchlike +not but what they would have been attended to, don't you see?" +"Has the boy," said Miss Havisham, "ever made any objection? Does +he like the trade?" +"Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip," returned Joe, +strengthening his former mixture of argumentation, confidence, and +politeness, "that it were the wish of your own hart." I saw the +idea suddenly break upon him that he would adapt his epitaph to the +occasion, before he went on to say "And there weren't no objection +on your part, and Pip it were the great wish of your heart" +It was quite in vain for me to endeavour to make him sensible that +he ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces and +gestures to him to do it, the more confidential, argumentative, and +polite, he persisted in being to Me. +"Have you brought his indentures with you?" asked Miss Havisham. +"Well, Pip, you know," replied Joe, as if that were a little +unreasonable, "you yourself see me put 'em in my 'at, and therefore +you know as they are here." With which he took them out, and gave +them, not to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of +the dear good fellow I know I was ashamed of him when I saw +that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havisham's chair, and that +her eyes laughed mischievously. I took the indentures out of his +hand and gave them to Miss Havisham. +"You expected," said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over, "no +premium with the boy?" +"Joe" I remonstrated for he made no reply at all. "Why don't you +answer" +"Pip," returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, "which I +meantersay that were not a question requiring a answer betwixt +yourself and me, and which you know the answer to be full well No. +You know it to be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it?" +Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he really +was, better than I had thought possible, seeing what he was there +and took up a little bag from the table beside her. +"Pip has earned a premium here," she said, "and here it is. There +are fiveandtwenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your master, +Pip." +As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the wonder awakened +in him by her strange figure and the strange room, Joe, even at +this pass, persisted in addressing me. +"This is wery liberal on your part, Pip," said Joe, "and it is as +such received and grateful welcome, though never looked for, far +nor near nor nowheres. And now, old chap," said Joe, conveying to +me a sensation, first of burning and then of freezing, for I felt +as if that familiar expression were applied to Miss Havisham "and +now, old chap, may we do our duty May you and me do our duty, both +on us by one and another, and by them which your liberal present +have conweyed to be for the satisfaction of mind of them +as never" here Joe showed that he felt he had fallen into +frightful difficulties, until he triumphantly rescued himself with +the words, "and from myself far be it" These words had such a +round and convincing sound for him that he said them twice. +"Goodbye, Pip" said Miss Havisham. "Let them out, Estella." +"Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?" I asked. +"No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery One word" +Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I heard her say to +Joe, in a distinct emphatic voice, "The boy has been a good boy +here, and that is his reward. Of course, as an honest man, you will +expect no other and no more." +How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able to determine +but, I know that when he did get out he was steadily proceeding +upstairs instead of coming down, and was deaf to all remonstrances +until I went after him and laid hold of him. In another minute we +were outside the gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. +When we stood in the daylight alone again, Joe backed up against a +wall, and said to me, "Astonishing" And there he remained so long, +saying "Astonishing" at intervals, so often, that I began to think +his senses were never coming back. At length he prolonged his +remark into "Pip, I do assure you this is asTONishing" and so, by +degrees, became conversational and able to walk away. +I have reason to think that Joe's intellects were brightened by the +encounter they had passed through, and that on our way to +Pumblechook's he invented a subtle and deep design. My reason is to +be found in what took place in Mr. Pumblechook's parlour where, on +our presenting ourselves, my sister sat in conference with that +detested seedsman. +"Well?" cried my sister, addressing us both at once. "And what's +happened to you? I wonder you condescend to come back to such poor +society as this, I am sure I do" +"Miss Havisham," said Joe, with a fixed look at me, like an effort +of remembrance, "made it wery partick'ler that we should give her +were it compliments or respects, Pip?" +"Compliments," I said. +"Which that were my own belief," answered Joe "her compliments to +Mrs. J. Gargery" +"Much good they'll do me" observed my sister but rather gratified +too. +"And wishing," pursued Joe, with another fixed look at me, like +another effort of remembrance, "that the state of Miss Havisham's +elth were sitch as would have allowed, were it, Pip?" +"Of her having the pleasure," I added. +"Of ladies' company," said Joe. And drew a long breath. +"Well" cried my sister, with a mollified glance at Mr. Pumblechook. +"She might have had the politeness to send that message at first, +but it's better late than never. And what did she give young +Rantipole here?" +"She giv' him," said Joe, "nothing." +Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on. +"What she giv'," said Joe, "she giv' to his friends. 'And by his +friends,' were her explanation, 'I mean into the hands of his +sister Mrs. J. Gargery.' Them were her words 'Mrs. J. Gargery.' She +mayn't have know'd," added Joe, with an appearance of reflection, +"whether it were Joe, or Jorge." +My sister looked at Pumblechook who smoothed the elbows of his +wooden armchair, and nodded at her and at the fire, as if he had +known all about it beforehand. +"And how much have you got?" asked my sister, laughing. Positively, +laughing +"What would present company say to ten pound?" demanded Joe. +"They'd say," returned my sister, curtly, "pretty well. Not too +much, but pretty well." +"It's more than that, then," said Joe. +That fearful Impostor, Pumblechook, immediately nodded, and said, +as he rubbed the arms of his chair "It's more than that, Mum." +"Why, you don't mean to say" began my sister. +"Yes I do, Mum," said Pumblechook "but wait a bit. Go on, Joseph. +Good in you Go on" +"What would present company say," proceeded Joe, "to twenty pound?" +"Handsome would be the word," returned my sister. +"Well, then," said Joe, "It's more than twenty pound." +That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nodded again, and said, with a +patronizing laugh, "It's more than that, Mum. Good again Follow her +up, Joseph" +"Then to make an end of it," said Joe, delightedly handing the bag +to my sister "it's fiveandtwenty pound." +"It's fiveandtwenty pound, Mum," echoed that basest of swindlers, +Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her "and it's no more than +your merits as I said when my opinion was asked, and I wish you +joy of the money" +If the villain had stopped here, his case would have been +sufficiently awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to +take me into custody, with a right of patronage that left all his +former criminality far behind. +"Now you see, Joseph and wife," said Pumblechook, as he took me by +the arm above the elbow, "I am one of them that always go right +through with what they've begun. This boy must be bound, out of +hand. That's my way. Bound out of hand." +"Goodness knows, Uncle Pumblechook," said my sister grasping the +money, "we're deeply beholden to you." +"Never mind me, Mum," returned that diabolical cornchandler. "A +pleasure's a pleasure, all the world over. But this boy, you know +we must have him bound. I said I'd see to it to tell you the +truth." +The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at hand, and we at +once went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in the +Magisterial presence. I say, we went over, but I was pushed over by +Pumblechook, exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or +fired a rick indeed, it was the general impression in Court that I +had been taken redhanded, for, as Pumblechook shoved me before him +through the crowd, I heard some people say, "What's he done?" and +others, "He's a young 'un, too, but looks bad, don't he?" One person +of mild and benevolent aspect even gave me a tract ornamented with +a woodcut of a malevolent young man fitted up with a perfect +sausageshop of fetters, and entitled, TO BE READ IN MY CELL. +The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it than +a church and with people hanging over the pews looking on and +with mighty Justices one with a powdered head leaning back in +chairs, with folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or +writing, or reading the newspapers and with some shining black +portraits on the walls, which my unartistic eye regarded as a +composition of hardbake and stickingplaister. Here, in a corner, +my indentures were duly signed and attested, and I was "bound" Mr. +Pumblechook holding me all the while as if we had looked in on our +way to the scaffold, to have those little preliminaries disposed +of. +When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys who had +been put into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me +publicly tortured, and who were much disappointed to find that my +friends were merely rallying round me, we went back to +Pumblechook's. And there my sister became so excited by the +twentyfive guineas, that nothing would serve her but we must have +a dinner out of that windfall, at the Blue Boar, and that +Pumblechook must go over in his chaisecart, and bring the Hubbles +and Mr. Wopsle. +It was agreed to be done and a most melancholy day I passed. For, +it inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the +whole company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. And +to make it worse, they all asked me from time to time in short, +whenever they had nothing else to do why I didn't enjoy myself. +And what could I possibly do then, but say I was enjoying myself +when I wasn't? +However, they were grown up and had their own way, and they made +the most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the +beneficent contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top +of the table and, when he addressed them on the subject of my +being bound, and had fiendishly congratulated them on my being +liable to imprisonment if I played at cards, drank strong liquors, +kept late hours or bad company, or indulged in other vagaries which +the form of my indentures appeared to contemplate as next to +inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair beside him, to +illustrate his remarks. +My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they +wouldn't let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping off, +woke me up and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in the +evening Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins's ode, and threw his bloodstain'd +sword in thunder down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and +said, "The Commercials underneath sent up their compliments, and it +wasn't the Tumblers' Arms." That, they were all in excellent +spirits on the road home, and sang O Lady Fair Mr. Wopsle taking +the bass, and asserting with a tremendously strong voice in reply +to the inquisitive bore who leads that piece of music in a most +impertinent manner, by wanting to know all about everybody's +private affairs that he was the man with his white locks flowing, +and that he was upon the whole the weakest pilgrim going. +Finally, I remember that when I got into my little bedroom I was +truly wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I should +never like Joe's trade. I had liked it once, but once was not now. +Chapter +It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be +black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be +retributive and well deserved but, that it is a miserable thing, I +can testify. +Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my +sister's temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in +it. I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon I +had believed in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the +Temple of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice +of roast fowls I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though +not magnificent apartment I had believed in the forge as the +glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year, all +this was changed. Now, it was all coarse and common, and I would +not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account. +How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own +fault, how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's, is now of no +moment to me or to any one. The change was made in me the thing +was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done. +Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my +shirtsleeves and go into the forge, Joe's 'prentice, I should be +distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only +felt that I was dusty with the dust of small coal, and that I had a +weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. +There have been occasions in my later life I suppose as in most +lives when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen +on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save +dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy +and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before +me through the newlyentered road of apprenticeship to Joe. +I remember that at a later period of my "time," I used to stand +about the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, +comparing my own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making +out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and low both +were, and how on both there came an unknown way and a dark mist and +then the sea. I was quite as dejected on the first workingday of +my apprenticeship as in that aftertime but I am glad to know that +I never breathed a murmur to Joe while my indentures lasted. It is +about the only thing I am glad to know of myself in that +connection. +For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of +what I proceed to add was Joe's. It was not because I was faithful, +but because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a +soldier or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the +virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the +virtue of industry, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the +grain. It is not possible to know how far the influence of any +amiable honesthearted dutydoing man flies out into the world but +it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going +by, and I know right well, that any good that intermixed itself +with my apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe, and not of +restlessly aspiring discontented me. +What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I never knew? What +I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest +and commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at +one of the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear +that she would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and +hands, doing the coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me +and despise me. Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows +for Joe, and we were singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we +used to sing it at Miss Havisham's would seem to show me Estella's +face in the fire, with her pretty hair fluttering in the wind and +her eyes scorning me, often at such a time I would look towards +those panels of black night in the wall which the wooden windows +then were, and would fancy that I saw her just drawing her face +away, and would believe that she had come at last. +After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal would +have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of +home than ever, in my own ungracious breast. +Chapter +As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's greataunt's room, my +education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however, +until Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little +catalogue of prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a +halfpenny. Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of +literature were the opening lines, +When I went to Lunnon town sirs, Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul +Wasn't I done very brown sirs? Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul +still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart +with the utmost gravity nor do I recollect that I questioned its +merit, except that I thought as I still do the amount of Too rul +somewhat in excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, I +made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon +me with which he kindly complied. As it turned out, however, that +he only wanted me for a dramatic layfigure, to be contradicted and +embraced and wept over and bullied and clutched and stabbed and +knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon declined that course of +instruction though not until Mr. Wopsle in his poetic fury had +severely mauled me. +Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement +sounds so well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass +unexplained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he +might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella's +reproach. +The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a +broken slate and a short piece of slate pencil were our educational +implements to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never +knew Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to +acquire, under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet +he would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious +air than anywhere else even with a learned air as if he +considered himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope +he did. +It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river +passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low, +looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing +on at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels +standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow +thought of Miss Havisham and Estella and whenever the light struck +aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or +waterline, it was just the same. Miss Havisham and Estella and +the strange house and the strange life appeared to have something +to do with everything that was picturesque. +One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed +himself on being "most awful dull," that I had given him up for the +day, I lay on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, +descrying traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the +prospect, in the sky and in the water, until at last I resolved to +mention a thought concerning them that had been much in my head. +"Joe," said I "don't you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a +visit?" +"Well, Pip," returned Joe, slowly considering. "What for?" +"What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?" +"There is some wisits, p'r'aps," said Joe, "as for ever remains +open to the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. +She might think you wanted something expected something of her." +"Don't you think I might say that I did not, Joe?" +"You might, old chap," said Joe. "And she might credit it. +Similarly she mightn't." +Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled +hard at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition. +"You see, Pip," Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, +"Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham +done the handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as +that were all." +"Yes, Joe. I heard her." +"ALL," Joe repeated, very emphatically. +"Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her." +"Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were Make +a end on it As you was Me to the North, and you to the South +Keep in sunders" +I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to +me to find that he had thought of it for it seemed to render it +more probable. +"But, Joe." +"Yes, old chap." +"Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the +day of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked +after her, or shown that I remember her." +"That's true, Pip and unless you was to turn her out a set of +shoes all four round and which I meantersay as even a set of +shoes all four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a +total wacancy of hoofs" +"I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe I don't mean a +present." +But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp +upon it. "Or even," said he, "if you was helped to knocking her up +a new chain for the front door or say a gross or two of +sharkheaded screws for general use or some light fancy article, +such as a toastingfork when she took her muffins or a gridiron +when she took a sprat or such like" +"I don't mean any present at all, Joe," I interposed. +"Well," said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly +pressed it, "if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn't. No, I would not. +For what's a doorchain when she's got one always up? And +sharkheaders is open to misrepresentations. And if it was a +toastingfork, you'd go into brass and do yourself no credit. And +the oncommonest workman can't show himself oncommon in a gridiron +for a gridiron IS a gridiron," said Joe, steadfastly impressing it +upon me, as if he were endeavouring to rouse me from a fixed +delusion, "and you may haim at what you like, but a gridiron it +will come out, either by your leave or again your leave, and you +can't help yourself" +"My dear Joe," I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat, +"don't go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham +any present." +"No, Pip," Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all +along "and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip." +"Yes, Joe but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather +slack just now, if you would give me a halfholiday tomorrow, I +think I would go uptown and make a call on Miss Est Havisham." +"Which her name," said Joe, gravely, "ain't Estavisham, Pip, unless +she have been rechris'ened." +"I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think of +it, Joe?" +In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well +of it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not +received with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my +visit as a visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of +gratitude for a favour received, then this experimental trip should +have no successor. By these conditions I promised to abide. +Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick. +He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge a clear +impossibility but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition +that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this +particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village +as an affront to its understanding. He was a broadshouldered +looselimbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, +and always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work on +purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident and when he +went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at +night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if +he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever coming +back. He lodged at a sluicekeeper's out on the marshes, and on +working days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his +hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round +his neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day +on the sluicegates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always +slouched, locomotively, with his eyes on the ground and, when +accosted or otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a +half resentful, half puzzled way, as though the only thought he +ever had, was, that it was rather an odd and injurious fact that he +should never be thinking. +This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small +and timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black +corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well also +that it was necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, +with a live boy, and that I might consider myself fuel. When I +became Joe's 'prentice, Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some +suspicion that I should displace him howbeit, he liked me still +less. Not that he ever said anything, or did anything, openly +importing hostility I only noticed that he always beat his sparks +in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came in out +of time. +Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded Joe +of my halfholiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe +had just got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the +bellows but byandby he said, leaning on his hammer +"Now, master Sure you're not agoing to favour only one of us. If +Young Pip has a halfholiday, do as much for Old Orlick." I suppose +he was about fiveandtwenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an +ancient person. +"Why, what'll you do with a halfholiday, if you get it?" said Joe. +"What'll I do with it What'll he do with it? I'll do as much with +it as him," said Orlick. +"As to Pip, he's going uptown," said Joe. +"Well then, as to Old Orlick, he's agoing uptown," retorted that +worthy. "Two can go uptown. Tan't only one wot can go uptown. +"Don't lose your temper," said Joe. +"Shall if I like," growled Orlick. "Some and their uptowning Now, +master Come. No favouring in this shop. Be a man" +The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journeyman +was in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a +redhot bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it +through my body, whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, +hammered it out as if it were I, I thought, and the sparks were +my spirting blood and finally said, when he had hammered himself +hot and the iron cold, and he again leaned on his hammer +"Now, master" +"Are you all right now?" demanded Joe. +"Ah I am all right," said gruff Old Orlick. +"Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men," +said Joe, "let it be a halfholiday for all." +My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing +she was a most unscrupulous spy and listener and she instantly +looked in at one of the windows. +"Like you, you fool" said she to Joe, "giving holidays to great +idle hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste +wages in that way. I wish I was his master" +"You'd be everybody's master, if you durst," retorted Orlick, with +an illfavoured grin. +"Let her alone," said Joe. +"I'd be a match for all noodles and all rogues," returned my +sister, beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. "And I +couldn't be a match for the noodles, without being a match for your +master, who's the dunderheaded king of the noodles. And I couldn't +be a match for the rogues, without being a match for you, who are +the blackestlooking and the worst rogue between this and France. +Now" +"You're a foul shrew, Mother Gargery," growled the journeyman. +"If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good'un." +"Let her alone, will you?" said Joe. +"What did you say?" cried my sister, beginning to scream. "What did +you say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he +call me, with my husband standing by? O O O" Each of these +exclamations was a shriek and I must remark of my sister, what is +equally true of all the violent women I have ever seen, that +passion was no excuse for her, because it is undeniable that +instead of lapsing into passion, she consciously and deliberately +took extraordinary pains to force herself into it, and became +blindly furious by regular stages "what was the name he gave me +before the base man who swore to defend me? O Hold me O" +"Ahhh" growled the journeyman, between his teeth, "I'd hold you, +if you was my wife. I'd hold you under the pump, and choke it out +of you." +"I tell you, let her alone," said Joe. +"Oh To hear him" cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a +scream together which was her next stage. "To hear the names he's +giving me That Orlick In my own house Me, a married woman With +my husband standing by O O" Here my sister, after a fit of +clappings and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon +her knees, and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down which +were the last stages on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a +perfect Fury and a complete success, she made a dash at the door, +which I had fortunately locked. +What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded +parenthetical interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and +ask him what he meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe +and further whether he was man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt +that the situation admitted of nothing less than coming on, and was +on his defence straightway so, without so much as pulling off +their singed and burnt aprons, they went at one another, like two +giants. But, if any man in that neighbourhood could stand up long +against Joe, I never saw the man. Orlick, as if he had been of no +more account than the pale young gentleman, was very soon among the +coaldust, and in no hurry to come out of it. Then, Joe unlocked +the door and picked up my sister, who had dropped insensible at the +window but who had seen the fight first, I think, and who was +carried into the house and laid down, and who was recommended to +revive, and would do nothing but struggle and clench her hands in +Joe's hair. Then, came that singular calm and silence which succeed +all uproars and then, with the vague sensation which I have always +connected with such a lull namely, that it was Sunday, and +somebody was dead I went upstairs to dress myself. +When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, without +any other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of Orlick's +nostrils, which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A pot of +beer had appeared from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it +by turns in a peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and +philosophical influence on Joe, who followed me out into the road +to say, as a parting observation that might do me good, "On the +Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip such is Life" +With what absurd emotions for, we think the feelings that are very +serious in a man quite comical in a boy I found myself again going +to Miss Havisham's, matters little here. Nor, how I passed and +repassed the gate many times before I could make up my mind to +ring. Nor, how I debated whether I should go away without ringing +nor, how I should undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my +own, to come back. +Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella. +"How, then? You here again?" said Miss Pocket. "What do you want?" +When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, Sarah +evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me about my +business. But, unwilling to hazard the responsibility, she let me +in, and presently brought the sharp message that I was to "come +up." +Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone. +"Well?" said she, fixing her eyes upon me. "I hope you want +nothing? You'll get nothing." +"No, indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that I am +doing very well in my apprenticeship, and am always much obliged to +you." +"There, there" with the old restless fingers. "Come now and then +come on your birthday. Ay" she cried suddenly, turning herself +and her chair towards me, "You are looking round for Estella? Hey?" +I had been looking round in fact, for Estella and I stammered +that I hoped she was well. +"Abroad," said Miss Havisham "educating for a lady far out of +reach prettier than ever admired by all who see her. Do you feel +that you have lost her?" +There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the last +words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at +a loss what to say. She spared me the trouble of considering, by +dismissing me. When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah of the +walnutshell countenance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with +my home and with my trade and with everything and that was all I +took by that motion. +As I was loitering along the Highstreet, looking in disconsolately +at the shop windows, and thinking what I would buy if I were a +gentleman, who should come out of the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr +Wopsle had in his hand the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell, in +which he had that moment invested sixpence, with the view of +heaping every word of it on the head of Pumblechook, with whom he +was going to drink tea. No sooner did he see me, than he appeared +to consider that a special Providence had put a 'prentice in his +way to be read at and he laid hold of me, and insisted on my +accompanying him to the Pumblechookian parlour. As I knew it would +be miserable at home, and as the nights were dark and the way was +dreary, and almost any companionship on the road was better than +none, I made no great resistance consequently, we turned into +Pumblechook's just as the street and the shops were lighting up. +As I never assisted at any other representation of George Barnwell, +I don't know how long it may usually take but I know very well +that it took until halfpast nine o' clock that night, and that +when Mr. Wopsle got into Newgate, I thought he never would go to the +scaffold, he became so much slower than at any former period of his +disgraceful career. I thought it a little too much that he should +complain of being cut short in his flower after all, as if he had +not been running to seed, leaf after leaf, ever since his course +began. This, however, was a mere question of length and +wearisomeness. What stung me, was the identification of the whole +affair with my unoffending self. When Barnwell began to go wrong, I +declare that I felt positively apologetic, Pumblechook's indignant +stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too, took pains to present me in +the worst light. At once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to +murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever +Millwood put me down in argument, on every occasion it became +sheer monomania in my master's daughter to care a button for me +and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating conduct on the +fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the general feebleness of +my character. Even after I was happily hanged and Wopsle had closed +the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking his head, and +saying, "Take warning, boy, take warning" as if it were a +wellknown fact that I contemplated murdering a near relation, +provided I could only induce one to have the weakness to become my +benefactor. +It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out +with Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy +mist out, and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, +quite out of the lamp's usual place apparently, and its rays looked +solid substance on the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how +that the mist rose with a change of wind from a certain quarter of +our marshes, when we came upon a man, slouching under the lee of +the turnpike house. +"Halloa" we said, stopping. "Orlick, there?" +"Ah" he answered, slouching out. "I was standing by, a minute, on +the chance of company." +"You are late," I remarked. +Orlick not unnaturally answered, "Well? And you're late." +"We have been," said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance, +"we have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening." +Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we +all went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been +spending his halfholiday up and down town? +"Yes," said he, "all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn't see +you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. Bythebye, the +guns is going again." +"At the Hulks?" said I. +"Ay There's some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have +been going since dark, about. You'll hear one presently." +In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the +wellremembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and +heavily rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it +were pursuing and threatening the fugitives. +"A good night for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be puzzled +how to bring down a jailbird on the wing, tonight." +The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in +silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the illrequited uncle of the evening's +tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. +Orlick, with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. +It was very dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. +Now and then, the sound of the signal cannon broke upon us again, +and again rolled sulkily along the course of the river. I kept +myself to myself and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at +Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth Field, and in the +greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes growled, "Beat it +out, beat it out Old Clem With a clink for the stout Old +Clem" I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk. +Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached it, +took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to +find it being eleven o'clock in a state of commotion, with the +door wide open, and unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up +and put down, scattered about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was +the matter surmising that a convict had been taken, but came +running out in a great hurry. +"There's something wrong," said he, without stopping, "up at your +place, Pip. Run all" +"What is it?" I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at my +side. +"I can't quite understand. The house seems to have been violently +entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody +has been attacked and hurt." +We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made +no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people the +whole village was there, or in the yard and there was a surgeon, +and there was Joe, and there was a group of women, all on the floor +in the midst of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back +when they saw me, and so I became aware of my sister lying +without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been +knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt by +some unknown hand when her face was turned towards the fire +destined never to be on the Rampage again, while she was the wife +of Joe. +Chapter +With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to +believe that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my +sister, or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known +to be under obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of +suspicion than any one else. But when, in the clearer light of next +morning, I began to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed +around me on all sides, I took another view of the case, which was +more reasonable. +Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a +quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While he was +there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and +had exchanged Good Night with a farmlabourer going home. The man +could not be more particular as to the time at which he saw her he +got into dense confusion when he tried to be, than that it must +have been before nine. When Joe went home at five minutes before +ten, he found her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in +assistance. The fire had not then burnt unusually low, nor was the +snuff of the candle very long the candle, however, had been blown +out. +Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. Neither, +beyond the blowing out of the candle which stood on a table +between the door and my sister, and was behind her when she stood +facing the fire and was struck was there any disarrangement of +the kitchen, excepting such as she herself had made, in falling and +bleeding. But, there was one remarkable piece of evidence on the +spot. She had been struck with something blunt and heavy, on the +head and spine after the blows were dealt, something heavy had +been thrown down at her with considerable violence, as she lay on +her face. And on the ground beside her, when Joe picked her up, was +a convict's legiron which had been filed asunder. +Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to +have been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off to +the Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe's +opinion was corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had +left the prisonships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged +but they claimed to know for certain that that particular manacle +had not been worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped last +night. Further, one of those two was already retaken, and had not +freed himself of his iron. +Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I +believed the iron to be my convict's iron the iron I had seen and +heard him filing at, on the marshes but my mind did not accuse +him of having put it to its latest use. For, I believed one of two +other persons to have become possessed of it, and to have turned it +to this cruel account. Either Orlick, or the strange man who had +shown me the file. +Now, as to Orlick he had gone to town exactly as he told us when +we picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about town all +the evening, he had been in divers companies in several +publichouses, and he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. +There was nothing against him, save the quarrel and my sister had +quarrelled with him, and with everybody else about her, ten +thousand times. As to the strange man if he had come back for his +two banknotes there could have been no dispute about them, because +my sister was fully prepared to restore them. Besides, there had +been no altercation the assailant had come in so silently and +suddenly, that she had been felled before she could look round. +It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however +undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered +unspeakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I +should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood, and tell Joe +all the story. For months afterwards, I every day settled the +question finally in the negative, and reopened and reargued it next +morning. The contention came, after all, to this the secret was +such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of +myself, that I could not tear it away. In addition to the dread +that, having led up to so much mischief, it would be now more +likely than ever to alienate Joe from me if he believed it, I had a +further restraining dread that he would not believe it, but would +assort it with the fabulous dogs and vealcutlets as a monstrous +invention. However, I temporized with myself, of course for, was +I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing is always +done? and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any +such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of +the assailant. +The Constables, and the Bow Street men from London for, this +happened in the days of the extinct redwaistcoated police were +about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much what I have +heard and read of like authorities doing in other such cases. They +took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads +very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the +circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from +the circumstances. Also, they stood about the door of the Jolly +Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks that filled the whole +neighbourhood with admiration and they had a mysterious manner of +taking their drink, that was almost as good as taking the culprit. +But not quite, for they never did it. +Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay +very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects +multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wineglasses +instead of the realities her hearing was greatly impaired her +memory also and her speech was unintelligible. When, at last, she +came round so far as to be helped downstairs, it was still +necessary to keep my slate always by her, that she might indicate +in writing what she could not indicate in speech. As she was very +bad handwriting apart a more than indifferent speller, and as Joe +was a more than indifferent reader, extraordinary complications +arose between them, which I was always called in to solve. The +administration of mutton instead of medicine, the substitution of +Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among the mildest of my +own mistakes. +However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient. A +tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became a +part of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or +three months, she would often put her hands to her head, and would +then remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of +mind. We were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her, until +a circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us. Mr. Wopsle's +greataunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had +fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment. +It may have been about a month after my sister's reappearance in +the kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box +containing the whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing +to the household. Above all, she was a blessing to Joe, for the +dear old fellow was sadly cut up by the constant contemplation of +the wreck of his wife, and had been accustomed, while attending on +her of an evening, to turn to me every now and then and say, with +his blue eyes moistened, "Such a fine figure of a woman as she once +were, Pip" Biddy instantly taking the cleverest charge of her as +though she had studied her from infancy, Joe became able in some +sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life, and to get down +to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that did him good. +It was characteristic of the police people that they had all more +or less suspected poor Joe though he never knew it, and that they +had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the deepest +spirits they had ever encountered. +Biddy's first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty +that had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but had +made nothing of it. Thus it was +Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate, a +character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost +eagerness had called our attention to it as something she +particularly wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that +began with a T, from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come +into my head that the sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily +calling that word in my sister's ear, she had begun to hammer on +the table and had expressed a qualified assent. Thereupon, I had +brought in all our hammers, one after another, but without avail. +Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape being much the same, and +I borrowed one in the village, and displayed it to my sister with +considerable confidence. But she shook her head to that extent when +she was shown it, that we were terrified lest in her weak and +shattered state she should dislocate her neck. +When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand her, +this mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked +thoughtfully at it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my +sister, looked thoughtfully at Joe who was always represented on +the slate by his initial letter, and ran into the forge, followed +by Joe and me. +"Why, of course" cried Biddy, with an exultant face. "Don't you +see? It's him" +Orlick, without a doubt She had lost his name, and could only +signify him by his hammer. We told him why we wanted him to come +into the kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped his +brow with his arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and came +slouching out, with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that +strongly distinguished him. +I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that I +was disappointed by the different result. She manifested the +greatest anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much +pleased by his being at length produced, and motioned that she +would have him given something to drink. She watched his +countenance as if she were particularly wishful to be assured that +he took kindly to his reception, she showed every possible desire +to conciliate him, and there was an air of humble propitiation in +all she did, such as I have seen pervade the bearing of a child +towards a hard master. After that day, a day rarely passed without +her drawing the hammer on her slate, and without Orlick's slouching +in and standing doggedly before her, as if he knew no more than I +did what to make of it. +Chapter +I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was +varied, beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no +more remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and my +paying another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket +still on duty at the gate, I found Miss Havisham just as I had left +her, and she spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not in the +very same words. The interview lasted but a few minutes, and she +gave me a guinea when I was going, and told me to come again on my +next birthday. I may mention at once that this became an annual +custom. I tried to decline taking the guinea on the first occasion, +but with no better effect than causing her to ask me very angrily, +if I expected more? Then, and after that, I took it. +So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the +darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressingtable +glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped +Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else +outside it grew older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the +house as to my thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to +the actual fact. It bewildered me, and under its influence I +continued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home. +Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. Her +shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her hands +were always clean. She was not beautiful she was common, and +could not be like Estella but she was pleasant and wholesome and +sweettempered. She had not been with us more than a year I +remember her being newly out of mourning at the time it struck me, +when I observed to myself one evening that she had curiously +thoughtful and attentive eyes eyes that were very pretty and very +good. +It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring at +writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two ways at +once by a sort of stratagem and seeing Biddy observant of what I +was about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework +without laying it down. +"Biddy," said I, "how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid, or +you are very clever." +"What is it that I manage? I don't know," returned Biddy, smiling. +She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully too but I did +not mean that, though that made what I did mean, more surprising. +"How do you manage, Biddy," said I, "to learn everything that I +learn, and always to keep up with me?" I was beginning to be rather +vain of my knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and +set aside the greater part of my pocketmoney for similar +investment though I have no doubt, now, that the little I knew was +extremely dear at the price. +"I might as well ask you," said Biddy, "how you manage?" +"No because when I come in from the forge of a night, any one can +see me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, Biddy." +"I suppose I must catch it like a cough," said Biddy, quietly +and went on with her sewing. +Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair and looked at +Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began to think her +rather an extraordinary girl. For, I called to mind now, that she +was equally accomplished in the terms of our trade, and the names +of our different sorts of work, and our various tools. In short, +whatever I knew, Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was already as good +a blacksmith as I, or better. +"You are one of those, Biddy," said I, "who make the most of every +chance. You never had a chance before you came here, and see how +improved you are" +Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sewing. "I +was your first teacher though wasn't I?" said she, as she sewed. +"Biddy" I exclaimed, in amazement. "Why, you are crying" +"No I am not," said Biddy, looking up and laughing. "What put that +in your head?" +What could have put it in my head, but the glistening of a tear as +it dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she +had been until Mr. Wopsle's greataunt successfully overcame that +bad habit of living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by some +people. I recalled the hopeless circumstances by which she had been +surrounded in the miserable little shop and the miserable little +noisy evening school, with that miserable old bundle of +incompetence always to be dragged and shouldered. I reflected that +even in those untoward times there must have been latent in Biddy +what was now developing, for, in my first uneasiness and discontent +I had turned to her for help, as a matter of course. Biddy sat +quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I looked at her +and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps I had not +been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been too +reserved, and should have patronized her more though I did not use +that precise word in my meditations, with my confidence. +"Yes, Biddy," I observed, when I had done turning it over, "you +were my first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought of +ever being together like this, in this kitchen." +"Ah, poor thing" replied Biddy. It was like her +selfforgetfulness, to transfer the remark to my sister, and to get +up and be busy about her, making her more comfortable "that's +sadly true" +"Well" said I, "we must talk together a little more, as we used to +do. And I must consult you a little more, as I used to do. Let us +have a quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, and a long +chat." +My sister was never left alone now but Joe more than readily +undertook the care of her on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and I +went out together. It was summertime, and lovely weather. When we +had passed the village and the church and the churchyard, and were +out on the marshes and began to see the sails of the ships as they +sailed on, I began to combine Miss Havisham and Estella with the +prospect, in my usual way. When we came to the riverside and sat +down on the bank, with the water rippling at our feet, making it +all more quiet than it would have been without that sound, I +resolved that it was a good time and place for the admission of +Biddy into my inner confidence. +"Biddy," said I, after binding her to secrecy, "I want to be a +gentleman." +"Oh, I wouldn't, if I was you" she returned. "I don't think it +would answer." +"Biddy," said I, with some severity, "I have particular reasons for +wanting to be a gentleman." +"You know best, Pip but don't you think you are happier as you +are?" +"Biddy," I exclaimed, impatiently, "I am not at all happy as I am. +I am disgusted with my calling and with my life. I have never taken +to either, since I was bound. Don't be absurd." +"Was I absurd?" said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows "I am +sorry for that I didn't mean to be. I only want you to do well, +and to be comfortable." +"Well then, understand once for all that I never shall or can be +comfortable or anything but miserable there, Biddy unless I +can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now." +"That's a pity" said Biddy, shaking her head with a sorrowful air. +Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the singular +kind of quarrel with myself which I was always carrying on, I was +half inclined to shed tears of vexation and distress when Biddy +gave utterance to her sentiment and my own. I told her she was +right, and I knew it was much to be regretted, but still it was not +to be helped. +"If I could have settled down," I said to Biddy, plucking up the +short grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my +feelings out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall "if +I could have settled down and been but half as fond of the forge as +I was when I was little, I know it would have been much better for +me. You and I and Joe would have wanted nothing then, and Joe and I +would perhaps have gone partners when I was out of my time, and I +might even have grown up to keep company with you, and we might +have sat on this very bank on a fine Sunday, quite different +people. I should have been good enough for you shouldn't I, +Biddy?" +Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and returned +for answer, "Yes I am not overparticular." It scarcely sounded +flattering, but I knew she meant well. +"Instead of that," said I, plucking up more grass and chewing a +blade or two, "see how I am going on. Dissatisfied, and +uncomfortable, and what would it signify to me, being coarse and +common, if nobody had told me so" +Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far more +attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships. +"It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say," she +remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. "Who said it?" +I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing +where I was going to. It was not to be shuffled off now, however, +and I answered, "The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's, and +she's more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her +dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account." Having +made this lunatic confession, I began to throw my tornup grass +into the river, as if I had some thoughts of following it. +"Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?" +Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause. +"I don't know," I moodily answered. +"Because, if it is to spite her," Biddy pursued, "I should think +but you know best that might be better and more independently +done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her +over, I should think but you know best she was not worth +gaining over." +Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly what was +perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But how could I, a poor +dazed village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which +the best and wisest of men fall every day? +"It may be all quite true," said I to Biddy, "but I admire her +dreadfully." +In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, and got a +good grasp on the hair on each side of my head, and wrenched it +well. All the while knowing the madness of my heart to be so very +mad and misplaced, that I was quite conscious it would have served +my face right, if I had lifted it up by my hair, and knocked it +against the pebbles as a punishment for belonging to such an idiot. +Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no more with +me. She put her hand, which was a comfortable hand though roughened +by work, upon my hands, one after another, and gently took them out +of my hair. Then she softly patted my shoulder in a soothing way, +while with my face upon my sleeve I cried a little exactly as I +had done in the brewery yard and felt vaguely convinced that I +was very much illused by somebody, or by everybody I can't say +which. +"I am glad of one thing," said Biddy, "and that is, that you have +felt you could give me your confidence, Pip. And I am glad of +another thing, and that is, that of course you know you may depend +upon my keeping it and always so far deserving it. If your first +teacher dear such a poor one, and so much in need of being taught +herself had been your teacher at the present time, she thinks she +knows what lesson she would set. But It would be a hard one to +learn, and you have got beyond her, and it's of no use now." So, +with a quiet sigh for me, Biddy rose from the bank, and said, with +a fresh and pleasant change of voice, "Shall we walk a little +further, or go home?" +"Biddy," I cried, getting up, putting my arm round her neck, and +giving her a kiss, "I shall always tell you everything." +"Till you're a gentleman," said Biddy. +"You know I never shall be, so that's always. Not that I have any +occasion to tell you anything, for you know everything I know as +I told you at home the other night." +"Ah" said Biddy, quite in a whisper, as she looked away at the +ships. And then repeated, with her former pleasant change "shall +we walk a little further, or go home?" +I said to Biddy we would walk a little further, and we did so, and +the summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, and it was +very beautiful. I began to consider whether I was not more +naturally and wholesomely situated, after all, in these +circumstances, than playing beggar my neighbour by candlelight in +the room with the stopped clocks, and being despised by Estella. I +thought it would be very good for me if I could get her out of my +head, with all the rest of those remembrances and fancies, and +could go to work determined to relish what I had to do, and stick +to it, and make the best of it. I asked myself the question whether +I did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at that moment +instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable? I was obliged to +admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said to myself, +"Pip, what a fool you are" +We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy said seemed +right. Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy today +and somebody else tomorrow she would have derived only pain, and +no pleasure, from giving me pain she would far rather have wounded +her own breast than mine. How could it be, then, that I did not +like her much the better of the two? +"Biddy," said I, when we were walking homeward, "I wish you could +put me right." +"I wish I could" said Biddy. +"If I could only get myself to fall in love with you you don't +mind my speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance?" +"Oh dear, not at all" said Biddy. "Don't mind me." +"If I could only get myself to do it, that would be the thing for +me." +"But you never will, you see," said Biddy. +It did not appear quite so unlikely to me that evening, as it would +have done if we had discussed it a few hours before. I therefore +observed I was not quite sure of that. But Biddy said she was, and +she said it decisively. In my heart I believed her to be right and +yet I took it rather ill, too, that she should be so positive on +the point. +When we came near the churchyard, we had to cross an embankment, +and get over a stile near a sluice gate. There started up, from the +gate, or from the rushes, or from the ooze which was quite in his +stagnant way, Old Orlick. +"Halloa" he growled, "where are you two going?" +"Where should we be going, but home?" +"Well then," said he, "I'm jiggered if I don't see you home" +This penalty of being jiggered was a favourite supposititious case +of his. He attached no definite meaning to the word that I am aware +of, but used it, like his own pretended Christian name, to affront +mankind, and convey an idea of something savagely damaging. When I +was younger, I had had a general belief that if he had jiggered me +personally, he would have done it with a sharp and twisted hook. +Biddy was much against his going with us, and said to me in a +whisper, "Don't let him come I don't like him." As I did not like +him either, I took the liberty of saying that we thanked him, but +we didn't want seeing home. He received that piece of information +with a yell of laughter, and dropped back, but came slouching after +us at a little distance. +Curious to know whether Biddy suspected him of having had a hand in +that murderous attack of which my sister had never been able to +give any account, I asked her why she did not like him. +"Oh" she replied, glancing over her shoulder as he slouched after +us, "because I I am afraid he likes me." +"Did he ever tell you he liked you?" I asked, indignantly. +"No," said Biddy, glancing over her shoulder again, "he never told +me so but he dances at me, whenever he can catch my eye." +However novel and peculiar this testimony of attachment, I did not +doubt the accuracy of the interpretation. I was very hot indeed +upon Old Orlick's daring to admire her as hot as if it were an +outrage on myself. +"But it makes no difference to you, you know," said Biddy, calmly. +"No, Biddy, it makes no difference to me only I don't like it I +don't approve of it." +"Nor I neither," said Biddy. "Though that makes no difference to +you." +"Exactly," said I "but I must tell you I should have no opinion of +you, Biddy, if he danced at you with your own consent." +I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and, whenever +circumstances were favourable to his dancing at Biddy, got before +him, to obscure that demonstration. He had struck root in Joe's +establishment, by reason of my sister's sudden fancy for him, or I +should have tried to get him dismissed. He quite understood and +reciprocated my good intentions, as I had reason to know +thereafter. +And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I +complicated its confusion fifty thousandfold, by having states and +seasons when I was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than +Estella, and that the plain honest working life to which I was +born, had nothing in it to be ashamed of, but offered me sufficient +means of selfrespect and happiness. At those times, I would decide +conclusively that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge, +was gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners +with Joe and to keep company with Biddy when all in a moment some +confounding remembrance of the Havisham days would fall upon me, +like a destructive missile, and scatter my wits again. Scattered +wits take a long time picking up and often, before I had got them +well together, they would be dispersed in all directions by one +stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss Havisham was going to +make my fortune when my time was out. +If my time had run out, it would have left me still at the height +of my perplexities, I dare say. It never did run out, however, but +was brought to a premature end, as I proceed to relate. +Chapter +It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, and it was a +Saturday night. There was a group assembled round the fire at the +Three Jolly Bargemen, attentive to Mr. Wopsle as he read the +newspaper aloud. Of that group I was one. +A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle was +imbrued in blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over every abhorrent +adjective in the description, and identified himself with every +witness at the Inquest. He faintly moaned, "I am done for," as the +victim, and he barbarously bellowed, "I'll serve you out," as the +murderer. He gave the medical testimony, in pointed imitation of +our local practitioner and he piped and shook, as the aged +turnpikekeeper who had heard blows, to an extent so very paralytic +as to suggest a doubt regarding the mental competency of that +witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle's hands, became Timon of Athens +the beadle, Coriolanus. He enjoyed himself thoroughly, and we all +enjoyed ourselves, and were delightfully comfortable. In this cozy +state of mind we came to the verdict Wilful Murder. +Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange gentleman leaning +over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on. There was an +expression of contempt on his face, and he bit the side of a great +forefinger as he watched the group of faces. +"Well" said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the reading was done, +"you have settled it all to your own satisfaction, I have no +doubt?" +Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the murderer. He +looked at everybody coldly and sarcastically. +"Guilty, of course?" said he. "Out with it. Come" +"Sir," returned Mr. Wopsle, "without having the honour of your +acquaintance, I do say Guilty." Upon this, we all took courage to +unite in a confirmatory murmur. +"I know you do," said the stranger "I knew you would. I told you +so. But now I'll ask you a question. Do you know, or do you not +know, that the law of England supposes every man to be innocent, +until he is proved proved to be guilty?" +"Sir," Mr. Wopsle began to reply, "as an Englishman myself, I" +"Come" said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him. "Don't +evade the question. Either you know it, or you don't know it. Which +is it to be?" +He stood with his head on one side and himself on one side, in a +bullying interrogative manner, and he threw his forefinger at Mr. +Wopsle as it were to mark him out before biting it again. +"Now" said he. "Do you know it, or don't you know it?" +"Certainly I know it," replied Mr. Wopsle. +"Certainly you know it. Then why didn't you say so at first? Now, +I'll ask you another question" taking possession of Mr. Wopsle, as +if he had a right to him. "Do you know that none of these witnesses +have yet been crossexamined?" +Mr. Wopsle was beginning, "I can only say" when the stranger +stopped him. +"What? You won't answer the question, yes or no? Now, I'll try you +again." Throwing his finger at him again. "Attend to me. Are you +aware, or are you not aware, that none of these witnesses have yet +been crossexamined? Come, I only want one word from you. Yes, or +no?" +Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive rather a poor +opinion of him. +"Come" said the stranger, "I'll help you. You don't deserve help, +but I'll help you. Look at that paper you hold in your hand. What +is it?" +"What is it?" repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it, much at a loss. +"Is it," pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspicious +manner, "the printed paper you have just been reading from?" +"Undoubtedly." +"Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether it +distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal +advisers instructed him altogether to reserve his defence?" +"I read that just now," Mr. Wopsle pleaded. +"Never mind what you read just now, sir I don't ask you what you +read just now. You may read the Lord's Prayer backwards, if you +like and, perhaps, have done it before today. Turn to the paper. +No, no, no my friend not to the top of the column you know better +than that to the bottom, to the bottom." We all began to think Mr. +Wopsle full of subterfuge. "Well? Have you found it?" +"Here it is," said Mr. Wopsle. +"Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me whether it +distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was +instructed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence? +Come Do you make that of it?" +Mr. Wopsle answered, "Those are not the exact words." +"Not the exact words" repeated the gentleman, bitterly. "Is that +the exact substance?" +"Yes," said Mr. Wopsle. +"Yes," repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the +company with his right hand extended towards the witness, Wopsle. +"And now I ask you what you say to the conscience of that man who, +with that passage before his eyes, can lay his head upon his pillow +after having pronounced a fellowcreature guilty, unheard?" +We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the man we had +thought him, and that he was beginning to be found out. +"And that same man, remember," pursued the gentleman, throwing his +finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily "that same man might be summoned as a +juryman upon this very trial, and, having thus deeply committed +himself, might return to the bosom of his family and lay his head +upon his pillow, after deliberately swearing that he would well and +truly try the issue joined between Our Sovereign Lord the King and +the prisoner at the bar, and would a true verdict give according to +the evidence, so help him God" +We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had gone +too far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there was +yet time. +The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be disputed, +and with a manner expressive of knowing something secret about +every one of us that would effectually do for each individual if he +chose to disclose it, left the back of the settle, and came into +the space between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he +remained standing his left hand in his pocket, and he biting the +forefinger of his right. +"From information I have received," said he, looking round at us as +we all quailed before him, "I have reason to believe there is a +blacksmith among you, by name Joseph or Joe Gargery. Which is +the man?" +"Here is the man," said Joe. +The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, and Joe went. +"You have an apprentice," pursued the stranger, "commonly known as +Pip? Is he here?" +"I am here" I cried. +The stranger did not recognize me, but I recognized him as the +gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second +visit to Miss Havisham. I had known him the moment I saw him +looking over the settle, and now that I stood confronting him with +his hand upon my shoulder, I checked off again in detail, his large +head, his dark complexion, his deepset eyes, his bushy black +eyebrows, his large watchchain, his strong black dots of beard and +whisker, and even the smell of scented soap on his great hand. +"I wish to have a private conference with you two," said he, when +he had surveyed me at his leisure. "It will take a little time. +Perhaps we had better go to your place of residence. I prefer not +to anticipate my communication here you will impart as much or as +little of it as you please to your friends afterwards I have +nothing to do with that." +Amidst a wondering silence, we three walked out of the Jolly +Bargemen, and in a wondering silence walked home. While going +along, the strange gentleman occasionally looked at me, and +occasionally bit the side of his finger. As we neared home, Joe +vaguely acknowledging the occasion as an impressive and ceremonious +one, went on ahead to open the front door. Our conference was held +in the state parlour, which was feebly lighted by one candle. +It began with the strange gentleman's sitting down at the table, +drawing the candle to him, and looking over some entries in his +pocketbook. He then put up the pocketbook and set the candle a +little aside after peering round it into the darkness at Joe and +me, to ascertain which was which. +"My name," he said, "is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London. I am +pretty well known. I have unusual business to transact with you, +and I commence by explaining that it is not of my originating. If +my advice had been asked, I should not have been here. It was not +asked, and you see me here. What I have to do as the confidential +agent of another, I do. No less, no more." +Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he +got up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon +it thus having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot on +the ground. +"Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you of +this young fellow your apprentice. You would not object to cancel +his indentures, at his request and for his good? You would want +nothing for so doing?" +"Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip's +way," said Joe, staring. +"Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose," returned Mr +Jaggers. "The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want +anything?" +"The answer is," returned Joe, sternly, "No." +I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool +for his disinterestedness. But I was too much bewildered between +breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it. +"Very well," said Mr. Jaggers. "Recollect the admission you have +made, and don't try to go from it presently." +"Who's agoing to try?" retorted Joe. +"I don't say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?" +"Yes, I do keep a dog." +"Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a +better. Bear that in mind, will you?" repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting +his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him +something. "Now, I return to this young fellow. And the +communication I have got to make is, that he has great +expectations." +Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another. +"I am instructed to communicate to him," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing +his finger at me sideways, "that he will come into a handsome +property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor +of that property, that he be immediately removed from his present +sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a +gentleman in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations." +My dream was out my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality +Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale. +"Now, Mr. Pip," pursued the lawyer, "I address the rest of what I +have to say, to you. You are to understand, first, that it is the +request of the person from whom I take my instructions, that you +always bear the name of Pip. You will have no objection, I dare +say, to your great expectations being encumbered with that easy +condition. But if you have any objection, this is the time to +mention it." +My heart was beating so fast, and there was such a singing in my +ears, that I could scarcely stammer I had no objection. +"I should think not Now you are to understand, secondly, Mr. Pip, +that the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains +a profound secret, until the person chooses to reveal it. I am +empowered to mention that it is the intention of the person to +reveal it at first hand by word of mouth to yourself. When or where +that intention may be carried out, I cannot say no one can say. It +may be years hence. Now, you are distinctly to understand that you +are most positively prohibited from making any inquiry on this +head, or any allusion or reference, however distant, to any +individual whomsoever as the individual, in all the communications +you may have with me. If you have a suspicion in your own breast, +keep that suspicion in your own breast. It is not the least to the +purpose what the reasons of this prohibition are they may be the +strongest and gravest reasons, or they may be mere whim. This is +not for you to inquire into. The condition is laid down. Your +acceptance of it, and your observance of it as binding, is the only +remaining condition that I am charged with, by the person from whom +I take my instructions, and for whom I am not otherwise +responsible. That person is the person from whom you derive your +expectations, and the secret is solely held by that person and by +me. Again, not a very difficult condition with which to encumber +such a rise in fortune but if you have any objection to it, this +is the time to mention it. Speak out." +Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no objection. +"I should think not Now, Mr. Pip, I have done with stipulations." +Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began rather to make up to me, he +still could not get rid of a certain air of bullying suspicion and +even now he occasionally shut his eyes and threw his finger at me +while he spoke, as much as to express that he knew all kinds of +things to my disparagement, if he only chose to mention them. "We +come next, to mere details of arrangement. You must know that, +although I have used the term "expectations" more than once, you +are not endowed with expectations only. There is already lodged in +my hands, a sum of money amply sufficient for your suitable +education and maintenance. You will please consider me your +guardian. Oh" for I was going to thank him, "I tell you at once, I +am paid for my services, or I shouldn't render them. It is +considered that you must be better educated, in accordance with +your altered position, and that you will be alive to the importance +and necessity of at once entering on that advantage." +I said I had always longed for it. +"Never mind what you have always longed for, Mr. Pip," he retorted +"keep to the record. If you long for it now, that's enough. Am I +answered that you are ready to be placed at once, under some proper +tutor? Is that it?" +I stammered yes, that was it. +"Good. Now, your inclinations are to be consulted. I don't think +that wise, mind, but it's my trust. Have you ever heard of any +tutor whom you would prefer to another?" +I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy and Mr. Wopsle's greataunt +so, I replied in the negative. +"There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge, who I +think might suit the purpose," said Mr. Jaggers. "I don't recommend +him, observe because I never recommend anybody. The gentleman I +speak of, is one Mr. Matthew Pocket." +Ah I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham's relation. The +Matthew whom Mr. and Mrs. Camilla had spoken of. The Matthew whose +place was to be at Miss Havisham's head, when she lay dead, in her +bride's dress on the bride's table. +"You know the name?" said Mr. Jaggers, looking shrewdly at me, and +then shutting up his eyes while he waited for my answer. +My answer was, that I had heard of the name. +"Oh" said he. "You have heard of the name. But the question is, +what do you say of it?" +I said, or tried to say, that I was much obliged to him for his +recommendation +"No, my young friend" he interrupted, shaking his great head very +slowly. "Recollect yourself" +Not recollecting myself, I began again that I was much obliged to +him for his recommendation +"No, my young friend," he interrupted, shaking his head and +frowning and smiling both at once "no, no, no it's very well +done, but it won't do you are too young to fix me with it. +Recommendation is not the word, Mr. Pip. Try another." +Correcting myself, I said that I was much obliged to him for his +mention of Mr. Matthew Pocket +"That's more like it" cried Mr. Jaggers. +And I added, I would gladly try that gentleman. +"Good. You had better try him in his own house. The way shall be +prepared for you, and you can see his son first, who is in London. +When will you come to London?" +I said glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, motionless, that I +supposed I could come directly. +"First," said Mr. Jaggers, "you should have some new clothes to come +in, and they should not be working clothes. Say this day week. +You'll want some money. Shall I leave you twenty guineas?" +He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, and counted +them out on the table and pushed them over to me. This was the +first time he had taken his leg from the chair. He sat astride of +the chair when he had pushed the money over, and sat swinging his +purse and eyeing Joe. +"Well, Joseph Gargery? You look dumbfoundered?" +"I am" said Joe, in a very decided manner. +"It was understood that you wanted nothing for yourself, remember?" +"It were understood," said Joe. "And it are understood. And it ever +will be similar according." +"But what," said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse, "what if it was in +my instructions to make you a present, as compensation?" +"As compensation what for?" Joe demanded. +"For the loss of his services." +Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. I +have often thought him since, like the steamhammer, that can crush +a man or pat an eggshell, in his combination of strength with +gentleness. "Pip is that hearty welcome," said Joe, "to go free +with his services, to honour and fortun', as no words can tell him. +But if you think as Money can make compensation to me for the loss +of the little child what come to the forge and ever the best of +friends" +O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to, +I see you again, with your muscular blacksmith's arm before your +eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying away. O +dear good faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your +hand upon my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle +of an angel's wing +But I encouraged Joe at the time. I was lost in the mazes of my +future fortunes, and could not retrace the bypaths we had trodden +together. I begged Joe to be comforted, for as he said we had +ever been the best of friends, and as I said we ever would be so. +Joe scooped his eyes with his disengaged wrist, as if he were bent +on gouging himself, but said not another word. +Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who recognized in Joe the +village idiot, and in me his keeper. When it was over, he said, +weighing in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing +"Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance. No half +measures with me. If you mean to take a present that I have it in +charge to make you, speak out, and you shall have it. If on the +contrary you mean to say" Here, to his great amazement, he was +stopped by Joe's suddenly working round him with every +demonstration of a fell pugilistic purpose. +"Which I meantersay," cried Joe, "that if you come into my place +bullbaiting and badgering me, come out Which I meantersay as sech +if you're a man, come on Which I meantersay that what I say, I +meantersay and stand or fall by" +I drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable merely stating +to me, in an obliging manner and as a polite expostulatory notice +to any one whom it might happen to concern, that he were not a +going to be bullbaited and badgered in his own place. Mr. Jaggers +had risen when Joe demonstrated, and had backed near the door. +Without evincing any inclination to come in again, he there +delivered his valedictory remarks. They were these +"Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here as you are to be +a gentleman the better. Let it stand for this day week, and you +shall receive my printed address in the meantime. You can take a +hackneycoach at the stagecoach office in London, and come +straight to me. Understand, that I express no opinion, one way or +other, on the trust I undertake. I am paid for undertaking it, and +I do so. Now, understand that, finally. Understand that" +He was throwing his finger at both of us, and I think would have +gone on, but for his seeming to think Joe dangerous, and going off. +Something came into my head which induced me to run after him, as +he was going down to the Jolly Bargemen where he had left a hired +carriage. +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Jaggers." +"Halloa" said he, facing round, "what's the matter?" +"I wish to be quite right, Mr. Jaggers, and to keep to your +directions so I thought I had better ask. Would there be any +objection to my taking leave of any one I know, about here, before +I go away?" +"No," said he, looking as if he hardly understood me. +"I don't mean in the village only, but uptown?" +"No," said he. "No objection." +I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found that Joe had +already locked the front door and vacated the state parlour, and +was seated by the kitchen fire with a hand on each knee, gazing +intently at the burning coals. I too sat down before the fire and +gazed at the coals, and nothing was said for a long time. +My sister was in her cushioned chair in her corner, and Biddy sat +at her needlework before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, and I +sat next Joe in the corner opposite my sister. The more I looked +into the glowing coals, the more incapable I became of looking at +Joe the longer the silence lasted, the more unable I felt to +speak. +At length I got out, "Joe, have you told Biddy?" +"No, Pip," returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and holding his +knees tight, as if he had private information that they intended to +make off somewhere, "which I left it to yourself, Pip." +"I would rather you told, Joe." +"Pip's a gentleman of fortun' then," said Joe, "and God bless him +in it" +Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me. Joe held his knees and +looked at me. I looked at both of them. After a pause, they both +heartily congratulated me but there was a certain touch of sadness +in their congratulations, that I rather resented. +I took it upon myself to impress Biddy and through Biddy, Joe +with the grave obligation I considered my friends under, to know +nothing and say nothing about the maker of my fortune. It would all +come out in good time, I observed, and in the meanwhile nothing was +to be said, save that I had come into great expectations from a +mysterious patron. Biddy nodded her head thoughtfully at the fire +as she took up her work again, and said she would be very +particular and Joe, still detaining his knees, said, "Ay, ay, I'll +be ekervally partickler, Pip" and then they congratulated me +again, and went on to express so much wonder at the notion of my +being a gentleman, that I didn't half like it. +Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to my sister some +idea of what had happened. To the best of my belief, those efforts +entirely failed. She laughed and nodded her head a great many +times, and even repeated after Biddy, the words "Pip" and +"Property." But I doubt if they had more meaning in them than an +election cry, and I cannot suggest a darker picture of her state of +mind. +I never could have believed it without experience, but as Joe and +Biddy became more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite +gloomy. Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be but +it is possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, +dissatisfied with myself. +Anyhow, I sat with my elbow on my knee and my face upon my hand, +looking into the fire, as those two talked about my going away, and +about what they should do without me, and all that. And whenever I +caught one of them looking at me, though never so pleasantly and +they often looked at me particularly Biddy, I felt offended as +if they were expressing some mistrust of me. Though Heaven knows +they never did by word or sign. +At those times I would get up and look out at the door for, our +kitchen door opened at once upon the night, and stood open on +summer evenings to air the room. The very stars to which I then +raised my eyes, I am afraid I took to be but poor and humble stars +for glittering on the rustic objects among which I had passed my +life. +"Saturday night," said I, when we sat at our supper of +breadandcheese and beer. "Five more days, and then the day before +the day They'll soon go." +"Yes, Pip," observed Joe, whose voice sounded hollow in his beer +mug. "They'll soon go." +"Soon, soon go," said Biddy. +"I have been thinking, Joe, that when I go down town on Monday, and +order my new clothes, I shall tell the tailor that I'll come and +put them on there, or that I'll have them sent to Mr. Pumblechook's. +It would be very disagreeable to be stared at by all the people +here." +"Mr. and Mrs. Hubble might like to see you in your new genteel figure +too, Pip," said Joe, industriously cutting his bread, with his +cheese on it, in the palm of his left hand, and glancing at my +untasted supper as if he thought of the time when we used to +compare slices. "So might Wopsle. And the Jolly Bargemen might take +it as a compliment." +"That's just what I don't want, Joe. They would make such a +business of it such a coarse and common business that I +couldn't bear myself." +"Ah, that indeed, Pip" said Joe. "If you couldn't abear +yourself" +Biddy asked me here, as she sat holding my sister's plate, "Have +you thought about when you'll show yourself to Mr. Gargery, and your +sister, and me? You will show yourself to us won't you?" +"Biddy," I returned with some resentment, "you are so exceedingly +quick that it's difficult to keep up with you." +"She always were quick," observed Joe. +"If you had waited another moment, Biddy, you would have heard me +say that I shall bring my clothes here in a bundle one evening +most likely on the evening before I go away." +Biddy said no more. Handsomely forgiving her, I soon exchanged an +affectionate goodnight with her and Joe, and went up to bed. When +I got into my little room, I sat down and took a long look at it, +as a mean little room that I should soon be parted from and raised +above, for ever, It was furnished with fresh young remembrances +too, and even at the same moment I fell into much the same confused +division of mind between it and the better rooms to which I was +going, as I had been in so often between the forge and Miss +Havisham's, and Biddy and Estella. +The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof of my attic, +and the room was warm. As I put the window open and stood looking +out, I saw Joe come slowly forth at the dark door below, and take a +turn or two in the air and then I saw Biddy come, and bring him a +pipe and light it for him. He never smoked so late, and it seemed +to hint to me that he wanted comforting, for some reason or other. +He presently stood at the door immediately beneath me, smoking his +pipe, and Biddy stood there too, quietly talking to him, and I knew +that they talked of me, for I heard my name mentioned in an +endearing tone by both of them more than once. I would not have +listened for more, if I could have heard more so, I drew away from +the window, and sat down in my one chair by the bedside, feeling it +very sorrowful and strange that this first night of my bright +fortunes should be the loneliest I had ever known. +Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from Joe's +pipe floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe +not obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we +shared together. I put my light out, and crept into bed and it was +an uneasy bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any +more. +Chapter +Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospect of +Life, and brightened it so much that it scarcely seemed the same. +What lay heaviest on my mind, was, the consideration that six days +intervened between me and the day of departure for, I could not +divest myself of a misgiving that something might happen to London +in the meanwhile, and that, when I got there, it would be either +greatly deteriorated or clean gone. +Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant when I spoke of +our approaching separation but they only referred to it when I +did. After breakfast, Joe brought out my indentures from the press +in the best parlour, and we put them in the fire, and I felt that I +was free. With all the novelty of my emancipation on me, I went to +church with Joe, and thought, perhaps the clergyman wouldn't have +read that about the rich man and the kingdom of Heaven, if he had +known all. +After our early dinner I strolled out alone, purposing to finish +off the marshes at once, and get them done with. As I passed the +church, I felt as I had felt during service in the morning a +sublime compassion for the poor creatures who were destined to go +there, Sunday after Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie +obscurely at last among the low green mounds. I promised myself +that I would do something for them one of these days, and formed a +plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roastbeef and +plumpudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension, upon +everybody in the village. +If I had often thought before, with something allied to shame, of +my companionship with the fugitive whom I had once seen limping +among those graves, what were my thoughts on this Sunday, when the +place recalled the wretch, ragged and shivering, with his felon +iron and badge My comfort was, that it happened a long time ago, +and that he had doubtless been transported a long way off, and that +he was dead to me, and might be veritably dead into the bargain. +No more low wet grounds, no more dykes and sluices, no more of +these grazing cattle though they seemed, in their dull manner, to +wear a more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that +they might stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great +expectations farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood, +henceforth I was for London and greatness not for smith's work in +general and for you I made my exultant way to the old Battery, +and, lying down there to consider the question whether Miss +Havisham intended me for Estella, fell asleep. +When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside me, +smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a cheerful smile on my opening +my eyes, and said +"As being the last time, Pip, I thought I'd foller." +"And Joe, I am very glad you did so." +"Thankee, Pip." +"You may be sure, dear Joe," I went on, after we had shaken hands, +"that I shall never forget you." +"No, no, Pip" said Joe, in a comfortable tone, "I'm sure of that. +Ay, ay, old chap Bless you, it were only necessary to get it well +round in a man's mind, to be certain on it. But it took a bit of +time to get it well round, the change come so oncommon plump +didn't it?" +Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe's being so mightily secure +of me. I should have liked him to have betrayed emotion, or to have +said, "It does you credit, Pip," or something of that sort. +Therefore, I made no remark on Joe's first head merely saying as +to his second, that the tidings had indeed come suddenly, but that +I had always wanted to be a gentleman, and had often and often +speculated on what I would do, if I were one. +"Have you though?" said Joe. "Astonishing" +"It's a pity now, Joe," said I, "that you did not get on a little +more, when we had our lessons here isn't it?" +"Well, I don't know," returned Joe. "I'm so awful dull. I'm only +master of my own trade. It were always a pity as I was so awful +dull but it's no more of a pity now, than it was this day +twelvemonth don't you see?" +What I had meant was, that when I came into my property and was +able to do something for Joe, it would have been much more +agreeable if he had been better qualified for a rise in station. He +was so perfectly innocent of my meaning, however, that I thought I +would mention it to Biddy in preference. +So, when we had walked home and had had tea, I took Biddy into our +little garden by the side of the lane, and, after throwing out in a +general way for the elevation of her spirits, that I should never +forget her, said I had a favour to ask of her. +"And it is, Biddy," said I, "that you will not omit any opportunity +of helping Joe on, a little." +"How helping him on?" asked Biddy, with a steady sort of glance. +"Well Joe is a dear good fellow in fact, I think he is the +dearest fellow that ever lived but he is rather backward in some +things. For instance, Biddy, in his learning and his manners." +Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and although she opened +her eyes very wide when I had spoken, she did not look at me. +"Oh, his manners won't his manners do, then?" asked Biddy, +plucking a blackcurrant leaf. +"My dear Biddy, they do very well here" +"Oh they do very well here?" interrupted Biddy, looking closely at +the leaf in her hand. +"Hear me out but if I were to remove Joe into a higher sphere, as +I shall hope to remove him when I fully come into my property, they +would hardly do him justice." +"And don't you think he knows that?" asked Biddy. +It was such a very provoking question for it had never in the most +distant manner occurred to me, that I said, snappishly, "Biddy, +what do you mean?" +Biddy having rubbed the leaf to pieces between her hands and the +smell of a blackcurrant bush has ever since recalled to me that +evening in the little garden by the side of the lane said, "Have +you never considered that he may be proud?" +"Proud?" I repeated, with disdainful emphasis. +"Oh there are many kinds of pride," said Biddy, looking full at me +and shaking her head "pride is not all of one kind" +"Well? What are you stopping for?" said I. +"Not all of one kind," resumed Biddy. "He may be too proud to let +any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and +fills well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is +though it sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him far +better than I do." +"Now, Biddy," said I, "I am very sorry to see this in you. I did +not expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and +grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, +and you can't help showing it." +"If you have the heart to think so," returned Biddy, "say so. Say +so over and over again, if you have the heart to think so." +"If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy," said I, in a +virtuous and superior tone "don't put it off upon me. I am very +sorry to see it, and it's a it's a bad side of human nature. I +did intend to ask you to use any little opportunities you might +have after I was gone, of improving dear Joe. But after this, I ask +you nothing. I am extremely sorry to see this in you, Biddy," I +repeated. "It's a it's a bad side of human nature." +"Whether you scold me or approve of me," returned poor Biddy, "you +may equally depend upon my trying to do all that lies in my power, +here, at all times. And whatever opinion you take away of me, shall +make no difference in my remembrance of you. Yet a gentleman should +not be unjust neither," said Biddy, turning away her head. +I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human nature in +which sentiment, waiving its application, I have since seen reason +to think I was right, and I walked down the little path away from +Biddy, and Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the garden +gate and took a dejected stroll until suppertime again feeling it +very sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of my bright +fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as the first. +But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my +clemency to Biddy, and we dropped the subject. Putting on the best +clothes I had, I went into town as early as I could hope to find +the shops open, and presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the tailor +who was having his breakfast in the parlour behind his shop, and +who did not think it worth his while to come out to me, but called +me in to him. +"Well" said Mr. Trabb, in a hailfellowwellmet kind of way. "How +are you, and what can I do for you?" +Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather beds, and was +slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up. He was +a prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into a +prosperous little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous +iron safe let into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did +not doubt that heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags. +"Mr. Trabb," said I, "it's an unpleasant thing to have to mention, +because it looks like boasting but I have come into a handsome +property." +A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter in bed, got up +from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth, +exclaiming, "Lord bless my soul" +"I am going up to my guardian in London," said I, casually drawing +some guineas out of my pocket and looking at them "and I want a +fashionable suit of clothes to go in. I wish to pay for them," I +added otherwise I thought he might only pretend to make them +"with ready money." +"My dear sir," said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body, +opened his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the outside +of each elbow, "don't hurt me by mentioning that. May I venture to +congratulate you? Would you do me the favour of stepping into the +shop?" +Mr. Trabb's boy was the most audacious boy in all that countryside. +When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had sweetened +his labours by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping when I came +out into the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against +all possible corners and obstacles, to express as I understood it +equality with any blacksmith, alive or dead. +"Hold that noise," said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest sternness, "or +I'll knock your head off Do me the favour to be seated, sir. Now, +this," said Mr. Trabb, taking down a roll of cloth, and tiding it +out in a flowing manner over the counter, preparatory to getting +his hand under it to show the gloss, "is a very sweet article. I +can recommend it for your purpose, sir, because it really is extra +super. But you shall see some others. Give me Number Four, you" +To the boy, and with a dreadfully severe stare foreseeing the +danger of that miscreant's brushing me with it, or making some +other sign of familiarity. +Mr. Trabb never removed his stern eye from the boy until he had +deposited number four on the counter and was at a safe distance +again. Then, he commanded him to bring number five, and number +eight. "And let me have none of your tricks here," said Mr. Trabb, +"or you shall repent it, you young scoundrel, the longest day you +have to live." +Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of deferential +confidence recommended it to me as a light article for summer wear, +an article much in vogue among the nobility and gentry, an article +that it would ever be an honour to him to reflect upon a +distinguished fellowtownsman's if he might claim me for a +fellowtownsman having worn. "Are you bringing numbers five and +eight, you vagabond," said Mr. Trabb to the boy after that, "or +shall I kick you out of the shop and bring them myself?" +I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of Mr. +Trabb's judgment, and reentered the parlour to be measured. For, +although Mr. Trabb had my measure already, and had previously been +quite contented with it, he said apologetically that it "wouldn't +do under existing circumstances, sir wouldn't do at all." So, Mr. +Trabb measured and calculated me, in the parlour, as if I were an +estate and he the finest species of surveyor, and gave himself such +a world of trouble that I felt that no suit of clothes could +possibly remunerate him for his pains. When he had at last done and +had appointed to send the articles to Mr. Pumblechook's on the +Thursday evening, he said, with his hand upon the parlour lock, "I +know, sir, that London gentlemen cannot be expected to patronize +local work, as a rule but if you would give me a turn now and then +in the quality of a townsman, I should greatly esteem it. Good +morning, sir, much obliged. Door" +The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the least notion +what it meant. But I saw him collapse as his master rubbed me out +with his hands, and my first decided experience of the stupendous +power of money, was, that it had morally laid upon his back, +Trabb's boy. +After this memorable event, I went to the hatter's, and the +bootmaker's, and the hosier's, and felt rather like Mother +Hubbard's dog whose outfit required the services of so many trades. +I also went to the coachoffice and took my place for seven o'clock +on Saturday morning. It was not necessary to explain everywhere +that I had come into a handsome property but whenever I said +anything to that effect, it followed that the officiating tradesman +ceased to have his attention diverted through the window by the +Highstreet, and concentrated his mind upon me. When I had ordered +everything I wanted, I directed my steps towards Pumblechook's, +and, as I approached that gentleman's place of business, I saw him +standing at his door. +He was waiting for me with great impatience. He had been out early +in the chaisecart, and had called at the forge and heard the +news. He had prepared a collation for me in the Barnwell parlour, +and he too ordered his shopman to "come out of the gangway" as my +sacred person passed. +"My dear friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both hands, +when he and I and the collation were alone, "I give you joy of your +good fortune. Well deserved, well deserved" +This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way of +expressing himself. +"To think," said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration at me +for some moments, "that I should have been the humble instrument of +leading up to this, is a proud reward." +I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to be ever +said or hinted, on that point. +"My dear young friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, "if you will allow me +to call you so" +I murmured "Certainly," and Mr. Pumblechook took me by both hands +again, and communicated a movement to his waistcoat, which had an +emotional appearance, though it was rather low down, "My dear young +friend, rely upon my doing my little all in your absence, by +keeping the fact before the mind of Joseph. Joseph" said Mr. +Pumblechook, in the way of a compassionate adjuration. "Joseph +Joseph" Thereupon he shook his head and tapped it, expressing +his sense of deficiency in Joseph. +"But my dear young friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, "you must be +hungry, you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a chicken had +round from the Boar, here is a tongue had round from the Boar, +here's one or two little things had round from the Boar, that I +hope you may not despise. But do I," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting +up again the moment after he had sat down, "see afore me, him as I +ever sported with in his times of happy infancy? And may I may +I ?" +This May I, meant might he shake hands? I consented, and he was +fervent, and then sat down again. +"Here is wine," said Mr. Pumblechook. "Let us drink, Thanks to +Fortune, and may she ever pick out her favourites with equal +judgment And yet I cannot," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, +"see afore me One and likewise drink to One without again +expressing May I may I ?" +I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and emptied his +glass and turned it upside down. I did the same and if I had +turned myself upside down before drinking, the wine could not have +gone more direct to my head. +Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to the best slice +of tongue none of those outoftheway No Thoroughfares of Pork +now, and took, comparatively speaking, no care of himself at all. +"Ah poultry, poultry You little thought," said Mr. Pumblechook, +apostrophizing the fowl in the dish, "when you was a young +fledgling, what was in store for you. You little thought you was to +be refreshment beneath this humble roof for one as Call it a +weakness, if you will," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, "but +may I? may I ?" +It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying he might, +so he did it at once. How he ever did it so often without wounding +himself with my knife, I don't know. +"And your sister," he resumed, after a little steady eating, "which +had the honour of bringing you up by hand It's a sad picter, to +reflect that she's no longer equal to fully understanding the +honour. May" +I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped him. +"We'll drink her health," said I. +"Ah" cried Mr. Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite +flaccid with admiration, "that's the way you know 'em, sir" I +don't know who Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there was +no third person present "that's the way you know the nobleminded, +sir Ever forgiving and ever affable. It might," said the servile +Pumblechook, putting down his untasted glass in a hurry and getting +up again, "to a common person, have the appearance of repeating +but may I ?" +When he had done it, he resumed his seat and drank to my sister. +"Let us never be blind," said Mr. Pumblechook, "to her faults of +temper, but it is to be hoped she meant well." +At about this time, I began to observe that he was getting flushed +in the face as to myself, I felt all face, steeped in wine and +smarting. +I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I wished to have my new clothes +sent to his house, and he was ecstatic on my so distinguishing him. +I mentioned my reason for desiring to avoid observation in the +village, and he lauded it to the skies. There was nobody but +himself, he intimated, worthy of my confidence, and in short, +might he? Then he asked me tenderly if I remembered our boyish +games at sums, and how we had gone together to have me bound +apprentice, and, in effect, how he had ever been my favourite fancy +and my chosen friend? If I had taken ten times as many glasses of +wine as I had, I should have known that he never had stood in that +relation towards me, and should in my heart of hearts have +repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I remember feeling convinced +that I had been much mistaken in him, and that he was a sensible +practical goodhearted prime fellow. +By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in me, as to +ask my advice in reference to his own affairs. He mentioned that +there was an opportunity for a great amalgamation and monopoly of +the corn and seed trade on those premises, if enlarged, such as had +never occurred before in that, or any other neighbourhood. What +alone was wanting to the realization of a vast fortune, he +considered to be More Capital. Those were the two little words, +more capital. Now it appeared to him Pumblechook that if that +capital were got into the business, through a sleeping partner, sir +which sleeping partner would have nothing to do but walk in, by +self or deputy, whenever he pleased, and examine the books and +walk in twice a year and take his profits away in his pocket, to +the tune of fifty per cent. it appeared to him that that might be +an opening for a young gentleman of spirit combined with property, +which would be worthy of his attention. But what did I think? He +had great confidence in my opinion, and what did I think? I gave it +as my opinion. "Wait a bit" The united vastness and distinctness +of this view so struck him, that he no longer asked if he might +shake hands with me, but said he really must and did. +We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself over and +over again to keep Joseph up to the mark I don't know what mark, +and to render me efficient and constant service I don't know what +service. He also made known to me for the first time in my life, +and certainly after having kept his secret wonderfully well, that +he had always said of me, "That boy is no common boy, and mark me, +his fortun' will be no common fortun'." He said with a tearful +smile that it was a singular thing to think of now, and I said so +too. Finally, I went out into the air, with a dim perception that +there was something unwonted in the conduct of the sunshine, and +found that I had slumberously got to the turnpike without having +taken any account of the road. +There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook's hailing me. He was a long +way down the sunny street, and was making expressive gestures for +me to stop. I stopped, and he came up breathless. +"No, my dear friend," said he, when he had recovered wind for +speech. "Not if I can help it. This occasion shall not entirely +pass without that affability on your part. May I, as an old +friend and wellwisher? May I?" +We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered a +young carter out of my way with the greatest indignation. Then, he +blessed me and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed the +crook in the road and then I turned into a field and had a long +nap under a hedge before I pursued my way home. +I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of the +little I possessed was adapted to my new station. But, I began +packing that same afternoon, and wildly packed up things that I +knew I should want next morning, in a fiction that there was not a +moment to be lost. +So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed and on Friday morning +I went to Mr. Pumblechook's, to put on my new clothes and pay my +visit to Miss Havisham. Mr. Pumblechook's own room was given up to +me to dress in, and was decorated with clean towels expressly for +the event. My clothes were rather a disappointment, of course. +Probably every new and eagerly expected garment ever put on since +clothes came in, fell a trifle short of the wearer's expectation. +But after I had had my new suit on, some half an hour, and had gone +through an immensity of posturing with Mr. Pumblechook's very +limited dressingglass, in the futile endeavour to see my legs, it +seemed to fit me better. It being market morning at a neighbouring +town some ten miles off, Mr. Pumblechook was not at home. I had not +told him exactly when I meant to leave, and was not likely to shake +hands with him again before departing. This was all as it should +be, and I went out in my new array fearfully ashamed of having to +pass the shopman, and suspicious after all that I was at a personal +disadvantage, something like Joe's in his Sunday suit. +I went circuitously to Miss Havisham's by all the back ways, and +rang at the bell constrainedly, on account of the stiff long +fingers of my gloves. Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively +reeled back when she saw me so changed her walnutshell +countenance likewise, turned from brown to green and yellow. +"You?" said she. "You, good gracious What do you want?" +"I am going to London, Miss Pocket," said I, "and want to say +goodbye to Miss Havisham." +I was not expected, for she left me locked in the yard, while she +went to ask if I were to be admitted. After a very short delay, she +returned and took me up, staring at me all the way. +Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with the long spread +table, leaning on her crutch stick. The room was lighted as of +yore, and at the sound of our entrance, she stopped and turned. She +was then just abreast of the rotted bridecake. +"Don't go, Sarah," she said. "Well, Pip?" +"I start for London, Miss Havisham, tomorrow," I was exceedingly +careful what I said, "and I thought you would kindly not mind my +taking leave of you." +"This is a gay figure, Pip," said she, making her crutch stick play +round me, as if she, the fairy godmother who had changed me, were +bestowing the finishing gift. +"I have come into such good fortune since I saw you last, Miss +Havisham," I murmured. "And I am so grateful for it, Miss +Havisham" +"Ay, ay" said she, looking at the discomfited and envious Sarah, +with delight. "I have seen Mr. Jaggers. I have heard about it, Pip. +So you go tomorrow?" +"Yes, Miss Havisham." +"And you are adopted by a rich person?" +"Yes, Miss Havisham." +"Not named?" +"No, Miss Havisham." +"And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?" +"Yes, Miss Havisham." +She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so keen was her +enjoyment of Sarah Pocket's jealous dismay. "Well" she went on +"you have a promising career before you. Be good deserve it and +abide by Mr. Jaggers's instructions." She looked at me, and looked +at Sarah, and Sarah's countenance wrung out of her watchful face a +cruel smile. "Goodbye, Pip you will always keep the name of +Pip, you know." +"Yes, Miss Havisham." +"Goodbye, Pip" +She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and put it +to my lips. I had not considered how I should take leave of her it +came naturally to me at the moment, to do this. She looked at Sarah +Pocket with triumph in her weird eyes, and so I left my fairy +godmother, with both her hands on her crutch stick, standing in the +midst of the dimly lighted room beside the rotten bridecake that +was hidden in cobwebs. +Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I were a ghost who must be +seen out. She could not get over my appearance, and was in the last +degree confounded. I said "Goodbye, Miss Pocket" but she merely +stared, and did not seem collected enough to know that I had +spoken. Clear of the house, I made the best of my way back to +Pumblechook's, took off my new clothes, made them into a bundle, +and went back home in my older dress, carrying it to speak the +truth much more at my ease too, though I had the bundle to carry. +And now, those six days which were to have run out so slowly, had +run out fast and were gone, and tomorrow looked me in the face +more steadily than I could look at it. As the six evenings had +dwindled away, to five, to four, to three, to two, I had become +more and more appreciative of the society of Joe and Biddy. On this +last evening, I dressed my self out in my new clothes, for their +delight, and sat in my splendour until bedtime. We had a hot supper +on the occasion, graced by the inevitable roast fowl, and we had +some flip to finish with. We were all very low, and none the higher +for pretending to be in spirits. +I was to leave our village at five in the morning, carrying my +little handportmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to walk +away all alone. I am afraid sore afraid that this purpose +originated in my sense of the contrast there would be between me +and Joe, if we went to the coach together. I had pretended with +myself that there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement but +when I went up to my little room on this last night, I felt +compelled to admit that it might be so, and had an impulse upon me +to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in the morning. I +did not. +All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong +places instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, +now cats, now pigs, now men never horses. Fantastic failures of +journeys occupied me until the day dawned and the birds were +singing. Then, I got up and partly dressed, and sat at the window +to take a last look out, and in taking it fell asleep. +Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast, that, although I did +not sleep at the window an hour, I smelt the smoke of the kitchen +fire when I started up with a terrible idea that it must be late in +the afternoon. But long after that, and long after I had heard the +clinking of the teacups and was quite ready, I wanted the +resolution to go down stairs. After all, I remained up there, +repeatedly unlocking and unstrapping my small portmanteau and +locking and strapping it up again, until Biddy called to me that I +was late. +It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it. I got up from the +meal, saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had only just +occurred to me, "Well I suppose I must be off" and then I kissed +my sister who was laughing and nodding and shaking in her usual +chair, and kissed Biddy, and threw my arms around Joe's neck. Then +I took up my little portmanteau and walked out. The last I saw of +them was, when I presently heard a scuffle behind me, and looking +back, saw Joe throwing an old shoe after me and Biddy throwing +another old shoe. I stopped then, to wave my hat, and dear old Joe +waved his strong right arm above his head, crying huskily +"Hooroar" and Biddy put her apron to her face. +I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I +had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have +done to have had an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of +all the Highstreet. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the +village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were +solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so +innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, +that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears. It +was by the fingerpost at the end of the village, and I laid my +hand upon it, and said, "Goodbye O my dear, dear friend" +Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are +rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I +was better after I had cried, than before more sorry, more aware +of my own ingratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before, I should +have had Joe with me then. +So subdued I was by those tears, and by their breaking out again in +the course of the quiet walk, that when I was on the coach, and it +was clear of the town, I deliberated with an aching heart whether I +would not get down when we changed horses and walk back, and have +another evening at home, and a better parting. We changed, and I +had not made up my mind, and still reflected for my comfort that it +would be quite practicable to get down and walk back, when we +changed again. And while I was occupied with these deliberations, I +would fancy an exact resemblance to Joe in some man coming along +the road towards us, and my heart would beat high. As if he could +possibly be there +We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too +far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen +now, and the world lay spread before me. +THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS. +Chapter +The journey from our town to the metropolis, was a journey of about +five hours. It was a little past midday when the fourhorse +stagecoach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of +traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Woodstreet, Cheapside, +London. +We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was +treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of +everything otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of +London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was +not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty. +Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address it was, Little Britain, +and he had written after it on his card, "just out of Smithfield, +and close by the coachoffice." Nevertheless, a hackneycoachman, +who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy greatcoat as he was +years old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a +folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take +me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have +been decorated with an old weatherstained peagreen hammercloth +motheaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful +equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind +for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below +them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to the temptation. +I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a +strawyard it was, and yet how like a ragshop, and to wonder why +the horses' nosebags were kept inside, when I observed the +coachman beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop +presently. And stop we presently did, in a gloomy street, at +certain offices with an open door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS. +"How much?" I asked the coachman. +The coachman answered, "A shilling unless you wish to make it +more." +I naturally said I had no wish to make it more. +"Then it must be a shilling," observed the coachman. "I don't want +to get into trouble. I know him" He darkly closed an eye at Mr +Jaggers's name, and shook his head. +When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time completed +the ascent to his box, and had got away which appeared to relieve +his mind, I went into the front office with my little portmanteau +in my hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home? +"He is not," returned the clerk. "He is in Court at present. Am I +addressing Mr. Pip?" +I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip. +"Mr. Jaggers left word would you wait in his room. He couldn't say +how long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to reason, +his time being valuable, that he won't be longer than he can help." +With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an +inner chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, +in a velveteen suit and kneebreeches, who wiped his nose with his +sleeve on being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper. +"Go and wait outside, Mike," said the clerk. +I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting when the clerk +shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw +used, and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone. +Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most +dismal place the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken +head, and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had +twisted themselves to peep down at me through it. There were not so +many papers about, as I should have expected to see and there were +some odd objects about, that I should not have expected to see +such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several +strangelooking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on a +shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr. +Jaggers's own highbacked chair was of deadly black horsehair, +with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin and I fancied I +could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at the +clients. The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had +a habit of backing up against the wall the wall, especially +opposite to Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with shoulders. I +recalled, too, that the oneeyed gentleman had shuffled forth +against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being turned +out. +I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers's +chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. +I called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing +something to everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had. I +wondered how many other clerks there were upstairs, and whether +they all claimed to have the same detrimental mastery of their +fellowcreatures. I wondered what was the history of all the odd +litter about the room, and how it came there. I wondered whether +the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and, if he were +so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such illlooking relations, +why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to +settle on, instead of giving them a place at home. Of course I had +no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may have been +oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit that +lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting in Mr. +Jaggers's close room, until I really could not bear the two casts +on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers's chair, and got up and went out. +When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I +waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into +Smithfield. So, I came into Smithfield and the shameful place, +being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to +stick to me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning +into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul's +bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a bystander +said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found +the roadway covered with straw to deaden the noise of passing +vehicles and from this, and from the quantity of people standing +about, smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred that the +trials were on. +While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially +drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and +hear a trial or so informing me that he could give me a front +place for halfacrown, whence I should command a full view of the +Lord Chief Justice in his wig and robes mentioning that awful +personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced +price of eighteenpence. As I declined the proposal on the plea of +an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show +me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly +whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors' Door, out of which +culprits came to be hanged heightening the interest of that +dreadful portal by giving me to understand that "four on 'em" would +come out at that door the day after tomorrow at eight in the +morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a +sickening idea of London the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's +proprietor wore from his hat down to his boots and up again to his +pockethandkerchief inclusive mildewed clothes, which had +evidently not belonged to him originally, and which, I took it into +my head, he had bought cheap of the executioner. Under these +circumstances I thought myself well rid of him for a shilling. +I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet, and +I found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I made the +tour of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close and now +I became aware that other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers, +as well as I. There were two men of secret appearance lounging in +Bartholomew Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet into the +cracks of the pavement as they talked together, one of whom said to +the other when they first passed me, that "Jaggers would do it if +it was to be done." There was a knot of three men and two women +standing at a corner, and one of the women was crying on her dirty +shawl, and the other comforted her by saying, as she pulled her own +shawl over her shoulders, "Jaggers is for him, 'Melia, and what +more could you have?" There was a redeyed little Jew who came into +the Close while I was loitering there, in company with a second +little Jew whom he sent upon an errand and while the messenger was +gone, I remarked this Jew, who was of a highly excitable +temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under a lamppost and +accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the words, "Oh +Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth all otherth ith CagMaggerth, give me +Jaggerth" These testimonies to the popularity of my guardian made +a deep impression on me, and I admired and wondered more than ever. +At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholomew +Close into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the road +towards me. All the others who were waiting, saw him at the same +time, and there was quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers, putting a hand +on my shoulder and walking me on at his side without saying +anything to me, addressed himself to his followers. +First, he took the two secret men. +"Now, I have nothing to say to you," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his +finger at them. "I want to know no more than I know. As to the +result, it's a tossup. I told you from the first it was a tossup. +Have you paid Wemmick?" +"We made the money up this morning, sir," said one of the men, +submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers's face. +"I don't ask you when you made it up, or where, or whether you made +it up at all. Has Wemmick got it?" +"Yes, sir," said both the men together. +"Very well then you may go. Now, I won't have it" said Mr +Jaggers, waving his hand at them to put them behind him. "If you +say a word to me, I'll throw up the case." +"We thought, Mr. Jaggers" one of the men began, pulling off his +hat. +"That's what I told you not to do," said Mr. Jaggers. "You thought +I think for you that's enough for you. If I want you, I know where +to find you I don't want you to find me. Now I won't have it. I +won't hear a word." +The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved them behind +again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more. +"And now you" said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly stopping, and turning on +the two women with the shawls, from whom the three men had meekly +separated. "Oh Amelia, is it?" +"Yes, Mr. Jaggers." +"And do you remember," retorted Mr. Jaggers, "that but for me you +wouldn't be here and couldn't be here?" +"Oh yes, sir" exclaimed both women together. "Lord bless you, sir, +well we knows that" +"Then why," said Mr. Jaggers, "do you come here?" +"My Bill, sir" the crying woman pleaded. +"Now, I tell you what" said Mr. Jaggers. "Once for all. If you +don't know that your Bill's in good hands, I know it. And if you +come here, bothering about your Bill, I'll make an example of both +your Bill and you, and let him slip through my fingers. Have you +paid Wemmick?" +"Oh yes, sir Every farden." +"Very well. Then you have done all you have got to do. Say another +word one single word and Wemmick shall give you your money +back." +This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off immediately. +No one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had already raised +the skirts of Mr. Jaggers's coat to his lips several times. +"I don't know this man" said Mr. Jaggers, in the same devastating +strain "What does this fellow want?" +"Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to Habraham Latharuth?" +"Who's he?" said Mr. Jaggers. "Let go of my coat." +The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before +relinquishing it, replied, "Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpithion of +plate." +"You're too late," said Mr. Jaggers. "I am over the way." +"Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth" cried my excitable acquaintance, +turning white, "don't thay you're again Habraham Latharuth" +"I am," said Mr. Jaggers, "and there's an end of it. Get out of the +way." +"Mithter Jaggerth Half a moment My hown cuthen'th gone to Mithter +Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to hoffer him hany termth. +Mithter Jaggerth Half a quarter of a moment If you'd have the +condethenthun to be bought off from the t'other thide at hany +thuperior prithe money no object Mithter Jaggerth Mithter " +My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, and +left him dancing on the pavement as if it were redhot. Without +further interruption, we reached the front office, where we found +the clerk and the man in velveteen with the fur cap. +"Here's Mike," said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and +approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially. +"Oh" said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock +of hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin +pulling at the bellrope "your man comes on this afternoon. Well?" +"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer +from a constitutional cold "arter a deal o' trouble, I've found +one, sir, as might do." +"What is he prepared to swear?" +"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap +this time "in a general way, anythink." +Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. "Now, I warned you before," +said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, "that if +you ever presumed to talk in that way here, I'd make an example of +you. You infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?" +The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were +unconscious what he had done. +"Spooney" said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with +his elbow. "Soft Head Need you say it face to face?" +"Now, I ask you, you blundering booby," said my guardian, very +sternly, "once more and for the last time, what the man you have +brought here is prepared to swear?" +Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a +lesson from his face, and slowly replied, "Ayther to character, or +to having been in his company and never left him all the night in +question." +"Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?" +Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the +ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before +beginning to reply in a nervous manner, "We've dressed him up +like" when my guardian blustered out +"What? You WILL, will you?" +"Spooney" added the clerk again, with another stir. +After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again +"He is dressed like a 'spectable pieman. A sort of a pastrycook." +"Is he here?" asked my guardian. +"I left him," said Mike, "a settin on some doorsteps round the +corner." +"Take him past that window, and let me see him." +The window indicated, was the office window. We all three went to +it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an +accidental manner, with a murderouslooking tall individual, in a +short suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless +confectioner was not by any means sober, and had a black eye in the +green stage of recovery, which was painted over. +"Tell him to take his witness away directly," said my guardian to +the clerk, in extreme disgust, "and ask him what he means by +bringing such a fellow as that." +My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched, +standing, from a sandwichbox and a pocket flask of sherry he +seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate it, informed me what +arrangements he had made for me. I was to go to "Barnard's Inn," to +young Mr. Pocket's rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my +accommodation I was to remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday +on Monday I was to go with him to his father's house on a visit, +that I might try how I liked it. Also, I was told what my allowance +was to be it was a very liberal one and had handed to me from +one of my guardian's drawers, the cards of certain tradesmen with +whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes, and such other things +as I could in reason want. "You will find your credit good, Mr. +Pip," said my guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt like a whole +caskfull, as he hastily refreshed himself, "but I shall by this +means be able to check your bills, and to pull you up if I find you +outrunning the constable. Of course you'll go wrong somehow, but +that's no fault of mine." +After I had pondered a little over this encouraging sentiment, I +asked Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? He said it was not +worth while, I was so near my destination Wemmick should walk +round with me, if I pleased. +I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next room. Another +clerk was rung down from upstairs to take his place while he was +out, and I accompanied him into the street, after shaking hands +with my guardian. We found a new set of people lingering outside, +but Wemmick made a way among them by saying coolly yet decisively, +"I tell you it's no use he won't have a word to say to one of +you" and we soon got clear of them, and went on side by side. +Chapter +Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was +like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short +in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to +have been imperfectly chipped out with a dulledged chisel. There +were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material +had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, +were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these +attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up +without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor +from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have +sustained a good many bereavements for, he wore at least four +mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping +willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, that several +rings and seals hung at his watch chain, as if he were quite laden +with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering eyes +small, keen, and black and thin wide mottled lips. He had had +them, to the best of my belief, from forty to fifty years. +"So you were never in London before?" said Mr. Wemmick to me. +"No," said I. +"I was new here once," said Mr. Wemmick. "Rum to think of now" +"You are well acquainted with it now?" +"Why, yes," said Mr. Wemmick. "I know the moves of it." +"Is it a very wicked place?" I asked, more for the sake of saying +something than for information. +"You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London. But there +are plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you." +"If there is bad blood between you and them," said I, to soften it +off a little. +"Oh I don't know about bad blood," returned Mr. Wemmick "there's +not much bad blood about. They'll do it, if there's anything to be +got by it." +"That makes it worse." +"You think so?" returned Mr. Wemmick. "Much about the same, I should +say." +He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before +him walking in a selfcontained way as if there were nothing in +the streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such a postoffice +of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had +got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a +mechanical appearance, and that he was not smiling at all. +"Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?" I asked Mr. Wemmick. +"Yes," said he, nodding in the direction. "At Hammersmith, west of +London." +"Is that far?" +"Well Say five miles." +"Do you know him?" +"Why, you're a regular crossexaminer" said Mr. Wemmick, looking at +me with an approving air. "Yes, I know him. I know him" +There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utterance +of these words, that rather depressed me and I was still looking +sideways at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note +to the text, when he said here we were at Barnard's Inn. My +depression was not alleviated by the announcement, for, I had +supposed that establishment to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to +which the Blue Boar in our town was a mere publichouse. Whereas I +now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a fiction, and his +inn the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed +together in a rank corner as a club for Tomcats. +We entered this haven through a wicketgate, and were disgorged by +an introductory passage into a melancholy little square that looked +to me like a flat buryingground. I thought it had the most dismal +trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal +cats, and the most dismal houses in number half a dozen or so, +that I had ever seen. I thought the windows of the sets of chambers +into which those houses were divided, were in every stage of +dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flowerpot, cracked glass, +dusty decay, and miserable makeshift while To Let To Let To Let, +glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new wretches ever came +there, and the vengeance of the soul of Barnard were being slowly +appeased by the gradual suicide of the present occupants and their +unholy interment under the gravel. A frouzy mourning of soot and +smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, and it had strewn +ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and humiliation as a +mere dusthole. Thus far my sense of sight while dry rot and wet +rot and all the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and cellar +rot of rat and mouse and bug and coachingstables near at hand +besides addressed themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and +moaned, "Try Barnard's Mixture." +So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great +expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. "Ah" said he, +mistaking me "the retirement reminds you of the country. So it +does me." +He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs +which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that +one of those days the upper lodgers would look out at their doors +and find themselves without the means of coming down to a set of +chambers on the top floor. MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the +door, and there was a label on the letterbox, "Return shortly." +"He hardly thought you'd come so soon," Mr. Wemmick explained. "You +don't want me any more?" +"No, thank you," said I. +"As I keep the cash," Mr. Wemmick observed, "we shall most likely +meet pretty often. Good day." +"Good day." +I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if he +thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said, +correcting himself, +"To be sure Yes. You're in the habit of shaking hands?" +I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London +fashion, but said yes. +"I have got so out of it" said Mr. Wemmick "except at last. Very +glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance. Good day" +When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase +window and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines had rotted +away, and it came down like the guillotine. Happily it was so quick +that I had not put my head out. After this escape, I was content to +take a foggy view of the Inn through the window's encrusting dirt, +and to stand dolefully looking out, saying to myself that London +was decidedly overrated. +Mr. Pocket, Junior's, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had nearly +maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had written +my name with my finger several times in the dirt of every pane in +the window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there +arose before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, +boots, of a member of society of about my own standing. He had a +paperbag under each arm and a pottle of strawberries in one hand, +and was out of breath. +"Mr. Pip?" said he. +"Mr. Pocket?" said I. +"Dear me" he exclaimed. "I am extremely sorry but I knew there +was a coach from your part of the country at midday, and I thought +you would come by that one. The fact is, I have been out on your +account not that that is any excuse for I thought, coming from +the country, you might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went +to Covent Garden Market to get it good." +For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my +head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think +this was a dream. +"Dear me" said Mr. Pocket, Junior. "This door sticks so" +As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the door +while the paperbags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me +to hold them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and +combated with the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so +suddenly at last, that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered +back upon the opposite door, and we both laughed. But still I felt +as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this must be a +dream. +"Pray come in," said Mr. Pocket, Junior. "Allow me to lead the way. +I am rather bare here, but I hope you'll be able to make out +tolerably well till Monday. My father thought you would get on more +agreeably through tomorrow with me than with him, and might like +to take a walk about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to +show London to you. As to our table, you won't find that bad, I +hope, for it will be supplied from our coffeehouse here, and it +is only right I should add at your expense, such being Mr. +Jaggers's directions. As to our lodging, it's not by any means +splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my father hasn't +anything to give me, and I shouldn't be willing to take it, if he +had. This is our sittingroom just such chairs and tables and +carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You +mustn't give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and castors, +because they come for you from the coffeehouse. This is my little +bedroom rather musty, but Barnard's is musty. This is your +bedroom the furniture's hired for the occasion, but I trust it +will answer the purpose if you should want anything, I'll go and +fetch it. The chambers are retired, and we shall be alone together, +but we shan't fight, I dare say. But, dear me, I beg your pardon, +you're holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me take these bags +from you. I am quite ashamed." +As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the bags, +One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that +I knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back +"Lord bless me, you're the prowling boy" +"And you," said I, "are the pale young gentleman" +Chapter +The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in +Barnard's Inn, until we both burst out laughing. "The idea of its +being you" said he. "The idea of its being you" said I. And then +we contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again. "Well" said +the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand goodhumouredly, +"it's all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if +you'll forgive me for having knocked you about so." +I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket for Herbert was +the pale young gentleman's name still rather confounded his +intention with his execution. But I made a modest reply, and we +shook hands warmly. +"You hadn't come into your good fortune at that time?" said Herbert +Pocket. +"No," said I. +"No," he acquiesced "I heard it had happened very lately. I was +rather on the lookout for goodfortune then." +"Indeed?" +"Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take a +fancy to me. But she couldn't at all events, she didn't." +I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that. +"Bad taste," said Herbert, laughing, "but a fact. Yes, she had sent +for me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, +I suppose I should have been provided for perhaps I should have +been whatyoumaycalled it to Estella." +"What's that?" I asked, with sudden gravity. +He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided +his attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a +word. "Affianced," he explained, still busy with the fruit. +"Betrothed. Engaged. What'shisnamed. Any word of that sort." +"How did you bear your disappointment?" I asked. +"Pooh" said he, "I didn't care much for it. She's a Tartar." +"Miss Havisham?" +"I don't say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl's hard and +haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up +by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex." +"What relation is she to Miss Havisham?" +"None," said he. "Only adopted." +"Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What revenge?" +"Lord, Mr. Pip" said he. "Don't you know?" +"No," said I. +"Dear me It's quite a story, and shall be saved till dinnertime. +And now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How did +you come there, that day?" +I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then +burst out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards? I +didn't ask him if he was, for my conviction on that point was +perfectly established. +"Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?" he went on. +"Yes." +"You know he is Miss Havisham's man of business and solicitor, and +has her confidence when nobody else has?" +This was bringing me I felt towards dangerous ground. I answered +with a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that I had seen Mr. +Jaggers in Miss Havisham's house on the very day of our combat, but +never at any other time, and that I believed he had no recollection +of having ever seen me there. +"He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he +called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my +father from his connexion with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss +Havisham's cousin not that that implies familiar intercourse +between them, for he is a bad courtier and will not propitiate +her." +Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very +taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any +one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and +tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There +was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and +something that at the same time whispered to me he would never be +very successful or rich. I don't know how this was. I became imbued +with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to +dinner, but I cannot define by what means. +He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered +languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that +did not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome +face, but it was better than handsome being extremely amiable and +cheerful. His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my +knuckles had taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if it +would always be light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb's local work +would have sat more gracefully on him than on me, may be a +question but I am conscious that he carried off his rather old +clothes, much better than I carried off my new suit. +As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be +a bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him my small +story, and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who my +benefactor was. I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a +blacksmith in a country place, and knew very little of the ways of +politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in him if he would +give me a hint whenever he saw me at a loss or going wrong. +"With pleasure," said he, "though I venture to prophesy that you'll +want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together, and I +should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you +do me the favour to begin at once to call me by my Christian name, +Herbert?" +I thanked him, and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my +Christian name was Philip. +"I don't take to Philip," said he, smiling, "for it sounds like a +moral boy out of the spellingbook, who was so lazy that he fell +into a pond, or so fat that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so +avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so +determined to go a bird'snesting that he got himself eaten by +bears who lived handy in the neighbourhood. I tell you what I +should like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith +would you mind it?" +"I shouldn't mind anything that you propose," I answered, "but I +don't understand you." +"Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There's a charming +piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith." +"I should like it very much." +"Then, my dear Handel," said he, turning round as the door opened, +"here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the +table, because the dinner is of your providing." +This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. It +was a nice little dinner seemed to me then, a very Lord Mayor's +Feast and it acquired additional relish from being eaten under +those independent circumstances, with no old people by, and with +London all around us. This again was heightened by a certain gipsy +character that set the banquet off for, while the table was, as Mr. +Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury being entirely +furnished forth from the coffeehouse the circumjacent region of +sittingroom was of a comparatively pastureless and shifty +character imposing on the waiter the wandering habits of putting +the covers on the floor where he fell over them, the melted +butter in the armchair, the bread on the bookshelves, the cheese in +the coalscuttle, and the boiled fowl into my bed in the next room +where I found much of its parsley and butter in a state of +congelation when I retired for the night. All this made the feast +delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me, my +pleasure was without alloy. +We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded Herbert of +his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham. +"True," he replied. "I'll redeem it at once. Let me introduce the +topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to +put the knife in the mouth for fear of accidents and that while +the fork is reserved for that use, it is not put further in than +necessary. It is scarcely worth mentioning, only it's as well to do +as other people do. Also, the spoon is not generally used +overhand, but under. This has two advantages. You get at your +mouth better which after all is the object, and you save a good +deal of the attitude of opening oysters, on the part of the right +elbow." +He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we +both laughed and I scarcely blushed. +"Now," he pursued, "concerning Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, you +must know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby, +and her father denied her nothing. Her father was a country +gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don't +know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer but it is +indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, +you may be as genteel as never was and brew. You see it every day." +"Yet a gentleman may not keep a publichouse may he?" said I. +"Not on any account," returned Herbert "but a publichouse may +keep a gentleman. Well Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud. +So was his daughter." +"Miss Havisham was an only child?" I hazarded. +"Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an only child +she had a halfbrother. Her father privately married again his +cook, I rather think." +"I thought he was proud," said I. +"My good Handel, so he was. He married his second wife privately, +because he was proud, and in course of time she died. When she was +dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and +then the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you +are acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out +riotous, extravagant, undutiful altogether bad. At last his +father disinherited him but he softened when he was dying, and +left him well off, though not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham. +Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society +as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in +emptying one's glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on +one's nose." +I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital. I +thanked him, and apologized. He said, "Not at all," and resumed. +"Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked +after as a great match. Her halfbrother had now ample means again, +but what with debts and what with new madness wasted them most +fearfully again. There were stronger differences between him and +her, than there had been between him and his father, and it is +suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal grudge against her, +as having influenced the father's anger. Now, I come to the cruel +part of the story merely breaking off, my dear Handel, to remark +that a dinnernapkin will not go into a tumbler." +Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable +to say. I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy +of a much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to +compress it within those limits. Again I thanked him and +apologized, and again he said in the cheerfullest manner, "Not at +all, I am sure" and resumed. +"There appeared upon the scene say at the races, or the public +balls, or anywhere else you like a certain man, who made love to +Miss Havisham. I never saw him, for this happened fiveandtwenty +years ago before you and I were, Handel, but I have heard my +father mention that he was a showyman, and the kind of man for the +purpose. But that he was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice, +mistaken for a gentleman, my father most strongly asseverates +because it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true +gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true +gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the +wood and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will +express itself. Well This man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and +professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not shown much +susceptibility up to that time but all the susceptibility she +possessed, certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him. +There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him. He practised on +her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of +money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a +share in the brewery which had been weakly left him by his father +at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband he +must hold and manage it all. Your guardian was not at that time in +Miss Havisham's councils, and she was too haughty and too much in +love, to be advised by any one. Her relations were poor and +scheming, with the exception of my father he was poor enough, but +not timeserving or jealous. The only independent one among them, +he warned her that she was doing too much for this man, and was +placing herself too unreservedly in his power. She took the first +opportunity of angrily ordering my father out of the house, in his +presence, and my father has never seen her since." +I thought of her having said, "Matthew will come and see me at last +when I am laid dead upon that table" and I asked Herbert whether +his father was so inveterate against her? +"It's not that," said he, "but she charged him, in the presence of +her intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of +fawning upon her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go to +her now, it would look true even to him and even to her. To +return to the man and make an end of him. The marriage day was +fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was +planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not +the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter" +"Which she received," I struck in, "when she was dressing for her +marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?" +"At the hour and minute," said Herbert, nodding, "at which she +afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than +that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can't tell you, +because I don't know. When she recovered from a bad illness that +she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and +she has never since looked upon the light of day." +"Is that all the story?" I asked, after considering it. +"All I know of it and indeed I only know so much, through piecing +it out for myself for my father always avoids it, and, even when +Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it +was absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten +one thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her +misplaced confidence, acted throughout in concert with her +halfbrother that it was a conspiracy between them and that they +shared the profits." +"I wonder he didn't marry her and get all the property," said I. +"He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may +have been a part of her halfbrother's scheme," said Herbert. +"Mind I don't know that." +"What became of the two men?" I asked, after again considering the +subject. +"They fell into deeper shame and degradation if there can be +deeper and ruin." +"Are they alive now?" +"I don't know." +"You said just now, that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham, +but adopted. When adopted?" +Herbert shrugged his shoulders. "There has always been an Estella, +since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. And now, +Handel," said he, finally throwing off the story as it were, "there +is a perfectly open understanding between us. All that I know about +Miss Havisham, you know." +"And all that I know," I retorted, "you know." +"I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or perplexity +between you and me. And as to the condition on which you hold your +advancement in life namely, that you are not to inquire or +discuss to whom you owe it you may be very sure that it will +never be encroached upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one +belonging to me." +In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the +subject done with, even though I should be under his father's roof +for years and years to come. Yet he said it with so much meaning, +too, that I felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be my +benefactress, as I understood the fact myself. +It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the theme +for the purpose of clearing it out of our way but we were so much +the lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now perceived +this to be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and I asked +him, in the course of conversation, what he was? He replied, "A +capitalist an Insurer of Ships." I suppose he saw me glancing +about the room in search of some tokens of Shipping, or capital, +for he added, "In the City." +I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of Ships +in the City, and I began to think with awe, of having laid a young +Insurer on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut his +responsible head open. But, again, there came upon me, for my +relief, that odd impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very +successful or rich. +"I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in +insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares, and +cut into the Direction. I shall also do a little in the mining way. +None of these things will interfere with my chartering a few +thousand tons on my own account. I think I shall trade," said he, +leaning back in his chair, "to the East Indies, for silks, shawls, +spices, dyes, drugs, and precious woods. It's an interesting +trade." +"And the profits are large?" said I. +"Tremendous" said he. +I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expectations +than my own. +"I think I shall trade, also," said he, putting his thumbs in his +waistcoat pockets, "to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and +rum. Also to Ceylon, specially for elephants' tusks." +"You will want a good many ships," said I. +"A perfect fleet," said he. +Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I +asked him where the ships he insured mostly traded to at present? +"I haven't begun insuring yet," he replied. "I am looking about +me." +Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard's Inn. I +said in a tone of conviction, "Ahh" +"Yes. I am in a countinghouse, and looking about me." +"Is a countinghouse profitable?" I asked. +"To do you mean to the young fellow who's in it?" he asked, in +reply. +"Yes to you." +"Why, nno not to me." He said this with the air of one carefully +reckoning up and striking a balance. "Not directly profitable. That +is, it doesn't pay me anything, and I have to keep myself." +This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my head +as if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much +accumulative capital from such a source of income. +"But the thing is," said Herbert Pocket, "that you look about you. +That's the grand thing. You are in a countinghouse, you know, and +you look about you." +It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn't be out of +a countinghouse, you know, and look about you but I silently +deferred to his experience. +"Then the time comes," said Herbert, "when you see your opening. +And you go in, and you swoop upon it and you make your capital, and +then there you are When you have once made your capital, you have +nothing to do but employ it." +This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in the +garden very like. His manner of bearing his poverty, too, exactly +corresponded to his manner of bearing that defeat. It seemed to me +that he took all blows and buffets now, with just the same air as +he had taken mine then. It was evident that he had nothing around +him but the simplest necessaries, for everything that I remarked +upon turned out to have been sent in on my account from the +coffeehouse or somewhere else. +Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was so +unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being +puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant +ways, and we got on famously. In the evening we went out for a walk +in the streets, and went halfprice to the Theatre and next day we +went to church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked +in the Parks and I wondered who shod all the horses there, and +wished Joe did. +On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday, since I +had left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between myself and +them, partook of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance +off. That I could have been at our old church in my old +churchgoing clothes, on the very last Sunday that ever was, seemed +a combination of impossibilities, geographical and social, solar +and lunar. Yet in the London streets, so crowded with people and so +brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening, there were depressing +hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor old kitchen at home +so far away and in the dead of night, the footsteps of some +incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Barnard's Inn, under +pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my heart. +On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went to the +countinghouse to report himself to look about him, too, I +suppose and I bore him company. He was to come away in an hour or +two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him. +It appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were +hatched, were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of +ostriches, judging from the places to which those incipient giants +repaired on a Monday morning. Nor did the countinghouse where +Herbert assisted, show in my eyes as at all a good Observatory +being a back second floor up a yard, of a grimy presence in all +particulars, and with a look into another back second floor, rather +than a look out. +I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon 'Change, and I +saw fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom I +took to be great merchants, though I couldn't understand why they +should all be out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had +lunch at a celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now +believe to have been the most abject superstition in Europe, and +where I could not help noticing, even then, that there was much +more gravy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters' clothes, than +in the steaks. This collation disposed of at a moderate price +considering the grease which was not charged for, we went back +to Barnard's Inn and got my little portmanteau, and then took coach +for Hammersmith. We arrived there at two or three o'clock in the +afternoon, and had very little way to walk to Mr. Pocket's house. +Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct into a little garden +overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket's children were playing +about. And unless I deceive myself on a point where my interests or +prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs. +Pocket's children were not growing up or being brought up, but were +tumbling up. +Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading, +with her legs upon another garden chair and Mrs. Pocket's two +nursemaids were looking about them while the children played. +"Mamma," said Herbert, "this is young Mr. Pip." Upon which Mrs. +Pocket received me with an appearance of amiable dignity. +"Master Alick and Miss Jane," cried one of the nurses to two of the +children, "if you go abouncing up against them bushes you'll fall +over into the river and be drownded, and what'll your pa say then?" +At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket's handkerchief, +and said, "If that don't make six times you've dropped it, Mum" +Upon which Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, "Thank you, Flopson," and +settling herself in one chair only, resumed her book. Her +countenance immediately assumed a knitted and intent expression as +if she had been reading for a week, but before she could have read +half a dozen lines, she fixed her eyes upon me, and said, "I hope +your mamma is quite well?" This unexpected inquiry put me into such +a difficulty that I began saying in the absurdest way that if there +had been any such person I had no doubt she would have been quite +well and would have been very much obliged and would have sent her +compliments, when the nurse came to my rescue. +"Well" she cried, picking up the pocket handkerchief, "if that +don't make seven times What ARE you adoing of this afternoon, +Mum" Mrs. Pocket received her property, at first with a look of +unutterable surprise as if she had never seen it before, and then +with a laugh of recognition, and said, "Thank you, Flopson," and +forgot me, and went on reading. +I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were no fewer +than six little Pockets present, in various stages of tumbling up. +I had scarcely arrived at the total when a seventh was heard, as in +the region of air, wailing dolefully. +"If there ain't Baby" said Flopson, appearing to think it most +surprising. "Make haste up, Millers." +Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house, and by +degrees the child's wailing was hushed and stopped, as if it were a +young ventriloquist with something in its mouth. Mrs. Pocket read +all the time, and I was curious to know what the book could be. +We were waiting, I supposed, for Mr. Pocket to come out to us at +any rate we waited there, and so I had an opportunity of observing +the remarkable family phenomenon that whenever any of the children +strayed near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped +themselves up and tumbled over her always very much to her +momentary astonishment, and their own more enduring lamentation. I +was at a loss to account for this surprising circumstance, and +could not help giving my mind to speculations about it, until +byandby Millers came down with the baby, which baby was handed to +Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs. Pocket, when she too +went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket, baby and all, and was +caught by Herbert and myself. +"Gracious me, Flopson" said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her book for a +moment, "everybody's tumbling" +"Gracious you, indeed, Mum" returned Flopson, very red in the +face "what have you got there?" +"I got here, Flopson?" asked Mrs. Pocket. +"Why, if it ain't your footstool" cried Flopson. "And if you keep +it under your skirts like that, who's to help tumbling? Here Take +the baby, Mum, and give me your book." +Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced the infant a +little in her lap, while the other children played about it. This +had lasted but a very short time, when Mrs. Pocket issued summary +orders that they were all to be taken into the house for a nap. +Thus I made the second discovery on that first occasion, that the +nurture of the little Pockets consisted of alternately tumbling up +and lying down. +Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got the +children into the house, like a little flock of sheep, and Mr. +Pocket came out of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much +surprised to find that Mr. Pocket was a gentleman with a rather +perplexed expression of face, and with his very grey hair +disordered on his head, as if he didn't quite see his way to +putting anything straight. +Chapter +Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry +to see him. "For, I really am not," he added, with his son's smile, +"an alarming personage." He was a younglooking man, in spite of +his perplexities and his very grey hair, and his manner seemed +quite natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being +unaffected there was something comic in his distraught way, as +though it would have been downright ludicrous but for his own +perception that it was very near being so. When he had talked with +me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious +contraction of his eyebrows, which were black and handsome, +"Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?" And she looked up from +her book, and said, "Yes." She then smiled upon me in an absent +state of mind, and asked me if I liked the taste of orangeflower +water? As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on any +foregone or subsequent transaction, I consider it to have been +thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general conversational +condescension. +I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that Mrs. +Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental deceased +Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his deceased +father would have been made a Baronet but for somebody's determined +opposition arising out of entirely personal motives I forget +whose, if I ever knew the Sovereign's, the Prime Minister's, the +Lord Chancellor's, the Archbishop of Canterbury's, anybody's and +had tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this +quite supposititious fact. I believe he had been knighted himself +for storming the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a +desperate address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the +laying of the first stone of some building or other, and for +handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar. Be +that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from +her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a title, +and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic +knowledge. +So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young +lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly +ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless. With her character +thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth she had +encountered Mr. Pocket who was also in the first bloom of youth, +and not quite decided whether to mount to the Woolsack, or to roof +himself in with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other was a +mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken Time by the +forelock when, to judge from its length, it would seem to have +wanted cutting, and had married without the knowledge of the +judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or +withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that dower upon +them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket that his +wife was "a treasure for a Prince." Mr. Pocket had invested the +Prince's treasure in the ways of the world ever since, and it was +supposed to have brought him in but indifferent interest. Still, +Mrs. Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of respectful +pity, because she had not married a title while Mr. Pocket was the +object of a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because he had never +got one. +Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room which was a +pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort +for my own private sittingroom. He then knocked at the doors of +two other similar rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by +name Drummle and Startop. Drummle, an oldlooking young man of a +heavy order of architecture, was whistling. Startop, younger in +years and appearance, was reading and holding his head, as if he +thought himself in danger of exploding it with too strong a charge +of knowledge. +Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in +somebody else's hands, that I wondered who really was in possession +of the house and let them live there, until I found this unknown +power to be the servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps, +in respect of saving trouble but it had the appearance of being +expensive, for the servants felt it a duty they owed to themselves +to be nice in their eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of +company down stairs. They allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and +Mrs. Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that by far the best part +of the house to have boarded in, would have been the kitchen +always supposing the boarder capable of selfdefence, for, before I +had been there a week, a neighbouring lady with whom the family +were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that she had seen +Millers slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who +burst into tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an +extraordinary thing that the neighbours couldn't mind their own +business. +By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had +been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had +distinguished himself but that when he had had the happiness of +marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life, he had impaired his +prospects and taken up the calling of a Grinder. After grinding a +number of dull blades of whom it was remarkable that their +fathers, when influential, were always going to help him to +preferment, but always forgot to do it when the blades had left the +Grindstone he had wearied of that poor work and had come to +London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had +"read" with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, +and had refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had +turned his acquirements to the account of literary compilation and +correction, and on such means, added to some very moderate private +resources, still maintained the house I saw. +Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour a widow lady of that +highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed +everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to +circumstances. This lady's name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the +honour of taking her down to dinner on the day of my installation. +She gave me to understand on the stairs, that it was a blow to dear +Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the necessity of +receiving gentlemen to read with him. That did not extend to me, +she told me in a gush of love and confidence at that time, I had +known her something less than five minutes if they were all like +Me, it would be quite another thing. +"But dear Mrs. Pocket," said Mrs. Coiler, "after her early +disappointment not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that, +requires so much luxury and elegance" +"Yes, ma'am," I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was going +to cry. +"And she is of so aristocratic a disposition" +"Yes, ma'am," I said again, with the same object as before. +" that it is hard," said Mrs. Coiler, "to have dear Mr. Pocket's +time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket." +I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the butcher's +time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket but I said +nothing, and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful watch +upon my companymanners. +It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. Pocket and +Drummle while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, +and other instruments of selfdestruction, that Drummle, whose +Christian name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a +baronetcy. It further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs. Pocket +reading in the garden, was all about titles, and that she knew the +exact date at which her grandpapa would have come into the book, if +he ever had come at all. Drummle didn't say much, but in his +limited way he struck me as a sulky kind of fellow he spoke as +one of the elect, and recognized Mrs. Pocket as a woman and a +sister. No one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler the toady neighbour +showed any interest in this part of the conversation, and it +appeared to me that it was painful to Herbert but it promised to +last a long time, when the page came in with the announcement of a +domestic affliction. It was, in effect, that the cook had mislaid +the beef. To my unutterable amazement, I now, for the first time, +saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a performance that +struck me as very extraordinary, but which made no impression on +anybody else, and with which I soon became as familiar as the rest. +He laid down the carvingknife and fork being engaged in carving, +at the moment put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and +appeared to make an extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it. +When he had done this, and had not lifted himself up at all, he +quietly went on with what he was about. +Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject, and began to flatter me. I +liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly +that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming +close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the +friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and +forktongued and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop +who said very little to her, or upon Drummle who said less, I +rather envied them for being on the opposite side of the table. +After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made +admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs a sagacious way +of improving their minds. There were four little girls, and two +little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the +baby's next successor who was as yet neither. They were brought in +by Flopson and Millers, much as though those two noncommissioned +officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and had +enlisted these while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young Nobles that +ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had had the +pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to +make of them. +"Here Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby," said Flopson. +"Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the table." +Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its head +upon the table which was announced to all present by a prodigious +concussion. +"Dear, dear Give it me back, Mum," said Flopson "and Miss Jane, +come and dance to baby, do" +One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have prematurely +taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out of her +place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off +crying, and laughed. Then, all the children laughed, and Mr. Pocket +who in the meantime had twice endeavoured to lift himself up by +the hair laughed, and we all laughed and were glad. +Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch +doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the +nutcrackers to play with at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket +to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely +to agree with its eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look +after the same. Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a +lively scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had +waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the +gamingtable. +I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket's falling into a +discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies, while she ate a +sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting all about +the baby on her lap who did most appalling things with the +nutcrackers. At length, little Jane perceiving its young brains to +be imperilled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices +coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange +at about the same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane +"You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this instant" +"Mamma dear," lisped the little girl, "baby ood have put hith eyeth +out." +"How dare you tell me so?" retorted Mrs. Pocket. "Go and sit down in +your chair this moment" +Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite abashed as +if I myself had done something to rouse it. +"Belinda," remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end of the table, +"how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered for the +protection of baby." +"I will not allow anybody to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket. "I am +surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of +interference." +"Good God" cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate +desperation. "Are infants to be nutcrackered into their tombs, and +is nobody to save them?" +"I will not be interfered with by Jane," said Mrs. Pocket, with a +majestic glance at that innocent little offender. "I hope I know my +poor grandpapa's position. Jane, indeed" +Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really did +lift himself some inches out of his chair. "Hear this" he +helplessly exclaimed to the elements. "Babies are to be +nutcrackered dead, for people's poor grandpapa's positions" Then +he let himself down again, and became silent. +We all looked awkwardly at the tablecloth while this was going on. +A pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible baby +made a series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared to me +to be the only member of the family irrespective of servants with +whom it had any decided acquaintance. +"Mr. Drummle," said Mrs. Pocket, "will you ring for Flopson? Jane, +you undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby darling, +come with ma" +The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its might. +It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's arm, exhibited +a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the company in lieu +of its soft face, and was carried out in the highest state of +mutiny. And it gained its point after all, for I saw it through the +window within a few minutes, being nursed by little Jane. +It happened that the other five children were left behind at the +dinnertable, through Flopson's having some private engagement, and +their not being anybody else's business. I thus became aware of the +mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified +in the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of +his face heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some +minutes, as if he couldn't make out how they came to be boarding +and lodging in that establishment, and why they hadn't been +billeted by Nature on somebody else. Then, in a distant, Missionary +way he asked them certain questions as why little Joe had that +hole in his frill who said, Pa, Flopson was going to mend it when +she had time and how little Fanny came by that whitlow who said, +Pa, Millers was going to poultice it when she didn't forget. Then, +he melted into parental tenderness, and gave them a shilling apiece +and told them to go and play and then as they went out, with one +very strong effort to lift himself up by the hair he dismissed the +hopeless subject. +In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drummle and +Startop had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine, and to cut them +both out. I was pretty good at most exercises in which countryboys +are adepts, but, as I was conscious of wanting elegance of style +for the Thames not to say for other waters I at once engaged to +place myself under the tuition of the winner of a prizewherry who +plied at our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by my new allies. +This practical authority confused me very much, by saying I had the +arm of a blacksmith. If he could have known how nearly the +compliment lost him his pupil, I doubt if he would have paid it. +There was a suppertray after we got home at night, and I think we +should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable +domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a +housemaid came in, and said, "If you please, sir, I should wish to +speak to you." +"Speak to your master?" said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was roused +again. "How can you think of such a thing? Go and speak to Flopson. +Or speak to me at some other time." +"Begging your pardon, ma'am," returned the housemaid, "I should +wish to speak at once, and to speak to master." +Hereupon, Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the best of +ourselves until he came back. +"This is a pretty thing, Belinda" said Mr. Pocket, returning with a +countenance expressive of grief and despair. "Here's the cook lying +insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bundle of fresh +butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease" +Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said, "This +is that odious Sophia's doing" +"What do you mean, Belinda?" demanded Mr. Pocket. +"Sophia has told you," said Mrs. Pocket. "Did I not see her with my +own eyes and hear her with my own ears, come into the room just now +and ask to speak to you?" +"But has she not taken me down stairs, Belinda," returned Mr. +Pocket, "and shown me the woman, and the bundle too?" +"And do you defend her, Matthew," said Mrs. Pocket, "for making +mischief?" +Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan. +"Am I, grandpapa's granddaughter, to be nothing in the house?" said +Mrs. Pocket. "Besides, the cook has always been a very nice +respectful woman, and said in the most natural manner when she came +to look after the situation, that she felt I was born to be a +Duchess." +There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in +the attitude of the Dying Gladiator. Still in that attitude he +said, with a hollow voice, "Good night, Mr. Pip," when I deemed it +advisable to go to bed and leave him. +Chapter +After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room +and had gone backwards and forwards to London several times, and +had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a +long talk together. He knew more of my intended career than I knew +myself, for he referred to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that +I was not designed for any profession, and that I should be well +enough educated for my destiny if I could "hold my own" with the +average of young men in prosperous circumstances. I acquiesced, of +course, knowing nothing to the contrary. +He advised my attending certain places in London, for the +acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing +him with the functions of explainer and director of all my studies. +He hoped that with intelligent assistance I should meet with little +to discourage me, and should soon be able to dispense with any aid +but his. Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar +purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an +admirable manner and I may state at once that he was always so +zealous and honourable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he +made me zealous and honourable in fulfilling mine with him. If he +had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have +returned the compliment as a pupil he gave me no such excuse, and +each of us did the other justice. Nor, did I ever regard him as +having anything ludicrous about him or anything but what was +serious, honest, and good in his tutor communication with me. +When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I +had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could +retain my bedroom in Barnard's Inn, my life would be agreeably +varied, while my manners would be none the worse for Herbert's +society. Mr. Pocket did not object to this arrangement, but urged +that before any step could possibly be taken in it, it must be +submitted to my guardian. I felt that this delicacy arose out of +the consideration that the plan would save Herbert some expense, so +I went off to Little Britain and imparted my wish to Mr. Jaggers. +"If I could buy the furniture now hired for me," said I, "and one +or two other little things, I should be quite at home there." +"Go it" said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. "I told you you'd get +on. Well How much do you want?" +I said I didn't know how much. +"Come" retorted Mr. Jaggers. "How much? Fifty pounds?" +"Oh, not nearly so much." +"Five pounds?" said Mr. Jaggers. +This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, "Oh more +than that." +"More than that, eh" retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me, +with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes +on the wall behind me "how much more?" +"It is so difficult to fix a sum," said I, hesitating. +"Come" said Mr. Jaggers. "Let's get at it. Twice five will that +do? Three times five will that do? Four times five will that do?" +I said I thought that would do handsomely. +"Four times five will do handsomely, will it?" said Mr. Jaggers, +knitting his brows. "Now, what do you make of four times five?" +"What do I make of it?" +"Ah" said Mr. Jaggers "how much?" +"I suppose you make it twenty pounds," said I, smiling. +"Never mind what I make it, my friend," observed Mr. Jaggers, with a +knowing and contradictory toss of his head. "I want to know what +you make it." +"Twenty pounds, of course." +"Wemmick" said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. "Take Mr. Pip's +written order, and pay him twenty pounds." +This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked +impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers +never laughed but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in +poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and +his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes +caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and +suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was +brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to +make of Mr. Jaggers's manner. +"Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered +Wemmick "he don't mean that you should know what to make of it. +Oh" for I looked surprised, "it's not personal it's professional +only professional." +Wemmick was at his desk, lunching and crunching on a dry hard +biscuit pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit +of a mouth, as if he were posting them. +"Always seems to me," said Wemmick, "as if he had set a mantrap and +was watching it. Suddenly click you're caught" +Without remarking that mantraps were not among the amenities of +life, I said I supposed he was very skilful? +"Deep," said Wemmick, "as Australia." Pointing with his pen at the +office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the +purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of +the globe. "If there was anything deeper," added Wemmick, bringing +his pen to paper, "he'd be it." +Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said, +"Capital" Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he +replied +"We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers, +and people won't have him at secondhand. There are only four of +us. Would you like to see 'em? You are one of us, as I may say." +I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into +the post, and had paid me my money from a cashbox in a safe, the +key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back and produced from +his coatcollar like an iron pigtail, we went upstairs. The house +was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their +mark in Mr. Jaggers's room, seemed to have been shuffling up and +down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who +looked something between a publican and a ratcatcher a large +pale puffed swollen man was attentively engaged with three or +four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as +unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who contributed +to Mr. Jaggers's coffers. "Getting evidence together," said Mr. +Wemmick, as we came out, "for the Bailey." +In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with +dangling hair his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he +was a puppy was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom +Mr. Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always +boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased and who was in +an excessive whiteperspiration, as if he had been trying his art on +himself. In a back room, a highshouldered man with a faceache tied +up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes that bore +the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his work of +making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr. +Jaggers's own use. +This was all the establishment. When we went downstairs again, +Wemmick led me into my guardian's room, and said, "This you've seen +already." +"Pray," said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon +them caught my sight again, "whose likenesses are those?" +"These?" said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust +off the horrible heads before bringing them down. "These are two +celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of +credit. This chap why you must have come down in the night and +been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, +you old rascal murdered his master, and, considering that he +wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it badly." +"Is it like him?" I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick +spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his sleeve. +"Like him? It's himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate, +directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for +me, hadn't you, Old Artful?" said Wemmick. He then explained this +affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the +lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and +saying, "Had it made for me, express" +"Is the lady anybody?" said I. +"No," returned Wemmick. "Only his game. You liked your bit of +game, didn't you? No deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr. Pip, +except one and she wasn't of this slender ladylike sort, and you +wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn unless there was +something to drink in it." Wemmick's attention being thus directed +to his brooch, he put down the cast, and polished the brooch with +his pockethandkerchief. +"Did that other creature come to the same end?" I asked. "He has +the same look." +"You're right," said Wemmick "it's the genuine look. Much as if +one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and a little fishhook. +Yes, he came to the same end quite the natural end here, I assure +you. He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn't also put the +supposed testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly Cove, +though" Mr. Wemmick was again apostrophizing, "and you said you +could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable What a liar you were I never +met such a liar as you" Before putting his late friend on his +shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his mourning rings and +said, "Sent out to buy it for me, only the day before." +While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from the +chair, the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewellery +was derived from like sources. As he had shown no diffidence on the +subject, I ventured on the liberty of asking him the question, when +he stood before me, dusting his hands. +"Oh yes," he returned, "these are all gifts of that kind. One +brings another, you see that's the way of it. I always take 'em. +They're curiosities. And they're property. They may not be worth +much, but, after all, they're property and portable. It don't +signify to you with your brilliant lookout, but as to myself, my +guidingstar always is, "Get hold of portable property"." +When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say, in a +friendly manner +"If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you +wouldn't mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer you +a bed, and I should consider it an honour. I have not much to show +you but such two or three curiosities as I have got, you might +like to look over and I am fond of a bit of garden and a +summerhouse." +I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality. +"Thankee," said he "then we'll consider that it's to come off, +when convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?" +"Not yet." +"Well," said Wemmick, "he'll give you wine, and good wine. I'll +give you punch, and not bad punch. And now I'll tell you something. +When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper." +"Shall I see something very uncommon?" +"Well," said Wemmick, "you'll see a wild beast tamed. Not so very +uncommon, you'll tell me. I reply, that depends on the original +wildness of the beast, and the amount of taming. It won't lower +your opinion of Mr. Jaggers's powers. Keep your eye on it." +I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that +his preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me +if I would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers "at +it?" +For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know +what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be "at," I replied in the +affirmative. We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded +policecourt, where a bloodrelation in the murderous sense of the +deceased with the fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the +bar, uncomfortably chewing something while my guardian had a woman +under examination or crossexamination I don't know which and +was striking her, and the bench, and everybody present, with awe. +If anybody, of whatsoever degree, said a word that he didn't +approve of, he instantly required to have it "taken down." If +anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said, "I'll have it out of +you" and if anybody made an admission, he said, "Now I have got +you" the magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger. +Thieves and thieftakers hung in dread rapture on his words, and +shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which +side he was on, I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be +grinding the whole place in a mill I only know that when I stole +out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench for, he was +making the legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive +under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the +representative of British law and justice in that chair that day. +Chapter +Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a +book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an +acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, +and comprehension in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in +the large awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as +he himself lolled about in a room he was idle, proud, niggardly, +reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in +Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until +they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. +Thus, Bentley Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head +taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than +most gentlemen. +Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he +ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her, +and admired her beyond measure. He had a woman's delicacy of +feature, and was "as you may see, though you never saw her," said +Herbert to me exactly like his mother. It was but natural that I +should take to him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even +in the earliest evenings of our boating, he and I should pull +homeward abreast of one another, conversing from boat to boat, +while Bentley Drummle came up in our wake alone, under the +overhanging banks and among the rushes. He would always creep +inshore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when the +tide would have sent him fast upon his way and I always think of +him as coming after us in the dark or by the backwater, when our +own two boats were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in +midstream. +Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with +a halfshare in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming +down to Hammersmith and my possession of a halfshare in his +chambers often took me up to London. We used to walk between the +two places at all hours. I have an affection for the road yet +though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then, formed in the +impressibility of untried youth and hope. +When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs. +Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister. Georgiana, whom +I had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occasion, also turned up. +she was a cousin an indigestive single woman, who called her +rigidity religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with +the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, +they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness. +Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grownup infant with no notion of his own +interests, they showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them +express. Mrs. Pocket they held in contempt but they allowed the +poor soul to have been heavily disappointed in life, because that +shed a feeble reflected light upon themselves. +These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied +myself to my education. I soon contracted expensive habits, and +began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I +should have thought almost fabulous but through good and evil I +stuck to my books. There was no other merit in this, than my having +sense enough to feel my deficiencies. Between Mr. Pocket and Herbert +I got on fast and, with one or the other always at my elbow to +give me the start I wanted, and clear obstructions out of my road, +I must have been as great a dolt as Drummle if I had done less. +I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would +write him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain +evening. He replied that it would give him much pleasure, and that +he would expect me at the office at six o'clock. Thither I went, +and there I found him, putting the key of his safe down his back as +the clock struck. +"Did you think of walking down to Walworth?" said he. +"Certainly," said I, "if you approve." +"Very much," was Wemmick's reply, "for I have had my legs under the +desk all day, and shall be glad to stretch them. Now, I'll tell you +what I have got for supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed steak +which is of home preparation and a cold roast fowl which is +from the cook'sshop. I think it's tender, because the master of +the shop was a Juryman in some cases of ours the other day, and we +let him down easy. I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl, and +I said, "Pick us out a good one, old Briton, because if we had +chosen to keep you in the box another day or two, we could easily +have done it." He said to that, "Let me make you a present of the +best fowl in the shop." I let him, of course. As far as it goes, +it's property and portable. You don't object to an aged parent, I +hope?" +I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added, +"Because I have got an aged parent at my place." I then said what +politeness required. +"So, you haven't dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?" he pursued, as we +walked along. +"Not yet." +"He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming. I +expect you'll have an invitation tomorrow. He's going to ask your +pals, too. Three of 'em ain't there?" +Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of my +intimate associates, I answered, "Yes." +"Well, he's going to ask the whole gang" I hardly felt +complimented by the word "and whatever he gives you, he'll give +you good. Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have +excellence. And there'sa nother rum thing in his house," proceeded +Wemmick, after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the +housekeeper understood "he never lets a door or window be fastened +at night." +"Is he never robbed?" +"That's it" returned Wemmick. "He says, and gives it out publicly, +"I want to see the man who'll rob me." Lord bless you, I have heard +him, a hundred times if I have heard him once, say to regular +cracksmen in our front office, "You know where I live now, no bolt +is ever drawn there why don't you do a stroke of business with me? +Come can't I tempt you?" Not a man of them, sir, would be bold +enough to try it on, for love or money." +"They dread him so much?" said I. +"Dread him," said Wemmick. "I believe you they dread him. Not but +what he's artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, sir. +Britannia metal, every spoon." +"So they wouldn't have much," I observed, "even if they" +"Ah But he would have much," said Wemmick, cutting me short, "and +they know it. He'd have their lives, and the lives of scores of +'em. He'd have all he could get. And it's impossible to say what he +couldn't get, if he gave his mind to it." +I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness, when +Wemmick remarked +"As to the absence of plate, that's only his natural depth, you +know. A river's its natural depth, and he's his natural depth. Look +at his watchchain. That's real enough." +"It's very massive," said I. +"Massive?" repeated Wemmick. "I think so. And his watch is a gold +repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it's worth a penny. Mr. Pip, +there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who know all +about that watch there's not a man, a woman, or a child, among +them, who wouldn't identify the smallest link in that chain, and +drop it as if it was redhot, if inveigled into touching it." +At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a +more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the +road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the +district of Walworth. +It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little +gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement. +Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots +of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery +mounted with guns. +"My own doing," said Wemmick. "Looks pretty don't it?" +I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever +saw with the queerest gothic windows by far the greater part of +them sham, and a gothic door, almost too small to get in at. +"That's a real flagstaff, you see," said Wemmick, "and on Sundays I +run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this +bridge, I hoist it up so and cut off the communication." +The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide +and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which +he hoisted it up and made it fast smiling as he did so, with a +relish and not merely mechanically. +"At nine o'clock every night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, "the +gun fires. There he is, you see And when you hear him go, I think +you'll say he's a Stinger." +The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate +fortress, constructed of latticework. It was protected from the +weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature +of an umbrella. +"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, "out of sight, so as not to +impede the idea of fortifications for it's a principle with me, +if you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up I don't know +whether that's your opinion" +I said, decidedly. +" At the back, there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits +then, I knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow +cucumbers and you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can +raise. So, sir," said Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously too, as +he shook his head, "if you can suppose the little place besieged, +it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions." +Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which +was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite +a long time to get at and in this retreat our glasses were already +set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose +margin the bower was raised. This piece of water with an island in +the middle which might have been the salad for supper was of a +circular form, and he had constructed a fountain in it, which, when +you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played +to that powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite +wet. +"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, +and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades," said Wemmick, +in acknowledging my compliments. "Well it's a good thing, you +know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged. +You wouldn't mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you? +It wouldn't put you out?" +I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. +There, we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel +coat clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but +intensely deaf. +"Well aged parent," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a +cordial and jocose way, "how am you?" +"All right, John all right" replied the old man. +"Here's Mr. Pip, aged parent," said Wemmick, "and I wish you could +hear his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip that's what he likes. Nod +away at him, if you please, like winking" +"This is a fine place of my son's, sir," cried the old man, while I +nodded as hard as I possibly could. "This is a pretty +pleasureground, sir. This spot and these beautiful works upon it +ought to be kept together by the Nation, after my son's time, for +the people's enjoyment." +"You're as proud of it as Punch ain't you, Aged?" said Wemmick, +contemplating the old man, with his hard face really softened +"there's a nod for you" giving him a tremendous one "there's +another for you" giving him a still more tremendous one "you like +that, don't you? If you're not tired, Mr. Pip though I know it's +tiring to strangers will you tip him one more? You can't think +how it pleases him." +I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. We left him +bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our punch +in the arbour where Wemmick told me as he smoked a pipe that it +had taken him a good many years to bring the property up to its +present pitch of perfection. +"Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?" +"O yes," said Wemmick, "I have got hold of it, a bit at a time. +It's a freehold, by George" +"Is it, indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?" +"Never seen it," said Wemmick. "Never heard of it. Never seen the +Aged. Never heard of him. No the office is one thing, and private +life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle +behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office +behind me. If it's not in any way disagreeable to you, you'll +oblige me by doing the same. I don't wish it professionally spoken +about." +Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his +request. The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and +talking, until it was almost nine o'clock. "Getting near gunfire," +said Wemmick then, as he laid down his pipe "it's the Aged's +treat." +Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating the +poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of +this great nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his +hand, until the moment was come for him to take the redhot poker +from the Aged, and repair to the battery. He took it, and went out, +and presently the Stinger went off with a Bang that shook the crazy +little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made +every glass and teacup in it ring. Upon this, the Aged who I +believe would have been blown out of his armchair but for holding +on by the elbows cried out exultingly, "He's fired I heerd him" +and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of speech +to declare that I absolutely could not see him. +The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick devoted to +showing me his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a +felonious character comprising the pen with which a celebrated +forgery had been committed, a distinguished razor or two, some +locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under +condemnation upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being, +to use his own words, "every one of 'em Lies, sir." These were +agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and glass, +various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and some +tobaccostoppers carved by the Aged. They were all displayed in +that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first inducted, +and which served, not only as the general sittingroom but as the +kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and a +brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a +roastingjack. +There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the +Aged in the day. When she had laid the suppercloth, the bridge was +lowered to give her means of egress, and she withdrew for the +night. The supper was excellent and though the Castle was rather +subject to dryrot insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut, and +though the pig might have been farther off, I was heartily pleased +with my whole entertainment. Nor was there any drawback on my +little turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very thin ceiling +between me and the flagstaff, that when I lay down on my back in +bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on my forehead all +night. +Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him +cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him +from my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at +him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the +supper, and at halfpast eight precisely we started for Little +Britain. By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along, +and his mouth tightened into a postoffice again. At last, when we +got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his +coatcollar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property as +if the Castle and the drawbridge and the arbour and the lake and +the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into space together +by the last discharge of the Stinger. +Chapter +It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early +opportunity of comparing my guardian's establishment with that of +his cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his +hands with his scented soap, when I went into the office from +Walworth and he called me to him, and gave me the invitation for +myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to receive. "No +ceremony," he stipulated, "and no dinner dress, and say tomorrow." +I asked him where we should come to for I had no idea where he +lived, and I believe it was in his general objection to make +anything like an admission, that he replied, "Come here, and I'll +take you home with me." I embrace this opportunity of remarking +that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a +dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, +which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer's shop. It had an +unusually large jacktowel on a roller inside the door, and he +would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this +towel, whenever he came in from a policecourt or dismissed a +client from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six +o'clock next day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a +darker complexion than usual, for, we found him with his head +butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his +face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done all that, +and had gone all round the jacktowel, he took out his penknife and +scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on. +There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out +into the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him but +there was something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which +encircled his presence, that they gave it up for that day. As we +walked along westward, he was recognized ever and again by some +face in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that happened he +talked louder to me but he never otherwise recognized anybody, or +took notice that anybody recognized him. +He conducted us to Gerrardstreet, Soho, to a house on the south +side of that street. Rather a stately house of its kind, but +dolefully in want of painting, and with dirty windows. He took out +his key and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, +bare, gloomy, and little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a +series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were +carved garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood among them +giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought they looked +like. +Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms the second was his +dressingroom the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the +whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was +comfortably laid no silver in the service, of course and at the +side of his chair was a capacious dumbwaiter, with a variety of +bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert. +I noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand, +and distributed everything himself. +There was a bookcase in the room I saw, from the backs of the +books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal +biography, trials, acts of parliament, and such things. The +furniture was all very solid and good, like his watchchain. It had +an official look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental +to be seen. In a corner, was a little table of papers with a shaded +lamp so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that +respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to work. +As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now for, he and +I had walked together he stood on the hearthrug, after ringing +the bell, and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he +seemed at once to be principally if not solely interested in +Drummle. +"Pip," said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me +to the window, "I don't know one from the other. Who's the Spider?" +"The spider?" said I. +"The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow." +"That's Bentley Drummle," I replied "the one with the delicate +face is Startop." +Not making the least account of "the one with the delicate face," +he returned, "Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look +of that fellow." +He immediately began to talk to Drummle not at all deterred by his +replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to +screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two, when there +came between me and them, the housekeeper, with the first dish for +the table. +She was a woman of about forty, I supposed but I may have thought +her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure, +extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming +hair. I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the heart +caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and her face +to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter but I know +that I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two +before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed +by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches' +caldron. +She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a +finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our +seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side +of him, while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish +that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of +equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird. +Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, +were given out by our host from his dumbwaiter and when they had +made the circuit of the table, he always put them back again. +Similarly, he dealt us clean plates and knives and forks, for each +course, and dropped those just disused into two baskets on the +ground by his chair. No other attendant than the housekeeper +appeared. She set on every dish and I always saw in her face, a +face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I made a dreadful +likeness of that woman, by causing a face that had no other natural +resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair, to pass behind +a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room. +Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her +own striking appearance and by Wemmick's preparation, I observed +that whenever she was in the room, she kept her eyes attentively on +my guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she +put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her +back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything +to say. I fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness +of this, and a purpose of always holding her in suspense. +Dinner went off gaily, and, although my guardian seemed to follow +rather than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest +part of our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was +expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronize +Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew +that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us, but with no +one more than Drummle the development of whose inclination to gird +in a grudging and suspicious way at the rest, was screwed out of +him before the fish was taken off. +It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our +conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was +rallied for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way +of his. Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much preferred +our room to our company, and that as to skill he was more than our +master, and that as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By +some invisible agency, my guardian wound him up to a pitch little +short of ferocity about this trifle and he fell to baring and +spanning his arm to show how muscular it was, and we all fell to +baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous manner. +Now, the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table my +guardian, taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face +turned from her, was leaning back in his chair biting the side of +his forefinger and showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was +quite inexplicable. Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the +housekeeper's, like a trap, as she stretched it across the table. +So suddenly and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our +foolish contention. +"If you talk of strength," said Mr. Jaggers, "I'll show you a wrist. +Molly, let them see your wrist." +Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her +other hand behind her waist. "Master," she said, in a low voice, +with her eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him. "Don't." +"I'll show you a wrist," repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable +determination to show it. "Molly, let them see your wrist." +"Master," she again murmured. "Please" +"Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately +looking at the opposite side of the room, "let them see both your +wrists. Show them. Come" +He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. +She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out +side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured deeply scarred +and scarred across and across. When she held her hands out, she +took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every +one of the rest of us in succession. +"There's power here," said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the +sinews with his forefinger. "Very few men have the power of wrist +that this woman has. It's remarkable what mere force of grip there +is in these hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands but I +never saw stronger in that respect, man's or woman's, than these." +While he said these words in a leisurely critical style, she +continued to look at every one of us in regular succession as we +sat. The moment he ceased, she looked at him again. "That'll do, +Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight nod "you have been +admired, and can go." She withdrew her hands and went out of the +room, and Mr. Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumbwaiter, +filled his glass and passed round the wine. +"At halfpast nine, gentlemen," said he, "we must break up. Pray +make the best use of your time. I am glad to see you all. Mr. +Drummle, I drink to you." +If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still +more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed +his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more +offensive degree until he became downright intolerable. Through all +his stages, Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. +He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers's wine. +In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to +drink, and I know we talked too much. We became particularly hot +upon some boorish sneer of Drummle's, to the effect that we were +too free with our money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal +than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to whom +Startop had lent money in my presence but a week or so before. +"Well," retorted Drummle "he'll be paid." +"I don't mean to imply that he won't," said I, "but it might make +you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think." +"You should think" retorted Drummle. "Oh Lord" +"I dare say," I went on, meaning to be very severe, "that you +wouldn't lend money to any of us, if we wanted it." +"You are right," said Drummle. "I wouldn't lend one of you a +sixpence. I wouldn't lend anybody a sixpence." +"Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say." +"You should say," repeated Drummle. "Oh Lord" +This was so very aggravating the more especially as I found +myself making no way against his surly obtuseness that I said, +disregarding Herbert's efforts to check me +"Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you what +passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money." +"I don't want to know what passed between Herbert there and you," +growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl, that we +might both go to the devil and shake ourselves. +"I'll tell you, however," said I, "whether you want to know or not. +We said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you +seemed to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it." +Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his +hands in his pockets and his round shoulders raised plainly +signifying that it was quite true, and that he despised us, as +asses all. +Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace +than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable. +Startop, being a lively bright young fellow, and Drummle being the +exact opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a +direct personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse lumpish way, +and Startop tried to turn the discussion aside with some small +pleasantry that made us all laugh. Resenting this little success +more than anything, Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled +his hands out of his pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore, +took up a large glass, and would have flung it at his adversary's +head, but for our entertainer's dexterously seizing it at the +instant when it was raised for that purpose. +"Gentlemen," said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, +and hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, "I am +exceedingly sorry to announce that it's halfpast nine." +On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street +door, Startop was cheerily calling Drummle "old boy," as if nothing +had happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that he +would not even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way so, +Herbert and I, who remained in town, saw them going down the street +on opposite sides Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind in +the shadow of the houses, much as he was wont to follow in his +boat. +As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there +for a moment, and run upstairs again to say a word to my guardian. +I found him in his dressingroom surrounded by his stock of boots, +already hard at it, washing his hands of us. +I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything +disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not +blame me much. +"Pooh" said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the +waterdrops "it's nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though." +He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and +blowing, and towelling himself. +"I am glad you like him, sir," said I "but I don't." +"No, no," my guardian assented "don't have too much to do with +him. Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip +he is one of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortuneteller" +Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye. +"But I am not a fortuneteller," he said, letting his head drop +into a festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. "You +know what I am, don't you? Goodnight, Pip." +"Goodnight, sir." +In about a month after that, the Spider's time with Mr. Pocket was +up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. +Pocket, he went home to the family hole. +Chapter +"MY DEAR MR PIP, +"I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he +is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad if +agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at Barnard's +Hotel Tuesday morning o'clock, when if not agreeable please +leave word. Your poor sister is much the same as when you left. We +talk of you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are +saying and doing. If now considered in the light of a liberty, +excuse it for the love of poor old days. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from +"Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant, +"BIDDY." +"P.S. He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He says you +will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to +see him even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and +he is a worthy worthy man. I have read him all excepting only the +last little sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write +again what larks." +I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore +its appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly, with what +feelings I looked forward to Joe's coming. +Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties no +with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense +of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I +certainly would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was, that +he was coming to Barnard's Inn, not to Hammersmith, and +consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle's way. I had little +objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father, for both of +whom I had a respect but I had the sharpest sensitiveness as to +his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in contempt. So, throughout +life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for +the sake of the people whom we most despise. +I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite +unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive +those wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms +were vastly different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the +honour of occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a +neighbouring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had +even started a boy in boots top boots in bondage and slavery to +whom I might have been said to pass my days. For, after I had made +the monster out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family and had +clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, +creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him +a little to do and a great deal to eat and with both of those +horrible requirements he haunted my existence. +This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday +morning in the hall it was two feet square, as charged for +floorcloth, and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast +that he thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to +him for being so interested and considerate, I had an odd +halfprovoked sense of suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been +coming to see him, he wouldn't have been quite so brisk about it. +However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe, +and I got up early in the morning, and caused the sittingroom and +breakfasttable to assume their most splendid appearance. +Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have +concealed the fact that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the +window, like some weak giant of a Sweep. +As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the +Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard +Joe on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of +coming upstairs his state boots being always too big for him +and by the time it took him to read the names on the other floors +in the course of his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our +door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of +my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the +keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper such was +the compromising name of the avenging boy announced "Mr. Gargery" +I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must +have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he came in. +"Joe, how are you, Joe?" +"Pip, how AIR you, Pip?" +With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put +down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked +them straight up and down, as if I had been the lastpatented Pump. +"I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat." +But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird'snest +with eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with that piece of +property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most +uncomfortable way. +"Which you have that growed," said Joe, "and that swelled, and that +gentlefolked" Joe considered a little before he discovered this +word "as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country." +"And you, Joe, look wonderfully well." +"Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval to most. And your sister, she's +no worse than she were. And Biddy, she's ever right and ready. And +all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. 'Ceptin Wopsle +he's had a drop." +All this time still with both hands taking great care of the +bird'snest, Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room, +and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressinggown. +"Had a drop, Joe?" +"Why yes," said Joe, lowering his voice, "he's left the Church, and +went into the playacting. Which the playacting have likeways +brought him to London along with me. And his wish were," said Joe, +getting the bird'snest under his left arm for the moment and +groping in it for an egg with his right "if no offence, as I would +'and you that." +I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled playbill +of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance, +in that very week, of "the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian +renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our +National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local +dramatic circles." +"Were you at his performance, Joe?" I inquired. +"I were," said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity. +"Was there a great sensation?" +"Why," said Joe, "yes, there certainly were a peck of orangepeel. +Partickler, when he see the ghost. Though I put it to yourself, +sir, whether it were calc'lated to keep a man up to his work with a +good hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost +with "Amen" A man may have had a misfortun' and been in the +Church," said Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and +feeling tone, "but that is no reason why you should put him out at +such a time. Which I meantersay, if the ghost of a man's own father +cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what can, Sir? Still +more, when his mourning 'at is unfortunately made so small as that +the weight of the black feathers brings it off, try to keep it on +how you may." +A ghostseeing effect in Joe's own countenance informed me that +Herbert had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who +held out his hand but Joe backed from it, and held on by the +bird'snest. +"Your servant, Sir," said Joe, "which I hope as you and Pip" here +his eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast on table, +and so plainly denoted an intention to make that young gentleman +one of the family, that I frowned it down and confused him more +"I meantersay, you two gentlemen which I hope as you get your +elths in this close spot? For the present may be a werry good inn, +according to London opinions," said Joe, confidentially, "and I +believe its character do stand i but I wouldn't keep a pig in it +myself not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and +to eat with a meller flavour on him." +Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our +dwellingplace, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call +me "sir," Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round +the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat as if it +were only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could +find a resting place and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner +of the chimneypiece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at +intervals. +"Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?" asked Herbert, who always +presided of a morning. +"Thankee, Sir," said Joe, stiff from head to foot, "I'll take +whichever is most agreeable to yourself." +"What do you say to coffee?" +"Thankee, Sir," returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal, +"since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run +contrairy to your own opinions. But don't you never find it a +little 'eating?" +"Say tea then," said Herbert, pouring it out. +Here Joe's hat tumbled off the mantelpiece, and he started out of +his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot. +As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it should +tumble off again soon. +"When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?" +"Were it yesterday afternoon?" said Joe, after coughing behind his +hand, as if he had had time to catch the whoopingcough since he +came. "No it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were yesterday +afternoon" with an appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and +strict impartiality. +"Have you seen anything of London, yet?" +"Why, yes, Sir," said Joe, "me and Wopsle went off straight to look +at the Blacking Ware'us. But we didn't find that it come up to its +likeness in the red bills at the shop doors which I meantersay," +added Joe, in an explanatory manner, "as it is there drawd too +architectooralooral." +I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word mightily +expressive to my mind of some architecture that I know into a +perfect Chorus, but for his attention being providentially +attracted by his hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from +him a constant attention, and a quickness of eye and hand, very +like that exacted by wicketkeeping. He made extraordinary play +with it, and showed the greatest skill now, rushing at it and +catching it neatly as it dropped now, merely stopping it midway, +beating it up, and humouring it in various parts of the room and +against a good deal of the pattern of the paper on the wall, before +he felt it safe to close with it finally, splashing it into the +slopbasin, where I took the liberty of laying hands upon it. +As to his shirtcollar, and his coatcollar, they were perplexing +to reflect upon insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man scrape +himself to that extent, before he could consider himself full +dressed? Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by +suffering for his holiday clothes? Then he fell into such +unaccountable fits of meditation, with his fork midway between his +plate and his mouth had his eyes attracted in such strange +directions was afflicted with such remarkable coughs sat so far +from the table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended +that he hadn't dropped it that I was heartily glad when Herbert +left us for the city. +I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this +was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would +have been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper +with him in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head. +"Us two being now alone, Sir," began Joe. +"Joe," I interrupted, pettishly, "how can you call me, Sir?" +Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like +reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his +collars were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look. +"Us two being now alone," resumed Joe, "and me having the +intentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now +conclude leastways begin to mention what have led to my having +had the present honour. For was it not," said Joe, with his old air +of lucid exposition, "that my only wish were to be useful to you, I +should not have had the honour of breaking wittles in the company +and abode of gentlemen." +I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no +remonstrance against this tone. +"Well, Sir," pursued Joe, "this is how it were. I were at the +Bargemen t'other night, Pip" whenever he subsided into affection, +he called me Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he +called me Sir "when there come up in his shaycart, Pumblechook. +Which that same identical," said Joe, going down a new track, "do +comb my 'air the wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up and +down town as it were him which ever had your infant companionation +and were looked upon as a playfellow by yourself." +"Nonsense. It was you, Joe." +"Which I fully believed it were, Pip," said Joe, slightly tossing +his head, "though it signify little now, Sir. Well, Pip this same +identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at +the Bargemen wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to +the workingman, Sir, and do not over stimilate, and his word +were, 'Joseph, Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.'" +"Miss Havisham, Joe?" +"'She wish,' were Pumblechook's word, 'to speak to you.'" Joe sat +and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. +"Yes, Joe? Go on, please." +"Next day, Sir," said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way +off, "having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A." +"Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?" +"Which I say, Sir," replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as +if he were making his will, "Miss A., or otherways Havisham. Her +expression air then as follering 'Mr. Gargery. You air in +correspondence with Mr. Pip?' Having had a letter from you, I were +able to say 'I am.' When I married your sister, Sir, I said 'I +will' and when I answered your friend, Pip, I said 'I am.' 'Would +you tell him, then,' said she, 'that which Estella has come home +and would be glad to see him.'" +I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote cause +of its firing, may have been my consciousness that if I had known +his errand, I should have given him more encouragement. +"Biddy," pursued Joe, "when I got home and asked her fur to write +the message to you, a little hung back. Biddy says, 'I know he will +be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holidaytime, you +want to see him, go' I have now concluded, Sir," said Joe, rising +from his chair, "and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering +to a greater and a greater heighth." +"But you are not going now, Joe?" +"Yes I am," said Joe. +"But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?" +"No I am not," said Joe. +Our eyes met, and all the "Sir" melted out of that manly heart as +he gave me his hand. +"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded +together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a +whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith. +Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If +there's been any fault at all today, it's mine. You and me is not +two figures to be together in London nor yet anywheres else but +what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It +ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall +never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. +I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes. You +won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge +dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find +half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to +see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see +Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt +apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've +beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD +bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you" +I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity +in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when +he spoke these words, than it could come in its way in Heaven. He +touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could +recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for +him in the neighbouring streets but he was gone. +Chapter +It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the +first flow of my repentance it was equally clear that I must stay +at Joe's. But, when I had secured my boxplace by tomorrow's coach +and had been down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by any means +convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons and make +excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar. I should be an +inconvenience at Joe's I was not expected, and my bed would not be +ready I should be too far from Miss Havisham's, and she was +exacting and mightn't like it. All other swindlers upon earth are +nothing to the selfswindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat +myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad +halfcrown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough +but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own +make, as good money An obliging stranger, under pretence of +compactly folding up my banknotes for security's sake, abstracts +the notes and gives me nutshells but what is his sleight of hand +to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as +notes +Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was much +disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger. It was +tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his +boots in the archway of the Blue Boar's postingyard it was almost +solemn to imagine him casually produced in the tailor's shop and +confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb's boy. On the other +hand, Trabb's boy might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him +things or, reckless and desperate wretch as I knew he could be, +might hoot him in the Highstreet, My patroness, too, might hear of +him, and not approve. On the whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger +behind. +It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as +winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination +until two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the +Cross Keys was two o'clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter +of an hour to spare, attended by the Avenger if I may connect +that expression with one who never attended on me if he could +possibly help it. +At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the +dockyards by stagecoach. As I had often heard of them in the +capacity of outside passengers, and had more than once seen them on +the high road dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof, I had +no cause to be surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came +up and told me there were two convicts going down with me. But I +had a reason that was an old reason now, for constitutionally +faltering whenever I heard the word convict. +"You don't mind them, Handel?" said Herbert. +"Oh no" +"I thought you seemed as if you didn't like them?" +"I can't pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don't +particularly. But I don't mind them." +"See There they are," said Herbert, "coming out of the Tap. What a +degraded and vile sight it is" +They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a +gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on +their hands. The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had +irons on their legs irons of a pattern that I knew well. They +wore the dress that I likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace +of pistols, and carried a thickknobbed bludgeon under his arm but +he was on terms of good understanding with them, and stood, with +them beside him, looking on at the puttingto of the horses, rather +with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibition not +formally open at the moment, and he the Curator. One was a taller +and stouter man than the other, and appeared as a matter of course, +according to the mysterious ways of the world both convict and +free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes. His +arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes, and his +attire disguised him absurdly but I knew his halfclosed eye at +one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at +the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought +me down with his invisible gun +It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he +had never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his eye +appraised my watchchain, and then he incidentally spat and said +something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued +themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked +at something else. The great numbers on their backs, as if they +were street doors their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if +they were lower animals their ironed legs, apologetically +garlanded with pockethandkerchiefs and the way in which all +present looked at them and kept from them made them as Herbert +had said a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle. +But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the +back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London, +and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat +in front, behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who +had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent +passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up +with such villainous company, and that it was poisonous and +pernicious and infamous and shameful, and I don't know what else. +At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we +were all preparing to get up, and the prisoners had come over with +their keeper bringing with them that curious flavour of +breadpoultice, baize, ropeyarn, and hearthstone, which attends +the convict presence. +"Don't take it so much amiss, sir," pleaded the keeper to the angry +passenger "I'll sit next you myself. I'll put 'em on the outside +of the row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You needn't know +they're there." +"And don't blame me," growled the convict I had recognized. "I +don't want to go. I am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am +concerned any one's welcome to my place." +"Or mine," said the other, gruffly. "I wouldn't have incommoded +none of you, if I'd had my way." Then, they both laughed, and began +cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about. As I really think I +should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so +despised. +At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry +gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or +remain behind. So, he got into his place, still making complaints, +and the keeper got into the place next him, and the convicts hauled +themselves up as well as they could, and the convict I had +recognized sat behind me with his breath on the hair of my head. +"Goodbye, Handel" Herbert called out as we started. I thought +what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for +me than Pip. +It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the +convict's breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along +my spine. The sensation was like being touched in the marrow with +some pungent and searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He +seemed to have more breathing business to do than another man, and +to make more noise in doing it and I was conscious of growing +highshoulderd on one side, in my shrinking endeavours to fend him +off. +The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold. It made +us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the +Halfway House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were +silent. I dozed off, myself, in considering the question whether I +ought to restore a couple of pounds sterling to this creature +before losing sight of him, and how it could best be done. In the +act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among the +horses, I woke in a fright and took the question up again. +But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although +I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and +shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind +that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a +screen against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than +before. They very first words I heard them interchange as I became +conscious were the words of my own thought, "Two One Pound notes." +"How did he get 'em?" said the convict I had never seen. +"How should I know?" returned the other. "He had 'em stowed away +somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect." +"I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, "that +I had 'em here." +"Two one pound notes, or friends?" +"Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the friends I ever had, for one, +and think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he says ?" +"So he says," resumed the convict I had recognized "it was all +said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the +Dockyard 'You're agoing to be discharged?' Yes, I was. Would I +find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him +them two one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did." +"More fool you," growled the other. "I'd have spent 'em on a Man, +in wittles and drink. He must have been a green one. Mean to say he +knowed nothing of you?" +"Not a ha'porth. Different gangs and different ships. He was tried +again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer." +"And was that Honour the only time you worked out, in this +part of the country?" +"The only time." +"What might have been your opinion of the place?" +"A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work work, swamp, +mist, and mudbank." +They both execrated the place in very strong language, and +gradually growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say. +After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got down +and been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, but for +feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity. +Indeed, I was not only so changed in the course of nature, but so +differently dressed and so differently circumstanced, that it was +not at all likely he could have known me without accidental help. +Still, the coincidence of our being together on the coach, was +sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some other +coincidence might at any moment connect me, in his hearing, with my +name. For this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as we touched +the town, and put myself out of his hearing. This device I executed +successfully. My little portmanteau was in the boot under my feet +I had but to turn a hinge to get it out I threw it down before me, +got down after it, and was left at the first lamp on the first +stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they went their +way with the coach, and I knew at what point they would be spirited +off to the river. In my fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew +waiting for them at the slimewashed stairs, again heard the +gruff "Give way, you" like and order to dogs again saw the +wicked Noah's Ark lying out on the black water. +I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was +altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me. +As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding +the mere apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition, +made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of +shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror +of childhood. +The coffeeroom at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only +ordered my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter +knew me. As soon as he had apologized for the remissness of his +memory, he asked me if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook? +"No," said I, "certainly not." +The waiter it was he who had brought up the Great Remonstrance +from the Commercials, on the day when I was bound appeared +surprised, and took the earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old +copy of a local newspaper so directly in my way, that I took it up +and read this paragraph +Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in +reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young +artificer in iron of this neighbourhood what a theme, by the way, +for the magic pen of our as yet not universally acknowledged +townsman TOOBY, the poet of our columns that the youth's earliest +patron, companion, and friend, was a highlyrespected individual +not entirely unconnected with the corn and seed trade, and whose +eminently convenient and commodious business premises are situate +within a hundred miles of the Highstreet. It is not wholly +irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as the +Mentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our +town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes. Does the +thoughtcontracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of +local Beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys +was the BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP. +I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in +the days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should +have met somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilized man, who +would have told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the +founder of my fortunes. +Chapter +Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go +to Miss Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on Miss +Havisham's side of town which was not Joe's side I could go +there tomorrow thinking about my patroness, and painting +brilliant pictures of her plans for me. +She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and it +could not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She +reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the +sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks agoing and the cold +hearths ablazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin in +short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and +marry the Princess. I had stopped to look at the house as I passed +and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and strong green +ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and +tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich attractive +mystery, of which I was the hero. Estella was the inspiration of +it, and the heart of it, of course. But, though she had taken such +strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set +upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had +been allpowerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest +her with any attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in +this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clue by which I +am to be followed into my poor labyrinth. According to my +experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always +true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the +love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. +Once for all I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, +that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, +against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that +could be. Once for all I loved her none the less because I knew +it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had +devoutly believed her to be human perfection. +I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at my old time. +When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my back +upon the gate, while I tried to get my breath and keep the beating +of my heart moderately quiet. I heard the side door open, and steps +come across the courtyard but I pretended not to hear, even when +the gate swung on its rusty hinges. +Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and turned. I +started much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by a +man in a sober grey dress. The last man I should have expected to +see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham's door. +"Orlick" +"Ah, young master, there's more changes than yours. But come in, +come in. It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate open." +I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out. +"Yes" said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few +steps towards the house. "Here I am" +"How did you come here?" +"I come her," he retorted, "on my legs. I had my box brought +alongside me in a barrow." +"Are you here for good?" +"I ain't her for harm, young master, I suppose?" +I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort in +my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement, +up my legs and arms, to my face. +"Then you have left the forge?" I said. +"Do this look like a forge?" replied Orlick, sending his glance all +round him with an air of injury. "Now, do it look like it?" +I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge? +"One day is so like another here," he replied, "that I don't know +without casting it up. However, I come her some time since you +left." +"I could have told you that, Orlick." +"Ah" said he, drily. "But then you've got to be a scholar." +By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room to be +one just within the side door, with a little window in it looking +on the courtyard. In its small proportions, it was not unlike the +kind of place usually assigned to a gateporter in Paris. Certain +keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gatekey +and his patchworkcovered bed was in a little inner division or +recess. The whole had a slovenly confined and sleepy look, like a +cage for a human dormouse while he, looming dark and heavy in the +shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse +for whom it was fitted up as indeed he was. +"I never saw this room before," I remarked "but there used to be +no Porter here." +"No," said he "not till it got about that there was no protection +on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with +convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And then I +was recommended to the place as a man who could give another man as +good as he brought, and I took it. It's easier than bellowsing and +hammering. That's loaded, that is." +My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass bound stock over the +chimneypiece, and his eye had followed mine. +"Well," said I, not desirous of more conversation, "shall I go up +to Miss Havisham?" +"Burn me, if I know" he retorted, first stretching himself and +then shaking himself "my orders ends here, young master. I give +this here bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on along the +passage till you meet somebody." +"I am expected, I believe?" +"Burn me twice over, if I can say" said he. +Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I had first trodden +in my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the end of the +passage, while the bell was still reverberating, I found Sarah +Pocket who appeared to have now become constitutionally green and +yellow by reason of me. +"Oh" said she. "You, is it, Mr. Pip?" +"It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and +family are all well." +"Are they any wiser?" said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the head +"they had better be wiser, than well. Ah, Matthew, Matthew You know +your way, sir?" +Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, many a +time. I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped +in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham's room. "Pip's rap," I +heard her say, immediately "come in, Pip." +She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her +two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her +eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe that had +never been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at +it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen. +"Come in, Pip," Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking +round or up "come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? so you kiss my hand +as if I were a queen, eh? Well?" +She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in +a grimly playful manner, +"Well?" +"I heard, Miss Havisham," said I, rather at a loss, "that you were +so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly." +"Well?" +The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and +looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella's +eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so +much more womanly, in all things winning admiration had made such +wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I +looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and +common boy again. O the sense of distance and disparity that came +upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her +She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the pleasure I +felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it +for a long, long time. +"Do you find her much changed, Pip?" asked Miss Havisham, with her +greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that stood between +them, as a sign to me to sit down there. +"When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of +Estella in the face or figure but now it all settles down so +curiously into the old" +"What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?" Miss +Havisham interrupted. "She was proud and insulting, and you wanted +to go away from her. Don't you remember?" +I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better +then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said +she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having +been very disagreeable. +"Is he changed?" Miss Havisham asked her. +"Very much," said Estella, looking at me. +"Less coarse and common?" said Miss Havisham, playing with +Estella's hair. +Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed +again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me as a +boy still, but she lured me on. +We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which +had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just come +home from France, and that she was going to London. Proud and +wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities into such +subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and out of nature +or I thought so to separate them from her beauty. Truly it was +impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched +hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood +from all those illregulated aspirations that had first made me +ashamed of home and Joe from all those visions that had raised +her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the +anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the +wooden window of the forge and flit away. In a word, it was +impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, +from the innermost life of my life. +It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, +and return to the hotel at night, and to London tomorrow. When we +had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in +the neglected garden on our coming in byandby, she said, I +should wheel her about a little as in times of yore. +So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through +which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman, +now Herbert I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of +her dress she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping +the hem of mine. As we drew near to the place of encounter, she +stopped and said +"I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that +fight that day but I did, and I enjoyed it very much." +"You rewarded me very much." +"Did I?" she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. "I +remember I entertained a great objection to your adversary, because +I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me with his +company." +"He and I are great friends now." +"Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his +father?" +"Yes." +I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a +boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a +boy. +"Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your +companions," said Estella. +"Naturally," said I. +"And necessarily," she added, in a haughty tone "what was fit +company for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now." +In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any lingering +intention left, of going to see Joe but if I had, this observation +put it to flight. +"You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those times?" +said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying in the +fighting times. +"Not the least." +The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked at my +side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I +walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would have +rankled in me more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as +eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned to her. +The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with ease, and +after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out +again into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had +seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said, +with a cold and careless look in that direction, "Did I?" I +reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me my +meat and drink, and she said, "I don't remember." "Not remember +that you made me cry?" said I. "No," said she, and shook her head +and looked about her. I verily believe that her not remembering and +not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly and that is +the sharpest crying of all. +"You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant +and beautiful woman might, "that I have no heart if that has +anything to do with my memory." +I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of +doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such +beauty without it. +"Oh I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt," +said Estella, "and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease +to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no +sympathy sentiment nonsense." +What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood still and +looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in Miss +Havisham? No. In some of her looks and gestures there was that +tinge of resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to +have been acquired by children, from grown person with whom they +have been much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood +is passed, will produce a remarkable occasional likeness of +expression between faces that are otherwise quite different. And +yet I could not trace this to Miss Havisham. I looked again, and +though she was still looking at me, the suggestion was gone. +What was it? +"I am serious," said Estella, not so much with a frown for her +brow was smooth as with a darkening of her face "if we are to be +thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No" +imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. "I have not bestowed +my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing." +In another moment we were in the brewery so long disused, and she +pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on that +same first day, and told me she remembered to have been up there, +and to have seen me standing scared below. As my eyes followed her +white hand, again the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly +grasp, crossed me. My involuntary start occasioned her to lay her +hand upon my arm. Instantly the ghost passed once more, and was +gone. +What was it? +"What is the matter?" asked Estella. "Are you scared again?" +"I should be, if I believed what you said just now," I replied, to +turn it off. +"Then you don't? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss Havisham +will soon be expecting you at your old post, though I think that +might be laid aside now, with other old belongings. Let us make one +more round of the garden, and then go in. Come You shall not shed +tears for my cruelty today you shall be my Page, and give me your +shoulder." +Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She held it in one +hand now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder as we +walked. We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and +it was all in bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed +in the chinks of the old wall had been the most precious flowers +that ever blew, it could not have been more cherished in my +remembrance. +There was no discrepancy of years between us, to remove her far +from me we were of nearly the same age, though of course the age +told for more in her case than in mine but the air of +inaccessibility which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented +me in the midst of my delight, and at the height of the assurance I +felt that our patroness had chosen us for one another. Wretched +boy +At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with +surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on +business, and would come back to dinner. The old wintry branches of +chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table was spread, had +been lighted while we were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair +and waiting for me. +It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we +began the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal +feast. But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave +fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked +more bright and beautiful than before, and I was under stronger +enchantment. +The time so melted away, that our early dinnerhour drew close at +hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself. We had stopped near +the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her +withered arms stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand +upon the yellow cloth. As Estella looked back over her shoulder +before going out at the door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to +her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind quite dreadful. +Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned to me, +and said in a whisper +"Is she beautiful, graceful, wellgrown? Do you admire her?" +"Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham." +She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers +as she sat in the chair. "Love her, love her, love her How does +she use you?" +Before I could answer if I could have answered so difficult a +question at all, she repeated, "Love her, love her, love her If +she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she +tears your heart to pieces and as it gets older and stronger, it +will tear deeper love her, love her, love her" +Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her +utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm +round my neck, swell with the vehemence that possessed her. +"Hear me, Pip I adopted her to be loved. I bred her and educated +her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might +be loved. Love her" +She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that +she meant to say it but if the often repeated word had been hate +instead of love despair revenge dire death it could not +have sounded from her lips more like a curse. +"I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, +"what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning +selfhumiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against +yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart +and soul to the smiter as I did" +When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed that, I +caught her round the waist. For she rose up in the chair, in her +shroud of a dress, and struck at the air as if she would as soon +have struck herself against the wall and fallen dead. +All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down into her +chair, I was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turning, saw my +guardian in the room. +He always carried I have not yet mentioned it, I think a +pockethandkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions, which +was of great value to him in his profession. I have seen him so +terrify a client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding this +pockethandkerchief as if he were immediately going to blow his +nose, and then pausing, as if he knew he should not have time to do +it before such client or witness committed himself, that the +selfcommittal has followed directly, quite as a matter of course. +When I saw him in the room, he had this expressive +pockethandkerchief in both hands, and was looking at us. On meeting +my eye, he said plainly, by a momentary and silent pause in that +attitude, "Indeed? Singular" and then put the handkerchief to its +right use with wonderful effect. +Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was like everybody +else afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to compose herself, +and stammered that he was as punctual as ever. +"As punctual as ever," he repeated, coming up to us. "How do you +do, Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss Havisham? Once round? +And so you are here, Pip?" +I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham had wished me +to come and see Estella. To which he replied, "Ah Very fine young +lady" Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair before him, with +one of his large hands, and put the other in his trouserspocket as +if the pocket were full of secrets. +"Well, Pip How often have you seen Miss Estella before?" said he, +when he came to a stop. +"How often?" +"Ah How many times? Ten thousand times?" +"Oh Certainly not so many." +"Twice?" +"Jaggers," interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief "leave my +Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner." +He complied, and we groped our way down the dark stairs together. +While we were still on our way to those detached apartments across +the paved yard at the back, he asked me how often I had seen Miss +Havisham eat and drink offering me a breadth of choice, as usual, +between a hundred times and once. +I considered, and said, "Never." +"And never will, Pip," he retorted, with a frowning smile. "She has +never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since she lived this +present life of hers. She wanders about in the night, and then lays +hands on such food as she takes." +"Pray, sir," said I, "may I ask you a question?" +"You may," said he, "and I may decline to answer it. Put your +question." +"Estella's name. Is it Havisham or ?" I had nothing to add. +"Or what?" said he. +"Is it Havisham?" +"It is Havisham." +This brought us to the dinnertable, where she and Sarah Pocket +awaited us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite to him, I +faced my green and yellow friend. We dined very well, and were +waited on by a maidservant whom I had never seen in all my comings +and goings, but who, for anything I know, had been in that +mysterious house the whole time. After dinner, a bottle of choice +old port was placed before my guardian he was evidently well +acquainted with the vintage, and the two ladies left us. +Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. Jaggers under that +roof, I never saw elsewhere, even in him. He kept his very looks to +himself, and scarcely directed his eyes to Estella's face once +during dinner. When she spoke to him, he listened, and in due +course answered, but never looked at her, that I could see. On the +other hand, she often looked at him, with interest and curiosity, +if not distrust, but his face never, showed the least +consciousness. Throughout dinner he took a dry delight in making +Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in +conversation with me to my expectations but here, again, he showed +no consciousness, and even made it appear that he extorted and +even did extort, though I don't know how those references out of +my innocent self. +And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an air upon +him of general lying by in consequence of information he possessed, +that really was too much for me. He crossexamined his very wine +when he had nothing else in hand. He held it between himself and +the candle, tasted the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it, +looked at his glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it, +filled again, and crossexamined the glass again, until I was as +nervous as if I had known the wine to be telling him something to +my disadvantage. Three or four times I feebly thought I would start +conversation but whenever he saw me going to ask him anything, he +looked at me with his glass in his hand, and rolling his wine about +in his mouth, as if requesting me to take notice that it was of no +use, for he couldn't answer. +I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me involved her +in the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tearing off +her cap which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a muslin +mop and strewing the ground with her hair which assuredly had +never grown on her head. She did not appear when we afterwards went +up to Miss Havisham's room, and we four played at whist. In the +interval, Miss Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put some of the +most beautiful jewels from her dressingtable into Estella's hair, +and about her bosom and arms and I saw even my guardian look at +her from under his thick eyebrows, and raise them a little, when +her loveliness was before him, with those rich flushes of glitter +and colour in it. +Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps into custody, +and came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands, before +which the glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, I say +nothing nor, of the feeling that I had, respecting his looking +upon us personally in the light of three very obvious and poor +riddles that he had found out long ago. What I suffered from, was +the incompatibility between his cold presence and my feelings +towards Estella. It was not that I knew I could never bear to speak +to him about her, that I knew I could never bear to hear him creak +his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see him wash +his hands of her it was, that my admiration should be within a +foot or two of him it was, that my feelings should be in the same +place with him that, was the agonizing circumstance. +We played until nine o'clock, and then it was arranged that when +Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her coming and +should meet her at the coach and then I took leave of her, and +touched her and left her. +My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine. Far into the +night, Miss Havisham's words, "Love her, love her, love her" +sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said +to my pillow, "I love her, I love her, I love her" hundreds of +times. Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should be +destined for me, once the blacksmith's boy. Then, I thought if she +were, as I feared, by no means rapturously grateful for that +destiny yet, when would she begin to be interested in me? When +should I awaken the heart within her, that was mute and sleeping +now? +Ah me I thought those were high and great emotions. But I never +thought there was anything low and small in my keeping away from +Joe, because I knew she would be contemptuous of him. It was but a +day gone, and Joe had brought the tears into my eyes they had soon +dried, God forgive me soon dried. +Chapter +After well considering the matter while I was dressing at the Blue +Boar in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted +Orlick's being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at +Miss Havisham's. "Why, of course he is not the right sort of man, +Pip," said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the +general head, "because the man who fills the post of trust never is +the right sort of man." It seemed quite to put him into spirits, to +find that this particular post was not exceptionally held by the +right sort of man, and he listened in a satisfied manner while I +told him what knowledge I had of Orlick. "Very good, Pip," he +observed, when I had concluded, "I'll go round presently, and pay +our friend off." Rather alarmed by this summary action, I was for a +little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might be +difficult to deal with. "Oh no he won't," said my guardian, making +his pockethandkerchiefpoint, with perfect confidence "I should +like to see him argue the question with me." +As we were going back together to London by the midday coach, and +as I breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook that I could +scarcely hold my cup, this gave me an opportunity of saying that I +wanted a walk, and that I would go on along the Londonroad while +Mr. Jaggers was occupied, if he would let the coachman know that I +would get into my place when overtaken. I was thus enabled to fly +from the Blue Boar immediately after breakfast. By then making a +loop of about a couple of miles into the open country at the back +of Pumblechook's premises, I got round into the Highstreet again, +a little beyond that pitfall, and felt myself in comparative +security. +It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it +was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognized and +stared after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of +their shops and went a little way down the street before me, that +they might turn, as if they had forgotten something, and pass me +face to face on which occasions I don't know whether they or I +made the worse pretence they of not doing it, or I of not seeing +it. Still my position was a distinguished one, and I was not at all +dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in the way of that +unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy. +Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, +I beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty +blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of +him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his +evil mind, I advanced with that expression of countenance, and was +rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees +of Trabb's boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, +he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road, +and crying to the populace, "Hold me I'm so frightened" feigned to +be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition, occasioned by the +dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly +chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme humiliation, +he prostrated himself in the dust. +This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I had not +advanced another two hundred yards, when, to my inexpressible +terror, amazement, and indignation, I again beheld Trabb's boy +approaching. He was coming round a narrow corner. His blue bag was +slung over his shoulder, honest industry beamed in his eyes, a +determination to proceed to Trabb's with cheerful briskness was +indicated in his gait. With a shock he became aware of me, and was +severely visited as before but this time his motion was rotatory, +and he staggered round and round me with knees more afflicted, and +with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His sufferings were +hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators, and I felt +utterly confounded. +I had not got as much further down the street as the postoffice, +when I again beheld Trabb's boy shooting round by a back way. This +time, he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner +of my greatcoat, and was strutting along the pavement towards me +on the opposite side of the street, attended by a company of +delighted young friends to whom he from time to time exclaimed, +with a wave of his hand, "Don't know yah" Words cannot state the +amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy, +when, passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirtcollar, twined +his sidehair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, +wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants, +"Don't know yah, don't know yah, pon my soul don't know yah" The +disgrace attendant on his immediately afterwards taking to crowing +and pursuing me across the bridge with crows, as from an +exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith, +culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was, so to +speak, ejected by it into the open country. +But unless I had taken the life of Trabb's boy on that occasion, I +really do not even now see what I could have done save endure. To +have struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted any lower +recompense from him than his heart's best blood, would have been +futile and degrading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could +hurt an invulnerable and dodging serpent who, when chased into a +corner, flew out again between his captor's legs, scornfully +yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr. Trabb by next day's post, to say +that Mr. Pip must decline to deal further with one who could so far +forget what he owed to the best interests of society, as to employ +a boy who excited Loathing in every respectable mind. +The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time, and I took +my boxseat again, and arrived in London safe but not sound, for +my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a penitential +codfish and barrel of oysters to Joe as reparation for not having +gone myself, and then went on to Barnard's Inn. +I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to welcome me +back. Having despatched The Avenger to the coffeehouse for an +addition to the dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that very +evening to my friend and chum. As confidence was out of the +question with The Avenger in the hall, which could merely be +regarded in the light of an antechamber to the keyhole, I sent him +to the Play. A better proof of the severity of my bondage to that +taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than the degrading shifts to +which I was constantly driven to find him employment. So mean is +extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park Corner to see +what o'clock it was. +Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said to +Herbert, "My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to tell +you." +"My dear Handel," he returned, "I shall esteem and respect your +confidence." +"It concerns myself, Herbert," said I, "and one other person." +Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one +side, and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at me +because I didn't go on. +"Herbert," said I, laying my hand upon his knee, "I love I adore +Estella." +Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy +matterofcourse way, "Exactly. Well?" +"Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?" +"What next, I mean?" said Herbert. "Of course I know that." +"How do you know it?" said I. +"How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you." +"I never told you." +"Told me You have never told me when you have got your hair cut, +but I have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored her, +ever since I have known you. You brought your adoration and your +portmanteau here, together. Told me Why, you have always told me +all day long. When you told me your own story, you told me plainly +that you began adoring her the first time you saw her, when you +were very young indeed." +"Very well, then," said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome +light, "I have never left off adoring her. And she has come back, a +most beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her yesterday. +And if I adored her before, I now doubly adore her." +"Lucky for you then, Handel," said Herbert, "that you are picked +out for her and allotted to her. Without encroaching on forbidden +ground, we may venture to say that there can be no doubt between +ourselves of that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella's views +on the adoration question?" +I shook my head gloomily. "Oh She is thousands of miles away, from +me," said I. +"Patience, my dear Handel time enough, time enough. But you have +something more to say?" +"I am ashamed to say it," I returned, "and yet it's no worse to say +it than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I am. I +was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday I am what shall I say I am +today?" +"Say, a good fellow, if you want a phrase," returned Herbert, +smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of mine, "a good fellow, +with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action +and dreaming, curiously mixed in him." +I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really was this +mixture in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognized the +analysis, but thought it not worth disputing. +"When I ask what I am to call myself today, Herbert," I went on, +"I suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I am lucky. I know I +have done nothing to raise myself in life, and that Fortune alone +has raised me that is being very lucky. And yet, when I think of +Estella" +"And when don't you, you know?" Herbert threw in, with his eyes on +the fire which I thought kind and sympathetic of him. +" Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how dependent and +uncertain I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. Avoiding +forbidden ground, as you did just now, I may still say that on the +constancy of one person naming no person all my expectations +depend. And at the best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to +know so vaguely what they are" In saying this, I relieved my mind +of what had always been there, more or less, though no doubt most +since yesterday. +"Now, Handel," Herbert replied, in his gay hopeful way, "it seems +to me that in the despondency of the tender passion, we are looking +into our gifthorse's mouth with a magnifyingglass. Likewise, it +seems to me that, concentrating our attention on the examination, +we altogether overlook one of the best points of the animal. Didn't +you tell me that your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the +beginning, that you were not endowed with expectations only? And +even if he had not told you so though that is a very large If, I +grant could you believe that of all men in London, Mr. Jaggers is +the man to hold his present relations towards you unless he were +sure of his ground?" +I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I said it +people often do so, in such cases like a rather reluctant +concession to truth and justice as if I wanted to deny it +"I should think it was a strong point," said Herbert, "and I should +think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger as to the rest, +you must bide your guardian's time, and he must bide his client's +time. You'll be oneandtwenty before you know where you are, and +then perhaps you'll get some further enlightenment. At all events, +you'll be nearer getting it, for it must come at last." +"What a hopeful disposition you have" said I, gratefully admiring +his cheery ways. +"I ought to have," said Herbert, "for I have not much else. I must +acknowledge, bythebye, that the good sense of what I have just +said is not my own, but my father's. The only remark I ever heard +him make on your story, was the final one "The thing is settled +and done, or Mr. Jaggers would not be in it." And now before I say +anything more about my father, or my father's son, and repay +confidence with confidence, I want to make myself seriously +disagreeable to you for a moment positively repulsive." +"You won't succeed," said I. +"Oh yes I shall" said he. "One, two, three, and now I am in for +it. Handel, my good fellow" though he spoke in this light tone, he +was very much in earnest "I have been thinking since we have been +talking with our feet on this fender, that Estella surely cannot be +a condition of your inheritance, if she was never referred to by +your guardian. Am I right in so understanding what you have told +me, as that he never referred to her, directly or indirectly, in +any way? Never even hinted, for instance, that your patron might +have views as to your marriage ultimately?" +"Never." +"Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavour of sour grapes, upon +my soul and honour Not being bound to her, can you not detach +yourself from her? I told you I should be disagreeable." +I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, like the old +marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which had +subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the mists +were solemnly rising, and when I laid my hand upon the village +fingerpost, smote upon my heart again. There was silence between +us for a little while. +"Yes but my dear Handel," Herbert went on, as if we had been +talking instead of silent, "its having been so strongly rooted in +the breast of a boy whom nature and circumstances made so romantic, +renders it very serious. Think of her bringingup, and think of +Miss Havisham. Think of what she is herself now I am repulsive and +you abominate me. This may lead to miserable things." +"I know it, Herbert," said I, with my head still turned away, "but +I can't help it." +"You can't detach yourself?" +"No. Impossible" +"You can't try, Handel?" +"No. Impossible" +"Well" said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he had +been asleep, and stirring the fire "now I'll endeavour to make +myself agreeable again" +So he went round the room and shook the curtains out, put the +chairs in their places, tidied the books and so forth that were +lying about, looked into the hall, peeped into the letterbox, shut +the door, and came back to his chair by the fire where he sat +down, nursing his left leg in both arms. +"I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my father and +my father's son. I am afraid it is scarcely necessary for my +father's son to remark that my father's establishment is not +particularly brilliant in its housekeeping." +"There is always plenty, Herbert," said I to say something +encouraging. +"Oh yes and so the dustman says, I believe, with the strongest +approval, and so does the marinestore shop in the back street. +Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave enough, you know how it +is, as well as I do. I suppose there was a time once when my father +had not given matters up but if ever there was, the time is gone. +May I ask you if you have ever had an opportunity of remarking, +down in your part of the country, that the children of not exactly +suitable marriages, are always most particularly anxious to be +married?" +This was such a singular question, that I asked him in return, "Is +it so?" +"I don't know," said Herbert, "that's what I want to know. Because +it is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister Charlotte who was +next me and died before she was fourteen, was a striking example. +Little Jane is the same. In her desire to be matrimonially +established, you might suppose her to have passed her short +existence in the perpetual contemplation of domestic bliss. Little +Alick in a frock has already made arrangements for his union with a +suitable young person at Kew. And indeed, I think we are all +engaged, except the baby." +"Then you are?" said I. +"I am," said Herbert "but it's a secret." +I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to be favoured +with further particulars. He had spoken so sensibly and feelingly +of my weakness that I wanted to know something about his strength. +"May I ask the name?" I said. +"Name of Clara," said Herbert. +"Live in London?" +"Yes. Perhaps I ought to mention," said Herbert, who had become +curiously crestfallen and meek, since we entered on the interesting +theme, "that she is rather below my mother's nonsensical family +notions. Her father had to do with the victualling of +passengerships. I think he was a species of purser." +"What is he now?" said I. +"He's an invalid now," replied Herbert. +"Living on ?" +"On the first floor," said Herbert. Which was not at all what I +meant, for I had intended my question to apply to his means. "I +have never seen him, for he has always kept his room overhead, +since I have known Clara. But I have heard him constantly. He makes +tremendous rows roars, and pegs at the floor with some frightful +instrument." In looking at me and then laughing heartily, Herbert +for the time recovered his usual lively manner. +"Don't you expect to see him?" said I. +"Oh yes, I constantly expect to see him," returned Herbert, +"because I never hear him, without expecting him to come tumbling +through the ceiling. But I don't know how long the rafters may +hold." +When he had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again, and +told me that the moment he began to realize Capital, it was his +intention to marry this young lady. He added as a selfevident +proposition, engendering low spirits, "But you can't marry, you +know, while you're looking about you." +As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a difficult +vision to realize this same Capital sometimes was, I put my hands +in my pockets. A folded piece of paper in one of them attracting my +attention, I opened it and found it to be the playbill I had +received from Joe, relative to the celebrated provincial amateur of +Roscian renown. "And bless my heart," I involuntarily added aloud, +"it's tonight" +This changed the subject in an instant, and made us hurriedly +resolve to go to the play. So, when I had pledged myself to comfort +and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable and +impracticable means, and when Herbert had told me that his +affianced already knew me by reputation and that I should be +presented to her, and when we had warmly shaken hands upon our +mutual confidence, we blew out our candles, made up our fire, +locked our door, and issued forth in quest of Mr. Wopsle and +Denmark. +Chapter +On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and queen of that +country elevated in two armchairs on a kitchentable, holding a +Court. The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance +consisting of a noble boy in the washleather boots of a gigantic +ancestor, a venerable Peer with a dirty face who seemed to have +risen from the people late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a +comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on +the whole a feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood gloomily +apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished that his curls and +forehead had been more probable. +Several curious little circumstances transpired as the action +proceeded. The late king of the country not only appeared to have +been troubled with a cough at the time of his decease, but to have +taken it with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The +royal phantom also carried a ghostly manuscript round its +truncheon, to which it had the appearance of occasionally +referring, and that, too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to +lose the place of reference which were suggestive of a state of +mortality. It was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade's being +advised by the gallery to "turn over" a recommendation which it +took extremely ill. It was likewise to be noted of this majestic +spirit that whereas it always appeared with an air of having been +out a long time and walked an immense distance, it perceptibly came +from a closely contiguous wall. This occasioned its terrors to be +received derisively. The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, +though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public +to have too much brass about her her chin being attached to her +diadem by a broad band of that metal as if she had a gorgeous +toothache, her waist being encircled by another, and each of her +arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as "the +kettledrum." The noble boy in the ancestral boots, was +inconsistent representing himself, as it were in one breath, as an +able seaman, a strolling actor, a gravedigger, a clergyman, and a +person of the utmost importance at a Court fencingmatch, on the +authority of whose practised eye and nice discrimination the finest +strokes were judged. This gradually led to a want of toleration for +him, and even on his being detected in holy orders, and declining +to perform the funeral service to the general indignation taking +the form of nuts. Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical +madness, that when, in course of time, she had taken off her white +muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried it, a sulky man who had been +long cooling his impatient nose against an iron bar in the front +row of the gallery, growled, "Now the baby's put to bed let's have +supper" Which, to say the least of it, was out of keeping. +Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated with +playful effect. Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a +question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. As +for example on the question whether 'twas nobler in the mind to +suffer, some roared yes, and some no, and some inclining to both +opinions said "toss up for it" and quite a Debating Society arose. +When he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling between +earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries of "Hear, +hear" When he appeared with his stocking disordered its disorder +expressed, according to usage, by one very neat fold in the top, +which I suppose to be always got up with a flat iron, a +conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of +his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had +given him. On his taking the recorders very like a little black +flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at +the door he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia. When +he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man +said, "And don't you do it, neither you're a deal worse than him" +And I grieve to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on +every one of these occasions. +But his greatest trials were in the churchyard which had the +appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small +ecclesiastical washhouse on one side, and a turnpike gate on the +other. Mr. Wopsle in a comprehensive black cloak, being descried +entering at the turnpike, the gravedigger was admonished in a +friendly way, "Look out Here's the undertaker acoming, to see how +you're agetting on with your work" I believe it is well known in +a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly have +returned the skull, after moralizing over it, without dusting his +fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast but even that +innocent and indispensable action did not pass without the comment +"Waiter" The arrival of the body for interment in an empty black +box with the lid tumbling open, was the signal for a general joy +which was much enhanced by the discovery, among the bearers, of an +individual obnoxious to identification. The joy attended Mr. Wopsle +through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the orchestra and +the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the king off +the kitchentable, and had died by inches from the ankles upward. +We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr. +Wopsle but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore we +had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, from +ear to ear. I laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole +thing was so droll and yet I had a latent impression that there +was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution not for old +associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very +dreary, very uphill and downhill, and very unlike any way in +which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever +expressed himself about anything. When the tragedy was over, and he +had been called for and hooted, I said to Herbert, "Let us go at +once, or perhaps we shall meet him." +We made all the haste we could downstairs, but we were not quick +enough either. Standing at the door was a Jewish man with an +unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow, who caught my eyes as we +advanced, and said, when we came up with him +"Mr. Pip and friend?" +Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed. +"Mr. Waldengarver," said the man, "would be glad to have the +honour." +"Waldengarver?" I repeated when Herbert murmured in my ear, +"Probably Wopsle." +"Oh" said I. "Yes. Shall we follow you?" +"A few steps, please." When we were in a side alley, he turned and +asked, "How did you think he looked? I dressed him." +I don't know what he had looked like, except a funeral with the +addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a +blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance of being insured in +some extraordinary Fire Office. But I said he had looked very nice. +"When he come to the grave," said our conductor, "he showed his +cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it looked to me that +when he see the ghost in the queen's apartment, he might have made +more of his stockings." +I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty swing +door, into a sort of hot packingcase immediately behind it. Here +Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and here +there was just room for us to look at him over one another's +shoulders, by keeping the packingcase door, or lid, wide open. +"Gentlemen," said Mr. Wopsle, "I am proud to see you. I hope, Mr. +Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had the happiness to know +you in former times, and the Drama has ever had a claim which has +ever been acknowledged, on the noble and the affluent." +Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspiration, was trying +to get himself out of his princely sables. +"Skin the stockings off, Mr. Waldengarver," said the owner of that +property, "or you'll bust 'em. Bust 'em, and you'll bust +fiveandthirty shillings. Shakspeare never was complimented with a +finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair now, and leave 'em to me." +With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim +who, on the first stocking coming off, would certainly have fallen +over backward with his chair, but for there being no room to fall +anyhow. +I had been afraid until then to say a word about the play. But +then, Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us complacently, and said +"Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in front?" +Herbert said from behind at the same time poking me, "capitally." +So I said "capitally." +"How did you like my reading of the character, gentlemen?" said Mr. +Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with patronage. +Herbert said from behind again poking me, "massive and concrete." +So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must beg to insist +upon it, "massive and concrete." +"I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen," said Mr. +Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his being ground +against the wall at the time, and holding on by the seat of the +chair. +"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver," said the man who +was on his knees, "in which you're out in your reading. Now mind I +don't care who says contrairy I tell you so. You're out in your +reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile. The last +Hamlet as I dressed, made the same mistakes in his reading at +rehearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer on each of his +shins, and then at that rehearsal which was the last I went in +front, sir, to the back of the pit, and whenever his reading +brought him into profile, I called out "I don't see no wafers" And +at night his reading was lovely." +Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say "a faithful +dependent I overlook his folly" and then said aloud, "My view is +a little classic and thoughtful for them here but they will +improve, they will improve." +Herbert and I said together, Oh, no doubt they would improve. +"Did you observe, gentlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver, "that there was +a man in the gallery who endeavoured to cast derision on the +service I mean, the representation?" +We basely replied that we rather thought we had noticed such a man. +I added, "He was drunk, no doubt." +"Oh dear no, sir," said Mr. Wopsle, "not drunk. His employer would +see to that, sir. His employer would not allow him to be drunk." +"You know his employer?" said I. +Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again performing both +ceremonies very slowly. "You must have observed, gentlemen," said +he, "an ignorant and a blatant ass, with a rasping throat and a +countenance expressive of low malignity, who went through I will +not say sustained the role if I may use a French expression of +Claudius King of Denmark. That is his employer, gentlemen. Such is +the profession" +Without distinctly knowing whether I should have been more sorry +for Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, I was so sorry for him as +it was, that I took the opportunity of his turning round to have +his braces put on which jostled us out at the doorway to ask +Herbert what he thought of having him home to supper? Herbert said +he thought it would be kind to do so therefore I invited him, and +he went to Barnard's with us, wrapped up to the eyes, and we did +our best for him, and he sat until two o'clock in the morning, +reviewing his success and developing his plans. I forget in detail +what they were, but I have a general recollection that he was to +begin with reviving the Drama, and to end with crushing it +inasmuch as his decease would leave it utterly bereft and without a +chance or hope. +Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of +Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all +cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert's +Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham's Ghost, before twenty +thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it. +Chapter +One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a +note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great +flutter for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it +was addressed, I divined whose hand it was. It had no set +beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear +Anything, but ran thus +"I am to come to London the day after tomorrow by the midday +coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events +Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. +She sends you her regard. +Yours, ESTELLA." +If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several +suits of clothes for this occasion but as there was not, I was +fain to be content with those I had. My appetite vanished +instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived. Not +that its arrival brought me either for, then I was worse than ever, +and began haunting the coachoffice in woodstreet, Cheapside, +before the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. For all that I +knew this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to +let the coachoffice be out of my sight longer than five minutes at +a time and in this condition of unreason I had performed the first +halfhour of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran +against me. +"Halloa, Mr. Pip," said he "how do you do? I should hardly have +thought this was your beat." +I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up +by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged. +"Both flourishing thankye," said Wemmick, "and particularly the +Aged. He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eightytwo next birthday. +I have a notion of firing eightytwo times, if the neighbourhood +shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to +the pressure. However, this is not London talk. Where do you think +I am going to?" +"To the office?" said I, for he was tending in that direction. +"Next thing to it," returned Wemmick, "I am going to Newgate. We +are in a banker'sparcel case just at present, and I have been down +the road taking as squint at the scene of action, and thereupon +must have a word or two with our client." +"Did your client commit the robbery?" I asked. +"Bless your soul and body, no," answered Wemmick, very drily. "But +he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might be +accused of it, you know." +"Only neither of us is," I remarked. +"Yah" said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his forefinger +"you're a deep one, Mr. Pip Would you like to have a look at +Newgate? Have you time to spare?" +I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as a relief, +notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep +my eye on the coachoffice. Muttering that I would make the inquiry +whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the office, and +ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and much to +the trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach +could be expected which I knew beforehand, quite as well as he. I +then rejoined Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to consult my watch and to +be surprised by the information I had received, accepted his offer. +We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the +lodge where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among +the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time, +jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction +consequent on all public wrongdoing and which is always its +heaviest and longest punishment was still far off. So, felons +were not lodged and fed better than soldiers to say nothing of +paupers, and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable +object of improving the flavour of their soup. It was visiting time +when Wemmick took me in and a potman was going his rounds with +beer and the prisoners, behind bars in yards, were buying beer, +and talking to friends and a frouzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing +scene it was. +It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners, much as a +gardener might walk among his plants. This was first put into my +head by his seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, and +saying, "What, Captain Tom? Are you there? Ah, indeed" and also, +"Is that Black Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn't look for you +these two months how do you find yourself?" Equally in his +stopping at the bars and attending to anxious whisperers always +singly Wemmick with his postoffice in an immovable state, looked +at them while in conference, as if he were taking particular notice +of the advance they had made, since last observed, towards coming +out in full blow at their trial. +He was highly popular, and I found that he took the familiar +department of Mr. Jaggers's business though something of the state +of Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, forbidding approach beyond +certain limits. His personal recognition of each successive client +was comprised in a nod, and in his settling his hat a little easier +on his head with both hands, and then tightening the postoffice, +and putting his hands in his pockets. In one or two instances, +there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and then Mr. +Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the insufficient money +produced, said, "it's no use, my boy. I'm only a subordinate. I +can't take it. Don't go on in that way with a subordinate. If you +are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you had better address +yourself to a principal there are plenty of principals in the +profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of one, may +be worth the while of another that's my recommendation to you, +speaking as a subordinate. Don't try on useless measures. Why +should you? Now, who's next?" +Thus, we walked through Wemmick's greenhouse, until he turned to me +and said, "Notice the man I shall shake hands with." I should have +done so, without the preparation, as he had shaken hands with no +one yet. +Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly upright man whom I can +see now, as I write in a wellworn olivecoloured frockcoat, with +a peculiar pallor overspreading the red in his complexion, and +eyes that went wandering about when he tried to fix them, came up +to a corner of the bars, and put his hand to his hat which had a +greasy and fatty surface like cold broth with a halfserious and +halfjocose military salute. +"Colonel, to you" said Wemmick "how are you, Colonel?" +"All right, Mr. Wemmick." +"Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was too +strong for us, Colonel." +"Yes, it was too strong, sir but I don't care." +"No, no," said Wemmick, coolly, "you don't care." Then, turning to +me, "Served His Majesty this man. Was a soldier in the line and +bought his discharge." +I said, "Indeed?" and the man's eyes looked at me, and then looked +over my head, and then looked all round me, and then he drew his +hand across his lips and laughed. +"I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir," he said to +Wemmick. +"Perhaps," returned my friend, "but there's no knowing." +"I am glad to have the chance of bidding you goodbye, Mr. Wemmick," +said the man, stretching out his hand between two bars. +"Thankye," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him. "Same to you, +Colonel." +"If what I had upon me when taken, had been real, Mr. Wemmick," said +the man, unwilling to let his hand go, "I should have asked the +favour of your wearing another ring in acknowledgment of your +attentions." +"I'll accept the will for the deed," said Wemmick. "Bythebye you +were quite a pigeonfancier." The man looked up at the sky. "I am +told you had a remarkable breed of tumblers. could you commission +any friend of yours to bring me a pair, of you've no further use +for 'em?" +"It shall be done, sir?" +"All right," said Wemmick, "they shall be taken care of. Good +afternoon, Colonel. Goodbye" They shook hands again, and as we +walked away Wemmick said to me, "A Coiner, a very good workman. The +Recorder's report is made today, and he is sure to be executed on +Monday. Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of pigeons are +portable property, all the same." With that, he looked back, and +nodded at this dead plant, and then cast his eyes about him in +walking out of the yard, as if he were considering what other pot +would go best in its place. +As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I found that the +great importance of my guardian was appreciated by the turnkeys, no +less than by those whom they held in charge. "Well, Mr. Wemmick," +said the turnkey, who kept us between the two studded and spiked +lodge gates, and who carefully locked one before he unlocked the +other, "what's Mr. Jaggers going to do with that waterside murder? +Is he going to make it manslaughter, or what's he going to make of +it?" +"Why don't you ask him?" returned Wemmick. +"Oh yes, I dare say" said the turnkey. +"Now, that's the way with them here. Mr. Pip," remarked Wemmick, +turning to me with his postoffice elongated. "They don't mind what +they ask of me, the subordinate but you'll never catch 'em asking +any questions of my principal." +"Is this young gentleman one of the 'prentices or articled ones of +your office?" asked the turnkey, with a grin at Mr. Wemmick's +humour. +"There he goes again, you see" cried Wemmick, "I told you so Asks +another question of the subordinate before his first is dry Well, +supposing Mr. Pip is one of them?" +"Why then," said the turnkey, grinning again, "he knows what Mr. +Jaggers is." +"Yah" cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the turnkey in a +facetious way, "you're dumb as one of your own keys when you have +to do with my principal, you know you are. Let us out, you old fox, +or I'll get him to bring an action against you for false +imprisonment." +The turnkey laughed, and gave us good day, and stood laughing at us +over the spikes of the wicket when we descended the steps into the +street. +"Mind you, Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, gravely in my ear, as he took my +arm to be more confidential "I don't know that Mr. Jaggers does a +better thing than the way in which he keeps himself so high. He's +always so high. His constant height is of a piece with his immense +abilities. That Colonel durst no more take leave of him, than that +turnkey durst ask him his intentions respecting a case. Then, +between his height and them, he slips in his subordinate don't +you see? and so he has 'em, soul and body." +I was very much impressed, and not for the first time, by my +guardian's subtlety. To confess the truth, I very heartily wished, +and not for the first time, that I had had some other guardian of +minor abilities. +Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, where +suppliants for Mr. Jaggers's notice were lingering about as usual, +and I returned to my watch in the street of the coachoffice, with +some three hours on hand. I consumed the whole time in thinking how +strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of +prison and crime that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes +on a winter evening I should have first encountered it that, it +should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain +that was faded but not gone that, it should in this new way +pervade my fortune and advancement. While my mind was thus engaged, +I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined, coming +towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast +between the jail and her. I wished that Wemmick had not met me, or +that I had not yielded to him and gone with him, so that, of all +days in the year on this day, I might not have had Newgate in my +breath and on my clothes. I beat the prison dust off my feet as I +sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress, and I exhaled +its air from my lungs. So contaminated did I feel, remembering who +was coming, that the coach came quickly after all, and I was not +yet free from the soiling consciousness of Mr. Wemmick's +conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach window and her hand +waving to me. +What was the nameless shadow which again in that one instant had +passed? +Chapter +In her furred travellingdress, Estella seemed more delicately +beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. Her manner +was more winning than she had cared to let it be to me before, and +I thought I saw Miss Havisham's influence in the change. +We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her luggage to me, +and when it was all collected I remembered having forgotten +everything but herself in the meanwhile that I knew nothing of +her destination. +"I am going to Richmond," she told me. "Our lesson is, that there +are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and that mine +is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I am to have a +carriage, and you are to take me. This is my purse, and you are to +pay my charges out of it. Oh, you must take the purse We have no +choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions. We are not free to +follow our own devices, you and I." +As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was an +inner meaning in her words. She said them slightingly, but not with +displeasure. +"A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella. Will you rest here a +little?" +"Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some tea, and +you are to take care of me the while." +She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I +requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who +had never seen such a thing in his life, to show us a private +sittingroom. Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a +magic clue without which he couldn't find the way upstairs, and +led us to the black hole of the establishment fitted up with a +diminishing mirror quite a superfluous article considering the +hole's proportions, an anchovy saucecruet, and somebody's +pattens. On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into another +room with a dinnertable for thirty, and in the grate a scorched +leaf of a copybook under a bushel of coaldust. Having looked at +this extinct conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order +which, proving to be merely "Some tea for the lady," sent him out +of the room in a very low state of mind. +I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its +strong combination of stable with soupstock, might have led one to +infer that the coaching department was not doing well, and that the +enterprising proprietor was boiling down the horses for the +refreshment department. Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella +being in it. I thought that with her I could have been happy there +for life. I was not at all happy there at the time, observe, and I +knew it well. +"Where are you going to, at Richmond?" I asked Estella. +"I am going to live," said she, "at a great expense, with a lady +there, who has the power or says she has of taking me about, +and introducing me, and showing people to me and showing me to +people." +"I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?" +"Yes, I suppose so." +She answered so carelessly, that I said, "You speak of yourself as +if you were some one else." +"Where did you learn how I speak of others? Come, come," said +Estella, smiling delightfully, "you must not expect me to go to +school to you I must talk in my own way. How do you thrive with +Mr. Pocket?" +"I live quite pleasantly there at least" It appeared to me that +I was losing a chance. +"At least?" repeated Estella. +"As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you." +"You silly boy," said Estella, quite composedly, "how can you talk +such nonsense? Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior to +the rest of his family?" +"Very superior indeed. He is nobody's enemy" +"Don't add but his own," interposed Estella, "for I hate that class +of man. But he really is disinterested, and above small jealousy +and spite, I have heard?" +"I am sure I have every reason to say so." +"You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his people," +said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was at +once grave and rallying, "for they beset Miss Havisham with reports +and insinuations to your disadvantage. They watch you, misrepresent +you, write letters about you anonymous sometimes, and you are the +torment and the occupation of their lives. You can scarcely realize +to yourself the hatred those people feel for you." +"They do me no harm, I hope?" +Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing. This was very +singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity. +When she left off and she had not laughed languidly, but with +real enjoyment I said, in my diffident way with her +"I hope I may suppose that you would not be amused if they did me +any harm." +"No, no you may be sure of that," said Estella. "You may be certain +that I laugh because they fail. Oh, those people with Miss +Havisham, and the tortures they undergo" She laughed again, and +even now when she had told me why, her laughter was very singular +to me, for I could not doubt its being genuine, and yet it seemed +too much for the occasion. I thought there must really be something +more here than I knew she saw the thought in my mind, and answered +it. +"It is not easy for even you." said Estella, "to know what +satisfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an +enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when they are made +ridiculous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from +a mere baby. I was. You had not your little wits sharpened by +their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless, under the +mask of sympathy and pity and what not that is soft and soothing. +I had. You did not gradually open your round childish eyes wider +and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who +calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up in the +night. I did." +It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was she summoning +these remembrances from any shallow place. I would not have been +the cause of that look of hers, for all my expectations in a heap. +"Two things I can tell you," said Estella. "First, notwithstanding +the proverb that constant dropping will wear away a stone, you may +set your mind at rest that these people never will never would, +in hundred years impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in any +particular, great or small. Second, I am beholden to you as the +cause of their being so busy and so mean in vain, and there is my +hand upon it." +As she gave it me playfully for her darker mood had been but +momentary I held it and put it to my lips. "You ridiculous boy," +said Estella, "will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my hand +in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?" +"What spirit was that?" said I. +"I must think a moment A spirit of contempt for the fawners and +plotters." +"If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?" +"You should have asked before you touched the hand. But, yes, if +you like." +I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statue's. "Now," said +Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her cheek, "you are to +take care that I have some tea, and you are to take me to +Richmond." +Her reverting to this tone as if our association were forced upon +us and we were mere puppets, gave me pain but everything in our +intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me happened to +be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it and yet I +went on against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand +times? So it always was. +I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his magic +clue, brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to that refreshment +but of tea not a glimpse. A teaboard, cups and saucers, plates, +knives and forks including carvers, spoons various, +saltcellars, a meek little muffin confined with the utmost +precaution under a strong iron cover, Moses in the bullrushes +typified by a soft bit of butter in a quantity of parsley, a pale +loaf with a powdered head, two proof impressions of the bars of the +kitchen fireplace on triangular bits of bread, and ultimately a +fat family urn which the waiter staggered in with, expressing in +his countenance burden and suffering. After a prolonged absence at +this stage of the entertainment, he at length came back with a +casket of precious appearance containing twigs. These I steeped in +hot water, and so from the whole of these appliances extracted one +cup of I don't know what, for Estella. +The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and the ostler not +forgotten, and the chambermaid taken into consideration in a +word, the whole house bribed into a state of contempt and +animosity, and Estella's purse much lightened we got into our +postcoach and drove away. Turning into Cheapside and rattling up +Newgatestreet, we were soon under the walls of which I was so +ashamed. +"What place is that?" Estella asked me. +I made a foolish pretence of not at first recognizing it, and then +told her. As she looked at it, and drew in her head again, +murmuring "Wretches" I would not have confessed to my visit for +any consideration. +"Mr. Jaggers," said I, by way of putting it neatly on somebody else, +"has the reputation of being more in the secrets of that dismal +place than any man in London." +"He is more in the secrets of every place, I think," said Estella, +in a low voice. +"You have been accustomed to see him often, I suppose?" +"I have been accustomed to see him at uncertain intervals, ever +since I can remember. But I know him no better now, than I did +before I could speak plainly. What is your own experience of him? +Do you advance with him?" +"Once habituated to his distrustful manner," said I, "I have done +very well." +"Are you intimate?" +"I have dined with him at his private house." +"I fancy," said Estella, shrinking "that must be a curious place." +"It is a curious place." +I should have been chary of discussing my guardian too freely even +with her but I should have gone on with the subject so far as to +describe the dinner in Gerrardstreet, if we had not then come into +a sudden glare of gas. It seemed, while it lasted, to be all alight +and alive with that inexplicable feeling I had had before and when +we were out of it, I was as much dazed for a few moments as if I +had been in Lightning. +So, we fell into other talk, and it was principally about the way +by which we were travelling, and about what parts of London lay on +this side of it, and what on that. The great city was almost new to +her, she told me, for she had never left Miss Havisham's +neighbourhood until she had gone to France, and she had merely +passed through London then in going and returning. I asked her if +my guardian had any charge of her while she remained here? To that +she emphatically said "God forbid" and no more. +It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared to attract +me that she made herself winning and would have won me even if +the task had needed pains. Yet this made me none the happier, for, +even if she had not taken that tone of our being disposed of by +others, I should have felt that she held my heart in her hand +because she wilfully chose to do it, and not because it would have +wrung any tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away. +When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her where Mr. Matthew +Pocket lived, and said it was no great way from Richmond, and that +I hoped I should see her sometimes. +"Oh yes, you are to see me you are to come when you think proper +you are to be mentioned to the family indeed you are already +mentioned." +I inquired was it a large household she was going to be a member +of? +"No there are only two mother and daughter. The mother is a lady +of some station, though not averse to increasing her income." +"I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you again so soon." +"It is a part of Miss Havisham's plans for me, Pip," said Estella, +with a sigh, as if she were tired "I am to write to her constantly +and see her regularly and report how I go on I and the jewels +for they are nearly all mine now." +It was the first time she had ever called me by my name. Of course +she did so, purposely, and knew that I should treasure it up. +We came to Richmond all too soon, and our destination there, was a +house by the Green a staid old house, where hoops and powder and +patches, embroidered coats rolled stockings ruffles and swords, had +had their court days many a time. Some ancient trees before the +house were still cut into fashions as formal and unnatural as the +hoops and wigs and stiff skirts but their own allotted places in +the great procession of the dead were not far off, and they would +soon drop into them and go the silent way of the rest. +A bell with an old voice which I dare say in its time had often +said to the house, Here is the green farthingale, Here is the +diamondhilted sword, Here are the shoes with red heels and the blue +solitaire, sounded gravely in the moonlight, and two +cherrycoloured maids came fluttering out to receive Estella. The +doorway soon absorbed her boxes, and she gave me her hand and a +smile, and said good night, and was absorbed likewise. And still I +stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I +lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, +but always miserable. +I got into the carriage to be taken back to Hammersmith, and I got +in with a bad heartache, and I got out with a worse heartache. At +our own door, I found little Jane Pocket coming home from a little +party escorted by her little lover and I envied her little lover, +in spite of his being subject to Flopson. +Mr. Pocket was out lecturing for, he was a most delightful lecturer +on domestic economy, and his treatises on the management of +children and servants were considered the very best textbooks on +those themes. But, Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in a little +difficulty, on account of the baby's having been accommodated with +a needlecase to keep him quiet during the unaccountable absence +with a relative in the Foot Guards of Millers. And more needles +were missing, than it could be regarded as quite wholesome for a +patient of such tender years either to apply externally or to take +as a tonic. +Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most excellent +practical advice, and for having a clear and sound perception of +things and a highly judicious mind, I had some notion in my +heartache of begging him to accept my confidence. But, happening to +look up at Mrs. Pocket as she sat reading her book of dignities +after prescribing Bed as a sovereign remedy for baby, I thought +Well No, I wouldn't. +Chapter +As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly +begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. Their +influence on my own character, I disguised from my recognition as +much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all good. I +lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to +Joe. My conscience was not by any means comfortable about Biddy. +When I woke up in the night like Camilla I used to think, with +a weariness on my spirits, that I should have been happier and +better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face, and had risen to +manhood content to be partners with Joe in the honest old forge. +Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking at the fire, I +thought, after all, there was no fire like the forge fire and the +kitchen fire at home. +Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and +disquiet of mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the +limits of my own part in its production. That is to say, supposing +I had had no expectations, and yet had had Estella to think of, I +could not make out to my satisfaction that I should have done much +better. Now, concerning the influence of my position on others, I +was in no such difficulty, and so I perceived though dimly enough +perhaps that it was not beneficial to anybody, and, above all, +that it was not beneficial to Herbert. My lavish habits led his +easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the +simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and +regrets. I was not at all remorseful for having unwittingly set +those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they +practised because such littlenesses were their natural bent, and +would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them +slumbering. But Herbert's was a very different case, and it often +caused me a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in +crowding his sparelyfurnished chambers with incongruous upholstery +work, and placing the canarybreasted Avenger at his disposal. +So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I +began to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly begin but +Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop's +suggestion, we put ourselves down for election into a club called +The Finches of the Grove the object of which institution I have +never divined, if it were not that the members should dine +expensively once a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much +as possible after dinner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on +the stairs. I Know that these gratifying social ends were so +invariably accomplished, that Herbert and I understood nothing else +to be referred to in the first standing toast of the society which +ran "Gentlemen, may the present promotion of good feeling ever +reign predominant among the Finches of the Grove." +The Finches spent their money foolishly the Hotel we dined at was +in Coventgarden, and the first Finch I saw, when I had the honour +of joining the Grove, was Bentley Drummle at that time floundering +about town in a cab of his own, and doing a great deal of damage to +the posts at the street corners. Occasionally, he shot himself out +of his equipage headforemost over the apron and I saw him on one +occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this +unintentional way like coals. But here I anticipate a little for +I was not a Finch, and could not be, according to the sacred laws +of the society, until I came of age. +In my confidence in my own resources, I would willingly have taken +Herbert's expenses on myself but Herbert was proud, and I could +make no such proposal to him. So, he got into difficulties in every +direction, and continued to look about him. When we gradually fell +into keeping late hours and late company, I noticed that he looked +about him with a desponding eye at breakfasttime that he began to +look about him more hopefully about midday that he drooped when +he came into dinner that he seemed to descry Capital in the +distance rather clearly, after dinner that he all but realized +Capital towards midnight and that at about two o'clock in the +morning, he became so deeply despondent again as to talk of buying +a rifle and going to America, with a general purpose of compelling +buffaloes to make his fortune. +I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I was at +Hammersmith I haunted Richmond whereof separately byandby. +Herbert would often come to Hammersmith when I was there, and I +think at those seasons his father would occasionally have some +passing perception that the opening he was looking for, had not +appeared yet. But in the general tumbling up of the family, his +tumbling out in life somewhere, was a thing to transact itself +somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew greyer, and tried oftener +to lift himself out of his perplexities by the hair. While Mrs. +Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool, read her book of +dignities, lost her pockethandkerchief, told us about her +grandpapa, and taught the young idea how to shoot, by shooting it +into bed whenever it attracted her notice. +As I am now generalizing a period of my life with the object of +clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at +once completing the description of our usual manners and customs at +Barnard's Inn. +We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as +people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or +less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same +condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly +enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the +best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common +one. +Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City to +look about him. I often paid him a visit in the dark backroom in +which he consorted with an inkjar, a hatpeg, a coalbox, a +stringbox, an almanack, a desk and stool, and a ruler and I do +not remember that I ever saw him do anything else but look about +him. If we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as +Herbert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues. He had +nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every +afternoon to "go to Lloyd's" in observance of a ceremony of +seeing his principal, I think. He never did anything else in +connexion with Lloyd's that I could find out, except come back +again. When he felt his case unusually serious, and that he +positively must find an opening, he would go on 'Change at a busy +time, and walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance +figure, among the assembled magnates. "For," says Herbert to me, +coming home to dinner on one of those special occasions, "I find +the truth to be, Handel, that an opening won't come to one, but one +must go to it so I have been." +If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must have +hated one another regularly every morning. I detested the chambers +beyond expression at that period of repentance, and could not +endure the sight of the Avenger's livery which had a more +expensive and a less remunerative appearance then, than at any +other time in the fourandtwenty hours. As we got more and more +into debt breakfast became a hollower and hollower form, and, being +on one occasion at breakfasttime threatened by letter with legal +proceedings, "not unwholly unconnected," as my local paper might +put it, "with jewellery," I went so far as to seize the Avenger by +his blue collar and shake him off his feet so that he was +actually in the air, like a booted Cupid for presuming to suppose +that we wanted a roll. +At certain times meaning at uncertain times, for they depended on +our humour I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable +discovery +"My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly." +"My dear Handel," Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, if you +will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange +coincidence." +"Then, Herbert," I would respond, "let us look into out affairs." +We always derived profound satisfaction from making an appointment +for this purpose. I always thought this was business, this was the +way to confront the thing, this was the way to take the foe by the +throat. And I know Herbert thought so too. +We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of +something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds +might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to +the mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious +supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. +For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty of +stationery. +I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of it, +in a neat hand, the heading, "Memorandum of Pip's debts" with +Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert would also +take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar +formalities, "Memorandum of Herbert's debts." +Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his +side, which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in +Pockets, halfburnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the +lookingglass, and otherwise damaged. The sound of our pens going, +refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it +difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding +and actually paying the money. In point of meritorious character, +the two things seemed about equal. +When we had written a little while, I would ask Herbert how he got +on? Herbert probably would have been scratching his head in a most +rueful manner at the sight of his accumulating figures. +"They are mounting up, Handel," Herbert would say "upon my life, +they are mounting up." +"Be firm, Herbert," I would retort, plying my own pen with great +assiduity. "Look the thing in the face. Look into your affairs. +Stare them out of countenance." +"So I would, Handel, only they are staring me out of countenance." +However, my determined manner would have its effect, and Herbert +would fall to work again. After a time he would give up once more, +on the plea that he had not got Cobbs's bill, or Lobbs's, or +Nobbs's, as the case might be. +"Then, Herbert, estimate estimate it in round numbers, and put it +down." +"What a fellow of resource you are" my friend would reply, with +admiration. "Really your business powers are very remarkable." +I thought so too. I established with myself on these occasions, the +reputation of a firstrate man of business prompt, decisive, +energetic, clear, coolheaded. When I had got all my +responsibilities down upon my list, I compared each with the bill, +and ticked it off. My selfapproval when I ticked an entry was +quite a luxurious sensation. When I had no more ticks to make, I +folded all my bills up uniformly, docketed each on the back, and +tied the whole into a symmetrical bundle. Then I did the same for +Herbert who modestly said he had not my administrative genius, +and felt that I had brought his affairs into a focus for him. +My business habits had one other bright feature, which i called +"leaving a Margin." For example supposing Herbert's debts to be +one hundred and sixtyfour pounds fourandtwopence, I would say, +"Leave a margin, and put them down at two hundred." Or, supposing +my own to be four times as much, I would leave a margin, and put +them down at seven hundred. I had the highest opinion of the wisdom +of this same Margin, but I am bound to acknowledge that on looking +back, I deem it to have been an expensive device. For, we always +ran into new debt immediately, to the full extent of the margin, +and sometimes, in the sense of freedom and solvency it imparted, +got pretty far on into another margin. +But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush, consequent on these +examinations of our affairs that gave me, for the time, an +admirable opinion of myself. Soothed by my exertions, my method, +and Herbert's compliments, I would sit with his symmetrical bundle +and my own on the table before me among the stationary, and feel +like a Bank of some sort, rather than a private individual. +We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions, in order that we +might not be interrupted. I had fallen into my serene state one +evening, when we heard a letter dropped through the slit in the +said door, and fall on the ground. "It's for you, Handel," said +Herbert, going out and coming back with it, "and I hope there is +nothing the matter." This was in allusion to its heavy black seal +and border. +The letter was signed TRABB CO., and its contents were simply, +that I was an honoured sir, and that they begged to inform me that +Mrs. J. Gargery had departed this life on Monday last, at twenty +minutes past six in the evening, and that my attendance was +requested at the interment on Monday next at three o'clock in the +afternoon. +Chapter +It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road of life, +and the gap it made in the smooth ground was wonderful. The figure +of my sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, haunted me night and +day. That the place could possibly be, without her, was something +my mind seemed unable to compass and whereas she had seldom or +never been in my thoughts of late, I had now the strangest ideas +that she was coming towards me in the street, or that she would +presently knock at the door. In my rooms too, with which she had +never been at all associated, there was at once the blankness of +death and a perpetual suggestion of the sound of her voice or the +turn of her face or figure, as if she were still alive and had been +often there. +Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have +recalled my sister with much tenderness. But I suppose there is a +shock of regret which may exist without much tenderness. Under its +influence and perhaps to make up for the want of the softer +feeling I was seized with a violent indignation against the +assailant from whom she had suffered so much and I felt that on +sufficient proof I could have revengefully pursued Orlick, or any +one else, to the last extremity. +Having written to Joe, to offer consolation, and to assure him that +I should come to the funeral, I passed the intermediate days in the +curious state of mind I have glanced at. I went down early in the +morning, and alighted at the Blue Boar in good time to walk over to +the forge. +It was fine summer weather again, and, as I walked along, the times +when I was a little helpless creature, and my sister did not spare +me, vividly returned. But they returned with a gentle tone upon +them that softened even the edge of Tickler. For now, the very +breath of the beans and clover whispered to my heart that the day +must come when it would be well for my memory that others walking +in the sunshine should be softened as they thought of me. +At last I came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and +Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken possession. Two +dismally absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch +done up in a black bandage as if that instrument could possibly +communicate any comfort to anybody were posted at the front door +and in one of them I recognized a postboy discharged from the Boar +for turning a young couple into a sawpit on their bridal morning, +in consequence of intoxication rendering it necessary for him to +ride his horse clasped round the neck with both arms. All the +children of the village, and most of the women, were admiring these +sable warders and the closed windows of the house and forge and as +I came up, one of the two warders the postboy knocked at the door +implying that I was far too much exhausted by grief, to have +strength remaining to knock for myself. +Another sable warder a carpenter, who had once eaten two geese for +a wager opened the door, and showed me into the best parlour. +Here, Mr. Trabb had taken unto himself the best table, and had got +all the leaves up, and was holding a kind of black Bazaar, with the +aid of a quantity of black pins. At the moment of my arrival, he +had just finished putting somebody's hat into black longclothes, +like an African baby so he held out his hand for mine. But I, +misled by the action, and confused by the occasion, shook hands +with him with every testimony of warm affection. +Poor dear Joe, entangled in a little black cloak tied in a large +bow under his chin, was seated apart at the upper end of the room +where, as chief mourner, he had evidently been stationed by Trabb. +When I bent down and said to him, "Dear Joe, how are you?" he said, +"Pip, old chap, you knowed her when she were a fine figure of a" +and clasped my hand and said no more. +Biddy, looking very neat and modest in her black dress, went +quietly here and there, and was very helpful. When I had spoken to +Biddy, as I thought it not a time for talking I went and sat down +near Joe, and there began to wonder in what part of the house it +she my sister was. The air of the parlour being faint with the +smell of sweet cake, I looked about for the table of refreshments +it was scarcely visible until one had got accustomed to the gloom, +but there was a cutup plumcake upon it, and there were cutup +oranges, and sandwiches, and biscuits, and two decanters that I +knew very well as ornaments, but had never seen used in all my +life one full of port, and one of sherry. Standing at this table, +I became conscious of the servile Pumblechook in a black cloak and +several yards of hatband, who was alternately stuffing himself, and +making obsequious movements to catch my attention. The moment he +succeeded, he came over to me breathing sherry and crumbs, and +said in a subdued voice, "May I, dear sir?" and did. I then +descried Mr. and Mrs. Hubble the lastnamed in a decent speechless +paroxysm in a corner. We were all going to "follow," and were all +in course of being tied up separately by Trabb into ridiculous +bundles. +"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe whispered me, as we were being what +Mr. Trabb called "formed" in the parlour, two and two and it was +dreadfully like a preparation for some grim kind of dance "which I +meantersay, sir, as I would in preference have carried her to the +church myself, along with three or four friendly ones wot come to +it with willing harts and arms, but it were considered wot the +neighbours would look down on such and would be of opinions as it +were wanting in respect." +"Pockethandkerchiefs out, all" cried Mr. Trabb at this point, in a +depressed businesslike voice. "Pockethandkerchiefs out We are +ready" +So, we all put our pockethandkerchiefs to our faces, as if our +noses were bleeding, and filed out two and two Joe and I Biddy +and Pumblechook Mr. and Mrs. Hubble. The remains of my poor sister +had been brought round by the kitchen door, and, it being a point +of Undertaking ceremony that the six bearers must be stifled and +blinded under a horrible black velvet housing with a white border, +the whole looked like a blind monster with twelve human legs, +shuffling and blundering along, under the guidance of two keepers +the postboy and his comrade. +The neighbourhood, however, highly approved of these arrangements, +and we were much admired as we went through the village the more +youthful and vigorous part of the community making dashes now and +then to cut us off, and lying in wait to intercept us at points of +vantage. At such times the more exuberant among them called out in +an excited manner on our emergence round some corner of expectancy, +"Here they come" "Here they are" and we were all but cheered. In +this progress I was much annoyed by the abject Pumblechook, who, +being behind me, persisted all the way as a delicate attention in +arranging my streaming hatband, and smoothing my cloak. My thoughts +were further distracted by the excessive pride of Mr. and Mrs. +Hubble, who were surpassingly conceited and vainglorious in being +members of so distinguished a procession. +And now, the range of marshes lay clear before us, with the sails +of the ships on the river growing out of it and we went into the +churchyard, close to the graves of my unknown parents, Philip +Pirrip, late of this parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above. +And there, my sister was laid quietly in the earth while the larks +sang high above it, and the light wind strewed it with beautiful +shadows of clouds and trees. +Of the conduct of the worldlyminded Pumblechook while this was +doing, I desire to say no more than it was all addressed to me and +that even when those noble passages were read which remind humanity +how it brought nothing into the world and can take nothing out, and +how it fleeth like a shadow and never continueth long in one stay, +I heard him cough a reservation of the case of a young gentleman +who came unexpectedly into large property. When we got back, he had +the hardihood to tell me that he wished my sister could have known +I had done her so much honour, and to hint that she would have +considered it reasonably purchased at the price of her death. After +that, he drank all the rest of the sherry, and Mr. Hubble drank the +port, and the two talked which I have since observed to be +customary in such cases as if they were of quite another race from +the deceased, and were notoriously immortal. Finally, he went away +with Mr. and Mrs. Hubble to make an evening of it, I felt sure, and +to tell the Jolly Bargemen that he was the founder of my fortunes +and my earliest benefactor. +When they were all gone, and when Trabb and his men but not his +boy I looked for him had crammed their mummery into bags, and +were gone too, the house felt wholesomer. Soon afterwards, Biddy, +Joe, and I, had a cold dinner together but we dined in the best +parlour, not in the old kitchen, and Joe was so exceedingly +particular what he did with his knife and fork and the saltcellar +and what not, that there was great restraint upon us. But after +dinner, when I made him take his pipe, and when I had loitered with +him about the forge, and when we sat down together on the great +block of stone outside it, we got on better. I noticed that after +the funeral Joe changed his clothes so far, as to make a compromise +between his Sunday dress and working dress in which the dear +fellow looked natural, and like the Man he was. +He was very much pleased by my asking if I might sleep in my own +little room, and I was pleased too for, I felt that I had done +rather a great thing in making the request. When the shadows of +evening were closing in, I took an opportunity of getting into the +garden with Biddy for a little talk. +"Biddy," said I, "I think you might have written to me about these +sad matters." +"Do you, Mr. Pip?" said Biddy. "I should have written if I had +thought that." +"Don't suppose that I mean to be unkind, Biddy, when I say I +consider that you ought to have thought that." +"Do you, Mr. Pip?" +She was so quiet, and had such an orderly, good, and pretty way +with her, that I did not like the thought of making her cry again. +After looking a little at her downcast eyes as she walked beside +me, I gave up that point. +"I suppose it will be difficult for you to remain here now, Biddy +dear?" +"Oh I can't do so, Mr. Pip," said Biddy, in a tone of regret, but +still of quiet conviction. "I have been speaking to Mrs. Hubble, and +I am going to her tomorrow. I hope we shall be able to take some +care of Mr. Gargery, together, until he settles down." +"How are you going to live, Biddy? If you want any mo" +"How am I going to live?" repeated Biddy, striking in, with a +momentary flush upon her face. "I'll tell you, Mr. Pip. I am going +to try to get the place of mistress in the new school nearly +finished here. I can be well recommended by all the neighbours, and +I hope I can be industrious and patient, and teach myself while I +teach others. You know, Mr. Pip," pursued Biddy, with a smile, as +she raised her eyes to my face, "the new schools are not like the +old, but I learnt a good deal from you after that time, and have +had time since then to improve." +"I think you would always improve, Biddy, under any circumstances." +"Ah Except in my bad side of human nature," murmured Biddy. +It was not so much a reproach, as an irresistible thinking aloud. +Well I thought I would give up that point too. So, I walked a +little further with Biddy, looking silently at her downcast eyes. +"I have not heard the particulars of my sister's death, Biddy." +"They are very slight, poor thing. She had been in one of her bad +states though they had got better of late, rather than worse +for four days, when she came out of it in the evening, just at +teatime, and said quite plainly, 'Joe.' As she had never said any +word for a long while, I ran and fetched in Mr. Gargery from the +forge. She made signs to me that she wanted him to sit down close +to her, and wanted me to put her arms round his neck. So I put them +round his neck, and she laid her head down on his shoulder quite +content and satisfied. And so she presently said 'Joe' again, and +once 'Pardon,' and once 'Pip.' And so she never lifted her head up +any more, and it was just an hour later when we laid it down on her +own bed, because we found she was gone." +Biddy cried the darkening garden, and the lane, and the stars that +were coming out, were blurred in my own sight. +"Nothing was ever discovered, Biddy?" +"Nothing." +"Do you know what is become of Orlick?" +"I should think from the colour of his clothes that he is working +in the quarries." +"Of course you have seen him then? Why are you looking at that +dark tree in the lane?" +"I saw him there, on the night she died." +"That was not the last time either, Biddy?" +"No I have seen him there, since we have been walking here. It +is of no use," said Biddy, laying her hand upon my arm, as I was +for running out, "you know I would not deceive you he was not +there a minute, and he is gone." +It revived my utmost indignation to find that she was still pursued +by this fellow, and I felt inveterate against him. I told her so, +and told her that I would spend any money or take any pains to +drive him out of that country. By degrees she led me into more +temperate talk, and she told me how Joe loved me, and how Joe never +complained of anything she didn't say, of me she had no need I +knew what she meant but ever did his duty in his way of life, +with a strong hand, a quiet tongue, and a gentle heart. +"Indeed, it would be hard to say too much for him," said I "and +Biddy, we must often speak of these things, for of course I shall +be often down here now. I am not going to leave poor Joe alone." +Biddy said never a single word. +"Biddy, don't you hear me?" +"Yes, Mr. Pip." +"Not to mention your calling me Mr. Pip which appears to me to be +in bad taste, Biddy what do you mean?" +"What do I mean?" asked Biddy, timidly. +"Biddy," said I, in a virtuously selfasserting manner, "I must +request to know what you mean by this?" +"By this?" said Biddy. +"Now, don't echo," I retorted. "You used not to echo, Biddy." +"Used not" said Biddy. "O Mr. Pip Used" +Well I rather thought I would give up that point too. After +another silent turn in the garden, I fell back on the main +position. +"Biddy," said I, "I made a remark respecting my coming down here +often, to see Joe, which you received with a marked silence. Have +the goodness, Biddy, to tell me why." +"Are you quite sure, then, that you WILL come to see him often?" +asked Biddy, stopping in the narrow garden walk, and looking at me +under the stars with a clear and honest eye. +"Oh dear me" said I, as if I found myself compelled to give up +Biddy in despair. "This really is a very bad side of human +nature Don't say any more, if you please, Biddy. This shocks me +very much." +For which cogent reason I kept Biddy at a distance during supper, +and, when I went up to my own old little room, took as stately a +leave of her as I could, in my murmuring soul, deem reconcilable +with the churchyard and the event of the day. As often as I was +restless in the night, and that was every quarter of an hour, I +reflected what an unkindness, what an injury, what an injustice, +Biddy had done me. +Early in the morning, I was to go. Early in the morning, I was out, +and looking in, unseen, at one of the wooden windows of the forge. +There I stood, for minutes, looking at Joe, already at work with a +glow of health and strength upon his face that made it show as if +the bright sun of the life in store for him were shining on it. +"Goodbye, dear Joe No, don't wipe it off for God's sake, give +me your blackened hand I shall be down soon, and often." +"Never too soon, sir," said Joe, "and never too often, Pip" +Biddy was waiting for me at the kitchen door, with a mug of new +milk and a crust of bread. "Biddy," said I, when I gave her my hand +at parting, "I am not angry, but I am hurt." +"No, don't be hurt," she pleaded quite pathetically "let only me +be hurt, if I have been ungenerous." +Once more, the mists were rising as I walked away. If they +disclosed to me, as I suspect they did, that I should not come +back, and that Biddy was quite right, all I can say is they were +quite right too. +Chapter +Herbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way of increasing +our debts, looking into our affairs, leaving Margins, and the like +exemplary transactions and Time went on, whether or no, as he has +a way of doing and I came of age in fulfilment of Herbert's +prediction, that I should do so before I knew where I was. +Herbert himself had come of age, eight months before me. As he had +nothing else than his majority to come into, the event did not make +a profound sensation in Barnard's Inn. But we had looked forward to +my oneandtwentieth birthday, with a crowd of speculations and +anticipations, for we had both considered that my guardian could +hardly help saying something definite on that occasion. +I had taken care to have it well understood in Little Britain, when +my birthday was. On the day before it, I received an official note +from Wemmick, informing me that Mr. Jaggers would be glad if I would +call upon him at five in the afternoon of the auspicious day. This +convinced us that something great was to happen, and threw me into +an unusual flutter when I repaired to my guardian's office, a model +of punctuality. +In the outer office Wemmick offered me his congratulations, and +incidentally rubbed the side of his nose with a folded piece of +tissuepaper that I liked the look of. But he said nothing +respecting it, and motioned me with a nod into my guardian's room. +It was November, and my guardian was standing before his fire +leaning his back against the chimneypiece, with his hands under +his coattails. +"Well, Pip," said he, "I must call you Mr. Pip today. +Congratulations, Mr. Pip." +We shook hands he was always a remarkably short shaker and I +thanked him. +"Take a chair, Mr. Pip," said my guardian. +As I sat down, and he preserved his attitude and bent his brows at +his boots, I felt at a disadvantage, which reminded me of that old +time when I had been put upon a tombstone. The two ghastly casts on +the shelf were not far from him, and their expression was as if +they were making a stupid apoplectic attempt to attend to the +conversation. +"Now my young friend," my guardian began, as if I were a witness in +the box, "I am going to have a word or two with you." +"If you please, sir." +"What do you suppose," said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at +the ground, and then throwing his head back to look at the ceiling, +"what do you suppose you are living at the rate of?" +"At the rate of, sir?" +"At," repeated Mr. Jaggers, still looking at the ceiling, "the +rate of?" And then looked all round the room, and paused with his +pockethandkerchief in his hand, half way to his nose. +I had looked into my affairs so often, that I had thoroughly +destroyed any slight notion I might ever have had of their +bearings. Reluctantly, I confessed myself quite unable to answer +the question. This reply seemed agreeable to Mr. Jaggers, who said, +"I thought so" and blew his nose with an air of satisfaction. +"Now, I have asked you a question, my friend," said Mr. Jaggers. +"Have you anything to ask me?" +"Of course it would be a great relief to me to ask you several +questions, sir but I remember your prohibition." +"Ask one," said Mr. Jaggers. +"Is my benefactor to be made known to me today?" +"No. Ask another." +"Is that confidence to be imparted to me soon?" +"Waive that, a moment," said Mr. Jaggers, "and ask another." +I looked about me, but there appeared to be now no possible escape +from the inquiry, "Have I anything to receive, sir?" On that, +Mr. Jaggers said, triumphantly, "I thought we should come to it" +and called to Wemmick to give him that piece of paper. Wemmick +appeared, handed it in, and disappeared. +"Now, Mr. Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, "attend, if you please. You have +been drawing pretty freely here your name occurs pretty often in +Wemmick's cashbook but you are in debt, of course?" +"I am afraid I must say yes, sir." +"You know you must say yes don't you?" said Mr. Jaggers. +"Yes, sir." +"I don't ask you what you owe, because you don't know and if you +did know, you wouldn't tell me you would say less. Yes, yes, my +friend," cried Mr. Jaggers, waving his forefinger to stop me, as I +made a show of protesting "it's likely enough that you think you +wouldn't, but you would. You'll excuse me, but I know better than +you. Now, take this piece of paper in your hand. You have got it? +Very good. Now, unfold it and tell me what it is." +"This is a banknote," said I, "for five hundred pounds." +"That is a banknote," repeated Mr. Jaggers, "for five hundred +pounds. And a very handsome sum of money too, I think. You consider +it so?" +"How could I do otherwise" +"Ah But answer the question," said Mr. Jaggers. +"Undoubtedly." +"You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of money. Now, that +handsome sum of money, Pip, is your own. It is a present to you on +this day, in earnest of your expectations. And at the rate of that +handsome sum of money per annum, and at no higher rate, you are to +live until the donor of the whole appears. That is to say, you will +now take your money affairs entirely into your own hands, and you +will draw from Wemmick one hundred and twentyfive pounds per +quarter, until you are in communication with the fountainhead, and +no longer with the mere agent. As I have told you before, I am the +mere agent. I execute my instructions, and I am paid for doing so. +I think them injudicious, but I am not paid for giving any opinion +on their merits." +I was beginning to express my gratitude to my benefactor for the +great liberality with which I was treated, when Mr. Jaggers stopped +me. "I am not paid, Pip," said he, coolly, "to carry your words to +any one" and then gathered up his coattails, as he had gathered +up the subject, and stood frowning at his boots as if he suspected +them of designs against him. +After a pause, I hinted +"There was a question just now, Mr. Jaggers, which you desired me to +waive for a moment. I hope I am doing nothing wrong in asking it +again?" +"What is it?" said he. +I might have known that he would never help me out but it took me +aback to have to shape the question afresh, as if it were quite +new. "Is it likely," I said, after hesitating, "that my patron, the +fountainhead you have spoken of, Mr. Jaggers, will soon" there I +delicately stopped. +"Will soon what?" asked Mr. Jaggers. "That's no question as it +stands, you know." +"Will soon come to London," said I, after casting about for a +precise form of words, "or summon me anywhere else?" +"Now here," replied Mr. Jaggers, fixing me for the first time with +his dark deepset eyes, "we must revert to the evening when we +first encountered one another in your village. What did I tell you +then, Pip?" +"You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence when that +person appeared." +"Just so," said Mr. Jaggers "that's my answer." +As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come quicker in +my strong desire to get something out of him. And as I felt that it +came quicker, and as I felt that he saw that it came quicker, I +felt that I had less chance than ever of getting anything out of +him. +"Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr. Jaggers?" +Mr. Jaggers shook his head not in negativing the question, but in +altogether negativing the notion that he could anyhow be got to +answer it and the two horrible casts of the twitched faces +looked, when my eyes strayed up to them, as if they had come to a +crisis in their suspended attention, and were going to sneeze. +"Come" said Mr. Jaggers, warming the backs of his legs with the +backs of his warmed hands, "I'll be plain with you, my friend Pip. +That's a question I must not be asked. You'll understand that, +better, when I tell you it's a question that might compromise me. +Come I'll go a little further with you I'll say something more." +He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was able to rub +the calves of his legs in the pause he made. +"When that person discloses," said Mr. Jaggers, straightening +himself, "you and that person will settle your own affairs. When +that person discloses, my part in this business will cease and +determine. When that person discloses, it will not be necessary for +me to know anything about it. And that's all I have got to say." +We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked +thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I derived the +notion that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not +taken him into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella +that he resented this, and felt a jealousy about it or that he +really did object to that scheme, and would have nothing to do with +it. When I raised my eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly +looking at me all the time, and was doing so still. +"If that is all you have to say, sir," I remarked, "there can be +nothing left for me to say." +He nodded assent, and pulled out his thiefdreaded watch, and asked +me where I was going to dine? I replied at my own chambers, with +Herbert. As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he would favour us +with his company, and he promptly accepted the invitation. But he +insisted on walking home with me, in order that I might make no +extra preparation for him, and first he had a letter or two to +write, and of course had his hands to wash. So, I said I would go +into the outer office and talk to Wemmick. +The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had come into my +pocket, a thought had come into my head which had been often there +before and it appeared to me that Wemmick was a good person to +advise with, concerning such thought. +He had already locked up his safe, and made preparations for going +home. He had left his desk, brought out his two greasy office +candlesticks and stood them in line with the snuffers on a slab +near the door, ready to be extinguished he had raked his fire low, +put his hat and greatcoat ready, and was beating himself all over +the chest with his safekey, as an athletic exercise after +business. +"Mr. Wemmick," said I, "I want to ask your opinion. I am very +desirous to serve a friend." +Wemmick tightened his postoffice and shook his head, as if his +opinion were dead against any fatal weakness of that sort. +"This friend," I pursued, "is trying to get on in commercial life, +but has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make +a beginning. Now, I want somehow to help him to a beginning." +"With money down?" said Wemmick, in a tone drier than any sawdust. +"With some money down," I replied, for an uneasy remembrance shot +across me of that symmetrical bundle of papers at home "with some +money down, and perhaps some anticipation of my expectations." +"Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, "I should like just to run over with you on +my fingers, if you please, the names of the various bridges up as +high as Chelsea Reach. Let's see there's London, one Southwark, +two Blackfriars, three Waterloo, four Westminster, five +Vauxhall, six." He had checked off each bridge in its turn, with +the handle of his safekey on the palm of his hand. "There's as +many as six, you see, to choose from." +"I don't understand you," said I. +"Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip," returned Wemmick, "and take a walk +upon your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames over the +centre arch of your bridge, and you know the end of it. Serve a +friend with it, and you may know the end of it too but it's a +less pleasant and profitable end." +I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, he made it so wide +after saying this. +"This is very discouraging," said I. +"Meant to be so," said Wemmick. +"Then is it your opinion," I inquired, with some little +indignation, "that a man should never" +" Invest portable property in a friend?" said Wemmick. "Certainly +he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the friend and then +it becomes a question how much portable property it may be worth to +get rid of him." +"And that," said I, "is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wemmick?" +"That," he returned, "is my deliberate opinion in this office." +"Ah" said I, pressing him, for I thought I saw him near a loophole +here "but would that be your opinion at Walworth?" +"Mr. Pip," he replied, with gravity, "Walworth is one place, and +this office is another. Much as the Aged is one person, and Mr. +Jaggers is another. They must not be confounded together. My +Walworth sentiments must be taken at Walworth none but my official +sentiments can be taken in this office." +"Very well," said I, much relieved, "then I shall look you up at +Walworth, you may depend upon it." +"Mr. Pip," he returned, "you will be welcome there, in a private and +personal capacity." +We had held this conversation in a low voice, well knowing my +guardian's ears to be the sharpest of the sharp. As he now appeared +in his doorway, towelling his hands, Wemmick got on his greatcoat +and stood by to snuff out the candles. We all three went into the +street together, and from the doorstep Wemmick turned his way, and +Mr. Jaggers and I turned ours. +I could not help wishing more than once that evening, that Mr. +Jaggers had had an Aged in Gerrardstreet, or a Stinger, or a +Something, or a Somebody, to unbend his brows a little. It was an +uncomfortable consideration on a twentyfirst birthday, that coming +of age at all seemed hardly worth while in such a guarded and +suspicious world as he made of it. He was a thousand times better +informed and cleverer than Wemmick, and yet I would a thousand +times rather have had Wemmick to dinner. And Mr. Jaggers made not me +alone intensely melancholy, because, after he was gone, Herbert +said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire, that he thought +he must have committed a felony and forgotten the details of it, he +felt so dejected and guilty. +Chapter +Deeming Sunday the best day for taking Mr. Wemmick's Walworth +sentiments, I devoted the next ensuing Sunday afternoon to a +pilgrimage to the Castle. On arriving before the battlements, I +found the Union Jack flying and the drawbridge up but undeterred +by this show of defiance and resistance, I rang at the gate, and +was admitted in a most pacific manner by the Aged. +"My son, sir," said the old man, after securing the drawbridge, +"rather had it in his mind that you might happen to drop in, and he +left word that he would soon be home from his afternoon's walk. He +is very regular in his walks, is my son. Very regular in +everything, is my son." +I nodded at the old gentleman as Wemmick himself might have nodded, +and we went in and sat down by the fireside. +"You made acquaintance with my son, sir," said the old man, in his +chirping way, while he warmed his hands at the blaze, "at his +office, I expect?" I nodded. "Hah I have heerd that my son is a +wonderful hand at his business, sir?" I nodded hard. "Yes so they +tell me. His business is the Law?" I nodded harder. "Which makes it +more surprising in my son," said the old man, "for he was not +brought up to the Law, but to the WineCoopering." +Curious to know how the old gentleman stood informed concerning the +reputation of Mr. Jaggers, I roared that name at him. He threw me +into the greatest confusion by laughing heartily and replying in a +very sprightly manner, "No, to be sure you're right." And to this +hour I have not the faintest notion what he meant, or what joke he +thought I had made. +As I could not sit there nodding at him perpetually, without making +some other attempt to interest him, I shouted at inquiry whether +his own calling in life had been "the WineCoopering." By dint of +straining that term out of myself several times and tapping the old +gentleman on the chest to associate it with him, I at last +succeeded in making my meaning understood. +"No," said the old gentleman "the warehousing, the warehousing. +First, over yonder" he appeared to mean up the chimney, but I +believe he intended to refer me to Liverpool "and then in the City +of London here. However, having an infirmity for I am hard of +hearing, sir" +I expressed in pantomime the greatest astonishment. +" Yes, hard of hearing having that infirmity coming upon me, my +son he went into the Law, and he took charge of me, and he by +little and little made out this elegant and beautiful property. But +returning to what you said, you know," pursued the old man, again +laughing heartily, "what I say is, No to be sure you're right." +I was modestly wondering whether my utmost ingenuity would have +enabled me to say anything that would have amused him half as much +as this imaginary pleasantry, when I was startled by a sudden click +in the wall on one side of the chimney, and the ghostly tumbling +open of a little wooden flap with "JOHN" upon it. The old man, +following my eyes, cried with great triumph, "My son's come home" +and we both went out to the drawbridge. +It was worth any money to see Wemmick waving a salute to me from +the other side of the moat, when we might have shaken hands across +it with the greatest ease. The Aged was so delighted to work the +drawbridge, that I made no offer to assist him, but stood quiet +until Wemmick had come across, and had presented me to Miss +Skiffins a lady by whom he was accompanied. +Miss Skiffins was of a wooden appearance, and was, like her escort, +in the postoffice branch of the service. She might have been some +two or three years younger than Wemmick, and I judged her to stand +possessed of portable property. The cut of her dress from the waist +upward, both before and behind, made her figure very like a boy's +kite and I might have pronounced her gown a little too decidedly +orange, and her gloves a little too intensely green. But she seemed +to be a good sort of fellow, and showed a high regard for the Aged. +I was not long in discovering that she was a frequent visitor at +the Castle for, on our going in, and my complimenting Wemmick on +his ingenious contrivance for announcing himself to the Aged, he +begged me to give my attention for a moment to the other side of +the chimney, and disappeared. Presently another click came, and +another little door tumbled open with "Miss Skiffins" on it then +Miss Skiffins shut up and John tumbled open then Miss Skiffins and +John both tumbled open together, and finally shut up together. On +Wemmick's return from working these mechanical appliances, I +expressed the great admiration with which I regarded them, and he +said, "Well, you know, they're both pleasant and useful to the +Aged. And by George, sir, it's a thing worth mentioning, that of +all the people who come to this gate, the secret of those pulls is +only known to the Aged, Miss Skiffins, and me" +"And Mr. Wemmick made them," added Miss Skiffins, "with his own +hands out of his own head." +While Miss Skiffins was taking off her bonnet she retained her +green gloves during the evening as an outward and visible sign that +there was company, Wemmick invited me to take a walk with him +round the property, and see how the island looked in wintertime. +Thinking that he did this to give me an opportunity of taking his +Walworth sentiments, I seized the opportunity as soon as we were +out of the Castle. +Having thought of the matter with care, I approached my subject as +if I had never hinted at it before. I informed Wemmick that I was +anxious in behalf of Herbert Pocket, and I told him how we had +first met, and how we had fought. I glanced at Herbert's home, and +at his character, and at his having no means but such as he was +dependent on his father for those, uncertain and unpunctual. +I alluded to the advantages I had derived in my first rawness and +ignorance from his society, and I confessed that I feared I had but +ill repaid them, and that he might have done better without me and +my expectations. Keeping Miss Havisham in the background at a great +distance, I still hinted at the possibility of my having competed +with him in his prospects, and at the certainty of his possessing a +generous soul, and being far above any mean distrusts, +retaliations, or designs. For all these reasons I told Wemmick, +and because he was my young companion and friend, and I had a great +affection for him, I wished my own good fortune to reflect some +rays upon him, and therefore I sought advice from Wemmick's +experience and knowledge of men and affairs, how I could best try +with my resources to help Herbert to some present income say of a +hundred a year, to keep him in good hope and heart and gradually +to buy him on to some small partnership. I begged Wemmick, in +conclusion, to understand that my help must always be rendered +without Herbert's knowledge or suspicion, and that there was no one +else in the world with whom I could advise. I wound up by laying my +hand upon his shoulder, and saying, "I can't help confiding in you, +though I know it must be troublesome to you but that is your +fault, in having ever brought me here." +Wemmick was silent for a little while, and then said with a kind of +start, "Well you know, Mr. Pip, I must tell you one thing. This is +devilish good of you." +"Say you'll help me to be good then," said I. +"Ecod," replied Wemmick, shaking his head, "that's not my trade." +"Nor is this your tradingplace," said I. +"You are right," he returned. "You hit the nail on the head. Mr. +Pip, I'll put on my consideringcap, and I think all you want to +do, may be done by degrees. Skiffins that's her brother is an +accountant and agent. I'll look him up and go to work for you." +"I thank you ten thousand times." +"On the contrary," said he, "I thank you, for though we are +strictly in our private and personal capacity, still it may be +mentioned that there are Newgate cobwebs about, and it brushes them +away." +After a little further conversation to the same effect, we returned +into the Castle where we found Miss Skiffins preparing tea. The +responsible duty of making the toast was delegated to the Aged, and +that excellent old gentleman was so intent upon it that he seemed +to me in some danger of melting his eyes. It was no nominal meal +that we were going to make, but a vigorous reality. The Aged +prepared such a haystack of buttered toast, that I could scarcely +see him over it as it simmered on an iron stand hooked on to the +topbar while Miss Skiffins brewed such a jorum of tea, that the +pig in the back premises became strongly excited, and repeatedly +expressed his desire to participate in the entertainment. +The flag had been struck, and the gun had been fired, at the right +moment of time, and I felt as snugly cut off from the rest of +Walworth as if the moat were thirty feet wide by as many deep. +Nothing disturbed the tranquillity of the Castle, but the +occasional tumbling open of John and Miss Skiffins which little +doors were a prey to some spasmodic infirmity that made me +sympathetically uncomfortable until I got used to it. I inferred +from the methodical nature of Miss Skiffins's arrangements that she +made tea there every Sunday night and I rather suspected that a +classic brooch she wore, representing the profile of an undesirable +female with a very straight nose and a very new moon, was a piece +of portable property that had been given her by Wemmick. +We ate the whole of the toast, and drank tea in proportion, and it +was delightful to see how warm and greasy we all got after it. The +Aged especially, might have passed for some clean old chief of a +savage tribe, just oiled. After a short pause for repose, Miss +Skiffins in the absence of the little servant who, it seemed, +retired to the bosom of her family on Sunday afternoons washed up +the teathings, in a trifling ladylike amateur manner that +compromised none of us. Then, she put on her gloves again, and we +drew round the fire, and Wemmick said, "Now Aged Parent, tip us the +paper." +Wemmick explained to me while the Aged got his spectacles out, that +this was according to custom, and that it gave the old gentleman +infinite satisfaction to read the news aloud. "I won't offer an +apology," said Wemmick, "for he isn't capable of many pleasures +are you, Aged P.?" +"All right, John, all right," returned the old man, seeing himself +spoken to. +"Only tip him a nod every now and then when he looks off his +paper," said Wemmick, "and he'll be as happy as a king. We are all +attention, Aged One." +"All right, John, all right" returned the cheerful old man so +busy and so pleased, that it really was quite charming. +The Aged's reading reminded me of the classes at Mr. Wopsle's +greataunt's, with the pleasanter peculiarity that it seemed to +come through a keyhole. As he wanted the candles close to him, and +as he was always on the verge of putting either his head or the +newspaper into them, he required as much watching as a powdermill. +But Wemmick was equally untiring and gentle in his vigilance, and +the Aged read on, quite unconscious of his many rescues. Whenever +he looked at us, we all expressed the greatest interest and +amazement, and nodded until he resumed again. +As Wemmick and Miss Skiffins sat side by side, and as I sat in a +shadowy corner, I observed a slow and gradual elongation of Mr. +Wemmick's mouth, powerfully suggestive of his slowly and gradually +stealing his arm round Miss Skiffins's waist. In course of time I +saw his hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins but at that +moment Miss Skiffins neatly stopped him with the green glove, +unwound his arm again as if it were an article of dress, and with +the greatest deliberation laid it on the table before her. Miss +Skiffins's composure while she did this was one of the most +remarkable sights I have ever seen, and if I could have thought the +act consistent with abstraction of mind, I should have deemed that +Miss Skiffins performed it mechanically. +Byandby, I noticed Wemmick's arm beginning to disappear again, +and gradually fading out of view. Shortly afterwards, his mouth +began to widen again. After an interval of suspense on my part that +was quite enthralling and almost painful, I saw his hand appear on +the other side of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss Skiffins stopped +it with the neatness of a placid boxer, took off that girdle or +cestus as before, and laid it on the table. Taking the table to +represent the path of virtue, I am justified in stating that during +the whole time of the Aged's reading, Wemmick's arm was straying +from the path of virtue and being recalled to it by Miss Skiffins. +At last, the Aged read himself into a light slumber. This was the +time for Wemmick to produce a little kettle, a tray of glasses, and +a black bottle with a porcelaintopped cork, representing some +clerical dignitary of a rubicund and social aspect. With the aid of +these appliances we all had something warm to drink including the +Aged, who was soon awake again. Miss Skiffins mixed, and I observed +that she and Wemmick drank out of one glass. Of course I knew +better than to offer to see Miss Skiffins home, and under the +circumstances I thought I had best go first which I did, taking a +cordial leave of the Aged, and having passed a pleasant evening. +Before a week was out, I received a note from Wemmick, dated +Walworth, stating that he hoped he had made some advance in that +matter appertaining to our private and personal capacities, and +that he would be glad if I could come and see him again upon it. +So, I went out to Walworth again, and yet again, and yet again, and +I saw him by appointment in the City several times, but never held +any communication with him on the subject in or near Little +Britain. The upshot was, that we found a worthy young merchant or +shippingbroker, not long established in business, who wanted +intelligent help, and who wanted capital, and who in due course of +time and receipt would want a partner. Between him and me, secret +articles were signed of which Herbert was the subject, and I paid +him half of my five hundred pounds down, and engaged for sundry +other payments some, to fall due at certain dates out of my +income some, contingent on my coming into my property. Miss +Skiffins's brother conducted the negotiation. Wemmick pervaded it +throughout, but never appeared in it. +The whole business was so cleverly managed, that Herbert had not +the least suspicion of my hand being in it. I never shall forget +the radiant face with which he came home one afternoon, and told +me, as a mighty piece of news, of his having fallen in with one +Clarriker the young merchant's name, and of Clarriker's having +shown an extraordinary inclination towards him, and of his belief +that the opening had come at last. Day by day as his hopes grew +stronger and his face brighter, he must have thought me a more and +more affectionate friend, for I had the greatest difficulty in +restraining my tears of triumph when I saw him so happy. At length, +the thing being done, and he having that day entered Clarriker's +House, and he having talked to me for a whole evening in a flush of +pleasure and success, I did really cry in good earnest when I went +to bed, to think that my expectations had done some good to +somebody. +A great event in my life, the turning point of my life, now opens +on my view. But, before I proceed to narrate it, and before I pass +on to all the changes it involved, I must give one chapter to +Estella. It is not much to give to the theme that so long filled +my heart. +Chapter +If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond should ever come +to be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunted, surely, by my +ghost. O the many, many nights and days through which the unquiet +spirit within me haunted that house when Estella lived there Let +my body be where it would, my spirit was always wandering, +wandering, wandering, about that house. +The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley by name, was a +widow, with one daughter several years older than Estella. The +mother looked young, and the daughter looked old the mother's +complexion was pink, and the daughter's was yellow the mother set +up for frivolity, and the daughter for theology. They were in what +is called a good position, and visited, and were visited by, +numbers of people. Little, if any, community of feeling subsisted +between them and Estella, but the understanding was established +that they were necessary to her, and that she was necessary to +them. Mrs. Brandley had been a friend of Miss Havisham's before the +time of her seclusion. +In Mrs. Brandley's house and out of Mrs. Brandley's house, I suffered +every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me. The +nature of my relations with her, which placed me on terms of +familiarity without placing me on terms of favour, conduced to my +distraction. She made use of me to tease other admirers, and she +turned the very familiarity between herself and me, to the account +of putting a constant slight on my devotion to her. If I had been +her secretary, steward, halfbrother, poor relation if I had been +a younger brother of her appointed husband I could not have +seemed to myself, further from my hopes when I was nearest to her. +The privilege of calling her by her name and hearing her call me by +mine, became under the circumstances an aggravation of my trials +and while I think it likely that it almost maddened her other +lovers, I know too certainly that it almost maddened me. +She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an admirer +of every one who went near her but there were more than enough of +them without that. +I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town, and I +used often to take her and the Brandleys on the water there were +picnics, fete days, plays, operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of +pleasures, through which I pursued her and they were all miseries +to me. I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my +mind all round the fourandtwenty hours was harping on the +happiness of having her with me unto death. +Throughout this part of our intercourse and it lasted, as will +presently be seen, for what I then thought a long time she +habitually reverted to that tone which expressed that our +association was forced upon us. There were other times when she +would come to a sudden check in this tone and in all her many +tones, and would seem to pity me. +"Pip, Pip," she said one evening, coming to such a check, when we +sat apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond "will you +never take warning?" +"Of what?" +"Of me." +"Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella?" +"Do I mean If you don't know what I mean, you are blind." +I should have replied that Love was commonly reputed blind, but for +the reason that I always was restrained and this was not the +least of my miseries by a feeling that it was ungenerous to press +myself upon her, when she knew that she could not choose but obey +Miss Havisham. My dread always was, that this knowledge on her part +laid me under a heavy disadvantage with her pride, and made me the +subject of a rebellious struggle in her bosom. +"At any rate," said I, "I have no warning given me just now, for +you wrote to me to come to you, this time." +"That's true," said Estella, with a cold careless smile that always +chilled me. +After looking at the twilight without, for a little while, she went +on to say +"The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes to have me for a +day at Satis. You are to take me there, and bring me back, if you +will. She would rather I did not travel alone, and objects to +receiving my maid, for she has a sensitive horror of being talked +of by such people. Can you take me?" +"Can I take you, Estella" +"You can then? The day after tomorrow, if you please. You are to +pay all charges out of my purse, You hear the condition of your +going?" +"And must obey," said I. +This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or for +others like it Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor had I ever so +much as seen her handwriting. We went down on the next day but one, +and we found her in the room where I had first beheld her, and it +is needless to add that there was no change in Satis House. +She was even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she had been when +I last saw them together I repeat the word advisedly, for there +was something positively dreadful in the energy of her looks and +embraces. She hung upon Estella's beauty, hung upon her words, hung +upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while +she looked at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful +creature she had reared. +From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance that seemed +to pry into my heart and probe its wounds. "How does she use you, +Pip how does she use you?" she asked me again, with her witchlike +eagerness, even in Estella's hearing. But, when we sat by her +flickering fire at night, she was most weird for then, keeping +Estella's hand drawn through her arm and clutched in her own hand, +she extorted from her, by dint of referring back to what Estella +had told her in her regular letters, the names and conditions of +the men whom she had fascinated and as Miss Havisham dwelt upon +this roll, with the intensity of a mind mortally hurt and diseased, +she sat with her other hand on her crutch stick, and her chin on +that, and her wan bright eyes glaring at me, a very spectre. +I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter the sense of +dependence and even of degradation that it awakened I saw in +this, that Estella was set to wreak Miss Havisham's revenge on men, +and that she was not to be given to me until she had gratified it +for a term. I saw in this, a reason for her being beforehand +assigned to me. Sending her out to attract and torment and do +mischief, Miss Havisham sent her with the malicious assurance that +she was beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who staked +upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in this, that I, too, +was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even while the prize +was reserved for me. I saw in this, the reason for my being staved +off so long, and the reason for my late guardian's declining to +commit himself to the formal knowledge of such a scheme. In a word, +I saw in this, Miss Havisham as I had her then and there before my +eyes, and always had had her before my eyes and I saw in this, the +distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy house in which her +life was hidden from the sun. +The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed in sconces +on the wall. They were high from the ground, and they burnt with +the steady dulness of artificial light in air that is seldom +renewed. As I looked round at them, and at the pale gloom they +made, and at the stopped clock, and at the withered articles of +bridal dress upon the table and the ground, and at her own awful +figure with its ghostly reflection thrown large by the fire upon +the ceiling and the wall, I saw in everything the construction that +my mind had come to, repeated and thrown back to me. My thoughts +passed into the great room across the landing where the table was +spread, and I saw it written, as it were, in the falls of the +cobwebs from the centrepiece, in the crawlings of the spiders on +the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as they betook their little +quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the gropings and +pausings of the beetles on the floor. +It happened on the occasion of this visit that some sharp words +arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. It was the first time I +had ever seen them opposed. +We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and Miss +Havisham still had Estella's arm drawn through her own, and still +clutched Estella's hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to +detach herself. She had shown a proud impatience more than once +before, and had rather endured that fierce affection than accepted +or returned it. +"What" said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her, "are you +tired of me?" +"Only a little tired of myself," replied Estella, disengaging her +arm, and moving to the great chimneypiece, where she stood looking +down at the fire. +"Speak the truth, you ingrate" cried Miss Havisham, passionately +striking her stick upon the floor "you are tired of me." +Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked down +at the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face expressed a +selfpossessed indifference to the wild heat of the other, that was +almost cruel. +"You stock and stone" exclaimed Miss Havisham. "You cold, cold +heart" +"What?" said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as +she leaned against the great chimneypiece and only moving her +eyes "do you reproach me for being cold? You?" +"Are you not?" was the fierce retort. +"You should know," said Estella. "I am what you have made me. Take +all the praise, take all the blame take all the success, take all +the failure in short, take me." +"O, look at her, look at her" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly "Look +at her, so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared +Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first +bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of +tenderness upon her" +"At least I was no party to the compact," said Estella, "for if I +could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could +do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I +owe everything to you. What would you have?" +"Love," replied the other. +"You have it." +"I have not," said Miss Havisham. +"Mother by adoption," retorted Estella, never departing from the +easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other +did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness, "Mother by +adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess +is freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command to +have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give +you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do +impossibilities." +"Did I never give her love" cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to +me. "Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy +at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me Let +her call me mad, let her call me mad" +"Why should I call you mad," returned Estella, "I, of all people? +Does any one live, who knows what set purposes you have, half as +well as I do? Does any one live, who knows what a steady memory you +have, half as well as I do? I who have sat on this same hearth on +the little stool that is even now beside you there, learning your +lessons and looking up into your face, when your face was strange +and frightened me" +"Soon forgotten" moaned Miss Havisham. "Times soon forgotten" +"No, not forgotten," retorted Estella. "Not forgotten, but +treasured up in my memory. When have you found me false to your +teaching? When have you found me unmindful of your lessons? When +have you found me giving admission here," she touched her bosom +with her hand, "to anything that you excluded? Be just to me." +"So proud, so proud" moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her grey +hair with both her hands. +"Who taught me to be proud?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when +I learnt my lesson?" +"So hard, so hard" moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action. +"Who taught me to be hard?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when +I learnt my lesson?" +"But to be proud and hard to me" Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as +she stretched out her arms. "Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud +and hard to me" +Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but +was not otherwise disturbed when the moment was past, she looked +down at the fire again. +"I cannot think," said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence +"why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a +separation. I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes. I +have never been unfaithful to you or your schooling. I have never +shown any weakness that I can charge myself with." +"Would it be weakness to return my love?" exclaimed Miss Havisham. +"But yes, yes, she would call it so" +"I begin to think," said Estella, in a musing way, after another +moment of calm wonder, "that I almost understand how this comes +about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the +dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know that +there was such a thing as the daylight by which she had never once +seen your face if you had done that, and then, for a purpose had +wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it, you +would have been disappointed and angry?" +Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a low +moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no answer. +"Or," said Estella, " which is a nearer case if you had taught +her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and +might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was +made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn +against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her if +you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take +naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have +been disappointed and angry?" +Miss Havisham sat listening or it seemed so, for I could not see +her face, but still made no answer. +"So," said Estella, "I must be taken as I have been made. The +success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together +make me." +Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how, upon the floor, +among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn. I took +advantage of the moment I had sought one from the first to +leave the room, after beseeching Estella's attention to her, with a +movement of my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by the +great chimneypiece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss +Havisham's grey hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the +other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see. +It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the starlight for an +hour and more, about the courtyard, and about the brewery, and +about the ruined garden. When I at last took courage to return to +the room, I found Estella sitting at Miss Havisham's knee, taking +up some stitches in one of those old articles of dress that were +dropping to pieces, and of which I have often been reminded since +by the faded tatters of old banners that I have seen hanging up in +cathedrals. Afterwards, Estella and I played at cards, as of yore +only we were skilful now, and played French games and so the +evening wore away, and I went to bed. +I lay in that separate building across the courtyard. It was the +first time I had ever lain down to rest in Satis House, and sleep +refused to come near me. A thousand Miss Havishams haunted me. She +was on this side of my pillow, on that, at the head of the bed, at +the foot, behind the halfopened door of the dressingroom, in the +dressingroom, in the room overhead, in the room beneath +everywhere. At last, when the night was slow to creep on towards +two o'clock, I felt that I absolutely could no longer bear the +place as a place to lie down in, and that I must get up. I +therefore got up and put on my clothes, and went out across the +yard into the long stone passage, designing to gain the outer +courtyard and walk there for the relief of my mind. But, I was no +sooner in the passage than I extinguished my candle for, I saw +Miss Havisham going along it in a ghostly manner, making a low cry. +I followed her at a distance, and saw her go up the staircase. She +carried a bare candle in her hand, which she had probably taken +from one of the sconces in her own room, and was a most unearthly +object by its light. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, I +felt the mildewed air of the feastchamber, without seeing her open +the door, and I heard her walking there, and so across into her own +room, and so across again into that, never ceasing the low cry. +After a time, I tried in the dark both to get out, and to go back, +but I could do neither until some streaks of day strayed in and +showed me where to lay my hands. During the whole interval, +whenever I went to the bottom of the staircase, I heard her +footstep, saw her light pass above, and heard her ceaseless low +cry. +Before we left next day, there was no revival of the difference +between her and Estella, nor was it ever revived on any similar +occasion and there were four similar occasions, to the best of my +remembrance. Nor, did Miss Havisham's manner towards Estella in +anywise change, except that I believed it to have something like +fear infused among its former characteristics. +It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life, without putting +Bentley Drummle's name upon it or I would, very gladly. +On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled in force, and +when good feeling was being promoted in the usual manner by +nobody's agreeing with anybody else, the presiding Finch called the +Grove to order, forasmuch as Mr. Drummle had not yet toasted a lady +which, according to the solemn constitution of the society, it was +the brute's turn to do that day. I thought I saw him leer in an +ugly way at me while the decanters were going round, but as there +was no love lost between us, that might easily be. What was my +indignant surprise when he called upon the company to pledge him to +"Estella" +"Estella who?" said I. +"Never you mind," retorted Drummle. +"Estella of where?" said I. "You are bound to say of where." Which +he was, as a Finch. +"Of Richmond, gentlemen," said Drummle, putting me out of the +question, "and a peerless beauty." +Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean miserable idiot I +whispered Herbert. +"I know that lady," said Herbert, across the table, when the toast +had been honoured. +"Do you?" said Drummle. +"And so do I," I added, with a scarlet face. +"Do you?" said Drummle. "Oh, Lord" +This was the only retort except glass or crockery that the +heavy creature was capable of making but, I became as highly +incensed by it as if it had been barbed with wit, and I immediately +rose in my place and said that I could not but regard it as being +like the honourable Finch's impudence to come down to that Grove +we always talked about coming down to that Grove, as a neat +Parliamentary turn of expression down to that Grove, proposing a +lady of whom he knew nothing. Mr. Drummle upon this, starting up, +demanded what I meant by that? Whereupon, I made him the extreme +reply that I believed he knew where I was to be found. +Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get on without +blood, after this, was a question on which the Finches were +divided. The debate upon it grew so lively, indeed, that at least +six more honourable members told six more, during the discussion, +that they believed they knew where they were to be found. However, +it was decided at last the Grove being a Court of Honour that if +Mr. Drummle would bring never so slight a certificate from the lady, +importing that he had the honour of her acquaintance, Mr. Pip must +express his regret, as a gentleman and a Finch, for "having been +betrayed into a warmth which." Next day was appointed for the +production lest our honour should take cold from delay, and next +day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal in Estella's hand, +that she had had the honour of dancing with him several times. This +left me no course but to regret that I had been "betrayed into a +warmth which," and on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the +idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drummle and I then sat +snorting at one another for an hour, while the Grove engaged in +indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the promotion of good +feeling was declared to have gone ahead at an amazing rate. +I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me. For, I cannot +adequately express what pain it gave me to think that Estella +should show any favour to a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby, so +very far below the average. To the present moment, I believe it to +have been referable to some pure fire of generosity and +disinterestedness in my love for her, that I could not endure the +thought of her stooping to that hound. No doubt I should have been +miserable whomsoever she had favoured but a worthier object would +have caused me a different kind and degree of distress. +It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out, that +Drummle had begun to follow her closely, and that she allowed him +to do it. A little while, and he was always in pursuit of her, and +he and I crossed one another every day. He held on, in a dull +persistent way, and Estella held him on now with encouragement, +now with discouragement, now almost flattering him, now openly +despising him, now knowing him very well, now scarcely remembering +who he was. +The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in +wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe. Added to that, he +had a blockhead confidence in his money and in his family +greatness, which sometimes did him good service almost taking the +place of concentration and determined purpose. So, the Spider, +doggedly watching Estella, outwatched many brighter insects, and +would often uncoil himself and drop at the right nick of time. +At a certain Assembly Ball at Richmond there used to be Assembly +Balls at most places then, where Estella had outshone all other +beauties, this blundering Drummle so hung about her, and with so +much toleration on her part, that I resolved to speak to her +concerning him. I took the next opportunity which was when she was +waiting for Mrs. Brandley to take her home, and was sitting apart +among some flowers, ready to go. I was with her, for I almost +always accompanied them to and from such places. +"Are you tired, Estella?" +"Rather, Pip." +"You should be." +"Say rather, I should not be for I have my letter to Satis House +to write, before I go to sleep." +"Recounting tonight's triumph?" said I. "Surely a very poor one, +Estella." +"What do you mean? I didn't know there had been any." +"Estella," said I, "do look at that fellow in the corner yonder, +who is looking over here at us." +"Why should I look at him?" returned Estella, with her eyes on me +instead. "What is there in that fellow in the corner yonder to +use your words that I need look at?" +"Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you," said I. "For +he has been hovering about you all night." +"Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures," replied Estella, with a +glance towards him, "hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle +help it?" +"No," I returned "but cannot the Estella help it?" +"Well" said she, laughing, after a moment, "perhaps. Yes. Anything +you like." +"But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched that you +should encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle. You know +he is despised." +"Well?" said she. +"You know he is as ungainly within, as without. A deficient, +illtempered, lowering, stupid fellow." +"Well?" said she. +"You know he has nothing to recommend him but money, and a +ridiculous roll of addleheaded predecessors now, don't you?" +"Well?" said she again and each time she said it, she opened her +lovely eyes the wider. +To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable, I +took it from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, "Well Then, +that is why it makes me wretched." +Now, if I could have believed that she favoured Drummle with any +idea of making me me wretched, I should have been in better +heart about it but in that habitual way of hers, she put me so +entirely out of the question, that I could believe nothing of the +kind. +"Pip," said Estella, casting her glance over the room, "don't be +foolish about its effect on you. It may have its effect on others, +and may be meant to have. It's not worth discussing." +"Yes it is," said I, "because I cannot bear that people should say, +'she throws away her graces and attractions on a mere boor, the +lowest in the crowd.'" +"I can bear it," said Estella. +"Oh don't be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible." +"Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath" said Estella, +opening her hands. "And in his last breath reproached me for +stooping to a boor" +"There is no doubt you do," said I, something hurriedly, "for I +have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as +you never give to me." +"Do you want me then," said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed +and serious, if not angry, look, "to deceive and entrap you?" +"Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?" +"Yes, and many others all of them but you. Here is Mrs. Brandley. +I'll say no more." +And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so +filled my heart, and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass +on, unhindered, to the event that had impended over me longer yet +the event that had begun to be prepared for, before I knew that the +world held Estella, and in the days when her baby intelligence was +receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham's wasting hands. +In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of +state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the +quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly +carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and +fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken +through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All being made +ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused +in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever +the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he +struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the +ceiling fell. So, in my case all the work, near and afar, that +tended to the end, had been accomplished and in an instant the +blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me. +Chapter +I was threeandtwenty years of age. Not another word had I heard +to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my +twentythird birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnard's Inn +more than a year, and lived in the Temple. Our chambers were in +Gardencourt, down by the river. +Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our original +relations, though we continued on the best terms. Notwithstanding my +inability to settle to anything which I hope arose out of the +restless and incomplete tenure on which I held my means I had a +taste for reading, and read regularly so many hours a day. That +matter of Herbert's was still progressing, and everything with me +was as I have brought it down to the close of the last preceding +chapter. +Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. I was alone, +and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious, long +hoping that tomorrow or next week would clear my way, and long +disappointed, I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response +of my friend. +It was wretched weather stormy and wet, stormy and wet and mud, +mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil +had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as +if in the East there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious +had been the gusts, that high buildings in town had had the lead +stripped off their roofs and in the country, trees had been torn +up, and sails of windmills carried away and gloomy accounts had +come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of +rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed +as I sat down to read had been the worst of all. +Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple since that +time, and it has not now so lonely a character as it had then, nor +is it so exposed to the river. We lived at the top of the last +house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that +night, like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the +rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought, +raising my eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied +myself in a stormbeaten lighthouse. Occasionally, the smoke came +rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out into +such a night and when I set the doors open and looked down the +staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out and when I shaded my +face with my hands and looked through the black windows opening +them ever so little, was out of the question in the teeth of such +wind and rain I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out, +and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering, +and that the coal fires in barges on the river were being carried +away before the wind like redhot splashes in the rain. +I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book at +eleven o'clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul's, and all the many +churchclocks in the City some leading, some accompanying, some +following struck that hour. The sound was curiously flawed by the +wind and I was listening, and thinking how the wind assailed and +tore it, when I heard a footstep on the stair. +What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect it with the +footstep of my dead sister, matters not. It was past in a moment, +and I listened again, and heard the footstep stumble in coming on. +Remembering then, that the staircaselights were blown out, I took +up my readinglamp and went out to the stairhead. Whoever was +below had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet. +"There is some one down there, is there not?" I called out, looking +down. +"Yes," said a voice from the darkness beneath. +"What floor do you want?" +"The top. Mr. Pip." +"That is my name. There is nothing the matter?" +"Nothing the matter," returned the voice. And the man came on. +I stood with my lamp held out over the stairrail, and he came +slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a +book, and its circle of light was very contracted so that he was +in it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant, I had +seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an +incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of +me. +Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was +substantially dressed, but roughly like a voyager by sea. That he +had long irongrey hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was +a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and +hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last stair or +two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with a +stupid kind of amazement, that he was holding out both his hands to +me. +"Pray what is your business?" I asked him. +"My business?" he repeated, pausing. "Ah Yes. I will explain my +business, by your leave." +"Do you wish to come in?" +"Yes," he replied "I wish to come in, Master." +I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented +the sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in +his face. I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he +expected me to respond to it. But, I took him into the room I had +just left, and, having set the lamp on the table, asked him as +civilly as I could, to explain himself. +He looked about him with the strangest air an air of wondering +pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired and he +pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat. Then, I saw that his +head was furrowed and bald, and that the long irongrey hair grew +only on its sides. But, I saw nothing that in the least explained +him. On the contrary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out +both his hands to me. +"What do you mean?" said I, half suspecting him to be mad. +He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand +over his head. "It's disapinting to a man," he said, in a coarse +broken voice, "arter having looked for'ard so distant, and come so +fur but you're not to blame for that neither on us is to blame +for that. I'll speak in half a minute. Give me half a minute, +please." +He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered his +forehead with his large brown veinous hands. I looked at him +attentively then, and recoiled a little from him but I did not +know him. +"There's no one nigh," said he, looking over his shoulder "is +there?" +"Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of the +night, ask that question?" said I. +"You're a game one," he returned, shaking his head at me with a +deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most +exasperating "I'm glad you've grow'd up, a game one But don't +catch hold of me. You'd be sorry arterwards to have done it." +I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him Even +yet, I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him If the +wind and the rain had driven away the intervening years, had +scattered all the intervening objects, had swept us to the +churchyard where we first stood face to face on such different +levels, I could not have known my convict more distinctly than I +knew him now as he sat in the chair before the fire. No need to +take a file from his pocket and show it to me no need to take the +handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head no need to +hug himself with both his arms, and take a shivering turn across +the room, looking back at me for recognition. I knew him before he +gave me one of those aids, though, a moment before, I had not been +conscious of remotely suspecting his identity. +He came back to where I stood, and again held out both his hands. +Not knowing what to do for, in my astonishment I had lost my +selfpossession I reluctantly gave him my hands. He grasped them +heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held +them. +"You acted noble, my boy," said he. "Noble, Pip And I have never +forgot it" +At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace me, I +laid a hand upon his breast and put him away. +"Stay" said I. "Keep off If you are grateful to me for what I did +when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your gratitude by +mending your way of life. If you have come here to thank me, it was +not necessary. Still, however you have found me out, there must be +something good in the feeling that has brought you here, and I will +not repulse you but surely you must understand that I" +My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed look +at me, that the words died away on my tongue. +"You was a saying," he observed, when we had confronted one another +in silence, "that surely I must understand. What, surely must I +understand?" +"That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you of +long ago, under these different circumstances. I am glad to believe +you have repented and recovered yourself. I am glad to tell you so. +I am glad that, thinking I deserve to be thanked, you have come to +thank me. But our ways are different ways, none the less. You are +wet, and you look weary. Will you drink something before you go?" +He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, keenly +observant of me, biting a long end of it. "I think," he answered, +still with the end at his mouth and still observant of me, "that I +will drink I thank you afore I go." +There was a tray ready on a sidetable. I brought it to the table +near the fire, and asked him what he would have? He touched one of +the bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I made him some +hot rumandwater. I tried to keep my hand steady while I did so, +but his look at me as he leaned back in his chair with the long +draggled end of his neckerchief between his teeth evidently +forgotten made my hand very difficult to master. When at last I +put the glass to him, I saw with amazement that his eyes were full +of tears. +Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I +wished him gone. But I was softened by the softened aspect of the +man, and felt a touch of reproach. "I hope," said I, hurriedly +putting something into a glass for myself, and drawing a chair to +the table, "that you will not think I spoke harshly to you just +now. I had no intention of doing it, and I am sorry for it if I +did. I wish you well, and happy" +As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at the end +of his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when he opened it, and +stretched out his hand. I gave him mine, and then he drank, and +drew his sleeve across his eyes and forehead. +"How are you living?" I asked him. +"I've been a sheepfarmer, stockbreeder, other trades besides, +away in the new world," said he "many a thousand mile of stormy +water off from this." +"I hope you have done well?" +"I've done wonderfully well. There's others went out alonger me as +has done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me. I'm +famous for it." +"I am glad to hear it." +"I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy." +Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in +which they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just come +into my mind. +"Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me," I inquired, +"since he undertook that trust?" +"Never set eyes upon him. I warn't likely to it." +"He came faithfully, and he brought me the two onepound notes. I +was a poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were a +little fortune. But, like you, I have done well since, and you must +let me pay them back. You can put them to some other poor boy's +use." I took out my purse. +He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it, and +he watched me as I separated two onepound notes from its contents. +They were clean and new, and I spread them out and handed them over +to him. Still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded +them longwise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp, +and dropped the ashes into the tray. +"May I make so bold," he said then, with a smile that was like a +frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, "as ask you how you +have done well, since you and me was out on them lone shivering +marshes?" +"How?" +"Ah" +He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire, +with his heavy brown hand on the mantelshelf. He put a foot up to +the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam but, +he neither looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at +me. It was only now that I began to tremble. +When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were +without sound, I forced myself to tell him though I could not do +it distinctly, that I had been chosen to succeed to some property. +"Might a mere warmint ask what property?" said he. +I faltered, "I don't know." +"Might a mere warmint ask whose property?" said he. +I faltered again, "I don't know." +"Could I make a guess, I wonder," said the Convict, "at your income +since you come of age As to the first figure now. Five?" +With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I +rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it, +looking wildly at him. +"Concerning a guardian," he went on. "There ought to have been some +guardian, or suchlike, whiles you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe. +As to the first letter of that lawyer's name now. Would it be J?" +All the truth of my position came flashing on me and its +disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, +rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had +to struggle for every breath I drew. +"Put it," he resumed, "as the employer of that lawyer whose name +begun with a J, and might be Jaggers put it as he had come over +sea to Portsmouth, and had landed there, and had wanted to come on +to you. 'However, you have found me out,' you says just now. Well +However, did I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a +person in London, for particulars of your address. That person's +name? Why, Wemmick." +I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my +life. I stood, with a hand on the chairback and a hand on my +breast, where I seemed to be suffocating I stood so, looking +wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair, when the room began to +surge and turn. He caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me up +against the cushions, and bent on one knee before me bringing the +face that I now well remembered, and that I shuddered at, very near +to mine. +"Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you It's me wot has +done it I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that +guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I +spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that +you should live smooth I worked hard, that you should be above +work. What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a +obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there +hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that +he could make a gentleman and, Pip, you're him" +The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the +repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been +exceeded if he had been some terrible beast. +"Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son more to +me nor any son. I've put away money, only for you to spend. When I +was a hiredout shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but +faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men's and women's faces wos +like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I +was aeating my dinner or my supper, and I says, 'Here's the boy +again, alooking at me whiles I eats and drinks' I see you there a +many times, as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. 'Lord +strike me dead' I says each time and I goes out in the air to +say it under the open heavens 'but wot, if I gets liberty and +money, I'll make that boy a gentleman' And I done it. Why, look at +you, dear boy Look at these here lodgings o'yourn, fit for a lord +A lord? Ah You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat +'em" +In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been +nearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this. It +was the one grain of relief I had. +"Look'ee here" he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and +turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his +touch as if he had been a snake, "a gold 'un and a beauty that's a +gentleman's, I hope A diamond all set round with rubies that's a +gentleman's, I hope Look at your linen fine and beautiful Look +at your clothes better ain't to be got And your books too," +turning his eyes round the room, "mounting up, on their shelves, by +hundreds And you read 'em don't you? I see you'd been a reading +of 'em when I come in. Ha, ha, ha You shall read 'em to me, dear +boy And if they're in foreign languages wot I don't understand, I +shall be just as proud as if I did." +Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my +blood ran cold within me. +"Don't you mind talking, Pip," said he, after again drawing his +sleeve over his eyes and forehead, as the click came in his throat +which I well remembered and he was all the more horrible to me +that he was so much in earnest "you can't do better nor keep +quiet, dear boy. You ain't looked slowly forward to this as I have +you wosn't prepared for this, as I wos. But didn't you never think +it might be me?" +"O no, no, no," I returned, "Never, never" +"Well, you see it wos me, and singlehanded. Never a soul in it but +my own self and Mr. Jaggers." +"Was there no one else?" I asked. +"No," said he, with a glance of surprise "who else should there +be? And, dear boy, how good looking you have growed There's bright +eyes somewheres eh? Isn't there bright eyes somewheres, wot you +love the thoughts on?" +O Estella, Estella +"They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy 'em. Not that a +gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can't win 'em off of his +own game but money shall back you Let me finish wot I was a +telling you, dear boy. From that there hut and that there +hiringout, I got money left me by my master which died, and had +been the same as me, and got my liberty and went for myself. In +every single thing I went for, I went for you. 'Lord strike a +blight upon it,' I says, wotever it was I went for, 'if it ain't +for him' It all prospered wonderful. As I giv' you to understand +just now, I'm famous for it. It was the money left me, and the +gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers all for +you when he first come arter you, agreeable to my letter." +O, that he had never come That he had left me at the forge far +from contented, yet, by comparison happy +"And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look'ee here, to +know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of +them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking +what do I say? I says to myself, 'I'm making a better gentleman nor +ever you'll be' When one of 'em says to another, 'He was a +convict, a few year ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for +all he's lucky,' what do I say? I says to myself, 'If I ain't a +gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, I'm the owner of such. +All on you owns stock and land which on you owns a broughtup +London gentleman?' This way I kep myself agoing. And this way I +held steady afore my mind that I would for certain come one day and +see my boy, and make myself known to him, on his own ground." +He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought that +for anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood. +"It warn't easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it warn't +safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held, +for I was determined, and my mind firm made up. At last I done it. +Dear boy, I done it" +I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. Throughout, I +had seemed to myself to attend more to the wind and the rain than +to him even now, I could not separate his voice from those voices, +though those were loud and his was silent. +"Where will you put me?" he asked, presently. "I must be put +somewheres, dear boy." +"To sleep?" said I. +"Yes. And to sleep long and sound," he answered "for I've been +seatossed and seawashed, months and months." +"My friend and companion," said I, rising from the sofa, "is +absent you must have his room." +"He won't come back tomorrow will he?" +"No," said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of my utmost +efforts "not tomorrow." +"Because, look'ee here, dear boy," he said, dropping his voice, and +laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner, "caution +is necessary." +"How do you mean? Caution?" +"By G , it's Death" +"What's death?" +"I was sent for life. It's death to come back. There's been +overmuch coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be +hanged if took." +Nothing was needed but this the wretched man, after loading +wretched me with his gold and silver chains for years, had risked +his life to come to me, and I held it there in my keeping If I had +loved him instead of abhorring him if I had been attracted to him +by the strongest admiration and affection, instead of shrinking +from him with the strongest repugnance it could have been no +worse. On the contrary, it would have been better, for his +preservation would then have naturally and tenderly addressed my +heart. +My first care was to close the shutters, so that no light might be +seen from without, and then to close and make fast the doors. While +I did so, he stood at the table drinking rum and eating biscuit +and when I saw him thus engaged, I saw my convict on the marshes at +his meal again. It almost seemed to me as if he must stoop down +presently, to file at his leg. +When I had gone into Herbert's room, and had shut off any other +communication between it and the staircase than through the room in +which our conversation had been held, I asked him if he would go to +bed? He said yes, but asked me for some of my "gentleman's linen" +to put on in the morning. I brought it out, and laid it ready for +him, and my blood again ran cold when he again took me by both +hands to give me good night. +I got away from him, without knowing how I did it, and mended the +fire in the room where we had been together, and sat down by it, +afraid to go to bed. For an hour or more, I remained too stunned to +think and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to +know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was +gone to pieces. +Miss Havisham's intentions towards me, all a mere dream Estella +not designed for me I only suffered in Satis House as a +convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a +mechanical heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand +those were the first smarts I had. But, sharpest and deepest pain +of all it was for the convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes, +and liable to be taken out of those rooms where I sat thinking, and +hanged at the Old Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe. +I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone back +to Biddy now, for any consideration simply, I suppose, because my +sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every +consideration. No wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort +that I should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity but +I could never, never, undo what I had done. +In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers. Twice, I +could have sworn there was a knocking and whispering at the outer +door. With these fears upon me, I began either to imagine or recall +that I had had mysterious warnings of this man's approach. That, +for weeks gone by, I had passed faces in the streets which I had +thought like his. That, these likenesses had grown more numerous, +as he, coming over the sea, had drawn nearer. That, his wicked +spirit had somehow sent these messengers to mine, and that now on +this stormy night he was as good as his word, and with me. +Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection that I had +seen him with my childish eyes to be a desperately violent man +that I had heard that other convict reiterate that he had tried to +murder him that I had seen him down in the ditch tearing and +fighting like a wild beast. Out of such remembrances I brought into +the light of the fire, a halfformed terror that it might not be +safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild solitary +night. This dilated until it filled the room, and impelled me to +take a candle and go in and look at my dreadful burden. +He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his face was set +and lowering in his sleep. But he was asleep, and quietly too, +though he had a pistol lying on the pillow. Assured of this, I +softly removed the key to the outside of his door, and turned it on +him before I again sat down by the fire. Gradually I slipped from +the chair and lay on the floor. When I awoke, without having parted +in my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the clocks of +the Eastward churches were striking five, the candles were wasted +out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the thick +black darkness. +THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS. +Chapter +It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to ensure +so far as I could the safety of my dreaded visitor for, this +thought pressing on me when I awoke, held other thoughts in a +confused concourse at a distance. +The impossibility of keeping him concealed in the chambers was +selfevident. It could not be done, and the attempt to do it would +inevitably engender suspicion. True, I had no Avenger in my service +now, but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female, assisted +by an animated ragbag whom she called her niece, and to keep a +room secret from them would be to invite curiosity and +exaggeration. They both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed +to their chronically looking in at keyholes, and they were always +at hand when not wanted indeed that was their only reliable +quality besides larceny. Not to get up a mystery with these people, +I resolved to announce in the morning that my uncle had +unexpectedly come from the country. +This course I decided on while I was yet groping about in the +darkness for the means of getting a light. Not stumbling on the +means after all, I was fain to go out to the adjacent Lodge and get +the watchman there to come with his lantern. Now, in groping my way +down the black staircase I fell over something, and that something +was a man crouching in a corner. +As the man made no answer when I asked him what he did there, but +eluded my touch in silence, I ran to the Lodge and urged the +watchman to come quickly telling him of the incident on the way +back. The wind being as fierce as ever, we did not care to endanger +the light in the lantern by rekindling the extinguished lamps on +the staircase, but we examined the staircase from the bottom to the +top and found no one there. It then occurred to me as possible that +the man might have slipped into my rooms so, lighting my candle at +the watchman's, and leaving him standing at the door, I examined +them carefully, including the room in which my dreaded guest lay +asleep. All was quiet, and assuredly no other man was in those +chambers. +It troubled me that there should have been a lurker on the stairs, +on that night of all nights in the year, and I asked the watchman, +on the chance of eliciting some hopeful explanation as I handed him +a dram at the door, whether he had admitted at his gate any +gentleman who had perceptibly been dining out? Yes, he said at +different times of the night, three. One lived in Fountain Court, +and the other two lived in the Lane, and he had seen them all go +home. Again, the only other man who dwelt in the house of which my +chambers formed a part, had been in the country for some weeks and +he certainly had not returned in the night, because we had seen his +door with his seal on it as we came upstairs. +"The night being so bad, sir," said the watchman, as he gave me +back my glass, "uncommon few have come in at my gate. Besides them +three gentlemen that I have named, I don't call to mind another +since about eleven o'clock, when a stranger asked for you." +"My uncle," I muttered. "Yes." +"You saw him, sir?" +"Yes. Oh yes." +"Likewise the person with him?" +"Person with him" I repeated. +"I judged the person to be with him," returned the watchman. "The +person stopped, when he stopped to make inquiry of me, and the +person took this way when he took this way." +"What sort of person?" +The watchman had not particularly noticed he should say a working +person to the best of his belief, he had a dustcoloured kind of +clothes on, under a dark coat. The watchman made more light of the +matter than I did, and naturally not having my reason for +attaching weight to it. +When I had got rid of him, which I thought it well to do without +prolonging explanations, my mind was much troubled by these two +circumstances taken together. Whereas they were easy of innocent +solution apart as, for instance, some dinerout or dinerathome, +who had not gone near this watchman's gate, might have strayed to +my staircase and dropped asleep there and my nameless visitor +might have brought some one with him to show him the way still, +joined, they had an ugly look to one as prone to distrust and fear +as the changes of a few hours had made me. +I lighted my fire, which burnt with a raw pale flare at that time +of the morning, and fell into a doze before it. I seemed to have +been dozing a whole night when the clocks struck six. As there was +full an hour and a half between me and daylight, I dozed again +now, waking up uneasily, with prolix conversations about nothing, +in my ears now, making thunder of the wind in the chimney at +length, falling off into a profound sleep from which the daylight +woke me with a start. +All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, +nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was +greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale +sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon +have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out +at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue when I walked from +room to room when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, +waiting for my laundress to appear I thought how miserable I was, +but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of +the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it. +At last, the old woman and the niece came in the latter with a +head not easily distinguishable from her dusty broom and +testified surprise at sight of me and the fire. To whom I imparted +how my uncle had come in the night and was then asleep, and how the +breakfast preparations were to be modified accordingly. Then, I +washed and dressed while they knocked the furniture about and made +a dust and so, in a sort of dream or sleepwaking, I found myself +sitting by the fire again, waiting for Him to come to +breakfast. +Byandby, his door opened and he came out. I could not bring +myself to bear the sight of him, and I thought he had a worse look +by daylight. +"I do not even know," said I, speaking low as he took his seat at +the table, "by what name to call you. I have given out that you are +my uncle." +"That's it, dear boy Call me uncle." +"You assumed some name, I suppose, on board ship?" +"Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis." +"Do you mean to keep that name?" +"Why, yes, dear boy, it's as good as another unless you'd like +another." +"What is your real name?" I asked him in a whisper. +"Magwitch," he answered, in the same tone "chrisen'd Abel." +"What were you brought up to be?" +"A warmint, dear boy." +He answered quite seriously, and used the word as if it denoted +some profession. +"When you came into the Temple last night" said I, pausing to +wonder whether that could really have been last night, which seemed +so long ago. +"Yes, dear boy?" +"When you came in at the gate and asked the watchman the way here, +had you any one with you?" +"With me? No, dear boy." +"But there was some one there?" +"I didn't take particular notice," he said, dubiously, "not knowing +the ways of the place. But I think there was a person, too, come in +alonger me." +"Are you known in London?" +"I hope not" said he, giving his neck a jerk with his forefinger +that made me turn hot and sick. +"Were you known in London, once?" +"Not over and above, dear boy. I was in the provinces mostly." +"Were you tried in London?" +"Which time?" said he, with a sharp look. +"The last time." +He nodded. "First knowed Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers was for me." +It was on my lips to ask him what he was tried for, but he took up +a knife, gave it a flourish, and with the words, "And what I done +is worked out and paid for" fell to at his breakfast. +He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and all his +actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some of his teeth had +failed him since I saw him eat on the marshes, and as he turned his +food in his mouth, and turned his head sideways to bring his +strongest fangs to bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry old +dog. If I had begun with any appetite, he would have taken it away, +and I should have sat much as I did repelled from him by an +insurmountable aversion, and gloomily looking at the cloth. +"I'm a heavy grubber, dear boy," he said, as a polite kind of +apology when he made an end of his meal, "but I always was. If it +had been in my constitution to be a lighter grubber, I might ha' +got into lighter trouble. Similarly, I must have my smoke. When I +was first hired out as shepherd t'other side the world, it's my +belief I should ha' turned into a molloncollymad sheep myself, if +I hadn't a had my smoke." +As he said so, he got up from the table, and putting his hand into the +breast of the peacoat he wore, brought out a short black pipe, and +a handful of loose tobacco of the kind that is called Negrohead. +Having filled his pipe, he put the surplus tobacco back again, as +if his pocket were a drawer. Then, he took a live coal from the +fire with the tongs, and lighted his pipe at it, and then turned +round on the hearthrug with his back to the fire, and went through +his favourite action of holding out both his hands for mine. +"And this," said he, dandling my hands up and down in his, as he +puffed at his pipe "and this is the gentleman what I made The +real genuine One It does me good fur to look at you, Pip. All I +stip'late, is, to stand by and look at you, dear boy" +I released my hands as soon as I could, and found that I was +beginning slowly to settle down to the contemplation of my +condition. What I was chained to, and how heavily, became +intelligible to me, as I heard his hoarse voice, and sat looking up +at his furrowed bald head with its iron grey hair at the sides. +"I mustn't see my gentleman a footing it in the mire of the +streets there mustn't be no mud on his boots. My gentleman must +have horses, Pip Horses to ride, and horses to drive, and horses +for his servant to ride and drive as well. Shall colonists have +their horses and blood 'uns, if you please, good Lord and not my +London gentleman? No, no. We'll show 'em another pair of shoes than +that, Pip won't us?" +He took out of his pocket a great thick pocketbook, bursting with +papers, and tossed it on the table. +"There's something worth spending in that there book, dear boy. +It's yourn. All I've got ain't mine it's yourn. Don't you be +afeerd on it. There's more where that come from. I've come to the +old country fur to see my gentleman spend his money like a +gentleman. That'll be my pleasure. My pleasure 'ull be fur to see +him do it. And blast you all" he wound up, looking round the room +and snapping his fingers once with a loud snap, "blast you every +one, from the judge in his wig, to the colonist a stirring up the +dust, I'll show a better gentleman than the whole kit on you put +together" +"Stop" said I, almost in a frenzy of fear and dislike, "I want to +speak to you. I want to know what is to be done. I want to know how +you are to be kept out of danger, how long you are going to stay, +what projects you have." +"Look'ee here, Pip," said he, laying his hand on my arm in a +suddenly altered and subdued manner "first of all, look'ee here. I +forgot myself half a minute ago. What I said was low that's what +it was low. Look'ee here, Pip. Look over it. I ain't agoing to be +low." +"First," I resumed, halfgroaning, "what precautions can be taken +against your being recognized and seized?" +"No, dear boy," he said, in the same tone as before, "that don't go +first. Lowness goes first. I ain't took so many years to make a +gentleman, not without knowing what's due to him. Look'ee here, +Pip. I was low that's what I was low. Look over it, dear boy." +Some sense of the grimlyludicrous moved me to a fretful laugh, as +I replied, "I have looked over it. In Heaven's name, don't harp +upon it" +"Yes, but look'ee here," he persisted. "Dear boy, I ain't come so +fur, not fur to be low. Now, go on, dear boy. You was asaying" +"How are you to be guarded from the danger you have incurred?" +"Well, dear boy, the danger ain't so great. Without I was informed +agen, the danger ain't so much to signify. There's Jaggers, and +there's Wemmick, and there's you. Who else is there to inform?" +"Is there no chance person who might identify you in the street?" +said I. +"Well," he returned, "there ain't many. Nor yet I don't intend to +advertise myself in the newspapers by the name of A. M. come back +from Botany Bay and years have rolled away, and who's to gain by +it? Still, look'ee here, Pip. If the danger had been fifty times as +great, I should ha' come to see you, mind you, just the same." +"And how long do you remain?" +"How long?" said he, taking his black pipe from his mouth, and +dropping his jaw as he stared at me. "I'm not agoing back. I've +come for good." +"Where are you to live?" said I. "What is to be done with you? +Where will you be safe?" +"Dear boy," he returned, "there's disguising wigs can be bought for +money, and there's hair powder, and spectacles, and black clothes +shorts and what not. Others has done it safe afore, and what others +has done afore, others can do agen. As to the where and how of +living, dear boy, give me your own opinions on it." +"You take it smoothly now," said I, "but you were very serious last +night, when you swore it was Death." +"And so I swear it is Death," said he, putting his pipe back in his +mouth, "and Death by the rope, in the open street not fur from +this, and it's serious that you should fully understand it to be +so. What then, when that's once done? Here I am. To go back now, +'ud be as bad as to stand ground worse. Besides, Pip, I'm here, +because I've meant it by you, years and years. As to what I dare, +I'm a old bird now, as has dared all manner of traps since first he +was fledged, and I'm not afeerd to perch upon a scarecrow. If +there's Death hid inside of it, there is, and let him come out, and +I'll face him, and then I'll believe in him and not afore. And now +let me have a look at my gentleman agen." +Once more, he took me by both hands and surveyed me with an air of +admiring proprietorship smoking with great complacency all the +while. +It appeared to me that I could do no better than secure him some +quiet lodging hard by, of which he might take possession when +Herbert returned whom I expected in two or three days. That the +secret must be confided to Herbert as a matter of unavoidable +necessity, even if I could have put the immense relief I should +derive from sharing it with him out of the question, was plain to +me. But it was by no means so plain to Mr. Provis I resolved to +call him by that name, who reserved his consent to Herbert's +participation until he should have seen him and formed a favourable +judgment of his physiognomy. "And even then, dear boy," said he, +pulling a greasy little clasped black Testament out of his pocket, +"we'll have him on his oath." +To state that my terrible patron carried this little black book +about the world solely to swear people on in cases of emergency, +would be to state what I never quite established but this I can +say, that I never knew him put it to any other use. The book itself +had the appearance of having been stolen from some court of +justice, and perhaps his knowledge of its antecedents, combined +with his own experience in that wise, gave him a reliance on its +powers as a sort of legal spell or charm. On this first occasion of +his producing it, I recalled how he had made me swear fidelity in +the churchyard long ago, and how he had described himself last +night as always swearing to his resolutions in his solitude. +As he was at present dressed in a seafaring slop suit, in which he +looked as if he had some parrots and cigars to dispose of, I next +discussed with him what dress he should wear. He cherished an +extraordinary belief in the virtues of "shorts" as a disguise, and +had in his own mind sketched a dress for himself that would have +made him something between a dean and a dentist. It was with +considerable difficulty that I won him over to the assumption of a +dress more like a prosperous farmer's and we arranged that he +should cut his hair close, and wear a little powder. Lastly, as he +had not yet been seen by the laundress or her niece, he was to keep +himself out of their view until his change of dress was made. +It would seem a simple matter to decide on these precautions but +in my dazed, not to say distracted, state, it took so long, that I +did not get out to further them, until two or three in the +afternoon. He was to remain shut up in the chambers while I was +gone, and was on no account to open the door. +There being to my knowledge a respectable lodginghouse in +Essexstreet, the back of which looked into the Temple, and was +almost within hail of my windows, I first of all repaired to that +house, and was so fortunate as to secure the second floor for my +uncle, Mr. Provis. I then went from shop to shop, making such +purchases as were necessary to the change in his appearance. This +business transacted, I turned my face, on my own account, to Little +Britain. Mr. Jaggers was at his desk, but, seeing me enter, got up +immediately and stood before his fire. +"Now, Pip," said he, "be careful." +"I will, sir," I returned. For, coming along I had thought well of +what I was going to say. +"Don't commit yourself," said Mr. Jaggers, "and don't commit any +one. You understand any one. Don't tell me anything I don't want +to know anything I am not curious." +Of course I saw that he knew the man was come. +"I merely want, Mr. Jaggers," said I, "to assure myself that what I +have been told, is true. I have no hope of its being untrue, but at +least I may verify it." +Mr. Jaggers nodded. "But did you say 'told' or 'informed'?" he asked +me, with his head on one side, and not looking at me, but looking +in a listening way at the floor. "Told would seem to imply verbal +communication. You can't have verbal communication with a man in +New South Wales, you know." +"I will say, informed, Mr. Jaggers." +"Good." +"I have been informed by a person named Abel Magwitch, that he is +the benefactor so long unknown to me." +"That is the man," said Mr. Jaggers, " in New South Wales." +"And only he?" said I. +"And only he," said Mr. Jaggers. +"I am not so unreasonable, sir, as to think you at all responsible +for my mistakes and wrong conclusions but I always supposed it was +Miss Havisham." +"As you say, Pip," returned Mr. Jaggers, turning his eyes upon me +coolly, and taking a bite at his forefinger, "I am not at all +responsible for that." +"And yet it looked so like it, sir," I pleaded with a downcast +heart. +"Not a particle of evidence, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, shaking his +head and gathering up his skirts. "Take nothing on its looks take +everything on evidence. There's no better rule." +"I have no more to say," said I, with a sigh, after standing silent +for a little while. "I have verified my information, and there's an +end." +"And Magwitch in New South Wales having at last disclosed +himself," said Mr. Jaggers, "you will comprehend, Pip, how rigidly +throughout my communication with you, I have always adhered to the +strict line of fact. There has never been the least departure from +the strict line of fact. You are quite aware of that?" +"Quite, sir." +"I communicated to Magwitch in New South Wales when he first +wrote to me from New South Wales the caution that he must not +expect me ever to deviate from the strict line of fact. I also +communicated to him another caution. He appeared to me to have +obscurely hinted in his letter at some distant idea he had of +seeing you in England here. I cautioned him that I must hear no +more of that that he was not at all likely to obtain a pardon +that he was expatriated for the term of his natural life and that +his presenting himself in this country would be an act of felony, +rendering him liable to the extreme penalty of the law. I gave +Magwitch that caution," said Mr. Jaggers, looking hard at me "I +wrote it to New South Wales. He guided himself by it, no doubt." +"No doubt," said I. +"I have been informed by Wemmick," pursued Mr. Jaggers, still +looking hard at me, "that he has received a letter, under date +Portsmouth, from a colonist of the name of Purvis, or" +"Or Provis," I suggested. +"Or Provis thank you, Pip. Perhaps it is Provis? Perhaps you know +it's Provis?" +"Yes," said I. +"You know it's Provis. A letter, under date Portsmouth, from a +colonist of the name of Provis, asking for the particulars of your +address, on behalf of Magwitch. Wemmick sent him the particulars, I +understand, by return of post. Probably it is through Provis that +you have received the explanation of Magwitch in New South +Wales?" +"It came through Provis," I replied. +"Good day, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, offering his hand "glad to have +seen you. In writing by post to Magwitch in New South Wales or +in communicating with him through Provis, have the goodness to +mention that the particulars and vouchers of our long account shall +be sent to you, together with the balance for there is still a +balance remaining. Good day, Pip" +We shook hands, and he looked hard at me as long as he could see +me. I turned at the door, and he was still looking hard at me, +while the two vile casts on the shelf seemed to be trying to get +their eyelids open, and to force out of their swollen throats, "O, +what a man he is" +Wemmick was out, and though he had been at his desk he could have +done nothing for me. I went straight back to the Temple, where I +found the terrible Provis drinking rumandwater and smoking +negrohead, in safety. +Next day the clothes I had ordered, all came home, and he put them +on. Whatever he put on, became him less it dismally seemed to me +than what he had worn before. To my thinking, there was something +in him that made it hopeless to attempt to disguise him. The more I +dressed him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like +the slouching fugitive on the marshes. This effect on my anxious +fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old face and manner +growing more familiar to me but I believe too that he dragged one +of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that +from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man. +The influences of his solitary hutlife were upon him besides, and +gave him a savage air that no dress could tame added to these, +were the influences of his subsequent branded life among men, and, +crowning all, his consciousness that he was dodging and hiding now. +In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking +of brooding about, in a highshouldered reluctant style of taking +out his great hornhandled jackknife and wiping it on his legs and +cutting his food of lifting light glasses and cups to his lips, +as if they were clumsy pannikins of chopping a wedge off his +bread, and soaking up with it the last fragments of gravy round and +round his plate, as if to make the most of an allowance, and then +drying his fingerends on it, and then swallowing it in these +ways and a thousand other small nameless instances arising every +minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as +plain could be. +It had been his own idea to wear that touch of powder, and I had +conceded the powder after overcoming the shorts. But I can compare +the effect of it, when on, to nothing but the probable effect of +rouge upon the dead so awful was the manner in which everything in +him that it was most desirable to repress, started through that +thin layer of pretence, and seemed to come blazing out at the crown +of his head. It was abandoned as soon as tried, and he wore his +grizzled hair cut short. +Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, of the +dreadful mystery that he was to me. When he fell asleep of an +evening, with his knotted hands clenching the sides of the +easychair, and his bald head tattooed with deep wrinkles falling +forward on his breast, I would sit and look at him, wondering what +he had done, and loading him with all the crimes in the Calendar, +until the impulse was powerful on me to start up and fly from him. +Every hour so increased my abhorrence of him, that I even think I +might have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of being so +haunted, notwithstanding all he had done for me, and the risk he +ran, but for the knowledge that Herbert must soon come back. Once, +I actually did start out of bed in the night, and begin to dress +myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him there +with everything else I possessed, and enlist for India as a private +soldier. +I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in those +lonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the wind +and the rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have been taken +and hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be, +and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to my +horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated kind of +patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own a game that I +never saw before or since, and in which he recorded his winnings by +sticking his jackknife into the table when he was not engaged in +either of these pursuits, he would ask me to read to him "Foreign +language, dear boy" While I complied, he, not comprehending a +single word, would stand before the fire surveying me with the air +of an Exhibitor, and I would see him, between the fingers of the +hand with which I shaded my face, appealing in dumb show to the +furniture to take notice of my proficiency. The imaginary student +pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not +more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and +recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired +me and the fonder he was of me. +This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a year. It +lasted about five days. Expecting Herbert all the time, I dared not +go out, except when I took Provis for an airing after dark. At +length, one evening when dinner was over and I had dropped into a +slumber quite worn out for my nights had been agitated and my +rest broken by fearful dreams I was roused by the welcome +footstep on the staircase. Provis, who had been asleep too, +staggered up at the noise I made, and in an instant I saw his +jackknife shining in his hand. +"Quiet It's Herbert" I said and Herbert came bursting in, with +the airy freshness of six hundred miles of France upon him. +"Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you, and +again how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelvemonth Why, so I +must have been, for you have grown quite thin and pale Handel, my +Halloa I beg your pardon." +He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking hands with me, +by seeing Provis. Provis, regarding him with a fixed attention, was +slowly putting up his jackknife, and groping in another pocket for +something else. +"Herbert, my dear friend," said I, shutting the double doors, while +Herbert stood staring and wondering, "something very strange has +happened. This is a visitor of mine." +"It's all right, dear boy" said Provis coming forward, with his +little clasped black book, and then addressing himself to Herbert. +"Take it in your right hand. Lord strike you dead on the spot, if +ever you split in any way sumever Kiss it" +"Do so, as he wishes it," I said to Herbert. So, Herbert, looking +at me with a friendly uneasiness and amazement, complied, and +Provis immediately shaking hands with him, said, "Now you're on +your oath, you know. And never believe me on mine, if Pip shan't +make a gentleman on you" +Chapter +In vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment and disquiet +of Herbert, when he and I and Provis sat down before the fire, and +I recounted the whole of the secret. Enough, that I saw my own +feelings reflected in Herbert's face, and, not least among them, my +repugnance towards the man who had done so much for me. +What would alone have set a division between that man and us, if +there had been no other dividing circumstance, was his triumph in +my story. Saving his troublesome sense of having been "low' on one +occasion since his return on which point he began to hold forth +to Herbert, the moment my revelation was finished he had no +perception of the possibility of my finding any fault with my good +fortune. His boast that he had made me a gentleman, and that he had +come to see me support the character on his ample resources, was +made for me quite as much as for himself and that it was a highly +agreeable boast to both of us, and that we must both be very proud +of it, was a conclusion quite established in his own mind. +"Though, look'ee here, Pip's comrade," he said to Herbert, after +having discoursed for some time, "I know very well that once since +I come back for half a minute I've been low. I said to Pip, I +knowed as I had been low. But don't you fret yourself on that +score. I ain't made Pip a gentleman, and Pip ain't agoing to make +you a gentleman, not fur me not to know what's due to ye both. Dear +boy, and Pip's comrade, you two may count upon me always having a +genteel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since that half a minute +when I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled I am at the present time, +muzzled I ever will be." +Herbert said, "Certainly," but looked as if there were no specific +consolation in this, and remained perplexed and dismayed. We were +anxious for the time when he would go to his lodging, and leave us +together, but he was evidently jealous of leaving us together, and +sat late. It was midnight before I took him round to Essexstreet, +and saw him safely in at his own dark door. When it closed upon +him, I experienced the first moment of relief I had known since the +night of his arrival. +Never quite free from an uneasy remembrance of the man on the +stairs, I had always looked about me in taking my guest out after +dark, and in bringing him back and I looked about me now. +Difficult as it is in a large city to avoid the suspicion of being +watched, when the mind is conscious of danger in that regard, I +could not persuade myself that any of the people within sight cared +about my movements. The few who were passing, passed on their +several ways, and the street was empty when I turned back into the +Temple. Nobody had come out at the gate with us, nobody went in at +the gate with me. As I crossed by the fountain, I saw his lighted +back windows looking bright and quiet, and, when I stood for a few +moments in the doorway of the building where I lived, before going +up the stairs, Gardencourt was as still and lifeless as the +staircase was when I ascended it. +Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before, so +blessedly, what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken some +sound words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to consider +the question, What was to be done? +The chair that Provis had occupied still remaining where it had +stood for he had a barrack way with him of hanging about one +spot, in one unsettled manner, and going through one round of +observances with his pipe and his negrohead and his jackknife and +his pack of cards, and what not, as if it were all put down for him +on a slate I say, his chair remaining where it had stood, Herbert +unconsciously took it, but next moment started out of it, pushed it +away, and took another. He had no occasion to say, after that, that +he had conceived an aversion for my patron, neither had I occasion +to confess my own. We interchanged that confidence without shaping +a syllable. +"What," said I to Herbert, when he was safe in another chair, "what +is to be done?" +"My poor dear Handel," he replied, holding his head, "I am too +stunned to think." +"So was I, Herbert, when the blow first fell. Still, something must +be done. He is intent upon various new expenses horses, and +carriages, and lavish appearances of all kinds. He must be stopped +somehow." +"You mean that you can't accept" +"How can I?" I interposed, as Herbert paused. "Think of him Look at +him" +An involuntary shudder passed over both of us. +"Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he is +attached to me, strongly attached to me. Was there ever such a +fate" +"My poor dear Handel," Herbert repeated. +"Then," said I, "after all, stopping short here, never taking +another penny from him, think what I owe him already Then again I +am heavily in debt very heavily for me, who have now no +expectations and I have been bred to no calling, and I am fit for +nothing." +"Well, well, well" Herbert remonstrated. "Don't say fit for +nothing." +"What am I fit for? I know only one thing that I am fit for, and +that is, to go for a soldier. And I might have gone, my dear +Herbert, but for the prospect of taking counsel with your +friendship and affection." +Of course I broke down there and of course Herbert, beyond seizing +a warm grip of my hand, pretended not to know it. +"Anyhow, my dear Handel," said he presently, "soldiering won't do. +If you were to renounce this patronage and these favours, I suppose +you would do so with some faint hope of one day repaying what you +have already had. Not very strong, that hope, if you went +soldiering Besides, it's absurd. You would be infinitely better in +Clarriker's house, small as it is. I am working up towards a +partnership, you know." +Poor fellow He little suspected with whose money. +"But there is another question," said Herbert. "This is an ignorant +determined man, who has long had one fixed idea. More than that, he +seems to me I may misjudge him to be a man of a desperate and +fierce character." +"I know he is," I returned. "Let me tell you what evidence I have +seen of it." And I told him what I had not mentioned in my +narrative of that encounter with the other convict. +"See, then," said Herbert "think of this He comes here at the +peril of his life, for the realization of his fixed idea. In the +moment of realization, after all his toil and waiting, you cut the +ground from under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gains +worthless to him. Do you see nothing that he might do, under the +disappointment?" +"I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it, ever since the fatal +night of his arrival. Nothing has been in my thoughts so +distinctly, as his putting himself in the way of being taken." +"Then you may rely upon it," said Herbert, "that there would be +great danger of his doing it. That is his power over you as long as +he remains in England, and that would be his reckless course if you +forsook him." +I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had weighed upon +me from the first, and the working out of which would make me +regard myself, in some sort, as his murderer, that I could not rest +in my chair but began pacing to and fro. I said to Herbert, +meanwhile, that even if Provis were recognized and taken, in spite +of himself, I should be wretched as the cause, however innocently. +Yes even though I was so wretched in having him at large and near +me, and even though I would far far rather have worked at the forge +all the days of my life than I would ever have come to this +But there was no staving off the question, What was to be done? +"The first and the main thing to be done," said Herbert, "is to get +him out of England. You will have to go with him, and then he may +be induced to go." +"But get him where I will, could I prevent his coming back?" +"My good Handel, is it not obvious that with Newgate in the next +street, there must be far greater hazard in your breaking your mind +to him and making him reckless, here, than elsewhere. If a pretext +to get him away could be made out of that other convict, or out of +anything else in his life, now." +"There, again" said I, stopping before Herbert, with my open hands +held out, as if they contained the desperation of the case. "I know +nothing of his life. It has almost made me mad to sit here of a +night and see him before me, so bound up with my fortunes and +misfortunes, and yet so unknown to me, except as the miserable +wretch who terrified me two days in my childhood" +Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we slowly walked to +and fro together, studying the carpet. +"Handel," said Herbert, stopping, "you feel convinced that you can +take no further benefits from him do you?" +"Fully. Surely you would, too, if you were in my place?" +"And you feel convinced that you must break with him?" +"Herbert, can you ask me?" +"And you have, and are bound to have, that tenderness for the life +he has risked on your account, that you must save him, if possible, +from throwing it away. Then you must get him out of England before +you stir a finger to extricate yourself. That done, extricate +yourself, in Heaven's name, and we'll see it out together, dear old +boy." +It was a comfort to shake hands upon it, and walk up and down +again, with only that done. +"Now, Herbert," said I, "with reference to gaining some knowledge +of his history. There is but one way that I know of. I must ask him +pointblank." +"Yes. Ask him," said Herbert, "when we sit at breakfast in the +morning." For, he had said, on taking leave of Herbert, that he +would come to breakfast with us. +With this project formed, we went to bed. I had the wildest dreams +concerning him, and woke unrefreshed I woke, too, to recover the +fear which I had lost in the night, of his being found out as a +returned transport. Waking, I never lost that fear. +He came round at the appointed time, took out his jackknife, and +sat down to his meal. He was full of plans "for his gentleman's +coming out strong, and like a gentleman," and urged me to begin +speedily upon the pocketbook, which he had left in my possession. +He considered the chambers and his own lodging as temporary +residences, and advised me to look out at once for a "fashionable +crib" near Hyde Park, in which he could have "a shakedown". When +he had made an end of his breakfast, and was wiping his knife on +his leg, I said to him, without a word of preface +"After you were gone last night, I told my friend of the struggle +that the soldiers found you engaged in on the marshes, when we came +up. You remember?" +"Remember" said he. "I think so" +"We want to know something about that man and about you. It is +strange to know no more about either, and particularly you, than I +was able to tell last night. Is not this as good a time as another +for our knowing more?" +"Well" he said, after consideration. "You're on your oath, you +know, Pip's comrade?" +"Assuredly," replied Herbert. +"As to anything I say, you know," he insisted. "The oath applies to +all." +"I understand it to do so." +"And look'ee here Wotever I done, is worked out and paid for," he +insisted again. +"So be it." +He took out his black pipe and was going to fill it with negrohead, +when, looking at the tangle of tobacco in his hand, he seemed to +think it might perplex the thread of his narrative. He put it back +again, stuck his pipe in a buttonhole of his coat, spread a hand +on each knee, and, after turning an angry eye on the fire for a few +silent moments, looked round at us and said what follows. +Chapter +"Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not agoing fur to tell you my +life, like a song or a storybook. But to give it you short and +handy, I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and +out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. +There, you got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times +as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend. +"I've been done everything to, pretty well except hanged. I've +been locked up, as much as a silver teakettle. I've been carted +here and carted there, and put out of this town and put out of that +town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. +I've no more notion where I was born, than you have if so much. I +first become aware of myself, down in Essex, a thieving turnips for +my living. Summun had run away from me a man a tinker and +he'd took the fire with him, and left me wery cold. +"I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd Abel. How did I know +it? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be +chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies +together, only as the birds' names come out true, I supposed mine +did. +"So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul that see young Abel +Magwitch, with us little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at +him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, took +up, took up, to that extent that I reg'larly grow'd up took up. +"This is the way it was, that when I was a ragged little creetur as +much to be pitied as ever I see not that I looked in the glass, +for there warn't many insides of furnished houses known to me, I +got the name of being hardened. "This is a terrible hardened one," +they says to prison wisitors, picking out me. "May be said to live +in jails, this boy. "Then they looked at me, and I looked at them, +and they measured my head, some on 'em they had better ameasured +my stomach and others on 'em giv me tracts what I couldn't read, +and made me speeches what I couldn't understand. They always went +on agen me about the Devil. But what the Devil was I to do? I must +put something into my stomach, mustn't I? Howsomever, I'm a +getting low, and I know what's due. Dear boy and Pip's comrade, +don't you be afeerd of me being low. +"Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could +though that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the +question whether you would ha' been overready to give me work +yourselves a bit of a poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a +waggoner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most +things that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A +deserting soldier in a Traveller's Rest, what lay hid up to the +chin under a lot of taturs, learnt me to read and a travelling +Giant what signed his name at a penny a time learnt me to write. I +warn't locked up as often now as formerly, but I wore out my good +share of keymetal still. +"At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I got +acquainted wi' a man whose skull I'd crack wi' this poker, like the +claw of a lobster, if I'd got it on this hob. His right name was +Compeyson and that's the man, dear boy, what you see me apounding +in the ditch, according to what you truly told your comrade arter I +was gone last night. +"He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a +public boardingschool and had learning. He was a smooth one to +talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was +goodlooking too. It was the night afore the great race, when I +found him on the heath, in a booth that I know'd on. Him and some +more was a sitting among the tables when I went in, and the +landlord which had a knowledge of me, and was a sporting one +called him out, and said, 'I think this is a man that might suit +you' meaning I was. +"Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has +a watch and a chain and a ring and a breastpin and a handsome suit +of clothes. +"'To judge from appearances, you're out of luck,' says Compeyson to +me. +"'Yes, master, and I've never been in it much.' I had come out of +Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might +have been for something else but it warn't. +"'Luck changes,' says Compeyson 'perhaps yours is going to change.' +"I says, 'I hope it may be so. There's room.' +"'What can you do?' says Compeyson. +"'Eat and drink,' I says 'if you'll find the materials.' +"Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv me five +shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same place. +"I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and Compeyson took me +on to be his man and pardner. And what was Compeyson's business in +which we was to go pardners? Compeyson's business was the +swindling, handwriting forging, stolen banknote passing, and +suchlike. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, +and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let +another man in for, was Compeyson's business. He'd no more heart +than a iron file, he was as cold as death, and he had the head of +the Devil afore mentioned. +"There was another in with Compeyson, as was called Arthur not as +being so chrisen'd, but as a surname. He was in a Decline, and was +a shadow to look at. Him and Compeyson had been in a bad thing with +a rich lady some years afore, and they'd made a pot of money by it +but Compeyson betted and gamed, and he'd have run through the +king's taxes. So, Arthur was adying, and adying poor and with the +horrors on him, and Compeyson's wife which Compeyson kicked +mostly was ahaving pity on him when she could, and Compeyson was +ahaving pity on nothing and nobody. +"I might atook warning by Arthur, but I didn't and I won't +pretend I was partick'ler for where 'ud be the good on it, dear +boy and comrade? So I begun wi' Compeyson, and a poor tool I was in +his hands. Arthur lived at the top of Compeyson's house over nigh +Brentford it was, and Compeyson kept a careful account agen him +for board and lodging, in case he should ever get better to work it +out. But Arthur soon settled the account. The second or third time +as ever I see him, he come atearing down into Compeyson's parlour +late at night, in only a flannel gown, with his hair all in a +sweat, and he says to Compeyson's wife, 'Sally, she really is +upstairs alonger me, now, and I can't get rid of her. She's all in +white,' he says, 'wi' white flowers in her hair, and she's awful +mad, and she's got a shroud hanging over her arm, and she says +she'll put it on me at five in the morning.' +"Says Compeyson 'Why, you fool, don't you know she's got a living +body? And how should she be up there, without coming through the +door, or in at the window, and up the stairs?' +"'I don't know how she's there,' says Arthur, shivering dreadful +with the horrors, 'but she's standing in the corner at the foot of +the bed, awful mad. And over where her heart's brook you broke +it there's drops of blood.' +"Compeyson spoke hardy, but he was always a coward. 'Go up alonger +this drivelling sick man,' he says to his wife, 'and Magwitch, lend +her a hand, will you?' But he never come nigh himself. +"Compeyson's wife and me took him up to bed agen, and he raved most +dreadful. 'Why look at her' he cries out. 'She's ashaking the +shroud at me Don't you see her? Look at her eyes Ain't it awful to +see her so mad?' Next, he cries, 'She'll put it on me, and then I'm +done for Take it away from her, take it away' And then he catched +hold of us, and kep on atalking to her, and answering of her, till +I half believed I see her myself. +"Compeyson's wife, being used to him, giv him some liquor to get +the horrors off, and byandby he quieted. 'Oh, she's gone Has her +keeper been for her?' he says. 'Yes,' says Compeyson's wife. 'Did +you tell him to lock her and bar her in?' 'Yes.' 'And to take that +ugly thing away from her?' 'Yes, yes, all right.' 'You're a good +creetur,' he says, 'don't leave me, whatever you do, and thank +you' +"He rested pretty quiet till it might want a few minutes of five, +and then he starts up with a scream, and screams out, 'Here she +is She's got the shroud again. She's unfolding it. She's coming out +of the corner. She's coming to the bed. Hold me, both on you one +of each side don't let her touch me with it. Hah she missed me +that time. Don't let her throw it over my shoulders. Don't let her +lift me up to get it round me. She's lifting me up. Keep me down' +Then he lifted himself up hard, and was dead. +"Compeyson took it easy as a good riddance for both sides. Him and +me was soon busy, and first he swore me being ever artful on my +own book this here little black book, dear boy, what I swore your +comrade on. +"Not to go into the things that Compeyson planned, and I done +which 'ud take a week I'll simply say to you, dear boy, and Pip's +comrade, that that man got me into such nets as made me his black +slave. I was always in debt to him, always under his thumb, always +aworking, always agetting into danger. He was younger than me, +but he'd got craft, and he'd got learning, and he overmatched me +five hundred times told and no mercy. My Missis as I had the hard +time wi' Stop though I ain't brought her in" +He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had lost his place +in the book of his remembrance and he turned his face to the fire, +and spread his hands broader on his knees, and lifted them off and +put them on again. +"There ain't no need to go into it," he said, looking round once +more. "The time wi' Compeyson was a'most as hard a time as ever I +had that said, all's said. Did I tell you as I was tried, alone, +for misdemeanour, while with Compeyson?" +I answered, No. +"Well" he said, "I was, and got convicted. As to took up on +suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or five year +that it lasted but evidence was wanting. At last, me and Compeyson +was both committed for felony on a charge of putting stolen notes +in circulation and there was other charges behind. Compeyson says +to me, 'Separate defences, no communication,' and that was all. And +I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, except +what hung on my back, afore I could get Jaggers. +"When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a +gentleman Compeyson looked, wi' his curly hair and his black +clothes and his white pockethandkercher, and what a common sort of +a wretch I looked. When the prosecution opened and the evidence was +put short, aforehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and +how light on him. When the evidence was giv in the box, I noticed +how it was always me that had come for'ard, and could be swore to, +how it was always me that the money had been paid to, how it was +always me that had seemed to work the thing and get the profit. +But, when the defence come on, then I see the plan plainer for, +says the counsellor for Compeyson, 'My lord and gentlemen, here you +has afore you, side by side, two persons as your eyes can separate +wide one, the younger, well brought up, who will be spoke to as +such one, the elder, ill brought up, who will be spoke to as such +one, the younger, seldom if ever seen in these here transactions, +and only suspected t'other, the elder, always seen in 'em and +always wi'his guilt brought home. Can you doubt, if there is but +one in it, which is the one, and, if there is two in it, which is +much the worst one?' And suchlike. And when it come to character, +warn't it Compeyson as had been to the school, and warn't it his +schoolfellows as was in this position and in that, and warn't it +him as had been know'd by witnesses in such clubs and societies, +and nowt to his disadvantage? And warn't it me as had been tried +afore, and as had been know'd up hill and down dale in Bridewells +and LockUps? And when it come to speechmaking, warn't it +Compeyson as could speak to 'em wi' his face dropping every now and +then into his white pockethandkercher ah and wi' verses in his +speech, too and warn't it me as could only say, 'Gentlemen, this +man at my side is a most precious rascal'? And when the verdict +come, warn't it Compeyson as was recommended to mercy on account of +good character and bad company, and giving up all the information +he could agen me, and warn't it me as got never a word but Guilty? +And when I says to Compeyson, 'Once out of this court, I'll smash +that face of yourn' ain't it Compeyson as prays the Judge to be +protected, and gets two turnkeys stood betwixt us? And when we're +sentenced, ain't it him as gets seven year, and me fourteen, and +ain't it him as the Judge is sorry for, because he might a done so +well, and ain't it me as the Judge perceives to be a old offender +of wiolent passion, likely to come to worse?" +He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, but he +checked it, took two or three short breaths, swallowed as often, +and stretching out his hand towards me said, in a reassuring +manner, "I ain't agoing to be low, dear boy" +He had so heated himself that he took out his handkerchief and +wiped his face and head and neck and hands, before he could go on. +"I had said to Compeyson that I'd smash that face of his, and I +swore Lord smash mine to do it. We was in the same prisonship, +but I couldn't get at him for long, though I tried. At last I come +behind him and hit him on the cheek to turn him round and get a +smashing one at him, when I was seen and seized. The blackhole of +that ship warn't a strong one, to a judge of blackholes that could +swim and dive. I escaped to the shore, and I was a hiding among the +graves there, envying them as was in 'em and all over, when I first +see my boy" +He regarded me with a look of affection that made him almost +abhorrent to me again, though I had felt great pity for him. +"By my boy, I was giv to understand as Compeyson was out on them +marshes too. Upon my soul, I half believe he escaped in his terror, +to get quit of me, not knowing it was me as had got ashore. I +hunted him down. I smashed his face. 'And now,' says I 'as the +worst thing I can do, caring nothing for myself, I'll drag you +back.' And I'd have swum off, towing him by the hair, if it had +come to that, and I'd a got him aboard without the soldiers. +"Of course he'd much the best of it to the last his character was +so good. He had escaped when he was made halfwild by me and my +murderous intentions and his punishment was light. I was put in +irons, brought to trial again, and sent for life. I didn't stop for +life, dear boy and Pip's comrade, being here." +"He wiped himself again, as he had done before, and then slowly +took his tangle of tobacco from his pocket, and plucked his pipe +from his buttonhole, and slowly filled it, and began to smoke. +"Is he dead?" I asked, after a silence. +"Is who dead, dear boy?" +"Compeyson." +"He hopes I am, if he's alive, you may be sure," with a fierce +look. "I never heerd no more of him." +Herbert had been writing with his pencil in the cover of a book. He +softly pushed the book over to me, as Provis stood smoking with his +eyes on the fire, and I read in it +"Young Havisham's name was Arthur. Compeyson is the man who +professed to be Miss Havisham's lover." +I shut the book and nodded slightly to Herbert, and put the book +by but we neither of us said anything, and both looked at Provis +as he stood smoking by the fire. +Chapter +Why should I pause to ask how much of my shrinking from Provis +might be traced to Estella? Why should I loiter on my road, to +compare the state of mind in which I had tried to rid myself of the +stain of the prison before meeting her at the coachoffice, with +the state of mind in which I now reflected on the abyss between +Estella in her pride and beauty, and the returned transport whom I +harboured? The road would be none the smoother for it, the end +would be none the better for it, he would not be helped, nor I +extenuated. +A new fear had been engendered in my mind by his narrative or +rather, his narrative had given form and purpose to the fear that +was already there. If Compeyson were alive and should discover his +return, I could hardly doubt the consequence. That, Compeyson stood +in mortal fear of him, neither of the two could know much better +than I and that, any such man as that man had been described to +be, would hesitate to release himself for good from a dreaded enemy +by the safe means of becoming an informer, was scarcely to be +imagined. +Never had I breathed, and never would I breathe or so I resolved +a word of Estella to Provis. But, I said to Herbert that before I +could go abroad, I must see both Estella and Miss Havisham. This +was when we were left alone on the night of the day when Provis +told us his story. I resolved to go out to Richmond next day, and I +went. +On my presenting myself at Mrs. Brandley's, Estella's maid was +called to tell that Estella had gone into the country. Where? To +Satis House, as usual. Not as usual, I said, for she had never yet +gone there without me when was she coming back? There was an air +of reservation in the answer which increased my perplexity, and the +answer was, that her maid believed she was only coming back at all +for a little while. I could make nothing of this, except that it +was meant that I should make nothing of it, and I went home again +in complete discomfiture. +Another nightconsultation with Herbert after Provis was gone home +I always took him home, and always looked well about me, led us +to the conclusion that nothing should be said about going abroad +until I came back from Miss Havisham's. In the meantime, Herbert +and I were to consider separately what it would be best to say +whether we should devise any pretence of being afraid that he was +under suspicious observation or whether I, who had never yet been +abroad, should propose an expedition. We both knew that I had but +to propose anything, and he would consent. We agreed that his +remaining many days in his present hazard was not to be thought of. +Next day, I had the meanness to feign that I was under a binding +promise to go down to Joe but I was capable of almost any meanness +towards Joe or his name. Provis was to be strictly careful while I +was gone, and Herbert was to take the charge of him that I had +taken. I was to be absent only one night, and, on my return, the +gratification of his impatience for my starting as a gentleman on a +greater scale, was to be begun. It occurred to me then, and as I +afterwards found to Herbert also, that he might be best got away +across the water, on that pretence as, to make purchases, or the +like. +Having thus cleared the way for my expedition to Miss Havisham's, I +set off by the early morning coach before it was yet light, and was +out on the open countryroad when the day came creeping on, halting +and whimpering and shivering, and wrapped in patches of cloud and +rags of mist, like a beggar. When we drove up to the Blue Boar +after a drizzly ride, whom should I see come out under the gateway, +toothpick in hand, to look at the coach, but Bentley Drummle +As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see him. It was a +very lame pretence on both sides the lamer, because we both went +into the coffeeroom, where he had just finished his breakfast, and +where I ordered mine. It was poisonous to me to see him in the +town, for I very well knew why he had come there. +Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which had +nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of +coffee, pickles, fishsauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine, with +which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in +a highly irregular form, I sat at my table while he stood before +the fire. By degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he +stood before the fire, and I got up, determined to have my share of +it. I had to put my hand behind his legs for the poker when I went +up to the fireplace to stir the fire, but still pretended not to +know him. +"Is this a cut?" said Mr. Drummle. +"Oh" said I, poker in hand "it's you, is it? How do you do? I was +wondering who it was, who kept the fire off." +With that, I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted myself +side by side with Mr. Drummle, my shoulders squared and my back to +the fire. +"You have just come down?" said Mr. Drummle, edging me a little away +with his shoulder. +"Yes," said I, edging him a little away with my shoulder. +"Beastly place," said Drummle. "Your part of the country, I +think?" +"Yes," I assented. "I am told it's very like your Shropshire." +"Not in the least like it," said Drummle. +Here Mr. Drummle looked at his boots, and I looked at mine, and then +Mr. Drummle looked at my boots, and I looked at his. +"Have you been here long?" I asked, determined not to yield an inch +of the fire. +"Long enough to be tired of it," returned Drummle, pretending to +yawn, but equally determined. +"Do you stay here long?" +"Can't say," answered Mr. Drummle. "Do you?" +"Can't say," said I. +I felt here, through a tingling in my blood, that if Mr. Drummle's +shoulder had claimed another hair's breadth of room, I should have +jerked him into the window equally, that if my own shoulder had +urged a similar claim, Mr. Drummle would have jerked me into the +nearest box. He whistled a little. So did I. +"Large tract of marshes about here, I believe?" said Drummle. +"Yes. What of that?" said I. +Mr. Drummle looked at me, and then at my boots, and then said, "Oh" +and laughed. +"Are you amused, Mr. Drummle?" +"No," said he, "not particularly. I am going out for a ride in the +saddle. I mean to explore those marshes for amusement. +Outoftheway villages there, they tell me. Curious little +publichouses and smithies and that. Waiter" +"Yes, sir." +"Is that horse of mine ready?" +"Brought round to the door, sir." +"I say. Look here, you sir. The lady won't ride today the weather +won't do." +"Very good, sir." +"And I don't dine, because I'm going to dine at the lady's." +"Very good, sir." +Then, Drummle glanced at me, with an insolent triumph on his +greatjowled face that cut me to the heart, dull as he was, and so +exasperated me, that I felt inclined to take him in my arms as the +robber in the storybook is said to have taken the old lady, and +seat him on the fire. +One thing was manifest to both of us, and that was, that until +relief came, neither of us could relinquish the fire. There we +stood, well squared up before it, shoulder to shoulder and foot to +foot, with our hands behind us, not budging an inch. The horse was +visible outside in the drizzle at the door, my breakfast was put on +the table, Drummle's was cleared away, the waiter invited me to +begin, I nodded, we both stood our ground. +"Have you been to the Grove since?" said Drummle. +"No," said I, "I had quite enough of the Finches the last time I +was there." +"Was that when we had a difference of opinion?" +"Yes," I replied, very shortly. +"Come, come They let you off easily enough," sneered Drummle. "You +shouldn't have lost your temper." +"Mr. Drummle," said I, "you are not competent to give advice on that +subject. When I lose my temper not that I admit having done so on +that occasion, I don't throw glasses." +"I do," said Drummle. +After glancing at him once or twice, in an increased state of +smouldering ferocity, I said +"Mr. Drummle, I did not seek this conversation, and I don't think it +an agreeable one." +"I am sure it's not," said he, superciliously over his shoulder "I +don't think anything about it." +"And therefore," I went on, "with your leave, I will suggest that +we hold no kind of communication in future." +"Quite my opinion," said Drummle, "and what I should have suggested +myself, or done more likely without suggesting. But don't lose +your temper. Haven't you lost enough without that?" +"What do you mean, sir?" +"Waiter" said Drummle, by way of answering me. +The waiter reappeared. +"Look here, you sir. You quite understand that the young lady don't +ride today, and that I dine at the young lady's?" +"Quite so, sir" +When the waiter had felt my fast cooling teapot with the palm of +his hand, and had looked imploringly at me, and had gone out, +Drummle, careful not to move the shoulder next me, took a cigar +from his pocket and bit the end off, but showed no sign of +stirring. Choking and boiling as I was, I felt that we could not go +a word further, without introducing Estella's name, which I could +not endure to hear him utter and therefore I looked stonily at the +opposite wall, as if there were no one present, and forced myself +to silence. How long we might have remained in this ridiculous +position it is impossible to say, but for the incursion of three +thriving farmers led on by the waiter, I think who came into +the coffeeroom unbuttoning their greatcoats and rubbing their +hands, and before whom, as they charged at the fire, we were +obliged to give way. +I saw him through the window, seizing his horse's mane, and +mounting in his blundering brutal manner, and sidling and backing +away. I thought he was gone, when he came back, calling for a light +for the cigar in his mouth, which he had forgotten. A man in a +dustcoloured dress appeared with what was wanted I could not have +said from where whether from the inn yard, or the street, or where +not and as Drummle leaned down from the saddle and lighted his +cigar and laughed, with a jerk of his head towards the coffeeroom +windows, the slouching shoulders and ragged hair of this man, whose +back was towards me, reminded me of Orlick. +Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time whether it were +he or no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the weather +and the journey from my face and hands, and went out to the +memorable old house that it would have been so much the better for +me never to have entered, never to have seen. +Chapter +In the room where the dressingtable stood, and where the wax +candles burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham and Estella Miss +Havisham seated on a settee near the fire, and Estella on a cushion +at her feet. Estella was knitting, and Miss Havisham was looking +on. They both raised their eyes as I went in, and both saw an +alteration in me. I derived that, from the look they interchanged. +"And what wind," said Miss Havisham, "blows you here, Pip?" +Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was rather +confused. Estella, pausing a moment in her knitting with her eyes +upon me, and then going on, I fancied that I read in the action of +her fingers, as plainly as if she had told me in the dumb alphabet, +that she perceived I had discovered my real benefactor. +"Miss Havisham," said I, "I went to Richmond yesterday, to speak to +Estella and finding that some wind had blown her here, I +followed." +Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third or fourth time to sit +down, I took the chair by the dressingtable, which I had often +seen her occupy. With all that ruin at my feet and about me, it +seemed a natural place for me, that day. +"What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say before +you, presently in a few moments. It will not surprise you, it +will not displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant +me to be." +Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me. I could see in the +action of Estella's fingers as they worked, that she attended to +what I said but she did not look up. +"I have found out who my patron is. It is not a fortunate +discovery, and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, +station, fortune, anything. There are reasons why I must say no +more of that. It is not my secret, but another's." +As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and considering how +to go on, Miss Havisham repeated, "It is not your secret, but +another's. Well?" +"When you first caused me to be brought here, Miss Havisham when I +belonged to the village over yonder, that I wish I had never left +I suppose I did really come here, as any other chance boy might +have come as a kind of servant, to gratify a want or a whim, and +to be paid for it?" +"Ay, Pip," replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her head "you +did." +"And that Mr. Jaggers" +"Mr. Jaggers," said Miss Havisham, taking me up in a firm tone, "had +nothing to do with it, and knew nothing of it. His being my lawyer, +and his being the lawyer of your patron, is a coincidence. He holds +the same relation towards numbers of people, and it might easily +arise. Be that as it may, it did arise, and was not brought about +by any one." +Any one might have seen in her haggard face that there was no +suppression or evasion so far. +"But when I fell into the mistake I have so long remained in, at +least you led me on?" said I. +"Yes," she returned, again nodding, steadily, "I let you go on." +"Was that kind?" +"Who am I," cried Miss Havisham, striking her stick upon the floor +and flashing into wrath so suddenly that Estella glanced up at her +in surprise, "who am I, for God's sake, that I should be kind?" +It was a weak complaint to have made, and I had not meant to make +it. I told her so, as she sat brooding after this outburst. +"Well, well, well" she said. "What else?" +"I was liberally paid for my old attendance here," I said, to +soothe her, "in being apprenticed, and I have asked these questions +only for my own information. What follows has another and I hope +more disinterested purpose. In humouring my mistake, Miss +Havisham, you punished practised on perhaps you will supply +whatever term expresses your intention, without offence your +selfseeking relations?" +"I did. Why, they would have it so So would you. What has been my +history, that I should be at the pains of entreating either them, +or you, not to have it so You made your own snares. I never made +them." +Waiting until she was quiet again for this, too, flashed out of +her in a wild and sudden way I went on. +"I have been thrown among one family of your relations, Miss +Havisham, and have been constantly among them since I went to +London. I know them to have been as honestly under my delusion as I +myself. And I should be false and base if I did not tell you, +whether it is acceptable to you or no, and whether you are inclined +to give credence to it or no, that you deeply wrong both Mr. Matthew +Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them to be otherwise +than generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything designing +or mean." +"They are your friends," said Miss Havisham. +"They made themselves my friends," said I, "when they supposed me +to have superseded them and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and +Mistress Camilla, were not my friends, I think." +This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see, +to do them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little +while, and then said quietly +"What do you want for them?" +"Only," said I, "that you would not confound them with the others. +They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the +same nature." +Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated +"What do you want for them?" +"I am not so cunning, you see," I said, in answer, conscious that I +reddened a little, "as that I could hide from you, even if I +desired, that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you would +spare the money to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life, +but which from the nature of the case must be done without his +knowledge, I could show you how." +"Why must it be done without his knowledge?" she asked, settling +her hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more +attentively. +"Because," said I, "I began the service myself, more than two years +ago, without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed. Why I +fail in my ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a part of +the secret which is another person's and not mine." +She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on the +fire. After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by the +light of the slowly wasting candles to be a long time, she was +roused by the collapse of some of the red coals, and looked towards +me again at first, vacantly then, with a gradually +concentrating attention. All this time, Estella knitted on. When +Miss Havisham had fixed her attention on me, she said, speaking as +if there had been no lapse in our dialogue +"What else?" +"Estella," said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my +trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know that I have loved +you long and dearly." +She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her +fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved +countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, and +from her to me. +"I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It +induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another. +While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I +refrained from saying it. But I must say it now." +Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still +going, Estella shook her head. +"I know," said I, in answer to that action "I know. I have no hope +that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may +become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. +Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in +this house." +Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she +shook her head again. +"It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to +practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me +through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if +she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she +did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot +mine, Estella." +I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as +she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me. +"It seems," said Estella, very calmly, "that there are sentiments, +fancies I don't know how to call them which I am not able to +comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a +form of words but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, +you touch nothing there. I don't care for what you say at all. I +have tried to warn you of this now, have I not?" +I said in a miserable manner, "Yes." +"Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did not mean +it. Now, did you not think so?" +"I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, untried, +and beautiful, Estella Surely it is not in Nature." +"It is in my nature," she returned. And then she added, with a +stress upon the words, "It is in the nature formed within me. I +make a great difference between you and all other people when I say +so much. I can do no more." +"Is it not true," said I, "that Bentley Drummle is in town here, +and pursuing you?" +"It is quite true," she replied, referring to him with the +indifference of utter contempt. +"That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he dines +with you this very day?" +She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again +replied, "Quite true." +"You cannot love him, Estella" +Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted rather +angrily, "What have I told you? Do you still think, in spite of it, +that I do not mean what I say?" +"You would never marry him, Estella?" +She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a moment with +her work in her hands. Then she said, "Why not tell you the truth? +I am going to be married to him." +I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to control myself +better than I could have expected, considering what agony it gave +me to hear her say those words. When I raised my face again, there +was such a ghastly look upon Miss Havisham's, that it impressed me, +even in my passionate hurry and grief. +"Estella, dearest dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead +you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever you have done so, +I well know but bestow yourself on some worthier person than +Drummle. Miss Havisham gives you to him, as the greatest slight and +injury that could be done to the many far better men who admire +you, and to the few who truly love you. Among those few, there may +be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not loved you as +long, as I. Take him, and I can bear it better, for your sake" +My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it would +have been touched with compassion, if she could have rendered me at +all intelligible to her own mind. +"I am going," she said again, in a gentler voice, "to be married to +him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be +married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of my +mother by adoption? It is my own act." +"Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute?" +"On whom should I fling myself away?" she retorted, with a smile. +"Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel +if people do feel such things that I took nothing to him? There +It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to +leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would +have had me wait, and not marry yet but I am tired of the life I +have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough +to change it. Say no more. We shall never understand each other." +"Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute" I urged in despair. +"Don't be afraid of my being a blessing to him," said Estella "I +shall not be that. Come Here is my hand. Do we part on this, you +visionary boy or man?" +"O Estella" I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her hand, +do what I would to restrain them "even if I remained in England +and could hold my head up with the rest, how could I see you +Drummle's wife?" +"Nonsense," she returned, "nonsense. This will pass in no time." +"Never, Estella" +"You will get me out of your thoughts in a week." +"Out of my thoughts You are part of my existence, part of myself. +You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came +here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. +You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since on the +river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in +the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, +in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful +fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of +which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, +or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your +presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and +will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose +but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, +part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with +the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you +must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what +sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you" +In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of +myself, I don't know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like blood +from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to my lips +some lingering moments, and so I left her. But ever afterwards, I +remembered and soon afterwards with stronger reason that while +Estella looked at me merely with incredulous wonder, the spectral +figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed +all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse. +All done, all gone So much was done and gone, that when I went out +at the gate, the light of the day seemed of a darker colour than +when I went in. For a while, I hid myself among some lanes and +bypaths, and then struck off to walk all the way to London. For, I +had by that time come to myself so far, as to consider that I could +not go back to the inn and see Drummle there that I could not bear +to sit upon the coach and be spoken to that I could do nothing +half so good for myself as tire myself out. +It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. Pursuing the +narrow intricacies of the streets which at that time tended +westward near the Middlesex shore of the river, my readiest access +to the Temple was close by the riverside, through Whitefriars. I +was not expected till tomorrow, but I had my keys, and, if Herbert +were gone to bed, could get to bed myself without disturbing him. +As it seldom happened that I came in at that Whitefriars gate after +the Temple was closed, and as I was very muddy and weary, I did not +take it ill that the nightporter examined me with much attention +as he held the gate a little way open for me to pass in. To help +his memory I mentioned my name. +"I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here's a note, sir. +The messenger that brought it, said would you be so good as read it +by my lantern?" +Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was directed to +Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the superscription were the +words, "PLEASE READ THIS, HERE." I opened it, the watchman holding +up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick's writing +"DON'T GO HOME." +Chapter +Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the warning, I +made the best of my way to Fleetstreet, and there got a late +hackney chariot and drove to the Hummums in Covent Garden. In those +times a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the night, +and the chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the +candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me straight into the +bedroom next in order on his list. It was a sort of vault on the +ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a fourpost +bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, putting one of his +arbitrary legs into the fireplace and another into the doorway, +and squeezing the wretched little washingstand in quite a Divinely +Righteous manner. +As I had asked for a nightlight, the chamberlain had brought me +in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rushlight of +those virtuous days an object like the ghost of a walkingcane, +which instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing +could ever be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary +confinement at the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with +round holes that made a staringly wideawake pattern on the walls. +When I had got into bed, and lay there footsore, weary, and +wretched, I found that I could no more close my own eyes than I +could close the eyes of this foolish Argus. And thus, in the gloom +and death of the night, we stared at one another. +What a doleful night How anxious, how dismal, how long There was +an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust and, +as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I +thought what a number of bluebottle flies from the butchers', and +earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country, must be +holding on up there, lying by for next summer. This led me to +speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, and then I fancied +that I felt light falls on my face a disagreeable turn of thought, +suggesting other and more objectionable approaches up my back. When +I had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with +which silence teems, began to make themselves audible. The closet +whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washingstand ticked, +and one guitarstring played occasionally in the chest of drawers. +At about the same time, the eyes on the wall acquired a new +expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I saw +written, DON'T GO HOME. +Whatever nightfancies and nightnoises crowded on me, they never +warded off this DON'T GO HOME. It plaited itself into whatever I +thought of, as a bodily pain would have done. Not long before, I +had read in the newspapers, how a gentleman unknown had come to the +Hummums in the night, and had gone to bed, and had destroyed +himself, and had been found in the morning weltering in blood. It +came into my head that he must have occupied this very vault of +mine, and I got out of bed to assure myself that there were no red +marks about then opened the door to look out into the passages, +and cheer myself with the companionship of a distant light, near +which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But all this time, why I +was not to go home, and what had happened at home, and when I +should go home, and whether Provis was safe at home, were questions +occupying my mind so busily, that one might have supposed there +could be no more room in it for any other theme. Even when I +thought of Estella, and how we had parted that day for ever, and +when I recalled all the circumstances of our parting, and all her +looks and tones, and the action of her fingers while she knitted +even then I was pursuing, here and there and everywhere, the +caution Don't go home. When at last I dozed, in sheer exhaustion of +mind and body, it became a vast shadowy verb which I had to +conjugate. Imperative mood, present tense Do not thou go home, let +him not go home, let us not go home, do not ye or you go home, let +not them go home. Then, potentially I may not and I cannot go +home and I might not, could not, would not, and should not go +home until I felt that I was going distracted, and rolled over on +the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall again. +I had left directions that I was to be called at seven for it was +plain that I must see Wemmick before seeing any one else, and +equally plain that this was a case in which his Walworth +sentiments, only, could be taken. It was a relief to get out of the +room where the night had been so miserable, and I needed no second +knocking at the door to startle me from my uneasy bed. +The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o'clock. The +little servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot +rolls, I passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge, in +her company, and so came without announcement into the presence of +Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the Aged. An open door +afforded a perspective view of the Aged in bed. +"Halloa, Mr. Pip" said Wemmick. "You did come home, then?" +"Yes," I returned "but I didn't go home." +"That's all right," said he, rubbing his hands. "I left a note for +you at each of the Temple gates, on the chance. Which gate did you +come to?" +I told him. +"I'll go round to the others in the course of the day and destroy +the notes," said Wemmick "it's a good rule never to leave +documentary evidence if you can help it, because you don't know +when it may be put in. I'm going to take a liberty with you. +Would you mind toasting this sausage for the Aged P.?" +I said I should be delighted to do it. +"Then you can go about your work, Mary Anne," said Wemmick to the +little servant "which leaves us to ourselves, don't you see, Mr. +Pip?" he added, winking, as she disappeared. +I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our discourse +proceeded in a low tone, while I toasted the Aged's sausage and he +buttered the crumb of the Aged's roll. +"Now, Mr. Pip, you know," said Wemmick, "you and I understand one +another. We are in our private and personal capacities, and we have +been engaged in a confidential transaction before today. Official +sentiments are one thing. We are extra official." +I cordially assented. I was so very nervous, that I had already +lighted the Aged's sausage like a torch, and been obliged to blow +it out. +"I accidentally heard, yesterday morning," said Wemmick, "being in +a certain place where I once took you even between you and me, +it's as well not to mention names when avoidable" +"Much better not," said I. "I understand you." +"I heard there by chance, yesterday morning," said Wemmick, "that a +certain person not altogether of uncolonial pursuits, and not +unpossessed of portable property I don't know who it may really +be we won't name this person" +"Not necessary," said I. +" had made some little stir in a certain part of the world where +a good many people go, not always in gratification of their own +inclinations, and not quite irrespective of the government +expense" +In watching his face, I made quite a firework of the Aged's +sausage, and greatly discomposed both my own attention and +Wemmick's for which I apologized. +" by disappearing from such place, and being no more heard of +thereabouts. From which," said Wemmick, "conjectures had been +raised and theories formed. I also heard that you at your chambers +in Garden Court, Temple, had been watched, and might be watched +again." +"By whom?" said I. +"I wouldn't go into that," said Wemmick, evasively, "it might clash +with official responsibilities. I heard it, as I have in my time +heard other curious things in the same place. I don't tell it you +on information received. I heard it." +He took the toastingfork and sausage from me as he spoke, and set +forth the Aged's breakfast neatly on a little tray. Previous to +placing it before him, he went into the Aged's room with a clean +white cloth, and tied the same under the old gentleman's chin, and +propped him up, and put his nightcap on one side, and gave him +quite a rakish air. Then, he placed his breakfast before him with +great care, and said, "All right, ain't you, Aged P.?" To which the +cheerful Aged replied, "All right, John, my boy, all right" As +there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the Aged was not in a +presentable state, and was therefore to be considered invisible, I +made a pretence of being in complete ignorance of these +proceedings. +"This watching of me at my chambers which I have once had reason +to suspect," I said to Wemmick when he came back, "is inseparable +from the person to whom you have adverted is it?" +Wemmick looked very serious. "I couldn't undertake to say that, of +my own knowledge. I mean, I couldn't undertake to say it was at +first. But it either is, or it will be, or it's in great danger of +being." +As I saw that he was restrained by fealty to Little Britain from +saying as much as he could, and as I knew with thankfulness to him +how far out of his way he went to say what he did, I could not +press him. But I told him, after a little meditation over the fire, +that I would like to ask him a question, subject to his answering +or not answering, as he deemed right, and sure that his course +would be right. He paused in his breakfast, and crossing his arms, +and pinching his shirtsleeves his notion of indoor comfort was to +sit without any coat, he nodded to me once, to put my question. +"You have heard of a man of bad character, whose true name is +Compeyson?" +He answered with one other nod. +"Is he living?" +One other nod. +"Is he in London?" +He gave me one other nod, compressed the postoffice exceedingly, +gave me one last nod, and went on with his breakfast. +"Now," said Wemmick, "questioning being over" which he emphasized +and repeated for my guidance "I come to what I did, after hearing +what I heard. I went to Garden Court to find you not finding you, +I went to Clarriker's to find Mr. Herbert." +"And him you found?" said I, with great anxiety. +"And him I found. Without mentioning any names or going into any +details, I gave him to understand that if he was aware of anybody +Tom, Jack, or Richard being about the chambers, or about the +immediate neighbourhood, he had better get Tom, Jack, or Richard, +out of the way while you were out of the way." +"He would be greatly puzzled what to do?" +"He was puzzled what to do not the less, because I gave him my +opinion that it was not safe to try to get Tom, Jack, or Richard, +too far out of the way at present. Mr. Pip, I'll tell you something. +Under existing circumstances there is no place like a great city +when you are once in it. Don't break cover too soon. Lie close. +Wait till things slacken, before you try the open, even for foreign +air." +I thanked him for his valuable advice, and asked him what Herbert +had done? +"Mr. Herbert," said Wemmick, "after being all of a heap for half an +hour, struck out a plan. He mentioned to me as a secret, that he is +courting a young lady who has, as no doubt you are aware, a +bedridden Pa. Which Pa, having been in the Purser line of life, +lies abed in a bowwindow where he can see the ships sail up and +down the river. You are acquainted with the young lady, most +probably?" +"Not personally," said I. +The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive +companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first +proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with +such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to +confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a +little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to +advance Herbert's prospects by Stealth, I had been able to bear +this with cheerful philosophy he and his affianced, for their +part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third +person into their interviews and thus, although I was assured that +I had risen in Clara's esteem, and although the young lady and I +had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by +Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick +with these particulars. +"The house with the bowwindow," said Wemmick, "being by the +riverside, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, +and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a +furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I +think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? +Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I'll give you. +That is to say. Firstly. It's altogether out of all your beats, and +is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small. +Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of +the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly. +After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to +slip Tom, Jack, or Richard, on board a foreign packetboat, there +he is ready." +Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and +again, and begged him to proceed. +"Well, sir Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will, +and by nine o'clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard +whichever it may be you and I don't want to know quite +successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was +summoned to Dover, and in fact he was taken down the Dover road and +cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this, is, +that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning +himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many +miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and +confuses it and for the same reason I recommended that even if you +came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more +confusion, and you want confusion." +Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, +and began to get his coat on. +"And now, Mr. Pip," said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, "I +have probably done the most I can do but if I can ever do more +from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and +personal capacity I shall be glad to do it. Here's the address. +There can be no harm in your going here tonight and seeing for +yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go +home which is another reason for your not going home last night. +But after you have gone home, don't go back here. You are very +welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip" his hands were now out of his sleeves, +and I was shaking them "and let me finally impress one important +point upon you." He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in +a solemn whisper "Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of +his portable property. You don't know what may happen to him. Don't +let anything happen to the portable property." +Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, +I forbore to try. +"Time's up," said Wemmick, "and I must be off. If you had nothing +more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that's what I +should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good +to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged he'll be up presently +and a little bit of you remember the pig?" +"Of course," said I. +"Well and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his, +and he was in all respects a firstrater. Do try him, if it is only +for old acquaintance sake. Goodbye, Aged Parent" in a cheery +shout. +"All right, John all right, my boy" piped the old man from +within. +I soon fell asleep before Wemmick's fire, and the Aged and I +enjoyed one another's society by falling asleep before it more or +less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on +the estate, and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever +I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged +preparing the fire for toast and I inferred from the number of +teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the +wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected. +Chapter +Eight o'clock had struck before I got into the air that was +scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the +longshore boatbuilders, and mast oar and block makers. All that +waterside region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge, was +unknown ground to me, and when I struck down by the river, I found +that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and +was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, +Chinks's Basin and I had no other guide to Chinks's Basin than the +Old Green Copper RopeWalk. +It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost +myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to +pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of +shipbuilders and shipbreakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting +into the ground though for years off duty, what mountainous country +of accumulated casks and timber, how many ropewalks that were not +the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my +destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly +round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, +all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had +room to turn itself round and there were two or three trees in it, +and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old +Green Copper RopeWalk whose long and narrow vista I could trace +in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the +ground, that looked like superannuated haymakingrakes which had +grown old and lost most of their teeth. +Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank, a house +with a wooden front and three stories of bowwindow not +baywindow, which is another thing, I looked at the plate upon the +door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I +knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance +responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who +silently led me into the parlour and shut the door. It was an odd +sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home +in that very unfamiliar room and region and I found myself looking +at him, much as I looked at the cornercupboard with the glass and +china, the shells upon the chimneypiece, and the coloured +engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a +shiplaunch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a +statecoachman's wig, leatherbreeches, and topboots, on the +terrace at Windsor. +"All is well, Handel," said Herbert, "and he is quite satisfied, +though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father and if +you'll wait till she comes down, I'll make you known to her, and +then we'll go upstairs. That's her father." +I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had +probably expressed the fact in my countenance. +"I am afraid he is a sad old rascal," said Herbert, smiling, "but I +have never seen him. Don't you smell rum? He is always at it." +"At rum?" said I. +"Yes," returned Herbert, "and you may suppose how mild it makes his +gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in +his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his +head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler's +shop." +While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, +and then died away. +"What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, +"if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand +and everywhere else can't expect to get through a Double +Gloucester without hurting himself." +He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another +furious roar. +"To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs. +Whimple," said Herbert, "for of course people in general won't +stand that noise. A curious place, Handel isn't it?" +It was a curious place, indeed but remarkably well kept and clean. +"Mrs. Whimple," said Herbert, when I told him so, "is the best of +housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without +her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and +no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim." +"Surely that's not his name, Herbert?" +"No, no," said Herbert, "that's my name for him. His name is Mr. +Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and +mother, to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never +bother herself, or anybody else, about her family" +Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that +he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her +education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being +recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their +affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered +and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It +was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be +confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to +the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum, +and Purser's stores. +As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley's +sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the +room door opened, and a very pretty slight darkeyed girl of twenty +or so, came in with a basket in her hand whom Herbert tenderly +relieved of the basket, and presented blushing, as "Clara." She +really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a +captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed +into his service. +"Look here," said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a +compassionate and tender smile after we had talked a little +"here's poor Clara's supper, served out every night. Here's her +allowance of bread, and here's her slice of cheese, and here's her +rum which I drink. This is Mr. Barley's breakfast for tomorrow, +served out to be cooked. Two mutton chops, three potatoes, some +split peas, a little flour, two ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, +and all this black pepper. It's stewed up together, and taken hot, +and it's a nice thing for the gout, I should think" +There was something so natural and winning in Clara's resigned way +of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out, +and something so confiding, loving, and innocent, in her modest +manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm and +something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond +Bank, by Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper RopeWalk, with +Old Barley growling in the beam that I would not have undone the +engagement between her and Herbert, for all the money in the +pocketbook I had never opened. +I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly +the growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise +was heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to +bore it through the ceiling to come to us. Upon this Clara said to +Herbert, "Papa wants me, darling" and ran away. +"There is an unconscionable old shark for you" said Herbert. "What +do you suppose he wants now, Handel?" +"I don't know," said I. "Something to drink?" +"That's it" cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of +extraordinary merit. "He keeps his grog readymixed in a little tub +on the table. Wait a moment, and you'll hear Clara lift him up to +take some. There he goes" Another roar, with a prolonged shake +at the end. "Now," said Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, +"he's drinking. Now," said Herbert, as the growl resounded in the +beam once more, "he's down again on his back" +Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me +upstairs to see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley's door, he was +heard hoarsely muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell +like wind, the following Refrain in which I substitute good wishes +for something quite the reverse. +"Ahoy Bless your eyes, here's old Bill Barley. Here's old Bill +Barley, bless your eyes. Here's old Bill Barley on the flat of his +back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back, like a drifting +old dead flounder, here's your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. +Ahoy Bless you." +In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible +Barley would commune with himself by the day and night together +often while it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a +telescope which was fitted on his bed for the convenience of +sweeping the river. +In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh +and airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I +found Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed +to feel none that was worth mentioning but it struck me that he +was softened indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could +never afterwards recall how when I tried but certainly. +The opportunity that the day's rest had given me for reflection, +had resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him +respecting Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards +the man might otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on +his own destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with +him by his fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on +Wemmick's judgment and sources of information? +"Ay, ay, dear boy" he answered, with a grave nod, "Jaggers knows." +"Then, I have talked with Wemmick," said I, "and have come to tell +you what caution he gave me and what advice." +This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned and I +told him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison whether from +officers or prisoners I could not say, that he was under some +suspicion, and that my chambers had been watched how Wemmick had +recommended his keeping close for a time, and my keeping away from +him and what Wemmick had said about getting him abroad. I added, +that of course, when the time came, I should go with him, or should +follow close upon him, as might be safest in Wemmick's judgment. +What was to follow that, I did not touch upon neither indeed was I +at all clear or comfortable about it in my own mind, now that I saw +him in that softer condition, and in declared peril for my sake. As +to altering my way of living, by enlarging my expenses, I put it to +him whether in our present unsettled and difficult circumstances, +it would not be simply ridiculous, if it were no worse? +He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. +His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it +to be a venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate +venture, and he had very little fear of his safety with such good +help. +Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said +that something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick's +suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. "We are both +good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves +when the right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the +purpose, and no boatmen that would save at least a chance of +suspicion, and any chance is worth saving. Never mind the season +don't you think it might be a good thing if you began at once to +keep a boat at the Temple stairs, and were in the habit of rowing +up and down the river? You fall into that habit, and then who +notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times, and there is nothing +special in your doing it the twentyfirst or fiftyfirst." +I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed +that it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should +never recognize us if we came below Bridge and rowed past Mill Pond +Bank. But, we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in +that part of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw +us and all was right. +Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to +go remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home +together, and that I would take half an hour's start of him. "I +don't like to leave you here," I said to Provis, "though I cannot +doubt your being safer here than near me. Goodbye" +"Dear boy," he answered, clasping my hands, "I don't know when we +may meet again, and I don't like Goodbye. Say Good Night" +"Good night Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the +time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, Good +night" +We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms, and we +left him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the +stairrail to light us down stairs. Looking back at him, I thought +of the first night of his return when our positions were reversed, +and when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and +anxious at parting from him as it was now. +Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, +with no appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we +got to the foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had +preserved the name of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that +the lodger was Mr. Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known +of Mr. Campbell there, was, that he Herbert had Mr. Campbell +consigned to him, and felt a strong personal interest in his being +well cared for, and living a secluded life. So, when we went into +the parlour where Mrs. Whimple and Clara were seated at work, I said +nothing of my own interest in Mr. Campbell, but kept it to myself. +When I had taken leave of the pretty gentle darkeyed girl, and of +the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a +little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper +RopeWalk had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as +old as the hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, +but there were redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in +Chinks's Basin to fill it to overflowing. And then I thought of +Estella, and of our parting, and went home very sadly. +All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The +windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were +dark and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked +past the fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that +were between me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert coming +to my bedside when he came in for I went straight to bed, +dispirited and fatigued made the same report. Opening one of the +windows after that, he looked out into the moonlight, and told me +that the pavement was a solemnly empty as the pavement of any +Cathedral at that same hour. +Next day, I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the +boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could +reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for +training and practice sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I +was often out in cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note +of me after I had been out a few times. At first, I kept above +Blackfriars Bridge but as the hours of the tide changed, I took +towards London Bridge. It was Old London Bridge in those days, and +at certain states of the tide there was a race and fall of water +there which gave it a bad reputation. But I knew well enough how to +"shoot" the bridge after seeing it done, and so began to row about +among the shipping in the Pool, and down to Erith. The first time I +passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were pulling a pair of oars +and, both in going and returning, we saw the blind towards the east +come down. Herbert was rarely there less frequently than three +times in a week, and he never brought me a single word of +intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there was +cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being +watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea how many undesigning +persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate. +In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in +hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant +to stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was +running down, and to think that it was flowing, with everything it +bore, towards Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing +towards Magwitch, and that any black mark on its surface might be +his pursuers, going swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him. +Chapter +Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for +Wemmick, and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of +Little Britain, and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a +familiar footing at the Castle, I might have doubted him not so +for a moment, knowing him as I did. +My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was +pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to +know the want of money I mean of ready money in my own pocket, +and to relieve it by converting some easily spared articles of +jewellery into cash. But I had quite determined that it would be a +heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing +state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him +the unopened pocketbook by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, +and I felt a kind of satisfaction whether it was a false kind or +a true, I hardly know in not having profited by his generosity +since his revelation of himself. +As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that +Estella was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was +all but a conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert +to whom I had confided the circumstances of our last interview +never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched +little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to the +winds, how do I know Why did you who read this, commit that not +dissimilar inconsistency of your own, last year, last month, last +week? +It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant anxiety, +towering over all its other anxieties like a high mountain above a +range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new +cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the +terror fresh upon me that he was discovered let me sit listening +as I would, with dread, for Herbert's returning step at night, lest +it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news for +all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of things went +on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant restlessness and +suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as +I best could. +There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I +could not get back through the eddychafed arches and starlings of +old London Bridge then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom +House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not +averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my boat a +commoner incident among the waterside people there. From this +slight occasion, sprang two meetings that I have now to tell of. +One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the +wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb +tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, +but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my +way back among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and +returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well. +As it was a raw evening and I was cold, I thought I would comfort +myself with dinner at once and as I had hours of dejection and +solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would +afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved +his questionable triumph, was in that waterside neighbourhood it +is nowhere now, and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware +that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the +contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously +heard of, through the playbills, as a faithful Black, in connexion +with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had +seen him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face +like a red brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells. +I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a Geographical +chophouse where there were maps of the world in porterpot rims +on every halfyard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on +every one of the knives to this day there is scarcely a single +chophouse within the Lord Mayor's dominions which is not +Geographical and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, staring +at gas, and baking in a hot blast of dinners. Byandby, I roused +myself and went to the play. +There, I found a virtuous boatswain in his Majesty's service a +most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not +quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others +who knocked all the little men's hats over their eyes, though he +was very generous and brave, and who wouldn't hear of anybody's +paying taxes, though he was very patriotic. He had a bag of money +in his pocket, like a pudding in the cloth, and on that property +married a young person in bedfurniture, with great rejoicings the +whole population of Portsmouth nine in number at the last Census +turning out on the beach, to rub their own hands and shake +everybody else's, and sing "Fill, fill" A certain +darkcomplexioned Swab, however, who wouldn't fill, or do anything +else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly stated +by the boatswain to be as black as his figurehead, proposed to +two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties which was so +effectually done the Swab family having considerable political +influence that it took half the evening to set things right, and +then it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with +a white hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, +with a gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking +everybody down from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn't +confute with what he had overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle's who +had never been heard of before coming in with a star and garter +on, as a plenipotentiary of great power direct from the Admiralty, +to say that the Swabs were all to go to prison on the spot, and +that he had brought the boatswain down the Union Jack, as a slight +acknowledgment of his public services. The boatswain, unmanned for +the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on the Jack, and then +cheering up and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your Honour, solicited +permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle conceding his fin with +a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into a dusty corner +while everybody danced a hornpipe and from that corner, surveying +the public with a discontented eye, became aware of me. +The second piece was the last new grand comic Christmas pantomime, +in the first scene of which, it pained me to suspect that I +detected Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magnified +phosphoric countenance and a shock of red curtainfringe for his +hair, engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and +displaying great cowardice when his gigantic master came home very +hoarse to dinner. But he presently presented himself under +worthier circumstances for, the Genius of Youthful Love being in +want of assistance on account of the parental brutality of an +ignorant farmer who opposed the choice of his daughter's heart, by +purposely falling upon the object, in a flour sack, out of the +firstfloor window summoned a sententious Enchanter and he, +coming up from the antipodes rather unsteadily, after an apparently +violent journey, proved to be Mr. Wopsle in a highcrowned hat, with +a necromantic work in one volume under his arm. The business of +this enchanter on earth, being principally to be talked at, sung +at, butted at, danced at, and flashed at with fires of various +colours, he had a good deal of time on his hands. And I observed +with great surprise, that he devoted it to staring in my direction +as if he were lost in amazement. +There was something so remarkable in the increasing glare of Mr. +Wopsle's eye, and he seemed to be turning so many things over in +his mind and to grow so confused, that I could not make it out. I +sat thinking of it, long after he had ascended to the clouds in a +large watchcase, and still I could not make it out. I was still +thinking of it when I came out of the theatre an hour afterwards, +and found him waiting for me near the door. +"How do you do?" said I, shaking hands with him as we turned down +the street together. "I saw that you saw me." +"Saw you, Mr. Pip" he returned. "Yes, of course I saw you. But who +else was there?" +"Who else?" +"It is the strangest thing," said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into his lost +look again "and yet I could swear to him." +Becoming alarmed, I entreated Mr. Wopsle to explain his meaning. +"Whether I should have noticed him at first but for your being +there," said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same lost way, "I can't be +positive yet I think I should." +Involuntarily I looked round me, as I was accustomed to look round +me when I went home for, these mysterious words gave me a chill. +"Oh He can't be in sight," said Mr. Wopsle. "He went out, before I +went off, I saw him go." +Having the reason that I had, for being suspicious, I even +suspected this poor actor. I mistrusted a design to entrap me into +some admission. Therefore, I glanced at him as we walked on +together, but said nothing. +"I had a ridiculous fancy that he must be with you, Mr. Pip, till I +saw that you were quite unconscious of him, sitting behind you +there, like a ghost." +My former chill crept over me again, but I was resolved not to +speak yet, for it was quite consistent with his words that he might +be set on to induce me to connect these references with Provis. Of +course, I was perfectly sure and safe that Provis had not been +there. +"I dare say you wonder at me, Mr. Pip indeed I see you do. But it +is so very strange You'll hardly believe what I am going to tell +you. I could hardly believe it myself, if you told me." +"Indeed?" said I. +"No, indeed. Mr. Pip, you remember in old times a certain Christmas +Day, when you were quite a child, and I dined at Gargery's, and +some soldiers came to the door to get a pair of handcuffs mended?" +"I remember it very well." +"And you remember that there was a chase after two convicts, and +that we joined in it, and that Gargery took you on his back, and +that I took the lead and you kept up with me as well as you could?" +"I remember it all very well." Better than he thought except the +last clause. +"And you remember that we came up with the two in a ditch, and that +there was a scuffle between them, and that one of them had been +severely handled and much mauled about the face, by the other?" +"I see it all before me." +"And that the soldiers lighted torches, and put the two in the +centre, and that we went on to see the last of them, over the black +marshes, with the torchlight shining on their faces I am +particular about that with the torchlight shining on their faces, +when there was an outer ring of dark night all about us?" +"Yes," said I. "I remember all that." +"Then, Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind you tonight. I +saw him over your shoulder." +"Steady" I thought. I asked him then, "Which of the two do you +suppose you saw?" +"The one who had been mauled," he answered readily, "and I'll swear +I saw him The more I think of him, the more certain I am of him." +"This is very curious" said I, with the best assumption I could +put on, of its being nothing more to me. "Very curious indeed" +I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which this +conversation threw me, or the special and peculiar terror I felt at +Compeyson's having been behind me "like a ghost." For, if he had +ever been out of my thoughts for a few moments together since the +hiding had begun, it was in those very moments when he was closest +to me and to think that I should be so unconscious and off my +guard after all my care, was as if I had shut an avenue of a +hundred doors to keep him out, and then had found him at my elbow. +I could not doubt either that he was there, because I was there, +and that however slight an appearance of danger there might be +about us, danger was always near and active. +I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as, When did the man come in? He +could not tell me that he saw me, and over my shoulder he saw the +man. It was not until he had seen him for some time that he began +to identify him but he had from the first vaguely associated him +with me, and known him as somehow belonging to me in the old +village time. How was he dressed? Prosperously, but not noticeably +otherwise he thought, in black. Was his face at all disfigured? +No, he believed not. I believed not, too, for, although in my +brooding state I had taken no especial notice of the people behind +me, I thought it likely that a face at all disfigured would have +attracted my attention. +When Mr. Wopsle had imparted to me all that he could recall or I +extract, and when I had treated him to a little appropriate +refreshment after the fatigues of the evening, we parted. It was +between twelve and one o'clock when I reached the Temple, and the +gates were shut. No one was near me when I went in and went home. +Herbert had come in, and we held a very serious council by the +fire. But there was nothing to be done, saving to communicate to +Wemmick what I had that night found out, and to remind him that we +waited for his hint. As I thought that I might compromise him if I +went too often to the Castle, I made this communication by letter. +I wrote it before I went to bed, and went out and posted it and +again no one was near me. Herbert and I agreed that we could do +nothing else but be very cautious. And we were very cautious indeed +more cautious than before, if that were possible and I for my +part never went near Chinks's Basin, except when I rowed by, and +then I only looked at Mill Pond Bank as I looked at anything else. +Chapter +The second of the two meetings referred to in the last chapter, +occurred about a week after the first. I had again left my boat at +the wharf below Bridge the time was an hour earlier in the +afternoon and, undecided where to dine, I had strolled up into +Cheapside, and was strolling along it, surely the most unsettled +person in all the busy concourse, when a large hand was laid upon +my shoulder, by some one overtaking me. It was Mr. Jaggers's hand, +and he passed it through my arm. +"As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk together. +Where are you bound for?" +"For the Temple, I think," said I. +"Don't you know?" said Mr. Jaggers. +"Well," I returned, glad for once to get the better of him in +crossexamination, "I do not know, for I have not made up my mind." +"You are going to dine?" said Mr. Jaggers. "You don't mind admitting +that, I suppose?" +"No," I returned, "I don't mind admitting that." +"And are not engaged?" +"I don't mind admitting also, that I am not engaged." +"Then," said Mr. Jaggers, "come and dine with me." +I was going to excuse myself, when he added, "Wemmick's coming." +So, I changed my excuse into an acceptance the few words I had +uttered, serving for the beginning of either and we went along +Cheapside and slanted off to Little Britain, while the lights were +springing up brilliantly in the shop windows, and the street +lamplighters, scarcely finding ground enough to plant their +ladders on in the midst of the afternoon's bustle, were skipping up +and down and running in and out, opening more red eyes in the +gathering fog than my rushlight tower at the Hummums had opened +white eyes in the ghostly wall. +At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letterwriting, +handwashing, candlesnuffing, and safelocking, that closed the +business of the day. As I stood idle by Mr. Jaggers's fire, its +rising and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf look as if +they were playing a diabolical game at bopeep with me while the +pair of coarse fat office candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as +he wrote in a corner, were decorated with dirty windingsheets, as +if in remembrance of a host of hanged clients. +We went to Gerrardstreet, all three together, in a hackney coach +and as soon as we got there, dinner was served. Although I should +not have thought of making, in that place, the most distant +reference by so much as a look to Wemmick's Walworth sentiments, +yet I should have had no objection to catching his eye now and then +in a friendly way. But it was not to be done. He turned his eyes on +Mr. Jaggers whenever he raised them from the table, and was as dry +and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks and this was the +wrong one. +"Did you send that note of Miss Havisham's to Mr. Pip, Wemmick?" Mr. +Jaggers asked, soon after we began dinner. +"No, sir," returned Wemmick "it was going by post, when you +brought Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is." He handed it to his +principal, instead of to me. +"It's a note of two lines, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, handing it on, +"sent up to me by Miss Havisham, on account of her not being sure +of your address. She tells me that she wants to see you on a little +matter of business you mentioned to her. You'll go down?" +"Yes," said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was exactly in +those terms. +"When do you think of going down?" +"I have an impending engagement," said I, glancing at Wemmick, who +was putting fish into the postoffice, "that renders me rather +uncertain of my time. At once, I think." +"If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once," said Wemmick to Mr. +Jaggers, "he needn't write an answer, you know." +Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay, I +settled that I would go tomorrow, and said so. Wemmick drank a +glass of wine and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr. Jaggers, +but not at me. +"So, Pip Our friend the Spider," said Mr. Jaggers, "has played his +cards. He has won the pool." +It was as much as I could do to assent. +"Hah He is a promising fellow in his way but he may not have +it all his own way. The stronger will win in the end, but the +stronger has to be found out first. If he should turn to, and beat +her" +"Surely," I interrupted, with a burning face and heart, "you do not +seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr. Jaggers?" +"I didn't say so, Pip. I am putting a case. If he should turn to +and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side if it +should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not. It would +be chance work to give an opinion how a fellow of that sort will +turn out in such circumstances, because it's a tossup between two +results." +"May I ask what they are?" +"A fellow like our friend the Spider," answered Mr. Jaggers, "either +beats, or cringes. He may cringe and growl, or cringe and not +growl but he either beats or cringes. Ask Wemmick his opinion." +"Either beats or cringes," said Wemmick, not at all addressing +himself to me. +"So, here's to Mrs. Bentley Drummle," said Mr. Jaggers, taking a +decanter of choicer wine from his dumbwaiter, and filling for each +of us and for himself, "and may the question of supremacy be +settled to the lady's satisfaction To the satisfaction of the lady +and the gentleman, it never will be. Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, +Molly, how slow you are today" +She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon the +table. As she withdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step or +two, nervously muttering some excuse. And a certain action of her +fingers as she spoke arrested my attention. +"What's the matter?" said Mr. Jaggers. +"Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking of," said I, "was +rather painful to me." +The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. She +stood looking at her master, not understanding whether she was free +to go, or whether he had more to say to her and would call her back +if she did go. Her look was very intent. Surely, I had seen exactly +such eyes and such hands, on a memorable occasion very lately +He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But she remained +before me, as plainly as if she were still there. I looked at those +hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair and I +compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair, that I knew +of, and with what those might be after twenty years of a brutal +husband and a stormy life. I looked again at those hands and eyes +of the housekeeper, and thought of the inexplicable feeling that +had come over me when I last walked not alone in the ruined +garden, and through the deserted brewery. I thought how the same +feeling had come back when I saw a face looking at me, and a hand +waving to me, from a stagecoach window and how it had come back +again and had flashed about me like Lightning, when I had passed in +a carriage not alone through a sudden glare of light in a dark +street. I thought how one link of association had helped that +identification in the theatre, and how such a link, wanting before, +had been riveted for me now, when I had passed by a chance swift +from Estella's name to the fingers with their knitting action, and +the attentive eyes. And I felt absolutely certain that this woman +was Estella's mother. +Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely to have +missed the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. He nodded +when I said the subject was painful to me, clapped me on the back, +put round the wine again, and went on with his dinner. +Only twice more, did the housekeeper reappear, and then her stay in +the room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with her. But her +hands were Estella's hands, and her eyes were Estella's eyes, and +if she had reappeared a hundred times I could have been neither +more sure nor less sure that my conviction was the truth. +It was a dull evening, for Wemmick drew his wine when it came +round, quite as a matter of business just as he might have drawn +his salary when that came round and with his eyes on his chief, +sat in a state of perpetual readiness for crossexamination. As to +the quantity of wine, his postoffice was as indifferent and ready +as any other postoffice for its quantity of letters. From my point +of view, he was the wrong twin all the time, and only externally +like the Wemmick of Walworth. +We took our leave early, and left together. Even when we were +groping among Mr. Jaggers's stock of boots for our hats, I felt that +the right twin was on his way back and we had not gone half a +dozen yards down Gerrardstreet in the Walworth direction before I +found that I was walking arminarm with the right twin, and that +the wrong twin had evaporated into the evening air. +"Well" said Wemmick, "that's over He's a wonderful man, without +his living likeness but I feel that I have to screw myself up when +I dine with him and I dine more comfortably unscrewed." +I felt that this was a good statement of the case, and told him so. +"Wouldn't say it to anybody but yourself," he answered. "I know +that what is said between you and me, goes no further." +I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, +Mrs. Bentley Drummle? He said no. To avoid being too abrupt, I then +spoke of the Aged, and of Miss Skiffins. He looked rather sly when +I mentioned Miss Skiffins, and stopped in the street to blow his +nose, with a roll of the head and a flourish not quite free from +latent boastfulness. +"Wemmick," said I, "do you remember telling me before I first went +to Mr. Jaggers's private house, to notice that housekeeper?" +"Did I?" he replied. "Ah, I dare say I did. Deuce take me," he +added, suddenly, "I know I did. I find I am not quite unscrewed +yet." +"A wild beast tamed, you called her." +"And what do you call her?" +"The same. How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick?" +"That's his secret. She has been with him many a long year." +"I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular interest +in being acquainted with it. You know that what is said between you +and me goes no further." +"Well" Wemmick replied, "I don't know her story that is, I don't +know all of it. But what I do know, I'll tell you. We are in our +private and personal capacities, of course." +"Of course." +"A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the Old Bailey +for murder, and was acquitted. She was a very handsome young woman, +and I believe had some gipsy blood in her. Anyhow, it was hot enough +when it was up, as you may suppose." +"But she was acquitted." +"Mr. Jaggers was for her," pursued Wemmick, with a look full of +meaning, "and worked the case in a way quite astonishing. It was a +desperate case, and it was comparatively early days with him then, +and he worked it to general admiration in fact, it may almost be +said to have made him. He worked it himself at the policeoffice, +day after day for many days, contending against even a committal +and at the trial where he couldn't work it himself, sat under +Counsel, and every one knew put in all the salt and pepper. The +murdered person was a woman a woman, a good ten years older, very +much larger, and very much stronger. It was a case of jealousy. +They both led tramping lives, and this woman in Gerrardstreet here +had been married very young, over the broomstick as we say, to a +tramping man, and was a perfect fury in point of jealousy. The +murdered woman more a match for the man, certainly, in point of +years was found dead in a barn near Hounslow Heath. There had +been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. She was bruised and +scratched and torn, and had been held by the throat at last and +choked. Now, there was no reasonable evidence to implicate any +person but this woman, and, on the improbabilities of her having +been able to do it, Mr. Jaggers principally rested his case. You may +be sure," said Wemmick, touching me on the sleeve, "that he never +dwelt upon the strength of her hands then, though he sometimes does +now." +I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists, that day of the +dinner party. +"Well, sir" Wemmick went on "it happened happened, don't you +see? that this woman was so very artfully dressed from the time +of her apprehension, that she looked much slighter than she really +was in particular, her sleeves are always remembered to have been +so skilfully contrived that her arms had quite a delicate look. She +had only a bruise or two about her nothing for a tramp but the +backs of her hands were lacerated, and the question was, was it +with fingernails? Now, Mr. Jaggers showed that she had struggled +through a great lot of brambles which were not as high as her face +but which she could not have got through and kept her hands out of +and bits of those brambles were actually found in her skin and put +in evidence, as well as the fact that the brambles in question were +found on examination to have been broken through, and to have +little shreds of her dress and little spots of blood upon them here +and there. But the boldest point he made, was this. It was +attempted to be set up in proof of her jealousy, that she was under +strong suspicion of having, at about the time of the murder, +frantically destroyed her child by this man some three years old +to revenge herself upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked that, in this way. +"We say these are not marks of fingernails, but marks of brambles, +and we show you the brambles. You say they are marks of +fingernails, and you set up the hypothesis that she destroyed her +child. You must accept all consequences of that hypothesis. For +anything we know, she may have destroyed her child, and the child +in clinging to her may have scratched her hands. What then? You are +not trying her for the murder of her child why don't you? As to +this case, if you will have scratches, we say that, for anything we +know, you may have accounted for them, assuming for the sake of +argument that you have not invented them" To sum up, sir," said +Wemmick, "Mr. Jaggers was altogether too many for the Jury, and they +gave in." +"Has she been in his service ever since?" +"Yes but not only that," said Wemmick. "She went into his service +immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is now. She has since +been taught one thing and another in the way of her duties, but she +was tamed from the beginning." +"Do you remember the sex of the child?" +"Said to have been a girl." +"You have nothing more to say to me tonight?" +"Nothing. I got your letter and destroyed it. Nothing." +We exchanged a cordial Good Night, and I went home, with new matter +for my thoughts, though with no relief from the old. +Chapter +Putting Miss Havisham's note in my pocket, that it might serve as +my credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis House, in case her +waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at seeing me, I +went down again by the coach next day. But I alighted at the +Halfway House, and breakfasted there, and walked the rest of the +distance for, I sought to get into the town quietly by the +unfrequented ways, and to leave it in the same manner. +The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet +echoing courts behind the Highstreet. The nooks of ruin where the +old monks had once had their refectories and gardens, and where the +strong walls were now pressed into the service of humble sheds and +stables, were almost as silent as the old monks in their graves. +The cathedral chimes had at once a sadder and a more remote sound +to me, as I hurried on avoiding observation, than they had ever had +before so, the swell of the old organ was borne to my ears like +funeral music and the rooks, as they hovered about the grey tower +and swung in the bare high trees of the priorygarden, seemed to +call to me that the place was changed, and that Estella was gone +out of it for ever. +An elderly woman whom I had seen before as one of the servants who +lived in the supplementary house across the back courtyard, opened +the gate. The lighted candle stood in the dark passage within, as +of old, and I took it up and ascended the staircase alone. Miss +Havisham was not in her own room, but was in the larger room across +the landing. Looking in at the door, after knocking in vain, I saw +her sitting on the hearth in a ragged chair, close before, and lost +in the contemplation of, the ashy fire. +Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood, touching the old +chimneypiece, where she could see me when she raised her eyes. +There was an air or utter loneliness upon her, that would have +moved me to pity though she had wilfully done me a deeper injury +than I could charge her with. As I stood compassionating her, and +thinking how in the progress of time I too had come to be a part of +the wrecked fortunes of that house, her eyes rested on me. She +stared, and said in a low voice, "Is it real?" +"It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I have +lost no time." +"Thank you. Thank you." +As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and sat +down, I remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were +afraid of me. +"I want," she said, "to pursue that subject you mentioned to me +when you were last here, and to show you that I am not all stone. +But perhaps you can never believe, now, that there is anything +human in my heart?" +When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out her tremulous +right hand, as though she was going to touch me but she recalled +it again before I understood the action, or knew how to receive it. +"You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell me how to +do something useful and good. Something that you would like done, +is it not?" +"Something that I would like done very much." +"What is it?" +I began explaining to her that secret history of the partnership. I +had not got far into it, when I judged from her looks that she was +thinking in a discursive way of me, rather than of what I said. It +seemed to be so, for, when I stopped speaking, many moments passed +before she showed that she was conscious of the fact. +"Do you break off," she asked then, with her former air of being +afraid of me, "because you hate me too much to bear to speak to +me?" +"No, no," I answered, "how can you think so, Miss Havisham I +stopped because I thought you were not following what I said." +"Perhaps I was not," she answered, putting a hand to her head. +"Begin again, and let me look at something else. Stay Now tell +me." +She set her hand upon her stick, in the resolute way that sometimes +was habitual to her, and looked at the fire with a strong +expression of forcing herself to attend. I went on with my +explanation, and told her how I had hoped to complete the +transaction out of my means, but how in this I was disappointed. +That part of the subject I reminded her involved matters which +could form no part of my explanation, for they were the weighty +secrets of another. +"So" said she, assenting with her head, but not looking at me. +"And how much money is wanting to complete the purchase?" +I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large sum. +"Nine hundred pounds." +"If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep my secret +as you have kept your own?" +"Quite as faithfully." +"And your mind will be more at rest?" +"Much more at rest." +"Are you very unhappy now?" +She asked this question, still without looking at me, but in an +unwonted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the moment, for my +voice failed me. She put her left arm across the head of her stick, +and softly laid her forehead on it. +"I am far from happy, Miss Havisham but I have other causes of +disquiet than any you know of. They are the secrets I have +mentioned." +After a little while, she raised her head and looked at the fire +again. +"It is noble in you to tell me that you have other causes of +unhappiness, Is it true?" +"Too true." +"Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? Regarding that +as done, is there nothing I can do for you yourself?" +"Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even more for +the tone of the question. But, there is nothing." +She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the blighted +room for the means of writing. There were non there, and she took +from her pocket a yellow set of ivory tablets, mounted in tarnished +gold, and wrote upon them with a pencil in a case of tarnished gold +that hung from her neck. +"You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers?" +"Quite. I dined with him yesterday." +"This is an authority to him to pay you that money, to lay out at +your irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep no money +here but if you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the +matter, I will send it to you." +"Thank you, Miss Havisham I have not the least objection to +receiving it from him." +She read me what she had written, and it was direct and clear, and +evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profiting by +the receipt of the money. I took the tablets from her hand, and it +trembled again, and it trembled more as she took off the chain to +which the pencil was attached, and put it in mine. All this she +did, without looking at me. +"My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under my name, +"I forgive her," though ever so long after my broken heart is dust +pray do it" +"O Miss Havisham," said I, "I can do it now. There have been sore +mistakes and my life has been a blind and thankless one and I +want forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with +you." +She turned her face to me for the first time since she had averted +it, and, to my amazement, I may even add to my terror, dropped on +her knees at my feet with her folded hands raised to me in the +manner in which, when her poor heart was young and fresh and whole, +they must often have been raised to heaven from her mother's side. +To see her with her white hair and her worn face kneeling at my +feet, gave me a shock through all my frame. I entreated her to +rise, and got my arms about her to help her up but she only +pressed that hand of mine which was nearest to her grasp, and hung +her head over it and wept. I had never seen her shed a tear before, +and, in the hope that the relief might do her good, I bent over her +without speaking. She was not kneeling now, but was down upon the +ground. +"O" she cried, despairingly. "What have I done What have I done" +"If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to injure me, let +me answer. Very little. I should have loved her under any +circumstances. Is she married?" +"Yes." +It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the desolate +house had told me so. +"What have I done What have I done" She wrung her hands, and +crushed her white hair, and returned to this cry over and over +again. "What have I done" +I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she had done +a grievous thing in taking an impressionable child to mould into +the form that her wild resentment, spurned affection, and wounded +pride, found vengeance in, I knew full well. But that, in shutting +out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more that, in +seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and +healing influences that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown +diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the +appointed order of their Maker I knew equally well. And could I +look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin +she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was +placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, +like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of +unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in +this world? +"Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a +lookingglass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not +know what I had done. What have I done What have I done" And so +again, twenty, fifty times over, What had she done +"Miss Havisham," I said, when her cry had died away, "you may +dismiss me from your mind and conscience. But Estella is a +different case, and if you can ever undo any scrap of what you have +done amiss in keeping a part of her right nature away from her, it +will be better to do that, than to bemoan the past through a +hundred years." +"Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip my Dear" There was an earnest +womanly compassion for me in her new affection. "My Dear Believe +this when she first came to me, I meant to save her from misery +like my own. At first I meant no more." +"Well, well" said I. "I hope so." +"But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually +did worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my +teachings, and with this figure of myself always before her a +warning to back and point my lessons, I stole her heart away and +put ice in its place." +"Better," I could not help saying, "to have left her a natural +heart, even to be bruised or broken." +With that, Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for a while, and +then burst out again, What had she done +"If you knew all my story," she pleaded, "you would have some +compassion for me and a better understanding of me." +"Miss Havisham," I answered, as delicately as I could, "I believe I +may say that I do know your story, and have known it ever since I +first left this neighbourhood. It has inspired me with great +commiseration, and I hope I understand it and its influences. Does +what has passed between us give me any excuse for asking you a +question relative to Estella? Not as she is, but as she was when +she first came here?" +She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair, +and her head leaning on them. She looked full at me when I said +this, and replied, "Go on." +"Whose child was Estella?" +She shook her head. +"You don't know?" +She shook her head again. +"But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?" +"Brought her here." +"Will you tell me how that came about?" +She answered in a low whisper and with caution "I had been shut up +in these rooms a long time I don't know how long you know what +time the clocks keep here, when I told him that I wanted a little +girl to rear and love, and save from my fate. I had first seen him +when I sent for him to lay this place waste for me having read of +him in the newspapers, before I and the world parted. He told me +that he would look about him for such an orphan child. One night he +brought her here asleep, and I called her Estella." +"Might I ask her age then?" +"Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she was left an +orphan and I adopted her." +So convinced I was of that woman's being her mother, that I wanted +no evidence to establish the fact in my own mind. But, to any mind, +I thought, the connection here was clear and straight. +What more could I hope to do by prolonging the interview? I had +succeeded on behalf of Herbert, Miss Havisham had told me all she +knew of Estella, I had said and done what I could to ease her mind. +No matter with what other words we parted we parted. +Twilight was closing in when I went down stairs into the natural +air. I called to the woman who had opened the gate when I entered, +that I would not trouble her just yet, but would walk round the +place before leaving. For, I had a presentiment that I should never +be there again, and I felt that the dying light was suited to my +last view of it. +By the wilderness of casks that I had walked on long ago, and on +which the rain of years had fallen since, rotting them in many +places, and leaving miniature swamps and pools of water upon those +that stood on end, I made my way to the ruined garden. I went all +round it round by the corner where Herbert and I had fought our +battle round by the paths where Estella and I had walked. So cold, +so lonely, so dreary all +Taking the brewery on my way back, I raised the rusty latch of a +little door at the garden end of it, and walked through. I was +going out at the opposite door not easy to open now, for the damp +wood had started and swelled, and the hinges were yielding, and the +threshold was encumbered with a growth of fungus when I turned my +head to look back. A childish association revived with wonderful +force in the moment of the slight action, and I fancied that I saw +Miss Havisham hanging to the beam. So strong was the impression, +that I stood under the beam shuddering from head to foot before I +knew it was a fancy though to be sure I was there in an instant. +The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great terror of +this illusion, though it was but momentary, caused me to feel an +indescribable awe as I came out between the open wooden gates where +I had once wrung my hair after Estella had wrung my heart. Passing +on into the front courtyard, I hesitated whether to call the woman +to let me out at the locked gate of which she had the key, or first +to go upstairs and assure myself that Miss Havisham was as safe +and well as I had left her. I took the latter course and went up. +I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw her seated +in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her +back towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go +quietly away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same +moment, I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire +blazing all about her, and soaring at least as many feet above her +head as she was high. +I had a doublecaped greatcoat on, and over my arm another thick +coat. That I got them off, closed with her, threw her down, and got +them over her that I dragged the great cloth from the table for +the same purpose, and with it dragged down the heap of rottenness +in the midst, and all the ugly things that sheltered there that we +were on the ground struggling like desperate enemies, and that the +closer I covered her, the more wildly she shrieked and tried to +free herself that this occurred I knew through the result, but not +through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing +until I knew that we were on the floor by the great table, and that +patches of tinder yet alight were floating in the smoky air, which, +a moment ago, had been her faded bridal dress. +Then, I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles and spiders +running away over the floor, and the servants coming in with +breathless cries at the door. I still held her forcibly down with +all my strength, like a prisoner who might escape and I doubt if I +even knew who she was, or why we had struggled, or that she had +been in flames, or that the flames were out, until I saw the +patches of tinder that had been her garments, no longer alight but +falling in a black shower around us. +She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved, or even +touched. Assistance was sent for and I held her until it came, as +if I unreasonably fancied I think I did that if I let her go, the +fire would break out again and consume her. When I got up, on the +surgeon's coming to her with other aid, I was astonished to see +that both my hands were burnt for, I had no knowledge of it +through the sense of feeling. +On examination it was pronounced that she had received serious +hurts, but that they of themselves were far from hopeless the +danger lay mainly in the nervous shock. By the surgeon's +directions, her bed was carried into that room and laid upon the +great table which happened to be well suited to the dressing of +her injuries. When I saw her again, an hour afterwards, she lay +indeed where I had seen her strike her stick, and had heard her say +that she would lie one day. +Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they told me, she +still had something of her old ghastly bridal appearance for, they +had covered her to the throat with white cottonwool, and as she +lay with a white sheet loosely overlying that, the phantom air of +something that had been and was changed, was still upon her. +I found, on questioning the servants, that Estella was in Paris, +and I got a promise from the surgeon that he would write to her by +the next post. Miss Havisham's family I took upon myself intending +to communicate with Mr. Matthew Pocket only, and leave him to do as +he liked about informing the rest. This I did next day, through +Herbert, as soon as I returned to town. +There was a stage, that evening, when she spoke collectedly of what +had happened, though with a certain terrible vivacity. Towards +midnight she began to wander in her speech, and after that it +gradually set in that she said innumerable times in a low solemn +voice, "What have I done" And then, "When she first came, I meant +to save her from misery like mine." And then, "Take the pencil and +write under my name, 'I forgive her'" She never changed the order +of these three sentences, but she sometimes left out a word in one +or other of them never putting in another word, but always leaving +a blank and going on to the next word. +As I could do no service there, and as I had, nearer home, that +pressing reason for anxiety and fear which even her wanderings +could not drive out of my mind, I decided in the course of the +night that I would return by the early morning coach walking on a +mile or so, and being taken up clear of the town. At about six +o'clock of the morning, therefore, I leaned over her and touched +her lips with mine, just as they said, not stopping for being +touched, "Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive +her.'" +Chapter +My hands had been dressed twice or thrice in the night, and again +in the morning. My left arm was a good deal burned to the elbow, +and, less severely, as high as the shoulder it was very painful, +but the flames had set in that direction, and I felt thankful it +was no worse. My right hand was not so badly burnt but that I could +move the fingers. It was bandaged, of course, but much less +inconveniently than my left hand and arm those I carried in a +sling and I could only wear my coat like a cloak, loose over my +shoulders and fastened at the neck. My hair had been caught by the +fire, but not my head or face. +When Herbert had been down to Hammersmith and seen his father, he +came back to me at our chambers, and devoted the day to attending on +me. He was the kindest of nurses, and at stated times took off the +bandages, and steeped them in the cooling liquid that was kept +ready, and put them on again, with a patient tenderness that I was +deeply grateful for. +At first, as I lay quiet on the sofa, I found it painfully +difficult, I might say impossible, to get rid of the impression of +the glare of the flames, their hurry and noise, and the fierce +burning smell. If I dozed for a minute, I was awakened by Miss +Havisham's cries, and by her running at me with all that height of +fire above her head. This pain of the mind was much harder to +strive against than any bodily pain I suffered and Herbert, seeing +that, did his utmost to hold my attention engaged. +Neither of us spoke of the boat, but we both thought of it. That +was made apparent by our avoidance of the subject, and by our +agreeing without agreement to make my recovery of the use of my +hands, a question of so many hours, not of so many weeks. +My first question when I saw Herbert had been of course, whether +all was well down the river? As he replied in the affirmative, with +perfect confidence and cheerfulness, we did not resume the subject +until the day was wearing away. But then, as Herbert changed the +bandages, more by the light of the fire than by the outer light, he +went back to it spontaneously. +"I sat with Provis last night, Handel, two good hours." +"Where was Clara?" +"Dear little thing" said Herbert. "She was up and down with +Gruffandgrim all the evening. He was perpetually pegging at the +floor, the moment she left his sight. I doubt if he can hold out +long though. What with rum and pepper and pepper and rum I +should think his pegging must be nearly over." +"And then you will be married, Herbert?" +"How can I take care of the dear child otherwise? Lay your arm +out upon the back of the sofa, my dear boy, and I'll sit down here, +and get the bandage off so gradually that you shall not know when +it comes. I was speaking of Provis. Do you know, Handel, he +improves?" +"I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw him." +"So you did. And so he is. He was very communicative last night, +and told me more of his life. You remember his breaking off here +about some woman that he had had great trouble with. Did I hurt +you?" +I had started, but not under his touch. His words had given me a +start. +"I had forgotten that, Herbert, but I remember it now you speak of +it." +"Well He went into that part of his life, and a dark wild part it +is. Shall I tell you? Or would it worry you just now?" +"Tell me by all means. Every word." +Herbert bent forward to look at me more nearly, as if my reply had +been rather more hurried or more eager than he could quite account +for. "Your head is cool?" he said, touching it. +"Quite," said I. "Tell me what Provis said, my dear Herbert." +"It seems," said Herbert, " there's a bandage off most +charmingly, and now comes the cool one makes you shrink at first, +my poor dear fellow, don't it? but it will be comfortable presently +it seems that the woman was a young woman, and a jealous woman, +and a revengeful woman revengeful, Handel, to the last degree." +"To what last degree?" +"Murder. Does it strike too cold on that sensitive place?" +"I don't feel it. How did she murder? Whom did she murder?" "Why, +the deed may not have merited quite so terrible a name," said +Herbert, "but, she was tried for it, and Mr. Jaggers defended her, +and the reputation of that defence first made his name known to +Provis. It was another and a stronger woman who was the victim, and +there had been a struggle in a barn. Who began it, or how fair it +was, or how unfair, may be doubtful but how it ended, is certainly +not doubtful, for the victim was found throttled." +"Was the woman brought in guilty?" +"No she was acquitted. My poor Handel, I hurt you" +"It is impossible to be gentler, Herbert. Yes? What else?" +"This acquitted young woman and Provis had a little child a little +child of whom Provis was exceedingly fond. On the evening of the +very night when the object of her jealousy was strangled as I tell +you, the young woman presented herself before Provis for one +moment, and swore that she would destroy the child which was in +her possession, and he should never see it again then, she +vanished. There's the worst arm comfortably in the sling once +more, and now there remains but the right hand, which is a far +easier job. I can do it better by this light than by a stronger, +for my hand is steadiest when I don't see the poor blistered +patches too distinctly. You don't think your breathing is +affected, my dear boy? You seem to breathe quickly." +"Perhaps I do, Herbert. Did the woman keep her oath?" +"There comes the darkest part of Provis's life. She did." +"That is, he says she did." +"Why, of course, my dear boy," returned Herbert, in a tone of +surprise, and again bending forward to get a nearer look at me. "He +says it all. I have no other information." +"No, to be sure." +"Now, whether," pursued Herbert, "he had used the child's mother +ill, or whether he had used the child's mother well, Provis doesn't +say but, she had shared some four or five years of the wretched +life he described to us at this fireside, and he seems to have felt +pity for her, and forbearance towards her. Therefore, fearing he +should be called upon to depose about this destroyed child, and so +be the cause of her death, he hid himself much as he grieved for +the child, kept himself dark, as he says, out of the way and out +of the trial, and was only vaguely talked of as a certain man +called Abel, out of whom the jealousy arose. After the acquittal +she disappeared, and thus he lost the child and the child's +mother." +"I want to ask" +"A moment, my dear boy, and I have done. That evil genius, +Compeyson, the worst of scoundrels among many scoundrels, knowing +of his keeping out of the way at that time, and of his reasons for +doing so, of course afterwards held the knowledge over his head as +a means of keeping him poorer, and working him harder. It was clear +last night that this barbed the point of Provis's animosity." +"I want to know," said I, "and particularly, Herbert, whether he +told you when this happened?" +"Particularly? Let me remember, then, what he said as to that. His +expression was, 'a round score o' year ago, and a'most directly +after I took up wi' Compeyson.' How old were you when you came upon +him in the little churchyard?" +"I think in my seventh year." +"Ay. It had happened some three or four years then, he said, and +you brought into his mind the little girl so tragically lost, who +would have been about your age." +"Herbert," said I, after a short silence, in a hurried way, "can +you see me best by the light of the window, or the light of the +fire?" +"By the firelight," answered Herbert, coming close again. +"Look at me." +"I do look at you, my dear boy." +"Touch me." +"I do touch you, my dear boy." +"You are not afraid that I am in any fever, or that my head is much +disordered by the accident of last night?" +"Nno, my dear boy," said Herbert, after taking time to examine me. +"You are rather excited, but you are quite yourself." +"I know I am quite myself. And the man we have in hiding down the +river, is Estella's Father." +Chapter +What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing out and +proving Estella's parentage, I cannot say. It will presently be +seen that the question was not before me in a distinct shape, until +it was put before me by a wiser head than my own. +But, when Herbert and I had held our momentous conversation, I was +seized with a feverish conviction that I ought to hunt the matter +down that I ought not to let it rest, but that I ought to see Mr. +Jaggers, and come at the bare truth. I really do not know whether I +felt that I did this for Estella's sake, or whether I was glad to +transfer to the man in whose preservation I was so much concerned, +some rays of the romantic interest that had so long surrounded her. +Perhaps the latter possibility may be the nearer to the truth. +Any way, I could scarcely be withheld from going out to +Gerrardstreet that night. Herbert's representations that if I did, +I should probably be laid up and stricken useless, when our +fugitive's safety would depend upon me, alone restrained my +impatience. On the understanding, again and again reiterated, that +come what would, I was to go to Mr. Jaggers tomorrow, I at length +submitted to keep quiet, and to have my hurts looked after, and to +stay at home. Early next morning we went out together, and at the +corner of Giltspurstreet by Smithfield, I left Herbert to go his +way into the City, and took my way to Little Britain. +There were periodical occasions when Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick went +over the office accounts, and checked off the vouchers, and put all +things straight. On these occasions Wemmick took his books and +papers into Mr. Jaggers's room, and one of the upstairs clerks came +down into the outer office. Finding such clerk on Wemmick's post +that morning, I knew what was going on but, I was not sorry to +have Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick together, as Wemmick would then hear +for himself that I said nothing to compromise him. +My appearance with my arm bandaged and my coat loose over my +shoulders, favoured my object. Although I had sent Mr. Jaggers a +brief account of the accident as soon as I had arrived in town, yet +I had to give him all the details now and the speciality of the +occasion caused our talk to be less dry and hard, and less strictly +regulated by the rules of evidence, than it had been before. While +I described the disaster, Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his wont, +before the fire. Wemmick leaned back in his chair, staring at me, +with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his pen put +horizontally into the post. The two brutal casts, always +inseparable in my mind from the official proceedings, seemed to be +congestively considering whether they didn't smell fire at the +present moment. +My narrative finished, and their questions exhausted, I then +produced Miss Havisham's authority to receive the nine hundred +pounds for Herbert. Mr. Jaggers's eyes retired a little deeper into +his head when I handed him the tablets, but he presently handed +them over to Wemmick, with instructions to draw the cheque for his +signature. While that was in course of being done, I looked on at +Wemmick as he wrote, and Mr. Jaggers, poising and swaying himself on +his wellpolished boots, looked on at me. "I am sorry, Pip," said +he, as I put the cheque in my pocket, when he had signed it, "that +we do nothing for you." +"Miss Havisham was good enough to ask me," I returned, "whether she +could do nothing for me, and I told her No." +"Everybody should know his own business," said Mr. Jaggers. And I +saw Wemmick's lips form the words "portable property." +"I should not have told her No, if I had been you," said Mr +Jaggers "but every man ought to know his own business best." +"Every man's business," said Wemmick, rather reproachfully towards +me, "is portable property." +As I thought the time was now come for pursuing the theme I had at +heart, I said, turning on Mr. Jaggers +"I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I asked her to +give me some information relative to her adopted daughter, and she +gave me all she possessed." +"Did she?" said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at his boots +and then straightening himself. "Hah I don't think I should have +done so, if I had been Miss Havisham. But she ought to know her own +business best." +"I know more of the history of Miss Havisham's adopted child, than +Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I know her mother." +Mr. Jaggers looked at me inquiringly, and repeated "Mother?" +"I have seen her mother within these three days." +"Yes?" said Mr. Jaggers. +"And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more recently." +"Yes?" said Mr. Jaggers. +"Perhaps I know more of Estella's history than even you do," said +I. "I know her father too." +A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner he was too +selfpossessed to change his manner, but he could not help its +being brought to an indefinably attentive stop assured me that he +did not know who her father was. This I had strongly suspected from +Provis's account as Herbert had repeated it of his having kept +himself dark which I pieced on to the fact that he himself was not +Mr. Jaggers's client until some four years later, and when he could +have no reason for claiming his identity. But, I could not be sure +of this unconsciousness on Mr. Jaggers's part before, though I was +quite sure of it now. +"So You know the young lady's father, Pip?" said Mr. Jaggers. +"Yes," I replied, "and his name is Provis from New South Wales." +Even Mr. Jaggers started when I said those words. It was the +slightest start that could escape a man, the most carefully +repressed and the soonest checked, but he did start, though he made +it a part of the action of taking out his pockethandkerchief. How +Wemmick received the announcement I am unable to say, for I was +afraid to look at him just then, lest Mr. Jaggers's sharpness should +detect that there had been some communication unknown to him +between us. +"And on what evidence, Pip," asked Mr. Jaggers, very coolly, as he +paused with his handkerchief half way to his nose, "does Provis +make this claim?" +"He does not make it," said I, "and has never made it, and has no +knowledge or belief that his daughter is in existence." +For once, the powerful pockethandkerchief failed. My reply was so +unexpected that Mr. Jaggers put the handkerchief back into his +pocket without completing the usual performance, folded his arms, +and looked with stern attention at me, though with an immovable +face. +Then I told him all I knew, and how I knew it with the one +reservation that I left him to infer that I knew from Miss Havisham +what I in fact knew from Wemmick. I was very careful indeed as to +that. Nor, did I look towards Wemmick until I had finished all I +had to tell, and had been for some time silently meeting Mr. +Jaggers's look. When I did at last turn my eyes in Wemmick's +direction, I found that he had unposted his pen, and was intent +upon the table before him. +"Hah" said Mr. Jaggers at last, as he moved towards the papers on +the table, " What item was it you were at, Wemmick, when Mr. Pip +came in?" +But I could not submit to be thrown off in that way, and I made a +passionate, almost an indignant, appeal to him to be more frank and +manly with me. I reminded him of the false hopes into which I had +lapsed, the length of time they had lasted, and the discovery I had +made and I hinted at the danger that weighed upon my spirits. I +represented myself as being surely worthy of some little confidence +from him, in return for the confidence I had just now imparted. I +said that I did not blame him, or suspect him, or mistrust him, but +I wanted assurance of the truth from him. And if he asked me why I +wanted it and why I thought I had any right to it, I would tell +him, little as he cared for such poor dreams, that I had loved +Estella dearly and long, and that, although I had lost her and must +live a bereaved life, whatever concerned her was still nearer and +dearer to me than anything else in the world. And seeing that Mr. +Jaggers stood quite still and silent, and apparently quite +obdurate, under this appeal, I turned to Wemmick, and said, +"Wemmick, I know you to be a man with a gentle heart. I have seen +your pleasant home, and your old father, and all the innocent +cheerful playful ways with which you refresh your business life. +And I entreat you to say a word for me to Mr. Jaggers, and to +represent to him that, all circumstances considered, he ought to be +more open with me" +I have never seen two men look more oddly at one another than Mr. +Jaggers and Wemmick did after this apostrophe. At first, a +misgiving crossed me that Wemmick would be instantly dismissed from +his employment but, it melted as I saw Mr. Jaggers relax into +something like a smile, and Wemmick become bolder. +"What's all this?" said Mr. Jaggers. "You with an old father, and +you with pleasant and playful ways?" +"Well" returned Wemmick. "If I don't bring 'em here, what does it +matter?" +"Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, laying his hand upon my arm, and smiling +openly, "this man must be the most cunning impostor in all London." +"Not a bit of it," returned Wemmick, growing bolder and bolder. "I +think you're another." +Again they exchanged their former odd looks, each apparently still +distrustful that the other was taking him in. +"You with a pleasant home?" said Mr. Jaggers. +"Since it don't interfere with business," returned Wemmick, "let it +be so. Now, I look at you, sir, I shouldn't wonder if you might be +planning and contriving to have a pleasant home of your own, one of +these days, when you're tired of all this work." +Mr. Jaggers nodded his head retrospectively two or three times, and +actually drew a sigh. "Pip," said he, "we won't talk about 'poor +dreams' you know more about such things than I, having much +fresher experience of that kind. But now, about this other matter. +I'll put a case to you. Mind I admit nothing." +He waited for me to declare that I quite understood that he +expressly said that he admitted nothing. +"Now, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, "put this case. Put the case that a +woman, under such circumstances as you have mentioned, held her +child concealed, and was obliged to communicate the fact to her +legal adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, with +an eye to the latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about +that child. Put the case that at the same time he held a trust to +find a child for an eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up." +"I follow you, sir." +"Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all +he saw of children, was, their being generated in great numbers for +certain destruction. Put the case that he often saw children +solemnly tried at a criminal bar, where they were held up to be +seen put the case that he habitually knew of their being +imprisoned, whipped, transported, neglected, cast out, qualified in +all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case +that pretty nigh all the children he saw in his daily business +life, he had reason to look upon as so much spawn, to develop into +the fish that were to come to his net to be prosecuted, defended, +forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow." +"I follow you, sir." +"Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of +the heap, who could be saved whom the father believed dead, and +dared make no stir about as to whom, over the mother, the legal +adviser had this power "I know what you did, and how you did it. +You came so and so, this was your manner of attack and this the +manner of resistance, you went so and so, you did such and such +things to divert suspicion. I have tracked you through it all, and +I tell it you all. Part with the child, unless it should be +necessary to produce it to clear you, and then it shall be +produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my best to +bring you off. If you are saved, your child is saved too if you +are lost, your child is still saved." Put the case that this was +done, and that the woman was cleared." +"I understand you perfectly." +"But that I make no admissions?" +"That you make no admissions." And Wemmick repeated, "No +admissions." +"Put the case, Pip, that passion and the terror of death had a +little shaken the woman's intellect, and that when she was set at +liberty, she was scared out of the ways of the world and went to +him to be sheltered. Put the case that he took her in, and that he +kept down the old wild violent nature whenever he saw an inkling of +its breaking out, by asserting his power over her in the old way. +Do you comprehend the imaginary case?" +"Quite." +"Put the case that the child grew up, and was married for money. +That the mother was still living. That the father was still living. +That the mother and father unknown to one another, were dwelling +within so many miles, furlongs, yards if you like, of one another. +That the secret was still a secret, except that you had got wind of +it. Put that last case to yourself very carefully." +"I do." +"I ask Wemmick to put it to himself very carefully." +And Wemmick said, "I do." +"For whose sake would you reveal the secret? For the father's? I +think he would not be much the better for the mother. For the +mother's? I think if she had done such a deed she would be safer +where she was. For the daughter's? I think it would hardly serve +her, to establish her parentage for the information of her husband, +and to drag her back to disgrace, after an escape of twenty years, +pretty secure to last for life. But, add the case that you had +loved her, Pip, and had made her the subject of those 'poor dreams' +which have, at one time or another, been in the heads of more men +than you think likely, then I tell you that you had better and +would much sooner when you had thought well of it chop off that +bandaged left hand of yours with your bandaged right hand, and then +pass the chopper on to Wemmick there, to cut that off, too." +I looked at Wemmick, whose face was very grave. He gravely touched +his lips with his forefinger. I did the same. Mr. Jaggers did the +same. "Now, Wemmick," said the latter then, resuming his usual +manner, "what item was it you were at, when Mr. Pip came in?" +Standing by for a little, while they were at work, I observed that +the odd looks they had cast at one another were repeated several +times with this difference now, that each of them seemed +suspicious, not to say conscious, of having shown himself in a weak +and unprofessional light to the other. For this reason, I suppose, +they were now inflexible with one another Mr. Jaggers being highly +dictatorial, and Wemmick obstinately justifying himself whenever +there was the smallest point in abeyance for a moment. I had never +seen them on such ill terms for generally they got on very well +indeed together. +But, they were both happily relieved by the opportune appearance of +Mike, the client with the fur cap and the habit of wiping his nose +on his sleeve, whom I had seen on the very first day of my +appearance within those walls. This individual, who, either in his +own person or in that of some member of his family, seemed to be +always in trouble which in that place meant Newgate, called to +announce that his eldest daughter was taken up on suspicion of +shoplifting. As he imparted this melancholy circumstance to +Wemmick, Mr. Jaggers standing magisterially before the fire and +taking no share in the proceedings, Mike's eye happened to twinkle +with a tear. +"What are you about?" demanded Wemmick, with the utmost +indignation. "What do you come snivelling here for?" +"I didn't go to do it, Mr. Wemmick." +"You did," said Wemmick. "How dare you? You're not in a fit state +to come here, if you can't come here without spluttering like a bad +pen. What do you mean by it?" +"A man can't help his feelings, Mr. Wemmick," pleaded Mike. +"His what?" demanded Wemmick, quite savagely. "Say that again" +"Now, look here my man," said Mr. Jaggers, advancing a step, and +pointing to the door. "Get out of this office. I'll have no +feelings here. Get out." +"It serves you right," said Wemmick, "Get out." +So the unfortunate Mike very humbly withdrew, and Mr. Jaggers and +Wemmick appeared to have reestablished their good understanding, +and went to work again with an air of refreshment upon them as if +they had just had lunch. +Chapter +From Little Britain, I went, with my cheque in my pocket, to Miss +Skiffins's brother, the accountant and Miss Skiffins's brother, +the accountant, going straight to Clarriker's and bringing +Clarriker to me, I had the great satisfaction of concluding that +arrangement. It was the only good thing I had done, and the only +completed thing I had done, since I was first apprised of my great +expectations. +Clarriker informing me on that occasion that the affairs of the +House were steadily progressing, that he would now be able to +establish a small branchhouse in the East which was much wanted +for the extension of the business, and that Herbert in his new +partnership capacity would go out and take charge of it, I found +that I must have prepared for a separation from my friend, even +though my own affairs had been more settled. And now indeed I felt +as if my last anchor were loosening its hold, and I should soon be +driving with the winds and waves. +But, there was recompense in the joy with which Herbert would come +home of a night and tell me of these changes, little imagining that +he told me no news, and would sketch airy pictures of himself +conducting Clara Barley to the land of the Arabian Nights, and of +me going out to join them with a caravan of camels, I believe, +and of our all going up the Nile and seeing wonders. Without being +sanguine as to my own part in these bright plans, I felt that +Herbert's way was clearing fast, and that old Bill Barley had but +to stick to his pepper and rum, and his daughter would soon be +happily provided for. +We had now got into the month of March. My left arm, though it +presented no bad symptoms, took in the natural course so long to +heal that I was still unable to get a coat on. My right arm was +tolerably restored disfigured, but fairly serviceable. +On a Monday morning, when Herbert and I were at breakfast, I +received the following letter from Wemmick by the post. +"Walworth. Burn this as soon as read. Early in the week, or say +Wednesday, you might do what you know of, if you felt disposed to +try it. Now burn." +When I had shown this to Herbert and had put it in the fire but +not before we had both got it by heart we considered what to do. +For, of course my being disabled could now be no longer kept out of +view. +"I have thought it over, again and again," said Herbert, "and I +think I know a better course than taking a Thames waterman. Take +Startop. A good fellow, a skilled hand, fond of us, and +enthusiastic and honourable." +I had thought of him, more than once. +"But how much would you tell him, Herbert?" +"It is necessary to tell him very little. Let him suppose it a mere +freak, but a secret one, until the morning comes then let him know +that there is urgent reason for your getting Provis aboard and +away. You go with him?" +"No doubt." +"Where?" +It had seemed to me, in the many anxious considerations I had given +the point, almost indifferent what port we made for Hamburg, +Rotterdam, Antwerp the place signified little, so that he was got +out of England. Any foreign steamer that fell in our way and would +take us up, would do. I had always proposed to myself to get him +well down the river in the boat certainly well beyond Gravesend, +which was a critical place for search or inquiry if suspicion were +afoot. As foreign steamers would leave London at about the time of +highwater, our plan would be to get down the river by a previous +ebbtide, and lie by in some quiet spot until we could pull off to +one. The time when one would be due where we lay, wherever that +might be, could be calculated pretty nearly, if we made inquiries +beforehand. +Herbert assented to all this, and we went out immediately after +breakfast to pursue our investigations. We found that a steamer for +Hamburg was likely to suit our purpose best, and we directed our +thoughts chiefly to that vessel. But we noted down what other +foreign steamers would leave London with the same tide, and we +satisfied ourselves that we knew the build and colour of each. We +then separated for a few hours I, to get at once such passports as +were necessary Herbert, to see Startop at his lodgings. We both +did what we had to do without any hindrance, and when we met again +at one o'clock reported it done. I, for my part, was prepared with +passports Herbert had seen Startop, and he was more than ready to +join. +Those two should pull a pair of oars, we settled, and I would +steer our charge would be sitter, and keep quiet as speed was not +our object, we should make way enough. We arranged that Herbert +should not come home to dinner before going to Mill Pond Bank that +evening that he should not go there at all, tomorrow evening, +Tuesday that he should prepare Provis to come down to some Stairs +hard by the house, on Wednesday, when he saw us approach, and not +sooner that all the arrangements with him should be concluded that +Monday night and that he should be communicated with no more in +any way, until we took him on board. +These precautions well understood by both of us, I went home. +On opening the outer door of our chambers with my key, I found a +letter in the box, directed to me a very dirty letter, though not +illwritten. It had been delivered by hand of course since I left +home, and its contents were these +"If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes tonight or +tomorrow night at Nine, and to come to the little sluicehouse by +the limekiln, you had better come. If you want information +regarding your uncle Provis, you had much better come and tell no +one and lose no time. You must come alone. Bring this with you." +I had had load enough upon my mind before the receipt of this +strange letter. What to do now, I could not tell. And the worst +was, that I must decide quickly, or I should miss the afternoon +coach, which would take me down in time for tonight. Tomorrow +night I could not think of going, for it would be too close upon +the time of the flight. And again, for anything I knew, the +proffered information might have some important bearing on the +flight itself. +If I had had ample time for consideration, I believe I should still +have gone. Having hardly any time for consideration my watch +showing me that the coach started within half an hour I resolved +to go. I should certainly not have gone, but for the reference to +my Uncle Provis that, coming on Wemmick's letter and the morning's +busy preparation, turned the scale. +It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the contents of +almost any letter, in a violent hurry, that I had to read this +mysterious epistle again, twice, before its injunction to me to be +secret got mechanically into my mind. Yielding to it in the same +mechanical kind of way, I left a note in pencil for Herbert, +telling him that as I should be so soon going away, I knew not for +how long, I had decided to hurry down and back, to ascertain for +myself how Miss Havisham was faring. I had then barely time to get +my greatcoat, lock up the chambers, and make for the coachoffice +by the short byways. If I had taken a hackneychariot and gone by +the streets, I should have missed my aim going as I did, I caught +the coach just as it came out of the yard. I was the only inside +passenger, jolting away kneedeep in straw, when I came to myself. +For, I really had not been myself since the receipt of the letter +it had so bewildered me ensuing on the hurry of the morning. The +morning hurry and flutter had been great, for, long and anxiously +as I had waited for Wemmick, his hint had come like a surprise at +last. And now, I began to wonder at myself for being in the coach, +and to doubt whether I had sufficient reason for being there, and +to consider whether I should get out presently and go back, and to +argue against ever heeding an anonymous communication, and, in +short, to pass through all those phases of contradiction and +indecision to which I suppose very few hurried people are +strangers. Still, the reference to Provis by name, mastered +everything. I reasoned as I had reasoned already without knowing it +if that be reasoning in case any harm should befall him through +my not going, how could I ever forgive myself +It was dark before we got down, and the journey seemed long and +dreary to me who could see little of it inside, and who could not +go outside in my disabled state. Avoiding the Blue Boar, I put up +at an inn of minor reputation down the town, and ordered some +dinner. While it was preparing, I went to Satis House and inquired +for Miss Havisham she was still very ill, though considered +something better. +My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical house, and +I dined in a little octagonal commonroom, like a font. As I was +not able to cut my dinner, the old landlord with a shining bald +head did it for me. This bringing us into conversation, he was so +good as to entertain me with my own story of course with the +popular feature that Pumblechook was my earliest benefactor and the +founder of my fortunes. +"Do you know the young man?" said I. +"Know him" repeated the landlord. "Ever since he was no height +at all." +"Does he ever come back to this neighbourhood?" +"Ay, he comes back," said the landlord, "to his great friends, now +and again, and gives the cold shoulder to the man that made him." +"What man is that?" +"Him that I speak of," said the landlord. "Mr. Pumblechook." +"Is he ungrateful to no one else?" +"No doubt he would be, if he could," returned the landlord, "but he +can't. And why? Because Pumblechook done everything for him." +"Does Pumblechook say so?" +"Say so" replied the landlord. "He han't no call to say so." +"But does he say so?" +"It would turn a man's blood to white wine winegar to hear him tell +of it, sir," said the landlord. +I thought, "Yet Joe, dear Joe, you never tell of it. Longsuffering +and loving Joe, you never complain. Nor you, sweettempered Biddy" +"Your appetite's been touched like, by your accident," said the +landlord, glancing at the bandaged arm under my coat. "Try a +tenderer bit." +"No thank you," I replied, turning from the table to brood over the +fire. "I can eat no more. Please take it away." +I had never been struck at so keenly, for my thanklessness to Joe, +as through the brazen impostor Pumblechook. The falser he, the +truer Joe the meaner he, the nobler Joe. +My heart was deeply and most deservedly humbled as I mused over the +fire for an hour or more. The striking of the clock aroused me, but +not from my dejection or remorse, and I got up and had my coat +fastened round my neck, and went out. I had previously sought in my +pockets for the letter, that I might refer to it again, but I could +not find it, and was uneasy to think that it must have been dropped +in the straw of the coach. I knew very well, however, that the +appointed place was the little sluicehouse by the limekiln on the +marshes, and the hour nine. Towards the marshes I now went +straight, having no time to spare. +Chapter +It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the +enclosed lands, and passed out upon the marshes. Beyond their dark +line there was a ribbon of clear sky, hardly broad enough to hold +the red large moon. In a few minutes she had ascended out of that +clear field, in among the piled mountains of cloud. +There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were very dismal. A +stranger would have found them insupportable, and even to me they +were so oppressive that I hesitated, half inclined to go back. But, +I knew them well, and could have found my way on a far darker +night, and had no excuse for returning, being there. So, having +come there against my inclination, I went on against it. +The direction that I took, was not that in which my old home lay, +nor that in which we had pursued the convicts. My back was turned +towards the distant Hulks as I walked on, and, though I could see +the old lights away on the spits of sand, I saw them over my +shoulder. I knew the limekiln as well as I knew the old Battery, +but they were miles apart so that if a light had been burning at +each point that night, there would have been a long strip of the +blank horizon between the two bright specks. +At first, I had to shut some gates after me, and now and then to +stand still while the cattle that were lying in the bankedup +pathway, arose and blundered down among the grass and reeds. But +after a little while, I seemed to have the whole flats to myself. +It was another halfhour before I drew near to the kiln. The lime +was burning with a sluggish stifling smell, but the fires were made +up and left, and no workmen were visible. Hard by, was a small +stonequarry. It lay directly in my way, and had been worked that +day, as I saw by the tools and barrows that were lying about. +Coming up again to the marsh level out of this excavation for the +rude path lay through it I saw a light in the old sluicehouse. I +quickened my pace, and knocked at the door with my hand. Waiting +for some reply, I looked about me, noticing how the sluice was +abandoned and broken, and how the house of wood with a tiled roof +would not be proof against the weather much longer, if it were so +even now, and how the mud and ooze were coated with lime, and how +the choking vapour of the kiln crept in a ghostly way towards me. +Still there was no answer, and I knocked again. No answer still, +and I tried the latch. +It rose under my hand, and the door yielded. Looking in, I saw a +lighted candle on a table, a bench, and a mattress on a truckle +bedstead. As there was a loft above, I called, "Is there any one +here?" but no voice answered. Then, I looked at my watch, and, +finding that it was past nine, called again, "Is there any one +here?" There being still no answer, I went out at the door, +irresolute what to do. +It was beginning to rain fast. Seeing nothing save what I had seen +already, I turned back into the house, and stood just within the +shelter of the doorway, looking out into the night. While I was +considering that some one must have been there lately and must soon +be coming back, or the candle would not be burning, it came into my +head to look if the wick were long. I turned round to do so, and +had taken up the candle in my hand, when it was extinguished by +some violent shock, and the next thing I comprehended, was, that I +had been caught in a strong running noose, thrown over my head from +behind. +"Now," said a suppressed voice with an oath, "I've got you" +"What is this?" I cried, struggling. "Who is it? Help, help, help" +Not only were my arms pulled close to my sides, but the pressure on +my bad arm caused me exquisite pain. Sometimes, a strong man's +hand, sometimes a strong man's breast, was set against my mouth to +deaden my cries, and with a hot breath always close to me, I +struggled ineffectually in the dark, while I was fastened tight to +the wall. "And now," said the suppressed voice with another oath, +"call out again, and I'll make short work of you" +Faint and sick with the pain of my injured arm, bewildered by the +surprise, and yet conscious how easily this threat could be put in +execution, I desisted, and tried to ease my arm were it ever so +little. But, it was bound too tight for that. I felt as if, having +been burnt before, it were now being boiled. +The sudden exclusion of the night and the substitution of black +darkness in its place, warned me that the man had closed a shutter. +After groping about for a little, he found the flint and steel he +wanted, and began to strike a light. I strained my sight upon the +sparks that fell among the tinder, and upon which he breathed and +breathed, match in hand, but I could only see his lips, and the +blue point of the match even those, but fitfully. The tinder was +damp no wonder there and one after another the sparks died out. +The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the flint and steel. +As the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see his +hands, and touches of his face, and could make out that he was +seated and bending over the table but nothing more. Presently I +saw his blue lips again, breathing on the tinder, and then a flare +of light flashed up, and showed me Orlick. +Whom I had looked for, I don't know. I had not looked for him. +Seeing him, I felt that I was in a dangerous strait indeed, and I +kept my eyes upon him. +He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great +deliberation, and dropped the match, and trod it out. Then, he put +the candle away from him on the table, so that he could see me, and +sat with his arms folded on the table and looked at me. I made out +that I was fastened to a stout perpendicular ladder a few inches +from the wall a fixture there the means of ascent to the loft +above. +"Now," said he, when we had surveyed one another for some time, +"I've got you." +"Unbind me. Let me go" +"Ah" he returned, "I'll let you go. I'll let you go to the moon, +I'll let you go to the stars. All in good time." +"Why have you lured me here?" +"Don't you know?" said he, with a deadly look +"Why have you set upon me in the dark?" +"Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret better than +two. Oh you enemy, you enemy" +His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his arms +folded on the table, shaking his head at me and hugging himself, +had a malignity in it that made me tremble. As I watched him in +silence, he put his hand into the corner at his side, and took up a +gun with a brassbound stock. +"Do you know this?" said he, making as if he would take aim at me. +"Do you know where you saw it afore? Speak, wolf" +"Yes," I answered. +"You cost me that place. You did. Speak" +"What else could I do?" +"You did that, and that would be enough, without more. How dared +you to come betwixt me and a young woman I liked?" +"When did I?" +"When didn't you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad name +to her." +"You gave it to yourself you gained it for yourself. I could have +done you no harm, if you had done yourself none." +"You're a liar. And you'll take any pains, and spend any money, to +drive me out of this country, will you?" said he, repeating my +words to Biddy in the last interview I had with her. "Now, I'll +tell you a piece of information. It was never so well worth your +while to get me out of this country as it is tonight. Ah If it +was all your money twenty times told, to the last brass farden" As +he shook his heavy hand at me, with his mouth snarling like a +tiger's, I felt that it was true. +"What are you going to do to me?" +"I'm agoing," said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with a +heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell, to give it greater force, +"I'm agoing to have your life" +He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand and +drew it across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and sat +down again. +"You was always in Old Orlick's way since ever you was a child. You +goes out of his way, this present night. He'll have no more on you. +You're dead." +I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I +looked wildly round my trap for any chance of escape but there was +none. +"More than that," said he, folding his arms on the table again, "I +won't have a rag of you, I won't have a bone of you, left on earth. +I'll put your body in the kiln I'd carry two such to it, on my +shoulders and, let people suppose what they may of you, they +shall never know nothing." +My mind, with inconceivable rapidity, followed out all the +consequences of such a death. Estella's father would believe I had +deserted him, would be taken, would die accusing me even Herbert +would doubt me, when he compared the letter I had left for him, +with the fact that I had called at Miss Havisham's gate for only a +moment Joe and Biddy would never know how sorry I had been that +night none would ever know what I had suffered, how true I had +meant to be, what an agony I had passed through. The death close +before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death was the +dread of being misremembered after death. And so quick were my +thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn generations +Estella's children, and their children while the wretch's words +were yet on his lips. +"Now, wolf," said he, "afore I kill you like any other beast +which is wot I mean to do and wot I have tied you up for I'll +have a good look at you and a good goad at you. Oh, you enemy" +It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help again though +few could know better than I, the solitary nature of the spot, and +the hopelessness of aid. But as he sat gloating over me, I was +supported by a scornful detestation of him that sealed my lips. +Above all things, I resolved that I would not entreat him, and that +I would die making some last poor resistance to him. Softened as my +thoughts of all the rest of men were in that dire extremity humbly +beseeching pardon, as I did, of Heaven melted at heart, as I was, +by the thought that I had taken no farewell, and never never now +could take farewell, of those who were dear to me, or could explain +myself to them, or ask for their compassion on my miserable errors +still, if I could have killed him, even in dying, I would have done +it. +He had been drinking, and his eyes were red and bloodshot. Around +his neck was slung a tin bottle, as I had often seen his meat and +drink slung about him in other days. He brought the bottle to his +lips, and took a fiery drink from it and I smelt the strong +spirits that I saw flash into his face. +"Wolf" said he, folding his arms again, "Old Orlick's agoing to +tell you somethink. It was you as did for your shrew sister." +Again my mind, with its former inconceivable rapidity, had +exhausted the whole subject of the attack upon my sister, her +illness, and her death, before his slow and hesitating speech had +formed these words. +"It was you, villain," said I. +"I tell you it was your doing I tell you it was done through +you," he retorted, catching up the gun, and making a blow with the +stock at the vacant air between us. "I come upon her from behind, +as I come upon you tonight. I giv' it her I left her for dead, +and if there had been a limekiln as nigh her as there is now nigh +you, she shouldn't have come to life again. But it warn't Old +Orlick as did it it was you. You was favoured, and he was bullied +and beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh? Now you pays for it. You +done it now you pays for it." +He drank again, and became more ferocious. I saw by his tilting of +the bottle that there was no great quantity left in it. I +distinctly understood that he was working himself up with its +contents, to make an end of me. I knew that every drop it held, was +a drop of my life. I knew that when I was changed into a part of +the vapour that had crept towards me but a little while before, +like my own warning ghost, he would do as he had done in my +sister's case make all haste to the town, and be seen slouching +about there, drinking at the alehouses. My rapid mind pursued him +to the town, made a picture of the street with him in it, and +contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and the white +vapour creeping over it, into which I should have dissolved. +It was not only that I could have summed up years and years and +years while he said a dozen words, but that what he did say +presented pictures to me, and not mere words. In the excited and +exalted state of my brain, I could not think of a place without +seeing it, or of persons without seeing them. It is impossible to +overstate the vividness of these images, and yet I was so intent, +all the time, upon him himself who would not be intent on the +tiger crouching to spring that I knew of the slightest action of +his fingers. +When he had drunk this second time, he rose from the bench on which +he sat, and pushed the table aside. Then, he took up the candle, +and shading it with his murderous hand so as to throw its light on +me, stood before me, looking at me and enjoying the sight. +"Wolf, I'll tell you something more. It was Old Orlick as you +tumbled over on your stairs that night." +I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps. I saw the shadows +of the heavy stairrails, thrown by the watchman's lantern on the +wall. I saw the rooms that I was never to see again here, a door +half open there, a door closed all the articles of furniture +around. +"And why was Old Orlick there? I'll tell you something more, wolf. +You and her have pretty well hunted me out of this country, so far +as getting a easy living in it goes, and I've took up with new +companions, and new masters. Some of 'em writes my letters when I +wants 'em wrote do you mind? writes my letters, wolf They +writes fifty hands they're not like sneaking you, as writes but +one. I've had a firm mind and a firm will to have your life, since +you was down here at your sister's burying. I han't seen a way to +get you safe, and I've looked arter you to know your ins and outs. +For, says Old Orlick to himself, 'Somehow or another I'll have +him' What When I looks for you, I finds your uncle Provis, eh?" +Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks's Basin, and the Old Green Copper +RopeWalk, all so clear and plain Provis in his rooms, the signal +whose use was over, pretty Clara, the good motherly woman, old Bill +Barley on his back, all drifting by, as on the swift stream of my +life fast running out to sea +"You with a uncle too Why, I know'd you at Gargery's when you was +so small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt this +finger and thumb and chucked you away dead as I'd thoughts o' +doing, odd times, when I see you loitering amongst the pollards on +a Sunday, and you hadn't found no uncles then. No, not you But +when Old Orlick come for to hear that your uncle Provis had +mostlike wore the legiron wot Old Orlick had picked up, filed +asunder, on these meshes ever so many year ago, and wot he kep by +him till he dropped your sister with it, like a bullock, as he +means to drop you hey? when he come for to hear that hey?" +In his savage taunting, he flared the candle so close at me, that I +turned my face aside, to save it from the flame. +"Ah" he cried, laughing, after doing it again, "the burnt child +dreads the fire Old Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick knowed +you was smuggling your uncle Provis away, Old Orlick's a match for +you and know'd you'd come tonight Now I'll tell you something +more, wolf, and this ends it. There's them that's as good a match +for your uncle Provis as Old Orlick has been for you. Let him 'ware +them, when he's lost his nevvy Let him 'ware them, when no man +can't find a rag of his dear relation's clothes, nor yet a bone of +his body. There's them that can't and that won't have Magwitch +yes, I know the name alive in the same land with them, and +that's had such sure information of him when he was alive in +another land, as that he couldn't and shouldn't leave it unbeknown +and put them in danger. P'raps it's them that writes fifty hands, +and that's not like sneaking you as writes but one. 'Ware +Compeyson, Magwitch, and the gallows" +He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and hair, and for +an instant blinding me, and turned his powerful back as he replaced +the light on the table. I had thought a prayer, and had been with +Joe and Biddy and Herbert, before he turned towards me again. +There was a clear space of a few feet between the table and the +opposite wall. Within this space, he now slouched backwards and +forwards. His great strength seemed to sit stronger upon him than +ever before, as he did this with his hands hanging loose and heavy +at his sides, and with his eyes scowling at me. I had no grain of +hope left. Wild as my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force of +the pictures that rushed by me instead of thoughts, I could yet +clearly understand that unless he had resolved that I was within a +few moments of surely perishing out of all human knowledge, he +would never have told me what he had told. +Of a sudden, he stopped, took the cork out of his bottle, and +tossed it away. Light as it was, I heard it fall like a plummet. He +swallowed slowly, tilting up the bottle by little and little, and +now he looked at me no more. The last few drops of liquor he poured +into the palm of his hand, and licked up. Then, with a sudden hurry +of violence and swearing horribly, he threw the bottle from him, +and stooped and I saw in his hand a stonehammer with a long heavy +handle. +The resolution I had made did not desert me, for, without uttering +one vain word of appeal to him, I shouted out with all my might, +and struggled with all my might. It was only my head and my legs +that I could move, but to that extent I struggled with all the +force, until then unknown, that was within me. In the same instant +I heard responsive shouts, saw figures and a gleam of light dash in +at the door, heard voices and tumult, and saw Orlick emerge from a +struggle of men, as if it were tumbling water, clear the table at a +leap, and fly out into the night. +After a blank, I found that I was lying unbound, on the floor, in +the same place, with my head on some one's knee. My eyes were fixed +on the ladder against the wall, when I came to myself had opened +on it before my mind saw it and thus as I recovered +consciousness, I knew that I was in the place where I had lost it. +Too indifferent at first, even to look round and ascertain who +supported me, I was lying looking at the ladder, when there came +between me and it, a face. The face of Trabb's boy +"I think he's all right" said Trabb's boy, in a sober voice "but +ain't he just pale though" +At these words, the face of him who supported me looked over into +mine, and I saw my supporter to be +"Herbert Great Heaven" +"Softly," said Herbert. "Gently, Handel. Don't be too eager." +"And our old comrade, Startop" I cried, as he too bent over me. +"Remember what he is going to assist us in," said Herbert, "and be +calm." +The allusion made me spring up though I dropped again from the +pain in my arm. "The time has not gone by, Herbert, has it? What +night is tonight? How long have I been here?" For, I had a strange +and strong misgiving that I had been lying there a long time a +day and a night two days and nights more. +"The time has not gone by. It is still Monday night." +"Thank God" +"And you have all tomorrow, Tuesday, to rest in," said Herbert. +"But you can't help groaning, my dear Handel. What hurt have you +got? Can you stand?" +"Yes, yes," said I, "I can walk. I have no hurt but in this +throbbing arm." +They laid it bare, and did what they could. It was violently +swollen and inflamed, and I could scarcely endure to have it +touched. But, they tore up their handkerchiefs to make fresh +bandages, and carefully replaced it in the sling, until we could +get to the town and obtain some cooling lotion to put upon it. In a +little while we had shut the door of the dark and empty +sluicehouse, and were passing through the quarry on our way back. +Trabb's boy Trabb's overgrown young man now went before us with +a lantern, which was the light I had seen come in at the door. But, +the moon was a good two hours higher than when I had last seen the +sky, and the night though rainy was much lighter. The white vapour +of the kiln was passing from us as we went by, and, as I had +thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now. +Entreating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my rescue which +at first he had flatly refused to do, but had insisted on my +remaining quiet I learnt that I had in my hurry dropped the +letter, open, in our chambers, where he, coming home to bring with +him Startop whom he had met in the street on his way to me, found +it, very soon after I was gone. Its tone made him uneasy, and the +more so because of the inconsistency between it and the hasty +letter I had left for him. His uneasiness increasing instead of +subsiding after a quarter of an hour's consideration, he set off +for the coachoffice, with Startop, who volunteered his company, to +make inquiry when the next coach went down. Finding that the +afternoon coach was gone, and finding that his uneasiness grew into +positive alarm, as obstacles came in his way, he resolved to follow +in a postchaise. So, he and Startop arrived at the Blue Boar, +fully expecting there to find me, or tidings of me but, finding +neither, went on to Miss Havisham's, where they lost me. Hereupon +they went back to the hotel doubtless at about the time when I was +hearing the popular local version of my own story, to refresh +themselves and to get some one to guide them out upon the marshes. +Among the loungers under the Boar's archway, happened to be Trabb's +boy true to his ancient habit of happening to be everywhere where +he had no business and Trabb's boy had seen me passing from Miss +Havisham's in the direction of my diningplace. Thus, Trabb's boy +became their guide, and with him they went out to the sluicehouse +though by the town way to the marshes, which I had avoided. Now, as +they went along, Herbert reflected, that I might, after all, have +been brought there on some genuine and serviceable errand tending +to Provis's safety, and, bethinking himself that in that case +interruption must be mischievous, left his guide and Startop on the +edge of the quarry, and went on by himself, and stole round the +house two or three times, endeavouring to ascertain whether all was +right within. As he could hear nothing but indistinct sounds of one +deep rough voice this was while my mind was so busy, he even at +last began to doubt whether I was there, when suddenly I cried out +loudly, and he answered the cries, and rushed in, closely followed +by the other two. +When I told Herbert what had passed within the house, he was for +our immediately going before a magistrate in the town, late at +night as it was, and getting out a warrant. But, I had already +considered that such a course, by detaining us there, or binding us +to come back, might be fatal to Provis. There was no gainsaying +this difficulty, and we relinquished all thoughts of pursuing +Orlick at that time. For the present, under the circumstances, we +deemed it prudent to make rather light of the matter to Trabb's +boy who I am convinced would have been much affected by +disappointment, if he had known that his intervention saved me from +the limekiln. Not that Trabb's boy was of a malignant nature, but +that he had too much spare vivacity, and that it was in his +constitution to want variety and excitement at anybody's expense. +When we parted, I presented him with two guineas which seemed to +meet his views, and told him that I was sorry ever to have had an +ill opinion of him which made no impression on him at all. +Wednesday being so close upon us, we determined to go back to +London that night, three in the postchaise the rather, as we +should then be clear away, before the night's adventure began to be +talked of. Herbert got a large bottle of stuff for my arm, and by +dint of having this stuff dropped over it all the night through, I +was just able to bear its pain on the journey. It was daylight when +we reached the Temple, and I went at once to bed, and lay in bed +all day. +My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill and being unfitted for +tomorrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it did not disable me of +itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, in conjunction with +the mental wear and tear I had suffered, but for the unnatural +strain upon me that tomorrow was. So anxiously looked forward to, +charged with such consequences, its results so impenetrably hidden +though so near. +No precaution could have been more obvious than our refraining from +communication with him that day yet this again increased my +restlessness. I started at every footstep and every sound, +believing that he was discovered and taken, and this was the +messenger to tell me so. I persuaded myself that I knew he was +taken that there was something more upon my mind than a fear or a +presentiment that the fact had occurred, and I had a mysterious +knowledge of it. As the day wore on and no ill news came, as the +day closed in and darkness fell, my overshadowing dread of being +disabled by illness before tomorrow morning, altogether mastered +me. My burning arm throbbed, and my burning head throbbed, and I +fancied I was beginning to wander. I counted up to high numbers, to +make sure of myself, and repeated passages that I knew in prose and +verse. It happened sometimes that in the mere escape of a fatigued +mind, I dozed for some moments or forgot then I would say to +myself with a start, "Now it has come, and I am turning delirious" +They kept me very quiet all day, and kept my arm constantly +dressed, and gave me cooling drinks. Whenever I fell asleep, I +awoke with the notion I had had in the sluicehouse, that a long +time had elapsed and the opportunity to save him was gone. About +midnight I got out of bed and went to Herbert, with the conviction +that I had been asleep for fourandtwenty hours, and that +Wednesday was past. It was the last selfexhausting effort of my +fretfulness, for, after that, I slept soundly. +Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of window. The +winking lights upon the bridges were already pale, the coming sun +was like a marsh of fire on the horizon. The river, still dark and +mysterious, was spanned by bridges that were turning coldly grey, +with here and there at top a warm touch from the burning in the +sky. As I looked along the clustered roofs, with Church towers and +spires shooting into the unusually clear air, the sun rose up, and +a veil seemed to be drawn from the river, and millions of sparkles +burst out upon its waters. From me too, a veil seemed to be drawn, +and I felt strong and well. +Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellowstudent lay +asleep on the sofa. I could not dress myself without help, but I +made up the fire, which was still burning, and got some coffee +ready for them. In good time they too started up strong and well, +and we admitted the sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at +the tide that was still flowing towards us. +"When it turns at nine o'clock," said Herbert, cheerfully, "look +out for us, and stand ready, you over there at Mill Pond Bank" +Chapter +It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind +blows cold when it is summer in the light, and winter in the +shade. We had out peacoats with us, and I took a bag. Of all my +worldly possessions I took no more than the few necessaries that +filled the bag. Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might +return, were questions utterly unknown to me nor did I vex my mind +with them, for it was wholly set on Provis's safety. I only +wondered for the passing moment, as I stopped at the door and +looked back, under what altered circumstances I should next see +those rooms, if ever. +We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood loitering there, +as if we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all. Of +course I had taken care that the boat should be ready and +everything in order. After a little show of indecision, which there +were none to see but the two or three amphibious creatures +belonging to our Temple stairs, we went on board and cast off +Herbert in the bow, I steering. It was then about highwater +halfpast eight. +Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at nine, and +being with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it +had turned, and row against it until dark. We should then be well +in those long reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex, +where the river is broad and solitary, where the waterside +inhabitants are very few, and where lone publichouses are +scattered here and there, of which we could choose one for a +restingplace. There, we meant to lie by, all night. The steamer +for Hamburg, and the steamer for Rotterdam, would start from London +at about nine on Thursday morning. We should know at what time to +expect them, according to where we were, and would hail the first +so that if by any accident we were not taken abroad, we should have +another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of each vessel. +The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the +purpose, was so great to me that I felt it difficult to realize the +condition in which I had been a few hours before. The crisp air, +the sunlight, the movement on the river, and the moving river +itself the road that ran with us, seeming to sympathize with us, +animate us, and encourage us on freshened me with new hope. I +felt mortified to be of so little use in the boat but, there were +few better oarsmen than my two friends, and they rowed with a +steady stroke that was to last all day. +At that time, the steamtraffic on the Thames was far below its +present extent, and watermen's boats were far more numerous. Of +barges, sailing colliers, and coasting traders, there were perhaps +as many as now but, of steamships, great and small, not a tithe +or a twentieth part so many. Early as it was, there were plenty of +scullers going here and there that morning, and plenty of barges +dropping down with the tide the navigation of the river between +bridges, in an open boat, was a much easier and commoner matter in +those days than it is in these and we went ahead among many skiffs +and wherries, briskly. +Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate market with +its oysterboats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and Traitor's +Gate, and we were in among the tiers of shipping. Here, were the +Leith, Aberdeen, and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading goods, +and looking immensely high out of the water as we passed alongside +here, were colliers by the score and score, with the coalwhippers +plunging off stages on deck, as counterweights to measures of coal +swinging up, which were then rattled over the side into barges +here, at her moorings was tomorrow's steamer for Rotterdam, of +which we took good notice and here tomorrow's for Hamburg, under +whose bowsprit we crossed. And now I, sitting in the stern, could +see with a faster beating heart, Mill Pond Bank and Mill Pond +stairs. +"Is he there?" said Herbert. +"Not yet." +"Right He was not to come down till he saw us. Can you see his +signal?" +"Not well from here but I think I see it. Now, I see him Pull +both. Easy, Herbert. Oars" +We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on +board and we were off again. He had a boatcloak with him, and a +black canvas bag, and he looked as like a riverpilot as my heart +could have wished. "Dear boy" he said, putting his arm on my +shoulder as he took his seat. "Faithful dear boy, well done. +Thankye, thankye" +Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty +chaincables frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing buoys, sinking for +the moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of +wood and shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under +the figurehead of the John of Sunderland making a speech to the +winds as is done by many Johns, and the Betsy of Yarmouth with a +firm formality of bosom and her nobby eyes starting two inches out +of her head, in and out, hammers going in shipbuilders'yards, saws +going at timber, clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps +going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and +unintelligible seacreatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at +respondent lightermen, in and out out at last upon the clearer +river, where the ships' boys might take their fenders in, no longer +fishing in troubled waters with them over the side, and where the +festooned sails might fly out to the wind. +At the Stairs where we had taken him abroad, and ever since, I had +looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had seen +none. We certainly had not been, and at that time as certainly we +were not, either attended or followed by any boat. If we had been +waited on by any boat, I should have run in to shore, and have +obliged her to go on, or to make her purpose evident. But, we held +our own, without any appearance of molestation. +He had his boatcloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a natural +part of the scene. It was remarkable but perhaps the wretched life +he had led, accounted for it, that he was the least anxious of any +of us. He was not indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live +to see his gentleman one of the best of gentlemen in a foreign +country he was not disposed to be passive or resigned, as I +understood it but he had no notion of meeting danger half way. +When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come before he +troubled himself. +"If you knowed, dear boy," he said to me, "what it is to sit here +alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having been day by day +betwixt four walls, you'd envy me. But you don't know what it is." +"I think I know the delights of freedom," I answered. +"Ah," said he, shaking his head gravely. "But you don't know it +equal to me. You must have been under lock and key, dear boy, to +know it equal to me but I ain't agoing to be low." +It occurred to me as inconsistent, that for any mastering idea, he +should have endangered his freedom and even his life. But I +reflected that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart +from all the habit of his existence to be to him what it would be +to another man. I was not far out, since he said, after smoking a +little +"You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t'other side the world, +I was always alooking to this side and it come flat to be there, +for all I was agrowing rich. Everybody knowed Magwitch, and +Magwitch could come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody's head would +be troubled about him. They ain't so easy concerning me here, dear +boy wouldn't be, leastwise, if they knowed where I was." +"If all goes well," said I, "you will be perfectly free and safe +again, within a few hours." +"Well," he returned, drawing a long breath, "I hope so." +"And think so?" +He dipped his hand in the water over the boat's gunwale, and said, +smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new to me +"Ay, I s'pose I think so, dear boy. We'd be puzzled to be more +quiet and easygoing than we are at present. But it's aflowing +so soft and pleasant through the water, p'raps, as makes me think +it I was athinking through my smoke just then, that we can no +more see to the bottom of the next few hours, than we can see to +the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can't +no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And it's run through +my fingers and gone, you see" holding up his dripping hand. +"But for your face, I should think you were a little despondent," +said I. +"Not a bit on it, dear boy It comes of flowing on so quiet, and of +that there rippling at the boat's head making a sort of a Sunday +tune. Maybe I'm agrowing a trifle old besides." +He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expression of +face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were already out +of England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of advice as if he +had been in constant terror, for, when we ran ashore to get some +bottles of beer into the boat, and he was stepping out, I hinted +that I thought he would be safest where he was, and he said. "Do +you, dear boy?" and quietly sat down again. +The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the +sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care to +lose none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on thoroughly +well. By imperceptible degrees, as the tide ran out, we lost more +and more of the nearer woods and hills, and dropped lower and lower +between the muddy banks, but the tide was yet with us when we were +off Gravesend. As our charge was wrapped in his cloak, I purposely +passed within a boat or two's length of the floating Custom House, +and so out to catch the stream, alongside of two emigrant ships, +and under the bows of a large transport with troops on the +forecastle looking down at us. And soon the tide began to slacken, +and the craft lying at anchor to swing, and presently they had all +swung round, and the ships that were taking advantage of the new +tide to get up to the Pool, began to crowd upon us in a fleet, and +we kept under the shore, as much out of the strength of the tide +now as we could, standing carefully off from low shallows and +mudbanks. +Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasionally let her +drive with the tide for a minute or two, that a quarter of an +hour's rest proved full as much as they wanted. We got ashore among +some slippery stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, +and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and +monotonous, and with a dim horizon while the winding river turned +and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned and turned, +and everything else seemed stranded and still. For, now, the last +of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we had headed +and the last green barge, strawladen, with a brown sail, had +followed and some ballastlighters, shaped like a child's first +rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud and a little squat +shoallighthouse on open piles, stood crippled in the mud on stilts +and crutches and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy +stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck +out of the mud, and an old landingstage and an old roofless building +slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and mud. +We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It was much harder +work now, but Herbert and Startop persevered, and rowed, and rowed, +and rowed, until the sun went down. By that time the river had +lifted us a little, so that we could see above the bank. There was +the red sun, on the low level of the shore, in a purple haze, fast +deepening into black and there was the solitary flat marsh and +far away there were the rising grounds, between which and us there +seemed to be no life, save here and there in the foreground a +melancholy gull. +As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the +full, would not rise early, we held a little council a short one, +for clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we +could find. So, they plied their oars once more, and I looked out +for anything like a house. Thus we held on, speaking little, for +four or five dull miles. It was very cold, and, a collier coming by +us, with her galleyfire smoking and flaring, looked like a +comfortable home. The night was as dark by this time as it would be +until morning and what light we had, seemed to come more from the +river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few +reflected stars. +At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea that +we were followed. As the tide made, it flapped heavily at irregular +intervals against the shore and whenever such a sound came, one or +other of us was sure to start and look in that direction. Here and +there, the set of the current had worn down the bank into a little +creek, and we were all suspicious of such places, and eyed them +nervously. Sometimes, "What was that ripple?" one of us would say +in a low voice. Or another, "Is that a boat yonder?" And +afterwards, we would fall into a dead silence, and I would sit +impatiently thinking with what an unusual amount of noise the oars +worked in the thowels. +At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently afterwards +ran alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been picked +up hard by. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, and +found the light to be in a window of a publichouse. It was a dirty +place enough, and I dare say not unknown to smuggling adventurers +but there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and +bacon to eat, and various liquors to drink. Also, there were two +doublebedded rooms "such as they were," the landlord said. No +other company was in the house than the landlord, his wife, and a +grizzled male creature, the "Jack" of the little causeway, who was +as slimy and smeary as if he had been lowwater mark too. +With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and we all came +ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder, and boathook, and +all else, and hauled her up for the night. We made a very good meal +by the kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms Herbert and +Startop were to occupy one I and our charge the other. We found +the air as carefully excluded from both, as if air were fatal to +life and there were more dirty clothes and bandboxes under the +beds than I should have thought the family possessed. But, we +considered ourselves well off, notwithstanding, for a more solitary +place we could not have found. +While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal, the +Jack who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated pair of +shoes on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our eggs and +bacon, as interesting relics that he had taken a few days ago from +the feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore asked me if we had +seen a fouroared galley going up with the tide? When I told him +No, he said she must have gone down then, and yet she "took up +too," when she left there. +"They must ha' thought better on't for some reason or another," +said the Jack, "and gone down." +"A fouroared galley, did you say?" said I. +"A four," said the Jack, "and two sitters." +"Did they come ashore here?" +"They put in with a stone twogallon jar, for some beer. I'd +ha'been glad to pison the beer myself," said the Jack, "or put some +rattling physic in it." +"Why?" +"I know why," said the Jack. He spoke in a slushy voice, as if much +mud had washed into his throat. +"He thinks," said the landlord a weakly meditative man with a pale +eye, who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack "he thinks they was, +what they wasn't." +"I knows what I thinks," observed the Jack. +"You thinks Custum 'Us, Jack?" said the landlord. +"I do," said the Jack. +"Then you're wrong, Jack." +"Am I" +In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless confidence +in his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off, looked +into it, knocked a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and +put it on again. He did this with the air of a Jack who was so +right that he could afford to do anything. +"Why, what do you make out that they done with their buttons then, +Jack?" asked the landlord, vacillating weakly. +"Done with their buttons?" returned the Jack. "Chucked 'em +overboard. Swallered 'em. Sowed 'em, to come up small salad. Done +with their buttons" +"Don't be cheeky, Jack," remonstrated the landlord, in a melancholy +and pathetic way. +"A Custum 'Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons," said the +Jack, repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest contempt, +"when they comes betwixt him and his own light. A Four and two +sitters don't go hanging and hovering, up with one tide and down +with another, and both with and against another, without there +being Custum 'Us at the bottom of it." Saying which he went out in +disdain and the landlord, having no one to reply upon, found it +impracticable to pursue the subject. +This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy. The dismal +wind was muttering round the house, the tide was flapping at the +shore, and I had a feeling that we were caged and threatened. A +fouroared galley hovering about in so unusual a way as to attract +this notice, was an ugly circumstance that I could not get rid of. +When I had induced Provis to go up to bed, I went outside with my +two companions Startop by this time knew the state of the case, +and held another council. Whether we should remain at the house +until near the steamer's time, which would be about one in the +afternoon or whether we should put off early in the morning was +the question we discussed. On the whole we deemed it the better +course to lie where we were, until within an hour or so of the +steamer's time, and then to get out in her track, and drift easily +with the tide. Having settled to do this, we returned into the +house and went to bed. +I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and slept well +for a few hours. When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the sign of +the house the Ship was creaking and banging about, with noises +that startled me. Rising softly, for my charge lay fast asleep, I +looked out of the window. It commanded the causeway where we had +hauled up our boat, and, as my eyes adapted themselves to the light +of the clouded moon, I saw two men looking into her. They passed by +under the window, looking at nothing else, and they did not go down +to the landingplace which I could discern to be empty, but struck +across the marsh in the direction of the Nore. +My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two men +going away. But, reflecting before I got into his room, which was +at the back of the house and adjoined mine, that he and Startop had +had a harder day than I, and were fatigued, I forbore. Going back +to my window, I could see the two men moving over the marsh. In +that light, however, I soon lost them, and feeling very cold, lay +down to think of the matter, and fell asleep again. +We were up early. As we walked to and fro, all four together, +before breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I had seen. +Again our charge was the least anxious of the party. It was very +likely that the men belonged to the Custom House, he said quietly, +and that they had no thought of us. I tried to persuade myself that +it was so as, indeed, it might easily be. However, I proposed +that he and I should walk away together to a distant point we could +see, and that the boat should take us aboard there, or as near +there as might prove feasible, at about noon. This being considered +a good precaution, soon after breakfast he and I set forth, without +saying anything at the tavern. +He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to clap +me on the shoulder. One would have supposed that it was I who was +in danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me. We spoke very +little. As we approached the point, I begged him to remain in a +sheltered place, while I went on to reconnoitre for, it was +towards it that the men had passed in the night. He complied, and I +went on alone. There was no boat off the point, nor any boat drawn +up anywhere near it, nor were there any signs of the men having +embarked there. But, to be sure the tide was high, and there might +have been some footprints under water. +When he looked out from his shelter in the distance, and saw that I +waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me, and there we +waited sometimes lying on the bank wrapped in our coats, and +sometimes moving about to warm ourselves until we saw our boat +coming round. We got aboard easily, and rowed out into the track of +the steamer. By that time it wanted but ten minutes of one o'clock, +and we began to look out for her smoke. +But, it was halfpast one before we saw her smoke, and soon +afterwards we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer. As they +were coming on at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took +that opportunity of saying goodbye to Herbert and Startop. We had +all shaken hands cordially, and neither Herbert's eyes nor mine +were quite dry, when I saw a fouroared galley shoot out from under +the bank but a little way ahead of us, and row out into the same +track. +A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the steamer's +smoke, by reason of the bend and wind of the river but now she was +visible, coming head on. I called to Herbert and Startop to keep +before the tide, that she might see us lying by for her, and I +adjured Provis to sit quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He +answered cheerily, "Trust to me, dear boy," and sat like a statue. +Meantime the galley, which was very skilfully handled, had crossed +us, let us come up with her, and fallen alongside. Leaving just +room enough for the play of the oars, she kept alongside, drifting +when we drifted, and pulling a stroke or two when we pulled. Of the +two sitters one held the rudder lines, and looked at us attentively +as did all the rowers the other sitter was wrapped up, much as +Provis was, and seemed to shrink, and whisper some instruction to +the steerer as he looked at us. Not a word was spoken in either +boat. +Startop could make out, after a few minutes, which steamer was +first, and gave me the word "Hamburg," in a low voice as we sat +face to face. She was nearing us very fast, and the beating of her +peddles grew louder and louder. I felt as if her shadow were +absolutely upon us, when the galley hailed us. I answered. +"You have a returned Transport there," said the man who held the +lines. "That's the man, wrapped in the cloak. His name is Abel +Magwitch, otherwise Provis. I apprehend that man, and call upon him +to surrender, and you to assist." +At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his +crew, he ran the galley abroad of us. They had pulled one sudden +stroke ahead, had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were +holding on to our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing. +This caused great confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them +calling to us, and heard the order given to stop the paddles, and +heard them stop, but felt her driving down upon us irresistibly. In +the same moment, I saw the steersman of the galley lay his hand on +his prisoner's shoulder, and saw that both boats were swinging +round with the force of the tide, and saw that all hands on board +the steamer were running forward quite frantically. Still in the +same moment, I saw the prisoner start up, lean across his captor, +and pull the cloak from the neck of the shrinking sitter in the +galley. Still in the same moment, I saw that the face disclosed, +was the face of the other convict of long ago. Still in the same +moment, I saw the face tilt backward with a white terror on it that +I shall never forget, and heard a great cry on board the steamer +and a loud splash in the water, and felt the boat sink from under +me. +It was but for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a thousand +millweirs and a thousand flashes of light that instant past, I +was taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, and Startop was +there but our boat was gone, and the two convicts were gone. +What with the cries aboard the steamer, and the furious blowing off +of her steam, and her driving on, and our driving on, I could not +at first distinguish sky from water or shore from shore but, the +crew of the galley righted her with great speed, and, pulling +certain swift strong strokes ahead, lay upon their oars, every man +looking silently and eagerly at the water astern. Presently a dark +object was seen in it, bearing towards us on the tide. No man +spoke, but the steersman held up his hand, and all softly backed +water, and kept the boat straight and true before it. As it came +nearer, I saw it to be Magwitch, swimming, but not swimming freely. +He was taken on board, and instantly manacled at the wrists and +ankles. +The galley was kept steady, and the silent eager lookout at the +water was resumed. But, the Rotterdam steamer now came up, and +apparently not understanding what had happened, came on at speed. +By the time she had been hailed and stopped, both steamers were +drifting away from us, and we were rising and falling in a troubled +wake of water. The lookout was kept, long after all was still +again and the two steamers were gone but, everybody knew that it +was hopeless now. +At length we gave it up, and pulled under the shore towards the +tavern we had lately left, where we were received with no little +surprise. Here, I was able to get some comforts for Magwitch +Provis no longer who had received some very severe injury in the +chest and a deep cut in the head. +He told me that he believed himself to have gone under the keel of +the steamer, and to have been struck on the head in rising. The +injury to his chest which rendered his breathing extremely +painful he thought he had received against the side of the galley. +He added that he did not pretend to say what he might or might not +have done to Compeyson, but, that in the moment of his laying his +hand on his cloak to identify him, that villain had staggered up +and staggered back, and they had both gone overboard together when +the sudden wrenching of him Magwitch out of our boat, and the +endeavour of his captor to keep him in it, had capsized us. He told +me in a whisper that they had gone down, fiercely locked in each +other's arms, and that there had been a struggle under water, and +that he had disengaged himself, struck out, and swum away. +I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what he thus +told me. The officer who steered the galley gave the same account +of their going overboard. +When I asked this officer's permission to change the prisoner's wet +clothes by purchasing any spare garments I could get at the +publichouse, he gave it readily merely observing that he must +take charge of everything his prisoner had about him. So the +pocketbook which had once been in my hands, passed into the +officer's. He further gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to +London but, declined to accord that grace to my two friends. +The Jack at the Ship was instructed where the drowned man had gone +down, and undertook to search for the body in the places where it +was likeliest to come ashore. His interest in its recovery seemed +to me to be much heightened when he heard that it had stockings on. +Probably, it took about a dozen drowned men to fit him out +completely and that may have been the reason why the different +articles of his dress were in various stages of decay. +We remained at the publichouse until the tide turned, and then +Magwitch was carried down to the galley and put on board. Herbert +and Startop were to get to London by land, as soon as they could. +We had a doleful parting, and when I took my place by Magwitch's +side, I felt that that was my place henceforth while he lived. +For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the +hunted wounded shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only +saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt +affectionately, gratefully, and generously, towards me with great +constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much +better man than I had been to Joe. +His breathing became more difficult and painful as the night drew +on, and often he could not repress a groan. I tried to rest him on +the arm I could use, in any easy position but, it was dreadful to +think that I could not be sorry at heart for his being badly hurt, +since it was unquestionably best that he should die. That there +were, still living, people enough who were able and willing to +identify him, I could not doubt. That he would be leniently +treated, I could not hope. He who had been presented in the worst +light at his trial, who had since broken prison and had been tried +again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, +and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of +his arrest. +As we returned towards the setting sun we had yesterday left behind +us, and as the stream of our hopes seemed all running back, I told +him how grieved I was to think that he had come home for my sake. +"Dear boy," he answered, "I'm quite content to take my chance. I've +seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me." +No. I had thought about that, while we had been there side by side. +No. Apart from any inclinations of my own, I understood Wemmick's +hint now. I foresaw that, being convicted, his possessions would be +forfeited to the Crown. +"Lookee here, dear boy," said he "It's best as a gentleman should +not be knowed to belong to me now. Only come to see me as if you +come by chance alonger Wemmick. Sit where I can see you when I am +swore to, for the last o' many times, and I don't ask no more." +"I will never stir from your side," said I, "when I am suffered to +be near you. Please God, I will be as true to you, as you have been +to me" +I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face +away as he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old +sound in his throat softened now, like all the rest of him. It +was a good thing that he had touched this point, for it put into my +mind what I might not otherwise have thought of until too late +That he need never know how his hopes of enriching me had perished. +Chapter +He was taken to the Police Court next day, and would have been +immediately committed for trial, but that it was necessary to send +down for an old officer of the prisonship from which he had once +escaped, to speak to his identity. Nobody doubted it but, +Compeyson, who had meant to depose to it, was tumbling on the +tides, dead, and it happened that there was not at that time any +prison officer in London who could give the required evidence. I +had gone direct to Mr. Jaggers at his private house, on my arrival +over night, to retain his assistance, and Mr. Jaggers on the +prisoner's behalf would admit nothing. It was the sole resource, +for he told me that the case must be over in five minutes when the +witness was there, and that no power on earth could prevent its +going against us. +I imparted to Mr. Jaggers my design of keeping him in ignorance of +the fate of his wealth. Mr. Jaggers was querulous and angry with me +for having "let it slip through my fingers," and said we must +memorialize byandby, and try at all events for some of it. But, +he did not conceal from me that although there might be many cases +in which the forfeiture would not be exacted, there were no +circumstances in this case to make it one of them. I understood +that, very well. I was not related to the outlaw, or connected with +him by any recognizable tie he had put his hand to no writing or +settlement in my favour before his apprehension, and to do so now +would be idle. I had no claim, and I finally resolved, and ever +afterwards abided by the resolution, that my heart should never be +sickened with the hopeless task of attempting to establish one. +There appeared to be reason for supposing that the drowned informer +had hoped for a reward out of this forfeiture, and had obtained +some accurate knowledge of Magwitch's affairs. When his body was +found, many miles from the scene of his death, and so horribly +disfigured that he was only recognizable by the contents of his +pockets, notes were still legible, folded in a case he carried. +Among these, were the name of a bankinghouse in New South Wales +where a sum of money was, and the designation of certain lands of +considerable value. Both these heads of information were in a list +that Magwitch, while in prison, gave to Mr. Jaggers, of the +possessions he supposed I should inherit. His ignorance, poor +fellow, at last served him he never mistrusted but that my +inheritance was quite safe, with Mr. Jaggers's aid. +After three days' delay, during which the crown prosecution stood +over for the production of the witness from the prisonship, the +witness came, and completed the easy case. He was committed to take +his trial at the next Sessions, which would come on in a month. +It was at this dark time of my life that Herbert returned home one +evening, a good deal cast down, and said +"My dear Handel, I fear I shall soon have to leave you." +His partner having prepared me for that, I was less surprised than +he thought. +"We shall lose a fine opportunity if I put off going to Cairo, and +I am very much afraid I must go, Handel, when you most need me." +"Herbert, I shall always need you, because I shall always love you +but my need is no greater now, than at another time." +"You will be so lonely." +"I have not leisure to think of that," said I. "You know that I am +always with him to the full extent of the time allowed, and that I +should be with him all day long, if I could. And when I come away +from him, you know that my thoughts are with him." +The dreadful condition to which he was brought, was so appalling to +both of us, that we could not refer to it in plainer words. +"My dear fellow," said Herbert, "let the near prospect of our +separation for, it is very near be my justification for +troubling you about yourself. Have you thought of your future?" +"No, for I have been afraid to think of any future." +"But yours cannot be dismissed indeed, my dear dear Handel, it +must not be dismissed. I wish you would enter on it now, as far as +a few friendly words go, with me." +"I will," said I. +"In this branch house of ours, Handel, we must have a" +I saw that his delicacy was avoiding the right word, so I said, "A +clerk." +"A clerk. And I hope it is not at all unlikely that he may expand +as a clerk of your acquaintance has expanded into a partner. Now, +Handel in short, my dear boy, will you come to me?" +There was something charmingly cordial and engaging in the manner +in which after saying "Now, Handel," as if it were the grave +beginning of a portentous business exordium, he had suddenly given +up that tone, stretched out his honest hand, and spoken like a +schoolboy. +"Clara and I have talked about it again and again," Herbert +pursued, "and the dear little thing begged me only this evening, +with tears in her eyes, to say to you that if you will live with us +when we come together, she will do her best to make you happy, and +to convince her husband's friend that he is her friend too. We +should get on so well, Handel" +I thanked her heartily, and I thanked him heartily, but said I +could not yet make sure of joining him as he so kindly offered. +Firstly, my mind was too preoccupied to be able to take in the +subject clearly. Secondly Yes Secondly, there was a vague +something lingering in my thoughts that will come out very near the +end of this slight narrative. +"But if you thought, Herbert, that you could, without doing any +injury to your business, leave the question open for a little +while" +"For any while," cried Herbert. "Six months, a year" +"Not so long as that," said I. "Two or three months at most." +Herbert was highly delighted when we shook hands on this +arrangement, and said he could now take courage to tell me that he +believed he must go away at the end of the week. +"And Clara?" said I. +"The dear little thing," returned Herbert, "holds dutifully to her +father as long as he lasts but he won't last long. Mrs. Whimple +confides to me that he is certainly going." +"Not to say an unfeeling thing," said I, "he cannot do better than +go." +"I am afraid that must be admitted," said Herbert "and then I +shall come back for the dear little thing, and the dear little +thing and I will walk quietly into the nearest church. Remember +The blessed darling comes of no family, my dear Handel, and never +looked into the red book, and hasn't a notion about her grandpapa. +What a fortune for the son of my mother" +On the Saturday in that same week, I took my leave of Herbert +full of bright hope, but sad and sorry to leave me as he sat on +one of the seaport mail coaches. I went into a coffeehouse to +write a little note to Clara, telling her he had gone off, sending +his love to her over and over again, and then went to my lonely +home if it deserved the name, for it was now no home to me, and I +had no home anywhere. +On the stairs I encountered Wemmick, who was coming down, after an +unsuccessful application of his knuckles to my door. I had not seen +him alone, since the disastrous issue of the attempted flight and +he had come, in his private and personal capacity, to say a few +words of explanation in reference to that failure. +"The late Compeyson," said Wemmick, "had by little and little got +at the bottom of half of the regular business now transacted, and +it was from the talk of some of his people in trouble some of his +people being always in trouble that I heard what I did. I kept my +ears open, seeming to have them shut, until I heard that he was +absent, and I thought that would be the best time for making the +attempt. I can only suppose now, that it was a part of his policy, +as a very clever man, habitually to deceive his own instruments. +You don't blame me, I hope, Mr. Pip? I am sure I tried to serve you, +with all my heart." +"I am as sure of that, Wemmick, as you can be, and I thank you most +earnestly for all your interest and friendship." +"Thank you, thank you very much. It's a bad job," said Wemmick, +scratching his head, "and I assure you I haven't been so cut up for +a long time. What I look at, is the sacrifice of so much portable +property. Dear me" +"What I think of, Wemmick, is the poor owner of the property." +"Yes, to be sure," said Wemmick. "Of course there can be no +objection to your being sorry for him, and I'd put down a +fivepound note myself to get him out of it. But what I look at, is +this. The late Compeyson having been beforehand with him in +intelligence of his return, and being so determined to bring him to +book, I do not think he could have been saved. Whereas, the +portable property certainly could have been saved. That's the +difference between the property and the owner, don't you see?" +I invited Wemmick to come upstairs, and refresh himself with a +glass of grog before walking to Walworth. He accepted the +invitation. While he was drinking his moderate allowance, he said, +with nothing to lead up to it, and after having appeared rather +fidgety +"What do you think of my meaning to take a holiday on Monday, Mr. +Pip?" +"Why, I suppose you have not done such a thing these twelve +months." +"These twelve years, more likely," said Wemmick. "Yes. I'm going to +take a holiday. More than that I'm going to take a walk. More than +that I'm going to ask you to take a walk with me." +I was about to excuse myself, as being but a bad companion just +then, when Wemmick anticipated me. +"I know your engagements," said he, "and I know you are out of +sorts, Mr. Pip. But if you could oblige me, I should take it as a +kindness. It ain't a long walk, and it's an early one. Say it might +occupy you including breakfast on the walk from eight to twelve. +Couldn't you stretch a point and manage it?" +He had done so much for me at various times, that this was very +little to do for him. I said I could manage it would manage it +and he was so very much pleased by my acquiescence, that I was +pleased too. At his particular request, I appointed to call for him +at the Castle at halfpast eight on Monday morning, and so we +parted for the time. +Punctual to my appointment, I rang at the Castle gate on the Monday +morning, and was received by Wemmick himself who struck me as +looking tighter than usual, and having a sleeker hat on. Within, +there were two glasses of rumandmilk prepared, and two biscuits. +The Aged must have been stirring with the lark, for, glancing into +the perspective of his bedroom, I observed that his bed was empty. +When we had fortified ourselves with the rumandmilk and biscuits, +and were going out for the walk with that training preparation on +us, I was considerably surprised to see Wemmick take up a +fishingrod, and put it over his shoulder. "Why, we are not going +fishing" said I. "No," returned Wemmick, "but I like to walk with +one." +I thought this odd however, I said nothing, and we set off. We +went towards Camberwell Green, and when we were thereabouts, +Wemmick said suddenly +"Halloa Here's a church" +There was nothing very surprising in that but a gain, I was rather +surprised, when he said, as if he were animated by a brilliant +idea +"Let's go in" +We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishingrod in the porch, and +looked all round. In the mean time, Wemmick was diving into his +coatpockets, and getting something out of paper there. +"Halloa" said he. "Here's a couple of pair of gloves Let's put +'em on" +As the gloves were white kid gloves, and as the postoffice was +widened to its utmost extent, I now began to have my strong +suspicions. They were strengthened into certainty when I beheld the +Aged enter at a side door, escorting a lady. +"Halloa" said Wemmick. "Here's Miss Skiffins Let's have a +wedding." +That discreet damsel was attired as usual, except that she was now +engaged in substituting for her green kid gloves, a pair of white. +The Aged was likewise occupied in preparing a similar sacrifice for +the altar of Hymen. The old gentleman, however, experienced so much +difficulty in getting his gloves on, that Wemmick found it +necessary to put him with his back against a pillar, and then to +get behind the pillar himself and pull away at them, while I for my +part held the old gentleman round the waist, that he might present +and equal and safe resistance. By dint of this ingenious Scheme, +his gloves were got on to perfection. +The clerk and clergyman then appearing, we were ranged in order at +those fatal rails. True to his notion of seeming to do it all +without preparation, I heard Wemmick say to himself as he took +something out of his waistcoatpocket before the service began, +"Halloa Here's a ring" +I acted in the capacity of backer, or bestman, to the bridegroom +while a little limp pew opener in a soft bonnet like a baby's, made +a feint of being the bosom friend of Miss Skiffins. The +responsibility of giving the lady away, devolved upon the Aged, +which led to the clergyman's being unintentionally scandalized, and +it happened thus. When he said, "Who giveth this woman to be +married to this man?" the old gentlemen, not in the least knowing +what point of the ceremony we had arrived at, stood most amiably +beaming at the ten commandments. Upon which, the clergyman said +again, "WHO giveth this woman to be married to this man?" The old +gentleman being still in a state of most estimable unconsciousness, +the bridegroom cried out in his accustomed voice, "Now Aged P. you +know who giveth?" To which the Aged replied with great briskness, +before saying that he gave, "All right, John, all right, my boy" +And the clergyman came to so gloomy a pause upon it, that I had +doubts for the moment whether we should get completely married that +day. +It was completely done, however, and when we were going out of +church, Wemmick took the cover off the font, and put his white +gloves in it, and put the cover on again. Mrs. Wemmick, more heedful +of the future, put her white gloves in her pocket and assumed her +green. "Now, Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, triumphantly shouldering the +fishingrod as we came out, "let me ask you whether anybody would +suppose this to be a weddingparty" +Breakfast had been ordered at a pleasant little tavern, a mile or +so away upon the rising ground beyond the Green, and there was a +bagatelle board in the room, in case we should desire to unbend our +minds after the solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that Mrs. +Wemmick no longer unwound Wemmick's arm when it adapted itself to +her figure, but sat in a highbacked chair against the wall, like a +violoncello in its case, and submitted to be embraced as that +melodious instrument might have done. +We had an excellent breakfast, and when any one declined anything +on table, Wemmick said, "Provided by contract, you know don't be +afraid of it" I drank to the new couple, drank to the Aged, drank +to the Castle, saluted the bride at parting, and made myself as +agreeable as I could. +Wemmick came down to the door with me, and I again shook hands with +him, and wished him joy. +"Thankee" said Wemmick, rubbing his hands. "She's such a manager +of fowls, you have no idea. You shall have some eggs, and judge for +yourself. I say, Mr. Pip" calling me back, and speaking low. "This +is altogether a Walworth sentiment, please." +"I understand. Not to be mentioned in Little Britain," said I. +Wemmick nodded. "After what you let out the other day, Mr. Jaggers +may as well not know of it. He might think my brain was softening, +or something of the kind." +Chapter +He lay in prison very ill, during the whole interval between his +committal for trial, and the coming round of the Sessions. He had +broken two ribs, they had wounded one of his lungs, and he breathed +with great pain and difficulty, which increased daily. It was a +consequence of his hurt, that he spoke so low as to be scarcely +audible therefore, he spoke very little. But, he was ever ready to +listen to me, and it became the first duty of my life to say to +him, and read to him, what I knew he ought to hear. +Being far too ill to remain in the common prison, he was removed, +after the first day or so, into the infirmary. This gave me +opportunities of being with him that I could not otherwise have +had. And but for his illness he would have been put in irons, for +he was regarded as a determined prisonbreaker, and I know not what +else. +Although I saw him every day, it was for only a short time hence, +the regularly recurring spaces of our separation were long enough +to record on his face any slight changes that occurred in his +physical state. I do not recollect that I once saw any change in it +for the better he wasted, and became slowly weaker and worse, day +by day, from the day when the prison door closed upon him. +The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that of a +man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his +manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he +pondered over the question whether he might have been a better man +under better circumstances. But, he never justified himself by a +hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal +shape. +It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his +desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people +in attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned +his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I +had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when +I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and +contrite, and I never knew him complain. +When the Sessions came round, Mr. Jaggers caused an application to +be made for the postponement of his trial until the following +Sessions. It was obviously made with the assurance that he could +not live so long, and was refused. The trial came on at once, and, +when he was put to the bar, he was seated in a chair. No objection +was made to my getting close to the dock, on the outside of it, and +holding the hand that he stretched forth to me. +The trial was very short and very clear. Such things as could be +said for him, were said how he had taken to industrious habits, +and had thriven lawfully and reputably. But, nothing could unsay +the fact that he had returned, and was there in presence of the +Judge and Jury. It was impossible to try him for that, and do +otherwise than find him guilty. +At that time, it was the custom as I learnt from my terrible +experience of that Sessions to devote a concluding day to the +passing of Sentences, and to make a finishing effect with the +Sentence of Death. But for the indelible picture that my +remembrance now holds before me, I could scarcely believe, even as +I write these words, that I saw twoandthirty men and women put +before the Judge to receive that sentence together. Foremost among +the twoandthirty, was he seated, that he might get breath enough +to keep life in him. +The whole scene starts out again in the vivid colours of the +moment, down to the drops of April rain on the windows of the +court, glittering in the rays of April sun. Penned in the dock, as +I again stood outside it at the corner with his hand in mine, were +the twoandthirty men and women some defiant, some stricken with +terror, some sobbing and weeping, some covering their faces, some +staring gloomily about. There had been shrieks from among the women +convicts, but they had been stilled, a hush had succeeded. The +sheriffs with their great chains and nosegays, other civic gewgaws +and monsters, criers, ushers, a great gallery full of people a +large theatrical audience looked on, as the twoandthirty and +the Judge were solemnly confronted. Then, the Judge addressed them. +Among the wretched creatures before him whom he must single out for +special address, was one who almost from his infancy had been an +offender against the laws who, after repeated imprisonments and +punishments, had been at length sentenced to exile for a term of +years and who, under circumstances of great violence and daring +had made his escape and been resentenced to exile for life. That +miserable man would seem for a time to have become convinced of his +errors, when far removed from the scenes of his old offences, and +to have lived a peaceable and honest life. But in a fatal moment, +yielding to those propensities and passions, the indulgence of +which had so long rendered him a scourge to society, he had quitted +his haven of rest and repentance, and had come back to the country +where he was proscribed. Being here presently denounced, he had for +a time succeeded in evading the officers of Justice, but being at +length seized while in the act of flight, he had resisted them, and +had he best knew whether by express design, or in the blindness +of his hardihood caused the death of his denouncer, to whom his +whole career was known. The appointed punishment for his return to +the land that had cast him out, being Death, and his case being +this aggravated case, he must prepare himself to Die. +The sun was striking in at the great windows of the court, through +the glittering drops of rain upon the glass, and it made a broad +shaft of light between the twoandthirty and the Judge, linking +both together, and perhaps reminding some among the audience, how +both were passing on, with absolute equality, to the greater +Judgment that knoweth all things and cannot err. Rising for a +moment, a distinct speck of face in this way of light, the prisoner +said, "My Lord, I have received my sentence of Death from the +Almighty, but I bow to yours," and sat down again. There was some +hushing, and the Judge went on with what he had to say to the rest. +Then, they were all formally doomed, and some of them were +supported out, and some of them sauntered out with a haggard look +of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery, and two or three shook +hands, and others went out chewing the fragments of herb they had +taken from the sweet herbs lying about. He went last of all, +because of having to be helped from his chair and to go very +slowly and he held my hand while all the others were removed, and +while the audience got up putting their dresses right, as they +might at church or elsewhere and pointed down at this criminal or +at that, and most of all at him and me. +I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before the +Recorder's Report was made, but, in the dread of his lingering on, +I began that night to write out a petition to the Home Secretary of +State, setting forth my knowledge of him, and how it was that he +had come back for my sake. I wrote it as fervently and pathetically +as I could, and when I had finished it and sent it in, I wrote out +other petitions to such men in authority as I hoped were the most +merciful, and drew up one to the Crown itself. For several days and +nights after he was sentenced I took no rest except when I fell +asleep in my chair, but was wholly absorbed in these appeals. And +after I had sent them in, I could not keep away from the places +where they were, but felt as if they were more hopeful and less +desperate when I was near them. In this unreasonable restlessness +and pain of mind, I would roam the streets of an evening, wandering +by those offices and houses where I had left the petitions. To the +present hour, the weary western streets of London on a cold dusty +spring night, with their ranges of stern shutup mansions and their +long rows of lamps, are melancholy to me from this association. +The daily visits I could make him were shortened now, and he was +more strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I was suspected of an +intention of carrying poison to him, I asked to be searched before +I sat down at his bedside, and told the officer who was always +there, that I was willing to do anything that would assure him of +the singleness of my designs. Nobody was hard with him, or with me. +There was duty to be done, and it was done, but not harshly. The +officer always gave me the assurance that he was worse, and some +other sick prisoners in the room, and some other prisoners who +attended on them as sick nurses malefactors, but not incapable of +kindness, God be thanked, always joined in the same report. +As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he would lie +placidly looking at the white ceiling, with an absence of light in +his face, until some word of mine brightened it for an instant, and +then it would subside again. Sometimes he was almost, or quite, +unable to speak then, he would answer me with slight pressures on +my hand, and I grew to understand his meaning very well. +The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a greater +change in him than I had seen yet. His eyes were turned towards the +door, and lighted up as I entered. +"Dear boy," he said, as I sat down by his bed "I thought you was +late. But I knowed you couldn't be that." +"It is just the time," said I. "I waited for it at the gate." +"You always waits at the gate don't you, dear boy?" +"Yes. Not to lose a moment of the time." +"Thank'ee dear boy, thank'ee. God bless you You've never deserted +me, dear boy." +I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I had +once meant to desert him. +"And what's the best of all," he said, "you've been more +comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than when +the sun shone. That's best of all." +He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty. Do what he +would, and love me though he did, the light left his face ever and +again, and a film came over the placid look at the white ceiling. +"Are you in much pain today?" +"I don't complain of none, dear boy." +"You never do complain." +He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I understood his touch +to mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it on his breast. I +laid it there, and he smiled again, and put both his hands upon it. +The allotted time ran out, while we were thus but, looking round, +I found the governor of the prison standing near me, and he +whispered, "You needn't go yet." I thanked him gratefully, and +asked, "Might I speak to him, if he can hear me?" +The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer away. The +change, though it was made without noise, drew back the film from +the placid look at the white ceiling, and he looked most +affectionately at me. +"Dear Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You understand what I +say?" +A gentle pressure on my hand. +"You had a child once, whom you loved and lost." +A stronger pressure on my hand. +"She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a +lady and very beautiful. And I love her" +With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but for +my yielding to it and assisting it, he raised my hand to his lips. +Then, he gently let it sink upon his breast again, with his own +hands lying on it. The placid look at the white ceiling came back, +and passed away, and his head dropped quietly on his breast. +Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the two +men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were no +better words that I could say beside his bed, than "O Lord, be +merciful to him, a sinner" +Chapter +Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of my intention +to quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy could +legally determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once I +put bills up in the windows for, I was in debt, and had scarcely +any money, and began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my +affairs. I ought rather to write that I should have been alarmed if +I had had energy and concentration enough to help me to the clear +perception of any truth beyond the fact that I was falling very +ill. The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness, but +not to put it away I knew that it was coming on me now, and I knew +very little else, and was even careless as to that. +For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor anywhere, +according as I happened to sink down with a heavy head and aching +limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came one night +which appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and +horror and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and +think of it, I found I could not do so. +Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the dead of the +night, groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there +whether I had two or three times come to myself on the staircase +with great terror, not knowing how I had got out of bed whether I +had found myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that he +was coming up the stairs, and that the lights were blown out +whether I had been inexpressibly harassed by the distracted +talking, laughing, and groaning, of some one, and had half +suspected those sounds to be of my own making whether there had +been a closed iron furnace in a dark corner of the room, and a +voice had called out over and over again that Miss Havisham was +consuming within it these were things that I tried to settle with +myself and get into some order, as I lay that morning on my bed. +But, the vapour of a limekiln would come between me and them, +disordering them all, and it was through the vapour at last that I +saw two men looking at me. +"What do you want?" I asked, starting "I don't know you." +"Well, sir," returned one of them, bending down and touching me on +the shoulder, "this is a matter that you'll soon arrange, I dare +say, but you're arrested." +"What is the debt?" +"Hundred and twentythree pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller's account, +I think." +"What is to be done?" +"You had better come to my house," said the man. "I keep a very +nice house." +I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I next +attended to them, they were standing a little off from the bed, +looking at me. I still lay there. +"You see my state," said I. "I would come with you if I could but +indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I shall +die by the way." +Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to encourage me +to believe that I was better than I thought. Forasmuch as they hang +in my memory by only this one slender thread, I don't know what +they did, except that they forbore to remove me. +That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that I +often lost my reason, that the time seemed interminable, that I +confounded impossible existences with my own identity that I was a +brick in the house wall, and yet entreating to be released from the +giddy place where the builders had set me that I was a steel beam +of a vast engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet that I +implored in my own person to have the engine stopped, and my part +in it hammered off that I passed through these phases of disease, +I know of my own remembrance, and did in some sort know at the +time. That I sometimes struggled with real people, in the belief +that they were murderers, and that I would all at once comprehend +that they meant to do me good, and would then sink exhausted in +their arms, and suffer them to lay me down, I also knew at the +time. But, above all, I knew that there was a constant tendency in +all these people who, when I was very ill, would present all +kinds of extraordinary transformations of the human face, and would +be much dilated in size above all, I say, I knew that there was +an extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner or later to +settle down into the likeness of Joe. +After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to notice +that while all its other features changed, this one consistent +feature did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled down +into Joe. I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw in the great +chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and, +sitting on the windowseat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open +window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear +hand that gave it me was Joe's. I sank back on my pillow after +drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon +me was the face of Joe. +At last, one day, I took courage, and said, "Is it Joe?" +And the dear old homevoice answered, "Which it air, old chap." +"O Joe, you break my heart Look angry at me, Joe. Strike me, Joe. +Tell me of my ingratitude. Don't be so good to me" +For, Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my side +and put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I knew him. +"Which dear old Pip, old chap," said Joe, "you and me was ever +friends. And when you're well enough to go out for a ride what +larks" +After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his back +towards me, wiping his eyes. And as my extreme weakness prevented +me from getting up and going to him, I lay there, penitently +whispering, "O God bless him O God bless this gentle Christian +man" +Joe's eyes were red when I next found him beside me but, I was +holding his hand, and we both felt happy. +"How long, dear Joe?" +"Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness lasted, dear +old chap?" +"Yes, Joe." +"It's the end of May, Pip. Tomorrow is the first of June." +"And have you been here all that time, dear Joe?" +"Pretty nigh, old chap. For, as I says to Biddy when the news of +your being ill were brought by letter, which it were brought by the +post and being formerly single he is now married though underpaid +for a deal of walking and shoeleather, but wealth were not a +object on his part, and marriage were the great wish of his hart" +"It is so delightful to hear you, Joe But I interrupt you in what +you said to Biddy." +"Which it were," said Joe, "that how you might be amongst +strangers, and that how you and me having been ever friends, a +wisit at such a moment might not prove unacceptabobble. And Biddy, +her word were, 'Go to him, without loss of time.' That," said Joe, +summing up with his judicial air, "were the word of Biddy. 'Go to +him,' Biddy say, 'without loss of time.' In short, I shouldn't +greatly deceive you," Joe added, after a little grave reflection, +"if I represented to you that the word of that young woman were, +'without a minute's loss of time.'" +There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to be +talked to in great moderation, and that I was to take a little +nourishment at stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined for +it or not, and that I was to submit myself to all his orders. So, I +kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to indite a note +to Biddy, with my love in it. +Evidently, Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed looking +at him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure to +see the pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead, +divested of its curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, into +the sittingroom, as the airiest and largest, and the carpet had +been taken away, and the room kept always fresh and wholesome night +and day. At my own writingtable, pushed into a corner and cumbered +with little bottles, Joe now sat down to his great work, first +choosing a pen from the pentray as if it were a chest of large +tools, and tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to wield a +crowbar or sledgehammer. It was necessary for Joe to hold on +heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right leg +well out behind him, before he could begin, and when he did begin, +he made every downstroke so slowly that it might have been six +feet long, while at every upstroke I could hear his pen +spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand +was on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his +pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. +Occasionally, he was tripped up by some orthographical +stumblingblock, but on the whole he got on very well indeed, and +when he had signed his name, and had removed a finishing blot from +the paper to the crown of his head with his two forefingers, he got +up and hovered about the table, trying the effect of his +performance from various points of view as it lay there, with +unbounded satisfaction. +Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been able +to talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham until next +day. He shook his head when I then asked him if she had recovered. +"Is she dead, Joe?" +"Why you see, old chap," said Joe, in a tone of remonstrance, and +by way of getting at it by degrees, "I wouldn't go so far as to say +that, for that's a deal to say but she ain't" +"Living, Joe?" +"That's nigher where it is," said Joe "she ain't living." +"Did she linger long, Joe?" +"Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might call if +you was put to it a week," said Joe still determined, on my +account, to come at everything by degrees. +"Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property?" +"Well, old chap," said Joe, "it do appear that she had settled the +most of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella. But she +had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or two +afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew +Pocket. And why, do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left +that cool four thousand unto him? 'Because of Pip's account of him +the said Matthew.' I am told by Biddy, that air the writing," said +Joe, repeating the legal turn as if it did him infinite good, +"'account of him the said Matthew.' And a cool four thousand, Pip" +I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional +temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make +the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in +insisting on its being cool. +This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only good thing +I had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard if any of the other +relations had any legacies? +"Miss Sarah," said Joe, "she have twentyfive pound perannium fur +to buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss Georgiana, she have +twenty pound down. Mrs. what's the name of them wild beasts with +humps, old chap?" +"Camels?" said I, wondering why he could possibly want to know. +Joe nodded. "Mrs. Camels," by which I presently understood he meant +Camilla, "she have five pound fur to buy rushlights to put her in +spirits when she wake up in the night." +The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious to me, to +give me great confidence in Joe's information. "And now," said Joe, +"you ain't that strong yet, old chap, that you can take in more nor +one additional shovelfull today. Old Orlick he's been a +bustin' open a dwellingouse." +"Whose?" said I. +"Not, I grant, you, but what his manners is given to blusterous," +said Joe, apologetically "still, a Englishman's ouse is his +Castle, and castles must not be busted 'cept when done in war time. +And wotsume'er the failings on his part, he were a corn and +seedsman in his hart." +"Is it Pumblechook's house that has been broken into, then?" +"That's it, Pip," said Joe "and they took his till, and they took +his cashbox, and they drinked his wine, and they partook of his +wittles, and they slapped his face, and they pulled his nose, and +they tied him up to his bedpust, and they giv' him a dozen, and +they stuffed his mouth full of flowering annuals to prewent his +crying out. But he knowed Orlick, and Orlick's in the county +jail." +By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted conversation. I was +slow to gain strength, but I did slowly and surely become less +weak, and Joe stayed with me, and I fancied I was little Pip again. +For, the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully proportioned to my +need, that I was like a child in his hands. He would sit and talk +to me in the old confidence, and with the old simplicity, and in +the old unassertive protecting way, so that I would half believe +that all my life since the days of the old kitchen was one of the +mental troubles of the fever that was gone. He did everything for +me except the household work, for which he had engaged a very +decent woman, after paying off the laundress on his first arrival. +"Which I do assure you, Pip," he would often say, in explanation of +that liberty "I found her a tapping the spare bed, like a cask of +beer, and drawing off the feathers in a bucket, for sale. Which she +would have tapped yourn next, and draw'd it off with you a laying +on it, and was then a carrying away the coals gradiwally in the +souptureen and wegetabledishes, and the wine and spirits in your +Wellington boots." +We looked forward to the day when I should go out for a ride, as we +had once looked forward to the day of my apprenticeship. And when +the day came, and an open carriage was got into the Lane, Joe +wrapped me up, took me in his arms, carried me down to it, and put +me in, as if I were still the small helpless creature to whom he +had so abundantly given of the wealth of his great nature. +And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together into the +country, where the rich summer growth was already on the trees and +on the grass, and sweet summer scents filled all the air. The day +happened to be Sunday, and when I looked on the loveliness around +me, and thought how it had grown and changed, and how the little +wild flowers had been forming, and the voices of the birds had been +strengthening, by day and by night, under the sun and under the +stars, while poor I lay burning and tossing on my bed, the mere +remembrance of having burned and tossed there, came like a check +upon my peace. But, when I heard the Sunday bells, and looked +around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I felt that I was +not nearly thankful enough that I was too weak yet, to be even +that and I laid my head on Joe's shoulder, as I had laid it long +ago when he had taken me to the Fair or where not, and it was too +much for my young senses. +More composure came to me after a while, and we talked as we used +to talk, lying on the grass at the old Battery. There was no change +whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had been in my eyes then, he was +in my eyes still just as simply faithful, and as simply right. +When we got back again and he lifted me out, and carried me so +easily across the court and up the stairs, I thought of that +eventful Christmas Day when he had carried me over the marshes. We +had not yet made any allusion to my change of fortune, nor did I +know how much of my late history he was acquainted with. I was so +doubtful of myself now, and put so much trust in him, that I could +not satisfy myself whether I ought to refer to it when he did not. +"Have you heard, Joe," I asked him that evening, upon further +consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window, "who my patron +was?" +"I heerd," returned Joe, "as it were not Miss Havisham, old chap." +"Did you hear who it was, Joe?" +"Well I heerd as it were a person what sent the person what +giv' you the banknotes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip." +"So it was." +"Astonishing" said Joe, in the placidest way. +"Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?" I presently asked, with +increasing diffidence. +"Which? Him as sent the banknotes, Pip?" +"Yes." +"I think," said Joe, after meditating a long time, and looking +rather evasively at the windowseat, "as I did hear tell that how +he were something or another in a general way in that direction." +"Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?" +"Not partickler, Pip." +"If you would like to hear, Joe" I was beginning, when Joe got up +and came to my sofa. +"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe, bending over me. "Ever the best +of friends ain't us, Pip?" +I was ashamed to answer him. +"Wery good, then," said Joe, as if I had answered "that's all +right, that's agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, old chap, +which as betwixt two sech must be for ever onnecessary? There's +subjects enough as betwixt two sech, without onnecessary ones. +Lord To think of your poor sister and her Rampages And don't you +remember Tickler?" +"I do indeed, Joe." +"Lookee here, old chap," said Joe. "I done what I could to keep you +and Tickler in sunders, but my power were not always fully equal to +my inclinations. For when your poor sister had a mind to drop into +you, it were not so much," said Joe, in his favourite argumentative +way, "that she dropped into me too, if I put myself in opposition +to her but that she dropped into you always heavier for it. I +noticed that. It ain't a grab at a man's whisker, not yet a shake +or two of a man to which your sister was quite welcome, that 'ud +put a man off from getting a little child out of punishment. But +when that little child is dropped into, heavier, for that grab of +whisker or shaking, then that man naterally up and says to himself, +'Where is the good as you are adoing? I grant you I see the 'arm,' +says the man, 'but I don't see the good. I call upon you, sir, +therefore, to pint out the good.'" +"The man says?" I observed, as Joe waited for me to speak. +"The man says," Joe assented. "Is he right, that man?" +"Dear Joe, he is always right." +"Well, old chap," said Joe, "then abide by your words. If he's +always right which in general he's more likely wrong, he's right +when he says this Supposing ever you kep any little matter to +yourself, when you was a little child, you kep it mostly because +you know'd as J. Gargery's power to part you and Tickler in +sunders, were not fully equal to his inclinations. Therefore, think +no more of it as betwixt two sech, and do not let us pass remarks +upon onnecessary subjects. Biddy giv' herself a deal o' trouble +with me afore I left for I am almost awful dull, as I should view +it in this light, and, viewing it in this light, as I should so put +it. Both of which," said Joe, quite charmed with his logical +arrangement, "being done, now this to you a true friend, say. +Namely. You mustn't go aoverdoing on it, but you must have your +supper and your wineandwater, and you must be put betwixt the +sheets." +The delicacy with which Joe dismissed this theme, and the sweet +tact and kindness with which Biddy who with her woman's wit had +found me out so soon had prepared him for it, made a deep +impression on my mind. But whether Joe knew how poor I was, and how +my great expectations had all dissolved, like our own marsh mists +before the sun, I could not understand. +Another thing in Joe that I could not understand when it first +began to develop itself, but which I soon arrived at a sorrowful +comprehension of, was this As I became stronger and better, Joe +became a little less easy with me. In my weakness and entire +dependence on him, the dear fellow had fallen into the old tone, +and called me by the old names, the dear "old Pip, old chap," that +now were music in my ears. I too had fallen into the old ways, only +happy and thankful that he let me. But, imperceptibly, though I +held by them fast, Joe's hold upon them began to slacken and +whereas I wondered at this, at first, I soon began to understand +that the cause of it was in me, and that the fault of it was all +mine. +Ah Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy, and to think +that in prosperity I should grow cold to him and cast him off? Had +I given Joe's innocent heart no cause to feel instinctively that as +I got stronger, his hold upon me would be weaker, and that he had +better loosen it in time and let me go, before I plucked myself +away? +It was on the third or fourth occasion of my going out walking in +the Temple Gardens leaning on Joe's arm, that I saw this change in +him very plainly. We had been sitting in the bright warm sunlight, +looking at the river, and I chanced to say as we got up +"See, Joe I can walk quite strongly. Now, you shall see me walk +back by myself." +"Which do not overdo it, Pip," said Joe "but I shall be happy fur +to see you able, sir." +The last word grated on me but how could I remonstrate I walked +no further than the gate of the gardens, and then pretended to be +weaker than I was, and asked Joe for his arm. Joe gave it me, but +was thoughtful. +I, for my part, was thoughtful too for, how best to check this +growing change in Joe, was a great perplexity to my remorseful +thoughts. That I was ashamed to tell him exactly how I was placed, +and what I had come down to, I do not seek to conceal but, I hope +my reluctance was not quite an unworthy one. He would want to help +me out of his little savings, I knew, and I knew that he ought not +to help me, and that I must not suffer him to do it. +It was a thoughtful evening with both of us. But, before we went to +bed, I had resolved that I would wait over tomorrow, tomorrow +being Sunday, and would begin my new course with the new week. On +Monday morning I would speak to Joe about this change, I would lay +aside this last vestige of reserve, I would tell him what I had in +my thoughts that Secondly, not yet arrived at, and why I had not +decided to go out to Herbert, and then the change would be +conquered for ever. As I cleared, Joe cleared, and it seemed as +though he had sympathetically arrived at a resolution too. +We had a quiet day on the Sunday, and we rode out into the country, +and then walked in the fields. +"I feel thankful that I have been ill, Joe," I said. +"Dear old Pip, old chap, you're a'most come round, sir." +"It has been a memorable time for me, Joe." +"Likeways for myself, sir," Joe returned. +"We have had a time together, Joe, that I can never forget. There +were days once, I know, that I did for a while forget but I never +shall forget these." +"Pip," said Joe, appearing a little hurried and troubled, "there +has been larks, And, dear sir, what have been betwixt us have +been." +At night, when I had gone to bed, Joe came into my room, as he had +done all through my recovery. He asked me if I felt sure that I was +as well as in the morning? +"Yes, dear Joe, quite." +"And are always agetting stronger, old chap?" +"Yes, dear Joe, steadily." +Joe patted the coverlet on my shoulder with his great good hand, +and said, in what I thought a husky voice, "Good night" +When I got up in the morning, refreshed and stronger yet, I was +full of my resolution to tell Joe all, without delay. I would tell +him before breakfast. I would dress at once and go to his room and +surprise him for, it was the first day I had been up early. I went +to his room, and he was not there. Not only was he not there, but +his box was gone. +I hurried then to the breakfasttable, and on it found a letter. +These were its brief contents. +"Not wishful to intrude I have departured fur you are well again +dear Pip and will do better without JO. +"P.S. Ever the best of friends." +Enclosed in the letter, was a receipt for the debt and costs on +which I had been arrested. Down to that moment I had vainly +supposed that my creditor had withdrawn or suspended proceedings +until I should be quite recovered. I had never dreamed of Joe's +having paid the money but, Joe had paid it, and the receipt was in +his name. +What remained for me now, but to follow him to the dear old forge, +and there to have out my disclosure to him, and my penitent +remonstrance with him, and there to relieve my mind and heart of +that reserved Secondly, which had begun as a vague something +lingering in my thoughts, and had formed into a settled purpose? +The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show her +how humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell her how I +had lost all I once hoped for, that I would remind her of our old +confidences in my first unhappy time. Then, I would say to her, +"Biddy, I think you once liked me very well, when my errant heart, +even while it strayed away from you, was quieter and better with +you than it ever has been since. If you can like me only half as +well once more, if you can take me with all my faults and +disappointments on my head, if you can receive me like a forgiven +child and indeed I am as sorry, Biddy, and have as much need of a +hushing voice and a soothing hand, I hope I am a little worthier +of you that I was not much, but a little. And, Biddy, it shall +rest with you to say whether I shall work at the forge with Joe, or +whether I shall try for any different occupation down in this +country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place where an +opportunity awaits me, which I set aside when it was offered, until +I knew your answer. And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me that +you will go through the world with me, you will surely make it a +better world for me, and me a better man for it, and I will try +hard to make it a better world for you." +Such was my purpose. After three days more of recovery, I went down +to the old place, to put it in execution and how I sped in it, is +all I have left to tell. +Chapter +The tidings of my high fortunes having had a heavy fall, had got +down to my native place and its neighbourhood, before I got there. +I found the Blue Boar in possession of the intelligence, and I +found that it made a great change in the Boar's demeanour. Whereas +the Boar had cultivated my good opinion with warm assiduity when I +was coming into property, the Boar was exceedingly cool on the +subject now that I was going out of property. +It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by the journey I had +so often made so easily. The Boar could not put me into my usual +bedroom, which was engaged probably by some one who had +expectations, and could only assign me a very indifferent chamber +among the pigeons and postchaises up the yard. But, I had as sound +a sleep in that lodging as in the most superior accommodation the +Boar could have given me, and the quality of my dreams was about +the same as in the best bedroom. +Early in the morning while my breakfast was getting ready, I +strolled round by Satis House. There were printed bills on the +gate, and on bits of carpet hanging out of the windows, announcing +a sale by auction of the Household Furniture and Effects, next +week. The House itself was to be sold as old building materials and +pulled down. LOT was marked in whitewashed knockknee letters on +the brew house LOT on that part of the main building which had +been so long shut up. Other lots were marked off on other parts of +the structure, and the ivy had been torn down to make room for the +inscriptions, and much of it trailed low in the dust and was +withered already. Stepping in for a moment at the open gate and +looking around me with the uncomfortable air of a stranger who had +no business there, I saw the auctioneer's clerk walking on the +casks and telling them off for the information of a catalogue +compiler, pen in hand, who made a temporary desk of the wheeled +chair I had so often pushed along to the tune of Old Clem. +When I got back to my breakfast in the Boar's coffeeroom, I found +Mr. Pumblechook conversing with the landlord. Mr. Pumblechook not +improved in appearance by his late nocturnal adventure was waiting +for me, and addressed me in the following terms. +"Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low. But what else could +be expected What else could be expected" +As he extended his hand with a magnificently forgiving air, and as +I was broken by illness and unfit to quarrel, I took it. +"William," said Mr. Pumblechook to the waiter, "put a muffin on +table. And has it come to this Has it come to this" +I frowningly sat down to my breakfast. Mr. Pumblechook stood over me +and poured out my tea before I could touch the teapot with the +air of a benefactor who was resolved to be true to the last. +"William," said Mr. Pumblechook, mournfully, "put the salt on. In +happier times," addressing me, "I think you took sugar. And did you +take milk? You did. Sugar and milk. William, bring a watercress." +"Thank you," said I, shortly, "but I don't eat watercresses." +"You don't eat 'em," returned Mr. Pumblechook, sighing and nodding +his head several times, as if he might have expected that, and as +if abstinence from watercresses were consistent with my downfall. +"True. The simple fruits of the earth. No. You needn't bring any, +William." +I went on with my breakfast, and Mr. Pumblechook continued to stand +over me, staring fishily and breathing noisily, as he always did. +"Little more than skin and bone" mused Mr. Pumblechook, aloud. "And +yet when he went from here I may say with my blessing, and I +spread afore him my humble store, like the Bee, he was as plump as +a Peach" +This reminded me of the wonderful difference between the servile +manner in which he had offered his hand in my new prosperity, +saying, "May I?" and the ostentatious clemency with which he had +just now exhibited the same fat five fingers. +"Hah" he went on, handing me the breadandbutter. "And air you +agoing to Joseph?" +"In heaven's name," said I, firing in spite of myself, "what does +it matter to you where I am going? Leave that teapot alone." +It was the worst course I could have taken, because it gave +Pumblechook the opportunity he wanted. +"Yes, young man," said he, releasing the handle of the article in +question, retiring a step or two from my table, and speaking for +the behoof of the landlord and waiter at the door, "I will leave +that teapot alone. You are right, young man. For once, you are +right. I forgit myself when I take such an interest in your +breakfast, as to wish your frame, exhausted by the debilitating +effects of prodigygality, to be stimilated by the 'olesome +nourishment of your forefathers. And yet," said Pumblechook, +turning to the landlord and waiter, and pointing me out at arm's +length, "this is him as I ever sported with in his days of happy +infancy Tell me not it cannot be I tell you this is him" +A low murmur from the two replied. The waiter appeared to be +particularly affected. +"This is him," said Pumblechook, "as I have rode in my shaycart. +This is him as I have seen brought up by hand. This is him untoe +the sister of which I was uncle by marriage, as her name was +Georgiana M'ria from her own mother, let him deny it if he can" +The waiter seemed convinced that I could not deny it, and that it +gave the case a black look. +"Young man," said Pumblechook, screwing his head at me in the old +fashion, "you air agoing to Joseph. What does it matter to me, you +ask me, where you air agoing? I say to you, Sir, you air agoing +to Joseph." +The waiter coughed, as if he modestly invited me to get over that. +"Now," said Pumblechook, and all this with a most exasperating air +of saying in the cause of virtue what was perfectly convincing and +conclusive, "I will tell you what to say to Joseph. Here is Squires +of the Boar present, known and respected in this town, and here is +William, which his father's name was Potkins if I do not deceive +myself." +"You do not, sir," said William. +"In their presence," pursued Pumblechook, "I will tell you, young +man, what to say to Joseph. Says you, "Joseph, I have this day seen +my earliest benefactor and the founder of my fortun's. I will name +no names, Joseph, but so they are pleased to call him uptown, and +I have seen that man." +"I swear I don't see him here," said I. +"Say that likewise," retorted Pumblechook. "Say you said that, and +even Joseph will probably betray surprise." +"There you quite mistake him," said I. "I know better." +"Says you," Pumblechook went on, "'Joseph, I have seen that man, and +that man bears you no malice and bears me no malice. He knows your +character, Joseph, and is well acquainted with your pigheadedness +and ignorance and he knows my character, Joseph, and he knows my +want of gratitoode. Yes, Joseph,' says you," here Pumblechook shook +his head and hand at me, "'he knows my total deficiency of common +human gratitoode. He knows it, Joseph, as none can. You do not know +it, Joseph, having no call to know it, but that man do.'" +Windy donkey as he was, it really amazed me that he could have the +face to talk thus to mine. +"Says you, 'Joseph, he gave me a little message, which I will now +repeat. It was, that in my being brought low, he saw the finger of +Providence. He knowed that finger when he saw it, Joseph, and he +saw it plain. It pinted out this writing, Joseph. Reward of +ingratitoode to his earliest benefactor, and founder of fortun's. +But that man said he did not repent of what he had done, Joseph. +Not at all. It was right to do it, it was kind to do it, it was +benevolent to do it, and he would do it again.'" +"It's pity," said I, scornfully, as I finished my interrupted +breakfast, "that the man did not say what he had done and would do +again." +"Squires of the Boar" Pumblechook was now addressing the landlord, +"and William I have no objections to your mentioning, either +uptown or downtown, if such should be your wishes, that it was +right to do it, kind to do it, benevolent to do it, and that I +would do it again." +With those words the Impostor shook them both by the hand, with an +air, and left the house leaving me much more astonished than +delighted by the virtues of that same indefinite "it." I was not +long after him in leaving the house too, and when I went down the +Highstreet I saw him holding forth no doubt to the same effect +at his shop door to a select group, who honoured me with very +unfavourable glances as I passed on the opposite side of the way. +But, it was only the pleasanter to turn to Biddy and to Joe, whose +great forbearance shone more brightly than before, if that could +be, contrasted with this brazen pretender. I went towards them +slowly, for my limbs were weak, but with a sense of increasing +relief as I drew nearer to them, and a sense of leaving arrogance +and untruthfulness further and further behind. +The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the larks were +soaring high over the green corn, I thought all that countryside +more beautiful and peaceful by far than I had ever known it to be +yet. Many pleasant pictures of the life that I would lead there, +and of the change for the better that would come over my character +when I had a guiding spirit at my side whose simple faith and clear +homewisdom I had proved, beguiled my way. They awakened a tender +emotion in me for, my heart was softened by my return, and such a +change had come to pass, that I felt like one who was toiling home +barefoot from distant travel, and whose wanderings had lasted many +years. +The schoolhouse where Biddy was mistress, I had never seen but, +the little roundabout lane by which I entered the village for +quietness' sake, took me past it. I was disappointed to find that +the day was a holiday no children were there, and Biddy's house +was closed. Some hopeful notion of seeing her busily engaged in her +daily duties, before she saw me, had been in my mind and was +defeated. +But, the forge was a very short distance off, and I went towards it +under the sweet green limes, listening for the clink of Joe's +hammer. Long after I ought to have heard it, and long after I had +fancied I heard it and found it but a fancy, all was still. The +limes were there, and the white thorns were there, and the +chestnuttrees were there, and their leaves rustled harmoniously +when I stopped to listen but, the clink of Joe's hammer was not in +the midsummer wind. +Almost fearing, without knowing why, to come in view of the forge, +I saw it at last, and saw that it was closed. No gleam of fire, no +glittering shower of sparks, no roar of bellows all shut up, and +still. +But, the house was not deserted, and the best parlour seemed to be +in use, for there were white curtains fluttering in its window, and +the window was open and gay with flowers. I went softly towards it, +meaning to peep over the flowers, when Joe and Biddy stood before +me, arm in arm. +At first Biddy gave a cry, as if she thought it was my apparition, +but in another moment she was in my embrace. I wept to see her, and +she wept to see me I, because she looked so fresh and pleasant +she, because I looked so worn and white. +"But dear Biddy, how smart you are" +"Yes, dear Pip." +"And Joe, how smart you are" +"Yes, dear old Pip, old chap." +I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and then +"It's my weddingday," cried Biddy, in a burst of happiness, "and I +am married to Joe" +They had taken me into the kitchen, and I had laid my head down on +the old deal table. Biddy held one of my hands to her lips, and +Joe's restoring touch was on my shoulder. "Which he warn't strong +enough, my dear, fur to be surprised," said Joe. And Biddy said, "I +ought to have thought of it, dear Joe, but I was too happy." They +were both so overjoyed to see me, so proud to see me, so touched by +my coming to them, so delighted that I should have come by accident +to make their day complete +My first thought was one of great thankfulness that I had never +breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How often, while he was +with me in my illness, had it risen to my lips. How irrevocable +would have been his knowledge of it, if he had remained with me but +another hour +"Dear Biddy," said I, "you have the best husband in the whole +world, and if you could have seen him by my bed you would have +But no, you couldn't love him better than you do." +"No, I couldn't indeed," said Biddy. +"And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, and she +will make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you dear, good, +noble Joe" +Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his sleeve +before his eyes. +"And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church today, and are +in charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble thanks for +all you have done for me and all I have so ill repaid And when I +say that I am going away within the hour, for I am soon going +abroad, and that I shall never rest until I have worked for the +money with which you have kept me out of prison, and have sent it +to you, don't think, dear Joe and Biddy, that if I could repay it a +thousand times over, I suppose I could cancel a farthing of the +debt I owe you, or that I would do so if I could" +They were both melted by these words, and both entreated me to say +no more. +"But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have children to +love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney corner +of a winter night, who may remind you of another little fellow gone +out of it for ever. Don't tell him, Joe, that I was thankless +don't tell him, Biddy, that I was ungenerous and unjust only tell +him that I honoured you both, because you were both so good and +true, and that, as your child, I said it would be natural to him to +grow up a much better man than I did." +"I ain't agoing," said Joe, from behind his sleeve, "to tell him +nothink o' that natur, Pip. Nor Biddy ain't. Nor yet no one ain't." +"And now, though I know you have already done it in your own kind +hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive me Pray let me hear +you say the words, that I may carry the sound of them away with me, +and then I shall be able to believe that you can trust me, and +think better of me, in the time to come" +"O dear old Pip, old chap," said Joe. "God knows as I forgive you, +if I have anythink to forgive" +"Amen And God knows I do" echoed Biddy. +"Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and rest there a +few minutes by myself, and then when I have eaten and drunk with you, +go with me as far as the fingerpost, dear Joe and Biddy, before we +say goodbye" +I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a +composition with my creditors who gave me ample time to pay them +in full and I went out and joined Herbert. Within a month, I had +quitted England, and within two months I was clerk to Clarriker and +Co., and within four months I assumed my first undivided +responsibility. For, the beam across the parlour ceiling at Mill +Pond Bank, had then ceased to tremble under old Bill Barley's +growls and was at peace, and Herbert had gone away to marry Clara, +and I was left in sole charge of the Eastern Branch until he +brought her back. +Many a year went round, before I was a partner in the House but, +I lived happily with Herbert and his wife, and lived frugally, and +paid my debts, and maintained a constant correspondence with Biddy +and Joe. It was not until I became third in the Firm, that +Clarriker betrayed me to Herbert but, he then declared that the +secret of Herbert's partnership had been long enough upon his +conscience, and he must tell it. So, he told it, and Herbert was as +much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow and I were not the worse +friends for the long concealment. I must not leave it to be +supposed that we were ever a great house, or that we made mints of +money. We were not in a grand way of business, but we had a good +name, and worked for our profits, and did very well. We owed so +much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I +often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, +until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the +inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me. +Chapter +For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily +eyesthough they had both been often before my fancy in the +Eastwhen, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark, +I laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I +touched it so softly that I was not heard, and looked in unseen. +There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, +as hale and as strong as ever though a little grey, sat Joe and +there, fenced into the corner with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own +little stool looking at the fire, was I again +"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap," said +Joe, delighted when I took another stool by the child's side but I +did not rumple his hair, "and we hoped he might grow a little bit +like you, and we think he do." +I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, and +we talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection. And I +took him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone +there, and he showed me from that elevation which stone was sacred +to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and Also +Georgiana, Wife of the Above. +"Biddy," said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little +girl lay sleeping in her lap, "you must give Pip to me, one of +these days or lend him, at all events." +"No, no," said Biddy, gently. "You must marry." +"So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy. I have +so settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. I am +already quite an old bachelor." +Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her +lips, and then put the good matronly hand with which she had +touched it, into mine. There was something in the action and in the +light pressure of Biddy's weddingring, that had a very pretty +eloquence in it. +"Dear Pip," said Biddy, "you are sure you don't fret for her?" +"O no I think not, Biddy." +"Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her? +"My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a +foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. But +that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy, +all gone by" +Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words, that I secretly +intended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone, +for her sake. Yes even so. For Estella's sake. +I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being +separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty, +and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice, +brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her +husband, from an accident consequent on his illtreatment of a +horse. This release had befallen her some two years before for +anything I knew, she was married again. +The early dinnerhour at Joe's, left me abundance of time, without +hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot before +dark. But, what with loitering on the way, to look at old objects +and to think of old times, the day had quite declined when I came +to the place. +There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but +the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed +with a rough fence, and, looking over it, I saw that some of the +old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet +mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it +open, and went in. +A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not +yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist, +and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could +trace out where every part of the old house had been, and where the +brewery had been, and where the gate, and where the casks. I had +done so, and was looking along the desolate gardenwalk, when I +beheld a solitary figure in it. +The figure showed itself aware of me, as I advanced. It had been +moving towards me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I saw it +to be the figure of a woman. As I drew nearer yet, it was about to +turn away, when it stopped, and let me come up with it. Then, it +faltered as if much surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried +out +"Estella" +"I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me." +The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable +majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those attractions in +it, I had seen before what I had never seen before, was the +saddened softened light of the once proud eyes what I had never +felt before, was the friendly touch of the once insensible hand. +We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, "After so many +years, it is strange that we should thus meet again, Estella, here +where our first meeting was Do you often come back?" +"I have never been here since." +"Nor I." +The moon began to rise, and I thought of the placid look at the +white ceiling, which had passed away. The moon began to rise, and I +thought of the pressure on my hand when I had spoken the last words +he had heard on earth. +Estella was the next to break the silence that ensued between us. +"I have very often hoped and intended to come back, but have been +prevented by many circumstances. Poor, poor old place" +The silvery mist was touched with the first rays of the moonlight, +and the same rays touched the tears that dropped from her eyes. Not +knowing that I saw them, and setting herself to get the better of +them, she said quietly +"Were you wondering, as you walked along, how it came to be left in +this condition?" +"Yes, Estella." +"The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have not +relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by little, +but I have kept this. It was the subject of the only determined +resistance I made in all the wretched years." +"Is it to be built on?" +"At last it is. I came here to take leave of it before its change. +And you," she said, in a voice of touching interest to a wanderer, +"you live abroad still?" +"Still." +"And do well, I am sure?" +"I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore Yes, I +do well." +"I have often thought of you," said Estella. +"Have you?" +"Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept far +from me, the remembrance, of what I had thrown away when I was +quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been +incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given +it a place in my heart." +"You have always held your place in my heart," I answered. +And we were silent again, until she spoke. +"I little thought," said Estella, "that I should take leave of you +in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so." +"Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful thing. To +me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mournful and +painful." +"But you said to me," returned Estella, very earnestly, "'God bless +you, God forgive you' And if you could say that to me then, you +will not hesitate to say that to me now now, when suffering has +been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to +understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, +but I hope into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to +me as you were, and tell me we are friends." +"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose +from the bench. +"And will continue friends apart," said Estella. +I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place and, +as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the +forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad +expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of +another parting from her. +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Great Expectations, by Dickens +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Complete +by Mark Twain Samuel Clemens +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +reuse it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net +Title The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Complete +Author Mark Twain Samuel Clemens +Release Date August , [EBook ] +Language English +Character set encoding ASCII + START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUCKLEBERRY FINN +Produced by David Widger. Previous editions produced by Ron Burkey +and Internet Wiretap +HUCKLEBERRY FINN +By Mark Twain +NOTICE +PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted +persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished persons +attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. +BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR, Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance. +EXPLANATORY +IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit the Missouri negro +dialect the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect the +ordinary "Pike County" dialect and four modified varieties of this last. +The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork +but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of +personal familiarity with these several forms of speech. +I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would +suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not +succeeding. +THE AUTHOR. +HUCKLEBERRY FINN +Scene The Mississippi Valley Time Forty to fifty years ago +CHAPTER I. +YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The +Adventures of Tom Sawyer but that ain't no matter. That book was made +by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which +he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never +seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or +the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt PollyTom's Aunt Polly, she isand +Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is +mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. +Now the way that the book winds up is this Tom and me found the money +that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six +thousand dollars apieceall gold. It was an awful sight of money when +it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at +interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round +more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took +me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me but it was rough +living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and +decent the widow was in all her ways and so when I couldn't stand it no +longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugarhogshead again, +and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he +was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back +to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. +The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she +called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. +She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat +and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced +again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. +When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to +wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the +victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them,that +is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds +and ends it is different things get mixed up, and the juice kind of +swaps around, and the things go better. +After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the +Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him but by and by +she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time so then +I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead +people. +Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she +wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must +try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They +get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was +abothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, +being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a +thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too of course that +was all right, because she done it herself. +Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, +had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a +spellingbook. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then +the widow made her ease up. I couldn't stood it much longer. Then for +an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, +"Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry" and "Don't scrunch up like +that, Huckleberryset up straight" and pretty soon she would say, +"Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberrywhy don't you try to +behave?" Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I +was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was +to go somewheres all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She +said it was wicked to say what I said said she wouldn't say it for the +whole world she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, +I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my +mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only +make trouble, and wouldn't do no good. +Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good +place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all +day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much +of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would +go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about +that, because I wanted him and me to be together. +Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By +and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody +was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it +on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to +think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I +most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled +in the woods ever so mournful and I heard an owl, away off, whowhooing +about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about +somebody that was going to die and the wind was trying to whisper +something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the +cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of +a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's +on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in +its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so +downhearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a +spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in +the candle and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't +need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch +me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. +I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast +every time and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to +keep witches away. But I hadn't no confidence. You do that when you've +lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the +door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad +luck when you'd killed a spider. +I set down again, ashaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke +for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't +know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go +boomboomboomtwelve licks and all still againstiller than ever. +Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees +something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could +just barely hear a "meyow meyow" down there. That was good Says I, +"meyow meyow" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and +scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the +ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom +Sawyer waiting for me. +CHAPTER II. +WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of +the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our +heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a +noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger, +named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door we could see him pretty +clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his +neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says +"Who dah?" +He listened some more then he come tiptoeing down and stood right +between us we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes +and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close +together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I +dasn't scratch it and then my ear begun to itch and next my back, right +between my shoulders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, +I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, +or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepyif you +are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all +over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says +"Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n. +Well, I know what I's gwyne to do I's gwyne to set down here and listen +tell I hears it agin." +So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up +against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched +one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into +my eyes. But I dasn't scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. +Next I got to itching underneath. I didn't know how I was going to set +still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes but it +seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in eleven different +places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but I +set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe +heavy next he begun to snoreand then I was pretty soon comfortable +again. +Tom he made a sign to mekind of a little noise with his mouthand we +went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom +whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said +no he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I +warn't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip +in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim +might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it so we slid in there +and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. +Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away but nothing would do +Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play +something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was +so still and lonesome. +As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, +and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of +the house. Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it on +a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. +Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance, +and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, +and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told +it he said they rode him down to New Orleans and, after that, every time +he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode +him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all +over saddleboils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he +wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to +hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in +that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and +look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking +about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire but whenever one was +talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in +and say, "Hm What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked +up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that fivecenter piece +round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to +him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and +fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it but +he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all +around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that +fivecenter piece but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had +his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck +up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches. +Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down +into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where +there was sick folks, maybe and the stars over us was sparkling ever so +fine and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and +awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben +Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we +unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the +big scar on the hillside, and went ashore. +We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the +secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest +part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands +and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. +Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall +where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a +narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, +and there we stopped. Tom says +"Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. +Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name +in blood." +Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote +the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and +never tell any of the secrets and if anybody done anything to any boy in +the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family +must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed +them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. +And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he +did he must be sued and if he done it again he must be killed. And if +anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his +throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered +all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never +mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot +forever. +Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it +out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of +piratebooks and robberbooks, and every gang that was hightoned had it. +Some thought it would be good to kill the FAMILIES of boys that told the +secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it +in. Then Ben Rogers says +"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family what you going to do 'bout +him?" +"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer. +"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He +used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen +in these parts for a year or more." +They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said +every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be +fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to +doeverybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry but +all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watsonthey +could kill her. Everybody said +"Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in." +Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and +I made my mark on the paper. +"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of business of this Gang?" +"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said. +"But who are we going to rob?houses, or cattle, or" +"Stuff stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery it's burglary," +says Tom Sawyer. "We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We +are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, +and kill the people and take their watches and money." +"Must we always kill the people?" +"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly +it's considered best to kill themexcept some that you bring to the cave +here, and keep them till they're ransomed." +"Ransomed? What's that?" +"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books and so +of course that's what we've got to do." +"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?" +"Why, blame it all, we've GOT to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the +books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, +and get things all muddled up?" +"Oh, that's all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are +these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? +that's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?" +"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, +it means that we keep them till they're dead." +"Now, that's something LIKE. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that +before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death and a bothersome +lot they'll be, tooeating up everything, and always trying to get +loose." +"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard +over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?" +"A guard Well, that IS good. So somebody's got to set up all night and +never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's +foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they +get here?" +"Because it ain't in the books sothat's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you +want to do things regular, or don't you?that's the idea. Don't you +reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing +to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. +No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way." +"All right. I don't mind but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we +kill the women, too?" +"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill +the women? No nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You +fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them and +by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any +more." +"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. +Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows +waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. +But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say." +Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was +scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't +want to be a robber any more. +So they all made fun of him, and called him crybaby, and that made him +mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom +give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet +next week, and rob somebody and kill some people. +Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted +to begin next Sunday but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it +on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and +fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first +captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home. +I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was +breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was +dogtired. +CHAPTER III. +WELL, I got a good goingover in the morning from old Miss Watson on +account of my clothes but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned +off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would +behave awhile if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and +prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and +whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. +Once I got a fishline, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without +hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't +make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but +she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out +no way. +I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I +says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't +Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get +back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up? +No, says I to my self, there ain't nothing in it. I went and told the +widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it +was "spiritual gifts." This was too many for me, but she told me what +she meantI must help other people, and do everything I could for other +people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. +This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods +and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no +advantage about itexcept for the other people so at last I reckoned I +wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the +widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a +body's mouth water but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and +knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two +Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the +widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help for +him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the +widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was agoing to +be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, +and so kind of lowdown and ornery. +Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable +for me I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always whale me +when he was sober and could get his hands on me though I used to take to +the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he +was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people +said. They judged it was him, anyway said this drownded man was just +his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like +pap but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been +in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. They said he was +floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the +bank. But I warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think of +something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his +back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a +woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I +judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he +wouldn't. +We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All +the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but +only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging +down on hogdrivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but +we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he +called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and +powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and +marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to +run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan which was +the sign for the Gang to get together, and then he said he had got +secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish +merchants and rich Arabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two +hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" +mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard +of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called +it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our +swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a +turnipcart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, +though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them +till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than +what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of +Spaniards and Arabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I +was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade and when we got the +word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no +Spaniards and Arabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It +warn't anything but a Sundayschool picnic, and only a primerclass at +that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow but we +never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a +rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymnbook and a tract and then the teacher +charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no +di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them +there, anyway and he said there was Arabs there, too, and elephants and +things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so +ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without +asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was +hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we +had enemies which he called magicians and they had turned the whole +thing into an infant Sundayschool, just out of spite. I said, all +right then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom +Sawyer said I was a numskull. +"Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would +hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as +tall as a tree and as big around as a church." +"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help UScan't we lick the +other crowd then?" +"How you going to get them?" +"I don't know. How do THEY get them?" +"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come +tearing in, with the thunder and lightning aripping around and the smoke +arolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They +don't think nothing of pulling a shottower up by the roots, and belting +a Sundayschool superintendent over the head with itor any other man." +"Who makes them tear around so?" +"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the +lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells +them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full +of chewinggum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter +from China for you to marry, they've got to do itand they've got to do +it before sunup next morning, too. And more they've got to waltz that +palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." +"Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flatheads for not keeping +the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's +moreif I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would +drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp." +"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to come when he rubbed it, +whether you wanted to or not." +"What and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then +I WOULD come but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there +was in the country." +"Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to +know anything, somehowperfect saphead." +I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I +would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron +ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like +an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it but it warn't no +use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was +only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the Arabs +and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks +of a Sundayschool. +CHAPTER IV. +WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter +now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and +write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six +times seven is thirtyfive, and I don't reckon I could ever get any +further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in +mathematics, anyway. +At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. +Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next +day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the +easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, +too, and they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a +bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used +to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to +me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new +ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, +and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me. +One morning I happened to turn over the saltcellar at breakfast. I +reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder +and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and +crossed me off. She says, "Take your hands away, Huckleberry what a mess +you are always making" The widow put in a good word for me, but that +warn't going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough. I +started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering +where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. There is +ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them +kind so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along lowspirited +and on the watchout. +I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go +through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the +ground, and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry +and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden +fence. It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. I +couldn't make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to +follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't +notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left +bootheel made with big nails, to keep off the devil. +I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my +shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge +Thatcher's as quick as I could get there. He said +"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your +interest?" +"No, sir," I says "is there some for me?" +"Oh, yes, a halfyearly is in last nightover a hundred and fifty +dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along +with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it." +"No, sir," I says, "I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at all +nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it I want to give it +to youthe six thousand and all." +He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says +"Why, what can you mean, my boy?" +I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take it +won't you?" +He says +"Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter?" +"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothingthen I won't have to +tell no lies." +He studied a while, and then he says +"Ohoo I think I see. You want to SELL all your property to menot +give it. That's the correct idea." +Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says +"There you see it says 'for a consideration.' That means I have bought +it of you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign +it." +So I signed it, and left. +Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hairball as big as your fist, which had +been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic +with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed +everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again, +for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was, what he +was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hairball and +said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the +floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried +it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got +down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. But it +warn't no use he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't +talk without money. I told him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter +that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, +and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show, because it was +so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. I +reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge. I +said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hairball would take it, +because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it +and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hairball would think it +was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the +quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you +couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so +anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hairball. Well, +I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it. +Jim put the quarter under the hairball, and got down and listened again. +This time he said the hairball was all right. He said it would tell my +whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hairball talked +to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says +"Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's agwyne to do. Sometimes he +spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is to +res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels hoverin' +roun' 'bout him. One uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. +De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail +in en bust it all up. A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him +at de las'. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble +in yo' life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en +sometimes you gwyne to git sick but every time you's gwyne to git well +agin. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light +en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to +marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep 'way +fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in +de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung." +When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat paphis +own self +CHAPTER V. +I HAD shut the door to. Then I turned around and there he was. I used +to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was +scared now, too but in a minute I see I was mistakenthat is, after the +first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so +unexpected but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth +bothring about. +He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and +greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he +was behind vines. It was all black, no gray so was his long, mixedup +whiskers. There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed it +was white not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, +a white to make a body's flesh crawla treetoad white, a fishbelly +white. As for his clothesjust rags, that was all. He had one ankle +resting on t'other knee the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his +toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying +on the flooran old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. +I stood alooking at him he set there alooking at me, with his chair +tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was +up so he had clumb in by the shed. He kept alooking me all over. By +and by he says +"Starchy clothesvery. You think you're a good deal of a bigbug, DON'T +you?" +"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says. +"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "You've put on +considerable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg +before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they saycan read and +write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he +can't? I'LL take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such +hifalut'n foolishness, hey?who told you you could?" +"The widow. She told me." +"The widow, hey?and who told the widow she could put in her shovel +about a thing that ain't none of her business?" +"Nobody never told her." +"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky hereyou drop that +school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs +over his own father and let on to be better'n what HE is. You lemme +catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother +couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of +the family couldn't before THEY died. I can't and here you're +aswelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand ityou hear? +Say, lemme hear you read." +I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the +wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack +with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says +"It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky +here you stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for +you, my smarty and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good. +First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a son." +He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and +says +"What's this?" +"It's something they give me for learning my lessons good." +He tore it up, and says +"I'll give you something betterI'll give you a cowhide." +He set there amumbling and agrowling a minute, and then he says +"AIN'T you a sweetscented dandy, though? A bed and bedclothes and a +look'n'glass and a piece of carpet on the floorand your own father +got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I +bet I'll take some o' these frills out o' you before I'm done with you. +Why, there ain't no end to your airsthey say you're rich. Hey?how's +that?" +"They liethat's how." +"Looky heremind how you talk to me I'm astanding about all I can +stand nowso don't gimme no sass. I've been in town two days, and I +hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. I heard about it away +down the river, too. That's why I come. You git me that money +tomorrowI want it." +"I hain't got no money." +"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it. I want it." +"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher he'll tell +you the same." +"All right. I'll ask him and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know +the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it." +"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to" +"It don't make no difference what you want it foryou just shell it +out." +He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was +going down town to get some whisky said he hadn't had a drink all day. +When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me +for putting on frills and trying to be better than him and when I +reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me +to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me +if I didn't drop that. +Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged +him, and tried to make him give up the money but he couldn't, and then +he swore he'd make the law force him. +The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from +him and let one of them be my guardian but it was a new judge that had +just come, and he didn't know the old man so he said courts mustn't +interfere and separate families if they could help it said he'd druther +not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow +had to quit on the business. +That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me +till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I +borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got +drunk, and went ablowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying +on and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight +then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed +him again for a week. But he said HE was satisfied said he was boss of +his son, and he'd make it warm for HIM. +When he got out the new judge said he was agoing to make a man of him. +So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and +had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just +old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about +temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a +fool, and fooled away his life but now he was agoing to turn over a new +leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge +would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him +for them words so he cried, and his wife she cried again pap said he'd +been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said +he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down +was sympathy, and the judge said it was so so they cried again. And +when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says +"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all take ahold of it shake it. +There's a hand that was the hand of a hog but it ain't so no more it's +the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before +he'll go back. You mark them wordsdon't forget I said them. It's a +clean hand now shake itdon't be afeard." +So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The +judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledgemade +his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something +like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was +the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and +clumb out on to the porchroof and slid down a stanchion and traded his +new coat for a jug of fortyrod, and clumb back again and had a good old +time and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and +rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most +froze to death when somebody found him after sunup. And when they come +to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could +navigate it. +The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform +the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way. +CHAPTER VI. +WELL, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went +for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he +went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of +times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him +or outrun him most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much +before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap. That law trial was a +slow businessappeared like they warn't ever going to get started on +it so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the +judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money +he got drunk and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town and +every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suitedthis kind +of thing was right in his line. +He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last +that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him. +Well, WASN'T he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So +he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me +up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the +Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old +log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if +you didn't know where it was. +He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. +We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key +under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we +fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he +locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and +traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and +had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by +and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me but pap drove +him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to +being where I was, and liked itall but the cowhide part. +It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking +and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and +my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got +to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a +plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever +bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the +time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because +the widow didn't like it but now I took to it again because pap hadn't +no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it +all around. +But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand +it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking +me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful +lonesome. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn't ever going to get +out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way +to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I +couldn't find no way. There warn't a window to it big enough for a dog +to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly it was too narrow. The +door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a +knife or anything in the cabin when he was away I reckon I had hunted +the place over as much as a hundred times well, I was most all the time +at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this +time I found something at last I found an old rusty woodsaw without any +handle it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. +I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horseblanket nailed +against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep +the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I +got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a +section of the big bottom log outbig enough to let me through. Well, +it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I +heard pap's gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and +dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in. +Pap warn't in a good humorso he was his natural self. He said he was +down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned +he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on +the trial but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge +Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be +another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my +guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up +considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more +and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old man +got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of, +and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any, +and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round, +including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names +of, and so called them what'shisname when he got to them, and went +right along with his cussing. +He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch +out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place +six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they +dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but +only for a minute I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that +chance. +The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got. +There was a fiftypound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon, +ammunition, and a fourgallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two +newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went +back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all +over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and +take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one +place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and +hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor +the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and +leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got +so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man +hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded. +I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While +I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of +warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, +and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body +would a thought he was Adamhe was just all mud. Whenever his liquor +begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says +"Call this a govment why, just look at it and see what it's like. +Here's the law astanding ready to take a man's son away from hima +man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and +all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son +raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for HIM +and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call THAT +govment That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher +up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law +does The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and +jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in +clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment A man can't +get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to +just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I TOLD 'em so I told +old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I +said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come +anear it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hatif you +call it a hatbut the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till +it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like +my head was shoved up through a jint o' stovepipe. Look at it, says I +such a hat for me to wearone of the wealthiest men in this town if I +could git my rights. +"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. +There was a free nigger there from Ohioa mulatter, most as white as a +white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the +shiniest hat and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine +clothes as what he had and he had a gold watch and chain, and a +silverheaded canethe awfulest old grayheaded nabob in the State. And +what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could +talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the +wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me +out. Thinks I, what is the country acoming to? It was 'lection day, and +I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get +there but when they told me there was a State in this country where +they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin. +Them's the very words I said they all heard me and the country may rot +for all meI'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool +way of that niggerwhy, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't +shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger +put up at auction and sold?that's what I want to know. And what do you +reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in +the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There, +nowthat's a specimen. They call that a govment that can't sell a free +nigger till he's been in the State six months. Here's a govment that +calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a +govment, and yet's got to set stockstill for six whole months before it +can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, whiteshirted free +nigger, and" +Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was +taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and +barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of +languagemostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the +tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin +considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one +shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot +all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good +judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking +out of the front end of it so now he raised a howl that fairly made a +body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and +held his toes and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had +ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard +old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too +but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe. +After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for +two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged +he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key, +or saw myself out, one or t'other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down +on his blankets by and by but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go +sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around +this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't +keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about +I was sound asleep, and the candle burning. +I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an +awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping +around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was +crawling up his legs and then he would give a jump and scream, and say +one had bit him on the cheekbut I couldn't see no snakes. He started +and run round and round the cabin, hollering "Take him off take him off +he's biting me on the neck" I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. +Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting then he rolled +over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and +striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying +there was devils ahold of him. He wore out by and by, and laid still a +while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound. I could +hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed +terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up +part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says, very low +"Tramptramptramp that's the dead tramptramptramp they're +coming after me but I won't go. Oh, they're here don't touch me +don't hands offthey're cold let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone" +Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him +alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the +old pine table, still abegging and then he went to crying. I could +hear him through the blanket. +By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he +see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a +claspknife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, +and then I couldn't come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was +only Huck but he laughed SUCH a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed, +and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his +arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I +thought I was gone but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and +saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his +back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me. +He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and +then he would see who was who. +So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old splitbottom chair +and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the +gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I +laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down +behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did +drag along. +CHAPTER VII. +"GIT up What you 'bout?" +I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It +was after sunup, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me +looking sour and sick, too. He says +"What you doin' with this gun?" +I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says +"Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him." +"Why didn't you roust me out?" +"Well, I tried to, but I couldn't I couldn't budge you." +"Well, all right. Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you +and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in a +minute." +He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the riverbank. I noticed +some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of +bark so I knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have +great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be +always luck for me because as soon as that rise begins here comes +cordwood floating down, and pieces of log raftssometimes a dozen logs +together so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the +woodyards and the sawmill. +I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out for +what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe +just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high +like a duck. I shot headfirst off of the bank like a frog, clothes and +all on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected there'd be +somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks, +and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and +laugh at him. But it warn't so this time. It was a driftcanoe sure +enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man +will be glad when he sees thisshe's worth ten dollars. But when I +got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into a +little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struck +another idea I judged I'd hide her good, and then, 'stead of taking to +the woods when I run off, I'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp +in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot. +It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man +coming all the time but I got her hid and then I out and looked around +a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just +drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So he hadn't seen anything. +When he got along I was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. He abused me +a little for being so slow but I told him I fell in the river, and that +was what made me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he +would be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went +home. +While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about +wore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap +and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing +than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me you +see, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn't see no way for a +while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of +water, and he says +"Another time a man comes aprowling round here you roust me out, you +hear? That man warn't here for no good. I'd a shot him. Next time you +roust me out, you hear?" +Then he dropped down and went to sleep again but what he had been saying +give me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can fix it now so +nobody won't think of following me. +About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river +was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise. +By and by along comes part of a log raftnine logs fast together. We +went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner. +Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch +more stuff but that warn't pap's style. Nine logs was enough for one +time he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and +took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about halfpast three. I +judged he wouldn't come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had +got a good start then I out with my saw, and went to work on that log +again. Before he was t'other side of the river I was out of the hole +him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder. +I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and +shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in then I done the same +with the side of bacon then the whiskyjug. I took all the coffee and +sugar there was, and all the ammunition I took the wadding I took the +bucket and gourd I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two +blankets, and the skillet and the coffeepot. I took fishlines and +matches and other thingseverything that was worth a cent. I cleaned +out the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out +at the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched +out the gun, and now I was done. +I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging +out so many things. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside +by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the +sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two +rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at +that place and didn't quite touch ground. If you stood four or five foot +away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice it and +besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely anybody +would go fooling around there. +It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track. I +followed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the +river. All safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods, +and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig hogs soon +went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms. +I shot this fellow and took him into camp. +I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it +considerable adoing it. I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly +to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down +on the ground to bleed I say ground because it was groundhard packed, +and no boards. Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks +in itall I could dragand I started it from the pig, and dragged it +to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and +down it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something had been +dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there I knowed he +would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy +touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as +that. +Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and +stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took +up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket so he couldn't drip +till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the +river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of +meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. I +took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom +of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the place +pap done everything with his claspknife about the cooking. Then I +carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the +willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and +full of rushesand ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was a +slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles +away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. The meal sifted +out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap's +whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident. +Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn't +leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again. +It was about dark now so I dropped the canoe down the river under some +willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made +fast to a willow then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in +the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they'll +follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the +river for me. And they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go +browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that +killed me and took the things. They won't ever hunt the river for +anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that, and won't +bother no more about me. All right I can stop anywhere I want to. +Jackson's Island is good enough for me I know that island pretty well, +and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights, +and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place. +I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I +woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked +around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and +miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs +that went aslipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from +shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and SMELT late. +You know what I meanI don't know the words to put it in. +I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start +when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I +made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from +oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. I peeped out through +the willow branches, and there it wasa skiff, away across the water. I +couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept acoming, and when it was +abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it. Think's I, maybe +it's pap, though I warn't expecting him. He dropped below me with the +current, and by and by he came aswinging up shore in the easy water, and +he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, +it WAS pap, sure enoughand sober, too, by the way he laid his oars. +I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was aspinning down stream soft +but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then +struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, +because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and people +might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid +down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there, and had +a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky not a +cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back +in the moonshine I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear +on the water such nights I heard people talking at the ferry landing. +I heard what they said, tooevery word of it. One man said it was +getting towards the long days and the short nights now. T'other one said +THIS warn't one of the short ones, he reckonedand then they laughed, +and he said it over again, and they laughed again then they waked up +another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh he ripped +out something brisk, and said let him alone. The first fellow said he +'lowed to tell it to his old womanshe would think it was pretty good +but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time. +I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight +wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got +further and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more but +I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a +long ways off. +I was away below the ferry now. I rose up, and there was Jackson's +Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and +standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like +a steamboat without any lights. There warn't any signs of the bar at the +headit was all under water now. +It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping +rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and +landed on the side towards the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a +deep dent in the bank that I knowed about I had to part the willow +branches to get in and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe +from the outside. +I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out +on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three +mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous +big lumberraft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a +lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down, and when +it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, "Stern oars, +there heave her head to stabboard" I heard that just as plain as if +the man was by my side. +There was a little gray in the sky now so I stepped into the woods, and +laid down for a nap before breakfast. +CHAPTER VIII. +THE sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight +o'clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about +things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. I could +see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all +about, and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on +the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the +freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze +up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very +friendly. +I was powerful lazy and comfortabledidn't want to get up and cook +breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep +sound of "boom" away up the river. I rouses up, and rests on my elbow +and listens pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up, and went and +looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying on +the water a long ways upabout abreast the ferry. And there was the +ferryboat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the +matter now. "Boom" I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat's +side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my +carcass come to the top. +I was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire, +because they might see the smoke. So I set there and watched the +cannonsmoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide there, +and it always looks pretty on a summer morningso I was having a good +enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to +eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in +loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the +drownded carcass and stop there. So, says I, I'll keep a lookout, and if +any of them's floating around after me I'll give them a show. I changed +to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have, and I +warn't disappointed. A big double loaf come along, and I most got it +with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of +course I was where the current set in the closest to the shoreI knowed +enough for that. But by and by along comes another one, and this time I +won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, +and set my teeth in. It was "baker's bread"what the quality eat none +of your lowdown cornpone. +I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching +the bread and watching the ferryboat, and very well satisfied. And then +something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or +somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and +done it. So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing +that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson +prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just +the right kind. +I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching. The +ferryboat was floating with the current, and I allowed I'd have a chance +to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in +close, where the bread did. When she'd got pretty well along down +towards me, I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread, +and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. Where the +log forked I could peep through. +By and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could a +run out a plank and walked ashore. Most everybody was on the boat. Pap, +and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom Sawyer, +and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and plenty more. Everybody was +talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says +"Look sharp, now the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's +washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. I +hope so, anyway." +"I didn't hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly +in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. I could see +them firstrate, but they couldn't see me. Then the captain sung out +"Stand away" and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it +made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and I +judged I was gone. If they'd a had some bullets in, I reckon they'd a +got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn't hurt, thanks to +goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder +of the island. I could hear the booming now and then, further and +further off, and by and by, after an hour, I didn't hear it no more. The +island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot, and was +giving it up. But they didn't yet a while. They turned around the foot +of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side, under +steam, and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that +side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the island they +quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the +town. +I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come ahunting after me. +I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick +woods. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under +so the rain couldn't get at them. I catched a catfish and haggled him +open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had +supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. +When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well +satisfied but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set +on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the +stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed +there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome you can't +stay so, you soon get over it. +And so for three days and nights. No differencejust the same thing. +But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was +boss of it it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know all +about it but mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty +strawberries, ripe and prime and green summer grapes, and green +razberries and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They +would all come handy by and by, I judged. +Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't far +from the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot +nothing it was for protection thought I would kill some game nigh home. +About this time I mighty near stepped on a goodsized snake, and it went +sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get +a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to +the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking. +My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further, +but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever +I could. Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the thick leaves +and listened, but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I +slunk along another piece further, then listened again and so on, and so +on. If I see a stump, I took it for a man if I trod on a stick and +broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two +and I only got half, and the short half, too. +When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in +my craw but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. So I got +all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I +put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last +year's camp, and then clumb a tree. +I reckon I was up in the tree two hours but I didn't see nothing, I +didn't hear nothingI only THOUGHT I heard and seen as much as a +thousand things. Well, I couldn't stay up there forever so at last I +got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. +All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. +By the time it was night I was pretty hungry. So when it was good and +dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the +Illinois bankabout a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and +cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all +night when I hear a PLUNKETYPLUNK, PLUNKETYPLUNK, and says to myself, +horses coming and next I hear people's voices. I got everything into +the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping through the woods +to see what I could find out. I hadn't got far when I hear a man say +"We better camp here if we can find a good place the horses is about +beat out. Let's look around." +I didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. I tied up in the +old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe. +I didn't sleep much. I couldn't, somehow, for thinking. And every time +I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck. So the sleep didn't do +me no good. By and by I says to myself, I can't live this way I'm +agoing to find out who it is that's here on the island with me I'll +find it out or bust. Well, I felt better right off. +So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then +let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. The moon was shining, +and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. I poked +along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. +Well, by this time I was most down to the foot of the island. A little +ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the +night was about done. I give her a turn with the paddle and brung her +nose to shore then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the +woods. I sat down there on a log, and looked out through the leaves. I +see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the river. +But in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops, and knowed +the day was coming. So I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had +run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. But I +hadn't no luck somehow I couldn't seem to find the place. But by and +by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. I +went for it, cautious and slow. By and by I was close enough to have a +look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fantods. +He had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. I +set there behind a clump of bushes in about six foot of him, and kept my +eyes on him steady. It was getting gray daylight now. Pretty soon he +gapped and stretched himself and hove off the blanket, and it was Miss +Watson's Jim I bet I was glad to see him. I says +"Hello, Jim" and skipped out. +He bounced up and stared at me wild. Then he drops down on his knees, +and puts his hands together and says +"Doan' hurt medon't I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. I alwuz +liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em. You go en git in de +river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to Ole Jim, 'at 'uz awluz +yo' fren'." +Well, I warn't long making him understand I warn't dead. I was ever so +glad to see Jim. I warn't lonesome now. I told him I warn't afraid of +HIM telling the people where I was. I talked along, but he only set +there and looked at me never said nothing. Then I says +"It's good daylight. Le's get breakfast. Make up your camp fire good." +"What's de use er makin' up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich +truck? But you got a gun, hain't you? Den we kin git sumfn better den +strawbries." +"Strawberries and such truck," I says. "Is that what you live on?" +"I couldn' git nuffn else," he says. +"Why, how long you been on the island, Jim?" +"I come heah de night arter you's killed." +"What, all that time?" +"Yesindeedy." +"And ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" +"No, sahnuffn else." +"Well, you must be most starved, ain't you?" +"I reck'n I could eat a hoss. I think I could. How long you ben on de +islan'?" +"Since the night I got killed." +"No W'y, what has you lived on? But you got a gun. Oh, yes, you got a +gun. Dat's good. Now you kill sumfn en I'll make up de fire." +So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a +grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee, +and coffeepot and fryingpan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was +set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with +witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him with +his knife, and fried him. +When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. +Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. Then +when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. By and by +Jim says +"But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty ef it +warn't you?" +Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. He said Tom +Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had. Then I says +"How do you come to be here, Jim, and how'd you get here?" +He looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute. Then he +says +"Maybe I better not tell." +"Why, Jim?" +"Well, dey's reasons. But you wouldn' tell on me ef I uz to tell you, +would you, Huck?" +"Blamed if I would, Jim." +"Well, I b'lieve you, Huck. II RUN OFF." +"Jim" +"But mind, you said you wouldn' tellyou know you said you wouldn' tell, +Huck." +"Well, I did. I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it. Honest INJUN, I +will. People would call me a lowdown Abolitionist and despise me for +keeping mumbut that don't make no difference. I ain't agoing to tell, +and I ain't agoing back there, anyways. So, now, le's know all about +it." +"Well, you see, it 'uz dis way. Ole missusdat's Miss Watsonshe pecks +on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she +wouldn' sell me down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader +roun' de place considable lately, en I begin to git oneasy. Well, one +night I creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en I +hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but +she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it +'uz sich a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'. De widder she try to +git her to say she wouldn' do it, but I never waited to hear de res'. I +lit out mighty quick, I tell you. +"I tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a skift 'long de sho' +som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people astirring yit, so I hid in de +ole tumbledown coopershop on de bank to wait for everybody to go 'way. +Well, I wuz dah all night. Dey wuz somebody roun' all de time. 'Long +'bout six in de mawnin' skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine +every skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over to de +town en say you's killed. Dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen +agoin' over for to see de place. Sometimes dey'd pull up at de sho' en +take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk I got to know all +'bout de killin'. I 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, Huck, but I ain't +no mo' now. +"I laid dah under de shavin's all day. I 'uz hungry, but I warn't +afeard bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to de +campmeet'n' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows I +goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me +roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'. +De yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday +soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way. +"Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two +mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. I'd made up my mine 'bout +what I's agwyne to do. You see, ef I kep' on tryin' to git away afoot, +de dogs 'ud track me ef I stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat +skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah I'd lan' on de yuther side, en +whah to pick up my track. So I says, a raff is what I's arter it doan' +MAKE no track. +"I see a light acomin' roun' de p'int bymeby, so I wade' in en shove' a +log ahead o' me en swum more'n half way acrost de river, en got in +'mongst de driftwood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de +current tell de raff come along. Den I swum to de stern uv it en tuck +aholt. It clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while. So I clumb +up en laid down on de planks. De men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle, +whah de lantern wuz. De river wuz arisin', en dey wuz a good current +so I reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' I'd be twentyfive mile down de +river, en den I'd slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en take to +de woods on de Illinois side. +"But I didn' have no luck. When we 'uz mos' down to de head er de islan' +a man begin to come aft wid de lantern, I see it warn't no use fer to +wait, so I slid overboard en struck out fer de islan'. Well, I had a +notion I could lan' mos' anywhers, but I couldn'tbank too bluff. I 'uz +mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' I found' a good place. I went into de +woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de +lantern roun' so. I had my pipe en a plug er dogleg, en some matches in +my cap, en dey warn't wet, so I 'uz all right." +"And so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? Why didn't +you get mudturkles?" +"How you gwyne to git 'm? You can't slip up on um en grab um en how's a +body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? How could a body do it in de night? En +I warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime." +"Well, that's so. You've had to keep in the woods all the time, of +course. Did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?" +"Oh, yes. I knowed dey was arter you. I see um go by heahwatched um +thoo de bushes." +Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. +Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. He said it was a sign when +young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when +young birds done it. I was going to catch some of them, but Jim wouldn't +let me. He said it was death. He said his father laid mighty sick once, +and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would +die, and he did. +And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for +dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the +tablecloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that +man died, the bees must be told about it before sunup next morning, or +else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees +wouldn't sting idiots but I didn't believe that, because I had tried +them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me. +I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. Jim +knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most everything. I said it +looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked him if +there warn't any goodluck signs. He says +"Mighty fewan' DEY ain't no use to a body. What you want to know when +good luck's acomin' for? Want to keep it off?" And he said "Ef you's +got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne to be +rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead. +You see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git +discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat you gwyne to +be rich bymeby." +"Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?" +"What's de use to ax dat question? Don't you see I has?" +"Well, are you rich?" +"No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin. Wunst I had foteen +dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out." +"What did you speculate in, Jim?" +"Well, fust I tackled stock." +"What kind of stock?" +"Why, live stockcattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I +ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. De cow up 'n' died on my +han's." +"So you lost the ten dollars." +"No, I didn't lose it all. I on'y los' 'bout nine of it. I sole de hide +en taller for a dollar en ten cents." +"You had five dollars and ten cents left. Did you speculate any more?" +"Yes. You know that onelaigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto Bradish? +Well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' +dollars mo' at de en' er de year. Well, all de niggers went in, but dey +didn't have much. I wuz de on'y one dat had much. So I stuck out for +mo' dan fo' dollars, en I said 'f I didn' git it I'd start a bank mysef. +Well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er de business, bekase he +says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say I could put in +my five dollars en he pay me thirtyfive at de en' er de year. +"So I done it. Den I reck'n'd I'd inves' de thirtyfive dollars right +off en keep things amovin'. Dey wuz a nigger name' Bob, dat had ketched +a woodflat, en his marster didn' know it en I bought it off'n him en +told him to take de thirtyfive dollars when de en' er de year come but +somebody stole de woodflat dat night, en nex day de onelaigged nigger +say de bank's busted. So dey didn' none uv us git no money." +"What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?" +"Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me to +give it to a nigger name' BalumBalum's Ass dey call him for short he's +one er dem chuckleheads, you know. But he's lucky, dey say, en I see I +warn't lucky. De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a +raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he +hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de Lord, en boun' +to git his money back a hund'd times. So Balum he tuck en give de ten +cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." +"Well, what did come of it, Jim?" +"Nuffn never come of it. I couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way en +Balum he couldn'. I ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout I see de +security. Boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says +Ef I could git de ten CENTS back, I'd call it squah, en be glad er de +chanst." +"Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again +some time or other." +"Yes en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth +eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'." +CHAPTER IX. +I WANTED to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island +that I'd found when I was exploring so we started and soon got to it, +because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile +wide. +This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot +high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and +the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and +by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side +towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched +together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool in there. +Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we didn't +want to be climbing up and down there all the time. +Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps +in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island, +and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he said them +little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to +get wet? +So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and +lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by to +hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of +the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner. +The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one +side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a +good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner. +We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. +We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon +it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten so the birds was right +about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, +and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer +storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blueblack outside, and +lovely and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a +little ways looked dim and spiderwebby and here would come a blast of +wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the +leaves and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set +the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild and next, +when it was just about the bluest and blackestFST it was as bright as +glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of treetops aplunging about away +off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see +before dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let +go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down +the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels +down stairswhere it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you +know. +"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but +here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot cornbread." +"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben +down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too dat +you would, honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de +birds, chile." +The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at +last it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the +island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it was +a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old +distance acrossa half a milebecause the Missouri shore was just a +wall of high bluffs. +Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool +and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. We +went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung +so thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every old +brokendown tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things and +when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on +account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand +on them if you wanted to but not the snakes and turtlesthey would +slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in was full of them. +We could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them. +One night we catched a little section of a lumber raftnice pine planks. +It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the +top stood above water six or seven inchesa solid, level floor. We +could see sawlogs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go +we didn't show ourselves in daylight. +Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before +daylight, here comes a framehouse down, on the west side. She was a +twostory, and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and got aboard +clumb in at an upstairs window. But it was too dark to see yet, so we +made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight. +The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then we +looked in at the window. We could make out a bed, and a table, and two +old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was +clothes hanging against the wall. There was something laying on the +floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says +"Hello, you" +But it didn't budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says +"De man ain't asleephe's dead. You hold stillI'll go en see." +He went, and bent down and looked, and says +"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy naked, too. He's ben shot in de back. +I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look +at his faceit's too gashly." +I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he +needn't done it I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy +cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a +couple of masks made out of black cloth and all over the walls was the +ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two +old dirty calico dresses, and a sunbonnet, and some women's underclothes +hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot +into the canoeit might come good. There was a boy's old speckled straw +hat on the floor I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had had +milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took +the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old +hair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn't +nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scattered +about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to +carry off most of their stuff. +We got an old tin lantern, and a butcherknife without any handle, and a +brannew Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow +candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty +old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and +beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet +and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some +monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dogcollar, +and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on +them and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good currycomb, and +Jim he found a ratty old fiddlebow, and a wooden leg. The straps was +broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it +was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the +other one, though we hunted all around. +And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to +shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty +broad day so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the +quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways +off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half +a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't no +accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all safe. +CHAPTER X. +AFTER breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he +come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to. He said it would fetch bad +luck and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us he said a man +that warn't buried was more likely to go aha'nting around than one that +was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn't +say no more but I couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing I +knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for. +We rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed +up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said he reckoned the +people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd a knowed the money +was there they wouldn't a left it. I said I reckoned they killed him, +too but Jim didn't want to talk about that. I says +"Now you think it's bad luck but what did you say when I fetched in the +snakeskin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday? +You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snakeskin +with my hands. Well, here's your bad luck We've raked in all this +truck and eight dollars besides. I wish we could have some bad luck like +this every day, Jim." +"Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don't you git too peart. It's +acomin'. Mind I tell you, it's acomin'." +It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after +dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the +ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some, and +found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on the +foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when +Jim found him there. Well, by night I forgot all about the snake, and +when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light the +snake's mate was there, and bit him. +He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the +varmint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a +second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap's whiskyjug and begun to pour +it down. +He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all +comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave +a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. Jim told +me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the body +and roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and said it would help +cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist, +too. He said that that would help. Then I slid out quiet and throwed +the snakes clear away amongst the bushes for I warn't going to let Jim +find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it. +Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head +and pitched around and yelled but every time he come to himself he went +to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did +his leg but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was +all right but I'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's whisky. +Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone +and he was around again. I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take aholt +of a snakeskin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it. +Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he said that +handling a snakeskin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to +the end of it yet. He said he druther see the new moon over his left +shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snakeskin in his +hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I've always +reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of +the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker +done it once, and bragged about it and in less than two years he got +drunk and fell off of the shottower, and spread himself out so that he +was just a kind of a layer, as you may say and they slid him edgeways +between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but +I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the +moon that way, like a fool. +Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks +again and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks +with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a +man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds. +We couldn't handle him, of course he would a flung us into Illinois. We +just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. We +found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of +rubbage. We split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool +in it. Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and +make a ball of it. It was as big a fish as was ever catched in the +Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. He +would a been worth a good deal over at the village. They peddle out such +a fish as that by the pound in the markethouse there everybody buys +some of him his meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry. +Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a +stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and +find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion but he said I must go +in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn't I +put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good +notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up +my trouserlegs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with +the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I put on the sunbonnet and tied it +under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like +looking down a joint of stovepipe. Jim said nobody would know me, even +in the daytime, hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of +the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I +didn't walk like a girl and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to +get at my britchespocket. I took notice, and done better. +I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. +I started across to the town from a little below the ferrylanding, and +the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I tied +up and started along the bank. There was a light burning in a little +shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had +took up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There +was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was +on a pine table. I didn't know her face she was a stranger, for you +couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know. Now this was +lucky, because I was weakening I was getting afraid I had come people +might know my voice and find me out. But if this woman had been in such +a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to know so I +knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn't forget I was a girl. +CHAPTER XI. +"COME in," says the woman, and I did. She says "Take a cheer." +I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says +"What might your name be?" +"Sarah Williams." +"Where 'bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?' +"No'm. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I've walked all the way and +I'm all tired out." +"Hungry, too, I reckon. I'll find you something." +"No'm, I ain't hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below +here at a farm so I ain't hungry no more. It's what makes me so late. +My mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to +tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of the town, she +says. I hain't ever been here before. Do you know him?" +"No but I don't know everybody yet. I haven't lived here quite two +weeks. It's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better +stay here all night. Take off your bonnet." +"No," I says "I'll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain't afeared +of the dark." +She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by +and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me. +Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the +river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off +they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake +coming to our town, instead of letting well aloneand so on and so on, +till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was +going on in the town but by and by she dropped on to pap and the murder, +and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. She told +about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars only she got it +ten and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I +was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says +"Who done it? We've heard considerable about these goings on down in +Hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed Huck Finn." +"Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people HERE that'd like +to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself." +"Nois that so?" +"Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how nigh he come +to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it +was done by a runaway nigger named Jim." +"Why HE" +I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never +noticed I had put in at all +"The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there's a +reward out for himthree hundred dollars. And there's a reward out for +old Finn, tootwo hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning +after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the +ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. Before night they +wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. Well, next day they found +out the nigger was gone they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten +o'clock the night the murder was done. So then they put it on him, you +see and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and +went boohooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all +over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got +drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty +hardlooking strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he hain't +come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing +blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and +fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get +Huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. People +do say he warn't any too good to do it. Oh, he's sly, I reckon. If he +don't come back for a year he'll be all right. You can't prove anything +on him, you know everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in +Huck's money as easy as nothing." +"Yes, I reckon so, 'm. I don't see nothing in the way of it. Has +everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?" +"Oh, no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it. But they'll get +the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him." +"Why, are they after him yet?" +"Well, you're innocent, ain't you Does three hundred dollars lay around +every day for people to pick up? Some folks think the nigger ain't far +from here. I'm one of thembut I hain't talked it around. A few days +ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log +shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island +over yonder that they call Jackson's Island. Don't anybody live there? +says I. No, nobody, says they. I didn't say any more, but I done some +thinking. I was pretty near certain I'd seen smoke over there, about the +head of the island, a day or two before that, so I says to myself, like +as not that nigger's hiding over there anyway, says I, it's worth the +trouble to give the place a hunt. I hain't seen any smoke sence, so I +reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him but husband's going over to see +him and another man. He was gone up the river but he got back today, +and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago." +I had got so uneasy I couldn't set still. I had to do something with my +hands so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it. +My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it. When the woman stopped +talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling +a little. I put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested +and I was, tooand says +"Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother could get +it. Is your husband going over there tonight?" +"Oh, yes. He went uptown with the man I was telling you of, to get a +boat and see if they could borrow another gun. They'll go over after +midnight." +"Couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?" +"Yes. And couldn't the nigger see better, too? After midnight he'll +likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up +his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he's got one." +"I didn't think of that." +The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn't feel a bit +comfortable. Pretty soon she says, +"What did you say your name was, honey?" +"MMary Williams." +Somehow it didn't seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn't +look upseemed to me I said it was Sarah so I felt sort of cornered, +and was afeared maybe I was looking it, too. I wished the woman would +say something more the longer she set still the uneasier I was. But now +she says +"Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in?" +"Oh, yes'm, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah's my first name. Some +calls me Sarah, some calls me Mary." +"Oh, that's the way of it?" +"Yes'm." +I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there, anyway. I +couldn't look up yet. +Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor +they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the +place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again. She was right +about the rats. You'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner +every little while. She said she had to have things handy to throw at +them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. She showed +me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot +with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't +know whether she could throw true now. But she watched for a chance, and +directly banged away at a rat but she missed him wide, and said "Ouch" +it hurt her arm so. Then she told me to try for the next one. I wanted +to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course I didn't +let on. I got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose I let +drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a tolerable sick +rat. She said that was firstrate, and she reckoned I would hive the +next one. She went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and +brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with. I +held up my two hands and she put the hank over them, and went on talking +about her and her husband's matters. But she broke off to say +"Keep your eye on the rats. You better have the lead in your lap, +handy." +So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped my +legs together on it and she went on talking. But only about a minute. +Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, and very +pleasant, and says +"Come, now, what's your real name?" +"Whwhat, mum?" +"What's your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?or what is it?" +I reckon I shook like a leaf, and I didn't know hardly what to do. But I +says +"Please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. If I'm in the way +here, I'll" +"No, you won't. Set down and stay where you are. I ain't going to hurt +you, and I ain't going to tell on you, nuther. You just tell me your +secret, and trust me. I'll keep it and, what's more, I'll help you. +So'll my old man if you want him to. You see, you're a runaway +'prentice, that's all. It ain't anything. There ain't no harm in it. +You've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. Bless you, +child, I wouldn't tell on you. Tell me all about it now, that's a good +boy." +So I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and I would +just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she musn't go back +on her promise. Then I told her my father and mother was dead, and the +law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back +from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it no longer +he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my chance and +stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out, and I had been +three nights coming the thirty miles. I traveled nights, and hid +daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from home +lasted me all the way, and I had aplenty. I said I believed my uncle +Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck out for +this town of Goshen. +"Goshen, child? This ain't Goshen. This is St. Petersburg. Goshen's +ten mile further up the river. Who told you this was Goshen?" +"Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning, just as I was going to turn +into the woods for my regular sleep. He told me when the roads forked I +must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to Goshen." +"He was drunk, I reckon. He told you just exactly wrong." +"Well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. I got +to be moving along. I'll fetch Goshen before daylight." +"Hold on a minute. I'll put you up a snack to eat. You might want it." +So she put me up a snack, and says +"Say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? Answer +up prompt nowdon't stop to study over it. Which end gets up first?" +"The hind end, mum." +"Well, then, a horse?" +"The for'rard end, mum." +"Which side of a tree does the moss grow on?" +"North side." +"If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with +their heads pointed the same direction?" +"The whole fifteen, mum." +"Well, I reckon you HAVE lived in the country. I thought maybe you was +trying to hocus me again. What's your real name, now?" +"George Peters, mum." +"Well, try to remember it, George. Don't forget and tell me it's +Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's George Elexander +when I catch you. And don't go about women in that old calico. You do a +girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child, +when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch +the needle up to it hold the needle still and poke the thread at it +that's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t'other +way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe +and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss +your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiffarmed from the shoulder, +like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl not from the +wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And, mind +you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees +apart she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the +lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the +needle and I contrived the other things just to make certain. Now trot +along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams George Elexander Peters, and if +you get into trouble you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me, +and I'll do what I can to get you out of it. Keep the river road all the +way, and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you. The river +road's a rocky one, and your feet'll be in a condition when you get to +Goshen, I reckon." +I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks and +slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. I +jumped in, and was off in a hurry. I went upstream far enough to make +the head of the island, and then started across. I took off the +sunbonnet, for I didn't want no blinders on then. When I was about the +middle I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stops and listens the +sound come faint over the water but cleareleven. When I struck the +head of the island I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but +I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started +a good fire there on a high and dry spot. +Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half +below, as hard as I could go. I landed, and slopped through the timber +and up the ridge and into the cavern. There Jim laid, sound asleep on +the ground. I roused him out and says +"Git up and hump yourself, Jim There ain't a minute to lose. They're +after us" +Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word but the way he worked +for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that time +everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be +shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. We put out the camp +fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside +after that. +I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look but +if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't +good to see by. Then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the +shade, past the foot of the island dead stillnever saying a word. +CHAPTER XII. +IT must a been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at +last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to come +along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore +and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the +gun in the canoe, or a fishingline, or anything to eat. We was in +ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It warn't good +judgment to put EVERYTHING on the raft. +If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I +built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed +away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no +fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as I could. +When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a +big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with +the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there +had been a cavein in the bank there. A towhead is a sandbar that has +cottonwoods on it as thick as harrowteeth. +We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois +side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we +warn't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and +watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and +upbound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim all +about the time I had jabbering with that woman and Jim said she was a +smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down +and watch a camp fireno, sir, she'd fetch a dog. Well, then, I said, +why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she +did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed +they must a gone uptown to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or +else we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the +villageno, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said +I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they +didn't. +When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the +cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across nothing in sight +so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam +to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry. +Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the +level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach +of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of +dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it +to its place this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly +the wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steeringoar, +too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something. +We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on, because we +must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming +downstream, to keep from getting run over but we wouldn't have to light +it for upstream boats unless we see we was in what they call a +"crossing" for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still +a little under water so upbound boats didn't always run the channel, +but hunted easy water. +This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current +that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and +we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of +solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking +up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't +often that we laughedonly a little kind of a low chuckle. We had +mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us +at allthat night, nor the next, nor the next. +Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides, +nothing but just a shiny bed of lights not a house could you see. The +fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up. +In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand +people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful +spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. There warn't a sound +there everybody was asleep. +Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little +village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other +stuff to eat and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting +comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when +you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy +find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see +pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to +say, anyway. +Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a +watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of +that kind. Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was +meaning to pay them back some time but the widow said it warn't anything +but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said +he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right so the +best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list +and say we wouldn't borrow them any morethen he reckoned it wouldn't be +no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night, +drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to +drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But +towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to +drop crabapples and p'simmons. We warn't feeling just right before that, +but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too, +because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe +for two or three months yet. +We shot a waterfowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or +didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. Take it all round, we +lived pretty high. +The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a +power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid +sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself. +When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead, +and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, "HelLO, Jim, +looky yonder" It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We +was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very +distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water, +and you could see every little chimblyguy clean and clear, and a chair +by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when +the flashes come. +Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysteriouslike, +I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck +laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I +wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there +was there. So I says +"Le's land on her, Jim." +But Jim was dead against it at first. He says +"I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack. We's doin' blame' well, en +we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey's +a watchman on dat wrack." +"Watchman your grandmother," I says "there ain't nothing to watch but +the texas and the pilothouse and do you reckon anybody's going to resk +his life for a texas and a pilothouse such a night as this, when it's +likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" Jim couldn't +say nothing to that, so he didn't try. "And besides," I says, "we might +borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom. Seegars, I +bet youand cost five cents apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is +always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and THEY don't care a cent +what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle in +your pocket I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do you +reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn't. +He'd call it an adventurethat's what he'd call it and he'd land on +that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn't he throw style into it? +wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? Why, you'd think it was +Christopher C'lumbus discovering KingdomCome. I wish Tom Sawyer WAS +here." +Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we mustn't talk any more +than we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed us +the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and +made fast there. +The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to +labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our +feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so +dark we couldn't see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forward +end of the skylight, and clumb on to it and the next step fetched us in +front of the captain's door, which was open, and by Jimminy, away down +through the texashall we see a light and all in the same second we seem +to hear low voices in yonder +Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come +along. I says, all right, and was going to start for the raft but just +then I heard a voice wail out and say +"Oh, please don't, boys I swear I won't ever tell" +Another voice said, pretty loud +"It's a lie, Jim Turner. You've acted this way before. You always want +more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because +you've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell. But this time you've said it +jest one time too many. You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this +country." +By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just abiling with +curiosity and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so +I won't either I'm agoing to see what's going on here. So I dropped on +my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark till +there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the crosshall of the +texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand +and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim +lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. This one kept +pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and saying +"I'd LIKE to And I orter, tooa mean skunk" +The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "Oh, please don't, Bill I +hain't ever goin' to tell." +And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say +"'Deed you AIN'T You never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet you." +And once he said "Hear him beg and yit if we hadn't got the best of +him and tied him he'd a killed us both. And what FOR? Jist for noth'n. +Jist because we stood on our RIGHTSthat's what for. But I lay you +ain't agoin' to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put UP that +pistol, Bill." +Bill says +"I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm for killin' himand didn't he kill +old Hatfield jist the same wayand don't he deserve it?" +"But I don't WANT him killed, and I've got my reasons for it." +"Bless yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard I'll never forgit you +long's I live" says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering. +Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail +and started towards where I was there in the dark, and motioned Bill to +come. I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat +slanted so that I couldn't make very good time so to keep from getting +run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. The +man came apawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my +stateroom, he says +"Herecome in here." +And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in +the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with +their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn't see them, +but I could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been having. I was +glad I didn't drink whisky but it wouldn't made much difference anyway, +because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because I didn't +breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body COULDN'T breathe and +hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill +Turner. He says +"He's said he'll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares to +him NOW it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we've +served him. Shore's you're born, he'll turn State's evidence now you +hear ME. I'm for putting him out of his troubles." +"So'm I," says Packard, very quiet. +"Blame it, I'd sorter begun to think you wasn't. Well, then, that's all +right. Le's go and do it." +"Hold on a minute I hain't had my say yit. You listen to me. +Shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's GOT to be done. +But what I say is this it ain't good sense to go court'n around after a +halter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist as +good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. Ain't that so?" +"You bet it is. But how you goin' to manage it this time?" +"Well, my idea is this we'll rustle around and gather up whatever +pickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide +the truck. Then we'll wait. Now I say it ain't agoin' to be more'n two +hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See? +He'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own +self. I reckon that's a considerble sight better 'n killin' of him. I'm +unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git aroun' it it ain't +good sense, it ain't good morals. Ain't I right?" +"Yes, I reck'n you are. But s'pose she DON'T break up and wash off?" +"Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we?" +"All right, then come along." +So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled +forward. It was dark as pitch there but I said, in a kind of a coarse +whisper, "Jim" and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a +moan, and I says +"Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning there's a +gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set +her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the +wreck there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their +boat we can put ALL of 'em in a bad fixfor the sheriff 'll get 'em. +Quickhurry I'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard. +You start at the raft, and" +"Oh, my lordy, lordy RAF'? Dey ain' no raf' no mo' she done broke +loose en gone Ien here we is" +CHAPTER XIII. +WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such +a gang as that But it warn't no time to be sentimentering. We'd GOT to +find that boat nowhad to have it for ourselves. So we went aquaking +and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, tooseemed a +week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn't +believe he could go any furtherso scared he hadn't hardly any strength +left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are +in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the +texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight, +hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in +the water. When we got pretty close to the crosshall door there was the +skiff, sure enough I could just barely see her. I felt ever so +thankful. In another second I would a been aboard of her, but just then +the door opened. One of the men stuck his head out only about a couple +of foot from me, and I thought I was gone but he jerked it in again, and +says +"Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill" +He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and +set down. It was Packard. Then Bill HE come out and got in. Packard +says, in a low voice +"All readyshove off" +I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill says +"Hold on'd you go through him?" +"No. Didn't you?" +"No. So he's got his share o' the cash yet." +"Well, then, come along no use to take truck and leave money." +"Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?" +"Maybe he won't. But we got to have it anyway. Come along." +So they got out and went in. +The door slammed to because it was on the careened side and in a half +second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my +knife and cut the rope, and away we went +We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even +breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the +paddlebox, and past the stern then in a second or two more we was a +hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last +sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it. +When we was three or four hundred yards downstream we see the lantern +show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed by +that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to +understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was. +Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the +first time that I begun to worry about the menI reckon I hadn't had +time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for +murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain't no telling +but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like +it? So says I to Jim +"The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it, +in a place where it's a good hidingplace for you and the skiff, and then +I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that +gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their +time comes." +But that idea was a failure for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and +this time worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light +showed everybody in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river, +watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the +rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering, +and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we +made for it. +It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We +seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. So I said I would go +for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole +there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I told +Jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone +about two mile, and keep it burning till I come then I manned my oars +and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it three or four more +showedup on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shore +light, and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it was a +lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a doublehull ferryboat. I skimmed +around for the watchman, awondering whereabouts he slept and by and by +I found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between his +knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry. +He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way but when he see it was only +me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says +"Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the trouble?" +I says +"Pap, and mam, and sis, and" +Then I broke down. He says +"Oh, dang it now, DON'T take on so we all has to have our troubles, and +this 'n 'll come out all right. What's the matter with 'em?" +"They'rethey'reare you the watchman of the boat?" +"Yes," he says, kind of prettywellsatisfied like. "I'm the captain and +the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deckhand and +sometimes I'm the freight and passengers. I ain't as rich as old Jim +Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous and good to Tom, Dick, and +Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does but I've told +him a many a time 't I wouldn't trade places with him for, says I, a +sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm derned if I'D live two mile out +o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin' on, not for all his +spondulicks and as much more on top of it. Says I" +I broke in and says +"They're in an awful peck of trouble, and" +"WHO is?" +"Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker and if you'd take your +ferryboat and go up there" +"Up where? Where are they?" +"On the wreck." +"What wreck?" +"Why, there ain't but one." +"What, you don't mean the Walter Scott?" +"Yes." +"Good land what are they doin' THERE, for gracious sakes?" +"Well, they didn't go there apurpose." +"I bet they didn't Why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em +if they don't git off mighty quick Why, how in the nation did they ever +git into such a scrape?" +"Easy enough. Miss Hooker was avisiting up there to the town" +"Yes, Booth's Landinggo on." +"She was avisiting there at Booth's Landing, and just in the edge of the +evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horseferry to stay +all night at her friend's house, Miss Whatyoumaycallher I disremember +her nameand they lost their steeringoar, and swung around and went +afloating down, stern first, about two mile, and saddlebaggsed on the +wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost, +but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. Well, about an +hour after dark we come along down in our tradingscow, and it was so +dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it and so WE +saddlebaggsed but all of us was saved but Bill Whippleand oh, he WAS +the best creturI most wish 't it had been me, I do." +"My George It's the beatenest thing I ever struck. And THEN what did +you all do?" +"Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't make +nobody hear. So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help +somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it, and +Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt +up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. I made the land about a mile +below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do +something, but they said, 'What, in such a night and such a current? +There ain't no sense in it go for the steam ferry.' Now if you'll go +and" +"By Jackson, I'd LIKE to, and, blame it, I don't know but I will but who +in the dingnation's agoing' to PAY for it? Do you reckon your pap" +"Why THAT'S all right. Miss Hooker she tole me, PARTICULAR, that her +uncle Hornback" +"Great guns is HE her uncle? Looky here, you break for that light over +yonderway, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of +a mile out you'll come to the tavern tell 'em to dart you out to Jim +Hornback's, and he'll foot the bill. And don't you fool around any, +because he'll want to know the news. Tell him I'll have his niece all +safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself, now I'm agoing up +around the corner here to roust out my engineer." +I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back +and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in the +easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some +woodboats for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferryboat start. +But take it all around, I was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of +taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a done it. I +wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for +helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the +kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in. +Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along +down A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for +her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn't much chance +for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a +little, but there wasn't any answer all dead still. I felt a little bit +heavyhearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they could +stand it I could. +Then here comes the ferryboat so I shoved for the middle of the river on +a long downstream slant and when I judged I was out of eyereach I laid +on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for +Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle +Hornback would want them and then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up +and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went abooming down +the river. +It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light showed up and when +it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got +there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east so we +struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in +and slept like dead people. +CHAPTER XIV. +BY and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole +off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all +sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three +boxes of seegars. We hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of our +lives. The seegars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the +woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time. +I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferryboat, +and I said these kinds of things was adventures but he said he didn't +want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the texas and he +crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died, +because he judged it was all up with HIM anyway it could be fixed for if +he didn't get saved he would get drownded and if he did get saved, +whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and +then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure. Well, he was right he was +most always right he had an uncommon level head for a nigger. +I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and +how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each +other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead +of mister and Jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says +"I didn' know dey was so many un um. I hain't hearn 'bout none un um, +skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a +pack er k'yards. How much do a king git?" +"Get?" I says "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want +it they can have just as much as they want everything belongs to them." +"AIN' dat gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?" +"THEY don't do nothing Why, how you talk They just set around." +"No is dat so?" +"Of course it is. They just set aroundexcept, maybe, when there's a +war then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around or +go hawkingjust hawking and spShd' you hear a noise?" +We skipped out and looked but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a +steamboat's wheel away down, coming around the point so we come back. +"Yes," says I, "and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the +parlyment and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off. +But mostly they hang round the harem." +"Roun' de which?" +"Harem." +"What's de harem?" +"The place where he keeps his wives. Don't you know about the harem? +Solomon had one he had about a million wives." +"Why, yes, dat's so II'd done forgot it. A harem's a bo'd'nhouse, I +reck'n. Mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. En I reck'n de +wives quarrels considable en dat 'crease de racket. Yit dey say +Sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. I doan' take no stock in dat. +Bekase why would a wise man want to live in de mids' er sich a +blimblammin' all de time? No'deed he wouldn't. A wise man 'ud take +en buil' a bilerfactry en den he could shet DOWN de bilerfactry when +he want to res'." +"Well, but he WAS the wisest man, anyway because the widow she told me +so, her own self." +"I doan k'yer what de widder say, he WARN'T no wise man nuther. He had +some er de dadfetchedes' ways I ever see. Does you know 'bout dat chile +dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?" +"Yes, the widow told me all about it." +"WELL, den Warn' dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'? You jes' take en +look at it a minute. Dah's de stump, dahdat's one er de women heah's +youdat's de yuther one I's Sollermun en dish yer dollar bill's de +chile. Bofe un you claims it. What does I do? Does I shin aroun' +mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill DO b'long to, en +han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat +had any gumption would? No I take en whack de bill in TWO, en give half +un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. Dat's de way +Sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. Now I want to ast you what's +de use er dat half a bill?can't buy noth'n wid it. En what use is a +half a chile? I wouldn' give a dern for a million un um." +"But hang it, Jim, you've clean missed the pointblame it, you've missed +it a thousand mile." +"Who? Me? Go 'long. Doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints. I reck'n I +knows sense when I sees it en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat. +De 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile +en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half +a chile doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. Doan' talk to me +'bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back." +"But I tell you you don't get the point." +"Blame de point I reck'n I knows what I knows. En mine you, de REAL +pint is down furderit's down deeper. It lays in de way Sollermun was +raised. You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen is dat man +gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? No, he ain't he can't 'ford it. HE +know how to value 'em. But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million +chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. HE as soon chop a chile +in two as a cat. Dey's plenty mo'. A chile er two, mo' er less, warn't +no consekens to Sollermun, dad fatch him" +I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there +warn't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any +nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let +Solomon slide. I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off in +France long time ago and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a +been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died +there. +"Po' little chap." +"But some says he got out and got away, and come to America." +"Dat's good But he'll be pooty lonesomedey ain' no kings here, is +dey, Huck?" +"No." +"Den he cain't git no situation. What he gwyne to do?" +"Well, I don't know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them +learns people how to talk French." +"Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?" +"NO, Jim you couldn't understand a word they saidnot a single word." +"Well, now, I be dingbusted How do dat come?" +"I don't know but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. +S'pose a man was to come to you and say Pollyvoofranzywhat would you +think?" +"I wouldn' think nuff'n I'd take en bust him over de headdat is, if he +warn't white. I wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat." +"Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only saying, do you know +how to talk French?" +"Well, den, why couldn't he SAY it?" +"Why, he IS asaying it. That's a Frenchman's WAY of saying it." +"Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout +it. Dey ain' no sense in it." +"Looky here, Jim does a cat talk like we do?" +"No, a cat don't." +"Well, does a cow?" +"No, a cow don't, nuther." +"Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?" +"No, dey don't." +"It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't +it?" +"Course." +"And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different +from US?" +"Why, mos' sholy it is." +"Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a FRENCHMAN to talk +different from us? You answer me that." +"Is a cat a man, Huck?" +"No." +"Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a +man?er is a cow a cat?" +"No, she ain't either of them." +"Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the +yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?" +"Yes." +"WELL, den Dad blame it, why doan' he TALK like a man? You answer me +DAT" +I see it warn't no use wasting wordsyou can't learn a nigger to argue. +So I quit. +CHAPTER XV. +WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom +of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was +after. We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the +Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of trouble. +Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead +to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog but when I paddled +ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything but +little saplings to tie to. I passed the line around one of them right on +the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft +come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she +went. I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I +couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to meand then there +warn't no raft in sight you couldn't see twenty yards. I jumped into +the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle and set her +back a stroke. But she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't +untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so excited my +hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with them. +As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right +down the towhead. That was all right as far as it went, but the towhead +warn't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot +out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way I was +going than a dead man. +Thinks I, it won't do to paddle first I know I'll run into the bank or a +towhead or something I got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty +fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I +whooped and listened. Away down there somewheres I hears a small whoop, +and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp to +hear it again. The next time it come I see I warn't heading for it, but +heading away to the right of it. And the next time I was heading away to +the left of itand not gaining on it much either, for I was flying +around, this way and that and t'other, but it was going straight ahead +all the time. +I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the +time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops +that was making the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly I +hears the whoop BEHIND me. I was tangled good now. That was somebody +else's whoop, or else I was turned around. +I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again it was behind me +yet, but in a different place it kept coming, and kept changing its +place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again, +and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head downstream, and I +was all right if that was Jim and not some other raftsman hollering. I +couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look +natural nor sound natural in a fog. +The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come abooming down on a +cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me +off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, +the currrent was tearing by them so swift. +In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set +perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn't +draw a breath while it thumped a hundred. +I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was an +island, and Jim had gone down t'other side of it. It warn't no towhead +that you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a +regular island it might be five or six miles long and more than half a +mile wide. +I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I +was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour but you don't +ever think of that. No, you FEEL like you are laying dead still on the +water and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to +yourself how fast YOU'RE going, but you catch your breath and think, my +how that snag's tearing along. If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome +out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it onceyou'll +see. +Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then at last I hears +the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do it, +and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had little +dim glimpses of them on both sides of mesometimes just a narrow channel +between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because I'd hear +the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung +over the banks. Well, I warn't long loosing the whoops down amongst the +towheads and I only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because +it was worse than chasing a Jacko'lantern. You never knowed a sound +dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much. +I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to +keep from knocking the islands out of the river and so I judged the raft +must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get +further ahead and clear out of hearingit was floating a little faster +than what I was. +Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't +hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a +snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. I was good and tired, so I laid +down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't want to +go to sleep, of course but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it so I +thought I would take jest one little catnap. +But I reckon it was more than a catnap, for when I waked up the stars +was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big +bend stern first. First I didn't know where I was I thought I was +dreaming and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up +dim out of last week. +It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind +of timber on both banks just a solid wall, as well as I could see by the +stars. I looked away downstream, and seen a black speck on the water. +I took after it but when I got to it it warn't nothing but a couple of +sawlogs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and chased that +then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft. +When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his +knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steeringoar. The +other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and +branches and dirt. So she'd had a rough time. +I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft, and began to gap, +and stretch my fists out against Jim, and says +"Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stir me up?" +"Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain' deadyou ain' +drowndedyou's back agin? It's too good for true, honey, it's too +good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you. No, you ain' +dead you's back agin, 'live en soun', jis de same ole Huckde same ole +Huck, thanks to goodness" +"What's the matter with you, Jim? You been adrinking?" +"Drinkin'? Has I ben adrinkin'? Has I had a chance to be adrinkin'?" +"Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?" +"How does I talk wild?" +"HOW? Why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that +stuff, as if I'd been gone away?" +"HuckHuck Finn, you look me in de eye look me in de eye. HAIN'T you +ben gone away?" +"Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I hain't been gone +anywheres. Where would I go to?" +"Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is. Is I ME, or who IS +I? Is I heah, or whah IS I? Now dat's what I wants to know." +"Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a +tangleheaded old fool, Jim." +"I is, is I? Well, you answer me dis Didn't you tote out de line in de +canoe fer to make fas' to de towhead?" +"No, I didn't. What towhead? I hain't see no towhead." +"You hain't seen no towhead? Looky here, didn't de line pull loose en de +raf' go ahummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de +fog?" +"What fog?" +"Why, de fogde fog dat's been aroun' all night. En didn't you whoop, +en didn't I whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got +los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he +wuz? En didn't I bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible +time en mos' git drownded? Now ain' dat so, bossain't it so? You +answer me dat." +"Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain't seen no fog, nor no +islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. I been setting here talking with +you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon +I done the same. You couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course +you've been dreaming." +"Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?" +"Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it +happen." +"But, Huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as" +"It don't make no difference how plain it is there ain't nothing in it. +I know, because I've been here all the time." +Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying +over it. Then he says +"Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck but dog my cats ef it ain't de +powerfullest dream I ever see. En I hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's +tired me like dis one." +"Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like +everything sometimes. But this one was a staving dream tell me all +about it, Jim." +So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it +happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must start +in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the +first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the +current was another man that would get us away from him. The whoops was +warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try +hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, +'stead of keeping us out of it. The lot of towheads was troubles we was +going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, +but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we +would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, +which was the free States, and wouldn't have no more trouble. +It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was +clearing up again now. +"Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim," I +says "but what does THESE things stand for?" +It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could +see them firstrate now. +Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash +again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't +seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right +away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me +steady without ever smiling, and says +"What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out +wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' +broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en +de raf'. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de +tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, I's so +thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv +ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is TRASH en trash is what people is +dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed." +Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without +saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean +I could almost kissed HIS foot to get him to take it back. +It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble +myself to a nigger but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it +afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't +done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way. +CHAPTER XVI. +WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a +monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. She had +four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty +men, likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open +camp fire in the middle, and a tall flagpole at each end. There was a +power of style about her. It AMOUNTED to something being a raftsman on +such a craft as that. +We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got +hot. The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both +sides you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. We talked +about Cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I +said likely we wouldn't, because I had heard say there warn't but about a +dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how +was we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said if the two big +rivers joined together there, that would show. But I said maybe we might +think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old +river again. That disturbed Jimand me too. So the question was, what +to do? I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell +them pap was behind, coming along with a tradingscow, and was a green +hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim +thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited. +There warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and +not pass it without seeing it. He said he'd be mighty sure to see it, +because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it +he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom. Every +little while he jumps up and says +"Dah she is?" +But it warn't. It was Jacko'lanterns, or lightning bugs so he set +down again, and went to watching, same as before. Jim said it made him +all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can +tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him, +because I begun to get it through my head that he WAS most freeand who +was to blame for it? Why, ME. I couldn't get that out of my conscience, +no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest I couldn't +stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to me before, what +this thing was that I was doing. But now it did and it stayed with me, +and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I +warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner +but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "But you knowed +he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told +somebody." That was soI couldn't get around that noway. That was +where it pinched. Conscience says to me, "What had poor Miss Watson done +to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and +never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that +you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she +tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way +she knowed how. THAT'S what she done." +I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I +fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was +fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still. Every +time he danced around and says, "Dah's Cairo" it went through me like a +shot, and I thought if it WAS Cairo I reckoned I would die of +miserableness. +Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was +saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he +would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he +got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to +where Miss Watson lived and then they would both work to buy the two +children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an +Ab'litionist to go and steal them. +It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such +talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the +minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, +"Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." Thinks I, this is what +comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as +helped to run away, coming right out flatfooted and saying he would +steal his childrenchildren that belonged to a man I didn't even know a +man that hadn't ever done me no harm. +I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My +conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says +to it, "Let up on meit ain't too late yetI'll paddle ashore at the +first light and tell." I felt easy and happy and light as a feather +right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a +light, and sort of singing to myself. By and by one showed. Jim sings +out +"We's safe, Huck, we's safe Jump up and crack yo' heels Dat's de good +ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it" +I says +"I'll take the canoe and go and see, Jim. It mightn't be, you know." +He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for +me to set on, and give me the paddle and as I shoved off, he says +"Pooty soon I'll be ashout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on accounts +o' Huck I's a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn' ben for +Huck Huck done it. Jim won't ever forgit you, Huck you's de bes' fren' +Jim's ever had en you's de ONLY fren' ole Jim's got now." +I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him but when he says this, +it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow +then, and I warn't right down certain whether I was glad I started or +whether I warn't. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says +"Dah you goes, de ole true Huck de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his +promise to ole Jim." +Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I GOT to do itI can't get OUT of +it. Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and +they stopped and I stopped. One of them says +"What's that yonder?" +"A piece of a raft," I says. +"Do you belong on it?" +"Yes, sir." +"Any men on it?" +"Only one, sir." +"Well, there's five niggers run off tonight up yonder, above the head of +the bend. Is your man white or black?" +I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I +tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't man +enoughhadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening so I just +give up trying, and up and says +"He's white." +"I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves." +"I wish you would," says I, "because it's pap that's there, and maybe +you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. He's sickand so +is mam and Mary Ann." +"Oh, the devil we're in a hurry, boy. But I s'pose we've got to. Come, +buckle to your paddle, and let's get along." +I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. When we had made a +stroke or two, I says +"Pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, I can tell you. Everybody goes +away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and I can't do it +by myself." +"Well, that's infernal mean. Odd, too. Say, boy, what's the matter with +your father?" +"It's theathewell, it ain't anything much." +They stopped pulling. It warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft +now. One says +"Boy, that's a lie. What IS the matter with your pap? Answer up square +now, and it'll be the better for you." +"I will, sir, I will, honestbut don't leave us, please. It's thethe +Gentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the +headline, you won't have to come anear the raftplease do." +"Set her back, John, set her back" says one. They backed water. "Keep +away, boykeep to looard. Confound it, I just expect the wind has +blowed it to us. Your pap's got the smallpox, and you know it precious +well. Why didn't you come out and say so? Do you want to spread it all +over?" +"Well," says I, ablubbering, "I've told everybody before, and they just +went away and left us." +"Poor devil, there's something in that. We are right down sorry for you, +but wewell, hang it, we don't want the smallpox, you see. Look here, +I'll tell you what to do. Don't you try to land by yourself, or you'll +smash everything to pieces. You float along down about twenty miles, and +you'll come to a town on the lefthand side of the river. It will be +long after sunup then, and when you ask for help you tell them your +folks are all down with chills and fever. Don't be a fool again, and let +people guess what is the matter. Now we're trying to do you a kindness +so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy. It wouldn't +do any good to land yonder where the light isit's only a woodyard. +Say, I reckon your father's poor, and I'm bound to say he's in pretty +hard luck. Here, I'll put a twentydollar gold piece on this board, and +you get it when it floats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you but my +kingdom it won't do to fool with smallpox, don't you see?" +"Hold on, Parker," says the other man, "here's a twenty to put on the +board for me. Goodbye, boy you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you'll +be all right." +"That's so, my boygoodbye, goodbye. If you see any runaway niggers +you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it." +"Goodbye, sir," says I "I won't let no runaway niggers get by me if I +can help it." +They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I +knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to +try to learn to do right a body that don't get STARTED right when he's +little ain't got no showwhen the pinch comes there ain't nothing to +back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I +thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on s'pose you'd a done right +and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, +I'd feel badI'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, +what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right +and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was +stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more +about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time. +I went into the wigwam Jim warn't there. I looked all around he warn't +anywhere. I says +"Jim" +"Here I is, Huck. Is dey out o' sight yit? Don't talk loud." +He was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out. I told +him they were out of sight, so he come aboard. He says +"I was alistenin' to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne +to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. Den I was gwyne to swim to de raf' +agin when dey was gone. But lawsy, how you did fool 'em, Huck Dat WUZ +de smartes' dodge I tell you, chile, I'spec it save' ole Jimole Jim +ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey." +Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raisetwenty +dollars apiece. Jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now, +and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free States. +He said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he wished we +was already there. +Towards daybreak we tied up, and Jim was mighty particular about hiding +the raft good. Then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and +getting all ready to quit rafting. +That night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down +in a lefthand bend. +I went off in the canoe to ask about it. Pretty soon I found a man out +in the river with a skiff, setting a trotline. I ranged up and says +"Mister, is that town Cairo?" +"Cairo? no. You must be a blame' fool." +"What town is it, mister?" +"If you want to know, go and find out. If you stay here botherin' around +me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you won't want." +I paddled to the raft. Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never +mind, Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned. +We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again but it +was high ground, so I didn't go. No high ground about Cairo, Jim said. +I had forgot it. We laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable close to +the lefthand bank. I begun to suspicion something. So did Jim. I +says +"Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night." +He says +"Doan' le's talk about it, Huck. Po' niggers can't have no luck. I +awluz 'spected dat rattlesnakeskin warn't done wid its work." +"I wish I'd never seen that snakeskin, JimI do wish I'd never laid +eyes on it." +"It ain't yo' fault, Huck you didn' know. Don't you blame yo'self 'bout +it." +When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure enough, +and outside was the old regular Muddy So it was all up with Cairo. +We talked it all over. It wouldn't do to take to the shore we couldn't +take the raft up the stream, of course. There warn't no way but to wait +for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. So we slept +all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work, +and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone +We didn't say a word for a good while. There warn't anything to say. We +both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnakeskin so +what was the use to talk about it? It would only look like we was +finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luckand keep +on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still. +By and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no +way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a +canoe to go back in. We warn't going to borrow it when there warn't +anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after us. +So we shoved out after dark on the raft. +Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a +snakeskin, after all that that snakeskin done for us, will believe +it now if they read on and see what more it done for us. +The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore. But we +didn't see no rafts laying up so we went along during three hours and +more. Well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next +meanest thing to fog. You can't tell the shape of the river, and you +can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then along +comes a steamboat up the river. We lit the lantern, and judged she would +see it. Upstream boats didn't generly come close to us they go out and +follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs but nights like +this they bull right up the channel against the whole river. +We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was +close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how +close they can come without touching sometimes the wheel bites off a +sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he's +mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and +shave us but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. She was a big +one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with +rows of glowworms around it but all of a sudden she bulged out, big and +scary, with a long row of wideopen furnace doors shining like redhot +teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. There +was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow +of cussing, and whistling of steamand as Jim went overboard on one side +and I on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft. +I divedand I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirtyfoot wheel had +got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room. I could +always stay under water a minute this time I reckon I stayed under a +minute and a half. Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was +nearly busting. I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of +my nose, and puffed a bit. Of course there was a booming current and of +course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped +them, for they never cared much for raftsmen so now she was churning +along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though I could +hear her. +I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I didn't get any answer so I +grabbed a plank that touched me while I was "treading water," and struck +out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. But I made out to see that the +drift of the current was towards the lefthand shore, which meant that I +was in a crossing so I changed off and went that way. +It was one of these long, slanting, twomile crossings so I was a good +long time in getting over. I made a safe landing, and clumb up the bank. +I couldn't see but a little ways, but I went poking along over rough +ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then I run across a big +oldfashioned double loghouse before I noticed it. I was going to rush +by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and +barking at me, and I knowed better than to move another peg. +CHAPTER XVII. +IN about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head +out, and says +"Be done, boys Who's there?" +I says +"It's me." +"Who's me?" +"George Jackson, sir." +"What do you want?" +"I don't want nothing, sir. I only want to go along by, but the dogs +won't let me." +"What are you prowling around here this time of night forhey?" +"I warn't prowling around, sir, I fell overboard off of the steamboat." +"Oh, you did, did you? Strike a light there, somebody. What did you say +your name was?" +"George Jackson, sir. I'm only a boy." +"Look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraidnobody'll +hurt you. But don't try to budge stand right where you are. Rouse out +Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson, is there +anybody with you?" +"No, sir, nobody." +I heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light. +The man sung out +"Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old foolain't you got any sense? +Put it on the floor behind the front door. Bob, if you and Tom are +ready, take your places." +"All ready." +"Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?" +"No, sir I never heard of them." +"Well, that may be so, and it mayn't. Now, all ready. Step forward, +George Jackson. And mind, don't you hurrycome mighty slow. If there's +anybody with you, let him keep backif he shows himself he'll be shot. +Come along now. Come slow push the door open yourselfjust enough to +squeeze in, d' you hear?" +I didn't hurry I couldn't if I'd a wanted to. I took one slow step at a +time and there warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart. The +dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me. +When I got to the three log doorsteps I heard them unlocking and +unbarring and unbolting. I put my hand on the door and pushed it a +little and a little more till somebody said, "There, that's enoughput +your head in." I done it, but I judged they would take it off. +The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and +me at them, for about a quarter of a minute Three big men with guns +pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you the oldest, gray and +about sixty, the other two thirty or moreall of them fine and handsome +and the sweetest old grayheaded lady, and back of her two young women +which I couldn't see right well. The old gentleman says +"There I reckon it's all right. Come in." +As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it +and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and +they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and +got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows +there warn't none on the side. They held the candle, and took a good +look at me, and all said, "Why, HE ain't a Shepherdsonno, there ain't +any Shepherdson about him." Then the old man said he hoped I wouldn't +mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by itit +was only to make sure. So he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt +outside with his hands, and said it was all right. He told me to make +myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself but the old lady +says +"Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be and don't +you reckon it may be he's hungry?" +"True for you, RachelI forgot." +So the old lady says +"Betsy" this was a nigger woman, "you fly around and get him something +to eat as quick as you can, poor thing and one of you girls go and wake +up Buck and tell himoh, here he is himself. Buck, take this little +stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of +yours that's dry." +Buck looked about as old as methirteen or fourteen or along there, +though he was a little bigger than me. He hadn't on anything but a +shirt, and he was very frowzyheaded. He came in gaping and digging one +fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one. +He says +"Ain't they no Shepherdsons around?" +They said, no, 'twas a false alarm. +"Well," he says, "if they'd a ben some, I reckon I'd a got one." +They all laughed, and Bob says +"Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in +coming." +"Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right I'm always kept down I +don't get no show." +"Never mind, Buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show enough, +all in good time, don't you fret about that. Go 'long with you now, and +do as your mother told you." +When we got upstairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a +roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it he +asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to tell +me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day +before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went +out. I said I didn't know I hadn't heard about it before, no way. +"Well, guess," he says. +"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it before?" +"But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy." +"WHICH candle?" I says. +"Why, any candle," he says. +"I don't know where he was," says I "where was he?" +"Why, he was in the DARK That's where he was" +"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?" +"Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? Say, how long are you +going to stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have booming +timesthey don't have no school now. Do you own a dog? I've got a +dogand he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. Do +you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? You bet I +don't, but ma she makes me. Confound these ole britches I reckon I'd +better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm. Are you all ready? +All right. Come along, old hoss." +Cold cornpone, cold cornbeef, butter and buttermilkthat is what they +had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've come +across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the +nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. They all smoked +and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around +them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and +I told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm +down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got +married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he +warn't heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't +nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, +on account of his troubles so when he died I took what there was left, +because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck +passage, and fell overboard and that was how I come to be here. So they +said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most +daylight and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when +I waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was. +So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I +says +"Can you spell, Buck?" +"Yes," he says. +"I bet you can't spell my name," says I. +"I bet you what you dare I can," says he. +"All right," says I, "go ahead." +"George Jaxonthere now," he says. +"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't no +slouch of a name to spellright off without studying." +I set it down, private, because somebody might want ME to spell it next, +and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to +it. +It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen +no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much +style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one +with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in +town. There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed but heaps +of parlors in towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was +bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring +water on them and scrubbing them with another brick sometimes they wash +them over with red waterpaint that they call Spanishbrown, same as they +do in town. They had big brass dogirons that could hold up a sawlog. +There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a +town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in +the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging +behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick and sometimes when +one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in +good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she +got tuckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her. +Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made +out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots +was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other and when you +pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look +different nor interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was a +couple of big wildturkeywing fans spread out behind those things. On +the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery +basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, +which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but +they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off +and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath. +This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and +blue spreadeagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It +come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books, +too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a +big family Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a +man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it +now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was +Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry but I didn't +read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr. +Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was +sick or dead. There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And +there was nice splitbottom chairs, and perfectly sound, toonot bagged +down in the middle and busted, like an old basket. +They had pictures hung on the wallsmainly Washingtons and Lafayettes, +and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the +Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one of the +daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen +years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before +blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, +belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle +of the sleeves, and a large black scoopshovel bonnet with a black veil, +and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black +slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on +her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down +her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the +picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a +young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, +and knotted there in front of a comb like a chairback, and she was +crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her +other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall +Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young +lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her +cheeks and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax +showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to +it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou +Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but +I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a +little they always give me the fantods. Everybody was sorry she died, +because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body +could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that +with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She +was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took +sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to +live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a +picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a +bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and +looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had +two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, +and two more reaching up towards the moonand the idea was to see which +pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms but, as I +was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept +this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her +birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a +little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice +sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, +seemed to me. +This young girl kept a scrapbook when she was alive, and used to paste +obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the +Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. +It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name +of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded +ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D +And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad +hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry? +No such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots Though sad +hearts round him thickened, 'Twas not from sickness' shots. +No whoopingcough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots Not +these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots. +Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach +troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots. +O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul +did from this cold world fly By falling down a well. +They got him out and emptied him Alas it was too late His spirit was +gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great. +If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was +fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck +said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to +stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't +find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down +another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular she could write about +anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. +Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on +hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes. +The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the +undertakerthe undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and +then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was +Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that she never complained, but +she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time +I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out +her poor old scrapbook and read in it when her pictures had been +aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that +family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between +us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was +alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some +about her now she was gone so I tried to sweat out a verse or two +myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's +room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked +to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old +lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, +and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly. +Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on +the windows white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines +all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little +old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever +so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is Broken" and +play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the rooms was +plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was +whitewashed on the outside. +It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and +floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, +and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn't be better. And +warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too +CHAPTER XVIII. +COL. GRANGERFORD was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over +and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that's +worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, +and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town +and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a +mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a +darkishpaly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres he was clean +shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind +of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy +eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they +seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His +forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to his +shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put +on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so +white it hurt your eyes to look at it and on Sundays he wore a blue +tailcoat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a +silver head to it. There warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, +and he warn't ever loud. He was as kind as he could beyou could feel +that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it +was good to see but when he straightened himself up like a libertypole, +and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you +wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was +afterwards. He didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners +everybody was always goodmannered where he was. Everybody loved to have +him around, too he was sunshine most alwaysI mean he made it seem +like good weather. When he turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for +half a minute, and that was enough there wouldn't nothing go wrong again +for a week. +When him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up +out of their chairs and give them goodday, and didn't set down again +till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the +decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he +held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and then +they bowed and said, "Our duty to you, sir, and madam" and THEY bowed +the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all +three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the +mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give +it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too. +Bob was the oldest and Tom nexttall, beautiful men with very broad +shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They +dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and +wore broad Panama hats. +Then there was Miss Charlotte she was twentyfive, and tall and proud +and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up but +when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like +her father. She was beautiful. +So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was +gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty. +Each person had their own nigger to wait on themBuck too. My nigger +had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do +anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time. +This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more +three sons they got killed and Emmeline that died. +The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers. +Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or +fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings +round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods +daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly +kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a +handsome lot of quality, I tell you. +There was another clan of aristocracy around therefive or six families +mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as hightoned and well +born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons +and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two +mile above our house so sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our +folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their fine horses. +One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse +coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says +"Quick Jump for the woods" +We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty +soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse +easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I +had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck's +gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat tumbled off from his head. He +grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we +didn't wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods warn't +thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I seen +Harney cover Buck with his gun and then he rode away the way he cometo +get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn't see. We never stopped running till +we got home. The old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute'twas pleasure, +mainly, I judgedthen his face sort of smoothed down, and he says, +kind of gentle +"I don't like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn't you step into +the road, my boy?" +"The Shepherdsons don't, father. They always take advantage." +Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling +his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young +men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale, +but the color come back when she found the man warn't hurt. +Soon as I could get Buck down by the corncribs under the trees by +ourselves, I says +"Did you want to kill him, Buck?" +"Well, I bet I did." +"What did he do to you?" +"Him? He never done nothing to me." +"Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?" +"Why, nothingonly it's on account of the feud." +"What's a feud?" +"Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?" +"Never heard of it beforetell me about it." +"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way A man has a quarrel with another +man, and kills him then that other man's brother kills HIM then the +other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another then the COUSINS +chip inand by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more +feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time." +"Has this one been going on long, Buck?" +"Well, I should RECKON It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along +there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle +it and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man +that won the suitwhich he would naturally do, of course. Anybody +would." +"What was the trouble about, Buck?land?" +"I reckon maybeI don't know." +"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?" +"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago." +"Don't anybody know?" +"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people but they +don't know now what the row was about in the first place." +"Has there been many killed, Buck?" +"Yes right smart chance of funerals. But they don't always kill. Pa's +got a few buckshot in him but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much, +anyway. Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been hurt once +or twice." +"Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?" +"Yes we got one and they got one. 'Bout three months ago my cousin Bud, +fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side of the +river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame' foolishness, +and in a lonesome place he hears a horse acoming behind him, and sees +old Baldy Shepherdson alinkin' after him with his gun in his hand and +his white hair aflying in the wind and 'stead of jumping off and taking +to the brush, Bud 'lowed he could outrun him so they had it, nip and +tuck, for five mile or more, the old man againing all the time so at +last Bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to +have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and +shot him down. But he didn't git much chance to enjoy his luck, for +inside of a week our folks laid HIM out." +"I reckon that old man was a coward, Buck." +"I reckon he WARN'T a coward. Not by a blame' sight. There ain't a +coward amongst them Shepherdsonsnot a one. And there ain't no cowards +amongst the Grangerfords either. Why, that old man kep' up his end in a +fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords, and come out +winner. They was all ahorseback he lit off of his horse and got behind +a little woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets but +the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around the old man, +and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. Him and his +horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had +to be FETCHED homeand one of 'em was dead, and another died the next +day. No, sir if a body's out hunting for cowards he don't want to fool +away any time amongst them Shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of +that KIND." +Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody +ahorseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them +between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The +Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preachingall about +brotherly love, and suchlike tiresomeness but everybody said it was a +good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a +powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and +preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me +to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet. +About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their +chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and a +dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep. I went up to +our room, and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that sweet Miss +Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in +her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her, and I +said I did and she asked me if I would do something for her and not tell +anybody, and I said I would. Then she said she'd forgot her Testament, +and left it in the seat at church between two other books, and would I +slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to +nobody. I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the road, and +there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there +warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in +summertime because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go +to church only when they've got to but a hog is different. +Says I to myself, something's up it ain't natural for a girl to be in +such a sweat about a Testament. So I give it a shake, and out drops a +little piece of paper with "HALFPAST TWO" wrote on it with a pencil. I +ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else. I couldn't make anything +out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I got home +and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me. She +pulled me in and shut the door then she looked in the Testament till she +found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad and before a +body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and said I was the +best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. She was mighty red in +the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it made her powerful +pretty. I was a good deal astonished, but when I got my breath I asked +her what the paper was about, and she asked me if I had read it, and I +said no, and she asked me if I could read writing, and I told her "no, +only coarsehand," and then she said the paper warn't anything but a +bookmark to keep her place, and I might go and play now. +I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon I +noticed that my nigger was following along behind. When we was out of +sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes +arunning, and says +"Mars Jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp I'll show you a whole +stack o' watermoccasins." +Thinks I, that's mighty curious he said that yesterday. He oughter know +a body don't love watermoccasins enough to go around hunting for them. +What is he up to, anyway? So I says +"All right trot ahead." +I followed a half a mile then he struck out over the swamp, and waded +ankle deep as much as another halfmile. We come to a little flat piece +of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and +he says +"You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars Jawge dah's whah dey is. +I's seed 'm befo' I don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'." +Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid +him. I poked into the place aways and come to a little open patch as +big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there +asleepand, by jings, it was my old Jim +I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him +to see me again, but it warn't. He nearly cried he was so glad, but he +warn't surprised. Said he swum along behind me that night, and heard me +yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to pick +HIM up and take him into slavery again. Says he +"I got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so I wuz a considable ways +behine you towards de las' when you landed I reck'ned I could ketch up +wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when I see dat house +I begin to go slow. I 'uz off too fur to hear what dey say to youI wuz +'fraid o' de dogs but when it 'uz all quiet agin I knowed you's in de +house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day. Early in de mawnin' +some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey tuk me en +showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o' de water, +en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you's agitt'n +along." +"Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?" +"Well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, Huck, tell we could do sumfnbut +we's all right now. I ben abuyin' pots en pans en vittles, as I got a +chanst, en apatchin' up de raf' nights when" +"WHAT raft, Jim?" +"Our ole raf'." +"You mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?" +"No, she warn't. She was tore up a good dealone en' of her was but +dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'. Ef we +hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn' ben so +dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkinheads, as de sayin' is, +we'd a seed de raf'. But it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now she's +all fixed up agin mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o' stuff, in +de place o' what 'uz los'." +"Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jimdid you catch her?" +"How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de woods? No some er de niggers +foun' her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a +crick 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um +she b'long to de mos' dat I come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so I ups en +settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv um, but to +you en me en I ast 'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's +propaty, en git a hid'n for it? Den I gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey +'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en make +'m rich agin. Dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever I +wants 'm to do fur me I doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey. Dat Jack's a +good nigger, en pooty smart." +"Yes, he is. He ain't ever told me you was here told me to come, and +he'd show me a lot of watermoccasins. If anything happens HE ain't +mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it 'll be the +truth." +I don't want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I'll cut it +pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was agoing to turn over and go +to sleep again when I noticed how still it wasdidn't seem to be anybody +stirring. That warn't usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone. +Well, I gets up, awondering, and goes down stairsnobody around +everything as still as a mouse. Just the same outside. Thinks I, what +does it mean? Down by the woodpile I comes across my Jack, and says +"What's it all about?" +Says he +"Don't you know, Mars Jawge?" +"No," says I, "I don't." +"Well, den, Miss Sophia's run off 'deed she has. She run off in de +night some timenobody don't know jis' when run off to get married to +dat young Harney Shepherdson, you knowleastways, so dey 'spec. De +fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour agomaybe a little mo'en' I +TELL you dey warn't no time los'. Sich another hurryin' up guns en +hosses YOU never see De women folks has gone for to stir up de +relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river +road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin git acrost +de river wid Miss Sophia. I reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty rough +times." +"Buck went off 'thout waking me up." +"Well, I reck'n he DID Dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars Buck +he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a Shepherdson or +bust. Well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, I reck'n, en you bet you he'll +fetch one ef he gits a chanst." +I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By and by I begin to +hear guns a good ways off. When I came in sight of the log store and the +woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees and +brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the forks of a +cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. There was a woodrank +four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first I was going +to hide behind that but maybe it was luckier I didn't. +There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open +place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a +couple of young chaps that was behind the woodrank alongside of the +steamboat landing but they couldn't come it. Every time one of them +showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at. The two +boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both +ways. +By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. They started +riding towards the store then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady +bead over the woodrank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. All +the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started +to carry him to the store and that minute the two boys started on the +run. They got half way to the tree I was in before the men noticed. +Then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after +them. They gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had +too good a start they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree, +and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. +One of the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about +nineteen years old. +The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. As soon as they was +out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn't know what to +make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. He was awful +surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men +come in sight again said they was up to some devilment or other +wouldn't be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but I dasn't +come down. Buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and his cousin +Joe that was the other young chap would make up for this day yet. He +said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the +enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in ambush. Buck said his +father and brothers ought to waited for their relationsthe Shepherdsons +was too strong for them. I asked him what was become of young Harney and +Miss Sophia. He said they'd got across the river and was safe. I was +glad of that but the way Buck did take on because he didn't manage to +kill Harney that day he shot at himI hain't ever heard anything like +it. +All of a sudden, bang bang bang goes three or four gunsthe men had +slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their +horses The boys jumped for the riverboth of them hurtand as they +swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and +singing out, "Kill them, kill them" It made me so sick I most fell out +of the tree. I ain't agoing to tell ALL that happenedit would make me +sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that +night to see such things. I ain't ever going to get shut of themlots +of times I dream about them. +I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down. +Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods and twice I seen little +gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns so I reckoned the +trouble was still agoing on. I was mighty downhearted so I made up my +mind I wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I was +to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss +Sophia was to meet Harney somewheres at halfpast two and run off and I +judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way +she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up, and this awful mess +wouldn't ever happened. +When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river bank a +piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and +tugged at them till I got them ashore then I covered up their faces, and +got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering up +Buck's face, for he was mighty good to me. +It was just dark now. I never went near the house, but struck through +the woods and made for the swamp. Jim warn't on his island, so I tramped +off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, redhot to +jump aboard and get out of that awful country. The raft was gone My +souls, but I was scared I couldn't get my breath for most a minute. +Then I raised a yell. A voice not twentyfive foot from me says +"Good lan' is dat you, honey? Doan' make no noise." +It was Jim's voicenothing ever sounded so good before. I run along the +bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was +so glad to see me. He says +"Laws bless you, chile, I 'uz right down sho' you's dead agin. Jack's +been heah he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no +mo' so I's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de +crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack comes +agin en tells me for certain you IS dead. Lawsy, I's mighty glad to git +you back again, honey." +I says +"All rightthat's mighty good they won't find me, and they'll think +I've been killed, and floated down the riverthere's something up there +that 'll help them think soso don't you lose no time, Jim, but just +shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can." +I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the +middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and +judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn't had a bite to eat +since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corndodgers and buttermilk, and +pork and cabbage and greensthere ain't nothing in the world so good +when it's cooked rightand whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a +good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was +Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn't no home like a +raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a +raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. +CHAPTER XIX. +TWO or three days and nights went by I reckon I might say they swum by, +they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put +in the time. It was a monstrous big river down theresometimes a mile +and a half wide we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes soon as +night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied upnearly always in +the dead water under a towhead and then cut young cottonwoods and +willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we +slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off +then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, +and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheresperfectly still +just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs +acluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, +was a kind of dull linethat was the woods on t'other side you couldn't +make nothing else out then a pale place in the sky then more paleness +spreading around then the river softened up away off, and warn't black +any more, but gray you could see little dark spots drifting along ever +so far awaytrading scows, and such things and long black streaks +rafts sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking or jumbled up voices, +it was so still, and sounds come so far and by and by you could see a +streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's +a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak +look that way and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the +east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a logcabin in the edge +of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a +woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through +it anywheres then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from +over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods +and the flowers but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead +fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank and next +you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the +songbirds just going it +A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of +the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the +lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off +to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see +a steamboat coughing along upstream, so far off towards the other side +you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a sternwheel or +sidewheel then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor +nothing to seejust solid lonesomeness. Next you'd see a raft sliding +by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're +most always doing it on a raft you'd see the axe flash and come down +you don't hear nothing you see that axe go up again, and by the time +it's above the man's head then you hear the K'CHUNKit had took all +that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying +around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the +rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats +wouldn't run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear +them talking and cussing and laughingheard them plain but we couldn't +see no sign of them it made you feel crawly it was like spirits +carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits +but I says +"No spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog.'" +Soon as it was night out we shoved when we got her out to about the +middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted +her to then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and +talked about all kinds of thingswe was always naked, day and night, +whenever the mosquitoes would let usthe new clothes Buck's folks made +for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on +clothes, nohow. +Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest +time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water and maybe a +sparkwhich was a candle in a cabin window and sometimes on the water +you could see a spark or twoon a raft or a scow, you know and maybe +you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. +It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled +with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and +discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he +allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened I judged it would +have took too long to MAKE so many. Jim said the moon could a LAID them +well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, +because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. +We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim +allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. +Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the +dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of +her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful +pretty then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and +her powwow shut off and leave the river still again and by and by her +waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the +raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't +tell how long, except maybe frogs or something. +After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three +hours the shores was blackno more sparks in the cabin windows. These +sparks was our clockthe first one that showed again meant morning was +coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away. +One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to +the main shoreit was only two hundred yardsand paddled about a mile +up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get some +berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed +the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as +they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was +after anybody I judged it was MEor maybe Jim. I was about to dig out +from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out +and begged me to save their livessaid they hadn't been doing nothing, +and was being chased for itsaid there was men and dogs acoming. They +wanted to jump right in, but I says +"Don't you do it. I don't hear the dogs and horses yet you've got time +to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways then you +take to the water and wade down to me and get inthat'll throw the dogs +off the scent." +They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our towhead, and +in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off, +shouting. We heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't see +them they seemed to stop and fool around a while then, as we got +further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at +all by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the +river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the towhead and hid +in the cottonwoods and was safe. +One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head +and very gray whiskers. He had an old batteredup slouch hat on, and a +greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed +into his boottops, and homeknit gallusesno, he only had one. He had +an old longtailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over +his arm, and both of them had big, fat, rattylooking carpetbags. +The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. After +breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out +was that these chaps didn't know one another. +"What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap. +"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teethand +it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with itbut I +stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of +sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you +told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I +told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out WITH you. +That's the whole yarnwhat's yourn? +"Well, I'd ben arunning' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week, +and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was makin' it +mighty warm for the rummies, I TELL you, and takin' as much as five or +six dollars a nightten cents a head, children and niggers freeand +business agrowin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report +got around last night that I had a way of puttin' in my time with a +private jug on the sly. A nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told +me the people was getherin' on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and +they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, and +then run me down if they could and if they got me they'd tar and feather +me and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn't wait for no breakfastI warn't +hungry." +"Old man," said the young one, "I reckon we might doubleteam it +together what do you think?" +"I ain't undisposed. What's your linemainly?" +"Jour printer by trade do a little in patent medicines theateractor +tragedy, you know take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there's a +chance teach singinggeography school for a change sling a lecture +sometimesoh, I do lots of thingsmost anything that comes handy, so it +ain't work. What's your lay?" +"I've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. Layin' on o' +hands is my best holtfor cancer and paralysis, and sich things and I +k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find out +the facts for me. Preachin's my line, too, and workin' campmeetin's, +and missionaryin' around." +Nobody never said anything for a while then the young man hove a sigh +and says +"Alas" +"What 're you alassin' about?" says the baldhead. +"To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded +down into such company." And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with +a rag. +"Dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the +baldhead, pretty pert and uppish. +"Yes, it IS good enough for me it's as good as I deserve for who +fetched me so low when I was so high? I did myself. I don't blame YOU, +gentlemenfar from it I don't blame anybody. I deserve it all. Let +the cold world do its worst one thing I knowthere's a grave somewhere +for me. The world may go on just as it's always done, and take everything +from meloved ones, property, everything but it can't take that. +Some day I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart +will be at rest." He went on awiping. +"Drot your pore broken heart," says the baldhead "what are you heaving +your pore broken heart at US f'r? WE hain't done nothing." +"No, I know you haven't. I ain't blaming you, gentlemen. I brought +myself downyes, I did it myself. It's right I should sufferperfectly +rightI don't make any moan." +"Brought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?" +"Ah, you would not believe me the world never believeslet it pass +'tis no matter. The secret of my birth" +"The secret of your birth Do you mean to say" +"Gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "I will reveal it to you, +for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke" +Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that and I reckon mine did, too. +Then the baldhead says "No you can't mean it?" +"Yes. My greatgrandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled +to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure +air of freedom married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father +dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke seized the +titles and estatesthe infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal +descendant of that infantI am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater and +here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by +the cold world, ragged, worn, heartbroken, and degraded to the +companionship of felons on a raft" +Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but +he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted said if we was +a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything +else so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we ought to +bow when we spoke to him, and say "Your Grace," or "My Lord," or "Your +Lordship"and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain +"Bridgewater," which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name and +one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him +he wanted done. +Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood +around and waited on him, and says, "Will yo' Grace have some o' dis or +some o' dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to +him. +But the old man got pretty silent by and bydidn't have much to say, and +didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on +around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind. So, along in +the afternoon, he says +"Looky here, Bilgewater," he says, "I'm nation sorry for you, but you +ain't the only person that's had troubles like that." +"No?" +"No you ain't. You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down +wrongfully out'n a high place." +"Alas" +"No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." And, +by jings, HE begins to cry. +"Hold What do you mean?" +"Bilgewater, kin I trust you?" says the old man, still sort of sobbing. +"To the bitter death" He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it, +and says, "That secret of your being speak" +"Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin" +You bet you, Jim and me stared this time. Then the duke says +"You are what?" +"Yes, my friend, it is too trueyour eyes is lookin' at this very moment +on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the +Sixteen and Marry Antonette." +"You At your age No You mean you're the late Charlemagne you must +be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least." +"Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it trouble has brung +these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see +before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled, trampledon, +and sufferin' rightful King of France." +Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what to +do, we was so sorryand so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too. So +we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort HIM. +But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all +could do him any good though he said it often made him feel easier and +better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got +down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him "Your Majesty," +and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence +till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this +and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he told us we might +set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and +comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a bit +satisfied with the way things was going still, the king acted real +friendly towards him, and said the duke's greatgrandfather and all the +other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by HIS father, and +was allowed to come to the palace considerable but the duke stayed huffy +a good while, till by and by the king says +"Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this hyer raft, +Bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? It 'll only make +things oncomfortable. It ain't my fault I warn't born a duke, it ain't +your fault you warn't born a kingso what's the use to worry? Make the +best o' things the way you find 'em, says Ithat's my motto. This ain't +no bad thing that we've struck hereplenty grub and an easy lifecome, +give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends." +The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away +all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because it +would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft +for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be +satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others. +It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no +kings nor dukes at all, but just lowdown humbugs and frauds. But I +never said nothing, never let on kept it to myself it's the best way +then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they +wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as +it would keep peace in the family and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so I +didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt +that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them +have their own way. +CHAPTER XX. +THEY asked us considerable many questions wanted to know what we covered +up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running +was Jim a runaway nigger? Says I +"Goodness sakes would a runaway nigger run SOUTH?" +No, they allowed he wouldn't. I had to account for things some way, so I +says +"My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and +they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he 'lowed he'd +break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little +onehorse place on the river, fortyfour mile below Orleans. Pa was +pretty poor, and had some debts so when he'd squared up there warn't +nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim. That warn't enough +to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. Well, +when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day he ketched this +piece of a raft so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans on it. Pa's luck +didn't hold out a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft one +night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel Jim and me +come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four years old, so +they never come up no more. Well, for the next day or two we had +considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and +trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway +nigger. We don't run daytimes no more now nights they don't bother us." +The duke says +"Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we +want to. I'll think the thing overI'll invent a plan that'll fix it. +We'll let it alone for today, because of course we don't want to go by +that town yonder in daylightit mightn't be healthy." +Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain the heat +lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was +beginning to shiverit was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see +that. So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see +what the beds was like. My bed was a straw tick better than Jim's, which +was a cornshuck tick there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick, +and they poke into you and hurt and when you roll over the dry shucks +sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves it makes such a +rustling that you wake up. Well, the duke allowed he would take my bed +but the king allowed he wouldn't. He says +"I should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that +a cornshuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. Your Grace 'll +take the shuck bed yourself." +Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was +going to be some more trouble amongst them so we was pretty glad when +the duke says +"'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of +oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit I yield, I +submit 'tis my fate. I am alone in the worldlet me suffer can bear +it." +We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand +well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we +got a long ways below the town. We come in sight of the little bunch of +lights by and bythat was the town, you knowand slid by, about a half +a mile out, all right. When we was threequarters of a mile below we +hoisted up our signal lantern and about ten o'clock it come on to rain +and blow and thunder and lighten like everything so the king told us to +both stay on watch till the weather got better then him and the duke +crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. It was my watch +below till twelve, but I wouldn't a turned in anyway if I'd had a bed, +because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not +by a long sight. My souls, how the wind did scream along And every +second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the whitecaps for a half +a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain, +and the trees thrashing around in the wind then comes a HWHACKbum +bum bumbleumbleumbumbumbumbumand the thunder would go rumbling +and grumbling away, and quitand then RIP comes another flash and +another sockdolager. The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes, +but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble +about snags the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant +that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or +that and miss them. +I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time, +so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me he was always +mighty good that way, Jim was. I crawled into the wigwam, but the king +and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for +me so I laid outsideI didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and +the waves warn't running so high now. About two they come up again, +though, and Jim was going to call me but he changed his mind, because he +reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm but he was mistaken +about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper +and washed me overboard. It most killed Jim alaughing. He was the +easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway. +I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away and by and by the +storm let up for good and all and the first cabinlight that showed I +rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the day. +The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and +the duke played sevenup a while, five cents a game. Then they got tired +of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it. +The duke went down into his carpetbag, and fetched up a lot of little +printed bills and read them out loud. One bill said, "The celebrated Dr. +Armand de Montalban, of Paris," would "lecture on the Science of +Phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten +cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at twentyfive cents +apiece." The duke said that was HIM. In another bill he was the +"worldrenowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the Younger, of Drury +Lane, London." In other bills he had a lot of other names and done other +wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "diviningrod," +"dissipating witch spells," and so on. By and by he says +"But the histrionic muse is the darling. Have you ever trod the boards, +Royalty?" +"No," says the king. +"You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur," says +the duke. "The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the +sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. +How does that strike you?" +"I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater but, you +see, I don't know nothing about playactin', and hain't ever seen much of +it. I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. Do you +reckon you can learn me?" +"Easy" +"All right. I'm jist afreezn' for something fresh, anyway. Le's +commence right away." +So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and +said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet. +"But if Juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white +whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe." +"No, don't you worry these country jakes won't ever think of that. +Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the +difference in the world Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight +before she goes to bed, and she's got on her nightgown and her ruffled +nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts." +He got out two or three curtaincalico suits, which he said was meedyevil +armor for Richard III. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton +nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was satisfied so +the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid +spreadeagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show +how it had got to be done then he give the book to the king and told him +to get his part by heart. +There was a little onehorse town about three mile down the bend, and +after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run +in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim so he allowed he would +go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he would go, +too, and see if he couldn't strike something. We was out of coffee, so +Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some. +When we got there there warn't nobody stirring streets empty, and +perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning +himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or +too sick or too old was gone to campmeeting, about two mile back in the +woods. The king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that +campmeeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too. +The duke said what he was after was a printingoffice. We found it a +little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shopcarpenters and +printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty, +litteredup place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of +horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed +his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for +the campmeeting. +We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most +awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty +mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched +everywheres, feeding out of the wagontroughs and stomping to keep off +the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with +branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of +watermelons and green corn and suchlike truck. +The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was +bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside +slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into +for legs. They didn't have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to +stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sunbonnets and some +had linseywoolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones +had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the +children didn't have on any clothes but just a towlinen shirt. Some of +the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on +the sly. +The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined +out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it, +there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way then he +lined out two more for them to singand so on. The people woke up more +and more, and sung louder and louder and towards the end some begun to +groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and +begun in earnest, too and went weaving first to one side of the platform +and then the other, and then aleaning down over the front of it, with +his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with +all his might and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and +spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting, +"It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness Look upon it and live" And +people would shout out, "GloryAaMEN" And so he went on, and the +people groaning and crying and saying amen +"Oh, come to the mourners' bench come, black with sin AMEN come, +sick and sore AMEN come, lame and halt and blind AMEN come, pore +and needy, sunk in shame AAMEN come, all that's worn and soiled and +sufferingcome with a broken spirit come with a contrite heart come +in your rags and sin and dirt the waters that cleanse is free, the door +of heaven stands openoh, enter in and be at rest" AAMEN GLORY, +GLORY HALLELUJAH +And so on. You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on +account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the +crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench, +with the tears running down their faces and when all the mourners had +got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and +flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild. +Well, the first I knowed the king got agoing, and you could hear him +over everybody and next he went acharging up on to the platform, and +the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He +told them he was a piratebeen a pirate for thirty years out in the +Indian Oceanand his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in +a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to +goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat +without a cent, and he was glad of it it was the blessedest thing that +ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the +first time in his life and, poor as he was, he was going to start right +off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his +life trying to turn the pirates into the true path for he could do it +better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that +ocean and though it would take him a long time to get there without +money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he +would say to him, "Don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit it +all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville campmeeting, natural +brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the +truest friend a pirate ever had" +And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings +out, "Take up a collection for him, take up a collection" Well, a half +a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "Let HIM pass the +hat around" Then everybody said it, the preacher too. +So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes, +and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so +good to the poor pirates away off there and every little while the +prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would +up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by and he +always done it and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or +six timesand he was invited to stay a week and everybody wanted him to +live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor but he said +as this was the last day of the campmeeting he couldn't do no good, and +besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to +work on the pirates. +When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had +collected eightyseven dollars and seventyfive cents. And then he had +fetched away a threegallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a +wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take +it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionarying +line. He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks +alongside of pirates to work a campmeeting with. +The duke was thinking HE'D been doing pretty well till the king come to +show up, but after that he didn't think so so much. He had set up and +printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printingofficehorse +billsand took the money, four dollars. And he had got in ten +dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would +put in for four dollars if they would pay in advanceso they done it. +The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three +subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in +advance they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he +said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as +he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. He set up a little +piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own headthree +verseskind of sweet and saddishthe name of it was, "Yes, crush, cold +world, this breaking heart"and he left that all set up and ready to +print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it. Well, he took in +nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work +for it. +Then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for, +because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger with a +bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and " reward" under it. The +reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot. It said he +run away from St. Jacques' plantation, forty mile below New Orleans, last +winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him +back he could have the reward and expenses. +"Now," says the duke, "after tonight we can run in the daytime if we +want to. Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot +with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we +captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so +we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to +get the reward. Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but +it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like +jewelry. Ropes are the correct thingwe must preserve the unities, as +we say on the boards." +We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble +about running daytimes. We judged we could make miles enough that night +to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in the +printing office was going to make in that little town then we could boom +right along if we wanted to. +We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock +then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our +lantern till we was clear out of sight of it. +When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says +"Huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis trip?" +"No," I says, "I reckon not." +"Well," says he, "dat's all right, den. I doan' mine one er two kings, +but dat's enough. Dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much +better." +I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear +what it was like but he said he had been in this country so long, and +had so much trouble, he'd forgot it. +CHAPTER XXI. +IT was after sunup now, but we went right on and didn't tie up. The +king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty but after +they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal. +After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and +pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle +in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to +getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart. When he had got it pretty good +him and the duke begun to practice it together. The duke had to learn +him over and over again how to say every speech and he made him sigh, +and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done it +pretty well "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out ROMEO that way, +like a bullyou must say it soft and sick and languishy, soRoomeo +that is the idea for Juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you +know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass." +Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of +oak laths, and begun to practice the sword fightthe duke called himself +Richard III. and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was +grand to see. But by and by the king tripped and fell overboard, and +after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures +they'd had in other times along the river. +After dinner the duke says +"Well, Capet, we'll want to make this a firstclass show, you know, so I +guess we'll add a little more to it. We want a little something to +answer encores with, anyway." +"What's onkores, Bilgewater?" +The duke told him, and then says +"I'll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe and +youwell, let me seeoh, I've got ityou can do Hamlet's soliloquy." +"Hamlet's which?" +"Hamlet's soliloquy, you know the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare. +Ah, it's sublime, sublime Always fetches the house. I haven't got it +in the bookI've only got one volumebut I reckon I can piece it out +from memory. I'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call +it back from recollection's vaults." +So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every +now and then then he would hoist up his eyebrows next he would squeeze +his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan next he would +sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him. +By and by he got it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a +most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched +away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky and then he +begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth and after that, all through +his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and +just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before. This is the +speechI learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king +To be, or not to be that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so +long life For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to +Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the +innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling +the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. +There's the respect must give us pause Wake Duncan with thy knocking I +would thou couldst For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The +oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The law's delay, and the +quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the +night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that +the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes +forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like +the poor cat i' the adage, Is sicklied o'er with care, And all the clouds +that lowered o'er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn +awry, And lose the name of action. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be +wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia Ope not thy ponderous and marble +jaws, But get thee to a nunnerygo +Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he +could do it firstrate. It seemed like he was just born for it and when +he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he +would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off. +The first chance we got the duke he had some showbills printed and after +that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most +uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword fighting and +rehearsingas the duke called itgoing on all the time. One morning, +when we was pretty well down the State of Arkansaw, we come in sight of a +little onehorse town in a big bend so we tied up about threequarters +of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a +tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took the canoe and +went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our +show. +We struck it mighty lucky there was going to be a circus there that +afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in +all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave +before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke he +hired the courthouse, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They +read like this +Shaksperean Revival +Wonderful Attraction +For One Night Only +The world renowned tragedians, David Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane +Theatre London, and Edmund Kean the elder, of the Royal Haymarket +Theatre, Whitechapel, Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal +Continental Theatres, in their sublime Shaksperean Spectacle entitled +The Balcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet +Romeo...................Mr. Garrick +Juliet..................Mr. Kean +Assisted by the whole strength of the company +New costumes, new scenes, new appointments +Also The thrilling, masterly, and bloodcurdling +Broadsword conflict In Richard III. +Richard III.............Mr. Garrick +Richmond................Mr. Kean +Also by special request Hamlet's Immortal Soliloquy +By The Illustrious Kean Done by him consecutive nights in Paris +For One Night Only, On account of imperative European engagements +Admission cents children and servants, cents. +Then we went loafing around town. The stores and houses was most all +old, shackly, dried up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted they +was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of +reach of the water when the river was overflowed. The houses had little +gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in +them but jimpsonweeds, and sunflowers, and ash piles, and old curledup +boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and playedout tinware. +The fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different +times and they leaned every which way, and had gates that didn't generly +have but one hingea leather one. Some of the fences had been +whitewashed some time or another, but the duke said it was in Clumbus' +time, like enough. There was generly hogs in the garden, and people +driving them out. +All the stores was along one street. They had white domestic awnings in +front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awningposts. +There was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on +them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives and chawing +tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretchinga mighty ornery lot. +They generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but +didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats, they called one another Bill, and +Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used +considerable many cuss words. There was as many as one loafer leaning up +against every awningpost, and he most always had his hands in his +britchespockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of +tobacco or scratch. What a body was hearing amongst them all the time +was +"Gimme a chaw 'v tobacker, Hank." +"Cain't I hain't got but one chaw left. Ask Bill." +Maybe Bill he gives him a chaw maybe he lies and says he ain't got none. +Some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a chaw +of tobacco of their own. They get all their chawing by borrowing they +say to a fellow, "I wisht you'd len' me a chaw, Jack, I jist this minute +give Ben Thompson the last chaw I had"which is a lie pretty much +everytime it don't fool nobody but a stranger but Jack ain't no +stranger, so he says +"YOU give him a chaw, did you? So did your sister's cat's grandmother. +You pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me, Lafe Buckner, +then I'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back +intrust, nuther." +"Well, I DID pay you back some of it wunst." +"Yes, you did'bout six chaws. You borry'd store tobacker and paid back +niggerhead." +Store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the +natural leaf twisted. When they borrow a chaw they don't generly cut it +off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with +their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two +then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when +it's handed back, and says, sarcastic +"Here, gimme the CHAW, and you take the PLUG." +All the streets and lanes was just mud they warn't nothing else BUT mud +mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two +or three inches deep in ALL the places. The hogs loafed and grunted +around everywheres. You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come +lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where +folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and +wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if +she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "Hi SO +boy sick him, Tige" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible, +with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more +acoming and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing +out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then +they'd settle back again till there was a dog fight. There couldn't +anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog +fightunless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting +fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to +death. +On the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and +they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in, The people had +moved out of them. The bank was caved away under one corner of some +others, and that corner was hanging over. People lived in them yet, but +it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house +caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep +will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the +river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back, +and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it. +The nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons +and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time. Families +fetched their dinners with them from the country, and eat them in the +wagons. There was considerable whisky drinking going on, and I seen +three fights. By and by somebody sings out +"Here comes old Boggsin from the country for his little old monthly +drunk here he comes, boys" +All the loafers looked glad I reckoned they was used to having fun out +of Boggs. One of them says +"Wonder who he's agwyne to chaw up this time. If he'd achawed up all +the men he's ben agwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year he'd have +considerable ruputation now." +Another one says, "I wisht old Boggs 'd threaten me, 'cuz then I'd know I +warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year." +Boggs comes atearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an +Injun, and singing out +"Cler the track, thar. I'm on the wawpath, and the price uv coffins is +agwyne to raise." +He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle he was over fifty year +old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him +and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay +them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because he'd +come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, "Meat +first, and spoon vittles to top off on." +He see me, and rode up and says +"Whar'd you come f'm, boy? You prepared to die?" +Then he rode on. I was scared, but a man says +"He don't mean nothing he's always acarryin' on like that when he's +drunk. He's the best naturedest old fool in Arkansawnever hurt nobody, +drunk nor sober." +Boggs rode up before the biggest store in town, and bent his head down so +he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells +"Come out here, Sherburn Come out and meet the man you've swindled. +You're the houn' I'm after, and I'm agwyne to have you, too" +And so he went on, calling Sherburn everything he could lay his tongue +to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and +going on. By and by a proudlooking man about fiftyfiveand he was a +heap the best dressed man in that town, toosteps out of the store, and +the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. He says to Boggs, +mighty ca'm and slowhe says +"I'm tired of this, but I'll endure it till one o'clock. Till one +o'clock, mindno longer. If you open your mouth against me only once +after that time you can't travel so far but I will find you." +Then he turns and goes in. The crowd looked mighty sober nobody +stirred, and there warn't no more laughing. Boggs rode off blackguarding +Sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street and pretty soon +back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. Some men +crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn't they +told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes, and so he MUST +go homehe must go right away. But it didn't do no good. He cussed +away with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode +over it, and pretty soon away he went araging down the street again, +with his gray hair aflying. Everybody that could get a chance at him +tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up +and get him sober but it warn't no useup the street he would tear +again, and give Sherburn another cussing. By and by somebody says +"Go for his daughterquick, go for his daughter sometimes he'll listen +to her. If anybody can persuade him, she can." +So somebody started on a run. I walked down street a ways and stopped. +In about five or ten minutes here comes Boggs again, but not on his +horse. He was areeling across the street towards me, bareheaded, with +a friend on both sides of him aholt of his arms and hurrying him along. +He was quiet, and looked uneasy and he warn't hanging back any, but was +doing some of the hurrying himself. Somebody sings out +"Boggs" +I looked over there to see who said it, and it was that Colonel Sherburn. +He was standing perfectly still in the street, and had a pistol raised in +his right handnot aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted +up towards the sky. The same second I see a young girl coming on the +run, and two men with her. Boggs and the men turned round to see who +called him, and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side, and +the pistolbarrel come down slow and steady to a levelboth barrels +cocked. Boggs throws up both of his hands and says, "O Lord, don't +shoot" Bang goes the first shot, and he staggers back, clawing at the +airbang goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards on to the +ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. That young girl +screamed out and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her +father, crying, and saying, "Oh, he's killed him, he's killed him" The +crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with +their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to +shove them back and shouting, "Back, back give him air, give him air" +Colonel Sherburn he tossed his pistol on to the ground, and turned around +on his heels and walked off. +They took Boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around just +the same, and the whole town following, and I rushed and got a good place +at the window, where I was close to him and could see in. They laid him +on the floor and put one large Bible under his head, and opened another +one and spread it on his breast but they tore open his shirt first, and +I seen where one of the bullets went in. He made about a dozen long +gasps, his breast lifting the Bible up when he drawed in his breath, and +letting it down again when he breathed it outand after that he laid +still he was dead. Then they pulled his daughter away from him, +screaming and crying, and took her off. She was about sixteen, and very +sweet and gentle looking, but awful pale and scared. +Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and +pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people that +had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was saying +all the time, "Say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows 'tain't right +and 'tain't fair for you to stay thar all the time, and never give nobody +a chance other folks has their rights as well as you." +There was considerable jawing back, so I slid out, thinking maybe there +was going to be trouble. The streets was full, and everybody was +excited. Everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened, +and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows, +stretching their necks and listening. One long, lanky man, with long +hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head, and a +crookedhandled cane, marked out the places on the ground where Boggs +stood and where Sherburn stood, and the people following him around from +one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their +heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their +hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his +cane and then he stood up straight and stiff where Sherburn had stood, +frowning and having his hatbrim down over his eyes, and sung out, +"Boggs" and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says "Bang" +staggered backwards, says "Bang" again, and fell down flat on his back. +The people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect said it was +just exactly the way it all happened. Then as much as a dozen people got +out their bottles and treated him. +Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched. In about a +minute everybody was saying it so away they went, mad and yelling, and +snatching down every clothesline they come to to do the hanging with. +CHAPTER XXII. +THEY swarmed up towards Sherburn's house, awhooping and raging like +Injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped +to mush, and it was awful to see. Children was heeling it ahead of the +mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way and every window along +the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every +tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence and as soon as the +mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of +reach. Lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most +to death. +They swarmed up in front of Sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam +together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. It was a +little twentyfoot yard. Some sung out "Tear down the fence tear down +the fence" Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing, +and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like +a wave. +Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch, +with a doublebarrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm +and deliberate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave +sucked back. +Sherburn never said a wordjust stood there, looking down. The +stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow +along the crowd and wherever it struck the people tried a little to +outgaze him, but they couldn't they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. +Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed not the pleasant kind, but the +kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand +in it. +Then he says, slow and scornful +"The idea of YOU lynching anybody It's amusing. The idea of you +thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a MAN Because you're brave +enough to tar and feather poor friendless castout women that come along +here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a +MAN? Why, a MAN'S safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kindas +long as it's daytime and you're not behind him. +"Do I know you? I know you clear through was born and raised in the +South, and I've lived in the North so I know the average all around. +The average man's a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him +that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it. +In the South one man all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in +the daytime, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people +so much that you think you are braver than any other peoplewhereas +you're just AS brave, and no braver. Why don't your juries hang +murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in +the back, in the darkand it's just what they WOULD do. +"So they always acquit and then a MAN goes in the night, with a hundred +masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that +you didn't bring a man with you that's one mistake, and the other is +that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. You brought PART +of a manBuck Harkness, thereand if you hadn't had him to start you, +you'd a taken it out in blowing. +"You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger. +YOU don't like trouble and danger. But if only HALF a manlike Buck +Harkness, thereshouts 'Lynch him lynch him' you're afraid to back +downafraid you'll be found out to be what you areCOWARDSand so +you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that halfaman's coattail, +and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. +The pitifulest thing out is a mob that's what an army isa mob they +don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's +borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any +MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness. Now the thing for YOU to +do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real +lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern +fashion and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a MAN +along. Now LEAVEand take your halfaman with you"tossing his gun up +across his left arm and cocking it when he says this. +The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing +off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, looking +tolerable cheap. I could a stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to. +I went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman +went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twentydollar gold +piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it, because +there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home +and amongst strangers that way. You can't be too careful. I ain't +opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but +there ain't no use in WASTING it on them. +It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was +when they all come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by +side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor +stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable +there must a been twenty of themand every lady with a lovely +complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real +sureenough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars, +and just littered with diamonds. It was a powerful fine sight I never +see anything so lovely. And then one by one they got up and stood, and +went aweaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men +looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and +skimming along, away up there under the tentroof, and every lady's +roseleafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking +like the most loveliest parasol. +And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot +out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and +the ringmaster going round and round the centerpole, cracking his whip +and shouting "Hihi" and the clown cracking jokes behind him and by +and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on +her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did +lean over and hump themselves And so one after the other they all +skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I ever see, and then +scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about +wild. +Well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things and +all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. The +ringmaster couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick +as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said and how he ever +COULD think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what I +couldn't noway understand. Why, I couldn't a thought of them in a year. +And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ringsaid he wanted to +ride said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued +and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show +come to a standstill. Then the people begun to holler at him and make +fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear so that +stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the +benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, "Knock him down throw him +out" and one or two women begun to scream. So, then, the ringmaster he +made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance, +and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble he would +let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse. So everybody +laughed and said all right, and the man got on. The minute he was on, the +horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus +men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man +hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and +the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till tears +rolled down. And at last, sure enough, all the circus men could do, the +horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round +the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck, with +first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t'other +one on t'other side, and the people just crazy. It warn't funny to me, +though I was all of a tremble to see his danger. But pretty soon he +struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, areeling this way and +that and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood +and the horse agoing like a house afire too. He just stood up there, +asailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his +lifeand then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed +them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed +seventeen suits. And, then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed +the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with +his whip and made him fairly humand finally skipped off, and made his +bow and danced off to the dressingroom, and everybody just ahowling +with pleasure and astonishment. +Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he WAS the sickest +ringmaster you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one of his own men He +had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. +Well, I felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but I wouldn't a been in +that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars. I don't know there +may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but I never struck them +yet. Anyways, it was plenty good enough for ME and wherever I run across +it, it can have all of MY custom every time. +Well, that night we had OUR show but there warn't only about twelve +people therejust enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the +time, and that made the duke mad and everybody left, anyway, before the +show was over, but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these +Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare what they wanted was +low comedyand maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he +reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got +some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off +some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said +AT THE COURT HOUSE FOR NIGHTS ONLY +The WorldRenowned Tragedians +DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER +AND EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER +Of the London and +Continental Theatres, +In their Thrilling Tragedy of +THE KING'S CAMELEOPARD, +OR THE ROYAL NONESUCH +Admission cents. +Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said +LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED. +"There," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansaw" +CHAPTER XXIII. +WELL, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a +curtain and a row of candles for footlights and that night the house was +jam full of men in no time. When the place couldn't hold no more, the +duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the +stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and +praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that +ever was and so he went on abragging about the tragedy, and about +Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it +and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he +rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come aprancing out +on all fours, naked and he was painted all over, ringstreakedand +striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. Andbut never +mind the rest of his outfit it was just wild, but it was awful funny. +The people most killed themselves laughing and when the king got done +capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and +stormed and hawhawed till he come back and done it over again, and after +that they made him do it another time. Well, it would make a cow laugh to +see the shines that old idiot cut. +Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says +the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of +pressing London engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it +in Drury Lane and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has +succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply +obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come +and see it. +Twenty people sings out +"What, is it over? Is that ALL?" +The duke says yes. Then there was a fine time. Everybody sings out, +"Sold" and rose up mad, and was agoing for that stage and them +tragedians. But a big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts +"Hold on Just a word, gentlemen." They stopped to listen. "We are +soldmighty badly sold. But we don't want to be the laughing stock of +this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long +as we live. NO. What we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk this +show up, and sell the REST of the town Then we'll all be in the same +boat. Ain't that sensible?" "You bet it isthe jedge is right" +everybody sings out. "All right, thennot a word about any sell. Go +along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy." +Next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that +show was. House was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the +same way. When me and the king and the duke got home to the raft we all +had a supper and by and by, about midnight, they made Jim and me back +her out and float her down the middle of the river, and fetch her in and +hide her about two mile below town. +The third night the house was crammed againand they warn't newcomers +this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. I stood +by the duke at the door, and I see that every man that went in had his +pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coatand I see it +warn't no perfumery, neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs +by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things and if I know the +signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixtyfour of +them went in. I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for +me I couldn't stand it. Well, when the place couldn't hold no more +people the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for +him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, I after him +but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark he says +"Walk fast now till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the +raft like the dickens was after you" +I done it, and he done the same. We struck the raft at the same time, +and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and +still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word. +I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience, +but nothing of the sort pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam, +and says +"Well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?" He hadn't been +uptown at all. +We never showed a light till we was about ten mile below the village. +Then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed +their bones loose over the way they'd served them people. The duke says +"Greenhorns, flatheads I knew the first house would keep mum and let +the rest of the town get roped in and I knew they'd lay for us the third +night, and consider it was THEIR turn now. Well, it IS their turn, and +I'd give something to know how much they'd take for it. I WOULD just +like to know how they're putting in their opportunity. They can turn it +into a picnic if they want tothey brought plenty provisions." +Them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixtyfive dollars in that +three nights. I never see money hauled in by the wagonload like that +before. By and by, when they was asleep and snoring, Jim says +"Don't it s'prise you de way dem kings carries on, Huck?" +"No," I says, "it don't." +"Why don't it, Huck?" +"Well, it don't, because it's in the breed. I reckon they're all alike," +"But, Huck, dese kings o' ourn is reglar rapscallions dat's jist what +dey is dey's reglar rapscallions." +"Well, that's what I'm asaying all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur +as I can make out." +"Is dat so?" +"You read about them onceyou'll see. Look at Henry the Eight this 'n +'s a Sundayschool Superintendent to HIM. And look at Charles Second, +and Louis Fourteen, and Louis Fifteen, and James Second, and Edward +Second, and Richard Third, and forty more besides all them Saxon +heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise Cain. My, +you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He WAS a +blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head +next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was +ordering up eggs. 'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says. They fetch her up. +Next morning, 'Chop off her head' And they chop it off. 'Fetch up Jane +Shore,' he says and up she comes, Next morning, 'Chop off her head'and +they chop it off. 'Ring up Fair Rosamun.' Fair Rosamun answers the +bell. Next morning, 'Chop off her head.' And he made every one of them +tell him a tale every night and he kept that up till he had hogged a +thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and +called it Domesday Bookwhich was a good name and stated the case. You +don't know kings, Jim, but I know them and this old rip of ourn is one +of the cleanest I've struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he +wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it +give notice?give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves +all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of +independence, and dares them to come on. That was HIS stylehe never +give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of +Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? Nodrownded +him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. S'pose people left money laying +around where he waswhat did he do? He collared it. S'pose he +contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set down there and +see that he done itwhat did he do? He always done the other thing. +S'pose he opened his mouthwhat then? If he didn't shut it up powerful +quick he'd lose a lie every time. That's the kind of a bug Henry was +and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings he'd a fooled that town a +heap worse than ourn done. I don't say that ourn is lambs, because they +ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts but they ain't nothing +to THAT old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to +make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. +It's the way they're raised." +"But dis one do SMELL so like de nation, Huck." +"Well, they all do, Jim. We can't help the way a king smells history +don't tell no way." +"Now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man in some ways." +"Yes, a duke's different. But not very different. This one's a middling +hard lot for a duke. When he's drunk there ain't no nearsighted man +could tell him from a king." +"Well, anyways, I doan' hanker for no mo' un um, Huck. Dese is all I kin +stan'." +"It's the way I feel, too, Jim. But we've got them on our hands, and we +got to remember what they are, and make allowances. Sometimes I wish we +could hear of a country that's out of kings." +What was the use to tell Jim these warn't real kings and dukes? It +wouldn't a done no good and, besides, it was just as I said you +couldn't tell them from the real kind. +I went to sleep, and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn. He often +done that. When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with +his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I +didn't take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was +thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low +and homesick because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his +life and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white +folks does for their'n. It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so. He +was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I was +asleep, and saying, "Po' little 'Lizabeth po' little Johnny it's mighty +hard I spec' I ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'" He was a +mighty good nigger, Jim was. +But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young +ones and by and by he says +"What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase I hear sumpn over yonder +on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time I +treat my little 'Lizabeth so ornery. She warn't on'y 'bout fo' year ole, +en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful rough spell but she got +well, en one day she was astannin' aroun', en I says to her, I says +"'Shet de do'.' +"She never done it jis' stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me. It make me +mad en I says agin, mighty loud, I says +"'Doan' you hear me? Shet de do'' +"She jis stood de same way, kiner smilin' up. I was abilin' I says +"'I lay I MAKE you mine' +"En wid dat I fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her asprawlin'. +Den I went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes en when I +come back dah was dat do' astannin' open YIT, en dat chile stannin' mos' +right in it, alookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down. My, +but I WUZ mad I was agwyne for de chile, but jis' denit was a do' +dat open innerdsjis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de +chile, kerBLAMen my lan', de chile never move' My breff mos' hop +outer me en I feel sosoI doan' know HOW I feel. I crope out, all +atremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head +in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden I says POW jis' as +loud as I could yell. SHE NEVER BUDGE Oh, Huck, I bust out acryin' en +grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing De Lord God +Amighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as +long's he live' Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en +dumben I'd ben atreat'n her so" +CHAPTER XXIV. +NEXT day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow towhead out in +the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the +duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. Jim he +spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, +because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all +day in the wigwam tied with the rope. You see, when we left him all +alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by +himself and not tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, +you know. So the duke said it WAS kind of hard to have to lay roped all +day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it. +He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. He dressed +Jim up in King Lear's outfitit was a long curtaincalico gown, and a +white horsehair wig and whiskers and then he took his theater paint and +painted Jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull, +solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days. Blamed if he +warn't the horriblest looking outrage I ever see. Then the duke took and +wrote out a sign on a shingle so +Sick Arabbut harmless when not out of his head. +And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five +foot in front of the wigwam. Jim was satisfied. He said it was a sight +better than lying tied a couple of years every day, and trembling all +over every time there was a sound. The duke told him to make himself +free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around, he must hop out +of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild +beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. Which +was sound enough judgment but you take the average man, and he wouldn't +wait for him to howl. Why, he didn't only look like he was dead, he +looked considerable more than that. +These rapscallions wanted to try the Nonesuch again, because there was so +much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the +news might a worked along down by this time. They couldn't hit no +project that suited exactly so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd +lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up +something on the Arkansaw village and the king he allowed he would drop +over to t'other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to +lead him the profitable waymeaning the devil, I reckon. We had all +bought store clothes where we stopped last and now the king put his'n +on, and he told me to put mine on. I done it, of course. The king's +duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. I never +knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked +like the orneriest old rip that ever was but now, when he'd take off his +new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and +good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and +maybe was old Leviticus himself. Jim cleaned up the canoe, and I got my +paddle ready. There was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up +under the point, about three mile above the townbeen there a couple +of hours, taking on freight. Says the king +"Seein' how I'm dressed, I reckon maybe I better arrive down from St. +Louis or Cincinnati, or some other big place. Go for the steamboat, +Huckleberry we'll come down to the village on her." +I didn't have to be ordered twice to go and take a steamboat ride. I +fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting +along the bluff bank in the easy water. Pretty soon we come to a nice +innocentlooking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the sweat +off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather and he had a couple of +big carpetbags by him. +"Run her nose in shore," says the king. I done it. "Wher' you bound +for, young man?" +"For the steamboat going to Orleans." +"Git aboard," says the king. "Hold on a minute, my servant 'll he'p you +with them bags. Jump out and he'p the gentleman, Adolphus"meaning me, +I see. +I done so, and then we all three started on again. The young chap was +mighty thankful said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather. +He asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come +down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he +was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. The +young fellow says +"When I first see you I says to myself, 'It's Mr. Wilks, sure, and he +come mighty near getting here in time.' But then I says again, 'No, I +reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river.' You +AIN'T him, are you?" +"No, my name's BlodgettElexander BlodgettREVEREND Elexander Blodgett, +I s'pose I must say, as I'm one o' the Lord's poor servants. But still +I'm jist as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilks for not arriving in time, all +the same, if he's missed anything by itwhich I hope he hasn't." +"Well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all +right but he's missed seeing his brother Peter diewhich he mayn't +mind, nobody can tell as to thatbut his brother would a give anything +in this world to see HIM before he died never talked about nothing else +all these three weeks hadn't seen him since they was boys togetherand +hadn't ever seen his brother William at allthat's the deef and dumb +oneWilliam ain't more than thirty or thirtyfive. Peter and George +were the only ones that come out here George was the married brother +him and his wife both died last year. Harvey and William's the only ones +that's left now and, as I was saying, they haven't got here in time." +"Did anybody send 'em word?" +"Oh, yes a month or two ago, when Peter was first took because Peter +said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this time. +You see, he was pretty old, and George's g'yirls was too young to be much +company for him, except Mary Jane, the redheaded one and so he was +kinder lonesome after George and his wife died, and didn't seem to care +much to live. He most desperately wanted to see Harveyand William, +too, for that matterbecause he was one of them kind that can't bear to +make a will. He left a letter behind for Harvey, and said he'd told in +it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property +divided up so George's g'yirls would be all rightfor George didn't +leave nothing. And that letter was all they could get him to put a pen +to." +"Why do you reckon Harvey don't come? Wher' does he live?" +"Oh, he lives in EnglandSheffieldpreaches therehasn't ever been in +this country. He hasn't had any too much timeand besides he mightn't a +got the letter at all, you know." +"Too bad, too bad he couldn't a lived to see his brothers, poor soul. +You going to Orleans, you say?" +"Yes, but that ain't only a part of it. I'm going in a ship, next +Wednesday, for Ryo Janeero, where my uncle lives." +"It's a pretty long journey. But it'll be lovely wisht I was agoing. +Is Mary Jane the oldest? How old is the others?" +"Mary Jane's nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanna's about fourteen +that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a harelip." +"Poor things to be left alone in the cold world so." +"Well, they could be worse off. Old Peter had friends, and they ain't +going to let them come to no harm. There's Hobson, the Babtis' preacher +and Deacon Lot Hovey, and Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi +Bell, the lawyer and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the widow +Bartley, andwell, there's a lot of them but these are the ones that +Peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote +home so Harvey 'll know where to look for friends when he gets here." +Well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied +that young fellow. Blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and +everything in that blessed town, and all about the Wilkses and about +Peter's businesswhich was a tanner and about George'swhich was a +carpenter and about Harvey'swhich was a dissentering minister and so +on, and so on. Then he says +"What did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?" +"Because she's a big Orleans boat, and I was afeard she mightn't stop +there. When they're deep they won't stop for a hail. A Cincinnati boat +will, but this is a St. Louis one." +"Was Peter Wilks well off?" +"Oh, yes, pretty well off. He had houses and land, and it's reckoned he +left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers." +"When did you say he died?" +"I didn't say, but it was last night." +"Funeral tomorrow, likely?" +"Yes, 'bout the middle of the day." +"Well, it's all terrible sad but we've all got to go, one time or +another. So what we want to do is to be prepared then we're all right." +"Yes, sir, it's the best way. Ma used to always say that." +When we struck the boat she was about done loading, and pretty soon she +got off. The king never said nothing about going aboard, so I lost my +ride, after all. When the boat was gone the king made me paddle up +another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore and says +"Now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new +carpetbags. And if he's gone over to t'other side, go over there and +git him. And tell him to git himself up regardless. Shove along, now." +I see what HE was up to but I never said nothing, of course. When I got +back with the duke we hid the canoe, and then they set down on a log, and +the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said it +every last word of it. And all the time he was adoing it he tried to +talk like an Englishman and he done it pretty well, too, for a slouch. +I can't imitate him, and so I ain't agoing to try to but he really done +it pretty good. Then he says +"How are you on the deef and dumb, Bilgewater?" +The duke said, leave him alone for that said he had played a deef and +dumb person on the histronic boards. So then they waited for a +steamboat. +About the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along, +but they didn't come from high enough up the river but at last there was +a big one, and they hailed her. She sent out her yawl, and we went +aboard, and she was from Cincinnati and when they found we only wanted +to go four or five mile they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and +said they wouldn't land us. But the king was ca'm. He says +"If gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and +put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, can't it?" +So they softened down and said it was all right and when we got to the +village they yawled us ashore. About two dozen men flocked down when +they see the yawl acoming, and when the king says +"Kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher' Mr. Peter Wilks lives?" they give +a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say, "What +d' I tell you?" Then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle +"I'm sorry sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he DID live +yesterday evening." +Sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went an to smash, and fell up +against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his +back, and says +"Alas, alas, our poor brothergone, and we never got to see him oh, +it's too, too hard" +Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the +duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpetbag and bust out +acrying. If they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever I +struck. +Well, the men gathered around and sympathized with them, and said all +sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpetbags up the hill +for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about +his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his +hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like +they'd lost the twelve disciples. Well, if ever I struck anything like +it, I'm a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. +CHAPTER XXV. +THE news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people +tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on +their coats as they come. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, +and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march. The windows and +dooryards was full and every minute somebody would say, over a fence +"Is it THEM?" +And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say +"You bet it is." +When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the +three girls was standing in the door. Mary Jane WAS redheaded, but that +don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and +her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come. +The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane she jumped for them, and the +harelip jumped for the duke, and there they HAD it Everybody most, +leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have +such good times. +Then the king he hunched the duke privateI see him do itand then he +looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs so +then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and +t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody +dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, +people saying "Sh" and all the men taking their hats off and drooping +their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall. And when they got there +they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then +they bust out acrying so you could a heard them to Orleans, most and +then they put their arms around each other's necks, and hung their chins +over each other's shoulders and then for three minutes, or maybe four, I +never see two men leak the way they done. And, mind you, everybody was +doing the same and the place was that damp I never see anything like it. +Then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on t'other +side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and +let on to pray all to themselves. Well, when it come to that it worked +the crowd like you never see anything like it, and everybody broke down +and went to sobbing right out loudthe poor girls, too and every woman, +nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them, +solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and +looked up towards the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted +out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give the next woman a show. I +never see anything so disgusting. +Well, by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works +himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle +about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the +diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive after the long journey of +four thousand mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to +us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out +of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths +they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and +slush, till it was just sickening and then he blubbers out a pious +goodygoody Amen, and turns himself loose and goes to crying fit to bust. +And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd +struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might, +and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting +out. Music is a good thing and after all that soulbutter and hogwash I +never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. +Then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his +nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family +would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the +ashes of the diseased and says if his poor brother laying yonder could +speak he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear +to him, and mentioned often in his letters and so he will name the same, +to wit, as follows, vizz.Rev. Mr. Hobson, and Deacon Lot Hovey, and +Mr. Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, and Dr. Robinson, +and their wives, and the widow Bartley. +Rev. Hobson and Dr. Robinson was down to the end of the town ahunting +togetherthat is, I mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t'other +world, and the preacher was pinting him right. Lawyer Bell was away up +to Louisville on business. But the rest was on hand, and so they all +come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him and +then they shook hands with the duke and didn't say nothing, but just kept +asmiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst he +made all sorts of signs with his hands and said "Googoogoogoogoo" +all the time, like a baby that can't talk. +So the king he blattered along, and managed to inquire about pretty much +everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little +things that happened one time or another in the town, or to George's +family, or to Peter. And he always let on that Peter wrote him the +things but that was a lie he got every blessed one of them out of that +young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat. +Then Mary Jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the +king he read it out loud and cried over it. It give the dwellinghouse +and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls and it give the tanyard +which was doing a good business, along with some other houses and land +worth about seven thousand, and three thousand dollars in gold to +Harvey and William, and told where the six thousand cash was hid down +cellar. So these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up, and have +everything square and aboveboard and told me to come with a candle. We +shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it +out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight, all them yallerboys. My, +the way the king's eyes did shine He slaps the duke on the shoulder and +says +"Oh, THIS ain't bully nor noth'n Oh, no, I reckon not Why, Billy, it +beats the Nonesuch, DON'T it?" +The duke allowed it did. They pawed the yallerboys, and sifted them +through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor and the king +says +"It ain't no use talkin' bein' brothers to a rich dead man and +representatives of furrin heirs that's got left is the line for you and +me, Bilge. Thish yer comes of trust'n to Providence. It's the best way, +in the long run. I've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better way." +Most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on +trust but no, they must count it. So they counts it, and it comes out +four hundred and fifteen dollars short. Says the king +"Dern him, I wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen +dollars?" +They worried over that awhile, and ransacked all around for it. Then the +duke says +"Well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistakeI reckon +that's the way of it. The best way's to let it go, and keep still about +it. We can spare it." +"Oh, shucks, yes, we can SPARE it. I don't k'yer noth'n 'bout thatit's +the COUNT I'm thinkin' about. We want to be awful square and open and +aboveboard here, you know. We want to lug this hyer money up stairs +and count it before everybodythen ther' ain't noth'n suspicious. But +when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you know, we don't +want to" +"Hold on," says the duke. "Le's make up the deffisit," and he begun to +haul out yallerboys out of his pocket. +"It's a most amaz'n' good idea, dukeyou HAVE got a rattlin' clever head +on you," says the king. "Blest if the old Nonesuch ain't a heppin' us +out agin," and HE begun to haul out yallerjackets and stack them up. +It most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear. +"Say," says the duke, "I got another idea. Le's go up stairs and count +this money, and then take and GIVE IT TO THE GIRLS." +"Good land, duke, lemme hug you It's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a +man struck. You have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head I ever see. +Oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it. Let 'em +fetch along their suspicions now if they want tothis 'll lay 'em out." +When we got upstairs everybody gethered around the table, and the king +he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a piletwenty +elegant little piles. Everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their +chops. Then they raked it into the bag again, and I see the king begin +to swell himself up for another speech. He says +"Friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by them +that's left behind in the vale of sorrers. He has done generous by these +yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left +fatherless and motherless. Yes, and we that knowed him knows that he +would a done MORE generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin' his +dear William and me. Now, WOULDN'T he? Ther' ain't no question 'bout it +in MY mind. Well, then, what kind o' brothers would it be that 'd stand +in his way at sech a time? And what kind o' uncles would it be that 'd +robyes, ROBsech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved so at sech a +time? If I know Williamand I THINK I dohewell, I'll jest ask him." +He turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with his +hands, and the duke he looks at him stupid and leatherheaded a while +then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the +king, googooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen +times before he lets up. Then the king says, "I knowed it I reckon THAT +'ll convince anybody the way HE feels about it. Here, Mary Jane, Susan, +Joanner, take the moneytake it ALL. It's the gift of him that lays +yonder, cold but joyful." +Mary Jane she went for him, Susan and the harelip went for the duke, and +then such another hugging and kissing I never see yet. And everybody +crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of +them frauds, saying all the time +"You DEAR good soulshow LOVELYhow COULD you" +Well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased +again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that and +before long a big ironjawed man worked himself in there from outside, +and stood alistening and looking, and not saying anything and nobody +saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was +all busy listening. The king was sayingin the middle of something he'd +started in on +"they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. That's why they're +invited here this evenin' but tomorrow we want ALL to comeeverybody +for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that +his funeral orgies sh'd be public." +And so he went amooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and +every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke +he couldn't stand it no more so he writes on a little scrap of paper, +"OBSEQUIES, you old fool," and folds it up, and goes to googooing and +reaching it over people's heads to him. The king he reads it and puts it +in his pocket, and says +"Poor William, afflicted as he is, his HEART'S aluz right. Asks me to +invite everybody to come to the funeralwants me to make 'em all +welcome. But he needn't a worriedit was jest what I was at." +Then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his +funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. And +when he done it the third time he says +"I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't +obsequies bein' the common termbut because orgies is the right term. +Obsequies ain't used in England no more nowit's gone out. We say +orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing +you're after more exact. It's a word that's made up out'n the Greek +ORGO, outside, open, abroad and the Hebrew JEESUM, to plant, cover up +hence inTER. So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral." +He was the WORST I ever struck. Well, the ironjawed man he laughed +right in his face. Everybody was shocked. Everybody says, "Why, +DOCTOR" and Abner Shackleford says +"Why, Robinson, hain't you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilks." +The king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says +"Is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? I" +"Keep your hands off of me" says the doctor. "YOU talk like an +Englishman, DON'T you? It's the worst imitation I ever heard. YOU Peter +Wilks's brother You're a fraud, that's what you are" +Well, how they all took on They crowded around the doctor and tried to +quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey 'd +showed in forty ways that he WAS Harvey, and knowed everybody by name, +and the names of the very dogs, and begged and BEGGED him not to hurt +Harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings, and all that. But it +warn't no use he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to +be an Englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he +did was a fraud and a liar. The poor girls was hanging to the king and +crying and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on THEM. He says +"I was your father's friend, and I'm your friend and I warn you as a +friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of +harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing +to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew, as +he calls it. He is the thinnest kind of an impostorhas come here with +a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and you +take them for PROOFS, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish +friends here, who ought to know better. Mary Jane Wilks, you know me for +your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. Now listen to me turn +this pitiful rascal outI BEG you to do it. Will you?" +Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome She +says +"HERE is my answer." She hove up the bag of money and put it in the +king's hands, and says, "Take this six thousand dollars, and invest for +me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for +it." +Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the +harelip done the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and +stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his +head and smiled proud. The doctor says +"All right I wash MY hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a +time 's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this +day." And away he went. +"All right, doctor," says the king, kinder mocking him "we'll try and +get 'em to send for you" which made them all laugh, and they said it was +a prime good hit. +CHAPTER XXVI. +WELL, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off +for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for +Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a +little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and +sleep on a cot and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. +The king said the cubby would do for his valleymeaning me. +So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain +but nice. She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took +out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said they +warn't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a +curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There was an old +hair trunk in one corner, and a guitarbox in another, and all sorts of +little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room +with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for +these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The duke's room was pretty +small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby. +That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, +and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and +the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the head of the +table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, +and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried +chickens wasand all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to +force out compliments and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, +and said sosaid "How DO you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "Where, +for the land's sake, DID you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind +of humbug talkytalk, just the way people always does at a supper, you +know. +And when it was all done me and the harelip had supper in the kitchen +off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up +the things. The harelip she got to pumping me about England, and blest +if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. She says +"Did you ever see the king?" +"Who? William Fourth? Well, I bet I havehe goes to our church." I +knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes +to our church, she says +"Whatregular?" +"Yesregular. His pew's right over opposite ournon t'other side the +pulpit." +"I thought he lived in London?" +"Well, he does. Where WOULD he live?" +"But I thought YOU lived in Sheffield?" +I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken +bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says +"I mean he goes to our church regular when he's in Sheffield. That's +only in the summer time, when he comes there to take the sea baths." +"Why, how you talkSheffield ain't on the sea." +"Well, who said it was?" +"Why, you did." +"I DIDN'T nuther." +"You did" +"I didn't." +"You did." +"I never said nothing of the kind." +"Well, what DID you say, then?" +"Said he come to take the sea BATHSthat's what I said." +"Well, then, how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the +sea?" +"Looky here," I says "did you ever see any Congresswater?" +"Yes." +"Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it?" +"Why, no." +"Well, neither does William Fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea +bath." +"How does he get it, then?" +"Gets it the way people down here gets Congresswaterin barrels. There +in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water +hot. They can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. +They haven't got no conveniences for it." +"Oh, I see, now. You might a said that in the first place and saved +time." +When she said that I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was +comfortable and glad. Next, she says +"Do you go to church, too?" +"Yesregular." +"Where do you set?" +"Why, in our pew." +"WHOSE pew?" +"Why, OURNyour Uncle Harvey's." +"His'n? What does HE want with a pew?" +"Wants it to set in. What did you RECKON he wanted with it?" +"Why, I thought he'd be in the pulpit." +Rot him, I forgot he was a preacher. I see I was up a stump again, so I +played another chicken bone and got another think. Then I says +"Blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church?" +"Why, what do they want with more?" +"Whatto preach before a king? I never did see such a girl as you. +They don't have no less than seventeen." +"Seventeen My land Why, I wouldn't set out such a string as that, not +if I NEVER got to glory. It must take 'em a week." +"Shucks, they don't ALL of 'em preach the same dayonly ONE of 'em." +"Well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?" +"Oh, nothing much. Loll around, pass the plateand one thing or +another. But mainly they don't do nothing." +"Well, then, what are they FOR?" +"Why, they're for STYLE. Don't you know nothing?" +"Well, I don't WANT to know no such foolishness as that. How is servants +treated in England? Do they treat 'em better 'n we treat our niggers?" +"NO A servant ain't nobody there. They treat them worse than dogs." +"Don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, Christmas and New Year's +week, and Fourth of July?" +"Oh, just listen A body could tell YOU hain't ever been to England by +that. Why, Harelwhy, Joanna, they never see a holiday from year's end +to year's end never go to the circus, nor theater, nor nigger shows, nor +nowheres." +"Nor church?" +"Nor church." +"But YOU always went to church." +Well, I was gone up again. I forgot I was the old man's servant. But +next minute I whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was +different from a common servant and HAD to go to church whether he wanted +to or not, and set with the family, on account of its being the law. But +I didn't do it pretty good, and when I got done I see she warn't +satisfied. She says +"Honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?" +"Honest injun," says I. +"None of it at all?" +"None of it at all. Not a lie in it," says I. +"Lay your hand on this book and say it." +I see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and +said it. So then she looked a little better satisfied, and says +"Well, then, I'll believe some of it but I hope to gracious if I'll +believe the rest." +"What is it you won't believe, Joe?" says Mary Jane, stepping in with +Susan behind her. "It ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him, +and him a stranger and so far from his people. How would you like to be +treated so?" +"That's always your way, Maimalways sailing in to help somebody before +they're hurt. I hain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, +I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all and that's every bit and +grain I DID say. I reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't +he?" +"I don't care whether 'twas little or whether 'twas big he's here in our +house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. If you was in +his place it would make you feel ashamed and so you oughtn't to say a +thing to another person that will make THEM feel ashamed." +"Why, Maim, he said" +"It don't make no difference what he SAIDthat ain't the thing. The +thing is for you to treat him KIND, and not be saying things to make him +remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks." +I says to myself, THIS is a girl that I'm letting that old reptle rob her +of her money +Then Susan SHE waltzed in and if you'll believe me, she did give +Harelip hark from the tomb +Says I to myself, and this is ANOTHER one that I'm letting him rob her of +her money +Then Mary Jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely +againwhich was her way but when she got done there warn't hardly +anything left o' poor Harelip. So she hollered. +"All right, then," says the other girls "you just ask his pardon." +She done it, too and she done it beautiful. She done it so beautiful it +was good to hear and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies, so she +could do it again. +I says to myself, this is ANOTHER one that I'm letting him rob her of her +money. And when she got through they all jest laid theirselves out to +make me feel at home and know I was amongst friends. I felt so ornery +and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind's made up I'll hive +that money for them or bust. +So then I lit outfor bed, I said, meaning some time or another. When I +got by myself I went to thinking the thing over. I says to myself, shall +I go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? Nothat won't +do. He might tell who told him then the king and the duke would make it +warm for me. Shall I go, private, and tell Mary Jane? NoI dasn't do +it. Her face would give them a hint, sure they've got the money, and +they'd slide right out and get away with it. If she was to fetch in help +I'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with, I judge. No +there ain't no good way but one. I got to steal that money, somehow and +I got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion that I done it. +They've got a good thing here, and they ain't agoing to leave till +they've played this family and this town for all they're worth, so I'll +find a chance time enough. I'll steal it and hide it and by and by, when +I'm away down the river, I'll write a letter and tell Mary Jane where +it's hid. But I better hive it tonight if I can, because the doctor +maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has he might scare them out +of here yet. +So, thinks I, I'll go and search them rooms. Upstairs the hall was dark, +but I found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with my hands +but I recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else +take care of that money but his own self so then I went to his room and +begun to paw around there. But I see I couldn't do nothing without a +candle, and I dasn't light one, of course. So I judged I'd got to do the +other thinglay for them and eavesdrop. About that time I hears their +footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed I reached for it, +but it wasn't where I thought it would be but I touched the curtain that +hid Mary Jane's frocks, so I jumped in behind that and snuggled in +amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still. +They come in and shut the door and the first thing the duke done was to +get down and look under the bed. Then I was glad I hadn't found the bed +when I wanted it. And yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under +the bed when you are up to anything private. They sets down then, and +the king says +"Well, what is it? And cut it middlin' short, because it's better for us +to be down there awhoopin' up the mournin' than up here givin' 'em a +chance to talk us over." +"Well, this is it, Capet. I ain't easy I ain't comfortable. That +doctor lays on my mind. I wanted to know your plans. I've got a notion, +and I think it's a sound one." +"What is it, duke?" +"That we better glide out of this before three in the morning, and clip +it down the river with what we've got. Specially, seeing we got it so +easyGIVEN back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of +course we allowed to have to steal it back. I'm for knocking off and +lighting out." +That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would a been a +little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed, The king +rips out and says +"What And not sell out the rest o' the property? March off like a +passel of fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o' +property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?and all good, +salable stuff, too." +The duke he grumbled said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want +to go no deeperdidn't want to rob a lot of orphans of EVERYTHING they +had. +"Why, how you talk" says the king. "We sha'n't rob 'em of nothing at +all but jest this money. The people that BUYS the property is the +suff'rers because as soon 's it's found out 'at we didn't own itwhich +won't be long after we've slidthe sale won't be valid, and it 'll all +go back to the estate. These yer orphans 'll git their house back agin, +and that's enough for THEM they're young and spry, and k'n easy earn a +livin'. THEY ain't agoin to suffer. Why, jest thinkthere's thous'n's +and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off. Bless you, THEY ain't got +noth'n' to complain of." +Well, the king he talked him blind so at last he give in, and said all +right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that +doctor hanging over them. But the king says +"Cuss the doctor What do we k'yer for HIM? Hain't we got all the fools +in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" +So they got ready to go down stairs again. The duke says +"I don't think we put that money in a good place." +That cheered me up. I'd begun to think I warn't going to get a hint of +no kind to help me. The king says +"Why?" +"Because Mary Jane 'll be in mourning from this out and first you know +the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up +and put 'em away and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not +borrow some of it?" +"Your head's level agin, duke," says the king and he comes afumbling +under the curtain two or three foot from where I was. I stuck tight to +the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery and I wondered what them +fellows would say to me if they catched me and I tried to think what I'd +better do if they did catch me. But the king he got the bag before I +could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned I +was around. They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick +that was under the featherbed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst +the straw and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up +the featherbed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a +year, and so it warn't in no danger of getting stole now. +But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was halfway down +stairs. I groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I could get +a chance to do better. I judged I better hide it outside of the house +somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good +ransacking I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes +all on but I couldn't a gone to sleep if I'd a wanted to, I was in such +a sweat to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and +the duke come up so I rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the +top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But +nothing did. +So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't +begun yet and then I slipped down the ladder. +CHAPTER XXVII. +I CREPT to their doors and listened they was snoring. So I tiptoed +along, and got down stairs all right. There warn't a sound anywheres. I +peeped through a crack of the diningroom door, and see the men that was +watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open +into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in +both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open but I see there +warn't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter so I shoved on by +but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. Just then I +heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the +parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the +bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing +the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his +shroud on. I tucked the moneybag in under the lid, just down beyond +where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and +then I run back across the room and in behind the door. +The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very soft, and +kneeled down and looked in then she put up her handkerchief, and I see +she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. I +slid out, and as I passed the diningroom I thought I'd make sure them +watchers hadn't seen me so I looked through the crack, and everything +was all right. They hadn't stirred. +I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing +playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much +resk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right because +when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to +Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it but that ain't the +thing that's going to happen the thing that's going to happen is, the +money 'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king 'll +get it again, and it 'll be a long day before he gives anybody another +chance to smouch it from him. Of course I WANTED to slide down and get it +out of there, but I dasn't try it. Every minute it was getting earlier +now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and I +might get catchedcatched with six thousand dollars in my hands that +nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. I don't wish to be mixed up in +no such business as that, I says to myself. +When I got down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the +watchers was gone. There warn't nobody around but the family and the +widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything +had been happening, but I couldn't tell. +Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they +set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then +set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the +hall and the parlor and the diningroom was full. I see the coffin lid +was the way it was before, but I dasn't go to look in under it, with +folks around. +Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats +in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the +people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead +man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very +still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to +their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There +warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and +blowing nosesbecause people always blows them more at a funeral than +they do at other places except church. +When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black +gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and +getting people and things all shipshape and comfortable, and making no +more sound than a cat. He never spoke he moved people around, he +squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods, +and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. +He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see and there +warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. +They had borrowed a melodeuma sick one and when everything was ready a +young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and +colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one +that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson +opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk and straight off the most +outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard it was only +one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right +along the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and waityou +couldn't hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody +didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that +longlegged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, +"Don't you worryjust depend on me." Then he stooped down and begun to +glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads. +So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more +outrageous all the time and at last, when he had gone around two sides +of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we +heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or +two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn +talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's +back and shoulders gliding along the wall again and so he glided and +glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his +mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher, +over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "HE HAD +A RAT" Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his +place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because +naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost +nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up +to and liked. There warn't no more popular man in town than what that +undertaker was. +Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome and +then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at +last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the +coffin with his screwdriver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him +pretty keen. But he never meddled at all just slid the lid along as soft +as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was I didn't +know whether the money was in there or not. So, says I, s'pose somebody +has hogged that bag on the sly?now how do I know whether to write to +Mary Jane or not? S'pose she dug him up and didn't find nothing, what +would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and +jailed I'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all the +thing's awful mixed now trying to better it, I've worsened it a hundred +times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole +business +They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces +againI couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy. But nothing come +of it the faces didn't tell me nothing. +The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up, +and made himself ever so friendly and he give out the idea that his +congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must +hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. He was +very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody they wished he could +stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. And he +said of course him and William would take the girls home with them and +that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed +and amongst their own relations and it pleased the girls, tootickled +them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world and told +him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. Them poor +things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting +fooled and lied to so, but I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and +change the general tune. +Well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all +the property for auction straight offsale two days after the funeral +but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to. +So the next day after the funeral, along about noontime, the girls' joy +got the first jolt. A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king +sold them the niggers reasonable, for threeday drafts as they called it, +and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their +mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them +niggers would break their hearts for grief they cried around each other, +and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they +hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the +town. I can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor +miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying +and I reckon I couldn't a stood it all, but would a had to bust out and +tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale warn't no account and the +niggers would be back home in a week or two. +The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out +flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the +children that way. It injured the frauds some but the old fool he +bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you +the duke was powerful uneasy. +Next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning the king and +the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look +that there was trouble. The king says +"Was you in my room night before last?" +"No, your majesty"which was the way I always called him when nobody but +our gang warn't around. +"Was you in there yisterday er last night?" +"No, your majesty." +"Honor bright, nowno lies." +"Honor bright, your majesty, I'm telling you the truth. I hain't been +anear your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it +to you." +The duke says +"Have you seen anybody else go in there?" +"No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe." +"Stop and think." +I studied awhile and see my chance then I says +"Well, I see the niggers go in there several times." +Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn't ever +expected it, and then like they HAD. Then the duke says +"What, all of them?" +"Noleastways, not all at oncethat is, I don't think I ever see them +all come OUT at once but just one time." +"Hello When was that?" +"It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn't early, +because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see +them." +"Well, go on, GO on What did they do? How'd they act?" +"They didn't do nothing. And they didn't act anyway much, as fur as I +see. They tiptoed away so I seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in +there to do up your majesty's room, or something, s'posing you was up +and found you WARN'T up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way +of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up." +"Great guns, THIS is a go" says the king and both of them looked pretty +sick and tolerable silly. They stood there athinking and scratching +their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy +chuckle, and says +"It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to +be SORRY they was going out of this region And I believed they WAS +sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don't ever tell ME any more +that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played +that thing it would fool ANYBODY. In my opinion, there's a fortune in +'em. If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn't want a better layout +than thatand here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. Yes, and ain't +privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where IS that songthat draft?" +"In the bank for to be collected. Where WOULD it be?" +"Well, THAT'S all right then, thank goodness." +Says I, kind of timidlike +"Is something gone wrong?" +The king whirls on me and rips out +"None o' your business You keep your head shet, and mind y'r own +affairsif you got any. Long as you're in this town don't you forgit +THATyou hear?" Then he says to the duke, "We got to jest swaller it +and say noth'n' mum's the word for US." +As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and +says +"Quick sales AND small profits It's a good businessyes." +The king snarls around on him and says +"I was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick. If the +profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry, +is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?" +"Well, THEY'D be in this house yet and we WOULDN'T if I could a got my +advice listened to." +The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around +and lit into ME again. He give me down the banks for not coming and +TELLING him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that waysaid +any fool would a KNOWED something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed +HIMSELF awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking +his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it +again. So they went off ajawing and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it +all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it. +CHAPTER XXVIII. +BY and by it was gettingup time. So I come down the ladder and started +for downstairs but as I come to the girls' room the door was open, and +I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd +been packing things in itgetting ready to go to England. But she had +stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands, +crying. I felt awful bad to see it of course anybody would. I went in +there and says +"Miss Mary Jane, you can't abear to see people in trouble, and I can't +most always. Tell me about it." +So she done it. And it was the niggersI just expected it. She said +the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her she didn't +know HOW she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the +children warn't ever going to see each other no moreand then busted out +bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says +"Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't EVER going to see each other any +more" +"But they WILLand inside of two weeksand I KNOW it" says I. +Laws, it was out before I could think And before I could budge she +throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it AGAIN, say it AGAIN, +say it AGAIN +I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. +I asked her to let me think a minute and she set there, very impatient +and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and easedup, like a +person that's had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I +says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is +in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain't had no +experience, and can't say for certain but it looks so to me, anyway and +yet here's a case where I'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth +is better and actuly SAFER than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and +think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular. +I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I'm agoing +to chance it I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem +most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see +where you'll go to. Then I says +"Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you +could go and stay three or four days?" +"Yes Mr. Lothrop's. Why?" +"Never mind why yet. If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see +each other again inside of two weekshere in this houseand PROVE how I +know itwill you go to Mr. Lothrop's and stay four days?" +"Four days" she says "I'll stay a year" +"All right," I says, "I don't want nothing more out of YOU than just your +wordI druther have it than another man's kisstheBible." She smiled +and reddened up very sweet, and I says, "If you don't mind it, I'll shut +the doorand bolt it." +Then I come back and set down again, and says +"Don't you holler. Just set still and take it like a man. I got to tell +the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind, +and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. These +uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all they're a couple of frauds +regular deadbeats. There, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand +the rest middling easy." +It jolted her up like everything, of course but I was over the shoal +water now, so I went right along, her eyes ablazing higher and higher +all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck +that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she +flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her +sixteen or seventeen timesand then up she jumps, with her face afire +like sunset, and says +"The brute Come, don't waste a minutenot a SECONDwe'll have them +tarred and feathered, and flung in the river" +Says I +"Cert'nly. But do you mean BEFORE you go to Mr. Lothrop's, or" +"Oh," she says, "what am I THINKING about" she says, and set right down +again. "Don't mind what I saidplease don'tyou WON'T, now, WILL you?" +Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would +die first. "I never thought, I was so stirred up," she says "now go on, +and I won't do so any more. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say +I'll do it." +"Well," I says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I +got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or notI +druther not tell you why and if you was to blow on them this town would +get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right but there'd be another +person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. Well, we got +to save HIM, hain't we? Of course. Well, then, we won't blow on them." +Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could +get me and Jim rid of the frauds get them jailed here, and then leave. +But I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard +to answer questions but me so I didn't want the plan to begin working +till pretty late tonight. I says +"Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay +at Mr. Lothrop's so long, nuther. How fur is it?" +"A little short of four milesright out in the country, back here." +"Well, that 'll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till +nine or halfpast tonight, and then get them to fetch you home again +tell them you've thought of something. If you get here before eleven put +a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up wait TILL eleven, and +THEN if I don't turn up it means I'm gone, and out of the way, and safe. +Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats +jailed." +"Good," she says, "I'll do it." +"And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along +with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and +you must stand by me all you can." +"Stand by you indeed I will. They sha'n't touch a hair of your head" +she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said +it, too. +"If I get away I sha'n't be here," I says, "to prove these rapscallions +ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I WAS here. I could swear +they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something. +Well, there's others can do that better than what I can, and they're +people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be. I'll tell you +how to find them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There'Royal +Nonesuch, Bricksville.' Put it away, and don't lose it. When the court +wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to +Bricksville and say they've got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch, +and ask for some witnesseswhy, you'll have that entire town down here +before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary. And they'll come abiling, too." +I judged we had got everything fixed about right now. So I says +"Just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. Nobody don't have +to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on +accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they +get that money and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count, +and they ain't going to get no money. It's just like the way it was with +the niggersit warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before +long. Why, they can't collect the money for the NIGGERS yetthey're in +the worst kind of a fix, Miss Mary." +"Well," she says, "I'll run down to breakfast now, and then I'll start +straight for Mr. Lothrop's." +"'Deed, THAT ain't the ticket, Miss Mary Jane," I says, "by no manner of +means go BEFORE breakfast." +"Why?" +"What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?" +"Well, I never thoughtand come to think, I don't know. What was it?" +"Why, it's because you ain't one of these leatherface people. I don't +want no better book than what your face is. A body can set down and read +it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles +when they come to kiss you goodmorning, and never" +"There, there, don't Yes, I'll go before breakfastI'll be glad to. +And leave my sisters with them?" +"Yes never mind about them. They've got to stand it yet a while. They +might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don't want you to +see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town if a neighbor was to +ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something. No, +you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I'll fix it with all of them. +I'll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you've went +away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a +friend, and you'll be back tonight or early in the morning." +"Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won't have my love given to +them." +"Well, then, it sha'n't be." It was well enough to tell HER sono harm +in it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble and it's the +little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below it +would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. Then I +says "There's one more thingthat bag of money." +"Well, they've got that and it makes me feel pretty silly to think HOW +they got it." +"No, you're out, there. They hain't got it." +"Why, who's got it?" +"I wish I knowed, but I don't. I HAD it, because I stole it from them +and I stole it to give to you and I know where I hid it, but I'm afraid +it ain't there no more. I'm awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I'm just as +sorry as I can be but I done the best I could I did honest. I come +nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I come +to, and runand it warn't a good place." +"Oh, stop blaming yourselfit's too bad to do it, and I won't allow it +you couldn't help it it wasn't your fault. Where did you hide it?" +I didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again and I +couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that +corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So +for a minute I didn't say nothing then I says +"I'd ruther not TELL you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't +mind letting me off but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and +you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's, if you want to. Do you +reckon that 'll do?" +"Oh, yes." +So I wrote "I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was +crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty +sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane." +It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by +herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own +roof, shaming her and robbing her and when I folded it up and give it to +her I see the water come into her eyes, too and she shook me by the +hand, hard, and says +"GOODbye. I'm going to do everything just as you've told me and if I +don't ever see you again, I sha'n't ever forget you and I'll think of +you a many and a many a time, and I'll PRAY for you, too"and she was +gone. +Pray for me I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more +nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the sameshe was just that +kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notionthere +warn't no backdown to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but +in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see in my +opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't +no flattery. And when it comes to beautyand goodness, tooshe lays +over them all. I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go +out of that door no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've +thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she +would pray for me and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me +to pray for HER, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust. +Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon because nobody see +her go. When I struck Susan and the harelip, I says +"What's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that +you all goes to see sometimes?" +They says +"There's several but it's the Proctors, mainly." +"That's the name," I says "I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she +told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurryone of +them's sick." +"Which one?" +"I don't know leastways, I kinder forget but I thinks it's" +"Sakes alive, I hope it ain't HANNER?" +"I'm sorry to say it," I says, "but Hanner's the very one." +"My goodness, and she so well only last week Is she took bad?" +"It ain't no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane +said, and they don't think she'll last many hours." +"Only think of that, now What's the matter with her?" +I couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says +"Mumps." +"Mumps your granny They don't set up with people that's got the mumps." +"They don't, don't they? You better bet they do with THESE mumps. These +mumps is different. It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said." +"How's it a new kind?" +"Because it's mixed up with other things." +"What other things?" +"Well, measles, and whoopingcough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and +yaller janders, and brainfever, and I don't know what all." +"My land And they call it the MUMPS?" +"That's what Miss Mary Jane said." +"Well, what in the nation do they call it the MUMPS for?" +"Why, because it IS the mumps. That's what it starts with." +"Well, ther' ain't no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take +pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains +out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull +up and say, 'Why, he stumped his TOE.' Would ther' be any sense in that? +NO. And ther' ain't no sense in THIS, nuther. Is it ketching?" +"Is it KETCHING? Why, how you talk. Is a HARROW catchingin the dark? +If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't +you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole +harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, +as you may sayand it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to +get it hitched on good." +"Well, it's awful, I think," says the harelip. "I'll go to Uncle Harvey +and" +"Oh, yes," I says, "I WOULD. Of COURSE I would. I wouldn't lose no +time." +"Well, why wouldn't you?" +"Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain't your uncles +obleegd to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you +reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that +journey by yourselves? YOU know they'll wait for you. So fur, so good. +Your uncle Harvey's a preacher, ain't he? Very well, then is a PREACHER +going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a SHIP CLERK? +so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now YOU know he +ain't. What WILL he do, then? Why, he'll say, 'It's a great pity, but +my church matters has got to get along the best way they can for my +niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribusunum mumps, and so it's +my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to +show on her if she's got it.' But never mind, if you think it's best to +tell your uncle Harvey" +"Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good +times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane's +got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins." +"Well, anyway, maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors." +"Listen at that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can't you +SEE that THEY'D go and tell? Ther' ain't no way but just to not tell +anybody at ALL." +"Well, maybe you're rightyes, I judge you ARE right." +"But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she's gone out a while, +anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?" +"Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, 'Tell them to +give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I've run over +the river to see Mr.'Mr.what IS the name of that rich family your +uncle Peter used to think so much of?I mean the one that" +"Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain't it?" +"Of course bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to remember +them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to +ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house, +because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had it than anybody +else and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come, and +then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home and if she is, she'll be +home in the morning anyway. She said, don't say nothing about the +Proctors, but only about the Apthorpswhich 'll be perfectly true, +because she is going there to speak about their buying the house I know +it, because she told me so herself." +"All right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give +them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message. +Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn't say nothing because +they wanted to go to England and the king and the duke would ruther Mary +Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor +Robinson. I felt very good I judged I had done it pretty neatI +reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. Of course he +would a throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not +being brung up to it. +Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end +of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man +he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the +auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little +goodygoody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around googooing +for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly. +But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold +everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they'd got +to work that offI never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting +to swallow EVERYTHING. Well, whilst they was at it a steamboat landed, +and in about two minutes up comes a crowd awhooping and yelling and +laughing and carrying on, and singing out +"HERE'S your opposition line here's your two sets o' heirs to old Peter +Wilksand you pays your money and you takes your choice" +CHAPTER XXIX. +THEY was fetching a very nicelooking old gentleman along, and a +nicelooking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And, my souls, +how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn't see no +joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to +see any. I reckoned they'd turn pale. But no, nary a pale did THEY +turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went +a googooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out +buttermilk and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful +on them newcomers like it give him the stomachache in his very heart to +think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done +it admirable. Lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to +let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come +looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see +straight off he pronounced LIKE an Englishmannot the king's way, though +the king's WAS pretty good for an imitation. I can't give the old gent's +words, nor I can't imitate him but he turned around to the crowd, and +says, about like this +"This is a surprise to me which I wasn't looking for and I'll +acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain't very well fixed to meet it and +answer it for my brother and me has had misfortunes he's broke his arm, +and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night +by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks' brother Harvey, and this is his brother +William, which can't hear nor speakand can't even make signs to amount +to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with. We are who we +say we are and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it. +But up till then I won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait." +So him and the new dummy started off and the king he laughs, and +blethers out +"Broke his armVERY likely, AIN'T it?and very convenient, too, for a +fraud that's got to make signs, and ain't learnt how. Lost their +baggage That's MIGHTY goodand mighty ingeniousunder the +CIRCUMSTANCES" +So he laughed again and so did everybody else, except three or four, or +maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor another one was a +sharplooking gentleman, with a carpetbag of the oldfashioned kind made +out of carpetstuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was +talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then +and nodding their headsit was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to +Louisville and another one was a big rough husky that come along and +listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king +now. And when the king got done this husky up and says +"Say, looky here if you are Harvey Wilks, when'd you come to this town?" +"The day before the funeral, friend," says the king. +"But what time o' day?" +"In the evenin''bout an hour er two before sundown." +"HOW'D you come?" +"I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati." +"Well, then, how'd you come to be up at the Pint in the MORNIN'in a +canoe?" +"I warn't up at the Pint in the mornin'." +"It's a lie." +Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an +old man and a preacher. +"Preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar. He was up at the Pint that +mornin'. I live up there, don't I? Well, I was up there, and he was up +there. I see him there. He come in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and +a boy." +The doctor he up and says +"Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Hines?" +"I reckon I would, but I don't know. Why, yonder he is, now. I know him +perfectly easy." +It was me he pointed at. The doctor says +"Neighbors, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not but if +THESE two ain't frauds, I am an idiot, that's all. I think it's our duty +to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this +thing. Come along, Hines come along, the rest of you. We'll take these +fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and I reckon +we'll find out SOMETHING before we get through." +It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends so we +all started. It was about sundown. The doctor he led me along by the +hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand. +We all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and +fetched in the new couple. First, the doctor says +"I don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're +frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. If +they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilks +left? It ain't unlikely. If these men ain't frauds, they won't object +to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're +all rightain't that so?" +Everybody agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty +tight place right at the outstart. But the king he only looked +sorrowful, and says +"Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain't got no disposition to +throw anything in the way of a fair, open, outandout investigation o' +this misable business but, alas, the money ain't there you k'n send and +see, if you want to." +"Where is it, then?" +"Well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her I took and hid it +inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few +days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein' +used to niggers, and suppos'n' 'em honest, like servants in England. The +niggers stole it the very next mornin' after I had went down stairs and +when I sold 'em I hadn't missed the money yit, so they got clean away +with it. My servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen." +The doctor and several said "Shucks" and I see nobody didn't altogether +believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said no, +but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never +thought nothing, only I reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my +master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That +was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says +"Are YOU English, too?" +I says yes and him and some others laughed, and said, "Stuff" +Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had +it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about +supper, nor ever seemed to think about itand so they kept it up, and +kept it up and it WAS the worst mixedup thing you ever see. They made +the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n and +anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a SEEN that the old +gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies. And by and by they +had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he give me a lefthanded look +out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right +side. I begun to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all +about the English Wilkses, and so on but I didn't get pretty fur till +the doctor begun to laugh and Levi Bell, the lawyer, says +"Set down, my boy I wouldn't strain myself if I was you. I reckon you +ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy what you want is +practice. You do it pretty awkward." +I didn't care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off, +anyway. +The doctor he started to say something, and turns and says +"If you'd been in town at first, Levi Bell" The king broke in and +reached out his hand, and says +"Why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often +about?" +The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, +and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side and talked +low and at last the lawyer speaks up and says +"That 'll fix it. I'll take the order and send it, along with your +brother's, and then they'll know it's all right." +So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted +his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something +and then they give the pen to the dukeand then for the first time the +duke looked sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer +turns to the new old gentleman and says +"You and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names." +The old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. The lawyer looked +powerful astonished, and says +"Well, it beats ME"and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, +and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then THEM +again and then says "These old letters is from Harvey Wilks and +here's THESE two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write +them" the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see +how the lawyer had took them in, "and here's THIS old gentleman's hand +writing, and anybody can tell, easy enough, HE didn't write themfact +is, the scratches he makes ain't properly WRITING at all. Now, here's +some letters from" +The new old gentleman says +"If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand but my brother +thereso he copies for me. It's HIS hand you've got there, not mine." +"WELL" says the lawyer, "this IS a state of things. I've got some of +William's letters, too so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can +com" +"He CAN'T write with his left hand," says the old gentleman. "If he +could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and +mine too. Look at both, pleasethey're by the same hand." +The lawyer done it, and says +"I believe it's soand if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger +resemblance than I'd noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well I +thought we was right on the track of a solution, but it's gone to grass, +partly. But anyway, one thing is provedTHESE two ain't either of 'em +Wilkses"and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke. +Well, what do you think? That muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in THEN +Indeed he wouldn't. Said it warn't no fair test. Said his brother +William was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't tried to write +HE see William was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the +pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling right along till he +was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying HIMSELF but pretty +soon the new gentleman broke in, and says +"I've thought of something. Is there anybody here that helped to lay out +my brhelped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying?" +"Yes," says somebody, "me and Ab Turner done it. We're both here." +Then the old man turns towards the king, and says +"Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast?" +Blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a +squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him +so sudden and, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most +ANYBODY sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice, +because how was HE going to know what was tattooed on the man? He +whitened a little he couldn't help it and it was mighty still in there, +and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. Says I to +myself, NOW he'll throw up the spongethere ain't no more use. Well, +did he? A body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. I reckon he +thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they'd +thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. Anyway, +he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says +"Mf It's a VERY tough question, AIN'T it YES, sir, I k'n tell you +what's tattooed on his breast. It's jest a small, thin, blue arrow +that's what it is and if you don't look clost, you can't see it. NOW +what do you sayhey?" +Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean outandout +cheek. +The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his pard, and his +eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king THIS time, and says +"Thereyou've heard what he said Was there any such mark on Peter +Wilks' breast?" +Both of them spoke up and says +"We didn't see no such mark." +"Good" says the old gentleman. "Now, what you DID see on his breast was +a small dim P, and a B which is an initial he dropped when he was +young, and a W, with dashes between them, so PBW"and he marked +them that way on a piece of paper. "Come, ain't that what you saw?" +Both of them spoke up again, and says +"No, we DIDN'T. We never seen any marks at all." +Well, everybody WAS in a state of mind now, and they sings out +"The whole BILIN' of 'm 's frauds Le's duck 'em le's drown 'em le's +ride 'em on a rail" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a +rattling powwow. But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and +says +"GentlemengentleMEN Hear me just a wordjust a SINGLE wordif you +PLEASE There's one way yetlet's go and dig up the corpse and look." +That took them. +"Hooray" they all shouted, and was starting right off but the lawyer +and the doctor sung out +"Hold on, hold on Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch THEM +along, too" +"We'll do it" they all shouted "and if we don't find them marks we'll +lynch the whole gang" +I WAS scared, now, I tell you. But there warn't no getting away, you +know. They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the +graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town +at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the +evening. +As we went by our house I wished I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town +because now if I could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and +blow on our deadbeats. +Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like +wildcats and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the +lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst +the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and most dangersome I ever +was in and I was kinder stunned everything was going so different from +what I had allowed for stead of being fixed so I could take my own time +if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to +save me and set me free when the closefit come, here was nothing in the +world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoomarks. If they +didn't find them +I couldn't bear to think about it and yet, somehow, I couldn't think +about nothing else. It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful +time to give the crowd the slip but that big husky had me by the wrist +Hinesand a body might as well try to give Goliar the slip. He dragged +me right along, he was so excited, and I had to run to keep up. +When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it +like an overflow. And when they got to the grave they found they had +about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't +thought to fetch a lantern. But they sailed into digging anyway by the +flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house, a half a +mile off, to borrow one. +So they dug and dug like everything and it got awful dark, and the rain +started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come +brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed but them people never took +no notice of it, they was so full of this business and one minute you +could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls +of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped +it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all. +At last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid, and then +such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was, to +scrouge in and get a sight, you never see and in the dark, that way, it +was awful. Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and I +reckon he clean forgot I was in the world, he was so excited and panting. +All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and +somebody sings out +"By the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast" +Hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and give +a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way I lit out and +shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell. +I had the road all to myself, and I fairly flewleastways, I had it all +to myself except the solid dark, and the nowandthen glares, and the +buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of +the thunder and sure as you are born I did clip it along +When I struck the town I see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so I +never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main +one and when I begun to get towards our house I aimed my eye and set it. +No light there the house all darkwhich made me feel sorry and +disappointed, I didn't know why. But at last, just as I was sailing by, +FLASH comes the light in Mary Jane's window and my heart swelled up +sudden, like to bust and the same second the house and all was behind me +in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. +She WAS the best girl I ever see, and had the most sand. +The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the +towhead, I begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time +the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and shoved. +It was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope. The towhead +was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the +river, but I didn't lose no time and when I struck the raft at last I +was so fagged I would a just laid down to blow and gasp if I could +afforded it. But I didn't. As I sprung aboard I sung out +"Out with you, Jim, and set her loose Glory be to goodness, we're shut +of them" +Jim lit out, and was acoming for me with both arms spread, he was so +full of joy but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in +my mouth and I went overboard backwards for I forgot he was old King +Lear and a drownded Arab all in one, and it most scared the livers and +lights out of me. But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and +bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back and we was shut of the +king and the duke, but I says +"Not now have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast Cut loose and +let her slide" +So in two seconds away we went asliding down the river, and it DID seem +so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and +nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack +my heels a few timesI couldn't help it but about the third crack I +noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well, and held my breath and +listened and waited and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over +the water, here they comeand just alaying to their oars and making +their skiff hum It was the king and the duke. +So I wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up and it was all +I could do to keep from crying. +CHAPTER XXX. +WHEN they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar, +and says +"Tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup Tired of our company, +hey?" +I says +"No, your majesty, we warn'tPLEASE don't, your majesty" +"Quick, then, and tell us what WAS your idea, or I'll shake the insides +out o' you" +"Honest, I'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty. The +man that had aholt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a +boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy +in such a dangerous fix and when they was all took by surprise by +finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and +whispers, 'Heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure' and I lit out. It +didn't seem no good for ME to stayI couldn't do nothing, and I didn't +want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped running till I +found the canoe and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they'd catch +me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive +now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we +see you coming you may ask Jim if I didn't." +Jim said it was so and the king told him to shut up, and said, "Oh, yes, +it's MIGHTY likely" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd +drownd me. But the duke says +"Leggo the boy, you old idiot Would YOU a done any different? Did you +inquire around for HIM when you got loose? I don't remember it." +So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in +it. But the duke says +"You better a blame' sight give YOURSELF a good cussing, for you're the +one that's entitled to it most. You hain't done a thing from the start +that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that +imaginary bluearrow mark. That WAS brightit was right down bully and +it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn't been for that they'd a +jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage comeand thenthe +penitentiary, you bet But that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the +gold done us a still bigger kindness for if the excited fools hadn't let +go all holts and made that rush to get a look we'd a slept in our cravats +tonightcravats warranted to WEAR, toolonger than WE'D need 'em." +They was still a minutethinking then the king says, kind of +absentminded like +"Mf And we reckoned the NIGGERS stole it" +That made me squirm +"Yes," says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, "WE did." +After about a half a minute the king drawls out +"Leastways, I did." +The duke says, the same way +"On the contrary, I did." +The king kind of ruffles up, and says +"Looky here, Bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?" +The duke says, pretty brisk +"When it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was YOU referring +to?" +"Shucks" says the king, very sarcastic "but I don't knowmaybe you was +asleep, and didn't know what you was about." +The duke bristles up now, and says +"Oh, let UP on this cussed nonsense do you take me for a blame' fool? +Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin?" +"YES, sir I know you DO know, because you done it yourself" +"It's a lie"and the duke went for him. The king sings out +"Take y'r hands offleggo my throatI take it all back" +The duke says +"Well, you just own up, first, that you DID hide that money there, +intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it +up, and have it all to yourself." +"Wait jest a minute, dukeanswer me this one question, honest and fair +if you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll b'lieve you, and take +back everything I said." +"You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't. There, now" +"Well, then, I b'lieve you. But answer me only jest this one morenow +DON'T git mad didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide +it?" +The duke never said nothing for a little bit then he says +"Well, I don't care if I DID, I didn't DO it, anyway. But you not only +had it in mind to do it, but you DONE it." +"I wisht I never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest. I won't say +I warn't goin' to do it, because I WAS but youI mean somebodygot in +ahead o' me." +"It's a lie You done it, and you got to SAY you done it, or" +The king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out +"'NoughI OWN UP" +I was very glad to hear him say that it made me feel much more easier +than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off and says +"If you ever deny it again I'll drown you. It's WELL for you to set +there and blubber like a babyit's fitten for you, after the way you've +acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything +and I atrusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought +to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot +of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em. It makes me feel +ridiculous to think I was soft enough to BELIEVE that rubbage. Cuss you, +I can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deffisityou wanted +to get what money I'd got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another, +and scoop it ALL" +The king says, timid, and still asnuffling +"Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit it warn't me." +"Dry up I don't want to hear no more out of you" says the duke. "And +NOW you see what you GOT by it. They've got all their own money back, +and all of OURN but a shekel or two BESIDES. G'long to bed, and don't +you deffersit ME no more deffersits, long 's YOU live" +So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort, +and before long the duke tackled HIS bottle and so in about a half an +hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the +lovinger they got, and went off asnoring in each other's arms. They +both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough +to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the moneybag again. That +made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring we +had a long gabble, and I told Jim everything. +CHAPTER XXXI. +WE dasn't stop again at any town for days and days kept right along down +the river. We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long +ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, +hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. It was the first I +ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So +now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work +the villages again. +First they done a lecture on temperance but they didn't make enough for +them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a +dancingschool but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo +does so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and +pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution +but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a +solid good cussing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying, +and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of +everything but they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got +just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along, +thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a +time, and dreadful blue and desperate. +And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in +the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time. +Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. We judged they +was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over +and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into +somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeitmoney +business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an +agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such +actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold +shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid +the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a +shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us +all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if +anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. "House to rob, +you MEAN," says I to myself "and when you get through robbing it you'll +come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raftand +you'll have to take it out in wondering." And he said if he warn't back +by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come +along. +So we stayed where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and +was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't +seem to do nothing right he found fault with every little thing. +Something was abrewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and +no king we could have a change, anywayand maybe a chance for THE +chance on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and +hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back +room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers +bullyragging him for sport, and he acussing and athreatening with all +his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to +them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun +to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and shook +the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer, +for I see our chance and I made up my mind that it would be a long day +before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of +breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out +"Set her loose, Jim we're all right now" +But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was +gone I set up a shoutand then anotherand then another one and run +this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching but it warn't no +useold Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried I couldn't help it. +But I couldn't set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road, +trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and +asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says +"Yes." +"Whereabouts?" says I. +"Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here. He's a runaway +nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?" +"You bet I ain't I run across him in the woods about an hour or two +ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers outand told me to lay +down and stay where I was and I done it. Been there ever since afeard +to come out." +"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him. +He run off f'm down South, som'ers." +"It's a good job they got him." +"Well, I RECKON There's two hunderd dollars reward on him. It's like +picking up money out'n the road." +"Yes, it isand I could a had it if I'd been big enough I see him +FIRST. Who nailed him?" +"It was an old fellowa strangerand he sold out his chance in him for +forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. Think +o' that, now You bet I'D wait, if it was seven year." +"That's me, every time," says I. "But maybe his chance ain't worth no +more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's something ain't +straight about it." +"But it IS, thoughstraight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It +tells all about him, to a dotpaints him like a picture, and tells the +plantation he's frum, below NewrLEANS. NosirreeBOB, they ain't no +trouble 'bout THAT speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme a chaw tobacker, +won't ye?" +I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the +wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore +my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all +this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it +was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because +they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him +a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty +dollars. +Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a +slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd GOT to be a slave, +and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss +Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things +she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for +leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again and if +she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd +make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. +And then think of ME It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a +nigger to get his freedom and if I was ever to see anybody from that +town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's +just the way a person does a lowdown thing, and then he don't want to +take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no +disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the +more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and lowdown +and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden +that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and +letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up +there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that +hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's +always on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow no such miserable +doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks +I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up +somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so +much to blame but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the +Sundayschool, you could a gone to it and if you'd a done it they'd a +learnt you there that people that acts as I'd been acting about that +nigger goes to everlasting fire." +It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I +couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I +kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It +warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I +knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't +right it was because I warn't square it was because I was playing +double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was +holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY +I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that +nigger's owner and tell where he was but deep down in me I knowed it was +a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lieI found that out. +So I was full of trouble, full as I could be and didn't know what to do. +At last I had an idea and I says, I'll go and write the letterand then +see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a +feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece +of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote +Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below +Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the +reward if you send. +HUCK FINN. +I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever +felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it +straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinkingthinking +how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost +and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our +trip down the river and I see Jim before me all the time in the day +and in the nighttime, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we +afloating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I +couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the +other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of +calling me, so I could go on sleeping and see him how glad he was when I +come back out of the fog and when I come to him again in the swamp, up +there where the feud was and suchlike times and would always call me +honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how +good he always was and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling +the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was +the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got +now and then I happened to look around and see that paper. +It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was +atrembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and +I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then +says to myself +"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"and tore it up. +It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them +stay said and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole +thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which +was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a +starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again and if I +could think up anything worse, I would do that, too because as long as I +was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog. +Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some +considerable many ways in my mind and at last fixed up a plan that +suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down +the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my +raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept the +night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and +put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another +in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. I landed below +where I judged was Phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and +then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sunk +her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter of a +mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank. +Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on it, +"Phelps's Sawmill," and when I come to the farmhouses, two or three +hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody +around, though it was good daylight now. But I didn't mind, because I +didn't want to see nobody just yetI only wanted to get the lay of the +land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from the +village, not from below. So I just took a look, and shoved along, +straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got there was +the duke. He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonesuchthreenight +performancelike that other time. They had the cheek, them frauds I +was right on him before I could shirk. He looked astonished, and says +"HelLO Where'd YOU come from?" Then he says, kind of glad and eager, +"Where's the raft?got her in a good place?" +I says +"Why, that's just what I was going to ask your grace." +Then he didn't look so joyful, and says +"What was your idea for asking ME?" he says. +"Well," I says, "when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says to +myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer so I went +aloafing around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and offered +me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a +sheep, and so I went along but when we was dragging him to the boat, and +the man left me aholt of the rope and went behind him to shove him +along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after +him. We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the +country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark then we +fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and +see it was gone, I says to myself, 'They've got into trouble and had to +leave and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in +the world, and now I'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no +more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living' so I set down and +cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what DID become of the raft, +then?and Jimpoor Jim" +"Blamed if I knowthat is, what's become of the raft. That old fool had +made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery +the loafers had matched halfdollars with him and got every cent but what +he'd spent for whisky and when I got him home late last night and found +the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has stole our raft and shook +us, and run off down the river.'" +"I wouldn't shake my NIGGER, would I?the only nigger I had in the +world, and the only property." +"We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider him +OUR nigger yes, we did consider him sogoodness knows we had trouble +enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke, +there warn't anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another shake. +And I've pegged along ever since, dry as a powderhorn. Where's that ten +cents? Give it here." +I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to +spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the +money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never +said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me and says +"Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We'd skin him if he done +that" +"How can he blow? Hain't he run off?" +"No That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's +gone." +"SOLD him?" I says, and begun to cry "why, he was MY nigger, and that +was my money. Where is he?I want my nigger." +"Well, you can't GET your nigger, that's allso dry up your blubbering. +Looky heredo you think YOU'D venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think +I'd trust you. Why, if you WAS to blow on us" +He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before. +I went on awhimpering, and says +"I don't want to blow on nobody and I ain't got no time to blow, nohow. +I got to turn out and find my nigger." +He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on +his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he says +"I'll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you'll +promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you +where to find him." +So I promised, and he says +"A farmer by the name of Silas Ph" and then he stopped. You see, he +started to tell me the truth but when he stopped that way, and begun to +study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind. And so he +was. He wouldn't trust me he wanted to make sure of having me out of the +way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says +"The man that bought him is named Abram FosterAbram G. Fosterand he +lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette." +"All right," I says, "I can walk it in three days. And I'll start this +very afternoon." +"No you wont, you'll start NOW and don't you lose any time about it, +neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in +your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with +US, d'ye hear?" +That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I wanted +to be left free to work my plans. +"So clear out," he says "and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want +to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim IS your niggersome idiots +don't require documentsleastways I've heard there's such down South +here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe +he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting +'em out. Go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to but mind you +don't work your jaw any BETWEEN here and there." +So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn't look around, but I +kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out +at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I +stopped then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps'. I +reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off without fooling +around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellows could get +away. I didn't want no trouble with their kind. I'd seen all I wanted +to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them. +CHAPTER XXXII. +WHEN I got there it was all still and Sundaylike, and hot and sunshiny +the hands was gone to the fields and there was them kind of faint +dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and +like everybody's dead and gone and if a breeze fans along and quivers +the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits +whisperingspirits that's been dead ever so many yearsand you always +think they're talking about YOU. As a general thing it makes a body wish +HE was dead, too, and done with it all. +Phelps' was one of these little onehorse cotton plantations, and they +all look alike. A rail fence round a twoacre yard a stile made out of +logs sawed off and upended in steps, like barrels of a different length, +to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are +going to jump on to a horse some sickly grasspatches in the big yard, +but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed +off big double loghouse for the white folkshewed logs, with the +chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mudstripes been +whitewashed some time or another roundlog kitchen, with a big broad, +open but roofed passage joining it to the house log smokehouse back of +the kitchen three little log niggercabins in a row t'other side the +smokehouse one little hut all by itself away down against the back +fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side ashhopper and +big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut bench by the kitchen door, +with bucket of water and a gourd hound asleep there in the sun more +hounds asleep round about about three shade trees away off in a corner +some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence +outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch then the cotton +fields begins, and after the fields the woods. +I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ashhopper, and +started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum of +a spinningwheel wailing along up and sinking along down again and then +I knowed for certain I wished I was deadfor that IS the lonesomest +sound in the whole world. +I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting +to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come for +I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if +I left it alone. +When I got halfway, first one hound and then another got up and went for +me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still. And such +another powwow as they made In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a +hub of a wheel, as you may sayspokes made out of dogscircle of +fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses +stretched up towards me, abarking and howling and more acoming you +could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres. +A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rollingpin in her +hand, singing out, "Begone YOU Tige you Spot begone sah" and she +fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling, +and then the rest followed and the next second half of them come back, +wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me. There ain't +no harm in a hound, nohow. +And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger +boys without anything on but towlinen shirts, and they hung on to their +mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way +they always do. And here comes the white woman running from the house, +about fortyfive or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinningstick in +her hand and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same +way the little niggers was going. She was smiling all over so she could +hardly standand says +"It's YOU, at lastAIN'T it?" +I out with a "Yes'm" before I thought. +She grabbed me and hugged me tight and then gripped me by both hands and +shook and shook and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over and +she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "You don't +look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would but law sakes, I +don't care for that, I'm so glad to see you Dear, dear, it does seem +like I could eat you up Children, it's your cousin Tomtell him +howdy." +But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and +hid behind her. So she run on +"Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right awayor did you get +your breakfast on the boat?" +I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the house, +leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we got +there she set me down in a splitbottomed chair, and set herself down on +a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says +"Now I can have a GOOD look at you and, lawsame, I've been hungry for +it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last +We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kep' you?boat +get aground?" +"Yes'mshe" +"Don't say yes'msay Aunt Sally. Where'd she get aground?" +I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the boat +would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on instinct +and my instinct said she would be coming upfrom down towards Orleans. +That didn't help me much, though for I didn't know the names of bars +down that way. I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the +one we got aground onorNow I struck an idea, and fetched it out +"It warn't the groundingthat didn't keep us back but a little. We +blowed out a cylinderhead." +"Good gracious anybody hurt?" +"No'm. Killed a nigger." +"Well, it's lucky because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago +last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old +Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinderhead and crippled a man. And I +think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knowed a +family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember +now, he DID die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. +But it didn't save him. Yes, it was mortificationthat was it. He +turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. +They say he was a sight to look at. Your uncle's been up to the town +every day to fetch you. And he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago +he'll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road, didn't +you?oldish man, with a" +"No, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight, +and I left my baggage on the wharfboat and went looking around the town +and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too +soon and so I come down the back way." +"Who'd you give the baggage to?" +"Nobody." +"Why, child, it 'll be stole" +"Not where I hid it I reckon it won't," I says. +"How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?" +It was kinder thin ice, but I says +"The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have something +to eat before I went ashore so he took me in the texas to the officers' +lunch, and give me all I wanted." +I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good. I had my mind on the +children all the time I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them +a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn't get no show, Mrs. +Phelps kept it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the cold chills +streak all down my back, because she says +"But here we're arunning on this way, and you hain't told me a word +about Sis, nor any of them. Now I'll rest my works a little, and you +start up yourn just tell me EVERYTHINGtell me all about 'm all every +one of 'm and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told +you to tell me and every last thing you can think of." +Well, I see I was up a stumpand up it good. Providence had stood by me +this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now. I see it +warn't a bit of use to try to go aheadI'd got to throw up my hand. So +I says to myself, here's another place where I got to resk the truth. I +opened my mouth to begin but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the +bed, and says +"Here he comes Stick your head down lowerthere, that'll do you can't +be seen now. Don't you let on you're here. I'll play a joke on him. +Children, don't you say a word." +I see I was in a fix now. But it warn't no use to worry there warn't +nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from +under when the lightning struck. +I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in then +the bed hid him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says +"Has he come?" +"No," says her husband. +"GoodNESS gracious" she says, "what in the warld can have become of +him?" +"I can't imagine," says the old gentleman "and I must say it makes me +dreadful uneasy." +"Uneasy" she says "I'm ready to go distracted He MUST a come and +you've missed him along the road. I KNOW it's sosomething tells me +so." +"Why, Sally, I COULDN'T miss him along the roadYOU know that." +"But oh, dear, dear, what WILL Sis say He must a come You must a +missed him. He" +"Oh, don't distress me any more'n I'm already distressed. I don't know +what in the world to make of it. I'm at my wit's end, and I don't mind +acknowledging 't I'm right down scared. But there's no hope that he's +come for he COULDN'T come and me miss him. Sally, it's terriblejust +terriblesomething's happened to the boat, sure" +"Why, Silas Look yonderup the roadain't that somebody coming?" +He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs. Phelps +the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and +give me a pull, and out I come and when he turned back from the window +there she stood, abeaming and asmiling like a house afire, and I +standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman stared, and +says +"Why, who's that?" +"Who do you reckon 't is?" +"I hain't no idea. Who IS it?" +"It's TOM SAWYER" +By jings, I most slumped through the floor But there warn't no time to +swap knives the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on +shaking and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and +cry and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary, +and the rest of the tribe. +But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was for it was like +being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they froze +to me for two hours and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't +hardly go any more, I had told them more about my familyI mean the +Sawyer familythan ever happened to any six Sawyer families. And I +explained all about how we blowed out a cylinderhead at the mouth of +White River, and it took us three days to fix it. Which was all right, +and worked firstrate because THEY didn't know but what it would take +three days to fix it. If I'd a called it a bolthead it would a done just +as well. +Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty +uncomfortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and +comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a +steamboat coughing along down the river. Then I says to myself, s'pose +Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat? And s'pose he steps in here any +minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep +quiet? +Well, I couldn't HAVE it that way it wouldn't do at all. I must go up +the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to +the town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman was for going +along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I +druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me. +CHAPTER XXXIII. +SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was halfway I see a wagon +coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till +he come along. I says "Hold on" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth +opened up like a trunk, and stayed so and he swallowed two or three +times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says +"I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that. So, then, what you want +to come back and ha'nt ME for?" +I says +"I hain't come backI hain't been GONE." +When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite +satisfied yet. He says +"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you. Honest injun, +you ain't a ghost?" +"Honest injun, I ain't," I says. +"WellIIwell, that ought to settle it, of course but I can't +somehow seem to understand it no way. Looky here, warn't you ever +murdered AT ALL?" +"No. I warn't ever murdered at allI played it on them. You come in +here and feel of me if you don't believe me." +So he done it and it satisfied him and he was that glad to see me again +he didn't know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it right off, +because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where +he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by and by and told his driver +to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told him the kind of a +fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do? He said, let him +alone a minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought and thought, and +pretty soon he says +"It's all right I've got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on +it's your'n and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the +house about the time you ought to and I'll go towards town a piece, and +take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you +and you needn't let on to know me at first." +I says +"All right but wait a minute. There's one more thinga thing that +NOBODY don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that I'm +atrying to steal out of slavery, and his name is JIMold Miss Watson's +Jim." +He says +"What Why, Jim is" +He stopped and went to studying. I says +"I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, lowdown business but +what if it is? I'm low down and I'm agoing to steal him, and I want +you keep mum and not let on. Will you?" +His eye lit up, and he says +"I'll HELP you steal him" +Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most +astonishing speech I ever heardand I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell +considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer a +NIGGERSTEALER +"Oh, shucks" I says "you're joking." +"I ain't joking, either." +"Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said +about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that YOU don't know +nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him." +Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way +and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on +accounts of being glad and full of thinking so I got home a heap too +quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and +he says +"Why, this is wonderful Whoever would a thought it was in that mare to +do it? I wish we'd a timed her. And she hain't sweated a hairnot a +hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that +horse nowI wouldn't, honest and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen +before, and thought 'twas all she was worth." +That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see. +But it warn't surprising because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a +preacher, too, and had a little onehorse log church down back of the +plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church +and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was +worth it, too. There was plenty other farmerpreachers like that, and +done the same way, down South. +In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt +Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty +yards, and says +"Why, there's somebody come I wonder who 'tis? Why, I do believe it's +a stranger. Jimmy" that's one of the children "run and tell Lize to +put on another plate for dinner." +Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger +don't come EVERY year, and so he lays over the yallerfever, for +interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the +house the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all +bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an +audienceand that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances +it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was +suitable. He warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep no, +he come ca'm and important, like the ram. When he got afront of us he +lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box +that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and +says +"Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?" +"No, my boy," says the old gentleman, "I'm sorry to say 't your driver +has deceived you Nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more. +Come in, come in." +Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "Too latehe's out +of sight." +"Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with +us and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's." +"Oh, I CAN'T make you so much trouble I couldn't think of it. I'll walk +I don't mind the distance." +"But we won't LET you walkit wouldn't be Southern hospitality to do it. +Come right in." +"Oh, DO," says Aunt Sally "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in +the world. You must stay. It's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't +let you walk. And, besides, I've already told 'em to put on another +plate when I see you coming so you mustn't disappoint us. Come right in +and make yourself at home." +So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be +persuaded, and come in and when he was in he said he was a stranger from +Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompsonand he made another +bow. +Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and +everybody in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervious, and +wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape and at last, +still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the +mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was +going on talking but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her +hand, and says +"You owdacious puppy" +He looked kind of hurt, and says +"I'm surprised at you, m'am." +"You're s'rpWhy, what do you reckon I am? I've a good notion to take +andSay, what do you mean by kissing me?" +He looked kind of humble, and says +"I didn't mean nothing, m'am. I didn't mean no harm. IIthought +you'd like it." +"Why, you born fool" She took up the spinning stick, and it looked like +it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "What +made you think I'd like it?" +"Well, I don't know. Only, theytheytold me you would." +"THEY told you I would. Whoever told you's ANOTHER lunatic. I never +heard the beat of it. Who's THEY?" +"Why, everybody. They all said so, m'am." +It was all she could do to hold in and her eyes snapped, and her fingers +worked like she wanted to scratch him and she says +"Who's 'everybody'? Out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot short." +He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says +"I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it. They told me to. They all told +me to. They all said, kiss her and said she'd like it. They all said +itevery one of them. But I'm sorry, m'am, and I won't do it no more +I won't, honest." +"You won't, won't you? Well, I sh'd RECKON you won't" +"No'm, I'm honest about it I won't ever do it againtill you ask me." +"Till I ASK you Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days I +lay you'll be the Methusalemnumskull of creation before ever I ask you +or the likes of you." +"Well," he says, "it does surprise me so. I can't make it out, somehow. +They said you would, and I thought you would. But" He stopped and +looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye +somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "Didn't YOU +think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?" +"Why, no IIwell, no, I b'lieve I didn't." +Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says +"Tom, didn't YOU think Aunt Sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'Sid +Sawyer'" +"My land" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young +rascal, to fool a body so" and was going to hug him, but he fended her +off, and says +"No, not till you've asked me first." +So she didn't lose no time, but asked him and hugged him and kissed him +over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took +what was left. And after they got a little quiet again she says +"Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We warn't looking for YOU at +all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him." +"It's because it warn't INTENDED for any of us to come but Tom," he says +"but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too +so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a firstrate +surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by +tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. But it was a +mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain't no healthy place for a stranger to +come." +"Nonot impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed I +hain't been so put out since I don't know when. But I don't care, I +don't mind the termsI'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to +have you here. Well, to think of that performance I don't deny it, I +was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack." +We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the +kitchen and there was things enough on that table for seven families +and all hot, too none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a +cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold +cannibal in the morning. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing +over it, but it was worth it and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the +way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times. There was a +considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and Tom was on +the lookout all the time but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say +nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to +it. But at supper, at night, one of the little boys says +"Pa, mayn't Tom and Sid and me go to the show?" +"No," says the old man, "I reckon there ain't going to be any and you +couldn't go if there was because the runaway nigger told Burton and me +all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the people +so I reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this +time." +So there it wasbut I couldn't help it. Tom and me was to sleep in the +same room and bed so, being tired, we bid goodnight and went up to bed +right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the +lightningrod, and shoved for the town for I didn't believe anybody was +going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn't hurry up +and give them one they'd get into trouble sure. +On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered, +and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and +what a stir there was when Jim run away and I told Tom all about our +Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as I had time +to and as we struck into the town and up through thehere comes a +raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, +and banging tin pans and blowing horns and we jumped to one side to let +them go by and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke +astraddle of a railthat is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke, +though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing +in the world that was humanjust looked like a couple of monstrous big +soldierplumes. Well, it made me sick to see it and I was sorry for +them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any +hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to +see. Human beings CAN be awful cruel to one another. +We see we was too latecouldn't do no good. We asked some stragglers +about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent +and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of +his cavortings on the stage then somebody give a signal, and the house +rose up and went for them. +So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was +before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehowthough I +hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way it don't make no +difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got +no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that +didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him. +It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet +ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same. +CHAPTER XXXIV. +WE stopped talking, and got to thinking. By and by Tom says +"Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not think of it before I bet I +know where Jim is." +"No Where?" +"In that hut down by the ashhopper. Why, looky here. When we was at +dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?" +"Yes." +"What did you think the vittles was for?" +"For a dog." +"So 'd I. Well, it wasn't for a dog." +"Why?" +"Because part of it was watermelon." +"So it wasI noticed it. Well, it does beat all that I never thought +about a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see and don't +see at the same time." +"Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it +again when he came out. He fetched uncle a key about the time we got up +from tablesame key, I bet. Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner +and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation, +and where the people's all so kind and good. Jim's the prisoner. All +rightI'm glad we found it out detective fashion I wouldn't give +shucks for any other way. Now you work your mind, and study out a plan +to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too and we'll take the one we +like the best." +What a head for just a boy to have If I had Tom Sawyer's head I +wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in +a circus, nor nothing I can think of. I went to thinking out a plan, but +only just to be doing something I knowed very well where the right plan +was going to come from. Pretty soon Tom says +"Ready?" +"Yes," I says. +"All rightbring it out." +"My plan is this," I says. "We can easy find out if it's Jim in there. +Then get up my canoe tomorrow night, and fetch my raft over from the +island. Then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the +old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on +the raft with Jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and Jim +used to do before. Wouldn't that plan work?" +"WORK? Why, cert'nly it would work, like rats afighting. But it's too +blame' simple there ain't nothing TO it. What's the good of a plan that +ain't no more trouble than that? It's as mild as goosemilk. Why, Huck, +it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory." +I never said nothing, because I warn't expecting nothing different but I +knowed mighty well that whenever he got HIS plan ready it wouldn't have +none of them objections to it. +And it didn't. He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was +worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as +mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and +said we would waltz in on it. I needn't tell what it was here, because I +knowed it wouldn't stay the way, it was. I knowed he would be changing +it around every which way as we went along, and heaving in new +bullinesses wherever he got a chance. And that is what he done. +Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in +earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. +That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy that was +respectable and well brung up and had a character to lose and folks at +home that had characters and he was bright and not leatherheaded and +knowing and not ignorant and not mean, but kind and yet here he was, +without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this +business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before +everybody. I COULDN'T understand it no way at all. It was outrageous, +and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so and so be his true +friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself. +And I DID start to tell him but he shut me up, and says +"Don't you reckon I know what I'm about? Don't I generly know what I'm +about?" +"Yes." +"Didn't I SAY I was going to help steal the nigger?" +"Yes." +"WELL, then." +That's all he said, and that's all I said. It warn't no use to say any +more because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. But I +couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing so I just let +it go, and never bothered no more about it. If he was bound to have it +so, I couldn't help it. +When we got home the house was all dark and still so we went on down to +the hut by the ashhopper for to examine it. We went through the yard so +as to see what the hounds would do. They knowed us, and didn't make no +more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in +the night. When we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the +two sides and on the side I warn't acquainted withwhich was the north +sidewe found a square windowhole, up tolerable high, with just one +stout board nailed across it. I says +"Here's the ticket. This hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we +wrench off the board." +Tom says +"It's as simple as tittattoe, threeinarow, and as easy as playing +hooky. I should HOPE we can find a way that's a little more complicated +than THAT, Huck Finn." +"Well, then," I says, "how 'll it do to saw him out, the way I done +before I was murdered that time?" +"That's more LIKE," he says. "It's real mysterious, and troublesome, and +good," he says "but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long. There +ain't no hurry le's keep on looking around." +Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a leanto that +joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. It was as long +as the hut, but narrowonly about six foot wide. The door to it was at +the south end, and was padlocked. Tom he went to the soapkettle and +searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with +so he took it and prized out one of the staples. The chain fell down, +and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and +see the shed was only built against a cabin and hadn't no connection with +it and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some old +rusty playedout hoes and spades and picks and a crippled plow. The +match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the +door was locked as good as ever. Tom was joyful. He says +"Now we're all right. We'll DIG him out. It 'll take about a week" +Then we started for the house, and I went in the back dooryou only have +to pull a buckskin latchstring, they don't fasten the doorsbut that +warn't romantical enough for Tom Sawyer no way would do him but he must +climb up the lightningrod. But after he got up half way about three +times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted +his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up but after he was +rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time +he made the trip. +In the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins +to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jimif it WAS +Jim that was being fed. The niggers was just getting through breakfast +and starting for the fields and Jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan +with bread and meat and things and whilst the others was leaving, the +key come from the house. +This nigger had a goodnatured, chuckleheaded face, and his wool was all +tied up in little bunches with thread. That was to keep witches off. He +said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and making him see +all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and +noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so long before in his +life. He got so worked up, and got to running on so about his troubles, +he forgot all about what he'd been agoing to do. So Tom says +"What's the vittles for? Going to feed the dogs?" +The nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face, like when you +heave a brickbat in a mudpuddle, and he says +"Yes, Mars Sid, A dog. Cur'us dog, too. Does you want to go en look at +'im?" +"Yes." +I hunched Tom, and whispers +"You going, right here in the daybreak? THAT warn't the plan." +"No, it warn't but it's the plan NOW." +So, drat him, we went along, but I didn't like it much. When we got in +we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark but Jim was there, sure +enough, and could see us and he sings out +"Why, HUCK En good LAN' ain' dat Misto Tom?" +I just knowed how it would be I just expected it. I didn't know nothing +to do and if I had I couldn't a done it, because that nigger busted in +and says +"Why, de gracious sakes do he know you genlmen?" +We could see pretty well now. Tom he looked at the nigger, steady and +kind of wondering, and says +"Does WHO know us?" +"Why, disyer runaway nigger." +"I don't reckon he does but what put that into your head?" +"What PUT it dar? Didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed you?" +Tom says, in a puzzledup kind of way +"Well, that's mighty curious. WHO sung out? WHEN did he sing out? WHAT +did he sing out?" And turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says, "Did YOU +hear anybody sing out?" +Of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing so I says +"No I ain't heard nobody say nothing." +Then he turns to Jim, and looks him over like he never see him before, +and says +"Did you sing out?" +"No, sah," says Jim "I hain't said nothing, sah." +"Not a word?" +"No, sah, I hain't said a word." +"Did you ever see us before?" +"No, sah not as I knows on." +So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and +says, kind of severe +"What do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? What made you think +somebody sung out?" +"Oh, it's de dadblame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do. Dey's +awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so. Please to +don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole Mars Silas he'll scole me 'kase +he say dey AIN'T no witches. I jis' wish to goodness he was heah now +DEN what would he say I jis' bet he couldn' fine no way to git aroun' +it DIS time. But it's awluz jis' so people dat's SOT, stays sot dey +won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when YOU fine it +out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you." +Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody and told him to +buy some more thread to tie up his wool with and then looks at Jim, and +says +"I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger. If I was to catch +a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn't give him up, +I'd hang him." And whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the +dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to Jim and says +"Don't ever let on to know us. And if you hear any digging going on +nights, it's us we're going to set you free." +Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it then the nigger +come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us +to and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the +witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks +around then. +CHAPTER XXXV. +IT would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down +into the woods because Tom said we got to have SOME light to see how to +dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble what +we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called foxfire, and +just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. We +fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and Tom +says, kind of dissatisfied +"Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be. +And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. There +ain't no watchman to be druggednow there OUGHT to be a watchman. There +ain't even a dog to give a sleepingmixture to. And there's Jim chained +by one leg, with a tenfoot chain, to the leg of his bed why, all you +got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. And Uncle +Silas he trusts everybody sends the key to the punkinheaded nigger, and +don't send nobody to watch the nigger. Jim could a got out of that +windowhole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel +with a tenfoot chain on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it's the stupidest +arrangement I ever see. You got to invent ALL the difficulties. Well, we +can't help it we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got. +Anyhow, there's one thingthere's more honor in getting him out +through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them +furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and +you had to contrive them all out of your own head. Now look at just that +one thing of the lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we +simply got to LET ON that a lantern's resky. Why, we could work with a +torchlight procession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I think of +it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we +get." +"What do we want of a saw?" +"What do we WANT of a saw? Hain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed +off, so as to get the chain loose?" +"Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain +off." +"Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn. You CAN get up the +infantschooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain't you ever read +any books at all?Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny, +nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Who ever heard of getting a +prisoner loose in such an oldmaidy way as that? No the way all the +best authorities does is to saw the bedleg in two, and leave it just so, +and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and +grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see no +sign of it's being sawed, and thinks the bedleg is perfectly sound. +Then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes slip +off your chain, and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope +ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat +because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you knowand there's +your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you +across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or +wherever it is. It's gaudy, Huck. I wish there was a moat to this cabin. +If we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one." +I says +"What do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under +the cabin?" +But he never heard me. He had forgot me and everything else. He had his +chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head +then sighs again, and says +"No, it wouldn't dothere ain't necessity enough for it." +"For what?" I says. +"Why, to saw Jim's leg off," he says. +"Good land" I says "why, there ain't NO necessity for it. And what +would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?" +"Well, some of the best authorities has done it. They couldn't get the +chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. And a leg would +be better still. But we got to let that go. There ain't necessity +enough in this case and, besides, Jim's a nigger, and wouldn't +understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in Europe so +we'll let it go. But there's one thinghe can have a rope ladder we +can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough. And we +can send it to him in a pie it's mostly done that way. And I've et +worse pies." +"Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk," I says "Jim ain't got no use for a rope +ladder." +"He HAS got use for it. How YOU talk, you better say you don't know +nothing about it. He's GOT to have a rope ladder they all do." +"What in the nation can he DO with it?" +"DO with it? He can hide it in his bed, can't he? That's what they all +do and HE'S got to, too. Huck, you don't ever seem to want to do +anything that's regular you want to be starting something fresh all the +time. S'pose he DON'T do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for +a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews? Of +course they will. And you wouldn't leave them any? That would be a +PRETTY howdydo, WOULDN'T it I never heard of such a thing." +"Well," I says, "if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have it, all +right, let him have it because I don't wish to go back on no +regulations but there's one thing, Tom Sawyerif we go to tearing up +our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we're going to get into trouble +with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you're born. Now, the way I look at it, +a hickrybark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing, and is +just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag +ladder you can start and as for Jim, he ain't had no experience, and so +he don't care what kind of a" +"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I'd keep still +that's what I'D do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a +hickrybark ladder? Why, it's perfectly ridiculous." +"Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way but if you'll take my advice, +you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline." +He said that would do. And that gave him another idea, and he says +"Borrow a shirt, too." +"What do we want of a shirt, Tom?" +"Want it for Jim to keep a journal on." +"Journal your grannyJIM can't write." +"S'pose he CAN'T writehe can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if we +make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron +barrelhoop?" +"Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better +one and quicker, too." +"PRISONERS don't have geese running around the donjonkeep to pull pens +out of, you muggins. They ALWAYS make their pens out of the hardest, +toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like +that they can get their hands on and it takes them weeks and weeks and +months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by +rubbing it on the wall. THEY wouldn't use a goosequill if they had it. +It ain't regular." +"Well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?" +"Many makes it out of ironrust and tears but that's the common sort and +women the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that and +when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to +let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom +of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. The Iron Mask +always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too." +"Jim ain't got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan." +"That ain't nothing we can get him some." +"Can't nobody READ his plates." +"That ain't got anything to DO with it, Huck Finn. All HE'S got to do is +to write on the plate and throw it out. You don't HAVE to be able to +read it. Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on +a tin plate, or anywhere else." +"Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?" +"Why, blame it all, it ain't the PRISONER'S plates." +"But it's SOMEBODY'S plates, ain't it?" +"Well, spos'n it is? What does the PRISONER care whose" +He broke off there, because we heard the breakfasthorn blowing. So we +cleared out for the house. +Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the +clothesline and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went +down and got the foxfire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing, +because that was what pap always called it but Tom said it warn't +borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners and +prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody +don't blame them for it, either. It ain't no crime in a prisoner to +steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said it's his right and +so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to +steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves +out of prison with. He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very +different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he +warn't a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was +that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, +when I stole a watermelon out of the niggerpatch and eat it and he made +me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for. +Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we NEEDED. Well, +I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn't need it to get out +of prison with there's where the difference was. He said if I'd a +wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal +with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I +couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set +down and chaw over a lot of goldleaf distinctions like that every time I +see a chance to hog a watermelon. +Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled +down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard then Tom he +carried the sack into the leanto whilst I stood off a piece to keep +watch. By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile +to talk. He says +"Everything's all right now except tools and that's easy fixed." +"Tools?" I says. +"Yes." +"Tools for what?" +"Why, to dig with. We ain't agoing to GNAW him out, are we?" +"Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a +nigger out with?" I says. +He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says +"Huck Finn, did you EVER hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and +all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? Now +I want to ask youif you got any reasonableness in you at allwhat kind +of a show would THAT give him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend +him the key and done with it. Picks and shovelswhy, they wouldn't +furnish 'em to a king." +"Well, then," I says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we +want?" +"A couple of caseknives." +"To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?" +"Yes." +"Confound it, it's foolish, Tom." +"It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the RIGHT wayand +it's the regular way. And there ain't no OTHER way, that ever I heard +of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these +things. They always dig out with a caseknifeand not through dirt, mind +you generly it's through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks +and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in +the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that +dug himself out that way how long was HE at it, you reckon?" +"I don't know." +"Well, guess." +"I don't know. A month and a half." +"THIRTYSEVEN YEARand he come out in China. THAT'S the kind. I wish +the bottom of THIS fortress was solid rock." +"JIM don't know nobody in China." +"What's THAT got to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But +you're always awandering off on a side issue. Why can't you stick to +the main point?" +"All rightI don't care where he comes out, so he COMES out and Jim +don't, either, I reckon. But there's one thing, anywayJim's too old to +be dug out with a caseknife. He won't last." +"Yes he will LAST, too. You don't reckon it's going to take thirtyseven +years to dig out through a DIRT foundation, do you?" +"How long will it take, Tom?" +"Well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take +very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans. He'll +hear Jim ain't from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim, +or something like that. So we can't resk being as long digging him out +as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years but +we can't. Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this that we +really dig right in, as quick as we can and after that, we can LET ON, +to ourselves, that we was at it thirtyseven years. Then we can snatch +him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. Yes, I reckon +that 'll be the best way." +"Now, there's SENSE in that," I says. "Letting on don't cost nothing +letting on ain't no trouble and if it's any object, I don't mind letting +on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. It wouldn't strain me none, +after I got my hand in. So I'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of +caseknives." +"Smouch three," he says "we want one to make a saw out of." +"Tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," I says, +"there's an old rusty sawblade around yonder sticking under the +weatherboarding behind the smokehouse." +He looked kind of weary and discouragedlike, and says +"It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and smouch +the knivesthree of them." So I done it. +CHAPTER XXXVI. +AS soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the +lightningrod, and shut ourselves up in the leanto, and got out our pile +of foxfire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way, +about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said we +was right behind Jim's bed now, and we'd dig in under it, and when we got +through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole +there, because Jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground, and you'd +have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. So we dug and dug +with the caseknives till most midnight and then we was dogtired, and +our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything +hardly. At last I says +"This ain't no thirtyseven year job this is a thirtyeight year job, +Tom Sawyer." +He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped +digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking. +Then he says +"It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't agoing to work. If we was prisoners it +would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry +and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was +changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could +keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the +way it ought to be done. But WE can't fool along we got to rush we +ain't got no time to spare. If we was to put in another night this way +we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get wellcouldn't +touch a caseknife with them sooner." +"Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?" +"I'll tell you. It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't like +it to get out but there ain't only just the one way we got to dig him +out with the picks, and LET ON it's caseknives." +"NOW you're TALKING" I says "your head gets leveler and leveler all +the time, Tom Sawyer," I says. "Picks is the thing, moral or no moral +and as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I +start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sundayschool book, I +ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done. What I want is my +nigger or what I want is my watermelon or what I want is my +Sundayschool book and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing +I'm agoing to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sundayschool +book out with and I don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks +about it nuther." +"Well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and lettingon in a case like +this if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I wouldn't stand by +and see the rules brokebecause right is right, and wrong is wrong, and +a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows +better. It might answer for YOU to dig Jim out with a pick, WITHOUT any +letting on, because you don't know no better but it wouldn't for me, +because I do know better. Gimme a caseknife." +He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and +says +"Gimme a CASEKNIFE." +I didn't know just what to dobut then I thought. I scratched around +amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took +it and went to work, and never said a word. +He was always just that particular. Full of principle. +So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and +made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long +as we could stand up but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. +When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his +level best with the lightningrod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was +so sore. At last he says +"It ain't no use, it can't be done. What you reckon I better do? Can't +you think of no way?" +"Yes," I says, "but I reckon it ain't regular. Come up the stairs, and +let on it's a lightningrod." +So he done it. +Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house, +for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles and I hung +around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin +plates. Tom says it wasn't enough but I said nobody wouldn't ever see +the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dogfennel +and jimpson weeds under the windowholethen we could tote them back and +he could use them over again. So Tom was satisfied. Then he says +"Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim." +"Take them in through the hole," I says, "when we get it done." +He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard +of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By and by he said +he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide +on any of them yet. Said we'd got to post Jim first. +That night we went down the lightningrod a little after ten, and took +one of the candles along, and listened under the windowhole, and heard +Jim snoring so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. Then we +whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half +the job was done. We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin, and +pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim awhile, +and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle +and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried and called us +honey, and all the pet names he could think of and was for having us +hunt up a coldchisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away, +and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed him how +unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and +how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm and not +to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, SURE. So Jim +he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times +awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told him +Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally +come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of +them was kind as they could be, Tom says +"NOW I know how to fix it. We'll send you some things by them." +I said, "Don't do nothing of the kind it's one of the most jackass ideas +I ever struck" but he never paid no attention to me went right on. It +was his way when he'd got his plans set. +So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the ropeladder pie and other +large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the +lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them and we +would put small things in uncle's coatpockets and he must steal them +out and we would tie things to aunt's apronstrings or put them in her +apronpocket, if we got a chance and told him what they would be and +what they was for. And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with +his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he couldn't see no +sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed +better than him so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as +Tom said. +Jim had plenty corncob pipes and tobacco so we had a right down good +sociable time then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed, +with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. Tom was in high spirits. +He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most +intellectural and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep +it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out +for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he +got used to it. He said that in that way it could be strung out to as +much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. And he said +it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it. +In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass +candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in +his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat's +notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a +cornpone that was in Jim's pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it +would work, and it just worked noble when Jim bit into it it most mashed +all his teeth out and there warn't ever anything could a worked better. +Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a +piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, +you know but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his +fork into it in three or four places first. +And whilst we was astanding there in the dimmish light, here comes a +couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed and they kept on +piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room in +there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that leanto +door The nigger Nat he only just hollered "Witches" once, and keeled +over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was +dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat, and +the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back +again and shut the door, and I knowed he'd fixed the other door too. +Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and +asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. He raised up, +and blinked his eyes around, and says +"Mars Sid, you'll say I's a fool, but if I didn't b'lieve I see most a +million dogs, er devils, er some'n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese +tracks. I did, mos' sholy. Mars Sid, I FELT umI FELT um, sah dey was +all over me. Dad fetch it, I jis' wisht I could git my han's on one er +dem witches jis' wunston'y jis' wunstit's all I'd ast. But mos'ly I +wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, I does." +Tom says +"Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at this +runaway nigger's breakfasttime? It's because they're hungry that's the +reason. You make them a witch pie that's the thing for YOU to do." +"But my lan', Mars Sid, how's I gwyne to make 'm a witch pie? I doan' +know how to make it. I hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'." +"Well, then, I'll have to make it myself." +"Will you do it, honey?will you? I'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot, +I will" +"All right, I'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and +showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful. When we +come around, you turn your back and then whatever we've put in the pan, +don't you let on you see it at all. And don't you look when Jim unloads +the pansomething might happen, I don't know what. And above all, don't +you HANDLE the witchthings." +"HANNEL 'm, Mars Sid? What IS you atalkin' 'bout? I wouldn' lay de +weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion dollars, I +wouldn't." +CHAPTER XXXVII. +THAT was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbagepile in +the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of +bottles, and woreout tin things, and all such truck, and scratched +around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as +we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full +of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shinglenails +that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and +sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt +Sally's apronpocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck +in the band of Uncle Silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we +heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's +house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the +pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coatpocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come +yet, so we had to wait a little while. +And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly wait +for the blessing and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand +and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, +and says +"I've hunted high and I've hunted low, and it does beat all what HAS +become of your other shirt." +My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard +piece of corncrust started down my throat after it and got met on the +road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the +children in the eye and curled him up like a fishingworm, and let a cry +out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around +the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for +about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out +for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right +againit was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. +Uncle Silas he says +"It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it. I know perfectly +well I took it OFF, because" +"Because you hain't got but one ON. Just LISTEN at the man I know you +took it off, and know it by a better way than your woolgethering memory, +too, because it was on the clo'sline yesterdayI see it there myself. +But it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have +to change to a red flann'l one till I can get time to make a new one. +And it 'll be the third I've made in two years. It just keeps a body on +the jump to keep you in shirts and whatever you do manage to DO with 'm +all is more'n I can make out. A body 'd think you WOULD learn to take +some sort of care of 'em at your time of life." +"I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn't to be +altogether my fault, because, you know, I don't see them nor have nothing +to do with them except when they're on me and I don't believe I've ever +lost one of them OFF of me." +"Well, it ain't YOUR fault if you haven't, Silas you'd a done it if you +could, I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. Ther's a +spoon gone and THAT ain't all. There was ten, and now ther's only nine. +The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, +THAT'S certain." +"Why, what else is gone, Sally?" +"Ther's six CANDLES gonethat's what. The rats could a got the candles, +and I reckon they did I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, +the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it and if +they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, SilasYOU'D never find it +out but you can't lay the SPOON on the rats, and that I know." +"Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it I've been remiss but I +won't let tomorrow go by without stopping up them holes." +"Oh, I wouldn't hurry next year 'll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta +PHELPS" +Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the +sugarbowl without fooling around any. Just then the nigger woman steps +on to the passage, and says +"Missus, dey's a sheet gone." +"A SHEET gone Well, for the land's sake" +"I'll stop up them holes today," says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful. +"Oh, DO shet ups'pose the rats took the SHEET? WHERE'S it gone, +Lize?" +"Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally. She wuz on de +clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone she ain' dah no mo' now." +"I reckon the world IS coming to an end. I NEVER see the beat of it in +all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can" +"Missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n." +"Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye" +Well, she was just abiling. I begun to lay for a chance I reckoned I +would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She +kept araging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and +everybody else mighty meek and quiet and at last Uncle Silas, looking +kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped, +with her mouth open and her hands up and as for me, I wished I was in +Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says +"It's JUST as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time and +like as not you've got the other things there, too. How'd it get there?" +"I reely don't know, Sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you know I +would tell. I was astudying over my text in Acts Seventeen before +breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put +my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain't in but +I'll go and see and if the Testament is where I had it, I'll know I +didn't put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and +took up the spoon, and" +"Oh, for the land's sake Give a body a rest Go 'long now, the whole +kit and biling of ye and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my +peace of mind." +I'd a heard her if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out +and I'd a got up and obeyed her if I'd a been dead. As we was passing +through the settingroom the old man he took up his hat, and the +shinglenail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and +laid it on the mantelshelf, and never said nothing, and went out. Tom +see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says +"Well, it ain't no use to send things by HIM no more, he ain't reliable." +Then he says "But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, +without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without HIM knowing +itstop up his ratholes." +There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole +hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard +steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid and here comes the +old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other, +looking as absentminded as year before last. He went a mooning around, +first to one rathole and then another, till he'd been to them all. Then +he stood about five minutes, picking tallowdrip off of his candle and +thinking. Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying +"Well, for the life of me I can't remember when I done it. I could show +her now that I warn't to blame on account of the rats. But never mind +let it go. I reckon it wouldn't do no good." +And so he went on amumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a +mighty nice old man. And always is. +Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said +we'd got to have it so he took a think. When he had ciphered it out he +told me how we was to do then we went and waited around the spoonbasket +till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to counting the spoons +and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of them up my sleeve, and +Tom says +"Why, Aunt Sally, there ain't but nine spoons YET." +She says +"Go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. I know better, I counted 'm +myself." +"Well, I've counted them twice, Aunty, and I can't make but nine." +She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to countanybody +would. +"I declare to gracious ther' AIN'T but nine" she says. "Why, what in +the worldplague TAKE the things, I'll count 'm again." +So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she +says +"Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's TEN now" and she looked huffy and +bothered both. But Tom says +"Why, Aunty, I don't think there's ten." +"You numskull, didn't you see me COUNT 'm?" +"I know, but" +"Well, I'll count 'm AGAIN." +So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well, +she WAS in a tearing wayjust atrembling all over, she was so mad. But +she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start to count in +the basket for a spoon sometimes and so, three times they come out +right, and three times they come out wrong. Then she grabbed up the +basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galleywest +and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if we come +bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin us. So we +had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apronpocket whilst she was +agiving us our sailing orders, and Jim got it all right, along with her +shingle nail, before noon. We was very well satisfied with this +business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took, because +he said NOW she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save +her life and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she DID and +said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days +he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to +ever count them any more. +So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her +closet and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of +days till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more, and she +didn't CARE, and warn't agoing to bullyrag the rest of her soul out +about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life she druther +die first. +So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and +the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixedup +counting and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would +blow over by and by. +But that pie was a job we had no end of trouble with that pie. We fixed +it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there and we got it done at +last, and very satisfactory, too but not all in one day and we had to +use up three washpans full of flour before we got through, and we got +burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke +because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't +prop it up right, and she would always cave in. But of course we thought +of the right way at lastwhich was to cook the ladder, too, in the +pie. So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore up the sheet +all in little strings and twisted them together, and long before daylight +we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person with. We let on it +took nine months to make it. +And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into +the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough +for forty pies if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or +sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner. +But we didn't need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie, +and so we throwed the rest away. We didn't cook none of the pies in the +washpanafraid the solder would melt but Uncle Silas he had a noble +brass warmingpan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged +to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from +England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early +ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things +that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they +warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her +out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies, +because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. We +took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her +up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put +hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool +and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a +satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would want to fetch a +couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn't +cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about, +and lay him in enough stomachache to last him till next time, too. +Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan and we put the +three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles and so Jim +got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into +the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched +some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the windowhole. +CHAPTER XXXVIII. +MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw and Jim +allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That's the +one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have +it Tom said he'd GOT to there warn't no case of a state prisoner not +scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms. +"Look at Lady Jane Grey," he says "look at Gilford Dudley look at old +Northumberland Why, Huck, s'pose it IS considerble trouble?what you +going to do?how you going to get around it? Jim's GOT to do his +inscription and coat of arms. They all do." +Jim says +"Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm I hain't got nuffn but dish +yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat." +"Oh, you don't understand, Jim a coat of arms is very different." +"Well," I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat +of arms, because he hain't." +"I reckon I knowed that," Tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he +goes out of thisbecause he's going out RIGHT, and there ain't going to +be no flaws in his record." +So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim +amaking his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom +set to work to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he'd struck +so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one +which he reckoned he'd decide on. He says +"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend OR in the dexter base, a saltire +MURREY in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under +his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a chief +engrailed, and three invected lines on a field AZURE, with the nombril +points rampant on a dancette indented crest, a runaway nigger, SABLE, +with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister and a couple of +gules for supporters, which is you and me motto, MAGGIORE FRETTA, MINORE +OTTO. Got it out of a bookmeans the more haste the less speed." +"Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of it mean?" +"We ain't got no time to bother over that," he says "we got to dig in +like all gitout." +"Well, anyway," I says, "what's SOME of it? What's a fess?" +"A fessa fess isYOU don't need to know what a fess is. I'll show him +how to make it when he gets to it." +"Shucks, Tom," I says, "I think you might tell a person. What's a bar +sinister?" +"Oh, I don't know. But he's got to have it. All the nobility does." +That was just his way. If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you, +he wouldn't do it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no +difference. +He'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to +finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a +mournful inscriptionsaid Jim got to have one, like they all done. He +made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so +. Here a captive heart busted. . Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the +world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. . Here a lonely heart +broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirtyseven years of +solitary captivity. . Here, homeless and friendless, after thirtyseven +years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of +Louis XIV. +Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. +When he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for Jim to +scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good but at last he allowed he +would let him scrabble them all on. Jim said it would take him a year to +scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he didn't +know how to make letters, besides but Tom said he would block them out +for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the +lines. Then pretty soon he says +"Come to think, the logs ain't agoing to do they don't have log walls +in a dungeon we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. We'll fetch a +rock." +Jim said the rock was worse than the logs he said it would take him such +a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out. But +Tom said he would let me help him do it. Then he took a look to see how +me and Jim was getting along with the pens. It was most pesky tedious +hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the +sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly so Tom says +"I know how to fix it. We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and +mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. +There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and +carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too." +It warn't no slouch of an idea and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone +nuther but we allowed we'd tackle it. It warn't quite midnight yet, so +we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work. We smouched the +grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough +job. Sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling over, +and she come mighty near mashing us every time. Tom said she was going +to get one of us, sure, before we got through. We got her half way and +then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat. We see it +warn't no use we got to go and fetch Jim So he raised up his bed and +slid the chain off of the bedleg, and wrapt it round and round his neck, +and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and Jim and me laid +into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing and Tom +superintended. He could outsuperintend any boy I ever see. He knowed +how to do everything. +Our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone +through but Jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough. Then Tom +marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them, +with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the +leanto for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle +quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under +his straw tick and sleep on it. Then we helped him fix his chain back on +the bedleg, and was ready for bed ourselves. But Tom thought of +something, and says +"You got any spiders in here, Jim?" +"No, sah, thanks to goodness I hain't, Mars Tom." +"All right, we'll get you some." +"But bless you, honey, I doan' WANT none. I's afeard un um. I jis' 's +soon have rattlesnakes aroun'." +Tom thought a minute or two, and says +"It's a good idea. And I reckon it's been done. It MUST a been done it +stands to reason. Yes, it's a prime good idea. Where could you keep +it?" +"Keep what, Mars Tom?" +"Why, a rattlesnake." +"De goodness gracious alive, Mars Tom Why, if dey was a rattlesnake to +come in heah I'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, I would, wid +my head." +Why, Jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little. You could tame +it." +"TAME it" +"Yeseasy enough. Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, +and they wouldn't THINK of hurting a person that pets them. Any book +will tell you that. You trythat's all I ask just try for two or three +days. Why, you can get him so in a little while that he'll love you and +sleep with you and won't stay away from you a minute and will let you +wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth." +"PLEASE, Mars TomDOAN' talk so I can't STAN' it He'd LET me shove +his head in my mouffer a favor, hain't it? I lay he'd wait a pow'ful +long time 'fo' I AST him. En mo' en dat, I doan' WANT him to sleep wid +me." +"Jim, don't act so foolish. A prisoner's GOT to have some kind of a dumb +pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more glory +to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way +you could ever think of to save your life." +"Why, Mars Tom, I doan' WANT no sich glory. Snake take 'n bite Jim's +chin off, den WHAH is de glory? No, sah, I doan' want no sich doin's." +"Blame it, can't you TRY? I only WANT you to tryyou needn't keep it up +if it don't work." +"But de trouble all DONE ef de snake bite me while I's a tryin' him. +Mars Tom, I's willin' to tackle mos' anything 'at ain't onreasonable, but +ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I's gwyne to +LEAVE, dat's SHORE." +"Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bullheaded about it. We +can get you some gartersnakes, and you can tie some buttons on their +tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and I reckon that 'll have to +do." +"I k'n stan' DEM, Mars Tom, but blame' 'f I couldn' get along widout um, +I tell you dat. I never knowed b'fo' 't was so much bother and trouble +to be a prisoner." +"Well, it ALWAYS is when it's done right. You got any rats around here?" +"No, sah, I hain't seed none." +"Well, we'll get you some rats." +"Why, Mars Tom, I doan' WANT no rats. Dey's de dadblamedest creturs to +'sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's +tryin' to sleep, I ever see. No, sah, gimme g'yartersnakes, 'f I's got +to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats I hain' got no use f'r um, skasely." +"But, Jim, you GOT to have 'emthey all do. So don't make no more fuss +about it. Prisoners ain't ever without rats. There ain't no instance of +it. And they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they +get to be as sociable as flies. But you got to play music to them. You +got anything to play music on?" +"I ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juiceharp +but I reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juiceharp." +"Yes they would. THEY don't care what kind of music 'tis. A jewsharp's +plenty good enough for a rat. All animals like musicin a prison they +dote on it. Specially, painful music and you can't get no other kind +out of a jewsharp. It always interests them they come out to see +what's the matter with you. Yes, you're all right you're fixed very +well. You want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep, and +early in the mornings, and play your jewsharp play 'The Last Link is +Broken'that's the thing that 'll scoop a rat quicker 'n anything else +and when you've played about two minutes you'll see all the rats, and the +snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you, and +come. And they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good +time." +"Yes, DEY will, I reck'n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is JIM havin'? +Blest if I kin see de pint. But I'll do it ef I got to. I reck'n I +better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house." +Tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn't nothing else and +pretty soon he says +"Oh, there's one thing I forgot. Could you raise a flower here, do you +reckon?" +"I doan know but maybe I could, Mars Tom but it's tolable dark in heah, +en I ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight o' +trouble." +"Well, you try it, anyway. Some other prisoners has done it." +"One er dem big cattaillookin' mullenstalks would grow in heah, Mars +Tom, I reck'n, but she wouldn't be wuth half de trouble she'd coss." +"Don't you believe it. We'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in +the corner over there, and raise it. And don't call it mullen, call it +Pitchiolathat's its right name when it's in a prison. And you want to +water it with your tears." +"Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom." +"You don't WANT spring water you want to water it with your tears. It's +the way they always do." +"Why, Mars Tom, I lay I kin raise one er dem mullenstalks twyste wid +spring water whiles another man's a START'N one wid tears." +"That ain't the idea. You GOT to do it with tears." +"She'll die on my han's, Mars Tom, she sholy will kase I doan' skasely +ever cry." +So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over, and then said Jim would have +to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised he would go +to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's coffeepot, in the +morning. Jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee" +and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising +the mullen, and jewsharping the rats, and petting and flattering up the +snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do +on pens, and inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more +trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he +ever undertook, that Tom most lost all patience with him and said he was +just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in +the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to +appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he was +sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved +for bed. +CHAPTER XXXIX. +IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rattrap and +fetched it down, and unstopped the best rathole, and in about an hour we +had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones and then we took it and put it +in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for +spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found +it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, +and they did and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was +astanding on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what +they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us +both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another +fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the +likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. +I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. +We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and +caterpillars, and one thing or another and we like to got a hornet's +nest, but we didn't. The family was at home. We didn't give it right +up, but stayed with them as long as we could because we allowed we'd +tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done it. Then we +got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right +again, but couldn't set down convenient. And so we went for the snakes, +and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and housesnakes, and put them in a +bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was suppertime, and a +rattling good honest day's work and hungry?oh, no, I reckon not And +there warn't a blessed snake up there when we went backwe didn't half +tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. But it didn't +matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. So we +judged we could get some of them again. No, there warn't no real +scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You'd see +them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then and they +generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of +the time where you didn't want them. Well, they was handsome and +striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them but that never +made no difference to Aunt Sally she despised snakes, be the breed what +they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it and +every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference +what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I +never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You +couldn't get her to take aholt of one of them with the tongs. And if +she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a +howl that you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man +so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes +created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the +house for as much as a week Aunt Sally warn't over it yet she warn't +near over it when she was setting thinking about something you could +touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right +out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women was +just so. He said they was made that way for some reason or other. +We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she +allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever +loaded up the place again with them. I didn't mind the lickings, because +they didn't amount to nothing but I minded the trouble we had to lay in +another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things and you +never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's was when they'd all swarm out +for music and go for him. Jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders +didn't like Jim and so they'd lay for him, and make it mighty warm for +him. And he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone +there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely and when there was, a body +couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, +because THEY never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when +the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in +the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his +way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt +a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. +He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner +again, not for a salary. +Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The +shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would +get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh the +pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the +grindstone the bedleg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust, +and it give us a most amazing stomachache. We reckoned we was all going +to die, but didn't. It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever see and +Tom said the same. But as I was saying, we'd got all the work done now, +at last and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The +old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to +come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because +there warn't no such plantation so he allowed he would advertise Jim in +the St. Louis and New Orleans papers and when he mentioned the St. Louis +ones it give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to lose. +So Tom said, now for the nonnamous letters. +"What's them?" I says. +"Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it's done one +way, sometimes another. But there's always somebody spying around that +gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI. was going to +light out of the Tooleries a servantgirl done it. It's a very good way, +and so is the nonnamous letters. We'll use them both. And it's usual +for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, +and he slides out in her clothes. We'll do that, too." +"But looky here, Tom, what do we want to WARN anybody for that +something's up? Let them find it out for themselvesit's their +lookout." +"Yes, I know but you can't depend on them. It's the way they've acted +from the very startleft us to do EVERYTHING. They're so confiding and +mulletheaded they don't take notice of nothing at all. So if we don't +GIVE them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, +and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape 'll go off +perfectly flat won't amount to nothingwon't be nothing TO it." +"Well, as for me, Tom, that's the way I'd like." +"Shucks" he says, and looked disgusted. So I says +"But I ain't going to make no complaint. Any way that suits you suits +me. What you going to do about the servantgirl?" +"You'll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that +yaller girl's frock." +"Why, Tom, that 'll make trouble next morning because, of course, she +prob'bly hain't got any but that one." +"I know but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the +nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door." +"All right, then, I'll do it but I could carry it just as handy in my +own togs." +"You wouldn't look like a servantgirl THEN, would you?" +"No, but there won't be nobody to see what I look like, ANYWAY." +"That ain't got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do is just to +do our DUTY, and not worry about whether anybody SEES us do it or not. +Hain't you got no principle at all?" +"All right, I ain't saying nothing I'm the servantgirl. Who's Jim's +mother?" +"I'm his mother. I'll hook a gown from Aunt Sally." +"Well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves." +"Not much. I'll stuff Jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed +to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim 'll take the nigger woman's +gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. When a +prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion. It's always called so +when a king escapes, f'rinstance. And the same with a king's son it +don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one." +So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench's +frock that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the +way Tom told me to. It said +Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout. UNKNOWN FRIEND. +Next night we stuck a picture, which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull and +crossbones on the front door and next night another one of a coffin on +the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They couldn't a +been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them +behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. If a +door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped and said "ouch" if anything fell, she +jumped and said "ouch" if you happened to touch her, when she warn't +noticing, she done the same she couldn't face noway and be satisfied, +because she allowed there was something behind her every timeso she was +always awhirling around sudden, and saying "ouch," and before she'd got +twothirds around she'd whirl back again, and say it again and she was +afraid to go to bed, but she dasn't set up. So the thing was working +very well, Tom said he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. +He said it showed it was done right. +So he said, now for the grand bulge So the very next morning at the +streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we +better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to +have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went down the +lightningrod to spy around and the nigger at the back door was asleep, +and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. This letter said +Don't betray me, I wish to be your friend. There is a desprate gang of +cutthroats from over in the Indian Territory going to steal your runaway +nigger tonight, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will +stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of the gang, but have +got religgion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and will +betray the helish design. They will sneak down from northards, along the +fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin +to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any +danger but stead of that I will BA like a sheep soon as they get in and +not blow at all then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip +there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. Don't do +anything but just the way I am telling you if you do they will suspicion +something and raise whoopjamboreehoo. I do not wish any reward but to +know I have done the right thing. UNKNOWN FRIEND. +CHAPTER XL. +WE was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went +over the river afishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a +look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, +and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they +was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done +supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a +word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much +about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her +back was turned we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good +lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about +halfpast eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress that he stole and +was going to start with the lunch, but says +"Where's the butter?" +"I laid out a hunk of it," I says, "on a piece of a cornpone." +"Well, you LEFT it laid out, thenit ain't here." +"We can get along without it," I says. +"We can get along WITH it, too," he says "just you slide down cellar and +fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightningrod and come along. +I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in +disguise, and be ready to BA like a sheep and shove soon as you get +there." +So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a +person's fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of +cornpone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs very +stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes Aunt +Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my +hat on my head, and the next second she see me and she says +"You been down cellar?" +"Yes'm." +"What you been doing down there?" +"Noth'n." +"NOTH'N" +"No'm." +"Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?" +"I don't know 'm." +"You don't KNOW? Don't answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you +been DOING down there." +"I hain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I +have." +I reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl thing she would but I +s'pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat +about every little thing that warn't yardstick straight so she says, +very decided +"You just march into that settingroom and stay there till I come. You +been up to something you no business to, and I lay I'll find out what it +is before I'M done with you." +So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the settingroom. +My, but there was a crowd there Fifteen farmers, and every one of them +had a gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. +They was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, +and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't +but I knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and +putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, +and fumbling with their buttons. I warn't easy myself, but I didn't take +my hat off, all the same. +I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if +she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we'd overdone this +thing, and what a thundering hornet'snest we'd got ourselves into, so we +could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with Jim before +these rips got out of patience and come for us. +At last she come and begun to ask me questions, but I COULDN'T answer +them straight, I didn't know which end of me was up because these men +was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right NOW and lay +for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to midnight +and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the +sheepsignal and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions, and me +ashaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was that scared +and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt +and run down my neck and behind my ears and pretty soon, when one of +them says, "I'M for going and getting in the cabin FIRST and right NOW, +and catching them when they come," I most dropped and a streak of butter +come atrickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns +white as a sheet, and says +"For the land's sake, what IS the matter with the child? He's got the +brainfever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out" +And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the +bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, +and says +"Oh, what a turn you did give me and how glad and grateful I am it ain't +no worse for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours, and +when I see that truck I thought we'd lost you, for I knowed by the color +and all it was just like your brains would be ifDear, dear, whyd'nt you +TELL me that was what you'd been down there for, I wouldn't a cared. Now +cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of you till morning" +I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightningrod in another one, +and shinning through the dark for the leanto. I couldn't hardly get my +words out, I was so anxious but I told Tom as quick as I could we must +jump for it now, and not a minute to losethe house full of men, yonder, +with guns +His eyes just blazed and he says +"Nois that so? AIN'T it bully Why, Huck, if it was to do over +again, I bet I could fetch two hundred If we could put it off till" +"Hurry HURRY" I says. "Where's Jim?" +"Right at your elbow if you reach out your arm you can touch him. He's +dressed, and everything's ready. Now we'll slide out and give the +sheepsignal." +But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them +begin to fumble with the padlock, and heard a man say +"I TOLD you we'd be too soon they haven't comethe door is locked. +Here, I'll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for 'em in the +dark and kill 'em when they come and the rest scatter around a piece, +and listen if you can hear 'em coming." +So in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on us +whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all right, +and out through the hole, swift but softJim first, me next, and Tom +last, which was according to Tom's orders. Now we was in the leanto, +and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom +stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out +nothing, it was so dark and whispered and said he would listen for the +steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out first, and +him last. So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and +listened, and the steps ascraping around out there all the time and at +last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and +not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in +Injun file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim over it but Tom's +britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the +steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and +made a noise and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings +out +"Who's that? Answer, or I'll shoot" +But we didn't answer we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there +was a rush, and a BANG, BANG, BANG and the bullets fairly whizzed around +us We heard them sing out +"Here they are They've broke for the river After 'em, boys, and turn +loose the dogs" +So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them because they wore boots +and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell. We was in the +path to the mill and when they got pretty close on to us we dodged into +the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They'd had +all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers but by this +time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making powwow +enough for a million but they was our dogs so we stopped in our tracks +till they catched up and when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no +excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead +towards the shouting and clattering and then we upsteam again, and +whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck +up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled +for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more +noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, +for the island where my raft was and we could hear them yelling and +barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away +the sounds got dim and died out. And when we stepped on to the raft I +says +"NOW, old Jim, you're a free man again, and I bet you won't ever be a +slave no more." +"En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It 'uz planned beautiful, en it +'uz done beautiful en dey ain't NOBODY kin git up a plan dat's mo' +mixedup en splendid den what dat one wuz." +We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because +he had a bullet in the calf of his leg. +When me and Jim heard that we didn't feel so brash as what we did before. +It was hurting him considerable, and bleeding so we laid him in the +wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but he +says +"Gimme the rags I can do it myself. Don't stop now don't fool around +here, and the evasion booming along so handsome man the sweeps, and set +her loose Boys, we done it elegant'deed we did. I wish WE'D a had +the handling of Louis XVI., there wouldn't a been no 'Son of Saint Louis, +ascend to heaven' wrote down in HIS biography no, sir, we'd a whooped +him over the BORDERthat's what we'd a done with HIMand done it just +as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweepsman the sweeps" +But me and Jim was consultingand thinking. And after we'd thought a +minute, I says +"Say it, Jim." +So he says +"Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat 'uz +bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go on +en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one?' Is dat like +Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn't WELL, den, is +JIM gywne to say it? No, sahI doan' budge a step out'n dis place 'dout +a DOCTOR, not if it's forty year" +I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did sayso +it was all right now, and I told Tom I was agoing for a doctor. He +raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn't +budge so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself but +we wouldn't let him. Then he give us a piece of his mind, but it didn't +do no good. +So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says +"Well, then, if you re bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do when you +get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and +fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full +of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back +alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, +in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his +chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back +to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. +It's the way they all do." +So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see +the doctor coming till he was gone again. +CHAPTER XLI. +THE doctor was an old man a very nice, kindlooking old man when I got +him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting +yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about +midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot +him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say +nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home +this evening and surprise the folks. +"Who is your folks?" he says. +"The Phelpses, down yonder." +"Oh," he says. And after a minute, he says +"How'd you say he got shot?" +"He had a dream," I says, "and it shot him." +"Singular dream," he says. +So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddlebags, and we started. But +when he sees the canoe he didn't like the look of hersaid she was big +enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. I says +"Oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us easy +enough." +"What three?" +"Why, me and Sid, andandand THE GUNS that's what I mean." +"Oh," he says. +But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head, and +said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. But they was all +locked and chained so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he +come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I better go down home +and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I said I didn't +so I told him just how to find the raft, and then he started. +I struck an idea pretty soon. I says to myself, spos'n he can't fix that +leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is? spos'n it +takes him three or four days? What are we going to do?lay around there +till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir I know what I'LL do. I'll +wait, and when he comes back if he says he's got to go any more I'll get +down there, too, if I swim and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and +shove out down the river and when Tom's done with him we'll give him +what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get ashore. +So then I crept into a lumberpile to get some sleep and next time I +waked up the sun was away up over my head I shot out and went for the +doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time or +other, and warn't back yet. Well, thinks I, that looks powerful bad for +Tom, and I'll dig out for the island right off. So away I shoved, and +turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into Uncle Silas's stomach +He says +"Why, TOM Where you been all this time, you rascal?" +"I hain't been nowheres," I says, "only just hunting for the runaway +niggerme and Sid." +"Why, where ever did you go?" he says. "Your aunt's been mighty uneasy." +"She needn't," I says, "because we was all right. We followed the men +and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them but we thought we +heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and +crossed over, but couldn't find nothing of them so we cruised along +upshore till we got kind of tired and beat out and tied up the canoe +and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago then we +paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid's at the postoffice to see +what he can hear, and I'm abranching out to get something to eat for us, +and then we're going home." +So then we went to the postoffice to get "Sid" but just as I +suspicioned, he warn't there so the old man he got a letter out of the +office, and we waited awhile longer, but Sid didn't come so the old man +said, come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he got done +fooling aroundbut we would ride. I couldn't get him to let me stay and +wait for Sid and he said there warn't no use in it, and I must come +along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right. +When we got home Aunt Sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried +both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that don't +amount to shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he come. +And the place was plum full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner and +such another clack a body never heard. Old Mrs. Hotchkiss was the worst +her tongue was agoing all the time. She says +"Well, Sister Phelps, I've ransacked thatair cabin over, an' I b'lieve +the nigger was crazy. I says to Sister Damrelldidn't I, Sister +Damrell?s'I, he's crazy, s'Ithem's the very words I said. You all +hearn me he's crazy, s'I everything shows it, s'I. Look at thatair +grindstone, s'I want to tell ME't any cretur 't's in his right mind 's a +goin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s'I? Here +sich 'n' sich a person busted his heart 'n' here so 'n' so pegged along +for thirtyseven year, 'n' all thatnatcherl son o' Louis somebody, 'n' +sich everlast'n rubbage. He's plumb crazy, s'I it's what I says in the +fust place, it's what I says in the middle, 'n' it's what I says last 'n' +all the timethe nigger's crazycrazy 's Nebokoodneezer, s'I." +"An' look at thatair ladder made out'n rags, Sister Hotchkiss," says old +Mrs. Damrell "what in the name o' goodness COULD he ever want of" +"The very words I was asayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to Sister +Utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. Shshe, look at thatair rag +ladder, shshe 'n' s'I, yes, LOOK at it, s'Iwhat COULD he awanted of +it, s'I. Shshe, Sister Hotchkiss, shshe" +"But how in the nation'd they ever GIT that grindstone IN there, ANYWAY? +'n' who dug thatair HOLE? 'n' who" +"My very WORDS, Brer Penrod I was asayin'pass thatair sasser o' +m'lasses, won't ye?I was asayin' to Sister Dunlap, jist this minute, +how DID they git that grindstone in there, s'I. Without HELP, mind you +'thout HELP THAT'S wher 'tis. Don't tell ME, s'I there WUZ help, +s'I 'n' ther' wuz a PLENTY help, too, s'I ther's ben a DOZEN ahelpin' +that nigger, 'n' I lay I'd skin every last nigger on this place but I'D +find out who done it, s'I 'n' moreover, s'I" +"A DOZEN says youFORTY couldn't a done every thing that's been done. +Look at them caseknife saws and things, how tedious they've been made +look at that bedleg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men look +at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed and look at" +"You may WELL say it, Brer Hightower It's jist as I was asayin' to +Brer Phelps, his own self. S'e, what do YOU think of it, Sister +Hotchkiss, s'e? Think o' what, Brer Phelps, s'I? Think o' that bedleg +sawed off that a way, s'e? THINK of it, s'I? I lay it never sawed +ITSELF off, s'Isomebody SAWED it, s'I that's my opinion, take it or +leave it, it mayn't be no 'count, s'I, but sich as 't is, it's my +opinion, s'I, 'n' if any body k'n start a better one, s'I, let him DO it, +s'I, that's all. I says to Sister Dunlap, s'I" +"Why, dog my cats, they must a ben a housefull o' niggers in there every +night for four weeks to a done all that work, Sister Phelps. Look at +that shirtevery last inch of it kivered over with secret African writ'n +done with blood Must a ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all the +time, amost. Why, I'd give two dollars to have it read to me 'n' as for +the niggers that wrote it, I 'low I'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll" +"People to HELP him, Brother Marples Well, I reckon you'd THINK so if +you'd a been in this house for a while back. Why, they've stole +everything they could lay their hands onand we awatching all the time, +mind you. They stole that shirt right off o' the line and as for that +sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no telling how many +times they DIDN'T steal that and flour, and candles, and candlesticks, +and spoons, and the old warmingpan, and most a thousand things that I +disremember now, and my new calico dress and me and Silas and my Sid and +Tom on the constant watch day AND night, as I was atelling you, and not +a one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them and +here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under +our noses and fools us, and not only fools US but the Injun Territory +robbers too, and actuly gets AWAY with that nigger safe and sound, and +that with sixteen men and twentytwo dogs right on their very heels at +that very time I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever HEARD of. +Why, SPERITS couldn't a done better and been no smarter. And I reckon +they must a BEEN speritsbecause, YOU know our dogs, and ther' ain't no +better well, them dogs never even got on the TRACK of 'm once You +explain THAT to me if you canANY of you" +"Well, it does beat" +"Laws alive, I never" +"So help me, I wouldn't a be" +"HOUSEthieves as well as" +"Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a" +"'Fraid to LIVEwhy, I was that scared I dasn't hardly go to bed, or +get up, or lay down, or SET down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they'd steal the +verywhy, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was +in by the time midnight come last night. I hope to gracious if I warn't +afraid they'd steal some o' the family I was just to that pass I didn't +have no reasoning faculties no more. It looks foolish enough NOW, in the +daytime but I says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up +stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy +'t I crep' up there and locked 'em in I DID. And anybody would. +Because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, +and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling, +and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by and by you think to +yourself, spos'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't +locked, and you" She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she +turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on meI got up and +took a walk. +Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that room +this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little. So I +done it. But I dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me. And when it was +late in the day the people all went, and then I come in and told her the +noise and shooting waked up me and "Sid," and the door was locked, and we +wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightningrod, and both of us +got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try THAT no more. And +then I went on and told her all what I told Uncle Silas before and then +she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and +about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty +harumscarum lot as fur as she could see and so, as long as no harm +hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful +we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what +was past and done. So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and +dropped into a kind of a brown study and pretty soon jumps up, and says +"Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet What HAS become +of that boy?" +I see my chance so I skips up and says +"I'll run right up to town and get him," I says. +"No you won't," she says. "You'll stay right wher' you are ONE'S enough +to be lost at a time. If he ain't here to supper, your uncle 'll go." +Well, he warn't there to supper so right after supper uncle went. +He come back about ten a little bit uneasy hadn't run across Tom's +track. Aunt Sally was a good DEAL uneasy but Uncle Silas he said there +warn't no occasion to beboys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this +one turn up in the morning all sound and right. So she had to be +satisfied. But she said she'd set up for him a while anyway, and keep a +light burning so he could see it. +And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her +candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and like I +couldn't look her in the face and she set down on the bed and talked +with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and didn't +seem to want to ever stop talking about him and kept asking me every now +and then if I reckoned he could a got lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded, +and might be laying at this minute somewheres suffering or dead, and she +not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down silent, and I +would tell her that Sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, +sure and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say +it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in +so much trouble. And when she was going away she looked down in my eyes +so steady and gentle, and says +"The door ain't going to be locked, Tom, and there's the window and the +rod but you'll be good, WON'T you? And you won't go? For MY sake." +Laws knows I WANTED to go bad enough to see about Tom, and was all +intending to go but after that I wouldn't a went, not for kingdoms. +But she was on my mind and Tom was on my mind, so I slept very restless. +And twice I went down the rod away in the night, and slipped around +front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window with her +eyes towards the road and the tears in them and I wished I could do +something for her, but I couldn't, only to swear that I wouldn't never do +nothing to grieve her any more. And the third time I waked up at dawn, +and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and +her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep. +CHAPTER XLII. +THE old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no track +of Tom and both of them set at the table thinking, and not saying +nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not +eating anything. And by and by the old man says +"Did I give you the letter?" +"What letter?" +"The one I got yesterday out of the postoffice." +"No, you didn't give me no letter." +"Well, I must a forgot it." +So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had +laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. She says +"Why, it's from St. Petersburgit's from Sis." +I allowed another walk would do me good but I couldn't stir. But before +she could break it open she dropped it and runfor she see something. +And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress and that old doctor and +Jim, in HER calico dress, with his hands tied behind him and a lot of +people. I hid the letter behind the first thing that come handy, and +rushed. She flung herself at Tom, crying, and says +"Oh, he's dead, he's dead, I know he's dead" +And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, +which showed he warn't in his right mind then she flung up her hands, +and says +"He's alive, thank God And that's enough" and she snatched a kiss of +him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders +right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue +could go, every jump of the way. +I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim and the old +doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was +very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to all the +other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like +Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family +scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, don't do +it, it wouldn't answer at all he ain't our nigger, and his owner would +turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a +little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a +nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the +most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of +him. +They cussed Jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side the +head once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to +know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on +him, and chained him again, and not to no bedleg this time, but to a big +staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both +legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after +this till his owner come, or he was sold at auction because he didn't +come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a +couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every +night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime and about this time +they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl +goodbye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and +says +"Don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't a +bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy I see I couldn't cut the +bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me to +leave to go and get help and he got a little worse and a little worse, +and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come +anigh him any more, and said if I chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no +end of wild foolishness like that, and I see I couldn't do anything at +all with him so I says, I got to have HELP somehow and the minute I +says it out crawls this nigger from somewheres and says he'll help, and +he done it, too, and done it very well. Of course I judged he must be a +runaway nigger, and there I WAS and there I had to stick right straight +along all the rest of the day and all night. It was a fix, I tell you +I had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course I'd of liked to +run up to town and see them, but I dasn't, because the nigger might get +away, and then I'd be to blame and yet never a skiff come close enough +for me to hail. So there I had to stick plumb until daylight this +morning and I never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuller, +and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too, +and I see plain enough he'd been worked main hard lately. I liked the +nigger for that I tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a +thousand dollarsand kind treatment, too. I had everything I needed, +and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at homebetter, +maybe, because it was so quiet but there I WAS, with both of 'm on my +hands, and there I had to stick till about dawn this morning then some +men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it the nigger was +setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep so +I motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and +tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. +And the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars +and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the +nigger never made the least row nor said a word from the start. He ain't +no bad nigger, gentlemen that's what I think about him." +Somebody says +"Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm obleeged to say." +Then the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful to +that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn and I was glad it was +according to my judgment of him, too because I thought he had a good +heart in him and was a good man the first time I see him. Then they all +agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some +notice took of it, and reward. So every one of them promised, right out +and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more. +Then they come out and locked him up. I hoped they was going to say he +could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten +heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water but they +didn't think of it, and I reckoned it warn't best for me to mix in, but I +judged I'd get the doctor's yarn to Aunt Sally somehow or other as soon +as I'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me +explanations, I mean, of how I forgot to mention about Sid being shot +when I was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling +around hunting the runaway nigger. +But I had plenty time. Aunt Sally she stuck to the sickroom all day and +all night, and every time I see Uncle Silas mooning around I dodged him. +Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt Sally +was gone to get a nap. So I slips to the sickroom, and if I found him +awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. +But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too and pale, not +firefaced the way he was when he come. So I set down and laid for him +to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes gliding in, and there I +was, up a stump again She motioned me to be still, and set down by me, +and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all +the symptoms was firstrate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so +long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one +he'd wake up in his right mind. +So we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his +eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says +"Hellowhy, I'm at HOME How's that? Where's the raft?" +"It's all right," I says. +"And JIM?" +"The same," I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never +noticed, but says +"Good Splendid NOW we're all right and safe Did you tell Aunty?" +I was going to say yes but she chipped in and says "About what, Sid?" +"Why, about the way the whole thing was done." +"What whole thing?" +"Why, THE whole thing. There ain't but one how we set the runaway +nigger freeme and Tom." +"Good land Set the runWhat IS the child talking about Dear, dear, +out of his head again" +"NO, I ain't out of my HEAD I know all what I'm talking about. We DID +set him freeme and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we DONE it. And we +done it elegant, too." He'd got a start, and she never checked him up, +just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it +warn't no use for ME to put in. "Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work +weeks of ithours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep. +And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your +dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and caseknives, and the warmingpan, +and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't +think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and +one thing or another, and you can't think HALF the fun it was. And we +had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters +from the robbers, and get up and down the lightningrod, and dig the hole +into the cabin, and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a +pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket" +"Mercy sakes" +"and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for +Jim and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that +you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we +was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive +at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go +by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the +most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all +safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and WASN'T +it bully, Aunty" +"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days So it was YOU, +you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned +everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I've +as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o' you this very +minute. To think, here I've been, night after night, aYOU just get +well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old Harry out o' both +o' ye" +But Tom, he WAS so proud and joyful, he just COULDN'T hold in, and his +tongue just WENT itshe achipping in, and spitting fire all along, and +both of them going it at once, like a cat convention and she says +"WELL, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it NOW, for mind I tell +you if I catch you meddling with him again" +"Meddling with WHO?" Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised. +"With WHO? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?" +Tom looks at me very grave, and says +"Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?" +"HIM?" says Aunt Sally "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've +got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and +water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold" +Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and +shutting like gills, and sings out to me +"They hain't no RIGHT to shut him up SHOVEand don't you lose a +minute. Turn him loose he ain't no slave he's as free as any cretur +that walks this earth" +"What DOES the child mean?" +"I mean every word I SAY, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'LL go. +I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson +died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him +down the river, and SAID so and she set him free in her will." +"Then what on earth did YOU want to set him free for, seeing he was +already free?" +"Well, that IS a question, I must say and just like women Why, I +wanted the ADVENTURE of it and I'd a waded neckdeep in blood to +goodness alive, AUNT POLLY" +If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as +sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never +Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried +over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it +was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in +a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there +looking across at Tom over her spectacleskind of grinding him into the +earth, you know. And then she says +"Yes, you BETTER turn y'r head awayI would if I was you, Tom." +"Oh, deary me" says Aunt Sally "IS he changed so? Why, that ain't TOM, +it's Sid Tom'sTom'swhy, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago." +"You mean where's Huck FINNthat's what you mean I reckon I hain't +raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I SEE +him. That WOULD be a pretty howdydo. Come out from under that bed, +Huck Finn." +So I done it. But not feeling brash. +Aunt Sally she was one of the mixedupestlooking persons I ever see +except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told it +all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't +know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayermeeting +sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest +man in the world couldn't a understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told +all about who I was, and what and I had to up and tell how I was in such +a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyershe chipped +in and says, "Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm used to it now, and +'tain't no need to change"that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I +had to stand itthere warn't no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't +mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an +adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out, +and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me. +And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting +Jim free in her will and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took +all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free and I couldn't +ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he COULD +help a body set a nigger free with his bringingup. +Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and +SID had come all right and safe, she says to herself +"Look at that, now I might have expected it, letting him go off that +way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all the +way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's +up to THIS time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any answer out of you +about it." +"Why, I never heard nothing from you," says Aunt Sally. +"Well, I wonder Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean +by Sid being here." +"Well, I never got 'em, Sis." +Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says +"You, Tom" +"WellWHAT?" he says, kind of pettish. +"Don t you what ME, you impudent thinghand out them letters." +"What letters?" +"THEM letters. I be bound, if I have to take aholt of you I'll" +"They're in the trunk. There, now. And they're just the same as they +was when I got them out of the office. I hain't looked into them, I +hain't touched them. But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought if +you warn't in no hurry, I'd" +"Well, you DO need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. And I +wrote another one to tell you I was coming and I s'pose he" +"No, it come yesterday I hain't read it yet, but IT'S all right, I've +got that one." +I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned maybe it +was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing. +CHAPTER THE LAST +THE first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time +of the evasion?what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all +right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before? +And he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got +Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and +have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about +his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and +pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the +niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight +procession and a brassband, and then he would be a hero, and so would +we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was. +We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle +Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom, +they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him +all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And we had him +up to the sickroom, and had a high talk and Tom give Jim forty dollars +for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and Jim +was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says +"DAH, now, Huck, what I tell you?what I tell you up dah on Jackson +islan'? I TOLE you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it en I +TOLE you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich AGIN en it's come +true en heah she is DAH, now doan' talk to MEsigns is SIGNS, mine I +tell you en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be rich agin as I's +astannin' heah dis minute" +And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three +slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for +howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a +couple of weeks or two and I says, all right, that suits me, but I ain't +got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get none from +home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away +from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up. +"No, he hain't," Tom says "it's all there yetsix thousand dollars and +more and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't when I come away, +anyhow." +Jim says, kind of solemn +"He ain't acomin' back no mo', Huck." +I says +"Why, Jim?" +"Nemmine why, Huckbut he ain't comin' back no mo." +But I kept at him so at last he says +"Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a +man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn' let you +come in? Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat +wuz him." +Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watchguard +for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't +nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a +knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and +ain't agoing to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the +Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me +and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before. +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, +Complete, by Mark Twain Samuel Clemens + END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUCKLEBERRY FINN + This file should be named .txt or .zip +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in +http//www.gutenberg.net/// +Produced by David Widger. Previous editions produced by Ron Burkey +and Internet Wiretap +Updated editions will replace the previous onethe old editions +will be renamed. +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +and you can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenbergtm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERGtm concept and trademark. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. +Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts +eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since +These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers +Title Jane Eyre +Author Charlotte Bronte +Edition +Language English +Character set encoding ASCII +Release Date March, [eBook ] +[Most recently updated on August , ] + START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OF JANE EYRE, BY BRONTE +This eBook was produced by David Price, email ccxcoventry.ac.uk +Jane Eyre +by Charlotte Bronte +PREFACE +A preface to the first edition of "Jane Eyre" being unnecessary, +I gave none this second edition demands a few words both of +acknowledgment and miscellaneous remark. +My thanks are due in three quarters. +To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain +tale with few pretensions. +To the Press, for the fair field its honest suffrage has opened to +an obscure aspirant. +To my Publishers, for the aid their tact, their energy, their +practical sense and frank liberality have afforded an unknown and +unrecommended Author. +The Press and the Public are but vague personifications for me, and +I must thank them in vague terms but my Publishers are definite +so are certain generous critics who have encouraged me as only +largehearted and highminded men know how to encourage a struggling +stranger to them, i.e., to my Publishers and the select Reviewers, +I say cordially, Gentlemen, I thank you from my heart. +Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved +me, I turn to another class a small one, so far as I know, but +not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping +few who doubt the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre" in whose +eyes whatever is unusual is wrong whose ears detect in each protest +against bigotry that parent of crime an insult to piety, that +regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain +obvious distinctions I would remind them of certain simple truths. +Conventionality is not morality. Selfrighteousness is not religion. +To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask +from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to +the Crown of Thorns. +These things and deeds are diametrically opposed they are +as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them +they should not be confounded appearance should not be mistaken +for truth narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and +magnify a few, should not be substituted for the worldredeeming +creed of Christ. There is I repeat it a difference and it +is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the +line of separation between them. +The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been +accustomed to blend them finding it convenient to make external +show pass for sterling worth to let whitewashed walls vouch for +clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose +to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it to penetrate +the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics but hate as it will, it +is indebted to him. +Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning +him, but evil probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaannah +better yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had he but +stopped his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel. +There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle +delicate ears who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones +of society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings +of Judah and Israel and who speaks truth as deep, with a power +as prophetlike and as vital a mien as dauntless and as daring. +Is the satirist of "Vanity Fair" admired in high places? I cannot +tell but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek +fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levinbrand +of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time they or +their seed might yet escape a fatal RimothGilead. +Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, Reader, +because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique +than his contemporaries have yet recognised because I regard him +as the first social regenerator of the day as the very master +of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped +system of things because I think no commentator on his writings +has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly +characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding they talk +of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle +does a vulture Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray +never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both +bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent +sheetlightning playing under the edge of the summercloud does to +the electric deathspark hid in its womb. Finally, I have alluded +to Mr. Thackeray, because to him if he will accept the tribute +of a total stranger I have dedicated this second edition of +"JANE EYRE." +CURRER BELL. +December st, . +NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION +I avail myself of the opportunity which a third edition of "Jane +Eyre" affords me, of again addressing a word to the Public, to +explain that my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one +work alone. If, therefore, the authorship of other works of fiction +has been attributed to me, an honour is awarded where it is not +merited and consequently, denied where it is justly due. +This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which may already +have been made, and to prevent future errors. +CURRER BELL. +April th, . +CHAPTER I +There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had +been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the +morning but since dinner Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, +dined early the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so +sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise +was now out of the question. +I was glad of it I never liked long walks, especially on chilly +afternoons dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, +with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings +of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical +inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed. +The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round +their mama in the drawingroom she lay reclined on a sofa by the +fireside, and with her darlings about her for the time neither +quarrelling nor crying looked perfectly happy. Me, she had +dispensed from joining the group saying, "She regretted to be +under the necessity of keeping me at a distance but that until +she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, +that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable +and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner +something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were she +really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, +happy, little children." +"What does Bessie say I have done?" I asked. +"Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners besides, there is +something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that +manner. Be seated somewhere and until you can speak pleasantly, +remain silent." +A breakfastroom adjoined the drawingroom, I slipped in there. It +contained a bookcase I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking +care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into +the windowseat gathering up my feet, I sat crosslegged, like +a Turk and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I +was shrined in double retirement. +Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand to the +left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating +me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over +the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. +Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud near a scene of +wet lawn and stormbeat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away +wildly before a long and lamentable blast. +I returned to my book Bewick's History of British Birds the +letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking and +yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I +could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of +the haunts of seafowl of "the solitary rocks and promontories" +by them only inhabited of the coast of Norway, studded with isles +from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape +"Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, +Boils round the naked, melancholy isles +Of farthest Thule and the Atlantic surge +Pours in among the stormy Hebrides." +Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of +Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, +with "the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions +of dreary space, that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm +fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed +in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre +the multiplied rigours of extreme cold." Of these deathwhite realms +I formed an idea of my own shadowy, like all the halfcomprehended +notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely +impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected +themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance +to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray to the +broken boat stranded on a desolate coast to the cold and ghastly +moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. +I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, +with its inscribed headstone its gate, its two trees, its low +horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newlyrisen crescent, +attesting the hour of eventide. +The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine +phantoms. +The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over +quickly it was an object of terror. +So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a +distant crowd surrounding a gallows. +Each picture told a story mysterious often to my undeveloped +understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting +as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter +evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour and when, having +brought her ironingtable to the nursery hearth, she allowed us +to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and +crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages +of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads +or as at a later period I discovered from the pages of Pamela, +and Henry, Earl of Moreland. +With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy happy at least in my +way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. +The breakfastroom door opened. +"Boh Madam Mope" cried the voice of John Reed then he paused +he found the room apparently empty. +"Where the dickens is she" he continued. "Lizzy Georgy +calling to his sisters Joan is not here tell mama she is run +out into the rain bad animal" +"It is well I drew the curtain," thought I and I wished fervently +he might not discover my hidingplace nor would John Reed have +found it out himself he was not quick either of vision or conception +but Eliza just put her head in at the door, and said at once +"She is in the windowseat, to be sure, Jack." +And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being +dragged forth by the said Jack. +"What do you want?" I asked, with awkward diffidence. +"Say, 'What do you want, Master Reed?'" was the answer. "I want +you to come here" and seating himself in an armchair, he intimated +by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him. +John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old four years older +than I, for I was but ten large and stout for his age, with a +dingy and unwholesome skin thick lineaments in a spacious visage, +heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually +at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared +eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school but +his mama had taken him home for a month or two, "on account of his +delicate health." Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would +do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from +home but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and +inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's sallowness +was owing to overapplication and, perhaps, to pining after home. +John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and +an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me not two or three +times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually +every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones +shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered +by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against +either his menaces or his inflictions the servants did not like to +offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. +Reed was blind and deaf on the subject she never saw him strike +or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very +presence, more frequently, however, behind her back. +Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair he spent +some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he +could without damaging the roots I knew he would soon strike, +and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly +appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonder if he +read that notion in my face for, all at once, without speaking, +he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my +equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair. +"That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since," said +he, "and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for +the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat" +Accustomed to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying +to it my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly +follow the insult. +"What were you doing behind the curtain?" he asked. +"I was reading." +"Show the book." +I returned to the window and fetched it thence. +"You have no business to take our books you are a dependent, mama +says you have no money your father left you none you ought to +beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and +eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense. +Now, I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves for they ARE mine +all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and +stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows." +I did so, not at first aware what was his intention but when +I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I +instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm not soon enough, +however the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my +head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was +sharp my terror had passed its climax other feelings succeeded. +"Wicked and cruel boy" I said. "You are like a murderer you +are like a slavedriver you are like the Roman emperors" +I had read Goldsmith's History of Rome, and had formed my opinion +of Nero, Caligula, c. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, +which I never thought thus to have declared aloud. +"What what" he cried. "Did she say that to me? Did you hear +her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won't I tell mama? but first " +He ran headlong at me I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder +he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant, +a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle +down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering these +sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him +in frantic sort. I don't very well know what I did with my hands, +but he called me "Rat Rat" and bellowed out aloud. Aid was +near him Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone +upstairs she now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie +and her maid Abbot. We were parted I heard the words +"Dear dear What a fury to fly at Master John" +"Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion" +Then Mrs. Reed subjoined +"Take her away to the redroom, and lock her in there." Four hands +were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs. +CHAPTER II +I resisted all the way a new thing for me, and a circumstance +which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot +were disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle +beside myself or rather OUT of myself, as the French would say +I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me +liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I +felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths. +"Hold her arms, Miss Abbot she's like a mad cat." +"For shame for shame" cried the lady'smaid. "What shocking +conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress's +son Your young master." +"Master How is he my master? Am I a servant?" +"No you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. +There, sit down, and think over your wickedness." +They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. +Reed, and had thrust me upon a stool my impulse was to rise from +it like a spring their two pair of hands arrested me instantly. +"If you don't sit still, you must be tied down," said Bessie. "Miss +Abbot, lend me your garters she would break mine directly." +Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. +This preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, +took a little of the excitement out of me. +"Don't take them off," I cried "I will not stir." +In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands. +"Mind you don't," said Bessie and when she had ascertained that +I was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me then she and +Miss Abbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully +on my face, as incredulous of my sanity. +"She never did so before," at last said Bessie, turning to the +Abigail. +"But it was always in her," was the reply. "I've told Missis often +my opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She's an +underhand little thing I never saw a girl of her age with so much +cover." +Bessie answered not but ere long, addressing me, she said "You +ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. +Reed she keeps you if she were to turn you off, you would have +to go to the poorhouse." +I had nothing to say to these words they were not new to me my +very first recollections of existence included hints of the same +kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague singsong +in my ear very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. +Miss Abbot joined in +"And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses +Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought +up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will +have none it is your place to be humble, and to try to make +yourself agreeable to them." +"What we tell you is for your good," added Bessie, in no harsh +voice, "you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, +you would have a home here but if you become passionate and rude, +Missis will send you away, I am sure." +"Besides," said Miss Abbot, "God will punish her He might strike +her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? +Come, Bessie, we will leave her I wouldn't have her heart for +anything. Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself +for if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to come +down the chimney and fetch you away." +They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them. +The redroom was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might +say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at +Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the +accommodation it contained yet it was one of the largest and +stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive +pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood +out like a tabernacle in the centre the two large windows, with +their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons +and falls of similar drapery the carpet was red the table at the +foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth the walls were +a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it the wardrobe, the +toilettable, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out +of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the +piledup mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy +Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample +cushioned easychair near the head of the bed, also white, with a +footstool before it and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne. +This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire it was silent, +because remote from the nursery and kitchen solemn, because it +was known to be so seldom entered. The housemaid alone came here +on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week's +quiet dust and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it +to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, +where were stored divers parchments, her jewelcasket, and a miniature +of her deceased husband and in those last words lies the secret +of the redroom the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of +its grandeur. +Mr. Reed had been dead nine years it was in this chamber he breathed +his last here he lay in state hence his coffin was borne by the +undertaker's men and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration +had guarded it from frequent intrusion. +My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me +riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimneypiece the bed +rose before me to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, +with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels +to my left were the muffled windows a great lookingglass between +them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not +quite sure whether they had locked the door and when I dared move, +I got up and went to see. Alas yes no jail was ever more secure. +Returning, I had to cross before the lookingglass my fascinated +glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked +colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality and +the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and +arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where +all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit I thought +it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's +evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells +in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I +returned to my stool. +Superstition was with me at that moment but it was not yet her +hour for complete victory my blood was still warm the mood of +the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour I +had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed +to the dismal present. +All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference, +all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned +up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why +was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for +ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to +try to win any one's favour? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, +was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid +spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged. +Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight +to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. +John no one thwarted, much less punished though he twisted the +necks of the pigeons, killed the little peachicks, set the dogs +at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke +the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory he called +his mother "old girl," too sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, +similar to his own bluntly disregarded her wishes not unfrequently +tore and spoiled her silk attire and he was still "her own darling." +I dared commit no fault I strove to fulfil every duty and I was +termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to +noon, and from noon to night. +My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received +no one had reproved John for wantonly striking me and because I +had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was +loaded with general opprobrium. +"Unjust unjust" said my reason, forced by the agonising +stimulus into precocious though transitory power and Resolve, +equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve +escape from insupportable oppression as running away, or, if that +could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting +myself die. +What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon How +all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection +Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle +fought I could not answer the ceaseless inward question WHY I +thus suffered now, at the distance of I will not say how many +years, I see it clearly. +I was a discord in Gateshead Hall I was like nobody there I had +nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen +vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love +them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that +could not sympathise with one amongst them a heterogeneous thing, +opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities a +useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to +their pleasure a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation +at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I know that +had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, +romping child though equally dependent and friendless Mrs. Reed +would have endured my presence more complacently her children would +have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellowfeeling +the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat +of the nursery. +Daylight began to forsake the redroom it was past four o'clock, +and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard +the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and +the wind howling in the grove behind the hall I grew by degrees +cold as a stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of +humiliation, selfdoubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers +of my decaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be +so what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself +to death? That certainly was a crime and was I fit to die? Or +was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting +bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried +and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with +gathering dread. I could not remember him but I knew that he was +my own uncle my mother's brother that he had taken me when +a parentless infant to his house and that in his last moments he +had required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain +me as one of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably considered she +had kept this promise and so she had, I dare say, as well as her +nature would permit her but how could she really like an interloper +not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband's +death, by any tie? It must have been most irksome to find herself +bound by a hardwrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to +a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien +permanently intruded on her own family group. +A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not never doubted +that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly +and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls +occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly +gleaning mirror I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, +troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, +revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed +and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his +sister's child, might quit its abode whether in the church vault +or in the unknown world of the departed and rise before me in +this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest +any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to +comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over +me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt +would be terrible if realised with all my might I endeavoured +to stifle it I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from +my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark +room at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked +myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? +No moonlight was still, and this stirred while I gazed, it glided +up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture +readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam +from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn but then, +prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by +agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some +coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew +hot a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings +something seemed near me I was oppressed, suffocated endurance +broke down I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate +effort. Steps came running along the outer passage the key turned, +Bessie and Abbot entered. +"Miss Eyre, are you ill?" said Bessie. +"What a dreadful noise it went quite through me" exclaimed +Abbot. +"Take me out Let me go into the nursery" was my cry. +"What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?" again demanded +Bessie. +"Oh I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come." I had now +got hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me. +"She has screamed out on purpose," declared Abbot, in some disgust. +"And what a scream If she had been in great pain one would have +excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here I know her +naughty tricks." +"What is all this?" demanded another voice peremptorily and Mrs. +Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling +stormily. "Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane +Eyre should be left in the redroom till I came to her myself." +"Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma'am," pleaded Bessie. +"Let her go," was the only answer. "Loose Bessie's hand, child +you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I +abhor artifice, particularly in children it is my duty to show +you that tricks will not answer you will now stay here an hour +longer, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and +stillness that I shall liberate you then." +"O aunt have pity Forgive me I cannot endure it +let me be punished some other way I shall be killed if " +"Silence This violence is all most repulsive" and so, no doubt, +she felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes she sincerely +looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and +dangerous duplicity. +Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now +frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked +me in, without farther parley. I heard her sweeping away and soon +after she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit unconsciousness +closed the scene. +CHAPTER III +The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I +had had a frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red +glare, crossed with thick black bars. I heard voices, too, speaking +with a hollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water +agitation, uncertainty, and an allpredominating sense of terror +confused my faculties. Ere long, I became aware that some one was +handling me lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, +and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. +I rested my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy. +In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved I knew +quite well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the +nursery fire. It was night a candle burnt on the table Bessie +stood at the bedfoot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman +sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me. +I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection +and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, +an individual not belonging to Gateshead., and not related to +Mrs. Reed. Turning from Bessie though her presence was far less +obnoxious to me than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been, +I scrutinised the face of the gentleman I knew him it was Mr. +Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the +servants were ailing for herself and the children she employed +a physician. +"Well, who am I?" he asked. +I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand he +took it, smiling and saying, "We shall do very well byandby." +Then he laid me down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very +careful that I was not disturbed during the night. Having given +some further directions, and intimates that he should call again +the next day, he departed to my grief I felt so sheltered and +befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow and as he +closed the door after him, all the room darkened and my heart again +sank inexpressible sadness weighed it down. +"Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss?" asked Bessie, rather +softly. +Scarcely dared I answer her for I feared the next sentence might +be rough. "I will try." +"Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?" +"No, thank you, Bessie." +"Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o'clock +but you may call me if you want anything in the night." +Wonderful civility this It emboldened me to ask a question. +"Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill?" +"You fell sick, I suppose, in the redroom with crying you'll be +better soon, no doubt." +Bessie went into the housemaid's apartment, which was near. I +heard her say +"Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery I daren't for my +life be alone with that poor child tonight she might die it's +such a strange thing she should have that fit I wonder if she +saw anything. Missis was rather too hard." +Sarah came back with her they both went to bed they were whispering +together for halfanhour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps +of their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly +to infer the main subject discussed. +"Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished" +"A great black dog behind him" "Three loud raps on the chamber +door" "A light in the churchyard just over his grave," c. c. +At last both slept the fire and the candle went out. For me, the +watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness strained +by dread such dread as children only can feel. +No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident +of the redroom it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel +the reverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some +fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for +you knew not what you did while rending my heartstrings, you +thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities. +Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl +by the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down +but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind a +wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears no sooner had +I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed. Yet, +I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Reeds were +there, they were all gone out in the carriage with their mama. +Abbot, too, was sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved +hither and thither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed +to me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness. This state +of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed +as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging +but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no +calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably. +Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with +her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird +of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had +been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration +and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my +hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto +been deemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel +was now placed on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the +circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain favour coming, like +most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late +I could not eat the tart and the plumage of the bird, the tints +of the flowers, seemed strangely faded I put both plate and tart +away. Bessie asked if I would have a book the word BOOK acted as +a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels +from the library. This book I had again and again perused with +delight. I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in +it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales for +as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves +and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the groundivy mantling old +wallnooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that +they were all gone out of England to some savage country where +the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant +whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of +the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking +a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and +trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of +the one realm and the cornfields foresthigh, the mighty mastiffs, +the monster cats, the towerlike men and women, of the other. +Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand when +I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures +the charm I had, till now, never failed to find all was eerie +and dreary the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent +and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread +and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer +peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart. +Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and having +washed her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full +of splendid shreds of silk and satin, and began making a new +bonnet for Georgiana's doll. Meantime she sang her song was +"In the days when we went gipsying, A long time ago." +I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight +for Bessie had a sweet voice, at least, I thought so. But +now, though her voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an +indescribable sadness. Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she +sang the refrain very low, very lingeringly "A long time ago" came +out like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn. She passed into +another ballad, this time a really doleful one. +"My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary Long is the way, +and the mountains are wild Soon will the twilight close moonless +and dreary Over the path of the poor orphan child. +"Why did they send me so far and so lonely, Up where the moors +spread and grey rocks are piled? Men are hardhearted, and kind +angels only Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child. +"Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing, Clouds there are +none, and clear stars beam mild, God, in His mercy, protection is +showing, Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child. +"Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing, Or stray in +the marshes, by false lights beguiled, Still will my Father, with +promise and blessing, Take to His bosom the poor orphan child. +"There is a thought that for strength should avail me, Though both +of shelter and kindred despoiled Heaven is a home, and a rest will +not fail me God is a friend to the poor orphan child." +"Come, Miss Jane, don't cry," said Bessie as she finished. She +might as well have said to the fire, "don't burn" but how could +she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey? In the +course of the morning Mr. Lloyd came again. +"What, already up" said he, as he entered the nursery. "Well, +nurse, how is she?" +Bessie answered that I was doing very well. +"Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Jane your +name is Jane, is it not?" +"Yes, sir, Jane Eyre." +"Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre can you tell me what +about? Have you any pain?" +"No, sir." +"Oh I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with +Missis in the carriage," interposed Bessie. +"Surely not why, she is too old for such pettishness." +I thought so too and my selfesteem being wounded by the false +charge, I answered promptly, "I never cried for such a thing in +my life I hate going out in the carriage. I cry because I am +miserable." +"Oh fie, Miss" said Bessie. +The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing +before him he fixed his eyes on me very steadily his eyes were +small and grey not very bright, but I dare say I should think them +shrewd now he had a hardfeatured yet goodnatured looking +face. Having considered me at leisure, he said +"What made you ill yesterday?" +"She had a fall," said Bessie, again putting in her word. +"Fall why, that is like a baby again Can't she manage to walk +at her age? She must be eight or nine years old." +"I was knocked down," was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me +by another pang of mortified pride "but that did not make me ill," +I added while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff. +As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang +for the servants' dinner he knew what it was. "That's for you, +nurse," said he "you can go down I'll give Miss Jane a lecture +till you come back." +Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because +punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall. +"The fall did not make you ill what did, then?" pursued Mr. Lloyd +when Bessie was gone. +"I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark." +I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time. +"Ghost What, you are a baby after all You are afraid of ghosts?" +"Of Mr. Reed's ghost I am he died in that room, and was laid out +there. Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night, +if they can help it and it was cruel to shut me up alone without +a candle, so cruel that I think I shall never forget it." +"Nonsense And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraid +now in daylight?" +"No but night will come again before long and besides, I am +unhappy, very unhappy, for other things." +"What other things? Can you tell me some of them?" +How much I wished to reply fully to this question How difficult +it was to frame any answer Children can feel, but they cannot +analyse their feelings and if the analysis is partially effected +in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process +in words. Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity +of relieving my grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, +contrived to frame a meagre, though, as far as it went, true +response. +"For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters." +"You have a kind aunt and cousins." +Again I paused then bunglingly enounced +"But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the red +room." +Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuffbox. +"Don't you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?" asked +he. "Are you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live +at?" +"It is not my house, sir and Abbot says I have less right to be +here than a servant." +"Pooh you can't be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid +place?" +"If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it but +I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman." +"Perhaps you may who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs. +Reed?" +"I think not, sir." +"None belonging to your father?" +"I don't know. I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly +I might have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew +nothing about them." +"If you had such, would you like to go to them?" +I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people still more +so to children they have not much idea of industrious, working, +respectable poverty they think of the word only as connected with +ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and +debasing vices poverty for me was synonymous with degradation. +"No I should not like to belong to poor people," was my reply. +"Not even if they were kind to you?" +I shook my head I could not see how poor people had the means of +being kind and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their +manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I +saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at +the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead no, I was not heroic +enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste. +"But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people?" +"I cannot tell Aunt. Reed says if I have any, they must be a +beggarly set I should not like to go a begging." +"Would you like to go to school?" +Again I reflected I scarcely knew what school was Bessie +sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, +wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and +precise John Reed hated his school, and abused his master but +John Reed's tastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie's accounts +of schooldiscipline gathered from the young ladies of a family +where she had lived before coming to Gateshead were somewhat +appalling, her details of certain accomplishments attained by +these same young ladies were, I thought, equally attractive. She +boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers by them +executed of songs they could sing and pieces they could play, of +purses they could net, of French books they could translate till +my spirit was moved to emulation as I listened. Besides, school +would be a complete change it implied a long journey, an entire +separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life. +"I should indeed like to go to school," was the audible conclusion +of my musings. +"Well, well who knows what may happen?" said Mr. Lloyd, as he got +up. "The child ought to have change of air and scene," he added, +speaking to himself "nerves not in a good state." +Bessie now returned at the same moment the carriage was heard +rolling up the gravelwalk. +"Is that your mistress, nurse?" asked Mr. Lloyd. "I should like +to speak to her before I go." +Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfastroom, and led the way +out. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, +I presume, from afteroccurrences, that the apothecary ventured to +recommend my being sent to school and the recommendation was no +doubt readily enough adopted for as Abbot said, in discussing the +subject with Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night, +after I was in bed, and, as they thought, asleep, "Missis was, she +dared say, glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill conditioned +child, who always looked as if she were watching everybody, and +scheming plots underhand." Abbot, I think, gave me credit for +being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes. +On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss +Abbot's communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor +clergyman that my mother had married him against the wishes of her +friends, who considered the match beneath her that my grandfather +Reed was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without +a shilling that after my mother and father had been married a +year, the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the +poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, +and where that disease was then prevalent that my mother took +the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other. +Bessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, "Poor Miss +Jane is to be pitied, too, Abbot." +"Yes," responded Abbot "if she were a nice, pretty child, one might +compassionate her forlornness but one really cannot care for such +a little toad as that." +"Not a great deal, to be sure," agreed Bessie "at any rate, a beauty +like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition." +"Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana" cried the fervent Abbot. "Little +darling with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet +colour as she has just as if she were painted Bessie, I could +fancy a Welsh rabbit for supper." +"So could I with a roast onion. Come, we'll go down." They +went. +CHAPTER IV +From my discourse with Mr. Lloyd, and from the above reported +conference between Bessie and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope to +suffice as a motive for wishing to get well a change seemed near, +I desired and waited it in silence. It tarried, however days +and weeks passed I had regained my normal state of health, but +no new allusion was made to the subject over which I brooded. Mrs. +Reed surveyed me at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed +me since my illness, she had drawn a more marked line of separation +than ever between me and her own children appointing me a small +closet to sleep in by myself, condemning me to take my meals +alone, and pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins were +constantly in the drawingroom. Not a hint, however, did she drop +about sending me to school still I felt an instinctive certainty +that she would not long endure me under the same roof with her +for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me, expressed +an insuperable and rooted aversion. +Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke +to me as little as possible John thrust his tongue in his cheek +whenever he saw me, and once attempted chastisement but as I +instantly turned against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep +ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my corruption before, he +thought it better to desist, and ran from me tittering execrations, +and vowing I had burst his nose. I had indeed levelled at that +prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict +and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him, I had the +greatest inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose but he was +already with his mama. I heard him in a blubbering tone commence +the tale of how "that nasty Jane Eyre" had flown at him +like a mad cat he was stopped rather harshly +"Don't talk to me about her, John I told you not to go near her +she is not worthy of notice I do not choose that either you or +your sisters should associate with her." +Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, +and without at all deliberating on my words +"They are not fit to associate with me." +Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman but, on hearing this strange +and audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me +like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge +of my crib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, +or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day. +"What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?" was my +scarcely voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed +as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their +utterance something spoke out of me over which I had no control. +"What?" said Mrs. Reed under her breath her usually cold composed +grey eye became troubled with a look like fear she took her hand +from my arm, and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether +I were child or fiend. I was now in for it. +"My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think and +so can papa and mama they know how you shut me up all day long, +and how you wish me dead." +Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits she shook me most soundly, +she boxed both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie +supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she +proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child +ever reared under a roof. I half believed her for I felt indeed +only bad feelings surging in my breast. +November, December, and half of January passed away. Christmas +and the New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual +festive cheer presents had been interchanged, dinners and evening +parties given. From every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded my +share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling +of Eliza and Georgiana, and seeing them descend to the drawingroom, +dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair +elaborately ringletted and afterwards, in listening to the sound +of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro +of the butler and footman, to the jingling of glass and china as +refreshments were handed, to the broken hum of conversation as the +drawingroom door opened and closed. When tired of this occupation, +I would retire from the stairhead to the solitary and silent nursery +there, though somewhat sad, I was not miserable. To speak truth, +I had not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was +very rarely noticed and if Bessie had but been kind and companionable, +I should have deemed it a treat to spend the evenings quietly with +her, instead of passing them under the formidable eye of Mrs. Reed, +in a room full of ladies and gentlemen. But Bessie, as soon as +she had dressed her young ladies, used to take herself off to the +lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper's room, generally +bearing the candle along with her. I then sat with my doll on my +knee till the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make +sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room and +when the embers sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging +at knots and strings as I best might, and sought shelter from cold +and darkness in my crib. To this crib I always took my doll human +beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects +of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing +a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles +me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this +little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I +could not sleep unless it was folded in my nightgown and when it +lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it +to be happy likewise. +Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company, and +listened for the sound of Bessie's step on the stairs sometimes +she would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her +scissors, or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper a +bun or a cheesecake then she would sit on the bed while I ate +it, and when I had finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, +and twice she kissed me, and said, "Good night, Miss Jane." When +thus gentle, Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being +in the world and I wished most intensely that she would always +be so pleasant and amiable, and never push me about, or scold, or +task me unreasonably, as she was too often wont to do. Bessie Lee +must, I think, have been a girl of good natural capacity, for she +was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of narrative +so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery +tales. She was pretty too, if my recollections of her face and +person are correct. I remember her as a slim young woman, with black +hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear complexion +but she had a capricious and hasty temper, and indifferent ideas +of principle or justice still, such as she was, I preferred her +to any one else at Gateshead Hall. +It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o'clock in the morning +Bessie was gone down to breakfast my cousins had not yet been +summoned to their mama Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm +gardencoat to go and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she +was fond and not less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper +and hoarding up the money she thus obtained. She had a turn for +traffic, and a marked propensity for saving shown not only in the +vending of eggs and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains +with the gardener about flowerroots, seeds, and slips of plants +that functionary having orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of his young +lady all the products of her parterre she wished to sell and +Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made +a handsome profit thereby. As to her money, she first secreted +it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curlpaper but some +of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza, +fearful of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to intrust +it to her mother, at a usurious rate of interest fifty or sixty +per cent. which interest she exacted every quarter, keeping her +accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy. +Georgiana sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and +interweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, +of which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic. I was +making my bed, having received strict orders from Bessie to get it +arranged before she returned for Bessie now frequently employed me +as a sort of undernurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, +c.. Having spread the quilt and folded my nightdress, I went +to the windowseat to put in order some picturebooks and doll's +house furniture scattered there an abrupt command from Georgiana +to let her playthings alone for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the +fairy plates and cups, were her property stopped my proceedings +and then, for lack of other occupation, I fell to breathing on the +frostflowers with which the window was fretted, and thus clearing +a space in the glass through which I might look out on the grounds, +where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard +frost. +From this window were visible the porter's lodge and the carriage +road, and just as I had dissolved so much of the silverwhite foliage +veiling the panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown +open and a carriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive +with indifference carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever +brought visitors in whom I was interested it stopped in front of +the house, the doorbell rang loudly, the newcomer was admitted. +All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier +attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and +chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherrytree nailed against +the wall near the casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread +and milk stood on the table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, +I was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the window +sill, when Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery. +"Miss Jane, take off your pinafore what are you doing there? Have +you washed your hands and face this morning?" I gave another tug +before I answered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread +the sash yielded I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, +some on the cherrytree bough, then, closing the window, I replied +"No, Bessie I have only just finished dusting." +"Troublesome, careless child and what are you doing now? You +look quite red, as if you had been about some mischief what were +you opening the window for?" +I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great +a hurry to listen to explanations she hauled me to the washstand, +inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands +with soap, water, and a coarse towel disciplined my head with a +bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to +the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in +the breakfastroom. +I would have asked who wanted me I would have demanded if +Mrs. Reed was there but Bessie was already gone, and had closed +the nurserydoor upon me. I slowly descended. For nearly three +months, I had never been called to Mrs. Reed's presence restricted +so long to the nursery, the breakfast, dining, and drawingrooms +were become for me awful regions, on which it dismayed me to intrude. +I now stood in the empty hall before me was the breakfastroom +door, and I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable +little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of +me in those days I feared to return to the nursery, and feared +to go forward to the parlour ten minutes I stood in agitated +hesitation the vehement ringing of the breakfastroom bell decided +me I MUST enter. +"Who could want me?" I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned +the stiff doorhandle, which, for a second or two, resisted my +efforts. "What should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment? +a man or a woman?" The handle turned, the door unclosed, +and passing through and curtseying low, I looked up at a black +pillar such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the +straight, narrow, sableclad shape standing erect on the rug the +grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft +by way of capital. +Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside she made a +signal to me to approach I did so, and she introduced me to the +stony stranger with the words "This is the little girl respecting +whom I applied to you." +HE, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood, +and having examined me with the two inquisitivelooking grey eyes +which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in +a bass voice, "Her size is small what is her age?" +"Ten years." +"So much?" was the doubtful answer and he prolonged his scrutiny +for some minutes. Presently he addressed me "Your name, little +girl?" +"Jane Eyre, sir." +In uttering these words I looked up he seemed to me a tall gentleman +but then I was very little his features were large, and they and +all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim. +"Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?" +Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative my little world +held a contrary opinion I was silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me +by an expressive shake of the head, adding soon, "Perhaps the less +said on that subject the better, Mr. Brocklehurst." +"Sorry indeed to hear it she and I must have some talk" and +bending from the perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm +chair opposite Mrs. Reed's. "Come here," he said. +I stepped across the rug he placed me square and straight before +him. What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level +with mine what a great nose and what a mouth and what large +prominent teeth +"No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a +naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?" +"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer. +"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?" +"A pit full of fire." +"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there +for ever?" +"No, sir." +"What must you do to avoid it?" +I deliberated a moment my answer, when it did come, was objectionable +"I must keep in good health, and not die." +"How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die +daily. I buried a little child of five years old only a day or +two since, a good little child, whose soul is now in heaven. +It is to be feared the same could not be said of you were you to +be called hence." +Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes +down on the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing +myself far enough away. +"I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever +having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress." +"Benefactress benefactress" said I inwardly "they all call +Mrs. Reed my benefactress if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable +thing." +"Do you say your prayers night and morning?" continued my +interrogator. +"Yes, sir." +"Do you read your Bible?" +"Sometimes." +"With pleasure? Are you fond of it?" +"I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, +and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, +and Job and Jonah." +"And the Psalms? I hope you like them?" +"No, sir." +"No? oh, shocking I have a little boy, younger than you, who +knows six Psalms by heart and when you ask him which he would +rather have, a gingerbreadnut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to +learn, he says 'Oh the verse of a Psalm angels sing Psalms' +says he, 'I wish to be a little angel here below' he then gets +two nuts in recompense for his infant piety." +"Psalms are not interesting," I remarked. +"That proves you have a wicked heart and you must pray to God to +change it to give you a new and clean one to take away your +heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." +I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which +that operation of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs. +Reed interposed, telling me to sit down she then proceeded to +carry on the conversation herself. +"Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I +wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite +the character and disposition I could wish should you admit her +into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and +teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above +all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit. I +mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to +impose on Mr. Brocklehurst." +Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed for it was +her nature to wound me cruelly never was I happy in her presence +however carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please +her, my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences +as the above. Now, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut +me to the heart I dimly perceived that she was already obliterating +hope from the new phase of existence which she destined me to +enter I felt, though I could not have expressed the feeling, that +she was sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path I saw +myself transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst's eye into an artful, +noxious child, and what could I do to remedy the injury? +"Nothing, indeed," thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and +hastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish. +"Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child," said Mr. Brocklehurst +"it is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in +the lake burning with fire and brimstone she shall, however, be +watched, Mrs. Reed. I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers." +"I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects," +continued my benefactress "to be made useful, to be kept humble +as for the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them +always at Lowood." +"Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam," returned Mr. +Brocklehurst. "Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly +appropriate to the pupils of Lowood I, therefore, direct that +especial care shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them. +I have studied how best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment +of pride and, only the other day, I had a pleasing proof of my +success. My second daughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit +the school, and on her return she exclaimed 'Oh, dear papa, +how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look, with their hair +combed behind their ears, and their long pinafores, and those little +holland pockets outside their frocks they are almost like poor +people's children and,' said she, 'they looked at my dress and +mama's, as if they had never seen a silk gown before.'" +"This is the state of things I quite approve," returned Mrs. +Reed "had I sought all England over, I could scarcely have found +a system more exactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre. Consistency, +my dear Mr. Brocklehurst I advocate consistency in all things." +"Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties and it has +been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment +of Lowood plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, +hardy and active habits such is the order of the day in the house +and its inhabitants." +"Quite right, sir. I may then depend upon this child being received +as a pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her +position and prospects?" +"Madam, you may she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen +plants, and I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable +privilege of her election." +"I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Brocklehurst for, +I assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility +that was becoming too irksome." +"No doubt, no doubt, madam and now I wish you good morning. I +shall return to Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two +my good friend, the Archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him +sooner. I shall send Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a +new girl, so that there will he no difficulty about receiving her. +Goodbye." +"Goodbye, Mr. Brocklehurst remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst, +and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst." +"I will, madam. Little girl, here is a book entitled the 'Child's +Guide,' read it with prayer, especially that part containing 'An +account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G , a naughty child +addicted to falsehood and deceit.'" +With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet +sewn in a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed. +Mrs. Reed and I were left alone some minutes passed in silence +she was sewing, I was watching her. Mrs. Reed might be at that +time some six or seven and thirty she was a woman of robust frame, +squareshouldered and stronglimbed, not tall, and, though stout, +not obese she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being +much developed and very solid her brow was low, her chin large and +prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular under her light +eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth her skin was dark and +opaque, her hair nearly flaxen her constitution was sound as a bell +illness never came near her she was an exact, clever manager +her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control +her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to +scorn she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to +set off handsome attire. +Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her armchair, I examined +her figure I perused her features. In my hand I held the +tract containing the sudden death of the Liar, to which narrative +my attention had been pointed as to an appropriate warning. What +had just passed what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me to Mr. +Brocklehurst the whole tenor of their conversation, was recent, +raw, and stinging in my mind I had felt every word as acutely as +I had heard it plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now +within me. +Mrs. Reed looked up from her work her eye settled on mine, her +fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements. +"Go out of the room return to the nursery," was her mandate. My +look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she +spoke with extreme though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went +to the door I came back again I walked to the window, across the +room, then close up to her. +SPEAK I must I had been trodden on severely, and MUST turn but +how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? +I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence +"I am not deceitful if I were, I should say I loved you but I +declare I do not love you I dislike you the worst of anybody in +the world except John Reed and this book about the liar, you may +give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and +not I." +Mrs. Reed's hands still lay on her work inactive her eye of ice +continued to dwell freezingly on mine. +"What more have you to say?" she asked, rather in the tone in +which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as +is ordinarily used to a child. +That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had. +Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, +I continued +"I am glad you are no relation of mine I will never call you +aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when +I am grown up and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you +treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and +that you treated me with miserable cruelty." +"How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?" +"How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the TRUTH. You +think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love +or kindness but I cannot live so and you have no pity. I shall +remember how you thrust me back roughly and violently thrust +me back into the redroom, and locked me up there, to my dying +day though I was in agony though I cried out, while suffocating +with distress, 'Have mercy Have mercy, Aunt Reed' And that +punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me +knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me +questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but +you are bad, hard hearted. YOU are deceitful" +Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, +with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It +seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled +out into unhopedfor liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment +Mrs. Reed looked frightened her work had slipped from her knee +she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even +twisting her face as if she would cry. +"Jane, you are under a mistake what is the matter with you? Why +do you tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?" +"No, Mrs. Reed." +"Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire +to be your friend." +"Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a +deceitful disposition and I'll let everybody at Lowood know what +you are, and what you have done." +"Jane, you don't understand these things children must be corrected +for their faults." +"Deceit is not my fault" I cried out in a savage, high voice. +"But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow and now return +to the nursery there's a dear and lie down a little." +"I am not your dear I cannot lie down send me to school soon, +Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here." +"I will indeed send her to school soon," murmured Mrs. Reed sotto +voce and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment. +I was left there alone winner of the field. It was the hardest +battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained I stood +awhile on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed +my conqueror's solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt +elate but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the +accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its +elders, as I had done cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled +play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang +of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, +alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my +mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed the same ridge, black +and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as +meetly my subsequent condition, when halfanhour's silence and +reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness +of my hated and hating position. +Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time as aromatic +wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy its afterflavour, +metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. +Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon but +I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was +the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby reexciting +every turbulent impulse of my nature. +I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce +speaking fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than +that of sombre indignation. I took a book some Arabian tales +I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of +the subject my own thoughts swam always between me and the page +I had usually found fascinating. I opened the glassdoor in the +breakfastroom the shrubbery was quite still the black frost +reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds. I covered +my head and arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk +in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated but I +found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fircones, the +congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in +heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a gate, and +looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where the +short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day a +most opaque sky, "onding on snaw," canopied all thence flakes felt +it intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea +without melting. I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to +myself over and over again, "What shall I do? what shall I do?" +All at once I heard a clear voice call, "Miss Jane where are you? +Come to lunch" +It was Bessie, I knew well enough but I did not stir her light +step came tripping down the path. +"You naughty little thing" she said. "Why don't you come when +you are called?" +Bessie's presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been +brooding, seemed cheerful even though, as usual, she was somewhat +cross. The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. +Reed, I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid's transitory +anger and I WAS disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of +heart. I just put my two arms round her and said, "Come, Bessie +don't scold." +The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated +to indulge in somehow it pleased her. +"You are a strange child, Miss Jane," she said, as she looked down +at me "a little roving, solitary thing and you are going to +school, I suppose?" +I nodded. +"And won't you be sorry to leave poor Bessie?" +"What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me." +"Because you're such a queer, frightened, shy little thing. You +should be bolder." +"What to get more knocks?" +"Nonsense But you are rather put upon, that's certain. My mother +said, when she came to see me last week, that she would not like +a little one of her own to be in your place. Now, come in, and +I've some good news for you." +"I don't think you have, Bessie." +"Child what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me +Well, but Missis and the young ladies and Master John are going +out to tea this afternoon, and you shall have tea with me. I'll +ask cook to bake you a little cake, and then you shall help me to +look over your drawers for I am soon to pack your trunk. Missis +intends you to leave Gateshead in a day or two, and you shall choose +what toys you like to take with you." +"Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go." +"Well, I will but mind you are a very good girl, and don't be +afraid of me. Don't start when I chance to speak rather sharply +it's so provoking." +"I don't think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because +I have got used to you, and I shall soon have another set of people +to dread." +"If you dread them they'll dislike you." +"As you do, Bessie?" +"I don't dislike you, Miss I believe I am fonder of you than of +all the others." +"You don't show it." +"You little sharp thing you've got quite a new way of talking. +What makes you so venturesome and hardy?" +"Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides" I was going +to say something about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed, +but on second thoughts I considered it better to remain silent on +that head. +"And so you're glad to leave me?" +"Not at all, Bessie indeed, just now I'm rather sorry." +"Just now and rather How coolly my little lady says it I +dare say now if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn't give it +me you'd say you'd RATHER not." +"I'll kiss you and welcome bend your head down." Bessie stooped +we mutually embraced, and I followed her into the house quite +comforted. That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony and in the +evening Bessie told me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang +me some of her sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of +sunshine. +CHAPTER V +Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the th of +January, when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me +already up and nearly dressed. I had risen halfanhour before +her entrance, and had washed my face, and put on my clothes by the +light of a halfmoon just setting, whose rays streamed through the +narrow window near my crib. I was to leave Gateshead that day by +a coach which passed the lodge gates at six a.m. Bessie was the +only person yet risen she had lit a fire in the nursery, where +she now proceeded to make my breakfast. Few children can eat when +excited with the thoughts of a journey nor could I. Bessie, having +pressed me in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled milk and +bread she had prepared for me, wrapped up some biscuits in a paper +and put them into my bag then she helped me on with my pelisse +and bonnet, and wrapping herself in a shawl, she and I left the +nursery. As we passed Mrs. Reed's bedroom, she said, "Will you go +in and bid Missis goodbye?" +"No, Bessie she came to my crib last night when you were gone +down to supper, and said I need not disturb her in the morning, or +my cousins either and she told me to remember that she had always +been my best friend, and to speak of her and be grateful to her +accordingly." +"What did you say, Miss?" +"Nothing I covered my face with the bedclothes, and turned from +her to the wall." +"That was wrong, Miss Jane." +"It was quite right, Bessie. Your Missis has not been my friend +she has been my foe." +"O Miss Jane don't say so" +"Goodbye to Gateshead" cried I, as we passed through the hall +and went out at the front door. +The moon was set, and it was very dark Bessie carried a lantern, +whose light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent +thaw. Raw and chill was the winter morning my teeth chattered +as I hastened down the drive. There was a light in the porter's +lodge when we reached it, we found the porter's wife just kindling +her fire my trunk, which had been carried down the evening +before, stood corded at the door. It wanted but a few minutes of +six, and shortly after that hour had struck, the distant roll of +wheels announced the coming coach I went to the door and watched +its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom. +"Is she going by herself?" asked the porter's wife. +"Yes." +"And how far is it?" +"Fifty miles." +"What a long way I wonder Mrs. Reed is not afraid to trust her +so far alone." +The coach drew up there it was at the gates with its four horses +and its top laden with passengers the guard and coachman loudly +urged haste my trunk was hoisted up I was taken from Bessie's +neck, to which I clung with kisses. +"Be sure and take good care of her," cried she to the guard, as he +lifted me into the inside. +"Ay, ay" was the answer the door was slapped to, a voice exclaimed +"All right," and on we drove. Thus was I severed from Bessie and +Gateshead thus whirled away to unknown, and, as I then deemed, +remote and mysterious regions. +I remember but little of the journey I only know that the day +seemed to me of a preternatural length, and that we appeared to +travel over hundreds of miles of road. We passed through several +towns, and in one, a very large one, the coach stopped the horses +were taken out, and the passengers alighted to dine. I was carried +into an inn, where the guard wanted me to have some dinner but, as +I had no appetite, he left me in an immense room with a fireplace +at each end, a chandelier pendent from the ceiling, and a little red +gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments. +Here I walked about for a long time, feeling very strange, and +mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me for +I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently figured +in Bessie's fireside chronicles. At last the guard returned once +more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector mounted his own +seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we rattled over the "stony +street" of L. +The afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty as it waned into +dusk, I began to feel that we were getting very far indeed from +Gateshead we ceased to pass through towns the country changed +great grey hills heaved up round the horizon as twilight deepened, +we descended a valley, dark with wood, and long after night had +overclouded the prospect, I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees. +Lulled by the sound, I at last dropped asleep I had not long slumbered +when the sudden cessation of motion awoke me the coachdoor was +open, and a person like a servant was standing at it I saw her +face and dress by the light of the lamps. +"Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?" she asked. I +answered "Yes," and was then lifted out my trunk was handed down, +and the coach instantly drove away. +I was stiff with long sitting, and bewildered with the noise and +motion of the coach Gathering my faculties, I looked about me. +Rain, wind, and darkness filled the air nevertheless, I dimly +discerned a wall before me and a door open in it through this door +I passed with my new guide she shut and locked it behind her. +There was now visible a house or houses for the building spread +far with many windows, and lights burning in some we went up +a broad pebbly path, splashing wet, and were admitted at a door +then the servant led me through a passage into a room with a fire, +where she left me alone. +I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze, then I looked +round there was no candle, but the uncertain light from the hearth +showed, by intervals, papered walls, carpet, curtains, shining +mahogany furniture it was a parlour, not so spacious or splendid +as the drawingroom at Gateshead, but comfortable enough. I was +puzzling to make out the subject of a picture on the wall, when the +door opened, and an individual carrying a light entered another +followed close behind. +The first was a tall lady with dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale +and large forehead her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl, +her countenance was grave, her bearing erect. +"The child is very young to be sent alone," said she, putting +her candle down on the table. She considered me attentively +for a minute or two, then further added +"She had better be put to bed soon she looks tired are you +tired?" she asked, placing her hand on my shoulder. +"A little, ma'am." +"And hungry too, no doubt let her have some supper before she +goes to bed, Miss Miller. Is this the first time you have left +your parents to come to school, my little girl?" +I explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long +they had been dead then how old I was, what was my name, whether +I could read, write, and sew a little then she touched my cheek +gently with her forefinger, and saying, "She hoped I should be a +good child," dismissed me along with Miss Miller. +The lady I had left might be about twentynine the one who went +with me appeared some years younger the first impressed me by +her voice, look, and air. Miss Miller was more ordinary ruddy in +complexion, though of a careworn countenance hurried in gait and +action, like one who had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand +she looked, indeed, what I afterwards found she really was, an +underteacher. Led by her, I passed from compartment to compartment, +from passage to passage, of a large and irregular building till, +emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that +portion of the house we had traversed, we came upon the hum of many +voices, and presently entered a wide, long room, with great deal +tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of candles, +and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every +age, from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by the dim light of the +dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality +exceeding eighty they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks +of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores. It was the hour of +study they were engaged in conning over their to morrow's task, +and the hum I had heard was the combined result of their whispered +repetitions. +Miss Miller signed to me to sit on a bench near the door, +then walking up to the top of the long room she cried out +"Monitors, collect the lessonbooks and put them away Four tall +girls arose from different tables, and going round, gathered the +books and removed them. Miss Miller again gave the word of command +"Monitors, fetch the suppertrays" +The tall girls went out and returned presently, each bearing a tray, +with portions of something, I knew not what, arranged thereon, and +a pitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray. The portions +were handed round those who liked took a draught of the water, +the mug being common to all. When it came to my turn, I drank, for +I was thirsty, but did not touch the food, excitement and fatigue +rendering me incapable of eating I now saw, however, that it was +a thin oaten cake shaved into fragments. +The meal over, prayers were read by Miss Miller, and the classes +filed off, two and two, upstairs. Overpowered by this time with +weariness, I scarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was, +except that, like the schoolroom, I saw it was very long. Tonight +I was to be Miss Miller's bedfellow she helped me to undress +when laid down I glanced at the long rows of beds, each of which +was quickly filled with two occupants in ten minutes the single +light was extinguished, and amidst silence and complete darkness +I fell asleep. +The night passed rapidly. I was too tired even to dream I only +once awoke to hear the wind rave in furious gusts, and the rain +fall in torrents, and to be sensible that Miss Miller had taken +her place by my side. When I again unclosed my eyes, a loud bell +was ringing the girls were up and dressing day had not yet begun +to dawn, and a rushlight or two burned in the room. I too rose +reluctantly it was bitter cold, and I dressed as well as I could +for shivering, and washed when there was a basin at liberty, which +did not occur soon, as there was but one basin to six girls, on +the stands down the middle of the room. Again the bell rang all +formed in file, two and two, and in that order descended the stairs +and entered the cold and dimly lit schoolroom here prayers +were read by Miss Miller afterwards she called out +"Form classes" +A great tumult succeeded for some minutes, during which Miss Miller +repeatedly exclaimed, "Silence" and "Order" When it subsided, +I saw them all drawn up in four semicircles, before four chairs, +placed at the four tables all held books in their hands, and a great +book, like a Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat. A +pause of some seconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum +of numbers Miss Miller walked from class to class, hushing this +indefinite sound. +A distant bell tinkled immediately three ladies entered the room, +each walked to a table and took her seat. Miss Miller assumed the +fourth vacant chair, which was that nearest the door, and around +which the smallest of the children were assembled to this inferior +class I was called, and placed at the bottom of it. +Business now began, the day's Collect was repeated, then certain +texts of Scripture were said, and to these succeeded a protracted +reading of chapters in the Bible, which lasted an hour. By +the time that exercise was terminated, day had fully dawned. The +indefatigable bell now sounded for the fourth time the classes +were marshalled and marched into another room to breakfast how +glad I was to behold a prospect of getting something to eat I +was now nearly sick from inanition, having taken so little the day +before. +The refectory was a great, lowceiled, gloomy room on two long tables +smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent +forth an odour far from inviting. I saw a universal manifestation +of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils +of those destined to swallow it from the van of the procession, +the tall girls of the first class, rose the whispered words +"Disgusting The porridge is burnt again" +"Silence" ejaculated a voice not that of Miss Miller, but one of +the upper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed, +but of somewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top +of one table, while a more buxom lady presided at the other. I +looked in vain for her I had first seen the night before she was +not visible Miss Miller occupied the foot of the table where I sat, +and a strange, foreignlooking, elderly lady, the French teacher, +as I afterwards found, took the corresponding seat at the other +board. A long grace was said and a hymn sung then a servant +brought in some tea for the teachers, and the meal began. +Ravenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my +portion without thinking of its taste but the first edge of hunger +blunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess burnt +porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes famine itself soon +sickens over it. The spoons were moved slowly I saw each girl +taste her food and try to swallow it but in most cases the effort +was soon relinquished. Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted. +Thanks being returned for what we had not got, and a second hymn +chanted, the refectory was evacuated for the schoolroom. I was one +of the last to go out, and in passing the tables, I saw one teacher +take a basin of the porridge and taste it she looked at the others +all their countenances expressed displeasure, and one of +them, the stout one, whispered +"Abominable stuff How shameful" +A quarter of an hour passed before lessons again began, during which +the schoolroom was in a glorious tumult for that space of time it +seemed to be permitted to talk loud and more freely, and they used +their privilege. The whole conversation ran on the breakfast, +which one and all abused roundly. Poor things it was the sole +consolation they had. Miss Miller was now the only teacher in the +room a group of great girls standing about her spoke with serious +and sullen gestures. I heard the name of Mr. Brocklehurst pronounced +by some lips at which Miss Miller shook her head disapprovingly +but she made no great effort to cheek the general wrath doubtless +she shared in it. +A clock in the schoolroom struck nine Miss Miller left +her circle, and standing in the middle of the room, cried +"Silence To your seats" +Discipline prevailed in five minutes the confused throng was +resolved into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel +clamour of tongues. The upper teachers now punctually resumed their +posts but still, all seemed to wait. Ranged on benches down the +sides of the room, the eighty girls sat motionless and erect a +quaint assemblage they appeared, all with plain locks combed from +their faces, not a curl visible in brown dresses, made high and +surrounded by a narrow tucker about the throat, with little pockets +of holland shaped something like a Highlander's purse tied in front +of their frocks, and destined to serve the purpose of a workbag +all, too, wearing woollen stockings and countrymade shoes, fastened +with brass buckles. Above twenty of those clad in this costume +were fullgrown girls, or rather young women it suited them ill, +and gave an air of oddity even to the prettiest. +I was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the +teachers none of whom precisely pleased me for the stout one +was a little coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner +harsh and grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing looked purple, +weather beaten, and overworked when, as my eye wandered from +face to face, the whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by +a common spring. +What was the matter? I had heard no order given I was puzzled. +Ere I had gathered my wits, the classes were again seated but as +all eyes were now turned to one point, mine followed the general +direction, and encountered the personage who had received me last +night. She stood at the bottom of the long room, on the hearth +for there was a fire at each end she surveyed the two rows of girls +silently and gravely. Miss Miller approaching, seemed to ask her +a question, and having received her answer, went back to +her place, and said aloud +"Monitor of the first class, fetch the globes" +While the direction was being executed, the lady consulted moved +slowly up the room. I suppose I have a considerable organ of +veneration, for I retain yet the sense of admiring awe with which +my eyes traced her steps. Seen now, in broad daylight, she looked +tall, fair, and shapely brown eyes with a benignant light in their +iris, and a fine pencilling of long lashes round, relieved the +whiteness of her large front on each of her temples her hair, of +a very dark brown, was clustered in round curls, according to the +fashion of those times, when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets +were in vogue her dress, also in the mode of the day, was of purple +cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black velvet +a gold watch watches were not so common then as now shone at +her girdle. Let the reader add, to complete the picture, refined +features a complexion, if pale, clear and a stately air and +carriage, and he will have, at least, as clearly as words can give +it, a correct idea of the exterior of Miss Temple Maria Temple, +as I afterwards saw the name written in a prayerbook intrusted to +me to carry to church. +The superintendent of Lowood for such was this lady having taken +her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, +summoned the first class round her, and commenced giving a lesson +on geography the lower classes were called by the teachers +repetitions in history, grammar, c., went on for an hour writing +and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss +Temple to some of the elder girls. The duration of each lesson +was measured by the clock, which at last struck twelve. The +superintendent rose +"I have a word to address to the pupils," said she. +The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking +forth, but it sank at her voice. She went on +"You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat you +must be hungry I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese +shall be served to all." +The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise. +"It is to be done on my responsibility," she added, in an explanatory +tone to them, and immediately afterwards left the room. +The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to +the high delight and refreshment of the whole school. The order +was now given "To the garden" Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, +with strings of coloured calico, and a cloak of grey frieze. I was +similarly equipped, and, following the stream, I made my way into +the open air. +The garden was a wide inclosure, surrounded with walls so high as +to exclude every glimpse of prospect a covered verandah ran down +one side, and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into +scores of little beds these beds were assigned as gardens for +the pupils to cultivate, and each bed had an owner. When full of +flowers they would doubtless look pretty but now, at the latter +end of January, all was wintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered +as I stood and looked round me it was an inclement day for outdoor +exercise not positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling yellow +fog all under foot was still soaking wet with the floods of +yesterday. The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in +active games, but sundry pale and thin ones herded together for +shelter and warmth in the verandah and amongst these, as the dense +mist penetrated to their shivering frames, I heard frequently the +sound of a hollow cough. +As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice +of me I stood lonely enough but to that feeling of isolation +I was accustomed it did not oppress me much. I leant against a +pillar of the verandah, drew my grey mantle close about me, and, +trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied +hunger which gnawed me within, delivered myself up to the employment +of watching and thinking. My reflections were too undefined +and fragmentary to merit record I hardly yet knew where I was +Gateshead and my past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable +distance the present was vague and strange, and of the future I +could form no conjecture. I looked round the conventlike garden, +and then up at the house a large building, half of which seemed +grey and old, the other half quite new. The new part, containing +the schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by mullioned and latticed +windows, which gave it a churchlike aspect a stone tablet over +the door bore this inscription +"Lowood Institution. This portion was rebuilt A.D. , by Naomi +Brocklehurst, of Brocklehurst Hall, in this county." +"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good +works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." St. Matt. +v. . +I read these words over and over again I felt that an explanation +belonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate their import. +I was still pondering the signification of "Institution," and +endeavouring to make out a connection between the first words and +the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a cough close behind me +made me turn my head. I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near +she was bent over a book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent +from where I stood I could see the title it was "Rasselas" a +name that struck me as strange, and consequently attractive. In +turning a leaf she happened to look up, and I said to her directly +"Is your book interesting?" I had already formed the intention of +asking her to lend it to me some day. +"I like it," she answered, after a pause of a second or two, during +which she examined me. +"What is it about?" I continued. I hardly know where I found the +hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger the step +was contrary to my nature and habits but I think her occupation +touched a chord of sympathy somewhere for I too liked reading, +though of a frivolous and childish kind I could not digest or +comprehend the serious or substantial. +"You may look at it," replied the girl, offering me the book. +I did so a brief examination convinced me that the contents were +less taking than the title "Rasselas" looked dull to my trifling +taste I saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii no bright +variety seemed spread over the closelyprinted pages. I returned +it to her she received it quietly, and without saying anything +she was about to relapse into her former studious mood again +I ventured to disturb her +"Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door means? +What is Lowood Institution?" +"This house where you are come to live." +"And why do they call it Institution? Is it in any way different +from other schools?" +"It is partly a charityschool you and I, and all the rest of +us, are charitychildren. I suppose you are an orphan are not +either your father or your mother dead?" +"Both died before I can remember." +"Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, +and this is called an institution for educating orphans." +"Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing?" +"We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each." +"Then why do they call us charitychildren?" +"Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and +the deficiency is supplied by subscription." +"Who subscribes?" +"Different benevolentminded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood +and in London." +"Who was Naomi Brocklehurst?" +"The lady who built the new part of this house as that tablet +records, and whose son overlooks and directs everything here." +"Why?" +"Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment." +"Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a +watch, and who said we were to have some bread and cheese?" +"To Miss Temple? Oh, no I wish it did she has to answer to +Mr. Brocklehurst for all she does. Mr. Brocklehurst buys all our +food and all our clothes." +"Does he live here?" +"No two miles off, at a large hall." +"Is he a good man?" +"He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good." +"Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Temple?" +"Yes." +"And what are the other teachers called?" +"The one with red cheeks is called Miss Smith she attends to the +work, and cuts out for we make our own clothes, our frocks, and +pelisses, and everything the little one with black hair is Miss +Scatcherd she teaches history and grammar, and hears the second +class repetitions and the one who wears a shawl, and has a +pockethandkerchief tied to her side with a yellow ribband, is Madame +Pierrot she comes from Lisle, in France, and teaches French." +"Do you like the teachers?" +"Well enough." +"Do you like the little black one, and the Madame ? I cannot +pronounce her name as you do." +"Miss Scatcherd is hasty you must take care not to offend her +Madame Pierrot is not a bad sort of person." +"But Miss Temple is the best isn't she?" +"Miss Temple is very good and very clever she is above the rest, +because she knows far more than they do." +"Have you been long here?" +"Two years." +"Are you an orphan?" +"My mother is dead." +"Are you happy here?" +"You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough +for the present now I want to read." +But at that moment the summons sounded for dinner all reentered +the house. The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely +more appetising than that which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast +the dinner was served in two huge tinplated vessels, whence rose +a strong steam redolent of rancid fat. I found the mess to consist +of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and +cooked together. Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful +was apportioned to each pupil. I ate what I could, and wondered +within myself whether every day's fare would be like this. +After dinner, we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom lessons +recommenced, and were continued till five o'clock. +The only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the girl +with whom I had conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace +by Miss Scatcherd from a history class, and sent to stand in the +middle of the large schoolroom. The punishment seemed to me in +a high degree ignominious, especially for so great a girl she +looked thirteen or upwards. I expected she would show signs of +great distress and shame but to my surprise she neither wept nor +blushed composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of +all eyes. "How can she bear it so quietly so firmly?" I asked +of myself. "Were I in her place, it seems to me I should wish the +earth to open and swallow me up. She looks as if she were thinking +of something beyond her punishment beyond her situation of +something not round her nor before her. I have heard of daydreams +is she in a daydream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor, +but I am sure they do not see it her sight seems turned in, gone +down into her heart she is looking at what she can remember, I +believe not at what is really present. I wonder what sort of a +girl she is whether good or naughty." +Soon after five p.m. we had another meal, consisting of a small +mug of coffee, and halfaslice of brown bread. I devoured my +bread and drank my coffee with relish but I should have been glad +of as much more I was still hungry. Halfanhour's recreation +succeeded, then study then the glass of water and the piece of +oatcake, prayers, and bed. Such was my first day at Lowood. +CHAPTER VI +The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by +rushlight but this morning we were obliged to dispense with the +ceremony of washing the water in the pitchers was frozen. A change +had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen +northeast wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom +windows all night long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned +the contents of the ewers to ice. +Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Biblereading +was over, I felt ready to perish with cold. Breakfasttime came +at last, and this morning the porridge was not burnt the quality +was eatable, the quantity small. How small my portion seemed I +wished it had been doubled. +In the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the fourth class, +and regular tasks and occupations were assigned me hitherto, I +had only been a spectator of the proceedings at Lowood I was now +to become an actor therein. At first, being little accustomed to +learn by heart, the lessons appeared to me both long and difficult +the frequent change from task to task, too, bewildered me and +I was glad when, about three o'clock in the afternoon, Miss Smith +put into my hands a border of muslin two yards long, together with +needle, thimble, c., and sent me to sit in a quiet corner of the +schoolroom, with directions to hem the same. At that hour most of +the others were sewing likewise but one class still stood round +Miss Scatcherd's chair reading, and as all was quiet, the subject +of their lessons could be heard, together with the manner in which +each girl acquitted herself, and the animadversions or commendations +of Miss Scatcherd on the performance. It was English history +among the readers I observed my acquaintance of the verandah at +the commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the top of +the class, but for some error of pronunciation, or some inattention +to stops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that +obscure position, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object +of constant notice she was continually addressing to her such +phrases as the following +"Burns" such it seems was her name the girls here were all +called by their surnames, as boys are elsewhere, "Burns, you are +standing on the side of your shoe turn your toes out immediately." +"Burns, you poke your chin most unpleasantly draw it in." "Burns, +I insist on your holding your head up I will not have you before +me in that attitude," c. c. +A chapter having been read through twice, the books were closed +and the girls examined. The lesson had comprised part of the reign +of Charles I., and there were sundry questions about tonnage and +poundage and shipmoney, which most of them appeared unable to +answer still, every little difficulty was solved instantly when +it reached Burns her memory seemed to have retained the substance +of the whole lesson, and she was ready with answers on every point. +I kept expecting that Miss Scatcherd would praise her attention +but, instead of that, she suddenly cried out +"You dirty, disagreeable girl you have never cleaned your nails +this morning" +Burns made no answer I wondered at her silence. "Why," thought +I, "does she not explain that she could neither clean her nails +nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?" +My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a +skein of thread while she was winding it, she talked to me from +time to time, asking whether I had ever been at school before, +whether I could mark, stitch, knit, c. till she dismissed me, +I could not pursue my observations on Miss Scatcherd's movements. +When I returned to my seat, that lady was just delivering an order +of which I did not catch the import but Burns immediately left +the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were +kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of +twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented +to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy then she quietly, and +without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly +and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch +of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns' eye and, while I paused from +my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a +sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her +pensive face altered its ordinary expression. +"Hardened girl" exclaimed Miss Scatcherd "nothing can correct +you of your slatternly habits carry the rod away." +Burns obeyed I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the +bookcloset she was just putting back her handkerchief into her +pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek. +The playhour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction +of the day at Lowood the bit of bread, the draught of coffee +swallowed at five o'clock had revived vitality, if it had not +satisfied hunger the long restraint of the day was slackened +the schoolroom felt warmer than in the morning its fires being +allowed to burn a little more brightly, to supply, in some measure, +the place of candles, not yet introduced the ruddy gloaming, the +licensed uproar, the confusion of many voices gave one a welcome +sense of liberty. +On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog +her pupil, Burns, I wandered as usual among the forms and tables +and laughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely +when I passed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind, and looked +out it snowed fast, a drift was already forming against the lower +panes putting my ear close to the window, I could distinguish from +the gleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside. +Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this +would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted +the separation that wind would then have saddened my heart this +obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace as it was, I derived +from both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished +the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and +the confusion to rise to clamour. +Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to +one of the fireplaces there, kneeling by the high wire fender, +I found Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by +the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of +the embers. +"Is it still 'Rasselas'?" I asked, coming behind her. +"Yes," she said, "and I have just finished it." +And in five minutes more she shut it up. I was glad of this. +"Now," thought I, "I can perhaps get her to talk." I sat down by +her on the floor. +"What is your name besides Burns?" +"Helen." +"Do you come a long way from here?" +"I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of Scotland." +"Will you ever go back?" +"I hope so but nobody can be sure of the future." +"You must wish to leave Lowood?" +"No why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education and +it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object." +"But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?" +"Cruel? Not at all She is severe she dislikes my faults." +"And if I were in your place I should dislike her I should resist +her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her +hand I should break it under her nose." +"Probably you would do nothing of the sort but if you did, Mr. +Brocklehurst would expel you from the school that would be a great +grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a +smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action +whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you and +besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil." +"But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to +stand in the middle of a room full of people and you are such a +great girl I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it." +"Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it +it is weak and silly to say you CANNOT BEAR what it is your fate +to be required to bear." +I heard her with wonder I could not comprehend this doctrine of +endurance and still less could I understand or sympathise with +the forbearance she expressed for her chastiser. Still I felt that +Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. I +suspected she might be right and I wrong but I would not ponder +the matter deeply like Felix, I put it off to a more convenient +season. +"You say you have faults, Helen what are they? To me you seem +very good." +"Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances I am, as Miss +Scatcherd said, slatternly I seldom put, and never keep, things, +in order I am careless I forget rules I read when I should +learn my lessons I have no method and sometimes I say, like you, +I cannot BEAR to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This +is all very provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, +punctual, and particular." +"And cross and cruel," I added but Helen Burns would not admit my +addition she kept silence. +"Is Miss Temple as severe to you as Miss Scatcherd?" +At the utterance of Miss Temple's name, a soft smile flitted over +her grave face. +"Miss Temple is full of goodness it pains her to be severe to any +one, even the worst in the school she sees my errors, and tells +me of them gently and, if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives +me my meed liberally. One strong proof of my wretchedly defective +nature is, that even her expostulations, so mild, so rational, have +not influence to cure me of my faults and even her praise, though +I value it most highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and +foresight." +"That is curious," said I, "it is so easy to be careful." +"For YOU I have no doubt it is. I observed you in your class this +morning, and saw you were closely attentive your thoughts never +seemed to wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned +you. Now, mine continually rove away when I should be listening +to Miss Scatcherd, and collecting all she says with assiduity, often +I lose the very sound of her voice I fall into a sort of dream. +Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I +hear round me are the bubbling of a little brook which runs through +Deepden, near our house then, when it comes to my turn to reply, +I have to be awakened and having heard nothing of what was read +for listening to the visionary brook, I have no answer ready." +"Yet how well you replied this afternoon." +"It was mere chance the subject on which we had been reading had +interested me. This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Deepden, I +was wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly +and unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did and I thought what +a pity it was that, with his integrity and conscientiousness, he +could see no farther than the prerogatives of the crown. If he had +but been able to look to a distance, and see how what they call the +spirit of the age was tending Still, I like Charles I respect +him I pity him, poor murdered king Yes, his enemies were the +worst they shed blood they had no right to shed. How dared they +kill him" +Helen was talking to herself now she had forgotten I could not +very well understand her that I was ignorant, or nearly so, of +the subject she discussed. I recalled her to my level. +"And when Miss Temple teaches you, do your thoughts wander then?" +"No, certainly, not often because Miss Temple has generally something +to say which is newer than my own reflections her language is +singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates +is often just what I wished to gain." +"Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?" +"Yes, in a passive way I make no effort I follow as inclination +guides me. There is no merit in such goodness." +"A great deal you are good to those who are good to you. It is +all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient +to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have +it all their own way they would never feel afraid, and so they +would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are +struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard +I am sure we should so hard as to teach the person who struck +us never to do it again." +"You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older as yet +you are but a little untaught girl." +"But I feel this, Helen I must dislike those who, whatever I do +to please them, persist in disliking me I must resist those who +punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those +who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is +deserved." +"Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and +civilised nations disown it." +"How? I don't understand." +"It is not violence that best overcomes hate nor vengeance that +most certainly heals injury." +"What then?" +"Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He +acts make His word your rule, and His conduct your example." +"What does He say?" +"Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that +hate you and despitefully use you." +"Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I cannot do I should bless +her son John, which is impossible." +In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded +forthwith to pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings +and resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I +felt, without reserve or softening. +Helen heard me patiently to the end I expected she would then +make a remark, but she said nothing. +"Well," I asked impatiently, "is not Mrs. Reed a hardhearted, bad +woman?" +"She has been unkind to you, no doubt because you see, she +dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine but +how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you What +a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made +on your heart No illusage so brands its record on my feelings. +Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, +together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears +to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering +wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in +this world but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall +put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies when debasement +and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and +only the spark of the spirit will remain, the impalpable principle +of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire +the creature whence it came it will return perhaps again to +be communicated to some being higher than man perhaps to pass +through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten +to the seraph Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered +to degenerate from man to fiend? No I cannot believe that I +hold another creed which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom +mention but in which I delight, and to which I cling for it +extends hope to all it makes Eternity a rest a mighty home, not +a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly +distinguish between the criminal and his crime I can so sincerely +forgive the first while I abhor the last with this creed revenge +never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, +injustice never crushes me too low I live in calm, looking to +the end." +Helen's head, always drooping, sank a little lower as she finished +this sentence. I saw by her look she wished no longer to talk +to me, but rather to converse with her own thoughts. She was not +allowed much time for meditation a monitor, a great rough girl, +presently came up, exclaiming in a strong Cumberland accent +"Helen Burns, if you don't go and put your drawer in order, and +fold up your work this minute, I'll tell Miss Scatcherd to come +and look at it" +Helen sighed as her reverie fled, and getting up, obeyed the monitor +without reply as without delay. +CHAPTER VII +My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age and not the golden +age either it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in +habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of +failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships +of my lot though these were no trifles. +During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, +and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented +our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church but +within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open +air. Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe +cold we had no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted +there our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, +as were our feet I remember well the distracting irritation I +endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed and +the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes +in the morning. Then the scanty supply of food was distressing +with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely +sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency +of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger +pupils whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they +would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion. Many +a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of +brown bread distributed at teatime and after relinquishing to a +third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the +remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by +the exigency of hunger. +Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk +two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated. +We set out cold, we arrived at church colder during the morning +service we became almost paralysed. It was too far to return +to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same +penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, was served +round between the services. +At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and +hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of +snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces. +I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our +drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, +gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and +example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, +"like stalwart soldiers." The other teachers, poor things, were +generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of +cheering others. +How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got +back But, to the little ones at least, this was denied each +hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double +row of great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched +in groups, wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores. +A little solace came at teatime, in the shape of a double ration +of bread a whole, instead of a half, slice with the delicious +addition of a thin scrape of butter it was the hebdomadal treat +to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath. I generally +contrived to reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself +but the remainder I was invariably obliged to part with. +The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the Church +Catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. +Matthew and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Miller, +whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent +interlude of these performances was the enactment of the part of +Eutychus by some halfdozen of little girls, who, overpowered with +sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the +fourth form, and be taken up half dead. The remedy was, to thrust +them forward into the centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them +to stand there till the sermon was finished. Sometimes their +feet failed them, and they sank together in a heap they were then +propped up with the monitors' high stools. +I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst and indeed +that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first +month after my arrival perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend +the archdeacon his absence was a relief to me. I need not say +that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming but come he +did at last. +One afternoon I had then been three weeks at Lowood, as I was sitting +with a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, my +eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure +just passing I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline +and when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, +rose en masse, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to +ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured +the schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself +had risen, stood the same black column which had frowned on me so +ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead. I now glanced sideways +at this piece of architecture. Yes, I was right it was Mr. +Brocklehurst, buttoned up in a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, +and more rigid than ever. +I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition too +well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my +disposition, c. the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise +Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature. All along +I had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise, I had been +looking out daily for the "Coming Man," whose information respecting +my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for +ever now there he was. +He stood at Miss Temple's side he was speaking low in her ear I did +not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy and I watched +her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its +dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt. I listened +too and as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, +I caught most of what he said its import relieved me from immediate +apprehension. +"I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I bought at Lowton will do +it struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico +chemises, and I sorted the needles to match. You may tell Miss +Smith that I forgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles, +but she shall have some papers sent in next week and she is not, +on any account, to give out more than one at a time to each pupil +if they have more, they are apt to be careless and lose them. And, +O ma'am I wish the woollen stockings were better looked to +when I was here last, I went into the kitchengarden and examined +the clothes drying on the line there was a quantity of black hose +in a very bad state of repair from the size of the holes in them +I was sure they had not been well mended from time to time." +He paused. +"Your directions shall be attended to, sir," said Miss Temple. +"And, ma'am," he continued, "the laundress tells me some of the +girls have two clean tuckers in the week it is too much the +rules limit them to one." +"I think I can explain that circumstance, sir. Agnes and Catherine +Johnstone were invited to take tea with some friends at Lowton +last Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for +the occasion." +Mr. Brocklehurst nodded. +"Well, for once it may pass but please not to let the circumstance +occur too often. And there is another thing which surprised me +I find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch, +consisting of bread and cheese, has twice been served out to +the girls during the past fortnight. How is this? I looked over +the regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who +introduced this innovation? and by what authority?" +"I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir," replied Miss +Temple "the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could +not possibly eat it and I dared not allow them to remain fasting +till dinnertime." +"Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing +up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and +indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, selfdenying. Should +any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such +as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a +dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with +something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body +and obviating the aim of this institution it ought to be improved +to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them +to evince fortitude under temporary privation. A brief address on +those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor +would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the +primitive Christians to the torments of martyrs to the exhortations +of our blessed Lord Himself, calling upon His disciples to take +up their cross and follow Him to His warnings that man shall not +live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the +mouth of God to His divine consolations, "If ye suffer hunger or +thirst for My sake, happy are ye." Oh, madam, when you put bread +and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, +you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how +you starve their immortal souls" +Mr. Brocklehurst again paused perhaps overcome by his feelings. +Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her +but she now gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale +as marble, appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of +that material especially her mouth, closed as if it would have +required a sculptor's chisel to open it, and her brow settled +gradually into petrified severity. +Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands +behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school. Suddenly +his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled +or shocked its pupil turning, he said in more rapid accents +than he had hitherto used +"Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what WHAT is that girl with curled +hair? Red hair, ma'am, curled curled all over?" And extending +his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he +did so. +"It is Julia Severn," replied Miss Temple, very quietly. +"Julia Severn, ma'am And why has she, or any other, curled hair? +Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, +does she conform to the world so openly here in an evangelical, +charitable establishment as to wear her hair one mass of curls?" +"Julia's hair curls naturally," returned Miss Temple, still more +quietly. +"Naturally Yes, but we are not to conform to nature I wish +these girls to be the children of Grace and why that abundance? +I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be +arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl's hair +must be cut off entirely I will send a barber tomorrow and I +see others who have far too much of the excrescence that tall +girl, tell her to turn round. Tell all the first form to rise up +and direct their faces to the wall." +Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth +away the involuntary smile that curled them she gave the order, +however, and when the first class could take in what was required +of them, they obeyed. Leaning a little back on my bench, I could +see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this +manoeuvre it was a pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too +he would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the +outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his +interference than he imagined. +He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes, +then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom +"All those topknots must be cut off." +Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate. +"Madam," he pursued, "I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not +of this world my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts +of the flesh to teach them to clothe themselves with shamefacedness +and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel and each +of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in +plaits which vanity itself might have woven these, I repeat, +must be cut off think of the time wasted, of " +Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted three other visitors, ladies, +now entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner to +have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired +in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio fine girls +of sixteen and seventeen had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, +shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful +headdress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled +the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with +ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls. +These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple, as Mrs. +and the Misses Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of honour at the +top of the room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their +reverend relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of +the room upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, +questioned the laundress, and lectured the superintendent. They +now proceeded to address divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, +who was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of +the dormitories but I had no time to listen to what they said +other matters called off and enchanted my attention. +Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Brocklehurst and +Miss Temple, I had not, at the same time, neglected precautions to +secure my personal safety which I thought would be effected, if +I could only elude observation. To this end, I had sat well back +on the form, and while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my +slate in such a manner as to conceal my face I might have escaped +notice, had not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from +my hand, and falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every +eye upon me I knew it was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick +up the two fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the worst. +It came. +"A careless girl" said Mr. Brocklehurst, and immediately after +"It is the new pupil, I perceive." And before I could draw +breath, "I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her." +Then aloud how loud it seemed to me "Let the child who broke +her slate come forward" +Of my own accord I could not have stirred I was paralysed but +the two great girls who sit on each side of me, set me on my legs +and pushed me towards the dread judge, and then Miss Temple gently +assisted me to his very feet, and I caught her whispered counsel +"Don't be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an accident you shall not be +punished." +The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger. +"Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite," thought +I and an impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst, and Co. +bounded in my pulses at the conviction. I was no Helen Burns. +"Fetch that stool," said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high +one from which a monitor had just risen it was brought. +"Place the child upon it." +And I was placed there, by whom I don't know I was in no condition +to note particulars I was only aware that they had hoisted me up +to the height of Mr. Brocklehurst's nose, that he was within a yard +of me, and that a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses +and a cloud of silvery plumage extended and waved below me. +Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed. +"Ladies," said he, turning to his family, "Miss Temple, teachers, +and children, you all see this girl?" +Of course they did for I felt their eyes directed like burningglasses +against my scorched skin. +"You see she is yet young you observe she possesses the ordinary +form of childhood God has graciously given her the shape that He +has given to all of us no signal deformity points her out as a +marked character. Who would think that the Evil One had already +found a servant and agent in her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is +the case." +A pause in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and +to feel that the Rubicon was passed and that the trial, no longer +to be shirked, must be firmly sustained. +"My dear children," pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos, +"this is a sad, a melancholy occasion for it becomes my duty to +warn you, that this girl, who might be one of God's own lambs, is +a little castaway not a member of the true flock, but evidently +an interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against +her you must shun her example if necessary, avoid her company, +exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse. +Teachers, you must watch her keep your eyes on her movements, +weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to +save her soul if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for my +tongue falters while I tell it this girl, this child, the native +of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its +prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut this girl is +a liar" +Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in +perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts +produce their pockethandkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, +while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two +younger ones whispered, "How shocking" Mr. Brocklehurst resumed. +"This I learned from her benefactress from the pious and charitable +lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own +daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl +repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her +excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young +ones, fearful lest her vicious example should contaminate their +purity she has sent her here to be healed, even as the Jews +of old sent their diseased to the troubled pool of Bethesda and, +teachers, superintendent, I beg of you not to allow the waters to +stagnate round her." +With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top button +of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose, bowed +to Miss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in +state from the room. Turning at the door, my judge said +"Let her stand halfanhour longer on that stool, and let no one +speak to her during the remainder of the day." +There was I, then, mounted aloft I, who had said I could not bear +the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, +was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What +my sensations were no language can describe but just as they all +rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came +up and passed me in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange +light inspired them What an extraordinary sensation that ray +sent through me How the new feeling bore me up It was as if a +martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength +in the transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, +and took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight +question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality +of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me as she +again went by. What a smile I remember it now, and I know that +it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage it lit up +her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a +reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen +Burns wore on her arm "the untidy badge" scarcely an hour ago I +had heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and +water on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying +it out. Such is the imperfect nature of man such spots are there +on the disc of the clearest planet and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's +can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full +brightness of the orb. +CHAPTER VIII +Ere the halfhour ended, five o'clock struck school was dismissed, +and all were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ventured to +descend it was deep dusk I retired into a corner and sat down on +the floor. The spell by which I had been so far supported began +to dissolve reaction took place, and soon, so overwhelming was the +grief that seized me, I sank prostrate with my face to the ground. +Now I wept Helen Burns was not here nothing sustained me left +to myself I abandoned myself, and my tears watered the boards. I +had meant to be so good, and to do so much at Lowood to make so +many friends, to earn respect and win affection. Already I had +made visible progress that very morning I had reached the head +of my class Miss Miller had praised me warmly Miss Temple had +smiled approbation she had promised to teach me drawing, and to +let me learn French, if I continued to make similar improvement two +months longer and then I was well received by my fellowpupils +treated as an equal by those of my own age, and not molested by +any now, here I lay again crushed and trodden on and could I ever +rise more? +"Never," I thought and ardently I wished to die. While sobbing +out this wish in broken accents, some one approached I started +up again Helen Burns was near me the fading fires just showed +her coming up the long, vacant room she brought my coffee and +bread. +"Come, eat something," she said but I put both away from me, +feeling as if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in my present +condition. Helen regarded me, probably with surprise I could not +now abate my agitation, though I tried hard I continued to weep +aloud. She sat down on the ground near me, embraced her knees +with her arms, and rested her head upon them in that attitude +she remained silent as an Indian. I was the first who spoke +"Helen, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be +a liar?" +"Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard +you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions." +"But what have I to do with millions? The eighty, I know, despise +me." +"Jane, you are mistaken probably not one in the school either +despises or dislikes you many, I am sure, pity you much." +"How can they pity me after what Mr. Brocklehurst has said?" +"Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god nor is he even a great and admired +man he is little liked here he never took steps to make himself +liked. Had he treated you as an especial favourite, you would +have found enemies, declared or covert, all around you as it is, +the greater number would offer you sympathy if they dared. Teachers +and pupils may look coldly on you for a day or two, but friendly +feelings are concealed in their hearts and if you persevere in +doing well, these feelings will ere long appear so much the more +evidently for their temporary suppression. Besides, Jane" she +paused. +"Well, Helen?" said I, putting my hand into hers she +chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went on +"If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your +own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would +not be without friends." +"No I know I should think well of myself but that is not enough +if others don't love me I would rather die than live I cannot +bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here to gain some +real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly +love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or +to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, +and let it dash its hoof at my chest " +"Hush, Jane you think too much of the love of human beings you +are too impulsive, too vehement the sovereign hand that created +your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other +resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. +Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible +world and a kingdom of spirits that world is round us, for it is +everywhere and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned +to guard us and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote +us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, +recognise our innocence if innocent we be as I know you are of +this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated +at secondhand from Mrs. Reed for I read a sincere nature in +your ardent eyes and on your clear front, and God waits only the +separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. +Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life +is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness +to glory?" +I was silent Helen had calmed me but in the tranquillity she +imparted there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I felt the +impression of woe as she spoke, but I could not tell whence it +came and when, having done speaking, she breathed a little fast +and coughed a short cough, I momentarily forgot my own sorrows to +yield to a vague concern for her. +Resting my head on Helen's shoulder, I put my arms round her waist +she drew me to her, and we reposed in silence. We had not sat long +thus, when another person came in. Some heavy clouds, swept from +the sky by a rising wind, had left the moon bare and her light, +streaming in through a window near, shone full both on us and on +the approaching figure, which we at once recognised as Miss Temple. +"I came on purpose to find you, Jane Eyre," said she "I want you +in my room and as Helen Burns is with you, she may come too." +We went following the superintendent's guidance, we had to thread +some intricate passages, and mount a staircase before we reached +her apartment it contained a good fire, and looked cheerful. Miss +Temple told Helen Burns to be seated in a low armchair on one +side of the hearth, and herself taking another, she called me to +her side. +"Is it all over?" she asked, looking down at my face. "Have you +cried your grief away?" +"I am afraid I never shall do that." +"Why?" +"Because I have been wrongly accused and you, ma'am, and everybody +else, will now think me wicked." +"We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. +Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us." +"Shall I, Miss Temple?" +"You will," said she, passing her arm round me. "And now tell me +who is the lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called your benefactress?" +"Mrs. Reed, my uncle's wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to +her care." +"Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?" +"No, ma'am she was sorry to have to do it but my uncle, as +I have often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he +died that she would always keep me." +"Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when +a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own +defence. You have been charged with falsehood defend yourself to +me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true +but add nothing and exaggerate nothing." +I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most moderate +most correct and, having reflected a few minutes in order +to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story +of my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my language was more +subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme and +mindful of Helen's warnings against the indulgence of resentment, +I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than +ordinary. Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible +I felt as I went on that Miss Temple fully believed me. +In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd as having come +to see me after the fit for I never forgot the, to me, frightful +episode of the redroom in detailing which, my excitement was +sure, in some degree, to break bounds for nothing could soften +in my recollection the spasm of agony which clutched my heart when +Mrs. Reed spurned my wild supplication for pardon, and locked me +a second time in the dark and haunted chamber. +I had finished Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes +in silence she then said +"I know something of Mr. Lloyd I shall write to him if his reply +agrees with your statement, you shall be publicly cleared from +every imputation to me, Jane, you are clear now." +She kissed me, and still keeping me at her side where I was well +contented to stand, for I derived a child's pleasure from the +contemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two ornaments, her +white forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and beaming dark +eyes, she proceeded to address Helen Burns. +"How are you tonight, Helen? Have you coughed much today?" +"Not quite so much, I think, ma'am." +"And the pain in your chest?" +"It is a little better." +Miss Temple got up, took her hand and examined her pulse then +she returned to her own seat as she resumed it, I heard her sigh +low. She was pensive a few minutes, then rousing herself, +she said cheerfully +"But you two are my visitors tonight I must treat you as such." +She rang her bell. +"Barbara," she said to the servant who answered it, "I have not yet +had tea bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies." +And a tray was soon brought. How pretty, to my eyes, did the china +cups and bright teapot look, placed on the little round table near +the fire How fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the +scent of the toast of which, however, I, to my dismay for I was +beginning to be hungry discerned only a very small portion Miss +Temple discerned it too. +"Barbara," said she, "can you not bring a little more bread and +butter? There is not enough for three." +Barbara went out she returned soon +"Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity." +Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper a woman after +Mr. Brocklehurst's own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone +and iron. +"Oh, very well" returned Miss Temple "we must make it do, +Barbara, I suppose." And as the girl withdrew she added, smiling, +"Fortunately, I have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this +once." +Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed +before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel +of toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel +wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a goodsized +seedcake. +"I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you," said +she, "but as there is so little toast, you must have it now," and +she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand. +We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia and not the +least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification +with which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished +appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied. +Tea over and the tray removed, she again summoned us to the fire +we sat one on each side of her, and now a conversation followed +between her and Helen, which it was indeed a privilege to be admitted +to hear. +Miss Temple had always something of serenity in her air, of state +in her mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded +deviation into the ardent, the excited, the eager something which +chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to +her, by a controlling sense of awe and such was my feeling now +but as to Helen Burns, I was struck with wonder. +The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and kindness +of her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all these, +something in her own unique mind, had roused her powers within +her. They woke, they kindled first, they glowed in the bright +tint of her cheek, which till this hour I had never seen but pale +and bloodless then they shone in the liquid lustre of her eyes, +which had suddenly acquired a beauty more singular than that of +Miss Temple's a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, +nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. Then +her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I +cannot tell. Has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous +enough, to hold the swelling spring of pure, full, fervid eloquence? +Such was the characteristic of Helen's discourse on that, to me, +memorable evening her spirit seemed hastening to live within a +very brief span as much as many live during a protracted existence. +They conversed of things I had never heard of of nations and times +past of countries far away of secrets of nature discovered or +guessed at they spoke of books how many they had read What +stores of knowledge they possessed Then they seemed so familiar +with French names and French authors but my amazement reached +its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched +a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking +a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil +and Helen obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding +line. She had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime +no delay could be admitted Miss Temple embraced us both, +saying, as she drew us to her heart +"God bless you, my children" +Helen she held a little longer than me she let her go more +reluctantly it was Helen her eye followed to the door it was for +her she a second time breathed a sad sigh for her she wiped a tear +from her cheek. +On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd she +was examining drawers she had just pulled out Helen Burns's, and +when we entered Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand, and told +that tomorrow she should have halfadozen of untidily folded +articles pinned to her shoulder. +"My things were indeed in shameful disorder," murmured Helen to me, +in a low voice "I intended to have arranged them, but I forgot." +Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece +of pasteboard the word "Slattern," and bound it like a phylactery +round Helen's large, mild, intelligent, and benign looking forehead. +She wore it till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as +a deserved punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew after +afternoon school, I ran to Helen, tore it off, and thrust it into +the fire the fury of which she was incapable had been burning +in my soul all day, and tears, hot and large, had continually been +scalding my cheek for the spectacle of her sad resignation gave +me an intolerable pain at the heart. +About a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated, Miss +Temple, who had written to Mr. Lloyd, received his answer it +appeared that what he said went to corroborate my account. Miss +Temple, having assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry +had been made into the charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that +she was most happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared +from every imputation. The teachers then shook hands with me and +kissed me, and a murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of my +companions. +Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work +afresh, resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty I +toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts my +memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practice exercise +sharpened my wits in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class +in less than two months I was allowed to commence French and drawing. +I learned the first two tenses of the verb ETRE, and sketched my +first cottage whose walls, bythebye, outrivalled in slope those of +the leaning tower of Pisa, on the same day. That night, on going +to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of +hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was +wont to amuse my inward cravings I feasted instead on the spectacle +of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark all the work of my own +hands freely pencilled houses and trees, picturesque rocks and +ruins, Cuyplike groups of cattle, sweet paintings of butterflies +hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking at ripe cherries, of +wren's nests enclosing pearllike eggs, wreathed about with young +ivy sprays. I examined, too, in thought, the possibility of +my ever being able to translate currently a certain little French +story which Madame Pierrot had that day shown me nor was that +problem solved to my satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep. +Well has Solomon said "Better is a dinner of herbs where love +is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." +I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for +Gateshead and its daily luxuries. +CHAPTER IX +But the privations, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened. +Spring drew on she was indeed already come the frosts of winter +had ceased its snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated. +My wretched feet, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air +of January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings +of April the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian +temperature froze the very blood in our veins we could now endure +the playhour passed in the garden sometimes on a sunny day it +began even to be pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over +those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought +that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter +traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves snow +drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and goldeneyed pansies. On +Thursday afternoons halfholidays we now took walks, and found +still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside, under the hedges. +I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the +horizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spikeguarded +walls of our garden this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble +summits girdling a great hillhollow, rich in verdure and shadow +in a bright beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How +different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath +the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow +when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds +along those purple peaks, and rolled down "ing" and holm till they +blended with the frozen fog of the beck That beck itself was then +a torrent, turbid and curbless it tore asunder the wood, and sent +a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or +whirling sleet and for the forest on its banks, THAT showed only +ranks of skeletons. +April advanced to May a bright serene May it was days of blue +sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled +up its duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour Lowood +shook loose its tresses it became all green, all flowery its +great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life +woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses unnumbered +varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange +groundsunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants I +have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings +of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, +unwatched, and almost alone for this unwonted liberty and pleasure +there was a cause, to which it now becomes my task to advert. +Have I not described a pleasant site for a dwelling, when I speak +of it as bosomed in hill and wood, and rising from the verge of a +stream? Assuredly, pleasant enough but whether healthy or not +is another question. +That forestdell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and +fogbred pestilence which, quickening with the quickening spring, +crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded +schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the +seminary into an hospital. +Semistarvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the +pupils to receive infection fortyfive out of the eighty girls +lay ill at one time. Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. The +few who continued well were allowed almost unlimited license +because the medical attendant insisted on the necessity of frequent +exercise to keep them in health and had it been otherwise, no +one had leisure to watch or restrain them. Miss Temple's whole +attention was absorbed by the patients she lived in the sickroom, +never quitting it except to snatch a few hours' rest at night. +The teachers were fully occupied with packing up and making other +necessary preparations for the departure of those girls who were +fortunate enough to have friends and relations able and willing +to remove them from the seat of contagion. Many, already smitten, +went home only to die some died at the school, and were buried +quietly and quickly, the nature of the malady forbidding delay. +While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death +its frequent visitor while there was gloom and fear within its +walls while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, +the drug and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia +of mortality, that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills +and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed +with flowers hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had +opened, tulips and roses were in bloom the borders of the little +beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies the +sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and +apples and these fragrant treasures were all useless for most of +the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and then a handful of +herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin. +But I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the beauties +of the scene and season they let us ramble in the wood, like +gipsies, from morning till night we did what we liked, went where +we liked we lived better too. Mr. Brocklehurst and his family +never came near Lowood now household matters were not scrutinised +into the cross housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear +of infection her successor, who had been matron at the Lowton +Dispensary, unused to the ways of her new abode, provided with +comparative liberality. Besides, there were fewer to feed the +sick could eat little our breakfastbasins were better filled +when there was no time to prepare a regular dinner, which often +happened, she would give us a large piece of cold pie, or a thick +slice of bread and cheese, and this we carried away with us to +the wood, where we each chose the spot we liked best, and dined +sumptuously. +My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and dry +from the very middle of the beck, and only to be got at by wading +through the water a feat I accomplished barefoot. The stone was +just broad enough to accommodate, comfortably, another girl and me, +at that time my chosen comrade one Mary Ann Wilson a shrewd, +observant personage, whose society I took pleasure in, partly +because she was witty and original, and partly because she had a +manner which set me at my ease. Some years older than I, she knew +more of the world, and could tell me many things I liked to hear +with her my curiosity found gratification to my faults also she +gave ample indulgence, never imposing curb or rein on anything I +said. She had a turn for narrative, I for analysis she liked to +inform, I to question so we got on swimmingly together, deriving +much entertainment, if not much improvement, from our mutual +intercourse. +And where, meantime, was Helen Burns? Why did I not spend these +sweet days of liberty with her? Had I forgotten her? or was I so +worthless as to have grown tired of her pure society? Surely the +Mary Ann Wilson I have mentioned was inferior to my first acquaintance +she could only tell me amusing stories, and reciprocate any racy +and pungent gossip I chose to indulge in while, if I have spoken +truth of Helen, she was qualified to give those who enjoyed the +privilege of her converse a taste of far higher things. +True, reader and I knew and felt this and though I am a defective +being, with many faults and few redeeming points, yet I never tired +of Helen Burns nor ever ceased to cherish for her a sentiment +of attachment, as strong, tender, and respectful as any that ever +animated my heart. How could it be otherwise, when Helen, at +all times and under all circumstances, evinced for me a quiet and +faithful friendship, which illhumour never soured, nor irritation +never troubled? But Helen was ill at present for some weeks she +had been removed from my sight to I knew not what room upstairs. +She was not, I was told, in the hospital portion of the house with +the fever patients for her complaint was consumption, not typhus +and by consumption I, in my ignorance, understood something mild, +which time and care would be sure to alleviate. +I was confirmed in this idea by the fact of her once or twice coming +downstairs on very warm sunny afternoons, and being taken by Miss +Temple into the garden but, on these occasions, I was not allowed +to go and speak to her I only saw her from the schoolroom window, +and then not distinctly for she was much wrapped up, and sat at +a distance under the verandah. +One evening, in the beginning of June, I had stayed out very late +with Mary Ann in the wood we had, as usual, separated ourselves +from the others, and had wandered far so far that we lost our +way, and had to ask it at a lonely cottage, where a man and woman +lived, who looked after a herd of halfwild swine that fed on the +mast in the wood. When we got back, it was after moonrise a +pony, which we knew to be the surgeon's, was standing at the garden +door. Mary Ann remarked that she supposed some one must be very +ill, as Mr. Bates had been sent for at that time of the evening. +She went into the house I stayed behind a few minutes to plant in +my garden a handful of roots I had dug up in the forest, and which +I feared would wither if I left them till the morning. This done, +I lingered yet a little longer the flowers smelt so sweet as +the dew fell it was such a pleasant evening, so serene, so warm +the still glowing west promised so fairly another fine day on the +morrow the moon rose with such majesty in the grave east. I was +noting these things and enjoying them as a child might, when it +entered my mind as it had never done before +"How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of +dying This world is pleasant it would be dreary to be called +from it, and to have to go who knows where?" +And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what +had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell and for the +first time it recoiled, baffled and for the first time glancing +behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed +gulf it felt the one point where it stood the present all the +rest was formless cloud and vacant depth and it shuddered at the +thought of tottering, and plunging amid that chaos. While pondering +this new idea, I heard the front door open Mr. Bates came out, +and with him was a nurse. After she had seen him mount his horse +and depart, she was about to close the door, but I ran up to her. +"How is Helen Burns?" +"Very poorly," was the answer. +"Is it her Mr. Bates has been to see?" +"Yes." +"And what does he say about her?" +"He says she'll not be here long." +This phrase, uttered in my hearing yesterday, would have only conveyed +the notion that she was about to be removed to Northumberland, to +her own home. I should not have suspected that it meant she was +dying but I knew instantly now It opened clear on my comprehension +that Helen Burns was numbering her last days in this world, and +that she was going to be taken to the region of spirits, if such +region there were. I experienced a shock of horror, then a strong +thrill of grief, then a desire a necessity to see her and I +asked in what room she lay. +"She is in Miss Temple's room," said the nurse. +"May I go up and speak to her?" +"Oh no, child It is not likely and now it is time for you to come +in you'll catch the fever if you stop out when the dew is falling." +The nurse closed the front door I went in by the side entrance which +led to the schoolroom I was just in time it was nine o'clock, +and Miss Miller was calling the pupils to go to bed. +It might be two hours later, probably near eleven, when I not +having been able to fall asleep, and deeming, from the perfect +silence of the dormitory, that my companions were all wrapt in +profound repose rose softly, put on my frock over my nightdress, +and, without shoes, crept from the apartment, and set off in quest +of Miss Temple's room. It was quite at the other end of the house +but I knew my way and the light of the unclouded summer moon, +entering here and there at passage windows, enabled me to find it +without difficulty. An odour of camphor and burnt vinegar warned +me when I came near the fever room and I passed its door quickly, +fearful lest the nurse who sat up all night should hear me. I +dreaded being discovered and sent back for I MUST see Helen, +I must embrace her before she died, I must give her one last +kiss, exchange with her one last word. +Having descended a staircase, traversed a portion of the house +below, and succeeded in opening and shutting, without noise, two +doors, I reached another flight of steps these I mounted, and then +just opposite to me was Miss Temple's room. A light shone through +the keyhole and from under the door a profound stillness pervaded +the vicinity. Coming near, I found the door slightly ajar +probably to admit some fresh air into the close abode of sickness. +Indisposed to hesitate, and full of impatient impulses soul and +senses quivering with keen throes I put it back and looked in. +My eye sought Helen, and feared to find death. +Close by Miss Temple's bed, and half covered with its white curtains, +there stood a little crib. I saw the outline of a form under the +clothes, but the face was hid by the hangings the nurse I had +spoken to in the garden sat in an easychair asleep an unsnuffed +candle burnt dimly on the table. Miss Temple was not to be seen +I knew afterwards that she had been called to a delirious patient +in the feverroom. I advanced then paused by the crib side my +hand was on the curtain, but I preferred speaking before I withdrew +it. I still recoiled at the dread of seeing a corpse. +"Helen" I whispered softly, "are you awake?" +She stirred herself, put back the curtain, and I saw her face, pale, +wasted, but quite composed she looked so little changed that my +fear was instantly dissipated. +"Can it be you, Jane?" she asked, in her own gentle voice. +"Oh" I thought, "she is not going to die they are mistaken she +could not speak and look so calmly if she were." +I got on to her crib and kissed her her forehead was cold, and +her cheek both cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist but +she smiled as of old. +"Why are you come here, Jane? It is past eleven o'clock I heard +it strike some minutes since." +"I came to see you, Helen I heard you were very ill, and I could +not sleep till I had spoken to you." +"You came to bid me goodbye, then you are just in time probably." +"Are you going somewhere, Helen? Are you going home?" +"Yes to my long home my last home." +"No, no, Helen" I stopped, distressed. While I tried to devour +my tears, a fit of coughing seized Helen it did not, however, wake +the nurse when it was over, she lay some minutes exhausted +then she whispered +"Jane, your little feet are bare lie down and cover yourself with +my quilt." +I did so she put her arm over me, and I nestled close +to her. After a long silence, she resumed, still whispering +"I am very happy, Jane and when you hear that I am dead, you must +be sure and not grieve there is nothing to grieve about. We +all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not +painful it is gentle and gradual my mind is at rest. I leave +no one to regret me much I have only a father and he is lately +married, and will not miss me. By dying young, I shall escape +great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way +very well in the world I should have been continually at fault." +"But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?" +"I believe I have faith I am going to God." +"Where is God? What is God?" +"My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I +rely implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness +I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore +me to Him, reveal Him to me." +"You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven, +and that our souls can get to it when we die?" +"I am sure there is a future state I believe God is good I can +resign my immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my +father God is my friend I love Him I believe He loves me." +"And shall I see you again, Helen, when I die?" +"You will come to the same region of happiness be received by +the same mighty, universal Parent, no doubt, dear Jane." +Again I questioned, but this time only in thought. "Where is +that region? Does it exist?" And I clasped my arms closer round +Helen she seemed dearer to me than ever I felt as if I could +not let her go I lay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently +she said, in the sweetest tone +"How comfortable I am That last fit of coughing has tired me a +little I feel as if I could sleep but don't leave me, Jane I +like to have you near me." +"I'll stay with you, DEAR Helen no one shall take me away." +"Are you warm, darling?" +"Yes." +"Goodnight, Jane." +"Goodnight, Helen." +She kissed me, and I her, and we both soon slumbered. +When I awoke it was day an unusual movement roused me I looked +up I was in somebody's arms the nurse held me she was carrying +me through the passage back to the dormitory. I was not reprimanded +for leaving my bed people had something else to think about no +explanation was afforded then to my many questions but a day or +two afterwards I learned that Miss Temple, on returning to her own +room at dawn, had found me laid in the little crib my face against +Helen Burns's shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and +Helen was dead. +Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard for fifteen years after +her death it was only covered by a grassy mound but now a grey +marble tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word +"Resurgam." +CHAPTER X +Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant +existence to the first ten years of my life I have given almost +as many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography. +I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will +possess some degree of interest therefore I now pass a space of +eight years almost in silence a few lines only are necessary to +keep up the links of connection. +When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation +at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence but not till its +virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention +on the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and +by degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation +in a high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site the quantity +and quality of the children's food the brackish, fetid water used +in its preparation the pupils' wretched clothing and accommodations +all these things were discovered, and the discovery produced +a result mortifying to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the +institution. +Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed +largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better +situation new regulations were made improvements in diet and +clothing introduced the funds of the school were intrusted to the +management of a committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth +and family connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the +post of treasurer but he was aided in the discharge of his duties +by gentlemen of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds his +office of inspector, too, was shared by those who knew how to +combine reason with strictness, comfort with economy, compassion +with uprightness. The school, thus improved, became in time a truly +useful and noble institution. I remained an inmate of its walls, +after its regeneration, for eight years six as pupil, and two as +teacher and in both capacities I bear my testimony to its value +and importance. +During these eight years my life was uniform but not unhappy, +because it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent +education placed within my reach a fondness for some of my studies, +and a desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in +pleasing my teachers, especially such as I loved, urged me on I +availed myself fully of the advantages offered me. In time I rose +to be the first girl of the first class then I was invested with +the office of teacher which I discharged with zeal for two years +but at the end of that time I altered. +Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent +of the seminary to her instruction I owed the best part of +my acquirements her friendship and society had been my continual +solace she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, +latterly, companion. At this period she married, removed with +her husband a clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such +a wife to a distant county, and consequently was lost to me. +From the day she left I was no longer the same with her was gone +every settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in +some degree a home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her +nature and much of her habits more harmonious thoughts what +seemed better regulated feelings had become the inmates of my +mind. I had given in allegiance to duty and order I was quiet +I believed I was content to the eyes of others, usually even to +my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued character. +But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between +me and Miss Temple I saw her in her travelling dress step into +a postchaise, shortly after the marriage ceremony I watched +the chaise mount the hill and disappear beyond its brow and then +retired to my own room, and there spent in solitude the greatest +part of the halfholiday granted in honour of the occasion. +I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself +only to be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it but +when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that +the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery +dawned on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a +transforming process that my mind had put off all it had borrowed +of Miss Temple or rather that she had taken with her the serene +atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity and that now I +was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the stirring +of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, +but rather as if a motive were gone it was not the power to be +tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquillity was +no more. My world had for some years been in Lowood my experience +had been of its rules and systems now I remembered that the real +world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of +sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go +forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its +perils. +I went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two +wings of the building there was the garden there were the skirts +of Lowood there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other +objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks it was those +I longed to surmount all within their boundary of rock and heath +seemed prisonground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding +round the base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between +two how I longed to follow it farther I recalled the time when +I had travelled that very road in a coach I remembered descending +that hill at twilight an age seemed to have elapsed since the day +which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. +My vacations had all been spent at school Mrs. Reed had never +sent for me to Gateshead neither she nor any of her family had ever +been to visit me. I had had no communication by letter or message +with the outer world schoolrules, schoolduties, schoolhabits +and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and +preferences, and antipathies such was what I knew of existence. +And now I felt that it was not enough I tired of the routine of +eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty for liberty I +gasped for liberty I uttered a prayer it seemed scattered on the +wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler +supplication for change, stimulus that petition, too, seemed swept +off into vague space "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant me +at least a new servitude" +Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs. +I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections +till bedtime even then a teacher who occupied the same room +with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a +prolonged effusion of small talk. How I wished sleep would silence +her. It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which +had last entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive +suggestion would rise for my relief. +Miss Gryce snored at last she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till +now her habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any +other light than as a nuisance tonight I hailed the first deep +notes with satisfaction I was debarrassed of interruption my +halfeffaced thought instantly revived. +"A new servitude There is something in that," I soliloquised +mentally, be it understood I did not talk aloud, "I know there +is, because it does not sound too sweet it is not like such words +as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment delightful sounds truly but +no more than sounds for me and so hollow and fleeting that it is +mere waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude That must +be matter of fact. Any one may serve I have served here eight +years now all I want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much +of my own will? Is not the thing feasible? Yes yes the end +is not so difficult if I had only a brain active enough to ferret +out the means of attaining it." +I sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain it was a chilly +night I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded +TO THINK again with all my might. +"What do I want? A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces, +under new circumstances I want this because it is of no use wanting +anything better. How do people do to get a new place? They apply +to friends, I suppose I have no friends. There are many others +who have no friends, who must look about for themselves and be +their own helpers and what is their resource?" +I could not tell nothing answered me I then ordered my brain to +find a response, and quickly. It worked and worked faster I felt +the pulses throb in my head and temples but for nearly an hour +it worked in chaos and no result came of its efforts. Feverish +with vain labour, I got up and took a turn in the room undrew the +curtain, noted a star or two, shivered with cold, and again crept +to bed. +A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion +on my pillow for as I lay down, it came quietly and naturally to +my mind. "Those who want situations advertise you must advertise +in the shire Herald." +"How? I know nothing about advertising." +Replies rose smooth and prompt now +"You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it +under a cover directed to the editor of the Herald you must put +it, the first opportunity you have, into the post at Lowton answers +must be addressed to J.E., at the postoffice there you can go +and inquire in about a week after you send your letter, if any are +come, and act accordingly." +This scheme I went over twice, thrice it was then digested in my +mind I had it in a clear practical form I felt satisfied, and +fell asleep. +With earliest day, I was up I had my advertisement written, +enclosed, and directed before the bell rang to rouse the school +it ran thus +"A young lady accustomed to tuition" had I not been a teacher +two years? "is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private +family where the children are under fourteen I thought that as I +was barely eighteen, it would not do to undertake the guidance of +pupils nearer my own age. She is qualified to teach the usual +branches of a good English education, together with French, Drawing, +and Music" in those days, reader, this now narrow catalogue of +accomplishments, would have been held tolerably comprehensive. +"Address, J.E., Postoffice, Lowton, shire." +This document remained locked in my drawer all day after tea, +I asked leave of the new superintendent to go to Lowton, in order +to perform some small commissions for myself and one or two of my +fellowteachers permission was readily granted I went. It was a +walk of two miles, and the evening was wet, but the days were still +long I visited a shop or two, slipped the letter into the postoffice, +and came back through heavy rain, with streaming garments, but with +a relieved heart. +The succeeding week seemed long it came to an end at last, however, +like all sublunary things, and once more, towards the close of a +pleasant autumn day, I found myself afoot on the road to Lowton. A +picturesque track it was, by the way lying along the side of the +beck and through the sweetest curves of the dale but that day I +thought more of the letters, that might or might not be awaiting +me at the little burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of +lea and water. +My ostensible errand on this occasion was to get measured for +a pair of shoes so I discharged that business first, and when it +was done, I stepped across the clean and quiet little street from +the shoemaker's to the postoffice it was kept by an old dame, who +wore horn spectacles on her nose, and black mittens on her hands. +"Are there any letters for J.E.?" I asked. +She peered at me over her spectacles, and then she opened a drawer and +fumbled among its contents for a long time, so long that my hopes +began to falter. At last, having held a document before her glasses +for nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter, +accompanying the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance +it was for J.E. +"Is there only one?" I demanded. +"There are no more," said she and I put it in my pocket and turned +my face homeward I could not open it then rules obliged me to +be back by eight, and it was already halfpast seven. +Various duties awaited me on my arrival. I had to sit with the girls +during their hour of study then it was my turn to read prayers +to see them to bed afterwards I supped with the other teachers. +Even when we finally retired for the night, the inevitable Miss +Gryce was still my companion we had only a short end of candle +in our candlestick, and I dreaded lest she should talk till it +was all burnt out fortunately, however, the heavy supper she had +eaten produced a soporific effect she was already snoring before +I had finished undressing. There still remained an inch of candle +I now took out my letter the seal was an initial F. I broke it +the contents were brief. +"If J.E., who advertised in the shire Herald of last Thursday, +possesses the acquirements mentioned, and if she is in a position +to give satisfactory references as to character and competency, a +situation can be offered her where there is but one pupil, a little +girl, under ten years of age and where the salary is thirty pounds +per annum. J.E. is requested to send references, name, address, +and all particulars to the direction +"Mrs. Fairfax, Thornfield, near Millcote, shire." +I examined the document long the writing was oldfashioned and +rather uncertain, like that of an elderly lady. This circumstance +was satisfactory a private fear had haunted me, that in thus +acting for myself, and by my own guidance, I ran the risk of getting +into some scrape and, above all things, I wished the result of my +endeavours to be respectable, proper, en regle. I now felt that an +elderly lady was no bad ingredient in the business I had on hand. +Mrs. Fairfax I saw her in a black gown and widow's cap frigid, +perhaps, but not uncivil a model of elderly English respectability. +Thornfield that, doubtless, was the name of her house a neat +orderly spot, I was sure though I failed in my efforts to conceive +a correct plan of the premises. Millcote, shire I brushed up +my recollections of the map of England, yes, I saw it both the +shire and the town. shire was seventy miles nearer London than +the remote county where I now resided that was a recommendation +to me. I longed to go where there was life and movement Millcote +was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A a busy place +enough, doubtless so much the better it would be a complete +change at least. Not that my fancy was much captivated by the idea +of long chimneys and clouds of smoke "but," I argued, "Thornfield +will, probably, be a good way from the town." +Here the socket of the candle dropped, and the wick went out. +Next day new steps were to be taken my plans could no longer be +confined to my own breast I must impart them in order to achieve +their success. Having sought and obtained an audience of the +superintendent during the noontide recreation, I told her I had a +prospect of getting a new situation where the salary would be double +what I now received for at Lowood I only got pounds per annum +and requested she would break the matter for me to Mr. Brocklehurst, +or some of the committee, and ascertain whether they would permit +me to mention them as references. She obligingly consented to +act as mediatrix in the matter. The next day she laid the affair +before Mr. Brocklehurst, who said that Mrs. Reed must be written to, +as she was my natural guardian. A note was accordingly addressed to +that lady, who returned for answer, that "I might do as I pleased +she had long relinquished all interference in my affairs." This note +went the round of the committee, and at last, after what appeared +to me most tedious delay, formal leave was given me to better my +condition if I could and an assurance added, that as I had always +conducted myself well, both as teacher and pupil, at Lowood, a +testimonial of character and capacity, signed by the inspectors of +that institution, should forthwith be furnished me. +This testimonial I accordingly received in about a month, forwarded +a copy of it to Mrs. Fairfax, and got that lady's reply, stating +that she was satisfied, and fixing that day fortnight as the period +for my assuming the post of governess in her house. +I now busied myself in preparations the fortnight passed rapidly. +I had not a very large wardrobe, though it was adequate to my +wants and the last day sufficed to pack my trunk, the same I +had brought with me eight years ago from Gateshead. +The box was corded, the card nailed on. In halfanhour the +carrier was to call for it to take it to Lowton, whither I myself +was to repair at an early hour the next morning to meet the coach. +I had brushed my black stuff travellingdress, prepared my bonnet, +gloves, and muff sought in all my drawers to see that no article +was left behind and now having nothing more to do, I sat down and +tried to rest. I could not though I had been on foot all day, I +could not now repose an instant I was too much excited. A phase +of my life was closing tonight, a new one opening tomorrow +impossible to slumber in the interval I must watch feverishly +while the change was being accomplished. +"Miss," said a servant who met me in the lobby, where I was wandering +like a troubled spirit, "a person below wishes to see you." +"The carrier, no doubt," I thought, and ran downstairs without +inquiry. I was passing the backparlour or teachers' sittingroom, +the door of which was half open, to go to the kitchen, +when some one ran out +"It's her, I am sure I could have told her anywhere" cried +the individual who stopped my progress and took my hand. +I looked I saw a woman attired like a welldressed servant, +matronly, yet still young very goodlooking, with black hair and +eyes, and lively complexion. +"Well, who is it?" she asked, in a voice and with a smile I half +recognised "you've not quite forgotten me, I think, Miss Jane?" +In another second I was embracing and kissing her rapturously +"Bessie Bessie Bessie" that was all I said whereat she half +laughed, half cried, and we both went into the parlour. By the +fire stood a little fellow of three years old, in plaid frock and +trousers. +"That is my little boy," said Bessie directly. +"Then you are married, Bessie?" +"Yes nearly five years since to Robert Leaven, the coachman and +I've a little girl besides Bobby there, that I've christened Jane." +"And you don't live at Gateshead?" +"I live at the lodge the old porter has left." +"Well, and how do they all get on? Tell me everything about them, +Bessie but sit down first and, Bobby, come and sit on my knee, +will you?" but Bobby preferred sidling over to his mother. +"You're not grown so very tall, Miss Jane, nor so very stout," +continued Mrs. Leaven. "I dare say they've not kept you too well +at school Miss Reed is the head and shoulders taller than you +are and Miss Georgiana would make two of you in breadth." +"Georgiana is handsome, I suppose, Bessie?" +"Very. She went up to London last winter with her mama, and there +everybody admired her, and a young lord fell in love with her but +his relations were against the match and what do you think? +he and Miss Georgiana made it up to run away but they were found +out and stopped. It was Miss Reed that found them out I believe +she was envious and now she and her sister lead a cat +and dog life together they are always quarrelling " +"Well, and what of John Reed?" +"Oh, he is not doing so well as his mama could wish. He went to +college, and he got plucked, I think they call it and then +his uncles wanted him to be a barrister, and study the law but he +is such a dissipated young man, they will never make much of him, +I think." +"What does he look like?" +"He is very tall some people call him a finelooking young man +but he has such thick lips." +"And Mrs. Reed?" +"Missis looks stout and well enough in the face, but I think she's +not quite easy in her mind Mr. John's conduct does not please +her he spends a deal of money." +"Did she send you here, Bessie?" +"No, indeed but I have long wanted to see you, and when I heard +that there had been a letter from you, and that you were going to +another part of the country, I thought I'd just set off, and get +a look at you before you were quite out of my reach." +"I am afraid you are disappointed in me, Bessie." I said this +laughing I perceived that Bessie's glance, though it expressed +regard, did in no shape denote admiration. +"No, Miss Jane, not exactly you are genteel enough you look like +a lady, and it is as much as ever I expected of you you were no +beauty as a child." +I smiled at Bessie's frank answer I felt that it was correct, but +I confess I was not quite indifferent to its import at eighteen +most people wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an +exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but gratification. +"I dare say you are clever, though," continued Bessie, by way of +solace. "What can you do? Can you play on the piano?" +"A little." +There was one in the room Bessie went and opened it, and then asked +me to sit down and give her a tune I played a waltz or two, and +she was charmed. +"The Miss Reeds could not play as well" said she exultingly. "I +always said you would surpass them in learning and can you draw?" +"That is one of my paintings over the chimneypiece." It was a +landscape in water colours, of which I had made a present to the +superintendent, in acknowledgment of her obliging mediation with +the committee on my behalf, and which she had framed and glazed. +"Well, that is beautiful, Miss Jane It is as fine a picture as +any Miss Reed's drawingmaster could paint, let alone the young +ladies themselves, who could not come near it and have you learnt +French?" +"Yes, Bessie, I can both read it and speak it." +"And you can work on muslin and canvas?" +"I can." +"Oh, you are quite a lady, Miss Jane I knew you would be you +will get on whether your relations notice you or not. There was +something I wanted to ask you. Have you ever heard anything from +your father's kinsfolk, the Eyres?" +"Never in my life." +"Well, you know Missis always said they were poor and quite +despicable and they may be poor but I believe they are as much +gentry as the Reeds are for one day, nearly seven years ago, a +Mr. Eyre came to Gateshead and wanted to see you Missis said you +were it school fifty miles off he seemed so much disappointed, for +he could not stay he was going on a voyage to a foreign country, +and the ship was to sail from London in a day or two. He looked +quite a gentleman, and I believe he was your father's brother." +"What foreign country was he going to, Bessie?" +"An island thousands of miles off, where they make wine +the butler did tell me " +"Madeira?" I suggested. +"Yes, that is it that is the very word." +"So he went?" +"Yes he did not stay many minutes in the house Missis was very +high with him she called him afterwards a 'sneaking tradesman.' +My Robert believes he was a winemerchant." +"Very likely," I returned "or perhaps clerk or agent to a +winemerchant." +Bessie and I conversed about old times an hour longer, and then +she was obliged to leave me I saw her again for a few minutes +the next morning at Lowton, while I was waiting for the coach. We +parted finally at the door of the Brocklehurst Arms there each +went her separate way she set off for the brow of Lowood Fell +to meet the conveyance which was to take her back to Gateshead, I +mounted the vehicle which was to bear me to new duties and a new +life in the unknown environs of Millcote. +CHAPTER XI +A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play +and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you +see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured +papering on the walls as inn rooms have such a carpet, such +furniture, such ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including +a portrait of George the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, +and a representation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible +to you by the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and +by that of an excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and +bonnet my muff and umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming +away the numbness and chill contracted by sixteen hours' exposure +to the rawness of an October day I left Lowton at four o'clock +a.m., and the Millcote town clock is now just striking eight. +Reader, though I look comfortably accommodated, I am not very tranquil +in my mind. I thought when the coach stopped here there would be +some one to meet me I looked anxiously round as I descended the +wooden steps the "boots" placed for my convenience, expecting to +hear my name pronounced, and to see some description of carriage +waiting to convey me to Thornfield. Nothing of the sort was +visible and when I asked a waiter if any one had been to inquire +after a Miss Eyre, I was answered in the negative so I had no +resource but to request to be shown into a private room and here +I am waiting, while all sorts of doubts and fears are troubling my +thoughts. +It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel +itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, +uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, +and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has +quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow +of pride warms it but then the throb of fear disturbs it and fear +with me became predominant when halfanhour elapsed and still I +was alone. I bethought myself to ring the bell. +"Is there a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield?" I +asked of the waiter who answered the summons. +"Thornfield? I don't know, ma'am I'll inquire at the +bar." He vanished, but reappeared instantly +"Is your name Eyre, Miss?" +"Yes." +"Person here waiting for you." +I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the inn +passage a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamplit +street I dimly saw a onehorse conveyance. +"This will be your luggage, I suppose?" said the man rather abruptly +when he saw me, pointing to my trunk in the passage. +"Yes." He hoisted it on to the vehicle, which was a sort of car, +and then I got in before he shut me up, I asked him how far it +was to Thornfield. +"A matter of six miles." +"How long shall we be before we get there?" +"Happen an hour and a half." +He fastened the car door, climbed to his own seat outside, and +we set off. Our progress was leisurely, and gave me ample time +to reflect I was content to be at length so near the end of my +journey and as I leaned back in the comfortable though not elegant +conveyance, I meditated much at my ease. +"I suppose," thought I, "judging from the plainness of the servant +and carriage, Mrs. Fairfax is not a very dashing person so much +the better I never lived amongst fine people but once, and I was +very miserable with them. I wonder if she lives alone except this +little girl if so, and if she is in any degree amiable, I shall +surely be able to get on with her I will do my best it is a pity +that doing one's best does not always answer. At Lowood, indeed, +I took that resolution, kept it, and succeeded in pleasing but +with Mrs. Reed, I remember my best was always spurned with scorn. +I pray God Mrs. Fairfax may not turn out a second Mrs. Reed but +if she does, I am not bound to stay with her let the worst come +to the worst, I can advertise again. How far are we on our road +now, I wonder?" +I let down the window and looked out Millcote was behind us judging +by the number of its lights, it seemed a place of considerable +magnitude, much larger than Lowton. We were now, as far as I could +see, on a sort of common but there were houses scattered all over +the district I felt we were in a different region to Lowood, more +populous, less picturesque more stirring, less romantic. +The roads were heavy, the night misty my conductor let his horse +walk all the way, and the hour and a half extended, I verily +believe, to two hours at last he turned in his seat and said +"You're noan so far fro' Thornfield now." +Again I looked out we were passing a church I saw its low broad +tower against the sky, and its bell was tolling a quarter I saw +a narrow galaxy of lights too, on a hillside, marking a village or +hamlet. About ten minutes after, the driver got down and opened a +pair of gates we passed through, and they clashed to behind us. +We now slowly ascended a drive, and came upon the long front of a +house candlelight gleamed from one curtained bowwindow all the +rest were dark. The car stopped at the front door it was opened +by a maidservant I alighted and went in. +"Will you walk this way, ma'am?" said the girl and I followed +her across a square hall with high doors all round she ushered me +into a room whose double illumination of fire and candle at first +dazzled me, contrasting as it did with the darkness to which my +eyes had been for two hours inured when I could see, however, a +cosy and agreeable picture presented itself to my view. +A snug small room a round table by a cheerful fire an armchair +highbacked and oldfashioned, wherein sat the neatest imaginable +little elderly lady, in widow's cap, black silk gown, and snowy +muslin apron exactly like what I had fancied Mrs. Fairfax, only +less stately and milder looking. She was occupied in knitting a +large cat sat demurely at her feet nothing in short was wanting +to complete the beauideal of domestic comfort. A more reassuring +introduction for a new governess could scarcely be conceived +there was no grandeur to overwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass +and then, as I entered, the old lady got up and promptly and kindly +came forward to meet me. +"How do you do, my dear? I am afraid you have had a tedious ride +John drives so slowly you must be cold, come to the fire." +"Mrs. Fairfax, I suppose?" said I. +"Yes, you are right do sit down." +She conducted me to her own chair, and then began to remove my shawl +and untie my bonnetstrings I begged she would not give herself +so much trouble. +"Oh, it is no trouble I dare say your own hands are almost numbed +with cold. Leah, make a little hot negus and cut a sandwich or +two here are the keys of the storeroom." +And she produced from her pocket a most housewifely bunch of keys, +and delivered them to the servant. +"Now, then, draw nearer to the fire," she continued. "You've +brought your luggage with you, haven't you, my dear?" +"Yes, ma'am." +"I'll see it carried into your room," she said, and bustled out. +"She treats me like a visitor," thought I. "I little expected such +a reception I anticipated only coldness and stiffness this is +not like what I have heard of the treatment of governesses but I +must not exult too soon." +She returned with her own hands cleared her knitting apparatus +and a book or two from the table, to make room for the tray which +Leah now brought, and then herself handed me the refreshments. I +felt rather confused at being the object of more attention than +I had ever before received, and, that too, shown by my employer +and superior but as she did not herself seem to consider she was +doing anything out of her place, I thought it better to take her +civilities quietly. +"Shall I have the pleasure of seeing Miss Fairfax tonight?" I +asked, when I had partaken of what she offered me. +"What did you say, my dear? I am a little deaf," returned the good +lady, approaching her ear to my mouth. +I repeated the question more distinctly. +"Miss Fairfax? Oh, you mean Miss Varens Varens is the name of +your future pupil." +"Indeed Then she is not your daughter?" +"No, I have no family." +I should have followed up my first inquiry, by asking in what way +Miss Varens was connected with her but I recollected it was not +polite to ask too many questions besides, I was sure to hear in +time. +"I am so glad," she continued, as she sat down opposite to me, and +took the cat on her knee "I am so glad you are come it will be +quite pleasant living here now with a companion. To be sure it +is pleasant at any time for Thornfield is a fine old hall, rather +neglected of late years perhaps, but still it is a respectable +place yet you know in wintertime one feels dreary quite alone in +the best quarters. I say alone Leah is a nice girl to be sure, +and John and his wife are very decent people but then you see +they are only servants, and one can't converse with them on terms +of equality one must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing +one's authority. I'm sure last winter it was a very severe one, +if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it rained and blew, +not a creature but the butcher and postman came to the house, from +November till February and I really got quite melancholy with sitting +night after night alone I had Leah in to read to me sometimes +but I don't think the poor girl liked the task much she felt it +confining. In spring and summer one got on better sunshine and +long days make such a difference and then, just at the commencement +of this autumn, little Adela Varens came and her nurse a child +makes a house alive all at once and now you are here I shall be +quite gay." +My heart really warmed to the worthy lady as I heard her talk and +I drew my chair a little nearer to her, and expressed my sincere +wish that she might find my company as agreeable as she anticipated. +"But I'll not keep you sitting up late tonight," said she "it is +on the stroke of twelve now, and you have been travelling all day +you must feel tired. If you have got your feet well warmed, I'll +show you your bedroom. I've had the room next to mine prepared for +you it is only a small apartment, but I thought you would like it +better than one of the large front chambers to be sure they have +finer furniture, but they are so dreary and solitary, I never sleep +in them myself." +I thanked her for her considerate choice, and as I really felt +fatigued with my long journey, expressed my readiness to retire. +She took her candle, and I followed her from the room. First she +went to see if the halldoor was fastened having taken the key +from the lock, she led the way upstairs. The steps and banisters +were of oak the staircase window was high and latticed both it +and the long gallery into which the bedroom doors opened looked +as if they belonged to a church rather than a house. A very chill +and vaultlike air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting cheerless +ideas of space and solitude and I was glad, when finally ushered +into my chamber, to find it of small dimensions, and furnished in +ordinary, modern style. +When Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind goodnight, and I had fastened +my door, gazed leisurely round, and in some measure effaced the +eerie impression made by that wide hall, that dark and spacious +staircase, and that long, cold gallery, by the livelier aspect of +my little room, I remembered that, after a day of bodily fatigue +and mental anxiety, I was now at last in safe haven. The impulse +of gratitude swelled my heart, and I knelt down at the bedside, +and offered up thanks where thanks were due not forgetting, ere I +rose, to implore aid on my further path, and the power of meriting +the kindness which seemed so frankly offered me before it was +earned. My couch had no thorns in it that night my solitary room +no fears. At once weary and content, I slept soon and soundly +when I awoke it was broad day. +The chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone +in between the gay blue chintz window curtains, showing papered +walls and a carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained +plaster of Lowood, that my spirits rose at the view. Externals +have a great effect on the young I thought that a fairer era of +life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and +pleasures, as well as its thorns and toils. My faculties, roused +by the change of scene, the new field offered to hope, seemed all +astir. I cannot precisely define what they expected, but it was +something pleasant not perhaps that day or that month, but at an +indefinite future period. +I rose I dressed myself with care obliged to be plain for I +had no article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity +I was still by nature solicitous to be neat. It was not my habit +to be disregardful of appearance or careless of the impression I +made on the contrary, I ever wished to look as well as I could, +and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit. I sometimes +regretted that I was not handsomer I sometimes wished to have rosy +cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth I desired to be +tall, stately, and finely developed in figure I felt it a misfortune +that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and +so marked. And why had I these aspirations and these regrets? +It would be difficult to say I could not then distinctly say it +to myself yet I had a reason, and a logical, natural reason too. +However, when I had brushed my hair very smooth, and put on my black +frock which, Quakerlike as it was, at least had the merit of +fitting to a nicety and adjusted my clean white tucker, I thought +I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs. Fairfax, and +that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me with antipathy. +Having opened my chamber window, and seen that I left all things +straight and neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth. +Traversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery +steps of oak then I gained the hall I halted there a minute I +looked at some pictures on the walls one, I remember, represented +a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a +pearl necklace, at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great +clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with +time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to +me but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The halldoor, +which was half of glass, stood open I stepped over the threshold. +It was a fine autumn morning the early sun shone serenely on +embrowned groves and still green fields advancing on to the lawn, +I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was three +storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable a +gentleman's manorhouse, not a nobleman's seat battlements round +the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well +from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on +the wing they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great +meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where +an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as +oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion's designation. +Farther off were hills not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so +craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world +but yet quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace +Thornfield with a seclusion I had not expected to find existent +so near the stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet, whose +roofs were blent with trees, straggled up the side of one of these +hills the church of the district stood nearer Thornfield its +old towertop looked over a knoll between the house and gates. +I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet +listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying +the wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place +it was for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, +when that lady appeared at the door. +"What out already?" said she. "I see you are an early riser." +I went up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake +of the hand. +"How do you like Thornfield?" she asked. I told her I liked it +very much. +"Yes," she said, "it is a pretty place but I fear it will be +getting out of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his +head to come and reside here permanently or, at least, visit it +rather oftener great houses and fine grounds require the presence +of the proprietor." +"Mr. Rochester" I exclaimed. "Who is he?" +"The owner of Thornfield," she responded quietly. "Did you not +know he was called Rochester?" +Of course I did not I had never heard of him before but the +old lady seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood +fact, with which everybody must be acquainted by instinct. +"I thought," I continued, "Thornfield belonged to you." +"To me? Bless you, child what an idea To me I am only the +housekeeper the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to +the Rochesters by the mother's side, or at least my husband was +he was a clergyman, incumbent of Hay that little village yonder +on the hill and that church near the gates was his. The present +Mr. Rochester's mother was a Fairfax, and second cousin to my +husband but I never presume on the connection in fact, it is +nothing to me I consider myself quite in the light of an ordinary +housekeeper my employer is always civil, and I expect nothing +more." +"And the little girl my pupil" +"She is Mr. Rochester's ward he commissioned me to find a governess +for her. He intended to have her brought up in shire, I believe. +Here she comes, with her 'bonne,' as she calls her nurse." The +enigma then was explained this affable and kind little widow was +no great dame but a dependant like myself. I did not like her the +worse for that on the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever. +The equality between her and me was real not the mere result of +condescension on her part so much the better my position was +all the freer. +As I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by +her attendant, came running up the lawn. I looked at my pupil, +who did not at first appear to notice me she was quite a child, +perhaps seven or eight years old, slightly built, with a pale, +smallfeatured face, and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to +her waist. +"Good morning, Miss Adela," said Mrs. Fairfax. "Come and speak to +the lady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman some +day." She approached. +"C'est le ma gouverante" said she, pointing to me, and +addressing her nurse who answered +"Mais oui, certainement." +"Are they foreigners?" I inquired, amazed at hearing the French +language. +"The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent +and, I believe, never left it till within six months ago. When +she first came here she could speak no English now she can make +shift to talk it a little I don't understand her, she mixes it +so with French but you will make out her meaning very well, I dare +say." +Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a +French lady and as I had always made a point of conversing with +Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last +seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily applying +myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as +possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain +degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not +likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and +shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess and as +I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her +own tongue she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated +at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her +large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently. +"Ah" cried she, in French, "you speak my language as well as +Mr. Rochester does I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can +Sophie. She will be glad nobody here understands her Madame +Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse she came with me over +the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked how it did +smoke and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. +Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, +and Sophie and I had little beds in another place. I nearly fell +out of mine it was like a shelf. And Mademoiselle what is your +name?" +"Eyre Jane Eyre." +"Aire? Bah I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the +morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city a huge +city, with very dark houses and all smoky not at all like the +pretty clean town I came from and Mr. Rochester carried me in his +arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all +got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger +than this and finer, called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a +week I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place +full of trees, called the Park and there were many children there +besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with +crumbs." +"Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?" asked Mrs. +Fairfax. +I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent +tongue of Madame Pierrot. +"I wish," continued the good lady, "you would ask her a question +or two about her parents I wonder if she remembers them?" +"Adele," I inquired, "with whom did you live when you were in that +pretty clean town you spoke of?" +"I lived long ago with mama but she is gone to the Holy Virgin. +Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A +great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to +dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them I +liked it. Shall I let you hear me sing now?" +She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen +of her accomplishments. Descending from her chair, she came and +placed herself on my knee then, folding her little hands demurely +before her, shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the +ceiling, she commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the +strain of a forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her +lover, calls pride to her aid desires her attendant to deck her +in her brightest jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the +false one that night at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of +her demeanour, how little his desertion has affected her. +The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer but +I suppose the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of +love and jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood and in very +bad taste that point was at least I thought so. +Adele sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the naivete +of her age. This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, "Now, +Mademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry." +Assuming an attitude, she began, "La Ligue des Rats fable de La +Fontaine." She then declaimed the little piece with an attention +to punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an +appropriateness of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and +which proved she had been carefully trained. +"Was it your mama who taught you that piece?" I asked. +"Yes, and she just used to say it in this way 'Qu' avez vous +donc? lui dit un de ces rats parlez' She made me lift my hand +so to remind me to raise my voice at the question. Now shall +I dance for you?" +"No, that will do but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, +as you say, with whom did you live then?" +"With Madame Frederic and her husband she took care of me, but +she is nothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had +not so fine a house as mama. I was not long there. Mr. Rochester +asked me if I would like to go and live with him in England, and I +said yes for I knew Mr. Rochester before I knew Madame Frederic, +and he was always kind to me and gave me pretty dresses and toys +but you see he has not kept his word, for he has brought me to +England, and now he is gone back again himself, and I never see +him." +After breakfast, Adele and I withdrew to the library, which room, +it appears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the +schoolroom. Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors +but there was one bookcase left open containing everything that +could be needed in the way of elementary works, and several volumes +of light literature, poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, +c. I suppose he had considered that these were all the governess +would require for her private perusal and, indeed, they contented +me amply for the present compared with the scanty pickings I had +now and then been able to glean at Lowood, they seemed to offer an +abundant harvest of entertainment and information. In this room, +too, there was a cabinet piano, quite new and of superior tone +also an easel for painting and a pair of globes. +I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply +she had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt +it would be injudicious to confine her too much at first so, when +I had talked to her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, +and when the morning had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return +to her nurse. I then proposed to occupy myself till dinnertime +in drawing some little sketches for her use. +As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs. +Fairfax called to me "Your morning schoolhours are over now, I +suppose," said she. She was in a room the foldingdoors of which +stood open I went in when she addressed me. It was a large, +stately apartment, with purple chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, +walnutpanelled walls, one vast window rich in slanted glass, and +a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs. Fairfax was dusting some +vases of fine purple spar, which stood on a sideboard. +"What a beautiful room" I exclaimed, as I looked round for I +had never before seen any half so imposing. +"Yes this is the diningroom. I have just opened the window, to +let in a little air and sunshine for everything gets so damp in +apartments that are seldom inhabited the drawingroom yonder feels +like a vault." +She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung like +it with a Tyriandyed curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by +two broad steps, and looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse +of a fairy place, so bright to my noviceeyes appeared the view +beyond. Yet it was merely a very pretty drawingroom, and within +it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid +brilliant garlands of flowers both ceiled with snowy mouldings of +white grapes and vineleaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast +crimson couches and ottomans while the ornaments on the pale +Parisian mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red +and between the windows large mirrors repeated the general blending +of snow and fire. +"In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax" said I. "No +dust, no canvas coverings except that the air feels chilly, one +would think they were inhabited daily." +"Why, Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester's visits here are rare, they +are always sudden and unexpected and as I observed that it put +him out to find everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of +arrangement on his arrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in +readiness." +"Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?" +"Not particularly so but he has a gentleman's tastes and habits, +and he expects to have things managed in conformity to them." +"Do you like him? Is he generally liked?" +"Oh, yes the family have always been respected here. Almost all +the land in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged +to the Rochesters time out of mind." +"Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? +Is he liked for himself?" +"I have no cause to do otherwise than like him and I believe he +is considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants but he +has never lived much amongst them." +"But has he no peculiarities? What, in short, is his character?" +"Oh his character is unimpeachable, I suppose. He is rather +peculiar, perhaps he has travelled a great deal, and seen a great +deal of the world, I should think. I dare say he is clever, but +I never had much conversation with him." +"In what way is he peculiar?" +"I don't know it is not easy to describe nothing striking, +but you feel it when he speaks to you you cannot be always sure +whether he is in jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the +contrary you don't thoroughly understand him, in short at least, +I don't but it is of no consequence, he is a very good master." +This was all the account I got from Mrs. Fairfax of her employer +and mine. There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching +a character, or observing and describing salient points, either in +persons or things the good lady evidently belonged to this class +my queries puzzled, but did not draw her out. Mr. Rochester was +Mr. Rochester in her eyes a gentleman, a landed proprietor +nothing more she inquired and searched no further, and evidently +wondered at my wish to gain a more definite notion of his identity. +When we left the diningroom, she proposed to show me over the rest +of the house and I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring +as I went for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front +chambers I thought especially grand and some of the thirdstorey +rooms, though dark and low, were interesting from their air of +antiquity. The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments +had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed +and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed +bedsteads of a hundred years old chests in oak or walnut, looking, +with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs' heads, +like types of the Hebrew ark rows of venerable chairs, highbacked +and narrow stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops +were yet apparent traces of halfeffaced embroideries, wrought by +fingers that for two generations had been coffindust. All these +relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a +home of the past a shrine of memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, +the quaintness of these retreats in the day but I by no means +coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds shut +in, some of them, with doors of oak shaded, others, with wrought +old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies +of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings, +all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam +of moonlight. +"Do the servants sleep in these rooms?" I asked. +"No they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back no +one ever sleeps here one would almost say that, if there were a +ghost at Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt." +"So I think you have no ghost, then?" +"None that I ever heard of," returned Mrs. Fairfax, smiling. +"Nor any traditions of one? no legends or ghost stories?" +"I believe not. And yet it is said the Rochesters have been rather +a violent than a quiet race in their time perhaps, though, that +is the reason they rest tranquilly in their graves now." +"Yes 'after life's fitful fever they sleep well,'" I muttered. +"Where are you going now, Mrs. Fairfax?" for she was moving away. +"On to the leads will you come and see the view from thence?" I +followed still, up a very narrow staircase to the attics, and thence +by a ladder and through a trapdoor to the roof of the hall. I +was now on a level with the crow colony, and could see into their +nests. Leaning over the battlements and looking far down, I +surveyed the grounds laid out like a map the bright and velvet +lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion the field, +wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber the wood, dun and +sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than +the trees were with foliage the church at the gates, the road, the +tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day's sun the horizon +bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white. No +feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was pleasing. When +I turned from it and repassed the trapdoor, I could scarcely see +my way down the ladder the attic seemed black as a vault compared +with that arch of blue air to which I had been looking up, and to +that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and green hill, of which the +hall was the centre, and over which I had been gazing with delight. +Mrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trapdoor I, by +drift of groping, found the outlet from the attic, and proceeded +to descend the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long +passage to which this led, separating the front and back rooms of +the third storey narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window +at the far end, and looking, with its two rows of small black doors +all shut, like a corridor in some Bluebeard's castle. +While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so +still a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh +distinct, formal, mirthless. I stopped the sound ceased, only +for an instant it began again, louder for at first, though +distinct, it was very low. It passed off in a clamorous peal that +seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber though it originated +but in one, and I could have pointed out the door whence the accents +issued. +"Mrs. Fairfax" I called out for I now heard her descending the +great stairs. "Did you hear that loud laugh? Who is it?" +"Some of the servants, very likely," she answered "perhaps Grace +Poole." +"Did you hear it?" I again inquired. +"Yes, plainly I often hear her she sews in one of these rooms. +Sometimes Leah is with her they are frequently noisy together." +The laugh was repeated in its low, syllabic tone, and terminated +in an odd murmur. +"Grace" exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax. +I really did not expect any Grace to answer for the laugh was +as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard and, but +that it was high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness +accompanied the curious cachinnation but that neither scene nor +season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. +However, the event showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense +even of surprise. +The door nearest me opened, and a servant came out, a woman of +between thirty and forty a set, squaremade figure, redhaired, +and with a hard, plain face any apparition less romantic or less +ghostly could scarcely be conceived. +"Too much noise, Grace," said Mrs. Fairfax. "Remember directions" +Grace curtseyed silently and went in. +"She is a person we have to sew and assist Leah in her housemaid's +work," continued the widow "not altogether unobjectionable in some +points, but she does well enough. Bythebye, how have you got on +with your new pupil this morning?" +The conversation, thus turned on Adele, continued till we reached +the light and cheerful region below. Adele came running +to meet us in the hall, exclaiming +"Mesdames, vous etes servies" adding, "J'ai bien faim, moi" +We found dinner ready, and waiting for us in Mrs. Fairfax's room. +CHAPTER XII +The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction +to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer +acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned +out to be what she appeared, a placidtempered, kindnatured woman, +of competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a +lively child, who had been spoilt and indulged, and therefore was +sometimes wayward but as she was committed entirely to my care, +and no injudicious interference from any quarter ever thwarted my +plans for her improvement, she soon forgot her little freaks, and +became obedient and teachable. She had no great talents, no marked +traits of character, no peculiar development of feeling or taste +which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood +but neither had she any deficiency or vice which sunk her below +it. She made reasonable progress, entertained for me a vivacious, +though perhaps not very profound, affection and by her simplicity, +gay prattle, and efforts to please, inspired me, in return, with +a degree of attachment sufficient to make us both content in each +other's society. +This, par parenthese, will be thought cool language by persons who +entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, +and the duty of those charged with their education to conceive +for them an idolatrous devotion but I am not writing to flatter +parental egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug I am merely +telling the truth. I felt a conscientious solicitude for Adele's +welfare and progress, and a quiet liking for her little self just +as I cherished towards Mrs. Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness, +and a pleasure in her society proportionate to the tranquil regard +she had for me, and the moderation of her mind and character. +Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and +then, when I took a walk by myself in the grounds when I went +down to the gates and looked through them along the road or when, +while Adele played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in +the storeroom, I climbed the three staircases, raised the trapdoor +of the attic, and having reached the leads, looked out afar over +sequestered field and hill, and along dim skyline that then +I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit +which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had +heard of but never seen that then I desired more of practical +experience than I possessed more of intercourse with my kind, of +acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my +reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was good +in Adele but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid +kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold. +Who blames me? Many, no doubt and I shall be called discontented. +I could not help it the restlessness was in my nature it agitated +me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the +corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the +silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind's eye to dwell +on whatever bright visions rose before it and, certainly, they +were many and glowing to let my heart be heaved by the exultant +movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it +with life and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that +was never ended a tale my imagination created, and narrated +continuously quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, +that I desired and had not in my actual existence. +It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with +tranquillity they must have action and they will make it if +they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than +mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody +knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in +the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be +very calm generally but women feel just as men feel they need +exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as +much as their brothers do they suffer from too rigid a restraint, +too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer and it +is narrowminded in their more privileged fellowcreatures to say +that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting +stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is +thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do +more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their +sex. +When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole's laugh the +same peal, the same low, slow ha ha which, when first heard, +had thrilled me I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs stranger +than her laugh. There were days when she was quite silent but +there were others when I could not account for the sounds she made. +Sometimes I saw her she would come out of her room with a basin, +or a plate, or a tray in her hand, go down to the kitchen and +shortly return, generally oh, romantic reader, forgive me for +telling the plain truth bearing a pot of porter. Her appearance +always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised by her oral oddities +hardfeatured and staid, she had no point to which interest could +attach. I made some attempts to draw her into conversation, but +she seemed a person of few words a monosyllabic reply usually +cut short every effort of that sort. +The other members of the household, viz., John and his wife, Leah +the housemaid, and Sophie the French nurse, were decent people +but in no respect remarkable with Sophie I used to talk French, +and sometimes I asked her questions about her native country but +she was not of a descriptive or narrative turn, and generally gave +such vapid and confused answers as were calculated rather to check +than encourage inquiry. +October, November, December passed away. One afternoon in January, +Mrs. Fairfax had begged a holiday for Adele, because she had a cold +and, as Adele seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me +how precious occasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood, +I accorded it, deeming that I did well in showing pliability on the +point. It was a fine, calm day, though very cold I was tired of +sitting still in the library through a whole long morning Mrs. +Fairfax had just written a letter which was waiting to be posted, +so I put on my bonnet and cloak and volunteered to carry it to +Hay the distance, two miles, would be a pleasant winter afternoon +walk. Having seen Adele comfortably seated in her little chair by +Mrs. Fairfax's parlour fireside, and given her her best wax doll +which I usually kept enveloped in silver paper in a drawer to +play with, and a storybook for change of amusement and having +replied to her "Revenez bientot, ma bonne amie, ma chere Mdlle. +Jeannette," with a kiss I set out. +The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely I +walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and +analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and +situation. It was three o'clock the church bell tolled as I passed +under the belfry the charm of the hour lay in its approaching +dimness, in the lowgliding and palebeaming sun. I was a mile +from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts +and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral +treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in +its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, +it made no sound here for there was not a holly, not an evergreen +to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still +as the white, worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. +Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle +now browsed and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally +in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten +to drop. +This lane inclined uphill all the way to Hay having reached +the middle, I sat down on a stile which led thence into a field. +Gathering my mantle about me, and sheltering my hands in my muff, +I did not feel the cold, though it froze keenly as was attested +by a sheet of ice covering the causeway, where a little brooklet, +now congealed, had overflowed after a rapid thaw some days since. +From my seat I could look down on Thornfield the grey and +battlemented hall was the principal object in the vale below me +its woods and dark rookery rose against the west. I lingered till +the sun went down amongst the trees, and sank crimson and clear +behind them. I then turned eastward. +On the hilltop above me sat the rising moon pale yet as a cloud, +but brightening momentarily, she looked over Hay, which, half lost +in trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys it was yet +a mile distant, but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its +thin murmurs of life. My ear, too, felt the flow of currents in +what dales and depths I could not tell but there were many hills +beyond Hay, and doubtless many becks threading their passes. That +evening calm betrayed alike the tinkle of the nearest streams, the +sough of the most remote. +A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at +once so far away and so clear a positive tramp, tramp, a metallic +clatter, which effaced the soft wavewanderings as, in a picture, +the solid mass of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn +in dark and strong on the foreground, efface the aerial distance +of azure hill, sunny horizon, and blended clouds where tint melts +into tint. +The din was on the causeway a horse was coming the windings of +the lane yet hid it, but it approached. I was just leaving the +stile yet, as the path was narrow, I sat still to let it go by. +In those days I was young, and all sorts of fancies bright and +dark tenanted my mind the memories of nursery stories were there +amongst other rubbish and when they recurred, maturing youth added +to them a vigour and vividness beyond what childhood could give. +As this horse approached, and as I watched for it to appear through +the dusk, I remembered certain of Bessie's tales, wherein figured +a NorthofEngland spirit called a "Gytrash," which, in the form +of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes +came upon belated travellers, as this horse was now coming upon +me. +It was very near, but not yet in sight when, in addition to the +tramp, tramp, I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the +hazel stems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made +him a distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form +of Bessie's Gytrash a lionlike creature with long hair and +a huge head it passed me, however, quietly enough not staying +to look up, with strange pretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half +expected it would. The horse followed, a tall steed, and on its +back a rider. The man, the human being, broke the spell at once. +Nothing ever rode the Gytrash it was always alone and goblins, +to my notions, though they might tenant the dumb carcasses of +beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace human form. +No Gytrash was this, only a traveller taking the short cut to +Millcote. He passed, and I went on a few steps, and I turned a +sliding sound and an exclamation of "What the deuce is to do now?" +and a clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse +were down they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the +causeway. The dog came bounding back, and seeing his master in a +predicament, and hearing the horse groan, barked till the evening +hills echoed the sound, which was deep in proportion to his +magnitude. He snuffed round the prostrate group, and then he ran +up to me it was all he could do, there was no other help at +hand to summon. I obeyed him, and walked down to the traveller, by +this time struggling himself free of his steed. His efforts were +so vigorous, I thought he could not be much hurt but I +asked him the question +"Are you injured, sir?" +I think he was swearing, but am not certain however, he was +pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me +directly. +"Can I do anything?" I asked again. +"You must just stand on one side," he answered as he rose, first to +his knees, and then to his feet. I did whereupon began a heaving, +stamping, clattering process, accompanied by a barking and baying +which removed me effectually some yards' distance but I would +not be driven quite away till I saw the event. This was finally +fortunate the horse was reestablished, and the dog was silenced +with a "Down, Pilot" The traveller now, stooping, felt his foot +and leg, as if trying whether they were sound apparently something +ailed them, for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen, +and sat down. +I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, +for I now drew near him again. +"If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I can fetch some one either +from Thornfield Hall or from Hay." +"Thank you I shall do I have no broken bones, only a sprain" +and again he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted +an involuntary "Ugh" +Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing +bright I could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a +riding cloak, fur collared and steel clasped its details were not +apparent, but I traced the general points of middle height and +considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern +features and a heavy brow his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked +ireful and thwarted just now he was past youth, but had not reached +middleage perhaps he might be thirtyfive. I felt no fear of +him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroiclooking +young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning +him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I had +hardly ever seen a handsome youth never in my life spoken to one. +I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, +gallantry, fascination but had I met those qualities incarnate +in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they +neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should +have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else +that is bright but antipathetic. +If even this stranger had smiled and been goodhumoured to me when +I addressed him if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and +with thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation +to renew inquiries but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, +set me at my ease I retained my station when he waved +to me to go, and announced +"I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this +solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse." +He looked at me when I said this he had hardly turned his eyes in +my direction before. +"I should think you ought to be at home yourself," said he, "if +you have a home in this neighbourhood where do you come from?" +"From just below and I am not at all afraid of being out late when +it is moonlight I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure, if +you wish it indeed, I am going there to post a letter." +"You live just below do you mean at that house with the +battlements?" pointing to Thornfield Hall, on which the moon cast +a hoary gleam, bringing it out distinct and pale from the woods that, +by contrast with the western sky, now seemed one mass of shadow. +"Yes, sir." +"Whose house is it?" +"Mr. Rochester's." +"Do you know Mr. Rochester?" +"No, I have never seen him." +"He is not resident, then?" +"No." +"Can you tell me where he is?" +"I cannot." +"You are not a servant at the hall, of course. You are " +He stopped, ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite +simple a black merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet neither +of them half fine enough for a lady'smaid. He seemed puzzled to +decide what I was I helped him. +"I am the governess." +"Ah, the governess" he repeated "deuce take me, if I had not +forgotten The governess" and again my raiment underwent scrutiny. +In two minutes he rose from the stile his face expressed pain +when he tried to move. +"I cannot commission you to fetch help," he said "but you may help +me a little yourself, if you will be so kind." +"Yes, sir." +"You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick?" +"No." +"Try to get hold of my horse's bridle and lead him to me you are +not afraid?" +I should have been afraid to touch a horse when alone, but when +told to do it, I was disposed to obey. I put down my muff on the +stile, and went up to the tall steed I endeavoured to catch the +bridle, but it was a spirited thing, and would not let me come +near its head I made effort on effort, though in vain meantime, +I was mortally afraid of its trampling forefeet. The traveller +waited and watched for some time, and at last he laughed. +"I see," he said, "the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, +so all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain I must +beg of you to come here." +I came. "Excuse me," he continued "necessity compels me to make +you useful." He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on +me with some stress, limped to his horse. Having once caught the +bridle, he mastered it directly and sprang to his saddle grimacing +grimly as he made the effort, for it wrenched his sprain. +"Now," said he, releasing his under lip from a hard bite, "just +hand me my whip it lies there under the hedge." +I sought it and found it. +"Thank you now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as +fast as you can." +A touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear, and +then bound away the dog rushed in his traces all three vanished, +"Like heath that, in the wilderness, The wild wind whirls away." +I took up my muff and walked on. The incident had occurred and +was gone for me it WAS an incident of no moment, no romance, +no interest in a sense yet it marked with change one single hour +of a monotonous life. My help had been needed and claimed I had +given it I was pleased to have done something trivial, transitory +though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary +of an existence all passive. The new face, too, was like a new +picture introduced to the gallery of memory and it was dissimilar +to all the others hanging there firstly, because it was masculine +and, secondly, because it was dark, strong, and stern. I had it +still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the letter into +the post office I saw it as I walked fast downhill all the way +home. When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked round +and listened, with an idea that a horse's hoofs might ring on the +causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrashlike +Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent I saw only the hedge +and a pollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to +meet the moonbeams I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming +fitful among the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant and when +I glanced down in the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing +the hallfront, caught a light kindling in a window it reminded +me that I was late, and I hurried on. +I did not like reentering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was +to return to stagnation to cross the silent hall, to ascend the +darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to +meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with +her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened +by my walk, to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters +of an uniform and too still existence of an existence whose +very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of +appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have +been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to +have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the +calm amidst which I now repined Yes, just as much good as it +would do a man tired of sitting still in a "too easy chair" to take +a long walk and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my +circumstances, as it would be under his. +I lingered at the gates I lingered on the lawn I paced backwards +and forwards on the pavement the shutters of the glass door were +closed I could not see into the interior and both my eyes and +spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house from the greyhollow +filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me to that sky +expanded before me, a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud +the moon ascending it in solemn march her orb seeming to look up +as she left the hilltops, from behind which she had come, far and +farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its +fathomless depth and measureless distance and for those trembling +stars that followed her course they made my heart tremble, my +veins glow when I viewed them. Little things recall us to earth +the clock struck in the hall that sufficed I turned from moon +and stars, opened a sidedoor, and went in. +The hall was not dark, nor yet was it lit, only by the highhung +bronze lamp a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the +oak staircase. This ruddy shine issued from the great diningroom, +whose twoleaved door stood open, and showed a genial fire in the +grate, glancing on marble hearth and brass fireirons, and revealing +purple draperies and polished furniture, in the most pleasant +radiance. It revealed, too, a group near the mantelpiece I had +scarcely caught it, and scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling +of voices, amongst which I seemed to distinguish the tones of Adele, +when the door closed. +I hastened to Mrs. Fairfax's room there was a fire there too, +but no candle, and no Mrs. Fairfax. Instead, all alone, sitting +upright on the rug, and gazing with gravity at the blaze, I beheld +a great black and white longhaired dog, just like the Gytrash of +the lane. It was so like it that I went forward and said "Pilot" +and the thing got up and came to me and snuffed me. I caressed +him, and he wagged his great tail but he looked an eerie creature +to be alone with, and I could not tell whence he had come. I +rang the bell, for I wanted a candle and I wanted, too, to get an +account of this visitant. Leah entered. +"What dog is this?" +"He came with master." +"With whom?" +"With master Mr. Rochester he is just arrived." +"Indeed and is Mrs. Fairfax with him?" +"Yes, and Miss Adele they are in the diningroom, and John is gone +for a surgeon for master has had an accident his horse fell and +his ankle is sprained." +"Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?" +"Yes, coming downhill it slipped on some ice." +"Ah Bring me a candle will you Leah?" +Leah brought it she entered, followed by Mrs. Fairfax, who repeated +the news adding that Mr. Carter the surgeon was come, and was now +with Mr. Rochester then she hurried out to give orders about tea, +and I went upstairs to take off my things. +CHAPTER XIII +Mr. Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon's orders, went to bed early +that night nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come +down, it was to attend to business his agent and some of his +tenants were arrived, and waiting to speak with him. +Adele and I had now to vacate the library it would be in daily +requisition as a receptionroom for callers. A fire was lit in +an apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged +it for the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the +morning that Thornfield Hall was a changed place no longer silent +as a church, it echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door, +or a clang of the bell steps, too, often traversed the hall, and +new voices spoke in different keys below a rill from the outer world +was flowing through it it had a master for my part, I liked it +better. +Adele was not easy to teach that day she could not apply she +kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if +she could get a glimpse of Mr. Rochester then she coined pretexts +to go downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the +library, where I knew she was not wanted then, when I got a little +angry, and made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly +of her "ami, Monsieur Edouard Fairfax DE Rochester," as she dubbed +him I had not before heard his prenomens, and to conjecture +what presents he had brought her for it appears he had intimated +the night before, that when his luggage came from Millcote, there +would be found amongst it a little box in whose contents she had +an interest. +"Et cela doit signifier," said she, "qu'il y aura le dedans un cadeau +pour moi, et peutetre pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur +a parle de vous il m'a demande le nom de ma gouvernante, et si +elle n'etait pas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pale. +J'ai dit qu'oui car c'est vrai, n'estce pas, mademoiselle?" +I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs. Fairfax's parlour the +afternoon was wild and snowy, and we passed it in the schoolroom. +At dark I allowed Adele to put away books and work, and to +run downstairs for, from the comparative silence below, and from +the cessation of appeals to the doorbell, I conjectured that Mr. +Rochester was now at liberty. Left alone, I walked to the window +but nothing was to be seen thence twilight and snowflakes together +thickened the air, and hid the very shrubs on the lawn. I let down +the curtain and went back to the fireside. +In the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I +remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, +when Mrs. Fairfax came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery +mosaic I had been piercing together, and scattering too some heavy +unwelcome thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude. +"Mr. Rochester would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea +with him in the drawingroom this evening," said she "he has been +so much engaged all day that he could not ask to see you before." +"When is his teatime?" I inquired. +"Oh, at six o'clock he keeps early hours in the country. You +had better change your frock now I will go with you and fasten +it. Here is a candle." +"Is it necessary to change my frock?" +"Yes, you had better I always dress for the evening when Mr. +Rochester is here." +This additional ceremony seemed somewhat stately however, I repaired +to my room, and, with Mrs. Fairfax's aid, replaced my black stuff +dress by one of black silk the best and the only additional one +I had, except one of light grey, which, in my Lowood notions of +the toilette, I thought too fine to be worn, except on firstrate +occasions. +"You want a brooch," said Mrs. Fairfax. I had a single little pearl +ornament which Miss Temple gave me as a parting keepsake I put +it on, and then we went downstairs. Unused as I was to strangers, +it was rather a trial to appear thus formally summoned in +Mr. Rochester's presence. I let Mrs. Fairfax precede me into the +diningroom, and kept in her shade as we crossed that apartment +and, passing the arch, whose curtain was now dropped, entered the +elegant recess beyond. +Two wax candles stood lighted on the table, and two on the mantelpiece +basking in the light and heat of a superb fire, lay Pilot Adele +knelt near him. Half reclined on a couch appeared Mr. Rochester, +his foot supported by the cushion he was looking at Adele and the +dog the fire shone full on his face. I knew my traveller with +his broad and jetty eyebrows his square forehead, made squarer by +the horizontal sweep of his black hair. I recognised his decisive +nose, more remarkable for character than beauty his full nostrils, +denoting, I thought, choler his grim mouth, chin, and jaw yes, +all three were very grim, and no mistake. His shape, now divested +of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy +I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term +broad chested and thin flanked, though neither tall nor graceful. +Mr. Rochester must have been aware of the entrance of Mrs. Fairfax +and myself but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us, +for he never lifted his head as we approached. +"Here is Miss Eyre, sir," said Mrs. Fairfax, in her quiet way. +He bowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and +child. +"Let Miss Eyre be seated," said he and there was something in the +forced stiff bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which seemed +further to express, "What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre +be there or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her." +I sat down quite disembarrassed. A reception of finished politeness +would probably have confused me I could not have returned or +repaid it by answering grace and elegance on my part but harsh +caprice laid me under no obligation on the contrary, a decent +quiescence, under the freak of manner, gave me the advantage. +Besides, the eccentricity of the proceeding was piquant I felt +interested to see how he would go on. +He went on as a statue would, that is, he neither spoke nor moved. +Mrs. Fairfax seemed to think it necessary that some one should be +amiable, and she began to talk. Kindly, as usual and, as usual, +rather trite she condoled with him on the pressure of business +he had had all day on the annoyance it must have been to him with +that painful sprain then she commended his patience and perseverance +in going through with it. +"Madam, I should like some tea," was the sole rejoinder she got. +She hastened to ring the bell and when the tray came, she proceeded +to arrange the cups, spoons, c., with assiduous celerity. I and +Adele went to the table but the master did not leave his couch. +"Will you hand Mr. Rochester's cup?" said Mrs. Fairfax to me +"Adele might perhaps spill it." +I did as requested. As he took the cup from my hand, Adele, thinking +the moment propitious for making a request in my favour, cried out +"N'estce pas, monsieur, qu'il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre +dans votre petit coffre?" +"Who talks of cadeaux?" said he gruffly. "Did you expect a +present, Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?" and he searched +my face with eyes that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing. +"I hardly know, sir I have little experience of them they are +generally thought pleasant things." +"Generally thought? But what do YOU think?" +"I should be obliged to take time, sir, before I could give you +an answer worthy of your acceptance a present has many faces to +it, has it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing +an opinion as to its nature." +"Miss Eyre, you are not so unsophisticated as Adele she demands +a 'cadeau,' clamorously, the moment she sees me you beat about +the bush." +"Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adele has she +can prefer the claim of old acquaintance, and the right too of +custom for she says you have always been in the habit of giving +her playthings but if I had to make out a case I should be puzzled, +since I am a stranger, and have done nothing to entitle me to an +acknowledgment." +"Oh, don't fall back on overmodesty I have examined Adele, and +find you have taken great pains with her she is not bright, she +has no talents yet in a short time she has made much improvement." +"Sir, you have now given me my 'cadeau' I am obliged to you it +is the meed teachers most covet praise of their pupils' progress." +"Humph" said Mr. Rochester, and he took his tea in silence. +"Come to the fire," said the master, when the tray was taken away, +and Mrs. Fairfax had settled into a corner with her knitting +while Adele was leading me by the hand round the room, showing me +the beautiful books and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnieres. +We obeyed, as in duty bound Adele wanted to take a seat on my +knee, but she was ordered to amuse herself with Pilot. +"You have been resident in my house three months?" +"Yes, sir." +"And you came from ?" +"From Lowood school, in shire." +"Ah a charitable concern. How long were you there?" +"Eight years." +"Eight years you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the +time in such a place would have done up any constitution No wonder +you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you +had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last +night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind +to demand whether you had bewitched my horse I am not sure yet. +Who are your parents?" +"I have none." +"Nor ever had, I suppose do you remember them?" +"No." +"I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you +sat on that stile?" +"For whom, sir?" +"For the men in green it was a proper moonlight evening for them. +Did I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned +ice on the causeway?" +I shook my head. "The men in green all forsook England a hundred +years ago," said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. "And not +even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace +of them. I don't think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, +will ever shine on their revels more." +Mrs. Fairfax had dropped her knitting, and, with raised eyebrows, +seemed wondering what sort of talk this was. +"Well," resumed Mr. Rochester, "if you disown parents, you must +have some sort of kinsfolk uncles and aunts?" +"No none that I ever saw." +"And your home?" +"I have none." +"Where do your brothers and sisters live?" +"I have no brothers or sisters." +"Who recommended you to come here?" +"I advertised, and Mrs. Fairfax answered my advertisement." +"Yes," said the good lady, who now knew what ground we were upon, +"and I am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make. +Miss Eyre has been an invaluable companion to me, and a kind and +careful teacher to Adele." +"Don't trouble yourself to give her a character," returned Mr. +Rochester "eulogiums will not bias me I shall judge for myself. +She began by felling my horse." +"Sir?" said Mrs. Fairfax. +"I have to thank her for this sprain." +The widow looked bewildered. +"Miss Eyre, have you ever lived in a town?" +"No, sir." +"Have you seen much society?" +"None but the pupils and teachers of Lowood, and now the inmates +of Thornfield." +"Have you read much?" +"Only such books as came in my way and they have not been numerous +or very learned." +"You have lived the life of a nun no doubt you are well drilled +in religious forms Brocklehurst, who I understand directs +Lowood, is a parson, is he not?" +"Yes, sir." +"And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of +religieuses would worship their director." +"Oh, no." +"You are very cool No What a novice not worship her priest +That sounds blasphemous." +"I disliked Mr. Brocklehurst and I was not alone in the feeling. +He is a harsh man at once pompous and meddling he cut off our +hair and for economy's sake bought us bad needles and thread, with +which we could hardly sew." +"That was very false economy," remarked Mrs. Fairfax, who now again +caught the drift of the dialogue. +"And was that the head and front of his offending?" demanded Mr. +Rochester. +"He starved us when he had the sole superintendence of the provision +department, before the committee was appointed and he bored us with +long lectures once a week, and with evening readings from books of +his own inditing, about sudden deaths and judgments, which made us +afraid to go to bed." +"What age were you when you went to Lowood?" +"About ten." +"And you stayed there eight years you are now, then, eighteen?" +I assented. +"Arithmetic, you see, is useful without its aid, I should hardly +have been able to guess your age. It is a point difficult to fix +where the features and countenance are so much at variance as in +your case. And now what did you learn at Lowood? Can you play?" +"A little." +"Of course that is the established answer. Go into the library +I mean, if you please. Excuse my tone of command I am used +to say, 'Do this,' and it is done I cannot alter my customary +habits for one new inmate. Go, then, into the library take a +candle with you leave the door open sit down to the piano, and +play a tune." +I departed, obeying his directions. +"Enough" he called out in a few minutes. "You play A LITTLE, I +see like any other English schoolgirl perhaps rather better than +some, but not well." +I closed the piano and returned. Mr. Rochester continued "Adele +showed me some sketches this morning, which she said were yours. +I don't know whether they were entirely of your doing probably a +master aided you?" +"No, indeed" I interjected. +"Ah that pricks pride. Well, fetch me your portfolio, if you +can vouch for its contents being original but don't pass your word +unless you are certain I can recognise patchwork." +"Then I will say nothing, and you shall judge for yourself, sir." +I brought the portfolio from the library. +"Approach the table," said he and I wheeled it to his couch. Adele +and Mrs. Fairfax drew near to see the pictures. +"No crowding," said Mr. Rochester "take the drawings from my hand +as I finish with them but don't push your faces up to mine." +He deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting. Three he +laid aside the others, when he had examined them, he swept from +him. +"Take them off to the other table, Mrs. Fairfax," said he, "and +look at them with Adele you" glancing at me "resume your seat, +and answer my questions. I perceive those pictures were done by +one hand was that hand yours?" +"Yes." +"And when did you find time to do them? They have taken much time, +and some thought." +"I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood, when I +had no other occupation." +"Where did you get your copies?" +"Out of my head." +"That head I see now on your shoulders?" +"Yes, sir." +"Has it other furniture of the same kind within?" +"I should think it may have I should hope better." +He spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them alternately. +While he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are +and first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The +subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with +the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were +striking but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case +it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived. +These pictures were in watercolours. The first represented clouds +low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea all the distance was +in eclipse so, too, was the foreground or rather, the nearest +billows, for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into +relief a halfsubmerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and +large, with wings flecked with foam its beak held a gold bracelet +set with gems, that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my +palette could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil +could impart. Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse +glanced through the green water a fair arm was the only limb +clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn. +The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak +of a hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. +Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight +rising into the sky was a woman's shape to the bust, portrayed in +tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was +crowned with a star the lineaments below were seen as through the +suffusion of vapour the eyes shone dark and wild the hair streamed +shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail. +On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight the same faint +lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed +this vision of the Evening Star. +The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter +sky a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close +serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, +in the foreground, a head, a colossal head, inclined towards +the iceberg, and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under +the forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features a +sable veil, a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow +and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone +were visible. Above the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of +black drapery, vague in its character and consistency as cloud, +gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid +tinge. This pale crescent was "the likeness of a kingly crown" +what it diademed was "the shape which shape had none." +"Were you happy when you painted these pictures?" asked Mr. +Rochester presently. +"I was absorbed, sir yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in +short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known." +"That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, +have been few but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist's +dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did +you sit at them long each day?" +"I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat +at them from morning till noon, and from noon till night the +length of the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply." +"And you felt selfsatisfied with the result of your ardent labours?" +"Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and +my handiwork in each case I had imagined something which I was +quite powerless to realise." +"Not quite you have secured the shadow of your thought but no +more, probably. You had not enough of the artist's skill and science +to give it full being yet the drawings are, for a schoolgirl, +peculiar. As to the thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the +Evening Star you must have seen in a dream. How could you make +them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet +above quells their rays. And what meaning is that in their solemn +depth? And who taught you to paint wind? There is a high gale +in that sky, and on this hilltop. Where did you see Latmos? For +that is Latmos. There put the drawings away" +I had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio, when, looking +at his watch, he said abruptly +"It is nine o'clock what are you about, Miss Eyre, to let Adele +sit up so long? Take her to bed." +Adele went to kiss him before quitting the room he endured the +caress, but scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have +done, nor so much. +"I wish you all goodnight, now," said he, making a movement of the +hand towards the door, in token that he was tired of our company, +and wished to dismiss us. Mrs. Fairfax folded up her knitting I +took my portfolio we curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in +return, and so withdrew. +"You said Mr. Rochester was not strikingly peculiar, Mrs. Fairfax," +I observed, when I rejoined her in her room, after putting Adele +to bed. +"Well, is he?" +"I think so he is very changeful and abrupt." +"True no doubt he may appear so to a stranger, but I am so +accustomed to his manner, I never think of it and then, if he has +peculiarities of temper, allowance should be made." +"Why?" +"Partly because it is his nature and we can none of us help our +nature and partly because he has painful thoughts, no doubt, to +harass him, and make his spirits unequal." +"What about?" +"Family troubles, for one thing." +"But he has no family." +"Not now, but he has had or, at least, relatives. He lost his +elder brother a few years since." +"His ELDER brother?" +"Yes. The present Mr. Rochester has not been very long in possession +of the property only about nine years." +"Nine years is a tolerable time. Was he so very fond of his brother +as to be still inconsolable for his loss?" +"Why, no perhaps not. I believe there were some misunderstandings +between them. Mr. Rowland Rochester was not quite just to Mr. +Edward and perhaps he prejudiced his father against him. The old +gentleman was fond of money, and anxious to keep the family estate +together. He did not like to diminish the property by division, +and yet he was anxious that Mr. Edward should have wealth, too, +to keep up the consequence of the name and, soon after he was of +age, some steps were taken that were not quite fair, and made a +great deal of mischief. Old Mr. Rochester and Mr. Rowland combined +to bring Mr. Edward into what he considered a painful position, for +the sake of making his fortune what the precise nature of that +position was I never clearly knew, but his spirit could not brook +what he had to suffer in it. He is not very forgiving he broke +with his family, and now for many years he has led an unsettled +kind of life. I don't think he has ever been resident at Thornfield +for a fortnight together, since the death of his brother without +a will left him master of the estate and, indeed, no wonder he +shuns the old place." +"Why should he shun it?" +"Perhaps he thinks it gloomy." +The answer was evasive. I should have liked something clearer but +Mrs. Fairfax either could not, or would not, give me more explicit +information of the origin and nature of Mr. Rochester's trials. +She averred they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew +was chiefly from conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she +wished me to drop the subject, which I did accordingly. +CHAPTER XIV +For several subsequent days I saw little of Mr. Rochester. In the +mornings he seemed much engaged with business, and, in the afternoon, +gentlemen from Millcote or the neighbourhood called, and sometimes +stayed to dine with him. When his sprain was well enough to admit +of horse exercise, he rode out a good deal probably to return +these visits, as he generally did not come back till late at night. +During this interval, even Adele was seldom sent for to his presence, +and all my acquaintance with him was confined to an occasional +rencontre in the hall, on the stairs, or in the gallery, when he +would sometimes pass me haughtily and coldly, just acknowledging +my presence by a distant nod or a cool glance, and sometimes bow +and smile with gentlemanlike affability. His changes of mood did +not offend me, because I saw that I had nothing to do with their +alternation the ebb and flow depended on causes quite disconnected +with me. +One day he had had company to dinner, and had sent for my portfolio +in order, doubtless, to exhibit its contents the gentlemen went +away early, to attend a public meeting at Millcote, as Mrs. Fairfax +informed me but the night being wet and inclement, Mr. Rochester +did not accompany them. Soon after they were gone he rang the bell +a message came that I and Adele were to go downstairs. I brushed +Adele's hair and made her neat, and having ascertained that I was +myself in my usual Quaker trim, where there was nothing to retouch +all being too close and plain, braided locks included, to admit +of disarrangement we descended, Adele wondering whether the +petit coffre was at length come for, owing to some mistake, its +arrival had hitherto been delayed. She was gratified there it +stood, a little carton, on the table when we entered the diningroom. +She appeared to know it by instinct. +"Ma boite ma boite" exclaimed she, running towards it. +"Yes, there is your 'boite' at last take it into a corner, you +genuine daughter of Paris, and amuse yourself with disembowelling +it," said the deep and rather sarcastic voice of Mr. Rochester, +proceeding from the depths of an immense easychair at the fireside. +"And mind," he continued, "don't bother me with any details of the +anatomical process, or any notice of the condition of the entrails +let your operation be conducted in silence tienstoi tranquille, +enfant comprendstu?" +Adele seemed scarcely to need the warning she had already retired +to a sofa with her treasure, and was busy untying the cord which +secured the lid. Having removed this impediment, and lifted +certain silvery envelopes of tissue paper, she merely exclaimed +"Oh ciel Que c'est beau" and then remained absorbed in ecstatic +contemplation. +"Is Miss Eyre there?" now demanded the master, half rising from +his seat to look round to the door, near which I still stood. +"Ah well, come forward be seated here." He drew a chair near +his own. "I am not fond of the prattle of children," he continued +"for, old bachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations +connected with their lisp. It would be intolerable to me to pass +a whole evening teteetete with a brat. Don't draw that chair +farther off, Miss Eyre sit down exactly where I placed it if +you please, that is. Confound these civilities I continually +forget them. Nor do I particularly affect simpleminded old ladies. +Bythebye, I must have mine in mind it won't do to neglect her +she is a Fairfax, or wed to one and blood is said to be thicker +than water." +He rang, and despatched an invitation to Mrs. Fairfax, who soon +arrived, knittingbasket in hand. +"Good evening, madam I sent to you for a charitable purpose. I +have forbidden Adele to talk to me about her presents, and she is +bursting with repletion have the goodness to serve her as auditress +and interlocutrice it will be one of the most benevolent acts you +ever performed." +Adele, indeed, no sooner saw Mrs. Fairfax, than she summoned her +to her sofa, and there quickly filled her lap with the porcelain, +the ivory, the waxen contents of her "boite" pouring out, meantime, +explanations and raptures in such broken English as she was mistress +of. +"Now I have performed the part of a good host," pursued Mr. Rochester, +"put my guests into the way of amusing each other, I ought to be at +liberty to attend to my own pleasure. Miss Eyre, draw your chair +still a little farther forward you are yet too far back I cannot +see you without disturbing my position in this comfortable chair, +which I have no mind to do." +I did as I was bid, though I would much rather have remained +somewhat in the shade but Mr. Rochester had such a direct way of +giving orders, it seemed a matter of course to obey him promptly. +We were, as I have said, in the diningroom the lustre, which +had been lit for dinner, filled the room with a festal breadth of +light the large fire was all red and clear the purple curtains +hung rich and ample before the lofty window and loftier arch +everything was still, save the subdued chat of Adele she dared +not speak loud, and, filling up each pause, the beating of winter +rain against the panes. +Mr. Rochester, as he sat in his damaskcovered chair, looked +different to what I had seen him look before not quite so stern +much less gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes +sparkled, whether with wine or not, I am not sure but I think it +very probable. He was, in short, in his afterdinner mood more +expanded and genial, and also more selfindulgent than the frigid +and rigid temper of the morning still he looked preciously grim, +cushioning his massive head against the swelling back of his chair, +and receiving the light of the fire on his granitehewn features, +and in his great, dark eyes for he had great, dark eyes, and very +fine eyes, too not without a certain change in their depths +sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at least, +of that feeling. +He had been looking two minutes at the fire, and I had been looking +the same length of time at him, when, turning suddenly, he caught +my gaze fastened on his physiognomy. +"You examine me, Miss Eyre," said he "do you think me handsome?" +I should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by +something conventionally vague and polite but the answer somehow +slipped from my tongue before I was aware "No, sir." +"Ah By my word there is something singular about you," said +he "you have the air of a little nonnette quaint, quiet, grave, +and simple, as you sit with your hands before you, and your eyes +generally bent on the carpet except, bythebye, when they are +directed piercingly to my face as just now, for instance and +when one asks you a question, or makes a remark to which you are +obliged to reply, you rap out a round rejoinder, which, if not +blunt, is at least brusque. What do you mean by it?" +"Sir, I was too plain I beg your pardon. I ought to have replied +that it was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question +about appearances that tastes mostly differ and that beauty is +of little consequence, or something of that sort." +"You ought to have replied no such thing. Beauty of little consequence, +indeed And so, under pretence of softening the previous outrage, +of stroking and soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife +under my ear Go on what fault do you find with me, pray? I +suppose I have all my limbs and all my features like any other +man?" +"Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my first answer I intended no +pointed repartee it was only a blunder." +"Just so I think so and you shall be answerable for it. Criticise +me does my forehead not please you?" +He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over +his brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, +but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should +have risen. +"Now, ma'am, am I a fool?" +"Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired +in return whether you are a philanthropist?" +"There again Another stick of the penknife, when she pretended +to pat my head and that is because I said I did not like the +society of children and old women low be it spoken. No, young +lady, I am not a general philanthropist but I bear a conscience" +and he pointed to the prominences which are said to indicate +that faculty, and which, fortunately for him, were sufficiently +conspicuous giving, indeed, a marked breadth to the upper part of +his head "and, besides, I once had a kind of rude tenderness of +heart. When I was as old as you, I was a feeling fellow enough, +partial to the unfledged, unfostered, and unlucky but Fortune has +knocked me about since she has even kneaded me with her knuckles, +and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as an Indiarubber +ball pervious, though, through a chink or two still, and with one +sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes does that leave +hope for me?" +"Hope of what, sir?" +"Of my final retransformation from Indiarubber back to flesh?" +"Decidedly he has had too much wine," I thought and I did not +know what answer to make to his queer question how could I tell +whether he was capable of being retransformed? +"You looked very much puzzled, Miss Eyre and though you are not +pretty any more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air becomes you +besides, it is convenient, for it keeps those searching eyes of +yours away from my physiognomy, and busies them with the worsted +flowers of the rug so puzzle on. Young lady, I am disposed to be +gregarious and communicative tonight." +With this announcement he rose from his chair, and stood, leaning +his arm on the marble mantelpiece in that attitude his shape was +seen plainly as well as his face his unusual breadth of chest, +disproportionate almost to his length of limb. I am sure most +people would have thought him an ugly man yet there was so much +unconscious pride in his port so much ease in his demeanour such +a look of complete indifference to his own external appearance so +haughty a reliance on the power of other qualities, intrinsic or +adventitious, to atone for the lack of mere personal attractiveness, +that, in looking at him, one inevitably shared the indifference, +and, even in a blind, imperfect sense, put faith in the confidence. +"I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative tonight," +he repeated, "and that is why I sent for you the fire and the +chandelier were not sufficient company for me nor would Pilot have +been, for none of these can talk. Adele is a degree better, but +still far below the mark Mrs. Fairfax ditto you, I am persuaded, +can suit me if you will you puzzled me the first evening I +invited you down here. I have almost forgotten you since other +ideas have driven yours from my head but tonight I am resolved +to be at ease to dismiss what importunes, and recall what pleases. +It would please me now to draw you out to learn more of you +therefore speak." +Instead of speaking, I smiled and not a very complacent or submissive +smile either. +"Speak," he urged. +"What about, sir?" +"Whatever you like. I leave both the choice of subject and the +manner of treating it entirely to yourself." +Accordingly I sat and said nothing "If he expects me to talk +for the mere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has +addressed himself to the wrong person," I thought. +"You are dumb, Miss Eyre." +I was dumb still. He bent his head a little towards me, and with +a single hasty glance seemed to dive into my eyes. +"Stubborn?" he said, "and annoyed. Ah it is consistent. I put +my request in an absurd, almost insolent form. Miss Eyre, I beg +your pardon. The fact is, once for all, I don't wish to treat you +like an inferior that is" correcting himself, "I claim only +such superiority as must result from twenty years' difference in +age and a century's advance in experience. This is legitimate, +et j'y tiens, as Adele would say and it is by virtue of this +superiority, and this alone, that I desire you to have the goodness +to talk to me a little now, and divert my thoughts, which are galled +with dwelling on one point cankering as a rusty nail." +He had deigned an explanation, almost an apology, and I did not +feel insensible to his condescension, and would not seem so. +"I am willing to amuse you, if I can, sir quite willing but I +cannot introduce a topic, because how do I know what will interest +you? Ask me questions, and I will do my best to answer them." +"Then, in the first place, do you agree with me that I have a right +to be a little masterful, abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, +on the grounds I stated, namely, that I am old enough to be your +father, and that I have battled through a varied experience with +many men of many nations, and roamed over half the globe, while +you have lived quietly with one set of people in one house?" +"Do as you please, sir." +"That is no answer or rather it is a very irritating, because a +very evasive one. Reply clearly." +"I don't think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because +you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world +than I have your claim to superiority depends on the use you have +made of your time and experience." +"Humph Promptly spoken. But I won't allow that, seeing that it +would never suit my case, as I have made an indifferent, not to +say a bad, use of both advantages. Leaving superiority out of the +question, then, you must still agree to receive my orders now and +then, without being piqued or hurt by the tone of command. Will +you?" +I smiled I thought to myself Mr. Rochester IS peculiar he +seems to forget that he pays me pounds per annum for receiving +his orders. +"The smile is very well," said he, catching instantly the passing +expression "but speak too." +"I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves +to inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and +hurt by their orders." +"Paid subordinates What you are my paid subordinate, are you? +Oh yes, I had forgotten the salary Well then, on that mercenary +ground, will you agree to let me hector a little?" +"No, sir, not on that ground but, on the ground that you did forget +it, and that you care whether or not a dependent is comfortable in +his dependency, I agree heartily." +"And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional +forms and phrases, without thinking that the omission arises from +insolence?" +"I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence +one I rather like, the other nothing freeborn would submit to, +even for a salary." +"Humbug Most things freeborn will submit to anything for a salary +therefore, keep to yourself, and don't venture on generalities of +which you are intensely ignorant. However, I mentally shake hands +with you for your answer, despite its inaccuracy and as much for +the manner in which it was said, as for the substance of the speech +the manner was frank and sincere one does not often see such a +manner no, on the contrary, affectation, or coldness, or stupid, +coarseminded misapprehension of one's meaning are the usual rewards +of candour. Not three in three thousand raw schoolgirlgovernesses +would have answered me as you have just done. But I don't mean to +flatter you if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, +it is no merit of yours Nature did it. And then, after all, +I go too fast in my conclusions for what I yet know, you may +be no better than the rest you may have intolerable defects to +counterbalance your few good points." +"And so may you," I thought. My eye met his as the idea crossed +my mind he seemed to read the glance, answering as if +its import had been spoken as well as imagined +"Yes, yes, you are right," said he "I have plenty of faults of +my own I know it, and I don't wish to palliate them, I assure +you. God wot I need not be too severe about others I have a past +existence, a series of deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within +my own breast, which might well call my sneers and censures from +my neighbours to myself. I started, or rather for like other +defaulters, I like to lay half the blame on ill fortune and adverse +circumstances was thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of oneand +twenty, and have never recovered the right course since but I +might have been very different I might have been as good as you +wiser almost as stainless. I envy you your peace of mind, +your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a +memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure +an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment is it not?" +"How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir?" +"All right then limpid, salubrious no gush of bilge water had +turned it to fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen quite +your equal. Nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss +Eyre one of the better kind, and you see I am not so. You would +say you don't see it at least I flatter myself I read as much in +your eye beware, bythebye, what you express with that organ +I am quick at interpreting its language. Then take my word for +it, I am not a villain you are not to suppose that not +to attribute to me any such bad eminence but, owing, I verily +believe, rather to circumstances than to my natural bent, I am a +trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations +with which the rich and worthless try to put on life. Do you wonder +that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future +life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant +of your acquaintances' secrets people will instinctively find +out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, +but to listen while others talk of themselves they will feel, too, +that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, +but with a kind of innate sympathy not the less comforting and +encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations." +"How do you know? how can you guess all this, sir?" +"I know it well therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were +writing my thoughts in a diary. You would say, I should have been +superior to circumstances so I should so I should but you see +I was not. When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain +cool I turned desperate then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious +simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot +flatter myself that I am better than he I am forced to confess +that he and I are on a level. I wish I had stood firm God +knows I do Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre +remorse is the poison of life." +"Repentance is said to be its cure, sir." +"It is not its cure. Reformation may be its cure and I could +reform I have strength yet for that if but where is the +use of thinking of it, hampered, burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, +since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get +pleasure out of life and I WILL get it, cost what it may." +"Then you will degenerate still more, sir." +"Possibly yet why should I, if I can get sweet, fresh pleasure? +And I may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee +gathers on the moor." +"It will sting it will taste bitter, sir." +"How do you know? you never tried it. How very serious how +very solemn you look and you are as ignorant of the matter as +this cameo head" taking one from the mantelpiece. "You have no +right to preach to me, you neophyte, that have not passed the porch +of life, and are absolutely unacquainted with its mysteries." +"I only remind you of your own words, sir you said error brought +remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence." +"And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion +that flittered across my brain was an error. I believe it was an +inspiration rather than a temptation it was very genial, very +soothing I know that. Here it comes again It is no devil, +I assure you or if it be, it has put on the robes of an angel of +light. I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance +to my heart." +"Distrust it, sir it is not a true angel." +"Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to +distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger +from the eternal throne between a guide and a seducer?" +"I judged by your countenance, sir, which was troubled when you +said the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will +work you more misery if you listen to it." +"Not at all it bears the most gracious message in the world for +the rest, you are not my consciencekeeper, so don't make yourself +uneasy. Here, come in, bonny wanderer" +He said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but +his own then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his +chest, he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being. +"Now," he continued, again addressing me, "I have received the +pilgrim a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it +has done me good my heart was a sort of charnel it will now be +a shrine." +"To speak truth, sir, I don't understand you at all I cannot keep +up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one +thing, I know you said you were not as good as you should like +to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection one thing +I can comprehend you intimated that to have a sullied memory +was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you +would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would +approve and that if from this day you began with resolution to +correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have +laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you +might revert with pleasure." +"Justly thought rightly said, Miss Eyre and, at this moment, I +am paving hell with energy." +"Sir?" +"I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as +flint. Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than +they have been." +"And better?" +"And better so much better as pure ore is than foul dross. You +seem to doubt me I don't doubt myself I know what my aim is, +what my motives are and at this moment I pass a law, unalterable +as that of the Medes and Persians, that both are right." +"They cannot be, sir, if they require a new statute to legalise +them." +"They are, Miss Eyre, though they absolutely require a new statute +unheardof combinations of circumstances demand unheardof rules." +"That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir because one can see at once +that it is liable to abuse." +"Sententious sage so it is but I swear by my household gods +not to abuse it." +"You are human and fallible." +"I am so are you what then?" +"The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the +divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted." +"What power?" +"That of saying of any strange, unsanctioned line of action, +'Let it be right.'" +"'Let it be right' the very words you have pronounced them." +"MAY it be right then," I said, as I rose, deeming it useless to +continue a discourse which was all darkness to me and, besides, +sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my +penetration at least, beyond its present reach and feeling the +uncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which accompanies a +conviction of ignorance. +"Where are you going?" +"To put Adele to bed it is past her bedtime." +"You are afraid of me, because I talk like a Sphynx." +"Your language is enigmatical, sir but though I am bewildered, +I am certainly not afraid." +"You ARE afraid your selflove dreads a blunder." +"In that sense I do feel apprehensive I have no wish to talk +nonsense." +"If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should +mistake it for sense. Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre? Don't +trouble yourself to answer I see you laugh rarely but you can +laugh very merrily believe me, you are not naturally austere, +any more than I am naturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still +clings to you somewhat controlling your features, muffling your +voice, and restricting your limbs and you fear in the presence of +a man and a brother or father, or master, or what you will +to smile too gaily, speak too freely, or move too quickly but, +in time, I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find +it impossible to be conventional with you and then your looks and +movements will have more vivacity and variety than they dare offer +now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird +through the closeset bars of a cage a vivid, restless, resolute +captive is there were it but free, it would soar cloudhigh. You +are still bent on going?" +"It has struck nine, sir." +"Never mind, wait a minute Adele is not ready to go to bed +yet. My position, Miss Eyre, with my back to the fire, and my face +to the room, favours observation. While talking to you, I have +also occasionally watched Adele I have my own reasons for thinking +her a curious study, reasons that I may, nay, that I shall, +impart to you some day. She pulled out of her box, about ten +minutes ago, a little pink silk frock rapture lit her face as she +unfolded it coquetry runs in her blood, blends with her brains, +and seasons the marrow of her bones. 'Il faut que je l'essaie' +cried she, 'et e l'instant meme' and she rushed out of the room. +She is now with Sophie, undergoing a robing process in a few minutes +she will reenter and I know what I shall see, a miniature of +Celine Varens, as she used to appear on the boards at the rising of +But never mind that. However, my tenderest feelings are about +to receive a shock such is my presentiment stay now, to see +whether it will be realised." +Ere long, Adele's little foot was heard tripping across the hall. +She entered, transformed as her guardian had predicted. A dress +of rosecoloured satin, very short, and as full in the skirt as +it could be gathered, replaced the brown frock she had previously +worn a wreath of rosebuds circled her forehead her feet were +dressed in silk stockings and small white satin sandals. +"Estce que ma robe va bien?" cried she, bounding forwards "et +mes souliers? et mes bas? Tenez, je crois que je vais danser" +And spreading out her dress, she chasseed across the room till, +having reached Mr. Rochester, she wheeled lightly round before +him on tiptoe, then dropped on one knee at his feet, exclaiming +"Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonte" then +rising, she added, "C'est comme cela que maman faisait, n'estce +pas, monsieur?" +"Precisely" was the answer "and, 'comme cela,' she charmed +my English gold out of my British breeches' pocket. I have been +green, too, Miss Eyre, ay, grass green not a more vernal +tint freshens you now than once freshened me. My Spring is gone, +however, but it has left me that French floweret on my hands, which, +in some moods, I would fain be rid of. Not valuing now the root +whence it sprang having found that it was of a sort which nothing +but gold dust could manure, I have but half a liking to the blossom, +especially when it looks so artificial as just now. I keep it and +rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous +sins, great or small, by one good work. I'll explain all this some +day. Goodnight." +CHAPTER XV +Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one +afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adele in the grounds +and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me +to walk up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her. +He then said that she was the daughter of a French operadancer, +Celine Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called +a "grande passion." This passion Celine had professed to return +with even superior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly as +he was he believed, as he said, that she preferred his "taille +d'athlete" to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere. +"And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of +the Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an +hotel gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, +cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles, c. In short, I began the process +of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony. I +had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame +and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not +to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had as I deserved +to have the fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one +evening when Celine did not expect me, I found her out but it was +a warm night, and I was tired with strolling through Paris, so I +sat down in her boudoir happy to breathe the air consecrated so +lately by her presence. No, I exaggerate I never thought there +was any consecrating virtue about her it was rather a sort of +pastille perfume she had left a scent of musk and amber, than an +odour of sanctity. I was just beginning to stifle with the fumes +of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences, when I bethought +myself to open the window and step out on to the balcony. It was +moonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and serene. The +balcony was furnished with a chair or two I sat down, and took +out a cigar, I will take one now, if you will excuse me." +Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting +of a cigar having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail +of Havannah incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on +"I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was croquant +overlook the barbarism croquant chocolate comfits, and +smoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled +along the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring operahouse, +when in an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of +English horses, and distinctly seen in the brilliant citynight, +I recognised the 'voiture' I had given Celine. She was returning +of course my heart thumped with impatience against the iron rails +I leant upon. The carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the +hotel door my flame that is the very word for an opera inamorata +alighted though muffed in a cloak an unnecessary encumbrance, +bythebye, on so warm a June evening I knew her instantly by +her little foot, seen peeping from the skirt of her dress, as she +skipped from the carriagestep. Bending over the balcony, I was +about to murmur 'Mon ange' in a tone, of course, which should +be audible to the ear of love alone when a figure jumped from +the carriage after her cloaked also but that was a spurred heel +which had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which +now passed under the arched porte cochere of the hotel. +"You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not I +need not ask you because you never felt love. You have both +sentiments yet to experience your soul sleeps the shock is yet +to be given which shall waken it. You think all existence lapses +in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid +away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither +see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor +hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you and you +may mark my words you will come some day to a craggy pass in the +channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into +whirl and tumult, foam and noise either you will be dashed to +atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some masterwave +into a calmer current as I am now. +"I like this day I like that sky of steel I like the sternness +and stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield, +its antiquity, its retirement, its old crowtrees and thorntrees, +its grey facade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal +welkin and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, +shunned it like a great plaguehouse? How I do still abhor " +He ground his teeth and was silent he arrested his step and struck +his boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to +have him in its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not +advance. +We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused the hall was before +us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare +such as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire, impatience, +disgust, detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict +in the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the +wrestle which should be paramount but another feeling rose and +triumphed something hard and cynical selfwilled and resolute +it settled his passion and petrified his countenance he went on +"During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point +with my destiny. She stood there, by that beechtrunk a hag +like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. +'You like Thornfield?' she said, lifting her finger and then she +wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all +along the housefront, between the upper and lower row of windows, +'Like it if you can Like it if you dare' +"'I will like it,' said I 'I dare like it' and" he subjoined +moodily "I will keep my word I will break obstacles to happiness, +to goodness yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I +have been, than I am as Job's leviathan broke the spear, the dart, +and the habergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass, +I will esteem but straw and rotten wood." +Adele here ran before him with her shuttlecock. "Away" he cried +harshly "keep at a distance, child or go in to Sophie" Continuing +then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall +him to the point whence he had abruptly diverged +"Did you leave the balcony, sir," I asked, "when Mdlle. Varens +entered?" +I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly welltimed question, +but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he +turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his +brow. "Oh, I had forgotten Celine Well, to resume. When I saw +my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to +hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating +coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate +its way in two minutes to my heart's core. Strange" he exclaimed, +suddenly starting again from the point. "Strange that I should +choose you for the confidant of all this, young lady passing +strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most +usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his +operamistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you But the +last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once before +you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made to +be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind +I have placed in communication with my own I know it is one not +liable to take infection it is a peculiar mind it is a unique +one. Happily I do not mean to harm it but, if I did, it would +not take harm from me. The more you and I converse, the better +for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh me." After +this digression he proceeded +"I remained in the balcony. 'They will come to her boudoir, no +doubt,' thought I 'let me prepare an ambush.' So putting my hand +in through the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only +an opening through which I could take observations then I closed +the casement, all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet +to lovers' whispered vows then I stole back to my chair and as +I resumed it the pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. +Celine's chambermaid entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, +and withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly both +removed their cloaks, and there was 'the Varens,' shining in satin +and jewels, my gifts of course, and there was her companion +in an officer's uniform and I knew him for a young roue of a +vicomte a brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met +in society, and had never thought of hating because I despised him +so absolutely. On recognising him, the fang of the snake Jealousy +was instantly broken because at the same moment my love for Celine +sank under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such +a rival was not worth contending for she deserved only scorn +less, however, than I, who had been her dupe. +"They began to talk their conversation eased me completely frivolous, +mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to +weary than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table +this being perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither +of them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they +insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way especially +Celine, who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal defects +deformities she termed them. Now it had been her custom to launch +out into fervent admiration of what she called my 'beaute male' +wherein she differed diametrically from you, who told me pointblank, +at the second interview, that you did not think me handsome. The +contrast struck me at the time and " +Adele here came running up again. +"Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called +and wishes to see you." +"Ah in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked +in upon them liberated Celine from my protection gave her notice +to vacate her hotel offered her a purse for immediate exigencies +disregarded screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions +made an appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de +Boulogne. Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him left +a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of +a chicken in the pip, and then thought I had done with the whole +crew. But unluckily the Varens, six months before, had given me +this filette Adele, who, she affirmed, was my daughter and perhaps +she may be, though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written +in her countenance Pilot is more like me than she. Some years +after I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, and +ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I acknowledged no +natural claim on Adele's part to be supported by me, nor do I now +acknowledge any, for I am not her father but hearing that she was +quite destitute, I e'en took the poor thing out of the slime and +mud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the +wholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found +you to train it but now you know that it is the illegitimate +offspring of a French opera girl, you will perhaps think differently +of your post and protegee you will be coming to me some day with +notice that you have found another place that you beg me to look +out for a new governess, c. Eh?" +"No Adele is not answerable for either her mother's faults or +yours I have a regard for her and now that I know she is, in a +sense, parentless forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir +I shall cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly +prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess +as a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as +a friend?" +"Oh, that is the light in which you view it Well, I must go in +now and you too it darkens." +But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adele and Pilot ran +a race with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock. +When we went in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her +on my knee kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she +liked not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into +which she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed +in her a superficiality of character, inherited probably from her +mother, hardly congenial to an English mind. Still she had her +merits and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her +to the utmost. I sought in her countenance and features a likeness +to Mr. Rochester, but found none no trait, no turn of expression +announced relationship. It was a pity if she could but have been +proved to resemble him, he would have thought more of her. +It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the +night, that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me. +As he had said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary +in the substance of the narrative itself a wealthy Englishman's +passion for a French dancer, and her treachery to him, were everyday +matters enough, no doubt, in society but there was something decidedly +strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him +when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of +his mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its +environs. I meditated wonderingly on this incident but gradually +quitting it, as I found it for the present inexplicable, I turned to +the consideration of my master's manner to myself. The confidence +he had thought fit to repose in me seemed a tribute to my discretion I +regarded and accepted it as such. His deportment had now for some +weeks been more uniform towards me than at the first. I never seemed +in his way he did not take fits of chilling hauteur when he met +me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome he had always a word +and sometimes a smile for me when summoned by formal invitation +to his presence, I was honoured by a cordiality of reception that +made me feel I really possessed the power to amuse him, and that +these evening conferences were sought as much for his pleasure as +for my benefit. +I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with +relish. It was his nature to be communicative he liked to open +to a mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and +ways I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such +as derived their interest from the great scale on which they were +acted, the strange novelty by which they were characterised +and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, +in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him in +thought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled or +troubled by one noxious allusion. +The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint the friendly +frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew +me to him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than +my master yet he was imperious sometimes still but I did not mind +that I saw it was his way. So happy, so gratified did I become +with this new interest added to life, that I ceased to pine after +kindred my thin crescentdestiny seemed to enlarge the blanks +of existence were filled up my bodily health improved I gathered +flesh and strength. +And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader gratitude, +and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face +the object I best liked to see his presence in a room was more +cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults +indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He +was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description +in my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced +by unjust severity to many others. He was moody, too unaccountably +so I more than once, when sent for to read to him, found him sitting +in his library alone, with his head bent on his folded arms and, +when he looked up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl blackened +his features. But I believed that his moodiness, his harshness, +and his former faults of morality I say FORMER, for now he seemed +corrected of them had their source in some cruel cross of fate. +I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher +principles, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, +education instilled, or destiny encouraged. I thought there were +excellent materials in him though for the present they hung together +somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I grieved for his +grief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it. +Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, +I could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the +avenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared +him to be happy at Thornfield. +"Why not?" I asked myself. "What alienates him from the house? +Will he leave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed +here longer than a fortnight at a time and he has now been resident +eight weeks. If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose +he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn how joyless sunshine +and fine days will seem" +I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing at any +rate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and +lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished I +had kept my candle burning the night was drearily dark my spirits +were depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound +was hushed. +I tried again to sleep but my heart beat anxiously my inward +tranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two. +Just then it seemed my chamberdoor was touched as if fingers had +swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. +I said, "Who is there?" Nothing answered. I was chilled with +fear. +All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the +kitchendoor chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his +way up to the threshold of Mr. Rochester's chamber I had seen him +lying there myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat +I lay down. Silence composes the nerves and as an unbroken hush +now reigned again through the whole house, I began to feel the return +of slumber. But it was not fated that I should sleep that night. +A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, +scared by a marrowfreezing incident enough. +This was a demoniac laugh low, suppressed, and deep uttered, +as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of +my bed was near the door, and I thought at first the goblinlaugher +stood at my bedside or rather, crouched by my pillow but I +rose, looked round, and could see nothing while, as I still gazed, +the unnatural sound was reiterated and I knew it came from behind +the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt my +next, again to cry out, "Who is there?" +Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up the +gallery towards the thirdstorey staircase a door had lately been +made to shut in that staircase I heard it open and close, and all +was still. +"Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil?" thought +I. Impossible now to remain longer by myself I must go to Mrs. +Fairfax. I hurried on my frock and a shawl I withdrew the bolt +and opened the door with a trembling hand. There was a candle +burning just outside, and on the matting in the gallery. I was +surprised at this circumstance but still more was I amazed to +perceive the air quite dim, as if filled with smoke and, while +looking to the right hand and left, to find whence these blue +wreaths issued, I became further aware of a strong smell of burning. +Something creaked it was a door ajar and that door was Mr. +Rochester's, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence. I thought +no more of Mrs. Fairfax I thought no more of Grace Poole, or the +laugh in an instant, I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame +darted round the bed the curtains were on fire. In the midst of +blaze and vapour, Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep +sleep. +"Wake wake" I cried. I shook him, but he only murmured and +turned the smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost +the very sheets were kindling, I rushed to his basin and ewer +fortunately, one was wide and the other deep, and both were filled +with water. I heaved them up, deluged the bed and its occupant, +flew back to my own room, brought my own waterjug, baptized the +couch afresh, and, by God's aid, succeeded in extinguishing the +flames which were devouring it. +The hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of a pitcher which +I flung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the +splash of the showerbath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr. +Rochester at last. Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake +because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself +lying in a pool of water. +"Is there a flood?" he cried. +"No, sir," I answered "but there has been a fire get up, do +you are quenched now I will fetch you a candle." +"In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?" +he demanded. "What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who +is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?" +"I will fetch you a candle, sir and, in Heaven's name, get up. +Somebody has plotted something you cannot too soon find out who +and what it is." +"There I am up now but at your peril you fetch a candle yet +wait two minutes till I get into some dry garments, if any dry +there be yes, here is my dressinggown. Now run" +I did run I brought the candle which still remained in the +gallery. He took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the +bed, all blackened and scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet +round swimming in water. +"What is it? and who did it?" he asked. I briefly related to him +what had transpired the strange laugh I had heard in the gallery +the step ascending to the third storey the smoke, the smell of +fire which had conducted me to his room in what state I had found +matters there, and how I had deluged him with all the water I could +lay hands on. +He listened very gravely his face, as I went on, expressed more +concern than astonishment he did not immediately speak when I had +concluded. +"Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?" I asked. +"Mrs. Fairfax? No what the deuce would you call her for? What +can she do? Let her sleep unmolested." +"Then I will fetch Leah, and wake John and his wife." +"Not at all just be still. You have a shawl on. If you are not +warm enough, you may take my cloak yonder wrap it about you, and +sit down in the armchair there, I will put it on. Now place +your feet on the stool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going +to leave you a few minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where +you are till I return be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit +to the second storey. Don't move, remember, or call any one." +He went I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery +very softly, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as +possible, shut it after him, and the last ray vanished. I was left +in total darkness. I listened for some noise, but heard nothing. +A very long time elapsed. I grew weary it was cold, in spite of +the cloak and then I did not see the use of staying, as I was not +to rouse the house. I was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester's +displeasure by disobeying his orders, when the light once more +gleamed dimly on the gallery wall, and I heard his unshod feet +tread the matting. "I hope it is he," thought I, "and not something +worse." +He reentered, pale and very gloomy. "I have found it all out," +said he, setting his candle down on the washstand "it is as I +thought." +"How, sir?" +He made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, looking on the +ground. At the end of a few minutes he inquired in rather +a peculiar tone +"I forget whether you said you saw anything when you opened your +chamber door." +"No, sir, only the candlestick on the ground." +"But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before, I +should think, or something like it?" +"Yes, sir there is a woman who sews here, called Grace Poole, +she laughs in that way. She is a singular person." +"Just so. Grace Poole you have guessed it. She is, as you say, +singular very. Well, I shall reflect on the subject. Meantime, +I am glad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted +with the precise details of tonight's incident. You are no talking +fool say nothing about it. I will account for this state of +affairs" pointing to the bed "and now return to your own room. +I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for the rest of the +night. It is near four in two hours the servants will be up." +"Goodnight, then, sir," said I, departing. +He seemed surprised very inconsistently so, as he had just told +me to go. +"What" he exclaimed, "are you quitting me already, and in that +way?" +"You said I might go, sir." +"But not without taking leave not without a word or two of +acknowledgment and goodwill not, in short, in that brief, dry +fashion. Why, you have saved my life snatched me from a horrible +and excruciating death and you walk past me as if we were mutual +strangers At least shake hands." +He held out his hand I gave him mine he took it first in one, +them in both his own. +"You have saved my life I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a +debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have +been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an +obligation but you it is different I feel your benefits no +burden, Jane." +He paused gazed at me words almost visible trembled on his lips, +but his voice was checked. +"Goodnight again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, +obligation, in the case." +"I knew," he continued, "you would do me good in some way, at some +time I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you their +expression and smile did not" again he stopped "did not" +he proceeded hastily "strike delight to my very inmost heart so +for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies I have heard of +good genii there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My +cherished preserver, goodnight" +Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look. +"I am glad I happened to be awake," I said and then I was going. +"What you WILL go?" +"I am cold, sir." +"Cold? Yes, and standing in a pool Go, then, Jane go" But +he still retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought +myself of an expedient. +"I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move, sir," said I. +"Well, leave me" he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone. +I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning +dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows +of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw +beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah and +now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit +triumphantly towards the bourne but I could not reach it, even +in fancy a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually +drove me back. Sense would resist delirium judgment would warn +passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned. +CHAPTER XVI +I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which +followed this sleepless night I wanted to hear his voice again, +yet feared to meet his eye. During the early part of the morning, +I momentarily expected his coming he was not in the frequent habit +of entering the schoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes +sometimes, and I had the impression that he was sure to visit it +that day. +But the morning passed just as usual nothing happened to interrupt +the quiet course of Adele's studies only soon after breakfast, I +heard some bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr. Rochester's chamber, +Mrs. Fairfax's voice, and Leah's, and the cook's that is, John's +wife and even John's own gruff tones. There were exclamations +of "What a mercy master was not burnt in his bed" "It is always +dangerous to keep a candle lit at night." "How providential that +he had presence of mind to think of the waterjug" "I wonder +he waked nobody" "It is to be hoped he will not take cold with +sleeping on the library sofa," c. +To much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to +rights and when I passed the room, in going downstairs to dinner, +I saw through the open door that all was again restored to complete +order only the bed was stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up +in the windowseat, rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. +I was about to address her, for I wished to know what account had +been given of the affair but, on advancing, I saw a second person +in the chamber a woman sitting on a chair by the bedside, and +sewing rings to new curtains. That woman was no other than Grace +Poole. +There she sat, staid and taciturnlooking, as usual, in her brown +stuff gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was +intent on her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed +on her hard forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing +either of the paleness or desperation one would have expected to +see marking the countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and +whose intended victim had followed her last night to her lair, and +as I believed, charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate. +I was amazed confounded. She looked up, while I still gazed at +her no start, no increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion, +consciousness of guilt, or fear of detection. She said "Good +morning, Miss," in her usual phlegmatic and brief manner and taking +up another ring and more tape, went on with her sewing. +"I will put her to some test," thought I "such absolute impenetrability +is past comprehension." +"Good morning, Grace," I said. "Has anything happened here? I +thought I heard the servants all talking together a while ago." +"Only master had been reading in his bed last night he fell asleep +with his candle lit, and the curtains got on fire but, fortunately, +he awoke before the bedclothes or the woodwork caught, and +contrived to quench the flames with the water in the ewer." +"A strange affair" I said, in a low voice then, looking at her +fixedly "Did Mr. Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him +move?" +She again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something +of consciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine +me warily then she answered +"The servants sleep so far off, you know, Miss, they would not be +likely to hear. Mrs. Fairfax's room and yours are the nearest to +master's but Mrs. Fairfax said she heard nothing when people +get elderly, they often sleep heavy." She paused, and then added, +with a sort of assumed indifference, but still in a marked and +significant tone "But you are young, Miss and I should say a +light sleeper perhaps you may have heard a noise?" +"I did," said I, dropping my voice, so that Leah, who was still +polishing the panes, could not hear me, "and at first I thought +it was Pilot but Pilot cannot laugh and I am certain I heard a +laugh, and a strange one." +She took a new needleful of thread, waxed it carefully, threaded her +needle with a steady hand, and then observed, with perfect composure +"It is hardly likely master would laugh, I should think, Miss, when +he was in such danger You must have been dreaming." +"I was not dreaming," I said, with some warmth, for her brazen +coolness provoked me. Again she looked at me and with the same +scrutinising and conscious eye. +"Have you told master that you heard a laugh?" she inquired. +"I have not had the opportunity of speaking to him this morning." +"You did not think of opening your door and looking out into the +gallery?" she further asked. +She appeared to be crossquestioning me, attempting to draw from +me information unawares. The idea struck me that if she discovered +I knew or suspected her guilt, she would be playing of some of her +malignant pranks on me I thought it advisable to be on my guard. +"On the contrary," said I, "I bolted my door." +"Then you are not in the habit of bolting your door every night +before you get into bed?" +"Fiend she wants to know my habits, that she may lay her plans +accordingly" Indignation again prevailed over prudence I replied +sharply, "Hitherto I have often omitted to fasten the bolt I did +not think it necessary. I was not aware any danger or annoyance +was to be dreaded at Thornfield Hall but in future" and I laid +marked stress on the words "I shall take good care to make all +secure before I venture to lie down." +"It will be wise so to do," was her answer "this neighbourhood +is as quiet as any I know, and I never heard of the hall being +attempted by robbers since it was a house though there are hundreds +of pounds' worth of plate in the platecloset, as is well known. +And you see, for such a large house, there are very few servants, +because master has never lived here much and when he does come, +being a bachelor, he needs little waiting on but I always think +it best to err on the safe side a door is soon fastened, and it +is as well to have a drawn bolt between one and any mischief that +may be about. A deal of people, Miss, are for trusting all to +Providence but I say Providence will not dispense with the means, +though He often blesses them when they are used discreetly." And +here she closed her harangue a long one for her, and uttered with +the demureness of a Quakeress. +I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her +miraculous selfpossession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when +the cook entered. +"Mrs. Poole," said she, addressing Grace, "the servants' dinner +will soon be ready will you come down?" +"No just put my pint of porter and bit of pudding on a tray, and +I'll carry it upstairs." +"You'll have some meat?" +"Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese, that's all." +"And the sago?" +"Never mind it at present I shall be coming down before teatime +I'll make it myself." +The cook here turned to me, saying that Mrs. Fairfax was waiting +for me so I departed. +I hardly heard Mrs. Fairfax's account of the curtain conflagration +during dinner, so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the +enigmatical character of Grace Poole, and still more in pondering +the problem of her position at Thornfield and questioning why +she had not been given into custody that morning, or, at the very +least, dismissed from her master's service. He had almost as much +as declared his conviction of her criminality last night what +mysterious cause withheld him from accusing her? Why had he +enjoined me, too, to secrecy? It was strange a bold, vindictive, +and haughty gentleman seemed somehow in the power of one of the +meanest of his dependants so much in her power, that even when +she lifted her hand against his life, he dared not openly charge +her with the attempt, much less punish her for it. +Had Grace been young and handsome, I should have been tempted to +think that tenderer feelings than prudence or fear influenced Mr. +Rochester in her behalf but, hardfavoured and matronly as she +was, the idea could not be admitted. "Yet," I reflected, "she has +been young once her youth would be contemporary with her master's +Mrs. Fairfax told me once, she had lived here many years. I don't +think she can ever have been pretty but, for aught I know, she +may possess originality and strength of character to compensate +for the want of personal advantages. Mr. Rochester is an amateur +of the decided and eccentric Grace is eccentric at least. What +if a former caprice a freak very possible to a nature so sudden and +headstrong as his has delivered him into her power, and she now +exercises over his actions a secret influence, the result of his own +indiscretion, which he cannot shake off, and dare not disregard?" +But, having reached this point of conjecture, Mrs. Poole's square, +flat figure, and uncomely, dry, even coarse face, recurred so +distinctly to my mind's eye, that I thought, "No impossible my +supposition cannot be correct. Yet," suggested the secret voice +which talks to us in our own hearts, "you are not beautiful either, +and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves you at any rate, you have often +felt as if he did and last night remember his words remember +his look remember his voice" +I well remembered all language, glance, and tone seemed at the +moment vividly renewed. I was now in the schoolroom Adele was +drawing I bent over her and directed her pencil. She looked up +with a sort of start. +"Qu' avezvous, mademoiselle?" said she. "Vos doigts tremblent +comme la feuille, et vos joues sont rouges mais, rouges comme +des cerises" +"I am hot, Adele, with stooping" She went on sketching I went +on thinking. +I hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been +conceiving respecting Grace Poole it disgusted me. I compared +myself with her, and found we were different. Bessie Leaven had +said I was quite a lady and she spoke truth I was a lady. And +now I looked much better than I did when Bessie saw me I had more +colour and more flesh, more life, more vivacity, because I had +brighter hopes and keener enjoyments. +"Evening approaches," said I, as I looked towards the window. "I +have never heard Mr. Rochester's voice or step in the house today +but surely I shall see him before night I feared the meeting in +the morning now I desire it, because expectation has been so long +baffled that it is grown impatient." +When dusk actually closed, and when Adele left me to go and play in +the nursery with Sophie, I did most keenly desire it. I listened +for the bell to ring below I listened for Leah coming up with +a message I fancied sometimes I heard Mr. Rochester's own tread, +and I turned to the door, expecting it to open and admit him. +The door remained shut darkness only came in through the window. +Still it was not late he often sent for me at seven and eight +o'clock, and it was yet but six. Surely I should not be wholly +disappointed to night, when I had so many things to say to him I +wanted again to introduce the subject of Grace Poole, and to hear +what he would answer I wanted to ask him plainly if he really +believed it was she who had made last night's hideous attempt and +if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little mattered +whether my curiosity irritated him I knew the pleasure of vexing +and soothing him by turns it was one I chiefly delighted in, and +a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far beyond +the verge of provocation I never ventured on the extreme brink I +liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, +every propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument +without fear or uneasy restraint this suited both him and me. +A tread creaked on the stairs at last. Leah made her appearance +but it was only to intimate that tea was ready in Mrs. Fairfax's +room. Thither I repaired, glad at least to go downstairs for that +brought me, I imagined, nearer to Mr. Rochester's presence. +"You must want your tea," said the good lady, as I joined her +"you ate so little at dinner. I am afraid," she continued, "you +are not well today you look flushed and feverish." +"Oh, quite well I never felt better." +"Then you must prove it by evincing a good appetite will you fill +the teapot while I knit off this needle?" Having completed her +task, she rose to draw down the blind, which she had hitherto kept +up, by way, I suppose, of making the most of daylight, though dusk +was now fast deepening into total obscurity. +"It is fair tonight," said she, as she looked through the panes, +"though not starlight Mr. Rochester has, on the whole, had a +favourable day for his journey." +"Journey Is Mr. Rochester gone anywhere? I did not know he +was out." +"Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted He is gone to the +Leas, Mr. Eshton's place, ten miles on the other side Millcote. I +believe there is quite a party assembled there Lord Ingram, Sir +George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and others." +"Do you expect him back tonight?" +"No nor tomorrow either I should think he is very likely to stay +a week or more when these fine, fashionable people get together, +they are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety, so well provided with +all that can please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate. +Gentlemen especially are often in request on such occasions and Mr. +Rochester is so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he +is a general favourite the ladies are very fond of him though +you would not think his appearance calculated to recommend him +particularly in their eyes but I suppose his acquirements and +abilities, perhaps his wealth and good blood, make amends for any +little fault of look." +"Are there ladies at the Leas?" +"There are Mrs. Eshton and her three daughters very elegant young +ladies indeed and there are the Honourable Blanche and Mary Ingram, +most beautiful women, I suppose indeed I have seen Blanche, six +or seven years since, when she was a girl of eighteen. She came +here to a Christmas ball and party Mr. Rochester gave. You should +have seen the diningroom that day how richly it was decorated, +how brilliantly lit up I should think there were fifty ladies +and gentlemen present all of the first county families and Miss +Ingram was considered the belle of the evening." +"You saw her, you say, Mrs. Fairfax what was she like?" +"Yes, I saw her. The diningroom doors were thrown open and, as +it was Christmastime, the servants were allowed to assemble in +the hall, to hear some of the ladies sing and play. Mr. Rochester +would have me to come in, and I sat down in a quiet corner and +watched them. I never saw a more splendid scene the ladies were +magnificently dressed most of them at least most of the younger +ones looked handsome but Miss Ingram was certainly the queen." +"And what was she like?" +"Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders long, graceful neck olive +complexion, dark and clear noble features eyes rather like Mr. +Rochester's large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And +then she had such a fine head of hair ravenblack and so becomingly +arranged a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, +the glossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white an +ambercoloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her +breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends +below her knee. She wore an ambercoloured flower, too, in her +hair it contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls." +"She was greatly admired, of course?" +"Yes, indeed and not only for her beauty, but for her accomplishments. +She was one of the ladies who sang a gentleman accompanied her +on the piano. She and Mr. Rochester sang a duet." +"Mr. Rochester? I was not aware he could sing." +"Oh he has a fine bass voice, and an excellent taste for music." +"And Miss Ingram what sort of a voice had she?" +"A very rich and powerful one she sang delightfully it was a treat +to listen to her and she played afterwards. I am no judge of +music, but Mr. Rochester is and I heard him say her execution was +remarkably good." +"And this beautiful and accomplished lady, she is not yet married?" +"It appears not I fancy neither she nor her sister have very +large fortunes. Old Lord Ingram's estates were chiefly entailed, +and the eldest son came in for everything almost." +"But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or gentleman has taken a fancy +to her Mr. Rochester, for instance. He is rich, is he not?" +"Oh yes. But you see there is a considerable difference in age +Mr. Rochester is nearly forty she is but twentyfive." +"What of that? More unequal matches are made every day." +"True yet I should scarcely fancy Mr. Rochester would entertain +an idea of the sort. But you eat nothing you have scarcely tasted +since you began tea." +"No I am too thirsty to eat. Will you let me have another cup?" +I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between +Mr. Rochester and the beautiful Blanche but Adele came in, and +the conversation was turned into another channel. +When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got looked +into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured +to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through +imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of +common sense. +Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the +hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night +of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly +a fortnight past Reason having come forward and told, in her own +quiet way a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the +real, and rabidly devoured the ideal I pronounced judgment to +this effect +That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath +of life that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself +on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar. +"YOU," I said, "a favourite with Mr. Rochester? YOU gifted with the +power of pleasing him? YOU of importance to him in any way? Go +your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional +tokens of preference equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of +family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. How +dared you? Poor stupid dupe Could not even selfinterest make +you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene +of last night? Cover your face and be ashamed He said something +in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy Open their bleared +lids and look on your own accursed senselessness It does good +to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly +intend to marry her and it is madness in all women to let a secret +love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must +devour the life that feeds it and, if discovered and responded +to, must lead, ignisfatuslike, into miry wilds whence there is +no extrication. +"Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence tomorrow, place the +glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, +without softening one defect omit no harsh line, smooth away no +displeasing irregularity write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, +disconnected, poor, and plain.' +"Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory you have one prepared +in your drawingbox take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, +clearest tints choose your most delicate camelhair pencils +delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine paint +it in your softest shades and sweetest lines, according to the +description given by Mrs. Fairfax of Blanche Ingram remember the +raven ringlets, the oriental eye What you revert to Mr. Rochester +as a model Order No snivel no sentiment no regret I +will endure only sense and resolution. Recall the august yet +harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust let the round +and dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand omit neither +diamond ring nor gold bracelet portray faithfully the attire, +aerial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose +call it 'Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank.' +"Whenever, in future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester +thinks well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them +say, 'Mr. Rochester might probably win that noble lady's love, if +he chose to strive for it is it likely he would waste a serious +thought on this indigent and insignificant plebeian?'" +"I'll do it," I resolved and having framed this determination, +I grew calm, and fell asleep. +I kept my word. An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait +in crayons and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory +miniature of an imaginary Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face +enough, and when compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast +was as great as selfcontrol could desire. I derived benefit from +the task it had kept my head and hands employed, and had given +force and fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp +indelibly on my heart. +Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course +of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to +submit. Thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences +with a decent calm, which, had they found me unprepared, I should +probably have been unequal to maintain, even externally. +CHAPTER XVII +A week passed, and no news arrived of Mr. Rochester ten days, +and still he did not come. Mrs. Fairfax said she should not be +surprised if he were to go straight from the Leas to London, and +thence to the Continent, and not show his face again at Thornfield +for a year to come he had not unfrequently quitted it in a manner +quite as abrupt and unexpected. When I heard this, I was beginning +to feel a strange chill and failing at the heart. I was actually +permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment +but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once +called my sensations to order and it was wonderful how I got over +the temporary blunder how I cleared up the mistake of supposing +Mr. Rochester's movements a matter in which I had any cause to take +a vital interest. Not that I humbled myself by a slavish +notion of inferiority on the contrary, I just said +"You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than +to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protegee, and +to be grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do +your duty, you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that +is the only tie he seriously acknowledges between you and him so +don't make him the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, +agonies, and so forth. He is not of your order keep to your +caste, and be too selfrespecting to lavish the love of the whole +heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted and +would be despised." +I went on with my day's business tranquilly but ever and anon +vague suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I +should quit Thornfield and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements +and pondering conjectures about new situations these thoughts I +did not think to check they might germinate and bear fruit if they +could. +Mr. Rochester had been absent upwards of a fortnight, when the post +brought Mrs. Fairfax a letter. +"It is from the master," said she, as she looked at the direction. +"Now I suppose we shall know whether we are to expect his return +or not." +And while she broke the seal and perused the document, I went on +taking my coffee we were at breakfast it was hot, and I attributed +to that circumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. +Why my hand shook, and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents +of my cup into my saucer, I did not choose to consider. +"Well, I sometimes think we are too quiet but we run a chance of +being busy enough now for a little while at least," said Mrs. +Fairfax, still holding the note before her spectacles. +Ere I permitted myself to request an explanation, I tied the string +of Adele's pinafore, which happened to be loose having helped her +also to another bun and refilled her mug with milk, I said, nonchalantly +"Mr. Rochester is not likely to return soon, I suppose?" +"Indeed he is in three days, he says that will be next Thursday +and not alone either. I don't know how many of the fine people +at the Leas are coming with him he sends directions for all the +best bedrooms to be prepared and the library and drawingrooms are +to be cleaned out I am to get more kitchen hands from the George +Inn, at Millcote, and from wherever else I can and the ladies will +bring their maids and the gentlemen their valets so we shall have +a full house of it." And Mrs. Fairfax swallowed her breakfast and +hastened away to commence operations. +The three days were, as she had foretold, busy enough. I had thought +all the rooms at Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged +but it appears I was mistaken. Three women were got to help and +such scrubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of +carpets, such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing +of mirrors and lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such +airing of sheets and featherbeds on hearths, I never beheld, +either before or since. Adele ran quite wild in the midst of it +the preparations for company and the prospect of their arrival, +seemed to throw her into ecstasies. She would have Sophie to look +over all her "toilettes," as she called frocks to furbish up any +that were "passees," and to air and arrange the new. For herself, +she did nothing but caper about in the front chambers, jump on and +off the bedsteads, and lie on the mattresses and piledup bolsters +and pillows before the enormous fires roaring in the chimneys. +From school duties she was exonerated Mrs. Fairfax had pressed +me into her service, and I was all day in the storeroom, helping +or hindering her and the cook learning to make custards and +cheesecakes and French pastry, to truss game and garnish desertdishes. +The party were expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon, in time +for dinner at six. During the intervening period I had no time to +nurse chimeras and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody +Adele excepted. Still, now and then, I received a damping check +to my cheerfulness and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on +the region of doubts and portents, and dark conjectures. This was +when I chanced to see the thirdstorey staircase door which of +late had always been kept locked open slowly, and give passage to +the form of Grace Poole, in prim cap, white apron, and handkerchief when +I watched her glide along the gallery, her quiet tread muffled in +a list slipper when I saw her look into the bustling, topsyturvy +bedrooms, just say a word, perhaps, to the charwoman about the +proper way to polish a grate, or clean a marble mantelpiece, or +take stains from papered walls, and then pass on. She would thus +descend to the kitchen once a day, eat her dinner, smoke a moderate +pipe on the hearth, and go back, carrying her pot of porter with +her, for her private solace, in her own gloomy, upper haunt. Only +one hour in the twentyfour did she pass with her fellowservants +below all the rest of her time was spent in some lowceiled, +oaken chamber of the second storey there she sat and sewed +and probably laughed drearily to herself, as companionless as +a prisoner in his dungeon. +The strangest thing of all was, that not a soul in the house, +except me, noticed her habits, or seemed to marvel at them no one +discussed her position or employment no one pitied her solitude +or isolation. I once, indeed, overheard part of a dialogue between +Leah and one of the charwomen, of which Grace formed the subject. +Leah had been saying something I had not caught, and the +charwoman remarked +"She gets good wages, I guess?" +"Yes," said Leah "I wish I had as good not that mine are to +complain of, there's no stinginess at Thornfield but they're +not one fifth of the sum Mrs. Poole receives. And she is laying +by she goes every quarter to the bank at Millcote. I should +not wonder but she has saved enough to keep her independent if she +liked to leave but I suppose she's got used to the place and then +she's not forty yet, and strong and able for anything. It is too +soon for her to give up business." +"She is a good hand, I daresay," said the charwoman. +"Ah she understands what she has to do, nobody better," +rejoined Leah significantly "and it is not every one could fill +her shoes not for all the money she gets." +"That it is not" was the reply. "I wonder whether the master " +The charwoman was going on but here Leah turned and perceived me, +and she instantly gave her companion a nudge. +"Doesn't she know?" I heard the woman whisper. +Leah shook her head, and the conversation was of course dropped. +All I had gathered from it amounted to this, that there was a +mystery at Thornfield and that from participation in that mystery +I was purposely excluded. +Thursday came all work had been completed the previous evening +carpets were laid down, bedhangings festooned, radiant white +counterpanes spread, toilet tables arranged, furniture rubbed, +flowers piled in vases both chambers and saloons looked as fresh +and bright as hands could make them. The hall, too, was scoured +and the great carved clock, as well as the steps and banisters of +the staircase, were polished to the brightness of glass in the +diningroom, the sideboard flashed resplendent with plate in the +drawingroom and boudoir, vases of exotics bloomed on all sides. +Afternoon arrived Mrs. Fairfax assumed her best black satin gown, +her gloves, and her gold watch for it was her part to receive the +company, to conduct the ladies to their rooms, c. Adele, too, +would be dressed though I thought she had little chance of being +introduced to the party that day at least. However, to please her, +I allowed Sophie to apparel her in one of her short, full muslin +frocks. For myself, I had no need to make any change I should not +be called upon to quit my sanctum of the schoolroom for a sanctum +it was now become to me, "a very pleasant refuge in time of +trouble." +It had been a mild, serene spring day one of those days which, +towards the end of March or the beginning of April, rise shining +over the earth as heralds of summer. It was drawing to an end now +but the evening was even warm, and I sat at work in the schoolroom +with the window open. +"It gets late," said Mrs. Fairfax, entering in rustling state. +"I am glad I ordered dinner an hour after the time Mr. Rochester +mentioned for it is past six now. I have sent John down to the +gates to see if there is anything on the road one can see a long +way from thence in the direction of Millcote." She went to the +window. "Here he is" said she. "Well, John" leaning out, "any +news?" +"They're coming, ma'am," was the answer. "They'll be here in ten +minutes." +Adele flew to the window. I followed, taking care to stand on one +side, so that, screened by the curtain, I could see without being +seen. +The ten minutes John had given seemed very long, but at last wheels +were heard four equestrians galloped up the drive, and after them +came two open carriages. Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled +the vehicles two of the cavaliers were young, dashinglooking +gentlemen the third was Mr. Rochester, on his black horse, Mesrour, +Pilot bounding before him at his side rode a lady, and he and she +were the first of the party. Her purple ridinghabit almost swept +the ground, her veil streamed long on the breeze mingling with +its transparent folds, and gleaming through them, shone rich raven +ringlets. +"Miss Ingram" exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, and away she hurried to +her post below. +The cavalcade, following the sweep of the drive, quickly turned the +angle of the house, and I lost sight of it. Adele now petitioned +to go down but I took her on my knee, and gave her to understand +that she must not on any account think of venturing in sight of +the ladies, either now or at any other time, unless expressly sent +for that Mr. Rochester would be very angry, c. "Some natural +tears she shed" on being told this but as I began to look very +grave, she consented at last to wipe them. +A joyous stir was now audible in the hall gentlemen's deep +tones and ladies' silvery accents blent harmoniously together, and +distinguishable above all, though not loud, was the sonorous voice +of the master of Thornfield Hall, welcoming his fair and gallant +guests under its roof. Then light steps ascended the stairs and +there was a tripping through the gallery, and soft cheerful laughs, +and opening and closing doors, and, for a time, a hush. +"Elles changent de toilettes," said Adele who, listening attentively, +had followed every movement and she sighed. +"Chez maman," said she, "quand il y avait du monde, je le suivais +partout, au salon et e leurs chambres souvent je regardais les +femmes de chambre coiffer et habiller les dames, et c'etait si +amusant comme cela on apprend." +"Don't you feel hungry, Adele?" +"Mais oui, mademoiselle voile cinq ou six heures que nous n'avons +pas mange." +"Well now, while the ladies are in their rooms, I will venture down +and get you something to eat." +And issuing from my asylum with precaution, I sought a backstairs +which conducted directly to the kitchen. All in that region was +fire and commotion the soup and fish were in the last stage of +projection, and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind +and body threatening spontaneous combustion. In the servants' hall +two coachmen and three gentlemen's gentlemen stood or sat round the +fire the abigails, I suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses +the new servants, that had been hired from Millcote, were bustling +about everywhere. Threading this chaos, I at last reached the +larder there I took possession of a cold chicken, a roll of bread, +some tarts, a plate or two and a knife and fork with this booty +I made a hasty retreat. I had regained the gallery, and was just +shutting the backdoor behind me, when an accelerated hum warned me +that the ladies were about to issue from their chambers. I could +not proceed to the schoolroom without passing some of their doors, +and running the risk of being surprised with my cargo of victualage +so I stood still at this end, which, being windowless, was dark +quite dark now, for the sun was set and twilight gathering. +Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another +each came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous +through the dusk. For a moment they stood grouped together at +the other extremity of the gallery, conversing in a key of sweet +subdued vivacity they then descended the staircase almost as +noiselessly as a bright mist rolls down a hill. Their collective +appearance had left on me an impression of highborn elegance, such +as I had never before received. +I found Adele peeping through the schoolroom door, which she held +ajar. "What beautiful ladies" cried she in English. "Oh, I wish +I might go to them Do you think Mr. Rochester will send for us +byandbye, after dinner?" +"No, indeed, I don't Mr. Rochester has something else to think +about. Never mind the ladies tonight perhaps you will see them +tomorrow here is your dinner." +She was really hungry, so the chicken and tarts served to divert +her attention for a time. It was well I secured this forage, or +both she, I, and Sophie, to whom I conveyed a share of our repast, +would have run a chance of getting no dinner at all every one +downstairs was too much engaged to think of us. The dessert was not +carried out till after nine and at ten footmen were still running +to and fro with trays and coffeecups. I allowed Adele to sit up +much later than usual for she declared she could not possibly go +to sleep while the doors kept opening and shutting below, and people +bustling about. Besides, she added, a message might possibly come +from Mr. Rochester when she was undressed "et alors quel dommage" +I told her stories as long as she would listen to them and then +for a change I took her out into the gallery. The hall lamp was +now lit, and it amused her to look over the balustrade and watch +the servants passing backwards and forwards. When the evening +was far advanced, a sound of music issued from the drawingroom, +whither the piano had been removed Adele and I sat down on the +top step of the stairs to listen. Presently a voice blent with +the rich tones of the instrument it was a lady who sang, and very +sweet her notes were. The solo over, a duet followed, and then a +glee a joyous conversational murmur filled up the intervals. I +listened long suddenly I discovered that my ear was wholly intent +on analysing the mingled sounds, and trying to discriminate amidst +the confusion of accents those of Mr. Rochester and when it caught +them, which it soon did, it found a further task in framing the +tones, rendered by distance inarticulate, into words. +The clock struck eleven. I looked at Adele, whose head leant +against my shoulder her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up +in my arms and carried her off to bed. It was near one before the +gentlemen and ladies sought their chambers. +The next day was as fine as its predecessor it was devoted by +the party to an excursion to some site in the neighbourhood. They +set out early in the forenoon, some on horseback, the rest in +carriages I witnessed both the departure and the return. Miss +Ingram, as before, was the only lady equestrian and, as before, +Mr. Rochester galloped at her side the two rode a little apart from +the rest. I pointed out this circumstance to Mrs. Fairfax, +who was standing at the window with me +"You said it was not likely they should think of being married," +said I, "but you see Mr. Rochester evidently prefers her to any of +the other ladies." +"Yes, I daresay no doubt he admires her." +"And she him," I added "look how she leans her head towards him +as if she were conversing confidentially I wish I could see her +face I have never had a glimpse of it yet." +"You will see her this evening," answered Mrs. Fairfax. "I happened +to remark to Mr. Rochester how much Adele wished to be introduced +to the ladies, and he said 'Oh let her come into the drawingroom +after dinner and request Miss Eyre to accompany her.'" +"Yes he said that from mere politeness I need not go, I am sure," +I answered. +"Well, I observed to him that as you were unused to company, I did +not think you would like appearing before so gay a party all +strangers and he replied, in his quick way 'Nonsense If she +objects, tell her it is my particular wish and if she resists, +say I shall come and fetch her in case of contumacy.'" +"I will not give him that trouble," I answered. "I will go, if +no better may be but I don't like it. Shall you be there, Mrs. +Fairfax?" +"No I pleaded off, and he admitted my plea. I'll tell you how to +manage so as to avoid the embarrassment of making a formal entrance, +which is the most disagreeable part of the business. You must go +into the drawingroom while it is empty, before the ladies leave +the dinnertable choose your seat in any quiet nook you like you +need not stay long after the gentlemen come in, unless you please +just let Mr. Rochester see you are there and then slip away +nobody will notice you." +"Will these people remain long, do you think?" +"Perhaps two or three weeks, certainly not more. After the +Easter recess, Sir George Lynn, who was lately elected member for +Millcote, will have to go up to town and take his seat I daresay +Mr. Rochester will accompany him it surprises me that he has +already made so protracted a stay at Thornfield." +It was with some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach +when I was to repair with my charge to the drawingroom. Adele +had been in a state of ecstasy all day, after hearing she was to be +presented to the ladies in the evening and it was not till Sophie +commenced the operation of dressing her that she sobered down. Then +the importance of the process quickly steadied her, and by the time +she had her curls arranged in wellsmoothed, drooping clusters, her +pink satin frock put on, her long sash tied, and her lace mittens +adjusted, she looked as grave as any judge. No need to warn her not +to disarrange her attire when she was dressed, she sat demurely +down in her little chair, taking care previously to lift up the +satin skirt for fear she should crease it, and assured me she would +not stir thence till I was ready. This I quickly was my best +dress the silvergrey one, purchased for Miss Temple's wedding, +and never worn since was soon put on my hair was soon smoothed +my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed. We descended. +Fortunately there was another entrance to the drawingroom than +that through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. We +found the apartment vacant a large fire burning silently on the +marble hearth, and wax candles shining in bright solitude, amid the +exquisite flowers with which the tables were adorned. The crimson +curtain hung before the arch slight as was the separation +this drapery formed from the party in the adjoining saloon, they +spoke in so low a key that nothing of their conversation could be +distinguished beyond a soothing murmur. +Adele, who appeared to be still under the influence of a most +solemnising impression, sat down, without a word, on the footstool I +pointed out to her. I retired to a windowseat, and taking a book +from a table near, endeavoured to read. Adele brought her stool +to my feet ere long she touched my knee. +"What is it, Adele?" +"Estce que je ne puis pas prendrie une seule de ces fleurs +magnifiques, mademoiselle? Seulement pour completer ma toilette." +"You think too much of your 'toilette,' Adele but you may have +a flower." And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her +sash. She sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup +of happiness were now full. I turned my face away to conceal a +smile I could not suppress there was something ludicrous as well +as painful in the little Parisienne's earnest and innate devotion +to matters of dress. +A soft sound of rising now became audible the curtain was swept +back from the arch through it appeared the diningroom, with its +lit lustre pouring down light on the silver and glass of a magnificent +dessertservice covering a long table a band of ladies stood in +the opening they entered, and the curtain fell behind them. +There were but eight yet, somehow, as they flocked in, they gave +the impression of a much larger number. Some of them were very +tall many were dressed in white and all had a sweeping amplitude +of array that seemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies +the moon. I rose and curtseyed to them one or two bent their +heads in return, the others only stared at me. +They dispersed about the room, reminding me, by the lightness and +buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some +of them threw themselves in halfreclining positions on the sofas +and ottomans some bent over the tables and examined the flowers +and books the rest gathered in a group round the fire all +talked in a low but clear tone which seemed habitual to them. I +knew their names afterwards, and may as well mention them now. +First, there was Mrs. Eshton and two of her daughters. She had +evidently been a handsome woman, and was well preserved still. +Of her daughters, the eldest, Amy, was rather little naive, +and childlike in face and manner, and piquant in form her white +muslin dress and blue sash became her well. The second, Louisa, +was taller and more elegant in figure with a very pretty face, +of that order the French term minois chiffone both sisters were +fair as lilies. +Lady Lynn was a large and stout personage of about forty, very erect, +very haughtylooking, richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful +sheen her dark hair shone glossily under the shade of an azure +plume, and within the circlet of a band of gems. +Mrs. Colonel Dent was less showy but, I thought, more ladylike. +She had a slight figure, a pale, gentle face, and fair hair. Her +black satin dress, her scarf of rich foreign lace, and her pearl +ornaments, pleased me better than the rainbow radiance of the titled +dame. +But the three most distinguished partly, perhaps, because the +tallest figures of the band were the Dowager Lady Ingram and her +daughters, Blanche and Mary. They were all three of the loftiest +stature of women. The Dowager might be between forty and fifty +her shape was still fine her hair by candlelight at least still +black her teeth, too, were still apparently perfect. Most people +would have termed her a splendid woman of her age and so she was, +no doubt, physically speaking but then there was an expression of +almost insupportable haughtiness in her bearing and countenance. +She had Roman features and a double chin, disappearing into a throat +like a pillar these features appeared to me not only inflated and +darkened, but even furrowed with pride and the chin was sustained +by the same principle, in a position of almost preternatural +erectness. She had, likewise, a fierce and a hard eye it reminded +me of Mrs. Reed's she mouthed her words in speaking her voice +was deep, its inflections very pompous, very dogmatical, very +intolerable, in short. A crimson velvet robe, and a shawl turban +of some goldwrought Indian fabric, invested her I suppose she +thought with a truly imperial dignity. +Blanche and Mary were of equal stature, straight and tall as +poplars. Mary was too slim for her height, but Blanche was moulded +like a Dian. I regarded her, of course, with special interest. +First, I wished to see whether her appearance accorded with +Mrs. Fairfax's description secondly, whether it at all resembled +the fancy miniature I had painted of her and thirdly it will +out whether it were such as I should fancy likely to suit Mr. +Rochester's taste. +As far as person went, she answered point for point, both to my +picture and Mrs. Fairfax's description. The noble bust, the sloping +shoulders, the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets +were all there but her face? Her face was like her mother's +a youthful unfurrowed likeness the same low brow, the same high +features, the same pride. It was not, however, so saturnine a +pride she laughed continually her laugh was satirical, and so +was the habitual expression of her arched and haughty lip. +Genius is said to be selfconscious. I cannot tell whether Miss +Ingram was a genius, but she was selfconscious remarkably self +conscious indeed. She entered into a discourse on botany with the +gentle Mrs. Dent. It seemed Mrs. Dent had not studied that science +though, as she said, she liked flowers, "especially wild ones" +Miss Ingram had, and she ran over its vocabulary with an air. I +presently perceived she was what is vernacularly termed TRAILING +Mrs. Dent that is, playing on her ignorance her TRAIL might be +clever, but it was decidedly not goodnatured. She played her +execution was brilliant she sang her voice was fine she talked +French apart to her mamma and she talked it well, with fluency +and with a good accent. +Mary had a milder and more open countenance than Blanche softer +features too, and a skin some shades fairer Miss Ingram was dark +as a Spaniard but Mary was deficient in life her face lacked +expression, her eye lustre she had nothing to say, and having once +taken her seat, remained fixed like a statue in its niche. The +sisters were both attired in spotless white. +And did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr. Rochester +would be likely to make? I could not tell I did not know his +taste in female beauty. If he liked the majestic, she was the +very type of majesty then she was accomplished, sprightly. Most +gentlemen would admire her, I thought and that he DID admire her, +I already seemed to have obtained proof to remove the last shade +of doubt, it remained but to see them together. +You are not to suppose, reader, that Adele has all this time been +sitting motionless on the stool at my feet no when the ladies +entered, she rose, advanced to meet them, made a stately +reverence, and said with gravity +"Bon jour, mesdames." +And Miss Ingram had looked down at her with a mocking air, and +exclaimed, "Oh, what a little puppet" +Lady Lynn had remarked, "It is Mr. Rochester's ward, I suppose +the little French girl he was speaking of." +Mrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand, and given her a kiss. +Amy and Louisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously "What a love +of a child" +And then they had called her to a sofa, where she now sat, ensconced +between them, chattering alternately in French and broken English +absorbing not only the young ladies' attention, but that of Mrs. +Eshton and Lady Lynn, and getting spoilt to her heart's content. +At last coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen are summoned. I +sit in the shade if any shade there be in this brilliantlylit +apartment the windowcurtain half hides me. Again the arch yawns +they come. The collective appearance of the gentlemen, like that +of the ladies, is very imposing they are all costumed in black +most of them are tall, some young. Henry and Frederick Lynn are +very dashing sparks indeed and Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly +man. Mr. Eshton, the magistrate of the district, is gentlemanlike +his hair is quite white, his eyebrows and whiskers still dark, +which gives him something of the appearance of a "pere noble de +theatre." Lord Ingram, like his sisters, is very tall like them, +also, he is handsome but he shares Mary's apathetic and listless +look he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of blood +or vigour of brain. +And where is Mr. Rochester? +He comes in last I am not looking at the arch, yet I see him +enter. I try to concentrate my attention on those nettingneedles, +on the meshes of the purse I am forming I wish to think only +of the work I have in my hands, to see only the silver beads and +silk threads that lie in my lap whereas, I distinctly behold his +figure, and I inevitably recall the moment when I last saw it just +after I had rendered him, what he deemed, an essential service, and +he, holding my hand, and looking down on my face, surveyed me with +eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to overflow in whose +emotions I had a part. How near had I approached him at that moment +What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative +positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were So +far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to me. +I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at +the other side of the room, and began conversing with some of the +ladies. +No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and +that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn +involuntarily to his face I could not keep their lids under control +they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had +an acute pleasure in looking, a precious yet poignant pleasure +pure gold, with a steely point of agony a pleasure like what the +thirstperishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has +crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless. +Most true is it that "beauty is in the eye of the gazer." My +master's colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and +jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, all +energy, decision, will, were not beautiful, according to rule +but they were more than beautiful to me they were full of an interest, +an influence that quite mastered me, that took my feelings from +my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love +him the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul +the germs of love there detected and now, at the first renewed view +of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong He made me +love him without looking at me. +I compared him with his guests. What was the gallant grace of the +Lynns, the languid elegance of Lord Ingram, even the military +distinction of Colonel Dent, contrasted with his look of native +pith and genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance, +their expression yet I could imagine that most observers would +call them attractive, handsome, imposing while they would pronounce +Mr. Rochester at once harshfeatured and melancholylooking. I +saw them smile, laugh it was nothing the light of the candles +had as much soul in it as their smile the tinkle of the bell as +much significance as their laugh. I saw Mr. Rochester smile his +stern features softened his eye grew both brilliant and gentle, +its ray both searching and sweet. He was talking, at the moment, +to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I wondered to see them receive with +calm that look which seemed to me so penetrating I expected their +eyes to fall, their colour to rise under it yet I was glad when I +found they were in no sense moved. "He is not to them what he is +to me," I thought "he is not of their kind. I believe he is of +mine I am sure he is I feel akin to him I understand the +language of his countenance and movements though rank and wealth +sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my +blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say, +a few days since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive +my salary at his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any +other light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature Every +good, true, vigorous feeling I have gathers impulsively round him. +I know I must conceal my sentiments I must smother hope I must +remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I +am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, +and his spell to attract I mean only that I have certain tastes +and feelings in common with him. I must, then, repeat continually +that we are for ever sundered and yet, while I breathe and think, +I must love him." +Coffee is handed. The ladies, since the gentlemen entered, have +become lively as larks conversation waxes brisk and merry. Colonel +Dent and Mr. Eshton argue on politics their wives listen. The two +proud dowagers, Lady Lynn and Lady Ingram, confabulate together. +Sir George whom, bythebye, I have forgotten to describe, a +very big, and very freshlooking country gentleman, stands before +their sofa, coffeecup in hand, and occasionally puts in a word. +Mr. Frederick Lynn has taken a seat beside Mary Ingram, and is +showing her the engravings of a splendid volume she looks, smiles +now and then, but apparently says little. The tall and phlegmatic +Lord Ingram leans with folded arms on the chairback of the little +and lively Amy Eshton she glances up at him, and chatters like +a wren she likes him better than she does Mr. Rochester. Henry +Lynn has taken possession of an ottoman at the feet of Louisa +Adele shares it with him he is trying to talk French with her, +and Louisa laughs at his blunders. With whom will Blanche Ingram +pair? She is standing alone at the table, bending gracefully over +an album. She seems waiting to be sought but she will not wait +too long she herself selects a mate. +Mr. Rochester, having quitted the Eshtons, stands on the hearth +as solitary as she stands by the table she confronts him, taking +her station on the opposite side of the mantelpiece. +"Mr. Rochester, I thought you were not fond of children?" +"Nor am I." +"Then, what induced you to take charge of such a little doll as +that?" pointing to Adele. "Where did you pick her up?" +"I did not pick her up she was left on my hands." +"You should have sent her to school." +"I could not afford it schools are so dear." +"Why, I suppose you have a governess for her I saw a person with +her just now is she gone? Oh, no there she is still, behind +the windowcurtain. You pay her, of course I should think it +quite as expensive, more so for you have them both to keep in +addition." +I feared or should I say, hoped? the allusion to me would +make Mr. Rochester glance my way and I involuntarily shrank farther +into the shade but he never turned his eyes. +"I have not considered the subject," said he indifferently, looking +straight before him. +"No, you men never do consider economy and common sense. You should +hear mama on the chapter of governesses Mary and I have had, I +should think, a dozen at least in our day half of them detestable +and the rest ridiculous, and all incubi were they not, mama?" +"Did you speak, my own?" +The young lady thus claimed as the dowager's special property, +reiterated her question with an explanation. +"My dearest, don't mention governesses the word makes me nervous. +I have suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice. +I thank Heaven I have now done with them" +Mrs. Dent here bent over to the pious lady and whispered something +in her ear I suppose, from the answer elicited, it was a reminder +that one of the anathematised race was present. +"Tant pis" said her Ladyship, "I hope it may do her good" Then, +in a lower tone, but still loud enough for me to hear, "I noticed +her I am a judge of physiognomy, and in hers I see all the faults +of her class." +"What are they, madam?" inquired Mr. Rochester aloud. +"I will tell you in your private ear," replied she, wagging her +turban three times with portentous significancy. +"But my curiosity will be past its appetite it craves food now." +"Ask Blanche she is nearer you than I." +"Oh, don't refer him to me, mama I have just one word to say of +the whole tribe they are a nuisance. Not that I ever suffered much +from them I took care to turn the tables. What tricks Theodore +and I used to play on our Miss Wilsons, and Mrs. Greys, and Madame +Jouberts Mary was always too sleepy to join in a plot with +spirit. The best fun was with Madame Joubert Miss Wilson was +a poor sickly thing, lachrymose and lowspirited, not worth the +trouble of vanquishing, in short and Mrs. Grey was coarse and +insensible no blow took effect on her. But poor Madame Joubert +I see her yet in her raging passions, when we had driven her to +extremities spilt our tea, crumbled our bread and butter, tossed +our books up to the ceiling, and played a charivari with the ruler +and desk, the fender and fireirons. Theodore, do you remember +those merry days?" +"Yaas, to be sure I do," drawled Lord Ingram "and the poor old +stick used to cry out 'Oh you villains childs' and then we +sermonised her on the presumption of attempting to teach such clever +blades as we were, when she was herself so ignorant." +"We did and, Tedo, you know, I helped you in prosecuting or +persecuting your tutor, wheyfaced Mr. Vining the parson in the +pip, as we used to call him. He and Miss Wilson took the liberty +of falling in love with each other at least Tedo and I thought +so we surprised sundry tender glances and sighs which we interpreted +as tokens of 'la belle passion,' and I promise you the public soon +had the benefit of our discovery we employed it as a sort of lever +to hoist our deadweights from the house. Dear mama, there, as +soon as she got an inkling of the business, found out that it was +of an immoral tendency. Did you not, my ladymother?" +"Certainly, my best. And I was quite right depend on that +there are a thousand reasons why liaisons between governesses and +tutors should never be tolerated a moment in any wellregulated +house firstly " +"Oh, gracious, mama Spare us the enumeration Au reste, we +all know them danger of bad example to innocence of childhood +distractions and consequent neglect of duty on the part of the attached +mutual alliance and reliance confidence thence resulting +insolence accompanying mutiny and general blowup. Am I right, +Baroness Ingram, of Ingram Park?" +"My lilyflower, you are right now, as always." +"Then no more need be said change the subject." +Amy Eshton, not hearing or not heeding this dictum, joined in with +her soft, infantine tone "Louisa and I used to quiz our governess +too but she was such a good creature, she would bear anything +nothing put her out. She was never cross with us was she, Louisa?" +"No, never we might do what we pleased ransack her desk and +her workbox, and turn her drawers inside out and she was so good +natured, she would give us anything we asked for." +"I suppose, now," said Miss Ingram, curling her lip sarcastically, +"we shall have an abstract of the memoirs of all the governesses +extant in order to avert such a visitation, I again move +the introduction of a new topic. Mr. Rochester, do you second my +motion?" +"Madam, I support you on this point, as on every other." +"Then on me be the onus of bringing it forward. Signior Eduardo, +are you in voice tonight?" +"Donna Bianca, if you command it, I will be." +"Then, signior, I lay on you my sovereign behest to furbish up your +lungs and other vocal organs, as they will be wanted on my royal +service." +"Who would not be the Rizzio of so divine a Mary?" +"A fig for Rizzio" cried she, tossing her head with all its +curls, as she moved to the piano. "It is my opinion the fiddler +David must have been an insipid sort of fellow I like black Bothwell +better to my mind a man is nothing without a spice of the devil +in him and history may say what it will of James Hepburn, but I +have a notion, he was just the sort of wild, fierce, bandit hero +whom I could have consented to gift with my hand." +"Gentlemen, you hear Now which of you most resembles Bothwell?" +cried Mr. Rochester. +"I should say the preference lies with you," responded Colonel +Dent. +"On my honour, I am much obliged to you," was the reply. +Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the +piano, spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced +a brilliant prelude talking meantime. She appeared to be on her +high horse tonight both her words and her air seemed intended to +excite not only the admiration, but the amazement of her auditors +she was evidently bent on striking them as something very dashing +and daring indeed. +"Oh, I am so sick of the young men of the present day" exclaimed +she, rattling away at the instrument. "Poor, puny things, not fit +to stir a step beyond papa's park gates nor to go even so far +without mama's permission and guardianship Creatures so absorbed +in care about their pretty faces, and their white hands, and +their small feet as if a man had anything to do with beauty As +if loveliness were not the special prerogative of woman her +legitimate appanage and heritage I grant an ugly WOMAN is a blot +on the fair face of creation but as to the GENTLEMEN, let them be +solicitous to possess only strength and valour let their motto +be Hunt, shoot, and fight the rest is not worth a fillip. Such +should be my device, were I a man." +"Whenever I marry," she continued after a pause which none interrupted, +"I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. +I will suffer no competitor near the throne I shall exact an +undivided homage his devotions shall not be shared between me +and the shape he sees in his mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and +I will play for you." +"I am all obedience," was the response. +"Here then is a Corsairsong. Know that I doat on Corsairs and +for that reason, sing it con spirito." +"Commands from Miss Ingram's lips would put spirit into a mug of +milk and water." +"Take care, then if you don't please me, I will shame you by +showing how such things SHOULD be done." +"That is offering a premium on incapacity I shall now endeavour +to fail." +"Gardezvous en bien If you err wilfully, I shall devise a +proportionate punishment." +"Miss Ingram ought to be clement, for she has it in her power to +inflict a chastisement beyond mortal endurance." +"Ha explain" commanded the lady. +"Pardon me, madam no need of explanation your own fine sense must +inform you that one of your frowns would be a sufficient substitute +for capital punishment." +"Sing" said she, and again touching the piano, she commenced an +accompaniment in spirited style. +"Now is my time to slip away," thought I but the tones that then +severed the air arrested me. Mrs. Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester +possessed a fine voice he did a mellow, powerful bass, into +which he threw his own feeling, his own force finding a way through +the ear to the heart, and there waking sensation strangely. I +waited till the last deep and full vibration had expired till +the tide of talk, checked an instant, had resumed its flow I then +quitted my sheltered corner and made my exit by the sidedoor, +which was fortunately near. Thence a narrow passage led into the +hall in crossing it, I perceived my sandal was loose I stopped +to tie it, kneeling down for that purpose on the mat at the foot of +the staircase. I heard the diningroom door unclose a gentleman +came out rising hastily, I stood face to face with him it was +Mr. Rochester. +"How do you do?" he asked. +"I am very well, sir." +"Why did you not come and speak to me in the room?" +I thought I might have retorted the question on him who +put it but I would not take that freedom. I answered +"I did not wish to disturb you, as you seemed engaged, sir." +"What have you been doing during my absence?" +"Nothing particular teaching Adele as usual." +"And getting a good deal paler than you were as I saw at first +sight. What is the matter?" +"Nothing at all, sir." +"Did you take any cold that night you half drowned me?" +"Not the least." +"Return to the drawingroom you are deserting too early." +"I am tired, sir." +He looked at me for a minute. +"And a little depressed," he said. "What about? Tell me." +"Nothing nothing, sir. I am not depressed." +"But I affirm that you are so much depressed that a few more +words would bring tears to your eyes indeed, they are there +now, shining and swimming and a bead has slipped from the lash +and fallen on to the flag. If I had time, and was not in mortal +dread of some prating prig of a servant passing, I would know what +all this means. Well, tonight I excuse you but understand that +so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawingroom +every evening it is my wish don't neglect it. Now go, and send +Sophie for Adele. Goodnight, my " He stopped, bit his lip, +and abruptly left me. +CHAPTER XVIII +Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall and busy days too how +different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and +solitude I had passed beneath its roof All sad feelings seemed +now driven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten there +was life everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now +traverse the gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, +once so tenantless, without encountering a smart lady'smaid or a +dandy valet. +The kitchen, the butler's pantry, the servants' hall, the entrance +hall, were equally alive and the saloons were only left void and +still when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring +weather called their occupants out into the grounds. Even when +that weather was broken, and continuous rain set in for some days, +no damp seemed cast over enjoyment indoor amusements only became +more lively and varied, in consequence of the stop put to outdoor +gaiety. +I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change +of entertainment was proposed they spoke of "playing charades," +but in my ignorance I did not understand the term. The servants +were called in, the diningroom tables wheeled away, the lights +otherwise disposed, the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the +arch. While Mr. Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these +alterations, the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing +for their maids. Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to give information +respecting the resources of the house in shawls, dresses, draperies of +any kind and certain wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked, +and their contents, in the shape of brocaded and hooped petticoats, +satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets, c., were brought down in +armfuls by the abigails then a selection was made, and such things +as were chosen were carried to the boudoir within the drawingroom. +Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, +and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. "Miss +Ingram is mine, of course," said he afterwards he named the two +Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me I happened to be +near him, as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent's bracelet, +which had got loose. +"Will you play?" he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist, +which I rather feared he would have done he allowed me to return +quietly to my usual seat. +He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain the other party, +which was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of chairs. +One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose +that I should be asked to join them but Lady Ingram instantly +negatived the notion. +"No," I heard her say "she looks too stupid for any game of the +sort." +Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the arch, +the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise +chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet before him, on +a table, lay open a large book and at his side stood Amy Eshton, +draped in Mr. Rochester's cloak, and holding a book in her hand. +Somebody, unseen, rang the bell merrily then Adele who had insisted +on being one of her guardian's party, bounded forward, scattering +round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her +arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad +in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her +brow by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew near +the table. They knelt while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed +also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony +followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the +pantomime of a marriage. At its termination, Colonel Dent and his +party consulted in whispers for two minutes, then the Colonel called out +"Bride" Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell. +A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its second +rising displayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last. +The drawingroom, as I have before observed, was raised two steps +above the diningroom, and on the top of the upper step, placed a +yard or two back within the room, appeared a large marble basin +which I recognised as an ornament of the conservatory where it +usually stood, surrounded by exotics, and tenanted by gold fish +and whence it must have been transported with some trouble, on +account of its size and weight. +Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr. +Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His +dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume +exactly he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent +or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss +Ingram. She, too, was attired in oriental fashion a crimson +scarf tied sashlike round the waist an embroidered handkerchief +knotted about her temples her beautifullymoulded arms bare, one +of them upraised in the act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully +on her head. Both her cast of form and feature, her complexion and +her general air, suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess +of the patriarchal days and such was doubtless the character she +intended to represent. +She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher +she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the wellbrink +now seemed to accost her to make some request "She hasted, let +down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink." From the +bosom of his robe he then produced a casket, opened it and showed +magnificent bracelets and earrings she acted astonishment and +admiration kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet incredulity +and delight were expressed by her looks and gestures the stranger +fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her ears. It +was Eliezer and Rebecca the camels only were wanting. +The divining party again laid their heads together apparently they +could not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated. +Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded "the tableau of the whole" +whereupon the curtain again descended. +On its third rising only a portion of the drawingroom was disclosed +the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark +and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed in its place, +stood a deal table and a kitchen chair these objects were visible +by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles +being all extinguished. +Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting +on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester +though the begrimed face, the disordered dress his coat hanging +loose from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back +in a scuffle, the desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, +bristling hair might well have disguised him. As he moved, a chain +clanked to his wrists were attached fetters. +"Bridewell" exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved. +A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume +their ordinary costume, they reentered the diningroom. Mr. Rochester +led in Miss Ingram she was complimenting him on his acting. +"Do you know," said she, "that, of the three characters, I liked +you in the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, +what a gallant gentlemanhighwayman you would have made" +"Is all the soot washed from my face?" he asked, turning it towards +her. +"Alas yes the more's the pity Nothing could be more becoming +to your complexion than that ruffian's rouge." +"You would like a hero of the road then?" +"An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an +Italian bandit and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine +pirate." +"Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife we were married an +hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses." She giggled, +and her colour rose. +"Now, Dent," continued Mr. Rochester, "it is your turn." And as +the other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. +Miss Ingram placed herself at her leader's right hand the other +diviners filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did +not now watch the actors I no longer waited with interest for the +curtain to rise my attention was absorbed by the spectators my +eyes, erewhile fixed on the arch, were now irresistibly attracted +to the semicircle of chairs. What charade Colonel Dent and his party +played, what word they chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no +longer remember but I still see the consultation which followed +each scene I see Mr. Rochester turn to Miss Ingram, and Miss +Ingram to him I see her incline her head towards him, till the +jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against his cheek +I hear their mutual whisperings I recall their interchanged glances +and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns +in memory at this moment. +I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester +I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had +ceased to notice me because I might pass hours in his presence, +and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction because +I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned +to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed who, if ever +her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw +it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I +could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this +very lady because I read daily in her a proud security in his +intentions respecting her because I witnessed hourly in him +a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be +sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, +and in its very pride, irresistible. +There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, +though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, +to engender jealousy if a woman, in my position, could presume +to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous +or very rarely the nature of the pain I suffered could not be +explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy +she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming +paradox I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not +genuine she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments but +her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature nothing bloomed +spontaneously on that soil no unforced natural fruit delighted by +its freshness. She was not good she was not original she used +to repeat sounding phrases from books she never offered, nor had, +an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment but +she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity tenderness and +truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue +vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against +little Adele pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if +she happened to approach her sometimes ordering her from the room, +and always treating her with coldness and acrimony. Other eyes +besides mine watched these manifestations of character watched +them closely, keenly, shrewdly. Yes the future bridegroom, +Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless +surveillance and it was from this sagacity this guardedness of +his this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one's defects +this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, +that my evertorturing pain arose. +I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political +reasons, because her rank and connections suited him I felt he +had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill +adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point this +was where the nerve was touched and teased this was where the +fever was sustained and fed SHE COULD NOT CHARM HIM. +If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and +sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, +turned to the wall, and figuratively have died to them. If Miss +Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, +kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers +jealousy and despair then, my heart torn out and devoured, I +should have admired her acknowledged her excellence, and been +quiet for the rest of my days and the more absolute her superiority, +the deeper would have been my admiration the more truly tranquil +my quiescence. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's +efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated +failure herself unconscious that they did fail vainly fancying +that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming +herself on success, when her pride and selfcomplacency repelled +further and further what she wished to allure to witness THIS, +was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint. +Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows +that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell +harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, +have quivered keen in his proud heart have called love into his +stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face or, better still, +without weapons a silent conquest might have been won. +"Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw +so near to him?" I asked myself. "Surely she cannot truly like +him, or not like him with true affection If she did, she need not +coin her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, +manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems +to me that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying +little and looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his +face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while +she is so vivaciously accosting him but then it came of itself +it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres +and one had but to accept it to answer what he asked without +pretension, to address him when needful without grimace and +it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like +a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when they +are married? I do not think she will manage it and yet it might +be managed and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very +happiest woman the sun shines on." +I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester's project +of marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when I +first discovered that such was his intention I had thought him a +man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice +of a wife but the longer I considered the position, education, c., +of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming +either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and +principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. +All their class held these principles I supposed, then, they had +reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed +to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom +only such a wife as I could love but the very obviousness of the +advantages to the husband's own happiness offered by this plan +convinced me that there must be arguments against its general +adoption of which I was quite ignorant otherwise I felt sure all +the world would act as I wished to act. +But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to +my master I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once +kept a sharp lookout. It had formerly been my endeavour to study +all sides of his character to take the bad with the good and +from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now +I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that +had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice +dish their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt +as comparatively insipid. And as for the vague something was it +a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? +that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, +and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially +disclosed that something which used to make me fear and shrink, +as if I had been wandering amongst volcaniclooking hills, and had +suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape that something, +I, at intervals, beheld still and with throbbing heart, but not +with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only +to dare to divine it and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because +one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its +secrets and analyse their nature. +Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride +saw only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only +their movements of importance the rest of the party were occupied +with their own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn +and Ingram continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they +nodded their two turbans at each other, and held up their four +hands in confronting gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, +according to the theme on which their gossip ran, like a pair of +magnified puppets. Mild Mrs. Dent talked with goodnatured Mrs. +Eshton and the two sometimes bestowed a courteous word or smile +on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed +politics, or county affairs, or justice business. Lord Ingram +flirted with Amy Eshton Louisa played and sang to and with one +of the Messrs. Lynn and Mary Ingram listened languidly to the +gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one consent, +suspended their byplay to observe and listen to the principal actors +for, after all, Mr. Rochester and because closely connected +with him Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party. If +he was absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed +to steal over the spirits of his guests and his reentrance was +sure to give a fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation. +The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt +one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was +not likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet a walk +the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched +on a common beyond Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the +gentlemen were gone to the stables the younger ones, together with +the younger ladies, were playing billiards in the billiardroom. +The dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards. +Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, +some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into +conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and +airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, +had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared +to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence. +The room and the house were silent only now and then the merriment +of the billiardplayers was heard from above. +It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of +the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adele, who knelt +by me in the drawingroom windowseat, suddenly exclaimed +"Voile, Monsieur Rochester, qui revient" +I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa the +others, too, looked up from their several occupations for at the +same time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horsehoofs +became audible on the wet gravel. A postchaise was approaching. +"What can possess him to come home in that style?" said Miss Ingram. +"He rode Mesrour the black horse, did he not, when he went out? +and Pilot was with him what has he done with the animals?" +As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments +so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the +breaking of my spine in her eagerness she did not observe me at +first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another +casement. The postchaise stopped the driver rang the doorbell, +and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb but it was not +Mr. Rochester it was a tall, fashionablelooking man, a stranger. +"How provoking" exclaimed Miss Ingram "you tiresome monkey" +apostrophising Adele, "who perched you up in the window to give +false intelligence?" and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I +were in fault. +Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the newcomer +entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady +present. +"It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam," said he, "when +my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home but I arrive from a very +long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate +acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns." +His manner was polite his accent, in speaking, struck me as being +somewhat unusual, not precisely foreign, but still not altogether +English his age might be about Mr. Rochester's, between thirty +and forty his complexion was singularly sallow otherwise he was +a finelooking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination, +you detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that +failed to please. His features were regular, but too relaxed his +eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a +tame, vacant life at least so I thought. +The sound of the dressingbell dispersed the party. It was not +till after dinner that I saw him again he then seemed quite at +his ease. But I liked his physiognomy even less than before it +struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His +eye wandered, and had no meaning in its wandering this gave him +an odd look, such as I never remembered to have seen. For a handsome +and not an unamiablelooking man, he repelled me exceedingly there +was no power in that smoothskinned face of a full oval shape no +firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth there was +no thought on the low, even forehead no command in that blank, +brown eye. +As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of +the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him for he +occupied an armchair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking +still nearer, as if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. +I think with deference be it spoken the contrast could not be +much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon between +a meek sheep and the roughcoated keeneyed dog, its guardian. +He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship +theirs must have been a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old +adage that "extremes meet." +Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times +scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could +not make much sense of what I heard for the discourse of Louisa +Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary +sentences that reached me at intervals. These last were discussing +the stranger they both called him "a beautiful man." Louisa +said he was "a love of a creature," and she "adored him" and Mary +instanced his "pretty little mouth, and nice nose," as her ideal +of the charming. +"And what a sweettempered forehead he has" cried Louisa, "so +smooth none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much +and such a placid eye and smile" +And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the +other side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred +excursion to Hay Common. +I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire, +and I presently gathered that the newcomer was called Mr. Mason +then I learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that +he came from some hot country which was the reason, doubtless, +his face was so sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and +wore a surtout in the house. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, +Spanish Town, indicated the West Indies as his residence and it +was with no little surprise I gathered, ere long, that he had there +first seen and become acquainted with Mr. Rochester. He spoke +of his friend's dislike of the burning heats, the hurricanes, and +rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr. Rochester had been a +traveller Mrs. Fairfax had said so but I thought the continent +of Europe had bounded his wanderings till now I had never heard +a hint given of visits to more distant shores. +I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat +unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering +as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be +put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of +cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, +in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton's chair, and said something +to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, "old woman," +"quite troublesome." +"Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take +herself off," replied the magistrate. +"No stop" interrupted Colonel Dent. "Don't send her away, +Eshton we might turn the thing to account better consult the +ladies." And speaking aloud, he continued "Ladies, you talked +of going to Hay Common to visit the gipsy camp Sam here says that +one of the old Mother Bunches is in the servants' hall at this +moment, and insists upon being brought in before 'the quality,' to +tell them their fortunes. Would you like to see her?" +"Surely, colonel," cried Lady Ingram, "you would not encourage such +a low impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once" +"But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady," said the footman +"nor can any of the servants Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, +entreating her to be gone but she has taken a chair in the chimney +comer, and says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave +to come in here." +"What does she want?" asked Mrs. Eshton. +"'To tell the gentry their fortunes,' she says, ma'am and she +swears she must and will do it." +"What is she like?" inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath. +"A shockingly ugly old creature, miss almost as black as a crock." +"Why, she's a real sorceress" cried Frederick Lynn. "Let us have +her in, of course." +"To be sure," rejoined his brother "it would be a thousand pities +to throw away such a chance of fun." +"My dear boys, what are you thinking about?" exclaimed Mrs. Lynn. +"I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding," +chimed in the Dowager Ingram. +"Indeed, mama, but you can and will," pronounced the haughty +voice of Blanche, as she turned round on the pianostool where +till now she had sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of +music. "I have a curiosity to hear my fortune told therefore, +Sam, order the beldame forward." +"My darling Blanche recollect " +"I do I recollect all you can suggest and I must have my will +quick, Sam" +"Yes yes yes" cried all the juveniles, both ladies and +gentlemen. "Let her come it will be excellent sport" +The footman still lingered. "She looks such a rough one," said +he. +"Go" ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man went. +Excitement instantly seized the whole party a running fire of +raillery and jests was proceeding when Sam returned. +"She won't come now," said he. "She says it's not her mission to +appear before the 'vulgar herd' them's her words. I must show +her into a room by herself, and then those who wish to consult her +must go to her one by one." +"You see now, my queenly Blanche," began Lady Ingram, "she +encroaches. Be advised, my angel girl and " +"Show her into the library, of course," cut in the "angel girl." "It +is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either +I mean to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?" +"Yes, ma'am but she looks such a tinkler." +"Cease that chatter, blockhead and do my bidding." +Again Sam vanished and mystery, animation, expectation rose to +full flow once more. +"She's ready now," said the footman, as he reappeared. "She wishes +to know who will be her first visitor." +"I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies +go," said Colonel Dent. +"Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming." +Sam went and returned. +"She says, sir, that she'll have no gentlemen they need not +trouble themselves to come near her nor," he added, with difficulty +suppressing a titter, "any ladies either, except the young, and +single." +"By Jove, she has taste" exclaimed Henry Lynn. +Miss Ingram rose solemnly "I go first," she said, in a tone which +might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach +in the van of his men. +"Oh, my best oh, my dearest pause reflect" was her mama's +cry but she swept past her in stately silence, passed through +the door which Colonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the +library. +A comparative silence ensued. Lady Ingram thought it "le cas" to +wring her hands which she did accordingly. Miss Mary declared +she felt, for her part, she never dared venture. Amy and Louisa +Eshton tittered under their breath, and looked a little frightened. +The minutes passed very slowly fifteen were counted before the +librarydoor again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us through the +arch. +Would she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All eyes met her +with a glance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of +rebuff and coldness she looked neither flurried nor merry she +walked stiffly to her seat, and took it in silence. +"Well, Blanche?" said Lord Ingram. +"What did she say, sister?" asked Mary. +"What did you think? How do you feel? Is she a real fortuneteller?" +demanded the Misses Eshton. +"Now, now, good people," returned Miss Ingram, "don't press upon +me. Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited +you seem, by the importance of you all my good mama included +ascribe to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine +witch in the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman. +I have seen a gipsy vagabond she has practised in hackneyed fashion +the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell. +My whim is gratified and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to +put the hag in the stocks tomorrow morning, as he threatened." +Miss Ingram took a book, leant back in her chair, and so declined +further conversation. I watched her for nearly halfanhour during +all that time she never turned a page, and her face grew momently +darker, more dissatisfied, and more sourly expressive of disappointment. +She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage and it +seemed to me, from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that +she herself, notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached +undue importance to whatever revelations had been made her. +Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared +not go alone and yet they all wished to go. A negotiation was opened +through the medium of the ambassador, Sam and after much pacing +to and fro, till, I think, the said Sam's calves must have ached +with the exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, +extorted from the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her +in a body. +Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram's had been we heard +hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library +and at the end of about twenty minutes they burst the door open, +and came running across the hall, as if they were halfscared out +of their wits. +"I am sure she is something not right" they cried, one and all. +"She told us such things She knows all about us" and they sank +breathless into the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring +them. +Pressed for further explanation, they declared she had told them +of things they had said and done when they were mere children +described books and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home +keepsakes that different relations had presented to them. They +affirmed that she had even divined their thoughts, and had whispered +in the ear of each the name of the person she liked best in the +world, and informed them of what they most wished for. +Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further +enlightened on these two lastnamed points but they got only +blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their +importunity. The matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and +wielded fans and again and again reiterated the expression of +their concern that their warning had not been taken in time and +the elder gentlemen laughed, and the younger urged their services +on the agitated fair ones. +In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully +engaged in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow +I turned, and saw Sam. +"If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another +young single lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she +swears she will not go till she has seen all. I thought it must +be you there is no one else for it. What shall I tell her?" +"Oh, I will go by all means," I answered and I was glad of the +unexpected opportunity to gratify my muchexcited curiosity. I +slipped out of the room, unobserved by any eye for the company +were gathered in one mass about the trembling trio just returned +and I closed the door quietly behind me. +"If you like, miss," said Sam, "I'll wait in the hall for you and +if she frightens you, just call and I'll come in." +"No, Sam, return to the kitchen I am not in the least afraid." +Nor was I but I was a good deal interested and excited. +CHAPTER XIX +The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl +if Sibyl she were was seated snugly enough in an easychair +at the chimneycorner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet +or rather, a broadbrimmed gipsy hat, tied down with a striped +handkerchief under her chin. An extinguished candle stood on +the table she was bending over the fire, and seemed reading in a +little black book, like a prayerbook, by the light of the blaze +she muttered the words to herself, as most old women do, while she +read she did not desist immediately on my entrance it appeared +she wished to finish a paragraph. +I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with +sitting at a distance from the drawingroom fire. I felt now as +composed as ever I did in my life there was nothing indeed in +the gipsy's appearance to trouble one's calm. She shut her book +and slowly looked up her hatbrim partially shaded her face, yet +I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked +all brown and black elflocks bristled out from beneath a white +band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, +or rather jaws her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and +direct gaze. +"Well, and you want your fortune told?" she said, in a voice as +decided as her glance, as harsh as her features. +"I don't care about it, mother you may please yourself but I +ought to warn you, I have no faith." +"It's like your impudence to say so I expected it of you I heard +it in your step as you crossed the threshold." +"Did you? You've a quick ear." +"I have and a quick eye and a quick brain." +"You need them all in your trade." +"I do especially when I've customers like you to deal with. Why +don't you tremble?" +"I'm not cold." +"Why don't you turn pale?" +"I am not sick." +"Why don't you consult my art?" +"I'm not silly." +The old crone "nichered" a laugh under her bonnet and bandage she +then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke. +Having indulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, +took the pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, +said very deliberately "You are cold you are sick and you are +silly." +"Prove it," I rejoined. +"I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone no +contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick +because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given +to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer +as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir +one step to meet it where it waits you." +She again put her short black pipe to her lips, and renewed her +smoking with vigour. +"You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a +solitary dependent in a great house." +"I might say it to almost any one but would it be true of almost +any one?" +"In my circumstances." +"Yes just so, in YOUR circumstances but find me another precisely +placed as you are." +"It would be easy to find you thousands." +"You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly +situated very near happiness yes, within reach of it. The +materials are all prepared there only wants a movement to combine +them. Chance laid them somewhat apart let them be once approached +and bliss results." +"I don't understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my +life." +"If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm." +"And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?" +"To be sure." +I gave her a shilling she put it into an old stockingfoot which +she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned +it, she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She arched her face +to the palm, and pored over it without touching it. +"It is too fine," said she. "I can make nothing of such a hand as +that almost without lines besides, what is in a palm? Destiny +is not written there." +"I believe you," said I. +"No," she continued, "it is in the face on the forehead, about +the eyes, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head." +"Ah now you are coming to reality," I said, as I obeyed her. "I +shall begin to put some faith in you presently." +I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so +that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal the glare, +however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow mine, +it illumined. +"I wonder with what feelings you came to me tonight," she said, +when she had examined me a while. "I wonder what thoughts are busy +in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the +fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magiclantern +just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them +as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the +actual substance." +"I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad." +"Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with +whispers of the future?" +"Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings +to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself." +"A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on and sitting +in that windowseat you see I know your habits " +"You have learned them from the servants." +"Ah you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have to speak +truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole " +I started to my feet when I heard the name. +"You have have you?" thought I "there is diablerie in the +business after all, then" +"Don't be alarmed," continued the strange being "she's a safe +hand is Mrs. Poole close and quiet any one may repose confidence +in her. But, as I was saying sitting in that windowseat, do +you think of nothing but your future school? Have you no present +interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs +before you? Is there not one face you study? one figure whose +movements you follow with at least curiosity?" +"I like to observe all the faces and all the figures." +"But do you never single one from the rest or it may be, two?" +"I do frequently when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling +a tale it amuses me to watch them." +"What tale do you like best to hear?" +"Oh, I have not much choice They generally run on the same theme +courtship and promise to end in the same catastrophe marriage." +"And do you like that monotonous theme?" +"Positively, I don't care about it it is nothing to me." +"Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and +health, charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank +and fortune, sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you " +"I what?" +"You know and perhaps think well of." +"I don't know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged +a syllable with one of them and as to thinking well of them, I +consider some respectable, and stately, and middleaged, and others +young, dashing, handsome, and lively but certainly they are all +at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without +my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to +me." +"You don't know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a +syllable with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the +house" +"He is not at home." +"A profound remark A most ingenious quibble He went to Millcote +this morning, and will be back here tonight or tomorrow does +that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance +blot him, as it were, out of existence?" +"No but I can scarcely see what Mr. Rochester has to do with the +theme you had introduced." +"I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen and of +late so many smiles have been shed into Mr. Rochester's eyes that +they overflow like two cups filled above the brim have you never +remarked that?" +"Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests." +"No question about his right but have you never observed that, +of all the tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been +favoured with the most lively and the most continuous?" +"The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator." I +said this rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, +voice, manner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One +unexpected sentence came from her lips after another, till I got +involved in a web of mystification and wondered what unseen spirit +had been sitting for weeks by my heart watching its workings and +taking record of every pulse. +"Eagerness of a listener" repeated she "yes Mr. Rochester has +sat by the hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took +such delight in their task of communicating and Mr. Rochester was +so willing to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given +him you have noticed this?" +"Grateful I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face." +"Detecting You have analysed, then. And what did you detect, if +not gratitude?" +I said nothing. +"You have seen love have you not? and, looking forward, you +have seen him married, and beheld his bride happy?" +"Humph Not exactly. Your witch's skill is rather at fault +sometimes." +"What the devil have you seen, then?" +"Never mind I came here to inquire, not to confess. Is it known +that Mr. Rochester is to be married?" +"Yes and to the beautiful Miss Ingram." +"Shortly?" +"Appearances would warrant that conclusion and, no doubt though, +with an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to +question it, they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must +love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady and probably +she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse. I know +she considers the Rochester estate eligible to the last degree +though God pardon me I told her something on that point about +an hour ago which made her look wondrous grave the corners of her +mouth fell half an inch. I would advise her blackaviced suitor to +look out if another comes, with a longer or clearer rentroll, +he's dished " +"But, mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Rochester's fortune I +came to hear my own and you have told me nothing of it." +"Your fortune is yet doubtful when I examined your face, one trait +contradicted another. Chance has meted you a measure of happiness +that I know. I knew it before I came here this evening. She has +laid it carefully on one side for you. I saw her do it. It depends +on yourself to stretch out your hand, and take it up but whether +you will do so, is the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug." +"Don't keep me long the fire scorches me." +I knelt. She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, +leaning back in her chair. She began muttering, +"The flame flickers in the eye the eye shines like dew it looks +soft and full of feeling it smiles at my jargon it is susceptible +impression follows impression through its clear sphere where it +ceases to smile, it is sad an unconscious lassitude weighs on the +lid that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns +from me it will not suffer further scrutiny it seems to deny, +by a mocking glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already +made, to disown the charge both of sensibility and chagrin +its pride and reserve only confirm me in my opinion. The eye is +favourable. +"As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter it is disposed +to impart all that the brain conceives though I daresay it would +be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, +it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of +solitude it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, +and have human affection for its interlocutor. That feature too +is propitious. +"I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow and that +brow professes to say, 'I can live alone, if selfrespect, and +circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy +bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me +alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered +only at a price I cannot afford to give.' The forehead declares, +'Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the +feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may +rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are and the desires +may imagine all sorts of vain things but judgment shall still +have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in +every decision. Strong wind, earthquakeshock, and fire may pass +by but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which +interprets the dictates of conscience.' +"Well said, forehead your declaration shall be respected. I have +formed my plans right plans I deem them and in them I have +attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I +know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup +of bliss offered, but one dreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse +were detected and I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution +such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight to earn +gratitude, not to wring tears of blood no, nor of brine my +harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet That will +do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish +now to protract this moment ad infinitum but I dare not. So far +I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore +I would act but further might try me beyond my strength. Rise, +Miss Eyre leave me the play is played out'." +Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I +dream still? The old woman's voice had changed her accent, her +gesture, and all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass +as the speech of my own tongue. I got up, but did not go. I +looked I stirred the fire, and I looked again but she drew her +bonnet and her bandage closer about her face, and again beckoned me +to depart. The flame illuminated her hand stretched out roused +now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that +hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own it was +a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned +a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, +I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before. +Again I looked at the face which was no longer turned from me +on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the +head advanced. +"Well, Jane, do you know me?" asked the familiar voice. +"Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then " +"But the string is in a knot help me." +"Break it, sir." +"There, then 'Off, ye lendings'" And Mr. Rochester stepped +out of his disguise. +"Now, sir, what a strange idea" +"But well carried out, eh? Don't you think so?" +"With the ladies you must have managed well." +"But not with you?" +"You did not act the character of a gipsy with me." +"What character did I act? My own?" +"No some unaccountable one. In short, I believe you have been +trying to draw me out or in you have been talking nonsense to +make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir." +"Do you forgive me, Jane?" +"I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If, on reflection, +I find I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive +you but it was not right." +"Oh, you have been very correct very careful, very sensible." +I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. It was a comfort +but, indeed, I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of +the interview. Something of masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies +and fortunetellers did not express themselves as this seeming old +woman had expressed herself besides I had noted her feigned voice, +her anxiety to conceal her features. But my mind had been running +on Grace Poole that living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, +as I considered her. I had never thought of Mr. Rochester. +"Well," said he, "what are you musing about? What does that grave +smile signify?" +"Wonder and selfcongratulation, sir. I have your permission to +retire now, I suppose?" +"No stay a moment and tell me what the people in the drawingroom +yonder are doing." +"Discussing the gipsy, I daresay." +"Sit down Let me hear what they said about me." +"I had better not stay long, sir it must be near eleven o'clock. +Oh, are you aware, Mr. Rochester, that a stranger has arrived here +since you left this morning?" +"A stranger no who can it be? I expected no one is he gone?" +"No he said he had known you long, and that he could take the +liberty of installing himself here till you returned." +"The devil he did Did he give his name?" +"His name is Mason, sir and he comes from the West Indies from +Spanish Town, in Jamaica, I think." +Mr. Rochester was standing near me he had taken my hand, as if +to lead me to a chair. As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive +grip the smile on his lips froze apparently a spasm caught his +breath. +"Mason the West Indies" he said, in the tone one might fancy +a speaking automaton to enounce its single words "Mason the +West Indies" he reiterated and he went over the syllables three +times, growing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes +he hardly seemed to know what he was doing. +"Do you feel ill, sir?" I inquired. +"Jane, I've got a blow I've got a blow, Jane" He staggered. +"Oh, lean on me, sir." +"Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before let me have it +now." +"Yes, sir, yes and my arm." +He sat down, and made me sit beside him. Holding my hand in both +his own, he chafed it gazing on me, at the same time, with the +most troubled and dreary look. +"My little friend" said he, "I wish I were in a quiet island +with only you and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections +removed from me." +"Can I help you, sir? I'd give my life to serve you." +"Jane, if aid is wanted, I'll seek it at your hands I promise you +that." +"Thank you, sir. Tell me what to do, I'll try, at least, to do +it." +"Fetch me now, Jane, a glass of wine from the diningroom they +will be at supper there and tell me if Mason is with them, and +what he is doing." +I went. I found all the party in the diningroom at supper, as Mr. +Rochester had said they were not seated at table, the supper was +arranged on the sideboard each had taken what he chose, and they +stood about here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in +their hands. Every one seemed in high glee laughter and conversation +were general and animated. Mr. Mason stood near the fire, talking +to Colonel and Mrs. Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them. I +filled a wineglass I saw Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did +so she thought I was taking a liberty, I daresay, and I returned +to the library. +Mr. Rochester's extreme pallor had disappeared, and he looked once +more firm and stern. He took the glass from my hand. +"Here is to your health, ministrant spirit" he said. He swallowed +the contents and returned it to me. "What are they doing, Jane?" +"Laughing and talking, sir." +"They don't look grave and mysterious, as if they had heard something +strange?" +"Not at all they are full of jests and gaiety." +"And Mason?" +"He was laughing too." +"If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you +do, Jane?" +"Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could." +He half smiled. "But if I were to go to them, and they only looked +at me coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then +dropped off and left me one by one, what then? Would you go with +them?" +"I rather think not, sir I should have more pleasure in staying +with you." +"To comfort me?" +"Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I could." +"And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me?" +"I, probably, should know nothing about their ban and if I did, +I should care nothing about it." +"Then, you could dare censure for my sake?" +"I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence +as you, I am sure, do." +"Go back now into the room step quietly up to Mason, and whisper +in his ear that Mr. Rochester is come and wishes to see him show +him in here and then leave me." +"Yes, sir." +I did his behest. The company all stared at me as I passed straight +among them. I sought Mr. Mason, delivered the message, and preceded +him from the room I ushered him into the library, and then I went +upstairs. +At a late hour, after I had been in bed some time, I heard the +visitors repair to their chambers I distinguished Mr. Rochester's +voice, and heard him say, "This way, Mason this is your room." +He spoke cheerfully the gay tones set my heart at ease. I was +soon asleep. +CHAPTER XX +I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also +to let down my windowblind. The consequence was, that when the +moon, which was full and bright for the night was fine, came in +her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked +in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. +Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk +silverwhite and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn +I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain. +Good God What a cry +The night its silence its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, +a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield +Hall. +My pulse stopped my heart stood still my stretched arm was +paralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever +being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon repeat it not +the widestwinged condor on the Andes could, twice in succession, +send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing +delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort. +It came out of the third storey for it passed overhead. And +overhead yes, in the room just above my chamberceiling I now +heard a struggle a deadly one it seemed from the noise +and a halfsmothered voice shouted +"Help help help" three times rapidly. +"Will no one come?" it cried and then, while the staggering and +stamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster +"Rochester Rochester for God's sake, come" +A chamberdoor opened some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery. +Another step stamped on the flooring above and something fell and +there was silence. +I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs I issued +from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused ejaculations, +terrified murmurs sounded in every room door after door unclosed +one looked out and another looked out the gallery filled. Gentlemen +and ladies alike had quitted their beds and "Oh what is it?" +"Who is hurt?" "What has happened?" "Fetch a light" "Is +it fire?" "Are there robbers?" "Where shall we run?" was +demanded confusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would +have been in complete darkness. They ran to and fro they crowded +together some sobbed, some stumbled the confusion was inextricable. +"Where the devil is Rochester?" cried Colonel Dent. "I cannot +find him in his bed." +"Here here" was shouted in return. "Be composed, all of you +I'm coming." +And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester +advanced with a candle he had just descended from the upper storey. +One of the ladies ran to him directly she seized his arm it was +Miss Ingram. +"What awful event has taken place?" said she. "Speak let us +know the worst at once" +"But don't pull me down or strangle me," he replied for the Misses +Eshton were clinging about him now and the two dowagers, in vast +white wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail. +"All's right all's right" he cried. "It's a mere rehearsal of +Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous." +And dangerous he looked his black eyes darted sparks. Calming +himself by an effort, he added +"A servant has had the nightmare that is all. She's an excitable, +nervous person she construed her dream into an apparition, or +something of that sort, no doubt and has taken a fit with fright. +Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms for, till the +house is settled, she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the +goodness to set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure +you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and +Louisa, return to your nests like a pair of doves, as you are. +Mesdames" to the dowagers, "you will take cold to a dead certainty, +if you stay in this chill gallery any longer." +And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived +to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. +I did not wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, +as unnoticed I had left it. +Not, however, to go to bed on the contrary, I began and dressed +myself carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the +words that had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me +for they had proceeded from the room above mine but they assured +me that it was not a servant's dream which had thus struck horror +through the house and that the explanation Mr. Rochester had given +was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests. I dressed, +then, to be ready for emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long +time by the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered +fields and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some +event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and call. +No stillness returned each murmur and movement ceased gradually, +and in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a +desert. It seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire. +Meantime the moon declined she was about to set. Not liking to +sit in the cold and darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, +dressed as I was. I left the window, and moved with little noise +across the carpet as I stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious +hand tapped low at the door. +"Am I wanted?" I asked. +"Are you up?" asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master's. +"Yes, sir." +"And dressed?" +"Yes." +"Come out, then, quietly." +I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light. +"I want you," he said "come this way take your time, and make +no noise." +My slippers were thin I could walk the matted floor as softly as +a cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in +the dark, low corridor of the fateful third storey I had followed +and stood at his side. +"Have you a sponge in your room?" he asked in a whisper. +"Yes, sir." +"Have you any salts volatile salts?" +"Yes." +"Go back and fetch both." +I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my +drawer, and once more retraced my steps. He still waited he held +a key in his hand approaching one of the small, black doors, he +put it in the lock he paused, and addressed me again. +"You don't turn sick at the sight of blood?" +"I think I shall not I have never been tried yet." +I felt a thrill while I answered him but no coldness, and no +faintness. +"Just give me your hand," he said "it will not do to risk a +fainting fit." +I put my fingers into his. "Warm and steady," was his remark he +turned the key and opened the door. +I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. +Fairfax showed me over the house it was hung with tapestry but +the tapestry was now looped up in one part, and there was a door +apparent, which had then been concealed. This door was open +a light shone out of the room within I heard thence a snarling, +snatching sound, almost like a dog quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, +putting down his candle, said to me, "Wait a minute," and he went +forward to the inner apartment. A shout of laughter greeted his +entrance noisy at first, and terminating in Grace Poole's own goblin +ha ha SHE then was there. He made some sort of arrangement +without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him he came +out and closed the door behind him. +"Here, Jane" he said and I walked round to the other side of a +large bed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable +portion of the chamber. An easychair was near the bedhead a +man sat in it, dressed with the exception of his coat he was still +his head leant back his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the +candle over him I recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless +face the stranger, Mason I saw too that his linen on one side, +and one arm, was almost soaked in blood. +"Hold the candle," said Mr. Rochester, and I took it he fetched +a basin of water from the washstand "Hold that," said he. I +obeyed. He took the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the +corpselike face he asked for my smellingbottle, and applied it +to the nostrils. Mr. Mason shortly unclosed his eyes he groaned. +Mr. Rochester opened the shirt of the wounded man, whose arm and +shoulder were bandaged he sponged away blood, trickling fast +down. +"Is there immediate danger?" murmured Mr. Mason. +"Pooh No a mere scratch. Don't be so overcome, man bear +up I'll fetch a surgeon for you now, myself you'll be able to +be removed by morning, I hope. Jane," he continued. +"Sir?" +"I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for +an hour, or perhaps two hours you will sponge the blood as I +do when it returns if he feels faint, you will put the glass of +water on that stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. You +will not speak to him on any pretext and Richard, it will be +at the peril of your life if you speak to her open your lips +agitate yourself and I'll not answer for the consequences." +Again the poor man groaned he looked as if he dared not move fear, +either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse +him. Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and +I proceeded to use it as he had done. He watched me a second, +then saying, "Remember No conversation," he left the room. I +experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and +the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard. +Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic +cells night around me a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes +and hands a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door +yes that was appalling the rest I could bear but I shuddered +at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me. +I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly +countenance these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose +these eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, +now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must +dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water, and +wipe away the trickling gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed +candle wane on my employment the shadows darken on the wrought, +antique tapestry round me, and grow black under the hangings of +the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great +cabinet opposite whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore, +in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each enclosed in +its separate panel as in a frame while above them at the top rose +an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ. +According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered +here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, +that bent his brow now St. John's long hair that waved and anon +the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed +gathering life and threatening a revelation of the archtraitor +of Satan himself in his subordinate's form. +Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch to listen for +the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. +But since Mr. Rochester's visit it seemed spellbound all the +night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals, a step +creak, a momentary renewal of the snarling, canine noise, and a +deep human groan. +Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this that lived +incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled +nor subdued by the owner? what mystery, that broke out now in +fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature +was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman's face and shape, uttered +the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrionseeking +bird of prey? +And this man I bent over this commonplace, quiet stranger +how had he become involved in the web of horror? and why had the +Fury flown at him? What made him seek this quarter of the house +at an untimely season, when he should have been asleep in bed? I +had heard Mr. Rochester assign him an apartment below what +brought him here And why, now, was he so tame under the violence +or treachery done him? Why did he so quietly submit to the +concealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why DID Mr. Rochester enforce +this concealment? His guest had been outraged, his own life +on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against and both +attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion Lastly, I +saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester that the impetuous +will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the +former the few words which had passed between them assured me of +this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive +disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active +energy of the other whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester's dismay +when he heard of Mr. Mason's arrival? Why had the mere name of +this unresisting individual whom his word now sufficed to control +like a child fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt +might fall on an oak? +Oh I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered +"Jane, I have got a blow I have got a blow, Jane." I could not +forget how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder +and it was no light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit +and thrill the vigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester. +"When will he come? When will he come?" I cried inwardly, as +the night lingered and lingered as my bleeding patient drooped, +moaned, sickened and neither day nor aid arrived. I had, again +and again, held the water to Mason's white lips again and again +offered him the stimulating salts my efforts seemed ineffectual +either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three +combined, were fast prostrating his strength. He moaned so, and +looked so weak, wild, and lost, I feared he was dying and I might +not even speak to him. +The candle, wasted at last, went out as it expired, I perceived +streaks of grey light edging the window curtains dawn was +then approaching. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of +his distant kennel in the courtyard hope revived. Nor was it +unwarranted in five minutes more the grating key, the yielding +lock, warned me my watch was relieved. It could not have lasted +more than two hours many a week has seemed shorter. +Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to +fetch. +"Now, Carter, be on the alert," he said to this last "I give you +but halfanhour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, +getting the patient downstairs and all." +"But is he fit to move, sir?" +"No doubt of it it is nothing serious he is nervous, his spirits +must be kept up. Come, set to work." +Mr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland +blind, let in all the daylight he could and I was surprised and +cheered to see how far dawn was advanced what rosy streaks were +beginning to brighten the east. Then he approached Mason, whom +the surgeon was already handling. +"Now, my good fellow, how are you?" he asked. +"She's done for me, I fear," was the faint reply. +"Not a whit courage This day fortnight you'll hardly be a pin +the worse of it you've lost a little blood that's all. Carter, +assure him there's no danger." +"I can do that conscientiously," said Carter, who had now undone +the bandages "only I wish I could have got here sooner he would +not have bled so much but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder +is torn as well as cut. This wound was not done with a knife +there have been teeth here" +"She bit me," he murmured. "She worried me like a tigress, when +Rochester got the knife from her." +"You should not have yielded you should have grappled with her +at once," said Mr. Rochester. +"But under such circumstances, what could one do?" returned Mason. +"Oh, it was frightful" he added, shuddering. "And I did not +expect it she looked so quiet at first." +"I warned you," was his friend's answer "I said be on your +guard when you go near her. Besides, you might have waited till +to morrow, and had me with you it was mere folly to attempt the +interview tonight, and alone." +"I thought I could have done some good." +"You thought you thought Yes, it makes me impatient to hear +you but, however, you have suffered, and are likely to suffer +enough for not taking my advice so I'll say no more. Carter +hurry hurry The sun will soon rise, and I must have him off." +"Directly, sir the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this +other wound in the arm she has had her teeth here too, I think." +"She sucked the blood she said she'd drain my heart," said Mason. +I saw Mr. Rochester shudder a singularly marked expression of disgust, +horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion +but he only said +"Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish don't +repeat it." +"I wish I could forget it," was the answer. +"You will when you are out of the country when you get back to +Spanish Town, you may think of her as dead and buried or rather, +you need not think of her at all." +"Impossible to forget this night" +"It is not impossible have some energy, man. You thought you +were as dead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive +and talking now. There Carter has done with you or nearly so +I'll make you decent in a trice. Jane" he turned to me for the +first time since his reentrance, "take this key go down into +my bedroom, and walk straight forward into my dressingroom open +the top drawer of the wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and +neckhandkerchief bring them here and be nimble." +I went sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles +named, and returned with them. +"Now," said he, "go to the other side of the bed while I order his +toilet but don't leave the room you may be wanted again." +I retired as directed. +"Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?" inquired +Mr. Rochester presently. +"No, sir all was very still." +"We shall get you off cannily, Dick and it will be better, both +for your sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have +striven long to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to come +at last. Here, Carter, help him on with his waistcoat. Where +did you leave your furred cloak? You can't travel a mile without +that, I know, in this damned cold climate. In your room? Jane, +run down to Mr. Mason's room, the one next mine, and fetch +a cloak you will see there." +Again I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined +and edged with fur. +"Now, I've another errand for you," said my untiring master "you +must away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, +Jane a clodhopping messenger would never do at this juncture. +You must open the middle drawer of my toilettable and take out a +little phial and a little glass you will find there, quick" +I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels. +"That's well Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering +a dose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at +Rome, of an Italian charlatan a fellow you would have kicked, +Carter. It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is +good upon occasion as now, for instance. Jane, a little water." +He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the waterbottle +on the washstand. +"That will do now wet the lip of the phial." +I did so he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented +it to Mason. +"Drink, Richard it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour +or so." +"But will it hurt me? is it inflammatory?" +"Drink drink drink" +Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He +was dressed now he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory +and sullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after +he had swallowed the liquid he then took his arm +"Now I am sure you can get on your feet," he said "try." +The patient rose. +"Carter, take him under the other shoulder. Be of good cheer, +Richard step out that's it" +"I do feel better," remarked Mr. Mason. +"I am sure you do. Now, Jane, trip on before us away to the +backstairs unbolt the sidepassage door, and tell the driver of +the postchaise you will see in the yard or just outside, for I +told him not to drive his rattling wheels over the pavement to +be ready we are coming and, Jane, if any one is about, come to +the foot of the stairs and hem." +It was by this time halfpast five, and the sun was on the point of +rising but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side +passage door was fastened I opened it with as little noise as +possible all the yard was quiet but the gates stood wide open, +and there was a postchaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver +seated on the box, stationed outside. I approached him, and said +the gentlemen were coming he nodded then I looked carefully round +and listened. The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere +the curtains were yet drawn over the servants' chamber windows +little birds were just twittering in the blossomblanched orchard +trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall +enclosing one side of the yard the carriage horses stamped from +time to time in their closed stables all else was still. +The gentlemen now appeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and +the surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease they assisted +him into the chaise Carter followed. +"Take care of him," said Mr. Rochester to the latter, "and keep +him at your house till he is quite well I shall ride over in a +day or two to see how he gets on. Richard, how is it with you?" +"The fresh air revives me, Fairfax." +"Leave the window open on his side, Carter there is no wind +good bye, Dick." +"Fairfax " +"Well what is it?" +"Let her be taken care of let her be treated as tenderly as may +be let her " he stopped and burst into tears. +"I do my best and have done it, and will do it," was the answer +he shut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away. +"Yet would to God there was an end of all this" added Mr. Rochester, +as he closed and barred the heavy yardgates. +This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a +door in the wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done +with me, prepared to return to the house again, however, I heard +him call "Jane" He had opened feel portal and stood at it, waiting +for me. +"Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments," he said +"that house is a mere dungeon don't you feel it so?" +"It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir." +"The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes," he answered "and +you see it through a charmed medium you cannot discern that the +gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs that the marble +is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly +bark. Now HERE" he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered +"all is real, sweet, and pure." +He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, +and cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all +sorts of oldfashioned flowers, stocks, sweetwilliams, primroses, +pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweetbriar, and various fragrant +herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and +gleams, followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them the +sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumined +the wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks +under them. +"Jane, will you have a flower?" +He gathered a halfblown rose, the first on the bush, and offered +it to me. +"Thank you, sir." +"Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light +clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm this +placid and balmly atmosphere?" +"I do, very much." +"You have passed a strange night, Jane." +"Yes, sir." +"And it has made you look pale were you afraid when I left you +alone with Mason?" +"I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room." +"But I had fastened the door I had the key in my pocket I should +have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb my pet lamb +so near a wolf's den, unguarded you were safe." +"Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?" +"Oh yes don't trouble your head about her put the thing out +of your thoughts." +"Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays." +"Never fear I will take care of myself." +"Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?" +"I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England nor even +then. To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a cratercrust which +may crack and spue fire any day." +"But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is +evidently potent with him he will never set you at defiance or +wilfully injure you." +"Oh, no Mason will not defy me nor, knowing it, will he hurt +me but, unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless +word, deprive me, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness." +"Tell him to be cautious, sir let him know what you fear, and +show him how to avert the danger." +He laughed sardonically, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw +it from him. +"If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated +in a moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say +to him 'Do that,' and the thing has been done. But I cannot give +him orders in this case I cannot say 'Beware of harming me, +Richard' for it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that +harm to me is possible. Now you look puzzled and I will puzzle +you further. You are my little friend, are you not?" +"I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right." +"Precisely I see you do. I see genuine contentment in your gait +and mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing +me working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically +say, 'ALL THAT IS RIGHT' for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, +there would be no lightfooted running, no neathanded alacrity, no +lively glance and animated complexion. My friend would then turn +to me, quiet and pale, and would say, 'No, sir that is impossible +I cannot do it, because it is wrong' and would become immutable +as a fixed star. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure +me yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful +and friendly as you are, you should transfix me at once." +"If you have no more to fear from Mr. Mason than you have from me, +sir, you are very safe." +"God grant it may be so Here, Jane, is an arbour sit down." +The arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy it contained +a rustic seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for +me but I stood before him. +"Sit," he said "the bench is long enough for two. You don't +hesitate to take a place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?" +I answered him by assuming it to refuse would, I felt, have been +unwise. +"Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew while all +the flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds +fetch their young ones' breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the +early bees do their first spell of work I'll put a case to you, +which you must endeavour to suppose your own but first, look +at me, and tell me you are at ease, and not fearing that I err in +detaining you, or that you err in staying." +"No, sir I am content." +"Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy suppose you were no +longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged +from childhood upwards imagine yourself in a remote foreign land +conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what +nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow +you through life and taint all your existence. Mind, I don't say +a CRIME I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty +act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law my word +is ERROR. The results of what you have done become in time to you +utterly insupportable you take measures to obtain relief unusual +measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable. Still you are +miserable for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life +your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not +leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base associations +have become the sole food of your memory you wander here and +there, seeking rest in exile happiness in pleasure I mean in +heartless, sensual pleasure such as dulls intellect and blights +feeling. Heartweary and soulwithered, you come home after years +of voluntary banishment you make a new acquaintance how or +where no matter you find in this stranger much of the good and +bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never +before encountered and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil +and without taint. Such society revives, regenerates you feel +better days come back higher wishes, purer feelings you desire +to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days +in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, +are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom a mere +conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies +nor your judgment approves?" +He paused for an answer and what was I to say? Oh, for some +good spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response Vain +aspiration The west wind whispered in the ivy round me but no +gentle Ariel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech the birds +sang in the treetops but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate. +Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query +"Is the wandering and sinful, but now restseeking and repentant, +man justified in daring the world's opinion, in order to attach +to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby +securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?" +"Sir," I answered, "a wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation +should never depend on a fellowcreature. Men and women die +philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness if any +one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his +equals for strength to amend and solace to heal." +"But the instrument the instrument God, who does the work, +ordains the instrument. I have myself I tell it you without +parable been a worldly, dissipated, restless man and +I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in " +He paused the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. +I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to +catch the suspended revelation but they would have had to wait many +minutes so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked +up at the tardy speaker he was looking eagerly at me. +"Little friend," said he, in quite a changed tone while his +face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming +harsh and sarcastic "you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss +Ingram don't you think if I married her she would regenerate me +with a vengeance?" +He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and +when he came back he was humming a tune. +"Jane, Jane," said he, stopping before me, "you are quite pale with +your vigils don't you curse me for disturbing your rest?" +"Curse you? No, sir." +"Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers +They were warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the +mysterious chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?" +"Whenever I can be useful, sir." +"For instance, the night before I am married I am sure I shall +not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear +me company? To you I can talk of my lovely one for now you have +seen her and know her." +"Yes, sir." +"She's a rare one, is she not, Jane?" +"Yes, sir." +"A strapper a real strapper, Jane big, brown, and buxom with +hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me +there's Dent and Lynn in the stables Go in by the shrubbery, +through that wicket." +As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in +the yard, saying cheerfully +"Mason got the start of you all this morning he was gone before +sunrise I rose at four to see him off." +CHAPTER XXI +Presentiments are strange things and so are sympathies and so +are signs and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity +has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in +my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, +I believe, exist for instance, between fardistant, longabsent, +wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their +alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin +whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught +we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man. +When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard +Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about +a little child and that to dream of children was a sure sign of +trouble, either to one's self or one's kin. The saying might have +worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed +which served indelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was +sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister. +Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident for +during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that +had not brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes +hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched +playing with daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in +running water. It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing +one the next now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me +but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, +it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I +entered the land of slumber. +I did not like this iteration of one idea this strange recurrence +of one image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the +hour of the vision drew near. It was from companionship with this +babyphantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard +the cry and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was +summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in Mrs. +Fairfax's room. On repairing thither, I found a man waiting for +me, having the appearance of a gentleman's servant he was dressed +in deep mourning, and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded +with a crape band. +"I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss," he said, rising as I +entered "but my name is Leaven I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed +when you were at Gateshead, eight or nine years since, and I live +there still." +"Oh, Robert how do you do? I remember you very well you used +to give me a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana's bay pony. And how +is Bessie? You are married to Bessie?" +"Yes, Miss my wife is very hearty, thank you she brought me +another little one about two months since we have three now +and both mother and child are thriving." +"And are the family well at the house, Robert?" +"I am sorry I can't give you better news of them, Miss they are +very badly at present in great trouble." +"I hope no one is dead," I said, glancing at his black dress. He +too looked down at the crape round his hat and replied +"Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London." +"Mr. John?" +"Yes." +"And how does his mother bear it?" +"Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap his life +has been very wild these last three years he gave himself up to +strange ways, and his death was shocking." +"I heard from Bessie he was not doing well." +"Doing well He could not do worse he ruined his health and +his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into +debt and into jail his mother helped him out twice, but as soon +as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. His +head was not strong the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond +anything I ever heard. He came down to Gateshead about three weeks +ago and wanted missis to give up all to him. Missis refused her +means have long been much reduced by his extravagance so he went +back again, and the next news was that he was dead. How he died, +God knows they say he killed himself." +I was silent the things were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed +"Missis had been out of health herself for some time she had got +very stout, but was not strong with it and the loss of money and +fear of poverty were quite breaking her down. The information +about Mr. John's death and the manner of it came too suddenly +it brought on a stroke. She was three days without speaking but +last Tuesday she seemed rather better she appeared as if she wanted +to say something, and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. +It was only yesterday morning, however, that Bessie understood +she was pronouncing your name and at last she made out the words, +'Bring Jane fetch Jane Eyre I want to speak to her.' Bessie +is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means anything by +the words but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and advised +them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first but +their mother grew so restless, and said, 'Jane, Jane,' so many +times, that at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday +and if you can get ready, Miss, I should like to take you back with +me early tomorrow morning." +"Yes, Robert, I shall be ready it seems to me that I ought to +go." +"I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not +refuse but I suppose you will have to ask leave before you can +get off?" +"Yes and I will do it now" and having directed him to the +servants' hall, and recommended him to the care of John's wife, +and the attentions of John himself, I went in search of Mr. Rochester. +He was not in any of the lower rooms he was not in the yard, the +stables, or the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him +yes she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram. +To the billiardroom I hastened the click of balls and the hum +of voices resounded thence Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram, the two +Misses Eshton, and their admirers, were all busied in the game. It +required some courage to disturb so interesting a party my errand, +however, was one I could not defer, so I approached the master +where he stood at Miss Ingram's side. She turned as I drew near, +and looked at me haughtily her eyes seemed to demand, "What can +the creeping creature want now?" and when I said, in a low voice, +"Mr. Rochester," she made a movement as if tempted to order me away. +I remember her appearance at the moment it was very graceful and +very striking she wore a morning robe of skyblue crape a gauzy +azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had been all animation +with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the expression of +her haughty lineaments. +"Does that person want you?" she inquired of Mr. Rochester and +Mr. Rochester turned to see who the "person" was. He made a curious +grimace one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations threw +down his cue and followed me from the room. +"Well, Jane?" he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom +door, which he had shut. +"If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two." +"What to do? where to go?" +"To see a sick lady who has sent for me." +"What sick lady? where does she live?" +"At Gateshead in shire." +"shire? That is a hundred miles off Who may she be that sends +for people to see her that distance?" +"Her name is Reed, sir Mrs. Reed." +"Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate." +"It is his widow, sir." +"And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?" +"Mr. Reed was my uncle my mother's brother." +"The deuce he was You never told me that before you always said +you had no relations." +"None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast +me off." +"Why?" +"Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me." +"But Reed left children? you must have cousins? Sir George +Lynn was talking of a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, +was one of the veriest rascals on town and Ingram was mentioning +a Georgiana Reed of the same place, who was much admired for her +beauty a season or two ago in London." +"John Reed is dead, too, sir he ruined himself and halfruined +his family, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news +so shocked his mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack." +"And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane I would never think +of running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, +be dead before you reach her besides, you say she cast you off." +"Yes, sir, but that is long ago and when her circumstances were +very different I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now." +"How long will you stay?" +"As short a time as possible, sir." +"Promise me only to stay a week " +"I had better not pass my word I might be obliged to break it." +"At all events you WILL come back you will not be induced under +any pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?" +"Oh, no I shall certainly return if all be well." +"And who goes with you? You don't travel a hundred miles alone." +"No, sir, she has sent her coachman." +"A person to be trusted?" +"Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family." +Mr. Rochester meditated. "When do you wish to go?" +"Early tomorrow morning, sir." +"Well, you must have some money you can't travel without money, +and I daresay you have not much I have given you no salary yet. +How much have you in the world, Jane?" he asked, smiling. +I drew out my purse a meagre thing it was. "Five shillings, sir." +He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over +it as if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket +book "Here," said he, offering me a note it was fifty pounds, +and he owed me but fifteen. I told him I had no change. +"I don't want change you know that. Take your wages." +I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled +at first then, as if recollecting something, he said +"Right, right Better not give you all now you would, perhaps, +stay away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten is +it not plenty?" +"Yes, sir, but now you owe me five." +"Come back for it, then I am your banker for forty pounds." +"Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business +to you while I have the opportunity." +"Matter of business? I am curious to hear it." +"You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly +to be married?" +"Yes what then?" +"In that case, sir, Adele ought to go to school I am sure you +will perceive the necessity of it." +"To get her out of my bride's way, who might otherwise walk over +her rather too emphatically? There's sense in the suggestion not +a doubt of it. Adele, as you say, must go to school and you, of +course, must march straight to the devil?" +"I hope not, sir but I must seek another situation somewhere." +"In course" he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion +of features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some +minutes. +"And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited +by you to seek a place, I suppose?" +"No, sir I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify +me in asking favours of them but I shall advertise." +"You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt" he growled. "At your +peril you advertise I wish I had only offered you a sovereign +instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane I've a use +for it." +"And so have I, sir," I returned, putting my hands and my purse +behind me. "I could not spare the money on any account." +"Little niggard" said he, "refusing me a pecuniary request Give +me five pounds, Jane." +"Not five shillings, sir nor five pence." +"Just let me look at the cash." +"No, sir you are not to be trusted." +"Jane" +"Sir?" +"Promise me one thing." +"I'll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to +perform." +"Not to advertise and to trust this quest of a situation to me. +I'll find you one in time." +"I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise +that I and Adele shall be both safe out of the house before your +bride enters it." +"Very well very well I'll pledge my word on it. You go tomorrow, +then?" +"Yes, sir early." +"Shall you come down to the drawingroom after dinner?" +"No, sir, I must prepare for the journey." +"Then you and I must bid goodbye for a little while?" +"I suppose so, sir." +"And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach +me I'm not quite up to it." +"They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer." +"Then say it." +"Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present." +"What must I say?" +"The same, if you like, sir." +"Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present is that all?" +"Yes?" +"It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should +like something else a little addition to the rite. If one shook +hands, for instance but no that would not content me either. +So you'll do no more than say Farewell, Jane?" +"It is enough, sir as much goodwill may be conveyed in one hearty +word as in many." +"Very likely but it is blank and cool 'Farewell.'" +"How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?" +I asked myself "I want to commence my packing." The dinnerbell +rang, and suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable I +saw him no more during the day, and was off before he had risen in +the morning. +I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o'clock in the afternoon +of the first of May I stepped in there before going up to the +hall. It was very clean and neat the ornamental windows were +hung with little white curtains the floor was spotless the grate +and fireirons were burnished bright, and the fire burnt clear. +Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her lastborn, and Robert and +his sister played quietly in a corner. +"Bless you I knew you would come" exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as +I entered. +"Yes, Bessie," said I, after I had kissed her "and I trust I am +not too late. How is Mrs. Reed? Alive still, I hope." +"Yes, she is alive and more sensible and collected than she was. +The doctor says she may linger a week or two yet but he hardly +thinks she will finally recover." +"Has she mentioned me lately?" +"She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would +come, but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was +up at the house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the +afternoon, and wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself +here an hour, Miss, and then I will go up with you?" +Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the +cradle and went to welcome him afterwards she insisted on my taking +off my bonnet and having some tea for she said I looked pale and +tired. I was glad to accept her hospitality and I submitted to +be relieved of my travelling garb just as passively as I used to +let her undress me when a child. +Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about +setting out the teatray with her best china, cutting bread and +butter, toasting a teacake, and, between whiles, giving little +Robert or Jane an occasional tap or push, just as she used to give +me in former days. Bessie had retained her quick temper as well +as her light foot and good looks. +Tea ready, I was going to approach the table but she desired me +to sit still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served +at the fireside, she said and she placed before me a little round +stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to +accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery +chair and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days. +She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort +of a person the mistress was and when I told her there was only +a master, whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I +told her he was rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman and +that he treated me kindly, and I was content. Then I went on to +describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the +house and to these details Bessie listened with interest they +were precisely of the kind she relished. +In such conversation an hour was soon gone Bessie restored to me +my bonnet, c., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for +the hall. It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine +years ago, walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, +misty, raw morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a +desperate and embittered heart a sense of outlawry and almost +of reprobation to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood that +bourne so far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again +rose before me my prospects were doubtful yet and I had yet an +aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth +but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and +less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, +too, was now quite healed and the flame of resentment extinguished. +"You shall go into the breakfastroom first," said Bessie, as she +preceded me through the hall "the young ladies will be there." +In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every +article of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was +first introduced to Mr. Brocklehurst the very rug he had stood upon +still covered the hearth. Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I +could distinguish the two volumes of Bewick's British Birds occupying +their old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver's Travels and the +Arabian Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not +changed but the living things had altered past recognition. +Two young ladies appeared before me one very tall, almost as tall +as Miss Ingram very thin too, with a sallow face and severe +mien. There was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented +by the extreme plainness of a straightskirted, black, stuff dress, +a starched linen collar, hair combed away from the temples, and +the nunlike ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. +This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance +to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage. +The other was as certainly Georgiana but not the Georgiana +I remembered the slim and fairylike girl of eleven. This was +a fullblown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome +and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow +hair. The hue of her dress was black too but its fashion was so +different from her sister's so much more flowing and becoming +it looked as stylish as the other's looked puritanical. +In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother and only +one the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm +eye the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of +jaw and chin perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an +indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous +and buxom. +Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed +me by the name of "Miss Eyre." Eliza's greeting was delivered in +a short, abrupt voice, without a smile and then she sat down again, +fixed her eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana +added to her "How d'ye do?" several commonplaces about my journey, +the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone and +accompanied by sundry sideglances that measured me from head to +foot now traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and +now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young +ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they +think you a "quiz" without actually saying the words. A certain +superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, +express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing +them by any positive rudeness in word or deed. +A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that +power over me it once possessed as I sat between my cousins, I +was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of +the one and the semisarcastic attentions of the other Eliza did +not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other +things to think about within the last few months feelings had +been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise +pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been +excited than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow that +their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad. +"How is Mrs. Reed?" I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, +who thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an +unexpected liberty. +"Mrs. Reed? Ah mama, you mean she is extremely poorly I doubt +if you can see her tonight." +"If," said I, "you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, +I should be much obliged to you." +Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and +wide. "I know she had a particular wish to see me," I added, "and +I would not defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely +necessary." +"Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening," remarked Eliza. I +soon rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and +said I would just step out to Bessie who was, I dared say, in the +kitchen and ask her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed +to receive me or not tonight. I went, and having found Bessie and +despatched her on my errand, I proceeded to take further measures. +It had heretofore been my habit always to shrink from arrogance +received as I had been today, I should, a year ago, have resolved +to quit Gateshead the very next morning now, it was disclosed +to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan. I had taken +a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I must stay with +her till she was better or dead as to her daughters' pride or +folly, I must put it on one side, make myself independent of it. +So I addressed the housekeeper asked her to show me a room, told +her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my +trunk conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself I +met Bessie on the landing. +"Missis is awake," said she "I have told her you are here come +and let us see if she will know you." +I did not need to be guided to the wellknown room, to which I +had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former +days. I hastened before Bessie I softly opened the door a shaded +light stood on the table, for it was now getting dark. There was +the great fourpost bed with amber hangings as of old there the +toilettable, the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a +hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences +by me uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near, halfexpecting +to see the slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk +there, waiting to leap out implike and lace my quivering palm or +shrinking neck. I approached the bed I opened the curtains and +leant over the highpiled pillows. +Well did I remember Mrs. Reed's face, and I eagerly sought the +familiar image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings +of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had +left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now +with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, +and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries to be +reconciled and clasp hands in amity. +The wellknown face was there stern, relentless as ever there +was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat +raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me +menace and hate and how the recollection of childhood's terrors +and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh line now And yet I +stooped down and kissed her she looked at me. +"Is this Jane Eyre?" she said. +"Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?" +I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again I thought +it no sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened +on her hand which lay outside the sheet had she pressed mine +kindly, I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But +unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural +antipathies so readily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, +and, turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night +was warm. Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that +her opinion of me her feeling towards me was unchanged and +unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye opaque to tenderness, +indissoluble to tears that she was resolved to consider me bad +to the last because to believe me good would give her no generous +pleasure only a sense of mortification. +I felt pain, and then I felt ire and then I felt a determination +to subdue her to be her mistress in spite both of her nature +and her will. My tears had risen, just as in childhood I ordered +them back to their source. I brought a chair to the bedhead I +sat down and leaned over the pillow. +"You sent for me," I said, "and I am here and it is my intention +to stay till I see how you get on." +"Oh, of course You have seen my daughters?" +"Yes." +"Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some +things over with you I have on my mind tonight it is too late, and +I have a difficulty in recalling them. But there was something +I wished to say let me see " +The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken +place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the +bedclothes round her my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, +fixed it down she was at once irritated. +"Sit up" said she "don't annoy me with holding the clothes fast. +Are you Jane Eyre?" +"I am Jane Eyre." +"I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. +Such a burden to be left on my hands and so much annoyance as she +caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, +and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural +watchings of one's movements I declare she talked to me once like +something mad, or like a fiend no child ever spoke or looked as +she did I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they +do with her at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many of the +pupils died. She, however, did not die but I said she did I +wish she had died" +"A strange wish, Mrs. Reed why do you hate her so?" +"I had a dislike to her mother always for she was my husband's only +sister, and a great favourite with him he opposed the family's +disowning her when she made her low marriage and when news came of +her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby +though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for +its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it +a sickly, whining, pining thing It would wail in its cradle all +night long not screaming heartily like any other child, but +whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it and he used to nurse it +and notice it as if it had been his own more, indeed, than he +ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children +friendly to the little beggar the darlings could not bear it, +and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his +last illness, he had it brought continually to his bedside and but +an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. +I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out of a +workhouse but he was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all +resemble his father, and I am glad of it John is like me and like +my brothers he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease +tormenting me with letters for money? I have no more money to give +him we are getting poor. I must send away half the servants and +shut up part of the house or let it off. I can never submit to +do that yet how are we to get on? Twothirds of my income goes +in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and +always loses poor boy He is beset by sharpers John is sunk +and degraded his look is frightful I feel ashamed for him +when I see him." +She was getting much excited. "I think I had better leave her +now," said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed. +"Perhaps you had, Miss but she often talks in this way towards +night in the morning she is calmer." +I rose. "Stop" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, "there is another thing +I wished to say. He threatens me he continually threatens me +with his own death, or mine and I dream sometimes that I see him +laid out with a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and +blackened face. I am come to a strange pass I have heavy troubles. +What is to be done? How is the money to be had?" +Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught +she succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more +composed, and sank into a dozing state. I then left her. +More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with +her. She continued either delirious or lethargic and the doctor +forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, +I got on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were +very cold, indeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, +reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her +sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the +hour, and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem +at a loss for occupation or amusement I had brought my drawing +materials with me, and they served me for both. +Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used +to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself +in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened +momentarily to shape itself in the evershifting kaleidoscope of +imagination a glimpse of sea between two rocks the rising moon, +and a ship crossing its disk a group of reeds and waterflags, and +a naiad's head, crowned with lotusflowers, rising out of them an +elf sitting in a hedgesparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthornbloom. +One morning I fell to sketching a face what sort of a face it was +to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave +it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper +a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage +that contour gave me pleasure my fingers proceeded actively to +fill it with features. Stronglymarked horizontal eyebrows must +be traced under that brow then followed, naturally, a welldefined +nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils then a flexible +looking mouth, by no means narrow then a firm chin, with a decided +cleft down the middle of it of course, some black whiskers were +wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above +the forehead. Now for the eyes I had left them to the last, +because they required the most careful working. I drew them +large I shaped them well the eyelashes I traced long and sombre +the irids lustrous and large. "Good but not quite the thing," +I thought, as I surveyed the effect "they want more force and +spirit" and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might +flash more brilliantly a happy touch or two secured success. +There, I had a friend's face under my gaze and what did it signify +that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it +I smiled at the speaking likeness I was absorbed and content. +"Is that a portrait of some one you know?" asked Eliza, who had +approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy +head, and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied +it was, in fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. +But what was that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana +also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much, but +she called that "an ugly man." They both seemed surprised at my +skill. I offered to sketch their portraits and each, in turn, +sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her album. I +promised to contribute a watercolour drawing this put her at once +into good humour. She proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we +had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation +she had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she +had spent in London two seasons ago of the admiration she had +there excited the attention she had received and I even got +hints of the titled conquest she had made. In the course of the +afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on various soft +conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented +and, in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day +improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed +from day to day they always ran on the same theme herself, her +loves, and woes. It was strange she never once adverted either to +her mother's illness, or her brother's death, or the present gloomy +state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with +reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations +to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother's +sickroom, and no more. +Eliza still spoke little she had evidently no time to talk. I +never saw a busier person than she seemed to be yet it was +difficult to say what she did or rather, to discover any result +of her diligence. She had an alarm to call her up early. I know +not how she occupied herself before breakfast, but after that meal +she divided her time into regular portions, and each hour had its +allotted task. Three times a day she studied a little book, which +I found, on inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once +what was the great attraction of that volume, and she said, "the +Rubric." Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold thread, +the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a +carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article, +she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church +lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary +two to working by herself in the kitchengarden and one to the +regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company no +conversation. I believe she was happy in her way this routine +sufficed for her and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence +of any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity. +She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative +than usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the +family, had been a source of profound affliction to her but she +had now, she said, settled her mind, and formed her resolution. +Her own fortune she had taken care to secure and when her mother +died and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked, +that she should either recover or linger long she would execute +a longcherished project seek a retirement where punctual habits +would be permanently secured from disturbance, and place safe barriers +between herself and a frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana would +accompany her. +"Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common they +never had had. She would not be burdened with her society for +any consideration. Georgiana should take her own course and she, +Eliza, would take hers." +Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her +time in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, +and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send +her an invitation up to town. "It would be so much better," she +said, "if she could only get out of the way for a month or two, till +all was over." I did not ask what she meant by "all being over," +but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother +and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no +more notice of her sister's indolence and complaints than if no such +murmuring, lounging object had been before her. One day, however, +as she put away her accountbook and unfolded her embroidery, +she suddenly took her up thus +"Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly +never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, +for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with +yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten +your feebleness on some other person's strength if no one can be +found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, +useless thing, you cry out that you are illtreated, neglected, +miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual +change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon you must +be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered you must +have music, dancing, and society or you languish, you die away. +Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent +of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day share +it into sections to each section apportion its task leave no +stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes +include all do each piece of business in its turn with method, +with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are +aware it has begun and you are indebted to no one for helping you +to get rid of one vacant moment you have had to seek no one's +company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance you have lived, +in short, as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice +the first and last I shall offer you then you will not want me or +any one else, happen what may. Neglect it go on as heretofore, +craving, whining, and idling and suffer the results of your +idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this +plainly and listen for though I shall no more repeat what I am +now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother's +death, I wash my hands of you from the day her coffin is carried +to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as +if we had never known each other. You need not think that because +we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to +fasten me down by even the feeblest claim I can tell you this +if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and +we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, +and betake myself to the new." +She closed her lips. +"You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that +tirade," answered Georgiana. "Everybody knows you are the most +selfish, heartless creature in existence and I know your spiteful +hatred towards me I have had a specimen of it before in the +trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere you could not bear me +to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles +where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spy and +informer, and ruined my prospects for ever." Georgiana took out +her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards Eliza +sat cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious. +True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here +were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other +despicably savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment +is a washy draught indeed but judgment untempered by feeling is +too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition. +It was a wet and windy afternoon Georgiana had fallen asleep on +the sofa over the perusal of a novel Eliza was gone to attend a +saint'sday service at the new church for in matters of religion +she was a rigid formalist no weather ever prevented the punctual +discharge of what she considered her devotional duties fair or foul, +she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on weekdays +as there were prayers. +I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, +who lay there almost unheeded the very servants paid her but a +remittent attention the hired nurse, being little looked after, +would slip out of the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful +but she had her own family to mind, and could only come occasionally +to the hall. I found the sickroom unwatched, as I had expected +no nurse was there the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic +her livid face sunk in the pillows the fire was dying in the +grate. I renewed the fuel, rearranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile +on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved away to the +window. +The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously +"One lies there," I thought, "who will soon be beyond the war of +earthly elements. Whither will that spirit now struggling to +quit its material tenement flit when at length released?" +In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled +her dying words her faith her doctrine of the equality +of disembodied souls. I was still listening in thought to her +wellremembered tones still picturing her pale and spiritual +aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid +deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine +Father's bosom when a feeble voice murmured from the couch +behind "Who is that?" +I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days was she reviving? I +went up to her. +"It is I, Aunt Reed." +"Who I?" was her answer. "Who are you?" looking at me with +surprise and a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. "You are quite +a stranger to me where is Bessie?" +"She is at the lodge, aunt." +"Aunt," she repeated. "Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the +Gibsons and yet I know you that face, and the eyes and forehead, +are quiet familiar to me you are like why, you are like Jane +Eyre" +I said nothing I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring +my identity. +"Yet," said she, "I am afraid it is a mistake my thoughts deceive +me. I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none +exists besides, in eight years she must be so changed." I now +gently assured her that I was the person she supposed and desired +me to be and seeing that I was understood, and that her senses +were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband +to fetch me from Thornfield. +"I am very ill, I know," she said ere long. "I was trying to turn +myself a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is +as well I should ease my mind before I die what we think little +of in health, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. +Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?" +I assured her we were alone. +"Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was +in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as +my own child the other " she stopped. "After all, it is of no +great importance, perhaps," she murmured to herself "and then I +may get better and to humble myself so to her is painful." +She made an effort to alter her position, but failed her face +changed she seemed to experience some inward sensation the +precursor, perhaps, of the last pang. +"Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me I had better +tell her. Go to my dressingcase, open it, and take out a letter +you will see there." +I obeyed her directions. "Read the letter," she said. +It was short, and thus conceived +"Madam, Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my +niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to +write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence +has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency and as I am +unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and +bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave. I am, +Madam, c., c., +"JOHN EYRE, Madeira." +It was dated three years back. +"Why did I never hear of this?" I asked. +"Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a +hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct +to me, Jane the fury with which you once turned on me the tone +in which you declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the +world the unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that +the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated +you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations +when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind I +felt fear as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked +up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man's voice. Bring +me some water Oh, make haste" +"Dear Mrs. Reed," said I, as I offered her the draught she +required, "think no more of all this, let it pass away from your +mind. Forgive me for my passionate language I was a child then +eight, nine years have passed since that day." +She heeded nothing of what I said but when she had tasted +the water and drawn breath, she went on thus +"I tell you I could not forget it and I took my revenge for +you to be adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease +and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him I said +I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead she +had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please write +and contradict my assertion expose my falsehood as soon as you +like. You were born, I think, to be my torment my last hour is +racked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should +never have been tempted to commit." +"If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and +to regard me with kindness and forgiveness" +"You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day +I feel it impossible to understand how for nine years you could +be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth +break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend." +"My disposition is not so bad as you think I am passionate, but +not vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been +glad to love you if you would have let me and I long earnestly to +be reconciled to you now kiss me, aunt." +I approached my cheek to her lips she would not touch it. She +said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded +water. As I laid her down for I raised her and supported her +on my arm while she drank I covered her icecold and clammy hand +with mine the feeble fingers shrank from my touch the glazing +eyes shunned my gaze. +"Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have +my full and free forgiveness ask now for God's, and be at peace." +Poor, suffering woman it was too late for her to make now the +effort to change her habitual frame of mind living, she had ever +hated me dying, she must hate me still. +The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered +halfanhour longer, hoping to see some sign of amity but she +gave none. She was fast relapsing into stupor nor did her mind +again rally at twelve o'clock that night she died. I was not +present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters. They +came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by +that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look at her Georgiana, +who had burst out into loud weeping, said she dared not go. There +was stretched Sarah Reed's once robust and active frame, rigid and +still her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid her brow +and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. +A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it +with gloom and pain nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, +or hopeful, or subduing did it inspire only a grating anguish +for HER woes not MY loss and a sombre tearless dismay at the +fearfulness of death in such a form. +Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some +minutes she observed +"With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age +her life was shortened by trouble." And then a spasm constricted +her mouth for an instant as it passed away she turned and left +the room, and so did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear. +CHAPTER XXII +Mr. Rochester had given me but one week's leave of absence yet +a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave +immediately after the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay +till she could get off to London, whither she was now at last +invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who had come down to direct his +sister's interment and settle the family affairs. Georgiana said +she dreaded being left alone with Eliza from her she got neither +sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor aid in her +preparations so I bore with her feebleminded wailings and selfish +lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for +her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she +would idle and I thought to myself, "If you and I were destined +to live always together, cousin, we would commence matters on a +different footing. I should not settle tamely down into being the +forbearing party I should assign you your share of labour, and +compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone I +should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling, +halfinsincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only +because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at +a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so +patient and compliant on my part." +At last I saw Georgiana off but now it was Eliza's turn to +request me to stay another week. Her plans required all her time +and attention, she said she was about to depart for some unknown +bourne and all day long she stayed in her own room, her door +bolted within, filling trunks, emptying drawers, burning papers, +and holding no communication with any one. She wished me to look +after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of condolence. +One morning she told me I was at liberty. "And," she added, "I +am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct +There is some difference between living with such an one as you +and with Georgiana you perform your own part in life and burden +no one. Tomorrow," she continued, "I set out for the Continent. +I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle a +nunnery you would call it there I shall be quiet and unmolested. +I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman +Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their +system if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the one best +calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order, +I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil." +I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to +dissuade her from it. "The vocation will fit you to a hair," I +thought "much good may it do you" +When we parted, she said "Goodbye, cousin Jane Eyre I wish you +well you have some sense." +I then returned "You are not without sense, cousin Eliza but +what you have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive +in a French convent. However, it is not my business, and so it +suits you, I don't much care." +"You are in the right," said she and with these words we each went +our separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to +her or her sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana +made an advantageous match with a wealthy wornout man of fashion, +and that Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior +of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and +which she endowed with her fortune. +How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long +or short, I did not know I had never experienced the sensation. +I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after +a long walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy and later, +what it was to come back from church to Lowood, to long for +a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be unable to get either. +Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable no +magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of +attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to +be tried. +My journey seemed tedious very tedious fifty miles one day, a +night spent at an inn fifty miles the next day. During the first +twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments I saw her +disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered +voice. I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black +train of tenants and servants few was the number of relatives +the gaping vault, the silent church, the solemn service. Then +I thought of Eliza and Georgiana I beheld one the cynosure of a +ballroom, the other the inmate of a convent cell and I dwelt on +and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character. +The evening arrival at the great town of scattered these thoughts +night gave them quite another turn laid down on my traveller's +bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation. +I was going back to Thornfield but how long was I to stay there? +Not long of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in +the interim of my absence the party at the hall was dispersed +Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then +expected to return in a fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he +was gone to make arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of +purchasing a new carriage she said the idea of his marrying Miss +Ingram still seemed strange to her but from what everybody said, +and from what she had herself seen, she could no longer doubt +that the event would shortly take place. "You would be strangely +incredulous if you did doubt it," was my mental comment. "I don't +doubt it." +The question followed, "Where was I to go?" I dreamt of Miss +Ingram all the night in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing +the gates of Thornfield against me and pointing me out another +road and Mr. Rochester looked on with his arms folded smiling +sardonically, as it seemed, at both her and me. +I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return for +I did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I +proposed to walk the distance quietly by myself and very quietly, +after leaving my box in the ostler's care, did I slip away from +the George Inn, about six o'clock of a June evening, and take the +old road to Thornfield a road which lay chiefly through fields, +and was now little frequented. +It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft +the haymakers were at work all along the road and the sky, though +far from cloudless, was such as promised well for the future its +blue where blue was visible was mild and settled, and its +cloud strata high and thin. The west, too, was warm no watery +gleam chilled it it seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar +burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures +shone a golden redness. +I felt glad as the road shortened before me so glad that I stopped +once to ask myself what that joy meant and to remind reason that +it was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent restingplace, +or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my +arrival. "Mrs. Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure," +said I "and little Adele will clap her hands and jump to see you +but you know very well you are thinking of another than they, and +that he is not thinking of you." +But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? +These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege +of again looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not +and they added "Hasten hasten be with him while you may +but a few more days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him +for ever" And then I strangled a newborn agony a deformed +thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear and ran +on. +They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows or rather, the +labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with +their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have +but a field or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and +reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses But I have no +time to gather any I want to be at the house. I passed a tall +briar, shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path I +see the narrow stile with stone steps and I see Mr. Rochester +sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand he is writing. +Well, he is not a ghost yet every nerve I have is unstrung for +a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did +not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my +voice or the power of motion in his presence. I will go back as +soon as I can stir I need not make an absolute fool of myself. +I know another way to the house. It does not signify if I knew +twenty ways for he has seen me. +"Hillo" he cries and he puts up his book and his pencil. "There +you are Come on, if you please." +I suppose I do come on though in what fashion I know not being +scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear +calm and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face +which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to +express what I had resolved to conceal. But I have a veil it +is down I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure. +"And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot? +Yes just one of your tricks not to send for a carriage, and +come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to +steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as +if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with +yourself this last month?" +"I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead." +"A true Janian reply Good angels be my guard She comes from the +other world from the abode of people who are dead and tells me +so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming If I dared, I'd +touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf but +I'd as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a +marsh. Truant truant" he added, when he had paused an instant. +"Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I'll be +sworn" +I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even +though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my +master, and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him but there +was ever in Mr. Rochester so at least I thought such a wealth +of the power of communicating happiness, that to taste but of the +crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me, was to +feast genially. His last words were balm they seemed to imply +that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not. +And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home would that it were +my home +He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I +inquired soon if he had not been to London. +"Yes I suppose you found that out by secondsight." +"Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter." +"And did she inform you what I went to do?" +"Oh, yes, sir Everybody knew your errand." +"You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don't think it +will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly and whether she won't look like +Queen Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish, +Jane, I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally. +Tell me now, fairy as you are can't you give me a charm, or a +philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?" +"It would be past the power of magic, sir" and, in thought, I added, +"A loving eye is all the charm needed to such you are handsome +enough or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty." +Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen +to me incomprehensible in the present instance he took no notice +of my abrupt vocal response but he smiled at me with a certain +smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. +He seemed to think it too good for common purposes it was the +real sunshine of feeling he shed it over me now. +"Pass, Janet," said he, making room for me to cross the stile "go +up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's +threshold." +All I had now to do was to obey him in silence no need for me +to colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, and +meant to leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast a force turned +me round. I said or something in me said for me, and in spite of me +"Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely +glad to get back again to you and wherever you are is my home +my only home." +I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me +had he tried. Little Adele was half wild with delight when she saw +me. Mrs. Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. +Leah smiled, and even Sophie bid me "bon soir" with glee. This +was very pleasant there is no happiness like that of being loved +by your fellowcreatures, and feeling that your presence is an +addition to their comfort. +I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future I stopped +my cars against the voice that kept warning me of near separation +and coming grief. When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken +her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adele, +kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of +mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, +I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon +but when, as we thus sat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and +looking at us, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group +so amicable when he said he supposed the old lady was all right +now that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added +that he saw Adele was "prete e croquer sa petite maman Anglaise" +I half ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage, +keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection, +and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence. +A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall. +Nothing was said of the master's marriage, and I saw no preparation +going on for such an event. Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax +if she had yet heard anything decided her answer was always in +the negative. Once she said she had actually put the question to +Mr. Rochester as to when he was going to bring his bride home but +he had answered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks, and +she could not tell what to make of him. +One thing specially surprised me, and that was, there were no +journeyings backward and forward, no visits to Ingram Park to +be sure it was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county +but what was that distance to an ardent lover? To so practised +and indefatigable a horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a +morning's ride. I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive +that the match was broken off that rumour had been mistaken that +one or both parties had changed their minds. I used to look at +my master's face to see if it were sad or fierce but I could not +remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or +evil feelings. If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him, I +lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he became even +gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his presence never +been kinder to me when there and, alas never had I loved him +so well. +CHAPTER XXIII +A splendid Midsummer shone over England skies so pure, suns so +radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even +singly, our wavegirt land. It was as if a band of Italian days +had come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, +and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was +all got in the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn the +roads white and baked the trees were in their dark prime hedge +and wood, fullleaved and deeply tinted, contrasted well with the +sunny hue of the cleared meadows between. +On Midsummereve, Adele, weary with gathering wild strawberries +in Hay Lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun. I watched +her drop asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden. +It was now the sweetest hour of the twentyfour "Day its fervid +fires had wasted," and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched +summit. Where the sun had gone down in simple state pure of the +pomp of clouds spread a solemn purple, burning with the light +of red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hillpeak, and +extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. +The east had its own charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest +gem, a casino and solitary star soon it would boast the moon +but she was yet beneath the horizon. +I walked a while on the pavement but a subtle, wellknown scent +that of a cigar stole from some window I saw the library +casement open a handbreadth I knew I might be watched thence so +I went apart into the orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered +and more Edenlike it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers +a very high wall shut it out from the court, on one side on the +other, a beech avenue screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was +a sunk fence its sole separation from lonely fields a winding +walk, bordered with laurels and terminating in a giant horsechestnut, +circled at the base by a seat, led down to the fence. Here one could +wander unseen. While such honeydew fell, such silence reigned, +such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade for +ever but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper +part of the enclosure, enticed there by the light the now rising +moon cast on this more open quarter, my step is stayed not by +sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning fragrance. +Sweetbriar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long +been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense this new scent +is neither of shrub nor flower it is I know it well it is +Mr. Rochester's cigar. I look round and I listen. I see trees +laden with ripening fruit. I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood +half a mile off no moving form is visible, no coming step audible +but that perfume increases I must flee. I make for the wicket +leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr. Rochester entering. I step +aside into the ivy recess he will not stay long he will soon +return whence he came, and if I sit still he will never see me. +But no eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique +garden as attractive and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry +tree branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they +are laden now taking a ripe cherry from the wall now stooping +towards a knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to +admire the dewbeads on their petals. A great moth goes humming +by me it alights on a plant at Mr. Rochester's foot he sees it, +and bends to examine it. +"Now, he has his back towards me," thought I, "and he is occupied +too perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed." +I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel +might not betray me he was standing among the beds at a yard or +two distant from where I had to pass the moth apparently engaged +him. "I shall get by very well," I meditated. As I crossed his +shadow, thrown long over the garden by the moon, not yet +risen high, he said quietly, without turning +"Jane, come and look at this fellow." +I had made no noise he had not eyes behind could his shadow +feel? I started at first, and then I approached him. +"Look at his wings," said he, "he reminds me rather of a West Indian +insect one does not often see so large and gay a nightrover in +England there he is flown." +The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also but Mr. +Rochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he said +"Turn back on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house +and surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at +meeting with moonrise." +It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt +enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in +framing an excuse and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when +a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me +out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour +alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard but I could not +find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging +step, and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication +but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I became +ashamed of feeling any confusion the evil if evil existent or +prospective there was seemed to lie with me only his mind was +unconscious and quiet. +"Jane," he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and slowly +strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horsechestnut, +"Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?" +"Yes, sir." +"You must have become in some degree attached to the house, +you, who have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the +organ of Adhesiveness?" +"I am attached to it, indeed." +"And though I don't comprehend how it is, I perceive you have +acquired a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adele, +too and even for simple dame Fairfax?" +"Yes, sir in different ways, I have an affection for both." +"And would be sorry to part with them?" +"Yes." +"Pity" he said, and sighed and paused. "It is always the way +of events in this life," he continued presently "no sooner have +you got settled in a pleasant restingplace, than a voice calls +out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired." +"Must I move on, sir?" I asked. "Must I leave Thornfield?" +"I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet, but I believe indeed +you must." +This was a blow but I did not let it prostrate me. +"Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes." +"It is come now I must give it tonight." +"Then you ARE going to be married, sir?" +"Exactly precisely with your usual acuteness, you have +hit the nail straight on the head." +"Soon, sir?" +"Very soon, my that is, Miss Eyre and you'll remember, Jane, +the first time I, or Rumour, plainly intimated to you that it was +my intention to put my old bachelor's neck into the sacred noose, +to enter into the holy estate of matrimony to take Miss Ingram +to my bosom, in short she's an extensive armful but that's not +to the point one can't have too much of such a very excellent +thing as my beautiful Blanche well, as I was saying listen to +me, Jane You're not turning your head to look after more moths, +are you? That was only a ladyclock, child, 'flying away home.' +I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me, with +that discretion I respect in you with that foresight, prudence, +and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position +that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adele +had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed +in this suggestion on the character of my beloved indeed, when +you are far away, Janet, I'll try to forget it I shall notice +only its wisdom which is such that I have made it my law of +action. Adele must go to school and you, Miss Eyre, must get a +new situation." +"Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately and meantime, I suppose +" I was going to say, "I suppose I may stay here, till I find +another shelter to betake myself to" but I stopped, feeling it +would not do to risk a long sentence, for my voice was not quite +under command. +"In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom," continued Mr. Rochester +"and in the interim, I shall myself look out for employment and an +asylum for you." +"Thank you, sir I am sorry to give " +"Oh, no need to apologise I consider that when a dependent does +her duty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim +upon her employer for any little assistance he can conveniently +render her indeed I have already, through my future motherinlaw, +heard of a place that I think will suit it is to undertake the +education of the five daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O'Gall of Bitternutt +Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. You'll like Ireland, I think they're +such warmhearted people there, they say." +"It is a long way off, sir." +"No matter a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage +or the distance." +"Not the voyage, but the distance and then the sea is a barrier " +"From what, Jane?" +"From England and from Thornfield and " +"Well?" +"From YOU, sir." +I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of +free will, my tears gushed out. I did not cry so as to be heard, +however I avoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs. O'Gall and Bitternutt +Lodge struck cold to my heart and colder the thought of all the +brine and foam, destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the +master at whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of +the wider ocean wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and +what I naturally and inevitably loved. +"It is a long way," I again said. +"It is, to be sure and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, +Ireland, I shall never see you again, Jane that's morally certain. +I never go over to Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for +the country. We have been good friends, Jane have we not?" +"Yes, sir." +"And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend +the little time that remains to them close to each other. Come +we'll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly halfanhour +or so, while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven +yonder here is the chestnut tree here is the bench at its old +roots. Come, we will sit there in peace tonight, though we should +never more be destined to sit there together." He seated me and +himself. +"It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my +little friend on such weary travels but if I can't do better, +how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, +Jane?" +I could risk no sort of answer by this time my heart was still. +"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard +to you especially when you are near me, as now it is as if I +had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably +knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter +of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two +hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that +cord of communion will be snapt and then I've a nervous notion I +should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me." +"That I NEVER should, sir You know " Impossible to proceed. +"Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen" +In listening, I sobbed convulsively for I could repress what I +endured no longer I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from +head to foot with acute distress. When I did speak, it was only +to express an impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never +come to Thornfield. +"Because you are sorry to leave it?" +The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, +was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting +a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at +last yes, and to speak. +"I grieve to leave Thornfield I love Thornfield I love it, because +I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at +least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I +have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every +glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. +I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I +delight in, with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I +have known you, Mr. Rochester and it strikes me with terror and +anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see +the necessity of departure and it is like looking on the necessity +of death." +"Where do you see the necessity?" he asked suddenly. +"Where? You, sir, have placed it before me." +"In what shape?" +"In the shape of Miss Ingram a noble and beautiful woman, your +bride." +"My bride What bride? I have no bride" +"But you will have." +"Yes I will I will" He set his teeth. +"Then I must go you have said it yourself." +"No you must stay I swear it and the oath shall be kept." +"I tell you I must go" I retorted, roused to something like +passion. "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do +you think I am an automaton? a machine without feelings? and +can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my +drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I +am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? +You think wrong I have as much soul as you, and full as much +heart And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, +I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for +me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium +of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh it is +my spirit that addresses your spirit just as if both had passed +through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal, as we +are" +"As we are" repeated Mr. Rochester "so," he added, enclosing +me in his arms. Gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on +my lips "so, Jane" +"Yes, so, sir," I rejoined "and yet not so for you are a married +man or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you +to one with whom you have no sympathy whom I do not believe +you truly love for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would +scorn such a union therefore I am better than you let me go" +"Where, Jane? To Ireland?" +"Yes to Ireland. I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere +now." +"Jane, be still don't struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that +is rending its own plumage in its desperation." +"I am no bird and no net ensnares me I am a free human being with +an independent will, which I now exert to leave you." +Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him. +"And your will shall decide your destiny," he said "I offer you +my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions." +"You play a farce, which I merely laugh at." +"I ask you to pass through life at my side to be my second self, +and best earthly companion." +"For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide +by it." +"Jane, be still a few moments you are overexcited I will be +still too." +A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurelwalk, and trembled +through the boughs of the chestnut it wandered away away +to an indefinite distance it died. The nightingale's song was +then the only voice of the hour in listening to it, I again wept. +Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously. +Some time passed before he spoke he at last said +"Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one +another." +"I will never again come to your side I am torn away now, and +cannot return." +"But, Jane, I summon you as my wife it is you only I intend to +marry." +I was silent I thought he mocked me. +"Come, Jane come hither." +"Your bride stands between us." +He rose, and with a stride reached me. +"My bride is here," he said, again drawing me to him, "because my +equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?" +Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp +for I was still incredulous. +"Do you doubt me, Jane?" +"Entirely." +"You have no faith in me?" +"Not a whit." +"Am I a liar in your eyes?" he asked passionately. "Little sceptic, +you SHALL be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None +and that you know. What love has she for me? None as I have +taken pains to prove I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune +was not a third of what was supposed, and after that I presented +myself to see the result it was coldness both from her and her +mother. I would not I could not marry Miss Ingram. You +you strange, you almost unearthly thing I love as my own flesh. +You poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are I entreat +to accept me as a husband." +"What, me" I ejaculated, beginning in his earnestness and +especially in his incivility to credit his sincerity "me who +have not a friend in the world but you if you are my friend +not a shilling but what you have given me?" +"You, Jane, I must have you for my own entirely my own. Will +you be mine? Say yes, quickly." +"Mr. Rochester, let me look at your face turn to the moonlight." +"Why?" +"Because I want to read your countenance turn" +"There you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled, +scratched page. Read on only make haste, for I suffer." +His face was very much agitated and very much flushed, and there +were strong workings in the features, and strange gleams in the +eyes +"Oh, Jane, you torture me" he exclaimed. "With that searching +and yet faithful and generous look, you torture me" +"How can I do that? If you are true, and your offer real, my +only feelings to you must be gratitude and devotion they cannot +torture." +"Gratitude" he ejaculated and added wildly "Jane accept me +quickly. Say, Edward give me my name Edward I will marry +you." +"Are you in earnest? Do you truly love me? Do you sincerely wish +me to be your wife?" +"I do and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you, I swear it." +"Then, sir, I will marry you." +"Edward my little wife" +"Dear Edward" +"Come to me come to me entirely now," said he and added, in +his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, +"Make my happiness I will make yours." +"God pardon me" he subjoined ere long "and man meddle not with +me I have her, and will hold her." +"There is no one to meddle, sir. I have no kindred to interfere." +"No that is the best of it," he said. And if I had loved +him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation +savage but, sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting +called to the paradise of union I thought only of the bliss +given me to drink in so abundant a flow. Again and again he said, +"Are you happy, Jane?" And again and again I answered, "Yes." +After which he murmured, "It will atone it will atone. Have I +not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless? Will I not +guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there not love in my heart, +and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God's tribunal. +I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgment +I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion I defy it." +But what had befallen the night? The moon was not yet set, and we +were all in shadow I could scarcely see my master's face, near as +I was. And what ailed the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned +while wind roared in the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us. +"We must go in," said Mr. Rochester "the weather changes. I +could have sat with thee till morning, Jane." +"And so," thought I, "could I with you." I should have said so, +perhaps, but a livid, vivid spark leapt out of a cloud at which I +was looking, and there was a crack, a crash, and a close rattling +peal and I thought only of hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr. +Rochester's shoulder. +The rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds, +and into the house but we were quite wet before we could pass the +threshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shaking +the water out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from +her room. I did not observe her at first, nor did Mr. Rochester. +The lamp was lit. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. +"Hasten to take off your wet things," said he "and before you go, +goodnight goodnight, my darling" +He kissed me repeatedly. When I looked up, on leaving his arms, +there stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed. I only smiled at +her, and ran upstairs. "Explanation will do for another time," +thought I. Still, when I reached my chamber, I felt a pang at the +idea she should even temporarily misconstrue what she had seen. But +joy soon effaced every other feeling and loud as the wind blew, +near and deep as the thunder crashed, fierce and frequent as the +lightning gleamed, cataractlike as the rain fell during a storm +of two hours' duration, I experienced no fear and little awe. Mr. +Rochester came thrice to my door in the course of it, to ask if +I was safe and tranquil and that was comfort, that was strength +for anything. +Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adele came running +in to tell me that the great horsechestnut at the bottom of the +orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it +split away. +CHAPTER XXIV +As I rose and dressed, I thought over what had happened, and wondered +if it were a dream. I could not be certain of the reality till I +had seen Mr. Rochester again, and heard him renew his words of love +and promise. +While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt +it was no longer plain there was hope in its aspect and life in +its colour and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of +fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often +been unwilling to look at my master, because I feared he could not +be pleased at my look but I was sure I might lift my face to his +now, and not cool his affection by its expression. I took a plain +but clean and light summer dress from my drawer and put it on it +seemed no attire had ever so well become me, because none had I +ever worn in so blissful a mood. +I was not surprised, when I ran down into the hall, to see that a +brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night +and to feel, through the open glass door, the breathing of a fresh +and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. +A beggarwoman and her little boy pale, ragged objects both +were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money +I happened to have in my purse some three or four shillings +good or bad, they must partake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed, +and blither birds sang but nothing was so merry or so musical as +my own rejoicing heart. +Mrs. Fairfax surprised me by looking out of the window with a +sad countenance, and saying gravely "Miss Eyre, will you come +to breakfast?" During the meal she was quiet and cool but I +could not undeceive her then. I must wait for my master to give +explanations and so must she. I ate what I could, and then I +hastened upstairs. I met Adele leaving the schoolroom. +"Where are you going? It is time for lessons." +"Mr. Rochester has sent me away to the nursery." +"Where is he?" +"In there," pointing to the apartment she had left and I went in, +and there he stood. +"Come and bid me goodmorning," said he. I gladly advanced and it +was not merely a cold word now, or even a shake of the hand that I +received, but an embrace and a kiss. It seemed natural it seemed +genial to be so well loved, so caressed by him. +"Jane, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty," said he +"truly pretty this morning. Is this my pale, little elf? Is this +my mustardseed? This little sunnyfaced girl with the dimpled +cheek and rosy lips the satinsmooth hazel hair, and the radiant +hazel eyes?" I had green eyes, reader but you must excuse the +mistake for him they were newdyed, I suppose. +"It is Jane Eyre, sir." +"Soon to be Jane Rochester," he added "in four weeks, Janet not +a day more. Do you hear that?" +I did, and I could not quite comprehend it it made me giddy. The +feeling, the announcement sent through me, was something stronger +than was consistent with joy something that smote and stunned. +It was, I think almost fear. +"You blushed, and now you are white, Jane what is that for?" +"Because you gave me a new name Jane Rochester and it seems so +strange." +"Yes, Mrs. Rochester," said he "young Mrs. Rochester Fairfax +Rochester's girlbride." +"It can never be, sir it does not sound likely. Human beings +never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for +a different destiny to the rest of my species to imagine such a +lot befalling me is a fairy tale a daydream." +"Which I can and will realise. I shall begin today. This morning +I wrote to my banker in London to send me certain jewels he has in +his keeping, heirlooms for the ladies of Thornfield. In a day +or two I hope to pour them into your lap for every privilege, every +attention shall be yours that I would accord a peer's daughter, if +about to marry her." +"Oh, sir never rain jewels I don't like to hear them spoken +of. Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange I would +rather not have them." +"I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet +on your forehead, which it will become for nature, at least, +has stamped her patent of nobility on this brow, Jane and I will +clasp the bracelets on these fine wrists, and load these fairylike +fingers with rings." +"No, no, sir think of other subjects, and speak of other things, +and in another strain. Don't address me as if I were a beauty I +am your plain, Quakerish governess." +"You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire +of my heart, delicate and aerial." +"Puny and insignificant, you mean. You are dreaming, sir, or +you are sneering. For God's sake don't be ironical" +"I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too," he went on, +while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because +I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me. "I +will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in +her hair and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless +veil." +"And then you won't know me, sir and I shall not be your Jane +Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket a jay in +borrowed plumes. I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked +out in stagetrappings, as myself clad in a courtlady's robe and +I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly far +too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me." +He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation. +"This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and +you must choose some dresses for yourself. I told you we shall be +married in four weeks. The wedding is to take place quietly, in +the church down below yonder and then I shall waft you away at +once to town. After a brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure +to regions nearer the sun to French vineyards and Italian plains +and she shall see whatever is famous in old story and in modern +record she shall taste, too, of the life of cities and she shall +learn to value herself by just comparison with others." +"Shall I travel? and with you, sir?" +"You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples at Florence, +Venice, and Vienna all the ground I have wandered over shall be +retrodden by you wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot +shall step also. Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad +with disgust, hate, and rage as my companions now I shall revisit +it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter." +I laughed at him as he said this. "I am not an angel," I asserted +"and I will not be one till I die I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, +you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me for +you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you which +I do not at all anticipate." +"What do you anticipate of me?" +"For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now, a very +little while and then you will turn cool and then you will be +capricious and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado +to please you but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps +like me again, LIKE me, I say, not LOVE me. I suppose your love +will effervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books +written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a +husband's ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, +I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master." +"Distasteful and like you again I think I shall like you again, +and yet again and I will make you confess I do not only LIKE, +but LOVE you with truth, fervour, constancy." +"Yet are you not capricious, sir?" +"To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil +when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts when they +open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps +imbecility, coarseness, and illtemper but to the clear eye and +eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that +bends but does not break at once supple and stable, tractable +and consistent I am ever tender and true." +"Had you ever experience of such a character, sir? Did you ever +love such an one?" +"I love it now." +"But before me if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your +difficult standard?" +"I never met your likeness. Jane, you please me, and you master me +you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart +and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it +sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced conquered +and the influence is sweeter than I can express and the conquest +I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win. Why do you +smile, Jane? What does that inexplicable, that uncanny turn of +countenance mean?" +"I was thinking, sir you will excuse the idea it was involuntary, +I was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers " +"You were, you little elfish " +"Hush, sir You don't talk very wisely just now any more than +those gentlemen acted very wisely. However, had they been married, +they would no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for +their softness as suitors and so will you, I fear. I wonder how +you will answer me a year hence, should I ask a favour it does not +suit your convenience or pleasure to grant." +"Ask me something now, Jane, the least thing I desire +to be entreated " +"Indeed I will, sir I have my petition all ready." +"Speak But if you look up and smile with that countenance, I shall +swear concession before I know to what, and that will make a fool +of me." +"Not at all, sir I ask only this don't send for the jewels, and +don't crown me with roses you might as well put a border of gold +lace round that plain pocket handkerchief you have there." +"I might as well 'gild refined gold.' I know it your request is +granted then for the time. I will remand the order I despatched +to my banker. But you have not yet asked for anything you have +prayed a gift to be withdrawn try again." +"Well then, sir, have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which +is much piqued on one point." +He looked disturbed. "What? what?" he said hastily. "Curiosity +is a dangerous petition it is well I have not taken a +vow to accord every request " +"But there can be no danger in complying with this, sir." +"Utter it, Jane but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into, +perhaps, a secret, it was a wish for half my estate." +"Now, King Ahasuerus What do I want with half your estate? Do +you think I am a Jewusurer, seeking good investment in land? I +would much rather have all your confidence. You will not exclude +me from your confidence if you admit me to your heart?" +"You are welcome to all my confidence that is worth having, Jane +but for God's sake, don't desire a useless burden Don't long for +poison don't turn out a downright Eve on my hands" +"Why not, sir? You have just been telling me how much you liked +to be conquered, and how pleasant overpersuasion is to you. Don't +you think I had better take advantage of the confession, and begin +and coax and entreat even cry and be sulky if necessary for +the sake of a mere essay of my power?" +"I dare you to any such experiment. Encroach, presume, and the +game is up." +"Is it, sir? You soon give in. How stern you look now Your +eyebrows have become as thick as my finger, and your forehead +resembles what, in some very astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, +'a bluepiled thunderloft.' That will be your married look, sir, +I suppose?" +"If that will be YOUR married look, I, as a Christian, will soon +give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. +But what had you to ask, thing, out with it?" +"There, you are less than civil now and I like rudeness a great +deal better than flattery. I had rather be a THING than an angel. +This is what I have to ask, Why did you take such pains to make +me believe you wished to marry Miss Ingram?" +"Is that all? Thank God it is no worse" And now he unknit his +black brows looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if +well pleased at seeing a danger averted. "I think I may confess," +he continued, "even although I should make you a little indignant, +Jane and I have seen what a firespirit you can be when you are +indignant. You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you +mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet, +bythebye, it was you who made me the offer." +"Of course I did. But to the point if you please, sir Miss +Ingram?" +"Well, I feigned courtship of Miss Ingram, because I wished to +render you as madly in love with me as I was with you and I knew +jealousy would be the best ally I could call in for the furtherance +of that end." +"Excellent Now you are small not one whit bigger than the +end of my little finger. It was a burning shame and a scandalous +disgrace to act in that way. Did you think nothing of Miss Ingram's +feelings, sir?" +"Her feelings are concentrated in one pride and that needs +humbling. Were you jealous, Jane?" +"Never mind, Mr. Rochester it is in no way interesting to you +to know that. Answer me truly once more. Do you think Miss Ingram +will not suffer from your dishonest coquetry? Won't she feel +forsaken and deserted?" +"Impossible when I told you how she, on the contrary, deserted +me the idea of my insolvency cooled, or rather extinguished, her +flame in a moment." +"You have a curious, designing mind, Mr. Rochester. I am afraid +your principles on some points are eccentric." +"My principles were never trained, Jane they may have grown a +little awry for want of attention." +"Once again, seriously may I enjoy the great good that has been +vouchsafed to me, without fearing that any one else is suffering +the bitter pain I myself felt a while ago?" +"That you may, my good little girl there is not another being in +the world has the same pure love for me as yourself for I lay +that pleasant unction to my soul, Jane, a belief in your affection." +I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him +very much more than I could trust myself to say more than +words had power to express. +"Ask something more," he said presently "it is my delight to be +entreated, and to yield." +I was again ready with my request. "Communicate your intentions +to Mrs. Fairfax, sir she saw me with you last night in the hall, +and she was shocked. Give her some explanation before I see her +again. It pains me to be misjudged by so good a woman." +"Go to your room, and put on your bonnet," he replied. "I mean +you to accompany me to Millcote this morning and while you prepare +for the drive, I will enlighten the old lady's understanding. Did +she think, Janet, you had given the world for love, and considered +it well lost?" +"I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir." +"Station station your station is in my heart, and on the +necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter. Go." +I was soon dressed and when I heard Mr. Rochester quit Mrs. +Fairfax's parlour, I hurried down to it. The old lady, had been +reading her morning portion of Scripture the Lesson for the +day her Bible lay open before her, and her spectacles were upon +it. Her occupation, suspended by Mr. Rochester's announcement, +seemed now forgotten her eyes, fixed on the blank wall opposite, +expressed the surprise of a quiet mind stirred by unwonted tidings. +Seeing me, she roused herself she made a sort of effort to smile, +and framed a few words of congratulation but the smile expired, and +the sentence was abandoned unfinished. She put up her spectacles, +shut the Bible, and pushed her chair back from the table. +"I feel so astonished," she began, "I hardly know what to say to +you, Miss Eyre. I have surely not been dreaming, have I? Sometimes +I half fall asleep when I am sitting alone and fancy things that +have never happened. It has seemed to me more than once when I +have been in a doze, that my dear husband, who died fifteen years +since, has come in and sat down beside me and that I have even +heard him call me by my name, Alice, as he used to do. Now, can +you tell me whether it is actually true that Mr. Rochester has +asked you to marry him? Don't laugh at me. But I really thought +he came in here five minutes ago, and said that in a month you +would be his wife." +"He has said the same thing to me," I replied. +"He has Do you believe him? Have you accepted him?" +"Yes." +She looked at me bewildered. "I could never have thought it. He +is a proud man all the Rochesters were proud and his father, +at least, liked money. He, too, has always been called careful. +He means to marry you?" +"He tells me so." +She surveyed my whole person in her eyes I read that they had +there found no charm powerful enough to solve the enigma. +"It passes me" she continued "but no doubt, it is true since you +say so. How it will answer, I cannot tell I really don't know. +Equality of position and fortune is often advisable in such cases +and there are twenty years of difference in your ages. He might +almost be your father." +"No, indeed, Mrs. Fairfax" exclaimed I, nettled "he is nothing +like my father No one, who saw us together, would suppose it for +an instant. Mr. Rochester looks as young, and is as young, as some +men at fiveandtwenty." +"Is it really for love he is going to marry you?" she asked. +I was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism, that the tears rose +to my eyes. +"I am sorry to grieve you," pursued the widow "but you are +so young, and so little acquainted with men, I wished to put you +on your guard. It is an old saying that 'all is not gold that +glitters' and in this case I do fear there will be something found +to be different to what either you or I expect." +"Why? am I a monster?" I said "is it impossible that Mr. +Rochester should have a sincere affection for me?" +"No you are very well and much improved of late and Mr. Rochester, +I daresay, is fond of you. I have always noticed that you were a +sort of pet of his. There are times when, for your sake, I have +been a little uneasy at his marked preference, and have wished +to put you on your guard but I did not like to suggest even the +possibility of wrong. I knew such an idea would shock, perhaps +offend you and you were so discreet, and so thoroughly modest and +sensible, I hoped you might be trusted to protect yourself. Last +night I cannot tell you what I suffered when I sought all over +the house, and could find you nowhere, nor the master either and +then, at twelve o'clock, saw you come in with him." +"Well, never mind that now," I interrupted impatiently "it is +enough that all was right." +"I hope all will be right in the end," she said "but believe me, +you cannot be too careful. Try and keep Mr. Rochester at a distance +distrust yourself as well as him. Gentlemen in his station are +not accustomed to marry their governesses." +I was growing truly irritated happily, Adele ran in. +"Let me go, let me go to Millcote too" she cried. "Mr. Rochester +won't though there is so much room in the new carriage. Beg him +to let me go mademoiselle." +"That I will, Adele" and I hastened away with her, glad to quit +my gloomy monitress. The carriage was ready they were bringing +it round to the front, and my master was on the pavement, Pilot +following him backwards and forwards. +"Adele may accompany us, may she not, sir?" +"I told her no. I'll have no brats I'll have only you." +"Do let her go, Mr. Rochester, if you please it would be better." +"Not it she will be a restraint." +He was quite peremptory, both in look and voice. The chill of +Mrs. Fairfax's warnings, and the damp of her doubts were upon me +something of unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes. +I half lost the sense of power over him. I was about mechanically +to obey him, without further remonstrance but as he helped me into +the carriage, he looked at my face. +"What is the matter?" he asked "all the sunshine is gone. Do +you really wish the bairn to go? Will it annoy you if she is left +behind?" +"I would far rather she went, sir." +"Then off for your bonnet, and back like a flash of lightning" +cried he to Adele. +She obeyed him with what speed she might. +"After all, a single morning's interruption will not matter much," +said he, "when I mean shortly to claim you your thoughts, +conversation, and company for life." +Adele, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing +her gratitude for my intercession she was instantly stowed away +into a corner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to +where I sat so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in +his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor +ask of him any information. +"Let her come to me," I entreated "she will, perhaps, trouble +you, sir there is plenty of room on this side." +He handed her over as if she had been a lapdog. "I'll send her to +school yet," he said, but now he was smiling. +Adele heard him, and asked if she was to go to school "sans +mademoiselle?" +"Yes," he replied, "absolutely sans mademoiselle for I am to take +mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of +the white valleys among the volcanotops, and mademoiselle shall +live with me there, and only me." +"She will have nothing to eat you will starve her," observed +Adele. +"I shall gather manna for her morning and night the plains and +hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adele." +"She will want to warm herself what will she do for a fire?" +"Fire rises out of the lunar mountains when she is cold, I'll +carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater." +"Oh, qu' elle y sera mal peu comfortable And her clothes, they +will wear out how can she get new ones?" +Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. "Hem" said he. "What +would you do, Adele? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How +would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And +one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow." +"She is far better as she is," concluded Adele, after musing some +time "besides, she would get tired of living with only you in +the moon. If I were mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with +you." +"She has consented she has pledged her word." +"But you can't get her there there is no road to the moon it is +all air and neither you nor she can fly." +"Adele, look at that field." We were now outside Thornfield gates, +and bowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote, where the +dust was well laid by the thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges +and lofty timber trees on each side glistened green and rainrefreshed. +"In that field, Adele, I was walking late one evening about +a fortnight since the evening of the day you helped me to make +hay in the orchard meadows and, as I was tired with raking swaths, +I sat down to rest me on a stile and there I took out a little book +and a pencil, and began to write about a misfortune that befell me +long ago, and a wish I had for happy days to come I was writing +away very fast, though daylight was fading from the leaf, when +something came up the path and stopped two yards off me. I looked +at it. It was a little thing with a veil of gossamer on its head. +I beckoned it to come near me it stood soon at my knee. I never +spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words but I read its eyes, +and it read mine and our speechless colloquy was to this effect +"It was a fairy, and come from Elfland, it said and its errand +was to make me happy I must go with it out of the common world to +a lonely place such as the moon, for instance and it nodded +its head towards her horn, rising over Hayhill it told me of +the alabaster cave and silver vale where we might live. I said I +should like to go but reminded it, as you did me, that I had no +wings to fly. +"'Oh,' returned the fairy, 'that does not signify Here is a +talisman will remove all difficulties' and she held out a pretty +gold ring. 'Put it,' she said, 'on the fourth finger of my left +hand, and I am yours, and you are mine and we shall leave earth, +and make our own heaven yonder.' She nodded again at the moon. +The ring, Adele, is in my breechespocket, under the disguise of +a sovereign but I mean soon to change it to a ring again." +"But what has mademoiselle to do with it? I don't care for the +fairy you said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon?" +"Mademoiselle is a fairy," he said, whispering mysteriously. Whereupon +I told her not to mind his badinage and she, on her part, evinced +a fund of genuine French scepticism denominating Mr. Rochester "un +vrai menteur," and assuring him that she made no account whatever +of his "contes de fee," and that "du reste, il n'y avait pas de +fees, et quand meme il y en avait" she was sure they would never +appear to him, nor ever give him rings, or offer to live with him +in the moon. +The hour spent at Millcote was a somewhat harassing one to me. Mr. +Rochester obliged me to go to a certain silk warehouse there I +was ordered to choose halfadozen dresses. I hated the business, +I begged leave to defer it no it should be gone through with +now. By dint of entreaties expressed in energetic whispers, I +reduced the halfdozen to two these however, he vowed he would +select himself. With anxiety I watched his eye rove over the gay +stores he fixed on a rich silk of the most brilliant amethyst dye, +and a superb pink satin. I told him in a new series of whispers, +that he might as well buy me a gold gown and a silver bonnet at +once I should certainly never venture to wear his choice. With +infinite difficulty, for he was stubborn as a stone, I persuaded him +to make an exchange in favour of a sober black satin and pearlgrey +silk. "It might pass for the present," he said "but he would yet +see me glittering like a parterre." +Glad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of +a jewellers shop the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned +with a sense of annoyance and degradation. As we reentered the +carriage, and I sat back feverish and fagged, I remembered what, +in the hurry of events, dark and bright, I had wholly forgotten +the letter of my uncle, John Eyre, to Mrs. Reed his intention to +adopt me and make me his legatee. "It would, indeed, be a relief," +I thought, "if I had ever so small an independency I never can +bear being dressed like a doll by Mr. Rochester, or sitting like +a second Danae with the golden shower falling daily round me. I +will write to Madeira the moment I get home, and tell my uncle John +I am going to be married, and to whom if I had but a prospect +of one day bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of fortune, I could +better endure to be kept by him now." And somewhat relieved by +this idea which I failed not to execute that day, I ventured once +more to meet my master's and lover's eye, which most pertinaciously +sought mine, though I averted both face and gaze. He smiled and +I thought his smile was such as a sultan might, in a blissful and +fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched I +crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously, and +thrust it back to him red with the passionate pressure. +"You need not look in that way," I said "if you do, I'll wear +nothing but my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter. I'll +be married in this lilac gingham you may make a dressinggown +for yourself out of the pearlgrey silk, and an infinite series of +waistcoats out of the black satin." +He chuckled he rubbed his hands. "Oh, it is rich to see and hear +her?" he exclaimed. "Is she original? Is she piquant? I would +not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk's +whole seraglio, gazelleeyes, houri forms, and all" +The Eastern allusion bit me again. "I'll not stand you an inch in +the stead of a seraglio," I said "so don't consider me an equivalent +for one. If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with +you, sir, to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out +in extensive slavepurchases some of that spare cash you seem at +a loss to spend satisfactorily here." +"And what will you do, Janet, while I am bargaining for so many +tons of flesh and such an assortment of black eyes?" +"I'll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach +liberty to them that are enslaved your harem inmates amongst the +rest. I'll get admitted there, and I'll stir up mutiny and you, +threetailed bashaw as you are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself +fettered amongst our hands nor will I, for one, consent to cut +your bonds till you have signed a charter, the most liberal that +despot ever yet conferred." +"I would consent to be at your mercy, Jane." +"I would have no mercy, Mr. Rochester, if you supplicated for it +with an eye like that. While you looked so, I should be certain +that whatever charter you might grant under coercion, your first +act, when released, would be to violate its conditions." +"Why, Jane, what would you have? I fear you will compel me to go +through a private marriage ceremony, besides that performed at the +altar. You will stipulate, I see, for peculiar terms what will +they be?" +"I only want an easy mind, sir not crushed by crowded obligations. +Do you remember what you said of Celine Varens? of the diamonds, +the cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Celine +Varens. I shall continue to act as Adele's governess by that I +shall earn my board and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides. +I'll furnish my own wardrobe out of that money, and you +shall give me nothing but " +"Well, but what?" +"Your regard and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be +quit." +"Well, for cool native impudence and pure innate pride, you haven't +your equal," said he. We were now approaching Thornfield. "Will +it please you to dine with me today?" he asked, as we reentered +the gates. +"No, thank you, sir." +"And what for, 'no, thank you?' if one may inquire." +"I never have dined with you, sir and I see no reason +why I should now till " +"Till what? You delight in halfphrases." +"Till I can't help it." +"Do you suppose I eat like an ogre or a ghoul, that you dread being +the companion of my repast?" +"I have formed no supposition on the subject, sir but I want to +go on as usual for another month." +"You will give up your governessing slavery at once." +"Indeed, begging your pardon, sir, I shall not. I shall just go +on with it as usual. I shall keep out of your way all day, as I +have been accustomed to do you may send for me in the evening, +when you feel disposed to see me, and I'll come then but at no +other time." +"I want a smoke, Jane, or a pinch of snuff, to comfort me under +all this, 'pour me donner une contenance,' as Adele would say and +unfortunately I have neither my cigarcase, nor my snuffbox. But +listen whisper. It is your time now, little tyrant, but it will +be mine presently and when once I have fairly seized you, to have +and to hold, I'll just figuratively speaking attach you to +a chain like this" touching his watchguard. "Yes, bonny wee +thing, I'll wear you in my bosom, lest my jewel I should tyne." +He said this as he helped me to alight from the carriage, and while +he afterwards lifted out Adele, I entered the house, and made good +my retreat upstairs. +He duly summoned me to his presence in the evening. I had prepared +an occupation for him for I was determined not to spend the whole +time in a teteetete conversation. I remembered his fine voice +I knew he liked to sing good singers generally do. I was +no vocalist myself, and, in his fastidious judgment, no musician, +either but I delighted in listening when the performance was good. +No sooner had twilight, that hour of romance, began to lower her +blue and starry banner over the lattice, than I rose, opened the +piano, and entreated him, for the love of heaven, to give me a +song. He said I was a capricious witch, and that he would rather +sing another time but I averred that no time was like the present. +"Did I like his voice?" he asked. +"Very much." I was not fond of pampering that susceptible vanity +of his but for once, and from motives of expediency, I would e'en +soothe and stimulate it. +"Then, Jane, you must play the accompaniment." +"Very well, sir, I will try." +I did try, but was presently swept off the stool and denominated "a +little bungler." Being pushed unceremoniously to one side which +was precisely what I wished he usurped my place, and proceeded +to accompany himself for he could play as well as sing. I hied +me to the windowrecess. And while I sat there and looked out on +the still trees and dim lawn, to a sweet air was sung in mellow +tones the following strain +"The truest love that ever heart +Felt at its kindled core, +Did through each vein, in quickened start, +The tide of being pour. +"Her coming was my hope each day, +Her parting was my pain +The chance that did her steps delay +Was ice in every vein. +"I dreamed it would be nameless bliss, +As I loved, loved to be +And to this object did I press +As blind as eagerly. +"But wide as pathless was the space +That lay our lives between, +And dangerous as the foamy race +Of oceansurges green. +"And haunted as a robberpath +Through wilderness or wood +For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath, +Between our spirits stood. +"I dangers dared I hindrance scorned +I omens did defy +Whatever menaced, harassed, warned, +I passed impetuous by. +"On sped my rainbow, fast as light +I flew as in a dream +For glorious rose upon my sight +That child of Shower and Gleam. +"Still bright on clouds of suffering dim +Shines that soft, solemn joy +Nor care I now, how dense and grim +Disasters gather nigh. +"I care not in this moment sweet, +Though all I have rushed o'er +Should come on pinion, strong and fleet, +Proclaiming vengeance sore +"Though haughty Hate should strike me down, +Right, bar approach to me, +And grinding Might, with furious frown, +Swear endless enmity. +"My love has placed her little hand +With noble faith in mine, +And vowed that wedlock's sacred band +Our nature shall entwine. +"My love has sworn, with sealing kiss, +With me to live to die +I have at last my nameless bliss. +As I love loved am I" +He rose and came towards me, and I saw his face all kindled, and +his full falconeye flashing, and tenderness and passion in every +lineament. I quailed momentarily then I rallied. Soft scene, +daring demonstration, I would not have and I stood in peril of +both a weapon of defence must be prepared I whetted my tongue +as he reached me, I asked with asperity, "whom he was going to +marry now?" +"That was a strange question to be put by his darling Jane." +"Indeed I considered it a very natural and necessary one he +had talked of his future wife dying with him. What did he mean +by such a pagan idea? I had no intention of dying with him he +might depend on that." +"Oh, all he longed, all he prayed for, was that I might live with +him Death was not for such as I." +"Indeed it was I had as good a right to die when my time came as +he had but I should bide that time, and not be hurried away in +a suttee." +"Would I forgive him for the selfish idea, and prove my pardon by +a reconciling kiss?" +"No I would rather be excused." +Here I heard myself apostrophised as a "hard little thing" and +it was added, "any other woman would have been melted to marrow at +hearing such stanzas crooned in her praise." +I assured him I was naturally hard very flinty, and that he would +often find me so and that, moreover, I was determined to show him +divers rugged points in my character before the ensuing four weeks +elapsed he should know fully what sort of a bargain he had made, +while there was yet time to rescind it. +"Would I be quiet and talk rationally?" +"I would be quiet if he liked, and as to talking rationally, I +flattered myself I was doing that now." +He fretted, pished, and pshawed. "Very good," I thought "you may +fume and fidget as you please but this is the best plan to pursue +with you, I am certain. I like you more than I can say but I'll +not sink into a bathos of sentiment and with this needle of +repartee I'll keep you from the edge of the gulf too and, moreover, +maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself +most conducive to our real mutual advantage." +From less to more, I worked him up to considerable irritation then, +after he had retired, in dudgeon, quite to the other end of the +room, I got up, and saying, "I wish you goodnight, sir," in my +natural and wonted respectful manner, I slipped out by the sidedoor +and got away. +The system thus entered on, I pursued during the whole season of +probation and with the best success. He was kept, to be sure, rather +cross and crusty but on the whole I could see he was excellently +entertained, and that a lamblike submission and turtledove +sensibility, while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased +his judgment, satisfied his commonsense, and even suited his taste +less. +In other people's presence I was, as formerly, deferential and +quiet any other line of conduct being uncalled for it was only +in the evening conferences I thus thwarted and afflicted him. He +continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck +seven though when I appeared before him now, he had no such +honeyed terms as "love" and "darling" on his lips the best words +at my service were "provoking puppet," "malicious elf," "sprite," +"changeling," c. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces for a +pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm for a kiss on the cheek, a +severe tweak of the ear. It was all right at present I decidedly +preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. Mrs. +Fairfax, I saw, approved me her anxiety on my account vanished +therefore I was certain I did well. Meantime, Mr. Rochester +affirmed I was wearing him to skin and bone, and threatened awful +vengeance for my present conduct at some period fast coming. I +laughed in my sleeve at his menaces. "I can keep you in reasonable +check now," I reflected "and I don't doubt to be able to do +it hereafter if one expedient loses its virtue, another must be +devised." +Yet after all my task was not an easy one often I would rather have +pleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my +whole world and more than the world almost my hope of heaven. +He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse +intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those +days, see God for His creature of whom I had made an idol. +CHAPTER XXV +The month of courtship had wasted its very last hours were being +numbered. There was no putting off the day that advanced the +bridal day and all preparations for its arrival were complete. I, +at least, had nothing more to do there were my trunks, packed, +locked, corded, ranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber +tomorrow, at this time, they would be far on their road to London +and so should I D.V., or rather, not I, but one Jane Rochester, +a person whom as yet I knew not. The cards of address alone remained +to nail on they lay, four little squares, in the drawer. Mr. +Rochester had himself written the direction, "Mrs. Rochester, +Hotel, London," on each I could not persuade myself to affix +them, or to have them affixed. Mrs. Rochester She did not exist +she would not be born till tomorrow, some time after eight o'clock +a.m. and I would wait to be assured she had come into the world +alive before I assigned to her all that property. It was enough +that in yonder closet, opposite my dressingtable, garments said to +be hers had already displaced my black stuff Lowood frock and straw +bonnet for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment +the pearlcoloured robe, the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped +portmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraithlike +apparel it contained which, at this evening hour nine o'clock +gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow +of my apartment. "I will leave you by yourself, white dream," I +said. "I am feverish I hear the wind blowing I will go out of +doors and feel it." +It was not only the hurry of preparation that made me feverish +not only the anticipation of the great change the new life which +was to commence tomorrow both these circumstances had their +share, doubtless, in producing that restless, excited mood which +hurried me forth at this late hour into the darkening grounds but +a third cause influenced my mind more than they. +I had at heart a strange and anxious thought. Something had +happened which I could not comprehend no one knew of or had seen +the event but myself it had taken place the preceding night. Mr. +Rochester that night was absent from home nor was he yet returned +business had called him to a small estate of two or three farms he +possessed thirty miles off business it was requisite he should +settle in person, previous to his meditated departure from England. +I waited now his return eager to disburthen my mind, and to seek +of him the solution of the enigma that perplexed me. Stay till +he comes, reader and, when I disclose my secret to him, you shall +share the confidence. +I sought the orchard, driven to its shelter by the wind, which all +day had blown strong and full from the south, without, however, +bringing a speck of rain. Instead of subsiding as night drew on, +it seemed to augment its rush and deepen its roar the trees blew +steadfastly one way, never writhing round, and scarcely tossing +back their boughs once in an hour so continuous was the strain +bending their branchy heads northward the clouds drifted from +pole to pole, fast following, mass on mass no glimpse of blue +sky had been visible that July day. +It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, +delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless airtorrent thundering +through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of +the chestnuttree it stood up black and riven the trunk, split +down the centre, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken +from each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them +unsundered below though community of vitality was destroyed +the sap could flow no more their great boughs on each side were +dead, and next winter's tempests would be sure to fell one or both +to earth as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree +a ruin, but an entire ruin. +"You did right to hold fast to each other," I said as if +the monstersplinters were living things, and could hear me. "I +think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must +be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion +at the faithful, honest roots you will never have green leaves +more never more see birds making nests and singing idyls in +your boughs the time of pleasure and love is over with you but +you are not desolate each of you has a comrade to sympathise +with him in his decay." As I looked up at them, the moon appeared +momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure +her disk was blood red and half overcast she seemed to throw on +me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly +in the deep drift of cloud. The wind fell, for a second, round +Thornfield but far away over wood and water, poured a wild, +melancholy wail it was sad to listen to, and I ran off again. +Here and there I strayed through the orchard, gathered up the apples +with which the grass round the tree roots was thickly strewn then +I employed myself in dividing the ripe from the unripe I carried +them into the house and put them away in the storeroom. Then +I repaired to the library to ascertain whether the fire was lit, +for, though summer, I knew on such a gloomy evening Mr. Rochester +would like to see a cheerful hearth when he came in yes, the fire +had been kindled some time, and burnt well. I placed his armchair +by the chimneycorner I wheeled the table near it I let down +the curtain, and had the candles brought in ready for lighting. +More restless than ever, when I had completed these arrangements +I could not sit still, nor even remain in the house a little +timepiece in the room and the old clock in the hall simultaneously +struck ten. +"How late it grows" I said. "I will run down to the gates it +is moonlight at intervals I can see a good way on the road. He may +be coming now, and to meet him will save some minutes of suspense." +The wind roared high in the great trees which embowered the gates +but the road as far as I could see, to the right hand and the +left, was all still and solitary save for the shadows of clouds +crossing it at intervals as the moon looked out, it was but a long +pale line, unvaried by one moving speck. +A puerile tear dimmed my eye while I looked a tear of disappointment +and impatience ashamed of it, I wiped it away. I lingered the +moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her +curtain of dense cloud the night grew dark rain came driving +fast on the gale. +"I wish he would come I wish he would come" I exclaimed, seized +with hypochondriac foreboding. I had expected his arrival before +tea now it was dark what could keep him? Had an accident happened? +The event of last night again recurred to me. I interpreted it +as a warning of disaster. I feared my hopes were too bright to be +realised and I had enjoyed so much bliss lately that I imagined +my fortune had passed its meridian, and must now decline. +"Well, I cannot return to the house," I thought "I cannot sit by +the fireside, while he is abroad in inclement weather better tire +my limbs than strain my heart I will go forward and meet him." +I set out I walked fast, but not far ere I had measured a quarter +of a mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs a horseman came on, full +gallop a dog ran by his side. Away with evil presentiment It +was he here he was, mounted on Mesrour, followed by Pilot. He +saw me for the moon had opened a blue field in the sky, and rode +in it watery bright he took his hat off, and waved it round his +head. I now ran to meet him. +"There" he exclaimed, as he stretched out his hand and bent from +the saddle "You can't do without me, that is evident. Step on +my boottoe give me both hands mount" +I obeyed joy made me agile I sprang up before him. A hearty +kissing I got for a welcome, and some boastful triumph, which I +swallowed as well as I could. He checked himself in his exultation +to demand, "But is there anything the matter, Janet, that you come +to meet me at such an hour? Is there anything wrong?" +"No, but I thought you would never come. I could not bear to wait +in the house for you, especially with this rain and wind." +"Rain and wind, indeed Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid pull +my cloak round you but I think you are feverish, Jane both your +cheek and hand are burning hot. I ask again, is there anything +the matter? +"Nothing now I am neither afraid nor unhappy." +"Then you have been both?" +"Rather but I'll tell you all about it byandbye, sir and I +daresay you will only laugh at me for my pains." +"I'll laugh at you heartily when tomorrow is past till then I +dare not my prize is not certain. This is you, who have been as +slippery as an eel this last month, and as thorny as a briarrose? +I could not lay a finger anywhere but I was pricked and now I seem +to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms. You wandered out of +the fold to seek your shepherd, did you, Jane?" +"I wanted you but don't boast. Here we are at Thornfield now +let me get down." +He landed me on the pavement. As John took his horse, and he followed +me into the hall, he told me to make haste and put something dry +on, and then return to him in the library and he stopped me, as +I made for the staircase, to extort a promise that I would not be +long nor was I long in five minutes I rejoined him. I found +him at supper. +"Take a seat and bear me company, Jane please God, it is the last +meal but one you will eat at Thornfield Hall for a long time." +I sat down near him, but told him I could not eat. "Is it because +you have the prospect of a journey before you, Jane? Is it the +thoughts of going to London that takes away your appetite?" +"I cannot see my prospects clearly tonight, sir and I hardly know +what thoughts I have in my head. Everything in life seems unreal." +"Except me I am substantial enough touch me." +"You, sir, are the most phantomlike of all you are a mere dream." +He held out his hand, laughing. "Is that a dream?" said he, placing +it close to my eyes. He had a rounded, muscular, and vigorous +hand, as well as a long, strong arm. +"Yes though I touch it, it is a dream," said I, as I put it down +from before my face. "Sir, have you finished supper?" +"Yes, Jane." +I rang the bell and ordered away the tray. When we were again +alone, I stirred the fire, and then took a low seat at my master's +knee. +"It is near midnight," I said. +"Yes but remember, Jane, you promised to wake with me the night +before my wedding." +"I did and I will keep my promise, for an hour or two at least +I have no wish to go to bed." +"Are all your arrangements complete?" +"All, sir." +"And on my part likewise," he returned, "I have settled everything +and we shall leave Thornfield tomorrow, within halfanhour after +our return from church." +"Very well, sir." +"With what an extraordinary smile you uttered that word 'very +well,' Jane What a bright spot of colour you have on each cheek +and how strangely your eyes glitter Are you well?" +"I believe I am." +"Believe What is the matter? Tell me what you feel." +"I could not, sir no words could tell you what I feel. I wish +this present hour would never end who knows with what fate the +next may come charged?" +"This is hypochondria, Jane. You have been overexcited, or +overfatigued." +"Do you, sir, feel calm and happy?" +"Calm? no but happy to the heart's core." +I looked up at him to read the signs of bliss in his face it was +ardent and flushed. +"Give me your confidence, Jane," he said "relieve your mind of +any weight that oppresses it, by imparting it to me. What do you +fear? that I shall not prove a good husband?" +"It is the idea farthest from my thoughts." +"Are you apprehensive of the new sphere you are about to enter? +of the new life into which you are passing?" +"No." +"You puzzle me, Jane your look and tone of sorrowful audacity +perplex and pain me. I want an explanation." +"Then, sir, listen. You were from home last night?" +"I was I know that and you hinted a while ago at something which +had happened in my absence nothing, probably, of consequence +but, in short, it has disturbed you. Let me hear it. Mrs. Fairfax +has said something, perhaps? or you have overheard the servants +talk? your sensitive selfrespect has been wounded?" +"No, sir." It struck twelve I waited till the timepiece had +concluded its silver chime, and the clock its hoarse, vibrating +stroke, and then I proceeded. +"All day yesterday I was very busy, and very happy in my ceaseless +bustle for I am not, as you seem to think, troubled by any haunting +fears about the new sphere, et cetera I think it a glorious +thing to have the hope of living with you, because I love you. No, +sir, don't caress me now let me talk undisturbed. Yesterday I +trusted well in Providence, and believed that events were working +together for your good and mine it was a fine day, if you recollect +the calmness of the air and sky forbade apprehensions respecting +your safety or comfort on your journey. I walked a little while +on the pavement after tea, thinking of you and I beheld you in +imagination so near me, I scarcely missed your actual presence. +I thought of the life that lay before me YOUR life, sir an +existence more expansive and stirring than my own as much more +so as the depths of the sea to which the brook runs are than the +shallows of its own strait channel. I wondered why moralists call +this world a dreary wilderness for me it blossomed like a rose. +Just at sunset, the air turned cold and the sky cloudy I went in, +Sophie called me upstairs to look at my weddingdress, which they +had just brought and under it in the box I found your present +the veil which, in your princely extravagance, you sent for from +London resolved, I suppose, since I would not have jewels, to +cheat me into accepting something as costly. I smiled as I unfolded +it, and devised how I would tease you about your aristocratic tastes, +and your efforts to masque your plebeian bride in the attributes +of a peeress. I though how I would carry down to you the square +of unembroidered blond I had myself prepared as a covering for my +lowborn head, and ask if that was not good enough for a woman who +could bring her husband neither fortune, beauty, nor connections. +I saw plainly how you would look and heard your impetuous republican +answers, and your haughty disavowal of any necessity on your part +to augment your wealth, or elevate your standing, by marrying either +a purse or a coronet." +"How well you read me, you witch" interposed Mr. Rochester "but +what did you find in the veil besides its embroidery? Did you find +poison, or a dagger, that you look so mournful now?" +"No, no, sir besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric, +I found nothing save Fairfax Rochester's pride and that did not +scare me, because I am used to the sight of the demon. But, sir, +as it grew dark, the wind rose it blew yesterday evening, not as +it blows now wild and high but 'with a sullen, moaning sound' +far more eerie. I wished you were at home. I came into this room, +and the sight of the empty chair and fireless hearth chilled me. +For some time after I went to bed, I could not sleep a sense of +anxious excitement distressed me. The gale still rising, seemed +to my ear to muffle a mournful undersound whether in the house +or abroad I could not at first tell, but it recurred, doubtful +yet doleful at every lull at last I made out it must be some dog +howling at a distance. I was glad when it ceased. On sleeping, I +continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I continued +also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful +consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my first +sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road total +obscurity environed me rain pelted me I was burdened with the +charge of a little child a very small creature, too young and +feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed +piteously in my ear. I thought, sir, that you were on the road +a long way before me and I strained every nerve to overtake you, +and made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat you to +stop but my movements were fettered, and my voice still died +away inarticulate while you, I felt, withdrew farther and farther +every moment." +"And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close +to you? Little nervous subject Forget visionary woe, and think +only of real happiness You say you love me, Janet yes I will +not forget that and you cannot deny it. THOSE words did not die +inarticulate on your lips. I heard them clear and soft a thought +too solemn perhaps, but sweet as music 'I think it is a glorious +thing to have the hope of living with you, Edward, because I love +you.' Do you love me, Jane? repeat it." +"I do, sir I do, with my whole heart." +"Well," he said, after some minutes' silence, "it is strange but +that sentence has penetrated my breast painfully. Why? I think +because you said it with such an earnest, religious energy, and +because your upward gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith, +truth, and devotion it is too much as if some spirit were near +me. Look wicked, Jane as you know well how to look coin one +of your wild, shy, provoking smiles tell me you hate me tease +me, vex me do anything but move me I would rather be incensed +than saddened." +"I will tease you and vex you to your heart's content, when I have +finished my tale but hear me to the end." +"I thought, Jane, you had told me all. I thought I had found the +source of your melancholy in a dream." +I shook my head. "What is there more? But I will not believe +it to be anything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. +Go on." +The disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience +of his manner, surprised me but I proceeded. +"I dreamt another dream, sir that Thornfield Hall was a dreary +ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the +stately front nothing remained but a shelllike wall, very high and +very fragilelooking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through +the grassgrown enclosure within here I stumbled over a marble +hearth, and there over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up +in a shawl, I still carried the unknown little child I might not +lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms however much its +weight impeded my progress, I must retain it. I heard the gallop +of a horse at a distance on the road I was sure it was you and +you were departing for many years and for a distant country. I +climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch +one glimpse of you from the top the stones rolled from under my +feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round +my neck in terror, and almost strangled me at last I gained the +summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening every +moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down +on the narrow ledge I hushed the scared infant in my lap you +turned an angle of the road I bent forward to take a last look +the wall crumbled I was shaken the child rolled from my knee, I +lost my balance, fell, and woke." +"Now, Jane, that is all." +"All the preface, sir the tale is yet to come. On waking, a +gleam dazzled my eyes I thought Oh, it is daylight But I was +mistaken it was only candlelight. Sophie, I supposed, had come +in. There was a light in the dressingtable, and the door of the +closet, where, before going to bed, I had hung my weddingdress +and veil, stood open I heard a rustling there. I asked, 'Sophie, +what are you doing?' No one answered but a form emerged from the +closet it took the light, held it aloft, and surveyed the garments +pendent from the portmanteau. 'Sophie Sophie' I again cried +and still it was silent. I had risen up in bed, I bent forward +first surprise, then bewilderment, came over me and then my blood +crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie, +it was not Leah, it was not Mrs. Fairfax it was not no, I was +sure of it, and am still it was not even that strange woman, +Grace Poole." +"It must have been one of them," interrupted my master. +"No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The shape +standing before me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts +of Thornfield Hall before the height, the contour were new to me." +"Describe it, Jane." +"It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair +hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on +it was white and straight but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I +cannot tell." +"Did you see her face?" +"Not at first. But presently she took my veil from its place she +held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own +head, and turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection +of the visage and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong +glass." +"And how were they?" +"Fearful and ghastly to me oh, sir, I never saw a face like it +It was a discoloured face it was a savage face. I wish I could +forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation +of the lineaments" +"Ghosts are usually pale, Jane." +"This, sir, was purple the lips were swelled and dark the brow +furrowed the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot +eyes. Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?" +"You may." +"Of the foul German spectre the Vampyre." +"Ah what did it do?" +"Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, +and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them." +"Afterwards?" +"It drew aside the windowcurtain and looked out perhaps it saw +dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. +Just at my bedside, the figure stopped the fiery eyes glared upon +me she thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished +it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, +and I lost consciousness for the second time in my life only +the second time I became insensible from terror." +"Who was with you when you revived?" +"No one, sir, but the broad day. I rose, bathed my head and face +in water, drank a long draught felt that though enfeebled I was +not ill, and determined that to none but you would I impart this +vision. Now, sir, tell me who and what that woman was?" +"The creature of an overstimulated brain that is certain. I must +be careful of you, my treasure nerves like yours were not made +for rough handling." +"Sir, depend on it, my nerves were not in fault the thing was +real the transaction actually took place." +"And your previous dreams, were they real too? Is Thornfield +Hall a ruin? Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles? Am +I leaving you without a tear without a kiss without a word?" +"Not yet." +"Am I about to do it? Why, the day is already commenced which is +to bind us indissolubly and when we are once united, there shall +be no recurrence of these mental terrors I guarantee that." +"Mental terrors, sir I wish I could believe them to be only such +I wish it more now than ever since even you cannot explain to me +the mystery of that awful visitant." +"And since I cannot do it, Jane, it must have been unreal." +"But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and +when I looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the +cheerful aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there +on the carpet I saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis, +the veil, torn from top to bottom in two halves" +I felt Mr. Rochester start and shudder he hastily flung his arms +round me. "Thank God" he exclaimed, "that if anything malignant +did come near you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed. +Oh, to think what might have happened" +He drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him, I could +scarcely pant. After some minutes' silence, he continued, cheerily +"Now, Janet, I'll explain to you all about it. It was half dream, +half reality. A woman did, I doubt not, enter your room and that +woman was must have been Grace Poole. You call her a strange +being yourself from all you know, you have reason so to call +her what did she do to me? what to Mason? In a state between +sleeping and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions +but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her +a goblin appearance different from her own the long dishevelled +hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments +of imagination results of nightmare the spiteful tearing of the +veil was real and it is like her. I see you would ask why I keep +such a woman in my house when we have been married a year and a +day, I will tell you but not now. Are you satisfied, Jane? Do +you accept my solution of the mystery?" +I reflected, and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one +satisfied I was not, but to please him I endeavoured to appear so +relieved, I certainly did feel so I answered him with a contented +smile. And now, as it was long past one, I prepared to leave him. +"Does not Sophie sleep with Adele in the nursery?" he asked, as +I lit my candle. +"Yes, sir." +"And there is room enough in Adele's little bed for you. You must +share it with her tonight, Jane it is no wonder that the incident +you have related should make you nervous, and I would rather you +did not sleep alone promise me to go to the nursery." +"I shall be very glad to do so, sir." +"And fasten the door securely on the inside. Wake Sophie when you +go upstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good +time tomorrow for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast +before eight. And now, no more sombre thoughts chase dull care +away, Janet. Don't you hear to what soft whispers the wind has +fallen? and there is no more beating of rain against the windowpanes +look here" he lifted up the curtain "it is a lovely night" +It was. Half heaven was pure and stainless the clouds, now +trooping before the wind, which had shifted to the west, were filing +off eastward in long, silvered columns. The moon shone peacefully. +"Well," said Mr. Rochester, gazing inquiringly into my eyes, "how +is my Janet now?" +"The night is serene, sir and so am I." +"And you will not dream of separation and sorrow tonight but of +happy love and blissful union." +This prediction was but half fulfilled I did not indeed dream of +sorrow, but as little did I dream of joy for I never slept at all. +With little Adele in my arms, I watched the slumber of childhood +so tranquil, so passionless, so innocent and waited for the +coming day all my life was awake and astir in my frame and as +soon as the sun rose I rose too. I remember Adele clung to me as I +left her I remember I kissed her as I loosened her little hands +from my neck and I cried over her with strange emotion, and quitted +her because I feared my sobs would break her still sound repose. +She seemed the emblem of my past life and he I was now to array +myself to meet, the dread, but adored, type of my unknown future +day. +CHAPTER XXVI +Sophie came at seven to dress me she was very long indeed in +accomplishing her task so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I suppose, +impatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come. She was +just fastening my veil the plain square of blond after all to +my hair with a brooch I hurried from under her hands as soon as +I could. +"Stop" she cried in French. "Look at yourself in the mirror +you have not taken one peep." +So I turned at the door I saw a robed and veiled figure, so +unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. +"Jane" called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at +the foot of the stairs by Mr. Rochester. +"Lingerer" he said, "my brain is on fire with impatience, and +you tarry so long" +He took me into the diningroom, surveyed me keenly all over, +pronounced me "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, +but the desire of his eyes," and then telling me he would give me +but ten minutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of +his lately hired servants, a footman, answered it. +"Is John getting the carriage ready?" +"Yes, sir." +"Is the luggage brought down?" +"They are bringing it down, sir." +"Go you to the church see if Mr. Wood the clergyman and the +clerk are there return and tell me." +The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates +the footman soon returned. +"Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice." +"And the carriage?" +"The horses are harnessing." +"We shall not want it to go to church but it must be ready the +moment we return all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped +on, and the coachman in his seat." +"Yes, sir." +"Jane, are you ready?" +I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to +wait for or marshal none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax +stood in the hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, +but my hand was held by a grasp of iron I was hurried along by a +stride I could hardly follow and to look at Mr. Rochester's face +was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for any +purpose. I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did +so bent up to a purpose, so grimly resolute or who, under such +steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes. +I know not whether the day was fair or foul in descending the drive, +I gazed neither on sky nor earth my heart was with my eyes and +both seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester's frame. I wanted to see +the invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to +fasten a glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts +whose force he seemed breasting and resisting. +At the churchyard wicket he stopped he discovered I was quite out +of breath. "Am I cruel in my love?" he said. "Delay an instant +lean on me, Jane." +And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God +rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a +ruddy morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green +gravemounds and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of +strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes +graven on the few mossy headstones. I noticed them, because, +as they saw us, they passed round to the back of the church and +I doubted not they were going to enter by the sideaisle door and +witness the ceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed he +was earnestly looking at my face from which the blood had, I daresay, +momentarily fled for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and +lips cold. When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with +me up the path to the porch. +We entered the quiet and humble temple the priest waited in his +white surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was +still two shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture +had been correct the strangers had slipped in before us, and they +now stood by the vault of the Rochesters, their backs towards us, +viewing through the rails the old timestained marble tomb, where +a kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester, slain +at Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars, and of Elizabeth, +his wife. +Our place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious +step behind me, I glanced over my shoulder one of the strangers +a gentleman, evidently was advancing up the chancel. The +service began. The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone +through and then the clergyman came a step further forward, and, +bending slightly towards Mr. Rochester, went on. +"I require and charge you both as ye will answer at the dreadful +day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, +that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully +be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it for be ye +well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than +God's Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is +their matrimony lawful." +He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence +ever broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And +the clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had +held his breath but for a moment, was proceeding his hand was +already stretched towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to +ask, "Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?" +when a distinct and near voice said +"The marriage cannot go on I declare the existence of an impediment." +The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute the clerk +did the same Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had +rolled under his feet taking a firmer footing, and not turning +his head or eyes, he said, "Proceed." +Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with +deep but low intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said +"I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been +asserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood." +"The ceremony is quite broken off," subjoined the voice behind +us. "I am in a condition to prove my allegation an insuperable +impediment to this marriage exists." +Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not he stood stubborn and rigid, +making no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot +and strong grasp he had and how like quarried marble was his +pale, firm, massive front at this moment How his eye shone, still +watchful, and yet wild beneath +Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. "What is the nature of the impediment?" +he asked. "Perhaps it may be got over explained away?" +"Hardly," was the answer. "I have called it insuperable, and I +speak advisedly." +The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued, +uttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly +"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr. +Rochester has a wife now living." +My nerves vibrated to those lowspoken words as they had never +vibrated to thunder my blood felt their subtle violence as it +had never felt frost or fire but I was collected, and in no danger +of swooning. I looked at Mr. Rochester I made him look at me. +His whole face was colourless rock his eye was both spark and +flint. He disavowed nothing he seemed as if he would defy all +things. Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to +recognise in me a human being, he only twined my waist with his +arm and riveted me to his side. +"Who are you?" he asked of the intruder. +"My name is Briggs, a solicitor of Street, London." +"And you would thrust on me a wife?" +"I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law +recognises, if you do not." +"Favour me with an account of her with her name, her parentage, +her place of abode." +"Certainly." Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and +read out in a sort of official, nasal voice +"'I affirm and can prove that on the th of October A.D. a +date of fifteen years back, Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield +Hall, in the county of , and of Ferndean Manor, in shire, England, +was married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of +Jonas Mason, merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at +church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be +found in the register of that church a copy of it is now in my +possession. Signed, Richard Mason.'" +"That if a genuine document may prove I have been married, +but it does not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife +is still living." +"She was living three months ago," returned the lawyer. +"How do you know?" +"I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will +scarcely controvert." +"Produce him or go to hell." +"I will produce him first he is on the spot. Mr. Mason, have +the goodness to step forward." +Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth he experienced, +too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver near to him as I was, I +felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame. +The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, +now drew near a pale face looked over the solicitor's shoulder +yes, it was Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at +him. His eye, as I have often said, was a black eye it had now +a tawny, nay, a bloody light in its gloom and his face flushed +olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow as from spreading, +ascending heartfire and he stirred, lifted his strong arm he +could have struck Mason, dashed him on the churchfloor, shocked +by ruthless blow the breath from his body but Mason shrank away, +and cried faintly, "Good God" Contempt fell cool on Mr. Rochester +his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up he only +asked "What have YOU to say?" +An inaudible reply escaped Mason's white lips. +"The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again +demand, what have you to say?" +"Sir sir," interrupted the clergyman, "do not forget you are in +a sacred place." Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, "Are +you aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still +living?" +"Courage," urged the lawyer, "speak out." +"She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, in more articulate +tones "I saw her there last April. I am her brother." +"At Thornfield Hall" ejaculated the clergyman. "Impossible I +am an old resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard +of a Mrs. Rochester at Thornfield Hall." +I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester's lips, and he muttered +"No, by God I took care that none should hear of it +or of her under that name." He mused for ten minutes he held +counsel with himself he formed his resolve, and announced it +"Enough all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the +barrel. Wood, close your book and take off your surplice John +Green to the clerk, leave the church there will be no wedding +today." The man obeyed. +Mr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly "Bigamy is an +ugly word I meant, however, to be a bigamist but fate has out +manoeuvred me, or Providence has checked me, perhaps the last. +I am little better than a devil at this moment and, as my pastor +there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of +God, even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm. Gentlemen, +my plan is broken up what this lawyer and his client say is true +I have been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives +You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder, +Wood but I daresay you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip +about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward. Some +have whispered to you that she is my bastard halfsister some, +my castoff mistress. I now inform you that she is my wife, whom +I married fifteen years ago, Bertha Mason by name sister of +this resolute personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs and +white cheeks, showing you what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer +up, Dick never fear me I'd almost as soon strike a woman +as you. Bertha Mason is mad and she came of a mad family idiots +and maniacs through three generations Her mother, the Creole, +was both a madwoman and a drunkard as I found out after I had +wed the daughter for they were silent on family secrets before. +Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. +I had a charming partner pure, wise, modest you can fancy I +was a happy man. I went through rich scenes Oh my experience +has been heavenly, if you only knew it But I owe you no further +explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come up to +the house and visit Mrs. Poole's patient, and MY WIFE You shall +see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing, and judge +whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy +with something at least human. This girl," he continued, looking +at me, "knew no more than you, Wood, of the disgusting secret +she thought all was fair and legal and never dreamt she was going +to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded wretch, +already bound to a bad, mad, and embruted partner Come all of +you follow" +Still holding me fast, he left the church the three gentlemen +came after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage. +"Take it back to the coachhouse, John," said Mr. Rochester coolly +"it will not be wanted today." +At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adele, Sophie, Leah, advanced to +meet and greet us. +"To the rightabout every soul" cried the master "away with +your congratulations Who wants them? Not I they are fifteen +years too late" +He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and +still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We +mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to +the third storey the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's +masterkey, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed +and its pictorial cabinet. +"You know this place, Mason," said our guide "she bit and stabbed +you here." +He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door +this, too, he opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a +fire guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from +the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently +cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther +end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it +was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, +tell it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours it snatched and growled +like some strange wild animal but it was covered with clothing, +and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head +and face. +"Goodmorrow, Mrs. Poole" said Mr. Rochester. "How are you? and +how is your charge today?" +"We're tolerable, sir, I thank you," replied Grace, lifting the +boiling mess carefully on to the hob "rather snappish, but not +'rageous." +A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report the +clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hindfeet. +"Ah sir, she sees you" exclaimed Grace "you'd better not +stay." +"Only a few moments, Grace you must allow me a few moments." +"Take care then, sir for God's sake, take care" +The maniac bellowed she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, +and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple +face, those bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced. +"Keep out of the way," said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside +"she has no knife now, I suppose, and I'm on my guard." +"One never knows what she has, sir she is so cunning it is not +in mortal discretion to fathom her craft." +"We had better leave her," whispered Mason. +"Go to the devil" was his brotherinlaw's recommendation. +"'Ware" cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. +Mr. Rochester flung me behind him the lunatic sprang and grappled +his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek they +struggled. She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her +husband, and corpulent besides she showed virile force in the +contest more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as +he was. He could have settled her with a wellplanted blow but +he would not strike he would only wrestle. At last he mastered +her arms Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind +her with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair. +The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most +convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the spectators +he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate. +"That is MY WIFE," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal embrace +I am ever to know such are the endearments which are to solace +my leisure hours And THIS is what I wished to have" laying his +hand on my shoulder "this young girl, who stands so grave and +quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of +a demon, I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout. +Wood and Briggs, look at the difference Compare these clear eyes +with the red balls yonder this face with that mask this form +with that bulk then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the +law, and remember with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged +Off with you now. I must shut up my prize." +We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give +some further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as +he descended the stair. +"You, madam," said he, "are cleared from all blame your uncle +will be glad to hear it if, indeed, he should be still living +when Mr. Mason returns to Madeira." +"My uncle What of him? Do you know him?" +"Mr. Mason does. Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of +his house for some years. When your uncle received your letter +intimating the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, +Mr. Mason, who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his +way back to Jamaica, happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned +the intelligence for he knew that my client here was acquainted +with a gentleman of the name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished +and distressed as you may suppose, revealed the real state of +matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a sick bed from +which, considering the nature of his disease decline and the +stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise. He could +not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the snare +into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to lose no +time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred +him to me for assistance. I used all despatch, and am thankful +I was not too late as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not +morally certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, +I would advise you to accompany Mr. Mason back but as it is, I +think you had better remain in England till you can hear further, +either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have we anything else to stay for?" +he inquired of Mr. Mason. +"No, no let us be gone," was the anxious reply and without +waiting to take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at +the hall door. The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, +either of admonition or reproof, with his haughty parishioner this +duty done, he too departed. +I heard him go as I stood at the halfopen door of my own room, to +which I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in, +fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded not to +weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but mechanically +to take off the wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I +had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time. I then sat +down I felt weak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and +my head dropped on them. And now I thought till now I had only +heard, seen, moved followed up and down where I was led or dragged +watched event rush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure +but NOW, I THOUGHT. +The morning had been a quiet morning enough all except the brief +scene with the lunatic the transaction in the church had not been +noisy there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no +dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs a few words +had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage +made some stern, short questions put by Mr. Rochester answers, +explanations given, evidence adduced an open admission of the +truth had been uttered by my master then the living proof had been +seen the intruders were gone, and all was over. +I was in my own room as usual just myself, without obvious +change nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And +yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday? where was her life? +where were her prospects? +Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman almost +a bride, was a cold, solitary girl again her life was pale her +prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer +a white December storm had whirled over June ice glazed the ripe +apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses on hayfield and cornfield lay +a frozen shroud lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, +today were pathless with untrodden snow and the woods, which +twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the +tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pineforests in wintry +Norway. My hopes were all dead struck with a subtle doom, such +as, in one night, fell on all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. +I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing +they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I +looked at my love that feeling which was my master's which he +had created it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a +cold cradle sickness and anguish had seized it it could not seek +Mr. Rochester's arms it could not derive warmth from his breast. +Oh, never more could it turn to him for faith was blighted +confidence destroyed Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had +been for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe +vice to him I would not say he had betrayed me but the attribute +of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I +must go THAT I perceived well. When how whither, I could +not yet discern but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from +Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me +it had been only fitful passion that was balked he would want me +no more. I should fear even to cross his path now my view must +be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes How weak my +conduct +My eyes were covered and closed eddying darkness seemed to swim +round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. +Selfabandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me +down in the driedup bed of a great river I heard a flood loosened +in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come to rise I had no +will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. +One idea only still throbbed lifelike within me a remembrance +of God it begot an unuttered prayer these words went wandering +up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should +be whispered, but no energy was found to express them +"Be not far from me, for trouble is near there is none to help." +It was near and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it +as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved +my lips it came in full heavy swing the torrent poured over +me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my +hope quenched, my faith deathstruck, swayed full and mighty above +me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described in +truth, "the waters came into my soul I sank in deep mire I felt +no standing I came into deep waters the floods overflowed me." +CHAPTER XXVII +Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round +and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the +wall, I asked, "What am I to do?" +But the answer my mind gave "Leave Thornfield at once" was +so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not +bear such words now. "That I am not Edward Rochester's bride is +the least part of my woe," I alleged "that I have wakened out of +most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror +I could bear and master but that I must leave him decidedly, +instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it." +But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold +that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution I wanted +to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering +I saw laid out for me and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion +by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her +dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he +would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony. +"Let me be torn away," then I cried. "Let another help me" +"No you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you you shall +yourself pluck out your right eye yourself cut off your right hand +your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it." +I rose up suddenly, terrorstruck at the solitude which so ruthless +a judge haunted, at the silence which so awful a voice filled. +My head swam as I stood erect. I perceived that I was sickening +from excitement and inanition neither meat nor drink had passed my +lips that day, for I had taken no breakfast. And, with a strange +pang, I now reflected that, long as I had been shut up here, no +message had been sent to ask how I was, or to invite me to come +down not even little Adele had tapped at the door not even Mrs. +Fairfax had sought me. "Friends always forget those whom fortune +forsakes," I murmured, as I undrew the bolt and passed out. I +stumbled over an obstacle my head was still dizzy, my sight was +dim, and my limbs were feeble. I could not soon recover myself. +I fell, but not on to the ground an outstretched arm caught me. +I looked up I was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a chair +across my chamber threshold. +"You come out at last," he said. "Well, I have been waiting for +you long, and listening yet not one movement have I heard, nor +one sob five minutes more of that deathlike hush, and I should +have forced the lock like a burglar. So you shun me? you shut +yourself up and grieve alone I would rather you had come and +upbraided me with vehemence. You are passionate. I expected a +scene of some kind. I was prepared for the hot rain of tears only +I wanted them to be shed on my breast now a senseless floor has +received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I err you have +not wept at all I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace +of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood?" +"Well, Jane not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter nothing +poignant? Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit +quietly where I have placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive +look." +"Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but +one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of +his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some +mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his +bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive +me?" +Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. There was +such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such +manly energy in his manner and besides, there was such unchanged +love in his whole look and mien I forgave him all yet not in +words, not outwardly only at my heart's core. +"You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?" ere long he inquired wistfully +wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness, the +result rather of weakness than of will. +"Yes, sir." +"Then tell me so roundly and sharply don't spare me." +"I cannot I am tired and sick. I want some water." He heaved +a sort of shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me +downstairs. At first I did not know to what room he had borne me +all was cloudy to my glazed sight presently I felt the reviving +warmth of a fire for, summer as it was, I had become icy cold in +my chamber. He put wine to my lips I tasted it and revived then +I ate something he offered me, and was soon myself. I was in the +library sitting in his chair he was quite near. "If I could +go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well +for me," I thought "then I should not have to make the effort of +cracking my heartstrings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. +I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him I +cannot leave him." +"How are you now, Jane?" +"Much better, sir I shall be well soon." +"Taste the wine again, Jane." +I obeyed him then he put the glass on the table, stood before me, +and looked at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away, with an +inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind +he walked fast through the room and came back he stooped towards +me as if to kiss me but I remembered caresses were now forbidden. +I turned my face away and put his aside. +"What How is this?" he exclaimed hastily. "Oh, I know you +won't kiss the husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled +and my embraces appropriated?" +"At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir." +"Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking I will +answer for you Because I have a wife already, you would reply. +I guess rightly?" +"Yes." +"If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me you must +regard me as a plotting profligate a base and low rake who +has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into +a snare deliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of +self respect. What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing +in the first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do +to draw your breath in the second place, you cannot yet accustom +yourself to accuse and revile me, and besides, the floodgates of +tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much and +you have no desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene +you are thinking how TO ACT TALKING you consider is of no use. +I know you I am on my guard." +"Sir, I do not wish to act against you," I said and my unsteady +voice warned me to curtail my sentence. +"Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to +destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man +as a married man you will shun me, keep out of my way just now +you have refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete +stranger to me to live under this roof only as Adele's governess +if ever I say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling +inclines you again to me, you will say, 'That man had nearly +made me his mistress I must be ice and rock to him' and ice and +rock you will accordingly become." +I cleared and steadied my voice to reply "All is changed about me, +sir I must change too there is no doubt of that and to avoid +fluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections +and associations, there is only one way Adele must have a new +governess, sir." +"Oh, Adele will go to school I have settled that already nor do +I mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections +of Thornfield Hall this accursed place this tent of Achan +this insolent vault, offering the ghastliness of living death to +the light of the open sky this narrow stone hell, with its one +real fiend, worse than a legion of such as we imagine. Jane, you +shall not stay here, nor will I. I was wrong ever to bring you to +Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged +them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of +the curse of the place merely because I feared Adele never would +have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed, +and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere +though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired +and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, +had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the +heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. +Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge +but to each villain his own vice and mine is not a tendency to +indirect assassination, even of what I most hate. +"Concealing the madwoman's neighbourhood from you, however, was +something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down +near a upastree that demon's vicinage is poisoned, and always +was. But I'll shut up Thornfield Hall I'll nail up the front +door and board the lower windows I'll give Mrs. Poole two hundred +a year to live here with MY WIFE, as you term that fearful hag +Grace will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper +at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her +aid in the paroxysms, when MY WIFE is prompted by her familiar to +burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite +their flesh from their bones, and so on " +"Sir," I interrupted him, "you are inexorable for that unfortunate +lady you speak of her with hate with vindictive antipathy. +It is cruel she cannot help being mad." +"Jane, my little darling so I will call you, for so you are, you +don't know what you are talking about you misjudge me again it +is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you +think I should hate you?" +"I do indeed, sir." +"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing +about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your +flesh is as dear to me as my own in pain and sickness it would +still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it +would be my treasure still if you raved, my arms should confine +you, and not a strait waistcoat your grasp, even in fury, would +have a charm for me if you flew at me as wildly as that woman +did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as +fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with +disgust as I did from her in your quiet moments you should have +no watcher and no nurse but me and I could hang over you with +untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return and +never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer +a ray of recognition for me. But why do I follow that train of +ideas? I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All, you +know, is prepared for prompt departure tomorrow you shall go. I +only ask you to endure one more night under this roof, Jane and +then, farewell to its miseries and terrors for ever I have a +place to repair to, which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful +reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion even from falsehood and +slander." +"And take Adele with you, sir," I interrupted "she will be a +companion for you." +"What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adele to school +and what do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own +child, a French dancer's bastard? Why do you importune me about +her I say, why do you assign Adele to me for a companion?" +"You spoke of a retirement, sir and retirement and solitude are +dull too dull for you." +"Solitude solitude" he reiterated with irritation. "I see I must +come to an explanation. I don't know what sphynxlike expression +is forming in your countenance. You are to share my solitude. Do +you understand?" +I shook my head it required a degree of courage, excited as he +was becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been +walking fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted +to one spot. He looked at me long and hard I turned my eyes +from him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to assume and maintain +a quiet, collected aspect. +"Now for the hitch in Jane's character," he said at last, speaking +more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. "The +reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far but I always knew there +would come a knot and a puzzle here it is. Now for vexation, +and exasperation, and endless trouble By God I long to exert +a fraction of Samson's strength, and break the entanglement like +tow" +He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just +before me. +"Jane will you hear reason?" he stooped and approached his +lips to my ear "because, if you won't, I'll try violence." His +voice was hoarse his look that of a man who is just about to +burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license. +I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, +I should be able to do nothing with him. The present the passing +second of time was all I had in which to control and restrain +him a movement of repulsion, flight, fear would have sealed my +doom, and his. But I was not afraid not in the least. I felt +an inward power a sense of influence, which supported me. The +crisis was perilous but not without its charm such as the Indian, +perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took +hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, +and said to him, soothingly +"Sit down I'll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you +have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable." +He sat down but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had +been struggling with tears for some time I had taken great pains +to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. +Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely +and as long as they liked. If the flood annoyed him, so much the +better. So I gave way and cried heartily. +Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said +I could not while he was in such a passion. +"But I am not angry, Jane I only love you too well and you had +steeled your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, +I could not endure it. Hush, now, and wipe your eyes." +His softened voice announced that he was subdued so I, in my +turn, became calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my +shoulder, but I would not permit it. Then he would draw me to him +no. +"Jane Jane" he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it +thrilled along every nerve I had "you don't love me, then? It +was only my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now +that you think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil +from my touch as if I were some toad or ape." +These words cut me yet what could I do or I say? I ought probably +to have done or said nothing but I was so tortured by a sense of +remorse at thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish +to drop balm where I had wounded. +"I DO love you," I said, "more than ever but I must not show or +indulge the feeling and this is the last time I must express it." +"The last time, Jane What do you think you can live with me, +and see me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold +and distant?" +"No, sir that I am certain I could not and therefore I see there +is but one way but you will be furious if I mention it." +"Oh, mention it If I storm, you have the art of weeping." +"Mr. Rochester, I must leave you." +"For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your +hair which is somewhat dishevelled and bathe your face which +looks feverish?" +"I must leave Adele and Thornfield. I must part with you for my +whole life I must begin a new existence among strange faces and +strange scenes." +"Of course I told you you should. I pass over the madness about +parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to +the new existence, it is all right you shall yet be my wife I +am not married. You shall be Mrs. Rochester both virtually and +nominally. I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live. You +shall go to a place I have in the south of France a whitewashed +villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live +a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life. Never fear that I +wish to lure you into error to make you my mistress. Why did +you shake your head? Jane, you must be reasonable, or in truth I +shall again become frantic." +His voice and hand quivered his large nostrils dilated his eye +blazed still I dared to speak. +"Sir, your wife is living that is a fact acknowledged this morning +by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be +your mistress to say otherwise is sophistical is false." +"Jane, I am not a gentletempered man you forget that I am +not longenduring I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to +me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, +and beware" +He bared his wrist, and offered it to me the blood was forsaking +his cheek and lips, they were growing livid I was distressed on all +hands. To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, +was cruel to yield was out of the question. I did what human +beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity +looked for aid to one higher than man the words "God help me" +burst involuntarily from my lips. +"I am a fool" cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. "I keep telling +her I am not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she +knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances +attending my infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will +agree with me in opinion, when she knows all that I know Just put +your hand in mine, Janet that I may have the evidence of touch +as well as sight, to prove you are near me and I will in a few +words show you the real state of the case. Can you listen to me?" +"Yes, sir for hours if you will." +"I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was +not the eldest son of my house that I had once a brother older +than I?" +"I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once." +"And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping +man?" +"I have understood something to that effect." +"Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property +together he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate +and leaving me a fair portion all, he resolved, should go to my +brother, Rowland. Yet as little could he endure that a son of his +should be a poor man. I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage. +He sought me a partner betimes. Mr. Mason, a West India planter and +merchant, was his old acquaintance. He was certain his possessions +were real and vast he made inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a +son and daughter and he learned from him that he could and would +give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds that sufficed. +When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride +already courted for me. My father said nothing about her money +but he told me Miss Mason was the boast of Spanish Town for her +beauty and this was no lie. I found her a fine woman, in the +style of Blanche Ingram tall, dark, and majestic. Her family +wished to secure me because I was of a good race and so did she. +They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom +saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her. +She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms +and accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her +and envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated my senses were excited +and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved +her. There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of +society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will +not hurry a man to its commission. Her relatives encouraged me +competitors piqued me she allured me a marriage was achieved +almost before I knew where I was. Oh, I have no respect for myself +when I think of that act an agony of inward contempt masters +me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her. I +was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature I had +marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement +in her mind or manners and, I married her gross, grovelling, +moleeyed blockhead that I was With less sin I might have But +let me remember to whom I am speaking." +"My bride's mother I had never seen I understood she was dead. +The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake she was only mad, and +shut up in a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too +a complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen and whom +I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some +grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued +interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a doglike +attachment he once bore me, will probably be in the same state +one day. My father and my brother Rowland knew all this but they +thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot +against me." +"These were vile discoveries but except for the treachery +of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to +my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her +tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and +singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded +to anything larger when I found that I could not pass a single +evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort +that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because +whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at +once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile when I perceived +that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because +no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and +unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, +exacting orders even then I restrained myself I eschewed +upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance I tried to devour my repentance +and disgust in secret I repressed the deep antipathy I felt. +"Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details some strong +words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman +upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed +her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity her +vices sprang up fast and rank they were so strong, only cruelty +could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy +intellect she had, and what giant propensities How fearful were +the curses those propensities entailed on me Bertha Mason, the +true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the +hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a +wife at once intemperate and unchaste. +"My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four +years my father died too. I was rich enough now yet poor to +hideous indigence a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever +saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society +a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal +proceedings for the doctors now discovered that MY WIFE was mad +her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. +Jane, you don't like my narrative you look almost sick shall +I defer the rest to another day?" +"No, sir, finish it now I pity you I do earnestly pity you." +"Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of +tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of +those who offer it but that is the sort of pity native to callous, +selfish hearts it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of +woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured +them. But that is not your pity, Jane it is not the feeling of +which your whole face is full at this moment with which your eyes +are now almost overflowing with which your heart is heaving +with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, +is the suffering mother of love its anguish is the very natal +pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane let the daughter +have free advent my arms wait to receive her." +"Now, sir, proceed what did you do when you found she was mad?" +"Jane, I approached the verge of despair a remnant of selfrespect +was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes +of the world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour but I +resolved to be clean in my own sight and to the last I repudiated +the contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection +with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and +person with hers I yet saw her and heard her daily something +of her breath faugh mixed with the air I breathed and besides, +I remembered I had once been her husband that recollection was +then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me moreover, I knew that +while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better +wife and, though five years my senior her family and her father +had lied to me even in the particular of her age, she was likely +to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm +in mind. Thus, at the age of twentysix, I was hopeless. +"One night I had been awakened by her yells since the medical +men had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up +it was a fiery West Indian night one of the description that +frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates. Being unable +to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window. The air was like +sulphursteams I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes +came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room the sea, which +I could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake black +clouds were casting up over it the moon was setting in the waves, +broad and red, like a hot cannonball she threw her last bloody +glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was +physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were +filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out wherein she +momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demonhate, with +such language no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary +than she though two rooms off, I heard every word the thin +partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction +to her wolfish cries. +"'This life,' said I at last, 'is hell this is the air those +are the sounds of the bottomless pit I have a right to deliver +myself from it if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will +leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the +fanatic's burning eternity I have no fear there is not a future +state worse than this present one let me break away, and go home +to God' +"I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which +contained a brace of loaded pistols I mean to shoot myself. I +only entertained the intention for a moment for, not being insane, +the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated +the wish and design of selfdestruction, was past in a second. +"A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through +the open casement the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, +and the air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. +While I walked under the dripping orangetrees of my wet garden, +and amongst its drenched pomegranates and pineapples, and while +the refulgent dawn of the tropics kindled round me I reasoned +thus, Jane and now listen for it was true Wisdom that consoled +me in that hour, and showed me the right path to follow. +"The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed +leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty my +heart, dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, +and filled with living blood my being longed for renewal my +soul thirsted for a pure draught. I saw hope revive and felt +regeneration possible. From a flowery arch at the bottom of my +garden I gazed over the sea bluer than the sky the old world +was beyond clear prospects opened thus +"'Go,' said Hope, 'and live again in Europe there it is not known +what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound +to you. You may take the maniac with you to England confine her +with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield then travel +yourself to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like. +That woman, who has so abused your longsuffering, so sullied your +name, so outraged your honour, so blighted your youth, is not your +wife, nor are you her husband. See that she is cared for as her +condition demands, and you have done all that God and humanity +require of you. Let her identity, her connection with yourself, +be buried in oblivion you are bound to impart them to no living +being. Place her in safety and comfort shelter her degradation +with secrecy, and leave her.' +"I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had +not made my marriage known to their acquaintance because, in the +very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union having +already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences, +and, from the family character and constitution, seeing a hideous +future opening to me I added an urgent charge to keep it +secret and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father +had selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his +daughterinlaw. Far from desiring to publish the connection, he +became as anxious to conceal it as myself. +"To England, then, I conveyed her a fearful voyage I had with +such a monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her +to Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that thirdstorey room, +of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild +beast's den a goblin's cell. I had some trouble in finding an +attendant for her, as it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity +dependence could be placed for her ravings would inevitably betray +my secret besides, she had lucid intervals of days sometimes +weeks which she filled up with abuse of me. At last I hired +Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She and the surgeon, Carter +who dressed Mason's wounds that night he was stabbed and worried, +are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence. Mrs. Fairfax +may indeed have suspected something, but she could have gained no +precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has, on the whole, proved a +good keeper though, owing partly to a fault of her own, of which +it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her +harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled +and baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and malignant she has +never failed to take advantage of her guardian's temporary lapses +once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and +twice to possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom +in the nighttime. On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated +the attempt to burn me in my bed on the second, she paid that +ghastly visit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you, +that she then spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps +brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days but on what +might have happened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of +the thing which flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black +and scarlet visage over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles." +"And what, sir," I asked, while he paused, "did you do when you +had settled her here? Where did you go?" +"What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a willo'thewisp. +Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the +Marchspirit. I sought the Continent, and went devious through +all its lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and +intelligent woman, whom I could love a contrast to the +fury I left at Thornfield " +"But you could not marry, sir." +"I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It +was not my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you. +I meant to tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly and +it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered +free to love and be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found +willing and able to understand my case and accept me, in spite of +the curse with which I was burdened." +"Well, sir?" +"When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You +open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a +restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough +for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one's heart. But +before I go on, tell me what you mean by your 'Well, sir?' It is +a small phrase very frequent with you and which many a time has +drawn me on and on through interminable talk I don't very well +know why." +"I mean, What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an +event?" +"Precisely and what do you wish to know now?" +"Whether you found any one you liked whether you asked her to +marry you and what she said." +"I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I +asked her to marry me but what she said is yet to be recorded in +the book of Fate. For ten long years I roved about, living first +in one capital, then another sometimes in St. Petersburg oftener +in Paris occasionally in Rome, Naples, and Florence. Provided +with plenty of money and the passport of an old name, I could choose +my own society no circles were closed against me. I sought my +ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian +signoras, and German grafinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes, +for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glance, heard a tone, +beheld a form, which announced the realisation of my dream but +I was presently undeserved. You are not to suppose that I desired +perfection, either of mind or person. I longed only for what +suited me for the antipodes of the Creole and I longed vainly. +Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever so free, +I warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of +incongruous unions would have asked to marry me. Disappointment +made me reckless. I tried dissipation never debauchery that +I hated, and hate. That was my Indian Messalina's attribute +rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. +Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her +and her vices, and I eschewed it. +"Yet I could not live alone so I tried the companionship +of mistresses. The first I chose was Celine Varens another of +those steps which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You +already know what she was, and how my liaison with her terminated. +She had two successors an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara +both considered singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me +in a few weeks? Giacinta was unprincipled and violent I tired +of her in three months. Clara was honest and quiet but heavy, +mindless, and unimpressible not one whit to my taste. I was +glad to give her a sufficient sum to set her up in a good line of +business, and so get decently rid of her. But, Jane, I see by your +face you are not forming a very favourable opinion of me just now. +You think me an unfeeling, looseprincipled rake don't you?" +"I don't like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. +Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, +first with one mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere +matter of course." +"It was with me and I did not like it. It was a grovelling +fashion of existence I should never like to return to it. Hiring +a mistress is the next worse thing to buying a slave both are +often by nature, and always by position, inferior and to live +familiarly with inferiors is degrading. I now hate the recollection +of the time I passed with Celine, Giacinta, and Clara." +I felt the truth of these words and I drew from them the certain +inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching +that had ever been instilled into me, as under any pretext +with any justification through any temptation to become the +successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the +same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did +not give utterance to this conviction it was enough to feel it. +I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me +as aid in the time of trial. +"Now, Jane, why don't you say 'Well, sir?' I have not done. You +are looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let +me come to the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses in a +harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely +life corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all +men, and especially against all womankind for I began to regard +the notion of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere +dream, recalled by business, I came back to England. +"On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall. +Abhorred spot I expected no peace no pleasure there. On a +stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. +I passed it as negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite +to it I had no presentiment of what it would be to me no inward +warning that the arbitress of my life my genius for good or evil +waited there in humble guise. I did not know it, even when, on +the occasion of Mesrour's accident, it came up and gravely offered +me help. Childish and slender creature It seemed as if a linnet +had hopped to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing. I +was surly but the thing would not go it stood by me with strange +perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort of authority. I +must be aided, and by that hand and aided I was. +"When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new a +fresh sap and sense stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt +that this elf must return to me that it belonged to my house +down below or I could not have felt it pass away from under my +hand, and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge, without singular +regret. I heard you come home that night, Jane, though probably +you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. The +next day I observed you myself unseen for halfanhour, +while you played with Adele in the gallery. It was a snowy day, +I recollect, and you could not go out of doors. I was in my room +the door was ajar I could both listen and watch. Adele claimed +your outward attention for a while yet I fancied your thoughts +were elsewhere but you were very patient with her, my little +Jane you talked to her and amused her a long time. When at last +she left you, you lapsed at once into deep reverie you betook +yourself slowly to pace the gallery. Now and then, in passing a +casement, you glanced out at the thickfalling snow you listened +to the sobbing wind, and again you paced gently on and dreamed. +I think those day visions were not dark there was a pleasurable +illumination in your eye occasionally, a soft excitement in your +aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious, hypochondriac brooding +your look revealed rather the sweet musings of youth when its spirit +follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up and on to an ideal +heaven. The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a servant in the +hall, wakened you and how curiously you smiled to and at yourself, +Janet There was much sense in your smile it was very shrewd, +and seemed to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to say +'My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they +are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden +in my brain but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet +a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to +encounter.' You ran downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some +occupation the weekly house accounts to make up, or something of +that sort, I think it was. I was vexed with you for getting out +of my sight. +"Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you +to my presence. An unusual to me a perfectly new character +I suspected was yours I desired to search it deeper and know it +better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and +independent you were quaintly dressed much as you are now. +I made you talk ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. +Your garb and manner were restricted by rule your air was often +diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but +absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making +herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder +yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing +eye to your interlocutor's face there was penetration and power +in each glance you gave when plied by close questions, you found +ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me +I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your +grim and cross master, Jane for it was astonishing to see how +quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquillised your manner snarl +as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure +at my moroseness you watched me, and now and then smiled at me +with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once +content and stimulated with what I saw I liked what I had seen, +and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you +distantly, and sought your company rarely. I was an intellectual +epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this +novel and piquant acquaintance besides, I was for a while troubled +with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom +would fade the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did +not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the +radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover, +I wished to see whether you would seek me if I shunned you but +you did not you kept in the schoolroom as still as your own desk +and easel if by chance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with +as little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect. +Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful +look not despondent, for you were not sickly but not buoyant, +for you had little hope, and no actual pleasure. I wondered what +you thought of me, or if you ever thought of me, and resolved to +find this out. +"I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your +glance, and genial in your manner, when you conversed I saw you +had a social heart it was the silent schoolroom it was the +tedium of your life that made you mournful. I permitted myself +the delight of being kind to you kindness stirred emotion soon +your face became soft in expression, your tones gentle I liked my +name pronounced by your lips in a grateful happy accent. I used to +enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time there was a +curious hesitation in your manner you glanced at me with a slight +trouble a hovering doubt you did not know what my caprice might +be whether I was going to play the master and be stern, or the +friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate +the first whim and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such +bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, +I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my +heart." +"Don't talk any more of those days, sir," I interrupted, furtively +dashing away some tears from my eyes his language was torture +to me for I knew what I must do and do soon and all these +reminiscences, and these revelations of his feelings only made my +work more difficult. +"No, Jane," he returned "what necessity is there to dwell on +the Past, when the Present is so much surer the Future so much +brighter?" +I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion. +"You see now how the case stands do you not?" he continued. +"After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and +half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can +truly love I have found you. You are my sympathy my better +self my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. +I think you good, gifted, lovely a fervent, a solemn passion +is conceived in my heart it leans to you, draws you to my centre +and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in +pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one. +"It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry +you. To tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery you +know now that I had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt +to deceive you but I feared a stubbornness that exists in your +character. I feared early instilled prejudice I wanted to have +you safe before hazarding confidences. This was cowardly I should +have appealed to your nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do +now opened to you plainly my life of agony described to you +my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier existence shown +to you, not my RESOLUTION that word is weak, but my resistless +BENT to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and well +loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge +of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane give it me now." +A pause. +"Why are you silent, Jane?" +I was experiencing an ordeal a hand of fiery iron grasped my +vitals. Terrible moment full of struggle, blackness, burning +Not a human being that ever lived could wish to be loved better +than I was loved and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped +and I must renounce love and idol. One drear word comprised my +intolerable duty "Depart" +"Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise 'I +will be yours, Mr. Rochester.'" +"Mr. Rochester, I will NOT be yours." +Another long silence. +"Jane" recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with +grief, and turned me stonecold with ominous terror for this +still voice was the pant of a lion rising "Jane, do you mean to +go one way in the world, and to let me go another?" +"I do." +"Jane" bending towards and embracing me, "do you mean it now?" +"I do." +"And now?" softly kissing my forehead and cheek. +"I do," extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely. +"Oh, Jane, this is bitter This this is wicked. It would not +be wicked to love me." +"It would to obey you." +A wild look raised his brows crossed his features he rose +but he forebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for +support I shook, I feared but I resolved. +"One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you +are gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is +left? For a wife I have but the maniac upstairs as well might +you refer me to some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I +do, Jane? Where turn for a companion and for some hope?" +"Do as I do trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope +to meet again there." +"Then you will not yield?" +"No." +"Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?" His +voice rose. +"I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil." +"Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on +lust for a passion vice for an occupation?" +"Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at +it for myself. We were born to strive and endure you as well +as I do so. You will forget me before I forget you." +"You make me a liar by such language you sully my honour. I +declared I could not change you tell me to my face I shall change +soon. And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity +in your ideas, is proved by your conduct Is it better to drive +a fellowcreature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, +no man being injured by the breach? for you have neither relatives +nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?" +This was true and while he spoke my very conscience and reason +turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting +him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling and that clamoured +wildly. "Oh, comply" it said. "Think of his misery think of his +danger look at his state when left alone remember his headlong +nature consider the recklessness following on despair soothe +him save him love him tell him you love him and will be his. +Who in the world cares for YOU? or who will be injured by what you +do?" +Still indomitable was the reply "I care for myself. The more +solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more +I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God sanctioned +by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was +sane, and not mad as I am now. Laws and principles are not for +the times when there is no temptation they are for such moments +as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour +stringent are they inviolate they shall be. If at my individual +convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They +have a worth so I have always believed and if I cannot believe +it now, it is because I am insane quite insane with my veins +running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its +throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all +I have at this hour to stand by there I plant my foot." +I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. +His fury was wrought to the highest he must yield to it for a +moment, whatever followed he crossed the floor and seized my arm +and grasped my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming +glance physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble +exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace mentally, I still +possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety. +The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter often an unconscious, +but still a truthful interpreter in the eye. My eye rose to +his and while I looked in his fierce face I gave an involuntary +sigh his gripe was painful, and my overtaxed strength almost +exhausted. +"Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at once +so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand" +And he shook me with the force of his hold. "I could bend her +with my finger and thumb and what good would it do if I bent, +if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye consider the +resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with +more than courage with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its +cage, I cannot get at it the savage, beautiful creature If +I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the +captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house but the inmate +would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its +clay dwellingplace. And it is you, spirit with will and energy, +and virtue and purity that I want not alone your brittle frame. +Of yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my +heart, if you would seized against your will, you will elude the +grasp like an essence you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. +Oh come, Jane, come" +As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked +at me. The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain +only an idiot, however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and +baffled his fury I must elude his sorrow I retired to the door. +"You are going, Jane?" +"I am going, sir." +"You are leaving me?" +"Yes." +"You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My +deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?" +What unutterable pathos was in his voice How hard it was to +reiterate firmly, "I am going." +"Jane" +"Mr. Rochester" +"Withdraw, then, I consent but remember, you leave me here in +anguish. Go up to your own room think over all I have said, and, +Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings think of me." +He turned away he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh, +Jane my hope my love my life" broke in anguish from his +lips. Then came a deep, strong sob. +I had already gained the door but, reader, I walked back walked +back as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him +I turned his face from the cushion to me I kissed his cheek I +smoothed his hair with my hand. +"God bless you, my dear master" I said. "God keep you from harm +and wrong direct you, solace you reward you well for your +past kindness to me." +"Little Jane's love would have been my best reward," he answered +"without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love +yes nobly, generously." +Up the blood rushed to his face forth flashed the fire from +his eyes erect he sprang he held his arms out but I evaded the +embrace, and at once quitted the room. +"Farewell" was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added, +"Farewell for ever" +That night I never thought to sleep but a slumber fell on me as +soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the +scenes of childhood I dreamt I lay in the redroom at Gateshead +that the night was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. +The light that long ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in +this vision, seemed glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to +pause in the centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head +to look the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim the gleam +was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever. I +watched her come watched with the strangest anticipation as +though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke +forth as never moon yet burst from cloud a hand first penetrated +the sable folds and waved them away then, not a moon, but a white +human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. +It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit immeasurably +distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart +"My daughter, flee temptation." +"Mother, I will." +So I answered after I had waked from the trancelike dream. It was +yet night, but July nights are short soon after midnight, dawn +comes. "It cannot be too early to commence the task I have to +fulfil," thought I. I rose I was dressed for I had taken off +nothing but my shoes. I knew where to find in my drawers some linen, +a locket, a ring. In seeking these articles, I encountered the +beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester had forced me to accept a +few days ago. I left that it was not mine it was the visionary +bride's who had melted in air. The other articles I made up in a +parcel my purse, containing twenty shillings it was all I had, +I put in my pocket I tied on my straw bonnet, pinned my shawl, +took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put on yet, and +stole from my room. +"Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax" I whispered, as I glided past her +door. "Farewell, my darling Adele" I said, as I glanced towards +the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace +her. I had to deceive a fine ear for aught I knew it might now +be listening. +I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without a pause but +my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot +was forced to stop also. No sleep was there the inmate was +walking restlessly from wall to wall and again and again he sighed +while I listened. There was a heaven a temporary heaven +in this room for me, if I chose I had but to go in and to say +"Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till +death," and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought +of this. +That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with +impatience for day. He would send for me in the morning I should +be gone. He would have me sought for vainly. He would feel +himself forsaken his love rejected he would suffer perhaps +grow desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved towards the +lock I caught it back, and glided on. +Drearily I wound my way downstairs I knew what I had to do, and +I did it mechanically. I sought the key of the sidedoor in the +kitchen I sought, too, a phial of oil and a feather I oiled the +key and the lock. I got some water, I got some bread for perhaps +I should have to walk far and my strength, sorely shaken of late, +must not break down. All this I did without one sound. I opened +the door, passed out, shut it softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the +yard. The great gates were closed and locked but a wicket in +one of them was only latched. Through that I departed it, too, +I shut and now I was out of Thornfield. +A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the +contrary direction to Millcote a road I had never travelled, but +often noticed, and wondered where it led thither I bent my steps. +No reflection was to be allowed now not one glance was to be +cast back not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given +either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly +sweet so deadly sad that to read one line of it would dissolve +my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank +something like the world when the deluge was gone by. +I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I +believe it was a lovely summer morning I know my shoes, which I +had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I +looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. +He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, +thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block +and axeedge of the disseverment of bone and vein of the grave +gaping at the end and I thought of drear flight and homeless +wandering and oh with agony I thought of what I left. I could +not help it. I thought of him now in his room watching the +sunrise hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him +and be his. I longed to be his I panted to return it was not +too late I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As +yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and +be his comforter his pride his redeemer from misery, perhaps +from ruin. Oh, that fear of his selfabandonment far worse than +my abandonment how it goaded me It was a barbed arrowhead +in my breast it tore me when I tried to extract it it sickened +me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in +brake and copse birds were faithful to their mates birds were +emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and +frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace +from self approbation none even from selfrespect. I had injured +wounded left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still +I could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. +As to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one +and stifled the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my +solitary way fast, fast I went like one delirious. A weakness, +beginning inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell +I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. +I had some fear or hope that here I should die but I was +soon up crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again +raised to my feet as eager and as determined as ever to reach +the road. +When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge +and while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood +up and lifted my hand it stopped. I asked where it was going +the driver named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. +Rochester had no connections. I asked for what sum he would take +me there he said thirty shillings I answered I had but twenty +well, he would try to make it do. He further gave me leave to get +into the inside, as the vehicle was empty I entered, was shut +in, and it rolled on its way. +Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt May your eyes +never shed such stormy, scalding, heartwrung tears as poured from +mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and +so agonised as in that hour left my lips for never may you, like +me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love. +CHAPTER XXVIII +Two days are passed. It is a summer evening the coachman has set +me down at a place called Whitcross he could take me no farther +for the sum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling +in the world. The coach is a mile off by this time I am alone. +At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of +the pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety there +it remains, there it must remain and now, I am absolutely destitute. +Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet it is but a stone pillar +set up where four roads meet whitewashed, I suppose, to be more +obvious at a distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its +summit the nearest town to which these point is, according to the +inscription, distant ten miles the farthest, above twenty. From +the wellknown names of these towns I learn in what county I have +lighted a northmidland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with +mountain this I see. There are great moors behind and on each +hand of me there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep +valley at my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see +no passengers on these roads they stretch out east, west, north, +and south white, broad, lonely they are all cut in the moor, +and the heather grows deep and wild to their very verge. Yet a +chance traveller might pass by and I wish no eye to see me now +strangers would wonder what I am doing, lingering here at the +signpost, evidently objectless and lost. I might be questioned +I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and excite +suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment +not a charm or hope calls me where my fellowcreatures are none +that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I +have no relative but the universal mother, Nature I will seek +her breast and ask repose. +I struck straight into the heath I held on to a hollow I saw +deeply furrowing the brown moorside I waded kneedeep in its dark +growth I turned with its turnings, and finding a mossblackened +granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of +moor were about me the crag protected my head the sky was over +that. +Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here I had a vague +dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or +poacher might discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I +looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull if a plover whistled, +I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, +and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined +at nightfall, I took confidence. As yet I had not thought I had +only listened, watched, dreaded now I regained the faculty of +reflection. +What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when +I could do nothing and go nowhere when a long way must yet be +measured by my weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human +habitation when cold charity must be entreated before I could get +a lodging reluctant sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse +incurred, before my tale could be listened to, or one of my wants +relieved +I touched the heath, it was dry, and yet warm with the beat of the +summer day. I looked at the sky it was pure a kindly star twinkled +just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious +softness no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and +good I thought she loved me, outcast as I was and I, who from +man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her +with filial fondness. Tonight, at least, I would be her guest, +as I was her child my mother would lodge me without money and +without price. I had one morsel of bread yet the remnant of a +roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray +penny my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and +there, like jet beads in the heath I gathered a handful and ate +them with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, +appeased by this hermit's meal. I said my evening prayers at its +conclusion, and then chose my couch. +Beside the crag the heath was very deep when I lay down my feet +were buried in it rising high on each side, it left only a narrow +space for the nightair to invade. I folded my shawl double, and +spread it over me for a coverlet a low, mossy swell was my pillow. +Thus lodged, I was not, at least at the commencement of the +night, cold. +My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. +It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven +chords. It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom it bemoaned +him with bitter pity it demanded him with ceaseless longing and, +impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its +shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him. +Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night +was come, and her planets were risen a safe, still night too +serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere +but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the +grandest scale spread before us and it is in the unclouded nightsky, +where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest +His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to +my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with teardimmed +eyes, saw the mighty Milkyway. Remembering what it was what +countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light +I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency +to save what He had made convinced I grew that neither earth should +perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to +thanksgiving the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. +Mr. Rochester was safe he was God's, and by God would he be +guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill and ere long +in sleep forgot sorrow. +But next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little +birds had left their nests long after bees had come in the sweet +prime of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried +when the long morning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled +earth and sky I got up, and I looked round me. +What a still, hot, perfect day What a golden desert this spreading +moor Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on +it. I saw a lizard run over the crag I saw a bee busy among the +sweet bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or +lizard, that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter +here. But I was a human being, and had a human being's wants I +must not linger where there was nothing to supply them. I rose I +looked back at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future, I wished +but this that my Maker had that night thought good to require +my soul of me while I slept and that this weary frame, absolved +by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay +quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life, +however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and +pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be carried the want +provided for the suffering endured the responsibility fulfilled. +I set out. +Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now +fervent and high. By no other circumstance had I will to decide +my choice. I walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly +done enough, and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that +almost overpowered me might relax this forced action, and, sitting +down on a stone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that +clogged heart and limb I heard a bell chime a church bell. +I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the +romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an +hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right +hand was full of pasturefields, and cornfields, and wood and a +glittering stream ran zigzag through the varied shades of green, +the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea. +Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw +a heavilyladen waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond +were two cows and their drover. Human life and human labour were +near. I must struggle on strive to live and bend to toil like +the rest. +About two o'clock p.m. I entered the village. At the bottom of +its one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread +in the window. I coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment +I could perhaps regain a degree of energy without it, it would +be difficult to proceed. The wish to have some strength and some +vigour returned to me as soon as I was amongst my fellowbeings. +I felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the causeway +of a hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could offer in exchange for +one of these rolls? I considered. I had a small silk handkerchief +tied round my throat I had my gloves. I could hardly tell how +men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded. I did not +know whether either of these articles would be accepted probably +they would not but I must try. +I entered the shop a woman was there. Seeing a respectablydressed +person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility. +How could she serve me? I was seized with shame my tongue would +not utter the request I had prepared. I dared not offer her the +halfworn gloves, the creased handkerchief besides, I felt it +would be absurd. I only begged permission to sit down a moment, +as I was tired. Disappointed in the expectation of a customer, she +coolly acceded to my request. She pointed to a seat I sank into +it. I felt sorely urged to weep but conscious how unseasonable +such a manifestation would be, I restrained it. Soon I asked her +"if there were any dressmaker or plainworkwoman in the village?" +"Yes two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for." +I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face +to face with Necessity. I stood in the position of one without a +resource, without a friend, without a coin. I must do something. +What? I must apply somewhere. Where? +"Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant +was wanted?" +"Nay she couldn't say." +"What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the +people do?" +"Some were farm labourers a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver's +needlefactory, and at the foundry." +"Did Mr. Oliver employ women?" +"Nay it was men's work." +"And what do the women do?" +"I knawn't," was the answer. "Some does one thing, and some another. +Poor folk mun get on as they can." +She seemed to be tired of my questions and, indeed, what claim +had I to importune her? A neighbour or two came in my chair was +evidently wanted. I took leave. +I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the +right hand and to the left but I could discover no pretext, nor +see an inducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet, going +sometimes to a little distance and returning again, for an hour or +more. Much exhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, +I turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere many +minutes had elapsed, I was again on my feet, however, and again +searching something a resource, or at least an informant. A +pretty little house stood at the top of the lane, with a garden +before it, exquisitely neat and brilliantly blooming. I stopped +at it. What business had I to approach the white door or touch the +glittering knocker? In what way could it possibly be the interest +of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me? Yet I drew near +and knocked. A mildlooking, cleanlyattired young woman opened +the door. In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless +heart and fainting frame a voice wretchedly low and faltering +I asked if a servant was wanted here? +"No," said she "we do not keep a servant." +"Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?" I +continued. "I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place. +I want some work no matter what." +But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place +for me besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my +character, position, tale. She shook her head, she "was sorry she +could give me no information," and the white door closed, quite +gently and civilly but it shut me out. If she had held it open +a little longer, I believe I should have begged a piece of bread +for I was now brought low. +I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, +no prospect of aid was visible. I should have longed rather to +deviate to a wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick +shade to offer inviting shelter but I was so sick, so weak, so +gnawed with nature's cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes +where there was a chance of food. Solitude would be no solitude +rest no rest while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and +talons in my side. +I drew near houses I left them, and came back again, and again I +wandered away always repelled by the consciousness of having no +claim to ask no right to expect interest in my isolated lot. +Meantime, the afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like +a lost and starving dog. In crossing a field, I saw the church +spire before me I hastened towards it. Near the churchyard, and +in the middle of a garden, stood a wellbuilt though small house, +which I had no doubt was the parsonage. I remembered that strangers +who arrive at a place where they have no friends, and who want +employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for introduction +and aid. It is the clergyman's function to help at least with +advice those who wished to help themselves. I seemed to have +something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my +courage, and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. +I reached the house, and knocked at the kitchendoor. An old woman +opened I asked was this the parsonage? +"Yes." +"Was the clergyman in?" +"No." +"Would he be in soon?" +"No, he was gone from home." +"To a distance?" +"Not so far happen three mile. He had been called away by the +sudden death of his father he was at Marsh End now, and would +very likely stay there a fortnight longer." +"Was there any lady of the house?" +"Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper" and of +her, reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which +I was sinking I could not yet beg and again I crawled away. +Once more I took off my handkerchief once more I thought of the +cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust for but +one mouthful to allay the pang of famine Instinctively I turned +my face again to the village I found the shop again, and I went +in and though others were there besides the woman I ventured the +request "Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?" +She looked at me with evident suspicion "Nay, she never sold +stuff i' that way." +Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake she again refused. "How +could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?" she said. +"Would she take my gloves?" +"No what could she do with them?" +Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say +there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past +but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I +allude the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, +form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. +I blamed none of those who repulsed me. I felt it was what was to +be expected, and what could not be helped an ordinary beggar is +frequently an object of suspicion a welldressed beggar inevitably +so. To be sure, what I begged was employment but whose business +was it to provide me with employment? Not, certainly, that of +persons who saw me then for the first time, and who knew nothing +about my character. And as to the woman who would not take my +handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if the +offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let +me condense now. I am sick of the subject. +A little before dark I passed a farmhouse, at the open door +of which the farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread +and cheese. I stopped and said +"Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry." He cast +on me a glance of surprise but without answering, he cut a thick +slice from his loaf, and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think +I was a beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken +a fancy to his brown loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his +house, I sat down and ate it. +I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in +the wood I have before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my +rest broken the ground was damp, the air cold besides, intruders +passed near me more than once, and I had again and again to change +my quarters no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me. +Towards morning it rained the whole of the following day was +wet. Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day +as before, I sought work as before, I was repulsed as before, I +starved but once did food pass my lips. At the door of a cottage +I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a +pig trough. "Will you give me that?" I asked. +She stared at me. "Mother" she exclaimed, "there is a woman +wants me to give her these porridge." +"Well lass," replied a voice within, "give it her if she's a beggar. +T' pig doesn't want it." +The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured +it ravenously. +As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridlepath, +which I had been pursuing an hour or more. +"My strength is quite failing me," I said in a soliloquy. "I feel +I cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? +While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched +ground? I fear I cannot do otherwise for who will receive me? But +it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, +chill, and this sense of desolation this total prostration of +hope. In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning. And +why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death? Why do I +struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, +Mr. Rochester is living and then, to die of want and cold is +a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh, Providence +sustain me a little longer Aid direct me" +My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw +I had strayed far from the village it was quite out of sight. +The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by +crossways and bypaths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland +and now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the +heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and +the dusky hill. +"Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented +road," I reflected. "And far better that crows and ravens if +any ravens there be in these regions should pick my flesh from +my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin +and moulder in a pauper's grave." +To the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only +to find a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, +if not secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. +It showed no variation but of tint green, where rush and moss +overgrew the marshes black, where the dry soil bore only heath. +Dark as it was getting, I could still see these changes, though +but as mere alternations of light and shade for colour had faded +with the daylight. +My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the mooredge, +vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far +in among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. "That is +an ignis fatuus," was my first thought and I expected it would +soon vanish. It burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding +nor advancing. "Is it, then, a bonfire just kindled?" I questioned. +I watched to see whether it would spread but no as it did not +diminish, so it did not enlarge. "It may be a candle in a house," +I then conjectured "but if so, I can never reach it. It is much +too far away and were it within a yard of me, what would it avail? +I should but knock at the door to have it shut in my face." +And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground. +I lay still a while the nightwind swept over the hill and over +me, and died moaning in the distance the rain fell fast, wetting +me afresh to the skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still +frost the friendly numbness of death it might have pelted +on I should not have felt it but my yet living flesh shuddered +at its chilling influence. I rose ere long. +The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. +I tried to walk again I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards +it. It led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which +would have been impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking +even now, in the height of summer. Here I fell twice but as often +I rose and rallied my faculties. This light was my forlorn hope +I must gain it. +Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. +I approached it it was a road or a track it led straight up to +the light, which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump +of trees firs, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the +character of their forms and foliage through the gloom. My star +vanished as I drew near some obstacle had intervened between +me and it. I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me I +discriminated the rough stones of a low wall above it, something +like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge. I groped +on. Again a whitish object gleamed before me it was a gate +a wicket it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On each side +stood a sable bushholly or yew. +Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house +rose to view, black, low, and rather long but the guiding light +shone nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to +rest? I feared it must be so. In seeking the door, I turned an +angle there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged +panes of a very small latticed window, within a foot of the ground, +made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping +plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house +wall in which it was set. The aperture was so screened and narrow, +that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary and when I +stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, +I could see all within. I could see clearly a room with a sanded +floor, clean scoured a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates +ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing +peatfire. I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs. +The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table and +by its light an elderly woman, somewhat roughlooking, but scrupulously +clean, like all about her, was knitting a stocking. +I noticed these objects cursorily only in them there was nothing +extraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth, +sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two +young, graceful women ladies in every point sat, one in a low +rockingchair, the other on a lower stool both wore deep mourning +of crape and bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very +fair necks and faces a large old pointer dog rested its massive +head on the knee of one girl in the lap of the other was cushioned +a black cat. +A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants Who +were they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person +at the table for she looked like a rustic, and they were all +delicacy and cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs +and yet, as I gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. +I cannot call them handsome they were too pale and grave for +the word as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful +almost to severity. A stand between them supported a second candle +and two great volumes, to which they frequently referred, comparing +them, seemingly, with the smaller books they held in their hands, +like people consulting a dictionary to aid them in the task of +translation. This scene was as silent as if all the figures had +been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture so hushed was +it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick +in its obscure corner and I even fancied I could distinguish the +clickclick of the woman's knittingneedles. When, therefore, a +voice broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough +to me. +"Listen, Diana," said one of the absorbed students "Franz and +old Daniel are together in the nighttime, and Franz is telling a +dream from which he has awakened in terror listen" And in a +low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible +to me for it was in an unknown tongue neither French nor Latin. +Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell. +"That is strong," she said, when she had finished "I relish it." +The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, +repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been +read. At a later day, I knew the language and the book therefore, +I will here quote the line though, when I first heard it, it was +only like a stroke on sounding brass to me conveying no meaning +"'Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.' Good +good" she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. "There +you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you The +line is worth a hundred pages of fustian. 'Ich wage die Gedanken +in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines +Grimms.' I like it" +Both were again silent. +"Is there ony country where they talk i' that way?" asked the old +woman, looking up from her knitting. +"Yes, Hannah a far larger country than England, where they talk +in no other way." +"Well, for sure case, I knawn't how they can understand t' one +t'other and if either o' ye went there, ye could tell what they +said, I guess?" +"We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all +for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don't speak +German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us." +"And what good does it do you?" +"We mean to teach it some time or at least the elements, as they +say and then we shall get more money than we do now." +"Varry like but give ower studying ye've done enough for tonight." +"I think we have at least I'm tired. Mary, are you?" +"Mortally after all, it's tough work fagging away at a language +with no master but a lexicon." +"It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious +Deutsch. I wonder when St. John will come home." +"Surely he will not be long now it is just ten looking at a +little gold watch she drew from her girdle. It rains fast, Hannah +will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?" +The woman rose she opened a door, through which I dimly saw +a passage soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room she +presently came back. +"Ah, childer" said she, "it fair troubles me to go into yond' +room now it looks so lonesome wi' the chair empty and set back +in a corner." +She wiped her eyes with her apron the two girls, grave before, +looked sad now. +"But he is in a better place," continued Hannah "we shouldn't +wish him here again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death +nor he had." +"You say he never mentioned us?" inquired one of the ladies. +"He hadn't time, bairn he was gone in a minute, was your father. +He had been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify +and when Mr. St. John asked if he would like either o' ye to be +sent for, he fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a +heaviness in his head the next day that is, a fortnight sin' +and he went to sleep and niver wakened he wor a'most stark when +your brother went into t' chamber and fand him. Ah, childer +that's t' last o' t' old stock for ye and Mr. St. John is like +of different soart to them 'at's gone for all your mother wor mich +i' your way, and a'most as booklearned. She wor the pictur' o' +ye, Mary Diana is more like your father." +I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant +for such I now concluded her to be saw the difference. Both were +fair complexioned and slenderly made both possessed faces full of +distinction and intelligence. One, to be sure, had hair a shade +darker than the other, and there was a difference in their style +of wearing it Mary's pale brown locks were parted and braided +smooth Diana's duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls. +The clock struck ten. +"Ye'll want your supper, I am sure," observed Hannah "and so will +Mr. St. John when he comes in." +And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose they +seemed about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment, I had +been so intent on watching them, their appearance and conversation +had excited in me so keen an interest, I had halfforgotten my own +wretched position now it recurred to me. More desolate, more +desperate than ever, it seemed from contrast. And how impossible +did it appear to touch the inmates of this house with concern on +my behalf to make them believe in the truth of my wants and woes +to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings As I +groped out the door, and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that +last idea to be a mere chimera. Hannah opened. +"What do you want?" she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she +surveyed me by the light of the candle she held. +"May I speak to your mistresses?" I said. +"You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do +you come from?" +"I am a stranger." +"What is your business here at this hour?" +"I want a night's shelter in an outhouse or anywhere, and a morsel +of bread to eat." +Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah's face. +"I'll give you a piece of bread," she said, after a pause "but we +can't take in a vagrant to lodge. It isn't likely." +"Do let me speak to your mistresses." +"No, not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving +about now it looks very ill." +"But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do?" +"Oh, I'll warrant you know where to go and what to do. Mind +you don't do wrong, that's all. Here is a penny now go " +"A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. +Don't shut the door oh, don't, for God's sake" +"I must the rain is driving in " +"Tell the young ladies. Let me see them " +"Indeed, I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you +wouldn't make such a noise. Move off." +"But I must die if I am turned away." +"Not you. I'm fear'd you have some ill plans agate, that bring you +about folk's houses at this time o' night. If you've any followers +housebreakers or such like anywhere near, you may tell them +we are not by ourselves in the house we have a gentleman, and +dogs, and guns." Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped +the door to and bolted it within. +This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering a throe +of true despair rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I +was not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep I +groaned I wrung my hands I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this +spectre of death Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror +Alas, this isolation this banishment from my kind Not only the +anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude was gone at least +for a moment but the last I soon endeavoured to regain. +"I can but die," I said, "and I believe in God. Let me try to wait +His will in silence." +These words I not only thought, but uttered and thrusting back all +my misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain +there dumb and still. +"All men must die," said a voice quite close at hand "but all +are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as +yours would be if you perished here of want." +"Who or what speaks?" I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, +and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A +form was near what form, the pitchdark night and my enfeebled +vision prevented me from distinguishing. With a loud long knock, +the newcomer appealed to the door. +"Is it you, Mr. St. John?" cried Hannah. +"Yes yes open quickly." +"Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is +Come in your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe +there are bad folks about. There has been a beggarwoman +I declare she is not gone yet laid down there. Get up for +shame Move off, I say" +"Hush, Hannah I have a word to say to the woman. You have done +your duty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her. I was +near, and listened to both you and her. I think this is a peculiar +case I must at least examine into it. Young woman, rise, and +pass before me into the house." +With difficulty I obeyed him. Presently I stood within that +clean, bright kitchen on the very hearth trembling, sickening +conscious of an aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and +weatherbeaten. The two ladies, their brother, Mr. St. John, the +old servant, were all gazing at me. +"St. John, who is it?" I heard one ask. +"I cannot tell I found her at the door," was the reply. +"She does look white," said Hannah. +"As white as clay or death," was responded. "She will fall let +her sit." +And indeed my head swam I dropped, but a chair received me. I +still possessed my senses, though just now I could not speak. +"Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah, fetch some. +But she is worn to nothing. How very thin, and how very bloodless" +"A mere spectre" +"Is she ill, or only famished?" +"Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me, and a piece +of bread." +Diana I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between +me and the fire as she bent over me broke some bread, dipped it +in milk, and put it to my lips. Her face was near mine I saw +there was pity in it, and I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing. +In her simple words, too, the same balmlike emotion spoke "Try +to eat." +"Yes try," repeated Mary gently and Mary's hand removed my +sodden bonnet and lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me +feebly at first, eagerly soon. +"Not too much at first restrain her," said the brother "she +has had enough." And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of +bread. +"A little more, St. John look at the avidity in her eyes." +"No more at present, sister. Try if she can speak now ask her +her name." +I felt I could speak, and I answered "My name is Jane Elliott." +Anxious as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume +an ALIAS. +"And where do you live? Where are your friends?" +I was silent. +"Can we send for any one you know?" +I shook my head. +"What account can you give of yourself?" +Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, +and once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer +outcast, vagrant, and disowned by the wide world. I dared to put +off the mendicant to resume my natural manner and character. +I began once more to know myself and when Mr. St. John demanded +an account which at present I was far too weak to render +I said after a brief pause +"Sir, I can give you no details tonight." +"But what, then," said he, "do you expect me to do for you?" +"Nothing," I replied. My strength sufficed for but short +answers. Diana took the word +"Do you mean," she asked, "that we have now given you what aid you +require? and that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy +night?" +I looked at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, +instinct both with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. +Answering her compassionate gaze with a smile, I said "I will +trust you. If I were a masterless and stray dog, I know that you +would not turn me from your hearth tonight as it is, I really +have no fear. Do with me and for me as you like but excuse me +from much discourse my breath is short I feel a spasm when +I speak." All three surveyed me, and all three were silent. +"Hannah," said Mr. St. John, at last, "let her sit there at +present, and ask her no questions in ten minutes more, give her +the remainder of that milk and bread. Mary and Diana, let us go +into the parlour and talk the matter over." +They withdrew. Very soon one of the ladies returned I could +not tell which. A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as +I sat by the genial fire. In an undertone she gave some directions +to Hannah. Ere long, with the servant's aid, I contrived to mount +a staircase my dripping clothes were removed soon a warm, dry +bed received me. I thanked God experienced amidst unutterable +exhaustion a glow of grateful joy and slept. +CHAPTER XXIX +The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is +very dim in my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that +interval but few thoughts framed, and no actions performed. I knew +I was in a small room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed +to have grown I lay on it motionless as a stone and to have torn +me from it would have been almost to kill me. I took no note of +the lapse of time of the change from morning to noon, from noon +to evening. I observed when any one entered or left the apartment +I could even tell who they were I could understand what was said +when the speaker stood near to me but I could not answer to +open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible. Hannah, the +servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed me. I +had a feeling that she wished me away that she did not understand +me or my circumstances that she was prejudiced against me. Diana +and Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They +would whisper sentences of this sort at my bedside +"It is very well we took her in." +"Yes she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the +morning had she been left out all night. I wonder what she has +gone through?" +"Strange hardships, I imagine poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer?" +"She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of +speaking her accent was quite pure and the clothes she took off, +though splashed and wet, were little worn and fine." +"She has a peculiar face fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather +like it and when in good health and animated, I can fancy her +physiognomy would be agreeable." +Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at +the hospitality they had extended to me, or of suspicion of, or +aversion to, myself. I was comforted. +Mr. St. John came but once he looked at me, and said my state of +lethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted +fatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor nature, +he was sure, would manage best, left to herself. He said every nerve +had been overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep +torpid a while. There was no disease. He imagined my recovery would +be rapid enough when once commenced. These opinions he delivered +in a few words, in a quiet, low voice and added, after a pause, in +the tone of a man little accustomed to expansive comment, "Rather +an unusual physiognomy certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or +degradation." +"Far otherwise," responded Diana. "To speak truth, St. John, my +heart rather warms to the poor little soul. I wish we may be able +to benefit her permanently." +"That is hardly likely," was the reply. "You will find she is +some young lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, +and has probably injudiciously left them. We may, perhaps, succeed +in restoring her to them, if she is not obstinate but I trace lines +of force in her face which make me sceptical of her tractability." +He stood considering me some minutes then added, "She looks +sensible, but not at all handsome." +"She is so ill, St. John." +"Ill or well, she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of +beauty are quite wanting in those features." +On the third day I was better on the fourth, I could speak, move, +rise in bed, and turn. Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry +toast, about, as I supposed, the dinnerhour. I had eaten with +relish the food was good void of the feverish flavour which +had hitherto poisoned what I had swallowed. When she left me, I +felt comparatively strong and revived ere long satiety of repose +and desire for action stirred me. I wished to rise but what could +I put on? Only my damp and bemired apparel in which I had slept +on the ground and fallen in the marsh. I felt ashamed to appear +before my benefactors so clad. I was spared the humiliation. +On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry. +My black silk frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog +were removed from it the creases left by the wet smoothed out it +was quite decent. My very shoes and stockings were purified and +rendered presentable. There were the means of washing in the room, +and a comb and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process, +and resting every five minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself. +My clothes hung loose on me for I was much wasted, but I covered +deficiencies with a shawl, and once more, clean and respectable looking +no speck of the dirt, no trace of the disorder I so hated, and +which seemed so to degrade me, left I crept down a stone staircase +with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow low passage, and found +my way presently to the kitchen. +It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a +generous fire. Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known, +are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never +been loosened or fertilised by education they grow there, firm +as weeds among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, +at the first latterly she had begun to relent a little and when +she saw me come in tidy and welldressed, she even smiled. +"What, you have got up" she said. "You are better, then. You +may sit you down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will." +She pointed to the rockingchair I took it. She bustled about, +examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning +to me, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly +"Did you ever go abegging afore you came here?" +I was indignant for a moment but remembering that anger was out +of the question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, +I answered quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness +"You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar any +more than yourself or your young ladies." +After a pause she said, "I dunnut understand that you've like no +house, nor no brass, I guess?" +"The want of house or brass by which I suppose you mean money +does not make a beggar in your sense of the word." +"Are you booklearned?" she inquired presently. +"Yes, very." +"But you've never been to a boardingschool?" +"I was at a boardingschool eight years." +She opened her eyes wide. "Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, +then?" +"I have kept myself and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What +are you going to do with these gooseberries?" I inquired, as she +brought out a basket of the fruit. +"Mak' 'em into pies." +"Give them to me and I'll pick them." +"Nay I dunnut want ye to do nought." +"But I must do something. Let me have them." +She consented and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over +my dress, "lest," as she said, "I should mucky it." +"Ye've not been used to sarvant's wark, I see by your hands," she +remarked. "Happen ye've been a dressmaker?" +"No, you are wrong. And now, never mind what I have been don't +trouble your head further about me but tell me the name of the +house where we are." +"Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House." +"And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?" +"Nay he doesn't live here he is only staying a while. When he +is at home, he is in his own parish at Morton." +"That village a few miles off? +"Aye." +"And what is he?" +"He is a parson." +I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, +when I had asked to see the clergyman. "This, then, was his father's +residence?" +"Aye old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather, +and gurt great grandfather afore him." +"The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?" +"Aye St. John is like his kirstened name." +"And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?" +"Yes." +"Their father is dead?" +"Dead three weeks sin' of a stroke." +"They have no mother?" +"The mistress has been dead this mony a year." +"Have you lived with the family long?" +"I've lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three." +"That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. +I will say so much for you, though you have had the incivility to +call me a beggar." +She again regarded me with a surprised stare. "I believe," she +said, "I was quite mista'en in my thoughts of you but there is +so mony cheats goes about, you mun forgie me." +"And though," I continued, rather severely, "you wished to turn me +from the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog." +"Well, it was hard but what can a body do? I thought more o' th' +childer nor of mysel poor things They've like nobody to tak' +care on 'em but me. I'm like to look sharpish." +I maintained a grave silence for some minutes. +"You munnut think too hardly of me," she again remarked. +"But I do think hardly of you," I said "and I'll tell you why +not so much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me +as an impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach +that I had no 'brass' and no house. Some of the best people that +ever lived have been as destitute as I am and if you are a Christian, +you ought not to consider poverty a crime." +"No more I ought," said she "Mr. St. John tells me so too and +I see I wor wrang but I've clear a different notion on you now +to what I had. You look a raight down dacent little crater." +"That will do I forgive you now. Shake hands." +She put her floury and horny hand into mine another and heartier +smile illumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends. +Hannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, +and she made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry +details about her deceased master and mistress, and "the childer," +as she called the young people. +Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and +of as ancient a family as could be found. Marsh End had belonged +to the Rivers ever since it was a house and it was, she affirmed, +"aboon two hundred year old for all it looked but a small, +humble place, naught to compare wi' Mr. Oliver's grand hall down +i' Morton Vale. But she could remember Bill Oliver's father a +journeyman needlemaker and th' Rivers wor gentry i' th' owd days +o' th' Henrys, as onybody might see by looking into th' registers +i' Morton Church vestry." Still, she allowed, "the owd maister was +like other folk naught mich out o' t' common way stark mad o' +shooting, and farming, and sich like." The mistress was different. +She was a great reader, and studied a deal and the "bairns" had +taken after her. There was nothing like them in these parts, nor +ever had been they had liked learning, all three, almost from +the time they could speak and they had always been "of a mak' of +their own." Mr. St. John, when he grew up, would go to college +and be a parson and the girls, as soon as they left school, would +seek places as governesses for they had told her their father had +some years ago lost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted +turning bankrupt and as he was now not rich enough to give them +fortunes, they must provide for themselves. They had lived very +little at home for a long while, and were only come now to stay a +few weeks on account of their father's death but they did so like +Marsh End and Morton, and all these moors and hills about. They +had been in London, and many other grand towns but they always +said there was no place like home and then they were so agreeable +with each other never fell out nor "threaped." She did not know +where there was such a family for being united. +Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the +two ladies and their brother were now. +"Gone over to Morton for a walk but they would be back in halfanhour +to tea." +They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them they +entered by the kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely +bowed and passed through the two ladies stopped Mary, in a few +words, kindly and calmly expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing +me well enough to be able to come down Diana took my hand she +shook her head at me. +"You should have waited for my leave to descend," she said. "You +still look very pale and so thin Poor child poor girl" +Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. +She possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole +face seemed to me full of charm. Mary's countenance was equally +intelligent her features equally pretty but her expression +was more reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant. +Diana looked and spoke with a certain authority she had a will, +evidently. It was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an +authority supported like hers, and to bend, where my conscience +and selfrespect permitted, to an active will. +"And what business have you here?" she continued. "It is not your +place. Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home +we like to be free, even to license but you are a visitor, and +must go into the parlour." +"I am very well here." +"Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with +flour." +"Besides, the fire is too hot for you," interposed Mary. +"To be sure," added her sister. "Come, you must be obedient." And +still holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner +room. +"Sit there," she said, placing me on the sofa, "while we take +our things off and get the tea ready it is another privilege we +exercise in our little moorland home to prepare our own meals +when we are so inclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, +or ironing." +She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat +opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand. I examined first, the +parlour, and then its occupant. +The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet +comfortable, because clean and neat. The oldfashioned chairs were +very bright, and the walnutwood table was like a lookingglass. A +few strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days +decorated the stained walls a cupboard with glass doors contained +some books and an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous +ornament in the room not one modern piece of furniture, save a +brace of workboxes and a lady's desk in rosewood, which stood on +a sidetable everything including the carpet and curtains +looked at once well worn and well saved. +Mr. St. John sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on +the walls, keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his +lips mutely sealed was easy enough to examine. Had he been +a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier. He was +young perhaps from twentyeight to thirty tall, slender +his face riveted the eye it was like a Greek face, very pure in +outline quite a straight, classic nose quite an Athenian mouth +and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the +antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked at +the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. +His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes his high forehead, +colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks +of fair hair. +This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom +it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a +yielding, an impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent +as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, +his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either +restless, or hard, or eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor +even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, +as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought +me a little cake, baked on the top of the oven. +"Eat that now," she said "you must be hungry. Hannah says you +have had nothing but some gruel since breakfast." +I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. +Rivers now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took +a seat, fixed his blue pictoriallooking eyes full on me. There +was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness +in his gaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence, +had hitherto kept it averted from the stranger. +"You are very hungry," he said. +"I am, sir." It is my way it always was my way, by instinct +ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness. +"It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for +the last three days there would have been danger in yielding to +the cravings of your appetite at first. Now you may eat, though +still not immoderately." +"I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir," was my very +clumsilycontrived, unpolished answer. +"No," he said coolly "when you have indicated to us the residence +of your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to +home." +"That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do being +absolutely without home and friends." +The three looked at me, but not distrustfully I felt there was no +suspicion in their glances there was more of curiosity. I speak +particularly of the young ladies. St. John's eyes, though clear +enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult +to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search +other people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own the +which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more +calculated to embarrass than to encourage. +"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you are completely isolated +from every connection?" +"I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing not a claim do I +possess to admittance under any roof in England." +"A most singular position at your age" +Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on +the table before me. I wondered what he sought there his words +soon explained the quest. +"You have never been married? You are a spinster?" +Diana laughed. "Why, she can't he above seventeen or eighteen +years old, St. John," said she. +"I am near nineteen but I am not married. No." +I felt a burning glow mount to my face for bitter and agitating +recollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all +saw the embarrassment and the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me +by turning their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage but +the colder and sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble +he had excited forced out tears as well as colour. +"Where did you last reside?" he now asked. +"You are too inquisitive, St. John," murmured Mary in a low voice +but he leaned over the table and required an answer by a second +firm and piercing look. +"The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, +is my secret," I replied concisely. +"Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both +from St. John and every other questioner," remarked Diana. +"Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help +you," he said. "And you need help, do you not?" +"I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist +will put me in the way of getting work which I can do, and the +remuneration for which will keep me, if but in the barest necessaries +of life." +"I know not whether I am a true philanthropist yet I am willing to +aid you to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest. First, +then, tell me what you have been accustomed to do, and what you +CAN do." +I had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage +as much so as a giant with wine it gave new tone to my unstrung +nerves, and enabled me to address this penetrating young judge +steadily. +"Mr. Rivers," I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he +looked at me, openly and without diffidence, "you and your sisters +have done me a great service the greatest man can do his fellow +being you have rescued me, by your noble hospitality, from death. +This benefit conferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, +and a claim, to a certain extent, on my confidence. I will tell +you as much of the history of the wanderer you have harboured, +as I can tell without compromising my own peace of mind my own +security, moral and physical, and that of others. +"I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died +before I could know them. I was brought up a dependant educated +in a charitable institution. I will even tell you the name of the +establishment, where I passed six years as a pupil, and two as a +teacher Lowood Orphan Asylum, shire you will have heard of +it, Mr. Rivers? the Rev. Robert Brocklehurst is the treasurer." +"I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school." +"I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. +I obtained a good situation, and was happy. This place I was +obliged to leave four days before I came here. The reason of my +departure I cannot and ought not to explain it would be useless, +dangerous, and would sound incredible. No blame attached to me +I am as free from culpability as any one of you three. Miserable +I am, and must be for a time for the catastrophe which drove me +from a house I had found a paradise was of a strange and direful +nature. I observed but two points in planning my departure speed, +secrecy to secure these, I had to leave behind me everything I +possessed except a small parcel which, in my hurry and trouble of +mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to Whitcross. +To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute. I slept two +nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without crossing +a threshold but twice in that space of time did I taste food +and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost +to the last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of +want at your door, and took me under the shelter of your roof. I +know all your sisters have done for me since for I have not +been insensible during my seeming torpor and I owe to their +spontaneous, genuine, genial compassion as large a debt as to your +evangelical charity." +"Don't make her talk any more now, St. John," said Diana, as I +paused "she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the +sofa and sit down now, Miss Elliott." +I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the alias I had +forgotten my new name. Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, +noticed it at once. +"You said your name was Jane Elliott?" he observed. +"I did say so and it is the name by which I think it expedient to +be called at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear +it, it sounds strange to me." +"Your real name you will not give?" +"No I fear discovery above all things and whatever disclosure +would lead to it, I avoid." +"You are quite right, I am sure," said Diana. "Now do, brother, +let her be at peace a while." +But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as +imperturbably and with as much acumen as ever. +"You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality you +would wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters' +compassion, and, above all, with my CHARITY I am quite sensible +of the distinction drawn, nor do I resent it it is just you +desire to be independent of us?" +"I do I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek +work that is all I now ask then let me go, if it be but to the +meanest cottage but till then, allow me to stay here I dread +another essay of the horrors of homeless destitution." +"Indeed you SHALL stay here," said Diana, putting her white hand on +my head. "You SHALL," repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative +sincerity which seemed natural to her. +"My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you," said Mr. +St. John, "as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing +a halffrozen bird, some wintry wind might have driven through +their casement. I feel more inclination to put you in the way of +keeping yourself, and shall endeavour to do so but observe, my +sphere is narrow. I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish +my aid must be of the humblest sort. And if you are inclined to +despise the day of small things, seek some more efficient succour +than such as I can offer." +"She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest +she can do," answered Diana for me "and you know, St. John, she +has no choice of helpers she is forced to put up with such crusty +people as you." +"I will be a dressmaker I will be a plainworkwoman I will be a +servant, a nursegirl, if I can be no better," I answered. +"Right," said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. "If such is your spirit, +I promise to aid you, in my own time and way." +He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. +I soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as +my present strength would permit. +CHAPTER XXX +The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked +them. In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could +sit up all day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana +and Mary in all their occupations converse with them as much as +they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me. There +was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted +by me for the first time the pleasure arising from perfect +congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles. +I liked to read what they liked to read what they enjoyed, +delighted me what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their +sequestered home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, +with its low roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, +its avenue of aged firs all grown aslant under the stress of +mountain winds its garden, dark with yew and holly and where +no flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom found a charm +both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple moors behind +and around their dwelling to the hollow vale into which the +pebbly bridlepath leading from their gate descended, and which +wound between fernbanks first, and then amongst a few of the +wildest little pasturefields that ever bordered a wilderness of +heath, or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with +their little mossyfaced lambs they clung to this scene, I say, +with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the +feeling, and share both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination +of the locality. I felt the consecration of its loneliness my eye +feasted on the outline of swell and sweep on the wild colouring +communicated to ridge and dell by moss, by heathbell, by +flowersprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow granite +crag. These details were just to me what they were to them so +many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the +soft breeze the rough and the halcyon day the hours of sunrise +and sunset the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, +in these regions, the same attraction as for them wound round +my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs. +Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished +and better read than I was but with eagerness I followed in the +path of knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books +they lent me then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them +in the evening what I had perused during the day. Thought fitted +thought opinion met opinion we coincided, in short, perfectly. +If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana. +Physically, she far excelled me she was handsome she was vigorous. +In her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty +of flow, such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. +I could talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first +gush of vivacity and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at +Diana's feet, to rest my head on her knee, and listen alternately +to her and Mary, while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which +I had but touched. Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to +learn of her I saw the part of instructress pleased and suited +her that of scholar pleased and suited me no less. Our natures +dovetailed mutual affection of the strongest kind was the +result. They discovered I could draw their pencils and colourboxes +were immediately at my service. My skill, greater in this one +point than theirs, surprised and charmed them. Mary would sit and +watch me by the hour together then she would take lessons and +a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus occupied, +and mutually entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks like +days. +As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and +rapidly between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One +reason of the distance yet observed between us was, that he +was comparatively seldom at home a large proportion of his time +appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor among the scattered +population of his parish. +No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions rain +or fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take +his hat, and, followed by his father's old pointer, Carlo, go out +on his mission of love or duty I scarcely know in which light +he regarded it. Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, +his sisters would expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar +smile, more solemn than cheerful +"And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside +from these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for +the future I propose to myself?" +Diana and Mary's general answer to this question was a sigh, and +some minutes of apparently mournful meditation. +But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to +friendship with him he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and +even of a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, +blameless in his life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy +that mental serenity, that inward content, which should be the +reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist. +Often, of an evening, when he sat at the window, his desk and papers +before him, he would cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his +hand, and deliver himself up to I know not what course of thought +but that it was perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent +flash and changeful dilation of his eye. +I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of +delight it was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in +my hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and +an inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls he called +his home but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone +and words in which the sentiment was manifested and never did he +seem to roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence +never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they +could yield. +Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had +an opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its +calibre when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish +I could describe that sermon but it is past my power. I cannot +even render faithfully the effect it produced on me. +It began calm and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice +went, it was calm to the end an earnestly felt, yet strictly +restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted +the nervous language. This grew to force compressed, condensed, +controlled. The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the +power of the preacher neither were softened. Throughout there +was a strange bitterness an absence of consolatory gentleness +stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines election, predestination, +reprobation were frequent and each reference to these points +sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done, +instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, +I experienced an inexpressible sadness for it seemed to me I +know not whether equally so to others that the eloquence to which +I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs +of disappointment where moved troubling impulses of insatiate +yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers +purelived, conscientious, zealous as he was had not yet +found that peace of God which passeth all understanding he had no +more found it, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking +regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium regrets to which I +have latterly avoided referring, but which possessed me and tyrannised +over me ruthlessly. +Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor +House, and return to the far different life and scene which awaited +them, as governesses in a large, fashionable, southofEngland +city, where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy +and haughty members they were regarded only as humble dependants, +and who neither knew nor sought out their innate excellences, and +appreciated only their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated +the skill of their cook or the taste of their waitingwoman. Mr. +St. John had said nothing to me yet about the employment he had +promised to obtain for me yet it became urgent that I should have +a vocation of some kind. One morning, being left alone with him a +few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the windowrecess +which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of study +and I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what +words to frame my inquiry for it is at all times difficult to +break the ice of reserve glassing over such natures as his when +he saved me the trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue. +Looking up as I drew near "You have a question to ask of me?" +he said. +"Yes I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can +offer myself to undertake?" +"I found or devised something for you three weeks ago but as you +seemed both useful and happy here as my sisters had evidently +become attached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure +I deemed it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till +their approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours +necessary." +"And they will go in three days now?" I said. +"Yes and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton +Hannah will accompany me and this old house will be shut up." +I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject +first broached but he seemed to have entered another train of +reflection his look denoted abstraction from me and my business. +I was obliged to recall him to a theme which was of necessity one +of close and anxious interest to me. +"What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this +delay will not have increased the difficulty of securing it." +"Oh, no since it is an employment which depends only on me to +give, and you to accept." +He again paused there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew +impatient a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting +glance fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as +effectually as words could have done, and with less trouble. +"You need be in no hurry to hear," he said "let me frankly tell +you, I have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I +explain, recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if +I helped you, it must be as the blind man would help the lame. I +am poor for I find that, when I have paid my father's debts, all +the patrimony remaining to me will be this crumbling grange, the +row of scathed firs behind, and the patch of moorish soil, with the +yewtrees and hollybushes in front. I am obscure Rivers is an +old name but of the three sole descendants of the race, two earn +the dependant's crust among strangers, and the third considers +himself an alien from his native country not only for life, but +in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound to deem, himself honoured by +the lot, and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation +from fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders, and when the +Head of that churchmilitant of whose humblest members he is one, +shall give the word, 'Rise, follow Me'" +St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with +a quiet, deep voice with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating +radiance of glance. He resumed +"And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a +service of poverty and obscurity. YOU may even think it degrading +for I see now your habits have been what the world calls refined +your tastes lean to the ideal, and your society has at least been +amongst the educated but I consider that no service degrades which +can better our race. I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed +the soil where the Christian labourer's task of tillage is appointed +him the scantier the meed his toil brings the higher the honour. +His, under such circumstances, is the destiny of the pioneer and +the first pioneers of the Gospel were the Apostles their captain +was Jesus, the Redeemer, Himself." +"Well?" I said, as he again paused "proceed." +He looked at me before he proceeded indeed, he seemed leisurely +to read my face, as if its features and lines were characters +on a page. The conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially +expressed in his succeeding observations. +"I believe you will accept the post I offer you," said he, "and +hold it for a while not permanently, though any more than I +could permanently keep the narrow and narrowing the tranquil, +hidden office of English country incumbent for in your nature +is an alloy as detrimental to repose as that in mine, though of a +different kind." +"Do explain," I urged, when he halted once more. +"I will and you shall hear how poor the proposal is, how trivial +how cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my +father is dead, and that I am my own master. I shall leave the +place probably in the course of a twelvemonth but while I do stay, +I will exert myself to the utmost for its improvement. Morton, +when I came to it two years ago, had no school the children of +the poor were excluded from every hope of progress. I established +one for boys I mean now to open a second school for girls. I +have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of two rooms +attached to it for the mistress's house. Her salary will be thirty +pounds a year her house is already furnished, very simply, but +sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver the only +daughter of the sole rich man in my parish Mr. Oliver, the +proprietor of a needlefactory and ironfoundry in the valley. The +same lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from +the workhouse, on condition that she shall aid the mistress in such +menial offices connected with her own house and the school as her +occupation of teaching will prevent her having time to discharge +in person. Will you be this mistress?" +He put the question rather hurriedly he seemed half to expect an +indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer not +knowing all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he +could not tell in what light the lot would appear to me. In truth +it was humble but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum +it was plodding but then, compared with that of a governess in +a rich house, it was independent and the fear of servitude with +strangers entered my soul like iron it was not ignoble not +unworthy not mentally degrading, I made my decision. +"I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with +all my heart." +"But you comprehend me?" he said. "It is a village school your +scholars will be only poor girls cottagers' children at the +best, farmers' daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, +ciphering, will be all you will have to teach. What will you do +with your accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your +mind sentiments tastes?" +"Save them till they are wanted. They will keep." +"You know what you undertake, then?" +"I do." +He now smiled and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well +pleased and deeply gratified. +"And when will you commence the exercise of your function?" +"I will go to my house tomorrow, and open the school, if you like, +next week." +"Very well so be it." +He rose and walked through the room. Standing still, he again +looked at me. He shook his head. +"What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?" I asked. +"You will not stay at Morton long no, no" +"Why? What is your reason for saying so?" +"I read it in your eye it is not of that description which promises +the maintenance of an even tenor in life." +"I am not ambitious." +He started at the word "ambitious." He repeated, "No. What made +you think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am but how +did you find it out?" +"I was speaking of myself." +"Well, if you are not ambitious, you are " He paused. +"What?" +"I was going to say, impassioned but perhaps you would have +misunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human +affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am +sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, +and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly +void of stimulus any more than I can be content," he added, with +emphasis, "to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains +my nature, that God gave me, contravened my faculties, +heavenbestowed, paralysed made useless. You hear now how I +contradict myself. I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, +and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of +water in God's service I, His ordained minister, almost rave +in my restlessness. Well, propensities and principles must be +reconciled by some means." +He left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than +in the whole previous month yet still he puzzled me. +Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day +approached for leaving their brother and their home. They both +tried to appear as usual but the sorrow they had to struggle against +was one that could not be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana +intimated that this would be a different parting from any they had +ever yet known. It would probably, as far as St. John was concerned, +be a parting for years it might be a parting for life. +"He will sacrifice all to his longframed resolves," she said +"natural affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks +quiet, Jane but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think +him gentle, yet in some things he is inexorable as death and the +worst of it is, my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him +from his severe decision certainly, I cannot for a moment blame +him for it. It is right, noble, Christian yet it breaks my +heart" And the tears gushed to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head +low over her work. +"We are now without father we shall soon be without home and +brother," she murmured, +At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed +by fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that "misfortunes +never come singly," and to add to their distresses the vexing one +of the slip between the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window +reading a letter. He entered. +"Our uncle John is dead," said he. +Both the sisters seemed struck not shocked or appalled the +tidings appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting. +"Dead?" repeated Diana. +"Yes." +She riveted a searching gaze on her brother's face. "And what +then?" she demanded, in a low voice. +"What then, Die?" he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of +feature. "What then? Why nothing. Read." +He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed +it to Mary. Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her +brother. All three looked at each other, and all three smiled +a dreary, pensive smile enough. +"Amen We can yet live," said Diana at last. +"At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before," remarked +Mary. +"Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what +MIGHT HAVE BEEN," said Mr. Rivers, "and contrasts it somewhat too +vividly with what IS." +He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out. +For some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me. +"Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries," she said, "and +think us hardhearted beings not to be more moved at the death of +so near a relation as an uncle but we have never seen him or known +him. He was my mother's brother. My father and he quarrelled +long ago. It was by his advice that my father risked most of his +property in the speculation that ruined him. Mutual recrimination +passed between them they parted in anger, and were never reconciled. +My uncle engaged afterwards in more prosperous undertakings it +appears he realised a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. He +was never married, and had no near kindred but ourselves and one +other person, not more closely related than we. My father always +cherished the idea that he would atone for his error by leaving his +possessions to us that letter informs us that he has bequeathed +every penny to the other relation, with the exception of thirty +guineas, to be divided between St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers, for +the purchase of three mourning rings. He had a right, of course, +to do as he pleased and yet a momentary damp is cast on the +spirits by the receipt of such news. Mary and I would have esteemed +ourselves rich with a thousand pounds each and to St. John such +a sum would have been valuable, for the good it would have enabled +him to do." +This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further +reference made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters. The next +day I left Marsh End for Morton. The day after, Diana and Mary +quitted it for distant B. In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired +to the parsonage and so the old grange was abandoned. +CHAPTER XXXI +My home, then, when I at last find a home, is a cottage a +little room with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing +four painted chairs and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or +three plates and dishes, and a set of teathings in delf. Above, a +chamber of the same dimensions as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead +and chest of drawers small, yet too large to be filled with my +scanty wardrobe though the kindness of my gentle and generous +friends has increased that, by a modest stock of such things as +are necessary. +It is evening. I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the +little orphan who serves me as a handmaid. I am sitting alone on +the hearth. This morning, the village school opened. I had twenty +scholars. But three of the number can read none write or cipher. +Several knit, and a few sew a little. They speak with the broadest +accent of the district. At present, they and I have a difficulty +in understanding each other's language. Some of them are unmannered, +rough, intractable, as well as ignorant but others are docile, +have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me. +I must not forget that these coarselyclad little peasants are of +flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy and +that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind +feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the +bestborn. My duty will be to develop these germs surely I shall +find some happiness in discharging that office. Much enjoyment I +do not expect in the life opening before me yet it will, doubtless, +if I regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought, yield me +enough to live on from day to day. +Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in +yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to +deceive myself, I must reply No I felt desolate to a degree. I +felt yes, idiot that I am I felt degraded. I doubted I had +taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social +existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, +the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate +and despise myself too much for these feelings I know them to be +wrong that is a great step gained I shall strive to overcome +them. Tomorrow, I trust, I shall get the better of them partially +and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite subdued. In a +few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing progress, and +a change for the better in my scholars may substitute gratification +for disgust. +Meantime, let me ask myself one question Which is better? To +have surrendered to temptation listened to passion made no painful +effort no struggle but to have sunk down in the silken snare +fallen asleep on the flowers covering it wakened in a southern +clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa to have been +now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress delirious with his +love half my time for he would oh, yes, he would have loved +me well for a while. He DID love me no one will ever love me so +again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, +youth, and grace for never to any one else shall I seem to +possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me it is what +no man besides will ever be. But where am I wandering, and what +am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, +to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles fevered with +delusive bliss one hour suffocating with the bitterest tears of +remorse and shame the next or to be a villageschoolmistress, +free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of +England? +Yes I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and +law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied +moment. God directed me to a correct choice I thank His providence +for the guidance +Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went +to my door, and looked at the sunset of the harvestday, and at +the quiet fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was +distant half a mile from the village. The birds were singing +their last strains +"The air was mild, the dew was balm." +While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find +myself ere long weeping and why? For the doom which had reft +me from adhesion to my master for him I was no more to see for +the desperate grief and fatal fury consequences of my departure +which might now, perhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, +too far to leave hope of ultimate restoration thither. At this +thought, I turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely +vale of Morton I say LONELY, for in that bend of it visible to +me there was no building apparent save the church and the parsonage, +halfhid in trees, and, quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale +Hall, where the rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived. I hid my +eyes, and leant my head against the stone frame of my door but +soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden +from the meadow beyond it made me look up. A dog old Carlo, +Mr. Rivers' pointer, as I saw in a moment was pushing the gate +with his nose, and St. John himself leant upon it with folded arms +his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on me. +I asked him to come in. +"No, I cannot stay I have only brought you a little parcel my +sisters left for you. I think it contains a colourbox, pencils, +and paper." +I approached to take it a welcome gift it was. He examined my +face, I thought, with austerity, as I came near the traces of +tears were doubtless very visible upon it. +"Have you found your first day's work harder than you expected?" +he asked. +"Oh, no On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my +scholars very well." +"But perhaps your accommodations your cottage your furniture +have disappointed your expectations? They are, in truth, +scanty enough but " I interrupted +"My cottage is clean and weatherproof my furniture sufficient +and commodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. +I am not absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the +absence of a carpet, a sofa, and silver plate besides, five weeks +ago I had nothing I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant now I +have acquaintance, a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness +of God the generosity of my friends the bounty of my lot. I do +not repine." +"But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind +you is dark and empty." +"I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much +less to grow impatient under one of loneliness." +"Very well I hope you feel the content you express at any rate, +your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to +the vacillating fears of Lot's wife. What you had left before I +saw you, of course I do not know but I counsel you to resist firmly +every temptation which would incline you to look back pursue your +present career steadily, for some months at least." +"It is what I mean to do," I answered. St. John continued +"It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn +the bent of nature but that it may be done, I know from experience. +God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate +and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get +when our will strains after a path we may not follow we need +neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair we +have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the +forbidden food it longed to taste and perhaps purer and to hew +out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one +Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it. +"A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I +had made a mistake in entering the ministry its uniform duties +wearied me to death. I burnt for the more active life of the +world for the more exciting toils of a literary career for +the destiny of an artist, author, orator anything rather than +that of a priest yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, +of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat +under my curate's surplice. I considered my life was so wretched, +it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and +struggling, light broke and relief fell my cramped existence all +at once spread out to a plain without bounds my powers heard a +call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their +wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me to bear which +afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, +the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were +all needed for these all centre in the good missionary. +"A missionary I resolved to be. From that moment my state of mind +changed the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, +leaving nothing of bondage but its galling soreness which time +only can heal. My father, indeed, imposed the determination, +but since his death, I have not a legitimate obstacle to contend +with some affairs settled, a successor for Morton provided, an +entanglement or two of the feelings broken through or cut asunder +a last conflict with human weakness, in which I know I shall +overcome, because I have vowed that I WILL overcome and I leave +Europe for the East." +He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice looking, +when he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at +which I looked too. Both he and I had our backs towards the path +leading up the field to the wicket. We had heard no step on that +grassgrown track the water running in the vale was the one lulling +sound of the hour and scene we might well then start when +a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed +"Good evening, Mr. Rivers. And good evening, old Carlo. Your dog +is quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir he pricked +his ears and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, +and you have your back towards me now." +It was true. Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those +musical accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head, +he stood yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude +in which the speaker had surprised him his arm resting on the +gate, his face directed towards the west. He turned at last, with +measured deliberation. A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at +his side. There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad +in pure white a youthful, graceful form full, yet fine in +contour and when, after bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its +head, and threw back a long veil, there bloomed under his glance +a face of perfect beauty. Perfect beauty is a strong expression +but I do not retrace or qualify it as sweet features as ever the +temperate clime of Albion moulded as pure hues of rose and lily +as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, +justified, in this instance, the term. No charm was wanting, no +defect was perceptible the young girl had regular and delicate +lineaments eyes shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely +pictures, large, and dark, and full the long and shadowy eyelash +which encircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination the pencilled +brow which gives such clearness the white smooth forehead, which +adds such repose to the livelier beauties of tint and ray the +cheek oval, fresh, and smooth the lips, fresh too, ruddy, healthy, +sweetly formed the even and gleaming teeth without flaw the +small dimpled chin the ornament of rich, plenteous tresses all +advantages, in short, which, combined, realise the ideal of beauty, +were fully hers. I wondered, as I looked at this fair creature +I admired her with my whole heart. Nature had surely formed her +in a partial mood and, forgetting her usual stinted stepmother +dole of gifts, had endowed this, her darling, with a granddame's +bounty. +What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally +asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at +her and, as naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his +countenance. He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and +was looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket. +"A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone," he said, as +he crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot. +"Oh, I only came home from S" she mentioned the name of a large +town some twenty miles distant "this afternoon. Papa told me you +had opened your school, and that the new mistress was come and +so I put on my bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her +this is she?" pointing to me. +"It is," said St. John. +"Do you think you shall like Morton?" she asked of me, with a direct +and naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if childlike. +"I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so." +"Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?" +"Quite." +"Do you like your house?" +"Very much." +"Have I furnished it nicely?" +"Very nicely, indeed." +"And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?" +"You have indeed. She is teachable and handy." This then, I thought, +is Miss Oliver, the heiress favoured, it seems, in the gifts of +fortune, as well as in those of nature What happy combination of +the planets presided over her birth, I wonder? +"I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes," she added. "It +will be a change for me to visit you now and then and I like a +change. Mr. Rivers, I have been SO gay during my stay at S. Last +night, or rather this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock. The +th regiment are stationed there since the riots and the officers +are the most agreeable men in the world they put all our young +knifegrinders and scissor merchants to shame." +It seemed to me that Mr. St. John's under lip protruded, and his +upper lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal +compressed, and the lower part of his face unusually stern and +square, as the laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted +his gaze, too, from the daisies, and turned it on her. An unsmiling, +a searching, a meaning gaze it was. She answered it with a second +laugh, and laughter well became her youth, her roses, her dimples, +her bright eyes. +As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo. +"Poor Carlo loves me," said she. "HE is not stern and distant to +his friends and if he could speak, he would not be silent." +As she patted the dog's head, bending with native grace before his +young and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master's face. +I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with +resistless emotion. Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as +beautiful for a man as she for a woman. His chest heaved once, as +if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, +despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of +liberty. But he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb +a rearing steed. He responded neither by word nor movement to the +gentle advances made him. +"Papa says you never come to see us now," continued Miss Oliver, +looking up. "You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall. He is alone +this evening, and not very well will you return with me and visit +him?" +"It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver," answered +St. John. +"Not a seasonable hour But I declare it is. It is just the hour +when papa most wants company when the works are closed and he +has no business to occupy him. Now, Mr. Rivers, DO come. Why are +you so very shy, and so very sombre?" She filled up the hiatus +his silence left by a reply of her own. +"I forgot" she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as +if shocked at herself. "I am so giddy and thoughtless DO excuse +me. It had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be +indisposed for joining in my chatter. Diana and Mary have left +you, and Moor House is shut up, and you are so lonely. I am sure +I pity you. Do come and see papa." +"Not tonight, Miss Rosamond, not tonight." +Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton himself only knew +the effort it cost him thus to refuse. +"Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you for I dare not +stay any longer the dew begins to fall. Good evening" +She held out her hand. He just touched it. "Good evening" he +repeated, in a voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned, but +in a moment returned. +"Are you well?" she asked. Well might she put the question his +face was blanched as her gown. +"Quite well," he enunciated and, with a bow, he left the gate. +She went one way he another. She turned twice to gaze after him +as she tripped fairylike down the field he, as he strode firmly +across, never turned at all. +This spectacle of another's suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts +from exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated +her brother "inexorable as death." She had not exaggerated. +CHAPTER XXXII +I continued the labours of the villageschool as actively and +faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time +elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars +and their nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, +they seemed to me hopelessly dull and, at first sight, all dull +alike but I soon found I was mistaken. There was a difference +amongst them as amongst the educated and when I got to know them, +and they me, this difference rapidly developed itself. Their +amazement at me, my language, my rules, and ways, once subsided, +I found some of these heavylooking, gaping rustics wake up into +sharpwitted girls enough. Many showed themselves obliging, and +amiable too and I discovered amongst them not a few examples of +natural politeness, and innate selfrespect, as well as of excellent +capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration. These soon +took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons +neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and +orderly manners. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, +was even surprising and an honest and happy pride I took in it +besides, I began personally to like some of the best girls and they +liked me. I had amongst my scholars several farmers' daughters +young women grown, almost. These could already read, write, and sew +and to them I taught the elements of grammar, geography, history, +and the finer kinds of needlework. I found estimable characters +amongst them characters desirous of information and disposed +for improvement with whom I passed many a pleasant evening hour +in their own homes. Their parents then the farmer and his wife +loaded me with attentions. There was an enjoyment in accepting +their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a consideration +a scrupulous regard to their feelings to which they were +not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and +benefited them because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it +made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received. +I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went +out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with +friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but +the regard of working people, is like "sitting in sunshine, calm +and sweet" serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. +At this period of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with +thankfulness than sank with dejection and yet, reader, to tell +you all, in the midst of this calm, this useful existence after +a day passed in honourable exertion amongst my scholars, an evening +spent in drawing or reading contentedly alone I used to rush into +strange dreams at night dreams manycoloured, agitated, full of +the ideal, the stirring, the stormy dreams where, amidst unusual +scenes, charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic +chance, I still again and again met Mr. Rochester, always at some +exciting crisis and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing +his voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving +him, being loved by him the hope of passing a lifetime at his +side, would be renewed, with all its first force and fire. Then +I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated. Then I +rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering and then +the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and +heard the burst of passion. By nine o'clock the next morning I +was punctually opening the school tranquil, settled, prepared for +the steady duties of the day. +Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at +the school was generally made in the course of her morning ride. +She would canter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted +livery servant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance, +in her purple habit, with her Amazon's cap of black velvet placed +gracefully above the long curls that kissed her cheek and floated +to her shoulders, can scarcely be imagined and it was thus she +would enter the rustic building, and glide through the dazzled ranks +of the village children. She generally came at the hour when Mr. +Rivers was engaged in giving his daily catechising lesson. Keenly, +I fear, did the eye of the visitress pierce the young pastor's +heart. A sort of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance, even +when he did not see it and when he was looking quite away from the +door, if she appeared at it, his cheek would glow, and his marble +seeming features, though they refused to relax, changed indescribably, +and in their very quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour, +stronger than working muscle or darting glance could indicate. +Of course, she knew her power indeed, he did not, because he could +not, conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism, when +she went up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, +even fondly in his face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn. +He seemed to say, with his sad and resolute look, if he did not +say it with his lips, "I love you, and I know you prefer me. It is +not despair of success that keeps me dumb. If I offered my heart, +I believe you would accept it. But that heart is already laid on +a sacred altar the fire is arranged round it. It will soon be +no more than a sacrifice consumed." +And then she would pout like a disappointed child a pensive cloud +would soften her radiant vivacity she would withdraw her hand +hastily from his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, +at once so heroic and so martyrlike. St. John, no doubt, would +have given the world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus +left him but he would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, +for the elysium of her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise. +Besides, he could not bind all that he had in his nature the +rover, the aspirant, the poet, the priest in the limits of a +single passion. He could not he would not renounce his wild +field of mission warfare for the parlours and the peace of Vale +Hall. I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once, despite +his reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence. +Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage. +I had learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or +disguise she was coquettish but not heartless exacting, but not +worthlessly selfish. She had been indulged from her birth, but was +not absolutely spoilt. She was hasty, but goodhumoured vain she +could not help it, when every glance in the glass showed her such +a flush of loveliness, but not affected liberalhanded innocent +of the pride of wealth ingenuous sufficiently intelligent gay, +lively, and unthinking she was very charming, in short, even to +a cool observer of her own sex like me but she was not profoundly +interesting or thoroughly impressive. A very different sort of +mind was hers from that, for instance, of the sisters of St. John. +Still, I liked her almost as I liked my pupil Adele except that, +for a child whom we have watched over and taught, a closer affection is +engendered than we can give an equally attractive adult acquaintance. +She had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr. +Rivers, only, certainly, she allowed, "not onetenth so handsome, +though I was a nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel." +I was, however, good, clever, composed, and firm, like him. I was +a lusus naturae, she affirmed, as a village schoolmistress she +was sure my previous history, if known, would make a delightful +romance. +One evening, while, with her usual childlike activity, and thoughtless +yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard +and the tabledrawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two +French books, a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, +and then my drawingmaterials and some sketches, including a +pencilhead of a pretty little cherublike girl, one of my scholars, +and sundry views from nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on +the surrounding moors. She was first transfixed with surprise, +and then electrified with delight. +"Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What +a love what a miracle I was I drew better than her master in +the first school in S. Would I sketch a portrait of her, to show +to papa?" +"With pleasure," I replied and I felt a thrill of artistdelight +at the idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model. She +had then on a darkblue silk dress her arms and her neck were +bare her only ornament was her chestnut tresses, which waved over +her shoulders with all the wild grace of natural curls. I took a +sheet of fine cardboard, and drew a careful outline. I promised +myself the pleasure of colouring it and, as it was getting late +then, I told her she must come and sit another day. +She made such a report of me to her father, that Mr. Oliver +himself accompanied her next evening a tall, massivefeatured, +middleaged, and greyheaded man, at whose side his lovely daughter +looked like a bright flower near a hoary turret. He appeared +a taciturn, and perhaps a proud personage but he was very kind +to me. The sketch of Rosamond's portrait pleased him highly he +said I must make a finished picture of it. He insisted, too, on +my coming the next day to spend the evening at Vale Hall. +I went. I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant +evidences of wealth in the proprietor. Rosamond was full of glee +and pleasure all the time I stayed. Her father was affable and +when he entered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed +in strong terms his approbation of what I had done in Morton school, +and said he only feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good +for the place, and would soon quit it for one more suitable. +"Indeed," cried Rosamond, "she is clever enough to be a governess +in a high family, papa." +I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family +in the land. Mr. Oliver spoke of Mr. Rivers of the Rivers family +with great respect. He said it was a very old name in that +neighbourhood that the ancestors of the house were wealthy that +all Morton had once belonged to them that even now he considered +the representative of that house might, if he liked, make an alliance +with the best. He accounted it a pity that so fine and talented a +young man should have formed the design of going out as a missionary +it was quite throwing a valuable life away. It appeared, then, +that her father would throw no obstacle in the way of Rosamond's +union with St. John. Mr. Oliver evidently regarded the young +clergyman's good birth, old name, and sacred profession as sufficient +compensation for the want of fortune. +It was the th of November, and a holiday. My little servant, +after helping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with +the fee of a penny for her aid. All about me was spotless and +bright scoured floor, polished grate, and wellrubbed chairs. +I had also made myself neat, and had now the afternoon before me +to spend as I would. +The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour then I +got my palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because +easier occupation, of completing Rosamond Oliver's miniature. The +head was finished already there was but the background to tint +and the drapery to shade off a touch of carmine, too, to add to +the ripe lips a soft curl here and there to the tresses a +deeper tinge to the shadow of the lash under the azured eyelid. I +was absorbed in the execution of these nice details, when, after +one rapid tap, my door unclosed, admitting St. John Rivers. +"I am come to see how you are spending your holiday," he said. "Not, +I hope, in thought? No, that is well while you draw you will +not feel lonely. You see, I mistrust you still, though you have +borne up wonderfully so far. I have brought you a book for evening +solace," and he laid on the table a new publication a poem one +of those genuine productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate +public of those days the golden age of modern literature. Alas +the readers of our era are less favoured. But courage I will +not pause either to accuse or repine. I know poetry is not dead, +nor genius lost nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind +or slay they will both assert their existence, their presence, +their liberty and strength again one day. Powerful angels, safe +in heaven they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones +weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? +No Mediocrity, no do not let envy prompt you to the thought. +No they not only live, but reign and redeem and without their +divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell the +hell of your own meanness. +While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of "Marmion" for +"Marmion" it was, St. John stooped to examine my drawing. His +tall figure sprang erect again with a start he said nothing. I +looked up at him he shunned my eye. I knew his thoughts well, +and could read his heart plainly at the moment I felt calmer and +cooler than he I had then temporarily the advantage of him, and +I conceived an inclination to do him some good, if I could. +"With all his firmness and selfcontrol," thought I, "he tasks +himself too far locks every feeling and pang within expresses, +confesses, imparts nothing. I am sure it would benefit him to talk +a little about this sweet Rosamond, whom he thinks he ought not to +marry I will make him talk." +I said first, "Take a chair, Mr. Rivers." But he answered, as +he always did, that he could not stay. "Very well," I responded, +mentally, "stand if you like but you shall not go just yet, I am +determined solitude is at least as bad for you as it is for me. +I'll try if I cannot discover the secret spring of your confidence, +and find an aperture in that marble breast through which I can shed +one drop of the balm of sympathy." +"Is this portrait like?" I asked bluntly. +"Like Like whom? I did not observe it closely." +"You did, Mr. Rivers." +He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness he looked +at me astonished. "Oh, that is nothing yet," I muttered within. +"I don't mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part +I'm prepared to go to considerable lengths." I continued, "You +observed it closely and distinctly but I have no objection to your +looking at it again," and I rose and placed it in his hand. +"A wellexecuted picture," he said "very soft, clear colouring +very graceful and correct drawing." +"Yes, yes I know all that. But what of the resemblance? Who is +it like?" +Mastering some hesitation, he answered, "Miss Oliver, I presume." +"Of course. And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I +will promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this +very picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable +to you. I don't wish to throw away my time and trouble on an +offering you would deem worthless." +He continued to gaze at the picture the longer he looked, the +firmer he held it, the more he seemed to covet it. "It is like" +he murmured "the eye is well managed the colour, light, expression, +are perfect. It smiles" +"Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting? +Tell me that. When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or +in India, would it be a consolation to have that memento in your +possession? or would the sight of it bring recollections calculated +to enervate and distress?" +He now furtively raised his eyes he glanced at me, irresolute, +disturbed he again surveyed the picture. +"That I should like to have it is certain whether it would be +judicious or wise is another question." +Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that +her father was not likely to oppose the match, I less exalted +in my views than St. John had been strongly disposed in my +own heart to advocate their union. It seemed to me that, should +he become the possessor of Mr. Oliver's large fortune, he might +do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius out to +wither, and his strength to waste, under a tropical sun. With +this persuasion I now answered +"As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you +were to take to yourself the original at once." +By this time he had sat down he had laid the picture on the table +before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly +over it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my +audacity. I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject +he had deemed unapproachable to hear it thus freely handled +was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure an unhopedfor +relief. Reserved people often really need the frank discussion +of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The +sternestseeming stoic is human after all and to "burst" with +boldness and goodwill into "the silent sea" of their souls is +often to confer on them the first of obligations. +"She likes you, I am sure," said I, as I stood behind his chair, +"and her father respects you. Moreover, she is a sweet girl +rather thoughtless but you would have sufficient thought for both +yourself and her. You ought to marry her." +"DOES she like me?" he asked. +"Certainly better than she likes any one else. She talks of you +continually there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches +upon so often." +"It is very pleasant to hear this," he said "very go on for +another quarter of an hour." And he actually took out his watch +and laid it upon the table to measure the time. +"But where is the use of going on," I asked, "when you are probably +preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain +to fetter your heart?" +"Don't imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting, +as I am doing human love rising like a freshly opened fountain +in my mind and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I +have so carefully and with such labour prepared so assiduously +sown with the seeds of good intentions, of selfdenying plans. And +now it is deluged with a nectarous flood the young germs swamped +delicious poison cankering them now I see myself stretched on +an ottoman in the drawingroom at Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond +Oliver's feet she is talking to me with her sweet voice gazing +down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has copied so well +smiling at me with these coral lips. She is mine I am hers +this present life and passing world suffice to me. Hush say +nothing my heart is full of delight my senses are entranced +let the time I marked pass in peace." +I humoured him the watch ticked on he breathed fast and low I +stood silent. Amidst this hush the quartet sped he replaced the +watch, laid the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth. +"Now," said he, "that little space was given to delirium and delusion. +I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck +voluntarily under her yoke of flowers. I tasted her cup. The +pillow was burning there is an asp in the garland the wine has +a bitter taste her promises are hollow her offers false I +see and know all this." +I gazed at him in wonder. +"It is strange," pursued he, "that while I love Rosamond Oliver so +wildly with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the +object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating +I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that +she would not make me a good wife that she is not the partner suited +to me that I should discover this within a year after marriage +and that to twelve months' rapture would succeed a lifetime of +regret. This I know." +"Strange indeed" I could not help ejaculating. +"While something in me," he went on, "is acutely sensible to her +charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects they +are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to co +operate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, +a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary's wife? No" +"But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that +scheme." +"Relinquish What my vocation? My great work? My foundation +laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered +in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of +bettering their race of carrying knowledge into the realms of +ignorance of substituting peace for war freedom for bondage +religion for superstition the hope of heaven for the fear of +hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my +veins. It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for." +After a considerable pause, I said "And Miss Oliver? Are her +disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?" +"Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers in less +than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will +forget me and will marry, probably, some one who will make her +far happier than I should do." +"You speak coolly enough but you suffer in the conflict. You are +wasting away." +"No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, +yet unsettled my departure, continually procrastinated. Only +this morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose +arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace +me for three months to come yet and perhaps the three months may +extend to six." +"You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the +schoolroom." +Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined +that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at +home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication +with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, +till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed +the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very +hearthstone. +"You are original," said he, "and not timid. There is something +brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye but allow +me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You +think them more profound and potent than they are. You give me a +larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I +colour, and when I shade before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. +I scorn the weakness. I know it is ignoble a mere fever of the +flesh not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul. THAT is just +as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea. Know +me to be what I am a cold hard man." +I smiled incredulously. +"You have taken my confidence by storm," he continued, "and now +it is much at your service. I am simply, in my original state +stripped of that bloodbleached robe with which Christianity covers +human deformity a cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural affection +only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason, +and not feeling, is my guide my ambition is unlimited my desire +to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable. I honour +endurance, perseverance, industry, talent because these are the +means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence. +I watch your career with interest, because I consider you a specimen +of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman not because I deeply +compassionate what you have gone through, or what you still suffer." +"You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher," I said. +"No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers +I believe and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I +am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher a follower of the +sect of Jesus. As His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, +His benignant doctrines. I advocate them I am sworn to spread +them. Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original +qualities thus From the minute germ, natural affection, she has +developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy. From the wild +stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of +the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for +my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master's +kingdom to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So +much has religion done for me turning the original materials to +the best account pruning and training nature. But she could not +eradicate nature nor will it be eradicated 'till this mortal +shall put on immortality.'" +Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside +my palette. Once more he looked at the portrait. +"She IS lovely," he murmured. "She is well named the Rose of the +World, indeed" +"And may I not paint one like it for you?" +"CUI BONO? No." +He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was +accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard +from being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it +was impossible for me to tell but something had caught his eye. +He took it up with a snatch he looked at the edge then shot a +glance at me, inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible +a glance that seemed to take and make note of every point in +my shape, face, and dress for it traversed all, quick, keen as +lightning. His lips parted, as if to speak but he checked the +coming sentence, whatever it was. +"What is the matter?" I asked. +"Nothing in the world," was the reply and, replacing the paper, +I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It +disappeared in his glove and, with one hasty nod and "goodafternoon," +he vanished. +"Well" I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, "that +caps the globe, however" +I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper but saw nothing on it save a +few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. +I pondered the mystery a minute or two but finding it insolvable, +and being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and +soon forgot it. +CHAPTER XXXIII +When Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow the whirling +storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh +and blinding falls by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost +impassable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to +prevent the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and +after sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled +fury of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down "Marmion," and beginning +"Day set on Norham's castled steep, +And Tweed's fair river broad and deep, +And Cheviot's mountains lone +The massive towers, the donjon keep, +The flanking walls that round them sweep, +In yellow lustre shone" +I soon forgot storm in music. +I heard a noise the wind, I thought, shook the door. No it was +St. John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen +hurricane the howling darkness and stood before me the +cloak that covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was +almost in consternation, so little had I expected any guest from +the blockedup vale that night. +"Any ill news?" I demanded. "Has anything happened?" +"No. How very easily alarmed you are" he answered, removing his +cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again +coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped +the snow from his boots. +"I shall sully the purity of your floor," said he, "but you must +excuse me for once." Then he approached the fire. "I have had +hard work to get here, I assure you," he observed, as he warmed his +hands over the flame. "One drift took me up to the waist happily +the snow is quite soft yet." +"But why are you come?" I could not forbear saying. +"Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor but since +you ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you I got +tired of my mute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday +I have experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has +been half told, and who is impatient to hear the sequel." +He sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and +really I began to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane, +however, his was a very cool and collected insanity I had never +seen that handsomefeatured face of his look more like chiselled +marble than it did just now, as he put aside his snowwet hair from +his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and +cheek as pale, where it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of +care or sorrow now so plainly graved. I waited, expecting he would +say something I could at least comprehend but his hand was now at +his chin, his finger on his lip he was thinking. It struck me +that his hand looked wasted like his face. A perhaps uncalledfor +gush of pity came over my heart I was moved to say +"I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you it is too bad +that you should be quite alone and you are recklessly rash about +your own health." +"Not at all," said he "I care for myself when necessary. I am +well now. What do you see amiss in me?" +This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed +that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous. +I was silenced. +He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his +eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate thinking it urgent to say +something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from +the door, which was behind him. +"No, no" he responded shortly and somewhat testily. +"Well," I reflected, "if you won't talk, you may be still I'll +let you alone now, and return to my book." +So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of "Marmion." He +soon stirred my eye was instantly drawn to his movements he only +took out a morocco pocketbook, thence produced a letter, which he +read in silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. +It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before +me nor could I, in impatience, consent to be dumb he might rebuff +me if he liked, but talk I would. +"Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?" +"Not since the letter I showed you a week ago." +"There has not been any change made about your own arrangements? +You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?" +"I fear not, indeed such chance is too good to befall me." Baffled +so far, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the +school and my scholars. +"Mary Garrett's mother is better, and Mary came back to the school +this morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the +Foundry Close they would have come today but for the snow." +"Indeed" +"Mr. Oliver pays for two." +"Does he?" +"He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas." +"I know." +"Was it your suggestion?" +"No." +"Whose, then?" +"His daughter's, I think." +"It is like her she is so goodnatured." +"Yes." +Again came the blank of a pause the clock struck eight strokes. +It aroused him he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me. +"Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire," he +said. +Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied. +"Halfanhour ago," he pursued, "I spoke of my impatience to hear +the sequel of a tale on reflection, I find the matter will be +better managed by my assuming the narrator's part, and converting +you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn +you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears but +stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass +through new lips. For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is +short. +"Twenty years ago, a poor curate never mind his name at this +moment fell in love with a rich man's daughter she fell in love +with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, +who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before +two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly +side by side under one slab. I have seen their grave it formed +part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, +sootblack old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in +shire. They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity +received in her lap cold as that of the snowdrift I almost stuck +fast in tonight. Charity carried the friendless thing to the house +of its rich maternal relations it was reared by an auntinlaw, +called I come to names now Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start +did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along +the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom it was a barn before +I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by +rats. To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years whether +it was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told +but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know +being no other than Lowood School, where you so long resided +yourself. It seems her career there was very honourable from a +pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself really it strikes me +there are parallel points in her history and yours she left it +to be a governess there, again, your fates were analogous she +undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester." +"Mr. Rivers" I interrupted. +"I can guess your feelings," he said, "but restrain them for a while +I have nearly finished hear me to the end. Of Mr. Rochester's +character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to +offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at the very +altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. +What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure +conjecture but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry +after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was gone no +one could tell when, where, or how. She had left Thornfield Hall +in the night every research after her course had been vain the +country had been scoured far and wide no vestige of information +could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be found is +become a matter of serious urgency advertisements have been put +in all the papers I myself have received a letter from one Mr. +Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. +Is it not an odd tale?" +"Just tell me this," said I, "and since you know so much, you +surely can tell it me what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is +he? What is he doing? Is he well?" +"I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester the letter never +mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I +have adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess +the nature of the event which requires her appearance." +"Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. +Rochester?" +"I suppose not." +"But they wrote to him?" +"Of course." +"And what did he say? Who has his letters?" +"Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not +from Mr. Rochester, but from a lady it is signed 'Alice Fairfax.'" +I felt cold and dismayed my worst fears then were probably true +he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless +desperation to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate +for his severe sufferings what object for his strong passions +had he sought there? I dared not answer the question. Oh, my +poor master once almost my husband whom I had often called +"my dear Edward" +"He must have been a bad man," observed Mr. Rivers. +"You don't know him don't pronounce an opinion upon him," I +said, with warmth. +"Very well," he answered quietly "and indeed my head is otherwise +occupied than with him I have my tale to finish. Since you won't +ask the governess's name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay +I have it here it is always more satisfactory to see important +points written down, fairly committed to black and white." +And the pocketbook was again deliberately produced, opened, sought +through from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip +of paper, hastily torn off I recognised in its texture and its +stains of ultramarine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin +of the portraitcover. He got up, held it close to my eyes and +I read, traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words +"JANE EYRE" the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction. +"Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre" he said, "the advertisements +demanded a Jane Eyre I knew a Jane Elliott. I confess I had my +suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once +resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the alias?" +"Yes yes but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of +Mr. Rochester than you do." +"Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all +about Mr. Rochester it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. +Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles you do +not inquire why Mr. Briggs sought after you what he wanted with +you." +"Well, what did he want?" +"Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead +that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich +merely that nothing more." +"I rich?" +"Yes, you, rich quite an heiress." +Silence succeeded. +"You must prove your identity of course," resumed St. John presently +"a step which will offer no difficulties you can then enter on +immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds +Briggs has the will and the necessary documents." +Here was a new card turned up It is a fine thing, reader, to be +lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth a very fine thing +but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at +once. And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling +and rapturegiving THIS is solid, an affair of the actual world, +nothing ideal about it all its associations are solid and sober, +and its manifestations are the same. One does not jump, and spring, +and shout hurrah at hearing one has got a fortune one begins +to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business on a base +of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain +ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow. +Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words, +Death, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead my only relative +ever since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the +hope of one day seeing him now, I never should. And then this +money came only to me not to me and a rejoicing family, but to +my isolated self. It was a grand boon doubtless and independence +would be glorious yes, I felt that that thought swelled my +heart. +"You unbend your forehead at last," said Mr. Rivers. "I thought +Medusa had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone. +Perhaps now you will ask how much you are worth?" +"How much am I worth?" +"Oh, a trifle Nothing of course to speak of twenty thousand +pounds, I think they say but what is that?" +"Twenty thousand pounds?" +Here was a new stunner I had been calculating on four or five +thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment Mr. +St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now. +"Well," said he, "if you had committed a murder, and I had told +you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast." +"It is a large sum don't you think there is a mistake?" +"No mistake at all." +"Perhaps you have read the figures wrong it may be two thousand" +"It is written in letters, not figures, twenty thousand." +I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical +powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions +for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on. +"If it were not such a very wild night," he said, "I would send +Hannah down to keep you company you look too desperately miserable +to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman could not stride the +drifts so well as I her legs are not quite so long so I must +e'en leave you to your sorrows. Goodnight." +He was lifting the latch a sudden thought occurred to me. "Stop +one minute" I cried. +"Well?" +"It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me or how +he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an outoftheway +place, had the power to aid in my discovery." +"Oh I am a clergyman," he said "and the clergy are often appealed +to about odd matters." Again the latch rattled. +"No that does not satisfy me" I exclaimed and indeed there +was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead +of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever. +"It is a very strange piece of business," I added "I must know +more about it." +"Another time." +"No tonight tonight" and as he turned from the door, I +placed myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed. +"You certainly shall not go till you have told me all," I said. +"I would rather not just now." +"You shall you must" +"I would rather Diana or Mary informed you." +Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax +gratified it must be, and that without delay and I told him so. +"But I apprised you that I was a hard man," said he, "difficult to +persuade." +"And I am a hard woman, impossible to put off." +"And then," he pursued, "I am cold no fervour infects me." +"Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has +thawed all the snow from your cloak by the same token, it has +streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As +you hope ever to be forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and +misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to +know." +"Well, then," he said, "I yield if not to your earnestness, to your +perseverance as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, +you must know some day, as well now as later. Your name is Jane +Eyre?" +"Of course that was all settled before." +"You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake? that I +was christened St. John Eyre Rivers?" +"No, indeed I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your +initials written in books you have at different times lent me but +I never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely " +I stopped I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to +express, the thought that rushed upon me that embodied itself, +that, in a second, stood out a strong, solid probability. +Circumstances knit themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order +the chain that had been lying hitherto a formless lump of links +was drawn out straight, every ring was perfect, the connection +complete. I knew, by instinct, how the matter stood, before St. +John had said another word but I cannot expect the reader to have +the same intuitive perception, so I must repeat his explanation. +"My mother's name was Eyre she had two brothers one a clergyman, +who married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead the other, John Eyre, Esq., +merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being Mr. Eyre's +solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle's +death, and to say that he had left his property to his brother the +clergyman's orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a +quarrel, never forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again +a few weeks since, to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking +if we knew anything of her. A name casually written on a slip of +paper has enabled me to find her out. You know the rest." Again +he was going, but I set my back against the door. +"Do let me speak," I said "let me have one moment to draw breath +and reflect." I paused he stood before me, hat in hand, +looking composed enough. I resumed +"Your mother was my father's sister?" +"Yes." +"My aunt, consequently?" +He bowed. +"My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his +sister's children, as I am his brother's child?" +"Undeniably." +"You three, then, are my cousins half our blood on each side flows +from the same source?" +"We are cousins yes." +I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother one I could be +proud of, one I could love and two sisters, whose qualities +were such, that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had +inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls, +on whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the +low, latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed with so +bitter a mixture of interest and despair, were my near kinswomen +and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying +at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a +lonely wretch This was wealth indeed wealth to the heart +a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing, bright, +vivid, and exhilarating not like the ponderous gift of gold +rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight. +I now clapped my hands in sudden joy my pulse bounded, my veins +thrilled. +"Oh, I am glad I am glad" I exclaimed. +St. John smiled. "Did I not say you neglected essential points +to pursue trifles?" he asked. "You were serious when I told you +you had got a fortune and now, for a matter of no moment, you are +excited." +"What can you mean? It may be of no moment to you you have +sisters and don't care for a cousin but I had nobody and now +three relations, or two, if you don't choose to be counted, +are born into my world fullgrown. I say again, I am glad" +I walked fast through the room I stopped, half suffocated with +the thoughts that rose faster than I could receive, comprehend, +settle them thoughts of what might, could, would, and should be, +and that ere long. I looked at the blank wall it seemed a sky +thick with ascending stars, every one lit me to a purpose or +delight. Those who had saved my life, whom, till this hour, I had +loved barrenly, I could now benefit. They were under a yoke, +I could free them they were scattered, I could reunite them +the independence, the affluence which was mine, might be theirs too. +Were we not four? Twenty thousand pounds shared equally would be +five thousand each, justice enough and to spare justice would +be done, mutual happiness secured. Now the wealth did not weigh +on me now it was not a mere bequest of coin, it was a legacy +of life, hope, enjoyment. +How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, +I cannot tell but I perceived soon that Mr. Rivers had placed a +chair behind me, and was gently attempting to make me sit down on +it. He also advised me to be composed I scorned the insinuation +of helplessness and distraction, shook off his hand, and began to +walk about again. +"Write to Diana and Mary tomorrow," I said, "and tell them to come +home directly. Diana said they would both consider themselves rich +with a thousand pounds, so with five thousand they will do very +well." +"Tell me where I can get you a glass of water," said St. John "you +must really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings." +"Nonsense and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you? +Will it keep you in England, induce you to marry Miss Oliver, and +settle down like an ordinary mortal?" +"You wander your head becomes confused. I have been too abrupt +in communicating the news it has excited you beyond your strength." +"Mr. Rivers you quite put me out of patience I am rational enough +it is you who misunderstand, or rather who affect to misunderstand." +"Perhaps, if you explained yourself a little more fully, I should +comprehend better." +"Explain What is there to explain? You cannot fail to see that +twenty thousand pounds, the sum in question, divided equally between +the nephew and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand +to each? What I want is, that you should write to your sisters +and tell them of the fortune that has accrued to them." +"To you, you mean." +"I have intimated my view of the case I am incapable of taking any +other. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly +ungrateful. Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and +connections. I like Moor House, and I will live at Moor House +I like Diana and Mary, and I will attach myself for life to Diana +and Mary. It would please and benefit me to have five thousand +pounds it would torment and oppress me to have twenty thousand +which, moreover, could never be mine in justice, though it might +in law. I abandon to you, then, what is absolutely superfluous to +me. Let there be no opposition, and no discussion about it let +us agree amongst each other, and decide the point at once." +"This is acting on first impulses you must take days to consider +such a matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid." +"Oh if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy you see the +justice of the case?" +"I DO see a certain justice but it is contrary to all custom. +Besides, the entire fortune is your right my uncle gained it by +his own efforts he was free to leave it to whom he would he left +it to you. After all, justice permits you to keep it you may, +with a clear conscience, consider it absolutely your own." +"With me," said I, "it is fully as much a matter of feeling as +of conscience I must indulge my feelings I so seldom have had +an opportunity of doing so. Were you to argue, object, and annoy +me for a year, I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which +I have caught a glimpse that of repaying, in part, a mighty +obligation, and winning to myself lifelong friends." +"You think so now," rejoined St. John, "because you do not know +what it is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth you +cannot form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would +give you of the place it would enable you to take in society +of the prospects it would open to you you cannot " +"And you," I interrupted, "cannot at all imagine the craving I have +for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had +brothers or sisters I must and will have them now you are not +reluctant to admit me and own me, are you?" +"Jane, I will be your brother my sisters will be your sisters +without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights." +"Brother? Yes at the distance of a thousand leagues Sisters? +Yes slaving amongst strangers I, wealthy gorged with gold I +never earned and do not merit You, penniless Famous equality +and fraternisation Close union Intimate attachment" +"But, Jane, your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness +may be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate you +may marry." +"Nonsense, again Marry I don't want to marry, and never shall +marry." +"That is saying too much such hazardous affirmations are a proof +of the excitement under which you labour." +"It is not saying too much I know what I feel, and how averse +are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would +take me for love and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere +money speculation. And I do not want a stranger unsympathising, +alien, different from me I want my kindred those with whom I +have full fellowfeeling. Say again you will be my brother when +you uttered the words I was satisfied, happy repeat them, if you +can, repeat them sincerely." +"I think I can. I know I have always loved my own sisters and +I know on what my affection for them is grounded, respect for +their worth and admiration of their talents. You too have principle +and mind your tastes and habits resemble Diana's and Mary's your +presence is always agreeable to me in your conversation I have +already for some time found a salutary solace. I feel I can easily +and naturally make room in my heart for you, as my third and youngest +sister." +"Thank you that contents me for tonight. Now you had better +go for if you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by +some mistrustful scruple." +"And the school, Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up, I suppose?" +"No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute." +He smiled approbation we shook hands, and he took leave. +I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and +arguments I used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as +I wished. My task was a very hard one but, as I was absolutely +resolved as my cousins saw at length that my mind was really +and immutably fixed on making a just division of the property as +they must in their own hearts have felt the equity of the intention +and must, besides, have been innately conscious that in my place +they would have done precisely what I wished to do they yielded +at length so far as to consent to put the affair to arbitration. The +judges chosen were Mr. Oliver and an able lawyer both coincided +in my opinion I carried my point. The instruments of transfer +were drawn out St. John, Diana, Mary, and I, each became possessed +of a competency. +CHAPTER XXXIV +It was near Christmas by the time all was settled the season of +general holiday approached. I now closed Morton school, taking care +that the parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune +opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully and to give +somewhat when we have largely received, is but to afford a vent +to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with +pleasure that many of my rustic scholars liked me, and when we +parted, that consciousness was confirmed they manifested their +affection plainly and strongly. Deep was my gratification to find +I had really a place in their unsophisticated hearts I promised +them that never a week should pass in future that I did not visit +them, and give them an hour's teaching in their school. +Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty +girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the +key in my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some +halfdozen of my best scholars as decent, respectable, modest, +and wellinformed young women as could be found in the ranks of +the British peasantry. And that is saying a great deal for after +all, the British peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most +selfrespecting of any in Europe since those days I have seen +paysannes and Bauerinnen and the best of them seemed to me ignorant, +coarse, and besotted, compared with my Morton girls. +"Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of +exertion?" asked Mr. Rivers, when they were gone. "Does not the +consciousness of having done some real good in your day and generation +give pleasure?" +"Doubtless." +"And you have only toiled a few months Would not a life devoted +to the task of regenerating your race be well spent?" +"Yes," I said "but I could not go on for ever so I want to enjoy +my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. +I must enjoy them now don't recall either my mind or body to the +school I am out of it and disposed for full holiday." +He looked grave. "What now? What sudden eagerness is this you +evince? What are you going to do?" +"To be active as active as I can. And first I must beg you to +set Hannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you." +"Do you want her?" +"Yes, to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home +in a week, and I want to have everything in order against their +arrival." +"I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion. +It is better so Hannah shall go with you." +"Tell her to be ready by tomorrow then and here is the schoolroom +key I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning." +He took it. "You give it up very gleefully," said he "I don't +quite understand your lightheartedness, because I cannot tell what +employment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you +are relinquishing. What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life +have you now?" +"My first aim will be to CLEAN DOWN do you comprehend the full +force of the expression? to CLEAN DOWN Moor House from chamber to +cellar my next to rub it up with beeswax, oil, and an indefinite +number of cloths, till it glitters again my third, to arrange every +chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision afterwards +I shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires +in every room and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your +sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a +beating of eggs, sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding +of Christmas cakes, chopping up of materials for mincepies, +and solemnising of other culinary rites, as words can convey but +an inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose, +in short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of +readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday and my ambition +is to give them a beauideal of a welcome when they come." +St. John smiled slightly still he was dissatisfied. +"It is all very well for the present," said he "but seriously, I +trust that when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look +a little higher than domestic endearments and household joys." +"The best things the world has" I interrupted. +"No, Jane, no this world is not the scene of fruition do not +attempt to make it so nor of rest do not turn slothful." +"I mean, on the contrary, to be busy." +"Jane, I excuse you for the present two months' grace I allow +you for the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing +yourself with this latefound charm of relationship but THEN, I hope +you will begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly +society, and the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised +affluence. I hope your energies will then once more trouble you +with their strength." +I looked at him with surprise. "St. John," I said, "I think you +are almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as +a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness To what end?" +"To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed +to your keeping and of which He will surely one day demand a strict +account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anxiously I warn +you of that. And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with +which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don't +cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh save your constancy +and ardour for an adequate cause forbear to waste them on trite +transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?" +"Yes just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate +cause to be happy, and I WILL be happy. Goodbye" +Happy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked and so did Hannah +she was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle +of a house turned topsyturvy how I could brush, and dust, and +clean, and cook. And really, after a day or two of confusion worse +confounded, it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the +chaos ourselves had made. I had previously taken a journey to S +to purchase some new furniture my cousins having given me CARTE +BLANCHE to effect what alterations I pleased, and a sum having been +set aside for that purpose. The ordinary sittingroom and bedrooms +I left much as they were for I knew Diana and Mary would derive +more pleasure from seeing again the old homely tables, and chairs, +and beds, than from the spectacle of the smartest innovations. Still +some novelty was necessary, to give to their return the piquancy +with which I wished it to be invested. Dark handsome new carpets +and curtains, an arrangement of some carefully selected antique +ornaments in porcelain and bronze, new coverings, and mirrors, +and dressingcases, for the toilet tables, answered the end they +looked fresh without being glaring. A spare parlour and bedroom +I refurnished entirely, with old mahogany and crimson upholstery +I laid canvas on the passage, and carpets on the stairs. When all +was finished, I thought Moor House as complete a model of bright +modest snugness within, as it was, at this season, a specimen of +wintry waste and desert dreariness without. +The eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about +dark, and ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below the kitchen +was in perfect trim Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in +readiness. +St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear +of the house till everything was arranged and, indeed, the bare +idea of the commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within +its walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me +in the kitchen, watching the progress of certain cakes for tea, +then baking. Approaching the hearth, he asked, "If I was at last +satisfied with housemaid's work?" I answered by inviting him to +accompany me on a general inspection of the result of my labours. +With some difficulty, I got him to make the tour of the house. +He just looked in at the doors I opened and when he had wandered +upstairs and downstairs, he said I must have gone through a great +deal of fatigue and trouble to have effected such considerable changes +in so short a time but not a syllable did he utter indicating +pleasure in the improved aspect of his abode. +This silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had +disturbed some old associations he valued. I inquired whether this +was the case no doubt in a somewhat crestfallen tone. +"Not at all he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had scrupulously +respected every association he feared, indeed, I must have bestowed +more thought on the matter than it was worth. How many minutes, +for instance, had I devoted to studying the arrangement of this +very room? Bythebye, could I tell him where such a book was?" +I showed him the volume on the shelf he took it down, and +withdrawing to his accustomed window recess, he began to read it. +Now, I did not like this, reader. St. John was a good man but I +began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard +and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction +for him its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived +only to aspire after what was good and great, certainly but +still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. +As I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone +at his fine lineaments fixed in study I comprehended all at +once that he would hardly make a good husband that it would be +a trying thing to be his wife. I understood, as by inspiration, +the nature of his love for Miss Oliver I agreed with him that it +was but a love of the senses. I comprehended how he should despise +himself for the feverish influence it exercised over him how he +should wish to stifle and destroy it how he should mistrust its +ever conducting permanently to his happiness or hers. I saw he +was of the material from which nature hews her heroes Christian +and Pagan her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors a +steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon but, at the +fireside, too often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place. +"This parlour is not his sphere," I reflected "the Himalayan +ridge or Caffre bush, even the plaguecursed Guinea Coast swamp +would suit him better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic +life it is not his element there his faculties stagnate they +cannot develop or appear to advantage. It is in scenes of strife +and danger where courage is proved, and energy exercised, and +fortitude tasked that he will speak and move, the leader and +superior. A merry child would have the advantage of him on this +hearth. He is right to choose a missionary's career I see it +now." +"They are coming they are coming" cried Hannah, throwing open +the parlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. +Out I ran. It was now dark but a rumbling of wheels was audible. +Hannah soon had a lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the +wicket the driver opened the door first one wellknown form, +then another, stepped out. In a minute I had my face under their +bonnets, in contact first with Mary's soft cheek, then with Diana's +flowing curls. They laughed kissed me then Hannah patted +Carlo, who was half wild with delight asked eagerly if all was +well and being assured in the affirmative, hastened into the house. +They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross, +and chilled with the frosty night air but their pleasant countenances +expanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah +brought in the boxes, they demanded St. John. At this moment he +advanced from the parlour. They both threw their arms round his +neck at once. He gave each one quiet kiss, said in a low tone +a few words of welcome, stood a while to be talked to, and then, +intimating that he supposed they would soon rejoin him in the +parlour, withdrew there as to a place of refuge. +I had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Diana had first to give +hospitable orders respecting the driver this done, both followed +me. They were delighted with the renovation and decorations +of their rooms with the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich +tinted china vases they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. +I had the pleasure of feeling that my arrangements met their wishes +exactly, and that what I had done added a vivid charm to their +joyous return home. +Sweet was that evening. My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so +eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St. +John's taciturnity he was sincerely glad to see his sisters but +in their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. +The event of the day that is, the return of Diana and Mary +pleased him but the accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, +the garrulous glee of reception irked him I saw he wished the calmer +morrow was come. In the very meridian of the night's enjoyment, +about an hour after tea, a rap was heard at the door. Hannah entered +with the intimation that "a poor lad was come, at that unlikely +time, to fetch Mr. Rivers to see his mother, who was drawing away." +"Where does she live, Hannah?" +"Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and +moss all the way." +"Tell him I will go." +"I'm sure, sir, you had better not. It's the worst road to travel +after dark that can be there's no track at all over the bog. And +then it is such a bitter night the keenest wind you ever felt. +You had better send word, sir, that you will be there in the +morning." +But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak and without +one objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine o'clock +he did not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough he was +but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed +an act of duty made an exertion felt his own strength to do and +deny, and was on better terms with himself. +I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It +was Christmas week we took to no settled employment, but spent +it in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, +the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and +Mary's spirits like some lifegiving elixir they were gay from +morning till noon, and from noon till night. They could always +talk and their discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms +for me, that I preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing +anything else. St. John did not rebuke our vivacity but he escaped +from it he was seldom in the house his parish was large, the +population scattered, and he found daily business in visiting the +sick and poor in its different districts. +One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive +for some minutes, asked him, "If his plans were yet unchanged." +"Unchanged and unchangeable," was the reply. And he proceeded +to inform us that his departure from England was now definitively +fixed for the ensuing year. +"And Rosamond Oliver?" suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape +her lips involuntarily for no sooner had she uttered them, than +she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a +book in his hand it was his unsocial custom to read at meals +he closed it, and looked up, +"Rosamond Oliver," said he, "is about to be married to Mr. Granby, +one of the best connected and most estimable residents in S, +grandson and heir to Sir Frederic Granby I had the intelligence +from her father yesterday." +His sisters looked at each other and at me we all three looked at +him he was serene as glass. +"The match must have been got up hastily," said Diana "they cannot +have known each other long." +"But two months they met in October at the county ball at S. But +where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, +where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are +unnecessary they will be married as soon as S Place, which Sir +Frederic gives up to them, can he refitted for their reception." +The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I +felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him but he seemed +so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer +him more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I +had already hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking +to him his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was +congealed beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me +like his sisters he continually made little chilling differences +between us, which did not at all tend to the development of +cordiality in short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, +and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance between +us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the village +schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted +to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity. +Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised +his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said +"You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won." +Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately +reply after a moment's hesitation I answered +"But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors +whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another +ruin you?" +"I think not and if I were, it does not much signify I shall +never be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the +conflict is decisive my way is now clear I thank God for it" +So saying, he returned to his papers and his silence. +As our mutual happiness i.e., Diana's, Mary's, and mine settled +into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular +studies, St. John stayed more at home he sat with us in the same +room, sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued +a course of encyclopaedic reading she had to my awe and amazement +undertaken, and I fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore +of his own that of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which +he thought necessary to his plans. +Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and +absorbed enough but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving +the outlandishlooking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes +fixing upon us, his fellowstudents, with a curious intensity of +observation if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn yet ever +and anon, it returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what +it meant I wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never +failed to exhibit on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, +namely, my weekly visit to Morton school and still more was I +puzzled when, if the day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or +rain, or high wind, and his sisters urged me not to go, he would +invariably make light of their solicitude, and encourage me to +accomplish the task without regard to the elements. +"Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her," he would say +"she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of +snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and +elastic better calculated to endure variations of climate than +many more robust." +And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little +weatherbeaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur +would be to vex him on all occasions fortitude pleased him the +reverse was a special annoyance. +One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I +really had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead I +sat reading Schiller he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. +As I exchanged a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his +way there I found myself under the influence of the everwatchful +blue eye. How long it had been searching me through and through, +and over and over, I cannot tell so keen was it, and yet so cold, +I felt for the moment superstitious as if I were sitting in the +room with something uncanny. +"Jane, what are you doing?" +"Learning German." +"I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee." +"You are not in earnest?" +"In such earnest that I must have it so and I will tell you why." +He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he +was himself at present studying that, as he advanced, he was apt +to forget the commencement that it would assist him greatly to have +a pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements, +and so fix them thoroughly in his mind that his choice had hovered +for some time between me and his sisters but that he had fixed on +me because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three. +Would I do him this favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make +the sacrifice long, as it wanted now barely three months to his +departure. +St. John was not a man to be lightly refused you felt that every +impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deepgraved and +permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former +found her scholar transferred from her to her brother she +laughed, and both she and Mary agreed that St. John should +never have persuaded them to such a step. He answered quietly +"I know it." +I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting +master he expected me to do a great deal and when I fulfilled his +expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. +By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away +my liberty of mind his praise and notice were more restraining +than his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when +he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me +that vivacity at least in me was distasteful to him. I was so +fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, +that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other +became vain I fell under a freezing spell. When he said "go," I +went "come," I came "do this," I did it. But I did not love my +servitude I wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me. +One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him, +bidding him goodnight, he kissed each of them, as was his custom +and, as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who +chanced to be in a frolicsome humour SHE was not painfully controlled +by his will for hers, in another way, was as strong, exclaimed +"St. John you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don't +treat her as such you should kiss her too." +She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt +uncomfortably confused and while I was thus thinking and feeling, +St. John bent his head his Greek face was brought to a level with +mine, his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly he kissed me. There +are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say +my ecclesiastical cousin's salute belonged to one of these classes +but there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. +When given, he viewed me to learn the result it was not striking +I am sure I did not blush perhaps I might have turned a little +pale, for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. +He never omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and +quiescence with which I underwent it, seemed to invest it for him +with a certain charm. +As for me, I daily wished more to please him but to do so, I felt +daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half +my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself +to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He +wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach it racked +me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was +as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and +classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the seablue +tint and solemn lustre of his own. +Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. +Of late it had been easy enough for me to look sad a cankering +evil sat at my heart and drained my happiness at its source the +evil of suspense. +Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst +these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea +was still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could +disperse, nor a sandtraced effigy storms could wash away it was +a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it +inscribed. The craving to know what had become of him followed +me everywhere when I was at Morton, I reentered my cottage every +evening to think of that and now at Moor House, I sought my bedroom +each night to brood over it. +In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs about +the will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Rochester's present +residence and state of health but, as St. John had conjectured, +he was quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs. +Fairfax, entreating information on the subject. I had calculated +with certainty on this step answering my end I felt sure it would +elicit an early answer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed +without reply but when two months wore away, and day after day +the post arrived and brought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the +keenest anxiety. +I wrote again there was a chance of my first letter having +missed. Renewed hope followed renewed effort it shone like the +former for some weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered not +a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain +expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed. +A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer +approached Diana tried to cheer me she said I looked ill, and +wished to accompany me to the seaside. This St. John opposed he +said I did not want dissipation, I wanted employment my present +life was too purposeless, I required an aim and, I suppose, by way +of supplying deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in +Hindostanee, and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment +and I, like a fool, never thought of resisting him I could not +resist him. +One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual the +ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had +told me in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went +down to take it, almost certain that the longlooked for tidings +were vouchsafed me at last, I found only an unimportant note from +Mr. Briggs on business. The bitter check had wrung from me some +tears and now, as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and +flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, my eyes filled again. +St. John called me to his side to read in attempting to do this +my voice failed me words were lost in sobs. He and I were the +only occupants of the parlour Diana was practising her music in +the drawingroom, Mary was gardening it was a very fine May day, +clear, sunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at +this emotion, nor did he question me as to its cause he only said +"We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed." +And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and +patient, leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching +with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis +in a patient's malady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, +and muttered something about not being very well that morning, I +resumed my task, and succeeded in completing it. St. John +put away my books and his, locked his desk, and said +"Now, Jane, you shall take a walk and with me." +"I will call Diana and Mary." +"No I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. +Put on your things go out by the kitchendoor take the road +towards the head of Marsh Glen I will join you in a moment." +I know no medium I never in my life have known any medium in my +dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, +between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always +faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, +sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other and as neither +present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me +to mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John's directions +and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side +by side with him. +The breeze was from the west it came over the hills, sweet with +scents of heath and rush the sky was of stainless blue the stream +descending the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured +along plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, +and sapphire tints from the firmament. As we advanced and left the +track, we trod a soft turf, mossy fine and emerald green, minutely +enamelled with a tiny white flower, and spangled with a starlike +yellow blossom the hills, meantime, shut us quite in for the +glen, towards its head, wound to their very core. +"Let us rest here," said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers +of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the +beck rushed down a waterfall and where, still a little farther, +the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment +and crag for gem where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, +and exchanged the fresh for the frowning where it guarded the +forlorn hope of solitude, and a last refuge for silence. +I took a seat St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass +and down the hollow his glance wandered away with the stream, and +returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it he +removed his hat, let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. +He seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt with his eye +he bade farewell to something. +"And I shall see it again," he said aloud, "in dreams when I sleep +by the Ganges and again in a more remote hour when another +slumber overcomes me on the shore of a darker stream" +Strange words of a strange love An austere patriot's passion +for his fatherland He sat down for halfanhour we never spoke +neither he to me nor I to him that interval past, he recommenced +"Jane, I go in six weeks I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman +which sails on the th of June." +"God will protect you for you have undertaken His work," I answered. +"Yes," said he, "there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of +an infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, +subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble +fellowworms my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the Allperfect. +It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist +under the same banner, to join in the same enterprise." +"All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to +wish to march with the strong." +"I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them I address only +such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it." +"Those are few in number, and difficult to discover." +"You say truly but when found, it is right to stir them up to +urge and exhort them to the effort to show them what their gifts +are, and why they were given to speak Heaven's message in their +ear, to offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of +His chosen." +"If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own +hearts be the first to inform them of it?" +I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over +me I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once +declare and rivet the spell. +"And what does YOUR heart say?" demanded St. John. +"My heart is mute, my heart is mute," I answered, struck and +thrilled. +"Then I must speak for it," continued the deep, relentless voice. +"Jane, come with me to India come as my helpmeet and fellowlabourer." +The glen and sky spun round the hills heaved It was as if I had +heard a summons from Heaven as if a visionary messenger, like +him of Macedonia, had enounced, "Come over and help us" But I +was no apostle, I could not behold the herald, I could not +receive his call. +"Oh, St. John" I cried, "have some mercy" +I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed +his duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued +"God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife. It is +not personal, but mental endowments they have given you you are +formed for labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must +shall be. You shall be mine I claim you not for my pleasure, +but for my Sovereign's service." +"I am not fit for it I have no vocation," I said. +He had calculated on these first objections he was not irritated +by them. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, +folded his arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he +was prepared for a long and trying opposition, and had taken in a +stock of patience to last him to its close resolved, however, +that that close should be conquest for him. +"Humility, Jane," said he, "is the groundwork of Christian virtues +you say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for +it? Or who, that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy +of the summons? I, for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. +Paul, I acknowledge myself the chiefest of sinners but I do not +suffer this sense of my personal vileness to daunt me. I know +my Leader that He is just as well as mighty and while He has +chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task, He will, from +the boundless stores of His providence, supply the inadequacy of +the means to the end. Think like me, Jane trust like me. It +is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on do not doubt but it will +bear the weight of your human weakness." +"I do not understand a missionary life I have never studied +missionary labours." +"There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want I can +set you your task from hour to hour stand by you always help you +from moment to moment. This I could do in the beginning soon +for I know your powers you would be as strong and apt as myself, +and would not require my help." +"But my powers where are they for this undertaking? I do not +feel them. Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am +sensible of no light kindling no life quickening no voice +counselling or cheering. Oh, I wish I could make you see how much +my mind is at this moment like a rayless dungeon, with one shrinking +fear fettered in its depths the fear of being persuaded by you +to attempt what I cannot accomplish" +"I have an answer for you hear it. I have watched you ever +since we first met I have made you my study for ten months. I +have proved you in that time by sundry tests and what have I +seen and elicited? In the village school I found you could perform +well, punctually, uprightly, labour uncongenial to your habits and +inclinations I saw you could perform it with capacity and tact +you could win while you controlled. In the calm with which you +learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read a mind clear of the +vice of Demas lucre had no undue power over you. In the resolute +readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares, keeping +but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others to the +claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in +the flame and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with +which, at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, +and adopted another because it interested me in the untiring assiduity +with which you have since persevered in it in the unflagging +energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties +I acknowledge the complement of the qualities I seek. Jane, +you are docile, diligent, disinterested, faithful, constant, +and courageous very gentle, and very heroic cease to mistrust +yourself I can trust you unreservedly. As a conductress of +Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance +will be to me invaluable." +My iron shroud contracted round me persuasion advanced with +slow sure step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his +succeeded in making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively +clear. My work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, +condensed itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under +his shaping hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter +of an hour to think, before I again hazarded a reply. +"Very willingly," he rejoined and rising, he strode a little +distance up the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and +there lay still. +"I CAN do what he wants me to do I am forced to see and acknowledge +that," I meditated, "that is, if life be spared me. But I feel +mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian +sun. What then? He does not care for that when my time came to +die, he would resign me, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God +who gave me. The case is very plain before me. In leaving England, +I should leave a loved but empty land Mr. Rochester is not there +and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business +is to live without him now nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag +on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in +circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course as St. +John once said I must seek another interest in life to replace the +one lost is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most +glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares +and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left +by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, +Yes and yet I shudder. Alas If I join St. John, I abandon +half myself if I go to India, I go to premature death. And how +will the interval between leaving England for India, and India for +the grave, be filled? Oh, I know well That, too, is very clear +to my vision. By straining to satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, +I SHALL satisfy him to the finest central point and farthest +outward circle of his expectations. If I DO go with him if I +DO make the sacrifice he urges, I will make it absolutely I will +throw all on the altar heart, vitals, the entire victim. He will +never love me but he shall approve me I will show him energies +he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected. Yes, I can +work as hard as he can, and with as little grudging. +"Consent, then, to his demand is possible but for one item +one dreadful item. It is that he asks me to be his wife, and +has no more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant +of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He +prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon and that is all. +Unmarried to him, this would never grieve me but can I let him +complete his calculations coolly put into practice his plans +go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from him the bridal +ring, endure all the forms of love which I doubt not he would +scrupulously observe and know that the spirit was quite absent? +Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows +is a sacrifice made on principle? No such a martyrdom would +be monstrous. I will never undergo it. As his sister, I might +accompany him not as his wife I will tell him so." +I looked towards the knoll there he lay, still as a prostrate +column his face turned to me his eye beaming watchful and keen. +He started to his feet and approached me. +"I am ready to go to India, if I may go free." +"Your answer requires a commentary," he said "it is not clear." +"You have hitherto been my adopted brother I, your adopted +sister let us continue as such you and I had better not marry." +He shook his head. "Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. +If you were my real sister it would be different I should take +you, and seek no wife. But as it is, either our union must be +consecrated and sealed by marriage, or it cannot exist practical +obstacles oppose themselves to any other plan. Do you not see it, +Jane? Consider a moment your strong sense will guide you." +I did consider and still my sense, such as it was, directed me +only to the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife +should and therefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said +so. "St. John," I returned, "I regard you as a brother you, me +as a sister so let us continue." +"We cannot we cannot," he answered, with short, sharp +determination "it would not do. You have said you will go with +me to India remember you have said that." +"Conditionally." +"Well well. To the main point the departure with me from +England, the cooperation with me in my future labours you do not +object. You have already as good as put your hand to the plough +you are too consistent to withdraw it. You have but one end to +keep in view how the work you have undertaken can best be done. +Simplify your complicated interests, feelings, thoughts, wishes, +aims merge all considerations in one purpose that of fulfilling +with effect with power the mission of your great Master. To +do so, you must have a coadjutor not a brother that is a loose +tie but a husband. I, too, do not want a sister a sister +might any day be taken from me. I want a wife the sole helpmeet +I can influence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till +death." +I shuddered as he spoke I felt his influence in my marrow his +hold on my limbs. +"Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John seek one fitted to you." +"One fitted to my purpose, you mean fitted to my vocation. Again +I tell you it is not the insignificant private individual the +mere man, with the man's selfish senses I wish to mate it is +the missionary." +"And I will give the missionary my energies it is all he wants +but not myself that would be only adding the husk and shell +to the kernel. For them he has no use I retain them." +"You cannot you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied +with half an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It +is the cause of God I advocate it is under His standard I enlist +you. I cannot accept on His behalf a divided allegiance it must +be entire." +"Oh I will give my heart to God," I said. "YOU do not want it." +I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed +sarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in +the feeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John +till now, because I had not understood him. He had held me in +awe, because he had held me in doubt. How much of him was saint, +how much mortal, I could not heretofore tell but revelations +were being made in this conference the analysis of his nature was +proceeding before my eyes. I saw his fallibilities I comprehended +them. I understood that, sitting there where I did, on the bank +of heath, and with that handsome form before me, I sat at the feet +of a man, caring as I. The veil fell from his hardness and despotism. +Having felt in him the presence of these qualities, I felt his +imperfection and took courage. I was with an equal one with +whom I might argue one whom, if I saw good, I might resist. +He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I presently +risked an upward glance at his countenance. +His eye, bent on me, expressed at once stern surprise and keen +inquiry. "Is she sarcastic, and sarcastic to ME" it seemed to +say. "What does this signify?" +"Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter," he said ere +long "one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without +sin. I trust, Jane, you are in earnest when you say you will serve +your heart to God it is all I want. Once wrench your heart from +man, and fix it on your Maker, the advancement of that Maker's +spiritual kingdom on earth will be your chief delight and endeavour +you will be ready to do at once whatever furthers that end. You +will see what impetus would be given to your efforts and mine by +our physical and mental union in marriage the only union that +gives a character of permanent conformity to the destinies and +designs of human beings and, passing over all minor caprices +all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling all scruple +about the degree, kind, strength or tenderness of mere personal +inclination you will hasten to enter into that union at once." +"Shall I?" I said briefly and I looked at his features, beautiful +in their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity +at his brow, commanding but not open at his eyes, bright and deep +and searching, but never soft at his tall imposing figure and +fancied myself in idea HIS WIFE. Oh it would never do As his +curate, his comrade, all would be right I would cross oceans with +him in that capacity toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with +him in that office admire and emulate his courage and devotion and +vigour accommodate quietly to his masterhood smile undisturbed +at his ineradicable ambition discriminate the Christian from the +man profoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other. I +should suffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity +my body would be under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and +mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn +to my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in +moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which +would be only mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing +there fresh and sheltered which his austerity could never blight, +nor his measured warriormarch trample down but as his wife +at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked +forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel +it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned +flame consumed vital after vital THIS would be unendurable. +"St. John" I exclaimed, when I had got so far in my meditation. +"Well?" he answered icily. +"I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your fellowmissionary, +but not as your wife I cannot marry you and become part of you." +"A part of me you must become," he answered steadily "otherwise +the whole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take +out with me to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to +me? How can we be for ever together sometimes in solitudes, +sometimes amidst savage tribes and unwed?" +"Very well," I said shortly "under the circumstances, quite as +well as if I were either your real sister, or a man and a clergyman +like yourself." +"It is known that you are not my sister I cannot introduce you as +such to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us +both. And for the rest, though you have a man's vigorous brain, +you have a woman's heart and it would not do." +"It would do," I affirmed with some disdain, "perfectly well. I +have a woman's heart, but not where you are concerned for you +I have only a comrade's constancy a fellowsoldier's frankness, +fidelity, fraternity, if you like a neophyte's respect and submission +to his hierophant nothing more don't fear." +"It is what I want," he said, speaking to himself "it is just what +I want. And there are obstacles in the way they must be hewn +down. Jane, you would not repent marrying me be certain of +that we MUST be married. I repeat it there is no other way +and undoubtedly enough of love would follow upon marriage to render +the union right even in your eyes." +"I scorn your idea of love," I could not help saying, as I rose up +and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. "I scorn +the counterfeit sentiment you offer yes, St. John, and I scorn +you when you offer it." +He looked at me fixedly, compressing his wellcut lips while he +did so. Whether he was incensed or surprised, or what, it was not +easy to tell he could command his countenance thoroughly. +"I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you," he said +"I think I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn." +I was touched by his gentle tone, and overawed by his high, calm +mien. +"Forgive me the words, St. John but it is your own fault that +I have been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced +a topic on which our natures are at variance a topic we should +never discuss the very name of love is an apple of discord between +us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should +we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage forget +it." +"No," said he "it is a longcherished scheme, and the only one +which can secure my great end but I shall urge you no further +at present. Tomorrow, I leave home for Cambridge I have many +friends there to whom I should wish to say farewell. I shall be +absent a fortnight take that space of time to consider my offer +and do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny, +but God. Through my means, He opens to you a noble career as my +wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my wife, and you limit +yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. +Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered with those who +have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels" +He had done. Turning from me, he once more +"Looked to river, looked to hill." +But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart I was not +worthy to hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward, +I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me the +disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met +resistance where it expected submission the disapprobation of a +cool, inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings +and views in which it has no power to sympathise in short, as a +man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience it was only +as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, +and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance. +That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to +forget even to shake hands with me, but left the room in silence. +I who, though I had no love, had much friendship for him was +hurt by the marked omission so much hurt that tears started to +my eyes. +"I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane," said Diana, +"during your walk on the moor. But go after him he is now lingering +in the passage expecting you he will make it up." +I have not much pride under such circumstances I would always +rather be happy than dignified and I ran after him he stood at +the foot of the stairs. +"Goodnight, St. John," said I. +"Goodnight, Jane," he replied calmly. +"Then shake hands," I added. +What a cold, loose touch, he impressed on my fingers He was +deeply displeased by what had occurred that day cordiality would +not warm, nor tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to +be had with him no cheering smile or generous word but still +the Christian was patient and placid and when I asked him if he +forgave me, he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing +the remembrance of vexation that he had nothing to forgive, not +having been offended. +And with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked +me down. +CHAPTER XXXV +He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he +would. He deferred his departure a whole week, and during that +time he made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a +conscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offended +him. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he +contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was +put beyond the pale of his favour. +Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness +not that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been +fully in his power to do so. Both by nature and principle, he was +superior to the mean gratification of vengeance he had forgiven +me for saying I scorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten +the words and as long as he and I lived he never would forget +them. I saw by his look, when he turned to me, that they were +always written on the air between me and him whenever I spoke, they +sounded in my voice to his ear, and their echo toned every answer +he gave me. +He did not abstain from conversing with me he even called me as +usual each morning to join him at his desk and I fear the corrupt +man within him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the +pure Christian, in evincing with what skill he could, while acting +and speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and +every phrase the spirit of interest and approval which had formerly +communicated a certain austere charm to his language and manner. +To me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble his +eye was a cold, bright, blue gem his tongue a speaking instrument +nothing more. +All this was torture to me refined, lingering torture. It kept +up a slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, +which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how if I were +his wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon +kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or +receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. +Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. +No ruth met my ruth. HE experienced no suffering from estrangement +no yearning after reconciliation and though, more than once, +my fast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, +they produced no more effect on him than if his heart had been +really a matter of stone or metal. To his sisters, meantime, he +was somewhat kinder than usual as if afraid that mere coldness +would not sufficiently convince me how completely I was banished +and banned, he added the force of contrast and this I am sure he +did not by force, but on principle. +The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the +garden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this +man, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we +were near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain +his friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning +over the little gate I spoke to the point at once. +"St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let +us be friends." +"I hope we are friends," was the unmoved reply while he still +watched the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as +I approached. +"No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that." +"Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and +all good." +"I believe you, St. John for I am sure you are incapable of wishing +any one ill but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat +more of affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend +to mere strangers." +"Of course," he said. "Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from +regarding you as a stranger." +This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling +enough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I +should immediately have left him but something worked within me +more strongly than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my +cousin's talent and principle. His friendship was of value to me +to lose it tried me severely. I would not so soon relinquish the +attempt to reconquer it. +"Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will +you leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?" +He now turned quite from the moon and faced me. +"When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you What do you not go +to India?" +"You said I could not unless I married you." +"And you will not marry me You adhere to that resolution?" +Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can +put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the +avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea +in their displeasure? +"No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution." +The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not +yet crash down. +"Once more, why this refusal?" he asked. +"Formerly," I answered, "because you did not love me now, I reply, +because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill +me. You are killing me now." +His lips and cheeks turned white quite white. +"I SHOULD KILL YOU I AM KILLING YOU? Your words are such as ought +not to be used violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an +unfortunate state of mind they merit severe reproof they would +seem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his +fellow even until seventyandseven times." +I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase +from his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that +tenacious surface another and far deeper impression, I had burnt +it in. +"Now you will indeed hate me," I said. "It is useless to attempt +to conciliate you I see I have made an eternal enemy of you." +A fresh wrong did these words inflict the worse, because they +touched on the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary +spasm. I knew the steely ire I had whetted. I was heartwrung. +"You utterly misinterpret my words," I said, at once seizing his +hand "I have no intention to grieve or pain you indeed, I have +not." +Most bitterly he smiled most decidedly he withdrew his hand from +mine. "And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India +at all, I presume?" said he, after a considerable pause. +"Yes, I will, as your assistant," I answered. +A very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in him +between Nature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell only +singular gleams scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed +over his face. He spoke at last. +"I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your +age proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved +it to you in such terms as, I should have thought, would have +prevented your ever again alluding to the plan. That you have done +so, I regret for your sake." +I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave me +courage at once. "Keep to common sense, St. John you are verging +on nonsense. You pretend to be shocked by what I have said. You +are not really shocked for, with your superior mind, you cannot +be either so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. +I say again, I will be your curate, if you like, but never your +wife." +Again he turned lividly pale but, as before, controlled +his passion perfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly +"A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me. With +me, then, it seems, you cannot go but if you are sincere in your +offer, I will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose +wife needs a coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent +of the Society's aid and thus you may still be spared the dishonour +of breaking your promise and deserting the band you engaged to +join." +Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal +promise or entered into any engagement and this language was all +much too hard and much too despotic for the occasion. I replied +"There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the +case. I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, +especially with strangers. With you I would have ventured much, +because I admire, confide in, and, as a sister, I love you but I +am convinced that, go when and with whom I would, I should not live +long in that climate." +"Ah you are afraid of yourself," he said, curling his lip. +"I am. God did not give me my life to throw away and to do as you +wish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing +suicide. Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting +England, I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater +use by remaining in it than by leaving it." +"What do you mean?" +"It would be fruitless to attempt to explain but there is a point +on which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere +till by some means that doubt is removed." +"I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The interest +you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to +have crushed it now you should blush to allude to it. You think +of Mr. Rochester?" +It was true. I confessed it by silence. +"Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?" +"I must find out what is become of him." +"It remains for me, then," he said, "to remember you in my prayers, +and to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not +indeed become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of +the chosen. But God sees not as man sees HIS will be done " +He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the +glen. He was soon out of sight. +On reentering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window, +looking very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I +she put her hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face. +"Jane," she said, "you are always agitated and pale now. I am +sure there is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John +and you have on hands. I have watched you this half hour from the +window you must forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time +I have fancied I hardly know what. St. John is a strange being " +She paused I did not speak soon she resumed +"That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting +you, I am sure he has long distinguished you by a notice and +interest he never showed to any one else to what end? I wish +he loved you does he, Jane?" +I put her cool hand to my hot forehead "No, Die, not one whit." +"Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so +frequently alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side? +Mary and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him." +"He does he has asked me to be his wife." +Diana clapped her hands. "That is just what we hoped and thought +And you will marry him, Jane, won't you? And then he will stay in +England." +"Far from that, Diana his sole idea in proposing to me is to +procure a fitting fellowlabourer in his Indian toils." +"What He wishes you to go to India?" +"Yes." +"Madness" she exclaimed. "You would not live three months there, +I am certain. You never shall go you have not consented, have +you, Jane?" +"I have refused to marry him " +"And have consequently displeased him?" she suggested. +"Deeply he will never forgive me, I fear yet I offered to +accompany him as his sister." +"It was frantic folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task you undertook +one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the strong, +and you are weak. St. John you know him would urge you to +impossibilities with him there would be no permission to rest +during the hot hours and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever +he exacts, you force yourself to perform. I am astonished you +found courage to refuse his hand. You do not love him then, Jane?" +"Not as a husband." +"Yet he is a handsome fellow." +"And I am so plain, you see, Die. We should never suit." +"Plain You? Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as too +good, to be grilled alive in Calcutta." And again she earnestly +conjured me to give up all thoughts of going out with her brother. +"I must indeed," I said "for when just now I repeated the offer of +serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want +of decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in +proposing to accompany him unmarried as if I had not from the +first hoped to find in him a brother, and habitually regarded him +as such." +"What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?" +"You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again +explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. +He has told me I am formed for labour not for love which is +true, no doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, +it follows that I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be +strange, Die, to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but +as a useful tool?" +"Insupportable unnatural out of the question" +"And then," I continued, "though I have only sisterly affection +for him now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the +possibility of conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind +of love for him, because he is so talented and there is often a +certain heroic grandeur in his look, manner, and conversation. In +that case, my lot would become unspeakably wretched. He would not +want me to love him and if I showed the feeling, he would make me +sensible that it was a superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming +in me. I know he would." +"And yet St. John is a good man," said Diana. +"He is a good and a great man but he forgets, pitilessly, the +feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large +views. It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out +of his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down. +Here he comes I will leave you, Diana." And I hastened upstairs +as I saw him entering the garden. +But I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal he +appeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardly +speak to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of +his matrimonial scheme the sequel showed I was mistaken on both +points. He addressed me precisely in his ordinary manner, or what +had, of late, been his ordinary manner one scrupulously polite. +No doubt he had invoked the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the +anger I had roused in him, and now believed he had forgiven me once +more. +For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twentyfirst +chapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to listen +while from his lips fell the words of the Bible never did his +fine voice sound at once so sweet and full never did his manner +become so impressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered +the oracles of God and tonight that voice took a more solemn +tone that manner a more thrilling meaning as he sat in the +midst of his household circle the May moon shining in through the +uncurtained window, and rendering almost unnecessary the light of +the candle on the table as he sat there, bending over the great +old Bible, and described from its page the vision of the new heaven +and the new earth told how God would come to dwell with men, +how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes, and promised that +there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any +more pain, because the former things were passed away. +The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them +especially as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in +sound, that in uttering them, his eye had turned on me. +"He that overcometh shall inherit all things and I will be his +God, and he shall be my son. But," was slowly, distinctly read, +"the fearful, the unbelieving, c., shall have their part in the +lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second +death." +Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me. +A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked +his enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The +reader believed his name was already written in the Lamb's book of +life, and he yearned after the hour which should admit him to the +city to which the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour +which has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, because the glory +of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. +In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered all +his stern zeal woke he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, +and resolved on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the weak +hearted guidance for wanderers from the fold a return, even at +the eleventh hour, for those whom the temptations of the world and +the flesh were luring from the narrow path. He asked, he urged, he +claimed the boon of a brand snatched from the burning. Earnestness +is ever deeply solemn first, as I listened to that prayer, I +wondered at his then, when it continued and rose, I was touched +by it, and at last awed. He felt the greatness and goodness of +his purpose so sincerely others who heard him plead for it, could +not but feel it too. +The prayer over, we took leave of him he was to go at a very +early hour in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left +the room in compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him +I tendered my hand, and wished him a pleasant journey. +"Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a +fortnight that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If +I listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage +with me but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my +first aim to do all things to the glory of God. My Master was +longsuffering so will I be. I cannot give you up to perdition +as a vessel of wrath repent resolve, while there is yet time. +Remember, we are bid to work while it is day warned that 'the +night cometh when no man shall work.' Remember the fate of Dives, +who had his good things in this life. God give you strength to +choose that better part which shall not be taken from you" +He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had +spoken earnestly, mildly his look was not, indeed, that of a lover +beholding his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his +wandering sheep or better, of a guardian angel watching the +soul for which he is responsible. All men of talent, whether they +be men of feeling or not whether they be zealots, or aspirants, +or despots provided only they be sincere have their sublime +moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt veneration for St. John +veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the +point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling +with him to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of +his existence, and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset +by him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. +I was a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an +error of principle to have yielded now would have been an error of +judgment. So I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis +through the quiet medium of time I was unconscious of folly at +the instant. +I stood motionless under my hierophant's touch. My refusals were +forgotten my fears overcome my wrestlings paralysed. The +Impossible I.E., my marriage with St. John was fast becoming +the Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. +Religion called Angels beckoned God commanded life rolled +together like a scroll death's gates opening, showed eternity +beyond it seemed, that for safety and bliss there, all here might +be sacrificed in a second. The dim room was full of visions. +"Could you decide now?" asked the missionary. The inquiry was put +in gentle tones he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness +how far more potent is it than force I could resist St. John's +wrath I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all +the time, if I yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, +some day, of my former rebellion. His nature was not changed by +one hour of solemn prayer it was only elevated. +"I could decide if I were but certain," I answered "were I but +convinced that it is God's will I should marry you, I could vow to +marry you here and now come afterwards what would" +"My prayers are heard" ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand +firmer on my head, as if he claimed me he surrounded me with his +arm, ALMOST as if he loved me I say ALMOST I knew the difference +for I had felt what it was to be loved but, like him, I had +now put love out of the question, and thought only of duty. I +contended with my inward dimness of vision, before which clouds +yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply, fervently longed to do what was +right and only that. "Show me, show me the path" I entreated +of Heaven. I was excited more than I had ever been and whether +what followed was the effect of excitement the reader shall judge. +All the house was still for I believe all, except St. John and +myself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out +the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick I +heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible +feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head +and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock, but +it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling it acted on my +senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, +from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose +expectant eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones. +"What have you heard? What do you see?" asked St. John. I +saw nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry +"Jane Jane Jane" nothing more. +"O God what is it?" I gasped. +I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room +nor in the house nor in the garden it did not come out of +the air nor from under the earth nor from overhead. I had +heard it where, or whence, for ever impossible to know And it +was the voice of a human being a known, loved, wellremembered +voice that of Edward Fairfax Rochester and it spoke in pain +and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently. +"I am coming" I cried. "Wait for me Oh, I will come" I flew +to the door and looked into the passage it was dark. I ran out +into the garden it was void. +"Where are you?" I exclaimed. +The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back "Where +are you?" I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs all was +moorland loneliness and midnight hush. +"Down superstition" I commented, as that spectre rose up black +by the black yew at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy +witchcraft it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did +no miracle but her best." +I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained +me. It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play +and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark I desired +him to leave me I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. +Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails. +I mounted to my chamber locked myself in fell on my knees and +prayed in my way a different way to St. John's, but effective in +its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit +and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the +thanksgiving took a resolve and lay down, unscared, enlightened +eager but for the daylight. +CHAPTER XXXVI +The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or +two with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, +in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief +absence. Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped +at my door I feared he would knock no, but a slip of paper +was passed under the door. I took it up. It bore these words +"You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little +longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross and +the angel's crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return +this day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not +into temptation the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, +I see, is weak. I shall pray for you hourly. Yours, ST. JOHN." +"My spirit," I answered mentally, "is willing to do what is right +and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will +of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any +rate, it shall be strong enough to search inquire to grope an +outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty." +It was the first of June yet the morning was overcast and chilly +rain beat fast on my casement. I heard the frontdoor open, and +St. John pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse +the garden. He took the way over the misty moors in the direction +of Whitcross there he would meet the coach. +"In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin," +thought I "I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have +some to see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever." +It wanted yet two hours of breakfasttime. I filled the interval +in walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which +had given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward +sensation I had experienced for I could recall it, with all its +unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard again +I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before it seemed in +ME not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous +impression a delusion? I could not conceive or believe it was +more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come +like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's +prison it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed +its bands it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang +trembling, listening, aghast then vibrated thrice a cry on my +startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which +neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success +of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the +cumbrous body. +"Ere many days," I said, as I terminated my musings, "I will know +something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters +have proved of no avail personal inquiry shall replace them." +At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a +journey, and should be absent at least four days. +"Alone, Jane?" they asked. +"Yes it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for +some time been uneasy." +They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they +had believed me to be without any friends save them for, indeed, +I had often said so but, with their true natural delicacy, they +abstained from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure +I was well enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I +replied, that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped +soon to alleviate. +It was easy to make my further arrangements for I was troubled with +no inquiries no surmises. Having once explained to them that +I could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely +acquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according to +me the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances +have accorded them. +I left Moor House at three o'clock p.m., and soon after four I +stood at the foot of the signpost of Whitcross, waiting the arrival +of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst +the silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it +approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence, +a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot +how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless It stopped as +I beckoned. I entered not now obliged to part with my whole +fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road +to Thornfield, I felt like the messengerpigeon flying home. +It was a journey of sixandthirty hours. I had set out from +Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding +Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside +inn, situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large +fields and low pastoral hills how mild of feature and verdant of +hue compared with the stern NorthMidland moors of Morton met my +eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the +character of this landscape I was sure we were near my bourne. +"How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of the ostler. +"Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields." +"My journey is closed," I thought to myself. I got out of the +coach, gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till +I called for it paid my fare satisfied the coachman, and was +going the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I +read in gilt letters, "The Rochester Arms." My heart leapt up I +was already on my master's very lands. It fell again the thought +struck it +"Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught +you know and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which +you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife and you +have nothing to do with him you dare not speak to him or seek +his presence. You have lost your labour you had better go no +farther," urged the monitor. "Ask information of the people at the +inn they can give you all you seek they can solve your doubts at +once. Go up to that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home." +The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to +act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. +To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see +the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before +me the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, +distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on +the morning I fled from Thornfield ere I well knew what course +I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I +walked How I ran sometimes How I looked forward to catch the +first view of the wellknown woods With what feelings I welcomed +single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill +between them +At last the woods rose the rookery clustered dark a loud cawing +broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me on I +hastened. Another field crossed a lane threaded and there +were the courtyard walls the back offices the house itself, +the rookery still hid. "My first view of it shall be in front," I +determined, "where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at +once, and where I can single out my master's very window perhaps +he will be standing at it he rises early perhaps he is now +walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front. Could I but +see him but a moment Surely, in that case, I should not be +so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell I am not certain. And +if I did what then? God bless him What then? Who would be +hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I +rave perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the +Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south." +I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard turned +its angle there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, +between two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one +pillar I could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion. +I advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any +bedroom windowblinds were yet drawn up battlements, windows, +long front all from this sheltered station were at my command. +The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this +survey. I wonder what they thought. They must have considered +I was very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew +very bold and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare and then +a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow and +a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted, +hardy gaze towards it. "What affectation of diffidence was this +at first?" they might have demanded "what stupid regardlessness +now?" +Hear an illustration, reader. +A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank he wishes to +catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals +softly over the grass, careful to make no sound he pauses +fancying she has stirred he withdraws not for worlds would he +be seen. All is still he again advances he bends above her +a light veil rests on her features he lifts it, bends lower now +his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty warm, and blooming, +and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance But how +they fix How he starts How he suddenly and vehemently clasps +in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with +his finger How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and +gazes on it wildly He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because +he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter by any +movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly he finds +she is stone dead. +I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house I saw a +blackened ruin. +No need to cower behind a gatepost, indeed to peep up at +chamber lattices, fearing life was astir behind them No need to +listen for doors opening to fancy steps on the pavement or the +gravelwalk The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste the +portal yawned void. The front was, as I had once seen it in a +dream, but a welllike wall, very high and very fragilelooking, +perforated with paneless windows no roof, no battlements, no +chimneys all had crashed in. +And there was the silence of death about it the solitude of +a lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here +had never received an answer as well despatch epistles to a vault +in a church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what +fate the Hall had fallen by conflagration but how kindled? +What story belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and +marble and woodwork had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked +as well as property? If so, whose? Dreadful question there was +no one here to answer it not even dumb sign, mute token. +In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated +interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late +occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that +void arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements for, +amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation +grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen +rafters. And oh where meantime was the hapless owner of this +wreck? In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily +wandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked, +"Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow +marble house?" +Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere +but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself +brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the +door and sit down I had some questions to ask him. But when he +complied, I scarcely knew how to begin such horror had I of the +possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just +left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was +a respectablelooking, middleaged man. +"You know Thornfield Hall, of course?" I managed to say at last. +"Yes, ma'am I lived there once." +"Did you?" Not in my time, I thought you are a stranger to me. +"I was the late Mr. Rochester's butler," he added. +The late I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I +had been trying to evade. +"The late" I gasped. "Is he dead?" +"I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father," he explained. +I breathed again my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by +these words that Mr. Edward MY Mr. Rochester God bless him, +wherever he was was at least alive was, in short, "the present +gentleman." Gladdening words It seemed I could hear all that was +to come whatever the disclosures might be with comparative +tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear, I +thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes. +"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?" I asked, knowing, +of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring +the direct question as to where he really was. +"No, ma'am oh, no No one is living there. I suppose you are +a stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened +last autumn, Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin it was burnt down +just about harvesttime. A dreadful calamity such an immense +quantity of valuable property destroyed hardly any of the furniture +could be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before +the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of +flame. It was a terrible spectacle I witnessed it myself." +"At dead of night" I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour +of fatality at Thornfield. "Was it known how it originated?" I +demanded. +"They guessed, ma'am they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was +ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware," he continued, +edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, "that +there was a lady a a lunatic, kept in the house?" +"I have heard something of it." +"She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am people even for +some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one +saw her they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the +Hall and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They +said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she +had been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since +a very queer thing." +I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to +the main fact. +"And this lady?" +"This lady, ma'am," he answered, "turned out to be Mr. Rochester's +wife The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There +was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in " +"But the fire," I suggested. +"I'm coming to that, ma'am that Mr. Edward fell in love with. +The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was +he was after her continually. They used to watch him servants +will, you know, ma'am and he set store on her past everything +for all, nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was +a little small thing, they say, almost like a child. I never saw +her myself but I've heard Leah, the housemaid, tell of her. Leah +liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this +governess not twenty and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall +in love with girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched. +Well, he would marry her." +"You shall tell me this part of the story another time," I said +"but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about +the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had +any hand in it?" +"You've hit it, ma'am it's quite certain that it was her, and +nobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care +of her called Mrs. Poole an able woman in her line, and very +trustworthy, but for one fault a fault common to a deal of them +nurses and matrons she KEPT A PRIVATE BOTTLE OF GIN BY HER, +and now and then took a drop overmuch. It is excusable, for she +had a hard life of it but still it was dangerous for when Mrs. +Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, who +was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her pocket, +let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house, +doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had +nearly burnt her husband in his bed once but I don't know about +that. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings +of the room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, +and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess's +she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and +had a spite at her and she kindled the bed there but there +was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The governess had run away +two months before and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she +had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never +could hear a word of her and he grew savage quite savage on +his disappointment he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous +after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax, +the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance but he did it +handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life and she +deserved it she was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward he +had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the +gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall." +"What did he not leave England?" +"Leave England? Bless you, no He would not cross the doorstones +of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost +about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses +which it is my opinion he had for a more spirited, bolder, keener +gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him, +you never saw, ma'am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards, +or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome but he +had a courage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him +from a boy, you see and for my part, I have often wished that +Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield +Hall." +"Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?" +"Yes, indeed was he and he went up to the attics when all was +burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds +and helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out +of her cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the +roof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, +and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off I saw her +and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long +black hair we could see it streaming against the flames as she +stood. I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend +through the skylight on to the roof we heard him call 'Bertha' +We saw him approach her and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a +spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement." +"Dead?" +"Dead Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were +scattered." +"Good God" +"You may well say so, ma'am it was frightful" +He shuddered. +"And afterwards?" I urged. +"Well, ma'am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground there +are only some bits of walls standing now." +"Were any other lives lost?" +"No perhaps it would have been better if there had." +"What do you mean?" +"Poor Mr. Edward" he ejaculated, "I little thought ever to have +seen it Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his +first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he +had one living but I pity him, for my part." +"You said he was alive?" I exclaimed. +"Yes, yes he is alive but many think he had better he dead." +"Why? How?" My blood was again running cold. "Where is he?" I +demanded. "Is he in England?" +"Ay ay he's in England he can't get out of England, I fancy +he's a fixture now." +What agony was this And the man seemed resolved to protract it. +"He is stoneblind," he said at last. "Yes, he is stoneblind, is +Mr. Edward." +I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength +to ask what had caused this calamity. +"It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, +in a way, ma'am he wouldn't leave the house till every one else +was out before him. As he came down the great staircase at last, +after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there +was a great crash all fell. He was taken out from under the +ruins, alive, but sadly hurt a beam had fallen in such a way as +to protect him partly but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so +crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly. +The other eye inflamed he lost the sight of that also. He is +now helpless, indeed blind and a cripple." +"Where is he? Where does he now live?" +"At Ferndean, a manorhouse on a farm he has, about thirty miles +off quite a desolate spot." +"Who is with him?" +"Old John and his wife he would have none else. He is quite +broken down, they say." +"Have you any sort of conveyance?" +"We have a chaise, ma'am, a very handsome chaise." +"Let it be got ready instantly and if your postboy can drive me +to Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice +the hire you usually demand." +CHAPTER XXXVII +The manorhouse of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, +moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in +a wood. I had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of +it, and sometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate +for the sake of the game covers. He would have let the house, but +could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious +site. Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the +exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation +of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot. +To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the +characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating +rain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the +chaise and driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even +when within a very short distance of the manorhouse, you could +see nothing of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy +wood about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where +to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at once in the +twilight of closeranked trees. There was a grassgrown track +descending the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and +under branched arches. I followed it, expecting soon to reach the +dwelling but it stretched on and on, it would far and farther +no sign of habitation or grounds was visible. +I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The +darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I +looked round in search of another road. There was none all was +interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense summer foliage no opening +anywhere. +I proceeded at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little +presently I beheld a railing, then the house scarce, by this +dim light, distinguishable from the trees so dank and green were +its decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, +I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept +away in a semicircle. There were no flowers, no gardenbeds only +a broad gravelwalk girdling a grassplat, and this set in the +heavy frame of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables +in its front the windows were latticed and narrow the front +door was narrow too, one step led up to it. The whole looked, as +the host of the Rochester Arms had said, "quite a desolate spot." +It was as still as a church on a weekday the pattering rain on +the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage. +"Can there be life here?" I asked. +Yes, life of some kind there was for I heard a movement that +narrow frontdoor was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue +from the grange. +It opened slowly a figure came out into the twilight and stood +on the step a man without a hat he stretched forth his hand as +if to feel whether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had recognised +him it was my master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other. +I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him to +examine him, myself unseen, and alas to him invisible. It was +a sudden meeting, and one in which rapture was kept well in check +by pain. I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, +my step from hasty advance. +His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever his +port was still erect, his hair was still raven black nor were his +features altered or sunk not in one year's space, by any sorrow, +could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted. +But in his countenance I saw a change that looked desperate and +brooding that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild +beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged +eagle, whose goldringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look +as looked that sightless Samson. +And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity? +if you do, you little know me. A soft hope blest with my sorrow +that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and +on those lips so sternly sealed beneath it but not yet. I would +not accost him yet. +He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards +the grassplat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he paused, +as if he knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and opened +his eyelids gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, +and toward the amphitheatre of trees one saw that all to him +was void darkness. He stretched his right hand the left arm, the +mutilated one, he kept hidden in his bosom he seemed to wish by +touch to gain an idea of what lay around him he met but vacancy +still for the trees were some yards off where he stood. He +relinquished the endeavour, folded his arms, and stood quiet and +mute in the rain, now falling fast on his uncovered head. At this +moment John approached him from some quarter. +"Will you take my arm, sir?" he said "there is a heavy shower +coming on had you not better go in?" +"Let me alone," was the answer. +John withdrew without having observed me. Mr. Rochester now tried +to walk about vainly, all was too uncertain. He groped his +way back to the house, and, reentering it, closed the door. +I now drew near and knocked John's wife opened for me. "Mary," +I said, "how are you?" +She started as if she had seen a ghost I calmed her. To her +hurried "Is it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this +lonely place?" I answered by taking her hand and then I followed +her into the kitchen, where John now sat by a good fire. I explained +to them, in few words, that I had heard all which had happened since +I left Thornfield, and that I was come to see Mr. Rochester. I +asked John to go down to the turnpikehouse, where I had dismissed +the chaise, and bring my trunk, which I had left there and +then, while I removed my bonnet and shawl, I questioned Mary as to +whether I could be accommodated at the Manor House for the night +and finding that arrangements to that effect, though difficult, +would not be impossible, I informed her I should stay. Just at +this moment the parlourbell rang. +"When you go in," said I, "tell your master that a person wishes +to speak to him, but do not give my name." +"I don't think he will see you," she answered "he refuses everybody." +When she returned, I inquired what he had said. "You are to send +in your name and your business," she replied. She then proceeded +to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray, together with +candles. +"Is that what he rang for?" I asked. +"Yes he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is +blind." +"Give the tray to me I will carry it in." +I took it from her hand she pointed me out the parlour door. The +tray shook as I held it the water spilt from the glass my heart +struck my ribs loud and fast. Mary opened the door for me, and +shut it behind me. +This parlour looked gloomy a neglected handful of fire burnt low +in the grate and, leaning over it, with his head supported against +the high, oldfashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant +of the room. His old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of +the way, and coiled up as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden +upon. Pilot pricked up his ears when I came in then he jumped +up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded towards me he almost +knocked the tray from my hands. I set it on the table then patted +him, and said softly, "Lie down" Mr. Rochester turned mechanically +to SEE what the commotion was but as he SAW nothing, he returned +and sighed. +"Give me the water, Mary," he said. +I approached him with the now only halffilled glass Pilot followed +me, still excited. +"What is the matter?" he inquired. +"Down, Pilot" I again said. He checked the water on its way to +his lips, and seemed to listen he drank, and put the glass down. +"This is you, Mary, is it not?" +"Mary is in the kitchen," I answered. +He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where +I stood, he did not touch me. "Who is this? Who is this?" he +demanded, trying, as it seemed, to SEE with those sightless eyes +unavailing and distressing attempt "Answer me speak again" +he ordered, imperiously and aloud. +"Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was +in the glass," I said. +"WHO is it? WHAT is it? Who speaks?" +"Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only +this evening," I answered. +"Great God what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness +has seized me?" +"No delusion no madness your mind, sir, is too strong for +delusion, your health too sound for frenzy." +"And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh I CANNOT +see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. +Whatever whoever you are be perceptible to the touch or I +cannot live" +He groped I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both +mine. +"Her very fingers" he cried "her small, slight fingers If so +there must be more of her." +The muscular hand broke from my custody my arm was seized, my +shoulder neck waist I was entwined and gathered to him. +"Is it Jane? WHAT is it? This is her shape this is her size " +"And this her voice," I added. "She is all here her heart, too. +God bless you, sir I am glad to be so near you again." +"Jane Eyre Jane Eyre," was all he said. +"My dear master," I answered, "I am Jane Eyre I have found you +out I am come back to you." +"In truth? in the flesh? My living Jane?" +"You touch me, sir, you hold me, and fast enough I am not cold +like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?" +"My living darling These are certainly her limbs, and these her +features but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a +dream such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her +once more to my heart, as I do now and kissed her, as thus and +felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me." +"Which I never will, sir, from this day." +"Never will, says the vision? But I always woke and found it an +empty mockery and I was desolate and abandoned my life dark, +lonely, hopeless my soul athirst and forbidden to drink my +heart famished and never to be fed. Gentle, soft dream, nestling +in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled +before you but kiss me before you go embrace me, Jane." +"There, sir and there"' +I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes +I swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that too. He suddenly +seemed to arouse himself the conviction of the reality of all +this seized him. +"It is you is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?" +"I am." +"And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream? And you +are not a pining outcast amongst strangers?" +"No, sir I am an independent woman now." +"Independent What do you mean, Jane?" +"My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds." +"Ah this is practical this is real" he cried "I should +never dream that. Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, +so animating and piquant, as well as soft it cheers my withered +heart it puts life into it. What, Janet Are you an independent +woman? A rich woman?" +"If you won't let me live with you, I can build a house of my own +close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when +you want company of an evening." +"But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who +will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a +blind lameter like me?" +"I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich I am my own +mistress." +"And you will stay with me?" +"Certainly unless you object. I will be your neighbour, +your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely I will be your +companion to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, +to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so +melancholy, my dear master you shall not be left desolate, so long +as I live." +He replied not he seemed serious abstracted he sighed +he halfopened his lips as if to speak he closed them again. I +felt a little embarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly overleaped +conventionalities and he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my +inconsiderateness. I had indeed made my proposal from the idea +that he wished and would ask me to be his wife an expectation, +not the less certain because unexpressed, had buoyed me up, that +he would claim me at once as his own. But no hint to that effect +escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast, I suddenly +remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing +the fool unwittingly and I began gently to withdraw myself from +his arms but he eagerly snatched me closer. +"No no Jane you must not go. No I have touched you, +heard you, felt the comfort of your presence the sweetness of +your consolation I cannot give up these joys. I have little left +in myself I must have you. The world may laugh may call me +absurd, selfish but it does not signify. My very soul demands +you it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on +its frame." +"Well, sir, I will stay with you I have said so." +"Yes but you understand one thing by staying with me and I +understand another. You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be +about my hand and chair to wait on me as a kind little nurse +for you have an affectionate heart and a generous spirit, which +prompt you to make sacrifices for those you pity, and that ought +to suffice for me no doubt. I suppose I should now entertain none +but fatherly feelings for you do you think so? Come tell me." +"I will think what you like, sir I am content to be only your +nurse, if you think it better." +"But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet you are young you +must marry one day." +"I don't care about being married." +"You should care, Janet if I were what I once was, I would try +to make you care but a sightless block" +He relapsed again into gloom. I, on the contrary, became more +cheerful, and took fresh courage these last words gave me an +insight as to where the difficulty lay and as it was no difficulty +with me, I felt quite relieved from my previous embarrassment. I +resumed a livelier vein of conversation. +"It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you," said I, parting +his thick and long uncut locks "for I see you are being metamorphosed +into a lion, or something of that sort. You have a 'faux air' of +Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain your hair +reminds me of eagles' feathers whether your nails are grown like +birds' claws or not, I have not yet noticed." +"On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails," he said, drawing +the mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me. "It is +a mere stump a ghastly sight Don't you think so, Jane?" +"It is a pity to see it and a pity to see your eyes and the +scar of fire on your forehead and the worst of it is, one is in +danger of loving you too well for all this and making too much of +you." +"I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and +my cicatrised visage." +"Did you? Don't tell me so lest I should say something +disparaging to your judgment. Now, let me leave you an instant, +to make a better fire, and have the hearth swept up. Can you tell +when there is a good fire?" +"Yes with the right eye I see a glow a ruddy haze." +"And you see the candles?" +"Very dimly each is a luminous cloud." +"Can you see me?" +"No, my fairy but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you." +"When do you take supper?" +"I never take supper." +"But you shall have some tonight. I am hungry so are you, I +daresay, only you forget." +Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order I +prepared him, likewise, a comfortable repast. My spirits were +excited, and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, +and for a long time after. There was no harassing restraint, no +repressing of glee and vivacity with him for with him I was at +perfect ease, because I knew I suited him all I said or did seemed +either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness It +brought to life and light my whole nature in his presence I +thoroughly lived and he lived in mine. Blind as he was, smiles +played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead his lineaments +softened and warmed. +After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had +been, what I had been doing, how I had found him out but I gave +him only very partial replies it was too late to enter into +particulars that night. Besides, I wished to touch no deepthrilling +chord to open no fresh well of emotion in his heart my sole +present aim was to cheer him. Cheered, as I have said, he was +and yet but by fits. If a moment's silence broke the conversation, +he would turn restless, touch me, then say, "Jane." +"You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?" +"I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester." +"Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly +rise on my lone hearth? I stretched my hand to take a glass of water +from a hireling, and it was given me by you I asked a question, +expecting John's wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my +ear." +"Because I had come in, in Mary's stead, with the tray." +"And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with +you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged +on for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing merging night +in day feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go +out, of hunger when I forgot to eat and then a ceaseless sorrow, +and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. +Yes for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my +lost sight. How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves +me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? Tomorrow, I +fear I shall find her no more." +A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own +disturbed ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for +him in this frame of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows, +and remarked that they were scorched, and that I would apply +something which would make them grow as broad and black as ever. +"Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit, +when, at some fatal moment, you will again desert me passing +like a shadow, whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining +afterwards undiscoverable? +"Have you a pocketcomb about you, sir?" +"What for, Jane?" +"Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather +alarming, when I examine you close at hand you talk of my being +a fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie." +"Am I hideous, Jane?" +"Very, sir you always were, you know." +"Humph The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever +you have sojourned." +"Yet I have been with good people far better than you a hundred +times better people possessed of ideas and views you never +entertained in your life quite more refined and exalted." +"Who the deuce have you been with?" +"If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of +your head and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of +my substantiality." +"Who have you been with, Jane?" +"You shall not get it out of me tonight, sir you must wait till +tomorrow to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort +of security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish +it. By the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only +a glass of water then I must bring an egg at the least, to say +nothing of fried ham." +"You mocking changeling fairyborn and humanbred You make me +feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have +had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised +without the aid of the harp." +"There, sir, you are redd up and made decent. Now I'll leave you +I have been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am +tired. Good night." +"Just one word, Jane were there only ladies in the house where +you have been?" +I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs. +"A good idea" I thought with glee. "I see I have the means of +fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to come." +Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering +from one room to another. As soon as Mary came down I heard the +question "Is Miss Eyre here?" Then "Which room did you put her +into? Was it dry? Is she up? Go and ask if she wants anything +and when she will come down." +I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast. +Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he +discovered my presence. It was mournful, indeed, to witness the +subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He +sat in his chair still, but not at rest expectant evidently +the lines of now habitual sadness marking his strong features. His +countenance reminded one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be relit +and alas it was not himself that could now kindle the lustre +of animated expression he was dependent on another for that +office I had meant to be gay and careless, but the powerlessness +of the strong man touched my heart to the quick still I accosted +him with what vivacity I could. +"It is a bright, sunny morning, sir," I said. "The rain is over +and gone, and there is a tender shining after it you shall have +a walk soon." +I had wakened the glow his features beamed. +"Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark Come to me. You are not +gone not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing +high over the wood but its song had no music for me, any more than +the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated +in my Jane's tongue to my ear I am glad it is not naturally a +silent one all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence." +The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence +just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced +to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be +lachrymose I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with +preparing breakfast. +Most of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of +the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields I described to +him how brilliantly green they were how the flowers and hedges +looked refreshed how sparklingly blue was the sky. I sought a +seat for him in a hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree +nor did I refuse to let him, when seated, place me on his knee. Why +should I, when both he and I were happier near than apart? Pilot +lay beside us all was quiet. He broke out suddenly while +clasping me in his arms +"Cruel, cruel deserter Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered +you had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you +and, after examining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken +no money, nor anything which could serve as an equivalent A pearl +necklace I had given you lay untouched in its little casket your +trunks were left corded and locked as they had been prepared for +the bridal tour. What could my darling do, I asked, left destitute +and penniless? And what did she do? Let me hear now." +Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last +year. I softened considerably what related to the three days of +wandering and starvation, because to have told him all would have +been to inflict unnecessary pain the little I did say lacerated +his faithful heart deeper than I wished. +I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of +making my way I should have told him my intention. I should have +confided in him he would never have forced me to be his mistress. +Violent as he had seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me +far too well and too tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant he +would have given me half his fortune, without demanding so much as +a kiss in return, rather than I should have flung myself friendless +on the wide world. I had endured, he was certain, more than I had +confessed to him. +"Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short," I +answered and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received +at Moor House how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, c. +The accession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed +in due order. Of course, St. John Rivers' name came in frequently +in the progress of my tale. When I had done, that name was +immediately taken up. +"This St. John, then, is your cousin?" +"Yes." +"You have spoken of him often do you like him?" +"He was a very good man, sir I could not help liking him." +"A good man. Does that mean a respectable wellconducted man of +fifty? Or what does it mean?" +"St John was only twentynine, sir." +"'Jeune encore,' as the French say. Is he a person of low stature, +phlegmatic, and plain. A person whose goodness consists rather in +his guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue." +"He is untiringly active. Great and exalted deeds are what he +lives to perform." +"But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well but +you shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?" +"He talks little, sir what he does say is ever to the point. His +brain is firstrate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous." +"Is he an able man, then?" +"Truly able." +"A thoroughly educated man?" +"St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar." +"His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste? priggish +and parsonic?" +"I never mentioned his manners but, unless I had a very bad taste, +they must suit it they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike." +"His appearance, I forget what description you gave of his +appearance a sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white +neckcloth, and stilted up on his thicksoled highlows, eh?" +"St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man tall, fair, with +blue eyes, and a Grecian profile." +Aside. "Damn him" To me. "Did you like him, Jane?" +"Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him but you asked me that before." +I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealousy +had got hold of him she stung him but the sting was salutary +it gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would +not, therefore, immediately charm the snake. +"Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?" +was the next somewhat unexpected observation. +"Why not, Mr. Rochester?" +"The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too +overwhelming contrast. Your words have delineated very prettily +a graceful Apollo he is present to your imagination, tall, +fair, blueeyed, and with a Grecian profile. Your eyes dwell on a +Vulcan, a real blacksmith, brown, broadshouldered and blind +and lame into the bargain." +"I never thought of it, before but you certainly are rather like +Vulcan, sir." +"Well, you can leave me, ma'am but before you go" and he retained +me by a firmer grasp than ever, "you will be pleased just to answer +me a question or two." He paused. +"What questions, Mr. Rochester?" +Then followed this crossexamination. +"St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were +his cousin?" +"Yes." +"You would often see him? He would visit the school sometimes?" +"Daily." +"He would approve of your plans, Jane? I know they would be clever, +for you are a talented creature" +"He approved of them yes." +"He would discover many things in you he could not have expected +to find? Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary." +"I don't know about that." +"You had a little cottage near the school, you say did he ever +come there to see you?" +"Now and then?" +"Of an evening?" +"Once or twice." +A pause. +"How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship +was discovered?" +"Five months." +"Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family?" +"Yes the back parlour was both his study and ours he sat near +the window, and we by the table." +"Did he study much?" +"A good deal." +"What?" +"Hindostanee." +"And what did you do meantime?" +"I learnt German, at first." +"Did he teach you?" +"He did not understand German." +"Did he teach you nothing?" +"A little Hindostanee." +"Rivers taught you Hindostanee?" +"Yes, sir." +"And his sisters also?" +"No." +"Only you?" +"Only me." +"Did you ask to learn?" +"No." +"He wished to teach you?" +"Yes." +A second pause. +"Why did he wish it? Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?" +"He intended me to go with him to India." +"Ah here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry +him?" +"He asked me to marry him." +"That is a fiction an impudent invention to vex me." +"I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth he asked me more than +once, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could +be." +"Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say +the same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my +knee, when I have given you notice to quit?" +"Because I am comfortable there." +"No, Jane, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not +with me it is with this cousin this St. John. Oh, till this +moment, I thought my little Jane was all mine I had a belief she +loved me even when she left me that was an atom of sweet in much +bitter. Long as we have been parted, hot tears as I have wept over +our separation, I never thought that while I was mourning her, she +was loving another But it is useless grieving. Jane, leave me +go and marry Rivers." +"Shake me off, then, sir, push me away, for I'll not leave you +of my own accord." +"Jane, I ever like your tone of voice it still renews hope, it +sounds so truthful. When I hear it, it carries me back a year. I +forget that you have formed a new tie. But I am not a fool go " +"Where must I go, sir?" +"Your own way with the husband you have chosen." +"Who is that?" +"You know this St. John Rivers." +"He is not my husband, nor ever will be. He does not love me I +do not love him. He loves as he CAN love, and that is not as you +love a beautiful young lady called Rosamond. He wanted to marry +me only because he thought I should make a suitable missionary's +wife, which she would not have done. He is good and great, but +severe and, for me, cold as an iceberg. He is not like you, sir +I am not happy at his side, nor near him, nor with him. He has no +indulgence for me no fondness. He sees nothing attractive in +me not even youth only a few useful mental points. Then I +must leave you, sir, to go to him?" +I shuddered involuntarily, and clung instinctively closer to my +blind but beloved master. He smiled. +"What, Jane Is this true? Is such really the state of matters +between you and Rivers?" +"Absolutely, sir Oh, you need not be jealous I wanted to tease +you a little to make you less sad I thought anger would be better +than grief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how +much I DO love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart +is yours, sir it belongs to you and with you it would remain, +were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence for ever." +Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect. "My +scarred vision My crippled strength" he murmured regretfully. +I caressed, in order to soothe him. I knew of what he was thinking, +and wanted to speak for him, but dared not. As he turned aside +his face a minute, I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid, +and trickle down the manly cheek. My heart swelled. +"I am no better than the old lightningstruck chestnuttree in +Thornfield orchard," he remarked ere long. "And what right would +that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with +freshness?" +"You are no ruin, sir no lightningstruck tree you are green +and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask +them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow +and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, +because your strength offers them so safe a prop." +Again he smiled I gave him comfort. +"You speak of friends, Jane?" he asked. +"Yes, of friends," I answered rather hesitatingly for I knew +I meant more than friends, but could not tell what other word to +employ. He helped me. +"Ah Jane. But I want a wife." +"Do you, sir?" +"Yes is it news to you?" +"Of course you said nothing about it before." +"Is it unwelcome news?" +"That depends on circumstances, sir on your choice." +"Which you shall make for me, Jane. I will abide by your decision." +"Choose then, sir HER WHO LOVES YOU BEST." +"I will at least choose HER I LOVE BEST. Jane, will you marry +me?" +"Yes, sir." +"A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?" +"Yes, sir." +"A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have +to wait on?" +"Yes, sir." +"Truly, Jane?" +"Most truly, sir." +"Oh my darling God bless you and reward you" +"Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life if ever I +thought a good thought if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless +prayer if ever I wished a righteous wish, I am rewarded now. +To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth." +"Because you delight in sacrifice." +"Sacrifice What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation +for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value +to press my lips to what I love to repose on what I trust +is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in +sacrifice." +"And to bear with my infirmities, Jane to overlook my deficiencies." +"Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really +be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, +when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector." +"Hitherto I have hated to be helped to be led henceforth, I +feel I shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into +a hireling's, but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane's little +fingers. I preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance +of servants but Jane's soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. +Jane suits me do I suit her?" +"To the finest fibre of my nature, sir." +"The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for we +must be married instantly." +He looked and spoke with eagerness his old impetuosity was rising. +"We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane there is but +the licence to get then we marry." +"Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from +its meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let +me look at your watch." +"Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward I +have no use for it." +"It is nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, sir. Don't you feel +hungry?" +"The third day from this must be our weddingday, Jane. Never mind +fine clothes and jewels, now all that is not worth a fillip." +"The sun has dried up all the raindrops, sir. The breeze is still +it is quite hot." +"Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment +fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it +since the day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her." +"We will go home through the wood that will be the shadiest way." +He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me. +"Jane you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog but my heart +swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just +now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer judges not as man +judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong I would have sullied +my innocent flower breathed guilt on its purity the Omnipotent +snatched it from me. I, in my stiffnecked rebellion, almost cursed +the dispensation instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. +Divine justice pursued its course disasters came thick on me I +was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. HIS +chastisements are mighty and one smote me which has humbled me for +ever. You know I was proud of my strength but what is it now, +when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its +weakness? Of late, Jane only only of late I began to see +and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience +remorse, repentance the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I +began sometimes to pray very brief prayers they were, but very +sincere. +"Some days since nay, I can number them four it was last Monday +night, a singular mood came over me one in which grief replaced +frenzy sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that +since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night +perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o'clock ere I +retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed +good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to +that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane. +"I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open +it soothed me to feel the balmy nightair though I could see no +stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a +moon. I longed for thee, Janet Oh, I longed for thee both with +soul and flesh I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, +if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented and +might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all +I endured, I acknowledged that I could scarcely endure more, +I pleaded and the alpha and omega of my heart's wishes broke +involuntarily from my lips in the words 'Jane Jane Jane'" +"Did you speak these words aloud?" +"I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought +me mad I pronounced them with such frantic energy." +"And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?" +"Yes but the time is of no consequence what followed is the +strange point. You will think me superstitious, some superstition +I have in my blood, and always had nevertheless, this is true +true at least it is that I heard what I now relate. +"As I exclaimed 'Jane Jane Jane' a voice I cannot tell +whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was replied, +'I am coming wait for me' and a moment after, went whispering +on the wind the words 'Where are you?' +"I'll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened +to my mind yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. +Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls +dull, and dies unreverberating. 'Where are you?' seemed spoken +amongst mountains for I heard a hillsent echo repeat the words. +Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow +I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were +meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt +were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane perhaps your soul +wandered from its cell to comfort mine for those were your accents +as certain as I live they were yours" +Reader, it was on Monday night near midnight that I too had +received the mysterious summons those were the very words by +which I replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester's narrative, +but made no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too +awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told +anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound +impression on the mind of my hearer and that mind, yet from its +sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the +supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered them in my +heart. +"You cannot now wonder," continued my master, "that when you rose +upon me so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing +you any other than a mere voice and vision, something that would melt +to silence and annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain +echo had melted before. Now, I thank God I know it to be otherwise. +Yes, I thank God" +He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from +his brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in +mute devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible. +"I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered +mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead +henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto" +Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, +held it a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder +being so much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop +and guide. We entered the wood, and wended homeward. +CHAPTER XXXVIII CONCLUSION +Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had he and I, the parson +and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went +into the kitchen of the manorhouse, where Mary was cooking +the dinner and John cleaning the knives, and I said +"Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning." The +housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic +order of people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate +a remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having +one's ears pierced by some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently +stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment. Mary did look up, and +she did stare at me the ladle with which she was basting a pair +of chickens roasting at the fire, did for some three minutes hang +suspended in air and for the same space of time John's knives +also had rest from the polishing process but Mary, bending +again over the roast, said only +"Have you, Miss? Well, for sure" +A short time after she pursued "I seed you go out with the +master, but I didn't know you were gone to church to be wed" and +she basted away. John, when I turned to him, was grinning from +ear to ear. +"I telled Mary how it would be," he said "I knew what Mr. Edward" +John was an old servant, and had known his master when he was +the cadet of the house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian +name "I knew what Mr. Edward would do and I was certain he would +not wait long neither and he's done right, for aught I know. I +wish you joy, Miss" and he politely pulled his forelock. +"Thank you, John. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary +this." I put into his hand a fivepound note. Without waiting to +hear more, I left the kitchen. In passing the door of +that sanctum some time after, I caught the words +"She'll happen do better for him nor ony o't' grand ladies." And +again, "If she ben't one o' th' handsomest, she's noan faal and +varry goodnatured and i' his een she's fair beautiful, onybody +may see that." +I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I +had done fully explaining also why I had thus acted. Diana and +Mary approved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she +would just give me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she +would come and see me. +"She had better not wait till then, Jane," said Mr. Rochester, when +I read her letter to him "if she does, she will be too late, for +our honeymoon will shine our life long its beams will only fade +over your grave or mine." +How St. John received the news, I don't know he never answered +the letter in which I communicated it yet six months after he +wrote to me, without, however, mentioning Mr. Rochester's name or +alluding to my marriage. His letter was then calm, and, though very +serious, kind. He has maintained a regular, though not frequent, +correspondence ever since he hopes I am happy, and trusts I am not +of those who live without God in the world, and only mind earthly +things. +You have not quite forgotten little Adele, have you, reader? I +had not I soon asked and obtained leave of Mr. Rochester, to go +and see her at the school where he had placed her. Her frantic +joy at beholding me again moved me much. She looked pale and thin +she said she was not happy. I found the rules of the establishment +were too strict, its course of study too severe for a child of her +age I took her home with me. I meant to become her governess +once more, but I soon found this impracticable my time and cares +were now required by another my husband needed them all. So I +sought out a school conducted on a more indulgent system, and near +enough to permit of my visiting her often, and bringing her home +sometimes. I took care she should never want for anything that +could contribute to her comfort she soon settled in her new abode, +became very happy there, and made fair progress in her studies. +As she grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great +measure her French defects and when she left school, I found in +her a pleasing and obliging companion docile, goodtempered, and +wellprincipled. By her grateful attention to me and mine, she +has long since well repaid any little kindness I ever had it in my +power to offer her. +My tale draws to its close one word respecting my experience of +married life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose +names have most frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have +done. +I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live +entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself +supremely blest blest beyond what language can express because +I am my husband's life as fully is he is mine. No woman was ever +nearer to her mate than I am ever more absolutely bone of his +bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's +society he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the +pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms consequently, +we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as +free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, +all day long to talk to each other is but a more animated and an +audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his +confidence is devoted to me we are precisely suited in character +perfect concord is the result. +Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union +perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near that +knit us so very close for I was then his vision, as I am still +his right hand. Literally, I was what he often called me the +apple of his eye. He saw nature he saw books through me and +never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into +words the effect of field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam of +the landscape before us of the weather round us and impressing +by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye. +Never did I weary of reading to him never did I weary of conducting +him where he wished to go of doing for him what he wished to be +done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most +exquisite, even though sad because he claimed these services +without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, +that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance he felt +I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge +my sweetest wishes. +One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter +to his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said "Jane, have +you a glittering ornament round your neck?" +I had a gold watchchain I answered "Yes." +"And have you a pale blue dress on?" +I had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the +obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense and that now +he was sure of it. +He and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent oculist +and he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He cannot +now see very distinctly he cannot read or write much but he can +find his way without being led by the hand the sky is no longer +a blank to him the earth no longer a void. When his firstborn +was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his +own eyes, as they once were large, brilliant, and black. On +that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God +had tempered judgment with mercy. +My Edward and I, then, are happy and the more so, because those +we most love are happy likewise. Diana and Mary Rivers are both +married alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and +we go to see them. Diana's husband is a captain in the navy, a +gallant officer and a good man. Mary's is a clergyman, a college +friend of her brother's, and, from his attainments and principles, +worthy of the connection. Both Captain Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton +love their wives, and are loved by them. +As to St. John Rivers, he left England he went to India. He +entered on the path he had marked for himself he pursues it still. +A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks +and dangers. Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and +zeal, and truth, he labours for his race he clears their painful +way to improvement he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed +and caste that encumber it. He may be stern he may be exacting +he may be ambitious yet but his is the sternness of the warrior +Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of +Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for +Christ, when he says "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny +himself, and take up his cross and follow me." His is the ambition +of the high masterspirit, which aims to fill a place in the first +rank of those who are redeemed from the earth who stand without +fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories +of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful. +St. John is unmarried he never will marry now. Himself has +hitherto sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close +his glorious sun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received +from him drew from my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart +with divine joy he anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible +crown. I know that a stranger's hand will write to me next, to say +that the good and faithful servant has been called at length into +the joy of his Lord. And why weep for this? No fear of death +will darken St. John's last hour his mind will be unclouded, his +heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith +steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this +"My Master," he says, "has forewarned me. Daily He announces more +distinctly, 'Surely I come quickly' and hourly I more eagerly +respond, 'Amen even so come, Lord Jesus'" + END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OF JANE EYRE, BY BRONTE +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, janey.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, janeya.txt +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Copyright C , by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] +END THE SMALL PRINT FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKSVer.//END +Preliminary Matter. +This text of Melville's MobyDick is based on the Hendricks House edition. +It was prepared by Professor Eugene F. Irey at the University of Colorado. +Any subsequent copies of this data must include this notice +and any publications resulting from analysis of this data must +include reference to Professor Irey's work. +Etymology Supplied by a late consumptive usher to a grammar school. +The pale Usheirthreadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain I see him now. +He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, +mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. +He loved to dust his old grammars it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. +Extracts supplied by a subsublibrarian. +It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grubworm of a poor +devil of a SubSub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and +streetstalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales +he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. +Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledypiggledy +whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel +cetology. Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well +as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, +as affording a glancing bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously said, +thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, +including our own. +So fare thee well, poor devil of a SubSub, whose commentator I am. +Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will +ever warm and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosystrong +but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poordevilish, too +and grow convivial upon tears and say to them bluntly, with full eyes and empty +glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness igive it up, subsubs +For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world, +by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless +Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye But +gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royalmast with your hearts for +your friends who have gone before are clearing out the sevenstoried heavens, +and making refugees of longpampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against +your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together ithere, ye shall +strike unsplinterable +Call me Ishmael. Some years agonever mind how +long precisely having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular +to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the +watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and +regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the +mouth whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul whenever I find +myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the +rear of every funeral I meet and especially whenever my hypos get such an +upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me +from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking +people's hats offthen, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. +This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish +Cato throws himself upon his sword I quietly take to the ship. There is +nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their +degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the +ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round +by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefscommerce surrounds it with her surf. +Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is +the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by +breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the +crowds of watergazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath +afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by +Whitehall northward. What do you see?Posted like silent sentinels all +around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean +reveries. Some leaning against the spiles some seated upon the pierheads +some looking over the bulwarks glasses +of ships from China some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a +still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen of week days pent up +in lath and plastertied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. +How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look +here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for +a dive. Strange Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the +land loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. +No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling +in. And there they standmiles of themleagues. Inlanders all, they come +from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues, north, east, south, and west. +Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of +the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more. Say, you +are in the country in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you +please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there +by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absentminded +of men be plunged in his deepest reveriesstand that man on his legs, set his +feet agoing, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in +all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, +try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical +professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. +But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, +quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the +Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with +a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within and here sleeps +his meadow, and there sleep his cattle and up from yonder cottage goes a +sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to +overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hillside blue. But though +the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pinetree shakes down its sighs +like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the +shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the +Prairies in June, +when for scores on scores of miles you wade kneedeep among Tigerlilieswhat +is the one charm wanting? Water there is not a drop of water there Were +Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see +it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls +of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or +invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every +robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other +crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you +yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your +ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea +holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? +Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that +story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image +he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same +image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the +ungraspable phantom of life and this is the key to it all. Now, when I say +that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the +eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it +inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you +must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something +in it. Besides, passengers get seasick grow quarrelsome don't sleep of +nights do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing no, I never go as a +passenger nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a +Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of +such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable +respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is +quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of +ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook, +though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of +officer on shipboard yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls though +once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, +there is no one who will +speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I +will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled +ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in +their huge bakehouses the pyramids. No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple +sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there +to the royal masthead. True, they rather order me about some, and make me +jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, +this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, +particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the van +Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just +previous to putting your hand into the tarpot, you have been lording it as a +country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The +transition is a keen one, I assure you, from the schoolmaster to a sailor, +and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin +and bear it. But even this wears off in time. What of it, if some old hunks +of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does +that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New +Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, +because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular +instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old +seacaptains may order me abouthowever they may thump and punch me about, I +have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right that everybody else +is one way or other served in much the same way either in a physical or +metaphysical point of view, that is and so the universal thump is passed +round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulderblades, and be +content. Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of +paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny +that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And +there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The +act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two +orchard +thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, what will compare with it? The +urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, +considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly +ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah how +cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition Finally, I always go to sea as +a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle +deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds +from astern that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim, so for +the most part the Commodore on the quarterdeck gets his atmosphere at second +hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first but +not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many +other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But +wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant +sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage this +the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance +of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way he +can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling +voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a +long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more +extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run +something like this Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the +United States. Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael. Bloody Battle in +Affghanistan. Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage +managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, +when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short +and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces though I +cannot tell why this was exactly yet, now that I recall all the +circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which +being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set +about +performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was +a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment. +chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale +himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. +Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk the +undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale these, with all the attending +marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my +wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements +but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I +love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what +is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with +itwould they let me since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all +the inmates of the place one lodges in. By reason of these things, then, the +whaling voyage was welcome the great floodgates of the wonderworld swung +open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two +there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid +most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air. +Returning to the SpouterInn from the +Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone he having left the Chapel before +the benediction some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with +his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his +face that little negro idol of his peering hard into its face, and with a +jackknife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself in +his heathenish way. But being now interrupted, he put up the image and +pretty +soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his +lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity at every fiftieth +page as I fancied stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and +giving utterance to a longdrawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would +then begin again at the next fifty seeming to commence at number one each +time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such +a large number of fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the +multitude of pages was excited. With much interest I sat watching him. Savage +though he was, and hideously marred about the face at least to my taste +his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. +You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I +saw the traces of a simple honest heart and in his large, deep eyes, fiery +black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand +devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the +Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like +a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, +too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and +brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I +will not venture to decide but certain it was his head was phrenologically +an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General +Washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long +regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise +very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg +was George Washington cannibalistically developed. Whilst I was thus closely +scanning him, halfpretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from +the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself with so +much as a single glance but appeared wholly occupied with counting the +pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping +together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm +I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this +indifference of his +very strange. But savages are strange beings at times you do not know +exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing their calm +selfcollectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed also +that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other +seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever appeared to have no desire +to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty +singular yet, upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in +it. Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape +Horn, that is which was the only way he could get there thrown among people +as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter and yet he seemed +entirely at his ease preserving the utmost serenity content with his own +companionship always equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine +philosophy though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as +that. But, perhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be +conscious of so living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a +man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic +old woman, he must have broken his digester. As I sat there in that now +lonely room the fire burning low, in that mild stage when, after its first +intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be looked at the +evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and peering in +upon us silent, solitary twain the storm booming without in solemn swells +I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No +more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish +world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very +indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies +and bland deceits. Wild he was a very sight of sights to see yet I began +to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that +would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew +me. I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved +but hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs +and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little +noticed these advances but presently, upon my referring to his last +night's hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be +bedfellows. I told him yes whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a +little complimented. We then turned over the book together, and I endeavored +to explain to him the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few +pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest and from that we +went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen +in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke and, producing his pouch +and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs +from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us. If +there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's breast, +this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. +He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him and +when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me +round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married meaning, in his +country's phrase, that we were bosom friends he would gladly die for me, if +need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have +seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted but in this simple +savage those old rules would not apply. After supper, and another social chat +and smoke, we went to our room together. He made me a present of his +embalmed head took out his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the +tobacco, drew out some thirty dollars in silver then spreading them on the +table, and mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of +them towards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate but he +silenced me by pouring them into my trowsers' pockets. I let them stay. He +then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed the +paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious +for me to join him but well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a +moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or otherwise. I was a +good Christian born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian +Church. How then could I unite with +this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? +thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven +and earth pagans and all included can possibly be jealous of an +insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible But what is worship? to do the +will of God that is worship. And what is the will of God? to do to my +fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me that is the will of +God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg +would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of +worship. consequently, i must then unite with him in his ergo, I must turn +idolator. So I kindled the shavings helped prop up the innocent little +idol offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg salamed before him twice or +thrice kissed his nose and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at +peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we did not go to sleep +without some little chat. How it is I know not but there is no place like a +bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, +there open the very bottom of their souls to each other and some old couples +often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our +hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg a cosy, loving pair. +ENDERBY, OF LONDON Ship, ahoy Hast seen the White Whale? So cried Ahab, +once more hailing a ship showing English colors, bearing down under the +stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted +quarterboat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who +was carelessly reclining in his own boat's bow. He was a darklytanned, +burly, goodnatured, finelooking man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in +a spacious roundabout, that hung round him in festoons of blue pilotcloth +and one empty arm of this jacket streamed behind him like the broidered arm of +a huzzar's surcoat. Hast seen the White Whale? See you this? and +withdrawing it from the fold that had hidden it, he held up a white arm of +sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet. Man my boat +cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near him Stand by to +lower In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and +his crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger. +But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of the +moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once +stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by +an ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, +and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment's +warning. Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody except those who are +almost hourly used to it, like whalemen to clamber up a ship's side from a +boat on the open sea for the great swells now lift the boat high up towards +the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. +so, deprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether +unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced +to a clumsy landsman again hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height +he could hardly hope to attain. It has before been hinted, perhaps, that +every little untoward circumstance that befel him, and which indirectly +sprang from his luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated +Ahab. And in the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of +the two officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the +perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a pair +of tastefullyornamented manropes for at first they did not seem to bethink +them that a onelegged man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea +bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange +captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, I see, I see +avast heaving there Jump, boys, and swing over the cuttingtackle. As +good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two +previous, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive curved +blubberhook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This was +quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his solitary +thigh into the curve of the hook it was like sitting in the fluke of an +anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree, and then giving the word, held +himself fast, and at the same time also helped to hoist his own weight, by +pulling handoverhand upon one of the running parts of the tackle. Soon he +was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks, and gently landed upon the +capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other +captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his ivory leg, and crossing the ivory +arm like two swordfish blades cried out in his walrus way, Aye, aye, +hearty let us shake bones together an arm and a leg an arm that never +can shrink, d'ye see and a leg that never can run. Where did'st thou see +the White Whale? how long ago? The White Whale, said the Englishman, +pointing his ivory +arm towards the East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a +telescope There I saw him, on the Line, last season. And he took that +arm off, did he? asked Ahab, now sliding down from the capstan, and resting +on the Englishman's shoulder, as he did so. Aye, he was the cause of it, at +least and that leg, too? Spin me the yarn, said Ahab how was it? It +was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line, began the +Englishman. I was ignorant of the White Whale at that time. Well, one day +we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat fastened to one of +them a regular circus horse he was, too, that went milling and milling +round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish, by sitting all their +sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from the bottom of the sea +a bouncing great whale, with a milkywhite head and hump, all crows' feet and +wrinkles. It was he, it was he cried Ahab, suddenly letting out his +suspended breath. And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin. Aye, +aye they were mine my irons, cried Ahab, exultingly but on Give me a +chance, then, said the Englishman, goodhumoredly. Well, this old +greatgrandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, +and goes to snapping furiously at my fastline. Aye, I see wanted to part +it free the fastfish an old trick I know him. How it was exactly, +continued the onearmed commander, I do not know but in biting the line, it +got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow but we didn't know it then so +that when we afterwards pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to his +hump instead of the other whale's that went off to windward, all fluking. +Seeing how matters stood, and what a noble great whale it was the noblest +and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life I resolved to capture him, spite of +the boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the haphazard line would +get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw for I have +a devil of a boat's crew for a pull on a whaleline seeing all this, I say, +I jumped into my first mate's boat Mr. Mounttop's here by the way, Captain +Mounttop Mounttopthe captain as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop's +boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then and snatching +the first harpoon, let this old greatgrandfather have it. But, Lord, look +you, sir hearts and souls alive, man the next instant, in a jiff, I was +blind as a bat both eyes out all befogged and bedeadened with black foam +the whale's tail looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, +like a marble steeple. No use sterning all, then but as I was groping at +midday, with a blinding sun, all crownjewels as I was groping, I say, +after the second iron, to toss it overboard down comes the tail like a Lima +tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters and, flukes +first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was all chips. +We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my +harpoonpole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that like a sucking +fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant, the fish, +taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash and the barb of that +cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here clapping his hand +just below his shoulder yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me down +to Hell's flames, I was thinking when, when, all of a sudden, thank the +good God, the barb ript its way along the flesh clear along the whole length +of my arm came out nigh my wrist, and up i floated and that gentleman +there will tell you the rest by the way, captain Dr. Bunger, ship's +surgeon Bunger, my lad, the captain. Now, Bunger boy, spin your part +of the yarn. The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had +been all the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to +denote his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but +sober one he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched +trowsers and had thus far been dividing his attention between a marlingspike +he held in one hand, and a pillbox held in the other, occasionally casting +a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at his +superior's introduction of him to Ahab, he +politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding. It was +a shocking bad wound, began the whalesurgeon and, taking my advice, +Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy Samuel Enderby is the name of +my ship, interrupted the onearmed captain, addressing Ahab go on, boy. +Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot +weather there on the Line. But it was no use I did all I could sat up with +him nights was very severe with him in the matter of diet Oh, very +severe chimed in the patient himself then suddenly altering his voice, +Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he couldn't see to put on +the bandages and sending me to bed, half seas over, about three o'clock in +the morning. Oh, ye stars he sat up with me indeed, and was very severe +in my diet. Oh a great watcher, and very dietetically severe, is Dr. +Bunger. Bunger, you dog, laugh out why don't ye? You know you're a +precious jolly rascal. But, heave ahead, boy, I'd rather be killed by you +than kept alive by any other man. My captain, you must have ere this +perceived, respected sir said the imperturbable godlylooking Bunger, +slightly bowing to Ahab is apt to be facetious at times he spins us many +clever things of that sort. But I may as well say en passant, as the French +remark that I myself that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend +clergy am a strict total abstinence man I never drink Water cried the +captain he never drinks it it's a sort of fits to him fresh water +throws him into the hydrophobia but go on go on with the arm story. Yes, +I may as well, said the surgeon, coolly. I was about observing, sir, before +Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my best and severest +endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse the truth was, sir, it +was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw more than two feet and several +inches long. I measured it with the lead line. In short, it grew black I +knew what was threatened, and off it came. +But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there that thing is against all +rule pointing at it with the marlingspike that is the captain's work, +not mine he ordered the carpenter to make it he had that clubhammer there +put to the end, to knock some one's brains out with, I suppose, as he tried +mine once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this +dent, sir removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a +bowllike cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, +or any token of ever having been a wound Well, the captain there will tell +you how that came here he knows. No, I don't, said the captain, but +his mother did he was born with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you you Bunger +was there ever such another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you +die, you ought to die in pickle, you dog you should be preserved to future +ages, you rascal. What became of the White Whale? now cried Ahab, who +thus far had been impatiently listening to this byeplay between the two +Englishmen. Oh cried the onearmed captain, Oh, yes Well after he +sounded, we didn't see him again for some time in fact, as I before hinted, +I didn't then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick, till +some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick +as some call him and then I knew it was he. Did'st thou cross his wake +again? Twice. But could not fasten? Didn't want to try to ain't one +limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby +Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows. Well, then, interrupted Bunger, +give him your left arm for bait to get the right. Do you know, gentlemen +very gravely and mathematically bowing to each Captain in succession Do +you know, gentlemen, that the digestive organs of the whale are so +inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence, that it is quite impossible for +him to completely digest even a +man's arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the White Whale's +malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb +he only thinks to terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old +juggling fellow, formerly a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe +swallow jackknives, once upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest, +and there it stayed for a twelvemonth or more when I gave him an emetic, +and he heaved it up in small tacks, d'ye see. No possible way for him to +digest that jackknife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily +system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a +mind to pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial to +the other, why in that case the arm is yours only let the whale have +another chance at you shortly, that's all. No, thank ye, Bunger, said the +english captain, he's welcome to the arm he has, since I can't help it, +and didn't know him then but not to another one. No more White Whales for +me I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be +great glory in killing him, I know that and there is a shipload of +precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone don't you think +so, Captain? glancing at the ivory leg. He is. But he will still be +hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not +always what least allures. He's all a magnet How long since thou saw'st him +last? Which way heading? Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend's, +cried Bunger, stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely +snuffing this man's blood bring the thermometer it's at the boiling +point his pulse makes these planks beat sir taking a lancet from his +pocket, and drawing near to Ahab's arm. Avast roared Ahab, dashing him +against the bulwarks Man the boat Which way heading? Good God cried +the English Captain, to whom the question was put. What's the matter? He +was heading east, I think. Is your Captain crazy? whispering Fedallah. +But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks +to take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab, swinging the cuttingtackle +towards him, commanded the ship's sailors to stand by to lower. In a moment +he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men were springing to +their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With back to the +stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright till +alongside of the Pequod. +Ere the English ship fades from sight, be +it set down here, that she hailed from London, and was named after the late +Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling +house of enderby and sons a house which in my poor whaleman's opinion, +comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in +point of real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord +, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous fishdocuments +do not make plain but in that year + it fitted out the first English +ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale though for some score of +years previous ever since + our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket +and the Vineyard had in large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only in the +North and South Atlantic not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, +that the Nantucketers were the first among mankind to harpoon with civilized +steel the great Sperm Whale and that for half a century they were the only +people of the whole globe who so harpooned him. In +, a fine ship, the +Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose, and at the sole charge of the +vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape Horn, and was the first among the +nations to lower a whaleboat of any sort in the great South Sea. The +voyage was a skilful and lucky one and returning to her berth with her hold +full of the precious sperm, the Amelia's example was soon followed by other +ships, English and American, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the +Pacific were thrown open. But not content with this good deed, the +indefatigable house again bestirred itself Samuel and all his Sons how +many, their mother only knows and under their immediate auspices, and +partly, I think, at their expense, the British government was induced to send +the sloopofwar Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South Sea. +Commanded by a naval PostCaptain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage of it, +and did some service how much does not appear. But this is not all. In +, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to go on +a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship well called the +Syren made a noble experimental cruise and it was thus that the great +Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The Syren in this +famous voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer. All honor to +the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to the present day +though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable for +the great South Sea of the other world. The ship named after him was worthy +of the honor, being a very fast sailer and a noble craft every way. I +boarded her once at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank +good flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all +trumps every soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And +that fine gam I had long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with +his ivory heel it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that +ship and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever lose +sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the +rate of ten gallons the hour and when the squall came for it's squally off +there by Patagonia, and all hands visitors and all were called to reef +topsails, we were so topheavy that we had to swing each other aloft in +bowlines and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our jackets into +the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the howling gale, a warning +example to all drunken tars. However, the masts did not go overboard and by +and bye we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the flip again, +though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle, rather too +much diluted and pickled it to my taste. The beef was fine tough, but with +body in it. They said it was bullbeef others, that it was dromedary beef +but i do not know, for certain, how that was. they had dumplings too small, +but substantial, symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I +fancied that you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were +swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching +out of you like billiardballs. The bread but that couldn't be helped +besides, it was an antiscorbutic in short, the bread contained the only +fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it was very +easy to step over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all in all, taking +her from truck to helm, considering the dimensions of the cook's boilers, +including his own live parchment boilers fore and aft, I say, the Samuel +Enderby was a jolly ship of good fare and plenty fine flip and strong +crack fellows all, and capital from boot heels to hatband. But why was it, +think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other English whalers I know of +not all though were such famous, hospitable ships that passed round the +beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke and were not soon weary +of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good +cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research. Nor have I +been at all sparing of historical whale research, when it has seemed needed. +The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders, +and Danes from whom they derived many terms still extant in the fishery +and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and +drink. For, as a general thing, the English merchantship scrimps her crew +but not so the English whaler. Hence, in the English, this thing of whaling +good cheer is not normal and natural, but incidental and particular and, +therefore, must have some special origin, +which is here pointed out, and will be still further elucidated. During my +researches in the leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch +volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about +whalers. The title was, Dan Coopman, wherefore I concluded that this must +be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every +whale ship must carry its cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing +that it was the production of one Fitz Swackhammer. But my friend Dr. +Snodhead, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German in the +college of Santa Claus and St. Pott's, to whom I handed the work for +translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble this same +Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me that Dan Coopman did +not mean The Cooper, but The Merchant. In short, this ancient and +learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of Holland and, among other +subjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in +this chapter it was, headed Smeer, or Fat, that I found a long detailed +list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of sail of Dutch whalemen +from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead. I transcribe the following , lbs. of beef. , lbs. Friesland pork. , lbs. of stock fish. +, lbs. of biscuit. , lbs. of soft bread. , firkins of butter. +, lbs. of Texel and Leyden cheese. , lbs. cheese probably an +inferior article. ankers of Geneva. , barrels of beer. Most +statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading not so in the present +case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts, +and gills of good gin and good cheer. At the time, I devoted three days to +the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many +profound +thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental +and Platonic application and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables +of my own, touching the probable quantity of stockfish, etc., consumed by +every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale +fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and Leyden +cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally +unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their +vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar +Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial +natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil. The quantity of beer, too, +is very large, , barrels. Now, as those polar fisheries could only be +prosecuted in the short summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise of +one of these Dutch whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the +Spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three months, say, and reckoning men +to each of their fleet of sail, we have , Low Dutch seamen in all +therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a +twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that ankers +of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might +fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a boat's +head, and take good aim at flying whales this would seem somewhat +improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very +far North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with the constitution +upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the +harpooneer sleepy at the masthead and boozy in his boat and grievous loss +might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford. But no more enough has been said +to show that the old Dutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high +livers and that the English whalers have not neglected so excellent an +example. For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get +nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And +this empties the decanter. +Hitherto, in descriptively +treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his +outer aspect or separately and in detail upon some few interior structural +features. But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, it +behoves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of his +hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of +the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum that +is to say, in his unconditional skeleton. But how now, Ishmael? How is it, +that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the +subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your +capstan, deliver lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea and by help of the +windlass, hold up a specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. +Can you land a fullgrown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook +dishes a roastpig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been, +Ishmael but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone the +privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams the rafters, ridgepole, +sleepers, and underpinnings, making up the framework of leviathan and +belike of the tallowvats, dairyrooms, butteries, and cheeseries in his +bowels. I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far +beneath the skin of the adult whale nevertheless, I have been blessed with +an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged to, a small +cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag, to +make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads of the lances. +Think you I let that chance go, without using my boathatchet and +jackknife, and breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young +cub? +And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their gigantic, +full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted to my late +royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides. For being at +Tranque, years ago, when attached to the tradingship Dey of Algiers, I was +invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque, at +his retired palm villa at Pupella a seaside glen not very far distant from +what our sailors called BambooTown, his capital. Among many other fine +qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all +matters of barbaric vertu, had brought together in Pupella whatever rare +things the more ingenious of his people could invent chiefly carved woods of +wonderful devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, +aromatic canoes and all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, +the wonderfreighted, tributerendering waves had cast upon his shores. Chief +among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an unusually long +raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his head against a +cocoanut tree, whose plumagelike, tufted droopings seemed his verdant jet. +When the vast body had at last been stripped of its fathomdeep enfoldings, +and the bones become dust dry in the sun, then the skeleton was carefully +transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now +sheltered it. The ribs were hung with trophies the vertebrae were carved +with Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics in the skull, the priests +kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent +forth its vapory spout while, suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw +vibrated over all the devotees, like the hairhung sword that so affrighted +damocles. it was a wondrous sight. the wood was green as mosses of the icy +Glen the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap the +industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous carpet on +it, whereof the groundvine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and the +living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden branches +all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses the messagecarrying air all +these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the leaves, the great +sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver +unseen weaver pause one word whither flows the fabric? what palace may +it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver stay thy +hand but one single word with thee Nay the shuttle flies the figures +float from forth the loom the freshetrushing carpet for ever slides away. +The weavergod, he weaves and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears +no mortal voice and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are +deafened and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that +speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken +words that are inaudible among the flying spindles those same words are +plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby +have villanies been detected. Ah, mortal then, be heedful for so, in all +this din of the great world's loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard +afar. Now, amid the green, liferestless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the +great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging a gigantic idler Yet, as the +everwoven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty +idler seemed the cunning weaver himself all woven over with the vines +every month assuming greener, fresher verdure but himself a skeleton. Life +folded Death Death trellised Life the grim god wived with youthful Life, +and begat him curlyheaded glories. Now, when with royal Tranquo I visited +this wondrous whale, and saw the skull an altar, and the artificial smoke +ascending from where the real jet had issued, I marvelled that the king +should regard a chapel as an object of vertu. He laughed. But more I +marvelled that the priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To +and fro I paced before this skeleton brushed the vines aside broke through +the ribs and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid +its many winding, shaded collonades and arbors. But soon my line was out +and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I saw no +living thing within naught was there but bones. +Cutting me a green measuringrod, I once more dived within the skeleton. +From their arrowslit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the +altitude of the final rib. How now they shouted Dar'st thou measure +this our god That's for us. Aye, priests well, how long do ye make him, +then? But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them, concerning feet and +inches they cracked each other's sconces with their yardsticks the great +skull echoed and seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own +admeasurements. These admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But +first, be it recorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any +fancied measurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can +refer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, +in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where they have +some fine specimens of finbacks and other whales. Likewise, I have heard +that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they have what the +proprietors call the only perfect specimen of a Greenland or River Whale in +the United States. Moreover, at a place in Yorkshire, England, Burton +constable by name, a certain sir clifford constable has in his possession the +skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no means of the +fullgrown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's. In both cases, the stranded +whales to which these two skeletons belonged, were originally claimed by +their proprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he +wanted it and Sir Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those +parts. Sir Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout so that, like a +great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony cavities +spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan and swing all day upon his lower +jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trapdoors and shutters and a +footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. +Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery +in the spinal column threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his +cerebellum and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead. The +skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are +copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed as in my wild +wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such +valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other +parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then composing at +least, what untattooed parts might remain I did not trouble myself with the +odd inches nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial +admeasurement of the whale. +In the first +place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain statement, touching the +living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton we are briefly to exhibit. +Such a statement may prove useful here. According to a careful calculation I +have made, and which I partly base upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of +seventy tons for the largest sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length +according to my careful calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest +magnitude, between eightyfive and ninety feet in length, and something less +than forty feet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at +least ninety tons so that reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would +considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one +thousand one hundred inhabitants. Think you not then that brains, like yoked +cattle, should be put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any +landsman's imagination? Having already in various ways put before you his +skull, spouthole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, +I shall now simply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of +his unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large a +proportion of the entire extent +of the skeleton as it is by far the most complicated part and as nothing +is to be repeated concerning it in this chapter, you must not fail to carry +it in your mind, or under your arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not +gain a complete notion of the general structure we are about to view. In +length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque measured seventytwo feet so +that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have been ninety feet +long for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one fifth in length +compared with the living body. Of this seventytwo feet, his skull and jaw +comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of plain backbone. +Attached to this backbone, for something less than a third of its length, +was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals. To me +this vast ivoryribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine, extending far +away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled the hull of a great +ship newlaid upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her naked bowribs are +inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the time, but a long, disconnected +timber. The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was +nearly six feet long the second, third, and fourth were each successively +longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the middle ribs, +which measured eight feet and some inches. From that part, the remaining +ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only spanned five feet and some +inches. In general thickness, they all bore a seemly correspondence to their +length. The middle ribs were the most arched. In some of the Arsacides they +are used for beams whereon to lay footpath bridges over small streams. In +considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the circumstance, +so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale is by no +means the mould of his invested form. The largest of the Tranque ribs, one +of the middle ones, occupied that part of the fish which, in life, is greatest +in depth. Now, the greatest depth of the invested body of this particular +whale must have been at least sixteen feet whereas, the corresponding rib +measured but little more than eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half +of the true notion of the living +magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I now saw but a naked +spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh, +muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here saw but a +few disordered joints and in place of the weighty and majestic, but boneless +flukes, an utter blank How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid +untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely +poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. +no. only in the heart of quickest perils only when within the eddyings of +his angry flukes only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested +whale be truly and livingly found out. But the spine. For that, the best way +we can consider it is, with a crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No +speedy enterprise. But now it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar. +There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are not +locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic +spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is +in width something less than three feet, and in depth more than four. The +smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in +width, and looks something like a white billiardball. I was told that there +were still smaller ones, but they had been lost by some little cannibal +urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. +Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off +at last into simple child's play. +From his mighty bulk the whale +affords a most congenial theme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally +expatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. By good rights he +should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again his +furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist +only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in +him like great cables and hausers coiled away in the subterranean orlopdeck +of a lineofbattleship. Since I have undertaken to manhandle this +Leviathan, it behoves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the +enterprise not overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and +spinning him out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described +him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now +remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian +point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan to an ant or +a flea such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. +But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to +this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it +said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of +these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, +expressly purchased for that purpose because that famous lexicographer's +uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a +whale author like me. One often hears of writers that rise and swell with +their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, +writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard +capitals. Give me a condor's quill Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand +Friends, hold my arms For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this +Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outreaching +comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the +sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, +present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, +and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so +magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme We expand to its +bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a +mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, +though many there be who have tried it. Ere entering upon the subject of +Fossil Whales, I present my credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my +miscellaneous time i have been a stonemason, and also a great digger of +ditches, canals, and wells, winevaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. +Likewise, by way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while +in the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now +almost completely extinct the subsequent relics discovered in what are +called the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate +intercepted links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose +remote posterity are said to have entered the Ark all the Fossil Whales +hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the last +preceding the superficial formations. And though none of them precisely +answer to any known species of the present time, they are yet sufficiently +akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking ranks as Cetacean +fossils. Detached broken fossils of preadamite whales, fragments of their +bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals, +been found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in +Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Among the +more curious of such remains is part of a skull, which in the year +was +disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street opening almost +directly upon the palace of the Tuileries and bones disinterred in +excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's time. Cuvier pronounced +these fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknown Leviathanic species. +But by far the most wonderful of all cetacean relics was the almost complete +vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year +, on the +plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awestricken credulous slaves in +the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. The Alabama +doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of +Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to +owen, the english anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a +whale, though of a departed species. +A significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this book, +that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his +fully invested body. So Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon and in his +paper read before the London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, +one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have +blotted out of existence. When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, +skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial +resemblances to the existing breeds of seamonsters but at the same time +bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical +Leviathans, their incalculable seniors I am, by a flood, borne back to that +wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun for time began +with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering +glimpses into those Polar eternities when wedged bastions of ice pressed +hard upon what are now the Tropics and in all the , miles of this +world's circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible. +Then the whole world was the whale's and, king of creation, he left his +wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a +pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the +Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems a schoolboy. I look round to shake hands with +Shem. I am horrorstruck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the +unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time, must +needs exist after all humane ages are over. But not alone has this Leviathan +left his preadamite traces in the stereotype plates of nature, and in +limestone and marl bequeathed his ancient bust but upon Egyptian tablets, +whose antiquity seems to claim for them an almost fossiliferous character, we +find the unmistakable print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple +of Denderah, some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite +ceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, +griffins, and dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial +globe of the moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore was +there swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled. +Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity of the +whale, in his own osseous postdiluvian reality, as set down by the venerable +John Leo, the old Barbary traveller. Not far from the Seaside, they have a +Temple, the Rafters and Beams of which are made of WhaleBones for Whales +of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common +People imagine, that by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no +Whale can pass it without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is, +that on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into +the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon 'em. They keep a Whale's +Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the Ground with +its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be +reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back. This Rib says John Leo is said to +have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historians affirm, +that a Prophet who prophesy'd of Mahomet, came from this Temple, and some do +not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at +the Base of the Temple. In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, +reader, and if you be a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship +there. +Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from the +headwaters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether, in the +long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulk +of his sires. But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of +the present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are found +in the Tertiary system embracing a distinct geological period prior to man, +but of the whales found in that +Tertiary system, those belonging to its latter formations exceed in size +those of its earlier ones. Of all the preadamite whales yet exhumed, by far +the largest is the Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was +less than seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already +seen, that the tapemeasure gives seventytwo feet for the skeleton of a +large sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen's authority, that +Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet long at the time of +capture. But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an +advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods may it +not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated? Assuredly, we must +conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of such gentlemen as Pliny, +and the ancient naturalists generally. For Pliny tells us of whales that +embraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus of others which measured eight +hundred feet in length Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales And even in +the days of Banks and Solander, Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish member +of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales +reydansiskur, or Wrinkled Bellies at one hundred and twenty yards that +is, three hundred and sixty feet. And Lacepede, the French naturalist, in his +elaborate history of whales, in the very beginning of his work page , +sets down the Right Whale at one hundred metres, three hundred and +twentyeight feet. And this work was published so late as A. D. +. But +will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of today is as big +as his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where Pliny is, I, a +whaleman more than he was, will make bold to tell him so. Because I +cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies that were buried +thousands of years before even Pliny was born, do not measure so much in +their coffins as a modern Kentuckian in his socks and while the cattle and +other animals sculptured on the oldest Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the +relative proportions in which they are drawn, just as plainly prove that the +highbred, stallfed, prize cattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far +exceed in magnitude the fattest of Pharaoh's fat kine in the face of +all this, I will not admit that of all animals the whale alone should have +degenerated. But still another inquiry remains one often agitated by the +more recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient +lookouts at the mastheads of the whaleships, now penetrating even through +Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and lockers of the +world and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along all continental +coasts the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, +and so remorseless a havoc whether he must not at last be exterminated from +the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and +then himself evaporate in the final puff. Comparing the humped herds of +whales with the humped herds of buffalo, which, not forty years ago, +overspread by tens of thousands the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and +shook their iron manes and scowled with their thunderclotted brows upon the +sites of populous rivercapitals, where now the polite broker sells you land +at a dollar an inch in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem +furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction. +But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a period +ago not a good lifetime the census of the buffalo in Illinois exceeded the +census of men now in London, and though at the present day not one horn or +hoof of them remains in all that region and though the cause of this +wondrous extermination was the spear of man yet the far different nature of +the whalehunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. +Forty men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whale for fortyeight months think +they have done extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the +oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters +and trappers of the West, when the far west in whose sunset suns still +rise was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for +the same number of months, mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, +would have slain not forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes a fact +that, if need were, could be statistically stated. Nor, considered aright, +does it seem any argument in favor +of the gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former +years the latter part of the last century, say these Leviathans, in small +pods, were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in consequence, +the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more remunerative. +Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales, influenced by some +views to safety, now swim the seas in immense caravans, so that to a large +degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and pods, and schools of other days +are now aggregated into vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies. That is +all. And equally fallacious seems the conceit, that because the socalled +whalebone whales no longer haunt many grounds in former years abounding with +them, hence that species also is declining. For they are only being driven +from promontory to cape and if one coast is no longer enlivened with their +jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has been very recently +startled by the unfamiliar spectacle. Furthermore concerning these last +mentioned Leviathans, they have two firm fortresses, which, in all human +probability, will for ever remain impregnable. And as upon the invasion of +their valleys, the frosty Swiss have retreated to their mountains so, +hunted from the savannas and glades of the middle seas, the whalebone whales +can at last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate +glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes and in +a charmed circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit from +man. But as perhaps fifty of these whalebone whales are harpooned for one +cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this +positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions. But +though for some time past a number of these whales, not less than , have +been annually slain on the nor' west coast by the Americans alone yet there +are considerations which render even this circumstance of little or no account +as an opposing argument in this matter. Natural as it is to be somewhat +incredulous concerning the populousness of the more enormous creatures of the +globe, yet what shall we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells +us that at one hunting the King of Siam took +elephants +that in those regions elephants are numerous as droves of cattle in the +temperate climes. And there seems no reason to doubt that if these elephants, +which have now been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by Porus, +by hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East if they still +survive there in great numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all +hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as +large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the +Isles of the sea combined. Moreover we are to consider, that from the +presumed great longevity of whales, their probably attaining the age of a +century and more, therefore at any one period of time, several distinct +adult generations must be contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain +some idea of, by imagining all the graveyards, cemeteries, and family vaults +of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, and children +who were alive seventyfive years ago and adding this countless host to the +present human population of the globe. Wherefore, for all these things, we +account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his +individuality. He swam the seas before the continents broke water he once +swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In +Noah's flood, he despised Noah's Ark and if ever the world is to be again +flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale +will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial +flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies. +The precipitating manner in which Captain +Ahab had quitted the Samuel Enderby of London, had not been unattended with +some small violence to his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a +thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had +received a halfsplintering shock. And when after gaining his own deck, and +his own pivothole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent +command to the steersman it was, as ever, something about his not steering +inflexibly enough then, the already shaken ivory received such an additional +twist and wrench, that though it still remained entire, and to all +appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy. And, +indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his pervading, mad +recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the condition of that +dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not been very long prior to +the Pequod's sailing from Nantucket, that he had been found one night lying +prone upon the ground, and insensible by some unknown, and seemingly +inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently +displaced, that it had stakewise smitten, and all but pierced his groin +nor was it without extreme difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely +cured. Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all +the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a +former woe and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous +reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest +songster of the grove so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events +do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab since +both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and +posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of this that it is an inference from +certain canonic teachings, that while some natural enjoyments here shall have +no children born to them for the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be +followed by the joychildlessness of all hell's despair whereas, some guilty +mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally +progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave not at all to hint of this, +there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the thing. For, +thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain +unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a +mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur so do their +diligent tracingsout not belie the obvious deduction. To trail the +genealogies +of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless +primogenitures of the gods so that, in the face of all the glad, haymaking +suns, and softcymballing, round harvestmoons, we must needs give in to +this that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad +birthmark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers. +Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more +properly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other particulars +concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some, why it was, that +for a certain period, both before and after the sailing of the Pequod, he +had hidden himself away with such GrandLamalike exclusiveness and, for +that one interval, sought speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble +senate of the dead. Captain Peleg's bruited reason for this thing appeared by +no means adequate though, indeed, as touching all Ahab's deeper part, every +revelation partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory light. +But, in the end, it all came out this one matter did, at least. That direful +mishap was at the bottom of his temporary recluseness. And not only this, but +to that evercontracting, dropping circle ashore, who, for any reason, +possessed the privilege of a less banned approach to him to that timid +circle the above hinted casualty remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted +for by Ahab invested itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the +land of spirits and of wails. So that, through their zeal for him, they had +all conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle up the knowledge of this +thing from others and hence it was, that not till a considerable interval +had elapsed, did it transpire upon the Pequod's decks. But be all this as it +may let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air, or the vindictive princes +and potentates of fire, have to do or not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this +present matter of his leg, he took plain practical procedures he called the +carpenter. And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him +without delay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him +supplied with all the studs and joists of jawivory Sperm Whale which had +thus far been accumulated +on the voyage, in order that a careful selection of the stoutest, +clearestgrained stuff might be secured. This done, the carpenter received +orders to have the leg completed that night and to provide all the fittings +for it, independent of those pertaining to the distrusted one in use. +Moreover, the ship's forge was ordered to be hoisted out of its temporary +idleness in the hold and, to accelerate the affair, the blacksmith was +commanded to proceed at once to the forging of whatever iron contrivances +might be needed. +Seat thyself sultanically among the +moons of Saturn, and take high abstracted man alone and he seems a wonder, +a grandeur, and a woe. But from the same point, take mankind in mass, and +for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both +contemporary and hereditary. But most humble though he was, and far from +furnishing an example of the high, humane abstraction the Pequod's carpenter +was no duplicate hence, he now comes in person on this stage. Like all +seagoing ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging to whaling +vessels, he was, to a certain offhanded, practical extent, alike experienced +in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own the carpenter's +pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all those numerous +handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an auxiliary material. +but, besides the application to him of the generic remark above, this +carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand nameless +mechanical emergencies continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three +or four years' voyage, in uncivilized and fardistant seas. For not to speak +of his readiness in ordinary duties repairing stove boats, sprung spars, +reforming the shape of clumsybladed oars, inserting bull's +eyes in the deck, or new treenails in the side planks, and other +miscellaneous matters more directly pertaining to his special business he +was moreover unhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, +both useful and capricious. The one grand stage where he enacted all his +various parts so manifold, was his vicebench a long rude ponderous table +furnished with several vices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of +wood. At all times except when whales were alongside, this bench was securely +lashed athwartships against the rear of the Tryworks. A belaying pin is +found too large to be easily inserted into its hole the carpenter claps it +into one of his everready vices, and straightway files it smaller. A lost +landbird of strange plumage strays on board, and is made a captive out of +clean shaved rods of rightwhale bone, and crossbeams of sperm whale ivory, +the carpenter makes a pagodalooking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his +wrist the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb longed for vermillion +stars to be painted upon the blade of his every oar screwing each oar in his +big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the constellation. A +sailor takes a fancy to wear sharkbone earrings the carpenter drills his +ears. Another has the toothache the carpenter out pincers, and clapping +one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there but the poor fellow +unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation whirling round the +handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that, +if he would have him draw the tooth. Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all +points, and alike indifferent and without respect in all. Teeth he +accounted bits of ivory heads he deemed but topblocks men themselves he +lightly held for capstans. But while now upon so wide a field thus variously +accomplished, and with such liveliness of expertness in him, too all this +would seem to argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely +so. For nothing was this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal +stolidity as it were impersonal, I say for it so shaded off into the +surrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general +stolidity discernible in the whole visible world which while +pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace, and +ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals. Yet was this +halfhorrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an +allramifying heartlessness yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an old, +crutchlike, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked now and then +with a certain grizzled wittiness such as might have served to pass the time +during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah's ark. Was it +that this old carpenter had been a lifelong wanderer, whose much rolling, to +and fro, not only had gathered no moss but what is more, had rubbed off +whatever small outward clingings might have originally pertained to him? He +was a stript abstract an unfractioned integral uncompromised as a newborn +babe living without premeditated reference to this world or the next. You +might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved a sort +of unintelligence for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work so +much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to it, +or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven but merely by a kind of +deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure manipulator his +brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of +his fingers. He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, +multum in parvo, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior though a +little swelled of a common pocket knife but containing, not only blades of +various sizes, but also screwdrivers, corkscrews, tweezers, awls, pens, +rulers, nailfilers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted to use the +carpenter for a screwdriver, all they had to do was to open that part of +him, and the screw was fast or if for tweezers, take him up by the legs, +and there they were. Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, +openandshut carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If +he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow +anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a +few drops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was and there it +had abided for now some sixty years or more. And this it was, this same +unaccountable, cunning lifeprinciple in him this it was, that kept him a +great part of the time soliloquizing but only like an unreasoning wheel, +which also hummingly soliloquizes or rather, his body was a sentrybox and +this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to keep himself +awake. +Carpenter standing before his vicebench, and by the light of two lanterns +busily filing the ivory joist for the leg, which joist is firmly fixed in the +vice. Slabs of ivory, leather straps, pads, screws, and various tools of all +sorts lying about the bench. Forward, the red flame of the forge is seen, +where the blacksmith is at work. Drat the file, and drat the bone That is +hard which should be soft, and that soft which should be hard. So we go, +who file old jaws and shinbones. Let's try another. Aye, now, this works +better sneezes. Halloa, this bone dust is sneezes why it's + sneezesyes it's sneezesbless my soul, it won't let me speak This is +what an old fellow gets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree, and +you don't get this dust amputate a live bone, and you don't get it + sneezes. Come, come, you old Smut, there, bear a hand, and let's have +that ferule and bucklescrew I'll be ready for them presently. Lucky now + sneezes there's no kneejoint to make that might puzzle a little but a +mere shinbone why it's easy as making hoppoles only I should like to put a +good finish on. Time, time if I but only had the time, I could turn him +out as neat a leg now as ever sneezes scraped to a lady in a parlor. Those +buckskin legs and calves of legs I've seen in shop windows wouldn't compare +at all. They soak water, they do and of +course get rheumatic, and have to be doctored sneezes with washes and +lotions, just like live legs. There before I saw it off, now, I must call +his old Mogulship, and see whether the length will be all right too short, +if anything, I guess. Ha that's the heel we are in luck here he comes, +or it's somebody else, that's certain. Ahab advancing. During the +ensuing scene, the carpenter continues sneezing at times. Well, manmaker +Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length. Let +me measure, sir. Measured for a leg good. Well, it's not the first time. +About it There keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast +here, carpenter let me feel its grip once. so, so it does pinch some. +Oh, sir, it will break bonesbeware, beware No fear I like a good grip I +like to feel something in this slippery world that can hold, man. What's +Prometheus about there? the blacksmith, I mean what's he about? He must be +forging the bucklescrew, sir, now. Right. It's a partnership he supplies +the muscle part. He makes a fierce red flame there Aye, sir he must have +the white heat for this kind of fine work. Umm. So he must. I do deem it +now a most meaning thing, that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they +say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated them with fire for what's +made in fire must properly belong to fire and so hell's probable. How the +soot flies This must be the remainder the Greek made the Africans of. +Carpenter, when he's through with that buckle, tell him to forge a pair of +steel shoulderblades there's a pedlar aboard with a crushing pack. Sir? +Hold while Prometheus is about it, I'll order a complete man after a +desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks then, chest +modelled after the Thames Tunnel then, legs with roots to 'em, to stay in +one place then, arms three +feet through the wrist no heart at all, brass forehead, and about a +quarter of an acre of fine brains and let me see shall I order eyes to see +outwards? No, but put a skylight on top of his head to illuminate inwards. +There, take the order, and away. Now, what's he speaking about, and who's he +speaking to, I should like to know? Shall I keep standing here? aside. +'Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome here's one. No, no, +no I must have a lantern. Ho, ho That's it, hey? Here are two, sir one +will serve my turn. What art thou thrusting that thiefcatcher into my face +for, man? thrusted light is worse than presented pistols. i thought, sir, +that you spoke to carpenter. Carpenter? why that's but no a very tidy, +and, I may say, an extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here, +carpenter or would'st thou rather work in clay? Sir? Clay? clay, sir? +That's mud we leave clay to ditchers, sir. The fellow's impious What art +thou sneezing about? Bone is rather dusty, sir. Take the hint, then and +when thou art dead, never bury thyself under living people's noses. Sir? +oh ah I guess so so yes, yes oh dear Look ye, carpenter, I dare say +thou callest thyself a right good workmanlike workman, eh Well, then, will +it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when I come to mount this leg +thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg in the same identical +place with it that is, carpenter, my old lost leg the flesh and blood one, +I mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away? Truly, sir, I begin to +understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard something curious on that score, +sir how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling of his old +spar, but it will be still pricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be +really so, sir? It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where +mine once was so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, +yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life there, exactly there, +there to a hair, do I. Is't a riddle? I should humbly call it a poser, sir. +Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may +not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now +standest aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most solitary hours, +then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers? Hold, don't speak And if I still +feel the smart of my crushed leg, though it be now so long dissolved then, +why mayest not thou, carpenter, feel the fiery pains of hell for ever, and +without a body? Hah Good Lord Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must +calculate over again I think I didn't carry a small figure, sir. Look ye, +puddingheads should never grant premises. How long before this leg is +done? Perhaps an hour, sir. Bungle away at it then, and bring it to me +turns to go. Oh, Life Here I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing +debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on Cursed be that mortal +interindebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free as +air and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have +given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman +empire which was the world's and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I +brag with. By heavens I'll get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve +myself down to one small, compendious vertebra. So. Carpenter resuming +his work. Well, well, well Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb +always says he's queer says nothing but that one sufficient little word +queer he's queer, says Stubb he's queerqueer, queer and keeps dinning +it into Mr. Starbuck all the time queer, sir queer, queer, very queer. And +here's his leg Yes, now that I think of it, here's his bedfellow has a +stick of whale's jawbone for a wife And this is his leg he'll stand on +this. What was that now about one leg standing in three places, and all +three places standing in one hell how was that? Oh I don't wonder he +looked so scornful at me I'm a sort of strangethoughted +sometimes, they say but that's only haphazardlike. Then, a short, little +old body like me, should never undertake to wade out into deep waters with +tall, heronbuilt captains the water chucks you under the chin pretty quick, +and there's a great cry for lifeboats. And here's the heron's leg long and +slim, sure enough Now, for most folks one pair of legs lasts a lifetime, +and that must be because they use them mercifully, as a tenderhearted old +lady uses her rolypoly old coachhorses. But Ahab oh he's a hard driver. +Look, driven one leg to death, and spavined the other for life, and now wears +out bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there, you Smut bear a hand there with +those screws, and let's finish it before the resurrection fellow comes +acalling with his horn for all legs, true or false, as brewerymen go round +collecting old beer barrels, to fill 'em up again. What a leg this is It +looks like a real live leg, filed down to nothing but the core he'll be +standing on this tomorrow he'll be taking altitudes on it. Halloa I +almost forgot the little oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the +latitude. So, so chisel, file, and sandpaper, now +According to usage they +were pumping the ship next morning and lo no inconsiderable oil came up +with the water the casks below must have sprung a bad leak. Much concern +was shown and Starbuck went down into the cabin to report this unfavorable +affair. +Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing nigh to Formosa and the +Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical outlets from the China +waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart of +the oriental archipelagoes spread before him and another separate one +representing the long eastern coasts of the Japanese islands Niphon, +Matsmai, and Sikoke. With his snowwhite new ivory leg braced against the +screwed leg of his table, and with a long pruninghook of a jackknife in his +hand, the wondrous old man, with his back to the gangway door, was wrinkling +his brow, and tracing his old courses again. Who's there? hearing the +footstep at the door, but not turning round to it. On deck Begone +captain ahab mistakes it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir. We +must up Burtons and break out. Up Burtons and break out? Now that we are +nearing Japan heaveto here for a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops? +Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make good in a +year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving, sir. So +it is, so it is if we get it. I was speaking of the oil in the hold, +sir. And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone Let it +leak I'm all aleak myself. Aye leaks in leaks not only full of leaky +casks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship and that's a far worse +plight than the Pequod's, man. Yet I don't stop to plug my leak for who can +find it in the deeploaded hull or how hope to plug it, even if found, in +this life's howling gale? Starbuck I'll not have the Burtons hoisted. +What will the owners say, sir? Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and +outyell the Typhoons. What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always +prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my +conscience. But look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander +and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship's keel. On deck Captain +Ahab, said the reddening mate, moving further into the cabin, with a daring +so strangely respectful and cautious that +it almost seemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward +manifestation of itself, but within also seemed more than half distrustful of +itself A better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would +quickly enough resent in a younger man aye and in a happier, Captain +Ahab. Devils Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me? +On deck Nay, sir, not yet I do entreat. And I do dare, sir to be +forbearing Shall we not understand each other better than hitherto, Captain +ahab? ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack forming part of most +SouthSeamen's cabin furniture, and pointing it towards Starbuck, +exclaimed There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain +that is lord over the Pequod. On deck For an instant in the flashing eyes +of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had +really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, +he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and +said Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, Sir but for that I ask thee not +to beware of Starbuck thou wouldst but laugh but let Ahab beware of Ahab +beware of thyself, old man. He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys most +careful bravery that murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. What's that +he said Ahab beware of Ahab there's something there Then unconsciously +using the musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the +little cabin but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and +returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck. Thou art but too good a +fellow, Starbuck, he said lowly to the mate then raising his voice to the +crew Furl the t'gallantsails and closereef the topsails, fore and aft +back the mainyard up Burtons, and break out in the mainhold. It were +perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting Starbuck, +Ahab thus acted. It may have been a flash of honesty in him or mere +prudential policy which, under the circumstance, imperiously forbade the +slightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient, in the important +chief +officer of his ship. However it was, his orders were executed and the +Burtons were hoisted. +In Spermwhalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it is a +regular semiweekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench the +casks with seawater which afterwards, at varying intervals, is removed by +the ship's pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be kept damply tight while +by the changed character of the withdrawn water, the mariners readily detect +any serious leakage in the precious cargo. +We had lain thus in bed, chatting and +napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing +his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back so entirely +sociable and free and easy were we when, at last, by reason of our +confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, +and we felt like getting up again, though daybreak was yet some way down the +future. Yes, we became very wakeful so much so that our recumbent +position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves +sitting up the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the +headboard with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two noses +bending over them, as if our kneepans were warmingpans. We felt very nice +and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors indeed out of +bedclothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I +say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be +cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by +contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all +over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to +be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip +of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, +in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. +For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, +which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of +this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and +your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one +warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal. We had been sitting in this +crouching manner for some time, when all at once I thought I would open my +eyes for when between sheets, whether by day or by night, and whether +asleep or awake, I have a way of always keeping my eyes shut, in order the +more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed. Because no man can ever +feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed as if darkness were +indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to +our clayey part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant +and selfcreated darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the +unilluminated twelveo'clockatnight, I experienced a disagreeable +revulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it +were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake and besides +he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it +said, that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in +the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when +love once comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to have +Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such +serene household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord's +policy of insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential +comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend. With our +shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawk from one +to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, +illuminated by the flame of the newlit lamp. Whether it was that this +undulating tester rolled the savage away to far distant scenes, I know not, +but he now spoke of his native island and, eager to hear his history, I +begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly complied. Though at the time I +but ill comprehended not a few of his words, yet subsequent disclosures, +when I had become more familiar with his broken phraseology, now enable me to +present the whole story such as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give. +Upon searching, it was found +that the casks last struck into the hold were perfectly sound, and that the +leak must be further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper +and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge groundtier butts and from +that black midnight sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So +deep did they go and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the +lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy cornerstone +cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards, +vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after tierce, +too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of +hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get +about and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over +empty catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an airfreighted +demijohn. Topheavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle +in his head. Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then. Now, at +this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast bosomfriend, +Queequeg, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh to his endless end. +Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown +dignity and danger go hand in hand till you get to be Captain, the higher +you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer, +must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but as we have +elsewhere seen mount his dead back in a rolling sea and finally descend +into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all day in that +subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see +to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the +holders, so called. Poor Queequeg when the ship was about half +disembowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down +upon him there where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage +was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard +at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an icehouse, it somehow proved to +him, poor pagan where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, +he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever and at last, after some +days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill of the door +of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few longlingering days, +till there seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing. But as +all else in him thinned, and his cheekbones grew sharper, his eyes, +nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller they became of a strange +softness of lustre and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his +sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not +die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow +fainter, expand so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of +Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the +side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any +beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly +wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the +drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a +last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. So +that let us say it again no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier +thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face +of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling +sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the ocean's invisible +floodtide lifted him higher and higher towards his destined heaven. Not a +man of the crew but gave him up and, as for Queequeg himself, what he +thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favor he asked. He called +one to him in the grey +morning watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said +that while in Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark +wood, like the rich warwood of his native isle and upon inquiry, he had +learned that all whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same +dark canoes, and that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him for +it was not unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead +warrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away +to the starry archipelagoes for not only do they believe that the stars are +isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own mild, +uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens and so form the white +breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at the thought of +being buried in his hammock, according to the usual seacustom, tossed like +something vile to the deathdevouring sharks. No he desired a canoe like +those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being a whaleman, that +like a whaleboat these coffincanoes were without a keel though that +involved but uncertain steering, and much leeway adown the dim ages. Now, +when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter was at once +commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever it might include. There was some +heathenish, coffincolored old lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous +voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and +from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was +the carpenter apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with +all the indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded into the +forecastle and took Queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly +chalking Queequeg's person as he shifted the rule. Ah poor fellow he'll +have to die now, ejaculated the Long Island sailor. Going to his +vicebench, the carpenter for convenience' sake and general reference, now +transferringly measured on it the exact length the coffin was to be, and then +made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at its extremities. This +done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to work. +When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he +lightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring whether they +were ready for it yet in that direction. Overhearing the indignant but +halfhumorous cries with which the people on deck began to drive the coffin +away, Queequeg, to every one's consternation, commanded that the thing should +be instantly brought to him, nor was there any denying him seeing that, of +all mortals, some dying men are the most tyrannical and certainly, since they +will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be +indulged. Leaning over in his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin +with an attentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock +drawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along with one +of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also, biscuits were +then ranged round the sides within a flask of fresh water was placed at the +head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up in the hold at the foot and +a piece of sailcloth being rolled up for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to +be lifted into his final bed, that he might make trial of its comforts, if +any it had. He lay without moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his +bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast +with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid hatch he called it to be +placed over him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there +lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in view. +Rarmai it will do it is easy, he murmured at last, and signed to be +replaced in his hammock. But ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily +hovering near by all this while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with +soft sobbings, took him by the hand in the other, holding his tambourine. +Poor rover will ye never have done with all this weary roving? Where go ye +now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the beaches +are only beat with waterlilies, will ye do one little errand for me? Seek +out one Pip, who's now been missing long I think he's in those far +Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him for he must be very sad for +look +he's left his tambourine behind I found it. Rigadig, dig, dig Now, +Queequeg, die and I'll beat ye your dying march. I have heard, murmured +Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, that in violent fevers, men, all +ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues and that when the mystery is +probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those +ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty +scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, in this strange sweetness of his +lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our heavenly homes. Where learned he +that, but there? Hark he speaks again but more wildly now. Form two +and two Let's make a General of him Ho, where's his harpoon? Lay it +across here. Rigadig, dig, dig huzza Oh for a game cock now to sit upon +his head and crow queequeg dies game mind ye that queequeg dies game +take ye good heed of that Queequeg dies game I say game, game, game +but base little Pip, he died a coward died all a'shiver out upon Pip +Hark ye if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles he's a runaway a coward, a +coward, a coward Tell them he jumped from a whaleboat I'd never beat my +tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once more dying +here. No, no shame upon all cowards shame upon them Let 'em go drown +like Pip, that jumped from a whaleboat. Shame shame During all this, +Queequeg lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip was led away, and the +sick man was replaced in his hammock. But now that he had apparently made +every preparation for death now that his coffin was proved a good fit, +Queequeg suddenly rallied soon there seemed no need of the carpenter's box +and thereupon, when some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in +substance, said, that the cause of his sudden convalescence was this at a +critical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was +leaving undone and therefore had changed his mind about dying he could not +die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a +matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a +word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man +made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him nothing but a +whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of +that sort. Now, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and +civilized that while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, +generally speaking, a sick savage is almost halfwell again in a day. So, in +good time my Queequeg gained strength and at length after sitting on the +windlass for a few indolent days but eating with a vigorous appetite he +suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out arms and legs, gave himself a good +stretching, yawned a little bit, and then springing into the head of his +hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon, pronounced himself fit for a fight. +With a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a seachest and emptying +into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there. Many spare hours +he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and +drawings and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy +parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing, had been the +work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic +marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the +earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth so that +Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold a wondrous work in +one volume but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own +live heart beat against them and these mysteries were therefore destined in +the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, +and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have been which +suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning turning away +from surveying poor Queequeg Oh, devilish tantalization of the gods +When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged +at last upon the great South Sea were it not for other things, I could have +greeted my dear Pacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication +of my youth was answered that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a +thousand leagues of blue. There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about +this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul +beneath like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried +Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these seapastures, +widerolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the +waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly for here, millions +of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries all +that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still tossing like +slumberers in their beds the everrolling waves but made so by their +restlessness. To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once +beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost +waters of the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The +same waves wash the moles of the newbuilt Californian towns, but yesterday +planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still gorgeous +skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham while all between float +milkyways of coral isles, and lowlying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and +impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's +whole bulk about makes all coasts one bay to it seems the tidebeating +heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the +seductive god, bowing your head to Pan. But few thoughts of Pan stirred +Ahab's brain, as standing like an iron statue at his accustomed place beside +the mizen +rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the +Bashee isles in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking, and with +the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea that sea +in which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at length +upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese +cruisingground, the old man's purpose intensified itself. His firm lips met +like the lips of a vice the Delta of his forehead's veins swelled like +overladen brooks in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran through the vaulted +hull, Stern all the White Whale spouts thick blood +The blacksmith availing himself of the mild, +summercool weather that now reigned in these latitudes, and in preparation +for the peculiarly active pursuits shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the +begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to +the hold again, after concluding his contributory work for Ahab's leg, but +still retained it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast being +now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen +to do some little job for them altering, or repairing, or new shaping their +various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an eager +circle, all waiting to be served holding boatspades, pikeheads, harpoons, +and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he toiled. +Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. +No murmur, no impatience, no petulence did come from him. Silent, slow, and +solemn bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled +away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the +heavy beating of his heart. And so it was. Most miserable +A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing yawing +in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the curiosity of +the mariners. And to the importunity of their persisted questionings he had +finally given in and so it came to pass that every one now knew the shameful +story of his wretched fate. Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter's +midnight, on the road running between two country towns, the blacksmith +halfstupidly felt the deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge +in a leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of +both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four +acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied fifth act +of the grief of his life's drama. He was an old man, who, at the age of +nearly sixty, had postponedly encountered that thing in sorrow's technicals +called ruin. He had been an artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to +do owned a house and garden embraced a youthful, daughterlike, loving +wife, and three blithe, ruddy children every Sunday went to a +cheerfullooking church, planted in a grove. But one night, under cover of +darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate +burglar slid into his happy home, and robbed them all of everything. And +darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this +burglar into his family's heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror Upon the opening +of that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, +for prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was in the +basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it so that always +had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness, +but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her youngarmed old +husband's hammer whose reverberations, muffled by passing through the floors +and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery and so, to stout +Labor's iron lullaby, the blacksmith's infants were rocked to slumber. Oh, +woe on woe Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst thou +taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then +had the young widow had a +delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream +of in their after years and all of them a carekilling competency. But +Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil +solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse +than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him +easier to harvest. Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer +every day grew more and more between and each blow every day grew fainter +than the last the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, +glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children the bellows fell +the forge choked up with cinders the house was sold the mother dived down +into the long churchyard grass her children twice followed her thither +and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a vagabond in crape his +every woe unreverenced his grey head a scorn to flaxen curls Death seems +the only desirable sequel for a career like this but Death is only a +launching into the region of the strange Untried it is but the first +salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, +the Unshored therefore, to the deathlonging eyes of such men, who still +have left in them some interior compunctions against suicide, does the +allcontributed and allreceptive ocean alluringly spread forth his whole +plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, newlife adventures +and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them +Come hither, brokenhearted here is another life without the guilt of +intermediate death here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. +Come hither bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and +abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither put up +thy gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry +thee Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by +fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come And so Perth +went awhaling. +With matted beard, and swathed in a +bristling sharkskin apron, about midday, Perth was standing between his +forge and anvil, the latter placed upon an ironwood log, with one hand +holding a pikehead in the coals, and with the other at his forge's lungs, +when captain ahab came along, carrying in his hand a small rustylooking +leathern bag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused +till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it +upon the anvil the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering +flights, some of which flew close to Ahab. Are these thy Mother Carey's +chickens, Perth? they are always flying in thy wake birds of good omen, +too, but not to all look here, they burn but thouthou liv'st among them +without a scorch. Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab, answered +Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer I am past scorching not easily +can'st thou scorch a scar. Well, well no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds +too calmly, sanely woful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of +all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith +say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do +the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad? What wert thou +making there? Welding an old pikehead, sir there were seams and dents in +it. And can'st thou make it all smooth, again, blacksmith, after such hard +usage as it had? I think so, sir. And I suppose thou can'st smoothe +almost any seams and dents never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith? +Aye, sir, I think I can all seams and dents but one. +Look ye here, then, cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning with +both hands on Perth's shoulders look ye here here can ye smoothe out a +seam like this, blacksmith, sweeping one hand across his ribbed browif +thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, +and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer Can'st thou smoothe +this seam? Oh that is the one, sir Said I not all seams and dents but +one? aye, blacksmith, it is the one aye, man, it is unsmoothable for +though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the bone +of my skull that is all wrinkles But, away with child's play no more +gaffs and pikes today. Look ye here jingling the leathern bag, as if it +were full of gold coins. I, too, want a harpoon made one that a thousand +yoke of fiends could not part, Perth something that will stick in a whale +like his own finbone. There's the stuff, flinging the pouch upon the +anvil. Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered nailstubbs of the steel +shoes of racing horses. Horseshoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou +hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work. I +know it, old man these stubbs will weld together like glue from the melted +bones of murderers. Quick forge me the harpoon. And forge me first, twelve +rods for its shank then wind, and twist, and hammer these twelve together +like the yarns and strands of a towline. Quick I'll blow the fire. When +at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one, by spiralling +them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. A flaw rejecting +the last one. Work that over again, Perth. This done, Perth was about to +begin welding the twelve into one, when Ahab stayed his hand, and said he +would weld his own iron. As, then, with regular, gasping hems, he hammered +on the anvil, Perth passing to him the glowing rods, one after the other, +and the hard pressed forge shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee +passed silently, and bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking +some curse or some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid +aside. +What's that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for? muttered Stubb, +looking on from the forecastle. That Parsee smells fire like a fusee and +smells of it himself, like a hot musket's powderpan. At last the shank, in +one complete rod, received its final heat and as perth, to temper it, plunged +it all hissing into the cask of water near by, the scalding steam shot up +into Ahab's bent face. Would'st thou brand me, Perth? wincing for a moment +with the pain have I been but forging my own brandingiron, then? Pray +God, not that yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this harpoon for +the White Whale? For the white fiend But now for the barbs thou must +make them thyself, man. Here are my razors the best of steel here, and make +the barbs sharp as the needlesleet of the Icy Sea. For a moment, the old +blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would fain not use them. Take them, +man, I have no need for them for I now neither shave, sup, nor pray till +but here to work Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by +Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron and as the +blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to tempering +them, he cried to Ahab to place the watercask near. No, no no water for +that I want it of the true deathtemper. Ahoy, there Tashtego, Queequeg, +Daggoo What say ye, pagans Will ye give me as much blood as will cover +this barb? holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three +punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale's barbs were +then tempered. Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli +deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the +baptismal blood. Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one +of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the +socket of the iron. A coil of new towline was then unwound, and some fathoms +of it taken to the windlass, and +stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope +hummed like a harpstring, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no +strandings, ahab exclaimed, good and now for the seizings. At one +extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns were all +braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon the pole was then driven +hard up into the socket from the lower end the rope was traced half way along +the pole's length, and firmly secured so, with intertwistings of twine. +This done, pole, iron, and rope like the Three Fates remained inseparable, +and Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon the sound of his ivory leg, +and the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. +But ere he entered his cabin, a light, unnatural, halfbantering, yet most +piteous sound was heard. Oh, Pip thy wretched laugh, thy idle but +unresting eye all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the +black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and mocked it +Penetrating further and further into the +heart of the Japanese cruising ground, the Pequod was soon all astir in the +fishery. Often, in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, +and twenty hours on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily +pulling, or sailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of +sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising though with but +small success for their pains. At such times, under an abated sun afloat +all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells seated in his boat, light as a +birch canoe and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that +like hearthstone cats they purr against the gunwale these are the times of +dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil +beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that +pants beneath it and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but +conceals a remorseless fang. These are the times, when in his whaleboat the +rover softly feels a certain filial, confident, landlike feeling towards the +sea that he regards it as so much flowery earth and the distant ship +revealing only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not though +high rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie as when +the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears, while their +hidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure. The longdrawn virgin +vales the mild blue hillsides as over these there steals the hush, the +hum you almost swear that playwearied children lie sleeping in these +solitudes, in some glad Maytime, when the flowers of the woods are plucked. +And all this mixes with your most mystic mood so that fact and fancy, +halfway meeting, interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole. Nor did such +soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as temporary an effect on +Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem to open in him his own secret +golden treasuries, yet did his breath upon them prove but tarnishing. Oh, +grassy glades oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul in ye, +though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life, in ye, men yet +may roll, like young horses in new morning clover and for some few fleeting +moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these +blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven +by warp and woof calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is +no steady unretracing progress in this life we do not advance through fixed +gradations, and at the last one pause through infancy's unconscious spell, +boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt the common doom, then +scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of +If. But once gone through, we trace the round again and are infants, boys, +and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no +more? in what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will +never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like +those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them the secret of our +paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it. And that same +day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side into that same golden sea, +Starbuck lowly murmured Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his +young bride's eye Tell me not of thy teethtiered sharks, and thy +kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact let fancy oust memory I +look deep down and do believe. And Stubb, fishlike, with sparkling scales, +leaped up in that same golden light I am Stubb, and Stubb has his +history but here Stubb takes oaths that he has always been jolly +And jolly enough were +the sights and the sounds that came bearing down before the wind, some few +weeks after Ahab's harpoon had been welded. It was a Nantucket ship, the +Bachelor, which had just wedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her +bursting hatches and now, in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though +somewhat vaingloriously, sailing round among the widelyseparated ships on +the ground, previous to pointing her prow for home. The three men at her +masthead wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at their hats from the +stern, a whaleboat was suspended, bottom down and hanging captive from the +bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last whale they had slain. +Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colors were flying from her rigging, on +every side. Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed tops were two +barrels of sperm above which, in her topmast crosstrees, you saw slender +breakers of the +same precious fluid and nailed to her main truck was a brazen lamp. As was +afterwards learned, the bachelor had met with the most surprising success +all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in the same seas numerous +other vessels had gone entire months without securing a single fish. Not only +had barrels of beef and bread been given away to make room for the far more +valuable sperm, but additional supplemental casks had been bartered for, +from the ships she had met and these were stowed along the deck, and in the +captain's and officers' staterooms. Even the cabin table itself had been +knocked into kindlingwood and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of +an oilbutt, lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, +the sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests, and filled them +it was humorously added, that the cook had clapped a head on his largest +boiler, and filled it that the steward had plugged his spare coffeepot and +filled it that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and +filled them that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the +captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, +in selfcomplacent testimony of his entire satisfaction. As this glad ship of +good luck bore down upon the moody Pequod, the barbarian sound of enormous +drums came from her forecastle and drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men +were seen standing round her huge trypots, which, covered with the +parchmentlike poke or stomach skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar +to every stroke of the clenched hands of the crew. On the quarterdeck, the +mates and harpooneers were dancing with the olivehued girls who had eloped +with them from the Polynesian Isles while suspended in an ornamented boat, +firmly secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast, three Long Island +negroes, with glittering fiddlebows of whale ivory, were presiding over the +hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship's company were tumultuously busy +at the masonry of the tryworks, from which the huge pots had been removed. +You would have almost thought they were pulling down the cursed Bastile, such +wild cries they raised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled +into the sea. +Lord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the ship's +elevated quarterdeck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was full before him, +and seemed merely contrived for his own individual diversion. And Ahab, he +too was standing on his quarterdeck, shaggy and black, with a stubborn +gloom and as the two ships crossed each other's wakes one all jubilations +for things passed, the other all forebodings as to things to come their two +captains in themselves impersonated the whole striking contrast of the scene. +Come aboard, come aboard cried the gay Bachelor's commander, lifting a +glass and a bottle in the air. Hast seen the White Whale? gritted Ahab in +reply. No only heard of him but don't believe in him at all, said the +other goodhumoredly. Come aboard Thou are too damned jolly. Sail on. +Hast lost any men? Not enough to speak of two islanders, that's all but +come aboard, old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that black from your +brow. Come along, will ye merry's the play a full ship and +homewardbound. How wondrous familiar is a fool muttered Ahab then +aloud, Thou art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayest well, then, +call me an empty ship, and outwardbound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. +Forward there Set all sail, and keep her to the wind And thus, while the +one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the other stubbornly fought against +it and so the two vessels parted the crew of the Pequod looking with +grave, lingering glances towards the receding Bachelor but the Bachelor's +men never heeding their gaze for the lively revelry they were in. And as +Ahab, leaning over the taffrail, eyed the homewardbound craft, he took from +his pocket a small vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the vial, +seemed thereby bringing two remote associations together, for that vial was +filled with Nantucket soundings. +Not seldom in this life, when, on the +right side, fortune's favorites sail close by us, we, though all adroop +before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging +sails fill out. So seemed it with the Pequod. For next day after +encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were seen and four were slain and one +of them by Ahab. It was far down the afternoon and when all the spearings of +the crimson fight were done and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, +sun and whale both stilly died together then, such a sweetness and such +plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it +almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the +Manilla isles, the Spanish landbreeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to +sea, freighted with these vesper hymns. Soothed again, but only soothed to +deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned off from the whale, sat intently +watching his final wanings from the now tranquil boat. For that strange +spectacle observable in all sperm whales dying the turning sunwards of the +head, and so expiring that strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid +evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a wondrousness unknown before. He turns +and turns him to it, how slowly, but how steadfastly, his homagerendering +and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too worships fire most +faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun Oh that these toofavoring eyes +should see these toofavoring sights. Look here, far waterlocked beyond +all hum of human weal or woe in these most candid and impartial seas where +to traditions no rocks furnish tablets where for long Chinese ages, the +billows have still rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine +upon the Niger's unknown source here, too, life dies sunwards full of +faith but see no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it +heads some other way. Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned +bones hast builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these +unverdured seas thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to +me in the wideslaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. +Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round +again, without a lesson to me. Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power +Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet that one strivest, this one jettest all in +vain In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon +allquickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet +dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy +unnamable imminglings, float beneath me here I am buoyed by breaths of once +living things, exhaled as air, but water now. Then hail, for ever hail, O +sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of +earth, yet suckled by the sea though hill and valley mothered me, ye +billows are my fosterbrothers +The four whales slain that evening +had died wide apart one, far to windward one, less distant, to leeward +one ahead one astern. These last three were brought alongside ere +nightfall but the windward one could not be reached till morning and the +boat that had killed it lay by its side all night and that boat was Ahab's. +The waifpole was thrust upright into the dead whale's spouthole and the +lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare upon the +black, glossy back, and far out upon the +midnight waves, which gently chafed the whale's broad flank, like soft surf +upon a beach. Ahab and all his boat's crew seemed asleep but the Parsee who +crouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played round +the whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails. A sound like +the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven ghosts of Gomorrah, +ran shuddering through the air. Started from his slumbers, Ahab, face to +face, saw the Parsee and hooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed +the last men in a flooded world. I have dreamed it again, said he. Of the +hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor coffin can be +thine? And who are hearsed that die on the sea? But I said, old man, that +ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two hearses must verily be seen by thee +on the sea the first not made by mortal hands and the visible wood of the +last one must be grown in America. Aye, aye a strange sight that, Parsee +a hearse and its plumes floating over the ocean with the waves for the +pallbearers. Ha Such a sight we shall not soon see. Believe it or not, +thou canst not die till it be seen, old man. And what was that saying about +thyself? Though it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy +pilot. And when thou art so gone before if that ever befall then ere I +can follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still? Was it not so? +Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot I have here two pledges +that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it. Take another pledge, old +man, said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up like fireflies in the gloom, +Hemp only can kill thee. The gallows, ye mean. I am immortal then, on +land and on sea, cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision Immortal on land +and on sea Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came on, and +the slumbering crew arose from the boat's bottom, and ere noon the dead whale +was brought to the ship. +The season for the Line at length drew +near and every day when Ahab, coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, +the vigilant helmsman would ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager +mariners quickly run to the braces, and would stand there with all their eyes +centrally fixed on the nailed doubloon impatient for the order to point the +ship's prow for the equator. In good time the order came. It was hard upon +high noon and Ahab, seated in the bows of his highhoisted boat, was about +taking his wonted daily obervation of the sun to determine his latitude. Now, +in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of effulgences. +That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy +ocean's immeasureable burningglass. The sky looks lacquered clouds there +are none the horizon floats and this nakedness of unrelieved radiance is +as the insufferable splendors of God's throne. Well that Ahab's quadrant +was furnished with colored glasses, through which to take sight of that solar +fire. So, swinging his seated form to the roll of the ship, and with his +astrologicallooking instrument placed to his eye, he remained in that posture +for some moments to catch the precise instant when the sun should gain its +precise meridian. Meantime while his whole attention was absorbed, the Parsee +was kneeling beneath him on the ship's deck, and with face thrown up like +Ahab's, was eyeing the same sun with him only the lids of his eyes half +hooded their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly +passionlessness. At length the desired observation was taken and with his +pencil upon his ivory leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at +that precise instant. Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked +up towards the sun and murmured to himself Thou seamark thou high and +mighty Pilot thou tellest me truly +where I am but canst thou cast the least hint where I shall be? Or canst +thou tell where some other thing besides me is this moment living? Where is +Moby Dick? This instant thou must be eyeing him. These eyes of mine look +into the very eye that is even now beholding him aye, and into the eye that +is even now equally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither side of +thee, thou sun Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the +other, its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and +muttered Foolish toy babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and +Commodores, and Captains the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might +but what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where +thou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds +thee no not one jot more Thou canst not tell where one drop of water or +one grain of sand will be tomorrow noon and yet with thy impotence thou +insultest the sun Science Curse thee, thou vain toy and cursed be all +the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness +but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O +sun Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes +not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his +firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant dashing it to the deck, no longer +will I guide my earthly way by thee the level ship's compass, and the level +deadreckoning, by log and by line these shall conduct me, and show me my +place on the sea. Aye, lighting from the boat to the deck, thus I +trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high thus I split +and destroy thee As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with +his live and dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and a +fatalistic despair that seemed meant for himself these passed over the mute, +motionless Parsee's face. Unobserved he rose and glided away while, +awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the seamen clustered together on +the forecastle, till Ahab, troubledly pacing the deck, shouted out To the +braces Up helm square in In an instant the yards swung round and as +the ship halfwheeled +upon her heel, her three firmseated graceful masts erectly poised upon her +long, ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one sufficient +steed. Standing between the knightheads, Starbuck watched the Pequod's +tumultuous way, and Ahab's also, as he went lurching along the deck. I +have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of its +tormented flaming life and I have seen it wane at last, down, down, to +dumbest dust. Old man of oceans of all this fiery life of thine, what will +at length remain but one little heap of ashes Aye, cried Stubb, but +seacoal ashes mind ye that, Mr. Starbuck seacoal, not your common +charcoal. Well, well I heard Ahab mutter, "Here some one thrusts these +cards into these old hands of mine swears that I must play them, and no +others." And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right live in the game, and +die it +Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest +fangs the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. +Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders gorgeous Cuba +knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in +these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all +storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, +like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town. Towards evening of that +day, the Pequod was torn of her canvas, and barepoled was left to fight a +Typhoon which had struck her directly ahead. When darkness came on, sky and +sea roared and split with the thunder, and blazed with the lightning, that +showed the disabled masts fluttering here and there with +the rags which the first fury of the tempest had left for its after sport. +Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarterdeck at every +flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional disaster might +have befallen the intricate hamper there while Stubb and Flask were +directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the boats. But +all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted to the very top of the cranes, +the windward quarter boat Ahab's did not escape. A great rolling sea, +dashing high up against the reeling ship's high tetering side, stove in the +boat's bottom at the stern, and left it again, all dripping through like a +sieve. Bad work, bad work Mr. Starbuck, said Stubb, regarding the wreck, +but the sea will have its way. Stubb, for one, can't fight it. You see, Mr. +Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it leaps, all round the +world it runs, and then comes the spring But as for me, all the start I +have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But never mind it's all in +fun so the old song says sings. Oh jolly is the gale, And a joker +is the whale, A' flourishin' his tail, Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, +joky, hokypoky lad, is the Ocean, oh The scud all a flyin' That's his +flip only foamin' When he stirs in the spicin', Such a funny, sporty, +gamy, jesty, joky, hokypoky lad, is the Ocean, oh Thunder splits the +ships, But he only smacks his lips, A tastin' of this flip, Such a funny, +sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hokypoky lad, is the Ocean, oh Avast Stubb, +cried Starbuck, let the Typhoon sing, and strike his harp here in our +rigging but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy peace. But I am +not a brave man never said i was a brave man I am a coward and I sing to +keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, there's no way +to stop my singing +in this world but to cut my throat. And when that's done, ten to one I sing +ye the doxology for a windup. Madman look through my eyes if thou hast +none of thine own. What how can you see better of a dark night than +anybody else, never mind how foolish? Here cried Starbuck, seizing +Stubb by the shoulder, and pointing his hand towards the weather bow, +markest thou not that the gale comes from the eastward, the very course Ahab +is to run for Moby Dick? the very course he swung to this day noon? now +mark his boat there where is that stove? In the sternsheets, man where +he is wont to stand his standpoint is stove, man Now jump overboard, and +sing away, if thou must I don't half understand ye what's in the wind? +Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to Nantucket, +soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Stubb's question. The gale that +now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it into a fair wind that will +drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward, all is blackness of doom but +to leeward, homeward I see it lightens up there but not with the +lightning. At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, +following the flashes, a voice was heard at his side and almost at the same +instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead. Who's there? Old +Thunder said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to his pivothole +but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed lances of fire. +Now, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off the +perilous fluid into the soil so the kindred rod which at sea some ships +carry to each mast, is intended to conduct it into the water. But as this +conductor must descend to considerable depth, that its end may avoid all +contact with the hull and as moreover, if kept constantly towing there, it +would be liable to many mishaps, besides interfering not a little with some +of the rigging, and more or less impeding the vessel's way in the water +because of all this, the lower parts of a ship's +lightningrods are not always overboard but are generally made in long +slender links, so as to be the more readily hauled up into the chains +outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may require. The rods +the rods cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished to vigilance by +the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux, to light Ahab to his +post. Are they overboard? drop them over, fore and aft. Quick Avast +cried Ahab let's have fair play here, though we be the weaker side. Yet +I'll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and Andes, that all the world +may be secured but out on privileges Let them be, sir. Look aloft +cried Starbuck. The corpusants the corpusants All the yardarms were +tipped with a pallid fire and touched at each tripointed lightningrodend +with three tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts was silently +burning in that sulphurous air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an +altar. Blast the boat let it go cried Stubb at this instant, as a +swashing sea heaved up under his own little craft, so that its gunwale +violently jammed his hand, as he was passing a lashing. Blast it but +slipping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames and +immediately shifting his tone, he cried The corpusants have mercy on us +all To sailors, oaths are household words they will swear in the trance +of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest they will imprecate curses +from the topsailyardarms, when most they teter over to a seething sea but +in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when God's burning +finger has been laid on the ship when his mene, mene, Tekel Upharsin has +been woven into the shrouds and the cordage. While this pallidness was burning +aloft, few words were heard from the enchanted crew who in one thick +cluster stood on the forecastle, all their eyes gleaming in that pale +phosphorescence, like a far away constellation of stars. Relieved against +the ghostly light, the gigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his +real stature, and seemed the black cloud from which the thunder had come. +The parted mouth of Tashtego revealed his sharkwhite teeth, which strangely +gleamed as if they too +had been tipped by corpusants while lit up by the preternatural light, +Queequeg's tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames on his body. The tableau +all waned at last with the pallidness aloft and once more the Pequod and +every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. A moment or two passed, when +Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one. It was Stubb. What +thinkest thou now, man I heard thy cry it was not the same in the song. +No, no, it wasn't I said the corpusants have mercy on us all and I hope +they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces? have they no +bowels for a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck but it's too dark to look. +Hear me, then I take that masthead flame we saw for a sign of good luck +for those masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be chock a' block with +spermoil, d'ye see and so, all that sperm will work up into the masts, +like sap in a tree. Yes, our three masts will yet be as three spermaceti +candles that's the good promise we saw. At that moment Starbuck caught +sight of Stubb's face slowly beginning to glimmer into sight. Glancing +upwards, he cried See see and once more the high tapering flames were +beheld with what seemed redoubled supernaturalness in their pallor. The +corpusants have mercy on us all, cried Stubb, again. At the base of the +mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame, the parsee was kneeling +in Ahab's front, but with his head bowed away from him while near by, from +the arched and overhanging rigging, where they had just been engaged securing +a spar, a number of the seamen, arrested by the glare, now cohered +together, and hung pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, +orchard twig. In various enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or +stepping, or running skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the +deck but all their eyes upcast. Aye, aye, men cried Ahab. Look up at +it mark it well the white flame but lights the way to the White Whale +Hand me those mainmast links there I would fain feel this pulse, and let +mine beat against it blood against fire So. +Then turning the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot upon +the Parsee and with fixed upward eye, and highflung right arm, he stood +erect before the lofty tripointed trinity of flames. Oh thou clear spirit +of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the +sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar I now +know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is +defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind and e'en for hate +thou canst but kill and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. +I own thy speechless, placeless power but to the last gasp of my earthquake +life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst +of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a +point at best whencesoe'er I came wheresoe'er I go yet while I earthly +live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But +war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will +kneel and kiss thee but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power and +though thou launchest navies of fullfreighted worlds, there's that in here +that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou +madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee. +[Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning the nine flames leap lengthwise to +thrice their previous height Ahab, with the rest, closes his eyes, his +right hand pressed hard upon them.] I own thy speechless, placeless power +said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me nor do I now drop these links. +Thou canst blind but I can then grope. Thou canst consume but I can then +be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes, and shutterhands. I would +not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull mine eyeballs ache and +ache my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning +ground. Oh, oh Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou +be, thou leapest out of darkness but I am darkness leaping out of light, +leaping out of thee The javelins cease open eyes see, or not? There burn +the flames Oh, thou magnanimous now do I glory in my genealogy. But thou +art but my fiery father my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel what hast +thou done with her? There lies my puzzle but thine is greater. Thou knowest +not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten certainly knowest not thy +beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou +knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing +beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all +thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched +eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou +too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with +haughty agony, i read my sire. leap leap up, and lick the sky I leap +with thee I burn with thee would fain be welded with thee defyingly I +worship thee The boat the boat cried Starbuck, look at thy boat, old +man Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly lashed +in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whaleboat's bow +but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to +drop off and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flame of +pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent's +tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm God, God is against thee, old +man forbear t'is an ill voyage ill begun, ill continued let me square +the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to +go on a better voyage than this. Overhearing Starbuck, the panicstricken +crew instantly ran to the braces though not a sail was left aloft. For the +moment all the aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs they raised a half +mutinous cry. But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and +snatching the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them +swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's +end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart +that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke All +your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine and heart, soul, +and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye may know to what +tune this heart beats +look ye here thus I blow out the last fear And with one blast of his +breath he extinguished the flame. As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, +men fly the neighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and +strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a +mark for thunderbolts so at those last words of ahab's many of the mariners +did run from him in a terror of dismay. +Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an +island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map true +places never are. When a newhatched savage running wild about his native +woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a +green sapling even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong +desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. +His father was a High Chief, a King his uncle a High Priest and on the +maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. +There was excellent blood in his veins royal stuff though +sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his +untutored youth. A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg +sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement +of seamen, spurned his suit and not all the King his father's influence +could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off +to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted +the island. On one side was a coral reef on the other a low tongue of +land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding +his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat +down in the stern, paddle low in hand and when the ship was gliding by, +like a flash he darted out gained her side with one backward dash of his +foot capsized and sank his canoe climbed up the chains and throwing +himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ringbolt there, and swore not +to let it go, though hacked in pieces. In vain the captain threatened to throw +him overboard suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists Queequeg was the +son of a King, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate +dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last +relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young +savage this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the captain's cabin. They put him +down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter +content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no +seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening +his untutored countrymen. For at bottom so he told me he was actuated by a +profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his +people still happier than they were and more than that, still better than +they were. But, alas the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even +Christians could be both miserable and wicked infinitely more so, than all +his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor and seeing what +the sailors did there and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they +spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. +Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians I'll die a pagan. +and thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians, wore +their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer ways about +him, though now some time from home. By hints, I asked him whether he did +not propose going back, and having a coronation since he might now consider +his father dead and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. +He answered no, not yet and added that he was fearful Christianity, or +rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled +throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would +return, as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, +he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They +had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a sceptre +now. I asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future +movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon this, +I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my intention +to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port for an adventurous +whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to accompany me to that island, +ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the same boat, the +same mess with me, in short to share my every hap with both my hands in +his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this I joyously +assented for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an +experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great usefulness +to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though +well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen. His story being +ended with his pipe's last dying puff, Queequeg embraced me, pressed his +forehead against mine, and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each +other, this way and that, and very soon were sleeping. +Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him. We must send down the +maintopsail yard, sir. The band is working loose, and the lee lift is +halfstranded. Shall I strike it, sir? Strike nothing lash it. If I had +skysail poles, I'd sway them up now. Sir? in God's name sir? Well. +The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard? Strike nothing, +and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises, but it has not got +up to my tablelands yet. Quick, and see to it. By masts and keels he +takes me for the hunchbacked skipper of some coasting smack. Send down my +maintopsail yard Ho, gluepots Loftiest trucks were made for wildest +winds, and this braintruck of mine now sails amid the cloudscud. Shall I +strike that? Oh, none but cowards send down their braintrucks in tempest +time. What a hooroosh aloft there I would e'en take it for sublime, did I +not know that the colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take +medicine +Stubb and Flask +mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over the anchors there +hanging. No, Stubb you may pound that knot there as much as you please, +but you will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how long +ago is it since you said the very contrary? Didn't you once say that whatever +ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on its insurance +policy, just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes of +lucifers forward? Stop, now didn't you say so? Well, suppose I did? What +then? i've part changed my flesh since that time, why not my mind? Besides, +supposing we are loaded with powder barrels aft and lucifers forward how +the devil could the lucifers get afire in this drenching spray here? Why, my +little man, you have pretty red hair, but you couldn't get afire now. Shake +yourself you're Aquarius, or the waterbearer, Flask might fill pitchers +at your coat collar. Don't you see, then, that for these extra risks the +Marine Insurance companies have extra guarantees? Here are hydrants, +Flask. But hark, again, and I'll answer ye the other thing. First take your +leg off from the crown of the anchor here, though, so I can pass the rope +now listen. What's the mighty difference between holding a mast's +lightningrod in the storm, and standing close by a mast that hasn't got any +lightningrod at all in a storm? Don't you see, you timberhead, that no +harm can come to the holder of the rod, unless the mast is first struck? +What are you talking about, then? Not one ship in a hundred carries rods, +and Ahab, aye, man, and all of us, were in no more danger then, in my poor +opinion, than all the crews in ten thousand ships now sailing the seas. Why, +you KingPost, you, I suppose you would have every man in the world go about +with a small lightningrod running up the corner of his hat, like a militia +officer's skewered feather, and trailing behind like his sash. Why don't ye +be sensible, Flask? it's easy to be sensible why don't ye, then? any man +with half an eye can be sensible. I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes +find it rather hard. Yes, when a fellow's soaked through, it's hard to be +sensible, that's a fact. And I am about drenched with this spray. Never +mind catch the turn there, and pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down +these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again. tying these +two anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man's hands behind him. And what +big generous hands they are, to be sure. These are your iron fists, hey? +What a hold they have, too I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored +anywhere if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though. There, +hammer that knot down, and we've done. So next to touching land, lighting +on deck is the most satisfactory. I say, just wring out my jacket skirts, +will ye? Thank ye. They laugh at longtogs so, Flask but seems to me, a +long tailed coat ought always to be worn in all storms afloat. The tails +tapering down that way, serve to carry off the water, d'ye see. Same with +cocked hats the cocks form gableend eavetroughs, Flask. No more +monkeyjackets and tarpaulins for me I must mount a swallowtail, and drive +down a beaver so. Halloa whew there goes my tarpaulin overboard Lord, +Lord, that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly This is +a nasty night, lad. +During the most violent shocks of the +Typhoon, the man at the Pequod's jawbone tiller had several times been +reelingly hurled to the deck by its spasmodic motions, even though preventer +tackles had been attached to it for they were slack because some play to +the tiller was indispensable. In a severe gale like this, while the ship is +but a tossed shuttlecock to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see +the needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was thus +with the Pequod's at almost every shock the helmsman had not failed to +notice the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon the cards it is a +sight that hardly any one can behold without some sort of unwonted emotion. +Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the +strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb one engaged forward and the other +aft the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and maintopsails were cut +adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like the feathers +of +an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when that stormtossed +bird is on the wing. The three corresponding new sails were now bent and +reefed, and a stormtrysail was set further aft so that the ship soon went +through the water with some precision again and the course for the present, +Eastsoutheast which he was to steer, if practicable, was once more given +to the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he had only steered +according to its vicissitudes. But as he was now bringing the ship as near +her course as possible, watching the compass meanwhile, lo a good sign +the wind seemed coming round astern aye the foul breeze became fair +Instantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of Ho the fair +wind ohheyo, cheerly, men the crew singing for joy, that so +promising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents preceding +it. In compliance with the standing order of his commander to report +immediately, and at any one of the twentyfour hours, any decided change in +the affairs of the deck, Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the yards to the +breeze however reluctantly and gloomily, than he mechanically went below to +apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance. Ere knocking at his stateroom, he +involuntarily paused before it a moment. The cabin lamp taking long swings +this way and that was burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the +old man's bolted door, a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of +upper panels. The isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain +humming silence to reign there, though it was hooped round by all the roar of +the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as +they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, +upright man but out of Starbuck's heart, at that instant when he saw the +muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought but so blent with its +neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for +itself. He would have shot me once, he murmured, yes, there's the very +musket that he pointed at me that one with the studded stock let me touch +it lift it. Strange, that I, who have +handled so many deadly lances, strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded? +I must see. Aye, aye and powder in the pan that's not good. Best spill +it? wait. I'll cure myself of this. I'll hold the musket boldly while I +think. I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death +and doom, that's fair for Moby Dick. It's a fair wind that's only fair for +that accursed fish. The very tube he pointed at me the very one this one +I hold it here he would have killed me with the very thing I handle now. +Aye and he would fain kill all his crew. Does he not say he will not strike +his spars to any gale? Has he not dashed his heavenly quadrant? and in these +same perilous seas, gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning of the +errorabounding log? and in this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he +would have no lightningrods? But shall this crazed old man be tamely +suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him? Yes, it would +make him the wilful murderer of thirty men and more, if this ship come to any +deadly harm and come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship will, if Ahab +have his way. If, then, he were this instantput aside, that crime would +not be his. Ha is he muttering in his sleep? Yes, just there, in there, +he's sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake again. I +can't withstand thee, then, old man. Not reasoning not remonstrance not +entreaty wilt thou hearken to all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to thy +own flat commands, this is all thou breathest. Aye, and say'st the men +have vow'd thy vow say'st all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid But is +there no other way? no lawful way? Make him a prisoner to be taken home? +What hope to wrest this old man's living power from his own living hands? +Only a fool would try it. Say he were pinioned even knotted all over with +ropes and hawsers chained down to ringbolts on this cabin floor he would +be more hideous than a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the sight +could not possibly fly his howlings all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable +reason would leave me on the long intolerable voyage. What, then, remains? +The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand +alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between +me and law. Aye, aye, 'tis so. Is heaven a murderer +when its lightning strikes a wouldbe murderer in his bed, tindering sheets +and skin together? And would I be a murderer, then, if and slowly, +stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's end +against the door. On this level, Ahab's hammock swings within his head +this way. A touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child +again. Oh Mary Mary boy boy boy But if I wake thee not to death, old +man, who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck's body this day week may +sink, with all the crew Great God, where art thou? Shall I? shall I? The +wind has gone down and shifted, sir the fore and main topsails are reefed +and set she heads her course. Stern all Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart +at last Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's +tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream to +speak. The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel +Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel but turning from the door, he +placed the deathtube in its rack, and left the place. He's too sound +asleep, Mr Stubb go thou down, and wake him, and tell him. I must see to +the deck here. Thou know'st what to say. +Next morning the notyetsubsided sea +rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's +gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong, +unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying +sails the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning +light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place +where his bayonet +rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and +queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, +that bubblingly leaps with light and heat. Long maintaining an enchanted +silence, Ahab stood apart and every time the tetering ship loweringly +pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to eye the bright sun's rays produced +ahead and when she profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind, and +saw the sun's rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with +his undeviating wake. Ha, ha, my ship thou mightest well be taken now for +the seachariot of the sun. Ho, ho all ye nations before my prow, I bring +the sun to ye Yoke on the further billows hallo a tandem, I drive the +sea But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards +the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading. Eastsoueast, +sir, said the frightened steersman. Thou liest smiting him with his +clenched fist. Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun +astern? Upon this every soul was confounded for the phenomenon just then +observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else but its very +blinding palpableness must have been the cause. Thrusting his head half way +into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse of the compasses his uplifted +arm slowly fell for a moment he almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind +him Starbuck looked, and lo the two compasses pointed East, and the +Pequod was as infallibly going West. But ere the first wild alarm could get +out abroad among the crew, the old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, I have +it It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our +compasses that's all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take +it. Aye but never before has it happened to me, sir, said the pale +mate, gloomily. Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in +more than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The +magnetic energy, as developed in the mariner's needle, is, as all know, +essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven hence it is not to be +much marvelled at, that such things should be. In instances where the +lightning has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the +spars and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more +fatal all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before +magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife's knitting needle. But in +either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue +thus marred or lost and if the binnacle compasses be affected, the same +fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship even were the lowermost +one inserted into the kelson. Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and +eyeing the transpointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his +extended hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that +the needles were exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship's +course to be changed accordingly. The yards were hard up and once more the +Pequod thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed +fair one had only been juggling her. Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret +thoughts, Starbuck said nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders +while Stubb and Flask who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing +his feelings likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some +of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear of +Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly +unimpressed or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into +their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab's. For a space the old man walked +the deck in rolling reveries. But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he +saw the crushed copper sighttubes of the quadrant he had the day before +dashed to the deck. Thou poor, proud heavengazer and sun's pilot yesterday +I wrecked thee, and today the compasses would feign have wrecked me. So, +so. But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone +yet. Mr. Starbucka lance without a pole a topmaul, and the smallest of +the sailmaker's needles. Quick Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse +dictating the thing he was now about to do, were certain prudential motives, +whose object might have been to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of +his subtile skill, in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses. +Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though +clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious +sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents. Men, said he, +steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the things he had +demanded, my men, the thunder turned old Ahab's needles but out of this +bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as true as any. +Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was +said and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow. But +Starbuck looked away. With a blow from the topmaul Ahab knocked off the steel +head of the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, +bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the +maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed the +blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered that, +several times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then going through +some small strange motions with it whether indispensable to the magnetizing +of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain +he called for linen thread and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two +reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the sailneedle by its +middle, over one of the compasscards. At first, the steel went round and +round, quivering and vibrating at either end but at last it settled to its +place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching for this result, stepped +frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, +exclaimed, Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not the lord of the level +loadstone The sun is East, and that compass swears it One after another +they peered in, for nothing but their own +eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they +slunk away. In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all +his fatal pride. +While now the fated Pequod had been +so long afloat this voyage, the log and line had but very seldom been in use. +Owing to a confident reliance upon other means of determining the vessel's +place, some merchantmen, and many whalemen, especially when cruising, +wholly neglect to heave the log though at the same time, and frequently more +for form's sake than anything else, regularly putting down upon the customary +slate the course steered by the ship, as well as the presumed average rate of +progression every hour. It had been thus with the Pequod. The wooden reel +and angular log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the railing of +the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it the sun and wind had +warped it all the elements had combined to rot a thing that hung so idly. +But heedless of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he happened to glance +upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet scene, and he remembered how +his quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic oath about the level log +and line. The ship was sailing plungingly astern the billows rolled in +riots. Forward, there Heave the log Two seamen came. The goldenhued +Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman. Take the reel, one of ye, I'll heave. +They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship's lee side, where the deck, +with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into the creamy, +sidelongrushing sea. The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by +the projecting handleends of the spindle, round which the spool +of line revolved, so stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab +advanced to him. Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty +or forty turns to form a preliminary handcoil to toss overboard, when the +old Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to +speak. Sir, I mistrust it this line looks far gone, long heat and wet +have spoiled it. 'Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they +spoiled thee? Thou seem'st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee not +thou it. I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these +grey hairs of mine 'tis not worth while disputing, 'specially with a +superior, who'll ne'er confess. What's that? There now's a patched +professor in Queen Nature's granitefounded College but methinks he's too +subservient. Where wert thou born? In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir. +Excellent Thou'st hit the world by that. I know not, sir, but I was born +there. In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it's good. Here's a +man from Man a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man +which is sucked in by what? Up with the reel The dead, blind wall butts +all inquiring heads at last. Up with it So. The log was heaved. The +loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long dragging line astern, and +then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In turn, jerkingly raised and +lowered by the rolling billows, the towing resistance of the log caused the +old reelman to stagger strangely. Hold hard Snap the overstrained line +sagged down in one long festoon the tugging log was gone. I crush the +quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts the +logline. But Ahab can mend all. Haul in here, Tahitian reel up, Manxman. +And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and mend thou the line. See +to it. +There he goes now to him nothing's happened but to me, the skewer seems +loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in, Tahitian These +lines run whole, and whirling out come in broken, and dragging slow. Ha, +Pip? come to help eh, Pip? Pip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the +whaleboat. pip's missing. let's see now if ye haven't fished him up here, +fisherman. It drags hard I guess he's holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti Jerk +him off we haul in no cowards here. Ho there's his arm just breaking +water. A hatchet a hatchet cut it off we haul in no cowards here. +Captain Ahab sir, sir here's Pip, trying to get on board again. Peace, +thou crazy loon, cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm. Away from the +quarterdeck The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser, muttered Ahab, +advancing. Hands off from that holiness Where sayest thou Pip was, boy? +Astern there, sir, astern Lo, lo And who art thou, boy? I see not my +reflection in the vacant pupils of thy eyes. Oh God that man should be a +thing for immortal souls to sieve through Who art thou, boy? Bellboy, +sir ship'scrier ding, dong, ding Pip Pip Pip One hundred pounds +of clay reward for Pip five feet high looks cowardly quickest known by +that Ding, dong, ding Who's seen Pip the coward? There can be no hearts +above the snowline. Oh, ye frozen heavens look down here. Ye did beget +this luckless child, and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines. Here, +boy Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou +touchest my inmost centre, boy thou art tied to me by cords woven of my +heartstrings. Come, let's down. What's this? here's velvet sharkskin, +intently gazing at Ahab's hand, and feeling it. Ah, now, had poor Pip but +felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost This seems to +me, sir, as a manrope something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let +old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together the black one with the +white, for I will not let this go. +Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors +than are here. come, then, to my cabin. Lo ye believers in gods all +goodness, and in man all ill, lo you see the omniscient gods oblivious of +suffering man and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet +full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come I feel prouder leading +thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor's There go two +daft ones now, muttered the old Manxman. One daft with strength, the other +daft with weakness. But here's the end of the rotten line all dripping, too. +Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new line altogether. I'll see Mr. +Stubb about it. +Steering now southeastward by Ahab's +levelled steel, and her progress solely determined by Ahab's level log and +line the Pequod held on her path towards the Equator. Making so long a +passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, +sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild +all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate +scene. At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of +the Equatorial fishingground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the +dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets the watch then headed by +Flask was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly like +halfarticulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod's murdered Innocents +that one and all, they started from their reveries, and for the space of +some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all transfixedly listening, like the +carved Roman slave, while that wild cry remained within hearing. The +Christian or civilized part of the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered +but the pagan harpooneers remained +unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman the oldest mariner of all declared that +the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the voices of newly drowned +men in the sea. below in his hammock, ahab did not hear of this till grey +dawn, when he came to the deck it was then recounted to him by Flask, not +unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus +explained the wonder. Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort +of great numbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, +or some dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and kept +company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail. But this +only the more affected some of them, because most mariners cherish a very +superstitious feeling about seals, arising not only from their peculiar tones +when in distress, but also from the human look of their round heads and +semiintelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising from the water alongside. In +the sea, under certain circumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken +for men. But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most +plausible confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At +sunrise this man went from his hammock to his masthead at the fore and +whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep for sailors +sometimes go aloft in a transition state, whether it was thus with the man, +there is now no telling but, be that as it may, he had not been long at +his perch, when a cry was heard a cry and a rushing and looking up, they +saw a falling phantom in the air and looking down, a little tossed heap of +white bubbles in the blue of the sea. The lifebuoy a long slender cask was +dropped from the stern, where it always hung obedient to a cunning spring +but no hand rose to seize it, and the sun having long beat upon this cask +it had shrunken, so that it slowly filled, and the parched wood also filled +at its every pore and the studded ironbound cask followed the sailor to the +bottom, as if to yield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one. And +thus the first man of the pequod that mounted the mast to look out for the +White Whale, on the White Whale's own +peculiar ground that man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, +thought of that at the time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at +this event, at least as a portent for they regarded it, not as a +foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already +presaged. They declared that now they knew the reason of those wild shrieks +they had heard the night before. But again the old Manxman said nay. The +lost lifebuoy was now to be replaced Starbuck was directed to see to it +but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as in the feverish +eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage, all hands were +impatient of any toil but what was directly connected with its final end, +whatever that might prove to be therefore, they were going to leave the +ship's stern unprovided with a buoy, when by certain strange signs and +inuendoes Queequeg hinted a hint concerning his coffin. A lifebuoy of a +coffin cried Starbuck, starting. Rather queer, that, I should say, said +Stubb. It will make a good enough one, said Flask, the carpenter here can +arrange it easily. Bring it up there's nothing else for it, said +Starbuck, after a melancholy pause. Rig it, carpenter do not look at me +so the coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it. And shall I nail down +the lid, sir? moving his hand as with a hammer. aye. And shall I caulk +the seams, sir? moving his hand as with a caulkingiron. Aye. And shall +I then pay over the same with pitch, sir? moving his hand as with a +pitchpot. Away What possesses thee to this? Make a lifebuoy of the +coffin, and no more. Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me. He goes +off in a huff. The whole he can endure at the parts he baulks. Now I don't +like this. i make a leg for captain ahab, and he wears it like a gentleman +but I make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he wont put his head into it. Are +all my pains to go for nothing with that coffin? And now I'm ordered to make +a lifebuoy of it. It's like turning an old coat going to bring the flesh on +the other side now. I don't like this cobbling sort of business I don't like +it at all it's undignified it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats do +tinkerings we are their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, +virgin, fairandsquare mathematical jobs, something that regularly begins +at the beginning, and is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at +the conclusion not a cobbler's job, that's at an end in the middle, and at +the beginning at the end. It's the old woman's tricks to be giving cobbling +jobs. Lord what an affection all old women have for tinkers. I know an old +woman of sixtyfive who ran away with a baldheaded young tinker once. And +that's the reason I never would work for lonely widow old women ashore, when +I kept my jobshop in the Vineyard they might have taken it into their +lonely old heads to run off with me. But heighho there are no caps at sea +but snowcaps. Let me see. Nail down the lid caulk the seams pay over +the same with pitch batten them down tight, and hang it with the snapspring +over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some +superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere they +would do the job. But I'm made of knotty Aroostook hemlock I don't budge. +Cruppered with a coffin Sailing about with a graveyard tray But never +mind. We workers in woods make bridalbedsteads and cardtables, as well as +coffins and hearses. We work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit +not for us to ask the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too +confounded cobbling, and then we stash it if we can. hem i'll do the job, +now, tenderly. I'll have me let's see how many in the ship's company, all +told? But I've forgotten. Any way, I'll have me thirty separate, +Turk'sheaded lifelines, each three feet long hanging all round to the +coffin. Then, if the hull go down, there'll be thirty lively fellows all +fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun Come +hammer, calkingiron, pitchpot, and marlingspike Let's to it. +The coffin laid upon two linetubs, between +the vicebench and the open hatchway the Carpenter calking its seams the +string of twisted oakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the +bosom of his frock. Ahab comes slowly from the cabingangway, and hears Pip +following him. Back, lad I will be with ye again presently. He goes Not +this hand complies with my humor more genially than that boy. Middle aisle +of a church What's here? Life buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders. Oh, +look, sir Beware the hatchway Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to +the vault. Sir? The hatchway? oh So it does, sir, so it does. Art +not thou the legmaker? Look, did not this stump come from thy shop? I +believe it did, sir does the ferrule stand, sir? Well enough. But art +thou not also the undertaker? Aye, sir I patched up this thing here as a +coffin for Queequeg but they've set me now to turning it into something +else. Then tell me art thou not an arrant, allgrasping, intermeddling, +monopolizing, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the next +day coffins to clap them in, and yet again lifebuoys out of those same +coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a +jackofalltrades. But I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do. The +gods again. hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a coffin? The +Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the craters for volcanoes +and the gravedigger in the play sings, spade in hand. Dost thou never? +Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I'm indifferent enough, sir, for that but the +reason why the gravedigger made music must +have been because there was none in his spade, sir. But the calking mallet is +full of it. Hark to it. Aye, and that's because the lid there's a +soundingboard and what in all things makes the soundingboard is this +there's naught beneath. And yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty +much the same, Carpenter. Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the +coffin knock against the churchyard gate, going in? Faith, sir, I've +Faith? What's that? Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamationlike +that's all, sir. Um, um go on. I was about to say, sir, that Art +thou a silkworm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself? Look at thy +bosom Despatch and get these traps out of sight. He goes aft. That was +sudden, now but squalls come sudden in hot latitudes. I've heard that the +Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the +middle. Seems to me some sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his +middle. He's always under the Linefiery hot, I tell ye He's looking this +way come, oakum quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, +and I'm the professor of musical glasses tap, tap Ahab to himself. +There's a sight There's sound The greyheaded woodpecker tapping the +hollow tree Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See that thing rests +on two linetubs, full of towlines. A most malicious wag, that fellow. +Rattat So man's seconds tick Oh how immaterial are all materials What +things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here now's the very +dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the +help and hope of most endangered life. A lifebuoy of a coffin Does it go +further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but +an immortalitypreserver I'll think of that. But no. So far gone +am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, +seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with +that accursed sound? I go below let me not see that thing here when I return +again. Now, then, Pip, we'll talk this over I do suck most wondrous +philosophies from thee Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds must +empty into thee +Next day, a large +ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down upon the Pequod, all her +spars thickly clustering with men. At the time the Pequod was making good +speed through the water but as the broadwinged windward stranger shot nigh +to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are +burst, and all life fled from the smitten hull. Bad news she brings bad +news, muttered the old Manxman. But ere her commander, who, with trumpet to +mouth, stood up in his boat ere he could hopefully hail, Ahab's voice was +heard. Hast seen the White Whale? Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a +whaleboat adrift? Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this +unexpected question and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when +the stranger captain himself, having stopped his vessel's way, was seen +descending her side. A few keen pulls, and his boathook soon clinched the +Pequod's mainchains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he was +recognized by ahab for a nantucketer he knew. But no formal salutation was +exchanged. Where was he? not killed not killed cried Ahab, closely +advancing. How was it? It seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the +day previous, while three of the stranger's boats were engaged with +a shoal of whales, which had led them some four or five miles from the ship +and while they were yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and head of +Moby Dick had suddenly loomed up out of the blue water, not very far to +leeward whereupon, the fourth rigged boat a reserved one had been +instantly lowered in chase. After a keen sail before the wind, this fourth +boat the swiftest keeled of all seemed to have succeeded in fastening at +least, as well as the man at the masthead could tell anything about it. In +the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat and then a swift gleam of +bubbling white water and after that nothing more whence it was concluded +that the stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with his pursuers, as +often happens. There was some apprehension, but no positive alarm, as yet. +The recall signals were placed in the rigging darkness came on and forced +to pick up her three far to windward boats ere going in quest of the fourth +one in the precisely opposite direction the ship had not only been +necessitated to leave that boat to its fate till near midnight, but, for the +time, to increase her distance from it. But the rest of her crew being at +last safe aboard, she crowded all sail stunsail on stunsail after the +missing boat kindling a fire in her trypots for a beacon and every +other man aloft on the lookout. But though when she had thus sailed a +sufficient distance to gain the presumed place of the absent ones when last +seen though she then paused to lower her spare boats to pull all around her +and not finding anything, had again dashed on again paused, and lowered her +boats and though she had thus continued doing till day light yet not the +least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen. The story told, the +stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal his object in boarding the +Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with his own in the search by sailing +over the sea some four or five miles apart, on parallel lines, and so sweeping +a double horizon, as it were. I will wager something now, whispered Stubb +to Flask, that some one in that missing boat wore off that Captain's best +coat mayhap, his watch he's so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever +heard of two pious whaleships cruising after +one missing whaleboat in the height of the whaling season? See, Flask, only +see how pale he looks pale in the very buttons of his eyes look it wasn't +the coat it must have been the My boy, my own boy is among them. For +God's sake I beg, I conjure here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, +who thus far had but icily received his petition. For eightandforty hours +let me charter your ship I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it +if there be no other way for eightandforty hours only only that you +must, oh, you must, and you shall do this thing. His son cried Stubb, +oh, it's his son he's lost I take back the coat and watch what says Ahab? +We must save that boy. He's drowned with the rest on 'em, last night, said +the old Manx sailor standing behind them I heard all of ye heard their +spirits. Now, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the +Rachel's the more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was one of +the Captain's sons among the number of the missing boat's crew but among the +number of the other boat's crews, at the same time, but on the other hand, +separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes of the chase, there had +been still another son as that for a time, the wretched father was plunged +to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity which was only solved for him by +his chief mate's instinctively adopting the ordinary procedure of a whaleship +in such emergencies, that is, when placed between jeopardized but divided +boats, always to pick up the majority first. But the captain, for some +unknown constitutional reason, had refrained from mentioning all this, and not +till forced to it by Ahab's iciness did he allude to his one yet missing boy +a little lad, but twelve years old, whose father with the earnest but +unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketer's paternal love, had thus early sought +to initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation almost immemorially +the destiny of all his race. Nor does it unfrequently occur, that Nantucket +captains will send a son of such tender age away from them, for a protracted +three or four years' voyage in some other ship than their own so that their +first knowledge of a whaleman's career shall be unenervated by any chance +display +of a father's natural but untimely partiality, or undue apprehensiveness +and concern. Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of +Ahab and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but +without the least quivering of his own. I will not go, said the stranger, +till you say aye to me. Do to me as you would have me do to you in the like +case. For you too have a boy, Captain Ahab though but a child, and nestling +safely at home now a child of your old age too Yes, yes, you relent I +see it run, run, men, now, and stand by to square in the yards. Avast, +cried Ahab touch not a ropeyarn then in a voice that prolongingly +moulded every word Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose +time. Good bye, good bye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, +but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch, and in three +minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers then brace forward +again, and let the ship sail as before. Hurriedly turning, with averted face, +he descended into his cabin, leaving the strange captain transfixed at this +unconditional and utter rejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from +his enchantment, Gardiner silently hurried to the side more fell than +stepped into his boat, and returned to his ship. Soon the two ships diverged +their wakes and long as the strange vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw +hither and thither at every dark spot, however small, on the sea. This way +and that her yards were swung round starboard and larboard, she continued to +tack now she beat against a head sea and again it pushed her before it +while all the while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as +three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs. But by +her still halting course and winding, woful way, you plainly saw that this +ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was +Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not. +Ahab moving to go on deck Pip catches +him by the hand to follow. Lad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab +now. The hour is coming when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would +not have thee by him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too +curing to my malady. Like cures like and for this hunt, my malady becomes +my most desired health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall serve +thee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit here in my own +screwed chair another screw to it, thou must be. No, no, no ye have not +a whole body, sir do ye but use poor me for your one lost leg only tread +upon me, sir I ask no more, so I remain a part of ye. Oh spite of +million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless fidelity of man and +a black and crazy but methinks likecureslike applies to him too he +grows so sane again. They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor +little Pip, whose drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his +living skin. But I will never desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must +go with ye. If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab's purpose keels up +in him. I tell thee no it cannot be. Oh good master, master, master +Weep so, and I will murder thee have a care, for Ahab too is mad. +Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and still know +that I am there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand Met True art thou, lad, +as the circumference to its centre. So God for ever bless thee and if it +come to that, God for ever save thee, let what will befall. +Ahab goes Pip steps one step forward. Here he this instant stood +I stand in his air, but I'm alone. Now were even poor Pip here I could +endure it, but he's missing. Pip Pip Ding, dong, ding Who's seen Pip? +He must be up here let's try the door. What? neither lock, nor bolt, nor +bar and yet there's no opening it. It must be the spell he told me to +stay here Aye, and told me this screwed chair was mine. Here, then, I'll +seat me, against the transom, in the ship's full middle, all her keel and +her three masts before me. Here, our old sailors say, in their black +seventyfours great admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it over rows +of captains and lieutenants. Ha what's this? epaulets epaulets the +epaulets all come crowding Pass round the decanters glad to see ye fill +up, monsieurs What an odd feeling, now, when a black boy's host to white men +with gold lace upon their coats Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip? a little +negro lad, five feet high, hangdog look, and cowardly Jumped from a +whaleboat once seen him? No Well then, fill up again, captains, and +let's drink shame upon all cowards I name no names. Shame upon them Put +one foot upon the table. Shame upon all cowards. Hist above there, I hear +ivory Oh, master, master I am indeed downhearted when you walk over me. +But here I'll stay, though this stern strikes rocks and they bulge +through and oysters come to join me. +wheelbarrow next morning, Monday, after disposing of +the embalmed head to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade's +bill using, however, my comrade's money. The grinning landlord, as well as +the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had +sprung up between me and Queequeg especially as Peter Coffin's cock and bull +stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person +whom I now companied with. We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our +things, including my own poor carpetbag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and +hammock, away we went down to the Moss, the little Nantucket packet +schooner moored at the wharf. As we were going along the people stared not +at Queequeg so much for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their +streets, but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we +heeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now +and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him why +he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling +ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied, +that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection +for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a +mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales. In short, like +many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers' meadows armed with +their own scythes though in no wise obliged to furnished them even so, +Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon. Shifting +the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about the first +wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The owners of his ship, +it seems, had lent him one, +in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant +about the thing though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise +way in which to manage the barrow Queequeg puts his chest upon it lashes +it fast and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. Why, said +I, Queequeg, you might have known better than that, one would think. Didn't +the people laugh? Upon this, he told me another story. The people of his +island of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant +water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl and +this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat +where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once touched at +Rokovoko, and its commander from all accounts, a very stately punctilious +gentleman, at least for a sea captain this commander was invited to the +wedding feast of Queequeg's sister, a pretty young princess just turned of +ten. Well when all the wedding guests were assembled at the bride's bamboo +cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of honor, +placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and +his majesty the King, Queequeg's father. Grace being said, for those people +have their grace as well as we though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who +at such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying +the ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts Grace, I say, +being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of +the island that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into +the bowl before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next +the Priest, and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself being Captain of +a ship as having plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the +King's own house the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punch +bowl taking it i suppose for a huge fingerglass. now, said Queequeg, +what you tink now, Didn't our people laugh? At last, passage paid, and +luggage safe, we stood on board the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down +the Acushnet river. On +one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their icecovered trees +all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on +casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the worldwandering whale +ships lay silent and safely moored at last while from others came a sound of +carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the +pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start that one most +perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second and a second ended, +only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the +endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort. Gaining the +more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh the little Moss tossed the +quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that +Tartar air how I spurned that turnpike earth that common highway all over +dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs and turned me to admire the +magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records. At the same +foamfountain, Queequeg seemed to drink and reel with me. His dusky nostrils +swelled apart he showed his filed and pointed teeth. On, on we flew, and +our offing gained, the Moss did homage to the blast ducked and dived her +brows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways leaning, we sideways darted +every ropeyarn tingling like a wire the two tall masts buckling like Indian +canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood +by the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering +glances of the passengers, a lubberlike assembly, who marvelled that two +fellow beings should be so companionable as though a white man were anything +more dignified than a whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies and +bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart +and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young saplings +mimicking him behind his back. I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was come. +Dropping his harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and by an +almost miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into the +air then slightly +tapping his stern in midsomerset, the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon +his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him, lighted his tomahawk +pipe and passed it to me for a puff. Capting Capting yelled the +bumpkin, running towards that officer Capting, Capting, here's the devil. +Hallo, you sir, cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking up to +Queequeg, what in thunder do you mean by that? Don't you know you might have +killed that chap? What him say? said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to me. +He say, said I, that you came near kille that man there, pointing to the +still shivering greenhorn. Kille, cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed +face into an unearthly expression of disdain, ah him bevy smalle fishe +Queequeg no kille so smalle fishe Queequeg kille big whale Look you, +roared the Captain, I'll kille you, you cannibal, if you try any more of +your tricks aboard here so mind your eye. But it so happened just then, +that it was high time for the Captain to mind his own eye. The prodigious +strain upon the mainsail had parted the weathersheet, and the tremendous +boom was now flying from side to side, completely sweeping the entire after +part of the deck. The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was +swept overboard all hands were in a panic and to attempt snatching at the +boom to stay it, seemed madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, +almost in one ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of +snapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of +being done those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing the boom +as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the midst of this +consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly to his knees, and crawling under the +path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, +and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept +over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all +was safe. The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were +clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from +the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three +minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms +straight out before him, and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through +the freezing foam. I looked at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one +to be saved. The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicularly +from the water, Queequeg now took an instant's glance around him, and +seeming to see just how matters were, dived down and disappeared. A few +minutes more, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with the +other dragging a lifeless form. The boat soon picked them up. The poor +bumpkin was restored. All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump the captain +begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle yea, +till poor Queequeg took his last long dive. Was there ever such +unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he at all deserved a medal +from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He only asked for water fresh +water something to wipe the brine off that done, he put on dry clothes, +lighted his pipe, and leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing those +around him, seemed to be saying to himself It's a mutual, jointstock +world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians. +And now that at the proper time and place, +after so long and wide a preliminary cruise, Ahab, all other whaling waters +swept seemed to have chased his foe into an oceanfold, to slay him the more +securely there now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and +longitude where his tormenting wound +had been inflicted now that a vessel had been spoken which on the very day +preceding had actually encountered Moby Dick and now that all his successive +meetings with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac +indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or +sinned against now it was that there lurked a something in the old man's +eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the +unsetting polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months' night +sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze so Ahab's purpose now fixedly +gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It domineered +above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain +to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf. In +this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced or natural, vanished. +Stubb no more strove to raise a smile Starbuck no more strove to check one. +Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, and +powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of ahab's iron soul. like +machines, they dumbly moved about the deck, ever conscious that the old +man's despot eye was on them. But did you deeply scan him in his more secret +confidential hours when he thought no glance but one was on him then you +would have seen that even as Ahab's eyes so awed the crew's, the inscrutable +Parsee's glance awed his or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times +affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin +Fedallah now such ceaseless shudderings shook him that the men looked +dubious at him half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a +mortal substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some +unseen being's body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by +night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go below. +He would stand still for hours but never sat or leaned his wan but +wondrous eyes did plainly say We two watchmen never rest. Nor, at any time, +by night or day could the mariners now step up the deck, unless Ahab was +before them either standing in his pivothole, or exactly pacing the planks +between two +undeviating limits, the mainmast and the mizen or else they saw him +standing in the cabinscuttle, his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if +to step his hat slouched heavily over his eyes so that however motionless +he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that he had not swung +in his hammock yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never tell +unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at times or +whether he was still intently scanning them no matter, though he stood so +in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded nightdamp +gathered in beads of dew upon that stonecarved coat and hat. The clothes +that the night had wet, the next day's sunshine dried upon him and so, +day after day, and night after night he went no more beneath the planks +whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for. He ate in the same +open air that is, his two only meals, breakfast and dinner supper he +never touched nor reaped his beard which darkly grew all gnarled, as +unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still grow idly on at naked base, +though perished in the upper verdure. But though his whole life was now +become one watch on deck and though the Parsee's mystic watch was without +intermission as his own yet these two never seemed to speak one man to the +other unless at long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it +necessary. Though such a potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain +openly, and to the awestruck crew, they seemed polelike asunder. If by day +they chanced to speak one word by night, dumb men were both, so far as +concerned the slightest verbal interchange. At times, for longest hours, +without a single hail, they stood far parted in the starlight Ahab in his +scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast but still fixedly gazing upon each +other as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the +Parsee his abandoned substance. And yet, somehow, did Ahab in his own proper +self, as daily, hourly, and every instant, commandingly revealed to his +subordinates, Ahab seemed an independent lord the Parsee but his slave. +Still again both seemed yoked together, and an unseen +tyrant driving them the lean shade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee +what he may, all rib and keel was solid Ahab. At the first faintest +glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard from aft Man the +mastheads and all through the day, till after sunset and after twilight, +the same voice every hour, at the striking of the helmsman's bell, was heard +What d'ye see? sharp sharp But when three or four days had slided by, +after meeting the childrenseeking Rachel and no spout had yet been seen +the monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity at least, +of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers he seemed to doubt, even, whether +Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But if +these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from verbally +expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them. I will have +the first sight of the whale myself, he said. Aye Ahab must have the +doubloon and with his own hands he rigged a nest of basketed bowlines and +sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved block, to secure to the +mainmast head, he received the two ends of the downwardreeved rope and +attaching one to his basket prepared a pin for the other end, in order to +fasten it at the rail. This done, with that end yet in his hand and standing +beside the pin, he looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the +other pausing his glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego but shunning +Fedallah and then settling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said, +Take the rope, sir I give it into thy hands, Starbuck. Then arranging +his person in the basket, he gave the word for them to hoist him to his +perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope at last and afterwards +stood near it. And thus, with one hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab +gazed abroad upon the sea for miles and miles, ahead, astern, this side, and +that, within the wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height. When +in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in the rigging, +which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is hoisted up to that +spot, and sustained there by +the rope under these circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given +in strict charge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in +such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations aloft +cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them at the deck +and when the deckends of these ropes are being every few minutes cast down +from the fastenings, it would be but a natural fatality, if, unprovided with +a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should by some carelessness of the +crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the sea. So Ahab's proceedings +in this matter were not unusual the only strange thing about them seemed to +be, that Starbuck, almost the one only man who had ever ventured to oppose +him with anything in the slightest degree approaching to decision one of +those too, whose faithfulness on the lookout he had seemed to doubt somewhat +it was strange, that this was the very man he should select for his watchman +freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise distrusted person's +hands. Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft ere he had been there ten +minutes one of those redbilled savage seahawks which so often fly +incommodiously close round the manned mastheads of whalemen in these +latitudes one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head in a +maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a thousand feet straight +up into the air then spiralized downwards, and went eddying again round his +head. But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab seemed +not to mark this wild bird nor, indeed, would any one else have marked it +much, it being no uncommon circumstance only now almost the least heedful +eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight. Your +hat, your hat, sir suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who being posted at +the mizenmasthead, stood directly behind Ahab, though somewhat lower than +his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing them. But already the sable +wing was before the old man's eyes the long hooked bill at his head with a +scream, the black hawk darted away with his prize. +an eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to replace it, +and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be king of Rome. +But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good. Ahab's +hat was never restored the wild hawk flew on and on with it far in +advance of the prow and at last disappeared while from the point of that +disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast +height into the sea. +The intense Pequod +sailed on the rolling waves and days went by the lifebuoycoffin still +lightly swung and another ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight, was +descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, +called shears, which, in some whalingships, cross the quarterdeck at the +height of eight or nine feet serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or +disabled boats. Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white +ribs, and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whaleboat but +you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled, +halfunhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse. Hast seen the White +Whale? Look replied the hollowcheeked captain from his taffrail and +with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck. Hast killed him? The harpoon is +not yet forged that will ever do that, answered the other, sadly glancing +upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless +sailors were busy in sewing together. Not forged and snatching Perth's +levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab held it out, exclaiming Look ye, +Nantucketer +here in this hand I hold his death Tempered in blood, and tempered by +lightning are these barbs and I swear to temper them triply in that hot +place behind the fin, where the white whale most feels his accursed life +Then God keep thee, old man see'st thou that pointing to the hammock I +bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only yesterday but were dead +ere night. Only that one I bury the rest were buried before they died +you sail upon their tomb. Then turning to his crew Are ye ready there? +place the plank then on the rail, and lift the body so, then Oh God +advancing towards the hammock with uplifted hands may the resurrection and +the life Brace forward Up helm cried Ahab like lightning to his men. +But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the sound of +the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea not so quick, +indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled her hull with +their ghostly baptism. As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the +strange lifebuoy hanging at the Pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief. +Ha yonder look yonder, men cried a foreboding voice in her wake. In +vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial ye but turn us your taffrail +to show us your coffin +It was a clear steelblue day. The +firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that allpervading azure +only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, +and the robust and manlike sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, +as Samson's chest in his sleep. +Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snowwhite wings of small, +unspeckled birds these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air but to +and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty +leviathans, swordfish, and sharks and these were the strong, troubled, +murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. But though thus contrasting within, +the contrast was only in shades and shadows without those two seemed one +it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them. Aloft, like a royal +czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling +sea even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a +soft and tremulous motion most seen here at the equator denoted the fond, +throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom +away. Tied up and twisted gnarled and knotted with wrinkles haggardly firm +and unyielding his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of +ruin untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn lifting his +splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven. Oh, +immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure Invisible winged creatures +that frolic all round us Sweet childhood of air and sky how oblivious were +ye of old Ahab's closecoiled woe But so have I seen little Miriam and +Martha, laughingeyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire +sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that +burntout crater of his brain. Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, +Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank and +sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the +profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to +dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, +that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him the stepmother world, +so long cruel forbidding now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn +neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however +wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her +heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear +into the sea nor did all the pacific contain such wealth as that one wee +drop. Starbuck saw the old man saw him, how he heavily leaned over the +side and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing +that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch +him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there. Ahab +turned. Starbuck Sir. Oh, Starbuck it is a mild, mild wind, and a +mild looking sky. On such a day very much such a sweetness as this I +struck my first whale a boyharpooneer of eighteen Forty fortyforty years +ago ago Forty years of continual whaling forty years of privation, and +peril, and stormtime forty years on the pitiless sea for forty years has +Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors +of the deep Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent +three ashore. When I think of this life I have led the desolation of +solitude it has been the masoned, walledtown of a Captain's exclusiveness, +which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without +oh, weariness heaviness Guineacoast slavery of solitary command when +I think of all this only halfsuspected, not so keenly known to me before +and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare fit emblem of the +dry nourishment of my soul when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to +his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts away, +whole oceans away, from that young girlwife I wedded past fifty, and +sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage +pillow wife? wife? rather a widow with her husband alive Aye, I widowed +that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck and then, the madness, the +frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand +lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey more a demon +than a man aye, aye what a forty years' fool fool old fool, has old +Ahab been Why this strife of the chase? why weary, +and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer or +better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck is it not hard, that with this +weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me? +Here, brush this old hair aside it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks +so grey did never grow but from out some ashes But do I look very old, so +very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though +I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God +God God crack my heart stave my brain mockery mockery bitter, +biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye and seem +and feel thus intolerably old? Close stand close to me, Starbuck let me +look into a human eye it is better than to gaze into sea or sky better +than to gaze upon God. By the green land by the bright hearthstone this +is the magic glass, man I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no +stay on board, on board lower not when I do when branded Ahab gives chase +to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no not with the far +away home I see in that eye Oh, my Captain my Captain noble soul +grand old heart, after all why should any one give chase to that hated fish +Away with me let us fly these deadly waters let us home Wife and child, +too, are Starbuck's wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, playfellow +youth even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, +paternal old age Away let us away this instant let me alter the course +How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl on our way to +see old Nantucket again I think, sir, they have some such mild blue days, +even as this, in nantucket. they have, they have. I have seen them some +summer days in the morning. About this time yes, it is his noon nap now +the boy vivaciously wakes sits up in bed and his mother tells him of me, +of cannibal old me how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to +dance him again. Tis my Mary, my Mary herself She promised that my boy, +every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of +his father's sail Yes, yes no more it is done we head for Nantucket +Come, my Captain, study out the course, +and let us away See, see the boy's face from the window the boy's hand +on the hill But Ahab's glance was averted like a blighted fruit tree he +shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil. What is it, what +nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it what cozzening, hidden lord and +master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me that against all natural +lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on +all the time recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural +heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, +that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself but is as an +errandboy in heaven nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible +power how then can this one small heart beat this one small brain think +thoughts unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that +living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this +world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, +lo that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea Look see yon Albicore who +put it into him to chase and fang that flyingfish? Where do murderers go, +man Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is +a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky and the air smells now, as if it +blew from a faraway meadow they have been making hay somewhere under the +slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the +newmown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the +field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness as last year's scythes flung +down, and left in the halfcut swaths Starbuck But blanched to a +corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away. Ahab crossed the deck +to gaze over on the other side but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in +the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail. +That night, in the midwatch, +when the old man as his wont at intervals stepped forth from the scuttle in +which he leaned, and went to his pivothole, he suddenly thrust out his +face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in +drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. +Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the +living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch nor was any mariner +surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dogvane, and +then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab +rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be +shortened. The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently +vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and +lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery +wrinkles bordering it, the polished metalliclike marks of some swift +tiderip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream. Man the mastheads Call +all hands Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the +forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that +they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear +with their clothes in their hands. What d'ye see? cried Ahab, flattening +his face to the sky. Nothing, nothing, sir was the sound hailing down in +reply. T'gallant sails stunsails alow and aloft, and on both sides All +sail being set, he now cast loose the lifeline, reserved for swaying him to +the main royalmast head and in a few moments they were hoisting him +thither, when, while but two thirds of the way aloft, and while peering +ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the maintopsail and +topgallantsail, +he raised a gulllike cry in the air, There she blows there she blows A +hump like a snowhill It is Moby Dick Fired by the cry which seemed +simultaneously taken up by the three lookouts, the men on deck rushed to the +rigging to behold the famous whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had +now gained his final perch, some feet above the other lookouts, Tashtego +standing just beneath him on the cap of the topgallant mast, so that the +Indian's head was almost on a level with Ahab's heel. From this height the +whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing +his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into the air. +To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they had so long +ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans. And did none of ye see +it before? cried Ahab, hailing the perched men all around him. I saw him +almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I cried out, said +Tashtego. Not the same instant not the same no, the doubloon is mine, +Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only none of ye could have raised the +White Whale first. There she blows there she blows there she blows +There again there again he cried, in longdrawn, lingering, methodic +tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale's visible jets. He's +going to sound In stunsails Down topgallantsails Stand by three +boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm +there Luff, luff a point So steady, man, steady There go flukes No, +no only black water All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by +Lower me, Mr. Starbuck lower, lower, quick, quicker and he slid through +the air to the deck. He is heading straight to leeward, sir, cried Stubb, +right away from us cannot have seen the ship yet. Be dumb, man Stand +by the braces Hard down the helm brace up Shiver her shiver her So +well that Boats, boats Soon all the boats but Starbuck's were dropped +all the boatsails set all the paddles plying with rippling swiftness, +shooting to leeward and Ahab heading the onset. A pale, deathglimmer +lit up Fedallah's sunken eyes a hideous motion gnawed his mouth. Like +noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea but only +slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more +smooth seemed drawing a carpet over its waves seemed a noonmeadow, so +serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his +seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly +visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually +set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, +involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out +on the soft Turkishrugged waters, went the glistening white shadow from his +broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade +and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley +of his steady wake and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his +side. But these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl +softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight and like to +some flagstaff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but +shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back and +at intervals one of the cloud of softtoed fowls hovering, and to and fro +skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked on this +pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons. A gentle joyousness a +mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the +white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful +horns his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid with smooth +bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete not +Jove, not that great majesty Supreme did surpass the glorified White Whale +as he so divinely swam. On each soft side coincident with the parted swell, +that but once leaving him, then flowed so wide away on each bright side, +the whale shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters +who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to +assail it but had fatally +found that quietude but the vesture of tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, +oh, whale thou glidest on, to all who for the first time eye thee, no +matter how many in that same way thou may'st have bejuggled and destroyed +before. And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, +among waves whose handclappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby +Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged +trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw. But soon the +fore part of him slowly rose from the water for an instant his whole +marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's Natural Bridge, and +warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed +himself, sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringly halting, and dipping on +the wing, the white seafowls longingly lingered over the agitated pool that +he left. With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails +adrift, the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's +reappearance. An hour, said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern +and he gazed beyond the whale's place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide +wooing vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant for again his eyes +seemed whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze +now freshened the sea began to swell. The birds the birds cried +Tashtego. In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds +were now all flying towards Ahab's boat and when within a few yards began +fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous, +expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man's Ahab could discover no +sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he +profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with +wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and +then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening +teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick's open +mouth and scrolled jaw his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the +blue of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath +the boat like an opendoored marble tomb and giving one sidelong sweep with +his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous +apparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to change places with him, went +forward to the bows, and seizing Perth's harpoon, commanded his crew to +grasp their oars and stand by to stern. Now, by reason of this timely +spinning round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to +face the whale's head while yet under water. But as if perceiving this +strategem, moby dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, +sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his +pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat. Through and through through every +plank and each rib, it thrilled for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on +his back, in the manner of a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its +bows full within his mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw +curled high up into the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a rowlock. +The bluish pearlwhite of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of +Ahab's head, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale +now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With unastonished +eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms but the tigeryellow crew were +tumbling over each other's heads to gain the uttermost stern. And now, while +both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the whale dallied with +the doomed craft in this devilish way and from his body being submerged +beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from the bows, for the bows were +almost inside of him, as it were and while the other boats involuntarily +paused, as before a quick crisis impossible to withstand, then it was that +monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which +placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated frenzied with +all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to +wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped +from him the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, +like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in +twain, and locked themselves fast again in +the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks. These floated aside, the +broken ends drooping, the crew at the sternwreck clinging to the gunwales, +and striving to hold fast to the oars to lash them across. At that preluding +moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first to perceive the whale's +intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a movement that loosed his +hold for the time at that moment his hand had made one final effort to push +the boat out of the bite. But only slipping further into the whale's mouth, +and tilting over sideways as it slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on +the jaw spilled him out of it, as he leaned to the push and so he fell +flatfaced upon the sea. Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now +lay at a little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and +down in the billows and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled +body so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose some twenty or more feet +out of the water the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves, +dazzlingly broke against it vindictively tossing their shivered spray still +higher into the air. So, in a gale, the but halfbaffled Channel billows only +recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit +with their scud. But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam +swiftly round and round the wrecked crew sideways churning the water in his +vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly +assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood +of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book of +Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's insolent +tail, and too much of a cripple to swim, though he could still keep afloat, +even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that helpless Ahab's head was seen, +like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst. From the +boat's fragmentary +stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eyed him the clinging crew, at the +other drifting end, could not succor him more than enough was it for them +to look to themselves. For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale's +aspect, and so planetarily swift the evercontracting circles he made, that +he seemed horizontally swooping upon them. And though the other boats, +unharmed, still hovered hard by still they dared not pull into the eddy to +strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant destruction of the +jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all nor in that case could they themselves +hope to escape. With straining eyes, then, they remained on the outer edge +of the direful zone, whose centre had now become the old man's head. +Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship's mast +heads and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene and was +now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her Sail on the but that +moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and whelmed him for the +time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing to rise on a towering +crest, he shouted, Sail on the whale Drive him off The Pequod's +prows were pointed and breaking up the charmed circle, she effectually +parted the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly swam off, the boats +flew to the rescue. Dragged into Stubb's boat with bloodshot, blinded eyes, +the white brine caking in his wrinkles the long tension of Ahab's bodily +strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom for a +time, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one trodden under +foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as +desolate sounds from out ravines. But this intensity of his physical +prostration did but so much the more abbreviate it. In an instant's compass, +great hearts sometimes condense to one deep pang, the sum total of those +shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such +hearts, though summary in each one suffering still, if the gods decree it, +in their lifetime aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of +instantaneous intensities for even in their pointless centres, those noble +natures contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls. +The harpoon, said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on one +bended arm is it safe? Aye, sir, for it was not darted this is it, said +Stubb, showing it. Lay it before me any missing men? One, two, three, +four, five there were five oars, sir, and here are five men. That's +good. Help me, man I wish to stand. So, so, I see him there there +going to leeward still what a leaping spout Hands off from me The eternal +sap runs up in Ahab's bones again Set the sail out oars the helm It +is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked up by +another boat, help to work that second boat and the chase is thus continued +with what is called doublebanked oars. It was thus now. But the added power +of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale, for he seemed to have +treblebanked his every fin swimming with a velocity which plainly showed, +that if now, under these circumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an +indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one nor could any crew endure for +so long a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar a +thing barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself, +then, as it sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate means +of overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were +soon swayed up to their cranes the two parts of the wrecked boat having been +previously secured by her and then hoisting everything to her side, and +stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it with stunsails, +like the doublejointed wings of an albatross the Pequod bore down in the +leeward wake of Moby Dick. At the well known, methodic intervals, the +whale's glittering spout was regularly announced from the manned mastheads +and when he would be reported as just gone down, Ahab would take the time, +and then pacing the deck, binnaclewatch in hand, so soon as the last second +of the allotted hour expired, his voice was heard. Whose is the doubloon +now? D'ye see him? and if the reply was, No, sir straightway he +commanded them to lift him to his perch. In this way the day wore on Ahab, +now aloft and motionless anon, unrestingly pacing the planks. As he was thus +walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men aloft, or to bid them +hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a still greater breadth thus +to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at every turn he passed his own +wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon the quarterdeck, and lay there +reversed broken bow to shattered stern. At last he paused before it and +as in an already overclouded sky fresh troops of clouds will sometimes sail +across, so over the old man's face there now stole some such added gloom as +this. Stubb saw him pause and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to +evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in his +Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed The thistle +the ass refused it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir ha ha What +soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man did I not know +thee brave as fearless fire and as mechanical I could swear thou wert a +poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck. Aye, sir, said +Starbuck drawing near, 'tis a solemn sight an omen, and an ill one. +Omen? omen? the dictionary If the gods think to speak outright to man, +they will honorably speak outright not shake their heads, and give an old +wives' darkling hint. Begone Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing +Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck and ye two are all +mankind and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor +gods nor men his neighbors Cold, cold I shiver How now? Aloft there +D'ye see him? Sing out for every spout, though he spout ten times a second +The day was nearly done only the hem of his golden robe was rustling. Soon, +it was almost dark, but the lookout men still remained unset. Can't see +the spout now, sir too dark cried a voice from the air. How heading when +last seen? As before, sir, straight to leeward. Good he will travel +slower now 'tis night. Down royals and +topgallant stunsails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before +morning he's making a passage now, and may heaveto a while. Helm there +keep her full before the wind Aloft come down Mr. Stubb, send a fresh +hand to the foremast head, and see it manned till morning. Then advancing +towards the doubloon in the mainmast Men, this gold is mine, for I earned +it but I shall let it abide here till the White Whale is dead and then, +whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be killed, this gold +is that man's and if on that day I shall again raise him, then, ten times +its sum shall be divided among all of ye Away now the deck is thine, sir. +And so saying, he placed himself half way within the scuttle, and slouching +his hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals rousing himself to +see how the night wore on. +This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation +pitchpoling from its being likened to that preliminary upanddown poise +of the whalelance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously +described. By this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively view +whatever objects may be encircling him. +At daybreak, the three +mastheads were punctually manned afresh. D'ye see him? cried Ahab, after +allowing a little space for the light to spread. see nothing, sir. Turn +up all hands and make sail he travels faster than I thought for the +topgallant sails aye, they should have been kept on her all night. But no +matter 'tis but resting for the rush. Here be it said, that this +pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale, continued through day into +night, and through night into day, is a thing by no means unprecedented in +the South sea fishery. For such is the wonderful skill, prescience of +experience, and invincible confidence acquired by some great natural geniuses +among the Nantucket commanders that from the simple observation of a whale +when last descried, they will, +under certain given circumstances, pretty accurately foretell both the +direction in which he will continue to swim for a time, while out of sight, +as well as his probable rate of progression during that period. And, in these +cases, somewhat as a pilot, when about losing sight of a coast, whose +general trending he well knows, and which he desires shortly to return to +again, but at some further point like as this pilot stands by his compass, +and takes the precise bearing of the cape at present visible, in order the +more certainly to hit aright the remote, unseen headland, eventually to be +visited so does the fisherman, at his compass, with the whale for after +being chased, and diligently marked, through several hours of daylight, +then, when night obscures the fish, the creature's future wake through the +darkness is almost as established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the +pilot's coast is to him. So that to this hunter's wondrous skill, the +proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all desired +purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land. And as the mighty iron +Leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known in its every pace, +that, with watches in their hands, men time his rate as doctors that of a +baby's pulse and lightly say of it, the up train or the down train will +reach such or such a spot, at such or such an hour even so, almost, there +are occasions when these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep, +according to the observed humor of his speed and say to themselves, so many +hours hence this whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have about +reached this or that degree of latitude or longitude. But to render this +acuteness at all successful in the end, the wind and the sea must be the +whaleman's allies for of what present avail to the becalmed or windbound +mariner is the skill that assures him he is exactly ninetythree leagues and a +quarter from his port? Inferable from these statements, are many +collateral subtile matters touching the chase of whales. The ship tore on +leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannonball, missent, becomes a +ploughshare and turns up the level field. By salt and hemp cried Stubb, +but this swift motion of the deck creeps up one's legs and tingles at the +heart. This +ship and I are two brave fellows Ha ha Some one take me up, and launch +me, spinewise, on the sea, for by liveoaks my spine's a keel. Ha, ha +we go the gait that leaves no dust behind There she blows she blows she +blows right ahead was now the masthead cry. Aye, aye cried Stubb. +I knew it ye can't escape blow on and split your spout, O whale the mad +fiend himself is after ye blow your trump blister your lungs Ahab will +dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his watergate upon the stream And +Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies of the +chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. +Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before +these were not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, +but they were broken up, and on all sides routed, as timid prairie hares +that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all +their souls and by the stirring perils of the previous day the rack of the +past night's suspense the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which +their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark by all these things, +their hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great bellies of their +sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible this +seemed the symbol of that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race. +They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all +though it was put together of all contrasting things oak, and maple, and pine +wood iron, and pitch, and hemp yet all these ran into each other in the one +concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long +central keel even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man's +valor, that man's fear guilt and guiltiness, all varieties were welded +into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one +lord and keel did point to. The rigging lived. The mastheads, like the tops +of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a +spar with one hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings +others, shading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat +far out on the rocking yards all the spars in full bearing of mortals, +ready and ripe for their fate. Ah how they still strove through that +infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them Why sing ye +not out for him, if ye see him? cried Ahab, when, after the lapse of some +minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard. Sway me up, men ye +have been deceived not moby dick casts one odd jet that way, and then +disappears. It was even so in their headlong eagerness, the men had +mistaken some other thing for the whalespout, as the event itself soon +proved for hardly had Ahab reached his perch hardly was the rope belayed +to its pin on deck, when he struck the keynote to an orchestra, that made +the air vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant +halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as much nearer to the ship than +the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead Moby Dick bodily +burst into view For not by any calm and indolent spoutings not by the +peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now +reveal his vicinity but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. +Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale +thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a +mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and +more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his +mane in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance. There she +breaches there she breaches was the cry, as in his immeasureable +bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmonlike to Heaven. So suddenly +seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved against the still bluer +margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment, intolerably +glittered and glared like a glacier and stood there gradually fading and +fading away from its first sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an +advancing shower in a vale. Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick +cried Ahab, thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand Down down all of ye, +but one man at the fore. The boats stand by +Unmindful of the tedious ropeladders of the shrouds, the men, like shooting +stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and halyards while +Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from his perch. Lower +away, he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat a spare one, rigged the +afternoon previous. Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine keep away from the +boats, but keep near them. Lower, all As if to strike a quick terror into +them, by this time being the first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, +and was now coming for the three crews. Ahab's boat was central and +cheering his men, he told them he would take the whale headandhead, that +is, pull straight up to his forehead, a not uncommon thing for when within +a certain limit, such a course excludes the coming onset from the whale's +sidelong vision. But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all +three boats were plain as the ship's three masts to his eye the White Whale +churning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were, +rushing among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered +appalling battle on every side and heedless of the irons darted at him from +every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank of which +those boats were made. But skilfully manoeuvred, incessantly wheeling like +trained chargers in the field the boats for a while eluded him though, at +times, but by a plank's breadth while all the time, Ahab's unearthly slogan +tore every other cry but his to shreds. But at last in his untraceable +evolutions, the White Whale so crossed and recrossed, and in a thousand ways +entangled the slack of the three lines now fast to him, that they +foreshortened, and, of themselves, warped the devoted boats towards the +planted irons in him though now for a moment the whale drew aside a little, +as if to rally for a more tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab +first paid out more line and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it +again hoping that way to disencumber it of some snarls when lo a sight +more savage than the embattled teeth of sharks Caught and twisted +corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose harpoons and lances, with all +their bristling barbs and +points, came flashing and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab's +boat. Only one thing could be done. Seizing the boatknife, he critically +reached within through and then, without the rays of steel dragged in +the line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice +sundering the rope near the chocks dropped the intercepted fagot of steel +into the sea and was all fast again. That instant, the White Whale made +a sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines by so doing, +irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and Flask towards his +flukes dashed them together like two rolling husks on a surfbeaten beach, +and then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in a boiling maelstrom, in +which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and +round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly stirred bowl of punch. While the +two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out after the revolving +linetubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while aslope little Flask +bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching his legs upwards to escape +the dreaded jaws of sharks and Stubb was lustily singing out for some one +to ladle him up and while the old man's line now parting admitted of his +pulling into the creamy pool to rescue whom he could in that wild +simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils, Ahab's yet unstricken boat +seemed drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires, as, arrowlike, shooting +perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead +against its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air till +it fell again gunwale downwards and Ahab and his men struggled out from +under it, like seals from a seaside cave. The first uprising momentum of the +whale modifying its direction as he struck the surface involuntarily +launched him along it, to a little distance from the centre of the +destruction he had made and with his back to it, he now lay for a moment +slowly feeling with his flukes from side to side and whenever a stray oar, +bit of plank, the least chip or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail +swiftly drew back, and came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if +satisfied that his work for that time was done, he pushed his pleated +forehead through the +ocean, and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued his leeward +way at a traveller's methodic pace. As before, the attentive ship having +descried the whole fight, again came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping +a boat, picked up the floating mariners, tubs, oars and whatever else could +be caught at, and safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, +wrists, and ankles livid contusions wrenched harpoons and lances +inextricable intricacies of rope shattered oars and planks all these were +there but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen any one. As +with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now found grimly clinging to his +boat's broken half, which afforded a comparatively easy float nor did it so +exhaust him as the previous day's mishap. But when he was helped to the deck, +all eyes were fastened upon him as instead of standing by himself he still +halfhung upon the shoulder of Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost +to assist him. His ivory leg had been snapped off, leaving but one short +sharp splinter. Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the +leaner who he will and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has. The +ferrule has not stood, sir, said the carpenter, now coming up I put good +work into that leg. But no bones broken, sir, I hope, said Stubb with true +concern. Aye and all splintered to pieces, Stubb d'ye see it. But +even with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched and I account no living bone +of mine one jot more me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor white whale, +nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and +inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrape yonder +roof? Aloft there which way? Dead to leeward, sir. Up helm, then +pile on the sail again, ship keepers down the rest of the spare boats and +rig them Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the boat's crews. Let me first help +thee towards the bulwarks, sir. Oh, oh, oh how this splinter gores me now +Accursed fate +that the unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate +Sir? My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane there, that +shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet. By +heaven it cannot be missing? quick call them all. The old man's hinted +thought was true. Upon mustering the company, the Parsee was not there. +The Parsee cried Stubb he must have been caught in The black vomit +wrench thee run all of ye above, alow, cabin, forecastle find him not gone +not gone But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee +was nowhere to be found. Aye, sir, said Stubb caught among the tangles of +your line I thought I saw him dragging under. My line my line? Gone? +gone? What means that little word? What deathknell rings in it, that old +Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry. The harpoon, too toss over the litter +there, d'ye see it? the forged iron, men, the white whale's no, no, no, +blistered fool this hand did dart it 'tis in the fish Aloft there +keep him nailed quick all hands to the rigging of the boats collect the +oars harpooneers the irons, the irons hoist the royals higher a pull +on all the sheets helm there steady, steady for your life I'll ten +times girdle the unmeasured globe yea and dive straight through it, but +I'll slay him yet Great God but for one single instant show thyself, +cried Starbuck never, never wilt thou capture him, old man In Jesus' name +no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased twice +stove to splinters thy very leg once more snatched from under thee thy +evil shadow gone all good angels mobbing thee with warnings what more +wouldst thou have? Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps +the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we +be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh, Impiety and blasphemy to +hunt him more Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee ever +since that hour we both saw thou know'st what, in one another's +eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the +palm of this hand a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. +This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion +years before this ocean rolled. Fool I am the Fates' lieutenant I act +under orders. Look thou, underling that thou obeyest mine. Stand round +me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump leaning on a shivered +lance propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab his body's part but Ahab's +soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half +stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale and I may look so. +But ere I break, ye'll hear me crack and till ye hear that, know that +Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called +omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore For ere they drown, drowning things +will twice rise to the surface then rise again, to sink for evermore. So +with Moby Dick two days he's floated tomorrow will be the third. Aye, men, +he'll rise once more, but only to spout his last D'ye feel brave men, +brave? As fearless fire, cried Stubb. And as mechanical, muttered Ahab. +Then as the men went forward, he muttered on The things called omens +And yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken +boat. Oh how valiantly I seek to drive out of others' hearts what's +clinched so fast in mine The Parsee the Parsee gone, gone? and he +was to go before but still was to be seen again ere I could perish How's +that? There's a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts +of the whole line of judges like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain. I'll, +I'll solve it, though When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight +to leeward. So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed +nearly as on the previous night only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of +the grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns +in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening their +fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken keel of Ahab's wrecked +craft the carpenter made him another leg while still as on the +night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle his hid, +heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial sat due eastward +for the earliest sun. +THE CHASETHIRD DAY The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and +once more the solitary nightman at the foremasthead was relieved by crowds +of the daylight lookouts, who dotted every mast and almost every spar. +D'ye see him? cried Ahab but the whale was not yet in sight. In his +infallible wake, though but follow that wake, that's all. Helm there +steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day again were it +a newmade world, and made for a summerhouse to the angels, and this +morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn +upon that world. Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think but Ahab +never thinks he only feels, feels, feels that's tingling enough for +mortal man to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. +Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness and our poor hearts +throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. And yet, I've sometimes +thought my brain was very calm frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like +a glass in which the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this +hair is growing now this moment growing, and heat must breed it but no, +it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the +earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow +it they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed +ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through +prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, +and now comes blowing hither as innocent as +fleeces. Out upon it it's tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on +such a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink +there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind who ever +conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting +at it, and you but run through it. Ha a coward wind that strikes stark +naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver +thing a nobler thing that that. Would now the wind but had a body but +all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things +are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most +special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference And yet, I say +again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and gracious in +the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow +straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness and veer not from +their mark, however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and +mightiest Mississippies of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where +to go at last. And by the eternal Poles these same Trades that so directly +blow my good ship on these Trades, or something like them something so +unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along To it Aloft +there What d'ye see? Nothing, sir. Nothing and noon at hand The +doubloon goes abegging See the sun Aye, aye, it must be so. I've +oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, he's chasing me now not I, him +that's bad I might have known it, too. Fool the lines the harpoons +he's towing. Aye, aye, I have run him by last night. About about Come +down, all of ye, but the regular look outs Man the braces Steering as +she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's quarter, so that +now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced ship sailed hard upon +the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own white wake. Against the +wind he now steers for the open jaw, murmured Starbuck to himself, as he +coiled the newhauled mainbrace upon the rail. God keep us, but already my +bones feel +damp within me, and from the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I +disobey my God in obeying him Stand by to sway me up cried Ahab, +advancing to the hempen basket. We should meet him soon. Aye, aye, sir, +and straightway Starbuck did Ahab's bidding, and once more Ahab swung on high. +a whole hour now passed goldbeaten out to ages. time itself now held long +breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the weather +bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three mastheads +three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it. Forehead to +forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick On deck there brace +sharper up crowd her into the wind's eye. He's too far off to lower yet, +Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake Stand over that helmsman with a topmaul +So, so he travels fast, and I must down. But let me have one more good +round look aloft here at the sea there's time for that. An old, old sight, +and yet somehow so young aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, +a boy, from the sandhills of Nantucket The same the same the same to +Noah as to me. There's a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings +They must lead somewhere to something else than common land, more palmy than +the palms. Leeward the white whale goes that way look to windward, then +the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old masthead +What's this? green? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks. No such green +weather stains on Ahab's head There's the difference now between man's old +age and matter's. But aye, old mast, we both grow old together sound in +our hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, minus a leg, that's all. By +heaven this dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way. I can't +compare with it and I've known some ships made of dead trees outlast the +lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. What's that he +said? he should still go before me, my pilot and yet to be seen again? But +where? Will I have eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those +endless stairs? and all night I've been sailing from him, wherever he did +sink to. Aye, +aye, like many more thou told'st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee +but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good by, masthead keep a good eye +upon the whale, the while I'm gone. We'll talk tomorrow, nay, tonight, +when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and tail. He gave the +word and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered through the cloven +blue air to the deck. In due time the boats were lowered, but as standing in +his shallop's stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he +waved to the mate, who held one of the tackleropes on deck and bade him +pause. Starbuck Sir? For the third time my soul's ship starts upon +this voyage, Starbuck. Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so. Some ships sail +from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck Truth, sir +saddest truth. Some men die at ebb tide some at low water some at the +full of the flood and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested comb, +Starbuck. I am old shake hands with me, man. Their hands met their eyes +fastened Starbuck's tears the glue. Oh, my captain, my captain noble +heart go not go not see, it's a brave man that weeps how great the +agony of the persuasion then Lower away cried Ahab, tossing the mate's +arm from him. Stand by the crew In an instant the boat was pulling round +close under the stern. The sharks the sharks cried a voice from the low +cabinwindow there O master, my master, come back But Ahab heard +nothing for his own voice was highlifted then and the boat leaped on. +Yet the voice spake true for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when +numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath the +hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they dipped +in the water and in this +way accompanied the boat with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly +happening to the whaleboats in those swarming seas the sharks at times +apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over +the banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the first +sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been +first descried and whether it was that Ahab's crew were all such +tigeryellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses +of the sharks a matter sometimes well known to affect them, however it was, +they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others. Heart of +wrought steel murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and following with +his eyes the receding boat canst thou yet ring boldly to that sight? +lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, openmouthed +to the chase and this the critical third day? For when three days flow +together in one continuous intense pursuit be sure the first is the morning, +the second the noon, and the third the evening and the end of that thing be +that end what it may. Oh my God what is this that shoots through me, and +leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant, fixed at the top of a shudder +Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons all the +past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl thou fadest in pale glories behind +me boy I seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems +of life seem clearing but clouds sweep between Is my journey's end coming? +My legs feel faint like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart, +beats it yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck stave it off move, move speak +aloud Masthead there See ye my boy's hand on the hill? Crazed aloft +there keep thy keenest eye upon the boats mark well the whale Ho +again drive off that hawk see he pecks he tears the vane pointing to +the red flag flying at the maintruck Ha he soars away with it Where's +the old man now? sees't thou that sight, oh Ahab shudder, shudder The +boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mastheads a downward +pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had sounded but intending to be near +him at the next rising, he +held on his way a little sideways from the vessel the becharmed crew +maintaining the profoundest silence, as the headbeat waves hammered and +hammered against the opposing bow. Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves +to their uttermost heads, drive them in ye but strike a thing without a +lid and no coffin and no hearse can be mine and hemp only can kill me +Ha ha Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles +then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice, +swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard a +subterraneous hum and then all held their breaths as bedraggled with +trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot lengthwise, but +obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it +hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air and then fell swamping back into +the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant +like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of flakes, leaving +the circling surface creamed like new milk round the marble trunk of the +whale. Give way cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward +to the attack but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded in him, +Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven. +The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad white forehead, +beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted together as head on, he came +churning his tail among the boats and once more flailed them apart +spilling out the irons and lances from the two mates' boats, and dashing in +one side of the upper part of their bows, but leaving Ahab's almost without a +scar. While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks and as +the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire flank as he +shot by them again at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round and +round to the fish's back pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during +the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, +the half torn body of the Parsee was seen his sable raiment frayed to +shreds his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab. +The harpoon dropped from his hand. Befooled, befooled drawing in a long +lean breath Aye, Parsee I see thee again. Aye, and thou goest before +and this, this then is the hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee +to the last letter of thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to +the ship those boats are useless now repair them if ye can in time, and +return to me if not, Ahab is enough to die Down, men the first thing +that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye +are not other men, but my arms and my legs and so obey me. Where's the +whale? gone down again? But he looked too nigh the boat for as if bent +upon escaping with the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the +last encounter had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now +again steadily swimming forward and had almost passed the ship, which thus +far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the present +her headway had been stopped. He seemed swimming with his utmost velocity, +and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight path in the sea. Oh +Ahab, cried Starbuck, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to +desist. See Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly +seekest him Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly +impelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was +sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck's face as +he leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow +him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he saw +Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three mastheads +while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats which had but just been +hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in repairing them. One after +the other, through the portholes, as he sped, he also caught flying glimpses +of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and +lances. As he saw all this as he heard the hammers in the broken boats +far other hammers seemed driving a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And +now marking that the vane or +flag was gone from the mainmasthead, he shouted to Tashtego, who had just +gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer and +nails, and so nail it to the mast. Whether fagged by the three days' running +chase, and the resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore or +whether it was some latent deceitfulness and malice in him whichever was +true, the White Whale's way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat +so rapidly nearing him once more though indeed the whale's last start had not +been so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves the +unpitying sharks accompanied him and so pertinaciously stuck to the boat +and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades became jagged and +crunched, and left small splinters in the sea, at almost every dip. Heed +them not those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull on 'tis the +better rest, the shark's jaw than the yielding water. But at every bite, +sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller They will last long enough +pull on But who can tell he muttered whether these sharks swim to feast +on the whale or on ahab? But pull on Aye, all alive, now we near him. The +helm take the helm let me pass, and so saying, two of the oarsmen +helped him forward to the bows of the still flying boat. At length as the +craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with the White Whale's +flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance as the whale sometimes +will and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off +from the whale's spout, curled round his great, Monadnock hump he was even +thus close to him when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise +highlifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer +curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as +if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed spasmodically rolled +his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so +suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of +the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed +into the sea. +As it was, three of the oarsmen who foreknew not the precise instant of the +dart, and were therefore unprepared for its effects these were flung out +but so fell, that, in an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again, and +rising to its level on a combing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard +again the third man helplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and +swimming. Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, +instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering sea. +But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with the line, and +hold it so and commanded the crew to turn round on their seats, and tow the +boat up to the mark the moment the treacherous line felt that double strain +and tug, it snapped in the empty air What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks +'tis whole again oars oars Burst in upon him Hearing the tremendous +rush of the seacrashing boat, the whale wheeled round to present his blank +forehead at bay but in that evolution, catching sight of the nearing black +hull of the ship seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions +bethinking it it may be a larger and nobler foe of a sudden, he bore down +upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam. Ahab +staggered his hand smote his forehead. I grow blind hands stretch out +before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night? The whale The ship +cried the cringing oarsmen. Oars oars Slope downwards to thy depths, O +sea, that ere it be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time +upon his mark I see the ship the ship Dash on, my men Will ye not +save my ship? But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the +sledgehammering seas, the before whalesmitten bowends of two planks burst +through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat lay nearly +level with the waves its halfwading, splashing crew, trying hard to stop +the gap and bale out the pouring water. Meantime, for that one beholding +instant, Tashtego's masthead hammer remained suspended in his hand and the +red +flag, halfwrapping him as with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out +from him, as his own forwardflowing heart while Starbuck and Stubb, +standing upon the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the downcoming monster +just as soon as he. The whale, the whale Up helm, up helm Oh, all ye +sweet powers of air, now hug me close Let not Starbuck die, if die he +must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say ye fools, the jaw the +jaw Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my lifelong fidelities? +Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady helmsman, steady. Nay, nay Up +helm again He turns to meet us Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards +one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now +Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help +Stubb for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale +Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking eye? +And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft would it +were stuffed with brushwood I grin at thee, thou grinning whale Look ye, +sun, moon, and stars I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted +up his ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but +hand the cup Oh, oh oh, oh thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty +of gulping soon Why fly ye not, O Ahab For me, off shoes and jacket to +it let Stubb die in his drawers A most mouldy and over salted death, +though cherries cherries cherries Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we +die Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I +hope my poor mother's drawn my partpay ere this if not, few coppers will now +come to her, for the voyage is up. From the ship's bows, nearly all the +seamen now hung inactive hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, +mechanically retained in their hands, just as they had darted from their +various employments all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which +from side to side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad +band of overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution, +swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all +that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead +smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat +upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft +shook on their bulllike necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters +pour, as mountain torrents down a flume. The ship The hearse the second +hearse cried ahab from the boat its wood could only be American +Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel +but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the +other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time, he lay +quiescent. I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego Let me hear thy +hammer. Oh ye three unsurrendered spires of mine thou uncracked keel and +only godbullied hull thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Polepointed +prow, deathglorious ship must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut +off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely +death on lonely life Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost +grief. Ho, ho from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold +billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death +Towards thee I roll, thou alldestroying but unconquering whale to the last +I grapple with thee from hell's heart I stab at thee for hate's sake I +spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common +pool and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still +chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale Thus, I give up the +spear The harpoon was darted the stricken whale flew forward with +igniting velocity the line ran through the groove ran foul. Ahab stooped to +clear it he did clear it but the flying turn caught him round the neck, +and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of +the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eyesplice +in the rope's final end flew out of the starkempty tub, knocked down an +oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths. For an instant, +the tranced boat's crew stood still then turned. The ship? Great God, +where is the ship? Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her +sidelong fading phantom, +as in the gaseous Fata Morgana only the uppermost masts out of water +while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, +the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. +And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, +and each floating oar, and every lancepole, and spinning, animate and +inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of +the Pequod out of sight. But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured +themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few +inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of +the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the +destroying billows they almost touched at that instant, a red arm and a +hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the +flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A skyhawk that tauntingly +had followed the maintruck downwards from its natural home among the stars, +pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there this bird now chanced +to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood and +simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, +in his deathgasp, kept his hammer frozen there and so the bird of heaven, +with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his +whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, +which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part +of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it. Now small fowls flew +screaming over the yet yawning gulf a sullen white surf beat against its +steep sides then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as +it rolled five thousand years ago. +House / edition. It was prepared by Professor Eugene F. Irey AT THE UNIVERSIT +Y / OF COLORADO, BOULDER, COLORADO , U.S.A. / ANY SUBSEQUENT COP +IES OF THIS DATA MUST INCLUDE THIS NOTICE / AND ANY PUBLICATIONS RESULTING FRO +M ANALYSIS OF THIS DATA MUST INCLUDE / REFERENCE TO PROFESSOR IREY'S WORK. + AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE. JOB. THE DRAMA'S DONE. +WHY THEN HERE DOES ANY ONE STEP FORTH? BECAUSE ONE DID SURVIVE THE WRECK. +IT SO CHANCED, THAT AFTER THE PARSEE'S DISAPPEARANCE, I WAS HE WHOM THE FA +TES ORDAINED TO TAKE THE PLACE OF AHAB'S BOWSMAN, WHEN THAT BOWSMAN ASSUMED TH +E VACANT POST THE SAME, WHO, WHEN ON THE LAST DAY THE THREE MEN WERE TOSSED F +ROM OUT THE ROCKING BOAT, WAS DROPPED ASTERN. SO, FLOATING ON THE MARGIN OF +THE ENSUING SCENE, AND IN FULL SIGHT OF IT, WHEN THE HALFSPENT SUCTION OF T +HE SUNK SHIP REACHED ME, I WAS THEN, BUT SLOWLY, DRAWN TOWARDS THE CLOSING VO +RTEX. WHEN I REACHED IT, IT HAD SUBSIDED TO A CREAMY POOL. ROUND AND ROUND +, THEN, AND EVER CONTRACTING TOWARDS THE BUTTONLIKE BLACK BUBBLE AT THE AXIS +OF THAT SLOWLY WHEELING CIRCLE, LIKE ANOTHER IXION I DID REVOLVE. TILL, G +AINING THAT VITAL CENTRE, THE BLACK BUBBLE UPWARD BURST AND NOW, LIBERATED +BY REASON OF ITS CUNNING SPRING, AND OWING TO ITS GREAT BUOYANCY, RISING WITH +GREAT FORCE, THE COFFIN LIFEBUOY SHOT LENGTHWISE FROM THE SEA, FELL OVER, +AND FLOATED BY MY SIDE. BUOYED UP BY THAT COFFIN, FOR ALMOST ONE WHOLE DAY +AND NIGHT, I FLOATED ON A SOFT AND DIRGELIKE MAIN. THE UNHARMING SHARKS, +THEY GLIDED BY AS IF WITH PADLOCKS ON THEIR MOUTHS THE SAVAGE SEAHAWKS SAILE +D WITH SHEATHED BEAKS. ON THE SECOND DAY, A SAIL DREW NEAR, NEARER, AND PIC +KED ME UP AT LAST. IT WAS THE DEVIOUSCRUISING RACHEL, THAT IN HER RETRACIN +Nothing more happened on the passage worthy +the mentioning so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket. +Nantucket Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the +world it occupies how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the +Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it a mere hillock, and elbow of sand all +beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in +twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will +tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don't +grow naturally that they import Canada thistles that they have to send +beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask that pieces of wood in +Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome that people +there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer +time that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's walk a +prairie that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snowshoes +that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and +made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables +small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea +turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois. +Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by +the redmen. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle swooped down upon +the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With +loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide +waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their +canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they +found an empty ivory casket, the poor little Indian's skeleton. What wonder, +then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a +livelihood They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand grown bolder, +they waded out with nets for mackerel more experienced, they pushed off in +boats and captured cod and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the +sea, explored this watery world put an incessant belt of circumnavigations +round it peeped in at Behring's Straits and in all seasons and all oceans +declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived +the flood most monstrous and most mountainous That Himmalehan, saltsea +Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his +very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious +assaults And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing +from their anthill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like +so many Alexanders parcelling out among +them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did +Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada let the +English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun +two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is +his he owns it, as Emperors own empires other seamen having but a right +of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges armed ones but +floating forts even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as +highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the +land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless +deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea he +alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships to and fro ploughing it +as his own special plantation. There is his home there lies his business, +which a noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the +millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie he +hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For +years he knows not the land so that when he comes to it at last, it smells +like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With +the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep +between billows so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, +furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush +herds of walruses and whales. +It was quite late in the evening when the +little Moss came snugly to anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore so we +could attend to no business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. +The landlord of the SpouterInn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey +of the Try Pots, whom he asserted to +be the proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and +moreover he had assured us that cousin Hosea, as he called him, was famous for +his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted that we could not possibly do +better than try potluck at the Try Pots. But the directions he had given us +about keeping a yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white +church to the larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we +made a corner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first +man we met where the place was these crooked directions of his very much +puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted that the +yellow warehouse our first point of departure must be left on the larboard +hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say it was on the starboard. +However, by dint of beating about a little in the dark, and now and then +knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire the way, we at last came to +something which there was no mistaking. Two enormous wooden pots painted +black, and suspended by asses' ears, swung from the crosstrees of an old +topmast, planted in front of an old doorway. The horns of the crosstrees +were sawed off on the other side, so that this old topmast looked not a +little like a gallows. Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at +the time, but I could not help staring at this gallows with a vague +misgiving. A sort of crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining +horns yes, two of them, one for Queequeg, and one for me. It's ominous, +thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port +tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's chapel and here a gallows and a +pair of prodigious black pots too Are these last throwing out oblique hints +touching tophet? I was called from these reflections by the sight of a +freckled woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of +the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an +injured eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen +shirt. Get along with ye, said she to the man, or I'll be combing ye +Come on, Queequeg, said I, all right. There's Mrs. Hussey. +And so it turned out Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving Mrs. +Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs. Upon making known our +desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing further scolding for +the present, ushered us into a little room, and seating us at a table spread +with the relics of a recently concluded repast, turned round to us and +said Clam or Cod? What's that about Cods, ma'am? said I, with much +politeness. Clam or Cod? she repeated. A clam for supper? a cold clam +is that what you mean, Mrs. Hussey? says I but that's a rather cold and +clammy reception in the winter time, ain't it, Mrs Hussey? But being in a +great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple shirt, who was waiting +for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing but the word clam, Mrs. +Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, and bawling out +clam for two, disappeared. Queequeg, said I, do you think that we can +make out a supper for us both on one clam? However, a warm savory steam from +the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But +when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. +Oh, sweet friends hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely +bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut +up into little flakes the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully +seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty +voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favorite fishing food before +him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with +great expedition when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. +Hussey's clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little experiment. +Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word cod with great emphasis, +and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savory steam came forth again, but +with a different flavor, and in good time a fine codchowder was placed +before us. We resumed business and while plying our spoons in the +bowl, thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the +head? What's that stultifying saying about chowderheaded people? But look, +Queequeg, ain't that a live eel in your bowl? Where's your harpoon? +Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its name +for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and +chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began to look for +fishbones coming through your clothes. The area before the house was paved +with clamshells. Mrs. Hussey wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra +and Hosea Hussey had his account books bound in superior old sharkskin. +There was a fishy flavor to the milk, too, which I could not at all account +for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some +fishermen's boats, I saw Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and +marching along the sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head, looking +very slipshod, I assure ye. Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and +directions from Mrs. Hussey concerning the nearest way to bed but, as +Queequeg was about to precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her +arm, and demanded his harpoon she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. Why +not? said I every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon but why not? +Because it's dangerous, says she. Ever since young Stiggs coming from that +unfort'nt v'y'ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half, with only +three barrels of ile, was found dead in my first floor back, with his +harpoon in his side ever since then I allow no boarders to take sich +dangerous weepons in their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg for she had +learned his name, I will just take this here iron, and keep it for you till +morning. But the chowder clam or cod tomorrow for breakfast, men? Both, +says I and let's have a couple of smoked herring by way of variety. +In bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. +But to my surprise and no small concern, Queequeg now gave me to understand, +that he had been diligently consulting Yojo the name of his black little god +and Yojo had told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it +everyway, that instead of our going together among the whalingfleet in +harbor, and in concert selecting our craft instead of this, I say, Yojo +earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest wholly with me, +inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us and, in order to do so, had already +pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself, I, Ishmael, should +infallibly light upon, for all the world as though it had turned out by +chance and in that vessel I must immediately ship myself, for the present +irrespective of Queequeg. I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, +Queequeg placed great confidence in the excellence of Yojo's judgment and +surprising forecast of things and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, +as a rather good sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, +but in all cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs. Now, this plan of +Queequeg's, or rather Yojo's, touching the selection of our craft I did not +like that plan at all. I had not a little relied on Queequeg's sagacity to +point out the whaler best fitted to carry us and our fortunes securely. But +as all my remonstrances produced no effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged to +acquiesce and accordingly prepared to set about this business with a +determined rushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quickly settle that +trifling little affair. Next morning early, leaving Queequeg shut up with +Yojo in our little bedroom for it seemed that it was some sort of Lent or +Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with Queequeg and Yojo +that +day how it was I never could find out, for, though I applied myself to it +several times, I never could master his liturgies and XXXIX Articles leaving +Queequeg, then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself at +his sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among the shipping. After +much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt that there +were three ships up for threeyears' voyages The DevilDam the Titbit, +and the pequod. devil dam, i do not know the origin of titbit is +obvious Pequod, you will no doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated +tribe of Massachusetts Indians, now extinct as the ancient Medes. I peered +and pryed about the DevilDam from her, hopped over to the Titbit and, +finally, going on board the Pequod, looked around her for a moment, and then +decided that this was the very ship for us. You may have seen many a quaint +craft in your day, for aught I know squaredtoed luggers mountainous +Japanese junks butterbox galliots, and what not but take my word for it, +you never saw such a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a +ship of the old school, rather small if anything with an old fashioned +clawfooted look about her. Long seasoned and weatherstained in the typhoons +and calms of all four oceans, her old hull's complexion was darkened like a +French grenadier's, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her +venerable bows looked bearded. Her mastscut somewhere on the coast of Japan, +where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale her masts stood +stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her ancient +decks were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrimworshipped flagstone in +Canterbury Cathedral where Beckett bled. But to all these her old +antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild +business that for more than half a century she had followed. Old Captain +Peleg, many years her chiefmate, before he commanded another vessel of his +own, and now a retired seaman, and one of the principal owners of the +Pequod, this old Peleg, during the term of his chiefmateship, had built upon +her original grotesqueness, and inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both +of material and device, unmatched by anything except it be ThorkillHake's +carved buckler or bedstead. She was +apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy with pendants +of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of a craft, +tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All round, her +unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the +long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her +old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of +land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of seaivory. Scorning a +turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller and that +tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her +hereditary foe. The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt +like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A +noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy All noble things are touched +with that. Now when I looked about the quarterdeck, for some one having +authority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at +first I saw nobody but I could not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or +rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the mainmast. It seemed only a +temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical shape, some ten feet +high consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber black bone taken from +the middle and highest part of the jaws of the rightwhale. Planted with their +broad ends on the deck, a circle of these slabs laced together, mutually +sloped towards each other, and at the apex united in a tufted point, where +the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like a topknot on some old +Pottowotamie Sachem's head. A triangular opening faced towards the bows of +the ship, so that the insider commanded a complete view forward. And half +concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by his aspect +seemed to have authority and who, it being noon, and the ship's work +suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of command. He was seated +on an oldfashioned oaken chair, wriggling all over with curious carving and +the bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic +stuff of which the wigwam was constructed. There was nothing so very +particular, perhaps, about the +appearance of the elderly man I saw he was brown and brawny, like most old +seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilotcloth, cut in the Quaker style +only there was a fine and almost microscopic network of the minutest wrinkles +interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his continual +sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward for this +causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together. Such +eyewrinkles are very effectual in a scowl. Is this the Captain of the +Pequod? said I, advancing to the door of the tent. Supposing it be the +Captain of the Pequod, what dost thou want of him? he demanded. I was +thinking of shipping. Thou wast, wast thou? I see thou are no Nantucketer +ever been in a stove boat? No, Sir, I never have. Dost know nothing at +all about whaling, I dare say eh? Nothing, Sir but I have no doubt I +shall soon learn. I've been several voyages in the merchant service, and I +think that Merchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost +see that leg? I'll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest +of the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed I suppose now +ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant ships. But +flukes man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh? it looks a little +suspicious, don't it, eh? Hast not been a pirate, hast thou? Didst not rob +thy last Captain, didst thou? Dost not think of murdering the officers when +thou gettest to sea? I protested my innocence of these things. I saw that +under the mask of these half humorous inuendoes, this old seaman, as an +insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and +rather distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the +Vineyard. But what takes thee awhaling? I want to know that before I think +of shipping ye. Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see +the world. Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on +Captain Ahab? +Who is Captain Ahab, sir? Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the +Captain of this ship. I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the +Captain himself. Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg that's who ye are +speaking to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the +Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including +crew. We are part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou +wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way +of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap eye +on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg. +What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale? Lost by a whale +Young man, come nearer to me it was devoured, chewed up, crunched by the +monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat ah, ah I was a little +alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at the hearty grief in +his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I could, What you say is +no doubt true enough, sir but how could I know there was any peculiar +ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed I might have inferred as +much from the simple fact of the accident. Look ye now, young man, thy +lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see thou dost not talk shark a bit. Sure, +ye've been to sea before now sure of that? Sir, said I, I thought I +told you that I had been four voyages in the merchant Hard down out of +that Mind what I said about the marchant service don't aggravate me I +won't have it. But let us understand each other. I have given thee a hint +about what whaling is do ye yet feel inclined for it? I do, sir. Very +good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale's throat, +and then jump after it? Answer, quick I am, sir, if it should be +positively indispensable to do so not to be got rid of, that is which I +don't take to be the fact. Good again. Now then, thou not only wantest to +go awhaling, to find out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to +go in order to see the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well +then, just step forward there, and take a peep over the weatherbow, and +then back to me and tell me what ye see there. For a moment I stood a little +puzzled by this curious request, not knowing exactly how to take it, whether +humorously or in earnest. But concentrating all his crow's feet into one +scowl, Captain Peleg started me on the errand. Going forward and glancing +over the weather bow, I perceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with +the floodtide, was now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean. The +prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding not the +slightest variety that I could see. Well, what's the report? said Peleg +when I came back what did ye see? Not much, I replied nothing but +water considerable horizon though, and there's a squall coming up, I +think. Well, what dost thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to +go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can't ye see the world where +you stand? I was a little staggered, but go awhaling I must, and I would +and the Pequod was as good a ship as any I thought the best and all this I +now repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined, he expressed his willingness +to ship me. And thou mayest as well sign the papers right off, he added +come along with ye. And so saying, he led the way below deck into the +cabin. seated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and +surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who along with +Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel the other shares, +as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old +annuitants widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards each owning +about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the +ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same +way that you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest. +Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, +was a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect and to +this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the +peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by +things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same Quakers are +the most sanguinary of all sailors and whalehunters. They are fighting +Quakers they are Quakers with a vengeance. So that there are instances among +them of men, who, named with Scripture names a singularly common fashion on +the island and in childhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and +thou of the Quaker idiom still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless +adventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these unoutgrown +peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not unworthy a +Scandinavian seaking, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when these things unite +in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain and a +ponderous heart who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long +nightwatches in the remotest waters, and beneath constellations never seen +here at the north, been led to think untraditionally and independently +receiving all nature's sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin +voluntary and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from +accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language that man +makes one in a whole nation's census a mighty pageant creature, formed for +noble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically regarded, +if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful +overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For all men tragically +great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young +ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease. But, as yet we have not to +do with such an one, but with quite another and still a man, who, if indeed +peculiar, it only results again from another phase of the Quaker, modified by +individual circumstances. Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a welltodo, +retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg who cared not a rush for what +are called serious things, and indeed deemed those selfsame serious things +the veriest of all trifles Captain Bildad +had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect of +Nantucket Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many +unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn all that had not moved this +native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of +his vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of common +consistency about worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from conscientious +scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably +invaded the Atlantic and Pacific and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, +yet had he in his straightbodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan +gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad +reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know but it did not +seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the +sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this +practical world quite another. This world pays dividends. Rising from a +little cabinboy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a +broad shadbellied waistcoat from that becoming boatheader, chiefmate, and +captain, and finally a shipowner Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded +his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age +of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his +wellearned income. Now Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of +being an incorrigible old hunks, and in his seagoing days, a bitter, hard +taskmaster. They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a curious +story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew, upon arriving +home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore exhausted and worn +out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was certainly rather +hardhearted to say the least. He never used to swear, though, at his men, +they said but somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated +hard work out of them. When Bildad was a chiefmate, to have his +drabcolored eye intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, +till you could clutch something a hammer or a marlingspike, and go to work +like mad, at something or other, never mind what. Indolence and +idleness perished from before him. His own person was the exact embodiment of +his utilitarian character. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare +flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, +like the worn nap of his broadbrimmed hat. Such, then, was the person that I +saw seated on the transom when I followed Captain Peleg down into the cabin. +The space between the decks was small and there, boltupright, sat old +Bildad, who always sat so, and never leaned, and this to save his coat +tails. His broadbrim was placed beside him his legs were stiffly crossed +his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin and spectacles on nose, he +seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume. Bildad, cried Captain +Peleg, at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have been studying those Scriptures, +now, for the last thirty years, to my certain knowledge. How far ye got, +Bildad? As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate, +Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up, and +seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg. He says he's our man, +Bildad, said Peleg, he wants to ship. Dost thee? said Bildad, in a +hollow tone, and turning round to me. I dost, said I unconsciously, he was +so intense a Quaker. What do ye think of him, Bildad? said Peleg. He'll +do, said Bildad, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at his book in a +mumbling tone quite audible. I thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, +especially as Peleg, his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer. +But I said nothing, only looking round me sharply. Peleg now threw open a +chest, and drawing forth the ship's articles, placed pen and ink before him, +and seated himself at a little table. I began to think it was high time to +settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for the voyage. +I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no wages but all +hands, including the captain, received certain shares of the profits called +lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance +pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's company. +I was also aware that being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be +very large but considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, +splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that from all I had heard I +should be offered at least the th lay that is, the th part of the clear +nett proceeds of the voyage, whatever that might eventually amount to. And +though the th lay was what they call a rather long lay, yet it was +better than nothing and if we had a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay +for the clothing I would wear out on it, not to speak of my three years' beef +and board, for which I would not have to pay one stiver. It might be thought +that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune and so it was, a +very poor way indeed. But I am one of those that never take on about princely +fortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge me, +while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, +I thought that the th lay would be about the fair thing, but would not +have been surprised had I been offered the th, considering I was of a +broadshouldered make. But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little +distrustful about receiving a generous share of the profits was this Ashore, +I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony +Bildad how that they being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, +therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly +the whole management of the ship's affairs to these two. And I did not know +but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about shipping +hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite at home there +in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his own fireside. Now while +Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jackknife, old Bildad, to my +no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these +proceedings Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of +his book, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth +Well, Captain Bildad, interrupted Peleg, what d'ye say, what lay shall we +give this young man? +Thou knowest best, was the sepulchral reply, the seven hundred and +seventyseventh wouldn't be too much, would it? "where moth and rust do +corrupt, but lay" Lay, indeed, thought I, and such a lay the seven +hundred and seventyseventh Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, +for one, shall not lay up many lays here below, where moth and rust do +corrupt. It was an exceedingly long lay that, indeed and though from the +magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the +slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and seventyseven +is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a teenth of it, you +will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventyseventh part of a +farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and seventyseven gold +doubloons and so I thought at the time. Why, blast your eyes, Bildad, +cried Peleg, Thou dost not want to swindle this young man he must have +more than that. Seven hundred and seventyseventh, again said Bildad, +without lifting his eyes and then went on mumbling for where your +treasure is, there will your heart be also. I am going to put him down for +the three hundredth, said Peleg, do ye hear that, Bildad The three +hundredth lay, I say. Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly +towards him said, Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart but thou must +consider the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship widows and +orphans, many of them and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this +young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. +The seven hundred and seventyseventh lay, Captain Peleg. Thou Bildad +roared Peleg, starting up and clattering about the cabin. Blast ye, Captain +Bildad, if I had followed thy advice in these matters, I would afore now had +a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest +ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn. Captain Peleg, said Bildad +steadily, thy conscience may be drawing ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, +i can't tell but as thou art still an impenitent man, captain Peleg, I +greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one and will in the end +sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg. +Fiery pit fiery pit ye insult me, man past all natural bearing, ye +insult me. It's an allfired outrage to tell any human creature that he's +bound to hell. Flukes and flames Bildad, say that again to me, and start +my soulbolts, but I'llI'llyes, I'll swallow a live goat with all his +hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drabcolored son of a wooden +gun a straight wake with ye As he thundered out this he made a rush at +Bildad, but with a marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that +time eluded him. Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal +and responsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up all +idea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily commanded, +I stepped aside from the door to give egress to Bildad, who, I made no doubt, +was all eagerness to vanish from before the awakened wrath of Peleg. But to +my astonishment, he sat down again on the transom very quietly, and seemed +to have not the slightest intention of withdrawing. He seemed quite used to +impenitent Peleg and his ways. As for Peleg, after letting off his rage as +he had, there seemed no more left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, +though he twitched a little as if still nervously agitated. Whew he +whistled at last the squall's gone off to leeward, I think. Bildad, thou +used to be good at sharpening a lance, mend that pen, will ye. My jackknife +here needs the grindstone. That's he thank ye, Bildad. Now then, my young +man, Ishmael's thy name, didn't ye say? Well then, down ye go here, Ishmael, +for the three hundredth lay. Captain Peleg, said I, I have a friend with +me who wants to ship too shall I bring him down tomorrow? To be sure, +said peleg. fetch him along, and we'll look at him. What lay does he +want? groaned Bildad, glancing up from the book in which he had again been +burying himself. Oh never thee mind about that, Bildad, said Peleg. Has +he ever whaled it any? turning to me. Killed more whales than I can count, +Captain Peleg. Well, bring him along then. +And, after signing the papers, off I went nothing doubting but that I had +done a good morning's work, and that the Pequod was the identical ship that +Yojo had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape. But I had not +proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the captain with whom I was to +sail yet remained unseen by me though, indeed, in many cases, a whaleship +will be completely fitted out, and receive all her crew on board, ere the +captain makes himself visible by arriving to take command for sometimes these +voyages are so prolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly +brief, that if the captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of +that sort, he does not trouble himself much about his ship in port, but +leaves her to the owners till all is ready for sea. However, it is always as +well to have a look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into his +hands. Turning back I accosted Captain Peleg, inquiring where Captain Ahab +was to be found. And what dost thou want of Captain Ahab? It's all right +enough thou art shipped. Yes, but I should like to see him. But I +don't think thou wilt be able to at present. I don't know exactly what's the +matter with him but he keeps close inside the house a sort of sick, and +yet he don't look so. In fact, he ain't sick but no, he isn't well either. +Any how, young man, he won't always see me, so I don't suppose he will thee. +He's a queer man, Captain Ahab so some think but a good one. Oh, thou'lt +like him well enough no fear, no fear. he's a grand, ungodly, godlike +man, Captain Ahab doesn't speak much but, when he does speak, then you may +well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned Ahab's above the common Ahab's been +in colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals been used to deeper wonders than +the waves fixed his fiery lance in mightier stranger foes than whales. His +lance aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle Oh he +ain't Captain Bildad no, and he ain't Captain Peleg he's Ahab, boy and +Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king And a very vile one. When +that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood? +Come hither to me hither, hither, said Peleg, with a significance in his +eye that almost startled me. Look ye, lad never say that on board the +Pequod. Never say it anywhere. Captain Ahab did not name himself. 'Twas a +foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died when he was +only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that +the name would somehow prove prophetic. And, perhaps, other fools like her +may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It's a lie. I know Captain +Ahab well I've sailed with him as mate years ago I know what he isa +good man not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good man +something like me only there's a good deal more of him. Aye, aye, I know +that he was never very jolly and I know that on the passage home, he was a +little out of his mind for a spell but it was the sharp shooting pains in +his bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see. I know, +too, that ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's +been a kind of moody desperate moody, and savage sometimes but that will +all pass off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, +it's better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. So +goodbye to thee and wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens to have a +wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife not three voyages wedded a +sweet, resigned girl. Think of that by that sweet girl that old man has a +child hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, +my lad stricken, blasted, if he be, Ahab has his humanities As I walked +away, I was full of thoughtfulness what had been incidentally revealed to +me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain wild vagueness of painfulness +concerning him. And somehow, at the time, I felt a sympathy and a sorrow for +him, but for I don't know what, unless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And +yet I also felt a strange awe of him but that sort of awe, which I cannot at +all describe, was not exactly awe I do not know what it was. But I felt +it and it did not disincline me towards him though I felt impatience at +what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then. +However, my thoughts were at length carried in other directions, so that for +the present dark Ahab slipped my mind. +As Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and +Humiliation, was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till +towards nightfall for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's +religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my +heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toadstool or +those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of +footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso +of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate +possessions yet owned and rented in his name. I say, we good Presbyterian +christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so +vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their +halfcrazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly +entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan but what of +that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose he seemed to be +content and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail +let him be, I say and Heaven have mercy on us all Presbyterians and Pagans +alike for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly +need mending. Towards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances +and rituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door but +no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside. Queequeg, said +I softly through the keyhole all silent. I say, Queequeg why don't you +speak? It's IIshmael. But all remained still as before. I began to grow +alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant time I thought he might have had +an apoplectic fit. I looked through the keyhole but the door opening into +an odd corner of the room, the keyhole prospect was but a crooked and +sinister one. I could only see part of the footboard of the bed and a line of +the wall, but nothing more. I was surprised to behold resting against the +wall the wooden shaft of Queequeg's harpoon, which the landlady the evening +previous had taken from him, before our mounting to the chamber. That's +strange, thought I but at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he +seldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside here, +and no possible mistake. Queequeg Queequeg all still. Something must +have happened. Apoplexy I tried to burst open the door but it stubbornly +resisted. Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the first +person i met the chambermaid. la la she cried, i thought something +must be the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast, and the door +was locked and not a mouse to be heard and it's been just so silent ever +since. But I thought, may be, you had both gone off and locked your baggage +in for safe keeping. La La, ma'am Mistress murder Mrs. Hussey +apoplexy and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I following. +Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustardpot in one hand and a vinegarcruet +in the other, having just broken away from the occupation of attending to the +castors, and scolding her little black boy meantime. Woodhouse cried I, +which way to it? Run for God's sake, and fetch something to pry open the +door the axe the axe he's had a stroke depend upon it and so saying I +was unmethodically rushing up stairs again emptyhanded, when Mrs. Hussey +interposed the mustardpot and vinegarcruet, and the entire castor of her +countenance. What's the matter with you, young man? Get the axe For +God's sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry it open Look here, +said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegarcruet, so as to have one +hand free look here are you talking about prying open any of my doors? +and with that she seized my arm. What's the matter with you? What's the +matter with you, shipmate? In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I +gave her to understand the whole case. Unconsciously clapping the +vinegarcruet +to one side of her nose, she ruminated for an instant then exclaimed No I +haven't seen it since I put it there. Running to a little closet under the +landing of the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me that Queequeg's +harpoon was missing. He's killed himself, she cried. It's unfort'nate +stiggs done over again there goes another counterpane god pity his poor +mother it will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister? Where's +that girl? there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint +me a sign, with "no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor" +might as well kill both birds at once. Kill? The Lord be merciful to his +ghost What's that noise there? You, young man, avast there And running +up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force open the door. I +won't allow it I won't have my premises spoiled. Go for the locksmith, +there's one about a mile from here. But avast putting her hand in her +sidepocket, here's a key that'll fit, I guess let's see. And with that, +she turned it in the lock but, alas Queequeg's supplemental bolt remained +unwithdrawn within. Have to burst it open, said I, and was running down +the entry a little, for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again +vowing I should not break down her premises but I tore from her, and with a +sudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark. With a prodigious +noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming against the wall, sent the +plaster to the ceiling and there, good heavens there sat Queequeg, +altogether cool and selfcollected right in the middle of the room +squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on top of his head. He looked neither +one way nor the other way, but sat like a carved image with scarce a sign of +active life. Queequeg, said I, going up to him, Queequeg, what's the +matter with you? He hain't been a sittin' so all day, has he? said the +landlady. But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him I almost +felt like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost +intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally +constrained especially, as in all probability he had been sitting so for +upwards of eight or ten hours, going too without his regular meals. Mrs. +Hussey, said I, he's alive at all events so leave us, if you please, and +I will see to this strange affair myself. Closing the door upon the landlady, +I endeavored to prevail upon Queequeg to take a chair but in vain. There +he sat and all he could do for all my polite arts and blandishments he +would not move a peg, nor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor +notice my presence in any the slightest way. I wonder, thought I, if this can +possibly be a part of his Ramadan do they fast on their hams that way in his +native island. It must be so yes, it's part of his creed, I suppose +well, then, let him rest he'll get up sooner or later, no doubt. It can't +last for ever, thank God, and his Ramadan only comes once a year and I +don't believe it's very punctual then. I went down to supper. After sitting a +long time listening to the long stories of some sailors who had just come from +a plumpudding voyage, as they called it that is, a short whalingvoyage in +a schooner or brig, confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean +only after listening to these plumpuddingers till nearly eleven o'clock, +I went up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Queequeg must +certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no there he was +just where I had left him he had not stirred an inch. I began to grow +vexed with him it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be sitting +there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room, holding a piece +of wood on his head. For heaven's sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself +get up and have some supper. You'll starve you'll kill yourself, +Queequeg. But not a word did he reply. Despairing of him, therefore, I +determined to go to bed and to sleep and no doubt, before a great while, he +would follow me. But previous to turning in, I took my heavy bearskin +jacket, and threw it over him, as it promised to be a very cold night and he +had nothing but his ordinary round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, +I could not get into the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle and the +mere thought of Queequeg +not four feet off sitting there in that uneasy position, stark alone in +the cold and dark this made me really wretched. Think of it sleeping all +night in the same room with a wide awake pagan on his hams in this dreary, +unaccountable Ramadan But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing +more till break of day when, looking over the bedside, there squatted +Queequeg, as if he had been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the +first glimpse of sun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating +joints, but with a cheerful look limped towards me where I lay pressed +his forehead again against mine and said his Ramadan was over. Now, as I +before hinted, I have no objection to any person's religion, be it what it +may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any other person, +because that other person don't believe it also. But when a man's religion +becomes really frantic when it is a positive torment to him and, in fine, +makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in then I think it +high time to take that individual aside and argue the point with him. And +just so I now did with Queequeg. Queequeg, said I, get into bed now, and +lie and listen to me. I then went on, beginning with the rise and progress +of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various religions of the +present time, during which time I labored to show Queequeg that all these +Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged hamsquattings in cold, cheerless rooms were +stark nonsense bad for the health useless for the soul opposed, in +short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense. I told him, too, that +he being in other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it +pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about +this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body +cave in hence the spirit caves in and all thoughts born of a fast must +necessarily be halfstarved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic +religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one +word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively hell is an idea first born on +an undigested appledumpling and since then perpetuated through the +hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans. +I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with dyspepsia +expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it in. He said no +only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great feast given by his +father the king, on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty of the enemy +had been killed by about two o'clock in the afternoon, and all cooked and +eaten that very evening. No more, Queequeg, said I, shuddering that will +do for I knew the inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen +a sailor who had visited that very island, and he told me that it was the +custom, when a great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain +in the yard or garden of the victor and then, one by one, they were placed +in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit +and cocoanuts and with some parsley in their mouths, were sent round with +the victor's compliments to all his friends, just as though these presents +were so many Christmas turkeys. After all, I do not think that my remarks +about religion made much impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the first +place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing on that important subject, unless +considered from his own point of view and, in the second place, he did not +more than one third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would and, +finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion +than I did. He looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and +compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible young +man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety. At last we rose +and dressed and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty breakfast of chowders +of all sorts, so that the landlady should not make much profit by reason of +his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering along, and +picking our teeth with halibut bones. +As we were walking down the end of the wharf +towards the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff +voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend +was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board +that craft, unless they previously produced their papers. What do you mean +by that, Captain Peleg? said I, now jumping on the bulwarks, and leaving my +comrade standing on the wharf. I mean, he replied, he must show his +papers. Yea, said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head +from behind Peleg's, out of the wigwam. He must show that he's converted. +Son of darkness, he added, turning to Queequeg, art thou at present in +communion with any christian church? Why, said I, he's a member of the +first Congregational Church. Here be it said, that many tattooed savages +sailing in Nantucket ships at last come to be converted into the churches. +First Congregational Church, cried Bildad, what that worships in Deacon +Deuteronomy Coleman's meetinghouse? and so saying, taking out his +spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and +putting them on very carefully, came out of the wigwam, and leaning stiffly +over the bulwarks, took a good long look at Queequeg. How long hath he been +a member? he then said, turning to me not very long, I rather guess, +young man. No, said Peleg, and he hasn't been baptized right either, or +it would have washed some of that devil's blue off his face. Do tell, now, +cried Bildad, is this Philistine a regular member of Deacon Deuteronomy's +meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass it every Lord's day. +I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeeting, said I, +all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of the First +Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is. Young man, +said Bildad sternly, thou art skylarking with me explain thyself, thou +young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me. Finding myself thus +hard pushed, I replied. I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to +which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, +and every mother's son and soul of us belong the great and everlasting +First Congregation of this whole worshipping world we all belong to that +only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief +in that we all join hands. Splice, thou mean'st splice hands, cried +Peleg, drawing nearer. Young man, you'd better ship for a missionary, +instead of a foremast hand I never heard a better sermon. Deacon +Deuteronomy why Father Mapple himself couldn't beat it, and he's reckoned +something. Come aboard, come aboard never mind about the papers. I say, +tell Quohog there what's that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By +the great anchor, what a harpoon he's got there looks like good stuff that +and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did +you ever stand in the head of a whaleboat? did you ever strike a fish? +Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon the +bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whaleboats hanging to the +side and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in +some such way as this Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? +You see him? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den and taking sharp +aim at it, he darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean across +the ship's decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight. Now, +said Queequeg, quietly hauling in the line, sposee him whalee eye why, +dad whale dead. Quick, Bildad, said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the +close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway. +Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship's papers. We must have Hedgehog +there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we'll give ye +the ninetieth lay, and that's more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of +Nantucket. So down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg +was soon enrolled among the same ship's company to which I myself belonged. +When all preliminaries were over and Peleg had got everything ready for +signing, he turned to me and said, I guess Quohog there don't know how to +write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye dost thou sign thy name or make thy +mark? But at this question, Queequeg, who had twice or thrice before taken +part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed but taking the offered +pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact counterpart of a +queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm so that through Captain +Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his appellative, it stood something like +this Quohog his mark. Meanwhile Captain Bildad sat earnestly and +steadfastly eyeing Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the +huge pockets of his broadskirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts, +and selecting one entitled The Latter Day Coming or No Time to Lose, placed +it in queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his, +looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, Son of darkness, I must do my +duty by thee I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the souls +of all its crew if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly +fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol +Bell, and the hideous dragon turn from the wrath to come mind thine eye, +I say oh goodness gracious steer clear of the fiery pit Something of +the salt sea yet lingered in old Bildad's language, heterogeneously mixed with +Scriptural and domestic phrases. Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now +spoiling our harpooneer, +cried Peleg. Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers it takes the shark +out of 'em no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish. There +was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boatheader out of all Nantucket and +the Vineyard he joined the meeting, and never came to good. He got so +frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from +whales, for fear of afterclaps in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones. +Peleg Peleg said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, thou thyself, as +I myself, hast seen many a perilous time thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to +have the fear of death how, then, can'st thou prate in this ungodly guise. +Thou beliest thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod here had +her three masts overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when +thou went mate with Captain Ahab, did'st thou not think of Death and the +Judgment then? Hear him, hear him now, cried Peleg, marching across the +cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets, hear him, all of +ye. Think of that When every moment we thought the ship would sink Death +and the judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an everlasting +thundering against the side and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. +Think of Death and the Judgment then? No no time to think about Death then. +Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of and how to save all hands +how to rig jurymasts how to get into the nearest port that was what I +was thinking of. Bildad said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on +deck, where we followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some +sailmakers who were mending a topsail in the waist. Now and then he +stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which otherwise +might have been wasted. +Shipmates, have ye shipped in that ship? +Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away from the +water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the above +words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his +massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled +in faded jacket and patched trowsers a rag of a black handkerchief +investing his neck. A confluent smallpox had in all directions flowed over +his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the +rushing waters have been dried up. Have ye shipped in her? he repeated. +You mean the ship Pequod, I suppose, said I, trying to gain a little more +time for an uninterrupted look at him. Aye, the Pequod that ship there, he +said, drawing back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out +from him, with the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the +object. Yes, said I, we have just signed the articles. Anything down +there about your souls? About what? Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any, he +said quickly. no matter though, i know many chaps that hav'n't got any, +good luck to 'em and they are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort +of a fifth wheel to a wagon. What are you jabbering about, shipmate? said +I. He's got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in +other chaps, abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the +word he. Queequeg, said I, let's go this fellow has broken loose from +somewhere he's talking about something and somebody we don't know. +Stop cried the stranger. Ye said true ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder yet, +have ye? Who's Old Thunder? said I, again riveted with the insane +earnestness of his manner. Captain Ahab. What the captain of our ship, +the Pequod? Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. +Ye hav'n't seen him yet, have ye? No, we hav'n't. He's sick they say, but +is getting better, and will be all right again before long. All right again +before long laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive sort of laugh. +Look ye when captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of mine will be +all right not before. What do you know about him? What did they tell +you about him? Say that They didn't tell much of anything about him only +I've heard that he's a good whalehunter, and a good captain to his crew. +That's true, that's true yes, both true enough. But you must jump when he +gives an order. Step and growl growl and go that's the word with Captain +Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long +ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights nothing about that +deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa? heard nothing +about that, eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing +about his losing his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye +hear a word about them matters and something more, eh? No, I don't think ye +did how could ye? Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But +hows'ever, mayhap, ye've heard tell about the leg, and how he lost it aye, +ye have heard of that, I dare say. Oh yes, that every one knows a'most I +mean they know he's only one leg and that a parmacetti took the other off. +My friend, said I, what all this gibberish of yours is about, I don't +know, and I don't much care for it seems to me that you must be a little +damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Ahab, of that ship +there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know all about the loss of +his leg. +All about it, eh sure you do? all? Pretty sure. With finger pointed +and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggarlike stranger stood a moment, as if +in a troubled reverie then starting a little, turned and said Ye've +shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well, what's signed, is +signed and what's to be, will be and then again, perhaps it wont be, after +all. Any how, it's all fixed and arranged a'ready and some sailors or +other must go with him, I suppose as well these as any other men, God pity +'em Morning to ye, shipmates, morning the ineffable heavens bless ye I'm +sorry I stopped ye. Look here, friend, said I, if you have anything +important to tell us, out with it but if you are only trying to bamboozle +us, you are mistaken in your game that's all I have to say. And it's said +very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way you are just the man +for him the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning Oh, when ye get +there, tell 'em I've concluded not to make one of 'em. Ah, my dear fellow, +you can't fool us that way you can't fool us. It is the easiest thing in +the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him. Morning to +ye, shipmates, morning. Morning it is, said I. Come along, Queequeg, +let's leave this crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you? +Elijah. Elijah thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after +each other's fashion, upon this ragged old sailor and agreed that he was +nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps +above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I +did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance. +Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I said nothing to Queequeg of +his being behind, but passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the +stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did and then it seemed +to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life +of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, halfhinting, +halfrevealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me +all kinds of vague wonderments and halfapprehensions, and all connected with +the Pequod and Captain Ahab and the leg he had lost and the Cape Horn +fit and the silver calabash and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when +I left the ship the day previous and the prediction of the squaw Tistig +and the voyage we had bound ourselves to sail and a hundred other shadowy +things. I was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was +really dogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, +and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without +seeming to notice us. This relieved me and once more, and finally as it +seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug. +I stuffed a shirt or two into my old +carpetbag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the +Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New +Bedford. It was on a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed +upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and +that no way of reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday. As +most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling +stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as +well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was +made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, +boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, +which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of late been +gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor +old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original +the Tyre of this Carthage the place where the first dead American whale +was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, +the RedMen, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan? And +where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put +forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones so goes the story to throw +at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a +harpoon from the bowsprit? Now having a night, a day, and still another night +following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, +it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It +was a very dubiouslooking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold +and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had +sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver, So, +wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a +dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north +with the darkness towards the south wherever in your wisdom you may conclude +to lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and +don't be too particular. With halting steps I paced the streets, and passed +the sign of The Crossed Harpoons but it looked too expensive and jolly +there. Further on, from the bright red windows of the SwordFish Inn, there +came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and ice +from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay ten inches +thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement, rather weary for me, when I struck my +foot against the flinty projections, because from hard, remorseless +service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight. Too expensive +and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in +the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go on, +Ishmael, said I at last don't you hear? get away from before the door +your patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct +followed the streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the +cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns. Such dreary streets Blocks of +blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a +candle moving about in a tomb. At this hour of the night, of the last day of +the week, that quarter of the town proved all but deserted. But presently I +came to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which +stood invitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the +uses of the public so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble over +an ashbox in the porch. Ha thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost +choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah? But The +Crossed Harpoons, and The SwordFish? this, then, must needs be the sign +of The Trap. However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, +pushed on and opened a second, interior door. It seemed the great Black +Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round in their +rows to peer and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a +pulpit. It was a negro church and the preacher's text was about the +blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teethgnashing +there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the +sign of The Trap Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far +from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air and looking up, +saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly +representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath +The SpouterInn Peter Coffin. Coffin? Spouter? Rather ominous in that +particular connexion, thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, +they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the +light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked +quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it +might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the +swinging sign had a povertystricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here +was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee. It was a +queer sort of place a gableended old house, one side palsied as it were, and +leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous +wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's +tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any +one indoors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. In judging +of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon, says an old writer of whose +works I possess the only copy extant it maketh a marvellous difference, +whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on +the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where +the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only +glazier. True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind old +blackletter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this +body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the +crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too +late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished the copestone +is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus +there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking +off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, +and put a corncob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the +tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon says old Dives, in his red silken +wrapper he had a redder one afterwards pooh, pooh What a fine frosty +night how Orion glitters what northern lights Let them talk of their +oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories give me the privilege +of making my own summer with my own coals. But what thinks Lazarus? Can he +warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would +not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him +down lengthwise along the line of the equator yea, ye +gods go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost? Now, +that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of +Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of +the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace +made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only +drinks the tepid tears of orphans. But no more of this blubbering now, we are +going awhaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the +ice from our frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this Spouter may +be. +A day or two passed, and there was great +activity aboard the pequod. not only were the old sails being mended, but +new sails were coming on board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging +in short, everything betokened that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a +close. Captain Peleg seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam +keeping a sharp lookout upon the hands Bildad did all the purchasing and +providing at the stores and the men employed in the hold and on the rigging +were working till long after nightfall. On the day following Queequeg's +signing the articles, word was given at all the inns where the ship's company +were stopping, that their chests must be on board before night, for there +was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing. So Queequeg and I got +down our traps, resolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it +seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not +sail for several days. But no wonder there was a good deal to be done, and +there +is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Pequod was fully +equipped. Every one knows what a multitude of things beds, saucepans, +knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nutcrackers, and what not, are +indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling, which +necessitates a threeyears' housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from all +grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And though this also +holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as +with whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the +numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the +impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented, it +must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed +to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss of the +very things upon which the success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the +spare boats, spare spars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, +almost, but a spare captain and duplicate ship. At the period of our arrival +at the Island, the heaviest storage of the Pequod had been almost completed +comprising her beef, bread, water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as +before hinted, for some time there was a continual fetching and carrying on +board of divers odds and ends of things, both large and small. Chief among +those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildad's sister, a lean +old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very +kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if she could help it, nothing should +be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea. At one time +she would come on board with a jar of pickles for the steward's pantry +another time with a bunch of quills for the chief mate's desk, where he kept +his log a third time with a roll of flannel for the small of some one's +rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name, which was +Charity Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of +charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, +ready to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, +comfort, and consolation to all on board +a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was concerned, and in which she +herself owned a score or two of wellsaved dollars. But it was startling to +see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on board, as she did the last +day, with a long oilladle in one hand, and a still longer whaling lance in +the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at all backward. As for +Bildad, he carried about with him a long list of the articles needed, and at +every fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article upon the paper. +Every once and a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring +at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the masthead, +and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam. During these days of +preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft, and as often I asked +about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was going to come on board +his ship. To these questions they would answer, that he was getting better +and better, and was expected aboard every day meantime, the two Captains, +Peleg and Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for +the voyage. If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen +very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to +so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the +absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. +But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be +already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his +suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said +nothing, and tried to think nothing. At last it was given out that some time +next day the ship would certainly sail. So next morning, Queequeg and I took +a very early start. +It was nearly six o'clock, but only grey +imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf. There are some sailors +running ahead there, if I see right, said I to Queequeg, it can't be +shadows she's off by sunrise, I guess come on Avast cried a voice, +whose owner at the same time coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our +shoulders, and then insinuating himself between us, stood stooping forward a +little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It +was Elijah. Going aboard? Hands off, will you, said I. Lookee here, +said Queequeg, shaking himself, go 'way Aint going aboard, then? Yes, +we are, said I, but what business is that of yours? Do you know, Mr. +Elijah, that I consider you a little impertinent? No, no, no I wasn't +aware of that, said elijah, slowly and wonderingly looking from me to +Queequeg, with the most unaccountable glances. Elijah, said I, you will +oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We are going to the Indian and Pacific +Oceans, and would prefer not to be detained. Ye be, be ye? Coming back +afore breakfast? He's cracked, Queequeg, said I, come on. Holloa +cried stationary Elijah, hailing us when we had removed a few paces. Never +mind him, said I, Queequeg, come on. But he stole up to us again, and +suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder, said Did ye see anything looking +like men going towards that ship a while ago? Struck by this plain +matteroffact question, I answered, saying, +Yes, I thought I did see four or five men but it was too dim to be sure. +Very dim, very dim, said Elijah. Morning to ye. Once more we quitted him +but once more he came softly after us and touching my shoulder again, said, +See if you can find 'em now, will ye? Find who? Morning to ye morning +to ye he rejoined, again moving off. Oh I was going to warn ye against +but never mind, never mind it's all one, all in the family too sharp +frost this morning, ain't it? Good bye to ye. Shan't see ye again very +soon, I guess unless it's before the Grand Jury. And with these cracked +words he finally departed, leaving me, for the moment, in no small wonderment +at his frantic impudence. At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found +everything in profound quiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was +locked within the hatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. +Going forward to the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. +Seeing a light, we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a +tattered peajacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his face +downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber slept +upon him. Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have gone to? +said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the +wharf, Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to hence I would +have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter, were it +not for Elijah's otherwise inexplicable question. But I beat the thing down +and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we +had best sit up with the body telling him to establish himself accordingly. +He put his hand upon the sleeper's rear, as though feeling if it was soft +enough and then, without more ado, sat quietly down there. Gracious +Queequeg, don't sit there, said I. Oh perry dood seat, said Queequeg, my +country way won't hurt him face. Face said I, call that his face? very +benevolent countenance +then but how hard he breathes, he's heaving himself get off, Queequeg, +you are heavy, it's grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg Look, +he'll twitch you off soon. I wonder he don't wake. Queequeg removed himself +to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat +at the feet. We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper, from one to the +other. Meanwhile, upon questioning him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave +me to understand that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas +of all sorts, the king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the +custom of fattening some of the lower orders for ottomans and to furnish a +house comfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy +fellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very +convenient on an excursion much better than those gardenchairs which are +convertible into walkingsticks upon occasion, a chief calling his attendant, +and desiring him to make a settee of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps +in some damp marshy place. While narrating these things, every time Queequeg +received the tomahawk from me, he flourished the hatchetside of it over the +sleeper's head. What's that for, Queequeg? Perry easy, kille oh perry +easy He was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawkpipe, +which, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed his +soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The strong +vapor now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to tell upon him. +He breathed with a sort of muffledness then seemed troubled in the nose +then revolved over once or twice then sat up and rubbed his eyes. Holloa +he breathed at last, who be ye smokers? Shipped men, answered I, when +does she sail? Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails today. +The Captain came aboard last night. What Captain? Ahab? Who but him +indeed? +I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab, when we heard a +noise on deck. Halloa Starbuck's astir, said the rigger. He's a lively +chief mate, that good man, and a pious but all alive now, I must turn +to. And so saying he went on deck, and we followed. It was now clear +sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes the riggers +bestirred themselves the mates were actively engaged and several of the +shore people were busy in bringing various last things on board. Meanwhile +Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin. +At length, towards noon, upon the +final dismissal of the ship's riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled +out from the wharf, and after the everthoughtful Charity had come off in a +whaleboat, with her last gift a nightcap for Stubb, the second mate, her +brotherinlaw, and a spare bible for the steward after all this, the two +captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief +mate, Peleg said Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? +Captain Ahab is all ready just spoke to him nothing more to be got from +shore, eh? Well, call all hands, then. Muster 'em aft here blast 'em No +need of profane words, however great the hurry, Peleg, said Bildad, but +away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding. How now Here upon the +very point of starting for the voyage, Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were +going it with a high hand on the quarterdeck, just as if they were to be +jointcommanders at sea, as well as to all appearances in port. And, as for +Captain Ahab, no sign of him was yet to be seen Only, they said he was in the +cabin. But then, the idea was, +that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship under weigh, +and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at all his proper +business, but the pilot's and as he was not yet completely recovered so +they said therefore, Captain Ahab stayed below. And all this seemed natural +enough especially as in the merchant service many captains never show +themselves on deck for a considerable time after heaving up the anchor, but +remain over the cabin table, having a farewell merrymaking with their shore +friends, before they quit the ship for good with the pilot. But there was +not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain Peleg was now all +alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and commanding, and not Bildad. +Aft here, ye sons of bachelors, he cried, as the sailors lingered at the +mainmast. Mr. Starbuck, drive 'em aft. Strike the tent there was the +next order. As I hinted before, this whalebone marquee was never pitched +except in port and on board the Pequod, for thirty years, the order to +strike the tent was well known to be the next thing to heaving up the anchor. +Man the capstan Blood and thunder jump was the next command, and the +crew sprang for the handspikes. Now, in getting under weigh, the station +generally occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the ship. And here +Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition to his other offices, was +one of the licensed pilots of the port he being suspected to have got himself +made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilotfee to all the ships he was +concerned in, for he never piloted any other craft Bildad, I say, might now +be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor, +and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer the +hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a chorus about the girls +in Booble Alley, with hearty good will. Nevertheless, not three days +previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be allowed on +board the Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh and Charity, his +sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman's berth. +Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg +ripped and swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he +would sink the ship before the anchor could be got up involuntarily I paused +on my handspike, and told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we +both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot. I was +comforting myself, however, with the thought that in pious Bildad might be +found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred and seventyseventh lay +when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear, and turning round, was horrified +at the apparition of Captain Peleg in the act of withdrawing his leg from my +immediate vicinity. That was my first kick. Is that the way they heave in +the marchant service? he roared. Spring, thou sheephead spring, and +break thy backbone why don't ye spring, i say, all of yespring Quohog +spring, thou chap with the red whiskers spring there, Scotchcap spring, +thou green pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out And +so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his leg very +freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks +I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something today. At last the anchor +was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold +Christmas and as the short northern day merged into night, we found +ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us +in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks +glistened in the moonlight and like the white ivory tusks of some huge +elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows. Lank Bildad, as pilot, +headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into +the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds +howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard, Sweet fields +beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green. So to the Jews old +Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between. Never did those sweet words sound +more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of +this frigid +winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter +jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in +store and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by +the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer. At last we gained such +an offing, that the two pilots were needed no longer. The stout sailboat +that had accompanied us began ranging alongside. It was curious and not +unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected at this juncture, especially +Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet very loath to leave, for good, a +ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage beyond both stormy Capes a ship +in which some thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested a ship, in +which an old shipmate sailed as captain a man almost as old as he, once +more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw loath to say +goodbye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him, poor old +Bildad lingered long paced the deck with anxious strides" ran down into the +cabin to speak another farewell word there again came on deck, and looked +to windward looked towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the +faroff unseen Eastern Continents looked towards the land, looked aloft +looked right and left looked everywhere and nowhere and at last, +mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by +the hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in +his face, as much as to say, Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it +yes, I can. As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher but +for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the +lantern came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck +now a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate. But, at +last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about him, Captain +Bildad come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the mainyard there Boat ahoy +Stand by to come close alongside, now Careful, careful come, Bildad, boy +say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck luck to ye, Mr. Stubb luck to ye, +Mr. Flask goodbye, and good luck to ye all and this day three years I'll +have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket. Hurrah and away God +bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men, murmured old Bildad, almost +incoherently. I hope ye'll have fine weather now, so that Captain Ahab may +soon be moving among ye a pleasant sun is all he needs, and ye'll have +plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful in the hunt, ye mates. +Don't stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers good white cedar plank is +raised full three per cent. within the year. Don't forget your prayers, +either. Mr Starbuck, mind that cooper don't waste the spare staves. Oh the +sailneedles are in the green locker Don't whale it too much a' Lord's days, +men but don't miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good +gifts. Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb it was a little leaky, +I thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. +Goodbye, goodbye Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. +Starbuck it'll spoil. Be careful with the butter twenty cents the pound it +was, and mind ye, if Come, come, Captain Bildad stop palavering, away +and with that, Peleg hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the +boat. Ship and boat diverged the cold, damp night breeze blew between a +screaming gull flew overhead the two hulls wildly rolled we gave three +heavyhearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic. +Some chapters back, one Bulkington was +spoken of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn. +When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows +into the cold malicious waves, who should I see +standing at her helm but Bulkington I looked with sympathetic awe and +fearfulness upon the man, who in midwinter just landed from a four years' +dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another +tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest +things are ever the unmentionable deep memories yield no epitaphs this +sixinch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that +it fared with him as with the stormtossed ship, that miserably drives along +the leeward land. The port would fain give succor the port is pitiful in +the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, +all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is +that ship's direst jeopardy she must fly all hospitality one touch of +land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and +through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore in so doing, +fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward seeks all +the lashed sea's landlessness again for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into +peril her only friend her bitterest foe Know ye, now, Bulkington? +Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth that all deep, +earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open +independence of her sea while the wildest winds of heaven and earth +conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness +alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God so, better is +it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the +lee, even if that were safety For wormlike, then, oh who would craven +crawl to land Terrors of the terrible is all this agony so vain? Take +heart, take heart, O Bulkington Bear thee grimly, demigod Up from the spray +of thy oceanperishing straight up, leaps thy apotheosis +As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked +in this business of whaling and as this business of whaling has somehow come +to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable +pursuit therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the +injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales. In the first place, it may be +deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact, that among people at large, +the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the +liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous +metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the general opinion of +his merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say and if in +emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S. W. F. Sperm +Whale Fishery to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed +preeminently presuming and ridiculous. Doubtless one leading reason why the +world declines honoring us whalemen, is this they think that, at best, our +vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business and that when actively +engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we +are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge +have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. +And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall +soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and +which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whaleship at least +among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge +in question to be true what disordered slippery decks of a whaleship are +comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battlefields from which so +many soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits? And if the +idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's +profession let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to +a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast +tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the +comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and +wonders of God But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it +unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage yea, an allabounding adoration +for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, +burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory But look at this matter in +other lights weigh it in all sorts of scales see what we whalemen are, and +have been. Why did the Dutch in DeWitt's time have admirals of their whaling +fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out +whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two +of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the +years +and +pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of ,, +pounds? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnumber +all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world sail a navy of upwards of +seven hundred vessels manned by eighteen thousand men yearly consuming ,, of dollars the ships worth, at the time of sailing, ,, +dollars and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of ,, dollars. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant in +whaling? But this is not the half look again. I freely assert, that the +cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life, point out one single peaceful +influence, which within the last sixty years has operated more potentially +upon the whole broad world, taken in one aggregate, than the high and mighty +business of whaling. One way and another, it has begotten events so +remarkable in themselves, and so continuously momentous in their sequential +issues, that whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore +offspring themselves pregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless +task to catalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many +years past the whaleship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest +and least known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes +which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If American +and european menofwar now peacefully ride in once savage harbors, let them +fire salutes to the honor and glory of the whaleship, which originally showed +them the way, and first interpreted between them and the savages. They may +celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cookes, +Your Krusensterns but I say that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed +out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cooke and your +Krusenstern. For in their succorless emptyhandedness, they, in the +heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, +battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cooke with all his marines and +muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a flourish of +in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the lifetime commonplaces +of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three +chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship's +common log. Ah, the world Oh, the world Until the whale fishery rounded +Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, +was carried on between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish +provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through +the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies and, if +space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last +eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old +Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts. That +great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given to the +enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunderborn discovery by +a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores as pestiferously +barbarous but the whaleship touched there. The whaleship is the true +mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy of the first +Australian settlement, the emigrants were several times saved +from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whaleship luckily dropping +an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the +same truth, and do commercial homage to the whaleship, that cleared the way +for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive +missionaries to their first destinations. If that doublebolted land, Japan, +is ever to become hospitable, it is the whaleship alone to whom the credit +will be due for already she is on the threshold. But if, in the face of all +this, you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations +connected with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, +and unhorse you with a split helmet every time. The whale has no famous +author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you will say. The whale no +famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler? Who wrote the first +account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job And who composed the first +narrative of a whalingvoyage? Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the +Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the words from Other, the +Norwegian whalehunter of those times And who pronounced our glowing eulogy +in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke True enough, but then whalemen +themselves are poor devils they have no good blood in their veins. No good +blood in their veins? They have something better than royal blood there. +The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel" afterwards, by marriage, +Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a +long line of Folgers and harpooneers all kith and kin to noble Benjamin +this day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other. +Good again but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable. +Whaling not respectable? Whaling is imperial By old English statutory +law, the whale is declared a royal fish. +Oh, that's only nominal The whale himself has never figured in any grand +imposing way. The whale never figured in any grand imposing way? In +one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the +world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian +coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession. Grant +it, since you cite it but, say what you will, there is no real dignity in +whaling. No dignity in whaling? The dignity of our calling the very +heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South No more Drive down +your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg No more I +know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I +account that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who +boasted of taking as many walled towns. And, as for me, if, by any +possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me if I shall +ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might +not be unreasonably ambitious of if hereafter I shall do anything that, +upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone if, at +my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. +in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to +whaling for a whaleship was my Yale College and my Harvard. +See subsequent chapters for something more on this head. +See subsequent chapters for something more on this head. +In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I +would fain advance naught but substantiated facts. But after embattling his +facts, an advocate who should wholly suppress a not unreasonable +surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his cause such an advocate, would +he not be blameworthy? It is well known that at the coronation of kings and +queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for +their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called, +and there may be a caster of state. How they use the salt, precisely who +knows? Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly oiled at his +coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they anoint it +with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery? Much +might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal +process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a +fellow who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, +a mature man who uses hairoil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got +a quoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in +his totality. But the only thing to be considered here, is this what kind +of oil is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar +oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor codliver oil. What +then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted +state, the sweetest of all oils? Think of that, ye loyal Britons we +whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff +The chief mate of the Pequod was +Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, +earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure +hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twicebaked biscuit. Transported to +the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled +ale. He must have been born in some time of general drought and famine, or +upon one of those fast days for which his state is famous. Only some thirty +arid summers had he seen those summers had dried up all his physical +superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to speak, seemed no more the +token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed the indication of any +bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. He was by no +means illlooking quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent +fit and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and +strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure +for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now for be it Polar snow or +torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to +do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the +yet lingering images of those thousandfold perils he had calmly confronted +through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a +telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all +his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which +at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the +rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural +reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly +incline him to superstition but to that sort of superstition, which in some +organizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from +ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his. And if at +times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more did his +faraway domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him +still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still +further to those latent influences which, in some honesthearted men, +restrain the gush of daredevil daring, so often evinced by others in the more +perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. I will have no man in my boat, said +starbuck, who is not afraid of a whale. by this, he seemed to mean, not only +that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair +estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a +far more dangerous comrade than a coward. +Aye, aye, said Stubb, the second mate, Starbuck, there, is as careful a +man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery. But we shall ere long see what +that word careful precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost +any other whale hunter. Starbuck was no crusader after perils in him +courage was not a sentiment but a thing simply useful to him, and always +at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, +that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits +of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. +Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sundown nor for +persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, +thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my +living, and not to be killed by them for theirs and that hundreds of men had +been so killed Starbuck well knew. What doom was his own father's? Where, in +the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother? With +memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain +superstitiousness, as has been said the courage of this Starbuck which +could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But it +was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible +experiences and remembrances as he had it was not in nature that these +things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under +suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all his +courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, +visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the +conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational +horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more +spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of +an enraged and mighty man. But were the coming narrative to reveal, in any +instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I +have the heart to write it for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, +to expose the fall of valor in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint +stockcompanies and nations knaves, +fools, and murderers there may be men may have mean and meagre faces but +man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing +creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run +to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within +ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer +character seem gone bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle +of a valorruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, +completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this +august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that +abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining +in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike that democratic dignity +which, on all hands, radiates without end from God Himself The great God +absolute The centre and circumference of all democracy His omnipresence, +our divine equality If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and +castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark weave round +them tragic graces if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, +among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts if I shall +touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light if I shall spread a +rainbow over his disastrous set of sun then against all mortal critics bear +me out in it, thou just spirit of equality, which hast spread one royal +mantle of humanity over all my kind Bear me out in it, thou great democratic +God who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan, the pale, poetic +pearl Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of finest gold, the +stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes Thou who didst pick up Andrew +Jackson from the pebbles who didst hurl him upon a warhorse who didst +thunder him higher than a throne Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly +marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons bear +me out in it, O God +Stubb was the second mate. He +was a native of Cape Cod and hence, according to local usage, was called a +CapeCodman. A happygolucky neither craven nor valiant taking perils as +they came with an indifferent air and while engaged in the most imminent +crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner +engaged for the year. Goodhumored, easy, and careless, he presided over his +whaleboat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his crew +all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable arrangement of +his part of the boat, as an old stagedriver is about the snugness of his box. +When close to the whale, in the very deathlock of the fight, he handled his +unpitying lance coolly and offhandedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. +He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most +exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this Stubb, converted the jaws of +death into an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no +telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question but, if +he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a comfortable dinner, no +doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of call of the watch to +tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something which he would find +out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner. What, perhaps, with other +things, made Stubb such an easygoing, unfearing man, so cheerily trudging off +with the burden of life in a world full of grave peddlers, all bowed to the +ground with their packs what helped to bring about that almost impious +goodhumor of his that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, +his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You +would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his +nose as without his pipe. +He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy +reach of his hand and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all out in +succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter then +loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead +of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth. +I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his +peculiar disposition for every one knows that this earthly air, whether +ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the +numberless mortals who have died exhaling it and as in time of the cholera, +some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths so, +likewise, against all mortal tribulations, Stubb's tobacco smoke might have +operated as a sort of disinfecting agent. The third mate was Flask, a native +of Tisbury, in Martha's Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very +pugnacious concerning whales, who somehow seemed to think that the great +Leviathans had personally and hereditarily affronted him and therefore it +was a sort of point of honor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. +So utterly lost was he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their +majestic bulk and mystic ways and so dead to anything like an apprehension +of any possible danger from encountering them that in his poor opinion, the +wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least waterrat, +requiring only a little circumvention and some small application of time and +trouble in order to kill and boil. This ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of +his made him a little waggish in the matter of whales he followed these +fish for the fun of it and a three years' voyage round Cape Horn was only a +jolly joke that lasted that length of time. As a carpenter's nails are +divided into wrought nails and cut nails so mankind may be similarly divided. +Little Flask was one of the wrought ones made to clinch tight and last +long. They called him KingPost on board of the Pequod because, in form, +he could be well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in +Arctic whalers and which by the means of many radiating side timbers +inserted in it, served to brace the ship against the icy concussions of those +battering seas. Now these three mates Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were +momentous men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of +the Pequod's boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which +Captain Ahab would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, +these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with +their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers even +as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins. And since in this famous +fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always +accompanied by his boatsteerer or harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures +provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, +or elbowed in the assault and moreover, as there generally subsists between +the two, a close intimacy and friendliness it is therefore but meet, that in +this place we set down who the Pequod's harpooneers were, and to what +headsman each of them belonged. first of all was queequeg, whom Starbuck, the +chief mate, had selected for his squire. But Queequeg is already known. Next +was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly promontory of +Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the last remnant of a village of +red men, which has long supplied the neighboring island of Nantucket with +many of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the +generic name of GayHeaders. Tashtego's long, lean, sable hair, his high +cheek bones, and black rounding eyes for an Indian, Oriental in their +largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression all this +sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those +proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had +scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer +snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now +hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea the unerring harpoon of +the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the +tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the +superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild +Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb +the second mate's squire. Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, +coalblack +negrosavage, with a lionlike tread an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from +his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them +ringbolts, and would talk of securing the topsail halyards to them. In his +youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely +bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in +Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen and +having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of +owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped daggoo retained +all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in +all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility +in looking up at him and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag +come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, +Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chessman +beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at +the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast +employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty +nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale +fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the +engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and +Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American +liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying +the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, +where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their +crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the +Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland +Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage +homewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but +Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in +the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging the common +continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his +own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were An +Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the +isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the +pequod to lay the world's grievances before that bar from which not very many +of them ever come back. Black Little Pip he never did oh, no he went +before. Poor Alabama boy On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere +long see him, beating his tambourine prelusive of the eternal time, when +sent for, to the great quarterdeck on high, he was bid strike in with +angels, and beat his tambourine in glory called a coward here, hailed a +hero there +For several days after leaving Nantucket, +nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab. The mates regularly relieved +each other at the watches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, +they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship only they sometimes issued +from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was +plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and dictator +was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate into +the now sacred retreat of the cabin. Every time I ascended to the deck from my +watches below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face were +visible for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now in +the seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely +heightened at times by the ragged Elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly +recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of. +But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready +to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the +wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness to call it so +which I felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed +against all warrantry to +cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of +the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the +tame merchantship companies which my previous experiences had made me +acquainted with, still I ascribed this and rightly ascribed it to the +fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in +which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect of the +three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly +calculated to allay these colorless misgivings, and induce confidence and +cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage. Three better, more likely +seaofficers and men, each in his own different way, could not readily be +found, and they were every one of them Americans a Nantucketer, a +Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out +her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather, though all the time +running away from it to the southward and by every degree and minute of +latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all +its intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but +still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind +the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping and +melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call of the forenoon +watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards the taffrail, foreboding +shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension Captain Ahab stood upon +his quarterdeck. There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, +nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, +when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, +or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole +high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable +mould, like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey +hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, +till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rodlike mark, lividly +whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the +straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning +tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and +grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, +leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born +with him, or whether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one +could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or no +allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once Tashtego's +senior, an old GayHead Indian among the crew, superstitiously asserted that +not till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way branded, and +then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in an +elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, +by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never +before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab. +Nevertheless, the old seatraditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly +invested this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that +no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain +Ahab should be tranquilly laid out which might hardly come to pass, so he +muttered then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a +birthmark on him from crown to sole. So powerfully did the whole grim aspect +of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first +few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was +owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously +come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished +bone of the sperm whale's jaw. Aye, he was dismasted off Japan, said the +old GayHead Indian once but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another +mast without coming home for it. he has a quiver of 'em. I was struck with +the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod's quarter +deck, and pretty close to the mizen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored +about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole +one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud Captain Ahab stood erect, looking +straight out beyond the ship's everpitching prow. There was an infinity of +firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable +wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not +a word he spoke nor did his officers say aught to him though by all their +minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not +painful, consciousness of being under a troubled mastereye. And not only +that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his +face in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere +long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after +that morning, he was every day visible to the crew either standing in his +pivothole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had or heavily walking the +deck. As the sky grew less gloomy indeed, began to grow a little genial, he +became still less and less a recluse as if, when the ship had sailed from +home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so +secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in +the air but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at +last sunny deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the +Pequod was only making a passage now not regularly cruising nearly all +whaling preparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, +so that there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite Ahab, +now and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon +layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks +to pile themselves upon. Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling +persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually +to charm him from his mood. For, as when the redcheeked, dancing girls, +April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods even the barest, +ruggedest, most thundercloven old oak will at least send forth some few green +sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants so Ahab did, in the end, a +little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once +did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would +have soon flowered out in a smile. +Some days elapsed, and ice +and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went rolling through the bright Quito +spring, which, at sea, almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the +eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, +overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, +heaped up flaked up, with rosewater snow. The starred and stately nights +seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the +memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns For +sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such +seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not +merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned +upon the soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on then, +memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. +And all these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture. +Old age is always wakeful as if, the longer linked with life, the less man +has to do with aught that looks like death. among seacommanders, the old +greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the nightcloaked deck. +It was so with Ahab only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in +the open air, that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than +from, the cabin to the planks. It feels like going down into one's tomb, +he would mutter to himself, for an old captain like me to be descending +this narrow scuttle, to go to my gravedug berth. So, almost every +twentyfour hours, when the watches of the night were set, and the band on +deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below and when if a rope was to be +hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, +but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place, for fear of disturbing +their slumbering shipmates when this sort of steady quietude would begin to +prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabinscuttle and +ere long the old man would emerge, griping at the iron banister, to help his +crippled way. Some considerating touch of humanity was in him for at times +like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarterdeck because to +his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such +would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their +dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the mood +was on him too deep for common regardings and as with heavy, lumberlike +pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the odd +second mate, came up from below, and with a certain unassured, deprecating +humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, +then, no one could say nay but there might be some way of muffling the +noise hinting something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, +and the insertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah Stubb, thou did'st not +know Ahab then. Am I a cannonball, Stubb, said Ahab, that thou wouldst +wad me that fashion? But go thy ways I had forgot. Below to thy nightly +grave where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one +at last. Down, dog, and kennel Starting at the unforeseen concluding +exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb was speechless a +moment then said excitedly, I am not used to be spoken to that way, sir +I do but less than half like it, sir. Avast gritted Ahab between his set +teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid some passionate temptation. +No, sir not yet, said Stubb, emboldened, I will not tamely be called a +dog, sir. Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and +begone, or I'll clear the world of thee As he said this, Ahab advanced upon +him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily +retreated. I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it, +muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabinscuttle. +It's very queer. Stop, Stubb somehow, now, I don't well know whether to go +back and strike him, or what's that? down here on my knees and pray for +him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me but it would be the first +time I ever did pray. It's queer very queer and he's queer too aye, +take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed +with. How he flashed at me his eyes like powderpans is he mad? Anyway +there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be something on a deck +when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more than three hours out of +the twentyfour and he don't sleep then. Didn't that DoughBoy, the +steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old man's hammock +clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the foot, and the +coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as +though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old man I guess he's got what +some folks ashore call a conscience it's a kind of TicDollyrow they say +worse nor a toothache. Well, well I don't know what it is, but the Lord +keep me from catching it. He's full of riddles I wonder what he goes into +the after hold for, every night, as DoughBoy tells me he suspects what's +that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments with him in the hold? +Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old game Here goes +for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the +world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's +about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, +but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my +principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment and sleep when you can, +is my twelfth So here goes again. But how's that? didn't he call me a dog? +blazes he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on +top of that He might as well have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he +did kick me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow, +somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil's the matter with +me? I don't stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort +of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though +How? how? how? but the only way's +to stash it so here goes to hammock again and in the morning, I'll see how +this plaguey juggling thinks over by daylight. +Entering that gableended SpouterInn, +you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with oldfashioned +wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one +side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way +defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was +only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful +inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding +of its purpose. such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at +first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New +England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of +much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by +throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last +come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be +altogether unwarranted. But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, +limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the +centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a +nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a +nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, halfattained, +unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you +involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous +painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart +you through. It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale. It's the unnatural +combat of the four primal elements. It's a blasted heath. It's a Hyperborean +winter scene. It's the breakingup of the icebound stream of Time. But at +last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the +picture's midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop +does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great +leviathan himself? In fact, the artist's design seemed this a final theory +of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons +with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a CapeHorner +in a great hurricane the halffoundered ship weltering there with its three +dismantled masts alone visible and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring +clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the +three mastheads. The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a +heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with +glittering teeth resembling ivory saws others were tufted with knots of +human hair and one was sickleshaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like +the segment made in the newmown grass by a longarmed mower. You shuddered +as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have +gone a deathharvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with +these were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. +Some were storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, +fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a +sunset. And that harpoonso like a corkscrew nowwas flung in Javan seas, +and run away with by a whale, years afterward slain off the Cape of Blanco. +The original iron entered +nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body of a man, +travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the hump. +Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon lowarched way cut through +what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fireplaces all +round you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such +low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you +would almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a +howling night, when this corneranchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one +side stood a long, low, shelflike table covered with cracked glass cases, +filled with dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks. +Projecting from the further angle of the room stands a darklooking den the +bar a rude attempt at a right whale's head. Be that how it may, there +stands the vast arched bone of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might +almost drive beneath it. within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old +decanters, bottles, flasks and in those jaws of swift destruction, like +another cursed Jonah by which name indeed they called him, bustles a +little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells the sailors +deliriums and death. Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his +poison. Though true cylinders without within, the villanous green goggling +glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel +meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets. +Fill to this mark, and your charge is but a penny to this a penny more +and so on to the full glass the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down +for a shilling. Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen +gathered about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of +skrimshander. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be +accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full not a +bed unoccupied. But avast, he added, tapping his forehead, you haint no +objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin' +a whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing. +I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed that if I should ever do +so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that if he the +landlord really had no other place for me, and the harpooneer was not +decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further about a strange town +on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of any decent man's +blanket. I thought so. All right take a seat. Supper? you want supper? +Supper 'll be ready directly. I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all +over like a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was still +further adorning it with his jackknife, stooping over and diligently working +away at the space between his legs. he was trying his hand at a ship under +full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought. At last some four or +five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as +Iceland no fire at all the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing +but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to +button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with +our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind not +only meat and potatoes, but dumplings good heavens dumplings for supper +One young fellow in a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in +a most direful manner. My boy, said the landlord, you'll have the +nightmare to a dead sartainty. Landlord, I whispered, that aint the +harpooneer, is it? Oh, no, said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, +the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he +don'the eats nothing but steaks, and likes 'em rare. The devil he does, +says I. Where is that harpooneer? Is he here? He'll be here afore long, +was the answer. I could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this +dark complexioned harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it +so turned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into bed +before I did. +Supper over, the company went back to the barroom, when, knowing not what +else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the evening as a +looker on. Presently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the +landlord cried, That's the Grampus's crew. I seed her reported in the +offing this morning a three years' voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys +now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees. A tramping of sea boots was +heard in the entry the door was flung open, and in rolled a wild set of +mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, and with their +heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged, and their +beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. +They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house they +entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's +mouth the bar when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon +poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, +upon which Jonah mixed him a pitchlike potion of gin and molasses, which +he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never +mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or +on the weather side of an iceisland. The liquor soon mounted into their +heads, as it generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from +sea, and they began capering about most obstreperously. I observed, however, +that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to +spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole +he refrained from making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me +at once and since the seagods had ordained that he should soon become my +shipmate though but a sleepingpartner one, so far as this narrative is +concerned, I will here venture upon a little description of him. He stood +full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a +cofferdam. I have seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply +brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast while in +the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to +give him much joy. His voice at once announced +that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be +one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleganian Ridge in Virginia. When +the revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped +away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the +sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, +it seems, for some reason a huge favorite with them, they raised a cry of +Bulkington Bulkington where's Bulkington? and darted out of the house in +pursuit of him. It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost +supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon +a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the +seamen. No man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal +rather not sleep with your own brother. I don't know how it is, but people +like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to sleeping with +an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town, and that stranger +a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely multiply. Nor was there any +earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two in a bed, more than anybody +else for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do +ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one apartment, but you have +your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your +own skin. The more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated +the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a +harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of the +tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over. Besides, +it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and going +bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight how could I +tell from what vile hole he had been coming? Landlord I've changed my mind +about that harpooneer. I shan't sleep with him. I'll try the bench here. +just as you please i'm sorry i cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, +and it's a plaguy rough board here feeling of the knots and notches. But +wait a bit, Skrimshander I've +got a carpenter's plane there in the bar wait, I say, and I'll make ye snug +enough. So saying he procured the plane and with his old silk handkerchief +first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while +grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and left till at last the +planeiron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was near +spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake to quit the bed was +soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing in the world +could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the shavings with +another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the middle of the +room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study. I now took +the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short but that +could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the other +bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one so there +was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the only +clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my back +to settle down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold +air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do +at all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from +the window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the +immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night. The +devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal a march on +him bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the +most violent knockings? it seemed no bad idea but upon second thoughts I +dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I +popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all +ready to knock me down Still, looking around me again, and seeing no possible +chance of spending a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I +began to think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices +against this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile he must be +dropping in before long. I'll have a good look at him then, and perhaps we +may become jolly good bedfellows after all there's no telling. +But though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes, and +going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer. Landlord said I, what sort of +a chap is he does he always keep such late hours? It was now hard upon +twelve o'clock. The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and +seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. No, he +answered, generally he's an early bird airley to bed and airley to rise +yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But tonight he went out a +peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, +may be, he can't sell his head. Can't sell his head? What sort of a +bamboozingly story is this you are telling me? getting into a towering rage. +Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged +this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head +around this town? That's precisely it, said the landlord, and I told him +he couldn't sell it here, the market's overstocked. With what? shouted I. +With heads to be sure ain't there too many heads in the world? I tell +you what it is, landlord, said I, quite calmly, you'd better stop spinning +that yarn to me I'm not green. May be not, taking out a stick and +whittling a toothpick, but I rayther guess you'll be done brown if that ere +harpooneer hears you a slanderin' his head. I'll break it for him, said I, +now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the +landlord's. It's broke a'ready, said he. Broke, said I broke, do you +mean? Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess. +Landlord, said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow storm, +landlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one another, and +that too without delay. I come to your house and want a bed you tell me you +can only give me half a one that the other half belongs to a certain +harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you +persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories, tending +to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom +you design for my bedfellow a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an +intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you to +speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall be +in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place, +you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if +true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've +no idea of sleeping with a madman and you, sir, you I mean, landlord, you, +sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself +liable to a criminal prosecution. Wall, said the landlord, fetching a long +breath, that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and +then. But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of +has just arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New +Zealand heads great curios, you know, and he's sold all on 'em but one, +and that one he's trying to sell tonight, cause tomorrow's Sunday, and it +would not do to be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' +to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was +goin' out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth +like a string of inions. This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable +mystery, and showed that the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling +me but at the same time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out a +Saturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal +business as selling the heads of dead idolators? Depend upon it, landlord, +that harpooneer is a dangerous man. He pays reg'lar, was the rejoinder. +But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had better be turning flukes it's +a nice bed Sal and me slept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. +There's plenty room for two to kick about in that bed it's an almighty big +bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little +Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, +and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm. +After +that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I'll give ye a glim in a +jiffy and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me, offering to +lead the way. But I stood irresolute when looking at a clock in the corner, +he exclaimed I vum it's Sunday you won't see that harpooneer tonight he's +come to anchor somewhere come along then do come won't ye come? I +considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was +ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a +prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep +abreast. There, said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea +chest that did double duty as a washstand and centre table there, make +yourself comfortable now, and good night to ye. I turned round from eyeing +the bed, but he had disappeared. Folding back the counterpane, I stooped +over the bed. Though none of the most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny +tolerably well. I then glanced round the room and besides the bedstead and +centre table, could see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a +rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man +striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a +hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner also a large +seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no doubt in lieu of a +land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the +shelf over the fireplace, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the +bed. But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the +light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive at +some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but a +large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something +like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole +or slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American +ponchos. But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into +a door mat, and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of +guise? I put it on, to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being +uncommonly shaggy and thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this +mysterious harpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to +a bit of glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my +life. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in +the neck. I sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about +this headpeddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on +the bedside, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in the +middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a little +more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now, half undressed +as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about the harpooneer's not +coming home at all that night, it being so very late, I made no more ado, +but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then blowing out the light +tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of heaven. Whether that +mattress was stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, +but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time. At +last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made a good offing +towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the passage, and +saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door. Lord save me, +thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal headpeddler. But I lay +perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to. Holding a +light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other, the +stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his +candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began +working away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being +in the room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for +some time while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished, +however, he turned round when, good heavens what a sight Such a face It +was of a dark purplish, yellow color, here and there stuck over with large, +blackish looking squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible +bedfellow he's been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just +from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his face so towards +the light, that I plainly saw they could not be stickingplasters at all, +those black squares on his cheeks. they were stains of some sort or other. At +first I knew not what to make of this but soon an inkling of the truth +occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white man a whaleman toowho, +falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by them. I concluded that this +harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages, must have met with a +similar adventure. And what is it, thought I, after all It's only his +outside a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of +his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and +completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be +nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning but I never heard of a hot sun's +tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been +in the South Seas and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary +effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me +like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some +difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently +pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a sealskin wallet with the hair on. +Placing these on the old chest in the middle of the room, he then took the +New Zealand head a ghastly thing enough and crammed it down into the bag. +He now took off his hat a new beaver hat when I came nigh singing out with +fresh surprise. There was no hair on his head none to speak of at least +nothing but a small scalpknot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish +head now looked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger +stood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker than ever +I bolted a dinner. Even as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the +window, but it was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make +of this headpeddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension. +Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and +confounded about the stranger, i confess i was now as much afraid of him as if +it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of +night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just then +to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed +inexplicable in him. +Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed his +chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were checkered with +the same squares as his face his back, too, was all over the same dark +squares he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just escaped from +it with a stickingplaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were marked, as +if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young palms. It +was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other shipped +aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian +country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too perhaps the heads +of his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine heavens look at that +tomahawk But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about +something that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he +must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or +dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the +pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image with a hunch +on its back, and exactly the color of a three days' old Congo baby. +Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought that this black +manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar manner. But seeing that it +was not at all limber, and that it glistened a good deal like polished ebony, +I concluded that it must be nothing but a wooden idol, which indeed it +proved to be. For now the savage goes up to the empty fireplace, and removing +the papered fireboard, sets up this little hunchbacked image, like a tenpin, +between the andirons. the chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very +sooty, so that I thought this fireplace made a very appropriate little shrine +or chapel for his Congo idol. I now screwed my eyes hard towards the half +hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime to see what was next to +follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings out of his grego +pocket, and places them carefully before the idol then laying a bit of ship +biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings +into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the +fire, and still hastier +withdrawals of his fingers whereby he seemed to be scorching them badly, +he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit then blowing off the heat +and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the little negro. But the +little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare at all he never +moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by still stranger +guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a singsong or +else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched +about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took +the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket +as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock. All these +queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now +exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping +into bed with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light +was put out, to break the spell into which I had so long been bound. But the +interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking up his +tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then +holding it to the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great +clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and +this wild cannibal, tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I +sang out, I could not help it now and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment +he began feeling me. Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away +from him against the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might +be, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his +guttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my +meaning. Whoe debel you? he at last said you no speake, damme, I +kille. And so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the +dark. Landlord, for God's sake, Peter Coffin shouted I. Landlord +Watch Coffin Angels save me Speake tellee me whoee be, or damme, +I kille again growled the cannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the +tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about me till I thought +my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment the landlord +came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him. +Don't be afraid now, said he, grinning again. Queequeg here wouldn't harm +a hair of your head. Stop your grinning, shouted I, and why didn't you +tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal? I thought ye know'd +it didn't I tell ye, he was peddlin' heads around town? but turn flukes +again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here you sabbee me, I sabbee you this +man sleepe you you sabbee? Me sabbee plenty grunted Queequeg, puffing +away at his pipe and sitting up in bed. You gettee in, he added, motioning +to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did +this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood +looking at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, +comely looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, +thought i to myself the man's a human being just as I am he has just as +much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a +sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. Landlord, said I, tell him to +stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or whatever you call it tell him to +stop smoking, in short, and I will turn in with him. But I don't fancy having +a man smoking in bed with me. It's dangerous. Besides, I aint insured. +This being told to Queequeg, he at once complied, and again politely motioned +me to get into bed rolling over to one side as much as to say I wont touch a +leg of ye. Good night, landlord, said I, you may go. I turned in, and +never slept better in my life. +When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a +while leaning over the bulwarks and then, as had been usual with him of +late, calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, +and also his pipe. lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the +stool on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked. In old Norse times, +the thrones of the sealoving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, +of the tusks of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that +tripod of bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a +Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was +Ahab. Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth +in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. How now, +he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, this smoking no longer +soothes. Oh, my pipe hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone Here +have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring, aye, and ignorantly +smoking to windward all the while to windward, and with such nervous +whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were the strongest and +fullest of trouble. What business have I with this pipe? This thing that is +meant for sereneness, to send up mild white vapors among mild white hairs, +not among torn irongrey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more He tossed the +still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the waves the same +instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe made. With slouched hat, +Ahab lurchingly paced the planks. +Next morning Stubb accosted Flask. Such a +queer dream, KingPost, I never had. You know the old man's ivory leg, well +I dreamed he kicked me with it and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, +my little man, I kicked my leg right off And then, presto Ahab seemed a +pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still +more curious, Flaskyou know how curious all dreams are through all this rage +that I was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it +was not much of an insult, that kick from ahab. "Why," thinks I,"what's the +row? It's not a real leg, only a false leg." And there's a mighty difference +between a living thump and a dead thump. That's what makes a blow from the +hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The +living member that makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I to +myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that +cursed pyramid so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I +say, I was thinking to myself, "what's his leg now, but a cane a whalebone +cane. Yes," thinks I,"it was only a playful cudgelling in fact, only a +whaleboning that he gave me not a base kick. Besides," thinks I,"look at it +once why, the end of it the foot part what a small sort of end it is +whereas, if a broad footed farmer kicked me, there's a devilish broad insult. +But this insult is whittled down to a point only." But now comes the +greatest joke of the dream, Flask. While I was battering away at the +pyramid, a sort of badgerhaired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes +me by the shoulders, and slews me round. "What are you 'bout?" says he. Slid +man, but I was frightened. Such a phiz But, somehow, next moment I was over +the fright. "What am I about?" says I at last. "And what business is that of +yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do you want a +kick?" By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned round +his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had for a +clout what do you think, I saw? why thunder alive, man, his stern was stuck +full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second thoughts,"I +guess I won't kick you, old fellow." "Wise Stubb," said he,"wise Stubb" and +kept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a +chimney hag. seeing he wasn't going to stop saying over his "wise Stubb, wise +Stubb," I thought I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I +had only just lifted my foot for it, when he roared out, "Stop that kicking" +"Halloa," says I,"what's the matter now, old fellow?" "Look ye here," says +he"let's argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he?" "Yes, he +did," says I "right here it was." "Very good," says he "he used his ivory +leg, didn't he?" "Yes, he did," says I. "Well then," says he, "wise Stubb, +what have you to complain of? Didn't he kick with right good will? it wasn't +a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you were kicked by a +great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It's an honor I consider +it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England the greatest lords think it +great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made garterknights of but, be +your boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. +Remember what I say be kicked by him account his kicks honors and on no +account kick back for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb. Don't you see +that pyramid?" With that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer +fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored rolled over and there I was +in my hammock Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask? I don't know +it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho'. May be, may be. But it's made a +wise man of me, Flask. D'ye see Ahab standing there, sideways looking over the +stern? Well, the best thing you can do, Flask, is to let that old man alone +never speak to him, whatever he says. Halloa what's that he shouts? Hark +Masthead, there Look sharp, all of ye There are whales hereabouts If +ye see a white one, split your lungs for him What d'ye think of that now, +Flask? ain't there a small drop +of something queer about that, eh? a white whaledid ye mark that, man? Look +yethere's something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Flask. Ahab has +that that's bloody on his mind. But, mum he comes this way. +Already we are boldly launched upon the +deep but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harborless immensities. Ere +that come to pass ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the +barnacled hulls of the leviathan at the outset it is but well to attend to a +matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the +more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to +follow. It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, +that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The +classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. +Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down. No branch of +Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology, says Captain +Scoresby, A. D. +. It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter +into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups +and families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal +sperm whale, says Surgeon Beale, A. D. +. Unfitness to pursue our +research in the unfathomable waters. Impenetrable veil covering our +knowledge of the cetacea. A field strewn with thorns. All these +incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists. Thus speak of +the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of +zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little, +yet of books there are +a plenty and so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of +whales. many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, +who have at large or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few The +Authors of the Bible Aristotle Pliny Aldrovandi Sir Thomas Browne +Gesner Ray Linnaeus Rondeletius Willoughby Green Artedi Sibbald +Brisson Marten Lacepede Bonneterre Desmarest Baron Cuvier Frederick +Cuvier John Hunter Owen Scoresby Beale Bennett J. Ross Browne the +Author of Miriam Coffin Olmstead and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what +ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts +will show. Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following +Owen ever saw living whales and but one of them was a real professional +harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of +the Greenland or rightwhale, he is the best existing authority. But Scoresby +knew nothing and says nothing of the great sperm whale, compared with which +the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that +the Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even +by any means the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of +his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, +invested the then fabulous and utterly unknown spermwhale, and which +ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific +retreats and whaleports this usurpation has been every way complete. +Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past +days, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, was to +them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a new +proclamation. This is Charing Cross hear ye good people all, the +Greenland whale is deposed, the great sperm whale now reigneth There are +only two books in being which at all pretend to put the living sperm whale +before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree succeed in the +attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's both in their time surgeons +to English SouthSea whaleships, and both exact and reliable men. The +original matter touching the sperm whale to be found in their volumes is +necessarily small but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, +though mostly confined to scientific description. As yet, however, the sperm +whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above +all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life. Now the various species of +whales need some sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy +outline one for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by +subsequent laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, +I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete because +any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly +be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the +various species, or in this place at least to much of any description. My +object here is simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. +I am the architect, not the builder. But it is a ponderous task no ordinary +lettersorter in the Postoffice is equal to it. To grope down into the +bottom of the sea after them to have one's hands among the unspeakable +foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the world this is a fearful thing. +What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan The awful +tauntings in Job might well appal me. Will he the leviathan make a covenant +with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain But I have swam through +libraries and sailed through oceans I have had to do with whales with these +visible hands I am in earnest and I will try. There are some +preliminaries to settle. first the uncertain, unsettled condition of this +science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in +some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his +System of Nature, A. D. +, Linnaeus declares, I hereby separate the whales +from the fish. But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year +sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnaeus's express edict, were +still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan. The +grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished +the whales from the waters, he states as follows On account of their warm +bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem +intrantem feminam mammis lactantem, and finally, ex lege naturae jure +meritoque. I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley +Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they +united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. +Charley profanely hinted they were humbug. Be it known that, waiving all +argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and +call upon holy Jonah to back me. This fundamental thing settled, the next +point is, in what internal respect does the whale differ from other fish. +Above, Linnaeus has given you those items. But in brief, they are these +lungs and warm blood whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded. +Next how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as +conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then, a whale +is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him. +However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation. A +walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is +amphibious. but the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as +coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish +familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or upanddown tail. +Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped, +invariably assumes a horizontal position. By the above definition of what a +whale is, I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea +creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers +nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively +regarded as alien. Hence, all the smaller, spouting, +and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this groundplan of Cetology. +Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host. First +According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS +subdivisible into Chapters, and these shall comprehend them all, both small +and large. I. The FOLIO WHALE II. the OCTAVO WHALE III. the DUODECIMO +WHALE. As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale of the +OCTAVO, the Grampus of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise. FOLIOS. Among these I +here include the following chapters I. The Sperm Whale II. the Right +Whale III. the Fin Back Whale IV. the Humpbacked Whale V. the +Razor Back Whale VI. the Sulphur Bottom Whale. BOOK I. Folio, +CHAPTER I. Sperm Whale. This whale, among the English of old vaguely +known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, +is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and +the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest +inhabitant of the globe the most formidable of all whales to encounter the +most majestic in aspect and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce +he being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is +obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. +It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically considered, +it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly +unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only +accidentally obtained from the stranded fish in those days spermaceti, it +would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical +with the one then known in England as the Greenland or Right Whale. It was +the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of the +Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses. In +those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for +light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had from the +druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the +course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became +known, its original name was still retained by the dealers no doubt to +enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And +so the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from +which this spermaceti was really derived. BOOK I. Folio, CHAPTER II. + Right Whale.In one respect this is the most venerable of the +leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by man. It yields the +article commonly known as whalebone or baleen and the oil specially known as +whale oil, an inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is +indiscriminately designated by all the following titles The Whale the +Greenland Whale the Black Whale the Great Whale the True Whale the Right +whale. there is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the species +thus multitudinously baptized. What then is the whale, which I include in +the second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English +naturalists the Greenland Whale of the English Whalemen the Baliene +Ordinaire of the French whalemen the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is +the whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch +and English in the Arctic seas it is the whale which the American fishermen +have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor' West +Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them Right Whale +Cruising Grounds. Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland +whale of the English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely +agree in all their grand features nor has there yet been presented a single +determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless +subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that some +departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The right +whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference to +elucidating the sperm whale. BOOK I. Folio, CHAPTER III. FinBack. +Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the various names of +FinBack, TallSpout, and LongJohn, has been seen almost in every sea and is +commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers +crossing the Atlantic, in the New York +packettracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Finback +resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter +color, approaching to olive. His great lips present a cablelike aspect, +formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His grand +distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name, is often a +conspicuous object. this fin is some three or four feet long, growing +vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an angular shape, and with a +very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest other part of the creature +be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from +the surface. When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with +spherical ripples, and this gnomonlike fin stands up and casts shadows upon +the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle +surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy hourlines +graved on it. On that Ahazdial the shadow often goes back. The FinBack is +not gregarious. He seems a whalehater, as some men are manhaters. Very +shy always going solitary unexpectedly rising to the surface in the +remotest and most sullen waters his straight and single lofty jet rising +like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain gifted with such +wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from +man this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, +bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From having the baleen in his +mouth, the FinBack is sometimes included with the right whale, among a +theoretic species denominated Whalebone whales, that is, whales with baleen. +Of these so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several +varieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broadnosed whales and +beaked whales pikeheaded whales bunched whales underjawed whales and +rostrated whales, are the fishermen's names for a few sorts. In connexion +with this appellative of Whalebone whales , it is of great importance to +mention, that however such a nomenclature may be convenient in facilitating +allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a clear +classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his baleen, or hump, or +fin, or teeth notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very +obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of +Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his +kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, backfin, and teeth these are +things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of +whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in +other and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the +humpbacked whale, each has a hump but there the similitude ceases. Then, +this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen +but there again the similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other +parts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular +combinations or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an irregular +isolation as utterly to defy all general methodization formed upon such a +basis. On this rock every one of the whalenaturalists has split. But it +may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the whale, in his +anatomy there, at least, we shall be able to hit the right classification. +Nay what thing, for example, is there in the Greenland whale's anatomy more +striking than his baleen? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is +impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And if you descend +into the bowels of the various leviathans, why there you will not find +distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematizer as those +external ones already enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold +of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them +that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted and it is the +only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed. +book i. folio, chapter iv. hump back. this whale is often seen on +the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and towed +into harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler or you might call +him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular name for him does +not sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump, +though a smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is +the most gamesome and lighthearted of all +the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any other of +them. BOOK I. Folio, CHAPTER V. Razor Back. Of this whale little is +known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a +retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, +he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises in a long +sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does anybody else. +BOOK I. Folio, CHAPTER VI. Sulphur Bottom. Another retiring +gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the +Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen at +least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas, and then +always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is never chased +he would run away with ropewalks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, +Sulphur Bottom I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest +Nantucketer. Thus ends BOOK I. Folio, and now begins BOOK II. octavo. +OCTAVOES. These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which at +present may be numbered I., the Grampus II., the Black Fish III., the +Narwhale IV., the Thrasher V., the Killer. BOOK II. Octavo, CHAPTER +I. Grampus. Though this fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather +blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of +the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But possessing all +the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have +recognised him for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen +to twentyfive feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the +waist. He swims in herds he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is +considerable +in quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is +regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale. BOOK II. + Octavo, CHAPTER II. Black Fish. I give the popular fishermen's names +for all these fish, for generally they are the best. Where any name happens +to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do so +now, touching the Black Fish, so called, because blackness is the rule among +almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity +is well known, and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips +are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his +face. This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is +found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal +hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not +more profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena +whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment as some +frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves, +burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber is very +thin, some of these whales will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil. +BOOK II. Octavo, CHAPTER III. Narwhale, that is, Nostril whale. +Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from his +peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is +some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some +exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is +but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed +from the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an +ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy +lefthanded man. What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it +would be hard to say. It does not seemed to be used like the blade of the +swordfish and billfish though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale +employs it for a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley +Coffin said it was used for an icepiercer for the Narwhale, rising to the +surface of the Polar Sea, +and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. +But you cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion +is, that however this onesided horn may really be used by the Narwhale +however that may be it would certainly be very convenient to him for a +folder in reading pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked +whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious +example of the Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated +nature. From certain cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same +seaunicorn's horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against +poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also +distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the +horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in +itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir +Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did +gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as +his bold ship sailed down the Thames when Sir Martin returned from that +voyage, saith Black Letter, on bended knees he presented to her highness a +prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in +the castle at Windsor. An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, +on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn, pertaining +to a land beast of the unicorn nature. The Narwhale has a very picturesque, +leopardlike look, being of a milkwhite ground color, dotted with round and +oblong spots of black. His oil is very superior, clear and fine but there +is little of it, and he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the +circumpolar seas. BOOK II. Octavo, CHAPTER IV. Killer. Of this whale +little is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the +professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should +say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage a sort of +Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs +there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer +is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception +might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its +indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on sea Bonapartes and +Sharks included. BOOK II. Octavo, CHAPTER V. Thrasher. This gentleman +is famous for his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He +mounts the Folio whale's back, and as he swims, he works his passage by +flogging him as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar +process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both are +outlaws, even in the lawless seas. thus ends book II. Octavo, and begins +BOOK III. Duodecimo. DUODECIMOES. These include the smaller whales. I. +The Huzza Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealymouthed +Porpoise. To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it +may possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five +feet should be marshalled among WHALES a word, which, in the popular sense, +always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down above as +Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition of what a +whale is i. e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail. BOOK III. + Duodecimo, CHAPTER I Huzza Porpoise. This is the common porpoise +found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own bestowal for there +are more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish +them. I call them thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which +upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a +FourthofJuly crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by +the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy +billows to windward. They are the lads that always live before the wind. They +are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at +beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye the spirit of godly +gamesomeness is not in ye. A wellfed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you +one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from +his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among jewellers and +watchmakers. +Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It +may never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is +so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the next time you have +a chance, watch him and you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in +miniature. BOOK III. Duodecimo, CHAPTER II. Algerine Porpoise. A +pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is +somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make. +Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many +times, but never yet saw him captured. BOOK III. Duodecimo, CHAPTER III. + Mealymouthed Porpoise. The largest kind of Porpoise and only found in +the Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he has +hitherto been designated, is that of the fishers RightWhale Porpoise, +from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. +In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less +rotund and jolly girth indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentlemanlike +figure. He has no fins on his back most other porpoises have, he has a +lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his +mealymouth spoils all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a +deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called +the bright waist, that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two +separate colors, black above and white below. The white comprises part of his +head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just +escaped from a felonious visit to a mealbag. A most mean and mealy aspect +His oil is much like that of the common porpoise. Beyond the DUODECIMO, this +system does not proceed, inasmuch as the Porpoise is the smallest of the +whales. Above, you have all the Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble +of uncertain, fugitive, halffabulous whales, which, as an American +whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by +their forecastle appellations for possibly such a list may be valuable to +future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If any of +the following +whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be +incorporated into this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo +magnitude The BottleNose Whale the Junk Whale the PuddingHeaded +Whale the Cape Whale the Leading Whale the Cannon Whale the Scragg Whale +the Coppered Whale the Elephant Whale the Iceberg Whale the Quog Whale +the Blue Whale etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, +there might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all +manner of uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete and can +hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but +signifying nothing. Finally It was stated at the outset, that this system +would not be here, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I +have kept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus +unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane +still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may +be finished by their first architects grand ones, true ones, ever leave the +copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This +whole book is but a draught nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh Time, +Strength, Cash, and Patience +I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and +Dugongs Pigfish and Sowfish of the Coffins of Nantucket are included by +many naturalists among the whales. But as these pigfish are a nosy, +contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet +hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as +whales and have presented them with their passports to quit the kingdom of +Cetology. +Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. Because, +while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former +order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet +the bookbinder's Quarto volume in its diminished form does not preserve the +shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does. +Concerning the officers of the +whalecraft, this seems as good a place as any to set down a little domestic +peculiarity on shipboard, arising from the existence of the harpooneer class +of officers, a class unknown of course in any other marine than the +whalefleet. The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is +evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries +and more ago, the command of a whale ship was +not wholly lodged in the person now called the captain, but was divided +between him and an officer called the Specksynder. Literally this word means +FatCutter usage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. +In those days, the captain's authority was restricted to the navigation and +general management of the vessel while over the whalehunting department +and all its concerns, the Specksynder or Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In +the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, +this old Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly +abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer and as such, is +but one of the captain's more inferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the +good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely +depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not only an important +officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances night watches on a +whaling ground the command of the ship's deck is also his therefore the +grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart +from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their +professional superior though always, by them, familiarly regarded as their +social equal. Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at +sea, is thisthe first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whaleships +and merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain and +so, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the +after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the +captain's cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it. +Though the long period of a Southern whaling voyage by far the longest of +all voyages now or ever made by man, the peculiar perils of it, and the +community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high or low, +depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their common luck, +together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and hard work though all +these things do in some cases tend to beget a less rigorous discipline than in +merchantmen generally yet, never mind how much like an old Mesopotamian +family these whalemen may, in some primitive instances, live together for +all that, +the punctilious externals, at least, of the quarterdeck are seldom materially +relaxed, and in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships +in which you will see the skipper parading his quarterdeck with an elated +grandeur not surpassed in any military navy nay, extorting almost as much +outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the shabbiest of +pilotcloth. And though of all men the moody captain of the Pequod was the +least given to that sort of shallowest assumption and though the only homage +he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience though he required no +man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the quarterdeck and +though there were times when, owing to peculiar circumstances connected with +events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them in unusual terms, whether +of condescension or in terrorem, or otherwise yet even Captain Ahab was +by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea. Nor, +perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and +usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself incidentally making use of +them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to +subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good +degree remained unmanifested through those forms that same sultanism became +incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual +superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available +supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and +entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it +is, that for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's +hustings and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men +who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden +handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over +the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things +when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal +instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as +in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire +encircles an imperial brain +then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. +Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its +fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important +in his art, as the one now alluded to. But Ahab, my Captain, still moves +before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess and in this episode +touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with +a poor old whalehunter like him and, therefore, all outward majestical +trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab what shall be grand in thee, +it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and +featured in the unbodied air +It is noon and DoughBoy, the +steward, thrusting his pale loafofbread face from the cabinscuttle, +announces dinner to his lord and master who, sitting in the lee +quarterboat, has just been taking an observation of the sun and is now +mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallionshaped tablet, +reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his +complete inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not +heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he +swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, +Dinner, Mr. Starbuck, disappears into the cabin. When the last echo of his +sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to +suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a +few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, +with some touch of pleasantness, Dinner, Mr. Stubb, and descends the +scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging +awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it be all +right with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with +a rapid Dinner, Mr. Flask, follows after his predecessors. But the third +emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarterdeck, seems to feel +relieved from some curious restraint for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks +in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp +but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head and +then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a +shelf, he goes down rollicking, so far at least as he remains visible from +the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. +But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face +altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's +presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. It is not the least +among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of seausages, +that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, +bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander yet, +ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary +dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not +to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the +table this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this +difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of +Babylon and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, +therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who +in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private +dinnertable of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of +individual influence for the time that man's royalty of state transcends +Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined +his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social +czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you +superadd the official supremacy of a shipmaster, then, by inference, you +will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sealife just mentioned. +Over his ivoryinlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sealion on the +white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs. In +his own proper turn, each officer waited to be served. They were as little +children before Ahab and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest +social arrogance. With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old +man's knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. I do not suppose that +for the world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest +observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No And when +reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, +Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the mate received his +meat as though receiving alms and cut it tenderly and a little started if, +perchance, the knife grazed against the plate and chewed it noiselessly +and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the Coronation +banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven +Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in +awful silence and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation only he +himself was dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a +sudden racket in the hold below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest +son, and little boy of this weary family party. His were the shinbones of +the saline beef his would have been the drumsticks. For Flask to have +presumed to help himself, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny +in the first degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never +more would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world +nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade him. And had Flask helped +himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as noticed it. Least of all, +did flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners of +the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny +complexion or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless +waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern +however it was, Flask, alas was a butterless man Another thing. Flask was +the last person down at the dinner, +and Flask is the first man up. Consider For hereby Flask's dinner was badly +jammed in point of time. Starbuck and Stubb both had the start of him and +yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who +is but a peg higher than Flask, happens to have but a small appetite, and +soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Flask must bestir +himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that day for it is +against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck. Therefore it was +that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the +dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be +otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve +his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought +Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer but, how I +wish I could fist a bit of oldfashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to +when I was before the mast. There's the fruits of promotion now there's the +vanity of glory there's the insanity of life Besides, if it were so that +any mere sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official +capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was +to go aft at dinnertime, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin skylight, +sitting silly and dumfoundered before awful Ahab. Now, Ahab and his three +mates formed what may be called the first table in the Pequod's cabin. After +their departure, taking place in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas +cloth was cleared, or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid +steward. And then the three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being +its residuary legatees. They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of the +high and mighty cabin. In strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint +and nameless invisible domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire +carefree license and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior +fellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the +sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with +such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined like lords they +filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices. Such +portentous +appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by +the previous repast, often the pale DoughBoy was fain to bring on a great +baron of saltjunk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were +not lively about it, if he did not go with a nimble hopskipandjump, then +Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his +back, harpoonwise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted +DoughBoy's memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a +great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out +the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous, +shuddering sort of little fellow, this breadfaced steward the progeny of a +bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And what with the standing spectacle of +the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical tumultuous visitations of these +three savages, DoughBoy's whole life was one continual lipquiver. +Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they +demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his little pantry +adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, +till all was over. It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against +Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indian's crosswise to them, +Daggoo seated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearseplumed +head to the low carlines at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the +low cabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a +ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to +say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small +mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, +and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank +deep of the abounding element of air and through his dilated nostrils +snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are +giants made or nourished. But Queequeg, he had a mortal, barbaric smack of +the lip in eating an ugly sound enough so much so, that the trembling +DoughBoy almost looked to see whether any marks of teeth lurked in his own +lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out for him to produce +himself, +that his bones might be picked, the simplewitted Steward all but shattered +the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the +palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, +for their lances and other weapons and with which whetstones, at dinner, +they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives that grating sound did not +at all tend to tranquillize poor DoughBoy. How could he forget that in his +Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some +murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas DoughBoy hard fares the white +waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, +but a buckler. in good time, though, to his great delight, the three +saltsea warriors would rise and depart to his credulous, fablemongering +ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish +scimetars in scabbards. But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and +nominally lived there still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, +they were scarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before +sleepingtime, when they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters. +In this one matter, Ahab seemed no exception to most American whale captains, +who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights the ship's cabin +belongs to them and that it is by courtesy alone that anybody else is, at +any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth, the mates and harpooneers +of the Pequod might more properly be said to have lived out of the cabin than +in it. For when they did enter it, it was something as a streetdoor enters a +house turning inwards for a moment, only to be turned out the next and, as +a permanent thing, residing in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby +in the cabin was no companionship socially, Ahab was inaccessible. Though +nominally included in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. +He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled +Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the +woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, +sucking his own paws so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, +shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its +gloom +It was during the more pleasant weather, +that in due rotation with the other seamen my first masthead came round. In +most American whalemen the mastheads are manned almost simultaneously with +the vessel's leaving her port even though she may have fifteen thousand +miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. and if, +after a three, four, or five years' voyage she is drawing nigh home with +anything empty in her say, an empty vial even then, her mastheads are kept +manned to the last and not till her skysailpoles sail in among the spires +of the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale +more. Now, as the business of standing mastheads, ashore or afloat, is a +very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I +take it, that the earliest standers of mastheads were the old Egyptians +because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their +progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have +intended to rear the loftiest masthead in all Asia, or Africa either yet +ere the final truck was put to it as that great stone mast of theirs may be +said to have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God's wrath therefore, +we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the +Egyptians were a nation of masthead standers, is an assertion based upon the +general belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for +astronomical purposes a theory singularly supported by the peculiar +stairlike formation of all four sides of those edifices whereby, with +prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to +mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars even as the lookouts of a +modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint +Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty +stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of +his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle in +him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless standerofmastheads who +was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet +but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post. +Of modern standersofmastheads we have but a lifeless set mere stone, +iron, and bronze men who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, +are still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering +any strange sight. There is Napoleon who, upon the top of the column of +Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air +careless, now, who rules the decks below whether Louis Philippe, Louis +Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on his +towering mainmast in Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars, his +column marks that point of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. +Admiral Nelson, also, on a capstan of gunmetal, stands his masthead in +Trafalgar Square and ever when most obscured by that London smoke, token is +yet given that a hidden hero is there for where there is smoke, must be +fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a +single hail from below, however madly invoked to befriend by their counsels +the distracted decks upon which they gaze however it may be surmised, that +their spirits penetrate through the thick haze of the future, and descry what +shoals and what rocks must be shunned. It may seem unwarrantable to couple in +any respect the masthead standers of the land with those of the sea but +that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed +Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed +tells us, that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were +regularly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected +lofty spars along the seacoast, to which the lookouts ascended by means of +nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a henhouse. A few years +ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand, who, upon +descrying the game, gave notice to the readymanned boats nigh the beach. But +this custom has now become obsolete turn we then to the one proper masthead, +that of a whaleship +at sea. The three mastheads are kept manned from sunrise to sunset the +seamen taking their regular turns as at the helm, and relieving each other +every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly +pleasant the masthead nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. +There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the +deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between +your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships +once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you +stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the +waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls the drowsy trade winds blow +everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic +whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you you hear no news read +no gazettes extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you +into unnecessary excitements you hear of no domestic afflictions bankrupt +securities fall of stocks are never troubled with the thought of what you +shall have for dinner for all your meals for three years and more are snugly +stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable. In one of those southern +whalemen, on a long three or four years' voyage, as often happens, the sum of +the various hours you spend at the masthead would amount to several entire +months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so +considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so +sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted +to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a +hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those +small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your +most usual point of perch is the head of the t' gallantmast, where you stand +upon two thin parallel sticks almost peculiar to whalemen called the t' +gallant crosstrees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about +as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure, in cold weather +you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watchcoat but +properly speaking the thickest watchcoat is no more of a house than the +unclad body for as the soul is glued inside +of its fleshly tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move +out of it, without running great risk of perishing like an ignorant pilgrim +crossing the snowy Alps in winter so a watchcoat is not so much of a house +as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a +shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you make a +convenient closet of your watchcoat. Concerning all this, it is much to be +deplored that the mastheads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with +those enviable little tents or pulpits, called crow'snests, in which the +lookouts of a Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of +the frozen seas. In the fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled A +Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally +for the rediscovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland in +this admirable volume, all standers of mastheads are furnished with a +charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented crow'snest +of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good craft. He called +it the Sleet's crow'snest, in honor of himself he being the original +inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and +holding that if we call our own children after our own names we fathers +being the original inventors and patentees, so likewise should we denominate +after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget. In shape, the Sleet's +crow'snest is something like a large tierce or pipe it is open above, +however, where it is furnished with a movable sidescreen to keep to windward +of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you +ascend into it through a little traphatch in the bottom. On the after side, +or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker +underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, +in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical +conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his masthead in this crow's +nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him also fixed in +the rack, together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping +off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters for +you cannot successfully shoot at them from +the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them is +a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet +to describe, as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of his +crow'snest but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he +treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow'snest, +with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the +errors resulting from what is called the local attraction of all binnacle +magnets an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the +ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so +many brokendown blacksmiths among her crew I say, that though the Captain +is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned binnacle +deviations, azimuth compass observations, and approximate errors, he +knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those +profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards +that well replenished little casebottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of +his crow's nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I +greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain yet +I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that casebottle, +seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with +mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there +in that bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole. But if we +Southern whalefishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his +Greenlandmen were yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the +widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers +mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, +resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom +I might find there then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy +leg over the topsail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, +and so at last mount to my ultimate destination. Let me make a clean breast +of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem +of the universe revolving in me, how could Ibeing left completely to myself +at such a thoughtengendering altitude, how could I but lightly hold my +obligations to observe all whaleships' standing orders, Keep your weather +eye open, and sing out every time. And let me in this place movingly admonish +you, ye shipowners of Nantucket Beware of enlisting in your vigilant +fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye given to unseasonable +meditativeness and who offers to ship with the phaedon instead of Bowditch +in his head. Beware of such an one, I say your whales must be seen before +they can be killed and this sunkeneyed young Platonist will tow you ten +wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor +are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whalefishery +furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absentminded young +men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar +and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the +masthead of some luckless disappointed whaleship, and in moody phrase +ejaculates Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll Ten thousand +blubberhunters sweep over thee in vain. Very often do the captains of such +ships take those absentminded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them +with not feeling sufficient interest in the voyage halfhinting that they +are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret +souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain those +young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect they are +shortsighted what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left +their operaglasses at home. Why, thou monkey, said a harpooneer to one of +these lads, we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not +raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up +here. Perhaps they were or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in +the far horizon but lulled into such an opiumlike listlessness of vacant, +unconscious reverie is this absentminded youth by the blending cadence of +waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity takes the mystic +ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, +pervading mankind and nature and every strange, halfseen, gliding, +beautiful thing that eludes him every dimlydiscovered, uprising fin of some +undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that +only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted +mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came becomes diffused through time +and space like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a +part of every shore the round globe over. There is no life in thee, now, +except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship by her, borrowed +from the sea by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this +sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch slip your hold +at all and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you +hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one +halfthrottled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer +sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists + enter Ahab Then, all. It +was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly +after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabingangway to the +deck. There most seacaptains usually walk at that hour, as country +gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the garden. Soon his +steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon +planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over dented, like +geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, +too, upon that ribbed +and dented brow there also, you would see still stranger footprints the +footprints of his one unsleeping, everpacing thought. But on the occasion in +question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning +left a deeper mark. And, so full of his thought was Ahab, that at every +uniform turn that he made, now at the mainmast and now at the binnacle, you +could almost see that thought turn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he +paced so completely possessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the +inward mould of every outer movement. D'ye mark him, Flask? whispered Stubb +the chick that's in him pecks the shell. T'will soon be out. The hours +wore on Ahab now shut up within his cabin anon, pacing the deck, with the +same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect. It drew near the close of day. +Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into +the augerhole there, and with one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck +to send everybody aft. Sir said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or +never given on shipboard except in some extraordinary case. Send everybody +aft, repeated Ahab. Mastheads, there come down When the entire ship's +company were assembled, and with curious and not wholly unapprehensive faces, +were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike the weather horizon when a storm is +coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing over the bulwarks, and then darting +his eyes among the crew, started from his standpoint and as though not a +soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and +halfslouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering +among the men till Stubb cautiously whispered to Flask, that Ahab must have +summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat. But this +did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried What do ye do when ye see +a whale, men? Sing out for him was the impulsive rejoinder from a score +of clubbed voices. +Good cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones observing the hearty +animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them. +And what do ye next, men? Lower away, and after him And what tune is +it ye pull to, men? A dead whale or a stove boat More and more strangely +and fiercely glad and approving, grew the countenance of the old man at every +shout while the mariners began to gaze curiously at each other, as if +marvelling how it was that they themselves became so excited at such +seemingly purposeless questions. But, they were all eagerness again, as Ahab, +now halfrevolving in his pivothole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, +and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus All ye +mastheaders have before now heard me give orders about a white whale. Look +ye d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold? holding up a broad bright coin to +the sun it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D'ye see it? Mr. Starbuck, +hand me yon topmaul. While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without +speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, +as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly +humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate +that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him. +Receiving the topmaul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the mainmast with +the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the other, and with +a high raised voice exclaiming Whosoever of ye raises me a whiteheaded +whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw whosoever of ye raises me that +whiteheaded whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke look +ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold +ounce, my boys Huzza huzza cried the seamen, as with swinging +tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast. It's a +white whale, I say, resumed Ahab, as he threw down +the topmaul a white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men look sharp for +white water if ye see but a bubble, sing out. All this while Tashtego, +Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with even more intense interest and +surprise than the rest, and at the mention of the wrinkled brow and crooked +jaw they had started as if each was separately touched by some specific +recollection. Captain Ahab, said Tashtego, that white whale must be the +same that some call Moby Dick. Moby Dick? shouted Ahab. Do ye know the +white whale then, Tash? Does he fantail a little curious, sir, before he +goes down? said the GayHeader deliberately. And has he a curious spout, +too, said Daggoo, very bushy, even for a parmacetty, and mighty quick, +Captain Ahab? And he have one, two, tree oh good many iron in him hide, +too, Captain, cried Queequeg disjointedly, all twisketee betwisk, like +himhim faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as +though uncorking a bottle like himhim Corkscrew cried Ahab, aye, +Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him aye, Daggoo, his +spout is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of our +Nantucket wool after the great annual sheepshearing aye, Tashtego, and he +fantails like a split jib in a squall. Death and devils men, it is Moby +Dick ye have seen Moby Dick Moby Dick Captain Ahab, said Starbuck, who, +with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing +surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained +all the wonder. Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dickbut it was not Moby +Dick that took off thy leg? Who told thee that? cried Ahab then pausing, +Aye, Starbuck aye, my hearties all round it was Moby Dick that dismasted +me Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye, +he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heartstricken +moose Aye, aye it was that accursed white whale that razeed me made a +poor pegging +lubber of me for ever and a day Then tossing both arms, with measureless +imprecations he shouted out Aye, aye and I'll chase him round Good Hope, +and round the horn, and round the norway maelstrom, and round perdition's +flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men to +chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, +till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye +splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave. Aye, aye shouted the +harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the excited old man A sharp eye +for the White Whale a sharp lance for Moby Dick God bless ye, he seemed +to half sob and half shout. God bless ye, men. Steward go draw the great +measure of grog. But what's this long face about, Mr. Starbuck wilt thou not +chase the white whale? art not game for Moby Dick? I am game for his +crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain Ahab, if it fairly comes +in the way of the business we follow but I came here to hunt whales, not my +commander's vengeance. How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even +if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our +Nantucket market. Nantucket market Hoot But come closer, Starbuck thou +requirest a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and the +accountants have computed their great countinghouse the globe, by girdling +it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch then, let me tell thee, +that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here He smites his chest, +whispered Stubb, what's that for? methinks it rings most vast, but hollow. +Vengeance on a dumb brute cried Starbuck, that simply smote thee from +blindest instinct Madness To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, +seems blasphemous. Hark ye yet again, the little lower layer. All visible +objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event in the living +act, the undoubted deed there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts +forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man +will strike, strike through +the mask How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the +wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I +think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me he heaps me I +see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. +That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate and be the white whale agent, +or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not +to me of blasphemy, man I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the +sun do that, then could I do the other since there is ever a sort of fair +play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, +is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off +thine eye more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare So, +so thou reddenest and palest my heat has melted thee to angerglow. But +look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are +men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. +Let it go. Look see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn living, +breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards the unrecking and +unworshipping things, that live and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid +life they feel The crew, man, the crew Are they not one and all with Ahab, +in this matter of the whale? See Stubb he laughs See yonder Chilian he +snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost +sapling cannot, Starbuck And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike +a fin no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor +hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, +when every foremasthand has clutched a whetstone? Ah constrainings seize +thee I see the billow lifts thee Speak, but speak Aye, aye thy +silence, then, that voices thee. aside something shot from my dilated +nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine cannot +oppose me now, without rebellion. God keep me keep us all murmured +Starbuck, lowly. But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the +mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation nor yet the low laugh +from the hold nor yet the presaging vibrations of +the winds in the cordage nor yet the hollow flap of the sails against the +masts, as for a moment their hearts sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast +eyes lighted up with the stubbornness of life the subterranean laugh died +away the winds blew on the sails filled out the ship heaved and rolled as +before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings why stay ye not when ye come? But +rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows Yet not so much +predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things within. +For with little external to constrain us, the innermost necessities in our +being, these still drive us on. The measure the measure cried Ahab. +Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he ordered +them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the capstan, +with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at his side +with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company formed a circle round +the group he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his crew. +But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves +meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of +the bison but, alas only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian. +Drink and pass he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest +seaman. The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round Short draughts +long swallows, men 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so it goes round +excellently. It spiralizes in ye forks out at the serpentsnapping eye. +well done almost drained. That way it went, this way it comes. Hand it me +here's a hollow Men, ye seem the years so brimming life is gulped and +gone. Steward, refill Attend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round +this capstan and ye mates, flank me with your lances and ye harpooneers, +stand there with your irons and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may +in some sort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men, +you will yet see that Ha boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner. +Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, wer't not thou St. +Vitus' imp away, thou ague Advance, ye mates Cross your lances full +before me. Well +done Let me touch the axis. So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the +three level, radiating lances at their crossed centre while so doing, +suddenly and nervously twitched them meanwhile, glancing intently from +Starbuck to Stubb from Stubb to Flask. It seemed as though, by some +nameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the same +fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own magnetic life. +The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained, and mystic aspect. +Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him the honest eye of Starbuck fell +downright. In vain cried Ahab but, maybe, 'tis well. For did ye three +but once take the fullforced shock, then mine own electric thing, that had +perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye dead. +Perchance ye need it not. Down lances And now, ye mates, I do appoint ye +three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there yon three most honorable +gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when +the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, my +sweet cardinals your own condescension, that shall bend ye to it. I do not +order ye ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers +Silently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the detached +iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him. +Stab me not with that keen steel Cant them cant them over know ye not +the goblet end? Turn up the socket So, so now, ye cupbearers, advance. +The irons take them hold them while I fill Forthwith, slowly going from +one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters +from the pewter. Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous +chalices Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble +league. Ha Starbuck but the deed is done Yon ratifying sun now waits to +sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers drink and swear, ye men that man the +deathful whaleboat's bow Death to Moby Dick God hunt us all, if we do not +hunt Moby Dick to his death The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted +and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits +were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and +shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds +among the frantic crew when, waving his free hand to them, they all +dispersed and Ahab retired within his cabin. +The cabin by the stern windows +Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out. I leave a white and turbid wake +pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong +swell to whelm my track let them but first I pass. Yonder, by the +everbrimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow +plumbs the blue. The diver sun slow dived from noon, goes down my soul +mounts up she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy +that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem +i, the wearer, see not its far flashings but darkly feel that i wear that, +that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron that I knownot gold. 'Tis split, too +that I feel the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against +the solid metal aye, steel skull, mine the sort that needs no helmet in the +most brainbattering fight Dry heat upon my brow? Oh time was, when as the +sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely +light, it lights not me all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er +enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power +damned, most subtly and most malignantly damned in the midst of Paradise +Good night good night waving his hand, he moves from the window. +'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at +the least but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and +they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many anthills of powder, they all +stand before me and I their match. Oh, hard that to fire others, the +match itself must needs be wasting What I've dared, I've willed and what +I've willed, I'll do They think me mad Starbuck does but I'm demoniac, I +am madness maddened That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend +itself The prophecy was that I should be dismembered andAye I lost this +leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the +prophet and the fulfiller one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever +were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricketplayers, ye pugilists, ye deaf +Burkes and blinded Bendigoes I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies, +Take some one of your own size don't pommel me No, ye've knocked me +down, and I am up again but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind +your cotton bags I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments +to ye come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, +else ye swerve yourselves man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my +fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. +Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under +torrents' beds, unerringly I rush Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle +to the iron way +By the Mainmast Starbuck leaning +against it. My soul is more than matched she's overmanned and by a +madman Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field +But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me I think I see +his impious end but feel that +I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to +him tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man Who's +over him, he cries aye, he would be a democrat to all above look, how he +lords it over all below Oh I plainly see my miserable office, to obey, +rebelling and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity For in his eyes I read +some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and +tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the +small goldfish has its glassy globe. His heaveninsulting purpose, God may +wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole clock's +run down my heart the allcontrolling weight, I have no key to lift again. +[ A burst of revelry from the forecastle.] Oh, God to sail with such a +heathen crew that have small touch of human mothers in them Whelped +somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white whale is their demigorgon. Hark +the infernal orgies that revelry is forward mark the unfaltering silence +aft Methinks it pictures life. Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on +the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where +he broods within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the +wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills +me through Peace ye revellers, and set the watch Oh, life 'tis in an +hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, as wild, +untutored things are forced to feed Oh, life 'tis now that I do feel the +latent horror in thee but 'tis not me that horror's out of me and with +the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, +phantom futures Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences + Stubb solus, and +mending a brace. Ha ha ha ha hem clear my throat I've been +thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence. Why +so? Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer and +come what will, one comfort's always left that unfailing comfort is, it's +all predestinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck but to my poor +eye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure the +old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it had had the gift, +might readily have prophesied it for when I clapped my eye upon his skull I +saw it. Well, Stubb, wise Stubb that's my title well, Stubb, what of it, +Stubb? Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what +it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your +horribles I feel funny. Fa, la lirra, skirra What's my juicy little pear +at home doing now? Crying its eyes out? Giving a party to the last arrived +harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a frigate's pennant, and so am Ifa, la +lirra, skirra Oh We'll drink tonight with hearts as light, To love, as +gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's brim, And break on the +lips while meeting. a brave stave that who calls? mr. starbuck? Aye, aye, +sir Aside he's my superior, he has his too, if I'm not mistaken. Aye, +aye, sir, just through with this job coming. +Upon waking next morning about daylight, +I found Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate +manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of +patchwork, full of odd little particolored squares and triangles and this +arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a +figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade owing I suppose to +his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt +sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times this same arm of his, I say, +looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed, +partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it +from the quilt, they so blended their hues together and it was only by the +sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me. +My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, +I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me whether it +was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was +this. I had been cutting up some caper or other I think it was trying to +crawl up the chimney, as i had seen a little sweep do a few days previous +and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or +sending me to bed supperless, my mother dragged me by the legs out of the +chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the +afternoon of the st June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I +felt dreadfully. But there was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my +little room in the third floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as +to kill time, and with a bitter sigh got between the sheets. I lay there +dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse before I could hope +for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in +bed the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too +the sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the +streets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse and +worse at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my stockinged +feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet, +beseeching her as a particular favor to give me a good slippering for my +misbehavior anything indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an +unendurable length of time. But she was the best and most conscientious of +stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For several hours I lay there +broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than I have ever done since, even +from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last I must have fallen into a +troubled nightmare of a doze and slowly waking from it half steeped in +dreams I opened my eyes, and the before sunlit room was now wrapped in outer +darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame nothing was +to be seen, and nothing was to be heard but a supernatural hand seemed +placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, +unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed +closely seated by my bedside. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay +there, frozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand +yet ever thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid +spell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away +from me but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and +for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts +to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle myself with +it. Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the +supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to those +which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan arm thrown round +me. But at length all the past night's events soberly recurred, one by one, +in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the comical predicament. For +though I tried to move his arm unlock his bridegroom clasp yet, sleeping +as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part +us twain. I now strove to rouse him +Queequeg but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my neck +feeling as if it were in a horsecollar and suddenly felt a slight scratch. +Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the +savage's side, as if it were a hatchetfaced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, +thought I abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and +a tomahawk Queequeg in the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake At length, +by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the +unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, +I succeeded in extracting a grunt and presently, he drew back his arm, +shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat +up in bed, stiff as a pikestaff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if +he did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim +consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him. +Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings now, and +bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at last, his mind +seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow, and he became, as it +were, reconciled to the fact he jumped out upon the floor, and by certain +signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he would +dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole +apartment to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a +very civilized overture but, the truth is, these savages have an innate +sense of delicacy, say what you will it is marvellous how essentially +polite they are. I pay this particular compliment to Queequeg, because he +treated me with so much civility and consideration, while I was guilty of +great rudeness staring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette +motions for the time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. +Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don't see every day, he and his ways +were well worth unusual regarding. He commenced dressing at top by donning his +beaver hat, a very tall one, by the by, and then still minus his trowsers +he hunted up his boots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot +tell, but his next movement was to crush himself boots in hand, and hat on +under the bed when, from sundry violent +gaspings and strainings, I inferred he was hard at work booting himself +though by no law of propriety that I ever heard of, is any man required to be +private when putting on his boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature +in the transition state neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just +enough civilized to show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible +manner. his education was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he +had not been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have +troubled himself with boots at all but then, if he had not been still a +savage, he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. +At last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his +eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not being much +accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide ones probably not +made to order either rather pinched and tormented him at the first go off of +a bitter cold morning. Seeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, +and that the street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain +view into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that +Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on I +begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and +particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He complied, +and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the morning any +Christian would have washed his face but Queequeg, to my amazement, +contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his chest, arms, and +hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on +the washstand centretable, dipped it into water and commenced lathering his +face. I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he +takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden stock, +unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and striding up to the +bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather +harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers's best +cutlery with a vengeance. Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation +when I came to know of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how +exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept. +the rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of the +room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his harpoon +like a marshal's baton. + Foresail +rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning, and +lying in various attitudes, all singing in chorus. Farewell and +adieu to you, Spanish ladies Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain Our +captain's commanded. st Nantucket Sailor Oh, boys, don't be sentimental +it's bad for the digestion Take a tonic, follow me Sings, and all +follow. Our captain stood upon the deck, A spyglass in his hand, A +viewing of those gallant whales That blew at every strand. Oh, your tubs in +your boats, my boys, And by your braces stand, And we'll have one of those +fine whales, Hand, boys, over hand So, be cheery, my lads may your hearts +never fail While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale Mate's Voice +from the QuarterDeck Eight bells there, forward nd Nantucket Sailor +Avast the chorus Eight bells there d'ye hear, bellboy? Strike the bell +eight, thou Pip thou blackling and let me call the watch. I've the sort +of mouth for that the hogshead mouth. So, so, thrusts his head down the +scuttle, Starboleens, ahoy Eight bells there below Tumble +up Dutch Sailor Grand snoozing tonight, maty fat night for that. I mark +this in our old Mogul's wine it's quite as deadening to some as +filliping to others. We sing they sleep aye, lie down there, like +groundtier butts. At 'em again There, take this copperpump, and hail +'em through it. Tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell 'em it's +the resurrection they must kiss their last, and come to judgment. That's +the way that's it thy throat ain't spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter. +French Sailor Hist, boys let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchor +in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand by all +legs Pip little Pip hurrah with your tambourine Pip Sulky and +sleepy. Don't know where it is. French Sailor Beat thy belly, then, and +wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I say merry's the word hurrah Damn me, won't +you dance? Form, now, Indianfile, and gallop into the doubleshuffle? +Throw yourselves Legs Legs Iceland Sailor I don't like your floor, +maty it's too springy to my taste. I'm used to icefloors. I'm sorry to +throw cold water on the subject but excuse me. Maltese Sailor Me too +where's your girls? Who but a fool would take his left hand by his right, +and say to himself, how d'ye do? Partners I must have partners Sicilian +Sailor Aye girls and a green then I'll hop with ye yea, turn +grasshopper LongIsland Sailor Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more +of us. Hoe corn when you may, I say. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah here +comes the music now for it Azore Sailor Ascending, and pitching the +tambourine up the scuttle. +Here you are, Pip and there's the windlassbitts up you mount Now, boys + The half of them dance to the tambourine some go below some +sleep or lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths aplenty. Azore +Sailor Dancing. Go it, Pip Bang it, bellboy Rig it, dig it, stig +it, quig it, bellboy Make fireflies break the jinglers Pip +Jinglers, you say? there goes another, dropped off I pound it so. China +Sailor Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away make a pagoda of thyself. +French Sailor Merrymad Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it +split jibs tear yourselves Tashtego Quietly smoking. That's a white +man he calls that fun humph I save my sweat. Old Manx Sailor I wonder +whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are dancing over. I'll +dance over your grave, I will that's the bitterest threat of your +nightwomen, that beat headwinds round corners. O Christ to think of the +green navies and the greenskulled crews Well, well belike the whole +world's a ball, as you scholars have it and so 'tis right to make one +ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you're young I was once. d Nantucket +Sailor Spell oh whew this is worse than pulling after whales in a calm +give us a whiff, Tash. They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. +Meantime the sky darkens the wind rises. +Lascar Sailor By Brahma boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The skyborn, +hightide Ganges turned to wind Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva +Maltese Sailor Reclining and shaking his cap. It's the waves the +snow's caps turn to jig it now. They'll shake their tassels soon. Now would +all the waves were women, then I'd go drown, and chassee with them evermore +There's naught so sweet on earth heaven may not match it as those swift +glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the overarboring arms hide +such ripe, bursting grapes. Sicilian Sailor Reclining. Tell me not of +it Hark ye, lad fleet interlacings of the limbs lithe swayings coyings +flutterings lip heart hip all graze unceasing touch and go not +taste, observe ye, else come satiety. Eh, Pagan? Nudging. Tahitan +Sailor Reclining on a mat. Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls +the HeevaHeeva Ah low veiled, high palmed Tahiti I still rest me on thy +mat, but the soft soil has slid I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat +green the first day i brought ye thence now worn and wilted quite. Ah me +not thou nor I can bear the change How then, if so be transplanted to yon +sky? Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee's peak of spears, when they +leap down the crags and drown the villages? The blast the blast Up, +spine, and meet it Leaps to his feet. Portuguese Sailor How the sea +rolls swashing 'gainst the side Stand by for reefing, hearties the winds +are just crossing swords, pellmell they'll go lunging presently. Danish +Sailor Crack, crack, old ship so long as thou crackest, thou holdest Well +done The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He's no more +afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with +stormlashed guns, on which the seasalt cakes th Nantucket Sailor He has +his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell him he must always kill a +squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a pistol fire your ship +right into it English Sailor Blood but that old man's a grand old cove +We are the lads to hunt him up his whale All Aye aye Old Manx Sailor +How the three pines shake Pines are the hardest sort of tree to live when +shifted to any other soil, and here there's none but the crew's cursed clay. +Steady, helmsman steady. This is the sort of weather when brave hearts snap +ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our captain has his birthmark look +yonder, boys, there's another in the sky luridlike, ye see, all else pitch +black. Daggoo What of that? Who's afraid of black's afraid of me I'm +quarried out of it Spanish Sailor Aside. He wants to bully, ah the +old grudge makes me touchy. Advancing. Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the +undeniable dark side of mankind devilish dark at that. No offence. Daggoo + grimly None. St. Jago's Sailor That Spaniard's mad or drunk. But that +can't be, or else in his one case our old Mogul's firewaters are somewhat +long in working. th Nantucket Sailor What's that I sawlightning? Yes. +Spanish Sailor No Daggoo showing his teeth. Daggoo springing Swallow +thine, mannikin White skin, white liver Spanish Sailor meeting him +Knife thee heartily big frame, small spirit All A row a row a row +Tashtego with a whiff A row a'low, and a row aloft Gods and men both +brawlers Humph Belfast Sailor A row arrah a row The Virgin be blessed, +a row Plunge in with ye English Sailor Fair play Snatch the Spaniard's +knife A ring, a ring Old Manx Sailor Ready formed. There the ringed +horizon. In that ring Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work No? Why +then, God, mad'st thou the ring? Mate's Voice from the Quarter Deck Hands by +the halyards in topgallant sails Stand by to reef topsails All The +squall the squall jump, my jollies They scatter. Pip shrinking +under the windlass Jollies? Lord help such jollies Crish, crash there +goes the jibstay Blangwhang God Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal +yard It's worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of the year +Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now? But there they go, all cursing, and +here I don't. Fine prospects to 'em they're on the road to heaven. Hold on +hard Jimmini, what a squall But those chaps there are worse yet they are +your white squalls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr +shirr Here have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale +shirr shirr but spoken of once and only this evening it makes me +jingle all over like my tambourine that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in +to hunt him Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, +have mercy on this small black boy down here preserve him from all men that +have no bowels to feel fear +I, Ishmael, was one of that crew my shouts +had gone up with the rest my oath had been welded with theirs and +stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the +dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me Ahab's +quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that +murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of +violence and revenge. For some time past, though at intervals only, the +unaccompanied, secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly +frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of his +existence only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen him while +the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given battle to him, was +small indeed. For, owing to the large number of whalecruisers the +disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire watery circumference, +many of them adventurously pushing their quest along solitary latitudes, so +as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or more on a stretch, to encounter +a single newstelling sail of any sort the inordinate length of each +separate voyage the irregularity of the times of sailing from home all +these, with other circumstances, direct and indirect, long obstructed +the spread through the whole worldwide whalingfleet of the special +individualizing tidings concerning Moby Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, +that several vessels reported to have encountered, at such or such a time, or +on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and +malignity, which whale, after doing great mischief to his assailants, had +completely escaped them to some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I +say, that the whale in question must have been no other than moby Dick. Yet +as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not +unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the monster +attacked therefore it was, that those who by accident ignorantly gave +battle to Moby Dick such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were content +to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to the perils of +the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause. In that way, +mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and the whale had hitherto been +popularly regarded. And as for those who, previously hearing of the White +Whale, by chance caught sight of him in the beginning of the thing they had +every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, as for +any other whale of that species. But at length, such calamities did ensue in +these assaults not restricted to sprained wrists and ancles, broken limbs, +or devouring amputations but fatal to the last degree of fatality those +repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon +Moby Dick those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave +hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come. Nor did +wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify the +true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do fabulous rumors +naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising terrible events, as the +smitten tree gives birth to its fungi but, in maritime life, far more than +in that of terra firma, wild rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate +reality for them to cling to. And as the sea surpasses the land in this +matter, so the whale fishery surpasses every other sort of maritime life, in +the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the +rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen as a body +unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors +but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into +contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea face to face +they not only eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to +them. Alone, in such remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand +miles, and passed a thousand shores, you would not come to any chiselled +hearthstone, or aught hospitable beneath that part of the sun in such +latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman +is wrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many a +mighty birth. No wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere +transit over the widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale +did in the end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and +halfformed foetal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which eventually +invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from anything that visibly +appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally strike, that few +who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White Whale, few of those +hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his jaw. But there were still +other and more vital practical influences at work. Not even at the present +day has the original prestige of the Sperm Whale, as fearfully distinguished +from all other species of the leviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen +as a body. There are those this day among them, who, though intelligent and +courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would +perhaps either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or timidity, +decline a contest with the Sperm Whale at any rate, there are plenty of +whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing under the +American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but +whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster +primitively pursued in the North seated on their hatches, these men will +hearken with a childish fireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange +tales of +Southern whaling. Nor is the preeminent tremendousness of the great Sperm +Whale anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which +stem him. And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former +legendary times thrown its shadow before it we find some book naturalists +Olassen and Povelson declaring the Sperm Whale not only to be a +consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to be so incredibly +ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood. Nor even down to so +late a time as Cuvier's, were these or almost similar impressions effaced. +For in his Natural History, the Baron himself affirms that at sight of the +Sperm Whale, all fish sharks included are struck with the most lively +terrors, and often in the precipitancy of their flight dash themselves +against the rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous death. And +however the general experiences in the fishery may amend such reports as +these yet in their full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty item of +Povelson, the superstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of their +vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters. So that overawed by the rumors +and portents concerning him, not a few of the fishermen recalled, in reference +to Moby Dick, the earlier days of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it was +oftentimes hard to induce long practised Right whalemen to embark in the +perils of this new and daring warfare such men protesting that although +other leviathans might be hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at +such an apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt +it, would be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity. on this head, there +are some remarkable documents that may be consulted. Nevertheless, some there +were, who even in the face of these things were ready to give chase to Moby +Dick and a still greater number who, chancing only to hear of him distantly +and vaguely, without the specific details of any certain calamity, and +without superstitious accompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee +from the battle if offered. One of the wild suggestings referred to, as at +last coming to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the +superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was +ubiquitous that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at +one and the same instant of time. Nor, credulous as such minds must have been, +was this conceit altogether without some faint show of superstitious +probability. For as the secrets of the currents in the seas have never yet +been divulged, even to the most erudite research so the hidden ways of the +Sperm Whale when beneath the surface remain, in great part, unaccountable to +his pursuers and from time to time have originated the most curious and +contradictory speculations regarding them, especially concerning the mystic +modes whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he transports himself with +such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points. It is a thing well +known to both American and English whaleships, and as well a thing placed +upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby, that some whales have been +captured far north in the Pacific, in whose bodies have been found the barbs +of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas. Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in +some of these instances it has been declared that the interval of time between +the two assaults could not have exceeded very many days. Hence, by inference, +it has been believed by some whalemen, that the nor' west passage, so long a +problem to man, was never a problem to the whale. So that here, in the real +living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old times of the +inland Strello mountain in Portugal near whose top there was said to be a +lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface and that still +more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse whose waters +were believed to have come from the Holy Land by an underground passage +these fabulous narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the +whaleman. Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these and +knowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped +alive it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go +still further in their superstitions declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, +but immortal for immortality is but ubiquity in time that though groves +of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed +or if indeed he should ever be made to spout thick +blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception for again in +unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his unsullied jet would once +more be seen. But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was +enough in the earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to +strike the imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his +uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales, but, as +was elsewhere thrown out a peculiar snowwhite wrinkled forehead, and a +high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent features the tokens +whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at +a long distance, to those who knew him. The rest of his body was so streaked, +and spotted, and marbled with the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had +gained his distinctive appellation of the white Whale a name, indeed, +literally justified by his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon +through a dark blue sea, leaving a milkyway wake of creamy foam, all +spangled with golden gleamings. Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his +remarkable hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the +whale with natural terror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, +according to specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his +assaults. More than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than +perhaps aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers, with +every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known to turn +around suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their boats to +splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship. Already several +fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar disasters, however +little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the fishery yet, in most +instances, such seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity, +that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as +having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent. Judge, then, to what pitches +of inflamed, distracted fury the +minds of his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of +chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the +white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene, exasperating +sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal. His three boats stove +around him, and oars and men both whirling in the eddies one captain, +seizing the lineknife from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, as an +Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach +the fathomdeep life of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was, +that suddenly sweeping his sickleshaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had +reaped away ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned +Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming +malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost +fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, +all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to +identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and +spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac +incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in +them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That +intangible malignity which has been from the beginning to whose dominion +even the modern Christians ascribe onehalf of the worlds which the ancient +Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil Ahab did not fall down +and worship it like them but deliriously transferring its idea to the +abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that +most maddens and torments all that stirs up the lees of things all truth +with malice in it all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain all the +subtle demonisms of life and thought all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly +personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the +whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole +race from Adam down and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst +his hot heart's shell upon it. +It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the +precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster, +knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal +animosity and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but +felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this +collision forced to turn towards home, and for long months of days and weeks, +ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid +winter that dreary, howling Patagonian Cape then it was, that his torn body +and gashed soul bled into one another and so interfusing, made him mad. +That it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the +final monomania seized him, seems all but certain from the fact that, at +intervals during the passage, he was a raving lunatic and, though unlimbed +of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was +moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him +fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a straitjacket, +he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when running into more +sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated across +the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's delirium seemed +left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his dark +den into the blessed light and air even then, when he bore that firm, +collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once again and +his mates thanked God the direful madness was now gone even then, Ahab, in +his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most +feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured +into some still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacy subsided not, but +deepeningly contracted like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman +flows narrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his +narrowflowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left +behind so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect +had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument. If +such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy +stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentred +cannon upon its own mad mark so that far from having lost his strength, +Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever +he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object. This is much +yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But vain to +popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding far down from +within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand +however grand and wonderful, now quit it and take your way, ye nobler, +sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes where far beneath the +fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful +essence sits in bearded state an antique buried beneath antiquities, and +throned on torsoes So with a broken throne, the great gods mock that +captive king so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his frozen +brow the piled entablatures of ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder +souls question that proud, sad king A family likeness aye, he did beget +ye, ye young exiled royalties and from your grim sire only will the old +Statesecret come. Now, in his heart, Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely +all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to +kill, or change, or shun the fact he likewise knew that to mankind he did +now long dissemble in some sort, did still. But that thing of his +dissembling was only subject to his perceptibility, not to his will +determinate. Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling, that +when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer thought him +otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the +terrible casualty which had overtaken him. The report of his undeniable +delirium at sea was likewise popularly ascribed to a kindred cause. And so +too, all the added moodiness which always afterwards, to the very day of +sailing in the pequod on the present voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is +it so very unlikely, that far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling +voyage, on account of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that +prudent isle were inclined to +harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons he was all the better +qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness as the +bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed, +unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea such an one, could he be found, +would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most +appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally +incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to +cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, +certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and +keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the +one only and allengrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of +his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him +then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship +from such a fiendish man They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit +to be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an audacious, +immitigable, and supernatural revenge. Here, then, was this greyheaded, +ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job's whale round the world, at the +head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and +cannibals morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue +or rightmindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference +and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a +crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal +fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so +aboundingly responded to the old man's ire by what evil magic their souls +were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs the White Whale +as much their insufferable foe as his how all this came to be what the +White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in +some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon of +the seas of life, all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael +can go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell +whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who +does not feel the +irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventyfour can stand still? +For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the place but +while yet all arush to encounter the whale, could see naught in that brute +but the deadliest ill. +What the white whale was to +Ahab, has been hinted what, at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid. +Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could +not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there was another +thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by +its intensity completely overpowered all the rest and yet so mystical and +well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a +comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things +appalled me. But how can I hope to explain myself here and yet, in some +dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be +naught. Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances +beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, +japonicas, and pearls and though various nations have in some way recognised +a certain royal preeminence in this hue even the barbaric, grand old kings +of Pegu placing the title Lord of the White Elephants above all their other +magniloquent ascriptions of dominion and the modern kings of Siam unfurling +the same snowwhite quadruped in the royal standard and the Hanoverian flag +bearing the one figure of a snowwhite charger and the great Austrian +Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial color +the same imperial hue and though this preeminence in it applies to the +human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky +tribe and though, besides all this, whiteness has been +even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked +a joyful day and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this +same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things the innocence of +brides, the benignity of age though among the Red Men of America the giving +of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor though in many +climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, +and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milkwhite +steeds though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it +has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power by the Persian +fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar +and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself made incarnate in a +snowwhite bull and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice +of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, +that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send +to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity and though +directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name +of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the +cassock and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is +specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord though in +the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the +fourandtwenty elders stand clothed in white before the great white throne, +and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool yet for all these +accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, +there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which +strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood. +This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when +divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible +in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white +bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics what but their smooth, +flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly +whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even +more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that +not the fiercefanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the +whiteshrouded bear or shark. Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those +clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom +sails in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell but God's +great, unflattering laureate, Nature. +Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the White +Steed of the Prairies a magnificent milkwhite charger, largeeyed, +smallheaded, bluffchested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in +his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of +wild horses, whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky +Mountains and the Alleghanies. At their flaming head he westward trooped it +like that chosen star which every evening leads on the hosts of light. The +flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him +with housings more resplendent than gold and silverbeaters could have +furnished him. A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, +western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the +glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a god, +bluffbowed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid his aides +and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over +the plains, like an Ohio or whether with his circumambient subjects browsing +all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed them with +warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness in whatever aspect he +presented himself, always to the bravest Indians he was the object of +trembling reverence and awe. Nor can it be questioned from what stands on +legendary record of +this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so +clothed him with divineness and that this divineness had that in it which, +though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless +terror. But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that +accessory and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and Albatross. +What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks the +eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin It is that +whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he bears. The +Albino is as well made as other men has no substantive deformity and yet +this mere aspect of allpervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous +than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be so? Nor, in quite other +aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but not the less malicious +agencies, fail to enlist among her forces this crowning attribute of the +terrible. From its snowy aspect, the gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas +has been denominated the White Squall. Nor, in some historic instances, has +the art of human malice omitted so potent an auxiliary. How wildly it +heightens the effect of that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy +symbol of their faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their +bailiff in the marketplace Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary +experience of all mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this +hue. It cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of +the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there +as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of consternation in the +other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And from that pallor of the dead, +we borrow the expressive hue of the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even +in our superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our +phantoms all ghosts rising in a milkwhite fog Yea, while these terrors +seize us, let us add, that even the king of terrors, when personified by the +evangelist, rides on his pallid horse. Therefore, in his other moods, +symbolize whatever grand or +gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest +idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul. But +though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to account for +it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we, then, by the citation of +some of those instances wherein this thing of whiteness though for the time +either wholly or in great part stripped of all direct associations calculated +to impart to it aught fearful, but, nevertheless, is found to exert over us +the same sorcery, however modified can we thus hope to light upon some +chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek? Let us try. But in a +matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety, and without imagination no +man can follow another into these halls. And though, doubtless, some at least +of the imaginative impressions about to be presented may have been shared by +most men, yet few perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and +therefore may not be able to recall them now. Why to the man of untutored +ideality, who happens to be but loosely acquainted with the peculiar +character of the day, does the bare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in the +fancy such long, dreary, speechless processions of slowpacing pilgrims, +downcast and hooded with newfallen snow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated +Protestant of the Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a +White Friar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul? Or what +is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings which +will not wholly account for it that makes the White Tower of London tell so +much more strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American, than those +other storied structures, its neighbors the Byward Tower, or even the +Bloody? And those sublimer towers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, +whence, in peculiar moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at +the bare mention of that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is +full of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all +latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a +spectralness +over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal thoughts of +long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet +sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely +addressed to the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central +Europe, does the tall pale man of the Hartz forests, whose changeless +pallor unrestingly glides through the green of the groves why is this phantom +more terrible than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg? Nor is it, +altogether, the remembrance of her cathedraltoppling earthquakes nor the +stampedoes of her frantic seas nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never +rain nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched +copestones, and crosses all adroop like canted yards of anchored fleets +and her suburban avenues of housewalls lying over upon each other, as a +tossed pack of cards it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, +the strangest, saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white +veil and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as +Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new admits not the +cheerful greenness of complete decay spreads over her broken ramparts the +rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions. I know that, to +the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness is not confessed to be +the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible nor +to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those appearances whose +awfulness to another mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, +especially when exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or +universality. What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be respectively +elucidated by the following examples. First The mariner, when drawing nigh +the coasts of foreign lands, if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts +to vigilance, and feels just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his +faculties but under precisely similar circumstances, let him be called from +his hammock to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness +as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming +round him, then he feels +a silent, superstitious dread the shrouded phantom of the whitened waters is +horrible to him as a real ghost in vain the lead assures him he is still off +soundings heart and helm they both go down he never rests till blue water +is under him again. Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, Sir, it was +not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous +whiteness that so stirred me? Second To the native Indian of Peru, the +continual sight of the snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, +perhaps, in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at +such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would +be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the +backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an +unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to +break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the +scenery of the Antarctic seas where at times, by some infernal trick of +legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half +shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery, +views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice +monuments and splintered crosses. But thou sayest, methinks this whitelead +chapter about whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul thou +surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael. Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled +in some peaceful valley of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey why +is it that upon the sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe +behind him, so that he cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal +muskiness why will he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in +phrensies of affright? There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild +creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he smells +cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience of former +perils for what knows he, this New England colt, of the black bisons of +distant oregon? no but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the +instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world. Though +thousands of miles from Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the +rending, goring bison herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the +prairies, which this instant they may be trampling into dust. Thus, then, +the muffled rollings of a milky sea the bleak rustlings of the festooned +frosts of mountains the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of +prairies all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to +the frightened colt Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of +which the mystic sign gives forth such hints yet with me, as with the colt, +somewhere those things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible +world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright. But +not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it +appeals with such power to the soul and more strange and far more portentous +why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual +things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's Deity and yet should be as it +is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind. Is it +that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and +immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought +of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, +that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of +color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors is it for these +reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide +landscape of snows a colorless, allcolor of atheism from which we shrink? +And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all +other earthly hues every stately or lovely emblazoning the sweet tinges of +sunset skies and woods yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the +butterfly cheeks of young girls all these are but subtile deceits, not +actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without so that all +deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover +nothing but the charnelhouse within and when we proceed further, and +consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the +great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and +if +operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and +roses, with its own blank tinge pondering all this, the palsied universe lies +before us a leper and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear +colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes +himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect +around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder +ye then at the fiery hunt? +With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him who would +fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the whiteness, +separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness of that +brute for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said, only +arises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness of the +creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love and +hence, by bringing together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the +Polar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all +this to be true yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have +that intensified terror. As for the white shark, the white gliding +ghostliness of repose in that creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, +strangely tallies with the same quality in the Polar quadruped. This +peculiarity is most vividly hit by the French in the name they bestow upon +that fish. The Romish mass for the dead begins with Requiem eternam +eternal rest, whence Requiem denominating the mass itself, and any +other funereal music. Now, in allusion to the white, silent stillness of +death in this shark, and the mild deadliness of his habits, the French +call him Requin. I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a +prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon +watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck and there, dashed upon the +main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and +with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast +archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and +throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some +king's ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange +eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham +before the angels, I bowed myself the white thing was so white, its wings +so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable +warping memories of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy +of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me +then. But at last I awoke and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. +A goney, he replied. Goney I never had heard that name before is it +conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore +never But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman's name for +albatross. So that by no possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had +aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw +that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew +the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly +burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet. I +assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly +lurks the secret of the spell a truth the more evinced in this, that by a +solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses and these I have +frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I beheld the Antarctic +fowl. But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will +tell with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea. At +last the Captain made a postman of it tying a lettered, leathern tally +round its neck, with the ship's time and place and then letting it escape. +But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in +Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wingfolding, the invoking, and +adoring cherubim + Hist Did you hear that noise, Cabaco? +It was the middlewatch a fair moonlight the seamen were standing in a +cordon, extending from one of the freshwater butts in the waist, to the +scuttlebutt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to +fill the scuttlebutt. Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts +of the quarterdeck, they were careful not to speak or rustle their feet. +From hand to hand, the buckets went in the deepest silence, only broken by +the occasional flap of a sail, and the steady hum of the unceasingly +advancing keel. It was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the +cordon, whose post was near the afterhatches, whispered to his neighbor, a +Cholo, the words above. Hist did you hear that noise, Cabaco? Take the +bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d'ye mean? There it is again under the +hatches don't you hear it a coughit sounded like a cough. Cough be +damned Pass along that return bucket. There again there it is it sounds +like two or three sleepers turning over, now Caramba have done, +shipmate, will ye? It's the three soaked biscuits ye eat for supper turning +over inside of ye nothing else. Look to the bucket +Say what ye will, shipmate I've sharp ears. Aye, you are the chap, ain't +ye, that heard the hum of the old Quakeress's knittingneedles fifty miles at +sea from Nantucket you're the chap. Grin away we'll see what turns up. +Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody down in the afterhold that has not yet +been seen on deck and I suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too. I +heard Stubb tell Flask, one morning watch, that there was something of that +sort in the wind. Tish the bucket +Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his +cabin after the squall that took place on the night succeeding that wild +ratification of his purpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a +locker in the transom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish +sea charts, spread them before him on his screweddown table. Then seating +himself before it, you would have seen him intently study the various lines +and shadings which there met his eye and with slow but steady pencil trace +additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At intervals, he would +refer to piles of old logbooks beside him, wherein were set down the seasons +and places in which, on various former voyages of various ships, sperm whales +had been captured or seen. While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp +suspended in chains over his head, continually rocked with the motion of the +ship, and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his +wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out +lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also +tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead. But +it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of +his cabin, Ahab thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were +brought out almost every night some pencil marks were effaced, and others +were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab +was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to the more certain +accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul. Now, to any one not +fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans, it might seem an absurdly +hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of +this planet. But not so did it seem to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides +and currents and thereby calculating the driftings of the sperm whale's +food and, also, calling to mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting +him in particular latitudes could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost +approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or +that ground in search of his prey. So assured, indeed, is the fact concerning +the periodicalness of the sperm whale's resorting to given waters, that many +hunters believe that, could he be closely observed and studied throughout the +world were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully +collated, then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to correspond +in invariability to those of the herringshoals or the flights of swallows. +On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory charts +of the sperm whale. Besides, when making a passage from one feedingground to +another, the sperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct say, rather, +secret intelligence from the Deity mostly swim in +veins, as they are called continuing their way along a given oceanline +with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any +chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, +the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor's parallel, and +though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable, +straight wake, yet the arbitrary vein in which at these times he is said to +swim, generally embraces some few miles in width more or less, as the vein +is presumed to expand or contract but never exceeds the visual sweep from +the whaleship's mastheads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic +zone. The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth and along +that path, migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for. And +hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate +feedinggrounds, could Ahab hope to encounter his prey but in crossing the +widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his art, so place +and time himself on his way, as even then not to be wholly without prospect of +a meeting. There was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle +his delirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality, +perhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons for +particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the herds which +hunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year, say, will turn out to +be identically the same with those that were found there the preceding +season though there are peculiar and unquestionable instances where the +contrary of this has proved true. In general, the same remark, only within a +less wide limit, applies to the solitaries and hermits among the matured, aged +sperm whales. So that though Moby Dick had in a former year been seen, for +example, on what is called the Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or +Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast yet it did not follow, that were the +pequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, +she would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some other feeding +grounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all these seemed only +his casual stoppingplaces and oceaninns, so to speak, not his places of +prolonged abode. And where Ahab's chances of accomplishing +his object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made to +whatever wayside, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a particular set +time or place were attained, when all possibilities would become +probabilities, and, as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next thing +to a certainty. That particular set time and place were conjoined in the one +technical phrase the SeasonontheLine. For there and then, for several +consecutive years, Moby Dick had been periodically descried, lingering in +those waters for awhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a +predicted interval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that +most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place there the +waves were storied with his deeds there also was that tragic spot where the +monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his vengeance. But in the +cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab threw his +brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not permit himself to rest +all his hopes upon the one crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering +it might be to those hopes nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so +tranquillize his unquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest. Now, +the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the +SeasonontheLine. No possible endeavor then could enable her commander to +make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then running down +sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time to cruise +there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the +premature hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected +by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of things. Because, an interval +of three hundred and sixtyfive days and nights was before him an interval +which, instead of impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a +miscellaneous hunt if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in +seas far remote from his periodical feedinggrounds, should turn up his +wrinkled brow off the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or +in any other waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, +NorWesters, Harmattans, Trades any wind but the Levanter and Simoom, might +blow Moby Dick into +the devious zigzag worldcircle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake. But +granting all this yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not but a +mad idea, this that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary whale, even +if encountered, should be thought capable of individual recognition from his +hunter, even as a whitebearded Mufti in the thronged thoroughfares of +Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar snowwhite brow of Moby Dick, and his +snowwhite hump, could not but be unmistakable. And have I not tallied the +whale, Ahab would mutter to himself, as after poring over his charts till +long after midnight he would throw himself back in reveries tallied him, +and shall he escape? His broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost +sheep's ear And here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race till +a weariness and faintness of pondering came over him and in the open air of +the deck he would seek to recover his strength. Ah, God what trances of +torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful +desire. He sleeps with clenched hands and wakes with his own bloody nails +in his palms. often, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and +intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense +thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and +whirled them round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of +his lifespot became insufferable anguish and when, as was sometimes the +case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a +chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, +and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them when this hell in +himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship and +with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though escaping +from a bed that was on fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the +unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve, +were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy +Ahab, the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale this +Ahab that had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused +him to burst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living +principle or soul in him and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from +the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its outer +vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the scorching contiguity +of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it was no longer an integral. +But as the mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul, therefore it +must have been that, in Ahab's case, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies +to his one supreme purpose that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of +will, forced itself against gods and devils into a kind of selfassumed, +independent being of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the +common vitality to which it was conjoined, fled horrorstricken from the +unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared +out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the +time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living +light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness +in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in +thee and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus a vulture +feeds upon that heart for ever that vulture the very creature he creates. +Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by an official +circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory, +Washington, April th, +. By that circular, it appears that precisely +such a chart is in course of completion and portions of it are presented in +the circular. This chart divides the ocean into districts of five degrees +of latitude by five degrees of longitude perpendicularly through each of +which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months and horizontally +through each of which districts are three lines one to show the number of +days that have been spent in each month in every district, and the two +others to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have been +seen. +So far as what there may be of a +narrative in this book and, indeed, as indirectly touching one or two very +interesting and curious particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the +foregoing chapter, in its earliest part, is as important a one as will be +found in this volume but the leading matter of it requires to be still +further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately +understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound +ignorance of the entire subject may +induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main points of this +affair. I care not to perform this part of my task methodically but shall +be content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items, +practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman and from these citations, +I take it the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself. First I +have personally known three instances where a whale, after receiving a +harpoon, has effected a complete escape and, after an interval in one +instance of three years, has been again struck by the same hand, and slain +when the two irons, both marked by the same private cypher, have been taken +from the body. In the instance where three years intervened between the +flinging of the two harpoons and I think it may have been something more +than that the man who darted them happening, in the interval, to go in a +trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore there, joined a discovery +party, and penetrated far into the interior, where he travelled for a period +of nearly two years, often endangered by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous +miasmas, with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart +of unknown regions. Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have been on +its travels no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe, brushing with +its flanks all the coasts of Africa but to no purpose. This man and this +whale again came together, and the one vanquished the other. I say I, +myself, have known three instances similar to this that is in two of them I +saw the whales struck and, upon the second attack, saw the two irons with +the respective marks cut in them, afterwards taken from the dead fish. In the +threeyear instance, it so fell out that I was in the boat both times, first +and last, and the last time distinctly recognized a peculiar sort of huge +mole under the whale's eye, which I had observed there three years previous. +I say three years, but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are +three instances, then, which I personally know the truth of but I have heard +of many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no +good ground to impeach. secondly It is well known in the Sperm Whale +Fishery, +however ignorant the world ashore may be of it, that there have been several +memorable historical instances where a particular whale in the ocean has been +at distant times and places popularly cognisable. Why such a whale became +thus marked was not altogether and originally owing to his bodily +peculiarities as distinguished from other whales for however peculiar in +that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end to his +peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly valuable +oil. No the reason was this that from the fatal experiences of the +fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about such a whale as +there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were +content to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would be +discovered lounging by them on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more +intimate acquaintance. Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an +irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the +street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a +summary thump for their presumption. But not only did each of these famous +whales enjoy great individual celebrity nay, you may call it an oceanwide +renown not only was he famous in life and now is immortal in forecastle +stories after death, but he was admitted into all the rights, privileges, +and distinctions of a name had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. +Was it not so, O Timor Tom thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, +who so long did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was +oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack +thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of the +Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan King of Japan, whose lofty jet +they say at times assumed the semblance of a snowwhite cross against the sky? +Was it not so, O Don Miguel thou Chilian whale, marked like an old +tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back In plain prose, here are +four whales as well known to the students of Cetacean History as Marius or +Sylla to the classic scholar. But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don +Miguel, after at various times creating great havoc among the boats of +different +vessels, were finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out, chased and +killed by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their anchors with that +express object as much in view, as in setting out through the Narragansett +Woods, Captain Butler of old had it in his mind to capture that notorious +murderous savage Annawon, the headmost warrior of the Indian King Philip. I +do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of +one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form +establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the +White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those +disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. +So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable +wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, +historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a +monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and +intolerable allegory. First Though most men have some vague flitting ideas +of the general perils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a +fixed, vivid conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they +recur. One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters +and deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at home, +however transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do you suppose that +that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by the whaleline off +the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to the bottom of the sea by +the sounding leviathan do you suppose that that poor fellow's name will +appear in the newspaper obituary you will read tomorrow at your breakfast? +No because the mails are very irregular between here and New Guinea. In +fact, did you ever hear what might be called regular news direct or indirect +from New Guinea? Yet I tell you that upon one particular voyage which I made +to the Pacific, among many others we spoke thirty different ships, every one +of which had had a death by a whale, some of them more than one, and three +that had each lost a boat's crew. For God's sake, be economical with your +lamps and candles not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's +blood was spilled for it. +Secondly People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is an +enormous creature of enormous power but I have ever found that when +narrating to them some specific example of this twofold enormousness, they +have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness when, I declare +upon my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses, when he wrote +the history of the plagues of Egypt. But fortunately the special point I here +seek can be established upon testimony entirely independent of my own. That +point is this The Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, +knowing, and judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, +utterly destroy, and sink a large ship and what is more, the Sperm Whale has +done it. First In the year +the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of +Nantucket, was cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, +lowered her boats, and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, +several of the whales were wounded when, suddenly, a very large whale +escaping from the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon +the ship. dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in, that +in less than ten minutes she settled down and fell over. Not a surviving +plank of her has been seen since. After the severest exposure, part of the +crew reached the land in their boats. Being returned home at last, Captain +Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific in command of another ship, but the +gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers for the second +time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith forswearing the sea, he has +never tempted it since. At this day Captain Pollard is a resident of +Nantucket. I have seen Owen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex at the +time of the tragedy I have read his plain and faithful narrative I have +conversed with his son and all this within a few miles of the scene of the +catastrophe. +Secondly The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year +totally +lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic particulars of +this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter, though from the whale +hunters I have now and then heard casual allusions to it. Thirdly Some +eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J then commanding an American +sloopofwar of the first class, happened to be dining with a party of +whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in the harbor of Oahu, Sandwich +Islands. Conversation turning upon whales, the Commodore was pleased to be +sceptical touching the amazing strength ascribed to them by the professional +gentlemen present. He peremptorily denied for example, that any whale could +so smite his stout sloopofwar as to cause her to leak so much as a +thimbleful. Very good but there is more coming. Some weeks after, the +commodore set sail in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he was +stopped on the way by a portly sperm whale, that begged a few moments' +confidential business with him. that business consisted in fetching the +Commodore's craft +such a thwack, that with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest +port to heave down and repair. I am not superstitious, but I consider the +Commodore's interview with that whale as providential. Was not Saul of Tarsus +converted from unbelief by a similar fright? I tell you, the sperm whale will +stand no nonsense. I will now refer you to Langsdorff's Voyages for a little +circumstance in point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. +Langsdorff, you must know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral +Krusenstern's famous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present +century. Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter. By the +thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next day we were out in +the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather was very clear and fine, +but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on our fur clothing. For +some days we had very little wind it was not till the nineteenth that a +brisk gale from the northwest sprang up. An uncommon large whale, the body +of which was larger than the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of the +water, but was not perceived by any one on board till the moment when the +ship, which was in full sail, was almost upon him, so that it was +impossible to prevent its striking against him. We were thus placed in the +most imminent danger, as this gigantic creature, setting up its back, +raised the ship three feet at least out of the water. The masts reeled, and +the sails fell altogether, while we who were below all sprang instantly upon +the deck, concluding that we had struck upon some rock instead of this we +saw the monster sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain +D'Wolf applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel +had received any damage from the shock, but we found that very happily it had +escaped entirely uninjured. now, the captain d'wolf here alluded to as +commanding the ship in question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life +of unusual adventures as a seacaptain, this day resides in the village of +Dorchester near Boston. I have the honor of being a nephew of his. I have +particularly questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff. He +substantiates every word. +The ship, however, was by no means a large one a Russian craft built on the +Siberian coast, and purchased by my uncle after bartering away the vessel in +which he sailed from home. In that up and down manly book of oldfashioned +adventure, so full, too, of honest wonders the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one +of ancient Dampier's old chums I found a little matter set down so like that +just quoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a +corroborative example, if such be needed. Lionel, it seems, was on his way +to John Ferdinando, as he calls the modern Juan Fernandes. In our way +thither, he says, about four o'clock in the morning, when we were about +one hundred and fifty leagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a +terrible shock, which put our men in such consternation that they could +hardly tell where they were or what to think but every one began to prepare +for death. And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent, that we took it +for granted the ship had struck against a rock but when the amazement was a +little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no ground. The +suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their carriages, and several of +the men were shaken out of their hammocks. Captain Davis, who lay with his +head on a gun, was thrown out of his cabin Lionel then goes on to impute +the shock to an earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputation by +stating that a great earthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually do +great mischief along the spanish land. but i should not much wonder if, in the +darkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock was after all caused by +an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath. I might proceed +with several more examples, one way or another known to me, of the great +power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more than one instance, he +has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats back to their ships, +but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand all the lances hurled at +him from its decks. The English ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that +head and, as for his strength, let me say, that there have been examples +where the lines attached to +a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship, and +secured there the whale towing her great hull through the water, as a +horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if the +sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not so +often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of destruction to +his pursuers nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his +character, that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth, and +retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutive minutes. But I must +be content with only one more and a concluding illustration a remarkable and +most significant one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is +the most marvellous event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the +present day, but that these marvels like all marvels are mere repetitions +of the ages so that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon Verily +there is nothing new under the sun. In the sixth Christian century lived +Procopius, a Christian magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when +Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the +history of his own times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best +authorities, he has always been considered a most trustworthy and +unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two particulars, not at all +affecting the matter presently to be mentioned. Now, in this history of his, +Procopius mentions that, during the term of his prefecture at Constantinople, +a great seamonster was captured in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of +Marmora, after having destroyed vessels at intervals in those waters for a +period of more than fifty years. A fact thus set down in substantial history +cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what +precise species this seamonster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed +ships, as well as for other reasons, he must have been a whale and I am +strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a +long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the +Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now I am certain +that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the present +constitution of +things, a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further +investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern times there have +been isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the +Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that on the Barbary coast, a +Commodore Davis of the British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, +as a vessel of war readily passes through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm +whale could, by the same route, pass out of the Mediterranean into the +Propontis. In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar +substance called brit is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But I +have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale squid or +cuttlefish lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures, but +by no means the largest of that sort, have been found at its surface. If, +then, you properly put these statements together, and reason upon them a bit, +you will clearly perceive that, according to all human reasoning, +Procopius's seamonster, that for half a century stove the ships of a Roman +Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm whale. +The following are extracts from Chace's narrative Every fact seemed to +warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which directed his +operations he made two several attacks upon the ship, at a short interval +between them, both of which, according to their direction, were +calculated to do us the most injury, by being made ahead, and thereby +combining the speed of the two objects for the shock to effect which, the +exact manoeuvres which he made were necessary. His aspect was most horrible, +and such as indicated resentment and fury. He came directly from the shoal +which we had just before entered, and in which we had struck three of his +companions, as if fired with revenge for their sufferings. Again At all +events, the whole circumstances taken together, all happening before my own +eyes, and producing, at the time, impressions in my mind of decided, +calculating mischief, on the part of the whale many of which impressions I +cannot now recall, induce me to be satisfied that I am correct in my +opinion. Here are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during +a black night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any +hospitable shore. The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing the +fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden +rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation, +seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's thought the dismal looking wreck, +and the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale, wholly engrossed my +reflections, until day again made its appearance. In another place p. , +he speaks of the mysterious and mortal attack of the animal. +Though, consumed with the hot fire of his +purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate +capture of Moby Dick though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal +interests to that one passion nevertheless it may have been that he was by +nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's ways, +altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least +if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more +influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even +considering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards +the White Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all +sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he +multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to +be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed +exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though not +so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by +no means incapable of swaying him. To accomplish his object Ahab must use +tools and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to +get out of order. He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency +in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the +complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves +intellectual mastership for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but +stand in a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body and Starbuck's coerced +will were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain +still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his +captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, +or even frustrate it. it might be that a long interval would elapse ere the +White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to +fall into open relapses of rebellion against his captain's leadership, unless +some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon +him. Not only that, but the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was +noways more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and +shrewdness in foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way +be stripped of that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested +it that the full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the +obscure background for few men's courage is proof against protracted +meditation unrelieved by action that when they stood their long night +watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of than +Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the +announcement of his quest yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less +capricious and unreliable they live in the varying outer weather, and they +inhale its fickleness and when retained +for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life +and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary +interests and employment should intervene and hold them healthily suspended +for the final dash. Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of +strong emotion mankind disdain all base considerations but such times are +evanescent. The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, +thought Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the +hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even breeds +a certain generous knighterrantism in them, still, while for the love of it +they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food for their more common, +daily appetites. For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old +times were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight for +their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, picking pockets, and +gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to +their one final and romantic object that final and romantic object, too many +would have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, +of all hopes of cash aye, cash. They may scorn cash now but let some months +go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same +quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon +cashier Ahab. Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more +related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps +somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod's +voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he had indirectly +laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation and with perfect +impunity, both moral and legal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end +competent, could refuse all further obedience to him, and even violently +wrest from him the command. From even the barely hinted imputation of +usurpation, and the possible consequences of such a suppressed impression +gaining ground, Ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect himself. +That protection could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart +and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating +attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his +crew to be subjected to. For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too +analytic to be verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still +in a good degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod's +voyage observe all customary usages and not only that, but force himself +to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general pursuit of his +profession. be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the +three mastheads and admonishing them to keep a bright lookout, and not omit +reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward. +It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon +the seamen were lazily lounging about the decks, or vacantly gazing over +into the leadcolored waters. Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving +what is called a swordmat, for an additional lashing to our boat. So still +and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an +incantation of revery lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed +resolved into his own invisible self. I was the attendant or page of +Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the +filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own +hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid +his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the +water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn I say so strange a +dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only +broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this +were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and +weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed +threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging +vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise +interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity and +here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own +destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, +indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or +strongly, or weakly, as the case might be and by this difference in the +concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the +completed fabric this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes +and fashions both warp and woof this easy, indifferent sword must be chance +aye, chance, free will, and necessity no wise incompatible all +interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be +swerved from its ultimate course its every alternating vibration, indeed, +only tending to that free will still free to ply her shuttle between given +threads and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of +necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus +prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last +featuring blow at events. Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started +at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the +ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds +whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the crosstrees was that +mad GayHeader, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand +stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his +cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all +over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's lookouts perched as high in the +air but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived +such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian's. As he stood hovering +over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering towards the +horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding the +shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming. There she +blows there there there she blows she blows +Whereaway? On the leebeam, about two miles off a school of them +Instantly all was commotion. The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the +same undeviating and reliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish +this fish from other tribes of his genus. There go flukes was now the cry +from Tashtego and the whales disappeared. Quick, steward cried Ahab. +Time time DoughBoy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported +the exact minute to Ahab. The ship was now kept away from the wind, and she +went gently rolling before it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone +down heading to leeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in +advance of our bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm +Whale when, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while +concealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in the +opposite quarter this deceitfulness of his could not now be in action for +there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by Tashtego had been in any +way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity. One of the men selected +for shipkeepers that is, those not appointed to the boats, by this time +relieved the Indian at the mainmast head. The sailors at the fore and +mizzen had come down the line tubs were fixed in their places the cranes +were thrust out the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over the +sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks +their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was +expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of manofwar's men +about to throw themselves on board an enemy's ship. But at this critical +instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took every eye from the whale. +With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five dusky +phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air. +The phantoms, for so they then +seemed, were flitting on the other side of the deck, and, with a noiseless +celerity, were casting loose the tackles and bands of the boat which swung +there. This boat had always been deemed one of the spare boats, though +technically called the captain's, on account of its hanging from the +starboard quarter. The figure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, +with one white tooth evilly protruding from its steellike lips. A rumpled +Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black +trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning his ebonness was a +glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and coiled round +and round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the companions of this figure +were of that vivid, tigeryellow complexion peculiar to some of the aboriginal +natives of the Manillas a race notorious for a certain diabolism of +subtilty, and by some honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies and +secret confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose +countingroom they suppose to be elsewhere. While yet the wondering ship's +company were gazing upon these strangers, Ahab cried out to the +whiteturbaned old man at their head, All ready there, Fedallah? Ready, +was the halfhissed reply. Lower away then d'ye hear? shouting across the +deck. Lower away there, I say. Such was the thunder of his voice, that +spite of their amazement the men sprang over the rail the sheaves whirled +round in the blocks with a wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea +while, with a dexterous, offhanded daring, unknown in any other vocation, +the sailors, goatlike, leaped down the rolling ship's side into the tossed +boats below. Hardly had they pulled out from under the ship's lee, when +a fourth keel, coming from the windward side, pulled round under the stern, +and showed the five strangers rowing Ahab, who, standing erect in the stern, +loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to spread themselves widely, so as +to cover a large expanse of water. but with all their eyes again riveted upon +the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of the other boats obeyed not +the command. Captain Ahab? said Starbuck. Spread yourselves, cried Ahab +give way, all four boats. Thou, Flask, pull out more to leeward Aye, +aye, sir, cheerily cried little KingPost, sweeping round his great steering +oar. Lay back addressing his crew. There there there again There +she blows right ahead, boys lay back Never heed yonder yellow boys, +Archy. Oh, I don't mind 'em, sir, said Archy I knew it all before now. +Didn't I hear 'em in the hold? And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it? What say +ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask. Pull, pull, my fine +heartsalive pull, my children pull, my little ones, drawingly and +soothingly sighed Stubb to his crew, some of whom still showed signs of +uneasiness. Why don't you break your backbones, my boys? What is it you +stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut They are only five more hands +come to help us never mind from where the more the merrier. Pull, then, do +pull never mind the brimstone devils are good fellows enough. So, so +there you are now that's the stroke for a thousand pounds that's the +stroke to sweep the stakes Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes +Three cheers, men all hearts alive Easy, easy don't be in a hurry don't +be in a hurry. Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, +you dogs So, so, so, then softly, softly That's it that's it long +and strong. Give way there, give way The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin +rapscallions ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, +will ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and +gingercakes don't ye pull? pull and break something pull, and start your +eyes out Here whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle every +mother's son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. +That's it that's it. Now ye do something that looks like it, my +steelbits. Start her start her, my silverspoons Start her, +marlingspikes Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, because +he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially +in inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this +specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions with +his congregation. Not at all and therein consisted his chief peculiarity. +He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a tone so strangely +compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so calculated merely as a +spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such queer invocations without +pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for the mere joke of the thing. +Besides he all the time looked so easy and indolent himself, so loungingly +managed his steeringoar, and so broadly gaped openmouthed at times that +the mere sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer force of contrast, +acted like a charm upon the crew. Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort +of humorists, whose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put +all inferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them. In obedience to a +sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely across Stubb's bow and +when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty near to each other, Stubb +hailed the mate. Mr. Starbuck larboard boat there, ahoy a word with ye, +sir, if ye please Halloa returned Starbuck, turning round not a single +inch as he spoke still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew his face +set like a flint from Stubb's. What think ye of those yellow boys, sir +Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. Strong, strong, boys +in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again A sad business, +Mr. Stubb seethe her, seethe her, my lads but never mind, Mr. Stubb, +all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what will. Spring, my +men, spring +There's hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came for. +Pull, my boys Sperm, sperm's the play This at least is duty duty and +profit hand in hand Aye, aye, I thought as much, soliloquized Stubb, +when the boats diverged, as soon as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so. Aye, +and that's what he went into the after hold for, so often, as DoughBoy long +suspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale's at the bottom of +it. Well, well, so be it Can't be helped All right Give way, men It +ain't the White Whale today Give way Now the advent of these outlandish +strangers at such a critical instant as the lowering of the boats from the +deck, this had not unreasonably awakened a sort of superstitious amazement in +some of the ship's company but Archy's fancied discovery having some time +previous got abroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in +some small measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge +of their wonder and so what with all this and Stubb's confident way of +accounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from +superstitious surmisings though the affair still left abundant room for all +manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise agency in the matter from +the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen +creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well as the +enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah. Meantime, Ahab, out of +hearing of his officers, having sided the furthest to windward, was still +ranging ahead of the other boats a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew +was pulling him. those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and +whalebone like five triphammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of +strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a +horizontal burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was +seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and +displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale, +clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon while +at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one +arm, like a fencer's, thrown half backward into the air, as if to +counterbalance any tendency to trip Ahab was seen steadily managing his +steering oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him. +All at once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained +fixed, while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat and +crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in the rear +paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the +blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement, though +from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it. Every man look out along his +oars cried Starbuck. Thou, Queequeg, stand up Nimbly springing up on +the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage stood erect there, and with +intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last been +descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also +triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen +coolly and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a +craft, and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea. Not very far +distant Flask's boat was also lying breathlessly still its commander +recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a stout sort of post +rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above the level of the stern +platform. it is used for catching turns with the whale line. Its top is not +more spacious than the palm of a man's hand, and standing upon such a base +as that, Flask seemed perched at the masthead of some ship which had sunk to +all but her trucks. But little KingPost was small and short, and at the +same time little KingPost was full of a large and tall ambition, so that +this loggerhead standpoint of his did by no means satisfy KingPost. I +can't see three seas off tip us up an oar there, and let me on to that. +Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way, +swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty shoulders +for a pedestal. +Good a masthead as any, sir. Will you mount? That I will, and thank ye +very much, my fine fellow only I wish you fifty feet taller. Whereupon +planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the boat, the gigantic +negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to Flask's foot, and then +putting Flask's hand on his hearseplumed head and bidding him spring as he +himself should toss, with one dexterous fling landed the little man high and +dry on his shoulders. And here was Flask now standing, Daggoo with one +lifted arm furnishing him with a breastband to lean against and steady +himself by. At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what +wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect +posture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously perverse +and crossrunning seas. Still more strange to see him giddily perched upon +the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the sight of little +Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious for sustaining +himself with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the +noble negro to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On +his broad back, flaxenhaired flask seemed a snowflake. The bearer looked +nobler than the rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious +little Flask would now and then stamp with impatience but not one added +heave did he thereby give to the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen +Passion and Vanity stamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did +not alter her tides and her seasons for that. Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, +betrayed no such fargazing solicitudes. The whales might have made one of +their regular soundings, not a temporary dive from mere fright and if that +were the case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to +solace the languishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his +hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and +rammed home the loading with his thumbend but hardly had he ignited his +match across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego, his harpooneer, +whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars, suddenly +dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat, +crying out in a quick phrensy of hurry, Down, down all, and give way there +they are To a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have +been visible at that moment nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white +water, and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it, and suffusingly +blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white rolling billows. +The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it were, like the air over +intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling, +and partially beneath a thin layer of water, also, the whales were swimming. +Seen in advance of all the other indications, the puffs of vapor they spouted, +seemed their forerunning couriers and detached flying outriders. All four +boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled water and air. +But it bade far to outstrip them it flew on and on, as a mass of +interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the hills. Pull, pull, +my good boys, said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but intensest +concentrated whisper to his men while the sharp fixed glance from his eyes +darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two visible needles in two +unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much to his crew, though, nor +did his crew say anything to him. Only the silence of the boat was at +intervals startlingly pierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh with +command, now soft with entreaty. How different the loud little KingPost. +Sing out and say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts +Beach me, beach me on their black backs, boys only do that for me, and I'll +sign over to you my Martha's Vineyard plantation, boys including wife and +children, boys. Lay me on lay me on O Lord, Lord but I shall go stark, +staring mad See see that white water And so shouting, he pulled his hat +from his head, and stamped up and down on it then picking it up, flirted it +far off upon the sea and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's +stern like a crazed colt from the prairie. Look at that chap now, +philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his unlighted short pipe, +mechanically retained between his teeth, at a short distance, followed after +He's got fits, that +Flask has. Fits? yes, give him fits that's the very word pitch fits +into 'em. Merrily, merrily, heartsalive. Pudding for supper, you know +merry's the word. Pull, babes pull, sucklings pull, all. But what the +devil are you hurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only +pull, and keep pulling nothing more. Crack all your backbones, and bite +your knives in two that's all. Take it easy why don't ye take it easy, I +say, and burst all your livers and lungs But what it was that inscrutable +Ahab said to that tigeryellow crew of his these were words best omitted +here for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the +infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with +tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foamglued lips, Ahab leaped after +his prey. Meanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions +of Flask to that whale, as he called the fictitious monster which he +declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's bow with its tail these +allusions of his were at times so vivid and lifelike, that they would cause +some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over the shoulder. But +this was against all rule for the oarsmen must put out their eyes, and ram +a skewer through their necks usage pronouncing that they must have no organs +but ears, and no limbs but arms, in these critical moments. It was a sight +full of quick wonder and awe The vast swells of the omnipotent sea the +surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales, like +gigantic bowls in a boundless bowlinggreen the brief suspended agony of the +boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knifelike edge of the sharper +waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two the sudden profound +dip into the watery glens and hollows the keen spurrings and goadings to +gain the top of the opposite hill the headlong, sledlike slide down its +other side all these, with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and +the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory +Pequod bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen +after her screaming brood all this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, +marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle +not the dead man's ghost encountering +the first unknown phantom in the other world neither of these can feel +stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first time +finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted sperm +whale. The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and +more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloudshadows flung +upon the sea. The jets of vapor no longer blended, but tilted everywhere to +right and left the whales seemed separating their wakes. The boats were +pulled more apart Starbuck giving chase to three whales running dead to +leeward. Our sail was now set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed +along the boat going with such madness through the water, that the lee oars +could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from the +rowlocks. Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist +neither ship nor boat to be seen. Give way, men, whispered Starbuck, drawing +still further aft the sheet of his sail there is time to kill a fish yet +before the squall comes. There's white water again close to Spring +Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted that the +other boats had got fast but hardly were they overheard, when with a +lightninglike hurtling whisper Starbuck said Stand up and Queequeg, +harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet. Though not one of the oarsmen was then +facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes +on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew +that the imminent instant had come they heard, too, an enormous wallowing +sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was +still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like +the erected crests of enraged serpents. That's his hump. There, there, +give it to him whispered Starbuck. A short rushing sound leaped out of the +boat it was the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion +came an invisible push from astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on +a ledge the sail collapsed and exploded a +gush of scalding vapor shot up near by something rolled and tumbled like an +earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were +tossed helterskelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, +whale, and harpoon had all blended together and the whale, merely grazed by +the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. +Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the +gunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea, +the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes +the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the +ocean. The wind increased to a howl the waves dashed their bucklers +together the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a +white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning immortal +in these jaws of death In vain we hailed the other boats as well roar to +the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in +that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the +shadows of night no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade +all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, +performing now the office of lifepreservers. So, cutting the lashing of the +waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the +lamp in the lantern then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg +as the standardbearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up +that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, +he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope +in the midst of despair. Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, +despairing of ship or boat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The +mist still spread over the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom +of the boat. Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his +ear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled by +the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer the thick mists were dimly +parted by +a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the sea as the ship at +last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us within a distance of not +much more than its length. Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as +for one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at +the base of a cataract and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was +seen no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were +dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely landed on +board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose from +their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us up, +but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our +perishing, an oar or a lance pole. +There are certain queer times and occasions +in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe +for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, +and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. +However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts +down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things +visible and invisible, never mind how knobby as an ostrich of potent +digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties +and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb all +these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, goodnatured hits, and jolly +punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That +odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time +of extreme tribulation it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so +that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now +seems but a part of the general +joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy +sort of genial, desperado philosophy and with it I now regarded this whole +voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object. Queequeg, said +I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and I was still +shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the water Queequeg, my fine +friend, does this sort of thing often happen? Without much emotion, though +soaked through just like me, he gave me to understand that such things did +often happen. Mr. Stubb, said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up +in his oiljacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain Mr. Stubb, +I think I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief +mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose then, +that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy squall is the +height of a whaleman's discretion? Certain. I've lowered for whales from a +leaking ship in a gale off Cape Horn. Mr. Flask, said I, turning to +little KingPost, who was standing close by you are experienced in these +things, and I am not. Will you tell me whether it is an unalterable law in +this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself +backforemost into death's jaws? Can't you twist that smaller? said Flask. +Yes, that's the law. I should like to see a boat's crew backing water up to a +whale face foremost. Ha, ha the whale would give them squint for squint, +mind that here then, from three impartial witnesses, i had a deliberate +statement of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and +capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters +of common occurrence in this kind of life considering that at the +superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my life +into the hands of him who steered the boat oftentimes a fellow who at that +very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft +with his own frantic stampings considering that the particular disaster to +our own particular boat was chiefly to be +imputed to Starbuck's driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a squall, +and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for his great +heedfulness in the fishery considering that I belonged to this uncommonly +prudent Starbuck's boat and finally considering in what a devil's chase I was +implicated, touching the White Whale taking all things together, I say, I +thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will. +Queequeg, said I, come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor, and +legatee. It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at +their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more +fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I +had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon the present +occasion, I felt all the easier a stone was rolled away from my heart. +Besides, all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that +Lazarus lived after his resurrection a supplementary clean gain of so many +months or weeks as the case might be. I survived myself my death and burial +were locked up in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, +like a quiet ghost with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug +family vault. now then, thought i, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of +my frock, here goes a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the +devil fetch the hindmost. +I quickly followed suit, and descending into +the barroom accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no +malice towards him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the +matter of my bedfellow. However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and +rather too scarce a good thing the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in +his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not +be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in +that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be +sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for. The barroom was +now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the night previous, and +whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were nearly all whalemen +chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea +coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers a brown and +brawny company, with bosky beards an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing +monkey jackets for morning gowns. You could pretty plainly tell how long each +one had been ashore. This young fellow's healthy cheek is like a suntoasted +pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost as musky he cannot have been +three days landed from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few +shades lighter you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the +complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly bleached +withal he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show a +cheek like +Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes' western +slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone by zone. +Grub, ho now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to +breakfast. They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at +ease in manner, quite selfpossessed in company. Not always, though +Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one of +all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the +mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the +taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of +Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances this kind of travel, +I say, may not be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish. +Still, for the most part, that sort of thing is to be had anywhere. These +reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that after we were +all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some good stories about +whaling to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound +silence. And not only that, but they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a +set of seadogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded +great whales on the high seas entire strangers to them and duelled them dead +without winking and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table all of +the same calling, all of kindred tastes looking round as sheepishly at +each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among +the Green Mountains. A curious sight these bashful bears, these timid +warrior whalemen But as for Queequeg why, Queequeg sat there among them at +the head of the table, too, it so chanced as cool as an icicle. To be sure +I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have +cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and +using it there without ceremony reaching over the table with it, to the +imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. +But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and every +one knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it +genteelly. We will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here how he +eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to +beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like +the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawkpipe, and was sitting +there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I +sallied out for a stroll. +Who would have thought +it, Flask cried Stubb if I had but one leg you would not catch me in a +boat, unless maybe to stop the plughole with my timber toe. Oh he's a +wonderful old man I don't think it so strange, after all, on that +account, said +Flask. If his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing. +That would disable him but he has one knee, and good part of the other left, +you know. I don't know that, my little man I never yet saw him kneel. +Among whalewise people it has often been argued whether, considering the +paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it is right for +a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active perils of the chase. +So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears in their eyes, whether that +invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the thickest of the fight. +But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that with +two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger considering that +the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties +that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril under these +circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whaleboat in the +hunt? As a general thing, the jointowners of the Pequod must have plainly +thought not. Ahab well knew that although his friends at home would think +little of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes +of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving his +orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually apportioned to +him as a regular headsman in the hunt above all for Captain Ahab to be +supplied with five extra men, as that same boat's crew, he well knew that +such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod. +Therefore he had not solicited a boat's crew from them, nor had he in any way +hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken private measures +of his own touching all that matter. Until Cabaco's published discovery, the +sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little +while out of port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting +the whaleboats for service when some time after this Ahab was now and then +found bestirring himself in the matter of making tholepins with his own hands +for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even solicitously +cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the +line is running out are pinned over the groove in the bow when all this was +observed in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra coat of +sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better withstand the +pointed pressure of his ivory limb and also the anxiety he evinced in +exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it is sometimes called, +the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing the knee against in +darting or stabbing at the whale when it was observed how often he stood up +in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semicircular depression in +the cleat, and with the carpenter's chisel gouged out a little here and +straightened it a little there all these things, I say, had awakened much +interest and curiosity at the time. But almost everybody supposed that this +particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the +ultimate chase of Moby Dick for he had already revealed his intention to +hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition did by no means +involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat's crew being assigned to that +boat. now, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned +away for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such +unaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks +and ashholes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of whalers and the +ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway creatures found tossing +about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, +blownoff Japanese junks, and what not that Beelzebub himself might climb up +the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the captain, and it would +not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle. But be all this as +it may, certain it is that while the subordinate phantoms soon found their +place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct from them, +yet that hairturbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last. +Whence he came in a mannerly world like this, by what sort of unaccountable +tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with Ahab's peculiar fortunes nay, +so far as to have some sort of a halfhinted influence Heaven knows, but +it might have been even authority over him all this none knew. But one +cannot sustain +an indifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as civilized, +domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but +dimly but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic +communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent those +insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern +days still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth's primal +generations, when the memory of the first man was a distinct recollection, +and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as +real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and to +what end when though, according to genesis, the angels indeed consorted +with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical Rabbins, +indulged in mundane amours. +Days, weeks passed, and under easy +sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept across four several cruisinggrounds +that off the Azores off the Cape de Verdes on the Plate so called, +being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata and the Carrol Ground, an +unstaked, watery locality, southerly from St. Helena. It was while gliding +through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all +the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver and, by their soft, suffusing +seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude on such a +silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at +the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial seemed some plumed and +glittering god uprising from the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For +of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the mainmast head, +and stand a lookout there, with the same precision as if it had been day. +And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman +in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what +emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at such +unusual hours his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But when, +after spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights +without uttering a single sound when, after all this silence, his unearthly +voice was heard announcing that silvery, moonlit jet, every reclining +mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the +rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. There she blows Had the trump of +judgment blown, they could not have quivered more yet still they felt no +terror rather pleasure. for though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so +impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul +on board instinctively desired a lowering. Walking the deck with quick, +sidelunging strides, Ahab commanded the t'gallant sails and royals to be set, +and every stunsail spread. The best man in the ship must take the helm. +Then, with every masthead manned, the piledup craft rolled down before the +wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling +the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like +air beneath the feet while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic +influences were struggling in her one to mount direct to heaven, the other +to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab's face +that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were +warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every +stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffintap. On life and death this old +man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, +like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen +that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time. This +midnightspout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days after, lo +at the same silent hour, it was again announced again it was descried by +all but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it +had never been. And so it served us night after night, till no one heeded it +but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, +or starlight, as the case might be disappearing again for one whole day, or +two days, or three and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be +advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for +ever alluring us on. Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and +in accordance with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many +things invested the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore +that whenever and wherever descried at however remote times, or in however +far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one +selfsame whale and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a +sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were +treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn +round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas. +These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous +potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath all +its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days +and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that +all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of +life before our urnlike prow. But, at last, when turning to the eastward, +the Cape winds began howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, +troubled seas that are there when the ivorytusked Pequod sharply bowed to +the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of +silver chips, the foamflakes flew over her bulwarks then all this desolate +vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before. +Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither before +us while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable searavens. And every +morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen and spite of +our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they +deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft a thing appointed to +desolation, and therefore fit roostingplace for their homeless selves. And +heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast +tides were a conscience and the great +mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had +bred. Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called +of yore for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended +us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings +transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on +everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air without any +horizon. But calm, snowwhite, and unvarying still directing its fountain of +feathers to the sky still beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet +would at times be descried. During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, +though assuming for the time the almost continual command of the drenched and +dangerous deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve and more seldom than ever +addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything above +and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await +the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists. +So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand +firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to +windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal +his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward +part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows, +stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist and the better to guard +against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a sort of +bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened belt. Few or +no words were spoken and the silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors in +wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of the +demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks of +the ocean prevailed still in silence the men swung in the bowlines still +wordless ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed +demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could +Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down into the cabin +to mark how the +barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his +floorscrewed chair the rain and halfmelted sleet of the storm from which +he had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat +and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides +and currents which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his +tightly clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back +so that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the telltale that +swung from a beam in the ceiling. Terrible old man thought Starbuck with a +shudder, sleeping in this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose. +Southeastward from the Cape, off the +distant Crozetts, a good cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed +ahead, the Goney Albatross by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty +perch at the foremasthead, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to +a tyro in the far ocean fisheries a whaler at sea, and long absent from +home. As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the +skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral appearance +was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her spars and her +rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over with hoarfrost. +Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see her longbearded +lookouts at those three mastheads. They seemed clad in the skins of +beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four years +of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and +swung over a fathomless sea +and though, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men in +the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped from the +mastheads of one ship to those of the other yet, those forlornlooking +fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own +lookouts, while the quarterdeck hail was being heard from below. Ship +ahoy Have ye seen the White Whale? But as the strange captain, leaning over +the pallid bulwarks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it +somehow fell from his hand into the sea and the wind now rising amain, he +in vain strove to make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still +increasing the distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of +the Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the +first mere mention of the White Whale's name to another ship, Ahab for a +moment paused it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to +board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking +advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing +by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound +home, he loudly hailed Ahoy there This is the Pequod, bound round the +world Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean and +this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to +At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in +accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for +some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what +seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with the +stranger's flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab must +often before have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the +veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings. Swim away from me, do ye? +murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There seemed but little in the +words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness than the insane +old man had ever before evinced. But turning to the steersman, who thus far +had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish +her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice, Up helm Keep her off +round the world Round the world There is much in that sound to inspire +proud feelings but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only +through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those +that we left behind secure, were all the time before us. Were this world an +endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, +and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of +King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those +far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, +some time or other, swims before all human hearts while chasing such over +this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us +whelmed. +The cabincompass is called the telltale, because without going to the +compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the +course of the ship. +The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on +board of the whaler we had spoken was this the wind and sea betokened +storms. But even had this not been the case, he would not after all, +perhaps, have boarded her judging by his subsequent conduct on similar +occasions if so it had been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained +a negative answer to the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, +he cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain, +except he could contribute some of that information he so absorbingly sought. +But all this might remain inadequately estimated, were not something said +here of the peculiar usages of whalingvessels when meeting each other in +foreign seas, and especially on a common cruisingground. If two strangers +crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the equally desolate Salisbury +Plain in England if +casually encountering each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for +the life of them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation and stopping for a +moment to interchange the news and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and +resting in concert then, how much more natural that upon the illimitable Pine +Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels descrying each +other at the ends of the earth off lone Fanning's Island, or the far away +King's Mills how much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances +these ships should not only interchange hails, but come into still closer, +more friendly and sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a +matter of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose +captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each +other and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk +about. For the long absent ship, the outwardbounder, perhaps, has letters +on board at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date +a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumbworn files. +And in return for that courtesy, the outwardbound ship would receive the +latest whaling intelligence from the cruisingground to which she may be +destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this +will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the +cruisingground itself, even though they are equally long absent from home. +for one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and +now far remote vessel and some of those letters may be for the people of the +ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have +an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of +sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a +common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils. Nor would +difference of country make any very essential difference that is, so long as +both parties speak one language, as is the case with Americans and English. +Though, to be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings +do not very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be a +sort of shyness between them for your Englishman is rather +reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody +but himself. Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of +metropolitan superiority over the American whalers regarding the long, lean +Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of seapeasant. +But where this superiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it +would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill +more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a +harmless little foible in the English whalehunters, which the Nantucketer +does not take much to heart probably, because he knows that he has a few +foibles himself. So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the +sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable and they are so. Whereas, +some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the midAtlantic, will +oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually +cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway +and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon each other's +rig. As for MenofWar, when they chance to meet at sea, they first go +through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of +ensigns, that there does not seem to be much rightdown hearty goodwill and +brotherly love about it at all. As touching Slaveships meeting, why, they are +in such a prodigious hurry, they run away from each other as soon as possible. +And as for Pirates, when they chance to cross each other's crossbones, the +first hail is How many skulls? the same way that whalers hail How many +barrels? And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, +for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch +of each other's villanous likenesses. But look at the godly, honest, +unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, freeandeasy whaler What does the +whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? She +has a Gam, a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never +heard of the name even and if by chance they should hear of it, they only +grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about spouters and blubberboilers, +and such like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchantseamen, and +also all +Pirates and ManofWar's men, and Slaveship sailors, cherish such a scornful +feeling towards Whaleships this is a question it would be hard to answer. +Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to know whether that +profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in +uncommon elevation, indeed but only at the gallows. And besides, when a +man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his +superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high +lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to +stand on. but what is a gam? you might wear out your indexfinger running +up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. +Johnson never attained to that erudition Noah Webster's ark does not hold it. +Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in +constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly it +needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that +view, let me learnedly define it. Gam. Noun A social meeting of two or more +Whaleships, generally on a cruisingground when, after exchanging hails, +they exchange visits by boats' crews the two captains remaining, for the +time, on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other. There is +another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten here. All +professions have their own little peculiarities of detail so has the whale +fishery. In a pirate, manofwar, or slave ship, when the captain is rowed +anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable, +sometimes cushioned seat there, and often steers himself with a pretty little +milliner's tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons. But the whaleboat +has no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. +High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about the water on castors +like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the +whaleboat never admits of any such effeminacy and therefore as in gamming a +complete boat's crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or +harpooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the +occasion, and the captain, having no +place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pine tree. +And often you will notice that being conscious of the eyes of the whole +visible world resting on him from the sides of the two ships, this standing +captain is all alive to the importance of sustaining his dignity by +maintaining his legs. nor is this any very easy matter for in his rear is +the immense projecting steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of +his back, the afteroar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is +thus completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself +sideways by settling down on his stretched legs but a sudden, violent pitch +of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of foundation is +nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two +poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again, it would never do in plain +sight of the world's riveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this +straddling captain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particle by +catching hold of anything with his hands indeed, as token of his entire, +buoyant selfcommand, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers' +pockets but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them +there for ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances, well +authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly +critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say to seize hold of the nearest +oarsman's hair, and hold on there like grim death. + As told at the Golden Inn. +The Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is much +like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet more +travellers than in any other part. It was not very long after speaking the +Goney that another +homewardbound whaleman, the TownHo, was encountered. She was manned almost +wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news +of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly +heightened by a circumstance of the TownHo's story, which seemed obscurely +to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of +those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. +This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming +what may be called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never +reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates. For that secret part of the +story was unknown to the captain of the TownHo himself. It was the private +property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of whom, it +seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of secresy, but +the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and revealed so much of it +in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest. +Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing have on those seamen in +the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and by such a strange +delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter, that they kept +the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft the Pequod's +mainmast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story +as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now +proceed to put on lasting record. For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the +style in which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish +friends, one saint's eve, smoking upon the thickgilt tiled piazza of the +Golden Inn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, +were on the closer terms with me and hence the interluding questions they +occasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time. Some two years +prior to my first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you, +gentlemen, the TownHo, Sperm +Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days' +sail westward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to +the northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according to +daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold than +common. They supposed a swordfish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the +captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited +him in those latitudes and therefore being very averse to quit them, and +the leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they +could not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in +rather heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners +working at the pumps at wide and easy intervals but no good luck came more +days went by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly +increased. So much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, making all +sail, stood away for the nearest harbor among the islands, there to have +his hull hove out and repaired. Though no small passage was before her, yet, +if the commonest chance favored, he did not at all fear that his ship would +founder by the way, because his pumps were of the best, and being +periodically relieved at them, those sixandthirty men of his could easily +keep the ship free never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, +well nigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous breezes, +the TownHo had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at her port +without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been for the brutal +overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the bitterly provoked +vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from Buffalo. "Lakeman +Buffalo Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?" said Don +Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass. On the eastern shore of our +Lake Erie, Don butI crave your courtesymay be, you shall soon hear further +of all that. Now, gentlemen, in squaresail brigs and threemasted ships, +wellnigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to +far manilla this lakeman, in the landlocked heart of our America, had yet +been nurtured by all those agrarian +freebooting impressions popularly connected with the open ocean. For in their +interflowing aggregate, those grand freshwater seas of ours Erie, and +Ontario, and Huron, and Superior, and Michigan, possess an oceanlike +expansiveness, with many of the ocean's noblest traits with many of its +rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of +romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters do in large part, are shored +by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is they furnish long +maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East, +dotted all round their banks here and there are frowned upon by batteries, +and by the goatlike craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw they have heard the fleet +thunderings of naval victories at intervals, they yield their beaches to +wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams +for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests, where +the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies +those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures +whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors they mirror the paved +capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages they float +alike the fullrigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the +steamer, and the beech canoe they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts +as direful as any that lash the salted wave they know what shipwrecks are, +for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a +midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an +inlander, Steelkilt was wildocean born, and wildocean nurtured as much +of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may +have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea +though in after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your +contemplative Pacific yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social +quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buckhorn +handled Bowieknives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man with some goodhearted +traits and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, +might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of +human recognition which is the meanest slave's right thus +treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all +events, he had proved so thus far but Radney was doomed and made mad, and +Steelkilt but, gentlemen, you shall hear. It was not more than a day or two +at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven, that the +TownHo's leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an hour or +more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized +ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping +their whole way across it though of a still, sleepy night, should the +officer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the +probability would be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, +on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary +and savage seas far from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether +unusual for ships to keep clanging at their pumphandles in full chorus even +for a voyage of considerable length that is, if it lie along a tolerably +accessible coast, or if any other reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is +only when a leaky vessel is in some very out of the way part of those waters, +some really landless latitude, that her captain begins to feel a little +anxious. Much this way had it been with the TownHo so when her leak was +found gaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by +several of her company especially by radney the mate. He commanded the +upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way expanded to +the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a coward, and as +little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness touching his own +person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea that you can +conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this solicitude +about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it was only on +account of his being a part owner in her. So when they were working that +evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness slily +going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by +the rippling clear water clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen that +bubbling from +the pumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at the +lee scupperholes. Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this +conventional world of ours watery or otherwise that when a person placed +in command over his fellowmen finds one of them to be very significantly his +superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he +conceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness and if he have a chance +he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little +heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all +events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a +flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's +snorting charger and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen, +which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagne's +father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule yet as hardy, as stubborn, +as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it. Espying the +mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest, the Lakeman +affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his gay banterings. +"Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this hold a cannikin, one of +ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling I tell ye +what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it he had best cut away his part +of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that swordfish only began +the job he's come back again with a gang of shipcarpenters, sawfish, and +filefish, and what not and the whole posse of 'em are now hard at work +cutting and slashing at the bottom making improvements, I suppose. If old +Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump overboard and scatter 'em. They're +playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him. But he's a simple old +soul, Rad, and a beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is +invested in lookingglasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the +model of his nose." "Damn your eyes what's that pump stopping for?" roared +Radney, pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. "Thunder away at it" +"Aye, aye, sir," said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. "Lively, boys, lively, +now" And with that the pump clanged like fifty fireengines the men tossed +their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was +heard which denotes the fullest tension of life's utmost energies. Quitting +the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went forward all +panting, and sat himself down on the windlass his face fiery red, his eyes +bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening +fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in +that corporeally exasperated state, I know not but so it happened. +Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom +and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove some offensive +matters consequent upon allowing a pig to run at large. Now, gentlemen, +sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece of household work which in all times +but raging gales is regularly attended to every evening it has been known to +be done in the case of ships actually foundering at the time. Such, +gentlemen, is the inflexibility of seausages and the instinctive love of +neatness in seamen some of whom would not willingly drown without first +washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business is the +prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it was +the stronger men in the TownHo that had been divided into gangs, taking +turns at the pumps and being the most athletic seaman of them all, +Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of the gangs +consequently he should have been freed from any trivial business not connected +with truly nautical duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention +all these particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood +between the two men. But there was more than this the order about the +shovel was almost as plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though +Radney had spat in his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whaleship will +understand this and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully +comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat still for a +moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate's malignant eye and +perceived the stacks of powdercasks heaped up in him and the slowmatch +silently burning along towards them as he instinctively saw all this, that +strange forbearance and unwillingness to stir up the deeper passionateness in +any already ireful being a repugnance most felt, when felt at all, by +really valiant men even when aggrieved this nameless phantom feeling, +gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt. Therefore, in his ordinary tone, only a +little broken by the bodily exhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him +saying that sweeping the deck was not his business, and he would not do it. +and then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as +the customary sweepers who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done little +or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a most +domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his command +meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper's +club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by. Heated and irritated +as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless +feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing +in the mate but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, +without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the +incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously +commanding him to do his bidding. Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating +round the windlass, steadily followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, +deliberately repeated his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his +forbearance had not the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable +intimation with his twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man +but it was to no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the +windlass when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that +he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused +on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer "Mr. Radney, I will not obey +you. Take that hammer away, or look to yourself." But the predestinated mate +coming still closer to him, where the Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the +heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth meanwhile repeating a string of +insufferable maledictions. Retreating not the thousandth part of an inch +stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance, +steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back, +told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he Steelkilt +would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter +by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek the next instant the +lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head he fell on the hatch spouting +blood like a whale. Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of +the backstays leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing +their mastheads. They were both Canallers. "Canallers" cried Don Pedro, +"We have seen many whaleships in our harbors, but never heard of your +Canallers. Pardon who and what are they?" "Canallers, Don, are the boatmen +belonging to our grand Erie Canal. You must have heard of it." "Nay, Senor +hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we know but +little of your vigorous North." "Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your +chicha's very fine and ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our +Canallers are for such information may throw sidelight upon my story." +For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth of +the state of New York through numerous populous cities and most thriving +villages through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated +fields, unrivalled for fertility by billiardroom and barroom through +the holyofholies of great forests on Roman arches over Indian rivers +through sun and shade by happy hearts or broken through all the wide +contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties and especially, by rows of +snowwhite chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one +continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life. There's your +true Ashantee, gentlemen there howl your pagans where you ever find them, +next door to you under the longflung shadow, and the snug patronizing lee +of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your +metropolitan freebooters +that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, +most abound in holiest vicinities. "Is that a friar passing?" said Don +Pedro, looking downwards into the crowded plazza, with humorous concern. +"Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's Inquisition wanes in Lima," +laughed Don Sebastian. "Proceed, Senor." "A moment Pardon" cried another +of the company. "In the name of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to +you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not +substituting present Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh +do not bow and look surprised you know the proverb all along this coast +Corrupt as Lima. It but bears out your saying, too churches more +plentiful than billiardtables, and for ever openand Corrupt as Lima. +So, too, Venice I have been there the holy city of the blessed evangelist, +St. Mark St. Dominic, purge it Your cup Thanks here I refill now, +you pour out again." Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the +Canaller would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely +wicked is he. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his greenturfed, +flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his redcheeked +Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all +this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly +sports his slouched and gailyribboned hat betoken his grand features. A +terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats his +swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on +his own canal, I have received good turns from one of these Canallers I +thank him heartily would fain be not ungrateful but it is often one of the +prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as +stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy +one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is +emphatically evinced by this that our wild whalefishery contains so many of +its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except +Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at +all diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our +rural boys and young men born along its line, the probationary life of the +Grand Canal furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a +Christian cornfield, and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric +seas. "I see I see " impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his +chicha upon his silvery ruffles. "No need to travel The world's one Lima. I +had thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were cold and +holy as the hills. But the story." I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman +shook the backstay. Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the +three junior mates and the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. +But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into +the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle. +Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil +ensued while standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and +down with a whalepike, calling upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious +scoundrel, and smoke him along to the quarterdeck. At intervals, he ran +close up to the revolving border of the confusion, and prying into the heart +of it with his pike, sought to prick out the object of his resentment. But +Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much for them all they succeeded in +gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily slewing about three or four large +casks in a line with the windlass, these seaParisians entrenched themselves +behind the barricade. "come out of that, ye pirates" roared the captain, +now menacing them with a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the +steward. "Come out of that, ye cutthroats" Steelkilt leaped on the +barricade, and striding up and down there, defied the worst the pistols could +do but gave the captain to understand distinctly, that his Steelkilt's +death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. +Fearing in his heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain a little +desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their +duty. "Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?" demanded their +ringleader. +"Turn to turn to I make no promise to your duty Do you want to sink +the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to" and he once more +raised a pistol. "Sink the ship?" cried Steelkilt. "Aye, let her sink. Not +a man of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a ropeyarn against us. +What say ye, men?" turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their +response. The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping +his eye on the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these "It's not +our fault we didn't want it I told him to take his hammer away it was +boy's business he might have known me before this I told him not to prick +the buffalo I believe I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw +ain't those mincing knives down in the forecastle there, men? look to those +handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to yourself say the word +don't be a fool forget it all we are ready to turn to treat us decently, +and we're your men but we won't be flogged." "Turn to I make no +promises, turn to, I say" "Look ye, now," cried the Lakeman, flinging out +his arm towards him. "there are a few of us here and I am one of them who +have shipped for the cruise, d'ye see now as you well know, sir, we can +claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down so we don't want a row +it's not our interest we want to be peaceable we are ready to work, but we +won't be flogged." "Turn to" roared the Captain. Steelkilt glanced round +him a moment, and then said "I tell you what it is now, Captain, rather +than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand +against ye unless ye attack us but till you say the word about not flogging +us, we won't do a hand's turn." "Down into the forecastle then, down with +ye, I'll keep ye there till ye're sick of it. Down ye go." "Shall we?" +cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against it but at +length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark +den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave. As the Lakeman's bare +head was just level with the planks, +the Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the +slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly +called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock, belonging to the +companionway. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered +something down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them ten in +number leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained +neutral. All night a wideawake watch was kept by all the officers, forward +and aft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway at which +last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after breaking through +the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed in peace the men who +still remained at their duty toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and +clanking at intervals through the dreary night dismally resounded through the +ship. at sunrise the captain went forward, and knocking on the deck, +summoned the prisoners to work but with a yell they refused. Water was +then lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were tossed +after it when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it, the Captain +returned to the quarterdeck. Twice every day for three days this was +repeated but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling, and then a +scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered and suddenly +four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to turn to. +The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some +fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at +discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the +rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling +and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of +the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought +to restrain them. Only three were left. "Better turn to, now?" said the +Captain with a heartless jeer. "Shut us up again, will ye" cried Steelkilt. +"Oh certainly," said the Captain and the key clicked. It was at this +point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection +of seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had +last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as black as +the bowels of despair it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the two +Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of their +hole at the next summoning of the garrison and armed with their keen +mincing knives long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end +run a muck from the bowsprit to the taffrail and if by any devilishness of +desperation possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, +whether they joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in +that den. but the scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two +they swore they were ready for that, or for any other mad thing, for +anything in short but a surrender. And what was more, they each insisted +upon being the first man on deck, when the time to make the rush should come. +But to this their leader as fiercely objected, reserving that priority for +himself particularly as his two comrades would not yield, the one to the +other, in the matter and both of them could not be first, for the ladder +would but admit one man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play of +these miscreants must come out. Upon hearing the frantic project of their +leader, each in his own separate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, +upon the same piece of treachery, namely to be foremost in breaking out, +in order to be the first of the three, though the last of the ten, to +surrender and thereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct +might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead +them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of villany, +mixed their before secret treacheries together and when their leader fell +into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three sentences +and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords and shrieked +out for the Captain at midnight. Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in +the dark for the blood, he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for +the forecastle. In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand +and foot, the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his +perfidious allies, who at once claimed the +honor of securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder. But all these were +collared, and dragged along the deck like dead cattle and, side by side, +were seized up into the mizen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there +they hung till morning. "Damn ye," cried the Captain, pacing to and fro +before them, "the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains" At sunrise he +summoned all hands and separating those who had rebelled from those who had +taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former that he had a good mind to +flog them all round thought, upon the whole, he would do so he ought to +justice demanded it but for the present, considering their timely +surrender, he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly +administered in the vernacular. "But as for you, ye carrion rogues," turning +to the three men in the rigging "for you, I mean to mince ye up for the +trypots" and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs +of the two traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their +heads sideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn. "My wrist is +sprained with ye" he cried, at last "but there is still rope enough left +for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn't give up. Take that gag from his mouth, +and let us hear what he can say for himself." For a moment the exhausted +mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully +twisting round his head, said in a sort of hiss, "What I say is this and +mind it well if you flog me, I murder you" "Say ye so? then see how ye +frighten me" and the Captain drew off with the rope to strike. "Best not," +hissed the Lakeman. "But I must," and the rope was once more drawn back for +the stroke. Steelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the +Captain who, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck +rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope, said,"I +won't do it let him gocut him down d'ye hear?" But as the junior mates +were hurrying to execute the order, +a pale man, with a bandaged head, arrested them Radney the chief mate. Ever +since the blow, he had lain in his berth but that morning, hearing the +tumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the whole +scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly speak but +mumbling something about his being willing and able to do what the captain +dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to his pinioned foe. +"You are a coward" hissed the Lakeman. "So I am, but take that." The mate +was in the very act of striking, when another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. +He paused and then pausing no more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt's +threat, whatever that might have been. The three men were then cut down, +all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron +pumps clanged as before. Just after dark that day, when one watch had retired +below, a clamor was heard in the forecastle and the two trembling traitors +running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the +crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their +own instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still, no +sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that +mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the +strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship +reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end +to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing namely, not to sing out for +whales, in case any should be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite +of all her other perils, the TownHo still maintained her mastheads, and +her captain was just as willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the +day his craft first struck the cruising ground and Radney the mate was quite +as ready to change his berth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to +gag in death the vital jaw of the whale. But though the Lakeman had induced +the seamen to adopt this sort of passiveness in their conduct, he kept his +own counsel at least till all was over concerning his own proper and +private revenge upon the man who had stung him in the ventricles +of his heart. He was in Radney the chief mate's watch and as if the +infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom, after the +scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the captain, +upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two +other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge. +During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the +bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the +boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side. In this +attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable +vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between this was the sea. +Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his next trick at the helm +would come round at two o'clock, in the morning of the third day from that in +which he had been betrayed. At his leisure, he employed the interval in +braiding something very carefully in his watches below. "What are you making +there?" said a shipmate. "What do you think? what does it look like?" +"Like a lanyard for your bag but it's an odd one, seems to me." "Yes, +rather oddish," said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's length before him +"but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough twine, have you +any?" But there was none in the forecastle. "Then I must get some from old +Rad" and he rose to go aft. "You don't mean to go a begging to him" said +a sailor. "Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when it's to help +himself in the end, shipmate?" and going to the mate, he looked at him +quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given him +neither twine nor lanyard were seen again but the next night an iron ball, +closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket, +as he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twentyfour hours +after, his trick at the silent helm nigh to the man who was apt to doze over +the grave always ready dug to the seaman's hand that fatal hour was then to +come and in +the foreordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and +stretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in. But, gentlemen, a fool +saved the wouldbe murderer from the bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete +revenge he had, and without being the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, +Heaven itself seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the +damning thing he would have done. It was just between daybreak and sunrise of +the morning of the second day, when they were washing down the decks, that +a stupid Teneriffe man, drawing water in the mainchains, all at once +shouted out, "There she rolls there she rolls" Jesu, what a whale It +was Moby Dick. "Moby Dick" cried Don Sebastian "St. Dominic Sir sailor, +but do whales have christenings? Whom call you Moby Dick?" "A very white, +and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don but that would be too long +a story." "How? how" cried all the young Spaniards, crowding. "Nay, Dons, +Dons nay, nay I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more into the air, +Sirs." "The chicha the chicha" cried Don Pedro "our vigorous friend +looks faint fill up his empty glass" No need, gentlemen one moment, and +I proceed. Now, gentlemen, so suddenly perceiving the snowy whale within +fifty yards of the ship forgetful of the compact among the crew in the +excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and +involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little time +past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mastheads. All was now +a phrensy. "The White Whale the White Whale" was the cry from captain, +mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumors, were all anxious +to capture so famous and precious a fish while the dogged crew eyed askance, +and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by +a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the +blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of +these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. +The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was +his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood +up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word +of command. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the +start and none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he +strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, +spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it +seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale's +topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a +blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together till of a sudden the boat +struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the standing +mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back, the boat +righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed over +into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the +spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking +to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a +sudden maelstrom seized the swimmer between his jaws and rearing high up +with him, plunged headlong again, and went down. Meantime, at the first tap +of the boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop +astern from the whirlpool calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts. +But a sudden, terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his +knife to the line. He cut it and the whale was free. But, at some +distance, Moby Dick rose again, with some tatters of Radney's red woollen +shirt, caught in the teeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase +again but the whale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared. In good +time, the TownHo reached her port a savage, solitary place where no +civilized creature resided. There, headed by the Lakeman, all but five or +six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted among the palms eventually, as +it turned out, seizing a large double warcanoe of the savages, and setting +sail for some other harbor. The ship's company being reduced to but a +handful, the captain called upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious +business of heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting +vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small +band of whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the +hard work they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, +they were in such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with +them in so heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he +anchored the ship as far off shore as possible loaded and ran out his two +cannon from the bows stacked his muskets on the poop and warning the +Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with him, and +setting the sail of his best whaleboat, steered straight before the wind for +Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew. +On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to +have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from it but the +savage craft bore down on him and soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to +heave to, or he would run him under water. the captain presented a pistol. +With one foot on each prow of the yoked warcanoes, the Lakeman laughed him +to scorn assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he +would bury him in bubbles and foam. "What do you want of me? cried the +captain. "Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?" demanded +Steelkilt "no lies." "I am bound to Tahiti for more men." "Very good. Let +me board you a moment I come in peace." With that he leaped from the canoe, +swam to the boat and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face with the +captain. "Cross your arms, sir throw back your head. Now, repeat after +me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder +island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings strike me" +"A pretty scholar," laughed the Lakeman."Adios, Senor" and leaping into the +sea, he swam back to his comrades. Watching the boat till it was fairly +beached, and drawn up to the roots of the cocoanut trees, Steelkilt made sail +again, and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. +There, luck befriended him two ships were about to sail for France, and +were providentially in want of precisely that number +of men which the sailor headed. They embarked and so for ever got the start +of their former captain, had he been at all minded to work them legal +retribution. Some ten days after the French ships sailed, the whaleboat +arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized +Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small native +schooner, he returned with them to his vessel and finding all right there, +again resumed his cruisings. Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know +but upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea +which refuses to give up its dead still in dreams sees the awful white whale +that destroyed him. "Are you through?" said Don Sebastian, quietly. "I am, +Don." "Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, +this story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful Did you +get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press." +"Also bear with all of us, sir sailor for we all join in Don Sebastian's +suit," cried the company, with exceeding interest. "Is there a copy of the +Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?" "Nay," said Don Sebastian +"but I know a worthy priest near by, who will quickly procure one for me. I +go for it but are you well advised? this may grow too serious." "Will you +be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?" "Though there are no +AutodaFes in Lima now," said one of the company to another "I fear our +sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of +the moonlight. I see no need for this." "Excuse me for running after you, +Don Sebastian but may I also beg that you will be particular in procuring +the largest sized Evangelists you can." "This is the priest, he brings you +the Evangelists," said Don Sebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and +solemn figure. "Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into +the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it." +"So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye, gentlemen, is +in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be true it happened on +this ball I trod the ship I knew the crew I have seen and talked with +Steelkilt since the death of Radney." +The ancient whalecry upon first sighting a whale from the masthead, still +used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin. +I shall ere long +paint to you as well as one can without canvas, something like the true form +of the whale as he actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own +absolute body the whale is moored alongside the whaleship so that he can be +fairly stepped upon there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to +advert to those curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the +present day confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to +set the world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all +wrong. It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will +be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For ever +since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of +temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields, medallions, cups, and +coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of chainarmor like Saladin's, and a +helmeted head like St. George's ever since then has something of the same +sort of license prevailed, not only in most popular pictures of the whale, +but in many scientific presentations of him. Now, by all odds, the most +ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be the whale's, is to be found +in the famous cavernpagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain +that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the +trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages +before any of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some +sort our noble profession +of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred +to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of +Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But +though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail +of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more +like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true +whale's majestic flukes. But go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great +Christian painter's portrait of this fish for he succeeds no better than the +antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido's picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda +from the seamonster or whale. Where did Guido get the model of such a +strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the same scene in +his own Perseus Descending, make out one whit better. The huge corpulence +of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface, scarcely drawing one +inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked +mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' +Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then, there are the +Prodromus whales of the old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as depicted +in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said +of these? As for the bookbinder's whale winding like a vinestalk round the +stock of a descending anchor as stamped and gilded on the backs and +titlepages of many books both old and new that is a very picturesque but +purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on +antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call +this bookbinder's fish an attempt at a whale because it was so intended +when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old Italian +publisher somewhere about the th century, during the Revival of Learning +and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period, dolphins +were popularly supposed to be a species of the Leviathan. In the vignettes +and other embellishments of some ancient books you will at times meet with +very curious touches at the whale, where all manner of spouts, jets d'eau, +hot springs and cold, Saratoga and BadenBaden, come bubbling up from his +unexhausted brain. In the titlepage of the original edition of the +Advancement of Learning you will find some curious whales. But quitting all +these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those pictures of leviathan +purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by those who know. In old +Harris's collection of voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from +a Dutch book of voyages, A. D. +, entitled A Whaling Voyage to +Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, +master. In one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are +represented lying among iceisles, with white bears running over their living +backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the +whale with perpendicular flukes. Then again, there is an imposing quarto, +written by one Captain Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled +A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending +the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries. In this book is an outline purporting to be +a Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from one killed +on the coast of Mexico, August, +, and hoisted on deck. I doubt not the +captain had this veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines. To +mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which applied, +according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make +the eye of that whale a bowwindow some five feet long. Ah, my gallant +captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye Nor are the +most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the benefit of the +young and tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake. Look at that +popular work Goldsmith's Animated Nature. In the abridged London edition of +, there are plates of an alleged whale and a narwhale. I do not wish +to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow +and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in +this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any +intelligent public of schoolboys. Then, again, in +, Bernard Germain, +Count de Lacepede, +a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are +several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these are +not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale +that is to say, the Right whale, even Scoresby, a long experienced man as +touching that species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature. But +the placing of the capsheaf to all this blundering business was reserved for +the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous Baron. In +, he +published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls a +picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer, +you had best provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, +Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, +he never had the benefit of a whaling voyage such men seldom have, but +whence he derived that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his +scientific predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his +authentic abortions that is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of +lively lads with the pencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers +inform us. As for the signpainters' whales seen in the streets hanging over +the shops of oildealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally +Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage breakfasting on +three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners their +deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint. but these manifold +mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very surprising after all. +Consider Most of the scientific drawings have been taken from the +stranded fish and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship, +with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all +its undashed pride of hull and spars. Though elephants have stood for their +fulllengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for +his portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is +only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters and afloat the vast bulk of +him is out of sight, like a launched lineofbattle ship and out of that +element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist +him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and +undulations. And, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of +contour between a young sucking whale and a fullgrown Platonian Leviathan +yet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a ship's +deck, such is then the outlandish, eellike, limbered, varying shape of him, +that his precise expression the devil himself could not catch. But it may be +fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale, accurate hints +may be derived touching his true form. Not at all. For it is one of the more +curious things about this Leviathan, that his skeleton gives very little idea +of his general shape. Though Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for +candelabra in the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea +of a burlybrowed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading +personal characteristics yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from +any leviathan's articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the +mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and +padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes +it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as in some part of +this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously displayed in +the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the +human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bonefingers, +the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently +lodged in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial +covering. However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us, said +humorous Stubb one day, he can never be truly said to handle us without +mittens. For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must +needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world +which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark +much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable +degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what +the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a +tolerable idea of his living contour, is by +going a whaling yourself but by so doing, you run no small risk of being +eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not +be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan. +PICTURES OF WHALING SCENES In connexion with the monstrous pictures of +whales, I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous +stories of them which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and +modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I +pass that matter by. i know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm +Whale Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's. In the +previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins's is far +better than theirs but, by great odds, Beale's is the best. All Beale's +drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the picture of +three whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter. His +frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to +excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and +lifelike in its general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross +Browne are pretty correct in contour but they are wretchedly engraved. That +is not his fault though. Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in +Scoresby but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable +impression. He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad +deficiency, because it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, +that you can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen +by his living hunters. But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though +in some details not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling +scenes to be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed, +and taken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent +attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble Sperm +Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath the boat from +the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the air upon his back the +terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of the boat is partially +unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the monster's spine and standing +in that prow, for that one single incomputable flash of time, you behold an +oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the whale, and in +the act of leaping, as if from a precipice. The action of the whole thing is +wonderfully good and true. The halfemptied linetub floats on the whitened +sea the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it the heads +of the swimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting expressions +of affright while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing down upon +the scene. Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details of this +whale, but let that pass since, for the life of me, I could not draw so +good a one. In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing +alongside the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his +black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rockslide from the Patagonian +cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot so that from so +abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave +supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small +crabs, shellfish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale +sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thicklipped +leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds +in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff +caught nigh the paddlewheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is +all raging commotion but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the +glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the +powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, +with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whalepole inserted into his +spouthole. +Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he was +either practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously tutored +by some experienced whaleman. The French are the lads for painting action. +Go and gaze upon all the paintings in Europe, and where will you find such a +gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal +hall at Versailles where the beholder fights his way, pellmell, through the +consecutive great battles of France where every sword seems a flash of the +Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a +charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, +are these sea battlepieces of Garnery. The natural aptitude of the French for +seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what +paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. With not one +tenth of England's experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of +that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the +only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the +whale hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen +seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things, such +as the vacant profile of the whale which, so far as picturesqueness of +effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a +pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us +a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate +miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical +engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels and with the +microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a +shivering world ninetysix facsimiles of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I +mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager I honor him for a veteran, +but in so important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have +procured for every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice +of the Peace. In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are +two other French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes +himself h. durand. one of them, though not precisely +adapted to our present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other +accounts. It is a quiet noonscene among the isles of the Pacific a French +whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board the +loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms in the +background, both drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is very +fine, when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen +under one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is +quite a different affair the ship hoveto upon the open sea, and in the +very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside the vessel +in the act of cuttingin hove over to the monster as if to a quay and a +boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is about giving +chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and lances lie levelled for +use three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its hole while from a +sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands halferect out of the water, +like a rearing horse. From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling +whale is going up like the smoke over a village of smithies and to +windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, seems +to quicken the activity of the excited seamen. +SHEETIRON IN STONE IN MOUNTAINS IN STARS On Towerhill, as you go down +to the London docks, you may have seen a crippled beggar or kedger, as the +sailors say holding a painted board before him, representing the tragic +scene in which he lost his leg. There are three whales and three boats and +one of the boats presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original +integrity is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time +these ten years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and +exhibited +that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification has now +come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping, +at any rate and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will find in +the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never a +stumpspeech does the poor whaleman make but, with downcast eyes, stands +ruefully contemplating his own amputation. Throughout the Pacific, and also +in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively +sketches of whales and whalingscenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on +Sperm Whaleteeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whalebone, and +other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little +ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in +their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of +dentisticallooking implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering +business. But, in general, they toil with their jackknives alone and, with +that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything +you please, in the way of a mariner's fancy. Long exile from Christendom and +civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed +him, i. e. what is called savagery. Your true whalehunter is as much a +savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage owning no allegiance but to the +King of the Cannibals and ready at any moment to rebel against him. Now, +one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic hours, is +his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian warclub or +spearpaddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as +great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but a bit +of broken seashell or a shark's tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden +network has been achieved and it has cost steady years of steady +application. As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailorsavage. +With the same marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth, +of his one poor jackknife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not +quite as workmanlike, but as close +packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield +and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine +old Dutch savage, Albert Durer. Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out +of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea warwood, are frequently met +with in the forecastles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much +accuracy. At some old gableroofed country houses you will see brass whales +hung by the tail for knockers to the roadside door. When the porter is +sleepy, the anvilheaded whale would be best. But these knocking whales are +seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some oldfashioned +churches you will see sheetiron whales placed there for weathercocks but +they are so elevated, and besides that are to all intents and purposes so +labelled with Hands off you cannot examine them closely enough to decide +upon their merit. In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of +high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the +plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the +Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in +a surf of green surges. Then, again, in mountainous countries where the +traveller is continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights here and there +from some lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles +of whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough +whaleman, to see these sights and not only that, but if you wish to return +to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact intersecting +latitude and longitude of your first standpoint, else so chancelike are +such observations of the hills, that your precise, previous standpoint would +require a laborious rediscovery like the Solomon islands, which still +remain incognita, though once highruffed Mendanna trod them and old Figuera +chronicled them. Nor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to +trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them +as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked +in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased Leviathan round +and round +the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him to +me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the ArgoNavis, +and joined the chase against the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of +Hydrus and the Flying Fish. With a frigate's anchors for my bridlebitts and +fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the +topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless +tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight +Steering northeastward from the Crozetts, we +fell in with vast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which +the Right Whale largely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, +so that we seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden +wheat. On the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure +from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly +swam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous +Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated from the water +that escaped at the lip. As morning mowers, who side by side slowly and +seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads +even so these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound and +leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea. +But it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at all +reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mastheads, especially when they paused +and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms looked more like +lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in the great hunting +countries of India, the stranger at a distance will sometimes pass on the +plains recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such, taking them for +bare, blackened elevations of the soil even so, often, with him, who for the +first time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea. And even when +recognised at last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really to +believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all +parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse. Indeed, in +other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep with the same +feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old naturalists have +maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind in the sea and +though taking a broad general view of the thing, this may very well be yet +coming to specialties, where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish +that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog? The +accursed shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear comparative +analogy to him. But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants +of the seas have ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and +repelling though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so +that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one +superficial western one though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal +disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds +of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters though but a moment's +consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag of his science and +skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may +augment yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will +insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can +make nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these +very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea +which aboriginally belongs to it. The first boat we read of, floated on an +ocean, that with Portuguese vengeance had whelmed a whole world without +leaving so much as a widow. That same ocean rolls now that same ocean +destroyed the wrecked ships of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood +is not yet subsided two thirds of the fair world it yet covers. Wherein +differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a miracle upon +the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews, when under the +feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened and swallowed them up for +ever yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in precisely the same manner the +live sea swallows up ships and crews. But not only is the sea such a foe to +man who is an alien to it, but it is also a fiend to its own offspring +worse than the Persian host who murdered his own guests sparing not the +creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in +the jungle overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales +against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks +of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting +like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean +overruns the globe. Consider the subtleness of the sea how its most dreaded +creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously +hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish +brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty +embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the +universal cannibalism of the sea all whose creatures prey upon each other, +carrying on eternal war since the world began. Consider all this and then +turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth consider them both, the +sea and the land and do you not find a strange analogy to something in +yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the +soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but +encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. +God keep thee Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return +That part of the sea known among whalemen as the Brazil Banks does not bear +that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there being shallows +and soundings there, but because of this remarkable meadowlike appearance, +caused by the vast drifts of brit continually floating in those latitudes, +where the Right Whale is often chased. +Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the +Pequod still held on her way northeastward towards the island of Java a +gentle air impelling her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three +tall tapering masts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms +on a plain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, +alluring jet would be seen. But one transparent blue morning, when a +stillness almost preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with +any stagnant calm when the long burnished sunglade on the waters seemed a +golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secresy when the slippered +waves whispered together as they softly ran on in this profound hush of the +visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the mainmasthead. +In the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and +higher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before our +prow like a snowslide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening for a +moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose, and silently +gleamed. It seemed not a whale and yet is this Moby Dick? thought Daggoo. +Again the phantom went down, but on reappearing once more, with a +stilettolike cry that startled every man from his nod, the negro yelled out +There there again there she breaches right ahead The White Whale, +the White Whale Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yardarms, as in +swarmingtime the bees rush to the boughs. Bareheaded in the sultry sun, +Ahab stood on the bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness +to wave his orders to the helmsman, cast +his eager glance in the direction indicated aloft by the outstretched +motionless arm of Daggoo. Whether the flitting attendance of the one still and +solitary jet had gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now prepared to +connect the ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the +particular whale he pursued however this was, or whether his eagerness +betrayed him whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly +perceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave orders +for lowering. The four boats were soon on the water Ahab's in advance, and +all swiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with +oars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo in the same spot where +it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all +thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the +secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in +length and breadth, of a glancing creamcolor, lay floating on the water, +innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like +a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within +reach. No perceptible face or front did it have no conceivable token of +either sensation or instinct but undulated there on the billows, an +unearthly, formless, chancelike apparition of life. As with a low sucking +sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still gazing at the agitated +waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice exclaimed Almost rather had I +seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost +What was it, Sir? said Flask. The great live squid, which they say, few +whaleships ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of it. But +Ahab said nothing turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel the rest +as silently following. Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general +have connected with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse +of it being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with +portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of them +declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few of +them have any but +the most vague ideas concerning its true nature and form notwithstanding, +they believe it to furnish to the sperm whale his only food. For though other +species of whales find their food above water, and may be seen by man in the +act of feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones +below the surface and only by inference is it that any one can tell of what, +precisely, that food consists. At times, when closely pursued, he will +disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms of the squid some of them +thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet in length. They fancy that +the monster to which these arms belonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed +of the ocean and that the sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied +with teeth in order to attack and tear it. There seems some ground to imagine +that the great Kraken of Bishop Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into +Squid. The manner in which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising +and sinking, with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two +correspond. But much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible +bulk he assigns it. By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the +mysterious creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of +cuttlefish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would seem to +belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe. +If I had been astonished at first catching a +glimpse of so outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the +polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon +taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford. In +thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer +to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in +Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle +the affrighted ladies. Regent street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays +and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the +natives. But New Bedford beats all Water street and Wapping. In these +lastmentioned haunts you see only sailors but in New Bedford, actual +cannibals stand chatting at street corners savages outright many of whom +yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare. But, +besides the Feegeeans, Tongatabooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and +Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whalingcraft which +unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more +curious, certainly more comical. +There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire +men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, +of stalwart frames fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop +the axe and snatch the whalelance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains +whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old. +Look there that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and +swallowtailed coat, girdled with a sailorbelt and sheathknife. Here comes +another with a sou'wester and a bombazine cloak. No townbred dandy will +compare with a countrybred one I mean a downright bumpkin dandy a fellow +that, in the dogdays, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of +tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head +to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whalefishery, you +should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In +bespeaking his seaoutfit, he orders bellbuttons to his waistcoats straps +to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor HaySeed how bitterly will burst those +straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and +all, down the throat of the tempest. But think not that this famous town has +only harpooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. +Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that +tract of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the +coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten +one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live +in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough but not like +Canaan a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with milk +nor in the springtime do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of +this, nowhere in all America will you find more patricianlike houses parks +and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they? how planted +upon this once scraggy scoria of a country? Go and gaze upon the iron +emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and your question will be +answered. Yes all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the +Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and +dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a +feat like that? In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to +their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises apiece. +You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding for, they say, they +have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their +lengths in spermaceti candles. In summer time, the town is sweet to see +full of fine maples long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in +air, the beautiful and bountiful horsechestnuts, candelabrawise, proffer +the passerby their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So +omnipotent is art which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced +bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at +creation's final day. And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own +red roses. But roses only bloom in summer whereas the fine carnation of +their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match +that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young +girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, +as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the +Puritanic sands. +With reference to the whaling scene shortly to +be described, as well as for the better understanding of all similar scenes +elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible +whaleline. The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, +slightly vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the +case of ordinary ropes for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp +more pliable to the ropemaker, and also renders the rope itself more +convenient to the sailor for common ship use yet, not only would the ordinary +quantity too much stiffen the whaleline for the close coiling to which it +must be subjected but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general +by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may +give it compactness and gloss. Of late years the Manilla rope has in the +American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for +whalelines for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far +more soft and elastic and I will add since there is an aesthetics in all +things, is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is +a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian but Manilla is as a goldenhaired +Circassian to behold. The whale line is only two thirds of an inch in +thickness. At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. +By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one +hundred and twenty pounds so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly +equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whaleline measures +something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is +spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the wormpipe of a still though, +but so as to form one round, cheeseshaped mass of densely bedded sheaves, +or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the heart, +or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle +or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody's arm, +leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in +its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this +business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a +block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all +possible wrinkles and twists. In the English boats two tubs are used instead +of one the same line being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is +some advantage in this because these twintubs being so small they fit more +readily into the boat, and do not strain it so much whereas, the American +tub, nearly three feet in diameter and +of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks +are but one halfinch in thickness for the bottom of the whaleboat is like +critical ice, which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but +not very much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped +on the american linetub, the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a +prodigious great weddingcake to present to the whales. Both ends of the line +are exposed the lower end terminating in an eyesplice or loop coming up +from the bottom against the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge +completely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of the lower end is +necessary on two accounts. First In order to facilitate the fastening to +it of an additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale +should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally +attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted +like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other though the +first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second This +arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake for were the lower end +of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run +the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes +does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be +dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea and in that case no +towncrier would ever find her again. Before lowering the boat for the chase, +the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the +loggerhead there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, +resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs +against his wrist in rowing and also passing between the men, as they +alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in +the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size +of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs +in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again +and some ten or twenty fathoms called boxline being coiled upon the box in +the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, +and is then +attached to the shortwarp the rope which is immediately connected with the +harpoon but previous to that connexion, the shortwarp goes through sundry +mystifications too tedious to detail. Thus the whaleline folds the whole +boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost +every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions so +that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with +the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of +mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen +intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at +any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible +contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings he cannot be thus +circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to +quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit strange thing what cannot +habit accomplish? Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter +repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the +halfinch white cedar of the whaleboat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses +and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men +composing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every +neck, as you may say. Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to +account for those repeated whaling disasters some few of which are casually +chronicled of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, +and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, +is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steamengine +in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. +It is worse for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, +because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and +the other, without the slightest warning and only by a certain +selfadjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you +escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the allseeing sun +himself could never pierce you out. Again as the profound calm which only +apparently precedes +and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself +for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm and +contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, +and the ball, and the explosion so the graceful repose of the line, as it +silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play +this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of +this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in +whalelines. All are born with halters round their necks but it is only +when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the +silent, subtle, everpresent perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, +though seated in the whaleboat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of +terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a +harpoon, by your side. +If to Starbuck the apparition of +the Squid was a thing of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different +object. When you see him 'quid, said the savage, honing his harpoon in the +bow of his hoisted boat, then you quick see him 'parm whale. The next day +was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, +the Pequod's crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a +vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were +voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground that is, it affords +fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flyingfish, and other vivacious +denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the +inshore ground off Peru. It was my turn to stand at the foremasthead and +with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and +fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could +withstand it in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul +went out of my body though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum +will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn. Ere +forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the +main and mizen mastheads were already drowsy. So that at last all three of +us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made there +was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded +their indolent crests and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to +west, and the sun over all. Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my +closed eyes like vices my hands grasped the shrouds some invisible, +gracious agency preserved me with a shock I came back to life. And lo +close under our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling +in the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of +an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily +undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting +his vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a +warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by +some enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once +started into wakefulness and more than a score of voices from all parts of +the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the +accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the sparkling +brine into the air. clear away the boats luff cried Ahab. And obeying +his own order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the +spokes. The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale and +ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the leeward, +but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples as he swam, +that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave orders that +not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in whispers. So seated +like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats, +we swiftly but silently paddled along the calm not admitting of the +noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the +monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air, and then +sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up. There go flukes was the cry, +an announcement immediately followed by Stubb's producing his match and +igniting his pipe, for now a respite was granted. After the full interval of +his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance of +the smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others, Stubb +counted upon the honor of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale +had at length become aware of his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was +therefore no longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into +play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the +assault. Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his +jeopardy, he was going head out that part obliquely projecting from the +mad yeast which he brewed. Start her, start her, my men Don't hurry +yourselves take plenty of time but start her start her like +thunderclaps, that's all, cried Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he +spoke. start her, now give 'em the long and strong stroke, tashtego. +Start her, Tash, my boy start her, all but keep cool, keep cool +cucumbers is the word easy, easy only start her like grim death and +grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, +boys that's all. Start her Woohoo Wahee screamed the GayHeader in +reply, raising some old warwhoop to the skies as every oarsman in the +strained boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading +stroke which the eager Indian gave. +But his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. Keehee +Keehee yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat, +like a pacing tiger in his cage. Kala Kooloo howled Queequeg, as if +smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And thus with oars +and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his place in the +van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke +from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the +welcome cry was heard Stand up, Tashtego give it to him The harpoon was +hurled. Stern all The oarsmen backed water the same moment something +went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the magical +line. An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with +it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, +a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his +pipe. As the line passed round and round the loggerhead so also, just +before reaching that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both +of Stubb's hands, from which the handcloths, or squares of quilted canvas +sometimes worn at these times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding +an enemy's sharp twoedged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time +striving to wrest it out of your clutch. Wet the line wet the line cried +stubb to the tub oarsman him seated by the tub who, snatching off his hat, +dashed the seawater into it. More turns were taken, so that the line began +holding its place. The boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark +all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed places stem for stern a +staggering business truly in that rocking commotion. From the vibrating line +extending the entire length of the upper part of the boat, and from its now +being more tight than a harpstring, you would have thought the craft had two +keels one cleaving the water, the other the air as the boat churned +on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the +bows a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake and, at the slightest motion +from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft +canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed each man +with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the +foam and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost +double, in order to bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and +Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their way, till at length the whale +somewhat slackened his flight. Haul in haul in cried Stubb to the +bowsman and, facing round towards the whale, all hands began pulling the +boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by +his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart +after dart into the flying fish at the word of command, the boat +alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then +ranging up for another fling. The red tide now poured from all sides of the +monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but +in blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The +slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its +reflection into every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red +men. And all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot +from the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth +of the excited headsman as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked +lance by the line attached to it, Stubb straightened it again and again, +by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it into +the whale. Pull up pull up he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning +whale relaxed in his wrath. Pull up close to and the boat ranged along +the fish's flank. When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his +long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and +churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the +whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he +could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of +the fish. And now it is struck for, starting +from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his flurry, the monster +horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, +boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had +much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear +air of the day. And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled +out into view surging from side to side spasmodically dilating and +contracting his spouthole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At +last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees +of red wine, shot into the frighted air and falling back again, ran dripping +down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst He's dead, +Mr. Stubb, said Daggoo. Yes both pipes smoked out and withdrawing his +own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes over the water and, for +a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made. +It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the entire +interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists. Though apparently the +most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about him. So that with ease +he elevates it in the air, and invariably does so when going at his utmost +speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part of the front of his +head, and such the tapering cutwater formation of the lower part, that by +obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform himself +from a bluffbowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New York +pilotboat. +Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated, +that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running line with +water in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for +that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most convenient. +A word concerning an incident in the last +chapter. According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whaleboat +pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whalekiller as temporary +steersman, and the harpooneer or whalefastener pulling the foremost oar, +the one known as the harpooneeroar. Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to +strike the first iron into the fish for often, in what is called a long +dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the distance of twenty or thirty +feet. But however prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is +expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost indeed, he is expected +to set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not only by incredible +rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations and what it is to +keep shouting at the top of one's compass, while all the other +muscles are strained and half started what that is none know but those who +have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work very recklessly +at one and the same time. In this straining, bawling state, then, with his +back to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry +Stand up, and give it to him He now has to drop and secure his oar, +turn round on his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and +with what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the +whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of +fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful no wonder that so +many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated no wonder that some +of them actually burst their bloodvessels in the boat no wonder that some +sperm whalemen are absent four years with four barrels no wonder that to +many ship owners, whaling is but a losing concern for it is the harpooneer +that makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how can +you expect to find it there when most wanted Again, if the dart be +successful, then at the second critical instant, that is, when the whale +starts to run, the boatheader and harpooneer likewise start to running fore +and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of themselves and every one else. It is +then they change places and the headsman, the chief officer of the little +craft, takes his proper station in the bows of the boat. Now, I care not who +maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish and unnecessary. The +headsman should stay in the bows from first to last he should both dart the +harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever should be expected of him, +except under circumstances obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would +sometimes involve a slight loss of speed in the chase but long experience in +various whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast +majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much +the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer +that has caused them. To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the +harpooneers of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and +not from out of toil. +Out of the trunk, the branches grow out +of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters. The crotch +alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention. It is a notched +stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length, which is perpendicularly +inserted into the starboard gunwale near the bow, for the purpose of +furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of the harpoon, whose other +naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow. Thereby the weapon is +instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest +as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is customary to have two +harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called the first and second +irons. But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with +the line the object being this to dart them both, if possible, one +instantly after the other into the same whale so that if, in the coming drag, +one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling of +the chances. But it very often happens that owing to the instantaneous, +violent, convulsive running of the whale upon receiving the first iron, it +becomes impossible for the harpooneer, however lightninglike in his +movements, to pitch the second iron into him. Nevertheless, as the second +iron is already connected with the line, and the line is running, hence that +weapon must, at all events, be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat, +somehow and somewhere else the most terrible jeopardy would involve all +hands. Tumbled into the water, it accordingly is in such cases the spare +coils of box line mentioned in a preceding chapter making this feat, in +most instances, prudently practicable. But this critical act is not always +unattended with the saddest and most fatal casualties. Furthermore you must +know that when the second iron is thrown overboard, it thenceforth becomes a +dangling, sharpedged +terror, skittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the lines, +or cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all directions. Nor, +in general, is it possible to secure it again until the whale is fairly +captured and a corpse. Consider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats +all engaging one unusually strong, active, and knowing whale when owing to +these qualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of +such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be +simultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is supplied with +several harpoons to bend on to the line should the first one be ineffectually +darted without recovery. All these particulars are faithfully narrated here, +as they will not fail to elucidate several most important, however intricate +passages, in scenes hereafter to be painted. +Stubb's whale had been killed some +distance from the ship. It was a calm so, forming a tandem of three boats, +we commenced the slow business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, +as we eighteen men with our thirtysix arms, and one hundred and eighty +thumbs and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish +corpse in the sea and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long +intervals good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass +we moved. For, upon the great canal of HangHo, or whatever they call it, in +China, four or five laborers on the footpath will draw a bulky freighted +junk at the rate of a mile an hour but this grand argosy we towed heavily +forged along, as if laden with piglead in bulk. Darkness came on but +three lights up and down in the Pequod's mainrigging dimly guided our way +till drawing nearer we saw Ahab dropping one of several more lanterns over the +bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual +orders for securing it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a +seaman, went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again until +morning. Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had +evinced his customary activity, to call it so yet now that the creature was +dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed working +in him as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was +yet to be slain and though a thousand other whales were brought to his ship, +all that would not one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object. Very soon +you would have thought from the sound on the Pequod's decks, that all hands +were preparing to cast anchor in the deep for heavy chains are being dragged +along the deck, and thrust rattling out of the portholes. But by those +clanking links, the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied +by the head to the stern, and by the tail to the bows, the whale now lies +with its black hull close to the vessel's, and seen through the darkness of +the night, which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the two ship and +whale, seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines +while the other remains standing. If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at +least so far as could be known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with +conquest, betrayed an unusual but still goodnatured excitement. Such an +unwonted bustle was he in that the staid Starbuck, his +official superior, quietly resigned to him for the time the sole management +of affairs. One small, helping cause of all this liveliness in Stubb, was +soon made strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver he was somewhat +intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate. A steak, +a steak, ere I sleep You, Daggoo overboard you go, and cut me one from +his small Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a +general thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy +defray the current expenses of the war at least before realizing the +proceeds of the voyage, yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers +who have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm Whale +designated by Stubb comprising the tapering extremity of the body. About +midnight that steak was cut and cooked and lighted by two lanterns of sperm +oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper at the capstanhead, +as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on +whale's flesh that night. Mingling their mumblings with his own mastications, +thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming round the dead leviathan, +smackingly feasted on its fatness. The few sleepers below in their bunks were +often startled by the sharp slapping of their tails against the hull, within +a few inches of the sleepers' hearts. Peering over the side you could just +see them as before you heard them wallowing in the sullen, black waters, +and turning over on their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of +the whale of the bigness of a human head. This particular feat of the shark +seems all but miraculous. How, at such an apparently unassailable surface, +they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part of the +universal problem of all things. The mark they thus leave on the whale, may +best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a +screw. Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a seafight, +sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs +round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed +man that is tossed to them and though, while the valiant butchers over the +decktable are +thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carvingknives all gilded +and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewelhilted mouths, are +quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat and though, were +you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the +same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all +parties and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave +ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy +in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently +buried and though one or two other like instances might be set down, +touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially +congregate, and most hilariously feast yet is there no conceivable time or +occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or +more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a +whaleship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your +decision about the propriety of devilworship, and the expediency of +conciliating the devil. But, as yet, Stubb heeded not the mumblings of the +banquet that was going on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the +smacking of his own epicurean lips. Cook, cook where's that old Fleece? +he cried at length, widening his legs still further, as if to form a more +secure base for his supper and, at the same time darting his fork into the +dish, as if stabbing with his lance cook, you cook sail this way, cook +the old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously routed from +his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along from his +galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with his +kneepans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans this old +Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his +step with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened +iron hoops this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of +command, came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb's sideboard +when, +with both hands folded before him, and resting on his twolegged cane, he +bowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining +his head, so as to bring his best ear into play. Cook, said Stubb, rapidly +lifting a rather reddish morsel to his mouth, don't you think this steak is +rather overdone? You've been beating this steak too much, cook it's too +tender. Don't I always say that to be good, a whalesteak must be tough? +There are those sharks now over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough +and rare? What a shindy they are kicking up Cook, go and talk to 'em tell +'em they are welcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they +must keep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and +deliver my message. Here, take this lantern, snatching one from his +sideboard now then, go and preach to 'em Sullenly taking the offered +lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck to the bulwarks and then, with +one hand dropping his light low over the sea, so as to get a good view of +his congregation, with the other hand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and +leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, +while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said. +Fellowcritters I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam noise +dare. you hear? stop dat dam smackin' ob de lip massa Stubb say dat you +can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor you must stop dat +dam racket Cook, here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a +sudden slap on the shoulder, Cook why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear +that way when you're preaching. That's no way to convert sinners, Cook +Who dat? Den preach to him yourself, sullenly turning to go. No, Cook +go on, go on. Well, den, Belubed fellowcritters Right exclaimed +Stubb, approvingly, coax 'em to it try that, and Fleece continued. Do +you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I +zay to you, fellowcritters, dat dat woraciousness 'top dat dam slappin' ob +de tail How you tink to hear, 'spose you keep up such a dam slappin' and +bitin' dare? Cook, cried Stubb, collaring him, I wont have that swearing. +Talk to 'em gentlemanly. Once more the sermon proceeded. Your +woraciousness, fellowcritters, I don't blame ye so much for dat is natur, +and can't be helped but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is +sharks, sartin but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel for +all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned. Now, look here, +bred'ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from dat whale. +Don't be tearin' de blubber out your neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one +shark dood right as toder to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right +to dat whale dat whale belong to some one else. I know some o' you has +berry brig mout, brigger dan oders but den de brig mouts sometimes has de +small bellies so dat de brigness ob de mout is not to swallar wid, but to +bite off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge +to help demselves. Well done, old Fleece cried Stubb, that's +Christianity go on. No use goin' on de dam willains will keep a +scrougin' and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb dey don't hear one word no +use apreachin' to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till dare bellies is +full, and dare bellies is bottomless and when dey do get em full, dey wont +hear you den for den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and +can't hear not'ing at all, no more, for eber and eber. Upon my soul, I am +about of the same opinion so give the benediction, Fleece, and I'll away to +my supper. Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised +his shrill voice, and cried Cussed fellowcritters Kick up de damndest +row as ever you can fill your dam' bellies 'till dey bust and den die. +Now, cook, said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan Stand just where +you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular attention. +All dention, said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the +desired position. Well, said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile I +shall now go back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old +are you, cook? What dat do wid de 'teak, said the old black, testily. +Silence How old are you, cook? 'Bout ninety, dey say, he gloomily +muttered. And have you lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, +cook, and don't know yet how to cook a whalesteak? rapidly bolting another +mouthful at the last word, so that that morsel seemed a continuation of the +question. Where were you born, cook? 'Hind de hatchway, in ferryboat, +goin' ober de Roanoke. Born in a ferryboat That's queer, too. But I want +to know what country you were born in, cook? Didn't I say de Roanoke +country? he cried, sharply. No, you didn't, cook but I'll tell you what +I'm coming to, cook. You must go home and be born over again you don't +know how to cook a whalesteak yet. Bress my soul, if I cook noder one, he +growled, angrily, turning round to depart. Come back, cook here, hand me +those tongs now take that bit of steak there, and tell me if you think that +steak cooked as it should be? Take it, I say holding the tongs towards him +take it, and taste it. Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a +moment, the old negro muttered, Best cooked 'teak I eber taste joosy, +berry joosy. Cook, said Stubb, squaring himself once more do you +belong to the church? Passed one once in CapeDown, said the old man +sullenly. And you have once in your life passed a holy church in CapeTown, +where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as his +beloved fellowcreatures, have you, cook And yet you come here, and tell +me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh? said Stubb. Where do you +expect to go to, cook? +Go to bed berry soon, he mumbled, halfturning as he spoke. Avast heave +to I mean when you die, cook. It's an awful question. Now what's your +answer? When dis old brack man dies, said the negro slowly, changing his +whole air and demeanor, he hisself won't go nowhere but some bressed angel +will come and fetch him. Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they +fetched Elijah? And fetch him where? Up dere, said Fleece, holding his +tongs straight over his head, and keeping it there very solemnly. So, then, +you expect to go up into our maintop, do you, cook, when you are dead? +But don't you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets? Maintop, eh? +Didn't say dat t'all, said Fleece, again in the sulks. You said up there, +didn't you, and now look yourself, and see where your tongs are pointing. +But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by crawling through the lubber's +hole, cook but no, no, cook, you don't get there, except you go the +regular way, round by the rigging. It's a ticklish business, but must be +done, or else it's no go. But none of us are in heaven yet. Drop your +tongs, cook, and hear my orders. Do ye hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and +clap t'other a'top of your heart, when I'm giving my orders, cook. What +that your heart, there? that's your gizzard Aloft aloft that's it now +you have it. Hold it there now, and pay attention. All 'dention, said +the old black, with both hands placed as desired, vainly wriggling his +grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at one and the same time. +Well then, cook you see this whalesteak of yours was so very bad, that I +have put it out of sight as soon as possible you see that, don't you? Well, +for the future, when you cook another whalesteak for my private table here, +the capstan, I'll tell you what to do so as not to spoil it by overdoing. +Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live coal to it with the other that +done, dish it d'ye hear? And now tomorrow, cook, when we are cutting in +the fish, be sure you stand by to get the tips of his fins have them put in +pickle. As for the ends of the flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now +ye may go. +But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled. Cook, give +me cutlets for supper tomorrow night in the midwatch. D'ye hear? away you +sail, then. Halloa stop make a bow before you go. Avast heaving again +Whaleballs for breakfast don't forget. Wish, by gor whale eat him, +'stead of him eat whale. I'm bressed if he ain't more of shark dan Massa +Shark hisself, muttered the old man, limping away with which sage +ejaculation he went to his hammock. +A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most reliable +hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside, is by the flukes +or tail and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier +than any other excepting the sidefins, its flexibility even in death, +causes it to sink low beneath the surface so that with the hand you +cannot get at it from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But +this difficulty is ingeniously overcome a small, strong line is prepared +with a wooden float at its outer end, and a weight in its middle, while the +other end is secured to the ship. By adroit management the wooden float is +to rise on the other side of the mass, so that now having girdled the made +whale, the chain is readily made to follow suit and being slipped along the +body, is at last locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the +point of junction with its broad flukes or lobes. +That mortal man should feed upon +the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, +as you may say this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a +little into the history and philosophy of it. It is upon record, that three +centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in +France, and commanded large prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth's +time, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an +admirable sauce to be eaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, +are a species of whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine +eating. The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and +being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtleballs or veal balls. +The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a great +porpoise grant from the crown. The fact is, that among his hunters at least, +the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so +much of him but when you come to sit down before a meatpie nearly one +hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced +of men like Stubb, nowadays partake of +cooked whales but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious. We all know how they +live upon whales, and have rare old vintages of prime old train oil. +Zogranda, one of their most famous doctors, recommends strips of blubber for +infants, as being exceedingly juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me +that certain Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by +a whaling vessel that these men actually lived for several months on the +mouldy scraps of whales which had been left ashore after trying out the +blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called fritters which, +indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown and crisp, and smelling +something like old Amsterdam housewives' doughnuts or olycooks, when fresh. +They have such an eatable look that the most selfdenying stranger can hardly +keep his hands off. But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized +dish, is his exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too +fat to be delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating +as the buffalo's which is esteemed a rare dish, were it not such a solid +pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is +like the transparent, halfjellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third +month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for butter. +Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into some other +substance, and then partaking of it. In the long try watches of the night it +is a common thing for the seamen to dip their shipbiscuit into the huge +oilpots and let them fry there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made. +In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The +casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish +lobes being withdrawn precisely resembling two large puddings, they are +then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in flavor +somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish among some epicures +and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually +dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their +own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head from their own heads which, +indeed, requires uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why +a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's head before him, is somehow +one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully +at him, with an Et tu Brute expression. It is not, perhaps, entirely +because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the +eating of him with abhorrence that appears to result, in some way, from the +consideration before mentioned i. e. that a man should eat a newly murdered +thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first +man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer perhaps he was hung +and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been +and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meatmarket of +a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows +of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's +jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable +for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a +coming famine it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in +the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who +nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy +patedefoiegras. But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? +and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knifehandle, +there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, +what is that handle made of? what but the bones of the brother of the very ox +you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that +fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the +Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally +indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that +society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens. +When in the Southern Fishery, a +captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil, is brought alongside late at +night, it is not, as a general thing at least, customary to proceed at once +to the business of cutting him in. For that business is an exceedingly +laborious one is not very soon completed and requires all hands to set +about it. Therefore, the common usage is to take in all sail lash the helm +a'lee and then send every one below to his hammock till daylight, with the +reservation that, until that time, anchorwatches shall be kept that is, +two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the +deck to see that all goes well. But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the +Pacific, this plan will not answer at all because such incalculable hosts +of sharks gather round the moored carcase, that were he left so for six +hours, say, on a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by +morning. In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not +so largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably +diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whalingspades, a +procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle +them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case +with the Pequod's sharks though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such +sights, to have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought +the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it. +nevertheless, upon stubb setting the anchorwatch after his supper was +concluded and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on +deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks for immediately +suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so +that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these +two mariners, darting their long whalingspades, kept up an incessant +murdering of the sharks, by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, +seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed +and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark and this +brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They +viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like +flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own till those entrails seemed +swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by +the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses +and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality +seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the +individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his +skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he +tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw. Queequeg no care what +god made him shark, said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and +down wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god but de god wat made shark must be +one dam Ingin. +The whalingspade used for cuttingin is made of the very best steel is about +the bigness of a man's spread hand and in general shape, corresponds to +the garden implement after which it is named only its sides are perfectly +flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower. This weapon +is always kept as sharp as possible and when being used is occasionally +honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole, from twenty to +thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle. +It was a Saturday night, and such a +Sabbath as followed Ex officio professors of Sabbath breaking are all +whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shamble +every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we were offering up ten +thousand red oxen to the sea gods. In the first place, the enormous cutting +tackles, among other ponderous things comprising a cluster of blocks generally +painted green, and which no single man can possibly lift this vast bunch of +grapes was swayed up to the maintop and firmly lashed to the lower masthead, +the strongest point anywhere above a ship's deck. The end of the hawserlike +rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted to the windlass, +and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over the whale to this +block the great blubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds, was attached. +And now suspended in stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb, the mates, +armed with their long spades, began cutting a hole in the body for the +insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two sidefins. This done, +a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and +the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving in +one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship careens over +on her side every bolt in her starts like the nailheads of an old house in +frosty weather she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mastheads to +the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping +heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows till +at last, a swift, startling snap is heard with a great swash the ship rolls +upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into +sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of +blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an +orange, so is it stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is +sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For the strain constantly kept up by +the windlass continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the water, +and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the +scarf, simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates +and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act itself, +it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end +grazes the maintop the men at the windlass then cease heaving, and for a +moment +or two the prodigious blooddripping mass sways to and fro as if let down from +the sky, and every one present must take good heed to dodge it when it +swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard. One of +the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen weapon called a +boardingsword, and watching his chance he dexterously slices out a +considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into this hole, the +end of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked so as to retain a +hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for what follows. Whereupon, this +accomplished swordsman, warning all hands to stand off, once more makes a +scientific dash at the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate, lunging +slicings, severs it completely in twain so that while the short lower part +is still fast, the long upper strip, called a blanketpiece, swings clear, +and is all ready for lowering. The heavers forward now resume their song, +and while the one tackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from the +whale, the other is slowly slackened away, and down goes the first strip +through the main hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the +blubberroom. Into this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling +away the long blanketpiece as if it were a great live mass of plaited +serpents. And thus the work proceeds the two tackles hoisting and lowering +simultaneously both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing, the +blubberroom gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship straining, and +all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction. +I have given no small attention to that +not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale. I have had controversies about it +with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. +My original opinion remains unchanged but it is only an opinion. The +question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you know what +his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence of firm, +closegrained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from +eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness. Now, however +preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's skin as being of +that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point of fact these are no +arguments against such a presumption because you cannot raise any other +dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but that same blubber and the +outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that +be but the skin? True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may +scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat +resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible +and soft as satin that is, previous to being dried, when it not only +contracts and thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle. I have several +such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whalebooks. It is +transparent, as I said before and being laid upon the printed page, I have +sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At +any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, +as you may say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same infinitely +thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the +whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the +skin of the skin, so to speak for it were simply ridiculous to say, that +the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the +skin of a newborn child. But no more of this. Assuming the blubber to be the +skin of the whale then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large +Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil and, when it +is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed +state, is only three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat some +idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part +of whose mere +integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels to the +ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff +of the whale's skin. In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not +the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all +over obliquely crossed and recrossed with numberless straight marks in thick +array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these +marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above +mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the +body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant +eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground +for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical that is, if you call +those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is +the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of +the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with +a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous +hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those +mystic rocks, too, the mysticmarked whale remains undecipherable. This +allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides all the +other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not +seldom displays the back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great +part of the regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches, +altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those New +England rocks on the seacoast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of +violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs I should say, that +those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular. It +also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made by hostile +contact with other whales for I have most remarked them in the large, +fullgrown bulls of the species. A word or two more concerning this matter +of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it is +stript from him in long pieces, called blanketpieces. Like most seaterms, +this one is very happy and significant. For the whale is +indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane or, still +better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It +is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to +keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. +What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of +the north, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are found +exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters but these, be it observed, are +your coldblooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators +creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller +in winter would bask before an inn fire whereas, like man, the whale has +lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies. How wonderful is it +then except after explanation that this great monster, to whom corporeal +warmth is as indispensable as it is to man how wonderful that he should be +found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters where, +when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, +perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found +glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by +experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo +negro in summer. It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a +strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare +virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man admire and model thyself after the +whale Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world +without being of it. Be cool at the equator keep thy blood fluid at the +Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, +O man in all seasons a temperature of thine own. But how easy and how +hopeless to teach these fine things Of erections, how few are domed like St. +Peter's of creatures, how few vast as the whale +Haul in the chains Let the carcase go +astern The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of +the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre though changed in hue, it +has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. it is still colossal. slowly it +floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the +insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming +fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale. The +vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and +every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods +of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost +stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild +azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous +breezes, that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite +perspectives. There's a most doleful and most mocking funeral The +seavultures all in pious mourning, the airsharks all punctiliously in +black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I +ween, if peradventure he had needed it but upon the banquet of his funeral +they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth from which +not the mightiest whale is free. Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the body +is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some +timid manofwar or blundering discoveryvessel from afar, when the distance +obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass +floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it +straightway the whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down +in the log shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts beware And for +years afterwards, +perhaps, ships shun the place leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a +vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. +There's your law of precedents there's your utility of traditions there's +the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the +earth, and now not even hovering in the air There's orthodoxy Thus, while +in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror to his foes, in +his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world. Are you a believer +in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the CockLane one, and far +deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them. +In this same New Bedford there stands a +Whaleman's Chapel, and few are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the +Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am +sure that I did not. Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied +out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear, +sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket +of the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. +Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' +wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the +shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart +from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The +chaplain had not yet arrived and there these silent islands of men and women +sat steadfastly eyeing several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned +into the wall on either side the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the +following, but I do not pretend to quote Sacred To the Memory of John +Talbot, Who, at the age of eighteen, was lost overboard, Near the Isle of +Desolation, off Patagonia, November st, +. This Tablet Is erected to his +Memory By his Sister. Sacred To the Memory of Robert Long, Willis Ellery, +Nathan Coleman, Walter Canny, Seth Macy, and Samuel Gleig, Forming one of the +boats' crews of the Ship Eliza, Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On +the Offshore Ground in the Pacific, December st, +. This Marble Is +here placed by their surviving Shipmates. +Sacred To the Memory of The late Captain Ezekiel Hardy, Who in the bows of +his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, August d, +This Tablet Is erected to his Memory by His Widow. Shaking off the sleet +from my iceglazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door, and +turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the +solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity +in his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed to +notice my entrance because he was the only one who could not read, and, +therefore, was not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any +of the relatives of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the +congregation, I knew not but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the +fishery, and so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not +the trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me +were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak +tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh ye whose +dead lie buried beneath the green grass who standing among flowers can say +here, here lies my beloved ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms +like these. What bitter blanks in those blackbordered marbles which cover no +ashes What despair in those immovable inscriptions What deadly voids and +unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and +refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a +grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here. +In what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included why it +is that a universal proverb says of them, that +they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands +how it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we +prefix so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if +he but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth why the Life +Insurance Companies pay deathforfeitures upon immortals in what eternal, +unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who +died sixty round centuries ago how it is that we still refuse to be +comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable +bliss why all the living so strive to hush all the dead wherefore but the +rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things +are not without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the +tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. It +needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket +voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of that +darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me, +Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. +Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems aye, +a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this +business of whaling a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into +Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of +Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my +true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much +like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick +water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better +being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And +therefore three cheers for Nantucket and come a stove boat and stove body +when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot. +It should not have been omitted that +previous to completely stripping the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. +Now, the beheading of the Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon +which experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves and not without +reason. Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a +neck on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that +very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must +operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him and his +subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discolored, rolling, and +oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under these +untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh and in that +subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep into the +evercontracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer clear of all +adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a critical +point hard by its insertion into the skull. Do you not marvel, +then, at Stubb's boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm +whale? When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a +cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale it +is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full grown +leviathan this is impossible for the sperm whale's head embraces nearly one +third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a burden as that, +even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to +attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers' scales The Pequod's whale being +decapitated and the body stripped, the head was hoisted against the ship's +side about half way out of the sea, so that it might yet in great part be +buoyed up by its native element. And there with the strained craft steeply +leaning over to it, by reason of the enormous downward drag from the lower +masthead, and every yardarm on that side projecting like a crane over the +waves there, that blooddripping head hung to the Pequod's waist like the +giant Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith. When this last task was +accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went below to their dinner. Silence +reigned over the before tumultuous but now deserted deck. An intense copper +calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its +noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea. A short space elapsed, and up into +this noiselessness came Ahab alone from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the +quarterdeck, he paused to gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the +mainchains he took Stubb's long spade still remaining there after the +whale's decapitation and striking it into the lower part of the +halfsuspended mass, placed its other end crutchwise under one arm, and so +stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head. It was a black +and hooded head and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it +seemed the Sphynx's in the desert. Speak, thou vast and venerable head, +muttered Ahab, which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there +lookest hoary with mosses speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing +that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. +that head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's +foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and +anchors rot where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with +bones of millions of the drowned there, in that awful waterland, there was +thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went hast +slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives +to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their +flaming ship heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave true to +each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate +when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck for hours he fell into the +deeper midnight of the insatiate maw and his murderers still sailed on +unharmed while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have +borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head thou hast +seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one +syllable is thine Sail ho cried a triumphant voice from the +mainmasthead. Aye? Well, now, that's cheering, cried Ahab, suddenly +erecting himself, while whole thunderclouds swept aside from his brow. +That lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man. +Where away? Three points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her +breeze to us Better and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along +that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze O Nature, and O soul of +man how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies not the +smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in +mind. +Hand in hand, ship and breeze +blew on but the breeze came faster than the ship, and soon the Pequod began +to rock. By and by, through the glass the stranger's boats and manned +mastheads proved her a whaleship. but as she was so far to windward, and +shooting by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the Pequod +could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what response would +be made. Here be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the +ships of the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal all which +signals being collected in a book with the names of the respective vessels +attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale commanders +are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at considerable +distances, and with no small facility. The Pequod's signal was at last +responded to by the stranger's setting her own which proved the ship to be +the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam +under the Pequod's lee, and lowered a boat it soon drew nigh but, as the +sideladder was being rigged by Starbuck's order to accommodate the visiting +captain, the stranger in question waved his hand from his boat's stern in +token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that the +Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her captain, +was fearful of infecting the Pequod's company. For, though himself and boat's +crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half a rifleshot off, and +an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between yet conscientiously +adhering to the timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily refused to come +into direct contact with the Pequod. But this did by no means prevent all +communication. Preserving an interval of some few yards between itself and +the +ship, the Jeroboam's boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep +parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea for by this +time it blew very fresh, with her maintopsail aback though, indeed, at +times by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed +some way ahead but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings +again. Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now and then, a +conversation was sustained between the two parties but at intervals not +without still another interruption of a very different sort. Pulling an oar +in the Jeroboam's boat, was a man of a singular appearance, even in that wild +whaling life where individual notabilities make up all totalities. He was a +small, short, youngish man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and +wearing redundant yellow hair. A longskirted, cabalisticallycut coat of a +faded walnut tinge enveloped him the overlapping sleeves of which were +rolled up on his wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes. +So soon as this figure had been first descried, Stubb had exclaimed That's +he that's he the longtogged scaramouch the TownHo's company told us of +Stubb here alluded to a strange story told of the Jeroboam, and a certain +man among her crew, some time previous when the Pequod spoke the TownHo. +According to this account and what was subsequently learned, it seemed that +the scaramouch in question had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost +everybody in the Jeroboam. His story was this He had been originally +nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna Shakers, where he had been a +great prophet in their cracked, secret meetings having several times +descended from heaven by the way of a trapdoor, announcing the speedy +opening of the seventh vial, which he carried in his vestpocket but, which, +instead of containing gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A +strange, apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for +Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a +steady, common sense exterior and offered himself as a greenhand candidate +for the Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him +but straightway upon the ship's getting out of sight of land, his insanity +broke out in a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and +commanded the captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby +he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and +vicargeneral of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he +declared these things the dark, daring play of his sleepless, excited +imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united to +invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew, with +an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such a +man, however, was not of much practical use in the ship, especially as he +refused to work except when he pleased, the incredulous captain would fain +have been rid of him but apprised that that individual's intention was to +land him in the first convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his +seals and vials devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, +in case this intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon his +disciples among the crew, that at last in a body they went to the captain and +told him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain. +He was therefore forced to relinquish his plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel +to be any way maltreated, say or do what he would so that it came to pass +that Gabriel had the complete freedom of the ship. The consequence of all +this was, that the archangel cared little or nothing for the captain and +mates and since the epidemic had broken out, he carried a higher hand than +ever declaring that the plague, as he called it, was at his sole command +nor should it be stayed but according to his good pleasure. The sailors, +mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned before him in +obedience to his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to +a god. Such things may seem incredible but, however wondrous, they are +true. Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the +measureless selfdeception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless power +of deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But it is time to return to the +Pequod. I fear not thy epidemic, man, said Ahab from the bulwarks +to Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern come on board. But now +Gabriel started to his feet. Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious +Beware of the horrible plague Gabriel, Gabriel cried Captain Mayhew +thou must either But that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far +ahead, and its seethings drowned all speech. Hast thou seen the White Whale? +demanded Ahab, when the boat drifted back. Think, think of thy whaleboat, +stoven and sunk Beware of the horrible tail I tell thee again, Gabriel, +that But again the boat tore ahead as if dragged by fiends. Nothing was +said for some moments, while a succession of riotous waves rolled by, which +by one of those occasional caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. +Meantime, the hoisted sperm whale's head jogged about very violently, and +Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than his +archangel nature seemed to warrant. When this interlude was over, Captain +Mayhew began a dark story concerning Moby Dick not, however, without +frequent interruptions from Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and +the crazy sea that seemed leagued with him. It seemed that the Jeroboam had +not long left home, when upon speaking a whaleship, her people were +reliably apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. +Greedily sucking in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain +against attacking the white whale, in case the monster should be seen in his +gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the +Shaker God incarnated the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some year +or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mastheads, Macey, +the chief mate, burned with ardor to encounter him and the captain himself +being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all the +archangel's denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading +five men to man his boat. With them he pushed off and, after +much weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last +succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the +mainroyal masthead, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling +forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his +divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat's bow, and +with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclamations +upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo +a broad white shadow rose from the sea by its quick, fanning motion, +temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. Next instant, +the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, +and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the distance of +about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any +oarsman's head but the mate for ever sank. It is well to parenthesize here, +that of the fatal accidents in the SpermWhale Fishery, this kind is perhaps +almost as frequent as any. Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is +thus annihilated oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the +thighboard, in which the headsman stands, is torn from its place and +accompanies the body. But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more +instances than one, when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of +violence is discernible the man being stark dead. The whole calamity, with +the falling form of Macey, was plainly descried from the ship. Raising a +piercing shriek The vial the vial Gabriel called off the +terrorstricken crew from the further hunting of the whale. This terrible +event clothed the archangel with added influence because his credulous +disciples believed that he had specifically foreannounced it, instead of +only making a general prophecy, which any one might have done, and so have +chanced to hit one of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became a +nameless terror to the ship. Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put +such questions to him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring +whether he intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To +which Ahab answered Aye. Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started to +his feet, glaring +upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with downward pointed finger +Think, think of the blasphemer dead, and down there beware of the +blasphemer's end Ahab stolidly turned aside then said to Mayhew, +Captain, I have just bethought me of my letterbag there is a letter for +one of thy officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag. Every +whaleship takes out a goodly number of letters for various ships, whose +delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed, depends upon the mere +chance of encountering them in the four oceans. Thus, most letters never +reach their mark and many are only received after attaining an age of two +or three years or more. Soon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It +was sorely tumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in +consequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, +Death himself might well have been the postboy. Can'st not read it? cried +ahab. give it me, man. aye, aye it's but a dim scrawl what's this? As +he was studying it out, Starbuck took a long cuttingspade pole, and with his +knife slightly split the end, to insert the letter there, and in that way, +hand it to the boat, without its coming any closer to the ship. Meantime, Ahab +holding the letter, muttered, Mr. Haryes, Mr. Harrya woman's pinny hand, +the man's wife, I'll wager Aye Mr. Harry Macey, Ship Jeroboam why +it's Macey, and he's dead Poor fellow poor fellow and from his wife, +sighed Mayhew but let me have it. Nay, keep it thyself, cried Gabriel to +Ahab thou art soon going that way. Curses throttle thee yelled Ahab. +Captain Mayhew, stand by now to receive it and taking the fatal missive +from Starbuck's hands, he caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it +over towards the boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted +from rowing the boat drifted a little towards the ship's stern so that, as +if by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel's eager hand. He +clutched it in an instant, seized the boatknife, and impaling the letter on +it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at Ahab's feet. Then +Gabriel +shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that manner +the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod. As, after this +interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of the whale, many +strange things were hinted in reference to this wild affair. +A TALK OVER HIM It must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm +Whale's prodigious head hanging to the Pequod's side. But we must let it +continue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to it. For +the present other matters press, and the best we can do now for the head, is +to pray heaven the tackles may hold. Now, during the past night and forenoon, +the Pequod had gradually drifted into a sea, which, by its occasional +patches of +yellow brit, gave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species +of the Leviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking +anywhere near. And though all hands commonly disdained the capture of those +inferior creatures and though the Pequod was not commissioned to cruise for +them at all, and though she had passed numbers of them near the Crozetts +without lowering a boat yet now that a Sperm Whale had been brought +alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the announcement was made +that a Right Whale should be captured that day, if opportunity offered. Nor +was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward and two boats, +Stubb's and Flask's, were detached in pursuit. Pulling further and further +away, they at last became almost invisible to the men at the masthead. But +suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap of tumultuous white water, +and soon after news came from aloft that one or both the boats must be fast. +An interval passed and the boats were in plain sight, in the act of being +dragged right towards the ship by the towing whale. So close did the monster +come to the hull, that at first it seemed as if he meant it malice but +suddenly going down in a maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he +wholly disappeared from view, as if diving under the keel. Cut, cut was +the cry from the ship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on the +point of being brought with a deadly dash against the vessel's side. But +having plenty of line yet in the tubs, and the whale not sounding very +rapidly, they paid out abundance of rope, and at the same time pulled with +all their might so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few minutes the +struggle was intensely critical for while they still slacked out the +tightened line in one direction, and still plied their oars in another, the +contending strain threatened to take them under. But it was only a few feet +advance they sought to gain. And they stuck to it till they did gain it +when instantly, a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel, +as the strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under +her bows, snapping and quivering and so flinging off its drippings, that +the drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water, while the whale +beyond also rose to sight, and once more the boats were free +to fly. But the fagged whale abated his speed, and blindly altering his +course, went round the stern of the ship towing the two boats after him, so +that they performed a complete circuit. Meantime, they hauled more and more +upon their lines, till close flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered +Flask with lance for lance and thus round and round the Pequod the battle +went, while the multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm +Whale's body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking +at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fountains +that poured from the smitten rock. At last his spout grew thick, and with a +frightful roll and vomit, he turned upon his back a corpse. While the two +headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his flukes, and in other ways +getting the mass in readiness for towing, some conversation ensued between +them. I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard, said +Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so +ignoble a leviathan. Wants with it? said Flask, coiling some spare line in +the boat's bow, did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm +Whale's head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a Right +Whale's on the larboard did you never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never +afterwards capsize? Why not? I don't know, but I heard that gamboge +ghost of a Fedallah saying so, and he seems to know all about ships' charms. +But I sometimes think he'll charm the ship to no good at last. I don't half +like that chap, Stubb. Did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of +carved into a snake's head, Stubb? Sink him I never look at him at all +but if ever I get a chance of a dark night, and he standing hard by the +bulwarks, and no one by look down there, Flask pointing into the sea with +a peculiar motion of both hands Aye, will I Flask, I take that Fedallah to +be the devil in disguise. Do you believe that cock and bull story about his +having been stowed away on board ship? He's the devil, I say. The reason why +you don't see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight he carries +it +coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him now that I think of it, he's +always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots. He sleeps in his +boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock but I've seen him lay of nights +in a coil of rigging. No doubt, and it's because of his cursed tail he +coils it down, do ye see, in the eye of the rigging. What's the old man +have so much to do with him for? Striking up a swap or a bargain, I +suppose. Bargain? about what? Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent +after that White Whale, and the devil there is trying to come round him, and +get him to swap away his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that +sort, and then he'll surrender Moby Dick. Pooh Stubb, you are +skylarking how can Fedallah do that? I don't know, Flask, but the devil +is a curious chap, and a wicked one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he +went a sauntering into the old flagship once, switching his tail about +devilish easy and gentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at +home. Well, he was at home, and asked the devil what he wanted. The devil, +switching his hoofs, up and says, "I want John." "What for?" says the old +governor, "What business is that of yours," says the devil, getting mad, "I +want to use him." "Take him," says the governor and by the Lord, Flask, if +the devil didn't give John the Asiatic cholera before he got through with +him, I'll eat this whale in one mouthful. But look sharp aint you all ready +there? Well, then, pull ahead, and let's get the whale alongside. I think +I remember some such story as you were telling, said Flask, when at last the +two boats were slowly advancing with their burden towards the ship, but I +can't remember where. Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three +bloodyminded soldadoes? Did ye read it there, Flask? I guess ye did? No +never saw such a book heard of it, though. But now, tell me, Stubb, do you +suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now, was the same you say is +now on board the Pequod? +Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn't the devil live for +ever who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see any parson a +wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a latchkey to get into +the admiral's cabin, don't you suppose he can crawl into a porthole? Tell me +that, Mr. Flask? How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb? Do you see +that mainmast there? pointing to the ship well, that's the figure one +now take all the hoops in the Pequod's hold, and string 'em along in a row +with that mast, for oughts, do you see well, that wouldn't begin to be +Fedallah's age. Nor all the coopers in creation couldn't show hoops enough to +make oughts enough. but see here, stubb, i thought you a little boasted +just now, that you meant to give Fedallah a seatoss, if you got a good +chance. Now, if he's so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he +is going to live for ever, what good will it do to pitch him overboard tell +me that? Give him a good ducking, anyhow. But he'd crawl back. Duck +him again and keep ducking him. Suppose he should take it into his head to +duck you, though yes, and drown you what then? I should like to see him +try it I'd give him such a pair of black eyes that he wouldn't dare to show +his face in the admiral's cabin again for a long while, let alone down in the +orlop there, where he lives, and hereabouts on the upper decks where he +sneaks so much. Damn the devil, Flask do you suppose I'm afraid of the +devil? Who's afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn't catch him +and put him in doubledarbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about +kidnapping people aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people the +devil kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor Do you suppose +Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab? Do I suppose it? You'll know it +before long, Flask. But I am going now to keep a sharp lookout on him and +if I see anything very suspicious going on, I'll just take him by the nape +of his neck, and say Look here, Beelzebub, you don't do +it and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord I'll make a grab into his pocket +for his tail, take it to the capstan, and give him such a wrenching and +heaving, that his tail will come short off at the stump do you see and +then, I rather guess when he finds himself docked in that queer fashion, +he'll sneak off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his tail between his +legs. And what will you do with the tail, Stubb? Do with it? Sell it for +an ox whip when we get home what else? Now, do you mean what you say, +and have been saying all along, stubb? Mean or not mean, here we are at +the ship. The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard +side, where fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for +securing him. Didn't I tell you so? said Flask yes, you'll soon see this +right whale's head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti's. In good time, +Flask's saying proved true. As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards +the sperm whale's head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained +her even keel though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one +side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way but now, on the other +side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again but in very poor plight. +Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish throw all +these thunderheads overboard, and then you will float light and right. In +disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the ship, the +same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the case of a sperm +whale only, in the latter instance, the head is cut off whole, but in the +former the lips and tongue are separately removed and hoisted on deck, with +all the well known black bone attached to what is called the crownpiece. +But nothing like this, in the present case, had been done. The carcases of +both whales had dropped astern and the headladen ship not a little resembled +a mule carrying a pair of overburdening panniers. Meantime, Fedallah was +calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever and anon glancing from the deep +wrinkles there to the +lines in his own hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee +occupied his shadow while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed +only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's. As the crew toiled on, Laplandish +speculations were bandied among them, concerning all these passing things. +Here, now, are +two great whales, laying their heads together let us join them, and lay +together our own. Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and +the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales +regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of +all the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them +is mainly observable in their heads and as a head of each is this moment +hanging from the Pequod's side and as we may freely go from one to the +other, by merely stepping across the deck where, I should like to know, +will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than here? In the +first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these heads. +Both are massive enough in all conscience but there is a certain mathematical +symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the Right Whale's sadly lacks. There is +more character in the Sperm Whale's head. As you behold it, you +involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point of pervading +dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the +pepper and salt color of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age +and large experience. In short, he is what the fishermen technically call a +greyheaded whale. Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads +namely, the two most important organs, the eye and the ear. +Far back on the side of the head, and low down, near the angle of either +whale's jaw, if you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, +which you would fancy to be a young colt's eye so out of all proportion is it +to the magnitude of the head. Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the +whale's eyes, it is plain that he can never see an object which is exactly +ahead, no more than he can one exactly astern. in a word, the position of +the whale's eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears and you may fancy, for +yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects through +your ears. You would find that you could only command some thirty degrees of +vision in advance of the straight sideline of sight and about thirty more +behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you, with +dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be able to see him, any more +than if he were stealing upon you from behind. In a word, you would have two +backs, so to speak but, at the same time, also, two fronts side fronts +for what is it that makes the front of a man what, indeed, but his eyes? +Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are so +planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one +picture and not two to the brain the peculiar position of the whale's eyes, +effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which +towers between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys +this, of course, must wholly separate the impressions which each independent +organ imparts. The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this +side, and another distinct picture on that side while all between must be +profound darkness and nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look +out on the world from a sentrybox with two joined sashes for his window. +But with the whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two +distinct windows, but sadly impairing the view. This peculiarity of the +whale's eyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery and to be +remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes. A curious and most +puzzling question might be started concerning +this visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with a +hint. so long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing is +involuntary that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever +objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one's experience will teach him, +that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance, +it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and completely, to examine any +two things however large or however small at one and the same instant of +time never mind if they lie side by side and touch each other. But if you +now come to separate these two objects, and surround each by a circle of +profound darkness then, in order to see one of them, in such a manner as to +bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your +contemporary consciousness. How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his +eyes, in themselves, must simultaneously act but is his brain so much more +comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same +moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of +him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he can, then is it as +marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultaneously to go through +the demonstrations of two distinct problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly +investigated, is there any incongruity in this comparison. It may be but an +idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the extraordinary +vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when beset by three or four +boats the timidity and liability to queer frights, so common to such whales +I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the helpless perplexity of +volition, in which their divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision +must involve them. But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If +you are an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two +heads for hours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf +whatever and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so +wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With respect +to their ears, this important difference is to be observed between the sperm +whale and the +right. While the ear of the former has an external opening, that of the +latter is entirely and evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite +imperceptible from without. Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the +whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder +through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as +the lens of Herschel's great telescope and his ears capacious as the porches +of cathedrals would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of +hearing? Not at all. Why then do you try to enlarge your mind? Subtilize +it. Let us now with whatever levers and steamengines we have at hand, cant +over the sperm whale's head, so that it may lie bottom up then, ascending +by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth and were it not that +the body is now completely separated from it, with a lantern we might descend +into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach. But let us hold on here +by this tooth, and look about us where we are. What a really beautiful and +chastelooking mouth from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a +glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal satins. But come out now, and +look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems like the long narrow lid of an +immense snuffbox, with a hinge at one end, instead of one side. If you pry +it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a +terrific portcullis and such, alas it proves to many a poor wight in the +fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force. But far more +terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky +whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet +long, hanging straight down at rightangles with his body, for all the world +like a ship's jibboom. This whale is not dead he is only dispirited out +of sorts, perhaps hypochondriac and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw +have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach +to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lockjaws upon him. In most +cases this lower jaw being easily unhinged by a practised artist is +disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth, +and furnishing a supply of +that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of +curious articles, including canes, umbrellastocks, and handles to +ridingwhips. With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it +were an anchor and when the proper time comes some few days after the other +work Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set +to drawing teeth. With a keen cuttingspade, Queequeg lances the gums then +the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, +they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of +wild woodlands. There are generally fortytwo teeth in all in old whales, +much worn down, but undecayed nor filled after our artificial fashion. The +jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building +houses. +Crossing the +deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right Whale's head. As in +general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a Roman +warchariot especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded so, at a +broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a +gigantic galliottoed shoe. Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager +likened its shape to that of a shoemaker's last. And in this same last or +shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might +very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny. But as you come nearer +to this great head it begins to assume different aspects, according to your +point of view. If you stand on its summit and look at these two fshaped +spoutholes, you would take the whole head for an enormous bassviol, and +these +spiracles, the apertures in its soundingboard. Then, again, if you fix your +eye upon this strange, crested, comblike incrustation on the top of the mass +this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the crown, and +the Southern fishers the bonnet of the Right Whale fixing your eyes solely +on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak, with a +bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those live crabs that +nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you +unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the technical term crown also +bestowed upon it in which case you will take great interest in thinking how +this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose green +crown has been put together for him in this marvellous manner. But if this +whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look +at that hanging lower lip what a huge sulk and pout is there a sulk and +pout, by carpenter's measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep +a sulk and pout that will yield you some gallons of oil and more. A great +pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be harelipped. The fissure is +about a foot across. Probably the mother during an important interval was +sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape. +Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. +Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an +Indian wigwam. Good Lord is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is +about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a +regular ridgepole there while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us +with those wondrous, half vertical, scimetarshaped slats of whalebone, say +three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the head or +crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily +mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through +which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains +the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding +time. In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, +there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some +whalemen calculate +the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the +certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of +analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far +greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable. In +old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning +these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous whiskers +inside of the whale's mouth another, hogs' bristles a third old gentleman +in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language There are about two hundred +and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his +tongue on each side of his mouth. As every one knows, these same hogs' +bristles, fins, whiskers, blinds, or whatever you please, furnish to +the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances. But in this +particular, the demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's +time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the +fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of +the whale, as you may say even so, in a shower, with the like +thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection the +umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone. But now forget all about +blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, standing in the Right Whale's mouth, +look around you afresh. Seeing all these colonnades of bone so methodically +ranged about, would you not think you were inside the great Haarlem organ, +and gazing upon its thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug +of the softest Turkey the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor of +the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting +it on deck. This particular tongue now before us at a passing glance I +should say it was a sixbarreler that is, it will yield you about that +amount of oil. Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I +started with that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely +different heads. To sum up, then in the Right Whale's there is no great +well of sperm no ivory teeth at all no long, slender mandible of a lower +jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any of those +blinds of bone no huge lower lip and scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, +the Right Whale has two external spoutholes, the Sperm Whale only one. +Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie +together for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea the other will not +be very long in following. Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's +there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the +forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a +prairielike placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. +But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by +accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does +not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in +facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic the Sperm +Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years. +This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or rather +a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the upper part of +the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these tufts impart a rather +brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn countenance. +Ere quitting, for the nonce, the +Sperm Whale's head, I would have you, as a sensible physiologist, simply +particularly remark its front aspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I +would have you investigate it now with the sole view of forming to yourself +some unexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever batteringram power may +be lodged there. Here is a vital point for you must either satisfactorily +settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an infidel as to one of +the most appalling, +but not the less true events, perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded +history. You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm +Whale, the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the +water you observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably +backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which +receives the boomlike lower jaw you observe that the mouth is entirely +under the head, much in the same way, indeed, as though your own mouth were +entirely under your chin. Moreover you observe that the whale has no external +nose and that what nose he has his spout hole is on the top of his head +you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides of his head, nearly one +third of his entire length from the front. Wherefore, you must now have +perceived that the front of the Sperm Whale's head is a dead, blind wall, +without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever. +Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme, lower, backward +sloping part of the front of the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone +and not till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the +full cranial development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one +wad. Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise +the most delicate oil yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of the +substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy. In some +previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the body of the +whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head but with this +difference about the head this envelope, though not so thick, is of a +boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The +severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human +arm, impotently rebounds from it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm +Whale were paved with horses' hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks +in it. Bethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded +Indiamen chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, what do +the sailors do? They do not suspend between them, at the point of coming +contact, any merely hard substance, +like iron or wood. No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork, +enveloped in the thickest and toughest of oxhide. That bravely and uninjured +takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron +crowbars. By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive +at. But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that +as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, +at will, of distension or contraction and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I +know, has no such provision in him considering, too, the otherwise +inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the +surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out of the water considering +the unobstructed elasticity of its envelop considering the unique interior +of his head it has hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical +lungcelled honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and +unsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to +atmospheric distension and contraction. If this be so, fancy the +irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and destructive +of all elements contributes. Now, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, +impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within there +swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately +estimated as piled wood is by the cord and all obedient to one volition, as +the smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the +specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this +expansive monster when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable +braining feats I trust you will have renounced all ignorant incredulity, +and be ready to abide by this that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage +through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you +would not elevate one hair of your eyebrow. For unless you own the whale, +you are but a provincial and sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a +thing for salamander giants only to encounter how small the chances for the +provincials then? What befel the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's +veil at Sais? +Now comes the Baling of +the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must know something of the +curious internal structure of the thing operated upon. Regarding the Sperm +whale's head as a solid oblong, you may, on an inclined plane, sideways +divide it into two quoins, whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming +the cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones +its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the +whale. At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, +and then you have two almost equal parts, which before were naturally +divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance. The lower +subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil, formed by +the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of tough +elastic white fibres throughout its whole extent. The upper part, known as +the Case, may be regarded as the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. +And as that famous great tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale's +vast plaited forehead forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical +adornment of his wondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always +replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so +the tun of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily +vintages namely, the highlyprized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, +limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed +in any other part of the creature. Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, +yet, upon +exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to concrete sending forth +beautiful crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just +forming in water. A large whale's case generally yields about five hundred +gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances, considerable of it +is spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the +ticklish business of securing what you can. I know not with what fine and +costly material the heidelburgh Tun was coated within, but in superlative +richness that coating could not possibly have compared with the silken +pearlcolored membrane, like the line of a fine pelisse, forming the inner +surface of the Sperm Whale's case. It will have been seen that the Heidelburgh +Tun of the Sperm Whale embraces the entire length of the entire top of the +head and since as has been elsewhere set forth the head embraces one third +of the whole length of the creature, then setting that length down at eighty +feet for a good sized whale, you have more than twentysix feet for the depth +of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and down against a ship's side. +As in decapitating the whale, the operator's instrument is brought close to +the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the spermaceti +magazine he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest a careless, +untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out its +invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the head, also, which is at +last elevated out of the water, and retained in that position by the +enormous cutting tackles, whose hempen combinations, on one side, make +quite a wilderness of ropes in that quarter. Thus much being said, attend +now, I pray you, to that marvellous and in this particular instance +almost fatal operation whereby the Sperm Whale's great Heidelburgh Tun is +tapped. +Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical mathematics. +I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a solid which differs +from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the steep inclination of one +side, instead of the mutual tapering of both sides. +Nimble as a cat, Tashtego +mounts aloft and without altering his erect posture, runs straight out upon +the overhanging mainyardarm, to the part where it exactly projects over the +hoisted Tun. He has carried with him a light tackle called a whip, +consisting of only two parts, travelling through a singlesheaved block. +Securing this block, so that it hangs down from the yardarm, he swings one +end of the rope, till it is caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, +handoverhand, down the other part, the Indian drops through the air, till +dexterously he lands on the summit of the head. There still high elevated +above the rest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries he seems some +Turkish Muezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A +shorthandled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches for +the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business he proceeds +very heedfully, like a treasurehunter in some old house, sounding the +walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search +is over, a stout ironbound bucket, precisely like a wellbucket, has been +attached to one end of the whip while the other end, being stretched across +the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands. These last now hoist +the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another person has reached up +a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward +guides the bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears then giving the +word to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like +a dairymaid's pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the +fullfreighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly emptied +into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through the same +round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego +has to ram his long pole harder and +harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of the +pole have gone down. Now, the people of the Pequod had been baling some time +in this way several tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm when all +at once a queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild +Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his onehanded +hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head or whether the place +where he stood was so treacherous and oozy or whether the Evil One himself +would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular reasons how it +was exactly, there is no telling now but, on a sudden, as the eightieth +or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up my God poor Tashtego like the twin +reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped headforemost down into +this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went +clean out of sight Man overboard cried Daggoo, who amid the general +consternation first came to his senses. Swing the bucket this way and +putting one foot into it, so as the better to secure his slippery handhold +on the whip itself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, +almost before Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, +there was a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before +lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea, as if +that moment seized with some momentous idea whereas it was only the poor +Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous depth to which +he had sunk. At this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was +clearing the whip which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles a +sharp cracking noise was heard and to the unspeakable horror of all, one of +the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a vast +vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship reeled and +shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook, upon which the +entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be on the point of giving +way an event still more likely from the violent motions of the head. Come +down, come down yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but +with one hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should +drop, he would still remain suspended the negro having cleared the foul +line, rammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the +buried harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out. In heaven's name, +man, cried Stubb, are you ramming home a cartridge there? Avast How +will that help him jamming that ironbound bucket on top of his head? Avast, +will ye Stand clear of the tackle cried a voice like the bursting of a +rocket. Almost in the same instant, with a thunderboom, the enormous mass +dropped into the sea, like Niagara's TableRock into the whirlpool the +suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper +and all caught their breath, as half swinging now over the sailors' heads, +and now over the water Daggoo, through a thick mist of spray, was dimly +beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor, buriedalive +Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea But hardly had +the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked figure with a boardingsword in +its hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The +next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the +rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every +ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or the +diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed +a little off from the ship. Ha ha cried Daggoo, all at once, from his +now quiet, swinging perch overhead and looking further off from the side, +we saw an arm thrust upright from the blue waves a sight strange to see, as +an arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave. both both it is both +cried daggoo again with a joyful shout and soon after, Queequeg was seen +boldly striking out with one hand, and with the other clutching the long hair +of the Indian. Drawn into the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to +the deck but Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very +brisk. +Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the +slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges +near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there then dropping his +sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out our +poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a +leg was presented but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and +might occasion great trouble he had thrust back the leg, and by a +dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian so that +with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way head foremost. As +for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected. And +thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the +deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, +in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments +which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in +the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing. I know that this +queer adventure of the GayHeader's will be sure to seem incredible to some +landsmen, though they themselves may have either seen or heard of some one's +falling into a cistern ashore an accident which not seldom happens, and +with much less reason too than the Indian's, considering the exceeding +slipperiness of the curb of the Sperm Whale's well. But, peradventure, it may +be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought the tissued, infiltrated head +of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and most corky part about him and yet +thou makest it sink in an element of a far greater specific gravity than +itself. We have thee there. Not at all, but I have ye for at the time +poor Tash fell in, the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, +leaving little but the dense tendinous wall of the well a double welded, +hammered substance, as I have before said, much heavier than the sea water, +and a lump of which sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid +sinking in this substance was in the present instance materially counteracted +by the other parts of the head remaining undetached from it, so that it sank +very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for +performing his agile +obstetrics on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a running delivery, so +it was. Now, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious +perishing smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant +spermaceti coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and +sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled +the delicious death of an Ohio honeyhunter, who seeking honey in the crotch +of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far +over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, +have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head, and sweetly perished there? +To scan the lines of his face, or feel +the bumps on the head of this Leviathan this is a thing which no +Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would +seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the +Rock of Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the +Dome of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only +treats of the various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces of +horses, birds, serpents, and fish and dwells in detail upon the +modifications of expression discernible therein. Nor have Gall and his +disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the phrenological +characteristics of other beings than man. Therefore, though I am but ill +qualified for a pioneer, in the application of these two semisciences to the +whale, I will do my endeavor. I try all things I achieve what I can. +Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature. He has +no proper nose. And since the nose is the central and most conspicuous of the +features and since it perhaps +most modifies and finally controls their combined expression hence it would +seem that its entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely +affect the countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire, +cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to +the completion of the scene so no face can be physiognomically in keeping +without the elevated openwork belfry of the nose. Dash the nose from +Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder Nevertheless, Leviathan +is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so stately, that the +same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no +blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale would have +been impertinent. As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast +head in your jollyboat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by +the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit, which +so often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal +beadle on his throne. In some particulars, perhaps, the most imposing +physiognomical view to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front +of his head. This aspect is sublime. In thought a fine human brow is like the +east when troubled with the morning. in the repose of the pasture, the +curled brow of the bull has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon +up mountain defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the +mystical brow is as that great golden seal affixed by the German emperors to +their decrees. It signifies God done this day by my hand. But in most +creatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of +alpine land lying along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like +Shakespeare's or Melancthon's rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyes +themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes and all above them +in the forehead's wrinkles, you seem to track the antlered thoughts descending +there to drink, as the Highland hunters track the snow prints of the deer. +But in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty godlike dignity inherent +in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front +view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers +more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see +no one point precisely not one distinct feature is revealed no nose, eyes, +ears, or mouth no face he has none, proper nothing but that one broad +firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles dumbly lowering with the doom +of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow +diminish though that way viewed, its grandeur does not domineer upon you +so. In profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semicrescentic +depression in the forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of +genius. But how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever +written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his +doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his +pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been +known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their +childmagian thoughts. they deified the crocodile of the nile, because the +crocodile is tongueless and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or as least it +is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any +highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birthright, the +merry Mayday gods of old and livingly enthrone them again in the now +egotistical sky in the now unhaunted hill then be sure, exalted to Jove's +high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it. Champollion deciphered the +wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the +Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other +human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who +read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face, in its +profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read +the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. +Read if it you can. +I had not been seated very long ere a man +of a certain venerable robustness entered immediately as the stormpelted +door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all +the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the +chaplain. Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, +among whom he was a very great favorite. He had been a sailor and a +harpooneer in his youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the +ministry. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter +of a healthy old age that sort of old age which seems merging into a second +flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone +certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom the spring verdure peeping +forth even beneath February's snow. No one having previously heard his +history, could for the first time behold Father Mapple without the utmost +interest, because there were certain engrafted clerical peculiarities about +him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered +I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his +carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great +pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of +the water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by +one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner when, +arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit. Like most old +fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a regular stairs to +such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the +already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the +hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting +a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting +a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the +chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted manropes for this ladder, which, +being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany color, the whole +contrivance, considering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in +bad taste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both +hands grasping the ornamental knobs of the manropes, Father Mapple cast a +look upwards, and then with a truly sailorlike but still reverential +dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if ascending the maintop of +his vessel. the perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the +case with swinging ones, were of clothcovered rope, only the rounds were of +wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of the +pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship, these +joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to +see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping +over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole +was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec. I +pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this. Father +Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I +could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. +No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing furthermore, +it must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of +physical isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from +all outward worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat +and wine of the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a +selfcontaining stronghold a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well +of water within the walls. But the side ladder was not the only strange +feature of the place, borrowed from the chaplain's former seafarings. +Between the marble cenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which +formed its back was adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship +beating against a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy +breakers. But high above the +flying scud and darkrolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, +from which beamed forth an angel's face and this bright face shed a distinct +spot of radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver +plate now inserted into the Victory's plank where Nelson fell. Ah, noble +ship, the angel seemed to say, beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and +bear a hardy helm for lo the sun is breaking through the clouds are +rolling off serenest azure is at hand. Nor was the pulpit itself without a +trace of the same seataste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its +panelled front was in the likeness of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible +rested on the projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship's +fiddleheaded beak. What could be more full of meaning? for the pulpit is +ever this earth's foremost part all the rest comes in its rear the pulpit +leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is first +descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the +God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the +world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete and the pulpit +is its prow. +If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a +Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain seems that geometrical circle which it +is impossible to square. In the fullgrown creature the skull will measure at +least twenty feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of +this skull is as the side view of a moderately inclined plane resting +throughout on a level base. But in life as we have elsewhere seen this +inclined plane is angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous +superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skull forms a +crater to bed that part of the mass while under the long floor of this +crater in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length and as many +in depth reposes the mere handful of this monster's brain. The brain is at +least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life it is hidden away +behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within the amplified +fortifications of Quebec. So like a choice casket is it secreted in him, +that I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale +has any other brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the +cubicyards of his sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and +convolutions, to their apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea +of his general might to regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his +intelligence. It is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this +Leviathan, in the creature's living intact state, is an entire delusion. As +for his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. +The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common +world. If you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view +of its rear end, which is the high end, you will be +struck by its resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, +and from the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull scaled +down to the human magnitude among a plate of men's skulls, and you would +involuntarily confound it with them and remarking the depressions on one +part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say This man had no +selfesteem, and no veneration. And by those negations, considered along with +the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and power, you can best form to +yourself the truest, though not the most exhilarating conception of what the +most exalted potency is. But if from the comparative dimensions of the +whale's proper brain, you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, +then I have another idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any +quadruped's spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae +to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance +to the skull proper. It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are +absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious external resemblance, I take +it the Germans were not the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once +pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the +vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a sort of bassorelievo, the beaked +prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the phrenologists have omitted an +important thing in not pushing their investigations from the cerebellum +through the spinal canal. For I believe that much of a man's character will be +found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your +skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and +noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that +flag which I fling half out to the world. Apply this spinal branch of +phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His cranial cavity is continuous with the first +neckvertebra and in that vertebra the bottom of the spinal canal will +measure ten inches across, being eight in height, and of a triangular +figure with the base downwards. As it passes through the remaining vertebrae +the canal tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of large +capacity. Now, of course, this +canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance the spinal +cord as the brain and directly communicates with the brain. And what is +still more, for many feet after emerging from the brain's cavity, the spinal +cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that of the brain. +Under all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to survey and map +out the whale's spine phrenologically? For, viewed in this light, the +wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper is more than compensated +by the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord. But leaving this +hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I would merely assume the +spinal theory for a moment, in reference to the sperm whale's hump. This +august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one of the larger vertebrae, and +is, therefore, in some sort, the outer convex mould of it. From its relative +situation then, I should call this high hump the organ of firmness or +indomitableness in the Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is +indomitable, you will yet have reason to know. +The predestinated day +arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau, Derick De Deer, master, of +Bremen. At one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and +Germans are now among the least but here and there at very wide intervals of +latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with their flag in the +Pacific. For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her +respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and +dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing +in the bows instead of the stern. +What has he in his hand there? cried Starbuck, pointing to something +wavingly held by the German. Impossible a lampfeeder Not that, said +Stubb, no, no, it's a coffeepot, Mr. Starbuck he's coming off to make +us our coffee, is the Yarman don't you see that big tin can there alongside +of him? that's his boiling water. Oh he's all right, is the Yarman. Go +along with you, cried Flask, it's a lampfeeder and an oilcan. He's out +of oil, and has come abegging. However curious it may seem for an oilship +to be borrowing oil on the whaleground, and however much it may invertedly +contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes +such a thing really happens and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer +did indubitably conduct a lampfeeder as Flask did declare. As he mounted the +deck, ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all heeding what he had in his +hand but in his broken lingo, the German soon evinced his complete +ignorance of the White Whale immediately turning the conversation to his +lampfeeder and oil can, with some remarks touching his having to turn into +his hammock at night in profound darkness his last drop of Bremen oil being +gone, and not a single flyingfish yet captured to supply the deficiency +concluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is +technically called a clean one that is, an empty one, well deserving the +name of Jungfrau or the Virgin. His necessities supplied, Derick departed +but he had not gained his ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously +raised from the mastheads of both vessels and so eager for the chase was +Derick, that without pausing to put his oilcan and lampfeeder aboard, he +slewed round his boat and made after the leviathan lampfeeders. Now, the +game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German boats that soon +followed him, had considerably the start of the Pequod's keels. There were +eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their danger, they were going all +abreast with great speed straight before the wind, rubbing their flanks as +closely as so many spans of horses in harness. They left a +great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a great wide parchment upon +the sea. Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a +huge, humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as +by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted +with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged to +the pod in advance, seemed questionable for it is not customary for such +venerable leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their +wake, though indeed their back water must have retarded him, because the +whitebone or swell at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell +formed when two hostile currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and +laborious coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in +torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which +seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters +behind him to upbubble. Who's got some paregoric? said Stubb, he has the +stomachache, I'm afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomachache +Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It's the first foul +wind I ever knew to blow from astern but look, did ever whale yaw so +before? it must be, he's lost his tiller. As an overladen Indiaman bearing +down the Hindostan coast with a deck load of frightened horses, careens, +buries, rolls, and wallows on her way so did this old whale heave his aged +bulk, and now and then partly turning over on his cumbrous ribends, expose +the cause of his devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. +Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were +hard to say. Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that +wounded arm, cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whaleline near him. Mind +he don't sling thee with it, cried Starbuck. Give way, or the German will +have him. With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this +one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most +valuable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were going +with such great velocity, moreover, +as almost to defy pursuit for the time. At this juncture, the Pequod's keel +had shot by the three German boats last lowered but from the great start he +had had, Derick's boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by +his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being already +so nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron before they could +completely overtake and pass him. as for derick, he seemed quite confident +that this would be the case, and occasionally with a deriding gesture shook +his lampfeeder at the other boats. The ungracious and ungrateful dog +cried Starbuck he mocks and dares me with the very poorbox I filled for +him not five minutes ago then in his old intense whisper give way, +greyhounds Dog to it I tell ye what it is, men cried Stubb to his crew +It's against my religion to get mad but I'd like to eat that villanous +Yarman Pullwon't ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye love +brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why don't some of +ye burst a bloodvessel? Who's that been dropping an anchor overboard we +don't budge an inch we're becalmed. Halloo, here's grass growing in the +boat's bottom and by the Lord, the mast there's budding. This won't do, +boys. Look at that Yarman The short and long of it is, men, will ye spit +fire or not? Oh see the suds he makes cried Flask, dancing up and down +What a hump Oh, do pile on the beef lays like a log Oh my lads, do +spring slapjacks and quohogs for supper, you know, my lads baked clams and +muffins oh, do, do spring he's a hundred barreler don't lose him now +don't oh, don't see that Yarman Oh won't ye pull for your duff, my +lads such a sog such a sogger Don't ye love sperm? There goes three +thousand dollars, men a bank a whole bank The bank of England Oh, do, +do, do What's that Yarman about now? At this moment Derick was in the act +of pitching his lampfeeder at the advancing boats, and also his oilcan +perhaps with the double view of retarding his rivals' way, and at the same +time economically accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the +backward toss. The unmannerly Dutch dogger cried Stubb. Pull now, +men, like fifty thousand lineofbattleship loads of redhaired devils. What +d'ye say, Tashtego are you the man to snap your spine in twoandtwenty +pieces for the honor of old Gayhead? What d'ye say? I say, pull like +goddam, cried the Indian. Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of +the German, the Pequod's three boats now began ranging almost abreast and, +so disposed, momentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude +of the headsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up +proudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry of, +There she slides, now Hurrah for the whiteash breeze Down with the +Yarman Sail over him But so decided an original start had Derick had, +that spite of all their gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this +race, had not a righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught +the blade of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to +free his whiteash, and while, in consequence, Derick's boat was nigh to +capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage that was a +good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout, they took a mortal +start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German's quarter. An instant +more, and all four boats were diagonically in the whale's immediate wake, +while stretching from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made. +It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now +going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented +jet while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this +hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every +billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled +towards the sky his one beating fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing, +making affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the +piratical hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make +known her fear but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained +up and enchanted in him he had no voice, save that choking respiration +through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably +pitiable while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent +tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied. Seeing now +that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod's boats the advantage, +and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick chose to hazard what to +him must have seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the last chance would +for ever escape. But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, +than all three tigers Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo instinctively sprang to +their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their +barbs and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three +Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam and whitefire +The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's headlong rush, bumped the +German's aside with such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer +were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels. Don't be +afraid, my butterboxes, cried Stubb, casting a passing glance upon them as +he shot by ye'll be picked up presently all right I saw some sharks +astern St. Bernard's dogs, you know relieve distressed travellers. +Hurrah this is the way to sail now. Every keel a sunbeam Hurrah Here +we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad cougar This puts me in +mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain makes the +wheelspokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that way and there's danger of +being pitched out too, when you strike a hill. Hurrah this is the way a +fellow feels when he's going to Davy Jones all a rush down an endless +inclined plane Hurrah this whale carries the everlasting mail But the +monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he tumultuously sounded. +With a grating rush, the three lines flew round the loggerheads with such a +force as to gouge deep grooves in them while so fearful were the +harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust the lines, that using +all their dexterous might, they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope +to hold on till at last owing to the perpendicular strain from the +leadlined chocks of the boats, whence the three +ropes went straight down into the blue the gunwales of the bows were almost +even with the water, while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the +whale soon ceasing to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude, +fearful of expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish. +But though boats have been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this +holding on, as it is called this hooking up by the sharp barbs of his live +flesh from the back this it is that often torments the Leviathan into soon +rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the +peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is always the +best for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken +whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. Because, owing to the +enormous surface of him in a full grown sperm whale something less than +square feet the pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an +astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under even here, +aboveground, in the air how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on +his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean It must at least equal the +weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of +twenty lineofbattle ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on +board. As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down +into its eternal blue noon and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, +nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths what +landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the +utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony Not eight +inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it credible +that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big +weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of +board. Is this the creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said Canst +thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fishspears? The +sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the +habergeon he esteemeth iron as straw the arrow cannot make him flee +darts are counted as stubble he laugheth at the shaking of a spear This +the creature? this he? Oh that unfulfilments +should follow the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his +tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him +from the Pequod's fishspears In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the +shadows that the three boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been +long enough and broad enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how +appalling to the wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over +his head Stand by, men he stirs, cried Starbuck, as the three lines +suddenly vibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by +magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every oarsman +felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in a great part from the +downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a +small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are scared from it +into the sea. Haul in Haul in cried Starbuck again he's rising. The +lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand's breadth could have +been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all dripping into the +boats, and soon the whale broke water within two ship's lengths of the +hunters. His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land +animals there are certain valves or floodgates in many of their veins, +whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut off +in certain directions. Not so with the whale one of whose peculiarities it +is, to have an entire nonvalvular structure of the bloodvessels, so that +when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once +begun upon his whole arterial system and when this is heightened by the +extraordinary pressure of water at a great distance below the surface, his +life may be said to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the +quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, +that he will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period even +as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the wellsprings of +faroff and undiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats pulled upon this +whale, and perilously drew over his swaying +flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by steady +jets from the new made wound, which kept continually playing, while the +natural spouthole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending +its affrighted moisture into the air. From this last vent no blood yet came, +because no vital part of him had thus far been struck. His life, as they +significantly call it, was untouched. As the boats now more closely +surrounded him, the whole upper part of his form, with much of it that is +ordinarily submerged, was plainly revealed. His eyes, or rather the places +where his eyes had been, were beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in +the knotholes of the noblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which +the whale's eyes had once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly +pitiable to see. but pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one +arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to +light the gay bridals and other merrymakings of men, and also to illuminate +the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all. +Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially disclosed a strangely +discolored bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel, low down on the flank. +A nice spot, cried Flask just let me prick him there once. Avast +cried Starbuck, there's no need of that But humane Starbuck was too late. +At the instant of the dart an ulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and +goaded by it into more than sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick +blood, with swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and +their glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's boat and +marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was +he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had +made lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin, +then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world turned up the white +secrets of his belly lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that +last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off +from some mighty fountain, and with halfstifled melancholy gurglings the +spraycolumn lowers and lowers to the ground so the last long dying spout +of the whale. +Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body showed +symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled. Immediately, by +Starbuck's orders, lines were secured to it at different points, so that ere +long every boat was a buoy the sunken whale being suspended a few inches +beneath them by the cords. By very heedful management, when the ship drew +nigh, the whale was transferred to her side, and was strongly secured there +by the stiffest flukechains, for it was plain that unless artificially +upheld, the body would at once sink to the bottom. It so chanced that almost +upon first cutting into him with the spade, the entire length of a corroded +harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch +before described. But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the +dead bodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, +and no prominence of any kind to denote their place therefore, there must +needs have been some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account +for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a +lancehead of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron, the +flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when? +It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long before America was +discovered. What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous +cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further +discoveries, by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the +sea, owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink. However, +Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to the last hung +on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the ship would have been +capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with the body then, when the +command was given to break clear from it, such was the immovable strain upon +the timberheads to which the flukechains and cables were fastened, that it +was impossible to cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod was +aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like walking up the steep +gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory +inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places, by the +unnatural dislocation. In +vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable +flukechains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads and so low had the +whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all approached, +while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, +and the ship seemed on the point of going over. Hold on, hold on, won't +ye? cried Stubb to the body, don't be in such a devil of a hurry to sink +By thunder, men, we must do something or go for it. No use prying there +avast, I say with your handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer book and a +penknife, and cut the big chains. Knife? Aye, aye, cried Queequeg, and +seizing the carpenter's heavy hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and +steel to iron, began slashing at the largest flukechains. But a few strokes, +full of sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest. +With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift the ship righted, the +carcase sank. Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed +Sperm Whale is a very curious thing nor has any fisherman yet adequately +accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy, +with its side or belly considerably elevated above the surface. If the only +whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and brokenhearted creatures, their +pads of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic then you +might with some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon +specific gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of +buoyant matter in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest +health, and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm +flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about them even these +brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink. Be it said, however, that the Sperm +Whale is far less liable to this accident than any other species. Where one +of that sort go down, twenty Right Whales do. This difference in the +species is no doubt imputable in no small degree to the greater quantity of +bone in the Right Whale his Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more +than a ton from this incumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there +are instances where, +after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale again rises, +more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is obvious. Gases are +generated in him he swells to a prodigious magnitude becomes a sort of +animal balloon. A lineofbattle ship could hardly keep him under then. In +the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right +Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of +rope so that when the body has gone down, they know where to look for it +when it shall have ascended again. It was not long after the sinking of the +body that a cry was heard from the Pequod's mastheads, announcing that the +Jungfrau was again lowering her boats though the only spout in sight was +that of a FinBack, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, +because of its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the FinBack's +spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful fishermen it is +often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were now in +valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made +after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward, +still in bold, hopeful chase. Oh many are the FinBacks, and many are the +Dericks, my friend. +There are some +enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. The more I +dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very +springhead of it, so much the more am I impressed with its great +honorableness and antiquity and especially when I find so many great +demigods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed +distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself +belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity. The gallant +Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman and to the eternal honor of +our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was +not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our +profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill +men's lampfeeders. Every one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda +how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the +seacoast, and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, +Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, +and delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, +rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day inasmuch as this +Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt this Arkite +story for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of +the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale, +which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical +bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans took Joppa, the same +skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most singular and +suggestively important in this story, is this it was from Joppa that Jonah +set sail. Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda indeed, by some +supposed to be indirectly derived from it is that famous story of St. George +and the Dragon which dragon I maintain to have been a whale for in many +old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often +stand for each other. Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of +the sea, saith ezekiel hereby, plainly meaning a whale in truth, some +versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract +from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling +reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the +deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, +have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale. Let not the modern +paintings of this scene mislead us for though the creature encountered by +that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely represented of a griffinlike shape, +and though +the battle is depicted on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering +the great ignorance of those times, when the true form of the whale was +unknown to artists and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's +whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach and considering that +the animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or +seahorse bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether +incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, +to hold this socalled dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself. In +fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will +fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name +who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and both the +palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of him +remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the +tutelary guardian of England and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket +should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let +not the knights of that honorable company none of whom, I venture to say, +have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron, let them never eye +a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred +trowsers we are much better entitled to st. george's decoration than they. +Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained +dubious for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique +Crockett and Kit Carson that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was +swallowed down and thrown up by a whale still, whether that strictly makes a +whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere appears that he ever +actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, +he may be deemed a sort of involuntary whaleman at any rate the whale caught +him, if he did not the whale. I claim him for one of our clan. But, by the +best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of Hercules and the whale +is considered to be derived from the still more ancient Hebrew story of Jonah +and the whale and vice versa certainly they are very similar. If I claim +the demigod then, why not the prophet? +Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of +our order. Our grand master is still to be named for like royal kings of +old times, we find the headwaters of our fraternity in nothing short of the +great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed +from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons +in the godhead of the Hindoos gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our +Lord Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for +ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, +saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of its +periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work +but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been +indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and which therefore +must have contained something in the shape of practical hints to young +architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters so Vishnoo +became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost +depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? +even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman? Perseus, St. George, +Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo there's a memberroll for you What club but +the whaleman's can head off like that? +Reference was made to +the historical story of Jonah and the whale in the preceding chapter. Now +some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story of Jonah and the +whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing +out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of +Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin +and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one +whit the less facts, for all that. One old SagHarbor whaleman's chief reason +for questioning the Hebrew story was this He had one of those quaint +oldfashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates one of +which represented Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head a peculiarity +only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan the Right Whale, and +the varieties of that order, concerning which the fishermen have this saying, +A penny roll would choke him his swallow is so very small. But, to this, +Bishop Jebb's anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary, hints the +Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whale's belly, but as +temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And this seems reasonable +enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale's mouth would +accommodate a couple of whist tables, and comfortably seat all the players. +Possibly, too, Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth but, on +second thoughts, the Right Whale is toothless. Another reason which +SagHarbor he went by that name urged for his want of faith in this matter +of the prophet, was something obscurely in reference to his incarcerated body +and the whale's gastric juices. But this objection likewise falls to the +ground, because a German exegetist supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge +in the floating body of a dead whale even as the French soldiers in the +Russian campaign turned their dead horses into tents, and crawled into them. +Besides, it has been divined by other continental commentators, that when +Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his +escape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a figurehead +and, I would add, possibly called The Whale, as some craft are nowadays +christened the Shark, the Gull, the Eagle. Nor have there been wanting +learned exegetists who have opined that the whale mentioned in the book of +Jonah merely meant a lifepreserver an inflated bag of wind which the +endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom. Poor +SagHarbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But he had still another +reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I remember right Jonah was +swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three days he was +vomited up somewhere within three days' journey of Nineveh, a city on the +Tigris, very much more than three days' journey across from the nearest point +of the Mediterranean coast. How is that? But was there no other way for the +whale to land the prophet within that short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He +might have carried him round by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to +speak of the passage through the whole length of the Mediterranean, and +another passage up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would +involve the complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to +speak of the Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for +any whale to swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape of +Good Hope at so early a day would wrest the honor of the discovery of that +great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and so make +modern history a liar. But all these foolish arguments of old SagHarbor only +evinced his foolish pride of reason a thing still more reprehensible in +him, seeing that he had but little learning except what he had picked up from +the sun and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and +abominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a +Portuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah's going to Nineveh via +the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal magnification of the general +miracle. And so it was. Besides, to this day, the highly enlightened Turks +devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah. And some three centuries +ago, an English traveller in old Harris's Voyages, speaks of a Turkish +Mosque built in honor of Jonah, in which mosque was a miraculous lamp that +burnt without any oil. +To make them run easily and swiftly, +the axles of carriages are anointed and for much the same purpose, some +whalers perform an analogous operation upon their boat they grease the +bottom. Nor is it to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it +may possibly be of no contemptible advantage considering that oil and water +are hostile that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to +make the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in anointing his +boat, and one morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau disappeared, +took more than customary pains in that occupation crawling under its bottom, +where it hung over the side, and rubbing in the unctuousness as though +diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair from the craft's bald keel. He +seemed to be working in obedience to some particular presentiment. Nor did +it remain unwarranted by the event. Towards noon whales were raised but so +soon as the ship sailed down to them, they turned and fled with swift +precipitancy a disordered flight, as of Cleopatra's barges from Actium. +Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb's was foremost. By great exertion, +Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron but the stricken whale, +without at all sounding, still continued his horizontal flight, with added +fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the planted iron must sooner or +later inevitably extract it. It became imperative to lance the flying whale, +or be content to lose him. But to haul the boat up to his flank was +impossible, he swam so fast and furious. What then remained? Of all the +wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and countless +subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced, none exceed +that fine manoeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small sword, or broad +sword, in all its +exercises boasts nothing like it. It is only indispensable with an inveterate +running whale its grand fact and feature is the wonderful distance to which +the long lance is accurately darted from a violently rocking, jerking boat, +under extreme headway. Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some ten +or twelve feet in length the staff is much slighter than that of the +harpoon, and also of a lighter materialpine. It is furnished with a small +rope called a warp, of considerable length, by which it can be hauled back to +the hand after darting. But before going further, it is important to mention +here, that though the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the +lance, yet it is seldom done and when done, is still less frequently +successful, on account of the greater weight and inferior length of the +harpoon as compared with the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks. +As a general thing, therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before any +pitchpoling comes into play. Look now at Stubb a man who from his humorous, +deliberate coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially +qualified to excel in pitchpoling. Look at him he stands upright in the +tossed bow of the flying boat wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is +forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice +along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers +up the coil of the warp in one hand, so as to secure its free end in his +grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then holding the lance full before +his waistband's middle, he levels it at the whale when, covering him with +it, he steadily depresses the buttend in his hand, thereby elevating the +point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his palm, fifteen feet in +the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a long staff on his +chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the +bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the +whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood. That drove the +spigot out of him cries Stubb. 'Tis July's immortal Fourth all fountains +must run wine today Would now, it were old Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, +or unspeakable +old Monongahela Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the jet, +and we'd drink round it Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew choice punch +in the spread of his spouthole there, and from that live punchbowl quaff +the living stuff Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart +is repeated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in +skilful leash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry the towline is +slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely +watches the monster die. +That for six thousand years and no one +knows how many millions of ages before the great whales should have been +spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the +deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots and that for some +centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain +of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings that all this should +be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute fifteen and a quarter +minutes past one o'clock P. M. of this sixteenth day of December, A. D. +it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, +really water, or nothing but vapor this is surely a noteworthy thing. Let +us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items contingent. +Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their gills, the finny tribes +in general breathe the air which at all times is combined with the element in +which they swim, hence, a herring or a cod might live a century, and never +once raise its head above the surface. But owing to his marked internal +structure which gives him regular lungs, like a human being's, the whale can +only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore +the necessity +for his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot in any degree +breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary attitude, the Sperm Whale's +mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the surface and what is still +more, his windpipe has no connexion with his mouth. No, he breathes through +his spiracle alone and this is on the top of his head. If I say, that in +any creature breathing is only a function indispensable to vitality, inasmuch +as it withdraws from the air a certain element, which being subsequently +brought into contact with the blood imparts to the blood its vivifying +principle, I do not think I shall err though I may possibly use some +superfluous scientific words. Assume it, and it follows that if all the +blood in a man could be aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his +nostrils and not fetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, he +would then live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is +precisely the case with the whale, who systematically lives, by intervals, +his full hour and more when at the bottom without drawing a single +breath, or so much as in any way inhaling a particle of air for, remember, +he has no gills. How is this? Between his ribs and on each side of his spine +he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicellilike +vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are completely distended +with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the +sea, he carries a surplus stock of vitality in him, just as the camel +crossing the waterless desert carries a surplus supply of drink for future use +in its four supplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth +is indisputable and that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable and +true, seems the more cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise inexplicable +obstinacy of that leviathan in having his spoutings out, as the fishermen +phrase it. This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon rising to the surface, +the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period of time exactly uniform with +all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets +seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths then whenever he rises +again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a minute. +Now, if after he fetches a few +breaths you alarm him, so that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again +to make good his regular allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths +are told, will he finally go down to stay out his full term below. Remark, +however, that in different individuals these rates are different but in any +one they are alike. Now, why should the whale thus insist upon having his +spoutings out, unless it be to replenish his reservoir of air, ere +descending for good? How obvious is it, too, that this necessity for the +whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal hazards of the chase. For not by +hook or by net could this vast leviathan be caught, when sailing a thousand +fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the +great necessities that strike the victory to thee In man, breathing is +incessantly going on one breath only serving for two or three pulsations so +that whatever other business he has to attend to, waking or sleeping, +breathe he must, or die he will. But the Sperm Whale only breathes about one +seventh or Sunday of his time. It has been said that the whale only breathes +through his spouthole if it could truthfully be added that his spouts are +mixed with water, then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his +sense of smell seems obliterated in him for the only thing about him that at +all answers to his nose is that identical spouthole and being so clogged +with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power of smelling. +But owing to the mystery of the spout whether it be water or whether it be +vapor no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it +is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what +does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no Colognewater in the sea. +Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting canal, +and as that long canal like the grand Erie Canal is furnished with a sort +of locks that open and shut for the downward retention of air or the +upward exclusion of water, therefore the whale has no voice unless you +insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through +his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known +any profound being that had anything to say to this +world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. +Oh happy that the world is such an excellent listener Now, the spouting +canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the conveyance of air, +and for several feet laid along, horizontally, just beneath the upper +surface of his head, and a little to one side this curious canal is very +much like a gaspipe laid down in a city on one side of a street. But the +question returns whether this gaspipe is also a waterpipe in other words, +whether the spout of the Sperm Whale is the mere vapor of the exhaled breath, +or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth, +and discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that the mouth indirectly +communicates with the spouting canal but it cannot be proved that this is +for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle. Because the +greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be, when in feeding he +accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale's food is far beneath the +surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would. Besides, if you regard +him very closely, and time him with your watch, you will find that when +unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets and +the ordinary periods of respiration. But why pester one with all this +reasoning on the subject? Speak out You have seen him spout then declare +what the spout is can you not tell water from air? My dear sir, in this +world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your +plain things the knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might +almost stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely. The +central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping it and +how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from it, when, always, +when you are close enough to a whale to get a close view of his spout, he is +in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all around him. And if at +such times you should think that you really perceived drops of moisture in +the spout, how do you know that they are not merely condensed from its vapor +or how do you know that they are not those identical drops superficially +lodged in the spouthole fissure, which is countersunk into the summit of the +whale's head? For even when tranquilly swimming through the midday +sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sundried as a dromedary's in the +desert even then, the whale always carries a small basin of water on his +head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled +up with rain. Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious +touching the precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be +peering into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher +to this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when coming into +slight contact with the outer, vapory shreds of the jet, which will often +happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from the acridness of the thing so +touching it. And I know one, who coming into still closer contact with the +spout, whether with some scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot +say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, +the spout is deemed poisonous they try to evade it. Another thing I have +heard it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted +into your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator can do +then, it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone. Still, we can +hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My hypothesis is this +that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides other reasons, to this +conclusion I am impelled, by considerations touching the great inherent +dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale I account him no common, shallow +being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed fact that he is never found on +soundings, or near shores all other whales sometimes are. He is both +ponderous and profound. And I am convinced that from the heads of all +ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, +and so on, there always goes up a certain semivisible steam, while in the +act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, +I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me and ere long saw reflected +there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my +head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought, +after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon this +seems an additional argument for the above supposition. And how nobly it +raises our conceit of the mighty, misty +monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea his +vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his +incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor as you will sometimes see it +glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his +thoughts. For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air they only +irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my +mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a +heavenly ray. And for this I thank God for all have doubts many deny +but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all +things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly this combination +makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both +with equal eye. +Other poets have warbled the praises of +the soft eye of the antelope, and the lovely plumage of the bird that never +alights less celestial, I celebrate a tail. Reckoning the largest sized +Sperm Whale's tail to begin at that point of the trunk where it tapers to +about the girth of a man, it comprises upon its upper surface alone, an area +of at least fifty square feet. The compact round body of its root expands +into two broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less +than an inch in thickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly +overlap, then sideways recede from each other like wings, leaving a wide +vacancy between. In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely +defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost +expansion in the full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty +feet across. The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded +sinews but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it +upper, middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long +and horizontal those of the middle one, very short, and running crosswise +between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as anything else, +imparts power to the tail. To the student of old Roman walls, the middle +layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin course of tiles always +alternating with the stone in those wonderful relics of the antique, and +which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great strength of the masonry. +But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough, the +whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of muscular +fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins and running down +into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely contribute to their +might so that in the tail the confluent measureless force of the whole +whale seems concentrated to a point. Could annihilation occur to matter, this +were the thing to do it. Nor does this its amazing strength, at all tend to +cripple the graceful flexion of its motions where infantileness of ease +undulates through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive +their most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or +harmony, but it often bestows it and in everything imposingly beautiful, +strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that all +over seem bursting from the marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm +would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked +corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that +seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in +human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of +the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian +pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied these +pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any +power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance, +which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his +teachings. Such is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that +whether wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood it +be in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein no +fairy's arm can transcend it. Five great motions are peculiar to it. First, +when used as a fin for progression Second, when used as a mace in battle +Third, in sweeping Fourth, in lobtailing Fifth, in peaking flukes. First +Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan's tail acts in a different +manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never wriggles. In man +or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his tail is the +sole means of propulsion. Scrollwise coiled forwards beneath the body, and +then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular darting, +leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His sidefins only +serve to steer by. Second It is a little significant, that while one sperm +whale only fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, +in his conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In +striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the blow +is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed air, +especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke is then simply irresistible. +No ribs of man or boat can withstand it. Your only salvation lies in eluding +it but if it comes sideways through the opposing water, then partly owing +to the light buoyancy of the whaleboat, and the elasticity of its materials, +a cracked rib or a dashed plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is +generally the most serious result. These submerged side blows are so often +received in the fishery, that they are accounted mere child's play. Some one +strips off a frock, and the hole is stopped. Third I cannot demonstrate it, +but it seems to me, that in the whale the sense of touch is concentrated in +the tail for in this respect there is a delicacy in it only equalled by the +daintiness of the elephant's trunk. This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the +action of sweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft +slowness moves his immense flukes from side to side upon the surface of the +sea and if he feel but a sailor's whisker, woe to that sailor, whiskers and +all. +What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch Had this tail any +prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me of Darmonodes' elephant +that so frequented the flowermarket, and with low salutations presented +nosegays to damsels, and then caressed their zones. On more accounts than +one, a pity it is that the whale does not possess this prehensile virtue in +his tail for I have heard of yet another elephant, that when wounded in +the fight, curved round his trunk and extracted the dart. Fourth Stealing +unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the middle of solitary +seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence of his dignity, and +kittenlike, he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see +his power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the +air then smiting the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. +You would almost think a great gun had been discharged and if you noticed +the light wreath of vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would +think that that was the smoke from the touchhole. Fifth As in the ordinary +floating posture of the leviathan the flukes lie considerably below the level +of his back, they are then completely out of sight beneath the surface but +when he is about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least +thirty feet of his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating +a moment, till they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime +breach somewhere else to be described this peaking of the whale's flukes is +perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the +bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the +highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his +tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such +scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in if in the Dantean, the devils +will occur to you if in that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the +masthead of my ship during a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw +a large herd of whales in the east, all heading towards the sun, and for a +moment vibrating in concert with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the +time, such a grand +embodiment of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the +home of the fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African +elephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout of +all beings. For according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity +often hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the profoundest +silence. The chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the +elephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk of the +other are concerned, should not tend to place those two opposite organs on an +equality, much less the creatures to which they respectively belong. For as +the mightiest elephant is but a terrier to Leviathan, so, compared with +Leviathan's tail, his trunk is but the stalk of a lily. The most direful +blow from the elephant's trunk were as the playful tap of a fan, compared with +the measureless crush and crash of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes, which +in repeated instances have one after the other hurled entire boats with all +their oars and crews into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his +balls. The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my +inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though +they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an +extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, +that I have heard hunters who have declared them akin to FreeMason signs and +symbols that the whale, indeed, by these methods intelligently conversed +with the world. Nor are there wanting other motions of the whale in his +general body, full of strangeness, and unaccountable to his most experienced +assailant. Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep I know him not, +and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how +understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has +none? +Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not +be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts and hint what he +will about his face, I say again he has no face. +Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale and the +elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the elephant +stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does to the elephant +nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of curious similitude among +these is the spout. It is well known that the elephant will often draw up +water or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it, jet it forth in a +stream. +The long and narrow peninsula of +Malacca, extending southeastward from the territories of Birmah, forms the +most southerly point of all Asia. In a continuous line from that peninsula +stretch the long islands of Sumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor which, with many +others, form a vast mole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with +Australia, and dividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the thickly +studded oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced by several sallyports +for the convenience of ships and whales conspicuous among which are the +straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of Sunda, chiefly, vessels +bound to China from the west, emerge into the China seas. Those narrow straits +of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java and standing midway in that vast rampart +of islands, buttressed by that bold green promontory, known to seamen as +Java Head they not a little correspond to the central gateway opening into +some vast walled empire and considering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, +and silks, and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of +that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of nature, +that such treasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least bear +the appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the allgrasping +western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those +domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the +Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the +obsequious homage of lowered topsails from the endless procession of ships +before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed +between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes +of the east. But while they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by +no means renounce their claim to more solid tribute. Time out of mind the +piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among the low shaded coves and islets +of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through the straits, +fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears. Though by the +repeated bloody chastisements they have received at the hands of European +cruisers, the audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed +yet, even at the present day, we occasionally hear of English and American +vessels, which, in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged. +With a fair, fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these straits +Ahab purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea, and thence, cruising +northwards, over waters known to be frequented here and there by the Sperm +whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands, and gain the far coast of +Japan, in time for the great whaling season there. By these means, the +circumnavigating Pequod would sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale cruising +grounds of the world, previous to descending upon the Line in the Pacific +where Ahab, though everywhere else foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted upon +giving battle to Moby Dick, in the sea he was most known to frequent and at +a season when he might most reasonably be presumed to be haunting it. But how +now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does his crew drink air? +Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time, now, the circusrunning +sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but what's in +himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the whaler. While other hulls are +loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred to foreign wharves the +worldwandering whaleship carries no cargo but herself and crew, their +weapons and their wants. She has a whole lake's contents bottled in her ample +hold. She is ballasted with utilities not altogether with unusable piglead +and kentledge. She carries years' water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket +water which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, +in the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday +rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, +while other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back again, +touching at a score of ports, the whaleship, in all that interval, may not +have sighted one grain of soil her crew having seen no man but floating +seamen like themselves. So that did you carry them the news that another +flood had come they would only answer Well, boys, here's the ark Now, +as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western coast of Java, in the +near vicinity of the straits of Sunda indeed, as most of the ground, +roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen as an excellent spot for +cruising therefore, as the Pequod gained more and more upon Java Head, the +lookouts were repeatedly hailed, and admonished to keep wide awake. But +though the green palmy cliffs of the land soon loomed on the starboard bow, +and with delighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet +not a single jet was descried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in +with any game hereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when +the customary cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle of +singular magnificence saluted us. But here be it premised, that owing to the +unwearied activity with which of late they have been hunted over all four +oceans, the Sperm Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small +detached companies, as in former times, are now frequently met with in +extensive herds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that it would +almost seem as if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and +covenant for mutual assistance and protection. To this aggregation of the +Sperm Whale into such immense caravans, may be imputed the circumstance that +even in the best cruising grounds, you may now sometimes sail for weeks and +months together, without being greeted by a single spout and then be +suddenly saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands. Broad on +both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and forming a great +semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon, a continuous chain of +whalejets were upplaying and sparkling in the noonday air. Unlike the +straight perpendicular +twinjets of the Right Whale, which, dividing at top, falls over in two +branches, like the cleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single +forwardslanting spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of +white mist, continually rising and falling away to leeward. Seen from the +Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill of the sea, this host +of vapory spouts, individually curling up into the air, and beheld through a +blending atmosphere of bluish haze, showed like the thousand cheerful chimneys +of some dense metropolis, descried of a balmy autumnal morning, by some +horseman on a height. As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in +the mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous +passage in their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the +plain even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward +through the straits gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle, +and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre. Crowding all sail +the Pequod pressed after them the harpooneers handling their weapons, and +loudly cheering from the heads of their yet suspended boats. If the wind only +held, little doubt had they, that chased through these Straits of Sunda, +the vast host would only deploy into the Oriental seas to witness the capture +of not a few of their number. And who could tell whether, in that congregated +caravan, Moby Dick himself might not temporarily be swimming, like the +worshipped whiteelephant in the coronation procession of the Siamese So +with stunsail piled on stunsail, we sailed along, driving these +leviathans before us when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego was heard, +loudly directing attention to something in our wake. Corresponding to the +crescent in our van, we beheld another in our rear. It seemed formed of +detached white vapors, rising and falling something like the spouts of the +whales only they did not so completely come and go for they constantly +hovered, without finally disappearing. Levelling his glass at this sight, +ahab quickly revolved in his pivothole, crying, aloft there, and rig whips +and buckets to wet the sails Malays, sir, and after us +As if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should fairly +have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot pursuit, to +make up for their overcautious delay. But when the swift Pequod, with a fresh +leading wind, was herself in hot chase how very kind of these tawny +philanthropists to assist in speeding her on to her own chosen pursuit, +mere ridingwhips and rowels to her, that they were. As with glass under arm, +Ahab toandfro paced the deck in his forward turn beholding the monsters he +chased, and in the after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him some +such fancy as the above seemed his. And when he glanced upon the green walls +of the watery defile in which the ship was then sailing, and bethought him +that through that gate lay the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how that +through that same gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly +end and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates and inhuman +atheistical devils were infernally cheering him on with their curses when +all these conceits had passed through his brain, Ahab's brow was left gaunt +and ribbed, like the black sand beach after some stormy tide has been gnawing +it, without being able to drag the firm thing from its place. But thoughts +like these troubled very few of the reckless crew and when, after steadily +dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod at last shot by the +vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side, emerging at last upon the +broad waters beyond then, the harpooneers seemed more to grieve that the +swift whales had been gaining upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship +had so victoriously gained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake +of the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed gradually the ship +neared them and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the +boats. But no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of +the Sperm Whale, become notified of the three keels that were after them, +though as yet a mile in their rear, than they rallied again, and forming in +close ranks and battalions, so that their spouts all looked like flashing +lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity. Stripped to our +shirts and drawers, we sprang to the whiteash, +and after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase, +when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating token that +they were now at last under the influence of that strange perplexity of inert +irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he +is gallied. The compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto +rapidly and steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout +and like King Porus' elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander, they +seemed going mad with consternation. In all directions expanding in vast +irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by their short +thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distraction of panic. This +was still more strangely evinced by those of their number, who, completely +paralysed as it were, helplessly floated like waterlogged dismantled ships on +the sea. Had these leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep, pursued over +the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not possibly have evinced such +excessive dismay. But this occasional timidity is characteristic of almost +all herding creatures. Though banding together in tens of thousands, the +lionmaned buffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman. +Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold of +a theatre's pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush +helterskelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and +remorselessly dashing each other to death. Best, therefore, withhold +any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly +of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of +men. Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion, +yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced nor +retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is customary in those +cases, the boats at once separated, each making for some one lone whale on +the outskirts of the shoal. In about three minutes' time, Queequeg's harpoon +was flung the stricken fish darted blinding spray in our faces, and then +running away with us like light, steered straight for the heart of the herd. +Though such a movement on the part of the whale struck under such +circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented and indeed is almost always more +or less anticipated yet does it present one of the more perilous vicissitudes +of the fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into +the frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a +delirious throb. As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer +power of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him as +we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by +the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us our beset boat was like a +ship mobbed by iceisles in a tempest, and striving to steer through their +complicated channels and straits, knowing not at what moment it may be +locked in and crushed. But not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully +now sheering off from this monster directly across our route in advance now +edging away from that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while +all the time, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand, pricking out of +our way whatever whales he could reach by short darts, for there was no time +to make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted +duty was now altogether dispensed with. They chiefly attended to the shouting +part of the business. Out of the way, Commodore cried one, to a great +dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the surface, and for an instant +threatened to swamp us. Hard down with your tail, there cried a second +to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly cooling himself with +his own fanlike extremity. All whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, +originally invented by the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick +squares of wood of equal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they +cross each other's grain at right angles a line of considerable length is +then attached to the middle of this block, and the other end of the line +being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly +among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For then, more whales are close +round you than you can possibly chase at one time. But sperm whales are not +every day encountered while you may, then, you must kill all you can. And +if you cannot kill them all at once, you must wing them, so that they can be +afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it is, that at times like these the +drugg comes into requisition. Our boat was furnished with three of them. +The first and second were successfully darted, and we saw the whales +staggeringly running off, fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance of the +towing drugg. They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball. +But upon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard the clumsy +wooden block, it caught under one of the seats of the boat, and in an +instant tore it out and carried it away, dropping the oarsman in the boat's +bottom as the seat slid from under him. On both sides the sea came in at the +wounded planks, but we stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in, and so +stopped the leaks for the time. It had been next to impossible to dart these +druggedharpoons, were it not that as we advanced into the herd, our whale's +way greatly diminished moreover, that as we went still further and further +from the circumference of commotion, the direful disorders seemed waning. So +that when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing whale sideways +vanished then, with the tapering force of his parting momentum, we glided +between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if from some +mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here the storms in the +roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard but not felt. In this +central expanse the sea presented that smooth satinlike surface, called a +sleek, produced +by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods. Yes, +we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every +commotion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the +outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight or ten in +each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of horses in a +ring and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic circusrider might +easily have overarched the middle ones, and so have gone round on their +backs. Owing to the density of the crowd of reposing whales, more +immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd, no possible chance of +escape was at present afforded us. We must watch for a breach in the living +wall that hemmed us in the wall that had only admitted us in order to shut +us up. Keeping at the centre of the lake, we were occasionally visited by +small tame cows and calves the women and children of this routed host. Now, +inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving outer +circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in any one of +those circles, the entire area at this juncture, embraced by the whole +multitude, must have contained at least two or three square miles. At any +rate though indeed such a test at such a time might be deceptive spoutings +might be discovered from our low boat that seemed playing up almost from the +rim of the horizon. I mention this circumstance, because, as if the cows and +calves had been purposely locked up in this innermost fold and as if the +wide extent of the herd had hitherto prevented them from learning the precise +cause of its stopping or, possibly, being so young, unsophisticated, and +every way innocent and inexperienced however it may have been, these +smaller whales now and then visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the +lake evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or else a still +becharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvel at. Like household dogs +they came snuffling round us, right up to our gunwales, and touching them +till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly domesticated them. +Queequeg patted their foreheads Starbuck scratched their backs with his +lance but fearful of the consequences, for the time refrained from darting +it. +But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still +stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in +those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, +and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The +lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent +and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the +breast, as if leading two different lives at the time and while yet drawing +mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly +reminiscence even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards +us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their newborn +sight. floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. +One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a +day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet +in girth. He was a little frisky though as yet his body seemed scarce yet +recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the +maternal reticule where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, +the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate sidefins, and +the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled +appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign parts. Line line +cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale him fast him fast Who line +him Who struck? Two whale one big, one little What ails ye, man? +cried Starbuck. Looke here, said Queequeg pointing down. As when the +stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of fathoms of rope +as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling +line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air so now, Starbuck saw +long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub +seemed still tethered to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the +chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled +with the hempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the +subtlest secrets of the seas +seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young Leviathan amours +in the deep. And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of +consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre +freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments yea, serenely +revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic +of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm and +while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep +inland there i still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy. Meanwhile, as we +thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic spectacles in the distance +evinced the activity of the other boats, still engaged in drugging the whales +on the frontier of the host or possibly carrying on the war within the first +circle, where abundance of room and some convenient retreats were afforded +them. But the sight of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly +darting to and fro across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our +eyes. It is sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly +powerful and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or +maiming his gigantic tailtendon. It is done by darting a shorthandled +cuttingspade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again. A +whale wounded as we afterwards learned in this part, but not effectually, +as it seemed, had broken away from the boat, carrying along with him half of +the harpoon line and in the extraordinary agony of the wound, he was now +dashing among the revolving circles like the lone mounted desperado +Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay wherever he went. But +agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle enough, +any way yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire the rest of +the herd, was owing to a cause which at first the intervening distance +obscured from us. But at length we perceived that by one of the unimaginable +accidents of the fishery, this whale had become entangled in the harpoonline +that he towed he had also run away with the cuttingspade in him and while +the free end of the rope attached to that weapon, had permanently caught in +the coils of the harpoonline round his tail, the cuttingspade itself had +worked loose from his flesh. So that tormented to madness, he was now +churning through the water, violently flailing with his flexible tail, and +tossing the keen spade about him, wounding and murdering his own comrades. +this terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their stationary +fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake began to crowd a +little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted by half spent billows +from afar then the lake itself began faintly to heave and swell the +submarine bridalchambers and nurseries vanished in more and more +contracting orbits the whales in the more central circles began to swim in +thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was departing. A low advancing hum +was soon heard and then like to the tumultuous masses of blockice when the +great river Hudson breaks up in Spring, the entire host of whales came +tumbling upon their inner centre, as if to pile themselves up in one common +mountain. Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg changed places Starbuck taking +the stern. Oars Oars he intensely whispered, seizing the helm gripe +your oars, and clutch your souls, now My God, men, stand by Shove him off, +you Queequeg the whale there prick him hit him Stand up stand up, and +stay so Spring, men pull, men never mind their backs scrape them +scrape away The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, +leaving a narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate +endeavor we at last shot into a temporary +opening then giving way rapidly, and at the same time earnestly watching +for another outlet. After many similar hairbreadth escapes, we at last +swiftly glided into what had just been one of the outer circles, but now +crossed by random whales, all violently making for one centre. This lucky +salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg's hat, who, while +standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean +from his head by the aireddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad +flukes close by. Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, +it soon resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement for having +clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their onward +flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless but the boats +still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged whales might be dropped +astern, and likewise to secure one which Flask had killed and waifed. The +waif is a pennoned pole, two or three of which are carried by every boat +and which, when additional game is at hand, are inserted upright into the +floating body of a dead whale, both to mark its place on the sea, and also +as token of prior possession, should the boats of any other ship draw near. +The result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious saying +in the Fishery, the more whales the less fish. Of all the drugged whales +only one was captured. The rest contrived to escape for the time, but only +to be taken, as will hereafter be seen, by some other craft than the Pequod. +To gally, or gallow, is to frighten excessively to confound with fright. +It is an old Saxon word. It occurs once in Shakespeare The wrathful skies +Gallow the very wanderers of the dark And make them keep their caves. To +common language, the word is now completely obsolete. When the polite +landsman first hears it from the gaunt Nantucketer, he is apt to set it +down as one of the whaleman's selfderived savageries. Much the same is it +with many other sinewy Saxonisms of this sort, which emigrated to +NewEngland rocks with the noble brawn of the old English emigrants in the +time of the Commonwealth. Thus, some of the best and furthestdescended +English words the etymological Howards and Percys are now democratised, nay, +plebeianised so to speak in the New World. +The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but unlike +most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons after a gestation +which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a time +though in some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and Jacob a +contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously situated, one +on each side of the anus but the breasts themselves extend upwards from +that. When by chance these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the +hunter's lance, the mother's pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolor +the sea for rods. The milk is very sweet and rich it has been tasted by +man it might do well with strawberries. When overflowing with mutual +esteem, the whales salute more hominum. +The previous chapter +gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm Whales, and there was also +then given the probable cause inducing those vast aggregations. Now, though +such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, +as must have been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are +occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each. Such +bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts those composed +almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but young vigorous +males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated. In cavalier attendance +upon the school of females, you invariably see a male of full grown magnitude, +but not old who, upon any alarm, evinces his gallantry by falling in the +rear and covering the flight of his ladies. In truth, this gentleman is a +luxurious Ottoman, swimming about over the watery world, surroundingly +accompanied by all the solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrast +between this Ottoman and his concubines is striking because, while he is +always of the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full +growth, are not more than one third of the bulk of an averagesized male. +They are comparatively delicate, indeed I dare say, not to exceed half a +dozen yards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the +whole they are hereditarily entitled to en bon point. It is very curious +to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent ramblings. Like +fashionables, they are for ever on the move in leisurely search of variety. +You meet them on the Line in time for the full flower of the Equatorial +feeding season, having just returned, perhaps, from spending the summer in +the Northern seas, and so cheating summer of all unpleasant weariness and +warmth. By the time they have lounged up and down the promenade of the +Equator awhile, they start for the Oriental waters in anticipation of the +cool season there, and so evade the other excessive temperature of the year. +When serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange suspicious +sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his interesting family. +Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming that way, presume to +draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with what prodigious fury the +Bashaw assails him, and chases him away High times, indeed, if +unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity +of domestic bliss though do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most +notorious Lothario out +of his bed for, alas all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often +cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers just so with the +whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence +with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving +for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers. Not a +few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters, furrowed heads, +broken teeth, scolloped fins and in some instances, wrenched and dislocated +mouths. but supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at +the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to watch that +lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and revels there +awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious Solomon +devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines. Granting other whales to +be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these Grand +Turks for these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hence +their unctuousness is small. As for the sons and the daughters they beget, +why, those sons and daughters must take care of themselves at least, with +only the maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that +might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for +the bower and so, being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies +all over the world every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as the +ardor of youth declines as years and dumps increase as reflection lends +her solemn pauses in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk +then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens our Ottoman +enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, +disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about +all alone among the meridians and parallels saying his prayers, and warning +each young Leviathan from his amorous errors. Now, as the harem of whales is +called by the fishermen a school, so is the lord and master of that school +technically known as the schoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict +character, however admirably satirical, that after going to school himself, +he should then go abroad inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly +of it. His title, schoolmaster, would very naturally +seem derived from the name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have +surmised that the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, +must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a +countryschoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and what +was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils. +The same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale betakes +himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm Whales. Almost +universally, a lone whale as a solitary Leviathan is called proves an +ancient one. Like venerable mossbearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one +near him but Nature herself and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of +waters, and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody +secrets. The schools composing none but young and vigorous males, previously +mentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while those +female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or +fortybarrelbulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious of all +Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter excepting +those wondrous greyheaded, grizzled whales, sometimes met, and these will +fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout. The Fortybarrelbull +schools are larger than the harem schools. Like a mob of young collegians, +they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round the world at such +a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter would insure them +any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish +this turbulence though, and when about three fourths grown, break up, and +separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems. Another point +of difference between the male and female schools is still more characteristic +of the sexes. Say you strike a Fortybarrelbull poor devil all his +comrades quit him. But strike a member of the harem school, and her +companions swim around her with every token of concern, sometimes lingering +so near her and so long, as themselves to fall a prey. +The allusion to the waifs +and waifpoles in the last chapter but one, necessitates some account of the +laws and regulations of the whale fishery, of which the waif may be deemed +the grand symbol and badge. It frequently happens that when several ships are +cruising in company, a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and +be finally killed and captured by another vessel and herein are indirectly +comprised many minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature. +For example, after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale, the +body may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent storm and drifting +far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly +tows it alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus the most vexatious and +violent disputes would often arise between the fishermen, were there not some +written or unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases. +Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative enactment, was +that of Holland. It was decreed by the StatesGeneral in A. D. +. But +though no other nation has ever had any written whaling law, yet the American +fishermen have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter. They +have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's +Pandects and the Bylaws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of +Meddling with other People's Business. Yes these laws might be engraven on a +Queen Anne's farthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so +small are they. I. A FastFish belongs to the party fast to it. II. A +LooseFish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it. But what plays +the mischief with this masterly code is the +admirable brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to +expound it. First What is a FastFish? Alive or dead a fish is technically +fast, when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at +all controllable by the occupant or occupants, a mast, an oar, a nineinch +cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same. Likewise +a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, or any other recognised +symbol of possession so long as the party waifing it plainly evince their +ability at any time to take it alongside, as well as their intention so to +do. These are scientific commentaries but the commentaries of the whalemen +themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks the +CokeuponLittleton of the fist. True, among the more upright and honorable +whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases, where it would be an +outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim possession of a whale +previously chased or killed by another party. But others are by no means so +scrupulous. Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whaletrover +litigated in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard +chase of a whale in the Northern seas and when indeed they the plaintiffs +had succeeded in harpooning the fish they were at last, through peril of +their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat itself. +Ultimately the defendants the crew of another ship came up with the whale, +struck, killed, seized, and finally appropriated it before the very eyes of +the plaintiffs. And when those defendants were remonstrated with, their +captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs' teeth, and assured them that by +way of doxology to the deed he had done, he would now retain their line, +harpoons, and boat, which had remained attached to the whale at the time of +the seizure. Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the value +of their whale, line, harpoons, and boat. Mr. Erskine was counsel for the +defendants Lord Ellenborough was the judge. In the course of the defence, +the witty Erskine went on to illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent +crim. con. case, wherein a gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his +wife's viciousness, had at last abandoned her upon +the seas of life but in the course of years, repenting of that step, he +instituted an action to recover possession of her. Erskine was on the other +side and he then supported it by saying, that though the gentleman had +originally harpooned the lady, and had once had her fast, and only by reason +of the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had as last abandoned her +yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loosefish and therefore when +a subsequent gentleman reharpooned her, the lady then became that subsequent +gentleman's property, along with whatever harpoon might have been found +sticking in her. Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples +of the whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other. These +pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the very learned judge +in set terms decided, to wit, That as for the boat, he awarded it to the +plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to save their lives but +that with regard to the controverted whale, harpoons, and line, they belonged +to the defendants the whale, because it was a LooseFish at the time of the +final capture and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off with +them, it the fish acquired a property in those articles and hence anybody +who afterwards took the fish had a right to them. Now the defendants +afterwards took the fish ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs. A common +man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge, might possibly object +to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the matter, the two great +principles laid down in the twin whaling laws previously quoted, and applied +and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in the above cited case these two laws +touching FastFish and LooseFish, I say, will, on reflection, be found the +fundamentals of all human jurisprudence For notwithstanding its complicated +tracery of sculpture, the Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the +Philistines, has but two props to stand on. Is it not a saying in every one's +mouth, Possession is half of the law that is, regardless of how the thing +came into possession? But often possession is the whole of the law. What are +the sinews and souls of Russian serfs and Republican slaves +but FastFish, whereof possession is the whole of the law? What to the +rapacious landlord is the widow's last mite but a FastFish? What is yonder +undetected villain's marble mansion with a doorplate for a waif what is +that but a FastFish? What is the ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker, +gets from poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family +from starvation what is that ruinous discount but a FastFish? What is the +archbishop of Savesoul's income of , pounds seized from the scant bread +and cheese of hundreds of thousands of brokenbacked laborers all sure of +heaven without any of Savesoul's help what is that globular , but a +FastFish? What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets but +FastFish? What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland, +but a FastFish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas +but a FastFish? And concerning all these, is not Possession the whole of +the law? But if the doctrine of FastFish be pretty generally applicable, the +kindred doctrine of LooseFish is still more widely so. That is +internationally and universally applicable. What was America in +but a +loosefish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing +it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What +Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to +the United States? All LooseFish. What are the Rights of Man and the +Liberties of the World but LooseFish? What all men's minds and opinions but +LooseFish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a +LooseFish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of +thinkers but LooseFish? What is the great globe itself but a LooseFish? +And what are you, reader, but a LooseFish and a FastFish, too? +Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of +unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense. Starboard +gangway, there side away to larboardlarboard gangway to starboard +Midships midships There was a low rumbling of heavy seaboots among the +benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet +again, and every eye on the preacher. He paused a little then kneeling in +the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his +closed eyes, +and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at +the bottom of the sea. This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the +continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog in +such tones he commenced reading the following hymn but changing his manner +towards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy +The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While +all God's sunlit waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom. I saw +the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there Which none but +they that feel can tell Oh, I was plunging to despair. In black distress, +I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear to my +complaints No more the whale did me confine. With speed he flew to my +relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone +The face of my Deliverer God. My song for ever shall record That terrible, +that joyful hour I give the glory to my God, His all the mercy and the +power. Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the +howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued the preacher slowly turned over +the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon the proper +page, said Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of +Jonah And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. Shipmates, +this book, containing only four chapters four yarns is one of the smallest +strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul +does Jonah's deep sealine sound what a pregnant lesson to us is this +prophet What +a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's belly How billowlike and +boisterously grand We feel the floods surging over us we sound with him to +the kelpy bottom of the waters seaweed and all the slime of the sea is +about us But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? +Shipmates, it is a twostranded lesson a lesson to us all as sinful men, +and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a +lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hardheartedness, +suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and +finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, +the sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command +of God never mind now what that command was, or how conveyed which he found +a hard command. But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us +to do remember that and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to +persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves and it is in this +disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. With +this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at God, by +seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men, will carry him +into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth. +He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship that's bound for +Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all +accounts Tarshish could have been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That's +the opinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in +Spain as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in +those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because +Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the +Mediterranean, the Syrian and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles +to the westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not +then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee worldwide from God? Miserable +man Oh most contemptible and worthy of all scorn with slouched hat and +guilty eye, skulking from his God prowling among the shipping like a vile +burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, selfcondemning is his +look, that had there been policemen in +those days, jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested +ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive no baggage, not a +hatbox, valise, or carpetbag, no friends accompany him to the wharf with +their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the Tarshish ship +receiving the last items of her cargo and as he steps on board to see its +Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in +the goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye. Jonah sees this but in vain he +tries to look all ease and confidence in vain essays his wretched smile. +Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In +their gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to the other "Jack, he's +robbed a widow" or,"Joe, do you mark him he's a bigamist" or,"Harry lad, +I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of +the missing murderers from Sodom." Another runs to read the bill that's stuck +against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering five +hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide, and containing a +description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill +while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay +their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his +boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. He will not +confess himself suspected but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes +the best of it and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is +advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into the cabin. "Who's +there?" cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his papers +for the Customs "who's there?" Oh how that harmless question mangles Jonah +For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. "I seek a +passage in this ship to Tarshish how soon sail ye, sir?" Thus far the busy +captain had not looked up to jonah, though the man now stands before him +but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing +glance. "We sail with the next coming tide," at last he slowly answered, +still intently eyeing him. "No sooner, sir?" "Soon enough for any honest man +that goes a passenger." Ha Jonah, that's another stab. But he swiftly calls +away the Captain from that scent. "I'll sail with ye," he says, "the +passage +money, how much is that, I'll pay now." For it is particularly written, +shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history,"that he +paid the fare thereof" ere the craft did sail. And taken with the context, +this is full of meaning. Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose +discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the +penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, +and without a passport whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all +frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, +ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum and it's +assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive but at the +same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when +Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. +He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any way, he mutters +and Jonah is put down for his passage. "Point out my stateroom, Sir," says +Jonah now. "I'm travelweary I need sleep." "Thou look'st like it," says +the Captain, "there's thy room." Jonah enters, and would lock the door, +but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the +Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of +convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and +dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little +stateroom ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and +jonah gasps. then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's +waterline, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when +the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowel's wards. Screwed at +its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's +room and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the +last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still +maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room though, in truth, +infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels +among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah as lying in his +berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful +fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in +the lamp more and +more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. "Oh so +my conscience hangs in me" he groans, "straight upward, so it burns but the +chambers of my soul are all in crookedness" Like one who after a night of +drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling, but with conscience yet +pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman racehorse but so much the more +strike his steel tags into him as one who in that miserable plight still +turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit +be passed and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals +over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, +and there's naught to staunch it so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, +Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep. And +now the time of tide has come the ship casts off her cables and from the +deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. +That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers the contraband +was jonah. but the sea rebels he will not bear the wicked burden. A +dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break. But now when the +boatswain calls all hands to lighten her when boxes, bales, and jars are +clattering overboard when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, +and every plank thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah's head in all +this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and +raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he +the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is cleaving +the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of +the ship a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But +the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear, "What +meanest thou, O sleeper arise" Startled from his lethargy by that direful +cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, +to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther +billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship, +and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners come +nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon shows +her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast +Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward +again towards the tormented deep. Terrors upon terrors run shouting through +his soul. In all his cringing attitudes, the Godfugitive is now too plainly +known. The sailors mark him more and more certain grow their suspicions of +him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to +high Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great +tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah's that discovered, then how +furiously they mob him with their questions. "What is thine occupation? +whence comest thou? thy country? what people?" but mark now, my shipmates, +the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and +where from whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions, but +likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited +answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him. "I am +a Hebrew," he cries and then "I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who hath +made the sea and the dry land" Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou +fear the Lord God then Straightway, he now goes on to make a full +confession whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still +are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he +but too well knew the darkness of his deserts, when wretched Jonah cries out +to them to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for +his sake this great tempest was upon them they mercifully turn from him, +and seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain the indignant +gale howls louder then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the +other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah. And now behold Jonah taken up +as an anchor and dropped into the sea when instantly an oily calmness floats +out from the east, and the sea is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with +him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such +a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething +into the yawning jaws +awaiting him and the whale shootsto all his ivory teeth, like the Lord out +of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and so many white bolts, upon +his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he +is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his +dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting +himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still +look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful +repentance not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how +pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual +deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place +Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a +model for repentance. Sin not but if you do, take heed to repent of it like +Jonah. While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, +slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who, when +describing Jonah's seastorm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep +chest heaved as with a groundswell his tossed arms seemed the warring +elements at work and the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy +brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look +on him with a quick fear that was strange to them. There now came a lull in +his look, as he silently turned over the leaves of the Book once more and, +at last, standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed +communing with God and himself. But again he leaned over towards the people, +and bowing his head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest +humility, he spake these words Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon +you both his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may +be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners and therefore to ye, +and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly +would I come down from this masthead and sit on the hatches there where you +sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads me that other +and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me as a pilot of +the living God. How being an anointed pilotprophet, or speaker of true +things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of +a wicked nineveh, jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from +his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at +Joppa. But God is everywhere Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, +God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of +doom, and with swift slantings tore him along"into the midst of the seas," +where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and"the weeds +were wrapped about his head," and all the watery world of woe bowled over +him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet "out of the belly of +hell" when the whale grounded upon the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God +heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the +fish and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came +breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air +and earth and"vomited out Jonah upon the dry land" when the word of the +Lord came a second time and Jonah, bruised and beaten his ears, like two +seashells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean Jonah did the +Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the +face of Falsehood That was it This, shipmates, this is that other lesson +and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this +world charms from Gospel duty Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the +waters when God has brewed them into a gale Woe to him who seeks to please +rather than to appal Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness +Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor Woe to him who would not +be true, even though to be false were salvation Yea, woe to him who, as the +great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway +He drooped and fell away from himself for a moment then lifting his face to +them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly +enthusiasm, but oh shipmates on the starboard hand of every woe, there is +a sure delight and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the +woe is +deep. Is not the maintruck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to +him a far, far upward, and inward delight who against the proud gods and +commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight +is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base +treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives +no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he +pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight, +topgallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the +Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all +the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake +from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will +be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath O Father +chiefly known to me by Thy rod mortal or immortal, here I die. I have +striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is +nothing I leave eternity to Thee for what is man that he should live out +the lifetime of his God? He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, +covered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the +people had departed, and he was left alone in the place. +De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat +caput, et regina caudam. Bracton, l . c. . Latin from the books of the +Laws of England, which taken along with the context, means, that of all whales +captured by anybody on the coast of that land, the King, as Honorary Grand +Harpooneer, must have the head, and the Queen be respectfully presented with +the tail. A division which, in the whale, is much like halving an apple +there is no intermediate remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form, +is to this day in force in England and as it offers in various respects a +strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast and LooseFish, it is here +treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous principle that +prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a separate car, specially +reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In the first place, in curious +proof of the fact that the abovementioned law is still in force, I proceed to +lay before you a circumstance that happened within the last two years. It +seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some one of the +Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and beaching a fine +whale which they had originally descried afar off from the shore. Now the +Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of +policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden. Holding the office directly from +the crown, I believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the Cinque Port +territories become by assignment his. By some writers this office is called a +sinecure. But not so. Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times +in fobbing his perquisites which are his chiefly by virtue of that same +fobbing of them. Now when these poor sunburnt mariners, barefooted, and +with their trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled +their fat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good pounds from the +precious oil and bone and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and +good ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares +up steps a very learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, with a +copy of Blackstone under his arm and laying it upon the whale's head, he +says Hands off this fish, my masters, is a FastFish. I seize it as the +Lord Warden's. Upon this the poor mariners in their respectful consternation +so truly English knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching +their heads all round meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the +stranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the hard +heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone. At length one of +them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak. Please, +sir, who is the Lord Warden? The Duke. But the duke had nothing to do +with taking this fish? It is his. We have been at great trouble, and +peril, and some expense, and is all that to go to the Duke's benefit we +getting nothing at all for our pains but our blisters? It is his. Is the +duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of getting a +livelihood? It is his. I thought to relieve my old bedridden mother by +part of my share of this whale. It is his. Won't the Duke be content +with a quarter or a half? It is his. In a word, the whale was seized and +sold, and his Grace the Duke of Wellington received the money. Thinking that +viewed in some particular lights, the case might by a bare possibility in +some small degree be deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an +honest clergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, +begging him to take the case of those unfortunate +mariners into full consideration. To which my Lord Duke in substance replied +both letters were published that he had already done so, and received the +money, and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he +the reverend gentleman would decline meddling with other people's business. +Is this the still militant old man, standing at the corners of the three +kingdoms, on all hands coercing alms of beggars? It will readily be seen that +in this case the alleged right of the Duke to the whale was a delegated one +from the Sovereign. We must needs inquire then on what principle the Sovereign +is originally invested with that right. The law itself has already been set +forth. But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so +caught belongs to the King and Queen, because of its superior excellence. +And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument +in such matters. But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the +tail? A reason for that, ye lawyers In his treatise on QueenGold, or +Queenpinmoney, an old King's Bench author, one William Prynne, thus +discourseth Ye tail is ye Queen's, that ye Queen's wardrobe may be supplied +with ye whalebone. Now this was written at a time when the black limber bone +of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this +same bone is not in the tail it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for +a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented +with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here. There are two royal fish +so styled by the English law writers the whale and the sturgeon both royal +property under certain limitations, and nominally supplying the tenth branch +of the crown's ordinary revenue. I know not that any other author has hinted +of the matter but by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be +divided in the same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and +elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may +possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus +there seems a reason in all things, even in law. +In vain it was to rake +for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan, insufferable fetor denying +not inquiry. Sir T. Browne, V. E. It was a week or two after the last +whaling scene recounted, and when we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, +vapory, midday sea, that the many noses on the Pequod's deck proved more +vigilant discoverers than the three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not +very pleasant smell was smelt in the sea. I will bet something now, said +Stubb, that somewhere hereabouts are some of those drugged whales we tickled +the other day. I thought they would keel up before long. Presently, the +vapors in advance slid aside and there in the distance lay a ship, whose +furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be alongside. As we +glided nearer, the stranger showed French colors from his peak and by the +eddying cloud of vulture seafowl that circled, and hovered, and swooped +around him, it was plain that the whale alongside must be what the fishermen +call a blasted whale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea, +and so floated an unappropriated corpse. It may well be conceived, what an +unsavory odor such a mass must exhale worse than an Assyrian city in the +plague, when the living are incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable +indeed is it regarded by some, that no cupidity could persuade them to moor +alongside of it. Yet are there those who will still do it notwithstanding +the fact that the oil obtained from such subjects is of a very inferior +quality, and by no means of the nature of attarofrose. Coming still nearer +with the expiring breeze, we saw that the Frenchman had a second whale +alongside and this second whale seemed even more of a nosegay than the +first. In truth, it turned out to be one of those problematical whales that +seem +to dry up and die with a sort of prodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion +leaving their defunct bodies almost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. +Nevertheless, in the proper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will +ever turn up his nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun +blasted whales in general. The Pequod had now swept so nigh to the stranger, +that Stubb vowed he recognized his cutting spadepole entangled in the lines +that were knotted round the tail of one of these whales. There's a pretty +fellow, now, he banteringly laughed, standing in the ship's bows, there's +a jackal for ye I well know that these Crappoes of Frenchmen are but poor +devils in the fishery sometimes lowering their boats for breakers, mistaking +them for Sperm Whale spouts yes, and sometimes sailing from their port with +their hold full of boxes of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, +foreseeing that all the oil they will get won't be enough to dip the Captain's +wick into aye, we all know these things but look ye, here's a Crappo +that is content with our leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean aye, and +is content too with scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has +there. Poor devil I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let's make him a +present of a little oil for dear charity's sake. For what oil he'll get from +that drugged whale there, wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail no, not in a +condemned cell. And as for the other whale, why, I'll agree to get more oil +by chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours, than he'll get from +that bundle of bones though, now that I think of it, it may contain +something worth a good deal more than oil yes, ambergris. I wonder now if +our old man has thought of that. It's worth trying. Yes, I'm for it and +so saying he started for the quarterdeck. By this time the faint air had +become a complete calm so that whether or no, the Pequod was now fairly +entrapped in the smell, with no hope of escaping except by its breezing up +again. Issuing from the cabin, Stubb now called his boat's crew, and pulled +off for the stranger. Drawing across her bow, he perceived that in accordance +with the fanciful French taste, the upper part of her stempiece was carved in +the likeness of a +huge drooping stalk, was painted green, and for thorns had copper spikes +projecting from it here and there the whole terminating in a symmetrical +folded bulb of a bright red color. Upon her head boards, in large gilt +letters, he read Bouton de Rose, Rosebutton, or Rosebud and this was +the romantic name of this aromatic ship. Though Stubb did not understand the +Bouton part of the inscription, yet the word rose, and the bulbous +figurehead put together, sufficiently explained the whole to him. A wooden +rosebud, eh? he cried with his hand to his nose, that will do very well +but how like all creation it smells Now in order to hold direct +communication with the people on deck, he had to pull round the bows to the +starboard side, and thus come close to the blasted whale and so talk over +it. Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he bawled +BoutondeRose, ahoy are there any of you BoutondeRoses that speak +English? Yes, rejoined a Guernseyman from the bulwarks, who turned out +to be the chiefmate. Well, then, my BoutondeRosebud, have you seen the +White Whale? What whale? The White Whale a Sperm Whale Moby Dick, +have ye seen him? Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche White +Whale no. Very good, then good bye now, and I'll call again in a +minute. Then rapidly pulling back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab +leaning over the quarterdeck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his two +hands into a trumpet and shouted No, Sir No Upon which Ahab retired, +and Stubb returned to the Frenchman. He now perceived that the Guernseyman, +who had just got into the chains, and was using a cuttingspade, had slung his +nose in a sort of bag. What's the matter with your nose, there? said Stubb. +Broke it? +I wish it was broken, or that I didn't have any nose at all answered the +Guernseyman, who did not seem to relish the job he was at very much. But +what are you holding yours for? Oh, nothing It's a wax nose I have to +hold it on. Fine day, aint it? Air rather gardenny, I should say throw us +a bunch of posies, will ye, BoutondeRose? What in the devil's name do you +want here? roared the Guernseyman, flying into a sudden passion. Oh +keep coolcool? yes, that's the word why don't you pack those whales in ice +while you're working at 'em? But joking aside, though do you know, +Rosebud, that it's all nonsense trying to get any oil out of such whales? As +for that dried up one, there, he hasn't a gill in his whole carcase. I +know that well enough but, d'ye see, the Captain here won't believe it +this is his first voyage he was a Cologne manufacturer before. But come +aboard, and mayhap he'll believe you, if he won't me and so I'll get out of +this dirty scrape. Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow, +rejoined Stubb, and with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer +scene presented itself. The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted, were +getting the heavy tackles in readiness for the whales. But they worked rather +slow and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good humor. All +their noses upwardly projected from their faces like so many jibbooms. Now +and then pairs of them would drop their work, and run up to the masthead to +get some fresh air. Some thinking they would catch the plague, dipped oakum +in coaltar, and at intervals held it to their nostrils. Others having +broken the stems of their pipes almost short off at the bowl, were vigorously +puffing tobaccosmoke, so that it constantly filled their olfactories. +Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding from the +Captain's roundhouse abaft and looking in that direction saw a fiery face +thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar from within. This was the +tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrating against the proceedings of +the day, had betaken himself to the Captain's roundhouse cabinet he +called it to avoid the pest but still, could not help yelling out his +entreaties and indignations at times. +Marking all this, Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the +Guernseyman had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate +expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had +brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle. Sounding him +carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernseyman had not the +slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore held his peace on +that head, but otherwise was quite frank and confidential with him, so that +the two quickly concocted a little plan for both circumventing and satirizing +the Captain, without his at all dreaming of distrusting their sincerity. +According to this little plan of theirs, the Guernseyman, under cover of an +interpreter's office, was to tell the Captain what he pleased, but as coming +from Stubb and as for Stubb, he was to utter any nonsense that should come +uppermost in him during the interview. By this time their destined victim +appeared from his cabin. He was a small and dark, but rather delicate looking +man for a seacaptain, with large whiskers and moustache, however and wore +a red cotton velvet vest with watchseals at his side. To this gentleman, +Stubb was now politely introduced by the Guernseyman, who at once +ostentatiously put on the aspect of interpreting between them. What shall I +say to him first? said he. Why, said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the +watch and seals, you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort +of babyish to me, though I don't pretend to be a judge. He says, Monsieur, +said the Guernseyman, in French, turning to his captain, that only +yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain and chiefmate, with six +sailors, had all died of a fever caught from a blasted whale they had brought +alongside. Upon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more. +What now? said the Guernseyman to Stubb. Why, since he takes it so easy, +tell him that now I have eyed him carefully, I'm quite certain that he's no +more fit to command a whaleship than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him +from me he's a baboon. +He vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one, is far +more deadly than the blasted one in fine, Monsieur, he conjures us, as we +value our lives, to cut loose from these fish. Instantly the captain ran +forward, and in a loud voice commanded his crew to desist from hoisting the +cuttingtackles, and at once cast loose the cables and chains confining the +whales to the ship. What now? said the Guernseyman, when the captain had +returned to them. Why, let me see yes, you may as well tell him now that +that in fact, tell him I've diddled him, and aside to himself perhaps +somebody else. He says, Monsieur, that he's very happy to have been of any +service to us. Hearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful +parties meaning himself and mate and concluded by inviting Stubb down into +his cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux. He wants you to take a glass of wine +with him, said the interpreter. Thank him heartily but tell him it's +against my principles to drink with the man I've diddled. In fact, tell him +I must go. He says, Monsieur, that his principles won't admit of his +drinking but that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then +Monsieur had best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these +whales, for it's so calm they won't drift. By this time Stubb was over the +side, and getting into his boat, hailed the Guernseyman to this effect, +that having a long towline in his boat, he would do what he could to help +them, by pulling out the lighter whale of the two from the ship's side. While +the Frenchman's boats, then, were engaged in towing the ship one way, Stubb +benevolently towed away at his whale the other way, ostentatiously slacking +out a most unusually long towline. Presently a breeze sprang up Stubb +feigned to cast off from the whale hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon +increased his distance, while the Pequod slid in between him and Stubb's +whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to the floating body, +and hailing the pequod to give notice of his intentions, at once proceeded to +reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boatspade, he +commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would +almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea and when at +length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up old +Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam. His boat's crew were all +in high excitement, eagerly helping their chief, and looking as anxious as +goldhunters. And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and +screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning to look +disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when suddenly +from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a faint stream of +perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells without being absorbed +by it, as one river will flow into and then along with another, without at +all blending with it for a time. I have it, I have it, cried Stubb, with +delight, striking something in the subterranean regions, a purse a +purse Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls +of something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old cheese +very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with your thumb +it is of a hue between yellow and ash color. And this, good friends, is +ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist. Some six handfuls +were obtained but more was unavoidably lost in the sea, and still more, +perhaps, might have been secured were it not for impatient Ahab's loud command +to Stubb to desist, and come on board, else the ship would bid them good +bye. +Now this ambergris is a very curious +substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in +a +certain Nantucketborn +Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that +subject. for at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the +precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the +learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, +yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found +on the seacoast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris +is never found except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, +brittle, odorless substance, used for mouthpieces to pipes, for beads and +ornaments but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, +that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, +hairpowders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to +Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in +Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it. Who +would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale +themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale +Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others +the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it +were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of +Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in +blasting rocks. I have forgotten to say that there were found in this +ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought +might be sailors' trousers buttons but it afterwards turned out that they +were nothing more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner. +Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in +the heart of such decay is this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St. +Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption how that we are sown +in dishonor, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mind that saying of +paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the +strange fact that of all things of illsavor, Colognewater, in its +rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst. I should like to conclude the +chapter with the above appeal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a +charge often made +against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, +might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the +Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has +been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, +untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all +whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma originate? I opine, +that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland whaling +ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because those whalemen did not +then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships have +always done but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it +through the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home in that manner the +shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms +to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course. The consequence is, +that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these whale +cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar to +that arising from excavating an old city graveyard, for the foundations of +a Lyingin Hospital. I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against +whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, +in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, +which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great +work on Smells, a textbook on that subject. As its name imports smeer, fat +berg, to put up, this village was founded in order to afford a place for +the blubber of the dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken +home to Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces, +fatkettles, and oil sheds and when the works were in full operation +certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But all this is quite different +from a South Sea Sperm Whaler which in a voyage of four years perhaps, +after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty +days in the business of boiling out and in the state that it is casked, the +oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently +treated, whales as a species are by no +means creatures of ill odor nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people of +the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor +indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general +thing, he enjoys such high health taking abundance of exercise always out +of doors though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the +motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a +muskscented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken +the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be +to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which +was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great? +It was but some few days after +encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event befell the most +insignificant of the Pequod's crew an event most lamentable and which +ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a +living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove +her own. Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. +Some few hands are reserved called shipkeepers, whose province it is to work +the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these +shipkeepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats' crews. But +if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the +ship, that wight is certain to be made a shipkeeper. It was so in the +Pequod with the little negro Pippin by nickname, Pip by abbreviation. Poor +Pip ye have heard of him before ye must remember his tambourine on that +dramatic midnight, so gloomyjolly. +In outer aspect, Pip and DoughBoy made a match, like a black pony and a +white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar color, driven in one +eccentric span. But while hapless DoughBoy was by nature dull and torpid in +his intellects, Pip, though over tenderhearted, was at bottom very bright, +with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe a tribe, +which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than +any other race. For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but three +hundred and sixtyfive Fourth of Julys and New Year's Days. Nor smile so, +while I write that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has +its brilliancy behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets. But +Pip loved life, and all life's peaceable securities so that the +panicstriking business in which he had somehow unaccountably become +entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness though, as ere long will be +seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to +be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off +to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in +Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green and +at melodious eventide, with his gay haha had turned the round horizon into +one starbelled tambourine. So, though in the clear air of day, suspended +against a blueveined neck, the purewatered diamond drop will healthful +glow yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its most +impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it +up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery +effulgences, infernally superb then the evilblazing diamond, once the +divinest symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crownjewel stolen from +the King of Hell. But let us to the story. It came to pass, that in the +ambergris affair Stubb's afteroarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as +for a time to become quite maimed and, temporarily, Pip was put into his +place. The first time Stubb lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness +but happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale and +therefore came off not altogether discreditably though Stubb observing him, +took care, afterwards, +to exhort him to cherish his courageousness to the utmost, for he might often +find it needful. Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the +whale and as the fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, +which happened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat. The +involuntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, +out of the boat and in such a way, that part of the slack whale line coming +against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as to become +entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water. That instant the +stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly straightened and +presto poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of the boat, +remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several turns around +his chest and neck. Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of +the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boatknife from its +sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb, +exclaimed interrogatively, cut? meantime pip's blue, choked face plainly +looked, Do, for God's sake All passed in a flash. In less than half a +minute, this entire thing happened. Damn him, cut roared Stubb and so +the whale was lost and Pip was saved. So soon as he recovered himself, the +poor little negro was assailed by yells and execrations from the crew. +Tranquilly permitting these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a +plain, businesslike, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially +and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome advice. The substance +was, Never jump from a boat, Pip, except but all the rest was indefinite, +as the soundest advice ever is. Now, in general, Stick to the boat, is +your true motto in whaling but cases will sometimes happen when Leap +from the boat, is still better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if +he should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be leaving him +too wide a margin to jump in for the future Stubb suddenly dropped all +advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, Stick to the boat, Pip, or +by the Lord, I wont pick you up if you jump mind that. We can't afford +to lose whales by the likes of you a whale would sell for thirty times what +you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don't jump any more. +Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, +yet man is a moneymaking animal, which propensity too often interferes with +his benevolence. But we are all in the hands of the Gods and Pip jumped +again. It was under very similar circumstances to the first performance but +this time he did not breast out the line and hence, when the whale started +to run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller's trunk. +Alas Stubb was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful, bounteous, +blue day the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away, all +round, to the horizon, like goldbeater's skin hammered out to the extremest. +Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip's ebon head showed like a head of cloves. +No boatknife was lifted when he fell so rapidly astern. Stubb's inexorable +back was turned upon him and the whale was winged. In three minutes, a +whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb. Out from the centre +of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling, black head to the sun, +another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the brightest. Now, in calm +weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to +ride in a springcarriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. +The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, +my God who can tell it? Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in +the open sea mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her +sides. But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No +he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake, and +he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly, +and pick him up though, indeed, such considerations towards oarsmen +jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested by the +hunters in all similar instances and such instances not unfrequently occur +almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the same +ruthless detestation peculiar to military navies and armies. +But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly spying +whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase and Stubb's boat +was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that +Pip's ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably. By the merest +chance the ship itself at last rescued him but from that hour the little +negro went about the deck an idiot such, at least, they said he was. The +sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his +soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous +depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro +before his passive eyes and the misermerman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded +heaps and among the joyous, heartless, everjuvenile eternities, Pip saw the +multitudinous, Godomnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of +waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the +loom, and spoke it and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's +insanity is heaven's sense and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes +at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic +and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. For the +rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that fishery and +in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment +befell myself. +That whale of Stubb's so dearly +purchased, was duly brought to the Pequod's side, where all those cutting and +hoisting operations previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to +the baling of the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case. While some were occupied with +this latter duty, others were employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so +soon as filled with the sperm and when the proper time arrived, this same +sperm was carefully manipulated ere going to the tryworks, of which anon. It +had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others, +I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I found it strangely +concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the liquid part. It +was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet and unctuous +duty no wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. +Such a clearer such a sweetener such a softener such a delicious +mollifier After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers +felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize. As I sat +there at my ease, crosslegged on the deck after the bitter exertion at the +windlass under a blue tranquil sky the ship under indolent sail, and +gliding so serenely along as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle +globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour as they richly +broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe +grapes their wine as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma, literally and +truly, like the smell of spring violets I declare to you, that for the +time I lived as in a musky meadow I forgot all about our horrible oath in +that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it I almost +began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue +in allaying the heat of anger while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely +free from all illwill, or petulence, or malice, of any sort whatsoever. +Squeeze squeeze squeeze all the morning long I squeezed that sperm till +I myself almost melted into it I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of +insanity came over me and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my +colaborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such +an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget +that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into +their eyes sentimentally as much as to say, Oh my dear fellow beings, why +should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest +illhumor or envy Come let us squeeze hands all round nay, let us all +squeeze ourselves +into each other let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and +sperm of kindness. Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever For +now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in +all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of +attainable felicity not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy +but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, +the country now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case +eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of +angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti. Now, while +discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things akin to it, in the +business of preparing the sperm whale for the tryworks. First comes +whitehorse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering part of the fish, +and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed +tendons a wad of muscle but still contains some oil. After being severed +from the whale, the whitehorse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going +to the mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble. Plumpudding +is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the whale's flesh, here +and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a +considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, convivial, +beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly +rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with +spots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures +of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I +confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something +as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might +have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison +season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually +fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne. +There is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in the +course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling adequately +to describe. It is called slobgollion an appellation original with the +whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance. It is an ineffably +oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm, after a +prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the +wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing. Gurry, so +called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but sometimes +incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous +substance which is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right whale, and +much of which covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble +Leviathan. Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's +vocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's nipper +is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of +Leviathan's tail it averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is +about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the oily deck, +it operates like a leathern squilgee and by nameless blandishments, as of +magic, allures along with it all impurities. But to learn all about these +recondite matters, your best way is at once to descend into the blubberroom, +and have a long talk with its inmates. This place has previously been +mentioned as the receptacle for the blanketpieces, when stript and hoisted +from the whale. When the proper time arrives for cutting up its contents, +this apartment is a scene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one +side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. +They generally go in pairs, a pikeandgaffman and a spademan. The +whalingpike is similar to a frigate's boardingweapon of the same name. The +gaff is something like a boathook. With his gaff, the gaffman hooks on to a +sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the ship pitches +and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spademan stands on the sheet itself, +perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horsepieces. This spade is +sharp as hone can make it the spademan's feet are shoeless the thing +he stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. +If he cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be +very much astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubberroom men. +Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a +certain juncture of this postmortemizing of the whale and had you strolled +forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with +no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have +seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous +cistern in the whale's huge head not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw +not the miracle of his symmetrical tail none of these would so surprise you, +as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone, longer than a Kentuckian is +tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jetblack as Yojo, the ebony +idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is or, rather, in old times, its +likeness was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen +Maachah in Judea and for worshipping which, king Asa, her son, did depose +her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook +Kedron, as darkly set forth in the th chapter of the first book of Kings. +Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and assisted by +two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners call it, and +with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying +a dead comrade from the field. extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now +proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the +pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg +gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter and at last +hangs it, well spread, in the +rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down when removing some three feet +of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for +armholes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The +mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling. +Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect +him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office. That office +consists in mincing the horsepieces of blubber for the pots an operation +which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted endwise against the +bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the minced pieces +drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator's desk. Arrayed in decent black +occupying a conspicuous pulpit intent on bible leaves what a candidate for +an archbishoprick, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer +Bible leaves Bible leaves This is the invariable cry from the mates to +the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin +slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the +oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides +perhaps improving it in quality. +Besides her hoisted boats, an American +whaler is outwardly distinguished by her tryworks. She presents the curious +anomaly of the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting +the completed ship. it is as if from the open field a brickkiln were +transported to her planks. The tryworks are planted between the foremast and +mainmast, the most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a +peculiar strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of +brick and mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The +foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly secured to +the surface by +ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all sides, and screwing it down to the +timbers. On the flanks it is cased with wood, and at top completely covered +by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the +great trypots, two in number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When +not in use, they are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished +with soapstone and sand, till they shine within like silver punchbowls. +During the nightwatches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and +coil themselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them one +man in each pot, side by side many confidential communications are carried +on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound mathematical +meditation. It was in the left hand trypot of the Pequod, with the +soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first indirectly struck by +the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies gliding along the cycloid, +my soapstone for example, will descend from any point in precisely the same +time. Removing the fireboard from the front of the tryworks, the bare +masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of the +furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted with heavy +doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented from communicating +itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir extending under the entire +inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this +reservoir is kept replenished with water as fast as it evaporates. There are +no external chimneys they open direct from the rear wall. And here let us +go back for a moment. It was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's +tryworks were first started on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to +oversee the business. All ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You +cook, fire the works. This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been +thrusting his shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it +said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the tryworks has to be fed +for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick +ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, +shrivelled +blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its +unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric +burning martyr, or a selfconsuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale +supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his +own smoke for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and +not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, +wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal +pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment it is an argument +for the pit. By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear +from the carcase sail had been made the wind was freshening the wild +ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce +flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and +illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. +The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful +deed. So the pitch and sulphurfreighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, +issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, +bore down upon the turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations. The +hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth in front +of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, +always the whaleship's stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched +hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires +beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch +them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of +the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to +leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side +of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a seasofa. +Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red +heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny +features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and +the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely +revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they +narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in +words of mirth as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, +like the flames from the furnace as to and fro, in their front, the +harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers as +the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and +yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of +the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, +and viciously spat round her on all sides then the rushing Pequod, freighted +with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into +that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her +monomaniac commander's soul. So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, +and for long hours silently guided the way of this fireship on the sea. +Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the +redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the +fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at +last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that +unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm. +But that night, in particular, a strange and ever since inexplicable +thing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was horribly +conscious of something fatally wrong. The jawbone tiller smote my side, +which leaned against it in my ears was the low hum of sails, just beginning +to shake in the wind I thought my eyes were open I was half conscious of +putting my fingers to the lids and mechanically stretching them still further +apart. But, spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to steer by +though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the card, by the +steady binnacle lamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet +gloom, now and then made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the +impression, that whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much +bound to any haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A stark, +bewildered feeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped +the tiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, +in some enchanted way, inverted. My God what is the matter with me? thought +I. Lo in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was fronting the +ship's stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In an instant I faced +back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up into the wind, and +very probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the relief from this +unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency of being +brought by the lee look not too long in the face of the fire, O man Never +dream with thy hand on the helm Turn not thy back to the compass accept +the first hint of the hitching tiller believe not the artificial fire, when +its redness makes all things look ghastly. Tomorrow, in the natural sun, +the skies will be bright those who glared like devils in the forking flames, +the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief the glorious, +golden, glad sun, the only true lamp all others but liars Nevertheless the +sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide +Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the +moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, +and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who +hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true not true, +or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of +Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the +fine hammered steel of woe. All is vanity. ALL. This wilful world hath +not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals +and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of +operas than hell calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of +sick men and throughout a carefree lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing +wise, and therefore jolly not that man is fitted to sit down on +tombstones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous +Solomon. But even Solomon, he says, the man that wandereth out of the way +of understanding shall remain i. e. even while living in the congregation +of the dead. Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, +deaden thee as for the time it did me. +There is a wisdom that is woe but there is a woe that is madness. And there +is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest +gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. +And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the +mountains so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still +higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. +Had you descended from the Pequod's +tryworks to the Pequod's forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, +for one single moment you would have almost thought you were standing in +some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in +their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness a score of +lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes. In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is +more scarce than the milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the +dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the +whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his +berth an Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it so that in the pitchiest +night the ship's black hull still houses an illumination. See with what +entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps often but old bottles +and vials, though to the copper cooler at the tryworks, and replenishes +them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too, the purest of oil, in +its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state a fluid unknown to +solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass +butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its +freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his +own supper of game. +Already has it been +related how the great leviathan is afar off descried from the masthead how +he is chased over the watery moors, and slaughtered in the valleys of the +deep how he is then towed alongside and beheaded and how on the +principle which entitled the headsman of old to the garments in which the +beheaded was killed his great padded surtout becomes the property of his +executioner how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like +Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed +through the fire but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this +part of the description by rehearsing singing, if I may the romantic +proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and striking them down into +the hold, where once again leviathan returns to his native profundities, +sliding along beneath the surface as before but, alas never more to rise +and blow. While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the +sixbarrel casks and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling this +way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed round and +headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot across the slippery +deck, like so many land slides, till at last manhandled and stayed in their +course and all round the hoops, rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play +upon them, for now, ex officio, every sailor is a cooper. At length, when +the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the great hatchways are +unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open, and down go the casks to +their final rest in the sea. This done, the hatches are replaced, and +hermetically closed, like a closet walled up. In the sperm fishery, this is +perhaps one of the most remarkable incidents in all the business of whaling. +One day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil on the sacred +quarterdeck enormous masses of the whale's head are profanely piled great +rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard the smoke from the tryworks has +besooted all the bulwarks the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness +the entire ship seems great leviathan himself while on all hands the din is +deafening. But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears +in this selfsame ship and were it not for the telltale boats and +tryworks, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, +with a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil +possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the decks +never look so white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides, +from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent ley is readily +made and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remains +clinging to the side, that ley quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently +along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags restore them to their +full tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous +implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put +away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the tryworks, completely +hiding the pots every cask is out of sight all tackles are coiled in +unseen nooks and when by the combined and simultaneous industry of almost +the entire ship's company, the whole of this conscientious duty is at last +concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions shift +themselves from top to toe and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh +and all aglow, as bridegrooms newleaped from out the daintiest Holland. Now, +with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously +discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics propose to mat the +deck think of having hangings to the top object not to taking tea by +moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked mariners of +oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. They know not the +thing you distantly allude to. Away, and bring us napkins But mark aloft +there, at the three mast heads, stand three +men intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again +soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small greasespot +somewhere. Yes and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted +labors, which know no night continuing straight through for ninetysix +hours when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day +rowing on the Line, they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and +heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very +sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial +sun and the equatorial tryworks when, on the heel of all this, they have +finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy +room of it many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of +their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of There she blows and away +they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. +Oh my friends, but this is mankilling Yet this is life. For hardly have +we mortals by long toilings extracted from the world's vast bulk its small but +valuable sperm and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its +defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul +hardly is this done, when There she blows the ghost is spouted up, and +away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old +routine again. Oh the metempsychosis Oh Pythagoras, that in bright +Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild I +sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage and, foolish as I am, +taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope +Ere now it has been related how Ahab was +wont to pace his quarterdeck, taking regular turns at either limit, the +binnacle +and mainmast but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it +has not been added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in +his mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there +strangely eyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the +binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that +glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose and +when resuming his walk he again paused before the mainmast, then, as the same +riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the +same aspect of nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if +not hopefulness. But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed +to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, +as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some +monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some certain +significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the +round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as +they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way. Now +this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of the heart of +gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands, the headwaters of +many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron +bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculate to +any foulness, it still preserved its Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst +a ruthless crew and every hour passed by ruthless hands, and through the +livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness which might cover any pilfering +approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left +it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to one awestriking end and +however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as +the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary watch +by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he would ever +live to spend it. Now those noble golden coins of South America are as +medals of the sun and tropic tokenpieces. Here palms, alpacas, and +volcanoes sun's disks and stars ecliptics, hornsofplenty, and rich +banners waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped so that the precious gold +seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by +passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic. It so chanced that +the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its +round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR QUITO. So this +bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and +beneath the great equator, and named after it and it had been cast midway +up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those +letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits from one a flame a +tower on another on the third a crowing cock while arching over all was a +segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual +cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. +Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now pausing. +There's something ever egotistical in mountaintops and towers, and all +other grand and lofty things look here, three peaks as proud as Lucifer. +The firm tower, that is Ahab the volcano, that is Ahab the courageous, the +undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab all are Ahab and this +round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's +glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious +self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them it +cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face but +see aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox and but six months +before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries From storm to storm So +be it, then. Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die +in pangs So be it, then Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, +then. No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws must +have left their mouldings there since yesterday, murmured Starbuck to +himself, leaning against the bulwarks. The old +man seems to read Belshazzar's awful writing. I have never marked the coin +inspectingly. He goes below let me read. A dark valley between three +mighty, heavenabiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint +earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round and over all +our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope. If we +bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil but if we lift them, +the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun +is no fixture and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace +from him, we gaze for him in vain This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, +but still sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely. There +now's the old Mogul, soliloquized Stubb by the tryworks, he's been twigging +it and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with faces which I +should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And all from looking +at a piece of gold, which did I have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer's +Hook, I'd not look at it very long ere spending it. Humph in my poor, +insignificant opinion, I regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before +now in my voyagings your doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, +your doubloons of Chili, your doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of +Popayan with plenty of gold moidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, +and quarter joes. what then should there be in this doubloon of the Equator +that is so killing wonderful? By Golconda let me read it once. Halloa +here's signs and wonders truly That, now, is what old Bowditch in his +Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanack below calls ditto. I'll get +the almanack and as I have heard devils can be raised with Daboll's +arithmetic, I'll try my hand at raising a meaning out of these queer +curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar. Here's the book. Let's see +now. Signs and wonders and the sun, he's always among 'em. Hem, hem, hem +here they are here they go all alive Aries, or the Ram Taurus, or the +Bull and Jimimi here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well the sun he +wheels among 'em. Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the threshold +between two of twelve sittingrooms all in a ring. Book you lie there the +fact is, you books must know your +places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to +supply the thoughts. That's my small experience, so far as the Massachusetts +calendar, and Bowditch's navigator, and Daboll's arithmetic go. Signs and +wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in +wonders There's a clue somewhere wait a bit histhark By Jove, I have +it Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round +chapter and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack +To begin there's Aries, or the Ram lecherous dog, he begets us then, +Taurus, or the Bull he bumps us the first thing then Gemini, or the Twins +that is, Virtue and Vice we try to reach Virtue, when lo comes Cancer +the Crab, and drags us back and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring +Lion, lies in the path he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his +paw we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin that's our first love we marry +and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales happiness +weighed and found wanting and while we are very sad about that, Lord how +we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear we are +curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all round Sagittarius, or the +Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside here's +the batteringram, Capricornus, or the Goat full tilt, he comes rushing, and +headlong we are tossed when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his +whole deluge and drowns us and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we +sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through +it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily he, +aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble and so, alow here, does jolly +Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye Adieu, Doubloon But stop here comes +little KingPost dodge round the tryworks, now, and let's hear what he'll +have to say. There he's before it he'll out with something presently. So, +so he's beginning. I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, +and whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, +what's all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true +and at two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and +sixty cigars. I wont smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and +here's nine hundred and sixty of them so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em +out. Shall I call that wise or foolish, now if it be really wise it has a +foolish look to it yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of +wiseish look to it. But, avast here comes our old Manxman the old +hearsedriver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea. He +luffs up before the doubloon halloa, and goes round on the other side of the +mast why, there's a horseshoe nailed on that side and now he's back +again what does that mean? Hark he's muttering voice like an old +wornout coffeemill. Prick ears, and listen If the White Whale be +raised, it must be in a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of +these signs. I've studied signs, and know their marks they were taught me +two score years ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will +the sun then be? The horseshoe sign for there it is, right opposite the +gold. And what's the horseshoe sign? The lion is the horseshoe sign the +roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship my old head shakes to think of +thee. There's another rendering now but still one text. All sorts of men +in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again here comes Queequeg all +tattooing looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the +Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes looking at his thigh bone thinks +the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose, as +the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the back country. And by Jove, he's +found something there in the vicinity of his thigh I guess it's Sagittarius, +or the Archer. No he don't know what to make of the doubloon he takes it +for an old button off some king's trowsers. But, aside again here comes +that ghostdevil, Fedallah tail coiled out of sight as usual, oakum in the +toes of his pumps as usual. What does he say, with that look of his? Ah, +only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself there is a sun on the coin +fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho more and more. This way comes Pip +poor boy would he had died, or I he's half horrible to me. He too has +been watching all of these interpreters myself included and look now, he +comes to read, +with that unearthly idiot face. stand away again and hear him. hark I +look, you look, he looks we look, ye look, they look. Upon my soul, +he's been studying Murray's Grammar Improving his mind, poor fellow But +what's that he says now hist I look, you look, he looks we look, ye +look, they look. Why, he's getting it by heart hist again. I look, +you look, he looks we look, ye look, they look. Well, that's funny. +And I, you, and he and we, ye, and they, are all bats and I'm a crow, +especially when I stand a'top of this pine tree here. Caw caw caw caw caw +caw Ain't I a crow? And where's the scarecrow? There he stands two +bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves +of an old jacket. Wonder if he means me? complimentary poor lad I +could go hang myself. Any way, for the present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity. +I can stand the rest, for they have plain wits but he's too crazywitty +for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering. Here's the ship's navel, +this doubloon here, and they are all on fire to unscrew it. But, unscrew +your navel, and what's the consequence? Then again, if it stays here, that +is ugly, too, for when aught's nailed to the mast it's a sign that things grow +desperate. Ha, ha old Ahab the White Whale he'll nail ye This is a +pine tree. My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and +found a silver ring grown over in it some old darkey's wedding ring. How +did it get there? And so they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to +fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters +for the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold the precious, precious gold the green +miser 'll hoard ye soon Hish hish God goes 'mong the worlds +blackberrying. Cook ho, cook and cook us Jenny hey, hey, hey, hey, +hey, Jenny, Jenny and get your hoecake done +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas + in our series by Alexandre Dumas [Pere] +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. 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Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / CarnegieMellon University". +ENDTHE SMALL PRINT FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTSVer...END +The Count of Monte Cristo +by Alexandre Dumas [Pere] +Chapter +Marseilles The Arrival. +On the th of February, , the lookout at NotreDame de +la Garde signalled the threemaster, the Pharaon from +Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. +As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and rounding the +Chateau d'If, got on board the vessel between Cape Morgion +and Rion island. +Immediately, and according to custom, the ramparts of Fort +SaintJean were covered with spectators it is always an +event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port, especially +when this ship, like the Pharaon, has been built, rigged, +and laden at the old Phocee docks, and belongs to an owner +of the city. +The ship drew on and had safely passed the strait, which +some volcanic shock has made between the Calasareigne and +Jaros islands had doubled Pomegue, and approached the +harbor under topsails, jib, and spanker, but so slowly and +sedately that the idlers, with that instinct which is the +forerunner of evil, asked one another what misfortune could +have happened on board. However, those experienced in +navigation saw plainly that if any accident had occurred, it +was not to the vessel herself, for she bore down with all +the evidence of being skilfully handled, the anchor +acockbill, the jibboom guys already eased off, and +standing by the side of the pilot, who was steering the +Pharaon towards the narrow entrance of the inner port, was a +young man, who, with activity and vigilant eye, watched +every motion of the ship, and repeated each direction of the +pilot. +The vague disquietude which prevailed among the spectators +had so much affected one of the crowd that he did not await +the arrival of the vessel in harbor, but jumping into a +small skiff, desired to be pulled alongside the Pharaon, +which he reached as she rounded into La Reserve basin. +When the young man on board saw this person approach, he +left his station by the pilot, and, hat in hand, leaned over +the ship's bulwarks. +He was a fine, tall, slim young fellow of eighteen or +twenty, with black eyes, and hair as dark as a raven's wing +and his whole appearance bespoke that calmness and +resolution peculiar to men accustomed from their cradle to +contend with danger. +"Ah, is it you, Dantes?" cried the man in the skiff. "What's +the matter? and why have you such an air of sadness aboard?" +"A great misfortune, M. Morrel," replied the young man, +"a great misfortune, for me especially Off Civita Vecchia +we lost our brave Captain Leclere." +"And the cargo?" inquired the owner, eagerly. +"Is all safe, M. Morrel and I think you will be satisfied +on that head. But poor Captain Leclere " +"What happened to him?" asked the owner, with an air of +considerable resignation. "What happened to the worthy +captain?" +"He died." +"Fell into the sea?" +"No, sir, he died of brainfever in dreadful agony." Then +turning to the crew, he said, "Bear a hand there, to take in +sail" +All hands obeyed, and at once the eight or ten seamen who +composed the crew, sprang to their respective stations at +the spanker brails and outhaul, topsail sheets and halyards, +the jib downhaul, and the topsail clewlines and buntlines. +The young sailor gave a look to see that his orders were +promptly and accurately obeyed, and then turned again to the +owner. +"And how did this misfortune occur?" inquired the latter, +resuming the interrupted conversation. +"Alas, sir, in the most unexpected manner. After a long talk +with the harbormaster, Captain Leclere left Naples greatly +disturbed in mind. In twentyfour hours he was attacked by a +fever, and died three days afterwards. We performed the +usual burial service, and he is at his rest, sewn up in his +hammock with a thirtysix pound shot at his head and his +heels, off El Giglio island. We bring to his widow his sword +and cross of honor. It was worth while, truly," added the +young man with a melancholy smile, "to make war against the +English for ten years, and to die in his bed at last, like +everybody else." +"Why, you see, Edmond," replied the owner, who appeared more +comforted at every moment, "we are all mortal, and the old +must make way for the young. If not, why, there would be no +promotion and since you assure me that the cargo " +"Is all safe and sound, M. Morrel, take my word for it and +I advise you not to take , francs for the profits of +the voyage." +Then, as they were just passing the Round Tower, the young +man shouted "Stand by there to lower the topsails and jib +brail up the spanker" +The order was executed as promptly as it would have been on +board a manofwar. +"Let go and clue up" At this last command all the sails +were lowered, and the vessel moved almost imperceptibly +onwards. +"Now, if you will come on board, M. Morrel," said Dantes, +observing the owner's impatience, "here is your supercargo, +M. Danglars, coming out of his cabin, who will furnish you +with every particular. As for me, I must look after the +anchoring, and dress the ship in mourning." +The owner did not wait for a second invitation. He seized a +rope which Dantes flung to him, and with an activity that +would have done credit to a sailor, climbed up the side of +the ship, while the young man, going to his task, left the +conversation to Danglars, who now came towards the owner. He +was a man of twentyfive or twentysix years of age, of +unprepossessing countenance, obsequious to his superiors, +insolent to his subordinates and this, in addition to his +position as responsible agent on board, which is always +obnoxious to the sailors, made him as much disliked by the +crew as Edmond Dantes was beloved by them. +"Well, M. Morrel," said Danglars, "you have heard of the +misfortune that has befallen us?" +"Yes yes poor Captain Leclere He was a brave and an +honest man." +"And a firstrate seaman, one who had seen long and +honorable service, as became a man charged with the +interests of a house so important as that of Morrel Son," +replied Danglars. +"But," replied the owner, glancing after Dantes, who was +watching the anchoring of his vessel, "it seems to me that a +sailor needs not be so old as you say, Danglars, to +understand his business, for our friend Edmond seems to +understand it thoroughly, and not to require instruction +from any one." +"Yes," said Danglars, darting at Edmond a look gleaming with +hate. "Yes, he is young, and youth is invariably +selfconfident. Scarcely was the captain's breath out of his +body when he assumed the command without consulting any one, +and he caused us to lose a day and a half at the Island of +Elba, instead of making for Marseilles direct." +"As to taking command of the vessel," replied Morrel, "that +was his duty as captain's mate as to losing a day and a +half off the Island of Elba, he was wrong, unless the vessel +needed repairs." +"The vessel was in as good condition as I am, and as, I hope +you are, M. Morrel, and this day and a half was lost from +pure whim, for the pleasure of going ashore, and nothing +else." +"Dantes," said the shipowner, turning towards the young man, +"come this way" +"In a moment, sir," answered Dantes, "and I'm with you." +Then calling to the crew, he said "Let go" +The anchor was instantly dropped, and the chain ran rattling +through the porthole. Dantes continued at his post in spite +of the presence of the pilot, until this manoeuvre was +completed, and then he added, "Halfmast the colors, and +square the yards" +"You see," said Danglars, "he fancies himself captain +already, upon my word." +"And so, in fact, he is," said the owner. +"Except your signature and your partner's, M. Morrel." +"And why should he not have this?" asked the owner "he is +young, it is true, but he seems to me a thorough seaman, and +of full experience." +A cloud passed over Danglars' brow. "Your pardon, M. +Morrel," said Dantes, approaching, "the vessel now rides at +anchor, and I am at your service. You hailed me, I think?" +Danglars retreated a step or two. "I wished to inquire why +you stopped at the Island of Elba?" +"I do not know, sir it was to fulfil the last instructions +of Captain Leclere, who, when dying, gave me a packet for +Marshal Bertrand." +"Then did you see him, Edmond?" +"Who?" +"The marshal." +"Yes." +Morrel looked around him, and then, drawing Dantes on one +side, he said suddenly "And how is the emperor?" +"Very well, as far as I could judge from the sight of him." +"You saw the emperor, then?" +"He entered the marshal's apartment while I was there." +"And you spoke to him?" +"Why, it was he who spoke to me, sir," said Dantes, with a +smile. +"And what did he say to you?" +"Asked me questions about the vessel, the time she left +Marseilles, the course she had taken, and what was her +cargo. I believe, if she had not been laden, and I had been +her master, he would have bought her. But I told him I was +only mate, and that she belonged to the firm of Morrel +Son. "Ah, yes,' he said, "I know them. The Morrels have been +shipowners from father to son and there was a Morrel who +served in the same regiment with me when I was in garrison +at Valence.'" +"Pardieu, and that is true" cried the owner, greatly +delighted. "And that was Policar Morrel, my uncle, who was +afterwards a captain. Dantes, you must tell my uncle that +the emperor remembered him, and you will see it will bring +tears into the old soldier's eyes. Come, come," continued +he, patting Edmond's shoulder kindly, "you did very right, +Dantes, to follow Captain Leclere's instructions, and touch +at Elba, although if it were known that you had conveyed a +packet to the marshal, and had conversed with the emperor, +it might bring you into trouble." +"How could that bring me into trouble, sir?" asked Dantes +"for I did not even know of what I was the bearer and the +emperor merely made such inquiries as he would of the first +comer. But, pardon me, here are the health officers and the +customs inspectors coming alongside." And the young man went +to the gangway. As he departed, Danglars approached, and +said, +"Well, it appears that he has given you satisfactory reasons +for his landing at PortoFerrajo?" +"Yes, most satisfactory, my dear Danglars." +"Well, so much the better," said the supercargo "for it is +not pleasant to think that a comrade has not done his duty." +"Dantes has done his," replied the owner, "and that is not +saying much. It was Captain Leclere who gave orders for this +delay." +"Talking of Captain Leclere, has not Dantes given you a +letter from him?" +"To me? no was there one?" +"I believe that, besides the packet, Captain Leclere +confided a letter to his care." +"Of what packet are you speaking, Danglars?" +"Why, that which Dantes left at PortoFerrajo." +"How do you know he had a packet to leave at PortoFerrajo?" +Danglars turned very red. +"I was passing close to the door of the captain's cabin, +which was half open, and I saw him give the packet and +letter to Dantes." +"He did not speak to me of it," replied the shipowner "but +if there be any letter he will give it to me." +Danglars reflected for a moment. "Then, M. Morrel, I beg of +you," said he, "not to say a word to Dantes on the subject. +I may have been mistaken." +At this moment the young man returned Danglars withdrew. +"Well, my dear Dantes, are you now free?" inquired the +owner. +"Yes, sir." +"You have not been long detained." +"No. I gave the customhouse officers a copy of our bill of +lading and as to the other papers, they sent a man off with +the pilot, to whom I gave them." +"Then you have nothing more to do here?" +"No everything is all right now." +"Then you can come and dine with me?" +"I really must ask you to excuse me, M. Morrel. My first +visit is due to my father, though I am not the less grateful +for the honor you have done me." +"Right, Dantes, quite right. I always knew you were a good +son." +"And," inquired Dantes, with some hesitation, "do you know +how my father is?" +"Well, I believe, my dear Edmond, though I have not seen him +lately." +"Yes, he likes to keep himself shut up in his little room." +"That proves, at least, that he has wanted for nothing +during your absence." +Dantes smiled. "My father is proud, sir, and if he had not a +meal left, I doubt if he would have asked anything from +anyone, except from Heaven." +"Well, then, after this first visit has been made we shall +count on you." +"I must again excuse myself, M. Morrel, for after this first +visit has been paid I have another which I am most anxious +to pay." +"True, Dantes, I forgot that there was at the Catalans some +one who expects you no less impatiently than your father +the lovely Mercedes." +Dantes blushed. +"Ah, ha," said the shipowner, "I am not in the least +surprised, for she has been to me three times, inquiring if +there were any news of the Pharaon. Peste, Edmond, you have +a very handsome mistress" +"She is not my mistress," replied the young sailor, gravely +"she is my betrothed." +"Sometimes one and the same thing," said Morrel, with a +smile. +"Not with us, sir," replied Dantes. +"Well, well, my dear Edmond," continued the owner, "don't +let me detain you. You have managed my affairs so well that +I ought to allow you all the time you require for your own. +Do you want any money?" +"No, sir I have all my pay to take nearly three months' +wages." +"You are a careful fellow, Edmond." +"Say I have a poor father, sir." +"Yes, yes, I know how good a son you are, so now hasten away +to see your father. I have a son too, and I should be very +wroth with those who detained him from me after a three +months' voyage." +"Then I have your leave, sir?" +"Yes, if you have nothing more to say to me." +"Nothing." +"Captain Leclere did not, before he died, give you a letter +for me?" +"He was unable to write, sir. But that reminds me that I +must ask your leave of absence for some days." +"To get married?" +"Yes, first, and then to go to Paris." +"Very good have what time you require, Dantes. It will take +quite six weeks to unload the cargo, and we cannot get you +ready for sea until three months after that only be back +again in three months, for the Pharaon," added the owner, +patting the young sailor on the back, "cannot sail without +her captain." +"Without her captain" cried Dantes, his eyes sparkling with +animation "pray mind what you say, for you are touching on +the most secret wishes of my heart. Is it really your +intention to make me captain of the Pharaon?" +"If I were sole owner we'd shake hands on it now, my dear +Dantes, and call it settled but I have a partner, and you +know the Italian proverb Chi ha compagno ha padrone +"He who has a partner has a master.' But the thing is at +least half done, as you have one out of two votes. Rely on +me to procure you the other I will do my best." +"Ah, M. Morrel," exclaimed the young seaman, with tears in +his eyes, and grasping the owner's hand, "M. Morrel, I thank +you in the name of my father and of Mercedes." +"That's all right, Edmond. There's a providence that watches +over the deserving. Go to your father go and see Mercedes, +and afterwards come to me." +"Shall I row you ashore?" +"No, thank you I shall remain and look over the accounts +with Danglars. Have you been satisfied with him this +voyage?" +"That is according to the sense you attach to the question, +sir. Do you mean is he a good comrade? No, for I think he +never liked me since the day when I was silly enough, after +a little quarrel we had, to propose to him to stop for ten +minutes at the island of Monte Cristo to settle the dispute +a proposition which I was wrong to suggest, and he quite +right to refuse. If you mean as responsible agent when you +ask me the question, I believe there is nothing to say +against him, and that you will be content with the way in +which he has performed his duty." +"But tell me, Dantes, if you had command of the Pharaon +should you be glad to see Danglars remain?" +"Captain or mate, M. Morrel, I shall always have the +greatest respect for those who possess the owners' +confidence." +"That's right, that's right, Dantes I see you are a +thoroughly good fellow, and will detain you no longer. Go, +for I see how impatient you are." +"Then I have leave?" +"Go, I tell you." +"May I have the use of your skiff?" +"Certainly." +"Then, for the present, M. Morrel, farewell, and a thousand +thanks" +"I hope soon to see you again, my dear Edmond. Good luck to +you." +The young sailor jumped into the skiff, and sat down in the +stern sheets, with the order that he be put ashore at La +Canebiere. The two oarsmen bent to their work, and the +little boat glided away as rapidly as possible in the midst +of the thousand vessels which choke up the narrow way which +leads between the two rows of ships from the mouth of the +harbor to the Quai d'Orleans. +The shipowner, smiling, followed him with his eyes until he +saw him spring out on the quay and disappear in the midst of +the throng, which from five o'clock in the morning until +nine o'clock at night, swarms in the famous street of La +Canebiere, a street of which the modern Phocaeans are so +proud that they say with all the gravity in the world, and +with that accent which gives so much character to what is +said, "If Paris had La Canebiere, Paris would be a second +Marseilles." On turning round the owner saw Danglars behind +him, apparently awaiting orders, but in reality also +watching the young sailor, but there was a great +difference in the expression of the two men who thus +followed the movements of Edmond Dantes. +Chapter +Father and Son. +We will leave Danglars struggling with the demon of hatred, +and endeavoring to insinuate in the ear of the shipowner +some evil suspicions against his comrade, and follow Dantes, +who, after having traversed La Canebiere, took the Rue de +Noailles, and entering a small house, on the left of the +Allees de Meillan, rapidly ascended four flights of a dark +staircase, holding the baluster with one hand, while with +the other he repressed the beatings of his heart, and paused +before a halfopen door, from which he could see the whole +of a small room. +This room was occupied by Dantes' father. The news of the +arrival of the Pharaon had not yet reached the old man, who, +mounted on a chair, was amusing himself by training with +trembling hand the nasturtiums and sprays of clematis that +clambered over the trellis at his window. Suddenly, he felt +an arm thrown around his body, and a wellknown voice behind +him exclaimed, "Father dear father" +The old man uttered a cry, and turned round then, seeing +his son, he fell into his arms, pale and trembling. +"What ails you, my dearest father? Are you ill?" inquired +the young man, much alarmed. +"No, no, my dear Edmond my boy my son no but I +did not expect you and joy, the surprise of seeing you so +suddenly Ah, I feel as if I were going to die." +"Come, come, cheer up, my dear father 'Tis I really I +They say joy never hurts, and so I came to you without any +warning. Come now, do smile, instead of looking at me so +solemnly. Here I am back again, and we are going to be +happy." +"Yes, yes, my boy, so we will so we will," replied the +old man "but how shall we be happy? Shall you never leave +me again? Come, tell me all the good fortune that has +befallen you." +"God forgive me," said the young man, "for rejoicing at +happiness derived from the misery of others, but, Heaven +knows, I did not seek this good fortune it has happened, +and I really cannot pretend to lament it. The good Captain +Leclere is dead, father, and it is probable that, with the +aid of M. Morrel, I shall have his place. Do you understand, +father? Only imagine me a captain at twenty, with a hundred +louis pay, and a share in the profits Is this not more than +a poor sailor like me could have hoped for?" +"Yes, my dear boy," replied the old man, "it is very +fortunate." +"Well, then, with the first money I touch, I mean you to +have a small house, with a garden in which to plant +clematis, nasturtiums, and honeysuckle. But what ails you, +father? Are you not well?" +"'Tis nothing, nothing it will soon pass away" and as he +said so the old man's strength failed him, and he fell +backwards. +"Come, come," said the young man, "a glass of wine, father, +will revive you. Where do you keep your wine?" +"No, no thanks. You need not look for it I do not want +it," said the old man. +"Yes, yes, father, tell me where it is," and he opened two +or three cupboards. +"It is no use," said the old man, "there is no wine." +"What, no wine?" said Dantes, turning pale, and looking +alternately at the hollow cheeks of the old man and the +empty cupboards. "What, no wine? Have you wanted money, +father?" +"I want nothing now that I have you," said the old man. +"Yet," stammered Dantes, wiping the perspiration from his +brow, "yet I gave you two hundred francs when I left, +three months ago." +"Yes, yes, Edmond, that is true, but you forgot at that time +a little debt to our neighbor, Caderousse. He reminded me of +it, telling me if I did not pay for you, he would be paid by +M. Morrel and so, you see, lest he might do you an injury" +"Well?" +"Why, I paid him." +"But," cried Dantes, "it was a hundred and forty francs I +owed Caderousse." +"Yes," stammered the old man. +"And you paid him out of the two hundred francs I left you?" +The old man nodded. +"So that you have lived for three months on sixty francs," +muttered Edmond. +"You know how little I require," said the old man. +"Heaven pardon me," cried Edmond, falling on his knees +before his father. +"What are you doing?" +"You have wounded me to the heart." +"Never mind it, for I see you once more," said the old man +"and now it's all over everything is all right again." +"Yes, here I am," said the young man, "with a promising +future and a little money. Here, father, here" he said, +"take this take it, and send for something immediately." +And he emptied his pockets on the table, the contents +consisting of a dozen gold pieces, five or six fivefranc +pieces, and some smaller coin. The countenance of old Dantes +brightened. +"Whom does this belong to?" he inquired. +"To me, to you, to us Take it buy some provisions be +happy, and tomorrow we shall have more." +"Gently, gently," said the old man, with a smile "and by +your leave I will use your purse moderately, for they would +say, if they saw me buy too many things at a time, that I +had been obliged to await your return, in order to be able +to purchase them." +"Do as you please but, first of all, pray have a servant, +father. I will not have you left alone so long. I have some +smuggled coffee and most capital tobacco, in a small chest +in the hold, which you shall have tomorrow. But, hush, here +comes somebody." +"'Tis Caderousse, who has heard of your arrival, and no +doubt comes to congratulate you on your fortunate return." +"Ah, lips that say one thing, while the heart thinks +another," murmured Edmond. "But, never mind, he is a +neighbor who has done us a service on a time, so he's +welcome." +As Edmond paused, the black and bearded head of Caderousse +appeared at the door. He was a man of twentyfive or six, +and held a piece of cloth, which, being a tailor, he was +about to make into a coatlining. +"What, is it you, Edmond, back again?" said he, with a broad +Marseillaise accent, and a grin that displayed his +ivorywhite teeth. +"Yes, as you see, neighbor Caderousse and ready to be +agreeable to you in any and every way," replied Dantes, but +illconcealing his coldness under this cloak of civility. +"Thanks thanks but, fortunately, I do not want for +anything and it chances that at times there are others who +have need of me." Dantes made a gesture. "I do not allude to +you, my boy. No no I lent you money, and you returned +it that's like good neighbors, and we are quits." +"We are never quits with those who oblige us," was Dantes' +reply "for when we do not owe them money, we owe them +gratitude." +"What's the use of mentioning that? What is done is done. +Let us talk of your happy return, my boy. I had gone on the +quay to match a piece of mulberry cloth, when I met friend +Danglars. "You at Marseilles?' "Yes,' says he. +""I thought you were at Smyrna.' "I was but am now back +again.' +""And where is the dear boy, our little Edmond?' +""Why, with his father, no doubt,' replied Danglars. And so +I came," added Caderousse, "as fast as I could to have the +pleasure of shaking hands with a friend." +"Worthy Caderousse" said the old man, "he is so much +attached to us." +"Yes, to be sure I am. I love and esteem you, because honest +folks are so rare. But it seems you have come back rich, my +boy," continued the tailor, looking askance at the handful +of gold and silver which Dantes had thrown on the table. +The young man remarked the greedy glance which shone in the +dark eyes of his neighbor. "Eh," he said, negligently. "this +money is not mine. I was expressing to my father my fears +that he had wanted many things in my absence, and to +convince me he emptied his purse on the table. Come, father" +added Dantes, "put this money back in your box unless +neighbor Caderousse wants anything, and in that case it is +at his service." +"No, my boy, no," said Caderousse. "I am not in any want, +thank God, my living is suited to my means. Keep your money +keep it, I say one never has too much but, at the +same time, my boy, I am as much obliged by your offer as if +I took advantage of it." +"It was offered with good will," said Dantes. +"No doubt, my boy no doubt. Well, you stand well with M. +Morrel I hear, you insinuating dog, you" +"M. Morrel has always been exceedingly kind to me," replied +Dantes. +"Then you were wrong to refuse to dine with him." +"What, did you refuse to dine with him?" said old Dantes +"and did he invite you to dine?" +"Yes, my dear father," replied Edmond, smiling at his +father's astonishment at the excessive honor paid to his +son. +"And why did you refuse, my son?" inquired the old man. +"That I might the sooner see you again, my dear father," +replied the young man. "I was most anxious to see you." +"But it must have vexed M. Morrel, good, worthy man," said +Caderousse. "And when you are looking forward to be captain, +it was wrong to annoy the owner." +"But I explained to him the cause of my refusal," replied +Dantes, "and I hope he fully understood it." +"Yes, but to be captain one must do a little flattery to +one's patrons." +"I hope to be captain without that," said Dantes. +"So much the better so much the better Nothing will give +greater pleasure to all your old friends and I know one +down there behind the Saint Nicolas citadel who will not be +sorry to hear it." +"Mercedes?" said the old man. +"Yes, my dear father, and with your permission, now I have +seen you, and know you are well and have all you require, I +will ask your consent to go and pay a visit to the +Catalans." +"Go, my dear boy," said old Dantes "and heaven bless you in +your wife, as it has blessed me in my son" +"His wife" said Caderousse "why, how fast you go on, +father Dantes she is not his wife yet, as it seems to me." +"So, but according to all probability she soon will be," +replied Edmond. +"Yes yes," said Caderousse "but you were right to return +as soon as possible, my boy." +"And why?" +"Because Mercedes is a very fine girl, and fine girls never +lack followers she particularly has them by dozens." +"Really?" answered Edmond, with a smile which had in it +traces of slight uneasiness. +"Ah, yes," continued Caderousse, "and capital offers, too +but you know, you will be captain, and who could refuse you +then?" +"Meaning to say," replied Dantes, with a smile which but +illconcealed his trouble, "that if I were not a captain" +"Eh eh" said Caderousse, shaking his head. +"Come, come," said the sailor, "I have a better opinion than +you of women in general, and of Mercedes in particular and +I am certain that, captain or not, she will remain ever +faithful to me." +"So much the better so much the better," said Caderousse. +"When one is going to be married, there is nothing like +implicit confidence but never mind that, my boy, go and +announce your arrival, and let her know all your hopes and +prospects." +"I will go directly," was Edmond's reply and, embracing his +father, and nodding to Caderousse, he left the apartment. +Caderousse lingered for a moment, then taking leave of old +Dantes, he went downstairs to rejoin Danglars, who awaited +him at the corner of the Rue Senac. +"Well," said Danglars, "did you see him?" +"I have just left him," answered Caderousse. +"Did he allude to his hope of being captain?" +"He spoke of it as a thing already decided." +"Indeed" said Danglars, "he is in too much hurry, it +appears to me." +"Why, it seems M. Morrel has promised him the thing." +"So that he is quite elated about it?" +"Why, yes, he is actually insolent over the matter has +already offered me his patronage, as if he were a grand +personage, and proffered me a loan of money, as though he +were a banker." +"Which you refused?" +"Most assuredly although I might easily have accepted it, +for it was I who put into his hands the first silver he ever +earned but now M. Dantes has no longer any occasion for +assistance he is about to become a captain." +"Pooh" said Danglars, "he is not one yet." +"Ma foi, it will be as well if he is not," answered +Caderousse "for if he should be, there will be really no +speaking to him." +"If we choose," replied Danglars, "he will remain what he +is and perhaps become even less than he is." +"What do you mean?" +"Nothing I was speaking to myself. And is he still in +love with the Catalane?" +"Over head and ears but, unless I am much mistaken, there +will be a storm in that quarter." +"Explain yourself." +"Why should I?" +"It is more important than you think, perhaps. You do not +like Dantes?" +"I never like upstarts." +"Then tell me all you know about the Catalane." +"I know nothing for certain only I have seen things which +induce me to believe, as I told you, that the future captain +will find some annoyance in the vicinity of the Vieilles +Infirmeries." +"What have you seen? come, tell me" +"Well, every time I have seen Mercedes come into the city +she has been accompanied by a tall, strapping, blackeyed +Catalan, with a red complexion, brown skin, and fierce air, +whom she calls cousin." +"Really and you think this cousin pays her attentions?" +"I only suppose so. What else can a strapping chap of +twentyone mean with a fine wench of seventeen?" +"And you say that Dantes has gone to the Catalans?" +"He went before I came down." +"Let us go the same way we will stop at La Reserve, and we +can drink a glass of La Malgue, whilst we wait for news." +"Come along," said Caderousse "but you pay the score." +"Of course," replied Danglars and going quickly to the +designated place, they called for a bottle of wine, and two +glasses. +Pere Pamphile had seen Dantes pass not ten minutes before +and assured that he was at the Catalans, they sat down under +the budding foliage of the planes and sycamores, in the +branches of which the birds were singing their welcome to +one of the first days of spring. +Chapter +The Catalans. +Beyond a bare, weatherworn wall, about a hundred paces from +the spot where the two friends sat looking and listening as +they drank their wine, was the village of the Catalans. Long +ago this mysterious colony quitted Spain, and settled on the +tongue of land on which it is to this day. Whence it came no +one knew, and it spoke an unknown tongue. One of its chiefs, +who understood Provencal, begged the commune of Marseilles +to give them this bare and barren promontory, where, like +the sailors of old, they had run their boats ashore. The +request was granted and three months afterwards, around the +twelve or fifteen small vessels which had brought these +gypsies of the sea, a small village sprang up. This village, +constructed in a singular and picturesque manner, half +Moorish, half Spanish, still remains, and is inhabited by +descendants of the first comers, who speak the language of +their fathers. For three or four centuries they have +remained upon this small promontory, on which they had +settled like a flight of seabirds, without mixing with the +Marseillaise population, intermarrying, and preserving their +original customs and the costume of their mothercountry as +they have preserved its language. +Our readers will follow us along the only street of this +little village, and enter with us one of the houses, which +is sunburned to the beautiful deadleaf color peculiar to +the buildings of the country, and within coated with +whitewash, like a Spanish posada. A young and beautiful +girl, with hair as black as jet, her eyes as velvety as the +gazelle's, was leaning with her back against the wainscot, +rubbing in her slender delicately moulded fingers a bunch of +heath blossoms, the flowers of which she was picking off and +strewing on the floor her arms, bare to the elbow, brown, +and modelled after those of the Arlesian Venus, moved with a +kind of restless impatience, and she tapped the earth with +her arched and supple foot, so as to display the pure and +full shape of her wellturned leg, in its red cotton, gray +and blue clocked, stocking. At three paces from her, seated +in a chair which he balanced on two legs, leaning his elbow +on an old wormeaten table, was a tall young man of twenty, +or twoandtwenty, who was looking at her with an air in +which vexation and uneasiness were mingled. He questioned +her with his eyes, but the firm and steady gaze of the young +girl controlled his look. +"You see, Mercedes," said the young man, "here is Easter +come round again tell me, is this the moment for a +wedding?" +"I have answered you a hundred times, Fernand, and really +you must be very stupid to ask me again." +"Well, repeat it, repeat it, I beg of you, that I may at +last believe it Tell me for the hundredth time that you +refuse my love, which had your mother's sanction. Make me +understand once for all that you are trifling with my +happiness, that my life or death are nothing to you. Ah, to +have dreamed for ten years of being your husband, Mercedes, +and to lose that hope, which was the only stay of my +existence" +"At least it was not I who ever encouraged you in that hope, +Fernand," replied Mercedes "you cannot reproach me with the +slightest coquetry. I have always said to you, "I love you +as a brother but do not ask from me more than sisterly +affection, for my heart is another's.' Is not this true, +Fernand?" +"Yes, that is very true, Mercedes," replied the young man, +"Yes, you have been cruelly frank with me but do you forget +that it is among the Catalans a sacred law to intermarry?" +"You mistake, Fernand it is not a law, but merely a custom, +and, I pray of you, do not cite this custom in your favor. +You are included in the conscription, Fernand, and are only +at liberty on sufferance, liable at any moment to be called +upon to take up arms. Once a soldier, what would you do with +me, a poor orphan, forlorn, without fortune, with nothing +but a halfruined hut and a few ragged nets, the miserable +inheritance left by my father to my mother, and by my mother +to me? She has been dead a year, and you know, Fernand, I +have subsisted almost entirely on public charity. Sometimes +you pretend I am useful to you, and that is an excuse to +share with me the produce of your fishing, and I accept it, +Fernand, because you are the son of my father's brother, +because we were brought up together, and still more because +it would give you so much pain if I refuse. But I feel very +deeply that this fish which I go and sell, and with the +produce of which I buy the flax I spin, I feel very +keenly, Fernand, that this is charity." +"And if it were, Mercedes, poor and lone as you are, you +suit me as well as the daughter of the first shipowner or +the richest banker of Marseilles What do such as we desire +but a good wife and careful housekeeper, and where can I +look for these better than in you?" +"Fernand," answered Mercedes, shaking her head, "a woman +becomes a bad manager, and who shall say she will remain an +honest woman, when she loves another man better than her +husband? Rest content with my friendship, for I say once +more that is all I can promise, and I will promise no more +than I can bestow." +"I understand," replied Fernand, "you can endure your own +wretchedness patiently, but you are afraid to share mine. +Well, Mercedes, beloved by you, I would tempt fortune you +would bring me good luck, and I should become rich. I could +extend my occupation as a fisherman, might get a place as +clerk in a warehouse, and become in time a dealer myself." +"You could do no such thing, Fernand you are a soldier, and +if you remain at the Catalans it is because there is no war +so remain a fisherman, and contented with my friendship, as +I cannot give you more." +"Well, I will do better, Mercedes. I will be a sailor +instead of the costume of our fathers, which you despise, I +will wear a varnished hat, a striped shirt, and a blue +jacket, with an anchor on the buttons. Would not that dress +please you?" +"What do you mean?" asked Mercedes, with an angry glance, +"what do you mean? I do not understand you?" +"I mean, Mercedes, that you are thus harsh and cruel with +me, because you are expecting some one who is thus attired +but perhaps he whom you await is inconstant, or if he is +not, the sea is so to him." +"Fernand," cried Mercedes, "I believed you were +goodhearted, and I was mistaken Fernand, you are wicked to +call to your aid jealousy and the anger of God Yes, I will +not deny it, I do await, and I do love him of whom you +speak and, if he does not return, instead of accusing him +of the inconstancy which you insinuate, I will tell you that +he died loving me and me only." The young girl made a +gesture of rage. "I understand you, Fernand you would be +revenged on him because I do not love you you would cross +your Catalan knife with his dirk. What end would that +answer? To lose you my friendship if he were conquered, and +see that friendship changed into hate if you were victor. +Believe me, to seek a quarrel with a man is a bad method of +pleasing the woman who loves that man. No, Fernand, you will +not thus give way to evil thoughts. Unable to have me for +your wife, you will content yourself with having me for your +friend and sister and besides," she added, her eyes +troubled and moistened with tears, "wait, wait, Fernand you +said just now that the sea was treacherous, and he has been +gone four months, and during these four months there have +been some terrible storms." +Fernand made no reply, nor did he attempt to check the tears +which flowed down the cheeks of Mercedes, although for each +of these tears he would have shed his heart's blood but +these tears flowed for another. He arose, paced a while up +and down the hut, and then, suddenly stopping before +Mercedes, with his eyes glowing and his hands clinched, +"Say, Mercedes," he said, "once for all, is this your final +determination?" +"I love Edmond Dantes," the young girl calmly replied, "and +none but Edmond shall ever be my husband." +"And you will always love him?" +"As long as I live." +Fernand let fall his head like a defeated man, heaved a sigh +that was like a groan, and then suddenly looking her full in +the face, with clinched teeth and expanded nostrils, said, +"But if he is dead" +"If he is dead, I shall die too." +"If he has forgotten you" +"Mercedes" called a joyous voice from without, +"Mercedes" +"Ah," exclaimed the young girl, blushing with delight, and +fairly leaping in excess of love, "you see he has not +forgotten me, for here he is" And rushing towards the door, +she opened it, saying, "Here, Edmond, here I am" +Fernand, pale and trembling, drew back, like a traveller at +the sight of a serpent, and fell into a chair beside him. +Edmond and Mercedes were clasped in each other's arms. The +burning Marseilles sun, which shot into the room through the +open door, covered them with a flood of light. At first they +saw nothing around them. Their intense happiness isolated +them from all the rest of the world, and they only spoke in +broken words, which are the tokens of a joy so extreme that +they seem rather the expression of sorrow. Suddenly Edmond +saw the gloomy, pale, and threatening countenance of +Fernand, as it was defined in the shadow. By a movement for +which he could scarcely account to himself, the young +Catalan placed his hand on the knife at his belt. +"Ah, your pardon," said Dantes, frowning in his turn "I did +not perceive that there were three of us." Then, turning to +Mercedes, he inquired, "Who is this gentleman?" +"One who will be your best friend, Dantes, for he is my +friend, my cousin, my brother it is Fernand the man +whom, after you, Edmond, I love the best in the world. Do +you not remember him?" +"Yes" said Dantes, and without relinquishing Mercedes hand +clasped in one of his own, he extended the other to the +Catalan with a cordial air. But Fernand, instead of +responding to this amiable gesture, remained mute and +trembling. Edmond then cast his eyes scrutinizingly at the +agitated and embarrassed Mercedes, and then again on the +gloomy and menacing Fernand. This look told him all, and his +anger waxed hot. +"I did not know, when I came with such haste to you, that I +was to meet an enemy here." +"An enemy" cried Mercedes, with an angry look at her +cousin. "An enemy in my house, do you say, Edmond If I +believed that, I would place my arm under yours and go with +you to Marseilles, leaving the house to return to it no +more." +Fernand's eye darted lightning. "And should any misfortune +occur to you, dear Edmond," she continued with the same +calmness which proved to Fernand that the young girl had +read the very innermost depths of his sinister thought, "if +misfortune should occur to you, I would ascend the highest +point of the Cape de Morgion and cast myself headlong from +it." +Fernand became deadly pale. "But you are deceived, Edmond," +she continued. "You have no enemy here there is no one +but Fernand, my brother, who will grasp your hand as a +devoted friend." +And at these words the young girl fixed her imperious look +on the Catalan, who, as if fascinated by it, came slowly +towards Edmond, and offered him his hand. His hatred, like a +powerless though furious wave, was broken against the strong +ascendancy which Mercedes exercised over him. Scarcely, +however, had he touched Edmond's hand than he felt he had +done all he could do, and rushed hastily out of the house. +"Oh," he exclaimed, running furiously and tearing his hair +"Oh, who will deliver me from this man? Wretched +wretched that I am" +"Hallo, Catalan Hallo, Fernand where are you running to?" +exclaimed a voice. +The young man stopped suddenly, looked around him, and +perceived Caderousse sitting at table with Danglars, under +an arbor. +"Well", said Caderousse, "why don't you come? Are you really +in such a hurry that you have no time to pass the time of +day with your friends?" +"Particularly when they have still a full bottle before +them," added Danglars. Fernand looked at them both with a +stupefied air, but did not say a word. +"He seems besotted," said Danglars, pushing Caderousse with +his knee. "Are we mistaken, and is Dantes triumphant in +spite of all we have believed?" +"Why, we must inquire into that," was Caderousse's reply +and turning towards the young man, said, "Well, Catalan, +can't you make up your mind?" +Fernand wiped away the perspiration steaming from his brow, +and slowly entered the arbor, whose shade seemed to restore +somewhat of calmness to his senses, and whose coolness +somewhat of refreshment to his exhausted body. +"Goodday," said he. "You called me, didn't you?" And he +fell, rather than sat down, on one of the seats which +surrounded the table. +"I called you because you were running like a madman, and I +was afraid you would throw yourself into the sea," said +Caderousse, laughing. "Why, when a man has friends, they are +not only to offer him a glass of wine, but, moreover, to +prevent his swallowing three or four pints of water +unnecessarily" +Fernand gave a groan, which resembled a sob, and dropped his +head into his hands, his elbows leaning on the table. +"Well, Fernand, I must say," said Caderousse, beginning the +conversation, with that brutality of the common people in +which curiosity destroys all diplomacy, "you look uncommonly +like a rejected lover" and he burst into a hoarse laugh. +"Bah" said Danglars, "a lad of his make was not born to be +unhappy in love. You are laughing at him, Caderousse." +"No," he replied, "only hark how he sighs Come, come, +Fernand," said Caderousse, "hold up your head, and answer +us. It's not polite not to reply to friends who ask news of +your health." +"My health is well enough," said Fernand, clinching his +hands without raising his head. +"Ah, you see, Danglars," said Caderousse, winking at his +friend, "this is how it is Fernand, whom you see here, is a +good and brave Catalan, one of the best fishermen in +Marseilles, and he is in love with a very fine girl, named +Mercedes but it appears, unfortunately, that the fine girl +is in love with the mate of the Pharaon and as the Pharaon +arrived today why, you understand" +"No I do not understand," said Danglars. +"Poor Fernand has been dismissed," continued Caderousse. +"Well, and what then?" said Fernand, lifting up his head, +and looking at Caderousse like a man who looks for some one +on whom to vent his anger "Mercedes is not accountable to +any person, is she? Is she not free to love whomsoever she +will?" +"Oh, if you take it in that sense," said Caderousse, "it is +another thing. But I thought you were a Catalan, and they +told me the Catalans were not men to allow themselves to be +supplanted by a rival. It was even told me that Fernand, +especially, was terrible in his vengeance." +Fernand smiled piteously. "A lover is never terrible," he +said. +"Poor fellow" remarked Danglars, affecting to pity the +young man from the bottom of his heart. "Why, you see, he +did not expect to see Dantes return so suddenly he +thought he was dead, perhaps or perchance faithless These +things always come on us more severely when they come +suddenly." +"Ah, ma foi, under any circumstances," said Caderousse, who +drank as he spoke, and on whom the fumes of the wine began +to take effect, "under any circumstances Fernand is not +the only person put out by the fortunate arrival of Dantes +is he, Danglars?" +"No, you are right and I should say that would bring him +illluck." +"Well, never mind," answered Caderousse, pouring out a glass +of wine for Fernand, and filling his own for the eighth or +ninth time, while Danglars had merely sipped his. "Never +mind in the meantime he marries Mercedes the lovely +Mercedes at least he returns to do that." +During this time Danglars fixed his piercing glance on the +young man, on whose heart Caderousse's words fell like +molten lead. +"And when is the wedding to be?" he asked. +"Oh, it is not yet fixed" murmured Fernand. +"No, but it will be," said Caderousse, "as surely as Dantes +will be captain of the Pharaon eh, Danglars?" +Danglars shuddered at this unexpected attack, and turned to +Caderousse, whose countenance he scrutinized, to try and +detect whether the blow was premeditated but he read +nothing but envy in a countenance already rendered brutal +and stupid by drunkenness. +"Well," said he, filling the glasses, "let us drink to +Captain Edmond Dantes, husband of the beautiful Catalane" +Caderousse raised his glass to his mouth with unsteady hand, +and swallowed the contents at a gulp. Fernand dashed his on +the ground. +"Eh, eh, eh" stammered Caderousse. "What do I see down +there by the wall, in the direction of the Catalans? Look, +Fernand, your eyes are better than mine. I believe I see +double. You know wine is a deceiver but I should say it was +two lovers walking side by side, and hand in hand. Heaven +forgive me, they do not know that we can see them, and they +are actually embracing" +Danglars did not lose one pang that Fernand endured. +"Do you know them, Fernand?" he said. +"Yes," was the reply, in a low voice. "It is Edmond and +Mercedes" +"Ah, see there, now" said Caderousse "and I did not +recognize them Hallo, Dantes hello, lovely damsel Come +this way, and let us know when the wedding is to be, for +Fernand here is so obstinate he will not tell us." +"Hold your tongue, will you?" said Danglars, pretending to +restrain Caderousse, who, with the tenacity of drunkards, +leaned out of the arbor. "Try to stand upright, and let the +lovers make love without interruption. See, look at Fernand, +and follow his example he is wellbehaved" +Fernand, probably excited beyond bearing, pricked by +Danglars, as the bull is by the bandilleros, was about to +rush out for he had risen from his seat, and seemed to be +collecting himself to dash headlong upon his rival, when +Mercedes, smiling and graceful, lifted up her lovely head, +and looked at them with her clear and bright eyes. At this +Fernand recollected her threat of dying if Edmond died, and +dropped again heavily on his seat. Danglars looked at the +two men, one after the other, the one brutalized by liquor, +the other overwhelmed with love. +"I shall get nothing from these fools," he muttered "and I +am very much afraid of being here between a drunkard and a +coward. Here's an envious fellow making himself boozy on +wine when he ought to be nursing his wrath, and here is a +fool who sees the woman he loves stolen from under his nose +and takes on like a big baby. Yet this Catalan has eyes that +glisten like those of the vengeful Spaniards, Sicilians, and +Calabrians, and the other has fists big enough to crush an +ox at one blow. Unquestionably, Edmond's star is in the +ascendant, and he will marry the splendid girl he will be +captain, too, and laugh at us all, unless" a sinister +smile passed over Danglars' lips "unless I take a hand in +the affair," he added. +"Hallo" continued Caderousse, halfrising, and with his +fist on the table, "hallo, Edmond do you not see your +friends, or are you too proud to speak to them?" +"No, my dear fellow" replied Dantes, "I am not proud, but I +am happy, and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride." +"Ah, very well, that's an explanation" said Caderousse. +"How do you do, Madame Dantes?" +Mercedes courtesied gravely, and said "That is not my +name, and in my country it bodes ill fortune, they say, to +call a young girl by the name of her betrothed before he +becomes her husband. So call me Mercedes, if you please." +"We must excuse our worthy neighbor, Caderousse," said +Dantes, "he is so easily mistaken." +"So, then, the wedding is to take place immediately, M. +Dantes," said Danglars, bowing to the young couple. +"As soon as possible, M. Danglars today all preliminaries +will be arranged at my father's, and tomorrow, or next day +at latest, the wedding festival here at La Reserve. My +friends will be there, I hope that is to say, you are +invited, M. Danglars, and you, Caderousse." +"And Fernand," said Caderousse with a chuckle "Fernand, +too, is invited" +"My wife's brother is my brother," said Edmond "and we, +Mercedes and I, should be very sorry if he were absent at +such a time." +Fernand opened his mouth to reply, but his voice died on his +lips, and he could not utter a word. +"Today the preliminaries, tomorrow or next day the +ceremony You are in a hurry, captain" +"Danglars," said Edmond, smiling, "I will say to you as +Mercedes said just now to Caderousse, "Do not give me a +title which does not belong to me' that may bring me bad +luck." +"Your pardon," replied Danglars, "I merely said you seemed +in a hurry, and we have lots of time the Pharaon cannot be +under weigh again in less than three months." +"We are always in a hurry to be happy, M. Danglars for when +we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in +believing in good fortune. But it is not selfishness alone +that makes me thus in haste I must go to Paris." +"Ah, really? to Paris and will it be the first time you +have ever been there, Dantes?" +"Yes." +"Have you business there?" +"Not of my own the last commission of poor Captain Leclere +you know to what I allude, Danglars it is sacred. +Besides, I shall only take the time to go and return." +"Yes, yes, I understand," said Danglars, and then in a low +tone, he added, "To Paris, no doubt to deliver the letter +which the grand marshal gave him. Ah, this letter gives me +an idea a capital idea Ah Dantes, my friend, you are +not yet registered number one on board the good ship +Pharaon" then turning towards Edmond, who was walking away, +"A pleasant journey," he cried. +"Thank you," said Edmond with a friendly nod, and the two +lovers continued on their way, as calm and joyous as if they +were the very elect of heaven. +Chapter +Conspiracy. +Danglars followed Edmond and Mercedes with his eyes until +the two lovers disappeared behind one of the angles of Fort +Saint Nicolas, then turning round, he perceived Fernand, who +had fallen, pale and trembling, into his chair, while +Caderousse stammered out the words of a drinkingsong. +"Well, my dear sir," said Danglars to Fernand, "here is a +marriage which does not appear to make everybody happy." +"It drives me to despair," said Fernand. +"Do you, then, love Mercedes?" +"I adore her" +"For long?" +"As long as I have known her always." +"And you sit there, tearing your hair, instead of seeking to +remedy your condition I did not think that was the way of +your people." +"What would you have me do?" said Fernand. +"How do I know? Is it my affair? I am not in love with +Mademoiselle Mercedes but for you in the words of the +gospel, seek, and you shall find." +"I have found already." +"What?" +"I would stab the man, but the woman told me that if any +misfortune happened to her betrothed, she would kill +herself." +"Pooh Women say those things, but never do them." +"You do not know Mercedes what she threatens she will do." +"Idiot" muttered Danglars "whether she kill herself or +not, what matter, provided Dantes is not captain?" +"Before Mercedes should die," replied Fernand, with the +accents of unshaken resolution, "I would die myself" +"That's what I call love" said Caderousse with a voice more +tipsy than ever. "That's love, or I don't know what love +is." +"Come," said Danglars, "you appear to me a good sort of +fellow, and hang me, I should like to help you, but" +"Yes," said Caderousse, "but how?" +"My dear fellow," replied Danglars, "you are three parts +drunk finish the bottle, and you will be completely so. +Drink then, and do not meddle with what we are discussing, +for that requires all one's wit and cool judgment." +"I drunk" said Caderousse "well that's a good one I +could drink four more such bottles they are no bigger than +cologne flasks. Pere Pamphile, more wine" and Caderousse +rattled his glass upon the table. +"You were saying, sir" said Fernand, awaiting with great +anxiety the end of this interrupted remark. +"What was I saying? I forget. This drunken Caderousse has +made me lose the thread of my sentence." +"Drunk, if you like so much the worse for those who fear +wine, for it is because they have bad thoughts which they +are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts" and +Caderousse began to sing the two last lines of a song very +popular at the time, +"Tous les mechants sont beuveurs d'eau +C'est bien prouve par le deluge.' + "The wicked are great drinkers of water +As the flood proved once for all." +"You said, sir, you would like to help me, but" +"Yes but I added, to help you it would be sufficient that +Dantes did not marry her you love and the marriage may +easily be thwarted, methinks, and yet Dantes need not die." +"Death alone can separate them," remarked Fernand. +"You talk like a noodle, my friend," said Caderousse "and +here is Danglars, who is a wideawake, clever, deep fellow, +who will prove to you that you are wrong. Prove it, +Danglars. I have answered for you. Say there is no need why +Dantes should die it would, indeed, be a pity he should. +Dantes is a good fellow I like Dantes. Dantes, your +health." +Fernand rose impatiently. "Let him run on," said Danglars, +restraining the young man "drunk as he is, he is not much +out in what he says. Absence severs as well as death, and if +the walls of a prison were between Edmond and Mercedes they +would be as effectually separated as if he lay under a +tombstone." +"Yes but one gets out of prison," said Caderousse, who, +with what sense was left him, listened eagerly to the +conversation, "and when one gets out and one's name is +Edmond Dantes, one seeks revenge" +"What matters that?" muttered Fernand. +"And why, I should like to know," persisted Caderousse, +"should they put Dantes in prison? he has not robbed or +killed or murdered." +"Hold your tongue" said Danglars. +"I won't hold my tongue" replied Caderousse "I say I want +to know why they should put Dantes in prison I like Dantes +Dantes, your health" and he swallowed another glass of +wine. +Danglars saw in the muddled look of the tailor the progress +of his intoxication, and turning towards Fernand, said, +"Well, you understand there is no need to kill him." +"Certainly not, if, as you said just now, you have the means +of having Dantes arrested. Have you that means?" +"It is to be found for the searching. But why should I +meddle in the matter? it is no affair of mine." +"I know not why you meddle," said Fernand, seizing his arm +"but this I know, you have some motive of personal hatred +against Dantes, for he who himself hates is never mistaken +in the sentiments of others." +"I motives of hatred against Dantes? None, on my word I +saw you were unhappy, and your unhappiness interested me +that's all but since you believe I act for my own account, +adieu, my dear friend, get out of the affair as best you +may" and Danglars rose as if he meant to depart. +"No, no," said Fernand, restraining him, "stay It is of +very little consequence to me at the end of the matter +whether you have any angry feeling or not against Dantes. I +hate him I confess it openly. Do you find the means, I will +execute it, provided it is not to kill the man, for Mercedes +has declared she will kill herself if Dantes is killed." +Caderousse, who had let his head drop on the table, now +raised it, and looking at Fernand with his dull and fishy +eyes, he said, "Kill Dantes who talks of killing Dantes? +I won't have him killed I won't He's my friend, and this +morning offered to share his money with me, as I shared mine +with him. I won't have Dantes killed I won't" +"And who has said a word about killing him, muddlehead?" +replied Danglars. "We were merely joking drink to his +health," he added, filling Caderousse's glass, "and do not +interfere with us." +"Yes, yes, Dantes' good health" said Caderousse, emptying +his glass, "here's to his health his health hurrah" +"But the means the means?" said Fernand. +"Have you not hit upon any?" asked Danglars. +"No you undertook to do so." +"True," replied Danglars "the French have the superiority +over the Spaniards, that the Spaniards ruminate, while the +French invent." +"Do you invent, then," said Fernand impatiently. +"Waiter," said Danglars, "pen, ink, and paper." +"Pen, ink, and paper," muttered Fernand. +"Yes I am a supercargo pen, ink, and paper are my tools, +and without my tools I am fit for nothing." +"Pen, ink, and paper, then," called Fernand loudly. +"There's what you want on that table," said the waiter. +"Bring them here." The waiter did as he was desired. +"When one thinks," said Caderousse, letting his hand drop on +the paper, "there is here wherewithal to kill a man more +sure than if we waited at the corner of a wood to +assassinate him I have always had more dread of a pen, a +bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, than of a sword or +pistol." +"The fellow is not so drunk as he appears to be," said +Danglars. "Give him some more wine, Fernand." Fernand filled +Caderousse's glass, who, like the confirmed toper he was, +lifted his hand from the paper and seized the glass. +The Catalan watched him until Caderousse, almost overcome by +this fresh assault on his senses, rested, or rather dropped, +his glass upon the table. +"Well" resumed the Catalan, as he saw the final glimmer of +Caderousse's reason vanishing before the last glass of wine. +"Well, then, I should say, for instance," resumed Danglars, +"that if after a voyage such as Dantes has just made, in +which he touched at the Island of Elba, some one were to +denounce him to the king's procureur as a Bonapartist agent" +"I will denounce him" exclaimed the young man hastily. +"Yes, but they will make you then sign your declaration, and +confront you with him you have denounced I will supply you +with the means of supporting your accusation, for I know the +fact well. But Dantes cannot remain forever in prison, and +one day or other he will leave it, and the day when he comes +out, woe betide him who was the cause of his incarceration" +"Oh, I should wish nothing better than that he would come +and seek a quarrel with me." +"Yes, and Mercedes Mercedes, who will detest you if you +have only the misfortune to scratch the skin of her dearly +beloved Edmond" +"True" said Fernand. +"No, no," continued Danglars "if we resolve on such a step, +it would be much better to take, as I now do, this pen, dip +it into this ink, and write with the left hand that the +writing may not be recognized the denunciation we propose." +And Danglars, uniting practice with theory, wrote with his +left hand, and in a writing reversed from his usual style, +and totally unlike it, the following lines, which he handed +to Fernand, and which Fernand read in an undertone +"The honorable, the king's attorney, is informed by a friend +of the throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantes, mate of +the ship Pharaon, arrived this morning from Smyrna, after +having touched at Naples and PortoFerrajo, has been +intrusted by Murat with a letter for the usurper, and by the +usurper with a letter for the Bonapartist committee in +Paris. Proof of this crime will be found on arresting him, +for the letter will be found upon him, or at his father's, +or in his cabin on board the Pharaon." +"Very good," resumed Danglars "now your revenge looks like +commonsense, for in no way can it revert to yourself, and +the matter will thus work its own way there is nothing to +do now but fold the letter as I am doing, and write upon it, +"To the king's attorney,' and that's all settled." And +Danglars wrote the address as he spoke. +"Yes, and that's all settled" exclaimed Caderousse, who, by +a last effort of intellect, had followed the reading of the +letter, and instinctively comprehended all the misery which +such a denunciation must entail. "Yes, and that's all +settled only it will be an infamous shame" and he +stretched out his hand to reach the letter. +"Yes," said Danglars, taking it from beyond his reach "and +as what I say and do is merely in jest, and I, amongst the +first and foremost, should be sorry if anything happened to +Dantes the worthy Dantes look here" And taking the +letter, he squeezed it up in his hands and threw it into a +corner of the arbor. +"All right" said Caderousse. "Dantes is my friend, and I +won't have him illused." +"And who thinks of using him ill? Certainly neither I nor +Fernand," said Danglars, rising and looking at the young +man, who still remained seated, but whose eye was fixed on +the denunciatory sheet of paper flung into the corner. +"In this case," replied Caderousse, "let's have some more +wine. I wish to drink to the health of Edmond and the lovely +Mercedes." +"You have had too much already, drunkard," said Danglars +"and if you continue, you will be compelled to sleep here, +because unable to stand on your legs." +"I?" said Caderousse, rising with all the offended dignity +of a drunken man, "I can't keep on my legs? Why, I'll wager +I can go up into the belfry of the Accoules, and without +staggering, too" +"Done" said Danglars, "I'll take your bet but tomorrow +today it is time to return. Give me your arm, and let us +go." +"Very well, let us go," said Caderousse "but I don't want +your arm at all. Come, Fernand, won't you return to +Marseilles with us?" +"No," said Fernand "I shall return to the Catalans." +"You're wrong. Come with us to Marseilles come along." +"I will not." +"What do you mean? you will not? Well, just as you like, my +prince there's liberty for all the world. Come along, +Danglars, and let the young gentleman return to the Catalans +if he chooses." +Danglars took advantage of Caderousse's temper at the +moment, to take him off towards Marseilles by the Porte +SaintVictor, staggering as he went. +When they had advanced about twenty yards, Danglars looked +back and saw Fernand stoop, pick up the crumpled paper, and +putting it into his pocket then rush out of the arbor +towards Pillon. +"Well," said Caderousse, "why, what a lie he told He said +he was going to the Catalans, and he is going to the city. +Hallo, Fernand" +"Oh, you don't see straight," said Danglars "he's gone +right enough." +"Well," said Caderousse, "I should have said not how +treacherous wine is" +"Come, come," said Danglars to himself, "now the thing is at +work and it will effect its purpose unassisted." +Chapter +The MarriageFeast. +The morning's sun rose clear and resplendent, touching the +foamy waves into a network of rubytinted light. +The feast had been made ready on the second floor at La +Reserve, with whose arbor the reader is already familiar. +The apartment destined for the purpose was spacious and +lighted by a number of windows, over each of which was +written in golden letters for some inexplicable reason the +name of one of the principal cities of France beneath these +windows a wooden balcony extended the entire length of the +house. And although the entertainment was fixed for twelve +o'clock, an hour previous to that time the balcony was +filled with impatient and expectant guests, consisting of +the favored part of the crew of the Pharaon, and other +personal friends of the bridegroom, the whole of whom had +arrayed themselves in their choicest costumes, in order to +do greater honor to the occasion. +Various rumors were afloat to the effect that the owners of +the Pharaon had promised to attend the nuptial feast but +all seemed unanimous in doubting that an act of such rare +and exceeding condescension could possibly be intended. +Danglars, however, who now made his appearance, accompanied +by Caderousse, effectually confirmed the report, stating +that he had recently conversed with M. Morrel, who had +himself assured him of his intention to dine at La Reserve. +In fact, a moment later M. Morrel appeared and was saluted +with an enthusiastic burst of applause from the crew of the +Pharaon, who hailed the visit of the shipowner as a sure +indication that the man whose wedding feast he thus +delighted to honor would ere long be first in command of the +ship and as Dantes was universally beloved on board his +vessel, the sailors put no restraint on their tumultuous joy +at finding that the opinion and choice of their superiors so +exactly coincided with their own. +With the entrance of M. Morrel, Danglars and Caderousse were +despatched in search of the bridegroom to convey to him the +intelligence of the arrival of the important personage whose +coming had created such a lively sensation, and to beseech +him to make haste. +Danglars and Caderousse set off upon their errand at full +speed but ere they had gone many steps they perceived a +group advancing towards them, composed of the betrothed +pair, a party of young girls in attendance on the bride, by +whose side walked Dantes' father the whole brought up by +Fernand, whose lips wore their usual sinister smile. +Neither Mercedes nor Edmond observed the strange expression +of his countenance they were so happy that they were +conscious only of the sunshine and the presence of each +other. +Having acquitted themselves of their errand, and exchanged a +hearty shake of the hand with Edmond, Danglars and +Caderousse took their places beside Fernand and old Dantes, +the latter of whom attracted universal notice. The old +man was attired in a suit of glistening watered silk, +trimmed with steel buttons, beautifully cut and polished. +His thin but wiry legs were arrayed in a pair of richly +embroidered clocked stockings, evidently of English +manufacture, while from his threecornered hat depended a +long streaming knot of white and blue ribbons. Thus he came +along, supporting himself on a curiously carved stick, his +aged countenance lit up with happiness, looking for all the +world like one of the aged dandies of , parading the +newly opened gardens of the Tuileries and Luxembourg. Beside +him glided Caderousse, whose desire to partake of the good +things provided for the weddingparty had induced him to +become reconciled to the Dantes, father and son, although +there still lingered in his mind a faint and unperfect +recollection of the events of the preceding night just as +the brain retains on waking in the morning the dim and misty +outline of a dream. +As Danglars approached the disappointed lover, he cast on +him a look of deep meaning, while Fernand, as he slowly +paced behind the happy pair, who seemed, in their own +unmixed content, to have entirely forgotten that such a +being as himself existed, was pale and abstracted +occasionally, however, a deep flush would overspread his +countenance, and a nervous contraction distort his features, +while, with an agitated and restless gaze, he would glance +in the direction of Marseilles, like one who either +anticipated or foresaw some great and important event. +Dantes himself was simply, but becomingly, clad in the dress +peculiar to the merchant service a costume somewhat +between a military and a civil garb and with his fine +countenance, radiant with joy and happiness, a more perfect +specimen of manly beauty could scarcely be imagined. +Lovely as the Greek girls of Cyprus or Chios, Mercedes +boasted the same bright flashing eyes of jet, and ripe, +round, coral lips. She moved with the light, free step of an +Arlesienne or an Andalusian. One more practiced in the arts +of great cities would have hid her blushes beneath a veil, +or, at least, have cast down her thickly fringed lashes, so +as to have concealed the liquid lustre of her animated eyes +but, on the contrary, the delighted girl looked around her +with a smile that seemed to say "If you are my friends, +rejoice with me, for I am very happy." +As soon as the bridal party came in sight of La Reserve, M. +Morrel descended and came forth to meet it, followed by the +soldiers and sailors there assembled, to whom he had +repeated the promise already given, that Dantes should be +the successor to the late Captain Leclere. Edmond, at the +approach of his patron, respectfully placed the arm of his +affianced bride within that of M. Morrel, who, forthwith +conducting her up the flight of wooden steps leading to the +chamber in which the feast was prepared, was gayly followed +by the guests, beneath whose heavy tread the slight +structure creaked and groaned for the space of several +minutes. +"Father," said Mercedes, stopping when she had reached the +centre of the table, "sit, I pray you, on my right hand on +my left I will place him who has ever been as a brother to +me," pointing with a soft and gentle smile to Fernand but +her words and look seemed to inflict the direst torture on +him, for his lips became ghastly pale, and even beneath the +dark hue of his complexion the blood might be seen +retreating as though some sudden pang drove it back to the +heart. +During this time, Dantes, at the opposite side of the table, +had been occupied in similarly placing his most honored +guests. M. Morrel was seated at his right hand, Danglars at +his left while, at a sign from Edmond, the rest of the +company ranged themselves as they found it most agreeable. +Then they began to pass around the dusky, piquant, Arlesian +sausages, and lobsters in their dazzling red cuirasses, +prawns of large size and brilliant color, the echinus with +its prickly outside and dainty morsel within, the clovis, +esteemed by the epicures of the South as more than rivalling +the exquisite flavor of the oyster, all the delicacies, +in fact, that are cast up by the wash of waters on the sandy +beach, and styled by the grateful fishermen "fruits of the +sea." +"A pretty silence truly" said the old father of the +bridegroom, as he carried to his lips a glass of wine of +the hue and brightness of the topaz, and which had just been +placed before Mercedes herself. "Now, would anybody think +that this room contained a happy, merry party, who desire +nothing better than to laugh and dance the hours away?" +"Ah," sighed Caderousse, "a man cannot always feel happy +because he is about to be married." +"The truth is," replied Dantes, "that I am too happy for +noisy mirth if that is what you meant by your observation, +my worthy friend, you are right joy takes a strange effect +at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow." +Danglars looked towards Fernand, whose excitable nature +received and betrayed each fresh impression. +"Why, what ails you?" asked he of Edmond. "Do you fear any +approaching evil? I should say that you were the happiest +man alive at this instant." +"And that is the very thing that alarms me," returned +Dantes. "Man does not appear to me to be intended to enjoy +felicity so unmixed happiness is like the enchanted palaces +we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons +defend the entrance and approach and monsters of all shapes +and kinds, requiring to be overcome ere victory is ours. I +own that I am lost in wonder to find myself promoted to an +honor of which I feel myself unworthy that of being the +husband of Mercedes." +"Nay, nay" cried Caderousse, smiling, "you have not +attained that honor yet. Mercedes is not yet your wife. Just +assume the tone and manner of a husband, and see how she +will remind you that your hour is not yet come" +The bride blushed, while Fernand, restless and uneasy, +seemed to start at every fresh sound, and from time to time +wiped away the large drops of perspiration that gathered on +his brow. +"Well, never mind that, neighbor Caderousse it is not worth +while to contradict me for such a trifle as that. 'Tis true +that Mercedes is not actually my wife but," added he, +drawing out his watch, "in an hour and a half she will be." +A general exclamation of surprise ran round the table, with +the exception of the elder Dantes, whose laugh displayed the +still perfect beauty of his large white teeth. Mercedes +looked pleased and gratified, while Fernand grasped the +handle of his knife with a convulsive clutch. +"In an hour?" inquired Danglars, turning pale. "How is that, +my friend?" +"Why, thus it is," replied Dantes. "Thanks to the influence +of M. Morrel, to whom, next to my father, I owe every +blessing I enjoy, every difficulty his been removed. We have +purchased permission to waive the usual delay and at +halfpast two o'clock the mayor of Marseilles will be +waiting for us at the city hall. Now, as a quarterpast one +has already struck, I do not consider I have asserted too +much in saying, that, in another hour and thirty minutes +Mercedes will have become Madame Dantes." +Fernand closed his eyes, a burning sensation passed across +his brow, and he was compelled to support himself by the +table to prevent his falling from his chair but in spite of +all his efforts, he could not refrain from uttering a deep +groan, which, however, was lost amid the noisy felicitations +of the company. +"Upon my word," cried the old man, "you make short work of +this kind of affair. Arrived here only yesterday morning, +and married today at three o'clock Commend me to a sailor +for going the quick way to work" +"But," asked Danglars, in a timid tone, "how did you manage +about the other formalities the contract the +settlement?" +"The contract," answered Dantes, laughingly, "it didn't take +long to fix that. Mercedes has no fortune I have none to +settle on her. So, you see, our papers were quickly written +out, and certainly do not come very expensive." This joke +elicited a fresh burst of applause. +"So that what we presumed to be merely the betrothal feast +turns out to be the actual wedding dinner" said Danglars. +"No, no," answered Dantes "don't imagine I am going to put +you off in that shabby manner. Tomorrow morning I start for +Paris four days to go, and the same to return, with one day +to discharge the commission intrusted to me, is all the time +I shall be absent. I shall be back here by the first of +March, and on the second I give my real marriage feast." +This prospect of fresh festivity redoubled the hilarity of +the guests to such a degree, that the elder Dantes, who, at +the commencement of the repast, had commented upon the +silence that prevailed, now found it difficult, amid the +general din of voices, to obtain a moment's tranquillity in +which to drink to the health and prosperity of the bride and +bridegroom. +Dantes, perceiving the affectionate eagerness of his father, +responded by a look of grateful pleasure while Mercedes +glanced at the clock and made an expressive gesture to +Edmond. +Around the table reigned that noisy hilarity which usually +prevails at such a time among people sufficiently free from +the demands of social position not to feel the trammels of +etiquette. Such as at the commencement of the repast had not +been able to seat themselves according to their inclination +rose unceremoniously, and sought out more agreeable +companions. Everybody talked at once, without waiting for a +reply and each one seemed to be contented with expressing +his or her own thoughts. +Fernand's paleness appeared to have communicated itself to +Danglars. As for Fernand himself, he seemed to be enduring +the tortures of the damned unable to rest, he was among the +first to quit the table, and, as though seeking to avoid the +hilarious mirth that rose in such deafening sounds, he +continued, in utter silence, to pace the farther end of the +salon. +Caderousse approached him just as Danglars, whom Fernand +seemed most anxious to avoid, had joined him in a corner of +the room. +"Upon my word," said Caderousse, from whose mind the +friendly treatment of Dantes, united with the effect of the +excellent wine he had partaken of, had effaced every feeling +of envy or jealousy at Dantes' good fortune, "upon my +word, Dantes is a downright good fellow, and when I see him +sitting there beside his pretty wife that is so soon to be. +I cannot help thinking it would have been a great pity to +have served him that trick you were planning yesterday." +"Oh, there was no harm meant," answered Danglars "at first +I certainly did feel somewhat uneasy as to what Fernand +might be tempted to do but when I saw how completely he had +mastered his feelings, even so far as to become one of his +rival's attendants, I knew there was no further cause for +apprehension." Caderousse looked full at Fernand he was +ghastly pale. +"Certainly," continued Danglars, "the sacrifice was no +trifling one, when the beauty of the bride is concerned. +Upon my soul, that future captain of mine is a lucky dog +Gad, I only wish he would let me take his place." +"Shall we not set forth?" asked the sweet, silvery voice of +Mercedes "two o'clock has just struck, and you know we are +expected in a quarter of an hour." +"To be sure to be sure" cried Dantes, eagerly quitting +the table "let us go directly" +His words were reechoed by the whole party, with vociferous +cheers. +At this moment Danglars, who had been incessantly observing +every change in Fernand's look and manner, saw him stagger +and fall back, with an almost convulsive spasm, against a +seat placed near one of the open windows. At the same +instant his ear caught a sort of indistinct sound on the +stairs, followed by the measured tread of soldiery, with the +clanking of swords and military accoutrements then came a +hum and buzz as of many voices, so as to deaden even the +noisy mirth of the bridal party, among whom a vague feeling +of curiosity and apprehension quelled every disposition to +talk, and almost instantaneously the most deathlike +stillness prevailed. +The sounds drew nearer. Three blows were struck upon the +panel of the door. The company looked at each other in +consternation. +"I demand admittance," said a loud voice outside the room, +"in the name of the law" As no attempt was made to prevent +it, the door was opened, and a magistrate, wearing his +official scarf, presented himself, followed by four soldiers +and a corporal. Uneasiness now yielded to the most extreme +dread on the part of those present. +"May I venture to inquire the reason of this unexpected +visit?" said M. Morrel, addressing the magistrate, whom he +evidently knew "there is doubtless some mistake easily +explained." +"If it be so," replied the magistrate, "rely upon every +reparation being made meanwhile, I am the bearer of an +order of arrest, and although I most reluctantly perform the +task assigned me, it must, nevertheless, be fulfilled. Who +among the persons here assembled answers to the name of +Edmond Dantes?" Every eye was turned towards the young man +who, spite of the agitation he could not but feel, advanced +with dignity, and said, in a firm voice, "I am he what is +your pleasure with me?" +"Edmond Dantes," replied the magistrate, "I arrest you in +the name of the law" +"Me" repeated Edmond, slightly changing color, "and +wherefore, I pray?" +"I cannot inform you, but you will be duly acquainted with +the reasons that have rendered such a step necessary at the +preliminary examination." +M. Morrel felt that further resistance or remonstrance was +useless. He saw before him an officer delegated to enforce +the law, and perfectly well knew that it would be as +unavailing to seek pity from a magistrate decked with his +official scarf, as to address a petition to some cold marble +effigy. Old Dantes, however, sprang forward. There are +situations which the heart of a father or a mother cannot be +made to understand. He prayed and supplicated in terms so +moving, that even the officer was touched, and, although +firm in his duty, he kindly said, "My worthy friend, let me +beg of you to calm your apprehensions. Your son has probably +neglected some prescribed form or attention in registering +his cargo, and it is more than probable he will be set at +liberty directly he has given the information required, +whether touching the health of his crew, or the value of his +freight." +"What is the meaning of all this?" inquired Caderousse, +frowningly, of Danglars, who had assumed an air of utter +surprise. +"How can I tell you?" replied he "I am, like yourself, +utterly bewildered at all that is going on, and cannot in +the least make out what it is about." Caderousse then looked +around for Fernand, but he had disappeared. +The scene of the previous night now came back to his mind +with startling clearness. The painful catastrophe he had +just witnessed appeared effectually to have rent away the +veil which the intoxication of the evening before had raised +between himself and his memory. +"So, so," said he, in a hoarse and choking voice, to +Danglars, "this, then, I suppose, is a part of the trick you +were concerting yesterday? All I can say is, that if it be +so, 'tis an ill turn, and well deserves to bring double evil +on those who have projected it." +"Nonsense," returned Danglars, "I tell you again I have +nothing whatever to do with it besides, you know very well +that I tore the paper to pieces." +"No, you did not" answered Caderousse, "you merely threw it +by I saw it lying in a corner." +"Hold your tongue, you fool what should you know about +it? why, you were drunk" +"Where is Fernand?" inquired Caderousse. +"How do I know?" replied Danglars "gone, as every prudent +man ought to be, to look after his own affairs, most likely. +Never mind where he is, let you and I go and see what is to +be done for our poor friends." +During this conversation, Dantes, after having exchanged a +cheerful shake of the hand with all his sympathizing +friends, had surrendered himself to the officer sent to +arrest him, merely saying, "Make yourselves quite easy, my +good fellows, there is some little mistake to clear up, +that's all, depend upon it and very likely I may not have +to go so far as the prison to effect that." +"Oh, to be sure" responded Danglars, who had now approached +the group, "nothing more than a mistake, I feel quite +certain." +Dantes descended the staircase, preceded by the magistrate, +and followed by the soldiers. A carriage awaited him at the +door he got in, followed by two soldiers and the +magistrate, and the vehicle drove off towards Marseilles. +"Adieu, adieu, dearest Edmond" cried Mercedes, stretching +out her arms to him from the balcony. +The prisoner heard the cry, which sounded like the sob of a +broken heart, and leaning from the coach he called out, +"Goodby, Mercedes we shall soon meet again" Then the +vehicle disappeared round one of the turnings of Fort Saint +Nicholas. +"Wait for me here, all of you" cried M. Morrel "I will +take the first conveyance I find, and hurry to Marseilles, +whence I will bring you word how all is going on." +"That's right" exclaimed a multitude of voices, "go, and +return as quickly as you can" +This second departure was followed by a long and fearful +state of terrified silence on the part of those who were +left behind. The old father and Mercedes remained for some +time apart, each absorbed in grief but at length the two +poor victims of the same blow raised their eyes, and with a +simultaneous burst of feeling rushed into each other's arms. +Meanwhile Fernand made his appearance, poured out for +himself a glass of water with a trembling hand then hastily +swallowing it, went to sit down at the first vacant place, +and this was, by mere chance, placed next to the seat on +which poor Mercedes had fallen half fainting, when released +from the warm and affectionate embrace of old Dantes. +Instinctively Fernand drew back his chair. +"He is the cause of all this misery I am quite sure of +it," whispered Caderousse, who had never taken his eyes off +Fernand, to Danglars. +"I don't think so," answered the other he's too stupid to +imagine such a scheme. I only hope the mischief will fall +upon the head of whoever wrought it." +"You don't mention those who aided and abetted the deed," +said Caderousse. +"Surely," answered Danglars, "one cannot be held responsible +for every chance arrow shot into the air." +"You can, indeed, when the arrow lights point downward on +somebody's head." +Meantime the subject of the arrest was being canvassed in +every different form. +"What think you, Danglars," said one of the party, turning +towards him, "of this event?" +"Why," replied he, "I think it just possible Dantes may have +been detected with some trifling article on board ship +considered here as contraband." +"But how could he have done so without your knowledge, +Danglars, since you are the ship's supercargo?" +"Why, as for that, I could only know what I was told +respecting the merchandise with which the vessel was laden. +I know she was loaded with cotton, and that she took in her +freight at Alexandria from Pastret's warehouse, and at +Smyrna from Pascal's that is all I was obliged to know, and +I beg I may not be asked for any further particulars." +"Now I recollect," said the afflicted old father "my poor +boy told me yesterday he had got a small case of coffee, and +another of tobacco for me" +"There, you see," exclaimed Danglars. "Now the mischief is +out depend upon it the customhouse people went rummaging +about the ship in our absence, and discovered poor Dantes' +hidden treasures." +Mercedes, however, paid no heed to this explanation of her +lover's arrest. Her grief, which she had hitherto tried to +restrain, now burst out in a violent fit of hysterical +sobbing. +"Come, come," said the old man, "be comforted, my poor +child there is still hope" +"Hope" repeated Danglars. +"Hope" faintly murmured Fernand, but the word seemed to die +away on his pale agitated lips, and a convulsive spasm +passed over his countenance. +"Good news good news" shouted forth one of the party +stationed in the balcony on the lookout. "Here comes M. +Morrel back. No doubt, now, we shall hear that our friend is +released" +Mercedes and the old man rushed to meet the shipowner and +greeted him at the door. He was very pale. +"What news?" exclaimed a general burst of voices. +"Alas, my friends," replied M. Morrel, with a mournful shake +of his head, "the thing has assumed a more serious aspect +than I expected." +"Oh, indeed indeed, sir, he is innocent" sobbed forth +Mercedes. +"That I believe" answered M. Morrel "but still he is +charged" +"With what?" inquired the elder Dantes. +"With being an agent of the Bonapartist faction" Many of +our readers may be able to recollect how formidable such an +accusation became in the period at which our story is dated. +A despairing cry escaped the pale lips of Mercedes the old +man sank into a chair. +"Ah, Danglars" whispered Caderousse, "you have deceived me +the trick you spoke of last night has been played but I +cannot suffer a poor old man or an innocent girl to die of +grief through your fault. I am determined to tell them all +about it." +"Be silent, you simpleton" cried Danglars, grasping him by +the arm, "or I will not answer even for your own safety. Who +can tell whether Dantes be innocent or guilty? The vessel +did touch at Elba, where he quitted it, and passed a whole +day in the island. Now, should any letters or other +documents of a compromising character be found upon him, +will it not be taken for granted that all who uphold him are +his accomplices?" +With the rapid instinct of selfishness, Caderousse readily +perceived the solidity of this mode of reasoning he gazed, +doubtfully, wistfully, on Danglars, and then caution +supplanted generosity. +"Suppose we wait a while, and see what comes of it," said +he, casting a bewildered look on his companion. +"To be sure" answered Danglars. "Let us wait, by all means. +If he be innocent, of course he will be set at liberty if +guilty, why, it is no use involving ourselves in a +conspiracy." +"Let us go, then. I cannot stay here any longer." +"With all my heart" replied Danglars, pleased to find the +other so tractable. "Let us take ourselves out of the way, +and leave things for the present to take their course." +After their departure, Fernand, who had now again become the +friend and protector of Mercedes, led the girl to her home, +while the friends of Dantes conducted the now halffainting +man back to his abode. +The rumor of Edmond's arrest as a Bonapartist agent was not +slow in circulating throughout the city. +"Could you ever have credited such a thing, my dear +Danglars?" asked M. Morrel, as, on his return to the port +for the purpose of gleaning fresh tidings of Dantes, from M. +de Villefort, the assistant procureur, he overtook his +supercargo and Caderousse. "Could you have believed such a +thing possible?" +"Why, you know I told you," replied Danglars, "that I +considered the circumstance of his having anchored at the +Island of Elba as a very suspicious circumstance." +"And did you mention these suspicions to any person beside +myself?" +"Certainly not" returned Danglars. Then added in a low +whisper, "You understand that, on account of your uncle, M. +Policar Morrel, who served under the other government, and +who does not altogether conceal what he thinks on the +subject, you are strongly suspected of regretting the +abdication of Napoleon. I should have feared to injure both +Edmond and yourself, had I divulged my own apprehensions to +a soul. I am too well aware that though a subordinate, like +myself, is bound to acquaint the shipowner with everything +that occurs, there are many things he ought most carefully +to conceal from all else." +"'Tis well, Danglars 'tis well" replied M. Morrel. "You +are a worthy fellow and I had already thought of your +interests in the event of poor Edmond having become captain +of the Pharaon." +"Is it possible you were so kind?" +"Yes, indeed I had previously inquired of Dantes what was +his opinion of you, and if he should have any reluctance to +continue you in your post, for somehow I have perceived a +sort of coolness between you." +"And what was his reply?" +"That he certainly did think he had given you offence in an +affair which he merely referred to without entering into +particulars, but that whoever possessed the good opinion and +confidence of the ship's owner would have his preference +also." +"The hypocrite" murmured Danglars. +"Poor Dantes" said Caderousse. "No one can deny his being a +noblehearted young fellow." +"But meanwhile," continued M. Morrel, "here is the Pharaon +without a captain." +"Oh," replied Danglars, "since we cannot leave this port for +the next three months, let us hope that ere the expiration +of that period Dantes will be set at liberty." +"No doubt but in the meantime?" +"I am entirely at your service, M. Morrel," answered +Danglars. "You know that I am as capable of managing a ship +as the most experienced captain in the service and it will +be so far advantageous to you to accept my services, that +upon Edmond's release from prison no further change will be +requisite on board the Pharaon than for Dantes and myself +each to resume our respective posts." +"Thanks, Danglars that will smooth over all difficulties. +I fully authorize you at once to assume the command of the +Pharaon, and look carefully to the unloading of her freight. +Private misfortunes must never be allowed to interfere with +business." +"Be easy on that score, M. Morrel but do you think we shall +be permitted to see our poor Edmond?" +"I will let you know that directly I have seen M. de +Villefort, whom I shall endeavor to interest in Edmond's +favor. I am aware he is a furious royalist but, in spite of +that, and of his being king's attorney, he is a man like +ourselves, and I fancy not a bad sort of one." +"Perhaps not," replied Danglars "but I hear that he is +ambitious, and that's rather against him." +"Well, well," returned M. Morrel, "we shall see. But now +hasten on board, I will join you there ere long." So saying, +the worthy shipowner quitted the two allies, and proceeded +in the direction of the Palais de Justice. +"You see," said Danglars, addressing Caderousse, "the turn +things have taken. Do you still feel any desire to stand up +in his defence?" +"Not the slightest, but yet it seems to me a shocking thing +that a mere joke should lead to such consequences." +"But who perpetrated that joke, let me ask? neither you nor +myself, but Fernand you knew very well that I threw the +paper into a corner of the room indeed, I fancied I had +destroyed it." +"Oh, no," replied Caderousse, "that I can answer for, you +did not. I only wish I could see it now as plainly as I saw +it lying all crushed and crumpled in a corner of the arbor." +"Well, then, if you did, depend upon it, Fernand picked it +up, and either copied it or caused it to be copied perhaps, +even, he did not take the trouble of recopying it. And now I +think of it, by Heavens, he may have sent the letter itself +Fortunately, for me, the handwriting was disguised." +"Then you were aware of Dantes being engaged in a +conspiracy?" +"Not I. As I before said, I thought the whole thing was a +joke, nothing more. It seems, however, that I have +unconsciously stumbled upon the truth." +"Still," argued Caderousse, "I would give a great deal if +nothing of the kind had happened or, at least, that I had +had no hand in it. You will see, Danglars, that it will turn +out an unlucky job for both of us." +"Nonsense If any harm come of it, it should fall on the +guilty person and that, you know, is Fernand. How can we be +implicated in any way? All we have got to do is, to keep our +own counsel, and remain perfectly quiet, not breathing a +word to any living soul and you will see that the storm +will pass away without in the least affecting us." +"Amen" responded Caderousse, waving his hand in token of +adieu to Danglars, and bending his steps towards the Allees +de Meillan, moving his head to and fro, and muttering as he +went, after the manner of one whose mind was overcharged +with one absorbing idea. +"So far, then," said Danglars, mentally, "all has gone as I +would have it. I am, temporarily, commander of the Pharaon, +with the certainty of being permanently so, if that fool of +a Caderousse can be persuaded to hold his tongue. My only +fear is the chance of Dantes being released. But, there, he +is in the hands of Justice and," added he with a smile, +"she will take her own." So saying, he leaped into a boat, +desiring to be rowed on board the Pharaon, where M. Morrel +had agreed to meet him. +Chapter +The Deputy Procureur du Roi. +In one of the aristocratic mansions built by Puget in the +Rue du Grand Cours opposite the Medusa fountain, a second +marriage feast was being celebrated, almost at the same hour +with the nuptial repast given by Dantes. In this case, +however, although the occasion of the entertainment was +similar, the company was strikingly dissimilar. Instead of a +rude mixture of sailors, soldiers, and those belonging to +the humblest grade of life, the present assembly was +composed of the very flower of Marseilles society, +magistrates who had resigned their office during the +usurper's reign officers who had deserted from the imperial +army and joined forces with Conde and younger members of +families, brought up to hate and execrate the man whom five +years of exile would convert into a martyr, and fifteen of +restoration elevate to the rank of a god. +The guests were still at table, and the heated and energetic +conversation that prevailed betrayed the violent and +vindictive passions that then agitated each dweller of the +South, where unhappily, for five centuries religious strife +had long given increased bitterness to the violence of party +feeling. +The emperor, now king of the petty Island of Elba, after +having held sovereign sway over onehalf of the world, +counting as his subjects a small population of five or six +thousand souls, after having been accustomed to hear the +"Vive Napoleons" of a hundred and twenty millions of human +beings, uttered in ten different languages, was looked +upon here as a ruined man, separated forever from any fresh +connection with France or claim to her throne. +The magistrates freely discussed their political views the +military part of the company talked unreservedly of Moscow +and Leipsic, while the women commented on the divorce of +Josephine. It was not over the downfall of the man, but over +the defeat of the Napoleonic idea, that they rejoiced, and +in this they foresaw for themselves the bright and cheering +prospect of a revivified political existence. +An old man, decorated with the cross of Saint Louis, now +rose and proposed the health of King Louis XVIII. It was the +Marquis de SaintMeran. This toast, recalling at once the +patient exile of Hartwell and the peaceloving King of +France, excited universal enthusiasm glasses were elevated +in the air a l'Anglais, and the ladies, snatching their +bouquets from their fair bosoms, strewed the table with +their floral treasures. In a word, an almost poetical fervor +prevailed. +"Ah," said the Marquise de SaintMeran, a woman with a +stern, forbidding eye, though still noble and distinguished +in appearance, despite her fifty years "ah, these +revolutionists, who have driven us from those very +possessions they afterwards purchased for a mere trifle +during the Reign of Terror, would be compelled to own, were +they here, that all true devotion was on our side, since we +were content to follow the fortunes of a falling monarch, +while they, on the contrary, made their fortune by +worshipping the rising sun yes, yes, they could not help +admitting that the king, for whom we sacrificed rank, +wealth, and station was truly our "Louis the wellbeloved,' +while their wretched usurper his been, and ever will be, to +them their evil genius, their "Napoleon the accursed.' Am I +not right, Villefort?" +"I beg your pardon, madame. I really must pray you to excuse +me, but in truth I was not attending to the +conversation." +"Marquise, marquise" interposed the old nobleman who had +proposed the toast, "let the young people alone let me tell +you, on one's wedding day there are more agreeable subjects +of conversation than dry politics." +"Never mind, dearest mother," said a young and lovely girl, +with a profusion of light brown hair, and eyes that seemed +to float in liquid crystal, "'tis all my fault for seizing +upon M. de Villefort, so as to prevent his listening to what +you said. But there now take him he is your own for as +long as you like. M. Villefort, I beg to remind you my +mother speaks to you." +"If the marquise will deign to repeat the words I but +imperfectly caught, I shall be delighted to answer," said M. +de Villefort. +"Never mind, Renee," replied the marquise, with a look of +tenderness that seemed out of keeping with her harsh dry +features but, however all other feelings may be withered in +a woman's nature, there is always one bright smiling spot in +the desert of her heart, and that is the shrine of maternal +love. "I forgive you. What I was saying, Villefort, was, +that the Bonapartists had not our sincerity, enthusiasm, or +devotion." +"They had, however, what supplied the place of those fine +qualities," replied the young man, "and that was fanaticism. +Napoleon is the Mahomet of the West, and is worshipped by +his commonplace but ambitions followers, not only as a +leader and lawgiver, but also as the personification of +equality." +"He" cried the marquise "Napoleon the type of equality +For mercy's sake, then, what would you call Robespierre? +Come, come, do not strip the latter of his just rights to +bestow them on the Corsican, who, to my mind, has usurped +quite enough." +"Nay, madame I would place each of these heroes on his +right pedestal that of Robespierre on his scaffold in the +Place Louis Quinze that of Napoleon on the column of the +Place Vendome. The only difference consists in the opposite +character of the equality advocated by these two men one is +the equality that elevates, the other is the equality that +degrades one brings a king within reach of the guillotine, +the other elevates the people to a level with the throne. +Observe," said Villefort, smiling, "I do not mean to deny +that both these men were revolutionary scoundrels, and that +the th Thermidor and the th of April, in the year , +were lucky days for France, worthy of being gratefully +remembered by every friend to monarchy and civil order and +that explains how it comes to pass that, fallen, as I trust +he is forever, Napoleon has still retained a train of +parasitical satellites. Still, marquise, it has been so with +other usurpers Cromwell, for instance, who was not half +so bad as Napoleon, had his partisans and advocates." +"Do you know, Villefort, that you are talking in a most +dreadfully revolutionary strain? But I excuse it, it is +impossible to expect the son of a Girondin to be free from a +small spice of the old leaven." A deep crimson suffused the +countenance of Villefort. +"'Tis true, madame," answered he, "that my father was a +Girondin, but he was not among the number of those who voted +for the king's death he was an equal sufferer with yourself +during the Reign of Terror, and had wellnigh lost his head +on the same scaffold on which your father perished." +"True," replied the marquise, without wincing in the +slightest degree at the tragic remembrance thus called up +"but bear in mind, if you please, that our respective +parents underwent persecution and proscription from +diametrically opposite principles in proof of which I may +remark, that while my family remained among the stanchest +adherents of the exiled princes, your father lost no time in +joining the new government and that while the Citizen +Noirtier was a Girondin, the Count Noirtier became a +senator." +"Dear mother," interposed Renee, "you know very well it was +agreed that all these disagreeable reminiscences should +forever be laid aside." +"Suffer me, also, madame," replied Villefort, "to add my +earnest request to Mademoiselle de SaintMeran's, that you +will kindly allow the veil of oblivion to cover and conceal +the past. What avails recrimination over matters wholly past +recall? For my own part, I have laid aside even the name of +my father, and altogether disown his political principles. +He was nay, probably may still be a Bonapartist, and +is called Noirtier I, on the contrary, am a stanch +royalist, and style myself de Villefort. Let what may remain +of revolutionary sap exhaust itself and die away with the +old trunk, and condescend only to regard the young shoot +which has started up at a distance from the parent tree, +without having the power, any more than the wish, to +separate entirely from the stock from which it sprung." +"Bravo, Villefort" cried the marquis "excellently well +said Come, now, I have hopes of obtaining what I have been +for years endeavoring to persuade the marquise to promise +namely, a perfect amnesty and forgetfulness of the past." +"With all my heart," replied the marquise "let the past be +forever forgotten. I promise you it affords me as little +pleasure to revive it as it does you. All I ask is, that +Villefort will be firm and inflexible for the future in his +political principles. Remember, also, Villefort, that we +have pledged ourselves to his majesty for your fealty and +strict loyalty, and that at our recommendation the king +consented to forget the past, as I do" and here she +extended to him her hand "as I now do at your entreaty. +But bear in mind, that should there fall in your way any one +guilty of conspiring against the government, you will be so +much the more bound to visit the offence with rigorous +punishment, as it is known you belong to a suspected +family." +"Alas, madame," returned Villefort, "my profession, as well +as the times in which we live, compels me to be severe. I +have already successfully conducted several public +prosecutions, and brought the offenders to merited +punishment. But we have not done with the thing yet." +"Do you, indeed, think so?" inquired the marquise. +"I am, at least, fearful of it. Napoleon, in the Island of +Elba, is too near France, and his proximity keeps up the +hopes of his partisans. Marseilles is filled with halfpay +officers, who are daily, under one frivolous pretext or +other, getting up quarrels with the royalists from hence +arise continual and fatal duels among the higher classes of +persons, and assassinations in the lower." +"You have heard, perhaps," said the Comte de Salvieux, one +of M. de SaintMeran's oldest friends, and chamberlain to +the Comte d'Artois, "that the Holy Alliance purpose removing +him from thence?" +"Yes they were talking about it when we left Paris," said +M. de SaintMeran "and where is it decided to transfer +him?" +"To Saint Helena." +"For heaven's sake, where is that?" asked the marquise. +"An island situated on the other side of the equator, at +least two thousand leagues from here," replied the count. +"So much the better. As Villefort observes, it is a great +act of folly to have left such a man between Corsica, where +he was born, and Naples, of which his brotherinlaw is +king, and face to face with Italy, the sovereignty of which +he coveted for his son." +"Unfortunately," said Villefort, "there are the treaties of +, and we cannot molest Napoleon without breaking those +compacts." +"Oh, well, we shall find some way out of it," responded M. +de Salvieux. "There wasn't any trouble over treaties when it +was a question of shooting the poor Duc d'Enghien." +"Well," said the marquise, "it seems probable that, by the +aid of the Holy Alliance, we shall be rid of Napoleon and +we must trust to the vigilance of M. de Villefort to purify +Marseilles of his partisans. The king is either a king or no +king if he be acknowledged as sovereign of France, he +should be upheld in peace and tranquillity and this can +best be effected by employing the most inflexible agents to +put down every attempt at conspiracy 'tis the best and +surest means of preventing mischief." +"Unfortunately, madame," answered Villefort, "the strong arm +of the law is not called upon to interfere until the evil +has taken place." +"Then all he has got to do is to endeavor to repair it." +"Nay, madame, the law is frequently powerless to effect +this all it can do is to avenge the wrong done." +"Oh, M. de Villefort," cried a beautiful young creature, +daughter to the Comte de Salvieux, and the cherished friend +of Mademoiselle de SaintMeran, "do try and get up some +famous trial while we are at Marseilles. I never was in a +lawcourt I am told it is so very amusing" +"Amusing, certainly," replied the young man, "inasmuch as, +instead of shedding tears as at the fictitious tale of woe +produced at a theatre, you behold in a lawcourt a case of +real and genuine distress a drama of life. The prisoner +whom you there see pale, agitated, and alarmed, instead of +as is the case when a curtain falls on a tragedy going +home to sup peacefully with his family, and then retiring to +rest, that he may recommence his mimic woes on the morrow, +is removed from your sight merely to be reconducted to +his prison and delivered up to the executioner. I leave you +to judge how far your nerves are calculated to bear you +through such a scene. Of this, however, be assured, that +should any favorable opportunity present itself, I will not +fail to offer you the choice of being present." +"For shame, M. de Villefort" said Renee, becoming quite +pale "don't you see how you are frightening us? and yet +you laugh." +"What would you have? 'Tis like a duel. I have already +recorded sentence of death, five or six times, against the +movers of political conspiracies, and who can say how many +daggers may be ready sharpened, and only waiting a favorable +opportunity to be buried in my heart?" +"Gracious heavens, M. de Villefort," said Renee, becoming +more and more terrified "you surely are not in earnest." +"Indeed I am," replied the young magistrate with a smile +"and in the interesting trial that young lady is anxious to +witness, the case would only be still more aggravated. +Suppose, for instance, the prisoner, as is more than +probable, to have served under Napoleon well, can you +expect for an instant, that one accustomed, at the word of +his commander, to rush fearlessly on the very bayonets of +his foe, will scruple more to drive a stiletto into the +heart of one he knows to be his personal enemy, than to +slaughter his fellowcreatures, merely because bidden to do +so by one he is bound to obey? Besides, one requires the +excitement of being hateful in the eyes of the accused, in +order to lash one's self into a state of sufficient +vehemence and power. I would not choose to see the man +against whom I pleaded smile, as though in mockery of my +words. No my pride is to see the accused pale, agitated, +and as though beaten out of all composure by the fire of my +eloquence." Renee uttered a smothered exclamation. +"Bravo" cried one of the guests "that is what I call +talking to some purpose." +"Just the person we require at a time like the present," +said a second. +"What a splendid business that last case of yours was, my +dear Villefort" remarked a third "I mean the trial of the +man for murdering his father. Upon my word, you killed him +ere the executioner had laid his hand upon him." +"Oh, as for parricides, and such dreadful people as that," +interposed Renee, "it matters very little what is done to +them but as regards poor unfortunate creatures whose only +crime consists in having mixed themselves up in political +intrigues" +"Why, that is the very worst offence they could possibly +commit for, don't you see, Renee, the king is the father of +his people, and he who shall plot or contrive aught against +the life and safety of the parent of thirtytwo millions of +souls, is a parricide upon a fearfully great scale?" +"I don't know anything about that," replied Renee "but, M. +de Villefort, you have promised me have you not? +always to show mercy to those I plead for." +"Make yourself quite easy on that point," answered +Villefort, with one of his sweetest smiles "you and I will +always consult upon our verdicts." +"My love," said the marquise, "attend to your doves, your +lapdogs, and embroidery, but do not meddle with what you do +not understand. Nowadays the military profession is in +abeyance and the magisterial robe is the badge of honor. +There is a wise Latin proverb that is very much in point." +"Cedant arma togae," said Villefort with a bow. +"I cannot speak Latin," responded the marquise. +"Well," said Renee, "I cannot help regretting you had not +chosen some other profession than your own a physician, +for instance. Do you know I always felt a shudder at the +idea of even a destroying angel?" +"Dear, good Renee," whispered Villefort, as he gazed with +unutterable tenderness on the lovely speaker. +"Let us hope, my child," cried the marquis, "that M. de +Villefort may prove the moral and political physician of +this province if so, he will have achieved a noble work." +"And one which will go far to efface the recollection of his +father's conduct," added the incorrigible marquise. +"Madame," replied Villefort, with a mournful smile, "I have +already had the honor to observe that my father has at +least, I hope so abjured his past errors, and that he is, +at the present moment, a firm and zealous friend to religion +and order a better royalist, possibly, than his son for +he has to atone for past dereliction, while I have no other +impulse than warm, decided preference and conviction." +Having made this wellturned speech, Villefort looked +carefully around to mark the effect of his oratory, much as +he would have done had he been addressing the bench in open +court. +"Do you know, my dear Villefort," cried the Comte de +Salvieux, "that is exactly what I myself said the other day +at the Tuileries, when questioned by his majesty's principal +chamberlain touching the singularity of an alliance between +the son of a Girondin and the daughter of an officer of the +Duc de Conde and I assure you he seemed fully to comprehend +that this mode of reconciling political differences was +based upon sound and excellent principles. Then the king, +who, without our suspecting it, had overheard our +conversation, interrupted us by saying, "Villefort' +observe that the king did not pronounce the word Noirtier, +but, on the contrary, placed considerable emphasis on that +of Villefort "Villefort,' said his majesty, "is a young +man of great judgment and discretion, who will be sure to +make a figure in his profession I like him much, and it +gave me great pleasure to hear that he was about to become +the soninlaw of the Marquis and Marquise de SaintMeran. I +should myself have recommended the match, had not the noble +marquis anticipated my wishes by requesting my consent to +it.'" +"Is it possible the king could have condescended so far as +to express himself so favorably of me?" asked the enraptured +Villefort. +"I give you his very words and if the marquis chooses to be +candid, he will confess that they perfectly agree with what +his majesty said to him, when he went six months ago to +consult him upon the subject of your espousing his +daughter." +"That is true," answered the marquis. +"How much do I owe this gracious prince What is there I +would not do to evince my earnest gratitude" +"That is right," cried the marquise. "I love to see you +thus. Now, then, were a conspirator to fall into your hands, +he would be most welcome." +"For my part, dear mother." interposed Renee, "I trust your +wishes will not prosper, and that Providence will only +permit petty offenders, poor debtors, and miserable cheats +to fall into M. de Villefort's hands, then I shall be +contented." +"Just the same as though you prayed that a physician might +only be called upon to prescribe for headaches, measles, and +the stings of wasps, or any other slight affection of the +epidermis. If you wish to see me the king's attorney, you +must desire for me some of those violent and dangerous +diseases from the cure of which so much honor redounds to +the physician." +At this moment, and as though the utterance of Villefort's +wish had sufficed to effect its accomplishment, a servant +entered the room, and whispered a few words in his ear. +Villefort immediately rose from table and quitted the room +upon the plea of urgent business he soon, however, +returned, his whole face beaming with delight. Renee +regarded him with fond affection and certainly his handsome +features, lit up as they then were with more than usual fire +and animation, seemed formed to excite the innocent +admiration with which she gazed on her graceful and +intelligent lover. +"You were wishing just now," said Villefort, addressing her, +"that I were a doctor instead of a lawyer. Well, I at least +resemble the disciples of Esculapius in one thing that of +not being able to call a day my own, not even that of my +betrothal." +"And wherefore were you called away just now?" asked +Mademoiselle de SaintMeran, with an air of deep interest. +"For a very serious matter, which bids fair to make work for +the executioner." +"How dreadful" exclaimed Renee, turning pale. +"Is it possible?" burst simultaneously from all who were +near enough to the magistrate to hear his words. +"Why, if my information prove correct, a sort of Bonaparte +conspiracy has just been discovered." +"Can I believe my ears?" cried the marquise. +"I will read you the letter containing the accusation, at +least," said Villefort +""The king's attorney is informed by a friend to the throne +and the religions institutions of his country, that one +named Edmond Dantes, mate of the ship Pharaon, this day +arrived from Smyrna, after having touched at Naples and +PortoFerrajo, has been the bearer of a letter from Murat to +the usurper, and again taken charge of another letter from +the usurper to the Bonapartist club in Paris. Ample +corroboration of this statement may be obtained by arresting +the abovementioned Edmond Dantes, who either carries the +letter for Paris about with him, or has it at his father's +abode. Should it not be found in the possession of father or +son, then it will assuredly be discovered in the cabin +belonging to the said Dantes on board the Pharaon.'" +"But," said Renee, "this letter, which, after all, is but an +anonymous scrawl, is not even addressed to you, but to the +king's attorney." +"True but that gentleman being absent, his secretary, by +his orders, opened his letters thinking this one of +importance, he sent for me, but not finding me, took upon +himself to give the necessary orders for arresting the +accused party." +"Then the guilty person is absolutely in custody?" said the +marquise. +"Nay, dear mother, say the accused person. You know we +cannot yet pronounce him guilty." +"He is in safe custody," answered Villefort "and rely upon +it, if the letter is found, he will not be likely to be +trusted abroad again, unless he goes forth under the +especial protection of the headsman." +"And where is the unfortunate being?" asked Renee. +"He is at my house." +"Come, come, my friend," interrupted the marquise, "do not +neglect your duty to linger with us. You are the king's +servant, and must go wherever that service calls you." +"O Villefort" cried Renee, clasping her hands, and looking +towards her lover with piteous earnestness, "be merciful on +this the day of our betrothal." +The young man passed round to the side of the table where +the fair pleader sat, and leaning over her chair said +tenderly, +"To give you pleasure, my sweet Renee, I promise to show all +the lenity in my power but if the charges brought against +this Bonapartist hero prove correct, why, then, you really +must give me leave to order his head to be cut off." Renee +shuddered. +"Never mind that foolish girl, Villefort," said the +marquise. "She will soon get over these things." So saying, +Madame de SaintMeran extended her dry bony hand to +Villefort, who, while imprinting a soninlaw's respectful +salute on it, looked at Renee, as much as to say, "I must +try and fancy 'tis your dear hand I kiss, as it should have +been." +"These are mournful auspices to accompany a betrothal," +sighed poor Renee. +"Upon my word, child" exclaimed the angry marquise, "your +folly exceeds all bounds. I should be glad to know what +connection there can possibly be between your sickly +sentimentality and the affairs of the state" +"O mother" murmured Renee. +"Nay, madame, I pray you pardon this little traitor. I +promise you that to make up for her want of loyalty, I will +be most inflexibly severe" then casting an expressive +glance at his betrothed, which seemed to say, "Fear not, for +your dear sake my justice shall be tempered with mercy," and +receiving a sweet and approving smile in return, Villefort +quitted the room. +Chapter +The Examination. +No sooner had Villefort left the salon, than he assumed the +grave air of a man who holds the balance of life and death +in his hands. Now, in spite of the mobility of his +countenance, the command of which, like a finished actor, he +had carefully studied before the glass, it was by no means +easy for him to assume an air of judicial severity. Except +the recollection of the line of politics his father had +adopted, and which might interfere, unless he acted with the +greatest prudence, with his own career, Gerard de Villefort +was as happy as a man could be. Already rich, he held a high +official situation, though only twentyseven. He was about +to marry a young and charming woman, whom he loved, not +passionately, but reasonably, as became a deputy attorney of +the king and besides her personal attractions, which were +very great, Mademoiselle de SaintMeran's family possessed +considerable political influence, which they would, of +course, exert in his favor. The dowry of his wife amounted +to fifty thousand crowns, and he had, besides, the prospect +of seeing her fortune increased to half a million at her +father's death. These considerations naturally gave +Villefort a feeling of such complete felicity that his mind +was fairly dazzled in its contemplation. +At the door he met the commissary of police, who was waiting +for him. The sight of this officer recalled Villefort from +the third heaven to earth he composed his face, as we have +before described, and said, "I have read the letter, sir, +and you have acted rightly in arresting this man now inform +me what you have discovered concerning him and the +conspiracy." +"We know nothing as yet of the conspiracy, monsieur all the +papers found have been sealed up and placed on your desk. +The prisoner himself is named Edmond Dantes, mate on board +the threemaster the Pharaon, trading in cotton with +Alexandria and Smyrna, and belonging to Morrel Son, of +Marseilles." +"Before he entered the merchant service, had he ever served +in the marines?" +"Oh, no, monsieur, he is very young." +"How old?" +"Nineteen or twenty at the most." +At this moment, and as Villefort had arrived at the corner +of the Rue des Conseils, a man, who seemed to have been +waiting for him, approached it was M. Morrel. +"Ah, M. de Villefort," cried he, "I am delighted to see you. +Some of your people have committed the strangest mistake +they have just arrested Edmond Dantes, mate of my vessel." +"I know it, monsieur," replied Villefort, "and I am now +going to examine him." +"Oh," said Morrel, carried away by his friendship, "you do +not know him, and I do. He is the most estimable, the most +trustworthy creature in the world, and I will venture to +say, there is not a better seaman in all the merchant +service. Oh, M. de Villefort, I beseech your indulgence for +him." +Villefort, as we have seen, belonged to the aristocratic +party at Marseilles, Morrel to the plebeian the first was a +royalist, the other suspected of Bonapartism. Villefort +looked disdainfully at Morrel, and replied, +"You are aware, monsieur, that a man may be estimable and +trustworthy in private life, and the best seaman in the +merchant service, and yet be, politically speaking, a great +criminal. Is it not true?" +The magistrate laid emphasis on these words, as if he wished +to apply them to the owner himself, while his eyes seemed to +plunge into the heart of one who, interceding for another, +had himself need of indulgence. Morrel reddened, for his own +conscience was not quite clear on politics besides, what +Dantes had told him of his interview with the grandmarshal, +and what the emperor had said to him, embarrassed him. He +replied, however, +"I entreat you, M. de Villefort, be, as you always are, kind +and equitable, and give him back to us soon." This give us +sounded revolutionary in the deputy's ears. +"Ah, ah," murmured he, "is Dantes then a member of some +Carbonari society, that his protector thus employs the +collective form? He was, if I recollect, arrested in a +tavern, in company with a great many others." Then he added, +"Monsieur, you may rest assured I shall perform my duty +impartially, and that if he be innocent you shall not have +appealed to me in vain should he, however, be guilty, in +this present epoch, impunity would furnish a dangerous +example, and I must do my duty." +As he had now arrived at the door of his own house, which +adjoined the Palais de Justice, he entered, after having, +coldly saluted the shipowner, who stood, as if petrified, on +the spot where Villefort had left him. The antechamber was +full of police agents and gendarmes, in the midst of whom, +carefully watched, but calm and smiling, stood the prisoner. +Villefort traversed the antechamber, cast a side glance at +Dantes, and taking a packet which a gendarme offered him, +disappeared, saying, "Bring in the prisoner." +Rapid as had been Villefort's glance, it had served to give +him an idea of the man he was about to interrogate. He had +recognized intelligence in the high forehead, courage in the +dark eye and bent brow, and frankness in the thick lips that +showed a set of pearly teeth. Villefort's first impression +was favorable but he had been so often warned to mistrust +first impulses, that he applied the maxim to the impression, +forgetting the difference between the two words. He stifled, +therefore, the feelings of compassion that were rising, +composed his features, and sat down, grim and sombre, at his +desk. An instant after Dantes entered. He was pale, but calm +and collected, and saluting his judge with easy politeness, +looked round for a seat, as if he had been in M. Morrel's +salon. It was then that he encountered for the first time +Villefort's look, that look peculiar to the magistrate, +who, while seeming to read the thoughts of others, betrays +nothing of his own. +"Who and what are you?" demanded Villefort, turning over a +pile of papers, containing information relative to the +prisoner, that a police agent had given to him on his entry, +and that, already, in an hour's time, had swelled to +voluminous proportions, thanks to the corrupt espionage of +which "the accused" is always made the victim. +"My name is Edmond Dantes," replied the young man calmly "I +am mate of the Pharaon, belonging to Messrs. Morrel Son." +"Your age?" continued Villefort. +"Nineteen," returned Dantes. +"What were you doing at the moment you were arrested?" +"I was at the festival of my marriage, monsieur," said the +young man, his voice slightly tremulous, so great was the +contrast between that happy moment and the painful ceremony +he was now undergoing so great was the contrast between the +sombre aspect of M. de Villefort and the radiant face of +Mercedes. +"You were at the festival of your marriage?" said the +deputy, shuddering in spite of himself. +"Yes, monsieur I am on the point of marrying a young girl I +have been attached to for three years." Villefort, impassive +as he was, was struck with this coincidence and the +tremulous voice of Dantes, surprised in the midst of his +happiness, struck a sympathetic chord in his own bosom he +also was on the point of being married, and he was summoned +from his own happiness to destroy that of another. "This +philosophic reflection," thought he, "will make a great +sensation at M. de SaintMeran's" and he arranged mentally, +while Dantes awaited further questions, the antithesis by +which orators often create a reputation for eloquence. When +this speech was arranged, Villefort turned to Dantes. +"Go on, sir," said he. +"What would you have me say?" +"Give all the information in your power." +"Tell me on which point you desire information, and I will +tell all I know only," added he, with a smile, "I warn you +I know very little." +"Have you served under the usurper?" +"I was about to be mustered into the Royal Marines when he +fell." +"It is reported your political opinions are extreme," said +Villefort, who had never heard anything of the kind, but was +not sorry to make this inquiry, as if it were an accusation. +"My political opinions" replied Dantes. "Alas, sir, I never +had any opinions. I am hardly nineteen I know nothing I +have no part to play. If I obtain the situation I desire, I +shall owe it to M. Morrel. Thus all my opinions I will +not say public, but private are confined to these three +sentiment, I love my father, I respect M. Morrel, and I +adore Mercedes. This, sir, is all I can tell you, and you +see how uninteresting it is." As Dantes spoke, Villefort +gazed at his ingenuous and open countenance, and recollected +the words of Renee, who, without knowing who the culprit +was, had besought his indulgence for him. With the deputy's +knowledge of crime and criminals, every word the young man +uttered convinced him more and more of his innocence. This +lad, for he was scarcely a man, simple, natural, eloquent +with that eloquence of the heart never found when sought +for full of affection for everybody, because he was happy, +and because happiness renders even the wicked good +extended his affection even to his judge, spite of +Villefort's severe look and stern accent. Dantes seemed full +of kindness. +"Pardieu," said Villefort, "he is a noble fellow. I hope I +shall gain Renee's favor easily by obeying the first command +she ever imposed on me. I shall have at least a pressure of +the hand in public, and a sweet kiss in private." Full of +this idea, Villefort's face became so joyous, that when he +turned to Dantes, the latter, who had watched the change on +his physiognomy, was smiling also. +"Sir," said Villefort, "have you any enemies, at least, that +you know." +"I have enemies?" replied Dantes "my position is not +sufficiently elevated for that. As for my disposition, that +is, perhaps, somewhat too hasty but I have striven to +repress it. I have had ten or twelve sailors under me, and +if you question them, they will tell you that they love and +respect me, not as a father, for I am too young, but as an +elder brother." +"But you may have excited jealousy. You are about to become +captain at nineteen an elevated post you are about to +marry a pretty girl, who loves you and these two pieces of +good fortune may have excited the envy of some one." +"You are right you know men better than I do, and what you +say may possibly be the case, I confess but if such persons +are among my acquaintances I prefer not to know it, because +then I should be forced to hate them." +"You are wrong you should always strive to see clearly +around you. You seem a worthy young man I will depart from +the strict line of my duty to aid you in discovering the +author of this accusation. Here is the paper do you know +the writing?" As he spoke, Villefort drew the letter from +his pocket, and presented it to Dantes. Dantes read it. A +cloud passed over his brow as he said, +"No, monsieur, I do not know the writing, and yet it is +tolerably plain. Whoever did it writes well. I am very +fortunate," added he, looking gratefully at Villefort, "to +be examined by such a man as you for this envious person is +a real enemy." And by the rapid glance that the young man's +eyes shot forth, Villefort saw how much energy lay hid +beneath this mildness. +"Now," said the deputy, "answer me frankly, not as a +prisoner to a judge, but as one man to another who takes an +interest in him, what truth is there in the accusation +contained in this anonymous letter?" And Villefort threw +disdainfully on his desk the letter Dantes had just given +back to him. +"None at all. I will tell you the real facts. I swear by my +honor as a sailor, by my love for Mercedes, by the life of +my father" +"Speak, monsieur," said Villefort. Then, internally, "If +Renee could see me, I hope she would be satisfied, and would +no longer call me a decapitator." +"Well, when we quitted Naples, Captain Leclere was attacked +with a brain fever. As we had no doctor on board, and he was +so anxious to arrive at Elba, that he would not touch at any +other port, his disorder rose to such a height, that at the +end of the third day, feeling he was dying, he called me to +him. "My dear Dantes,' said he, "swear to perform what I am +going to tell you, for it is a matter of the deepest +importance.' +""I swear, captain,' replied I. +""Well, as after my death the command devolves on you as +mate, assume the command, and bear up for the Island of +Elba, disembark at PortoFerrajo, ask for the grandmarshal, +give him this letter perhaps they will give you another +letter, and charge you with a commission. You will +accomplish what I was to have done, and derive all the honor +and profit from it.' +""I will do it, captain but perhaps I shall not be admitted +to the grand marshal's presence as easily as you expect?' +""Here is a ring that will obtain audience of him, and +remove every difficulty,' said the captain. At these words +he gave me a ring. It was time two hours after he was +delirious the next day he died." +"And what did you do then?" +"What I ought to have done, and what every one would have +done in my place. Everywhere the last requests of a dying +man are sacred but with a sailor the last requests of his +superior are commands. I sailed for the Island of Elba, +where I arrived the next day I ordered everybody to remain +on board, and went on shore alone. As I had expected, I +found some difficulty in obtaining access to the +grandmarshal but I sent the ring I had received from the +captain to him, and was instantly admitted. He questioned me +concerning Captain Leclere's death and, as the latter had +told me, gave me a letter to carry on to a person in Paris. +I undertook it because it was what my captain had bade me +do. I landed here, regulated the affairs of the vessel, and +hastened to visit my affianced bride, whom I found more +lovely than ever. Thanks to M. Morrel, all the forms were +got over in a word I was, as I told you, at my +marriagefeast and I should have been married in an hour, +and tomorrow I intended to start for Paris, had I not been +arrested on this charge which you as well as I now see to be +unjust." +"Ah," said Villefort, "this seems to me the truth. If you +have been culpable, it was imprudence, and this imprudence +was in obedience to the orders of your captain. Give up this +letter you have brought from Elba, and pass your word you +will appear should you be required, and go and rejoin your +friends. +"I am free, then, sir?" cried Dantes joyfully. +"Yes but first give me this letter." +"You have it already, for it was taken from me with some +others which I see in that packet." +"Stop a moment," said the deputy, as Dantes took his hat and +gloves. "To whom is it addressed?" +"To Monsieur Noirtier, Rue CoqHeron, Paris." Had a +thunderbolt fallen into the room, Villefort could not have +been more stupefied. He sank into his seat, and hastily +turning over the packet, drew forth the fatal letter, at +which he glanced with an expression of terror. +"M. Noirtier, Rue CoqHeron, No. ," murmured he, growing +still paler. +"Yes," said Dantes "do you know him?" +"No," replied Villefort "a faithful servant of the king +does not know conspirators." +"It is a conspiracy, then?" asked Dantes, who after +believing himself free, now began to feel a tenfold alarm. +"I have, however, already told you, sir, I was entirely +ignorant of the contents of the letter." +"Yes but you knew the name of the person to whom it was +addressed," said Villefort. +"I was forced to read the address to know to whom to give +it." +"Have you shown this letter to any one?" asked Villefort, +becoming still more pale. +"To no one, on my honor." +"Everybody is ignorant that you are the bearer of a letter +from the Island of Elba, and addressed to M. Noirtier?" +"Everybody, except the person who gave it to me." +"And that was too much, far too much," murmured Villefort. +Villefort's brow darkened more and more, his white lips and +clinched teeth filled Dantes with apprehension. After +reading the letter, Villefort covered his face with his +hands. +"Oh," said Dantes timidly, "what is the matter?" Villefort +made no answer, but raised his head at the expiration of a +few seconds, and again perused the letter. +"And you say that you are ignorant of the contents of this +letter?" +"I give you my word of honor, sir," said Dantes "but what +is the matter? You are ill shall I ring for assistance? +shall I call?" +"No," said Villefort, rising hastily "stay where you are. +It is for me to give orders here, and not you." +"Monsieur," replied Dantes proudly, "it was only to summon +assistance for you." +"I want none it was a temporary indisposition. Attend to +yourself answer me." Dantes waited, expecting a question, +but in vain. Villefort fell back on his chair, passed his +hand over his brow, moist with perspiration, and, for the +third time, read the letter. +"Oh, if he knows the contents of this" murmured he, "and +that Noirtier is the father of Villefort, I am lost" And he +fixed his eyes upon Edmond as if he would have penetrated +his thoughts. +"Oh, it is impossible to doubt it," cried he, suddenly. +"In heaven's name" cried the unhappy young man, "if you +doubt me, question me I will answer you." Villefort made a +violent effort, and in a tone he strove to render firm, +"Sir," said he, "I am no longer able, as I had hoped, to +restore you immediately to liberty before doing so, I must +consult the trial justice what my own feeling is you +already know." +"Oh, monsieur," cried Dantes, "you have been rather a friend +than a judge." +"Well, I must detain you some time longer, but I will strive +to make it as short as possible. The principal charge +against you is this letter, and you see" Villefort +approached the fire, cast it in, and waited until it was +entirely consumed. +"You see, I destroy it?" +"Oh," exclaimed Dantes, "you are goodness itself." +"Listen," continued Villefort "you can now have confidence +in me after what I have done." +"Oh, command, and I will obey." +"Listen this is not a command, but advice I give you." +"Speak, and I will follow your advice." +"I shall detain you until this evening in the Palais de +Justice. Should any one else interrogate you, say to him +what you have said to me, but do not breathe a word of this +letter." +"I promise." It was Villefort who seemed to entreat, and the +prisoner who reassured him. +"You see," continued he, glancing toward the grate, where +fragments of burnt paper fluttered in the flames, "the +letter is destroyed you and I alone know of its existence +should you, therefore, be questioned, deny all knowledge of +it deny it boldly, and you are saved." +"Be satisfied I will deny it." +"It was the only letter you had?" +"It was." +"Swear it." +"I swear it." +Villefort rang. A police agent entered. Villefort whispered +some words in his ear, to which the officer replied by a +motion of his head. +"Follow him," said Villefort to Dantes. Dantes saluted +Villefort and retired. Hardly had the door closed when +Villefort threw himself halffainting into a chair. +"Alas, alas," murmured he, "if the procureur himself had +been at Marseilles I should have been ruined. This accursed +letter would have destroyed all my hopes. Oh, my father, +must your past career always interfere with my successes?" +Suddenly a light passed over his face, a smile played round +his set mouth, and his haggard eyes were fixed in thought. +"This will do," said he, "and from this letter, which might +have ruined me, I will make my fortune. Now to the work I +have in hand." And after having assured himself that the +prisoner was gone, the deputy procureur hastened to the +house of his betrothed. +Chapter +The Chateau D'If. +The commissary of police, as he traversed the antechamber, +made a sign to two gendarmes, who placed themselves one on +Dantes' right and the other on his left. A door that +communicated with the Palais de Justice was opened, and they +went through a long range of gloomy corridors, whose +appearance might have made even the boldest shudder. The +Palais de Justice communicated with the prison, a sombre +edifice, that from its grated windows looks on the +clocktower of the Accoules. After numberless windings, +Dantes saw a door with an iron wicket. The commissary took +up an iron mallet and knocked thrice, every blow seeming to +Dantes as if struck on his heart. The door opened, the two +gendarmes gently pushed him forward, and the door closed +with a loud sound behind him. The air he inhaled was no +longer pure, but thick and mephitic, he was in prison. He +was conducted to a tolerably neat chamber, but grated and +barred, and its appearance, therefore, did not greatly alarm +him besides, the words of Villefort, who seemed to interest +himself so much, resounded still in his ears like a promise +of freedom. It was four o'clock when Dantes was placed in +this chamber. It was, as we have said, the st of March, and +the prisoner was soon buried in darkness. The obscurity +augmented the acuteness of his hearing at the slightest +sound he rose and hastened to the door, convinced they were +about to liberate him, but the sound died away, and Dantes +sank again into his seat. At last, about ten o'clock, and +just as Dantes began to despair, steps were heard in the +corridor, a key turned in the lock, the bolts creaked, the +massy oaken door flew open, and a flood of light from two +torches pervaded the apartment. By the torchlight Dantes saw +the glittering sabres and carbines of four gendarmes. He had +advanced at first, but stopped at the sight of this display +of force. +"Are you come to fetch me?" asked he. +"Yes," replied a gendarme. +"By the orders of the deputy procureur?" +"I believe so." The conviction that they came from M. de +Villefort relieved all Dantes' apprehensions he advanced +calmly, and placed himself in the centre of the escort. A +carriage waited at the door, the coachman was on the box, +and a police officer sat beside him. +"Is this carriage for me?" said Dantes. +"It is for you," replied a gendarme. +Dantes was about to speak but feeling himself urged +forward, and having neither the power nor the intention to +resist, he mounted the steps, and was in an instant seated +inside between two gendarmes the two others took their +places opposite, and the carriage rolled heavily over the +stones. +The prisoner glanced at the windows they were grated he +had changed his prison for another that was conveying him he +knew not whither. Through the grating, however, Dantes saw +they were passing through the Rue Caisserie, and by the Rue +SaintLaurent and the Rue Taramis, to the port. Soon he saw +the lights of La Consigne. +The carriage stopped, the officer descended, approached the +guardhouse, a dozen soldiers came out and formed themselves +in order Dantes saw the reflection of their muskets by the +light of the lamps on the quay. +"Can all this force be summoned on my account?" thought he. +The officer opened the door, which was locked, and, without +speaking a word, answered Dantes' question for he saw +between the ranks of the soldiers a passage formed from the +carriage to the port. The two gendarmes who were opposite to +him descended first, then he was ordered to alight and the +gendarmes on each side of him followed his example. They +advanced towards a boat, which a customhouse officer held +by a chain, near the quay. +The soldiers looked at Dantes with an air of stupid +curiosity. In an instant he was placed in the sternsheets +of the boat, between the gendarmes, while the officer +stationed himself at the bow a shove sent the boat adrift, +and four sturdy oarsmen impelled it rapidly towards the +Pilon. At a shout from the boat, the chain that closes the +mouth of the port was lowered and in a second they were, as +Dantes knew, in the Frioul and outside the inner harbor. +The prisoner's first feeling was of joy at again breathing +the pure air for air is freedom but he soon sighed, for +he passed before La Reserve, where he had that morning been +so happy, and now through the open windows came the laughter +and revelry of a ball. Dantes folded his hands, raised his +eyes to heaven, and prayed fervently. +The boat continued her voyage. They had passed the Tete de +Morte, were now off the Anse du Pharo, and about to double +the battery. This manoeuvre was incomprehensible to Dantes. +"Whither are you taking me?" asked he. +"You will soon know." +"But still" +"We are forbidden to give you any explanation." Dantes, +trained in discipline, knew that nothing would be more +absurd than to question subordinates, who were forbidden to +reply and so he remained silent. +The most vague and wild thoughts passed through his mind. +The boat they were in could not make a long voyage there +was no vessel at anchor outside the harbor he thought, +perhaps, they were going to leave him on some distant point. +He was not bound, nor had they made any attempt to handcuff +him this seemed a good augury. Besides, had not the deputy, +who had been so kind to him, told him that provided he did +not pronounce the dreaded name of Noirtier, he had nothing +to apprehend? Had not Villefort in his presence destroyed +the fatal letter, the only proof against him? +He waited silently, striving to pierce through the darkness. +They had left the Ile Ratonneau, where the lighthouse stood, +on the right, and were now opposite the Point des Catalans. +It seemed to the prisoner that he could distinguish a +feminine form on the beach, for it was there Mercedes dwelt. +How was it that a presentiment did not warn Mercedes that +her lover was within three hundred yards of her? +One light alone was visible and Dantes saw that it came +from Mercedes' chamber. Mercedes was the only one awake in +the whole settlement. A loud cry could be heard by her. But +pride restrained him and he did not utter it. What would his +guards think if they heard him shout like a madman? +He remained silent, his eyes fixed upon the light the boat +went on, but the prisoner thought only of Mercedes. An +intervening elevation of land hid the light. Dantes turned +and perceived that they had got out to sea. While he had +been absorbed in thought, they had shipped their oars and +hoisted sail the boat was now moving with the wind. +In spite of his repugnance to address the guards, Dantes +turned to the nearest gendarme, and taking his hand, +"Comrade," said he, "I adjure you, as a Christian and a +soldier, to tell me where we are going. I am Captain Dantes, +a loyal Frenchman, thought accused of treason tell me where +you are conducting me, and I promise you on my honor I will +submit to my fate." +The gendarme looked irresolutely at his companion, who +returned for answer a sign that said, "I see no great harm +in telling him now," and the gendarme replied, +"You are a native of Marseilles, and a sailor, and yet you +do not know where you are going?" +"On my honor, I have no idea." +"Have you no idea whatever?" +"None at all." +"That is impossible." +"I swear to you it is true. Tell me, I entreat." +"But my orders." +"Your orders do not forbid your telling me what I must know +in ten minutes, in half an hour, or an hour. You see I +cannot escape, even if I intended." +"Unless you are blind, or have never been outside the +harbor, you must know." +"I do not." +"Look round you then." Dantes rose and looked forward, when +he saw rise within a hundred yards of him the black and +frowning rock on which stands the Chateau d'If. This gloomy +fortress, which has for more than three hundred years +furnished food for so many wild legends, seemed to Dantes +like a scaffold to a malefactor. +"The Chateau d'If?" cried he, "what are we going there for?" +The gendarme smiled. +"I am not going there to be imprisoned," said Dantes "it is +only used for political prisoners. I have committed no +crime. Are there any magistrates or judges at the Chateau +d'If?" +"There are only," said the gendarme, "a governor, a +garrison, turnkeys, and good thick walls. Come, come, do not +look so astonished, or you will make me think you are +laughing at me in return for my good nature." Dantes pressed +the gendarme's hand as though he would crush it. +"You think, then," said he, "that I am taken to the Chateau +d'If to be imprisoned there?" +"It is probable but there is no occasion to squeeze so +hard." +"Without any inquiry, without any formality?" +"All the formalities have been gone through the inquiry is +already made." +"And so, in spite of M. de Villefort's promises?" +"I do not know what M. de Villefort promised you," said the +gendarme, "but I know we are taking you to the Chateau d'If. +But what are you doing? Help, comrades, help" +By a rapid movement, which the gendarme's practiced eye had +perceived, Dantes sprang forward to precipitate himself into +the sea but four vigorous arms seized him as his feet +quitted the bottom of the boat. He fell back cursing with +rage. +"Good" said the gendarme, placing his knee on his chest +"believe softspoken gentlemen again Harkye, my friend, I +have disobeyed my first order, but I will not disobey the +second and if you move, I will blow your brains out." And +he levelled his carbine at Dantes, who felt the muzzle +against his temple. +For a moment the idea of struggling crossed his mind, and of +so ending the unexpected evil that had overtaken him. But he +bethought him of M. de Villefort's promise and, besides, +death in a boat from the hand of a gendarme seemed too +terrible. He remained motionless, but gnashing his teeth and +wringing his hands with fury. +At this moment the boat came to a landing with a violent +shock. One of the sailors leaped on shore, a cord creaked as +it ran through a pulley, and Dantes guessed they were at the +end of the voyage, and that they were mooring the boat. +His guards, taking him by the arms and coatcollar, forced +him to rise, and dragged him towards the steps that lead to +the gate of the fortress, while the police officer carrying +a musket with fixed bayonet followed behind. +Dantes made no resistance he was like a man in a dream he +saw soldiers drawn up on the embankment he knew vaguely +that he was ascending a flight of steps he was conscious +that he passed through a door, and that the door closed +behind him but all this indistinctly as through a mist. He +did not even see the ocean, that terrible barrier against +freedom, which the prisoners look upon with utter despair. +They halted for a minute, during which he strove to collect +his thoughts. He looked around he was in a court surrounded +by high walls he heard the measured tread of sentinels, and +as they passed before the light he saw the barrels of their +muskets shine. +They waited upwards of ten minutes. Certain Dantes could not +escape, the gendarmes released him. They seemed awaiting +orders. The orders came. +"Where is the prisoner?" said a voice. +"Here," replied the gendarmes. +"Let him follow me I will take him to his cell." +"Go" said the gendarmes, thrusting Dantes forward. +The prisoner followed his guide, who led him into a room +almost under ground, whose bare and reeking walls seemed as +though impregnated with tears a lamp placed on a stool +illumined the apartment faintly, and showed Dantes the +features of his conductor, an underjailer, illclothed, and +of sullen appearance. +"Here is your chamber for tonight," said he. "It is late, +and the governor is asleep. Tomorrow, perhaps, he may +change you. In the meantime there is bread, water, and fresh +straw and that is all a prisoner can wish for. Goodnight." +And before Dantes could open his mouth before he had +noticed where the jailer placed his bread or the water +before he had glanced towards the corner where the straw +was, the jailer disappeared, taking with him the lamp and +closing the door, leaving stamped upon the prisoner's mind +the dim reflection of the dripping walls of his dungeon. +Dantes was alone in darkness and in silence cold as the +shadows that he felt breathe on his burning forehead. With +the first dawn of day the jailer returned, with orders to +leave Dantes where he was. He found the prisoner in the same +position, as if fixed there, his eyes swollen with weeping. +He had passed the night standing, and without sleep. The +jailer advanced Dantes appeared not to perceive him. He +touched him on the shoulder. Edmond started. +"Have you not slept?" said the jailer. +"I do not know," replied Dantes. The jailer stared. +"Are you hungry?" continued he. +"I do not know." +"Do you wish for anything?" +"I wish to see the governor." The jailer shrugged his +shoulders and left the chamber. +Dantes followed him with his eyes, and stretched forth his +hands towards the open door but the door closed. All his +emotion then burst forth he cast himself on the ground, +weeping bitterly, and asking himself what crime he had +committed that he was thus punished. +The day passed thus he scarcely tasted food, but walked +round and round the cell like a wild beast in its cage. One +thought in particular tormented him namely, that during his +journey hither he had sat so still, whereas he might, a +dozen times, have plunged into the sea, and, thanks to his +powers of swimming, for which he was famous, have gained the +shore, concealed himself until the arrival of a Genoese or +Spanish vessel, escaped to Spain or Italy, where Mercedes +and his father could have joined him. He had no fears as to +how he should live good seamen are welcome everywhere. He +spoke Italian like a Tuscan, and Spanish like a Castilian +he would have been free, and happy with Mercedes and his +father, whereas he was now confined in the Chateau d'If, +that impregnable fortress, ignorant of the future destiny of +his father and Mercedes and all this because he had trusted +to Villefort's promise. The thought was maddening, and +Dantes threw himself furiously down on his straw. The next +morning at the same hour, the jailer came again. +"Well," said the jailer, "are you more reasonable today?" +Dantes made no reply. +"Come, cheer up is there anything that I can do for you?" +"I wish to see the governor." +"I have already told you it was impossible." +"Why so?" +"Because it is against prison rules, and prisoners must not +even ask for it." +"What is allowed, then?" +"Better fare, if you pay for it, books, and leave to walk +about." +"I do not want books, I am satisfied with my food, and do +not care to walk about but I wish to see the governor." +"If you worry me by repeating the same thing, I will not +bring you any more to eat." +"Well, then," said Edmond, "if you do not, I shall die of +hunger that is all." +The jailer saw by his tone he would be happy to die and as +every prisoner is worth ten sous a day to his jailer, he +replied in a more subdued tone. +"What you ask is impossible but if you are very well +behaved you will be allowed to walk about, and some day you +will meet the governor, and if he chooses to reply, that is +his affair." +"But," asked Dantes, "how long shall I have to wait?" +"Ah, a month six months a year." +"It is too long a time. I wish to see him at once." +"Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is +impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight." +"You think so?" +"Yes we have an instance here it was by always offering a +million of francs to the governor for his liberty that an +abbe became mad, who was in this chamber before you." +"How long has he left it?" +"Two years." +"Was he liberated, then?" +"No he was put in a dungeon." +"Listen" said Dantes. "I am not an abbe, I am not mad +perhaps I shall be, but at present, unfortunately, I am not. +I will make you another offer." +"What is that?" +"I do not offer you a million, because I have it not but I +will give you a hundred crowns if, the first time you go to +Marseilles, you will seek out a young girl named Mercedes, +at the Catalans, and give her two lines from me." +"If I took them, and were detected, I should lose my place, +which is worth two thousand francs a year so that I should +be a great fool to run such a risk for three hundred." +"Well," said Dantes, "mark this if you refuse at least to +tell Mercedes I am here, I will some day hide myself behind +the door, and when you enter I will dash out your brains +with this stool." +"Threats" cried the jailer, retreating and putting himself +on the defensive "you are certainly going mad. The abbe +began like you, and in three days you will be like him, mad +enough to tie up but, fortunately, there are dungeons +here." Dantes whirled the stool round his head. +"All right, all right," said the jailer "all right, since +you will have it so. I will send word to the governor." +"Very well," returned Dantes, dropping the stool and sitting +on it as if he were in reality mad. The jailer went out, and +returned in an instant with a corporal and four soldiers. +"By the governor's orders," said he, "conduct the prisoner +to the tier beneath." +"To the dungeon, then," said the corporal. +"Yes we must put the madman with the madmen." The soldiers +seized Dantes, who followed passively. +He descended fifteen steps, and the door of a dungeon was +opened, and he was thrust in. The door closed, and Dantes +advanced with outstretched hands until he touched the wall +he then sat down in the corner until his eyes became +accustomed to the darkness. The jailer was right Dantes +wanted but little of being utterly mad. +Chapter +The Evening of the Betrothal. +Villefort had, as we have said, hastened back to Madame de +SaintMeran's in the Place du Grand Cours, and on entering +the house found that the guests whom he had left at table +were taking coffee in the salon. Renee was, with all the +rest of the company, anxiously awaiting him, and his +entrance was followed by a general exclamation. +"Well, Decapitator, Guardian of the State, Royalist, Brutus, +what is the matter?" said one. "Speak out." +"Are we threatened with a fresh Reign of Terror?" asked +another. +"Has the Corsican ogre broken loose?" cried a third. +"Marquise," said Villefort, approaching his future +motherinlaw, "I request your pardon for thus leaving you. +Will the marquis honor me by a few moments' private +conversation?" +"Ah, it is really a serious matter, then?" asked the +marquis, remarking the cloud on Villefort's brow. +"So serious that I must take leave of you for a few days +so," added he, turning to Renee, "judge for yourself if it +be not important." +"You are going to leave us?" cried Renee, unable to hide her +emotion at this unexpected announcement. +"Alas," returned Villefort, "I must" +"Where, then, are you going?" asked the marquise. +"That, madame, is an official secret but if you have any +commissions for Paris, a friend of mine is going there +tonight, and will with pleasure undertake them." The guests +looked at each other. +"You wish to speak to me alone?" said the marquis. +"Yes, let us go to the library, please." The marquis took +his arm, and they left the salon. +"Well," asked he, as soon as they were by themselves, "tell +me what it is?" +"An affair of the greatest importance, that demands my +immediate presence in Paris. Now, excuse the indiscretion, +marquis, but have you any landed property?" +"All my fortune is in the funds seven or eight hundred +thousand francs." +"Then sell out sell out, marquis, or you will lose it +all." +"But how can I sell out here?" +"You have a broker, have you not?" +"Yes." +"Then give me a letter to him, and tell him to sell out +without an instant's delay, perhaps even now I shall arrive +too late." +"The deuce you say" replied the marquis, "let us lose no +time, then" +And, sitting down, he wrote a letter to his broker, ordering +him to sell out at the market price. +"Now, then," said Villefort, placing the letter in his +pocketbook, "I must have another" +"To whom?" +"To the king." +"To the king?" +"Yes." +"I dare not write to his majesty." +"I do not ask you to write to his majesty, but ask M. de +Salvieux to do so. I want a letter that will enable me to +reach the king's presence without all the formalities of +demanding an audience that would occasion a loss of +precious time." +"But address yourself to the keeper of the seals he has the +right of entry at the Tuileries, and can procure you +audience at any hour of the day or night." +"Doubtless but there is no occasion to divide the honors of +my discovery with him. The keeper would leave me in the +background, and take all the glory to himself. I tell you, +marquis, my fortune is made if I only reach the Tuileries +the first, for the king will not forget the service I do +him." +"In that case go and get ready. I will call Salvieux and +make him write the letter." +"Be as quick as possible, I must be on the road in a quarter +of an hour." +"Tell your coachman to stop at the door." +"You will present my excuses to the marquise and +Mademoiselle Renee, whom I leave on such a day with great +regret." +"You will find them both here, and can make your farewells +in person." +"A thousand thanks and now for the letter." +The marquis rang, a servant entered. +"Say to the Comte de Salvieux that I would like to see him." +"Now, then, go," said the marquis. +"I shall be gone only a few moments." +Villefort hastily quitted the apartment, but reflecting that +the sight of the deputy procureur running through the +streets would be enough to throw the whole city into +confusion, he resumed his ordinary pace. At his door he +perceived a figure in the shadow that seemed to wait for +him. It was Mercedes, who, hearing no news of her lover, had +come unobserved to inquire after him. +As Villefort drew near, she advanced and stood before him. +Dantes had spoken of Mercedes, and Villefort instantly +recognized her. Her beauty and high bearing surprised him, +and when she inquired what had become of her lover, it +seemed to him that she was the judge, and he the accused. +"The young man you speak of," said Villefort abruptly, "is a +great criminal. and I can do nothing for him, mademoiselle." +Mercedes burst into tears, and, as Villefort strove to pass +her, again addressed him. +"But, at least, tell me where he is, that I may know whether +he is alive or dead," said she. +"I do not know he is no longer in my hands," replied +Villefort. +And desirous of putting an end to the interview, he pushed +by her, and closed the door, as if to exclude the pain he +felt. But remorse is not thus banished like Virgil's +wounded hero, he carried the arrow in his wound, and, +arrived at the salon, Villefort uttered a sigh that was +almost a sob, and sank into a chair. +Then the first pangs of an unending torture seized upon his +heart. The man he sacrificed to his ambition, that innocent +victim immolated on the altar of his father's faults, +appeared to him pale and threatening, leading his affianced +bride by the hand, and bringing with him remorse, not such +as the ancients figured, furious and terrible, but that slow +and consuming agony whose pangs are intensified from hour to +hour up to the very moment of death. Then he had a moment's +hesitation. He had frequently called for capital punishment +on criminals, and owing to his irresistible eloquence they +had been condemned, and yet the slightest shadow of remorse +had never clouded Villefort's brow, because they were +guilty at least, he believed so but here was an innocent +man whose happiness he had destroyed in this case he was +not the judge, but the executioner. +As he thus reflected, he felt the sensation we have +described, and which had hitherto been unknown to him, arise +in his bosom, and fill him with vague apprehensions. It is +thus that a wounded man trembles instinctively at the +approach of the finger to his wound until it be healed, but +Villefort's was one of those that never close, or if they +do, only close to reopen more agonizing than ever. If at +this moment the sweet voice of Renee had sounded in his ears +pleading for mercy, or the fair Mercedes had entered and +said, "In the name of God, I conjure you to restore me my +affianced husband," his cold and trembling hands would have +signed his release but no voice broke the stillness of the +chamber, and the door was opened only by Villefort's valet, +who came to tell him that the travelling carriage was in +readiness. +Villefort rose, or rather sprang, from his chair, hastily +opened one of the drawers of his desk, emptied all the gold +it contained into his pocket, stood motionless an instant, +his hand pressed to his head, muttered a few inarticulate +sounds, and then, perceiving that his servant had placed his +cloak on his shoulders, he sprang into the carriage, +ordering the postilions to drive to M. de SaintMeran's. The +hapless Dantes was doomed. +As the marquis had promised, Villefort found the marquise +and Renee in waiting. He started when he saw Renee, for he +fancied she was again about to plead for Dantes. Alas, her +emotions were wholly personal she was thinking only of +Villefort's departure. +She loved Villefort, and he left her at the moment he was +about to become her husband. Villefort knew not when he +should return, and Renee, far from pleading for Dantes, +hated the man whose crime separated her from her lover. +Meanwhile what of Mercedes? She had met Fernand at the +corner of the Rue de la Loge she had returned to the +Catalans, and had despairingly cast herself on her couch. +Fernand, kneeling by her side, took her hand, and covered it +with kisses that Mercedes did not even feel. She passed the +night thus. The lamp went out for want of oil, but she paid +no heed to the darkness, and dawn came, but she knew not +that it was day. Grief had made her blind to all but one +object that was Edmond. +"Ah, you are there," said she, at length, turning towards +Fernand. +"I have not quitted you since yesterday," returned Fernand +sorrowfully. +M. Morrel had not readily given up the fight. He had learned +that Dantes had been taken to prison, and he had gone to all +his friends, and the influential persons of the city but +the report was already in circulation that Dantes was +arrested as a Bonapartist agent and as the most sanguine +looked upon any attempt of Napoleon to remount the throne as +impossible, he met with nothing but refusal, and had +returned home in despair, declaring that the matter was +serious and that nothing more could be done. +Caderousse was equally restless and uneasy, but instead of +seeking, like M. Morrel, to aid Dantes, he had shut himself +up with two bottles of black currant brandy, in the hope of +drowning reflection. But he did not succeed, and became too +intoxicated to fetch any more drink, and yet not so +intoxicated as to forget what had happened. With his elbows +on the table he sat between the two empty bottles, while +spectres danced in the light of the unsnuffed candle +spectres such as Hoffmann strews over his punchdrenched +pages, like black, fantastic dust. +Danglars alone was content and joyous he had got rid of +an enemy and made his own situation on the Pharaon secure. +Danglars was one of those men born with a pen behind the +ear, and an inkstand in place of a heart. Everything with +him was multiplication or subtraction. The life of a man was +to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when, by +taking it away, he could increase the sum total of his own +desires. He went to bed at his usual hour, and slept in +peace. +Villefort, after having received M. de Salvieux' letter, +embraced Renee, kissed the marquise's hand, and shaken that +of the marquis, started for Paris along the Aix road. +Old Dantes was dying with anxiety to know what had become of +Edmond. But we know very well what had become of Edmond. +Chapter +The King's Closet at the Tuileries. +We will leave Villefort on the road to Paris, travelling +thanks to trebled fees with all speed, and passing +through two or three apartments, enter at the Tuileries the +little room with the arched window, so well known as having +been the favorite closet of Napoleon and Louis XVIII., and +now of Louis Philippe. +There, seated before a walnut table he had brought with him +from Hartwell, and to which, from one of those fancies not +uncommon to great people, he was particularly attached, the +king, Louis XVIII., was carelessly listening to a man of +fifty or fiftytwo years of age, with gray hair, +aristocratic bearing, and exceedingly gentlemanly attire, +and meanwhile making a marginal note in a volume of +Gryphius's rather inaccurate, but much soughtafter, edition +of Horace a work which was much indebted to the sagacious +observations of the philosophical monarch. +"You say, sir" said the king. +"That I am exceedingly disquieted, sire." +"Really, have you had a vision of the seven fat kine and the +seven lean kine?" +"No, sire, for that would only betoken for us seven years of +plenty and seven years of scarcity and with a king as full +of foresight as your majesty, scarcity is not a thing to be +feared." +"Then of what other scourge are you afraid, my dear Blacas?" +"Sire, I have every reason to believe that a storm is +brewing in the south." +"Well, my dear duke," replied Louis XVIII., "I think you are +wrongly informed, and know positively that, on the contrary, +it is very fine weather in that direction." Man of ability +as he was, Louis XVIII. liked a pleasant jest. +"Sire," continued M. de Blacas, "if it only be to reassure a +faithful servant, will your majesty send into Languedoc, +Provence, and Dauphine, trusty men, who will bring you back +a faithful report as to the feeling in these three +provinces?" +"Caninus surdis," replied the king, continuing the +annotations in his Horace. +"Sire," replied the courtier, laughing, in order that he +might seem to comprehend the quotation, "your majesty may be +perfectly right in relying on the good feeling of France, +but I fear I am not altogether wrong in dreading some +desperate attempt." +"By whom?" +"By Bonaparte, or, at least, by his adherents." +"My dear Blacas," said the king, "you with your alarms +prevent me from working." +"And you, sire, prevent me from sleeping with your +security." +"Wait, my dear sir, wait a moment for I have such a +delightful note on the Pastor quum traheret wait, and I +will listen to you afterwards." +There was a brief pause, during which Louis XVIII. wrote, in +a hand as small as possible, another note on the margin of +his Horace, and then looking at the duke with the air of a +man who thinks he has an idea of his own, while he is only +commenting upon the idea of another, said, +"Go on, my dear duke, go on I listen." +"Sire," said Blacas, who had for a moment the hope of +sacrificing Villefort to his own profit, "I am compelled to +tell you that these are not mere rumors destitute of +foundation which thus disquiet me but a seriousminded man, +deserving all my confidence, and charged by me to watch over +the south" the duke hesitated as he pronounced these +words, "has arrived by post to tell me that a great peril +threatens the king, and so I hastened to you, sire." +"Mala ducis avi domum," continued Louis XVIII., still +annotating. +"Does your majesty wish me to drop the subject?" +"By no means, my dear duke but just stretch out your hand." +"Which?" +"Whichever you please there to the left." +"Here, sire?" +"I tell you to the left, and you are looking to the right I +mean on my left yes, there. You will find yesterday's +report of the minister of police. But here is M. Dandre +himself" and M. Dandre, announced by the +chamberlaininwaiting, entered. +"Come in," said Louis XVIII., with repressed smile, "come +in, Baron, and tell the duke all you know the latest news +of M. de Bonaparte do not conceal anything, however +serious, let us see, the Island of Elba is a volcano, and +we may expect to have issuing thence flaming and bristling +war bella, horrida bella." M. Dandre leaned very +respectfully on the back of a chair with his two hands, and +said, +"Has your majesty perused yesterday's report?" +"Yes, yes but tell the duke himself, who cannot find +anything, what the report contains give him the +particulars of what the usurper is doing in his islet." +"Monsieur," said the baron to the duke, "all the servants of +his majesty must approve of the latest intelligence which we +have from the Island of Elba. Bonaparte" M. Dandre looked +at Louis XVIII., who, employed in writing a note, did not +even raise his head. "Bonaparte," continued the baron, "is +mortally wearied, and passes whole days in watching his +miners at work at PortoLongone." +"And scratches himself for amusement," added the king. +"Scratches himself?" inquired the duke, "what does your +majesty mean?" +"Yes, indeed, my dear duke. Did you forget that this great +man, this hero, this demigod, is attacked with a malady of +the skin which worries him to death, prurigo?" +"And, moreover, my dear duke," continued the minister of +police, "we are almost assured that, in a very short time, +the usurper will be insane." +"Insane?" +"Raving mad his head becomes weaker. Sometimes he weeps +bitterly, sometimes laughs boisterously, at other time he +passes hours on the seashore, flinging stones in the water +and when the flint makes "duckanddrake' five or six times, +he appears as delighted as if he had gained another Marengo +or Austerlitz. Now, you must agree that these are +indubitable symptoms of insanity." +"Or of wisdom, my dear baron or of wisdom," said Louis +XVIII., laughing "the greatest captains of antiquity amused +themselves by casting pebbles into the ocean see +Plutarch's life of Scipio Africanus." +M. de Blacas pondered deeply between the confident monarch +and the truthful minister. Villefort, who did not choose to +reveal the whole secret, lest another should reap all the +benefit of the disclosure, had yet communicated enough to +cause him the greatest uneasiness. +"Well, well, Dandre," said Louis XVIII., "Blacas is not yet +convinced let us proceed, therefore, to the usurper's +conversion." The minister of police bowed. +"The usurper's conversion" murmured the duke, looking at +the king and Dandre, who spoke alternately, like Virgil's +shepherds. "The usurper converted" +"Decidedly, my dear duke." +"In what way converted?" +"To good principles. Tell him all about it, baron." +"Why, this is the way of it," said the minister, with the +gravest air in the world "Napoleon lately had a review, and +as two or three of his old veterans expressed a desire to +return to France, he gave them their dismissal, and exhorted +them to "serve the good king.' These were his own words, of +that I am certain." +"Well, Blacas, what think you of this?" inquired the king +triumphantly, and pausing for a moment from the voluminous +scholiast before him. +"I say, sire, that the minister of police is greatly +deceived or I am and as it is impossible it can be the +minister of police as he has the guardianship of the safety +and honor of your majesty, it is probable that I am in +error. However, sire, if I might advise, your majesty will +interrogate the person of whom I spoke to you, and I will +urge your majesty to do him this honor." +"Most willingly, duke under your auspices I will receive +any person you please, but you must not expect me to be too +confiding. Baron, have you any report more recent than this +dated the th February. this is the th of March?" +"No, sire, but I am hourly expecting one it may have +arrived since I left my office." +"Go thither, and if there be none well, well," continued +Louis XVIII., "make one that is the usual way, is it not?" +and the king laughed facetiously. +"Oh, sire," replied the minister, "we have no occasion to +invent any every day our desks are loaded with most +circumstantial denunciations, coming from hosts of people +who hope for some return for services which they seek to +render, but cannot they trust to fortune, and rely upon +some unexpected event in some way to justify their +predictions." +"Well, sir, go" said Louis XVIII., "and remember that I am +waiting for you." +"I will but go and return, sire I shall be back in ten +minutes." +"And I, sire," said M. de Blacas, "will go and find my +messenger." +"Wait, sir, wait," said Louis XVIII. "Really, M. de Blacas, +I must change your armorial bearings I will give you an +eagle with outstretched wings, holding in its claws a prey +which tries in vain to escape, and bearing this device +Tenax." +"Sire, I listen," said De Blacas, biting his nails with +impatience. +"I wish to consult you on this passage, "Molli fugiens +anhelitu,' you know it refers to a stag flying from a wolf. +Are you not a sportsman and a great wolfhunter? Well, then, +what do you think of the molli anhelitu?" +"Admirable, sire but my messenger is like the stag you +refer to, for he has posted two hundred and twenty leagues +in scarcely three days." +"Which is undergoing great fatigue and anxiety, my dear +duke, when we have a telegraph which transmits messages in +three or four hours, and that without getting in the least +out of breath." +"Ah, sire, you recompense but badly this poor young man, who +has come so far, and with so much ardor, to give your +majesty useful information. If only for the sake of M. de +Salvieux, who recommends him to me, I entreat your majesty +to receive him graciously." +"M. de Salvieux, my brother's chamberlain?" +"Yes, sire." +"He is at Marseilles." +"And writes me thence." +"Does he speak to you of this conspiracy?" +"No but strongly recommends M. de Villefort, and begs me to +present him to your majesty." +"M. de Villefort" cried the king, "is the messenger's name +M. de Villefort?" +"Yes, sire." +"And he comes from Marseilles?" +"In person." +"Why did you not mention his name at once?" replied the +king, betraying some uneasiness. +"Sire, I thought his name was unknown to your majesty." +"No, no, Blacas he is a man of strong and elevated +understanding, ambitious, too, and, pardieu, you know his +father's name" +"His father?" +"Yes, Noirtier." +"Noirtier the Girondin? Noirtier the senator?" +"He himself." +"And your majesty has employed the son of such a man?" +"Blacas, my friend, you have but limited comprehension. I +told you Villefort was ambitious, and to attain this +ambition Villefort would sacrifice everything, even his +father." +"Then, sire, may I present him?" +"This instant, duke Where is he?" +"Waiting below, in my carriage." +"Seek him at once." +"I hasten to do so." The duke left the royal presence with +the speed of a young man his really sincere royalism made +him youthful again. Louis XVIII. remained alone, and turning +his eyes on his halfopened Horace, muttered, +"Justum et tenacem propositi virum." +M. de Blacas returned as speedily as he had departed, but in +the antechamber he was forced to appeal to the king's +authority. Villefort's dusty garb, his costume, which was +not of courtly cut, excited the susceptibility of M. de +Breze, who was all astonishment at finding that this young +man had the audacity to enter before the king in such +attire. The duke, however, overcame all difficulties with a +word his majesty's order and, in spite of the +protestations which the master of ceremonies made for the +honor of his office and principles, Villefort was +introduced. +The king was seated in the same place where the duke had +left him. On opening the door, Villefort found himself +facing him, and the young magistrate's first impulse was to +pause. +"Come in, M. de Villefort," said the king, "come in." +Villefort bowed, and advancing a few steps, waited until the +king should interrogate him. +"M. de Villefort," said Louis XVIII., "the Duc de Blacas +assures me you have some interesting information to +communicate." +"Sire, the duke is right, and I believe your majesty will +think it equally important." +"In the first place, and before everything else, sir, is the +news as bad in your opinion as I am asked to believe?" +"Sire, I believe it to be most urgent, but I hope, by the +speed I have used, that it is not irreparable." +"Speak as fully as you please, sir," said the king, who +began to give way to the emotion which had showed itself in +Blacas's face and affected Villefort's voice. "Speak, sir, +and pray begin at the beginning I like order in +everything." +"Sire," said Villefort, "I will render a faithful report to +your majesty, but I must entreat your forgiveness if my +anxiety leads to some obscurity in my language." A glance at +the king after this discreet and subtle exordium, assured +Villefort of the benignity of his august auditor, and he +went on +"Sire, I have come as rapidly to Paris as possible, to +inform your majesty that I have discovered, in the exercise +of my duties, not a commonplace and insignificant plot, such +as is every day got up in the lower ranks of the people and +in the army, but an actual conspiracy a storm which +menaces no less than your majesty's throne. Sire, the +usurper is arming three ships, he meditates some project, +which, however mad, is yet, perhaps, terrible. At this +moment he will have left Elba, to go whither I know not, but +assuredly to attempt a landing either at Naples, or on the +coast of Tuscany, or perhaps on the shores of France. Your +majesty is well aware that the sovereign of the Island of +Elba has maintained his relations with Italy and France?" +"I am, sir," said the king, much agitated "and recently we +have had information that the Bonapartist clubs have had +meetings in the Rue SaintJacques. But proceed, I beg of +you. How did you obtain these details?" +"Sire, they are the results of an examination which I have +made of a man of Marseilles, whom I have watched for some +time, and arrested on the day of my departure. This person, +a sailor, of turbulent character, and whom I suspected of +Bonapartism, has been secretly to the Island of Elba. There +he saw the grandmarshal, who charged him with an oral +message to a Bonapartist in Paris, whose name I could not +extract from him but this mission was to prepare men's +minds for a return it is the man who says this, sire a +return which will soon occur." +"And where is this man?" +"In prison, sire." +"And the matter seems serious to you?" +"So serious, sire, that when the circumstance surprised me +in the midst of a family festival, on the very day of my +betrothal, I left my bride and friends, postponing +everything, that I might hasten to lay at your majesty's +feet the fears which impressed me, and the assurance of my +devotion." +"True," said Louis XVIII., "was there not a marriage +engagement between you and Mademoiselle de SaintMeran?" +"Daughter of one of your majesty's most faithful servants." +"Yes, yes but let us talk of this plot, M. de Villefort." +"Sire, I fear it is more than a plot I fear it is a +conspiracy." +"A conspiracy in these times," said Louis XVIII., smiling, +"is a thing very easy to meditate, but more difficult to +conduct to an end, inasmuch as, reestablished so recently +on the throne of our ancestors, we have our eyes open at +once upon the past, the present, and the future. For the +last ten months my ministers have redoubled their vigilance, +in order to watch the shore of the Mediterranean. If +Bonaparte landed at Naples, the whole coalition would be on +foot before he could even reach Piomoino if he land in +Tuscany, he will be in an unfriendly territory if he land +in France, it must be with a handful of men, and the result +of that is easily foretold, execrated as he is by the +population. Take courage, sir but at the same time rely on +our royal gratitude." +"Ah, here is M. Dandre" cried de Blacas. At this instant +the minister of police appeared at the door, pale, +trembling, and as if ready to faint. Villefort was about to +retire, but M. de Blacas, taking his hand, restrained him. +Chapter +The Corsican Ogre. +At the sight of this agitation Louis XVIII. pushed from him +violently the table at which he was sitting. +"What ails you, baron?" he exclaimed. "You appear quite +aghast. Has your uneasiness anything to do with what M. de +Blacas has told me, and M. de Villefort has just confirmed?" +M. de Blacas moved suddenly towards the baron, but the +fright of the courtier pleaded for the forbearance of the +statesman and besides, as matters were, it was much more to +his advantage that the prefect of police should triumph over +him than that he should humiliate the prefect. +"Sire" stammered the baron. +"Well, what is it?" asked Louis XVIII. The minister of +police, giving way to an impulse of despair, was about to +throw himself at the feet of Louis XVIII., who retreated a +step and frowned. +"Will you speak?" he said. +"Oh, sire, what a dreadful misfortune I am, indeed, to be +pitied. I can never forgive myself" +"Monsieur," said Louis XVIII., "I command you to speak." +"Well, sire, the usurper left Elba on the th February, and +landed on the st of March." +"And where? In Italy?" asked the king eagerly. +"In France, sire, at a small port, near Antibes, in the +Gulf of Juan." +"The usurper landed in France, near Antibes, in the Gulf of +Juan, two hundred and fifty leagues from Paris, on the st +of March, and you only acquired this information today, the +th of March Well, sir, what you tell me is impossible. You +must have received a false report, or you have gone mad." +"Alas, sire, it is but too true" Louis made a gesture of +indescribable anger and alarm, and then drew himself up as +if this sudden blow had struck him at the same moment in +heart and countenance. +"In France" he cried, "the usurper in France Then they did +not watch over this man. Who knows? they were, perhaps, in +league with him." +"Oh, sire," exclaimed the Duc de Blacas, "M. Dandre is not a +man to be accused of treason Sire, we have all been blind, +and the minister of police has shared the general blindness, +that is all." +"But" said Villefort, and then suddenly checking himself, +he was silent then he continued, "Your pardon, sire," he +said, bowing, "my zeal carried me away. Will your majesty +deign to excuse me?" +"Speak, sir, speak boldly," replied Louis. "You alone +forewarned us of the evil now try and aid us with the +remedy." +"Sire," said Villefort, "the usurper is detested in the +south and it seems to me that if he ventured into the +south, it would be easy to raise Languedoc and Provence +against him." +"Yes, assuredly," replied the minister "but he is advancing +by Gap and Sisteron." +"Advancing he is advancing" said Louis XVIII. "Is he +then advancing on Paris?" The minister of police maintained +a silence which was equivalent to a complete avowal. +"And Dauphine, sir?" inquired the king, of Villefort. "Do +you think it possible to rouse that as well as Provence?" +"Sire, I am sorry to tell your majesty a cruel fact but the +feeling in Dauphine is quite the reverse of that in Provence +or Languedoc. The mountaineers are Bonapartists, sire." +"Then," murmured Louis, "he was well informed. And how many +men had he with him?" +"I do not know, sire," answered the minister of police. +"What, you do not know Have you neglected to obtain +information on that point? Of course it is of no +consequence," he added, with a withering smile. +"Sire, it was impossible to learn the despatch simply +stated the fact of the landing and the route taken by the +usurper." +"And how did this despatch reach you?" inquired the king. +The minister bowed his head, and while a deep color +overspread his cheeks, he stammered out, +"By the telegraph, sire." Louis XVIII. advanced a step, +and folded his arms over his chest as Napoleon would have +done. +"So then," he exclaimed, turning pale with anger, "seven +conjoined and allied armies overthrew that man. A miracle of +heaven replaced me on the throne of my fathers after +fiveandtwenty years of exile. I have, during those +fiveandtwenty years, spared no pains to understand the +people of France and the interests which were confided to +me and now, when I see the fruition of my wishes almost +within reach, the power I hold in my hands bursts, and +shatters me to atoms" +"Sire, it is fatality" murmured the minister, feeling that +the pressure of circumstances, however light a thing to +destiny, was too much for any human strength to endure. +"What our enemies say of us is then true. We have learnt +nothing, forgotten nothing If I were betrayed as he was, I +would console myself but to be in the midst of persons +elevated by myself to places of honor, who ought to watch +over me more carefully than over themselves, for my +fortune is theirs before me they were nothing after me +they will be nothing, and perish miserably from incapacity +ineptitude Oh, yes, sir, you are right it is +fatality" +The minister quailed before this outburst of sarcasm. M. de +Blacas wiped the moisture from his brow. Villefort smiled +within himself, for he felt his increased importance. +"To fall," continued King Louis, who at the first glance had +sounded the abyss on which the monarchy hung suspended, +"to fall, and learn of that fall by telegraph Oh, I would +rather mount the scaffold of my brother, Louis XVI., than +thus descend the staircase at the Tuileries driven away by +ridicule. Ridicule, sir why, you know not its power in +France, and yet you ought to know it" +"Sire, sire," murmured the minister, "for pity's" +"Approach, M. de Villefort," resumed the king, addressing +the young man, who, motionless and breathless, was listening +to a conversation on which depended the destiny of a +kingdom. "Approach, and tell monsieur that it is possible to +know beforehand all that he has not known." +"Sire, it was really impossible to learn secrets which that +man concealed from all the world." +"Really impossible Yes that is a great word, sir. +Unfortunately, there are great words, as there are great +men I have measured them. Really impossible for a minister +who has an office, agents, spies, and fifteen hundred +thousand francs for secret service money, to know what is +going on at sixty leagues from the coast of France Well, +then, see, here is a gentleman who had none of these +resources at his disposal a gentleman, only a simple +magistrate, who learned more than you with all your police, +and who would have saved my crown, if, like you, he had the +power of directing a telegraph." The look of the minister of +police was turned with concentrated spite on Villefort, who +bent his head in modest triumph. +"I do not mean that for you, Blacas," continued Louis +XVIII. "for if you have discovered nothing, at least you +have had the good sense to persevere in your suspicions. Any +other than yourself would have considered the disclosure of +M. de Villefort insignificant, or else dictated by venal +ambition," These words were an allusion to the sentiments +which the minister of police had uttered with so much +confidence an hour before. +Villefort understood the king's intent. Any other person +would, perhaps, have been overcome by such an intoxicating +draught of praise but he feared to make for himself a +mortal enemy of the police minister, although he saw that +Dandre was irrevocably lost. In fact, the minister, who, in +the plenitude of his power, had been unable to unearth +Napoleon's secret, might in despair at his own downfall +interrogate Dantes and so lay bare the motives of +Villefort's plot. Realizing this, Villefort came to the +rescue of the crestfallen minister, instead of aiding to +crush him. +"Sire," said Villefort, "the suddenness of this event must +prove to your majesty that the issue is in the hands of +Providence what your majesty is pleased to attribute to me +as profound perspicacity is simply owing to chance, and I +have profited by that chance, like a good and devoted +servant that's all. Do not attribute to me more than I +deserve, sire, that your majesty may never have occasion to +recall the first opinion you have been pleased to form of +me." The minister of police thanked the young man by an +eloquent look, and Villefort understood that he had +succeeded in his design that is to say, that without +forfeiting the gratitude of the king, he had made a friend +of one on whom, in case of necessity, he might rely. +"'Tis well," resumed the king. "And now, gentlemen," he +continued, turning towards M. de Blacas and the minister of +police, "I have no further occasion for you, and you may +retire what now remains to do is in the department of the +minister of war." +"Fortunately, sire," said M. de Blacas, "we can rely on the +army your majesty knows how every report confirms their +loyalty and attachment." +"Do not mention reports, duke, to me, for I know now what +confidence to place in them. Yet, speaking of reports, +baron, what have you learned with regard to the affair in +the Rue SaintJacques?" +"The affair in the Rue SaintJacques" exclaimed Villefort, +unable to repress an exclamation. Then, suddenly pausing, he +added, "Your pardon, sire, but my devotion to your majesty +has made me forget, not the respect I have, for that is too +deeply engraved in my heart, but the rules of etiquette." +"Go on, go on, sir," replied the king "you have today +earned the right to make inquiries here." +"Sire," interposed the minister of police, "I came a moment +ago to give your majesty fresh information which I had +obtained on this head, when your majesty's attention was +attracted by the terrible event that has occurred in the +gulf, and now these facts will cease to interest your +majesty." +"On the contrary, sir, on the contrary," said Louis +XVIII., "this affair seems to me to have a decided +connection with that which occupies our attention, and the +death of General Quesnel will, perhaps, put us on the direct +track of a great internal conspiracy." At the name of +General Quesnel, Villefort trembled. +"Everything points to the conclusion, sire," said the +minister of police, "that death was not the result of +suicide, as we first believed, but of assassination. General +Quesnel, it appears, had just left a Bonapartist club when +he disappeared. An unknown person had been with him that +morning, and made an appointment with him in the Rue +SaintJacques unfortunately, the general's valet, who was +dressing his hair at the moment when the stranger entered, +heard the street mentioned, but did not catch the number." +As the police minister related this to the king, Villefort, +who looked as if his very life hung on the speaker's lips, +turned alternately red and pale. The king looked towards +him. +"Do you not think with me, M. de Villefort, that General +Quesnel, whom they believed attached to the usurper, but who +was really entirely devoted to me, has perished the victim +of a Bonapartist ambush?" +"It is probable, sire," replied Villefort. "But is this all +that is known?" +"They are on the track of the man who appointed the meeting +with him." +"On his track?" said Villefort. +"Yes, the servant has given his description. He is a man of +from fifty to fiftytwo years of age, dark, with black eyes +covered with shaggy eyebrows, and a thick mustache. He was +dressed in a blue frockcoat, buttoned up to the chin, and +wore at his buttonhole the rosette of an officer of the +Legion of Honor. Yesterday a person exactly corresponding +with this description was followed, but he was lost sight of +at the corner of the Rue de la Jussienne and the Rue +CoqHeron." Villefort leaned on the back of an armchair, +for as the minister of police went on speaking he felt his +legs bend under him but when he learned that the unknown +had escaped the vigilance of the agent who followed him, he +breathed again. +"Continue to seek for this man, sir," said the king to the +minister of police "for if, as I am all but convinced, +General Quesnel, who would have been so useful to us at this +moment, has been murdered, his assassins, Bonapartists or +not, shall be cruelly punished." It required all Villefort's +coolness not to betray the terror with which this +declaration of the king inspired him. +"How strange," continued the king, with some asperity "the +police think that they have disposed of the whole matter +when they say, "A murder has been committed,' and especially +so when they can add, "And we are on the track of the guilty +persons.'" +"Sire, your majesty will, I trust, be amply satisfied on +this point at least." +"We shall see. I will no longer detain you, M. de Villefort, +for you must be fatigued after so long a journey go and +rest. Of course you stopped at your father's?" A feeling of +faintness came over Villefort. +"No, sire," he replied, "I alighted at the Hotel de Madrid, +in the Rue de Tournon." +"But you have seen him?" +"Sire, I went straight to the Duc de Blacas." +"But you will see him, then?" +"I think not, sire." +"Ah, I forgot," said Louis, smiling in a manner which proved +that all these questions were not made without a motive "I +forgot you and M. Noirtier are not on the best terms +possible, and that is another sacrifice made to the royal +cause, and for which you should be recompensed." +"Sire, the kindness your majesty deigns to evince towards me +is a recompense which so far surpasses my utmost ambition +that I have nothing more to ask for." +"Never mind, sir, we will not forget you make your mind +easy. In the meanwhile" the king here detached the cross of +the Legion of Honor which he usually wore over his blue +coat, near the cross of St. Louis, above the order of +NotreDameduMontCarmel and St. Lazare, and gave it to +Villefort "in the meanwhile take this cross." +"Sire," said Villefort, "your majesty mistakes this is an +officer's cross." +"Ma foi," said Louis XVIII., "take it, such as it is, for I +have not the time to procure you another. Blacas, let it be +your care to see that the brevet is made out and sent to M. +de Villefort." Villefort's eyes were filled with tears of +joy and pride he took the cross and kissed it. +"And now," he said, "may I inquire what are the orders with +which your majesty deigns to honor me?" +"Take what rest you require, and remember that if you are +not able to serve me here in Paris, you may be of the +greatest service to me at Marseilles." +"Sire," replied Villefort, bowing, "in an hour I shall have +quitted Paris." +"Go, sir," said the king "and should I forget you kings' +memories are short, do not be afraid to bring yourself to +my recollection. Baron, send for the minister of war. +Blacas, remain." +"Ah, sir," said the minister of police to Villefort, as they +left the Tuileries, "you entered by luck's door your +fortune is made." +"Will it be long first?" muttered Villefort, saluting the +minister, whose career was ended, and looking about him for +a hackneycoach. One passed at the moment, which he hailed +he gave his address to the driver, and springing in, threw +himself on the seat, and gave loose to dreams of ambition. +Ten minutes afterwards Villefort reached his hotel, ordered +horses to be ready in two hours, and asked to have his +breakfast brought to him. He was about to begin his repast +when the sound of the bell rang sharp and loud. The valet +opened the door, and Villefort heard some one speak his +name. +"Who could know that I was here already?" said the young +man. The valet entered. +"Well," said Villefort, "what is it? Who rang? Who +asked for me?" +"A stranger who will not send in his name." +"A stranger who will not send in his name What can he want +with me?" +"He wishes to speak to you." +"To me?" +"Yes." +"Did he mention my name?" +"Yes." +"What sort of person is he?" +"Why, sir, a man of about fifty." +"Short or tall?" +"About your own height, sir." +"Dark or fair?" +"Dark, very dark with black eyes, black hair, black +eyebrows." +"And how dressed?" asked Villefort quickly. +"In a blue frockcoat, buttoned up close, decorated with the +Legion of Honor." +"It is he" said Villefort, turning pale. +"Eh, pardieu," said the individual whose description we have +twice given, entering the door, "what a great deal of +ceremony Is it the custom in Marseilles for sons to keep +their fathers waiting in their anterooms?" +"Father" cried Villefort, "then I was not deceived I felt +sure it must be you." +"Well, then, if you felt so sure," replied the newcomer, +putting his cane in a corner and his hat on a chair, "allow +me to say, my dear Gerard, that it was not very filial of +you to keep me waiting at the door." +"Leave us, Germain," said Villefort. The servant quitted the +apartment with evident signs of astonishment. +Chapter +Father and Son. +M. Noirtier for it was, indeed, he who entered looked +after the servant until the door was closed, and then, +fearing, no doubt, that he might be overheard in the +antechamber, he opened the door again, nor was the +precaution useless, as appeared from the rapid retreat of +Germain, who proved that he was not exempt from the sin +which ruined our first parents. M. Noirtier then took the +trouble to close and bolt the antechamber door, then that +of the bedchamber, and then extended his hand to Villefort, +who had followed all his motions with surprise which he +could not conceal. +"Well, now, my dear Gerard," said he to the young man, with +a very significant look, "do you know, you seem as if you +were not very glad to see me?" +"My dear father," said Villefort, "I am, on the contrary, +delighted but I so little expected your visit, that it has +somewhat overcome me." +"But, my dear fellow," replied M. Noirtier, seating himself, +"I might say the same thing to you, when you announce to me +your wedding for the th of February, and on the rd of +March you turn up here in Paris." +"And if I have come, my dear father," said Gerard, drawing +closer to M. Noirtier, "do not complain, for it is for you +that I came, and my journey will be your salvation." +"Ah, indeed" said M. Noirtier, stretching himself out at +his ease in the chair. "Really, pray tell me all about it, +for it must be interesting." +"Father, you have heard speak of a certain Bonapartist club +in the Rue SaintJacques?" +"No. yes, I am vicepresident." +"Father, your coolness makes me shudder." +"Why, my dear boy, when a man has been proscribed by the +mountaineers, has escaped from Paris in a haycart, been +hunted over the plains of Bordeaux by Robespierre's +bloodhounds, he becomes accustomed to most things. But go +on, what about the club in the Rue SaintJacques?" +"Why, they induced General Quesnel to go there, and General +Quesnel, who quitted his own house at nine o'clock in the +evening, was found the next day in the Seine." +"And who told you this fine story?" +"The king himself." +"Well, then, in return for your story," continued Noirtier, +"I will tell you another." +"My dear father, I think I already know what you are about +to tell me." +"Ah, you have heard of the landing of the emperor?" +"Not so loud, father, I entreat of you for your own sake +as well as mine. Yes, I heard this news, and knew it even +before you could for three days ago I posted from +Marseilles to Paris with all possible speed, halfdesperate +at the enforced delay." +"Three days ago? You are crazy. Why, three days ago the +emperor had not landed." +"No matter, I was aware of his intention." +"How did you know about it?" +"By a letter addressed to you from the Island of Elba." +"To me?" +"To you and which I discovered in the pocketbook of the +messenger. Had that letter fallen into the hands of another, +you, my dear father, would probably ere this have been +shot." Villefort's father laughed. +"Come, come," said he, "will the Restoration adopt imperial +methods so promptly? Shot, my dear boy? What an idea Where +is the letter you speak of? I know you too well to suppose +you would allow such a thing to pass you." +"I burnt it, for fear that even a fragment should remain +for that letter must have led to your condemnation." +"And the destruction of your future prospects," replied +Noirtier "yes, I can easily comprehend that. But I have +nothing to fear while I have you to protect me." +"I do better than that, sir I save you." +"You do? Why, really, the thing becomes more and more +dramatic explain yourself." +"I must refer again to the club in the Rue SaintJacques." +"It appears that this club is rather a bore to the police. +Why didn't they search more vigilantly? they would have +found" +"They have not found but they are on the track." +"Yes, that the usual phrase I am quite familiar with it. +When the police is at fault, it declares that it is on the +track and the government patiently awaits the day when it +comes to say, with a sneaking air, that the track is lost." +"Yes, but they have found a corpse the general has been +killed, and in all countries they call that a murder." +"A murder do you call it? why, there is nothing to prove +that the general was murdered. People are found every day in +the Seine, having thrown themselves in, or having been +drowned from not knowing how to swim." +"Father, you know very well that the general was not a man +to drown himself in despair, and people do not bathe in the +Seine in the month of January. No, no, do not be deceived +this was murder in every sense of the word." +"And who thus designated it?" +"The king himself." +"The king I thought he was philosopher enough to allow that +there was no murder in politics. In politics, my dear +fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but +ideas no feelings, but interests in politics we do not +kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all. Would +you like to know how matters have progressed? Well, I will +tell you. It was thought reliance might be placed in General +Quesnel he was recommended to us from the Island of Elba +one of us went to him, and invited him to the Rue +SaintJacques, where he would find some friends. He came +there, and the plan was unfolded to him for leaving Elba, +the projected landing, etc. When he had heard and +comprehended all to the fullest extent, he replied that he +was a royalist. Then all looked at each other, he was +made to take an oath, and did so, but with such an ill grace +that it was really tempting Providence to swear him, and +yet, in spite of that, the general was allowed to depart +free perfectly free. Yet he did not return home. What +could that mean? why, my dear fellow, that on leaving us he +lost his way, that's all. A murder? really, Villefort, you +surprise me. You, a deputy procureur, to found an accusation +on such bad premises Did I ever say to you, when you were +fulfilling your character as a royalist, and cut off the +head of one of my party, "My son, you have committed a +murder?' No, I said, "Very well, sir, you have gained the +victory tomorrow, perchance, it will be our turn.'" +"But, father, take care when our turn comes, our revenge +will be sweeping." +"I do not understand you." +"You rely on the usurper's return?" +"We do." +"You are mistaken he will not advance two leagues into the +interior of France without being followed, tracked, and +caught like a wild beast." +"My dear fellow, the emperor is at this moment on the way to +Grenoble on the th or th he will be at Lyons, and on +the th or th at Paris." +"The people will rise." +"Yes, to go and meet him." +"He has but a handful of men with him, and armies will be +despatched against him." +"Yes, to escort him into the capital. Really, my dear +Gerard, you are but a child you think yourself well +informed because the telegraph has told you, three days +after the landing, "The usurper has landed at Cannes with +several men. He is pursued.' But where is he? what is he +doing? You do not know at all, and in this way they will +chase him to Paris, without drawing a trigger." +"Grenoble and Lyons are faithful cities, and will oppose to +him an impassable barrier." +"Grenoble will open her gates to him with enthusiasm all +Lyons will hasten to welcome him. Believe me, we are as well +informed as you, and our police are as good as your own. +Would you like a proof of it? well, you wished to conceal +your journey from me, and yet I knew of your arrival half an +hour after you had passed the barrier. You gave your +direction to no one but your postilion, yet I have your +address, and in proof I am here the very instant you are +going to sit at table. Ring, then, if you please, for a +second knife, fork, and plate, and we will dine together." +"Indeed" replied Villefort, looking at his father with +astonishment, "you really do seem very well informed." +"Eh? the thing is simple enough. You who are in power have +only the means that money produces we who are in +expectation, have those which devotion prompts." +"Devotion" said Villefort, with a sneer. +"Yes, devotion for that is, I believe, the phrase for +hopeful ambition." +And Villefort's father extended his hand to the bellrope, +to summon the servant whom his son had not called. Villefort +caught his arm. +"Wait, my dear father," said the young man, "one word more." +"Say on." +"However stupid the royalist police may be, they do know one +terrible thing." +"What is that?" +"The description of the man who, on the morning of the day +when General Quesnel disappeared, presented himself at his +house." +"Oh, the admirable police have found that out, have they? +And what may be that description?" +"Dark complexion hair, eyebrows, and whiskers, black blue +frockcoat, buttoned up to the chin rosette of an officer +of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole a hat with wide +brim, and a cane." +"Ah, ha, that's it, is it?" said Noirtier "and why, then, +have they not laid hands on him?" +"Because yesterday, or the day before, they lost sight of +him at the corner of the Rue CoqHeron." +"Didn't I say that your police were good for nothing?" +"Yes but they may catch him yet." +"True," said Noirtier, looking carelessly around him, "true, +if this person were not on his guard, as he is" and he +added with a smile, "He will consequently make a few changes +in his personal appearance." At these words he rose, and put +off his frockcoat and cravat, went towards a table on which +lay his son's toilet articles, lathered his face, took a +razor, and, with a firm hand, cut off the compromising +whiskers. Villefort watched him with alarm not devoid of +admiration. +His whiskers cut off, Noirtier gave another turn to his +hair took, instead of his black cravat, a colored +neckerchief which lay at the top of an open portmanteau put +on, in lieu of his blue and highbuttoned frockcoat, a coat +of Villefort's of dark brown, and cut away in front tried +on before the glass a narrowbrimmed hat of his son's, which +appeared to fit him perfectly, and, leaving his cane in the +corner where he had deposited it, he took up a small bamboo +switch, cut the air with it once or twice, and walked about +with that easy swagger which was one of his principal +characteristics. +"Well," he said, turning towards his wondering son, when +this disguise was completed, "well, do you think your police +will recognize me now." +"No, father," stammered Villefort "at least, I hope not." +"And now, my dear boy," continued Noirtier, "I rely on your +prudence to remove all the things which I leave in your +care." +"Oh, rely on me," said Villefort. +"Yes, yes and now I believe you are right, and that you +have really saved my life be assured I will return the +favor hereafter." Villefort shook his head. +"You are not convinced yet?" +"I hope at least, that you may be mistaken." +"Shall you see the king again?" +"Perhaps." +"Would you pass in his eyes for a prophet?" +"Prophets of evil are not in favor at the court, father." +"True, but some day they do them justice and supposing a +second restoration, you would then pass for a great man." +"Well, what should I say to the king?" +"Say this to him "Sire, you are deceived as to the feeling +in France, as to the opinions of the towns, and the +prejudices of the army he whom in Paris you call the +Corsican ogre, who at Nevers is styled the usurper, is +already saluted as Bonaparte at Lyons, and emperor at +Grenoble. You think he is tracked, pursued, captured he is +advancing as rapidly as his own eagles. The soldiers you +believe to be dying with hunger, worn out with fatigue, +ready to desert, gather like atoms of snow about the rolling +ball as it hastens onward. Sire, go, leave France to its +real master, to him who acquired it, not by purchase, but by +right of conquest go, sire, not that you incur any risk, +for your adversary is powerful enough to show you mercy, but +because it would be humiliating for a grandson of Saint +Louis to owe his life to the man of Arcola, Marengo, +Austerlitz.' Tell him this, Gerard or, rather, tell him +nothing. Keep your journey a secret do not boast of what +you have come to Paris to do, or have done return with all +speed enter Marseilles at night, and your house by the +backdoor, and there remain, quiet, submissive, secret, and, +above all, inoffensive for this time, I swear to you, we +shall act like powerful men who know their enemies. Go, my +son go, my dear Gerard, and by your obedience to my +paternal orders, or, if you prefer it, friendly counsels, we +will keep you in your place. This will be," added Noirtier, +with a smile, "one means by which you may a second time save +me, if the political balance should some day take another +turn, and cast you aloft while hurling me down. Adieu, my +dear Gerard, and at your next journey alight at my door." +Noirtier left the room when he had finished, with the same +calmness that had characterized him during the whole of this +remarkable and trying conversation. Villefort, pale and +agitated, ran to the window, put aside the curtain, and saw +him pass, cool and collected, by two or three illlooking +men at the corner of the street, who were there, perhaps, to +arrest a man with black whiskers, and a blue frockcoat, and +hat with broad brim. +Villefort stood watching, breathless, until his father had +disappeared at the Rue Bussy. Then he turned to the various +articles he had left behind him, put the black cravat and +blue frockcoat at the bottom of the portmanteau, threw the +hat into a dark closet, broke the cane into small bits and +flung it in the fire, put on his travellingcap, and calling +his valet, checked with a look the thousand questions he was +ready to ask, paid his bill, sprang into his carriage, which +was ready, learned at Lyons that Bonaparte had entered +Grenoble, and in the midst of the tumult which prevailed +along the road, at length reached Marseilles, a prey to all +the hopes and fears which enter into the heart of man with +ambition and its first successes. +Chapter +The Hundred Days. +M. Noirtier was a true prophet, and things progressed +rapidly, as he had predicted. Every one knows the history of +the famous return from Elba, a return which was +unprecedented in the past, and will probably remain without +a counterpart in the future. +Louis XVIII. made but a faint attempt to parry this +unexpected blow the monarchy he had scarcely reconstructed +tottered on its precarious foundation, and at a sign from +the emperor the incongruous structure of ancient prejudices +and new ideas fell to the ground. Villefort, therefore, +gained nothing save the king's gratitude which was rather +likely to injure him at the present time and the cross of +the Legion of Honor, which he had the prudence not to wear, +although M. de Blacas had duly forwarded the brevet. +Napoleon would, doubtless, have deprived Villefort of his +office had it not been for Noirtier, who was all powerful at +court, and thus the Girondin of ' and the Senator of +protected him who so lately had been his protector. All +Villefort's influence barely enabled him to stifle the +secret Dantes had so nearly divulged. The king's procureur +alone was deprived of his office, being suspected of +royalism. +However, scarcely was the imperial power established that +is, scarcely had the emperor reentered the Tuileries and +begun to issue orders from the closet into which we have +introduced our readers, he found on the table there Louis +XVIII.'s halffilled snuffbox, scarcely had this +occurred when Marseilles began, in spite of the authorities, +to rekindle the flames of civil war, always smouldering in +the south, and it required but little to excite the populace +to acts of far greater violence than the shouts and insults +with which they assailed the royalists whenever they +ventured abroad. +Owing to this change, the worthy shipowner became at that +moment we will not say all powerful, because Morrel was a +prudent and rather a timid man, so much so, that many of the +most zealous partisans of Bonaparte accused him of +"moderation" but sufficiently influential to make a +demand in favor of Dantes. +Villefort retained his place, but his marriage was put off +until a more favorable opportunity. If the emperor remained +on the throne, Gerard required a different alliance to aid +his career if Louis XVIII. returned, the influence of M. de +SaintMeran, like his own, could be vastly increased, and +the marriage be still more suitable. The deputyprocureur +was, therefore, the first magistrate of Marseilles, when one +morning his door opened, and M. Morrel was announced. +Any one else would have hastened to receive him but +Villefort was a man of ability, and he knew this would be a +sign of weakness. He made Morrel wait in the antechamber, +although he had no one with him, for the simple reason that +the king's procureur always makes every one wait, and after +passing a quarter of an hour in reading the papers, he +ordered M. Morrel to be admitted. +Morrel expected Villefort would be dejected he found him as +he had found him six weeks before, calm, firm, and full of +that glacial politeness, that most insurmountable barrier +which separates the wellbred from the vulgar man. +He had entered Villefort's office expecting that the +magistrate would tremble at the sight of him on the +contrary, he felt a cold shudder all over him when he saw +Villefort sitting there with his elbow on his desk, and his +head leaning on his hand. He stopped at the door Villefort +gazed at him as if he had some difficulty in recognizing +him then, after a brief interval, during which the honest +shipowner turned his hat in his hands, +"M. Morrel, I believe?" said Villefort. +"Yes, sir." +"Come nearer," said the magistrate, with a patronizing wave +of the hand, "and tell me to what circumstance I owe the +honor of this visit." +"Do you not guess, monsieur?" asked Morrel. +"Not in the least but if I can serve you in any way I shall +be delighted." +"Everything depends on you." +"Explain yourself, pray." +"Monsieur," said Morrel, recovering his assurance as he +proceeded, "do you recollect that a few days before the +landing of his majesty the emperor, I came to intercede for +a young man, the mate of my ship, who was accused of being +concerned in correspondence with the Island of Elba? What +was the other day a crime is today a title to favor. You +then served Louis XVIII., and you did not show any favor +it was your duty today you serve Napoleon, and you ought +to protect him it is equally your duty I come, +therefore, to ask what has become of him?" +Villefort by a strong effort sought to control himself. +"What is his name?" said he. "Tell me his name." +"Edmond Dantes." +Villefort would probably have rather stood opposite the +muzzle of a pistol at fiveandtwenty paces than have heard +this name spoken but he did not blanch. +"Dantes," repeated he, "Edmond Dantes." +"Yes, monsieur." Villefort opened a large register, then +went to a table, from the table turned to his registers, and +then, turning to Morrel, +"Are you quite sure you are not mistaken, monsieur?" said +he, in the most natural tone in the world. +Had Morrel been a more quicksighted man, or better versed +in these matters, he would have been surprised at the king's +procureur answering him on such a subject, instead of +referring him to the governors of the prison or the prefect +of the department. But Morrel, disappointed in his +expectations of exciting fear, was conscious only of the +other's condescension. Villefort had calculated rightly. +"No," said Morrel "I am not mistaken. I have known him for +ten years, the last four of which he was in my service. Do +not you recollect, I came about six weeks ago to plead for +clemency, as I come today to plead for justice. You +received me very coldly. Oh, the royalists were very severe +with the Bonapartists in those days." +"Monsieur," returned Villefort, "I was then a royalist, +because I believed the Bourbons not only the heirs to the +throne, but the chosen of the nation. The miraculous return +of Napoleon has conquered me, the legitimate monarch is he +who is loved by his people." +"That's right" cried Morrel. "I like to hear you speak +thus, and I augur well for Edmond from it." +"Wait a moment," said Villefort, turning over the leaves of +a register "I have it a sailor, who was about to marry a +young Catalan girl. I recollect now it was a very serious +charge." +"How so?" +"You know that when he left here he was taken to the Palais +de Justice." +"Well?" +"I made my report to the authorities at Paris, and a week +after he was carried off." +"Carried off" said Morrel. "What can they have done with +him?" +"Oh, he has been taken to Fenestrelles, to Pignerol, or to +the SainteMarguerite islands. Some fine morning he will +return to take command of your vessel." +"Come when he will, it shall be kept for him. But how is it +he is not already returned? It seems to me the first care of +government should be to set at liberty those who have +suffered for their adherence to it." +"Do not be too hasty, M. Morrel," replied Villefort. "The +order of imprisonment came from high authority, and the +order for his liberation must proceed from the same source +and, as Napoleon has scarcely been reinstated a fortnight, +the letters have not yet been forwarded." +"But," said Morrel, "is there no way of expediting all these +formalities of releasing him from arrest?" +"There has been no arrest." +"How?" +"It is sometimes essential to government to cause a man's +disappearance without leaving any traces, so that no written +forms or documents may defeat their wishes." +"It might be so under the Bourbons, but at present" +"It has always been so, my dear Morrel, since the reign of +Louis XIV. The emperor is more strict in prison discipline +than even Louis himself, and the number of prisoners whose +names are not on the register is incalculable." Had Morrel +even any suspicions, so much kindness would have dispelled +them. +"Well, M. de Villefort, how would you advise me to act?" +asked he. +"Petition the minister." +"Oh, I know what that is the minister receives two hundred +petitions every day, and does not read three." +"That is true but he will read a petition countersigned and +presented by me." +"And will you undertake to deliver it?" +"With the greatest pleasure. Dantes was then guilty, and now +he is innocent, and it is as much my duty to free him as it +was to condemn him." Villefort thus forestalled any danger +of an inquiry, which, however improbable it might be, if it +did take place would leave him defenceless. +"But how shall I address the minister?" +"Sit down there," said Villefort, giving up his place to +Morrel, "and write what I dictate." +"Will you be so good?" +"Certainly. But lose no time we have lost too much +already." +"That is true. Only think what the poor fellow may even now +be suffering." Villefort shuddered at the suggestion but he +had gone too far to draw back. Dantes must be crushed to +gratify Villefort's ambition. +Villefort dictated a petition, in which, from an excellent +intention, no doubt, Dantes' patriotic services were +exaggerated, and he was made out one of the most active +agents of Napoleon's return. It was evident that at the +sight of this document the minister would instantly release +him. The petition finished, Villefort read it aloud. +"That will do," said he "leave the rest to me." +"Will the petition go soon?" +"Today." +"Countersigned by you?" +"The best thing I can do will be to certify the truth of the +contents of your petition." And, sitting down, Villefort +wrote the certificate at the bottom. +"What more is to be done?" +"I will do whatever is necessary." This assurance delighted +Morrel, who took leave of Villefort, and hastened to +announce to old Dantes that he would soon see his son. +As for Villefort, instead of sending to Paris, he carefully +preserved the petition that so fearfully compromised Dantes, +in the hopes of an event that seemed not unlikely, that +is, a second restoration. Dantes remained a prisoner, and +heard not the noise of the fall of Louis XVIII.'s throne, or +the still more tragic destruction of the empire. +Twice during the Hundred Days had Morrel renewed his demand, +and twice had Villefort soothed him with promises. At last +there was Waterloo, and Morrel came no more he had done all +that was in his power, and any fresh attempt would only +compromise himself uselessly. +Louis XVIII. remounted the throne Villefort, to whom +Marseilles had become filled with remorseful memories, +sought and obtained the situation of king's procureur at +Toulouse, and a fortnight afterwards he married Mademoiselle +de SaintMeran, whose father now stood higher at court than +ever. +And so Dantes, after the Hundred Days and after Waterloo, +remained in his dungeon, forgotten of earth and heaven. +Danglars comprehended the full extent of the wretched fate +that overwhelmed Dantes and, when Napoleon returned to +France, he, after the manner of mediocre minds, termed the +coincidence, "a decree of Providence." But when Napoleon +returned to Paris, Danglars' heart failed him, and he lived +in constant fear of Dantes' return on a mission of +vengeance. He therefore informed M. Morrel of his wish to +quit the sea, and obtained a recommendation from him to a +Spanish merchant, into whose service he entered at the end +of March, that is, ten or twelve days after Napoleon's +return. He then left for Madrid, and was no more heard of. +Fernand understood nothing except that Dantes was absent. +What had become of him he cared not to inquire. Only, during +the respite the absence of his rival afforded him, he +reflected, partly on the means of deceiving Mercedes as to +the cause of his absence, partly on plans of emigration and +abduction, as from time to time he sat sad and motionless on +the summit of Cape Pharo, at the spot from whence Marseilles +and the Catalans are visible, watching for the apparition of +a young and handsome man, who was for him also the messenger +of vengeance. Fernand's mind was made up he would shoot +Dantes, and then kill himself. But Fernand was mistaken a +man of his disposition never kills himself, for he +constantly hopes. +During this time the empire made its last conscription, and +every man in France capable of bearing arms rushed to obey +the summons of the emperor. Fernand departed with the rest, +bearing with him the terrible thought that while he was +away, his rival would perhaps return and marry Mercedes. Had +Fernand really meant to kill himself, he would have done so +when he parted from Mercedes. His devotion, and the +compassion he showed for her misfortunes, produced the +effect they always produce on noble minds Mercedes had +always had a sincere regard for Fernand, and this was now +strengthened by gratitude. +"My brother," said she as she placed his knapsack on his +shoulders, "be careful of yourself, for if you are killed, I +shall be alone in the world." These words carried a ray of +hope into Fernand's heart. Should Dantes not return, +Mercedes might one day be his. +Mercedes was left alone face to face with the vast plain +that had never seemed so barren, and the sea that had never +seemed so vast. Bathed in tears she wandered about the +Catalan village. Sometimes she stood mute and motionless as +a statue, looking towards Marseilles, at other times gazing +on the sea, and debating as to whether it were not better to +cast herself into the abyss of the ocean, and thus end her +woes. It was not want of courage that prevented her putting +this resolution into execution but her religious feelings +came to her aid and saved her. Caderousse was, like Fernand, +enrolled in the army, but, being married and eight years +older, he was merely sent to the frontier. Old Dantes, who +was only sustained by hope, lost all hope at Napoleon's +downfall. Five months after he had been separated from his +son, and almost at the hour of his arrest, he breathed his +last in Mercedes' arms. M. Morrel paid the expenses of his +funeral, and a few small debts the poor old man had +contracted. +There was more than benevolence in this action there was +courage the south was aflame, and to assist, even on his +deathbed, the father of so dangerous a Bonapartist as +Dantes, was stigmatized as a crime. +Chapter +The Two Prisoners. +A year after Louis XVIII.'s restoration, a visit was made by +the inspectorgeneral of prisons. Dantes in his cell heard +the noise of preparation, sounds that at the depth where +he lay would have been inaudible to any but the ear of a +prisoner, who could hear the splash of the drop of water that +every hour fell from the roof of his dungeon. He guessed +something uncommon was passing among the living but he had +so long ceased to have any intercourse with the world, that +he looked upon himself as dead. +The inspector visited, one after another, the cells and +dungeons of several of the prisoners, whose good behavior or +stupidity recommended them to the clemency of the +government. He inquired how they were fed, and if they had +any request to make. The universal response was, that the +fare was detestable, and that they wanted to be set free. +The inspector asked if they had anything else to ask for. +They shook their heads. What could they desire beyond their +liberty? The inspector turned smilingly to the governor. +"I do not know what reason government can assign for these +useless visits when you see one prisoner, you see all, +always the same thing, ill fed and innocent. Are there +any others?" +"Yes the dangerous and mad prisoners are in the dungeons." +"Let us visit them," said the inspector with an air of +fatigue. "We must play the farce to the end. Let us see the +dungeons." +"Let us first send for two soldiers," said the governor. +"The prisoners sometimes, through mere uneasiness of life, +and in order to be sentenced to death, commit acts of +useless violence, and you might fall a victim." +"Take all needful precautions," replied the inspector. +Two soldiers were accordingly sent for, and the inspector +descended a stairway, so foul, so humid, so dark, as to be +loathsome to sight, smell, and respiration. +"Oh," cried the inspector, "who can live here?" +"A most dangerous conspirator, a man we are ordered to keep +the most strict watch over, as he is daring and resolute." +"He is alone?" +"Certainly." +"How long his he been there?" +"Nearly a year." +"Was he placed here when he first arrived?" +"No not until he attempted to kill the turnkey, who took +his food to him." +"To kill the turnkey?" +"Yes, the very one who is lighting us. Is it not true, +Antoine?" asked the governor. +"True enough he wanted to kill me" returned the turnkey. +"He must be mad," said the inspector. +"He is worse than that, he is a devil" returned the +turnkey. +"Shall I complain of him?" demanded the inspector. +"Oh, no it is useless. Besides, he is almost mad now, and +in another year he will be quite so." +"So much the better for him, he will suffer less," said +the inspector. He was, as this remark shows, a man full of +philanthropy, and in every way fit for his office. +"You are right, sir," replied the governor "and this remark +proves that you have deeply considered the subject. Now we +have in a dungeon about twenty feet distant, and to which +you descend by another stair, an abbe, formerly leader of a +party in Italy, who has been here since , and in he +went mad, and the change is astonishing. He used to weep, he +now laughs he grew thin, he now grows fat. You had better +see him, for his madness is amusing." +"I will see them both," returned the inspector "I must +conscientiously perform my duty." This was the inspector's +first visit he wished to display his authority. +"Let us visit this one first," added he. +"By all means," replied the governor, and he signed to the +turnkey to open the door. At the sound of the key turning in +the lock, and the creaking of the hinges, Dantes, who was +crouched in a corner of the dungeon, whence he could see the +ray of light that came through a narrow iron grating above, +raised his head. Seeing a stranger, escorted by two turnkeys +holding torches and accompanied by two soldiers, and to whom +the governor spoke bareheaded, Dantes, who guessed the +truth, and that the moment to address himself to the +superior authorities was come, sprang forward with clasped +hands. +The soldiers interposed their bayonets, for they thought +that he was about to attack the inspector, and the latter +recoiled two or three steps. Dantes saw that he was looked +upon as dangerous. Then, infusing all the humility he +possessed into his eyes and voice, he addressed the +inspector, and sought to inspire him with pity. +The inspector listened attentively then, turning to the +governor, observed, "He will become religious he is +already more gentle he is afraid, and retreated before the +bayonets madmen are not afraid of anything I made some +curious observations on this at Charenton." Then, turning to +the prisoner, "What is it you want?" said he. +"I want to know what crime I have committed to be tried +and if I am guilty, to be shot if innocent, to be set at +liberty." +"Are you well fed?" said the inspector. +"I believe so I don't know it's of no consequence. What +matters really, not only to me, but to officers of justice +and the king, is that an innocent man should languish in +prison, the victim of an infamous denunciation, to die here +cursing his executioners." +"You are very humble today," remarked the governor "you +are not so always the other day, for instance, when you +tried to kill the turnkey." +"It is true, sir, and I beg his pardon, for he his always +been very good to me, but I was mad." +"And you are not so any longer?" +"No captivity has subdued me I have been here so long." +"So long? when were you arrested, then?" asked the +inspector. +"The th of February, , at halfpast two in the +afternoon." +"Today is the th of July, , why it is but +seventeen months." +"Only seventeen months," replied Dantes. "Oh, you do not +know what is seventeen months in prison seventeen ages +rather, especially to a man who, like me, had arrived at the +summit of his ambition to a man, who, like me, was on the +point of marrying a woman he adored, who saw an honorable +career opened before him, and who loses all in an instant +who sees his prospects destroyed, and is ignorant of the +fate of his affianced wife, and whether his aged father be +still living Seventeen months captivity to a sailor +accustomed to the boundless ocean, is a worse punishment +than human crime ever merited. Have pity on me, then, and +ask for me, not intelligence, but a trial not pardon, but a +verdict a trial, sir, I ask only for a trial that, +surely, cannot be denied to one who is accused" +"We shall see," said the inspector then, turning to the +governor, "On my word, the poor devil touches me. You must +show me the proofs against him." +"Certainly but you will find terrible charges." +"Monsieur," continued Dantes, "I know it is not in your +power to release me but you can plead for me you can +have me tried and that is all I ask. Let me know my +crime, and the reason why I was condemned. Uncertainty is +worse than all." +"Go on with the lights," said the inspector. +"Monsieur," cried Dantes, "I can tell by your voice you are +touched with pity tell me at least to hope." +"I cannot tell you that," replied the inspector "I can only +promise to examine into your case." +"Oh, I am free then I am saved" +"Who arrested you?" +"M. Villefort. See him, and hear what he says." +"M. Villefort is no longer at Marseilles he is now at +Toulouse." +"I am no longer surprised at my detention," murmured Dantes, +"since my only protector is removed." +"Had M. de Villefort any cause of personal dislike to you?" +"None on the contrary, he was very kind to me." +"I can, then, rely on the notes he has left concerning you?" +"Entirely." +"That is well wait patiently, then." Dantes fell on his +knees, and prayed earnestly. The door closed but this time +a fresh inmate was left with Dantes hope. +"Will you see the register at once," asked the governor, "or +proceed to the other cell?" +"Let us visit them all," said the inspector. "If I once went +up those stairs. I should never have the courage to come +down again." +"Ah, this one is not like the other, and his madness is less +affecting than this one's display of reason." +"What is his folly?" +"He fancies he possesses an immense treasure. The first year +he offered government a million of francs for his release +the second, two the third, three and so on progressively. +He is now in his fifth year of captivity he will ask to +speak to you in private, and offer you five millions." +"How curious what is his name?" +"The Abbe Faria." +"No. ," said the inspector. +"It is here unlock the door, Antoine." The turnkey obeyed, +and the inspector gazed curiously into the chamber of the +"mad abbe." +In the centre of the cell, in a circle traced with a +fragment of plaster detached from the wall, sat a man whose +tattered garments scarcely covered him. He was drawing in +this circle geometrical lines, and seemed as much absorbed +in his problem as Archimedes was when the soldier of +Marcellus slew him. +He did not move at the sound of the door, and continued his +calculations until the flash of the torches lighted up with +an unwonted glare the sombre walls of his cell then, +raising his head, he perceived with astonishment the number +of persons present. He hastily seized the coverlet of his +bed, and wrapped it round him. +"What is it you want?" said the inspector. +"I, monsieur," replied the abbe with an air of surprise +"I want nothing." +"You do not understand," continued the inspector "I am sent +here by government to visit the prison, and hear the +requests of the prisoners." +"Oh, that is different," cried the abbe "and we shall +understand each other, I hope." +"There, now," whispered the governor, "it is just as I told +you." +"Monsieur," continued the prisoner, "I am the Abbe Faria, +born at Rome. I was for twenty years Cardinal Spada's +secretary I was arrested, why, I know not, toward the +beginning of the year since then I have demanded my +liberty from the Italian and French government." +"Why from the French government?" +"Because I was arrested at Piombino, and I presume that, +like Milan and Florence, Piombino has become the capital of +some French department." +"Ah," said the inspector, "you have not the latest news from +Italy?" +"My information dates from the day on which I was arrested," +returned the Abbe Faria "and as the emperor had created the +kingdom of Rome for his infant son, I presume that he has +realized the dream of Machiavelli and Caesar Borgia, which +was to make Italy a united kingdom." +"Monsieur," returned the inspector, "providence has changed +this gigantic plan you advocate so warmly." +"It is the only means of rendering Italy strong, happy, and +independent." +"Very possibly only I am not come to discuss politics, but +to inquire if you have anything to ask or to complain of." +"The food is the same as in other prisons, that is, very +bad the lodging is very unhealthful, but, on the whole, +passable for a dungeon but it is not that which I wish to +speak of, but a secret I have to reveal of the greatest +importance." +"We are coming to the point," whispered the governor. +"It is for that reason I am delighted to see you," continued +the abbe, "although you have disturbed me in a most +important calculation, which, if it succeeded, would +possibly change Newton's system. Could you allow me a few +words in private." +"What did I tell you?" said the governor. +"You knew him," returned the inspector with a smile. +"What you ask is impossible, monsieur," continued he, +addressing Faria. +"But," said the abbe, "I would speak to you of a large sum, +amounting to five millions." +"The very sum you named," whispered the inspector in his +turn. +"However," continued Faria, seeing that the inspector was +about to depart, "it is not absolutely necessary for us to +be alone the governor can be present." +"Unfortunately," said the governor, "I know beforehand what +you are about to say it concerns your treasures, does it +not?" Faria fixed his eyes on him with an expression that +would have convinced any one else of his sanity. +"Of course," said he "of what else should I speak?" +"Mr. Inspector," continued the governor, "I can tell you the +story as well as he, for it has been dinned in my ears for +the last four or five years." +"That proves," returned the abbe, "that you are like those +of Holy Writ, who having ears hear not, and having eyes see +not." +"My dear sir, the government is rich and does not want your +treasures," replied the inspector "keep them until you are +liberated." The abbe's eyes glistened he seized the +inspector's hand. +"But what if I am not liberated," cried he, "and am detained +here until my death? this treasure will be lost. Had not +government better profit by it? I will offer six millions, +and I will content myself with the rest, if they will only +give me my liberty." +"On my word," said the inspector in a low tone, "had I not +been told beforehand that this man was mad, I should believe +what he says." +"I am not mad," replied Faria, with that acuteness of +hearing peculiar to prisoners. "The treasure I speak of +really exists, and I offer to sign an agreement with you, in +which I promise to lead you to the spot where you shall dig +and if I deceive you, bring me here again, I ask no +more." +The governor laughed. "Is the spot far from here?" +"A hundred leagues." +"It is not illplanned," said the governor. "If all the +prisoners took it into their heads to travel a hundred +leagues, and their guardians consented to accompany them, +they would have a capital chance of escaping." +"The scheme is well known," said the inspector "and the +abbe's plan has not even the merit of originality." +Then turning to Faria "I inquired if you are well fed?" +said he. +"Swear to me," replied Faria, "to free me if what I tell you +prove true, and I will stay here while you go to the spot." +"Are you well fed?" repeated the inspector. +"Monsieur, you run no risk, for, as I told you, I will stay +here so there is no chance of my escaping." +"You do not reply to my question," replied the inspector +impatiently. +"Nor you to mine," cried the abbe. "You will not accept my +gold I will keep it for myself. You refuse me my liberty +God will give it me." And the abbe, casting away his +coverlet, resumed his place, and continued his calculations. +"What is he doing there?" said the inspector. +"Counting his treasures," replied the governor. +Faria replied to this sarcasm with a glance of profound +contempt. They went out. The turnkey closed the door behind +them. +"He was wealthy once, perhaps?" said the inspector. +"Or dreamed he was, and awoke mad." +"After all," said the inspector, "if he had been rich, he +would not have been here." So the matter ended for the Abbe +Faria. He remained in his cell, and this visit only +increased the belief in his insanity. +Caligula or Nero, those treasureseekers, those desirers of +the impossible, would have accorded to the poor wretch, in +exchange for his wealth, the liberty he so earnestly prayed +for. But the kings of modern times, restrained by the limits +of mere probability, have neither courage nor desire. They +fear the ear that hears their orders, and the eye that +scrutinizes their actions. Formerly they believed themselves +sprung from Jupiter, and shielded by their birth but +nowadays they are not inviolable. +It has always been against the policy of despotic +governments to suffer the victims of their persecutions to +reappear. As the Inquisition rarely allowed its victims to +be seen with their limbs distorted and their flesh lacerated +by torture, so madness is always concealed in its cell, from +whence, should it depart, it is conveyed to some gloomy +hospital, where the doctor has no thought for man or mind in +the mutilated being the jailer delivers to him. The very +madness of the Abbe Faria, gone mad in prison, condemned him +to perpetual captivity. +The inspector kept his word with Dantes he examined the +register, and found the following note concerning him +Edmond Dantes +Violent Bonapartist took an active part in the return from +Elba. +The greatest watchfulness and care to be exercised. +This note was in a different hand from the rest, which +showed that it had been added since his confinement. The +inspector could not contend against this accusation he +simply wrote, "Nothing to be done." +This visit had infused new vigor into Dantes he had, till +then, forgotten the date but now, with a fragment of +plaster, he wrote the date, th July, , and made a mark +every day, in order not to lose his reckoning again. Days +and weeks passed away, then months Dantes still waited +he at first expected to be freed in a fortnight. This +fortnight expired, he decided that the inspector would do +nothing until his return to Paris, and that he would not +reach there until his circuit was finished, he therefore +fixed three months three months passed away, then six more. +Finally ten months and a half had gone by and no favorable +change had taken place, and Dantes began to fancy the +inspector's visit but a dream, an illusion of the brain. +At the expiration of a year the governor was transferred he +had obtained charge of the fortress at Ham. He took with him +several of his subordinates, and amongst them Dantes' +jailer. A new governor arrived it would have been too +tedious to acquire the names of the prisoners he learned +their numbers instead. This horrible place contained fifty +cells their inhabitants were designated by the numbers of +their cell, and the unhappy young man was no longer called +Edmond Dantes he was now number . +Chapter +Number and Number . +Dantes passed through all the stages of torture natural to +prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that +pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope +then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in +some measure the governor's belief in his mental alienation +and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his +supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always the +last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do +not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other +means of deliverance. +Dantes asked to be removed from his present dungeon into +another for a change, however disadvantageous, was still a +change, and would afford him some amusement. He entreated to +be allowed to walk about, to have fresh air, books, and +writing materials. His requests were not granted, but he +went on asking all the same. He accustomed himself to +speaking to the new jailer, although the latter was, if +possible, more taciturn than the old one but still, to +speak to a man, even though mute, was something. Dantes +spoke for the sake of hearing his own voice he had tried to +speak when alone, but the sound of his voice terrified him. +Often, before his captivity, Dantes' mind had revolted at +the idea of assemblages of prisoners, made up of thieves, +vagabonds, and murderers. He now wished to be amongst them, +in order to see some other face besides that of his jailer +he sighed for the galleys, with the infamous costume, the +chain, and the brand on the shoulder. The galleyslaves +breathed the fresh air of heaven, and saw each other. They +were very happy. He besought the jailer one day to let him +have a companion, were it even the mad abbe. +The jailer, though rough and hardened by the constant sight +of so much suffering, was yet a man. At the bottom of his +heart he had often had a feeling of pity for this unhappy +young man who suffered so and he laid the request of number + before the governor but the latter sapiently imagined +that Dantes wished to conspire or attempt an escape, and +refused his request. Dantes had exhausted all human +resources, and he then turned to God. +All the pious ideas that had been so long forgotten, +returned he recollected the prayers his mother had taught +him, and discovered a new meaning in every word for in +prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until +misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands +the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the +pity of heaven He prayed, and prayed aloud, no longer +terrified at the sound of his own voice, for he fell into a +sort of ecstasy. He laid every action of his life before the +Almighty, proposed tasks to accomplish, and at the end of +every prayer introduced the entreaty oftener addressed to +man than to God "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive +them that trespass against us." Yet in spite of his earnest +prayers, Dantes remained a prisoner. +Then gloom settled heavily upon him. Dantes was a man of +great simplicity of thought, and without education he could +not, therefore, in the solitude of his dungeon, traverse in +mental vision the history of the ages, bring to life the +nations that had perished, and rebuild the ancient cities so +vast and stupendous in the light of the imagination, and +that pass before the eye glowing with celestial colors in +Martin's Babylonian pictures. He could not do this, he whose +past life was so short, whose present so melancholy, and his +future so doubtful. Nineteen years of light to reflect upon +in eternal darkness No distraction could come to his aid +his energetic spirit, that would have exalted in thus +revisiting the past, was imprisoned like an eagle in a cage. +He clung to one idea that of his happiness, destroyed, +without apparent cause, by an unheardof fatality he +considered and reconsidered this idea, devoured it so to +speak, as the implacable Ugolino devours the skull of +Archbishop Roger in the Inferno of Dante. +Rage supplanted religious fervor. Dantes uttered blasphemies +that made his jailer recoil with horror, dashed himself +furiously against the walls of his prison, wreaked his anger +upon everything, and chiefly upon himself, so that the least +thing, a grain of sand, a straw, or a breath of air that +annoyed him, led to paroxysms of fury. Then the letter that +Villefort had showed to him recurred to his mind, and every +line gleamed forth in fiery letters on the wall like the +mene tekel upharsin of Belshazzar. He told himself that it +was the enmity of man, and not the vengeance of heaven, that +had thus plunged him into the deepest misery. He consigned +his unknown persecutors to the most horrible tortures he +could imagine, and found them all insufficient, because +after torture came death, and after death, if not repose, at +least the boon of unconsciousness. +By dint of constantly dwelling on the idea that tranquillity +was death, and if punishment were the end in view other +tortures than death must be invented, he began to reflect on +suicide. Unhappy he, who, on the brink of misfortune, broods +over ideas like these +Before him is a dead sea that stretches in azure calm before +the eye but he who unwarily ventures within its embrace +finds himself struggling with a monster that would drag him +down to perdition. Once thus ensnared, unless the protecting +hand of God snatch him thence, all is over, and his +struggles but tend to hasten his destruction. This state of +mental anguish is, however, less terrible than the +sufferings that precede or the punishment that possibly will +follow. There is a sort of consolation at the contemplation +of the yawning abyss, at the bottom of which lie darkness +and obscurity. +Edmond found some solace in these ideas. All his sorrows, +all his sufferings, with their train of gloomy spectres, +fled from his cell when the angel of death seemed about to +enter. Dantes reviewed his past life with composure, and, +looking forward with terror to his future existence, chose +that middle line that seemed to afford him a refuge. +"Sometimes," said he, "in my voyages, when I was a man and +commanded other men, I have seen the heavens overcast, the +sea rage and foam, the storm arise, and, like a monstrous +bird, beating the two horizons with its wings. Then I felt +that my vessel was a vain refuge, that trembled and shook +before the tempest. Soon the fury of the waves and the sight +of the sharp rocks announced the approach of death, and +death then terrified me, and I used all my skill and +intelligence as a man and a sailor to struggle against the +wrath of God. But I did so because I was happy, because I +had not courted death, because to be cast upon a bed of +rocks and seaweed seemed terrible, because I was unwilling +that I, a creature made for the service of God, should serve +for food to the gulls and ravens. But now it is different I +have lost all that bound me to life, death smiles and +invites me to repose I die after my own manner, I die +exhausted and brokenspirited, as I fall asleep when I have +paced three thousand times round my cell." +No sooner had this idea taken possession of him than he +became more composed, arranged his couch to the best of his +power, ate little and slept less, and found existence almost +supportable, because he felt that he could throw it off at +pleasure, like a wornout garment. Two methods of +selfdestruction were at his disposal. He could hang himself +with his handkerchief to the window bars, or refuse food and +die of starvation. But the first was repugnant to him. +Dantes had always entertained the greatest horror of +pirates, who are hung up to the yardarm he would not die +by what seemed an infamous death. He resolved to adopt the +second, and began that day to carry out his resolve. Nearly +four years had passed away at the end of the second he had +ceased to mark the lapse of time. +Dantes said, "I wish to die," and had chosen the manner of +his death, and fearful of changing his mind, he had taken an +oath to die. "When my morning and evening meals are +brought," thought he, "I will cast them out of the window, +and they will think that I have eaten them." +He kept his word twice a day he cast out, through the +barred aperture, the provisions his jailer brought him at +first gayly, then with deliberation, and at last with +regret. Nothing but the recollection of his oath gave him +strength to proceed. Hunger made viands once repugnant, now +acceptable he held the plate in his hand for an hour at a +time, and gazed thoughtfully at the morsel of bad meat, of +tainted fish, of black and mouldy bread. It was the last +yearning for life contending with the resolution of despair +then his dungeon seemed less sombre, his prospects less +desperate. He was still young he was only four or five +and twenty he had nearly fifty years to live. What +unforseen events might not open his prison door, and restore +him to liberty? Then he raised to his lips the repast that, +like a voluntary Tantalus, he refused himself but he +thought of his oath, and he would not break it. He persisted +until, at last, he had not sufficient strength to rise and +cast his supper out of the loophole. The next morning he +could not see or hear the jailer feared he was dangerously +ill. Edmond hoped he was dying. +Thus the day passed away. Edmond felt a sort of stupor +creeping over him which brought with it a feeling almost of +content the gnawing pain at his stomach had ceased his +thirst had abated when he closed his eyes he saw myriads of +lights dancing before them like the willo'thewisps that +play about the marshes. It was the twilight of that +mysterious country called Death +Suddenly, about nine o'clock in the evening, Edmond heard a +hollow sound in the wall against which he was lying. +So many loathsome animals inhabited the prison, that their +noise did not, in general, awake him but whether abstinence +had quickened his faculties, or whether the noise was really +louder than usual, Edmond raised his head and listened. It +was a continual scratching, as if made by a huge claw, a +powerful tooth, or some iron instrument attacking the +stones. +Although weakened, the young man's brain instantly responded +to the idea that haunts all prisoners liberty It seemed +to him that heaven had at length taken pity on him, and had +sent this noise to warn him on the very brink of the abyss. +Perhaps one of those beloved ones he had so often thought of +was thinking of him, and striving to diminish the distance +that separated them. +No, no, doubtless he was deceived, and it was but one of +those dreams that forerun death +Edmond still heard the sound. It lasted nearly three hours +he then heard a noise of something falling, and all was +silent. +Some hours afterwards it began again, nearer and more +distinct. Edmond was intensely interested. Suddenly the +jailer entered. +For a week since he had resolved to die, and during the four +days that he had been carrying out his purpose, Edmond had +not spoken to the attendant, had not answered him when he +inquired what was the matter with him, and turned his face +to the wall when he looked too curiously at him but now the +jailer might hear the noise and put an end to it, and so +destroy a ray of something like hope that soothed his last +moments. +The jailer brought him his breakfast. Dantes raised himself +up and began to talk about everything about the bad quality +of the food, about the coldness of his dungeon, grumbling +and complaining, in order to have an excuse for speaking +louder, and wearying the patience of his jailer, who out of +kindness of heart had brought broth and white bread for his +prisoner. +Fortunately, he fancied that Dantes was delirious and +placing the food on the rickety table, he withdrew. Edmond +listened, and the sound became more and more distinct. +"There can be no doubt about it," thought he "it is some +prisoner who is striving to obtain his freedom. Oh, if I +were only there to help him" Suddenly another idea took +possession of his mind, so used to misfortune, that it was +scarcely capable of hope the idea that the noise was made +by workmen the governor had ordered to repair the +neighboring dungeon. +It was easy to ascertain this but how could he risk the +question? It was easy to call his jailer's attention to the +noise, and watch his countenance as he listened but might +he not by this means destroy hopes far more important than +the shortlived satisfaction of his own curiosity? +Unfortunately, Edmond's brain was still so feeble that he +could not bend his thoughts to anything in particular. +He saw but one means of restoring lucidity and clearness to +his judgment. He turned his eyes towards the soup which the +jailer had brought, rose, staggered towards it, raised the +vessel to his lips, and drank off the contents with a +feeling of indescribable pleasure. He had often heard that +shipwrecked persons had died through having eagerly devoured +too much food. Edmond replaced on the table the bread he was +about to devour, and returned to his couch he did not +wish to die. He soon felt that his ideas became again +collected he could think, and strengthen his thoughts by +reasoning. Then he said to himself, "I must put this to the +test, but without compromising anybody. If it is a workman, +I need but knock against the wall, and he will cease to +work, in order to find out who is knocking, and why he does +so but as his occupation is sanctioned by the governor, he +will soon resume it. If, on the contrary, it is a prisoner, +the noise I make will alarm him, he will cease, and not +begin again until he thinks every one is asleep." +Edmond rose again, but this time his legs did not tremble, +and his sight was clear he went to a corner of his dungeon, +detached a stone, and with it knocked against the wall where +the sound came. He struck thrice. At the first blow the +sound ceased, as if by magic. +Edmond listened intently an hour passed, two hours passed, +and no sound was heard from the wall all was silent +there. +Full of hope, Edmond swallowed a few mouthfuls of bread and +water, and, thanks to the vigor of his constitution, found +himself wellnigh recovered. +The day passed away in utter silence night came without +recurrence of the noise. +"It is a prisoner," said Edmond joyfully. The night passed +in perfect silence. Edmond did not close his eyes. +In the morning the jailer brought him fresh provisions he +had already devoured those of the previous day he ate these +listening anxiously for the sound, walking round and round +his cell, shaking the iron bars of the loophole, restoring +vigor and agility to his limbs by exercise, and so preparing +himself for his future destiny. At intervals he listened to +learn if the noise had not begun again, and grew impatient +at the prudence of the prisoner, who did not guess he had +been disturbed by a captive as anxious for liberty as +himself. +Three days passed seventytwo long tedious hours which he +counted off by minutes +At length one evening, as the jailer was visiting him for +the last time that night, Dantes, with his ear for the +hundredth time at the wall, fancied he heard an almost +imperceptible movement among the stones. He moved away, +walked up and down his cell to collect his thoughts, and +then went back and listened. +The matter was no longer doubtful. Something was at work on +the other side of the wall the prisoner had discovered the +danger, and had substituted a lever for a chisel. +Encouraged by this discovery, Edmond determined to assist +the indefatigable laborer. He began by moving his bed, and +looked around for anything with which he could pierce the +wall, penetrate the moist cement, and displace a stone. +He saw nothing, he had no knife or sharp instrument, the +window grating was of iron, but he had too often assured +himself of its solidity. All his furniture consisted of a +bed, a chair, a table, a pail, and a jug. The bed had iron +clamps, but they were screwed to the wood, and it would have +required a screwdriver to take them off. The table and +chair had nothing, the pail had once possessed a handle, but +that had been removed. +Dantes had but one resource, which was to break the jug, and +with one of the sharp fragments attack the wall. He let the +jug fall on the floor, and it broke in pieces. +Dantes concealed two or three of the sharpest fragments in +his bed, leaving the rest on the floor. The breaking of his +jug was too natural an accident to excite suspicion. Edmond +had all the night to work in, but in the darkness he could +not do much, and he soon felt that he was working against +something very hard he pushed back his bed, and waited for +day. +All night he heard the subterranean workman, who continued +to mine his way. Day came, the jailer entered. Dantes told +him that the jug had fallen from his hands while he was +drinking, and the jailer went grumblingly to fetch another, +without giving himself the trouble to remove the fragments +of the broken one. He returned speedily, advised the +prisoner to be more careful, and departed. +Dantes heard joyfully the key grate in the lock he listened +until the sound of steps died away, and then, hastily +displacing his bed, saw by the faint light that penetrated +into his cell, that he had labored uselessly the previous +evening in attacking the stone instead of removing the +plaster that surrounded it. +The damp had rendered it friable, and Dantes was able to +break it off in small morsels, it is true, but at the end +of half an hour he had scraped off a handful a +mathematician might have calculated that in two years, +supposing that the rock was not encountered, a passage +twenty feet long and two feet broad, might be formed. +The prisoner reproached himself with not having thus +employed the hours he had passed in vain hopes, prayer, and +despondency. During the six years that he had been +imprisoned, what might he not have accomplished? +In three days he had succeeded, with the utmost precaution, +in removing the cement, and exposing the stonework. The +wall was built of rough stones, among which, to give +strength to the structure, blocks of hewn stone were at +intervals imbedded. It was one of these he had uncovered, +and which he must remove from its socket. +Dantes strove to do this with his nails, but they were too +weak. The fragments of the jug broke, and after an hour of +useless toil, he paused. +Was he to be thus stopped at the beginning, and was he to +wait inactive until his fellow workman had completed his +task? Suddenly an idea occurred to him he smiled, and the +perspiration dried on his forehead. +The jailer always brought Dantes' soup in an iron saucepan +this saucepan contained soup for both prisoners, for Dantes +had noticed that it was either quite full, or half empty, +according as the turnkey gave it to him or to his companion +first. +The handle of this saucepan was of iron Dantes would have +given ten years of his life in exchange for it. +The jailer was accustomed to pour the contents of the +saucepan into Dantes' plate, and Dantes, after eating his +soup with a wooden spoon, washed the plate, which thus +served for every day. Now when evening came Dantes put his +plate on the ground near the door the jailer, as he +entered, stepped on it and broke it. +This time he could not blame Dantes. He was wrong to leave +it there, but the jailer was wrong not to have looked before +him. +The jailer, therefore, only grumbled. Then he looked about +for something to pour the soup into Dantes' entire dinner +service consisted of one plate there was no alternative. +"Leave the saucepan," said Dantes "you can take it away +when you bring me my breakfast." This advice was to the +jailer's taste, as it spared him the necessity of making +another trip. He left the saucepan. +Dantes was beside himself with joy. He rapidly devoured his +food, and after waiting an hour, lest the jailer should +change his mind and return, he removed his bed, took the +handle of the saucepan, inserted the point between the hewn +stone and rough stones of the wall, and employed it as a +lever. A slight oscillation showed Dantes that all went +well. At the end of an hour the stone was extricated from +the wall, leaving a cavity a foot and a half in diameter. +Dantes carefully collected the plaster, carried it into the +corner of his cell, and covered it with earth. Then, wishing +to make the best use of his time while he had the means of +labor, he continued to work without ceasing. At the dawn of +day he replaced the stone, pushed his bed against the wall, +and lay down. The breakfast consisted of a piece of bread +the jailer entered and placed the bread on the table. +"Well, don't you intend to bring me another plate?" said +Dantes. +"No," replied the turnkey "you destroy everything. First +you break your jug, then you make me break your plate if +all the prisoners followed your example, the government +would be ruined. I shall leave you the saucepan, and pour +your soup into that. So for the future I hope you will not +be so destructive." +Dantes raised his eyes to heaven and clasped his hands +beneath the coverlet. He felt more gratitude for the +possession of this piece of iron than he had ever felt for +anything. He had noticed, however, that the prisoner on the +other side had ceased to labor no matter, this was a +greater reason for proceeding if his neighbor would not +come to him, he would go to his neighbor. All day he toiled +on untiringly, and by the evening he had succeeded in +extracting ten handfuls of plaster and fragments of stone. +When the hour for his jailer's visit arrived, Dantes +straightened the handle of the saucepan as well as he could, +and placed it in its accustomed place. The turnkey poured +his ration of soup into it, together with the fish for +thrice a week the prisoners were deprived of meat. This +would have been a method of reckoning time, had not Dantes +long ceased to do so. Having poured out the soup, the +turnkey retired. Dantes wished to ascertain whether his +neighbor had really ceased to work. He listened all was +silent, as it had been for the last three days. Dantes +sighed it was evident that his neighbor distrusted him. +However, he toiled on all the night without being +discouraged but after two or three hours he encountered an +obstacle. The iron made no impression, but met with a smooth +surface Dantes touched it, and found that it was a beam. +This beam crossed, or rather blocked up, the hole Dantes had +made it was necessary, therefore, to dig above or under it. +The unhappy young man had not thought of this. "O my God, my +God" murmured he, "I have so earnestly prayed to you, that +I hoped my prayers had been heard. After having deprived me +of my liberty, after having deprived me of death, after +having recalled me to existence, my God, have pity on me, +and do not let me die in despair" +"Who talks of God and despair at the same time?" said a +voice that seemed to come from beneath the earth, and, +deadened by the distance, sounded hollow and sepulchral in +the young man's ears. Edmond's hair stood on end, and he +rose to his knees. +"Ah," said he, "I hear a human voice." Edmond had not heard +any one speak save his jailer for four or five years and a +jailer is no man to a prisoner he is a living door, a +barrier of flesh and blood adding strength to restraints of +oak and iron. +"In the name of heaven," cried Dantes, "speak again, though +the sound of your voice terrifies me. Who are you?" +"Who are you?" said the voice. +"An unhappy prisoner," replied Dantes, who made no +hesitation in answering. +"Of what country?" +"A Frenchman." +"Your name?" +"Edmond Dantes." +"Your profession?" +"A sailor." +"How long have you been here?" +"Since the th of February, ." +"Your crime?" +"I am innocent." +"But of what are you accused?" +"Of having conspired to aid the emperor's return." +"What For the emperor's return? the emperor is no longer +on the throne, then?" +"He abdicated at Fontainebleau in , and was sent to the +Island of Elba. But how long have you been here that you are +ignorant of all this?" +"Since ." +Dantes shuddered this man had been four years longer than +himself in prison. +"Do not dig any more," said the voice "only tell me how +high up is your excavation?" +"On a level with the floor." +"How is it concealed?" +"Behind my bed." +"Has your bed been moved since you have been a prisoner?" +"No." +"What does your chamber open on?" +"A corridor." +"And the corridor?" +"On a court." +"Alas" murmured the voice. +"Oh, what is the matter?" cried Dantes. +"I have made a mistake owing to an error in my plans. I took +the wrong angle, and have come out fifteen feet from where I +intended. I took the wall you are mining for the outer wall +of the fortress." +"But then you would be close to the sea?" +"That is what I hoped." +"And supposing you had succeeded?" +"I should have thrown myself into the sea, gained one of the +islands near here the Isle de Daume or the Isle de +Tiboulen and then I should have been safe." +"Could you have swum so far?" +"Heaven would have given me strength but now all is lost." +"All?" +"Yes stop up your excavation carefully, do not work any +more, and wait until you hear from me." +"Tell me, at least, who you are?" +"I am I am No. ." +"You mistrust me, then," said Dantes. Edmond fancied he +heard a bitter laugh resounding from the depths. +"Oh, I am a Christian," cried Dantes, guessing instinctively +that this man meant to abandon him. "I swear to you by him +who died for us that naught shall induce me to breathe one +syllable to my jailers but I conjure you do not abandon me. +If you do, I swear to you, for I have got to the end of my +strength, that I will dash my brains out against the wall, +and you will have my death to reproach yourself with." +"How old are you? Your voice is that of a young man." +"I do not know my age, for I have not counted the years I +have been here. All I do know is, that I was just nineteen +when I was arrested, the th of February, ." +"Not quite twentysix" murmured the voice "at that age he +cannot be a traitor." +"Oh, no, no," cried Dantes. "I swear to you again, rather +than betray you, I would allow myself to be hacked in +pieces" +"You have done well to speak to me, and ask for my +assistance, for I was about to form another plan, and leave +you but your age reassures me. I will not forget you. +Wait." +"How long?" +"I must calculate our chances I will give you the signal." +"But you will not leave me you will come to me, or you will +let me come to you. We will escape, and if we cannot escape +we will talk you of those whom you love, and I of those +whom I love. You must love somebody?" +"No, I am alone in the world." +"Then you will love me. If you are young, I will be your +comrade if you are old, I will be your son. I have a father +who is seventy if he yet lives I only love him and a young +girl called Mercedes. My father has not yet forgotten me, I +am sure, but God alone knows if she loves me still I shall +love you as I loved my father." +"It is well," returned the voice "tomorrow." +These few words were uttered with an accent that left no +doubt of his sincerity Dantes rose, dispersed the fragments +with the same precaution as before, and pushed his bed back +against the wall. He then gave himself up to his happiness. +He would no longer be alone. He was, perhaps, about to +regain his liberty at the worst, he would have a companion, +and captivity that is shared is but half captivity. Plaints +made in common are almost prayers, and prayers where two or +three are gathered together invoke the mercy of heaven. +All day Dantes walked up and down his cell. He sat down +occasionally on his bed, pressing his hand on his heart. At +the slightest noise he bounded towards the door. Once or +twice the thought crossed his mind that he might be +separated from this unknown, whom he loved already and then +his mind was made up when the jailer moved his bed and +stooped to examine the opening, he would kill him with his +water jug. He would be condemned to die, but he was about to +die of grief and despair when this miraculous noise recalled +him to life. +The jailer came in the evening. Dantes was on his bed. It +seemed to him that thus he better guarded the unfinished +opening. Doubtless there was a strange expression in his +eyes, for the jailer said, "Come, are you going mad again?" +Dantes did not answer he feared that the emotion of his +voice would betray him. The jailer went away shaking his +head. Night came Dantes hoped that his neighbor would +profit by the silence to address him, but he was mistaken. +The next morning, however, just as he removed his bed from +the wall, he heard three knocks he threw himself on his +knees. +"Is it you?" said he "I am here." +"Is your jailer gone?" +"Yes," said Dantes "he will not return until the evening +so that we have twelve hours before us." +"I can work, then?" said the voice. +"Oh, yes, yes this instant, I entreat you." +In a moment that part of the floor on which Dantes was +resting his two hands, as he knelt with his head in the +opening, suddenly gave way he drew back smartly, while a +mass of stones and earth disappeared in a hole that opened +beneath the aperture he himself had formed. Then from the +bottom of this passage, the depth of which it was impossible +to measure, he saw appear, first the head, then the +shoulders, and lastly the body of a man, who sprang lightly +into his cell. +Chapter +A Learned Italian. +Seizing in his arms the friend so long and ardently desired, +Dantes almost carried him towards the window, in order to +obtain a better view of his features by the aid of the +imperfect light that struggled through the grating. +He was a man of small stature, with hair blanched rather by +suffering and sorrow than by age. He had a deepset, +penetrating eye, almost buried beneath the thick gray +eyebrow, and a long and still black beard reaching down to +his breast. His thin face, deeply furrowed by care, and the +bold outline of his strongly marked features, betokened a +man more accustomed to exercise his mental faculties than +his physical strength. Large drops of perspiration were now +standing on his brow, while the garments that hung about him +were so ragged that one could only guess at the pattern upon +which they had originally been fashioned. +The stranger might have numbered sixty or sixtyfive years +but a certain briskness and appearance of vigor in his +movements made it probable that he was aged more from +captivity than the course of time. He received the +enthusiastic greeting of his young acquaintance with evident +pleasure, as though his chilled affections were rekindled +and invigorated by his contact with one so warm and ardent. +He thanked him with grateful cordiality for his kindly +welcome, although he must at that moment have been suffering +bitterly to find another dungeon where he had fondly +reckoned on discovering a means of regaining his liberty. +"Let us first see," said he, "whether it is possible to +remove the traces of my entrance here our future +tranquillity depends upon our jailers being entirely +ignorant of it." Advancing to the opening, he stooped and +raised the stone easily in spite of its weight then, +fitting it into its place, he said, +"You removed this stone very carelessly but I suppose you +had no tools to aid you." +"Why," exclaimed Dantes, with astonishment, "do you possess +any?" +"I made myself some and with the exception of a file, I +have all that are necessary, a chisel, pincers, and +lever." +"Oh, how I should like to see these products of your +industry and patience." +"Well, in the first place, here is my chisel." So saying, he +displayed a sharp strong blade, with a handle made of +beechwood. +"And with what did you contrive to make that?" inquired +Dantes. +"With one of the clamps of my bedstead and this very tool +has sufficed me to hollow out the road by which I came +hither, a distance of about fifty feet." +"Fifty feet" responded Dantes, almost terrified. +"Do not speak so loud, young man don't speak so loud. It +frequently occurs in a state prison like this, that persons +are stationed outside the doors of the cells purposely to +overhear the conversation of the prisoners." +"But they believe I am shut up alone here." +"That makes no difference." +"And you say that you dug your way a distance of fifty feet +to get here?" +"I do that is about the distance that separates your +chamber from mine only, unfortunately, I did not curve +aright for want of the necessary geometrical instruments to +calculate my scale of proportion, instead of taking an +ellipsis of forty feet, I made it fifty. I expected, as I +told you, to reach the outer wall, pierce through it, and +throw myself into the sea I have, however, kept along the +corridor on which your chamber opens, instead of going +beneath it. My labor is all in vain, for I find that the +corridor looks into a courtyard filled with soldiers." +"That's true," said Dantes "but the corridor you speak of +only bounds one side of my cell there are three others +do you know anything of their situation?" +"This one is built against the solid rock, and it would take +ten experienced miners, duly furnished with the requisite +tools, as many years to perforate it. This adjoins the lower +part of the governor's apartments, and were we to work our +way through, we should only get into some lockup cellars, +where we must necessarily be recaptured. The fourth and last +side of your cell faces on faces on stop a minute, now +where does it face?" +The wall of which he spoke was the one in which was fixed +the loophole by which light was admitted to the chamber. +This loophole, which gradually diminished in size as it +approached the outside, to an opening through which a child +could not have passed, was, for better security, furnished +with three iron bars, so as to quiet all apprehensions even +in the mind of the most suspicious jailer as to the +possibility of a prisoner's escape. As the stranger asked +the question, he dragged the table beneath the window. +"Climb up," said he to Dantes. The young man obeyed, mounted +on the table, and, divining the wishes of his companion, +placed his back securely against the wall and held out both +hands. The stranger, whom as yet Dantes knew only by the +number of his cell, sprang up with an agility by no means to +be expected in a person of his years, and, light and steady +on his feet as a cat or a lizard, climbed from the table to +the outstretched hands of Dantes, and from them to his +shoulders then, bending double, for the ceiling of the +dungeon prevented him from holding himself erect, he managed +to slip his head between the upper bars of the window, so as +to be able to command a perfect view from top to bottom. +An instant afterwards he hastily drew back his head, saying, +"I thought so" and sliding from the shoulders of Dantes as +dextrously as he had ascended, he nimbly leaped from the +table to the ground. +"What was it that you thought?" asked the young man +anxiously, in his turn descending from the table. +The elder prisoner pondered the matter. "Yes," said he at +length, "it is so. This side of your chamber looks out upon +a kind of open gallery, where patrols are continually +passing, and sentries keep watch day and night." +"Are you quite sure of that?" +"Certain. I saw the soldier's shape and the top of his +musket that made me draw in my head so quickly, for I was +fearful he might also see me." +"Well?" inquired Dantes. +"You perceive then the utter impossibility of escaping +through your dungeon?" +"Then," pursued the young man eagerly +"Then," answered the elder prisoner, "the will of God be +done" and as the old man slowly pronounced those words, an +air of profound resignation spread itself over his careworn +countenance. Dantes gazed on the man who could thus +philosophically resign hopes so long and ardently nourished +with an astonishment mingled with admiration. +"Tell me, I entreat of you, who and what you are?" said he +at length "never have I met with so remarkable a person as +yourself." +"Willingly," answered the stranger "if, indeed, you feel +any curiosity respecting one, now, alas, powerless to aid +you in any way." +"Say not so you can console and support me by the strength +of your own powerful mind. Pray let me know who you really +are?" +The stranger smiled a melancholy smile. "Then listen," said +he. "I am the Abbe Faria, and have been imprisoned as you +know in this Chateau d'If since the year previously to +which I had been confined for three years in the fortress of +Fenestrelle. In the year I was transferred to Piedmont +in France. It was at this period I learned that the destiny +which seemed subservient to every wish formed by Napoleon, +had bestowed on him a son, named king of Rome even in his +cradle. I was very far then from expecting the change you +have just informed me of namely, that four years +afterwards, this colossus of power would be overthrown. Then +who reigns in France at this moment Napoleon II.?" +"No, Louis XVIII." +"The brother of Louis XVII. How inscrutable are the ways of +providence for what great and mysterious purpose has it +pleased heaven to abase the man once so elevated, and raise +up him who was so abased?" +Dantes' whole attention was riveted on a man who could thus +forget his own misfortunes while occupying himself with the +destinies of others. +"Yes, yes," continued he, "'Twill be the same as it was in +England. After Charles I., Cromwell after Cromwell, Charles +II., and then James II., and then some soninlaw or +relation, some Prince of Orange, a stadtholder who becomes a +king. Then new concessions to the people, then a +constitution, then liberty. Ah, my friend" said the abbe, +turning towards Dantes, and surveying him with the kindling +gaze of a prophet, "you are young, you will see all this +come to pass." +"Probably, if ever I get out of prison" +"True," replied Faria, "we are prisoners but I forget this +sometimes, and there are even moments when my mental vision +transports me beyond these walls, and I fancy myself at +liberty." +"But wherefore are you here?" +"Because in I dreamed of the very plan Napoleon tried +to realize in because, like Machiavelli, I desired to +alter the political face of Italy, and instead of allowing +it to be split up into a quantity of petty principalities, +each held by some weak or tyrannical ruler, I sought to form +one large, compact, and powerful empire and, lastly, +because I fancied I had found my Caesar Borgia in a crowned +simpleton, who feigned to enter into my views only to betray +me. It was the plan of Alexander VI. and Clement VII., but +it will never succeed now, for they attempted it +fruitlessly, and Napoleon was unable to complete his work. +Italy seems fated to misfortune." And the old man bowed his +head. +Dantes could not understand a man risking his life for such +matters. Napoleon certainly he knew something of, inasmuch +as he had seen and spoken with him but of Clement VII. and +Alexander VI. he knew nothing. +"Are you not," he asked, "the priest who here in the Chateau +d'If is generally thought to be ill?" +"Mad, you mean, don't you?" +"I did not like to say so," answered Dantes, smiling. +"Well, then," resumed Faria with a bitter smile, "let me +answer your question in full, by acknowledging that I am the +poor mad prisoner of the Chateau d'If, for many years +permitted to amuse the different visitors with what is said +to be my insanity and, in all probability, I should be +promoted to the honor of making sport for the children, if +such innocent beings could be found in an abode devoted like +this to suffering and despair." +Dantes remained for a short time mute and motionless at +length he said, "Then you abandon all hope of escape?" +"I perceive its utter impossibility and I consider it +impious to attempt that which the Almighty evidently does +not approve." +"Nay, be not discouraged. Would it not be expecting too much +to hope to succeed at your first attempt? Why not try to +find an opening in another direction from that which has so +unfortunately failed?" +"Alas, it shows how little notion you can have of all it has +cost me to effect a purpose so unexpectedly frustrated, that +you talk of beginning over again. In the first place, I was +four years making the tools I possess, and have been two +years scraping and digging out earth, hard as granite +itself then what toil and fatigue has it not been to remove +huge stones I should once have deemed impossible to loosen. +Whole days have I passed in these Titanic efforts, +considering my labor well repaid if, by nighttime I had +contrived to carry away a square inch of this hardbound +cement, changed by ages into a substance unyielding as the +stones themselves then to conceal the mass of earth and +rubbish I dug up, I was compelled to break through a +staircase, and throw the fruits of my labor into the hollow +part of it but the well is now so completely choked up, +that I scarcely think it would be possible to add another +handful of dust without leading to discovery. Consider also +that I fully believed I had accomplished the end and aim of +my undertaking, for which I had so exactly husbanded my +strength as to make it just hold out to the termination of +my enterprise and now, at the moment when I reckoned upon +success, my hopes are forever dashed from me. No, I repeat +again, that nothing shall induce me to renew attempts +evidently at variance with the Almighty's pleasure." +Dantes held down his head, that the other might not see how +joy at the thought of having a companion outweighed the +sympathy he felt for the failure of the abbe's plans. +The abbe sank upon Edmond's bed, while Edmond himself +remained standing. Escape had never once occurred to him. +There are, indeed, some things which appear so impossible +that the mind does not dwell on them for an instant. To +undermine the ground for fifty feet to devote three years +to a labor which, if successful, would conduct you to a +precipice overhanging the sea to plunge into the waves +from the height of fifty, sixty, perhaps a hundred feet, at +the risk of being dashed to pieces against the rocks, should +you have been fortunate enough to have escaped the fire of +the sentinels and even, supposing all these perils past, +then to have to swim for your life a distance of at least +three miles ere you could reach the shore were +difficulties so startling and formidable that Dantes had +never even dreamed of such a scheme, resigning himself +rather to death. But the sight of an old man clinging to +life with so desperate a courage, gave a fresh turn to his +ideas, and inspired him with new courage. Another, older and +less strong than he, had attempted what he had not had +sufficient resolution to undertake, and had failed only +because of an error in calculation. This same person, with +almost incredible patience and perseverance, had contrived +to provide himself with tools requisite for so unparalleled +an attempt. Another had done all this why, then, was it +impossible to Dantes? Faria had dug his way through fifty +feet, Dantes would dig a hundred Faria, at the age of +fifty, had devoted three years to the task he, who was but +half as old, would sacrifice six Faria, a priest and +savant, had not shrunk from the idea of risking his life by +trying to swim a distance of three miles to one of the +islands Daume, Rattonneau, or Lemaire should a hardy +sailer, an experienced diver, like himself, shrink from a +similar task should he, who had so often for mere +amusement's sake plunged to the bottom of the sea to fetch +up the bright coral branch, hesitate to entertain the same +project? He could do it in an hour, and how many times had +he, for pure pastime, continued in the water for more than +twice as long At once Dantes resolved to follow the brave +example of his energetic companion, and to remember that +what has once been done may be done again. +After continuing some time in profound meditation, the young +man suddenly exclaimed, "I have found what you were in +search of" +Faria started "Have you, indeed?" cried he, raising his +head with quick anxiety "pray, let me know what it is you +have discovered?" +"The corridor through which you have bored your way from the +cell you occupy here, extends in the same direction as the +outer gallery, does it not?" +"It does." +"And is not above fifteen feet from it?" +"About that." +"Well, then, I will tell you what we must do. We must pierce +through the corridor by forming a side opening about the +middle, as it were the top part of a cross. This time you +will lay your plans more accurately we shall get out into +the gallery you have described kill the sentinel who guards +it, and make our escape. All we require to insure success is +courage, and that you possess, and strength, which I am not +deficient in as for patience, you have abundantly proved +yours you shall now see me prove mine." +"One instant, my dear friend," replied the abbe "it is +clear you do not understand the nature of the courage with +which I am endowed, and what use I intend making of my +strength. As for patience, I consider that I have abundantly +exercised that in beginning every morning the task of the +night before, and every night renewing the task of the day. +But then, young man and I pray of you to give me your full +attention, then I thought I could not be doing anything +displeasing to the Almighty in trying to set an innocent +being at liberty one who had committed no offence, and +merited not condemnation." +"And have your notions changed?" asked Dantes with much +surprise "do you think yourself more guilty in making the +attempt since you have encountered me?" +"No neither do I wish to incur guilt. Hitherto I have +fancied myself merely waging war against circumstances, not +men. I have thought it no sin to bore through a wall, or +destroy a staircase but I cannot so easily persuade myself +to pierce a heart or take away a life." A slight movement of +surprise escaped Dantes. +"Is it possible," said he, "that where your liberty is at +stake you can allow any such scruple to deter you from +obtaining it?" +"Tell me," replied Faria, "what has hindered you from +knocking down your jailer with a piece of wood torn from +your bedstead, dressing yourself in his clothes, and +endeavoring to escape?" +"Simply the fact that the idea never occurred to me," +answered Dantes. +"Because," said the old man, "the natural repugnance to the +commission of such a crime prevented you from thinking of +it and so it ever is because in simple and allowable things +our natural instincts keep us from deviating from the strict +line of duty. The tiger, whose nature teaches him to delight +in shedding blood, needs but the sense of smell to show him +when his prey is within his reach, and by following this +instinct he is enabled to measure the leap necessary to +permit him to spring on his victim but man, on the +contrary, loathes the idea of blood it is not alone that +the laws of social life inspire him with a shrinking dread +of taking life his natural construction and physiological +formation" +Dantes was confused and silent at this explanation of the +thoughts which had unconsciously been working in his mind, +or rather soul for there are two distinct sorts of ideas, +those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from +the heart. +"Since my imprisonment," said Faria, "I have thought over +all the most celebrated cases of escape on record. They have +rarely been successful. Those that have been crowned with +full success have been long meditated upon, and carefully +arranged such, for instance, as the escape of the Duc de +Beaufort from the Chateau de Vincennes, that of the Abbe +Dubuquoi from For l'Eveque of Latude from the Bastille. +Then there are those for which chance sometimes affords +opportunity, and those are the best of all. Let us, +therefore, wait patiently for some favorable moment, and +when it presents itself, profit by it." +"Ah," said Dantes, "you might well endure the tedious delay +you were constantly employed in the task you set yourself, +and when weary with toil, you had your hopes to refresh and +encourage you." +"I assure you," replied the old man, "I did not turn to that +source for recreation or support." +"What did you do then?" +"I wrote or studied." +"Were you then permitted the use of pens, ink, and paper?" +"Oh, no," answered the abbe "I had none but what I made for +myself." +"You made paper, pens and ink?" +"Yes." +Dantes gazed with admiration, but he had some difficulty in +believing. Faria saw this. +"When you pay me a visit in my cell, my young friend," said +he, "I will show you an entire work, the fruits of the +thoughts and reflections of my whole life many of them +meditated over in the shades of the Coloseum at Rome, at the +foot of St. Mark's column at Venice, and on the borders of +the Arno at Florence, little imagining at the time that they +would be arranged in order within the walls of the Chateau +d'If. The work I speak of is called "A Treatise on the +Possibility of a General Monarchy in Italy,' and will make +one large quarto volume." +"And on what have you written all this?" +"On two of my shirts. I invented a preparation that makes +linen as smooth and as easy to write on as parchment." +"You are, then, a chemist?" +"Somewhat I know Lavoisier, and was the intimate friend of +Cabanis." +"But for such a work you must have needed books had you +any?" +"I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome +but after reading them over many times, I found out that +with one hundred and fifty wellchosen books a man +possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, +at least all that a man need really know. I devoted three +years of my life to reading and studying these one hundred +and fifty volumes, till I knew them nearly by heart so that +since I have been in prison, a very slight effort of memory +has enabled me to recall their contents as readily as though +the pages were open before me. I could recite you the whole +of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, +Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, +Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important." +"You are, doubtless, acquainted with a variety of languages, +so as to have been able to read all these?" +"Yes, I speak five of the modern tongues that is to say, +German, French, Italian, English, and Spanish by the aid of +ancient Greek I learned modern Greek I don't speak it so +well as I could wish, but I am still trying to improve +myself." +"Improve yourself" repeated Dantes "why, how can you +manage to do so?" +"Why, I made a vocabulary of the words I knew turned, +returned, and arranged them, so as to enable me to express +my thoughts through their medium. I know nearly one thousand +words, which is all that is absolutely necessary, although I +believe there are nearly one hundred thousand in the +dictionaries. I cannot hope to be very fluent, but I +certainly should have no difficulty in explaining my wants +and wishes and that would be quite as much as I should ever +require." +Stronger grew the wonder of Dantes, who almost fancied he +had to do with one gifted with supernatural powers still +hoping to find some imperfection which might bring him down +to a level with human beings, he added, "Then if you were +not furnished with pens, how did you manage to write the +work you speak of?" +"I made myself some excellent ones, which would be +universally preferred to all others if once known. You are +aware what huge whitings are served to us on maigre days. +Well, I selected the cartilages of the heads of these +fishes, and you can scarcely imagine the delight with which +I welcomed the arrival of each Wednesday, Friday, and +Saturday, as affording me the means of increasing my stock +of pens for I will freely confess that my historical labors +have been my greatest solace and relief. While retracing the +past, I forget the present and traversing at will the path +of history I cease to remember that I am myself a prisoner." +"But the ink," said Dantes "of what did you make your ink?" +"There was formerly a fireplace in my dungeon," replied +Faria, "but it was closed up long ere I became an occupant +of this prison. Still, it must have been many years in use, +for it was thickly covered with a coating of soot this soot +I dissolved in a portion of the wine brought to me every +Sunday, and I assure you a better ink cannot be desired. For +very important notes, for which closer attention is +required, I pricked one of my fingers, and wrote with my own +blood." +"And when," asked Dantes, "may I see all this?" +"Whenever you please," replied the abbe. +"Oh, then let it be directly" exclaimed the young man. +"Follow me, then," said the abbe, as he reentered the +subterranean passage, in which he soon disappeared, followed +by Dantes. +Chapter +The Abbe's Chamber. +After having passed with tolerable ease through the +subterranean passage, which, however, did not admit of their +holding themselves erect, the two friends reached the +further end of the corridor, into which the abbe's cell +opened from that point the passage became much narrower, +and barely permitted one to creep through on hands and +knees. The floor of the abbe's cell was paved, and it had +been by raising one of the stones in the most obscure corner +that Faria had to been able to commence the laborious task +of which Dantes had witnessed the completion. +As he entered the chamber of his friend, Dantes cast around +one eager and searching glance in quest of the expected +marvels, but nothing more than common met his view. +"It is well," said the abbe "we have some hours before us +it is now just a quarter past twelve o'clock." +Instinctively Dantes turned round to observe by what watch +or clock the abbe had been able so accurately to specify the +hour. +"Look at this ray of light which enters by my window," said +the abbe, "and then observe the lines traced on the wall. +Well, by means of these lines, which are in accordance with +the double motion of the earth, and the ellipse it describes +round the sun, I am enabled to ascertain the precise hour +with more minuteness than if I possessed a watch for that +might be broken or deranged in its movements, while the sun +and earth never vary in their appointed paths." +This last explanation was wholly lost upon Dantes, who had +always imagined, from seeing the sun rise from behind the +mountains and set in the Mediterranean, that it moved, and +not the earth. A double movement of the globe he inhabited, +and of which he could feel nothing, appeared to him +perfectly impossible. Each word that fell from his +companion's lips seemed fraught with the mysteries of +science, as worthy of digging out as the gold and diamonds +in the mines of Guzerat and Golconda, which he could just +recollect having visited during a voyage made in his +earliest youth. +"Come," said he to the abbe, "I am anxious to see your +treasures." +The abbe smiled, and, proceeding to the disused fireplace, +raised, by the help of his chisel, a long stone, which had +doubtless been the hearth, beneath which was a cavity of +considerable depth, serving as a safe depository of the +articles mentioned to Dantes. +"What do you wish to see first?" asked the abbe. +"Oh, your great work on the monarchy of Italy" +Faria then drew forth from his hidingplace three or four +rolls of linen, laid one over the other, like folds of +papyrus. These rolls consisted of slips of cloth about four +inches wide and eighteen long they were all carefully +numbered and closely covered with writing, so legible that +Dantes could easily read it, as well as make out the sense +it being in Italian, a language he, as a Provencal, +perfectly understood. +"There," said he, "there is the work complete. I wrote the +word finis at the end of the sixtyeighth strip about a week +ago. I have torn up two of my shirts, and as many +handkerchiefs as I was master of, to complete the precious +pages. Should I ever get out of prison and find in all Italy +a printer courageous enough to publish what I have composed, +my literary reputation is forever secured." +"I see," answered Dantes. "Now let me behold the curious +pens with which you have written your work." +"Look" said Faria, showing to the young man a slender stick +about six inches long, and much resembling the size of the +handle of a fine paintingbrush, to the end of which was +tied, by a piece of thread, one of those cartilages of which +the abbe had before spoken to Dantes it was pointed, and +divided at the nib like an ordinary pen. Dantes examined it +with intense admiration, then looked around to see the +instrument with which it had been shaped so correctly into +form. +"Ah, yes," said Faria "the penknife. That's my masterpiece. +I made it, as well as this larger knife, out of an old iron +candlestick." The penknife was sharp and keen as a razor as +for the other knife, it would serve a double purpose, and +with it one could cut and thrust. +Dantes examined the various articles shown to him with the +same attention that he had bestowed on the curiosities and +strange tools exhibited in the shops at Marseilles as the +works of the savages in the South Seas from whence they had +been brought by the different trading vessels. +"As for the ink," said Faria, "I told you how I managed to +obtain that and I only just make it from time to time, as +I require it." +"One thing still puzzles me," observed Dantes, "and that is +how you managed to do all this by daylight?" +"I worked at night also," replied Faria. +"Night why, for heaven's sake, are your eyes like cats', +that you can see to work in the dark?" +"Indeed they are not but God his supplied man with the +intelligence that enables him to overcome the limitations of +natural conditions. I furnished myself with a light." +"You did? Pray tell me how." +"I separated the fat from the meat served to me, melted it, +and so made oil here is my lamp." So saying, the abbe +exhibited a sort of torch very similar to those used in +public illuminations. +"But light?" +"Here are two flints and a piece of burnt linen." +"And matches?" +"I pretended that I had a disorder of the skin, and asked +for a little sulphur, which was readily supplied." Dantes +laid the different things he had been looking at on the +table, and stood with his head drooping on his breast, as +though overwhelmed by the perseverance and strength of +Faria's mind. +"You have not seen all yet," continued Faria, "for I did not +think it wise to trust all my treasures in the same +hidingplace. Let us shut this one up." They put the stone +back in its place the abbe sprinkled a little dust over it +to conceal the traces of its having been removed, rubbed his +foot well on it to make it assume the same appearance as the +other, and then, going towards his bed, he removed it from +the spot it stood in. Behind the head of the bed, and +concealed by a stone fitting in so closely as to defy all +suspicion, was a hollow space, and in this space a ladder of +cords between twentyfive and thirty feet in length. Dantes +closely and eagerly examined it he found it firm, solid, +and compact enough to bear any weight. +"Who supplied you with the materials for making this +wonderful work?" +"I tore up several of my shirts, and ripped out the seams in +the sheets of my bed, during my three years' imprisonment at +Fenestrelle and when I was removed to the Chateau d'If, I +managed to bring the ravellings with me, so that I have been +able to finish my work here." +"And was it not discovered that your sheets were unhemmed?" +"Oh, no, for when I had taken out the thread I required, I +hemmed the edges over again." +"With what?" +"With this needle," said the abbe, as, opening his ragged +vestments, he showed Dantes a long, sharp fishbone, with a +small perforated eye for the thread, a small portion of +which still remained in it. "I once thought," continued +Faria, "of removing these iron bars, and letting myself down +from the window, which, as you see, is somewhat wider than +yours, although I should have enlarged it still more +preparatory to my flight however, I discovered that I +should merely have dropped into a sort of inner court, and I +therefore renounced the project altogether as too full of +risk and danger. Nevertheless, I carefully preserved my +ladder against one of those unforeseen opportunities of +which I spoke just now, and which sudden chance frequently +brings about." While affecting to be deeply engaged in +examining the ladder, the mind of Dantes was, in fact, +busily occupied by the idea that a person so intelligent, +ingenious, and clearsighted as the abbe might probably be +able to solve the dark mystery of his own misfortunes, where +he himself could see nothing. +"What are you thinking of?" asked the abbe smilingly, +imputing the deep abstraction in which his visitor was +plunged to the excess of his awe and wonder. +"I was reflecting, in the first place," replied Dantes, +"upon the enormous degree of intelligence and ability you +must have employed to reach the high perfection to which you +have attained. What would you not have accomplished if you +had been free?" +"Possibly nothing at all the overflow of my brain would +probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a +thousand follies misfortune is needed to bring to light the +treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to +explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties +to a focus and you are well aware that from the collision +of clouds electricity is produced from electricity, +lightning, from lightning, illumination." +"No," replied Dantes. "I know nothing. Some of your words +are to me quite empty of meaning. You must be blessed indeed +to possess the knowledge you have." +The abbe smiled. "Well," said he, "but you had another +subject for your thoughts did you not say so just now?" +"I did" +"You have told me as yet but one of them let me hear the +other." +"It was this, that while you had related to me all the +particulars of your past life, you were perfectly +unacquainted with mine." +"Your life, my young friend, has not been of sufficient +length to admit of your having passed through any very +important events." +"It has been long enough to inflict on me a great and +undeserved misfortune. I would fain fix the source of it on +man that I may no longer vent reproaches upon heaven." +"Then you profess ignorance of the crime with which you are +charged?" +"I do, indeed and this I swear by the two beings most dear +to me upon earth, my father and Mercedes." +"Come," said the abbe, closing his hidingplace, and pushing +the bed back to its original situation, "let me hear your +story." +Dantes obeyed, and commenced what he called his history, but +which consisted only of the account of a voyage to India, +and two or three voyages to the Levant until he arrived at +the recital of his last cruise, with the death of Captain +Leclere, and the receipt of a packet to be delivered by +himself to the grand marshal his interview with that +personage, and his receiving, in place of the packet +brought, a letter addressed to a Monsieur Noirtier his +arrival at Marseilles, and interview with his father his +affection for Mercedes, and their nuptual feast his +arrest and subsequent examination, his temporary detention +at the Palais de Justice, and his final imprisonment in the +Chateau d'If. From this point everything was a blank to +Dantes he knew nothing more, not even the length of time +he had been imprisoned. His recital finished, the abbe +reflected long and earnestly. +"There is," said he, at the end of his meditations, "a +clever maxim, which bears upon what I was saying to you some +little while ago, and that is, that unless wicked ideas take +root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right +and wholesome state, revolts at crime. Still, from an +artificial civilization have originated wants, vices, and +false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to +stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead +us into guilt and wickedness. From this view of things, +then, comes the axiom that if you visit to discover the +author of any bad action, seek first to discover the person +to whom the perpetration of that bad action could be in any +way advantageous. Now, to apply it in your case, to whom +could your disappearance have been serviceable?" +"To no one, by heaven I was a very insignificant person." +"Do not speak thus, for your reply evinces neither logic nor +philosophy everything is relative, my dear young friend, +from the king who stands in the way of his successor, to the +employee who keeps his rival out of a place. Now, in the +event of the king's death, his successor inherits a crown, +when the employee dies, the supernumerary steps into his +shoes, and receives his salary of twelve thousand livres. +Well, these twelve thousand livres are his civil list, and +are as essential to him as the twelve millions of a king. +Every one, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his +place on the social ladder, and is beset by stormy passions +and conflicting interests, as in Descartes' theory of +pressure and impulsion. But these forces increase as we go +higher, so that we have a spiral which in defiance of reason +rests upon the apex and not on the base. Now let us return +to your particular world. You say you were on the point of +being made captain of the Pharaon?" +"Yes." +"And about to become the husband of a young and lovely +girl?" +"Yes." +"Now, could any one have had any interest in preventing the +accomplishment of these two things? But let us first settle +the question as to its being the interest of any one to +hinder you from being captain of the Pharaon. What say you?" +"I cannot believe such was the case. I was generally liked +on board, and had the sailors possessed the right of +selecting a captain themselves, I feel convinced their +choice would have fallen on me. There was only one person +among the crew who had any feeling of illwill towards me. I +had quarelled with him some time previously, and had even +challenged him to fight me but he refused." +"Now we are getting on. And what was this man's name?" +"Danglars." +"What rank did he hold on board?" +"He was supercargo." +"And had you been captain, should you have retained him in +his employment?" +"Not if the choice had remained with me, for I had +frequently observed inaccuracies in his accounts." +"Good again Now then, tell me, was any person present +during your last conversation with Captain Leclere?" +"No we were quite alone." +"Could your conversation have been overheard by any one?" +"It might, for the cabin door was open and stay now I +recollect, Danglars himself passed by just as Captain +Leclere was giving me the packet for the grand marshal." +"That's better," cried the abbe "now we are on the right +scent. Did you take anybody with you when you put into the +port of Elba?" +"Nobody." +"Somebody there received your packet, and gave you a letter +in place of it, I think?" +"Yes the grand marshal did." +"And what did you do with that letter?" +"Put it into my portfolio." +"You had your portfolio with you, then? Now, how could a +sailor find room in his pocket for a portfolio large enough +to contain an official letter?" +"You are right it was left on board." +"Then it was not till your return to the ship that you put +the letter in the portfolio?" +"No." +"And what did you do with this same letter while returning +from PortoFerrajo to the vessel?" +"I carried it in my hand." +"So that when you went on board the Pharaon, everybody could +see that you held a letter in your hand?" +"Yes." +"Danglars, as well as the rest?" +"Danglars, as well as others." +"Now, listen to me, and try to recall every circumstance +attending your arrest. Do you recollect the words in which +the information against you was formulated?" +"Oh yes, I read it over three times, and the words sank +deeply into my memory." +"Repeat it to me." +Dantes paused a moment, then said, "This is it, word for +word "The king's attorney is informed by a friend to the +throne and religion, that one Edmond Dantes, mate on board +the Pharaon, this day arrived from Smyrna, after having +touched at Naples and PortoFerrajo, has been intrusted by +Murat with a packet for the usurper again, by the usurper, +with a letter for the Bonapartist Club in Paris. This proof +of his guilt may be procured by his immediate arrest, as the +letter will be found either about his person, at his +father's residence, or in his cabin on board the Pharaon.'" +The abbe shrugged his shoulders. "The thing is clear as +day," said he "and you must have had a very confiding +nature, as well as a good heart, not to have suspected the +origin of the whole affair." +"Do you really think so? Ah, that would indeed be infamous." +"How did Danglars usually write?" +"In a handsome, running hand." +"And how was the anonymous letter written?" +"Backhanded." Again the abbe smiled. "Disguised." +"It was very boldly written, if disguised." +"Stop a bit," said the abbe, taking up what he called his +pen, and, after dipping it into the ink, he wrote on a piece +of prepared linen, with his left hand, the first two or +three words of the accusation. Dantes drew back, and gazed +on the abbe with a sensation almost amounting to terror. +"How very astonishing" cried he at length. "Why your +writing exactly resembles that of the accusation." +"Simply because that accusation had been written with the +left hand and I have noticed that" +"What?" +"That while the writing of different persons done with the +right hand varies, that performed with the left hand is +invariably uniform." +"You have evidently seen and observed everything." +"Let us proceed." +"Oh, yes, yes" +"Now as regards the second question." +"I am listening." +"Was there any person whose interest it was to prevent your +marriage with Mercedes?" +"Yes a young man who loved her." +"And his name was" +"Fernand." +"That is a Spanish name, I think?" +"He was a Catalan." +"You imagine him capable of writing the letter?" +"Oh, no he would more likely have got rid of me by sticking +a knife into me." +"That is in strict accordance with the Spanish character an +assassination they will unhesitatingly commit, but an act of +cowardice, never." +"Besides," said Dantes, "the various circumstances mentioned +in the letter were wholly unknown to him." +"You had never spoken of them yourself to any one?" +"To no one." +"Not even to your mistress?" +"No, not even to my betrothed." +"Then it is Danglars." +"I feel quite sure of it now." +"Wait a little. Pray, was Danglars acquainted with Fernand?" +"No yes, he was. Now I recollect" +"What?" +"To have seen them both sitting at table together under an +arbor at Pere Pamphile's the evening before the day fixed +for my wedding. They were in earnest conversation. Danglars +was joking in a friendly way, but Fernand looked pale and +agitated." +"Were they alone?" +"There was a third person with them whom I knew perfectly +well, and who had, in all probability made their +acquaintance he was a tailor named Caderousse, but he was +very drunk. Stay stay How strange that it should not +have occurred to me before Now I remember quite well, that +on the table round which they were sitting were pens, ink, +and paper. Oh, the heartless, treacherous scoundrels" +exclaimed Dantes, pressing his hand to his throbbing brows. +"Is there anything else I can assist you in discovering, +besides the villany of your friends?" inquired the abbe with +a laugh. +"Yes, yes," replied Dantes eagerly "I would beg of you, who +see so completely to the depths of things, and to whom the +greatest mystery seems but an easy riddle, to explain to me +how it was that I underwent no second examination, was never +brought to trial, and, above all, was condemned without ever +having had sentence passed on me?" +"That is altogether a different and more serious matter," +responded the abbe. "The ways of justice are frequently too +dark and mysterious to be easily penetrated. All we have +hitherto done in the matter has been child's play. If you +wish me to enter upon the more difficult part of the +business, you must assist me by the most minute information +on every point." +"Pray ask me whatever questions you please for, in good +truth, you see more clearly into my life than I do myself." +"In the first place, then, who examined you, the king's +attorney, his deputy, or a magistrate?" +"The deputy." +"Was he young or old?" +"About six or seven and twenty years of age, I should say." +"So," answered the abbe. "Old enough to be ambitions, but +too young to be corrupt. And how did he treat you?" +"With more of mildness than severity." +"Did you tell him your whole story?" +"I did." +"And did his conduct change at all in the course of your +examination?" +"He did appear much disturbed when he read the letter that +had brought me into this scrape. He seemed quite overcome by +my misfortune." +"By your misfortune?" +"Yes." +"Then you feel quite sure that it was your misfortune he +deplored?" +"He gave me one great proof of his sympathy, at any rate." +"And that?" +"He burnt the sole evidence that could at all have +criminated me." +"What? the accusation?" +"No the letter." +"Are you sure?" +"I saw it done." +"That alters the case. This man might, after all, be a +greater scoundrel than you have thought possible." +"Upon my word," said Dantes, "you make me shudder. Is the +world filled with tigers and crocodiles?" +"Yes and remember that twolegged tigers and crocodiles are +more dangerous than the others." +"Never mind let us go on." +"With all my heart You tell me he burned the letter?" +"He did saying at the same time, "You see I thus destroy +the only proof existing against you.'" +"This action is somewhat too sublime to be natural." +"You think so?" +"I am sure of it. To whom was this letter addressed?" +"To M. Noirtier, No. CoqHeron, Paris." +"Now can you conceive of any interest that your heroic +deputy could possibly have had in the destruction of that +letter?" +"Why, it is not altogether impossible he might have had, for +he made me promise several times never to speak of that +letter to any one, assuring me he so advised me for my own +interest and, more than this, he insisted on my taking a +solemn oath never to utter the name mentioned in the +address." +"Noirtier" repeated the abbe "Noirtier I knew a person +of that name at the court of the Queen of Etruria, a +Noirtier, who had been a Girondin during the Revolution +What was your deputy called?" +"De Villefort" The abbe burst into a fit of laughter, while +Dantes gazed on him in utter astonishment. +"What ails you?" said he at length. +"Do you see that ray of sunlight?" +"I do." +"Well, the whole thing is more clear to me than that sunbeam +is to you. Poor fellow poor young man And you tell me this +magistrate expressed great sympathy and commiseration for +you?" +"He did." +"And the worthy man destroyed your compromising letter?" +"Yes." +"And then made you swear never to utter the name of +Noirtier?" +"Yes." +"Why, you poor shortsighted simpleton, can you not guess +who this Noirtier was, whose very name he was so careful to +keep concealed? Noirtier was his father." +Had a thunderbolt fallen at the feet of Dantes, or hell +opened its yawning gulf before him, he could not have been +more completely transfixed with horror than he was at the +sound of these unexpected words. Starting up, he clasped his +hands around his head as though to prevent his very brain +from bursting, and exclaimed, "His father his father" +"Yes, his father," replied the abbe "his right name was +Noirtier de Villefort." At this instant a bright light shot +through the mind of Dantes, and cleared up all that had been +dark and obscure before. The change that had come over +Villefort during the examination, the destruction of the +letter, the exacted promise, the almost supplicating tones +of the magistrate, who seemed rather to implore mercy than +to pronounce punishment, all returned with a stunning +force to his memory. He cried out, and staggered against the +wall like a drunken man, then he hurried to the opening that +led from the abbe's cell to his own, and said, "I must be +alone, to think over all this." +When he regained his dungeon, he threw himself on his bed, +where the turnkey found him in the evening visit, sitting +with fixed gaze and contracted features, dumb and motionless +as a statue. During these hours of profound meditation, +which to him had seemed only minutes, he had formed a +fearful resolution, and bound himself to its fulfilment by a +solemn oath. +Dantes was at length roused from his revery by the voice of +Faria, who, having also been visited by his jailer, had come +to invite his fellowsufferer to share his supper. The +reputation of being out of his mind, though harmlessly and +even amusingly so, had procured for the abbe unusual +privileges. He was supplied with bread of a finer, whiter +quality than the usual prison fare, and even regaled each +Sunday with a small quantity of wine. Now this was a Sunday, +and the abbe had come to ask his young companion to share +the luxuries with him. Dantes followed his features were no +longer contracted, and now wore their usual expression, but +there was that in his whole appearance that bespoke one who +had come to a fixed and desperate resolve. Faria bent on him +his penetrating eye "I regret now," said he, "having helped +you in your late inquiries, or having given you the +information I did." +"Why so?" inquired Dantes. +"Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart +that of vengeance." +Dantes smiled. "Let us talk of something else," said he. +Again the abbe looked at him, then mournfully shook his +head but in accordance with Dantes' request, he began to +speak of other matters. The elder prisoner was one of those +persons whose conversation, like that of all who have +experienced many trials, contained many useful and important +hints as well as sound information but it was never +egotistical, for the unfortunate man never alluded to his +own sorrows. Dantes listened with admiring attention to all +he said some of his remarks corresponded with what he +already knew, or applied to the sort of knowledge his +nautical life had enabled him to acquire. A part of the good +abbe's words, however, were wholly incomprehensible to him +but, like the aurora which guides the navigator in northern +latitudes, opened new vistas to the inquiring mind of the +listener, and gave fantastic glimpses of new horizons, +enabling him justly to estimate the delight an intellectual +mind would have in following one so richly gifted as Faria +along the heights of truth, where he was so much at home. +"You must teach me a small part of what you know," said +Dantes, "if only to prevent your growing weary of me. I can +well believe that so learned a person as yourself would +prefer absolute solitude to being tormented with the company +of one as ignorant and uninformed as myself. If you will +only agree to my request, I promise you never to mention +another word about escaping." The abbe smiled. "Alas, my +boy," said he, "human knowledge is confined within very +narrow limits and when I have taught you mathematics, +physics, history, and the three or four modern languages +with which I am acquainted, you will know as much as I do +myself. Now, it will scarcely require two years for me to +communicate to you the stock of learning I possess." +"Two years" exclaimed Dantes "do you really believe I can +acquire all these things in so short a time?" +"Not their application, certainly, but their principles you +may to learn is not to know there are the learners and the +learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other." +"But cannot one learn philosophy?" +"Philosophy cannot be taught it is the application of the +sciences to truth it is like the golden cloud in which the +Messiah went up into heaven." +"Well, then," said Dantes, "What shall you teach me first? I +am in a hurry to begin. I want to learn." +"Everything," said the abbe. And that very evening the +prisoners sketched a plan of education, to be entered upon +the following day. Dantes possessed a prodigious memory, +combined with an astonishing quickness and readiness of +conception the mathematical turn of his mind rendered him +apt at all kinds of calculation, while his naturally +poetical feelings threw a light and pleasing veil over the +dry reality of arithmetical computation, or the rigid +severity of geometry. He already knew Italian, and had also +picked up a little of the Romaic dialect during voyages to +the East and by the aid of these two languages he easily +comprehended the construction of all the others, so that at +the end of six months he began to speak Spanish, English, +and German. In strict accordance with the promise made to +the abbe, Dantes spoke no more of escape. Perhaps the +delight his studies afforded him left no room for such +thoughts perhaps the recollection that he had pledged his +word on which his sense of honor was keen kept him from +referring in any way to the possibilities of flight. Days, +even months, passed by unheeded in one rapid and instructive +course. At the end of a year Dantes was a new man. Dantes +observed, however, that Faria, in spite of the relief his +society afforded, daily grew sadder one thought seemed +incessantly to harass and distract his mind. Sometimes he +would fall into long reveries, sigh heavily and +involuntarily, then suddenly rise, and, with folded arms, +begin pacing the confined space of his dungeon. One day he +stopped all at once, and exclaimed, "Ah, if there were no +sentinel" +"There shall not be one a minute longer than you please," +said Dantes, who had followed the working of his thoughts as +accurately as though his brain were enclosed in crystal so +clear as to display its minutest operations. +"I have already told you," answered the abbe, "that I loathe +the idea of shedding blood." +"And yet the murder, if you choose to call it so, would be +simply a measure of selfpreservation." +"No matter I could never agree to it." +"Still, you have thought of it?" +"Incessantly, alas" cried the abbe. +"And you have discovered a means of regaining our freedom, +have you not?" asked Dantes eagerly. +"I have if it were only possible to place a deaf and blind +sentinel in the gallery beyond us." +"He shall be both blind and deaf," replied the young man, +with an air of determination that made his companion +shudder. +"No, no," cried the abbe "impossible" Dantes endeavored to +renew the subject the abbe shook his head in token of +disapproval, and refused to make any further response. Three +months passed away. +"Are you strong?" the abbe asked one day of Dantes. The +young man, in reply, took up the chisel, bent it into the +form of a horseshoe, and then as readily straightened it. +"And will you engage not to do any harm to the sentry, +except as a last resort?" +"I promise on my honor." +"Then," said the abbe, "we may hope to put our design into +execution." +"And how long shall we be in accomplishing the necessary +work?" +"At least a year." +"And shall we begin at once?" +"At once." +"We have lost a year to no purpose" cried Dantes. +"Do you consider the last twelve months to have been +wasted?" asked the abbe. +"Forgive me" cried Edmond, blushing deeply. +"Tut, tut" answered the abbe, "man is but man after all, +and you are about the best specimen of the genus I have ever +known. Come, let me show you my plan." The abbe then showed +Dantes the sketch he had made for their escape. It consisted +of a plan of his own cell and that of Dantes, with the +passage which united them. In this passage he proposed to +drive a level as they do in mines this level would bring +the two prisoners immediately beneath the gallery where the +sentry kept watch once there, a large excavation would be +made, and one of the flagstones with which the gallery was +paved be so completely loosened that at the desired moment +it would give way beneath the feet of the soldier, who, +stunned by his fall, would be immediately bound and gagged +by Dantes before he had power to offer any resistance. The +prisoners were then to make their way through one of the +gallery windows, and to let themselves down from the outer +walls by means of the abbe's ladder of cords. Dantes' eyes +sparkled with joy, and he rubbed his hands with delight at +the idea of a plan so simple, yet apparently so certain to +succeed. +That very day the miners began their labors, with a vigor +and alacrity proportionate to their long rest from fatigue +and their hopes of ultimate success. Nothing interrupted the +progress of the work except the necessity that each was +under of returning to his cell in anticipation of the +turnkey's visits. They had learned to distinguish the almost +imperceptible sound of his footsteps as he descended towards +their dungeons, and happily, never failed of being prepared +for his coming. The fresh earth excavated during their +present work, and which would have entirely blocked up the +old passage, was thrown, by degrees and with the utmost +precaution, out of the window in either Faria's or Dantes' +cell, the rubbish being first pulverized so finely that the +night wind carried it far away without permitting the +smallest trace to remain. More than a year had been consumed +in this undertaking, the only tools for which had been a +chisel, a knife, and a wooden lever Faria still continuing +to instruct Dantes by conversing with him, sometimes in one +language, sometimes in another at others, relating to him +the history of nations and great men who from time to time +have risen to fame and trodden the path of glory. +The abbe was a man of the world, and had, moreover, mixed in +the first society of the day he wore an air of melancholy +dignity which Dantes, thanks to the imitative powers +bestowed on him by nature, easily acquired, as well as that +outward polish and politeness he had before been wanting in, +and which is seldom possessed except by those who have been +placed in constant intercourse with persons of high birth +and breeding. At the end of fifteen months the level was +finished, and the excavation completed beneath the gallery, +and the two workmen could distinctly hear the measured tread +of the sentinel as he paced to and fro over their heads. +Compelled, as they were, to await a night sufficiently dark +to favor their flight, they were obliged to defer their +final attempt till that auspicious moment should arrive +their greatest dread now was lest the stone through which +the sentry was doomed to fall should give way before its +right time, and this they had in some measure provided +against by propping it up with a small beam which they had +discovered in the walls through which they had worked their +way. Dantes was occupied in arranging this piece of wood +when he heard Faria, who had remained in Edmond's cell for +the purpose of cutting a peg to secure their ropeladder, +call to him in a tone indicative of great suffering. Dantes +hastened to his dungeon, where he found him standing in the +middle of the room, pale as death, his forehead streaming +with perspiration, and his hands clinched tightly together. +"Gracious heavens" exclaimed Dantes, "what is the matter? +what has happened?" +"Quick quick" returned the abbe, "listen to what I have to +say." Dantes looked in fear and wonder at the livid +countenance of Faria, whose eyes, already dull and sunken, +were surrounded by purple circles, while his lips were white +as those of a corpse, and his very hair seemed to stand on +end. +"Tell me, I beseech you, what ails you?" cried Dantes, +letting his chisel fall to the floor. +"Alas," faltered out the abbe, "all is over with me. I am +seized with a terrible, perhaps mortal illness I can feel +that the paroxysm is fast approaching. I had a similar +attack the year previous to my imprisonment. This malady +admits but of one remedy I will tell you what that is. Go +into my cell as quickly as you can draw out one of the feet +that support the bed you will find it has been hollowed out +for the purpose of containing a small phial you will see +there halffilled with a redlooking fluid. Bring it to me +or rather no, no I may be found here, therefore +help me back to my room while I have the strength to drag +myself along. Who knows what may happen, or how long the +attack may last?" +In spite of the magnitude of the misfortune which thus +suddenly frustrated his hopes, Dantes did not lose his +presence of mind, but descended into the passage, dragging +his unfortunate companion with him then, halfcarrying, +halfsupporting him, he managed to reach the abbe's chamber, +when he immediately laid the sufferer on his bed. +"Thanks," said the poor abbe, shivering as though his veins +were filled with ice. "I am about to be seized with a fit of +catalepsy when it comes to its height I shall probably lie +still and motionless as though dead, uttering neither sigh +nor groan. On the other hand, the symptoms may be much more +violent, and cause me to fall into fearful convulsions, foam +at the mouth, and cry out loudly. Take care my cries are not +heard, for if they are it is more than probable I should be +removed to another part of the prison, and we be separated +forever. When I become quite motionless, cold, and rigid as +a corpse, then, and not before, be careful about this, +force open my teeth with the knife, pour from eight to ten +drops of the liquor contained in the phial down my throat, +and I may perhaps revive." +"Perhaps" exclaimed Dantes in griefstricken tones. +"Help help" cried the abbe, "I I die I" +So sudden and violent was the fit that the unfortunate +prisoner was unable to complete the sentence a violent +convulsion shook his whole frame, his eyes started from +their sockets, his mouth was drawn on one side, his cheeks +became purple, he struggled, foamed, dashed himself about, +and uttered the most dreadful cries, which, however, Dantes +prevented from being heard by covering his head with the +blanket. The fit lasted two hours then, more helpless than +an infant, and colder and paler than marble, more crushed +and broken than a reed trampled under foot, he fell back, +doubled up in one last convulsion, and became as rigid as a +corpse. +Edmond waited till life seemed extinct in the body of his +friend, then, taking up the knife, he with difficulty forced +open the closely fixed jaws, carefully administered the +appointed number of drops, and anxiously awaited the result. +An hour passed away and the old man gave no sign of +returning animation. Dantes began to fear he had delayed too +long ere he administered the remedy, and, thrusting his +hands into his hair, continued gazing on the lifeless +features of his friend. At length a slight color tinged the +livid cheeks, consciousness returned to the dull, open +eyeballs, a faint sigh issued from the lips, and the +sufferer made a feeble effort to move. +"He is saved he is saved" cried Dantes in a paroxysm of +delight. +The sick man was not yet able to speak, but he pointed with +evident anxiety towards the door. Dantes listened, and +plainly distinguished the approaching steps of the jailer. +It was therefore near seven o'clock but Edmond's anxiety +had put all thoughts of time out of his head. The young man +sprang to the entrance, darted through it, carefully drawing +the stone over the opening, and hurried to his cell. He had +scarcely done so before the door opened, and the jailer saw +the prisoner seated as usual on the side of his bed. Almost +before the key had turned in the lock, and before the +departing steps of the jailer had died away in the long +corridor he had to traverse, Dantes, whose restless anxiety +concerning his friend left him no desire to touch the food +brought him, hurried back to the abbe's chamber, and raising +the stone by pressing his head against it, was soon beside +the sick man's couch. Faria had now fully regained his +consciousness, but he still lay helpless and exhausted. +"I did not expect to see you again," said he feebly, to +Dantes. +"And why not?" asked the young man. "Did you fancy yourself +dying?" +"No, I had no such idea but, knowing that all was ready for +flight, I thought you might have made your escape." The deep +glow of indignation suffused the cheeks of Dantes. +"Without you? Did you really think me capable of that?" +"At least," said the abbe, "I now see how wrong such an +opinion would have been. Alas, alas I am fearfully +exhausted and debilitated by this attack." +"Be of good cheer," replied Dantes "your strength will +return." And as he spoke he seated himself near the bed +beside Faria, and took his hands. The abbe shook his head. +"The last attack I had," said he, "lasted but half an hour, +and after it I was hungry, and got up without help now I +can move neither my right arm nor leg, and my head seems +uncomfortable, which shows that there has been a suffusion +of blood on the brain. The third attack will either carry me +off, or leave me paralyzed for life." +"No, no," cried Dantes "you are mistaken you will not +die And your third attack if, indeed, you should have +another will find you at liberty. We shall save you another +time, as we have done this, only with a better chance of +success, because we shall be able to command every requisite +assistance." +"My good Edmond," answered the abbe, "be not deceived. The +attack which has just passed away, condemns me forever to +the walls of a prison. None can fly from a dungeon who +cannot walk." +"Well, we will wait, a week, a month, two months, if need +be, and meanwhile your strength will return. Everything +is in readiness for our flight, and we can select any time +we choose. As soon as you feel able to swim we will go." +"I shall never swim again," replied Faria. "This arm is +paralyzed not for a time, but forever. Lift it, and judge +if I am mistaken." The young man raised the arm, which fell +back by its own weight, perfectly inanimate and helpless. A +sigh escaped him. +"You are convinced now, Edmond, are you not?" asked the +abbe. "Depend upon it, I know what I say. Since the first +attack I experienced of this malady, I have continually +reflected on it. Indeed, I expected it, for it is a family +inheritance both my father and grandfather died of it in a +third attack. The physician who prepared for me the remedy I +have twice successfully taken, was no other than the +celebrated Cabanis, and he predicted a similar end for me." +"The physician may be mistaken" exclaimed Dantes. "And as +for your poor arm, what difference will that make? I can +take you on my shoulders, and swim for both of us." +"My son," said the abbe, "you, who are a sailor and a +swimmer, must know as well as I do that a man so loaded +would sink before he had done fifty strokes. Cease, then, to +allow yourself to be duped by vain hopes, that even your own +excellent heart refuses to believe in. Here I shall remain +till the hour of my deliverance arrives, and that, in all +human probability, will be the hour of my death. As for you, +who are young and active, delay not on my account, but fly +goI give you back your promise." +"It is well," said Dantes. "Then I shall also remain." Then, +rising and extending his hand with an air of solemnity over +the old man's head, he slowly added, "By the blood of Christ +I swear never to leave you while you live." +Faria gazed fondly on his nobleminded, singlehearted, +highprincipled young friend, and read in his countenance +ample confirmation of the sincerity of his devotion and the +loyalty of his purpose. +"Thanks," murmured the invalid, extending one hand. "I +accept. You may one of these days reap the reward of your +disinterested devotion. But as I cannot, and you will not, +quit this place, it becomes necessary to fill up the +excavation beneath the soldier's gallery he might, by +chance, hear the hollow sound of his footsteps, and call the +attention of his officer to the circumstance. That would +bring about a discovery which would inevitably lead to our +being separated. Go, then, and set about this work, in +which, unhappily, I can offer you no assistance keep at it +all night, if necessary, and do not return here tomorrow +till after the jailer his visited me. I shall have something +of the greatest importance to communicate to you." +Dantes took the hand of the abbe in his, and affectionately +pressed it. Faria smiled encouragingly on him, and the young +man retired to his task, in the spirit of obedience and +respect which he had sworn to show towards his aged friend. +Chapter +The Treasure. +When Dantes returned next morning to the chamber of his +companion in captivity, he found Faria seated and looking +composed. In the ray of light which entered by the narrow +window of his cell, he held open in his left hand, of which +alone, it will be recollected, he retained the use, a sheet +of paper, which, from being constantly rolled into a small +compass, had the form of a cylinder, and was not easily kept +open. He did not speak, but showed the paper to Dantes. +"What is that?" he inquired. +"Look at it," said the abbe with a smile. +"I have looked at it with all possible attention," said +Dantes, "and I only see a halfburnt paper, on which are +traces of Gothic characters inscribed with a peculiar kind +of ink." +"This paper, my friend," said Faria, "I may now avow to you, +since I have the proof of your fidelity this paper is my +treasure, of which, from this day forth, onehalf belongs to +you." +The sweat started forth on Dantes brow. Until this day and +for how long a time he had refrained from talking of the +treasure, which had brought upon the abbe the accusation of +madness. With his instinctive delicacy Edmond had preferred +avoiding any touch on this painful chord, and Faria had been +equally silent. He had taken the silence of the old man for +a return to reason and now these few words uttered by +Faria, after so painful a crisis, seemed to indicate a +serious relapse into mental alienation. +"Your treasure?" stammered Dantes. Faria smiled. +"Yes," said he. "You have, indeed, a noble nature, Edmond, +and I see by your paleness and agitation what is passing in +your heart at this moment. No, be assured, I am not mad. +This treasure exists, Dantes, and if I have not been allowed +to possess it, you will. Yes you. No one would listen or +believe me, because everyone thought me mad but you, who +must know that I am not, listen to me, and believe me so +afterwards if you will." +"Alas," murmured Edmond to himself, "this is a terrible +relapse There was only this blow wanting." Then he said +aloud, "My dear friend, your attack has, perhaps, fatigued +you had you not better repose awhile? Tomorrow, if you +will, I will hear your narrative but today I wish to nurse +you carefully. Besides," he said, "a treasure is not a thing +we need hurry about." +"On the contrary, it is a matter of the utmost importance, +Edmond" replied the old man. "Who knows if tomorrow, or +the next day after, the third attack may not come on? and +then must not all be over? Yes, indeed, I have often thought +with a bitter joy that these riches, which would make the +wealth of a dozen families, will be forever lost to those +men who persecute me. This idea was one of vengeance to me, +and I tasted it slowly in the night of my dungeon and the +despair of my captivity. But now I have forgiven the world +for the love of you now that I see you, young and with a +promising future, now that I think of all that may result +to you in the good fortune of such a disclosure, I shudder +at any delay, and tremble lest I should not assure to one as +worthy as yourself the possession of so vast an amount of +hidden wealth." Edmond turned away his head with a sigh. +"You persist in your incredulity, Edmond," continued Faria. +"My words have not convinced you. I see you require proofs. +Well, then, read this paper, which I have never shown to any +one." +"Tomorrow, my dear friend," said Edmond, desirous of not +yielding to the old man's madness. "I thought it was +understood that we should not talk of that until tomorrow." +"Then we will not talk of it until tomorrow but read this +paper today." +"I will not irritate him," thought Edmond, and taking the +paper, of which half was wanting, having been burnt, no +doubt, by some accident, he read +"This treasure, which may amount to two... +of Roman crowns in the most distant a... +of the second opening wh... +declare to belong to him alo... +heir. +"th April, " +"Well" said Faria, when the young man had finished reading +it. +"Why," replied Dantes, "I see nothing but broken lines and +unconnected words, which are rendered illegible by fire." +"Yes, to you, my friend, who read them for the first time +but not for me, who have grown pale over them by many +nights' study, and have reconstructed every phrase, +completed every thought." +"And do you believe you have discovered the hidden meaning?" +"I am sure I have, and you shall judge for yourself but +first listen to the history of this paper." +"Silence" exclaimed Dantes. "Steps approach I go +adieu." +And Dantes, happy to escape the history and explanation +which would be sure to confirm his belief in his friend's +mental instability, glided like a snake along the narrow +passage while Faria, restored by his alarm to a certain +amount of activity, pushed the stone into place with his +foot, and covered it with a mat in order the more +effectually to avoid discovery. +It was the governor, who, hearing of Faria's illness from +the jailer, had come in person to see him. +Faria sat up to receive him, avoiding all gestures in order +that he might conceal from the governor the paralysis that +had already half stricken him with death. His fear was lest +the governor, touched with pity, might order him to be +removed to better quarters, and thus separate him from his +young companion. But fortunately this was not the case, and +the governor left him, convinced that the poor madman, for +whom in his heart he felt a kind of affection, was only +troubled with a slight indisposition. +During this time, Edmond, seated on his bed with his head in +his hands, tried to collect his scattered thoughts. Faria, +since their first acquaintance, had been on all points so +rational and logical, so wonderfully sagacious, in fact, +that he could not understand how so much wisdom on all +points could be allied with madness. Was Faria deceived as +to his treasure, or was all the world deceived as to Faria? +Dantes remained in his cell all day, not daring to return to +his friend, thinking thus to defer the moment when he should +be convinced, once for all, that the abbe was mad such a +conviction would be so terrible +But, towards the evening after the hour for the customary +visit had gone by, Faria, not seeing the young man appear, +tried to move and get over the distance which separated +them. Edmond shuddered when he heard the painful efforts +which the old man made to drag himself along his leg was +inert, and he could no longer make use of one arm. Edmond +was obliged to assist him, for otherwise he would not have +been able to enter by the small aperture which led to +Dantes' chamber. +"Here I am, pursuing you remorselessly," he said with a +benignant smile. "You thought to escape my munificence, but +it is in vain. Listen to me." +Edmond saw there was no escape, and placing the old man on +his bed, he seated himself on the stool beside him. +"You know," said the abbe, "that I was the secretary and +intimate friend of Cardinal Spada, the last of the princes +of that name. I owe to this worthy lord all the happiness I +ever knew. He was not rich, although the wealth of his +family had passed into a proverb, and I heard the phrase +very often, "As rich as a Spada.' But he, like public rumor, +lived on this reputation for wealth his palace was my +paradise. I was tutor to his nephews, who are dead and when +he was alone in the world, I tried by absolute devotion to +his will, to make up to him all he had done for me during +ten years of unremitting kindness. The cardinal's house had +no secrets for me. I had often seen my noble patron +annotating ancient volumes, and eagerly searching amongst +dusty family manuscripts. One day when I was reproaching him +for his unavailing searches, and deploring the prostration +of mind that followed them, he looked at me, and, smiling +bitterly, opened a volume relating to the History of the +City of Rome. There, in the twentieth chapter of the Life of +Pope Alexander VI., were the following lines, which I can +never forget +""The great wars of Romagna had ended Caesar Borgia, who +had completed his conquest, had need of money to purchase +all Italy. The pope had also need of money to bring matters +to an end with Louis XII. King of France, who was formidable +still in spite of his recent reverses and it was necessary, +therefore, to have recourse to some profitable scheme, which +was a matter of great difficulty in the impoverished +condition of exhausted Italy. His holiness had an idea. He +determined to make two cardinals.' +"By choosing two of the greatest personages of Rome, +especially rich men this was the return the holy father +looked for. In the first place, he could sell the great +appointments and splendid offices which the cardinals +already held and then he had the two hats to sell besides. +There was a third point in view, which will appear +hereafter. The pope and Caesar Borgia first found the two +future cardinals they were Giovanni Rospigliosi, who held +four of the highest dignities of the Holy See, and Caesar +Spada, one of the noblest and richest of the Roman nobility +both felt the high honor of such a favor from the pope. They +were ambitious, and Caesar Borgia soon found purchasers for +their appointments. The result was, that Rospigliosi and +Spada paid for being cardinals, and eight other persons paid +for the offices the cardinals held before their elevation, +and thus eight hundred thousand crowns entered into the +coffers of the speculators. +"It is time now to proceed to the last part of the +speculation. The pope heaped attentions upon Rospigliosi and +Spada, conferred upon them the insignia of the cardinalate, +and induced them to arrange their affairs and take up their +residence at Rome. Then the pope and Caesar Borgia invited +the two cardinals to dinner. This was a matter of dispute +between the holy father and his son. Caesar thought they +could make use of one of the means which he always had ready +for his friends, that is to say, in the first place, the +famous key which was given to certain persons with the +request that they go and open a designated cupboard. This +key was furnished with a small iron point, a negligence +on the part of the locksmith. When this was pressed to +effect the opening of the cupboard, of which the lock was +difficult, the person was pricked by this small point, and +died next day. Then there was the ring with the lion's head, +which Caesar wore when he wanted to greet his friends with a +clasp of the hand. The lion bit the hand thus favored, and +at the end of twentyfour hours, the bite was mortal. Caesar +proposed to his father, that they should either ask the +cardinals to open the cupboard, or shake hands with them +but Alexander VI., replied "Now as to the worthy cardinals, +Spada and Rospigliosi, let us ask both of them to dinner, +something tells me that we shall get that money back. +Besides, you forget, Caesar, an indigestion declares itself +immediately, while a prick or a bite occasions a delay of a +day or two.' Caesar gave way before such cogent reasoning, +and the cardinals were consequently invited to dinner. +"The table was laid in a vineyard belonging to the pope, +near San Pierdarena, a charming retreat which the cardinals +knew very well by report. Rospigliosi, quite set up with his +new dignities, went with a good appetite and his most +ingratiating manner. Spada, a prudent man, and greatly +attached to his only nephew, a young captain of the highest +promise, took paper and pen, and made his will. He then sent +word to his nephew to wait for him near the vineyard but it +appeared the servant did not find him. +"Spada knew what these invitations meant since +Christianity, so eminently civilizing, had made progress in +Rome, it was no longer a centurion who came from the tyrant +with a message, "Caesar wills that you die.' but it was a +legate a latere, who came with a smile on his lips to say +from the pope, "His holiness requests you to dine with him.' +"Spada set out about two o'clock to San Pierdarena. The pope +awaited him. The first sight that attracted the eyes of +Spada was that of his nephew, in full costume, and Caesar +Borgia paying him most marked attentions. Spada turned pale, +as Caesar looked at him with an ironical air, which proved +that he had anticipated all, and that the snare was well +spread. They began dinner and Spada was only able to inquire +of his nephew if he had received his message. The nephew +replied no perfectly comprehending the meaning of the +question. It was too late, for he had already drunk a glass +of excellent wine, placed for him expressly by the pope's +butler. Spada at the same moment saw another bottle approach +him, which he was pressed to taste. An hour afterwards a +physician declared they were both poisoned through eating +mushrooms. Spada died on the threshold of the vineyard the +nephew expired at his own door, making signs which his wife +could not comprehend. +"Then Caesar and the pope hastened to lay hands on the +heritage, under presence of seeking for the papers of the +dead man. But the inheritance consisted in this only, a +scrap of paper on which Spada had written "I bequeath to +my beloved nephew my coffers, my books, and, amongst others, +my breviary with the gold corners, which I beg he will +preserve in remembrance of his affectionate uncle.' +"The heirs sought everywhere, admired the breviary, laid +hands on the furniture, and were greatly astonished that +Spada, the rich man, was really the most miserable of uncles +no treasures unless they were those of science, +contained in the library and laboratories. That was all. +Caesar and his father searched, examined, scrutinized, but +found nothing, or at least very little not exceeding a few +thousand crowns in plate, and about the same in ready money +but the nephew had time to say to his wife before he +expired "Look well among my uncle's papers there is a +will.' +"They sought even more thoroughly than the august heirs had +done, but it was fruitless. There were two palaces and a +vineyard behind the Palatine Hill but in these days landed +property had not much value, and the two palaces and the +vineyard remained to the family since they were beneath the +rapacity of the pope and his son. Months and years rolled +on. Alexander VI. died, poisoned, you know by what +mistake. Caesar, poisoned at the same time, escaped by +shedding his skin like a snake but the new skin was spotted +by the poison till it looked like a tiger's. Then, compelled +to quit Rome, he went and got himself obscurely killed in a +night skirmish, scarcely noticed in history. After the +pope's death and his son's exile, it was supposed that the +Spada family would resume the splendid position they had +held before the cardinal's time but this was not the case. +The Spadas remained in doubtful ease, a mystery hung over +this dark affair, and the public rumor was, that Caesar, a +better politician than his father, had carried off from the +pope the fortune of the two cardinals. I say the two, +because Cardinal Rospigliosi, who had not taken any +precaution, was completely despoiled. +"Up to this point," said Faria, interrupting the thread of +his narrative, "this seems to you very meaningless, no +doubt, eh?" +"Oh, my friend," cried Dantes, "on the contrary, it seems as +if I were reading a most interesting narrative go on, I beg +of you." +"I will." +"The family began to get accustomed to their obscurity. +Years rolled on, and amongst the descendants some were +soldiers, others diplomatists some churchmen, some bankers +some grew rich, and some were ruined. I come now to the last +of the family, whose secretary I was the Count of Spada. +I had often heard him complain of the disproportion of his +rank with his fortune and I advised him to invest all he +had in an annuity. He did so, and thus doubled his income. +The celebrated breviary remained in the family, and was in +the count's possession. It had been handed down from father +to son for the singular clause of the only will that had +been found, had caused it to be regarded as a genuine relic, +preserved in the family with superstitious veneration. It +was an illuminated book, with beautiful Gothic characters, +and so weighty with gold, that a servant always carried it +before the cardinal on days of great solemnity. +"At the sight of papers of all sorts, titles, contracts, +parchments, which were kept in the archives of the family, +all descending from the poisoned cardinal, I in my turn +examined the immense bundles of documents, like twenty +servitors, stewards, secretaries before me but in spite of +the most exhaustive researches, I found nothing. Yet I +had read, I had even written a precise history of the Borgia +family, for the sole purpose of assuring myself whether any +increase of fortune had occurred to them on the death of the +Cardinal Caesar Spada but could only trace the acquisition +of the property of the Cardinal Rospigliosi, his companion +in misfortune. +"I was then almost assured that the inheritance had neither +profited the Borgias nor the family, but had remained +unpossessed like the treasures of the Arabian Nights, which +slept in the bosom of the earth under the eyes of the genie. +I searched, ransacked, counted, calculated a thousand and a +thousand times the income and expenditure of the family for +three hundred years. It was useless. I remained in my +ignorance, and the Count of Spada in his poverty. My patron +died. He had reserved from his annuity his family papers, +his library, composed of five thousand volumes, and his +famous breviary. All these he bequeathed to me, with a +thousand Roman crowns, which he had in ready money, on +condition that I would have anniversary masses said for the +repose of his soul, and that I would draw up a genealogical +tree and history of his house. All this I did scrupulously. +Be easy, my dear Edmond, we are near the conclusion. +"In , a month before I was arrested, and a fortnight +after the death of the Count of Spada, on the th of +December you will see presently how the date became fixed +in my memory, I was reading, for the thousandth time, the +papers I was arranging, for the palace was sold to a +stranger, and I was going to leave Rome and settle at +Florence, intending to take with me twelve thousand francs I +possessed, my library, and the famous breviary, when, tired +with my constant labor at the same thing, and overcome by a +heavy dinner I had eaten, my head dropped on my hands, and I +fell asleep about three o'clock in the afternoon. I awoke as +the clock was striking six. I raised my head I was in utter +darkness. I rang for a light, but as no one came, I +determined to find one for myself. It was indeed but +anticipating the simple manners which I should soon be under +the necessity of adopting. I took a waxcandle in one hand, +and with the other groped about for a piece of paper my +matchbox being empty, with which I proposed to get a light +from the small flame still playing on the embers. Fearing, +however, to make use of any valuable piece of paper, I +hesitated for a moment, then recollected that I had seen in +the famous breviary, which was on the table beside me, an +old paper quite yellow with age, and which had served as a +marker for centuries, kept there by the request of the +heirs. I felt for it, found it, twisted it up together, and +putting it into the expiring flame, set light to it. +"But beneath my fingers, as if by magic, in proportion as +the fire ascended, I saw yellowish characters appear on the +paper. I grasped it in my hand, put out the flame as quickly +as I could, lighted my taper in the fire itself, and opened +the crumpled paper with inexpressible emotion, recognizing, +when I had done so, that these characters had been traced in +mysterious and sympathetic ink, only appearing when exposed +to the fire nearly onethird of the paper had been consumed +by the flame. It was that paper you read this morning read +it again, Dantes, and then I will complete for you the +incomplete words and unconnected sense." +Faria, with an air of triumph, offered the paper to Dantes, +who this time read the following words, traced with an ink +of a reddish color resembling rust +"This th day of April, , be... +Alexander VI., and fearing that not... +he may desire to become my heir, and re... +and Bentivoglio, who were poisoned,... +my sole heir, that I have bu... +and has visited with me, that is, in... +Island of Monte Cristo, all I poss... +jewels, diamonds, gems that I alone... +may amount to nearly two mil... +will find on raising the twentieth ro... +creek to the east in a right line. Two open... +in these caves the treasure is in the furthest a... +which treasure I bequeath and leave en... +as my sole heir. +"th April, . +"Caes... +"And now," said the abbe, "read this other paper" and he +presented to Dantes a second leaf with fragments of lines +written on it, which Edmond read as follows +"...ing invited to dine by his Holiness +...content with making me pay for my hat, +...serves for me the fate of Cardinals Caprara +...I declare to my nephew, Guido Spada +...ried in a place he knows +...the caves of the small +...essed of ingots, gold, money, +...know of the existence of this treasure, which +...lions of Roman crowns, and which he +...ck from the small +...ings have been made +...ngle in the second +...tire to him +...ar Spada." +Faria followed him with an excited look. "and now," he said, +when he saw that Dantes had read the last line, "put the two +fragments together, and judge for yourself." Dantes obeyed, +and the conjointed pieces gave the following +"This th day of April, , be...ing invited to dine by +his Holiness Alexander VI., and fearing that not...content +with making me pay for my hat, he may desire to become my +heir, and re...serves for me the fate of Cardinals Caprara +and Bentivoglio, who were poisoned...I declare to my nephew, +Guido Spada, my sole heir, that I have bu...ried in a place +he knows and has visited with me, that is, in...the caves of +the small Island of Monte Cristo all I poss...ssed of +ingots, gold, money, jewels, diamonds, gems that I +alone...know of the existence of this treasure, which may +amount to nearly two mil...lions of Roman crowns, and which +he will find on raising the twentieth ro...ck from the small +creek to the east in a right line. Two open...ings have been +made in these caves the treasure is in the furthest +a...ngle in the second which treasure I bequeath and leave +en...tire to him as my sole heir. +"th April, . +"Caes...ar Spada." +"Well, do you comprehend now?" inquired Faria. +"It is the declaration of Cardinal Spada, and the will so +long sought for," replied Edmond, still incredulous. +"Yes a thousand times, yes" +"And who completed it as it now is?" +"I did. Aided by the remaining fragment, I guessed the rest +measuring the length of the lines by those of the paper, and +divining the hidden meaning by means of what was in part +revealed, as we are guided in a cavern by the small ray of +light above us." +"And what did you do when you arrived at this conclusion?" +"I resolved to set out, and did set out at that very +instant, carrying with me the beginning of my great work, +the unity of the Italian kingdom but for some time the +imperial police who at this period, quite contrary to what +Napoleon desired so soon as he had a son born to him, wished +for a partition of provinces had their eyes on me and my +hasty departure, the cause of which they were unable to +guess, having aroused their suspicions, I was arrested at +the very moment I was leaving Piombino. +"Now," continued Faria, addressing Dantes with an almost +paternal expression, "now, my dear fellow, you know as much +as I do myself. If we ever escape together, half this +treasure is yours if I die here, and you escape alone, the +whole belongs to you." +"But," inquired Dantes hesitating, "has this treasure no +more legitimate possessor in the world than ourselves?" +"No, no, be easy on that score the family is extinct. The +last Count of Spada, moreover, made me his heir, bequeathing +to me this symbolic breviary, he bequeathed to me all it +contained no, no, make your mind satisfied on that point. +If we lay hands on this fortune, we may enjoy it without +remorse." +"And you say this treasure amounts to" +"Two millions of Roman crowns nearly thirteen millions of +our money." + ,, in . +"Impossible" said Dantes, staggered at the enormous amount. +"Impossible? and why?" asked the old man. "The Spada family +was one of the oldest and most powerful families of the +fifteenth century and in those times, when other +opportunities for investment were wanting, such +accumulations of gold and jewels were by no means rare +there are at this day Roman families perishing of hunger, +though possessed of nearly a million in diamonds and jewels, +handed down by entail, and which they cannot touch." Edmond +thought he was in a dream he wavered between incredulity +and joy. +"I have only kept this secret so long from you," continued +Faria, "that I might test your character, and then surprise +you. Had we escaped before my attack of catalepsy, I should +have conducted you to Monte Cristo now," he added, with a +sigh, "it is you who will conduct me thither. Well, Dantes, +you do not thank me?" +"This treasure belongs to you, my dear friend," replied +Dantes, "and to you only. I have no right to it. I am no +relation of yours." +"You are my son, Dantes," exclaimed the old man. "You are +the child of my captivity. My profession condemns me to +celibacy. God has sent you to me to console, at one and the +same time, the man who could not be a father, and the +prisoner who could not get free." And Faria extended the arm +of which alone the use remained to him to the young man who +threw himself upon his neck and wept. +Chapter +The Third Attack. +Now that this treasure, which had so long been the object of +the abbe's meditations, could insure the future happiness of +him whom Faria really loved as a son, it had doubled its +value in his eyes, and every day he expatiated on the +amount, explaining to Dantes all the good which, with +thirteen or fourteen millions of francs, a man could do in +these days to his friends and then Dantes' countenance +became gloomy, for the oath of vengeance he had taken +recurred to his memory, and he reflected how much ill, in +these times, a man with thirteen or fourteen millions could +do to his enemies. +The abbe did not know the Island of Monte Cristo but Dantes +knew it, and had often passed it, situated twentyfive miles +from Pianosa, between Corsica and the Island of Elba, and +had once touched there. This island was, always had been, +and still is, completely deserted. It is a rock of almost +conical form, which looks as though it had been thrust up by +volcanic force from the depth to the surface of the ocean. +Dantes drew a plan of the island for Faria, and Faria gave +Dantes advice as to the means he should employ to recover +the treasure. But Dantes was far from being as enthusiastic +and confident as the old man. It was past a question now +that Faria was not a lunatic, and the way in which he had +achieved the discovery, which had given rise to the +suspicion of his madness, increased Edmond's admiration of +him but at the same time Dantes could not believe that the +deposit, supposing it had ever existed, still existed and +though he considered the treasure as by no means chimerical, +he yet believed it was no longer there. +However, as if fate resolved on depriving the prisoners of +their last chance, and making them understand that they were +condemned to perpetual imprisonment, a new misfortune befell +them the gallery on the sea side, which had long been in +ruins, was rebuilt. They had repaired it completely, and +stopped up with vast masses of stone the hole Dantes had +partly filled in. But for this precaution, which, it will be +remembered, the abbe had made to Edmond, the misfortune +would have been still greater, for their attempt to escape +would have been detected, and they would undoubtedly have +been separated. Thus a new, a stronger, and more inexorable +barrier was interposed to cut off the realization of their +hopes. +"You see," said the young man, with an air of sorrowful +resignation, to Faria, "that God deems it right to take from +me any claim to merit for what you call my devotion to you. +I have promised to remain forever with you, and now I could +not break my promise if I would. The treasure will be no +more mine than yours, and neither of us will quit this +prison. But my real treasure is not that, my dear friend, +which awaits me beneath the sombre rocks of Monte Cristo, it +is your presence, our living together five or six hours a +day, in spite of our jailers it is the rays of intelligence +you have elicited from my brain, the languages you have +implanted in my memory, and which have taken root there with +all their philological ramifications. These different +sciences that you have made so easy to me by the depth of +the knowledge you possess of them, and the clearness of the +principles to which you have reduced them this is my +treasure, my beloved friend, and with this you have made me +rich and happy. Believe me, and take comfort, this is better +for me than tons of gold and cases of diamonds, even were +they not as problematical as the clouds we see in the +morning floating over the sea, which we take for terra +firma, and which evaporate and vanish as we draw near to +them. To have you as long as possible near me, to hear your +eloquent speech, which embellishes my mind, strengthens +my soul, and makes my whole frame capable of great and +terrible things, if I should ever be free, so fills my +whole existence, that the despair to which I was just on the +point of yielding when I knew you, has no longer any hold +over me and this this is my fortune not chimerical, +but actual. I owe you my real good, my present happiness +and all the sovereigns of the earth, even Caesar Borgia +himself, could not deprive me of this." +Thus, if not actually happy, yet the days these two +unfortunates passed together went quickly. Faria, who for so +long a time had kept silence as to the treasure, now +perpetually talked of it. As he had prophesied would be the +case, he remained paralyzed in the right arm and the left +leg, and had given up all hope of ever enjoying it himself. +But he was continually thinking over some means of escape +for his young companion, and anticipating the pleasure he +would enjoy. For fear the letter might be some day lost or +stolen, he compelled Dantes to learn it by heart and Dantes +knew it from the first to the last word. Then he destroyed +the second portion, assured that if the first were seized, +no one would be able to discover its real meaning. Whole +hours sometimes passed while Faria was giving instructions +to Dantes, instructions which were to serve him when he +was at liberty. Then, once free, from the day and hour and +moment when he was so, he could have but one only thought, +which was, to gain Monte Cristo by some means, and remain +there alone under some pretext which would arouse no +suspicions and once there, to endeavor to find the +wonderful caverns, and search in the appointed spot, the +appointed spot, be it remembered, being the farthest angle +in the second opening. +In the meanwhile the hours passed, if not rapidly, at least +tolerably. Faria, as we have said, without having recovered +the use of his hand and foot, had regained all the clearness +of his understanding, and had gradually, besides the moral +instructions we have detailed, taught his youthful companion +the patient and sublime duty of a prisoner, who learns to +make something from nothing. They were thus perpetually +employed, Faria, that he might not see himself grow old +Dantes, for fear of recalling the almost extinct past which +now only floated in his memory like a distant light +wandering in the night. So life went on for them as it does +for those who are not victims of misfortune and whose +activities glide along mechanically and tranquilly beneath +the eye of providence. +But beneath this superficial calm there were in the heart of +the young man, and perhaps in that of the old man, many +repressed desires, many stifled sighs, which found vent when +Faria was left alone, and when Edmond returned to his cell. +One night Edmond awoke suddenly, believing that he heard +some one calling him. He opened his eyes upon utter +darkness. His name, or rather a plaintive voice which +essayed to pronounce his name, reached him. He sat up in bed +and a cold sweat broke out upon his brow. Undoubtedly the +call came from Faria's dungeon. "Alas," murmured Edmond +"can it be?" +He moved his bed, drew up the stone, rushed into the +passage, and reached the opposite extremity the secret +entrance was open. By the light of the wretched and wavering +lamp, of which we have spoken, Dantes saw the old man, pale, +but yet erect, clinging to the bedstead. His features were +writhing with those horrible symptoms which he already knew, +and which had so seriously alarmed him when he saw them for +the first time. +"Alas, my dear friend," said Faria in a resigned tone, "you +understand, do you not, and I need not attempt to explain to +you?" +Edmond uttered a cry of agony, and, quite out of his senses, +rushed towards the door, exclaiming, "Help, help" Faria had +just sufficient strength to restrain him. +"Silence," he said, "or you are lost. We must now only think +of you, my dear friend, and so act as to render your +captivity supportable or your flight possible. It would +require years to do again what I have done here, and the +results would be instantly destroyed if our jailers knew we +had communicated with each other. Besides, be assured, my +dear Edmond, the dungeon I am about to leave will not long +remain empty some other unfortunate being will soon take my +place, and to him you will appear like an angel of +salvation. Perhaps he will be young, strong, and enduring, +like yourself, and will aid you in your escape, while I have +been but a hindrance. You will no longer have half a dead +body tied to you as a drag to all your movements. At length +providence has done something for you he restores to you +more than he takes away, and it was time I should die." +Edmond could only clasp his hands and exclaim, "Oh, my +friend, my friend, speak not thus" and then resuming all +his presence of mind, which had for a moment staggered under +this blow, and his strength, which had failed at the words +of the old man, he said, "Oh, I have saved you once, and I +will save you a second time" And raising the foot of the +bed, he drew out the phial, still a third filled with the +red liquor. +"See," he exclaimed, "there remains still some of the magic +draught. Quick, quick tell me what I must do this time are +there any fresh instructions? Speak, my friend I listen." +"There is not a hope," replied Faria, shaking his head, "but +no matter God wills it that man whom he has created, and in +whose heart he has so profoundly rooted the love of life, +should do all in his power to preserve that existence, +which, however painful it may be, is yet always so dear." +"Oh, yes, yes" exclaimed Dantes "and I tell you that I +will save you yet." +"Well, then, try. The cold gains upon me. I feel the blood +flowing towards my brain. These horrible chills, which make +my teeth chatter and seem to dislocate my bones, begin to +pervade my whole frame in five minutes the malady will +reach its height, and in a quarter of an hour there will be +nothing left of me but a corpse." +"Oh" exclaimed Dantes, his heart wrung with anguish. +"Do as you did before, only do not wait so long, all the +springs of life are now exhausted in me, and death," he +continued, looking at his paralyzed arm and leg, "has but +half its work to do. If, after having made me swallow twelve +drops instead of ten, you see that I do not recover, then +pour the rest down my throat. Now lift me on my bed, for I +can no longer support myself." +Edmond took the old man in his arms, and laid him on the +bed. +"And now, my dear friend," said Faria, "sole consolation of +my wretched existence, you whom heaven gave me somewhat +late, but still gave me, a priceless gift, and for which I +am most grateful, at the moment of separating from you +forever, I wish you all the happiness and all the prosperity +you so well deserve. My son, I bless thee" The young man +cast himself on his knees, leaning his head against the old +man's bed. +"Listen, now, to what I say in this my dying moment. The +treasure of the Spadas exists. God grants me the boon of +vision unrestricted by time or space. I see it in the depths +of the inner cavern. My eyes pierce the inmost recesses of +the earth, and are dazzled at the sight of so much riches. +If you do escape, remember that the poor abbe, whom all the +world called mad, was not so. Hasten to Monte Cristo +avail yourself of the fortune for you have indeed +suffered long enough." A violent convulsion attacked the old +man. Dantes raised his head and saw Faria's eyes injected +with blood. It seemed as if a flow of blood had ascended +from the chest to the head. +"Adieu, adieu" murmured the old man, clasping Edmond's hand +convulsively "adieu" +"Oh, no, no, not yet," he cried "do not forsake me Oh, +succor him Help help help" +"Hush hush" murmured the dying man, "that they may not +separate us if you save me" +"You are right. Oh, yes, yes be assured I shall save you +Besides, although you suffer much, you do not seem to be in +such agony as you were before." +"Do not mistake. I suffer less because there is in me less +strength to endure. At your age we have faith in life it is +the privilege of youth to believe and hope, but old men see +death more clearly. Oh, 'tis here 'tis here 'tis over +my sight is gone my senses fail Your hand, Dantes +Adieu adieu" And raising himself by a final effort, in +which he summoned all his faculties, he said, "Monte +Cristo, forget not Monte Cristo" And he fell back on the +bed. The crisis was terrible, and a rigid form with twisted +limbs, swollen eyelids, and lips flecked with bloody foam, +lay on the bed of torture, in place of the intellectual +being who so lately rested there. +Dantes took the lamp, placed it on a projecting stone above +the bed, whence its tremulous light fell with strange and +fantastic ray on the distorted countenance and motionless, +stiffened body. With steady gaze he awaited confidently the +moment for administering the restorative. +When he believed that the right moment had arrived, he took +the knife, pried open the teeth, which offered less +resistance than before, counted one after the other twelve +drops, and watched the phial contained, perhaps, twice as +much more. He waited ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, half +an hour, no change took place. Trembling, his hair erect, +his brow bathed with perspiration, he counted the seconds by +the beating of his heart. Then he thought it was time to +make the last trial, and he put the phial to the purple lips +of Faria, and without having occasion to force open his +jaws, which had remained extended, he poured the whole of +the liquid down his throat. +The draught produced a galvanic effect, a violent trembling +pervaded the old man's limbs, his eyes opened until it was +fearful to gaze upon them, he heaved a sigh which resembled +a shriek, and then his convulsed body returned gradually to +its former immobility, the eyes remaining open. +Half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half elapsed, and +during this period of anguish, Edmond leaned over his +friend, his hand applied to his heart, and felt the body +gradually grow cold, and the heart's pulsation become more +and more deep and dull, until at length it stopped the last +movement of the heart ceased, the face became livid, the +eyes remained open, but the eyeballs were glazed. It was six +o'clock in the morning, the dawn was just breaking, and its +feeble ray came into the dungeon, and paled the ineffectual +light of the lamp. Strange shadows passed over the +countenance of the dead man, and at times gave it the +appearance of life. While the struggle between day and night +lasted, Dantes still doubted but as soon as the daylight +gained the preeminence, he saw that he was alone with a +corpse. Then an invincible and extreme terror seized upon +him, and he dared not again press the hand that hung out of +bed, he dared no longer to gaze on those fixed and vacant +eyes, which he tried many times to close, but in vain +they opened again as soon as shut. He extinguished the lamp, +carefully concealed it, and then went away, closing as well +as he could the entrance to the secret passage by the large +stone as he descended. +It was time, for the jailer was coming. On this occasion he +began his rounds at Dantes' cell, and on leaving him he went +on to Faria's dungeon, taking thither breakfast and some +linen. Nothing betokened that the man know anything of what +had occurred. He went on his way. +Dantes was then seized with an indescribable desire to know +what was going on in the dungeon of his unfortunate friend. +He therefore returned by the subterraneous gallery, and +arrived in time to hear the exclamations of the turnkey, who +called out for help. Other turnkeys came, and then was heard +the regular tramp of soldiers. Last of all came the +governor. +Edmond heard the creaking of the bed as they moved the +corpse, heard the voice of the governor, who asked them to +throw water on the dead man's face and seeing that, in +spite of this application, the prisoner did not recover, +they sent for the doctor. The governor then went out, and +words of pity fell on Dantes' listening ears, mingled with +brutal laughter. +"Well, well," said one, "the madman has gone to look after +his treasure. Good journey to him" +"With all his millions, he will not have enough to pay for +his shroud" said another. +"Oh," added a third voice, "the shrouds of the Chateau d'If +are not dear" +"Perhaps," said one of the previous speakers, "as he was a +churchman, they may go to some expense in his behalf." +"They may give him the honors of the sack." +Edmond did not lose a word, but comprehended very little of +what was said. The voices soon ceased, and it seemed to him +as if every one had left the cell. Still he dared not to +enter, as they might have left some turnkey to watch the +dead. He remained, therefore, mute and motionless, hardly +venturing to breathe. At the end of an hour, he heard a +faint noise, which increased. It was the governor who +returned, followed by the doctor and other attendants. There +was a moment's silence, it was evident that the doctor +was examining the dead body. The inquiries soon commenced. +The doctor analyzed the symptoms of the malady to which the +prisoner had succumbed, and declared that he was dead. +Questions and answers followed in a nonchalant manner that +made Dantes indignant, for he felt that all the world should +have for the poor abbe a love and respect equal to his own. +"I am very sorry for what you tell me," said the governor, +replying to the assurance of the doctor, "that the old man +is really dead for he was a quiet, inoffensive prisoner, +happy in his folly, and required no watching." +"Ah," added the turnkey, "there was no occasion for watching +him he would have stayed here fifty years, I'll answer for +it, without any attempt to escape." +"Still," said the governor, "I believe it will be requisite, +notwithstanding your certainty, and not that I doubt your +science, but in discharge of my official duty, that we +should be perfectly assured that the prisoner is dead." +There was a moment of complete silence, during which Dantes, +still listening, knew that the doctor was examining the +corpse a second time. +"You may make your mind easy," said the doctor "he is dead. +I will answer for that." +"You know, sir," said the governor, persisting, "that we are +not content in such cases as this with such a simple +examination. In spite of all appearances, be so kind, +therefore, as to finish your duty by fulfilling the +formalities described by law." +"Let the irons be heated," said the doctor "but really it +is a useless precaution." This order to heat the irons made +Dantes shudder. He heard hasty steps, the creaking of a +door, people going and coming, and some minutes afterwards a +turnkey entered, saying, +"Here is the brazier, lighted." There was a moment's +silence, and then was heard the crackling of burning flesh, +of which the peculiar and nauseous smell penetrated even +behind the wall where Dantes was listening in horror. The +perspiration poured forth upon the young man's brow, and he +felt as if he should faint. +"You see, sir, he is really dead," said the doctor "this +burn in the heel is decisive. The poor fool is cured of his +folly, and delivered from his captivity." +"Wasn't his name Faria?" inquired one of the officers who +accompanied the governor. +"Yes, sir and, as he said, it was an ancient name. He was, +too, very learned, and rational enough on all points which +did not relate to his treasure but on that, indeed, he was +intractable." +"It is the sort of malady which we call monomania," said the +doctor. +"You had never anything to complain of?" said the governor +to the jailer who had charge of the abbe. +"Never, sir," replied the jailer, "never on the contrary, +he sometimes amused me very much by telling me stories. One +day, too, when my wife was ill, he gave me a prescription +which cured her." +"Ah, ah" said the doctor, "I did not know that I had a +rival but I hope, governor, that you will show him all +proper respect." +"Yes, yes, make your mind easy, he shall be decently +interred in the newest sack we can find. Will that satisfy +you?" +"Must this last formality take place in your presence, sir?" +inquired a turnkey. +"Certainly. But make haste I cannot stay here all day." +Other footsteps, going and coming, were now heard, and a +moment afterwards the noise of rustling canvas reached +Dantes' ears, the bed creaked, and the heavy footfall of a +man who lifts a weight sounded on the floor then the bed +again creaked under the weight deposited upon it. +"This evening," said the governor. +"Will there be any mass?" asked one of the attendants. +"That is impossible," replied the governor. "The chaplain of +the chateau came to me yesterday to beg for leave of +absence, in order to take a trip to Hyeres for a week. I +told him I would attend to the prisoners in his absence. If +the poor abbe had not been in such a hurry, he might have +had his requiem." +"Pooh, pooh" said the doctor, with the impiety usual in +persons of his profession "he is a churchman. God will +respect his profession, and not give the devil the wicked +delight of sending him a priest." A shout of laughter +followed this brutal jest. Meanwhile the operation of +putting the body in the sack was going on. +"This evening," said the governor, when the task was ended. +"At what hour?" inquired a turnkey. +"Why, about ten or eleven o'clock." +"Shall we watch by the corpse?" +"Of what use would it be? Shut the dungeon as if he were +alive that is all." Then the steps retreated, and the +voices died away in the distance the noise of the door, +with its creaking hinges and bolts ceased, and a silence +more sombre than that of solitude ensued, the silence of +death, which was allpervasive, and struck its icy chill to +the very soul of Dantes. Then he raised the flagstone +cautiously with his head, and looked carefully around the +chamber. It was empty, and Dantes emerged from the tunnel. +Chapter +The Cemetery of the Chateau D'If. +On the bed, at full length, and faintly illuminated by the +pale light that came from the window, lay a sack of canvas, +and under its rude folds was stretched a long and stiffened +form it was Faria's last windingsheet, a windingsheet +which, as the turnkey said, cost so little. Everything was +in readiness. A barrier had been placed between Dantes and +his old friend. No longer could Edmond look into those +wideopen eyes which had seemed to be penetrating the +mysteries of death no longer could he clasp the hand which +had done so much to make his existence blessed. Faria, the +beneficent and cheerful companion, with whom he was +accustomed to live so intimately, no longer breathed. He +seated himself on the edge of that terrible bed, and fell +into melancholy and gloomy revery. +Alone he was alone again again condemned to silence +again face to face with nothingness Alone never again +to see the face, never again to hear the voice of the only +human being who united him to earth Was not Faria's fate +the better, after all to solve the problem of life at its +source, even at the risk of horrible suffering? The idea of +suicide, which his friend had driven away and kept away by +his cheerful presence, now hovered like a phantom over the +abbe's dead body. +"If I could die," he said, "I should go where he goes, and +should assuredly find him again. But how to die? It is very +easy," he went on with a smile "I will remain here, rush on +the first person that opens the door, strangle him, and then +they will guillotine me." But excessive grief is like a +storm at sea, where the frail bark is tossed from the depths +to the top of the wave. Dantes recoiled from the idea of so +infamous a death, and passed suddenly from despair to an +ardent desire for life and liberty. +"Die? oh, no," he exclaimed "not die now, after having +lived and suffered so long and so much Die? yes, had I died +years ago but now to die would be, indeed, to give way to +the sarcasm of destiny. No, I want to live I shall struggle +to the very last I will yet win back the happiness of which +I have been deprived. Before I die I must not forget that I +have my executioners to punish, and perhaps, too, who knows, +some friends to reward. Yet they will forget me here, and I +shall die in my dungeon like Faria." As he said this, he +became silent and gazed straight before him like one +overwhelmed with a strange and amazing thought. Suddenly he +arose, lifted his hand to his brow as if his brain wore +giddy, paced twice or thrice round the dungeon, and then +paused abruptly by the bed. +"Just God" he muttered, "whence comes this thought? Is it +from thee? Since none but the dead pass freely from this +dungeon, let me take the place of the dead" Without giving +himself time to reconsider his decision, and, indeed, that +he might not allow his thoughts to be distracted from his +desperate resolution, he bent over the appalling shroud, +opened it with the knife which Faria had made, drew the +corpse from the sack, and bore it along the tunnel to his +own chamber, laid it on his couch, tied around its head the +rag he wore at night around his own, covered it with his +counterpane, once again kissed the icecold brow, and tried +vainly to close the resisting eyes, which glared horribly, +turned the head towards the wall, so that the jailer might, +when he brought the evening meal, believe that he was +asleep, as was his frequent custom entered the tunnel +again, drew the bed against the wall, returned to the other +cell, took from the hidingplace the needle and thread, +flung off his rags, that they might feel only naked flesh +beneath the coarse canvas, and getting inside the sack, +placed himself in the posture in which the dead body had +been laid, and sewed up the mouth of the sack from the +inside. +He would have been discovered by the beating of his heart, +if by any mischance the jailers had entered at that moment. +Dantes might have waited until the evening visit was over, +but he was afraid that the governor would change his mind, +and order the dead body to be removed earlier. In that case +his last hope would have been destroyed. Now his plans were +fully made, and this is what he intended to do. If while he +was being carried out the gravediggers should discover that +they were bearing a live instead of a dead body, Dantes did +not intend to give them time to recognize him, but with a +sudden cut of the knife, he meant to open the sack from top +to bottom, and, profiting by their alarm, escape if they +tried to catch him, he would use his knife to better +purpose. +If they took him to the cemetery and laid him in a grave, he +would allow himself to be covered with earth, and then, as +it was night, the gravediggers could scarcely have turned +their backs before he would have worked his way through the +yielding soil and escaped. He hoped that the weight of earth +would not be so great that he could not overcome it. If he +was detected in this and the earth proved too heavy, he +would be stifled, and then so much the better, all would +be over. Dantes had not eaten since the preceding evening, +but he had not thought of hunger, nor did he think of it +now. His situation was too precarious to allow him even time +to reflect on any thought but one. +The first risk that Dantes ran was, that the jailer, when he +brought him his supper at seven o'clock, might perceive the +change that had been made fortunately, twenty times at +least, from misanthropy or fatigue, Dantes had received his +jailer in bed, and then the man placed his bread and soup on +the table, and went away without saying a word. This time +the jailer might not be as silent as usual, but speak to +Dantes, and seeing that he received no reply, go to the bed, +and thus discover all. +When seven o'clock came, Dantes' agony really began. His +hand placed upon his heart was unable to redress its +throbbings, while, with the other he wiped the perspiration +from his temples. From time to time chills ran through his +whole body, and clutched his heart in a grasp of ice. Then +he thought he was going to die. Yet the hours passed on +without any unusual disturbance, and Dantes knew that he had +escaped the first peril. It was a good augury. At length, +about the hour the governor had appointed, footsteps were +heard on the stairs. Edmond felt that the moment had +arrived, summoned up all his courage, held his breath, and +would have been happy if at the same time he could have +repressed the throbbing of his veins. The footsteps they +were double paused at the door and Dantes guessed that +the two gravediggers had come to seek him this idea was +soon converted into certainty, when he heard the noise they +made in putting down the handbier. The door opened, and a +dim light reached Dantes' eyes through the coarse sack that +covered him he saw two shadows approach his bed, a third +remaining at the door with a torch in its hand. The two men, +approaching the ends of the bed, took the sack by its +extremities. +"He's heavy though for an old and thin man," said one, as he +raised the head. +"They say every year adds half a pound to the weight of the +bones," said another, lifting the feet. +"Have you tied the knot?" inquired the first speaker. +"What would be the use of carrying so much more weight?" was +the reply, "I can do that when we get there." +"Yes, you're right," replied the companion. +"What's the knot for?" thought Dantes. +They deposited the supposed corpse on the bier. Edmond +stiffened himself in order to play the part of a dead man, +and then the party, lighted by the man with the torch, who +went first, ascended the stairs. Suddenly he felt the fresh +and sharp night air, and Dantes knew that the mistral was +blowing. It was a sensation in which pleasure and pain were +strangely mingled. The bearers went on for twenty paces, +then stopped, putting the bier down on the ground. One of +them went away, and Dantes heard his shoes striking on the +pavement. +"Where am I?" he asked himself. +"Really, he is by no means a light load" said the other +bearer, sitting on the edge of the handbarrow. Dantes' +first impulse was to escape, but fortunately he did not +attempt it. +"Give us a light," said the other bearer, "or I shall never +find what I am looking for." The man with the torch +complied, although not asked in the most polite terms. +"What can he be looking for?" thought Edmond. "The spade, +perhaps." An exclamation of satisfaction indicated that the +gravedigger had found the object of his search. "Here it is +at last," he said, "not without some trouble though." +"Yes," was the answer, "but it has lost nothing by waiting." +As he said this, the man came towards Edmond, who heard a +heavy metallic substance laid down beside him, and at the +same moment a cord was fastened round his feet with sudden +and painful violence. +"Well, have you tied the knot?" inquired the gravedigger, +who was looking on. +"Yes, and pretty tight too, I can tell you," was the answer. +"Move on, then." And the bier was lifted once more, and they +proceeded. +They advanced fifty paces farther, and then stopped to open +a door, then went forward again. The noise of the waves +dashing against the rocks on which the chateau is built, +reached Dantes' ear distinctly as they went forward. +"Bad weather" observed one of the bearers "not a pleasant +night for a dip in the sea." +"Why, yes, the abbe runs a chance of being wet," said the +other and then there was a burst of brutal laughter. Dantes +did not comprehend the jest, but his hair stood erect on his +head. +"Well, here we are at last," said one of them. "A little +farther a little farther," said the other. "You know very +well that the last was stopped on his way, dashed on the +rocks, and the governor told us next day that we were +careless fellows." +They ascended five or six more steps, and then Dantes felt +that they took him, one by the head and the other by the +heels, and swung him to and fro. "One" said the +gravediggers, "two three" And at the same instant Dantes +felt himself flung into the air like a wounded bird, +falling, falling, with a rapidity that made his blood +curdle. Although drawn downwards by the heavy weight which +hastened his rapid descent, it seemed to him as if the fall +lasted for a century. +At last, with a horrible splash, he darted like an arrow +into the icecold water, and as he did so he uttered a +shrill cry, stifled in a moment by his immersion beneath the +waves. +Dantes had been flung into the sea, and was dragged into its +depths by a thirtysix pound shot tied to his feet. The sea +is the cemetery of the Chateau d'If. +Chapter +The Island of Tiboulen. +Dantes, although stunned and almost suffocated, had +sufficient presence of mind to hold his breath, and as his +right hand prepared as he was for every chance held his +knife open, he rapidly ripped up the sack, extricated his +arm, and then his body but in spite of all his efforts to +free himself from the shot, he felt it dragging him down +still lower. He then bent his body, and by a desperate +effort severed the cord that bound his legs, at the moment +when it seemed as if he were actually strangled. With a +mighty leap he rose to the surface of the sea, while the +shot dragged down to the depths the sack that had so nearly +become his shroud. +Dantes waited only to get breath, and then dived, in order +to avoid being seen. When he arose a second time, he was +fifty paces from where he had first sunk. He saw overhead a +black and tempestuous sky, across which the wind was driving +clouds that occasionally suffered a twinkling star to +appear before him was the vast expanse of waters, sombre +and terrible, whose waves foamed and roared as if before the +approach of a storm. Behind him, blacker than the sea, +blacker than the sky, rose phantomlike the vast stone +structure, whose projecting crags seemed like arms extended +to seize their prey, and on the highest rock was a torch +lighting two figures. He fancied that these two forms were +looking at the sea doubtless these strange gravediggers +had heard his cry. Dantes dived again, and remained a long +time beneath the water. This was an easy feat to him, for he +usually attracted a crowd of spectators in the bay before +the lighthouse at Marseilles when he swam there, and was +unanimously declared to be the best swimmer in the port. +When he came up again the light had disappeared. +He must now get his bearings. Ratonneau and Pomegue are the +nearest islands of all those that surround the Chateau d'If, +but Ratonneau and Pomegue are inhabited, as is also the +islet of Daume. Tiboulen and Lemaire were therefore the +safest for Dantes' venture. The islands of Tiboulen and +Lemaire are a league from the Chateau d'If Dantes, +nevertheless, determined to make for them. But how could he +find his way in the darkness of the night? At this moment he +saw the light of Planier, gleaming in front of him like a +star. By leaving this light on the right, he kept the Island +of Tiboulen a little on the left by turning to the left, +therefore, he would find it. But, as we have said, it was at +least a league from the Chateau d'If to this island. Often +in prison Faria had said to him, when he saw him idle and +inactive, "Dantes, you must not give way to this +listlessness you will be drowned if you seek to escape, and +your strength has not been properly exercised and prepared +for exertion." These words rang in Dantes' ears, even +beneath the waves he hastened to cleave his way through +them to see if he had not lost his strength. He found with +pleasure that his captivity had taken away nothing of his +power, and that he was still master of that element on whose +bosom he had so often sported as a boy. +Fear, that relentless pursuer, clogged Dantes' efforts. He +listened for any sound that might be audible, and every time +that he rose to the top of a wave he scanned the horizon, +and strove to penetrate the darkness. He fancied that every +wave behind him was a pursuing boat, and he redoubled his +exertions, increasing rapidly his distance from the chateau, +but exhausting his strength. He swam on still, and already +the terrible chateau had disappeared in the darkness. He +could not see it, but he felt its presence. An hour passed, +during which Dantes, excited by the feeling of freedom, +continued to cleave the waves. "Let us see," said he, "I +have swum above an hour, but as the wind is against me, that +has retarded my speed however, if I am not mistaken, I must +be close to Tiboulen. But what if I were mistaken?" A +shudder passed over him. He sought to tread water, in order +to rest himself but the sea was too violent, and he felt +that he could not make use of this means of recuperation. +"Well," said he, "I will swim on until I am worn out, or the +cramp seizes me, and then I shall sink" and he struck out +with the energy of despair. +Suddenly the sky seemed to him to become still darker and +more dense, and heavy clouds seemed to sweep down towards +him at the same time he felt a sharp pain in his knee. He +fancied for a moment that he had been shot, and listened for +the report but he heard nothing. Then he put out his hand, +and encountered an obstacle and with another stroke knew +that he had gained the shore. +Before him rose a grotesque mass of rocks, that resembled +nothing so much as a vast fire petrified at the moment of +its most fervent combustion. It was the Island of Tiboulen. +Dantes rose, advanced a few steps, and, with a fervent +prayer of gratitude, stretched himself on the granite, which +seemed to him softer than down. Then, in spite of the wind +and rain, he fell into the deep, sweet sleep of utter +exhaustion. At the expiration of an hour Edmond was awakened +by the roar of thunder. The tempest was let loose and +beating the atmosphere with its mighty wings from time to +time a flash of lightning stretched across the heavens like +a fiery serpent, lighting up the clouds that rolled on in +vast chaotic waves. +Dantes had not been deceived he had reached the first of +the two islands, which was, in fact, Tiboulen. He knew that +it was barren and without shelter but when the sea became +more calm, he resolved to plunge into its waves again, and +swim to Lemaire, equally arid, but larger, and consequently +better adapted for concealment. +An overhanging rock offered him a temporary shelter, and +scarcely had he availed himself of it when the tempest burst +forth in all its fury. Edmond felt the trembling of the rock +beneath which he lay the waves, dashing themselves against +it, wetted him with their spray. He was safely sheltered, +and yet he felt dizzy in the midst of the warring of the +elements and the dazzling brightness of the lightning. It +seemed to him that the island trembled to its base, and that +it would, like a vessel at anchor, break moorings, and bear +him off into the centre of the storm. He then recollected +that he had not eaten or drunk for fourandtwenty hours. He +extended his hands, and drank greedily of the rainwater that +had lodged in a hollow of the rock. +As he rose, a flash of lightning, that seemed to rive the +remotest heights of heaven, illumined the darkness. By its +light, between the Island of Lemaire and Cape Croiselle, a +quarter of a league distant, Dantes saw a fishingboat +driven rapidly like a spectre before the power of winds and +waves. A second after, he saw it again, approaching with +frightful rapidity. Dantes cried at the top of his voice to +warn them of their danger, but they saw it themselves. +Another flash showed him four men clinging to the shattered +mast and the rigging, while a fifth clung to the broken +rudder. +The men he beheld saw him undoubtedly, for their cries were +carried to his ears by the wind. Above the splintered mast a +sail rent to tatters was waving suddenly the ropes that +still held it gave way, and it disappeared in the darkness +of the night like a vast seabird. At the same moment a +violent crash was heard, and cries of distress. Dantes from +his rocky perch saw the shattered vessel, and among the +fragments the floating forms of the hapless sailors. Then +all was dark again. +Dantes ran down the rocks at the risk of being himself +dashed to pieces he listened, he groped about, but he heard +and saw nothing the cries had ceased, and the tempest +continued to rage. By degrees the wind abated, vast gray +clouds rolled towards the west, and the blue firmament +appeared studded with bright stars. Soon a red streak became +visible in the horizon, the waves whitened, a light played +over them, and gilded their foaming crests with gold. It was +day. +Dantes stood mute and motionless before this majestic +spectacle, as if he now beheld it for the first time and +indeed since his captivity in the Chateau d'If he had +forgotten that such scenes were ever to be witnessed. He +turned towards the fortress, and looked at both sea and +land. The gloomy building rose from the bosom of the ocean +with imposing majesty and seemed to dominate the scene. It +was about five o'clock. The sea continued to get calmer. +"In two or three hours," thought Dantes, "the turnkey will +enter my chamber, find the body of my poor friend, recognize +it, seek for me in vain, and give the alarm. Then the tunnel +will be discovered the men who cast me into the sea and who +must have heard the cry I uttered, will be questioned. Then +boats filled with armed soldiers will pursue the wretched +fugitive. The cannon will warn every one to refuse shelter +to a man wandering about naked and famished. The police of +Marseilles will be on the alert by land, whilst the governor +pursues me by sea. I am cold, I am hungry. I have lost even +the knife that saved me. O my God, I have suffered enough +surely Have pity on me, and do for me what I am unable to +do for myself." +As Dantes his eyes turned in the direction of the Chateau +d'If uttered this prayer, he saw off the farther point of +the Island of Pomegue a small vessel with lateen sail +skimming the sea like a gull in search of prey and with his +sailor's eye he knew it to be a Genoese tartan. She was +coming out of Marseilles harbor, and was standing out to sea +rapidly, her sharp prow cleaving through the waves. "Oh," +cried Edmond, "to think that in half an hour I could join +her, did I not fear being questioned, detected, and conveyed +back to Marseilles What can I do? What story can I invent? +under pretext of trading along the coast, these men, who are +in reality smugglers, will prefer selling me to doing a good +action. I must wait. But I cannot I am starving. In a few +hours my strength will be utterly exhausted besides, +perhaps I have not been missed at the fortress. I can pass +as one of the sailors wrecked last night. My story will be +accepted, for there is no one left to contradict me." +As he spoke, Dantes looked toward the spot where the +fishingvessel had been wrecked, and started. The red cap of +one of the sailors hung to a point of the rock and some +timbers that had formed part of the vessel's keel, floated +at the foot of the crag. In an instant Dantes' plan was +formed. He swam to the cap, placed it on his head, seized +one of the timbers, and struck out so as to cut across the +course the vessel was taking. +"I am saved" murmured he. And this conviction restored his +strength. +He soon saw that the vessel, with the wind dead ahead, was +tacking between the Chateau d'If and the tower of Planier. +For an instant he feared lest, instead of keeping in shore, +she should stand out to sea but he soon saw that she would +pass, like most vessels bound for Italy, between the islands +of Jaros and Calaseraigne. However, the vessel and the +swimmer insensibly neared one another, and in one of its +tacks the tartan bore down within a quarter of a mile of +him. He rose on the waves, making signs of distress but no +one on board saw him, and the vessel stood on another tack. +Dantes would have shouted, but he knew that the wind would +drown his voice. +It was then he rejoiced at his precaution in taking the +timber, for without it he would have been unable, perhaps, +to reach the vessel certainly to return to shore, should +he be unsuccessful in attracting attention. +Dantes, though almost sure as to what course the vessel +would take, had yet watched it anxiously until it tacked and +stood towards him. Then he advanced but before they could +meet, the vessel again changed her course. By a violent +effort he rose half out of the water, waving his cap, and +uttering a loud shout peculiar to sailers. This time he was +both seen and heard, and the tartan instantly steered +towards him. At the same time, he saw they were about to +lower the boat. +An instant after, the boat, rowed by two men, advanced +rapidly towards him. Dantes let go of the timber, which he +now thought to be useless, and swam vigorously to meet them. +But he had reckoned too much upon his strength, and then he +realized how serviceable the timber had been to him. His +arms became stiff, his legs lost their flexibility, and he +was almost breathless. +He shouted again. The two sailors redoubled their efforts, +and one of them cried in Italian, "Courage" +The word reached his ear as a wave which he no longer had +the strength to surmount passed over his head. He rose again +to the surface, struggled with the last desperate effort of +a drowning man, uttered a third cry, and felt himself +sinking, as if the fatal cannon shot were again tied to his +feet. The water passed over his head, and the sky turned +gray. A convulsive movement again brought him to the +surface. He felt himself seized by the hair, then he saw and +heard nothing. He had fainted. +When he opened his eyes Dantes found himself on the deck of +the tartan. His first care was to see what course they were +taking. They were rapidly leaving the Chateau d'If behind. +Dantes was so exhausted that the exclamation of joy he +uttered was mistaken for a sigh. +As we have said, he was lying on the deck. A sailor was +rubbing his limbs with a woollen cloth another, whom he +recognized as the one who had cried out "Courage" held a +gourd full of rum to his mouth while the third, an old +sailer, at once the pilot and captain, looked on with that +egotistical pity men feel for a misfortune that they have +escaped yesterday, and which may overtake them tomorrow. +A few drops of the rum restored suspended animation, while +the friction of his limbs restored their elasticity. +"Who are you?" said the pilot in bad French. +"I am," replied Dantes, in bad Italian, "a Maltese sailor. +We were coming from Syracuse laden with grain. The storm of +last night overtook us at Cape Morgion, and we were wrecked +on these rocks." +"Where do you come from?" +"From these rocks that I had the good luck to cling to while +our captain and the rest of the crew were all lost. I saw +your vessel, and fearful of being left to perish on the +desolate island, I swam off on a piece of wreckage to try +and intercept your course. You have saved my life, and I +thank you," continued Dantes. "I was lost when one of your +sailors caught hold of my hair." +"It was I," said a sailor of a frank and manly appearance +"and it was time, for you were sinking." +"Yes," returned Dantes, holding out his hand, "I thank you +again." +"I almost hesitated, though," replied the sailor "you +looked more like a brigand than an honest man, with your +beard six inches, and your hair a foot long." Dantes +recollected that his hair and beard had not been cut all the +time he was at the Chateau d'If. +"Yes," said he, "I made a vow, to our Lady of the Grotto not +to cut my hair or beard for ten years if I were saved in a +moment of danger but today the vow expires." +"Now what are we to do with you?" said the captain. +"Alas, anything you please. My captain is dead I have +barely escaped but I am a good sailor. Leave me at the +first port you make I shall be sure to find employment." +"Do you know the Mediterranean?" +"I have sailed over it since my childhood." +"You know the best harbors?" +"There are few ports that I could not enter or leave with a +bandage over my eyes." +"I say, captain," said the sailor who had cried "Courage" +to Dantes, "if what he says is true, what hinders his +staying with us?" +"If he says true," said the captain doubtingly. "But in his +present condition he will promise anything, and take his +chance of keeping it afterwards." +"I will do more than I promise," said Dantes. +"We shall see," returned the other, smiling. +"Where are you going?" asked Dantes. +"To Leghorn." +"Then why, instead of tacking so frequently, do you not sail +nearer the wind?" +"Because we should run straight on to the Island of Rion." +"You shall pass it by twenty fathoms." +"Take the helm, and let us see what you know." The young man +took the helm, felt to see if the vessel answered the rudder +promptly and seeing that, without being a firstrate sailer, +she yet was tolerably obedient, +"To the sheets," said he. The four seamen, who composed the +crew, obeyed, while the pilot looked on. "Haul taut." +They obeyed. +"Belay." This order was also executed and the vessel +passed, as Dantes had predicted, twenty fathoms to windward. +"Bravo" said the captain. +"Bravo" repeated the sailors. And they all looked with +astonishment at this man whose eye now disclosed an +intelligence and his body a vigor they had not thought him +capable of showing. +"You see," said Dantes, quitting the helm, "I shall be of +some use to you, at least during the voyage. If you do not +want me at Leghorn, you can leave me there, and I will pay +you out of the first wages I get, for my food and the +clothes you lend me." +"Ah," said the captain, "we can agree very well, if you are +reasonable." +"Give me what you give the others, and it will be all +right," returned Dantes. +"That's not fair," said the seaman who had saved Dantes +"for you know more than we do." +"What is that to you, Jacopo?" returned the Captain. "Every +one is free to ask what he pleases." +"That's true," replied Jacopo "I only make a remark." +"Well, you would do much better to find him a jacket and a +pair of trousers, if you have them." +"No," said Jacopo "but I have a shirt and a pair of +trousers." +"That is all I want," interrupted Dantes. Jacopo dived into +the hold and soon returned with what Edmond wanted. +"Now, then, do you wish for anything else?" said the patron. +"A piece of bread and another glass of the capital rum I +tasted, for I have not eaten or drunk for a long time." He +had not tasted food for forty hours. A piece of bread was +brought, and Jacopo offered him the gourd. +"Larboard your helm," cried the captain to the steersman. +Dantes glanced that way as he lifted the gourd to his mouth +then paused with hand in midair. +"Hollo what's the matter at the Chateau d'If?" said the +captain. +A small white cloud, which had attracted Dantes' attention, +crowned the summit of the bastion of the Chateau d'If. At +the same moment the faint report of a gun was heard. The +sailors looked at one another. +"What is this?" asked the captain. +"A prisoner has escaped from the Chateau d'If, and they are +firing the alarm gun," replied Dantes. The captain glanced +at him, but he had lifted the rum to his lips and was +drinking it with so much composure, that suspicions, if the +captain had any, died away. +"At any rate," murmured he, "if it be, so much the better, +for I have made a rare acquisition." Under pretence of being +fatigued, Dantes asked to take the helm the steersman, glad +to be relieved, looked at the captain, and the latter by a +sign indicated that he might abandon it to his new comrade. +Dantes could thus keep his eyes on Marseilles. +"What is the day of the month?" asked he of Jacopo, who sat +down beside him. +"The th of February." +"In what year?" +"In what year you ask me in what year?" +"Yes," replied the young man, "I ask you in what year" +"You have forgotten then?" +"I got such a fright last night," replied Dantes, smiling, +"that I have almost lost my memory. I ask you what year is +it?" +"The year ," returned Jacopo. It was fourteen years day +for day since Dantes' arrest. He was nineteen when he +entered the Chateau d'If he was thirtythree when he +escaped. A sorrowful smile passed over his face he asked +himself what had become of Mercedes, who must believe him +dead. Then his eyes lighted up with hatred as he thought of +the three men who had caused him so long and wretched a +captivity. He renewed against Danglars, Fernand, and +Villefort the oath of implacable vengeance he had made in +his dungeon. This oath was no longer a vain menace for the +fastest sailer in the Mediterranean would have been unable +to overtake the little tartan, that with every stitch of +canvas set was flying before the wind to Leghorn. +Chapter +The Smugglers. +Dantes had not been a day on board before he had a very +clear idea of the men with whom his lot had been cast. +Without having been in the school of the Abbe Faria, the +worthy master of The Young Amelia the name of the Genoese +tartan knew a smattering of all the tongues spoken on the +shores of that large lake called the Mediterranean, from the +Arabic to the Provencal, and this, while it spared him +interpreters, persons always troublesome and frequently +indiscreet, gave him great facilities of communication, +either with the vessels he met at sea, with the small boats +sailing along the coast, or with the people without name, +country, or occupation, who are always seen on the quays of +seaports, and who live by hidden and mysterious means which +we must suppose to be a direct gift of providence, as they +have no visible means of support. It is fair to assume that +Dantes was on board a smuggler. +At first the captain had received Dantes on board with a +certain degree of distrust. He was very well known to the +customs officers of the coast and as there was between +these worthies and himself a perpetual battle of wits, he +had at first thought that Dantes might be an emissary of +these industrious guardians of rights and duties, who +perhaps employed this ingenious means of learning some of +the secrets of his trade. But the skilful manner in which +Dantes had handled the lugger had entirely reassured him +and then, when he saw the light plume of smoke floating +above the bastion of the Chateau d'If, and heard the distant +report, he was instantly struck with the idea that he had on +board his vessel one whose coming and going, like that of +kings, was accompanied with salutes of artillery. This made +him less uneasy, it must be owned, than if the newcomer had +proved to be a customs officer but this supposition also +disappeared like the first, when he beheld the perfect +tranquillity of his recruit. +Edmond thus had the advantage of knowing what the owner was, +without the owner knowing who he was and however the old +sailor and his crew tried to "pump" him, they extracted +nothing more from him he gave accurate descriptions of +Naples and Malta, which he knew as well as Marseilles, and +held stoutly to his first story. Thus the Genoese, subtle as +he was, was duped by Edmond, in whose favor his mild +demeanor, his nautical skill, and his admirable +dissimulation, pleaded. Moreover, it is possible that the +Genoese was one of those shrewd persons who know nothing but +what they should know, and believe nothing but what they +should believe. +In this state of mutual understanding, they reached Leghorn. +Here Edmond was to undergo another trial he was to find out +whether he could recognize himself, as he had not seen his +own face for fourteen years. He had preserved a tolerably +good remembrance of what the youth had been, and was now to +find out what the man had become. His comrades believed that +his vow was fulfilled. As he had twenty times touched at +Leghorn, he remembered a barber in St. Ferdinand Street he +went there to have his beard and hair cut. The barber gazed +in amazement at this man with the long, thick and black hair +and beard, which gave his head the appearance of one of +Titian's portraits. At this period it was not the fashion to +wear so large a beard and hair so long now a barber would +only be surprised if a man gifted with such advantages +should consent voluntarily to deprive himself of them. The +Leghorn barber said nothing and went to work. +When the operation was concluded, and Edmond felt that his +chin was completely smooth, and his hair reduced to its +usual length, he asked for a handglass. He was now, as we +have said, threeandthirty years of age, and his fourteen +years' imprisonment had produced a great transformation in +his appearance. Dantes had entered the Chateau d'If with the +round, open, smiling face of a young and happy man, with +whom the early paths of life have been smooth, and who +anticipates a future corresponding with his past. This was +now all changed. The oval face was lengthened, his smiling +mouth had assumed the firm and marked lines which betoken +resolution his eyebrows were arched beneath a brow furrowed +with thought his eyes were full of melancholy, and from +their depths occasionally sparkled gloomy fires of +misanthropy and hatred his complexion, so long kept from +the sun, had now that pale color which produces, when the +features are encircled with black hair, the aristocratic +beauty of the man of the north the profound learning he had +acquired had besides diffused over his features a refined +intellectual expression and he had also acquired, being +naturally of a goodly stature, that vigor which a frame +possesses which has so long concentrated all its force +within itself. +To the elegance of a nervous and slight form had succeeded +the solidity of a rounded and muscular figure. As to his +voice, prayers, sobs, and imprecations had changed it so +that at times it was of a singularly penetrating sweetness, +and at others rough and almost hoarse. Moreover, from being +so long in twilight or darkness, his eyes had acquired the +faculty of distinguishing objects in the night, common to +the hyena and the wolf. Edmond smiled when he beheld +himself it was impossible that his best friend if, +indeed, he had any friend left could recognize him he +could not recognize himself. +The master of The Young Amelia, who was very desirous of +retaining amongst his crew a man of Edmond's value, had +offered to advance him funds out of his future profits, +which Edmond had accepted. His next care on leaving the +barber's who had achieved his first metamorphosis was to +enter a shop and buy a complete sailor's suit a garb, as +we all know, very simple, and consisting of white trousers, +a striped shirt, and a cap. It was in this costume, and +bringing back to Jacopo the shirt and trousers he had lent +him, that Edmond reappeared before the captain of the +lugger, who had made him tell his story over and over again +before he could believe him, or recognize in the neat and +trim sailor the man with thick and matted beard, hair +tangled with seaweed, and body soaking in seabrine, whom he +had picked up naked and nearly drowned. Attracted by his +prepossessing appearance, he renewed his offers of an +engagement to Dantes but Dantes, who had his own projects, +would not agree for a longer time than three months. +The Young Amelia had a very active crew, very obedient to +their captain, who lost as little time as possible. He had +scarcely been a week at Leghorn before the hold of his +vessel was filled with printed muslins, contraband cottons, +English powder, and tobacco on which the excise had +forgotten to put its mark. The master was to get all this +out of Leghorn free of duties, and land it on the shores of +Corsica, where certain speculators undertook to forward the +cargo to France. They sailed Edmond was again cleaving the +azure sea which had been the first horizon of his youth, and +which he had so often dreamed of in prison. He left Gorgone +on his right and La Pianosa on his left, and went towards +the country of Paoli and Napoleon. The next morning going on +deck, as he always did at an early hour, the patron found +Dantes leaning against the bulwarks gazing with intense +earnestness at a pile of granite rocks, which the rising sun +tinged with rosy light. It was the Island of Monte Cristo. +The Young Amelia left it threequarters of a league to the +larboard, and kept on for Corsica. +Dantes thought, as they passed so closely to the island +whose name was so interesting to him, that he had only to +leap into the sea and in half an hour be at the promised +land. But then what could he do without instruments to +discover his treasure, without arms to defend himself? +Besides, what would the sailors say? What would the patron +think? He must wait. +Fortunately, Dantes had learned how to wait he had waited +fourteen years for his liberty, and now he was free he could +wait at least six months or a year for wealth. Would he not +have accepted liberty without riches if it had been offered +to him? Besides, were not those riches chimerical? +offspring of the brain of the poor Abbe Faria, had they not +died with him? It is true, the letter of the Cardinal Spada +was singularly circumstantial, and Dantes repeated it to +himself, from one end to the other, for he had not forgotten +a word. +Evening came, and Edmond saw the island tinged with the +shades of twilight, and then disappear in the darkness from +all eyes but his own, for he, with vision accustomed to the +gloom of a prison, continued to behold it last of all, for +he remained alone upon deck. The next morn broke off the +coast of Aleria all day they coasted, and in the evening +saw fires lighted on land the position of these was no +doubt a signal for landing, for a ship's lantern was hung up +at the masthead instead of the streamer, and they came to +within a gunshot of the shore. Dantes noticed that the +captain of The Young Amelia had, as he neared the land, +mounted two small culverins, which, without making much +noise, can throw a four ounce ball a thousand paces or so. +But on this occasion the precaution was superfluous, and +everything proceeded with the utmost smoothness and +politeness. Four shallops came off with very little noise +alongside the lugger, which, no doubt, in acknowledgement of +the compliment, lowered her own shallop into the sea, and +the five boats worked so well that by two o'clock in the +morning all the cargo was out of The Young Amelia and on +terra firma. The same night, such a man of regularity was +the patron of The Young Amelia, the profits were divided, +and each man had a hundred Tuscan livres, or about eighty +francs. But the voyage was not ended. They turned the +bowsprit towards Sardinia, where they intended to take in a +cargo, which was to replace what had been discharged. The +second operation was as successful as the first, The Young +Amelia was in luck. This new cargo was destined for the +coast of the Duchy of Lucca, and consisted almost entirely +of Havana cigars, sherry, and Malaga wines. +There they had a bit of a skirmish in getting rid of the +duties the excise was, in truth, the everlasting enemy of +the patron of The Young Amelia. A customs officer was laid +low, and two sailors wounded Dantes was one of the latter, +a ball having touched him in the left shoulder. Dantes was +almost glad of this affray, and almost pleased at being +wounded, for they were rude lessons which taught him with +what eye he could view danger, and with what endurance he +could bear suffering. He had contemplated danger with a +smile, and when wounded had exclaimed with the great +philosopher, "Pain, thou art not an evil." He had, moreover, +looked upon the customs officer wounded to death, and, +whether from heat of blood produced by the encounter, or the +chill of human sentiment, this sight had made but slight +impression upon him. Dantes was on the way he desired to +follow, and was moving towards the end he wished to achieve +his heart was in a fair way of petrifying in his bosom. +Jacopo, seeing him fall, had believed him killed, and +rushing towards him raised him up, and then attended to him +with all the kindness of a devoted comrade. +This world was not then so good as Doctor Pangloss believed +it, neither was it so wicked as Dantes thought it, since +this man, who had nothing to expect from his comrade but the +inheritance of his share of the prizemoney, manifested so +much sorrow when he saw him fall. Fortunately, as we have +said, Edmond was only wounded, and with certain herbs +gathered at certain seasons, and sold to the smugglers by +the old Sardinian women, the wound soon closed. Edmond then +resolved to try Jacopo, and offered him in return for his +attention a share of his prizemoney, but Jacopo refused it +indignantly. +As a result of the sympathetic devotion which Jacopo had +from the first bestowed on Edmond, the latter was moved to a +certain degree of affection. But this sufficed for Jacopo, +who instinctively felt that Edmond had a right to +superiority of position a superiority which Edmond had +concealed from all others. And from this time the kindness +which Edmond showed him was enough for the brave seaman. +Then in the long days on board ship, when the vessel, +gliding on with security over the azure sea, required no +care but the hand of the helmsman, thanks to the favorable +winds that swelled her sails, Edmond, with a chart in his +hand, became the instructor of Jacopo, as the poor Abbe +Faria had been his tutor. He pointed out to him the bearings +of the coast, explained to him the variations of the +compass, and taught him to read in that vast book opened +over our heads which they call heaven, and where God writes +in azure with letters of diamonds. And when Jacopo inquired +of him, "What is the use of teaching all these things to a +poor sailor like me?" Edmond replied, "Who knows? You may +one day be the captain of a vessel. Your fellowcountryman, +Bonaparte, became emperor." We had forgotten to say that +Jacopo was a Corsican. +Two months and a half elapsed in these trips, and Edmond had +become as skilful a coaster as he had been a hardy seaman +he had formed an acquaintance with all the smugglers on the +coast, and learned all the Masonic signs by which these half +pirates recognize each other. He had passed and repassed +his Island of Monte Cristo twenty times, but not once had he +found an opportunity of landing there. He then formed a +resolution. As soon as his engagement with the patron of The +Young Amelia ended, he would hire a small vessel on his own +account for in his several voyages he had amassed a +hundred piastres and under some pretext land at the +Island of Monte Cristo. Then he would be free to make his +researches, not perhaps entirely at liberty, for he would be +doubtless watched by those who accompanied him. But in this +world we must risk something. Prison had made Edmond +prudent, and he was desirous of running no risk whatever. +But in vain did he rack his imagination fertile as it was, +he could not devise any plan for reaching the island without +companionship. +Dantes was tossed about on these doubts and wishes, when the +patron, who had great confidence in him, and was very +desirous of retaining him in his service, took him by the +arm one evening and led him to a tavern on the Via del' +Oglio, where the leading smugglers of Leghorn used to +congregate and discuss affairs connected with their trade. +Already Dantes had visited this maritime Bourse two or three +times, and seeing all these hardy freetraders, who supplied +the whole coast for nearly two hundred leagues in extent, he +had asked himself what power might not that man attain who +should give the impulse of his will to all these contrary +and diverging minds. This time it was a great matter that +was under discussion, connected with a vessel laden with +Turkey carpets, stuffs of the Levant, and cashmeres. It was +necessary to find some neutral ground on which an exchange +could be made, and then to try and land these goods on the +coast of France. If the venture was successful the profit +would be enormous, there would be a gain of fifty or sixty +piastres each for the crew. +The patron of The Young Amelia proposed as a place of +landing the Island of Monte Cristo, which being completely +deserted, and having neither soldiers nor revenue officers, +seemed to have been placed in the midst of the ocean since +the time of the heathen Olympus by Mercury, the god of +merchants and robbers, classes of mankind which we in modern +times have separated if not made distinct, but which +antiquity appears to have included in the same category. At +the mention of Monte Cristo Dantes started with joy he rose +to conceal his emotion, and took a turn around the smoky +tavern, where all the languages of the known world were +jumbled in a lingua franca. When he again joined the two +persons who had been discussing the matter, it had been +decided that they should touch at Monte Cristo and set out +on the following night. Edmond, being consulted, was of +opinion that the island afforded every possible security, +and that great enterprises to be well done should be done +quickly. Nothing then was altered in the plan, and orders +were given to get under weigh next night, and, wind and +weather permitting, to make the neutral island by the +following day. +Chapter +The Island of Monte Cristo. +Thus, at length, by one of the unexpected strokes of fortune +which sometimes befall those who have for a long time been +the victims of an evil destiny, Dantes was about to secure +the opportunity he wished for, by simple and natural means, +and land on the island without incurring any suspicion. One +night more and he would be on his way. +The night was one of feverish distraction, and in its +progress visions good and evil passed through Dantes' mind. +If he closed his eyes, he saw Cardinal Spada's letter +written on the wall in characters of flame if he slept +for a moment the wildest dreams haunted his brain. He +ascended into grottos paved with emeralds, with panels of +rubies, and the roof glowing with diamond stalactites. +Pearls fell drop by drop, as subterranean waters filter in +their caves. Edmond, amazed, wonderstruck, filled his +pockets with the radiant gems and then returned to daylight, +when be discovered that his prizes had all changed into +common pebbles. He then endeavored to reenter the +marvellous grottos, but they had suddenly receded, and now +the path became a labyrinth, and then the entrance vanished, +and in vain did he tax his memory for the magic and +mysterious word which opened the splendid caverns of Ali +Baba to the Arabian fisherman. All was useless, the treasure +disappeared, and had again reverted to the genii from whom +for a moment he had hoped to carry it off. The day came at +length, and was almost as feverish as the night had been, +but it brought reason to the aid of imagination, and Dantes +was then enabled to arrange a plan which had hitherto been +vague and unsettled in his brain. Night came, and with it +the preparation for departure, and these preparations served +to conceal Dantes' agitation. He had by degrees assumed such +authority over his companions that he was almost like a +commander on board and as his orders were always clear, +distinct, and easy of execution, his comrades obeyed him +with celerity and pleasure. +The old patron did not interfere, for he too had recognized +the superiority of Dantes over the crew and himself. He saw +in the young man his natural successor, and regretted that +he had not a daughter, that he might have bound Edmond to +him by a more secure alliance. At seven o'clock in the +evening all was ready, and at ten minutes past seven they +doubled the lighthouse just as the beacon was kindled. The +sea was calm, and, with a fresh breeze from the southeast, +they sailed beneath a bright blue sky, in which God also +lighted up in turn his beacon lights, each of which is a +world. Dantes told them that all hands might turn in, and he +would take the helm. When the Maltese for so they called +Dantes had said this, it was sufficient, and all went to +their bunks contentedly. This frequently happened. Dantes, +cast from solitude into the world, frequently experienced an +imperious desire for solitude and what solitude is more +complete, or more poetical, than that of a ship floating in +isolation on the sea during the obscurity of the night, in +the silence of immensity, and under the eye of heaven? +Now this solitude was peopled with his thoughts, the night +lighted up by his illusions, and the silence animated by his +anticipations. When the patron awoke, the vessel was +hurrying on with every sail set, and every sail full with +the breeze. They were making nearly ten knots an hour. The +Island of Monte Cristo loomed large in the horizon. Edmond +resigned the lugger to the master's care, and went and lay +down in his hammock but, in spite of a sleepless night, he +could not close his eyes for a moment. Two hours afterwards +he came on deck, as the boat was about to double the Island +of Elba. They were just abreast of Mareciana, and beyond the +flat but verdant Island of La Pianosa. The peak of Monte +Cristo reddened by the burning sun, was seen against the +azure sky. Dantes ordered the helmsman to put down his helm, +in order to leave La Pianosa to starboard, as he knew that +he should shorten his course by two or three knots. About +five o'clock in the evening the island was distinct, and +everything on it was plainly perceptible, owing to that +clearness of the atmosphere peculiar to the light which the +rays of the sun cast at its setting. +Edmond gazed very earnestly at the mass of rocks which gave +out all the variety of twilight colors, from the brightest +pink to the deepest blue and from time to time his cheeks +flushed, his brow darkened, and a mist passed over his eyes. +Never did gamester, whose whole fortune is staked on one +cast of the die, experience the anguish which Edmond felt in +his paroxysms of hope. Night came, and at ten o'clock they +anchored. The Young Amelia was first at the rendezvous. In +spite of his usual command over himself, Dantes could not +restrain his impetuosity. He was the first to jump on shore +and had he dared, he would, like Lucius Brutus, have "kissed +his mother earth." It was dark, but at eleven o'clock the +moon rose in the midst of the ocean, whose every wave she +silvered, and then, "ascending high," played in floods of +pale light on the rocky hills of this second Pelion. +The island was familiar to the crew of The Young Amelia, +it was one of her regular haunts. As to Dantes, he had +passed it on his voyage to and from the Levant, but never +touched at it. He questioned Jacopo. "Where shall we pass +the night?" he inquired. +"Why, on board the tartan," replied the sailor. +"Should we not do better in the grottos?" +"What grottos?" +"Why, the grottos caves of the island." +"I do not know of any grottos," replied Jacopo. The cold +sweat sprang forth on Dantes' brow. +"What, are there no grottos at Monte Cristo?" he asked. +"None." +For a moment Dantes was speechless then he remembered that +these caves might have been filled up by some accident, or +even stopped up, for the sake of greater security, by +Cardinal Spada. The point was, then, to discover the hidden +entrance. It was useless to search at night, and Dantes +therefore delayed all investigation until the morning. +Besides, a signal made half a league out at sea, and to +which The Young Amelia replied by a similar signal, +indicated that the moment for business had come. The boat +that now arrived, assured by the answering signal that all +was well, soon came in sight, white and silent as a phantom, +and cast anchor within a cable's length of shore. +Then the landing began. Dantes reflected, as he worked, on +the shout of joy which, with a single word, he could evoke +from all these men, if he gave utterance to the one +unchanging thought that pervaded his heart but, far from +disclosing this precious secret, he almost feared that he +had already said too much, and by his restlessness and +continual questions, his minute observations and evident +preoccupation, aroused suspicions. Fortunately, as regarded +this circumstance at least, his painful past gave to his +countenance an indelible sadness, and the glimmerings of +gayety seen beneath this cloud were indeed but transitory. +No one had the slightest suspicion and when next day, +taking a fowlingpiece, powder, and shot, Dantes declared +his intention to go and kill some of the wild goats that +were seen springing from rock to rock, his wish was +construed into a love of sport, or a desire for solitude. +However, Jacopo insisted on following him, and Dantes did +not oppose this, fearing if he did so that he might incur +distrust. Scarcely, however, had they gone a quarter of a +league when, having killed a kid, he begged Jacopo to take +it to his comrades, and request them to cook it, and when +ready to let him know by firing a gun. This and some dried +fruits and a flask of Monte Pulciano, was the bill of fare. +Dantes went on, looking from time to time behind and around +about him. Having reached the summit of a rock, he saw, a +thousand feet beneath him, his companions, whom Jacopo had +rejoined, and who were all busy preparing the repast which +Edmond's skill as a marksman had augmented with a capital +dish. +Edmond looked at them for a moment with the sad and gentle +smile of a man superior to his fellows. "In two hours' +time," said he, "these persons will depart richer by fifty +piastres each, to go and risk their lives again by +endeavoring to gain fifty more then they will return with a +fortune of six hundred francs, and waste this treasure in +some city with the pride of sultans and the insolence of +nabobs. At this moment hope makes me despise their riches, +which seem to me contemptible. Yet perchance tomorrow +deception will so act on me, that I shall, on compulsion, +consider such a contemptible possession as the utmost +happiness. Oh, no" exclaimed Edmond, "that will not be. The +wise, unerring Faria could not be mistaken in this one +thing. Besides, it were better to die than to continue to +lead this low and wretched life." Thus Dantes, who but three +months before had no desire but liberty had now not liberty +enough, and panted for wealth. The cause was not in Dantes, +but in providence, who, while limiting the power of man, has +filled him with boundless desires. +Meanwhile, by a cleft between two walls of rock, following a +path worn by a torrent, and which, in all human probability, +human foot had never before trod, Dantes approached the spot +where he supposed the grottos must have existed. Keeping +along the shore, and examining the smallest object with +serious attention, he thought he could trace, on certain +rocks, marks made by the hand of man. +Time, which encrusts all physical substances with its mossy +mantle, as it invests all things of the mind with +forgetfulness, seemed to have respected these signs, which +apparently had been made with some degree of regularity, and +probably with a definite purpose. Occasionally the marks +were hidden under tufts of myrtle, which spread into large +bushes laden with blossoms, or beneath parasitical lichen. +So Edmond had to separate the branches or brush away the +moss to know where the guidemarks were. The sight of marks +renewed Edmond fondest hopes. Might it not have been the +cardinal himself who had first traced them, in order that +they might serve as a guide for his nephew in the event of a +catastrophe, which he could not foresee would have been so +complete. This solitary place was precisely suited to the +requirements of a man desirous of burying treasure. Only, +might not these betraying marks have attracted other eyes +than those for whom they were made? and had the dark and +wondrous island indeed faithfully guarded its precious +secret? +It seemed, however, to Edmond, who was hidden from his +comrades by the inequalities of the ground, that at sixty +paces from the harbor the marks ceased nor did they +terminate at any grotto. A large round rock, placed solidly +on its base, was the only spot to which they seemed to lead. +Edmond concluded that perhaps instead of having reached the +end of the route he had only explored its beginning, and he +therefore turned round and retraced his steps. +Meanwhile his comrades had prepared the repast, had got some +water from a spring, spread out the fruit and bread, and +cooked the kid. Just at the moment when they were taking the +dainty animal from the spit, they saw Edmond springing with +the boldness of a chamois from rock to rock, and they fired +the signal agreed upon. The sportsman instantly changed his +direction, and ran quickly towards them. But even while they +watched his daring progress, Edmond's foot slipped, and they +saw him stagger on the edge of a rock and disappear. They +all rushed towards him, for all loved Edmond in spite of his +superiority yet Jacopo reached him first. +He found Edmond lying prone, bleeding, and almost senseless. +He had rolled down a declivity of twelve or fifteen feet. +They poured a little rum down his throat, and this remedy +which had before been so beneficial to him, produced the +same effect as formerly. Edmond opened his eyes, complained +of great pain in his knee, a feeling of heaviness in his +head, and severe pains in his loins. They wished to carry +him to the shore but when they touched him, although under +Jacopo's directions, he declared, with heavy groans, that he +could not bear to be moved. +It may be supposed that Dantes did not now think of his +dinner, but he insisted that his comrades, who had not his +reasons for fasting, should have their meal. As for himself, +he declared that he had only need of a little rest, and that +when they returned he should be easier. The sailors did not +require much urging. They were hungry, and the smell of the +roasted kid was very savory, and your tars are not very +ceremonious. An hour afterwards they returned. All that +Edmond had been able to do was to drag himself about a dozen +paces forward to lean against a mossgrown rock. +But, instead of growing easier, Dantes' pains appeared to +increase in violence. The old patron, who was obliged to +sail in the morning in order to land his cargo on the +frontiers of Piedmont and France, between Nice and Frejus, +urged Dantes to try and rise. Edmond made great exertions in +order to comply but at each effort he fell back, moaning +and turning pale. +"He has broken his ribs," said the commander, in a low +voice. "No matter he is an excellent fellow, and we must +not leave him. We will try and carry him on board the +tartan." Dantes declared, however, that he would rather die +where he was than undergo the agony which the slightest +movement cost him. "Well," said the patron, "let what may +happen, it shall never be said that we deserted a good +comrade like you. We will not go till evening." This very +much astonished the sailors, although, not one opposed it. +The patron was so strict that this was the first time they +had ever seen him give up an enterprise, or even delay in +its execution. Dantes would not allow that any such +infraction of regular and proper rules should be made in his +favor. "No, no," he said to the patron, "I was awkward, and +it is just that I pay the penalty of my clumsiness. Leave me +a small supply of biscuit, a gun, powder, and balls, to kill +the kids or defend myself at need, and a pickaxe, that I may +build a shelter if you delay in coming back for me." +"But you'll die of hunger," said the patron. +"I would rather do so," was Edmond reply, "than suffer the +inexpressible agonies which the slightest movement causes +me." The patron turned towards his vessel, which was rolling +on the swell in the little harbor, and, with sails partly +set, would be ready for sea when her toilet should be +completed. +"What are we to do, Maltese?" asked the captain. "We cannot +leave you here so, and yet we cannot stay." +"Go, go" exclaimed Dantes. +"We shall be absent at least a week," said the patron, "and +then we must run out of our course to come here and take you +up again." +"Why," said Dantes, "if in two or three days you hail any +fishingboat, desire them to come here to me. I will pay +twentyfive piastres for my passage back to Leghorn. If you +do not come across one, return for me." The patron shook his +head. +"Listen, Captain Baldi there's one way of settling this," +said Jacopo. "Do you go, and I will stay and take care of +the wounded man." +"And give up your share of the venture," said Edmond, "to +remain with me?" +"Yes," said Jacopo, "and without any hesitation." +"You are a good fellow and a kindhearted messmate," replied +Edmond, "and heaven will recompense you for your generous +intentions but I do not wish any one to stay with me. A day +or two of rest will set me up, and I hope I shall find among +the rocks certain herbs most excellent for bruises." +A peculiar smile passed over Dantes' lips he squeezed +Jacopo's hand warmly, but nothing could shake his +determination to remain and remain alone. The smugglers +left with Edmond what he had requested and set sail, but not +without turning about several times, and each time making +signs of a cordial farewell, to which Edmond replied with +his hand only, as if he could not move the rest of his body. +Then, when they had disappeared, he said with a smile, +"'Tis strange that it should be among such men that we find +proofs of friendship and devotion." Then he dragged himself +cautiously to the top of a rock, from which he had a full +view of the sea, and thence he saw the tartan complete her +preparations for sailing, weigh anchor, and, balancing +herself as gracefully as a waterfowl ere it takes to the +wing, set sail. At the end of an hour she was completely out +of sight at least, it was impossible for the wounded man to +see her any longer from the spot where he was. Then Dantes +rose more agile and light than the kid among the myrtles and +shrubs of these wild rocks, took his gun in one hand, his +pickaxe in the other, and hastened towards the rock on which +the marks he had noted terminated. "And now," he exclaimed, +remembering the tale of the Arabian fisherman, which Faria +had related to him, "now, open sesame" +Chapter +The Secret Cave. +The sun had nearly reached the meridian, and his scorching +rays fell full on the rocks, which seemed themselves +sensible of the heat. Thousands of grasshoppers, hidden in +the bushes, chirped with a monotonous and dull note the +leaves of the myrtle and olive trees waved and rustled in +the wind. At every step that Edmond took he disturbed the +lizards glittering with the hues of the emerald afar off he +saw the wild goats bounding from crag to crag. In a word, +the island was inhabited, yet Edmond felt himself alone, +guided by the hand of God. He felt an indescribable +sensation somewhat akin to dread that dread of the +daylight which even in the desert makes us fear we are +watched and observed. This feeling was so strong that at the +moment when Edmond was about to begin his labor, he stopped, +laid down his pickaxe, seized his gun, mounted to the summit +of the highest rock, and from thence gazed round in every +direction. +But it was not upon Corsica, the very houses of which he +could distinguish or on Sardinia or on the Island of Elba, +with its historical associations or upon the almost +imperceptible line that to the experienced eye of a sailor +alone revealed the coast of Genoa the proud, and Leghorn the +commercial, that he gazed. It was at the brigantine that had +left in the morning, and the tartan that had just set sail, +that Edmond fixed his eyes. The first was just disappearing +in the straits of Bonifacio the other, following an +opposite direction, was about to round the Island of +Corsica. This sight reassured him. He then looked at the +objects near him. He saw that he was on the highest point of +the island, a statue on this vast pedestal of granite, +nothing human appearing in sight, while the blue ocean beat +against the base of the island, and covered it with a fringe +of foam. Then he descended with cautious and slow step, for +he dreaded lest an accident similar to that he had so +adroitly feigned should happen in reality. +Dantes, as we have said, had traced the marks along the +rocks, and he had noticed that they led to a small creek. +which was hidden like the bath of some ancient nymph. This +creek was sufficiently wide at its mouth, and deep in the +centre, to admit of the entrance of a small vessel of the +lugger class, which would be perfectly concealed from +observation. +Then following the clew that, in the hands of the Abbe +Faria, had been so skilfully used to guide him through the +Daedalian labyrinth of probabilities, he thought that the +Cardinal Spada, anxious not to be watched, had entered the +creek, concealed his little barque, followed the line marked +by the notches in the rock, and at the end of it had buried +his treasure. It was this idea that had brought Dantes back +to the circular rock. One thing only perplexed Edmond, and +destroyed his theory. How could this rock, which weighed +several tons, have been lifted to this spot, without the aid +of many men? Suddenly an idea flashed across his mind. +Instead of raising it, thought he, they have lowered it. And +he sprang from the rock in order to inspect the base on +which it had formerly stood. He soon perceived that a slope +had been formed, and the rock had slid along this until it +stopped at the spot it now occupied. A large stone had +served as a wedge flints and pebbles had been inserted +around it, so as to conceal the orifice this species of +masonry had been covered with earth, and grass and weeds had +grown there, moss had clung to the stones, myrtlebushes had +taken root, and the old rock seemed fixed to the earth. +Dantes dug away the earth carefully, and detected, or +fancied he detected, the ingenious artifice. He attacked +this wall, cemented by the hand of time, with his pickaxe. +After ten minutes' labor the wall gave way, and a hole large +enough to insert the arm was opened. Dantes went and cut the +strongest olivetree he could find, stripped off its +branches, inserted it in the hole, and used it as a lever. +But the rock was too heavy, and too firmly wedged, to be +moved by any one man, were he Hercules himself. Dantes saw +that he must attack the wedge. But how? He cast his eyes +around, and saw the horn full of powder which his friend +Jacopo had left him. He smiled the infernal invention would +serve him for this purpose. With the aid of his pickaxe, +Dantes, after the manner of a laborsaving pioneer, dug a +mine between the upper rock and the one that supported it, +filled it with powder, then made a match by rolling his +handkerchief in saltpetre. He lighted it and retired. The +explosion soon followed the upper rock was lifted from its +base by the terrific force of the powder the lower one flew +into pieces thousands of insects escaped from the aperture +Dantes had previously formed, and a huge snake, like the +guardian demon of the treasure, rolled himself along in +darkening coils, and disappeared. +Dantes approached the upper rock, which now, without any +support, leaned towards the sea. The intrepid +treasureseeker walked round it, and, selecting the spot +from whence it appeared most susceptible to attack, placed +his lever in one of the crevices, and strained every nerve +to move the mass. The rock, already shaken by the explosion, +tottered on its base. Dantes redoubled his efforts he +seemed like one of the ancient Titans, who uprooted the +mountains to hurl against the father of the gods. The rock +yielded, rolled over, bounded from point to point, and +finally disappeared in the ocean. +On the spot it had occupied was a circular space, exposing +an iron ring let into a square flagstone. Dantes uttered a +cry of joy and surprise never had a first attempt been +crowned with more perfect success. He would fain have +continued, but his knees trembled, and his heart beat so +violently, and his sight became so dim, that he was forced +to pause. This feeling lasted but for a moment. Edmond +inserted his lever in the ring and exerted all his strength +the flagstone yielded, and disclosed steps that descended +until they were lost in the obscurity of a subterraneous +grotto. Any one else would have rushed on with a cry of joy. +Dantes turned pale, hesitated, and reflected. "Come," said +he to himself, "be a man. I am accustomed to adversity. I +must not be cast down by the discovery that I have been +deceived. What, then, would be the use of all I have +suffered? The heart breaks when, after having been elated by +flattering hopes, it sees all its illusions destroyed. Faria +has dreamed this the Cardinal Spada buried no treasure +here perhaps he never came here, or if he did, Caesar +Borgia, the intrepid adventurer, the stealthy and +indefatigable plunderer, has followed him, discovered his +traces, pursued them as I have done, raised the stone, and +descending before me, has left me nothing." He remained +motionless and pensive, his eyes fixed on the gloomy +aperture that was open at his feet. +"Now that I expect nothing, now that I no longer entertain +the slightest hopes, the end of this adventure becomes +simply a matter of curiosity." And he remained again +motionless and thoughtful. +"Yes, yes this is an adventure worthy a place in the varied +career of that royal bandit. This fabulous event formed but +a link in a long chain of marvels. Yes, Borgia has been +here, a torch in one hand, a sword in the other, and within +twenty paces, at the foot of this rock, perhaps two guards +kept watch on land and sea, while their master descended, as +I am about to descend, dispelling the darkness before his +aweinspiring progress." +"But what was the fate of the guards who thus possessed his +secret?" asked Dantes of himself. +"The fate," replied he, smiling, "of those who buried +Alaric." +"Yet, had he come," thought Dantes, "he would have found the +treasure, and Borgia, he who compared Italy to an artichoke, +which he could devour leaf by leaf, knew too well the value +of time to waste it in replacing this rock. I will go down." +Then he descended, a smile on his lips, and murmuring that +last word of human philosophy, "Perhaps" But instead of the +darkness, and the thick and mephitic atmosphere he had +expected to find, Dantes saw a dim and bluish light, which, +as well as the air, entered, not merely by the aperture he +had just formed, but by the interstices and crevices of the +rock which were visible from without, and through which he +could distinguish the blue sky and the waving branches of +the evergreen oaks, and the tendrils of the creepers that +grew from the rocks. After having stood a few minutes in the +cavern, the atmosphere of which was rather warm than damp, +Dantes' eye, habituated as it was to darkness, could pierce +even to the remotest angles of the cavern, which was of +granite that sparkled like diamonds. "Alas," said Edmond, +smiling, "these are the treasures the cardinal has left and +the good abbe, seeing in a dream these glittering walls, has +indulged in fallacious hopes." +But he called to mind the words of the will, which he knew +by heart. "In the farthest angle of the second opening," +said the cardinal's will. He had only found the first +grotto he had now to seek the second. Dantes continued his +search. He reflected that this second grotto must penetrate +deeper into the island he examined the stones, and sounded +one part of the wall where he fancied the opening existed, +masked for precaution's sake. The pickaxe struck for a +moment with a dull sound that drew out of Dantes' forehead +large drops of perspiration. At last it seemed to him that +one part of the wall gave forth a more hollow and deeper +echo he eagerly advanced, and with the quickness of +perception that no one but a prisoner possesses, saw that +there, in all probability, the opening must be. +However, he, like Caesar Borgia, knew the value of time +and, in order to avoid fruitless toil, he sounded all the +other walls with his pickaxe, struck the earth with the butt +of his gun, and finding nothing that appeared suspicious, +returned to that part of the wall whence issued the +consoling sound he had before heard. He again struck it, and +with greater force. Then a singular thing occurred. As he +struck the wall, pieces of stucco similar to that used in +the ground work of arabesques broke off, and fell to the +ground in flakes, exposing a large white stone. The aperture +of the rock had been closed with stones, then this stucco +had been applied, and painted to imitate granite. Dantes +struck with the sharp end of his pickaxe, which entered +someway between the interstices. It was there he must dig. +But by some strange play of emotion, in proportion as the +proofs that Faria, had not been deceived became stronger, so +did his heart give way, and a feeling of discouragement +stole over him. This last proof, instead of giving him fresh +strength, deprived him of it the pickaxe descended, or +rather fell he placed it on the ground, passed his hand +over his brow, and remounted the stairs, alleging to +himself, as an excuse, a desire to be assured that no one +was watching him, but in reality because he felt that he was +about to faint. The island was deserted, and the sun seemed +to cover it with its fiery glance afar off, a few small +fishing boats studded the bosom of the blue ocean. +Dantes had tasted nothing, but he thought not of hunger at +such a moment he hastily swallowed a few drops of rum, and +again entered the cavern. The pickaxe that had seemed so +heavy, was now like a feather in his grasp he seized it, +and attacked the wall. After several blows he perceived that +the stones were not cemented, but had been merely placed one +upon the other, and covered with stucco he inserted the +point of his pickaxe, and using the handle as a lever, with +joy soon saw the stone turn as if on hinges, and fall at his +feet. He had nothing more to do now, but with the iron tooth +of the pickaxe to draw the stones towards him one by one. +The aperture was already sufficiently large for him to +enter, but by waiting, he could still cling to hope, and +retard the certainty of deception. At last, after renewed +hesitation, Dantes entered the second grotto. The second +grotto was lower and more gloomy than the first the air +that could only enter by the newly formed opening had the +mephitic smell Dantes was surprised not to find in the outer +cavern. He waited in order to allow pure air to displace the +foul atmosphere, and then went on. At the left of the +opening was a dark and deep angle. But to Dantes' eye there +was no darkness. He glanced around this second grotto it +was, like the first, empty. +The treasure, if it existed, was buried in this corner. The +time had at length arrived two feet of earth removed, and +Dantes' fate would be decided. He advanced towards the +angle, and summoning all his resolution, attacked the ground +with the pickaxe. At the fifth or sixth blow the pickaxe +struck against an iron substance. Never did funeral knell, +never did alarmbell, produce a greater effect on the +hearer. Had Dantes found nothing he could not have become +more ghastly pale. He again struck his pickaxe into the +earth, and encountered the same resistance, but not the same +sound. "It is a casket of wood bound with iron," thought he. +At this moment a shadow passed rapidly before the opening +Dantes seized his gun, sprang through the opening, and +mounted the stair. A wild goat had passed before the mouth +of the cave, and was feeding at a little distance. This +would have been a favorable occasion to secure his dinner +but Dantes feared lest the report of his gun should attract +attention. +He thought a moment, cut a branch of a resinous tree, +lighted it at the fire at which the smugglers had prepared +their breakfast, and descended with this torch. He wished to +see everything. He approached the hole he had dug, and now, +with the aid of the torch, saw that his pickaxe had in +reality struck against iron and wood. He planted his torch +in the ground and resumed his labor. In an instant a space +three feet long by two feet broad was cleared, and Dantes +could see an oaken coffer, bound with cut steel in the +middle of the lid he saw engraved on a silver plate, which +was still untarnished, the arms of the Spada family viz., +a sword, pale, on an oval shield, like all the Italian +armorial bearings, and surmounted by a cardinal's hat +Dantes easily recognized them, Faria had so often drawn them +for him. There was no longer any doubt the treasure was +there no one would have been at such pains to conceal an +empty casket. In an instant he had cleared every obstacle +away, and he saw successively the lock, placed between two +padlocks, and the two handles at each end, all carved as +things were carved at that epoch, when art rendered the +commonest metals precious. Dantes seized the handles, and +strove to lift the coffer it was impossible. He sought to +open it lock and padlock were fastened these faithful +guardians seemed unwilling to surrender their trust. Dantes +inserted the sharp end of the pickaxe between the coffer and +the lid, and pressing with all his force on the handle, +burst open the fastenings. The hinges yielded in their turn +and fell, still holding in their grasp fragments of the +wood, and the chest was open. +Edmond was seized with vertigo he cocked his gun and laid +it beside him. He then closed his eyes as children do in +order that they may see in the resplendent night of their +own imagination more stars than are visible in the +firmament then he reopened them, and stood motionless with +amazement. Three compartments divided the coffer. In the +first, blazed piles of golden coin in the second, were +ranged bars of unpolished gold, which possessed nothing +attractive save their value in the third, Edmond grasped +handfuls of diamonds, pearls, and rubies, which, as they +fell on one another, sounded like hail against glass. After +having touched, felt, examined these treasures, Edmond +rushed through the caverns like a man seized with frenzy he +leaped on a rock, from whence he could behold the sea. He +was alone alone with these countless, these unheardof +treasures was he awake, or was it but a dream? +He would fain have gazed upon his gold, and yet he had not +strength enough for an instant he leaned his head in his +hands as if to prevent his senses from leaving him, and then +rushed madly about the rocks of Monte Cristo, terrifying the +wild goats and scaring the seafowls with his wild cries and +gestures then he returned, and, still unable to believe the +evidence of his senses, rushed into the grotto, and found +himself before this mine of gold and jewels. This time he +fell on his knees, and, clasping his hands convulsively, +uttered a prayer intelligible to God alone. He soon became +calmer and more happy, for only now did he begin to realize +his felicity. He then set himself to work to count his +fortune. There were a thousand ingots of gold, each weighing +from two to three pounds then he piled up twentyfive +thousand crowns, each worth about eighty francs of our +money, and bearing the effigies of Alexander VI. and his +predecessors and he saw that the complement was not half +empty. And he measured ten double handfuls of pearls, +diamonds, and other gems, many of which, mounted by the most +famous workmen, were valuable beyond their intrinsic worth. +Dantes saw the light gradually disappear, and fearing to be +surprised in the cavern, left it, his gun in his hand. A +piece of biscuit and a small quantity of rum formed his +supper, and he snatched a few hours' sleep, lying over the +mouth of the cave. +It was a night of joy and terror, such as this man of +stupendous emotions had already experienced twice or thrice +in his lifetime. +Chapter +The Unknown. +Day, for which Dantes had so eagerly and impatiently waited +with open eyes, again dawned. With the first light Dantes +resumed his search. Again he climbed the rocky height he had +ascended the previous evening, and strained his view to +catch every peculiarity of the landscape but it wore the +same wild, barren aspect when seen by the rays of the +morning sun which it had done when surveyed by the fading +glimmer of eve. Descending into the grotto, he lifted the +stone, filled his pockets with gems, put the box together as +well and securely as he could, sprinkled fresh sand over the +spot from which it had been taken, and then carefully trod +down the earth to give it everywhere a uniform appearance +then, quitting the grotto, he replaced the stone, heaping on +it broken masses of rocks and rough fragments of crumbling +granite, filling the interstices with earth, into which he +deftly inserted rapidly growing plants, such as the wild +myrtle and flowering thorn, then carefully watering these +new plantations, he scrupulously effaced every trace of +footsteps, leaving the approach to the cavern as +savagelooking and untrodden as he had found it. This done, +he impatiently awaited the return of his companions. To wait +at Monte Cristo for the purpose of watching like a dragon +over the almost incalculable riches that had thus fallen into +his possession satisfied not the cravings of his heart, +which yearned to return to dwell among mankind, and to +assume the rank, power, and influence which are always +accorded to wealth that first and greatest of all the +forces within the grasp of man. +On the sixth day, the smugglers returned. From a distance +Dantes recognized the rig and handling of The Young Amelia, +and dragging himself with affected difficulty towards the +landingplace, he met his companions with an assurance that, +although considerably better than when they quitted him, he +still suffered acutely from his late accident. He then +inquired how they had fared in their trip. To this question +the smugglers replied that, although successful in landing +their cargo in safety, they had scarcely done so when they +received intelligence that a guardship had just quitted the +port of Toulon and was crowding all sail towards them. This +obliged them to make all the speed they could to evade the +enemy, when they could but lament the absence of Dantes, +whose superior skill in the management of a vessel would +have availed them so materially. In fact, the pursuing +vessel had almost overtaken them when, fortunately, night +came on, and enabled them to double the Cape of Corsica, and +so elude all further pursuit. Upon the whole, however, the +trip had been sufficiently successful to satisfy all +concerned while the crew, and particularly Jacopo, +expressed great regrets that Dantes had not been an equal +sharer with themselves in the profits, which amounted to no +less a sum than fifty piastres each. +Edmond preserved the most admirable selfcommand, not +suffering the faintest indication of a smile to escape him +at the enumeration of all the benefits he would have reaped +had he been able to quit the island but as The Young Amelia +had merely come to Monte Cristo to fetch him away, he +embarked that same evening, and proceeded with the captain +to Leghorn. Arrived at Leghorn, he repaired to the house of +a Jew, a dealer in precious stones, to whom he disposed of +four of his smallest diamonds for five thousand francs each. +Dantes half feared that such valuable jewels in the hands of +a poor sailor like himself might excite suspicion but the +cunning purchaser asked no troublesome questions concerning +a bargain by which he gained a round profit of at least +eighty per cent. +The following day Dantes presented Jacopo with an entirely +new vessel, accompanying the gift by a donation of one +hundred piastres, that he might provide himself with a +suitable crew and other requisites for his outfit, upon +condition that he would go at once to Marseilles for the +purpose of inquiring after an old man named Louis Dantes, +residing in the Allees de Meillan, and also a young woman +called Mercedes, an inhabitant of the Catalan village. +Jacopo could scarcely believe his senses at receiving this +magnificent present, which Dantes hastened to account for by +saying that he had merely been a sailor from whim and a +desire to spite his family, who did not allow him as much +money as he liked to spend but that on his arrival at +Leghorn he had come into possession of a large fortune, left +him by an uncle, whose sole heir he was. The superior +education of Dantes gave an air of such extreme probability +to this statement that it never once occurred to Jacopo to +doubt its accuracy. The term for which Edmond had engaged to +serve on board The Young Amelia having expired, Dantes took +leave of the captain, who at first tried all his powers of +persuasion to induce him to remain as one of the crew, but +having been told the history of the legacy, he ceased to +importune him further. The following morning Jacopo set sail +for Marseilles, with directions from Dantes to join him at +the Island of Monte Cristo. +Having seen Jacopo fairly out of the harbor, Dantes +proceeded to make his final adieus on board The Young +Amelia, distributing so liberal a gratuity among her crew as +to secure for him the good wishes of all, and expressions of +cordial interest in all that concerned him. To the captain +he promised to write when he had made up his mind as to his +future plans. Then Dantes departed for Genoa. At the moment +of his arrival a small yacht was under trial in the bay +this yacht had been built by order of an Englishman, who, +having heard that the Genoese excelled all other builders +along the shores of the Mediterranean in the construction of +fastsailing vessels, was desirous of possessing a specimen +of their skill the price agreed upon between the Englishman +and the Genoese builder was forty thousand francs. Dantes, +struck with the beauty and capability of the little vessel, +applied to its owner to transfer it to him, offering sixty +thousand francs, upon condition that he should be allowed to +take immediate possession. The proposal was too advantageous +to be refused, the more so as the person for whom the yacht +was intended had gone upon a tour through Switzerland, and +was not expected back in less than three weeks or a month, +by which time the builder reckoned upon being able to +complete another. A bargain was therefore struck. Dantes led +the owner of the yacht to the dwelling of a Jew retired +with the latter for a few minutes to a small back parlor, +and upon their return the Jew counted out to the shipbuilder +the sum of sixty thousand francs in bright gold pieces. +The delighted builder then offered his services in providing +a suitable crew for the little vessel, but this Dantes +declined with many thanks, saying he was accustomed to +cruise about quite alone, and his principal pleasure +consisted in managing his yacht himself the only thing the +builder could oblige him in would be to contrive a sort of +secret closet in the cabin at his bed's head, the closet to +contain three divisions, so constructed as to be concealed +from all but himself. The builder cheerfully undertook the +commission, and promised to have these secret places +completed by the next day, Dantes furnishing the dimensions +and plan in accordance with which they were to be +constructed. +The following day Dantes sailed with his yacht from Genoa, +under the inspection of an immense crowd drawn together by +curiosity to see the rich Spanish nobleman who preferred +managing his own yacht. But their wonder was soon changed to +admiration at seeing the perfect skill with which Dantes +handled the helm. The boat, indeed, seemed to be animated +with almost human intelligence, so promptly did it obey the +slightest touch and Dantes required but a short trial of +his beautiful craft to acknowledge that the Genoese had not +without reason attained their high reputation in the art of +shipbuilding. The spectators followed the little vessel with +their eyes as long as it remained visible they then turned +their conjectures upon her probable destination. Some +insisted she was making for Corsica, others the Island of +Elba bets were offered to any amount that she was bound for +Spain while Africa was positively reported by many persons +as her intended course but no one thought of Monte Cristo. +Yet thither it was that Dantes guided his vessel, and at +Monte Cristo he arrived at the close of the second day his +boat had proved herself a firstclass sailer, and had come +the distance from Genoa in thirtyfive hours. Dantes had +carefully noted the general appearance of the shore, and, +instead of landing at the usual place, he dropped anchor in +the little creek. The island was utterly deserted, and bore +no evidence of having been visited since he went away his +treasure was just as he had left it. Early on the following +morning he commenced the removal of his riches, and ere +nightfall the whole of his immense wealth was safely +deposited in the compartments of the secret locker. +A week passed by. Dantes employed it in manoeuvring his +yacht round the island, studying it as a skilful horseman +would the animal he destined for some important service, +till at the end of that time he was perfectly conversant +with its good and bad qualities. The former Dantes proposed +to augment, the latter to remedy. +Upon the eighth day he discerned a small vessel under full +sail approaching Monte Cristo. As it drew near, he +recognized it as the boat he had given to Jacopo. He +immediately signalled it. His signal was returned, and in +two hours afterwards the newcomer lay at anchor beside the +yacht. A mournful answer awaited each of Edmond's eager +inquiries as to the information Jacopo had obtained. Old +Dantes was dead, and Mercedes had disappeared. Dantes +listened to these melancholy tidings with outward calmness +but, leaping lightly ashore, he signified his desire to be +quite alone. In a couple of hours he returned. Two of the +men from Jacopo's boat came on board the yacht to assist in +navigating it, and he gave orders that she should be steered +direct to Marseilles. For his father's death he was in some +manner prepared but he knew not how to account for the +mysterious disappearance of Mercedes. +Without divulging his secret, Dantes could not give +sufficiently clear instructions to an agent. There were, +besides, other particulars he was desirous of ascertaining, +and those were of a nature he alone could investigate in a +manner satisfactory to himself. His lookingglass had +assured him, during his stay at Leghorn, that he ran no risk +of recognition moreover, he had now the means of adopting +any disguise he thought proper. One fine morning, then, his +yacht, followed by the little fishingboat, boldly entered +the port of Marseilles, and anchored exactly opposite the +spot from whence, on the nevertobeforgotten night of his +departure for the Chateau d'If, he had been put on board the +boat destined to convey him thither. Still Dantes could not +view without a shudder the approach of a gendarme who +accompanied the officers deputed to demand his bill of +health ere the yacht was permitted to hold communication +with the shore but with that perfect selfpossession he had +acquired during his acquaintance with Faria, Dantes coolly +presented an English passport he had obtained from Leghorn, +and as this gave him a standing which a French passport +would not have afforded, he was informed that there existed +no obstacle to his immediate debarkation. +The first person to attract the attention of Dantes, as he +landed on the Canebiere, was one of the crew belonging to +the Pharaon. Edmond welcomed the meeting with this fellow +who had been one of his own sailors as a sure means of +testing the extent of the change which time had worked in +his own appearance. Going straight towards him, he +propounded a variety of questions on different subjects, +carefully watching the man's countenance as he did so but +not a word or look implied that he had the slightest idea of +ever having seen before the person with whom he was then +conversing. Giving the sailor a piece of money in return for +his civility, Dantes proceeded onwards but ere he had gone +many steps he heard the man loudly calling him to stop. +Dantes instantly turned to meet him. "I beg your pardon, +sir," said the honest fellow, in almost breathless haste, +"but I believe you made a mistake you intended to give me a +twofranc piece, and see, you gave me a double Napoleon." +"Thank you, my good friend. I see that I have made a +trifling mistake, as you say but by way of rewarding your +honesty I give you another double Napoleon, that you may +drink to my health, and be able to ask your messmates to +join you." +So extreme was the surprise of the sailor, that he was +unable even to thank Edmond, whose receding figure he +continued to gaze after in speechless astonishment. "Some +nabob from India," was his comment. +Dantes, meanwhile, went on his way. Each step he trod +oppressed his heart with fresh emotion his first and most +indelible recollections were there not a tree, not a +street, that he passed but seemed filled with dear and +cherished memories. And thus he proceeded onwards till he +arrived at the end of the Rue de Noailles, from whence a +full view of the Allees de Meillan was obtained. At this +spot, so pregnant with fond and filial remembrances, his +heart beat almost to bursting, his knees tottered under him, +a mist floated over his sight, and had he not clung for +support to one of the trees, he would inevitably have fallen +to the ground and been crushed beneath the many vehicles +continually passing there. Recovering himself, however, he +wiped the perspiration from his brows, and stopped not again +till he found himself at the door of the house in which his +father had lived. +The nasturtiums and other plants, which his father had +delighted to train before his window, had all disappeared +from the upper part of the house. Leaning against the tree, +he gazed thoughtfully for a time at the upper stories of the +shabby little house. Then he advanced to the door, and asked +whether there were any rooms to be let. Though answered in +the negative, he begged so earnestly to be permitted to +visit those on the fifth floor, that, in despite of the +oftrepeated assurance of the concierge that they were +occupied, Dantes succeeded in inducing the man to go up to +the tenants, and ask permission for a gentleman to be +allowed to look at them. +The tenants of the humble lodging were a young couple who +had been scarcely married a week and seeing them, Dantes +sighed heavily. Nothing in the two small chambers forming +the apartments remained as it had been in the time of the +elder Dantes the very paper was different, while the +articles of antiquated furniture with which the rooms had +been filled in Edmond's time had all disappeared the four +walls alone remained as he had left them. The bed belonging +to the present occupants was placed as the former owner of +the chamber had been accustomed to have his and, in spite +of his efforts to prevent it, the eyes of Edmond were +suffused in tears as he reflected that on that spot the old +man had breathed his last, vainly calling for his son. The +young couple gazed with astonishment at the sight of their +visitor's emotion, and wondered to see the large tears +silently chasing each other down his otherwise stern and +immovable features but they felt the sacredness of his +grief, and kindly refrained from questioning him as to its +cause, while, with instinctive delicacy, they left him to +indulge his sorrow alone. When he withdrew from the scene of +his painful recollections, they both accompanied him +downstairs, reiterating their hope that he would come again +whenever he pleased, and assuring him that their poor +dwelling would ever be open to him. As Edmond passed the +door on the fourth floor, he paused to inquire whether +Caderousse the tailor still dwelt there but he received, +for reply, that the person in question had got into +difficulties, and at the present time kept a small inn on +the route from Bellegarde to Beaucaire. +Having obtained the address of the person to whom the house +in the Allees de Meillan belonged, Dantes next proceeded +thither, and, under the name of Lord Wilmore the name and +title inscribed on his passport, purchased the small +dwelling for the sum of twentyfive thousand francs, at +least ten thousand more than it was worth but had its owner +asked half a million, it would unhesitatingly have been +given. The very same day the occupants of the apartments on +the fifth floor of the house, now become the property of +Dantes, were duly informed by the notary who had arranged +the necessary transfer of deeds, etc., that the new landlord +gave them their choice of any of the rooms in the house, +without the least augmentation of rent, upon condition of +their giving instant possession of the two small chambers +they at present inhabited. +This strange event aroused great wonder and curiosity in the +neighborhood of the Allees de Meillan, and a multitude of +theories were afloat, none of which was anywhere near the +truth. But what raised public astonishment to a climax, and +set all conjecture at defiance, was the knowledge that the +same stranger who had in the morning visited the Allees de +Meillan had been seen in the evening walking in the little +village of the Catalans, and afterwards observed to enter a +poor fisherman's hut, and to pass more than an hour in +inquiring after persons who had either been dead or gone +away for more than fifteen or sixteen years. But on the +following day the family from whom all these particulars had +been asked received a handsome present, consisting of an +entirely new fishingboat, with two seines and a tender. The +delighted recipients of these munificent gifts would gladly +have poured out their thanks to their generous benefactor, +but they had seen him, upon quitting the hut, merely give +some orders to a sailor, and then springing lightly on +horseback, leave Marseilles by the Porte d'Aix. +Chapter +The Pont du Gard Inn. +Such of my readers as have made a pedestrian excursion to +the south of France may perchance have noticed, about midway +between the town of Beaucaire and the village of Bellegarde, +a little nearer to the former than to the latter, a +small roadside inn, from the front of which hung, creaking +and flapping in the wind, a sheet of tin covered with a +grotesque representation of the Pont du Gard. This modern +place of entertainment stood on the lefthand side of the +post road, and backed upon the Rhone. It also boasted of +what in Languedoc is styled a garden, consisting of a small +plot of ground, on the side opposite to the main entrance +reserved for the reception of guests. A few dingy olives and +stunted figtrees struggled hard for existence, but their +withered dusty foliage abundantly proved how unequal was the +conflict. Between these sickly shrubs grew a scanty supply +of garlic, tomatoes, and eschalots while, lone and +solitary, like a forgotten sentinel, a tall pine raised its +melancholy head in one of the corners of this unattractive +spot, and displayed its flexible stem and fanshaped summit +dried and cracked by the fierce heat of the subtropical +sun. +In the surrounding plain, which more resembled a dusty lake +than solid ground, were scattered a few miserable stalks of +wheat, the effect, no doubt, of a curious desire on the part +of the agriculturists of the country to see whether such a +thing as the raising of grain in those parched regions was +practicable. Each stalk served as a perch for a grasshopper, +which regaled the passers by through this Egyptian scene +with its strident, monotonous note. +For about seven or eight years the little tavern had been +kept by a man and his wife, with two servants, a +chambermaid named Trinette, and a hostler called Pecaud. +This small staff was quite equal to all the requirements, +for a canal between Beaucaire and Aiguemortes had +revolutionized transportation by substituting boats for the +cart and the stagecoach. And, as though to add to the daily +misery which this prosperous canal inflicted on the +unfortunate innkeeper, whose utter ruin it was fast +accomplishing, it was situated between the Rhone from which +it had its source and the postroad it had depleted, not a +hundred steps from the inn, of which we have given a brief +but faithful description. +The innkeeper himself was a man of from forty to fiftyfive +years of age, tall, strong, and bony, a perfect specimen of +the natives of those southern latitudes he had dark, +sparkling, and deepset eyes, hooked nose, and teeth white +as those of a carnivorous animal his hair, like his beard, +which he wore under his chin, was thick and curly, and in +spite of his age but slightly interspersed with a few +silvery threads. His naturally dark complexion had assumed a +still further shade of brown from the habit the unfortunate +man had acquired of stationing himself from morning till eve +at the threshold of his door, on the lookout for guests who +seldom came, yet there he stood, day after day, exposed to +the meridional rays of a burning sun, with no other +protection for his head than a red handkerchief twisted +around it, after the manner of the Spanish muleteers. This +man was our old acquaintance, Gaspard Caderousse. His wife, +on the contrary, whose maiden name had been Madeleine +Radelle, was pale, meagre, and sicklylooking. Born in the +neighborhood of Arles, she had shared in the beauty for +which its women are proverbial but that beauty had +gradually withered beneath the devastating influence of the +slow fever so prevalent among dwellers by the ponds of +Aiguemortes and the marshes of Camargue. She remained nearly +always in her secondfloor chamber, shivering in her chair, +or stretched languid and feeble on her bed, while her +husband kept his daily watch at the door a duty he +performed with so much the greater willingness, as it saved +him the necessity of listening to the endless plaints and +murmurs of his helpmate, who never saw him without breaking +out into bitter invectives against fate to all of which her +husband would calmly return an unvarying reply, in these +philosophic words +"Hush, La Carconte. It is God's pleasure that things should +be so." +The sobriquet of La Carconte had been bestowed on Madeleine +Radelle from the fact that she had been born in a village, +so called, situated between Salon and Lambesc and as a +custom existed among the inhabitants of that part of France +where Caderousse lived of styling every person by some +particular and distinctive appellation, her husband had +bestowed on her the name of La Carconte in place of her +sweet and euphonious name of Madeleine, which, in all +probability, his rude gutteral language would not have +enabled him to pronounce. Still, let it not be supposed that +amid this affected resignation to the will of Providence, +the unfortunate innkeeper did not writhe under the double +misery of seeing the hateful canal carry off his customers +and his profits, and the daily infliction of his peevish +partner's murmurs and lamentations. +Like other dwellers in the south, he was a man of sober +habits and moderate desires, but fond of external show, +vain, and addicted to display. During the days of his +prosperity, not a festivity took place without himself and +wife being among the spectators. He dressed in the +picturesque costume worn upon grand occasions by the +inhabitants of the south of France, bearing equal +resemblance to the style adopted both by the Catalans and +Andalusians while La Carconte displayed the charming +fashion prevalent among the women of Arles, a mode of attire +borrowed equally from Greece and Arabia. But, by degrees, +watchchains, necklaces, particolored scarfs, embroidered +bodices, velvet vests, elegantly worked stockings, striped +gaiters, and silver buckles for the shoes, all disappeared +and Gaspard Caderousse, unable to appear abroad in his +pristine splendor, had given up any further participation in +the pomps and vanities, both for himself and wife, although +a bitter feeling of envious discontent filled his mind as +the sound of mirth and merry music from the joyous revellers +reached even the miserable hostelry to which he still clung, +more for the shelter than the profit it afforded. +Caderousse, then, was, as usual, at his place of observation +before the door, his eyes glancing listlessly from a piece +of closely shaven grass on which some fowls were +industriously, though fruitlessly, endeavoring to turn up +some grain or insect suited to their palate to the +deserted road, which led away to the north and south, when +he was aroused by the shrill voice of his wife, and +grumbling to himself as he went, he mounted to her chamber, +first taking care, however, to set the entrance door wide +open, as an invitation to any chance traveller who might be +passing. +At the moment Caderousse quitted his sentrylike watch +before the door, the road on which he so eagerly strained +his sight was void and lonely as a desert at midday. There +it lay stretching out into one interminable line of dust and +sand, with its sides bordered by tall, meagre trees, +altogether presenting so uninviting an appearance, that no +one in his senses could have imagined that any traveller, at +liberty to regulate his hours for journeying, would choose +to expose himself in such a formidable Sahara. Nevertheless, +had Caderousse but retained his post a few minutes longer, +he might have caught a dim outline of something approaching +from the direction of Bellegarde as the moving object drew +nearer, he would easily have perceived that it consisted of +a man and horse, between whom the kindest and most amiable +understanding appeared to exist. The horse was of Hungarian +breed, and ambled along at an easy pace. His rider was a +priest, dressed in black, and wearing a threecornered hat +and, spite of the ardent rays of a noonday sun, the pair +came on with a fair degree of rapidity. +Having arrived before the Pont du Gard, the horse stopped, +but whether for his own pleasure or that of his rider would +have been difficult to say. However that might have been, +the priest, dismounting, led his steed by the bridle in +search of some place to which he could secure him. Availing +himself of a handle that projected from a halffallen door, +he tied the animal safely and having drawn a red cotton +handkerchief, from his pocket, wiped away the perspiration +that streamed from his brow, then, advancing to the door, +struck thrice with the end of his ironshod stick. At this +unusual sound, a huge black dog came rushing to meet the +daring assailant of his ordinarily tranquil abode, snarling +and displaying his sharp white teeth with a determined +hostility that abundantly proved how little he was +accustomed to society. At that moment a heavy footstep was +heard descending the wooden staircase that led from the +upper floor, and, with many bows and courteous smiles, mine +host of the Pont du Gard besought his guest to enter. +"You are welcome, sir, most welcome" repeated the +astonished Caderousse. "Now, then, Margotin," cried he, +speaking to the dog, "will you be quiet? Pray don't heed +him, sir he only barks, he never bites. I make no doubt +a glass of good wine would be acceptable this dreadfully hot +day." Then perceiving for the first time the garb of the +traveller he had to entertain, Caderousse hastily exclaimed +"A thousand pardons I really did not observe whom I had the +honor to receive under my poor roof. What would the abbe +please to have? What refreshment can I offer? All I have is +at his service." +The priest gazed on the person addressing him with a long +and searching gaze there even seemed a disposition on his +part to court a similar scrutiny on the part of the +innkeeper then, observing in the countenance of the latter +no other expression than extreme surprise at his own want of +attention to an inquiry so courteously worded, he deemed it +as well to terminate this dumb show, and therefore said, +speaking with a strong Italian accent, "You are, I presume, +M. Caderousse?" +"Yes, sir," answered the host, even more surprised at the +question than he had been by the silence which had preceded +it "I am Gaspard Caderousse, at your service." +"Gaspard Caderousse," rejoined the priest. "Yes, +Christian and surname are the same. You formerly lived, I +believe in the Allees de Meillan, on the fourth floor?" +"I did." +"And you followed the business of a tailor?" +"True, I was a tailor, till the trade fell off. It is so hot +at Marseilles, that really I believe that the respectable +inhabitants will in time go without any clothing whatever. +But talking of heat, is there nothing I can offer you by way +of refreshment?" +"Yes let me have a bottle of your best wine, and then, with +your permission, we will resume our conversation from where +we left off." +"As you please, sir," said Caderousse, who, anxious not to +lose the present opportunity of finding a customer for one +of the few bottles of Cahors still remaining in his +possession, hastily raised a trapdoor in the floor of the +apartment they were in, which served both as parlor and +kitchen. Upon issuing forth from his subterranean retreat at +the expiration of five minutes, he found the abbe seated +upon a wooden stool, leaning his elbow on a table, while +Margotin, whose animosity seemed appeased by the unusual +command of the traveller for refreshments, had crept up to +him, and had established himself very comfortably between +his knees, his long, skinny neck resting on his lap, while +his dim eye was fixed earnestly on the traveller's face. +"Are you quite alone?" inquired the guest, as Caderousse +placed before him the bottle of wine and a glass. +"Quite, quite alone," replied the man "or, at least, +practically so, for my poor wife, who is the only person in +the house besides myself, is laid up with illness, and +unable to render me the least assistance, poor thing" +"You are married, then?" said the priest, with a show of +interest, glancing round as he spoke at the scanty +furnishings of the apartment. +"Ah, sir," said Caderousse with a sigh, "it is easy to +perceive I am not a rich man but in this world a man does +not thrive the better for being honest." The abbe fixed on +him a searching, penetrating glance. +"Yes, honest I can certainly say that much for myself," +continued the innkeeper, fairly sustaining the scrutiny of +the abbe's gaze "I can boast with truth of being an honest +man and," continued he significantly, with a hand on his +breast and shaking his head, "that is more than every one +can say nowadays." +"So much the better for you, if what you assert be true," +said the abbe "for I am firmly persuaded that, sooner or +later, the good will be rewarded, and the wicked punished." +"Such words as those belong to your profession," answered +Caderousse, "and you do well to repeat them but," added he, +with a bitter expression of countenance, "one is free to +believe them or not, as one pleases." +"You are wrong to speak thus," said the abbe "and perhaps I +may, in my own person, be able to prove to you how +completely you are in error." +"What mean you?" inquired Caderousse with a look of +surprise. +"In the first place, I must be satisfied that you are the +person I am in search of." +"What proofs do you require?" +"Did you, in the year or , know anything of a young +sailor named Dantes?" +"Dantes? Did I know poor dear Edmond? Why, Edmond Dantes and +myself were intimate friends" exclaimed Caderousse, whose +countenance flushed darkly as he caught the penetrating gaze +of the abbe fixed on him, while the clear, calm eye of the +questioner seemed to dilate with feverish scrutiny. +"You remind me," said the priest, "that the young man +concerning whom I asked you was said to bear the name of +Edmond." +"Said to bear the name" repeated Caderousse, becoming +excited and eager. "Why, he was so called as truly as I +myself bore the appellation of Gaspard Caderousse but tell +me, I pray, what has become of poor Edmond? Did you know +him? Is he alive and at liberty? Is he prosperous and +happy?" +"He died a more wretched, hopeless, heartbroken prisoner +than the felons who pay the penalty of their crimes at the +galleys of Toulon." +A deadly pallor followed the flush on the countenance of +Caderousse, who turned away, and the priest saw him wiping +the tears from his eyes with the corner of the red +handkerchief twisted round his head. +"Poor fellow, poor fellow" murmured Caderousse. "Well, +there, sir, is another proof that good people are never +rewarded on this earth, and that none but the wicked +prosper. Ah," continued Caderousse, speaking in the highly +colored language of the south, "the world grows worse and +worse. Why does not God, if he really hates the wicked, as +he is said to do, send down brimstone and fire, and consume +them altogether?" +"You speak as though you had loved this young Dantes," +observed the abbe, without taking any notice of his +companion's vehemence. +"And so I did," replied Caderousse "though once, I confess, +I envied him his good fortune. But I swear to you, sir, I +swear to you, by everything a man holds dear, I have, since +then, deeply and sincerely lamented his unhappy fate." There +was a brief silence, during which the fixed, searching eye +of the abbe was employed in scrutinizing the agitated +features of the innkeeper. +"You knew the poor lad, then?" continued Caderousse. +"I was called to see him on his dying bed, that I might +administer to him the consolations of religion." +"And of what did he die?" asked Caderousse in a choking +voice. +"Of what, think you, do young and strong men die in prison, +when they have scarcely numbered their thirtieth year, +unless it be of imprisonment?" Caderousse wiped away the +large beads of perspiration that gathered on his brow. +"But the strangest part of the story is," resumed the abbe, +"that Dantes, even in his dying moments, swore by his +crucified Redeemer, that he was utterly ignorant of the +cause of his detention." +"And so he was," murmured Caderousse. "How should he have +been otherwise? Ah, sir, the poor fellow told you the +truth." +"And for that reason, he besought me to try and clear up a +mystery he had never been able to penetrate, and to clear +his memory should any foul spot or stain have fallen on it." +And here the look of the abbe, becoming more and more fixed, +seemed to rest with illconcealed satisfaction on the gloomy +depression which was rapidly spreading over the countenance +of Caderousse. +"A rich Englishman," continued the abbe, "who had been his +companion in misfortune, but had been released from prison +during the second restoration, was possessed of a diamond of +immense value this jewel he bestowed on Dantes upon himself +quitting the prison, as a mark of his gratitude for the +kindness and brotherly care with which Dantes had nursed him +in a severe illness he underwent during his confinement. +Instead of employing this diamond in attempting to bribe his +jailers, who might only have taken it and then betrayed him +to the governor, Dantes carefully preserved it, that in the +event of his getting out of prison he might have wherewithal +to live, for the sale of such a diamond would have quite +sufficed to make his fortune." +"Then, I suppose," asked Caderousse, with eager, glowing +looks, "that it was a stone of immense value?" +"Why, everything is relative," answered the abbe. "To one in +Edmond's position the diamond certainly was of great value. +It was estimated at fifty thousand francs." +"Bless me" exclaimed Caderousse, "fifty thousand francs +Surely the diamond was as large as a nut to be worth all +that." +"No," replied the abbe, "it was not of such a size as that +but you shall judge for yourself. I have it with me." +The sharp gaze of Caderousse was instantly directed towards +the priest's garments, as though hoping to discover the +location of the treasure. Calmly drawing forth from his +pocket a small box covered with black shagreen, the abbe +opened it, and displayed to the dazzled eyes of Caderousse +the sparkling jewel it contained, set in a ring of admirable +workmanship. "And that diamond," cried Caderousse, almost +breathless with eager admiration, "you say, is worth fifty +thousand francs?" +"It is, without the setting, which is also valuable," +replied the abbe, as he closed the box, and returned it to +his pocket, while its brilliant hues seemed still to dance +before the eyes of the fascinated innkeeper. +"But how comes the diamond in your possession, sir? Did +Edmond make you his heir?" +"No, merely his testamentary executor. "I once possessed +four dear and faithful friends, besides the maiden to whom I +was betrothed' he said "and I feel convinced they have all +unfeignedly grieved over my loss. The name of one of the +four friends is Caderousse.'" The innkeeper shivered. +""Another of the number,'" continued the abbe, without +seeming to notice the emotion of Caderousse, ""is called +Danglars and the third, in spite of being my rival, +entertained a very sincere affection for me.'" A fiendish +smile played over the features of Caderousse, who was about +to break in upon the abbe's speech, when the latter, waving +his hand, said, "Allow me to finish first, and then if you +have any observations to make, you can do so afterwards. +"The third of my friends, although my rival, was much +attached to me, his name was Fernand that of my +betrothed was' Stay, stay," continued the abbe, "I have +forgotten what he called her." +"Mercedes," said Caderousse eagerly. +"True," said the abbe, with a stifled sigh, "Mercedes it +was." +"Go on," urged Caderousse. +"Bring me a carafe of water," said the abbe. +Caderousse quickly performed the stranger's bidding and +after pouring some into a glass, and slowly swallowing its +contents, the abbe, resuming his usual placidity of manner, +said, as he placed his empty glass on the table, "Where +did we leave off?" +"The name of Edmond's betrothed was Mercedes." +"To be sure. "You will go to Marseilles,' said Dantes, +for you understand, I repeat his words just as he uttered +them. Do you understand?" +"Perfectly." +""You will sell this diamond you will divide the money into +five equal parts, and give an equal portion to these good +friends, the only persons who have loved me upon earth.'" +"But why into five parts?" asked Caderousse "you only +mentioned four persons." +"Because the fifth is dead, as I hear. The fifth sharer in +Edmond's bequest, was his own father." +"Too true, too true" ejaculated Caderousse, almost +suffocated by the contending passions which assailed him, +"the poor old man did die." +"I learned so much at Marseilles," replied the abbe, making +a strong effort to appear indifferent "but from the length +of time that has elapsed since the death of the elder +Dantes, I was unable to obtain any particulars of his end. +Can you enlighten me on that point?" +"I do not know who could if I could not," said Caderousse. +"Why, I lived almost on the same floor with the poor old +man. Ah, yes, about a year after the disappearance of his +son the poor old man died." +"Of what did he die?" +"Why, the doctors called his complaint gastroenteritis, I +believe his acquaintances say he died of grief but I, who +saw him in his dying moments, I say he died of" +Caderousse paused. +"Of what?" asked the priest, anxiously and eagerly. +"Why, of downright starvation." +"Starvation" exclaimed the abbe, springing from his seat. +"Why, the vilest animals are not suffered to die by such a +death as that. The very dogs that wander houseless and +homeless in the streets find some pitying hand to cast them +a mouthful of bread and that a man, a Christian, should be +allowed to perish of hunger in the midst of other men who +call themselves Christians, is too horrible for belief. Oh, +it is impossible utterly impossible" +"What I have said, I have said," answered Caderousse. +"And you are a fool for having said anything about it," said +a voice from the top of the stairs. "Why should you meddle +with what does not concern you?" +The two men turned quickly, and saw the sickly countenance +of La Carconte peering between the baluster rails attracted +by the sound of voices, she had feebly dragged herself down +the stairs, and, seated on the lower step, head on knees, +she had listened to the foregoing conversation. "Mind your +own business, wife," replied Caderousse sharply. "This +gentleman asks me for information, which common politeness +will not permit me to refuse." +"Politeness, you simpleton" retorted La Carconte. "What +have you to do with politeness, I should like to know? +Better study a little common prudence. How do you know the +motives that person may have for trying to extract all he +can from you?" +"I pledge you my word, madam," said the abbe, "that my +intentions are good and that you husband can incur no risk, +provided he answers me candidly." +"Ah, that's all very fine," retorted the woman. "Nothing is +easier than to begin with fair promises and assurances of +nothing to fear but when poor, silly folks, like my husband +there, have been persuaded to tell all they know, the +promises and assurances of safety are quickly forgotten and +at some moment when nobody is expecting it, behold trouble +and misery, and all sorts of persecutions, are heaped on the +unfortunate wretches, who cannot even see whence all their +afflictions come." +"Nay, nay, my good woman, make yourself perfectly easy, I +beg of you. Whatever evils may befall you, they will not be +occasioned by my instrumentality, that I solemnly promise +you." +La Carconte muttered a few inarticulate words, then let her +head again drop upon her knees, and went into a fit of ague, +leaving the two speakers to resume the conversation, but +remaining so as to be able to hear every word they uttered. +Again the abbe had been obliged to swallow a draught of +water to calm the emotions that threatened to overpower him. +When he had sufficiently recovered himself, he said, "It +appears, then, that the miserable old man you were telling +me of was forsaken by every one. Surely, had not such been +the case, he would not have perished by so dreadful a +death." +"Why, he was not altogether forsaken," continued Caderousse, +"for Mercedes the Catalan and Monsieur Morrel were very kind +to him but somehow the poor old man had contracted a +profound hatred for Fernand the very person," added +Caderousse with a bitter smile, "that you named just now as +being one of Dantes' faithful and attached friends." +"And was he not so?" asked the abbe. +"Gaspard, Gaspard" murmured the woman, from her seat on the +stairs, "mind what you are saying" Caderousse made no reply +to these words, though evidently irritated and annoyed by +the interruption, but, addressing the abbe, said, "Can a man +be faithful to another whose wife he covets and desires for +himself? But Dantes was so honorable and true in his own +nature, that he believed everybody's professions of +friendship. Poor Edmond, he was cruelly deceived but it was +fortunate that he never knew, or he might have found it more +difficult, when on his deathbed, to pardon his enemies. And, +whatever people may say," continued Caderousse, in his +native language, which was not altogether devoid of rude +poetry, "I cannot help being more frightened at the idea of +the malediction of the dead than the hatred of the living." +"Imbecile" exclaimed La Carconte. +"Do you, then, know in what manner Fernand injured Dantes?" +inquired the abbe of Caderousse. +"Do I? No one better." +"Speak out then, say what it was" +"Gaspard" cried La Carconte, "do as you will you are +master but if you take my advice you'll hold your +tongue." +"Well, wife," replied Caderousse, "I don't know but what +you're right" +"So you will say nothing?" asked the abbe. +"Why, what good would it do?" asked Caderousse. "If the poor +lad were living, and came to me and begged that I would +candidly tell which were his true and which his false +friends, why, perhaps, I should not hesitate. But you tell +me he is no more, and therefore can have nothing to do with +hatred or revenge, so let all such feeling be buried with +him." +"You prefer, then," said the abbe, "that I should bestow on +men you say are false and treacherous, the reward intended +for faithful friendship?" +"That is true enough," returned Caderousse. "You say truly, +the gift of poor Edmond was not meant for such traitors as +Fernand and Danglars besides, what would it be to them? no +more than a drop of water in the ocean." +"Remember," chimed in La Carconte, "those two could crush +you at a single blow" +"How so?" inquired the abbe. "Are these persons, then, so +rich and powerful?" +"Do you not know their history?" +"I do not. Pray relate it to me" Caderousse seemed to +reflect for a few moments, then said, "No, truly, it would +take up too much time." +"Well, my good friend," returned the abbe, in a tone that +indicated utter indifference on his part, "you are at +liberty, either to speak or be silent, just as you please +for my own part, I respect your scruples and admire your +sentiments so let the matter end. I shall do my duty as +conscientiously as I can, and fulfil my promise to the dying +man. My first business will be to dispose of this diamond." +So saying, the abbe again draw the small box from his +pocket, opened it, and contrived to hold it in such a light, +that a bright flash of brilliant hues passed before the +dazzled gaze of Caderousse. +"Wife, wife" cried he in a hoarse voice, "come here" +"Diamond" exclaimed La Carconte, rising and descending to +the chamber with a tolerably firm step "what diamond are +you talking about?" +"Why, did you not hear all we said?" inquired Caderousse. +"It is a beautiful diamond left by poor Edmond Dantes, to be +sold, and the money divided between his father, Mercedes, +his betrothed bride, Fernand, Danglars, and myself. The +jewel is worth at least fifty thousand francs." +"Oh, what a magnificent jewel" cried the astonished woman. +"The fifth part of the profits from this stone belongs to us +then, does it not?" asked Caderousse. +"It does," replied the abbe "with the addition of an equal +division of that part intended for the elder Dantes, which I +believe myself at liberty to divide equally with the four +survivors." +"And why among us four?" inquired Caderousse. +"As being the friends Edmond esteemed most faithful and +devoted to him." +"I don't call those friends who betray and ruin you," +murmured the wife in her turn, in a low, muttering voice. +"Of course not" rejoined Caderousse quickly "no more do I, +and that was what I was observing to this gentleman just +now. I said I looked upon it as a sacrilegious profanation +to reward treachery, perhaps crime." +"Remember," answered the abbe calmly, as he replaced the +jewel and its case in the pocket of his cassock, "it is your +fault, not mine, that I do so. You will have the goodness to +furnish me with the address of both Fernand and Danglars, in +order that I may execute Edmond's last wishes." The +agitation of Caderousse became extreme, and large drops of +perspiration rolled from his heated brow. As he saw the abbe +rise from his seat and go towards the door, as though to +ascertain if his horse were sufficiently refreshed to +continue his journey, Caderousse and his wife exchanged +looks of deep meaning. +"There, you see, wife," said the former, "this splendid +diamond might all be ours, if we chose" +"Do you believe it?" +"Why, surely a man of his holy profession would not deceive +us" +"Well," replied La Carconte, "do as you like. For my part, I +wash my hands of the affair." So saying, she once more +climbed the staircase leading to her chamber, her body +convulsed with chills, and her teeth rattling in her head, +in spite of the intense heat of the weather. Arrived at the +top stair, she turned round, and called out, in a warning +tone, to her husband, "Gaspard, consider well what you are +about to do" +"I have both reflected and decided," answered he. La +Carconte then entered her chamber, the flooring of which +creaked beneath her heavy, uncertain tread, as she proceeded +towards her armchair, into which she fell as though +exhausted. +"Well," asked the abbe, as he returned to the apartment +below, "what have you made up your mind to do?" +"To tell you all I know," was the reply. +"I certainly think you act wisely in so doing," said the +priest. "Not because I have the least desire to learn +anything you may please to conceal from me, but simply that +if, through your assistance, I could distribute the legacy +according to the wishes of the testator, why, so much the +better, that is all." +"I hope it may be so," replied Caderousse, his face flushed +with cupidity. +"I am all attention," said the abbe. +"Stop a minute," answered Caderousse "we might be +interrupted in the most interesting part of my story, which +would be a pity and it is as well that your visit hither +should be made known only to ourselves." With these words he +went stealthily to the door, which he closed, and, by way of +still greater precaution, bolted and barred it, as he was +accustomed to do at night. During this time the abbe had +chosen his place for listening at his ease. He removed his +seat into a corner of the room, where he himself would be in +deep shadow, while the light would be fully thrown on the +narrator then, with head bent down and hands clasped, or +rather clinched together, he prepared to give his whole +attention to Caderousse, who seated himself on the little +stool, exactly opposite to him. +"Remember, this is no affair of mine," said the trembling +voice of La Carconte, as though through the flooring of her +chamber she viewed the scene that was enacting below. +"Enough, enough" replied Caderousse "say no more about it +I will take all the consequences upon myself." And he began +his story. +Chapter +The Story. +"First, sir," said Caderousse, "you must make me a promise." +"What is that?" inquired the abbe. +"Why, if you ever make use of the details I am about to give +you, that you will never let any one know that it was I who +supplied them for the persons of whom I am about to talk +are rich and powerful, and if they only laid the tips of +their fingers on me, I should break to pieces like glass." +"Make yourself easy, my friend," replied the abbe. "I am a +priest, and confessions die in my breast. Recollect, our +only desire is to carry out, in a fitting manner, the last +wishes of our friend. Speak, then, without reserve, as +without hatred tell the truth, the whole truth I do not +know, never may know, the persons of whom you are about to +speak besides, I am an Italian, and not a Frenchman, and +belong to God, and not to man, and I shall shortly retire to +my convent, which I have only quitted to fulfil the last +wishes of a dying man." This positive assurance seemed to +give Caderousse a little courage. +"Well, then, under these circumstances," said Caderousse, "I +will, I even believe I ought to undeceive you as to the +friendship which poor Edmond thought so sincere and +unquestionable." +"Begin with his father, if you please." said the abbe +"Edmond talked to me a great deal about the old man for whom +he had the deepest love." +"The history is a sad one, sir," said Caderousse, shaking +his head "perhaps you know all the earlier part of it?" +"Yes." answered the abbe "Edmond related to me everything +until the moment when he was arrested in a small cabaret +close to Marseilles." +"At La Reserve Oh, yes I can see it all before me this +moment." +"Was it not his betrothal feast?" +"It was and the feast that began so gayly had a very +sorrowful ending a police commissary, followed by four +soldiers, entered, and Dantes was arrested." +"Yes, and up to this point I know all," said the priest. +"Dantes himself only knew that which personally concerned +him, for he never beheld again the five persons I have named +to you, or heard mention of any one of them." +"Well, when Dantes was arrested, Monsieur Morrel hastened to +obtain the particulars, and they were very sad. The old man +returned alone to his home, folded up his wedding suit with +tears in his eyes, and paced up and down his chamber the +whole day, and would not go to bed at all, for I was +underneath him and heard him walking the whole night and +for myself, I assure you I could not sleep either, for the +grief of the poor father gave me great uneasiness, and every +step he took went to my heart as really as if his foot had +pressed against my breast. The next day Mercedes came to +implore the protection of M. de Villefort she did not +obtain it, however, and went to visit the old man when she +saw him so miserable and heartbroken, having passed a +sleepless night, and not touched food since the previous +day, she wished him to go with her that she might take care +of him but the old man would not consent. "No,' was the old +man's reply, "I will not leave this house, for my poor dear +boy loves me better than anything in the world and if he +gets out of prison he will come and see me the first thing, +and what would he think if I did not wait here for him?' I +heard all this from the window, for I was anxious that +Mercedes should persuade the old man to accompany her, for +his footsteps over my head night and day did not leave me a +moment's repose." +"But did you not go upstairs and try to console the poor +old man?" asked the abbe. +"Ah, sir," replied Caderousse, "we cannot console those who +will not be consoled, and he was one of these besides, I +know not why, but he seemed to dislike seeing me. One night, +however, I heard his sobs, and I could not resist my desire +to go up to him, but when I reached his door he was no +longer weeping but praying. I cannot now repeat to you, sir, +all the eloquent words and imploring language he made use +of it was more than piety, it was more than grief, and I, +who am no canter, and hate the Jesuits, said then to myself, +"It is really well, and I am very glad that I have not any +children for if I were a father and felt such excessive +grief as the old man does, and did not find in my memory or +heart all he is now saying, I should throw myself into the +sea at once, for I could not bear it.'" +"Poor father" murmured the priest. +"From day to day he lived on alone, and more and more +solitary. M. Morrel and Mercedes came to see him, but his +door was closed and, although I was certain he was at home, +he would not make any answer. One day, when, contrary to his +custom, he had admitted Mercedes, and the poor girl, in +spite of her own grief and despair, endeavored to console +him, he said to her, "Be assured, my dear daughter, he is +dead and instead of expecting him, it is he who is awaiting +us I am quite happy, for I am the oldest, and of course +shall see him first.' However well disposed a person may be, +why you see we leave off after a time seeing persons who are +in sorrow, they make one melancholy and so at last old +Dantes was left all to himself, and I only saw from time to +time strangers go up to him and come down again with some +bundle they tried to hide but I guessed what these bundles +were, and that he sold by degrees what he had to pay for his +subsistence. At length the poor old fellow reached the end +of all he had he owed three quarters' rent, and they +threatened to turn him out he begged for another week, +which was granted to him. I know this, because the landlord +came into my apartment when he left his. For the first three +days I heard him walking about as usual, but, on the fourth +I heard nothing. I then resolved to go up to him at all +risks. The door was closed, but I looked through the +keyhole, and saw him so pale and haggard, that believing him +very ill, I went and told M. Morrel and then ran on to +Mercedes. They both came immediately, M. Morrel bringing a +doctor, and the doctor said it was inflammation of the +bowels, and ordered him a limited diet. I was there, too, +and I never shall forget the old man's smile at this +prescription. From that time he received all who came he +had an excuse for not eating any more the doctor had put +him on a diet." The abbe uttered a kind of groan. "The story +interests you, does it not, sir?" inquired Caderousse. +"Yes," replied the abbe, "it is very affecting." +"Mercedes came again, and she found him so altered that she +was even more anxious than before to have him taken to her +own home. This was M. Morrel's wish also, who would fain +have conveyed the old man against his consent but the old +man resisted, and cried so that they were actually +frightened. Mercedes remained, therefore, by his bedside, +and M. Morrel went away, making a sign to the Catalan that +he had left his purse on the chimneypiece. But availing +himself of the doctor's order, the old man would not take +any sustenance at length after nine days of despair and +fasting, the old man died, cursing those who had caused his +misery, and saying to Mercedes, "If you ever see my Edmond +again, tell him I die blessing him.'" The abbe rose from his +chair, made two turns round the chamber, and pressed his +trembling hand against his parched throat. "And you believe +he died" +"Of hunger, sir, of hunger," said Caderousse. "I am as +certain of it as that we two are Christians." +The abbe, with a shaking hand, seized a glass of water that +was standing by him halffull, swallowed it at one gulp, and +then resumed his seat, with red eyes and pale cheeks. "This +was, indeed, a horrid event." said he in a hoarse voice. +"The more so, sir, as it was men's and not God's doing." +"Tell me of those men," said the abbe, "and remember too," +he added in an almost menacing tone, "you have promised to +tell me everything. Tell me, therefore, who are these men +who killed the son with despair, and the father with +famine?" +"Two men jealous of him, sir one from love, and the other +from ambition, Fernand and Danglars." +"How was this jealousy manifested? Speak on." +"They denounced Edmond as a Bonapartist agent." +"Which of the two denounced him? Which was the real +delinquent?" +"Both, sir one with a letter, and the other put it in the +post." +"And where was this letter written?" +"At La Reserve, the day before the betrothal feast." +"'Twas so, then 'twas so, then," murmured the abbe. "Oh, +Faria, Faria, how well did you judge men and things" +"What did you please to say, sir?" asked Caderousse. +"Nothing, nothing," replied the priest "go on." +"It was Danglars who wrote the denunciation with his left +hand, that his writing might not be recognized, and Fernand +who put it in the post." +"But," exclaimed the abbe suddenly, "you were there +yourself." +"I" said Caderousse, astonished "who told you I was +there?" +The abbe saw he had overshot the mark, and he added quickly, +"No one but in order to have known everything so well, +you must have been an eyewitness." +"True, true" said Caderousse in a choking voice, "I was +there." +"And did you not remonstrate against such infamy?" asked the +abbe "if not, you were an accomplice." +"Sir," replied Caderousse, "they had made me drink to such +an excess that I nearly lost all perception. I had only an +indistinct understanding of what was passing around me. I +said all that a man in such a state could say but they both +assured me that it was a jest they were carrying on, and +perfectly harmless." +"Next day next day, sir, you must have seen plain enough +what they had been doing, yet you said nothing, though you +were present when Dantes was arrested." +"Yes, sir, I was there, and very anxious to speak but +Danglars restrained me. "If he should really be guilty,' +said he, "and did really put in to the Island of Elba if he +is really charged with a letter for the Bonapartist +committee at Paris, and if they find this letter upon him, +those who have supported him will pass for his accomplices.' +I confess I had my fears, in the state in which politics +then were, and I held my tongue. It was cowardly, I confess, +but it was not criminal." +"I understand you allowed matters to take their course, +that was all." +"Yes, sir," answered Caderousse "and remorse preys on me +night and day. I often ask pardon of God, I swear to you, +because this action, the only one with which I have +seriously to reproach myself in all my life, is no doubt the +cause of my abject condition. I am expiating a moment of +selfishness, and so I always say to La Carconte, when she +complains, "Hold your tongue, woman it is the will of +God.'" And Caderousse bowed his head with every sign of real +repentance. +"Well, sir," said the abbe, "you have spoken unreservedly +and thus to accuse yourself is to deserve pardon." +"Unfortunately, Edmond is dead, and has not pardoned me." +"He did not know," said the abbe. +"But he knows it all now," interrupted Caderousse "they say +the dead know everything." There was a brief silence the +abbe rose and paced up and down pensively, and then resumed +his seat. "You have two or three times mentioned a M. +Morrel," he said "who was he?" +"The owner of the Pharaon and patron of Dantes." +"And what part did he play in this sad drama?" inquired the +abbe. +"The part of an honest man, full of courage and real regard. +Twenty times he interceded for Edmond. When the emperor +returned, he wrote, implored, threatened, and so +energetically, that on the second restoration he was +persecuted as a Bonapartist. Ten times, as I told you, he +came to see Dantes' father, and offered to receive him in +his own house and the night or two before his death, as I +have already said, he left his purse on the mantelpiece, +with which they paid the old man's debts, and buried him +decently and so Edmond's father died, as he had lived, +without doing harm to any one. I have the purse still by me +a large one, made of red silk." +"And," asked the abbe, "is M. Morrel still alive?" +"Yes," replied Caderousse. +"In that case," replied the abbe, "he should be rich, +happy." +Caderousse smiled bitterly. "Yes, happy as myself," said he. +"What M. Morrel unhappy?" exclaimed the abbe. +"He is reduced almost to the last extremity nay, he is +almost at the point of dishonor." +"How?" +"Yes," continued Caderousse, "so it is after five and +twenty years of labor, after having acquired a most +honorable name in the trade of Marseilles, M. Morrel is +utterly ruined he has lost five ships in two years, has +suffered by the bankruptcy of three large houses, and his +only hope now is in that very Pharaon which poor Dantes +commanded, and which is expected from the Indies with a +cargo of cochineal and indigo. If this ship founders, like +the others, he is a ruined man." +"And has the unfortunate man wife or children?" inquired the +abbe. +"Yes, he has a wife, who through everything has behaved like +an angel he has a daughter, who was about to marry the man +she loved, but whose family now will not allow him to wed +the daughter of a ruined man he has, besides, a son, a +lieutenant in the army and, as you may suppose, all this, +instead of lessening, only augments his sorrows. If he were +alone in the world he would blow out his brains, and there +would be an end." +"Horrible" ejaculated the priest. +"And it is thus heaven recompenses virtue, sir," added +Caderousse. "You see, I, who never did a bad action but that +I have told you of am in destitution, with my poor wife +dying of fever before my very eyes, and I unable to do +anything in the world for her I shall die of hunger, as old +Dantes did, while Fernand and Danglars are rolling in +wealth." +"How is that?" +"Because their deeds have brought them good fortune, while +honest men have been reduced to misery." +"What has become of Danglars, the instigator, and therefore +the most guilty?" +"What has become of him? Why, he left Marseilles, and was +taken, on the recommendation of M. Morrel, who did not know +his crime, as cashier into a Spanish bank. During the war +with Spain he was employed in the commissariat of the French +army, and made a fortune then with that money he speculated +in the funds, and trebled or quadrupled his capital and, +having first married his banker's daughter, who left him a +widower, he has married a second time, a widow, a Madame de +Nargonne, daughter of M. de Servieux, the king's +chamberlain, who is in high favor at court. He is a +millionaire, and they have made him a baron, and now he is +the Baron Danglars, with a fine residence in the Rue de +MontBlanc, with ten horses in his stables, six footmen in +his antechamber, and I know not how many millions in his +strongbox." +"Ah" said the abbe, in a peculiar tone, "he is happy." +"Happy? Who can answer for that? Happiness or unhappiness is +the secret known but to one's self and the walls walls +have ears but no tongue but if a large fortune produces +happiness, Danglars is happy." +"And Fernand?" +"Fernand? Why, much the same story." +"But how could a poor Catalan fisherboy, without education +or resources, make a fortune? I confess this staggers me." +"And it has staggered everybody. There must have been in his +life some strange secret that no one knows." +"But, then, by what visible steps has he attained this high +fortune or high position?" +"Both, sir he has both fortune and position both." +"This must be impossible" +"It would seem so but listen, and you will understand. Some +days before the return of the emperor, Fernand was drafted. +The Bourbons left him quietly enough at the Catalans, but +Napoleon returned, a special levy was made, and Fernand was +compelled to join. I went too but as I was older than +Fernand, and had just married my poor wife, I was only sent +to the coast. Fernand was enrolled in the active troop, went +to the frontier with his regiment, and was at the battle of +Ligny. The night after that battle he was sentry at the door +of a general who carried on a secret correspondence with the +enemy. That same night the general was to go over to the +English. He proposed to Fernand to accompany him Fernand +agreed to do so, deserted his post, and followed the +general. Fernand would have been courtmartialed if Napoleon +had remained on the throne, but his action was rewarded by +the Bourbons. He returned to France with the epaulet of +sublieutenant, and as the protection of the general, who is +in the highest favor, was accorded to him, he was a captain +in , during the Spanish war that is to say, at the +time when Danglars made his early speculations. Fernand was +a Spaniard, and being sent to Spain to ascertain the feeling +of his fellowcountrymen, found Danglars there, got on very +intimate terms with him, won over the support of the +royalists at the capital and in the provinces, received +promises and made pledges on his own part, guided his +regiment by paths known to himself alone through the +mountain gorges which were held by the royalists, and, in +fact, rendered such services in this brief campaign that, +after the taking of Trocadero, he was made colonel, and +received the title of count and the cross of an officer of +the Legion of Honor." +"Destiny destiny" murmured the abbe. +"Yes, but listen this was not all. The war with Spain being +ended, Fernand's career was checked by the long peace which +seemed likely to endure throughout Europe. Greece only had +risen against Turkey, and had begun her war of independence +all eyes were turned towards Athens it was the fashion to +pity and support the Greeks. The French government, without +protecting them openly, as you know, gave countenance to +volunteer assistance. Fernand sought and obtained leave to +go and serve in Greece, still having his name kept on the +army roll. Some time after, it was stated that the Comte de +Morcerf this was the name he bore had entered the service +of Ali Pasha with the rank of instructorgeneral. Ali Pasha +was killed, as you know, but before he died he recompensed +the services of Fernand by leaving him a considerable sum, +with which he returned to France, when he was gazetted +lieutenantgeneral." +"So that now?" inquired the abbe. +"So that now," continued Caderousse, "he owns a magnificent +house No. , Rue du Helder, Paris." The abbe opened his +mouth, hesitated for a moment, then, making an effort at +selfcontrol, he said, "And Mercedes they tell me that +she has disappeared?" +"Disappeared," said Caderousse, "yes, as the sun disappears, +to rise the next day with still more splendor." +"Has she made a fortune also?" inquired the abbe, with an +ironical smile. +"Mercedes is at this moment one of the greatest ladies in +Paris," replied Caderousse. +"Go on," said the abbe "it seems as if I were listening to +the story of a dream. But I have seen things so +extraordinary, that what you tell me seems less astonishing +than it otherwise might." +"Mercedes was at first in the deepest despair at the blow +which deprived her of Edmond. I have told you of her +attempts to propitiate M. de Villefort, her devotion to the +elder Dantes. In the midst of her despair, a new affliction +overtook her. This was the departure of Fernand of +Fernand, whose crime she did not know, and whom she regarded +as her brother. Fernand went, and Mercedes remained alone. +Three months passed and still she wept no news of Edmond, +no news of Fernand, no companionship save that of an old man +who was dying with despair. One evening, after a day of +accustomed vigil at the angle of two roads leading to +Marseilles from the Catalans, she returned to her home more +depressed than ever. Suddenly she heard a step she knew, +turned anxiously around, the door opened, and Fernand, +dressed in the uniform of a sublieutenant, stood before +her. It was not the one she wished for most, but it seemed +as if a part of her past life had returned to her. Mercedes +seized Fernand's hands with a transport which he took for +love, but which was only joy at being no longer alone in the +world, and seeing at last a friend, after long hours of +solitary sorrow. And then, it must be confessed, Fernand had +never been hated he was only not precisely loved. Another +possessed all Mercedes' heart that other was absent, had +disappeared, perhaps was dead. At this last thought Mercedes +burst into a flood of tears, and wrung her hands in agony +but the thought, which she had always repelled before when +it was suggested to her by another, came now in full force +upon her mind and then, too, old Dantes incessantly said to +her, "Our Edmond is dead if he were not, he would return to +us.' The old man died, as I have told you had he lived, +Mercedes, perchance, had not become the wife of another, for +he would have been there to reproach her infidelity. Fernand +saw this, and when he learned of the old man's death he +returned. He was now a lieutenant. At his first coming he +had not said a word of love to Mercedes at the second he +reminded her that he loved her. Mercedes begged for six +months more in which to await and mourn for Edmond." +"So that," said the abbe, with a bitter smile, "that makes +eighteen months in all. What more could the most devoted +lover desire?" Then he murmured the words of the English +poet, ""Frailty, thy name is woman.'" +"Six months afterwards," continued Caderousse, "the marriage +took place in the church of Accoules." +"The very church in which she was to have married Edmond," +murmured the priest "there was only a change of +bridegrooms." +"Well, Mercedes was married," proceeded Caderousse "but +although in the eyes of the world she appeared calm, she +nearly fainted as she passed La Reserve, where, eighteen +months before, the betrothal had been celebrated with him +whom she might have known she still loved had she looked to +the bottom of her heart. Fernand, more happy, but not more +at his ease for I saw at this time he was in constant +dread of Edmond's return Fernand was very anxious to get +his wife away, and to depart himself. There were too many +unpleasant possibilities associated with the Catalans, and +eight days after the wedding they left Marseilles." +"Did you ever see Mercedes again?" inquired the priest. +"Yes, during the Spanish war, at Perpignan, where Fernand +had left her she was attending to the education of her +son." The abbe started. "Her son?" said he. +"Yes," replied Caderousse, "little Albert." +"But, then, to be able to instruct her child," continued the +abbe, "she must have received an education herself. I +understood from Edmond that she was the daughter of a simple +fisherman, beautiful but uneducated." +"Oh," replied Caderousse, "did he know so little of his +lovely betrothed? Mercedes might have been a queen, sir, if +the crown were to be placed on the heads of the loveliest +and most intelligent. Fernand's fortune was already waxing +great, and she developed with his growing fortune. She +learned drawing, music everything. Besides, I believe, +between ourselves, she did this in order to distract her +mind, that she might forget and she only filled her head in +order to alleviate the weight on her heart. But now her +position in life is assured," continued Caderousse "no +doubt fortune and honors have comforted her she is rich, a +countess, and yet" Caderousse paused. +"And yet what?" asked the abbe. +"Yet, I am sure, she is not happy," said Caderousse. +"What makes you believe this?" +"Why, when I found myself utterly destitute, I thought my +old friends would, perhaps, assist me. So I went to +Danglars, who would not even receive me. I called on +Fernand, who sent me a hundred francs by his +valetdechambre." +"Then you did not see either of them?" +"No, but Madame de Morcerf saw me." +"How was that?" +"As I went away a purse fell at my feet it contained five +and twenty louis I raised my head quickly, and saw +Mercedes, who at once shut the blind." +"And M. de Villefort?" asked the abbe. +"Oh, he never was a friend of mine, I did not know him, and +I had nothing to ask of him." +"Do you not know what became of him, and the share he had in +Edmond's misfortunes?" +"No I only know that some time after Edmond's arrest, he +married Mademoiselle de SaintMeran, and soon after left +Marseilles no doubt he has been as lucky as the rest no +doubt he is as rich as Danglars, as high in station as +Fernand. I only, as you see, have remained poor, wretched, +and forgotten." +"You are mistaken, my friend," replied the abbe "God may +seem sometimes to forget for a time, while his justice +reposes, but there always comes a moment when he remembers +and behold a proof" As he spoke, the abbe took the +diamond from his pocket, and giving it to Caderousse, said, +"Here, my friend, take this diamond, it is yours." +"What, for me only?" cried Caderousse, "ah, sir, do not jest +with me" +"This diamond was to have been shared among his friends. +Edmond had one friend only, and thus it cannot be divided. +Take the diamond, then, and sell it it is worth fifty +thousand francs, and I repeat my wish that this sum may +suffice to release you from your wretchedness." +"Oh, sir," said Caderousse, putting out one hand timidly, +and with the other wiping away the perspiration which +bedewed his brow, "Oh, sir, do not make a jest of the +happiness or despair of a man." +"I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never +make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange +Caderousse, who touched the diamond, withdrew his hand. The +abbe smiled. "In exchange," he continued, "give me the red +silk purse that M. Morrel left on old Dantes' chimneypiece, +and which you tell me is still in your hands." Caderousse, +more and more astonished, went toward a large oaken +cupboard, opened it, and gave the abbe a long purse of faded +red silk, round which were two copper runners that had once +been gilt. The abbe took it, and in return gave Caderousse +the diamond. +"Oh, you are a man of God, sir," cried Caderousse "for no +one knew that Edmond had given you this diamond, and you +might have kept it." +"Which," said the abbe to himself, "you would have done." +The abbe rose, took his hat and gloves. "Well," he said, +"all you have told me is perfectly true, then, and I may +believe it in every particular." +"See, sir," replied Caderousse, "in this corner is a +crucifix in holy wood here on this shelf is my wife's +testament open this book, and I will swear upon it with my +hand on the crucifix. I will swear to you by my soul's +salvation, my faith as a Christian, I have told everything +to you as it occurred, and as the recording angel will tell +it to the ear of God at the day of the last judgment" +"'Tis well," said the abbe, convinced by his manner and tone +that Caderousse spoke the truth. "'Tis well, and may this +money profit you Adieu I go far from men who thus so +bitterly injure each other." The abbe with difficulty got +away from the enthusiastic thanks of Caderousse, opened the +door himself, got out and mounted his horse, once more +saluted the innkeeper, who kept uttering his loud farewells, +and then returned by the road he had travelled in coming. +When Caderousse turned around, he saw behind him La +Carconte, paler and trembling more than ever. "Is, then, all +that I have heard really true?" she inquired. +"What? That he has given the diamond to us only?" inquired +Caderousse, half bewildered with joy "yes, nothing more +true See, here it is." The woman gazed at it a moment, and +then said, in a gloomy voice, "Suppose it's false?" +Caderousse started and turned pale. "False" he muttered. +"False Why should that man give me a false diamond?" +"To get your secret without paying for it, you blockhead" +Caderousse remained for a moment aghast under the weight of +such an idea. "Oh" he said, taking up his hat, which he +placed on the red handkerchief tied round his head, "we will +soon find out." +"In what way?" +"Why, the fair is on at Beaucaire, there are always +jewellers from Paris there, and I will show it to them. Look +after the house, wife, and I shall be back in two hours," +and Caderousse left the house in haste, and ran rapidly in +the direction opposite to that which the priest had taken. +"Fifty thousand francs" muttered La Carconte when left +alone "it is a large sum of money, but it is not a +fortune." +Chapter +The Prison Register. +The day after that in which the scene we have just described +had taken place on the road between Bellegarde and +Beaucaire, a man of about thirty or two and thirty, dressed +in a bright blue frock coat, nankeen trousers, and a white +waistcoat, having the appearance and accent of an +Englishman, presented himself before the mayor of +Marseilles. "Sir," said he, "I am chief clerk of the house +of Thomson French, of Rome. We are, and have been these +ten years, connected with the house of Morrel Son, of +Marseilles. We have a hundred thousand francs or thereabouts +loaned on their securities, and we are a little uneasy at +reports that have reached us that the firm is on the brink +of ruin. I have come, therefore, express from Rome, to ask +you for information." +"Sir," replied the mayor. "I know very well that during the +last four or five years misfortune has seemed to pursue M. +Morrel. He has lost four or five vessels, and suffered by +three or four bankruptcies but it is not for me, although I +am a creditor myself to the amount of ten thousand francs, +to give any information as to the state of his finances. Ask +of me, as mayor, what is my opinion of M. Morrel, and I +shall say that he is a man honorable to the last degree, and +who has up to this time fulfilled every engagement with +scrupulous punctuality. This is all I can say, sir if you +wish to learn more, address yourself to M. de Boville, the +inspector of prisons, No. , Rue de Nouailles he has, I +believe, two hundred thousand francs in Morrel's hands, and +if there be any grounds for apprehension, as this is a +greater amount than mine, you will most probably find him +better informed than myself." +The Englishman seemed to appreciate this extreme delicacy, +made his bow and went away, proceeding with a characteristic +British stride towards the street mentioned. M. de Boville +was in his private room, and the Englishman, on perceiving +him, made a gesture of surprise, which seemed to indicate +that it was not the first time he had been in his presence. +As to M. de Boville, he was in such a state of despair, that +it was evident all the faculties of his mind, absorbed in +the thought which occupied him at the moment, did not allow +either his memory or his imagination to stray to the past. +The Englishman, with the coolness of his nation, addressed +him in terms nearly similar to those with which he had +accosted the mayor of Marseilles. "Oh, sir," exclaimed M. de +Boville, "your fears are unfortunately but too well founded, +and you see before you a man in despair. I had two hundred +thousand francs placed in the hands of Morrel Son these +two hundred thousand francs were the dowry of my daughter, +who was to be married in a fortnight, and these two hundred +thousand francs were payable, half on the th of this +month, and the other half on the th of next month. I had +informed M. Morrel of my desire to have these payments +punctually, and he has been here within the last halfhour +to tell me that if his ship, the Pharaon, did not come into +port on the th, he would be wholly unable to make this +payment." +"But," said the Englishman, "this looks very much like a +suspension of payment." +"It looks more like bankruptcy" exclaimed M. de Boville +despairingly. +The Englishman appeared to reflect a moment, and then said, +"From which it would appear, sir, that this credit +inspires you with considerable apprehension?" +"To tell you the truth, I consider it lost." +"Well, then, I will buy it of you" +"You?" +"Yes, I" +"But at a tremendous discount, of course?" +"No, for two hundred thousand francs. Our house," added the +Englishman with a laugh, "does not do things in that way." +"And you will pay" +"Ready money." And the Englishman drew from his pocket a +bundle of banknotes, which might have been twice the sum M. +de Boville feared to lose. A ray of joy passed across M. de +Boville's countenance, yet he made an effort at +selfcontrol, and said, "Sir, I ought to tell you that, +in all probability, you will not realize six per cent of +this sum." +"That's no affair of mine," replied the Englishman, "that is +the affair of the house of Thomson French, in whose name I +act. They have, perhaps, some motive to serve in hastening +the ruin of a rival firm. But all I know, sir, is, that I am +ready to hand you over this sum in exchange for your +assignment of the debt. I only ask a brokerage." +"Of course, that is perfectly just," cried M. de Boville. +"The commission is usually one and a half will you have two +three five per cent, or even more? Whatever you say." +"Sir," replied the Englishman, laughing, "I am like my +house, and do not do such things no, the commission I ask +is quite different." +"Name it, sir, I beg." +"You are the inspector of prisons?" +"I have been so these fourteen years." +"You keep the registers of entries and departures?" +"I do." +"To these registers there are added notes relative to the +prisoners?" +"There are special reports on every prisoner." +"Well, sir, I was educated at home by a poor devil of an +abbe, who disappeared suddenly. I have since learned that he +was confined in the Chateau d'If, and I should like to learn +some particulars of his death." +"What was his name?" +"The Abbe Faria." +"Oh, I recollect him perfectly," cried M. de Boville "he +was crazy." +"So they said." +"Oh, he was, decidedly." +"Very possibly but what sort of madness was it?" +"He pretended to know of an immense treasure, and offered +vast sums to the government if they would liberate him." +"Poor devil and he is dead?" +"Yes, sir, five or six months ago last February." +"You have a good memory, sir, to recollect dates so well." +"I recollect this, because the poor devil's death was +accompanied by a singular incident." +"May I ask what that was?" said the Englishman with an +expression of curiosity, which a close observer would have +been astonished at discovering in his phlegmatic +countenance. +"Oh dear, yes, sir the abbe's dungeon was forty or fifty +feet distant from that of one of Bonaparte's emissaries, +one of those who had contributed the most to the return of +the usurper in , a very resolute and very dangerous +man." +"Indeed" said the Englishman. +"Yes," replied M. de Boville "I myself had occasion to see +this man in or , and we could only go into his +dungeon with a file of soldiers. That man made a deep +impression on me I shall never forget his countenance" The +Englishman smiled imperceptibly. +"And you say, sir," he interposed, "that the two dungeons" +"Were separated by a distance of fifty feet but it appears +that this Edmond Dantes" +"This dangerous man's name was" +"Edmond Dantes. It appears, sir, that this Edmond Dantes had +procured tools, or made them, for they found a tunnel +through which the prisoners held communication with one +another." +"This tunnel was dug, no doubt, with an intention of +escape?" +"No doubt but unfortunately for the prisoners, the Abbe +Faria had an attack of catalepsy, and died." +"That must have cut short the projects of escape." +"For the dead man, yes," replied M. de Boville, "but not for +the survivor on the contrary, this Dantes saw a means of +accelerating his escape. He, no doubt, thought that +prisoners who died in the Chateau d'If were interred in an +ordinary burialground, and he conveyed the dead man into +his own cell, took his place in the sack in which they had +sewed up the corpse, and awaited the moment of interment." +"It was a bold step, and one that showed some courage," +remarked the Englishman. +"As I have already told you, sir, he was a very dangerous +man and, fortunately, by his own act disembarrassed the +government of the fears it had on his account." +"How was that?" +"How? Do you not comprehend?" +"No." +"The Chateau d'If has no cemetery, and they simply throw the +dead into the sea, after fastening a thirtysix pound +cannonball to their feet." +"Well," observed the Englishman as if he were slow of +comprehension. +"Well, they fastened a thirtysix pound ball to his feet, +and threw him into the sea." +"Really" exclaimed the Englishman. +"Yes, sir," continued the inspector of prisons. "You may +imagine the amazement of the fugitive when he found himself +flung headlong over the rocks I should like to have seen +his face at that moment." +"That would have been difficult." +"No matter," replied De Boville, in supreme goodhumor at +the certainty of recovering his two hundred thousand francs, +"no matter, I can fancy it." And he shouted with +laughter. +"So can I," said the Englishman, and he laughed too but he +laughed as the English do, "at the end of his teeth." +"And so," continued the Englishman who first gained his +composure, "he was drowned?" +"Unquestionably." +"So that the governor got rid of the dangerous and the crazy +prisoner at the same time?" +"Precisely." +"But some official document was drawn up as to this affair, +I suppose?" inquired the Englishman. +"Yes, yes, the mortuary deposition. You understand, Dantes' +relations, if he had any, might have some interest in +knowing if he were dead or alive." +"So that now, if there were anything to inherit from him, +they may do so with easy conscience. He is dead, and no +mistake about it." +"Oh, yes and they may have the fact attested whenever they +please." +"So be it," said the Englishman. "But to return to these +registers." +"True, this story has diverted our attention from them. +Excuse me." +"Excuse you for what? For the story? By no means it really +seems to me very curious." +"Yes, indeed. So, sir, you wish to see all relating to the +poor abbe, who really was gentleness itself." +"Yes, you will much oblige me." +"Go into my study here, and I will show it to you." And they +both entered M. de Boville's study. Everything was here +arranged in perfect order each register had its number, +each file of papers its place. The inspector begged the +Englishman to seat himself in an armchair, and placed +before him the register and documents relative to the +Chateau d'If, giving him all the time he desired for the +examination, while De Boville seated himself in a corner, +and began to read his newspaper. The Englishman easily found +the entries relative to the Abbe Faria but it seemed that +the history which the inspector had related interested him +greatly, for after having perused the first documents he +turned over the leaves until he reached the deposition +respecting Edmond Dantes. There he found everything arranged +in due order, the accusation, examination, Morrel's +petition, M. de Villefort's marginal notes. He folded up the +accusation quietly, and put it as quietly in his pocket +read the examination, and saw that the name of Noirtier was +not mentioned in it perused, too, the application dated +th April, , in which Morrel, by the deputy procureur's +advice, exaggerated with the best intentions for Napoleon +was then on the throne the services Dantes had rendered to +the imperial cause services which Villefort's +certificates rendered indispensable. Then he saw through the +whole thing. This petition to Napoleon, kept back by +Villefort, had become, under the second restoration, a +terrible weapon against him in the hands of the king's +attorney. He was no longer astonished when he searched on to +find in the register this note, placed in a bracket against +his name +Edmond Dantes. +An inveterate Bonapartist took an active part in the return +from the Island of Elba. +To be kept in strict solitary confinement, and to be closely +watched and guarded. +Beneath these lines was written in another hand "See note +above nothing can be done." He compared the writing in +the bracket with the writing of the certificate placed +beneath Morrel's petition, and discovered that the note in +the bracket was the same writing as the certificate that +is to say, was in Villefort's handwriting. As to the note +which accompanied this, the Englishman understood that it +might have been added by some inspector who had taken a +momentary interest in Dantes' situation, but who had, from +the remarks we have quoted, found it impossible to give any +effect to the interest he had felt. +As we have said, the inspector, from discretion, and that he +might not disturb the Abbe Faria's pupil in his researches, +had seated himself in a corner, and was reading Le Drapeau +Blanc. He did not see the Englishman fold up and place in +his pocket the accusation written by Danglars under the +arbor of La Reserve, and which had the postmark, +"Marseilles, th Feb., delivery o'clock, P.M." But it +must be said that if he had seen it, he attached so little +importance to this scrap of paper, and so much importance to +his two hundred thousand francs, that he would not have +opposed whatever the Englishman might do, however irregular +it might be. +"Thanks," said the latter, closing the register with a slam, +"I have all I want now it is for me to perform my promise. +Give me a simple assignment of your debt acknowledge +therein the receipt of the cash, and I will hand you over +the money." He rose, gave his seat to M. de Boville, who +took it without ceremony, and quickly drew up the required +assignment, while the Englishman counted out the banknotes +on the other side of the desk. +Chapter +The House of Morrel Son. +Any one who had quitted Marseilles a few years previously, +well acquainted with the interior of Morrel's warehouse, and +had returned at this date, would have found a great change. +Instead of that air of life, of comfort, and of happiness +that permeates a flourishing and prosperous business +establishment instead of merry faces at the windows, busy +clerks hurrying to and fro in the long corridors instead +of the court filled with bales of goods, reechoing with the +cries and the jokes of porters, one would have immediately +perceived all aspect of sadness and gloom. Out of all the +numerous clerks that used to fill the deserted corridor and +the empty office, but two remained. One was a young man of +three or four and twenty, who was in love with M. Morrel's +daughter, and had remained with him in spite of the efforts +of his friends to induce him to withdraw the other was an +old oneeyed cashier, called "Cocles," or "Cockeye," a +nickname given him by the young men who used to throng this +vast now almost deserted beehive, and which had so +completely replaced his real name that he would not, in all +probability, have replied to any one who addressed him by +it. +Cocles remained in M. Morrel's service, and a most singular +change had taken place in his position he had at the same +time risen to the rank of cashier, and sunk to the rank of a +servant. He was, however, the same Cocles, good, patient, +devoted, but inflexible on the subject of arithmetic, the +only point on which he would have stood firm against the +world, even against M. Morrel and strong in the +multiplicationtable, which he had at his fingers' ends, no +matter what scheme or what trap was laid to catch him. In +the midst of the disasters that befell the house, Cocles was +the only one unmoved. But this did not arise from a want of +affection on the contrary, from a firm conviction. Like the +rats that one by one forsake the doomed ship even before the +vessel weighs anchor, so all the numerous clerks had by +degrees deserted the office and the warehouse. Cocles had +seen them go without thinking of inquiring the cause of +their departure. Everything was as we have said, a question +of arithmetic to Cocles, and during twenty years he had +always seen all payments made with such exactitude, that it +seemed as impossible to him that the house should stop +payment, as it would to a miller that the river that had so +long turned his mill should cease to flow. +Nothing had as yet occurred to shake Cocles' belief the +last month's payment had been made with the most scrupulous +exactitude Cocles had detected an overbalance of fourteen +sous in his cash, and the same evening he had brought them +to M. Morrel, who, with a melancholy smile, threw them into +an almost empty drawer, saying +"Thanks, Cocles you are the pearl of cashiers." +Cocles went away perfectly happy, for this eulogium of M. +Morrel, himself the pearl of the honest men of Marseilles, +flattered him more than a present of fifty crowns. But since +the end of the month M. Morrel had passed many an anxious +hour. In order to meet the payments then due he had +collected all his resources, and, fearing lest the report of +his distress should get bruited abroad at Marseilles when he +was known to be reduced to such an extremity, he went to the +Beaucaire fair to sell his wife's and daughter's jewels and +a portion of his plate. By this means the end of the month +was passed, but his resources were now exhausted. Credit, +owing to the reports afloat, was no longer to be had and to +meet the one hundred thousand francs due on the th of the +present month, and the one hundred thousand francs due on +the th of the next month to M. de Boville, M. Morrel had, +in reality, no hope but the return of the Pharaon, of whose +departure he had learnt from a vessel which had weighed +anchor at the same time, and which had already arrived in +harbor. But this vessel which, like the Pharaon, came from +Calcutta, had been in for a fortnight, while no intelligence +had been received of the Pharaon. +Such was the state of affairs when, the day after his +interview with M. de Boville, the confidential clerk of the +house of Thomson French of Rome, presented himself at M. +Morrel's. Emmanuel received him this young man was alarmed +by the appearance of every new face, for every new face +might be that of a new creditor, come in anxiety to question +the head of the house. The young man, wishing to spare his +employer the pain of this interview, questioned the +newcomer but the stranger declared that he had nothing to +say to M. Emmanuel, and that his business was with M. Morrel +in person. Emmanuel sighed, and summoned Cocles. Cocles +appeared, and the young man bade him conduct the stranger to +M. Morrel's apartment. Cocles went first, and the stranger +followed him. On the staircase they met a beautiful girl of +sixteen or seventeen, who looked with anxiety at the +stranger. +"M. Morrel is in his room, is he not, Mademoiselle Julie?" +said the cashier. +"Yes I think so, at least," said the young girl +hesitatingly. "Go and see, Cocles, and if my father is +there, announce this gentleman." +"It will be useless to announce me, mademoiselle," returned +the Englishman. "M. Morrel does not know my name this +worthy gentleman has only to announce the confidential clerk +of the house of Thomson French of Rome, with whom your +father does business." +The young girl turned pale and continued to descend, while +the stranger and Cocles continued to mount the staircase. +She entered the office where Emmanuel was, while Cocles, by +the aid of a key he possessed, opened a door in the corner +of a landingplace on the second staircase, conducted the +stranger into an antechamber, opened a second door, which +he closed behind him, and after having left the clerk of the +house of Thomson French alone, returned and signed to him +that he could enter. The Englishman entered, and found +Morrel seated at a table, turning over the formidable +columns of his ledger, which contained the list of his +liabilities. At the sight of the stranger, M. Morrel closed +the ledger, arose, and offered a seat to the stranger and +when he had seen him seated, resumed his own chair. Fourteen +years had changed the worthy merchant, who, in his +thirtysixth year at the opening of this history, was now in +his fiftieth his hair had turned white, time and sorrow had +ploughed deep furrows on his brow, and his look, once so +firm and penetrating, was now irresolute and wandering, as +if he feared being forced to fix his attention on some +particular thought or person. The Englishman looked at him +with an air of curiosity, evidently mingled with interest. +"Monsieur," said Morrel, whose uneasiness was increased by +this examination, "you wish to speak to me?" +"Yes, monsieur you are aware from whom I come?" +"The house of Thomson French at least, so my cashier +tells me." +"He has told you rightly. The house of Thomson French had +, or , francs to pay this month in France and, +knowing your strict punctuality, have collected all the +bills bearing your signature, and charged me as they became +due to present them, and to employ the money otherwise." +Morrel sighed deeply, and passed his hand over his forehead, +which was covered with perspiration. +"So then, sir," said Morrel, "you hold bills of mine?" +"Yes, and for a considerable sum." +"What is the amount?" asked Morrel with a voice he strove to +render firm. +"Here is," said the Englishman, taking a quantity of papers +from his pocket, "an assignment of , francs to our +house by M. de Boville, the inspector of prisons, to whom +they are due. You acknowledge, of course, that you owe this +sum to him?" +"Yes he placed the money in my hands at four and a half per +cent nearly five years ago." +"When are you to pay?" +"Half the th of this month, half the th of next." +"Just so and now here are , francs payable shortly +they are all signed by you, and assigned to our house by the +holders." +"I recognize them," said Morrel, whose face was suffused, as +he thought that, for the first time in his life, he would be +unable to honor his own signature. "Is this all?" +"No, I have for the end of the month these bills which have +been assigned to us by the house of Pascal, and the house of +Wild Turner of Marseilles, amounting to nearly , +francs in all, , francs." It is impossible to +describe what Morrel suffered during this enumeration. "Two +hundred and eightyseven thousand five hundred francs," +repeated he. +"Yes, sir," replied the Englishman. "I will not," continued +he, after a moment's silence, "conceal from you, that while +your probity and exactitude up to this moment are +universally acknowledged, yet the report is current in +Marseilles that you are not able to meet your liabilities." +At this almost brutal speech Morrel turned deathly pale. +"Sir," said he, "up to this time and it is now more than +fourandtwenty years since I received the direction of this +house from my father, who had himself conducted it for five +and thirty years never has anything bearing the signature +of Morrel Son been dishonored." +"I know that," replied the Englishman. "But as a man of +honor should answer another, tell me fairly, shall you pay +these with the same punctuality?" Morrel shuddered, and +looked at the man, who spoke with more assurance than he had +hitherto shown. "To questions frankly put," said he, "a +straightforward answer should be given. Yes, I shall pay, +if, as I hope, my vessel arrives safely for its arrival +will again procure me the credit which the numerous +accidents, of which I have been the victim, have deprived +me but if the Pharaon should be lost, and this last +resource be gone" the poor man's eyes filled with tears. +"Well," said the other, "if this last resource fail you?" +"Well," returned Morrel, "it is a cruel thing to be forced +to say, but, already used to misfortune, I must habituate +myself to shame. I fear I shall be forced to suspend +payment." +"Have you no friends who could assist you?" Morrel smiled +mournfully. "In business, sir," said he, "one has no +friends, only correspondents." +"It is true," murmured the Englishman "then you have but +one hope." +"But one." +"The last?" +"The last." +"So that if this fail" +"I am ruined, completely ruined" +"As I was on my way here, a vessel was coming into port." +"I know it, sir a young man, who still adheres to my fallen +fortunes, passes a part of his time in a belvidere at the +top of the house, in hopes of being the first to announce +good news to me he has informed me of the arrival of this +ship." +"And it is not yours?" +"No, she is a Bordeaux vessel, La Gironde she comes from +India also but she is not mine." +"Perhaps she has spoken the Pharaon, and brings you some +tidings of her?" +"Shall I tell you plainly one thing, sir? I dread almost as +much to receive any tidings of my vessel as to remain in +doubt. Uncertainty is still hope." Then in a low voice +Morrel added, "This delay is not natural. The Pharaon +left Calcutta the th February she ought to have been here +a month ago." +"What is that?" said the Englishman. "What is the meaning of +that noise?" +"Oh, oh" cried Morrel, turning pale, "what is it?" A loud +noise was heard on the stairs of people moving hastily, and +halfstifled sobs. Morrel rose and advanced to the door but +his strength failed him and he sank into a chair. The two +men remained opposite one another, Morrel trembling in every +limb, the stranger gazing at him with an air of profound +pity. The noise had ceased but it seemed that Morrel +expected something something had occasioned the noise, +and something must follow. The stranger fancied he heard +footsteps on the stairs and that the footsteps, which were +those of several persons, stopped at the door. A key was +inserted in the lock of the first door, and the creaking of +hinges was audible. +"There are only two persons who have the key to that door," +murmured Morrel, "Cocles and Julie." At this instant the +second door opened, and the young girl, her eyes bathed with +tears, appeared. Morrel rose tremblingly, supporting himself +by the arm of the chair. He would have spoken, but his voice +failed him. "Oh, father" said she, clasping her hands, +"forgive your child for being the bearer of evil tidings." +Morrel again changed color. Julie threw herself into his +arms. +"Oh, father, father" murmured she, "courage" +"The Pharaon has gone down, then?" said Morrel in a hoarse +voice. The young girl did not speak but she made an +affirmative sign with her head as she lay on her father's +breast. +"And the crew?" asked Morrel. +"Saved," said the girl "saved by the crew of the vessel +that has just entered the harbor." Morrel raised his two +hands to heaven with an expression of resignation and +sublime gratitude. "Thanks, my God," said he, "at least thou +strikest but me alone." A tear moistened the eye of the +phlegmatic Englishman. +"Come in, come in," said Morrel, "for I presume you are all +at the door." +Scarcely had he uttered those words than Madame Morrel +entered weeping bitterly. Emmanuel followed her, and in the +antechamber were visible the rough faces of seven or eight +halfnaked sailors. At the sight of these men the Englishman +started and advanced a step then restrained himself, and +retired into the farthest and most obscure corner of the +apartment. Madame Morrel sat down by her husband and took +one of his hands in hers, Julie still lay with her head on +his shoulder, Emmanuel stood in the centre of the chamber +and seemed to form the link between Morrel's family and the +sailors at the door. +"How did this happen?" said Morrel. +"Draw nearer, Penelon," said the young man, "and tell us all +about it." +An old seaman, bronzed by the tropical sun, advanced, +twirling the remains of a tarpaulin between his hands. +"Goodday, M. Morrel," said he, as if he had just quitted +Marseilles the previous evening, and had just returned from +Aix or Toulon. +"Goodday, Penelon," returned Morrel, who could not refrain +from smiling through his tears, "where is the captain?" +"The captain, M. Morrel, he has stayed behind sick at +Palma but please God, it won't be much, and you will see +him in a few days all alive and hearty." +"Well, now tell your story, Penelon." +Penelon rolled his quid in his cheek, placed his hand before +his mouth, turned his head, and sent a long jet of +tobaccojuice into the antechamber, advanced his foot, +balanced himself, and began, "You see, M. Morrel," said +he, "we were somewhere between Cape Blanc and Cape Boyador, +sailing with a fair breeze, southsouthwest after a week's +calm, when Captain Gaumard comes up to me I was at the +helm I should tell you and says, "Penelon, what do you +think of those clouds coming up over there?' I was just then +looking at them myself. "What do I think, captain? Why I +think that they are rising faster than they have any +business to do, and that they would not be so black if they +didn't mean mischief.' "That's my opinion too,' said the +captain, "and I'll take precautions accordingly. We are +carrying too much canvas. Avast, there, all hands Take in +the studdingsl's and stow the flying jib.' It was time the +squall was on us, and the vessel began to heel. "Ah,' said +the captain, "we have still too much canvas set all hands +lower the mains'l' Five minutes after, it was down and we +sailed under mizzentops'ls and to'gall'nt sails. "Well, +Penelon,' said the captain, "what makes you shake your +head?' "Why,' I says, "I still think you've got too much +on.' "I think you're right,' answered he, "we shall have a +gale.' "A gale? More than that, we shall have a tempest, or +I don't know what's what.' You could see the wind coming +like the dust at Montredon luckily the captain understood +his business. "Take in two reefs in the tops'ls,' cried the +captain "let go the bowlin's, haul the brace, lower the +to'gall'nt sails, haul out the reeftackles on the yards.'" +"That was not enough for those latitudes," said the +Englishman "I should have taken four reefs in the topsails +and furled the spanker." +His firm, sonorous, and unexpected voice made every one +start. Penelon put his hand over his eyes, and then stared +at the man who thus criticized the manoeuvres of his +captain. "We did better than that, sir," said the old sailor +respectfully "we put the helm up to run before the tempest +ten minutes after we struck our tops'ls and scudded under +bare poles." +"The vessel was very old to risk that," said the Englishman. +"Eh, it was that that did the business after pitching +heavily for twelve hours we sprung a leak. "Penelon,' said +the captain, "I think we are sinking, give me the helm, and +go down into the hold.' I gave him the helm, and descended +there was already three feet of water. "All hands to the +pumps' I shouted but it was too late, and it seemed the +more we pumped the more came in. "Ah,' said I, after four +hours' work, "since we are sinking, let us sink we can die +but once.' "That's the example you set, Penelon,' cries the +captain "very well, wait a minute.' He went into his cabin +and came back with a brace of pistols. "I will blow the +brains out of the first man who leaves the pump,' said he." +"Well done" said the Englishman. +"There's nothing gives you so much courage as good reasons," +continued the sailor "and during that time the wind had +abated, and the sea gone down, but the water kept rising +not much, only two inches an hour, but still it rose. Two +inches an hour does not seem much, but in twelve hours that +makes two feet, and three we had before, that makes five. +"Come,' said the captain, "we have done all in our power, +and M. Morrel will have nothing to reproach us with, we have +tried to save the ship, let us now save ourselves. To the +boats, my lads, as quick as you can.' Now," continued +Penelon, "you see, M. Morrel, a sailor is attached to his +ship, but still more to his life, so we did not wait to be +told twice the more so, that the ship was sinking under us, +and seemed to say, "Get along save yourselves.' We soon +launched the boat, and all eight of us got into it. The +captain descended last, or rather, he did not descend, he +would not quit the vessel so I took him round the waist, +and threw him into the boat, and then I jumped after him. It +was time, for just as I jumped the deck burst with a noise +like the broadside of a manofwar. Ten minutes after she +pitched forward, then the other way, spun round and round, +and then goodby to the Pharaon. As for us, we were three +days without anything to eat or drink, so that we began to +think of drawing lots who should feed the rest, when we saw +La Gironde we made signals of distress, she perceived us, +made for us, and took us all on board. There now, M. Morrel, +that's the whole truth, on the honor of a sailor is not it +true, you fellows there?" A general murmur of approbation +showed that the narrator had faithfully detailed their +misfortunes and sufferings. +"Well, well," said M. Morrel, "I know there was no one in +fault but destiny. It was the will of God that this should +happen, blessed be his name. What wages are due to you?" +"Oh, don't let us talk of that, M. Morrel." +"Yes, but we will talk of it." +"Well, then, three months," said Penelon. +"Cocles, pay two hundred francs to each of these good +fellows," said Morrel. "At another time," added be, "I +should have said, Give them, besides, two hundred francs +over as a present but times are changed, and the little +money that remains to me is not my own." +Penelon turned to his companions, and exchanged a few words +with them. +"As for that, M. Morrel," said he, again turning his quid, +"as for that" +"As for what?" +"The money." +"Well" +"Well, we all say that fifty francs will be enough for us at +present, and that we will wait for the rest." +"Thanks, my friends, thanks" cried Morrel gratefully "take +it take it and if you can find another employer, enter +his service you are free to do so." These last words +produced a prodigious effect on the seaman. Penelon nearly +swallowed his quid fortunately he recovered. "What, M. +Morrel" said he in a low voice, "you send us away you are +then angry with us" +"No, no," said M. Morrel, "I am not angry, quite the +contrary, and I do not send you away but I have no more +ships, and therefore I do not want any sailors." +"No more ships" returned Penelon "well, then, you'll build +some we'll wait for you." +"I have no money to build ships with, Penelon," said the +poor owner mournfully, "so I cannot accept your kind offer." +"No more money? Then you must not pay us we can scud, like +the Pharaon, under bare poles." +"Enough, enough" cried Morrel, almost overpowered "leave +me, I pray you we shall meet again in a happier time. +Emmanuel, go with them, and see that my orders are +executed." +"At least, we shall see each other again, M. Morrel?" asked +Penelon. +"Yes I hope so, at least. Now go." He made a sign to +Cocles, who went first the seamen followed him and Emmanuel +brought up the rear. "Now," said the owner to his wife and +daughter, "leave me I wish to speak with this gentleman." +And he glanced towards the clerk of Thomson French, who +had remained motionless in the corner during this scene, in +which he had taken no part, except the few words we have +mentioned. The two women looked at this person whose +presence they had entirely forgotten, and retired but, as +she left the apartment, Julie gave the stranger a +supplicating glance, to which he replied by a smile that an +indifferent spectator would have been surprised to see on +his stern features. The two men were left alone. "Well, +sir," said Morrel, sinking into a chair, "you have heard +all, and I have nothing further to tell you." +"I see," returned the Englishman, "that a fresh and +unmerited misfortune his overwhelmed you, and this only +increases my desire to serve you." +"Oh, sir" cried Morrel. +"Let me see," continued the stranger, "I am one of your +largest creditors." +"Your bills, at least, are the first that will fall due." +"Do you wish for time to pay?" +"A delay would save my honor, and consequently my life." +"How long a delay do you wish for?" Morrel reflected. +"Two months," said he. +"I will give you three," replied the stranger. +"But," asked Morrel, "will the house of Thomson French +consent?" +"Oh, I take everything on myself. Today is the th of +June." +"Yes." +"Well, renew these bills up to the th of September and on +the th of September at eleven o'clock the hand of the +clock pointed to eleven, I shall come to receive the +money." +"I shall expect you," returned Morrel "and I will pay you +or I shall be dead." These last words were uttered in so +low a tone that the stranger could not hear them. The bills +were renewed, the old ones destroyed, and the poor +shipowner found himself with three months before him to +collect his resources. The Englishman received his thanks +with the phlegm peculiar to his nation and Morrel, +overwhelming him with grateful blessings, conducted him to +the staircase. The stranger met Julie on the stairs she +pretended to be descending, but in reality she was waiting +for him. "Oh, sir" said she, clasping her hands. +"Mademoiselle," said the stranger, "one day you will receive +a letter signed "Sinbad the Sailor.' Do exactly what the +letter bids you, however strange it may appear." +"Yes, sir," returned Julie. +"Do you promise?" +"I swear to you I will." +"It is well. Adieu, mademoiselle. Continue to be the good, +sweet girl you are at present, and I have great hopes that +heaven will reward you by giving you Emmanuel for a +husband." +Julie uttered a faint cry, blushed like a rose, and leaned +against the baluster. The stranger waved his hand, and +continued to descend. In the court he found Penelon, who, +with a rouleau of a hundred francs in either hand, seemed +unable to make up his mind to retain them. "Come with me, my +friend," said the Englishman "I wish to speak to you." +Chapter +The Fifth of September. +The extension provided for by the agent of Thomson French, +at the moment when Morrel expected it least, was to the poor +shipowner so decided a stroke of good fortune that he almost +dared to believe that fate was at length grown weary of +wasting her spite upon him. The same day he told his wife, +Emmanuel, and his daughter all that had occurred and a ray +of hope, if not of tranquillity, returned to the family. +Unfortunately, however, Morrel had not only engagements with +the house of Thomson French, who had shown themselves so +considerate towards him and, as he had said, in business he +had correspondents, and not friends. When he thought the +matter over, he could by no means account for this generous +conduct on the part of Thomson French towards him and +could only attribute it to some such selfish argument as +this "We had better help a man who owes us nearly +, francs, and have those , francs at the end of +three months than hasten his ruin, and get only six or eight +per cent of our money back again." Unfortunately, whether +through envy or stupidity, all Morrel's correspondents did +not take this view and some even came to a contrary +decision. The bills signed by Morrel were presented at his +office with scrupulous exactitude, and, thanks to the delay +granted by the Englishman, were paid by Cocles with equal +punctuality. Cocles thus remained in his accustomed +tranquillity. It was Morrel alone who remembered with alarm, +that if he had to repay on the th the , francs of M. +de Boville, and on the th the , francs of bills, for +which, as well as the debt due to the inspector of prisons, +he had time granted, he must be a ruined man. +The opinion of all the commercial men was that, under the +reverses which had successively weighed down Morrel, it was +impossible for him to remain solvent. Great, therefore, was +the astonishment when at the end of the month, he cancelled +all his obligations with his usual punctuality. Still +confidence was not restored to all minds, and the general +opinion was that the complete ruin of the unfortunate +shipowner had been postponed only until the end of the +month. The month passed, and Morrel made extraordinary +efforts to get in all his resources. Formerly his paper, at +any date, was taken with confidence, and was even in +request. Morrel now tried to negotiate bills at ninety days +only, and none of the banks would give him credit. +Fortunately, Morrel had some funds coming in on which he +could rely and, as they reached him, he found himself in a +condition to meet his engagements when the end of July came. +The agent of Thomson French had not been again seen at +Marseilles the day after, or two days after his visit to +Morrel, he had disappeared and as in that city he had had +no intercourse but with the mayor, the inspector of prisons, +and M. Morrel, his departure left no trace except in the +memories of these three persons. As to the sailors of the +Pharaon, they must have found snug berths elsewhere, for +they also had disappeared. +Captain Gaumard, recovered from his illness, had returned +from Palma. He delayed presenting himself at Morrel's, but +the owner, hearing of his arrival, went to see him. The +worthy shipowner knew, from Penelon's recital, of the +captain's brave conduct during the storm, and tried to +console him. He brought him also the amount of his wages, +which Captain Gaumard had not dared to apply for. As he +descended the staircase, Morrel met Penelon, who was going +up. Penelon had, it would seem, made good use of his money, +for he was newly clad. When he saw his employer, the worthy +tar seemed much embarrassed, drew on one side into the +corner of the landingplace, passed his quid from one cheek +to the other, stared stupidly with his great eyes, and only +acknowledged the squeeze of the hand which Morrel as usual +gave him by a slight pressure in return. Morrel attributed +Penelon's embarrassment to the elegance of his attire it +was evident the good fellow had not gone to such an expense +on his own account he was, no doubt, engaged on board some +other vessel, and thus his bashfulness arose from the fact +of his not having, if we may so express ourselves, worn +mourning for the Pharaon longer. Perhaps he had come to tell +Captain Gaumard of his good luck, and to offer him +employment from his new master. "Worthy fellows" said +Morrel, as he went away, "may your new master love you as I +loved you, and be more fortunate than I have been" +August rolled by in unceasing efforts on the part of Morrel +to renew his credit or revive the old. On the th of August +it was known at Marseilles that he had left town in the +mailcoach, and then it was said that the bills would go to +protest at the end of the month, and that Morrel had gone +away and left his chief clerk Emmanuel, and his cashier +Cocles, to meet the creditors. But, contrary to all +expectation, when the st of August came, the house opened +as usual, and Cocles appeared behind the grating of the +counter, examined all bills presented with the usual +scrutiny, and, from first to last, paid all with the usual +precision. There came in, moreover, two drafts which M. +Morrel had fully anticipated, and which Cocles paid as +punctually as the bills which the shipowner had accepted. +All this was incomprehensible, and then, with the tenacity +peculiar to prophets of bad news, the failure was put off +until the end of September. On the st, Morrel returned he +was awaited by his family with extreme anxiety, for from +this journey to Paris they hoped great things. Morrel had +thought of Danglars, who was now immensely rich, and had +lain under great obligations to Morrel in former days, since +to him it was owing that Danglars entered the service of the +Spanish banker, with whom he had laid the foundations of his +vast wealth. It was said at this moment that Danglars was +worth from six to eight millions of francs, and had +unlimited credit. Danglars, then, without taking a crown +from his pocket, could save Morrel he had but to pass his +word for a loan, and Morrel was saved. Morrel had long +thought of Danglars, but had kept away from some instinctive +motive, and had delayed as long as possible availing himself +of this last resource. And Morrel was right, for he returned +home crushed by the humiliation of a refusal. Yet, on his +arrival, Morrel did not utter a complaint, or say one harsh +word. He embraced his weeping wife and daughter, pressed +Emmanuel's hand with friendly warmth, and then going to his +private room on the second floor had sent for Cocles. +"Then," said the two women to Emmanuel, "we are indeed +ruined." +It was agreed in a brief council held among them, that Julie +should write to her brother, who was in garrison at Nimes, +to come to them as speedily as possible. The poor women felt +instinctively that they required all their strength to +support the blow that impended. Besides, Maximilian Morrel, +though hardly two and twenty, had great influence over his +father. He was a strongminded, upright young man. At the +time when he decided on his profession his father had no +desire to choose for him, but had consulted young +Maximilian's taste. He had at once declared for a military +life, and had in consequence studied hard, passed +brilliantly through the Polytechnic School, and left it as +sublieutenant of the d of the line. For a year he had +held this rank, and expected promotion on the first vacancy. +In his regiment Maximilian Morrel was noted for his rigid +observance, not only of the obligations imposed on a +soldier, but also of the duties of a man and he thus gained +the name of "the stoic." We need hardly say that many of +those who gave him this epithet repeated it because they had +heard it, and did not even know what it meant. This was the +young man whom his mother and sister called to their aid to +sustain them under the serious trial which they felt they +would soon have to endure. They had not mistaken the gravity +of this event, for the moment after Morrel had entered his +private office with Cocles, Julie saw the latter leave it +pale, trembling, and his features betraying the utmost +consternation. She would have questioned him as he passed by +her, but the worthy creature hastened down the staircase +with unusual precipitation, and only raised his hands to +heaven and exclaimed, "Oh, mademoiselle, mademoiselle, what +a dreadful misfortune Who could ever have believed it" A +moment afterwards Julie saw him go upstairs carrying two or +three heavy ledgers, a portfolio, and a bag of money. +Morrel examined the ledgers, opened the portfolio, and +counted the money. All his funds amounted to ,, or , +francs, his bills receivable up to the th to , or +,, which, making the best of everything, gave him , +francs to meet debts amounting to , francs. He had not +even the means for making a possible settlement on account. +However, when Morrel went down to his dinner, he appeared +very calm. This calmness was more alarming to the two women +than the deepest dejection would have been. After dinner +Morrel usually went out and used to take his coffee at the +Phocaean club, and read the Semaphore this day he did not +leave the house, but returned to his office. +As to Cocles, he seemed completely bewildered. For part of +the day he went into the courtyard, seated himself on a +stone with his head bare and exposed to the blazing sun. +Emmanuel tried to comfort the women, but his eloquence +faltered. The young man was too well acquainted with the +business of the house, not to feel that a great catastrophe +hung over the Morrel family. Night came, the two women had +watched, hoping that when he left his room Morrel would come +to them, but they heard him pass before their door, and +trying to conceal the noise of his footsteps. They listened +he went into his sleepingroom, and fastened the door +inside. Madame Morrel sent her daughter to bed, and half an +hour after Julie had retired, she rose, took off her shoes, +and went stealthily along the passage, to see through the +keyhole what her husband was doing. In the passage she saw a +retreating shadow it was Julie, who, uneasy herself, had +anticipated her mother. The young lady went towards Madame +Morrel. +"He is writing," she said. They had understood each other +without speaking. Madame Morrel looked again through the +keyhole, Morrel was writing but Madame Morrel remarked, +what her daughter had not observed, that her husband was +writing on stamped paper. The terrible idea that he was +writing his will flashed across her she shuddered, and yet +had not strength to utter a word. Next day M. Morrel seemed +as calm as ever, went into his office as usual, came to his +breakfast punctually, and then, after dinner, he placed his +daughter beside him, took her head in his arms, and held her +for a long time against his bosom. In the evening, Julie +told her mother, that although he was apparently so calm, +she had noticed that her father's heart beat violently. The +next two days passed in much the same way. On the evening of +the th of September, M. Morrel asked his daughter for the +key of his study. Julie trembled at this request, which +seemed to her of bad omen. Why did her father ask for this +key which she always kept, and which was only taken from her +in childhood as a punishment? The young girl looked at +Morrel. +"What have I done wrong, father," she said, "that you should +take this key from me?" +"Nothing, my dear," replied the unhappy man, the tears +starting to his eyes at this simple question, "nothing, +only I want it." Julie made a pretence to feel for the key. +"I must have left it in my room," she said. And she went +out, but instead of going to her apartment she hastened to +consult Emmanuel. "Do not give this key to your father," +said he, "and tomorrow morning, if possible, do not quit +him for a moment." She questioned Emmanuel, but he knew +nothing, or would not say what he knew. During the night, +between the th and th of September, Madame Morrel remained +listening for every sound, and, until three o'clock in the +morning, she heard her husband pacing the room in great +agitation. It was three o'clock when he threw himself on the +bed. The mother and daughter passed the night together. They +had expected Maximilian since the previous evening. At eight +o'clock in the morning Morrel entered their chamber. He was +calm but the agitation of the night was legible in his pale +and careworn visage. They did not dare to ask him how he had +slept. Morrel was kinder to his wife, more affectionate to +his daughter, than he had ever been. He could not cease +gazing at and kissing the sweet girl. Julie, mindful of +Emmanuel's request, was following her father when he quitted +the room, but he said to her quickly, "Remain with your +mother, dearest." Julie wished to accompany him. "I wish you +to do so," said he. +This was the first time Morrel had ever so spoken, but he +said it in a tone of paternal kindness, and Julie did not +dare to disobey. She remained at the same spot standing mute +and motionless. An instant afterwards the door opened, she +felt two arms encircle her, and a mouth pressed her +forehead. She looked up and uttered an exclamation of joy. +"Maximilian, my dearest brother" she cried. At these words +Madame Morrel rose, and threw herself into her son's arms. +"Mother," said the young man, looking alternately at Madame +Morrel and her daughter, "what has occurred what has +happened? Your letter has frightened me, and I have come +hither with all speed." +"Julie," said Madame Morrel, making a sign to the young man, +"go and tell your father that Maximilian has just arrived." +The young lady rushed out of the apartment, but on the first +step of the staircase she found a man holding a letter in +his hand. +"Are you not Mademoiselle Julie Morrel?" inquired the man, +with a strong Italian accent. +"Yes, sir," replied Julie with hesitation "what is your +pleasure? I do not know you." +"Read this letter," he said, handing it to her. Julie +hesitated. "It concerns the best interests of your father," +said the messenger. +The young girl hastily took the letter from him. She opened +it quickly and read +"Go this moment to the Allees de Meillan, enter the house +No. , ask the porter for the key of the room on the fifth +floor, enter the apartment, take from the corner of the +mantelpiece a purse netted in red silk, and give it to your +father. It is important that he should receive it before +eleven o'clock. You promised to obey me implicitly. Remember +your oath. +"Sinbad the Sailor." +The young girl uttered a joyful cry, raised her eyes, looked +round to question the messenger, but he had disappeared. She +cast her eyes again over the note to peruse it a second +time, and saw there was a postscript. She read +"It is important that you should fulfil this mission in +person and alone. If you go accompanied by any other person, +or should any one else go in your place, the porter will +reply that he does not know anything about it." +This postscript decreased greatly the young girl's +happiness. Was there nothing to fear? was there not some +snare laid for her? Her innocence had kept her in ignorance +of the dangers that might assail a young girl of her age. +But there is no need to know danger in order to fear it +indeed, it may be observed, that it is usually unknown +perils that inspire the greatest terror. +Julie hesitated, and resolved to take counsel. Yet, through +a singular impulse, it was neither to her mother nor her +brother that she applied, but to Emmanuel. She hastened down +and told him what had occurred on the day when the agent of +Thomson French had come to her father's, related the scene +on the staircase, repeated the promise she had made, and +showed him the letter. "You must go, then, mademoiselle," +said Emmanuel. +"Go there?" murmured Julie. +"Yes I will accompany you." +"But did you not read that I must be alone?" said Julie. +"And you shall be alone," replied the young man. "I will +await you at the corner of the Rue de Musee, and if you are +so long absent as to make me uneasy, I will hasten to rejoin +you, and woe to him of whom you shall have cause to complain +to me" +"Then, Emmanuel?" said the young girl with hesitation, "it +is your opinion that I should obey this invitation?" +"Yes. Did not the messenger say your father's safety +depended upon it?" +"But what danger threatens him, then, Emmanuel?" she asked. +Emmanuel hesitated a moment, but his desire to make Julie +decide immediately made him reply. +"Listen," he said "today is the th of September, is it +not?" +"Yes." +"Today, then, at eleven o'clock, your father has nearly +three hundred thousand francs to pay?" +"Yes, we know that." +"Well, then," continued Emmanuel, "we have not fifteen +thousand francs in the house." +"What will happen then?" +"Why, if today before eleven o'clock your father has not +found someone who will come to his aid, he will be compelled +at twelve o'clock to declare himself a bankrupt." +"Oh, come, then, come" cried she, hastening away with the +young man. During this time, Madame Morrel had told her son +everything. The young man knew quite well that, after the +succession of misfortunes which had befallen his father, +great changes had taken place in the style of living and +housekeeping but he did not know that matters had reached +such a point. He was thunderstruck. Then, rushing hastily +out of the apartment, he ran upstairs, expecting to find +his father in his study, but he rapped there in vain. +While he was yet at the door of the study he heard the +bedroom door open, turned, and saw his father. Instead of +going direct to his study, M. Morrel had returned to his +bedchamber, which he was only this moment quitting. Morrel +uttered a cry of surprise at the sight of his son, of whose +arrival he was ignorant. He remained motionless on the spot, +pressing with his left hand something he had concealed under +his coat. Maximilian sprang down the staircase, and threw +his arms round his father's neck but suddenly he recoiled, +and placed his right hand on Morrel's breast. "Father," he +exclaimed, turning pale as death, "what are you going to do +with that brace of pistols under your coat?" +"Oh, this is what I feared" said Morrel. +"Father, father, in heaven's name," exclaimed the young man, +"what are these weapons for?" +"Maximilian," replied Morrel, looking fixedly at his son, +"you are a man, and a man of honor. Come, and I will explain +to you." +And with a firm step Morrel went up to his study, while +Maximilian followed him, trembling as he went. Morrel opened +the door, and closed it behind his son then, crossing the +anteroom, went to his desk on which he placed the pistols, +and pointed with his finger to an open ledger. In this +ledger was made out an exact balancesheet of his affair's. +Morrel had to pay, within half an hour, , francs. All +he possessed was , francs. "Read" said Morrel. +The young man was overwhelmed as he read. Morrel said not a +word. What could he say? What need he add to such a +desperate proof in figures? "And have you done all that is +possible, father, to meet this disastrous result?" asked the +young man, after a moment's pause. "I have," replied Morrel. +"You have no money coming in on which you can rely?" +"None." +"You have exhausted every resource?" +"All." +"And in half an hour," said Maximilian in a gloomy voice, +"our name is dishonored" +"Blood washes out dishonor," said Morrel. +"You are right, father I understand you." Then extending +his hand towards one of the pistols, he said, "There is one +for you and one for me thanks" Morrel caught his hand. +"Your mother your sister Who will support them?" A +shudder ran through the young man's frame. "Father," he +said, "do you reflect that you are bidding me to live?" +"Yes, I do so bid you," answered Morrel, "it is your duty. +You have a calm, strong mind, Maximilian. Maximilian, you +are no ordinary man. I make no requests or commands I only +ask you to examine my position as if it were your own, and +then judge for yourself." +The young man reflected for a moment, then an expression of +sublime resignation appeared in his eyes, and with a slow +and sad gesture he took off his two epaulets, the insignia +of his rank. "Be it so, then, my father," he said, extending +his hand to Morrel, "die in peace, my father I will live." +Morrel was about to cast himself on his knees before his +son, but Maximilian caught him in his arms, and those two +noble hearts were pressed against each other for a moment. +"You know it is not my fault," said Morrel. Maximilian +smiled. "I know, father, you are the most honorable man I +have ever known." +"Good, my son. And now there is no more to be said go and +rejoin your mother and sister." +"My father," said the young man, bending his knee, "bless +me" Morrel took the head of his son between his two hands, +drew him forward, and kissing his forehead several times +said, "Oh, yes, yes, I bless you in my own name, and in the +name of three generations of irreproachable men, who say +through me, "The edifice which misfortune has destroyed, +providence may build up again.' On seeing me die such a +death, the most inexorable will have pity on you. To you, +perhaps, they will accord the time they have refused to me. +Then do your best to keep our name free from dishonor. Go to +work, labor, young man, struggle ardently and courageously +live, yourself, your mother and sister, with the most rigid +economy, so that from day to day the property of those whom +I leave in your hands may augment and fructify. Reflect how +glorious a day it will be, how grand, how solemn, that day +of complete restoration, on which you will say in this very +office, "My father died because he could not do what I have +this day done but he died calmly and peaceably, because in +dying he knew what I should do.'" +"My father, my father" cried the young man, "why should you +not live?" +"If I live, all would be changed if I live, interest would +be converted into doubt, pity into hostility if I live I am +only a man who his broken his word, failed in his +engagements in fact, only a bankrupt. If, on the +contrary, I die, remember, Maximilian, my corpse is that of +an honest but unfortunate man. Living, my best friends would +avoid my house dead, all Marseilles will follow me in tears +to my last home. Living, you would feel shame at my name +dead, you may raise your head and say, "I am the son of him +you killed, because, for the first time, he has been +compelled to break his word.'" +The young man uttered a groan, but appeared resigned. +"And now," said Morrel, "leave me alone, and endeavor to +keep your mother and sister away." +"Will you not see my sister once more?" asked Maximilian. A +last but final hope was concealed by the young man in the +effect of this interview, and therefore he had suggested it. +Morrel shook his head. "I saw her this morning, and bade her +adieu." +"Have you no particular commands to leave with me, my +father?" inquired Maximilian in a faltering voice. +"Yes my son, and a sacred command." +"Say it, my father." +"The house of Thomson French is the only one who, from +humanity, or, it may be, selfishness it is not for me to +read men's hearts has had any pity for me. Its agent, who +will in ten minutes present himself to receive the amount of +a bill of , francs, I will not say granted, but +offered me three months. Let this house be the first repaid, +my son, and respect this man." +"Father, I will," said Maximilian. +"And now, once more, adieu," said Morrel. "Go, leave me I +would be alone. You will find my will in the secretary in my +bedroom." +The young man remained standing and motionless, having but +the force of will and not the power of execution. +"Hear me, Maximilian," said his father. "Suppose I was a +soldier like you, and ordered to carry a certain redoubt, +and you knew I must be killed in the assault, would you not +say to me, as you said just now, "Go, father for you are +dishonored by delay, and death is preferable to shame'" +"Yes, yes," said the young man, "yes" and once again +embracing his father with convulsive pressure, he said, "Be +it so, my father." +And he rushed out of the study. When his son had left him, +Morrel remained an instant standing with his eyes fixed on +the door then putting forth his arm, he pulled the bell. +After a moment's interval, Cocles appeared. +It was no longer the same man the fearful revelations of +the three last days had crushed him. This thought the +house of Morrel is about to stop payment bent him to the +earth more than twenty years would otherwise have done. +"My worthy Cocles," said Morrel in a tone impossible to +describe, "do you remain in the antechamber. When the +gentleman who came three months ago the agent of Thomson + French arrives, announce his arrival to me." Cocles +made no reply he made a sign with his head, went into the +anteroom, and seated himself. Morrel fell back in his chair, +his eyes fixed on the clock there were seven minutes left, +that was all. The hand moved on with incredible rapidity, he +seemed to see its motion. +What passed in the mind of this man at the supreme moment of +his agony cannot be told in words. He was still +comparatively young, he was surrounded by the loving care of +a devoted family, but he had convinced himself by a course +of reasoning, illogical perhaps, yet certainly plausible, +that he must separate himself from all he held dear in the +world, even life itself. To form the slightest idea of his +feelings, one must have seen his face with its expression of +enforced resignation and its tearmoistened eyes raised to +heaven. The minute hand moved on. The pistols were loaded +he stretched forth his hand, took one up, and murmured his +daughter's name. Then he laid it down seized his pen, and +wrote a few words. It seemed to him as if he had not taken a +sufficient farewell of his beloved daughter. Then he turned +again to the clock, counting time now not by minutes, but by +seconds. He took up the deadly weapon again, his lips parted +and his eyes fixed on the clock, and then shuddered at the +click of the trigger as he cocked the pistol. At this moment +of mortal anguish the cold sweat came forth upon his brow, a +pang stronger than death clutched at his heartstrings. He +heard the door of the staircase creak on its hinges the +clock gave its warning to strike eleven the door of his +study opened Morrel did not turn round he expected these +words of Cocles, "The agent of Thomson French." +He placed the muzzle of the pistol between his teeth. +Suddenly he heard a cry it was his daughter's voice. He +turned and saw Julie. The pistol fell from his hands. "My +father" cried the young girl, out of breath, and half dead +with joy "saved, you are saved" And she threw herself +into his arms, holding in her extended hand a red, netted +silk purse. +"Saved, my child" said Morrel "what do you mean?" +"Yes, saved saved See, see" said the young girl. +Morrel took the purse, and started as he did so, for a vague +remembrance reminded him that it once belonged to himself. +At one end was the receipted bill for the , francs, +and at the other was a diamond as large as a hazelnut, with +these words on a small slip of parchment Julie's Dowry. +Morrel passed his hand over his brow it seemed to him a +dream. At this moment the clock struck eleven. He felt as if +each stroke of the hammer fell upon his heart. "Explain, my +child," he said, "Explain, my child," he said, "explain +where did you find this purse?" +"In a house in the Allees de Meillan, No. , on the corner +of a mantelpiece in a small room on the fifth floor." +"But," cried Morrel, "this purse is not yours" Julie handed +to her father the letter she had received in the morning. +"And did you go alone?" asked Morrel, after he had read it. +"Emmanuel accompanied me, father. He was to have waited for +me at the corner of the Rue de Musee, but, strange to say, +he was not there when I returned." +"Monsieur Morrel" exclaimed a voice on the stairs. +"Monsieur Morrel" +"It is his voice" said Julie. At this moment Emmanuel +entered, his countenance full of animation and joy. "The +Pharaon" he cried "the Pharaon" +"What what the Pharaon Are you mad, Emmanuel? You +know the vessel is lost." +"The Pharaon, sir they signal the Pharaon The Pharaon is +entering the harbor" Morrel fell back in his chair, his +strength was failing him his understanding weakened by such +events, refused to comprehend such incredible, unheardof, +fabulous facts. But his son came in. "Father," cried +Maximilian, "how could you say the Pharaon was lost? The +lookout has signalled her, and they say she is now coming +into port." +"My dear friends," said Morrel, "if this be so, it must be a +miracle of heaven Impossible, impossible" +But what was real and not less incredible was the purse he +held in his hand, the acceptance receipted the splendid +diamond. +"Ah, sir," exclaimed Cocles, "what can it mean? the +Pharaon?" +"Come, dear ones," said Morrel, rising from his seat, "let +us go and see, and heaven have pity upon us if it be false +intelligence" They all went out, and on the stairs met +Madame Morrel, who had been afraid to go up into the study. +In a moment they were at the Cannebiere. There was a crowd +on the pier. All the crowd gave way before Morrel. "The +Pharaon, the Pharaon" said every voice. +And, wonderful to see, in front of the tower of SaintJean, +was a ship bearing on her stern these words, printed in +white letters, "The Pharaon, Morrel Son, of Marseilles." +She was the exact duplicate of the other Pharaon, and +loaded, as that had been, with cochineal and indigo. She +cast anchor, clued up sails, and on the deck was Captain +Gaumard giving orders, and good old Penelon making signals +to M. Morrel. To doubt any longer was impossible there was +the evidence of the senses, and ten thousand persons who +came to corroborate the testimony. As Morrel and his son +embraced on the pierhead, in the presence and amid the +applause of the whole city witnessing this event, a man, +with his face halfcovered by a black beard, and who, +concealed behind the sentrybox, watched the scene with +delight, uttered these words in a low tone "Be happy, noble +heart, be blessed for all the good thou hast done and wilt +do hereafter, and let my gratitude remain in obscurity like +your good deeds." +And with a smile expressive of supreme content, he left his +hidingplace, and without being observed, descended one of +the flights of steps provided for debarkation, and hailing +three times, shouted "Jacopo, Jacopo, Jacopo" Then a launch +came to shore, took him on board, and conveyed him to a +yacht splendidly fitted up, on whose deck he sprung with the +activity of a sailor thence he once again looked towards +Morrel, who, weeping with joy, was shaking hands most +cordially with all the crowd around him, and thanking with a +look the unknown benefactor whom he seemed to be seeking in +the skies. "And now," said the unknown, "farewell kindness, +humanity, and gratitude Farewell to all the feelings that +expand the heart I have been heaven's substitute to +recompense the good now the god of vengeance yields to me +his power to punish the wicked" At these words he gave a +signal, and, as if only awaiting this signal, the yacht +instantly put out to sea. +Chapter +Italy Sinbad the Sailor. +Towards the beginning of the year , two young men +belonging to the first society of Paris, the Vicomte Albert +de Morcerf and the Baron Franz d'Epinay, were at Florence. +They had agreed to see the Carnival at Rome that year, and +that Franz, who for the last three or four years had +inhabited Italy, should act as cicerone to Albert. As it is +no inconsiderable affair to spend the Carnival at Rome, +especially when you have no great desire to sleep on the +Piazza del Popolo, or the Campo Vaccino, they wrote to +Signor Pastrini, the proprietor of the Hotel de Londres, +Piazza di Spagna, to reserve comfortable apartments for +them. Signor Pastrini replied that he had only two rooms and +a parlor on the third floor, which he offered at the low +charge of a louis per diem. They accepted his offer but +wishing to make the best use of the time that was left, +Albert started for Naples. As for Franz, he remained at +Florence, and after having passed a few days in exploring +the paradise of the Cascine, and spending two or three +evenings at the houses of the Florentine nobility, he took a +fancy into his head having already visited Corsica, the +cradle of Bonaparte to visit Elba, the waitingplace of +Napoleon. +One evening he cast off the painter of a sailboat from the +iron ring that secured it to the dock at Leghorn, wrapped +himself in his coat and lay down, and said to the crew, +"To the Island of Elba" The boat shot out of the harbor +like a bird and the next morning Franz disembarked at +PortoFerrajo. He traversed the island, after having +followed the traces which the footsteps of the giant have +left, and reembarked for Marciana. Two hours after he again +landed at Pianosa, where he was assured that red partridges +abounded. The sport was bad Franz only succeeded in killing +a few partridges, and, like every unsuccessful sportsman, he +returned to the boat very much out of temper. "Ah, if your +excellency chose," said the captain, "you might have capital +sport." +"Where?" +"Do you see that island?" continued the captain, pointing to +a conical pile rising from the indigo sea. +"Well, what is this island?" +"The Island of Monte Cristo." +"But I have no permission to shoot over this island." +"Your excellency does not require a permit, for the island +is uninhabited." +"Ah, indeed" said the young man. "A desert island in the +midst of the Mediterranean must be a curiosity." +"It is very natural this island is a mass of rocks, and +does not contain an acre of land capable of cultivation." +"To whom does this island belong?" +"To Tuscany." +"What game shall I find there" +"Thousands of wild goats." +"Who live upon the stones, I suppose," said Franz with an +incredulous smile. +"No, but by browsing the shrubs and trees that grow out of +the crevices of the rocks." +"Where can I sleep?" +"On shore in the grottos, or on board in your cloak +besides, if your excellency pleases, we can leave as soon as +you like we can sail as well by night as by day, and if +the wind drops we can use our oars." +As Franz had sufficient time, and his apartments at Rome +were not yet available, he accepted the proposition. Upon +his answer in the affirmative, the sailors exchanged a few +words together in a low tone. "Well," asked he, "what now? +Is there any difficulty in the way?" +"No." replied the captain, "but we must warn your excellency +that the island is an infected port." +"What do you mean?" +"Monte Cristo although uninhabited, yet serves occasionally +as a refuge for the smugglers and pirates who come from +Corsica, Sardinia, and Africa, and if it becomes known that +we have been there, we shall have to perform quarantine for +six days on our return to Leghorn." +"The deuce That puts a different face on the matter. Six +days Why, that's as long as the Almighty took to make the +world Too long a wait too long." +"But who will say your excellency has been to Monte Cristo?" +"Oh, I shall not," cried Franz. +"Nor I, nor I," chorused the sailors. +"Then steer for Monte Cristo." +The captain gave his orders, the helm was put up, and the +boat was soon sailing in the direction of the island. Franz +waited until all was in order, and when the sail was filled, +and the four sailors had taken their places three +forward, and one at the helm he resumed the conversation. +"Gaetano," said he to the captain, "you tell me Monte Cristo +serves as a refuge for pirates, who are, it seems to me, a +very different kind of game from the goats." +"Yes, your excellency, and it is true." +"I knew there were smugglers, but I thought that since the +capture of Algiers, and the destruction of the regency, +pirates existed only in the romances of Cooper and Captain +Marryat." +"Your excellency is mistaken there are pirates, like the +bandits who were believed to have been exterminated by Pope +Leo XII., and who yet, every day, rob travellers at the +gates of Rome. Has not your excellency heard that the French +charge d'affaires was robbed six months ago within five +hundred paces of Velletri?" +"Oh, yes, I heard that." +"Well, then, if, like us, your excellency lived at Leghorn, +you would hear, from time to time, that a little merchant +vessel, or an English yacht that was expected at Bastia, at +PortoFerrajo, or at Civita Vecchia, has not arrived no one +knows what has become of it, but, doubtless, it has struck +on a rock and foundered. Now this rock it has met has been a +long and narrow boat, manned by six or eight men, who have +surprised and plundered it, some dark and stormy night, near +some desert and gloomy island, as bandits plunder a carriage +in the recesses of a forest." +"But," asked Franz, who lay wrapped in his cloak at the +bottom of the boat, "why do not those who have been +plundered complain to the French, Sardinian, or Tuscan +governments?" +"Why?" said Gaetano with a smile. +"Yes, why?" +"Because, in the first place, they transfer from the vessel +to their own boat whatever they think worth taking, then +they bind the crew hand and foot, they attach to every one's +neck a four and twenty pound ball, a large hole is chopped +in the vessel's bottom, and then they leave her. At the end +of ten minutes the vessel begins to roll heavily and settle +down. First one gun'l goes under, then the other. Then they +lift and sink again, and both go under at once. All at once +there's a noise like a cannon that's the air blowing up +the deck. Soon the water rushes out of the scupperholes +like a whale spouting, the vessel gives a last groan, spins +round and round, and disappears, forming a vast whirlpool in +the ocean, and then all is over, so that in five minutes +nothing but the eye of God can see the vessel where she lies +at the bottom of the sea. Do you understand now," said the +captain, "why no complaints are made to the government, and +why the vessel never reaches port?" +It is probable that if Gaetano had related this previous to +proposing the expedition, Franz would have hesitated, but +now that they had started, he thought it would be cowardly +to draw back. He was one of those men who do not rashly +court danger, but if danger presents itself, combat it with +the most unalterable coolness. Calm and resolute, he treated +any peril as he would an adversary in a duel, calculated +its probable method of approach retreated, if at all, as a +point of strategy and not from cowardice was quick to see +an opening for attack, and won victory at a single thrust. +"Bah" said he, "I have travelled through Sicily and +Calabria I have sailed two months in the Archipelago, and +yet I never saw even the shadow of a bandit or a pirate." +"I did not tell your excellency this to deter you from your +project," replied Gaetano, "but you questioned me, and I +have answered that's all." +"Yes, and your conversation is most interesting and as I +wish to enjoy it as long as possible, steer for Monte +Cristo." +The wind blew strongly, the boat made six or seven knots an +hour, and they were rapidly reaching the end of their +voyage. As they drew near the island seemed to lift from the +sea, and the air was so clear that they could already +distinguish the rocks heaped on one another, like cannon +balls in an arsenal, with green bushes and trees growing in +the crevices. As for the sailors, although they appeared +perfectly tranquil yet it was evident that they were on the +alert, and that they carefully watched the glassy surface +over which they were sailing, and on which a few +fishingboats, with their white sails, were alone visible. +They were within fifteen miles of Monte Cristo when the sun +began to set behind Corsica, whose mountains appeared +against the sky, showing their rugged peaks in bold relief +this mass of rock, like the giant Adamastor, rose dead +ahead, a formidable barrier, and intercepting the light that +gilded its massive peaks so that the voyagers were in +shadow. Little by little the shadow rose higher and seemed +to drive before it the last rays of the expiring day at +last the reflection rested on the summit of the mountain, +where it paused an instant, like the fiery crest of a +volcano, then gloom gradually covered the summit as it had +covered the base, and the island now only appeared to be a +gray mountain that grew continually darker half an hour +after, the night was quite dark. +Fortunately, the mariners were used to these latitudes, and +knew every rock in the Tuscan Archipelago for in the midst +of this obscurity Franz was not without uneasiness +Corsica had long since disappeared, and Monte Cristo itself +was invisible but the sailors seemed, like the lynx, to see +in the dark, and the pilot who steered did not evince the +slightest hesitation. An hour had passed since the sun had +set, when Franz fancied he saw, at a quarter of a mile to +the left, a dark mass, but he could not precisely make out +what it was, and fearing to excite the mirth of the sailors +by mistaking a floating cloud for land, he remained silent +suddenly a great light appeared on the strand land might +resemble a cloud, but the fire was not a meteor. "What is +this light?" asked he. +"Hush" said the captain "it is a fire." +"But you told me the island was uninhabited?" +"I said there were no fixed habitations on it, but I said +also that it served sometimes as a harbor for smugglers." +"And for pirates?" +"And for pirates," returned Gaetano, repeating Franz's +words. "It is for that reason I have given orders to pass +the island, for, as you see, the fire is behind us." +"But this fire?" continued Franz. "It seems to me rather +reassuring than otherwise men who did not wish to be seen +would not light a fire." +"Oh, that goes for nothing," said Gaetano. "If you can guess +the position of the island in the darkness, you will see +that the fire cannot be seen from the side or from Pianosa, +but only from the sea." +"You think, then, this fire indicates the presence of +unpleasant neighbors?" +"That is what we must find out," returned Gaetano, fixing +his eyes on this terrestrial star. +"How can you find out?" +"You shall see." Gaetano consulted with his companions, and +after five minutes' discussion a manoeuvre was executed +which caused the vessel to tack about, they returned the way +they had come, and in a few minutes the fire disappeared, +hidden by an elevation of the land. The pilot again changed +the course of the boat, which rapidly approached the island, +and was soon within fifty paces of it. Gaetano lowered the +sail, and the boat came to rest. All this was done in +silence, and from the moment that their course was changed +not a word was spoken. +Gaetano, who had proposed the expedition, had taken all the +responsibility on himself the four sailors fixed their eyes +on him, while they got out their oars and held themselves in +readiness to row away, which, thanks to the darkness, would +not be difficult. As for Franz, he examined his arms with +the utmost coolness he had two doublebarrelled guns and a +rifle he loaded them, looked at the priming, and waited +quietly. During this time the captain had thrown off his +vest and shirt, and secured his trousers round his waist +his feet were naked, so he had no shoes and stockings to +take off after these preparations he placed his finger on +his lips, and lowering himself noiselessly into the sea, +swam towards the shore with such precaution that it was +impossible to hear the slightest sound he could only be +traced by the phosphorescent line in his wake. This track +soon disappeared it was evident that he had touched the +shore. Every one on board remained motionless for half an +hour, when the same luminous track was again observed, and +the swimmer was soon on board. "Well?" exclaimed Franz and +the sailors in unison. +"They are Spanish smugglers," said he "they have with them +two Corsican bandits." +"And what are these Corsican bandits doing here with Spanish +smugglers?" +"Alas," returned the captain with an accent of the most +profound pity, "we ought always to help one another. Very +often the bandits are hard pressed by gendarmes or +carbineers well, they see a vessel, and good fellows like +us on board, they come and demand hospitality of us you +can't refuse help to a poor hunted devil we receive them, +and for greater security we stand out to sea. This costs us +nothing, and saves the life, or at least the liberty, of a +fellowcreature, who on the first occasion returns the +service by pointing out some safe spot where we can land our +goods without interruption." +"Ah" said Franz, "then you are a smuggler occasionally, +Gaetano?" +"Your excellency, we must live somehow," returned the other, +smiling impenetrably. +"Then you know the men who are now on Monte Cristo?" +"Oh, yes, we sailors are like freemasons, and recognize each +other by signs." +"And do you think we have nothing to fear if we land?" +"Nothing at all smugglers are not thieves." +"But these two Corsican bandits?" said Franz, calculating +the chances of peril. +"It is not their fault that they are bandits, but that of +the authorities." +"How so?" +"Because they are pursued for having made a stiff, as if it +was not in a Corsican's nature to revenge himself." +"What do you mean by having made a stiff? having +assassinated a man?" said Franz, continuing his +investigation. +"I mean that they have killed an enemy, which is a very +different thing," returned the captain. +"Well," said the young man, "let us demand hospitality of +these smugglers and bandits. Do you think they will grant +it?" +"Without doubt." +"How many are they?" +"Four, and the two bandits make six." +"Just our number, so that if they prove troublesome, we +shall be able to hold them in check so, for the last time, +steer to Monte Cristo." +"Yes, but your excellency will permit us to take all due +precautions." +"By all means, be as wise as Nestor and as prudent as +Ulysses I do more than permit, I exhort you." +"Silence, then" said Gaetano. +Every one obeyed. For a man who, like Franz, viewed his +position in its true light, it was a grave one. He was alone +in the darkness with sailors whom he did not know, and who +had no reason to be devoted to him who knew that he had +several thousand francs in his belt, and who had often +examined his weapons, which were very beautiful, if +not with envy, at least with curiosity. On the other hand, +he was about to land, without any other escort than these +men, on an island which had, indeed, a very religious name, +but which did not seem to Franz likely to afford him much +hospitality, thanks to the smugglers and bandits. The +history of the scuttled vessels, which had appeared +improbable during the day, seemed very probable at night +placed as he was between two possible sources of danger, he +kept his eye on the crew, and his gun in his hand. The +sailors had again hoisted sail, and the vessel was once more +cleaving the waves. Through the darkness Franz, whose eyes +were now more accustomed to it, could see the looming shore +along which the boat was sailing, and then, as they rounded +a rocky point, he saw the fire more brilliant than ever, and +about it five or six persons seated. The blaze illumined the +sea for a hundred paces around. Gaetano skirted the light, +carefully keeping the boat in the shadow then, when they +were opposite the fire, he steered to the centre of the +circle, singing a fishing song, of which his companions sung +the chorus. At the first words of the song the men seated +round the fire arose and approached the landingplace, their +eyes fixed on the boat, evidently seeking to know who the +newcomers were and what were their intentions. They soon +appeared satisfied and returned with the exception of one, +who remained at the shore to their fire, at which the +carcass of a goat was roasting. When the boat was within +twenty paces of the shore, the man on the beach, who carried +a carbine, presented arms after the manner of a sentinel, +and cried, "Who comes there?" in Sardinian. Franz coolly +cocked both barrels. Gaetano then exchanged a few words with +this man which the traveller did not understand, but which +evidently concerned him. "Will your excellency give your +name, or remain incognito?" asked the captain. +"My name must rest unknown, merely say I am a Frenchman +travelling for pleasure." As soon as Gaetano had transmitted +this answer, the sentinel gave an order to one of the men +seated round the fire, who rose and disappeared among the +rocks. Not a word was spoken, every one seemed occupied, +Franz with his disembarkment, the sailors with their sails, +the smugglers with their goat but in the midst of all this +carelessness it was evident that they mutually observed each +other. The man who had disappeared returned suddenly on the +opposite side to that by which he had left he made a sign +with his head to the sentinel, who, turning to the boat, +said, "S'accommodi." The Italian s'accommodi is +untranslatable it means at once, "Come, enter, you are +welcome make yourself at home you are the master." It is +like that Turkish phrase of Moliere's that so astonished the +bourgeois gentleman by the number of things implied in its +utterance. The sailors did not wait for a second invitation +four strokes of the oar brought them to land Gaetano sprang +to shore, exchanged a few words with the sentinel, then his +comrades disembarked, and lastly came Franz. One of his guns +was swung over his shoulder, Gaetano had the other, and a +sailor held his rifle his dress, half artist, half dandy, +did not excite any suspicion, and, consequently, no +disquietude. The boat was moored to the shore, and they +advanced a few paces to find a comfortable bivouac but, +doubtless, the spot they chose did not suit the smuggler who +filled the post of sentinel, for he cried out, "Not that +way, if you please." +Gaetano faltered an excuse, and advanced to the opposite +side, while two sailors kindled torches at the fire to light +them on their way. They advanced about thirty paces, and +then stopped at a small esplanade surrounded with rocks, in +which seats had been cut, not unlike sentryboxes. Around in +the crevices of the rocks grew a few dwarf oaks and thick +bushes of myrtles. Franz lowered a torch, and saw by the +mass of cinders that had accumulated that he was not the +first to discover this retreat, which was, doubtless, one of +the haltingplaces of the wandering visitors of Monte +Cristo. As for his suspicions, once on terra firma, once +that he had seen the indifferent, if not friendly, +appearance of his hosts, his anxiety had quite disappeared, +or rather, at sight of the goat, had turned to appetite. He +mentioned this to Gaetano, who replied that nothing could be +more easy than to prepare a supper when they had in their +boat, bread, wine, half a dozen partridges, and a good fire +to roast them by. "Besides," added he, "if the smell of +their roast meat tempts you, I will go and offer them two of +our birds for a slice." +"You are a born diplomat," returned Franz "go and try." +Meanwhile the sailors had collected dried sticks and +branches with which they made a fire. Franz waited +impatiently, inhaling the aroma of the roasted meat, when +the captain returned with a mysterious air. +"Well," said Franz, "anything new? do they refuse?" +"On the contrary," returned Gaetano, "the chief, who was +told you were a young Frenchman, invites you to sup with +him." +"Well," observed Franz, "this chief is very polite, and I +see no objection the more so as I bring my share of the +supper." +"Oh, it is not that he has plenty, and to spare, for +supper but he makes one condition, and rather a peculiar +one, before he will receive you at his house." +"His house? Has he built one here, then?" +"No but he has a very comfortable one all the same, so they +say." +"You know this chief, then?" +"I have heard talk of him." +"Favorably or otherwise?" +"Both." +"The deuce and what is this condition?" +"That you are blindfolded, and do not take off the bandage +until he himself bids you." Franz looked at Gaetano, to see, +if possible, what he thought of this proposal. "Ah," replied +he, guessing Franz's thought, "I know this is a serious +matter." +"What should you do in my place?" +"I, who have nothing to lose, I should go." +"You would accept?" +"Yes, were it only out of curiosity." +"There is something very peculiar about this chief, then?" +"Listen," said Gaetano, lowering his voice, "I do not know +if what they say is true" he stopped to see if any one +was near. +"What do they say?" +"That this chief inhabits a cavern to which the Pitti Palace +is nothing." +"What nonsense" said Franz, reseating himself. +"It is no nonsense it is quite true. Cama, the pilot of the +Saint Ferdinand, went in once, and he came back amazed, +vowing that such treasures were only to be heard of in fairy +tales." +"Do you know," observed Franz, "that with such stories you +make me think of Ali Baba's enchanted cavern?" +"I tell you what I have been told." +"Then you advise me to accept?" +"Oh, I don't say that your excellency will do as you +please I should be sorry to advise you in the matter." +Franz pondered the matter for a few moments, concluded that +a man so rich could not have any intention of plundering him +of what little he had, and seeing only the prospect of a +good supper, accepted. Gaetano departed with the reply. +Franz was prudent, and wished to learn all he possibly could +concerning his host. He turned towards the sailor, who, +during this dialogue, had sat gravely plucking the +partridges with the air of a man proud of his office, and +asked him how these men had landed, as no vessel of any kind +was visible. +"Never mind that," returned the sailor, "I know their +vessel." +"Is it a very beautiful vessel?" +"I would not wish for a better to sail round the world." +"Of what burden is she?" +"About a hundred tons but she is built to stand any +weather. She is what the English call a yacht." +"Where was she built?" +"I know not but my own opinion is she is a Genoese." +"And how did a leader of smugglers," continued Franz, +"venture to build a vessel designed for such a purpose at +Genoa?" +"I did not say that the owner was a smuggler," replied the +sailor. +"No but Gaetano did, I thought." +"Gaetano had only seen the vessel from a distance, he had +not then spoken to any one." +"And if this person be not a smuggler, who is he?" +"A wealthy signor, who travels for his pleasure." +"Come," thought Franz, "he is still more mysterious, since +the two accounts do not agree." +"What is his name?" +"If you ask him he says Sinbad the Sailor but I doubt if it +be his real name." +"Sinbad the Sailor?" +"Yes." +"And where does he reside?" +"On the sea." +"What country does he come from?" +"I do not know." +"Have you ever seen him?" +"Sometimes." +"What sort of a man is he?" +"Your excellency will judge for yourself." +"Where will he receive me?" +"No doubt in the subterranean palace Gaetano told you of." +"Have you never had the curiosity, when you have landed and +found this island deserted, to seek for this enchanted +palace?" +"Oh, yes, more than once, but always in vain we examined +the grotto all over, but we never could find the slightest +trace of any opening they say that the door is not opened +by a key, but a magic word." +"Decidedly," muttered Franz, "this is an Arabian Nights' +adventure." +"His excellency waits for you," said a voice, which he +recognized as that of the sentinel. He was accompanied by +two of the yacht's crew. Franz drew his handkerchief from +his pocket, and presented it to the man who had spoken to +him. Without uttering a word, they bandaged his eyes with a +care that showed their apprehensions of his committing some +indiscretion. Afterwards he was made to promise that he +would not make the least attempt to raise the bandage. He +promised. Then his two guides took his arms, and he went on, +guided by them, and preceded by the sentinel. After going +about thirty paces, he smelt the appetizing odor of the kid +that was roasting, and knew thus that he was passing the +bivouac they then led him on about fifty paces farther, +evidently advancing towards that part of the shore where +they would not allow Gaetano to go a refusal he could now +comprehend. Presently, by a change in the atmosphere, he +knew that they were entering a cave after going on for a +few seconds more he heard a crackling, and it seemed to him +as though the atmosphere again changed, and became balmy and +perfumed. At length his feet touched on a thick and soft +carpet, and his guides let go their hold of him. There was a +moment's silence, and then a voice, in excellent French, +although, with a foreign accent, said, "Welcome, sir. I beg +you will remove your bandage." It may be supposed, then, +Franz did not wait for a repetition of this permission, but +took off the handkerchief, and found himself in the presence +of a man from thirtyeight to forty years of age, dressed in +a Tunisian costume that is to say, a red cap with a long +blue silk tassel, a vest of black cloth embroidered with +gold, pantaloons of deep red, large and full gaiters of the +same color, embroidered with gold like the vest, and yellow +slippers he had a splendid cashmere round his waist, and a +small sharp and crooked cangiar was passed through his +girdle. Although of a paleness that was almost livid, this +man had a remarkably handsome face his eyes were +penetrating and sparkling his nose, quite straight, and +projecting direct from the brow, was of the pure Greek type, +while his teeth, as white as pearls, were set off to +admiration by the black mustache that encircled them. +His pallor was so peculiar, that it seemed to pertain to one +who had been long entombed, and who was incapable of +resuming the healthy glow and hue of life. He was not +particularly tall, but extremely well made, and, like the +men of the south, had small hands and feet. But what +astonished Franz, who had treated Gaetano's description as a +fable, was the splendor of the apartment in which he found +himself. The entire chamber was lined with crimson brocade, +worked with flowers of gold. In a recess was a kind of +divan, surmounted with a stand of Arabian swords in silver +scabbards, and the handles resplendent with gems from the +ceiling hung a lamp of Venetian glass, of beautiful shape +and color, while the feet rested on a Turkey carpet, in +which they sunk to the instep tapestry hung before the door +by which Franz had entered, and also in front of another +door, leading into a second apartment which seemed to be +brilliantly illuminated. The host gave Franz time to recover +from his surprise, and, moreover, returned look for look, +not even taking his eyes off him. "Sir," he said, after a +pause, "a thousand excuses for the precaution taken in your +introduction hither but as, during the greater portion of +the year, this island is deserted, if the secret of this +abode were discovered. I should doubtless, find on my return +my temporary retirement in a state of great disorder, which +would be exceedingly annoying, not for the loss it +occasioned me, but because I should not have the certainty I +now possess of separating myself from all the rest of +mankind at pleasure. Let me now endeavor to make you forget +this temporary unpleasantness, and offer you what no doubt +you did not expect to find here that is to say, a +tolerable supper and pretty comfortable beds." +"Ma foi, my dear sir," replied Franz, "make no apologies. I +have always observed that they bandage people's eyes who +penetrate enchanted palaces, for instance, those of Raoul in +the "Huguenots,' and really I have nothing to complain of, +for what I see makes me think of the wonders of the "Arabian +Nights.'" +"Alas, I may say with Lucullus, if I could have anticipated +the honor of your visit, I would have prepared for it. But +such as is my hermitage, it is at your disposal such as is +my supper, it is yours to share, if you will. Ali, is the +supper ready?" At this moment the tapestry moved aside, and +a Nubian, black as ebony, and dressed in a plain white +tunic, made a sign to his master that all was prepared in +the diningroom. "Now," said the unknown to Franz, "I do not +know if you are of my opinion, but I think nothing is more +annoying than to remain two or three hours together without +knowing by name or appellation how to address one another. +Pray observe, that I too much respect the laws of +hospitality to ask your name or title. I only request you to +give me one by which I may have the pleasure of addressing +you. As for myself, that I may put you at your ease, I tell +you that I am generally called "Sinbad the Sailor.'" +"And I," replied Franz, "will tell you, as I only require +his wonderful lamp to make me precisely like Aladdin, that I +see no reason why at this moment I should not be called +Aladdin. That will keep us from going away from the East +whither I am tempted to think I have been conveyed by some +good genius." +"Well, then, Signor Aladdin," replied the singular +amphitryon, "you heard our repast announced, will you now +take the trouble to enter the diningroom, your humble +servant going first to show the way?" At these words, moving +aside the tapestry, Sinbad preceded his guest. Franz now +looked upon another scene of enchantment the table was +splendidly covered, and once convinced of this important +point he cast his eyes around him. The diningroom was +scarcely less striking than the room he had just left it +was entirely of marble, with antique basreliefs of +priceless value and at the four corners of this apartment, +which was oblong, were four magnificent statues, having +baskets in their hands. These baskets contained four +pyramids of most splendid fruit there were Sicily +pineapples, pomegranates from Malaga, oranges from the +Balearic Isles, peaches from France, and dates from Tunis. +The supper consisted of a roast pheasant garnished with +Corsican blackbirds a boar's ham with jelly, a quarter of a +kid with tartar sauce, a glorious turbot, and a gigantic +lobster. Between these large dishes were smaller ones +containing various dainties. The dishes were of silver, and +the plates of Japanese china. +Franz rubbed his eyes in order to assure himself that this +was not a dream. Ali alone was present to wait at table, and +acquitted himself so admirably, that the guest complimented +his host thereupon. "Yes," replied he, while he did the +honors of the supper with much ease and grace "yes, he is +a poor devil who is much devoted to me, and does all he can +to prove it. He remembers that I saved his life, and as he +has a regard for his head, he feels some gratitude towards +me for having kept it on his shoulders." Ali approached his +master, took his hand, and kissed it. +"Would it be impertinent, Signor Sinbad," said Franz, "to +ask you the particulars of this kindness?" +"Oh, they are simple enough," replied the host. "It seems +the fellow had been caught wandering nearer to the harem of +the Bey of Tunis than etiquette permits to one of his color, +and he was condemned by the bey to have his tongue cut out, +and his hand and head cut off the tongue the first day, the +hand the second, and the head the third. I always had a +desire to have a mute in my service, so learning the day his +tongue was cut out, I went to the bey, and proposed to give +him for Ali a splendid doublebarreled gun which I knew he +was very desirous of having. He hesitated a moment, he was +so very desirous to complete the poor devil's punishment. +But when I added to the gun an English cutlass with which I +had shivered his highness's yataghan to pieces, the bey +yielded, and agreed to forgive the hand and head, but on +condition that the poor fellow never again set foot in +Tunis. This was a useless clause in the bargain, for +whenever the coward sees the first glimpse of the shores of +Africa, he runs down below, and can only be induced to +appear again when we are out of sight of that quarter of the +globe." +Franz remained a moment silent and pensive, hardly knowing +what to think of the halfkindness, halfcruelty, with which +his host related the brief narrative. "And like the +celebrated sailor whose name you have assumed," he said, by +way of changing the conversation, "you pass your life in +travelling?" +"Yes. I made a vow at a time when I little thought I should +ever be able to accomplish it," said the unknown with a +singular smile "and I made some others also which I hope I +may fulfil in due season." Although Sinbad pronounced these +words with much calmness, his eyes gave forth gleams of +extraordinary ferocity. +"You have suffered a great deal, sir?" said Franz +inquiringly. +Sinbad started and looked fixedly at him, as he replied, +"What makes you suppose so?" +"Everything," answered Franz, "your voice, your look, +your pallid complexion, and even the life you lead." +"I? I live the happiest life possible, the real life of a +pasha. I am king of all creation. I am pleased with one +place, and stay there I get tired of it, and leave it I am +free as a bird and have wings like one my attendants obey +my slightest wish. Sometimes I amuse myself by delivering +some bandit or criminal from the bonds of the law. Then I +have my mode of dispensing justice, silent and sure, without +respite or appeal, which condemns or pardons, and which no +one sees. Ah, if you had tasted my life, you would not +desire any other, and would never return to the world unless +you had some great project to accomplish there." +"Revenge, for instance" observed Franz. +The unknown fixed on the young man one of those looks which +penetrate into the depth of the heart and thoughts. "And why +revenge?" he asked. +"Because," replied Franz, "you seem to me like a man who, +persecuted by society, has a fearful account to settle with +it." +"Ah," responded Sinbad, laughing with his singular laugh +which displayed his white and sharp teeth. "You have not +guessed rightly. Such as you see me I am, a sort of +philosopher, and one day perhaps I shall go to Paris to +rival Monsieur Appert, and the little man in the blue +cloak." +"And will that be the first time you ever took that +journey?" +"Yes it will. I must seem to you by no means curious, but I +assure you that it is not my fault I have delayed it so long +it will happen one day or the other." +"And do you propose to make this journey very shortly?" +"I do not know it depends on circumstances which depend on +certain arrangements." +"I should like to be there at the time you come, and I will +endeavor to repay you, as far as lies in my power, for your +liberal hospitality displayed to me at Monte Cristo." +"I should avail myself of your offer with pleasure," replied +the host, "but, unfortunately, if I go there, it will be, in +all probability, incognito." +The supper appeared to have been supplied solely for Franz, +for the unknown scarcely touched one or two dishes of the +splendid banquet to which his guest did ample justice. Then +Ali brought on the dessert, or rather took the baskets from +the hands of the statues and placed them on the table. +Between the two baskets he placed a small silver cup with a +silver cover. The care with which Ali placed this cup on the +table roused Franz's curiosity. He raised the cover and saw +a kind of greenish paste, something like preserved angelica, +but which was perfectly unknown to him. He replaced the lid, +as ignorant of what the cup contained as he was before he +had looked at it, and then casting his eyes towards his host +he saw him smile at his disappointment. "You cannot guess," +said he, "what there is in that small vase, can you?" +"No, I really cannot." +"Well, then, that green preserve is nothing less than the +ambrosia which Hebe served at the table of Jupiter." +"But," replied Franz, "this ambrosia, no doubt, in passing +through mortal hands has lost its heavenly appellation and +assumed a human name in vulgar phrase, what may you term +this composition, for which, to tell the truth, I do not +feel any particular desire?" +"Ah, thus it is that our material origin is revealed," cried +Sinbad "we frequently pass so near to happiness without +seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, +yet without recognizing it. Are you a man for the +substantials, and is gold your god? taste this, and the +mines of Peru, Guzerat, and Golconda are opened to you. Are +you a man of imagination a poet? taste this, and the +boundaries of possibility disappear the fields of infinite +space open to you, you advance free in heart, free in mind, +into the boundless realms of unfettered revery. Are you +ambitious, and do you seek after the greatnesses of the +earth? taste this, and in an hour you will be a king, not a +king of a petty kingdom hidden in some corner of Europe like +France, Spain, or England, but king of the world, king of +the universe, king of creation without bowing at the feet +of Satan, you will be king and master of all the kingdoms of +the earth. Is it not tempting what I offer you, and is it +not an easy thing, since it is only to do thus? look" At +these words he uncovered the small cup which contained the +substance so lauded, took a teaspoonful of the magic +sweetmeat, raised it to his lips, and swallowed it slowly +with his eyes half shut and his head bent backwards. Franz +did not disturb him whilst he absorbed his favorite +sweetmeat, but when he had finished, he inquired, "What, +then, is this precious stuff?" +"Did you ever hear," he replied, "of the Old Man of the +Mountain, who attempted to assassinate Philip Augustus?" +"Of course I have." +"Well, you know he reigned over a rich valley which was +overhung by the mountain whence he derived his picturesque +name. In this valley were magnificent gardens planted by +HassenbenSabah, and in these gardens isolated pavilions. +Into these pavilions he admitted the elect, and there, says +Marco Polo, gave them to eat a certain herb, which +transported them to Paradise, in the midst of everblooming +shrubs, everripe fruit, and everlovely virgins. What these +happy persons took for reality was but a dream but it was a +dream so soft, so voluptuous, so enthralling, that they sold +themselves body and soul to him who gave it to them, and +obedient to his orders as to those of a deity, struck down +the designated victim, died in torture without a murmur, +believing that the death they underwent was but a quick +transition to that life of delights of which the holy herb, +now before you had given them a slight foretaste." +"Then," cried Franz, "it is hashish I know that by name +at least." +"That is it precisely, Signor Aladdin it is hashish the +purest and most unadulterated hashish of Alexandria, the +hashish of AbouGor, the celebrated maker, the only man, the +man to whom there should be built a palace, inscribed with +these words, "A grateful world to the dealer in happiness.'" +"Do you know," said Franz, "I have a very great inclination +to judge for myself of the truth or exaggeration of your +eulogies." +"Judge for yourself, Signor Aladdin judge, but do not +confine yourself to one trial. Like everything else, we must +habituate the senses to a fresh impression, gentle or +violent, sad or joyous. There is a struggle in nature +against this divine substance, in nature which is not +made for joy and clings to pain. Nature subdued must yield +in the combat, the dream must succeed to reality, and then +the dream reigns supreme, then the dream becomes life, and +life becomes the dream. But what changes occur It is only +by comparing the pains of actual being with the joys of the +assumed existence, that you would desire to live no longer, +but to dream thus forever. When you return to this mundane +sphere from your visionary world, you would seem to leave a +Neapolitan spring for a Lapland winter to quit paradise +for earth heaven for hell Taste the hashish, guest of +mine taste the hashish." +Franz's only reply was to take a teaspoonful of the +marvellous preparation, about as much in quantity as his +host had eaten, and lift it to his mouth. "Diable" he said, +after having swallowed the divine preserve. "I do not know +if the result will be as agreeable as you describe, but the +thing does not appear to me as palatable as you say." +"Because your palate his not yet been attuned to the +sublimity of the substances it flavors. Tell me, the first +time you tasted oysters, tea, porter, truffles, and sundry +other dainties which you now adore, did you like them? Could +you comprehend how the Romans stuffed their pheasants with +assafoetida, and the Chinese eat swallows' nests? Eh? no +Well, it is the same with hashish only eat for a week, and +nothing in the world will seem to you to equal the delicacy +of its flavor, which now appears to you flat and +distasteful. Let us now go into the adjoining chamber, which +is your apartment, and Ali will bring us coffee and pipes." +They both arose, and while he who called himself Sinbad +and whom we have occasionally named so, that we might, like +his guest, have some title by which to distinguish him +gave some orders to the servant, Franz entered still another +apartment. It was simply yet richly furnished. It was round, +and a large divan completely encircled it. Divan, walls, +ceiling, floor, were all covered with magnificent skins as +soft and downy as the richest carpets there were +heavymaned lionskins from Atlas, striped tigerskins from +Bengal pantherskins from the Cape, spotted beautifully, +like those that appeared to Dante bearskins from Siberia, +foxskins from Norway, and so on and all these skins were +strewn in profusion one on the other, so that it seemed like +walking over the most mossy turf, or reclining on the most +luxurious bed. Both laid themselves down on the divan +chibouques with jasmine tubes and amber mouthpieces were +within reach, and all prepared so that there was no need to +smoke the same pipe twice. Each of them took one, which Ali +lighted and then retired to prepare the coffee. There was a +moment's silence, during which Sinbad gave himself up to +thoughts that seemed to occupy him incessantly, even in the +midst of his conversation and Franz abandoned himself to +that mute revery, into which we always sink when smoking +excellent tobacco, which seems to remove with its fume all +the troubles of the mind, and to give the smoker in exchange +all the visions of the soul. Ali brought in the coffee. "How +do you take it?" inquired the unknown "in the French or +Turkish style, strong or weak, sugar or none, cool or +boiling? As you please it is ready in all ways." +"I will take it in the Turkish style," replied Franz. +"And you are right," said his host "it shows you have a +tendency for an Oriental life. Ah, those Orientals they are +the only men who know how to live. As for me," he added, +with one of those singular smiles which did not escape the +young man, "when I have completed my affairs in Paris, I +shall go and die in the East and should you wish to see me +again, you must seek me at Cairo, Bagdad, or Ispahan." +"Ma foi," said Franz, "it would be the easiest thing in the +world for I feel eagle's wings springing out at my +shoulders, and with those wings I could make a tour of the +world in four and twenty hours." +"Ah, yes, the hashish is beginning its work. Well, unfurl +your wings, and fly into superhuman regions fear nothing, +there is a watch over you and if your wings, like those of +Icarus, melt before the sun, we are here to ease your fall." +He then said something in Arabic to Ali, who made a sign of +obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As to Franz +a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the +bodily fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind +which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared +as they do at the first approach of sleep, when we are still +sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. +His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his perception +brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to +redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand but +it was not the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he +had seen before he slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded +horizon, with all the blue of the ocean, all the spangles of +the sun, all the perfumes of the summer breeze then, in the +midst of the songs of his sailors, songs so clear and +sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had +their notes been taken down, he saw the Island of Monte +Cristo, no longer as a threatening rock in the midst of the +waves, but as an oasis in the desert then, as his boat drew +nearer, the songs became louder, for an enchanting and +mysterious harmony rose to heaven, as if some Loreley had +decreed to attract a soul thither, or Amphion, the +enchanter, intended there to build a city. +At length the boat touched the shore, but without effort, +without shock, as lips touch lips and he entered the grotto +amidst continued strains of most delicious melody. He +descended, or rather seemed to descend, several steps, +inhaling the fresh and balmy air, like that which may be +supposed to reign around the grotto of Circe, formed from +such perfumes as set the mind a dreaming, and such fires as +burn the very senses and he saw again all he had seen +before his sleep, from Sinbad, his singular host, to Ali, +the mute attendant then all seemed to fade away and become +confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic +lantern before it is extinguished, and he was again in the +chamber of statues, lighted only by one of those pale and +antique lamps which watch in the dead of the night over the +sleep of pleasure. They were the same statues, rich in form, +in attraction, and poesy, with eyes of fascination, smiles +of love, and bright and flowing hair. They were Phryne, +Cleopatra, Messalina, those three celebrated courtesans. +Then among them glided like a pure ray, like a Christian +angel in the midst of Olympus, one of those chaste figures, +those calm shadows, those soft visions, which seemed to veil +its virgin brow before these marble wantons. Then the three +statues advanced towards him with looks of love, and +approached the couch on which he was reposing, their feet +hidden in their long white tunics, their throats bare, hair +flowing like waves, and assuming attitudes which the gods +could not resist, but which saints withstood, and looks +inflexible and ardent like those with which the serpent +charms the bird and then he gave way before looks that held +him in a torturing grasp and delighted his senses as with a +voluptuous kiss. It seemed to Franz that he closed his eyes, +and in a last look about him saw the vision of modesty +completely veiled and then followed a dream of passion like +that promised by the Prophet to the elect. Lips of stone +turned to flame, breasts of ice became like heated lava, so +that to Franz, yielding for the first time to the sway of +the drug, love was a sorrow and voluptuousness a torture, as +burning mouths were pressed to his thirsty lips, and he was +held in cool serpentlike embraces. The more he strove +against this unhallowed passion the more his senses yielded +to its thrall, and at length, weary of a struggle that taxed +his very soul, he gave way and sank back breathless and +exhausted beneath the kisses of these marble goddesses, and +the enchantment of his marvellous dream. +Chapter +The Waking. +When Franz returned to himself, he seemed still to be in a +dream. He thought himself in a sepulchre, into which a ray +of sunlight in pity scarcely penetrated. He stretched forth +his hand, and touched stone he rose to his seat, and found +himself lying on his bournous in a bed of dry heather, very +soft and odoriferous. The vision had fled and as if the +statues had been but shadows from the tomb, they had +vanished at his waking. He advanced several paces towards +the point whence the light came, and to all the excitement +of his dream succeeded the calmness of reality. He found +that he was in a grotto, went towards the opening, and +through a kind of fanlight saw a blue sea and an azure sky. +The air and water were shining in the beams of the morning +sun on the shore the sailors were sitting, chatting and +laughing and at ten yards from them the boat was at anchor, +undulating gracefully on the water. There for some time he +enjoyed the fresh breeze which played on his brow, and +listened to the dash of the waves on the beach, that left +against the rocks a lace of foam as white as silver. He was +for some time without reflection or thought for the divine +charm which is in the things of nature, specially after a +fantastic dream then gradually this view of the outer +world, so calm, so pure, so grand, reminded him of the +illusiveness of his vision, and once more awakened memory. +He recalled his arrival on the island, his presentation to a +smuggler chief, a subterranean palace full of splendor, an +excellent supper, and a spoonful of hashish. It seemed, +however, even in the very face of open day, that at least a +year had elapsed since all these things had passed, so deep +was the impression made in his mind by the dream, and so +strong a hold had it taken of his imagination. Thus every +now and then he saw in fancy amid the sailors, seated on a +rock, or undulating in the vessel, one of the shadows which +had shared his dream with looks and kisses. Otherwise, his +head was perfectly clear, and his body refreshed he was +free from the slightest headache on the contrary, he felt a +certain degree of lightness, a faculty for absorbing the +pure air, and enjoying the bright sunshine more vividly than +ever. +He went gayly up to the sailors, who rose as soon as they +perceived him and the patron, accosting him, said, "The +Signor Sinbad has left his compliments for your excellency, +and desires us to express the regret he feels at not being +able to take his leave in person but he trusts you will +excuse him, as very important business calls him to Malaga." +"So, then, Gaetano," said Franz, "this is, then, all +reality there exists a man who has received me in this +island, entertained me right royally, and his departed while +I was asleep?" +"He exists as certainly as that you may see his small yacht +with all her sails spread and if you will use your glass, +you will, in all probability, recognize your host in the +midst of his crew." So saying, Gaetano pointed in a +direction in which a small vessel was making sail towards +the southern point of Corsica. Franz adjusted his telescope, +and directed it towards the yacht. Gaetano was not mistaken. +At the stern the mysterious stranger was standing up looking +towards the shore, and holding a spyglass in his hand. He +was attired as he had been on the previous evening, and +waved his pockethandkerchief to his guest in token of +adieu. Franz returned the salute by shaking his handkerchief +as an exchange of signals. After a second, a slight cloud of +smoke was seen at the stern of the vessel, which rose +gracefully as it expanded in the air, and then Franz heard a +slight report. "There, do you hear?" observed Gaetano "he +is bidding you adieu." The young man took his carbine and +fired it in the air, but without any idea that the noise +could be heard at the distance which separated the yacht +from the shore. +"What are your excellency's orders?" inquired Gaetano. +"In the first place, light me a torch." +"Ah, yes, I understand," replied the patron, "to find the +entrance to the enchanted apartment. With much pleasure, +your excellency, if it would amuse you and I will get you +the torch you ask for. But I too have had the idea you have, +and two or three times the same fancy has come over me but +I have always given it up. Giovanni, light a torch," he +added, "and give it to his excellency." +Giovanni obeyed. Franz took the lamp, and entered the +subterranean grotto, followed by Gaetano. He recognized the +place where he had awaked by the bed of heather that was +there but it was in vain that he carried his torch all +round the exterior surface of the grotto. He saw nothing, +unless that, by traces of smoke, others had before him +attempted the same thing, and, like him, in vain. Yet he did +not leave a foot of this granite wall, as impenetrable as +futurity, without strict scrutiny he did not see a fissure +without introducing the blade of his hunting sword into it, +or a projecting point on which he did not lean and press in +the hopes it would give way. All was vain and he lost two +hours in his attempts, which were at last utterly useless. +At the end of this time he gave up his search, and Gaetano +smiled. +When Franz appeared again on the shore, the yacht only +seemed like a small white speck on the horizon. He looked +again through his glass, but even then he could not +distinguish anything. Gaetano reminded him that he had come +for the purpose of shooting goats, which he had utterly +forgotten. He took his fowlingpiece, and began to hunt over +the island with the air of a man who is fulfilling a duty, +rather than enjoying a pleasure and at the end of a quarter +of an hour he had killed a goat and two kids. These animals, +though wild and agile as chamois, were too much like +domestic goats, and Franz could not consider them as game. +Moreover, other ideas, much more enthralling, occupied his +mind. Since, the evening before, he had really been the hero +of one of the tales of the "Thousand and One Nights," and he +was irresistibly attracted towards the grotto. Then, in +spite of the failure of his first search, he began a second, +after having told Gaetano to roast one of the two kids. The +second visit was a long one, and when he returned the kid +was roasted and the repast ready. Franz was sitting on the +spot where he was on the previous evening when his +mysterious host had invited him to supper and he saw the +little yacht, now like a seagull on the wave, continuing +her flight towards Corsica. "Why," he remarked to Gaetano, +"you told me that Signor Sinbad was going to Malaga, while +it seems he is in the direction of PortoVecchio." +"Don't you remember," said the patron, "I told you that +among the crew there were two Corsican brigands?" +"True and he is going to land them," added Franz. +"Precisely so," replied Gaetano. "Ah, he is one who fears +neither God nor Satan, they say, and would at any time run +fifty leagues out of his course to do a poor devil a +service." +"But such services as these might involve him with the +authorities of the country in which he practices this kind +of philanthropy," said Franz. +"And what cares he for that," replied Gaetano with a laugh, +"or any authorities? He smiles at them. Let them try to +pursue him Why, in the first place, his yacht is not a +ship, but a bird, and he would beat any frigate three knots +in every nine and if he were to throw himself on the coast, +why, is he not certain of finding friends everywhere?" +It was perfectly clear that the Signor Sinbad, Franz's host, +had the honor of being on excellent terms with the smugglers +and bandits along the whole coast of the Mediterranean, and +so enjoyed exceptional privileges. As to Franz, he had no +longer any inducement to remain at Monte Cristo. He had lost +all hope of detecting the secret of the grotto he +consequently despatched his breakfast, and, his boat being +ready, he hastened on board, and they were soon under way. +At the moment the boat began her course they lost sight of +the yacht, as it disappeared in the gulf of PortoVecchio. +With it was effaced the last trace of the preceding night +and then supper, Sinbad, hashish, statues, all became a +dream for Franz. The boat sailed on all day and all night, +and next morning, when the sun rose, they had lost sight of +Monte Cristo. When Franz had once again set foot on shore, +he forgot, for the moment at least, the events which had +just passed, while he finished his affairs of pleasure at +Florence, and then thought of nothing but how he should +rejoin his companion, who was awaiting him at Rome. +He set out, and on the Saturday evening reached the Eternal +City by the mailcoach. An apartment, as we have said, had +been retained beforehand, and thus he had but to go to +Signor Pastrini's hotel. But this was not so easy a matter, +for the streets were thronged with people, and Rome was +already a prey to that low and feverish murmur which +precedes all great events and at Rome there are four great +events in every year, the Carnival, Holy Week, Corpus +Christi, and the Feast of St. Peter. All the rest of the +year the city is in that state of dull apathy, between life +and death, which renders it similar to a kind of station +between this world and the next a sublime spot, a +restingplace full of poetry and character, and at which +Franz had already halted five or six times, and at each time +found it more marvellous and striking. At last he made his +way through the mob, which was continually increasing and +getting more and more turbulent, and reached the hotel. On +his first inquiry he was told, with the impertinence +peculiar to hired hackneycoachmen and innkeepers with +their houses full, that there was no room for him at the +Hotel de Londres. Then he sent his card to Signor Pastrini, +and asked for Albert de Morcerf. This plan succeeded and +Signor Pastrini himself ran to him, excusing himself for +having made his excellency wait, scolding the waiters, +taking the candlestick from the porter, who was ready to +pounce on the traveller and was about to lead him to Albert, +when Morcerf himself appeared. +The apartment consisted of two small rooms and a parlor. The +two rooms looked onto the street a fact which Signor +Pastrini commented upon as an inappreciable advantage. The +rest of the floor was hired by a very rich gentleman who was +supposed to be a Sicilian or Maltese but the host was +unable to decide to which of the two nations the traveller +belonged. "Very good, signor Pastrini," said Franz "but we +must have some supper instantly, and a carriage for tomorrow +and the following days." +"As to supper," replied the landlord, "you shall be served +immediately but as for the carriage" +"What as to the carriage?" exclaimed Albert. "Come, come, +Signor Pastrini, no joking we must have a carriage." +"Sir," replied the host, "we will do all in our power to +procure you one this is all I can say." +"And when shall we know?" inquired Franz. +"Tomorrow morning," answered the innkeeper. +"Oh, the deuce then we shall pay the more, that's all, I +see plainly enough. At Drake's or Aaron's one pays +twentyfive lire for common days, and thirty or thirtyfive +lire a day more for Sundays and feast days add five lire a +day more for extras, that will make forty, and there's an +end of it." +"I am afraid if we offer them double that we shall not +procure a carriage." +"Then they must put horses to mine. It is a little worse for +the journey, but that's no matter." +"There are no horses." Albert looked at Franz like a man who +hears a reply he does not understand. +"Do you understand that, my dear Franz no horses?" he +said, "but can't we have posthorses?" +"They have been all hired this fortnight, and there are none +left but those absolutely requisite for posting." +"What are we to say to this?" asked Franz. +"I say, that when a thing completely surpasses my +comprehension, I am accustomed not to dwell on that thing, +but to pass to another. Is supper ready, Signor Pastrini?" +"Yes, your excellency." +"Well, then, let us sup." +"But the carriage and horses?" said Franz. +"Be easy, my dear boy they will come in due season it is +only a question of how much shall be charged for them." +Morcerf then, with that delighted philosophy which believes +that nothing is impossible to a full purse or welllined +pocketbook, supped, went to bed, slept soundly, and dreamed +he was racing all over Rome at Carnival time in a coach with +six horses. +Chapter +Roman Bandits. +The next morning Franz woke first, and instantly rang the +bell. The sound had not yet died away when Signor Pastrini +himself entered. +"Well, excellency," said the landlord triumphantly, and +without waiting for Franz to question him, "I feared +yesterday, when I would not promise you anything, that you +were too late there is not a single carriage to be had +that is, for the last three days of the carnival." +"Yes," returned Franz, "for the very three days it is most +needed." +"What is the matter?" said Albert, entering "no carriage to +be had?" +"Just so," returned Franz, "you have guessed it." +"Well, your Eternal City is a nice sort of place." +"That is to say, excellency," replied Pastrini, who was +desirous of keeping up the dignity of the capital of the +Christian world in the eyes of his guest, "that there are no +carriages to be had from Sunday to Tuesday evening, but from +now till Sunday you can have fifty if you please." +"Ah, that is something," said Albert "today is Thursday, +and who knows what may arrive between this and Sunday?" +"Ten or twelve thousand travellers will arrive," replied +Franz, "which will make it still more difficult." +"My friend," said Morcerf, "let us enjoy the present without +gloomy forebodings for the future." +"At least we can have a window?" +"Where?" +"In the Corso." +"Ah, a window" exclaimed Signor Pastrini, "utterly +impossible there was only one left on the fifth floor of +the Doria Palace, and that has been let to a Russian prince +for twenty sequins a day." +The two young men looked at each other with an air of +stupefaction. +"Well," said Franz to Albert, "do you know what is the best +thing we can do? It is to pass the Carnival at Venice there +we are sure of obtaining gondolas if we cannot have +carriages." +"Ah, the devil, no," cried Albert "I came to Rome to see +the Carnival, and I will, though I see it on stilts." +"Bravo an excellent idea. We will disguise ourselves as +monster pulchinellos or shepherds of the Landes, and we +shall have complete success." +"Do your excellencies still wish for a carriage from now to +Sunday morning?" +"Parbleu" said Albert, "do you think we are going to run +about on foot in the streets of Rome, like lawyer's clerks?" +"I hasten to comply with your excellencies' wishes only, I +tell you beforehand, the carriage will cost you six piastres +a day." +"And, as I am not a millionaire, like the gentleman in the +next apartments," said Franz, "I warn you, that as I have +been four times before at Rome, I know the prices of all the +carriages we will give you twelve piastres for today, +tomorrow, and the day after, and then you will make a good +profit." +"But, excellency" said Pastrini, still striving to gain +his point. +"Now go," returned Franz, "or I shall go myself and bargain +with your affettatore, who is mine also he is an old friend +of mine, who has plundered me pretty well already, and, in +the hope of making more out of me, he will take a less price +than the one I offer you you will lose the preference, and +that will be your fault." +"Do not give yourselves the trouble, excellency," returned +Signor Pastrini, with the smile peculiar to the Italian +speculator when he confesses defeat "I will do all I can, +and I hope you will be satisfied." +"And now we understand each other." +"When do you wish the carriage to be here?" +"In an hour." +"In an hour it will be at the door." +An hour after the vehicle was at the door it was a hack +conveyance which was elevated to the rank of a private +carriage in honor of the occasion, but, in spite of its +humble exterior, the young men would have thought themselves +happy to have secured it for the last three days of the +Carnival. "Excellency," cried the cicerone, seeing Franz +approach the window, "shall I bring the carriage nearer to +the palace?" +Accustomed as Franz was to the Italian phraseology, his +first impulse was to look round him, but these words were +addressed to him. Franz was the "excellency," the vehicle +was the "carriage," and the Hotel de Londres was the +"palace." The genius for laudation characteristic of the +race was in that phrase. +Franz and Albert descended, the carriage approached the +palace their excellencies stretched their legs along the +seats the cicerone sprang into the seat behind. "Where do +your excellencies wish to go?" asked he. +"To Saint Peter's first, and then to the Colosseum," +returned Albert. But Albert did not know that it takes a day +to see Saint Peter's, and a month to study it. The day was +passed at Saint Peter's alone. Suddenly the daylight began +to fade away Franz took out his watch it was halfpast +four. They returned to the hotel at the door Franz ordered +the coachman to be ready at eight. He wished to show Albert +the Colosseum by moonlight, as he had shown him Saint +Peter's by daylight. When we show a friend a city one has +already visited, we feel the same pride as when we point out +a woman whose lover we have been. He was to leave the city +by the Porta del Popolo, skirt the outer wall, and reenter +by the Porta San Giovanni thus they would behold the +Colosseum without finding their impressions dulled by first +looking on the Capitol, the Forum, the Arch of Septimus +Severus, the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, and the Via +Sacra. They sat down to dinner. Signor Pastrini had promised +them a banquet he gave them a tolerable repast. At the end +of the dinner he entered in person. Franz thought that he +came to hear his dinner praised, and began accordingly, but +at the first words he was interrupted. "Excellency," said +Pastrini, "I am delighted to have your approbation, but it +was not for that I came." +"Did you come to tell us you have procured a carriage?" +asked Albert, lighting his cigar. +"No and your excellencies will do well not to think of that +any longer at Rome things can or cannot be done when you +are told anything cannot he done, there is an end of it." +"It is much more convenient at Paris, when anything +cannot be done, you pay double, and it is done directly." +"That is what all the French say," returned Signor Pastrini, +somewhat piqued "for that reason, I do not understand why +they travel." +"But," said Albert, emitting a volume of smoke and balancing +his chair on its hind legs, "only madmen, or blockheads like +us, ever do travel. Men in their senses do not quit their +hotel in the Rue du Helder, their walk on the Boulevard de +Gand, and the Cafe de Paris." It is of course understood +that Albert resided in the aforesaid street, appeared every +day on the fashionable walk, and dined frequently at the +only restaurant where you can really dine, that is, if you +are on good terms with its frequenters. Signor Pastrini +remained silent a short time it was evident that he was +musing over this answer, which did not seem very clear. +"But," said Franz, in his turn interrupting his host's +meditations, "you had some motive for coming here, may I beg +to know what it was?" +"Ah, yes you have ordered your carriage at eight o'clock +precisely?" +"I have." +"You intend visiting Il Colosseo." +"You mean the Colosseum?" +"It is the same thing. You have told your coachman to leave +the city by the Porta del Popolo, to drive round the walls, +and reenter by the Porta San Giovanni?" +"These are my words exactly." +"Well, this route is impossible." +"Impossible" +"Very dangerous, to say the least." +"Dangerous and why?" +"On account of the famous Luigi Vampa." +"Pray, who may this famous Luigi Vampa be?" inquired Albert +"he may be very famous at Rome, but I can assure you he is +quite unknown at Paris." +"What do you not know him?" +"I have not that honor." +"You have never heard his name?" +"Never." +"Well, then, he is a bandit, compared to whom the Decesaris +and the Gasparones were mere children." +"Now then, Albert," cried Franz, "here is a bandit for you +at last." +"I forewarn you, Signor Pastrini, that I shall not believe +one word of what you are going to tell us having told you +this, begin." +"Once upon a time" +"Well, go on." Signor Pastrini turned toward Franz, who +seemed to him the more reasonable of the two we must do him +justice, he had had a great many Frenchmen in his house, +but had never been able to comprehend them. "Excellency," +said he gravely, addressing Franz, "if you look upon me as a +liar, it is useless for me to say anything it was for your +interest I" +"Albert does not say you are a liar, Signor Pastrini," said +Franz, "but that he will not believe what you are going to +tell us, but I will believe all you say so proceed." +"But if your excellency doubt my veracity" +"Signor Pastrini," returned Franz, "you are more susceptible +than Cassandra, who was a prophetess, and yet no one +believed her while you, at least, are sure of the credence +of half your audience. Come, sit down, and tell us all about +this Signor Vampa." +"I had told your excellency he is the most famous bandit we +have had since the days of Mastrilla." +"Well, what has this bandit to do with the order I have +given the coachman to leave the city by the Porta del +Popolo, and to reenter by the Porta San Giovanni?" +"This," replied Signor Pastrini, "that you will go out by +one, but I very much doubt your returning by the other." +"Why?" asked Franz. +"Because, after nightfall, you are not safe fifty yards from +the gates." +"On your honor is that true?" cried Albert. +"Count," returned Signor Pastrini, hurt at Albert's repeated +doubts of the truth of his assertions, "I do not say this to +you, but to your companion, who knows Rome, and knows, too, +that these things are not to be laughed at." +"My dear fellow," said Albert, turning to Franz, "here is an +admirable adventure we will fill our carriage with pistols, +blunderbusses, and doublebarrelled guns. Luigi Vampa comes +to take us, and we take him we bring him back to Rome, +and present him to his holiness the Pope, who asks how he +can repay so great a service then we merely ask for a +carriage and a pair of horses, and we see the Carnival in +the carriage, and doubtless the Roman people will crown us +at the Capitol, and proclaim us, like Curtius and the veiled +Horatius, the preservers of their country." Whilst Albert +proposed this scheme, Signor Pastrini's face assumed an +expression impossible to describe. +"And pray," asked Franz, "where are these pistols, +blunderbusses, and other deadly weapons with which you +intend filling the carriage?" +"Not out of my armory, for at Terracina I was plundered even +of my huntingknife." +"I shared the same fate at Aquapendente." +"Do you know, Signor Pastrini," said Albert, lighting a +second cigar at the first, "that this practice is very +convenient for bandits, and that it seems to be due to an +arrangement of their own." Doubtless Signor Pastrini found +this pleasantry compromising, for he only answered half the +question, and then he spoke to Franz, as the only one likely +to listen with attention. "Your excellency knows that it is +not customary to defend yourself when attacked by bandits." +"What" cried Albert, whose courage revolted at the idea of +being plundered tamely, "not make any resistance" +"No, for it would be useless. What could you do against a +dozen bandits who spring out of some pit, ruin, or aqueduct, +and level their pieces at you?" +"Eh, parbleu they should kill me." +The innkeeper turned to Franz with an air that seemed to +say, "Your friend is decidedly mad." +"My dear Albert," returned Franz, "your answer is sublime, +and worthy the "Let him die,' of Corneille, only, when +Horace made that answer, the safety of Rome was concerned +but, as for us, it is only to gratify a whim, and it would +be ridiculous to risk our lives for so foolish a motive." +Albert poured himself out a glass of lacryma Christi, which +he sipped at intervals, muttering some unintelligible words. +"Well, Signor Pastrini," said Franz, "now that my companion +is quieted, and you have seen how peaceful my intentions +are, tell me who is this Luigi Vampa. Is he a shepherd or a +nobleman? young or old? tall or short? Describe him, +in order that, if we meet him by chance, like Bugaboo John +or Lara, we may recognize him." +"You could not apply to any one better able to inform you on +all these points, for I knew him when he was a child, and +one day that I fell into his hands, going from Ferentino to +Alatri, he, fortunately for me, recollected me, and set me +free, not only without ransom, but made me a present of a +very splendid watch, and related his history to me." +"Let us see the watch," said Albert. +Signor Pastrini drew from his fob a magnificent Breguet, +bearing the name of its maker, of Parisian manufacture, and +a count's coronet. +"Here it is," said he. +"Peste," returned Albert, "I compliment you on it I have +its fellow" he took his watch from his waistcoat pocket +"and it cost me , francs." +"Let us hear the history," said Franz, motioning Signor +Pastrini to seat himself. +"Your excellencies permit it?" asked the host. +"Pardieu" cried Albert, "you are not a preacher, to remain +standing" +The host sat down, after having made each of them a +respectful bow, which meant that he was ready to tell them +all they wished to know concerning Luigi Vampa. "You tell +me," said Franz, at the moment Signor Pastrini was about to +open his mouth, "that you knew Luigi Vampa when he was a +child he is still a young man, then?" +"A young man? he is only two and twenty he will gain +himself a reputation." +"What do you think of that, Albert? at two and twenty to +be thus famous?" +"Yes, and at his age, Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, who +have all made some noise in the world, were quite behind +him." +"So," continued Franz, "the hero of this history is only two +and twenty?" +"Scarcely so much." +"Is he tall or short?" +"Of the middle height about the same stature as his +excellency," returned the host, pointing to Albert. +"Thanks for the comparison," said Albert, with a bow. +"Go on, Signor Pastrini," continued Franz, smiling at his +friend's susceptibility. "To what class of society does he +belong?" +"He was a shepherdboy attached to the farm of the Count of +SanFelice, situated between Palestrina and the lake of +Gabri he was born at Pampinara, and entered the count's +service when he was five years old his father was also a +shepherd, who owned a small flock, and lived by the wool and +the milk, which he sold at Rome. When quite a child, the +little Vampa displayed a most extraordinary precocity. One +day, when he was seven years old, he came to the curate of +Palestrina, and asked to be taught to read it was somewhat +difficult, for he could not quit his flock but the good +curate went every day to say mass at a little hamlet too +poor to pay a priest and which, having no other name, was +called Borgo he told Luigi that he might meet him on his +return, and that then he would give him a lesson, warning +him that it would be short, and that he must profit as much +as possible by it. The child accepted joyfully. Every day +Luigi led his flock to graze on the road that leads from +Palestrina to Borgo every day, at nine o'clock in the +morning, the priest and the boy sat down on a bank by the +wayside, and the little shepherd took his lesson out of the +priest's breviary. At the end of three months he had learned +to read. This was not enough he must now learn to write. +The priest had a writing teacher at Rome make three +alphabets one large, one middling, and one small and +pointed out to him that by the help of a sharp instrument he +could trace the letters on a slate, and thus learn to write. +The same evening, when the flock was safe at the farm, the +little Luigi hastened to the smith at Palestrina, took a +large nail, heated and sharpened it, and formed a sort of +stylus. The next morning he gathered an armful of pieces of +slate and began. At the end of three months he had learned +to write. The curate, astonished at his quickness and +intelligence, made him a present of pens, paper, and a +penknife. This demanded new effort, but nothing compared to +the first at the end of a week he wrote as well with this +pen as with the stylus. The curate related the incident to +the Count of SanFelice, who sent for the little shepherd, +made him read and write before him, ordered his attendant to +let him eat with the domestics, and to give him two piastres +a month. With this, Luigi purchased books and pencils. He +applied his imitative powers to everything, and, like +Giotto, when young, he drew on his slate sheep, houses, and +trees. Then, with his knife, he began to carve all sorts of +objects in wood it was thus that Pinelli, the famous +sculptor, had commenced. +"A girl of six or seven that is, a little younger than +Vampa tended sheep on a farm near Palestrina she was an +orphan, born at Valmontone and was named Teresa. The two +children met, sat down near each other, let their flocks +mingle together, played, laughed, and conversed together in +the evening they separated the Count of SanFelice's flock +from those of Baron Cervetri, and the children returned to +their respective farms, promising to meet the next morning. +The next day they kept their word, and thus they grew up +together. Vampa was twelve, and Teresa eleven. And yet their +natural disposition revealed itself. Beside his taste for +the fine arts, which Luigi had carried as far as he could in +his solitude, he was given to alternating fits of sadness +and enthusiasm, was often angry and capricious, and always +sarcastic. None of the lads of Pampinara, Palestrina, or +Valmontone had been able to gain any influence over him or +even to become his companion. His disposition always +inclined to exact concessions rather than to make them kept +him aloof from all friendships. Teresa alone ruled by a +look, a word, a gesture, this impetuous character, which +yielded beneath the hand of a woman, and which beneath the +hand of a man might have broken, but could never have been +bended. Teresa was lively and gay, but coquettish to excess. +The two piastres that Luigi received every month from the +Count of SanFelice's steward, and the price of all the +little carvings in wood he sold at Rome, were expended in +earrings, necklaces, and gold hairpins. So that, thanks to +her friend's generosity, Teresa was the most beautiful and +the bestattired peasant near Rome. The two children grew up +together, passing all their time with each other, and giving +themselves up to the wild ideas of their different +characters. Thus, in all their dreams, their wishes, and +their conversations, Vampa saw himself the captain of a +vessel, general of an army, or governor of a province. +Teresa saw herself rich, superbly attired, and attended by a +train of liveried domestics. Then, when they had thus passed +the day in building castles in the air, they separated their +flocks, and descended from the elevation of their dreams to +the reality of their humble position. +"One day the young shepherd told the count's steward that he +had seen a wolf come out of the Sabine mountains, and prowl +around his flock. The steward gave him a gun this was what +Vampa longed for. This gun had an excellent barrel, made at +Breschia, and carrying a ball with the precision of an +English rifle but one day the count broke the stock, and +had then cast the gun aside. This, however, was nothing to a +sculptor like Vampa he examined the broken stock, +calculated what change it would require to adapt the gun to +his shoulder, and made a fresh stock, so beautifully carved +that it would have fetched fifteen or twenty piastres, had +he chosen to sell it. But nothing could be farther from his +thoughts. For a long time a gun had been the young man's +greatest ambition. In every country where independence has +taken the place of liberty, the first desire of a manly +heart is to possess a weapon, which at once renders him +capable of defence or attack, and, by rendering its owner +terrible, often makes him feared. From this moment Vampa +devoted all his leisure time to perfecting himself in the +use of his precious weapon he purchased powder and ball, +and everything served him for a mark the trunk of some +old and mossgrown olivetree, that grew on the Sabine +mountains the fox, as he quitted his earth on some +marauding excursion the eagle that soared above their +heads and thus he soon became so expert, that Teresa +overcame the terror she at first felt at the report, and +amused herself by watching him direct the ball wherever he +pleased, with as much accuracy as if he placed it by hand. +"One evening a wolf emerged from a pinewood hear which they +were usually stationed, but the wolf had scarcely advanced +ten yards ere he was dead. Proud of this exploit, Vampa took +the dead animal on his shoulders, and carried him to the +farm. These exploits had gained Luigi considerable +reputation. The man of superior abilities always finds +admirers, go where he will. He was spoken of as the most +adroit, the strongest, and the most courageous contadino for +ten leagues around and although Teresa was universally +allowed to be the most beautiful girl of the Sabines, no one +had ever spoken to her of love, because it was known that +she was beloved by Vampa. And yet the two young people had +never declared their affection they had grown together like +two trees whose roots are mingled, whose branches +intertwined, and whose intermingled perfume rises to the +heavens. Only their wish to see each other had become a +necessity, and they would have preferred death to a day's +separation. Teresa was sixteen, and Vampa seventeen. About +this time, a band of brigands that had established itself in +the Lepini mountains began to be much spoken of. The +brigands have never been really extirpated from the +neighborhood of Rome. Sometimes a chief is wanted, but when +a chief presents himself he rarely has to wait long for a +band of followers. +"The celebrated Cucumetto, pursued in the Abruzzo, driven +out of the kingdom of Naples, where he had carried on a +regular war, had crossed the Garigliano, like Manfred, and +had taken refuge on the banks of the Amasine between Sonnino +and Juperno. He strove to collect a band of followers, and +followed the footsteps of Decesaris and Gasperone, whom he +hoped to surpass. Many young men of Palestrina, Frascati, +and Pampinara had disappeared. Their disappearance at first +caused much disquietude but it was soon known that they had +joined Cucumetto. After some time Cucumetto became the +object of universal attention the most extraordinary traits +of ferocious daring and brutality were related of him. One +day he carried off a young girl, the daughter of a surveyor +of Frosinone. The bandit's laws are positive a young girl +belongs first to him who carries her off, then the rest draw +lots for her, and she is abandoned to their brutality until +death relieves her sufferings. When their parents are +sufficiently rich to pay a ransom, a messenger is sent to +negotiate the prisoner is hostage for the security of the +messenger should the ransom be refused, the prisoner is +irrevocably lost. The young girl's lover was in Cucumetto's +troop his name was Carlini. When she recognized her lover, +the poor girl extended her arms to him, and believed herself +safe but Carlini felt his heart sink, for he but too well +knew the fate that awaited her. However, as he was a +favorite with Cucumetto, as he had for three years +faithfully served him, and as he had saved his life by +shooting a dragoon who was about to cut him down, he hoped +the chief would have pity on him. He took Cucumetto one +side, while the young girl, seated at the foot of a huge +pine that stood in the centre of the forest, made a veil of +her picturesque headdress to hide her face from the +lascivious gaze of the bandits. There he told the chief all +his affection for the prisoner, their promises of mutual +fidelity, and how every night, since he had been near, they +had met in some neighboring ruins. +"It so happened that night that Cucumetto had sent Carlini +to a village, so that he had been unable to go to the place +of meeting. Cucumetto had been there, however, by accident, +as he said, and had carried the maiden off. Carlini besought +his chief to make an exception in Rita's favor, as her +father was rich, and could pay a large ransom. Cucumetto +seemed to yield to his friend's entreaties, and bade him +find a shepherd to send to Rita's father at Frosinone. +Carlini flew joyfully to Rita, telling her she was saved, +and bidding her write to her father, to inform him what had +occurred, and that her ransom was fixed at three hundred +piastres. Twelve hours' delay was all that was granted +that is, until nine the next morning. The instant the letter +was written, Carlini seized it, and hastened to the plain to +find a messenger. He found a young shepherd watching his +flock. The natural messengers of the bandits are the +shepherds who live between the city and the mountains, +between civilized and savage life. The boy undertook the +commission, promising to be in Frosinone in less than an +hour. Carlini returned, anxious to see his mistress, and +announce the joyful intelligence. He found the troop in the +glade, supping off the provisions exacted as contributions +from the peasants but his eye vainly sought Rita and +Cucumetto among them. He inquired where they were, and was +answered by a burst of laughter. A cold perspiration burst +from every pore, and his hair stood on end. He repeated his +question. One of the bandits rose, and offered him a glass +filled with Orvietto, saying, "To the health of the brave +Cucumetto and the fair Rita.' At this moment Carlini heard a +woman's cry he divined the truth, seized the glass, broke +it across the face of him who presented it, and rushed +towards the spot whence the cry came. After a hundred yards +he turned the corner of the thicket he found Rita senseless +in the arms of Cucumetto. At the sight of Carlini, Cucumetto +rose, a pistol in each hand. The two brigands looked at each +other for a moment the one with a smile of lasciviousness +on his lips, the other with the pallor of death on his brow. +A terrible battle between the two men seemed imminent but +by degrees Carlini's features relaxed, his hand, which had +grasped one of the pistols in his belt, fell to his side. +Rita lay between them. The moon lighted the group. +""Well,' said Cucumetto, "have you executed your +commission?' +""Yes, captain,' returned Carlini. "At nine o'clock +tomorrow Rita's father will be here with the money.' "It +is well in the meantime, we will have a merry night this +young girl is charming, and does credit to your taste. Now, +as I am not egotistical, we will return to our comrades and +draw lots for her.' "You have determined, then, to +abandon her to the common law?" said Carlini. +""Why should an exception be made in her favor?' +""I thought that my entreaties' +""What right have you, any more than the rest, to ask for an +exception?' "It is true.' "But never mind,' continued +Cucumetto, laughing, "sooner or later your turn will come.' +Carlini's teeth clinched convulsively. +""Now, then,' said Cucumetto, advancing towards the other +bandits, "are you coming?' "I follow you.' +"Cucumetto departed, without losing sight of Carlini, for, +doubtless, he feared lest he should strike him unawares but +nothing betrayed a hostile design on Carlini's part. He was +standing, his arms folded, near Rita, who was still +insensible. Cucumetto fancied for a moment the young man was +about to take her in his arms and fly but this mattered +little to him now Rita had been his and as for the money, +three hundred piastres distributed among the band was so +small a sum that he cared little about it. He continued to +follow the path to the glade but, to his great surprise, +Carlini arrived almost as soon as himself. "Let us draw +lots let us draw lots' cried all the brigands, when they +saw the chief. +"Their demand was fair, and the chief inclined his head in +sign of acquiescence. The eyes of all shone fiercely as they +made their demand, and the red light of the fire made them +look like demons. The names of all, including Carlini, were +placed in a hat, and the youngest of the band drew forth a +ticket the ticket bore the name of Diovolaccio. He was the +man who had proposed to Carlini the health of their chief, +and to whom Carlini replied by breaking the glass across his +face. A large wound, extending from the temple to the mouth, +was bleeding profusely. Diovalaccio, seeing himself thus +favored by fortune, burst into a loud laugh. "Captain,' said +he, "just now Carlini would not drink your health when I +proposed it to him propose mine to him, and let us see if +he will be more condescending to you than to me.' Every one +expected an explosion on Carlini's part but to their great +surprise, he took a glass in one hand and a flask in the +other, and filling it, "Your health, Diavolaccio,' said +he calmly, and he drank it off, without his hand trembling +in the least. Then sitting down by the fire, "My supper,' +said he "my expedition has given me an appetite.' "Well +done, Carlini' cried the brigands "that is acting like a +good fellow' and they all formed a circle round the fire, +while Diavolaccio disappeared. Carlini ate and drank as if +nothing had happened. The bandits looked on with +astonishment at this singular conduct until they heard +footsteps. They turned round, and saw Diavolaccio bearing +the young girl in his arms. Her head hung back, and her long +hair swept the ground. As they entered the circle, the +bandits could perceive, by the firelight, the unearthly +pallor of the young girl and of Diavolaccio. This apparition +was so strange and so solemn, that every one rose, with the +exception of Carlini, who remained seated, and ate and drank +calmly. Diavolaccio advanced amidst the most profound +silence, and laid Rita at the captain's feet. Then every one +could understand the cause of the unearthly pallor in the +young girl and the bandit. A knife was plunged up to the +hilt in Rita's left breast. Every one looked at Carlini the +sheath at his belt was empty. "Ah, ah,' said the chief, "I +now understand why Carlini stayed behind.' All savage +natures appreciate a desperate deed. No other of the bandits +would, perhaps, have done the same but they all understood +what Carlini had done. "Now, then,' cried Carlini, rising in +his turn, and approaching the corpse, his hand on the butt +of one of his pistols, "does any one dispute the possession +of this woman with me?' "No,' returned the chief, "she is +thine.' Carlini raised her in his arms, and carried her out +of the circle of firelight. Cucumetto placed his sentinels +for the night, and the bandits wrapped themselves in their +cloaks, and lay down before the fire. At midnight the +sentinel gave the alarm, and in an instant all were on the +alert. It was Rita's father, who brought his daughter's +ransom in person. "Here,' said he, to Cucumetto, "here are +three hundred piastres give me back my child. But the +chief, without taking the money, made a sign to him to +follow. The old man obeyed. They both advanced beneath the +trees, through whose branches streamed the moonlight. +Cucumetto stopped at last, and pointed to two persons +grouped at the foot of a tree. +""There,' said he, "demand thy child of Carlini he will +tell thee what has become of her' and he returned to his +companions. The old man remained motionless he felt that +some great and unforeseen misfortune hung over his head. At +length he advanced toward the group, the meaning of which he +could not comprehend. As he approached, Carlini raised his +head, and the forms of two persons became visible to the old +man's eyes. A woman lay on the ground, her head resting on +the knees of a man, who was seated by her as he raised his +head, the woman's face became visible. The old man +recognized his child, and Carlini recognized the old man. "I +expected thee,' said the bandit to Rita's father. +"Wretch' returned the old man, "what hast thou done?' and +he gazed with terror on Rita, pale and bloody, a knife +buried in her bosom. A ray of moonlight poured through the +trees, and lighted up the face of the dead. "Cucumetto +had violated thy daughter,' said the bandit "I loved her, +therefore I slew her for she would have served as the sport +of the whole band.' The old man spoke not, and grew pale as +death. "Now,' continued Carlini, "if I have done wrongly, +avenge her' and withdrawing the knife from the wound in +Rita's bosom, he held it out to the old man with one hand, +while with the other he tore open his vest. "Thou hast +done well' returned the old man in a hoarse voice "embrace +me, my son.' Carlini threw himself, sobbing like a child, +into the arms of his mistress's father. These were the first +tears the man of blood had ever wept. "Now,' said the old +man, "aid me to bury my child.' Carlini fetched two +pickaxes and the father and the lover began to dig at the +foot of a huge oak, beneath which the young girl was to +repose. When the grave was formed, the father kissed her +first, and then the lover afterwards, one taking the head, +the other the feet, they placed her in the grave. Then they +knelt on each side of the grave, and said the prayers of the +dead. Then, when they had finished, they cast the earth over +the corpse, until the grave was filled. Then, extending his +hand, the old man said "I thank you, my son and now leave +me alone.' "Yet' replied Carlini. "Leave me, I +command you.' Carlini obeyed, rejoined his comrades, folded +himself in his cloak, and soon appeared to sleep as soundly +as the rest. It had been resolved the night before to change +their encampment. An hour before daybreak, Cucumetto aroused +his men, and gave the word to march. But Carlini would not +quit the forest, without knowing what had become of Rita's +father. He went toward the place where he had left him. He +found the old man suspended from one of the branches of the +oak which shaded his daughter's grave. He then took an oath +of bitter vengeance over the dead body of the one and the +tomb of the other. But he was unable to complete this oath, +for two days afterwards, in an encounter with the Roman +carbineers, Carlini was killed. There was some surprise, +however, that, as he was with his face to the enemy, he +should have received a ball between his shoulders. That +astonishment ceased when one of the brigands remarked to his +comrades that Cucumetto was stationed ten paces in Carlini's +rear when he fell. On the morning of the departure from the +forest of Frosinone he had followed Carlini in the darkness, +and heard this oath of vengeance, and, like a wise man, +anticipated it. They told ten other stories of this bandit +chief, each more singular than the other. Thus, from Fondi +to Perusia, every one trembles at the name of Cucumetto. +"These narratives were frequently the theme of conversation +between Luigi and Teresa. The young girl trembled very much +at hearing the stories but Vampa reassured her with a +smile, tapping the butt of his good fowlingpiece, which +threw its ball so well and if that did not restore her +courage, he pointed to a crow, perched on some dead branch, +took aim, touched the trigger, and the bird fell dead at the +foot of the tree. Time passed on, and the two young people +had agreed to be married when Vampa should be twenty and +Teresa nineteen years of age. They were both orphans, and +had only their employers' leave to ask, which had been +already sought and obtained. One day when they were talking +over their plans for the future, they heard two or three +reports of firearms, and then suddenly a man came out of the +wood, near which the two young persons used to graze their +flocks, and hurried towards them. When he came within +hearing, he exclaimed. "I am pursued can you conceal me?' +They knew full well that this fugitive must be a bandit but +there is an innate sympathy between the Roman brigand and +the Roman peasant and the latter is always ready to aid the +former. Vampa, without saying a word, hastened to the stone +that closed up the entrance to their grotto, drew it away, +made a sign to the fugitive to take refuge there, in a +retreat unknown to every one, closed the stone upon him, and +then went and resumed his seat by Teresa. Instantly +afterwards four carbineers, on horseback, appeared on the +edge of the wood three of them appeared to be looking for +the fugitive, while the fourth dragged a brigand prisoner by +the neck. The three carbineers looked about carefully on +every side, saw the young peasants, and galloping up, began +to question them. They had seen no one. "That is very +annoying,' said the brigadier for the man we are looking +for is the chief.' "Cucumetto?' cried Luigi and Teresa at +the same moment. +""Yes,' replied the brigadier "and as his head is valued at +a thousand Roman crowns, there would have been five hundred +for you, if you had helped us to catch him.' The two young +persons exchanged looks. The brigadier had a moment's hope. +Five hundred Roman crowns are three thousand lire, and three +thousand lire are a fortune for two poor orphans who are +going to be married. +""Yes, it is very annoying,' said Vampa "but we have not +seen him.' +"Then the carbineers scoured the country in different +directions, but in vain then, after a time, they +disappeared. Vampa then removed the stone, and Cucumetto +came out. Through the crevices in the granite he had seen +the two young peasants talking with the carbineers, and +guessed the subject of their parley. He had read in the +countenances of Luigi and Teresa their steadfast resolution +not to surrender him, and he drew from his pocket a purse +full of gold, which he offered to them. But Vampa raised his +head proudly as to Teresa, her eyes sparkled when she +thought of all the fine gowns and gay jewellery she could +buy with this purse of gold. +"Cucumetto was a cunning fiend, and had assumed the form of +a brigand instead of a serpent, and this look from Teresa +showed to him that she was a worthy daughter of Eve, and he +returned to the forest, pausing several times on his way, +under the pretext of saluting his protectors. Several days +elapsed, and they neither saw nor heard of Cucumetto. The +time of the Carnival was at hand. The Count of SanFelice +announced a grand masked ball, to which all that were +distinguished in Rome were invited. Teresa had a great +desire to see this ball. Luigi asked permission of his +protector, the steward, that she and he might be present +amongst the servants of the house. This was granted. The +ball was given by the Count for the particular pleasure of +his daughter Carmela, whom he adored. Carmela was precisely +the age and figure of Teresa, and Teresa was as handsome as +Carmela. On the evening of the ball Teresa was attired in +her best, her most brilliant ornaments in her hair, and +gayest glass beads, she was in the costume of the women +of Frascati. Luigi wore the very picturesque garb of the +Roman peasant at holiday time. They both mingled, as they +had leave to do, with the servants and peasants. +"The festa was magnificent not only was the villa +brilliantly illuminated, but thousands of colored lanterns +were suspended from the trees in the garden and very soon +the palace overflowed to the terraces, and the terraces to +the gardenwalks. At each crosspath was an orchestra, and +tables spread with refreshments the guests stopped, formed +quadrilles, and danced in any part of the grounds they +pleased. Carmela was attired like a woman of Sonnino. Her +cap was embroidered with pearls, the pins in her hair were +of gold and diamonds, her girdle was of Turkey silk, with +large embroidered flowers, her bodice and skirt were of +cashmere, her apron of Indian muslin, and the buttons of her +corset were of jewels. Two of her companions were dressed, +the one as a woman of Nettuno, and the other as a woman of +La Riccia. Four young men of the richest and noblest +families of Rome accompanied them with that Italian freedom +which has not its parallel in any other country in the +world. They were attired as peasants of Albano, Velletri, +CivitaCastellana, and Sora. We need hardly add that these +peasant costumes, like those of the young women, were +brilliant with gold and jewels. +"Carmela wished to form a quadrille, but there was one lady +wanting. Carmela looked all around her, but not one of the +guests had a costume similar to her own, or those of her +companions. The Count of SanFelice pointed out Teresa, who +was hanging on Luigi's arm in a group of peasants. "Will you +allow me, father?' said Carmela. "Certainly,' replied the +count, "are we not in Carnival time?' Carmela turned +towards the young man who was talking with her, and saying a +few words to him, pointed with her finger to Teresa. The +young man looked, bowed in obedience, and then went to +Teresa, and invited her to dance in a quadrille directed by +the count's daughter. Teresa felt a flush pass over her +face she looked at Luigi, who could not refuse his assent. +Luigi slowly relinquished Teresa's arm, which he had held +beneath his own, and Teresa, accompanied by her elegant +cavalier, took her appointed place with much agitation in +the aristocratic quadrille. Certainly, in the eyes of an +artist, the exact and strict costume of Teresa had a very +different character from that of Carmela and her companions +and Teresa was frivolous and coquettish, and thus the +embroidery and muslins, the cashmere waistgirdles, all +dazzled her, and the reflection of sapphires and diamonds +almost turned her giddy brain. +"Luigi felt a sensation hitherto unknown arising in his +mind. It was like an acute pain which gnawed at his heart, +and then thrilled through his whole body. He followed with +his eye each movement of Teresa and her cavalier when their +hands touched, he felt as though he should swoon every +pulse beat with violence, and it seemed as though a bell +were ringing in his ears. When they spoke, although Teresa +listened timidly and with downcast eyes to the conversation +of her cavalier, as Luigi could read in the ardent looks of +the goodlooking young man that his language was that of +praise, it seemed as if the whole world was turning round +with him, and all the voices of hell were whispering in his +ears ideas of murder and assassination. Then fearing that +his paroxysm might get the better of him, he clutched with +one hand the branch of a tree against which he was leaning, +and with the other convulsively grasped the dagger with a +carved handle which was in his belt, and which, unwittingly, +he drew from the scabbard from time to time. Luigi was +jealous He felt that, influenced by her ambitions and +coquettish disposition, Teresa might escape him. +"The young peasant girl, at first timid and scared, soon +recovered herself. We have said that Teresa was handsome, +but this is not all Teresa was endowed with all those wild +graces which are so much more potent than our affected and +studied elegancies. She had almost all the honors of the +quadrille, and if she were envious of the Count of +SanFelice's daughter, we will not undertake to say that +Carmela was not jealous of her. And with overpowering +compliments her handsome cavalier led her back to the place +whence he had taken her, and where Luigi awaited her. Twice +or thrice during the dance the young girl had glanced at +Luigi, and each time she saw that he was pale and that his +features were agitated, once even the blade of his knife, +half drawn from its sheath, had dazzled her eyes with its +sinister glare. Thus, it was almost tremblingly that she +resumed her lover's arm. The quadrille had been most +perfect, and it was evident there was a great demand for a +repetition, Carmela alone objecting to it, but the Count of +SanFelice besought his daughter so earnestly, that she +acceded. One of the cavaliers then hastened to invite +Teresa, without whom it was impossible for the quadrille to +be formed, but the young girl had disappeared. The truth +was, that Luigi had not felt the strength to support another +such trial, and, half by persuasion and half by force, he +had removed Teresa toward another part of the garden. Teresa +had yielded in spite of herself, but when she looked at the +agitated countenance of the young man, she understood by his +silence and trembling voice that something strange was +passing within him. She herself was not exempt from internal +emotion, and without having done anything wrong, yet fully +comprehended that Luigi was right in reproaching her. Why, +she did not know, but yet she did not the less feel that +these reproaches were merited. However, to Teresa's great +astonishment, Luigi remained mute, and not a word escaped +his lips the rest of the evening. When the chill of the +night had driven away the guests from the gardens, and the +gates of the villa were closed on them for the festa +indoors, he took Teresa quite away, and as he left her at +her home, he said, +""Teresa, what were you thinking of as you danced opposite +the young Countess of SanFelice?' "I thought,' replied +the young girl, with all the frankness of her nature, "that +I would give half my life for a costume such as she wore.' +""And what said your cavalier to you?' "He said it only +depended on myself to have it, and I had only one word to +say.' +""He was right,' said Luigi. "Do you desire it as ardently +as you say?' "Yes.' "Well, then, you shall have it' +"The young girl, much astonished, raised her head to look at +him, but his face was so gloomy and terrible that her words +froze to her lips. As Luigi spoke thus, he left her. Teresa +followed him with her eyes into the darkness as long as she +could, and when he had quite disappeared, she went into the +house with a sigh. +"That night a memorable event occurred, due, no doubt, to +the imprudence of some servant who had neglected to +extinguish the lights. The Villa of SanFelice took fire in +the rooms adjoining the very apartment of the lovely +Carmela. Awakened in the night by the light of the flames, +she sprang out of bed, wrapped herself in a dressinggown, +and attempted to escape by the door, but the corridor by +which she hoped to fly was already a prey to the flames. She +then returned to her room, calling for help as loudly as she +could, when suddenly her window, which was twenty feet from +the ground, was opened, a young peasant jumped into the +chamber, seized her in his arms, and with superhuman skill +and strength conveyed her to the turf of the grassplot, +where she fainted. When she recovered, her father was by her +side. All the servants surrounded her, offering her +assistance. An entire wing of the villa was burnt down but +what of that, as long as Carmela was safe and uninjured? Her +preserver was everywhere sought for, but he did not appear +he was inquired after, but no one had seen him. Carmela was +greatly troubled that she had not recognized him. As the +count was immensely rich, excepting the danger Carmela had +run, and the marvellous manner in which she had escaped, +made that appear to him rather a favor of providence than a +real misfortune, the loss occasioned by the conflagration +was to him but a trifle. +"The next day, at the usual hour, the two young peasants +were on the borders of the forest. Luigi arrived first. He +came toward Teresa in high spirits, and seemed to have +completely forgotten the events of the previous evening. The +young girl was very pensive, but seeing Luigi so cheerful, +she on her part assumed a smiling air, which was natural to +her when she was not excited or in a passion. Luigi took her +arm beneath his own, and led her to the door of the grotto. +Then he paused. The young girl, perceiving that there was +something extraordinary, looked at him steadfastly. +"Teresa,' said Luigi, "yesterday evening you told me you +would give all the world to have a costume similar to that +of the count's daughter.' "Yes,' replied Teresa with +astonishment "but I was mad to utter such a wish.' "And +I replied, "Very well, you shall have it."' "Yes,' +replied the young girl, whose astonishment increased at +every word uttered by Luigi, "but of course your reply was +only to please me.' +""I have promised no more than I have given you, Teresa,' +said Luigi proudly. "Go into the grotto and dress yourself.' +At these words he drew away the stone, and showed Teresa the +grotto, lighted up by two wax lights, which burnt on each +side of a splendid mirror on a rustic table, made by Luigi, +were spread out the pearl necklace and the diamond pins, and +on a chair at the side was laid the rest of the costume. +"Teresa uttered a cry of joy, and, without inquiring whence +this attire came, or even thanking Luigi, darted into the +grotto, transformed into a dressingroom. Luigi pushed the +stone behind her, for on the crest of a small adjacent hill +which cut off the view toward Palestrina, he saw a traveller +on horseback, stopping a moment, as if uncertain of his +road, and thus presenting against the blue sky that perfect +outline which is peculiar to distant objects in southern +climes. When he saw Luigi, he put his horse into a gallop +and advanced toward him. Luigi was not mistaken. The +traveller, who was going from Palestrina to Tivoli, had +mistaken his way the young man directed him but as at a +distance of a quarter of a mile the road again divided into +three ways, and on reaching these the traveller might again +stray from his route, he begged Luigi to be his guide. Luigi +threw his cloak on the ground, placed his carbine on his +shoulder, and freed from his heavy covering, preceded the +traveller with the rapid step of a mountaineer, which a +horse can scarcely keep up with. In ten minutes Luigi and +the traveller reached the crossroads. On arriving there, +with an air as majestic as that of an emperor, he stretched +his hand towards that one of the roads which the traveller +was to follow. "That is your road, excellency, and now +you cannot again mistake.' "And here is your recompense,' +said the traveller, offering the young herdsman some small +pieces of money. +""Thank you,' said Luigi, drawing back his hand "I render a +service, I do not sell it.' "Well,' replied the +traveller, who seemed used to this difference between the +servility of a man of the cities and the pride of the +mountaineer, "if you refuse wages, you will, perhaps, accept +a gift.' "Ah, yes, that is another thing.' "Then,' +said the traveller, "take these two Venetian sequins and +give them to your bride, to make herself a pair of +earrings.' +""And then do you take this poniard,' said the young +herdsman "you will not find one better carved between +Albano and CivitaCastellana.' +""I accept it,' answered the traveller, "but then the +obligation will be on my side, for this poniard is worth +more than two sequins.' "For a dealer perhaps but for +me, who engraved it myself, it is hardly worth a piastre.' +""What is your name?' inquired the traveller. "Luigi +Vampa,' replied the shepherd, with the same air as he would +have replied, Alexander, King of Macedon. "And yours?' +"I,' said the traveller, "am called Sinbad the Sailor.'" +Franz d'Epinay started with surprise. +"Sinbad the Sailor." he said. +"Yes," replied the narrator "that was the name which the +traveller gave to Vampa as his own." +"Well, and what may you have to say against this name?" +inquired Albert "it is a very pretty name, and the +adventures of the gentleman of that name amused me very much +in my youth, I must confess." Franz said no more. The +name of Sinbad the Sailor, as may well be supposed, awakened +in him a world of recollections, as had the name of the +Count of Monte Cristo on the previous evening. +"Proceed" said he to the host. +"Vampa put the two sequins haughtily into his pocket, and +slowly returned by the way he had gone. As he came within +two or three hundred paces of the grotto, he thought he +heard a cry. He listened to know whence this sound could +proceed. A moment afterwards he thought he heard his own +name pronounced distinctly. The cry proceeded from the +grotto. He bounded like a chamois, cocking his carbine as he +went, and in a moment reached the summit of a hill opposite +to that on which he had perceived the traveller. Three cries +for help came more distinctly to his ear. He cast his eyes +around him and saw a man carrying off Teresa, as Nessus, the +centaur, carried Dejanira. This man, who was hastening +towards the wood, was already threequarters of the way on +the road from the grotto to the forest. Vampa measured the +distance the man was at least two hundred paces in advance +of him, and there was not a chance of overtaking him. The +young shepherd stopped, as if his feet had been rooted to +the ground then he put the butt of his carbine to his +shoulder, took aim at the ravisher, followed him for a +second in his track, and then fired. The ravisher stopped +suddenly, his knees bent under him, and he fell with Teresa +in his arms. The young girl rose instantly, but the man lay +on the earth struggling in the agonies of death. Vampa then +rushed towards Teresa for at ten paces from the dying man +her legs had failed her, and she had dropped on her knees, +so that the young man feared that the ball that had brought +down his enemy, had also wounded his betrothed. Fortunately, +she was unscathed, and it was fright alone that had overcome +Teresa. When Luigi had assured himself that she was safe and +unharmed, he turned towards the wounded man. He had just +expired, with clinched hands, his mouth in a spasm of agony, +and his hair on end in the sweat of death. His eyes remained +open and menacing. Vampa approached the corpse, and +recognized Cucumetto. From the day on which the bandit had +been saved by the two young peasants, he had been enamoured +of Teresa, and had sworn she should be his. From that time +he had watched them, and profiting by the moment when her +lover had left her alone, had carried her off, and believed +he at length had her in his power, when the ball, directed +by the unerring skill of the young herdsman, had pierced his +heart. Vampa gazed on him for a moment without betraying the +slightest emotion while, on the contrary, Teresa, +shuddering in every limb, dared not approach the slain +ruffian but by degrees, and threw a hesitating glance at the +dead body over the shoulder of her lover. Suddenly Vampa +turned toward his mistress "Ah,' said he "good, good +You are dressed it is now my turn to dress myself.' +"Teresa was clothed from head to foot in the garb of the +Count of SanFelice's daughter. Vampa took Cucumetto's body +in his arms and conveyed it to the grotto, while in her turn +Teresa remained outside. If a second traveller had passed, +he would have seen a strange thing, a shepherdess +watching her flock, clad in a cashmere grown, with earrings +and necklace of pearls, diamond pins, and buttons of +sapphires, emeralds, and rubies. He would, no doubt, have +believed that he had returned to the times of Florian, and +would have declared, on reaching Paris, that he had met an +Alpine shepherdess seated at the foot of the Sabine Hill. At +the end of a quarter of an hour Vampa quitted the grotto +his costume was no less elegant than that of Teresa. He wore +a vest of garnetcolored velvet, with buttons of cut gold a +silk waistcoat covered with embroidery a Roman scarf tied +round his neck a cartridgebox worked with gold, and red +and green silk skyblue velvet breeches, fastened above the +knee with diamond buckles garters of deerskin, worked with +a thousand arabesques, and a hat whereon hung ribbons of all +colors two watches hung from his girdle, and a splendid +poniard was in his belt. Teresa uttered a cry of admiration. +Vampa in this attire resembled a painting by Leopold Robert, +or Schnetz. He had assumed the entire costume of Cucumetto. +The young man saw the effect produced on his betrothed, and +a smile of pride passed over his lips. "Now,' he said to +Teresa, "are you ready to share my fortune, whatever it may +be?' "Oh, yes' exclaimed the young girl +enthusiastically. "And follow me wherever I go?' "To +the world's end.' "Then take my arm, and let us on we +have no time to lose.' The young girl did so without +questioning her lover as to where he was conducting her, for +he appeared to her at this moment as handsome, proud, and +powerful as a god. They went towards the forest, and soon +entered it. We need scarcely say that all the paths of the +mountain were known to Vampa he therefore went forward +without a moment's hesitation, although there was no beaten +track, but he knew his path by looking at the trees and +bushes, and thus they kept on advancing for nearly an hour +and a half. At the end of this time they had reached the +thickest of the forest. A torrent, whose bed was dry, led +into a deep gorge. Vampa took this wild road, which, +enclosed between two ridges, and shadowed by the tufted +umbrage of the pines, seemed, but for the difficulties of +its descent, that path to Avernus of which Virgil speaks. +Teresa had become alarmed at the wild and deserted look of +the plain around her, and pressed closely against her guide, +not uttering a syllable but as she saw him advance with +even step and composed countenance, she endeavored to +repress her emotion. Suddenly, about ten paces from them, a +man advanced from behind a tree and aimed at Vampa. "Not +another step,' he said, "or you are a dead man.' "What, +then,' said Vampa, raising his hand with a gesture of +disdain, while Teresa, no longer able to restrain her alarm, +clung closely to him, "do wolves rend each other?' "Who +are you?' inquired the sentinel. "I am Luigi Vampa, +shepherd of the SanFelice farm.' "What do you want?' +"I would speak with your companions who are in the glade at +Rocca Bianca.' "Follow me, then,' said the sentinel "or, +as you know your way, go first.' Vampa smiled +disdainfully at this precaution on the part of the bandit, +went before Teresa, and continued to advance with the same +firm and easy step as before. At the end of ten minutes the +bandit made them a sign to stop. The two young persons +obeyed. Then the bandit thrice imitated the cry of a crow a +croak answered this signal. "Good' said the sentry, "you +may now go on.' Luigi and Teresa again set forward as +they went on Teresa clung tremblingly to her lover at the +sight of weapons and the glistening of carbines through the +trees. The retreat of Rocca Bianca was at the top of a small +mountain, which no doubt in former days had been a volcano +an extinct volcano before the days when Remus and Romulus +had deserted Alba to come and found the city of Rome. Teresa +and Luigi reached the summit, and all at once found +themselves in the presence of twenty bandits. "Here is a +young man who seeks and wishes to speak to you,' said the +sentinel. "What has he to say?' inquired the young man +who was in command in the chief's absence. "I wish to say +that I am tired of a shepherd's life,' was Vampa's reply. +"Ah, I understand,' said the lieutenant "and you seek +admittance into our ranks?' "Welcome' cried several +bandits from Ferrusino, Pampinara, and Anagni, who had +recognized Luigi Vampa. "Yes, but I came to ask something +more than to be your companion.' "And what may that be?' +inquired the bandits with astonishment. "I come to ask to +be your captain,' said the young man. The bandits shouted +with laughter. "And what have you done to aspire to this +honor?' demanded the lieutenant. "I have killed your +chief, Cucumetto, whose dress I now wear and I set fire to +the villa SanFelice to procure a weddingdress for my +betrothed.' An hour afterwards Luigi Vampa was chosen +captain, vice Cucumetto deceased." +"Well, my dear Albert," said Franz, turning towards his +friend "what think you of citizen Luigi Vampa?" +"I say he is a myth," replied Albert, "and never had an +existence." +"And what may a myth be?" inquired Pastrini. +"The explanation would be too long, my dear landlord," +replied Franz. +"And you say that Signor Vampa exercises his profession at +this moment in the environs of Rome?" +"And with a boldness of which no bandit before him ever gave +an example." +"Then the police have vainly tried to lay hands on him?" +"Why, you see, he has a good understanding with the +shepherds in the plains, the fishermen of the Tiber, and the +smugglers of the coast. They seek for him in the mountains, +and he is on the waters they follow him on the waters, and +he is on the open sea then they pursue him, and he has +suddenly taken refuge in the islands, at Giglio, Guanouti, +or Monte Cristo and when they hunt for him there, he +reappears suddenly at Albano, Tivoli, or La Riccia." +"And how does he behave towards travellers?" +"Alas his plan is very simple. It depends on the distance +he may be from the city, whether he gives eight hours, +twelve hours, or a day wherein to pay their ransom and when +that time has elapsed he allows another hour's grace. At the +sixtieth minute of this hour, if the money is not +forthcoming, he blows out the prisoner's brains with a +pistolshot, or plants his dagger in his heart, and that +settles the account." +"Well, Albert," inquired Franz of his companion, "are you +still disposed to go to the Colosseum by the outer wall?" +"Quite so," said Albert, "if the way be picturesque." The +clock struck nine as the door opened, and a coachman +appeared. "Excellencies," said he, "the coach is ready." +"Well, then," said Franz, "let us to the Colosseum." +"By the Porta del Popolo or by the streets, your +excellencies?" +"By the streets, morbleu, by the streets" cried Franz. +"Ah, my dear fellow," said Albert, rising, and lighting his +third cigar, "really, I thought you had more courage." So +saying, the two young men went down the staircase, and got +into the carriage. +Chapter +The Colosseum. +Franz had so managed his route, that during the ride to the +Colosseum they passed not a single ancient ruin, so that no +preliminary impression interfered to mitigate the colossal +proportions of the gigantic building they came to admire. +The road selected was a continuation of the Via Sistina +then by cutting off the right angle of the street in which +stands Santa Maria Maggiore and proceeding by the Via Urbana +and San Pietro in Vincoli, the travellers would find +themselves directly opposite the Colosseum. This itinerary +possessed another great advantage, that of leaving Franz +at full liberty to indulge his deep reverie upon the subject +of Signor Pastrini's story, in which his mysterious host of +Monte Cristo was so strangely mixed up. Seated with folded +arms in a corner of the carriage, he continued to ponder +over the singular history he had so lately listened to, and +to ask himself an interminable number of questions touching +its various circumstances without, however, arriving at a +satisfactory reply to any of them. One fact more than the +rest brought his friend "Sinbad the Sailor" back to his +recollection, and that was the mysterious sort of intimacy +that seemed to exist between the brigands and the sailors +and Pastrini's account of Vampa's having found refuge on +board the vessels of smugglers and fishermen, reminded Franz +of the two Corsican bandits he had found supping so amicably +with the crew of the little yacht, which had even deviated +from its course and touched at PortoVecchio for the sole +purpose of landing them. The very name assumed by his host +of Monte Cristo and again repeated by the landlord of the +Hotel de Londres, abundantly proved to him that his island +friend was playing his philanthropic part on the shores of +Piombino, CivitaVecchio, Ostia, and Gaeta, as on those of +Corsica, Tuscany, and Spain and further, Franz bethought +him of having heard his singular entertainer speak both of +Tunis and Palermo, proving thereby how largely his circle of +acquaintances extended. +But however the mind of the young man might be absorbed in +these reflections, they were at once dispersed at the sight +of the dark frowning ruins of the stupendous Colosseum, +through the various openings of which the pale moonlight +played and flickered like the unearthly gleam from the eyes +of the wandering dead. The carriage stopped near the Meta +Sudans the door was opened, and the young men, eagerly +alighting, found themselves opposite a cicerone, who +appeared to have sprung up from the ground, so unexpected +was his appearance. +The usual guide from the hotel having followed them, they +had paid two conductors, nor is it possible, at Rome, to +avoid this abundant supply of guides besides the ordinary +cicerone, who seizes upon you directly you set foot in your +hotel, and never quits you while you remain in the city, +there is also a special cicerone belonging to each monument +nay, almost to each part of a monument. It may, +therefore, be easily imagined there is no scarcity of guides +at the Colosseum, that wonder of all ages, which Martial +thus eulogizes "Let Memphis cease to boast the barbarous +miracles of her pyramids, and the wonders of Babylon be +talked of no more among us all must bow to the superiority +of the gigantic labor of the Caesars, and the many voices of +Fame spread far and wide the surpassing merits of this +incomparable monument." +As for Albert and Franz, they essayed not to escape from +their ciceronian tyrants and, indeed, it would have been so +much the more difficult to break their bondage, as the +guides alone are permitted to visit these monuments with +torches in their hands. Thus, then, the young men made no +attempt at resistance, but blindly and confidingly +surrendered themselves into the care and custody of their +conductors. Albert had already made seven or eight similar +excursions to the Colosseum, while his less favored +companion trod for the first time in his life the classic +ground forming the monument of Flavius Vespasian and, to +his credit be it spoken, his mind, even amid the glib +loquacity of the guides, was duly and deeply touched with +awe and enthusiastic admiration of all he saw and certainly +no adequate notion of these stupendous ruins can be formed +save by such as have visited them, and more especially by +moonlight, at which time the vast proportions of the +building appear twice as large when viewed by the mysterious +beams of a southern moonlit sky, whose rays are sufficiently +clear and vivid to light the horizon with a glow equal to +the soft twilight of an eastern clime. Scarcely, therefore, +had the reflective Franz walked a hundred steps beneath the +interior porticoes of the ruin, than, abandoning Albert to +the guides who would by no means yield their prescriptive +right of carrying their victims through the routine +regularly laid down, and as regularly followed by them, but +dragged the unconscious visitor to the various objects with +a pertinacity that admitted of no appeal, beginning, as a +matter of course, with the Lions' Den, and finishing with +Caesar's "Podium,", to escape a jargon and mechanical +survey of the wonders by which he was surrounded, Franz +ascended a halfdilapidated staircase, and, leaving them to +follow their monotonous round, seated himself at the foot of +a column, and immediately opposite a large aperture, which +permitted him to enjoy a full and undisturbed view of the +gigantic dimensions of the majestic ruin. +Franz had remained for nearly a quarter of an hour perfectly +hidden by the shadow of the vast column at whose base he had +found a restingplace, and from whence his eyes followed the +motions of Albert and his guides, who, holding torches in +their hands, had emerged from a vomitarium at the opposite +extremity of the Colosseum, and then again disappeared down +the steps conducting to the seats reserved for the Vestal +virgins, resembling, as they glided along, some restless +shades following the flickering glare of so many +ignesfatui. All at once his ear caught a sound resembling +that of a stone rolling down the staircase opposite the one +by which he had himself ascended. There was nothing +remarkable in the circumstance of a fragment of granite +giving way and falling heavily below but it seemed to him +that the substance that fell gave way beneath the pressure +of a foot, and also that some one, who endeavored as much as +possible to prevent his footsteps from being heard, was +approaching the spot where he sat. Conjecture soon became +certainty, for the figure of a man was distinctly visible to +Franz, gradually emerging from the staircase opposite, upon +which the moon was at that moment pouring a full tide of +silvery brightness. +The stranger thus presenting himself was probably a person +who, like Franz, preferred the enjoyment of solitude and his +own thoughts to the frivolous gabble of the guides. And his +appearance had nothing extraordinary in it but the +hesitation with which he proceeded, stopping and listening +with anxious attention at every step he took, convinced +Franz that he expected the arrival of some person. By a sort +of instinctive impulse, Franz withdrew as much as possible +behind his pillar. About ten feet from the spot where he and +the stranger were, the roof had given way, leaving a large +round opening, through which might be seen the blue vault of +heaven, thickly studded with stars. Around this opening, +which had, possibly, for ages permitted a free entrance to +the brilliant moonbeams that now illumined the vast pile, +grew a quantity of creeping plants, whose delicate green +branches stood out in bold relief against the clear azure of +the firmament, while large masses of thick, strong fibrous +shoots forced their way through the chasm, and hung floating +to and fro, like so many waving strings. The person whose +mysterious arrival had attracted the attention of Franz +stood in a kind of halflight, that rendered it impossible +to distinguish his features, although his dress was easily +made out. He wore a large brown mantle, one fold of which, +thrown over his left shoulder, served likewise to mask the +lower part of his countenance, while the upper part was +completely hidden by his broadbrimmed hat. The lower part +of his dress was more distinctly visible by the bright rays +of the moon, which, entering through the broken ceiling, +shed their refulgent beams on feet cased in elegantly made +boots of polished leather, over which descended fashionably +cut trousers of black cloth. +From the imperfect means Franz had of judging, he could only +come to one conclusion, that the person whom he was thus +watching certainly belonged to no inferior station of life. +Some few minutes had elapsed, and the stranger began to show +manifest signs of impatience, when a slight noise was heard +outside the aperture in the roof, and almost immediately a +dark shadow seemed to obstruct the flood of light that had +entered it, and the figure of a man was clearly seen gazing +with eager scrutiny on the immense space beneath him then, +as his eye caught sight of him in the mantle, he grasped a +floating mass of thickly matted boughs, and glided down by +their help to within three or four feet of the ground, and +then leaped lightly on his feet. The man who had performed +this daring act with so much indifference wore the +Transtevere costume. "I beg your excellency's pardon for +keeping you waiting," said the man, in the Roman dialect, +"but I don't think I'm many minutes after my time, ten +o'clock his just struck on the Lateran." +"Say not a word about being late," replied the stranger in +purest Tuscan "'tis I who am too soon. But even if you had +caused me to wait a little while, I should have felt quite +sure that the delay was not occasioned by any fault of +yours." +"Your excellency is perfectly right in so thinking," said +the man "I came here direct from the Castle of St. Angelo, +and I had an immense deal of trouble before I could get a +chance to speak to Beppo." +"And who is Beppo?" +"Oh, Beppo is employed in the prison, and I give him so much +a year to let me know what is going on within his holiness's +castle." +"Indeed You are a provident person, I see." +"Why, you see, no one knows what may happen. Perhaps some of +these days I may be entrapped, like poor Peppino and may be +very glad to have some little nibbling mouse to gnaw the +meshes of my net, and so help me out of prison." +"Briefly, what did you glean?" +"That two executions of considerable interest will take +place the day after tomorrow at two o'clock, as is +customary at Rome at the commencement of all great +festivals. One of the culprits will be mazzolato he is an +atrocious villain, who murdered the priest who brought him +up, and deserves not the smallest pity. The other sufferer +is sentenced to be decapitato and he, your excellency, is +poor Peppino." + Knocked on the head. + Beheaded. +"The fact is, that you have inspired not only the pontifical +government, but also the neighboring states, with such +extreme fear, that they are glad of all opportunity of +making an example." +"But Peppino did not even belong to my band he was merely a +poor shepherd, whose only crime consisted in furnishing us +with provisions." +"Which makes him your accomplice to all intents and +purposes. But mark the distinction with which he is treated +instead of being knocked on the head as you would be if once +they caught hold of you, he is simply sentenced to be +guillotined, by which means, too, the amusements of the day +are diversified, and there is a spectacle to please every +spectator." +"Without reckoning the wholly unexpected one I am preparing +to surprise them with." +"My good friend," said the man in the cloak, "excuse me for +saying that you seem to me precisely in the mood to commit +some wild or extravagant act." +"Perhaps I am but one thing I have resolved on, and that +is, to stop at nothing to restore a poor devil to liberty, +who has got into this scrape solely from having served me. I +should hate and despise myself as a coward did I desert the +brave fellow in his present extremity." +"And what do you mean to do?" +"To surround the scaffold with twenty of my best men, who, +at a signal from me, will rush forward directly Peppino is +brought for execution, and, by the assistance of their +stilettos, drive back the guard, and carry off the +prisoner." +"That seems to me as hazardous as uncertain, and convinces +me that my scheme is far better than yours." +"And what is your excellency's project?" +"Just this. I will so advantageously bestow , piastres, +that the person receiving them shall obtain a respite till +next year for Peppino and during that year, another +skilfully placed , piastres will afford him the means of +escaping from his prison." +"And do you feel sure of succeeding?" +"Pardieu" exclaimed the man in the cloak, suddenly +expressing himself in French. +"What did your excellency say?" inquired the other. +"I said, my good fellow, that I would do more singlehanded +by the means of gold than you and all your troop could +effect with stilettos, pistols, carbines, and blunderbusses +included. Leave me, then, to act, and have no fears for the +result." +"At least, there can be no harm in myself and party being in +readiness, in case your excellency should fail." +"None whatever. Take what precautions you please, if it is +any satisfaction to you to do so but rely upon my obtaining +the reprieve I seek." +"Remember, the execution is fixed for the day after +tomorrow, and that you have but one day to work in." +"And what of that? Is not a day divided into twentyfour +hours, each hour into sixty minutes, and every minute +subdivided into sixty seconds? Now in , seconds very +many things can be done." +"And how shall I know whether your excellency has succeeded +or not." +"Oh, that is very easily arranged. I have engaged the three +lower windows at the Cafe Rospoli should I have obtained +the requisite pardon for Peppino, the two outside windows +will be hung with yellow damasks, and the centre with white, +having a large cross in red marked on it." +"And whom will you employ to carry the reprieve to the +officer directing the execution?" +"Send one of your men, disguised as a penitent friar, and I +will give it to him. His dress will procure him the means of +approaching the scaffold itself, and he will deliver the +official order to the officer, who, in his turn, will hand +it to the executioner in the meantime, it will be as well +to acquaint Peppino with what we have determined on, if it +be only to prevent his dying of fear or losing his senses, +because in either case a very useless expense will have been +incurred." +"Your excellency," said the man, "you are fully persuaded of +my entire devotion to you, are you not?" +"Nay, I flatter myself that there can be no doubt of it," +replied the cavalier in the cloak. +"Well, then, only fulfil your promise of rescuing Peppino, +and henceforward you shall receive not only devotion, but +the most absolute obedience from myself and those under me +that one human being can render to another." +"Have a care how far you pledge yourself, my good friend, +for I may remind you of your promise at some, perhaps, not +very distant period, when I, in my turn, may require your +aid and influence." +"Let that day come sooner or later, your excellency will +find me what I have found you in this my heavy trouble and +if from the other end of the world you but write me word to +do such or such a thing, you may regard it as done, for done +it shall be, on the word and faith of" +"Hush" interrupted the stranger "I hear a noise." +"'Tis some travellers, who are visiting the Colosseum by +torchlight." +"'Twere better we should not be seen together those guides +are nothing but spies, and might possibly recognize you +and, however I may be honored by your friendship, my worthy +friend, if once the extent of our intimacy were known, I am +sadly afraid both my reputation and credit would suffer +thereby." +"Well, then, if you obtain the reprieve?" +"The middle window at the Cafe Rospoli will be hung with +white damask, bearing a red cross." +"And if you fail?" +"Then all three windows will have yellow draperies." +"And then?" +"And then, my good fellow, use your daggers in any way you +please, and I further promise you to be there as a spectator +of your prowess." +"We understand each other perfectly, then. Adieu, your +excellency depend upon me as firmly as I do upon you." +Saying these words, the Transteverin disappeared down the +staircase, while his companion, muffling his features more +closely than before in the folds of his mantle, passed +almost close to Franz, and descended to the arena by an +outward flight of steps. The next minute Franz heard himself +called by Albert, who made the lofty building reecho with +the sound of his friend's name. Franz, however, did not obey +the summons till he had satisfied himself that the two men +whose conversation he had overheard were at a sufficient +distance to prevent his encountering them in his descent. In +ten minutes after the strangers had departed, Franz was on +the road to the Piazza de Spagni, listening with studied +indifference to the learned dissertation delivered by +Albert, after the manner of Pliny and Calpurnius, touching +the ironpointed nets used to prevent the ferocious beasts +from springing on the spectators. Franz let him proceed +without interruption, and, in fact, did not hear what was +said he longed to be alone, and free to ponder over all +that had occurred. One of the two men, whose mysterious +meeting in the Colosseum he had so unintentionally +witnessed, was an entire stranger to him, but not so the +other and though Franz had been unable to distinguish his +features, from his being either wrapped in his mantle or +obscured by the shadow, the tones of his voice had made too +powerful an impression on him the first time he had heard +them for him ever again to forget them, hear them when or +where he might. It was more especially when this man was +speaking in a manner half jesting, half bitter, that Franz's +ear recalled most vividly the deep sonorous, yet +wellpitched voice that had addressed him in the grotto of +Monte Cristo, and which he heard for the second time amid +the darkness and ruined grandeur of the Colosseum. And the +more he thought, the more entire was his conviction, that +the person who wore the mantle was no other than his former +host and entertainer, "Sinbad the Sailor." +Under any other circumstances, Franz would have found it +impossible to resist his extreme curiosity to know more of +so singular a personage, and with that intent have sought to +renew their short acquaintance but in the present instance, +the confidential nature of the conversation he had overheard +made him, with propriety, judge that his appearance at such +a time would be anything but agreeable. As we have seen, +therefore, he permitted his former host to retire without +attempting a recognition, but fully promising himself a rich +indemnity for his present forbearance should chance afford +him another opportunity. In vain did Franz endeavor to +forget the many perplexing thoughts which assailed him in +vain did he court the refreshment of sleep. Slumber refused +to visit his eyelids and the night was passed in feverish +contemplation of the chain of circumstances tending to prove +the identity of the mysterious visitant to the Colosseum +with the inhabitant of the grotto of Monte Cristo and the +more he thought, the firmer grew his opinion on the subject. +Worn out at length, he fell asleep at daybreak, and did not +awake till late. Like a genuine Frenchman, Albert had +employed his time in arranging for the evening's diversion +he had sent to engage a box at the Teatro Argentino and +Franz, having a number of letters to write, relinquished the +carriage to Albert for the whole of the day. At five o'clock +Albert returned, delighted with his day's work he had been +occupied in leaving his letters of introduction, and had +received in return more invitations to balls and routs than +it would be possible for him to accept besides this, he had +seen as he called it all the remarkable sights at Rome. +Yes, in a single day he had accomplished what his more +seriousminded companion would have taken weeks to effect. +Neither had he neglected to ascertain the name of the piece +to be played that night at the Teatro Argentino, and also +what performers appeared in it. +The opera of "Parisina" was announced for representation, +and the principal actors were Coselli, Moriani, and La +Specchia. The young men, therefore, had reason to consider +themselves fortunate in having the opportunity of hearing +one of the best works by the composer of "Lucia di +Lammermoor," supported by three of the most renowned +vocalists of Italy. Albert had never been able to endure the +Italian theatres, with their orchestras from which it is +impossible to see, and the absence of balconies, or open +boxes all these defects pressed hard on a man who had had +his stall at the Bouffes, and had shared a lower box at the +Opera. Still, in spite of this, Albert displayed his most +dazzling and effective costumes each time he visited the +theatres but, alas, his elegant toilet was wholly thrown +away, and one of the most worthy representatives of Parisian +fashion had to carry with him the mortifying reflection that +he had nearly overrun Italy without meeting with a single +adventure. +Sometimes Albert would affect to make a joke of his want of +success but internally he was deeply wounded, and his +selflove immensely piqued, to think that Albert de Morcerf, +the most admired and most sought after of any young person +of his day, should thus be passed over, and merely have his +labor for his pains. And the thing was so much the more +annoying, as, according to the characteristic modesty of a +Frenchman, Albert had quitted Paris with the full conviction +that he had only to show himself in Italy to carry all +before him, and that upon his return he should astonish the +Parisian world with the recital of his numerous +loveaffairs. Alas, poor Albert none of those interesting +adventures fell in his way the lovely Genoese, Florentines, +and Neapolitans were all faithful, if not to their husbands, +at least to their lovers, and thought not of changing even +for the splendid appearance of Albert de Morcerf and all he +gained was the painful conviction that the ladies of Italy +have this advantage over those of France, that they are +faithful even in their infidelity. Yet he could not restrain +a hope that in Italy, as elsewhere, there might be an +exception to the general rule. Albert, besides being an +elegant, welllooking young man, was also possessed of +considerable talent and ability moreover, he was a viscount +a recently created one, certainly, but in the present day +it is not necessary to go as far back as Noah in tracing a +descent, and a genealogical tree is equally estimated, +whether dated from or merely but to crown all +these advantages, Albert de Morcerf commanded an income of +, livres, a more than sufficient sum to render him a +personage of considerable importance in Paris. It was +therefore no small mortification to him to have visited most +of the principal cities in Italy without having excited the +most trifling observation. Albert, however, hoped to +indemnify himself for all these slights and indifferences +during the Carnival, knowing full well that among the +different states and kingdoms in which this festivity is +celebrated, Rome is the spot where even the wisest and +gravest throw off the usual rigidity of their lives, and +deign to mingle in the follies of this time of liberty and +relaxation. +The Carnival was to commence on the morrow therefore Albert +had not an instant to lose in setting forth the programme of +his hopes, expectations, and claims to notice. With this +design he had engaged a box in the most conspicuous part of +the theatre, and exerted himself to set off his personal +attractions by the aid of the most rich and elaborate +toilet. The box taken by Albert was in the first circle +although each of the three tiers of boxes is deemed equally +aristocratic, and is, for this reason, generally styled the +"nobility's boxes," and although the box engaged for the two +friends was sufficiently capacious to contain at least a +dozen persons, it had cost less than would be paid at some +of the French theatres for one admitting merely four +occupants. Another motive had influenced Albert's selection +of his seat, who knew but that, thus advantageously +placed, he might not in truth attract the notice of some +fair Roman, and an introduction might ensue that would +procure him the offer of a seat in a carriage, or a place in +a princely balcony, from which he might behold the gayeties +of the Carnival? These united considerations made Albert +more lively and anxious to please than he had hitherto been. +Totally disregarding the business of the stage, he leaned +from his box and began attentively scrutinizing the beauty +of each pretty woman, aided by a powerful operaglass but, +alas, this attempt to attract notice wholly failed not even +curiosity had been excited, and it was but too apparent that +the lovely creatures, into whose good graces he was desirous +of stealing, were all so much engrossed with themselves, +their lovers, or their own thoughts, that they had not so +much as noticed him or the manipulation of his glass. +The truth was, that the anticipated pleasures of the +Carnival, with the "holy week" that was to succeed it, so +filled every fair breast, as to prevent the least attention +being bestowed even on the business of the stage. The actors +made their entries and exits unobserved or unthought of at +certain conventional moments, the spectators would suddenly +cease their conversation, or rouse themselves from their +musings, to listen to some brilliant effort of Moriani's, a +wellexecuted recitative by Coselli, or to join in loud +applause at the wonderful powers of La Specchia but that +momentary excitement over, they quickly relapsed into their +former state of preoccupation or interesting conversation. +Towards the close of the first act, the door of a box which +had been hitherto vacant was opened a lady entered to whom +Franz had been introduced in Paris, where indeed, he had +imagined she still was. The quick eye of Albert caught the +involuntary start with which his friend beheld the new +arrival, and, turning to him, he said hastily, "Do you know +the woman who has just entered that box?" +"Yes what do you think of her?" +"Oh, she is perfectly lovely what a complexion And such +magnificent hair Is she French?" +"No a Venetian." +"And her name is " +"Countess G ." +"Ah, I know her by name" exclaimed Albert "she is said to +possess as much wit and cleverness as beauty. I was to have +been presented to her when I met her at Madame Villefort's +ball." +"Shall I assist you in repairing your negligence?" asked +Franz. +"My dear fellow, are you really on such good terms with her +as to venture to take me to her box?" +"Why, I have only had the honor of being in her society and +conversing with her three or four times in my life but you +know that even such an acquaintance as that might warrant my +doing what you ask." At that instant, the countess perceived +Franz, and graciously waved her hand to him, to which he +replied by a respectful inclination of the head. "Upon my +word," said Albert, "you seem to be on excellent terms with +the beautiful countess." +"You are mistaken in thinking so," returned Franz calmly +"but you merely fall into the same error which leads so many +of our countrymen to commit the most egregious blunders, +I mean that of judging the habits and customs of Italy and +Spain by our Parisian notions believe me, nothing is more +fallacious than to form any estimate of the degree of +intimacy you may suppose existing among persons by the +familiar terms they seem upon there is a similarity of +feeling at this instant between ourselves and the countess +nothing more." +"Is there, indeed, my good fellow? Pray tell me, is it +sympathy of heart?" +"No of taste," continued Franz gravely. +"And in what manner has this congeniality of mind been +evinced?" +"By the countess's visiting the Colosseum, as we did last +night, by moonlight, and nearly alone." +"You were with her, then?" +"I was." +"And what did you say to her?" +"Oh, we talked of the illustrious dead of whom that +magnificent ruin is a glorious monument" +"Upon my word," cried Albert, "you must have been a very +entertaining companion alone, or all but alone, with a +beautiful woman in such a place of sentiment as the +Colosseum, and yet to find nothing better a talk about than +the dead All I can say is, if ever I should get such a +chance, the living should be my theme." +"And you will probably find your theme illchosen." +"But," said Albert, breaking in upon his discourse, "never +mind the past let us only remember the present. Are you not +going to keep your promise of introducing me to the fair +subject of our remarks?" +"Certainly, directly the curtain falls on the stage." +"What a confounded time this first act takes. I believe, on +my soul, that they never mean to finish it." +"Oh, yes, they will only listen to that charming finale. +How exquisitely Coselli sings his part." +"But what an awkward, inelegant fellow he is." +"Well, then, what do you say to La Specchia? Did you ever +see anything more perfect than her acting?" +"Why, you know, my dear fellow, when one has been accustomed +to Malibran and Sontag, such singers as these don't make the +same impression on you they perhaps do on others." +"At least, you must admire Moriani's style and execution." +"I never fancied men of his dark, ponderous appearance +singing with a voice like a woman's." +"My good friend," said Franz, turning to him, while Albert +continued to point his glass at every box in the theatre, +"you seem determined not to approve you are really too +difficult to please." The curtain at length fell on the +performances, to the infinite satisfaction of the Viscount +of Morcerf, who seized his hat, rapidly passed his fingers +through his hair, arranged his cravat and wristbands, and +signified to Franz that he was waiting for him to lead the +way. Franz, who had mutely interrogated the countess, and +received from her a gracious smile in token that he would be +welcome, sought not to retard the gratification of Albert's +eager impatience, but began at once the tour of the house, +closely followed by Albert, who availed himself of the few +minutes required to reach the opposite side of the theatre +to settle the height and smoothness of his collar, and to +arrange the lappets of his coat. This important task was +just completed as they arrived at the countess's box. At the +knock, the door was immediately opened, and the young man +who was seated beside the countess, in obedience to the +Italian custom, instantly rose and surrendered his place to +the strangers, who, in turn, would be expected to retire +upon the arrival of other visitors. +Franz presented Albert as one of the most distinguished +young men of the day, both as regarded his position in +society and extraordinary talents nor did he say more than +the truth, for in Paris and the circle in which the viscount +moved, he was looked upon and cited as a model of +perfection. Franz added that his companion, deeply grieved +at having been prevented the honor of being presented to the +countess during her sojourn in Paris, was most anxious to +make up for it, and had requested him Franz to remedy the +past misfortune by conducting him to her box, and concluded +by asking pardon for his presumption in having taken it upon +himself to do so. The countess, in reply, bowed gracefully +to Albert, and extended her hand with cordial kindness to +Franz then, inviting Albert to take the vacant seat beside +her, she recommended Franz to take the next best, if he +wished to view the ballet, and pointed to the one behind her +own chair. Albert was soon deeply engrossed in discoursing +upon Paris and Parisian matters, speaking to the countess of +the various persons they both knew there. Franz perceived +how completely he was in his element and, unwilling to +interfere with the pleasure he so evidently felt, took up +Albert's glass, and began in his turn to survey the +audience. Sitting alone, in the front of a box immediately +opposite, but situated on the third row, was a woman of +exquisite beauty, dressed in a Greek costume, which +evidently, from the ease and grace with which she wore it, +was her national attire. Behind her, but in deep shadow, was +the outline of a masculine figure but the features of this +latter personage it was not possible to distinguish. Franz +could not forbear breaking in upon the apparently +interesting conversation passing between the countess and +Albert, to inquire of the former if she knew who was the +fair Albanian opposite, since beauty such as hers was well +worthy of being observed by either sex. "All I can tell +about her," replied the countess, "is, that she has been at +Rome since the beginning of the season for I saw her where +she now sits the very first night of the season, and since +then she has never missed a performance. Sometimes she is +accompanied by the person who is now with her, and at others +she is merely attended by a black servant." +"And what do you think of her personal appearance?" +"Oh, I consider her perfectly lovely she is just my idea +of what Medora must have been." +Franz and the countess exchanged a smile, and then the +latter resumed her conversation with Albert, while Franz +returned to his previous survey of the house and company. +The curtain rose on the ballet, which was one of those +excellent specimens of the Italian school, admirably +arranged and put on the stage by Henri, who has established +for himself a great reputation throughout Italy for his +taste and skill in the choreographic art one of those +masterly productions of grace, method, and elegance in which +the whole corps de ballet, from the principal dancers to the +humblest supernumerary, are all engaged on the stage at the +same time and a hundred and fifty persons may be seen +exhibiting the same attitude, or elevating the same arm or +leg with a simultaneous movement, that would lead you to +suppose that but one mind, one act of volition, influenced +the moving mass the ballet was called "Poliska." However +much the ballet might have claimed his attention, Franz was +too deeply occupied with the beautiful Greek to take any +note of it while she seemed to experience an almost +childlike delight in watching it, her eager, animated looks +contrasting strongly with the utter indifference of her +companion, who, during the whole time the piece lasted, +never even moved, not even when the furious, crashing din +produced by the trumpets, cymbals, and Chinese bells sounded +their loudest from the orchestra. Of this he took no heed, +but was, as far as appearances might be trusted, enjoying +soft repose and bright celestial dreams. The ballet at +length came to a close, and the curtain fell amid the loud, +unanimous plaudits of an enthusiastic and delighted +audience. +Owing to the very judicious plan of dividing the two acts of +the opera with a ballet, the pauses between the performances +are very short, the singers in the opera having time to +repose themselves and change their costume, when necessary, +while the dancers are executing their pirouettes and +exhibiting their graceful steps. The overture to the second +act began and, at the first sound of the leader's bow +across his violin, Franz observed the sleeper slowly arise +and approach the Greek girl, who turned around to say a few +words to him, and then, leaning forward again on the railing +of her box, she became as absorbed as before in what was +going on. The countenance of the person who had addressed +her remained so completely in the shade, that, though Franz +tried his utmost, he could not distinguish a single feature. +The curtain rose, and the attention of Franz was attracted +by the actors and his eyes turned from the box containing +the Greek girl and her strange companion to watch the +business of the stage. +Most of my readers are aware that the second act of +"Parisina" opens with the celebrated and effective duet in +which Parisina, while sleeping, betrays to Azzo the secret +of her love for Ugo. The injured husband goes through all +the emotions of jealousy, until conviction seizes on his +mind, and then, in a frenzy of rage and indignation, he +awakens his guilty wife to tell her that he knows her guilt +and to threaten her with his vengeance. This duet is one of +the most beautiful, expressive and terrible conceptions that +has ever emanated from the fruitful pen of Donizetti. Franz +now listened to it for the third time yet its notes, so +tenderly expressive and fearfully grand as the wretched +husband and wife give vent to their different griefs and +passions, thrilled through the soul of Franz with an effect +equal to his first emotions upon hearing it. Excited beyond +his usual calm demeanor, Franz rose with the audience, and +was about to join the loud, enthusiastic applause that +followed but suddenly his purpose was arrested, his hands +fell by his sides, and the halfuttered "bravos" expired on +his lips. The occupant of the box in which the Greek girl +sat appeared to share the universal admiration that +prevailed for he left his seat to stand up in front, so +that, his countenance being fully revealed, Franz had no +difficulty in recognizing him as the mysterious inhabitant +of Monte Cristo, and the very same person he had encountered +the preceding evening in the ruins of the Colosseum, and +whose voice and figure had seemed so familiar to him. All +doubt of his identity was now at an end his singular host +evidently resided at Rome. The surprise and agitation +occasioned by this full confirmation of Franz's former +suspicion had no doubt imparted a corresponding expression +to his features for the countess, after gazing with a +puzzled look at his face, burst into a fit of laughter, and +begged to know what had happened. "Countess," returned +Franz, totally unheeding her raillery, "I asked you a short +time since if you knew any particulars respecting the +Albanian lady opposite I must now beseech you to inform me +who and what is her husband?" +"Nay," answered the countess, "I know no more of him than +yourself." +"Perhaps you never before noticed him?" +"What a question so truly French Do you not know that we +Italians have eyes only for the man we love?" +"True," replied Franz. +"All I can say is," continued the countess, taking up the +lorgnette, and directing it toward the box in question, +"that the gentleman, whose history I am unable to furnish, +seems to me as though he had just been dug up he looks more +like a corpse permitted by some friendly gravedigger to +quit his tomb for a while, and revisit this earth of ours, +than anything human. How ghastly pale he is" +"Oh, he is always as colorless as you now see him," said +Franz. +"Then you know him?" almost screamed the countess. "Oh, pray +do, for heaven's sake, tell us all about is he a vampire, +or a resuscitated corpse, or what?" +"I fancy I have seen him before and I even think he +recognizes me." +"And I can well understand," said the countess, shrugging up +her beautiful shoulders, as though an involuntary shudder +passed through her veins, "that those who have once seen +that man will never be likely to forget him." The sensation +experienced by Franz was evidently not peculiar to himself +another, and wholly uninterested person, felt the same +unaccountable awe and misgiving. "Well." inquired Franz, +after the countess had a second time directed her lorgnette +at the box, "what do you think of our opposite neighbor?" +"Why, that he is no other than Lord Ruthven himself in a +living form." This fresh allusion to Byron drew a smile to +Franz's countenance although he could but allow that if +anything was likely to induce belief in the existence of +vampires, it would be the presence of such a man as the +mysterious personage before him. +"I must positively find out who and what he is," said Franz, +rising from his seat. +"No, no," cried the countess "you must not leave me. I +depend upon you to escort me home. Oh, indeed, I cannot +permit you to go." + Scott, of course "The son of an illfated sire, and the +father of a yet more unfortunate family, bore in his looks +that cast of inauspicious melancholy by which the +physiognomists of that time pretended to distinguish those +who were predestined to a violent and unhappy death." The +Abbot, ch. xxii. +"Is it possible," whispered Franz, "that you entertain any +fear?" +"I'll tell you," answered the countess. "Byron had the most +perfect belief in the existence of vampires, and even +assured me that he had seen them. The description he gave me +perfectly corresponds with the features and character of the +man before us. Oh, he is the exact personification of what I +have been led to expect The coalblack hair, large bright, +glittering eyes, in which a wild, unearthly fire seems +burning, the same ghastly paleness. Then observe, too, +that the woman with him is altogether unlike all others of +her sex. She is a foreigner a stranger. Nobody knows who +she is, or where she comes from. No doubt she belongs to the +same horrible race he does, and is, like himself, a dealer +in magical arts. I entreat of you not to go near him at +least tonight and if tomorrow your curiosity still +continues as great, pursue your researches if you will but +tonight you neither can nor shall. For that purpose I mean +to keep you all to myself." Franz protested he could not +defer his pursuit till the following day, for many reasons. +"Listen to me," said the countess, "and do not be so very +headstrong. I am going home. I have a party at my house +tonight, and therefore cannot possibly remain till the end +of the opera. Now, I cannot for one instant believe you so +devoid of gallantry as to refuse a lady your escort when she +even condescends to ask you for it." +There was nothing else left for Franz to do but to take up +his hat, open the door of the box, and offer the countess +his arm. It was quite evident, by her manner, that her +uneasiness was not feigned and Franz himself could not +resist a feeling of superstitious dread so much the +stronger in him, as it arose from a variety of corroborative +recollections, while the terror of the countess sprang from +an instinctive belief, originally created in her mind by the +wild tales she had listened to till she believed them +truths. Franz could even feel her arm tremble as he assisted +her into the carriage. Upon arriving at her hotel, Franz +perceived that she had deceived him when she spoke of +expecting company on the contrary, her own return before +the appointed hour seemed greatly to astonish the servants. +"Excuse my little subterfuge," said the countess, in reply +to her companion's halfreproachful observation on the +subject "but that horrid man had made me feel quite +uncomfortable, and I longed to be alone, that I might +compose my startled mind." Franz essayed to smile. "Nay," +said she, "do not smile it ill accords with the expression +of your countenance, and I am sure it does not spring from +your heart. However, promise me one thing." +"What is it?" +"Promise me, I say." +"I will do anything you desire, except relinquish my +determination of finding out who this man is. I have more +reasons than you can imagine for desiring to know who he is, +from whence he came, and whither he is going." +"Where he comes from I am ignorant but I can readily tell +you where he is going to, and that is down below, without +the least doubt." +"Let us only speak of the promise you wished me to make," +said Franz. +"Well, then, you must give me your word to return +immediately to your hotel, and make no attempt to follow +this man tonight. There are certain affinities between the +persons we quit and those we meet afterwards. For heaven's +sake, do not serve as a conductor between that man and me. +Pursue your chase after him tomorrow as eagerly as you +please but never bring him near me, if you would not see me +die of terror. And now, goodnight go to your rooms, and +try to sleep away all recollections of this evening. For my +own part, I am quite sure I shall not be able to close my +eyes." So saying, the countess quitted Franz, leaving him +unable to decide whether she were merely amusing herself at +his expense, or whether her fears and agitations were +genuine. +Upon his return to the hotel, Franz found Albert in his +dressinggown and slippers, listlessly extended on a sofa, +smoking a cigar. "My dear fellow." cried he, springing up, +"is it really you? Why, I did not expect to see you before +tomorrow." +"My dear Albert," replied Franz, "I am glad of this +opportunity to tell you, once and forever, that you +entertain a most erroneous notion concerning Italian women. +I should have thought the continual failures you have met +with in all your own love affairs might have taught you +better by this time." +"Upon my soul, these women would puzzle the very Devil to +read them aright. Why, here they give you their hand +they press yours in return they keep up a whispering +conversation permit you to accompany them home. Why, if a +Parisian were to indulge in a quarter of these marks of +flattering attention, her reputation would be gone forever." +"And the very reason why the women of this fine country put +so little restraint on their words and actions, is because +they live so much in public, and have really nothing to +conceal. Besides, you must have perceived that the countess +was really alarmed." +"At what? At the sight of that respectable gentleman sitting +opposite to us in the same box with the lovely Greek girl? +Now, for my part, I met them in the lobby after the +conclusion of the piece and hang me, if I can guess where +you took your notions of the other world from. I can assure +you that this hobgoblin of yours is a deuced finelooking +fellow admirably dressed. Indeed, I feel quite sure, from +the cut of his clothes, they are made by a firstrate Paris +tailor probably Blin or Humann. He was rather too pale, +certainly but then, you know, paleness is always looked +upon as a strong proof of aristocratic descent and +distinguished breeding." Franz smiled for he well +remembered that Albert particularly prided himself on the +entire absence of color in his own complexion. +"Well, that tends to confirm my own ideas," said Franz, +"that the countess's suspicions were destitute alike of +sense and reason. Did he speak in your hearing? and did you +catch any of his words?" +"I did but they were uttered in the Romaic dialect. I knew +that from the mixture of Greek words. I don't know whether I +ever told you that when I was at college I was rather +rather strong in Greek." +"He spoke the Romaic language, did he?" +"I think so." +"That settles it," murmured Franz. "'Tis he, past all +doubt." +"What do you say?" +"Nothing, nothing. But tell me, what were you thinking about +when I came in?" +"Oh, I was arranging a little surprise for you." +"Indeed. Of what nature?" +"Why, you know it is quite impossible to procure a +carriage." +"Certainly and I also know that we have done all that human +means afforded to endeavor to get one." +"Now, then, in this difficulty a bright idea has flashed +across my brain." Franz looked at Albert as though he had +not much confidence in the suggestions of his imagination. +"I tell you what, Sir Franz," cried Albert, "you deserve to +be called out for such a misgiving and incredulous glance as +that you were pleased to bestow on me just now." +"And I promise to give you the satisfaction of a gentleman +if your scheme turns out as ingenious as you assert." +"Well, then, hearken to me." +"I listen." +"You agree, do you not, that obtaining a carriage is out of +the question?" +"I do." +"Neither can we procure horses?" +"True we have offered any sum, but have failed." +"Well, now, what do you say to a cart? I dare say such a +thing might be had." +"Very possibly." +"And a pair of oxen?" +"As easily found as the cart." +"Then you see, my good fellow, with a cart and a couple of +oxen our business can be managed. The cart must be +tastefully ornamented and if you and I dress ourselves as +Neapolitan reapers, we may get up a striking tableau, after +the manner of that splendid picture by Leopold Robert. It +would add greatly to the effect if the countess would join +us in the costume of a peasant from Puzzoli or Sorrento. Our +group would then be quite complete, more especially as the +countess is quite beautiful enough to represent a madonna." +"Well," said Franz, "this time, Albert, I am bound to give +you credit for having hit upon a most capital idea." +"And quite a national one, too," replied Albert with +gratified pride. "A mere masque borrowed from our own +festivities. Ha, ha, ye Romans you thought to make us, +unhappy strangers, trot at the heels of your processions, +like so many lazzaroni, because no carriages or horses are +to be had in your beggarly city. But you don't know us when +we can't have one thing we invent another." +"And have you communicated your triumphant idea to anybody?" +"Only to our host. Upon my return home I sent for him, and I +then explained to him what I wished to procure. He assured +me that nothing would be easier than to furnish all I +desired. One thing I was sorry for when I bade him have the +horns of the oxen gilded, he told me there would not be +time, as it would require three days to do that so you see +we must do without this little superfluity." +"And where is he now?" +"Who?" +"Our host." +"Gone out in search of our equipage, by tomorrow it might +be too late." +"Then he will be able to give us an answer tonight." +"Oh, I expect him every minute." At this instant the door +opened, and the head of Signor Pastrini appeared. +"Permesso?" inquired he. +"Certainly certainly," cried Franz. "Come in, mine host." +"Now, then," asked Albert eagerly, "have you found the +desired cart and oxen?" +"Better than that" replied Signor Pastrini, with the air of +a man perfectly well satisfied with himself. +"Take care, my worthy host," said Albert, "better is a sure +enemy to well." +"Let your excellencies only leave the matter to me," +returned Signor Pastrini in a tone indicative of unbounded +selfconfidence. +"But what have you done?" asked Franz. "Speak out, there's a +worthy fellow." +"Your excellencies are aware," responded the landlord, +swelling with importance, "that the Count of Monte Cristo is +living on the same floor with yourselves" +"I should think we did know it," exclaimed Albert, "since it +is owing to that circumstance that we are packed into these +small rooms, like two poor students in the back streets of +Paris." +"When, then, the Count of Monte Cristo, hearing of the +dilemma in which you are placed, has sent to offer you seats +in his carriage and two places at his windows in the Palazzo +Rospoli." The friends looked at each other with unutterable +surprise. +"But do you think," asked Albert, "that we ought to accept +such offers from a perfect stranger?" +"What sort of person is this Count of Monte Cristo?" asked +Franz of his host. "A very great nobleman, but whether +Maltese or Sicilian I cannot exactly say but this I know, +that he is noble as a Borghese and rich as a goldmine." +"It seems to me," said Franz, speaking in an undertone to +Albert, "that if this person merited the high panegyrics of +our landlord, he would have conveyed his invitation through +another channel, and not permitted it to be brought to us in +this unceremonious way. He would have written or" +At this instant some one knocked at the door. "Come in," +said Franz. A servant, wearing a livery of considerable +style and richness, appeared at the threshold, and, placing +two cards in the landlord's hands, who forthwith presented +them to the two young men, he said, "Please to deliver +these, from the Count of Monte Cristo to Viscomte Albert de +Morcerf and M. Franz d'Epinay. The Count of Monte Cristo," +continued the servant, "begs these gentlemen's permission to +wait upon them as their neighbor, and he will be honored by +an intimation of what time they will please to receive him." +"Faith, Franz," whispered Albert, "there is not much to find +fault with here." +"Tell the count," replied Franz, "that we will do ourselves +the pleasure of calling on him." The servant bowed and +retired. +"That is what I call an elegant mode of attack," said +Albert, "You were quite correct in what you said, Signor +Pastrini. The Count of Monte Cristo is unquestionably a man +of firstrate breeding and knowledge of the world." +"Then you accept his offer?" said the host. +"Of course we do," replied Albert. "Still, I must own I am +sorry to be obliged to give up the cart and the group of +reapers it would have produced such an effect And were +it not for the windows at the Palazzo Rospoli, by way of +recompense for the loss of our beautiful scheme, I don't +know but what I should have held on by my original plan. +What say you, Franz?" +"Oh, I agree with you the windows in the Palazzo Rospoli +alone decided me." The truth was, that the mention of two +places in the Palazzo Rospoli had recalled to Franz the +conversation he had overheard the preceding evening in the +ruins of the Colosseum between the mysterious unknown and +the Transteverin, in which the stranger in the cloak had +undertaken to obtain the freedom of a condemned criminal +and if this muffledup individual proved as Franz felt sure +he would the same as the person he had just seen in the +Teatro Argentino, then he should be able to establish his +identity, and also to prosecute his researches respecting +him with perfect facility and freedom. Franz passed the +night in confused dreams respecting the two meetings he had +already had with his mysterious tormentor, and in waking +speculations as to what the morrow would produce. The next +day must clear up every doubt and unless his near neighbor +and wouldbe friend, the Count of Monte Cristo, possessed +the ring of Gyges, and by its power was able to render +himself invisible, it was very certain he could not escape +this time. Eight o'clock found Franz up and dressed, while +Albert, who had not the same motives for early rising, was +still soundly asleep. The first act of Franz was to summon +his landlord, who presented himself with his accustomed +obsequiousness. +"Pray, Signor Pastrini," asked Franz, "is not some execution +appointed to take place today?" +"Yes, your excellency but if your reason for inquiry is +that you may procure a window to view it from, you are much +too late." +"Oh, no," answered Franz, "I had no such intention and even +if I had felt a wish to witness the spectacle, I might have +done so from Monte Pincio could I not?" +"Ah" exclaimed mine host, "I did not think it likely your +excellency would have chosen to mingle with such a rabble as +are always collected on that hill, which, indeed, they +consider as exclusively belonging to themselves." +"Very possibly I may not go," answered Franz "but in case I +feel disposed, give me some particulars of today's +executions." +"What particulars would your excellency like to hear?" +"Why, the number of persons condemned to suffer, their +names, and description of the death they are to die." +"That happens just lucky, your excellency Only a few +minutes ago they brought me the tavolettas." +"What are they?" +"Sort of wooden tablets hung up at the corners of streets +the evening before an execution, on which is pasted up a +paper containing the names of the condemned persons, their +crimes, and mode of punishment. The reason for so publicly +announcing all this is, that all good and faithful Catholics +may offer up their prayers for the unfortunate culprits, +and, above all, beseech of heaven to grant them a sincere +repentance." +"And these tablets are brought to you that you may add your +prayers to those of the faithful, are they?" asked Franz +somewhat incredulously. +"Oh, dear, no, your excellency I have not time for +anybody's affairs but my own and those of my honorable +guests but I make an agreement with the man who pastes up +the papers, and he brings them to me as he would the +playbills, that in case any person staying at my hotel +should like to witness an execution, he may obtain every +requisite information concerning the time and place etc." +"Upon my word, that is a most delicate attention on your +part, Signor Pastrini," cried Franz. +"Why, your excellency," returned the landlord, chuckling and +rubbing his hands with infinite complacency, "I think I may +take upon myself to say I neglect nothing to deserve the +support and patronage of the noble visitors to this poor +hotel." +"I see that plainly enough, my most excellent host, and you +may rely upon me to proclaim so striking a proof of your +attention to your guests wherever I go. Meanwhile, oblige me +by a sight of one of these tavolettas." +"Nothing can be easier than to comply with your excellency's +wish," said the landlord, opening the door of the chamber +"I have caused one to be placed on the landing, close by +your apartment." Then, taking the tablet from the wall, he +handed it to Franz, who read as follows +""The public is informed that on Wednesday, February d, +being the first day of the Carnival, executions will take +place in the Piazza del Popolo, by order of the Tribunal of +the Rota, of two persons, named Andrea Rondola, and Peppino, +otherwise called Rocca Priori the former found guilty of +the murder of a venerable and exemplary priest, named Don +Cesare Torlini, canon of the church of St. John Lateran and +the latter convicted of being an accomplice of the atrocious +and sanguinary bandit, Luigi Vampa, and his band. The +firstnamed malefactor will be subjected to the mazzuola, +the second culprit beheaded. The prayers of all good +Christians are entreated for these unfortunate men, that it +may please God to awaken them to a sense of their guilt, and +to grant them a hearty and sincere repentance for their +crimes.'" +This was precisely what Franz had heard the evening before +in the ruins of the Colosseum. No part of the programme +differed, the names of the condemned persons, their +crimes, and mode of punishment, all agreed with his previous +information. In all probability, therefore, the Transteverin +was no other than the bandit Luigi Vampa himself, and the +man shrouded in the mantle the same he had known as "Sinbad +the Sailor," but who, no doubt, was still pursuing his +philanthropic expedition in Rome, as he had already done at +PortoVecchio and Tunis. Time was getting on, however, and +Franz deemed it advisable to awaken Albert but at the +moment he prepared to proceed to his chamber, his friend +entered the room in perfect costume for the day. The +anticipated delights of the Carnival had so run in his head +as to make him leave his pillow long before his usual hour. +"Now, my excellent Signor Pastrini," said Franz, addressing +his landlord, "since we are both ready, do you think we may +proceed at once to visit the Count of Monte Cristo?" +"Most assuredly," replied he. "The Count of Monte Cristo is +always an early riser and I can answer for his having been +up these two hours." +"Then you really consider we shall not be intruding if we +pay our respects to him directly?" +"Oh, I am quite sure. I will take all the blame on myself if +you find I have led you into an error." +"Well, then, if it be so, are you ready, Albert?" +"Perfectly." +"Let us go and return our best thanks for his courtesy." +"Yes, let us do so." The landlord preceded the friends +across the landing, which was all that separated them from +the apartments of the count, rang at the bell, and, upon the +door being opened by a servant, said, "I signori Francesi." +The domestic bowed respectfully, and invited them to enter. +They passed through two rooms, furnished in a luxurious +manner they had not expected to see under the roof of Signor +Pastrini, and were shown into an elegantly fittedup +drawingroom. The richest Turkey carpets covered the floor, +and the softest and most inviting couches, easychairs, and +sofas, offered their highpiled and yielding cushions to +such as desired repose or refreshment. Splendid paintings by +the first masters were ranged against the walls, +intermingled with magnificent trophies of war, while heavy +curtains of costly tapestry were suspended before the +different doors of the room. "If your excellencies will +please to be seated," said the man, "I will let the count +know that you are here." +And with these words he disappeared behind one of the +tapestried portieres. As the door opened, the sound of a +guzla reached the ears of the young men, but was almost +immediately lost, for the rapid closing of the door merely +allowed one rich swell of harmony to enter. Franz and Albert +looked inquiringly at each other, then at the gorgeous +furnishings of the apartment. Everything seemed more +magnificent at a second view than it had done at their first +rapid survey. +"Well," said Franz to his friend, "what think you of all +this?" +"Why, upon my soul, my dear fellow, it strikes me that our +elegant and attentive neighbor must either be some +successful stockjobber who has speculated in the fall of +the Spanish funds, or some prince travelling incog." +"Hush, hush" replied Franz "we shall ascertain who and +what he is he comes" As Franz spoke, he heard the sound +of a door turning on its hinges, and almost immediately +afterwards the tapestry was drawn aside, and the owner of +all these riches stood before the two young men. Albert +instantly rose to meet him, but Franz remained, in a manner, +spellbound on his chair for in the person of him who had +just entered he recognized not only the mysterious visitant +to the Colosseum, and the occupant of the box at the Teatro +Argentino, but also his extraordinary host of Monte Cristo. +Chapter +La Mazzolata. +"Gentlemen," said the Count of Monte Cristo as he entered, +"I pray you excuse me for suffering my visit to be +anticipated but I feared to disturb you by presenting +myself earlier at your apartments besides, you sent me word +that you would come to me, and I have held myself at your +disposal." +"Franz and I have to thank you a thousand times, count," +returned Albert "you extricated us from a great dilemma, +and we were on the point of inventing a very fantastic +vehicle when your friendly invitation reached us." +"Indeed," returned the count, motioning the two young men to +sit down. "It was the fault of that blockhead Pastrini, that +I did not sooner assist you in your distress. He did not +mention a syllable of your embarrassment to me, when he +knows that, alone and isolated as I am, I seek every +opportunity of making the acquaintance of my neighbors. As +soon as I learned I could in any way assist you, I most +eagerly seized the opportunity of offering my services." The +two young men bowed. Franz had, as yet, found nothing to +say he had come to no determination, and as nothing in the +count's manner manifested the wish that he should recognize +him, he did not know whether to make any allusion to the +past, or wait until he had more proof besides, although +sure it was he who had been in the box the previous evening, +he could not be equally positive that this was the man he +had seen at the Colosseum. He resolved, therefore, to let +things take their course without making any direct overture +to the count. Moreover, he had this advantage, he was master +of the count's secret, while the count had no hold on Franz, +who had nothing to conceal. However, he resolved to lead the +conversation to a subject which might possibly clear up his +doubts. +"Count," said he, "you have offered us places in your +carriage, and at your windows in the Rospoli Palace. Can you +tell us where we can obtain a sight of the Piazza del +Popolo?" +"Ah," said the count negligently, looking attentively at +Morcerf, "is there not something like an execution upon the +Piazza del Popolo?" +"Yes," returned Franz, finding that the count was coming to +the point he wished. +"Stay, I think I told my steward yesterday to attend to +this perhaps I can render you this slight service also." He +extended his hand, and rang the bell thrice. "Did you ever +occupy yourself," said he to Franz, "with the employment of +time and the means of simplifying the summoning your +servants? I have. When I ring once, it is for my valet +twice, for my majordomo thrice, for my steward, thus I +do not waste a minute or a word. Here he is." A man of about +fortyfive or fifty entered, exactly resembling the smuggler +who had introduced Franz into the cavern but he did not +appear to recognize him. It was evident he had his orders. +"Monsieur Bertuccio," said the count, "you have procured me +windows looking on the Piazza del Popolo, as I ordered you +yesterday." +"Yes, excellency," returned the steward "but it was very +late." +"Did I not tell you I wished for one?" replied the count, +frowning. +"And your excellency has one, which was let to Prince +Lobanieff but I was obliged to pay a hundred" +"That will do that will do, Monsieur Bertuccio spare +these gentlemen all such domestic arrangements. You have the +window, that is sufficient. Give orders to the coachman and +be in readiness on the stairs to conduct us to it." The +steward bowed, and was about to quit the room. "Ah," +continued the count, "be good enough to ask Pastrini if he +has received the tavoletta, and if he can send us an account +of the execution." +"There is no need to do that," said Franz, taking out his +tablets "for I saw the account, and copied it down." +"Very well, you can retire, M. Bertuccio but let us know +when breakfast is ready. These gentlemen," added he, turning +to the two friends, "will, I trust, do me the honor to +breakfast with me?" +"But, my dear count," said Albert, "we shall abuse your +kindness." +"Not at all on the contrary, you will give me great +pleasure. You will, one or other of you, perhaps both, +return it to me at Paris. M. Bertuccio, lay covers for +three." He then took Franz's tablets out of his hand. ""We +announce,' he read, in the same tone with which he would +have read a newspaper, "that today, the d of February, +will be executed Andrea Rondolo, guilty of murder on the +person of the respected and venerated Don Cesare Torlini, +canon of the church of St. John Lateran, and Peppino, called +Rocca Priori, convicted of complicity with the detestable +bandit Luigi Vampa, and the men of his band.' Hum "The +first will be mazzolato, the second decapitato.' Yes," +continued the count, "it was at first arranged in this way +but I think since yesterday some change has taken place in +the order of the ceremony." +"Really?" said Franz. +"Yes, I passed the evening at the Cardinal Rospigliosi's, +and there mention was made of something like a pardon for +one of the two men." +"For Andrea Rondolo?" asked Franz. +"No," replied the count, carelessly "for the other he +glanced at the tablets as if to recall the name, for +Peppino, called Rocca Priori. You are thus deprived of +seeing a man guillotined but the mazzuola still remains, +which is a very curious punishment when seen for the first +time, and even the second, while the other, as you must +know, is very simple. The mandaia never fails, never +trembles, never strikes thirty times ineffectually, like the +soldier who beheaded the Count of Chalais, and to whose +tender mercy Richelieu had doubtless recommended the +sufferer. Ah," added the count, in a contemptuous tone, "do +not tell me of European punishments, they are in the +infancy, or rather the old age, of cruelty." + Guillotine. +"Really, count," replied Franz, "one would think that you +had studied the different tortures of all the nations of the +world." +"There are, at least, few that I have not seen," said the +count coldly. +"And you took pleasure in beholding these dreadful +spectacles?" +"My first sentiment was horror, the second indifference, the +third curiosity." +"Curiosity that is a terrible word." +"Why so? In life, our greatest preoccupation is death is it +not then, curious to study the different ways by which the +soul and body can part and how, according to their +different characters, temperaments, and even the different +customs of their countries, different persons bear the +transition from life to death, from existence to +annihilation? As for myself, I can assure you of one thing, +the more men you see die, the easier it becomes to die +yourself and in my opinion, death may be a torture, but it +is not an expiation." +"I do not quite understand you," replied Franz "pray +explain your meaning, for you excite my curiosity to the +highest pitch." +"Listen," said the count, and deep hatred mounted to his +face, as the blood would to the face of any other. "If a man +had by unheardof and excruciating tortures destroyed your +father, your mother, your betrothed, a being who, when +torn from you, left a desolation, a wound that never closes, +in your breast, do you think the reparation that society +gives you is sufficient when it interposes the knife of the +guillotine between the base of the occiput and the trapezal +muscles of the murderer, and allows him who has caused us +years of moral sufferings to escape with a few moments of +physical pain?" +"Yes, I know," said Franz, "that human justice is +insufficient to console us she can give blood in return for +blood, that is all but you must demand from her only what +it is in her power to grant." +"I will put another case to you," continued the count "that +where society, attacked by the death of a person, avenges +death by death. But are there not a thousand tortures by +which a man may be made to suffer without society taking the +least cognizance of them, or offering him even the +insufficient means of vengeance, of which we have just +spoken? Are there not crimes for which the impalement of the +Turks, the augers of the Persians, the stake and the brand +of the Iroquois Indians, are inadequate tortures, and which +are unpunished by society? Answer me, do not these crimes +exist?" +"Yes," answered Franz "and it is to punish them that +duelling is tolerated." +"Ah, duelling," cried the count "a pleasant manner, upon my +soul, of arriving at your end when that end is vengeance A +man has carried off your mistress, a man has seduced your +wife, a man has dishonored your daughter he has rendered +the whole life of one who had the right to expect from +heaven that portion of happiness God his promised to every +one of his creatures, an existence of misery and infamy and +you think you are avenged because you send a ball through +the head, or pass a sword through the breast, of that man +who has planted madness in your brain, and despair in your +heart. And remember, moreover, that it is often he who comes +off victorious from the strife, absolved of all crime in the +eyes of the world. No, no," continued the count, "had I to +avenge myself, it is not thus I would take revenge." +"Then you disapprove of duelling? You would not fight a +duel?" asked Albert in his turn, astonished at this strange +theory. +"Oh, yes," replied the count "understand me, I would fight +a duel for a trifle, for an insult, for a blow and the more +so that, thanks to my skill in all bodily exercises, and the +indifference to danger I have gradually acquired, I should +be almost certain to kill my man. Oh, I would fight for such +a cause but in return for a slow, profound, eternal +torture, I would give back the same, were it possible an +eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as the Orientalists +say, our masters in everything, those favored +creatures who have formed for themselves a life of dreams +and a paradise of realities." +"But," said Franz to the count, "with this theory, which +renders you at once judge and executioner of your own cause, +it would be difficult to adopt a course that would forever +prevent your falling under the power of the law. Hatred is +blind, rage carries you away and he who pours out vengeance +runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught." +"Yes, if he be poor and inexperienced, not if he be rich and +skilful besides, the worst that could happen to him would +be the punishment of which we have already spoken, and which +the philanthropic French Revolution has substituted for +being torn to pieces by horses or broken on the wheel. What +matters this punishment, as long as he is avenged? On my +word, I almost regret that in all probability this miserable +Peppino will not be beheaded, as you might have had an +opportunity then of seeing how short a time the punishment +lasts, and whether it is worth even mentioning but, really +this is a most singular conversation for the Carnival, +gentlemen how did it arise? Ah, I recollect, you asked for +a place at my window you shall have it but let us first +sit down to table, for here comes the servant to inform us +that breakfast is ready." As he spoke, a servant opened one +of the four doors of the apartment, saying "Al suo +commodo" The two young men arose and entered the +breakfastroom. +During the meal, which was excellent, and admirably served, +Franz looked repeatedly at Albert, in order to observe the +impressions which he doubted not had been made on him by the +words of their entertainer but whether with his usual +carelessness he had paid but little attention to him, +whether the explanation of the Count of Monte Cristo with +regard to duelling had satisfied him, or whether the events +which Franz knew of had had their effect on him alone, he +remarked that his companion did not pay the least regard to +them, but on the contrary ate like a man who for the last +four or five months had been condemned to partake of Italian +cookery that is, the worst in the world. As for the +count, he just touched the dishes he seemed to fulfil the +duties of a host by sitting down with his guests, and +awaited their departure to be served with some strange or +more delicate food. This brought back to Franz, in spite of +himself, the recollection of the terror with which the count +had inspired the Countess G , and her firm conviction +that the man in the opposite box was a vampire. At the end +of the breakfast Franz took out his watch. "Well," said the +count, "what are you doing?" +"You must excuse us, count," returned Franz, "but we have +still much to do." +"What may that be?" +"We have no masks, and it is absolutely necessary to procure +them." +"Do not concern yourself about that we have, I think, a +private room in the Piazza del Popolo I will have whatever +costumes you choose brought to us, and you can dress there." +"After the execution?" cried Franz. +"Before or after, whichever you please." +"Opposite the scaffold?" +"The scaffold forms part of the fete." +"Count, I have reflected on the matter," said Franz, "I +thank you for your courtesy, but I shall content myself with +accepting a place in your carriage and at your window at the +Rospoli Palace, and I leave you at liberty to dispose of my +place at the Piazza del Popolo." +"But I warn you, you will lose a very curious sight," +returned the count. +"You will describe it to me," replied Franz, "and the +recital from your lips will make as great an impression on +me as if I had witnessed it. I have more than once intended +witnessing an execution, but I have never been able to make +up my mind and you, Albert?" +"I," replied the viscount, "I saw Castaing executed, but +I think I was rather intoxicated that day, for I had quitted +college the same morning, and we had passed the previous +night at a tavern." +"Besides, it is no reason because you have not seen an +execution at Paris, that you should not see one anywhere +else when you travel, it is to see everything. Think what a +figure you will make when you are asked, "How do they +execute at Rome?' and you reply, "I do not know' And, +besides, they say that the culprit is an infamous scoundrel, +who killed with a log of wood a worthy canon who had brought +him up like his own son. Diable, when a churchman is killed, +it should be with a different weapon than a log, especially +when he has behaved like a father. If you went to Spain, +would you not see the bullfight? Well, suppose it is a +bullfight you are going to see? Recollect the ancient +Romans of the Circus, and the sports where they killed three +hundred lions and a hundred men. Think of the eighty +thousand applauding spectators, the sage matrons who took +their daughters, and the charming Vestals who made with the +thumb of their white hands the fatal sign that said, "Come, +despatch the dying.'" +"Shall you go, then, Albert?" asked Franz. +"Ma foi, yes like you, I hesitated, but the count's +eloquence decides me." +"Let us go, then," said Franz, "since you wish it but on +our way to the Piazza del Popolo, I wish to pass through the +Corso. Is this possible, count?" +"On foot, yes, in a carriage, no." +"I will go on foot, then." +"Is it important that you should go that way?" +"Yes, there is something I wish to see." +"Well, we will go by the Corso. We will send the carriage to +wait for us on the Piazza del Popolo, by the Strada del +Babuino, for I shall be glad to pass, myself, through the +Corso, to see if some orders I have given have been +executed." +"Excellency," said a servant, opening the door, "a man in +the dress of a penitent wishes to speak to you." +"Ah, yes" returned the count, "I know who he is, gentlemen +will you return to the salon? you will find good cigars on +the centre table. I will be with you directly." The young +men rose and returned into the salon, while the count, again +apologizing, left by another door. Albert, who was a great +smoker, and who had considered it no small sacrifice to be +deprived of the cigars of the Cafe de Paris, approached the +table, and uttered a cry of joy at perceiving some veritable +puros. +"Well," asked Franz, "what think you of the Count of Monte +Cristo?" +"What do I think?" said Albert, evidently surprised at such +a question from his companion "I think he is a delightful +fellow, who does the honors of his table admirably who has +travelled much, read much, is, like Brutus, of the Stoic +school, and moreover," added he, sending a volume of smoke +up towards the ceiling, "that he has excellent cigars." Such +was Albert's opinion of the count, and as Franz well knew +that Albert professed never to form an opinion except upon +long reflection, he made no attempt to change it. "But," +said he, "did you observe one very singular thing?" +"What?" +"How attentively he looked at you." +"At me?" +"Yes." Albert reflected. "Ah," replied he, sighing, "that +is not very surprising I have been more than a year absent +from Paris, and my clothes are of a most antiquated cut the +count takes me for a provincial. The first opportunity you +have, undeceive him, I beg, and tell him I am nothing of the +kind." Franz smiled an instant after the count entered. +"I am now quite at your service, gentlemen," said he. "The +carriage is going one way to the Piazza del Popolo, and we +will go another and, if you please, by the Corso. Take some +more of these cigars, M. de Morcerf." +"With all my heart," returned Albert "Italian cigars are +horrible. When you come to Paris, I will return all this." +"I will not refuse I intend going there soon, and since you +allow me, I will pay you a visit. Come, we have not any time +to lose, it is halfpast twelve let us set off." All +three descended the coachman received his master's orders, +and drove down the Via del Babuino. While the three +gentlemen walked along the Piazza de Spagni and the Via +Frattina, which led directly between the Fiano and Rospoli +palaces, Franz's attention was directed towards the windows +of that last palace, for he had not forgotten the signal +agreed upon between the man in the mantle and the +Transtevere peasant. "Which are your windows?" asked he of +the count, with as much indifference as he could assume. +"The three last," returned he, with a negligence evidently +unaffected, for he could not imagine with what intention the +question was put. Franz glanced rapidly towards the three +windows. The side windows were hung with yellow damask, and +the centre one with white damask and a red cross. The man in +the mantle had kept his promise to the Transteverin, and +there could now be no doubt that he was the count. The three +windows were still untenanted. Preparations were making on +every side chairs were placed, scaffolds were raised, and +windows were hung with flags. The masks could not appear +the carriages could not move about but the masks were +visible behind the windows, the carriages, and the doors. +Franz, Albert, and the count continued to descend the Corso. +As they approached the Piazza del Popolo, the crowd became +more dense, and above the heads of the multitude two objects +were visible the obelisk, surmounted by a cross, which +marks the centre of the square, and in front of the obelisk, +at the point where the three streets, del Babuino, del +Corso, and di Ripetta, meet, the two uprights of the +scaffold, between which glittered the curved knife of the +mandaia. At the corner of the street they met the count's +steward, who was awaiting his master. The window, let at an +exorbitant price, which the count had doubtless wished to +conceal from his guests, was on the second floor of the +great palace, situated between the Via del Babuino and the +Monte Pincio. It consisted, as we have said, of a small +dressingroom, opening into a bedroom, and, when the door of +communication was shut, the inmates were quite alone. On +chairs were laid elegant masquerade costumes of blue and +white satin. "As you left the choice of your costumes to +me," said the count to the two friends, "I have had these +brought, as they will be the most worn this year and they +are most suitable, on account of the confetti sweetmeats, +as they do not show the flour." +Franz heard the words of the count but imperfectly, and he +perhaps did not fully appreciate this new attention to their +wishes for he was wholly absorbed by the spectacle that the +Piazza del Popolo presented, and by the terrible instrument +that was in the centre. It was the first time Franz had ever +seen a guillotine, we say guillotine, because the Roman +mandaia is formed on almost the same model as the French +instrument. The knife, which is shaped like a crescent, +that cuts with the convex side, falls from a less height, +and that is all the difference. Two men, seated on the +movable plank on which the victim is laid, were eating their +breakfasts, while waiting for the criminal. Their repast +consisted apparently of bread and sausages. One of them +lifted the plank, took out a flask of wine, drank some, and +then passed it to his companion. These two men were the +executioner's assistants. At this sight Franz felt the +perspiration start forth upon his brow. The prisoners, +transported the previous evening from the Carcere Nuovo to +the little church of Santa Maria del Popolo, had passed the +night, each accompanied by two priests, in a chapel closed +by a grating, before which were two sentinels, who were +relieved at intervals. A double line of carbineers, placed +on each side of the door of the church, reached to the +scaffold, and formed a circle around it, leaving a path +about ten feet wide, and around the guillotine a space of +nearly a hundred feet. All the rest of the square was paved +with heads. Many women held their infants on their +shoulders, and thus the children had the best view. The +Monte Pincio seemed a vast amphitheatre filled with +spectators the balconies of the two churches at the corner +of the Via del Babuino and the Via di Ripetta were crammed +the steps even seemed a particolored sea, that was impelled +towards the portico every niche in the wall held its living +statue. What the count said was true the most curious +spectacle in life is that of death. And yet, instead of the +silence and the solemnity demanded by the occasion, laughter +and jests arose from the crowd. It was evident that the +execution was, in the eyes of the people, only the +commencement of the Carnival. Suddenly the tumult ceased, as +if by magic, and the doors of the church opened. A +brotherhood of penitents, clothed from head to foot in robes +of gray sackcloth, with holes for the eyes, and holding in +their hands lighted tapers, appeared first the chief +marched at the head. Behind the penitents came a man of vast +stature and proportions. He was naked, with the exception of +cloth drawers at the left side of which hung a large knife +in a sheath, and he bore on his right shoulder a heavy iron +sledgehammer. This man was the executioner. He had, +moreover, sandals bound on his feet by cords. Behind the +executioner came, in the order in which they were to die, +first Peppino and then Andrea. Each was accompanied by two +priests. Neither had his eyes bandaged. Peppino walked with +a firm step, doubtless aware of what awaited him. Andrea was +supported by two priests. Each of them, from time to time, +kissed the crucifix a confessor held out to them. At this +sight alone Franz felt his legs tremble under him. He looked +at Albert he was as white as his shirt, and mechanically +cast away his cigar, although he had not half smoked it. The +count alone seemed unmoved nay, more, a slight color +seemed striving to rise in his pale cheeks. His nostrils +dilated like those of a wild beast that scents its prey, and +his lips, half opened, disclosed his white teeth, small and +sharp like those of a jackal. And yet his features wore an +expression of smiling tenderness, such as Franz had never +before witnessed in them his black eyes especially were +full of kindness and pity. However, the two culprits +advanced, and as they approached their faces became visible. +Peppino was a handsome young man of four or five and twenty, +bronzed by the sun he carried his head erect, and seemed on +the watch to see on which side his liberator would appear. +Andrea was short and fat his visage, marked with brutal +cruelty, did not indicate age he might be thirty. In prison +he had suffered his beard to grow his head fell on his +shoulder, his legs bent beneath him, and his movements were +apparently automatic and unconscious. + Dr. Guillotin got the idea of his famous machine from +witnessing an execution in Italy. +"I thought," said Franz to the count, "that you told me +there would be but one execution." +"I told you true," replied he coldly. +"And yet here are two culprits." +"Yes but only one of these two is about to die the other +has many years to live." +"If the pardon is to come, there is no time to lose." +"And see, here it is," said the count. At the moment when +Peppino reached the foot of the mandaia, a priest arrived in +some haste, forced his way through the soldiers, and, +advancing to the chief of the brotherhood, gave him a folded +paper. The piercing eye of Peppino had noticed all. The +chief took the paper, unfolded it, and, raising his hand, +"Heaven be praised, and his holiness also," said he in a +loud voice "here is a pardon for one of the prisoners" +"A pardon" cried the people with one voice "a pardon" +At this cry Andrea raised his head. "Pardon for whom?" cried +he. +Peppino remained breathless. "A pardon for Peppino, called +Rocca Priori," said the principal friar. And he passed the +paper to the officer commanding the carbineers, who read and +returned it to him. +"For Peppino" cried Andrea, who seemed roused from the +torpor in which he had been plunged. "Why for him and not +for me? We ought to die together. I was promised he should +die with me. You have no right to put me to death alone. I +will not die alone I will not" And he broke from the +priests struggling and raving like a wild beast, and +striving desperately to break the cords that bound his +hands. The executioner made a sign, and his two assistants +leaped from the scaffold and seized him. "What is going on?" +asked Franz of the count for, as all the talk was in the +Roman dialect, he had not perfectly understood it. "Do you +not see?" returned the count, "that this human creature who +is about to die is furious that his fellowsufferer does not +perish with him? and, were he able, he would rather tear him +to pieces with his teeth and nails than let him enjoy the +life he himself is about to be deprived of. Oh, man, man +race of crocodiles," cried the count, extending his clinched +hands towards the crowd, "how well do I recognize you there, +and that at all times you are worthy of yourselves" +Meanwhile Andrea and the two executioners were struggling on +the ground, and he kept exclaiming, "He ought to die he +shall die I will not die alone" +"Look, look," cried the count, seizing the young men's hands +"look, for on my soul it is curious. Here is a man who +had resigned himself to his fate, who was going to the +scaffold to die like a coward, it is true, but he was +about to die without resistance. Do you know what gave him +strength? do you know what consoled him? It was, that +another partook of his punishment that another partook of +his anguish that another was to die before him. Lead two +sheep to the butcher's, two oxen to the slaughterhouse, and +make one of them understand that his companion will not die +the sheep will bleat for pleasure, the ox will bellow with +joy. But man man, whom God created in his own image +man, upon whom God has laid his first, his sole commandment, +to love his neighbor man, to whom God has given a voice +to express his thoughts what is his first cry when he +hears his fellowman is saved? A blasphemy. Honor to man, +this masterpiece of nature, this king of the creation" And +the count burst into a laugh a terrible laugh, that showed +he must have suffered horribly to be able thus to laugh. +However, the struggle still continued, and it was dreadful +to witness. The people all took part against Andrea, and +twenty thousand voices cried, "Put him to death put him to +death" Franz sprang back, but the count seized his arm, and +held him before the window. "What are you doing?" said he. +"Do you pity him? If you heard the cry of "Mad dog' you +would take your gun you would unhesitatingly shoot the +poor beast, who, after all, was only guilty of having been +bitten by another dog. And yet you pity a man who, without +being bitten by one of his race, has yet murdered his +benefactor and who, now unable to kill any one, because his +hands are bound, wishes to see his companion in captivity +perish. No, no look, look" +The command was needless. Franz was fascinated by the +horrible spectacle. The two assistants had borne Andrea to +the scaffold, and there, in spite of his struggles, his +bites, and his cries, had forced him to his knees. During +this time the executioner had raised his mace, and signed to +them to get out of the way the criminal strove to rise, +but, ere he had time, the mace fell on his left temple. A +dull and heavy sound was heard, and the man dropped like an +ox on his face, and then turned over on his back. The +executioner let fall his mace, drew his knife, and with one +stroke opened his throat, and mounting on his stomach, +stamped violently on it with his feet. At every stroke a jet +of blood sprang from the wound. +This time Franz could contain himself no longer, but sank, +half fainting, into a seat. Albert, with his eyes closed, +was standing grasping the windowcurtains. The count was +erect and triumphant, like the Avenging Angel +Chapter +The Carnival at Rome. +When Franz recovered his senses, he saw Albert drinking a +glass of water, of which, to judge from his pallor, he stood +in great need and the count, who was assuming his +masquerade costume. He glanced mechanically towards the +square the scene was wholly changed scaffold, +executioners, victims, all had disappeared only the people +remained, full of noise and excitement. The bell of Monte +Citorio, which only sounds on the pope's decease and the +opening of the Carnival, was ringing a joyous peal. "Well," +asked he of the count, "what has, then, happened?" +"Nothing," replied the count "only, as you see, the +Carnival his commenced. Make haste and dress yourself." +"In fact," said Franz, "this horrible scene has passed away +like a dream." +"It is but a dream, a nightmare, that has disturbed you." +"Yes, that I have suffered but the culprit?" +"That is a dream also only he has remained asleep, while +you have awakened and who knows which of you is the most +fortunate?" +"But Peppino what has become of him?" +"Peppino is a lad of sense, who, unlike most men, who are +happy in proportion as they are noticed, was delighted to +see that the general attention was directed towards his +companion. He profited by this distraction to slip away +among the crowd, without even thanking the worthy priests +who accompanied him. Decidedly man is an ungrateful and +egotistical animal. But dress yourself see, M. de Morcerf +sets you the example." Albert was drawing on the satin +pantaloon over his black trousers and varnished boots. +"Well, Albert," said Franz, "do you feel much inclined to +join the revels? Come, answer frankly." +"Ma foi, no," returned Albert. "But I am really glad to have +seen such a sight and I understand what the count said +that when you have once habituated yourself to a similar +spectacle, it is the only one that causes you any emotion." +"Without reflecting that this is the only moment in which +you can study character," said the count "on the steps of +the scaffold death tears off the mask that has been worn +through life, and the real visage is disclosed. It must be +allowed that Andrea was not very handsome, the hideous +scoundrel Come, dress yourselves, gentlemen, dress +yourselves." Franz felt it would be ridiculous not to follow +his two companions' example. He assumed his costume, and +fastened on the mask that scarcely equalled the pallor of +his own face. Their toilet finished, they descended the +carriage awaited them at the door, filled with sweetmeats +and bouquets. They fell into the line of carriages. It is +difficult to form an idea of the perfect change that had +taken place. Instead of the spectacle of gloomy and silent +death, the Piazza del Popolo presented a spectacle of gay +and noisy mirth and revelry. A crowd of masks flowed in from +all sides, emerging from the doors, descending from the +windows. From every street and every corner drove carriages +filled with clowns, harlequins, dominoes, mummers, +pantomimists, Transteverins, knights, and peasants, +screaming, fighting, gesticulating, throwing eggs filled +with flour, confetti, nosegays, attacking, with their +sarcasms and their missiles, friends and foes, companions +and strangers, indiscriminately, and no one took offence, or +did anything but laugh. Franz and Albert were like men who, +to drive away a violent sorrow, have recourse to wine, and +who, as they drink and become intoxicated, feel a thick veil +drawn between the past and the present. They saw, or rather +continued to see, the image of what they had witnessed but +little by little the general vertigo seized them, and they +felt themselves obliged to take part in the noise and +confusion. A handful of confetti that came from a +neighboring carriage, and which, while it covered Morcerf +and his two companions with dust, pricked his neck and that +portion of his face uncovered by his mask like a hundred +pins, incited him to join in the general combat, in which +all the masks around him were engaged. He rose in his turn, +and seizing handfuls of confetti and sweetmeats, with which +the carriage was filled, cast them with all the force and +skill he was master of. +The strife had fairly begun, and the recollection of what +they had seen half an hour before was gradually effaced from +the young men's minds, so much were they occupied by the gay +and glittering procession they now beheld. As for the Count +of Monte Cristo, he had never for an instant shown any +appearance of having been moved. Imagine the large and +splendid Corso, bordered from one end to the other with +lofty palaces, with their balconies hung with carpets, and +their windows with flags. At these balconies are three +hundred thousand spectators Romans, Italians, strangers +from all parts of the world, the united aristocracy of +birth, wealth, and genius. Lovely women, yielding to the +influence of the scene, bend over their balconies, or lean +from their windows, and shower down confetti, which are +returned by bouquets the air seems darkened with the +falling confetti and flying flowers. In the streets the +lively crowd is dressed in the most fantastic costumes +gigantic cabbages walk gravely about, buffaloes' heads bellow +from men's shoulders, dogs walk on their hind legs in the +midst of all this a mask is lifted, and, as in Callot's +Temptation of St. Anthony, a lovely face is exhibited, which +we would fain follow, but from which we are separated by +troops of fiends. This will give a faint idea of the +Carnival at Rome. At the second turn the Count stopped the +carriage, and requested permission to withdraw, leaving the +vehicle at their disposal. Franz looked up they were +opposite the Rospoli Palace. At the centre window, the one +hung with white damask with a red cross, was a blue domino, +beneath which Franz's imagination easily pictured the +beautiful Greek of the Argentina. "Gentlemen," said the +count, springing out, "when you are tired of being actors, +and wish to become spectators of this scene, you know you +have places at my windows. In the meantime, dispose of my +coachman, my carriage, and my servants." We have forgotten +to mention, that the count's coachman was attired in a +bearskin, exactly resembling Odry's in "The Bear and the +Pasha" and the two footmen behind were dressed up as green +monkeys, with spring masks, with which they made grimaces at +every one who passed. Franz thanked the count for his +attention. As for Albert, he was busily occupied throwing +bouquets at a carriage full of Roman peasants that was +passing near him. Unfortunately for him, the line of +carriages moved on again, and while he descended the Piazza +del Popolo, the other ascended towards the Palazzo di +Venezia. "Ah, my dear fellow," said he to Franz "you did +not see?" +"What?" +"There, that calash filled with Roman peasants." +"No." +"Well, I am convinced they are all charming women." +"How unfortunate that you were masked, Albert," said Franz +"here was an opportunity of making up for past +disappointments." +"Oh," replied he, half laughing, half serious "I hope the +Carnival will not pass without some amends in one shape or +the other." +But, in spite of Albert's hope, the day passed unmarked by +any incident, excepting two or three encounters with the +carriage full of Roman peasants. At one of these encounters, +accidentally or purposely, Albert's mask fell off. He +instantly rose and cast the remainder of the bouquets into +the carriage. Doubtless one of the charming females Albert +had detected beneath their coquettish disguise was touched +by his gallantry for, as the carriage of the two friends +passed her, she threw a bunch of violets. Albert seized it, +and as Franz had no reason to suppose it was meant for him, +he suffered Albert to retain it. Albert placed it in his +buttonhole, and the carriage went triumphantly on. +"Well," said Franz to him "there is the beginning of an +adventure." +"Laugh if you please I really think so. So I will not +abandon this bouquet." +"Pardieu," returned Franz, laughing, "in token of your +ingratitude." The jest, however, soon appeared to become +earnest for when Albert and Franz again encountered the +carriage with the contadini, the one who had thrown the +violets to Albert, clapped her hands when she beheld them in +his buttonhole. "Bravo, bravo," said Franz "things go +wonderfully. Shall I leave you? Perhaps you would prefer +being alone?" +"No," replied he "I will not be caught like a fool at a +first disclosure by a rendezvous under the clock, as they +say at the operaballs. If the fair peasant wishes to carry +matters any further, we shall find her, or rather, she will +find us tomorrow then she will give me some sign or other, +and I shall know what I have to do." +"On my word," said Franz, "you are wise as Nestor and +prudent as Ulysses, and your fair Circe must be very skilful +or very powerful if she succeed in changing you into a beast +of any kind." Albert was right the fair unknown had +resolved, doubtless, to carry the intrigue no farther for +although the young men made several more turns, they did not +again see the calash, which had turned up one of the +neighboring streets. Then they returned to the Rospoli +Palace but the count and the blue domino had also +disappeared the two windows, hung with yellow damask, were +still occupied by the persons whom the count had invited. At +this moment the same bell that had proclaimed the beginning +of the mascherata sounded the retreat. The file on the Corso +broke the line, and in a second all the carriages had +disappeared. Franz and Albert were opposite the Via delle +Maratte the coachman, without saying a word, drove up it, +passed along the Piazza di Spagni and the Rospoli Palace and +stopped at the door of the hotel. Signor Pastrini came to +the door to receive his guests. Franz hastened to inquire +after the count, and to express regret that he had not +returned in sufficient time but Pastrini reassured him by +saying that the Count of Monte Cristo had ordered a second +carriage for himself, and that it had gone at four o'clock +to fetch him from the Rospoli Palace. The count had, +moreover, charged him to offer the two friends the key of +his box at the Argentina. Franz questioned Albert as to his +intentions but Albert had great projects to put into +execution before going to the theatre and instead of making +any answer, he inquired if Signor Pastrini could procure him +a tailor. "A tailor," said the host "and for what?" +"To make us between now and tomorrow two Roman peasant +costumes," returned Albert. The host shook his head. "To +make you two costumes between now and tomorrow? I ask your +excellencies' pardon, but this is quite a French demand for +the next week you will not find a single tailor who would +consent to sew six buttons on a waistcoat if you paid him a +crown a piece for each button." +"Then I must give up the idea?" +"No we have them readymade. Leave all to me and +tomorrow, when you awake, you shall find a collection of +costumes with which you will be satisfied." +"My dear Albert," said Franz, "leave all to our host he has +already proved himself full of resources let us dine +quietly, and afterwards go and see "The Algerian Captive.'" +"Agreed," returned Albert "but remember, Signor Pastrini, +that both my friend and myself attach the greatest +importance to having tomorrow the costumes we have asked +for." The host again assured them they might rely on him, +and that their wishes should be attended to upon which +Franz and Albert mounted to their apartments, and proceeded +to disencumber themselves of their costumes. Albert, as he +took off his dress, carefully preserved the bunch of +violets it was his token reserved for the morrow. The two +friends sat down to table but they could not refrain from +remarking the difference between the Count of Monte Cristo's +table and that of Signor Pastrini. Truth compelled Franz, in +spite of the dislike he seemed to have taken to the count, +to confess that the advantage was not on Pastrini's side. +During dessert, the servant inquired at what time they +wished for the carriage. Albert and Franz looked at each +other, fearing really to abuse the count's kindness. The +servant understood them. "His excellency the Count of Monte +Cristo had," he said, "given positive orders that the +carriage was to remain at their lordships' orders all day, +and they could therefore dispose of it without fear of +indiscretion." +They resolved to profit by the count's courtesy, and ordered +the horses to be harnessed, while they substituted evening +dress for that which they had on, and which was somewhat the +worse for the numerous combats they had sustained. This +precaution taken, they went to the theatre, and installed +themselves in the count's box. During the first act, the +Countess G entered. Her first look was at the box where +she had seen the count the previous evening, so that she +perceived Franz and Albert in the place of the very person +concerning whom she had expressed so strange an opinion to +Franz. Her operaglass was so fixedly directed towards them, +that Franz saw it would be cruel not to satisfy her +curiosity and, availing himself of one of the privileges of +the spectators of the Italian theatres, who use their boxes +to hold receptions, the two friends went to pay their +respects to the countess. Scarcely had they entered, when +she motioned to Franz to assume the seat of honor. Albert, +in his turn, sat behind. +"Well," said she, hardly giving Franz time to sit down, "it +seems you have nothing better to do than to make the +acquaintance of this new Lord Ruthven, and you are already +the best friends in the world." +"Without being so far advanced as that, my dear countess," +returned Franz, "I cannot deny that we have abused his good +nature all day." +"All day?" +"Yes this morning we breakfasted with him we rode in his +carriage all day, and now we have taken possession of his +box." +"You know him, then?" +"Yes, and no." +"How so?" +"It is a long story." +'Tell it to me." +"It would frighten you too much." +"So much the more reason." +"At least wait until the story has a conclusion." +"Very well I prefer complete histories but tell me how you +made his acquaintance? Did any one introduce you to him?" +"No it was he who introduced himself to us." +"When?" +"Last night, after we left you." +"Through what medium?" +"The very prosaic one of our landlord." +"He is staying, then, at the Hotel de Londres with you?" +"Not only in the same hotel, but on the same floor." +"What is his name for, of course, you know?" +"The Count of Monte Cristo." +"That is not a family name?" +"No, it is the name of the island he has purchased." +"And he is a count?" +"A Tuscan count." +"Well, we must put up with that," said the countess, who was +herself from one of the oldest Venetian families. "What sort +of a man is he?" +"Ask the Vicomte de Morcerf." +"You hear, M. de Morcerf, I am referred to you," said the +countess. +"We should be very hard to please, madam," returned Albert, +"did we not think him delightful. A friend of ten years' +standing could not have done more for us, or with a more +perfect courtesy." +"Come," observed the countess, smiling, "I see my vampire is +only some millionaire, who has taken the appearance of Lara +in order to avoid being confounded with M. de Rothschild +and you have seen her?" +"Her?" +"The beautiful Greek of yesterday." +"No we heard, I think, the sound of her guzla, but she +remained perfectly invisible." +"When you say invisible," interrupted Albert, "it is only to +keep up the mystery for whom do you take the blue domino at +the window with the white curtains?" +"Where was this window with white hangings?" asked the +countess. +"At the Rospoli Palace." +"The count had three windows at the Rospoli Palace?" +"Yes. Did you pass through the Corso?" +"Yes." +"Well, did you notice two windows hung with yellow damask, +and one with white damask with a red cross? Those were the +count's windows." +"Why, he must be a nabob. Do you know what those three +windows were worth?" +"Two or three hundred Roman crowns?" +"Two or three thousand." +"The deuce." +"Does his island produce him such a revenue?" +"It does not bring him a baiocco." +"Then why did he purchase it?" +"For a whim." +"He is an original, then?" +"In reality," observed Albert, "he seemed to me somewhat +eccentric were he at Paris, and a frequenter of the +theatres, I should say he was a poor devil literally mad. +This morning he made two or three exits worthy of Didier or +Anthony." At this moment a fresh visitor entered, and, +according to custom, Franz gave up his seat to him. This +circumstance had, moreover, the effect of changing the +conversation an hour afterwards the two friends returned to +their hotel. Signor Pastrini had already set about procuring +their disguises for the morrow and he assured them that +they would be perfectly satisfied. The next morning, at nine +o'clock, he entered Franz's room, followed by a tailor, who +had eight or ten Roman peasant costumes on his arm they +selected two exactly alike, and charged the tailor to sew on +each of their hats about twenty yards of ribbon, and to +procure them two of the long silk sashes of different colors +with which the lower orders decorate themselves on +fetedays. Albert was impatient to see how he looked in his +new dress a jacket and breeches of blue velvet, silk +stockings with clocks, shoes with buckles, and a silk +waistcoat. This picturesque attire set him off to great +advantage and when he had bound the scarf around his waist, +and when his hat, placed coquettishly on one side, let fall +on his shoulder a stream of ribbons, Franz was forced to +confess that costume has much to do with the physical +superiority we accord to certain nations. The Turks used to +be so picturesque with their long and flowing robes, but are +they not now hideous with their blue frocks buttoned up to +the chin, and their red caps, which make them look like a +bottle of wine with a red seal? Franz complimented Albert, +who looked at himself in the glass with an unequivocal smile +of satisfaction. They were thus engaged when the Count of +Monte Cristo entered. +"Gentlemen," said he, "although a companion is agreeable, +perfect freedom is sometimes still more agreeable. I come to +say that today, and for the remainder of the Carnival, I +leave the carriage entirely at your disposal. The host will +tell you I have three or four more, so that you will not +inconvenience me in any way. Make use of it, I pray you, for +your pleasure or your business." +The young men wished to decline, but they could find no good +reason for refusing an offer which was so agreeable to them. +The Count of Monte Cristo remained a quarter of an hour with +them, conversing on all subjects with the greatest ease. He +was, as we have already said, perfectly well acquainted with +the literature of all countries. A glance at the walls of +his salon proved to Franz and Albert that he was a +connoisseur of pictures. A few words he let fall showed them +that he was no stranger to the sciences, and he seemed much +occupied with chemistry. The two friends did not venture to +return the count the breakfast he had given them it would +have been too absurd to offer him in exchange for his +excellent table the very inferior one of Signor Pastrini. +They told him so frankly, and he received their excuses with +the air of a man who appreciated their delicacy. Albert was +charmed with the count's manners, and he was only prevented +from recognizing him for a perfect gentleman by reason of +his varied knowledge. The permission to do what he liked +with the carriage pleased him above all, for the fair +peasants had appeared in a most elegant carriage the +preceding evening, and Albert was not sorry to be upon an +equal footing with them. At halfpast one they descended, +the coachman and footman had put on their livery over their +disguises, which gave them a more ridiculous appearance than +ever, and which gained them the applause of Franz and +Albert. Albert had fastened the faded bunch of violets to +his buttonhole. At the first sound of the bell they +hastened into the Corso by the Via Vittoria. At the second +turn, a bunch of fresh violets, thrown from a carriage +filled with harlequins, indicated to Albert that, like +himself and his friend, the peasants had changed their +costume, also and whether it was the result of chance, or +whether a similar feeling had possessed them both, while he +had changed his costume they had assumed his. +Albert placed the fresh bouquet in his buttonhole, but he +kept the faded one in his hand and when he again met the +calash, he raised it to his lips, an action which seemed +greatly to amuse not only the fair lady who had thrown it, +but her joyous companions also. The day was as gay as the +preceding one, perhaps even more animated and noisy the +count appeared for an instant at his window, but when they +again passed he had disappeared. It is almost needless to +say that the flirtation between Albert and the fair peasant +continued all day. In the evening, on his return, Franz +found a letter from the embassy, informing him that he would +have the honor of being received by his holiness the next +day. At each previous visit he had made to Rome, he had +solicited and obtained the same favor and incited as much +by a religious feeling as by gratitude, he was unwilling to +quit the capital of the Christian world without laying his +respectful homage at the feet of one of St. Peter's +successors who has set the rare example of all the virtues. +He did not then think of the Carnival, for in spite of his +condescension and touching kindness, one cannot incline +one's self without awe before the venerable and noble old +man called Gregory XVI. On his return from the Vatican, +Franz carefully avoided the Corso he brought away with him +a treasure of pious thoughts, to which the mad gayety of the +maskers would have been profanation. At ten minutes past +five Albert entered overjoyed. The harlequin had reassumed +her peasant's costume, and as she passed she raised her +mask. She was charming. Franz congratulated Albert, who +received his congratulations with the air of a man conscious +that they are merited. He had recognized by certain +unmistakable signs, that his fair incognita belonged to the +aristocracy. He had made up his mind to write to her the +next day. Franz remarked, while he gave these details, that +Albert seemed to have something to ask of him, but that he +was unwilling to ask it. He insisted upon it, declaring +beforehand that he was willing to make any sacrifice the +other wished. Albert let himself be pressed just as long as +friendship required, and then avowed to Franz that he would +do him a great favor by allowing him to occupy the carriage +alone the next day. Albert attributed to Franz's absence the +extreme kindness of the fair peasant in raising her mask. +Franz was not sufficiently egotistical to stop Albert in the +middle of an adventure that promised to prove so agreeable +to his curiosity and so flattering to his vanity. He felt +assured that the perfect indiscretion of his friend would +duly inform him of all that happened and as, during three +years that he had travelled all over Italy, a similar piece +of good fortune had never fallen to his share, Franz was by +no means sorry to learn how to act on such an occasion. He +therefore promised Albert that he would content himself the +morrow with witnessing the Carnival from the windows of the +Rospoli Palace. +The next morning he saw Albert pass and repass, holding an +enormous bouquet, which he doubtless meant to make the +bearer of his amorous epistle. This belief was changed into +certainty when Franz saw the bouquet conspicuous by a +circle of white camellias in the hand of a charming +harlequin dressed in rosecolored satin. The evening was no +longer joy, but delirium. Albert nothing doubted but that +the fair unknown would reply in the same manner. Franz +anticipated his wishes by saying that the noise fatigued +him, and that he should pass the next day in writing and +looking over his journal. Albert was not deceived, for the +next evening Franz saw him enter triumphantly shaking a +folded paper which he held by one corner. "Well," said he, +"was I mistaken?" +"She has answered you" cried Franz. +"Read." This word was pronounced in a manner impossible to +describe. Franz took the letter, and read +Tuesday evening, at seven o'clock, descend from your +carriage opposite the Via dei Pontefici, and follow the +Roman peasant who snatches your torch from you. When you +arrive at the first step of the church of San Giacomo, be +sure to fasten a knot of rosecolored ribbons to the +shoulder of your harlequin costume, in order that you may be +recognized. Until then you will not see me. +Constancy and Discretion. +"Well," asked he, when Franz had finished, "what do you +think of that?" +"I think that the adventure is assuming a very agreeable +appearance." +"I think so, also," replied Albert "and I very much fear +you will go alone to the Duke of Bracciano's ball." Franz +and Albert had received that morning an invitation from the +celebrated Roman banker. "Take care, Albert," said Franz. +"All the nobility of Rome will be present, and if your fair +incognita belong to the higher class of society, she must go +there." +"Whether she goes there or not, my opinion is still the +same," returned Albert. "You have read the letter?" +"Yes." +"You know how imperfectly the women of the mezzo cito are +educated in Italy?" This is the name of the lower class. +"Yes." +"Well, read the letter again. Look at the writing, and find +if you can, any blemish in the language or orthography." +The writing was, in reality, charming, and the orthography +irreproachable. "You are born to good fortune," said Franz, +as he returned the letter. +"Laugh as much as you will," replied Albert, "I am in love." +"You alarm me," cried Franz. "I see that I shall not only go +alone to the Duke of Bracciano's, but also return to +Florence alone." +"If my unknown be as amiable as she is beautiful," said +Albert, "I shall fix myself at Rome for six weeks, at least. +I adore Rome, and I have always had a great taste for +archaeology." +"Come, two or three more such adventures, and I do not +despair of seeing you a member of the Academy." Doubtless +Albert was about to discuss seriously his right to the +academic chair when they were informed that dinner was +ready. Albert's love had not taken away his appetite. He +hastened with Franz to seat himself, free to recommence the +discussion after dinner. After dinner, the Count of Monte +Cristo was announced. They had not seen him for two days. +Signor Pastrini informed them that business had called him +to Civita Vecchia. He had started the previous evening, and +had only returned an hour since. He was charming. Whether he +kept a watch over himself, or whether by accident he did not +sound the acrimonious chords that in other circumstances had +been touched, he was tonight like everybody else. The man +was an enigma to Franz. The count must feel sure that Franz +recognized him and yet he had not let fall a single word +indicating any previous acquaintance between them. On his +side, however great Franz's desire was to allude to their +former interview, the fear of being disagreeable to the man +who had loaded him and his friend with kindness prevented +him from mentioning it. The count had learned that the two +friends had sent to secure a box at the Argentina Theatre, +and were told they were all let. In consequence, he brought +them the key of his own at least such was the apparent +motive of his visit. Franz and Albert made some difficulty, +alleging their fear of depriving him of it but the count +replied that, as he was going to the Palli Theatre, the box +at the Argentina Theatre would be lost if they did not +profit by it. This assurance determined the two friends to +accept it. +Franz had by degrees become accustomed to the count's +pallor, which had so forcibly struck him at their first +meeting. He could not refrain from admiring the severe +beauty of his features, the only defect, or rather the +principal quality of which was the pallor. Truly, a Byronic +hero Franz could not, we will not say see him, but even +think of him without imagining his stern head upon Manfred's +shoulders, or beneath Lara's helmet. His forehead was marked +with the line that indicates the constant presence of bitter +thoughts he had the fiery eyes that seem to penetrate to +the very soul, and the haughty and disdainful upper lip that +gives to the words it utters a peculiar character that +impresses them on the minds of those to whom they are +addressed. The count was no longer young. He was at least +forty and yet it was easy to understand that he was formed +to rule the young men with whom he associated at present. +And, to complete his resemblance with the fantastic heroes +of the English poet, the count seemed to have the power of +fascination. Albert was constantly expatiating on their good +fortune in meeting such a man. Franz was less enthusiastic +but the count exercised over him also the ascendency a +strong mind always acquires over a mind less domineering. He +thought several times of the project the count had of +visiting Paris and he had no doubt but that, with his +eccentric character, his characteristic face, and his +colossal fortune, he would produce a great effect there. And +yet he did not wish to be at Paris when the count was there. +The evening passed as evenings mostly pass at Italian +theatres that is, not in listening to the music, but in +paying visits and conversing. The Countess G wished to +revive the subject of the count, but Franz announced he had +something far newer to tell her, and, in spite of Albert's +demonstrations of false modesty, he informed the countess of +the great event which had preoccupied them for the last +three days. As similar intrigues are not uncommon in Italy, +if we may credit travellers, the comtess did not manifest +the least incredulity, but congratulated Albert on his +success. They promised, upon separating, to meet at the Duke +of Bracciano's ball, to which all Rome was invited. The +heroine of the bouquet kept her word she gave Albert no +sign of her existence the morrow or the day after. +At length Tuesday came, the last and most tumultuous day of +the Carnival. On Tuesday, the theatres open at ten o'clock +in the morning, as Lent begins after eight at night. On +Tuesday, all those who through want of money, time, or +enthusiasm, have not been to see the Carnival before, mingle +in the gayety, and contribute to the noise and excitement. +From two o'clock till five Franz and Albert followed in the +fete, exchanging handfuls of confetti with the other +carriages and the pedestrians, who crowded amongst the +horses' feet and the carriage wheels without a single +accident, a single dispute, or a single fight. The fetes are +veritable pleasure days to the Italians. The author of this +history, who has resided five or six years in Italy, does +not recollect to have ever seen a ceremony interrupted by +one of those events so common in other countries. Albert was +triumphant in his harlequin costume. A knot of rosecolored +ribbons fell from his shoulder almost to the ground. In +order that there might be no confusion, Franz wore his +peasant's costume. +As the day advanced, the tumult became greater. There was +not on the pavement, in the carriages, at the windows, a +single tongue that was silent, a single arm that did not +move. It was a human storm, made up of a thunder of cries, +and a hail of sweetmeats, flowers, eggs, oranges, and +nosegays. At three o'clock the sound of fireworks, let off +on the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza di Venezia heard +with difficulty amid the din and confusion announced that +the races were about to begin. The races, like the moccoli, +are one of the episodes peculiar to the last days of the +Carnival. At the sound of the fireworks the carriages +instantly broke ranks, and retired by the adjacent streets. +All these evolutions are executed with an inconceivable +address and marvellous rapidity, without the police +interfering in the matter. The pedestrians ranged themselves +against the walls then the trampling of horses and the +clashing of steel were heard. A detachment of carbineers, +fifteen abreast, galloped up the Corso in order to clear it +for the barberi. When the detachment arrived at the Piazza +di Venezia, a second volley of fireworks was discharged, to +announce that the street was clear. Almost instantly, in the +midst of a tremendous and general outcry, seven or eight +horses, excited by the shouts of three hundred thousand +spectators, passed by like lightning. Then the Castle of +Saint Angelo fired three cannon to indicate that number +three had won. Immediately, without any other signal, the +carriages moved on, flowing on towards the Corso, down all +the streets, like torrents pent up for a while, which again +flow into the parent river and the immense stream again +continued its course between its two granite banks. +A new source of noise and movement was added to the crowd. +The sellers of moccoletti entered on the scene. The moccoli, +or moccoletti, are candles which vary in size from the +pascal taper to the rushlight, and which give to each actor +in the great final scene of the Carnival two very serious +problems to grapple with, first, how to keep his own +moccoletto alight and secondly, how to extinguish the +moccoletti of others. The moccoletto is like life man has +found but one means of transmitting it, and that one comes +from God. But he has discovered a thousand means of taking +it away, and the devil has somewhat aided him. The +moccoletto is kindled by approaching it to a light. But who +can describe the thousand means of extinguishing the +moccoletto? the gigantic bellows, the monstrous +extinguishers, the superhuman fans. Every one hastened to +purchase moccoletti Franz and Albert among the rest. +The night was rapidly approaching and already, at the cry +of "Moccoletti" repeated by the shrill voices of a thousand +vendors, two or three stars began to burn among the crowd. +It was a signal. At the end of ten minutes fifty thousand +lights glittered, descending from the Palazzo di Venezia to +the Piazza del Popolo, and mounting from the Piazzo del +Popolo to the Palazzo di Venezia. It seemed like the fete of +jacko'lanterns. It is impossible to form any idea of it +without having seen it. Suppose that all the stars had +descended from the sky and mingled in a wild dance on the +face of the earth the whole accompanied by cries that were +never heard in any other part of the world. The facchino +follows the prince, the Transteverin the citizen, every one +blowing, extinguishing, relighting. Had old AEolus appeared +at this moment, he would have been proclaimed king of the +moccoli, and Aquilo the heirpresumptive to the throne. This +battle of folly and flame continued for two hours the Corso +was light as day the features of the spectators on the +third and fourth stories were visible. Every five minutes +Albert took out his watch at length it pointed to seven. +The two friends were in the Via dei Pontefici. Albert sprang +out, bearing his moccoletto in his hand. Two or three masks +strove to knock his moccoletto out of his hand but Albert, +a firstrate pugilist, sent them rolling in the street, one +after the other, and continued his course towards the church +of San Giacomo. The steps were crowded with masks, who +strove to snatch each other's torches. Franz followed Albert +with his eyes, and saw him mount the first step. Instantly a +mask, wearing the wellknown costume of a peasant woman, +snatched his moccoletto from him without his offering any +resistance. Franz was too far off to hear what they said +but, without doubt, nothing hostile passed, for he saw +Albert disappear arminarm with the peasant girl. He +watched them pass through the crowd for some time, but at +length he lost sight of them in the Via Macello. Suddenly +the bell that gives the signal for the end of the carnival +sounded, and at the same instant all the moccoletti were +extinguished as if by enchantment. It seemed as though one +immense blast of the wind had extinguished every one. Franz +found himself in utter darkness. No sound was audible save +that of the carriages that were carrying the maskers home +nothing was visible save a few lights that burnt behind the +windows. The Carnival was over. +Chapter +The Catacombs of Saint Sebastian. +In his whole life, perhaps, Franz had never before +experienced so sudden an impression, so rapid a transition +from gayety to sadness, as in this moment. It seemed as +though Rome, under the magic breath of some demon of the +night, had suddenly changed into a vast tomb. By a chance, +which added yet more to the intensity of the darkness, the +moon, which was on the wane, did not rise until eleven +o'clock, and the streets which the young man traversed were +plunged in the deepest obscurity. The distance was short, +and at the end of ten minutes his carriage, or rather the +count's, stopped before the Hotel de Londres. Dinner was +waiting, but as Albert had told him that he should not +return so soon, Franz sat down without him. Signor Pastrini, +who had been accustomed to see them dine together, inquired +into the cause of his absence, but Franz merely replied that +Albert had received on the previous evening an invitation +which he had accepted. The sudden extinction of the +moccoletti, the darkness which had replaced the light, and +the silence which had succeeded the turmoil, had left in +Franz's mind a certain depression which was not free from +uneasiness. He therefore dined very silently, in spite of +the officious attention of his host, who presented himself +two or three times to inquire if he wanted anything. +Franz resolved to wait for Albert as late as possible. He +ordered the carriage, therefore, for eleven o'clock, +desiring Signor Pastrini to inform him the moment that +Albert returned to the hotel. At eleven o'clock Albert had +not come back. Franz dressed himself, and went out, telling +his host that he was going to pass the night at the Duke of +Bracciano's. The house of the Duke of Bracciano is one of +the most delightful in Rome, the duchess, one of the last +heiresses of the Colonnas, does its honors with the most +consummate grace, and thus their fetes have a European +celebrity. Franz and Albert had brought to Rome letters of +introduction to them, and their first question on his +arrival was to inquire the whereabouts of his travelling +companion. Franz replied that he had left him at the moment +they were about to extinguish the moccoli, and that he had +lost sight of him in the Via Macello. "Then he has not +returned?" said the duke. +"I waited for him until this hour," replied Franz. +"And do you know whither he went?" +"No, not precisely however, I think it was something very +like a rendezvous." +"Diavolo" said the duke, "this is a bad day, or rather a +bad night, to be out late is it not, countess" These words +were addressed to the Countess G , who had just +arrived, and was leaning on the arm of Signor Torlonia, the +duke's brother. +"I think, on the contrary, that it is a charming night," +replied the countess, "and those who are here will complain +of but one thing its too rapid flight." +"I am not speaking," said the duke with a smile, "of the +persons who are here the men run no other danger than that +of falling in love with you, and the women of falling ill of +jealousy at seeing you so lovely I meant persons who were +out in the streets of Rome." +"Ah," asked the countess, "who is out in the streets of Rome +at this hour, unless it be to go to a ball?" +"Our friend, Albert de Morcerf, countess, whom I left in +pursuit of his unknown about seven o'clock this evening," +said Franz, "and whom I have not seen since." +"And don't you know where he is?" +"Not at all." +"Is he armed?" +"He is in masquerade." +"You should not have allowed him to go," said the duke to +Franz "you, who know Rome better than he does." +"You might as well have tried to stop number three of the +barberi, who gained the prize in the race today," replied +Franz "and then moreover, what could happen to him?" +"Who can tell? The night is gloomy, and the Tiber is very +near the Via Macello." Franz felt a shudder run through his +veins at observing that the feeling of the duke and the +countess was so much in unison with his own personal +disquietude. "I informed them at the hotel that I had the +honor of passing the night here, duke," said Franz, "and +desired them to come and inform me of his return." +"Ah," replied the duke, "here I think, is one of my servants +who is seeking you." +The duke was not mistaken when he saw Franz, the servant +came up to him. "Your excellency," he said, "the master of +the Hotel de Londres has sent to let you know that a man is +waiting for you with a letter from the Viscount of Morcerf." +"A letter from the viscount" exclaimed Franz. +"Yes." +"And who is the man?" +"I do not know." +"Why did he not bring it to me here?" +"The messenger did not say." +"And where is the messenger?" +"He went away directly he saw me enter the ballroom to find +you." +"Oh," said the countess to Franz, "go with all speed poor +young man Perhaps some accident has happened to him." +"I will hasten," replied Franz. +"Shall we see you again to give us any information?" +inquired the countess. +"Yes, if it is not any serious affair, otherwise I cannot +answer as to what I may do myself." +"Be prudent, in any event," said the countess. +"Oh, pray be assured of that." Franz took his hat and went +away in haste. He had sent away his carriage with orders for +it to fetch him at two o'clock fortunately the Palazzo +Bracciano, which is on one side in the Corso, and on the +other in the Square of the Holy Apostles, is hardly ten +minutes' walk from the Hotel de Londres. As he came near the +hotel, Franz saw a man in the middle of the street. He had +no doubt that it was the messenger from Albert. The man was +wrapped up in a large cloak. He went up to him, but, to his +extreme astonishment, the stranger first addressed him. +"What wants your excellency of me?" inquired the man, +retreating a step or two, as if to keep on his guard. +"Are not you the person who brought me a letter," inquired +Franz, "from the Viscount of Morcerf?" +"Your excellency lodges at Pastrini's hotel?" +"I do." +"Your excellency is the travelling companion of the +viscount?" +"I am." +"Your excellency's name" +"Is the Baron Franz d'Epinay." +"Then it is to your excellency that this letter is +addressed." +"Is there any answer?" inquired Franz, taking the letter +from him. +"Yes your friend at least hopes so." +"Come upstairs with me, and I will give it to you." +"I prefer waiting here," said the messenger, with a smile. +"And why?" +"Your excellency will know when you have read the letter." +"Shall I find you here, then?" +"Certainly." +Franz entered the hotel. On the staircase he met Signor +Pastrini. "Well?" said the landlord. +"Well what?" responded Franz. +"You have seen the man who desired to speak with you from +your friend?" he asked of Franz. +"Yes, I have seen him," he replied, "and he has handed this +letter to me. Light the candles in my apartment, if you +please." The innkeeper gave orders to a servant to go +before Franz with a light. The young man had found Signor +Pastrini looking very much alarmed, and this had only made +him the more anxious to read Albert's letter and so he went +instantly towards the waxlight, and unfolded it. It was +written and signed by Albert. Franz read it twice before he +could comprehend what it contained. It was thus worded +My Dear Fellow, The moment you have received this, have +the kindness to take the letter of credit from my +pocketbook, which you will find in the square drawer of the +secretary add your own to it, if it be not sufficient. Run +to Torlonia, draw from him instantly four thousand piastres, +and give them to the bearer. It is urgent that I should have +this money without delay. I do not say more, relying on you +as you may rely on me. Your friend, +Albert de Morcerf. +P.S. I now believe in Italian banditti. +Below these lines were written, in a strange hand, the +following in Italian +Se alle sei della mattina le quattro mile piastre non sono +nelle mie mani, alla sette il conte Alberto avra cessato di +vivere. +Luigi Vampa. +"If by six in the morning the four thousand piastres are not +in my hands, by seven o'clock the Count Albert will have +ceased to live." +This second signature explained everything to Franz, who now +understood the objection of the messenger to coming up into +the apartment the street was safer for him. Albert, then, +had fallen into the hands of the famous bandit chief, in +whose existence he had for so long a time refused to +believe. There was no time to lose. He hastened to open the +secretary, and found the pocketbook in the drawer, and in +it the letter of credit. There were in all six thousand +piastres, but of these six thousand Albert had already +expended three thousand. As to Franz, he had no letter of +credit, as he lived at Florence, and had only come to Rome +to pass seven or eight days he had brought but a hundred +louis, and of these he had not more than fifty left. Thus +seven or eight hundred piastres were wanting to them both to +make up the sum that Albert required. True, he might in such +a case rely on the kindness of Signor Torlonia. He was, +therefore, about to return to the Palazzo Bracciano without +loss of time, when suddenly a luminous idea crossed his +mind. He remembered the Count of Monte Cristo. Franz was +about to ring for Signor Pastrini, when that worthy +presented himself. "My dear sir," he said, hastily, "do you +know if the count is within?" +"Yes, your excellency he has this moment returned." +"Is he in bed?" +"I should say no." +"Then ring at his door, if you please, and request him to be +so kind as to give me an audience." Signor Pastrini did as +he was desired, and returning five minutes after, he said, +"The count awaits your excellency." Franz went along the +corridor, and a servant introduced him to the count. He was +in a small room which Franz had not yet seen, and which was +surrounded with divans. The count came towards him. "Well, +what good wind blows you hither at this hour?" said he +"have you come to sup with me? It would be very kind of +you." +"No I have come to speak to you of a very serious matter." +"A serious matter," said the count, looking at Franz with +the earnestness usual to him "and what may it be?" +"Are we alone?" +"Yes," replied the count, going to the door, and returning. +Franz gave him Albert's letter. "Read that," he said. The +count read it. +"Well, well" said he. +"Did you see the postscript?" +"I did, indeed. +""Se alle sei della mattina le quattro mile piastre non sono +nelle mie mani, alla sette il conte Alberto avra cessato di +vivere. +""Luigi Vampa.'" +"What think you of that?" inquired Franz. +"Have you the money he demands?" +"Yes, all but eight hundred piastres." The count went to his +secretary, opened it, and pulling out a drawer filled with +gold, said to Franz, "I hope you will not offend me by +applying to any one but myself." +"You see, on the contrary, I come to you first and +instantly," replied Franz. +"And I thank you have what you will" and he made a sign to +Franz to take what he pleased. +"Is it absolutely necessary, then, to send the money to +Luigi Vampa?" asked the young man, looking fixedly in his +turn at the count. +"Judge for yourself," replied he. "The postscript is +explicit." +"I think that if you would take the trouble of reflecting, +you could find a way of simplifying the negotiation," said +Franz. +"How so?" returned the count, with surprise. +"If we were to go together to Luigi Vampa, I am sure he +would not refuse you Albert's freedom." +"What influence can I possibly have over a bandit?" +"Have you not just rendered him a service that can never be +forgotten?" +"What is that?" +"Have you not saved Peppino's life?" +"Well, well," said the count, "who told you that?" +"No matter I know it." The count knit his brows, and +remained silent an instant. "And if I went to seek Vampa, +would you accompany me?" +"If my society would not be disagreeable." +"Be it so. It is a lovely night, and a walk without Rome +will do us both good." +"Shall I take any arms?" +"For what purpose?" +"Any money?" +"It is useless. Where is the man who brought the letter?" +"In the street." +"He awaits the answer?" +"Yes." +"I must learn where we are going. I will summon him hither." +"It is useless he would not come up." +"To your apartments, perhaps but he will not make any +difficulty at entering mine." The count went to the window +of the apartment that looked on to the street, and whistled +in a peculiar manner. The man in the mantle quitted the +wall, and advanced into the middle of the street. "Salite" +said the count, in the same tone in which he would have +given an order to his servant. The messenger obeyed without +the least hesitation, but rather with alacrity, and, +mounting the steps at a bound, entered the hotel five +seconds afterwards he was at the door of the room. "Ah, it +is you, Peppino," said the count. But Peppino, instead of +answering, threw himself on his knees, seized the count's +hand, and covered it with kisses. "Ah," said the count, "you +have, then, not forgotten that I saved your life that is +strange, for it is a week ago." +"No, excellency and never shall I forget it," returned +Peppino, with an accent of profound gratitude. +"Never? That is a long time but it is something that you +believe so. Rise and answer." Peppino glanced anxiously at +Franz. "Oh, you may speak before his excellency," said he +"he is one of my friends. You allow me to give you this +title?" continued the count in French, "it is necessary to +excite this man's confidence." +"You can speak before me," said Franz "I am a friend of the +count's." +"Good" returned Peppino. "I am ready to answer any +questions your excellency may address to me." +"How did the Viscount Albert fall into Luigi's hands?" +"Excellency, the Frenchman's carriage passed several times +the one in which was Teresa." +"The chief's mistress?" +"Yes. The Frenchman threw her a bouquet Teresa returned it +all this with the consent of the chief, who was in the +carriage." +"What?" cried Franz, "was Luigi Vampa in the carriage with +the Roman peasants?" +"It was he who drove, disguised as the coachman," replied +Peppino. +"Well?" said the count. +"Well, then, the Frenchman took off his mask Teresa, with +the chief's consent, did the same. The Frenchman asked for a +rendezvous Teresa gave him one only, instead of Teresa, +it was Beppo who was on the steps of the church of San +Giacomo." +"What" exclaimed Franz, "the peasant girl who snatched his +mocoletto from him" +"Was a lad of fifteen," replied Peppino. "But it was no +disgrace to your friend to have been deceived Beppo has +taken in plenty of others." +"And Beppo led him outside the walls?" said the count. +"Exactly so a carriage was waiting at the end of the Via +Macello. Beppo got in, inviting the Frenchman to follow him, +and he did not wait to be asked twice. He gallantly offered +the righthand seat to Beppo, and sat by him. Beppo told him +he was going to take him to a villa a league from Rome the +Frenchman assured him he would follow him to the end of the +world. The coachman went up the Via di Ripetta and the Porta +San Paola and when they were two hundred yards outside, as +the Frenchman became somewhat too forward, Beppo put a brace +of pistols to his head, the coachman pulled up and did the +same. At the same time, four of the band, who were concealed +on the banks of the Almo, surrounded the carriage. The +Frenchman made some resistance, and nearly strangled Beppo +but he could not resist five armed men, and was forced to +yield. They made him get out, walk along the banks of the +river, and then brought him to Teresa and Luigi, who were +waiting for him in the catacombs of St. Sebastian." +"Well," said the count, turning towards Franz, "it seems to +me that this is a very likely story. What do you say to it?" +"Why, that I should think it very amusing," replied Franz, +"if it had happened to any one but poor Albert." +"And, in truth, if you had not found me here," said the +count, "it might have proved a gallant adventure which would +have cost your friend dear but now, be assured, his alarm +will be the only serious consequence." +"And shall we go and find him?" inquired Franz. +"Oh, decidedly, sir. He is in a very picturesque place do +you know the catacombs of St. Sebastian?" +"I was never in them but I have often resolved to visit +them." +"Well, here is an opportunity made to your hand, and it +would be difficult to contrive a better. Have you a +carriage?" +"No." +"That is of no consequence I always have one ready, day and +night." +"Always ready?" +"Yes. I am a very capricious being, and I should tell you +that sometimes when I rise, or after my dinner, or in the +middle of the night, I resolve on starting for some +particular point, and away I go." The count rang, and a +footman appeared. "Order out the carriage," he said, "and +remove the pistols which are in the holsters. You need not +awaken the coachman Ali will drive." In a very short time +the noise of wheels was heard, and the carriage stopped at +the door. The count took out his watch. "Halfpast twelve," +he said. "We might start at five o'clock and be in time, but +the delay may cause your friend to pass an uneasy night, and +therefore we had better go with all speed to extricate him +from the hands of the infidels. Are you still resolved to +accompany me?" +"More determined than ever." +"Well, then, come along." +Franz and the count went downstairs, accompanied by Peppino. +At the door they found the carriage. Ali was on the box, in +whom Franz recognized the dumb slave of the grotto of Monte +Cristo. Franz and the count got into the carriage. Peppino +placed himself beside Ali, and they set off at a rapid pace. +Ali had received his instructions, and went down the Corso, +crossed the Campo Vaccino, went up the Strada San Gregorio, +and reached the gates of St. Sebastian. Then the porter +raised some difficulties, but the Count of Monte Cristo +produced a permit from the governor of Rome, allowing him to +leave or enter the city at any hour of the day or night the +portcullis was therefore raised, the porter had a louis for +his trouble, and they went on their way. The road which the +carriage now traversed was the ancient Appian Way, and +bordered with tombs. From time to time, by the light of the +moon, which began to rise, Franz imagined that he saw +something like a sentinel appear at various points among the +ruins, and suddenly retreat into the darkness on a signal +from Peppino. A short time before they reached the Baths of +Caracalla the carriage stopped, Peppino opened the door, and +the count and Franz alighted. +"In ten minutes," said the count to his companion, "we shall +be there." +He then took Peppino aside, gave him an order in a low +voice, and Peppino went away, taking with him a torch, +brought with them in the carriage. Five minutes elapsed, +during which Franz saw the shepherd going along a narrow +path that led over the irregular and broken surface of the +Campagna and finally he disappeared in the midst of the +tall red herbage, which seemed like the bristling mane of an +enormous lion. "Now," said the count, "let us follow him." +Franz and the count in their turn then advanced along the +same path, which, at the distance of a hundred paces, led +them over a declivity to the bottom of a small valley. They +then perceived two men conversing in the obscurity. "Ought +we to go on?" asked Franz of the count "or shall we wait +awhile?" +"Let us go on Peppino will have warned the sentry of our +coming." One of the two men was Peppino, and the other a +bandit on the lookout. Franz and the count advanced, and the +bandit saluted them. "Your excellency," said Peppino, +addressing the count, "if you will follow me, the opening of +the catacombs is close at hand." +"Go on, then," replied the count. They came to an opening +behind a clump of bushes and in the midst of a pile of +rocks, by which a man could scarcely pass. Peppino glided +first into this crevice after they got along a few paces +the passage widened. Peppino passed, lighted his torch, and +turned to see if they came after him. The count first +reached an open space and Franz followed him closely. The +passageway sloped in a gentle descent, enlarging as they +proceeded still Franz and the count were compelled to +advance in a stooping posture, and were scarcely able to +proceed abreast of one another. They went on a hundred and +fifty paces in this way, and then were stopped by, "Who +comes there?" At the same time they saw the reflection of a +torch on a carbine barrel. +"A friend" responded Peppino and, advancing alone towards +the sentry, he said a few words to him in a low tone and +then he, like the first, saluted the nocturnal visitors, +making a sign that they might proceed. +Behind the sentinel was a staircase with twenty steps. Franz +and the count descended these, and found themselves in a +mortuary chamber. Five corridors diverged like the rays of a +star, and the walls, dug into niches, which were arranged +one above the other in the shape of coffins, showed that +they were at last in the catacombs. Down one of the +corridors, whose extent it was impossible to determine, rays +of light were visible. The count laid his hand on Franz's +shoulder. "Would you like to see a camp of bandits in +repose?" he inquired. +"Exceedingly," replied Franz. +"Come with me, then. Peppino, put out the torch." Peppino +obeyed, and Franz and the count were in utter darkness, +except that fifty paces in advance of them a reddish glare, +more evident since Peppino had put out his torch, was +visible along the wall. They advanced silently, the count +guiding Franz as if he had the singular faculty of seeing in +the dark. Franz himself, however, saw his way more plainly +in proportion as he went on towards the light, which served +in some manner as a guide. Three arcades were before them, +and the middle one was used as a door. These arcades opened +on one side into the corridor where the count and Franz +were, and on the other into a large square chamber, entirely +surrounded by niches similar to those of which we have +spoken. In the midst of this chamber were four stones, which +had formerly served as an altar, as was evident from the +cross which still surmounted them. A lamp, placed at the +base of a pillar, lighted up with its pale and flickering +flame the singular scene which presented itself to the eyes +of the two visitors concealed in the shadow. A man was +seated with his elbow leaning on the column, and was reading +with his back turned to the arcades, through the openings of +which the newcomers contemplated him. This was the chief of +the band, Luigi Vampa. Around him, and in groups, according +to their fancy, lying in their mantles, or with their backs +against a sort of stone bench, which went all round the +columbarium, were to be seen twenty brigands or more, each +having his carbine within reach. At the other end, silent, +scarcely visible, and like a shadow, was a sentinel, who was +walking up and down before a grotto, which was only +distinguishable because in that spot the darkness seemed +more dense than elsewhere. When the count thought Franz had +gazed sufficiently on this picturesque tableau, he raised +his finger to his lips, to warn him to be silent, and, +ascending the three steps which led to the corridor of the +columbarium, entered the chamber by the middle arcade, and +advanced towards Vampa, who was so intent on the book before +him that he did not hear the noise of his footsteps. +"Who comes there?" cried the sentinel, who was less +abstracted, and who saw by the lamplight a shadow +approaching his chief. At this challenge, Vampa rose +quickly, drawing at the same moment a pistol from his +girdle. In a moment all the bandits were on their feet, and +twenty carbines were levelled at the count. "Well," said he +in a voice perfectly calm, and no muscle of his countenance +disturbed, "well, my dear Vampa, it appears to me that you +receive a friend with a great deal of ceremony." +"Ground arms," exclaimed the chief, with an imperative sign +of the hand, while with the other he took off his hat +respectfully then, turning to the singular personage who +had caused this scene, he said, "Your pardon, your +excellency, but I was so far from expecting the honor of a +visit, that I did not really recognize you." +"It seems that your memory is equally short in everything, +Vampa," said the count, "and that not only do you forget +people's faces, but also the conditions you make with them." +"What conditions have I forgotten, your excellency?" +inquired the bandit, with the air of a man who, having +committed an error, is anxious to repair it. +"Was it not agreed," asked the count, "that not only my +person, but also that of my friends, should be respected by +you?" +"And how have I broken that treaty, your excellency?" +"You have this evening carried off and conveyed hither the +Vicomte Albert de Morcerf. Well," continued the count, in a +tone that made Franz shudder, "this young gentleman is one +of my friends this young gentleman lodges in the same +hotel as myself this young gentleman has been up and down +the Corso for eight hours in my private carriage, and yet, I +repeat to you, you have carried him off, and conveyed him +hither, and," added the count, taking the letter from his +pocket, "you have set a ransom on him, as if he were an +utter stranger." +"Why did you not tell me all this you?" inquired the +brigand chief, turning towards his men, who all retreated +before his look. "Why have you caused me thus to fail in my +word towards a gentleman like the count, who has all our +lives in his hands? By heavens, if I thought one of you knew +that the young gentleman was the friend of his excellency, I +would blow his brains out with my own hand" +"Well," said the count, turning towards Franz, "I told you +there was some mistake in this." +"Are you not alone?" asked Vampa with uneasiness. +"I am with the person to whom this letter was addressed, and +to whom I desired to prove that Luigi Vampa was a man of his +word. Come, your excellency," the count added, turning to +Franz, "here is Luigi Vampa, who will himself express to you +his deep regret at the mistake he has committed." Franz +approached, the chief advancing several steps to meet him. +"Welcome among us, your excellency," he said to him "you +heard what the count just said, and also my reply let me +add that I would not for the four thousand piastres at which +I had fixed your friend's ransom, that this had happened." +"But," said Franz, looking round him uneasily, "where is the +Viscount? I do not see him." +"Nothing has happened to him, I hope," said the count +frowningly. +"The prisoner is there," replied Vampa, pointing to the +hollow space in front of which the bandit was on guard, "and +I will go myself and tell him he is free." The chief went +towards the place he had pointed out as Albert's prison, and +Franz and the count followed him. "What is the prisoner +doing?" inquired Vampa of the sentinel. +"Ma foi, captain," replied the sentry, "I do not know for +the last hour I have not heard him stir." +"Come in, your excellency," said Vampa. The count and Franz +ascended seven or eight steps after the chief, who drew back +a bolt and opened a door. Then, by the gleam of a lamp, +similar to that which lighted the columbarium, Albert was to +be seen wrapped up in a cloak which one of the bandits had +lent him, lying in a corner in profound slumber. "Come," +said the count, smiling with his own peculiar smile, "not so +bad for a man who is to be shot at seven o'clock tomorrow +morning." Vampa looked at Albert with a kind of admiration +he was not insensible to such a proof of courage. +"You are right, your excellency," he said "this must be one +of your friends." Then going to Albert, he touched him on +the shoulder, saying, "Will your excellency please to +awaken?" Albert stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyelids, +and opened his eyes. "Oh," said he, "is it you, captain? You +should have allowed me to sleep. I had such a delightful +dream. I was dancing the galop at Torlonia's with the +Countess G ." Then he drew his watch from his pocket, +that he might see how time sped. +"Halfpast one only?" said he. "Why the devil do you rouse +me at this hour?" +"To tell you that you are free, your excellency." +"My dear fellow," replied Albert, with perfect ease of mind, +"remember, for the future, Napoleon's maxim, "Never awaken +me but for bad news' if you had let me sleep on, I should +have finished my galop, and have been grateful to you all my +life. So, then, they have paid my ransom?" +"No, your excellency." +"Well, then, how am I free?" +"A person to whom I can refuse nothing has come to demand +you." +"Come hither?" +"Yes, hither." +"Really? Then that person is a most amiable person." Albert +looked around and perceived Franz. "What," said he, "is it +you, my dear Franz, whose devotion and friendship are thus +displayed?" +"No, not I," replied Franz, "but our neighbor, the Count of +Monte Cristo." +"Oh. my dear count." said Albert gayly, arranging his cravat +and wristbands, "you are really most kind, and I hope you +will consider me as under eternal obligations to you, in the +first place for the carriage, and in the next for this +visit," and he put out his hand to the Count, who shuddered +as he gave his own, but who nevertheless did give it. The +bandit gazed on this scene with amazement he was evidently +accustomed to see his prisoners tremble before him, and yet +here was one whose gay temperament was not for a moment +altered as for Franz, he was enchanted at the way in which +Albert had sustained the national honor in the presence of +the bandit. "My dear Albert," he said, "if you will make +haste, we shall yet have time to finish the night at +Torlonia's. You may conclude your interrupted galop, so that +you will owe no illwill to Signor Luigi, who has, indeed, +throughout this whole affair acted like a gentleman." +"You are decidedly right, and we may reach the Palazzo by +two o'clock. Signor Luigi," continued Albert, "is there any +formality to fulfil before I take leave of your excellency?" +"None, sir," replied the bandit, "you are as free as air." +"Well, then, a happy and merry life to you. Come, gentlemen, +come." +And Albert, followed by Franz and the count, descended the +staircase, crossed the square chamber, where stood all the +bandits, hat in hand. "Peppino," said the brigand chief, +"give me the torch." +"What are you going to do?" inquired the count. +"I will show you the way back myself," said the captain +"that is the least honor that I can render to your +excellency." And taking the lighted torch from the hands of +the herdsman, he preceded his guests, not as a servant who +performs an act of civility, but like a king who precedes +ambassadors. On reaching the door, he bowed. "And now, your +excellency," added he, "allow me to repeat my apologies, and +I hope you will not entertain any resentment at what has +occurred." +"No, my dear Vampa," replied the count "besides, you +compensate for your mistakes in so gentlemanly a way, that +one almost feels obliged to you for having committed them." +"Gentlemen," added the chief, turning towards the young men, +"perhaps the offer may not appear very tempting to you but +if you should ever feel inclined to pay me a second visit, +wherever I may be, you shall be welcome." Franz and Albert +bowed. The count went out first, then Albert. Franz paused +for a moment. "Has your excellency anything to ask me?" said +Vampa with a smile. +"Yes, I have," replied Franz "I am curious to know what +work you were perusing with so much attention as we +entered." +"Caesar's "Commentaries,'" said the bandit, "it is my +favorite work." +"Well, are you coming?" asked Albert. +"Yes," replied Franz, "here I am," and he, in his turn, left +the caves. They advanced to the plain. "Ah, your pardon," +said Albert, turning round "will you allow me, captain?" +And he lighted his cigar at Vampa's torch. "Now, my dear +count," he said, "let us on with all the speed we may. I am +enormously anxious to finish my night at the Duke of +Bracciano's." They found the carriage where they had left +it. The count said a word in Arabic to Ali, and the horses +went on at great speed. It was just two o'clock by Albert's +watch when the two friends entered into the dancingroom. +Their return was quite an event, but as they entered +together, all uneasiness on Albert's account ceased +instantly. "Madame," said the Viscount of Morcerf, advancing +towards the countess, "yesterday you were so condescending +as to promise me a galop I am rather late in claiming this +gracious promise, but here is my friend, whose character for +veracity you well know, and he will assure you the delay +arose from no fault of mine." And as at this moment the +orchestra gave the signal for the waltz, Albert put his arm +round the waist of the countess, and disappeared with her in +the whirl of dancers. In the meanwhile Franz was considering +the singular shudder that had passed over the Count of Monte +Cristo at the moment when he had been, in some sort, forced +to give his hand to Albert. +Chapter +The Compact. +The first words that Albert uttered to his friend, on the +following morning, contained a request that Franz would +accompany him on a visit to the count true, the young man +had warmly and energetically thanked the count on the +previous evening but services such as he had rendered could +never be too often acknowledged. Franz, who seemed attracted +by some invisible influence towards the count, in which +terror was strangely mingled, felt an extreme reluctance to +permit his friend to be exposed alone to the singular +fascination that this mysterious personage seemed to +exercise over him, and therefore made no objection to +Albert's request, but at once accompanied him to the desired +spot, and, after a short delay, the count joined them in the +salon. "My dear count," said Albert, advancing to meet him, +"permit me to repeat the poor thanks I offered last night, +and to assure you that the remembrance of all I owe to you +will never be effaced from my memory believe me, as long as +I live, I shall never cease to dwell with grateful +recollection on the prompt and important service you +rendered me and also to remember that to you I am indebted +even for my life." +"My very good friend and excellent neighbor," replied the +count, with a smile, "you really exaggerate my trifling +exertions. You owe me nothing but some trifle of , +francs, which you have been saved out of your travelling +expenses, so that there is not much of a score between us +but you must really permit me to congratulate you on the +ease and unconcern with which you resigned yourself to your +fate, and the perfect indifference you manifested as to the +turn events might take." +"Upon my word," said Albert, "I deserve no credit for what I +could not help, namely, a determination to take everything +as I found it, and to let those bandits see, that although +men get into troublesome scrapes all over the world, there +is no nation but the French that can smile even in the face +of grim Death himself. All that, however, has nothing to do +with my obligations to you, and I now come to ask you +whether, in my own person, my family, or connections, I can +in any way serve you? My father, the Comte de Morcerf, +although of Spanish origin, possesses considerable +influence, both at the court of France and Madrid, and I +unhesitatingly place the best services of myself, and all to +whom my life is dear, at your disposal." +"Monsieur de Morcerf," replied the count, "your offer, far +from surprising me, is precisely what I expected from you, +and I accept it in the same spirit of hearty sincerity with +which it is made nay, I will go still further, and say +that I had previously made up my mind to ask a great favor +at your hands." +"Oh, pray name it." +"I am wholly a stranger to Paris it is a city I have +never yet seen." +"Is it possible," exclaimed Albert, "that you have reached +your present age without visiting the finest capital in the +world? I can scarcely credit it." +"Nevertheless, it is quite true still, I agree with you in +thinking that my present ignorance of the first city in +Europe is a reproach to me in every way, and calls for +immediate correction but, in all probability, I should have +performed so important, so necessary a duty, as that of +making myself acquainted with the wonders and beauties of +your justly celebrated capital, had I known any person who +would have introduced me into the fashionable world, but +unfortunately I possessed no acquaintance there, and, of +necessity, was compelled to abandon the idea." +"So distinguished an individual as yourself," cried Albert, +"could scarcely have required an introduction." +"You are most kind but as regards myself, I can find no +merit I possess, save that, as a millionaire, I might have +become a partner in the speculations of M. Aguado and M. +Rothschild but as my motive in travelling to your capital +would not have been for the pleasure of dabbling in stocks, +I stayed away till some favorable chance should present +itself of carrying my wish into execution. Your offer, +however, smooths all difficulties, and I have only to ask +you, my dear M. de Morcerf" these words were accompanied by +a most peculiar smile, "whether you undertake, upon my +arrival in France, to open to me the doors of that +fashionable world of which I know no more than a Huron or a +native of CochinChina?" +"Oh, that I do, and with infinite pleasure," answered +Albert "and so much the more readily as a letter received +this morning from my father summons me to Paris, in +consequence of a treaty of marriage my dear Franz, do not +smile, I beg of you with a family of high standing, and +connected with the very cream of Parisian society." +"Connected by marriage, you mean," said Franz, laughingly. +"Well, never mind how it is," answered Albert, "it comes to +the same thing in the end. Perhaps by the time you return to +Paris, I shall be quite a sober, staid father of a family A +most edifying representative I shall make of all the +domestic virtues don't you think so? But as regards your +wish to visit our fine city, my dear count, I can only say +that you may command me and mine to any extent you please." +"Then it is settled," said the count, "and I give you my +solemn assurance that I only waited an opportunity like the +present to realize plans that I have long meditated." Franz +did not doubt that these plans were the same concerning +which the count had dropped a few words in the grotto of +Monte Cristo, and while the Count was speaking the young man +watched him closely, hoping to read something of his purpose +in his face, but his countenance was inscrutable especially +when, as in the present case, it was veiled in a sphinxlike +smile. "But tell me now, count," exclaimed Albert, delighted +at the idea of having to chaperon so distinguished a person +as Monte Cristo "tell me truly whether you are in earnest, +or if this project of visiting Paris is merely one of the +chimerical and uncertain air castles of which we make so +many in the course of our lives, but which, like a house +built on the sand, is liable to be blown over by the first +puff of wind?" +"I pledge you my honor," returned the count, "that I mean to +do as I have said both inclination and positive necessity +compel me to visit Paris." +"When do you propose going thither?" +"Have you made up your mind when you shall be there +yourself?" +"Certainly I have in a fortnight or three weeks' time, that +is to say, as fast as I can get there" +"Nay," said the Count "I will give you three months ere I +join you you see I make an ample allowance for all delays +and difficulties. +"And in three months' time," said Albert, "you will be at my +house?" +"Shall we make a positive appointment for a particular day +and hour?" inquired the count "only let me warn you that I +am proverbial for my punctilious exactitude in keeping my +engagements." +"Day for day, hour for hour," said Albert "that will suit +me to a dot." +"So be it, then," replied the count, and extending his hand +towards a calendar, suspended near the chimneypiece, he +said, "today is the st of February" and drawing out his +watch, added, "it is exactly halfpast ten o'clock. Now +promise me to remember this, and expect me the st of May +at the same hour in the forenoon." +"Capital," exclaimed Albert "your breakfast shall be +waiting." +"Where do you live?" +"No. , Rue du Helder." +"Have you bachelor's apartments there? I hope my coming will +not put you to any inconvenience." +"I reside in my father's house, but occupy a pavilion at the +farther side of the courtyard, entirely separated from the +main building." +"Quite sufficient," replied the count, as, taking out his +tablets, he wrote down "No. , Rue du Helder, st May, +halfpast ten in the morning." +"Now then," said the count, returning his tablets to his +pocket, "make yourself perfectly easy the hand of your +timepiece will not be more accurate in marking the time +than myself." +"Shall I see you again ere my departure?" asked Albert. +"That depends when do you leave?" +"Tomorrow evening, at five o'clock." +"In that case I must say adieu to you, as I am compelled to +go to Naples, and shall not return hither before Saturday +evening or Sunday morning. And you, baron," pursued the +count, addressing Franz, "do you also depart tomorrow?" +"Yes." +"For France?" +"No, for Venice I shall remain in Italy for another year or +two." +"Then we shall not meet in Paris?" +"I fear I shall not have that honor." +"Well, since we must part," said the count, holding out a +hand to each of the young men, "allow me to wish you both a +safe and pleasant journey." It was the first time the hand +of Franz had come in contact with that of the mysterious +individual before him, and unconsciously he shuddered at its +touch, for it felt cold and icy as that of a corpse. "Let us +understand each other," said Albert "it is agreed is it +not? that you are to be at No. , in the Rue du Helder, +on the st of May, at halfpast ten in the morning, and +your word of honor passed for your punctuality?" +"The st of May, at halfpast ten in the morning, Rue du +Helder, No. ," replied the Count. The young men then rose, +and bowing to the count, quitted the room. "What is the +matter?" asked Albert of Franz, when they had returned to +their own apartments "you seem more than commonly +thoughtful." +"I will confess to you, Albert," replied Franz, "the count +is a very singular person, and the appointment you have made +to meet him in Paris fills me with a thousand +apprehensions." +"My dear fellow," exclaimed Albert, "what can there possibly +be in that to excite uneasiness? Why, you must have lost +your senses." +"Whether I am in my senses or not," answered Franz, "that is +the way I feel." +"Listen to me, Franz," said Albert "I am glad that the +occasion has presented itself for saying this to you, for I +have noticed how cold you are in your bearing towards the +count, while he, on the other hand, has always been courtesy +itself to us. Have you anything particular against him?" +"Possibly." +"Did you ever meet him previously to coming hither?" +"I have." +"And where?" +"Will you promise me not to repeat a single word of what I +am about to tell you?" +"I promise." +"Upon your honor?" +"Upon my honor." +"Then listen to me." Franz then related to his friend the +history of his excursion to the Island of Monte Cristo and +of his finding a party of smugglers there, and the two +Corsican bandits with them. He dwelt with considerable force +and energy on the almost magical hospitality he had received +from the count, and the magnificence of his entertainment in +the grotto of the "Thousand and One Nights." He recounted, +with circumstantial exactitude, all the particulars of the +supper, the hashish, the statues, the dream, and how, at his +awakening, there remained no proof or trace of all these +events, save the small yacht, seen in the distant horizon +driving under full sail toward PortoVecchio. Then he +detailed the conversation overheard by him at the Colosseum, +between the count and Vampa, in which the count had promised +to obtain the release of the bandit Peppino, an +engagement which, as our readers are aware, he most +faithfully fulfilled. At last he arrived at the adventure of +the preceding night, and the embarrassment in which he found +himself placed by not having sufficient cash by six or seven +hundred piastres to make up the sum required, and finally of +his application to the count and the picturesque and +satisfactory result that followed. Albert listened with the +most profound attention. "Well," said he, when Franz had +concluded, "what do you find to object to in all you have +related? The count is fond of travelling, and, being rich, +possesses a vessel of his own. Go but to Portsmouth or +Southampton, and you will find the harbors crowded with the +yachts belonging to such of the English as can afford the +expense, and have the same liking for this amusement. Now, +by way of having a restingplace during his excursions, +avoiding the wretched cookery which has been trying its +best to poison me during the last four months, while you +have manfully resisted its effects for as many years, and +obtaining a bed on which it is possible to slumber, Monte +Cristo has furnished for himself a temporary abode where you +first found him but, to prevent the possibility of the +Tuscan government taking a fancy to his enchanted palace, +and thereby depriving him of the advantages naturally +expected from so large an outlay of capital, he has wisely +enough purchased the island, and taken its name. Just ask +yourself, my good fellow, whether there are not many persons +of our acquaintance who assume the names of lands and +properties they never in their lives were masters of?" +"But," said Franz, "the Corsican bandits that were among the +crew of his vessel?" +"Why, really the thing seems to me simple enough. Nobody +knows better than yourself that the bandits of Corsica are +not rogues or thieves, but purely and simply fugitives, +driven by some sinister motive from their native town or +village, and that their fellowship involves no disgrace or +stigma for my own part, I protest that, should I ever go to +Corsica, my first visit, ere even I presented myself to the +mayor or prefect, should be to the bandits of Colomba, if I +could only manage to find them for, on my conscience, they +are a race of men I admire greatly." +"Still," persisted Franz, "I suppose you will allow that +such men as Vampa and his band are regular villains, who +have no other motive than plunder when they seize your +person. How do you explain the influence the count evidently +possessed over those ruffians?" +"My good friend, as in all probability I own my present +safety to that influence, it would ill become me to search +too closely into its source therefore, instead of +condemning him for his intimacy with outlaws, you must give +me leave to excuse any little irregularity there may be in +such a connection not altogether for preserving my life, +for my own idea was that it never was in much danger, but +certainly for saving me , piastres, which, being +translated, means neither more nor less than , livres +of our money a sum at which, most assuredly, I should +never have been estimated in France, proving most +indisputably," added Albert with a laugh, "that no prophet +is honored in his own country." +"Talking of countries," replied Franz, "of what country is +the count, what is his native tongue, whence does he derive +his immense fortune, and what were those events of his early +life a life as marvellous as unknown that have +tinctured his succeeding years with so dark and gloomy a +misanthropy? Certainly these are questions that, in your +place, I should like to have answered." +"My dear Franz," replied Albert, "when, upon receipt of my +letter, you found the necessity of asking the count's +assistance, you promptly went to him, saying, "My friend +Albert de Morcerf is in danger help me to deliver him.' Was +not that nearly what you said?" +"It was." +"Well, then, did he ask you, "Who is M. Albert de Morcerf? +how does he come by his name his fortune? what are his +means of existence? what is his birthplace of what country +is he a native?' Tell me, did he put all these questions to +you?" +"I confess he asked me none." +"No he merely came and freed me from the hands of Signor +Vampa, where, I can assure you, in spite of all my outward +appearance of ease and unconcern, I did not very +particularly care to remain. Now, then, Franz, when, for +services so promptly and unhesitatingly rendered, he but +asks me in return to do for him what is done daily for any +Russian prince or Italian nobleman who may pass through +Paris merely to introduce him into society would you +have me refuse? My good fellow, you must have lost your +senses to think it possible I could act with such +coldblooded policy." And this time it must be confessed +that, contrary to the usual state of affairs in discussions +between the young men, the effective arguments were all on +Albert's side. +"Well," said Franz with a sigh, "do as you please my dear +viscount, for your arguments are beyond my powers of +refutation. Still, in spite of all, you must admit that this +Count of Monte Cristo is a most singular personage." +"He is a philanthropist," answered the other "and no doubt +his motive in visiting Paris is to compete for the Monthyon +prize, given, as you are aware, to whoever shall be proved +to have most materially advanced the interests of virtue and +humanity. If my vote and interest can obtain it for him, I +will readily give him the one and promise the other. And +now, my dear Franz, let us talk of something else. Come, +shall we take our luncheon, and then pay a last visit to St. +Peter's?" Franz silently assented and the following +afternoon, at halfpast five o'clock, the young men parted. +Albert de Morcerf to return to Paris, and Franz d'Epinay to +pass a fortnight at Venice. But, ere he entered his +travelling carriage, Albert, fearing that his expected guest +might forget the engagement he had entered into, placed in +the care of a waiter at the hotel a card to be delivered to +the Count of Monte Cristo, on which, beneath the name of +Vicomte Albert de Morcerf, he had written in pencil ", +Rue du Helder, on the st May, halfpast ten A.M." +Chapter +The Guests. +In the house in the Rue du Helder, where Albert had invited +the Count of Monte Cristo, everything was being prepared on +the morning of the st of May to do honor to the occasion. +Albert de Morcerf inhabited a pavilion situated at the +corner of a large court, and directly opposite another +building, in which were the servants' apartments. Two +windows only of the pavilion faced the street three other +windows looked into the court, and two at the back into the +garden. Between the court and the garden, built in the heavy +style of the imperial architecture, was the large and +fashionable dwelling of the Count and Countess of Morcerf. A +high wall surrounded the whole of the hotel, surmounted at +intervals by vases filled with flowers, and broken in the +centre by a large gate of gilded iron, which served as the +carriage entrance. A small door, close to the lodge of the +concierge, gave ingress and egress to the servants and +masters when they were on foot. +It was easy to discover that the delicate care of a mother, +unwilling to part from her son, and yet aware that a young +man of the viscount's age required the full exercise of his +liberty, had chosen this habitation for Albert. There were +not lacking, however, evidences of what we may call the +intelligent egoism of a youth who is charmed with the +indolent, careless life of an only son, and who lives as it +were in a gilded cage. By means of the two windows looking +into the street, Albert could see all that passed the sight +of what is going on is necessary to young men, who always +want to see the world traverse their horizon, even if that +horizon is only a public thoroughfare. Then, should anything +appear to merit a more minute examination, Albert de Morcerf +could follow up his researches by means of a small gate, +similar to that close to the concierge's door, and which +merits a particular description. It was a little entrance +that seemed never to have been opened since the house was +built, so entirely was it covered with dust and dirt but +the welloiled hinges and locks told quite another story. +This door was a mockery to the concierge, from whose +vigilance and jurisdiction it was free, and, like that +famous portal in the "Arabian Nights," opening at the +"Sesame" of Ali Baba, it was wont to swing backward at a +cabalistic word or a concerted tap from without from the +sweetest voices or whitest fingers in the world. At the end +of a long corridor, with which the door communicated, and +which formed the antechamber, was, on the right, Albert's +breakfastroom, looking into the court, and on the left the +salon, looking into the garden. Shrubs and creeping plants +covered the windows, and hid from the garden and court these +two apartments, the only rooms into which, as they were on +the groundfloor, the prying eyes of the curious could +penetrate. On the floor above were similar rooms, with the +addition of a third, formed out of the antechamber these +three rooms were a salon, a boudoir, and a bedroom. The +salon downstairs was only an Algerian divan, for the use of +smokers. The boudoir upstairs communicated with the +bedchamber by an invisible door on the staircase it was +evident that every precaution had been taken. Above this +floor was a large atelier, which had been increased in size +by pulling down the partitions a pandemonium, in which +the artist and the dandy strove for preeminence. There were +collected and piled up all Albert's successive caprices, +huntinghorns, bassviols, flutes a whole orchestra, for +Albert had had not a taste but a fancy for music easels, +palettes, brushes, pencils for music had been succeeded +by painting foils, boxinggloves, broadswords, and +singlesticks for, following the example of the +fashionable young men of the time, Albert de Morcerf +cultivated, with far more perseverance than music and +drawing, the three arts that complete a dandy's education, +i.e., fencing, boxing, and singlestick and it was here +that he received Grisier, Cook, and Charles Leboucher. The +rest of the furniture of this privileged apartment consisted +of old cabinets, filled with Chinese porcelain and Japanese +vases, Lucca della Robbia faience, and Palissy platters of +old armchairs, in which perhaps had sat Henry IV. or Sully, +Louis XIII. or Richelieu for two of these armchairs, +adorned with a carved shield, on which were engraved the +fleurdelis of France on an azure field evidently came from +the Louvre, or, at least, some royal residence. Over these +dark and sombre chairs were thrown splendid stuffs, dyed +beneath Persia's sun, or woven by the fingers of the women +of Calcutta or of Chandernagor. What these stuffs did there, +it was impossible to say they awaited, while gratifying the +eyes, a destination unknown to their owner himself in the +meantime they filled the place with their golden and silky +reflections. In the centre of the room was a Roller and +Blanchet "baby grand" piano in rosewood, but holding the +potentialities of an orchestra in its narrow and sonorous +cavity, and groaning beneath the weight of the +chefsd'oeuvre of Beethoven, Weber, Mozart, Haydn, Gretry, +and Porpora. On the walls, over the doors, on the ceiling, +were swords, daggers, Malay creeses, maces, battleaxes +gilded, damasked, and inlaid suits of armor dried plants, +minerals, and stuffed birds, their flamecolored wings +outspread in motionless flight, and their beaks forever +open. This was Albert's favorite lounging place. +However, the morning of the appointment, the young man had +established himself in the small salon downstairs. There, +on a table, surrounded at some distance by a large and +luxurious divan, every species of tobacco known, from the +yellow tobacco of Petersburg to the black of Sinai, and so +on along the scale from Maryland and PortoRico, to Latakia, +was exposed in pots of crackled earthenware of which the +Dutch are so fond beside them, in boxes of fragrant wood, +were ranged, according to their size and quality, pueros, +regalias, havanas, and manillas and, in an open cabinet, a +collection of German pipes, of chibouques, with their amber +mouthpieces ornamented with coral, and of narghiles, with +their long tubes of morocco, awaiting the caprice or the +sympathy of the smokers. Albert had himself presided at the +arrangement, or, rather, the symmetrical derangement, which, +after coffee, the guests at a breakfast of modern days love +to contemplate through the vapor that escapes from their +mouths, and ascends in long and fanciful wreaths to the +ceiling. At a quarter to ten, a valet entered he composed, +with a little groom named John, and who only spoke English, +all Albert's establishment, although the cook of the hotel +was always at his service, and on great occasions the +count's chasseur also. This valet, whose name was Germain, +and who enjoyed the entire confidence of his young master, +held in one hand a number of papers, and in the other a +packet of letters, which he gave to Albert. Albert glanced +carelessly at the different missives, selected two written +in a small and delicate hand, and enclosed in scented +envelopes, opened them and perused their contents with some +attention. "How did these letters come?" said he. +"One by the post, Madame Danglars' footman left the other." +"Let Madame Danglars know that I accept the place she offers +me in her box. Wait then, during the day, tell Rosa that +when I leave the Opera I will sup with her as she wishes. +Take her six bottles of different wine Cyprus, sherry, +and Malaga, and a barrel of Ostend oysters get them at +Borel's, and be sure you say they are for me." +"At what o'clock, sir, do you breakfast?" +"What time is it now?" +"A quarter to ten." +"Very well, at half past ten. Debray will, perhaps, be +obliged to go to the minister and besides" Albert looked +at his tablets, "it is the hour I told the count, st May, +at half past ten and though I do not much rely upon his +promise, I wish to be punctual. Is the countess up yet?" +"If you wish, I will inquire." +"Yes, ask her for one of her liqueur cellarets, mine is +incomplete and tell her I shall have the honor of seeing +her about three o'clock, and that I request permission to +introduce some one to her." The valet left the room. Albert +threw himself on the divan, tore off the cover of two or +three of the papers, looked at the theatre announcements, +made a face seeing they gave an opera, and not a ballet +hunted vainly amongst the advertisements for a new +toothpowder of which he had heard, and threw down, one +after the other, the three leading papers of Paris, +muttering, "These papers become more and more stupid every +day." A moment after, a carriage stopped before the door, +and the servant announced M. Lucien Debray. A tall young +man, with light hair, clear gray eyes, and thin and +compressed lips, dressed in a blue coat with beautifully +carved gold buttons, a white neckcloth, and a tortoiseshell +eyeglass suspended by a silken thread, and which, by an +effort of the superciliary and zygomatic muscles, he fixed +in his eye, entered, with a halfofficial air, without +smiling or speaking. "Goodmorning, Lucien, goodmorning," +said Albert "your punctuality really alarms me. What do I +say? punctuality You, whom I expected last, you arrive at +five minutes to ten, when the time fixed was halfpast Has +the ministry resigned?" +"No, my dear fellow," returned the young man, seating +himself on the divan "reassure yourself we are tottering +always, but we never fall, and I begin to believe that we +shall pass into a state of immobility, and then the affairs +of the Peninsula will completely consolidate us." +"Ah, true you drive Don Carlos out of Spain." +"No, no, my dear fellow, do not confound our plans. We take +him to the other side of the French frontier, and offer him +hospitality at Bourges." +"At Bourges?" +"Yes, he has not much to complain of Bourges is the capital +of Charles VII. Do you not know that all Paris knew it +yesterday, and the day before it had already transpired on +the Bourse, and M. Danglars I do not know by what means +that man contrives to obtain intelligence as soon as we do +made a million" +"And you another order, for I see you have a blue ribbon at +your buttonhole." +"Yes they sent me the order of Charles III.," returned +Debray, carelessly. +"Come, do not affect indifference, but confess you were +pleased to have it." +"Oh, it is very well as a finish to the toilet. It looks +very neat on a black coat buttoned up." +"And makes you resemble the Prince of Wales or the Duke of +Reichstadt." +"It is for that reason you see me so early." +"Because you have the order of Charles III., and you wish to +announce the good news to me?" +"No, because I passed the night writing letters, five and +twenty despatches. I returned home at daybreak, and strove +to sleep but my head ached and I got up to have a ride for +an hour. At the Bois de Boulogne, ennui and hunger attacked +me at once, two enemies who rarely accompany each other, +and who are yet leagued against me, a sort of +Carlorepublican alliance. I then recollected you gave a +breakfast this morning, and here I am. I am hungry, feed me +I am bored, amuse me." +"It is my duty as your host," returned Albert, ringing the +bell, while Lucien turned over, with his goldmounted cane, +the papers that lay on the table. "Germain, a glass of +sherry and a biscuit. In the meantime, my dear Lucien, here +are cigars contraband, of course try them, and +persuade the minister to sell us such instead of poisoning +us with cabbage leaves." +"Peste, I will do nothing of the kind the moment they come +from government you would find them execrable. Besides, that +does not concern the home but the financial department. +Address yourself to M. Humann, section of the indirect +contributions, corridor A., No. ." +"On my word," said Albert, "you astonish me by the extent of +your knowledge. Take a cigar." +"Really, my dear Albert," replied Lucien, lighting a manilla +at a rosecolored taper that burnt in a beautifully +enamelled stand "how happy you are to have nothing to do. +You do not know your own good fortune" +"And what would you do, my dear diplomatist," replied +Morcerf, with a slight degree of irony in his voice, "if you +did nothing? What? private secretary to a minister, plunged +at once into European cabals and Parisian intrigues having +kings, and, better still, queens, to protect, parties to +unite, elections to direct making more use of your cabinet +with your pen and your telegraph than Napoleon did of his +battlefields with his sword and his victories possessing +five and twenty thousand francs a year, besides your place +a horse, for which ChateauRenaud offered you four hundred +louis, and which you would not part with a tailor who never +disappoints you with the opera, the jockeyclub, and other +diversions, can you not amuse yourself? Well, I will amuse +you." +"How?" +"By introducing to you a new acquaintance." +"A man or a woman?" +"A man." +"I know so many men already." +"But you do not know this man." +"Where does he come from the end of the world?" +"Farther still, perhaps." +"The deuce I hope he does not bring our breakfast with +him." +"Oh, no our breakfast comes from my father's kitchen. Are +you hungry?" +"Humiliating as such a confession is, I am. But I dined at +M. de Villefort's, and lawyers always give you very bad +dinners. You would think they felt some remorse did you +ever remark that?" +"Ah, depreciate other persons' dinners you ministers give +such splendid ones." +"Yes but we do not invite people of fashion. If we were not +forced to entertain a parcel of country boobies because they +think and vote with us, we should never dream of dining at +home, I assure you." +"Well, take another glass of sherry and another biscuit." +"Willingly. Your Spanish wine is excellent. You see we were +quite right to pacify that country." +"Yes but Don Carlos?" +"Well, Don Carlos will drink Bordeaux, and in ten years we +will marry his son to the little queen." +"You will then obtain the Golden Fleece, if you are still in +the ministry." +"I think, Albert, you have adopted the system of feeding me +on smoke this morning." +"Well, you must allow it is the best thing for the stomach +but I hear Beauchamp in the next room you can dispute +together, and that will pass away the time." +"About what?" +"About the papers." +"My dear friend," said Lucien with an air of sovereign +contempt, "do I ever read the papers?" +"Then you will dispute the more." +"M. Beauchamp," announced the servant. "Come in, come in," +said Albert, rising and advancing to meet the young man. +"Here is Debray, who detests you without reading you, so he +says." +"He is quite right," returned Beauchamp "for I criticise +him without knowing what he does. Goodday, commander" +"Ah, you know that already," said the private secretary, +smiling and shaking hands with him. +"Pardieu?" +"And what do they say of it in the world?" +"In which world? we have so many worlds in the year of grace +"In the entire political world, of which you are one of the +leaders." +"They say that it is quite fair, and that sowing so much +red, you ought to reap a little blue." +"Come, come, that is not bad" said Lucien. "Why do you not +join our party, my dear Beauchamp? With your talents you +would make your fortune in three or four years." +"I only await one thing before following your advice that +is, a minister who will hold office for six months. My dear +Albert, one word, for I must give poor Lucien a respite. Do +we breakfast or dine? I must go to the Chamber, for our life +is not an idle one." +"You only breakfast I await two persons, and the instant +they arrive we shall sit down to table." +Chapter +The Breakfast. +"And what sort of persons do you expect to breakfast?" said +Beauchamp. +"A gentleman, and a diplomatist." +"Then we shall have to wait two hours for the gentleman, and +three for the diplomatist. I shall come back to dessert +keep me some strawberries, coffee, and cigars. I shall take +a cutlet on my way to the Chamber." +"Do not do anything of the sort for were the gentleman a +Montmorency, and the diplomatist a Metternich, we will +breakfast at eleven in the meantime, follow Debray's +example, and take a glass of sherry and a biscuit." +"Be it so I will stay I must do something to distract my +thoughts." +"You are like Debray, and yet it seems to me that when the +minister is out of spirits, the opposition ought to be +joyous." +"Ah, you do not know with what I am threatened. I shall hear +this morning that M. Danglars make a speech at the Chamber +of Deputies, and at his wife's this evening I shall hear the +tragedy of a peer of France. The devil take the +constitutional government, and since we had our choice, as +they say, at least, how could we choose that?" +"I understand you must lay in a stock of hilarity." +"Do not run down M. Danglars' speeches," said Debray "he +votes for you, for he belongs to the opposition." +"Pardieu, that is exactly the worst of all. I am waiting +until you send him to speak at the Luxembourg, to laugh at +my ease." +"My dear friend," said Albert to Beauchamp, "it is plain +that the affairs of Spain are settled, for you are most +desperately out of humor this morning. Recollect that +Parisian gossip has spoken of a marriage between myself and +Mlle. Eugenie Danglars I cannot in conscience, therefore, +let you run down the speeches of a man who will one day say +to me, "Vicomte, you know I give my daughter two millions.'" +"Ah, this marriage will never take place," said Beauchamp. +"The king has made him a baron, and can make him a peer, but +he cannot make him a gentleman, and the Count of Morcerf is +too aristocratic to consent, for the paltry sum of two +million francs, to a mesalliance. The Viscount of Morcerf +can only wed a marchioness." +"But two million francs make a nice little sum," replied +Morcerf. +"It is the social capital of a theatre on the boulevard, or +a railroad from the Jardin des Plantes to La Rapee." +"Never mind what he says, Morcerf," said Debray, "do you +marry her. You marry a moneybag label, it is true well, +but what does that matter? It is better to have a blazon +less and a figure more on it. You have seven martlets on +your arms give three to your wife, and you will still have +four that is one more than M. de Guise had, who so nearly +became King of France, and whose cousin was Emperor of +Germany." +"On my word, I think you are right, Lucien," said Albert +absently. +"To be sure besides, every millionaire is as noble as a +bastard that is, he can be." +"Do not say that, Debray," returned Beauchamp, laughing, +"for here is ChateauRenaud, who, to cure you of your mania +for paradoxes, will pass the sword of Renaud de Montauban, +his ancestor, through your body." +"He will sully it then," returned Lucien "for I am low +very low." +"Oh, heavens," cried Beauchamp, "the minister quotes +Beranger, what shall we come to next?" +"M. de ChateauRenaud M. Maximilian Morrel," said the +servant, announcing two fresh guests. +"Now, then, to breakfast," said Beauchamp "for, if I +remember, you told me you only expected two persons, +Albert." +"Morrel," muttered Albert "Morrel who is he?" But +before he had finished, M. de ChateauRenaud, a handsome +young man of thirty, gentleman all over, that is, with +the figure of a Guiche and the wit of a Mortemart, took +Albert's hand. "My dear Albert," said he, "let me introduce +to you M. Maximilian Morrel, captain of Spahis, my friend +and what is more however the man speaks for himself my +preserver. Salute my hero, viscount." And he stepped on one +side to give place to a young man of refined and dignified +bearing, with large and open brow, piercing eyes, and black +mustache, whom our readers have already seen at Marseilles, +under circumstances sufficiently dramatic not to be +forgotten. A rich uniform, half French, half Oriental, set +off his graceful and stalwart figure, and his broad chest +was decorated with the order of the Legion of Honor. The +young officer bowed with easy and elegant politeness. +"Monsieur," said Albert with affectionate courtesy, "the +count of ChateauRenaud knew how much pleasure this +introduction would give me you are his friend, be ours +also." +"Well said," interrupted ChateauRenaud "and pray that, if +you should ever be in a similar predicament, he may do as +much for you as he did for me." +"What has he done?" asked Albert. +"Oh, nothing worth speaking of," said Morrel "M. de +ChateauRenaud exaggerates." +"Not worth speaking of?" cried ChateauRenaud "life is not +worth speaking of that is rather too philosophical, on +my word, Morrel. It is very well for you, who risk your life +every day, but for me, who only did so once" +"We gather from all this, baron, that Captain Morrel saved +your life." +"Exactly so." +"On what occasion?" asked Beauchamp. +"Beauchamp, my good fellow, you know I am starving," said +Debray "do not set him off on some long story." +"Well, I do not prevent your sitting down to table," replied +Beauchamp, "ChateauRenaud can tell us while we eat our +breakfast." +"Gentlemen," said Morcerf, "it is only a quarter past ten, +and I expect some one else." +"Ah, true, a diplomatist" observed Debray. +"Diplomat or not, I don't know I only know that he charged +himself on my account with a mission, which he terminated so +entirely to my satisfaction, that had I been king, I should +have instantly created him knight of all my orders, even had +I been able to offer him the Golden Fleece and the Garter." +"Well, since we are not to sit down to table," said Debray, +"take a glass of sherry, and tell us all about it." +"You all know that I had the fancy of going to Africa." +"It is a road your ancestors have traced for you," said +Albert gallantly. +"Yes? but I doubt that your object was like theirs to +rescue the Holy Sepulchre." +"You are quite right, Beauchamp," observed the young +aristocrat. "It was only to fight as an amateur. I cannot +bear duelling since two seconds, whom I had chosen to +arrange an affair, forced me to break the arm of one of my +best friends, one whom you all know poor Franz d'Epinay." +"Ah, true," said Debray, "you did fight some time ago about +what?" +"The devil take me, if I remember," returned ChateauRenaud. +"But I recollect perfectly one thing, that, being unwilling +to let such talents as mine sleep, I wished to try upon the +Arabs the new pistols that had been given to me. In +consequence I embarked for Oran, and went from thence to +Constantine, where I arrived just in time to witness the +raising of the siege. I retreated with the rest, for eight +and forty hours. I endured the rain during the day, and the +cold during the night tolerably well, but the third morning +my horse died of cold. Poor brute accustomed to be +covered up and to have a stove in the stable, the Arabian +finds himself unable to bear ten degrees of cold in Arabia." +"That's why you want to purchase my English horse," said +Debray, "you think he will bear the cold better." +"You are mistaken, for I have made a vow never to return to +Africa." +"You were very much frightened, then?" asked Beauchamp. +"Well, yes, and I had good reason to be so," replied +ChateauRenaud. "I was retreating on foot, for my horse was +dead. Six Arabs came up, full gallop, to cut off my head. I +shot two with my doublebarrelled gun, and two more with my +pistols, but I was then disarmed, and two were still left +one seized me by the hair that is why I now wear it so +short, for no one knows what may happen, the other swung a +yataghan, and I already felt the cold steel on my neck, when +this gentleman whom you see here charged them, shot the one +who held me by the hair, and cleft the skull of the other +with his sabre. He had assigned himself the task of saving a +man's life that day chance caused that man to be myself. +When I am rich I will order a statue of Chance from Klagmann +or Marochetti." +"Yes," said Morrel, smiling, "it was the th of September, +the anniversary of the day on which my father was +miraculously preserved therefore, as far as it lies in my +power, I endeavor to celebrate it by some" +"Heroic action," interrupted ChateauRenaud. "I was chosen. +But that is not all after rescuing me from the sword, he +rescued me from the cold, not by sharing his cloak with me, +like St. Martin, but by giving me the whole then from +hunger by sharing with me guess what?" +"A Strasbourg pie?" asked Beauchamp. +"No, his horse of which we each of us ate a slice with a +hearty appetite. It was very hard." +"The horse?" said Morcerf, laughing. +"No, the sacrifice," returned ChateauRenaud "ask Debray if +he would sacrifice his English steed for a stranger?" +"Not for a stranger," said Debray, "but for a friend I +might, perhaps." +"I divined that you would become mine, count," replied +Morrel "besides, as I had the honor to tell you, heroism or +not, sacrifice or not, that day I owed an offering to bad +fortune in recompense for the favors good fortune had on +other days granted to us." +"The history to which M. Morrel alludes," continued +ChateauRenaud, "is an admirable one, which he will tell you +some day when you are better acquainted with him today let +us fill our stomachs, and not our memories. What time do you +breakfast, Albert?" +"At halfpast ten." +"Precisely?" asked Debray, taking out his watch. +"Oh, you will give me five minutes' grace," replied Morcerf, +"for I also expect a preserver." +"Of whom?" +"Of myself," cried Morcerf "parbleu, do you think I cannot +be saved as well as any one else, and that there are only +Arabs who cut off heads? Our breakfast is a philanthropic +one, and we shall have at table at least, I hope so +two benefactors of humanity." +"What shall we do?" said Debray "we have only one Monthyon +prize." +"Well, it will be given to some one who has done nothing to +deserve it," said Beauchamp "that is the way the Academy +mostly escapes from the dilemma." +"And where does he come from?" asked Debray. "You have +already answered the question once, but so vaguely that I +venture to put it a second time." +"Really," said Albert, "I do not know when I invited him +three months ago, he was then at Rome, but since that time +who knows where he may have gone?" +"And you think him capable of being exact?" demanded Debray. +"I think him capable of everything." +"Well, with the five minutes' grace, we have only ten left." +"I will profit by them to tell you something about my +guest." +"I beg pardon," interrupted Beauchamp "are there any +materials for an article in what you are going to tell us?" +"Yes, and for a most curious one." +"Go on, then, for I see I shall not get to the Chamber this +morning, and I must make up for it." +"I was at Rome during the last Carnival." +"We know that," said Beauchamp. +"Yes, but what you do not know is that I was carried off by +bandits." +"There are no bandits," cried Debray. +"Yes there are, and most hideous, or rather most admirable +ones, for I found them ugly enough to frighten me." +"Come, my dear Albert," said Debray, "confess that your cook +is behindhand, that the oysters have not arrived from Ostend +or Marennes, and that, like Madame de Maintenon, you are +going to replace the dish by a story. Say so at once we are +sufficiently wellbred to excuse you, and to listen to your +history, fabulous as it promises to be." +"And I say to you, fabulous as it may seem, I tell it as a +true one from beginning to end. The brigands had carried me +off, and conducted me to a gloomy spot, called the Catacombs +of Saint Sebastian." +"I know it," said ChateauRenaud "I narrowly escaped +catching a fever there." +"And I did more than that," replied Morcerf, "for I caught +one. I was informed that I was prisoner until I paid the sum +of , Roman crowns about , francs. Unfortunately, +I had not above ,. I was at the end of my journey and of +my credit. I wrote to Franz and were he here he would +confirm every word I wrote then to Franz that if he did +not come with the four thousand crowns before six, at ten +minutes past I should have gone to join the blessed saints +and glorious martyrs in whose company I had the honor of +being and Signor Luigi Vampa, such was the name of the +chief of these bandits, would have scrupulously kept his +word." +"But Franz did come with the four thousand crowns," said +ChateauRenaud. "A man whose name is Franz d'Epinay or +Albert de Morcerf has not much difficulty in procuring +them." +"No, he arrived accompanied simply by the guest I am going +to present to you." +"Ah, this gentleman is a Hercules killing Cacus, a Perseus +freeing Andromeda." +"No, he is a man about my own size." +"Armed to the teeth?" +"He had not even a knittingneedle." +"But he paid your ransom?" +"He said two words to the chief and I was free." +"And they apologized to him for having carried you off?" +said Beauchamp. +"Just so." +"Why, he is a second Ariosto." +"No, his name is the Count of Monte Cristo." +"There is no Count of Monte Cristo" said Debray. +"I do not think so," added ChateauRenaud, with the air of a +man who knows the whole of the European nobility perfectly. +"Does any one know anything of a Count of Monte Cristo?" +"He comes possibly from the Holy Land, and one of his +ancestors possessed Calvary, as the Mortemarts did the Dead +Sea." +"I think I can assist your researches," said Maximilian. +"Monte Cristo is a little island I have often heard spoken +of by the old sailors my father employed a grain of sand +in the centre of the Mediterranean, an atom in the +infinite." +"Precisely" cried Albert. "Well, he of whom I speak is the +lord and master of this grain of sand, of this atom he has +purchased the title of count somewhere in Tuscany." +"He is rich, then?" +"I believe so." +"But that ought to be visible." +"That is what deceives you, Debray." +"I do not understand you." +"Have you read the "Arabian Nights'?" +"What a question" +"Well, do you know if the persons you see there are rich or +poor, if their sacks of wheat are not rubies or diamonds? +They seem like poor fishermen, and suddenly they open some +mysterious cavern filled with the wealth of the Indies." +"Which means?" +"Which means that my Count of Monte Cristo is one of those +fishermen. He has even a name taken from the book, since he +calls himself Sinbad the Sailor, and has a cave filled with +gold." +"And you have seen this cavern, Morcerf?" asked Beauchamp. +"No, but Franz has for heaven's sake, not a word of this +before him. Franz went in with his eyes blindfolded, and was +waited on by mutes and by women to whom Cleopatra was a +painted strumpet. Only he is not quite sure about the women, +for they did not come in until after he had taken hashish, +so that what he took for women might have been simply a row +of statues." +The two young men looked at Morcerf as if to say, "Are +you mad, or are you laughing at us?" +"And I also," said Morrel thoughtfully, "have heard +something like this from an old sailor named Penelon." +"Ah," cried Albert, "it is very lucky that M. Morrel comes +to aid me you are vexed, are you not, that he thus gives a +clew to the labyrinth?" +"My dear Albert," said Debray, "what you tell us is so +extraordinary." +"Ah, because your ambassadors and your consuls do not tell +you of them they have no time. They are too much taken up +with interfering in the affairs of their countrymen who +travel." +"Now you get angry, and attack our poor agents. How will you +have them protect you? The Chamber cuts down their salaries +every day, so that now they have scarcely any. Will you be +ambassador, Albert? I will send you to Constantinople." +"No, lest on the first demonstration I make in favor of +Mehemet Ali, the Sultan send me the bowstring, and make my +secretaries strangle me." +"You say very true," responded Debray. +"Yes," said Albert, "but this has nothing to do with the +existence of the Count of Monte Cristo." +"Pardieu, every one exists." +"Doubtless, but not in the same way every one has not black +slaves, a princely retinue, an arsenal of weapons that would +do credit to an Arabian fortress, horses that cost six +thousand francs apiece, and Greek mistresses." +"Have you seen the Greek mistress?" +"I have both seen and heard her. I saw her at the theatre, +and heard her one morning when I breakfasted with the +count." +"He eats, then?" +"Yes but so little, it can hardly be called eating." +"He must be a vampire." +"Laugh, if you will the Countess G , who knew Lord +Ruthven, declared that the count was a vampire." +"Ah, capital," said Beauchamp. "For a man not connected with +newspapers, here is the pendant to the famous seaserpent of +the Constitutionnel." +"Wild eyes, the iris of which contracts or dilates at +pleasure," said Debray "facial angle strongly developed, +magnificent forehead, livid complexion, black beard, sharp +and white teeth, politeness unexceptionable." +"Just so, Lucien," returned Morcerf "you have described him +feature for feature. Yes, keen and cutting politeness. This +man has often made me shudder and one day that we were +viewing an execution, I thought I should faint, more from +hearing the cold and calm manner in which he spoke of every +description of torture, than from the sight of the +executioner and the culprit." +"Did he not conduct you to the ruins of the Colosseum and +suck your blood?" asked Beauchamp. +"Or, having delivered you, make you sign a flaming +parchment, surrendering your soul to him as Esau did his +birthright?" +"Rail on, rail on at your ease, gentlemen," said Morcerf, +somewhat piqued. "When I look at you Parisians, idlers on +the Boulevard de Gand or the Bois de Boulogne, and think of +this man, it seems to me we are not of the same race." +"I am highly flattered," returned Beauchamp. "At the same +time," added ChateauRenaud, "your Count of Monte Cristo is +a very fine fellow, always excepting his little arrangements +with the Italian banditti." +"There are no Italian banditti," said Debray. +"No vampire," cried Beauchamp. "No Count of Monte Cristo" +added Debray. "There is halfpast ten striking, Albert." +"Confess you have dreamed this, and let us sit down to +breakfast," continued Beauchamp. But the sound of the clock +had not died away when Germain announced, "His excellency +the Count of Monte Cristo." The involuntary start every one +gave proved how much Morcerf's narrative had impressed them, +and Albert himself could not wholly refrain from manifesting +sudden emotion. He had not heard a carriage stop in the +street, or steps in the antechamber the door had itself +opened noiselessly. The count appeared, dressed with the +greatest simplicity, but the most fastidious dandy could +have found nothing to cavil at in his toilet. Every article +of dress hat, coat, gloves, and boots was from the +first makers. He seemed scarcely five and thirty. But what +struck everybody was his extreme resemblance to the portrait +Debray had drawn. The count advanced, smiling, into the +centre of the room, and approached Albert, who hastened +towards him holding out his hand in a ceremonial manner. +"Punctuality," said Monte Cristo, "is the politeness of +kings, according to one of your sovereigns, I think but it +is not the same with travellers. However, I hope you will +excuse the two or three seconds I am behindhand five +hundred leagues are not to be accomplished without some +trouble, and especially in France, where, it seems, it is +forbidden to beat the postilions." +"My dear count," replied Albert, "I was announcing your +visit to some of my friends, whom I had invited in +consequence of the promise you did me the honor to make, and +whom I now present to you. They are the Count of +ChateauRenaud, whose nobility goes back to the twelve +peers, and whose ancestors had a place at the Round Table +M. Lucien Debray, private secretary to the minister of the +interior M. Beauchamp, an editor of a paper, and the terror +of the French government, but of whom, in spite of his +national celebrity, you perhaps have not heard in Italy, +since his paper is prohibited there and M. Maximilian +Morrel, captain of Spahis." +At this name the count, who had hitherto saluted every one +with courtesy, but at the same time with coldness and +formality, stepped a pace forward, and a slight tinge of red +colored his pale cheeks. "You wear the uniform of the new +French conquerors, monsieur," said he "it is a handsome +uniform." No one could have said what caused the count's +voice to vibrate so deeply, and what made his eye flash, +which was in general so clear, lustrous, and limpid when he +pleased. "You have never seen our Africans, count?" said +Albert. "Never," replied the count, who was by this time +perfectly master of himself again. +"Well, beneath this uniform beats one of the bravest and +noblest hearts in the whole army." +"Oh, M. de Morcerf," interrupted Morrel. +"Let me go on, captain. And we have just heard," continued +Albert, "of a new deed of his, and so heroic a one, that, +although I have seen him today for the first time, I +request you to allow me to introduce him as my friend." At +these words it was still possible to observe in Monte Cristo +the concentrated look, changing color, and slight trembling +of the eyelid that show emotion. "Ah, you have a noble +heart," said the count "so much the better." This +exclamation, which corresponded to the count's own thought +rather than to what Albert was saying, surprised everybody, +and especially Morrel, who looked at Monte Cristo with +wonder. But, at the same time, the intonation was so soft +that, however strange the speech might seem, it was +impossible to be offended at it. "Why should he doubt it?" +said Beauchamp to ChateauRenaud. +"In reality," replied the latter, who, with his aristocratic +glance and his knowledge of the world, had penetrated at +once all that was penetrable in Monte Cristo, "Albert has +not deceived us, for the count is a most singular being. +What say you, Morrel" +"Ma foi, he has an open look about him that pleases me, in +spite of the singular remark he has made about me." +"Gentlemen," said Albert, "Germain informs me that breakfast +is ready. My dear count, allow me to show you the way." They +passed silently into the breakfastroom, and every one took +his place. "Gentlemen," said the count, seating himself, +"permit me to make a confession which must form my excuse +for any improprieties I may commit. I am a stranger, and a +stranger to such a degree, that this is the first time I +have ever been at Paris. The French way of living is utterly +unknown to me, and up to the present time I have followed +the Eastern customs, which are entirely in contrast to the +Parisian. I beg you, therefore, to excuse if you find +anything in me too Turkish, too Italian, or too Arabian. +Now, then, let us breakfast." +"With what an air he says all this," muttered Beauchamp +"decidedly he is a great man." +"A great man in his own country," added Debray. +"A great man in every country, M. Debray," said +ChateauRenaud. The count was, it may be remembered, a most +temperate guest. Albert remarked this, expressing his fears +lest, at the outset, the Parisian mode of life should +displease the traveller in the most essential point. "My +dear count," said he, "I fear one thing, and that is, that +the fare of the Rue du Helder is not so much to your taste +as that of the Piazza di Spagni. I ought to have consulted +you on the point, and have had some dishes prepared +expressly." +"Did you know me better," returned the count, smiling, "you +would not give one thought of such a thing for a traveller +like myself, who has successively lived on maccaroni at +Naples, polenta at Milan, olla podrida at Valencia, pilau at +Constantinople, karrick in India, and swallows' nests in +China. I eat everywhere, and of everything, only I eat but +little and today, that you reproach me with my want of +appetite, is my day of appetite, for I have not eaten since +yesterday morning." +"What," cried all the guests, "you have not eaten for four +and twenty hours?" +"No," replied the count "I was forced to go out of my road +to obtain some information near Nimes, so that I was +somewhat late, and therefore I did not choose to stop." +"And you ate in your carriage?" asked Morcerf. +"No, I slept, as I generally do when I am weary without +having the courage to amuse myself, or when I am hungry +without feeling inclined to eat." +"But you can sleep when you please, monsieur?" said Morrel. +"Yes." +"You have a recipe for it?" +"An infallible one." +"That would be invaluable to us in Africa, who have not +always any food to eat, and rarely anything to drink." +"Yes," said Monte Cristo "but, unfortunately, a recipe +excellent for a man like myself would be very dangerous +applied to an army, which might not awake when it was +needed." +"May we inquire what is this recipe?" asked Debray. +"Oh, yes," returned Monte Cristo "I make no secret of it. +It is a mixture of excellent opium, which I fetched myself +from Canton in order to have it pure, and the best hashish +which grows in the East that is, between the Tigris and +the Euphrates. These two ingredients are mixed in equal +proportions, and formed into pills. Ten minutes after one is +taken, the effect is produced. Ask Baron Franz d'Epinay I +think he tasted them one day." +"Yes," replied Morcerf, "he said something about it to me." +"But," said Beauchamp, who, as became a journalist, was very +incredulous, "you always carry this drug about you?" +"Always." +"Would it be an indiscretion to ask to see those precious +pills?" continued Beauchamp, hoping to take him at a +disadvantage. +"No, monsieur," returned the count and he drew from his +pocket a marvellous casket, formed out of a single emerald +and closed by a golden lid which unscrewed and gave passage +to a small greenish colored pellet about the size of a pea. +This ball had an acrid and penetrating odor. There were four +or five more in the emerald, which would contain about a +dozen. The casket passed around the table, but it was more +to examine the admirable emerald than to see the pills that +it passed from hand to hand. "And is it your cook who +prepares these pills?" asked Beauchamp. +"Oh, no, monsieur," replied Monte Cristo "I do not thus +betray my enjoyments to the vulgar. I am a tolerable +chemist, and prepare my pills myself." +"This is a magnificent emerald, and the largest I have ever +seen," said ChateauRenaud, "although my mother has some +remarkable family jewels." +"I had three similar ones," returned Monte Cristo. "I gave +one to the Sultan, who mounted it in his sabre another to +our holy father the Pope, who had it set in his tiara, +opposite to one nearly as large, though not so fine, given +by the Emperor Napoleon to his predecessor, Pius VII. I kept +the third for myself, and I had it hollowed out, which +reduced its value, but rendered it more commodious for the +purpose I intended." Every one looked at Monte Cristo with +astonishment he spoke with so much simplicity that it was +evident he spoke the truth, or that he was mad. However, the +sight of the emerald made them naturally incline to the +former belief. "And what did these two sovereigns give you +in exchange for these magnificent presents?" asked Debray. +"The Sultan, the liberty of a woman," replied the Count +"the Pope, the life of a man so that once in my life I have +been as powerful as if heaven had brought me into the world +on the steps of a throne." +"And it was Peppino you saved, was it not?" cried Morcerf +"it was for him that you obtained pardon?" +"Perhaps," returned the count, smiling. +"My dear count, you have no idea what pleasure it gives me +to hear you speak thus," said Morcerf. "I had announced you +beforehand to my friends as an enchanter of the "Arabian +Nights,' a wizard of the Middle Ages but the Parisians are +so subtle in paradoxes that they mistake for caprices of the +imagination the most incontestable truths, when these truths +do not form a part of their daily existence. For example, +here is Debray who reads, and Beauchamp who prints, every +day, "A member of the Jockey Club has been stopped and +robbed on the Boulevard' "four persons have been +assassinated in the Rue St. Denis' or "the Faubourg St. +Germain' "ten, fifteen, or twenty thieves, have been +arrested in a cafe on the Boulevard du Temple, or in the +Thermes de Julien,' and yet these same men deny the +existence of the bandits in the Maremma, the Campagna di +Romana, or the Pontine Marshes. Tell them yourself that I +was taken by bandits, and that without your generous +intercession I should now have been sleeping in the +Catacombs of St. Sebastian, instead of receiving them in my +humble abode in the Rue du Helder." +"Ah," said Monte Cristo "you promised me never to mention +that circumstance." +"It was not I who made that promise," cried Morcerf "it +must have been some one else whom you have rescued in the +same manner, and whom you have forgotten. Pray speak of it, +for I shall not only, I trust, relate the little I do know, +but also a great deal I do not know." +"It seems to me," returned the count, smiling, "that you +played a sufficiently important part to know as well as +myself what happened." +"Well, you promise me, if I tell all I know, to relate, in +your turn, all that I do not know?" +"That is but fair," replied Monte Cristo. +"Well," said Morcerf, "for three days I believed myself the +object of the attentions of a masque, whom I took for a +descendant of Tullia or Poppoea, while I was simply the +object of the attentions of a contadina, and I say contadina +to avoid saying peasant girl. What I know is, that, like a +fool, a greater fool than he of whom I spoke just now, I +mistook for this peasant girl a young bandit of fifteen or +sixteen, with a beardless chin and slim waist, and who, just +as I was about to imprint a chaste salute on his lips, +placed a pistol to my head, and, aided by seven or eight +others, led, or rather dragged me, to the Catacombs of St. +Sebastian, where I found a highly educated brigand chief +perusing Caesar's "Commentaries,' and who deigned to leave +off reading to inform me, that unless the next morning, +before six o'clock, four thousand piastres were paid into +his account at his banker's, at a quarter past six I should +have ceased to exist. The letter is still to be seen, for it +is in Franz d'Epinay's possession, signed by me, and with a +postscript of M. Luigi Vampa. This is all I know, but I know +not, count, how you contrived to inspire so much respect in +the bandits of Rome who ordinarily have so little respect +for anything. I assure you, Franz and I were lost in +admiration." +"Nothing more simple," returned the count. "I had known the +famous Vampa for more than ten years. When he was quite a +child, and only a shepherd, I gave him a few gold pieces for +showing me my way, and he, in order to repay me, gave me a +poniard, the hilt of which he had carved with his own hand, +and which you may have seen in my collection of arms. In +after years, whether he had forgotten this interchange of +presents, which ought to have cemented our friendship, or +whether he did not recollect me, he sought to take me, but, +on the contrary, it was I who captured him and a dozen of +his band. I might have handed him over to Roman justice, +which is somewhat expeditious, and which would have been +particularly so with him but I did nothing of the sort I +suffered him and his band to depart." +"With the condition that they should sin no more," said +Beauchamp, laughing. "I see they kept their promise." +"No, monsieur," returned Monte Cristo "upon the simple +condition that they should respect myself and my friends. +Perhaps what I am about to say may seem strange to you, who +are socialists, and vaunt humanity and your duty to your +neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which does +not protect me, and which I will even say, generally +occupies itself about me only to injure me and thus by +giving them a low place in my esteem, and preserving a +neutrality towards them, it is society and my neighbor who +are indebted to me." +"Bravo," cried ChateauRenaud "you are the first man I ever +met sufficiently courageous to preach egotism. Bravo, count, +bravo" +"It is frank, at least," said Morrel. "But I am sure that +the count does not regret having once deviated from the +principles he has so boldly avowed." +"How have I deviated from those principles, monsieur?" asked +Monte Cristo, who could not help looking at Morrel with so +much intensity, that two or three times the young man had +been unable to sustain that clear and piercing glance. +"Why, it seems to me," replied Morrel, "that in delivering +M. de Morcerf, whom you did not know, you did good to your +neighbor and to society." +"Of which he is the brightest ornament," said Beauchamp, +drinking off a glass of champagne. +"My dear count," cried Morcerf, "you are at fault you, +one of the most formidable logicians I know and you must +see it clearly proved that instead of being an egotist, you +are a philanthropist. Ah, you call yourself Oriental, a +Levantine, Maltese, Indian, Chinese your family name is +Monte Cristo Sinbad the Sailor is your baptismal +appellation, and yet the first day you set foot in Paris you +instinctively display the greatest virtue, or rather the +chief defect, of us eccentric Parisians, that is, you +assume the vices you have not, and conceal the virtues you +possess." +"My dear vicomte," returned Monte Cristo, "I do not see, in +all I have done, anything that merits, either from you or +these gentlemen, the pretended eulogies I have received. You +were no stranger to me, for I knew you from the time I gave +up two rooms to you, invited you to breakfast with me, lent +you one of my carriages, witnessed the Carnival in your +company, and saw with you from a window in the Piazza del +Popolo the execution that affected you so much that you +nearly fainted. I will appeal to any of these gentlemen, +could I leave my guest in the hands of a hideous bandit, as +you term him? Besides, you know, I had the idea that you +could introduce me into some of the Paris salons when I came +to France. You might some time ago have looked upon this +resolution as a vague project, but today you see it was a +reality, and you must submit to it under penalty of breaking +your word." +"I will keep it," returned Morcerf "but I fear that you +will be much disappointed, accustomed as you are to +picturesque events and fantastic horizons. Amongst us you +will not meet with any of those episodes with which your +adventurous existence has so familiarized you our +Chimborazo is Mortmartre, our Himalaya is Mount Valerien, +our Great Desert is the plain of Grenelle, where they are +now boring an artesian well to water the caravans. We have +plenty of thieves, though not so many as is said but these +thieves stand in far more dread of a policeman than a lord. +France is so prosaic, and Paris so civilized a city, that +you will not find in its eightyfive departments I say +eightyfive, because I do not include Corsica you will +not find, then, in these eightyfive departments a single +hill on which there is not a telegraph, or a grotto in which +the commissary of police has not put up a gaslamp. There is +but one service I can render you, and for that I place +myself entirely at your orders, that is, to present, or make +my friends present, you everywhere besides, you have no +need of any one to introduce you with your name, and your +fortune, and your talent" Monte Cristo bowed with a +somewhat ironical smile "you can present yourself +everywhere, and be well received. I can be useful in one way +only if knowledge of Parisian habits, of the means of +rendering yourself comfortable, or of the bazaars, can +assist, you may depend upon me to find you a fitting +dwelling here. I do not dare offer to share my apartments +with you, as I shared yours at Rome I, who do not profess +egotism, but am yet egotist par excellence for, except +myself, these rooms would not hold a shadow more, unless +that shadow were feminine." +"Ah," said the count, "that is a most conjugal reservation +I recollect that at Rome you said something of a projected +marriage. May I congratulate you?" +"The affair is still in projection." +"And he who says in "projection,' means already decided," +said Debray. +"No," replied Morcerf, "my father is most anxious about it +and I hope, ere long, to introduce you, if not to my wife, +at least to my betrothed Mademoiselle Eugenie Danglars." +"Eugenie Danglars," said Monte Cristo "tell me, is not her +father Baron Danglars?" +"Yes," returned Morcerf, "a baron of a new creation." +"What matter," said Monte Cristo "if he has rendered the +State services which merit this distinction?" +"Enormous ones," answered Beauchamp. "Although in reality a +Liberal, he negotiated a loan of six millions for Charles +X., in , who made him a baron and chevalier of the +Legion of Honor so that he wears the ribbon, not, as you +would think, in his waistcoatpocket, but at his +buttonhole." +"Ah," interrupted Morcerf, laughing, "Beauchamp, Beauchamp, +keep that for the Corsaire or the Charivari, but spare my +future fatherinlaw before me." Then, turning to Monte +Cristo, "You just now spoke his name as if you knew the +baron?" +"I do not know him," returned Monte Cristo "but I shall +probably soon make his acquaintance, for I have a credit +opened with him by the house of Richard Blount, of London, +Arstein Eskeles of Vienna, and Thomson French at Rome." +As he pronounced the two last names, the count glanced at +Maximilian Morrel. If the stranger expected to produce an +effect on Morrel, he was not mistaken Maximilian started +as if he had been electrified. "Thomson French," said he +"do you know this house, monsieur?" +"They are my bankers in the capital of the Christian world," +returned the count quietly. "Can my influence with them be +of any service to you?" +"Oh, count, you could assist me perhaps in researches which +have been, up to the present, fruitless. This house, in past +years, did ours a great service, and has, I know not for +what reason, always denied having rendered us this service." +"I shall be at your orders," said Monte Cristo bowing. +"But," continued Morcerf, "a propos of Danglars, we have +strangely wandered from the subject. We were speaking of a +suitable habitation for the Count of Monte Cristo. Come, +gentlemen, let us all propose some place. Where shall we +lodge this new guest in our great capital?" +"Faubourg SaintGermain," said ChateauRenaud. "The count +will find there a charming hotel, with a court and garden." +"Bah, ChateauRenaud," returned Debray, "you only know your +dull and gloomy Faubourg SaintGermain do not pay any +attention to him, count live in the Chaussee d'Antin, +that's the real centre of Paris." +"Boulevard de l'Opera," said Beauchamp "the second floor +a house with a balcony. The count will have his cushions of +silver cloth brought there, and as he smokes his chibouque, +see all Paris pass before him." +"You have no idea, then, Morrel?" asked ChateauRenaud "you +do not propose anything." +"Oh, yes," returned the young man, smiling "on the +contrary, I have one, but I expected the count would be +tempted by one of the brilliant proposals made him, yet as +he has not replied to any of them, I will venture to offer +him a suite of apartments in a charming hotel, in the +Pompadour style, that my sister has inhabited for a year, in +the Rue Meslay." +"You have a sister?" asked the count. +"Yes, monsieur, a most excellent sister." +"Married?" +"Nearly nine years." +"Happy?" asked the count again. +"As happy as it is permitted to a human creature to be," +replied Maximilian. "She married the man she loved, who +remained faithful to us in our fallen fortunes Emmanuel +Herbaut." Monte Cristo smiled imperceptibly. "I live there +during my leave of absence," continued Maximilian "and I +shall be, together with my brotherinlaw Emmanuel, at the +disposition of the Count, whenever he thinks fit to honor +us." +"One minute," cried Albert, without giving Monte Cristo the +time to reply. "Take care, you are going to immure a +traveller, Sinbad the Sailor, a man who comes to see Paris +you are going to make a patriarch of him." +"Oh, no," said Morrel "my sister is five and twenty, my +brotherinlaw is thirty, they are gay, young, and happy. +Besides, the count will be in his own house, and only see +them when he thinks fit to do so." +"Thanks, monsieur," said Monte Cristo "I shall content +myself with being presented to your sister and her husband, +if you will do me the honor to introduce me but I cannot +accept the offer of any one of these gentlemen, since my +habitation is already prepared." +"What," cried Morcerf "you are, then, going to an hotel +that will be very dull for you." +"Was I so badly lodged at Rome?" said Monte Cristo smiling. +"Parbleu, at Rome you spent fifty thousand piastres in +furnishing your apartments, but I presume that you are not +disposed to spend a similar sum every day." +"It is not that which deterred me," replied Monte Cristo +"but as I determined to have a house to myself, I sent on my +valet de chambre, and he ought by this time to have bought +the house and furnished it." +"But you have, then, a valet de chambre who knows Paris?" +said Beauchamp. +"It is the first time he has ever been in Paris. He is +black, and cannot speak," returned Monte Cristo. +"It is Ali" cried Albert, in the midst of the general +surprise. +"Yes, Ali himself, my Nubian mute, whom you saw, I think, at +Rome." +"Certainly," said Morcerf "I recollect him perfectly. But +how could you charge a Nubian to purchase a house, and a +mute to furnish it? he will do everything wrong." +"Undeceive yourself, monsieur," replied Monte Cristo "I am +quite sure, that, on the contrary, he will choose everything +as I wish. He knows my tastes, my caprices, my wants. He has +been here a week, with the instinct of a hound, hunting by +himself. He will arrange everything for me. He knew, that I +should arrive today at ten o'clock he was waiting for me +at nine at the Barriere de Fontainebleau. He gave me this +paper it contains the number of my new abode read it +yourself," and Monte Cristo passed a paper to Albert. "Ah, +that is really original," said Beauchamp. +"And very princely," added ChateauRenaud. +"What, do you not know your house?" asked Debray. +"No," said Monte Cristo "I told you I did not wish to be +behind my time I dressed myself in the carriage, and +descended at the viscount's door." The young men looked at +each other they did not know if it was a comedy Monte +Cristo was playing, but every word he uttered had such an +air of simplicity, that it was impossible to suppose what he +said was false besides, why should he tell a falsehood? +"We must content ourselves, then," said Beauchamp, "with +rendering the count all the little services in our power. I, +in my quality of journalist, open all the theatres to him." +"Thanks, monsieur," returned Monte Cristo, "my steward has +orders to take a box at each theatre." +"Is your steward also a Nubian?" asked Debray. +"No, he is a countryman of yours, if a Corsican is a +countryman of any one's. But you know him, M. de Morcerf." +"Is it that excellent M. Bertuccio, who understands hiring +windows so well?" +"Yes, you saw him the day I had the honor of receiving you +he has been a soldier, a smuggler in fact, everything. I +would not be quite sure that he has not been mixed up with +the police for some trifle a stab with a knife, for +instance." +"And you have chosen this honest citizen for your steward," +said Debray. "Of how much does he rob you every year?" +"On my word," replied the count, "not more than another. I +am sure he answers my purpose, knows no impossibility, and +so I keep him." +"Then," continued ChateauRenaud, "since you have an +establishment, a steward, and a hotel in the Champs Elysees, +you only want a mistress." Albert smiled. He thought of the +fair Greek he had seen in the count's box at the Argentina +and Valle theatres. "I have something better than that," +said Monte Cristo "I have a slave. You procure your +mistresses from the opera, the Vaudeville, or the Varietes +I purchased mine at Constantinople it cost me more, but I +have nothing to fear." +"But you forget," replied Debray, laughing, "that we are +Franks by name and franks by nature, as King Charles said, +and that the moment she puts her foot in France your slave +becomes free." +"Who will tell her?" +"The first person who sees her." +"She only speaks Romaic." +"That is different." +"But at least we shall see her," said Beauchamp, "or do you +keep eunuchs as well as mutes?" +"Oh, no," replied Monte Cristo "I do not carry brutalism so +far. Every one who surrounds me is free to quit me, and when +they leave me will no longer have any need of me or any one +else it is for that reason, perhaps, that they do not quit +me." They had long since passed to dessert and cigars. +"My dear Albert," said Debray, rising, "it is halfpast two. +Your guest is charming, but you leave the best company to go +into the worst sometimes. I must return to the minister's. I +will tell him of the count, and we shall soon know who he +is." +"Take care," returned Albert "no one has been able to +accomplish that." +"Oh, we have three millions for our police it is true they +are almost always spent beforehand, but, no matter, we shall +still have fifty thousand francs to spend for this purpose." +"And when you know, will you tell me?" +"I promise you. Au revoir, Albert. Gentlemen, good morning." +As he left the room, Debray called out loudly, "My +carriage." +"Bravo," said Beauchamp to Albert "I shall not go to the +Chamber, but I have something better to offer my readers +than a speech of M. Danglars." +"For heaven's sake, Beauchamp," returned Morcerf, "do not +deprive me of the merit of introducing him everywhere. Is he +not peculiar?" +"He is more than that," replied ChateauRenaud "he is one +of the most extraordinary men I ever saw in my life. Are you +coming, Morrel?" +"Directly I have given my card to the count, who has +promised to pay us a visit at Rue Meslay, No. ." +"Be sure I shall not fail to do so," returned the count, +bowing. And Maximilian Morrel left the room with the Baron +de ChateauRenaud, leaving Monte Cristo alone with Morcerf. +Chapter +The Presentation. +When Albert found himself alone with Monte Cristo, "My dear +count," said he, "allow me to commence my services as +cicerone by showing you a specimen of a bachelor's +apartment. You, who are accustomed to the palaces of Italy, +can amuse yourself by calculating in how many square feet a +young man who is not the worst lodged in Paris can live. As +we pass from one room to another, I will open the windows to +let you breathe." Monte Cristo had already seen the +breakfastroom and the salon on the groundfloor. Albert led +him first to his atelier, which was, as we have said, his +favorite apartment. Monte Cristo quickly appreciated all +that Albert had collected here old cabinets, Japanese +porcelain, Oriental stuffs, Venetian glass, arms from all +parts of the world everything was familiar to him and at +the first glance he recognized their date, their country, +and their origin. Morcerf had expected he should be the +guide on the contrary, it was he who, under the count's +guidance, followed a course of archaeology, mineralogy, and +natural history. They descended to the first floor Albert +led his guest into the salon. The salon was filled with the +works of modern artists there were landscapes by Dupre, +with their long reeds and tall trees, their lowing oxen and +marvellous skies Delacroix's Arabian cavaliers, with their +long white burnouses, their shining belts, their damasked +arms, their horses, who tore each other with their teeth +while their riders contended fiercely with their maces +aquarelles of Boulanger, representing Notre Dame de Paris +with that vigor that makes the artist the rival of the poet +there were paintings by Diaz, who makes his flowers more +beautiful than flowers, his suns more brilliant than the +sun designs by Decamp, as vividly colored as those of +Salvator Rosa, but more poetic pastels by Giraud and +Muller, representing children like angels and women with the +features of a virgin sketches torn from the album of +Dauzats' "Travels in the East," that had been made in a few +seconds on the saddle of a camel, or beneath the dome of a +mosque in a word, all that modern art can give in +exchange and as recompense for the art lost and gone with +ages long since past. +Albert expected to have something new this time to show to +the traveller, but, to his great surprise, the latter, +without seeking for the signatures, many of which, indeed, +were only initials, named instantly the author of every +picture in such a manner that it was easy to see that each +name was not only known to him, but that each style +associated with it had been appreciated and studied by him. +From the salon they passed into the bedchamber it was a +model of taste and simple elegance. A single portrait, +signed by Leopold Robert, shone in its carved and gilded +frame. This portrait attracted the Count of Monte Cristo's +attention, for he made three rapid steps in the chamber, and +stopped suddenly before it. It was the portrait of a young +woman of five or six and twenty, with a dark complexion, and +light and lustrous eyes, veiled beneath long lashes. She +wore the picturesque costume of the Catalan fisherwomen, a +red and black bodice, and golden pins in her hair. She was +looking at the sea, and her form was outlined on the blue +ocean and sky. The light was so faint in the room that +Albert did not perceive the pallor that spread itself over +the count's visage, or the nervous heaving of his chest and +shoulders. Silence prevailed for an instant, during which +Monte Cristo gazed intently on the picture. +"You have there a most charming mistress, viscount," said +the count in a perfectly calm tone "and this costume a +ball costume, doubtless becomes her admirably." +"Ah, monsieur," returned Albert, "I would never forgive you +this mistake if you had seen another picture beside this. +You do not know my mother she it is whom you see here. She +had her portrait painted thus six or eight years ago. This +costume is a fancy one, it appears, and the resemblance is +so great that I think I still see my mother the same as she +was in . The countess had this portrait painted during +the count's absence. She doubtless intended giving him an +agreeable surprise but, strange to say, this portrait +seemed to displease my father, and the value of the picture, +which is, as you see, one of the best works of Leopold +Robert, could not overcome his dislike to it. It is true, +between ourselves, that M. de Morcerf is one of the most +assiduous peers at the Luxembourg, a general renowned for +theory, but a most mediocre amateur of art. It is different +with my mother, who paints exceedingly well, and who, +unwilling to part with so valuable a picture, gave it to me +to put here, where it would be less likely to displease M. +de Morcerf, whose portrait, by Gros, I will also show you. +Excuse my talking of family matters, but as I shall have the +honor of introducing you to the count, I tell you this to +prevent you making any allusions to this picture. The +picture seems to have a malign influence, for my mother +rarely comes here without looking at it, and still more +rarely does she look at it without weeping. This +disagreement is the only one that has ever taken place +between the count and countess, who are still as much +united, although married more than twenty years, as on the +first day of their wedding." +Monte Cristo glanced rapidly at Albert, as if to seek a +hidden meaning in his words, but it was evident the young +man uttered them in the simplicity of his heart. "Now," said +Albert, "that you have seen all my treasures, allow me to +offer them to you, unworthy as they are. Consider yourself +as in your own house, and to put yourself still more at your +ease, pray accompany me to the apartments of M. de Morcerf, +he whom I wrote from Rome an account of the services you +rendered me, and to whom I announced your promised visit, +and I may say that both the count and countess anxiously +desire to thank you in person. You are somewhat blase I +know, and family scenes have not much effect on Sinbad the +Sailor, who has seen so many others. However, accept what I +propose to you as an initiation into Parisian life a life +of politeness, visiting, and introductions." Monte Cristo +bowed without making any answer he accepted the offer +without enthusiasm and without regret, as one of those +conventions of society which every gentleman looks upon as a +duty. Albert summoned his servant, and ordered him to +acquaint M. and Madame de Morcerf of the arrival of the +Count of Monte Cristo. Albert followed him with the count. +When they arrived at the antechamber, above the door was +visible a shield, which, by its rich ornaments and its +harmony with the rest of the furniture, indicated the +importance the owner attached to this blazon. Monte Cristo +stopped and examined it attentively. +"Azure seven merlets, or, placed bender," said he. "These +are, doubtless, your family arms? Except the knowledge of +blazons, that enables me to decipher them, I am very +ignorant of heraldry I, a count of a fresh creation, +fabricated in Tuscany by the aid of a commandery of St. +Stephen, and who would not have taken the trouble had I not +been told that when you travel much it is necessary. +Besides, you must have something on the panels of your +carriage, to escape being searched by the customhouse +officers. Excuse my putting such a question to you." +"It is not indiscreet," returned Morcerf, with the +simplicity of conviction. "You have guessed rightly. These +are our arms, that is, those of my father, but they are, as +you see, joined to another shield, which has gules, a silver +tower, which are my mother's. By her side I am Spanish, but +the family of Morcerf is French, and, I have heard, one of +the oldest of the south of France." +"Yes," replied Monte Cristo "these blazons prove that. +Almost all the armed pilgrims that went to the Holy Land +took for their arms either a cross, in honor of their +mission, or birds of passage, in sign of the long voyage +they were about to undertake, and which they hoped to +accomplish on the wings of faith. One of your ancestors had +joined the Crusades, and supposing it to be only that of St. +Louis, that makes you mount to the thirteenth century, which +is tolerably ancient." +"It is possible," said Morcerf "my father has in his study +a genealogical tree which will tell you all that, and on +which I made commentaries that would have greatly edified +Hozier and Jaucourt. At present I no longer think of it, and +yet I must tell you that we are beginning to occupy +ourselves greatly with these things under our popular +government." +"Well, then, your government would do well to choose from +the past something better than the things that I have +noticed on your monuments, and which have no heraldic +meaning whatever. As for you, viscount," continued Monte +Cristo to Morcerf, "you are more fortunate than the +government, for your arms are really beautiful, and speak to +the imagination. Yes, you are at once from Provence and +Spain that explains, if the portrait you showed me be like, +the dark hue I so much admired on the visage of the noble +Catalan." It would have required the penetration of Oedipus +or the Sphinx to have divined the irony the count concealed +beneath these words, apparently uttered with the greatest +politeness. Morcerf thanked him with a smile, and pushed +open the door above which were his arms, and which, as we +have said, opened into the salon. In the most conspicuous +part of the salon was another portrait. It was that of a +man, from five to eight and thirty, in the uniform of a +general officer, wearing the double epaulet of heavy +bullion, that indicates superior rank, the ribbon of the +Legion of Honor around his neck, which showed he was a +commander, and on the right breast, the star of a grand +officer of the order of the Saviour, and on the left that of +the grand cross of Charles III., which proved that the +person represented by the picture had served in the wars of +Greece and Spain, or, what was just the same thing as +regarded decorations, had fulfilled some diplomatic mission +in the two countries. +Monte Cristo was engaged in examining this portrait with no +less care than he had bestowed upon the other, when another +door opened, and he found himself opposite to the Count of +Morcerf in person. He was a man of forty to fortyfive +years, but he seemed at least fifty, and his black mustache +and eyebrows contrasted strangely with his almost white +hair, which was cut short, in the military fashion. He was +dressed in plain clothes, and wore at his buttonhole the +ribbons of the different orders to which he belonged. He +entered with a tolerably dignified step, and some little +haste. Monte Cristo saw him advance towards him without +making a single step. It seemed as if his feet were rooted +to the ground, and his eyes on the Count of Morcerf. +"Father," said the young man, "I have the honor of +presenting to you the Count of Monte Cristo, the generous +friend whom I had the good fortune to meet in the critical +situation of which I have told you." +"You are most welcome, monsieur," said the Count of Morcerf, +saluting Monte Cristo with a smile, "and monsieur has +rendered our house, in preserving its only heir, a service +which insures him our eternal gratitude." As he said these +words, the count of Morcerf pointed to a chair, while he +seated himself in another opposite the window. +Monte Cristo, in taking the seat Morcerf offered him, placed +himself in such a manner as to remain concealed in the +shadow of the large velvet curtains, and read on the +careworn and livid features of the count a whole history of +secret griefs written in each wrinkle time had planted +there. "The countess," said Morcerf, "was at her toilet when +she was informed of the visit she was about to receive. She +will, however, be in the salon in ten minutes." +"It is a great honor to me," returned Monte Cristo, "to be +thus, on the first day of my arrival in Paris, brought in +contact with a man whose merit equals his reputation, and to +whom fortune has for once been equitable, but has she not +still on the plains of Metidja, or in the mountains of +Atlas, a marshal's staff to offer you?" +"Oh," replied Morcerf, reddening slightly, "I have left the +service, monsieur. Made a peer at the Restoration, I served +through the first campaign under the orders of Marshal +Bourmont. I could, therefore, expect a higher rank, and who +knows what might have happened had the elder branch remained +on the throne? But the Revolution of July was, it seems, +sufficiently glorious to allow itself to be ungrateful, and +it was so for all services that did not date from the +imperial period. I tendered my resignation, for when you +have gained your epaulets on the battlefield, you do not +know how to manoeuvre on the slippery grounds of the salons. +I have hung up my sword, and cast myself into politics. I +have devoted myself to industry I study the useful arts. +During the twenty years I served, I often wished to do so, +but I had not the time." +"These are the ideas that render your nation superior to any +other," returned Monte Cristo. "A gentleman of high birth, +possessor of an ample fortune, you have consented to gain +your promotion as an obscure soldier, step by step this +is uncommon then become general, peer of France, commander +of the Legion of Honor, you consent to again commence a +second apprenticeship, without any other hope or any other +desire than that of one day becoming useful to your +fellowcreatures this, indeed, is praiseworthy, nay, +more, it is sublime." Albert looked on and listened with +astonishment he was not used to see Monte Cristo give vent +to such bursts of enthusiasm. "Alas," continued the +stranger, doubtless to dispel the slight cloud that covered +Morcerf's brow, "we do not act thus in Italy we grow +according to our race and our species, and we pursue the +same lines, and often the same uselessness, all our lives." +"But, monsieur," said the Count of Morcerf, "for a man of +your merit, Italy is not a country, and France opens her +arms to receive you respond to her call. France will not, +perhaps, be always ungrateful. She treats her children ill, +but she always welcomes strangers." +"Ah, father," said Albert with a smile, "it is evident you +do not know the Count of Monte Cristo he despises all +honors, and contents himself with those written on his +passport." +"That is the most just remark," replied the stranger, "I +ever heard made concerning myself." +"You have been free to choose your career," observed the +Count of Morcerf, with a sigh "and you have chosen the path +strewed with flowers." +"Precisely, monsieur," replied Monte Cristo with one of +those smiles that a painter could never represent or a +physiologist analyze. +"If I did not fear to fatigue you," said the general, +evidently charmed with the count's manners, "I would have +taken you to the Chamber there is a debate very curious to +those who are strangers to our modern senators." +"I shall be most grateful, monsieur, if you will, at some +future time, renew your offer, but I have been flattered +with the hope of being introduced to the countess, and I +will therefore wait." +"Ah, here is my mother," cried the viscount. Monte Cristo, +turned round hastily, and saw Madame de Morcerf at the +entrance of the salon, at the door opposite to that by which +her husband had entered, pale and motionless when Monte +Cristo turned round, she let fall her arm, which for some +unknown reason had been resting on the gilded doorpost. She +had been there some moments, and had heard the last words of +the visitor. The latter rose and bowed to the countess, who +inclined herself without speaking. "Ah, good heavens, +madame," said the count, "are you ill, or is it the heat of +the room that affects you?" +"Are you ill, mother?" cried the viscount, springing towards +her. +She thanked them both with a smile. "No," returned she, "but +I feel some emotion on seeing, for the first time, the man +without whose intervention we should have been in tears and +desolation. Monsieur," continued the countess, advancing +with the majesty of a queen, "I owe to you the life of my +son, and for this I bless you. Now, I thank you for the +pleasure you give me in thus affording me the opportunity of +thanking you as I have blessed you, from the bottom of my +heart." The count bowed again, but lower than before He was +even paler than Mercedes. "Madame," said he, "the count and +yourself recompense too generously a simple action. To save +a man, to spare a father's feelings, or a mother's +sensibility, is not to do a good action, but a simple deed +of humanity." At these words, uttered with the most +exquisite sweetness and politeness, Madame de Morcerf +replied. "It is very fortunate for my son, monsieur, that he +found such a friend, and I thank God that things are thus." +And Mercedes raised her fine eyes to heaven with so fervent +an expression of gratitude, that the count fancied he saw +tears in them. M. de Morcerf approached her. "Madame," said +he. "I have already made my excuses to the count for +quitting him, and I pray you to do so also. The sitting +commences at two it is now three, and I am to speak." +"Go, then, and monsieur and I will strive our best to forget +your absence," replied the countess, with the same tone of +deep feeling. "Monsieur," continued she, turning to Monte +Cristo, "will you do us the honor of passing the rest of the +day with us?" +"Believe me, madame, I feel most grateful for your kindness, +but I got out of my travelling carriage at your door this +morning, and I am ignorant how I am installed in Paris, +which I scarcely know this is but a trifling inquietude, I +know, but one that may be appreciated." +"We shall have the pleasure another time," said the +countess "you promise that?" Monte Cristo inclined himself +without answering, but the gesture might pass for assent. "I +will not detain you, monsieur," continued the countess "I +would not have our gratitude become indiscreet or +importunate." +"My dear Count," said Albert, "I will endeavor to return +your politeness at Rome, and place my coupe at your disposal +until your own be ready." +"A thousand thanks for your kindness, viscount," returned +the Count of Monte Cristo "but I suppose that M. Bertuccio +has suitably employed the four hours and a half I have given +him, and that I shall find a carriage of some sort ready at +the door." Albert was used to the count's manner of +proceeding he knew that, like Nero, he was in search of the +impossible, and nothing astonished him, but wishing to judge +with his own eyes how far the count's orders had been +executed, he accompanied him to the door of the house. Monte +Cristo was not deceived. As soon as he appeared in the Count +of Morcerf's antechamber, a footman, the same who at Rome +had brought the count's card to the two young men, and +announced his visit, sprang into the vestibule, and when he +arrived at the door the illustrious traveller found his +carriage awaiting him. It was a coupe of Koller's building, +and with horses and harness for which Drake had, to the +knowledge of all the lions of Paris, refused on the previous +day seven hundred guineas. "Monsieur," said the count to +Albert, "I do not ask you to accompany me to my house, as I +can only show you a habitation fitted up in a hurry, and I +have, as you know, a reputation to keep up as regards not +being taken by surprise. Give me, therefore, one more day +before I invite you I shall then be certain not to fail in +my hospitality." +"If you ask me for a day, count, I know what to anticipate +it will not be a house I shall see, but a palace. You have +decidedly some genius at your control." +"Ma foi, spread that idea," replied the Count of Monte +Cristo, putting his foot on the velvetlined steps of his +splendid carriage, "and that will be worth something to me +among the ladies." As he spoke, he sprang into the vehicle, +the door was closed, but not so rapidly that Monte Cristo +failed to perceive the almost imperceptible movement which +stirred the curtains of the apartment in which he had left +Madame de Morcerf. When Albert returned to his mother, he +found her in the boudoir reclining in a large velvet +armchair, the whole room so obscure that only the shining +spangle, fastened here and there to the drapery, and the +angles of the gilded frames of the pictures, showed with +some degree of brightness in the gloom. Albert could not see +the face of the countess, as it was covered with a thin veil +she had put on her head, and which fell over her features in +misty folds, but it seemed to him as though her voice had +altered. He could distinguish amid the perfumes of the roses +and heliotropes in the flowerstands, the sharp and fragrant +odor of volatile salts, and he noticed in one of the chased +cups on the mantlepiece the countess's smellingbottle, +taken from its shagreen case, and exclaimed in a tone of +uneasiness, as he entered, "My dear mother, have you been +ill during my absence?" +"No, no, Albert, but you know these roses, tuberoses, and +orangeflowers throw out at first, before one is used to +them, such violent perfumes." +"Then, my dear mother," said Albert, putting his hand to the +bell, "they must be taken into the antechamber. You are +really ill, and just now were so pale as you came into the +room" +"Was I pale, Albert?" +"Yes a pallor that suits you admirably, mother, but which +did not the less alarm my father and myself." +"Did your father speak of it?" inquired Mercedes eagerly. +"No, madame but do you not remember that he spoke of the +fact to you?" +"Yes, I do remember," replied the countess. A servant +entered, summoned by Albert's ring of the bell. "Take these +flowers into the anteroom or dressingroom," said the +viscount "they make the countess ill." The footman obeyed +his orders. A long pause ensued, which lasted until all the +flowers were removed. "What is this name of Monte Cristo?" +inquired the countess, when the servant had taken away the +last vase of flowers, "is it a family name, or the name of +the estate, or a simple title?" +"I believe, mother, it is merely a title. The count +purchased an island in the Tuscan archipelago, and, as he +told you today, has founded a commandery. You know the same +thing was done for Saint Stephen of Florence, Saint George, +Constantinian of Parma, and even for the Order of Malta. +Except this, he has no pretension to nobility, and calls +himself a chance count, although the general opinion at Rome +is that the count is a man of very high distinction." +"His manners are admirable," said the countess, "at least, +as far as I could judge in the few minutes he remained +here." +"They are perfect mother, so perfect, that they surpass by +far all I have known in the leading aristocracy of the three +proudest nobilities of Europe the English, the Spanish, +and the German." The countess paused a moment then, after a +slight hesitation, she resumed, "You have seen, my dear +Albert I ask the question as a mother you have seen M. +de Monte Cristo in his house, you are quicksighted, have +much knowledge of the world, more tact than is usual at your +age, do you think the count is really what he appears to +be?" +"What does he appear to be?" +"Why, you have just said, a man of high distinction." +"I told you, my dear mother, he was esteemed such." +"But what is your own opinion, Albert?" +"I must tell you that I have not come to any decided opinion +respecting him, but I think him a Maltese." +"I do not ask you of his origin but what he is." +"Ah, what he is that is quite another thing. I have seen so +many remarkable things in him, that if you would have me +really say what I think, I shall reply that I really do look +upon him as one of Byron's heroes, whom misery has marked +with a fatal brand some Manfred, some Lara, some Werner, +one of those wrecks, as it were, of some ancient family, +who, disinherited of their patrimony, have achieved one by +the force of their adventurous genius, which has placed them +above the laws of society." +"You say" +"I say that Monte Cristo is an island in the midst of the +Mediterranean, without inhabitants or garrison, the resort +of smugglers of all nations, and pirates of every flag. Who +knows whether or not these industrious worthies do not pay +to their feudal lord some dues for his protection?" +"That is possible," said the countess, reflecting. +"Never mind," continued the young man, "smuggler or not, you +must agree, mother dear, as you have seen him, that the +Count of Monte Cristo is a remarkable man, who will have the +greatest success in the salons of Paris. Why, this very +morning, in my rooms, he made his entree amongst us by +striking every man of us with amazement, not even excepting +ChateauRenaud." +"And what do you suppose is the count's age?" inquired +Mercedes, evidently attaching great importance to this +question. +"Thirtyfive or thirtysix, mother." +"So young, it is impossible," said Mercedes, replying at +the same time to what Albert said as well as to her own +private reflection. +"It is the truth, however. Three or four times he has said +to me, and certainly without the slightest premeditation, +"at such a period I was five years old, at another ten years +old, at another twelve,' and I, induced by curiosity, which +kept me alive to these details, have compared the dates, and +never found him inaccurate. The age of this singular man, +who is of no age, is then, I am certain, thirtyfive. +Besides, mother, remark how vivid his eye, how ravenblack +his hair, and his brow, though so pale, is free from +wrinkles, he is not only vigorous, but also young." The +countess bent her head, as if beneath a heavy wave of bitter +thoughts. "And has this man displayed a friendship for you, +Albert?" she asked with a nervous shudder. +"I am inclined to think so." +"And do you like him?" +"Why, he pleases me in spite of Franz d'Epinay, who tries to +convince me that he is a being returned from the other +world." The countess shuddered. "Albert," she said, in a +voice which was altered by emotion, "I have always put you +on your guard against new acquaintances. Now you are a man, +and are able to give me advice yet I repeat to you, Albert, +be prudent." +"Why, my dear mother, it is necessary, in order to make your +advice turn to account, that I should know beforehand what I +have to distrust. The count never plays, he only drinks pure +water tinged with a little sherry, and is so rich that he +cannot, without intending to laugh at me, try to borrow +money. What, then, have I to fear from him?" +"You are right," said the countess, "and my fears are +weakness, especially when directed against a man who has +saved your life. How did your father receive him, Albert? It +is necessary that we should be more than complaisant to the +count. M. de Morcerf is sometimes occupied, his business +makes him reflective, and he might, without intending it" +"Nothing could be in better taste than my father's demeanor, +madame," said Albert "nay, more, he seemed greatly +flattered at two or three compliments which the count very +skilfully and agreeably paid him with as much ease as if he +had known him these thirty years. Each of these little +tickling arrows must have pleased my father," added Albert +with a laugh. "And thus they parted the best possible +friends, and M. de Morcerf even wished to take him to the +Chamber to hear the speakers." The countess made no reply. +She fell into so deep a revery that her eyes gradually +closed. The young man, standing up before her, gazed upon +her with that filial affection which is so tender and +endearing with children whose mothers are still young and +handsome. Then, after seeing her eyes closed, and hearing +her breathe gently, he believed she had dropped asleep, and +left the apartment on tiptoe, closing the door after him +with the utmost precaution. "This devil of a fellow," he +muttered, shaking his head "I said at the time he would +create a sensation here, and I measure his effect by an +infallible thermometer. My mother has noticed him, and he +must therefore, perforce, be remarkable." He went down to +the stables, not without some slight annoyance, when he +remembered that the Count of Monte Cristo had laid his hands +on a "turnout" which sent his bays down to second place in +the opinion of connoisseurs. "Most decidedly," said he, "men +are not equal, and I must beg my father to develop this +theorem in the Chamber of Peers." +Chapter +Monsieur Bertuccio. +Meanwhile the count had arrived at his house it had taken +him six minutes to perform the distance, but these six +minutes were sufficient to induce twenty young men who knew +the price of the equipage they had been unable to purchase +themselves, to put their horses in a gallop in order to see +the rich foreigner who could afford to give , francs +apiece for his horses. The house Ali had chosen, and which +was to serve as a town residence to Monte Cristo, was +situated on the right hand as you ascend the Champs Elysees. +A thick clump of trees and shrubs rose in the centre, and +masked a portion of the front around this shrubbery two +alleys, like two arms, extended right and left, and formed a +carriagedrive from the iron gates to a double portico, on +every step of which stood a porcelain vase, filled with +flowers. This house, isolated from the rest, had, besides +the main entrance, another in the Rue Ponthieu. Even before +the coachman had hailed the concierge, the massy gates +rolled on their hinges they had seen the Count coming, +and at Paris, as everywhere else, he was served with the +rapidity of lightning. The coachman entered and traversed +the halfcircle without slackening his speed, and the gates +were closed ere the wheels had ceased to sound on the +gravel. The carriage stopped at the left side of the +portico, two men presented themselves at the +carriagewindow the one was Ali, who, smiling with an +expression of the most sincere joy, seemed amply repaid by a +mere look from Monte Cristo. The other bowed respectfully, +and offered his arm to assist the count in descending. +"Thanks, M. Bertuccio," said the count, springing lightly up +the three steps of the portico "and the notary?" +"He is in the small salon, excellency," returned Bertuccio. +"And the cards I ordered to be engraved as soon as you knew +the number of the house?" +"Your excellency, it is done already. I have been myself to +the best engraver of the Palais Royal, who did the plate in +my presence. The first card struck off was taken, according +to your orders, to the Baron Danglars, Rue de la Chaussee +d'Antin, No. the others are on the mantlepiece of your +excellency's bedroom." +"Good what o'clock is it?" +"Four o'clock." Monte Cristo gave his hat, cane, and gloves +to the same French footman who had called his carriage at +the Count of Morcerf's, and then he passed into the small +salon, preceded by Bertuccio, who showed him the way. "These +are but indifferent marbles in this antechamber," said +Monte Cristo. "I trust all this will soon be taken away." +Bertuccio bowed. As the steward had said, the notary awaited +him in the small salon. He was a simplelooking lawyer's +clerk, elevated to the extraordinary dignity of a provincial +scrivener. "You are the notary empowered to sell the country +house that I wish to purchase, monsieur?" asked Monte +Cristo. +"Yes, count," returned the notary. +"Is the deed of sale ready?" +"Yes, count." +"Have you brought it?" +"Here it is." +"Very well and where is this house that I purchase?" asked +the count carelessly, addressing himself half to Bertuccio, +half to the notary. The steward made a gesture that +signified, "I do not know." The notary looked at the count +with astonishment. "What" said he, "does not the count know +where the house he purchases is situated?" +"No," returned the count. +"The count does not know?" +"How should I know? I have arrived from Cadiz this morning. +I have never before been at Paris, and it is the first time +I have ever even set my foot in France." +"Ah, that is different the house you purchase is at +Auteuil." At these words Bertuccio turned pale. "And where +is Auteuil?" asked the count. +"Close by here, monsieur," replied the notary "a little +beyond Passy a charming situation, in the heart of the Bois +de Boulogne." +"So near as that?" said the Count "but that is not in the +country. What made you choose a house at the gates of Paris, +M. Bertuccio?" +"I," cried the steward with a strange expression. "His +excellency did not charge me to purchase this house. If his +excellency will recollect if he will think" +"Ah, true," observed Monte Cristo "I recollect now. I read +the advertisement in one of the papers, and was tempted by +the false title, "a country house.'" +"It is not yet too late," cried Bertuccio, eagerly "and if +your excellency will intrust me with the commission, I will +find you a better at Enghien, at FontenayauxRoses, or at +Bellevue." +"Oh, no," returned Monte Cristo negligently "since I have +this, I will keep it." +"And you are quite right," said the notary, who feared to +lose his fee. "It is a charming place, well supplied with +springwater and fine trees a comfortable habitation, +although abandoned for a long time, without reckoning the +furniture, which, although old, is yet valuable, now that +old things are so much sought after. I suppose the count has +the tastes of the day?" +"To be sure," returned Monte Cristo "it is very convenient, +then?" +"It is more it is magnificent." +"Peste, let us not lose such an opportunity," returned Monte +Cristo. "The deed, if you please, Mr. Notary." And he signed +it rapidly, after having first run his eye over that part of +the deed in which were specified the situation of the house +and the names of the proprietors. "Bertuccio," said he, +"give fiftyfive thousand francs to monsieur." The steward +left the room with a faltering step, and returned with a +bundle of banknotes, which the notary counted like a man +who never gives a receipt for money until after he is sure +it is all there. "And now," demanded the count, "are all the +forms complied with?" +"All, sir." +"Have you the keys?" +"They are in the hands of the concierge, who takes care of +the house, but here is the order I have given him to install +the count in his new possessions." +"Very well" and Monte Cristo made a sign with his hand to +the notary, which said, "I have no further need of you you +may go." +"But," observed the honest notary, "the count is, I think, +mistaken it is only fifty thousand francs, everything +included." +"And your fee?" +"Is included in this sum." +"But have you not come from Auteuil here?" +"Yes, certainly." +"Well, then, it is but fair that you should be paid for your +loss of time and trouble," said the count and he made a +gesture of polite dismissal. The notary left the room +backwards, and bowing down to the ground it was the first +time he had ever met a similar client. "See this gentleman +out," said the count to Bertuccio. And the steward followed +the notary out of the room. Scarcely was the count alone, +when he drew from his pocket a book closed with a lock, and +opened it with a key which he wore round his neck, and which +never left him. After having sought for a few minutes, he +stopped at a leaf which had several notes, and compared them +with the deed of sale, which lay on the table. ""Auteuil, +Rue de la Fontaine, No. ' it is indeed the same," said +he "and now, am I to rely upon an avowal extorted by +religious or physical terror? However, in an hour I shall +know all. Bertuccio" cried he, striking a light hammer with +a pliant handle on a small gong. "Bertuccio" The steward +appeared at the door. "Monsieur Bertuccio," said the count, +"did you never tell me that you had travelled in France?" +"In some parts of France yes, excellency." +"You know the environs of Paris, then?" +"No, excellency, no," returned the steward, with a sort of +nervous trembling, which Monte Cristo, a connoisseur in all +emotions, rightly attributed to great disquietude. +"It is unfortunate," returned he, "that you have never +visited the environs, for I wish to see my new property this +evening, and had you gone with me, you could have given me +some useful information." +"To Auteuil" cried Bertuccio, whose copper complexion +became livid "I go to Auteuil?" +"Well, what is there surprising in that? When I live at +Auteuil, you must come there, as you belong to my service." +Bertuccio hung down his head before the imperious look of +his master, and remained motionless, without making any +answer. "Why, what has happened to you? are you going to +make me ring a second time for the carriage?" asked Monte +Cristo, in the same tone that Louis XIV. pronounced the +famous, "I have been almost obliged to wait." Bertuccio made +but one bound to the antechamber, and cried in a hoarse +voice "His excellency's horses" Monte Cristo wrote two +or three notes, and, as he sealed the last, the steward +appeared. "Your excellency's carriage is at the door," said +he. +"Well, take your hat and gloves," returned Monte Cristo. +"Am I to accompany you, your excellency?" cried Bertuccio. +"Certainly, you must give the orders, for I intend residing +at the house." It was unexampled for a servant of the +count's to dare to dispute an order of his, so the steward, +without saying a word, followed his master, who got into the +carriage, and signed to him to follow, which he did, taking +his place respectfully on the front seat. +Chapter +The House at Auteuil. +Monte Cristo noticed, as they descended the staircase, that +Bertuccio signed himself in the Corsican manner that is, +had formed the sign of the cross in the air with his thumb, +and as he seated himself in the carriage, muttered a short +prayer. Any one but a man of exhaustless thirst for +knowledge would have had pity on seeing the steward's +extraordinary repugnance for the count's projected drive +without the walls but the Count was too curious to let +Bertuccio off from this little journey. In twenty minutes +they were at Auteuil the steward's emotion had continued to +augment as they entered the village. Bertuccio, crouched in +the corner of the carriage, began to examine with a feverish +anxiety every house they passed. "Tell them to stop at Rue +de la Fontaine, No. ," said the count, fixing his eyes on +the steward, to whom he gave this order. Bertuccio's +forehead was covered with perspiration however, he obeyed, +and, leaning out of the window, he cried to the coachman, +"Rue de la Fontaine, No. ." No. was situated at the +extremity of the village during the drive night had set in, +and darkness gave the surroundings the artificial appearance +of a scene on the stage. The carriage stopped, the footman +sprang off the box, and opened the door. "Well," said the +count, "you do not get out, M. Bertuccio you are going to +stay in the carriage, then? What are you thinking of this +evening?" Bertuccio sprang out, and offered his shoulder to +the count, who, this time, leaned upon it as he descended +the three steps of the carriage. "Knock," said the count, +"and announce me." Bertuccio knocked, the door opened, and +the concierge appeared. "What is it?" asked he. +"It is your new master, my good fellow," said the footman. +And he held out to the concierge the notary's order. +"The house is sold, then?" demanded the concierge "and this +gentleman is coming to live here?" +"Yes, my friend," returned the count "and I will endeavor +to give you no cause to regret your old master." +"Oh, monsieur," said the concierge, "I shall not have much +cause to regret him, for he came here but seldom it is five +years since he was here last, and he did well to sell the +house, for it did not bring him in anything at all." +"What was the name of your old master?" said Monte Cristo. +"The Marquis of SaintMeran. Ah, I am sure he has not sold +the house for what he gave for it." +"The Marquis of SaintMeran" returned the count. "The name +is not unknown to me the Marquis of SaintMeran" and he +appeared to meditate. +"An old gentleman," continued the concierge, "a stanch +follower of the Bourbons he had an only daughter, who +married M. de Villefort, who had been the king's attorney at +Nimes, and afterwards at Versailles." Monte Cristo glanced +at Bertuccio, who became whiter than the wall against which +he leaned to prevent himself from falling. "And is not this +daughter dead?" demanded Monte Cristo "I fancy I have heard +so." +"Yes, monsieur, one and twenty years ago and since then we +have not seen the poor marquis three times." +"Thanks, thanks," said Monte Cristo, judging from the +steward's utter prostration that he could not stretch the +cord further without danger of breaking it. "Give me a +light." +"Shall I accompany you, monsieur?" +"No, it is unnecessary Bertuccio will show me a light." And +Monte Cristo accompanied these words by the gift of two gold +pieces, which produced a torrent of thanks and blessings +from the concierge. "Ah, monsieur," said he, after having +vainly searched on the mantlepiece and the shelves, "I have +not got any candles." +"Take one of the carriagelamps, Bertuccio," said the count, +"and show me the apartments." The steward obeyed in silence, +but it was easy to see, from the manner in which the hand +that held the light trembled, how much it cost him to obey. +They went over a tolerably large groundfloor a second +floor consisted of a salon, a bathroom, and two bedrooms +near one of the bedrooms they came to a winding staircase +that led down to the garden. +"Ah, here is a private staircase," said the count "that is +convenient. Light me, M. Bertuccio, and go first we will +see where it leads to." +"Monsieur," replied Bertuccio, "it leads to the garden." +"And, pray, how do you know that?" +"It ought to do so, at least." +"Well, let us be sure of that." Bertuccio sighed, and went +on first the stairs did, indeed, lead to the garden. At the +outer door the steward paused. "Go on, Monsieur Bertuccio," +said the count. But he who was addressed stood there, +stupefied, bewildered, stunned his haggard eyes glanced +around, as if in search of the traces of some terrible +event, and with his clinched hands he seemed striving to +shut out horrible recollections. "Well," insisted the Count. +"No, no," cried Bertuccio, setting down the lantern at the +angle of the interior wall. "No, monsieur, it is impossible +I can go no farther." +"What does this mean?" demanded the irresistible voice of +Monte Cristo. +"Why, you must see, your excellency," cried the steward, +"that this is not natural that, having a house to purchase, +you purchase it exactly at Auteuil, and that, purchasing it +at Auteuil, this house should be No. , Rue de la Fontaine. +Oh, why did I not tell you all? I am sure you would not have +forced me to come. I hoped your house would have been some +other one than this as if there was not another house at +Auteuil than that of the assassination" +"What, what" cried Monte Cristo, stopping suddenly, "what +words do you utter? Devil of a man, Corsican that you are +always mysteries or superstitions. Come, take the lantern, +and let us visit the garden you are not afraid of ghosts +with me, I hope?" Bertuccio raised the lantern, and obeyed. +The door, as it opened, disclosed a gloomy sky, in which the +moon strove vainly to struggle through a sea of clouds that +covered her with billows of vapor which she illumined for an +instant, only to sink into obscurity. The steward wished to +turn to the left. "No, no, monsieur," said Monte Cristo. +"What is the use of following the alleys? Here is a +beautiful lawn let us go on straight forwards." +Bertuccio wiped the perspiration from his brow, but obeyed +however, he continued to take the left hand. Monte Cristo, +on the contrary, took the right hand arrived near a clump +of trees, he stopped. The steward could not restrain +himself. "Move, monsieur move away, I entreat you you +are exactly in the spot" +"What spot?" +"Where he fell." +"My dear Monsieur Bertuccio," said Monte Cristo, laughing, +"control yourself we are not at Sartena or at Corte. This +is not a Corsican arbor, but an English garden badly kept, +I own, but still you must not calumniate it for that." +"Monsieur, I implore you do not stay there" +"I think you are going mad, Bertuccio," said the count +coldly. "If that is the case, I warn you, I shall have you +put in a lunatic asylum." +"Alas, excellency," returned Bertuccio, joining his hands, +and shaking his head in a manner that would have excited the +count's laughter, had not thoughts of a superior interest +occupied him, and rendered him attentive to the least +revelation of this timorous conscience. "Alas, excellency, +the evil has arrived" +"M. Bertuccio," said the count, "I am very glad to tell you, +that while you gesticulate, you wring your hands and roll +your eyes like a man possessed by a devil who will not leave +him and I have always observed, that the devil most +obstinate to be expelled is a secret. I knew you were a +Corsican. I knew you were gloomy, and always brooding over +some old history of the vendetta and I overlooked that in +Italy, because in Italy those things are thought nothing of. +But in France they are considered in very bad taste there +are gendarmes who occupy themselves with such affairs, +judges who condemn, and scaffolds which avenge." Bertuccio +clasped his hands, and as, in all these evolutions, he did +not let fall the lantern, the light showed his pale and +altered countenance. Monte Cristo examined him with the same +look that, at Rome, he had bent upon the execution of +Andrea, and then, in a tone that made a shudder pass through +the veins of the poor steward, "The Abbe Busoni, then +told me an untruth," said he, "when, after his journey in +France, in , he sent you to me, with a letter of +recommendation, in which he enumerated all your valuable +qualities. Well, I shall write to the abbe I shall hold him +responsible for his protege's misconduct, and I shall soon +know all about this assassination. Only I warn you, that +when I reside in a country, I conform to all its code, and I +have no wish to put myself within the compass of the French +laws for your sake." +"Oh, do not do that, excellency I have always served you +faithfully," cried Bertuccio, in despair. "I have always +been an honest man, and, as far as lay in my power, I have +done good." +"I do not deny it," returned the count "but why are you +thus agitated. It is a bad sign a quiet conscience does not +occasion such paleness in the cheeks, and such fever in the +hands of a man." +"But, your excellency," replied Bertuccio hesitatingly, "did +not the Abbe Busoni, who heard my confession in the prison +at Nimes, tell you that I had a heavy burden upon my +conscience?" +"Yes but as he said you would make an excellent steward, I +concluded you had stolen that was all." +"Oh, your excellency," returned Bertuccio in deep contempt. +"Or, as you are a Corsican, that you had been unable to +resist the desire of making a "stiff,' as you call it." +"Yes, my good master," cried Bertuccio, casting himself at +the count's feet, "it was simply vengeance nothing else." +"I understand that, but I do not understand what it is that +galvanizes you in this manner." +"But, monsieur, it is very natural," returned Bertuccio, +"since it was in this house that my vengeance was +accomplished." +"What my house?" +"Oh, your excellency, it was not yours, then." +"Whose, then? The Marquis de SaintMeran, I think, the +concierge said. What had you to revenge on the Marquis de +SaintMeran?" +"Oh, it was not on him, monsieur it was on another." +"This is strange," returned Monte Cristo, seeming to yield +to his reflections, "that you should find yourself without +any preparation in a house where the event happened that +causes you so much remorse." +"Monsieur," said the steward, "it is fatality, I am sure. +First, you purchase a house at Auteuil this house is the +one where I have committed an assassination you descend to +the garden by the same staircase by which he descended you +stop at the spot where he received the blow and two paces +farther is the grave in which he had just buried his child. +This is not chance, for chance, in this case, is too much +like providence." +"Well, amiable Corsican, let us suppose it is providence. I +always suppose anything people please, and, besides, you +must concede something to diseased minds. Come, collect +yourself, and tell me all." +"I have related it but once, and that was to the Abbe +Busoni. Such things," continued Bertuccio, shaking his head, +"are only related under the seal of confession." +"Then," said the count, "I refer you to your confessor. Turn +Chartreux or Trappist, and relate your secrets, but, as for +me, I do not like any one who is alarmed by such phantasms, +and I do not choose that my servants should be afraid to +walk in the garden of an evening. I confess I am not very +desirous of a visit from the commissary of police, for, in +Italy, justice is only paid when silent in France she is +paid only when she speaks. Peste, I thought you somewhat +Corsican, a great deal smuggler, and an excellent steward +but I see you have other strings to your bow. You are no +longer in my service, Monsieur Bertuccio." +"Oh, your excellency, your excellency" cried the steward, +struck with terror at this threat, "if that is the only +reason I cannot remain in your service, I will tell all, for +if I quit you, it will only be to go to the scaffold." +"That is different," replied Monte Cristo "but if you +intend to tell an untruth, reflect it were better not to +speak at all." +"No, monsieur, I swear to you, by my hopes of salvation, I +will tell you all, for the Abbe Busoni himself only knew a +part of my secret but, I pray you, go away from that +planetree. The moon is just bursting through the clouds, +and there, standing where you do, and wrapped in that cloak +that conceals your figure, you remind me of M. de +Villefort." +"What" cried Monte Cristo, "it was M. de Villefort?" +"Your excellency knows him?" +"The former royal attorney at Nimes?" +"Yes." +"Who married the Marquis of SaintMeran's daughter?" +"Yes." +"Who enjoyed the reputation of being the most severe, the +most upright, the most rigid magistrate on the bench?" +"Well, monsieur," said Bertuccio, "this man with this +spotless reputation" +"Well?" +"Was a villain." +"Bah," replied Monte Cristo, "impossible" +"It is as I tell you." +"Ah, really," said Monte Cristo. "Have you proof of this?" +"I had it." +"And you have lost it how stupid" +"Yes but by careful search it might be recovered." +"Really," returned the count, "relate it to me, for it +begins to interest me." And the count, humming an air from +"Lucia," went to sit down on a bench, while Bertuccio +followed him, collecting his thoughts. Bertuccio remained +standing before him. +Chapter +The Vendetta. +"At what point shall I begin my story, your excellency?" +asked Bertuccio. +"Where you please," returned Monte Cristo, "since I know +nothing at all of it." +"I thought the Abbe Busoni had told your excellency." +"Some particulars, doubtless, but that is seven or eight +years ago, and I have forgotten them." +"Then I can speak without fear of tiring your excellency." +"Go on, M. Bertuccio you will supply the want of the +evening papers." +"The story begins in ." +"Ah," said Monte Cristo, " is not yesterday." +"No, monsieur, and yet I recollect all things as clearly as +if they had happened but then. I had a brother, an elder +brother, who was in the service of the emperor he had +become lieutenant in a regiment composed entirely of +Corsicans. This brother was my only friend we became +orphans I at five, he at eighteen. He brought me up as if +I had been his son, and in he married. When the emperor +returned from the Island of Elba, my brother instantly +joined the army, was slightly wounded at Waterloo, and +retired with the army beyond the Loire." +"But that is the history of the Hundred Days, M. Bertuccio," +said the count "unless I am mistaken, it has been already +written." +"Excuse me, excellency, but these details are necessary, and +you promised to be patient." +"Go on I will keep my word." +"One day we received a letter. I should tell you that we +lived in the little village of Rogliano, at the extremity of +Cape Corso. This letter was from my brother. He told us that +the army was disbanded, and that he should return by +Chateauroux, ClermontFerrand, Le Puy, and Nimes and, if I +had any money, he prayed me to leave it for him at Nimes, +with an innkeeper with whom I had dealings." +"In the smuggling line?" said Monte Cristo. +"Eh, your excellency? Every one must live." +"Certainly go on." +"I loved my brother tenderly, as I told your excellency, and +I resolved not to send the money, but to take it to him +myself. I possessed a thousand francs. I left five hundred +with Assunta, my sisterinlaw, and with the other five +hundred I set off for Nimes. It was easy to do so, and as I +had my boat and a lading to take in at sea, everything +favored my project. But, after we had taken in our cargo, +the wind became contrary, so that we were four or five days +without being able to enter the Rhone. At last, however, we +succeeded, and worked up to Arles. I left the boat between +Bellegarde and Beaucaire, and took the road to Nimes." +"We are getting to the story now?" +"Yes, your excellency excuse me, but, as you will see, I +only tell you what is absolutely necessary. Just at this +time the famous massacres took place in the south of France. +Three brigands, called Trestaillon, Truphemy, and Graffan, +publicly assassinated everybody whom they suspected of +Bonapartism. You have doubtless heard of these massacres, +your excellency?" +"Vaguely I was far from France at that period. Go on." +"As I entered Nimes, I literally waded in blood at every +step you encountered dead bodies and bands of murderers, who +killed, plundered, and burned. At the sight of this +slaughter and devastation I became terrified, not for myself +for I, a simple Corsican fisherman, had nothing to fear +on the contrary, that time was most favorable for us +smugglers but for my brother, a soldier of the empire, +returning from the army of the Loire, with his uniform and +his epaulets, there was everything to apprehend. I hastened +to the innkeeper. My misgivings had been but too true. My +brother had arrived the previous evening at Nimes, and, at +the very door of the house where he was about to demand +hospitality, he had been assassinated. I did all in my power +to discover the murderers, but no one durst tell me their +names, so much were they dreaded. I then thought of that +French justice of which I had heard so much, and which +feared nothing, and I went to the king's attorney." +"And this king's attorney was named Villefort?" asked Monte +Cristo carelessly. +"Yes, your excellency he came from Marseilles, where he had +been deputyprocureur. His zeal had procured him +advancement, and he was said to be one of the first who had +informed the government of the departure from the Island of +Elba." +"Then," said Monte Cristo "you went to him?" +""Monsieur,' I said, "my brother was assassinated yesterday +in the streets of Nimes, I know not by whom, but it is your +duty to find out. You are the representative of justice +here, and it is for justice to avenge those she has been +unable to protect.' "Who was your brother?' asked he. +"A lieutenant in the Corsican battalion.' "A soldier of +the usurper, then?' "A soldier of the French army.' +"Well,' replied he, "he has smitten with the sword, and he +has perished by the sword.' "You are mistaken, monsieur,' +I replied "he has perished by the poniard.' "What do you +want me to do?' asked the magistrate. "I have already +told you avenge him.' "On whom?' "On his +murderers.' "How should I know who they are?' "Order +them to be sought for.' "Why, your brother has been +involved in a quarrel, and killed in a duel. All these old +soldiers commit excesses which were tolerated in the time of +the emperor, but which are not suffered now, for the people +here do not like soldiers of such disorderly conduct.' +"Monsieur,' I replied, "it is not for myself that I entreat +your interference I should grieve for him or avenge him, +but my poor brother had a wife, and were anything to happen +to me, the poor creature would perish from want, for my +brother's pay alone kept her. Pray, try and obtain a small +government pension for her.' +""Every revolution has its catastrophes,' returned M. de +Villefort "your brother has been the victim of this. It is +a misfortune, and government owes nothing to his family. If +we are to judge by all the vengeance that the followers of +the usurper exercised on the partisans of the king, when, in +their turn, they were in power, your brother would be +today, in all probability, condemned to death. What has +happened is quite natural, and in conformity with the law of +reprisals.' "What,' cried I, "do you, a magistrate, speak +thus to me?' "All these Corsicans are mad, on my honor,' +replied M. de Villefort "they fancy that their countryman +is still emperor. You have mistaken the time, you should +have told me this two months ago, it is too late now. Go +now, at once, or I shall have you put out.' +"I looked at him an instant to see if there was anything to +hope from further entreaty. But he was a man of stone. I +approached him, and said in a low voice, "Well, since you +know the Corsicans so well, you know that they always keep +their word. You think that it was a good deed to kill my +brother, who was a Bonapartist, because you are a royalist. +Well, I, who am a Bonapartist also, declare one thing to +you, which is, that I will kill you. From this moment I +declare the vendetta against you, so protect yourself as +well as you can, for the next time we meet your last hour +has come.' And before he had recovered from his surprise, I +opened the door and left the room." +"Well, well," said Monte Cristo, "such an innocent looking +person as you are to do those things, M. Bertuccio, and to a +king's attorney at that But did he know what was meant by +the terrible word "vendetta'?" +"He knew so well, that from that moment he shut himself in +his house, and never went out unattended, seeking me high +and low. Fortunately, I was so well concealed that he could +not find me. Then he became alarmed, and dared not stay any +longer at Nimes, so he solicited a change of residence, and, +as he was in reality very influential, he was nominated to +Versailles. But, as you know, a Corsican who has sworn to +avenge himself cares not for distance, so his carriage, fast +as it went, was never above half a day's journey before me, +who followed him on foot. The most important thing was, not +to kill him only for I had an opportunity of doing so a +hundred times but to kill him without being discovered +at least, without being arrested. I no longer belonged to +myself, for I had my sisterinlaw to protect and provide +for. For three months I watched M. de Villefort, for three +months he took not a step outofdoors without my following +him. At length I discovered that he went mysteriously to +Auteuil. I followed him thither, and I saw him enter the +house where we now are, only, instead of entering by the +great door that looks into the street, he came on horseback, +or in his carriage, left the one or the other at the little +inn, and entered by the gate you see there." Monte Cristo +made a sign with his head to show that he could discern in +the darkness the door to which Bertuccio alluded. "As I had +nothing more to do at Versailles, I went to Auteuil, and +gained all the information I could. If I wished to surprise +him, it was evident this was the spot to lie in wait for +him. The house belonged, as the concierge informed your +excellency, to M. de SaintMeran, Villefort's fatherinlaw. +M. de SaintMeran lived at Marseilles, so that this country +house was useless to him, and it was reported to be let to a +young widow, known only by the name of "the baroness.' +"One evening, as I was looking over the wall, I saw a young +and handsome woman who was walking alone in that garden, +which was not overlooked by any windows, and I guessed that +she was awaiting M. de Villefort. When she was sufficiently +near for me to distinguish her features, I saw she was from +eighteen to nineteen, tall and very fair. As she had a loose +muslin dress on and as nothing concealed her figure, I saw +she would ere long become a mother. A few moments after, the +little door was opened and a man entered. The young woman +hastened to meet him. They threw themselves into each +other's arms, embraced tenderly, and returned together to +the house. The man was M. de Villefort I fully believed +that when he went out in the night he would be forced to +traverse the whole of the garden alone." +"And," asked the count, "did you ever know the name of this +woman?" +"No, excellency," returned Bertuccio "you will see that I +had no time to learn it." +"Go on." +"That evening," continued Bertuccio, "I could have killed +the procureur, but as I was not sufficiently acquainted with +the neighborhood, I was fearful of not killing him on the +spot, and that if his cries were overheard I might be taken +so I put it off until the next occasion, and in order that +nothing should escape me, I took a chamber looking into the +street bordered by the wall of the garden. Three days after, +about seven o'clock in the evening, I saw a servant on +horseback leave the house at full gallop, and take the road +to Sevres. I concluded that he was going to Versailles, and +I was not deceived. Three hours later, the man returned +covered with dust, his errand was performed, and two minutes +after, another man on foot, muffled in a mantle, opened the +little door of the garden, which he closed after him. I +descended rapidly although I had not seen Villefort's face, +I recognized him by the beating of my heart. I crossed the +street, and stopped at a post placed at the angle of the +wall, and by means of which I had once before looked into +the garden. This time I did not content myself with looking, +but I took my knife out of my pocket, felt that the point +was sharp, and sprang over the wall. My first care was to +run to the door he had left the key in it, taking the +simple precaution of turning it twice in the lock. Nothing, +then, preventing my escape by this means, I examined the +grounds. The garden was long and narrow a stretch of smooth +turf extended down the middle, and at the corners were +clumps of trees with thick and massy foliage, that made a +background for the shrubs and flowers. In order to go from +the door to the house, or from the house to the door, M. de +Villefort would be obliged to pass by one of these clumps of +trees. +"It was the end of September the wind blew violently. The +faint glimpses of the pale moon, hidden momentarily by +masses of dark clouds that were sweeping across the sky, +whitened the gravel walks that led to the house, but were +unable to pierce the obscurity of the thick shrubberies, in +which a man could conceal himself without any fear of +discovery. I hid myself in the one nearest to the path +Villefort must take, and scarcely was I there when, amidst +the gusts of wind, I fancied I heard groans but you know, +or rather you do not know, your excellency, that he who is +about to commit an assassination fancies that he hears low +cries perpetually ringing in his ears. Two hours passed +thus, during which I imagined I heard moans repeatedly. +Midnight struck. As the last stroke died away, I saw a faint +light shine through the windows of the private staircase by +which we have just descended. The door opened, and the man +in the mantle reappeared. The terrible moment had come, but +I had so long been prepared for it that my heart did not +fail in the least. I drew my knife from my pocket again, +opened it, and made ready to strike. The man in the mantle +advanced towards me, but as he drew near I saw that he had a +weapon in his hand. I was afraid, not of a struggle, but of +a failure. When he was only a few paces from me, I saw that +what I had taken for a weapon was only a spade. I was still +unable to divine for what reason M. de Villefort had this +spade in his hands, when he stopped close to the thicket +where I was, glanced round, and began to dig a hole in the +earth. I then perceived that he was hiding something under +his mantle, which he laid on the grass in order to dig more +freely. Then, I confess, curiosity mingled with hatred I +wished to see what Villefort was going to do there, and I +remained motionless, holding my breath. Then an idea crossed +my mind, which was confirmed when I saw the procureur lift +from under his mantle a box, two feet long, and six or eight +inches deep. I let him place the box in the hole he had +made, then, while he stamped with his feet to remove all +traces of his occupation, I rushed on him and plunged my +knife into his breast, exclaiming, "I am Giovanni +Bertuccio thy death for my brother's thy treasure for his +widow thou seest that my vengeance is more complete than I +had hoped.' I know not if he heard these words I think he +did not, for he fell without a cry. I felt his blood gush +over my face, but I was intoxicated, I was delirious, and +the blood refreshed, instead of burning me. In a second I +had disinterred the box then, that it might not be known I +had done so, I filled up the hole, threw the spade over the +wall, and rushed through the door, which I doublelocked, +carrying off the key." +"Ah," said Monte Cristo "it seems to me this was nothing but +murder and robbery." +"No, your excellency," returned Bertuccio "it was a +vendetta followed by restitution." +"And was the sum a large one?" +"It was not money." +"Ah, I recollect," replied the count "did you not say +something of an infant?" +"Yes, excellency I hastened to the river, sat down on the +bank, and with my knife forced open the lock of the box. In +a fine linen cloth was wrapped a newborn child. Its purple +visage, and its violetcolored hands showed that it had +perished from suffocation, but as it was not yet cold, I +hesitated to throw it into the water that ran at my feet. +After a moment I fancied that I felt a slight pulsation of +the heart, and as I had been assistant at the hospital at +Bastia, I did what a doctor would have done I inflated +the lungs by blowing air into them, and at the expiration of +a quarter of an hour, it began to breathe, and cried feebly. +In my turn I uttered a cry, but a cry of joy. "God has not +cursed me then,' I cried, "since he permits me to save the +life of a human creature, in exchange for the life I have +taken away.'" +"And what did you do with the child?" asked Monte Cristo. +"It was an embarrassing load for a man seeking to escape." +"I had not for a moment the idea of keeping it, but I knew +that at Paris there was an asylum where they receive such +creatures. As I passed the city gates I declared that I had +found the child on the road, and I inquired where the asylum +was the box confirmed my statement, the linen proved that +the infant belonged to wealthy parents, the blood with which +I was covered might have proceeded from the child as well as +from any one else. No objection was raised, but they pointed +out the asylum, which was situated at the upper end of the +Rue d'Enfer, and after having taken the precaution of +cutting the linen in two pieces, so that one of the two +letters which marked it was on the piece wrapped around the +child, while the other remained in my possession, I rang the +bell, and fled with all speed. A fortnight after I was at +Rogliano, and I said to Assunta, "Console thyself, +sister Israel is dead, but he is avenged.' She demanded +what I meant, and when I had told her all, "Giovanni,' +said she, "you should have brought this child with you we +would have replaced the parents it has lost, have called it +Benedetto, and then, in consequence of this good action, God +would have blessed us.' In reply I gave her the half of the +linen I had kept in order to reclaim him if we became rich." +"What letters were marked on the linen?" said Monte Cristo. +"An H and an N, surmounted by a baron's coronet." +"By heaven, M. Bertuccio, you make use of heraldic terms +where did you study heraldry?" +"In your service, excellency, where everything is learned." +"Go on, I am curious to know two things." +"What are they, your excellency ?" +"What became of this little boy? for I think you told me it +was a boy, M. Bertuccio." +"No excellency, I do not recollect telling you that." +"I thought you did I must have been mistaken." +"No, you were not, for it was in reality a little boy. But +your excellency wished to know two things what was the +second?" +"The second was the crime of which you were accused when you +asked for a confessor, and the Abbe Busoni came to visit you +at your request in the prison at Nimes." +"The story will be very long, excellency." +"What matter? you know I take but little sleep, and I do not +suppose you are very much inclined for it either." Bertuccio +bowed, and resumed his story. +"Partly to drown the recollections of the past that haunted +me, partly to supply the wants of the poor widow, I eagerly +returned to my trade of smuggler, which had become more easy +since that relaxation of the laws which always follows a +revolution. The southern districts were illwatched in +particular, in consequence of the disturbances that were +perpetually breaking out in Avignon, Nimes, or Uzes. We +profited by this respite on the part of the government to +make friends everywhere. Since my brother's assassination in +the streets of Nimes, I had never entered the town the +result was that the innkeeper with whom we were connected, +seeing that we would no longer come to him, was forced to +come to us, and had established a branch to his inn, on the +road from Bellegarde to Beaucaire, at the sign of the Pont +du Gard. We had thus, at AiguesMortes, Martigues, or Bouc, +a dozen places where we left our goods, and where, in case +of necessity, we concealed ourselves from the gendarmes and +customhouse officers. Smuggling is a profitable trade, when +a certain degree of vigor and intelligence is employed as +for myself, brought up in the mountains, I had a double +motive for fearing the gendarmes and customhouse officers, +as my appearance before the judges would cause an inquiry, +and an inquiry always looks back into the past. And in my +past life they might find something far more grave than the +selling of smuggled cigars, or barrels of brandy without a +permit. So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the +most astonishing deeds, and which, more than once, showed me +that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only +obstacle to the success of those projects which require +rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution. In +reality, when you have once devoted your life to your +enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, +rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever +has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources +doubled." +"Philosophy, M. Bertuccio," interrupted the Count "you have +done a little of everything in your life." +"Oh, excellency," +"No, no but philosophy at halfpast ten at night is +somewhat late yet I have no other observation to make, for +what you say is correct, which is more than can be said for +all philosophy." +"My journeys became more and more extensive and more +productive. Assunta took care of all, and our little fortune +increased. One day as I was setting off on an expedition, +"Go,' said she "at your return I will give you a surprise.' +I questioned her, but in vain she would tell me nothing, +and I departed. Our expedition lasted nearly six weeks we +had been to Lucca to take in oil, to Leghorn for English +cottons, and we ran our cargo without opposition, and +returned home full of joy. When I entered the house, the +first thing I beheld in the middle of Assunta's chamber was +a cradle that might be called sumptuous compared with the +rest of the furniture, and in it a baby seven or eight +months old. I uttered a cry of joy the only moments of +sadness I had known since the assassination of the procureur +were caused by the recollection that I had abandoned this +child. For the assassination itself I had never felt any +remorse. Poor Assunta had guessed all. She had profited by +my absence, and furnished with the half of the linen, and +having written down the day and hour at which I had +deposited the child at the asylum, had set off for Paris, +and had reclaimed it. No objection was raised, and the +infant was given up to her. Ah, I confess, your excellency, +when I saw this poor creature sleeping peacefully in its +cradle, I felt my eyes filled with tears. "Ah, Assunta,' +cried I, "you are an excellent woman, and heaven will bless +you.'" +"This," said Monte Cristo, "is less correct than your +philosophy, it is only faith." +"Alas, your excellency is right," replied Bertuccio, "and +God made this infant the instrument of our punishment. Never +did a perverse nature declare itself more prematurely, and +yet it was not owing to any fault in his bringing up. He was +a most lovely child, with large blue eyes, of that deep +color that harmonizes so well with the blond complexion +only his hair, which was too light, gave his face a most +singular expression, and added to the vivacity of his look, +and the malice of his smile. Unfortunately, there is a +proverb which says that "red is either altogether good or +altogether bad.' The proverb was but too correct as regarded +Benedetto, and even in his infancy he manifested the worst +disposition. It is true that the indulgence of his +fostermother encouraged him. This child, for whom my poor +sister would go to the town, five or six leagues off, to +purchase the earliest fruits and the most tempting +sweetmeats, preferred to Palma grapes or Genoese preserves, +the chestnuts stolen from a neighbor's orchard, or the dried +apples in his loft, when he could eat as well of the nuts +and apples that grew in my garden. One day, when Benedetto +was about five or six, our neighbor Vasilio, who, according +to the custom of the country, never locked up his purse or +his valuables for, as your excellency knows, there are no +thieves in Corsica complained that he had lost a louis +out of his purse we thought he must have made a mistake in +counting his money, but he persisted in the accuracy of his +statement. One day, Benedetto, who had been gone from the +house since morning, to our great anxiety, did not return +until late in the evening, dragging a monkey after him, +which he said he had found chained to the foot of a tree. +For more than a month past, the mischievous child, who knew +not what to wish for, had taken it into his head to have a +monkey. A boatman, who had passed by Rogliano, and who had +several of these animals, whose tricks had greatly diverted +him, had, doubtless, suggested this idea to him. "Monkeys +are not found in our woods chained to trees,' said I +"confess how you obtained this animal.' Benedetto maintained +the truth of what he had said, and accompanied it with +details that did more honor to his imagination than to his +veracity. I became angry he began to laugh, I threatened to +strike him, and he made two steps backwards. "You cannot +beat me,' said he "you have no right, for you are not my +father.' +"We never knew who had revealed this fatal secret, which we +had so carefully concealed from him however, it was this +answer, in which the child's whole character revealed +itself, that almost terrified me, and my arm fell without +touching him. The boy triumphed, and this victory rendered +him so audacious, that all the money of Assunta, whose +affection for him seemed to increase as he became more +unworthy of it, was spent in caprices she knew not how to +contend against, and follies she had not the courage to +prevent. When I was at Rogliano everything went on properly, +but no sooner was my back turned than Benedetto became +master, and everything went ill. When he was only eleven, he +chose his companions from among the young men of eighteen or +twenty, the worst characters in Bastia, or, indeed, in +Corsica, and they had already, for some mischievous pranks, +been several times threatened with a prosecution. I became +alarmed, as any prosecution might be attended with serious +consequences. I was compelled, at this period, to leave +Corsica on an important expedition I reflected for a long +time, and with the hope of averting some impending +misfortune, I resolved that Benedetto should accompany me. I +hoped that the active and laborious life of a smuggler, with +the severe discipline on board, would have a salutary effect +on his character, which was now wellnigh, if not quite, +corrupt. I spoke to Benedetto alone, and proposed to him to +accompany me, endeavoring to tempt him by all the promises +most likely to dazzle the imagination of a child of twelve. +He heard me patiently, and when I had finished, burst out +laughing. +""Are you mad, uncle?' he called me by this name when he +was in good humor "do you think I am going to change the +life I lead for your mode of existence my agreeable +indolence for the hard and precarious toil you impose on +yourself, exposed to the bitter frost at night, and the +scorching heat by day, compelled to conceal yourself, and +when you are perceived, receive a volley of bullets, all to +earn a paltry sum? Why, I have as much money as I want +mother Assunta always furnishes me when I ask for it You +see that I should be a fool to accept your offer.' The +arguments, and his audacity, perfectly stupefied me. +Benedetto rejoined his associates, and I saw him from a +distance point me out to them as a fool." +"Sweet child," murmured Monte Cristo. +"Oh, had he been my own son," replied Bertuccio, "or even my +nephew, I would have brought him back to the right road, for +the knowledge that you are doing your duty gives you +strength, but the idea that I was striking a child whose +father I had killed, made it impossible for me to punish +him. I gave my sister, who constantly defended the +unfortunate boy, good advice, and as she confessed that she +had several times missed money to a considerable amount, I +showed her a safe place in which to conceal our little +treasure for the future. My mind was already made up. +Benedetto could read, write, and cipher perfectly, for when +the fit seized him, he learned more in a day than others in +a week. My intention was to enter him as a clerk in some +ship, and without letting him know anything of my plan, to +convey him some morning on board by this means his future +treatment would depend upon his own conduct. I set off for +France, after having fixed upon the plan. Our cargo was to +be landed in the Gulf of Lyons, and this was a difficult +thing to do because it was then the year . The most +perfect tranquillity was restored, and the vigilance of the +customhouse officers was redoubled, and their strictness +was increased at this time, in consequence of the fair at +Beaucaire. +"Our expedition made a favorable beginning. We anchored our +vessel which had a double hold, where our goods were +concealed amidst a number of other vessels that bordered +the banks of the Rhone from Beaucaire to Arles. On our +arrival we began to discharge our cargo in the night, and to +convey it into the town, by the help of the innkeeper with +whom we were connected. Whether success rendered us +imprudent, or whether we were betrayed, I know not but one +evening, about five o'clock, our little cabinboy came +breathlessly, to inform us that he had seen a detachment of +customhouse officers advancing in our direction. It was not +their proximity that alarmed us, for detachments were +constantly patrolling along the banks of the Rhone, but the +care, according to the boy's account, that they took to +avoid being seen. In an instant we were on the alert, but it +was too late our vessel was surrounded, and amongst the +customhouse officers I observed several gendarmes, and, as +terrified at the sight of their uniforms as I was brave at +the sight of any other, I sprang into the hold, opened a +port, and dropped into the river, dived, and only rose at +intervals to breathe, until I reached a ditch that had +recently been made from the Rhone to the canal that runs +from Beaucaire to AiguesMortes. I was now safe, for I could +swim along the ditch without being seen, and I reached the +canal in safety. I had designedly taken this direction. I +have already told your excellency of an innkeeper from +Nimes who had set up a little tavern on the road from +Bellegarde to Beaucaire." +"Yes," said Monte Cristo "I perfectly recollect him I think +he was your colleague." +"Precisely," answered Bertuccio "but he had, seven or eight +years before this period, sold his establishment to a tailor +at Marseilles, who, having almost ruined himself in his old +trade, wished to make his fortune in another. Of course, we +made the same arrangements with the new landlord that we had +with the old and it was of this man that I intended to ask +shelter." +"What was his name?" inquired the count, who seemed to +become somewhat interested in Bertuccio's story. +"Gaspard Caderousse he had married a woman from the village +of Carconte, and whom we did not know by any other name than +that of her village. She was suffering from malarial fever, +and seemed dying by inches. As for her husband, he was a +strapping fellow of forty, or five and forty, who had more +than once, in time of danger, given ample proof of his +presence of mind and courage." +"And you say," interrupted Monte Cristo "that this took +place towards the year" +", your excellency." +"In what month?" +"June." +"The beginning or the end?" +"The evening of the d." +"Ah," said Monte Cristo "the evening of the d of June, +. Go on." +"It was from Caderousse that I intended demanding shelter, +and, as we never entered by the door that opened onto the +road, I resolved not to break through the rule, so climbing +over the gardenhedge, I crept amongst the olive and wild +fig trees, and fearing that Caderousse might have some +guest, I entered a kind of shed in which I had often passed +the night, and which was only separated from the inn by a +partition, in which holes had been made in order to enable +us to watch an opportunity of announcing our presence. My +intention was, if Caderousse was alone, to acquaint him with +my presence, finish the meal the customhouse officers had +interrupted, and profit by the threatened storm to return to +the Rhone, and ascertain the state of our vessel and its +crew. I stepped into the shed, and it was fortunate I did +so, for at that moment Caderousse entered with a stranger. +"I waited patiently, not to overhear what they said, but +because I could do nothing else besides, the same thing had +occurred often before. The man who was with Caderousse was +evidently a stranger to the South of France he was one of +those merchants who come to sell jewellery at the Beaucaire +fair, and who during the month the fair lasts, and during +which there is so great an influx of merchants and customers +from all parts of Europe, often have dealings to the amount +of , to , francs. Caderousse entered hastily. +Then, seeing that the room was, as usual, empty, and only +guarded by the dog, he called to his wife, "Hello, +Carconte,' said he, "the worthy priest has not deceived us +the diamond is real.' An exclamation of joy was heard, and +the staircase creaked beneath a feeble step. "What do you +say?' asked his wife, pale as death. +""I say that the diamond is real, and that this gentleman, +one of the first jewellers of Paris, will give us , +francs for it. Only, in order to satisfy himself that it +really belongs to us, he wishes you to relate to him, as I +have done already, the miraculous manner in which the +diamond came into our possession. In the meantime please to +sit down, monsieur, and I will fetch you some refreshment.' +The jeweller examined attentively the interior of the inn +and the apparent poverty of the persons who were about to +sell him a diamond that seemed to have come from the casket +of a prince. "Relate your story, madame,' said he, wishing, +no doubt, to profit by the absence of the husband, so that +the latter could not influence the wife's story, to see if +the two recitals tallied. +""Oh,' returned she, "it was a gift of heaven. My husband +was a great friend, in or , of a sailor named +Edmond Dantes. This poor fellow, whom Caderousse had +forgotten, had not forgotten him, and at his death he +bequeathed this diamond to him.' "But how did he obtain +it?' asked the jeweller "had he it before he was +imprisoned?' "No, monsieur but it appears that in prison +he made the acquaintance of a rich Englishman, and as in +prison he fell sick, and Dantes took the same care of him as +if he had been his brother, the Englishman, when he was set +free, gave this stone to Dantes, who, less fortunate, died, +and, in his turn, left it to us, and charged the excellent +abbe, who was here this morning, to deliver it.' "The +same story,' muttered the jeweller "and improbable as it +seemed at first, it may be true. There's only the price we +are not agreed about.' "How not agreed about?' said +Caderousse. "I thought we agreed for the price I asked.' +"That is,' replied the jeweller, "I offered , francs.' +"Forty thousand,' cried La Carconte "we will not part +with it for that sum. The abbe told us it was worth , +without the setting.' +""What was the abbe's name?' asked the indefatigable +questioner. "The Abbe Busoni,' said La Carconte. "He +was a foreigner?' "An Italian, from the neighborhood of +Mantua, I believe.' "Let me see this diamond again,' +replied the jeweller "the first time you are often mistaken +as to the value of a stone.' Caderousse took from his pocket +a small case of black shagreen, opened, and gave it to the +jeweller. At the sight of the diamond, which was as large as +a hazelnut, La Carconte's eyes sparkled with cupidity." +"And what did you think of this fine story, eavesdropper?" +said Monte Cristo "did you credit it?" +"Yes, your excellency. I did not look on Caderousse as a bad +man, and I thought him incapable of committing a crime, or +even a theft." +"That did more honor to your heart than to your experience, +M. Bertuccio. Had you known this Edmond Dantes, of whom they +spoke?" +"No, your excellency, I had never heard of him before, and +never but once afterwards, and that was from the Abbe Busoni +himself, when I saw him in the prison at Nimes." +"Go on." +"The jeweller took the ring, and drawing from his pocket a +pair of steel pliers and a small set of copper scales, he +took the stone out of its setting, and weighed it carefully. +"I will give you ,,' said he, "but not a sou more +besides, as that is the exact value of the stone, I brought +just that sum with me.' "Oh, that's no matter,' replied +Caderousse, "I will go back with you to fetch the other +, francs.' "No,' returned the jeweller, giving back +the diamond and the ring to Caderousse "no, it is worth +no more, and I am sorry I offered so much, for the stone has +a flaw in it, which I had not seen. However, I will not go +back on my word, and I will give ,.' "At least, +replace the diamond in the ring,' said La Carconte sharply. +"Ah, true,' replied the jeweller, and he reset the stone. +"No matter,' observed Caderousse, replacing the box in +his pocket, "some one else will purchase it.' "Yes,' +continued the jeweller "but some one else will not be so +easy as I am, or content himself with the same story. It is +not natural that a man like you should possess such a +diamond. He will inform against you. You will have to find +the Abbe Busoni and abbes who give diamonds worth two +thousand louis are rare. The law would seize it, and put you +in prison if at the end of three or four months you are set +at liberty, the ring will be lost, or a false stone, worth +three francs, will be given you, instead of a diamond worth +, or perhaps , francs from which you must allow +that one runs considerable risk in purchasing.' Caderousse +and his wife looked eagerly at each other. "No,' said +Caderousse, "we are not rich enough to lose , francs.' +"As you please, my dear sir,' said the, jeweller "I had, +however, as you see, brought you the money in bright coin.' +And he drew from his pocket a handful of gold, and held it +sparkling before the dazzled eyes of the innkeeper, and in +the other hand he held a packet of banknotes. +"There was evidently a severe struggle in the mind of +Caderousse it was plain that the small shagreen case, which +he turned over and over in his hand, did not seem to him +commensurate in value to the enormous sum which fascinated +his gaze. He turned towards his wife. "What do you think of +this?' he asked in a low voice. "Let him have it let +him have it,' she said. "If he returns to Beaucaire without +the diamond, he will inform against us, and, as he says, who +knows if we shall ever again see the Abbe Busoni? in all +probability we shall never see him.' "Well, then, so I +will' said Caderousse "so you may have the diamond for +, francs. But my wife wants a gold chain, and I want a +pair of silver buckles.' The jeweller drew from his pocket a +long flat box, which contained several samples of the +articles demanded. "Here,' he said, "I am very +straightforward in my dealings take your choice.' The +woman selected a gold chain worth about five louis, and the +husband a pair of buckles, worth perhaps fifteen francs. +"I hope you will not complain now?' said the jeweller. +""The abbe told me it was worth , francs,' muttered +Caderousse. "Come, come give it to me What a strange +fellow you are,' said the jeweller, taking the diamond from +his hand. "I give you , francs that is, , livres +of income, a fortune such as I wish I had myself, and you +are not satisfied' "And the five and forty thousand +francs,' inquired Caderousse in a hoarse voice, "where are +they? Come let us see them.' "Here they are,' replied +the jeweller, and he counted out upon the table , +francs in gold, and , francs in banknotes. +""Wait while I light the lamp,' said La Carconte "it is +growing dark, and there may be some mistake.' In fact, night +had come on during this conversation, and with night the +storm which had been threatening for the last halfhour. The +thunder growled in the distance but it was apparently not +heard by the jeweller, Caderousse, or La Carconte, absorbed +as they were all three with the demon of gain. I myself +felt a strange kind of fascination at the sight of all this +gold and all these banknotes it seemed to me that I was in +a dream, and, as it always happens in a dream, I felt myself +riveted to the spot. Caderousse counted and again counted +the gold and the notes, then handed them to his wife, who +counted and counted them again in her turn. During this +time, the jeweller made the diamond play and sparkle in the +lamplight, and the gem threw out jets of light which made +him unmindful of those which precursors of the storm +began to play in at the windows. "Well,' inquired the +jeweller, "is the cash all right?' +""Yes,' said Caderousse. "Give me the pocketbook, La +Carconte, and find a bag somewhere.' +"La Carconte went to a cupboard, and returned with an old +leathern pocketbook and a bag. From the former she took +some greasy letters, and put in their place the banknotes, +and from the bag took two or three crowns of six livres +each, which, in all probability, formed the entire fortune +of the miserable couple. "There,' said Caderousse "and now, +although you have wronged us of perhaps , francs, will +you have your supper with us? I invite you with goodwill.' +"Thank you,' replied the jeweller, "it must be getting +late, and I must return to Beaucaire my wife will be +getting uneasy.' He drew out his watch, and exclaimed, +"Morbleu, nearly nine o'clock why, I shall not get back +to Beaucaire before midnight Goodnight, my friends. If the +Abbe Busoni should by any accident return, think of me.' +"In another week you will have left Beaucaire.' remarked +Caderousse, "for the fair ends in a few days.' "True, but +that makes no difference. Write to me at Paris, to M. +Joannes, in the Palais Royal, arcade Pierre, No. . I will +make the journey on purpose to see him, if it is worth +while.' At this moment there was a tremendous clap of +thunder, accompanied by a flash of lightning so vivid, that +it quite eclipsed the light of the lamp. +""See here,' exclaimed Caderousse. "You cannot think of +going out in such weather as this.' "Oh, I am not afraid +of thunder,' said the jeweller. "And then there are +robbers,' said La Carconte. "The road is never very safe +during fair time.' "Oh, as to the robbers,' said Joannes, +"here is something for them,' and he drew from his pocket a +pair of small pistols, loaded to the muzzle. "Here,' said +he, "are dogs who bark and bite at the same time, they are +for the two first who shall have a longing for your diamond, +Friend Caderousse.' +"Caderousse and his wife again interchanged a meaning look. +It seemed as though they were both inspired at the same time +with some horrible thought. "Well, then, a good journey to +you,' said Caderousse. "Thanks,' replied the jeweller. He +then took his cane, which he had placed against an old +cupboard, and went out. At the moment when he opened the +door, such a gust of wind came in that the lamp was nearly +extinguished. "Oh,' said he, "this is very nice weather, and +two leagues to go in such a storm.' "Remain,' said +Caderousse. "You can sleep here.' "Yes do stay,' added +La Carconte in a tremulous voice "we will take every care +of you.' "No I must sleep at Beaucaire. So, once more, +goodnight.' Caderousse followed him slowly to the +threshold. "I can see neither heaven nor earth,' said the +jeweller, who was outside the door. "Do I turn to the right, +or to the left hand?' "To the right,' said Caderousse. +"You cannot go wrong the road is bordered by trees on +both sides.' "Good all right,' said a voice almost +lost in the distance. "Close the door,' said La Carconte "I +do not like open doors when it thunders.' "Particularly +when there is money in the house, eh?' answered Caderousse, +doublelocking the door. +"He came into the room, went to the cupboard, took out the +bag and pocketbook, and both began, for the third time, to +count their gold and banknotes. I never saw such an +expression of cupidity as the flickering lamp revealed in +those two countenances. The woman, especially, was hideous +her usual feverish tremulousness was intensified, her +countenance had become livid, and her eyes resembled burning +coals. "Why,' she inquired in a hoarse voice, "did you +invite him to sleep here tonight?' "Why?' said +Caderousse with a shudder "why, that he might not have the +trouble of returning to Beaucaire.' "Ah,' responded the +woman, with an expression impossible to describe "I thought +it was for something else.' "Woman, woman why do you +have such ideas?' cried Caderousse "or, if you have them, +why don't you keep them to yourself?' "Well,' said La +Carconte, after a moment's pause, "you are not a man.' +"What do you mean?' added Caderousse. "If you had been a +man, you would not have let him go from here.' "Woman' +"Or else he should not have reached Beaucaire.' +"Woman' "The road takes a turn he is obliged to +follow it while alongside of the canal there is a shorter +road.' "Woman you offend the good God. There +listen' And at this moment there was a tremendous peal of +thunder, while the livid lightning illumined the room, and +the thunder, rolling away in the distance, seemed to +withdraw unwillingly from the cursed abode. "Mercy' said +Caderousse, crossing himself. +At the same moment, and in the midst of the terrifying +silence which usually follows a clap of thunder, they heard +a knocking at the door. Caderousse and his wife started and +looked aghast at each other. "Who's there?' cried +Caderousse, rising, and drawing up in a heap the gold and +notes scattered over the table, and which he covered with +his two hands. "It is I,' shouted a voice. "And who +are you?' "Eh, pardieu, Joannes, the jeweller.' "Well, +and you said I offended the good God,' said La Carconte with +a horrid smile. "Why, the good God sends him back again.' +Caderousse sank pale and breathless into his chair. La +Carconte, on the contrary, rose, and going with a firm step +towards the door, opened it, saying, as she did so "Come +in, dear M. Joannes.' "Ma foi,' said the jeweller, +drenched with rain, "I am not destined to return to +Beaucaire tonight. The shortest follies are best, my dear +Caderousse. You offered me hospitality, and I accept it, and +have returned to sleep beneath your friendly roof.' +Caderousse stammered out something, while he wiped away the +sweat that started to his brow. La Carconte doublelocked +the door behind the jeweller. +Chapter +The Rain of Blood. +"As the jeweller returned to the apartment, he cast around +him a scrutinizing glance but there was nothing to excite +suspicion, if it did not exist, or to confirm it, if it were +already awakened. Caderousse's hands still grasped the gold +and banknotes, and La Carconte called up her sweetest +smiles while welcoming the reappearance of their guest. +"Well, well,' said the jeweller, "you seem, my good friends, +to have had some fears respecting the accuracy of your +money, by counting it over so carefully directly I was +gone.' "Oh, no,' answered Caderousse, "that was not my +reason, I can assure you but the circumstances by which we +have become possessed of this wealth are so unexpected, as +to make us scarcely credit our good fortune, and it is only +by placing the actual proof of our riches before our eyes +that we can persuade ourselves that the whole affair is not +a dream.' The jeweller smiled. "Have you any other guests +in your house?' inquired he. "Nobody but ourselves,' +replied Caderousse "the fact is, we do not lodge travellers +indeed, our tavern is so near the town, that nobody would +think of stopping here. "Then I am afraid I shall very +much inconvenience you.' "Inconvenience us? Not at all, +my dear sir,' said La Carconte in her most gracious manner. +"Not at all, I assure you.' "But where will you manage to +stow me?' "In the chamber overhead.' "Surely that is +where you yourselves sleep?' "Never mind that we have a +second bed in the adjoining room.' Caderousse stared at his +wife with much astonishment. +"The jeweller, meanwhile, was humming a song as he stood +warming his back at the fire La Carconte had kindled to dry +the wet garments of her guest and this done, she next +occupied herself in arranging his supper, by spreading a +napkin at the end of the table, and placing on it the +slender remains of their dinner, to which she added three or +four freshlaid eggs. Caderousse had once more parted with +his treasure the banknotes were replaced in the +pocketbook, the gold put back into the bag, and the whole +carefully locked in the cupboard. He then began pacing the +room with a pensive and gloomy air, glancing from time to +time at the jeweller, who stood reeking with the steam from +his wet clothes, and merely changing his place on the warm +hearth, to enable the whole of his garments to be dried. +""There,' said La Carconte, as she placed a bottle of wine +on the table, "supper is ready whenever you are.' "And +you?' asked Joannes. "I don't want any supper,' said +Caderousse. "We dined so very late,' hastily interposed +La Carconte. "Then it seems I am to eat alone,' remarked +the jeweller. "Oh, we shall have the pleasure of waiting +upon you,' answered La Carconte, with an eager attention she +was not accustomed to manifest even to guests who paid for +what they took. +"From time to time Caderousse darted on his wife keen, +searching glances, but rapid as the lightning flash. The +storm still continued. "There, there,' said La Carconte "do +you hear that? upon my word, you did well to come back.' +"Nevertheless,' replied the jeweller, "if by the time I have +finished my supper the tempest has at all abated, I shall +make another start.' "It's the mistral,' said Caderousse, +"and it will be sure to last till tomorrow morning.' He +sighed heavily. "Well,' said the jeweller, as he placed +himself at table, "all I can say is, so much the worse for +those who are abroad.' "Yes,' chimed in La Carconte, +"they will have a wretched night of it.' +"The jeweller began eating his supper, and the woman, who +was ordinarily so querulous and indifferent to all who +approached her, was suddenly transformed into the most +smiling and attentive hostess. Had the unhappy man on whom +she lavished her assiduities been previously acquainted with +her, so sudden an alteration might well have excited +suspicion in his mind, or at least have greatly astonished +him. Caderousse, meanwhile, continued to pace the room in +gloomy silence, sedulously avoiding the sight of his guest +but as soon as the stranger had completed his repast, the +agitated innkeeper went eagerly to the door and opened it. +"I believe the storm is over,' said he. But as if to +contradict his statement, at that instant a violent clap of +thunder seemed to shake the house to its very foundation, +while a sudden gust of wind, mingled with rain, extinguished +the lamp he held in his hand. Trembling and awestruck, +Caderousse hastily shut the door and returned to his guest, +while La Carconte lighted a candle by the smouldering ashes +that glimmered on the hearth. "You must be tired,' said she +to the jeweller "I have spread a pair of white sheets on +your bed go up when you are ready, and sleep well.' +"Joannes stayed for a while to see whether the storm seemed +to abate in its fury, but a brief space of time sufficed to +assure him that, instead of diminishing, the violence of the +rain and thunder momentarily increased resigning himself, +therefore, to what seemed inevitable, he bade his host +goodnight, and mounted the stairs. He passed over my head +and I heard the flooring creak beneath his footsteps. The +quick, eager glance of La Carconte followed him as he +ascended, while Caderousse, on the contrary, turned his +back, and seemed most anxiously to avoid even glancing at +him. +"All these circumstances did not strike me as painfully at +the time as they have since done in fact, all that had +happened with the exception of the story of the diamond, +which certainly did wear an air of improbability, appeared +natural enough, and called for neither apprehension nor +mistrust but, worn out as I was with fatigue, and fully +purposing to proceed onwards directly the tempest abated, I +determined to obtain a few hours' sleep. Overhead I could +accurately distinguish every movement of the jeweller, who, +after making the best arrangements in his power for passing +a comfortable night, threw himself on his bed, and I could +hear it creak and groan beneath his weight. Insensibly my +eyelids grew heavy, deep sleep stole over me, and having no +suspicion of anything wrong, I sought not to shake it off. I +looked into the kitchen once more and saw Caderousse sitting +by the side of a long table upon one of the low wooden +stools which in country places are frequently used instead +of chairs his back was turned towards me, so that I could +not see the expression of his countenance neither should +I have been able to do so had he been placed differently, as +his head was buried between his two hands. La Carconte +continued to gaze on him for some time, then shrugging her +shoulders, she took her seat immediately opposite to him. At +this moment the expiring embers threw up a fresh flame from +the kindling of a piece of wood that lay near, and a bright +light flashed over the room. La Carconte still kept her eyes +fixed on her husband, but as he made no sign of changing his +position, she extended her hard, bony hand, and touched him +on the forehead. +"Caderousse shuddered. The woman's lips seemed to move, as +though she were talking but because she merely spoke in an +undertone, or my senses were dulled by sleep, I did not +catch a word she uttered. Confused sights and sounds seemed +to float before me, and gradually I fell into a deep, heavy +slumber. How long I had been in this unconscious state I +know not, when I was suddenly aroused by the report of a +pistol, followed by a fearful cry. Weak and tottering +footsteps resounded across the chamber above me, and the +next instant a dull, heavy weight seemed to fall powerless +on the staircase. I had not yet fully recovered +consciousness, when again I heard groans, mingled with +halfstifled cries, as if from persons engaged in a deadly +struggle. A cry more prolonged than the others and ending in +a series of groans effectually roused me from my drowsy +lethargy. Hastily raising myself on one arm, I looked +around, but all was dark and it seemed to me as if the rain +must have penetrated through the flooring of the room above, +for some kind of moisture appeared to fall, drop by drop, +upon my forehead, and when I passed my hand across my brow, +I felt that it was wet and clammy. +"To the fearful noises that had awakened me had succeeded +the most perfect silence unbroken, save by the footsteps +of a man walking about in the chamber above. The staircase +creaked, he descended into the room below, approached the +fire and lit a candle. The man was Caderousse he was pale +and his shirt was all blood. Having obtained the light, he +hurried upstairs again, and once more I heard his rapid and +uneasy footsteps. A moment later he came down again, holding +in his hand the small shagreen case, which he opened, to +assure himself it contained the diamond, seemed to +hesitate as to which pocket he should put it in, then, as if +dissatisfied with the security of either pocket, he +deposited it in his red handkerchief, which he carefully +rolled round his head. After this he took from his cupboard +the banknotes and gold he had put there, thrust the one +into the pocket of his trousers, and the other into that of +his waistcoat, hastily tied up a small bundle of linen, and +rushing towards the door, disappeared in the darkness of the +night. +"Then all became clear and manifest to me, and I reproached +myself with what had happened, as though I myself had done +the guilty deed. I fancied that I still heard faint moans, +and imagining that the unfortunate jeweller might not be +quite dead, I determined to go to his relief, by way of +atoning in some slight degree, not for the crime I had +committed, but for that which I had not endeavored to +prevent. For this purpose I applied all the strength I +possessed to force an entrance from the cramped spot in +which I lay to the adjoining room. The poorly fastened +boards which alone divided me from it yielded to my efforts, +and I found myself in the house. Hastily snatching up the +lighted candle, I hurried to the staircase about midway a +body was lying quite across the stairs. It was that of La +Carconte. The pistol I had heard had doubtless been fired at +her. The shot had frightfully lacerated her throat, leaving +two gaping wounds from which, as well as the mouth, the +blood was pouring in floods. She was stone dead. I strode +past her, and ascended to the sleeping chamber, which +presented an appearance of the wildest disorder. The +furniture had been knocked over in the deadly struggle that +had taken place there, and the sheets, to which the +unfortunate jeweller had doubtless clung, were dragged +across the room. The murdered man lay on the floor, his head +leaning against the wall, and about him was a pool of blood +which poured forth from three large wounds in his breast +there was a fourth gash, in which a long table knife was +plunged up to the handle. +"I stumbled over some object I stooped to examine it was +the second pistol, which had not gone off, probably from the +powder being wet. I approached the jeweller, who was not +quite dead, and at the sound of my footsteps and the +creaking of the floor, he opened his eyes, fixed them on me +with an anxious and inquiring gaze, moved his lips as though +trying to speak, then, overcome by the effort, fell back and +expired. This appalling sight almost bereft me of my senses, +and finding that I could no longer be of service to any one +in the house, my only desire was to fly. I rushed towards +the staircase, clutching my hair, and uttering a groan of +horror. Upon reaching the room below, I found five or six +customhouse officers, and two or three gendarmes all +heavily armed. They threw themselves upon me. I made no +resistance I was no longer master of my senses. When I +strove to speak, a few inarticulate sounds alone escaped my +lips. +"As I noticed the significant manner in which the whole +party pointed to my bloodstained garments, I involuntarily +surveyed myself, and then I discovered that the thick warm +drops that had so bedewed me as I lay beneath the staircase +must have been the blood of La Carconte. I pointed to the +spot where I had concealed myself. "What does he mean?' +asked a gendarme. One of the officers went to the place I +directed. "He means,' replied the man upon his return, "that +he got in that way' and he showed the hole I had made when +I broke through. +"Then I saw that they took me for the assassin. I recovered +force and energy enough to free myself from the hands of +those who held me, while I managed to stammer forth "I +did not do it Indeed, indeed I did not' A couple of +gendarmes held the muzzles of their carbines against my +breast. "Stir but a step,' said they, "and you are a dead +man.' "Why should you threaten me with death,' cried I, +"when I have already declared my innocence?' "Tush, +tush,' cried the men "keep your innocent stories to tell to +the judge at Nimes. Meanwhile, come along with us and the +best advice we can give you is to do so unresistingly.' +Alas, resistance was far from my thoughts. I was utterly +overpowered by surprise and terror and without a word I +suffered myself to be handcuffed and tied to a horse's tail, +and thus they took me to Nimes. +"I had been tracked by a customsofficer, who had lost sight +of me near the tavern feeling certain that I intended to +pass the night there, he had returned to summon his +comrades, who just arrived in time to hear the report of the +pistol, and to take me in the midst of such circumstantial +proofs of my guilt as rendered all hopes of proving my +innocence utterly futile. One only chance was left me, that +of beseeching the magistrate before whom I was taken to +cause every inquiry to be made for the Abbe Busoni, who had +stopped at the inn of the Pont du Gard on that morning. If +Caderousse had invented the story relative to the diamond, +and there existed no such person as the Abbe Busoni, then, +indeed, I was lost past redemption, or, at least, my life +hung upon the feeble chance of Caderousse himself being +apprehended and confessing the whole truth. Two months +passed away in hopeless expectation on my part, while I must +do the magistrate the justice to say that he used every +means to obtain information of the person I declared could +exculpate me if he would. Caderousse still evaded all +pursuit, and I had resigned myself to what seemed my +inevitable fate. My trial was to come on at the approaching +assizes when, on the th of September that is to say, +precisely three months and five days after the events which +had perilled my life the Abbe Busoni, whom I never +ventured to believe I should see, presented himself at the +prison doors, saying he understood one of the prisoners +wished to speak to him he added, that having learned at +Marseilles the particulars of my imprisonment, he hastened +to comply with my desire. You may easily imagine with what +eagerness I welcomed him, and how minutely I related the +whole of what I had seen and heard. I felt some degree of +nervousness as I entered upon the history of the diamond, +but, to my inexpressible astonishment, he confirmed it in +every particular, and to my equal surprise, he seemed to +place entire belief in all I said. And then it was that, won +by his mild charity, seeing that he was acquainted with all +the habits and customs of my own country, and considering +also that pardon for the only crime of which I was really +guilty might come with a double power from lips so +benevolent and kind, I besought him to receive my +confession, under the seal of which I recounted the Auteuil +affair in all its details, as well as every other +transaction of my life. That which I had done by the impulse +of my best feelings produced the same effect as though it +had been the result of calculation. My voluntary confession +of the assassination at Auteuil proved to him that I had not +committed that of which I stood accused. When he quitted me, +he bade me be of good courage, and to rely upon his doing +all in his power to convince my judges of my innocence. +"I had speedy proofs that the excellent abbe was engaged in +my behalf, for the rigors of my imprisonment were alleviated +by many trifling though acceptable indulgences, and I was +told that my trial was to be postponed to the assizes +following those now being held. In the interim it pleased +providence to cause the apprehension of Caderousse, who was +discovered in some distant country, and brought back to +France, where he made a full confession, refusing to make +the fact of his wife's having suggested and arranged the +murder any excuse for his own guilt. The wretched man was +sentenced to the galleys for life, and I was immediately set +at liberty." +"And then it was, I presume," said Monte Cristo "that you +came to me as the bearer of a letter from the Abbe Busoni?" +"It was, your excellency the benevolent abbe took an +evident interest in all that concerned me. +""Your mode of life as a smuggler,' said he to me one day, +"will be the ruin of you if you get out, don't take it up +again.' "But how,' inquired I, "am I to maintain myself +and my poor sister?' +""A person, whose confessor I am,' replied he, "and who +entertains a high regard for me, applied to me a short time +since to procure him a confidential servant. Would you like +such a post? If so, I will give you a letter of introduction +to him.' "Oh, father,' I exclaimed, "you are very good.' +""But you must swear solemnly that I shall never have reason +to repent my recommendation.' I extended my hand, and was +about to pledge myself by any promise he would dictate, but +he stopped me. "It is unnecessary for you to bind yourself +by any vow,' said he "I know and admire the Corsican nature +too well to fear you. Here, take this,' continued he, after +rapidly writing the few lines I brought to your excellency, +and upon receipt of which you deigned to receive me into +your service, and proudly I ask whether your excellency has +ever had cause to repent having done so?" +"No," replied the count "I take pleasure in saying that you +have served me faithfully, Bertuccio but you might have +shown more confidence in me." +"I, your excellency?" +"Yes you. How comes it, that having both a sister and an +adopted son, you have never spoken to me of either?" +"Alas, I have still to recount the most distressing period +of my life. Anxious as you may suppose I was to behold and +comfort my dear sister, I lost no time in hastening to +Corsica, but when I arrived at Rogliano I found a house of +mourning, the consequences of a scene so horrible that the +neighbors remember and speak of it to this day. Acting by my +advice, my poor sister had refused to comply with the +unreasonable demands of Benedetto, who was continually +tormenting her for money, as long as he believed there was a +sou left in her possession. One morning that he had demanded +money, threatening her with the severest consequences if she +did not supply him with what he desired, he disappeared and +remained away all day, leaving the kindhearted Assunta, who +loved him as if he were her own child, to weep over his +conduct and bewail his absence. Evening came, and still, +with all the patient solicitude of a mother, she watched for +his return. +"As the eleventh hour struck, he entered with a swaggering +air, attended by two of the most dissolute and reckless of +his boon companions. She stretched out her arms to him, but +they seized hold of her, and one of the three none other +than the accursed Benedetto exclaimed, "Put her to +torture and she'll soon tell us where her money is.' +"It unfortunately happened that our neighbor, Vasilio, was +at Bastia, leaving no person in his house but his wife no +human creature beside could hear or see anything that took +place within our dwelling. Two held poor Assunta, who, +unable to conceive that any harm was intended to her, smiled +in the face of those who were soon to become her +executioners. The third proceeded to barricade the doors and +windows, then returned, and the three united in stifling the +cries of terror incited by the sight of these preparations, +and then dragged Assunta feet foremost towards the brazier, +expecting to wring from her an avowal of where her supposed +treasure was secreted. In the struggle her clothes caught +fire, and they were obliged to let go their hold in order to +preserve themselves from sharing the same fate. Covered with +flames, Assunta rushed wildly to the door, but it was +fastened she flew to the windows, but they were also +secured then the neighbors heard frightful shrieks it was +Assunta calling for help. The cries died away in groans, and +next morning, as soon as Vasilio's wife could muster up +courage to venture abroad, she caused the door of our +dwelling to be opened by the public authorities, when +Assunta, although dreadfully burnt, was found still +breathing every drawer and closet in the house had been +forced open, and the money stolen. Benedetto never again +appeared at Rogliano, neither have I since that day either +seen or heard anything concerning him. +"It was subsequently to these dreadful events that I waited +on your excellency, to whom it would have been folly to have +mentioned Benedetto, since all trace of him seemed entirely +lost or of my sister, since she was dead." +"And in what light did you view the occurrence?" inquired +Monte Cristo. +"As a punishment for the crime I had committed," answered +Bertuccio. "Oh, those Villeforts are an accursed race" +"Truly they are," murmured the count in a lugubrious tone. +"And now," resumed Bertuccio, "your excellency may, perhaps, +be able to comprehend that this place, which I revisit for +the first time this garden, the actual scene of my crime +must have given rise to reflections of no very agreeable +nature, and produced that gloom and depression of spirits +which excited the notice of your excellency, who was pleased +to express a desire to know the cause. At this instant a +shudder passes over me as I reflect that possibly I am now +standing on the very grave in which lies M. de Villefort, by +whose hand the ground was dug to receive the corpse of his +child." +"Everything is possible," said Monte Cristo, rising from the +bench on which he had been sitting "even," he added in an +inaudible voice, "even that the procureur be not dead. The +Abbe Busoni did right to send you to me," he went on in his +ordinary tone, "and you have done well in relating to me the +whole of your history, as it will prevent my forming any +erroneous opinions concerning you in future. As for that +Benedetto, who so grossly belied his name, have you never +made any effort to trace out whither he has gone, or what +has become of him?" +"No far from wishing to learn whither he has betaken +himself, I should shun the possibility of meeting him as I +would a wild beast. Thank God, I have never heard his name +mentioned by any person, and I hope and believe he is dead." +"Do not think so, Bertuccio," replied the count "for the +wicked are not so easily disposed of, for God seems to have +them under his special watchcare to make of them +instruments of his vengeance." +"So be it," responded Bertuccio, "all I ask of heaven is +that I may never see him again. And now, your excellency," +he added, bowing his head, "you know everything you are +my judge on earth, as the Almighty is in heaven have you +for me no words of consolation?" +"My good friend, I can only repeat the words addressed to +you by the Abbe Busoni. Villefort merited punishment for +what he had done to you, and, perhaps, to others. Benedetto, +if still living, will become the instrument of divine +retribution in some way or other, and then be duly punished +in his turn. As far as you yourself are concerned, I see but +one point in which you are really guilty. Ask yourself, +wherefore, after rescuing the infant from its living grave, +you did not restore it to its mother? There was the crime, +Bertuccio that was where you became really culpable." +"True, excellency, that was the crime, the real crime, for +in that I acted like a coward. My first duty, directly I had +succeeded in recalling the babe to life, was to restore it +to its mother but, in order to do so, I must have made +close and careful inquiry, which would, in all probability, +have led to my own apprehension and I clung to life, partly +on my sister's account, and partly from that feeling of +pride inborn in our hearts of desiring to come off untouched +and victorious in the execution of our vengeance. Perhaps, +too, the natural and instinctive love of life made me wish +to avoid endangering my own. And then, again, I am not as +brave and courageous as was my poor brother." Bertuccio hid +his face in his hands as he uttered these words, while Monte +Cristo fixed on him a look of inscrutable meaning. After a +brief silence, rendered still more solemn by the time and +place, the count said, in a tone of melancholy wholly unlike +his usual manner, "In order to bring this conversation to a +fitting termination the last we shall ever hold upon this +subject, I will repeat to you some words I have heard from +the lips of the Abbe Busoni. For all evils there are two +remedies time and silence. And now leave me, Monsieur +Bertuccio, to walk alone here in the garden. The very +circumstances which inflict on you, as a principal in the +tragic scene enacted here, such painful emotions, are to me, +on the contrary, a source of something like contentment, and +serve but to enhance the value of this dwelling in my +estimation. The chief beauty of trees consists in the deep +shadow of their umbrageous boughs, while fancy pictures a +moving multitude of shapes and forms flitting and passing +beneath that shade. Here I have a garden laid out in such a +way as to afford the fullest scope for the imagination, and +furnished with thickly grown trees, beneath whose leafy +screen a visionary like myself may conjure up phantoms at +will. This to me, who expected but to find a blank enclosure +surrounded by a straight wall, is, I assure you, a most +agreeable surprise. I have no fear of ghosts, and I have +never heard it said that so much harm had been done by the +dead during six thousand years as is wrought by the living +in a single day. Retire within, Bertuccio, and tranquillize +your mind. Should your confessor be less indulgent to you in +your dying moments than you found the Abbe Busoni, send for +me, if I am still on earth, and I will soothe your ears with +words that shall effectually calm and soothe your parting +soul ere it goes forth to traverse the ocean called +eternity." +Bertuccio bowed respectfully, and turned away, sighing +heavily. Monte Cristo, left alone, took three or four steps +onwards, and murmured, "Here, beneath this planetree, must +have been where the infant's grave was dug. There is the +little door opening into the garden. At this corner is the +private staircase communicating with the sleeping apartment. +There will be no necessity for me to make a note of these +particulars, for there, before my eyes, beneath my feet, all +around me, I have the plan sketched with all the living +reality of truth." After making the tour of the garden a +second time, the count reentered his carriage, while +Bertuccio, who perceived the thoughtful expression of his +master's features, took his seat beside the driver without +uttering a word. The carriage proceeded rapidly towards +Paris. +That same evening, upon reaching his abode in the Champs +Elysees, the Count of Monte Cristo went over the whole +building with the air of one long acquainted with each nook +or corner. Nor, although preceding the party, did he once +mistake one door for another, or commit the smallest error +when choosing any particular corridor or staircase to +conduct him to a place or suite of rooms he desired to +visit. Ali was his principal attendant during this nocturnal +survey. Having given various orders to Bertuccio relative to +the improvements and alterations he desired to make in the +house, the Count, drawing out his watch, said to the +attentive Nubian, "It is halfpast eleven o'clock Haidee +will soon he here. Have the French attendants been summoned +to await her coming?" Ali extended his hands towards the +apartments destined for the fair Greek, which were so +effectually concealed by means of a tapestried entrance, +that it would have puzzled the most curious to have divined +their existence. Ali, having pointed to the apartments, held +up three fingers of his right hand, and then, placing it +beneath his head, shut his eyes, and feigned to sleep. "I +understand," said Monte Cristo, well acquainted with Ali's +pantomime "you mean to tell me that three female attendants +await their new mistress in her sleepingchamber." Ali, with +considerable animation, made a sign in the affirmative. +"Madame will be tired tonight," continued Monte Cristo, +"and will, no doubt, wish to rest. Desire the French +attendants not to weary her with questions, but merely to +pay their respectful duty and retire. You will also see that +the Greek servants hold no communication with those of this +country." He bowed. Just at that moment voices were heard +hailing the concierge. The gate opened, a carriage rolled +down the avenue, and stopped at the steps. The count hastily +descended, presented himself at the already opened carriage +door, and held out his hand to a young woman, completely +enveloped in a green silk mantle heavily embroidered with +gold. She raised the hand extended towards her to her lips, +and kissed it with a mixture of love and respect. Some few +words passed between them in that sonorous language in which +Homer makes his gods converse. The young woman spoke with an +expression of deep tenderness, while the count replied with +an air of gentle gravity. Preceded by Ali, who carried a +rosecolored flambeau in his hand, the newcomer, who was no +other than the lovely Greek who had been Monte Cristo's +companion in Italy, was conducted to her apartments, while +the count retired to the pavilion reserved for himself. In +another hour every light in the house was extinguished, and +it might have been thought that all its inmates slept. +Chapter +Unlimited Credit. +About two o'clock the following day a calash, drawn by a +pair of magnificent English horses, stopped at the door of +Monte Cristo and a person, dressed in a blue coat, with +buttons of a similar color, a white waistcoat, over which +was displayed a massive gold chain, brown trousers, and a +quantity of black hair descending so low over his eyebrows +as to leave it doubtful whether it were not artificial so +little did its jetty glossiness assimilate with the deep +wrinkles stamped on his features a person, in a word, +who, although evidently past fifty, desired to be taken for +not more than forty, bent forwards from the carriage door, +on the panels of which were emblazoned the armorial bearings +of a baron, and directed his groom to inquire at the +porter's lodge whether the Count of Monte Cristo resided +there, and if he were within. While waiting, the occupant of +the carriage surveyed the house, the garden as far as he +could distinguish it, and the livery of servants who passed +to and fro, with an attention so close as to be somewhat +impertinent. His glance was keen but showed cunning rather +than intelligence his lips were straight, and so thin that, +as they closed, they were drawn in over the teeth his +cheekbones were broad and projecting, a neverfailing proof +of audacity and craftiness while the flatness of his +forehead, and the enlargement of the back of his skull, +which rose much higher than his large and coarsely shaped +ears, combined to form a physiognomy anything but +prepossessing, save in the eyes of such as considered that +the owner of so splendid an equipage must needs be all that +was admirable and enviable, more especially when they gazed +on the enormous diamond that glittered in his shirt, and the +red ribbon that depended from his buttonhole. +The groom, in obedience to his orders, tapped at the window +of the porter's lodge, saying, "Pray, does not the Count of +Monte Cristo live here?" +"His excellency does reside here," replied the concierge +"but" added he, glancing an inquiring look at Ali. Ali +returned a sign in the negative. "But what?" asked the +groom. +"His excellency does not receive visitors today." +"Then here is my master's card, the Baron Danglars. You +will take it to the count, and say that, although in haste +to attend the Chamber, my master came out of his way to have +the honor of calling upon him." +"I never speak to his excellency," replied the concierge +"the valet de chambre will carry your message." The groom +returned to the carriage. "Well?" asked Danglars. The man, +somewhat crestfallen by the rebuke he had received, +repeated what the concierge had said. "Bless me," murmured +Baron Danglars, "this must surely be a prince instead of a +count by their styling him "excellency,' and only venturing +to address him by the medium of his valet de chambre. +However, it does not signify he has a letter of credit on +me, so I must see him when he requires his money." +Then, throwing himself back in his carriage, Danglars called +out to his coachman, in a voice that might be heard across +the road, "To the Chamber of Deputies." +Apprised in time of the visit paid him, Monte Cristo had, +from behind the blinds of his pavilion, as minutely observed +the baron, by means of an excellent lorgnette, as Danglars +himself had scrutinized the house, garden, and servants. +"That fellow has a decidedly bad countenance," said the +count in a tone of disgust, as he shut up his glass into its +ivory case. "How comes it that all do not retreat in +aversion at sight of that flat, receding, serpentlike +forehead, round, vultureshaped head, and sharphooked nose, +like the beak of a buzzard? Ali," cried he, striking at the +same time on the brazen gong. Ali appeared. "Summon +Bertuccio," said the count. Almost immediately Bertuccio +entered the apartment. "Did your excellency desire to see +me?" inquired he. "I did," replied the count. "You no doubt +observed the horses standing a few minutes since at the +door?" +"Certainly, your excellency. I noticed them for their +remarkable beauty." +"Then how comes it," said Monte Cristo with a frown, "that, +when I desired you to purchase for me the finest pair of +horses to be found in Paris, there is another pair, fully as +fine as mine, not in my stables?" At the look of +displeasure, added to the angry tone in which the count +spoke, Ali turned pale and held down his head. "It is not +your fault, my good Ali," said the count in the Arabic +language, and with a gentleness none would have thought him +capable of showing, either in voice or face "it is not +your fault. You do not understand the points of English +horses." The countenance of poor Ali recovered its serenity. +"Permit me to assure your excellency," said Bertuccio, "that +the horses you speak of were not to be sold when I purchased +yours." Monte Cristo shrugged his shoulders. "It seems, sir +steward," said he, "that you have yet to learn that all +things are to be sold to such as care to pay the price." +"His excellency is not, perhaps, aware that M. Danglars gave +, francs for his horses?" +"Very well. Then offer him double that sum a banker never +loses an opportunity of doubling his capital." +"Is your excellency really in earnest?" inquired the +steward. Monte Cristo regarded the person who durst presume +to doubt his words with the look of one equally surprised +and displeased. "I have to pay a visit this evening," +replied he. "I desire that these horses, with completely new +harness, may be at the door with my carriage." Bertuccio +bowed, and was about to retire but when he reached the +door, he paused, and then said, "At what o'clock does your +excellency wish the carriage and horses to be ready?" +"At five o'clock," replied the count. +"I beg your excellency's pardon," interposed the steward in +a deprecating manner, "for venturing to observe that it is +already two o'clock." +"I am perfectly aware of that fact," answered Monte Cristo +calmly. Then, turning towards Ali, he said, "Let all the +horses in my stables be led before the windows of your young +lady, that she may select those she prefers for her +carriage. Request her also to oblige me by saying whether it +is her pleasure to dine with me if so, let dinner be served +in her apartments. Now, leave me, and desire my valet de +chambre to come hither." Scarcely had Ali disappeared when +the valet entered the chamber. "Monsieur Baptistin," said +the count, "you have been in my service one year, the time I +generally give myself to judge of the merits or demerits of +those about me. You suit me very well." Baptistin bowed low. +"It only remains for me to know whether I also suit you?" +"Oh, your excellency" exclaimed Baptistin eagerly. +"Listen, if you please, till I have finished speaking," +replied Monte Cristo. "You receive , francs per annum +for your services here more than many a brave subaltern, +who continually risks his life for his country, obtains. You +live in a manner far superior to many clerks who work ten +times harder than you do for their money. Then, though +yourself a servant, you have other servants to wait upon +you, take care of your clothes, and see that your linen is +duly prepared for you. Again, you make a profit upon each +article you purchase for my toilet, amounting in the course +of a year to a sum equalling your wages." +"Nay, indeed, your excellency." +"I am not condemning you for this, Monsieur Baptistin but +let your profits end here. It would be long indeed ere you +would find so lucrative a post as that you have now the good +fortune to fill. I neither illuse nor illtreat my servants +by word or action. An error I readily forgive, but wilful +negligence or forgetfulness, never. My commands are +ordinarily short, clear, and precise and I would rather be +obliged to repeat my words twice, or even three times, than +they should be misunderstood. I am rich enough to know +whatever I desire to know, and I can promise you I am not +wanting in curiosity. If, then, I should learn that you had +taken upon yourself to speak of me to any one favorably or +unfavorably, to comment on my actions, or watch my conduct, +that very instant you would quit my service. You may now +retire. I never caution my servants a second time +remember that." Baptistin bowed, and was proceeding towards +the door. "I forgot to mention to you," said the count, +"that I lay yearly aside a certain sum for each servant in +my establishment those whom I am compelled to dismiss lose +as a matter of course all participation in this money, +while their portion goes to the fund accumulating for those +domestics who remain with me, and among whom it will be +divided at my death. You have been in my service a year, +your fund has already begun to accumulate let it continue +to do so." +This address, delivered in the presence of Ali, who, not +understanding one word of the language in which it was +spoken, stood wholly unmoved, produced an effect on M. +Baptistin only to be conceived by such as have occasion to +study the character and disposition of French domestics. "I +assure your excellency," said he, "that at least it shall be +my study to merit your approbation in all things, and I will +take M. Ali as my model." +"By no means," replied the count in the most frigid tones +"Ali has many faults mixed with most excellent qualities. He +cannot possibly serve you as a pattern for your conduct, not +being, as you are, a paid servant, but a mere slave a +dog, who, should he fail in his duty towards me, I should +not discharge from my service, but kill." Baptistin opened +his eyes with astonishment. +"You seem incredulous," said Monte Cristo, who repeated to +Ali in the Arabic language what he had just been saying to +Baptistin in French. The Nubian smiled assentingly to his +master's words, then, kneeling on one knee, respectfully +kissed the hand of the count. This corroboration of the +lesson he had just received put the finishing stroke to the +wonder and stupefaction of M. Baptistin. The count then +motioned the valet de chambre to retire, and to Ali to +follow to his study, where they conversed long and earnestly +together. As the hand of the clock pointed to five the count +struck thrice upon his gong. When Ali was wanted one stroke +was given, two summoned Baptistin, and three Bertuccio. The +steward entered. "My horses," said Monte Cristo. +"They are at the door harnessed to the carriage as your +excellency desired. Does your excellency wish me to +accompany him?" +"No, the coachman, Ali, and Baptistin will go." The count +descended to the door of his mansion, and beheld his +carriage drawn by the very pair of horses he had so much +admired in the morning as the property of Danglars. As he +passed them he said "They are extremely handsome +certainly, and you have done well to purchase them, although +you were somewhat remiss not to have procured them sooner." +"Indeed, your excellency, I had very considerable difficulty +in obtaining them, and, as it is, they have cost an enormous +price." +"Does the sum you gave for them make the animals less +beautiful," inquired the count, shrugging his shoulders. +"Nay, if your excellency is satisfied, it is all that I +could wish. Whither does your excellency desire to be +driven?" +"To the residence of Baron Danglars, Rue de la Chaussee +d'Antin." This conversation had passed as they stood upon +the terrace, from which a flight of stone steps led to the +carriagedrive. As Bertuccio, with a respectful bow, was +moving away, the count called him back. "I have another +commission for you, M. Bertuccio," said he "I am desirous +of having an estate by the seaside in Normandy for +instance, between Havre and Boulogne. You see I give you a +wide range. It will be absolutely necessary that the place +you may select have a small harbor, creek, or bay, into +which my corvette can enter and remain at anchor. She draws +only fifteen feet. She must be kept in constant readiness to +sail immediately I think proper to give the signal. Make the +requisite inquiries for a place of this description, and +when you have met with an eligible spot, visit it, and if it +possess the advantages desired, purchase it at once in your +own name. The corvette must now, I think, be on her way to +Fecamp, must she not?" +"Certainly, your excellency I saw her put to sea the same +evening we quitted Marseilles." +"And the yacht." +"Was ordered to remain at Martigues." +"'Tis well. I wish you to write from time to time to the +captains in charge of the two vessels so as to keep them on +the alert." +"And the steamboat?" +"She is at Chalons?" +"Yes." +"The same orders for her as for the two sailing vessels." +"Very good." +"When you have purchased the estate I desire, I want +constant relays of horses at ten leagues apart along the +northern and southern road." +"Your excellency may depend upon me." The Count made a +gesture of satisfaction, descended the terrace steps, and +sprang into his carriage, which was whirled along swiftly to +the banker's house. Danglars was engaged at that moment, +presiding over a railroad committee. But the meeting was +nearly concluded when the name of his visitor was announced. +As the count's title sounded on his ear he rose, and +addressing his colleagues, who were members of one or the +other Chamber, he said, "Gentlemen, pardon me for leaving +you so abruptly but a most ridiculous circumstance has +occurred, which is this, Thomson French, the Roman +bankers, have sent to me a certain person calling himself +the Count of Monte Cristo, and have given him an unlimited +credit with me. I confess this is the drollest thing I have +ever met with in the course of my extensive foreign +transactions, and you may readily suppose it has greatly +roused my curiosity. I took the trouble this morning to call +on the pretended count if he were a real count he +wouldn't be so rich. But, would you believe it, "He was not +receiving.' So the master of Monte Cristo gives himself airs +befitting a great millionaire or a capricious beauty. I made +inquiries, and found that the house in the Champs Elysees is +his own property, and certainly it was very decently kept +up. But," pursued Danglars with one of his sinister smiles, +"an order for unlimited credit calls for something like +caution on the part of the banker to whom that order is +given. I am very anxious to see this man. I suspect a hoax +is intended, but the instigators of it little knew whom they +had to deal with. "They laugh best who laugh last'" +Having delivered himself of this pompous address, uttered +with a degree of energy that left the baron almost out of +breath, he bowed to the assembled party and withdrew to his +drawingroom, whose sumptuous furnishings of white and gold +had caused a great sensation in the Chaussee d'Antin. It was +to this apartment he had desired his guest to be shown, with +the purpose of overwhelming him at the sight of so much +luxury. He found the count standing before some copies of +Albano and Fattore that had been passed off to the banker as +originals but which, mere copies as they were, seemed to +feel their degradation in being brought into juxtaposition +with the gaudy colors that covered the ceiling. The count +turned round as he heard the entrance of Danglars into the +room. With a slight inclination of the head, Danglars signed +to the count to be seated, pointing significantly to a +gilded armchair, covered with white satin embroidered with +gold. The count sat down. "I have the honor, I presume, of +addressing M. de Monte Cristo." +The count bowed. "And I of speaking to Baron Danglars, +chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and member of the Chamber +of Deputies?" +Monte Cristo repeated all the titles he had read on the +baron's card. +Danglars felt the irony and compressed his lips. "You will, +I trust, excuse me, monsieur, for not calling you by your +title when I first addressed you," he said, "but you are +aware that we are living under a popular form of government, +and that I am myself a representative of the liberties of +the people." +"So much so," replied Monte Cristo, "that while you call +yourself baron you are not willing to call anybody else +count." +"Upon my word, monsieur," said Danglars with affected +carelessness, "I attach no sort of value to such empty +distinctions but the fact is, I was made baron, and also +chevalier of the Legion of Honor, in return for services +rendered, but" +"But you have discarded your titles after the example set +you by Messrs. de Montmorency and Lafayette? That was a +noble example to follow, monsieur." +"Why," replied Danglars, "not entirely so with the +servants, you understand." +"I see to your domestics you are "my lord,' the journalists +style you "monsieur,' while your constituents call you +"citizen.' These are distinctions very suitable under a +constitutional government. I understand perfectly." Again +Danglars bit his lips he saw that he was no match for Monte +Cristo in an argument of this sort, and he therefore +hastened to turn to subjects more congenial. +"Permit me to inform you, Count," said he, bowing, "that I +have received a letter of advice from Thomson French, of +Rome." +"I am glad to hear it, baron, for I must claim the +privilege of addressing you after the manner of your +servants. I have acquired the bad habit of calling persons +by their titles from living in a country where barons are +still barons by right of birth. But as regards the letter of +advice, I am charmed to find that it has reached you that +will spare me the troublesome and disagreeable task of +coming to you for money myself. You have received a regular +letter of advice?" +"Yes," said Danglars, "but I confess I didn't quite +comprehend its meaning." +"Indeed?" +"And for that reason I did myself the honor of calling upon +you, in order to beg for an explanation." +"Go on, monsieur. Here I am, ready to give you any +explanation you desire." +"Why," said Danglers, "in the letter I believe I have it +about me" here he felt in his breastpocket "yes, here +it is. Well, this letter gives the Count of Monte Cristo +unlimited credit on our house." +"Well, baron, what is there difficult to understand about +that?" +"Merely the term unlimited nothing else, certainly." +"Is not that word known in France? The people who wrote are +AngloGermans, you know." +"Oh, as for the composition of the letter, there is nothing +to be said but as regards the competency of the document, I +certainly have doubts." +"Is it possible?" asked the count, assuming all air and tone +of the utmost simplicity and candor. "Is it possible that +Thomson French are not looked upon as safe and solvent +bankers? Pray tell me what you think, baron, for I feel +uneasy, I can assure you, having some considerable property +in their hands." +"Thomson French are perfectly solvent," replied Danglars, +with an almost mocking smile "but the word unlimited, in +financial affairs, is so extremely vague." +"Is, in fact, unlimited," said Monte Cristo. +"Precisely what I was about to say," cried Danglars. "Now +what is vague is doubtful and it was a wise man who said, +"when in doubt, keep out.'" +"Meaning to say," rejoined Monte Cristo, "that however +Thomson French may be inclined to commit acts of +imprudence and folly, the Baron Danglars is not disposed to +follow their example." +"Not at all." +"Plainly enough. Messrs. Thomson French set no bounds to +their engagements while those of M. Danglars have their +limits he is a wise man, according to his own showing." +"Monsieur," replied the banker, drawing himself up with a +haughty air, "the extent of my resources has never yet been +questioned." +"It seems, then, reserved for me," said Monte Cristo coldly, +"to be the first to do so." +"By what right, sir?" +"By right of the objections you have raised, and the +explanations you have demanded, which certainly must have +some motive." +Once more Danglars bit his lips. It was the second time he +had been worsted, and this time on his own ground. His +forced politeness sat awkwardly upon him, and approached +almost to impertinence. Monte Cristo on the contrary, +preserved a graceful suavity of demeanor, aided by a certain +degree of simplicity he could assume at pleasure, and thus +possessed the advantage. +"Well, sir," resumed Danglars, after a brief silence, "I +will endeavor to make myself understood, by requesting you +to inform me for what sum you propose to draw upon me?" +"Why, truly," replied Monte Cristo, determined not to lose +an inch of the ground he had gained, "my reason for desiring +an "unlimited' credit was precisely because I did not know +how much money I might need." +The banker thought the time had come for him to take the +upper hand. So throwing himself back in his armchair, he +said, with an arrogant and purseproud air, "Let me beg +of you not to hesitate in naming your wishes you will then +be convinced that the resources of the house of Danglars, +however limited, are still equal to meeting the largest +demands and were you even to require a million" +"I beg your pardon," interposed Monte Cristo. +"I said a million," replied Danglars, with the confidence of +ignorance. +"But could I do with a million?" retorted the count. "My +dear sir, if a trifle like that could suffice me, I should +never have given myself the trouble of opening an account. A +million? Excuse my smiling when you speak of a sum I am in +the habit of carrying in my pocketbook or dressingcase." +And with these words Monte Cristo took from his pocket a +small case containing his visitingcards, and drew forth two +orders on the treasury for , francs each, payable at +sight to the bearer. A man like Danglars was wholly +inaccessible to any gentler method of correction. The effect +of the present revelation was stunning he trembled and was +on the verge of apoplexy. The pupils of his eyes, as he +gazed at Monte Cristo dilated horribly. +"Come, come," said Monte Cristo, "confess honestly that you +have not perfect confidence in Thomson French. I +understand, and foreseeing that such might be the case, I +took, in spite of my ignorance of affairs, certain +precautions. See, here are two similar letters to that you +have yourself received one from the house of Arstein +Eskeles of Vienna, to Baron Rothschild, the other drawn by +Baring of London, upon M. Laffitte. Now, sir, you have but +to say the word, and I will spare you all uneasiness by +presenting my letter of credit to one or other of these two +firms." The blow had struck home, and Danglars was entirely +vanquished with a trembling hand he took the two letters +from the count, who held them carelessly between finger and +thumb, and proceeded to scrutinize the signatures, with a +minuteness that the count might have regarded as insulting, +had it not suited his present purpose to mislead the banker. +"Oh, sir," said Danglars, after he had convinced himself of +the authenticity of the documents he held, and rising as if +to salute the power of gold personified in the man before +him, "three letters of unlimited credit I can be no +longer mistrustful, but you must pardon me, my dear count, +for confessing to some degree of astonishment." +"Nay," answered Monte Cristo, with the most gentlemanly air, +"'tis not for such trifling sums as these that your banking +house is to be incommoded. Then, you can let me have some +money, can you not?" +"Whatever you say, my dear count I am at your orders." +"Why," replied Monte Cristo, "since we mutually understand +each other for such I presume is the case?" Danglars +bowed assentingly. "You are quite sure that not a lurking +doubt or suspicion lingers in your mind?" +"Oh, my dear count," exclaimed Danglars, "I never for an +instant entertained such a feeling towards you." +"No, you merely wished to be convinced, nothing more but +now that we have come to so clear an understanding, and that +all distrust and suspicion are laid at rest, we may as well +fix a sum as the probable expenditure of the first year, +suppose we say six millions to" +"Six millions" gasped Danglars "so be it." +"Then, if I should require more," continued Monte Cristo in +a careless manner, "why, of course, I should draw upon you +but my present intention is not to remain in France more +than a year, and during that period I scarcely think I shall +exceed the sum I mentioned. However, we shall see. Be kind +enough, then, to send me , francs tomorrow. I shall +be at home till midday, or if not, I will leave a receipt +with my steward." +"The money you desire shall be at your house by ten o'clock +tomorrow morning, my dear count," replied Danglars. "How +would you like to have it? in gold, silver, or notes?" +"Half in gold, and the other half in banknotes, if you +please," said the count, rising from his seat. +"I must confess to you, count," said Danglars, "that I have +hitherto imagined myself acquainted with the degree of all +the great fortunes of Europe, and still wealth such as yours +has been wholly unknown to me. May I presume to ask whether +you have long possessed it?" +"It has been in the family a very long while," returned +Monte Cristo, "a sort of treasure expressly forbidden to be +touched for a certain period of years, during which the +accumulated interest has doubled the capital. The period +appointed by the testator for the disposal of these riches +occurred only a short time ago, and they have only been +employed by me within the last few years. Your ignorance on +the subject, therefore, is easily accounted for. However, +you will be better informed as to me and my possessions ere +long." And the count, while pronouncing these latter words, +accompanied them with one of those ghastly smiles that used +to strike terror into poor Franz d'Epinay. +"With your tastes, and means of gratifying them," continued +Danglars, "you will exhibit a splendor that must effectually +put us poor miserable millionaires quite in the shade. If I +mistake not you are an admirer of paintings, at least I +judged so from the attention you appeared to be bestowing on +mine when I entered the room. If you will permit me, I shall +be happy to show you my picture gallery, composed entirely +of works by the ancient masters warranted as such. Not a +modern picture among them. I cannot endure the modern school +of painting." +"You are perfectly right in objecting to them, for this one +great fault that they have not yet had time to become +old." +"Or will you allow me to show you several fine statues by +Thorwaldsen, Bartoloni, and Canova? all foreign artists, +for, as you may perceive, I think but very indifferently of +our French sculptors." +"You have a right to be unjust to them, monsieur they are +your compatriots." +"But all this may come later, when we shall be better known +to each other. For the present, I will confine myself if +perfectly agreeable to you to introducing you to the +Baroness Danglars excuse my impatience, my dear count, +but a client like you is almost like a member of the +family." Monte Cristo bowed, in sign that he accepted the +proffered honor Danglars rang and was answered by a servant +in a showy livery. "Is the baroness at home?" inquired +Danglars. +"Yes, my lord," answered the man. +"And alone?" +"No, my lord, madame has visitors." +"Have you any objection to meet any persons who may be with +madame, or do you desire to preserve a strict incognito?" +"No, indeed," replied Monte Cristo with a smile, "I do not +arrogate to myself the right of so doing." +"And who is with madame? M. Debray?" inquired Danglars, +with an air of indulgence and goodnature that made Monte +Cristo smile, acquainted as he was with the secrets of the +banker's domestic life. +"Yes, my lord," replied the servant, "M. Debray is with +madame." Danglars nodded his head then, turning to Monte +Cristo, said, "M. Lucien Debray is an old friend of ours, +and private secretary to the Minister of the Interior. As +for my wife, I must tell you, she lowered herself by +marrying me, for she belongs to one of the most ancient +families in France. Her maiden name was De Servieres, and +her first husband was Colonel the Marquis of Nargonne." +"I have not the honor of knowing Madame Danglars but I have +already met M. Lucien Debray." +"Ah, indeed?" said Danglars "and where was that?" +"At the house of M. de Morcerf." +"Ah, ha, you are acquainted with the young viscount, are +you?" +"We were together a good deal during the Carnival at Rome." +"True, true," cried Danglars. "Let me see have I not heard +talk of some strange adventure with bandits or thieves hid +in ruins, and of his having had a miraculous escape? I +forget how, but I know he used to amuse my wife and daughter +by telling them about it after his return from Italy." +"Her ladyship is waiting to receive you, gentlemen," said +the servant, who had gone to inquire the pleasure of his +mistress. "With your permission," said Danglars, bowing, "I +will precede you, to show you the way." +"By all means," replied Monte Cristo "I follow you." +Chapter +The Dappled Grays. +The baron, followed by the count, traversed a long series of +apartments, in which the prevailing characteristics were +heavy magnificence and the gaudiness of ostentatious wealth, +until he reached the boudoir of Madame Danglars a small +octagonalshaped room, hung with pink satin, covered with +white Indian muslin. The chairs were of ancient workmanship +and materials over the doors were painted sketches of +shepherds and shepherdesses, after the style and manner of +Boucher and at each side pretty medallions in crayons, +harmonizing well with the furnishings of this charming +apartment, the only one throughout the great mansion in +which any distinctive taste prevailed. The truth was, it had +been entirely overlooked in the plan arranged and followed +out by M. Danglars and his architect, who had been selected +to aid the baron in the great work of improvement solely +because he was the most fashionable and celebrated decorator +of the day. The decorations of the boudoir had then been +left entirely to Madame Danglars and Lucien Debray. M. +Danglars, however, while possessing a great admiration for +the antique, as it was understood during the time of the +Directory, entertained the most sovereign contempt for the +simple elegance of his wife's favorite sittingroom, where, +by the way, he was never permitted to intrude, unless, +indeed, he excused his own appearance by ushering in some +more agreeable visitor than himself and even then he had +rather the air and manner of a person who was himself +introduced, than that of being the presenter of another, his +reception being cordial or frigid, in proportion as the +person who accompanied him chanced to please or displease +the baroness. +Madame Danglars who, although past the first bloom of +youth, was still strikingly handsome was now seated at the +piano, a most elaborate piece of cabinet and inlaid work, +while Lucien Debray, standing before a small worktable, was +turning over the pages of an album. Lucien had found time, +preparatory to the count's arrival, to relate many +particulars respecting him to Madame Danglars. It will be +remembered that Monte Cristo had made a lively impression on +the minds of all the party assembled at the breakfast given +by Albert de Morcerf and although Debray was not in the +habit of yielding to such feelings, he had never been able +to shake off the powerful influence excited in his mind by +the impressive look and manner of the count, consequently +the description given by Lucien to the baroness bore the +highlycolored tinge of his own heated imagination. Already +excited by the wonderful stories related of the count by De +Morcerf, it is no wonder that Madame Danglars eagerly +listened to, and fully credited, all the additional +circumstances detailed by Debray. This posing at the piano +and over the album was only a little ruse adopted by way of +precaution. A most gracious welcome and unusual smile were +bestowed on M. Danglars the count, in return for his +gentlemanly bow, received a formal though graceful courtesy, +while Lucien exchanged with the count a sort of distant +recognition, and with Danglars a free and easy nod. +"Baroness," said Danglars, "give me leave to present to you +the Count of Monte Cristo, who has been most warmly +recommended to me by my correspondents at Rome. I need but +mention one fact to make all the ladies in Paris court his +notice, and that is, that he has come to take up his abode +in Paris for a year, during which brief period he proposes +to spend six millions of money. That means balls, dinners, +and lawn parties without end, in all of which I trust the +count will remember us, as he may depend upon it we shall +him, in our own humble entertainments." In spite of the +gross flattery and coarseness of this address, Madame +Danglars could not forbear gazing with considerable interest +on a man capable of expending six millions in twelve months, +and who had selected Paris for the scene of his princely +extravagance. "And when did you arrive here?" inquired she. +"Yesterday morning, madame." +"Coming, as usual, I presume, from the extreme end of the +globe? Pardon me at least, such I have heard is your +custom." +"Nay, madame. This time I have merely come from Cadiz." +"You have selected a most unfavorable moment for your first +visit. Paris is a horrible place in summer. Balls, parties, +and fetes are over the Italian opera is in London the +French opera everywhere except in Paris. As for the Theatre +Francais, you know, of course, that it is nowhere. The only +amusements left us are the indifferent races at the Champ de +Mars and Satory. Do you propose entering any horses at +either of these races, count?" +"I shall do whatever they do at Paris, madame, if I have the +good fortune to find some one who will initiate me into the +prevalent ideas of amusement." +"Are you fond of horses, count?" +"I have passed a considerable part of my life in the East, +madame, and you are doubtless aware that the Orientals value +only two things the fine breeding of their horses and the +beauty of their women." +"Nay, count," said the baroness, "it would have been +somewhat more gallant to have placed the ladies first." +"You see, madame, how rightly I spoke when I said I required +a preceptor to guide me in all my sayings and doings here." +At this instant the favorite attendant of Madame Danglars +entered the boudoir approaching her mistress, she spoke +some words in an undertone. Madame Danglars turned very +pale, then exclaimed, "I cannot believe it the thing is +impossible." +"I assure you, madame," replied the woman, "it is as I have +said." Turning impatiently towards her husband, Madame +Danglars demanded, "Is this true?" +"Is what true, madame?" inquired Danglars, visibly agitated. +"What my maid tells me." +"But what does she tell you?" +"That when my coachman was about to harness the horses to my +carriage, he discovered that they had been removed from the +stables without his knowledge. I desire to know what is the +meaning of this?" +"Be kind enough, madame, to listen to me," said Danglars. +"Oh, yes I will listen, monsieur, for I am most curious to +hear what explanation you will give. These two gentlemen +shall decide between us but, first, I will state the case +to them. Gentlemen," continued the baroness, "among the ten +horses in the stables of Baron Danglars, are two that belong +exclusively to me a pair of the handsomest and most +spirited creatures to be found in Paris. But to you, at +least, M. Debray, I need not give a further description, +because to you my beautiful pair of dappled grays were well +known. Well, I had promised Madame de Villefort the loan of +my carriage to drive tomorrow to the Bois but when my +coachman goes to fetch the grays from the stables they are +gone positively gone. No doubt M. Danglars has sacrificed +them to the selfish consideration of gaining some thousands +of paltry francs. Oh, what a detestable crew they are, these +mercenary speculators" +"Madame," replied Danglars, "the horses were not +sufficiently quiet for you they were scarcely four years +old, and they made me extremely uneasy on your account." +"Nonsense," retorted the baroness "you could not have +entertained any alarm on the subject, because you are +perfectly well aware that I have had for a month in my +service the very best coachman in Paris. But, perhaps, you +have disposed of the coachman as well as the horses?" +"My dear love, pray do not say any more about them, and I +promise you another pair exactly like them in appearance, +only more quiet and steady." The baroness shrugged her +shoulders with an air of ineffable contempt, while her +husband, affecting not to observe this unconjugal gesture, +turned towards Monte Cristo and said, "Upon my word, +count, I am quite sorry not to have met you sooner. You are +setting up an establishment, of course?" +"Why, yes," replied the count. +"I should have liked to have made you the offer of these +horses. I have almost given them away, as it is but, as I +before said, I was anxious to get rid of them upon any +terms. They were only fit for a young man." +"I am much obliged by your kind intentions towards me," said +Monte Cristo "but this morning I purchased a very excellent +pair of carriagehorses, and I do not think they were dear. +There they are. Come, M. Debray, you are a connoisseur, I +believe, let me have your opinion upon them." As Debray +walked towards the window, Danglars approached his wife. "I +could not tell you before others," said he in a low tone, +"the reason of my parting with the horses but a most +enormous price was offered me this morning for them. Some +madman or fool, bent upon ruining himself as fast as he can, +actually sent his steward to me to purchase them at any +cost and the fact is, I have gained , francs by the +sale of them. Come, don't look so angry, and you shall have +, francs of the money to do what you like with, and +Eugenie shall have ,. There, what do you think now of +the affair? Wasn't I right to part with the horses?" Madame +Danglars surveyed her husband with a look of withering +contempt. +"Great heavens?" suddenly exclaimed Debray. +"What is it?" asked the baroness. +"I cannot be mistaken there are your horses The very +animals we were speaking of, harnessed to the count's +carriage" +"My dappled grays?" demanded the baroness, springing to the +window. "'Tis indeed they" said she. Danglars looked +absolutely stupefied. "How very singular," cried Monte +Cristo with wellfeigned astonishment. +"I cannot believe it," murmured the banker. Madame Danglars +whispered a few words in the ear of Debray, who approached +Monte Cristo, saying, "The baroness wishes to know what you +paid her husband for the horses." +"I scarcely know," replied the count "it was a little +surprise prepared for me by my steward, and cost me well, +somewhere about , francs." Debray conveyed the count's +reply to the baroness. Poor Danglars looked so crestfallen +and discomfited that Monte Cristo assumed a pitying air +towards him. "See," said the count, "how very ungrateful +women are. Your kind attention, in providing for the safety +of the baroness by disposing of the horses, does not seem to +have made the least impression on her. But so it is a woman +will often, from mere wilfulness, prefer that which is +dangerous to that which is safe. Therefore, in my opinion, +my dear baron, the best and easiest way is to leave them to +their fancies, and allow them to act as they please, and +then, if any mischief follows, why, at least, they have no +one to blame but themselves." Danglars made no reply he was +occupied in anticipations of the coming scene between +himself and the baroness, whose frowning brow, like that of +Olympic Jove, predicted a storm. Debray, who perceived the +gathering clouds, and felt no desire to witness the +explosion of Madame Danglars' rage, suddenly recollected an +appointment, which compelled him to take his leave while +Monte Cristo, unwilling by prolonging his stay to destroy +the advantages he hoped to obtain, made a farewell bow and +departed, leaving Danglars to endure the angry reproaches of +his wife. +"Excellent," murmured Monte Cristo to himself, as he came +away. "All has gone according to my wishes. The domestic +peace of this family is henceforth in my hands. Now, then, +to play another masterstroke, by which I shall gain the +heart of both husband and wife delightful Still," added +he, "amid all this, I have not yet been presented to +Mademoiselle Eugenie Danglars, whose acquaintance I should +have been glad to make. But," he went on with his peculiar +smile, "I am here in Paris, and have plenty of time before +me by and by will do for that." With these reflections he +entered his carriage and returned home. Two hours +afterwards, Madame Danglars received a most flattering +epistle from the count, in which he entreated her to receive +back her favorite "dappled grays," protesting that he could +not endure the idea of making his entry into the Parisian +world of fashion with the knowledge that his splendid +equipage had been obtained at the price of a lovely woman's +regrets. The horses were sent back wearing the same harness +she had seen on them in the morning only, by the count's +orders, in the centre of each rosette that adorned either +side of their heads, had been fastened a large diamond. +To Danglars Monte Cristo also wrote, requesting him to +excuse the whimsical gift of a capricious millionaire, and +to beg the baroness to pardon the Eastern fashion adopted in +the return of the horses. +During the evening, Monte Cristo quitted Paris for Auteuil, +accompanied by Ali. The following day, about three o'clock, +a single blow struck on the gong summoned Ali to the +presence of the count. "Ali," observed his master, as the +Nubian entered the chamber, "you have frequently explained +to me how more than commonly skilful you are in throwing the +lasso, have you not?" Ali drew himself up proudly, and then +returned a sign in the affirmative. "I thought I did not +mistake. With your lasso you could stop an ox?" Again Ali +repeated his affirmative gesture. "Or a tiger?" Ali bowed +his head in token of assent. "A lion even?" Ali sprung +forwards, imitating the action of one throwing the lasso, +then of a strangled lion. +"I understand," said Monte Cristo "you wish to tell me you +have hunted the lion?" Ali smiled with triumphant pride as +he signified that he had indeed both chased and captured +many lions. "But do you believe you could arrest the +progress of two horses rushing forwards with ungovernable +fury?" The Nubian smiled. "It is well," said Monte Cristo. +"Then listen to me. Ere long a carriage will dash past here, +drawn by the pair of dappled gray horses you saw me with +yesterday now, at the risk of your own life, you must +manage to stop those horses before my door." +Ali descended to the street, and marked a straight line on +the pavement immediately at the entrance of the house, and +then pointed out the line he had traced to the count, who +was watching him. The count patted him gently on the +shoulder, his usual mode of praising Ali, who, pleased and +gratified with the commission assigned him, walked calmly +towards a projecting stone forming the angle of the street +and house, and, seating himself thereon, began to smoke his +chibouque, while Monte Cristo reentered his dwelling, +perfectly assured of the success of his plan. Still, as five +o'clock approached, and the carriage was momentarily +expected by the count, the indication of more than common +impatience and uneasiness might be observed in his manner. +He stationed himself in a room commanding a view of the +street, pacing the chamber with restless steps, stopping +merely to listen from time to time for the sound of +approaching wheels, then to cast an anxious glance on Ali +but the regularity with which the Nubian puffed forth the +smoke of his chibouque proved that he at least was wholly +absorbed in the enjoyment of his favorite occupation. +Suddenly a distant sound of rapidly advancing wheels was +heard, and almost immediately a carriage appeared, drawn by +a pair of wild, ungovernable horses, while the terrified +coachman strove in vain to restrain their furious speed. +In the vehicle was a young woman and a child of about seven +or eight clasped in each other's arms. Terror seemed to have +deprived them even of the power of uttering a cry. The +carriage creaked and rattled as it flew over the rough +stones, and the slightest obstacle under the wheels would +have caused disaster but it kept on in the middle of the +road, and those who saw it pass uttered cries of terror. +Ali suddenly cast aside his chibouque, drew the lasso from +his pocket, threw it so skilfully as to catch the forelegs +of the near horse in its triple fold, and suffered himself +to be dragged on for a few steps by the violence of the +shock, then the animal fell over on the pole, which snapped, +and therefore prevented the other horse from pursuing its +way. Gladly availing himself of this opportunity, the +coachman leaped from his box but Ali had promptly seized +the nostrils of the second horse, and held them in his iron +grasp, till the beast, snorting with pain, sunk beside his +companion. All this was achieved in much less time than is +occupied in the recital. The brief space had, however, been +sufficient for a man, followed by a number of servants, to +rush from the house before which the accident had occurred, +and, as the coachman opened the door of the carriage, to +take from it a lady who was convulsively grasping the +cushions with one hand, while with the other she pressed to +her bosom the young boy, who had lost consciousness. +Monte Cristo carried them both to the salon, and deposited +them on a sofa. "Compose yourself, madame," said he "all +danger is over." The woman looked up at these words, and, +with a glance far more expressive than any entreaties could +have been, pointed to her child, who still continued +insensible. "I understand the nature of your alarms, +madame," said the count, carefully examining the child, "but +I assure you there is not the slightest occasion for +uneasiness your little charge has not received the least +injury his insensibility is merely the effects of terror, +and will soon pass." +"Are you quite sure you do not say so to tranquillize my +fears? See how deadly pale he is My child, my darling +Edward speak to your mother open your dear eyes and look +on me once again Oh, sir, in pity send for a physician my +whole fortune shall not be thought too much for the recovery +of my boy." +With a calm smile and a gentle wave of the hand, Monte +Cristo signed to the distracted mother to lay aside her +apprehensions then, opening a casket that stood near, he +drew forth a phial of Bohemian glass incrusted with gold, +containing a liquid of the color of blood, of which he let +fall a single drop on the child's lips. Scarcely had it +reached them, ere the boy, though still pale as marble, +opened his eyes, and eagerly gazed around him. At this, the +delight of the mother was almost frantic. "Where am I?" +exclaimed she "and to whom am I indebted for so happy a +termination to my late dreadful alarm?" +"Madame," answered the count, "you are under the roof of one +who esteems himself most fortunate in having been able to +save you from a further continuance of your sufferings." +"My wretched curiosity has brought all this about," pursued +the lady. "All Paris rung with the praises of Madame +Danglars' beautiful horses, and I had the folly to desire to +know whether they really merited the high praise given to +them." +"Is it possible," exclaimed the count with wellfeigned +astonishment, "that these horses belong to the baroness?" +"They do, indeed. May I inquire if you are acquainted with +Madame Danglars?" +"I have that honor and my happiness at your escape from the +danger that threatened you is redoubled by the consciousness +that I have been the unwilling and the unintentional cause +of all the peril you have incurred. I yesterday purchased +these horses of the baron but as the baroness evidently +regretted parting with them, I ventured to send them back to +her, with a request that she would gratify me by accepting +them from my hands." +"You are, then, doubtless, the Count of Monte Cristo, of +whom Hermine has talked to me so much?" +"You have rightly guessed, madame," replied the count. +"And I am Madame Heloise de Villefort." The count bowed with +the air of a person who hears a name for the first time. +"How grateful will M. de Villefort be for all your goodness +how thankfully will he acknowledge that to you alone he owes +the existence of his wife and child Most certainly, but for +the prompt assistance of your intrepid servant, this dear +child and myself must both have perished." +"Indeed, I still shudder at the fearful danger you were +placed in." +"I trust you will allow me to recompense worthily the +devotion of your man." +"I beseech you, madame," replied Monte Cristo "not to spoil +Ali, either by too great praise or rewards. I cannot allow +him to acquire the habit of expecting to be recompensed for +every trifling service he may render. Ali is my slave, and +in saving your life he was but discharging his duty to me." +"Nay," interposed Madame de Villefort, on whom the +authoritative style adopted by the count made a deep +impression, "nay, but consider that to preserve my life he +has risked his own." +"His life, madame, belongs not to him it is mine, in return +for my having myself saved him from death." Madame de +Villefort made no further reply her mind was utterly +absorbed in the contemplation of the person who, from the +first instant she saw him, had made so powerful an +impression on her. During the evident preoccupation of +Madame de Villefort, Monte Cristo scrutinized the features +and appearance of the boy she kept folded in her arms, +lavishing on him the most tender endearments. The child was +small for his age, and unnaturally pale. A mass of straight +black hair, defying all attempts to train or curl it, fell +over his projecting forehead, and hung down to his +shoulders, giving increased vivacity to eyes already +sparkling with a youthful love of mischief and fondness for +every forbidden enjoyment. His mouth was large, and the +lips, which had not yet regained their color, were +particularly thin in fact, the deep and crafty look, giving +a predominant expression to the child's face, belonged +rather to a boy of twelve or fourteen than to one so young. +His first movement was to free himself by a violent push +from the encircling arms of his mother, and to rush forward +to the casket from whence the count had taken the phial of +elixir then, without asking permission of any one, he +proceeded, in all the wilfulness of a spoiled child +unaccustomed to restrain either whims or caprices, to pull +the corks out of all the bottles. +"Touch nothing, my little friend," cried the count eagerly +"some of those liquids are not only dangerous to taste, but +even to inhale." +Madame de Villefort became very pale, and, seizing her son's +arm, drew him anxiously toward her but, once satisfied of +his safety, she also cast a brief but expressive glance on +the casket, which was not lost upon the count. At this +moment Ali entered. At sight of him Madame de Villefort +uttered an expression of pleasure, and, holding the child +still closer towards her, she said, "Edward, dearest, do you +see that good man? He has shown very great courage and +resolution, for he exposed his own life to stop the horses +that were running away with us, and would certainly have +dashed the carriage to pieces. Thank him, then, my child, in +your very best manner for, had he not come to our aid, +neither you nor I would have been alive to speak our +thanks." The child stuck out his lips and turned away his +head in a disdainful manner, saying, "He's too ugly." +The count smiled as if the child bade fair to realize his +hopes, while Madame de Villefort reprimanded her son with a +gentleness and moderation very far from conveying the least +idea of a fault having been committed. "This lady," said the +Count, speaking to Ali in the Arabic language, "is desirous +that her son should thank you for saving both their lives +but the boy refuses, saying you are too ugly." Ali turned +his intelligent countenance towards the boy, on whom he +gazed without any apparent emotion but the spasmodic +working of the nostrils showed to the practiced eye of Monte +Cristo that the Arab had been wounded to the heart. +"Will you permit me to inquire," said Madame de Villefort, +as she arose to take her leave, "whether you usually reside +here?" +"No, I do not," replied Monte Cristo "it is a small place I +have purchased quite lately. My place of abode is No. , +Avenue des Champs Elysees but I see you have quite +recovered from your fright, and are, no doubt, desirous of +returning home. Anticipating your wishes, I have desired the +same horses you came with to be put to one of my carriages, +and Ali, he whom you think so very ugly," continued he, +addressing the boy with a smiling air, "will have the honor +of driving you home, while your coachman remains here to +attend to the necessary repairs of your calash. As soon as +that important business is concluded, I will have a pair of +my own horses harnessed to convey it direct to Madame +Danglars." +"I dare not return with those dreadful horses," said Madame +de Villefort. +"You will see," replied Monte Cristo, "that they will be as +different as possible in the hands of Ali. With him they +will be gentle and docile as lambs." Ali had, indeed, given +proof of this for, approaching the animals, who had been +got upon their legs with considerable difficulty, he rubbed +their foreheads and nostrils with a sponge soaked in +aromatic vinegar, and wiped off the sweat and foam that +covered their mouths. Then, commencing a loud whistling +noise, he rubbed them well all over their bodies for several +minutes then, undisturbed by the noisy crowd collected +round the broken carriage, Ali quietly harnessed the +pacified animals to the count's chariot, took the reins in +his hands, and mounted the box, when to the utter +astonishment of those who had witnessed the ungovernable +spirit and maddened speed of the same horses, he was +actually compelled to apply his whip in no very gentle +manner before he could induce them to start and even then +all that could be obtained from the celebrated "dappled +grays," now changed into a couple of dull, sluggish, stupid +brutes, was a slow, pottering pace, kept up with so much +difficulty that Madame de Villefort was more than two hours +returning to her residence in the Faubourg St. Honore. +Scarcely had the first congratulations upon her marvellous +escape been gone through when she wrote the following letter +to Madame Danglars +Dear Hermine, I have just had a wonderful escape from the +most imminent danger, and I owe my safety to the very Count +of Monte Cristo we were talking about yesterday, but whom I +little expected to see today. I remember how unmercifully I +laughed at what I considered your eulogistic and exaggerated +praises of him but I have now ample cause to admit that +your enthusiastic description of this wonderful man fell far +short of his merits. Your horses got as far as Ranelagh, +when they darted forward like mad things, and galloped away +at so fearful a rate, that there seemed no other prospect +for myself and my poor Edward but that of being dashed to +pieces against the first object that impeded their progress, +when a strangelooking man, an Arab, a negro, or a +Nubian, at least a black of some nation or other at a +signal from the count, whose domestic he is, suddenly seized +and stopped the infuriated animals, even at the risk of +being trampled to death himself and certainly he must have +had a most wonderful escape. The count then hastened to us, +and took us into his house, where he speedily recalled my +poor Edward to life. He sent us home in his own carriage. +Yours will be returned to you tomorrow. You will find your +horses in bad condition, from the results of this accident +they seem thoroughly stupefied, as if sulky and vexed at +having been conquered by man. The count, however, his +commissioned me to assure you that two or three days' rest, +with plenty of barley for their sole food during that time, +will bring them back to as fine, that is as terrifying, a +condition as they were in yesterday. Adieu I cannot return +you many thanks for the drive of yesterday but, after all, +I ought not to blame you for the misconduct of your horses, +more especially as it procured me the pleasure of an +introduction to the Count of Monte Cristo, and certainly +that illustrious personage, apart from the millions he is +said to be so very anxious to dispose of, seemed to me one +of those curiously interesting problems I, for one, delight +in solving at any risk, even if it were to necessitate +another drive to the Bois behind your horses. Edward endured +the accident with miraculous courage he did not utter a +single cry, but fell lifeless into my arms nor did a tear +fall from his eyes after it was over. I doubt not you will +consider these praises the result of blind maternal +affection, but there is a soul of iron in that delicate, +fragile body. Valentine sends many affectionate remembrances +to your dear Eugenie. I embrace you with all my heart. +Heloise de Villefort. +P.S. Do pray contrive some means for me to meet the Count +of Monte Cristo at your house. I must and will see him +again. I have just made M. de Villefort promise to call on +him, and I hope the visit will be returned. +That night the adventure at Auteuil was talked of +everywhere. Albert related it to his mother ChateauRenaud +recounted it at the Jockey Club, and Debray detailed it at +length in the salons of the minister even Beauchamp +accorded twenty lines in his journal to the relation of the +count's courage and gallantry, thereby celebrating him as +the greatest hero of the day in the eyes of all the feminine +members of the aristocracy. Vast was the crowd of visitors +and inquiring friends who left their names at the residence +of Madame de Villefort, with the design of renewing their +visit at the right moment, of hearing from her lips all the +interesting circumstances of this most romantic adventure. +As for M. de Villefort, he fulfilled the predictions of +Heloise to the letter, donned his dress suit, drew on a +pair of white gloves, ordered the servants to attend the +carriage dressed in their full livery, and drove that same +night to No. in the Avenue des ChampsElysees. +Chapter +Ideology. +If the Count of Monte Cristo had been for a long time +familiar with the ways of Parisian society, he would have +appreciated better the significance of the step which M. de +Villefort had taken. Standing well at court, whether the +king regnant was of the older or younger branch, whether the +government was doctrinaire liberal, or conservative looked +upon by all as a man of talent, since those who have never +experienced a political check are generally so regarded +hated by many, but warmly supported by others, without being +really liked by anybody, M. de Villefort held a high +position in the magistracy, and maintained his eminence like +a Harlay or a Mole. His drawingroom, under the regenerating +influence of a young wife and a daughter by his first +marriage, scarcely eighteen, was still one of the +wellregulated Paris salons where the worship of traditional +customs and the observance of rigid etiquette were carefully +maintained. A freezing politeness, a strict fidelity to +government principles, a profound contempt for theories and +theorists, a deepseated hatred of ideality, these were +the elements of private and public life displayed by M. de +Villefort. +He was not only a magistrate, he was almost a diplomatist. +His relations with the former court, of which he always +spoke with dignity and respect, made him respected by the +new one, and he knew so many things, that not only was he +always carefully considered, but sometimes consulted. +Perhaps this would not have been so had it been possible to +get rid of M. de Villefort but, like the feudal barons who +rebelled against their sovereign, he dwelt in an impregnable +fortress. This fortress was his post as king's attorney, all +the advantages of which he exploited with marvellous skill, +and which he would not have resigned but to be made deputy, +and thus to replace neutrality by opposition. Ordinarily M. +de Villefort made and returned very few visits. His wife +visited for him, and this was the received thing in the +world, where the weighty and multifarious occupations of the +magistrate were accepted as an excuse for what was really +only calculated pride, a manifestation of professed +superiority in fact, the application of the axiom, +"Pretend to think well of yourself, and the world will think +well of you," an axiom a hundred times more useful in +society nowadays than that of the Greeks, "Know thyself," a +knowledge for which, in our days, we have substituted the +less difficult and more advantageous science of knowing +others. +To his friends M. de Villefort was a powerful protector to +his enemies, he was a silent, but bitter opponent for those +who were neither the one nor the other, he was a statue of +the lawmade man. He had a haughty bearing, a look either +steady and impenetrable or insolently piercing and +inquisitorial. Four successive revolutions had built and +cemented the pedestal upon which his fortune was based. M. +de Villefort had the reputation of being the least curious +and the least wearisome man in France. He gave a ball every +year, at which he appeared for a quarter of an hour only, +that is to say, five and forty minutes less than the king is +visible at his balls. He was never seen at the theatres, at +concerts, or in any place of public resort. Occasionally, +but seldom, he played at whist, and then care was taken to +select partners worthy of him sometimes they were +ambassadors, sometimes archbishops, or sometimes a prince, +or a president, or some dowager duchess. Such was the man +whose carriage had just now stopped before the Count of +Monte Cristo's door. The valet de chambre announced M. de +Villefort at the moment when the count, leaning over a large +table, was tracing on a map the route from St. Petersburg to +China. +The procureur entered with the same grave and measured step +he would have employed in entering a court of justice. He +was the same man, or rather the development of the same man, +whom we have heretofore seen as assistant attorney at +Marseilles. Nature, according to her way, had made no +deviation in the path he had marked out for himself. From +being slender he had now become meagre once pale, he was +now yellow his deepset eyes were hollow, and the gold +spectacles shielding his eyes seemed to be an integral +portion of his face. He dressed entirely in black, with the +exception of his white tie, and his funeral appearance was +only mitigated by the slight line of red ribbon which passed +almost imperceptibly through his buttonhole, and appeared +like a streak of blood traced with a delicate brush. +Although master of himself, Monte Cristo, scrutinized with +irrepressible curiosity the magistrate whose salute he +returned, and who, distrustful by habit, and especially +incredulous as to social prodigies, was much more despised +to look upon "the noble stranger," as Monte Cristo was +already called, as an adventurer in search of new fields, or +an escaped criminal, rather than as a prince of the Holy +See, or a sultan of the Thousand and One Nights. +"Sir," said Villefort, in the squeaky tone assumed by +magistrates in their oratorical periods, and of which they +cannot, or will not, divest themselves in society, "sir, the +signal service which you yesterday rendered to my wife and +son has made it a duty for me to offer you my thanks. I have +come, therefore, to discharge this duty, and to express to +you my overwhelming gratitude." And as he said this, the +"eye severe" of the magistrate had lost nothing of its +habitual arrogance. He spoke in a voice of the +procureurgeneral, with the rigid inflexibility of neck and +shoulders which caused his flatterers to say as we have +before observed that he was the living statue of the law. +"Monsieur," replied the count, with a chilling air, "I am +very happy to have been the means of preserving a son to his +mother, for they say that the sentiment of maternity is the +most holy of all and the good fortune which occurred to me, +monsieur, might have enabled you to dispense with a duty +which, in its discharge, confers an undoubtedly great honor +for I am aware that M. de Villefort is not usually lavish of +the favor which he now bestows on me, a favor which, +however estimable, is unequal to the satisfaction which I +have in my own consciousness." Villefort, astonished at this +reply, which he by no means expected, started like a soldier +who feels the blow levelled at him over the armor he wears, +and a curl of his disdainful lip indicated that from that +moment he noted in the tablets of his brain that the Count +of Monte Cristo was by no means a highly bred gentleman. He +glanced around. in order to seize on something on which the +conversation might turn, and seemed to fall easily on a +topic. He saw the map which Monte Cristo had been examining +when he entered, and said, "You seem geographically engaged, +sir? It is a rich study for you, who, as I learn, have seen +as many lands as are delineated on this map." +"Yes, sir," replied the count "I have sought to make of the +human race, taken in the mass, what you practice every day +on individuals a physiological study. I have believed it +was much easier to descend from the whole to a part than to +ascend from a part to the whole. It is an algebraic axiom, +which makes us proceed from a known to an unknown quantity, +and not from an unknown to a known but sit down, sir, I beg +of you." +Monte Cristo pointed to a chair, which the procureur was +obliged to take the trouble to move forwards himself, while +the count merely fell back into his own, on which he had +been kneeling when M. Villefort entered. Thus the count was +halfway turned towards his visitor, having his back towards +the window, his elbow resting on the geographical chart +which furnished the theme of conversation for the moment, +a conversation which assumed, as in the case of the +interviews with Danglars and Morcerf, a turn analogous to +the persons, if not to the situation. "Ah, you +philosophize," replied Villefort, after a moment's silence, +during which, like a wrestler who encounters a powerful +opponent, he took breath "well, sir, really, if, like you, +I had nothing else to do, I should seek a more amusing +occupation." +"Why, in truth, sir," was Monte Cristo's reply, "man is but +an ugly caterpillar for him who studies him through a solar +microscope but you said, I think, that I had nothing else +to do. Now, really, let me ask, sir, have you? do you +believe you have anything to do? or to speak in plain terms, +do you really think that what you do deserves being called +anything?" +Villefort's astonishment redoubled at this second thrust so +forcibly made by his strange adversary. It was a long time +since the magistrate had heard a paradox so strong, or +rather, to say the truth more exactly, it was the first time +he had ever heard of it. The procureur exerted himself to +reply. "Sir," he responded, "you are a stranger, and I +believe you say yourself that a portion of your life has +been spent in Oriental countries, so you are not aware how +human justice, so expeditions in barbarous countries, takes +with us a prudent and wellstudied course." +"Oh, yes yes, I do, sir it is the pede claudo of the +ancients. I know all that, for it is with the justice of all +countries especially that I have occupied myself it is +with the criminal procedure of all nations that I have +compared natural justice, and I must say, sir, that it is +the law of primitive nations, that is, the law of +retaliation, that I have most frequently found to be +according to the law of God." +"If this law were adopted, sir," said the procureur, "it +would greatly simplify our legal codes, and in that case the +magistrates would not as you just observed have much to +do." +"It may, perhaps, come to this in time," observed Monte +Cristo "you know that human inventions march from the +complex to the simple, and simplicity is always perfection." +"In the meanwhile," continued the magistrate, "our codes are +in full force, with all their contradictory enactments +derived from Gallic customs, Roman laws, and Frank usages +the knowledge of all which, you will agree, is not to be +acquired without extended labor it needs tedious study to +acquire this knowledge, and, when acquired, a strong power +of brain to retain it." +"I agree with you entirely, sir but all that even you know +with respect to the French code, I know, not only in +reference to that code, but as regards the codes of all +nations. The English, Turkish, Japanese, Hindu laws, are as +familiar to me as the French laws, and thus I was right, +when I said to you, that relatively you know that +everything is relative, sir that relatively to what I +have done, you have very little to do but that relatively +to all I have learned, you have yet a great deal to learn." +"But with what motive have you learned all this?" inquired +Villefort, in astonishment. Monte Cristo smiled. "Really, +sir," he observed, "I see that in spite of the reputation +which you have acquired as a superior man, you look at +everything from the material and vulgar view of society, +beginning with man, and ending with man that is to say, +in the most restricted, most narrow view which it is +possible for human understanding to embrace." +"Pray, sir, explain yourself," said Villefort, more and more +astonished, "I really do not understand you +perfectly." +"I say, sir, that with the eyes fixed on the social +organization of nations, you see only the springs of the +machine, and lose sight of the sublime workman who makes +them act I say that you do not recognize before you and +around you any but those officeholders whose commissions +have been signed by a minister or king and that the men +whom God has put above those officeholders, ministers, and +kings, by giving them a mission to follow out, instead of a +post to fill I say that they escape your narrow, limited +field of observation. It is thus that human weakness fails, +from its debilitated and imperfect organs. Tobias took the +angel who restored him to light for an ordinary young man. +The nations took Attila, who was doomed to destroy them, for +a conqueror similar to other conquerors, and it was +necessary for both to reveal their missions, that they might +be known and acknowledged one was compelled to say, "I am +the angel of the Lord' and the other, "I am the hammer of +God,' in order that the divine essence in both might be +revealed." +"Then," said Villefort, more and more amazed, and really +supposing he was speaking to a mystic or a madman, "you +consider yourself as one of those extraordinary beings whom +you have mentioned?" +"And why not?" said Monte Cristo coldly. +"Your pardon, sir," replied Villefort, quite astounded, "but +you will excuse me if, when I presented myself to you, I was +unaware that I should meet with a person whose knowledge and +understanding so far surpass the usual knowledge and +understanding of men. It is not usual with us corrupted +wretches of civilization to find gentlemen like yourself, +possessors, as you are, of immense fortune at least, so +it is said and I beg you to observe that I do not +inquire, I merely repeat it is not usual, I say, for +such privileged and wealthy beings to waste their time in +speculations on the state of society, in philosophical +reveries, intended at best to console those whom fate has +disinherited from the goods of this world." +"Really, sir," retorted the count, "have you attained the +eminent situation in which you are, without having admitted, +or even without having met with exceptions? and do you never +use your eyes, which must have acquired so much finesse and +certainty, to divine, at a glance, the kind of man by whom +you are confronted? Should not a magistrate be not merely +the best administrator of the law, but the most crafty +expounder of the chicanery of his profession, a steel probe +to search hearts, a touchstone to try the gold which in each +soul is mingled with more or less of alloy?" +"Sir," said Villefort, "upon my word, you overcome me. I +really never heard a person speak as you do." +"Because you remain eternally encircled in a round of +general conditions, and have never dared to raise your wings +into those upper spheres which God has peopled with +invisible or exceptional beings." +"And you allow then, sir, that spheres exist, and that these +marked and invisible beings mingle amongst us?" +"Why should they not? Can you see the air you breathe, and +yet without which you could not for a moment exist?" +"Then we do not see those beings to whom you allude?" +"Yes, we do you see them whenever God pleases to allow them +to assume a material form. You touch them, come in contact +with them, speak to them, and they reply to you." +"Ah," said Villefort, smiling, "I confess I should like to +be warned when one of these beings is in contact with me." +"You have been served as you desire, monsieur, for you were +warned just now, and I now again warn you." +"Then you yourself are one of these marked beings?" +"Yes, monsieur, I believe so for until now, no man has +found himself in a position similar to mine. The dominions +of kings are limited either by mountains or rivers, or a +change of manners, or an alteration of language. My kingdom +is bounded only by the world, for I am not an Italian, or a +Frenchman, or a Hindu, or an American, or a Spaniard I am +a cosmopolite. No country can say it saw my birth. God alone +knows what country will see me die. I adopt all customs, +speak all languages. You believe me to be a Frenchman, for I +speak French with the same facility and purity as yourself. +Well, Ali, my Nubian, believes me to be an Arab Bertuccio, +my steward, takes me for a Roman Haidee, my slave, thinks +me a Greek. You may, therefore, comprehend, that being of no +country, asking no protection from any government, +acknowledging no man as my brother, not one of the scruples +that arrest the powerful, or the obstacles which paralyze +the weak, paralyzes or arrests me. I have only two +adversaries I will not say two conquerors, for with +perseverance I subdue even them, they are time and +distance. There is a third, and the most terrible that is +my condition as a mortal being. This alone can stop me in my +onward career, before I have attained the goal at which I +aim, for all the rest I have reduced to mathematical terms. +What men call the chances of fate namely, ruin, change, +circumstances I have fully anticipated, and if any of +these should overtake me, yet it will not overwhelm me. +Unless I die, I shall always be what I am, and therefore it +is that I utter the things you have never heard, even from +the mouths of kings for kings have need, and other +persons have fear of you. For who is there who does not say +to himself, in a society as incongruously organized as ours, +"Perhaps some day I shall have to do with the king's +attorney'?" +"But can you not say that, sir? The moment you become an +inhabitant of France, you are naturally subjected to the +French law." +"I know it sir," replied Monte Cristo "but when I visit a +country I begin to study, by all the means which are +available, the men from whom I may have anything to hope or +to fear, till I know them as well as, perhaps better than, +they know themselves. It follows from this, that the king's +attorney, be he who he may, with whom I should have to deal, +would assuredly be more embarrassed than I should." +"That is to say," replied Villefort with hesitation, "that +human nature being weak, every man, according to your creed, +has committed faults." +"Faults or crimes," responded Monte Cristo with a negligent +air. +"And that you alone, amongst the men whom you do not +recognize as your brothers for you have said so," +observed Villefort in a tone that faltered somewhat "you +alone are perfect." +"No, not perfect," was the count's reply "only +impenetrable, that's all. But let us leave off this strain, +sir, if the tone of it is displeasing to you I am no more +disturbed by your justice than are you by my secondsight." +"No, no, by no means," said Villefort, who was afraid of +seeming to abandon his ground. "No by your brilliant and +almost sublime conversation you have elevated me above the +ordinary level we no longer talk, we rise to dissertation. +But you know how the theologians in their collegiate chairs, +and philosophers in their controversies, occasionally say +cruel truths let us suppose for the moment that we are +theologizing in a social way, or even philosophically, and I +will say to you, rude as it may seem, "My brother, you +sacrifice greatly to pride you may be above others, but +above you there is God.'" +"Above us all, sir," was Monte Cristo's response, in a tone +and with an emphasis so deep that Villefort involuntarily +shuddered. "I have my pride for men serpents always ready +to threaten every one who would pass without crushing them +under foot. But I lay aside that pride before God, who has +taken me from nothing to make me what I am." +"Then, count, I admire you," said Villefort, who, for the +first time in this strange conversation, used the +aristocratic form to the unknown personage, whom, until now, +he had only called monsieur. "Yes, and I say to you, if you +are really strong, really superior, really pious, or +impenetrable, which you were right in saying amounts to the +same thing then be proud, sir, for that is the +characteristic of predominance. Yet you have unquestionably +some ambition." +"I have, sir." +"And what may it be?" +"I too, as happens to every man once in his life, have been +taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and +when there he showed me all the kingdoms of the world, and +as he said before, so said he to me, "Child of earth, what +wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?' I reflected long, +for a gnawing ambition had long preyed upon me, and then I +replied, "Listen, I have always heard of providence, and +yet I have never seen him, or anything that resembles him, +or which can make me believe that he exists. I wish to be +providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, +noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense +and punish.' Satan bowed his head, and groaned. "You +mistake,' he said, "providence does exist, only you have +never seen him, because the child of God is as invisible as +the parent. You have seen nothing that resembles him, +because he works by secret springs, and moves by hidden +ways. All I can do for you is to make you one of the agents +of that providence.' The bargain was concluded. I may +sacrifice my soul, but what matters it?" added Monte Cristo. +"If the thing were to do again, I would again do it." +Villefort looked at Monte Cristo with extreme amazement. +"Count," he inquired, "have you any relations?" +"No, sir, I am alone in the world." +"So much the worse." +"Why?" asked Monte Cristo. +"Because then you might witness a spectacle calculated to +break down your pride. You say you fear nothing but death?" +"I did not say that I feared it I only said that death +alone could check the execution of my plans." +"And old age?" +"My end will be achieved before I grow old." +"And madness?" +"I have been nearly mad and you know the axiom, non bis +in idem. It is an axiom of criminal law, and, consequently, +you understand its full application." +"Sir," continued Villefort, "there is something to fear +besides death, old age, and madness. For instance, there is +apoplexy that lightningstroke which strikes but does not +destroy you, and yet which brings everything to an end. You +are still yourself as now, and yet you are yourself no +longer you who, like Ariel, verge on the angelic, are but +an inert mass, which, like Caliban, verges on the brutal +and this is called in human tongues, as I tell you, neither +more nor less than apoplexy. Come, if so you will, count, +and continue this conversation at my house, any day you may +be willing to see an adversary capable of understanding and +anxious to refute you, and I will show you my father, M. +Noirtier de Villefort, one of the most fiery Jacobins of the +French Revolution that is to say, he had the most +remarkable audacity, seconded by a most powerful +organization a man who has not, perhaps, like yourself +seen all the kingdoms of the earth, but who has helped to +overturn one of the greatest in fact, a man who believed +himself, like you, one of the envoys, not of God, but of a +supreme being not of providence, but of fate. Well, sir, +the rupture of a bloodvessel on the lobe of the brain has +destroyed all this, not in a day, not in an hour, but in a +second. M. Noirtier, who, on the previous night, was the old +Jacobin, the old senator, the old Carbonaro, laughing at the +guillotine, the cannon, and the dagger M. Noirtier, +playing with revolutions M. Noirtier, for whom France was +a vast chessboard, from which pawns, rooks, knights, and +queens were to disappear, so that the king was checkmated +M. Noirtier, the redoubtable, was the next morning "poor M. +Noirtier,' the helpless old man, at the tender mercies of +the weakest creature in the household, that is, his +grandchild, Valentine a dumb and frozen carcass, in fact, +living painlessly on, that time may be given for his frame +to decompose without his consciousness of its decay." +"Alas, sir," said Monte Cristo "this spectacle is neither +strange to my eye nor my thought. I am something of a +physician, and have, like my fellows, sought more than once +for the soul in living and in dead matter yet, like +providence, it has remained invisible to my eyes, although +present to my heart. A hundred writers since Socrates, +Seneca, St. Augustine, and Gall, have made, in verse and +prose, the comparison you have made, and yet I can well +understand that a father's sufferings may effect great +changes in the mind of a son. I will call on you, sir, since +you bid me contemplate, for the advantage of my pride, this +terrible spectacle, which must have been so great a source +of sorrow to your family." +"It would have been so unquestionably, had not God given me +so large a compensation. In contrast with the old man, who +is dragging his way to the tomb, are two children just +entering into life Valentine, the daughter by my first +wife Mademoiselle Renee de SaintMeran and Edward, the +boy whose life you have this day saved." +"And what is your deduction from this compensation, sir?" +inquired Monte Cristo. +"My deduction is," replied Villefort, "that my father, led +away by his passions, has committed some fault unknown to +human justice, but marked by the justice of God. That God, +desirous in his mercy to punish but one person, has visited +this justice on him alone." Monte Cristo with a smile on his +lips, uttered in the depths of his soul a groan which would +have made Villefort fly had he but heard it. "Adieu, sir," +said the magistrate, who had risen from his seat "I leave +you, bearing a remembrance of you a remembrance of +esteem, which I hope will not be disagreeable to you when +you know me better for I am not a man to bore my friends, +as you will learn. Besides, you have made an eternal friend +of Madame de Villefort." The count bowed, and contented +himself with seeing Villefort to the door of his cabinet, +the procureur being escorted to his carriage by two footmen, +who, on a signal from their master, followed him with every +mark of attention. When he had gone, Monte Cristo breathed a +profound sigh, and said, "Enough of this poison, let me +now seek the antidote." Then sounding his bell, he said to +Ali, who entered, "I am going to madam's chamber have the +carriage ready at one o'clock." +Chapter +Haidee. +It will be recollected that the new, or rather old, +acquaintances of the Count of Monte Cristo, residing in the +Rue Meslay, were no other than Maximilian, Julie, and +Emmanuel. The very anticipations of delight to be enjoyed in +his forthcoming visits the bright, pure gleam of heavenly +happiness it diffused over the almost deadly warfare in +which he had voluntarily engaged, illumined his whole +countenance with a look of ineffable joy and calmness, as, +immediately after Villefort's departure, his thoughts flew +back to the cheering prospect before him, of tasting, at +least, a brief respite from the fierce and stormy passions +of his mind. Even Ali, who had hastened to obey the Count's +summons, went forth from his master's presence in charmed +amazement at the unusual animation and pleasure depicted on +features ordinarily so stern and cold while, as though +dreading to put to flight the agreeable ideas hovering over +his patron's meditations, whatever they were, the faithful +Nubian walked on tiptoe towards the door, holding his +breath, lest its faintest sound should dissipate his +master's happy reverie. +It was noon, and Monte Cristo had set apart one hour to be +passed in the apartments of Haidee, as though his oppressed +spirit could not all at once admit the feeling of pure and +unmixed joy, but required a gradual succession of calm and +gentle emotions to prepare his mind to receive full and +perfect happiness, in the same manner as ordinary natures +demand to be inured by degrees to the reception of strong or +violent sensations. The young Greek, as we have already +said, occupied apartments wholly unconnected with those of +the count. The rooms had been fitted up in strict accordance +with Oriental ideas the floors were covered with the +richest carpets Turkey could produce the walls hung with +brocaded silk of the most magnificent designs and texture +while around each chamber luxurious divans were placed, with +piles of soft and yielding cushions, that needed only to be +arranged at the pleasure or convenience of such as sought +repose. Haidee and three French maids, and one who was a +Greek. The first three remained constantly in a small +waitingroom, ready to obey the summons of a small golden +bell, or to receive the orders of the Romaic slave, who knew +just enough French to be able to transmit her mistress's +wishes to the three other waitingwomen the latter had +received most peremptory instructions from Monte Cristo to +treat Haidee with all the deference they would observe to a +queen. +The young girl herself generally passed her time in the +chamber at the farther end of her apartments. This was a +sort of boudoir, circular, and lighted only from the roof, +which consisted of rosecolored glass. Haidee was reclining +upon soft downy cushions, covered with blue satin spotted +with silver her head, supported by one of her exquisitely +moulded arms, rested on the divan immediately behind her, +while the other was employed in adjusting to her lips the +coral tube of a rich narghile, through whose flexible pipe +she drew the smoke fragrant by its passage through perfumed +water. Her attitude, though perfectly natural for an Eastern +woman would, in a European, have been deemed too full of +coquettish straining after effect. Her dress, which was that +of the women of Epirus, consisted of a pair of white satin +trousers, embroidered with pink roses, displaying feet so +exquisitely formed and so delicately fair, that they might +well have been taken for Parian marble, had not the eye been +undeceived by their movements as they constantly shifted in +and out of a pair of little slippers with upturned toes, +beautifully ornamented with gold and pearls. She wore a blue +and whitestriped vest, with long open sleeves, trimmed with +silver loops and buttons of pearls, and a sort of bodice, +which, closing only from the centre to the waist, exhibited +the whole of the ivory throat and upper part of the bosom +it was fastened with three magnificent diamond clasps. The +junction of the bodice and drawers was entirely concealed by +one of the manycolored scarfs, whose brilliant hues and +rich silken fringe have rendered them so precious in the +eyes of Parisian belles. Tilted on one side of her head she +had a small cap of goldcolored silk, embroidered with +pearls while on the other a purple rose mingled its glowing +colors with the luxuriant masses of her hair, of which the +blackness was so intense that it was tinged with blue. The +extreme beauty of the countenance, that shone forth in +loveliness that mocked the vain attempts of dress to augment +it, was peculiarly and purely Grecian there were the large, +dark, melting eyes, the finely formed nose, the coral lips, +and pearly teeth, that belonged to her race and country. +And, to complete the whole, Haidee was in the very +springtide and fulness of youthful charms she had not yet +numbered more than twenty summers. +Monte Cristo summoned the Greek attendant, and bade her +inquire whether it would be agreeable to her mistress to +receive his visit. Haidee's only reply was to direct her +servant by a sign to withdraw the tapestried curtain that +hung before the door of her boudoir, the framework of the +opening thus made serving as a sort of border to the +graceful tableau presented by the young girl's picturesque +attitude and appearance. As Monte Cristo approached, she +leaned upon the elbow of the arm that held the narghile, and +extending to him her other hand, said, with a smile of +captivating sweetness, in the sonorous language spoken by +the women of Athens and Sparta, "Why demand permission ere +you enter? Are you no longer my master, or have I ceased to +be your slave?" Monte Cristo returned her smile. "Haidee," +said he, "you well know." +"Why do you address me so coldly so distantly?" asked the +young Greek. "Have I by any means displeased you? Oh, if so, +punish me as you will but do not do not speak to me in +tones and manner so formal and constrained." +"Haidee," replied the count, "you know that you are now in +France, and are free." +"Free to do what?" asked the young girl. +"Free to leave me." +"Leave you? Why should I leave you?" +"That is not for me to say but we are now about to mix in +society to visit and be visited." +"I don't wish to see anybody but you." +"And should you see one whom you could prefer, I would not +be so unjust" +"I have never seen any one I preferred to you, and I have +never loved any one but you and my father." +"My poor child," replied Monte Cristo, "that is merely +because your father and myself are the only men who have +ever talked to you." +"I don't want anybody else to talk to me. My father said I +was his "joy' you style me your "love,' and both of +you have called me "my child.'" +"Do you remember your father, Haidee?" The young Greek +smiled. "He is here, and here," said she, touching her eyes +and her heart. "And where am I?" inquired Monte Cristo +laughingly. +"You?" cried she, with tones of thrilling tenderness, "you +are everywhere" Monte Cristo took the delicate hand of the +young girl in his, and was about to raise it to his lips, +when the simple child of nature hastily withdrew it, and +presented her cheek. "You now understand, Haidee," said the +count, "that from this moment you are absolutely free that +here you exercise unlimited sway, and are at liberty to lay +aside or continue the costume of your country, as it may +suit your inclination. Within this mansion you are absolute +mistress of your actions, and may go abroad or remain in +your apartments as may seem most agreeable to you. A +carriage waits your orders, and Ali and Myrtho will +accompany you whithersoever you desire to go. There is but +one favor I would entreat of you." +"Speak." +"Guard carefully the secret of your birth. Make no allusion +to the past nor upon any occasion be induced to pronounce +the names of your illustrious father or illfated mother." +"I have already told you, my lord, that I shall see no one." +"It is possible, Haidee, that so perfect a seclusion, though +conformable with the habits and customs of the East, may not +be practicable in Paris. Endeavor, then, to accustom +yourself to our manner of living in these northern climes as +you did to those of Rome, Florence, Milan, and Madrid it +may be useful to you one of these days, whether you remain +here or return to the East." The young girl raised her +tearful eyes towards Monte Cristo as she said with touching +earnestness, "Whether we return to the East, you mean to +say, my lord, do you not?" +"My child," returned Monte Cristo "you know full well that +whenever we part, it will be no fault or wish of mine the +tree forsakes not the flower the flower falls from the +tree." +"My lord," replied Haidee, "I never will leave you, for I am +sure I could not exist without you." +"My poor girl, in ten years I shall be old, and you will be +still young." +"My father had a long white beard, but I loved him he was +sixty years old, but to me he was handsomer than all the +fine youths I saw." +"Then tell me, Haidee, do you believe you shall be able to +accustom yourself to our present mode of life?" +"Shall I see you?" +"Every day." +"Then what do you fear, my lord?" +"You might find it dull." +"No, my lord. In the morning, I shall rejoice in the +prospect of your coming, and in the evening dwell with +delight on the happiness I have enjoyed in your presence +then too, when alone, I can call forth mighty pictures of +the past, see vast horizons bounded only by the towering +mountains of Pindus and Olympus. Oh, believe me, that when +three great passions, such as sorrow, love, and gratitude +fill the heart, ennui can find no place." +"You are a worthy daughter of Epirus, Haidee, and your +charming and poetical ideas prove well your descent from +that race of goddesses who claim your country as their +birthplace. Depend on my care to see that your youth is not +blighted, or suffered to pass away in ungenial solitude and +of this be well assured, that if you love me as a father, I +love you as a child." +"You are wrong, my lord. The love I have for you is very +different from the love I had for my father. My father died, +but I did not die. If you were to die, I should die too." +The Count, with a smile of profound tenderness, extended his +hand, and she carried it to her lips. Monte Cristo, thus +attuned to the interview he proposed to hold with Morrel and +his family, departed, murmuring as he went these lines of +Pindar, "Youth is a flower of which love is the fruit happy +is he who, after having watched its silent growth, is +permitted to gather and call it his own." The carriage was +prepared according to orders, and stepping lightly into it, +the count drove off at his usual rapid pace. +Chapter +The Morrel Family. +In a very few minutes the count reached No. in the Rue +Meslay. The house was of white stone, and in a small court +before it were two small beds full of beautiful flowers. In +the concierge that opened the gate the count recognized +Cocles but as he had but one eye, and that eye had become +somewhat dim in the course of nine years, Cocles did not +recognize the count. The carriages that drove up to the door +were compelled to turn, to avoid a fountain that played in a +basin of rockwork, an ornament that had excited the +jealousy of the whole quarter, and had gained for the place +the appellation of "The Little Versailles." It is needless +to add that there were gold and silver fish in the basin. +The house, with kitchens and cellars below, had above the +groundfloor, two stories and attics. The whole of the +property, consisting of an immense workshop, two pavilions +at the bottom of the garden, and the garden itself, had been +purchased by Emmanuel, who had seen at a glance that he +could make of it a profitable speculation. He had reserved +the house and half the garden, and building a wall between +the garden and the workshops, had let them upon lease with +the pavilions at the bottom of the garden. So that for a +trifling sum he was as well lodged, and as perfectly shut +out from observation, as the inhabitants of the finest +mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain. The breakfastroom was +finished in oak the salon in mahogany, and the furnishings +were of blue velvet the bedroom was in citronwood and green +damask. There was a study for Emmanuel, who never studied, +and a musicroom for Julie, who never played. The whole of +the second story was set apart for Maximilian it was +precisely similar to his sister's apartments, except that +for the breakfastparlor he had a billiardroom, where he +received his friends. He was superintending the grooming of +his horse, and smoking his cigar at the entrance of the +garden, when the count's carriage stopped at the gate. +Cocles opened the gate, and Baptistin, springing from the +box, inquired whether Monsieur and Madame Herbault and +Monsieur Maximilian Morrel would see his excellency the +Count of Monte Cristo. "The Count of Monte Cristo?" cried +Morrel, throwing away his cigar and hastening to the +carriage "I should think we would see him. Ah, a thousand +thanks, count, for not having forgotten your promise." And +the young officer shook the count's hand so warmly, that +Monte Cristo could not be mistaken as to the sincerity of +his joy, and he saw that he had been expected with +impatience, and was received with pleasure. "Come, come," +said Maximilian, "I will serve as your guide such a man as +you are ought not to be introduced by a servant. My sister +is in the garden plucking the dead roses my brother is +reading his two papers, the Presse and the Debats, within +six steps of her for wherever you see Madame Herbault, you +have only to look within a circle of four yards and you will +find M. Emmanuel, and "reciprocally,' as they say at the +Polytechnic School." At the sound of their steps a young +woman of twenty to five and twenty, dressed in a silk +morning gown, and busily engaged in plucking the dead leaves +off a noisette rosetree, raised her head. This was Julie, +who had become, as the clerk of the house of Thomson +French had predicted, Madame Emmanuel Herbault. She uttered +a cry of surprise at the sight of a stranger, and Maximilian +began to laugh. "Don't disturb yourself, Julie," said he. +"The count has only been two or three days in Paris, but he +already knows what a fashionable woman of the Marais is, and +if he does not, you will show him." +"Ah, monsieur," returned Julie, "it is treason in my brother +to bring you thus, but he never has any regard for his poor +sister. Penelon, Penelon" An old man, who was digging +busily at one of the beds, stuck his spade in the earth, and +approached, cap in hand, striving to conceal a quid of +tobacco he had just thrust into his cheek. A few locks of +gray mingled with his hair, which was still thick and +matted, while his bronzed features and determined glance +well suited an old sailor who had braved the heat of the +equator and the storms of the tropics. "I think you hailed +me, Mademoiselle Julie?" said he. Penelon had still +preserved the habit of calling his master's daughter +"Mademoiselle Julie," and had never been able to change the +name to Madame Herbault. "Penelon," replied Julie, "go and +inform M. Emmanuel of this gentleman's visit, and Maximilian +will conduct him to the salon." Then, turning to Monte +Cristo, "I hope you will permit me to leave you for a few +minutes," continued she and without awaiting any reply, +disappeared behind a clump of trees, and escaped to the +house by a lateral alley. +"I am sorry to see," observed Monte Cristo to Morrel, "that +I cause no small disturbance in your house." +"Look there," said Maximilian, laughing "there is her +husband changing his jacket for a coat. I assure you, you +are well known in the Rue Meslay." +"Your family appears to be a very happy one," said the +count, as if speaking to himself. +"Oh, yes, I assure you, count, they want nothing that can +render them happy they are young and cheerful, they are +tenderly attached to each other, and with twentyfive +thousand francs a year they fancy themselves as rich as +Rothschild." +"Five and twenty thousand francs is not a large sum, +however," replied Monte Cristo, with a tone so sweet and +gentle, that it went to Maximilian's heart like the voice of +a father "but they will not be content with that. Your +brotherinlaw is a barrister? a doctor?" +"He was a merchant, monsieur, and had succeeded to the +business of my poor father. M. Morrel, at his death, left +, francs, which were divided between my sister and +myself, for we were his only children. Her husband, who, +when he married her, had no other patrimony than his noble +probity, his firstrate ability, and his spotless +reputation, wished to possess as much as his wife. He +labored and toiled until he had amassed , francs six +years sufficed to achieve this object. Oh, I assure you, +sir, it was a touching spectacle to see these young +creatures, destined by their talents for higher stations, +toiling together, and through their unwillingness to change +any of the customs of their paternal house, taking six years +to accomplish what less scrupulous people would have +effected in two or three. Marseilles resounded with their +wellearned praises. At last, one day, Emmanuel came to his +wife, who had just finished making up the accounts. "Julie,' +said he to her, "Cocles has just given me the last rouleau +of a hundred francs that completes the , francs we +had fixed as the limits of our gains. Can you content +yourself with the small fortune which we shall possess for +the future? Listen to me. Our house transacts business to +the amount of a million a year, from which we derive an +income of , francs. We can dispose of the business, if +we please, in an hour, for I have received a letter from M. +Delaunay, in which he offers to purchase the goodwill of +the house, to unite with his own, for , francs. Advise +me what I had better do.' "Emmanuel,' returned my sister, +"the house of Morrel can only be carried on by a Morrel. Is +it not worth , francs to save our father's name from +the chances of evil fortune and failure?' "I thought so,' +replied Emmanuel "but I wished to have your advice.' +"This is my counsel Our accounts are made up and our +bills paid all we have to do is to stop the issue of any +more, and close our office.' This was done instantly. It was +three o'clock at a quarter past, a merchant presented +himself to insure two ships it was a clear profit of , +francs. "Monsieur,' said Emmanuel, "have the goodness to +address yourself to M. Delaunay. We have quitted business.' +"How long?' inquired the astonished merchant. "A quarter +of an hour,' was the reply. And this is the reason, +monsieur," continued Maximilian, "of my sister and +brotherinlaw having only , francs a year." +Maximilian had scarcely finished his story, during which the +count's heart had swelled within him, when Emmanuel entered +wearing a hat and coat. He saluted the count with the air of +a man who is aware of the rank of his guest then, after +having led Monte Cristo around the little garden, he +returned to the house. A large vase of Japan porcelain, +filled with flowers that loaded the air with their perfume, +stood in the salon. Julie, suitably dressed, and her hair +arranged she had accomplished this feat in less than ten +minutes, received the count on his entrance. The songs of +the birds were heard in an aviary hard by, and the branches +of laburnums and rose acacias formed an exquisite framework +to the blue velvet curtains. Everything in this charming +retreat, from the warble of the birds to the smile of the +mistress, breathed tranquillity and repose. The count had +felt the influence of this happiness from the moment he +entered the house, and he remained silent and pensive, +forgetting that he was expected to renew the conversation, +which had ceased after the first salutations had been +exchanged. The silence became almost painful when, by a +violent effort, tearing himself from his pleasing reverie +"Madame," said he at length, "I pray you to excuse my +emotion, which must astonish you who are only accustomed to +the happiness I meet here but contentment is so new a sight +to me, that I could never be weary of looking at yourself +and your husband." +"We are very happy, monsieur," replied Julie "but we have +also known unhappiness, and few have ever undergone more +bitter sufferings than ourselves." The Count's features +displayed an expression of the most intense curiosity. +"Oh, all this is a family history, as ChateauRenaud told +you the other day," observed Maximilian. "This humble +picture would have but little interest for you, accustomed +as you are to behold the pleasures and the misfortunes of +the wealthy and industrious but such as we are, we have +experienced bitter sorrows." +"And God has poured balm into your wounds, as he does into +those of all who are in affliction?" said Monte Cristo +inquiringly. +"Yes, count," returned Julie, "we may indeed say he has, for +he has done for us what he grants only to his chosen he +sent us one of his angels." The count's cheeks became +scarlet, and he coughed, in order to have an excuse for +putting his handkerchief to his mouth. "Those born to +wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish," +said Emmanuel, "know not what is the real happiness of life, +just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of +the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the +blessings of fair weather." +Monte Cristo rose, and without making any answer for the +tremulousness of his voice would have betrayed his emotion +walked up and down the apartment with a slow step. +"Our magnificence makes you smile, count," said Maximilian, +who had followed him with his eyes. "No, no," returned Monte +Cristo, pale as death, pressing one hand on his heart to +still its throbbings, while with the other he pointed to a +crystal cover, beneath which a silken purse lay on a black +velvet cushion. "I was wondering what could be the +significance of this purse, with the paper at one end and +the large diamond at the other." +"Count," replied Maximilian, with an air of gravity, "those +are our most precious family treasures." +"The stone seems very brilliant," answered the count. +"Oh, my brother does not allude to its value, although it +has been estimated at , francs he means, that the +articles contained in this purse are the relics of the angel +I spoke of just now." +"This I do not comprehend and yet I may not ask for an +explanation, madame," replied Monte Cristo bowing. "Pardon +me, I had no intention of committing an indiscretion." +"Indiscretion, oh, you make us happy by giving us an +excuse for expatiating on this subject. If we wanted to +conceal the noble action this purse commemorates, we should +not expose it thus to view. Oh, would we could relate it +everywhere, and to every one, so that the emotion of our +unknown benefactor might reveal his presence." +"Ah, really," said Monte Cristo in a halfstifled voice. +"Monsieur," returned Maximilian, raising the glass cover, +and respectfully kissing the silken purse, "this has touched +the hand of a man who saved my father from suicide, us from +ruin, and our name from shame and disgrace, a man by +whose matchless benevolence we poor children, doomed to want +and wretchedness, can at present hear every one envying our +happy lot. This letter" as he spoke, Maximilian drew a +letter from the purse and gave it to the count "this +letter was written by him the day that my father had taken a +desperate resolution, and this diamond was given by the +generous unknown to my sister as her dowry." Monte Cristo +opened the letter, and read it with an indescribable feeling +of delight. It was the letter written as our readers know +to Julie, and signed "Sinbad the Sailor." "Unknown you say, +is the man who rendered you this service unknown to you?" +"Yes we have never had the happiness of pressing his hand," +continued Maximilian. "We have supplicated heaven in vain to +grant us this favor, but the whole affair has had a +mysterious meaning that we cannot comprehend we have been +guided by an invisible hand, a hand as powerful as that +of an enchanter." +"Oh," cried Julie, "I have not lost all hope of some day +kissing that hand, as I now kiss the purse which he has +touched. Four years ago, Penelon was at Trieste Penelon, +count, is the old sailor you saw in the garden, and who, +from quartermaster, has become gardener Penelon, when he +was at Trieste, saw on the quay an Englishman, who was on +the point of embarking on board a yacht, and he recognized +him as the person who called on my father the fifth of June, +, and who wrote me this letter on the fifth of +September. He felt convinced of his identity, but he did not +venture to address him." +"An Englishman," said Monte Cristo, who grew uneasy at the +attention with which Julie looked at him. "An Englishman you +say?" +"Yes," replied Maximilian, "an Englishman, who represented +himself as the confidential clerk of the house of Thomson +French, at Rome. It was this that made me start when you +said the other day, at M. de Morcerf's, that Messrs. Thomson + French were your bankers. That happened, as I told you, in +. For God's sake, tell me, did you know this +Englishman?" +"But you tell me, also, that the house of Thomson French +have constantly denied having rendered you this service?" +"Yes." +"Then is it not probable that this Englishman may be some +one who, grateful for a kindness your father had shown him, +and which he himself had forgotten, has taken this method of +requiting the obligation?" +"Everything is possible in this affair, even a miracle." +"What was his name?" asked Monte Cristo. +"He gave no other name," answered Julie, looking earnestly +at the count, "than that at the end of his letter "Sinbad +the Sailor.'" +"Which is evidently not his real name, but a fictitious +one." +Then, noticing that Julie was struck with the sound of his +voice, +"Tell me," continued he, "was he not about my height, +perhaps a little taller, with his chin imprisoned, as it +were, in a high cravat his coat closely buttoned up, and +constantly taking out his pencil?" +"Oh, do you then know him?" cried Julie, whose eyes sparkled +with joy. +"No," returned Monte Cristo "I only guessed. I knew a Lord +Wilmore, who was constantly doing actions of this kind." +"Without revealing himself?" +"He was an eccentric being, and did not believe in the +existence of gratitude." +"Oh, heaven," exclaimed Julie, clasping her hands, "in what +did he believe, then?" +"He did not credit it at the period which I knew him," said +Monte Cristo, touched to the heart by the accents of Julie's +voice "but, perhaps, since then he has had proofs that +gratitude does exist." +"And do you know this gentleman, monsieur?" inquired +Emmanuel. +"Oh, if you do know him," cried Julie, "can you tell us +where he is where we can find him? Maximilian Emmanuel +if we do but discover him, he must believe in the +gratitude of the heart" Monte Cristo felt tears start into +his eyes, and he again walked hastily up and down the room. +"In the name of heaven," said Maximilian, "if you know +anything of him, tell us what it is." +"Alas," cried Monte Cristo, striving to repress his emotion, +"if Lord Wilmore was your unknown benefactor, I fear you +will never see him again. I parted from him two years ago at +Palermo, and he was then on the point of setting out for the +most remote regions so that I fear he will never return." +"Oh, monsieur, this is cruel of you," said Julie, much +affected and the young lady's eyes swam with tears. +"Madame," replied Monte Cristo gravely, and gazing earnestly +on the two liquid pearls that trickled down Julie's cheeks, +"had Lord Wilmore seen what I now see, he would become +attached to life, for the tears you shed would reconcile him +to mankind" and he held out his hand to Julie, who gave him +hers, carried away by the look and accent of the count. +"But," continued she, "Lord Wilmore had a family or friends, +he must have known some one, can we not " +"Oh, it is useless to inquire," returned the count +"perhaps, after all, he was not the man you seek for. He was +my friend he had no secrets from me, and if this had been +so he would have confided in me." +"And he told you nothing?" +"Not a word." +"Nothing that would lead you to suppose?" +"Nothing." +"And yet you spoke of him at once." +"Ah, in such a case one supposes" +"Sister, sister," said Maximilian, coming to the count's +aid, "monsieur is quite right. Recollect what our excellent +father so often told us, "It was no Englishman that thus +saved us.'" Monte Cristo started. "What did your father tell +you, M. Morrel?" said he eagerly. +"My father thought that this action had been miraculously +performed he believed that a benefactor had arisen from +the grave to save us. Oh, it was a touching superstition, +monsieur, and although I did not myself believe it, I would +not for the world have destroyed my father's faith. How +often did he muse over it and pronounce the name of a dear +friend a friend lost to him forever and on his +deathbed, when the near approach of eternity seemed to have +illumined his mind with supernatural light, this thought, +which had until then been but a doubt, became a conviction, +and his last words were, "Maximilian, it was Edmond +Dantes'" At these words the count's paleness, which had for +some time been increasing, became alarming he could not +speak he looked at his watch like a man who has forgotten +the hour, said a few hurried words to Madame Herbault, and +pressing the hands of Emmanuel and Maximilian, "Madame," +said he, "I trust you will allow me to visit you +occasionally I value your friendship, and feel grateful to +you for your welcome, for this is the first time for many +years that I have thus yielded to my feelings" and he +hastily quitted the apartment. +"This Count of Monte Cristo is a strange man," said +Emmanuel. +"Yes," answered Maximilian, "but I feel sure he has an +excellent heart, and that he likes us." +"His voice went to my heart," observed Julie "and two or +three times I fancied that I had heard it before." +Chapter +Pyramus and Thisbe. +About twothirds of the way along the Faubourg SaintHonore, +and in the rear of one of the most imposing mansions in this +rich neighborhood, where the various houses vie with each +other for elegance of design and magnificence of +construction, extended a large garden, where the +widespreading chestnuttrees raised their heads high above +the walls in a solid rampart, and with the coming of every +spring scattered a shower of delicate pink and white +blossoms into the large stone vases that stood upon the two +square pilasters of a curiously wrought iron gate, that +dated from the time of Louis XII. This noble entrance, +however, in spite of its striking appearance and the +graceful effect of the geraniums planted in the two vases, +as they waved their variegated leaves in the wind and +charmed the eye with their scarlet bloom, had fallen into +utter disuse. The proprietors of the mansion had many years +before thought it best to confine themselves to the +possession of the house itself, with its thickly planted +courtyard, opening into the Faubourg SaintHonore, and to +the garden shut in by this gate, which formerly communicated +with a fine kitchengarden of about an acre. For the demon +of speculation drew a line, or in other words projected a +street, at the farther side of the kitchengarden. The +street was laid out, a name was chosen and posted up on an +iron plate, but before construction was begun, it occurred +to the possessor of the property that a handsome sum might +be obtained for the ground then devoted to fruits and +vegetables, by building along the line of the proposed +street, and so making it a branch of communication with the +Faubourg SaintHonore itself, one of the most important +thoroughfares in the city of Paris. +In matters of speculation, however, though "man proposes," +"money disposes." From some such difficulty the newly named +street died almost in birth, and the purchaser of the +kitchengarden, having paid a high price for it, and being +quite unable to find any one willing to take his bargain off +his hands without a considerable loss, yet still clinging to +the belief that at some future day he should obtain a sum +for it that would repay him, not only for his past outlay, +but also the interest upon the capital locked up in his new +acquisition, contented himself with letting the ground +temporarily to some marketgardeners, at a yearly rental of + francs. And so, as we have said, the iron gate leading +into the kitchengarden had been closed up and left to the +rust, which bade fair before long to eat off its hinges, +while to prevent the ignoble glances of the diggers and +delvers of the ground from presuming to sully the +aristocratic enclosure belonging to the mansion, the gate +had been boarded up to a height of six feet. True, the +planks were not so closely adjusted but that a hasty peep +might be obtained through their interstices but the strict +decorum and rigid propriety of the inhabitants of the house +left no grounds for apprehending that advantage would be +taken of that circumstance. +Horticulture seemed, however, to have been abandoned in the +deserted kitchengarden and where cabbages, carrots, +radishes, pease, and melons had once flourished, a scanty +crop of lucerne alone bore evidence of its being deemed +worthy of cultivation. A small, low door gave egress from +the walled space we have been describing into the projected +street, the ground having been abandoned as unproductive by +its various renters, and had now fallen so completely in +general estimation as to return not even the onehalf per +cent it had originally paid. Towards the house the +chestnuttrees we have before mentioned rose high above the +wall, without in any way affecting the growth of other +luxuriant shrubs and flowers that eagerly dressed forward to +fill up the vacant spaces, as though asserting their right +to enjoy the boon of light and air. At one corner, where the +foliage became so thick as almost to shut out day, a large +stone bench and sundry rustic seats indicated that this +sheltered spot was either in general favor or particular use +by some inhabitant of the house, which was faintly +discernible through the dense mass of verdure that partially +concealed it, though situated but a hundred paces off. +Whoever had selected this retired portion of the grounds as +the boundary of a walk, or as a place for meditation, was +abundantly justified in the choice by the absence of all +glare, the cool, refreshing shade, the screen it afforded +from the scorching rays of the sun, that found no entrance +there even during the burning days of hottest summer, the +incessant and melodious warbling of birds, and the entire +removal from either the noise of the street or the bustle of +the mansion. On the evening of one of the warmest days +spring had yet bestowed on the inhabitants of Paris, might +be seen negligently thrown upon the stone bench, a book, a +parasol, and a workbasket, from which hung a partly +embroidered cambric handkerchief, while at a little distance +from these articles was a young woman, standing close to the +iron gate, endeavoring to discern something on the other +side by means of the openings in the planks, the +earnestness of her attitude and the fixed gaze with which +she seemed to seek the object of her wishes, proving how +much her feelings were interested in the matter. At that +instant the little sidegate leading from the waste ground +to the street was noiselessly opened, and a tall, powerful +young man appeared. He was dressed in a common gray blouse +and velvet cap, but his carefully arranged hair, beard and +mustache, all of the richest and glossiest black, ill +accorded with his plebeian attire. After casting a rapid +glance around him, in order to assure himself that he was +unobserved, he entered by the small gate, and, carefully +closing and securing it after him, proceeded with a hurried +step towards the barrier. +At the sight of him she expected, though probably not in +such a costume, the young woman started in terror, and was +about to make a hasty retreat. But the eye of love had +already seen, even through the narrow chinks of the wooden +palisades, the movement of the white robe, and observed the +fluttering of the blue sash. Pressing his lips close to the +planks, he exclaimed, "Don't be alarmed, Valentine it is +I" Again the timid girl found courage to return to the +gate, saying, as she did so, "And why do you come so late +today? It is almost dinnertime, and I had to use no little +diplomacy to get rid of my watchful motherinlaw, my +toodevoted maid, and my troublesome brother, who is always +teasing me about coming to work at my embroidery, which I am +in a fair way never to get done. So pray excuse yourself as +well as you can for having made me wait, and, after that, +tell me why I see you in a dress so singular that at first I +did not recognize you." +"Dearest Valentine," said the young man, "the difference +between our respective stations makes me fear to offend you +by speaking of my love, but yet I cannot find myself in your +presence without longing to pour forth my soul, and tell you +how fondly I adore you. If it be but to carry away with me +the recollection of such sweet moments, I could even thank +you for chiding me, for it leaves me a gleam of hope, that +if you did not expect me and that indeed would be worse +than vanity to suppose, at least I was in your thoughts. +You asked me the cause of my being late, and why I come +disguised. I will candidly explain the reason of both, and I +trust to your goodness to pardon me. I have chosen a trade." +"A trade? Oh, Maximilian, how can you jest at a time when we +have such deep cause for uneasiness?" +"Heaven keep me from jesting with that which is far dearer +to me than life itself But listen to me, Valentine, and I +will tell you all about it. I became weary of ranging fields +and scaling walls, and seriously alarmed at the idea +suggested by you, that if caught hovering about here your +father would very likely have me sent to prison as a thief. +That would compromise the honor of the French army, to say +nothing of the fact that the continual presence of a captain +of Spahis in a place where no warlike projects could be +supposed to account for it might well create surprise so I +have become a gardener, and, consequently, adopted the +costume of my calling." +"What excessive nonsense you talk, Maximilian" +"Nonsense? Pray do not call what I consider the wisest +action of my life by such a name. Consider, by becoming a +gardener I effectually screen our meetings from all +suspicion or danger." +"I beseech of you, Maximilian, to cease trifling, and tell +me what you really mean." +"Simply, that having ascertained that the piece of ground on +which I stand was to let, I made application for it, was +readily accepted by the proprietor, and am now master of +this fine crop of lucerne. Think of that, Valentine There +is nothing now to prevent my building myself a little hut on +my plantation, and residing not twenty yards from you. Only +imagine what happiness that would afford me. I can scarcely +contain myself at the bare idea. Such felicity seems above +all price as a thing impossible and unattainable. But +would you believe that I purchase all this delight, joy, and +happiness, for which I would cheerfully have surrendered ten +years of my life, at the small cost of francs per annum, +paid quarterly? Henceforth we have nothing to fear. I am on +my own ground, and have an undoubted right to place a ladder +against the wall, and to look over when I please, without +having any apprehensions of being taken off by the police as +a suspicious character. I may also enjoy the precious +privilege of assuring you of my fond, faithful, and +unalterable affection, whenever you visit your favorite +bower, unless, indeed, it offends your pride to listen to +professions of love from the lips of a poor workingman, clad +in a blouse and cap." A faint cry of mingled pleasure and +surprise escaped from the lips of Valentine, who almost +instantly said, in a saddened tone, as though some envious +cloud darkened the joy which illumined her heart, "Alas, no, +Maximilian, this must not be, for many reasons. We should +presume too much on our own strength, and, like others, +perhaps, be led astray by our blind confidence in each +other's prudence." +"How can you for an instant entertain so unworthy a thought, +dear Valentine? Have I not, from the first blessed hour of +our acquaintance, schooled all my words and actions to your +sentiments and ideas? And you have, I am sure, the fullest +confidence in my honor. When you spoke to me of experiencing +a vague and indefinite sense of coming danger, I placed +myself blindly and devotedly at your service, asking no +other reward than the pleasure of being useful to you and +have I ever since, by word or look, given you cause of +regret for having selected me from the numbers that would +willingly have sacrificed their lives for you? You told me, +my dear Valentine, that you were engaged to M. d'Epinay, and +that your father was resolved upon completing the match, and +that from his will there was no appeal, as M. de Villefort +was never known to change a determination once formed. I +kept in the background, as you wished, and waited, not for +the decision of your heart or my own, but hoping that +providence would graciously interpose in our behalf, and +order events in our favor. But what cared I for delays or +difficulties, Valentine, as long as you confessed that you +loved me, and took pity on me? If you will only repeat that +avowal now and then, I can endure anything." +"Ah, Maximilian, that is the very thing that makes you so +bold, and which renders me at once so happy and unhappy, +that I frequently ask myself whether it is better for me to +endure the harshness of my motherinlaw, and her blind +preference for her own child, or to be, as I now am, +insensible to any pleasure save such as I find in these +meetings, so fraught with danger to both." +"I will not admit that word," returned the young man "it is +at once cruel and unjust. Is it possible to find a more +submissive slave than myself? You have permitted me to +converse with you from time to time, Valentine, but +forbidden my ever following you in your walks or elsewhere +have I not obeyed? And since I found means to enter this +enclosure to exchange a few words with you through this gate +to be close to you without really seeing you have I +ever asked so much as to touch the hem of your gown or tried +to pass this barrier which is but a trifle to one of my +youth and strength? Never has a complaint or a murmur +escaped me. I have been bound by my promises as rigidly as +any knight of olden times. Come, come, dearest Valentine, +confess that what I say is true, lest I be tempted to call +you unjust." +"It is true," said Valentine, as she passed the end of her +slender fingers through a small opening in the planks, and +permitted Maximilian to press his lips to them, "and you are +a true and faithful friend but still you acted from motives +of selfinterest, my dear Maximilian, for you well knew that +from the moment in which you had manifested an opposite +spirit all would have been ended between us. You promised to +bestow on me the friendly affection of a brother. For I have +no friend but yourself upon earth, who am neglected and +forgotten by my father, harassed and persecuted by my +motherinlaw, and left to the sole companionship of a +paralyzed and speechless old man, whose withered hand can no +longer press mine, and who can speak to me with the eye +alone, although there still lingers in his heart the warmest +tenderness for his poor grandchild. Oh, how bitter a fate is +mine, to serve either as a victim or an enemy to all who are +stronger than myself, while my only friend and supporter is +a living corpse Indeed, indeed, Maximilian, I am very +miserable, and if you love me it must be out of pity." +"Valentine," replied the young man, deeply affected, "I will +not say you are all I love in the world, for I dearly prize +my sister and brotherinlaw but my affection for them is +calm and tranquil, in no manner resembling what I feel for +you. When I think of you my heart beats fast, the blood +burns in my veins, and I can hardly breathe but I solemnly +promise you to restrain all this ardor, this fervor and +intensity of feeling, until you yourself shall require me to +render them available in serving or assisting you. M. Franz +is not expected to return home for a year to come, I am +told in that time many favorable and unforeseen chances may +befriend us. Let us, then, hope for the best hope is so +sweet a comforter. Meanwhile, Valentine, while reproaching +me with selfishness, think a little what you have been to me +the beautiful but cold resemblance of a marble Venus. +What promise of future reward have you made me for all the +submission and obedience I have evinced? none whatever. +What granted me? scarcely more. You tell me of M. Franz +d'Epinay, your betrothed lover, and you shrink from the idea +of being his wife but tell me, Valentine, is there no other +sorrow in your heart? You see me devoted to you, body and +soul, my life and each warm drop that circles round my heart +are consecrated to your service you know full well that my +existence is bound up in yours that were I to lose you I +would not outlive the hour of such crushing misery yet you +speak with calmness of the prospect of your being the wife +of another Oh, Valentine, were I in your place, and did I +feel conscious, as you do, of being worshipped, adored, with +such a love as mine, a hundred times at least should I have +passed my hand between these iron bars, and said, "Take this +hand, dearest Maximilian, and believe that, living or dead, +I am yours yours only, and forever'" The poor girl made +no reply, but her lover could plainly hear her sobs and +tears. A rapid change took place in the young man's +feelings. "Dearest, dearest Valentine," exclaimed he, +"forgive me if I have offended you, and forget the words I +spoke if they have unwittingly caused you pain." +"No, Maximilian, I am not offended," answered she, "but do +you not see what a poor, helpless being I am, almost a +stranger and an outcast in my father's house, where even he +is seldom seen whose will has been thwarted, and spirits +broken, from the age of ten years, beneath the iron rod so +sternly held over me oppressed, mortified, and persecuted, +day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, no person has +cared for, even observed my sufferings, nor have I ever +breathed one word on the subject save to yourself. Outwardly +and in the eyes of the world, I am surrounded by kindness +and affection but the reverse is the case. The general +remark is, "Oh, it cannot be expected that one of so stern a +character as M. Villefort could lavish the tenderness some +fathers do on their daughters. What though she has lost her +own mother at a tender age, she has had the happiness to +find a second mother in Madame de Villefort.' The world, +however, is mistaken my father abandons me from utter +indifference, while my motherinlaw detests me with a +hatred so much the more terrible because it is veiled +beneath a continual smile." +"Hate you, sweet Valentine," exclaimed the young man "how +is it possible for any one to do that?" +"Alas," replied the weeping girl, "I am obliged to own that +my motherinlaw's aversion to me arises from a very natural +source her overweening love for her own child, my brother +Edward." +"But why should it?" +"I do not know but, though unwilling to introduce money +matters into our present conversation, I will just say this +much that her extreme dislike to me has its origin there +and I much fear she envies me the fortune I enjoy in right +of my mother, and which will be more than doubled at the +death of M. and Mme. de SaintMeran, whose sole heiress I +am. Madame de Villefort has nothing of her own, and hates me +for being so richly endowed. Alas, how gladly would I +exchange the half of this wealth for the happiness of at +least sharing my father's love. God knows, I would prefer +sacrificing the whole, so that it would obtain me a happy +and affectionate home." +"Poor Valentine" +"I seem to myself as though living a life of bondage, yet at +the same time am so conscious of my own weakness that I fear +to break the restraint in which I am held, lest I fall +utterly helpless. Then, too, my father is not a person whose +orders may be infringed with impunity protected as he is by +his high position and firmly established reputation for +talent and unswerving integrity, no one could oppose him he +is allpowerful even with the king he would crush you at a +word. Dear Maximilian, believe me when I assure you that if +I do not attempt to resist my father's commands it is more +on your account than my own." +"But why, Valentine, do you persist in anticipating the +worst, why picture so gloomy a future?" +"Because I judge it from the past." +"Still, consider that although I may not be, strictly +speaking, what is termed an illustrious match for you, I am, +for many reasons, not altogether so much beneath your +alliance. The days when such distinctions were so nicely +weighed and considered no longer exist in France, and the +first families of the monarchy have intermarried with those +of the empire. The aristocracy of the lance has allied +itself with the nobility of the cannon. Now I belong to this +lastnamed class and certainly my prospects of military +preferment are most encouraging as well as certain. My +fortune, though small, is free and unfettered, and the +memory of my late father is respected in our country, +Valentine, as that of the most upright and honorable +merchant of the city I say our country, because you were +born not far from Marseilles." +"Don't speak of Marseilles, I beg of you, Maximilian that +one word brings back my mother to my recollection my +angel mother, who died too soon for myself and all who knew +her but who, after watching over her child during the brief +period allotted to her in this world, now, I fondly hope, +watches from her home in heaven. Oh, if my mother were still +living, there would be nothing to fear, Maximilian, for I +would tell her that I loved you, and she would protect us." +"I fear, Valentine," replied the lover, "that were she +living I should never have had the happiness of knowing you +you would then have been too happy to have stooped from your +grandeur to bestow a thought on me." +"Now it is you who are unjust, Maximilian," cried Valentine +"but there is one thing I wish to know." +"And what is that?" inquired the young man, perceiving that +Valentine hesitated. +"Tell me truly, Maximilian, whether in former days, when our +fathers dwelt at Marseilles, there was ever any +misunderstanding between them?" +"Not that I am aware of," replied the young man, "unless, +indeed, any illfeeling might have arisen from their being +of opposite parties your father was, as you know, a +zealous partisan of the Bourbons, while mine was wholly +devoted to the emperor there could not possibly be any +other difference between them. But why do you ask?" +"I will tell you," replied the young girl, "for it is but +right you should know. Well, on the day when your +appointment as an officer of the Legion of honor was +announced in the papers, we were all sitting with my +grandfather, M. Noirtier M. Danglars was there also you +recollect M. Danglars, do you not, Maximilian, the banker, +whose horses ran away with my motherinlaw and little +brother, and very nearly killed them? While the rest of the +company were discussing the approaching marriage of +Mademoiselle Danglars, I was reading the paper to my +grandfather but when I came to the paragraph about you, +although I had done nothing else but read it over to myself +all the morning you know you had told me all about it the +previous evening, I felt so happy, and yet so nervous, at +the idea of speaking your name aloud, and before so many +people, that I really think I should have passed it over, +but for the fear that my doing so might create suspicions as +to the cause of my silence so I summoned up all my courage, +and read it as firmly and as steadily as I could." +"Dear Valentine" +"Well, would you believe it? directly my father caught the +sound of your name he turned round quite hastily, and, like +a poor silly thing, I was so persuaded that every one must +be as much affected as myself by the utterance of your name, +that I was not surprised to see my father start, and almost +tremble but I even thought though that surely must have +been a mistake that M. Danglars trembled too." +""Morrel, Morrel,' cried my father, "stop a bit' then +knitting his brows into a deep frown, he added, "surely this +cannot be one of the Morrel family who lived at Marseilles, +and gave us so much trouble from their violent Bonapartism +I mean about the year .' "Yes,' replied M. +Danglars, "I believe he is the son of the old shipowner.'" +"Indeed," answered Maximilian "and what did your father say +then, Valentine?" +"Oh, such a dreadful thing, that I don't dare to tell you." +"Always tell me everything," said Maximilian with a smile. +""Ah,' continued my father, still frowning, "their idolized +emperor treated these madmen as they deserved he called +them "food for powder,' which was precisely all they were +good for and I am delighted to see that the present +government have adopted this salutary principle with all its +pristine vigor if Algiers were good for nothing but to +furnish the means of carrying so admirable an idea into +practice, it would be an acquisition well worthy of +struggling to obtain. Though it certainly does cost France +somewhat dear to assert her rights in that uncivilized +country.'" +"Brutal politics, I must confess." said Maximilian "but +don't attach any serious importance, dear, to what your +father said. My father was not a bit behind yours in that +sort of talk. "Why,' said he, "does not the emperor, who has +devised so many clever and efficient modes of improving the +art of war, organize a regiment of lawyers, judges and legal +practitioners, sending them in the hottest fire the enemy +could maintain, and using them to save better men?' You see, +my dear, that for picturesque expression and generosity of +spirit there is not much to choose between the language of +either party. But what did M. Danglars say to this outburst +on the part of the procureur?" +"Oh, he laughed, and in that singular manner so peculiar to +himself halfmalicious, halfferocious he almost +immediately got up and took his leave then, for the first +time, I observed the agitation of my grandfather, and I must +tell you, Maximilian, that I am the only person capable of +discerning emotion in his paralyzed frame. And I suspected +that the conversation that had been carried on in his +presence for they always say and do what they like before +the dear old man, without the smallest regard for his +feelings had made a strong impression on his mind for, +naturally enough, it must have pained him to hear the +emperor he so devotedly loved and served spoken of in that +depreciating manner." +"The name of M. Noirtier," interposed Maximilian, "is +celebrated throughout Europe he was a statesman of high +standing, and you may or may not know, Valentine, that he +took a leading part in every Bonapartist conspiracy set on +foot during the restoration of the Bourbons." +"Oh, I have often heard whispers of things that seem to me +most strange the father a Bonapartist, the son a +Royalist what can have been the reason of so singular a +difference in parties and politics? But to resume my story +I turned towards my grandfather, as though to question him +as to the cause of his emotion he looked expressively at +the newspaper I had been reading. "What is the matter, dear +grandfather?' said I, "are you pleased?' He gave me a sign +in the affirmative. "With what my father said just now?' He +returned a sign in the negative. "Perhaps you liked what M. +Danglars said?' Another sign in the negative. "Oh, then, you +were glad to hear that M. Morrel I didn't dare to say +Maximilian had been made an officer of the Legion of +Honor?' He signified assent only think of the poor old +man's being so pleased to think that you, who were a perfect +stranger to him, had been made an officer of the Legion of +Honor Perhaps it was a mere whim on his part, for he is +falling, they say, into second childhood, but I love him for +showing so much interest in you." +"How singular," murmured Maximilian "your father hates me, +while your grandfather, on the contrary What strange +feelings are aroused by politics." +"Hush," cried Valentine, suddenly "some one is coming" +Maximilian leaped at one bound into his crop of lucerne, +which he began to pull up in the most ruthless way, under +the pretext of being occupied in weeding it. +"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle" exclaimed a voice from behind +the trees. "Madame is searching for you everywhere there is +a visitor in the drawingroom." +"A visitor?" inquired Valentine, much agitated "who is it?" +"Some grand personage a prince I believe they said the +Count of Monte Cristo." +"I will come directly," cried Valentine aloud. The name of +Monte Cristo sent an electric shock through the young man on +the other side of the iron gate, to whom Valentine's "I am +coming" was the customary signal of farewell. "Now, then," +said Maximilian, leaning on the handle of his spade, "I +would give a good deal to know how it comes about that the +Count of Monte Cristo is acquainted with M. de Villefort." +Chapter +Toxicology. +It was really the Count of Monte Cristo who had just arrived +at Madame de Villefort's for the purpose of returning the +procureur's visit, and at his name, as may be easily +imagined, the whole house was in confusion. Madame de +Villefort, who was alone in her drawingroom when the count +was announced, desired that her son might be brought thither +instantly to renew his thanks to the count and Edward, who +heard this great personage talked of for two whole days, +made all possible haste to come to him, not from obedience +to his mother, or out of any feeling of gratitude to the +count, but from sheer curiosity, and that some chance remark +might give him the opportunity for making one of the +impertinent speeches which made his mother say, "Oh, that +naughty child But I can't be severe with him, he is really +so bright." +After the usual civilities, the count inquired after M. de +Villefort. "My husband dines with the chancellor," replied +the young lady "he has just gone, and I am sure he'll be +exceedingly sorry not to have had the pleasure of seeing you +before he went." Two visitors who were there when the count +arrived, having gazed at him with all their eyes, retired +after that reasonable delay which politeness admits and +curiosity requires. "What is your sister Valentine doing?" +inquired Madame de Villefort of Edward "tell some one to +bid her come here, that I may have the honor of introducing +her to the count." +"You have a daughter, then, madame?" inquired the count +"very young, I presume?" +"The daughter of M. de Villefort by his first marriage," +replied the young wife, "a fine wellgrown girl." +"But melancholy," interrupted Master Edward, snatching the +feathers out of the tail of a splendid parroquet that was +screaming on its gilded perch, in order to make a plume for +his hat. Madame de Villefort merely cried, "Be still, +Edward" She then added, "This young madcap is, however, +very nearly right, and merely reechoes what he has heard me +say with pain a hundred times for Mademoiselle de Villefort +is, in spite of all we can do to rouse her, of a melancholy +disposition and taciturn habit, which frequently injure the +effect of her beauty. But what detains her? Go, Edward, and +see." +"Because they are looking for her where she is not to be +found." +"And where are they looking for her?" +"With grandpapa Noirtier." +"And do you think she is not there?" +"No, no, no, no, no, she is not there," replied Edward, +singing his words. +"And where is she, then? If you know, why don't you tell?" +"She is under the big chestnuttree," replied the spoiled +brat, as he gave, in spite of his mother's commands, live +flies to the parrot, which seemed keenly to relish such +fare. Madame de Villefort stretched out her hand to ring, +intending to direct her waitingmaid to the spot where she +would find Valentine, when the young lady herself entered +the apartment. She appeared much dejected and any person +who considered her attentively might have observed the +traces of recent tears in her eyes. +Valentine, whom we have in the rapid march of our narrative +presented to our readers without formally introducing her, +was a tall and graceful girl of nineteen, with bright +chestnut hair, deep blue eyes, and that reposeful air of +quiet distinction which characterized her mother. Her white +and slender fingers, her pearly neck, her cheeks tinted with +varying hues reminded one of the lovely Englishwomen who +have been so poetically compared in their manner to the +gracefulness of a swan. She entered the apartment, and +seeing near her stepmother the stranger of whom she had +already heard so much, saluted him without any girlish +awkwardness, or even lowering her eyes, and with an elegance +that redoubled the count's attention. He rose to return the +salutation. "Mademoiselle de Villefort, my daughterinlaw," +said Madame de Villefort to Monte Cristo, leaning back on +her sofa and motioning towards Valentine with her hand. "And +M. de Monte Cristo, King of China, Emperor of CochinChina," +said the young imp, looking slyly towards his sister. +Madame de Villefort at this really did turn pale, and was +very nearly angry with this household plague, who answered +to the name of Edward but the count, on the contrary, +smiled, and appeared to look at the boy complacently, which +caused the maternal heart to bound again with joy and +enthusiasm. +"But, madame," replied the count, continuing the +conversation, and looking by turns at Madame de Villefort +and Valentine, "have I not already had the honor of meeting +yourself and mademoiselle before? I could not help thinking +so just now the idea came over my mind, and as mademoiselle +entered the sight of her was an additional ray of light +thrown on a confused remembrance excuse the remark." +"I do not think it likely, sir Mademoiselle de Villefort is +not very fond of society, and we very seldom go out," said +the young lady. +"Then it was not in society that I met with mademoiselle or +yourself, madame, or this charming little merry boy. +Besides, the Parisian world is entirely unknown to me, for, +as I believe I told you, I have been in Paris but very few +days. No, but, perhaps, you will permit me to call to +mind stay" The Count placed his hand on his brow as if +to collect his thoughts. "No it was somewhere away +from here it was I do not know but it appears that +this recollection is connected with a lovely sky and some +religious fete mademoiselle was holding flowers in her +hand, the interesting boy was chasing a beautiful peacock in +a garden, and you, madame, were under the trellis of some +arbor. Pray come to my aid, madame do not these +circumstances appeal to your memory?" +"No, indeed," replied Madame de Villefort "and yet it +appears to me, sir, that if I had met you anywhere, the +recollection of you must have been imprinted on my memory." +"Perhaps the count saw us in Italy," said Valentine timidly. +"Yes, in Italy it was in Italy most probably," replied +Monte Cristo "you have travelled then in Italy, +mademoiselle?" +"Yes madame and I were there two years ago. The doctors, +anxious for my lungs, had prescribed the air of Naples. We +went by Bologna, Perugia, and Rome." +"Ah, yes true, mademoiselle," exclaimed Monte Cristo as +if this simple explanation was sufficient to revive the +recollection he sought. "It was at Perugia on Corpus Christi +Day, in the garden of the Hotel des Postes, when chance +brought us together you, Madame de Villefort, and her son +I now remember having had the honor of meeting you." +"I perfectly well remember Perugia, sir, and the Hotel des +Postes, and the festival of which you speak," said Madame de +Villefort, "but in vain do I tax my memory, of whose +treachery I am ashamed, for I really do not recall to mind +that I ever had the pleasure of seeing you before." +"It is strange, but neither do I recollect meeting with +you," observed Valentine, raising her beautiful eyes to the +count. +"But I remember it perfectly," interposed the darling +Edward. +"I will assist your memory, madame," continued the count +"the day had been burning hot you were waiting for horses, +which were delayed in consequence of the festival. +Mademoiselle was walking in the shade of the garden, and +your son disappeared in pursuit of the peacock." +"And I caught it, mamma, don't you remember?" interposed +Edward, "and I pulled three such beautiful feathers out of +his tail." +"You, madame, remained under the arbor do you not remember, +that while you were seated on a stone bench, and while, as I +told you, Mademoiselle de Villefort and your young son were +absent, you conversed for a considerable time with +somebody?" +"Yes, in truth, yes," answered the young lady, turning very +red, "I do remember conversing with a person wrapped in a +long woollen mantle he was a medical man, I think." +"Precisely so, madame this man was myself for a fortnight +I had been at that hotel, during which period I had cured my +valet de chambre of a fever, and my landlord of the +jaundice, so that I really acquired a reputation as a +skilful physician. We discoursed a long time, madame, on +different subjects of Perugino, of Raffaelle, of manners, +customs, of the famous aquatofana, of which they had told +you, I think you said, that certain individuals in Perugia +had preserved the secret." +"Yes, true," replied Madame de Villefort, somewhat uneasily, +"I remember now." +"I do not recollect now all the various subjects of which we +discoursed, madame," continued the count with perfect +calmness "but I perfectly remember that, falling into the +error which others had entertained respecting me, you +consulted me as to the health of Mademoiselle de Villefort." +"Yes, really, sir, you were in fact a medical man," said +Madame de Villefort, "since you had cured the sick." +"Moliere or Beaumarchais would reply to you, madame, that it +was precisely because I was not, that I had cured my +patients for myself, I am content to say to you that I have +studied chemistry and the natural sciences somewhat deeply, +but still only as an amateur, you understand." At this +moment the clock struck six. "It is six o'clock," said +Madame de Villefort, evidently agitated. "Valentine, will +you not go and see if your grandpapa will have his dinner?" +Valentine rose, and saluting the count, left the apartment +without speaking. +"Oh, madame," said the count, when Valentine had left the +room, "was it on my account that you sent Mademoiselle de +Villefort away?" +"By no means," replied the young lady quickly "but this is +the hour when we usually give M. Noirtier the unwelcome meal +that sustains his pitiful existence. You are aware, sir, of +the deplorable condition of my husband's father?" +"Yes, madame, M. de Villefort spoke of it to me a +paralysis, I think." +"Alas, yes the poor old gentleman is entirely helpless the +mind alone is still active in this human machine, and that +is faint and flickering, like the light of a lamp about to +expire. But excuse me, sir, for talking of our domestic +misfortunes I interrupted you at the moment when you were +telling me that you were a skilful chemist." +"No, madame, I did not say as much as that," replied the +count with a smile "quite the contrary. I have studied +chemistry because, having determined to live in eastern +climates I have been desirous of following the example of +King Mithridates." +"Mithridates rex Ponticus," said the young scamp, as he tore +some beautiful portraits out of a splendid album, "the +individual who took cream in his cup of poison every morning +at breakfast." +"Edward, you naughty boy," exclaimed Madame de Villefort, +snatching the mutilated book from the urchin's grasp, "you +are positively past bearing you really disturb the +conversation go, leave us, and join your sister Valentine +in dear grandpapa Noirtier's room." +"The album," said Edward sulkily. +"What do you mean? the album" +"I want the album." +"How dare you tear out the drawings?" +"Oh, it amuses me." +"Go go at once." +"I won't go unless you give me the album," said the boy, +seating himself doggedly in an armchair, according to his +habit of never giving way. +"Take it, then, and pray disturb us no longer," said Madame +de Villefort, giving the album to Edward, who then went +towards the door, led by his mother. The count followed her +with his eyes. +"Let us see if she shuts the door after him," he muttered. +Madame de Villefort closed the door carefully after the +child, the count appearing not to notice her then casting a +scrutinizing glance around the chamber, the young wife +returned to her chair, in which she seated herself. "Allow +me to observe, madame," said the count, with that kind tone +he could assume so well, "you are really very severe with +that dear clever child." +"Oh, sometimes severity is quite necessary," replied Madame +de Villefort, with all a mother's real firmness. +"It was his Cornelius Nepos that Master Edward was repeating +when he referred to King Mithridates," continued the count, +"and you interrupted him in a quotation which proves that +his tutor has by no means neglected him, for your son is +really advanced for his years." +"The fact is, count," answered the mother, agreeably +flattered, "he has great aptitude, and learns all that is +set before him. He has but one fault, he is somewhat wilful +but really, on referring for the moment to what he said, do +you truly believe that Mithridates used these precautions, +and that these precautions were efficacious?" +"I think so, madame, because I myself have made use of them, +that I might not be poisoned at Naples, at Palermo, and at +Smyrna that is to say, on three several occasions when, +but for these precautions, I must have lost my life." +"And your precautions were successful?" +"Completely so." +"Yes, I remember now your mentioning to me at Perugia +something of this sort." +"Indeed?" said the count with an air of surprise, remarkably +well counterfeited "I really did not remember." +"I inquired of you if poisons acted equally, and with the +same effect, on men of the North as on men of the South and +you answered me that the cold and sluggish habits of the +North did not present the same aptitude as the rich and +energetic temperaments of the natives of the South." +"And that is the case," observed Monte Cristo. "I have seen +Russians devour, without being visibly inconvenienced, +vegetable substances which would infallibly have killed a +Neapolitan or an Arab." +"And you really believe the result would be still more sure +with us than in the East, and in the midst of our fogs and +rains a man would habituate himself more easily than in a +warm latitude to this progressive absorption of poison?" +"Certainly it being at the same time perfectly understood +that he should have been duly fortified against the poison +to which he had not been accustomed." +"Yes, I understand that and how would you habituate +yourself, for instance, or rather, how did you habituate +yourself to it?" +"Oh, very easily. Suppose you knew beforehand the poison +that would be made use of against you suppose the poison +was, for instance, brucine" +"Brucine is extracted from the false angostura is it not?" +inquired Madame de Villefort. +"Precisely, madame," replied Monte Cristo "but I perceive I +have not much to teach you. Allow me to compliment you on +your knowledge such learning is very rare among ladies." + Brucoea ferruginea. +"Oh, I am aware of that," said Madame de Villefort "but I +have a passion for the occult sciences, which speak to the +imagination like poetry, and are reducible to figures, like +an algebraic equation but go on, I beg of you what you say +interests me to the greatest degree." +"Well," replied Monte Cristo "suppose, then, that this +poison was brucine, and you were to take a milligramme the +first day, two milligrammes the second day, and so on. Well, +at the end of ten days you would have taken a centigramme, +at the end of twenty days, increasing another milligramme, +you would have taken three hundred centigrammes that is to +say, a dose which you would support without inconvenience, +and which would be very dangerous for any other person who +had not taken the same precautions as yourself. Well, then, +at the end of a month, when drinking water from the same +carafe, you would kill the person who drank with you, +without your perceiving, otherwise than from slight +inconvenience, that there was any poisonous substance +mingled with this water." +"Do you know any other counterpoisons?" +"I do not." +"I have often read, and read again, the history of +Mithridates," said Madame de Villefort in a tone of +reflection, "and had always considered it a fable." +"No, madame, contrary to most history, it is true but what +you tell me, madame, what you inquire of me, is not the +result of a chance query, for two years ago you asked me the +same questions, and said then, that for a very long time +this history of Mithridates had occupied your mind." +"True, sir. The two favorite studies of my youth were botany +and mineralogy, and subsequently, when I learned that the +use of simples frequently explained the whole history of a +people, and the entire life of individuals in the East, as +flowers betoken and symbolize a love affair, I have +regretted that I was not a man, that I might have been a +Flamel, a Fontana, or a Cabanis." +"And the more, madame," said Monte Cristo, "as the Orientals +do not confine themselves, as did Mithridates, to make a +cuirass of his poisons, but they also made them a dagger. +Science becomes, in their hands, not only a defensive +weapon, but still more frequently an offensive one the one +serves against all their physical sufferings, the other +against all their enemies. With opium, belladonna, brucaea, +snakewood, and the cherrylaurel, they put to sleep all who +stand in their way. There is not one of those women, +Egyptian, Turkish, or Greek, whom here you call "good +women,' who do not know how, by means of chemistry, to +stupefy a doctor, and in psychology to amaze a confessor." +"Really," said Madame de Villefort, whose eyes sparkled with +strange fire at this conversation. +"Oh, yes, indeed, madame," continued Monte Cristo, "the +secret dramas of the East begin with a love philtre and end +with a death potion begin with paradise and end with +hell. There are as many elixirs of every kind as there are +caprices and peculiarities in the physical and moral nature +of humanity and I will say further the art of these +chemists is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate +and proportion the remedy and the bane to yearnings for love +or desires for vengeance." +"But, sir," remarked the young woman, "these Eastern +societies, in the midst of which you have passed a portion +of your existence, are as fantastic as the tales that come +from their strange land. A man can easily be put out of the +way there, then it is, indeed, the Bagdad and Bassora of +the "Thousand and One Nights.' The sultans and viziers who +rule over society there, and who constitute what in France +we call the government, are really HarounalRaschids and +Giaffars, who not only pardon a poisoner, but even make him +a prime minister, if his crime has been an ingenious one, +and who, under such circumstances, have the whole story +written in letters of gold, to divert their hours of +idleness and ennui." +"By no means, madame the fanciful exists no longer in the +East. There, disguised under other names, and concealed +under other costumes, are police agents, magistrates, +attorneysgeneral, and bailiffs. They hang, behead, and +impale their criminals in the most agreeable possible +manner but some of these, like clever rogues, have +contrived to escape human justice, and succeed in their +fraudulent enterprises by cunning stratagems. Amongst us a +simpleton, possessed by the demon of hate or cupidity, who +has an enemy to destroy, or some near relation to dispose +of, goes straight to the grocer's or druggist's, gives a +false name, which leads more easily to his detection than +his real one, and under the pretext that the rats prevent +him from sleeping, purchases five or six grammes of arsenic +if he is really a cunning fellow, he goes to five or six +different druggists or grocers, and thereby becomes only +five or six times more easily traced then, when he has +acquired his specific, he administers duly to his enemy, or +near kinsman, a dose of arsenic which would make a mammoth +or mastodon burst, and which, without rhyme or reason, makes +his victim utter groans which alarm the entire neighborhood. +Then arrive a crowd of policemen and constables. They fetch +a doctor, who opens the dead body, and collects from the +entrails and stomach a quantity of arsenic in a spoon. Next +day a hundred newspapers relate the fact, with the names of +the victim and the murderer. The same evening the grocer or +grocers, druggist or druggists, come and say, "It was I who +sold the arsenic to the gentleman' and rather than not +recognize the guilty purchaser, they will recognize twenty. +Then the foolish criminal is taken, imprisoned, +interrogated, confronted, confounded, condemned, and cut off +by hemp or steel or if she be a woman of any consideration, +they lock her up for life. This is the way in which you +Northerns understand chemistry, madame. Desrues was, +however, I must confess, more skilful." +"What would you have, sir?" said the lady, laughing "we do +what we can. All the world has not the secret of the Medicis +or the Borgias." +"Now," replied the count, shrugging his shoulders, "shall I +tell you the cause of all these stupidities? It is because, +at your theatres, by what at least I could judge by reading +the pieces they play, they see persons swallow the contents +of a phial, or suck the button of a ring, and fall dead +instantly. Five minutes afterwards the curtain falls, and +the spectators depart. They are ignorant of the consequences +of the murder they see neither the police commissary with +his badge of office, nor the corporal with his four men and +so the poor fools believe that the whole thing is as easy as +lying. But go a little way from France go either to +Aleppo or Cairo, or only to Naples or Rome, and you will see +people passing by you in the streets people erect, +smiling, and freshcolored, of whom Asmodeus, if you were +holding on by the skirt of his mantle, would say, "That man +was poisoned three weeks ago he will be a dead man in a +month.'" +"Then," remarked Madame de Villefort, "they have again +discovered the secret of the famous aquatofana that they +said was lost at Perugia." +"Ah, but madame, does mankind ever lose anything? The arts +change about and make a tour of the world things take a +different name, and the vulgar do not follow them that is +all but there is always the same result. Poisons act +particularly on some organ or another one on the stomach, +another on the brain, another on the intestines. Well, the +poison brings on a cough, the cough an inflammation of the +lungs, or some other complaint catalogued in the book of +science, which, however, by no means precludes it from being +decidedly mortal and if it were not, would be sure to +become so, thanks to the remedies applied by foolish +doctors, who are generally bad chemists, and which will act +in favor of or against the malady, as you please and then +there is a human being killed according to all the rules of +art and skill, and of whom justice learns nothing, as was +said by a terrible chemist of my acquaintance, the worthy +Abbe Adelmonte of Taormina, in Sicily, who has studied these +national phenomena very profoundly." +"It is quite frightful, but deeply interesting," said the +young lady, motionless with attention. "I thought, I must +confess, that these tales, were inventions of the Middle +Ages." +"Yes, no doubt, but improved upon by ours. What is the use +of time, rewards of merit, medals, crosses, Monthyon prizes, +if they do not lead society towards more complete +perfection? Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to +create and destroy he does know how to destroy, and that is +half the battle." +"So," added Madame de Villefort, constantly returning to her +object, "the poisons of the Borgias, the Medicis, the Renes, +the Ruggieris, and later, probably, that of Baron de Trenck, +whose story has been so misused by modern drama and romance" +"Were objects of art, madame, and nothing more," replied the +count. "Do you suppose that the real savant addresses +himself stupidly to the mere individual? By no means. +Science loves eccentricities, leaps and bounds, trials of +strength, fancies, if I may be allowed so to term them. +Thus, for instance, the excellent Abbe Adelmonte, of whom I +spoke just now, made in this way some marvellous +experiments." +"Really?" +"Yes I will mention one to you. He had a remarkably fine +garden, full of vegetables, flowers, and fruit. From amongst +these vegetables he selected the most simple a cabbage, +for instance. For three days he watered this cabbage with a +distillation of arsenic on the third, the cabbage began to +droop and turn yellow. At that moment he cut it. In the eyes +of everybody it seemed fit for table, and preserved its +wholesome appearance. It was only poisoned to the Abbe +Adelmonte. He then took the cabbage to the room where he had +rabbits for the Abbe Adelmonte had a collection of +rabbits, cats, and guineapigs, fully as fine as his +collection of vegetables, flowers, and fruit. Well, the Abbe +Adelmonte took a rabbit, and made it eat a leaf of the +cabbage. The rabbit died. What magistrate would find, or +even venture to insinuate, anything against this? What +procureur has ever ventured to draw up an accusation against +M. Magendie or M. Flourens, in consequence of the rabbits, +cats, and guineapigs they have killed? not one. So, +then, the rabbit dies, and justice takes no notice. This +rabbit dead, the Abbe Adelmonte has its entrails taken out +by his cook and thrown on the dunghill on this dunghill is +a hen, who, pecking these intestines, is in her turn taken +ill, and dies next day. At the moment when she is struggling +in the convulsions of death, a vulture is flying by there +are a good many vultures in Adelmonte's country this bird +darts on the dead fowl, and carries it away to a rock, where +it dines off its prey. Three days afterwards, this poor +vulture, which has been very much indisposed since that +dinner, suddenly feels very giddy while flying aloft in the +clouds, and falls heavily into a fishpond. The pike, eels, +and carp eat greedily always, as everybody knows well, +they feast on the vulture. Now suppose that next day, one of +these eels, or pike, or carp, poisoned at the fourth remove, +is served up at your table. Well, then, your guest will be +poisoned at the fifth remove, and die, at the end of eight +or ten days, of pains in the intestines, sickness, or +abscess of the pylorus. The doctors open the body and say +with an air of profound learning, "The subject has died of a +tumor on the liver, or of typhoid fever'" +"But," remarked Madame de Villefort, "all these +circumstances which you link thus to one another may be +broken by the least accident the vulture may not see the +fowl, or may fall a hundred yards from the fishpond." +"Ah, that is where the art comes in. To be a great chemist +in the East, one must direct chance and this is to be +achieved." Madame de Villefort was in deep thought, yet +listened attentively. "But," she exclaimed, suddenly, +"arsenic is indelible, indestructible in whatsoever way it +is absorbed, it will be found again in the body of the +victim from the moment when it has been taken in sufficient +quantity to cause death." +"Precisely so," cried Monte Cristo "precisely so and +this is what I said to my worthy Adelmonte. He reflected, +smiled, and replied to me by a Sicilian proverb, which I +believe is also a French proverb, "My son, the world was not +made in a day but in seven. Return on Sunday.' On the +Sunday following I did return to him. Instead of having +watered his cabbage with arsenic, he had watered it this +time with a solution of salts, having their basis in +strychnine, strychnos colubrina, as the learned term it. +Now, the cabbage had not the slightest appearance of disease +in the world, and the rabbit had not the smallest distrust +yet, five minutes afterwards, the rabbit was dead. The fowl +pecked at the rabbit, and the next day was a dead hen. This +time we were the vultures so we opened the bird, and this +time all special symptoms had disappeared, there were only +general symptoms. There was no peculiar indication in any +organ an excitement of the nervous system that was it +a case of cerebral congestion nothing more. The fowl had +not been poisoned she had died of apoplexy. Apoplexy is a +rare disease among fowls, I believe, but very common among +men." Madame de Villefort appeared more and more thoughtful. +"It is very fortunate," she observed, "that such substances +could only be prepared by chemists otherwise, all the world +would be poisoning each other." +"By chemists and persons who have a taste for chemistry," +said Monte Cristo carelessly. +"And then," said Madame de Villefort, endeavoring by a +struggle, and with effort, to get away from her thoughts, +"however skilfully it is prepared, crime is always crime, +and if it avoid human scrutiny, it does not escape the eye +of God. The Orientals are stronger than we are in cases of +conscience, and, very prudently, have no hell that is the +point." +"Really, madame, this is a scruple which naturally must +occur to a pure mind like yours, but which would easily +yield before sound reasoning. The bad side of human thought +will always be defined by the paradox of Jean Jacques +Rousseau, you remember, the mandarin who is killed +five hundred leagues off by raising the tip of the finger. +Man's whole life passes in doing these things, and his +intellect is exhausted by reflecting on them. You will find +very few persons who will go and brutally thrust a knife in +the heart of a fellowcreature, or will administer to him, +in order to remove him from the surface of the globe on +which we move with life and animation, that quantity of +arsenic of which we just now talked. Such a thing is really +out of rule eccentric or stupid. To attain such a point, +the blood must be heated to thirtysix degrees, the pulse +be, at least, at ninety, and the feelings excited beyond the +ordinary limit. But suppose one pass, as is permissible in +philology, from the word itself to its softened synonym, +then, instead of committing an ignoble assassination you +make an "elimination' you merely and simply remove from +your path the individual who is in your way, and that +without shock or violence, without the display of the +sufferings which, in the case of becoming a punishment, make +a martyr of the victim, and a butcher, in every sense of the +word, of him who inflicts them. Then there will be no blood, +no groans, no convulsions, and above all, no consciousness +of that horrid and compromising moment of accomplishing the +act, then one escapes the clutch of the human law, which +says, "Do not disturb society' This is the mode in which +they manage these things, and succeed in Eastern climes, +where there are grave and phlegmatic persons who care very +little for the questions of time in conjunctures of +importance." +"Yet conscience remains," remarked Madame de Villefort in an +agitated voice, and with a stifled sigh. +"Yes," answered Monte Cristo "happily, yes, conscience does +remain and if it did not, how wretched we should be After +every action requiring exertion, it is conscience that saves +us, for it supplies us with a thousand good excuses, of +which we alone are judges and these reasons, howsoever +excellent in producing sleep, would avail us but very little +before a tribunal, when we were tried for our lives. Thus +Richard III., for instance, was marvellously served by his +conscience after the putting away of the two children of +Edward IV. in fact, he could say, "These two children of a +cruel and persecuting king, who have inherited the vices of +their father, which I alone could perceive in their juvenile +propensities these two children are impediments in my way +of promoting the happiness of the English people, whose +unhappiness they the children would infallibly have +caused.' Thus was Lady Macbeth served by her conscience, +when she sought to give her son, and not her husband +whatever Shakespeare may say, a throne. Ah, maternal love +is a great virtue, a powerful motive so powerful that it +excuses a multitude of things, even if, after Duncan's +death, Lady Macbeth had been at all pricked by her +conscience." +Madame de Villefort listened with avidity to these appalling +maxims and horrible paradoxes, delivered by the count with +that ironical simplicity which was peculiar to him. After a +moment's silence, the lady inquired, "Do you know, my dear +count," she said, "that you are a very terrible reasoner, +and that you look at the world through a somewhat +distempered medium? Have you really measured the world by +scrutinies, or through alembics and crucibles? For you must +indeed be a great chemist, and the elixir you administered +to my son, which recalled him to life almost +instantaneously" +"Oh, do not place any reliance on that, madame one drop of +that elixir sufficed to recall life to a dying child, but +three drops would have impelled the blood into his lungs in +such a way as to have produced most violent palpitations +six would have suspended his respiration, and caused syncope +more serious than that in which he was ten would have +destroyed him. You know, madame, how suddenly I snatched him +from those phials which he so imprudently touched?" +"Is it then so terrible a poison?" +"Oh, no. In the first place, let us agree that the word +poison does not exist, because in medicine use is made of +the most violent poisons, which become, according as they +are employed, most salutary remedies." +"What, then, is it?" +"A skilful preparation of my friend's the worthy Abbe +Adelmonte, who taught me the use of it." +"Oh," observed Madame de Villefort, "it must be an admirable +antispasmodic." +"Perfect, madame, as you have seen," replied the count "and +I frequently make use of it with all possible prudence +though, be it observed," he added with a smile of +intelligence. +"Most assuredly," responded Madame de Villefort in the same +tone. "As for me, so nervous, and so subject to fainting +fits, I should require a Doctor Adelmonte to invent for me +some means of breathing freely and tranquillizing my mind, +in the fear I have of dying some fine day of suffocation. In +the meanwhile, as the thing is difficult to find in France, +and your abbe is not probably disposed to make a journey to +Paris on my account, I must continue to use Monsieur +Planche's antispasmodics and mint and Hoffman's drops are +among my favorite remedies. Here are some lozenges which I +have made up on purpose they are compounded doubly strong." +Monte Cristo opened the tortoiseshell box, which the lady +presented to him, and inhaled the odor of the lozenges with +the air of an amateur who thoroughly appreciated their +composition. "They are indeed exquisite," he said "but as +they are necessarily submitted to the process of deglutition +a function which it is frequently impossible for a +fainting person to accomplish I prefer my own specific." +"Undoubtedly, and so should I prefer it, after the effects I +have seen produced but of course it is a secret, and I am +not so indiscreet as to ask it of you." +"But I," said Monte Cristo, rising as he spoke "I am +gallant enough to offer it you." +"How kind you are." +"Only remember one thing a small dose is a remedy, a +large one is poison. One drop will restore life, as you have +seen five or six will inevitably kill, and in a way the +more terrible inasmuch as, poured into a glass of wine, it +would not in the slightest degree affect its flavor. But I +say no more, madame it is really as if I were prescribing +for you." The clock struck halfpast six, and a lady was +announced, a friend of Madame de Villefort, who came to dine +with her. +"If I had had the honor of seeing you for the third or +fourth time, count, instead of only for the second," said +Madame de Villefort "if I had had the honor of being your +friend, instead of only having the happiness of being under +an obligation to you, I should insist on detaining you to +dinner, and not allow myself to be daunted by a first +refusal." +"A thousand thanks, madame," replied Monte Cristo "but I +have an engagement which I cannot break. I have promised to +escort to the Academie a Greek princess of my acquaintance +who has never seen your grand opera, and who relies on me to +conduct her thither." +"Adieu, then, sir, and do not forget the prescription." +"Ah, in truth, madame, to do that I must forget the hour's +conversation I have had with you, which is indeed +impossible." Monte Cristo bowed, and left the house. Madame +de Villefort remained immersed in thought. "He is a very +strange man," she said, "and in my opinion is himself the +Adelmonte he talks about." As to Monte Cristo the result had +surpassed his utmost expectations. "Good," said he, as he +went away "this is a fruitful soil, and I feel certain that +the seed sown will not be cast on barren ground." Next +morning, faithful to his promise, he sent the prescription +requested. +Chapter +Robert le Diable. +The pretext of an opera engagement was so much the more +feasible, as there chanced to be on that very night a more +than ordinary attraction at the Academie Royale. Levasseur, +who had been suffering under severe illness, made his +reappearance in the character of Bertrand, and, as usual, +the announcement of the most admired production of the +favorite composer of the day had attracted a brilliant and +fashionable audience. Morcerf, like most other young men of +rank and fortune, had his orchestra stall, with the +certainty of always finding a seat in at least a dozen of +the principal boxes occupied by persons of his acquaintance +he had, moreover, his right of entry into the omnibus box. +ChateauRenaud rented a stall beside his own, while +Beauchamp, as a journalist, had unlimited range all over the +theatre. It happened that on this particular night the +minister's box was placed at the disposal of Lucien Debray, +who offered it to the Comte de Morcerf, who again, upon his +mother's rejection of it, sent it to Danglars, with an +intimation that he should probably do himself the honor of +joining the baroness and her daughter during the evening, in +the event of their accepting the box in question. The ladies +received the offer with too much pleasure to dream of a +refusal. To no class of persons is the presentation of a +gratuitous operabox more acceptable than to the wealthy +millionaire, who still hugs economy while boasting of +carrying a king's ransom in his waistcoat pocket. +Danglars had, however, protested against showing himself in +a ministerial box, declaring that his political principles, +and his parliamentary position as member of the opposition +party would not permit him so to commit himself the +baroness had, therefore, despatched a note to Lucien Debray, +bidding him call for them, it being wholly impossible for +her to go alone with Eugenie to the opera. There is no +gainsaying the fact that a very unfavorable construction +would have been put upon the circumstance if the two women +had gone without escort, while the addition of a third, in +the person of her mother's admitted lover, enabled +Mademoiselle Danglars to defy malice and illnature. One +must take the world as one finds it. +The curtain rose, as usual, to an almost empty house, it +being one of the absurdities of Parisian fashion never to +appear at the opera until after the beginning of the +performance, so that the first act is generally played +without the slightest attention being paid to it, that part +of the audience already assembled being too much occupied in +observing the fresh arrivals, while nothing is heard but the +noise of opening and shutting doors, and the buzz of +conversation. "Surely," said Albert, as the door of a box on +the first circle opened, "that must be the Countess G." +"And who is the Countess G ?" inquired ChateauRenaud. +"What a question Now, do you know, baron, I have a great +mind to pick a quarrel with you for asking it as if all the +world did not know who the Countess G was." +"Ah, to be sure," replied ChateauRenaud "the lovely +Venetian, is it not?" +"Herself." At this moment the countess perceived Albert, and +returned his salutation with a smile. "You know her, it +seems?" said ChateauRenaud. +"Franz introduced me to her at Rome," replied Albert. +"Well, then, will you do as much for me in Paris as Franz +did for you in Rome?" +"With pleasure." +There was a cry of "Shut up" from the audience. This +manifestation on the part of the spectators of their wish to +be allowed to hear the music, produced not the slightest +effect on the two young men, who continued their +conversation. "The countess was present at the races in the +ChampdeMars," said ChateauRenaud. +"Today?" +"Yes." +"Bless me, I quite forgot the races. Did you bet?" +"Oh, merely a paltry fifty louis." +"And who was the winner?" +"Nautilus. I staked on him." +"But there were three races, were there not?" +"Yes there was the prize given by the Jockey Club a gold +cup, you know and a very singular circumstance occurred +about that race." +"What was it?" +"Oh, shut up" again interposed some of the audience. +"Why, it was won by a horse and rider utterly unknown on the +course." +"Is that possible?" +"True as day. The fact was, nobody had observed a horse +entered by the name of Vampa, or that of a jockey styled +Job, when, at the last moment, a splendid roan, mounted by a +jockey about as big as your fist, presented themselves at +the startingpost. They were obliged to stuff at least +twenty pounds weight of shot in the small rider's pockets, +to make him weight but with all that he outstripped Ariel +and Barbare, against whom he ran, by at least three whole +lengths." +"And was it not found out at last to whom the horse and +jockey belonged?" +"No." +"You say that the horse was entered under the name of +Vampa?" +"Exactly that was the title." +"Then," answered Albert, "I am better informed than you are, +and know who the owner of that horse was." +"Shut up, there" cried the pit in chorus. And this time the +tone and manner in which the command was given, betokened +such growing hostility that the two young men perceived, for +the first time, that the mandate was addressed to them. +Leisurely turning round, they calmly scrutinized the various +countenances around them, as though demanding some one +person who would take upon himself the responsibility of +what they deemed excessive impertinence but as no one +responded to the challenge, the friends turned again to the +front of the theatre, and affected to busy themselves with +the stage. At this moment the door of the minister's box +opened, and Madame Danglars, accompanied by her daughter, +entered, escorted by Lucien Debray, who assiduously +conducted them to their seats. +"Ha, ha," said ChateauRenaud, "here comes some friends of +yours, viscount What are you looking at there? don't you +see they are trying to catch your eye?" Albert turned round, +just in time to receive a gracious wave of the fan from the +baroness as for Mademoiselle Eugenie, she scarcely +vouchsafed to waste the glances of her large black eyes even +upon the business of the stage. "I tell you what, my dear +fellow," said ChateauRenaud, "I cannot imagine what +objection you can possibly have to Mademoiselle Danglars +that is, setting aside her want of ancestry and somewhat +inferior rank, which by the way I don't think you care very +much about. Now, barring all that, I mean to say she is a +deuced fine girl" +"Handsome, certainly," replied Albert, "but not to my taste, +which I confess, inclines to something softer, gentler, and +more feminine." +"Ah, well," exclaimed ChateauRenaud, who because he had +seen his thirtieth summer fancied himself duly warranted in +assuming a sort of paternal air with his more youthful +friend, "you young people are never satisfied why, what +would you have more? your parents have chosen you a bride +built on the model of Diana, the huntress, and yet you are +not content." +"No, for that very resemblance affrights me I should have +liked something more in the manner of the Venus of Milo or +Capua but this chaseloving Diana continually surrounded by +her nymphs gives me a sort of alarm lest she should some day +bring on me the fate of Actaeon." +And, indeed, it required but one glance at Mademoiselle +Danglars to comprehend the justness of Morcerf's remark +she was beautiful, but her beauty was of too marked and +decided a character to please a fastidious taste her hair +was raven black, but its natural waves seemed somewhat +rebellious her eyes, of the same color as her hair, were +surmounted by wellarched brows, whose great defect, +however, consisted in an almost habitual frown, while her +whole physiognomy wore that expression of firmness and +decision so little in accordance with the gentler attributes +of her sex her nose was precisely what a sculptor would +have chosen for a chiselled Juno. Her mouth, which might +have been found fault with as too large, displayed teeth of +pearly whiteness, rendered still more conspicuous by the +brilliant carmine of her lips, contrasting vividly with her +naturally pale complexion. But that which completed the +almost masculine look Morcerf found so little to his taste, +was a dark mole, of much larger dimensions than these freaks +of nature generally are, placed just at the corner of her +mouth and the effect tended to increase the expression of +selfdependence that characterized her countenance. The rest +of Mademoiselle Eugenie's person was in perfect keeping with +the head just described she, indeed, reminded one of Diana, +as ChateauRenaud observed, but her bearing was more haughty +and resolute. As regarded her attainments, the only fault to +be found with them was the same that a fastidious +connoisseur might have found with her beauty, that they were +somewhat too erudite and masculine for so young a person. +She was a perfect linguist, a firstrate artist, wrote +poetry, and composed music to the study of the latter she +professed to be entirely devoted, following it with an +indefatigable perseverance, assisted by a schoolfellow, a +young woman without fortune whose talent promised to develop +into remarkable powers as a singer. It was rumored that she +was an object of almost paternal interest to one of the +principal composers of the day, who excited her to spare no +pains in the cultivation of her voice, which might hereafter +prove a source of wealth and independence. But this counsel +effectually decided Mademoiselle Danglars never to commit +herself by being seen in public with one destined for a +theatrical life and acting upon this principle, the +banker's daughter, though perfectly willing to allow +Mademoiselle Louise d'Armilly that was the name of the +young virtuosa to practice with her through the day, took +especial care not to be seen in her company. Still, though +not actually received at the Hotel Danglars in the light of +an acknowledged friend, Louise was treated with far more +kindness and consideration than is usually bestowed on a +governess. +The curtain fell almost immediately after the entrance of +Madame Danglars into her box, the band quitted the orchestra +for the accustomed halfhour's interval allowed between the +acts, and the audience were left at liberty to promenade the +salon or lobbies, or to pay and receive visits in their +respective boxes. Morcerf and ChateauRenaud were amongst +the first to avail themselves of this permission. For an +instant the idea struck Madame Danglars that this eagerness +on the part of the young viscount arose from his impatience +to join her party, and she whispered her expectations to her +daughter, that Albert was hurrying to pay his respects to +them. Mademoiselle Eugenie, however, merely returned a +dissenting movement of the head, while, with a cold smile, +she directed the attention of her mother to an opposite box +on the first circle, in which sat the Countess G , and +where Morcerf had just made his appearance. "So we meet +again, my travelling friend, do we?" cried the countess, +extending her hand to him with all the warmth and cordiality +of an old acquaintance "it was really very good of you to +recognize me so quickly, and still more so to bestow your +first visit on me." +"Be assured," replied Albert, "that if I had been aware of +your arrival in Paris, and had known your address, I should +have paid my respects to you before this. Allow me to +introduce my friend, Baron de ChateauRenaud, one of the few +true gentlemen now to be found in France, and from whom I +have just learned that you were a spectator of the races in +the ChampdeMars, yesterday." ChateauRenaud bowed to the +countess. +"So you were at the races, baron?" inquired the countess +eagerly. +"Yes, madame." +"Well, then," pursued Madame G with considerable +animation, "you can probably tell me who won the Jockey Club +stakes?" +"I am sorry to say I cannot," replied the baron "and I was +just asking the same question of Albert." +"Are you very anxious to know, countess?" asked Albert. +"To know what?" +"The name of the owner of the winning horse?" +"Excessively only imagine but do tell me, viscount, +whether you really are acquainted with it or no?" +"I beg your pardon, madame, but you were about to relate +some story, were you not? You said, "only imagine,' and +then paused. Pray continue." +"Well, then, listen. You must know I felt so interested in +the splendid roan horse, with his elegant little rider, so +tastefully dressed in a pink satin jacket and cap, that I +could not help praying for their success with as much +earnestness as though the half of my fortune were at stake +and when I saw them outstrip all the others, and come to the +winningpost in such gallant style, I actually clapped my +hands with joy. Imagine my surprise, when, upon returning +home, the first object I met on the staircase was the +identical jockey in the pink jacket I concluded that, by +some singular chance, the owner of the winning horse must +live in the same hotel as myself but, as I entered my +apartments, I beheld the very gold cup awarded as a prize to +the unknown horse and rider. Inside the cup was a small +piece of paper, on which were written these words "From +Lord Ruthven to Countess G .'" +"Precisely I was sure of it," said Morcerf. +"Sure of what?" +"That the owner of the horse was Lord Ruthven himself." +"What Lord Ruthven do you mean?" +"Why, our Lord Ruthven the Vampire of the Salle +Argentino" +"Is it possible?" exclaimed the countess "is he here in +Paris?" +"To be sure, why not?" +"And you visit him? meet him at your own house and +elsewhere?" +"I assure you he is my most intimate friend, and M. de +ChateauRenaud has also the honor of his acquaintance." +"But why are you so sure of his being the winner of the +Jockey Club prize?" +"Was not the winning horse entered by the name of Vampa?" +"What of that?" +"Why, do you not recollect the name of the celebrated bandit +by whom I was made prisoner?" +"Oh, yes." +"And from whose hands the count extricated me in so +wonderful a manner?" +"To be sure, I remember it all now." +"He called himself Vampa. You see, it's evident where the +count got the name." +"But what could have been his motive for sending the cup to +me?" +"In the first place, because I had spoken much of you to +him, as you may believe and in the second, because he +delighted to see a countrywoman take so lively an interest +in his success." +"I trust and hope you never repeated to the count all the +foolish remarks we used to make about him?" +"I should not like to affirm upon oath that I have not. +Besides, his presenting you the cup under the name of Lord +Ruthven" +"Oh, but that is dreadful Why, the man must owe me a +fearful grudge." +"Does his action appear like that of an enemy?" +"No certainly not." +"Well, then" +"And so he is in Paris?" +"Yes." +"And what effect does he produce?" +"Why," said Albert, "he was talked about for a week then +the coronation of the queen of England took place, followed +by the theft of Mademoiselle Mars's diamonds and so people +talked of something else." +"My good fellow," said ChateauRenaud, "the count is your +friend and you treat him accordingly. Do not believe what +Albert is telling you, countess so far from the sensation +excited in the Parisian circles by the appearance of the +Count of Monte Cristo having abated, I take upon myself to +declare that it is as strong as ever. His first astounding +act upon coming amongst us was to present a pair of horses, +worth , francs, to Madame Danglars his second, the +almost miraculous preservation of Madame de Villefort's +life now it seems that he has carried off the prize awarded +by the Jockey Club. I therefore maintain, in spite of +Morcerf, that not only is the count the object of interest +at this present moment, but also that he will continue to be +so for a month longer if he pleases to exhibit an +eccentricity of conduct which, after all, may be his +ordinary mode of existence." +"Perhaps you are right," said Morcerf "meanwhile, who is in +the Russian ambassador's box?" +"Which box do you mean?" asked the countess. +"The one between the pillars on the first tier it seems +to have been fitted up entirely afresh." +"Did you observe any one during the first act?" asked +ChateauRenaud. +"Where?" +"In that box." +"No," replied the countess, "it was certainly empty during +the first act" then, resuming the subject of their previous +conversation, she said, "And so you really believe it was +your mysterious Count of Monte Cristo that gained the +prize?" +"I am sure of it." +"And who afterwards sent the cup to me?" +"Undoubtedly." +"But I don't know him," said the countess "I have a great +mind to return it." +"Do no such thing, I beg of you he would only send you +another, formed of a magnificent sapphire, or hollowed out +of a gigantic ruby. It is his way, and you must take him as +you find him." At this moment the bell rang to announce the +drawing up of the curtain for the second act. Albert rose to +return to his place. "Shall I see you again?" asked the +countess. "At the end of the next act, with your permission, +I will come and inquire whether there is anything I can do +for you in Paris?" +"Pray take notice," said the countess, "that my present +residence is Rue de Rivoli, and that I am at home to my +friends every Saturday evening. So now, you are both +forewarned." The young men bowed, and quitted the box. Upon +reaching their stalls, they found the whole of the audience +in the parterre standing up and directing their gaze towards +the box formerly possessed by the Russian ambassador. A man +of from thirtyfive to forty years of age, dressed in deep +black, had just entered, accompanied by a young woman +dressed after the Eastern style. The lady was surpassingly +beautiful, while the rich magnificence of her attire drew +all eyes upon her. "Hullo," said Albert "it is Monte Cristo +and his Greek" +The strangers were, indeed, no other than the count and +Haidee. In a few moments the young girl had attracted the +attention of the whole house, and even the occupants of the +boxes leaned forward to scrutinize her magnificent diamonds. +The second act passed away during one continued buzz of +voices one deep whisper intimating that some great and +universally interesting event had occurred all eyes, all +thoughts, were occupied with the young and beautiful woman, +whose gorgeous apparel and splendid jewels made a most +extraordinary spectacle. Upon this occasion an unmistakable +sign from Madame Danglars intimated her desire to see Albert +in her box directly the curtain fell on the second act, and +neither the politeness nor good taste of Morcerf would +permit his neglecting an invitation so unequivocally given. +At the close of the act he therefore went to the baroness. +Having bowed to the two ladies, he extended his hand to +Debray. By the baroness he was most graciously welcomed, +while Eugenie received him with her accustomed coldness. +"My dear fellow," said Debray, "you have come in the nick of +time. There is madame overwhelming me with questions +respecting the count she insists upon it that I can tell +her his birth, education, and parentage, where he came from, +and whither he is going. Being no disciple of Cagliostro, I +was wholly unable to do this so, by way of getting out of +the scrape, I said, "Ask Morcerf he has got the whole +history of his beloved Monte Cristo at his fingers' ends' +whereupon the baroness signified her desire to see you." +"Is it not almost incredible," said Madame Danglars, "that a +person having at least half a million of secretservice +money at his command, should possess so little information?" +"Let me assure you, madame," said Lucien, "that had I really +the sum you mention at my disposal, I would employ it more +profitably than in troubling myself to obtain particulars +respecting the Count of Monte Cristo, whose only merit in my +eyes consists in his being twice as rich as a nabob. +However, I have turned the business over to Morcerf, so pray +settle it with him as may be most agreeable to you for my +own part, I care nothing about the count or his mysterious +doings." +"I am very sure no nabob would have sent me a pair of horses +worth , francs, wearing on their heads four diamonds +valued at , francs each." +"He seems to have a mania for diamonds," said Morcerf, +smiling, "and I verily believe that, like Potemkin, he keeps +his pockets filled, for the sake of strewing them along the +road, as Tom Thumb did his flint stones." +"Perhaps he has discovered some mine," said Madame Danglars. +"I suppose you know he has an order for unlimited credit on +the baron's banking establishment?" +"I was not aware of it," replied Albert, "but I can readily +believe it." +"And, further, that he stated to M. Danglars his intention +of only staying a year in Paris, during which time he +proposed to spend six millions. +"He must be the Shah of Persia, travelling incog." +"Have you noticed the remarkable beauty of the young woman, +M. Lucien?" inquired Eugenie. +"I really never met with one woman so ready to do justice to +the charms of another as yourself," responded Lucien, +raising his lorgnette to his eye. "A most lovely creature, +upon my soul" was his verdict. +"Who is this young person, M. de Morcerf?" inquired Eugenie +"does anybody know?" +"Mademoiselle," said Albert, replying to this direct appeal, +"I can give you very exact information on that subject, as +well as on most points relative to the mysterious person of +whom we are now conversing the young woman is a Greek." +"So I should suppose by her dress if you know no more than +that, every one here is as wellinformed as yourself." +"I am extremely sorry you find me so ignorant a cicerone," +replied Morcerf, "but I am reluctantly obliged to confess, I +have nothing further to communicate yes, stay, I do know +one thing more, namely, that she is a musician, for one day +when I chanced to be breakfasting with the count, I heard +the sound of a guzla it is impossible that it could have +been touched by any other finger than her own." +"Then your count entertains visitors, does he?" asked Madame +Danglars. +"Indeed he does, and in a most lavish manner, I can assure +you." +"I must try and persuade M. Danglars to invite him to a ball +or dinner, or something of the sort, that he may be +compelled to ask us in return." +"What," said Debray, laughing "do you really mean you would +go to his house?" +"Why not? my husband could accompany me." +"But do you know this mysterious count is a bachelor?" +"You have ample proof to the contrary, if you look +opposite," said the baroness, as she laughingly pointed to +the beautiful Greek. +"No, no" exclaimed Debray "that girl is not his wife he +told us himself she was his slave. Do you not recollect, +Morcerf, his telling us so at your breakfast?" +"Well, then," said the baroness, "if slave she be, she has +all the air and manner of a princess." +"Of the "Arabian Nights'?" +"If you like but tell me, my dear Lucien, what it is that +constitutes a princess. Why, diamonds and she is covered +with them." +"To me she seems overloaded," observed Eugenie "she would +look far better if she wore fewer, and we should then be +able to see her finely formed throat and wrists." +"See how the artist peeps out" exclaimed Madame Danglars. +"My poor Eugenie, you must conceal your passion for the fine +arts." +"I admire all that is beautiful," returned the young lady. +"What do you think of the count?" inquired Debray "he is +not much amiss, according to my ideas of good looks." +"The count," repeated Eugenie, as though it had not occurred +to her to observe him sooner "the count? oh, he is so +dreadfully pale." +"I quite agree with you," said Morcerf "and the secret of +that very pallor is what we want to find out. The Countess +G insists upon it that he is a vampire." +"Then the Countess G has returned to Paris, has she?" +inquired the baroness. +"Is that she, mamma?" asked Eugenie "almost opposite to us, +with that profusion of beautiful light hair?" +"Yes," said Madame Danglars, "that is she. Shall I tell you +what you ought to do, Morcerf?" +"Command me, madame." +"Well, then, you should go and bring your Count of Monte +Cristo to us." +"What for?" asked Eugenie. +"What for? Why, to converse with him, of course. Have you +really no desire to meet him?" +"None whatever," replied Eugenie. +"Strange child," murmured the baroness. +"He will very probably come of his own accord," said +Morcerf. "There do you see, madame, he recognizes you, and +bows." The baroness returned the salute in the most smiling +and graceful manner. +"Well," said Morcerf, "I may as well be magnanimous, and +tear myself away to forward your wishes. Adieu I will go +and try if there are any means of speaking to him." +"Go straight to his box that will be the simplest plan." +"But I have never been presented." +"Presented to whom?" +"To the beautiful Greek." +"You say she is only a slave?" +"While you assert that she is a queen, or at least a +princess. No I hope that when he sees me leave you, he will +come out." +"That is possible go." +"I am going," said Albert, as he made his parting bow. Just +as he was passing the count's box, the door opened, and +Monte Cristo came forth. After giving some directions to +Ali, who stood in the lobby, the count took Albert's arm. +Carefully closing the box door, Ali placed himself before +it, while a crowd of spectators assembled round the Nubian. +"Upon my word," said Monte Cristo, "Paris is a strange city, +and the Parisians a very singular people. See that cluster +of persons collected around poor Ali, who is as much +astonished as themselves really one might suppose he was +the only Nubian they had ever beheld. Now I can promise you, +that a Frenchman might show himself in public, either in +Tunis, Constantinople, Bagdad, or Cairo, without being +treated in that way." +"That shows that the Eastern nations have too much good +sense to waste their time and attention on objects +undeserving of either. However, as far as Ali is concerned, +I can assure you, the interest he excites is merely from the +circumstance of his being your attendant you, who are at +this moment the most celebrated and fashionable person in +Paris." +"Really? and what has procured me so fluttering a +distinction?" +"What? why, yourself, to be sure You give away horses worth +a thousand louis you save the lives of ladies of high rank +and beauty under the name of Major Brack you run +thoroughbreds ridden by tiny urchins not larger than +marmots then, when you have carried off the golden trophy +of victory, instead of setting any value on it, you give it +to the first handsome woman you think of" +"And who has filled your head with all this nonsense?" +"Why, in the first place, I heard it from Madame Danglars, +who, by the by, is dying to see you in her box, or to have +you seen there by others secondly, I learned it from +Beauchamp's journal and thirdly, from my own imagination. +Why, if you sought concealment, did you call your horse +Vampa?" +"That was an oversight, certainly," replied the count "but +tell me, does the Count of Morcerf never visit the Opera? I +have been looking for him, but without success." +"He will be here tonight." +"In what part of the house?" +"In the baroness's box, I believe." +"That charming young woman with her is her daughter?" +"Yes." +"I congratulate you." Morcerf smiled. "We will discuss that +subject at length some future time," said he. "But what do +you think of the music?" +"What music?" +"Why, the music you have been listening to." +"Oh, it is well enough as the production of a human +composer, sung by featherless bipeds, to quote the late +Diogenes." +"From which it would seem, my dear count, that you can at +pleasure enjoy the seraphic strains that proceed from the +seven choirs of paradise?" +"You are right, in some degree when I wish to listen to +sounds more exquisitely attuned to melody than mortal ear +ever yet listened to, I go to sleep." +"Then sleep here, my dear count. The conditions are +favorable what else was opera invented for?" +"No, thank you. Your orchestra is too noisy. To sleep after +the manner I speak of, absolute calm and silence are +necessary, and then a certain preparation" +"I know the famous hashish" +"Precisely. So, my dear viscount, whenever you wish to be +regaled with music come and sup with me." +"I have already enjoyed that treat when breakfasting with +you," said Morcerf. +"Do you mean at Rome?" +"I do." +"Ah, then, I suppose you heard Haidee's guzla the poor +exile frequently beguiles a weary hour in playing over to me +the airs of her native land." Morcerf did not pursue the +subject, and Monte Cristo himself fell into a silent +reverie. The bell rang at this moment for the rising of the +curtain. "You will excuse my leaving you," said the count, +turning in the direction of his box. +"What? Are you going?" +"Pray, say everything that is kind to Countess G on the +part of her friend the Vampire." +"And what message shall I convey to the baroness" +"That, with her permission, I shall do myself the honor of +paying my respects in the course of the evening." +The third act had begun and during its progress the Count +of Morcerf, according to his promise, made his appearance in +the box of Madame Danglars. The Count of Morcerf was not a +person to excite either interest or curiosity in a place of +public amusement his presence, therefore, was wholly +unnoticed, save by the occupants of the box in which he had +just seated himself. The quick eye of Monte Cristo however, +marked his coming and a slight though meaning smile passed +over his lips. Haidee, whose soul seemed centred in the +business of the stage, like all unsophisticated natures, +delighted in whatever addressed itself to the eye or ear. +The third act passed off as usual. Mesdemoiselles Noblet, +Julie, and Leroux executed the customary pirouettes Robert +duly challenged the Prince of Granada and the royal father +of the princess Isabella, taking his daughter by the hand, +swept round the stage with majestic strides, the better to +display the rich folds of his velvet robe and mantle. After +which the curtain again fell, and the spectators poured +forth from the theatre into the lobbies and salon. The count +left his box, and a moment later was saluting the Baronne +Danglars, who could not restrain a cry of mingled pleasure +and surprise. "You are welcome, count" she exclaimed, as he +entered. "I have been most anxious to see you, that I might +repeat orally the thanks writing can so ill express." +"Surely so trifling a circumstance cannot deserve a place in +your remembrance. Believe me, madame, I had entirely +forgotten it." +"But it is not so easy to forget, monsieur, that the very +next day after your princely gift you saved the life of my +dear friend, Madame de Villefort, which was endangered by +the very animals your generosity restored to me." +"This time, at least, I do not deserve your thanks. It was +Ali, my Nubian slave, who rendered this service to Madame de +Villefort." +"Was it Ali," asked the Count of Morcerf, "who rescued my +son from the hands of bandits?" +"No, count," replied Monte Cristo taking the hand held out +to him by the general "in this instance I may fairly and +freely accept your thanks but you have already tendered +them, and fully discharged your debt if indeed there +existed one and I feel almost mortified to find you still +reverting to the subject. May I beg of you, baroness, to +honor me with an introduction to your daughter?" +"Oh, you are no stranger at least not by name," replied +Madame Danglars, "and the last two or three days we have +really talked of nothing but you. Eugenie," continued the +baroness, turning towards her daughter, "this is the Count +of Monte Cristo." The Count bowed, while Mademoiselle +Danglars bent her head slightly. "You have a charming young +person with you tonight, count," said Eugenie. "Is she your +daughter?" +"No, mademoiselle," said Monte Cristo, astonished at the +coolness and freedom of the question. "She is a poor +unfortunate Greek left under my care." +"And what is her name?" +"Haidee," replied Monte Cristo. +"A Greek?" murmured the Count of Morcerf. +"Yes, indeed, count," said Madame Danglars "and tell me, +did you ever see at the court of Ali Tepelini, whom you so +gloriously and valiantly served, a more exquisite beauty or +richer costume?" +"Did I hear rightly, monsieur," said Monte Cristo "that you +served at Yanina?" +"I was inspectorgeneral of the pasha's troops," replied +Morcerf "and it is no secret that I owe my fortune, such as +it is, to the liberality of the illustrious Albanese chief." +"But look" exclaimed Madame Danglars. +"Where?" stammered Morcerf. +"There," said Monte Cristo placing his arms around the +count, and leaning with him over the front of the box, just +as Haidee, whose eyes were occupied in examining the theatre +in search of her guardian, perceived his pale features close +to Morcerf's face. It was as if the young girl beheld the +head of Medusa. She bent forwards as though to assure +herself of the reality of what she saw, then, uttering a +faint cry, threw herself back in her seat. The sound was +heard by the people about Ali, who instantly opened the +boxdoor. "Why, count," exclaimed Eugenie, "what has +happened to your ward? she seems to have been taken suddenly +ill." +"Very probably," answered the count. "But do not be alarmed +on her account. Haidee's nervous system is delicately +organized, and she is peculiarly susceptible to the odors +even of flowers nay, there are some which cause her to +faint if brought into her presence. However," continued +Monte Cristo, drawing a small phial from his pocket, "I have +an infallible remedy." So saying, he bowed to the baroness +and her daughter, exchanged a parting shake of the hand with +Debray and the count, and left Madame Danglars' box. Upon +his return to Haidee he found her still very pale. As soon +as she saw him she seized his hand her own hands were moist +and icy cold. "Who was it you were talking with over there?" +she asked. +"With the Count of Morcerf," answered Monte Cristo. "He +tells me he served your illustrious father, and that he owes +his fortune to him." +"Wretch" exclaimed Haidee, her eyes flashing with rage "he +sold my father to the Turks, and the fortune he boasts of +was the price of his treachery Did not you know that, my +dear lord?" +"Something of this I heard in Epirus," said Monte Cristo +"but the particulars are still unknown to me. You shall +relate them to me, my child. They are, no doubt, both +curious and interesting." +"Yes, yes but let us go. I feel as though it would kill me +to remain long near that dreadful man." So saying, Haidee +arose, and wrapping herself in her burnoose of white +cashmire embroidered with pearls and coral, she hastily +quitted the box at the moment when the curtain was rising +upon the fourth act. +"Do you observe," said the Countess G to Albert, who +had returned to her side, "that man does nothing like other +people he listens most devoutly to the third act of "Robert +le Diable,' and when the fourth begins, takes his +departure." +Chapter +A Flurry in Stocks. +Some days after this meeting, Albert de Morcerf visited the +Count of Monte Cristo at his house in the Champs Elysees, +which had already assumed that palacelike appearance which +the count's princely fortune enabled him to give even to his +most temporary residences. He came to renew the thanks of +Madame Danglars which had been already conveyed to the count +through the medium of a letter, signed "Baronne Danglars, +nee Hermine de Servieux." Albert was accompanied by Lucien +Debray, who, joining in his friend's conversation, added +some passing compliments, the source of which the count's +talent for finesse easily enabled him to guess. He was +convinced that Lucien's visit was due to a double feeling of +curiosity, the larger half of which sentiment emanated from +the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin. In short, Madame Danglars, +not being able personally to examine in detail the domestic +economy and household arrangements of a man who gave away +horses worth , francs and who went to the opera with a +Greek slave wearing diamonds to the amount of a million of +money, had deputed those eyes, by which she was accustomed +to see, to give her a faithful account of the mode of life +of this incomprehensible person. But the count did not +appear to suspect that there could be the slightest +connection between Lucien's visit and the curiosity of the +baroness. +"You are in constant communication with the Baron Danglars?" +the count inquired of Albert de Morcerf. +"Yes, count, you know what I told you?" +"All remains the same, then, in that quarter?" +"It is more than ever a settled thing," said Lucien, and, +considering that this remark was all that he was at that +time called upon to make, he adjusted the glass to his eye, +and biting the top of his gold headed cane, began to make +the tour of the apartment, examining the arms and the +pictures. +"Ah," said Monte Cristo "I did not expect that the affair +would be so promptly concluded." +"Oh, things take their course without our assistance. While +we are forgetting them, they are falling into their +appointed order and when, again, our attention is directed +to them, we are surprised at the progress they have made +towards the proposed end. My father and M. Danglars served +together in Spain, my father in the army and M. Danglars in +the commissariat department. It was there that my father, +ruined by the revolution, and M. Danglars, who never had +possessed any patrimony, both laid the foundations of their +different fortunes." +"Yes," said Monte Cristo "I think M. Danglars mentioned that +in a visit which I paid him and," continued he, casting a +sideglance at Lucien, who was turning over the leaves of an +album, "Mademoiselle Eugenie is pretty I think I remember +that to be her name." +"Very pretty, or rather, very beautiful," replied Albert, +"but of that style of beauty which I do not appreciate I am +an ungrateful fellow." +"You speak as if you were already her husband." +"Ah," returned Albert, in his turn looking around to see +what Lucien was doing. +"Really," said Monte Cristo, lowering his voice, "you do not +appear to me to be very enthusiastic on the subject of this +marriage." +"Mademoiselle Danglars is too rich for me," replied Morcerf, +"and that frightens me." +"Bah," exclaimed Monte Cristo, "that's a fine reason to +give. Are you not rich yourself?" +"My father's income is about , francs per annum and he +will give me, perhaps, ten or twelve thousand when I marry." +"That, perhaps, might not be considered a large sum, in +Paris especially," said the count "but everything does not +depend on wealth, and it is a fine thing to have a good +name, and to occupy a high station in society. Your name is +celebrated, your position magnificent and then the Comte de +Morcerf is a soldier, and it is pleasing to see the +integrity of a Bayard united to the poverty of a Duguesclin +disinterestedness is the brightest ray in which a noble +sword can shine. As for me, I consider the union with +Mademoiselle Danglars a most suitable one she will enrich +you, and you will ennoble her." Albert shook his head, and +looked thoughtful. "There is still something else," said he. +"I confess," observed Monte Cristo, "that I have some +difficulty in comprehending your objection to a young lady +who is both rich and beautiful." +"Oh," said Morcerf, "this repugnance, if repugnance it may +be called, is not all on my side." +"Whence can it arise, then? for you told me your father +desired the marriage." +"It is my mother who dissents she has a clear and +penetrating judgment, and does not smile on the proposed +union. I cannot account for it, but she seems to entertain +some prejudice against the Danglars." +"Ah," said the count, in a somewhat forced tone, "that may +be easily explained the Comtesse de Morcerf, who is +aristocracy and refinement itself, does not relish the idea +of being allied by your marriage with one of ignoble birth +that is natural enough." +"I do not know if that is her reason," said Albert, "but one +thing I do know, that if this marriage be consummated, it +will render her quite miserable. There was to have been a +meeting six weeks ago in order to talk over and settle the +affair but I had such a sudden attack of indisposition" +"Real?" interrupted the count, smiling. +"Oh, real enough, from anxiety doubtless, at any rate +they postponed the matter for two months. There is no hurry, +you know. I am not yet twentyone, and Eugenie is only +seventeen but the two months expire next week. It must be +done. My dear count, you cannot imagine how my mind is +harassed. How happy you are in being exempt from all this" +"Well, and why should not you be free, too? What prevents +you from being so?" +"Oh, it will be too great a disappointment to my father if I +do not marry Mademoiselle Danglars." +"Marry her then," said the count, with a significant shrug +of the shoulders. +"Yes," replied Morcerf, "but that will plunge my mother into +positive grief." +"Then do not marry her," said the count. +"Well, I shall see. I will try and think over what is the +best thing to be done you will give me your advice, will +you not, and if possible extricate me from my unpleasant +position? I think, rather than give pain to my dear mother, +I would run the risk of offending the count." Monte Cristo +turned away he seemed moved by this last remark. "Ah," said +he to Debray, who had thrown himself into an easychair at +the farthest extremity of the salon, and who held a pencil +in his right hand and an account book in his left, "what are +you doing there? Are you making a sketch after Poussin?" +"Oh, no," was the tranquil response "I am too fond of art +to attempt anything of that sort. I am doing a little sum in +arithmetic." +"In arithmetic?" +"Yes I am calculating by the way, Morcerf, that +indirectly concerns you I am calculating what the house +of Danglars must have gained by the last rise in Haiti +bonds from they have risen to in three days, and +the prudent banker had purchased at therefore he must +have made , livres." +"That is not his biggest scoop," said Morcerf "did he not +make a million in Spaniards this last year?" +"My dear fellow," said Lucien, "here is the Count of Monte +Cristo, who will say to you, as the Italians do, +""Danaro e santita, +Meta della meta.' + "Money and sanctity, +Each in a moiety. +"When they tell me such things, I only shrug my shoulders +and say nothing." +"But you were speaking of Haitians?" said Monte Cristo. +"Ah, Haitians, that is quite another thing Haitians are +the ecarte of French stockjobbing. We may like bouillotte, +delight in whist, be enraptured with boston, and yet grow +tired of them all but we always come back to ecarte it +is not only a game, it is a horsd'oeuvre M. Danglars sold +yesterday at , and pockets , francs. Had he but +waited till today, the price would have fallen to , and +instead of gaining , francs, he would have lost or +"And what has caused the sudden fall from to ?" asked +Monte Cristo. "I am profoundly ignorant of all these +stockjobbing intrigues." +"Because," said Albert, laughing, "one piece of news follows +another, and there is often great dissimilarity between +them." +"Ah," said the count, "I see that M. Danglars is accustomed +to play at gaining or losing , francs in a day he +must be enormously rich." +"It is not he who plays" exclaimed Lucien "it is Madame +Danglars she is indeed daring." +"But you who are a reasonable being, Lucien, and who know +how little dependence is to be placed on the news, since you +are at the fountainhead, surely you ought to prevent it," +said Morcerf, with a smile. +"How can I, if her husband fails in controlling her?" asked +Lucien "you know the character of the baroness no one +has any influence with her, and she does precisely what she +pleases." +"Ah, if I were in your place" said Albert. +"Well?" +"I would reform her it would be rendering a service to her +future soninlaw." +"How would you set about it?" +"Ah, that would be easy enough I would give her a +lesson." +"A lesson?" +"Yes. Your position as secretary to the minister renders +your authority great on the subject of political news you +never open your mouth but the stockbrokers immediately +stenograph your words. Cause her to lose a hundred thousand +francs, and that would teach her prudence." +"I do not understand," stammered Lucien. +"It is very clear, notwithstanding," replied the young man, +with an artlessness wholly free from affectation "tell her +some fine morning an unheardof piece of intelligence +some telegraphic despatch, of which you alone are in +possession for instance, that Henri IV. was seen yesterday +at Gabrielle's. That would boom the market she will buy +heavily, and she will certainly lose when Beauchamp +announces the following day, in his gazette, "The report +circulated by some usually wellinformed persons that the +king was seen yesterday at Gabrielle's house, is totally +without foundation. We can positively assert that his +majesty did not quit the PontNeuf.'" Lucien half smiled. +Monte Cristo, although apparently indifferent, had not lost +one word of this conversation, and his penetrating eye had +even read a hidden secret in the embarrassed manner of the +secretary. This embarrassment had completely escaped Albert, +but it caused Lucien to shorten his visit he was evidently +ill at ease. The count, in taking leave of him, said +something in a low voice, to which he answered, "Willingly, +count I accept." The count returned to young Morcerf. +"Do you not think, on reflection," said he to him, "that you +have done wrong in thus speaking of your motherinlaw in +the presence of M. Debray?" +"My dear count," said Morcerf, "I beg of you not to apply +that title so prematurely." +"Now, speaking without any exaggeration, is your mother +really so very much averse to this marriage?" +"So much so that the baroness very rarely comes to the +house, and my mother, has not, I think, visited Madame +Danglars twice in her whole life." +"Then," said the count, "I am emboldened to speak openly to +you. M. Danglars is my banker M. de Villefort has +overwhelmed me with politeness in return for a service which +a casual piece of good fortune enabled me to render him. I +predict from all this an avalanche of dinners and routs. +Now, in order not to presume on this, and also to be +beforehand with them, I have, if agreeable to you, thought +of inviting M. and Madame Danglars, and M. and Madame de +Villefort, to my countryhouse at Auteuil. If I were to +invite you and the Count and Countess of Morcerf to this +dinner, I should give it the appearance of being a +matrimonial meeting, or at least Madame de Morcerf would +look upon the affair in that light, especially if Baron +Danglars did me the honor to bring his daughter. In that +case your mother would hold me in aversion, and I do not at +all wish that on the contrary, I desire to stand high in +her esteem." +"Indeed, count," said Morcerf, "I thank you sincerely for +having used so much candor towards me, and I gratefully +accept the exclusion which you propose. You say you desire +my mother's good opinion I assure you it is already yours +to a very unusual extent." +"Do you think so?" said Monte Cristo, with interest. +"Oh, I am sure of it we talked of you an hour after you +left us the other day. But to return to what we were saying. +If my mother could know of this attention on your part +and I will venture to tell her I am sure that she will be +most grateful to you it is true that my father will be +equally angry." The count laughed. "Well," said he to +Morcerf, "but I think your father will not be the only angry +one M. and Madame Danglars will think me a very +illmannered person. They know that I am intimate with you +that you are, in fact one of the oldest of my Parisian +acquaintances and they will not find you at my house +they will certainly ask me why I did not invite you. Be sure +to provide yourself with some previous engagement which +shall have a semblance of probability, and communicate the +fact to me by a line in writing. You know that with bankers +nothing but a written document will be valid." +"I will do better than that," said Albert "my mother is +wishing to go to the seaside what day is fixed for your +dinner?" +"Saturday." +"This is Tuesday well, tomorrow evening we leave, and +the day after we shall be at Treport. Really, count, you +have a delightful way of setting people at their ease." +"Indeed, you give me more credit than I deserve I only wish +to do what will be agreeable to you, that is all." +"When shall you send your invitations?" +"This very day." +"Well, I will immediately call on M. Danglars, and tell him +that my mother and myself must leave Paris tomorrow. I have +not seen you, consequently I know nothing of your dinner." +"How foolish you are Have you forgotten that M. Debray has +just seen you at my house?" +"Ah, true," +"Fix it this way. I have seen you, and invited you without +any ceremony, when you instantly answered that it would be +impossible for you to accept, as you were going to Treport." +"Well, then, that is settled but you will come and call on +my mother before tomorrow?" +"Before tomorrow? that will be a difficult matter to +arrange, besides, I shall just be in the way of all the +preparations for departure." +"Well, you can do better. You were only a charming man +before, but, if you accede to my proposal, you will be +adorable." +"What must I do to attain such sublimity?" +"You are today free as air come and dine with me we +shall be a small party only yourself, my mother, and I. +You have scarcely seen my mother you shall have an +opportunity of observing her more closely. She is a +remarkable woman, and I only regret that there does not +exist another like her, about twenty years younger in that +case, I assure you, there would very soon be a Countess and +Viscountess of Morcerf. As to my father, you will not see +him he is officially engaged, and dines with the chief +referendary. We will talk over our travels and you, who +have seen the whole world, will relate your adventures +you shall tell us the history of the beautiful Greek who was +with you the other night at the Opera, and whom you call +your slave, and yet treat like a princess. We will talk +Italian and Spanish. Come, accept my invitation, and my +mother will thank you." +"A thousand thanks," said the count, "your invitation is +most gracious, and I regret exceedingly that it is not in my +power to accept it. I am not so much at liberty as you +suppose on the contrary, I have a most important +engagement." +"Ah, take care, you were teaching me just now how, in case +of an invitation to dinner, one might creditably make an +excuse. I require the proof of a preengagement. I am not a +banker, like M. Danglars, but I am quite as incredulous as +he is." +"I am going to give you a proof," replied the count, and he +rang the bell. +"Humph," said Morcerf, "this is the second time you have +refused to dine with my mother it is evident that you wish +to avoid her." Monte Cristo started. "Oh, you do not mean +that," said he "besides, here comes the confirmation of my +assertion." Baptistin entered, and remained standing at the +door. "I had no previous knowledge of your visit, had I?" +"Indeed, you are such an extraordinary person, that I would +not answer for it." +"At all events, I could not guess that you would invite me +to dinner." +"Probably not." +"Well, listen, Baptistin, what did I tell you this morning +when I called you into my laboratory?" +"To close the door against visitors as soon as the clock +struck five," replied the valet. +"What then?" +"Ah, my dear count," said Albert. +"No, no, I wish to do away with that mysterious reputation +that you have given me, my dear viscount it is tiresome to +be always acting Manfred. I wish my life to be free and +open. Go on, Baptistin." +"Then to admit no one except Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti and +his son." +"You hear Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti a man who ranks +amongst the most ancient nobility of Italy, whose name Dante +has celebrated in the tenth canto of "The Inferno,' you +remember it, do you not? Then there is his son, Andrea, a +charming young man, about your own age, viscount, bearing +the same title as yourself, and who is making his entry into +the Parisian world, aided by his father's millions. The +major will bring his son with him this evening, the contino, +as we say in Italy he confides him to my care. If he proves +himself worthy of it, I will do what I can to advance his +interests. You will assist me in the work, will you not?" +"Most undoubtedly. This Major Cavalcanti is an old friend of +yours, then?" +"By no means. He is a perfect nobleman, very polite, modest, +and agreeable, such as may be found constantly in Italy, +descendants of very ancient families. I have met him several +times at Florence, Bologna and Lucca, and he has now +communicated to me the fact of his arrival in Paris. The +acquaintances one makes in travelling have a sort of claim +on one they everywhere expect to receive the same attention +which you once paid them by chance, as though the civilities +of a passing hour were likely to awaken any lasting interest +in favor of the man in whose society you may happen to be +thrown in the course of your journey. This good Major +Cavalcanti is come to take a second view of Paris, which he +only saw in passing through in the time of the Empire, when +he was on his way to Moscow. I shall give him a good dinner, +he will confide his son to my care, I will promise to watch +over him, I shall let him follow in whatever path his folly +may lead him, and then I shall have done my part." +"Certainly I see you are a model Mentor," said Albert +"Goodby, we shall return on Sunday. By the way, I have +received news of Franz." +"Have you? Is he still amusing himself in Italy?" +"I believe so however, he regrets your absence extremely. +He says you were the sun of Rome, and that without you all +appears dark and cloudy I do not know if he does not even +go so far as to say that it rains." +"His opinion of me is altered for the better, then?" +"No, he still persists in looking upon you as the most +incomprehensible and mysterious of beings." +"He is a charming young man," said Monte Cristo "and I felt +a lively interest in him the very first evening of my +introduction, when I met him in search of a supper, and +prevailed upon him to accept a portion of mine. He is, I +think, the son of General d'Epinay?" +"He is." +"The same who was so shamefully assassinated in ?" +"By the Bonapartists." +"Yes. Really I like him extremely is there not also a +matrimonial engagement contemplated for him?" +"Yes, he is to marry Mademoiselle de Villefort." +"Indeed?" +"And you know I am to marry Mademoiselle Danglars," said +Albert, laughing. +"You smile." +"Yes." +"Why do you do so?" +"I smile because there appears to me to be about as much +inclination for the consummation of the engagement in +question as there is for my own. But really, my dear count, +we are talking as much of women as they do of us it is +unpardonable." Albert rose. +"Are you going?" +"Really, that is a good idea two hours have I been +boring you to death with my company, and then you, with the +greatest politeness, ask me if I am going. Indeed, count, +you are the most polished man in the world. And your +servants, too, how very well behaved they are there is +quite a style about them. Monsieur Baptistin especially I +could never get such a man as that. My servants seem to +imitate those you sometimes see in a play, who, because they +have only a word or two to say, aquit themselves in the most +awkward manner possible. Therefore, if you part with M. +Baptistin, give me the refusal of him." +"By all means." +"That is not all give my compliments to your illustrious +Luccanese, Cavalcante of the Cavalcanti and if by any +chance he should be wishing to establish his son, find him a +wife very rich, very noble on her mother's side at least, +and a baroness in right of her father, I will help you in +the search." +"Ah, ha you will do as much as that, will you?" +"Yes." +"Well, really, nothing is certain in this world." +"Oh, count, what a service you might render me I should +like you a hundred times better if, by your intervention, I +could manage to remain a bachelor, even were it only for ten +years." +"Nothing is impossible," gravely replied Monte Cristo and +taking leave of Albert, he returned into the house, and +struck the gong three times. Bertuccio appeared. "Monsieur +Bertuccio, you understand that I intend entertaining company +on Saturday at Auteuil." Bertuccio slightly started. "I +shall require your services to see that all be properly +arranged. It is a beautiful house, or at all events may be +made so." +"There must be a good deal done before it can deserve that +title, your excellency, for the tapestried hangings are very +old." +"Let them all be taken away and changed, then, with the +exception of the sleepingchamber which is hung with red +damask you will leave that exactly as it is." Bertuccio +bowed. "You will not touch the garden either as to the +yard, you may do what you please with it I should prefer +that being altered beyond all recognition." +"I will do everything in my power to carry out your wishes, +your excellency. I should be glad, however, to receive your +excellency's commands concerning the dinner." +"Really, my dear M. Bertuccio," said the count, "since you +have been in Paris, you have become quite nervous, and +apparently out of your element you no longer seem to +understand me." +"But surely your excellency will be so good as to inform me +whom you are expecting to receive?" +"I do not yet know myself, neither is it necessary that you +should do so. "Lucullus dines with Lucullus,' that is quite +sufficient." Bertuccio bowed, and left the room. +Chapter +Major Cavalcanti. +Both the count and Baptistin had told the truth when they +announced to Morcerf the proposed visit of the major, which +had served Monte Cristo as a pretext for declining Albert's +invitation. Seven o'clock had just struck, and M. Bertuccio, +according to the command which had been given him, had two +hours before left for Auteuil, when a cab stopped at the +door, and after depositing its occupant at the gate, +immediately hurried away, as if ashamed of its employment. +The visitor was about fiftytwo years of age, dressed in one +of the green surtouts, ornamented with black frogs, which +have so long maintained their popularity all over Europe. He +wore trousers of blue cloth, boots tolerably clean, but not +of the brightest polish, and a little too thick in the +soles, buckskin gloves, a hat somewhat resembling in shape +those usually worn by the gendarmes, and a black cravat +striped with white, which, if the proprietor had not worn it +of his own free will, might have passed for a halter, so +much did it resemble one. Such was the picturesque costume +of the person who rang at the gate, and demanded if it was +not at No. in the Avenue des ChampsElysees that the +Count of Monte Cristo lived, and who, being answered by the +porter in the affirmative, entered, closed the gate after +him, and began to ascend the steps. +The small and angular head of this man, his white hair and +thick gray mustaches, caused him to be easily recognized by +Baptistin, who had received an exact description of the +expected visitor, and who was awaiting him in the hall. +Therefore, scarcely had the stranger time to pronounce his +name before the count was apprised of his arrival. He was +ushered into a simple and elegant drawingroom, and the +count rose to meet him with a smiling air. "Ah, my dear sir, +you are most welcome I was expecting you." +"Indeed," said the Italian, "was your excellency then aware +of my visit?" +"Yes I had been told that I should see you today at seven +o'clock." +"Then you have received full information concerning my +arrival?" +"Of course." +"Ah, so much the better, I feared this little precaution +might have been forgotten." +"What precaution?" +"That of informing you beforehand of my coming." +"Oh, no, it has not." +"But you are sure you are not mistaken." +"Very sure." +"It really was I whom your excellency expected at seven +o'clock this evening?" +"I will prove it to you beyond a doubt." +"Oh, no, never mind that," said the Italian "it is not +worth the trouble." +"Yes, yes," said Monte Cristo. His visitor appeared slightly +uneasy. "Let me see," said the count "are you not the +Marquis Bartolomeo Cavalcanti?" +"Bartolomeo Cavalcanti," joyfully replied the Italian "yes, +I am really he." +"Exmajor in the Austrian service?" +"Was I a major?" timidly asked the old soldier. +"Yes," said Monte Cristo "you were a major that is the +title the French give to the post which you filled in +Italy." +"Very good," said the major, "I do not demand more, you +understand" +"Your visit here today is not of your own suggestion, is +it?" said Monte Cristo. +"No, certainly not." +"You were sent by some other person?" +"Yes." +"By the excellent Abbe Busoni?" +"Exactly so," said the delighted major. +"And you have a letter?" +"Yes, there it is." +"Give it me, then" and Monte Cristo took the letter, which +he opened and read. The major looked at the count with his +large staring eyes, and then took a survey of the apartment, +but his gaze almost immediately reverted to the proprietor +of the room. "Yes, yes, I see. "Major Cavalcanti, a worthy +patrician of Lucca, a descendant of the Cavalcanti of +Florence,'" continued Monte Cristo, reading aloud, +""possessing an income of half a million.'" Monte Cristo +raised his eyes from the paper, and bowed. "Half a million," +said he, "magnificent" +"Half a million, is it?" said the major. +"Yes, in so many words and it must be so, for the abbe +knows correctly the amount of all the largest fortunes in +Europe." +"Be it half a million, then but on my word of honor, I had +no idea that it was so much." +"Because you are robbed by your steward. You must make some +reformation in that quarter." +"You have opened my eyes," said the Italian gravely "I will +show the gentlemen the door." Monte Cristo resumed the +perusal of the letter +""And who only needs one thing more to make him happy.'" +"Yes, indeed but one" said the major with a sigh. +""Which is to recover a lost and adored son.'" +"A lost and adored son" +""Stolen away in his infancy, either by an enemy of his +noble family or by the gypsies.'" +"At the age of five years" said the major with a deep sigh, +and raising his eye to heaven. +"Unhappy father," said Monte Cristo. The count continued +""I have given him renewed life and hope, in the assurance +that you have the power of restoring the son whom he has +vainly sought for fifteen years.'" The major looked at the +count with an indescribable expression of anxiety. "I have +the power of so doing," said Monte Cristo. The major +recovered his selfpossession. "So, then," said he, "the +letter was true to the end?" +"Did you doubt it, my dear Monsieur Bartolomeo?" +"No, indeed certainly not a good man, a man holding +religious office, as does the Abbe Busoni, could not +condescend to deceive or play off a joke but your +excellency has not read all." +"Ah, true," said Monte Cristo "there is a postscript." +"Yes, yes," repeated the major, "yes there is a +postscript." +""In order to save Major Cavalcanti the trouble of drawing +on his banker, I send him a draft for , francs to defray +his travelling expenses, and credit on you for the further +sum of , francs, which you still owe me.'" The major +awaited the conclusion of the postscript, apparently with +great anxiety. "Very good," said the count. +"He said "very good,'" muttered the major, "then sir" +replied he. +"Then what?" asked Monte Cristo. +"Then the postscript" +"Well what of the postscript?" +"Then the postscript is as favorably received by you as the +rest of the letter?" +"Certainly the Abbe Busoni and myself have a small account +open between us. I do not remember if it is exactly , +francs, which I am still owing him, but I dare say we shall +not dispute the difference. You attached great importance, +then, to this postscript, my dear Monsieur Cavalcanti?" +"I must explain to you," said the major, "that, fully +confiding in the signature of the Abbe Busoni, I had not +provided myself with any other funds so that if this +resource had failed me, I should have found myself very +unpleasantly situated in Paris." +"Is it possible that a man of your standing should be +embarrassed anywhere?" said Monte Cristo. +"Why, really I know no one," said the major. +"But then you yourself are known to others?" +"Yes, I am known, so that" +"Proceed, my dear Monsieur Cavalcanti." +"So that you will remit to me these , francs?" +"Certainly, at your first request." The major's eyes dilated +with pleasing astonishment. "But sit down," said Monte +Cristo "really I do not know what I have been thinking of +I have positively kept you standing for the last quarter +of an hour." +"Don't mention it." The major drew an armchair towards him, +and proceeded to seat himself. +"Now," said the count, "what will you take a glass of +port, sherry, or Alicante?" +"Alicante, if you please it is my favorite wine." +"I have some that is very good. You will take a biscuit with +it, will you not?" +"Yes, I will take a biscuit, as you are so obliging." +Monte Cristo rang Baptistin appeared. The count advanced to +meet him. "Well?" said he in a low voice. "The young man is +here," said the valet de chambre in the same tone. +"Into what room did you take him?" +"Into the blue drawingroom, according to your excellency's +orders." +"That's right now bring the Alicante and some biscuits." +Baptistin left the room. "Really," said the major, "I am +quite ashamed of the trouble I am giving you." +"Pray don't mention such a thing," said the count. Baptistin +reentered with glasses, wine, and biscuits. The count +filled one glass, but in the other he only poured a few +drops of the rubycolored liquid. The bottle was covered +with spiders' webs, and all the other signs which indicate +the age of wine more truly than do wrinkles on a man's face. +The major made a wise choice he took the full glass and a +biscuit. The count told Baptistin to leave the plate within +reach of his guest, who began by sipping the Alicante with +an expression of great satisfaction, and then delicately +steeped his biscuit in the wine. +"So, sir, you lived at Lucca, did you? You were rich, noble, +held in great esteem had all that could render a man +happy?" +"All," said the major, hastily swallowing his biscuit, +"positively all." +"And yet there was one thing wanting in order to complete +your happiness?" +"Only one thing," said the Italian. +"And that one thing, your lost child." +"Ah," said the major, taking a second biscuit, "that +consummation of my happiness was indeed wanting." The worthy +major raised his eyes to heaven and sighed. +"Let me hear, then," said the count, "who this deeply +regretted son was for I always understood you were a +bachelor." +"That was the general opinion, sir," said the major, "and I" +"Yes," replied the count, "and you confirmed the report. A +youthful indiscretion, I suppose, which you were anxious to +conceal from the world at large?" The major recovered +himself, and resumed his usual calm manner, at the same time +casting his eyes down, either to give himself time to +compose his countenance, or to assist his imagination, all +the while giving an underlook at the count, the protracted +smile on whose lips still announced the same polite +curiosity. "Yes," said the major, "I did wish this fault to +be hidden from every eye." +"Not on your own account, surely," replied Monte Cristo +"for a man is above that sort of thing?" +"Oh, no, certainly not on my own account," said the major +with a smile and a shake of the head. +"But for the sake of the mother?" said the count. +"Yes, for the mother's sake his poor mother" cried the +major, taking a third biscuit. +"Take some more wine, my dear Cavalcanti," said the count, +pouring out for him a second glass of Alicante "your +emotion has quite overcome you." +"His poor mother," murmured the major, trying to get the +lachrymal gland in operation, so as to moisten the corner of +his eye with a false tear. +"She belonged to one of the first families in Italy, I +think, did she not?" +"She was of a noble family of Fiesole, count." +"And her name was" +"Do you desire to know her name?" +"Oh," said Monte Cristo "it would be quite superfluous for +you to tell me, for I already know it." +"The count knows everything," said the Italian, bowing. +"Oliva Corsinari, was it not?" +"Oliva Corsinari." +"A marchioness?" +"A marchioness." +"And you married her at last, notwithstanding the opposition +of her family?" +"Yes, that was the way it ended." +"And you have doubtless brought all your papers with you?" +said Monte Cristo. +"What papers?" +"The certificate of your marriage with Oliva Corsinari, and +the register of your child's birth." +"The register of my child's birth?" +"The register of the birth of Andrea Cavalcanti of your +son is not his name Andrea?" +"I believe so," said the major. +"What? You believe so?" +"I dare not positively assert it, as he has been lost for so +long a time." +"Well, then," said Monte Cristo "you have all the documents +with you?" +"Your excellency, I regret to say that, not knowing it was +necessary to come provided with these papers, I neglected to +bring them." +"That is unfortunate," returned Monte Cristo. +"Were they, then, so necessary?" +"They were indispensable." +The major passed his hand across his brow. "Ah, per Bacco, +indispensable, were they?" +"Certainly they were supposing there were to be doubts +raised as to the validity of your marriage or the legitimacy +of your child?" +"True," said the major, "there might be doubts raised." +"In that case your son would be very unpleasantly situated." +"It would be fatal to his interests." +"It might cause him to fail in some desirable matrimonial +alliance." +"O peccato" +"You must know that in France they are very particular on +these points it is not sufficient, as in Italy, to go to +the priest and say, "We love each other, and want you to +marry us.' Marriage is a civil affair in France, and in +order to marry in an orthodox manner you must have papers +which undeniably establish your identity." +"That is the misfortune You see I have not these necessary +papers." +"Fortunately, I have them, though," said Monte Cristo. +"You?" +"Yes." +"You have them?" +"I have them." +"Ah, indeed?" said the major, who, seeing the object of his +journey frustrated by the absence of the papers, feared also +that his forgetfulness might give rise to some difficulty +concerning the , francs "ah, indeed, that is a +fortunate circumstance yes, that really is lucky, for it +never occurred to me to bring them." +"I do not at all wonder at it one cannot think of +everything but, happily, the Abbe Busoni thought for you." +"He is an excellent person." +"He is extremely prudent and thoughtful" +"He is an admirable man," said the major "and he sent them +to you?" +"Here they are." +The major clasped his hands in token of admiration. "You +married Oliva Corsinari in the church of San Paolo del +MonteCattini here is the priest's certificate." +"Yes indeed, there it is truly," said the Italian, looking +on with astonishment. +"And here is Andrea Cavalcanti's baptismal register, given +by the curate of Saravezza." +"All quite correct." +"Take these documents, then they do not concern me. You +will give them to your son, who will, of course, take great +care of them." +"I should think so, indeed If he were to lose them" +"Well, and if he were to lose them?" said Monte Cristo. +"In that case," replied the major, "it would be necessary to +write to the curate for duplicates, and it would be some +time before they could be obtained." +"It would be a difficult matter to arrange," said Monte +Cristo. +"Almost an impossibility," replied the major. +"I am very glad to see that you understand the value of +these papers." +"I regard them as invaluable." +"Now," said Monte Cristo "as to the mother of the young man" +"As to the mother of the young man" repeated the Italian, +with anxiety. +"As regards the Marchesa Corsinari" +"Really," said the major, "difficulties seem to thicken upon +us will she be wanted in any way?" +"No, sir," replied Monte Cristo "besides, has she not" +"Yes, sir," said the major, "she has" +"Paid the last debt of nature?" +"Alas, yes," returned the Italian. +"I knew that," said Monte Cristo "she has been dead these +ten years." +"And I am still mourning her loss," exclaimed the major, +drawing from his pocket a checked handkerchief, and +alternately wiping first the left and then the right eye. +"What would you have?" said Monte Cristo "we are all +mortal. Now, you understand, my dear Monsieur Cavalcanti, +that it is useless for you to tell people in France that you +have been separated from your son for fifteen years. Stories +of gypsies, who steal children, are not at all in vogue in +this part of the world, and would not be believed. You sent +him for his education to a college in one of the provinces, +and now you wish him to complete his education in the +Parisian world. That is the reason which has induced you to +leave Via Reggio, where you have lived since the death of +your wife. That will be sufficient." +"You think so?" +"Certainly." +"Very well, then." +"If they should hear of the separation" +"Ah, yes what could I say?" +"That an unfaithful tutor, bought over by the enemies of +your family" +"By the Corsinari?" +"Precisely. Had stolen away this child, in order that your +name might become extinct." +"That is reasonable, since he is an only son." +"Well, now that all is arranged, do not let these newly +awakened remembrances be forgotten. You have, doubtless, +already guessed that I was preparing a surprise for you?" +"An agreeable one?" asked the Italian. +"Ah, I see the eye of a father is no more to be deceived +than his heart." +"Hum" said the major. +"Some one has told you the secret or, perhaps, you guessed +that he was here." +"That who was here?" +"Your child your son your Andrea" +"I did guess it," replied the major with the greatest +possible coolness. "Then he is here?" +"He is," said Monte Cristo "when the valet de chambre came +in just now, he told me of his arrival." +"Ah, very well, very well," said the major, clutching the +buttons of his coat at each exclamation. +"My dear sir," said Monte Cristo, "I understand your +emotion you must have time to recover yourself. I will, in +the meantime, go and prepare the young man for this +muchdesired interview, for I presume that he is not less +impatient for it than yourself." +"I should quite imagine that to be the case," said +Cavalcanti. +"Well, in a quarter of an hour he shall be with you." +"You will bring him, then? You carry your goodness so far as +even to present him to me yourself?" +"No I do not wish to come between a father and son. Your +interview will be private. But do not be uneasy even if the +powerful voice of nature should be silent, you cannot well +mistake him he will enter by this door. He is a fine young +man, of fair complexion a little too fair, perhaps +pleasing in manners but you will see and judge for +yourself." +"By the way," said the major, "you know I have only the +, francs which the Abbe Busoni sent me this sum I have +expended upon travelling expenses, and" +"And you want money that is a matter of course, my dear M. +Cavalcanti. Well, here are , francs on account." +The major's eyes sparkled brilliantly. +"It is , francs which I now owe you," said Monte +Cristo. +"Does your excellency wish for a receipt?" said the major, +at the same time slipping the money into the inner pocket of +his coat. +"For what?" said the count. +"I thought you might want it to show the Abbe Busoni." +"Well, when you receive the remaining ,, you shall give +me a receipt in full. Between honest men such excessive +precaution is, I think, quite unnecessary." +"Yes, so it is, between perfectly upright people." +"One word more," said Monte Cristo. +"Say on." +"You will permit me to make one remark?" +"Certainly pray do so." +"Then I should advise you to leave off wearing that style of +dress." +"Indeed," said the major, regarding himself with an air of +complete satisfaction. +"Yes. It may be worn at Via Reggio but that costume, +however elegant in itself, has long been out of fashion in +Paris." +"That's unfortunate." +"Oh, if you really are attached to your old mode of dress +you can easily resume it when you leave Paris." +"But what shall I wear?" +"What you find in your trunks." +"In my trunks? I have but one portmanteau." +"I dare say you have nothing else with you. What is the use +of boring one's self with so many things? Besides an old +soldier always likes to march with as little baggage as +possible." +"That is just the case precisely so." +"But you are a man of foresight and prudence, therefore you +sent your luggage on before you. It has arrived at the Hotel +des Princes, Rue de Richelieu. It is there you are to take +up your quarters." +"Then, in these trunks" +"I presume you have given orders to your valet de chambre to +put in all you are likely to need, your plain clothes and +your uniform. On grand occasions you must wear your uniform +that will look very well. Do not forget your crosses. They +still laugh at them in France, and yet always wear them, for +all that." +"Very well, very well," said the major, who was in ecstasy +at the attention paid him by the count. +"Now," said Monte Cristo, "that you have fortified yourself +against all painful excitement, prepare yourself, my dear M. +Cavalcanti, to meet your lost Andrea." Saying which Monte +Cristo bowed, and disappeared behind the tapestry, leaving +the major fascinated beyond expression with the delightful +reception which he had received at the hands of the count. +Chapter +Andrea Cavalcanti. +The Count of Monte Cristo entered the adjoining room, which +Baptistin had designated as the drawingroom, and found +there a young man, of graceful demeanor and elegant +appearance, who had arrived in a cab about half an hour +previously. Baptistin had not found any difficulty in +recognizing the person who presented himself at the door for +admittance. He was certainly the tall young man with light +hair, red beard, black eyes, and brilliant complexion, whom +his master had so particularly described to him. When the +count entered the room the young man was carelessly +stretched on a sofa, tapping his boot with the goldheaded +cane which he held in his hand. On perceiving the count he +rose quickly. "The Count of Monte Cristo, I believe?" said +he. +"Yes, sir, and I think I have the honor of addressing Count +Andrea Cavalcanti?" +"Count Andrea Cavalcanti," repeated the young man, +accompanying his words with a bow. +"You are charged with a letter of introduction addressed to +me, are you not?" said the count. +"I did not mention that, because the signature seemed to me +so strange." +"The letter signed "Sinbad the Sailor,' is it not?" +"Exactly so. Now, as I have never known any Sinbad, with the +exception of the one celebrated in the "Thousand and One +Nights'" +"Well, it is one of his descendants, and a great friend of +mine he is a very rich Englishman, eccentric almost to +insanity, and his real name is Lord Wilmore." +"Ah, indeed? Then that explains everything that is +extraordinary," said Andrea. "He is, then, the same +Englishman whom I met at ah yes, indeed. Well, +monsieur, I am at your service." +"If what you say be true," replied the count, smiling, +"perhaps you will be kind enough to give me some account of +yourself and your family?" +"Certainly, I will do so," said the young man, with a +quickness which gave proof of his ready invention. "I am as +you have said the Count Andrea Cavalcanti, son of Major +Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, a descendant of the Cavalcanti whose +names are inscribed in the golden book at Florence. Our +family, although still rich for my father's income amounts +to half a million, has experienced many misfortunes, and I +myself was, at the age of five years, taken away by the +treachery of my tutor, so that for fifteen years I have not +seen the author of my existence. Since I have arrived at +years of discretion and become my own master, I have been +constantly seeking him, but all in vain. At length I +received this letter from your friend, which states that my +father is in Paris, and authorizes me to address myself to +you for information respecting him." +"Really, all you have related to me is exceedingly +interesting," said Monte Cristo, observing the young man +with a gloomy satisfaction "and you have done well to +conform in everything to the wishes of my friend Sinbad for +your father is indeed here, and is seeking you." +The count from the moment of first entering the +drawingroom, had not once lost sight of the expression of +the young man's countenance he had admired the assurance of +his look and the firmness of his voice but at these words, +so natural in themselves, "Your father is indeed here, and +is seeking you," young Andrea started, and exclaimed, "My +father? Is my father here?" +"Most undoubtedly," replied Monte Cristo "your father, +Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti." The expression of terror +which, for the moment, had overspread the features of the +young man, had now disappeared. "Ah, yes, that is the name, +certainly. Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti. And you really mean +to say monsieur, that my dear father is here?" +"Yes, sir and I can even add that I have only just left his +company. The history which he related to me of his lost son +touched me to the quick indeed, his griefs, hopes, and +fears on that subject might furnish material for a most +touching and pathetic poem. At length, he one day received a +letter, stating that the abductors of his son now offered to +restore him, or at least to give notice where he might be +found, on condition of receiving a large sum of money, by +way of ransom. Your father did not hesitate an instant, and +the sum was sent to the frontier of Piedmont, with a +passport signed for Italy. You were in the south of France, +I think?" +"Yes," replied Andrea, with an embarrassed air, "I was in +the south of France." +"A carriage was to await you at Nice?" +"Precisely so and it conveyed me from Nice to Genoa, from +Genoa to Turin, from Turin to Chambery, from Chambery to +PontdeBeauvoisin, and from PontdeBeauvoisin to Paris." +"Indeed? Then your father ought to have met with you on the +road, for it is exactly the same route which he himself +took, and that is how we have been able to trace your +journey to this place." +"But," said Andrea, "if my father had met me, I doubt if he +would have recognized me I must be somewhat altered since +he last saw me." +"Oh, the voice of nature," said Monte Cristo. +"True," interrupted the young man, "I had not looked upon it +in that light." +"Now," replied Monte Cristo "there is only one source of +uneasiness left in your father's mind, which is this he +is anxious to know how you have been employed during your +long absence from him, how you have been treated by your +persecutors, and if they have conducted themselves towards +you with all the deference due to your rank. Finally, he is +anxious to see if you have been fortunate enough to escape +the bad moral influence to which you have been exposed, and +which is infinitely more to be dreaded than any physical +suffering he wishes to discover if the fine abilities with +which nature had endowed you have been weakened by want of +culture and, in short, whether you consider yourself +capable of resuming and retaining in the world the high +position to which your rank entitles you." +"Sir" exclaimed the young man, quite astounded, "I hope no +false report" +"As for myself, I first heard you spoken of by my friend +Wilmore, the philanthropist. I believe he found you in some +unpleasant position, but do not know of what nature, for I +did not ask, not being inquisitive. Your misfortunes engaged +his sympathies, so you see you must have been interesting. +He told me that he was anxious to restore you to the +position which you had lost, and that he would seek your +father until he found him. He did seek, and has found him, +apparently, since he is here now and, finally, my friend +apprised me of your coming, and gave me a few other +instructions relative to your future fortune. I am quite +aware that my friend Wilmore is peculiar, but he is sincere, +and as rich as a goldmine, consequently, he may indulge his +eccentricities without any fear of their ruining him, and I +have promised to adhere to his instructions. Now, sir, pray +do not be offended at the question I am about to put to you, +as it comes in the way of my duty as your patron. I would +wish to know if the misfortunes which have happened to you +misfortunes entirely beyond your control, and which in no +degree diminish my regard for you I would wish to know if +they have not, in some measure, contributed to render you a +stranger to the world in which your fortune and your name +entitle you to make a conspicuous figure?" +"Sir," returned the young man, with a reassurance of manner, +"make your mind easy on this score. Those who took me from +my father, and who always intended, sooner or later, to sell +me again to my original proprietor, as they have now done, +calculated that, in order to make the most of their bargain, +it would be politic to leave me in possession of all my +personal and hereditary worth, and even to increase the +value, if possible. I have, therefore, received a very good +education, and have been treated by these kidnappers very +much as the slaves were treated in Asia Minor, whose masters +made them grammarians, doctors, and philosophers, in order +that they might fetch a higher price in the Roman market." +Monte Cristo smiled with satisfaction it appeared as if he +had not expected so much from M. Andrea Cavalcanti. +"Besides," continued the young man, "if there did appear +some defect in education, or offence against the established +forms of etiquette, I suppose it would be excused, in +consideration of the misfortunes which accompanied my birth, +and followed me through my youth." +"Well," said Monte Cristo in an indifferent tone, "you will +do as you please, count, for you are the master of your own +actions, and are the person most concerned in the matter, +but if I were you, I would not divulge a word of these +adventures. Your history is quite a romance, and the world, +which delights in romances in yellow covers, strangely +mistrusts those which are bound in living parchment, even +though they be gilded like yourself. This is the kind of +difficulty which I wished to represent to you, my dear +count. You would hardly have recited your touching history +before it would go forth to the world, and be deemed +unlikely and unnatural. You would be no longer a lost child +found, but you would be looked upon as an upstart, who had +sprung up like a mushroom in the night. You might excite a +little curiosity, but it is not every one who likes to be +made the centre of observation and the subject of unpleasant +remark." +"I agree with you, monsieur," said the young man, turning +pale, and, in spite of himself, trembling beneath the +scrutinizing look of his companion, "such consequences would +be extremely unpleasant." +"Nevertheless, you must not exaggerate the evil," said Monte +Cristo, "for by endeavoring to avoid one fault you will fall +into another. You must resolve upon one simple and single +line of conduct, and for a man of your intelligence, this +plan is as easy as it is necessary you must form honorable +friendships, and by that means counteract the prejudice +which may attach to the obscurity of your former life." +Andrea visibly changed countenance. "I would offer myself as +your surety and friendly adviser," said Monte Cristo, "did I +not possess a moral distrust of my best friends, and a sort +of inclination to lead others to doubt them too therefore, +in departing from this rule, I should as the actors say be +playing a part quite out of my line, and should, therefore, +run the risk of being hissed, which would be an act of +folly." +"However, your excellency," said Andrea, "in consideration +of Lord Wilmore, by whom I was recommended to you " +"Yes, certainly," interrupted Monte Cristo "but Lord +Wilmore did not omit to inform me, my dear M. Andrea, that +the season of your youth was rather a stormy one. Ah," said +the count, watching Andrea's countenance, "I do not demand +any confession from you it is precisely to avoid that +necessity that your father was sent for from Lucca. You +shall soon see him. He is a little stiff and pompous in his +manner, and he is disfigured by his uniform but when it +becomes known that he has been for eighteen years in the +Austrian service, all that will be pardoned. We are not +generally very severe with the Austrians. In short, you will +find your father a very presentable person, I assure you." +"Ah, sir, you have given me confidence it is so long since +we were separated, that I have not the least remembrance of +him, and, besides, you know that in the eyes of the world a +large fortune covers all defects." +"He is a millionaire his income is , francs." +"Then," said the young man, with anxiety, "I shall be sure +to be placed in an agreeable position." +"One of the most agreeable possible, my dear sir he will +allow you an income of , livres per annum during the +whole time of your stay in Paris." +"Then in that case I shall always choose to remain there." +"You cannot control circumstances, my dear sir "man +proposes, and God disposes.'" Andrea sighed. "But," said he, +"so long as I do remain in Paris, and nothing forces me to +quit it, do you mean to tell me that I may rely on receiving +the sum you just now mentioned to me?" +"You may." +"Shall I receive it from my father?" asked Andrea, with some +uneasiness. +"Yes, you will receive it from your father personally, but +Lord Wilmore will be the security for the money. He has, at +the request of your father, opened an account of , +francs a month at M. Danglars', which is one of the safest +banks in Paris." +"And does my father mean to remain long in Paris?" asked +Andrea. +"Only a few days," replied Monte Cristo. "His service does +not allow him to absent himself more than two or three weeks +together." +"Ah, my dear father" exclaimed Andrea, evidently charmed +with the idea of his speedy departure. +"Therefore," said Monte Cristo feigning to mistake his +meaning "therefore I will not, for another instant, +retard the pleasure of your meeting. Are you prepared to +embrace your worthy father?" +"I hope you do not doubt it." +"Go, then, into the drawingroom, my young friend, where you +will find your father awaiting you." Andrea made a low bow +to the count, and entered the adjoining room. Monte Cristo +watched him till he disappeared, and then touched a spring +in a panel made to look like a picture, which, in sliding +partly from the frame, discovered to view a small opening, +so cleverly contrived that it revealed all that was passing +in the drawingroom now occupied by Cavalcanti and Andrea. +The young man closed the door behind him, and advanced +towards the major, who had risen when he heard steps +approaching him. "Ah, my dear father" said Andrea in a loud +voice, in order that the count might hear him in the next +room, "is it really you?" +"How do you do, my dear son?" said the major gravely. +"After so many years of painful separation," said Andrea, in +the same tone of voice, and glancing towards the door, "what +a happiness it is to meet again" +"Indeed it is, after so long a separation." +"Will you not embrace me, sir?" said Andrea. +"If you wish it, my son," said the major and the two men +embraced each other after the fashion of actors on the +stage that is to say, each rested his head on the other's +shoulder. +"Then we are once more reunited?" said Andrea. +"Once more," replied the major. +"Never more to be separated?" +"Why, as to that I think, my dear son, you must be by +this time so accustomed to France as to look upon it almost +as a second country." +"The fact is," said the young man, "that I should be +exceedingly grieved to leave it." +"As for me, you must know I cannot possibly live out of +Lucca therefore I shall return to Italy as soon as I can." +"But before you leave France, my dear father, I hope you +will put me in possession of the documents which will be +necessary to prove my descent." +"Certainly I am come expressly on that account it has cost +me much trouble to find you, but I had resolved on giving +them into your hands, and if I had to recommence my search, +it would occupy all the few remaining years of my life." +"Where are these papers, then?" +"Here they are." +Andrea seized the certificate of his father's marriage and +his own baptismal register, and after having opened them +with all the eagerness which might be expected under the +circumstances, he read them with a facility which proved +that he was accustomed to similar documents, and with an +expression which plainly denoted an unusual interest in the +contents. When he had perused the documents, an indefinable +expression of pleasure lighted up his countenance, and +looking at the major with a most peculiar smile, he said, in +very excellent Tuscan, "Then there is no longer any such +thing, in Italy as being condemned to the galleys?" The +major drew himself up to his full height. +"Why? what do you mean by that question?" +"I mean that if there were, it would be impossible to draw +up with impunity two such deeds as these. In France, my dear +sir, half such a piece of effrontery as that would cause you +to be quickly despatched to Toulon for five years, for +change of air." +"Will you be good enough to explain your meaning?" said the +major, endeavoring as much as possible to assume an air of +the greatest majesty. +"My dear M. Cavalcanti," said Andrea, taking the major by +the arm in a confidential manner, "how much are you paid for +being my father?" The major was about to speak, when Andrea +continued, in a low voice. +"Nonsense, I am going to set you an example of confidence, +they give me , francs a year to be your son +consequently, you can understand that it is not at all +likely I shall ever deny my parent." The major looked +anxiously around him. "Make yourself easy, we are quite +alone," said Andrea "besides, we are conversing in +Italian." +"Well, then," replied the major, "they paid me , francs +down." +"Monsieur Cavalcanti," said Andrea, "do you believe in fairy +tales?" +"I used not to do so, but I really feel now almost obliged +to have faith in them." +"You have, then, been induced to alter your opinion you +have had some proofs of their truth?" The major drew from +his pocket a handful of gold. "Most palpable proofs," said +he, "as you may perceive." +"You think, then, that I may rely on the count's promises?" +"Certainly I do." +"You are sure he will keep his word with me?" +"To the letter, but at the same time, remember, we must +continue to play our respective parts. I, as a tender +father" +"And I as a dutiful son, as they choose that I shall be +descended from you." +"Whom do you mean by they?" +"Ma foi, I can hardly tell, but I was alluding to those who +wrote the letter you received one, did you not?" +"Yes." +"From whom?" +"From a certain Abbe Busoni." +"Have you any knowledge of him?" +"No, I have never seen him." +"What did he say in the letter?" +"You will promise not to betray me?" +"Rest assured of that you well know that our interests are +the same." +"Then read for yourself" and the major gave a letter into +the young man's hand. Andrea read in a low voice +"You are poor a miserable old age awaits you. Would you +like to become rich, or at least independent? Set out +immediately for Paris, and demand of the Count of Monte +Cristo, Avenue des Champs Elysees, No. , the son whom you +had by the Marchesa Corsinari, and who was taken from you at +five years of age. This son is named Andrea Cavalcanti. In +order that you may not doubt the kind intention of the +writer of this letter, you will find enclosed an order for +, francs, payable in Florence, at Signor Gozzi's also a +letter of introduction to the Count of Monte Cristo, on whom +I give you a draft of , francs. Remember to go to the +count on the th May at seven o'clock in the evening. +Signed +"Abbe Busoni." +"It is the same." +"What do you mean?" said the major. +"I was going to say that I received a letter almost to the +same effect." +"You?" +"Yes." +"From the Abbe Busoni?" +"No." +"From whom, then?" +"From an Englishman, called Lord Wilmore, who takes the name +of Sinbad the Sailor." +"And of whom you have no more knowledge than I of the Abbe +Busoni?" +"You are mistaken there I am ahead of you." +"You have seen him, then?" +"Yes, once." +"Where?" +"Ah, that is just what I cannot tell you if I did, I should +make you as wise as myself, which it is not my intention to +do." +"And what did the letter contain?" +"Read it." +""You are poor, and your future prospects are dark and +gloomy. Do you wish for a name? should you like to be rich, +and your own master?'" +"Ma foi," said the young man "was it possible there could +be two answers to such a question?" +"Take the postchaise which you will find waiting at the +Porte de Genes, as you enter Nice pass through Turin, +Chambery, and PontdeBeauvoisin. Go to the Count of Monte +Cristo, Avenue des Champs Elysees, on the th of May, at +seven o'clock in the evening, and demand of him your father. +You are the son of the Marchese Cavalcanti and the Marchesa +Oliva Corsinari. The marquis will give you some papers which +will certify this fact, and authorize you to appear under +that name in the Parisian world. As to your rank, an annual +income of , livres will enable you to support it +admirably. I enclose a draft for , livres, payable on M. +Ferrea, banker at Nice, and also a letter of introduction to +the Count of Monte Cristo, whom I have directed to supply +all your wants. +"Sinbad the Sailor." +"Humph," said the major "very good. You have seen the +count, you say?" +"I have only just left him " +"And has he conformed to all that the letter specified?" +"He has." +"Do you understand it?" +"Not in the least." +"There is a dupe somewhere." +"At all events, it is neither you nor I." +"Certainly not." +"Well, then" +"Why, it does not much concern us, do you think it does?" +"No I agree with you there. We must play the game to the +end, and consent to be blindfold." +"Ah, you shall see I promise you I will sustain my part to +admiration." +"I never once doubted your doing so." Monte Cristo chose +this moment for reentering the drawingroom. On hearing the +sound of his footsteps, the two men threw themselves in each +other's arms, and while they were in the midst of this +embrace, the count entered. "Well, marquis," said Monte +Cristo, "you appear to be in no way disappointed in the son +whom your good fortune has restored to you." +"Ah, your excellency, I am overwhelmed with delight." +"And what are your feelings?" said Monte Cristo, turning to +the young man. +"As for me, my heart is overflowing with happiness." +"Happy father, happy son" said the count. +"There is only one thing which grieves me," observed the +major, "and that is the necessity for my leaving Paris so +soon." +"Ah, my dear M. Cavalcanti, I trust you will not leave +before I have had the honor of presenting you to some of my +friends." +"I am at your service, sir," replied the major. +"Now, sir," said Monte Cristo, addressing Andrea, "make your +confession." +"To whom?" +"Tell M. Cavalcanti something of the state of your +finances." +"Ma foi, monsieur, you have touched upon a tender chord." +"Do you hear what he says, major?" +"Certainly I do." +"But do you understand?" +"I do." +"Your son says he requires money." +"Well, what would you have me do?" said the major. +"You should furnish him with some of course," replied Monte +Cristo. +"I?" +"Yes, you," said the count, at the same time advancing +towards Andrea, and slipping a packet of banknotes into the +young man's hand. +"What is this?" +"It is from your father." +"From my father?" +"Yes did you not tell him just now that you wanted money? +Well, then, he deputes me to give you this." +"Am I to consider this as part of my income on account?" +"No, it is for the first expenses of your settling in +Paris." +"Ah, how good my dear father is" +"Silence," said Monte Cristo "he does not wish you to know +that it comes from him." +"I fully appreciate his delicacy," said Andrea, cramming the +notes hastily into his pocket. +"And now, gentlemen, I wish you goodmorning," said Monte +Cristo. +"And when shall we have the honor of seeing you again, your +excellency?" asked Cavalcanti. +"Ah," said Andrea, "when may we hope for that pleasure?" +"On Saturday, if you will Yes. Let me see Saturday +I am to dine at my country house, at Auteuil, on that +day, Rue de la Fontaine, No. . Several persons are +invited, and among others, M. Danglars, your banker. I will +introduce you to him, for it will be necessary he should +know you, as he is to pay your money." +"Full dress?" said the major, half aloud. +"Oh, yes, certainly," said the count "uniform, cross, +kneebreeches." +"And how shall I be dressed?" demanded Andrea. +"Oh, very simply black trousers, patent leather boots, +white waistcoat, either a black or blue coat, and a long +cravat. Go to Blin or Veronique for your clothes. Baptistin +will tell you where, if you do not know their address. The +less pretension there is in your attire, the better will be +the effect, as you are a rich man. If you mean to buy any +horses, get them of Devedeux, and if you purchase a phaeton, +go to Baptiste for it." +"At what hour shall we come?" asked the young man. +"About halfpast six." +"We will be with you at that time," said the major. The two +Cavalcanti bowed to the count, and left the house. Monte +Cristo went to the window, and saw them crossing the street, +arm in arm. "There go two miscreants" said he, "it is a +pity they are not really related" then, after an instant +of gloomy reflection, "Come, I will go to see the Morrels," +said he "I think that disgust is even more sickening than +hatred." +Chapter +In the Lucerne Patch. +Our readers must now allow us to transport them again to the +enclosure surrounding M. de Villefort's house, and, behind +the gate, half screened from view by the large +chestnuttrees, which on all sides spread their luxuriant +branches, we shall find some people of our acquaintance. +This time Maximilian was the first to arrive. He was +intently watching for a shadow to appear among the trees, +and awaiting with anxiety the sound of a light step on the +gravel walk. At length, the longdesired sound was heard, +and instead of one figure, as he had expected, he perceived +that two were approaching him. The delay had been occasioned +by a visit from Madame Danglars and Eugenie, which had been +prolonged beyond the time at which Valentine was expected. +That she might not appear to fail in her promise to +Maximilian, she proposed to Mademoiselle Danglars that they +should take a walk in the garden, being anxious to show that +the delay, which was doubtless a cause of vexation to him, +was not occasioned by any neglect on her part. The young +man, with the intuitive perception of a lover, quickly +understood the circumstances in which she was involuntarily +placed, and he was comforted. Besides, although she avoided +coming within speaking distance, Valentine arranged so that +Maximilian could see her pass and repass, and each time she +went by, she managed, unperceived by her companion, to cast +an expressive look at the young man, which seemed to say, +"Have patience You see it is not my fault." And Maximilian +was patient, and employed himself in mentally contrasting +the two girls, one fair, with soft languishing eyes, a +figure gracefully bending like a weeping willow the other a +brunette, with a fierce and haughty expression, and as +straight as a poplar. It is unnecessary to state that, in +the eyes of the young man, Valentine did not suffer by the +contrast. In about half an hour the girls went away, and +Maximilian understood that Mademoiselle Danglars' visit had +at last come to an end. In a few minutes Valentine +reentered the garden alone. For fear that any one should be +observing her return, she walked slowly and instead of +immediately directing her steps towards the gate, she seated +herself on a bench, and, carefully casting her eyes around, +to convince herself that she was not watched, she presently +arose, and proceeded quickly to join Maximilian. +"Goodevening, Valentine," said a wellknown voice. +"Goodevening, Maximilian I know I have kept you waiting, +but you saw the cause of my delay." +"Yes, I recognized Mademoiselle Danglars. I was not aware +that you were so intimate with her." +"Who told you we were intimate, Maximilian?" +"No one, but you appeared to be so. From the manner in which +you walked and talked together, one would have thought you +were two schoolgirls telling your secrets to each other." +"We were having a confidential conversation," returned +Valentine "she was owning to me her repugnance to the +marriage with M. de Morcerf and I, on the other hand, was +confessing to her how wretched it made me to think of +marrying M. d'Epinay." +"Dear Valentine" +"That will account to you for the unreserved manner which +you observed between me and Eugenie, as in speaking of the +man whom I could not love, my thoughts involuntarily +reverted to him on whom my affections were fixed." +"Ah, how good you are to say so, Valentine You possess a +quality which can never belong to Mademoiselle Danglars. It +is that indefinable charm which is to a woman what perfume +is to the flower and flavor to the fruit, for the beauty of +either is not the only quality we seek." +"It is your love which makes you look upon everything in +that light." +"No, Valentine, I assure you such is not the case. I was +observing you both when you were walking in the garden, and, +on my honor, without at all wishing to depreciate the beauty +of Mademoiselle Danglars, I cannot understand how any man +can really love her." +"The fact is, Maximilian, that I was there, and my presence +had the effect of rendering you unjust in your comparison." +"No but tell me it is a question of simple curiosity, +and which was suggested by certain ideas passing in my mind +relative to Mademoiselle Danglars" +"I dare say it is something disparaging which you are going +to say. It only proves how little indulgence we may expect +from your sex," interrupted Valentine. +"You cannot, at least, deny that you are very harsh judges +of each other." +"If we are so, it is because we generally judge under the +influence of excitement. But return to your question." +"Does Mademoiselle Danglars object to this marriage with M. +de Morcerf on account of loving another?" +"I told you I was not on terms of strict intimacy with +Eugenie." +"Yes, but girls tell each other secrets without being +particularly intimate own, now, that you did question her +on the subject. Ah, I see you are smiling." +"If you are already aware of the conversation that passed, +the wooden partition which interposed between us and you has +proved but a slight security." +"Come, what did she say?" +"She told me that she loved no one," said Valentine "that +she disliked the idea of being married that she would +infinitely prefer leading an independent and unfettered +life and that she almost wished her father might lose his +fortune, that she might become an artist, like her friend, +Mademoiselle Louise d'Armilly." +"Ah, you see" +"Well, what does that prove?" asked Valentine. +"Nothing," replied Maximilian. +"Then why did you smile?" +"Why, you know very well that you are reflecting on +yourself, Valentine." +"Do you want me to go away?" +"Ah, no, no. But do not let us lose time you are the +subject on which I wish to speak." +"True, we must be quick, for we have scarcely ten minutes +more to pass together." +"Ma foi," said Maximilian, in consternation. +"Yes, you are right I am but a poor friend to you. What a +life I cause you to lead, poor Maximilian, you who are +formed for happiness I bitterly reproach myself, I assure +you." +"Well, what does it signify, Valentine, so long as I am +satisfied, and feel that even this long and painful suspense +is amply repaid by five minutes of your society, or two +words from your lips? And I have also a deep conviction that +heaven would not have created two hearts, harmonizing as +ours do, and almost miraculously brought us together, to +separate us at last." +"Those are kind and cheering words. You must hope for us +both, Maximilian that will make me at least partly happy." +"But why must you leave me so soon?" +"I do not know particulars. I can only tell you that Madame +de Villefort sent to request my presence, as she had a +communication to make on which a part of my fortune +depended. Let them take my fortune, I am already too rich +and, perhaps, when they have taken it, they will leave me in +peace and quietness. You would love me as much if I were +poor, would you not, Maximilian?" +"Oh, I shall always love you. What should I care for either +riches or poverty, if my Valentine was near me, and I felt +certain that no one could deprive me of her? But do you not +fear that this communication may relate to your marriage?" +"I do not think that is the case." +"However it may be, Valentine, you must not be alarmed. I +assure you that, as long as I live, I shall never love any +one else" +"You think to reassure me when you say that, Maximilian." +"Pardon me, you are right. I am a brute. But I was going to +tell you that I met M. de Morcerf the other day." +"Well?" +"Monsieur Franz is his friend, you know." +"What then?" +"Monsieur de Morcerf has received a letter from Franz, +announcing his immediate return." Valentine turned pale, and +leaned her hand against the gate. "Ah heavens, if it were +that But no, the communication would not come through +Madame de Villefort." +"Why not?" +"Because I scarcely know why but it has appeared as if +Madame de Villefort secretly objected to the marriage, +although she did not choose openly to oppose it." +"Is it so? Then I feel as if I could adore Madame de +Villefort." +"Do not be in such a hurry to do that," said Valentine, with +a sad smile. +"If she objects to your marrying M. d'Epinay, she would be +all the more likely to listen to any other proposition." +"No, Maximilian, it is not suitors to which Madame de +Villefort objects, it is marriage itself." +"Marriage? If she dislikes that so much, why did she ever +marry herself?" +"You do not understand me, Maximilian. About a year ago, I +talked of retiring to a convent. Madame de Villefort, in +spite of all the remarks which she considered it her duty to +make, secretly approved of the proposition, my father +consented to it at her instigation, and it was only on +account of my poor grandfather that I finally abandoned the +project. You can form no idea of the expression of that old +man's eye when he looks at me, the only person in the world +whom he loves, and, I had almost said, by whom he is beloved +in return. When he learned my resolution, I shall never +forget the reproachful look which he cast on me, and the +tears of utter despair which chased each other down his +lifeless cheeks. Ah, Maximilian, I experienced, at that +moment, such remorse for my intention, that, throwing myself +at his feet, I exclaimed, "Forgive me, pray forgive me, +my dear grandfather they may do what they will with me, I +will never leave you.' When I had ceased speaking, he +thankfully raised his eyes to heaven, but without uttering a +word. Ah, Maximilian, I may have much to suffer, but I feel +as if my grandfather's look at that moment would more than +compensate for all." +"Dear Valentine, you are a perfect angel, and I am sure I do +not know what I sabring right and left among the Bedouins +can have done to merit your being revealed to me, unless, +indeed, heaven took into consideration the fact that the +victims of my sword were infidels. But tell me what interest +Madame de Villefort can have in your remaining unmarried?" +"Did I not tell you just now that I was rich, Maximilian +too rich? I possess nearly , livres in right of my +mother my grandfather and my grandmother, the Marquis and +Marquise de SaintMeran, will leave me as much, and M. +Noirtier evidently intends making me his heir. My brother +Edward, who inherits nothing from his mother, will, +therefore, be poor in comparison with me. Now, if I had +taken the veil, all this fortune would have descended to my +father, and, in reversion, to his son." +"Ah, how strange it seems that such a young and beautiful +woman should be so avaricious." +"It is not for herself that she is so, but for her son, and +what you regard as a vice becomes almost a virtue when +looked at in the light of maternal love." +"But could you not compromise matters, and give up a portion +of your fortune to her son?" +"How could I make such a proposition, especially to a woman +who always professes to be so entirely disinterested?" +"Valentine, I have always regarded our love in the light of +something sacred consequently, I have covered it with the +veil of respect, and hid it in the innermost recesses of my +soul. No human being, not even my sister, is aware of its +existence. Valentine, will you permit me to make a confidant +of a friend and reveal to him the love I bear you?" +Valentine started. "A friend, Maximilian and who is this +friend? I tremble to give my permission." +"Listen, Valentine. Have you never experienced for any one +that sudden and irresistible sympathy which made you feel as +if the object of it had been your old and familiar friend, +though, in reality, it was the first time you had ever met? +Nay, further, have you never endeavored to recall the time, +place, and circumstances of your former intercourse, and +failing in this attempt, have almost believed that your +spirits must have held converse with each other in some +state of being anterior to the present, and that you are +only now occupied in a reminiscence of the past?" +"Yes." +"Well, that is precisely the feeling which I experienced +when I first saw that extraordinary man." +"Extraordinary, did you say?" +"Yes." +"You have known him for some time, then?" +"Scarcely longer than eight or ten days." +"And do you call a man your friend whom you have only known +for eight or ten days? Ah, Maximilian, I had hoped you set a +higher value on the title of friend." +"Your logic is most powerful, Valentine, but say what you +will, I can never renounce the sentiment which has +instinctively taken possession of my mind. I feel as if it +were ordained that this man should be associated with all +the good which the future may have in store for me, and +sometimes it really seems as if his eye was able to see what +was to come, and his hand endowed with the power of +directing events according to his own will." +"He must be a prophet, then," said Valentine, smiling. +"Indeed," said Maximilian, "I have often been almost tempted +to attribute to him the gift of prophecy at all events, he +has a wonderful power of foretelling any future good." +"Ah," said Valentine in a mournful tone, "do let me see this +man, Maximilian he may tell me whether I shall ever be +loved sufficiently to make amends for all I have suffered." +"My poor girl, you know him already." +"I know him?" +"Yes it was he who saved the life of your stepmother and +her son." +"The Count of Monte Cristo?" +"The same." +"Ah," cried Valentine, "he is too much the friend of Madame +de Villefort ever to be mine." +"The friend of Madame de Villefort It cannot be surely, +Valentine, you are mistaken?" +"No, indeed, I am not for I assure you, his power over our +household is almost unlimited. Courted by my stepmother, +who regards him as the epitome of human wisdom admired by +my father, who says he has never before heard such sublime +ideas so eloquently expressed idolized by Edward, who, +notwithstanding his fear of the count's large black eyes, +runs to meet him the moment he arrives, and opens his hand, +in which he is sure to find some delightful present, M. +de Monte Cristo appears to exert a mysterious and almost +uncontrollable influence over all the members of our +family." +"If such be the case, my dear Valentine, you must yourself +have felt, or at all events will soon feel, the effects of +his presence. He meets Albert de Morcerf in Italy it is +to rescue him from the hands of the banditti he introduces +himself to Madame Danglars it is that he may give her a +royal present your stepmother and her son pass before his +door it is that his Nubian may save them from +destruction. This man evidently possesses the power of +influencing events, both as regards men and things. I never +saw more simple tastes united to greater magnificence. His +smile is so sweet when he addresses me, that I forget it +ever can be bitter to others. Ah, Valentine, tell me, if he +ever looked on you with one of those sweet smiles? if so, +depend on it, you will be happy." +"Me?" said the young girl, "he never even glances at me on +the contrary, if I accidentally cross his path, he appears +rather to avoid me. Ah, he is not generous, neither does he +possess that supernatural penetration which you attribute to +him, for if he did, he would have perceived that I was +unhappy and if he had been generous, seeing me sad and +solitary, he would have used his influence to my advantage, +and since, as you say, he resembles the sun, he would have +warmed my heart with one of his lifegiving rays. You say he +loves you, Maximilian how do you know that he does? All +would pay deference to an officer like you, with a fierce +mustache and a long sabre, but they think they may crush a +poor weeping girl with impunity." +"Ah, Valentine, I assure you you are mistaken." +"If it were otherwise if he treated me diplomatically +that is to say, like a man who wishes, by some means or +other, to obtain a footing in the house, so that he may +ultimately gain the power of dictating to its occupants +he would, if it had been but once, have honored me with the +smile which you extol so loudly but no, he saw that I was +unhappy, he understood that I could be of no use to him, and +therefore paid no attention to me whatever. Who knows but +that, in order to please Madame de Villefort and my father, +he may not persecute me by every means in his power? It is +not just that he should despise me so, without any reason. +Ah, forgive me," said Valentine, perceiving the effect which +her words were producing on Maximilian "I have done wrong, +for I have given utterance to thoughts concerning that man +which I did not even know existed in my heart. I do not deny +the influence of which you speak, or that I have not myself +experienced it, but with me it has been productive of evil +rather than good." +"Well, Valentine," said Morrel with a sigh, "we will not +discuss the matter further. I will not make a confidant of +him." +"Alas," said Valentine, "I see that I have given you pain. I +can only say how sincerely I ask pardon for having griefed +you. But, indeed, I am not prejudiced beyond the power of +conviction. Tell me what this Count of Monte Cristo has done +for you." +"I own that your question embarrasses me, Valentine, for I +cannot say that the count has rendered me any ostensible +service. Still, as I have already told you I have an +instinctive affection for him, the source of which I cannot +explain to you. Has the sun done anything for me? No he +warms me with his rays, and it is by his light that I see +you nothing more. Has such and such a perfume done +anything for me? No its odor charms one of my senses +that is all I can say when I am asked why I praise it. My +friendship for him is as strange and unaccountable as his +for me. A secret voice seems to whisper to me that there +must be something more than chance in this unexpected +reciprocity of friendship. In his most simple actions, as +well as in his most secret thoughts, I find a relation to my +own. You will perhaps smile at me when I tell you that, ever +since I have known this man, I have involuntarily +entertained the idea that all the good fortune which his +befallen me originated from him. However, I have managed to +live thirty years without this protection, you will say but +I will endeavor a little to illustrate my meaning. He +invited me to dine with him on Saturday, which was a very +natural thing for him to do. Well, what have I learned +since? That your mother and M. de Villefort are both coming +to this dinner. I shall meet them there, and who knows what +future advantages may result from the interview? This may +appear to you to be no unusual combination of circumstances +nevertheless, I perceive some hidden plot in the arrangement +something, in fact, more than is apparent on a casual +view of the subject. I believe that this singular man, who +appears to fathom the motives of every one, has purposely +arranged for me to meet M. and Madame de Villefort, and +sometimes, I confess, I have gone so far as to try to read +in his eyes whether he was in possession of the secret of +our love." +"My good friend," said Valentine, "I should take you for a +visionary, and should tremble for your reason, if I were +always to hear you talk in a strain similar to this. Is it +possible that you can see anything more than the merest +chance in this meeting? Pray reflect a little. My father, +who never goes out, has several times been on the point of +refusing this invitation Madame de Villefort, on the +contrary, is burning with the desire of seeing this +extraordinary nabob in his own house, therefore, she has +with great difficulty prevailed on my father to accompany +her. No, no it is as I have said, Maximilian, there is +no one in the world of whom I can ask help but yourself and +my grandfather, who is little better than a corpse." +"I see that you are right, logically speaking," said +Maximilian "but the gentle voice which usually has such +power over me fails to convince me today." +"I feel the same as regards yourself." said Valentine "and +I own that, if you have no stronger proof to give me" +"I have another," replied Maximilian "but I fear you will +deem it even more absurd than the first." +"So much the worse," said Valentine, smiling. +"It is, nevertheless, conclusive to my mind. My ten years of +service have also confirmed my ideas on the subject of +sudden inspirations, for I have several times owed my life +to a mysterious impulse which directed me to move at once +either to the right or to the left, in order to escape the +ball which killed the comrade fighting by my side, while it +left me unharmed." +"Dear Maximilian, why not attribute your escape to my +constant prayers for your safety? When you are away, I no +longer pray for myself, but for you." +"Yes, since you have known me," said Morrel, smiling "but +that cannot apply to the time previous to our acquaintance, +Valentine." +"You are very provoking, and will not give me credit for +anything but let me hear this second proof, which you +yourself own to be absurd." +"Well, look through this opening, and you will see the +beautiful new horse which I rode here." +"Ah, what a beautiful creature" cried Valentine "why did +you not bring him close to the gate, so that I could talk to +him and pat him?" +"He is, as you see, a very valuable animal," said +Maximilian. "You know that my means are limited, and that I +am what would be designated a man of moderate pretensions. +Well, I went to a horse dealer's, where I saw this +magnificent horse, which I have named Medeah. I asked the +price they told me it was , francs. I was, therefore, +obliged to give it up, as you may imagine, but I own I went +away with rather a heavy heart, for the horse had looked at +me affectionately, had rubbed his head against me and, when +I mounted him, had pranced in the most delightful way +imaginable, so that I was altogether fascinated with him. +The same evening some friends of mine visited me, M. de +ChateauRenaud, M. Debray, and five or six other choice +spirits, whom you do not know, even by name. They proposed a +game of bouillotte. I never play, for I am not rich enough +to afford to lose, or sufficiently poor to desire to gain. +But I was at my own house, you understand, so there was +nothing to be done but to send for the cards, which I did. +"Just as they were sitting down to table, M. de Monte Cristo +arrived. He took his seat amongst them they played, and I +won. I am almost ashamed to say that my gains amounted to +, francs. We separated at midnight. I could not defer my +pleasure, so I took a cabriolet and drove to the horse +dealer's. Feverish and excited, I rang at the door. The +person who opened it must have taken me for a madman, for I +rushed at once to the stable. Medeah was standing at the +rack, eating his hay. I immediately put on the saddle and +bridle, to which operation he lent himself with the best +grace possible then, putting the , francs into the +hands of the astonished dealer, I proceeded to fulfil my +intention of passing the night in riding in the Champs +Elysees. As I rode by the count's house I perceived a light +in one of the windows, and fancied I saw the shadow of his +figure moving behind the curtain. Now, Valentine, I firmly +believe that he knew of my wish to possess this horse, and +that he lost expressly to give me the means of procuring +him." +"My dear Maximilian, you are really too fanciful you will +not love even me long. A man who accustoms himself to live +in such a world of poetry and imagination must find far too +little excitement in a common, everyday sort of attachment +such as ours. But they are calling me. Do you hear?" +"Ah, Valentine," said Maximilian, "give me but one finger +through this opening in the grating, one finger, the +littlest finger of all, that I may have the happiness of +kissing it." +"Maximilian, we said we would be to each other as two +voices, two shadows." +"As you will, Valentine." +"Shall you be happy if I do what you wish?" +"Oh, yes" Valentine mounted on a bench, and passed not only +her finger but her whole hand through the opening. +Maximilian uttered a cry of delight, and, springing +forwards, seized the hand extended towards him, and +imprinted on it a fervent and impassioned kiss. The little +hand was then immediately withdrawn, and the young man saw +Valentine hurrying towards the house, as though she were +almost terrified at her own sensations. +Chapter +M. Noirtier de Villefort. +We will now relate what was passing in the house of the +king's attorney after the departure of Madame Danglars and +her daughter, and during the time of the conversation +between Maximilian and Valentine, which we have just +detailed. M. de Villefort entered his father's room, +followed by Madame de Villefort. Both of the visitors, after +saluting the old man and speaking to Barrois, a faithful +servant, who had been twentyfive years in his service, took +their places on either side of the paralytic. +M. Noirtier was sitting in an armchair, which moved upon +casters, in which he was wheeled into the room in the +morning, and in the same way drawn out again at night. He +was placed before a large glass, which reflected the whole +apartment, and so, without any attempt to move, which would +have been impossible, he could see all who entered the room +and everything which was going on around him. M. Noirtier, +although almost as immovable as a corpse, looked at the +newcomers with a quick and intelligent expression, +perceiving at once, by their ceremonious courtesy, that they +were come on business of an unexpected and official +character. Sight and hearing were the only senses remaining, +and they, like two solitary sparks, remained to animate the +miserable body which seemed fit for nothing but the grave +it was only, however, by means of one of these senses that +he could reveal the thoughts and feelings that still +occupied his mind, and the look by which he gave expression +to his inner life was like the distant gleam of a candle +which a traveller sees by night across some desert place, +and knows that a living being dwells beyond the silence and +obscurity. Noirtier's hair was long and white, and flowed +over his shoulders while in his eyes, shaded by thick black +lashes, was concentrated, as it often happens with an organ +which is used to the exclusion of the others, all the +activity, address, force, and intelligence which were +formerly diffused over his whole body and so although the +movement of the arm, the sound of the voice, and the agility +of the body, were wanting, the speaking eye sufficed for +all. He commanded with it it was the medium through which +his thanks were conveyed. In short, his whole appearance +produced on the mind the impression of a corpse with living +eyes, and nothing could be more startling than to observe +the expression of anger or joy suddenly lighting up these +organs, while the rest of the rigid and marblelike features +were utterly deprived of the power of participation. Three +persons only could understand this language of the poor +paralytic these were Villefort, Valentine, and the old +servant of whom we have already spoken. But as Villefort saw +his father but seldom, and then only when absolutely +obliged, and as he never took any pains to please or gratify +him when he was there, all the old man's happiness was +centred in his granddaughter. Valentine, by means of her +love, her patience, and her devotion, had learned to read in +Noirtier's look all the varied feelings which were passing +in his mind. To this dumb language, which was so +unintelligible to others, she answered by throwing her whole +soul into the expression of her countenance, and in this +manner were the conversations sustained between the blooming +girl and the helpless invalid, whose body could scarcely be +called a living one, but who, nevertheless, possessed a fund +of knowledge and penetration, united with a will as powerful +as ever although clogged by a body rendered utterly +incapable of obeying its impulses. Valentine had solved the +problem, and was able easily to understand his thoughts, and +to convey her own in return, and, through her untiring and +devoted assiduity, it was seldom that, in the ordinary +transactions of everyday life, she failed to anticipate the +wishes of the living, thinking mind, or the wants of the +almost inanimate body. As to the servant, he had, as we have +said, been with his master for five and twenty years, +therefore he knew all his habits, and it was seldom that +Noirtier found it necessary to ask for anything, so prompt +was he in administering to all the necessities of the +invalid. Villefort did not need the help of either Valentine +or the domestic in order to carry on with his father the +strange conversation which he was about to begin. As we have +said, he perfectly understood the old man's vocabulary, and +if he did not use it more often, it was only indifference +and ennui which prevented him from so doing. He therefore +allowed Valentine to go into the garden, sent away Barrois, +and after having seated himself at his father's right hand, +while Madame de Villefort placed herself on the left, he +addressed him thus +"I trust you will not be displeased, sir, that Valentine has +not come with us, or that I dismissed Barrois, for our +conference will be one which could not with propriety be +carried on in the presence of either. Madame de Villefort +and I have a communication to make to you." +Noirtier's face remained perfectly passive during this long +preamble, while, on the contrary, Villefort's eye was +endeavoring to penetrate into the inmost recesses of the old +man's heart. +"This communication," continued the procureur, in that cold +and decisive tone which seemed at once to preclude all +discussion, "will, we are sure, meet with your approbation." +The eye of the invalid still retained that vacancy of +expression which prevented his son from obtaining any +knowledge of the feelings which were passing in his mind he +listened, nothing more. "Sir," resumed Villefort, "we are +thinking of marrying Valentine." Had the old man's face been +moulded in wax it could not have shown less emotion at this +news than was now to be traced there. "The marriage will +take place in less than three months," said Villefort. +Noirtier's eye still retained its inanimate expression. +Madame de Villefort now took her part in the conversation +and added, "We thought this news would possess an +interest for you, sir, who have always entertained a great +affection for Valentine it therefore only now remains for +us to tell you the name of the young man for whom she is +destined. It is one of the most desirable connections which +could possibly be formed he possesses fortune, a high rank +in society, and every personal qualification likely to +render Valentine supremely happy, his name, moreover, +cannot be wholly unknown to you. It is M. Franz de Quesnel, +Baron d'Epinay." +While his wife was speaking, Villefort had narrowly watched +the old man's countenance. When Madame de Villefort +pronounced the name of Franz, the pupil of M. Noirtier's eye +began to dilate, and his eyelids trembled with the same +movement that may be perceived on the lips of an individual +about to speak, and he darted a lightning glance at Madame +de Villefort and his son. The procureur, who knew the +political hatred which had formerly existed between M. +Noirtier and the elder d'Epinay, well understood the +agitation and anger which the announcement had produced +but, feigning not to perceive either, he immediately resumed +the narrative begun by his wife. "Sir," said he, "you are +aware that Valentine is about to enter her nineteenth year, +which renders it important that she should lose no time in +forming a suitable alliance. Nevertheless, you have not been +forgotten in our plans, and we have fully ascertained +beforehand that Valentine's future husband will consent, not +to live in this house, for that might not be pleasant for +the young people, but that you should live with them so +that you and Valentine, who are so attached to each other, +would not be separated, and you would be able to pursue +exactly the same course of life which you have hitherto +done, and thus, instead of losing, you will be a gainer by +the change, as it will secure to you two children instead of +one, to watch over and comfort you." +Noirtier's look was furious it was very evident that +something desperate was passing in the old man's mind, for a +cry of anger and grief rose in his throat, and not being +able to find vent in utterance, appeared almost to choke +him, for his face and lips turned quite purple with the +struggle. Villefort quietly opened a window, saying, "It is +very warm, and the heat affects M. Noirtier." He then +returned to his place, but did not sit down. "This +marriage," added Madame de Villefort, "is quite agreeable to +the wishes of M. d'Epinay and his family besides, he had no +relations nearer than an uncle and aunt, his mother having +died at his birth, and his father having been assassinated +in , that is to say, when he was but two years old it +naturally followed that the child was permitted to choose +his own pursuits, and he has, therefore, seldom acknowledged +any other authority but that of his own will." +"That assassination was a mysterious affair," said +Villefort, "and the perpetrators have hitherto escaped +detection, although suspicion has fallen on the head of more +than one person." Noirtier made such an effort that his lips +expanded into a smile. +"Now," continued Villefort, "those to whom the guilt really +belongs, by whom the crime was committed, on whose heads the +justice of man may probably descend here, and the certain +judgment of God hereafter, would rejoice in the opportunity +thus afforded of bestowing such a peaceoffering as +Valentine on the son of him whose life they so ruthlessly +destroyed." Noirtier had succeeded in mastering his emotion +more than could have been deemed possible with such an +enfeebled and shattered frame. "Yes, I understand," was the +reply contained in his look and this look expressed a +feeling of strong indignation, mixed with profound contempt. +Villefort fully understood his father's meaning, and +answered by a slight shrug of his shoulders. He then +motioned to his wife to take leave. "Now sir," said Madame +de Villefort, "I must bid you farewell. Would you like me to +send Edward to you for a short time?" +It had been agreed that the old man should express his +approbation by closing his eyes, his refusal by winking them +several times, and if he had some desire or feeling to +express, he raised them to heaven. If he wanted Valentine, +he closed his right eye only, and if Barrois, the left. At +Madame de Villefort's proposition he instantly winked his +eyes. Provoked by a complete refusal, she bit her lip and +said, "Then shall I send Valentine to you?" The old man +closed his eyes eagerly, thereby intimating that such was +his wish. M. and Madame de Villefort bowed and left the +room, giving orders that Valentine should be summoned to her +grandfather's presence, and feeling sure that she would have +much to do to restore calmness to the perturbed spirit of +the invalid. Valentine, with a color still heightened by +emotion, entered the room just after her parents had quitted +it. One look was sufficient to tell her that her grandfather +was suffering, and that there was much on his mind which he +was wishing to communicate to her. "Dear grandpapa," cried +she, "what has happened? They have vexed you, and you are +angry?" The paralytic closed his eyes in token of assent. +"Who has displeased you? Is it my father?" +"No." +"Madame de Villefort?" +"No." +"Me?" The former sign was repeated. "Are you displeased with +me?" cried Valentine in astonishment. M. Noirtier again +closed his eyes. "And what have I done, dear grandpapa, that +you should be angry with me?" cried Valentine. +There was no answer, and she continued. "I have not seen you +all day. Has any one been speaking to you against me?" +"Yes," said the old man's look, with eagerness. +"Let me think a moment. I do assure you, grandpapa Ah +M. and Madame de Villefort have just left this room, have +they not?" +"Yes." +"And it was they who told you something which made you +angry? What was it then? May I go and ask them, that I may +have the opportunity of making my peace with you?" +"No, no," said Noirtier's look. +"Ah, you frighten me. What can they have said?" and she +again tried to think what it could be. +"Ah, I know," said she, lowering her voice and going close +to the old man. "They have been speaking of my marriage, +have they not?" +"Yes," replied the angry look. +"I understand you are displeased at the silence I have +preserved on the subject. The reason of it was, that they +had insisted on my keeping the matter a secret, and begged +me not to tell you anything of it. They did not even +acquaint me with their intentions, and I only discovered +them by chance, that is why I have been so reserved with +you, dear grandpapa. Pray forgive me." But there was no look +calculated to reassure her all it seemed to say was, "It is +not only your reserve which afflicts me." +"What is it, then?" asked the young girl. "Perhaps you think +I shall abandon you, dear grandpapa, and that I shall forget +you when I am married?" +"No." +"They told you, then, that M. d'Epinay consented to our all +living together?" +"Yes." +"Then why are you still vexed and grieved?" The old man's +eyes beamed with an expression of gentle affection. "Yes, I +understand," said Valentine "it is because you love me." +The old man assented. "And you are afraid I shall be +unhappy?" +"Yes." +"You do not like M. Franz?" The eyes repeated several times, +"No, no, no." +"Then you are vexed with the engagement?" +"Yes." +"Well, listen," said Valentine, throwing herself on her +knees, and putting her arm round her grandfather's neck, "I +am vexed, too, for I do not love M. Franz d'Epinay." An +expression of intense joy illumined the old man's eyes. +"When I wished to retire into a convent, you remember how +angry you were with me?" A tear trembled in the eye of the +invalid. "Well," continued Valentine, "the reason of my +proposing it was that I might escape this hateful marriage, +which drives me to despair." Noirtier's breathing came thick +and short. "Then the idea of this marriage really grieves +you too? Ah, if you could but help me if we could both +together defeat their plan But you are unable to oppose +them, you, whose mind is so quick, and whose will is so +firm are nevertheless, as weak and unequal to the contest as +I am myself. Alas, you, who would have been such a powerful +protector to me in the days of your health and strength, can +now only sympathize in my joys and sorrows, without being +able to take any active part in them. However, this is much, +and calls for gratitude and heaven has not taken away all my +blessings when it leaves me your sympathy and kindness." +At these words there appeared in Noirtier's eye an +expression of such deep meaning that the young girl thought +she could read these words there "You are mistaken I can +still do much for you." +"Do you think you can help me, dear grandpapa?" said +Valentine. +"Yes." Noirtier raised his eyes, it was the sign agreed on +between him and Valentine when he wanted anything. +"What is it you want, dear grandpapa?" said Valentine, and +she endeavored to recall to mind all the things which he +would be likely to need and as the ideas presented +themselves to her mind, she repeated them aloud, then, +finding that all her efforts elicited nothing but a constant +"No," she said, "Come, since this plan does not answer, I +will have recourse to another." She then recited all the +letters of the alphabet from A down to N. When she arrived +at that letter the paralytic made her understand that she +had spoken the initial letter of the thing he wanted. "Ah," +said Valentine, "the thing you desire begins with the letter +N it is with N that we have to do, then. Well, let me see, +what can you want that begins with N? Na Ne Ni No" +"Yes, yes, yes," said the old man's eye. +"Ah, it is No, then?" +"Yes." Valentine fetched a dictionary, which she placed on a +desk before Noirtier she opened it, and, seeing that the +odd man's eye was thoroughly fixed on its pages, she ran her +finger quickly up and down the columns. During the six years +which had passed since Noirtier first fell into this sad +state, Valentine's powers of invention had been too often +put to the test not to render her expert in devising +expedients for gaining a knowledge of his wishes, and the +constant practice had so perfected her in the art that she +guessed the old man's meaning as quickly as if he himself +had been able to seek for what he wanted. At the word +"Notary," Noirtier made a sign to her to stop. "Notary," +said she, "do you want a notary, dear grandpapa?" The old +man again signified that it was a notary he desired. +"You would wish a notary to be sent for then?" said +Valentine. +"Yes." +"Shall my father be informed of your wish?" +"Yes." +"Do you wish the notary to be sent for immediately?" +"Yes." +"Then they shall go for him directly, dear grandpapa. Is +that all you want?" +"Yes." Valentine rang the bell, and ordered the servant to +tell Monsieur or Madame de Villefort that they were +requested to come to M. Noirtier's room. "Are you satisfied +now?" inquired Valentine. +"Yes." +"I am sure you are it is not very difficult to discover +that," and the young girl smiled on her grandfather, as +if he had been a child. M. de Villefort entered, followed by +Barrois. "What do you want me for, sir?" demanded he of the +paralytic. +"Sir," said Valentine, "my grandfather wishes for a notary." +At this strange and unexpected demand M. de Villefort and +his father exchanged looks. "Yes," motioned the latter, with +a firmness which seemed to declare that with the help of +Valentine and his old servant, who both knew what his wishes +were, he was quite prepared to maintain the contest. "Do you +wish for a notary?" asked Villefort. +"Yes." +"What to do?" +Noirtier made no answer. "What do you want with a notary?" +again repeated Villefort. The invalid's eye remained fixed, +by which expression he intended to intimate that his +resolution was unalterable. "Is it to do us some ill turn? +Do you think it is worth while?" said Villefort. +"Still," said Barrois, with the freedom and fidelity of an +old servant, "if M. Noirtier asks for a notary, I suppose he +really wishes for a notary therefore I shall go at once and +fetch one." Barrois acknowledged no master but Noirtier, and +never allowed his desires in any way to be contradicted. +"Yes, I do want a notary," motioned the old man, shutting +his eyes with a look of defiance, which seemed to say, "and +I should like to see the person who dares to refuse my +request." +"You shall have a notary, as you absolutely wish for one, +sir," said Villefort "but I shall explain to him your state +of health, and make excuses for you, for the scene cannot +fail of being a most ridiculous one." +"Never mind that," said Barrois "I shall go and fetch a +notary, nevertheless," and the old servant departed +triumphantly on his mission. +Chapter +The Will. +As soon as Barrois had left the room, Noirtier looked at +Valentine with a malicious expression that said many things. +The young girl perfectly understood the look, and so did +Villefort, for his countenance became clouded, and he +knitted his eyebrows angrily. He took a seat, and quietly +awaited the arrival of the notary. Noirtier saw him seat +himself with an appearance of perfect indifference, at the +same time giving a side look at Valentine, which made her +understand that she also was to remain in the room. +Threequarters of an hour after, Barrois returned, bringing +the notary with him. "Sir," said Villefort, after the first +salutations were over, "you were sent for by M. Noirtier, +whom you see here. All his limbs have become completely +paralysed, he has lost his voice also, and we ourselves find +much trouble in endeavoring to catch some fragments of his +meaning." Noirtier cast an appealing look on Valentine, +which look was at once so earnest and imperative, that she +answered immediately. "Sir," said she, "I perfectly +understand my grandfather's meaning at all times." +"That is quite true," said Barrois "and that is what I told +the gentleman as we walked along." +"Permit me," said the notary, turning first to Villefort and +then to Valentine "permit me to state that the case in +question is just one of those in which a public officer like +myself cannot proceed to act without thereby incurring a +dangerous responsibility. The first thing necessary to +render an act valid is, that the notary should be thoroughly +convinced that he has faithfully interpreted the will and +wishes of the person dictating the act. Now I cannot be sure +of the approbation or disapprobation of a client who cannot +speak, and as the object of his desire or his repugnance +cannot be clearly proved to me, on account of his want of +speech, my services here would be quite useless, and cannot +be legally exercised." The notary then prepared to retire. +An imperceptible smile of triumph was expressed on the lips +of the procureur. Noirtier looked at Valentine with an +expression so full of grief, that she arrested the departure +of the notary. "Sir," said she, "the language which I speak +with my grandfather may be easily learnt, and I can teach +you in a few minutes, to understand it almost as well as I +can myself. Will you tell me what you require, in order to +set your conscience quite at ease on the subject?" +"In order to render an act valid, I must be certain of the +approbation or disapprobation of my client. Illness of body +would not affect the validity of the deed, but sanity of +mind is absolutely requisite." +"Well, sir, by the help of two signs, with which I will +acquaint you presently, you may ascertain with perfect +certainty that my grandfather is still in the full +possession of all his mental faculties. M. Noirtier, being +deprived of voice and motion, is accustomed to convey his +meaning by closing his eyes when he wishes to signify "yes,' +and to wink when he means "no.' You now know quite enough to +enable you to converse with M. Noirtier try." Noirtier +gave Valentine such a look of tenderness and gratitude that +it was comprehended even by the notary himself. "You have +heard and understood what your granddaughter has been +saying, sir, have you?" asked the notary. Noirtier closed +his eyes. "And you approve of what she said that is to +say, you declare that the signs which she mentioned are +really those by means of which you are accustomed to convey +your thoughts?" +"Yes." +"It was you who sent for me?" +"Yes." +"To make your will?" +"Yes." +"And you do not wish me to go away without fulfilling your +original intentions?" The old man winked violently. "Well, +sir," said the young girl, "do you understand now, and is +your conscience perfectly at rest on the subject?" But +before the notary could answer, Villefort had drawn him +aside. "Sir," said he, "do you suppose for a moment that a +man can sustain a physical shock, such as M. Noirtier has +received, without any detriment to his mental faculties?" +"It is not exactly that, sir," said the notary, "which makes +me uneasy, but the difficulty will be in wording his +thoughts and intentions, so as to be able to get his +answers." +"You must see that to be an utter impossibility," said +Villefort. Valentine and the old man heard this +conversation, and Noirtier fixed his eye so earnestly on +Valentine that she felt bound to answer to the look. +"Sir," said she, "that need not make you uneasy, however +difficult it may at first sight appear to be. I can discover +and explain to you my grandfather's thoughts, so as to put +an end to all your doubts and fears on the subject. I have +now been six years with M. Noirtier, and let him tell you if +ever once, during that time, he has entertained a thought +which he was unable to make me understand." +"No," signed the old man. +"Let us try what we can do, then," said the notary. "You +accept this young lady as your interpreter, M. Noirtier?" +"Yes." +"Well, sir, what do you require of me, and what document is +it that you wish to be drawn up?" Valentine named all the +letters of the alphabet until she came to W. At this letter +the eloquent eye of Noirtier gave her notice that she was to +stop. "It is very evident that it is the letter W which M. +Noirtier wants," said the notary. "Wait," said Valentine +and, turning to her grandfather, she repeated, "Wa We +Wi" The old man stopped her at the last syllable. +Valentine then took the dictionary, and the notary watched +her while she turned over the pages. She passed her finger +slowly down the columns, and when she came to the word +"Will," M. Noirtier's eye bade her stop. "Will," said the +notary "it is very evident that M. Noirtier is desirous of +making his will." +"Yes, yes, yes," motioned the invalid. +"Really, sir, you must allow that this is most +extraordinary," said the astonished notary, turning to M. de +Villefort. "Yes," said the procureur, "and I think the will +promises to be yet more extraordinary, for I cannot see how +it is to be drawn up without the intervention of Valentine, +and she may, perhaps, be considered as too much interested +in its contents to allow of her being a suitable interpreter +of the obscure and illdefined wishes of her grandfather." +"No, no, no," replied the eye of the paralytic. +"What?" said Villefort, "do you mean to say that Valentine +is not interested in your will?" +"No." +"Sir," said the notary, whose interest had been greatly +excited, and who had resolved on publishing far and wide the +account of this extraordinary and picturesque scene, "what +appeared so impossible to me an hour ago, has now become +quite easy and practicable, and this may be a perfectly +valid will, provided it be read in the presence of seven +witnesses, approved by the testator, and sealed by the +notary in the presence of the witnesses. As to the time, it +will not require very much more than the generality of +wills. There are certain forms necessary to be gone through, +and which are always the same. As to the details, the +greater part will be furnished afterwards by the state in +which we find the affairs of the testator, and by yourself, +who, having had the management of them, can doubtless give +full information on the subject. But besides all this, in +order that the instrument may not be contested, I am anxious +to give it the greatest possible authenticity, therefore, +one of my colleagues will help me, and, contrary to custom, +will assist in the dictation of the testament. Are you +satisfied, sir?" continued the notary, addressing the old +man. +"Yes," looked the invalid, his eye beaming with delight at +the ready interpretation of his meaning. +"What is he going to do?" thought Villefort, whose position +demanded much reserve, but who was longing to know what his +father's intentions were. He left the room to give orders +for another notary to be sent, but Barrois, who had heard +all that passed, had guessed his master's wishes, and had +already gone to fetch one. The procureur then told his wife +to come up. In the course of a quarter of an hour every one +had assembled in the chamber of the paralytic the second +notary had also arrived. A few words sufficed for a mutual +understanding between the two officers of the law. They read +to Noirtier the formal copy of a will, in order to give him +an idea of the terms in which such documents are generally +couched then, in order to test the capacity of the +testator, the first notary said, turning towards him, +"When an individual makes his will, it is generally in favor +or in prejudice of some person." +"Yes." +"Have you an exact idea of the amount of your fortune?" +"Yes." +"I will name to you several sums which will increase by +gradation you will stop me when I reach the one +representing the amount of your own possessions?" +"Yes." There was a kind of solemnity in this interrogation. +Never had the struggle between mind and matter been more +apparent than now, and if it was not a sublime, it was, at +least, a curious spectacle. They had formed a circle round +the invalid the second notary was sitting at a table, +prepared for writing, and his colleague was standing before +the testator in the act of interrogating him on the subject +to which we have alluded. "Your fortune exceeds , +francs, does it not?" asked he. Noirtier made a sign that it +did. "Do you possess , francs?" inquired the notary. +Noirtier's eye remained immovable. "Five hundred thousand?" +The same expression continued. "Six hundred thousand +, , ,?" Noirtier stopped him at the +lastnamed sum. "You are then in possession of , +francs?" asked the notary. "Yes." +"In landed property?" +"No." +"In stock?" +"Yes." +"The stock is in your own hands?" The look which M. Noirtier +cast on Barrois showed that there was something wanting +which he knew where to find. The old servant left the room, +and presently returned, bringing with him a small casket. +"Do you permit us to open this casket?" asked the notary. +Noirtier gave his assent. They opened it, and found , +francs in bank scrip. The first notary handed over each +note, as he examined it, to his colleague. +The total amount was found to be as M. Noirtier had stated. +"It is all as he has said it is very evident that the mind +still retains its full force and vigor." Then, turning +towards the paralytic, he said, "You possess, then, , +francs of capital, which, according to the manner in which +you have invested it, ought to bring in an income of about +, livres?" +"Yes." +"To whom do you desire to leave this fortune?" +"Oh," said Madame de Villefort, "there is not much doubt on +that subject. M. Noirtier tenderly loves his granddaughter, +Mademoiselle de Villefort it is she who has nursed and +tended him for six years, and has, by her devoted attention, +fully secured the affection, I had almost said the +gratitude, of her grandfather, and it is but just that she +should reap the fruit of her devotion." The eye of Noirtier +clearly showed by its expression that he was not deceived by +the false assent given by Madame de Villefort's words and +manner to the motives which she supposed him to entertain. +"Is it, then, to Mademoiselle Valentine de Villefort that +you leave these , francs?" demanded the notary, +thinking he had only to insert this clause, but waiting +first for the assent of Noirtier, which it was necessary +should be given before all the witnesses of this singular +scene. Valentine, when her name was made the subject of +discussion, had stepped back, to escape unpleasant +observation her eyes were cast down, and she was crying. +The old man looked at her for an instant with an expression +of the deepest tenderness, then, turning towards the notary, +he significantly winked his eye in token of dissent. +"What," said the notary, "do you not intend making +Mademoiselle Valentine de Villefort your residuary legatee?" +"No." +"You are not making any mistake, are you?" said the notary +"you really mean to declare that such is not your +intention?" +"No," repeated Noirtier "No." Valentine raised her head, +struck dumb with astonishment. It was not so much the +conviction that she was disinherited that caused her grief, +but her total inability to account for the feelings which +had provoked her grandfather to such an act. But Noirtier +looked at her with so much affectionate tenderness that she +exclaimed, "Oh, grandpapa, I see now that it is only your +fortune of which you deprive me you still leave me the love +which I have always enjoyed." +"Ah, yes, most assuredly," said the eyes of the paralytic, +for he closed them with an expression which Valentine could +not mistake. "Thank you, thank you," murmured she. The old +man's declaration that Valentine was not the destined +inheritor of his fortune had excited the hopes of Madame de +Villefort she gradually approached the invalid, and said +"Then, doubtless, dear M. Noirtier, you intend leaving your +fortune to your grandson, Edward de Villefort?" The winking +of the eyes which answered this speech was most decided and +terrible, and expressed a feeling almost amounting to +hatred. +"No?" said the notary "then, perhaps, it is to your son, M. +de Villefort?" +"No." The two notaries looked at each other in mute +astonishment and inquiry as to what were the real intentions +of the testator. Villefort and his wife both grew red, one +from shame, the other from anger. +"What have we all done, then, dear grandpapa?" said +Valentine "you no longer seem to love any of us?" The old +man's eyes passed rapidly from Villefort and his wife, and +rested on Valentine with a look of unutterable fondness. +"Well," said she "if you love me, grandpapa, try and bring +that love to bear upon your actions at this present moment. +You know me well enough to be quite sure that I have never +thought of your fortune besides, they say I am already rich +in right of my mother too rich, even. Explain yourself, +then." Noirtier fixed his intelligent eyes on Valentine's +hand. "My hand?" said she. +"Yes." +"Her hand" exclaimed every one. +"Oh, gentlemen, you see it is all useless, and that my +father's mind is really impaired," said Villefort. +"Ah," cried Valentine suddenly, "I understand. It is my +marriage you mean, is it not, dear grandpapa?" +"Yes, yes, yes," signed the paralytic, casting on Valentine +a look of joyful gratitude for having guessed his meaning. +"You are angry with us all on account of this marriage, are +you not?" +"Yes?" +"Really, this is too absurd," said Villefort. +"Excuse me, sir," replied the notary "on the contrary, the +meaning of M. Noirtier is quite evident to me, and I can +quite easily connect the train of ideas passing in his +mind." +"You do not wish me to marry M. Franz d'Epinay?" observed +Valentine. +"I do not wish it," said the eye of her grandfather. "And +you disinherit your granddaughter," continued the notary, +"because she has contracted an engagement contrary to your +wishes?" +"Yes." +"So that, but for this marriage, she would have been your +heir?" +"Yes." There was a profound silence. The two notaries were +holding a consultation as to the best means of proceeding +with the affair. Valentine was looking at her grandfather +with a smile of intense gratitude, and Villefort was biting +his lips with vexation, while Madame de Villefort could not +succeed in repressing an inward feeling of joy, which, in +spite of herself, appeared in her whole countenance. "But," +said Villefort, who was the first to break the silence, "I +consider that I am the best judge of the propriety of the +marriage in question. I am the only person possessing the +right to dispose of my daughter's hand. It is my wish that +she should marry M. Franz d'Epinay and she shall marry +him." Valentine sank weeping into a chair. +"Sir," said the notary, "how do you intend disposing of your +fortune in case Mademoiselle de Villefort still determines +on marrying M. Franz?" The old man gave no answer. "You +will, of course, dispose of it in some way or other?" +"Yes." +"In favor of some member of your family?" +"No." +"Do you intend devoting it to charitable purposes, then?" +pursued the notary. +"Yes." +"But," said the notary, "you are aware that the law does not +allow a son to be entirely deprived of his patrimony?" +"Yes." +"You only intend, then, to dispose of that part of your +fortune which the law allows you to subtract from the +inheritance of your son?" Noirtier made no answer. "Do you +still wish to dispose of all?" +"Yes." +"But they will contest the will after your death?" +"No." +"My father knows me," replied Villefort "he is quite sure +that his wishes will be held sacred by me besides, he +understands that in my position I cannot plead against the +poor." The eye of Noirtier beamed with triumph. "What do you +decide on, sir?" asked the notary of Villefort. +"Nothing, sir it is a resolution which my father has taken +and I know he never alters his mind. I am quite resigned. +These , francs will go out of the family in order to +enrich some hospital but it is ridiculous thus to yield to +the caprices of an old man, and I shall, therefore, act +according to my conscience." Having said this, Villefort +quitted the room with his wife, leaving his father at +liberty to do as he pleased. The same day the will was made, +the witnesses were brought, it was approved by the old man, +sealed in the presence of all and given in charge to M. +Deschamps, the family notary. +Chapter +The Telegraph. +M. and Madame de Villefort found on their return that the +Count of Monte Cristo, who had come to visit them in their +absence, had been ushered into the drawingroom, and was +still awaiting them there. Madame de Villefort, who had not +yet sufficiently recovered from her late emotion to allow of +her entertaining visitors so immediately, retired to her +bedroom, while the procureur, who could better depend upon +himself, proceeded at once to the salon. Although M. de +Villefort flattered himself that, to all outward view, he +had completely masked the feelings which were passing in his +mind, he did not know that the cloud was still lowering on +his brow, so much so that the count, whose smile was +radiant, immediately noticed his sombre and thoughtful air. +"Ma foi," said Monte Cristo, after the first compliments +were over, "what is the matter with you, M. de Villefort? +Have I arrived at the moment when you were drawing up an +indictment for a capital crime?" Villefort tried to smile. +"No, count," he replied, "I am the only victim in this case. +It is I who lose my cause, and it is illluck, obstinacy, +and folly which have caused it to be decided against me." +"To what do you refer?" said Monte Cristo with wellfeigned +interest. "Have you really met with some great misfortune?" +"Oh, no, monsieur," said Villefort with a bitter smile "it +is only a loss of money which I have sustained nothing +worth mentioning, I assure you." +"True," said Monte Cristo, "the loss of a sum of money +becomes almost immaterial with a fortune such as you +possess, and to one of your philosophic spirit." +"It is not so much the loss of the money that vexes me," +said Villefort, "though, after all, , francs are worth +regretting but I am the more annoyed with this fate, +chance, or whatever you please to call the power which has +destroyed my hopes and my fortune, and may blast the +prospects of my child also, as it is all occasioned by an +old man relapsed into second childhood." +"What do you say?" said the count ", francs? It is +indeed a sum which might be regretted even by a philosopher. +And who is the cause of all this annoyance?" +"My father, as I told you." +"M. Noirtier? But I thought you told me he had become +entirely paralyzed, and that all his faculties were +completely destroyed?" +"Yes, his bodily faculties, for he can neither move nor +speak, nevertheless he thinks, acts, and wills in the manner +I have described. I left him about five minutes ago, and he +is now occupied in dictating his will to two notaries." +"But to do this he must have spoken?" +"He has done better than that he has made himself +understood." +"How was such a thing possible?" +"By the help of his eyes, which are still full of life, and, +as you perceive, possess the power of inflicting mortal +injury." +"My dear," said Madame de Villefort, who had just entered +the room, "perhaps you exaggerate the evil." +"Goodmorning, madame," said the count, bowing. Madame de +Villefort acknowledged the salutation with one of her most +gracious smiles. "What is this that M. de Villefort has been +telling me?" demanded Monte Cristo "and what +incomprehensible misfortune" +"Incomprehensible is not the word," interrupted the +procureur, shrugging his shoulders. "It is an old man's +caprice." +"And is there no means of making him revoke his decision?" +"Yes," said Madame de Villefort "and it is still entirely +in the power of my husband to cause the will, which is now +in prejudice of Valentine, to be altered in her favor." The +count, who perceived that M. and Madame de Villefort were +beginning to speak in parables, appeared to pay no attention +to the conversation, and feigned to be busily engaged in +watching Edward, who was mischievously pouring some ink into +the bird's waterglass. "My dear," said Villefort, in answer +to his wife, "you know I have never been accustomed to play +the patriarch in my family, nor have I ever considered that +the fate of a universe was to be decided by my nod. +Nevertheless, it is necessary that my will should be +respected in my family, and that the folly of an old man and +the caprice of a child should not be allowed to overturn a +project which I have entertained for so many years. The +Baron d'Epinay was my friend, as you know, and an alliance +with his son is the most suitable thing that could possibly +be arranged." +"Do you think," said Madame de Villefort, "that Valentine is +in league with him? She has always been opposed to this +marriage, and I should not be at all surprised if what we +have just seen and heard is nothing but the execution of a +plan concerted between them." +"Madame," said Villefort, "believe me, a fortune of , +francs is not so easily renounced." +"She could, nevertheless, make up her mind to renounce the +world, sir, since it is only about a year ago that she +herself proposed entering a convent." +"Never mind," replied Villefort "I say that this marriage +shall be consummated." +"Notwithstanding your father's wishes to the contrary?" said +Madame de Villefort, selecting a new point of attack. "That +is a serious thing." Monte Cristo, who pretended not to be +listening, heard however, every word that was said. +"Madame," replied Villefort "I can truly say that I have +always entertained a high respect for my father, because, to +the natural feeling of relationship was added the +consciousness of his moral superiority. The name of father +is sacred in two senses he should be reverenced as the +author of our being and as a master whom we ought to obey. +But, under the present circumstances, I am justified in +doubting the wisdom of an old man who, because he hated the +father, vents his anger on the son. It would be ridiculous +in me to regulate my conduct by such caprices. I shall still +continue to preserve the same respect toward M. Noirtier I +will suffer, without complaint, the pecuniary deprivation to +which he has subjected me but I shall remain firm in my +determination, and the world shall see which party has +reason on his side. Consequently I shall marry my daughter +to the Baron Franz d'Epinay, because I consider it would be +a proper and eligible match for her to make, and, in short, +because I choose to bestow my daughter's hand on whomever I +please." +"What?" said the count, the approbation of whose eye +Villefort had frequently solicited during this speech. +"What? Do you say that M. Noirtier disinherits Mademoiselle +de Villefort because she is going to marry M. le Baron Franz +d'Epinay?" +"Yes, sir, that is the reason," said Villefort, shrugging +his shoulders. +"The apparent reason, at least," said Madame de Villefort. +"The real reason, madame, I can assure you I know my +father." +"But I want to know in what way M. d'Epinay can have +displeased your father more than any other person?" +"I believe I know M. Franz d'Epinay," said the count "is he +not the son of General de Quesnel, who was created Baron +d'Epinay by Charles X.?" +"The same," said Villefort. +"Well, but he is a charming young man, according to my +ideas." +"He is, which makes me believe that it is only an excuse of +M. Noirtier to prevent his granddaughter marrying old men +are always so selfish in their affection," said Madame de +Villefort. +"But," said Monte Cristo "do you not know any cause for this +hatred?" +"Ah, ma foi, who is to know?" +"Perhaps it is some political difference?" +"My father and the Baron d'Epinay lived in the stormy times +of which I only saw the ending," said Villefort. +"Was not your father a Bonapartist?" asked Monte Cristo "I +think I remember that you told me something of that kind." +"My father has been a Jacobin more than anything else," said +Villefort, carried by his emotion beyond the bounds of +prudence "and the senator's robe, which Napoleon cast on +his shoulders, only served to disguise the old man without +in any degree changing him. When my father conspired, it was +not for the emperor, it was against the Bourbons for M. +Noirtier possessed this peculiarity, he never projected any +Utopian schemes which could never be realized, but strove +for possibilities, and he applied to the realization of +these possibilities the terrible theories of The Mountain, +theories that never shrank from any means that were +deemed necessary to bring about the desired result." +"Well," said Monte Cristo, "it is just as I thought it was +politics which brought Noirtier and M. d'Epinay into +personal contact. Although General d'Epinay served under +Napoleon, did he not still retain royalist sentiments? And +was he not the person who was assassinated one evening on +leaving a Bonapartist meeting to which he had been invited +on the supposition that he favored the cause of the +emperor?" Villefort looked at the count almost with terror. +"Am I mistaken, then?" said Monte Cristo. +"No, sir, the facts were precisely what you have stated," +said Madame de Villefort "and it was to prevent the renewal +of old feuds that M. de Villefort formed the idea of uniting +in the bonds of affection the two children of these +inveterate enemies." +"It was a sublime and charitable thought," said Monte +Cristo, "and the whole world should applaud it. It would be +noble to see Mademoiselle Noirtier de Villefort assuming the +title of Madame Franz d'Epinay." Villefort shuddered and +looked at Monte Cristo as if he wished to read in his +countenance the real feelings which had dictated the words +he had just uttered. But the count completely baffled the +procureur, and prevented him from discovering anything +beneath the nevervarying smile he was so constantly in the +habit of assuming. "Although," said Villefort, "it will be a +serious thing for Valentine to lose her grandfather's +fortune, I do not think that M. d'Epinay will be frightened +at this pecuniary loss. He will, perhaps, hold me in greater +esteem than the money itself, seeing that I sacrifice +everything in order to keep my word with him. Besides, he +knows that Valentine is rich in right of her mother, and +that she will, in all probability, inherit the fortune of M. +and Madame de SaintMeran, her mother's parents, who both +love her tenderly." +"And who are fully as well worth loving and tending as M. +Noirtier," said Madame de Villefort "besides, they are to +come to Paris in about a month, and Valentine, after the +affront she has received, need not consider it necessary to +continue to bury herself alive by being shut up with M. +Noirtier." The count listened with satisfaction to this tale +of wounded selflove and defeated ambition. "But it seems to +me," said Monte Cristo, "and I must begin by asking your +pardon for what I am about to say, that if M. Noirtier +disinherits Mademoiselle de Villefort because she is going +to marry a man whose father he detested, he cannot have the +same cause of complaint against this dear Edward." +"True," said Madame de Villefort, with an intonation of +voice which it is impossible to describe "is it not unjust +shamefully unjust? Poor Edward is as much M. Noirtier's +grandchild as Valentine, and yet, if she had not been going +to marry M. Franz, M. Noirtier would have left her all his +money and supposing Valentine to be disinherited by her +grandfather, she will still be three times richer than he." +The count listened and said no more. "Count," said +Villefort, "we will not entertain you any longer with our +family misfortunes. It is true that my patrimony will go to +endow charitable institutions, and my father will have +deprived me of my lawful inheritance without any reason for +doing so, but I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that +I have acted like a man of sense and feeling. M. d'Epinay, +to whom I had promised the interest of this sum, shall +receive it, even if I endure the most cruel privations." +"However," said Madame de Villefort, returning to the one +idea which incessantly occupied her mind, "perhaps it would +be better to explain this unlucky affair to M. d'Epinay, in +order to give him the opportunity of himself renouncing his +claim to the hand of Mademoiselle de Villefort." +"Ah, that would be a great pity," said Villefort. +"A great pity," said Monte Cristo. +"Undoubtedly," said Villefort, moderating the tones of his +voice, "a marriage once concerted and then broken off, +throws a sort of discredit on a young lady then again, the +old reports, which I was so anxious to put an end to, will +instantly gain ground. No, it will all go well M. d'Epinay, +if he is an honorable man, will consider himself more than +ever pledged to Mademoiselle de Villefort, unless he were +actuated by a decided feeling of avarice, but that is +impossible." +"I agree with M. de Villefort," said Monte Cristo, fixing +his eyes on Madame de Villefort "and if I were sufficiently +intimate with him to allow of giving my advice, I would +persuade him, since I have been told M. d'Epinay is coming +back, to settle this affair at once beyond all possibility +of revocation. I will answer for the success of a project +which will reflect so much honor on M. de Villefort." The +procureur arose, delighted with the proposition, but his +wife slightly changed color. "Well, that is all that I +wanted, and I will be guided by a counsellor such as you +are," said he, extending his hand to Monte Cristo. +"Therefore let every one here look upon what has passed +today as if it had not happened, and as though we had never +thought of such a thing as a change in our original plans." +"Sir," said the count, "the world, unjust as it is, will be +pleased with your resolution your friends will be proud of +you, and M. d'Epinay, even if he took Mademoiselle de +Villefort without any dowry, which he will not do, would be +delighted with the idea of entering a family which could +make such sacrifices in order to keep a promise and fulfil a +duty." At the conclusion of these words, the count rose to +depart. "Are you going to leave us, count?" said Madame de +Villefort. +"I am sorry to say I must do so, madame, I only came to +remind you of your promise for Saturday." +"Did you fear that we should forget it?" +"You are very good, madame, but M. de Villefort has so many +important and urgent occupations." +"My husband has given me his word, sir," said Madame de +Villefort "you have just seen him resolve to keep it when +he has everything to lose, and surely there is more reason +for his doing so where he has everything to gain." +"And," said Villefort, "is it at your house in the +ChampsElysees that you receive your visitors?" +"No," said Monte Cristo, "which is precisely the reason +which renders your kindness more meritorious, it is in +the country." +"In the country?" +"Yes." +"Where is it, then? Near Paris, is it not?" +"Very near, only half a league from the Barriers, it is +at Auteuil." +"At Auteuil?" said Villefort "true, Madame de Villefort +told me you lived at Auteuil, since it was to your house +that she was taken. And in what part of Auteuil do you +reside?" +"Rue de la Fontaine." +"Rue de la Fontaine" exclaimed Villefort in an agitated +tone "at what number?" +"No. ." +"Then," cried Villefort, "was it you who bought M. de +SaintMeran's house" +"Did it belong to M. de SaintMeran?" demanded Monte Cristo. +"Yes," replied Madame de Villefort "and, would you believe +it, count" +"Believe what?" +"You think this house pretty, do you not?" +"I think it charming." +"Well, my husband would never live in it." +"Indeed?" returned Monte Cristo, "that is a prejudice on +your part, M. de Villefort, for which I am quite at a loss +to account." +"I do not like Auteuil, sir," said the procureur, making an +evident effort to appear calm. +"But I hope you will not carry your antipathy so far as to +deprive me of the pleasure of your company, sir," said Monte +Cristo. +"No, count, I hope I assure you I shall do my best," +stammered Villefort. +"Oh," said Monte Cristo, "I allow of no excuse. On Saturday, +at six o'clock. I shall be expecting you, and if you fail to +come, I shall think for how do I know to the contrary? +that this house, which his remained uninhabited for twenty +years, must have some gloomy tradition or dreadful legend +connected with it." +"I will come, count, I will be sure to come," said +Villefort eagerly. +"Thank you," said Monte Cristo "now you must permit me to +take my leave of you." +"You said before that you were obliged to leave us, +monsieur," said Madame de Villefort, "and you were about to +tell us why when your attention was called to some other +subject." +"Indeed madame," said Monte Cristo "I scarcely know if I +dare tell you where I am going." +"Nonsense say on." +"Well, then, it is to see a thing on which I have sometimes +mused for hours together." +"What is it?" +"A telegraph. So now I have told my secret." +"A telegraph?" repeated Madame de Villefort. +"Yes, a telegraph. I had often seen one placed at the end of +a road on a hillock, and in the light of the sun its black +arms, bending in every direction, always reminded me of the +claws of an immense beetle, and I assure you it was never +without emotion that I gazed on it, for I could not help +thinking how wonderful it was that these various signs +should be made to cleave the air with such precision as to +convey to the distance of three hundred leagues the ideas +and wishes of a man sitting at a table at one end of the +line to another man similarly placed at the opposite +extremity, and all this effected by a simple act of volition +on the part of the sender of the message. I began to think +of genii, sylphs, gnomes, in short, of all the ministers of +the occult sciences, until I laughed aloud at the freaks of +my own imagination. Now, it never occurred to me to wish for +a nearer inspection of these large insects, with their long +black claws, for I always feared to find under their stone +wings some little human genius fagged to death with cabals, +factions, and government intrigues. But one fine day I +learned that the mover of this telegraph was only a poor +wretch, hired for twelve hundred francs a year, and employed +all day, not in studying the heavens like an astronomer, or +in gazing on the water like an angler, or even in enjoying +the privilege of observing the country around him, but all +his monotonous life was passed in watching his +whitebellied, blackclawed fellow insect, four or five +leagues distant from him. At length I felt a desire to study +this living chrysalis more closely, and to endeavor to +understand the secret part played by these insectactors +when they occupy themselves simply with pulling different +pieces of string." +"And are you going there?" +"I am." +"What telegraph do you intend visiting? that of the home +department, or of the observatory?" +"Oh, no I should find there people who would force me to +understand things of which I would prefer to remain +ignorant, and who would try to explain to me, in spite of +myself, a mystery which even they do not understand. Ma foi, +I should wish to keep my illusions concerning insects +unimpaired it is quite enough to have those dissipated +which I had formed of my fellowcreatures. I shall, +therefore, not visit either of these telegraphs, but one in +the open country where I shall find a goodnatured +simpleton, who knows no more than the machine he is employed +to work." +"You are a singular man," said Villefort. +"What line would you advise me to study?" +"The one that is most in use just at this time." +"The Spanish one, you mean, I suppose?" +"Yes should you like a letter to the minister that they +might explain to you" +"No," said Monte Cristo "since, as I told you before, I do +not wish to comprehend it. The moment I understand it there +will no longer exist a telegraph for me it will be nothing +more than a sign from M. Duchatel, or from M. Montalivet, +transmitted to the prefect of Bayonne, mystified by two +Greek words, tele, graphein. It is the insect with black +claws, and the awful word which I wish to retain in my +imagination in all its purity and all its importance." +"Go then for in the course of two hours it will be dark, +and you will not be able to see anything." +"Ma foi, you frighten me. Which is the nearest way? +Bayonne?" +"Yes the road to Bayonne." +"And afterwards the road to Chatillon?" +"Yes." +"By the tower of Montlhery, you mean?" +"Yes." +"Thank you. Goodby. On Saturday I will tell you my +impressions concerning the telegraph." At the door the count +was met by the two notaries, who had just completed the act +which was to disinherit Valentine, and who were leaving +under the conviction of having done a thing which could not +fail of redounding considerably to their credit. +Chapter +How a Gardener may get rid of the Dormice that eat His +Peaches. +Not on the same night, as he had intended, but the next +morning, the Count of Monte Cristo went out by the Barrier +d'Enfer, taking the road to Orleans. Leaving the village of +Linas, without stopping at the telegraph, which flourished +its great bony arms as he passed, the count reached the +tower of Montlhery, situated, as every one knows, upon the +highest point of the plain of that name. At the foot of the +hill the count dismounted and began to ascend by a little +winding path, about eighteen inches wide when he reached +the summit he found himself stopped by a hedge, upon which +green fruit had succeeded to red and white flowers. +Monte Cristo looked for the entrance to the enclosure, and +was not long in finding a little wooden gate, working on +willow hinges, and fastened with a nail and string. The +count soon mastered the mechanism, the gate opened, and he +then found himself in a little garden, about twenty feet +long by twelve wide, bounded on one side by part of the +hedge, which contained the ingenious contrivance we have +called a gate, and on the other by the old tower, covered +with ivy and studded with wallflowers. No one would have +thought in looking at this old, weatherbeaten, +floraldecked tower which might be likened to an elderly +dame dressed up to receive her grandchildren at a birthday +feast that it would have been capable of telling strange +things, if, in addition to the menacing ears which the +proverb says all walls are provided with, it had also a +voice. The garden was crossed by a path of red gravel, edged +by a border of thick box, of many years' growth, and of a +tone and color that would have delighted the heart of +Delacroix, our modern Rubens. This path was formed in the +shape of the figure of , thus, in its windings, making a +walk of sixty feet in a garden of only twenty. +Never had Flora, the fresh and smiling goddess of gardeners, +been honored with a purer or more scrupulous worship than +that which was paid to her in this little enclosure. In +fact, of the twenty rosetrees which formed the parterre, +not one bore the mark of the slug, nor were there evidences +anywhere of the clustering aphis which is so destructive to +plants growing in a damp soil. And yet it was not because +the damp had been excluded from the garden the earth, black +as soot, the thick foliage of the trees betrayed its +presence besides, had natural humidity been wanting, it +could have been immediately supplied by artificial means, +thanks to a tank of water, sunk in one of the corners of the +garden, and upon which were stationed a frog and a toad, +who, from antipathy, no doubt, always remained on the two +opposite sides of the basin. There was not a blade of grass +to be seen in the paths, or a weed in the flowerbeds no +fine lady ever trained and watered her geraniums, her cacti, +and her rhododendrons, with more pains than this hitherto +unseen gardener bestowed upon his little enclosure. Monte +Cristo stopped after having closed the gate and fastened the +string to the nail, and cast a look around. +"The man at the telegraph," said he, "must either engage a +gardener or devote himself passionately to agriculture." +Suddenly he struck against something crouching behind a +wheelbarrow filled with leaves the something rose, uttering +an exclamation of astonishment, and Monte Cristo found +himself facing a man about fifty years old, who was plucking +strawberries, which he was placing upon grape leaves. He had +twelve leaves and about as many strawberries, which, on +rising suddenly, he let fall from his hand. "You are +gathering your crop, sir?" said Monte Cristo, smiling. +"Excuse me, sir," replied the man, raising his hand to his +cap "I am not up there, I know, but I have only just come +down." +"Do not let me interfere with you in anything, my friend," +said the count "gather your strawberries, if, indeed, there +are any left." +"I have ten left," said the man, "for here are eleven, and I +had twentyone, five more than last year. But I am not +surprised the spring has been warm this year, and +strawberries require heat, sir. This is the reason that, +instead of the sixteen I had last year, I have this year, +you see, eleven, already plucked twelve, thirteen, +fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Ah, I miss +three, they were here last night, sir I am sure they were +here I counted them. It must be the Mere Simon's son who +has stolen them I saw him strolling about here this +morning. Ah, the young rascal stealing in a garden he +does not know where that may lead him to." +"Certainly, it is wrong," said Monte Cristo, "but you should +take into consideration the youth and greediness of the +delinquent." +"Of course," said the gardener, "but that does not make it +the less unpleasant. But, sir, once more I beg pardon +perhaps you are an officer that I am detaining here." And he +glanced timidly at the count's blue coat. +"Calm yourself, my friend," said the count, with the smile +which he made at will either terrible or benevolent, and +which now expressed only the kindliest feeling "I am not an +inspector, but a traveller, brought here by a curiosity he +half repents of, since he causes you to lose your time." +"Ah, my time is not valuable," replied the man with a +melancholy smile. "Still it belongs to government, and I +ought not to waste it but, having received the signal that +I might rest for an hour" here he glanced at the sundial, +for there was everything in the enclosure of Montlhery, even +a sundial, "and having ten minutes before me, and my +strawberries being ripe, when a day longer bytheby, +sir, do you think dormice eat them?" +"Indeed, I should think not," replied Monte Cristo "dormice +are bad neighbors for us who do not eat them preserved, as +the Romans did." +"What? Did the Romans eat them?" said the gardener "ate +dormice?" +"I have read so in Petronius," said the count. +"Really? They can't be nice, though they do say "as fat as a +dormouse.' It is not a wonder they are fat, sleeping all +day, and only waking to eat all night. Listen. Last year I +had four apricots they stole one, I had one nectarine, +only one well, sir, they ate half of it on the wall a +splendid nectarine I never ate a better." +"You ate it?" +"That is to say, the half that was left you understand +it was exquisite, sir. Ah, those gentlemen never choose the +worst morsels like Mere Simon's son, who has not chosen the +worst strawberries. But this year," continued the +horticulturist, "I'll take care it shall not happen, even if +I should be forced to sit by the whole night to watch when +the strawberries are ripe." Monte Cristo had seen enough. +Every man has a devouring passion in his heart, as every +fruit has its worm that of the telegraph man was +horticulture. He began gathering the grapeleaves which +screened the sun from the grapes, and won the heart of the +gardener. "Did you come here, sir, to see the telegraph?" he +said. +"Yes, if it isn't contrary to the rules." +"Oh, no," said the gardener "not in the least, since there +is no danger that anyone can possibly understand what we are +saying." +"I have been told," said the count, "that you do not always +yourselves understand the signals you repeat." +"That is true, sir, and that is what I like best," said the +man, smiling. +"Why do you like that best?" +"Because then I have no responsibility. I am a machine then, +and nothing else, and so long as I work, nothing more is +required of me." +"Is it possible," said Monte Cristo to himself, "that I can +have met with a man that has no ambition? That would spoil +my plans." +"Sir," said the gardener, glancing at the sundial, "the ten +minutes are almost up I must return to my post. Will you go +up with me?" +"I follow you." Monte Cristo entered the tower, which was +divided into three stories. The tower contained implements, +such as spades, rakes, wateringpots, hung against the wall +this was all the furniture. The second was the man's +conventional abode, or rather sleepingplace it contained a +few poor articles of household furniture a bed, a table, +two chairs, a stone pitcher and some dry herbs, hung up +to the ceiling, which the count recognized as sweet pease, +and of which the good man was preserving the seeds he had +labelled them with as much care as if he had been master +botanist in the Jardin des Plantes. +"Does it require much study to learn the art of +telegraphing?" asked Monte Cristo. +"The study does not take long it was acting as a +supernumerary that was so tedious." +"And what is the pay?" +"A thousand francs, sir." +"It is nothing." +"No but then we are lodged, as you perceive." +Monte Cristo looked at the room. They passed to the third +story it was the telegraph room. Monte Cristo looked in +turn at the two iron handles by which the machine was +worked. "It is very interesting," he said, "but it must be +very tedious for a lifetime." +"Yes. At first my neck was cramped with looking at it, but +at the end of a year I became used to it and then we have +our hours of recreation, and our holidays." +"Holidays?" +"Yes." +"When?" +"When we have a fog." +"Ah, to be sure." +"Those are indeed holidays to me I go into the garden, I +plant, I prune, I trim, I kill the insects all day long." +"How long have you been here?" +"Ten years, and five as a supernumerary make fifteen." +"You are " +"Fiftyfive years old." +"How long must you have served to claim the pension?" +"Oh, sir, twentyfive years." +"And how much is the pension?" +"A hundred crowns." +"Poor humanity" murmured Monte Cristo. +"What did you say, sir?" asked the man. +"I was saying it was very interesting." +"What was?" +"All you were showing me. And you really understand none of +these signals?" +"None at all." +"And have you never tried to understand them?" +"Never. Why should I?" +"But still there are some signals only addressed to you." +"Certainly." +"And do you understand them?" +"They are always the same." +"And they mean " +"Nothing new You have an hour or Tomorrow." +"This is simple enough," said the count "but look, is not +your correspondent putting itself in motion?" +"Ah, yes thank you, sir." +"And what is it saying anything you understand?" +"Yes it asks if I am ready." +"And you reply?" +"By the same sign, which, at the same time, tells my +righthand correspondent that I am ready, while it gives +notice to my lefthand correspondent to prepare in his +turn." +"It is very ingenious," said the count. +"You will see," said the man proudly "in five minutes he +will speak." +"I have, then, five minutes," said Monte Cristo to himself +"it is more time than I require. My dear sir, will you allow +me to ask you a question?" +"What is it, sir?" +"You are fond of gardening?" +"Passionately." +"And you would be pleased to have, instead of this terrace +of twenty feet, an enclosure of two acres?" +"Sir, I should make a terrestrial paradise of it." +"You live badly on your thousand francs?" +"Badly enough but yet I do live." +"Yes but you have a wretchedly small garden." +"True, the garden is not large." +"And, then, such as it is, it is filled with dormice, who +eat everything." +"Ah, they are my scourges." +"Tell me, should you have the misfortune to turn your head +while your righthand correspondent was telegraphing" +"I should not see him." +"Then what would happen?" +"I could not repeat the signals." +"And then?" +"Not having repeated them, through negligence, I should be +fined." +"How much?" +"A hundred francs." +"The tenth of your income that would be fine work." +"Ah," said the man. +"Has it ever happened to you?" said Monte Cristo. +"Once, sir, when I was grafting a rosetree." +"Well, suppose you were to alter a signal, and substitute +another?" +"Ah, that is another case I should be turned off, and lose +my pension." +"Three hundred francs?" +"A hundred crowns, yes, sir so you see that I am not likely +to do any of these things." +"Not even for fifteen years' wages? Come, it is worth +thinking about?" +"For fifteen thousand francs?" +"Yes." +"Sir, you alarm me." +"Nonsense." +"Sir, you are tempting me?" +"Just so fifteen thousand francs, do you understand?" +"Sir, let me see my righthand correspondent." +"On the contrary, do not look at him, but at this." +"What is it?" +"What? Do you not know these bits of paper?" +"Banknotes" +"Exactly there are fifteen of them." +"And whose are they?" +"Yours, if you like." +"Mine?" exclaimed the man, halfsuffocated. +"Yes yours your own property." +"Sir, my righthand correspondent is signalling." +"Let him signal." +"Sir, you have distracted me I shall be fined." +"That will cost you a hundred francs you see it is your +interest to take my banknotes." +"Sir, my righthand correspondent redoubles his signals he +is impatient." +"Never mind take these" and the count placed the packet +in the man's hands. "Now this is not all," he said "you +cannot live upon your fifteen thousand francs." +"I shall still have my place." +"No, you will lose it, for you are going to alter your +correspondent's message." +"Oh, sir, what are you proposing?" +"A jest." +"Sir, unless you force me" +"I think I can effectually force you" and Monte Cristo drew +another packet from his pocket. "Here are ten thousand more +francs," he said, "with the fifteen thousand already in your +pocket, they will make twentyfive thousand. With five +thousand you can buy a pretty little house with two acres of +land the remaining twenty thousand will bring you in a +thousand francs a year." +"A garden with two acres of land" +"And a thousand francs a year." +"Oh, heavens" +"Come, take them," and Monte Cristo forced the banknotes +into his hand. +"What am I to do?" +"Nothing very difficult." +"But what is it?" +"To repeat these signs." Monte Cristo took a paper from his +pocket, upon which were drawn three signs, with numbers to +indicate the order in which they were to be worked. +"There, you see it will not take long." +"Yes but" +"Do this, and you will have nectarines and all the rest." +The shot told red with fever, while the large drops fell +from his brow, the man executed, one after the other, the +three signs given by the count, in spite of the frightful +contortions of the righthand correspondent, who, not +understanding the change, began to think the gardener had +gone mad. As to the lefthand one, he conscientiously +repeated the same signals, which were finally transmitted to +the Minister of the Interior. "Now you are rich," said Monte +Cristo. +"Yes," replied the man, "but at what a price" +"Listen, friend," said Monte Cristo. "I do not wish to cause +you any remorse believe me, then, when I swear to you that +you have wronged no man, but on the contrary have benefited +mankind." The man looked at the banknotes, felt them, +counted them, turned pale, then red, then rushed into his +room to drink a glass of water, but he had no time to reach +the waterjug, and fainted in the midst of his dried herbs. +Five minutes after the new telegram reached the minister, +Debray had the horses put to his carriage, and drove to +Danglars' house. +"Has your husband any Spanish bonds?" he asked of the +baroness. +"I think so, indeed He has six millions' worth." +"He must sell them at whatever price." +"Why?" +"Because Don Carlos has fled from Bourges, and has returned +to Spain." +"How do you know?" Debray shrugged his shoulders. "The idea +of asking how I hear the news," he said. The baroness did +not wait for a repetition she ran to her husband, who +immediately hastened to his agent, and ordered him to sell +at any price. When it was seen that Danglars sold, the +Spanish funds fell directly. Danglars lost five hundred +thousand francs but he rid himself of all his Spanish +shares. The same evening the following was read in Le +Messager +"[By telegraph.] The king, Don Carlos, has escaped the +vigilance of his guardians at Bourges, and has returned to +Spain by the Catalonian frontier. Barcelona has risen in his +favor." +All that evening nothing was spoken of but the foresight of +Danglars, who had sold his shares, and of the luck of the +stockjobber, who only lost five hundred thousand francs by +such a blow. Those who had kept their shares, or bought +those of Danglars, looked upon themselves as ruined, and +passed a very bad night. Next morning Le Moniteur contained +the following +"It was without any foundation that Le Messager yesterday +announced the flight of Don Carlos and the revolt of +Barcelona. The king Don Carlos has not left Bourges, and +the peninsula is in the enjoyment of profound peace. A +telegraphic signal, improperly interpreted, owing to the +fog, was the cause of this error." +The funds rose one per cent higher than before they had +fallen. This, reckoning his loss, and what he had missed +gaining, made the difference of a million to Danglars. +"Good," said Monte Cristo to Morrel, who was at his house +when the news arrived of the strange reverse of fortune of +which Danglars had been the victim, "I have just made a +discovery for twentyfive thousand francs, for which I would +have paid a hundred thousand." +"What have you discovered?" asked Morrel. +"I have just discovered how a gardener may get rid of the +dormice that eat his peaches." +Chapter +Ghosts. +At first sight the exterior of the house at Auteuil gave no +indications of splendor, nothing one would expect from the +destined residence of the magnificent Count of Monte Cristo +but this simplicity was according to the will of its master, +who positively ordered nothing to be altered outside. The +splendor was within. Indeed, almost before the door opened, +the scene changed. M. Bertuccio had outdone himself in the +taste displayed in furnishing, and in the rapidity with +which it was executed. It is told that the Duc d'Antin +removed in a single night a whole avenue of trees that +annoyed Louis XIV. in three days M. Bertuccio planted an +entirely bare court with poplars, large spreading sycamores +to shade the different parts of the house, and in the +foreground, instead of the usual pavingstones, half hidden +by the grass, there extended a lawn but that morning laid +down, and upon which the water was yet glistening. For the +rest, the orders had been issued by the count he himself +had given a plan to Bertuccio, marking the spot where each +tree was to be planted, and the shape and extent of the lawn +which was to take the place of the pavingstones. Thus the +house had become unrecognizable, and Bertuccio himself +declared that he scarcely knew it, encircled as it was by a +framework of trees. The overseer would not have objected, +while he was about it, to have made some improvements in the +garden, but the count had positively forbidden it to be +touched. Bertuccio made amends, however, by loading the +antechambers, staircases, and mantlepieces with flowers. +What, above all, manifested the shrewdness of the steward, +and the profound science of the master, the one in carrying +out the ideas of the other, was that this house which +appeared only the night before so sad and gloomy, +impregnated with that sickly smell one can almost fancy to +be the smell of time, had in a single day acquired the +aspect of life, was scented with its master's favorite +perfumes, and had the very light regulated according to his +wish. When the count arrived, he had under his touch his +books and arms, his eyes rested upon his favorite pictures +his dogs, whose caresses he loved, welcomed him in the +antechamber the birds, whose songs delighted him, cheered +him with their music and the house, awakened from its long +sleep, like the sleeping beauty in the wood, lived, sang, +and bloomed like the houses we have long cherished, and in +which, when we are forced to leave them, we leave a part of +our souls. The servants passed gayly along the fine +courtyard some, belonging to the kitchens, gliding down +the stairs, restored but the previous day, as if they had +always inhabited the house others filling the coachhouses, +where the equipages, encased and numbered, appeared to have +been installed for the last fifty years and in the stables +the horses replied with neighs to the grooms, who spoke to +them with much more respect than many servants pay their +masters. +The library was divided into two parts on either side of the +wall, and contained upwards of two thousand volumes one +division was entirely devoted to novels, and even the volume +which had been published but the day before was to be seen +in its place in all the dignity of its red and gold binding. +On the other side of the house, to match with the library, +was the conservatory, ornamented with rare flowers, that +bloomed in china jars and in the midst of the greenhouse, +marvellous alike to sight and smell, was a billiardtable +which looked as if it had been abandoned during the past +hour by players who had left the balls on the cloth. One +chamber alone had been respected by the magnificent +Bertuccio. Before this room, to which you could ascend by +the grand, and go out by the back staircase, the servants +passed with curiosity, and Bertuccio with terror. At five +o'clock precisely, the count arrived before the house at +Auteuil, followed by Ali. Bertuccio was awaiting this +arrival with impatience, mingled with uneasiness he hoped +for some compliments, while, at the same time, he feared to +have frowns. Monte Cristo descended into the courtyard, +walked all over the house, without giving any sign of +approbation or pleasure, until he entered his bedroom, +situated on the opposite side to the closed room then he +approached a little piece of furniture, made of rosewood, +which he had noticed at a previous visit. "That can only be +to hold gloves," he said. +"Will your excellency deign to open it?" said the delighted +Bertuccio, "and you will find gloves in it." Elsewhere the +count found everything he required smellingbottles, +cigars, knickknacks. +"Good," he said and M. Bertuccio left enraptured, so great, +so powerful, and real was the influence exercised by this +man over all who surrounded him. At precisely six o'clock +the clatter of horses' hoofs was heard at the entrance door +it was our captain of Spahis, who had arrived on Medeah. "I +am sure I am the first," cried Morrel "I did it on purpose +to have you a minute to myself, before every one came. Julie +and Emmanuel have a thousand things to tell you. Ah, really +this is magnificent But tell me, count, will your people +take care of my horse?" +"Do not alarm yourself, my dear Maximilian they +understand." +"I mean, because he wants petting. If you had seen at what a +pace he came like the wind" +"I should think so, a horse that cost , francs" said +Monte Cristo, in the tone which a father would use towards a +son. +"Do you regret them?" asked Morrel, with his open laugh. +"I? Certainly not," replied the count. "No I should only +regret if the horse had not proved good." +"It is so good, that I have distanced M. de ChateauRenaud, +one of the best riders in France, and M. Debray, who both +mount the minister's Arabians and close on their heels are +the horses of Madame Danglars, who always go at six leagues +an hour." +"Then they follow you?" asked Monte Cristo. +"See, they are here." And at the same minute a carriage with +smoking horses, accompanied by two mounted gentlemen, +arrived at the gate, which opened before them. The carriage +drove round, and stopped at the steps, followed by the +horsemen. The instant Debray had touched the ground, he was +at the carriagedoor. He offered his hand to the baroness, +who, descending, took it with a peculiarity of manner +imperceptible to every one but Monte Cristo. But nothing +escaped the count's notice, and he observed a little note, +passed with the facility that indicates frequent practice, +from the hand of Madame Danglars to that of the minister's +secretary. After his wife the banker descended, as pale as +though he had issued from his tomb instead of his carriage. +Madame Danglars threw a rapid and inquiring glance which +could only be interpreted by Monte Cristo, around the +courtyard, over the peristyle, and across the front of the +house, then, repressing a slight emotion, which must have +been seen on her countenance if she had not kept her color, +she ascended the steps, saying to Morrel, "Sir, if you were +a friend of mine, I should ask you if you would sell your +horse." +Morrel smiled with an expression very like a grimace, and +then turned round to Monte Cristo, as if to ask him to +extricate him from his embarrassment. The count understood +him. "Ah, madame," he said, "why did you not make that +request of me?" +"With you, sir," replied the baroness, "one can wish for +nothing, one is so sure to obtain it. If it were so with M. +Morrel" +"Unfortunately," replied the count, "I am witness that M. +Morrel cannot give up his horse, his honor being engaged in +keeping it." +"How so?" +"He laid a wager he would tame Medeah in the space of six +months. You understand now that if he were to get rid of the +animal before the time named, he would not only lose his +bet, but people would say he was afraid and a brave captain +of Spahis cannot risk this, even to gratify a pretty woman, +which is, in my opinion, one of the most sacred obligations +in the world." +"You see my position, madame," said Morrel, bestowing a +grateful smile on Monte Cristo. +"It seems to me," said Danglars, in his coarse tone, +illconcealed by a forced smile, "that you have already got +horses enough." Madame Danglars seldom allowed remarks of +this kind to pass unnoticed, but, to the surprise of the +young people, she pretended not to hear it, and said +nothing. Monte Cristo smiled at her unusual humility, and +showed her two immense porcelain jars, over which wound +marine plants, of a size and delicacy that nature alone +could produce. The baroness was astonished. "Why," said she, +"you could plant one of the chestnuttrees in the Tuileries +inside How can such enormous jars have been manufactured?" +"Ah, madame," replied Monte Cristo, "you must not ask of us, +the manufacturers of fine porcelain, such a question. It is +the work of another age, constructed by the genii of earth +and water." +"How so? at what period can that have been?" +"I do not know I have only heard that an emperor of China +had an oven built expressly, and that in this oven twelve +jars like this were successively baked. Two broke, from the +heat of the fire the other ten were sunk three hundred +fathoms deep into the sea. The sea, knowing what was +required of her, threw over them her weeds, encircled them +with coral, and encrusted them with shells the whole was +cemented by two hundred years beneath these almost +impervious depths, for a revolution carried away the emperor +who wished to make the trial, and only left the documents +proving the manufacture of the jars and their descent into +the sea. At the end of two hundred years the documents were +found, and they thought of bringing up the jars. Divers +descended in machines, made expressly on the discovery, into +the bay where they were thrown but of ten three only +remained, the rest having been broken by the waves. I am +fond of these jars, upon which, perhaps, misshapen, +frightful monsters have fixed their cold, dull eyes, and in +which myriads of small fish have slept, seeking a refuge +from the pursuit of their enemies." Meanwhile, Danglars, who +had cared little for curiosities, was mechanically tearing +off the blossoms of a splendid orangetree, one after +another. When he had finished with the orangetree, he began +at the cactus but this, not being so easily plucked as the +orangetree, pricked him dreadfully. He shuddered, and +rubbed his eyes as though awaking from a dream. +"Sir," said Monte Cristo to him, "I do not recommend my +pictures to you, who possess such splendid paintings but, +nevertheless, here are two by Hobbema, a Paul Potter, a +Mieris, two by Gerard Douw, a Raphael, a Vandyke, a +Zurbaran, and two or three by Murillo, worth looking at." +"Stay," said Debray "I recognize this Hobbema." +"Ah, indeed" +"Yes it was proposed for the Museum." +"Which, I believe, does not contain one?" said Monte Cristo. +"No and yet they refused to buy it." +"Why?" said ChateauRenaud. +"You pretend not to know, because government was not rich +enough." +"Ah, pardon me," said ChateauRenaud "I have heard of these +things every day during the last eight years, and I cannot +understand them yet." +"You will, by and by," said Debray. +"I think not," replied ChateauRenaud. +"Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti and Count Andrea Cavalcanti," +announced Baptistin. A black satin stock, fresh from the +maker's hands, gray moustaches, a bold eye, a major's +uniform, ornamented with three medals and five crosses in +fact, the thorough bearing of an old soldier such was the +appearance of Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, that tender +father with whom we are already acquainted. Close to him, +dressed in entirely new clothes, advanced smilingly Count +Andrea Cavalcanti, the dutiful son, whom we also know. The +three young people were talking together. On the entrance of +the newcomers, their eyes glanced from father to son, and +then, naturally enough, rested on the latter, whom they +began criticising. "Cavalcanti" said Debray. "A fine name," +said Morrel. +"Yes," said ChateauRenaud, "these Italians are well named +and badly dressed." +"You are fastidious, ChateauRenaud," replied Debray "those +clothes are well cut and quite new." +"That is just what I find fault with. That gentleman appears +to be well dressed for the first time in his life." +"Who are those gentlemen?" asked Danglars of Monte Cristo. +"You heard Cavalcanti." +"That tells me their name, and nothing else." +"Ah, true. You do not know the Italian nobility the +Cavalcanti are all descended from princes." +"Have they any fortune?" +"An enormous one." +"What do they do?" +"Try to spend it all. They have some business with you, I +think, from what they told me the day before yesterday. I, +indeed, invited them here today on your account. I will +introduce you to them." +"But they appear to speak French with a very pure accent," +said Danglars. +"The son has been educated in a college in the south I +believe near Marseilles. You will find him quite +enthusiastic." +"Upon what subject?" asked Madame Danglars. +"The French ladies, madame. He has made up his mind to take +a wife from Paris." +"A fine idea that of his," said Danglars, shrugging his +shoulders. Madame Danglars looked at her husband with an +expression which, at any other time, would have indicated a +storm, but for the second time she controlled herself. "The +baron appears thoughtful today," said Monte Cristo to her +"are they going to put him in the ministry?" +"Not yet, I think. More likely he has been speculating on +the Bourse, and has lost money." +"M. and Madame de Villefort," cried Baptistin. They entered. +M. de Villefort, notwithstanding his selfcontrol, was +visibly affected, and when Monte Cristo touched his hand, he +felt it tremble. "Certainly, women alone know how to +dissimulate," said Monte Cristo to himself, glancing at +Madame Danglars, who was smiling on the procureur, and +embracing his wife. After a short time, the count saw +Bertuccio, who, until then, had been occupied on the other +side of the house, glide into an adjoining room. He went to +him. "What do you want, M. Bertuccio?" said he. +"Your excellency has not stated the number of guests." +"Ah, true." +"How many covers?" +"Count for yourself." +"Is every one here, your excellency?" +"Yes." +Bertuccio glanced through the door, which was ajar. The +count watched him. "Good heavens" he exclaimed. +"What is the matter?" said the count. +"That woman that woman" +"Which?" +"The one with a white dress and so many diamonds the fair +one." +"Madame Danglars?" +"I do not know her name but it is she, sir, it is she" +"Whom do you mean?" +"The woman of the garden she that was enciente she +who was walking while she waited for" Bertuccio stood at +the open door, with his eyes starting and his hair on end. +"Waiting for whom?" Bertuccio, without answering, pointed to +Villefort with something of the gesture Macbeth uses to +point out Banquo. "Oh, oh," he at length muttered, "do you +see?" +"What? Who?" +"Him" +"Him M. de Villefort, the king's attorney? Certainly I +see him." +"Then I did not kill him?" +"Really, I think you are going mad, good Bertuccio," said +the count. +"Then he is not dead?" +"No you see plainly he is not dead. Instead of striking +between the sixth and seventh left ribs, as your countrymen +do, you must have struck higher or lower, and life is very +tenacious in these lawyers, or rather there is no truth in +anything you have told me it was a fright of the +imagination, a dream of your fancy. You went to sleep full +of thoughts of vengeance they weighed heavily upon your +stomach you had the nightmare that's all. Come, calm +yourself, and reckon them up M. and Madame de Villefort, +two M. and Madame Danglars, four M. de ChateauRenaud, M. +Debray, M. Morrel, seven Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, +eight." +"Eight" repeated Bertuccio. +"Stop You are in a shocking hurry to be off you forget +one of my guests. Lean a little to the left. Stay look at +M. Andrea Cavalcanti, the young man in a black coat, looking +at Murillo's Madonna now he is turning." This time +Bertuccio would have uttered an exclamation, had not a look +from Monte Cristo silenced him. "Benedetto?" he muttered +"fatality" +"Halfpast six o'clock has just struck, M. Bertuccio," said +the count severely "I ordered dinner at that hour, and I do +not like to wait" and he returned to his guests, while +Bertuccio, leaning against the wall, succeeded in reaching +the diningroom. Five minutes afterwards the doors of the +drawingroom were thrown open, and Bertuccio appearing said, +with a violent effort, "The dinner waits." +The Count of Monte Cristo offered his arm to Madame de +Villefort. "M. de Villefort," he said, "will you conduct the +Baroness Danglars?" +Villefort complied, and they passed on to the diningroom. +Chapter +The Dinner. +It was evident that one sentiment affected all the guests on +entering the diningroom. Each one asked what strange +influence had brought them to this house, and yet +astonished, even uneasy though they were, they still felt +that they would not like to be absent. The recent events, +the solitary and eccentric position of the count, his +enormous, nay, almost incredible fortune, should have made +men cautious, and have altogether prevented ladies visiting +a house where there was no one of their own sex to receive +them and yet curiosity had been enough to lead them to +overleap the bounds of prudence and decorum. And all +present, even including Cavalcanti and his son, +notwithstanding the stiffness of the one and the +carelessness of the other, were thoughtful, on finding +themselves assembled at the house of this incomprehensible +man. Madame Danglars had started when Villefort, on the +count's invitation, offered his arm and Villefort felt that +his glance was uneasy beneath his gold spectacles, when he +felt the arm of the baroness press upon his own. None of +this had escaped the count, and even by this mere contact of +individuals the scene had already acquired considerable +interest for an observer. M. de Villefort had on the right +hand Madame Danglars, on his left Morrel. The count was +seated between Madame de Villefort and Danglars the other +seats were filled by Debray, who was placed between the two +Cavalcanti, and by ChateauRenaud, seated between Madame de +Villefort and Morrel. +The repast was magnificent Monte Cristo had endeavored +completely to overturn the Parisian ideas, and to feed the +curiosity as much as the appetite of his guests. It was an +Oriental feast that he offered to them, but of such a kind +as the Arabian fairies might be supposed to prepare. Every +delicious fruit that the four quarters of the globe could +provide was heaped in vases from China and jars from Japan. +Rare birds, retaining their most brilliant plumage, enormous +fish, spread upon massive silver dishes, together with every +wine produced in the Archipelago, Asia Minor, or the Cape, +sparkling in bottles, whose grotesque shape seemed to give +an additional flavor to the draught, all these, like one +of the displays with which Apicius of old gratified his +guests, passed in review before the eyes of the astonished +Parisians, who understood that it was possible to expend a +thousand louis upon a dinner for ten persons, but only on +the condition of eating pearls, like Cleopatra, or drinking +refined gold, like Lorenzo de' Medici. +Monte Cristo noticed the general astonishment, and began +laughing and joking about it. "Gentlemen," he said, "you +will admit that, when arrived at a certain degree of +fortune, the superfluities of life are all that can be +desired and the ladies will allow that, after having risen +to a certain eminence of position, the ideal alone can be +more exalted. Now, to follow out this reasoning, what is the +marvellous? that which we do not understand. What is it +that we really desire? that which we cannot obtain. Now, +to see things which I cannot understand, to procure +impossibilities, these are the study of my life. I gratify +my wishes by two means my will and my money. I take as +much interest in the pursuit of some whim as you do, M. +Danglars, in promoting a new railway line you, M. de +Villefort, in condemning a culprit to death you, M. Debray, +in pacifying a kingdom you, M. de ChateauRenaud, in +pleasing a woman and you, Morrel, in breaking a horse that +no one can ride. For example, you see these two fish one +brought fifty leagues beyond St. Petersburg, the other five +leagues from Naples. Is it not amusing to see them both on +the same table?" +"What are the two fish?" asked Danglars. +"M. ChateauRenaud, who has lived in Russia, will tell you +the name of one, and Major Cavalcanti, who is an Italian, +will tell you the name of the other." +"This one is, I think, a sterlet," said ChateauRenaud. +"And that one, if I mistake not, a lamprey." +"Just so. Now, M. Danglars, ask these gentlemen where they +are caught." +"Starlets," said ChateauRenaud, "are only found in the +Volga." +"And," said Cavalcanti, "I know that Lake Fusaro alone +supplies lampreys of that size." +"Exactly one comes from the Volga, and the other from Lake +Fusaro." +"Impossible" cried all the guests simultaneously. +"Well, this is just what amuses me," said Monte Cristo. "I +am like Nero cupitor impossibilium and that is what is +amusing you at this moment. This fish, which seems so +exquisite to you, is very likely no better than perch or +salmon but it seemed impossible to procure it, and here it +is." +"But how could you have these fish brought to France?" +"Oh, nothing more easy. Each fish was brought over in a cask +one filled with river herbs and weeds, the other with +rushes and lake plants they were placed in a wagon built on +purpose, and thus the sterlet lived twelve days, the lamprey +eight, and both were alive when my cook seized them, killing +one with milk and the other with wine. You do not believe +me, M. Danglars" +"I cannot help doubting," answered Danglars with his stupid +smile. +"Baptistin," said the count, "have the other fish brought in +the sterlet and the lamprey which came in the other +casks, and which are yet alive." Danglars opened his +bewildered eyes the company clapped their hands. Four +servants carried in two casks covered with aquatic plants, +and in each of which was breathing a fish similar to those +on the table. +"But why have two of each sort?" asked Danglars. +"Merely because one might have died," carelessly answered +Monte Cristo. +"You are certainly an extraordinary man," said Danglars +"and philosophers may well say it is a fine thing to be +rich." +"And to have ideas," added Madame Danglars. +"Oh, do not give me credit for this, madame it was done by +the Romans, who much esteemed them, and Pliny relates that +they sent slaves from Ostia to Rome, who carried on their +heads fish which he calls the mulus, and which, from the +description, must probably be the goldfish. It was also +considered a luxury to have them alive, it being an amusing +sight to see them die, for, when dying, they change color +three or four times, and like the rainbow when it +disappears, pass through all the prismatic shades, after +which they were sent to the kitchen. Their agony formed part +of their merit if they were not seen alive, they were +despised when dead." +"Yes," said Debray, "but then Ostia is only a few leagues +from Rome." +"True," said Monte Cristo "but what would be the use of +living eighteen hundred years after Lucullus, if we can do +no better than he could?" The two Cavalcanti opened their +enormous eyes, but had the good sense not to say anything. +"All this is very extraordinary," said ChateauRenaud +"still, what I admire the most, I confess, is the marvellous +promptitude with which your orders are executed. Is it not +true that you only bought this house five or six days ago?" +"Certainly not longer." +"Well, I am sure it is quite transformed since last week. If +I remember rightly, it had another entrance, and the +courtyard was paved and empty while today we have a +splendid lawn, bordered by trees which appear to be a +hundred years old." +"Why not? I am fond of grass and shade," said Monte Cristo. +"Yes," said Madame de Villefort, "the door was towards the +road before, and on the day of my miraculous escape you +brought me into the house from the road, I remember." +"Yes, madame," said Monte Cristo "but I preferred having an +entrance which would allow me to see the Bois de Boulogne +over my gate." +"In four days," said Morrel "it is extraordinary" +"Indeed," said ChateauRenaud, "it seems quite miraculous to +make a new house out of an old one for it was very old, and +dull too. I recollect coming for my mother to look at it +when M. de SaintMeran advertised it for sale two or three +years ago." +"M. de SaintMeran?" said Madame de Villefort "then this +house belonged to M. de SaintMeran before you bought it?" +"It appears so," replied Monte Cristo. +"Is it possible that you do not know of whom you purchased +it?" +"Quite so my steward transacts all this business for me." +"It is certainly ten years since the house had been +occupied," said ChateauRenaud, "and it was quite melancholy +to look at it, with the blinds closed, the doors locked, and +the weeds in the court. Really, if the house had not +belonged to the fatherinlaw of the procureur, one might +have thought it some accursed place where a horrible crime +had been committed." Villefort, who had hitherto not tasted +the three or four glasses of rare wine which were placed +before him, here took one, and drank it off. Monte Cristo +allowed a short time to elapse, and then said, "It is +singular, baron, but the same idea came across me the first +time I came here it looked so gloomy I should never have +bought it if my steward had not taken the matter into his +own hands. Perhaps the fellow had been bribed by the +notary." +"It is probable," stammered out Villefort, trying to smile +"but I can assure you that I had nothing to do with any such +proceeding. This house is part of Valentine's +marriageportion, and M. de SaintMeran wished to sell it +for if it had remained another year or two uninhabited it +would have fallen to ruin." It was Morrel's turn to become +pale. +"There was, above all, one room," continued Monte Cristo, +"very plain in appearance, hung with red damask, which, I +know not why, appeared to me quite dramatic." +"Why so?" said Danglars "why dramatic?" +"Can we account for instinct?" said Monte Cristo. "Are there +not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? why, we +cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections an idea which +carries you back to other times, to other places which, +very likely, have no connection with the present time and +place. And there is something in this room which reminds me +forcibly of the chamber of the Marquise de Ganges or +Desdemona. Stay, since we have finished dinner, I will show +it to you, and then we will take coffee in the garden. After +dinner, the play." Monte Cristo looked inquiringly at his +guests. Madame de Villefort rose, Monte Cristo did the same, +and the rest followed their example. Villefort and Madame +Danglars remained for a moment, as if rooted to their seats +they questioned each other with vague and stupid glances. +"Did you hear?" said Madame Danglars. + Elisabeth de Rossan, Marquise de Ganges, was one of the +famous women of the court of Louis XIV. where she was known +as "La Belle Provencale." She was the widow of the Marquise +de Castellane when she married de Ganges, and having the +misfortune to excite the enmity of her new brothersinlaw, +was forced by them to take poison and they finished her off +with pistol and dagger. Ed. +"We must go," replied Villefort, offering his arm. The +others, attracted by curiosity, were already scattered in +different parts of the house for they thought the visit +would not be limited to the one room, and that, at the same +time, they would obtain a view of the rest of the building, +of which Monte Cristo had created a palace. Each one went +out by the open doors. Monte Cristo waited for the two who +remained then, when they had passed, he brought up the +rear, and on his face was a smile, which, if they could have +understood it, would have alarmed them much more than a +visit to the room they were about to enter. They began by +walking through the apartments, many of which were fitted up +in the Eastern style, with cushions and divans instead of +beds, and pipes instead of furniture. The drawingrooms were +decorated with the rarest pictures by the old masters, the +boudoirs hung with draperies from China, of fanciful colors, +fantastic design, and wonderful texture. At length they +arrived at the famous room. There was nothing particular +about it, excepting that, although daylight had disappeared, +it was not lighted, and everything in it was oldfashioned, +while the rest of the rooms had been redecorated. These two +causes were enough to give it a gloomy aspect. "Oh." cried +Madame de Villefort, "it is really frightful." Madame +Danglars tried to utter a few words, but was not heard. Many +observations were made, the import of which was a unanimous +opinion that there was something sinister about the room. +"Is it not so?" asked Monte Cristo. "Look at that large +clumsy bed, hung with such gloomy, bloodcolored drapery +And those two crayon portraits, that have faded from the +dampness do they not seem to say, with their pale lips and +staring eyes, "We have seen'?" Villefort became livid +Madame Danglars fell into a long seat placed near the +chimney. "Oh," said Madame de Villefort, smiling, "are you +courageous enough to sit down upon the very seat perhaps +upon which the crime was committed?" Madame Danglars rose +suddenly. +"And then," said Monte Cristo, "this is not all." +"What is there more?" said Debray, who had not failed to +notice the agitation of Madame Danglars. +"Ah, what else is there?" said Danglars "for, at present, I +cannot say that I have seen anything extraordinary. What do +you say, M. Cavalcanti?" +"Ah," said he, "we have at Pisa, Ugolino's tower at +Ferrara, Tasso's prison at Rimini, the room of Francesca +and Paolo." +"Yes, but you have not this little staircase," said Monte +Cristo, opening a door concealed by the drapery. "Look at +it, and tell me what you think of it." +"What a wickedlooking, crooked staircase," said +ChateauRenaud with a smile. +"I do not know whether the wine of Chios produces +melancholy, but certainly everything appears to me black in +this house," said Debray. +Ever since Valentine's dowry had been mentioned, Morrel had +been silent and sad. "Can you imagine," said Monte Cristo, +"some Othello or Abbe de Ganges, one stormy, dark night, +descending these stairs step by step, carrying a load, which +he wishes to hide from the sight of man, if not from God?" +Madame Danglars half fainted on the arm of Villefort, who +was obliged to support himself against the wall. "Ah, +madame," cried Debray, "what is the matter with you? how +pale you look" +"It is very evident what is the matter with her," said +Madame de Villefort "M. de Monte Cristo is relating +horrible stories to us, doubtless intending to frighten us +to death." +"Yes," said Villefort, "really, count, you frighten the +ladies." +"What is the matter?" asked Debray, in a whisper, of Madame +Danglars. +"Nothing," she replied with a violent effort. "I want air, +that is all." +"Will you come into the garden?" said Debray, advancing +towards the back staircase. +"No, no," she answered, "I would rather remain here." +"Are you really frightened, madame?" said Monte Cristo. +"Oh, no, sir," said Madame Danglars "but you suppose scenes +in a manner which gives them the appearance of reality." +"Ah, yes," said Monte Cristo smiling "it is all a matter of +imagination. Why should we not imagine this the apartment of +an honest mother? And this bed with red hangings, a bed +visited by the goddess Lucina? And that mysterious +staircase, the passage through which, not to disturb their +sleep, the doctor and nurse pass, or even the father +carrying the sleeping child?" Here Madame Danglars, instead +of being calmed by the soft picture, uttered a groan and +fainted. "Madame Danglars is ill," said Villefort "it would +be better to take her to her carriage." +"Oh, mon Dieu," said Monte Cristo, "and I have forgotten my +smellingbottle" +"I have mine," said Madame de Villefort and she passed over +to Monte Cristo a bottle full of the same kind of red liquid +whose good properties the count had tested on Edward. +"Ah," said Monte Cristo, taking it from her hand. +"Yes," she said, "at your advice I have made the trial." +"And have you succeeded?" +"I think so." +Madame Danglars was carried into the adjoining room Monte +Cristo dropped a very small portion of the red liquid upon +her lips she returned to consciousness. "Ah," she cried, +"what a frightful dream" +Villefort pressed her hand to let her know it was not a +dream. They looked for M. Danglars, but, as he was not +especially interested in poetical ideas, he had gone into +the garden, and was talking with Major Cavalcanti on the +projected railway from Leghorn to Florence. Monte Cristo +seemed in despair. He took the arm of Madame Danglars, and +conducted her into the garden, where they found Danglars +taking coffee between the Cavalcanti. "Really, madame," he +said, "did I alarm you much?" +"Oh, no, sir," she answered "but you know, things impress +us differently, according to the mood of our minds." +Villefort forced a laugh. "And then, you know," he said, "an +idea, a supposition, is sufficient." +"Well," said Monte Cristo, "you may believe me if you like, +but it is my opinion that a crime has been committed in this +house." +"Take care," said Madame de Villefort, "the king's attorney +is here." +"Ah," replied Monte Cristo, "since that is the case, I will +take advantage of his presence to make my declaration." +"Your declaration?" said Villefort. +"Yes, before witnesses." +"Oh, this is very interesting," said Debray "if there +really has been a crime, we will investigate it." +"There has been a crime," said Monte Cristo. "Come this way, +gentlemen come, M. Villefort, for a declaration to be +available, should be made before the competent authorities." +He then took Villefort's arm, and, at the same time, holding +that of Madame Danglars under his own, he dragged the +procureur to the plantaintree, where the shade was +thickest. All the other guests followed. "Stay," said Monte +Cristo, "here, in this very spot" and he stamped upon the +ground, "I had the earth dug up and fresh mould put in, to +refresh these old trees well, my man, digging, found a box, +or rather, the ironwork of a box, in the midst of which was +the skeleton of a newly born infant." Monte Cristo felt the +arm of Madame Danglars stiffen, while that of Villefort +trembled. "A newly born infant," repeated Debray "this +affair becomes serious" +"Well," said ChateauRenaud, "I was not wrong just now then, +when I said that houses had souls and faces like men, and +that their exteriors carried the impress of their +characters. This house was gloomy because it was remorseful +it was remorseful because it concealed a crime." +"Who said it was a crime?" asked Villefort, with a last +effort. +"How? is it not a crime to bury a living child in a garden?" +cried Monte Cristo. "And pray what do you call such an +action?" +"But who said it was buried alive?" +"Why bury it there if it were dead? This garden has never +been a cemetery." +"What is done to infanticides in this country?" asked Major +Cavalcanti innocently. +"Oh, their heads are soon cut off," said Danglars. +"Ah, indeed?" said Cavalcanti. +"I think so am I not right, M. de Villefort?" asked Monte +Cristo. +"Yes, count," replied Villefort, in a voice now scarcely +human. +Monte Cristo, seeing that the two persons for whom he had +prepared this scene could scarcely endure it, and not +wishing to carry it too far, said, "Come, gentlemen, some +coffee, we seem to have forgotten it," and he conducted the +guests back to the table on the lawn. +"Indeed, count," said Madame Danglars, "I am ashamed to own +it, but all your frightful stories have so upset me, that I +must beg you to let me sit down" and she fell into a chair. +Monte Cristo bowed, and went to Madame de Villefort. "I +think Madame Danglars again requires your bottle," he said. +But before Madame de Villefort could reach her friend the +procureur had found time to whisper to Madame Danglars, "I +must speak to you." +"When?" +"Tomorrow." +"Where?" +"In my office, or in the court, if you like, that is the +surest place." +"I will be there." At this moment Madame de Villefort +approached. "Thanks, my dear friend," said Madame Danglars, +trying to smile "it is over now, and I am much better." +Chapter +The Beggar. +The evening passed on Madame de Villefort expressed a +desire to return to Paris, which Madame Danglars had not +dared to do, notwithstanding the uneasiness she experienced. +On his wife's request, M. de Villefort was the first to give +the signal of departure. He offered a seat in his landau to +Madame Danglars, that she might be under the care of his +wife. As for M. Danglars, absorbed in an interesting +conversation with M. Cavalcanti, he paid no attention to +anything that was passing. While Monte Cristo had begged the +smellingbottle of Madame de Villefort, he had noticed the +approach of Villefort to Madame Danglars, and he soon +guessed all that had passed between them, though the words +had been uttered in so low a voice as hardly to be heard by +Madame Danglars. Without opposing their arrangements, he +allowed Morrel, ChateauRenaud, and Debray to leave on +horseback, and the ladies in M. de Villefort's carriage. +Danglars, more and more delighted with Major Cavalcanti, had +offered him a seat in his carriage. Andrea Cavalcanti found +his tilbury waiting at the door the groom, in every respect +a caricature of the English fashion, was standing on tiptoe +to hold a large irongray horse. +Andrea had spoken very little during dinner he was an +intelligent lad, and he feared to utter some absurdity +before so many grand people, amongst whom, with dilating +eyes, he saw the king's attorney. Then he had been seized +upon by Danglars, who, with a rapid glance at the +stiffnecked old major and his modest son, and taking into +consideration the hospitality of the count, made up his mind +that he was in the society of some nabob come to Paris to +finish the worldly education of his heir. He contemplated +with unspeakable delight the large diamond which shone on +the major's little finger for the major, like a prudent +man, in case of any accident happening to his banknotes, +had immediately converted them into an available asset. +Then, after dinner, on the pretext of business, he +questioned the father and son upon their mode of living and +the father and son, previously informed that it was through +Danglars the one was to receive his , francs and the +other , livres annually, were so full of affability +that they would have shaken hands even with the banker's +servants, so much did their gratitude need an object to +expend itself upon. One thing above all the rest heightened +the respect, nay almost the veneration, of Danglars for +Cavalcanti. The latter, faithful to the principle of Horace, +nil admirari, had contented himself with showing his +knowledge by declaring in what lake the best lampreys were +caught. Then he had eaten some without saying a word more +Danglars, therefore, concluded that such luxuries were +common at the table of the illustrious descendant of the +Cavalcanti, who most likely in Lucca fed upon trout brought +from Switzerland, and lobsters sent from England, by the +same means used by the count to bring the lampreys from Lake +Fusaro, and the sterlet from the Volga. Thus it was with +much politeness of manner that he heard Cavalcanti pronounce +these words, "Tomorrow, sir, I shall have the honor of +waiting upon you on business." +"And I, sir," said Danglars, "shall be most happy to receive +you." Upon which he offered to take Cavalcanti in his +carriage to the Hotel des Princes, if it would not be +depriving him of the company of his son. To this Cavalcanti +replied by saying that for some time past his son had lived +independently of him, that he had his own horses and +carriages, and that not having come together, it would not +be difficult for them to leave separately. The major seated +himself, therefore, by the side of Danglars, who was more +and more charmed with the ideas of order and economy which +ruled this man, and yet who, being able to allow his son +, francs a year, might be supposed to possess a fortune +of , or , livres. +As for Andrea, he began, by way of showing off, to scold his +groom, who, instead of bringing the tilbury to the steps of +the house, had taken it to the outer door, thus giving him +the trouble of walking thirty steps to reach it. The groom +heard him with humility, took the bit of the impatient +animal with his left hand, and with the right held out the +reins to Andrea, who, taking them from him, rested his +polished boot lightly on the step. At that moment a hand +touched his shoulder. The young man turned round, thinking +that Danglars or Monte Cristo had forgotten something they +wished to tell him, and had returned just as they were +starting. But instead of either of these, he saw nothing but +a strange face, sunburnt, and encircled by a beard, with +eyes brilliant as carbuncles, and a smile upon the mouth +which displayed a perfect set of white teeth, pointed and +sharp as the wolf's or jackal's. A red handkerchief +encircled his gray head torn and filthy garments covered +his large bony limbs, which seemed as though, like those of +a skeleton, they would rattle as he walked and the hand +with which he leaned upon the young man's shoulder, and +which was the first thing Andrea saw, seemed of gigantic +size. Did the young man recognize that face by the light of +the lantern in his tilbury, or was he merely struck with the +horrible appearance of his interrogator? We cannot say but +only relate the fact that he shuddered and stepped back +suddenly. "What do you want of me?" he asked. +"Pardon me, my friend, if I disturb you," said the man with +the red handkerchief, "but I want to speak to you." +"You have no right to beg at night," said the groom, +endeavoring to rid his master of the troublesome intruder. +"I am not begging, my fine fellow," said the unknown to the +servant, with so ironical an expression of the eye, and so +frightful a smile, that he withdrew "I only wish to say two +or three words to your master, who gave me a commission to +execute about a fortnight ago." +"Come," said Andrea, with sufficient nerve for his servant +not to perceive his agitation, "what do you want? Speak +quickly, friend." +The man said, in a low voice "I wish I wish you to spare +me the walk back to Paris. I am very tired, and as I have +not eaten so good a dinner as you, I can scarcely stand." +The young man shuddered at this strange familiarity. "Tell +me," he said "tell me what you want?" +"Well, then, I want you to take me up in your fine carriage, +and carry me back." Andrea turned pale, but said nothing. +"Yes," said the man, thrusting his hands into his pockets, +and looking impudently at the youth "I have taken the whim +into my head do you understand, Master Benedetto?" +At this name, no doubt, the young man reflected a little, +for he went towards his groom, saying, "This man is right I +did indeed charge him with a commission, the result of which +he must tell me walk to the barrier, there take a cab, that +you may not be too late." The surprised groom retired. "Let +me at least reach a shady spot," said Andrea. +"Oh, as for that, I'll take you to a splendid place," said +the man with the handkerchief and taking the horse's bit he +led the tilbury where it was certainly impossible for any +one to witness the honor that Andrea conferred upon him. +"Don't think I want the glory of riding in your fine +carriage," said he "oh, no, it's only because I am tired, +and also because I have a little business to talk over with +you." +"Come, step in," said the young man. It was a pity this +scene had not occurred in daylight, for it was curious to +see this rascal throwing himself heavily down on the cushion +beside the young and elegant driver of the tilbury. Andrea +drove past the last house in the village without saying a +word to his companion, who smiled complacently, as though +wellpleased to find himself travelling in so comfortable a +vehicle. Once out of Auteuil, Andrea looked around, in order +to assure himself that he could neither be seen nor heard, +and then, stopping the horse and crossing his arms before +the man, he asked, "Now, tell me why you come to disturb +my tranquillity?" +"Let me ask you why you deceived me?" +"How have I deceived you?" +""How,' do you ask? When we parted at the Pont du Var, you +told me you were going to travel through Piedmont and +Tuscany but instead of that, you come to Paris." +"How does that annoy you?" +"It does not on the contrary, I think it will answer my +purpose." +"So," said Andrea, "you are speculating upon me?" +"What fine words he uses" +"I warn you, Master Caderousse, that you are mistaken." +"Well, well, don't be angry, my boy you know well enough +what it is to be unfortunate and misfortunes make us +jealous. I thought you were earning a living in Tuscany or +Piedmont by acting as facchino or cicerone, and I pitied you +sincerely, as I would a child of my own. You know I always +did call you my child." +"Come, come, what then?" +"Patience patience" +"I am patient, but go on." +"All at once I see you pass through the barrier with a +groom, a tilbury, and fine new clothes. You must have +discovered a mine, or else become a stockbroker." +"So that, as you confess, you are jealous?" +"No, I am pleased so pleased that I wished to +congratulate you but as I am not quite properly dressed, I +chose my opportunity, that I might not compromise you." +"Yes, and a fine opportunity you have chosen" exclaimed +Andrea "you speak to me before my servant." +"How can I help that, my boy? I speak to you when I can +catch you. You have a quick horse, a light tilbury, you are +naturally as slippery as an eel if I had missed you +tonight, I might not have had another chance." +"You see, I do not conceal myself." +"You are lucky I wish I could say as much, for I do conceal +myself and then I was afraid you would not recognize me, +but you did," added Caderousse with his unpleasant smile. +"It was very polite of you." +"Come," said Andrea, "what do you want?" +"You do not speak affectionately to me, Benedetto, my old +friend, that is not right take care, or I may become +troublesome." This menace smothered the young man's passion. +He urged the horse again into a trot. "You should not speak +so to an old friend like me, Caderousse, as you said just +now you are a native of Marseilles, I am" +"Do you know then now what you are?" +"No, but I was brought up in Corsica you are old and +obstinate, I am young and wilful. Between people like us +threats are out of place, everything should be amicably +arranged. Is it my fault if fortune, which has frowned on +you, has been kind to me?" +"Fortune has been kind to you, then? Your tilbury, your +groom, your clothes, are not then hired? Good, so much the +better," said Caderousse, his eyes sparkling with avarice. +"Oh, you knew that well enough before speaking to me," said +Andrea, becoming more and more excited. "If I had been +wearing a handkerchief like yours on my head, rags on my +back, and wornout shoes on my feet, you would not have +known me." +"You wrong me, my boy now I have found you, nothing +prevents my being as welldressed as any one, knowing, as I +do, the goodness of your heart. If you have two coats you +will give me one of them. I used to divide my soup and beans +with you when you were hungry." +"True," said Andrea. +"What an appetite you used to have Is it as good now?" +"Oh, yes," replied Andrea, laughing. +"How did you come to be dining with that prince whose house +you have just left?" +"He is not a prince simply a count." +"A count, and a rich one too, eh?" +"Yes but you had better not have anything to say to him, +for he is not a very goodtempered gentleman." +"Oh, be easy I have no design upon your count, and you +shall have him all to yourself. But," said Caderousse, again +smiling with the disagreeable expression he had before +assumed, "you must pay for it you understand?" +"Well, what do you want?" +"I think that with a hundred francs a month" +"Well?" +"I could live" +"Upon a hundred francs" +"Come you understand me but that with" +"With?" +"With a hundred and fifty francs I should be quite happy." +"Here are two hundred," said Andrea and he placed ten gold +louis in the hand of Caderousse. +"Good" said Caderousse. +"Apply to the steward on the first day of every month, and +you will receive the same sum." +"There now, again you degrade me." +"How so?" +"By making me apply to the servants, when I want to transact +business with you alone." +"Well, be it so, then. Take it from me then, and so long at +least as I receive my income, you shall be paid yours." +"Come, come I always said you were a fine fellow, and it is +a blessing when good fortune happens to such as you. But +tell me all about it?" +"Why do you wish to know?" asked Cavalcanti. +"What? do you again defy me?" +"No the fact is, I have found my father." +"What? a real father?" +"Yes, so long as he pays me" +"You'll honor and believe him that's right. What is his +name?" +"Major Cavalcanti." +"Is he pleased with you?" +"So far I have appeared to answer his purpose." +"And who found this father for you?" +"The Count of Monte Cristo." +"The man whose house you have just left?" +"Yes." +"I wish you would try and find me a situation with him as +grandfather, since he holds the moneychest" +"Well, I will mention you to him. Meanwhile, what are you +going to do?" +"I?" +"Yes, you." +"It is very kind of you to trouble yourself about me." +"Since you interest yourself in my affairs, I think it is +now my turn to ask you some questions." +"Ah, true. Well I shall rent a room in some respectable +house, wear a decent coat, shave every day, and go and read +the papers in a cafe. Then, in the evening, I shall go to +the theatre I shall look like some retired baker. That is +what I want." +"Come, if you will only put this scheme into execution, and +be steady, nothing could be better." +"Do you think so, M. Bossuet? And you what will you +become? A peer of France?" +"Ah," said Andrea, "who knows?" +"Major Cavalcanti is already one, perhaps but then, +hereditary rank is abolished." +"No politics, Caderousse. And now that you have all you +want, and that we understand each other, jump down from the +tilbury and disappear." +"Not at all, my good friend." +"How? Not at all?" +"Why, just think for a moment with this red handkerchief on +my head, with scarcely any shoes, no papers, and ten gold +napoleons in my pocket, without reckoning what was there +before making in all about two hundred francs, why, I +should certainly be arrested at the barriers. Then, to +justify myself, I should say that you gave me the money +this would cause inquiries, it would be found that I left +Toulon without giving due notice, and I should then be +escorted back to the shores of the Mediterranean. Then I +should become simply No. , and goodby to my dream of +resembling the retired baker No, no, my boy I prefer +remaining honorably in the capital." Andrea scowled. +Certainly, as he had himself owned, the reputed son of Major +Cavalcanti was a wilful fellow. He drew up for a minute, +threw a rapid glance around him, and then his hand fell +instantly into his pocket, where it began playing with a +pistol. But, meanwhile, Caderousse, who had never taken his +eyes off his companion, passed his hand behind his back, and +opened a long Spanish knife, which he always carried with +him, to be ready in case of need. The two friends, as we +see, were worthy of and understood one another. Andrea's +hand left his pocket inoffensively, and was carried up to +the red mustache, which it played with for some time. "Good +Caderousse," he said, "how happy you will be." +"I will do my best," said the innkeeper of the Pont du +Gard, shutting up his knife. +"Well, then, we will go into Paris. But how will you pass +through the barrier without exciting suspicion? It seems to +me that you are in more danger riding than on foot." +"Wait," said Caderousse, "we shall see." He then took the +greatcoat with the large collar, which the groom had left +behind in the tilbury, and put it on his back then he took +off Cavalcanti's hat, which he placed upon his own head, and +finally he assumed the careless attitude of a servant whose +master drives himself. +"But, tell me," said Andrea, "am I to remain bareheaded?" +"Pooh," said Caderousse "it is so windy that your hat can +easily appear to have blown off." +"Come, come enough of this," said Cavalcanti. +"What are you waiting for?" said Caderousse. "I hope I am +not the cause." +"Hush," said Andrea. They passed the barrier without +accident. At the first cross street Andrea stopped his +horse, and Caderousse leaped out. +"Well" said Andrea, "my servant's coat and my hat?" +"Ah," said Caderousse, "you would not like me to risk taking +cold?" +"But what am I to do?" +"You? Oh, you are young while I am beginning to get old. Au +revoir, Benedetto" and running into a court, he +disappeared. "Alas," said Andrea, sighing, "one cannot be +completely happy in this world" +Chapter +A Conjugal Scene. +At the Place Louis XV. the three young people separated +that is to say, Morrel went to the Boulevards, +ChateauRenaud to the Pont de la Revolution, and Debray to +the Quai. Most probably Morrel and ChateauRenaud returned +to their "domestic hearths," as they say in the gallery of +the Chamber in wellturned speeches, and in the theatre of +the Rue Richelieu in wellwritten pieces but it was not the +case with Debray. When he reached the wicket of the Louvre, +he turned to the left, galloped across the Carrousel, passed +through the Rue SaintRoch, and, issuing from the Rue de la +Michodiere, he arrived at M. Danglars' door just at the same +time that Villefort's landau, after having deposited him and +his wife at the Faubourg St. Honore, stopped to leave the +baroness at her own house. Debray, with the air of a man +familiar with the house, entered first into the court, threw +his bridle into the hands of a footman, and returned to the +door to receive Madame Danglars, to whom he offered his arm, +to conduct her to her apartments. The gate once closed, and +Debray and the baroness alone in the court, he asked, +"What was the matter with you, Hermine? and why were you so +affected at that story, or rather fable, which the count +related?" +"Because I have been in such shocking spirits all the +evening, my friend," said the baroness. +"No, Hermine," replied Debray "you cannot make me believe +that on the contrary, you were in excellent spirits when +you arrived at the count's. M. Danglars was disagreeable, +certainly, but I know how much you care for his illhumor. +Some one has vexed you I will allow no one to annoy you." +"You are deceived, Lucien, I assure you," replied Madame +Danglars "and what I have told you is really the case, +added to the illhumor you remarked, but which I did not +think it worth while to allude to." It was evident that +Madame Danglars was suffering from that nervous irritability +which women frequently cannot account for even to +themselves or that, as Debray had guessed, she had +experienced some secret agitation that she would not +acknowledge to any one. Being a man who knew that the former +of these symptoms was one of the inherent penalties of +womanhood, he did not then press his inquiries, but waited +for a more appropriate opportunity when he should again +interrogate her, or receive an avowal proprio motu. At the +door of her apartment the baroness met Mademoiselle +Cornelie, her confidential maid. "What is my daughter +doing?" asked Madame Danglars. +"She practiced all the evening, and then went to bed," +replied Mademoiselle Cornelie. +"Yet I think I hear her piano." +"It is Mademoiselle Louise d'Armilly, who is playing while +Mademoiselle Danglars is in bed." +"Well," said Madame Danglars, "come and undress me." They +entered the bedroom. Debray stretched himself upon a large +couch, and Madame Danglars passed into her dressingroom +with Mademoiselle Cornelie. "My dear M. Lucien," said Madame +Danglars through the door, "you are always complaining that +Eugenie will not address a word to you." +"Madame," said Lucien, playing with a little dog, who, +recognizing him as a friend of the house, expected to be +caressed, "I am not the only one who makes similar +complaints, I think I heard Morcerf say that he could not +extract a word from his betrothed." +"True," said Madame Danglars "yet I think this will all +pass off, and that you will one day see her enter your +study." +"My study?" +"At least that of the minister." +"Why so" +"To ask for an engagement at the Opera. Really, I never saw +such an infatuation for music it is quite ridiculous for a +young lady of fashion." Debray smiled. "Well," said he, "let +her come, with your consent and that of the baron, and we +will try and give her an engagement, though we are very poor +to pay such talent as hers." +"Go, Cornelie," said Madame Danglars, "I do not require you +any longer." +Cornelie obeyed, and the next minute Madame Danglars left +her room in a charming loose dress, and came and sat down +close to Debray. Then she began thoughtfully to caress the +little spaniel. Lucien looked at her for a moment in +silence. "Come, Hermine," he said, after a short time, +"answer candidly, something vexes you is it not so?" +"Nothing," answered the baroness. +And yet, as she could scarcely breathe, she rose and went +towards a lookingglass. "I am frightful tonight," she +said. Debray rose, smiling, and was about to contradict the +baroness upon this latter point, when the door opened +suddenly. M. Danglars appeared Debray reseated himself. At +the noise of the door Madame Danglars turned round, and +looked upon her husband with an astonishment she took no +trouble to conceal. "Goodevening, madame," said the banker +"goodevening, M. Debray." +Probably the baroness thought this unexpected visit +signified a desire to make up for the sharp words he had +uttered during the day. Assuming a dignified air, she turned +round to Debray, without answering her husband. "Read me +something, M. Debray," she said. Debray, who was slightly +disturbed at this visit, recovered himself when he saw the +calmness of the baroness, and took up a book marked by a +motherofpearl knife inlaid with gold. "Excuse me," said +the banker, "but you will tire yourself, baroness, by such +late hours, and M. Debray lives some distance from here." +Debray was petrified, not only to hear Danglars speak so +calmly and politely, but because it was apparent that +beneath outward politeness there really lurked a determined +spirit of opposition to anything his wife might wish to do. +The baroness was also surprised, and showed her astonishment +by a look which would doubtless have had some effect upon +her husband if he had not been intently occupied with the +paper, where he was looking to see the closing stock +quotations. The result was, that the proud look entirely +failed of its purpose. +"M. Lucien," said the baroness, "I assure you I have no +desire to sleep, and that I have a thousand things to tell +you this evening, which you must listen to, even though you +slept while hearing me." +"I am at your service, madame," replied Lucien coldly. +"My dear M. Debray," said the banker, "do not kill yourself +tonight listening to the follies of Madame Danglars, for +you can hear them as well tomorrow but I claim tonight +and will devote it, if you will allow me, to talk over some +serious matters with my wife." This time the blow was so +well aimed, and hit so directly, that Lucien and the +baroness were staggered, and they interrogated each other +with their eyes, as if to seek help against this aggression, +but the irresistible will of the master of the house +prevailed, and the husband was victorious. +"Do not think I wish to turn you out, my dear Debray," +continued Danglars "oh, no, not at all. An unexpected +occurrence forces me to ask my wife to have a little +conversation with me it is so rarely I make such a request, +I am sure you cannot grudge it to me." Debray muttered +something, bowed and went out, knocking himself against the +edge of the door, like Nathan in "Athalie." +"It is extraordinary," he said, when the door was closed +behind him, "how easily these husbands, whom we ridicule, +gain an advantage over us." +Lucien having left, Danglars took his place on the sofa, +closed the open book, and placing himself in a dreadfully +dictatorial attitude, he began playing with the dog but the +animal, not liking him as well as Debray, and attempting to +bite him, Danglars seized him by the skin of his neck and +threw him upon a couch on the other side of the room. The +animal uttered a cry during the transit, but, arrived at its +destination, it crouched behind the cushions, and stupefied +at such unusual treatment remained silent and motionless. +"Do you know, sir," asked the baroness, "that you are +improving? Generally you are only rude, but tonight you are +brutal." +"It is because I am in a worse humor than usual," replied +Danglars. Hermine looked at the banker with supreme disdain. +These glances frequently exasperated the pride of Danglars, +but this evening he took no notice of them. +"And what have I to do with your illhumor?" said the +baroness, irritated at the impassibility of her husband "do +these things concern me? Keep your illhumor at home in your +money boxes, or, since you have clerks whom you pay, vent it +upon them." +"Not so," replied Danglars "your advice is wrong, so I +shall not follow it. My money boxes are my Pactolus, as, I +think, M. Demoustier says, and I will not retard its course, +or disturb its calm. My clerks are honest men, who earn my +fortune, whom I pay much below their deserts, if I may value +them according to what they bring in therefore I shall not +get into a passion with them those with whom I will be in a +passion are those who eat my dinners, mount my horses, and +exhaust my fortune." +"And pray who are the persons who exhaust your fortune? +Explain yourself more clearly, I beg, sir." +"Oh, make yourself easy I am not speaking riddles, and +you will soon know what I mean. The people who exhaust my +fortune are those who draw out , francs in the course +of an hour." +"I do not understand you, sir," said the baroness, trying to +disguise the agitation of her voice and the flush of her +face. "You understand me perfectly, on the contrary," said +Danglars "but, if you will persist, I will tell you that I +have just lost , francs upon the Spanish loan." +"And pray," asked the baroness, "am I responsible for this +loss?" +"Why not?" +"Is it my fault you have lost , francs?" +"Certainly it is not mine." +"Once for all, sir," replied the baroness sharply, "I tell +you I will not hear cash named it is a style of language I +never heard in the house of my parents or in that of my +first husband." +"Oh, I can well believe that, for neither of them was worth +a penny." +"The better reason for my not being conversant with the +slang of the bank, which is here dinning in my ears from +morning to night that noise of jingling crowns, which are +constantly being counted and recounted, is odious to me. I +only know one thing I dislike more, which is the sound of +your voice." +"Really?" said Danglars. "Well, this surprises me, for I +thought you took the liveliest interest in all my affairs" +"I? What could put such an idea into your head?" +"Yourself." +"Ah? what next?" +"Most assuredly." +"I should like to know upon what occasion?" +"Oh, mon Dieu, that is very easily done. Last February you +were the first who told me of the Haitian funds. You had +dreamed that a ship had entered the harbor at Havre, that +this ship brought news that a payment we had looked upon as +lost was going to be made. I know how clearsighted your +dreams are I therefore purchased immediately as many shares +as I could of the Haitian debt, and I gained , francs +by it, of which , have been honestly paid to you. You +spent it as you pleased that was your business. In March +there was a question about a grant to a railway. Three +companies presented themselves, each offering equal +securities. You told me that your instinct, and although +you pretend to know nothing about speculations, I think on +the contrary, that your comprehension is very clear upon +certain affairs, well, you told me that your instinct led +you to believe the grant would be given to the company +called the Southern. I bought two thirds of the shares of +that company as you had foreseen, the shares trebled in +value, and I picked up a million, from which , francs +were paid to you for pinmoney. How have you spent this +, francs? it is no business of mine." +"When are you coming to the point?" cried the baroness, +shivering with anger and impatience. +"Patience, madame, I am coming to it." +"That's fortunate." +"In April you went to dine at the minister's. You heard a +private conversation respecting Spanish affairs on the +expulsion of Don Carlos. I bought some Spanish shares. The +expulsion took place and I pocketed , francs the day +Charles V. repassed the Bidassoa. Of these , francs +you took , crowns. They were yours, you disposed of +them according to your fancy, and I asked no questions but +it is not the less true that you have this year received +, livres." +"Well, sir, and what then?" +"Ah, yes, it was just after this that you spoiled +everything." +"Really, your manner of speaking" +"It expresses my meaning, and that is all I want. Well, +three days after that you talked politics with M. Debray, +and you fancied from his words that Don Carlos had returned +to Spain. Well, I sold my shares, the news got out, and I no +longer sold I gave them away, next day I find the news +was false, and by this false report I have lost , +francs." +"Well?" +"Well, since I gave you a fourth of my gains, I think you +owe me a fourth of my losses the fourth of , francs +is , francs." +"What you say is absurd, and I cannot see why M. Debray's +name is mixed up in this affair." +"Because if you do not possess the , francs I reclaim, +you must have lent them to your friends, and M. Debray is +one of your friends." +"For shame" exclaimed the baroness. +"Oh, let us have no gestures, no screams, no modern drama, +or you will oblige me to tell you that I see Debray leave +here, pocketing the whole of the , livres you have +handed over to him this year, while he smiles to himself, +saying that he has found what the most skilful players have +never discovered that is, a roulette where he wins +without playing, and is no loser when he loses." The +baroness became enraged. "Wretch" she cried, "will you dare +to tell me you did not know what you now reproach me with?" +"I do not say that I did know it, and I do not say that I +did not know it. I merely tell you to look into my conduct +during the last four years that we have ceased to be husband +and wife, and see whether it has not always been consistent. +Some time after our rupture, you wished to study music, +under the celebrated baritone who made such a successful +appearance at the Theatre Italien at the same time I felt +inclined to learn dancing of the danseuse who acquired such +a reputation in London. This cost me, on your account and +mine, , francs. I said nothing, for we must have peace +in the house and , francs for a lady and gentleman to +be properly instructed in music and dancing are not too +much. Well, you soon become tired of singing, and you take a +fancy to study diplomacy with the minister's secretary. You +understand, it signifies nothing to me so long as you pay +for your lessons out of your own cashbox. But today I find +you are drawing on mine, and that your apprenticeship may +cost me , francs per month. Stop there, madame, for +this cannot last. Either the diplomatist must give his +lessons gratis, and I will tolerate him, or he must never +set his foot again in my house do you understand, +madame?" +"Oh, this is too much," cried Hermine, choking, "you are +worse than despicable." +"But," continued Danglars, "I find you did not even pause +there" +"Insults" +"You are right let us leave these facts alone, and reason +coolly. I have never interfered in your affairs excepting +for your good treat me in the same way. You say you have +nothing to do with my cashbox. Be it so. Do as you like +with your own, but do not fill or empty mine. Besides, how +do I know that this was not a political trick, that the +minister enraged at seeing me in the opposition, and jealous +of the popular sympathy I excite, has not concerted with M. +Debray to ruin me?" +"A probable thing" +"Why not? Who ever heard of such an occurrence as this? a +false telegraphic despatch it is almost impossible for +wrong signals to be made as they were in the last two +telegrams. It was done on purpose for me I am sure of +it." +"Sir," said the baroness humbly, "are you not aware that the +man employed there was dismissed, that they talked of going +to law with him, that orders were issued to arrest him and +that this order would have been put into execution if he had +not escaped by flight, which proves that he was either mad +or guilty? It was a mistake." +"Yes, which made fools laugh, which caused the minister to +have a sleepless night, which has caused the minister's +secretaries to blacken several sheets of paper, but which +has cost me , francs." +"But, sir," said Hermine suddenly, "if all this is, as you +say, caused by M. Debray, why, instead of going direct to +him, do you come and tell me of it? Why, to accuse the man, +do you address the woman?" +"Do I know M. Debray? do I wish to know him? do I wish +to know that he gives advice? do I wish to follow it? +do I speculate? No you do all this, not I." +"Still it seems to me, that as you profit by it " +Danglars shrugged his shoulders. "Foolish creature," he +exclaimed. "Women fancy they have talent because they have +managed two or three intrigues without being the talk of +Paris But know that if you had even hidden your +irregularities from your husband, who has but the +commencement of the art for generally husbands will not +see you would then have been but a faint imitation of +most of your friends among the women of the world. But it +has not been so with me, I see, and always have seen, +during the last sixteen years. You may, perhaps, have hidden +a thought but not a step, not an action, not a fault, has +escaped me, while you flattered yourself upon your address, +and firmly believed you had deceived me. What has been the +result? that, thanks to my pretended ignorance, there is +none of your friends, from M. de Villefort to M. Debray, who +has not trembled before me. There is not one who has not +treated me as the master of the house, the only title I +desire with respect to you there is not one, in fact, who +would have dared to speak of me as I have spoken of them +this day. I will allow you to make me hateful, but I will +prevent your rendering me ridiculous, and, above all, I +forbid you to ruin me." +The baroness had been tolerably composed until the name of +Villefort had been pronounced but then she became pale, +and, rising, as if touched by a spring, she stretched out +her hands as though conjuring an apparition she then took +two or three steps towards her husband, as though to tear +the secret from him, of which he was ignorant, or which he +withheld from some odious calculation, odious, as all his +calculations were. "M. de Villefort What do you mean?" +"I mean that M. de Nargonne, your first husband, being +neither a philosopher nor a banker, or perhaps being both, +and seeing there was nothing to be got out of a king's +attorney, died of grief or anger at finding, after an +absence of nine months, that you had been enceinte six. I am +brutal, I not only allow it, but boast of it it is one +of the reasons of my success in commercial business. Why did +he kill himself instead of you? Because he had no cash to +save. My life belongs to my cash. M. Debray has made me lose +, francs let him bear his share of the loss, and we +will go on as before if not, let him become bankrupt for +the , livres, and do as all bankrupts do disappear. +He is a charming fellow, I allow, when his news is correct +but when it is not, there are fifty others in the world who +would do better than he." +Madame Danglars was rooted to the spot she made a violent +effort to reply to this last attack, but she fell upon a +chair thinking of Villefort, of the dinner scene, of the +strange series of misfortunes which had taken place in her +house during the last few days, and changed the usual calm +of her establishment to a scene of scandalous debate. +Danglars did not even look at her, though she did her best +to faint. He shut the bedroom door after him, without adding +another word, and returned to his apartments and when +Madame Danglars recovered from her halffainting condition, +she could almost believe that she had had a disagreeable +dream. +Chapter +Matrimonial Projects. +The day following this scene, at the hour the banker usually +chose to pay a visit to Madame Danglars on his way to his +office, his coupe did not appear. At this time, that is, +about halfpast twelve, Madame Danglars ordered her +carriage, and went out. Danglars, hidden behind a curtain, +watched the departure he had been waiting for. He gave +orders that he should be informed as soon as Madame Danglars +appeared but at two o'clock she had not returned. He then +called for his horses, drove to the Chamber, and inscribed +his name to speak against the budget. From twelve to two +o'clock Danglars had remained in his study, unsealing his +dispatches, and becoming more and more sad every minute, +heaping figure upon figure, and receiving, among other +visits, one from Major Cavalcanti, who, as stiff and exact +as ever, presented himself precisely at the hour named the +night before, to terminate his business with the banker. On +leaving the Chamber, Danglars, who had shown violent marks +of agitation during the sitting, and been more bitter than +ever against the ministry, reentered his carriage, and told +the coachman to drive to the Avenue des ChampsElysees, No. +Monte Cristo was at home only he was engaged with some one +and begged Danglars to wait for a moment in the +drawingroom. While the banker was waiting in the anteroom, +the door opened, and a man dressed as an abbe and doubtless +more familiar with the house than he was, came in and +instead of waiting, merely bowed, passed on to the farther +apartments, and disappeared. A minute after the door by +which the priest had entered reopened, and Monte Cristo +appeared. "Pardon me," said he, "my dear baron, but one of +my friends, the Abbe Busoni, whom you perhaps saw pass by, +has just arrived in Paris not having seen him for a long +time, I could not make up my mind to leave him sooner, so I +hope this will be sufficient reason for my having made you +wait." +"Nay," said Danglars, "it is my fault I have chosen my +visit at a wrong time, and will retire." +"Not at all on the contrary, be seated but what is the +matter with you? You look careworn really, you alarm me. +Melancholy in a capitalist, like the appearance of a comet, +presages some misfortune to the world." +"I have been in illluck for several days," said Danglars, +"and I have heard nothing but bad news." +"Ah, indeed?" said Monte Cristo. "Have you had another fall +at the Bourse?" +"No I am safe for a few days at least. I am only annoyed +about a bankrupt of Trieste." +"Really? Does it happen to be Jacopo Manfredi?" +"Exactly so. Imagine a man who has transacted business with +me for I don't know how long, to the amount of , or +, francs during the year. Never a mistake or delay +a fellow who paid like a prince. Well, I was a million in +advance with him, and now my fine Jacopo Manfredi suspends +payment" +"Really?" +"It is an unheardof fatality. I draw upon him for , +francs, my bills are returned unpaid, and, more than that, I +hold bills of exchange signed by him to the value of , +francs, payable at his correspondent's in Paris at the end +of this month. Today is the th. I present them but my +correspondent has disappeared. This, with my Spanish +affairs, made a pretty end to the month." +"Then you really lost by that affair in Spain?" +"Yes only , francs out of my cashbox nothing +more" +"Why, how could you make such a mistake such an old +stager?" +"Oh, it is all my wife's fault. She dreamed Don Carlos had +returned to Spain she believes in dreams. It is magnetism, +she says, and when she dreams a thing it is sure to happen, +she assures me. On this conviction I allow her to speculate, +she having her bank and her stockbroker she speculated and +lost. It is true she speculates with her own money, not +mine nevertheless, you can understand that when , +francs leave the wife's pocket, the husband always finds it +out. But do you mean to say you have not heard of this? Why, +the thing has made a tremendous noise." +"Yes, I heard it spoken of, but I did not know the details, +and then no one can be more ignorant than I am of the +affairs in the Bourse." +"Then you do not speculate?" +"I? How could I speculate when I already have so much +trouble in regulating my income? I should be obliged, +besides my steward, to keep a clerk and a boy. But touching +these Spanish affairs, I think that the baroness did not +dream the whole of the Don Carlos matter. The papers said +something about it, did they not?" +"Then you believe the papers?" +"I? not the least in the world only I fancied that the +honest Messager was an exception to the rule, and that it +only announced telegraphic despatches." +"Well, that's what puzzles me," replied Danglars "the news +of the return of Don Carlos was brought by telegraph." +"So that," said Monte Cristo, "you have lost nearly +,, francs this month." +"Not nearly, indeed that is exactly my loss." +"Diable," said Monte Cristo compassionately, "it is a hard +blow for a thirdrate fortune." +"Thirdrate," said Danglars, rather humble, "what do you +mean by that?" +"Certainly," continued Monte Cristo, "I make three +assortments in fortune firstrate, secondrate, and +thirdrate fortunes. I call those firstrate which are +composed of treasures one possesses under one's hand, such +as mines, lands, and funded property, in such states as +France, Austria, and England, provided these treasures and +property form a total of about a hundred millions I call +those secondrate fortunes, that are gained by manufacturing +enterprises, jointstock companies, viceroyalties, and +principalities, not drawing more than ,, francs, the +whole forming a capital of about fifty millions finally, I +call those thirdrate fortunes, which are composed of a +fluctuating capital, dependent upon the will of others, or +upon chances which a bankruptcy involves or a false telegram +shakes, such as banks, speculations of the day in fact, +all operations under the influence of greater or less +mischances, the whole bringing in a real or fictitious +capital of about fifteen millions. I think this is about +your position, is it not?" +"Confound it, yes" replied Danglars. +"The result, then, of six more such months as this would be +to reduce the thirdrate house to despair." +"Oh," said Danglars, becoming very pale, how you are running +on" +"Let us imagine seven such months," continued Monte Cristo, +in the same tone. "Tell me, have you ever thought that seven +times ,, francs make nearly twelve millions? No, you +have not well, you are right, for if you indulged in +such reflections, you would never risk your principal, which +is to the speculator what the skin is to civilized man. We +have our clothes, some more splendid than others, this is +our credit but when a man dies he has only his skin in the +same way, on retiring from business, you have nothing but +your real principal of about five or six millions, at the +most for thirdrate fortunes are never more than a fourth +of what they appear to be, like the locomotive on a railway, +the size of which is magnified by the smoke and steam +surrounding it. Well, out of the five or six millions which +form your real capital, you have just lost nearly two +millions, which must, of course, in the same degree diminish +your credit and fictitious fortune to follow out my simile, +your skin has been opened by bleeding, and this if repeated +three or four times will cause death so pay attention to +it, my dear Monsieur Danglars. Do you want money? Do you +wish me to lend you some?" +"What a bad calculator you are" exclaimed Danglars, calling +to his assistance all his philosophy and dissimulation. "I +have made money at the same time by speculations which have +succeeded. I have made up the loss of blood by nutrition. I +lost a battle in Spain, I have been defeated in Trieste, but +my naval army in India will have taken some galleons, and my +Mexican pioneers will have discovered some mine." +"Very good, very good But the wound remains and will reopen +at the first loss." +"No, for I am only embarked in certainties," replied +Danglars, with the air of a mountebank sounding his own +praises "to involve me, three governments must crumble to +dust." +"Well, such things have been." +"That there should be a famine" +"Recollect the seven fat and the seven lean kine." +"Or, that the sea should become dry, as in the days of +Pharaoh, and even then my vessels would become caravans." +"So much the better. I congratulate you, my dear M. +Danglars," said Monte Cristo "I see I was deceived, and +that you belong to the class of secondrate fortunes." +"I think I may aspire to that honor," said Danglars with a +smile, which reminded Monte Cristo of the sickly moons which +bad artists are so fond of daubing into their pictures of +ruins. "But, while we are speaking of business," Danglars +added, pleased to find an opportunity of changing the +subject, "tell me what I am to do for M. Cavalcanti." +"Give him money, if he is recommended to you, and the +recommendation seems good." +"Excellent he presented himself this morning with a bond of +, francs, payable at sight, on you, signed by Busoni, +and returned by you to me, with your indorsement of +course, I immediately counted him over the forty +banknotes." +Monte Cristo nodded his head in token of assent. "But that +is not all," continued Danglars "he has opened an account +with my house for his son." +"May I ask how much he allows the young man?" +"Five thousand francs per month." +"Sixty thousand francs per year. I thought I was right in +believing that Cavalcanti to be a stingy fellow. How can a +young man live upon , francs a month?" +"But you understand that if the young man should want a few +thousands more" +"Do not advance it the father will never repay it. You do +not know these ultramontane millionaires they are regular +misers. And by whom were they recommended to you?" +"Oh, by the house of Fenzi, one of the best in Florence." +"I do not mean to say you will lose, but, nevertheless, mind +you hold to the terms of the agreement." +"Would you not trust the Cavalcanti?" +"I? oh, I would advance six millions on his signature. I was +only speaking in reference to the secondrate fortunes we +were mentioning just now." +"And with all this, how unassuming he is I should never +have taken him for anything more than a mere major." +"And you would have flattered him, for certainly, as you +say, he has no manner. The first time I saw him he appeared +to me like an old lieutenant who had grown mouldy under his +epaulets. But all the Italians are the same they are like +old Jews when they are not glittering in Oriental splendor." +"The young man is better," said Danglars. +"Yes a little nervous, perhaps, but, upon the whole, he +appeared tolerable. I was uneasy about him." +"Why?" +"Because you met him at my house, just after his +introduction into the world, as they told me. He has been +travelling with a very severe tutor, and had never been to +Paris before." +"Ah, I believe noblemen marry amongst themselves, do they +not?" asked Danglars carelessly "they like to unite their +fortunes." +"It is usual, certainly but Cavalcanti is an original who +does nothing like other people. I cannot help thinking that +he has brought his son to France to choose a wife." +"Do you think so?" +"I am sure of it." +"And you have heard his fortune mentioned?" +"Nothing else was talked of only some said he was worth +millions, and others that he did not possess a farthing." +"And what is your opinion?" +"I ought not to influence you, because it is only my own +personal impression." +"Well, and it is that" +"My opinion is, that all these old podestas, these ancient +condottieri, for the Cavalcanti have commanded armies and +governed provinces, my opinion, I say, is, that they have +buried their millions in corners, the secret of which they +have transmitted only to their eldest sons, who have done +the same from generation to generation and the proof of +this is seen in their yellow and dry appearance, like the +florins of the republic, which, from being constantly gazed +upon, have become reflected in them." +"Certainly," said Danglars, "and this is further supported +by the fact of their not possessing an inch of land." +"Very little, at least I know of none which Cavalcanti +possesses, excepting his palace in Lucca." +"Ah, he has a palace?" said Danglars, laughing "come, that +is something." +"Yes and more than that, he lets it to the Minister of +Finance while he lives in a simple house. Oh, as I told you +before, I think the old fellow is very close." +"Come, you do not flatter him." +"I scarcely know him I think I have seen him three times in +my life all I know relating to him is through Busoni and +himself. He was telling me this morning that, tired of +letting his property lie dormant in Italy, which is a dead +nation, he wished to find a method, either in France or +England, of multiplying his millions, but remember, that +though I place great confidence in Busoni, I am not +responsible for this." +"Never mind accept my thanks for the client you have sent +me. It is a fine name to inscribe on my ledgers, and my +cashier was quite proud of it when I explained to him who +the Cavalcanti were. By the way, this is merely a simple +question, when this sort of people marry their sons, do they +give them any fortune?" +"Oh, that depends upon circumstances. I know an Italian +prince, rich as a gold mine, one of the noblest families in +Tuscany, who, when his sons married according to his wish, +gave them millions and when they married against his +consent, merely allowed them thirty crowns a month. Should +Andrea marry according to his father's views, he will, +perhaps, give him one, two, or three millions. For example, +supposing it were the daughter of a banker, he might take an +interest in the house of the fatherinlaw of his son then +again, if he disliked his choice, the major takes the key, +doublelocks his coffer, and Master Andrea would be obliged +to live like the sons of a Parisian family, by shuffling +cards or rattling the dice." +"Ah, that boy will find out some Bavarian or Peruvian +princess he will want a crown and an immense fortune." +"No these grand lords on the other side of the Alps +frequently marry into plain families like Jupiter, they +like to cross the race. But do you wish to marry Andrea, my +dear M. Danglars, that you are asking so many questions?" +"Ma foi," said Danglars, "it would not be a bad speculation, +I fancy, and you know I am a speculator." +"You are not thinking of Mademoiselle Danglars, I hope you +would not like poor Andrea to have his throat cut by +Albert?" +"Albert," repeated Danglars, shrugging his shoulders "ah, +well he would care very little about it, I think." +"But he is betrothed to your daughter, I believe?" +"Well, M. de Morcerf and I have talked about this marriage, +but Madame de Morcerf and Albert" +"You do not mean to say that it would not be a good match?" +"Indeed, I imagine that Mademoiselle Danglars is as good as +M. de Morcerf." +"Mademoiselle Danglars' fortune will be great, no doubt, +especially if the telegraph should not make any more +mistakes." +"Oh, I do not mean her fortune only but tell me" +"What?" +"Why did you not invite M. and Madame de Morcerf to your +dinner?" +"I did so, but he excused himself on account of Madame de +Morcerf being obliged to go to Dieppe for the benefit of sea +air." +"Yes, yes," said Danglars, laughing, "it would do her a +great deal of good." +"Why so?" +"Because it is the air she always breathed in her youth." +Monte Cristo took no notice of this illnatured remark. +"But still, if Albert be not so rich as Mademoiselle +Danglars," said the count, "you must allow that he has a +fine name?" +"So he has but I like mine as well." +"Certainly your name is popular, and does honor to the +title they have adorned it with but you are too intelligent +not to know that according to a prejudice, too firmly rooted +to be exterminated, a nobility which dates back five +centuries is worth more than one that can only reckon twenty +years." +"And for this very reason," said Danglars with a smile, +which he tried to make sardonic, "I prefer M. Andrea +Cavalcanti to M. Albert de Morcerf." +"Still, I should not think the Morcerfs would yield to the +Cavalcanti?" +"The Morcerfs Stay, my dear count," said Danglars "you +are a man of the world, are you not?" +"I think so." +"And you understand heraldry?" +"A little." +"Well, look at my coatofarms, it is worth more than +Morcerf's." +"Why so?" +"Because, though I am not a baron by birth, my real name is, +at least, Danglars." +"Well, what then?" +"While his name is not Morcerf." +"How? not Morcerf?" +"Not the least in the world." +"Go on." +"I have been made a baron, so that I actually am one he +made himself a count, so that he is not one at all." +"Impossible" +"Listen my dear count M. de Morcerf has been my friend, or +rather my acquaintance, during the last thirty years. You +know I have made the most of my arms, though I never forgot +my origin." +"A proof of great humility or great pride," said Monte +Cristo. +"Well, when I was a clerk, Morcerf was a mere fisherman." +"And then he was called" +"Fernand." +"Only Fernand?" +"Fernand Mondego." +"You are sure?" +"Pardieu, I have bought enough fish of him to know his +name." +"Then, why did you think of giving your daughter to him?" +"Because Fernand and Danglars, being both parvenus, both +having become noble, both rich, are about equal in worth, +excepting that there have been certain things mentioned of +him that were never said of me." +"What?" +"Oh, nothing" +"Ah, yes what you tell me recalls to mind something about +the name of Fernand Mondego. I have heard that name in +Greece." +"In conjunction with the affairs of Ali Pasha?" +"Exactly so." +"This is the mystery," said Danglars. "I acknowledge I would +have given anything to find it out." +"It would be very easy if you much wished it?" +"How so?" +"Probably you have some correspondent in Greece?" +"I should think so." +"At Yanina?" +"Everywhere." +"Well, write to your correspondent in Yanina, and ask him +what part was played by a Frenchman named Fernand Mondego in +the catastrophe of Ali Tepelini." +"You are right," exclaimed Danglars, rising quickly, "I will +write today." +"Do so." +"I will." +"And if you should hear of anything very scandalous" +"I will communicate it to you." +"You will oblige me." Danglars rushed out of the room, and +made but one leap into his coupe. +Chapter +At the Office of the King's Attorney. +Let us leave the banker driving his horses at their fullest +speed, and follow Madame Danglars in her morning excursion. +We have said that at halfpast twelve o'clock Madame +Danglars had ordered her horses, and had left home in the +carriage. She directed her course towards the Faubourg Saint +Germain, went down the Rue Mazarine, and stopped at the +Passage du PontNeuf. She descended, and went through the +passage. She was very plainly dressed, as would be the case +with a woman of taste walking in the morning. At the Rue +Guenegaud she called a cab, and directed the driver to go to +the Rue de Harlay. As soon as she was seated in the vehicle, +she drew from her pocket a very thick black veil, which she +tied on to her straw bonnet. She then replaced the bonnet, +and saw with pleasure, in a little pocketmirror, that her +white complexion and brilliant eyes were alone visible. The +cab crossed the PontNeuf and entered the Rue de Harlay by +the Place Dauphine the driver was paid as the door opened, +and stepping lightly up the stairs Madame Danglars soon +reached the Salle des PasPerdus. +There was a great deal going on that morning, and many +businesslike persons at the Palais businesslike persons +pay very little attention to women, and Madame Danglars +crossed the hall without exciting any more attention than +any other woman calling upon her lawyer. There was a great +press of people in M. de Villefort's antechamber, but +Madame Danglars had no occasion even to pronounce her name. +The instant she appeared the doorkeeper rose, came to her, +and asked her whether she was not the person with whom the +procureur had made an appointment and on her affirmative +answer being given, he conducted her by a private passage to +M. de Villefort's office. The magistrate was seated in an +armchair, writing, with his back towards the door he did +not move as he heard it open, and the doorkeeper pronounce +the words, "Walk in, madame," and then reclose it but no +sooner had the man's footsteps ceased, than he started up, +drew the bolts, closed the curtains, and examined every +corner of the room. Then, when he had assured himself that +he could neither be seen nor heard, and was consequently +relieved of doubts, he said, "Thanks, madame, thanks +for your punctuality" and he offered a chair to Madame +Danglars, which she accepted, for her heart beat so +violently that she felt nearly suffocated. +"It is a long time, madame," said the procureur, describing +a halfcircle with his chair, so as to place himself exactly +opposite to Madame Danglars, "it is a long time since I +had the pleasure of speaking alone with you, and I regret +that we have only now met to enter upon a painful +conversation." +"Nevertheless, sir, you see I have answered your first +appeal, although certainly the conversation must be much +more painful for me than for you." Villefort smiled +bitterly. +"It is true, then," he said, rather uttering his thoughts +aloud than addressing his companion, "it is true, then, +that all our actions leave their traces some sad, others +bright on our paths it is true that every step in our +lives is like the course of an insect on the sands it +leaves its track Alas, to many the path is traced by +tears." +"Sir," said Madame Danglars, "you can feel for my emotion, +can you not? Spare me, then, I beseech you. When I look at +this room, whence so many guilty creatures have departed, +trembling and ashamed, when I look at that chair before +which I now sit trembling and ashamed, oh, it requires +all my reason to convince me that I am not a very guilty +woman and you a menacing judge." Villefort dropped his head +and sighed. "And I," he said, "I feel that my place is not +in the judge's seat, but on the prisoner's stool." +"You?" said Madame Danglars. +"Yes, I." +"I think, sir, you exaggerate your situation," said Madame +Danglars, whose beautiful eyes sparkled for a moment. "The +paths of which you were just speaking have been traced by +all young men of ardent imaginations. Besides the pleasure, +there is always remorse from the indulgence of our passions, +and, after all, what have you men to fear from all this? the +world excuses, and notoriety ennobles you." +"Madame," replied Villefort, "you know that I am no +hypocrite, or, at least, that I never deceive without a +reason. If my brow be severe, it is because many misfortunes +have clouded it if my heart be petrified, it is that it +might sustain the blows it has received. I was not so in my +youth, I was not so on the night of the betrothal, when we +were all seated around a table in the Rue du Cours at +Marseilles. But since then everything has changed in and +about me I am accustomed to brave difficulties, and, in the +conflict to crush those who, by their own free will, or by +chance, voluntarily or involuntarily, interfere with me in +my career. It is generally the case that what we most +ardently desire is as ardently withheld from us by those who +wish to obtain it, or from whom we attempt to snatch it. +Thus, the greater number of a man's errors come before him +disguised under the specious form of necessity then, after +error has been committed in a moment of excitement, of +delirium, or of fear, we see that we might have avoided and +escaped it. The means we might have used, which we in our +blindness could not see, then seem simple and easy, and we +say, "Why did I not do this, instead of that?' Women, on the +contrary, are rarely tormented with remorse for the +decision does not come from you, your misfortunes are +generally imposed upon you, and your faults the results of +others' crimes." +"In any case, sir, you will allow," replied Madame Danglars, +"that, even if the fault were alone mine, I last night +received a severe punishment for it." +"Poor thing," said Villefort, pressing her hand, "it was too +severe for your strength, for you were twice overwhelmed, +and yet" +"Well?" +"Well, I must tell you. Collect all your courage, for you +have not yet heard all." +"Ah," exclaimed Madame Danglars, alarmed, "what is there +more to hear?" +"You only look back to the past, and it is, indeed, bad +enough. Well, picture to yourself a future more gloomy still +certainly frightful, perhaps sanguinary." The baroness +knew how calm Villefort naturally was, and his present +excitement frightened her so much that she opened her mouth +to scream, but the sound died in her throat. "How has this +terrible past been recalled?" cried Villefort "how is it +that it has escaped from the depths of the tomb and the +recesses of our hearts, where it was buried, to visit us +now, like a phantom, whitening our cheeks and flushing our +brows with shame?" +"Alas," said Hermine, "doubtless it is chance." +"Chance?" replied Villefort "No, no, madame, there is no +such thing as chance." +"Oh, yes has not a fatal chance revealed all this? Was it +not by chance the Count of Monte Cristo bought that house? +Was it not by chance he caused the earth to be dug up? Is it +not by chance that the unfortunate child was disinterred +under the trees? that poor innocent offspring of mine, +which I never even kissed, but for whom I wept many, many +tears. Ah, my heart clung to the count when he mentioned the +dear spoil found beneath the flowers." +"Well, no, madame, this is the terrible news I have to +tell you," said Villefort in a hollow voice "no, nothing +was found beneath the flowers there was no child +disinterred no. You must not weep, no, you must not +groan, you must tremble" +"What can you mean?" asked Madame Danglars, shuddering. +"I mean that M. de Monte Cristo, digging underneath these +trees, found neither skeleton nor chest, because neither of +them was there" +"Neither of them there?" repeated Madame Danglars, her +staring, wideopen eyes expressing her alarm. +"Neither of them there" she again said, as though striving +to impress herself with the meaning of the words which +escaped her. +"No," said Villefort, burying his face in his hands, "no, a +hundred times no" +"Then you did not bury the poor child there, sir? Why did +you deceive me? Where did you place it? tell me where?" +"There But listen to me listen and you will pity me +who has for twenty years alone borne the heavy burden of +grief I am about to reveal, without casting the least +portion upon you." +"Oh, you frighten me But speak I will listen." +"You recollect that sad night, when you were halfexpiring +on that bed in the red damask room, while I, scarcely less +agitated than you, awaited your delivery. The child was +born, was given to me motionless, breathless, voiceless +we thought it dead." Madame Danglars moved rapidly, as +though she would spring from her chair, but Villefort +stopped, and clasped his hands as if to implore her +attention. "We thought it dead," he repeated "I placed it +in the chest, which was to take the place of a coffin I +descended to the garden, I dug a hole, and then flung it +down in haste. Scarcely had I covered it with earth, when +the arm of the Corsican was stretched towards me I saw a +shadow rise, and, at the same time, a flash of light. I felt +pain I wished to cry out, but an icy shiver ran through my +veins and stifled my voice I fell lifeless, and fancied +myself killed. Never shall I forget your sublime courage, +when, having returned to consciousness, I dragged myself to +the foot of the stairs, and you, almost dying yourself, came +to meet me. We were obliged to keep silent upon the dreadful +catastrophe. You had the fortitude to regain the house, +assisted by your nurse. A duel was the pretext for my wound. +Though we scarcely expected it, our secret remained in our +own keeping alone. I was taken to Versailles for three +months I struggled with death at last, as I seemed to cling +to life, I was ordered to the South. Four men carried me +from Paris to Chalons, walking six leagues a day Madame de +Villefort followed the litter in her carriage. At Chalons I +was put upon the Saone, thence I passed on to the Rhone, +whence I descended, merely with the current, to Arles at +Arles I was again placed on my litter, and continued my +journey to Marseilles. My recovery lasted six months. I +never heard you mentioned, and I did not dare inquire for +you. When I returned to Paris, I learned that you, the widow +of M. de Nargonne, had married M. Danglars. +"What was the subject of my thoughts from the time +consciousness returned to me? Always the same always the +child's corpse, coming every night in my dreams, rising from +the earth, and hovering over the grave with menacing look +and gesture. I inquired immediately on my return to Paris +the house had not been inhabited since we left it, but it +had just been let for nine years. I found the tenant. I +pretended that I disliked the idea that a house belonging to +my wife's father and mother should pass into the hands of +strangers. I offered to pay them for cancelling the lease +they demanded , francs. I would have given , I +would have given ,. I had the money with me I made the +tenant sign the deed of resilition, and when I had obtained +what I so much wanted, I galloped to Auteuil. +"No one had entered the house since I had left it. It was +five o'clock in the afternoon I ascended into the red room, +and waited for night. There all the thoughts which had +disturbed me during my year of constant agony came back with +double force. The Corsican, who had declared the vendetta +against me, who had followed me from Nimes to Paris, who had +hid himself in the garden, who had struck me, had seen me +dig the grave, had seen me inter the child, he might +become acquainted with your person, nay, he might even +then have known it. Would he not one day make you pay for +keeping this terrible secret? Would it not be a sweet +revenge for him when he found that I had not died from the +blow of his dagger? It was therefore necessary, before +everything else, and at all risks, that I should cause all +traces of the past to disappear that I should destroy +every material vestige too much reality would always remain +in my recollection. It was for this I had annulled the lease +it was for this I had come it was for this I was +waiting. Night arrived I allowed it to become quite dark. I +was without a light in that room when the wind shook all +the doors, behind which I continually expected to see some +spy concealed, I trembled. I seemed everywhere to hear your +moans behind me in the bed, and I dared not turn around. My +heart beat so violently that I feared my wound would open. +At length, one by one, all the noises in the neighborhood +ceased. I understood that I had nothing to fear, that I +should neither be seen nor heard, so I decided upon +descending to the garden. +"Listen, Hermine I consider myself as brave as most men, +but when I drew from my breast the little key of the +staircase, which I had found in my coat that little key +we both used to cherish so much, which you wished to have +fastened to a golden ring when I opened the door, and saw +the pale moon shedding a long stream of white light on the +spiral staircase like a spectre, I leaned against the wall, +and nearly shrieked. I seemed to be going mad. At last I +mastered my agitation. I descended the staircase step by +step the only thing I could not conquer was a strange +trembling in my knees. I grasped the railings if I had +relaxed my hold for a moment, I should have fallen. I +reached the lower door. Outside this door a spade was placed +against the wall I took it, and advanced towards the +thicket. I had provided myself with a dark lantern. In the +middle of the lawn I stopped to light it, then I continued +my path. +"It was the end of November, all the verdure of the garden +had disappeared, the trees were nothing more than skeletons +with their long bony arms, and the dead leaves sounded on +the gravel under my feet. My terror overcame me to such a +degree as I approached the thicket, that I took a pistol +from my pocket and armed myself. I fancied continually that +I saw the figure of the Corsican between the branches. I +examined the thicket with my dark lantern it was empty. I +looked carefully around I was indeed alone, no noise +disturbed the silence but the owl, whose piercing cry seemed +to be calling up the phantoms of the night. I tied my +lantern to a forked branch I had noticed a year before at +the precise spot where I stopped to dig the hole. +"The grass had grown very thickly there during the summer, +and when autumn arrived no one had been there to mow it. +Still one place where the grass was thin attracted my +attention it evidently was there I had turned up the +ground. I went to work. The hour, then, for which I had been +waiting during the last year had at length arrived. How I +worked, how I hoped, how I struck every piece of turf, +thinking to find some resistance to my spade But no, I +found nothing, though I had made a hole twice as large as +the first. I thought I had been deceived had mistaken the +spot. I turned around, I looked at the trees, I tried to +recall the details which had struck me at the time. A cold, +sharp wind whistled through the leafless branches, and yet +the drops fell from my forehead. I recollected that I was +stabbed just as I was trampling the ground to fill up the +hole while doing so I had leaned against a laburnum behind +me was an artificial rockery, intended to serve as a +restingplace for persons walking in the garden in falling, +my hand, relaxing its hold of the laburnum, felt the +coldness of the stone. On my right I saw the tree, behind me +the rock. I stood in the same attitude, and threw myself +down. I rose, and again began digging and enlarging the +hole still I found nothing, nothing the chest was no +longer there" +"The chest no longer there?" murmured Madame Danglars, +choking with fear. +"Think not I contented myself with this one effort," +continued Villefort. "No I searched the whole thicket. I +thought the assassin, having discovered the chest, and +supposing it to be a treasure, had intended carrying it off, +but, perceiving his error, had dug another hole, and +deposited it there but I could find nothing. Then the idea +struck me that he had not taken these precautions, and had +simply thrown it in a corner. In the last case I must wait +for daylight to renew my search. I remained the room and +waited." +"Oh, heavens" +When daylight dawned I went down again. My first visit was +to the thicket. I hoped to find some traces which had +escaped me in the darkness. I had turned up the earth over a +surface of more than twenty feet square, and a depth of two +feet. A laborer would not have done in a day what occupied +me an hour. But I could find nothing absolutely nothing. +Then I renewed the search. Supposing it had been thrown +aside, it would probably be on the path which led to the +little gate but this examination was as useless as the +first, and with a bursting heart I returned to the thicket, +which now contained no hope for me." +"Oh," cried Madame Danglars, "it was enough to drive you +mad" +"I hoped for a moment that it might," said Villefort "but +that happiness was denied me. However, recovering my +strength and my ideas, "Why,' said I, "should that man have +carried away the corpse?'" +"But you said," replied Madame Danglars, "he would require +it as a proof." +"Ah, no, madame, that could not be. Dead bodies are not kept +a year they are shown to a magistrate, and the evidence is +taken. Now, nothing of the kind has happened." +"What then?" asked Hermine, trembling violently. +"Something more terrible, more fatal, more alarming for us +the child was, perhaps, alive, and the assassin may have +saved it" +Madame Danglars uttered a piercing cry, and, seizing +Villefort's hands, exclaimed, "My child was alive?" said +she "you buried my child alive? You were not certain my +child was dead, and you buried it? Ah" +Madame Danglars had risen, and stood before the procureur, +whose hands she wrung in her feeble grasp. "I know not I +merely suppose so, as I might suppose anything else," +replied Villefort with a look so fixed, it indicated that +his powerful mind was on the verge of despair and madness. +"Ah, my child, my poor child" cried the baroness, falling +on her chair, and stifling her sobs in her handkerchief. +Villefort, becoming somewhat reassured, perceived that to +avert the maternal storm gathering over his head, he must +inspire Madame Danglars with the terror he felt. "You +understand, then, that if it were so," said he, rising in +his turn, and approaching the baroness, to speak to her in a +lower tone, "we are lost. This child lives, and some one +knows it lives some one is in possession of our secret +and since Monte Cristo speaks before us of a child +disinterred, when that child could not be found, it is he +who is in possession of our secret." +"Just God, avenging God" murmured Madame Danglars. +Villefort's only answer was a stifled groan. +"But the child the child, sir?" repeated the agitated +mother. +"How I have searched for him," replied Villefort, wringing +his hands "how I have called him in my long sleepless +nights how I have longed for royal wealth to purchase a +million of secrets from a million of men, and to find mine +among them At last, one day, when for the hundredth time I +took up my spade, I asked myself again and again what the +Corsican could have done with the child. A child encumbers a +fugitive perhaps, on perceiving it was still alive, he had +thrown it into the river." +"Impossible" cried Madame Danglars "a man may murder +another out of revenge, but he would not deliberately drown +a child." +"Perhaps," continued Villefort, "he had put it in the +foundling hospital." +"Oh, yes, yes," cried the baroness "my child is there" +"I ran to the hospital, and learned that the same night +the night of the th of September a child had been +brought there, wrapped in part of a fine linen napkin, +purposely torn in half. This portion of the napkin was +marked with half a baron's crown, and the letter H." +"Truly, truly," said Madame Danglars, "all my linen is +marked thus Monsieur de Nargonne was a baronet, and my name +is Hermine. Thank God, my child was not then dead" +"No, it was not dead." +"And you can tell me so without fearing to make me die of +joy? Where is the child?" Villefort shrugged his shoulders. +"Do I know?" said he "and do you believe that if I knew I +would relate to you all its trials and all its adventures as +would a dramatist or a novel writer? Alas, no, I know not. A +woman, about six months after, came to claim it with the +other half of the napkin. This woman gave all the requisite +particulars, and it was intrusted to her." +"But you should have inquired for the woman you should have +traced her." +"And what do you think I did? I feigned a criminal process, +and employed all the most acute bloodhounds and skilful +agents in search of her. They traced her to Chalons, and +there they lost her." +"They lost her?" +"Yes, forever." Madame Danglars had listened to this recital +with a sigh, a tear, or a shriek for every detail. "And this +is all?" said she "and you stopped there?" +"Oh, no," said Villefort "I never ceased to search and to +inquire. However, the last two or three years I had allowed +myself some respite. But now I will begin with more +perseverance and fury than ever, since fear urges me, not my +conscience." +"But," replied Madame Danglars, "the Count of Monte Cristo +can know nothing, or he would not seek our society as he +does." +"Oh, the wickedness of man is very great," said Villefort, +"since it surpasses the goodness of God. Did you observe +that man's eyes while he was speaking to us?" +"No." +"But have you ever watched him carefully?" +"Doubtless he is capricious, but that is all one thing +alone struck me, of all the exquisite things he placed +before us, he touched nothing. I might have suspected he was +poisoning us." +"And you see you would have been deceived." +"Yes, doubtless." +"But believe me, that man has other projects. For that +reason I wished to see you, to speak to you, to warn you +against every one, but especially against him. Tell me," +cried Villefort, fixing his eyes more steadfastly on her +than he had ever done before, "did you ever reveal to any +one our connection?" +"Never, to any one." +"You understand me," replied Villefort, affectionately +"when I say any one, pardon my urgency, to any one +living I mean?" +"Yes, yes, I understand very well," ejaculated the baroness +"never, I swear to you." +"Were you ever in the habit of writing in the evening what +had transpired in the morning? Do you keep a journal?" +"No, my life has been passed in frivolity I wish to forget +it myself." +"Do you talk in your sleep?" +"I sleep soundly, like a child do you not remember?" The +color mounted to the baroness's face, and Villefort turned +awfully pale. +"It is true," said he, in so low a tone that he could hardly +be heard. +"Well?" said the baroness. +"Well, I understand what I now have to do," replied +Villefort. "In less than one week from this time I will +ascertain who this M. de Monte Cristo is, whence he comes, +where he goes, and why he speaks in our presence of children +that have been disinterred in a garden." Villefort +pronounced these words with an accent which would have made +the count shudder had he heard him. Then he pressed the hand +the baroness reluctantly gave him, and led her respectfully +back to the door. Madame Danglars returned in another cab to +the passage, on the other side of which she found her +carriage, and her coachman sleeping peacefully on his box +while waiting for her. +Chapter +A Summer Ball. +The same day during the interview between Madame Danglars +and the procureur, a travellingcarriage entered the Rue du +Helder, passed through the gateway of No. , and stopped in +the yard. In a moment the door was opened, and Madame de +Morcerf alighted, leaning on her son's arm. Albert soon left +her, ordered his horses, and having arranged his toilet, +drove to the Champs Elysees, to the house of Monte Cristo. +The count received him with his habitual smile. It was a +strange thing that no one ever appeared to advance a step in +that man's favor. Those who would, as it were, force a +passage to his heart, found an impassable barrier. Morcerf, +who ran towards him with open arms, was chilled as he drew +near, in spite of the friendly smile, and simply held out +his hand. Monte Cristo shook it coldly, according to his +invariable practice. "Here I am, dear count." +"Welcome home again." +"I arrived an hour since." +"From Dieppe?" +"No, from Treport." +"Indeed?" +"And I have come at once to see you." +"That is extremely kind of you," said Monte Cristo with a +tone of perfect indifference. +"And what is the news?" +"You should not ask a stranger, a foreigner, for news." +"I know it, but in asking for news, I mean, have you done +anything for me?" +"Had you commissioned me?" said Monte Cristo, feigning +uneasiness. +"Come, come," said Albert, "do not assume so much +indifference. It is said, sympathy travels rapidly, and when +at Treport, I felt the electric shock you have either been +working for me or thinking of me." +"Possibly," said Monte Cristo, "I have indeed thought of +you, but the magnetic wire I was guiding acted, indeed, +without my knowledge." +"Indeed? Pray tell me how it happened?" +"Willingly. M. Danglars dined with me." +"I know it to avoid meeting him, my mother and I left +town." +"But he met here M. Andrea Cavalcanti." +"Your Italian prince?" +"Not so fast M. Andrea only calls himself count." +"Calls himself, do you say?" +"Yes, calls himself." +"Is he not a count?" +"What can I know of him? He calls himself so. I, of course, +give him the same title, and every one else does likewise." +"What a strange man you are What next? You say M. Danglars +dined here?" +"Yes, with Count Cavalcanti, the marquis his father, Madame +Danglars, M. and Madame de Villefort, charming people, +M. Debray, Maximilian Morrel, and M. de ChateauRenaud." +"Did they speak of me?" +"Not a word." +"So much the worse." +"Why so? I thought you wished them to forget you?" +"If they did not speak of me, I am sure they thought about +me, and I am in despair." +"How will that affect you, since Mademoiselle Danglars was +not among the number here who thought of you? Truly, she +might have thought of you at home." +"I have no fear of that or, if she did, it was only in the +same way in which I think of her." +"Touching sympathy So you hate each other?" said the count. +"Listen," said Morcerf "if Mademoiselle Danglars were +disposed to take pity on my supposed martyrdom on her +account, and would dispense with all matrimonial formalities +between our two families, I am ready to agree to the +arrangement. In a word, Mademoiselle Danglars would make a +charming mistress but a wife diable" +"And this," said Monte Cristo, "is your opinion of your +intended spouse?" +"Yes it is rather unkind, I acknowledge, but it is true. +But as this dream cannot be realized, since Mademoiselle +Danglars must become my lawful wife, live perpetually with +me, sing to me, compose verses and music within ten paces of +me, and that for my whole life, it frightens me. One may +forsake a mistress, but a wife, good heavens There she +must always be and to marry Mademoiselle Danglars would be +awful." +"You are difficult to please, viscount." +"Yes, for I often wish for what is impossible." +"What is that?" +"To find such a wife as my father found." Monte Cristo +turned pale, and looked at Albert, while playing with some +magnificent pistols. +"Your father was fortunate, then?" said he. +"You know my opinion of my mother, count look at her, +still beautiful, witty, more charming than ever. For any +other son to have stayed with his mother for four days at +Treport, it would have been a condescension or a martyrdom, +while I return, more contented, more peaceful shall I say +more poetic than if I had taken Queen Mab or Titania as +my companion." +"That is an overwhelming demonstration, and you would make +every one vow to live a single life." +"Such are my reasons for not liking to marry Mademoiselle +Danglars. Have you ever noticed how much a thing is +heightened in value when we obtain possession of it? The +diamond which glittered in the window at Marle's or Fossin's +shines with more splendor when it is our own but if we are +compelled to acknowledge the superiority of another, and +still must retain the one that is inferior, do you not know +what we have to endure?" +"Worldling," murmured the count. +"Thus I shall rejoice when Mademoiselle Eugenie perceives I +am but a pitiful atom, with scarcely as many hundred +thousand francs as she has millions." Monte Cristo smiled. +"One plan occurred to me," continued Albert "Franz likes +all that is eccentric I tried to make him fall in love with +Mademoiselle Danglars but in spite of four letters, written +in the most alluring style, he invariably answered "My +eccentricity may be great, but it will not make me break my +promise.'" +"That is what I call devoted friendship, to recommend to +another one whom you would not marry yourself." Albert +smiled. "Apropos," continued he, "Franz is coming soon, +but it will not interest you you dislike him, I think?" +"I?" said Monte Cristo "my dear Viscount, how have you +discovered that I did not like M. Franz I like every one." +"And you include me in the expression every one many +thanks" +"Let us not mistake," said Monte Cristo "I love every one +as God commands us to love our neighbor, as Christians but +I thoroughly hate but a few. Let us return to M. Franz +d'Epinay. Did you say he was coming?" +"Yes summoned by M. de Villefort, who is apparently as +anxious to get Mademoiselle Valentine married as M. Danglars +is to see Mademoiselle Eugenie settled. It must be a very +irksome office to be the father of a grownup daughter it +seems to make one feverish, and to raise one's pulse to +ninety beats a minute until the deed is done." +"But M. d'Epinay, unlike you, bears his misfortune +patiently." +"Still more, he talks seriously about the matter, puts on a +white tie, and speaks of his family. He entertains a very +high opinion of M. and Madame de Villefort." +"Which they deserve, do they not?" +"I believe they do. M. de Villefort has always passed for a +severe but a just man." +"There is, then, one," said Monte Cristo, "whom you do not +condemn like poor Danglars?" +"Because I am not compelled to marry his daughter perhaps," +replied Albert, laughing. +"Indeed, my dear sir," said Monte Cristo, "you are +revoltingly foppish." +"I foppish? how do you mean?" +"Yes pray take a cigar, and cease to defend yourself, and +to struggle to escape marrying Mademoiselle Danglars. Let +things take their course perhaps you may not have to +retract." +"Bah," said Albert, staring. +"Doubtless, my dear viscount, you will not be taken by +force and seriously, do you wish to break off your +engagement?" +"I would give a hundred thousand francs to be able to do +so." +"Then make yourself quite easy. M. Danglars would give +double that sum to attain the same end." +"Am I, indeed, so happy?" said Albert, who still could not +prevent an almost imperceptible cloud passing across his +brow. "But, my dear count, has M. Danglars any reason?" +"Ah, there is your proud and selfish nature. You would +expose the selflove of another with a hatchet, but you +shrink if your own is attacked with a needle." +"But yet M. Danglars appeared" +"Delighted with you, was he not? Well, he is a man of bad +taste, and is still more enchanted with another. I know not +whom look and judge for yourself." +"Thank you, I understand. But my mother no, not my +mother I mistake my father intends giving a ball." +"A ball at this season?" +"Summer balls are fashionable." +"If they were not, the countess has only to wish it, and +they would become so." +"You are right You know they are select affairs those who +remain in Paris in July must be true Parisians. Will you +take charge of our invitation to Messieurs Cavalcanti?" +"When will it take place?" +"On Saturday." +"M. Cavalcanti's father will be gone." +"But the son will be here will you invite young M. +Cavalcanti?" +"I do not know him, viscount." +"You do not know him?" +"No, I never saw him until a few days since, and am not +responsible for him." +"But you receive him at your house?" +"That is another thing he was recommended to me by a good +abbe, who may be deceived. Give him a direct invitation, but +do not ask me to present him. If he were afterwards to marry +Mademoiselle Danglars, you would accuse me of intrigue, and +would be challenging me, besides, I may not be there +myself." +"Where?" +"At your ball." +"Why should you not be there?" +"Because you have not yet invited me." +"But I come expressly for that purpose." +"You are very kind, but I may be prevented." +"If I tell you one thing, you will be so amiable as to set +aside all impediments." +"Tell me what it is." +"My mother begs you to come." +"The Comtesse de Morcerf?" said Monte Cristo, starting. +"Ah, count," said Albert, "I assure you Madame de Morcerf +speaks freely to me, and if you have not felt those +sympathetic fibres of which I spoke just now thrill within +you, you must be entirely devoid of them, for during the +last four days we have spoken of no one else." +"You have talked of me?" +"Yes, that is the penalty of being a living puzzle" +"Then I am also a puzzle to your mother? I should have +thought her too reasonable to be led by imagination." +"A problem, my dear count, for every one for my mother as +well as others much studied, but not solved, you still +remain an enigma, do not fear. My mother is only astonished +that you remain so long unsolved. I believe, while the +Countess G takes you for Lord Ruthven, my mother +imagines you to be Cagliostro or the Count SaintGermain. +The first opportunity you have, confirm her in her opinion +it will be easy for you, as you have the philosophy of the +one and the wit of the other." +"I thank you for the warning," said the count "I shall +endeavor to be prepared for all suppositions." +"You will, then, come on Saturday?" +"Yes, since Madame de Morcerf invites me." +"You are very kind." +"Will M. Danglars be there?" +"He has already been invited by my father. We shall try to +persuade the great d'Aguesseau, M. de Villefort, to come, +but have not much hope of seeing him." +""Never despair of anything,' says the proverb." + Magistrate and orator of great eloquence chancellor of +France under Louis XV. +"Do you dance, count?" +"I dance?" +"Yes, you it would not be astonishing." +"That is very well before one is over forty. No, I do not +dance, but I like to see others do so. Does Madame de +Morcerf dance?" +"Never you can talk to her, she so delights in your +conversation." +"Indeed?" +"Yes, truly and I assure you. You are the only man of whom +I have heard her speak with interest." Albert rose and took +his hat the count conducted him to the door. "I have one +thing to reproach myself with," said he, stopping Albert on +the steps. "What is it?" +"I have spoken to you indiscreetly about Danglars." +"On the contrary, speak to me always in the same strain +about him." +"I am glad to be reassured on that point. Apropos, when do +you aspect M. d'Epinay?" +"Five or six days hence at the latest." +"And when is he to be married?" +"Immediately on the arrival of M. and Madame de +SaintMeran." +"Bring him to see me. Although you say I do not like him, I +assure you I shall be happy to see him." +"I will obey your orders, my lord." +"Goodby." +"Until Saturday, when I may expect you, may I not?" +"Yes, I promised you." The Count watched Albert, waving his +hand to him. When he had mounted his phaeton, Monte Cristo +turned, and seeing Bertuccio, "What news?" said he. "She +went to the Palais," replied the steward. +"Did she stay long there?" +"An hour and a half." +"Did she return home?" +"Directly." +"Well, my dear Bertuccio," said the count, "I now advise you +to go in quest of the little estate I spoke to you of in +Normandy." Bertuccio bowed, and as his wishes were in +perfect harmony with the order he had received, he started +the same evening. +Chapter +The Inquiry. +M. de Villefort kept the promise he had made to Madame +Danglars, to endeavor to find out how the Count of Monte +Cristo had discovered the history of the house at Auteuil. +He wrote the same day for the required information to M. de +Boville, who, from having been an inspector of prisons, was +promoted to a high office in the police and the latter +begged for two days time to ascertain exactly who would be +most likely to give him full particulars. At the end of the +second day M. de Villefort received the following note +"The person called the Count of Monte Cristo is an intimate +acquaintance of Lord Wilmore, a rich foreigner, who is +sometimes seen in Paris and who is there at this moment he +is also known to the Abbe Busoni, a Sicilian priest, of high +repute in the East, where he has done much good." +M. de Villefort replied by ordering the strictest inquiries +to be made respecting these two persons his orders were +executed, and the following evening he received these +details +"The abbe, who was in Paris only for a month, inhabited a +small twostoried house behind SaintSulpice there were two +rooms on each floor and he was the only tenant. The two +lower rooms consisted of a diningroom, with a table, +chairs, and sideboard of walnut, and a wainscoted +parlor, without ornaments, carpet, or timepiece. It was +evident that the abbe limited himself to objects of strict +necessity. He preferred to use the sittingroom upstairs, +which was more library than parlor, and was furnished with +theological books and parchments, in which he delighted to +bury himself for months at a time, according to his valet de +chambre. His valet looked at the visitors through a sort of +wicket and if their faces were unknown to him or displeased +him, he replied that the abbe was not in Paris, an answer +which satisfied most persons, because the abbe was known to +be a great traveller. Besides, whether at home or not, +whether in Paris or Cairo, the abbe always left something to +give away, which the valet distributed through this wicket +in his master's name. The other room near the library was a +bedroom. A bed without curtains, four armchairs, and a +couch, covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, composed, with a +prieDieu, all its furniture. Lord Wilmore resided in Rue +FontaineSaintGeorge. He was one of those English tourists +who consume a large fortune in travelling. He hired the +apartment in which he lived furnished, passed only a few +hours in the day there, and rarely slept there. One of his +peculiarities was never to speak a word of French, which he +however wrote with great facility." +The day after this important information had been given to +the king's attorney, a man alighted from a carriage at the +corner of the Rue Ferou, and rapping at an olivegreen door, +asked if the Abbe Busoni were within. "No, he went out early +this morning," replied the valet. +"I might not always be content with that answer," replied +the visitor, "for I come from one to whom everyone must be +at home. But have the kindness to give the Abbe Busoni" +"I told you he was not at home," repeated the valet. "Then +on his return give him that card and this sealed paper. Will +he be at home at eight o'clock this evening?" +"Doubtless, unless he is at work, which is the same as if he +were out." +"I will come again at that time," replied the visitor, who +then retired. +At the appointed hour the same man returned in the same +carriage, which, instead of stopping this time at the end of +the Rue Ferou, drove up to the green door. He knocked, and +it opened immediately to admit him. From the signs of +respect the valet paid him, he saw that his note had +produced a good effect. "Is the abbe at home?" asked he. +"Yes he is at work in his library, but he expects you, +sir," replied the valet. The stranger ascended a rough +staircase, and before a table, illumined by a lamp whose +light was concentrated by a large shade while the rest of +the apartment was in partial darkness, he perceived the abbe +in a monk's dress, with a cowl on his head such as was used +by learned men of the Middle Ages. "Have I the honor of +addressing the Abbe Busoni?" asked the visitor. +"Yes, sir," replied the abbe "and you are the person whom +M. de Boville, formerly an inspector of prisons, sends to me +from the prefect of police?" +"Exactly, sir." +"One of the agents appointed to secure the safety of Paris?" +"Yes, sir" replied the stranger with a slight hesitation, +and blushing. +The abbe replaced the large spectacles, which covered not +only his eyes but his temples, and sitting down motioned to +his visitor to do the same. "I am at your service, sir," +said the abbe, with a marked Italian accent. +"The mission with which I am charged, sir," replied the +visitor, speaking with hesitation, "is a confidential one on +the part of him who fulfils it, and him by whom he is +employed." The abbe bowed. "Your probity," replied the +stranger, "is so well known to the prefect that he wishes as +a magistrate to ascertain from you some particulars +connected with the public safety, to ascertain which I am +deputed to see you. It is hoped that no ties of friendship +or humane consideration will induce you to conceal the +truth." +"Provided, sir, the particulars you wish for do not +interfere with my scruples or my conscience. I am a priest, +sir, and the secrets of confession, for instance, must +remain between me and God, and not between me and human +justice." +"Do not alarm yourself, monsieur, we will duly respect your +conscience." +At this moment the abbe pressed down his side of the shade +and so raised it on the other, throwing a bright light on +the stranger's face, while his own remained obscured. +"Excuse me, abbe," said the envoy of the prefect of the +police, "but the light tries my eyes very much." The abbe +lowered the shade. "Now, sir, I am listening go on." +"I will come at once to the point. Do you know the Count of +Monte Cristo?" +"You mean Monsieur Zaccone, I presume?" +"Zaccone? is not his name Monte Cristo?" +"Monte Cristo is the name of an estate, or, rather, of a +rock, and not a family name." +"Well, be it so let us not dispute about words and since +M. de Monte Cristo and M. Zaccone are the same" +"Absolutely the same." +"Let us speak of M. Zaccone." +"Agreed." +"I asked you if you knew him?" +"Extremely well." +"Who is he?" +"The son of a rich shipbuilder in Malta." +"I know that is the report but, as you are aware, the +police does not content itself with vague reports." +"However," replied the abbe, with an affable smile, "when +that report is in accordance with the truth, everybody must +believe it, the police as well as all the rest." +"Are you sure of what you assert?" +"What do you mean by that question?" +"Understand, sir, I do not in the least suspect your +veracity I ask if you are certain of it?" +"I knew his father, M. Zaccone." +"Ah, indeed?" +"And when a child I often played with the son in the +timberyards." +"But whence does he derive the title of count?" +"You are aware that may be bought." +"In Italy?" +"Everywhere." +"And his immense riches, whence does he procure them?" +"They may not be so very great." +"How much do you suppose he possesses?" +"From one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand livres +per annum." +"That is reasonable," said the visitor "I have heard he had +three or four millions." +"Two hundred thousand per annum would make four millions of +capital." +"But I was told he had four millions per annum?" +"That is not probable." +"Do you know this Island of Monte Cristo?" +"Certainly, every one who has come from Palermo, Naples, or +Rome to France by sea must know it, since he has passed +close to it and must have seen it." +"I am told it is a delightful place?" +"It is a rock." +"And why has the count bought a rock?" +"For the sake of being a count. In Italy one must have +territorial possessions to be a count." +"You have, doubtless, heard the adventures of M. Zaccone's +youth?" +"The father's?" +"No, the son's." +"I know nothing certain at that period of his life, I lost +sight of my young comrade." +"Was he in the wars?" +"I think he entered the service." +"In what branch?" +"In the navy." +"Are you not his confessor?" +"No, sir I believe he is a Lutheran." +"A Lutheran?" +"I say, I believe such is the case, I do not affirm it +besides, liberty of conscience is established in France." +"Doubtless, and we are not now inquiring into his creed, but +his actions in the name of the prefect of police, I ask you +what you know of him. +"He passes for a very charitable man. Our holy father, the +pope, has made him a knight of Jesus Christ for the services +he rendered to the Christians in the East he has five or +six rings as testimonials from Eastern monarchs of his +services." +"Does he wear them?" +"No, but he is proud of them he is better pleased with +rewards given to the benefactors of man than to his +destroyers." +"He is a Quaker then?" +"Exactly, he is a Quaker, with the exception of the peculiar +dress." +"Has he any friends?" +"Yes, every one who knows him is his friend." +"But has he any enemies?" +"One only." +"What is his name?" +"Lord Wilmore." +"Where is he?" +"He is in Paris just now." +"Can he give me any particulars?" +"Important ones he was in India with Zaccone." +"Do you know his abode?" +"It's somewhere in the Chaussee d'Antin but I know neither +the street nor the number." +"Are you at variance with the Englishman?" +"I love Zaccone, and he hates him we are consequently not +friends." +"Do you think the Count of Monte Cristo had ever been in +France before he made this visit to Paris?" +"To that question I can answer positively no, sir, he had +not, because he applied to me six months ago for the +particulars he required, and as I did not know when I might +again come to Paris, I recommended M. Cavalcanti to him." +"Andrea?" +"No, Bartolomeo, his father." +"Now, sir, I have but one question more to ask, and I charge +you, in the name of honor, of humanity, and of religion, to +answer me candidly." +"What is it, sir?" +"Do you know with what design M. de Monte Cristo purchased a +house at Auteuil?" +"Certainly, for he told me." +"What is it, sir?" +"To make a lunatic asylum of it, similar to that founded by +the Count of Pisani at Palermo. Do you know about that +institution?" +"I have heard of it." +"It is a magnificent charity." Having said this, the abbe +bowed to imply he wished to pursue his studies. The visitor +either understood the abbe's meaning, or had no more +questions to ask he arose, and the abbe accompanied him to +the door. "You are a great almsgiver," said the visitor, +"and although you are said to be rich, I will venture to +offer you something for your poor people will you accept my +offering?" +"I thank you, sir I am only jealous in one thing, and that +is that the relief I give should be entirely from my own +resources." +"However" +"My resolution, sir, is unchangeable, but you have only to +search for yourself and you will find, alas, but too many +objects upon whom to exercise your benevolence." The abbe +once more bowed as he opened the door, the stranger bowed +and took his leave, and the carriage conveyed him straight +to the house of M. de Villefort. An hour afterwards the +carriage was again ordered, and this time it went to the Rue +FontaineSaintGeorge, and stopped at No. , where Lord +Wilmore lived. The stranger had written to Lord Wilmore, +requesting an interview, which the latter had fixed for ten +o'clock. As the envoy of the prefect of police arrived ten +minutes before ten, he was told that Lord Wilmore, who was +precision and punctuality personified, was not yet come in, +but that he would be sure to return as the clock struck. +The visitor was introduced into the drawingroom, which was +like all other furnished drawingrooms. A mantlepiece, with +two modern Sevres vases, a timepiece representing Cupid with +his bent bow, a mirror with an engraving on each side one +representing Homer carrying his guide, the other, Belisarius +begging a grayish paper red and black tapestry such +was the appearance of Lord Wilmore's drawingroom. It was +illuminated by lamps with groundglass shades which gave +only a feeble light, as if out of consideration for the +envoy's weak sight. After ten minutes' expectation the clock +struck ten at the fifth stroke the door opened and Lord +Wilmore appeared. He was rather above the middle height, +with thin reddish whiskers, light complexion and light hair, +turning rather gray. He was dressed with all the English +peculiarity, namely, in a blue coat, with gilt buttons and +high collar, in the fashion of , a white kerseymere +waistcoat, and nankeen pantaloons, three inches too short, +but which were prevented by straps from slipping up to the +knee. His first remark on entering was, "You know, sir, I +do not speak French?" +"I know you do not like to converse in our language," +replied the envoy. "But you may use it," replied Lord +Wilmore "I understand it." +"And I," replied the visitor, changing his idiom, "know +enough of English to keep up the conversation. Do not put +yourself to the slightest inconvenience." +"Aw?" said Lord Wilmore, with that tone which is only known +to natives of Great Britain. +The envoy presented his letter of introduction, which the +latter read with English coolness, and having finished, +"I understand," said he, "perfectly." +Then began the questions, which were similar to those which +had been addressed to the Abbe Busoni. But as Lord Wilmore, +in the character of the count's enemy, was less restrained +in his answers, they were more numerous he described the +youth of Monte Cristo, who he said, at ten years of age, +entered the service of one of the petty sovereigns of India +who make war on the English. It was there Wilmore had first +met him and fought against him and in that war Zaccone had +been taken prisoner, sent to England, and consigned to the +hulks, whence he had escaped by swimming. Then began his +travels, his duels, his caprices then the insurrection in +Greece broke out, and he had served in the Grecian ranks. +While in that service he had discovered a silver mine in the +mountains of Thessaly, but he had been careful to conceal it +from every one. After the battle of Navarino, when the Greek +government was consolidated, he asked of King Otho a mining +grant for that district, which was given him. Hence that +immense fortune, which, in Lord Wilmore's opinion, possibly +amounted to one or two millions per annum, a precarious +fortune, which might be momentarily lost by the failure of +the mine. +"But," asked the visitor, "do you know why he came to +France?" +"He is speculating in railways," said Lord Wilmore, "and as +he is an expert chemist and physicist, he has invented a new +system of telegraphy, which he is seeking to bring to +perfection." +"How much does he spend yearly?" asked the prefect. +"Not more than five or six hundred thousand francs," said +Lord Wilmore "he is a miser." Hatred evidently inspired the +Englishman, who, knowing no other reproach to bring on the +count, accused him of avarice. "Do you know his house at +Auteuil?" +"Certainly." +"What do you know respecting it?" +"Do you wish to know why he bought it?" +"Yes." +"The count is a speculator, who will certainly ruin himself +in experiments. He supposes there is in the neighborhood of +the house he has bought a mineral spring equal to those at +Bagneres, Luchon, and Cauterets. He is going to turn his +house into a Badhaus, as the Germans term it. He has already +dug up all the garden two or three times to find the famous +spring, and, being unsuccessful, he will soon purchase all +the contiguous houses. Now, as I dislike him, and hope his +railway, his electric telegraph, or his search for baths, +will ruin him, I am watching for his discomfiture, which +must soon take place." +"What was the cause of your quarrel?" +"When he was in England he seduced the wife of one of my +friends." +"Why do you not seek revenge?" +"I have already fought three duels with him," said the +Englishman, "the first with the pistol, the second with the +sword, and the third with the sabre." +"And what was the result of those duels?" +"The first time, he broke my arm the second, he wounded me +in the breast and the third time, made this large wound." +The Englishman turned down his shirtcollar, and showed a +scar, whose redness proved it to be a recent one. "So that, +you see, there is a deadly feud between us." +"But," said the envoy, "you do not go about it in the right +way to kill him, if I understand you correctly." +"Aw?" said the Englishman, "I practice shooting every day, +and every other day Grisier comes to my house." +This was all the visitor wished to ascertain, or, rather, +all the Englishman appeared to know. The agent arose, and +having bowed to Lord Wilmore, who returned his salutation +with the stiff politeness of the English, he retired. Lord +Wilmore, having heard the door close after him, returned to +his bedroom, where with one hand he pulled off his light +hair, his red whiskers, his false jaw, and his wound, to +resume the black hair, dark complexion, and pearly teeth of +the Count of Monte Cristo. It was M. de Villefort, and not +the prefect, who returned to the house of M. de Villefort. +The procureur felt more at ease, although he had learned +nothing really satisfactory, and, for the first time since +the dinnerparty at Auteuil, he slept soundly. +Chapter +The Ball. +It was in the warmest days of July, when in due course of +time the Saturday arrived upon which the ball was to take +place at M. de Morcerf's. It was ten o'clock at night the +branches of the great trees in the garden of the count's +house stood out boldly against the azure canopy of heaven, +which was studded with golden stars, but where the last +fleeting clouds of a vanishing storm yet lingered. From the +apartments on the groundfloor might be heard the sound of +music, with the whirl of the waltz and galop, while +brilliant streams of light shone through the openings of the +Venetian blinds. At this moment the garden was only occupied +by about ten servants, who had just received orders from +their mistress to prepare the supper, the serenity of the +weather continuing to increase. Until now, it had been +undecided whether the supper should take place in the +diningroom, or under a long tent erected on the lawn, but +the beautiful blue sky, studded with stars, had settled the +question in favor of the lawn. The gardens were illuminated +with colored lanterns, according to the Italian custom, and, +as is usual in countries where the luxuries of the table +the rarest of all luxuries in their complete form are +well understood, the suppertable was loaded with waxlights +and flowers. +At the time the Countess of Morcerf returned to the rooms, +after giving her orders, many guests were arriving, more +attracted by the charming hospitality of the countess than +by the distinguished position of the count for, owing to +the good taste of Mercedes, one was sure of finding some +devices at her entertainment worthy of describing, or even +copying in case of need. Madame Danglars, in whom the events +we have related had caused deep anxiety, had hesitated about +going to Madame de Morcerf's, when during the morning her +carriage happened to meet that of Villefort. The latter made +a sign, and when the carriages had drawn close together, +said, "You are going to Madame de Morcerf's, are you +not?" +"No," replied Madame Danglars, "I am too ill." +"You are wrong," replied Villefort, significantly "it is +important that you should be seen there." +"Do you think so?" asked the baroness. +"I do." +"In that case I will go." And the two carriages passed on +towards their different destinations. Madame Danglars +therefore came, not only beautiful in person, but radiant +with splendor she entered by one door at the time when +Mercedes appeared at the door. The countess took Albert to +meet Madame Danglars. He approached, paid her some well +merited compliments on her toilet, and offered his arm to +conduct her to a seat. Albert looked around him. "You are +looking for my daughter?" said the baroness, smiling. +"I confess it," replied Albert. "Could you have been so +cruel as not to bring her?" +"Calm yourself. She has met Mademoiselle de Villefort, and +has taken her arm see, they are following us, both in white +dresses, one with a bouquet of camellias, the other with one +of myosotis. But tell me" +"Well, what do you wish to know?" +"Will not the Count of Monte Cristo be here tonight?" +"Seventeen" replied Albert. +"What do you mean?" +"I only mean that the count seems the rage," replied the +viscount, smiling, "and that you are the seventeenth person +that has asked me the same question. The count is in +fashion I congratulate him upon it." +"And have you replied to every one as you have to me?" +"Ah, to be sure, I have not answered you be satisfied, we +shall have this "lion' we are among the privileged ones." +"Were you at the opera yesterday?" +"No." +"He was there." +"Ah, indeed? And did the eccentric person commit any new +originality?" +"Can he be seen without doing so? Elssler was dancing in the +"Diable Boiteux' the Greek princess was in ecstasies. After +the cachucha he placed a magnificent ring on the stem of a +bouquet, and threw it to the charming danseuse, who, in the +third act, to do honor to the gift, reappeared with it on +her finger. And the Greek princess, will she be here?" +"No, you will be deprived of that pleasure her position in +the count's establishment is not sufficiently understood." +"Wait leave me here, and go and speak to Madame de +Villefort, who is trying to attract your attention." +Albert bowed to Madame Danglars, and advanced towards Madame +de Villefort, whose lips opened as he approached. "I wager +anything," said Albert, interrupting her, "that I know what +you were about to say." +"Well, what is it?" +"If I guess rightly, will you confess it?" +"Yes." +"On your honor?" +"On my honor." +"You were going to ask me if the Count of Monte Cristo had +arrived, or was expected." +"Not at all. It is not of him that I am now thinking. I was +going to ask you if you had received any news of Monsieur +Franz." +"Yes, yesterday." +"What did he tell you?" +"That he was leaving at the same time as his letter." +"Well, now then, the count?" +"The count will come, of that you may be satisfied." +"You know that he has another name besides Monte Cristo?" +"No, I did not know it." +"Monte Cristo is the name of an island, and he has a family name." +"I never heard it." +"Well, then, I am better informed than you his name is Zaccone." +"It is possible." +"He is a Maltese." +"That is also possible. +"The son of a shipowner." +"Really, you should relate all this aloud, you would have +the greatest success." +"He served in India, discovered a mine in Thessaly, and +comes to Paris to establish a mineral watercure at +Auteuil." +"Well, I'm sure," said Morcerf, "this is indeed news Am I +allowed to repeat it?" +"Yes, but cautiously, tell one thing at a time, and do not +say I told you." +"Why so?" +"Because it is a secret just discovered." +"By whom?" +"The police." +"Then the news originated" +"At the prefect's last night. Paris, you can understand, is +astonished at the sight of such unusual splendor, and the +police have made inquiries." +"Well, well Nothing more is wanting than to arrest the +count as a vagabond, on the pretext of his being too rich." +"Indeed, that doubtless would have happened if his +credentials had not been so favorable." +"Poor count And is he aware of the danger he has been in?" +"I think not." +"Then it will be but charitable to inform him. When he +arrives, I will not fail to do so." +Just then, a handsome young man, with bright eyes, black +hair, and glossy mustache, respectfully bowed to Madame de +Villefort. Albert extended his hand. "Madame," said Albert, +"allow me to present to you M. Maximilian Morrel, captain of +Spahis, one of our best, and, above all, of our bravest +officers." +"I have already had the pleasure of meeting this gentleman +at Auteuil, at the house of the Count of Monte Cristo," +replied Madame de Villefort, turning away with marked +coldness of manner. This answer, and especially the tone in +which it was uttered, chilled the heart of poor Morrel. But +a recompense was in store for him turning around, he saw +near the door a beautiful fair face, whose large blue eyes +were, without any marked expression, fixed upon him, while +the bouquet of myosotis was gently raised to her lips. +The salutation was so well understood that Morrel, with the +same expression in his eyes, placed his handkerchief to his +mouth and these two living statues, whose hearts beat so +violently under their marble aspect, separated from each +other by the whole length of the room, forgot themselves for +a moment, or rather forgot the world in their mutual +contemplation. They might have remained much longer lost in +one another, without any one noticing their abstraction. The +Count of Monte Cristo had just entered. +We have already said that there was something in the count +which attracted universal attention wherever he appeared. It +was not the coat, unexceptional in its cut, though simple +and unornamented it was not the plain white waistcoat it +was not the trousers, that displayed the foot so perfectly +formed it was none of these things that attracted the +attention, it was his pale complexion, his waving black +hair, his calm and serene expression, his dark and +melancholy eye, his mouth, chiselled with such marvellous +delicacy, which so easily expressed such high disdain, +these were what fixed the attention of all upon him. Many +men might have been handsomer, but certainly there could be +none whose appearance was more significant, if the +expression may be used. Everything about the count seemed to +have its meaning, for the constant habit of thought which he +had acquired had given an ease and vigor to the expression +of his face, and even to the most trifling gesture, scarcely +to be understood. Yet the Parisian world is so strange, that +even all this might not have won attention had there not +been connected with it a mysterious story gilded by an +immense fortune. +Meanwhile he advanced through the assemblage of guests under +a battery of curious glances towards Madame de Morcerf, who, +standing before a mantlepiece ornamented with flowers, had +seen his entrance in a lookingglass placed opposite the +door, and was prepared to receive him. She turned towards +him with a serene smile just at the moment he was bowing to +her. No doubt she fancied the count would speak to her, +while on his side the count thought she was about to address +him but both remained silent, and after a mere bow, Monte +Cristo directed his steps to Albert, who received him +cordially. "Have you seen my mother?" asked Albert. +"I have just had the pleasure," replied the count "but I +have not seen your father." +"See, he is down there, talking politics with that little +group of great geniuses." +"Indeed?" said Monte Cristo "and so those gentlemen down +there are men of great talent. I should not have guessed it. +And for what kind of talent are they celebrated? You know +there are different sorts." +"That tall, harshlooking man is very learned, he +discovered, in the neighborhood of Rome, a kind of lizard +with a vertebra more than lizards usually have, and he +immediately laid his discovery before the Institute. The +thing was discussed for a long time, but finally decided in +his favor. I can assure you the vertebra made a great noise +in the learned world, and the gentleman, who was only a +knight of the Legion of Honor, was made an officer." +"Come," said Monte Cristo, "this cross seems to me to be +wisely awarded. I suppose, had he found another additional +vertebra, they would have made him a commander." +"Very likely," said Albert. +"And who can that person be who has taken it into his head +to wrap himself up in a blue coat embroidered with green?" +"Oh, that coat is not his own idea it is the Republic's, +which deputed David to devise a uniform for the +Academicians." + Louis David, a famous French painter. +"Indeed?" said Monte Cristo "so this gentleman is an +Academician?" +"Within the last week he has been made one of the learned +assembly." +"And what is his especial talent?" +"His talent? I believe he thrusts pins through the heads of +rabbits, he makes fowls eat madder, and punches the spinal +marrow out of dogs with whalebone." +"And he is made a member of the Academy of Sciences for +this?" +"No of the French Academy." +"But what has the French Academy to do with all this?" +"I was going to tell you. It seems" +"That his experiments have very considerably advanced the +cause of science, doubtless?" +"No that his style of writing is very good." +"This must be very flattering to the feelings of the rabbits +into whose heads he has thrust pins, to the fowls whose +bones he has dyed red, and to the dogs whose spinal marrow +he has punched out?" +Albert laughed. +"And the other one?" demanded the count. +"That one?" +"Yes, the third." +"The one in the dark blue coat?" +"Yes." +"He is a colleague of the count, and one of the most active +opponents to the idea of providing the Chamber of Peers with +a uniform. He was very successful upon that question. He +stood badly with the Liberal papers, but his noble +opposition to the wishes of the court is now getting him +into favor with the journalists. They talk of making him an +ambassador." +"And what are his claims to the peerage?" +"He has composed two or three comic operas, written four or +five articles in the Siecle, and voted five or six years on +the ministerial side." +"Bravo, Viscount," said Monte Cristo, smiling "you are a +delightful cicerone. And now you will do me a favor, will +you not?" +"What is it?" +"Do not introduce me to any of these gentlemen and should +they wish it, you will warn me." Just then the count felt +his arm pressed. He turned round it was Danglars. +"Ah, is it you, baron?" said he. +"Why do you call me baron?" said Danglars "you know that I +care nothing for my title. I am not like you, viscount you +like your title, do you not?" +"Certainly," replied Albert, "seeing that without my title I +should be nothing while you, sacrificing the baron, would +still remain the millionaire." +"Which seems to me the finest title under the royalty of +July," replied Danglars. +"Unfortunately," said Monte Cristo, "one's title to a +millionaire does not last for life, like that of baron, peer +of France, or Academician for example, the millionaires +Franck Poulmann, of Frankfort, who have just become +bankrupts." +"Indeed?" said Danglars, becoming pale. +"Yes I received the news this evening by a courier. I had +about a million in their hands, but, warned in time, I +withdrew it a month ago." +"Ah, mon Dieu," exclaimed Danglars, "they have drawn on me +for , francs" +"Well, you can throw out the draft their signature is worth +five per cent." +"Yes, but it is too late," said Danglars, "I have honored +their bills." +"Then," said Monte Cristo, "here are , francs gone +after" +"Hush, do not mention these things," said Danglars then, +approaching Monte Cristo, he added, "especially before young +M. Cavalcanti" after which he smiled, and turned towards +the young man in question. Albert had left the count to +speak to his mother, Danglars to converse with young +Cavalcanti Monte Cristo was for an instant alone. Meanwhile +the heat became excessive. The footmen were hastening +through the rooms with waiters loaded with ices. Monte +Cristo wiped the perspiration from his forehead, but drew +back when the waiter was presented to him he took no +refreshment. Madame de Morcerf did not lose sight of Monte +Cristo she saw that he took nothing, and even noticed his +gesture of refusal. +"Albert," she asked, "did you notice that?" +"What, mother?" +"That the count has never been willing to partake of food +under the roof of M. de Morcerf." +"Yes but then he breakfasted with me indeed, he made his +first appearance in the world on that occasion." +"But your house is not M. de Morcerf's," murmured Mercedes +"and since he has been here I have watched him." +"Well?" +"Well, he has taken nothing yet." +"The count is very temperate." Mercedes smiled sadly. +"Approach him," said she, "and when the next waiter passes, +insist upon his taking something." +"But why, mother?" +"Just to please me, Albert," said Mercedes. Albert kissed +his mother's hand, and drew near the count. Another salver +passed, loaded like the preceding ones she saw Albert +attempt to persuade the count, but he obstinately refused. +Albert rejoined his mother she was very pale. +"Well," said she, "you see he refuses?" +"Yes but why need this annoy you?" +"You know, Albert, women are singular creatures. I should +like to have seen the count take something in my house, if +only an ice. Perhaps he cannot reconcile himself to the +French style of living, and might prefer something else." +"Oh, no I have seen him eat of everything in Italy no +doubt he does not feel inclined this evening." +"And besides," said the countess, "accustomed as he is to +burning climates, possibly he does not feel the heat as we +do." +"I do not think that, for he has complained of feeling +almost suffocated, and asked why the Venetian blinds were +not opened as well as the windows." +"In a word," said Mercedes, "it was a way of assuring me +that his abstinence was intended." And she left the room. A +minute afterwards the blinds were thrown open, and through +the jessamine and clematis that overhung the window one +could see the garden ornamented with lanterns, and the +supper laid under the tent. Dancers, players, talkers, all +uttered an exclamation of joy every one inhaled with +delight the breeze that floated in. At the same time +Mercedes reappeared, paler than before, but with that +imperturbable expression of countenance which she sometimes +wore. She went straight to the group of which her husband +formed the centre. "Do not detain those gentlemen here, +count," she said "they would prefer, I should think, to +breathe in the garden rather than suffocate here, since they +are not playing." +"Ah," said a gallant old general, who, in , had sung +"Partant pour la Syrie," "we will not go alone to the +garden." +"Then," said Mercedes, "I will lead the way." Turning +towards Monte Cristo, she added, "count, will you oblige me +with your arm?" The count almost staggered at these simple +words then he fixed his eyes on Mercedes. It was only a +momentary glance, but it seemed to the countess to have +lasted for a century, so much was expressed in that one +look. He offered his arm to the countess she took it, or +rather just touched it with her little hand, and they +together descended the steps, lined with rhododendrons and +camellias. Behind them, by another outlet, a group of about +twenty persons rushed into the garden with loud exclamations +of delight. +Chapter +Bread and Salt. +Madame de Morcerf entered an archway of trees with her +companion. It led through a grove of lindens to a +conservatory. +"It was too warm in the room, was it not, count?" she asked. +"Yes, madame and it was an excellent idea of yours to open +the doors and the blinds." As he ceased speaking, the count +felt the hand of Mercedes tremble. "But you," he said, "with +that light dress, and without anything to cover you but that +gauze scarf, perhaps you feel cold?" +"Do you know where I am leading you?" said the countess, +without replying to the question. +"No, madame," replied Monte Cristo "but you see I make no +resistance." +"We are going to the greenhouse that you see at the other +end of the grove." +The count looked at Mercedes as if to interrogate her, but +she continued to walk on in silence, and he refrained from +speaking. They reached the building, ornamented with +magnificent fruits, which ripen at the beginning of July in +the artificial temperature which takes the place of the sun, +so frequently absent in our climate. The countess left the +arm of Monte Cristo, and gathered a bunch of Muscatel +grapes. "See, count," she said, with a smile so sad in its +expression that one could almost detect the tears on her +eyelids "see, our French grapes are not to be compared, I +know, with yours of Sicily and Cyprus, but you will make +allowance for our northern sun." The count bowed, but +stepped back. "Do you refuse?" said Mercedes, in a tremulous +voice. "Pray excuse me, madame," replied Monte Cristo, "but +I never eat Muscatel grapes." +Mercedes let them fall, and sighed. A magnificent peach was +hanging against an adjoining wall, ripened by the same +artificial heat. Mercedes drew near, and plucked the fruit. +"Take this peach, then," she said. The count again refused. +"What, again?" she exclaimed, in so plaintive an accent that +it seemed to stifle a sob "really, you pain me." +A long silence followed the peach, like the grapes, fell to +the ground. "Count," added Mercedes with a supplicating +glance, "there is a beautiful Arabian custom, which makes +eternal friends of those who have together eaten bread and +salt under the same roof." +"I know it, madame," replied the count "but we are in +France, and not in Arabia, and in France eternal friendships +are as rare as the custom of dividing bread and salt with +one another." +"But," said the countess, breathlessly, with her eyes fixed +on Monte Cristo, whose arm she convulsively pressed with +both hands, "we are friends, are we not?" +The count became pale as death, the blood rushed to his +heart, and then again rising, dyed his cheeks with crimson +his eyes swam like those of a man suddenly dazzled. +"Certainly, we are friends," he replied "why should we not +be?" The answer was so little like the one Mercedes desired, +that she turned away to give vent to a sigh, which sounded +more like a groan. "Thank you," she said. And they walked on +again. They went the whole length of the garden without +uttering a word. "Sir," suddenly exclaimed the countess, +after their walk had continued ten minutes in silence, "is +it true that you have seen so much, travelled so far, and +suffered so deeply?" +"I have suffered deeply, madame," answered Monte Cristo. +"But now you are happy?" +"Doubtless," replied the count, "since no one hears me +complain." +"And your present happiness, has it softened your heart?" +"My present happiness equals my past misery," said the +count. +"Are you not married?" asked the countess. "I married?" +exclaimed Monte Cristo, shuddering "who could have told you +so?" +"No one told me you were, but you have frequently been seen +at the opera with a young and lovely woman." +"She is a slave whom I bought at Constantinople, madame, the +daughter of a prince. I have adopted her as my daughter, +having no one else to love in the world." +"You live alone, then?" +"I do." +"You have no sister no son no father?" +"I have no one." +"How can you exist thus without any one to attach you to +life?" +"It is not my fault, madame. At Malta, I loved a young girl, +was on the point of marrying her, when war came and carried +me away. I thought she loved me well enough to wait for me, +and even to remain faithful to my memory. When I returned +she was married. This is the history of most men who have +passed twenty years of age. Perhaps my heart was weaker than +the hearts of most men, and I suffered more than they would +have done in my place that is all." The countess stopped +for a moment, as if gasping for breath. "Yes," she said, +"and you have still preserved this love in your heart one +can only love once and did you ever see her again?" +"Never." +"Never?" +"I never returned to the country where she lived." +"To Malta?" +"Yes Malta." +"She is, then, now at Malta?" +"I think so." +"And have you forgiven her for all she has made you suffer?" +"Her, yes." +"But only her do you then still hate those who separated +you?" +"I hate them? Not at all why should I?" The countess placed +herself before Monte Cristo, still holding in her hand a +portion of the perfumed grapes. "Take some," she said. +"Madame, I never eat Muscatel grapes," replied Monte Cristo, +as if the subject had not been mentioned before. The +countess dashed the grapes into the nearest thicket, with a +gesture of despair. "Inflexible man" she murmured. Monte +Cristo remained as unmoved as if the reproach had not been +addressed to him. Albert at this moment ran in. "Oh, +mother," he exclaimed, "such a misfortune his happened" +"What? What has happened?" asked the countess, as though +awakening from a sleep to the realities of life "did you +say a misfortune? Indeed, I should expect misfortunes." +"M. de Villefort is here." +"Well?" +"He comes to fetch his wife and daughter." +"Why so?" +"Because Madame de SaintMeran is just arrived in Paris, +bringing the news of M. de SaintMeran's death, which took +place on the first stage after he left Marseilles. Madame de +Villefort, who was in very good spirits, would neither +believe nor think of the misfortune, but Mademoiselle +Valentine, at the first words, guessed the whole truth, +notwithstanding all the precautions of her father the blow +struck her like a thunderbolt, and she fell senseless." +"And how was M. de SaintMeran related to Mademoiselle de +Villefort?" said the count. +"He was her grandfather on the mother's side. He was coming +here to hasten her marriage with Franz." +"Ah, indeed?" +"So Franz must wait. Why was not M. de SaintMeran also +grandfather to Mademoiselle Danglars?" +"Albert, Albert," said Madame de Morcerf, in a tone of mild +reproof, "what are you saying? Ah, count, he esteems you so +highly, tell him that he has spoken amiss." And she took two +or three steps forward. Monte Cristo watched her with an air +so thoughtful, and so full of affectionate admiration, that +she turned back and grasped his hand at the same time she +seized that of her son, and joined them together. +"We are friends are we not?" she asked. +"Oh, madame, I do not presume to call myself your friend, +but at all times I am your most respectful servant." The +countess left with an indescribable pang in her heart, and +before she had taken ten steps the count saw her raise her +handkerchief to her eyes. "Do not my mother and you agree?" +asked Albert, astonished. +"On the contrary," replied the count, "did you not hear her +declare that we were friends?" They reentered the +drawingroom, which Valentine and Madame de Villefort had +just quitted. It is perhaps needless to add that Morrel +departed almost at the same time. +Chapter +Madame de SaintMeran. +A gloomy scene had indeed just passed at the house of M. de +Villefort. After the ladies had departed for the ball, +whither all the entreaties of Madame de Villefort had failed +in persuading him to accompany them, the procureur had shut +himself up in his study, according to his custom, with a +heap of papers calculated to alarm any one else, but which +generally scarcely satisfied his inordinate desires. But +this time the papers were a mere matter of form. Villefort +had secluded himself, not to study, but to reflect and with +the door locked and orders given that he should not be +disturbed excepting for important business, he sat down in +his armchair and began to ponder over the events, the +remembrance of which had during the last eight days filled +his mind with so many gloomy thoughts and bitter +recollections. Then, instead of plunging into the mass of +documents piled before him, he opened the drawer of his +desk, touched a spring, and drew out a parcel of cherished +memoranda, amongst which he had carefully arranged, in +characters only known to himself, the names of all those +who, either in his political career, in money matters, at +the bar, or in his mysterious love affairs, had become his +enemies. +Their number was formidable, now that he had begun to fear, +and yet these names, powerful though they were, had often +caused him to smile with the same kind of satisfaction +experienced by a traveller who from the summit of a mountain +beholds at his feet the craggy eminences, the almost +impassable paths, and the fearful chasms, through which he +has so perilously climbed. When he had run over all these +names in his memory, again read and studied them, commenting +meanwhile upon his lists, he shook his head. +"No," he murmured, "none of my enemies would have waited so +patiently and laboriously for so long a space of time, that +they might now come and crush me with this secret. +Sometimes, as Hamlet says +"Foul deeds will rise, +Tho' all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes' +but, like a phosphoric light, they rise but to mislead. The +story has been told by the Corsican to some priest, who in +his turn has repeated it. M. de Monte Cristo may have heard +it, and to enlighten himself but why should he wish to +enlighten himself upon the subject?" asked Villefort, after +a moment's reflection, "what interest can this M. de Monte +Cristo or M. Zaccone, son of a shipowner of Malta, +discoverer of a mine in Thessaly, now visiting Paris for the +first time, what interest, I say, can he take in +discovering a gloomy, mysterious, and useless fact like +this? However, among all the incoherent details given to me +by the Abbe Busoni and by Lord Wilmore, by that friend and +that enemy, one thing appears certain and clear in my +opinion that in no period, in no case, in no +circumstance, could there have been any contact between him +and me." +But Villefort uttered words which even he himself did not +believe. He dreaded not so much the revelation, for he could +reply to or deny its truth he cared little for that +mene, tekel, upharsin, which appeared suddenly in letters of +blood upon the wall but what he was really anxious for +was to discover whose hand had traced them. While he was +endeavoring to calm his fears, and instead of dwelling +upon the political future that had so often been the subject +of his ambitious dreams, was imagining a future limited to +the enjoyments of home, in fear of awakening the enemy that +had so long slept, the noise of a carriage sounded in the +yard, then he heard the steps of an aged person ascending +the stairs, followed by tears and lamentations, such as +servants always give vent to when they wish to appear +interested in their master's grief. He drew back the bolt of +his door, and almost directly an old lady entered, +unannounced, carrying her shawl on her arm, and her bonnet +in her hand. The white hair was thrown back from her yellow +forehead, and her eyes, already sunken by the furrows of +age, now almost disappeared beneath the eyelids swollen with +grief. "Oh, sir," she said "oh, sir, what a misfortune I +shall die of it oh, yes, I shall certainly die of it" +And then, falling upon the chair nearest the door, she burst +into a paroxysm of sobs. The servants, standing in the +doorway, not daring to approach nearer, were looking at +Noirtier's old servant, who had heard the noise from his +master's room, and run there also, remaining behind the +others. Villefort rose, and ran towards his motherinlaw, +for it was she. +"Why, what can have happened?" he exclaimed, "what has thus +disturbed you? Is M. de SaintMeran with you?" +"M. de SaintMeran is dead," answered the old marchioness, +without preface and without expression she appeared to be +stupefied. Villefort drew back, and clasping his hands +together, exclaimed "Dead so suddenly?" +"A week ago," continued Madame de SaintMeran, "we went out +together in the carriage after dinner. M. de SaintMeran had +been unwell for some days still, the idea of seeing our +dear Valentine again inspired him with courage, and +notwithstanding his illness he would leave. At six leagues +from Marseilles, after having eaten some of the lozenges he +is accustomed to take, he fell into such a deep sleep, that +it appeared to me unnatural still I hesitated to wake him, +although I fancied that his face was flushed, and that the +veins of his temples throbbed more violently than usual. +However, as it became dark, and I could no longer see, I +fell asleep I was soon aroused by a piercing shriek, as +from a person suffering in his dreams, and he suddenly threw +his head back violently. I called the valet, I stopped the +postilion, I spoke to M. de SaintMeran, I applied my +smellingsalts but all was over, and I arrived at Aix by +the side of a corpse." Villefort stood with his mouth half +open, quite stupefied. +"Of course you sent for a doctor?" +"Immediately but, as I have told you, it was too late." +"Yes but then he could tell of what complaint the poor +marquis had died." +"Oh, yes, sir, he told me it appears to have been an +apoplectic stroke." +"And what did you do then?" +"M. de SaintMeran had always expressed a desire, in case +his death happened during his absence from Paris, that his +body might be brought to the family vault. I had him put +into a leaden coffin, and I am preceding him by a few days." +"Oh, my poor mother," said Villefort, "to have such duties +to perform at your age after such a blow" +"God has supported me through all and then, my dear +marquis, he would certainly have done everything for me that +I performed for him. It is true that since I left him, I +seem to have lost my senses. I cannot cry at my age they +say that we have no more tears, still I think that when +one is in trouble one should have the power of weeping. +Where is Valentine, sir? It is on her account I am here I +wish to see Valentine." Villefort thought it would be +terrible to reply that Valentine was at a ball so he only +said that she had gone out with her stepmother, and that +she should be fetched. "This instant, sir this instant, I +beseech you" said the old lady. Villefort placed the arm of +Madame de SaintMeran within his own, and conducted her to +his apartment. "Rest yourself, mother," he said. +The marchioness raised her head at this word, and beholding +the man who so forcibly reminded her of her deeplyregretted +child, who still lived for her in Valentine, she felt +touched at the name of mother, and bursting into tears, she +fell on her knees before an armchair, where she buried her +venerable head. Villefort left her to the care of the women, +while old Barrois ran, halfscared, to his master for +nothing frightens old people so much as when death relaxes +its vigilance over them for a moment in order to strike some +other old person. Then, while Madame de SaintMeran remained +on her knees, praying fervently, Villefort sent for a cab, +and went himself to fetch his wife and daughter from Madame +de Morcerf's. He was so pale when he appeared at the door of +the ballroom, that Valentine ran to him, saying +"Oh, father, some misfortune has happened" +"Your grandmamma has just arrived, Valentine," said M. de +Villefort. +"And grandpapa?" inquired the young girl, trembling with +apprehension. M. de Villefort only replied by offering his +arm to his daughter. It was just in time, for Valentine's +head swam, and she staggered Madame de Villefort instantly +hastened to her assistance, and aided her husband in +dragging her to the carriage, saying "What a singular +event Who could have thought it? Ah, yes, it is indeed +strange" And the wretched family departed, leaving a cloud +of sadness hanging over the rest of the evening. At the foot +of the stairs, Valentine found Barrois awaiting her. +"M. Noirtier wishes to see you tonight, he said, in an +undertone. +"Tell him I will come when I leave my dear grandmamma," she +replied, feeling, with true delicacy, that the person to +whom she could be of the most service just then was Madame +de SaintMeran. Valentine found her grandmother in bed +silent caresses, heartwrung sobs, broken sighs, burning +tears, were all that passed in this sad interview, while +Madame de Villefort, leaning on her husband's arm, +maintained all outward forms of respect, at least towards +the poor widow. She soon whispered to her husband, "I think +it would be better for me to retire, with your permission, +for the sight of me appears still to afflict your +motherinlaw." Madame de SaintMeran heard her. "Yes, yes," +she said softly to Valentine, "let her leave but do you +stay." Madame de Villefort left, and Valentine remained +alone beside the bed, for the procureur, overcome with +astonishment at the unexpected death, had followed his wife. +Meanwhile, Barrois had returned for the first time to old +Noirtier, who having heard the noise in the house, had, as +we have said, sent his old servant to inquire the cause on +his return, his quick intelligent eye interrogated the +messenger. "Alas, sir," exclaimed Barrois, "a great +misfortune has happened. Madame de SaintMeran has arrived, +and her husband is dead" +M. de SaintMeran and Noirtier had never been on strict +terms of friendship still, the death of one old man always +considerably affects another. Noirtier let his head fall +upon his chest, apparently overwhelmed and thoughtful then +he closed one eye, in token of inquiry. "Mademoiselle +Valentine?" Noirtier nodded his head. "She is at the ball, +as you know, since she came to say goodby to you in full +dress." Noirtier again closed his left eye. "Do you wish to +see her?" Noirtier again made an affirmative sign. "Well, +they have gone to fetch her, no doubt, from Madame de +Morcerf's I will await her return, and beg her to come up +here. Is that what you wish for?" +"Yes," replied the invalid. +Barrois, therefore, as we have seen, watched for Valentine, +and informed her of her grandfather's wish. Consequently, +Valentine came up to Noirtier, on leaving Madame de +SaintMeran, who in the midst of her grief had at last +yielded to fatigue and fallen into a feverish sleep. Within +reach of her hand they placed a small table upon which stood +a bottle of orangeade, her usual beverage, and a glass. +Then, as we have said, the young girl left the bedside to +see M. Noirtier. Valentine kissed the old man, who looked at +her with such tenderness that her eyes again filled with +tears, whose sources he thought must be exhausted. The old +gentleman continued to dwell upon her with the same +expression. "Yes, yes," said Valentine, "you mean that I +have yet a kind grandfather left, do you not." The old man +intimated that such was his meaning. "Ah, yes, happily I +have," replied Valentine. "Without that, what would become +of me?" +It was one o'clock in the morning. Barrois, who wished to go +to bed himself, observed that after such sad events every +one stood in need of rest. Noirtier would not say that the +only rest he needed was to see his child, but wished her +goodnight, for grief and fatigue had made her appear quite +ill. The next morning she found her grandmother in bed the +fever had not abated, on the contrary her eyes glistened and +she appeared to be suffering from violent nervous +irritability. "Oh, dear grandmamma, are you worse?" +exclaimed Valentine, perceiving all these signs of +agitation. +"No, my child, no," said Madame de SaintMeran "but I was +impatiently waiting for your arrival, that I might send for +your father." +"My father?" inquired Valentine, uneasily. +"Yes, I wish to speak to him." Valentine durst not oppose +her grandmother's wish, the cause of which she did not know, +and an instant afterwards Villefort entered. "Sir," said +Madame de SaintMeran, without using any circumlocution, and +as if fearing she had no time to lose, "you wrote to me +concerning the marriage of this child?" +"Yes, madame," replied Villefort, "it is not only projected +but arranged." +"Your intended soninlaw is named M. Franz d'Epinay?" +"Yes, madame." +"Is he not the son of General d'Epinay who was on our side, +and who was assassinated some days before the usurper +returned from the Island of Elba?" +"The same." +"Does he not dislike the idea of marrying the granddaughter +of a Jacobin?" +"Our civil dissensions are now happily extinguished, +mother," said Villefort "M. d'Epinay was quite a child when +his father died, he knows very little of M. Noirtier, and +will meet him, if not with pleasure, at least with +indifference." +"Is it a suitable match?" +"In every respect." +"And the young man?" +"Is regarded with universal esteem." +"You approve of him?" +"He is one of the most wellbred young men I know." During +the whole of this conversation Valentine had remained +silent. "Well, sir," said Madame de SaintMeran, after a few +minutes' reflection, "I must hasten the marriage, for I have +but a short time to live." +"You, madame?" "You, dear mamma?" exclaimed M. de Villefort +and Valentine at the same time. +"I know what I am saying," continued the marchioness "I +must hurry you, so that, as she has no mother, she may at +least have a grandmother to bless her marriage. I am all +that is left to her belonging to my poor Renee, whom you +have so soon forgotten, sir." +"Ah, madame," said Villefort, "you forget that I was obliged +to give a mother to my child." +"A stepmother is never a mother, sir. But this is not to the +purpose, our business concerns Valentine, let us leave +the dead in peace." +All this was said with such exceeding rapidity, that there +was something in the conversation that seemed like the +beginning of delirium. +"It shall be as you wish, madame," said Villefort "more +especially since your wishes coincide with mine, and as soon +as M. d'Epinay arrives in Paris" +"My dear grandmother," interrupted Valentine, "consider +decorum the recent death. You would not have me marry +under such sad auspices?" +"My child," exclaimed the old lady sharply, "let us hear +none of the conventional objections that deter weak minds +from preparing for the future. I also was married at the +deathbed of my mother, and certainly I have not been less +happy on that account." +"Still that idea of death, madame," said Villefort. +"Still? Always I tell you I am going to die do you +understand? Well, before dying, I wish to see my soninlaw. +I wish to tell him to make my child happy I wish to read in +his eyes whether he intends to obey me in fact, I will +know him I will" continued the old lady, with a fearful +expression, "that I may rise from the depths of my grave to +find him, if he should not fulfil his duty" +"Madame," said Villefort, "you must lay aside these exalted +ideas, which almost assume the appearance of madness. The +dead, once buried in their graves, rise no more." +"And I tell you, sir, that you are mistaken. This night I +have had a fearful sleep. It seemed as though my soul were +already hovering over my body, my eyes, which I tried to +open, closed against my will, and what will appear +impossible above all to you, sir, I saw, with my eyes shut, +in the spot where you are now standing, issuing from that +corner where there is a door leading into Madame Villefort's +dressingroom I saw, I tell you, silently enter, a white +figure." Valentine screamed. "It was the fever that +disturbed you, madame," said Villefort. +"Doubt, if you please, but I am sure of what I say. I saw a +white figure, and as if to prevent my discrediting the +testimony of only one of my senses, I heard my glass removed +the same which is there now on the table." +"Oh, dear mother, it was a dream." +"So little was it a dream, that I stretched my hand towards +the bell but when I did so, the shade disappeared my maid +then entered with a light." +"But she saw no one?" +"Phantoms are visible to those only who ought to see them. +It was the soul of my husband Well, if my husband's soul +can come to me, why should not my soul reappear to guard my +granddaughter? the tie is even more direct, it seems to me." +"Oh, madame," said Villefort, deeply affected, in spite of +himself, "do not yield to those gloomy thoughts you will +long live with us, happy, loved, and honored, and we will +make you forget" +"Never, never, never," said the marchioness. "When does M. +d'Epinay return?" +"We expect him every moment." +"It is well. As soon as he arrives inform me. We must be +expeditious. And then I also wish to see a notary, that I +may be assured that all our property returns to Valentine." +"Ah, grandmamma," murmured Valentine, pressing her lips on +the burning brow, "do you wish to kill me? Oh, how feverish +you are we must not send for a notary, but for a doctor." +"A doctor?" said she, shrugging her shoulders, "I am not +ill I am thirsty that is all." +"What are you drinking, dear grandmamma?" +"The same as usual, my dear, my glass is there on the table +give it to me, Valentine." Valentine poured the orangeade +into a glass and gave it to her grandmother with a certain +degree of dread, for it was the same glass she fancied that +had been touched by the spectre. The marchioness drained the +glass at a single draught, and then turned on her pillow, +repeating, "The notary, the notary" +M. de Villefort left the room, and Valentine seated herself +at the bedside of her grandmother. The poor child appeared +herself to require the doctor she had recommended to her +aged relative. A bright spot burned in either cheek, her +respiration was short and difficult, and her pulse beat with +feverish excitement. She was thinking of the despair of +Maximilian, when he should be informed that Madame de +SaintMeran, instead of being an ally, was unconsciously +acting as his enemy. More than once she thought of revealing +all to her grandmother, and she would not have hesitated a +moment, if Maximilian Morrel had been named Albert de +Morcerf or Raoul de ChateauRenaud but Morrel was of +plebeian extraction, and Valentine knew how the haughty +Marquise de SaintMeran despised all who were not noble. Her +secret had each time been repressed when she was about to +reveal it, by the sad conviction that it would be useless to +do so for, were it once discovered by her father and +mother, all would be lost. Two hours passed thus Madame de +SaintMeran was in a feverish sleep, and the notary had +arrived. Though his coming was announced in a very low tone, +Madame de SaintMeran arose from her pillow. "The notary" +she exclaimed, "let him come in." +The notary, who was at the door, immediately entered. "Go, +Valentine," said Madame de SaintMeran, "and leave me with +this gentleman." +"But, grandmamma" +"Leave me go" The young girl kissed her grandmother, and +left with her handkerchief to her eyes at the door she +found the valet de chambre, who told her that the doctor was +waiting in the diningroom. Valentine instantly ran down. +The doctor was a friend of the family, and at the same time +one of the cleverest men of the day, and very fond of +Valentine, whose birth he had witnessed. He had himself a +daughter about her age, but whose life was one continued +source of anxiety and fear to him from her mother having +been consumptive. +"Oh," said Valentine, "we have been waiting for you with +such impatience, dear M. d'Avrigny. But, first of all, how +are Madeleine and Antoinette?" Madeleine was the daughter of +M. d'Avrigny, and Antoinette his niece. M. d'Avrigny smiled +sadly. "Antoinette is very well," he said, "and Madeleine +tolerably so. But you sent for me, my dear child. It is not +your father or Madame de Villefort who is ill. As for you, +although we doctors cannot divest our patients of nerves, I +fancy you have no further need of me than to recommend you +not to allow your imagination to take too wide a field." +Valentine colored. M. d'Avrigny carried the science of +divination almost to a miraculous extent, for he was one of +the physicians who always work upon the body through the +mind. "No," she replied, "it is for my poor grandmother. You +know the calamity that has happened to us, do you not?" +"I know nothing." said M. d'Avrigny. +"Alas," said Valentine, restraining her tears, "my +grandfather is dead." +"M. de SaintMeran?" +"Yes." +"Suddenly?" +"From an apoplectic stroke." +"An apoplectic stroke?" repeated the doctor. +"Yes, and my poor grandmother fancies that her husband, whom +she never left, has called her, and that she must go and +join him. Oh, M. d'Avrigny, I beseech you, do something for +her" +"Where is she?" +"In her room with the notary." +"And M. Noirtier?" +"Just as he was, his mind perfectly clear, but the same +incapability of moving or speaking." +"And the same love for you eh, my dear child?" +"Yes," said Valentine, "he was very fond of me." +"Who does not love you?" Valentine smiled sadly. "What are +your grandmother's symptoms?" +"An extreme nervous excitement and a strangely agitated +sleep she fancied this morning in her sleep that her soul +was hovering above her body, which she at the same time +watched. It must have been delirium she fancies, too, that +she saw a phantom enter her chamber and even heard the noise +it made on touching her glass." +"It is singular," said the doctor "I was not aware that +Madame de SaintMeran was subject to such hallucinations." +"It is the first time I ever saw her in this condition," +said Valentine "and this morning she frightened me so that +I thought her mad and my father, who you know is a +strongminded man, himself appeared deeply impressed." +"We will go and see," said the doctor "what you tell me +seems very strange." The notary here descended, and +Valentine was informed that her grandmother was alone. "Go +upstairs," she said to the doctor. +"And you?" +"Oh, I dare not she forbade my sending for you and, as +you say, I am myself agitated, feverish and out of sorts. I +will go and take a turn in the garden to recover myself." +The doctor pressed Valentine's hand, and while he visited +her grandmother, she descended the steps. We need not say +which portion of the garden was her favorite walk. After +remaining for a short time in the parterre surrounding the +house, and gathering a rose to place in her waist or hair, +she turned into the dark avenue which led to the bench then +from the bench she went to the gate. As usual, Valentine +strolled for a short time among her flowers, but without +gathering them. The mourning in her heart forbade her +assuming this simple ornament, though she had not yet had +time to put on the outward semblance of woe. She then turned +towards the avenue. As she advanced she fancied she heard a +voice speaking her name. She stopped astonished, then the +voice reached her ear more distinctly, and she recognized it +to be that of Maximilian. +Chapter +The Promise. +It was, indeed, Maximilian Morrel, who had passed a wretched +existence since the previous day. With the instinct peculiar +to lovers he had anticipated after the return of Madame de +SaintMeran and the death of the marquis, that something +would occur at M. de Villefort's in connection with his +attachment for Valentine. His presentiments were realized, +as we shall see, and his uneasy forebodings had goaded him +pale and trembling to the gate under the chestnuttrees. +Valentine was ignorant of the cause of this sorrow and +anxiety, and as it was not his accustomed hour for visiting +her, she had gone to the spot simply by accident or perhaps +through sympathy. Morrel called her, and she ran to the +gate. "You here at this hour?" said she. "Yes, my poor +girl," replied Morrel "I come to bring and to hear bad +tidings." +"This is, indeed, a house of mourning," said Valentine +"speak, Maximilian, although the cup of sorrow seems already +full." +"Dear Valentine," said Morrel, endeavoring to conceal his +own emotion, "listen, I entreat you what I am about to say +is very serious. When are you to be married?" +"I will tell you all," said Valentine "from you I have +nothing to conceal. This morning the subject was introduced, +and my dear grandmother, on whom I depended as my only +support, not only declared herself favorable to it, but is +so anxious for it, that they only await the arrival of M. +d'Epinay, and the following day the contract will be +signed." A deep sigh escaped the young man, who gazed long +and mournfully at her he loved. "Alas," replied he, "it is +dreadful thus to hear my condemnation from your own lips. +The sentence is passed, and, in a few hours, will be +executed it must be so, and I will not endeavor to prevent +it. But, since you say nothing remains but for M. d'Epinay +to arrive that the contract may be signed, and the following +day you will be his, tomorrow you will be engaged to M. +d'Epinay, for he came this morning to Paris." Valentine +uttered a cry. +"I was at the house of Monte Cristo an hour since," said +Morrel "we were speaking, he of the sorrow your family had +experienced, and I of your grief, when a carriage rolled +into the courtyard. Never, till then, had I placed any +confidence in presentiments, but now I cannot help believing +them, Valentine. At the sound of that carriage I shuddered +soon I heard steps on the staircase, which terrified me as +much as the footsteps of the commander did Don Juan. The +door at last opened Albert de Morcerf entered first, and I +began to hope my fears were vain, when, after him, another +young man advanced, and the count exclaimed "Ah, here is +the Baron Franz d'Epinay' I summoned all my strength and +courage to my support. Perhaps I turned pale and trembled, +but certainly I smiled and five minutes after I left, +without having heard one word that had passed." +"Poor Maximilian" murmured Valentine. +"Valentine, the time has arrived when you must answer me. +And remember my life depends on your answer. What do you +intend doing?" Valentine held down her head she was +overwhelmed. +"Listen," said Morrel "it is not the first time you have +contemplated our present position, which is a serious and +urgent one I do not think it is a moment to give way to +useless sorrow leave that for those who like to suffer at +their leisure and indulge their grief in secret. There are +such in the world, and God will doubtless reward them in +heaven for their resignation on earth, but those who mean to +contend must not lose one precious moment, but must return +immediately the blow which fortune strikes. Do you intend to +struggle against our illfortune? Tell me, Valentine for it +is that I came to know." +Valentine trembled, and looked at him with amazement. The +idea of resisting her father, her grandmother, and all the +family, had never occurred to her. "What do you say, +Maximilian?" asked Valentine. "What do you mean by a +struggle? Oh, it would be a sacrilege. What? I resist my +father's order, and my dying grandmother's wish? +Impossible" Morrel started. "You are too noble not to +understand me, and you understand me so well that you +already yield, dear Maximilian. No, no I shall need all my +strength to struggle with myself and support my grief in +secret, as you say. But to grieve my father to disturb my +grandmother's last moments never" +"You are right," said Morrel, calmly. +"In what a tone you speak" cried Valentine. +"I speak as one who admires you, mademoiselle." +"Mademoiselle," cried Valentine "mademoiselle Oh, selfish +man, he sees me in despair, and pretends he cannot +understand me" +"You mistake I understand you perfectly. You will not +oppose M. Villefort, you will not displease the marchioness, +and tomorrow you will sign the contract which will bind you +to your husband." +"But, mon Dieu, tell me, how can I do otherwise?" +"Do not appeal to me, mademoiselle I shall be a bad judge +in such a case my selfishness will blind me," replied +Morrel, whose low voice and clinched hands announced his +growing desperation. +"What would you have proposed, Maximilian, had you found me +willing to accede?" +"It is not for me to say." +"You are wrong you must advise me what to do." +"Do you seriously ask my advice, Valentine?" +"Certainly, dear Maximilian, for if it is good, I will +follow it you know my devotion to you." +"Valentine," said Morrel pushing aside a loose plank, "give +me your hand in token of forgiveness of my anger my senses +are confused, and during the last hour the most extravagant +thoughts have passed through my brain. Oh, if you refuse my +advice" +"What do you advise?" said Valentine, raising her eyes to +heaven and sighing. "I am free," replied Maximilian, "and +rich enough to support you. I swear to make you my lawful +wife before my lips even shall have approached your +forehead." +"You make me tremble" said the young girl. +"Follow me," said Morrel "I will take you to my sister, who +is worthy also to be yours. We will embark for Algiers, for +England, for America, or, if your prefer it, retire to the +country and only return to Paris when our friends have +reconciled your family." Valentine shook her head. "I feared +it, Maximilian," said she "it is the counsel of a madman, +and I should be more mad than you, did I not stop you at +once with the word "Impossible, impossible'" +"You will then submit to what fate decrees for you without +even attempting to contend with it?" said Morrel +sorrowfully. "Yes, if I die" +"Well, Valentine," resumed Maximilian, "I can only say again +that you are right. Truly, it is I who am mad, and you prove +to me that passion blinds the most wellmeaning. I +appreciate your calm reasoning. It is then understood that +tomorrow you will be irrevocably promised to M. Franz +d'Epinay, not only by that theatrical formality invented to +heighten the effect of a comedy called the signature of the +contract, but your own will?" +"Again you drive me to despair, Maximilian," said Valentine, +"again you plunge the dagger into the wound What would you +do, tell me, if your sister listened to such a proposition?" +"Mademoiselle," replied Morrel with a bitter smile, "I am +selfish you have already said so and as a selfish man +I think not of what others would do in my situation, but of +what I intend doing myself. I think only that I have known +you not a whole year. From the day I first saw you, all my +hopes of happiness have been in securing your affection. One +day you acknowledged that you loved me, and since that day +my hope of future happiness has rested on obtaining you, for +to gain you would be life to me. Now, I think no more I say +only that fortune has turned against me I had thought to +gain heaven, and now I have lost it. It is an everyday +occurrence for a gambler to lose not only what he possesses +but also what he has not." Morrel pronounced these words +with perfect calmness Valentine looked at him a moment with +her large, scrutinizing eyes, endeavoring not to let Morrel +discover the grief which struggled in her heart. "But, in a +word, what are you going to do?" asked she. +"I am going to have the honor of taking my leave of you, +mademoiselle, solemnly assuring you that I wish your life +may be so calm, so happy, and so fully occupied, that there +may be no place for me even in your memory." +"Oh" murmured Valentine. +"Adieu, Valentine, adieu" said Morrel, bowing. +"Where are you going?" cried the young girl, extending her +hand through the opening, and seizing Maximilian by his +coat, for she understood from her own agitated feelings that +her lover's calmness could not be real "where are you +going?" +"I am going, that I may not bring fresh trouble into your +family and to set an example which every honest and devoted +man, situated as I am, may follow." +"Before you leave me, tell me what you are going to do, +Maximilian." The young man smiled sorrowfully. "Speak, +speak" said Valentine "I entreat you." +"Has your resolution changed, Valentine?" +"It cannot change, unhappy man you know it must not" cried +the young girl. "Then adieu, Valentine" Valentine shook the +gate with a strength of which she could not have been +supposed to be possessed, as Morrel was going away, and +passing both her hands through the opening, she clasped and +wrung them. "I must know what you mean to do" said she. +"Where are you going?" +"Oh, fear not," said Maximilian, stopping at a short +distance, "I do not intend to render another man responsible +for the rigorous fate reserved for me. Another might +threaten to seek M. Franz, to provoke him, and to fight with +him all that would be folly. What has M. Franz to do with +it? He saw me this morning for the first time, and has +already forgotten he has seen me. He did not even know I +existed when it was arranged by your two families that you +should be united. I have no enmity against M. Franz, and +promise you the punishment shall not fall on him." +"On whom, then on me?" +"On you? Valentine Oh, heaven forbid Woman is sacred the +woman one loves is holy." +"On yourself, then, unhappy man on yourself?" +"I am the only guilty person, am I not?' said Maximilian. +"Maximilian" said Valentine, "Maximilian, come back, I +entreat you" He drew near with his sweet smile, and but for +his paleness one might have thought him in his usual happy +mood. "Listen, my dear, my adored Valentine," said he in his +melodious and grave tone "those who, like us, have never +had a thought for which we need blush before the world, such +may read each other's hearts. I never was romantic, and am +no melancholy hero. I imitate neither Manfred nor Anthony +but without words, protestations, or vows, my life has +entwined itself with yours you leave me, and you are right +in doing so, I repeat it, you are right but in losing +you, I lose my life. +"The moment you leave me, Valentine, I am alone in the +world. My sister is happily married her husband is only my +brotherinlaw, that is, a man whom the ties of social life +alone attach to me no one then longer needs my useless +life. This is what I shall do I will wait until the very +moment you are married, for I will not lose the shadow of +one of those unexpected chances which are sometimes reserved +for us, since M. Franz may, after all, die before that time, +a thunderbolt may fall even on the altar as you approach it, +nothing appears impossible to one condemned to die, and +miracles appear quite reasonable when his escape from death +is concerned. I will, then, wait until the last moment, and +when my misery is certain, irremediable, hopeless, I will +write a confidential letter to my brotherinlaw, another to +the prefect of police, to acquaint them with my intention, +and at the corner of some wood, on the brink of some abyss, +on the bank of some river, I will put an end to my +existence, as certainly as I am the son of the most honest +man who ever lived in France." +Valentine trembled convulsively she loosened her hold of +the gate, her arms fell by her side, and two large tears +rolled down her cheeks. The young man stood before her, +sorrowful and resolute. "Oh, for pity's sake," said she, +"you will live, will you not?" +"No, on my honor," said Maximilian "but that will not +affect you. You have done your duty, and your conscience +will be at rest." Valentine fell on her knees, and pressed +her almost bursting heart. "Maximilian," said she, +"Maximilian, my friend, my brother on earth, my true husband +in heaven, I entreat you, do as I do, live in suffering +perhaps we may one day be united." +"Adieu, Valentine," repeated Morrel. +"My God," said Valentine, raising both her hands to heaven +with a sublime expression, "I have done my utmost to remain +a submissive daughter I have begged, entreated, implored +he has regarded neither my prayers, my entreaties, nor my +tears. It is done," cried she, willing away her tears, and +resuming her firmness, "I am resolved not to die of remorse, +but rather of shame. Live, Maximilian, and I will be yours. +Say when shall it be? Speak, command, I will obey." Morrel, +who had already gone some few steps away, again returned, +and pale with joy extended both hands towards Valentine +through the opening. "Valentine," said he, "dear Valentine, +you must not speak thus rather let me die. Why should I +obtain you by violence, if our love is mutual? Is it from +mere humanity you bid me live? I would then rather die." +"Truly," murmured Valentine, "who on this earth cares for +me, if he does not? Who has consoled me in my sorrow but he? +On whom do my hopes rest? On whom does my bleeding heart +repose? On him, on him, always on him Yes, you are right, +Maximilian, I will follow you. I will leave the paternal +home, I will give up all. Oh, ungrateful girl that I am," +cried Valentine, sobbing, "I will give up all, even my dear +old grandfather, whom I had nearly forgotten." +"No," said Maximilian, "you shall not leave him. M. Noirtier +has evinced, you say, a kind feeling towards me. Well, +before you leave, tell him all his consent would be your +justification in God's sight. As soon as we are married, he +shall come and live with us, instead of one child, he shall +have two. You have told me how you talk to him and how he +answers you I shall very soon learn that language by signs, +Valentine, and I promise you solemnly, that instead of +despair, it is happiness that awaits us." +"Oh, see, Maximilian, see the power you have over me, you +almost make me believe you and yet, what you tell me is +madness, for my father will curse me he is inflexible +he will never pardon me. Now listen to me, Maximilian if by +artifice, by entreaty, by accident in short, if by any +means I can delay this marriage, will you wait?" +"Yes, I promise you, as faithfully as you have promised me +that this horrible marriage shall not take place, and that +if you are dragged before a magistrate or a priest, you will +refuse." +"I promise you by all that is most sacred to me in the +world, namely, by my mother." +"We will wait, then," said Morrel. +"Yes, we will wait," replied Valentine, who revived at these +words "there are so many things which may save unhappy +beings such as we are." +"I rely on you, Valentine," said Morrel "all you do will be +well done only if they disregard your prayers, if your +father and Madame de SaintMeran insist that M. d'Epinay +should be called tomorrow to sign the contract" +"Then you have my promise, Maximilian." +"Instead of signing" +"I will go to you, and we will fly but from this moment +until then, let us not tempt providence, let us not see each +other. It is a miracle, it is a providence that we have not +been discovered. If we were surprised, if it were known that +we met thus, we should have no further resource." +"You are right, Valentine but how shall I ascertain?" +"From the notary, M. Deschamps." +"I know him." +"And for myself I will write to you, depend on me. I +dread this marriage, Maximilian, as much as you." +"Thank you, my adored Valentine, thank you that is enough. +When once I know the hour, I will hasten to this spot, you +can easily get over this fence with my assistance, a +carriage will await us at the gate, in which you will +accompany me to my sister's there living, retired or +mingling in society, as you wish, we shall be enabled to use +our power to resist oppression, and not suffer ourselves to +be put to death like sheep, which only defend themselves by +sighs." +"Yes," said Valentine, "I will now acknowledge you are +right, Maximilian and now are you satisfied with your +betrothal?" said the young girl sorrowfully. +"My adored Valentine, words cannot express one half of my +satisfaction." Valentine had approached, or rather, had +placed her lips so near the fence, that they nearly touched +those of Morrel, which were pressed against the other side +of the cold and inexorable barrier. "Adieu, then, till we +meet again," said Valentine, tearing herself away. "I shall +hear from you?" +"Yes." +"Thanks, thanks, dear love, adieu" The sound of a kiss was +heard, and Valentine fled through the avenue. Morrel +listened to catch the last sound of her dress brushing the +branches, and of her footstep on the gravel, then raised his +eyes with an ineffable smile of thankfulness to heaven for +being permitted to be thus loved, and then also disappeared. +The young man returned home and waited all the evening and +all the next day without getting any message. It was only on +the following day, at about ten o'clock in the morning, as +he was starting to call on M. Deschamps, the notary, that he +received from the postman a small billet, which he knew to +be from Valentine, although he had not before seen her +writing. It was to this effect +Tears, entreaties, prayers, have availed me nothing. +Yesterday, for two hours, I was at the church of +SaintPhillippe du Roule, and for two hours I prayed most +fervently. Heaven is as inflexible as man, and the signature +of the contract is fixed for this evening at nine o'clock. I +have but one promise and but one heart to give that promise +is pledged to you, that heart is also yours. This evening, +then, at a quarter to nine at the gate. +Your betrothed, +Valentine de Villefort. +P.S. My poor grandmother gets worse and worse yesterday +her fever amounted to delirium today her delirium is +almost madness. You will be very kind to me, will you not, +Morrel, to make me forget my sorrow in leaving her thus? I +think it is kept a secret from grandpapa Noirtier, that the +contract is to be signed this evening. +Morrel went also to the notary, who confirmed the news that +the contract was to be signed that evening. Then he went to +call on Monte Cristo and heard still more. Franz had been to +announce the ceremony, and Madame de Villefort had also +written to beg the count to excuse her not inviting him the +death of M. de SaintMeran and the dangerous illness of his +widow would cast a gloom over the meeting which she would +regret should be shared by the count whom she wished every +happiness. The day before Franz had been presented to Madame +de SaintMeran, who had left her bed to receive him, but had +been obliged to return to it immediately after. It is easy +to suppose that Morrel's agitation would not escape the +count's penetrating eye. Monte Cristo was more affectionate +than ever, indeed, his manner was so kind that several +times Morrel was on the point of telling him all. But he +recalled the promise he had made to Valentine, and kept his +secret. +The young man read Valentine's letter twenty times in the +course of the day. It was her first, and on what an +occasion Each time he read it he renewed his vow to make +her happy. How great is the power of a woman who has made so +courageous a resolution What devotion does she deserve from +him for whom she has sacrificed everything How ought she +really to be supremely loved She becomes at once a queen +and a wife, and it is impossible to thank and love her +sufficiently. Morrel longed intensely for the moment when he +should hear Valentine say, "Here I am, Maximilian come and +help me." He had arranged everything for her escape two +ladders were hidden in the cloverfield a cabriolet was +ordered for Maximilian alone, without a servant, without +lights at the turning of the first street they would light +the lamps, as it would be foolish to attract the notice of +the police by too many precautions. Occasionally he +shuddered he thought of the moment when, from the top of +that wall, he should protect the descent of his dear +Valentine, pressing in his arms for the first time her of +whom he had yet only kissed the delicate hand. +When the afternoon arrived and he felt that the hour was +drawing near, he wished for solitude, his agitation was +extreme a simple question from a friend would have +irritated him. He shut himself in his room, and tried to +read, but his eye glanced over the page without +understanding a word, and he threw away the book, and for +the second time sat down to sketch his plan, the ladders and +the fence. At length the hour drew near. Never did a man +deeply in love allow the clocks to go on peacefully. Morrel +tormented his so effectually that they struck eight at +halfpast six. He then said, "It is time to start the +signature was indeed fixed to take place at nine o'clock, +but perhaps Valentine will not wait for that." Consequently, +Morrel, having left the Rue Meslay at halfpast eight by his +timepiece, entered the cloverfield while the clock of +SaintPhillippe du Roule was striking eight. The horse and +cabriolet were concealed behind a small ruin, where Morrel +had often waited. +The night gradually drew on, and the foliage in the garden +assumed a deeper hue. Then Morrel came out from his +hidingplace with a beating heart, and looked through the +small opening in the gate there was yet no one to be seen. +The clock struck halfpast eight, and still another +halfhour was passed in waiting, while Morrel walked to and +fro, and gazed more and more frequently through the opening. +The garden became darker still, but in the darkness he +looked in vain for the white dress, and in the silence he +vainly listened for the sound of footsteps. The house, which +was discernible through the trees, remained in darkness, and +gave no indication that so important an event as the +signature of a marriagecontract was going on. Morrel looked +at his watch, which wanted a quarter to ten but soon the +same clock he had already heard strike two or three times +rectified the error by striking halfpast nine. +This was already half an hour past the time Valentine had +fixed. It was a terrible moment for the young man. The +slightest rustling of the foliage, the least whistling of +the wind, attracted his attention, and drew the perspiration +to his brow then he tremblingly fixed his ladder, and, not +to lose a moment, placed his foot on the first step. Amidst +all these alternations of hope and fear, the clock struck +ten. "It is impossible," said Maximilian, "that the signing +of a contract should occupy so long a time without +unexpected interruptions. I have weighed all the chances, +calculated the time required for all the forms something +must have happened." And then he walked rapidly to and fro, +and pressed his burning forehead against the fence. Had +Valentine fainted? or had she been discovered and stopped in +her flight? These were the only obstacles which appeared +possible to the young man. +The idea that her strength had failed her in attempting to +escape, and that she had fainted in one of the paths, was +the one that most impressed itself upon his mind. "In that +case," said he, "I should lose her, and by my own fault." He +dwelt on this idea for a moment, then it appeared reality. +He even thought he could perceive something on the ground at +a distance he ventured to call, and it seemed to him that +the wind wafted back an almost inarticulate sigh. At last +the halfhour struck. It was impossible to wait longer, his +temples throbbed violently, his eyes were growing dim he +passed one leg over the wall, and in a moment leaped down on +the other side. He was on Villefort's premises had +arrived there by scaling the wall. What might be the +consequences? However, he had not ventured thus far to draw +back. He followed a short distance close under the wall, +then crossed a path, hid entered a clump of trees. In a +moment he had passed through them, and could see the house +distinctly. Then Morrel saw that he had been right in +believing that the house was not illuminated. Instead of +lights at every window, as is customary on days of ceremony, +he saw only a gray mass, which was veiled also by a cloud, +which at that moment obscured the moon's feeble light. A +light moved rapidly from time to time past three windows of +the second floor. These three windows were in Madame de +SaintMeran's room. Another remained motionless behind some +red curtains which were in Madame de Villefort's bedroom. +Morrel guessed all this. So many times, in order to follow +Valentine in thought at every hour in the day, had he made +her describe the whole house, that without having seen it he +knew it all. +This darkness and silence alarmed Morrel still more than +Valentine's absence had done. Almost mad with grief, and +determined to venture everything in order to see Valentine +once more, and be certain of the misfortune he feared, +Morrel gained the edge of the clump of trees, and was going +to pass as quickly as possible through the flowergarden, +when the sound of a voice, still at some distance, but which +was borne upon the wind, reached him. +At this sound, as he was already partially exposed to view, +he stepped back and concealed himself completely, remaining +perfectly motionless. He had formed his resolution. If it +was Valentine alone, he would speak as she passed if she +was accompanied, and he could not speak, still he should see +her, and know that she was safe if they were strangers, he +would listen to their conversation, and might understand +something of this hitherto incomprehensible mystery. The +moon had just then escaped from behind the cloud which had +concealed it, and Morrel saw Villefort come out upon the +steps, followed by a gentleman in black. They descended, and +advanced towards the clump of trees, and Morrel soon +recognized the other gentleman as Doctor d'Avrigny. +The young man, seeing them approach, drew back mechanically, +until he found himself stopped by a sycamoretree in the +centre of the clump there he was compelled to remain. Soon +the two gentlemen stopped also. +"Ah, my dear doctor," said the procureur, "heaven declares +itself against my house What a dreadful death what a +blow Seek not to console me alas, nothing can alleviate so +great a sorrow the wound is too deep and too fresh Dead, +dead" The cold sweat sprang to the young man's brow, and +his teeth chattered. Who could be dead in that house, which +Villefort himself had called accursed? "My dear M. de +Villefort," replied the doctor, with a tone which redoubled +the terror of the young man, "I have not led you here to +console you on the contrary" +"What can you mean?" asked the procureur, alarmed. +"I mean that behind the misfortune which has just happened +to you, there is another, perhaps, still greater." +"Can it be possible?" murmured Villefort, clasping his +hands. "What are you going to tell me?" +"Are we quite alone, my friend?" +"Yes, quite but why all these precautions?" +"Because I have a terrible secret to communicate to you," +said the doctor. "Let us sit down." +Villefort fell, rather than seated himself The doctor stood +before him, with one hand placed on his shoulder. Morrel, +horrified, supported his head with one hand, and with the +other pressed his heart, lest its beatings should be heard. +"Dead, dead" repeated he within himself and he felt as if +he were also dying. +"Speak, doctor I am listening," said Villefort "strike +I am prepared for everything" +"Madame de SaintMeran was, doubtless, advancing in years, +but she enjoyed excellent health." Morrel began again to +breathe freely, which he had not done during the last ten +minutes. +"Grief has consumed her," said Villefort "yes, grief, +doctor After living forty years with the marquis" +"It is not grief, my dear Villefort," said the doctor +"grief may kill, although it rarely does, and never in a +day, never in an hour, never in ten minutes." Villefort +answered nothing, he simply raised his head, which had been +cast down before, and looked at the doctor with amazement. +"Were you present during the last struggle?" asked M. +d'Avrigny. +"I was," replied the procureur "you begged me not to +leave." +"Did you notice the symptoms of the disease to which Madame +de SaintMeran has fallen a victim?" +"I did. Madame de SaintMeran had three successive attacks, +at intervals of some minutes, each one more serious than the +former. When you arrived, Madame de SaintMeran had already +been panting for breath some minutes she then had a fit, +which I took to be simply a nervous attack, and it was only +when I saw her raise herself in the bed, and her limbs and +neck appear stiffened, that I became really alarmed. Then I +understood from your countenance there was more to fear than +I had thought. This crisis past, I endeavored to catch your +eye, but could not. You held her hand you were feeling +her pulse and the second fit came on before you had +turned towards me. This was more terrible than the first +the same nervous movements were repeated, and the mouth +contracted and turned purple." +"And at the third she expired." +"At the end of the first attack I discovered symptoms of +tetanus you confirmed my opinion." +"Yes, before others," replied the doctor "but now we are +alone" +"What are you going to say? Oh, spare me" +"That the symptoms of tetanus and poisoning by vegetable +substances are the same." M. de Villefort started from his +seat, then in a moment fell down again, silent and +motionless. Morrel knew not if he were dreaming or awake. +"Listen," said the doctor "I know the full importance of the +statement I have just made, and the disposition of the man +to whom I have made it." +"Do you speak to me as a magistrate or as a friend?" asked +Villefort. +"As a friend, and only as a friend, at this moment. The +similarity in the symptoms of tetanus and poisoning by +vegetable substances is so great, that were I obliged to +affirm by oath what I have now stated, I should hesitate I +therefore repeat to you, I speak not to a magistrate, but to +a friend. And to that friend I say. "During the +threequarters of an hour that the struggle continued, I +watched the convulsions and the death of Madame de +SaintMeran, and am thoroughly convinced that not only did +her death proceed from poison, but I could also specify the +poison.'" +"Can it be possible?" +"The symptoms are marked, do you see? sleep broken by +nervous spasms, excitation of the brain, torpor of the nerve +centres. Madame de SaintMeran succumbed to a powerful dose +of brucine or of strychnine, which by some mistake, perhaps, +has been given to her." Villefort seized the doctor's hand. +"Oh, it is impossible," said he, "I must be dreaming It is +frightful to hear such things from such a man as you Tell +me, I entreat you, my dear doctor, that you may be +deceived." +"Doubtless I may, but" +"But?" +"But I do not think so." +"Have pity on me doctor So many dreadful things have +happened to me lately that I am on the verge of madness." +"Has any one besides me seen Madame de SaintMeran?" +"No." +"Has anything been sent for from a chemist's that I have not +examined?" +"Nothing." +"Had Madame de SaintMeran any enemies?" +"Not to my knowledge." +"Would her death affect any one's interest?" +"It could not indeed, my daughter is her only heiress +Valentine alone. Oh, if such a thought could present itself, +I would stab myself to punish my heart for having for one +instant harbored it." +"Indeed, my dear friend," said M. d'Avrigny, "I would not +accuse any one I speak only of an accident, you understand, +of a mistake, but whether accident or mistake, the +fact is there it is on my conscience and compels me to +speak aloud to you. Make inquiry." +"Of whom? how? of what?" +"May not Barrois, the old servant, have made a mistake, and +have given Madame de SaintMeran a dose prepared for his +master?" +"For my father?" +"Yes." +"But how could a dose prepared for M. Noirtier poison Madame +de SaintMeran?" +"Nothing is more simple. You know poisons become remedies in +certain diseases, of which paralysis is one. For instance, +having tried every other remedy to restore movement and +speech to M. Noirtier, I resolved to try one last means, and +for three months I have been giving him brucine so that in +the last dose I ordered for him there were six grains. This +quantity, which is perfectly safe to administer to the +paralyzed frame of M. Noirtier, which has become gradually +accustomed to it, would be sufficient to kill another +person." +"My dear doctor, there is no communication between M. +Noirtier's apartment and that of Madame de SaintMeran, and +Barrois never entered my motherinlaw's room. In short, +doctor although I know you to be the most conscientious man +in the world, and although I place the utmost reliance in +you, I want, notwithstanding my conviction, to believe this +axiom, errare humanum est." +"Is there one of my brethren in whom you have equal +confidence with myself?" +"Why do you ask me that? what do you wish?" +"Send for him I will tell him what I have seen, and we will +consult together, and examine the body." +"And you will find traces of poison?" +"No, I did not say of poison, but we can prove what was the +state of the body we shall discover the cause of her sudden +death, and we shall say, "Dear Villefort, if this thing has +been caused by negligence, watch over your servants if from +hatred, watch your enemies.'" +"What do you propose to me, d'Avrigny?" said Villefort in +despair "so soon as another is admitted into our secret, an +inquest will become necessary and an inquest in my house +impossible Still," continued the procureur, looking at the +doctor with uneasiness, "if you wish it if you demand it, +why then it shall be done. But, doctor, you see me already +so grieved how can I introduce into my house so much +scandal, after so much sorrow? My wife and my daughter would +die of it And I, doctor you know a man does not arrive +at the post I occupy one has not been king's attorney +twentyfive years without having amassed a tolerable number +of enemies mine are numerous. Let this affair be talked of, +it will be a triumph for them, which will make them rejoice, +and cover me with shame. Pardon me, doctor, these worldly +ideas were you a priest I should not dare tell you that, +but you are a man, and you know mankind. Doctor, pray recall +your words you have said nothing, have you?" +"My dear M. de Villefort," replied the doctor, "my first +duty is to humanity. I would have saved Madame de +SaintMeran, if science could have done it but she is dead +and my duty regards the living. Let us bury this terrible +secret in the deepest recesses of our hearts I am willing, +if any one should suspect this, that my silence on the +subject should be imputed to my ignorance. Meanwhile, sir, +watch always watch carefully, for perhaps the evil may +not stop here. And when you have found the culprit, if you +find him, I will say to you, "You are a magistrate, do as +you will'" +"I thank you, doctor," said Villefort with indescribable +joy "I never had a better friend than you." And, as if he +feared Doctor d'Avrigny would recall his promise, he hurried +him towards the house. +When they were gone, Morrel ventured out from under the +trees, and the moon shone upon his face, which was so pale +it might have been taken for that of a ghost. "I am +manifestly protected in a most wonderful, but most terrible +manner," said he "but Valentine, poor girl, how will she +bear so much sorrow?" +As he thought thus, he looked alternately at the window with +red curtains and the three windows with white curtains. The +light had almost disappeared from the former doubtless +Madame de Villefort had just put out her lamp, and the +nightlamp alone reflected its dull light on the window. At +the extremity of the building, on the contrary, he saw one +of the three windows open. A waxlight placed on the +mantlepiece threw some of its pale rays without, and a +shadow was seen for one moment on the balcony. Morrel +shuddered he thought he heard a sob. +It cannot be wondered at that his mind, generally so +courageous, but now disturbed by the two strongest human +passions, love and fear, was weakened even to the indulgence +of superstitious thoughts. Although it was impossible that +Valentine should see him, hidden as he was, he thought he +heard the shadow at the window call him his disturbed mind +told him so. This double error became an irresistible +reality, and by one of the incomprehensible transports of +youth, he bounded from his hidingplace, and with two +strides, at the risk of being seen, at the risk of alarming +Valentine, at the risk of being discovered by some +exclamation which might escape the young girl, he crossed +the flowergarden, which by the light of the moon resembled +a large white lake, and having passed the rows of +orangetrees which extended in front of the house, he +reached the step, ran quickly up and pushed the door, which +opened without offering any resistance. Valentine had not +seen him. Her eyes, raised towards heaven, were watching a +silvery cloud gliding over the azure, its form that of a +shadow mounting towards heaven. Her poetic and excited mind +pictured it as the soul of her grandmother. +Meanwhile, Morrel had traversed the anteroom and found the +staircase, which, being carpeted, prevented his approach +being heard, and he had regained that degree of confidence +that the presence of M. de Villefort even would not have +alarmed him. He was quite prepared for any such encounter. +He would at once approach Valentine's father and acknowledge +all, begging Villefort to pardon and sanction the love which +united two fond and loving hearts. Morrel was mad. Happily +he did not meet any one. Now, especially, did he find the +description Valentine had given of the interior of the house +useful to him he arrived safely at the top of the +staircase, and while he was feeling his way, a sob indicated +the direction he was to take. He turned back, a door partly +open enabled him to see his road, and to hear the voice of +one in sorrow. He pushed the door open and entered. At the +other end of the room, under a white sheet which covered it, +lay the corpse, still more alarming to Morrel since the +account he had so unexpectedly overheard. By its side, on +her knees, and with her head buried in the cushion of an +easychair, was Valentine, trembling and sobbing, her hands +extended above her head, clasped and stiff. She had turned +from the window, which remained open, and was praying in +accents that would have affected the most unfeeling her +words were rapid, incoherent, unintelligible, for the +burning weight of grief almost stopped her utterance. The +moon shining through the open blinds made the lamp appear to +burn paler, and cast a sepulchral hue over the whole scene. +Morrel could not resist this he was not exemplary for +piety, he was not easily impressed, but Valentine suffering, +weeping, wringing her hands before him, was more than he +could bear in silence. He sighed, and whispered a name, and +the head bathed in tears and pressed on the velvet cushion +of the chair a head like that of a Magdalen by Correggio +was raised and turned towards him. Valentine perceived +him without betraying the least surprise. A heart +overwhelmed with one great grief is insensible to minor +emotions. Morrel held out his hand to her. Valentine, as her +only apology for not having met him, pointed to the corpse +under the sheet, and began to sob again. Neither dared for +some time to speak in that room. They hesitated to break the +silence which death seemed to impose at length Valentine +ventured. +"My friend," said she, "how came you here? Alas, I would say +you are welcome, had not death opened the way for you into +this house." +"Valentine," said Morrel with a trembling voice, "I had +waited since halfpast eight, and did not see you come I +became uneasy, leaped the wall, found my way through the +garden, when voices conversing about the fatal event" +"What voices ?" asked Valentine. Morrel shuddered as he +thought of the conversation of the doctor and M. de +Villefort, and he thought he could see through the sheet the +extended hands, the stiff neck, and the purple lips. +"Your servants," said he, "who were repeating the whole of +the sorrowful story from them I learned it all." +"But it was risking the failure of our plan to come up here, +love." +"Forgive me," replied Morrel "I will go away." +"No," said Valentine, "you might meet some one stay." +"But if any one should come here" +The young girl shook her head. "No one will come," said she +"do not fear, there is our safeguard," pointing to the bed. +"But what has become of M. d'Epinay?" replied Morrel. +"M. Franz arrived to sign the contract just as my dear +grandmother was dying." +"Alas," said Morrel with a feeling of selfish joy for he +thought this death would cause the wedding to be postponed +indefinitely. "But what redoubles my sorrow," continued the +young girl, as if this feeling was to receive its immediate +punishment, "is that the poor old lady, on her deathbed, +requested that the marriage might take place as soon as +possible she also, thinking to protect me, was acting +against me." +"Hark" said Morrel. They both listened steps were +distinctly heard in the corridor and on the stairs. +"It is my father, who has just left his study." +"To accompany the doctor to the door," added Morrel. +"How do you know it is the doctor?" asked Valentine, +astonished. +"I imagined it must be," said Morrel. Valentine looked at +the young man they heard the street door close, then M. de +Villefort locked the garden door, and returned upstairs. He +stopped a moment in the anteroom, as if hesitating whether +to turn to his own apartment or into Madame de +SaintMeran's Morrel concealed himself behind a door +Valentine remained motionless, grief seeming to deprive her +of all fear. M. de Villefort passed on to his own room. +"Now," said Valentine, "you can neither go out by the front +door nor by the garden." Morrel looked at her with +astonishment. "There is but one way left you that is safe," +said she "it is through my grandfather's room." She rose, +"Come," she added. "Where?" asked Maximilian. +"To my grandfather's room." +"I in M. Noirtier's apartment?" +"Yes." +"Can you mean it, Valentine?" +"I have long wished it he is my only remaining friend and +we both need his help, come." +"Be careful, Valentine," said Morrel, hesitating to comply +with the young girl's wishes "I now see my error I acted +like a madman in coming in here. Are you sure you are more +reasonable?" +"Yes," said Valentine "and I have but one scruple, that +of leaving my dear grandmother's remains, which I had +undertaken to watch." +"Valentine," said Morrel, "death is in itself sacred." +"Yes," said Valentine "besides, it will not be for long." +She then crossed the corridor, and led the way down a narrow +staircase to M. Noirtier's room Morrel followed her on +tiptoe at the door they found the old servant. "Barrois," +said Valentine, "shut the door, and let no one come in." She +passed first. Noirtier, seated in his chair, and listening +to every sound, was watching the door he saw Valentine, and +his eye brightened. There was something grave and solemn in +the approach of the young girl which struck the old man, and +immediately his bright eye began to interrogate. "Dear +grandfather." said she hurriedly, "you know poor grandmamma +died an hour since, and now I have no friend in the world +but you." His expressive eyes evinced the greatest +tenderness. "To you alone, then, may I confide my sorrows +and my hopes?" The paralytic motioned "Yes." Valentine took +Maximilian's hand. "Look attentively, then, at this +gentleman." The old man fixed his scrutinizing gaze with +slight astonishment on Morrel. "It is M. Maximilian Morrel," +said she "the son of that good merchant of Marseilles, whom +you doubtless recollect." +"Yes," said the old man. "He brings an irreproachable name, +which Maximilian is likely to render glorious, since at +thirty years of age he is a captain, an officer of the +Legion of Honor." The old man signified that he recollected +him. "Well, grandpapa," said Valentine, kneeling before him, +and pointing to Maximilian, "I love him, and will be only +his were I compelled to marry another, I would destroy +myself." +The eyes of the paralytic expressed a multitude of +tumultuous thoughts. "You like M. Maximilian Morrel, do you +not, grandpapa?" asked Valentine. +"Yes." +"And you will protect us, who are your children, against the +will of my father?" Noirtier cast an intelligent glance +at Morrel, as if to say, "perhaps I may." Maximilian +understood him. +"Mademoiselle," said he, "you have a sacred duty to fulfil +in your deceased grandmother's room, will you allow me the +honor of a few minutes' conversation with M. Noirtier?" +"That is it," said the old man's eye. Then he looked +anxiously at Valentine. +"Do you fear he will not understand?" +"Yes." +"Oh, we have so often spoken of you, that he knows exactly +how I talk to you." Then turning to Maximilian, with an +adorable smile although shaded by sorrow, "He knows +everything I know," said she. +Valentine arose, placed a chair for Morrel, requested +Barrois not to admit any one, and having tenderly embraced +her grandfather, and sorrowfully taken leave of Morrel, she +went away. To prove to Noirtier that he was in Valentine's +confidence and knew all their secrets, Morrel took the +dictionary, a pen, and some paper, and placed them all on a +table where there was a light. +"But first," said Morrel, "allow me, sir, to tell you who I +am, how much I love Mademoiselle Valentine, and what are my +designs respecting her." Noirtier made a sign that he would +listen. +It was an imposing sight to witness this old man, apparently +a mere useless burden, becoming the sole protector, support, +and adviser of the lovers who were both young, beautiful, +and strong. His remarkably noble and austere expression +struck Morrel, who began his story with trembling. He +related the manner in which he had become acquainted with +Valentine, and how he had loved her, and that Valentine, in +her solitude and her misfortune, had accepted the offer of +his devotion. He told him his birth, his position, his +fortune, and more than once, when he consulted the look of +the paralytic, that look answered, "That is good, proceed." +"And now," said Morrel, when he had finished the first part +of his recital, "now I have told you of my love and my +hopes, may I inform you of my intentions?" +"Yes," signified the old man. +"This was our resolution a cabriolet was in waiting at the +gate, in which I intended to carry off Valentine to my +sister's house, to marry her, and to wait respectfully M. de +Villefort's pardon." +"No," said Noirtier. +"We must not do so?" +"No." +"You do not sanction our project?" +"No." +"There is another way," said Morrel. The old man's +interrogative eye said, "What?" +"I will go," continued Maximilian, "I will seek M. Franz +d'Epinay I am happy to be able to mention this in +Mademoiselle de Villefort's absence and will conduct +myself toward him so as to compel him to challenge me." +Noirtier's look continued to interrogate. "You wish to know +what I will do?" +"Yes." +"I will find him, as I told you. I will tell him the ties +which bind me to Mademoiselle Valentine if he be a sensible +man, he will prove it by renouncing of his own accord the +hand of his betrothed, and will secure my friendship, and +love until death if he refuse, either through interest or +ridiculous pride, after I have proved to him that he would +be forcing my wife from me, that Valentine loves me, and +will have no other, I will fight with him, give him every +advantage, and I shall kill him, or he will kill me if I am +victorious, he will not marry Valentine, and if I die, I am +very sure Valentine will not marry him." Noirtier watched, +with indescribable pleasure, this noble and sincere +countenance, on which every sentiment his tongue uttered was +depicted, adding by the expression of his fine features all +that coloring adds to a sound and faithful drawing. Still, +when Morrel had finished, he shut his eyes several times, +which was his manner of saying "No." +"No?" said Morrel "you disapprove of this second project, +as you did of the first?" +"I do," signified the old man. +"But what then must be done?" asked Morrel. "Madame de +SaintMeran's last request was, that the marriage might not +be delayed must I let things take their course?" Noirtier +did not move. "I understand," said Morrel "I am to wait." +"Yes." +"But delay may ruin our plan, sir," replied the young man. +"Alone, Valentine has no power she will be compelled to +submit. I am here almost miraculously, and can scarcely hope +for so good an opportunity to occur again. Believe me, there +are only the two plans I have proposed to you forgive my +vanity, and tell me which you prefer. Do you authorize +Mademoiselle Valentine to intrust herself to my honor?" +"No." +"Do you prefer I should seek M. d'Epinay?" +"No." +"Whence then will come the help we need from chance?" +resumed Morrel. +"No." +"From you?" +"Yes." +"You thoroughly understand me, sir? Pardon my eagerness, for +my life depends on your answer. Will our help come from +you?" +"Yes." +"You are sure of it?" +"Yes." There was so much firmness in the look which gave +this answer, no one could, at any rate, doubt his will, if +they did his power. "Oh, thank you a thousand times But +how, unless a miracle should restore your speech, your +gesture, your movement, how can you, chained to that +armchair, dumb and motionless, oppose this marriage?" A +smile lit up the old man's face, a strange smile of the eyes +in a paralyzed face. "Then I must wait?" asked the young +man. +"Yes." +"But the contract?" The same smile returned. "Will you +assure me it shall not be signed?" +"Yes," said Noirtier. +"The contract shall not be signed" cried Morrel. "Oh, +pardon me, sir I can scarcely realize so great a happiness. +Will they not sign it?" +"No," said the paralytic. Notwithstanding that assurance, +Morrel still hesitated. This promise of an impotent old man +was so strange that, instead of being the result of the +power of his will, it might emanate from enfeebled organs. +Is it not natural that the madman, ignorant of his folly, +should attempt things beyond his power? The weak man talks +of burdens he can raise, the timid of giants he can +confront, the poor of treasures he spends, the most humble +peasant, in the height of his pride, calls himself Jupiter. +Whether Noirtier understood the young man's indecision, or +whether he had not full confidence in his docility, he +looked uneasily at him. "What do you wish, sir?" asked +Morrel "that I should renew my promise of remaining +tranquil?" Noirtier's eye remained fixed and firm, as if to +imply that a promise did not suffice then it passed from +his face to his hands. +"Shall I swear to you, sir?" asked Maximilian. +"Yes?" said the paralytic with the same solemnity. Morrel +understood that the old man attached great importance to an +oath. He extended his hand. +"I swear to you, on my honor," said he, "to await your +decision respecting the course I am to pursue with M. +d'Epinay." +"That is right," said the old man. +"Now," said Morrel, "do you wish me to retire?" +"Yes." +"Without seeing Mademoiselle Valentine?" +"Yes." +Morrel made a sign that he was ready to obey. "But," said +he, "first allow me to embrace you as your daughter did just +now." Noirtier's expression could not be understood. The +young man pressed his lips on the same spot, on the old +man's forehead, where Valentine's had been. Then he bowed a +second time and retired. He found outside the door the old +servant, to whom Valentine had given directions. Morrel was +conducted along a dark passage, which led to a little door +opening on the garden, soon found the spot where he had +entered, with the assistance of the shrubs gained the top of +the wall, and by his ladder was in an instant in the +cloverfield where his cabriolet was still waiting for him. +He got in it, and thoroughly wearied by so many emotions, +arrived about midnight in the Rue Meslay, threw himself on +his bed and slept soundly. +Chapter +The Villefort Family Vault. +Two days after, a considerable crowd was assembled, towards +ten o'clock in the morning, around the door of M. de +Villefort's house, and a long file of mourningcoaches and +private carriages extended along the Faubourg SaintHonore +and the Rue de la Pepiniere. Among them was one of a very +singular form, which appeared to have come from a distance. +It was a kind of covered wagon, painted black, and was one +of the first to arrive. Inquiry was made, and it was +ascertained that, by a strange coincidence, this carriage +contained the corpse of the Marquis de SaintMeran, and that +those who had come thinking to attend one funeral would +follow two. Their number was great. The Marquis de +SaintMeran, one of the most zealous and faithful +dignitaries of Louis XVIII. and King Charles X., had +preserved a great number of friends, and these, added to the +personages whom the usages of society gave Villefort a claim +on, formed a considerable body. +Due information was given to the authorities, and permission +obtained that the two funerals should take place at the same +time. A second hearse, decked with the same funereal pomp, +was brought to M. de Villefort's door, and the coffin +removed into it from the postwagon. The two bodies were to +be interred in the cemetery of PerelaChaise, where M. de +Villefort had long since had a tomb prepared for the +reception of his family. The remains of poor Renee were +already deposited there, and now, after ten years of +separation, her father and mother were to be reunited with +her. The Parisians, always curious, always affected by +funereal display, looked on with religious silence while the +splendid procession accompanied to their last abode two of +the number of the old aristocracy the greatest protectors +of commerce and sincere devotees to their principles. In one +of the mourningcoaches Beauchamp, Debray, and +ChateauRenaud were talking of the very sudden death of the +marchioness. "I saw Madame de SaintMeran only last year at +Marseilles, when I was coming back from Algiers," said +ChateauRenaud "she looked like a woman destined to live to +be a hundred years old, from her apparent sound health and +great activity of mind and body. How old was she?" +"Franz assured me," replied Albert, "that she was sixtysix +years old. But she has not died of old age, but of grief it +appears that since the death of the marquis, which affected +her very deeply, she has not completely recovered her +reason." +"But of what disease, then, did she die?" asked Debray. +"It is said to have been a congestion of the brain, or +apoplexy, which is the same thing, is it not?" +"Nearly." +"It is difficult to believe that it was apoplexy," said +Beauchamp. "Madame de SaintMeran, whom I once saw, was +short, of slender form, and of a much more nervous than +sanguine temperament grief could hardly produce apoplexy in +such a constitution as that of Madame de SaintMeran." +"At any rate," said Albert, "whatever disease or doctor may +have killed her, M. de Villefort, or rather, Mademoiselle +Valentine, or, still rather, our friend Franz, inherits a +magnificent fortune, amounting, I believe, to , livres +per annum." +"And this fortune will be doubled at the death of the old +Jacobin, Noirtier." +"That is a tenacious old grandfather," said Beauchamp. +"Tenacem propositi virum. I think he must have made an +agreement with death to outlive all his heirs, and he +appears likely to succeed. He resembles the old +Conventionalist of ', who said to Napoleon, in , "You +bend because your empire is a young stem, weakened by rapid +growth. Take the Republic for a tutor let us return with +renewed strength to the battlefield, and I promise you +, soldiers, another Marengo, and a second Austerlitz. +Ideas do not become extinct, sire they slumber sometimes, +but only revive the stronger before they sleep entirely.' +Ideas and men appeared the same to him. One thing only +puzzles me, namely, how Franz d'Epinay will like a +grandfather who cannot be separated from his wife. But where +is Franz?" +"In the first carriage, with M. de Villefort, who considers +him already as one of the family." +Such was the conversation in almost all the carriages these +two sudden deaths, so quickly following each other, +astonished every one, but no one suspected the terrible +secret which M. d'Avrigny had communicated, in his nocturnal +walk to M. de Villefort. They arrived in about an hour at +the cemetery the weather was mild, but dull, and in harmony +with the funeral ceremony. Among the groups which flocked +towards the family vault, ChateauRenaud recognized Morrel, +who had come alone in a cabriolet, and walked silently along +the path bordered with yewtrees. "You here?" said +ChateauRenaud, passing his arms through the young +captain's "are you a friend of Villefort's? How is it that +I have never met you at his house?" +"I am no acquaintance of M. de Villefort's." answered +Morrel, "but I was of Madame de SaintMeran." Albert came up +to them at this moment with Franz. +"The time and place are but illsuited for an introduction." +said Albert "but we are not superstitious. M. Morrel, allow +me to present to you M. Franz d'Epinay, a delightful +travelling companion, with whom I made the tour of Italy. My +dear Franz, M. Maximilian Morrel, an excellent friend I have +acquired in your absence, and whose name you will hear me +mention every time I make any allusion to affection, wit, or +amiability." Morrel hesitated for a moment he feared it +would be hypocritical to accost in a friendly manner the man +whom he was tacitly opposing, but his oath and the gravity +of the circumstances recurred to his memory he struggled to +conceal his emotion and bowed to Franz. "Mademoiselle de +Villefort is in deep sorrow, is she not?" said Debray to +Franz. +"Extremely," replied he "she looked so pale this morning, I +scarcely knew her." These apparently simple words pierced +Morrel to the heart. This man had seen Valentine, and spoken +to her The young and highspirited officer required all his +strength of mind to resist breaking his oath. He took the +arm of ChateauRenaud, and turned towards the vault, where +the attendants had already placed the two coffins. "This is +a magnificent habitation," said Beauchamp, looking towards +the mausoleum "a summer and winter palace. You will, in +turn, enter it, my dear d'Epinay, for you will soon be +numbered as one of the family. I, as a philosopher, should +like a little countryhouse, a cottage down there under the +trees, without so many freestones over my poor body. In +dying, I will say to those around me what Voltaire wrote to +Piron "Eo rus, and all will be over.' But come, Franz, take +courage, your wife is an heiress." +"Indeed, Beauchamp, you are unbearable. Politics has made +you laugh at everything, and political men have made you +disbelieve everything. But when you have the honor of +associating with ordinary men, and the pleasure of leaving +politics for a moment, try to find your affectionate heart, +which you leave with your stick when you go to the Chamber." +"But tell me," said Beauchamp, "what is life? Is it not a +hall in Death's anteroom?" +"I am prejudiced against Beauchamp," said Albert, drawing +Franz away, and leaving the former to finish his +philosophical dissertation with Debray. The Villefort vault +formed a square of white stones, about twenty feet high an +interior partition separated the two families, and each +apartment had its entrance door. Here were not, as in other +tombs, ignoble drawers, one above another, where thrift +bestows its dead and labels them like specimens in a museum +all that was visible within the bronze gates was a +gloomylooking room, separated by a wall from the vault +itself. The two doors before mentioned were in the middle of +this wall, and enclosed the Villefort and SaintMeran +coffins. There grief might freely expend itself without +being disturbed by the trifling loungers who came from a +picnic party to visit PerelaChaise, or by lovers who make +it their rendezvous. +The two coffins were placed on trestles previously prepared +for their reception in the righthand crypt belonging to the +SaintMeran family. Villefort, Franz, and a few near +relatives alone entered the sanctuary. +As the religious ceremonies had all been performed at the +door, and there was no address given, the party all +separated ChateauRenaud, Albert, and Morrel, went one way, +and Debray and Beauchamp the other. Franz remained with M. +de Villefort at the gate of the cemetery Morrel made an +excuse to wait he saw Franz and M. de Villefort get into +the same mourning coach, and thought this meeting forboded +evil. He then returned to Paris, and although in the same +carriage with ChateauRenaud and Albert, he did not hear one +word of their conversation. As Franz was about to take leave +of M. de Villefort, "When shall I see you again?" said the +latter. +"At what time you please, sir," replied Franz. +"As soon as possible." +"I am at your command, sir shall we return together?" +"If not unpleasant to you." +"On the contrary, I shall feel much pleasure." Thus, the +future father and soninlaw stepped into the same carriage, +and Morrel, seeing them pass, became uneasy. Villefort and +Franz returned to the Faubourg SaintHonore. The procureur, +without going to see either his wife or his daughter, went +at once to his study, and, offering the young man a chair, +"M. d'Epinay," said he, "allow me to remind you at this +moment, which is perhaps not so illchosen as at first +sight may appear, for obedience to the wishes of the +departed is the first offering which should be made at their +tomb, allow me then to remind you of the wish expressed +by Madame de SaintMeran on her deathbed, that Valentine's +wedding might not be deferred. You know the affairs of the +deceased are in perfect order, and her will bequeaths to +Valentine the entire property of the SaintMeran family the +notary showed me the documents yesterday, which will enable +us to draw up the contract immediately. You may call on the +notary, M. Deschamps, Place Beauveau, Faubourg SaintHonore, +and you have my authority to inspect those deeds." +"Sir," replied M. d'Epinay, "it is not, perhaps, the moment +for Mademoiselle Valentine, who is in deep distress, to +think of a husband indeed, I fear" +"Valentine will have no greater pleasure than that of +fulfilling her grandmother's last injunctions there will be +no obstacle from that quarter, I assure you." +"In that case," replied Franz, "as I shall raise none, you +may make arrangements when you please I have pledged my +word, and shall feel pleasure and happiness in adhering to +it." +"Then," said Villefort, "nothing further is required. The +contract was to have been signed three days since we shall +find it all ready, and can sign it today." +"But the mourning?" said Franz, hesitating. +"Don't be uneasy on that score," replied Villefort "no +ceremony will be neglected in my house. Mademoiselle de +Villefort may retire during the prescribed three months to +her estate of SaintMeran I say hers, for she inherits it +today. There, after a few days, if you like, the civil +marriage shall be celebrated without pomp or ceremony. +Madame de SaintMeran wished her daughter should be married +there. When that is over, you, sir, can return to Paris, +while your wife passes the time of her mourning with her +motherinlaw." +"As you please, sir," said Franz. +"Then," replied M. de Villefort, "have the kindness to wait +half an hour Valentine shall come down into the +drawingroom. I will send for M. Deschamps we will read and +sign the contract before we separate, and this evening +Madame de Villefort shall accompany Valentine to her +estate, where we will rejoin them in a week." +"Sir," said Franz, "I have one request to make." +"What is it?" +"I wish Albert de Morcerf and Raoul de ChateauRenaud to be +present at this signature you know they are my witnesses." +"Half an hour will suffice to apprise them will you go for +them yourself, or shall you send?" +"I prefer going, sir." +"I shall expect you, then, in half an hour, baron, and +Valentine will be ready." Franz bowed and left the room. +Scarcely had the door closed, when M. de Villefort sent to +tell Valentine to be ready in the drawingroom in half an +hour, as he expected the notary and M. d'Epinay and his +witnesses. The news caused a great sensation throughout the +house Madame de Villefort would not believe it, and +Valentine was thunderstruck. She looked around for help, and +would have gone down to her grandfather's room, but on the +stairs she met M. de Villefort, who took her arm and led her +into the drawingroom. In the anteroom, Valentine met +Barrois, and looked despairingly at the old servant. A +moment later, Madame de Villefort entered the drawingroom +with her little Edward. It was evident that she had shared +the grief of the family, for she was pale and looked +fatigued. She sat down, took Edward on her knees, and from +time to time pressed this child, on whom her affections +appeared centred, almost convulsively to her bosom. Two +carriages were soon heard to enter the court yard. One was +the notary's the other, that of Franz and his friends. In a +moment the whole party was assembled. Valentine was so pale +one might trace the blue veins from her temples, round her +eyes and down her cheeks. Franz was deeply affected. +ChateauRenaud and Albert looked at each other with +amazement the ceremony which was just concluded had not +appeared more sorrowful than did that which was about to +begin. Madame de Villefort had placed herself in the shadow +behind a velvet curtain, and as she constantly bent over her +child, it was difficult to read the expression of her face. +M. de Villefort was, as usual, unmoved. +The notary, after having according to the customary method +arranged the papers on the table, taken his place in an +armchair, and raised his spectacles, turned towards Franz +"Are you M. Franz de Quesnel, baron d'Epinay?" asked he, +although he knew it perfectly. +"Yes, sir," replied Franz. The notary bowed. "I have, then, +to inform you, sir, at the request of M. de Villefort, that +your projected marriage with Mademoiselle de Villefort has +changed the feeling of M. Noirtier towards his grandchild, +and that he disinherits her entirely of the fortune he would +have left her. Let me hasten to add," continued he, "that +the testator, having only the right to alienate a part of +his fortune, and having alienated it all, the will will not +bear scrutiny, and is declared null and void." +"Yes." said Villefort "but I warn M. d'Epinay, that during +my lifetime my father's will shall never be questioned, my +position forbidding any doubt to be entertained." +"Sir," said Franz, "I regret much that such a question has +been raised in the presence of Mademoiselle Valentine I +have never inquired the amount of her fortune, which, +however limited it may be, exceeds mine. My family has +sought consideration in this alliance with M. de Villefort +all I seek is happiness." Valentine imperceptibly thanked +him, while two silent tears rolled down her cheeks. +"Besides, sir," said Villefort, addressing himself to his +future soninlaw, "excepting the loss of a portion of your +hopes, this unexpected will need not personally wound you +M. Noirtier's weakness of mind sufficiently explains it. It +is not because Mademoiselle Valentine is going to marry you +that he is angry, but because she will marry, a union with +any other would have caused him the same sorrow. Old age is +selfish, sir, and Mademoiselle de Villefort has been a +faithful companion to M. Noirtier, which she cannot be when +she becomes the Baroness d'Epinay. My father's melancholy +state prevents our speaking to him on any subjects, which +the weakness of his mind would incapacitate him from +understanding, and I am perfectly convinced that at the +present time, although, he knows that his granddaughter is +going to be married, M. Noirtier has even forgotten the name +of his intended grandson." M. de Villefort had scarcely said +this, when the door opened, and Barrois appeared. +"Gentlemen," said he, in a tone strangely firm for a servant +speaking to his masters under such solemn circumstances, +"gentlemen, M. Noirtier de Villefort wishes to speak +immediately to M. Franz de Quesnel, baron d'Epinay" he, as +well as the notary, that there might be no mistake in the +person, gave all his titles to the bridegroom elect. +Villefort started, Madame de Villefort let her son slip from +her knees, Valentine rose, pale and dumb as a statue. Albert +and ChateauRenaud exchanged a second look, more full of +amazement than the first. The notary looked at Villefort. +"It is impossible," said the procureur. "M. d'Epinay cannot +leave the drawingroom at present." +"It is at this moment," replied Barrois with the same +firmness, "that M. Noirtier, my master, wishes to speak on +important subjects to M. Franz d'Epinay." +"Grandpapa Noirtier can speak now, then," said Edward, with +his habitual quickness. However, his remark did not make +Madame de Villefort even smile, so much was every mind +engaged, and so solemn was the situation. Astonishment was +at its height. Something like a smile was perceptible on +Madame de Villefort's countenance. Valentine instinctively +raised her eyes, as if to thank heaven. +"Pray go, Valentine," said M. de Villefort, "and see what +this new fancy of your grandfather's is." Valentine rose +quickly, and was hastening joyfully towards the door, when +M. de Villefort altered his intention. +"Stop," said he "I will go with you." +"Excuse me, sir," said Franz, "since M. Noirtier sent for +me, I am ready to attend to his wish besides, I shall be +happy to pay my respects to him, not having yet had the +honor of doing so." +"Pray, sir," said Villefort with marked uneasiness, "do not +disturb yourself." +"Forgive me, sir," said Franz in a resolute tone. "I would +not lose this opportunity of proving to M. Noirtier how +wrong it would be of him to encourage feelings of dislike to +me, which I am determined to conquer, whatever they may be, +by my devotion." And without listening to Villefort he +arose, and followed Valentine, who was running downstairs +with the joy of a shipwrecked mariner who finds a rock to +cling to. M. de Villefort followed them. ChateauRenaud and +Morcerf exchanged a third look of still increasing wonder. +Chapter +A Signed Statement. +Noirtier was prepared to receive them, dressed in black, and +installed in his armchair. When the three persons he +expected had entered, he looked at the door, which his valet +immediately closed. +"Listen," whispered Villefort to Valentine, who could not +conceal her joy "if M. Noirtier wishes to communicate +anything which would delay your marriage, I forbid you to +understand him." Valentine blushed, but did not answer. +Villefort, approaching Noirtier "Here is M. Franz +d'Epinay," said he "you requested to see him. We have all +wished for this interview, and I trust it will convince you +how illformed are your objections to Valentine's marriage." +Noirtier answered only by a look which made Villefort's +blood run cold. He motioned to Valentine to approach. In a +moment, thanks to her habit of conversing with her +grandfather, she understood that he asked for a key. Then +his eye was fixed on the drawer of a small chest between the +windows. She opened the drawer, and found a key and, +understanding that was what he wanted, again watched his +eyes, which turned toward an old secretary which had been +neglected for many years and was supposed to contain nothing +but useless documents. "Shall I open the secretary?" asked +Valentine. +"Yes," said the old man. +"And the drawers?" +"Yes." +"Those at the side?" +"No." +"The middle one?" +"Yes." Valentine opened it and drew out a bundle of papers. +"Is that what you wish for?" asked she. +"No." +She took successively all the other papers out till the +drawer was empty. "But there are no more," said she. +Noirtier's eye was fixed on the dictionary. "Yes, I +understand, grandfather," said the young girl. +He pointed to each letter of the alphabet. At the letter S +the old man stopped her. She opened, and found the word +"secret." +"Ah, is there a secret spring?" said Valentine. +"Yes," said Noirtier. +"And who knows it?" Noirtier looked at the door where the +servant had gone out. "Barrois?" said she. +"Yes." +"Shall I call him?" +"Yes." +Valentine went to the door, and called Barrois. Villefort's +impatience during this scene made the perspiration roll from +his forehead, and Franz was stupefied. The old servant came. +"Barrois," said Valentine, "my grandfather has told me to +open that drawer in the secretary, but there is a secret +spring in it, which you know will you open it?" +Barrois looked at the old man. "Obey," said Noirtier's +intelligent eye. Barrois touched a spring, the false bottom +came out, and they saw a bundle of papers tied with a black +string. +"Is that what you wish for?" said Barrois. +"Yes." +"Shall I give these papers to M. de Villefort?" +"No." +"To Mademoiselle Valentine?" +"No." +"To M. Franz d'Epinay?" +"Yes." +Franz, astonished, advanced a step. "To me, sir?" said he. +"Yes." Franz took them from Barrois and casting a glance at +the cover, read +""To be given, after my death, to General Durand, who shall +bequeath the packet to his son, with an injunction to +preserve it as containing an important document.' +"Well, sir," asked Franz, "what do you wish me to do with +this paper?" +"To preserve it, sealed up as it is, doubtless," said the +procureur. +"No," replied Noirtier eagerly. +"Do you wish him to read it?" said Valentine. +"Yes," replied the old man. "You understand, baron, my +grandfather wishes you to read this paper," said Valentine. +"Then let us sit down," said Villefort impatiently, "for it +will take some time." +"Sit down," said the old man. Villefort took a chair, but +Valentine remained standing by her father's side, and Franz +before him, holding the mysterious paper in his hand. +"Read," said the old man. Franz untied it, and in the midst +of the most profound silence read +""Extract from the Report of a meeting of the Bonapartist +Club in the Rue SaintJacques, held February th, .'" +Franz stopped. "February th, " said he "it is the day +my father was murdered." Valentine and Villefort were dumb +the eye of the old man alone seemed to say clearly, "Go on." +"But it was on leaving this club," said he, "my father +disappeared." Noirtier's eye continued to say, "Read." He +resumed +""The undersigned Louis Jacques Beaurepaire, +lieutenantcolonel of artillery, Etienne Duchampy, general +of brigade, and Claude Lecharpal, keeper of woods and +forests, Declare, that on the th of February, a letter +arrived from the Island of Elba, recommending to the +kindness and the confidence of the Bonapartist Club, General +Flavien de Quesnel, who having served the emperor from +to was supposed to be devoted to the interests of the +Napoleon dynasty, notwithstanding the title of baron which +Louis XVIII. had just granted to him with his estate of +Epinay. +""A note was in consequence addressed to General de Quesnel, +begging him to be present at the meeting next day, the th. +The note indicated neither the street nor the number of the +house where the meeting was to be held it bore no +signature, but it announced to the general that some one +would call for him if he would be ready at nine o'clock. The +meetings were always held from that time till midnight. At +nine o'clock the president of the club presented himself +the general was ready, the president informed him that one +of the conditions of his introduction was that he should be +eternally ignorant of the place of meeting, and that he +would allow his eyes to be bandaged, swearing that he would +not endeavor to take off the bandage. General de Quesnel +accepted the condition, and promised on his honor not to +seek to discover the road they took. The general's carriage +was ready, but the president told him it was impossible for +him to use it, since it was useless to blindfold the master +if the coachman knew through what streets he went. "What +must be done then?" asked the general. "I have my +carriage here," said the president. +"""Have you, then, so much confidence in your servant that +you can intrust him with a secret you will not allow me to +know?" +"""Our coachman is a member of the club," said the +president "we shall be driven by a StateCouncillor." +"""Then we run another risk," said the general, laughing, +"that of being upset." We insert this joke to prove that the +general was not in the least compelled to attend the +meeting, but that he came willingly. When they were seated +in the carriage the president reminded the general of his +promise to allow his eyes to be bandaged, to which he made +no opposition. On the road the president thought he saw the +general make an attempt to remove the handkerchief, and +reminded him of his oath. "Sure enough," said the general. +The carriage stopped at an alley leading out of the Rue +SaintJacques. The general alighted, leaning on the arm of +the president, of whose dignity he was not aware, +considering him simply as a member of the club they went +through the alley, mounted a flight of stairs, and entered +the assemblyroom. +"""The deliberations had already begun. The members, +apprised of the sort of presentation which was to be made +that evening, were all in attendance. When in the middle of +the room the general was invited to remove his bandage, he +did so immediately, and was surprised to see so many +wellknown faces in a society of whose existence he had till +then been ignorant. They questioned him as to his +sentiments, but he contented himself with answering, that +the letters from the Island of Elba ought to have informed +them'" +Franz interrupted himself by saying, "My father was a +royalist they need not have asked his sentiments, which +were well known." +"And hence," said Villefort, "arose my affection for your +father, my dear M. Franz. Opinions held in common are a +ready bond of union." +"Read again," said the old man. Franz continued +""The president then sought to make him speak more +explicitly, but M. de Quesnel replied that he wished first +to know what they wanted with him. He was then informed of +the contents of the letter from the Island of Elba, in which +he was recommended to the club as a man who would be likely +to advance the interests of their party. One paragraph spoke +of the return of Bonaparte and promised another letter and +further details, on the arrival of the Pharaon belonging to +the shipbuilder Morrel, of Marseilles, whose captain was +entirely devoted to the emperor. During all this time, the +general, on whom they thought to have relied as on a +brother, manifested evidently signs of discontent and +repugnance. When the reading was finished, he remained +silent, with knitted brows. +"""Well," asked the president, "what do you say to this +letter, general?" +"""I say that it is too soon after declaring myself for +Louis XVIII. to break my vow in behalf of the exemperor." +This answer was too clear to permit of any mistake as to his +sentiments. "General," said the president, "we acknowledge +no King Louis XVIII., or an exemperor, but his majesty the +emperor and king, driven from France, which is his kingdom, +by violence and treason." +"""Excuse me, gentlemen," said the general "you may not +acknowledge Louis XVIII., but I do, as he has made me a +baron and a fieldmarshal, and I shall never forget that for +these two titles I am indebted to his happy return to +France." +"""Sir," said the president, rising with gravity, "be +careful what you say your words clearly show us that they +are deceived concerning you in the Island of Elba, and have +deceived us The communication has been made to you in +consequence of the confidence placed in you, and which does +you honor. Now we discover our error a title and promotion +attach you to the government we wish to overturn. We will +not constrain you to help us we enroll no one against his +conscience, but we will compel you to act generously, even +if you are not disposed to do so." +"""You would call acting generously, knowing your conspiracy +and not informing against you, that is what I should call +becoming your accomplice. You see I am more candid than +you."'" +"Ah, my father" said Franz, interrupting himself. "I +understand now why they murdered him." Valentine could not +help casting one glance towards the young man, whose filial +enthusiasm it was delightful to behold. Villefort walked to +and fro behind them. Noirtier watched the expression of each +one, and preserved his dignified and commanding attitude. +Franz returned to the manuscript, and continued +"""Sir," said the president, "you have been invited to join +this assembly you were not forced here it was proposed +to you to come blindfolded you accepted. When you +complied with this twofold request you well knew we did not +wish to secure the throne of Louis XVIII., or we should not +take so much care to avoid the vigilance of the police. It +would be conceding too much to allow you to put on a mask to +aid you in the discovery of our secret, and then to remove +it that you may ruin those who have confided in you. No, no, +you must first say if you declare yourself for the king of a +day who now reigns, or for his majesty the emperor." +"""I am a royalist," replied the general "I have taken the +oath of allegiance to Louis XVIII., and I will adhere to +it." These words were followed by a general murmur, and it +was evident that several of the members were discussing the +propriety of making the general repent of his rashness. +""The president again arose, and having imposed silence, +said, "Sir, you are too serious and too sensible a man +not to understand the consequences of our present situation, +and your candor has already dictated to us the conditions +which remain for us to offer you." The general, putting his +hand on his sword, exclaimed, "If you talk of honor, do +not begin by disavowing its laws, and impose nothing by +violence." +"""And you, sir," continued the president, with a calmness +still more terrible than the general's anger, "I advise you +not to touch your sword." The general looked around him with +slight uneasiness however he did not yield, but calling up +all his fortitude, said, "I will not swear." +"""Then you must die," replied the president calmly. M. +d'Epinay became very pale he looked round him a second +time, several members of the club were whispering, and +getting their arms from under their cloaks. "General," said +the president, "do not alarm yourself you are among men of +honor who will use every means to convince you before +resorting to the last extremity, but as you have said, you +are among conspirators, you are in possession of our secret, +and you must restore it to us." A significant silence +followed these words, and as the general did not reply, +"Close the doors," said the president to the doorkeeper. +""The same deadly silence succeeded these words. Then the +general advanced, and making a violent effort to control his +feelings, "I have a son," said he, "and I ought to think +of him, finding myself among assassins." +"""General," said the chief of the assembly, "one man may +insult fifty it is the privilege of weakness. But he does +wrong to use his privilege. Follow my advice, swear, and do +not insult." The general, again daunted by the superiority +of the chief, hesitated a moment then advancing to the +president's desk, "What is the form, said he. +"""It is this "I swear by my honor not to reveal to any +one what I have seen and heard on the th of February, , +between nine and ten o'clock in the evening and I plead +guilty of death should I ever violate this oath.'" The +general appeared to be affected by a nervous tremor, which +prevented his answering for some moments then, overcoming +his manifest repugnance, he pronounced the required oath, +but in so low a tone as to be scarcely audible to the +majority of the members, who insisted on his repeating it +clearly and distinctly, which he did. +"""Now am I at liberty to retire?" said the general. The +president rose, appointed three members to accompany him, +and got into the carriage with the general after bandaging +his eyes. One of those three members was the coachman who +had driven them there. The other members silently dispersed. +"Where do you wish to be taken?" asked the president. +"Anywhere out of your presence," replied M. d'Epinay. +"Beware, sir," replied the president, "you are no longer in +the assembly, and have only to do with individuals do not +insult them unless you wish to be held responsible." But +instead of listening, M. d'Epinay went on, "You are still +as brave in your carriage as in your assembly because you +are still four against one." The president stopped the +coach. They were at that part of the Quai des Ormes where +the steps lead down to the river. "Why do you stop here?" +asked d'Epinay. +"""Because, sir," said the president, "you have insulted a +man, and that man will not go one step farther without +demanding honorable reparation." +"""Another method of assassination?" said the general, +shrugging his shoulders. +"""Make no noise, sir, unless you wish me to consider you as +one of the men of whom you spoke just now as cowards, who +take their weakness for a shield. You are alone, one alone +shall answer you you have a sword by your side, I have one +in my cane you have no witness, one of these gentlemen will +serve you. Now, if you please, remove your bandage." The +general tore the handkerchief from his eyes. "At last," said +he, "I shall know with whom I have to do." They opened the +door and the four men alighted.'" +Franz again interrupted himself, and wiped the cold drops +from his brow there was something awful in hearing the son +read aloud in trembling pallor these details of his father's +death, which had hitherto been a mystery. Valentine clasped +her hands as if in prayer. Noirtier looked at Villefort with +an almost sublime expression of contempt and pride. Franz +continued +""It was, as we said, the fifth of February. For three days +the mercury had been five or six degrees below freezing and +the steps were covered with ice. The general was stout and +tall, the president offered him the side of the railing to +assist him in getting down. The two witnesses followed. It +was a dark night. The ground from the steps to the river was +covered with snow and hoarfrost, the water of the river +looked black and deep. One of the seconds went for a lantern +in a coalbarge near, and by its light they examined the +weapons. The president's sword, which was simply, as he had +said, one he carried in his cane, was five inches shorter +than the general's, and had no guard. The general proposed +to cast lots for the swords, but the president said it was +he who had given the provocation, and when he had given it +he had supposed each would use his own arms. The witnesses +endeavored to insist, but the president bade them be silent. +The lantern was placed on the ground, the two adversaries +took their stations, and the duel began. The light made the +two swords appear like flashes of lightning as for the men, +they were scarcely perceptible, the darkness was so great. +""General d'Epinay passed for one of the best swordsmen in +the army, but he was pressed so closely in the onset that he +missed his aim and fell. The witnesses thought he was dead, +but his adversary, who knew he had not struck him, offered +him the assistance of his hand to rise. The circumstance +irritated instead of calming the general, and he rushed on +his adversary. But his opponent did not allow his guard to +be broken. He received him on his sword and three times the +general drew back on finding himself too closely engaged, +and then returned to the charge. At the third he fell again. +They thought he slipped, as at first, and the witnesses, +seeing he did not move, approached and endeavored to raise +him, but the one who passed his arm around the body found it +was moistened with blood. The general, who had almost +fainted, revived. "Ah," said he, "they have sent some +fencingmaster to fight with me." The president, without +answering, approached the witness who held the lantern, and +raising his sleeve, showed him two wounds he had received in +his arm then opening his coat, and unbuttoning his +waistcoat, displayed his side, pierced with a third wound. +Still he had not even uttered a sigh. General d'Epinay died +five minutes after.'" +Franz read these last words in a voice so choked that they +were hardly audible, and then stopped, passing his hand over +his eyes as if to dispel a cloud but after a moment's +silence, he continued +""The president went up the steps, after pushing his sword +into his cane a track of blood on the snow marked his +course. He had scarcely arrived at the top when he heard a +heavy splash in the water it was the general's body, +which the witnesses had just thrown into the river after +ascertaining that he was dead. The general fell, then, in a +loyal duel, and not in ambush as it might have been +reported. In proof of this we have signed this paper to +establish the truth of the facts, lest the moment should +arrive when either of the actors in this terrible scene +should be accused of premeditated murder or of infringement +of the laws of honor. +""Signed, Beaurepaire, Deschamps, and Lecharpal.'" +When Franz had finished reading this account, so dreadful +for a son when Valentine, pale with emotion, had wiped away +a tear when Villefort, trembling, and crouched in a corner, +had endeavored to lessen the storm by supplicating glances +at the implacable old man, "Sir," said d'Epinay to +Noirtier, "since you are well acquainted with all these +details, which are attested by honorable signatures, +since you appear to take some interest in me, although you +have only manifested it hitherto by causing me sorrow, +refuse me not one final satisfaction tell me the name of +the president of the club, that I may at least know who +killed my father." Villefort mechanically felt for the +handle of the door Valentine, who understood sooner than +anyone her grandfather's answer, and who had often seen two +scars upon his right arm, drew back a few steps. +"Mademoiselle," said Franz, turning towards Valentine, +"unite your efforts with mine to find out the name of the +man who made me an orphan at two years of age." Valentine +remained dumb and motionless. +"Hold, sir," said Villefort, "do not prolong this dreadful +scene. The names have been purposely concealed my father +himself does not know who this president was, and if he +knows, he cannot tell you proper names are not in the +dictionary." +"Oh, misery," cried Franz "the only hope which sustained me +and enabled me to read to the end was that of knowing, at +least, the name of him who killed my father Sir, sir," +cried he, turning to Noirtier, "do what you can make me +understand in some way" +"Yes," replied Noirtier. +"Oh, mademoiselle, mademoiselle" cried Franz, "your +grandfather says he can indicate the person. Help me, +lend me your assistance" Noirtier looked at the dictionary. +Franz took it with a nervous trembling, and repeated the +letters of the alphabet successively, until he came to M. At +that letter the old man signified "Yes." +"M," repeated Franz. The young man's finger, glided over the +words, but at each one Noirtier answered by a negative sign. +Valentine hid her head between her hands. At length, Franz +arrived at the word MYSELF. +"Yes" +"You?" cried Franz, whose hair stood on end "you, M. +Noirtier you killed my father?" +"Yes" replied Noirtier, fixing a majestic look on the young +man. Franz fell powerless on a chair Villefort opened the +door and escaped, for the idea had entered his mind to +stifle the little remaining life in the heart of this +terrible old man. +Chapter +Progress of Cavalcanti the Younger. +Meanwhile M. Cavalcanti the elder had returned to his +service, not in the army of his majesty the Emperor of +Austria, but at the gamingtable of the baths of Lucca, of +which he was one of the most assiduous courtiers. He had +spent every farthing that had been allowed for his journey +as a reward for the majestic and solemn manner in which he +had maintained his assumed character of father. M. Andrea at +his departure inherited all the papers which proved that he +had indeed the honor of being the son of the Marquis +Bartolomeo and the Marchioness Oliva Corsinari. He was now +fairly launched in that Parisian society which gives such +ready access to foreigners, and treats them, not as they +really are, but as they wish to be considered. Besides, what +is required of a young man in Paris? To speak its language +tolerably, to make a good appearance, to be a good gamester, +and to pay in cash. They are certainly less particular with +a foreigner than with a Frenchman. Andrea had, then, in a +fortnight, attained a very fair position. He was called +count, he was said to possess , livres per annum and +his father's immense riches, buried in the quarries of +Saravezza, were a constant theme. A learned man, before whom +the last circumstance was mentioned as a fact, declared he +had seen the quarries in question, which gave great weight +to assertions hitherto somewhat doubtful, but which now +assumed the garb of reality. +Such was the state of society in Paris at the period we +bring before our readers, when Monte Cristo went one evening +to pay M. Danglars a visit. M. Danglars was out, but the +count was asked to go and see the baroness, and he accepted +the invitation. It was never without a nervous shudder, +since the dinner at Auteuil, and the events which followed +it, that Madame Danglars heard Monte Cristo's name +announced. If he did not come, the painful sensation became +most intense if, on the contrary, he appeared, his noble +countenance, his brilliant eyes, his amiability, his polite +attention even towards Madame Danglars, soon dispelled every +impression of fear. It appeared impossible to the baroness +that a man of such delightfully pleasing manners should +entertain evil designs against her besides, the most +corrupt minds only suspect evil when it would answer some +interested end useless injury is repugnant to every mind. +When Monte Cristo entered the boudoir, to which we have +already once introduced our readers, and where the baroness +was examining some drawings, which her daughter passed to +her after having looked at them with M. Cavalcanti, his +presence soon produced its usual effect, and it was with +smiles that the baroness received the count, although she +had been a little disconcerted at the announcement of his +name. The latter took in the whole scene at a glance. +The baroness was partially reclining on a sofa, Eugenie sat +near her, and Cavalcanti was standing. Cavalcanti, dressed +in black, like one of Goethe's heroes, with varnished shoes +and white silk openworked stockings, passed a white and +tolerably nicelooking hand through his light hair, and so +displayed a sparkling diamond, that in spite of Monte +Cristo's advice the vain young man had been unable to resist +putting on his little finger. This movement was accompanied +by killing glances at Mademoiselle Danglars, and by sighs +launched in the same direction. Mademoiselle Danglars was +still the same cold, beautiful, and satirical. Not one of +these glances, nor one sigh, was lost on her they might +have been said to fall on the shield of Minerva, which some +philosophers assert protected sometimes the breast of +Sappho. Eugenie bowed coldly to the count, and availed +herself of the first moment when the conversation became +earnest to escape to her study, whence very soon two +cheerful and noisy voices being heard in connection with +occasional notes of the piano assured Monte Cristo that +Mademoiselle Danglars preferred to his society and to that +of M. Cavalcanti the company of Mademoiselle Louise +d'Armilly, her singing teacher. +It was then, especially while conversing with Madame +Danglars, and apparently absorbed by the charm of the +conversation, that the count noticed M. Andrea Cavalcanti's +solicitude, his manner of listening to the music at the door +he dared not pass, and of manifesting his admiration. The +banker soon returned. His first look was certainly directed +towards Monte Cristo, but the second was for Andrea. As for +his wife, he bowed to her, as some husbands do to their +wives, but in a way that bachelors will never comprehend, +until a very extensive code is published on conjugal life. +"Have not the ladies invited you to join them at the piano?" +said Danglars to Andrea. "Alas, no, sir," replied Andrea +with a sigh, still more remarkable than the former ones. +Danglars immediately advanced towards the door and opened +it. +The two young ladies were seen seated on the same chair, at +the piano, accompanying themselves, each with one hand, a +fancy to which they had accustomed themselves, and performed +admirably. Mademoiselle d'Armilly, whom they then perceived +through the open doorway, formed with Eugenie one of the +tableaux vivants of which the Germans are so fond. She was +somewhat beautiful, and exquisitely formed a little +fairylike figure, with large curls falling on her neck, +which was rather too long, as Perugino sometimes makes his +Virgins, and her eyes dull from fatigue. She was said to +have a weak chest, and like Antonia in the "Cremona Violin," +she would die one day while singing. Monte Cristo cast one +rapid and curious glance round this sanctum it was the +first time he had ever seen Mademoiselle d'Armilly, of whom +he had heard much. "Well," said the banker to his daughter, +"are we then all to be excluded?" He then led the young man +into the study, and either by chance or manoeuvre the door +was partially closed after Andrea, so that from the place +where they sat neither the Count nor the baroness could see +anything but as the banker had accompanied Andrea, Madame +Danglars appeared to take no notice of it. +The count soon heard Andrea's voice, singing a Corsican +song, accompanied by the piano. While the count smiled at +hearing this song, which made him lose sight of Andrea in +the recollection of Benedetto, Madame Danglars was boasting +to Monte Cristo of her husband's strength of mind, who that +very morning had lost three or four hundred thousand francs +by a failure at Milan. The praise was well deserved, for had +not the count heard it from the baroness, or by one of those +means by which he knew everything, the baron's countenance +would not have led him to suspect it. "Hem," thought Monte +Cristo, "he begins to conceal his losses a month since he +boasted of them." Then aloud, "Oh, madame, M. Danglars is +so skilful, he will soon regain at the Bourse what he loses +elsewhere." +"I see that you participate in a prevalent error," said +Madame Danglars. "What is it?" said Monte Cristo. +"That M. Danglars speculates, whereas he never does." +"Truly, madame, I recollect M. Debray told me apropos, +what is become of him? I have seen nothing of him the last +three or four days." +"Nor I," said Madame Danglars "but you began a sentence, +sir, and did not finish." +"Which?" +"M. Debray had told you" +"Ah, yes he told me it was you who sacrificed to the demon +of speculation." +"I was once very fond of it, but I do not indulge now." +"Then you are wrong, madame. Fortune is precarious and if I +were a woman and fate had made me a banker's wife, whatever +might be my confidence in my husband's good fortune, still +in speculation you know there is great risk. Well, I would +secure for myself a fortune independent of him, even if I +acquired it by placing my interests in hands unknown to +him." Madame Danglars blushed, in spite of all her efforts. +"Stay," said Monte Cristo, as though he had not observed her +confusion, "I have heard of a lucky hit that was made +yesterday on the Neapolitan bonds." +"I have none nor have I ever possessed any but really we +have talked long enough of money, count, we are like two +stockbrokers have you heard how fate is persecuting the +poor Villeforts?" +"What has happened?" said the count, simulating total +ignorance. +"You know the Marquis of SaintMeran died a few days after +he had set out on his journey to Paris, and the marchioness +a few days after her arrival?" +"Yes," said Monte Cristo, "I have heard that but, as +Claudius said to Hamlet, "it is a law of nature their +fathers died before them, and they mourned their loss they +will die before their children, who will, in their turn, +grieve for them.'" +"But that is not all." +"Not all" +"No they were going to marry their daughter" +"To M. Franz d'Epinay. Is it broken off?" +"Yesterday morning, it appears, Franz declined the honor." +"Indeed? And is the reason known?" +"No." +"How extraordinary And how does M. de Villefort bear it?" +"As usual. Like a philosopher." Danglars returned at this +moment alone. "Well," said the baroness, "do you leave M. +Cavalcanti with your daughter?" +"And Mademoiselle d'Armilly," said the banker "do you +consider her no one?" Then, turning to Monte Cristo, he +said, "Prince Cavalcanti is a charming young man, is he not? +But is he really a prince?" +"I will not answer for it," said Monte Cristo. "His father +was introduced to me as a marquis, so he ought to be a +count but I do not think he has much claim to that title." +"Why?" said the banker. "If he is a prince, he is wrong not +to maintain his rank I do not like any one to deny his +origin." +"Oh, you are a thorough democrat," said Monte Cristo, +smiling. +"But do you see to what you are exposing yourself?" said the +baroness. "If, perchance, M. de Morcerf came, he would find +M. Cavalcanti in that room, where he, the betrothed of +Eugenie, has never been admitted." +"You may well say, perchance," replied the banker "for he +comes so seldom, it would seem only chance that brings him." +"But should he come and find that young man with your +daughter, he might be displeased." +"He? You are mistaken. M. Albert would not do us the honor +to be jealous he does not like Eugenie sufficiently. +Besides, I care not for his displeasure." +"Still, situated as we are" +"Yes, do you know how we are situated? At his mother's ball +he danced once with Eugenie, and M. Cavalcanti three times, +and he took no notice of it." The valet announced the +Vicomte Albert de Morcerf. The baroness rose hastily, and +was going into the study, when Danglars stopped her. "Let +her alone," said he. She looked at him in amazement. Monte +Cristo appeared to be unconscious of what passed. Albert +entered, looking very handsome and in high spirits. He bowed +politely to the baroness, familiarly to Danglars, and +affectionately to Monte Cristo. Then turning to the +baroness "May I ask how Mademoiselle Danglars is?" said he. +"She is quite well," replied Danglars quickly "she is at +the piano with M. Cavalcanti." Albert retained his calm and +indifferent manner he might feel perhaps annoyed, but he +knew Monte Cristo's eye was on him. "M. Cavalcanti has a +fine tenor voice," said he, "and Mademoiselle Eugenie a +splendid soprano, and then she plays the piano like +Thalberg. The concert must be a delightful one." +"They suit each other remarkably well," said Danglars. +Albert appeared not to notice this remark, which was, +however, so rude that Madame Danglars blushed. +"I, too," said the young man, "am a musician at least, my +masters used to tell me so but it is strange that my voice +never would suit any other, and a soprano less than any." +Danglars smiled, and seemed to say, "It is of no +consequence." Then, hoping doubtless to effect his purpose, +he said, "The prince and my daughter were universally +admired yesterday. You were not of the party, M. de +Morcerf?" +"What prince?" asked Albert. "Prince Cavalcanti," said +Danglars, who persisted in giving the young man that title. +"Pardon me," said Albert, "I was not aware that he was a +prince. And Prince Cavalcanti sang with Mademoiselle Eugenie +yesterday? It must have been charming, indeed. I regret not +having heard them. But I was unable to accept your +invitation, having promised to accompany my mother to a +German concert given by the Baroness of ChateauRenaud." +This was followed by rather an awkward silence. "May I also +be allowed," said Morcerf, "to pay my respects to +Mademoiselle Danglars?" "Wait a moment," said the banker, +stopping the young man "do you hear that delightful +cavatina? Ta, ta, ta, ti, ta, ti, ta, ta it is charming, +let them finish one moment. Bravo, bravi, brava" The +banker was enthusiastic in his applause. +"Indeed," said Albert, "it is exquisite it is impossible to +understand the music of his country better than Prince +Cavalcanti does. You said prince, did you not? But he can +easily become one, if he is not already it is no uncommon +thing in Italy. But to return to the charming musicians +you should give us a treat, Danglars, without telling them +there is a stranger. Ask them to sing one more song it is +so delightful to hear music in the distance, when the +musicians are unrestrained by observation." +Danglars was quite annoyed by the young man's indifference. +He took Monte Cristo aside. "What do you think of our +lover?" said he. +"He appears cool. But, then your word is given." +"Yes, doubtless I have promised to give my daughter to a man +who loves her, but not to one who does not. See him there, +cold as marble and proud like his father. If he were rich, +if he had Cavalcanti's fortune, that might be pardoned. Ma +foi, I haven't consulted my daughter but if she has good +taste" +"Oh," said Monte Cristo, "my fondness may blind me, but I +assure you I consider Morcerf a charming young man who will +render your daughter happy and will sooner or later attain a +certain amount of distinction, and his father's position is +good." +"Hem," said Danglars. +"Why do you doubt?" +"The past that obscurity on the past." +"But that does not affect the son." +"Very true." +"Now, I beg of you, don't go off your head. It's a month now +that you have been thinking of this marriage, and you must +see that it throws some responsibility on me, for it was at +my house you met this young Cavalcanti, whom I do not really +know at all." +"But I do." +"Have you made inquiry?" +"Is there any need of that Does not his appearance speak +for him? And he is very rich." +"I am not so sure of that." +"And yet you said he had money." +"Fifty thousand livres a mere trifle." +"He is well educated." +"Hem," said Monte Cristo in his turn. +"He is a musician." +"So are all Italians." +"Come, count, you do not do that young man justice." +"Well, I acknowledge it annoys me, knowing your connection +with the Morcerf family, to see him throw himself in the +way." Danglars burst out laughing. "What a Puritan you are" +said he "that happens every day." +"But you cannot break it off in this way the Morcerfs are +depending on this union." +"Indeed." +"Positively." +"Then let them explain themselves you should give the +father a hint, you are so intimate with the family." +"I? where the devil did you find out that?" +"At their ball it was apparent enough. Why, did not the +countess, the proud Mercedes, the disdainful Catalane, who +will scarcely open her lips to her oldest acquaintances, +take your arm, lead you into the garden, into the private +walks, and remain there for half an hour?" +"Ah, baron, baron," said Albert, "you are not listening +what barbarism in a megalomaniac like you" +"Oh, don't worry about me, Sir Mocker," said Danglars then +turning to the count he said, "but will you undertake to +speak to the father?" +"Willingly, if you wish it." +"But let it be done explicitly and positively. If he demands +my daughter let him fix the day declare his conditions +in short, let us either understand each other, or quarrel. +You understand no more delay." +"Yes. sir, I will give my attention to the subject." +"I do not say that I await with pleasure his decision, but I +do await it. A banker must, you know, be a slave to his +promise." And Danglars sighed as M. Cavalcanti had done half +an hour before. "Bravi, bravo, brava" cried Morcerf, +parodying the banker, as the selection came to an end. +Danglars began to look suspiciously at Morcerf, when some +one came and whispered a few words to him. "I shall soon +return," said the banker to Monte Cristo "wait for me. I +shall, perhaps, have something to say to you." And he went +out. +The baroness took advantage of her husband's absence to push +open the door of her daughter's study, and M. Andrea, who +was sitting before the piano with Mademoiselle Eugenie, +started up like a jackinthebox. Albert bowed with a smile +to Mademoiselle Danglars, who did not appear in the least +disturbed, and returned his bow with her usual coolness. +Cavalcanti was evidently embarrassed he bowed to Morcerf, +who replied with the most impertinent look possible. Then +Albert launched out in praise of Mademoiselle Danglars' +voice, and on his regret, after what he had just heard, that +he had been unable to be present the previous evening. +Cavalcanti, being left alone, turned to Monte Cristo. +"Come," said Madame Danglars, "leave music and compliments, +and let us go and take tea." +"Come, Louise," said Mademoiselle Danglars to her friend. +They passed into the next drawingroom, where tea was +prepared. Just as they were beginning, in the English +fashion, to leave the spoons in their cups, the door again +opened and Danglars entered, visibly agitated. Monte Cristo +observed it particularly, and by a look asked the banker for +an explanation. "I have just received my courier from +Greece," said Danglars. +"Ah, yes," said the count "that was the reason of your +running away from us." +"Yes." +"How is King Otho getting on?" asked Albert in the most +sprightly tone. Danglars cast another suspicious look +towards him without answering, and Monte Cristo turned away +to conceal the expression of pity which passed over his +features, but which was gone in a moment. "We shall go +together, shall we not?" said Albert to the count. +"If you like," replied the latter. Albert could not +understand the banker's look, and turning to Monte Cristo, +who understood it perfectly, "Did you see," said he, "how +he looked at me?" +"Yes," said the count "but did you think there was anything +particular in his look?" +"Indeed, I did and what does he mean by his news from +Greece?" +"How can I tell you?" +"Because I imagine you have correspondents in that country." +Monte Cristo smiled significantly. +"Stop," said Albert, "here he comes. I shall compliment +Mademoiselle Danglars on her cameo, while the father talks +to you." +"If you compliment her at all, let it be on her voice, at +least," said Monte Cristo. +"No, every one would do that." +"My dear viscount, you are dreadfully impertinent." Albert +advanced towards Eugenie, smiling. Meanwhile, Danglars, +stooping to Monte Cristo's ear, "Your advice was excellent," +said he "there is a whole history connected with the names +Fernand and Yanina." +"Indeed?" said Monte Cristo. +"Yes, I will tell you all but take away the young man I +cannot endure his presence." +"He is going with me. Shall I send the father to you?" +"Immediately." +"Very well." The count made a sign to Albert and they bowed +to the ladies, and took their leave, Albert perfectly +indifferent to Mademoiselle Danglars' contempt, Monte Cristo +reiterating his advice to Madame Danglars on the prudence a +banker's wife should exercise in providing for the future. +M. Cavalcanti remained master of the field. +Chapter +Haidee. +Scarcely had the count's horses cleared the angle of the +boulevard, than Albert, turning towards the count, burst +into a loud fit of laughter much too loud in fact not to +give the idea of its being rather forced and unnatural. +"Well," said he, "I will ask you the same question which +Charles IX. put to Catherine de Medicis, after the massacre +of Saint Bartholomew, "How have I played my little part?'" +"To what do you allude?" asked Monte Cristo. +"To the installation of my rival at M. Danglars'." +"What rival?" +"Ma foi, what rival? Why, your protege, M. Andrea +Cavalcanti" +"Ah, no joking, viscount, if you please I do not patronize +M. Andrea at least, not as concerns M. Danglars." +"And you would be to blame for not assisting him, if the +young man really needed your help in that quarter, but, +happily for me, he can dispense with it." +"What, do you think he is paying his addresses?" +"I am certain of it his languishing looks and modulated +tones when addressing Mademoiselle Danglars fully proclaim +his intentions. He aspires to the hand of the proud +Eugenie." +"What does that signify, so long as they favor your suit?" +"But it is not the case, my dear count on the contrary. I +am repulsed on all sides." +"What" +"It is so indeed Mademoiselle Eugenie scarcely answers me, +and Mademoiselle d'Armilly, her confidant, does not speak to +me at all." +"But the father has the greatest regard possible for you," +said Monte Cristo. +"He? Oh, no, he has plunged a thousand daggers into my +heart, tragedyweapons, I own, which instead of wounding +sheathe their points in their own handles, but daggers which +he nevertheless believed to be real and deadly." +"Jealousy indicates affection." +"True but I am not jealous." +"He is." +"Of whom? of Debray?" +"No, of you." +"Of me? I will engage to say that before a week is past the +door will be closed against me." +"You are mistaken, my dear viscount." +"Prove it to me." +"Do you wish me to do so?" +"Yes." +"Well, I am charged with the commission of endeavoring to +induce the Comte de Morcerf to make some definite +arrangement with the baron." +"By whom are you charged?" +"By the baron himself." +"Oh," said Albert with all the cajolery of which he was +capable. "You surely will not do that, my dear count?" +"Certainly I shall, Albert, as I have promised to do it." +"Well," said Albert, with a sigh, "it seems you are +determined to marry me." +"I am determined to try and be on good terms with everybody, +at all events," said Monte Cristo. "But apropos of Debray, +how is it that I have not seen him lately at the baron's +house?" +"There has been a misunderstanding." +"What, with the baroness?" +"No, with the baron." +"Has he perceived anything?" +"Ah, that is a good joke" +"Do you think he suspects?" said Monte Cristo with charming +artlessness. +"Where have you come from, my dear count?" said Albert. +"From Congo, if you will." +"It must be farther off than even that." +"But what do I know of your Parisian husbands?" +"Oh, my dear count, husbands are pretty much the same +everywhere an individual husband of any country is a pretty +fair specimen of the whole race." +"But then, what can have led to the quarrel between Danglars +and Debray? They seemed to understand each other so well," +said Monte Cristo with renewed energy. +"Ah, now you are trying to penetrate into the mysteries of +Isis, in which I am not initiated. When M. Andrea Cavalcanti +has become one of the family, you can ask him that +question." The carriage stopped. "Here we are," said Monte +Cristo "it is only halfpast ten o'clock, come in." +"Certainly I will." +"My carriage shall take you back." +"No, thank you I gave orders for my coupe to follow me." +"There it is, then," said Monte Cristo, as he stepped out of +the carriage. They both went into the house the +drawingroom was lighted up they went in there. "You will +make tea for us, Baptistin," said the count. Baptistin left +the room without waiting to answer, and in two seconds +reappeared, bringing on a waiter all that his master had +ordered, ready prepared, and appearing to have sprung from +the ground, like the repasts which we read of in fairy +tales. "Really, my dear count," said Morcerf. "what I admire +in you is, not so much your riches, for perhaps there are +people even wealthier than yourself, nor is it only your +wit, for Beaumarchais might have possessed as much, but +it is your manner of being served, without any questions, in +a moment, in a second it is as if they guessed what you +wanted by your manner of ringing, and made a point of +keeping everything you can possibly desire in constant +readiness." +"What you say is perhaps true they know my habits. For +instance, you shall see how do you wish to occupy yourself +during teatime?" +"Ma foi, I should like to smoke." +Monte Cristo took the gong and struck it once. In about the +space of a second a private door opened, and Ali appeared, +bringing two chibouques filled with excellent latakia. "It +is quite wonderful," said Albert. +"Oh no, it is as simple as possible," replied Monte Cristo. +"Ali knows I generally smoke while I am taking my tea or +coffee he has heard that I ordered tea, and he also knows +that I brought you home with me when I summoned him he +naturally guessed the reason of my doing so, and as he comes +from a country where hospitality is especially manifested +through the medium of smoking, he naturally concludes that +we shall smoke in company, and therefore brings two +chibouques instead of one and now the mystery is solved." +"Certainly you give a most commonplace air to your +explanation, but it is not the less true that you Ah, but +what do I hear?" and Morcerf inclined his head towards the +door, through which sounds seemed to issue resembling those +of a guitar. +"Ma foi, my dear viscount, you are fated to hear music this +evening you have only escaped from Mademoiselle Danglars' +piano, to be attacked by Haidee's guzla." +"Haidee what an adorable name Are there, then, really +women who bear the name of Haidee anywhere but in Byron's +poems?" +"Certainly there are. Haidee is a very uncommon name in +France, but is common enough in Albania and Epirus it is as +it you said, for example, Chastity, Modesty, Innocence, +it is a kind of baptismal name, as you Parisians call it." +"Oh, that is charming," said Albert, "how I should like to +hear my countrywomen called Mademoiselle Goodness, +Mademoiselle Silence, Mademoiselle Christian Charity Only +think, then, if Mademoiselle Danglars, instead of being +called ClaireMarieEugenie, had been named Mademoiselle +ChastityModestyInnocence Danglars what a fine effect that +would have produced on the announcement of her marriage" +"Hush," said the count, "do not joke in so loud a tone +Haidee may hear you, perhaps." +"And you think she would be angry?" +"No, certainly not," said the count with a haughty +expression. +"She is very amiable, then, is she not?" said Albert. +"It is not to be called amiability, it is her duty a slave +does not dictate to a master." +"Come you are joking yourself now. Are there any more +slaves to be had who bear this beautiful name?" +"Undoubtedly." +"Really, count, you do nothing, and have nothing like other +people. The slave of the Count of Monte Cristo Why, it is a +rank of itself in France, and from the way in which you +lavish money, it is a place that must be worth a hundred +thousand francs a year." +"A hundred thousand francs The poor girl originally +possessed much more than that she was born to treasures in +comparison with which those recorded in the "Thousand and +One Nights' would seem but poverty." +"She must be a princess then." +"You are right and she is one of the greatest in her +country too." +"I thought so. But how did it happen that such a great +princess became a slave?" +"How was it that Dionysius the Tyrant became a schoolmaster? +The fortune of war, my dear viscount, the caprice of +fortune that is the way in which these things are to be +accounted for." +"And is her name a secret?" +"As regards the generality of mankind it is but not for +you, my dear viscount, who are one of my most intimate +friends, and on whose silence I feel I may rely, if I +consider it necessary to enjoin it may I not do so?" +"Certainly on my word of honor." +"You know the history of the pasha of Yanina, do you not?" +"Of Ali Tepelini? Oh, yes it was in his service that my +father made his fortune." +"True, I had forgotten that." + Ali Pasha, "The Lion," was born at Tepelini, an Albanian +village at the foot of the Klissoura Mountains, in . By +diplomacy and success in arms he became almost supreme ruler +of Albania, Epirus, and adjacent territory. Having aroused +the enmity of the Sultan, he was proscribed and put to death +by treachery in , at the age of eighty. Ed. +"Well, what is Haidee to Ali Tepelini?" +"Merely his daughter." +"What? the daughter of Ali Pasha?" +"Of Ali Pasha and the beautiful Vasiliki." +"And your slave?" +"Ma foi, yes." +"But how did she become so?" +"Why, simply from the circumstance of my having bought her +one day, as I was passing through the market at +Constantinople." +"Wonderful Really, my dear count, you seem to throw a sort +of magic influence over all in which you are concerned when +I listen to you, existence no longer seems reality, but a +waking dream. Now, I am perhaps going to make an imprudent +and thoughtless request, but" +"Say on." +"But, since you go out with Haidee, and sometimes even take +her to the opera" +"Well?" +"I think I may venture to ask you this favor." +"You may venture to ask me anything." +"Well then, my dear count, present me to your princess." +"I will do so but on two conditions." +"I accept them at once." +"The first is, that you will never tell any one that I have +granted the interview." +"Very well," said Albert, extending his hand "I swear I +will not." +"The second is, that you will not tell her that your father +ever served hers." +"I give you my oath that I will not." +"Enough, viscount you will remember those two vows, will +you not? But I know you to be a man of honor." The count +again struck the gong. Ali reappeared. "Tell Haidee," said +he, "that I will take coffee with her, and give her to +understand that I desire permission to present one of my +friends to her." Ali bowed and left the room. "Now, +understand me," said the count, "no direct questions, my +dear Morcerf if you wish to know anything, tell me, and I +will ask her." +"Agreed." Ali reappeared for the third time, and drew back +the tapestried hanging which concealed the door, to signify +to his master and Albert that they were at liberty to pass +on. "Let us go in," said Monte Cristo. +Albert passed his hand through his hair, and curled his +mustache, then, having satisfied himself as to his personal +appearance, followed the count into the room, the latter +having previously resumed his hat and gloves. Ali was +stationed as a kind of advanced guard, and the door was kept +by the three French attendants, commanded by Myrtho. Haidee +was awaiting her visitors in the first room of her +apartments, which was the drawingroom. Her large eyes were +dilated with surprise and expectation, for it was the first +time that any man, except Monte Cristo, had been accorded an +entrance into her presence. She was sitting on a sofa placed +in an angle of the room, with her legs crossed under her in +the Eastern fashion, and seemed to have made for herself, as +it were, a kind of nest in the rich Indian silks which +enveloped her. Near her was the instrument on which she had +just been playing it was elegantly fashioned, and worthy of +its mistress. On perceiving Monte Cristo, she arose and +welcomed him with a smile peculiar to herself, expressive at +once of the most implicit obedience and also of the deepest +love. Monte Cristo advanced towards her and extended his +hand, which she as usual raised to her lips. +Albert had proceeded no farther than the door, where he +remained rooted to the spot, being completely fascinated by +the sight of such surpassing beauty, beheld as it was for +the first time, and of which an inhabitant of more northern +climes could form no adequate idea. +"Whom do you bring?" asked the young girl in Romaic, of +Monte Cristo "is it a friend, a brother, a simple +acquaintance, or an enemy." +"A friend," said Monte Cristo in the same language. +"What is his name?" +"Count Albert it is the same man whom I rescued from the +hands of the banditti at Rome." +"In what language would you like me to converse with him?" +Monte Cristo turned to Albert. "Do you know modern Greek," +asked he. +"Alas, no," said Albert "nor even ancient Greek, my dear +count never had Homer or Plato a more unworthy scholar than +myself." +"Then," said Haidee, proving by her remark that she had +quite understood Monte Cristo's question and Albert's +answer, "then I will speak either in French or Italian, if +my lord so wills it." +Monte Cristo reflected one instant. "You will speak in +Italian," said he. Then, turning towards Albert, "It is a +pity you do not understand either ancient or modern Greek, +both of which Haidee speaks so fluently the poor child will +be obliged to talk to you in Italian, which will give you +but a very false idea of her powers of conversation." The +count made a sign to Haidee to address his visitor. "Sir," +she said to Morcerf, "you are most welcome as the friend of +my lord and master." This was said in excellent Tuscan, and +with that soft Roman accent which makes the language of +Dante as sonorous as that of Homer. Then, turning to Ali, +she directed him to bring coffee and pipes, and when he had +left the room to execute the orders of his young mistress +she beckoned Albert to approach nearer to her. Monte Cristo +and Morcerf drew their seats towards a small table, on which +were arranged music, drawings, and vases of flowers. Ali +then entered bringing coffee and chibouques as to M. +Baptistin, this portion of the building was interdicted to +him. Albert refused the pipe which the Nubian offered him. +"Oh, take it take it," said the count "Haidee is almost +as civilized as a Parisian the smell of an Havana is +disagreeable to her, but the tobacco of the East is a most +delicious perfume, you know." +Ali left the room. The cups of coffee were all prepared, +with the addition of sugar, which had been brought for +Albert. Monte Cristo and Haidee took the beverage in the +original Arabian manner, that is to say, without sugar. +Haidee took the porcelain cup in her little slender fingers +and conveyed it to her mouth with all the innocent +artlessness of a child when eating or drinking something +which it likes. At this moment two women entered, bringing +salvers filled with ices and sherbet, which they placed on +two small tables appropriated to that purpose. "My dear +host, and you, signora," said Albert, in Italian, "excuse my +apparent stupidity. I am quite bewildered, and it is natural +that it should be so. Here I am in the heart of Paris but a +moment ago I heard the rumbling of the omnibuses and the +tinkling of the bells of the lemonadesellers, and now I +feel as if I were suddenly transported to the East not such +as I have seen it, but such as my dreams have painted it. +Oh, signora, if I could but speak Greek, your conversation, +added to the fairyscene which surrounds me, would furnish +an evening of such delight as it would be impossible for me +ever to forget." +"I speak sufficient Italian to enable me to converse with +you, sir," said Haidee quietly "and if you like what is +Eastern, I will do my best to secure the gratification of +your tastes while you are here." +"On what subject shall I converse with her?" said Albert, in +a low tone to Monte Cristo. +"Just what you please you may speak of her country and of +her youthful reminiscences, or if you like it better you can +talk of Rome, Naples, or Florence." +"Oh," said Albert, "it is of no use to be in the company of +a Greek if one converses just in the same style as with a +Parisian let me speak to her of the East." +"Do so then, for of all themes which you could choose that +will be the most agreeable to her taste." Albert turned +towards Haidee. "At what age did you leave Greece, signora?" +asked he. +"I left it when I was but five years old," replied Haidee. +"And have you any recollection of your country?" +"When I shut my eyes and think, I seem to see it all again. +The mind can see as well as the body. The body forgets +sometimes but the mind never forgets." +"And how far back into the past do your recollections +extend?" +"I could scarcely walk when my mother, who was called +Vasiliki, which means royal," said the young girl, tossing +her head proudly, "took me by the hand, and after putting in +our purse all the money we possessed, we went out, both +covered with veils, to solicit alms for the prisoners, +saying, "He who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.' +Then when our purse was full we returned to the palace, and +without saying a word to my father, we sent it to the +convent, where it was divided amongst the prisoners." +"And how old were you at that time?" +"I was three years old," said Haidee. +"Then you remember everything that went on about you from +the time when you were three years old?" said Albert. +"Everything." +"Count," said Albert, in a low tone to Monte Cristo, "do +allow the signora to tell me something of her history. You +prohibited my mentioning my father's name to her, but +perhaps she will allude to him of her own accord in the +course of the recital, and you have no idea how delighted I +should be to hear our name pronounced by such beautiful +lips." Monte Cristo turned to Haidee, and with an expression +of countenance which commanded her to pay the most implicit +attention to his words, he said in Greek, "Tell us the +fate of your father but neither the name of the traitor nor +the treason." Haidee sighed deeply, and a shade of sadness +clouded her beautiful brow. +"What are you saying to her?" said Morcerf in an undertone. +"I again reminded her that you were a friend, and that she +need not conceal anything from you." +"Then," said Albert, "this pious pilgrimage in behalf of the +prisoners was your first remembrance what is the next?" +"Oh, then I remember as if it were but yesterday sitting +under the shade of some sycamoretrees, on the borders of a +lake, in the waters of which the trembling foliage was +reflected as in a mirror. Under the oldest and thickest of +these trees, reclining on cushions, sat my father my mother +was at his feet, and I, childlike, amused myself by playing +with his long white beard which descended to his girdle, or +with the diamondhilt of the scimitar attached to his +girdle. Then from time to time there came to him an Albanian +who said something to which I paid no attention, but which +he always answered in the same tone of voice, either "Kill,' +or "Pardon.'" +"It is very strange," said Albert, "to hear such words +proceed from the mouth of any one but an actress on the +stage, and one needs constantly to be saying to one's self, +"This is no fiction, it is all reality,' in order to believe +it. And how does France appear in your eyes, accustomed as +they have been to gaze on such enchanted scenes?" +"I think it is a fine country," said Haidee, "but I see +France as it really is, because I look on it with the eyes +of a woman whereas my own country, which I can only judge +of from the impression produced on my childish mind, always +seems enveloped in a vague atmosphere, which is luminous or +otherwise, according as my remembrances of it are sad or +joyous." +"So young," said Albert, forgetting at the moment the +Count's command that he should ask no questions of the slave +herself, "is it possible that you can have known what +suffering is except by name?" +Haidee turned her eyes towards Monte Cristo, who, making at +the same time some imperceptible sign, murmured, "Go on." +"Nothing is ever so firmly impressed on the mind as the +memory of our early childhood, and with the exception of the +two scenes I have just described to you, all my earliest +reminiscences are fraught with deepest sadness." +"Speak, speak, signora," said Albert, "I am listening with +the most intense delight and interest to all you say." +Haidee answered his remark with a melancholy smile. "You +wish me, then, to relate the history of my past sorrows?" +said she. +"I beg you to do so," replied Albert. +"Well, I was but four years old when one night I was +suddenly awakened by my mother. We were in the palace of +Yanina she snatched me from the cushions on which I was +sleeping, and on opening my eyes I saw hers filled with +tears. She took me away without speaking. When I saw her +weeping I began to cry too. "Hush, child' said she. At +other times in spite of maternal endearments or threats, I +had with a child's caprice been accustomed to indulge my +feelings of sorrow or anger by crying as much as I felt +inclined but on this occasion there was an intonation of +such extreme terror in my mother's voice when she enjoined +me to silence, that I ceased crying as soon as her command +was given. She bore me rapidly away. +"I saw then that we were descending a large staircase +around us were all my mother's servants carrying trunks, +bags, ornaments, jewels, purses of gold, with which they +were hurrying away in the greatest distraction. +"Behind the women came a guard of twenty men armed with long +guns and pistols, and dressed in the costume which the +Greeks have assumed since they have again become a nation. +You may imagine there was something startling and ominous," +said Haidee, shaking her head and turning pale at the mere +remembrance of the scene, "in this long file of slaves and +women only halfaroused from sleep, or at least so they +appeared to me, who was myself scarcely awake. Here and +there on the walls of the staircase, were reflected gigantic +shadows, which trembled in the flickering light of the +pinetorches till they seemed to reach to the vaulted roof +above. +""Quick' said a voice at the end of the gallery. This voice +made every one bow before it, resembling in its effect the +wind passing over a field of wheat, by its superior strength +forcing every ear to yield obeisance. As for me, it made me +tremble. This voice was that of my father. He came last, +clothed in his splendid robes and holding in his hand the +carbine which your emperor presented him. He was leaning on +the shoulder of his favorite Selim, and he drove us all +before him, as a shepherd would his straggling flock. My +father," said Haidee, raising her head, "was that +illustrious man known in Europe under the name of Ali +Tepelini, pasha of Yanina, and before whom Turkey trembled." +Albert, without knowing why, started on hearing these words +pronounced with such a haughty and dignified accent it +appeared to him as if there was something supernaturally +gloomy and terrible in the expression which gleamed from the +brilliant eyes of Haidee at this moment she appeared like a +Pythoness evoking a spectre, as she recalled to his mind the +remembrance of the fearful death of this man, to the news of +which all Europe had listened with horror. "Soon," said +Haidee, "we halted on our march, and found ourselves on the +borders of a lake. My mother pressed me to her throbbing +heart, and at the distance of a few paces I saw my father, +who was glancing anxiously around. Four marble steps led +down to the water's edge, and below them was a boat floating +on the tide. +"From where we stood I could see in the middle of the lake a +large blank mass it was the kiosk to which we were going. +This kiosk appeared to me to be at a considerable distance, +perhaps on account of the darkness of the night, which +prevented any object from being more than partially +discerned. We stepped into the boat. I remember well that +the oars made no noise whatever in striking the water, and +when I leaned over to ascertain the cause I saw that they +were muffled with the sashes of our Palikares. Besides the +rowers, the boat contained only the women, my father, +mother, Selim, and myself. The Palikares had remained on the +shore of the lake, ready to cover our retreat they were +kneeling on the lowest of the marble steps, and in that +manner intended making a rampart of the three others, in +case of pursuit. Our bark flew before the wind. "Why does +the boat go so fast?' asked I of my mother. + Greek militiamen in the war for independence. Ed. +""Silence, child Hush, we are flying' I did not +understand. Why should my father fly? he, the +allpowerful he, before whom others were accustomed to +fly he, who had taken for his device, "They hate me then +they fear me' It was, indeed, a flight which my father was +trying to effect. I have been told since that the garrison +of the castle of Yanina, fatigued with long service" +Here Haidee cast a significant glance at Monte Cristo, whose +eyes had been riveted on her countenance during the whole +course of her narrative. The young girl then continued, +speaking slowly, like a person who is either inventing or +suppressing some feature of the history which he is +relating. "You were saying, signora," said Albert, who was +paying the most implicit attention to the recital, "that the +garrison of Yanina, fatigued with long service" +"Had treated with the Serasker Koorshid, who had been sent +by the sultan to gain possession of the person of my father +it was then that Ali Tepelini after having sent to the +sultan a French officer in whom he reposed great confidence +resolved to retire to the asylum which he had long before +prepared for himself, and which he called kataphygion, or +the refuge." +"And this officer," asked Albert, "do you remember his name, +signora?" Monte Cristo exchanged a rapid glance with the +young girl, which was quite unperceived by Albert. "No," +said she, "I do not remember it just at this moment but if +it should occur to me presently, I will tell you." Albert +was on the point of pronouncing his father's name, when +Monte Cristo gently held up his finger in token of reproach +the young man recollected his promise, and was silent. + A Turkish pasha in command of the troops of a province. +Ed. +"It was towards this kiosk that we were rowing. A +groundfloor, ornamented with arabesques, bathing its +terraces in the water, and another floor, looking on the +lake, was all which was visible to the eye. But beneath the +groundfloor, stretching out into the island, was a large +subterranean cavern, to which my mother, myself, and the +women were conducted. In this place were together , +pouches and barrels the pouches contained ,, of +money in gold, and the barrels were filled with , +pounds of gunpowder. +"Near the barrels stood Selim, my father's favorite, whom I +mentioned to you just now. He stood watch day and night with +a lance provided with a lighted slowmatch in his hand, and +he had orders to blow up everything kiosk, guards, women, +gold, and Ali Tepelini himself at the first signal given +by my father. I remember well that the slaves, convinced of +the precarious tenure on which they held their lives, passed +whole days and nights in praying, crying, and groaning. As +for me, I can never forget the pale complexion and black +eyes of the young soldier, and whenever the angel of death +summons me to another world, I am quite sure I shall +recognize Selim. I cannot tell you how long we remained in +this state at that period I did not even know what time +meant. Sometimes, but very rarely, my father summoned me and +my mother to the terrace of the palace these were hours of +recreation for me, as I never saw anything in the dismal +cavern but the gloomy countenances of the slaves and Selim's +fiery lance. My father was endeavoring to pierce with his +eager looks the remotest verge of the horizon, examining +attentively every black speck which appeared on the lake, +while my mother, reclining by his side, rested her head on +his shoulder, and I played at his feet, admiring everything +I saw with that unsophisticated innocence of childhood which +throws a charm round objects insignificant in themselves, +but which in its eyes are invested with the greatest +importance. The heights of Pindus towered above us the +castle of Yanina rose white and angular from the blue waters +of the lake, and the immense masses of black vegetation +which, viewed in the distance, gave the idea of lichens +clinging to the rocks, were in reality gigantic firtrees +and myrtles. +"One morning my father sent for us my mother had been +crying all the night, and was very wretched we found the +pasha calm, but paler than usual. "Take courage, Vasiliki,' +said he "today arrives the firman of the master, and my +fate will be decided. If my pardon be complete, we shall +return triumphant to Yanina if the news be inauspicious, we +must fly this night.' "But supposing our enemy should not +allow us to do so?' said my mother. "Oh, make yourself easy +on that head,' said Ali, smiling "Selim and his flaming +lance will settle that matter. They would be glad to see me +dead, but they would not like themselves to die with me.' +"My mother only answered by sighs to consolations which she +knew did not come from my father's heart. She prepared the +iced water which he was in the habit of constantly drinking, +for since his sojourn at the kiosk he had been parched by +the most violent fever, after which she anointed his +white beard with perfumed oil, and lighted his chibouque, +which he sometimes smoked for hours together, quietly +watching the wreaths of vapor that ascended in spiral clouds +and gradually melted away in the surrounding atmosphere. +Presently he made such a sudden movement that I was +paralyzed with fear. Then, without taking his eyes from the +object which had first attracted his attention, he asked for +his telescope. My mother gave it him, and as she did so, +looked whiter than the marble against which she leaned. I +saw my father's hand tremble. "A boat two three' +murmured my, father "four' He then arose, seizing his +arms and priming his pistols. "Vasiliki,' said he to my +mother, trembling perceptibly, "the instant approaches which +will decide everything. In the space of half an hour we +shall know the emperor's answer. Go into the cavern with +Haidee.' "I will not quit you,' said Vasiliki "if you +die, my lord, I will die with you.' "Go to Selim' cried +my father. "Adieu, my lord,' murmured my mother, determining +quietly to await the approach of death. "Take away +Vasiliki' said my father to his Palikares. +"As for me, I had been forgotten in the general confusion I +ran toward Ali Tepelini he saw me hold out my arms to him, +and he stooped down and pressed my forehead with his lips. +Oh, how distinctly I remember that kiss it was the last +he ever gave me, and I feel as if it were still warm on my +forehead. On descending, we saw through the latticework +several boats which were gradually becoming more distinct to +our view. At first they appeared like black specks, and now +they looked like birds skimming the surface of the waves. +During this time, in the kiosk at my father's feet, were +seated twenty Palikares, concealed from view by an angle of +the wall and watching with eager eyes the arrival of the +boats. They were armed with their long guns inlaid with +motherofpearl and silver, and cartridges in great numbers +were lying scattered on the floor. My father looked at his +watch, and paced up and down with a countenance expressive +of the greatest anguish. This was the scene which presented +itself to my view as I quitted my father after that last +kiss. My mother and I traversed the gloomy passage leading +to the cavern. Selim was still at his post, and smiled sadly +on us as we entered. We fetched our cushions from the other +end of the cavern, and sat down by Selim. In great dangers +the devoted ones cling to each other and, young as I was, I +quite understood that some imminent danger was hanging over +our heads." +Albert had often heard not from his father, for he never +spoke on the subject, but from strangers the description +of the last moments of the vizier of Yanina he had read +different accounts of his death, but the story seemed to +acquire fresh meaning from the voice and expression of the +young girl, and her sympathetic accent and the melancholy +expression of her countenance at once charmed and horrified +him. As to Haidee, these terrible reminiscences seemed to +have overpowered her for a moment, for she ceased speaking, +her head leaning on her hand like a beautiful flower bowing +beneath the violence of the storm and her eyes gazing on +vacancy indicated that she was mentally contemplating the +green summit of the Pindus and the blue waters of the lake +of Yanina, which, like a magic mirror, seemed to reflect the +sombre picture which she sketched. Monte Cristo looked at +her with an indescribable expression of interest and pity. +"Go on," said the count in the Romaic language. +Haidee looked up abruptly, as if the sonorous tones of Monte +Cristo's voice had awakened her from a dream and she +resumed her narrative. "It was about four o'clock in the +afternoon, and although the day was brilliant outofdoors, +we were enveloped in the gloomy darkness of the cavern. One +single, solitary light was burning there, and it appeared +like a star set in a heaven of blackness it was Selim's +flaming lance. My mother was a Christian, and she prayed. +Selim repeated from time to time the sacred words "God is +great' However, my mother had still some hope. As she was +coming down, she thought she recognized the French officer +who had been sent to Constantinople, and in whom my father +placed so much confidence for he knew that all the soldiers +of the French emperor were naturally noble and generous. She +advanced some steps towards the staircase, and listened. +"They are approaching,' said she "perhaps they bring us +peace and liberty' "What do you fear, Vasiliki?' said +Selim, in a voice at once so gentle and yet so proud. "If +they do not bring us peace, we will give them war if they +do not bring life, we will give them death.' And he renewed +the flame of his lance with a gesture which made one think +of Dionysus of Crete. But I, being only a little child, was +terrified by this undaunted courage, which appeared to me +both ferocious and senseless, and I recoiled with horror +from the idea of the frightful death amidst fire and flames +which probably awaited us. + The god of fruitfulness in Grecian mythology. In Crete he +was supposed to be slain in winter with the decay of +vegetation and to revive in the spring. Haidee's learned +reference is to the behavior of an actor in the Dionysian +festivals. Ed. +"My mother experienced the same sensations, for I felt her +tremble. "Mamma, mamma,' said I, "are we really to be +killed?' And at the sound of my voice the slaves redoubled +their cries and prayers and lamentations. "My child,' said +Vasiliki, "may God preserve you from ever wishing for that +death which today you so much dread' Then, whispering to +Selim, she asked what were her master's orders. "If he send +me his poniard, it will signify that the emperor's +intentions are not favorable, and I am to set fire to the +powder if, on the contrary, he send me his ring, it will be +a sign that the emperor pardons him, and I am to extinguish +the match and leave the magazine untouched.' "My friend,' +said my mother, "when your master's orders arrive, if it is +the poniard which he sends, instead of despatching us by +that horrible death which we both so much dread, you will +mercifully kill us with this same poniard, will you not?' +"Yes, Vasiliki,' replied Selim tranquilly. +"Suddenly we heard loud cries and, listening, discerned +that they were cries of joy. The name of the French officer +who had been sent to Constantinople resounded on all sides +amongst our Palikares it was evident that he brought the +answer of the emperor, and that it was favorable." +"And do you not remember the Frenchman's name?" said +Morcerf, quite ready to aid the memory of the narrator. +Monte Cristo made a sign to him to be silent. +"I do not recollect it," said Haidee. +"The noise increased steps were heard approaching nearer +and nearer they were descending the steps leading to the +cavern. Selim made ready his lance. Soon a figure appeared +in the gray twilight at the entrance of the cave, formed by +the reflection of the few rays of daylight which had found +their way into this gloomy retreat. "Who are you?' cried +Selim. "But whoever you may be, I charge you not to advance +another step.' "Long live the emperor' said the figure. +"He grants a full pardon to the Vizier Ali, and not only +gives him his life, but restores to him his fortune and his +possessions.' My mother uttered a cry of joy, and clasped me +to her bosom. "Stop,' said Selim, seeing that she was about +to go out "you see I have not yet received the ring,' +"True,' said my mother. And she fell on her knees, at the +same time holding me up towards heaven, as if she desired, +while praying to God in my behalf, to raise me actually to +his presence." +And for the second time Haidee stopped, overcome by such +violent emotion that the perspiration stood upon her pale +brow, and her stifled voice seemed hardly able to find +utterance, so parched and dry were her throat and lips. +Monte Cristo poured a little iced water into a glass, and +presented it to her, saying with a mildness in which was +also a shade of command, "Courage." +Haidee dried her eyes, and continued "By this time our +eyes, habituated to the darkness, had recognized the +messenger of the pasha, it was a friend. Selim had also +recognized him, but the brave young man only acknowledged +one duty, which was to obey. "In whose name do you come?' +said he to him. "I come in the name of our master, Ali +Tepelini.' "If you come from Ali himself,' said Selim, +"you know what you were charged to remit to me?' "Yes,' +said the messenger, "and I bring you his ring.' At these +words he raised his hand above his head, to show the token +but it was too far off, and there was not light enough to +enable Selim, where he was standing, to distinguish and +recognize the object presented to his view. "I do not see +what you have in your hand,' said Selim. "Approach then,' +said the messenger, "or I will come nearer to you, if you +prefer it.' "I will agree to neither one nor the other,' +replied the young soldier "place the object which I desire +to see in the ray of light which shines there, and retire +while I examine it.' "Be it so,' said the envoy and he +retired, after having first deposited the token agreed on in +the place pointed out to him by Selim. +"Oh, how our hearts palpitated for it did, indeed, seem to +be a ring which was placed there. But was it my father's +ring? that was the question. Selim, still holding in his +hand the lighted match, walked towards the opening in the +cavern, and, aided by the faint light which streamed in +through the mouth of the cave, picked up the token. +""It is well,' said he, kissing it "it is my master's +ring' And throwing the match on the ground, he trampled on +it and extinguished it. The messenger uttered a cry of joy +and clapped his hands. At this signal four soldiers of the +Serasker Koorshid suddenly appeared, and Selim fell, pierced +by five blows. Each man had stabbed him separately, and, +intoxicated by their crime, though still pale with fear, +they sought all over the cavern to discover if there was any +fear of fire, after which they amused themselves by rolling +on the bags of gold. At this moment my mother seized me in +her arms, and hurrying noiselessly along numerous turnings +and windings known only to ourselves, she arrived at a +private staircase of the kiosk, where was a scene of +frightful tumult and confusion. The lower rooms were +entirely filled with Koorshid's troops that is to say, with +our enemies. Just as my mother was on the point of pushing +open a small door, we heard the voice of the pasha sounding +in a loud and threatening tone. My mother applied her eye to +the crack between the boards I luckily found a small +opening which afforded me a view of the apartment and what +was passing within. "What do you want?' said my father to +some people who were holding a paper inscribed with +characters of gold. "What we want,' replied one, "is to +communicate to you the will of his highness. Do you see this +firman?' "I do,' said my father. "Well, read it he +demands your head.' +"My father answered with a loud laugh, which was more +frightful than even threats would have been, and he had not +ceased when two reports of a pistol were heard he had fired +them himself, and had killed two men. The Palikares, who +were prostrated at my father's feet, now sprang up and +fired, and the room was filled with fire and smoke. At the +same instant the firing began on the other side, and the +balls penetrated the boards all round us. Oh, how noble did +the grand vizier my father look at that moment, in the midst +of the flying bullets, his scimitar in his hand, and his +face blackened with the powder of his enemies and how he +terrified them, even then, and made them fly before him +"Selim, Selim' cried he, "guardian of the fire, do your +duty' "Selim is dead,' replied a voice which seemed to +come from the depths of the earth, "and you are lost, Ali' +At the same moment an explosion was heard, and the flooring +of the room in which my father was sitting was suddenly torn +up and shivered to atoms the troops were firing from +underneath. Three or four Palikares fell with their bodies +literally ploughed with wounds. +"My father howled aloud, plunged his fingers into the holes +which the balls had made, and tore up one of the planks +entire. But immediately through this opening twenty more +shots were fired, and the flame, rushing up like fire from +the crater of a volcano, soon reached the tapestry, which it +quickly devoured. In the midst of all this frightful tumult +and these terrific cries, two reports, fearfully distinct, +followed by two shrieks more heartrending than all, froze me +with terror. These two shots had mortally wounded my father, +and it was he who had given utterance to these frightful +cries. However, he remained standing, clinging to a window. +My mother tried to force the door, that she might go and die +with him, but it was fastened on the inside. All around him +were lying the Palikares, writhing in convulsive agonies, +while two or three who were only slightly wounded were +trying to escape by springing from the windows. At this +crisis the whole flooring suddenly gave way, my father fell +on one knee, and at the same moment twenty hands were thrust +forth, armed with sabres, pistols, and poniards twenty +blows were instantaneously directed against one man, and my +father disappeared in a whirlwind of fire and smoke kindled +by these demons, and which seemed like hell itself opening +beneath his feet. I felt myself fall to the ground, my +mother had fainted." +Haidee's arms fell by her side, and she uttered a deep +groan, at the same time looking towards the count as if to +ask if he were satisfied with her obedience to his commands. +Monte Cristo arose and approached her, took her hand, and +said to her in Romaic, "Calm yourself, my dear child, and +take courage in remembering that there is a God who will +punish traitors." +"It is a frightful story, count," said Albert, terrified at +the paleness of Haidee's countenance, "and I reproach myself +now for having been so cruel and thoughtless in my request." +"Oh, it is nothing," said Monte Cristo. Then, patting the +young girl on the head, he continued, "Haidee is very +courageous, and she sometimes even finds consolation in the +recital of her misfortunes." +"Because, my lord," said Haidee eagerly, "my miseries recall +to me the remembrance of your goodness." +Albert looked at her with curiosity, for she had not yet +related what he most desired to know, how she had become +the slave of the count. Haidee saw at a glance the same +expression pervading the countenances of her two auditors +she exclaimed, "When my mother recovered her senses we were +before the serasker. "Kill,' said she, "but spare the honor +of the widow of Ali.' "It is not to me to whom you must +address yourself,' said Koorshid. +""To whom, then?' "To your new master.' +""Who and where is he?' "He is here.' +"And Koorshid pointed out one who had more than any +contributed to the death of my father," said Haidee, in a +tone of chastened anger. "Then," said Albert, "you became +the property of this man?" +"No," replied Haidee, "he did not dare to keep us, so we +were sold to some slavemerchants who were going to +Constantinople. We traversed Greece, and arrived half dead +at the imperial gates. They were surrounded by a crowd of +people, who opened a way for us to pass, when suddenly my +mother, having looked closely at an object which was +attracting their attention, uttered a piercing cry and fell +to the ground, pointing as she did so to a head which was +placed over the gates, and beneath which were inscribed +these words +""This is the head of Ali Tepelini Pasha of Yanina.' I cried +bitterly, and tried to raise my mother from the earth, but +she was dead I was taken to the slavemarket, and was +purchased by a rich Armenian. He caused me to be instructed, +gave me masters, and when I was thirteen years of age he +sold me to the Sultan Mahmood." +"Of whom I bought her," said Monte Cristo, "as I told you, +Albert, with the emerald which formed a match to the one I +had made into a box for the purpose of holding my hashish +pills." +"Oh, you are good, you are great, my lord" said Haidee, +kissing the count's hand, "and I am very fortunate in +belonging to such a master" Albert remained quite +bewildered with all that he had seen and heard. "Come, +finish your cup of coffee," said Monte Cristo "the history +is ended." +Chapter +We hear From Yanina. +If Valentine could have seen the trembling step and agitated +countenance of Franz when he quitted the chamber of M. +Noirtier, even she would have been constrained to pity him. +Villefort had only just given utterance to a few incoherent +sentences, and then retired to his study, where he received +about two hours afterwards the following letter +"After all the disclosures which were made this morning, M. +Noirtier de Villefort must see the utter impossibility of +any alliance being formed between his family and that of M. +Franz d'Epinay. M. d'Epinay must say that he is shocked and +astonished that M. de Villefort, who appeared to be aware of +all the circumstances detailed this morning, should not have +anticipated him in this announcement." +No one who had seen the magistrate at this moment, so +thoroughly unnerved by the recent inauspicious combination +of circumstances, would have supposed for an instant that he +had anticipated the annoyance although it certainly never +had occurred to him that his father would carry candor, or +rather rudeness, so far as to relate such a history. And in +justice to Villefort, it must be understood that M. +Noirtier, who never cared for the opinion of his son on any +subject, had always omitted to explain the affair to +Villefort, so that he had all his life entertained the +belief that General de Quesnel, or the Baron d'Epinay, as he +was alternately styled, according as the speaker wished to +identify him by his own family name, or by the title which +had been conferred on him, fell the victim of assassination, +and not that he was killed fairly in a duel. This harsh +letter, coming as it did from a man generally so polite and +respectful, struck a mortal blow at the pride of Villefort. +Hardly had he read the letter, when his wife entered. The +sudden departure of Franz, after being summoned by M. +Noirtier, had so much astonished every one, that the +position of Madame de Villefort, left alone with the notary +and the witnesses, became every moment more embarrassing. +Determined to bear it no longer, she arose and left the +room saying she would go and make some inquiries into the +cause of his sudden disappearance. +M. de Villefort's communications on the subject were very +limited and concise he told her, in fact, that an +explanation had taken place between M. Noirtier, M. +d'Epinay, and himself, and that the marriage of Valentine +and Franz would consequently be broken off. This was an +awkward and unpleasant thing to have to report to those who +were awaiting her return in the chamber of her +fatherinlaw. She therefore contented herself with saying +that M. Noirtier having at the commencement of the +discussion been attacked by a sort of apoplectic fit, the +affair would necessarily be deferred for some days longer. +This news, false as it was following so singularly in the +train of the two similar misfortunes which had so recently +occurred, evidently astonished the auditors, and they +retired without a word. During this time Valentine, at once +terrified and happy, after having embraced and thanked the +feeble old man for thus breaking with a single blow the +chain which she had been accustomed to consider as +irrefragable, asked leave to retire to her own room, in +order to recover her composure. Noirtier looked the +permission which she solicited. But instead of going to her +own room, Valentine, having once gained her liberty, entered +the gallery, and, opening a small door at the end of it. +found herself at once in the garden. +In the midst of all the strange events which had crowded one +on the other, an indefinable sentiment of dread had taken +possession of Valentine's mind. She expected every moment +that she should see Morrel appear, pale and trembling, to +forbid the signing of the contract, like the Laird of +Ravenswood in "The Bride of Lammermoor." It was high time +for her to make her appearance at the gate, for Maximilian +had long awaited her coming. He had half guessed what was +going on when he saw Franz quit the cemetery with M. de +Villefort. He followed M. d'Epinay, saw him enter, +afterwards go out, and then reenter with Albert and +ChateauRenaud. He had no longer any doubts as to the nature +of the conference he therefore quickly went to the gate in +the cloverpatch, prepared to hear the result of the +proceedings, and very certain that Valentine would hasten to +him the first moment she should be set at liberty. He was +not mistaken peering through the crevices of the wooden +partition, he soon discovered the young girl, who cast aside +all her usual precautions and walked at once to the barrier. +The first glance which Maximilian directed towards her +entirely reassured him, and the first words she spoke made +his heart bound with delight. +"We are saved" said Valentine. "Saved?" repeated Morrel, +not being able to conceive such intense happiness "by +whom?" +"By my grandfather. Oh, Morrel, pray love him for all his +goodness to us" Morrel swore to love him with all his soul +and at that moment he could safely promise to do so, for he +felt as though it were not enough to love him merely as a +friend or even as a father. "But tell me, Valentine, how has +it all been effected? What strange means has he used to +compass this blessed end?" +Valentine was on the point of relating all that had passed, +but she suddenly remembered that in doing so she must reveal +a terrible secret which concerned others as well as her +grandfather, and she said, "At some future time I will tell +you all about it." +"But when will that be?" +"When I am your wife." +The conversation had now turned upon a topic so pleasing to +Morrel, that he was ready to accede to anything that +Valentine thought fit to propose, and he likewise felt that +a piece of intelligence such as he just heard ought to be +more than sufficient to content him for one day. However, he +would not leave without the promise of seeing Valentine +again the next night. Valentine promised all that Morrel +required of her, and certainly it was less difficult now for +her to believe that she should marry Maximilian than it was +an hour ago to assure herself that she should not marry +Franz. During the time occupied by the interview we have +just detailed, Madame de Villefort had gone to visit M. +Noirtier. The old man looked at her with that stern and +forbidding expression with which he was accustomed to +receive her. +"Sir," said she, "it is superfluous for me to tell you that +Valentine's marriage is broken off, since it was here that +the affair was concluded." Noirtier's countenance remained +immovable. "But one thing I can tell you, of which I do not +think you are aware that is, that I have always been +opposed to this marriage, and that the contract was entered +into entirely without my consent or approbation." Noirtier +regarded his daughterinlaw with the look of a man desiring +an explanation. "Now that this marriage, which I know you so +much disliked, is done away with, I come to you on an errand +which neither M. de Villefort nor Valentine could +consistently undertake." Noirtier's eyes demanded the nature +of her mission. "I come to entreat you, sir," continued +Madame de Villefort, "as the only one who has the right of +doing so, inasmuch as I am the only one who will receive no +personal benefit from the transaction, I come to entreat +you to restore, not your love, for that she has always +possessed, but to restore your fortune to your +granddaughter." +There was a doubtful expression in Noirtier's eyes he was +evidently trying to discover the motive of this proceeding, +and he could not succeed in doing so. "May I hope, sir," +said Madame de Villefort, "that your intentions accord with +my request?" Noirtier made a sign that they did. "In that +case, sir," rejoined Madame de Villefort, "I will leave you +overwhelmed with gratitude and happiness at your prompt +acquiescence to my wishes." She then bowed to M. Noirtier +and retired. +The next day M. Noirtier sent for the notary the first will +was torn up and a second made, in which he left the whole of +his fortune to Valentine, on condition that she should never +be separated from him. It was then generally reported that +Mademoiselle de Villefort, the heiress of the marquis and +marchioness of SaintMeran, had regained the good graces of +her grandfather, and that she would ultimately be in +possession of an income of , livres. +While all the proceedings relative to the dissolution of the +marriagecontract were being carried on at the house of M. +de Villefort, Monte Cristo had paid his visit to the Count +of Morcerf, who, in order to lose no time in responding to +M. Danglars' wishes, and at the same time to pay all due +deference to his position in society, donned his uniform of +lieutenantgeneral, which he ornamented with all his +crosses, and thus attired, ordered his finest horses and +drove to the Rue de la Chausse d'Antin. +Danglars was balancing his monthly accounts, and it was +perhaps not the most favorable moment for finding him in his +best humor. At the first sight of his old friend, Danglars +assumed his majestic air, and settled himself in his +easychair. Morcerf, usually so stiff and formal, accosted +the banker in an affable and smiling manner, and, feeling +sure that the overture he was about make would be well +received, he did not consider it necessary to adopt any +manoeuvres in order to gain his end, but went at once +straight to the point. +"Well, baron," said he, "here I am at last some time has +elapsed since our plans were formed, and they are not yet +executed." Morcerf paused at these words, quietly waiting +till the cloud should have dispersed which had gathered on +the brow of Danglars, and which he attributed to his +silence but, on the contrary, to his great surprise, it +grew darker and darker. "To what do you allude, monsieur?" +said Danglars as if he were trying in vain to guess at the +possible meaning of the general's words. +"Ah," said Morcerf, "I see you are a stickler for forms, my +dear sir, and you would remind me that the ceremonial rites +should not be omitted. Ma foi, I beg your pardon, but as I +have but one son, and it is the first time I have ever +thought of marrying him, I am still serving my +apprenticeship, you know come, I will reform." And Morcerf +with a forced smile arose, and, making a low bow to M. +Danglars, said "Baron, I have the honor of asking of you +the hand of Mademoiselle Eugenie Danglars for my son, the +Vicomte Albert de Morcerf." +But Danglars, instead of receiving this address in the +favorable manner which Morcerf had expected, knit his brow, +and without inviting the count, who was still standing, to +take a seat, he said "Monsieur, it will be necessary to +reflect before I give you an answer." +"To reflect?" said Morcerf, more and more astonished "have +you not had enough time for reflection during the eight +years which have elapsed since this marriage was first +discussed between us?" +"Count," said the banker, "things are constantly occurring +in the world to induce us to lay aside our most established +opinions, or at all events to cause us to remodel them +according to the change of circumstances, which may have +placed affairs in a totally different light to that in which +we at first viewed them." +"I do not understand you, baron," said Morcerf. +"What I mean to say is this, sir, that during the last +fortnight unforeseen circumstances have occurred" +"Excuse me," said Morcerf, "but is it a play we are acting?" +"A play?" +"Yes, for it is like one pray let us come more to the +point, and endeavor thoroughly to understand each other." +"That is quite my desire." +"You have seen M. de Monte Cristo have you not?" +"I see him very often," said Danglars, drawing himself up +"he is a particular friend of mine." +"Well, in one of your late conversations with him, you said +that I appeared to be forgetful and irresolute concerning +this marriage, did you not?" +"I did say so." +"Well, here I am, proving at once that I am really neither +the one nor the other, by entreating you to keep your +promise on that score." +Danglars did not answer. "Have you so soon changed your +mind," added Morcerf, "or have you only provoked my request +that you may have the pleasure of seeing me humbled?" +Danglars, seeing that if he continued the conversation in +the same tone in which he had begun it, the whole thing +might turn out to his own disadvantage, turned to Morcerf, +and said "Count, you must doubtless be surprised at my +reserve, and I assure you it costs me much to act in such a +manner towards you but, believe me when I say that +imperative necessity has imposed the painful task upon me." +"These are all so many empty words, my dear sir," said +Morcerf "they might satisfy a new acquaintance, but the +Comte de Morcerf does not rank in that list and when a man +like him comes to another, recalls to him his plighted word, +and this man fails to redeem the pledge, he has at least a +right to exact from him a good reason for so doing." +Danglars was a coward, but did not wish to appear so he was +piqued at the tone which Morcerf had just assumed. "I am not +without a good reason for my conduct," replied the banker. +"What do you mean to say?" +"I mean to say that I have a good reason, but that it is +difficult to explain." +"You must be aware, at all events, that it is impossible for +me to understand motives before they are explained to me +but one thing at least is clear, which is, that you decline +allying yourself with my family." +"No, sir," said Danglars "I merely suspend my decision, +that is all." +"And do you really flatter yourself that I shall yield to +all your caprices, and quietly and humbly await the time of +again being received into your good graces?" +"Then, count, if you will not wait, we must look upon these +projects as if they had never been entertained." The count +bit his lips till the blood almost started, to prevent the +ebullition of anger which his proud and irritable temper +scarcely allowed him to restrain understanding, however, +that in the present state of things the laugh would +decidedly be against him, he turned from the door, towards +which he had been directing his steps, and again confronted +the banker. A cloud settled on his brow, evincing decided +anxiety and uneasiness, instead of the expression of +offended pride which had lately reigned there. "My dear +Danglars," said Morcerf, "we have been acquainted for many +years, and consequently we ought to make some allowance for +each other's failings. You owe me an explanation, and really +it is but fair that I should know what circumstance has +occurred to deprive my son of your favor." +"It is from no personal illfeeling towards the viscount, +that is all I can say, sir," replied Danglars, who resumed +his insolent manner as soon as he perceived that Morcerf was +a little softened and calmed down. "And towards whom do you +bear this personal illfeeling, then?" said Morcerf, turning +pale with anger. The expression of the count's face had not +remained unperceived by the banker he fixed on him a look +of greater assurance than before, and said "You may, +perhaps, be better satisfied that I should not go farther +into particulars." +A tremor of suppressed rage shook the whole frame of the +count, and making a violent effort over himself, he said "I +have a right to insist on your giving me an explanation. Is +it Madame de Morcerf who has displeased you? Is it my +fortune which you find insufficient? Is it because my +opinions differ from yours?" +"Nothing of the kind, sir," replied Danglars "if such had +been the case, I only should have been to blame, inasmuch as +I was aware of all these things when I made the engagement. +No, do not seek any longer to discover the reason. I really +am quite ashamed to have been the cause of your undergoing +such severe selfexamination let us drop the subject, and +adopt the middle course of delay, which implies neither a +rupture nor an engagement. Ma foi, there is no hurry. My +daughter is only seventeen years old, and your son +twentyone. While we wait, time will be progressing, events +will succeed each other things which in the evening look +dark and obscure, appear but too clearly in the light of +morning, and sometimes the utterance of one word, or the +lapse of a single day, will reveal the most cruel +calumnies." +"Calumnies, did you say, sir?" cried Morcerf, turning livid +with rage. "Does any one dare to slander me?" +"Monsieur, I told you that I considered it best to avoid all +explanation." +"Then, sir, I am patiently to submit to your refusal?" +"Yes, sir, although I assure you the refusal is as painful +for me to give as it is for you to receive, for I had +reckoned on the honor of your alliance, and the breaking off +of a marriage contract always injures the lady more than the +gentleman." +"Enough, sir," said Morcerf, "we will speak no more on the +subject." And clutching his gloves in anger, he left the +apartment. Danglars observed that during the whole +conversation Morcerf had never once dared to ask if it was +on his own account that Danglars recalled his word. That +evening he had a long conference with several friends and +M. Cavalcanti, who had remained in the drawingroom with the +ladies, was the last to leave the banker's house. +The next morning, as soon as he awoke, Danglars asked for +the newspapers they were brought to him he laid aside +three or four, and at last fixed on the Impartial, the paper +of which Beauchamp was the chief editor. He hastily tore off +the cover, opened the journal with nervous precipitation, +passed contemptuously over the Paris jottings, and arriving +at the miscellaneous intelligence, stopped with a malicious +smile, at a paragraph headed "We hear from Yanina." "Very +good," observed Danglars, after having read the paragraph +"here is a little article on Colonel Fernand, which, if I am +not mistaken, would render the explanation which the Comte +de Morcerf required of me perfectly unnecessary." +At the same moment, that is, at nine o'clock in the morning, +Albert de Morcerf, dressed in a black coat buttoned up to +his chin, might have been seen walking with a quick and +agitated step in the direction of Monte Cristo's house in +the Champs Elysees. When he presented himself at the gate +the porter informed him that the Count had gone out about +half an hour previously. "Did he take Baptistin with him?" +"No, my lord." +"Call him, then I wish to speak to him." The concierge went +to seek the valet de chambre, and returned with him in an +instant. +"My good friend," said Albert, "I beg pardon for my +intrusion, but I was anxious to know from your own mouth if +your master was really out or not." +"He is really out, sir," replied Baptistin. +"Out, even to me?" +"I know how happy my master always is to receive the +vicomte," said Baptistin "and I should therefore never +think of including him in any general order." +"You are right and now I wish to see him on an affair of +great importance. Do you think it will be long before he +comes in?" +"No, I think not, for he ordered his breakfast at ten +o'clock." +"Well, I will go and take a turn in the Champs Elysees, and +at ten o'clock I will return here meanwhile, if the count +should come in, will you beg him not to go out again without +seeing me?" +"You may depend on my doing so, sir," said Baptistin. +Albert left the cab in which he had come at the count's +door, intending to take a turn on foot. As he was passing +the Allee des Veuves, he thought he saw the count's horses +standing at Gosset's shootinggallery he approached, and +soon recognized the coachman. "Is the count shooting in the +gallery?" said Morcerf. +"Yes, sir," replied the coachman. While he was speaking, +Albert had heard the report of two or three pistolshots. He +entered, and on his way met the waiter. "Excuse me, my +lord," said the lad "but will you have the kindness to wait +a moment?" +"What for, Philip?" asked Albert, who, being a constant +visitor there, did not understand this opposition to his +entrance. +"Because the person who is now in the gallery prefers being +alone, and never practices in the presence of any one." +"Not even before you, Philip? Then who loads his pistol?" +"His servant." +"A Nubian?" +"A negro." +"It is he, then." +"Do you know this gentleman?" +"Yes, and I am come to look for him he is a friend of +mine." +"Oh, that is quite another thing, then. I will go +immediately and inform him of your arrival." And Philip, +urged by his own curiosity, entered the gallery a second +afterwards, Monte Cristo appeared on the threshold. "I ask +your pardon, my dear count," said Albert, "for following you +here, and I must first tell you that it was not the fault of +your servants that I did so I alone am to blame for the +indiscretion. I went to your house, and they told me you +were out, but that they expected you home at ten o'clock to +breakfast. I was walking about in order to pass away the +time till ten o'clock, when I caught sight of your carriage +and horses." +"What you have just said induces me to hope that you intend +breakfasting with me." +"No, thank you, I am thinking of other things besides +breakfast just now perhaps we may take that meal at a later +hour and in worse company." +"What on earth are you talking of?" +"I am to fight today." +"For what?" +"I am going to fight" +"Yes, I understand that, but what is the quarrel? People +fight for all sorts of reasons, you know." +"I fight in the cause of honor." +"Ah, that is something serious." +"So serious, that I come to beg you to render me a service." +"What is it?" +"To be my second." +"That is a serious matter, and we will not discuss it here +let us speak of nothing till we get home. Ali, bring me some +water." The count turned up his sleeves, and passed into the +little vestibule where the gentlemen were accustomed to wash +their hands after shooting. "Come in, my lord," said Philip +in a low tone, "and I will show you something droll." +Morcerf entered, and in place of the usual target, he saw +some playingcards fixed against the wall. At a distance +Albert thought it was a complete suit, for he counted from +the ace to the ten. "Ah, ha," said Albert, "I see you were +preparing for a game of cards." +"No," said the count, "I was making a suit." +"How?" said Albert. +"Those are really aces and twos which you see, but my shots +have turned them into threes, fives, sevens, eights, nines, +and tens." Albert approached. In fact, the bullets had +actually pierced the cards in the exact places which the +painted signs would otherwise have occupied, the lines and +distances being as regularly kept as if they had been ruled +with pencil. "Diable," said Morcerf. +"What would you have, my dear viscount?" said Monte Cristo, +wiping his hands on the towel which Ali had brought him "I +must occupy my leisure moments in some way or other. But +come, I am waiting for you." Both men entered Monte Cristo's +carriage, which in the course of a few minutes deposited +them safely at No. . Monte Cristo took Albert into his +study, and pointing to a seat, placed another for himself. +"Now let us talk the matter over quietly," said the count. +"You see I am perfectly composed," said Albert. +"With whom are you going to fight?" +"With Beauchamp." +"One of your friends" +"Of course it is always with friends that one fights." +"I suppose you have some cause of quarrel?" +"I have." +"What has he done to you?" +"There appeared in his journal last night but wait, and +read for yourself." And Albert handed over the paper to the +count, who read as follows +"A correspondent at Yanina informs us of a fact of which +until now we had remained in ignorance. The castle which +formed the protection of the town was given up to the Turks +by a French officer named Fernand, in whom the grand vizier, +Ali Tepelini, had reposed the greatest confidence." +"Well," said Monte Cristo, "what do you see in that to annoy +you?" +"What do I see in it?" +"Yes what does it signify to you if the castle of Yanina +was given up by a French officer?" +"It signifies to my father, the Count of Morcerf, whose +Christian name is Fernand" +"Did your father serve under Ali Pasha?" +"Yes that is to say, he fought for the independence of the +Greeks, and hence arises the calumny." +"Oh, my dear viscount, do talk reason" +"I do not desire to do otherwise." +"Now, just tell me who the devil should know in France that +the officer Fernand and the Count of Morcerf are one and the +same person? and who cares now about Yanina, which was taken +as long ago as the year or ?" +"That just shows the meanness of this slander. They have +allowed all this time to elapse, and then all of a sudden +rake up events which have been forgotten to furnish +materials for scandal, in order to tarnish the lustre of our +high position. I inherit my father's name, and I do not +choose that the shadow of disgrace should darken it. I am +going to Beauchamp, in whose journal this paragraph appears, +and I shall insist on his retracting the assertion before +two witnesses." +"Beauchamp will never retract." +"Then he must fight." +"No he will not, for he will tell you, what is very true, +that perhaps there were fifty officers in the Greek army +bearing the same name." +"We will fight, nevertheless. I will efface that blot on my +father's character. My father, who was such a brave soldier, +whose career was so brilliant" +"Oh, well, he will add, "We are warranted in believing that +this Fernand is not the illustrious Count of Morcerf, who +also bears the same Christian name.'" +"I am determined not to be content with anything short of an +entire retractation." +"And you intend to make him do it in the presence of two +witnesses, do you?" +"Yes." +"You do wrong." +"Which means, I suppose, that you refuse the service which I +asked of you?" +"You know my theory regarding duels I told you my opinion +on that subject, if you remember, when we were at Rome." +"Nevertheless, my dear count, I found you this morning +engaged in an occupation but little consistent with the +notions you profess to entertain." +"Because, my dear fellow, you understand one must never be +eccentric. If one's lot is cast among fools, it is necessary +to study folly. I shall perhaps find myself one day called +out by some harebrained scamp, who has no more real cause of +quarrel with me than you have with Beauchamp he may take me +to task for some foolish trifle or other, he will bring his +witnesses, or will insult me in some public place, and I am +expected to kill him for all that." +"You admit that you would fight, then? Well, if so, why do +you object to my doing so?" +"I do not say that you ought not to fight, I only say that a +duel is a serious thing, and ought not to be undertaken +without due reflection." +"Did he reflect before he insulted my father?" +"If he spoke hastily, and owns that he did so, you ought to +be satisfied." +"Ah, my dear count, you are far too indulgent." +"And you are far too exacting. Supposing, for instance, and +do not be angry at what I am going to say" +"Well." +"Supposing the assertion to be really true?" +"A son ought not to submit to such a stain on his father's +honor." +"Ma foi, we live in times when there is much to which we +must submit." +"That is precisely the fault of the age." +"And do you undertake to reform it?" +"Yes, as far as I am personally concerned." +"Well, you the?? indeed exacting, my dear fellow" +"Yes, I own it." +"Are you quite impervious to good advice?" +"Not when it comes from a friend." +"And do you account me that title?" +"Certainly I do." +"Well, then, before going to Beauchamp with your witnesses, +seek further information on the subject." +"From whom?" +"From Haidee." +"Why, what can be the use of mixing a woman up in the +affair? what can she do in it?" +"She can declare to you, for example, that your father had +no hand whatever in the defeat and death of the vizier or +if by chance he had, indeed, the misfortune to" +"I have told you, my dear count, that I would not for one +moment admit of such a proposition." +"You reject this means of information, then?" +"I do most decidedly." +"Then let me offer one more word of advice." +"Do so, then, but let it be the last." +"You do not wish to hear it, perhaps?" +"On the contrary, I request it." +"Do not take any witnesses with you when you go to Beauchamp +visit him alone." +"That would be contrary to all custom." +"Your case is not an ordinary one." +"And what is your reason for advising me to go alone?" +"Because then the affair will rest between you and +Beauchamp." +"Explain yourself." +"I will do so. If Beauchamp be disposed to retract, you +ought at least to give him the opportunity of doing it of +his own free will, the satisfaction to you will be the +same. If, on the contrary, he refuses to do so, it will then +be quite time enough to admit two strangers into your +secret." +"They will not be strangers, they will be friends." +"Ah, but the friends of today are the enemies of tomorrow +Beauchamp, for instance." +"So you recommend" +"I recommend you to be prudent." +"Then you advise me to go alone to Beauchamp?" +"I do, and I will tell you why. When you wish to obtain some +concession from a man's selflove, you must avoid even the +appearance of wishing to wound it." +"I believe you are right." +"I am glad of it." +"Then I will go alone." +"Go but you would do better still by not going at all." +"That is impossible." +"Do so, then it will be a wiser plan than the first which +you proposed." +"But if, in spite of all my precautions, I am at last +obliged to fight, will you not be my second?" +"My dear viscount," said Monte Cristo gravely, "you must +have seen before today that at all times and in all places +I have been at your disposal, but the service which you have +just demanded of me is one which it is out of my power to +render you." +"Why?" +"Perhaps you may know at some future period, and in the mean +time I request you to excuse my declining to put you in +possession of my reasons." +"Well, I will have Franz and ChateauRenaud they will be +the very men for it." +"Do so, then." +"But if I do fight, you will surely not object to giving me +a lesson or two in shooting and fencing?" +"That, too, is impossible." +"What a singular being you are you will not interfere in +anything." +"You are right that is the principle on which I wish to +act." +"We will say no more about it, then. Goodby, count." +Morcerf took his hat, and left the room. He found his +carriage at the door, and doing his utmost to restrain his +anger he went at once to find Beauchamp, who was in his +office. It was a gloomy, dustylooking apartment, such as +journalists' offices have always been from time immemorial. +The servant announced M. Albert de Morcerf. Beauchamp +repeated the name to himself, as though he could scarcely +believe that he had heard aright, and then gave orders for +him to be admitted. Albert entered. Beauchamp uttered an +exclamation of surprise on seeing his friend leap over and +trample under foot all the newspapers which were strewed +about the room. "This way, this way, my dear Albert" said +he, holding out his hand to the young man. "Are you out of +your senses, or do you come peaceably to take breakfast with +me? Try and find a seat there is one by that geranium, +which is the only thing in the room to remind me that there +are other leaves in the world besides leaves of paper." +"Beauchamp," said Albert, "it is of your journal that I come +to speak." +"Indeed? What do you wish to say about it?" +"I desire that a statement contained in it should be +rectified." +"To what do you refer? But pray sit down." +"Thank you," said Albert, with a cold and formal bow. +"Will you now have the kindness to explain the nature of the +statement which has displeased you?" +"An announcement has been made which implicates the honor of +a member of my family." +"What is it?" said Beauchamp, much surprised "surely you +must be mistaken." +"The story sent you from Yanina." +"Yanina?" +"Yes really you appear to be totally ignorant of the cause +which brings me here." +"Such is really the case, I assure you, upon my honor +Baptiste, give me yesterday's paper," cried Beauchamp. +"Here, I have brought mine with me," replied Albert. +Beauchamp took the paper, and read the article to which +Albert pointed in an undertone. "You see it is a serious +annoyance," said Morcerf, when Beauchamp had finished the +perusal of the paragraph. "Is the officer referred to a +relation of yours, then?" demanded the journalist. +"Yes," said Albert, blushing. +"Well, what do you wish me to do for you?" said Beauchamp +mildly. +"My dear Beauchamp, I wish you to contradict this +statement." Beauchamp looked at Albert with a benevolent +expression. +"Come," said he, "this matter will want a good deal of +talking over a retractation is always a serious thing, you +know. Sit down, and I will read it again." Albert resumed +his seat, and Beauchamp read, with more attention than at +first, the lines denounced by his friend. "Well," said +Albert in a determined tone, "you see that your paper his +insulted a member of my family, and I insist on a +retractation being made." +"You insist?" +"Yes, I insist." +"Permit me to remind you that you are not in the Chamber, my +dear Viscount." +"Nor do I wish to be there," replied the young man, rising. +"I repeat that I am determined to have the announcement of +yesterday contradicted. You have known me long enough," +continued Albert, biting his lips convulsively, for he saw +that Beauchamp's anger was beginning to rise, "you have +been my friend, and therefore sufficiently intimate with me +to be aware that I am likely to maintain my resolution on +this point." +"If I have been your friend, Morcerf, your present manner of +speaking would almost lead me to forget that I ever bore +that title. But wait a moment, do not let us get angry, or +at least not yet. You are irritated and vexed tell me how +this Fernand is related to you?" +"He is merely my father," said Albert "M. Fernand +Mondego, Count of Morcerf, an old soldier who has fought in +twenty battles and whose honorable scars they would denounce +as badges of disgrace." +"Is it your father?" said Beauchamp "that is quite another +thing. Then can well understand your indignation, my dear +Albert. I will look at it again" and he read the paragraph +for the third time, laying a stress on each word as he +proceeded. "But the paper nowhere identifies this Fernand +with your father." +"No but the connection will be seen by others, and +therefore I will have the article contradicted." At the +words "I will," Beauchamp steadily raised his eyes to +Albert's countenance, and then as gradually lowering them, +he remained thoughtful for a few moments. "You will retract +this assertion, will you not, Beauchamp?" said Albert with +increased though stifled anger. +"Yes," replied Beauchamp. +"Immediately?" said Albert. +"When I am convinced that the statement is false." +"What?" +"The thing is worth looking into, and I will take pains to +investigate the matter thoroughly." +"But what is there to investigate, sir?" said Albert, +enraged beyond measure at Beauchamp's last remark. "If you +do not believe that it is my father, say so immediately and +if, on the contrary, you believe it to be him, state your +reasons for doing so." Beauchamp looked at Albert with the +smile which was so peculiar to him, and which in its +numerous modifications served to express every varied +emotion of his mind. "Sir," replied he, "if you came to me +with the idea of demanding satisfaction, you should have +gone at once to the point, and not have entertained me with +the idle conversation to which I have been patiently +listening for the last half hour. Am I to put this +construction on your visit?" +"Yes, if you will not consent to retract that infamous +calumny." +"Wait a moment no threats, if you please, M. Fernand +Mondego, Vicomte de Morcerf I never allow them from my +enemies, and therefore shall not put up with them from my +friends. You insist on my contradicting the article relating +to General Fernand, an article with which, I assure you on +my word of honor, I had nothing whatever to do?" +"Yes, I insist on it," said Albert, whose mind was beginning +to get bewildered with the excitement of his feelings. +"And if I refuse to retract, you wish to fight, do you?" +said Beauchamp in a calm tone. +"Yes," replied Albert, raising his voice. +"Well," said Beauchamp, "here is my answer, my dear sir. The +article was not inserted by me I was not even aware of +it but you have, by the step you have taken, called my +attention to the paragraph in question, and it will remain +until it shall be either contradicted or confirmed by some +one who has a right to do so." +"Sir," said Albert, rising, "I will do myself the honor of +sending my seconds to you, and you will be kind enough to +arrange with them the place of meeting and the weapons." +"Certainly, my dear sir." +"And this evening, if you please, or tomorrow at the +latest, we will meet." +"No, no, I will be on the ground at the proper time but in +my opinion and I have a right to dictate the preliminaries, +as it is I who have received the provocation in my +opinion the time ought not to be yet. I know you to be well +skilled in the management of the sword, while I am only +moderately so I know, too, that you are a good marksman +there we are about equal. I know that a duel between us two +would be a serious affair, because you are brave, and I am +brave also. I do not therefore wish either to kill you, or +to be killed myself without a cause. Now, I am going to put +a question to you, and one very much to the purpose too. Do +you insist on this retractation so far as to kill me if I do +not make it, although I have repeated more than once, and +affirmed on my honor, that I was ignorant of the thing with +which you charge me, and although I still declare that it is +impossible for any one but you to recognize the Count of +Morcerf under the name of Fernand?" +"I maintain my original resolution." +"Very well, my dear sir then I consent to cut throats with +you. But I require three weeks' preparation at the end of +that time I shall come and say to you, "The assertion is +false, and I retract it,' or "The assertion is true,' when I +shall immediately draw the sword from its sheath, or the +pistols from the case, whichever you please." +"Three weeks" cried Albert "they will pass as slowly as +three centuries when I am all the time suffering dishonor." +"Had you continued to remain on amicable terms with me, I +should have said, "Patience, my friend' but you have +constituted yourself my enemy, therefore I say, "What does +that signify to me, sir?'" +"Well, let it be three weeks then," said Morcerf "but +remember, at the expiration of that time no delay or +subterfuge will justify you in" +"M. Albert de Morcerf," said Beauchamp, rising in his turn, +"I cannot throw you out of window for three weeks that is +to say, for twentyfour days to come nor have you any +right to split my skull open till that time has elapsed. +Today is the th of August the st of September will, +therefore, be the conclusion of the term agreed on, and till +that time arrives and it is the advice of a gentleman +which I am about to give you till then we will refrain +from growling and barking like two dogs chained within sight +of each other." When he had concluded his speech, Beauchamp +bowed coldly to Albert, turned his back upon him, and went +to the pressroom. +Albert vented his anger on a pile of newspapers, which he +sent flying all over the office by switching them violently +with his stick after which ebullition he departed not, +however, without walking several times to the door of the +pressroom, as if he had half a mind to enter. While Albert +was lashing the front of his carriage in the same manner +that he had the newspapers which were the innocent agents of +his discomfiture, as he was crossing the barrier he +perceived Morrel, who was walking with a quick step and a +bright eye. He was passing the Chinese Baths, and appeared +to have come from the direction of the Porte SaintMartin, +and to be going towards the Madeleine. "Ah," said Morcerf, +"there goes a happy man" And it so happened Albert was not +mistaken in his opinion. +Chapter +The Lemonade. +Morrel was, in fact, very happy. M. Noirtier had just sent +for him, and he was in such haste to know the reason of his +doing so that he had not stopped to take a cab, placing +infinitely more dependence on his own two legs than on the +four legs of a cabhorse. He had therefore set off at a +furious rate from the Rue Meslay, and was hastening with +rapid strides in the direction of the Faubourg SaintHonore. +Morrel advanced with a firm, manly tread, and poor Barrois +followed him as he best might. Morrel was only thirtyone, +Barrois was sixty years of age Morrel was deeply in love, +and Barrois was dying with heat and exertion. These two men, +thus opposed in age and interests, resembled two parts of a +triangle, presenting the extremes of separation, yet +nevertheless possessing their point of union. This point of +union was Noirtier, and it was he who had just sent for +Morrel, with the request that the latter would lose no time +in coming to him a command which Morrel obeyed to the +letter, to the great discomfiture of Barrois. On arriving at +the house, Morrel was not even out of breath, for love lends +wings to our desires but Barrois, who had long forgotten +what it was to love, was sorely fatigued by the expedition +he had been constrained to use. +The old servant introduced Morrel by a private entrance, +closed the door of the study, and soon the rustling of a +dress announced the arrival of Valentine. She looked +marvellously beautiful in her deep mourning dress, and +Morrel experienced such intense delight in gazing upon her +that he felt as if he could almost have dispensed with the +conversation of her grandfather. But the easychair of the +old man was heard rolling along the floor, and he soon made +his appearance in the room. Noirtier acknowledged by a look +of extreme kindness and benevolence the thanks which Morrel +lavished on him for his timely intervention on behalf of +Valentine and himself an intervention which had saved +them from despair. Morrel then cast on the invalid an +interrogative look as to the new favor which he designed to +bestow on him. Valentine was sitting at a little distance +from them, timidly awaiting the moment when she should be +obliged to speak. Noirtier fixed his eyes on her. "Am I to +say what you told me?" asked Valentine. Noirtier made a sign +that she was to do so. +"Monsieur Morrel," said Valentine to the young man, who was +regarding her with the most intense interest, "my +grandfather, M. Noirtier, had a thousand things to say, +which he told me three days ago and now, he has sent for +you, that I may repeat them to you. I will repeat them, +then and since he has chosen me as his interpreter, I will +be faithful to the trust, and will not alter a word of his +intentions." +"Oh, I am listening with the greatest impatience," replied +the young man "speak, I beg of you." Valentine cast down +her eyes this was a good omen for Morrel, for he knew that +nothing but happiness could have the power of thus +overcoming Valentine. "My grandfather intends leaving this +house," said she, "and Barrois is looking out suitable +apartments for him in another." +"But you, Mademoiselle de Villefort, you, who are +necessary to M. Noirtier's happiness" +"I?" interrupted Valentine "I shall not leave my +grandfather, that is an understood thing between us. My +apartment will be close to his. Now, M. de Villefort must +either give his consent to this plan or his refusal in the +first case, I shall leave directly, and in the second, I +shall wait till I am of age, which will be in about ten +months. Then I shall be free, I shall have an independent +fortune, and" +"And what?" demanded Morrel. +"And with my grandfather's consent I shall fulfil the +promise which I have made you." Valentine pronounced these +last few words in such a low tone, that nothing but Morrel's +intense interest in what she was saying could have enabled +him to hear them. "Have I not explained your wishes, +grandpapa?" said Valentine, addressing Noirtier. "Yes," +looked the old man. "Once under my grandfather's roof, M. +Morrel can visit me in the presence of my good and worthy +protector, if we still feel that the union we contemplated +will be likely to insure our future comfort and happiness +in that case I shall expect M. Morrel to come and claim me +at my own hands. But, alas, I have heard it said that hearts +inflamed by obstacles to their desire grew cold in time of +security I trust we shall never find it so in our +experience" +"Oh," cried Morrel, almost tempted to throw himself on his +knees before Noirtier and Valentine, and to adore them as +two superior beings, "what have I ever done in my life to +merit such unbounded happiness?" +"Until that time," continued the young girl in a calm and +selfpossessed tone of voice, "we will conform to +circumstances, and be guided by the wishes of our friends, +so long as those wishes do not tend finally to separate us +in a word, and I repeat it, because it expresses all I wish +to convey, we will wait." +"And I swear to make all the sacrifices which this word +imposes, sir," said Morrel, "not only with resignation, but +with cheerfulness." +"Therefore," continued Valentine, looking playfully at +Maximilian, "no more inconsiderate actions no more rash +projects for you surely would not wish to compromise one +who from this day regards herself as destined, honorably and +happily, to bear your name?" +Morrel looked obedience to her commands. Noirtier regarded +the lovers with a look of ineffable tenderness, while +Barrois, who had remained in the room in the character of a +man privileged to know everything that passed, smiled on the +youthful couple as he wiped the perspiration from his bald +forehead. "How hot you look, my good Barrois," said +Valentine. +"Ah, I have been running very fast, mademoiselle, but I must +do M. Morrel the justice to say that he ran still faster." +Noirtier directed their attention to a waiter, on which was +placed a decanter containing lemonade and a glass. The +decanter was nearly full, with the exception of a little, +which had been already drunk by M. Noirtier. +"Come, Barrois," said the young girl, "take some of this +lemonade I see you are coveting a good draught of it." +"The fact is, mademoiselle," said Barrois, "I am dying with +thirst, and since you are so kind as to offer it me, I +cannot say I should at all object to drinking your health in +a glass of it." +"Take some, then, and come back immediately." Barrois took +away the waiter, and hardly was he outside the door, which +in his haste he forgot to shut, than they saw him throw back +his head and empty to the very dregs the glass which +Valentine had filled. Valentine and Morrel were exchanging +their adieux in the presence of Noirtier when a ring was +heard at the doorbell. It was the signal of a visit. +Valentine looked at her watch. +"It is past noon," said she, "and today is Saturday I dare +say it is the doctor, grandpapa." Noirtier looked his +conviction that she was right in her supposition. "He will +come in here, and M. Morrel had better go, do you not +think so, grandpapa?" +"Yes," signed the old man. +"Barrois," cried Valentine, "Barrois" +"I am coming, mademoiselle," replied he. "Barrois will open +the door for you," said Valentine, addressing Morrel. "And +now remember one thing, Monsieur Officer, that my +grandfather commands you not to take any rash or illadvised +step which would be likely to compromise our happiness." +"I promised him to wait," replied Morrel "and I will wait." +At this moment Barrois entered. "Who rang?" asked Valentine. +"Doctor d'Avrigny," said Barrois, staggering as if he would +fall. +"What is the matter, Barrois?" said Valentine. The old man +did not answer, but looked at his master with wild staring +eyes, while with his cramped hand he grasped a piece of +furniture to enable him to stand upright. "He is going to +fall" cried Morrel. The rigors which had attacked Barrois +gradually increased, the features of the face became quite +altered, and the convulsive movement of the muscles appeared +to indicate the approach of a most serious nervous disorder. +Noirtier, seeing Barrois in this pitiable condition, showed +by his looks all the various emotions of sorrow and sympathy +which can animate the heart of man. Barrois made some steps +towards his master. +"Ah, sir," said he, "tell me what is the matter with me. I +am suffering I cannot see. A thousand fiery darts are +piercing my brain. Ah, don't touch me, pray don't." By this +time his haggard eyes had the appearance of being ready to +start from their sockets his head fell back, and the lower +extremities of the body began to stiffen. Valentine uttered +a cry of horror Morrel took her in his arms, as if to +defend her from some unknown danger. "M. d'Avrigny, M. +d'Avrigny," cried she, in a stifled voice. "Help, help" +Barrois turned round and with a great effort stumbled a few +steps, then fell at the feet of Noirtier, and resting his +hand on the knee of the invalid, exclaimed, "My master, my +good master" At this moment M. de Villefort, attracted by +the noise, appeared on the threshold. Morrel relaxed his +hold of Valentine, and retreating to a distant corner of the +room remained half hidden behind a curtain. Pale as if he +had been gazing on a serpent, he fixed his terrified eye on +the agonized sufferer. +Noirtier, burning with impatience and terror, was in despair +at his utter inability to help his old domestic, whom he +regarded more in the light of a friend than a servant. One +might by the fearful swelling of the veins of his forehead +and the contraction of the muscles round the eye, trace the +terrible conflict which was going on between the living +energetic mind and the inanimate and helpless body. Barrois, +his features convulsed, his eyes suffused with blood, and +his head thrown back, was lying at full length, beating the +floor with his hands, while his legs had become so stiff, +that they looked as if they would break rather than bend. A +slight appearance of foam was visible around the mouth, and +he breathed painfully, and with extreme difficulty. +Villefort seemed stupefied with astonishment, and remained +gazing intently on the scene before him without uttering a +word. He had not seen Morrel. After a moment of dumb +contemplation, during which his face became pale and his +hair seemed to stand on end, he sprang towards the door, +crying out, "Doctor, doctor come instantly, pray come" +"Madame, madame" cried Valentine, calling her stepmother, +and running upstairs to meet her "come quick, quick +and bring your bottle of smellingsalts with you." +"What is the matter?" said Madame de Villefort in a harsh +and constrained tone. +"Oh, come, come" +"But where is the doctor?" exclaimed Villefort "where is +he?" Madame de Villefort now deliberately descended the +staircase. In one hand she held her handkerchief, with which +she appeared to be wiping her face, and in the other a +bottle of English smellingsalts. Her first look on entering +the room was at Noirtier, whose face, independent of the +emotion which such a scene could not fail of producing, +proclaimed him to be in possession of his usual health her +second glance was at the dying man. She turned pale, and her +eye passed quickly from the servant and rested on the +master. +"In the name of heaven, madame," said Villefort, "where is +the doctor? He was with you just now. You see this is a fit +of apoplexy, and he might be saved if he could but be bled" +"Has he eaten anything lately?" asked Madame de Villefort, +eluding her husband's question. "Madame," replied Valentine, +"he has not even breakfasted. He has been running very fast +on an errand with which my grandfather charged him, and when +he returned, took nothing but a glass of lemonade." +"Ah," said Madame de Villefort, "why did he not take wine? +Lemonade was a very bad thing for him." +"Grandpapa's bottle of lemonade was standing just by his +side poor Barrois was very thirsty, and was thankful to +drink anything he could find." Madame de Villefort started. +Noirtier looked at her with a glance of the most profound +scrutiny. "He has such a short neck," said she. "Madame," +said Villefort, "I ask where is M. d'Avrigny? In God's name +answer me" +"He is with Edward, who is not quite well," replied Madame +de Villefort, no longer being able to avoid answering. +Villefort rushed upstairs to fetch him. "Take this," said +Madame de Villefort, giving her smellingbottle to +Valentine. "They will, no doubt, bleed him therefore I will +retire, for I cannot endure the sight of blood" and she +followed her husband upstairs. Morrel now emerged from his +hidingplace, where he had remained quite unperceived, so +great had been the general confusion. "Go away as quick as +you can, Maximilian," said Valentine, "and stay till I send +for you. Go." +Morrel looked towards Noirtier for permission to retire. The +old man, who had preserved all his usual coolness, made a +sign to him to do so. The young man pressed Valentine's hand +to his lips, and then left the house by a back staircase. At +the same moment that he quitted the room, Villefort and the +doctor entered by an opposite door. Barrois was now showing +signs of returning consciousness. The crisis seemed past, a +low moaning was heard, and he raised himself on one knee. +D'Avrigny and Villefort laid him on a couch. "What do you +prescribe, doctor?" demanded Villefort. "Give me some water +and ether. You have some in the house, have you not?" +"Yes." +"Send for some oil of turpentine and tartar emetic." +Villefort immediately despatched a messenger. "And now let +every one retire." +"Must I go too?" asked Valentine timidly. +"Yes, mademoiselle, you especially," replied the doctor +abruptly. +Valentine looked at M. d'Avrigny with astonishment, kissed +her grandfather on the forehead, and left the room. The +doctor closed the door after her with a gloomy air. "Look, +look, doctor," said Villefort, "he is quite coming round +again I really do not think, after all, it is anything of +consequence." M. d'Avrigny answered by a melancholy smile. +"How do you feel, Barrois?" asked he. "A little better, +sir." +"Will you drink some of this ether and water?" +"I will try but don't touch me." +"Why not?" +"Because I feel that if you were only to touch me with the +tip of your finger the fit would return." +"Drink." +Barrois took the glass, and, raising it to his purple lips, +took about half of the liquid offered him. "Where do you +suffer?" asked the doctor. +"Everywhere. I feel cramps over my whole body." +"Do you find any dazzling sensation before the eyes?" +"Yes." +"Any noise in the ears?" +"Frightful." +"When did you first feel that?" +"Just now." +"Suddenly?" +"Yes, like a clap of thunder." +"Did you feel nothing of it yesterday or the day before?" +"Nothing." +"No drowsiness?" +"None." +"What have you eaten today?" +"I have eaten nothing I only drank a glass of my master's +lemonade that's all" and Barrois turned towards +Noirtier, who, immovably fixed in his armchair, was +contemplating this terrible scene without allowing a word or +a movement to escape him. +"Where is this lemonade?" asked the doctor eagerly. +"Downstairs in the decanter." +"Whereabouts downstairs?" +"In the kitchen." +"Shall I go and fetch it, doctor?" inquired Villefort. +"No, stay here and try to make Barrois drink the rest of +this glass of ether and water. I will go myself and fetch +the lemonade." D'Avrigny bounded towards the door, flew down +the back staircase, and almost knocked down Madame de +Villefort, in his haste, who was herself going down to the +kitchen. She cried out, but d'Avrigny paid no attention to +her possessed with but one idea, he cleared the last four +steps with a bound, and rushed into the kitchen, where he +saw the decanter about three parts empty still standing on +the waiter, where it had been left. He darted upon it as an +eagle would seize upon its prey. Panting with loss of +breath, he returned to the room he had just left. Madame de +Villefort was slowly ascending the steps which led to her +room. "Is this the decanter you spoke of?" asked d'Avrigny. +"Yes, doctor." +"Is this the same lemonade of which you partook?" +"I believe so." +"What did it taste like?" +"It had a bitter taste." +The doctor poured some drops of the lemonade into the palm +of his hand, put his lips to it, and after having rinsed his +mouth as a man does when he is tasting wine, he spat the +liquor into the fireplace. +"It is no doubt the same," said he. "Did you drink some too, +M. Noirtier?" +"Yes." +"And did you also discover a bitter taste?" +"Yes." +"Oh, doctor," cried Barrois, "the fit is coming on again. +Oh, do something for me." The doctor flew to his patient. +"That emetic, Villefort see if it is coming." Villefort +sprang into the passage, exclaiming, "The emetic the +emetic is it come yet?" No one answered. The most +profound terror reigned throughout the house. "If I had +anything by means of which I could inflate the lungs," said +d'Avrigny, looking around him, "perhaps I might prevent +suffocation. But there is nothing which would do +nothing" "Oh, sir," cried Barrois, "are you going to let me +die without help? Oh, I am dying Oh, save me" +"A pen, a pen" said the doctor. There was one lying on the +table he endeavored to introduce it into the mouth of the +patient, who, in the midst of his convulsions, was making +vain attempts to vomit but the jaws were so clinched that +the pen could not pass them. This second attack was much +more violent than the first, and he had slipped from the +couch to the ground, where he was writhing in agony. The +doctor left him in this paroxysm, knowing that he could do +nothing to alleviate it, and, going up to Noirtier, said +abruptly, "How do you find yourself? well?" +"Yes." +"Have you any weight on the chest or does your stomach feel +light and comfortable eh?" +"Yes." +"Then you feel pretty much as you generally do after you +have had the dose which I am accustomed to give you every +Sunday?" +"Yes." +"Did Barrois make your lemonade?" +"Yes." +"Was it you who asked him to drink some of it?" +"No." +"Was it M. de Villefort?" +"No." +"Madame?" +"No." +"It was your granddaughter, then, was it not?" +"Yes." A groan from Barrois, accompanied by a yawn which +seemed to crack the very jawbones, attracted the attention +of M. d'Avrigny he left M. Noirtier, and returned to the +sick man. "Barrois," said the doctor, "can you speak?" +Barrois muttered a few unintelligible words. "Try and make +an effort to do so, my good man." said d'Avrigny. Barrois +reopened his bloodshot eyes. "Who made the lemonade?" +"I did." +"Did you bring it to your master directly it was made?" +"No." +"You left it somewhere, then, in the meantime?" +"Yes I left it in the pantry, because I was called away." +"Who brought it into this room, then?" +"Mademoiselle Valentine." D'Avrigny struck his forehead with +his hand. "Gracious heaven," exclaimed he. "Doctor, doctor" +cried Barrois, who felt another fit coming. +"Will they never bring that emetic?" asked the doctor. +"Here is a glass with one already prepared," said Villefort, +entering the room. +"Who prepared it?" +"The chemist who came here with me." +"Drink it," said the doctor to Barrois. "Impossible, doctor +it is too late my throat is closing up. I am choking Oh, +my heart Ah, my head Oh, what agony Shall I suffer +like this long?" +"No, no, friend," replied the doctor, "you will soon cease +to suffer." +"Ah, I understand you," said the unhappy man. "My God, have +mercy upon me" and, uttering a fearful cry, Barrois fell +back as if he had been struck by lightning. D'Avrigny put +his hand to his heart, and placed a glass before his lips. +"Well?" said Villefort. "Go to the kitchen and get me some +syrup of violets." Villefort went immediately. "Do not be +alarmed, M. Noirtier," said d'Avrigny "I am going to take +my patient into the next room to bleed him this sort of +attack is very frightful to witness." +And taking Barrois under the arms, he dragged him into an +adjoining room but almost immediately he returned to fetch +the lemonade. Noirtier closed lids right eye. "You want +Valentine, do you not? I will tell them to send her to you." +Villefort returned, and d'Avrigny met him in the passage. +"Well, how is he now?" asked he. "Come in here," said +d'Avrigny, and he took him into the chamber where the sick +man lay. "Is he still in a fit?" said the procureur. +"He is dead." +Villefort drew back a few steps, and, clasping his hands, +exclaimed, with real amazement and sympathy, "Dead? and +so soon too" +"Yes, it is very soon," said the doctor, looking at the +corpse before him "but that ought not to astonish you +Monsieur and Madame de SaintMeran died as soon. People die +very suddenly in your house, M. de Villefort." +"What?" cried the magistrate, with an accent of horror and +consternation, "are you still harping on that terrible +idea?" +"Still, sir and I shall always do so," replied d'Avrigny, +"for it has never for one instant ceased to retain +possession of my mind and that you may be quite sure I am +not mistaken this time, listen well to what I am going to +say, M. de Villefort." The magistrate trembled convulsively. +"There is a poison which destroys life almost without +leaving any perceptible traces. I know it well I have +studied it in all its forms and in the effects which it +produces. I recognized the presence of this poison in the +case of poor Barrois as well as in that of Madame de +SaintMeran. There is a way of detecting its presence. It +restores the blue color of litmuspaper reddened by an acid, +and it turns syrup of violets green. We have no +litmuspaper, but, see, here they come with the syrup of +violets." +The doctor was right steps were heard in the passage. M. +d'Avrigny opened the door, and took from the hands of the +chambermaid a cup which contained two or three spoonfuls of +the syrup, he then carefully closed the door. "Look," said +he to the procureur, whose heart beat so loudly that it +might almost be heard, "here is in this cup some syrup of +violets, and this decanter contains the remainder of the +lemonade of which M. Noirtier and Barrois partook. If the +lemonade be pure and inoffensive, the syrup will retain its +color if, on the contrary, the lemonade be drugged with +poison, the syrup will become green. Look closely" +The doctor then slowly poured some drops of the lemonade +from the decanter into the cup, and in an instant a light +cloudy sediment began to form at the bottom of the cup this +sediment first took a blue shade, then from the color of +sapphire it passed to that of opal, and from opal to +emerald. Arrived at this last hue, it changed no more. The +result of the experiment left no doubt whatever on the mind. +"The unfortunate Barrois has been poisoned," said d'Avrigny, +"and I will maintain this assertion before God and man." +Villefort said nothing, but he clasped his hands, opened his +haggard eyes, and, overcome with his emotion, sank into a +chair. +Chapter +The Accusation. +M. D'Avrigny soon restored the magistrate to consciousness, +who had looked like a second corpse in that chamber of +death. "Oh, death is in my house" cried Villefort. +"Say, rather, crime" replied the doctor. +"M. d'Avrigny," cried Villefort, "I cannot tell you all I +feel at this moment, terror, grief, madness." +"Yes," said M. d'Avrigny, with an imposing calmness, "but I +think it is now time to act. I think it is time to stop this +torrent of mortality. I can no longer bear to be in +possession of these secrets without the hope of seeing the +victims and society generally revenged." Villefort cast a +gloomy look around him. "In my house," murmured he, "in my +house" +"Come, magistrate," said M. d'Avrigny, "show yourself a man +as an interpreter of the law, do honor to your profession by +sacrificing your selfish interests to it." +"You make me shudder, doctor. Do you talk of a sacrifice?" +"I do." +"Do you then suspect any one?" +"I suspect no one death raps at your door it enters +it goes, not blindfolded, but circumspectly, from room to +room. Well, I follow its course, I track its passage I +adopt the wisdom of the ancients, and feel my way, for my +friendship for your family and my respect for you are as a +twofold bandage over my eyes well" +"Oh, speak, speak, doctor I shall have courage." +"Well, sir, you have in your establishment, or in your +family, perhaps, one of the frightful monstrosities of which +each century produces only one. Locusta and Agrippina, +living at the same time, were an exception, and proved the +determination of providence to effect the entire ruin of the +Roman empire, sullied by so many crimes. Brunehilde and +Fredegonde were the results of the painful struggle of +civilization in its infancy, when man was learning to +control mind, were it even by an emissary from the realms of +darkness. All these women had been, or were, beautiful. The +same flower of innocence had flourished, or was still +flourishing, on their brow, that is seen on the brow of the +culprit in your house." Villefort shrieked, clasped his +hands, and looked at the doctor with a supplicating air. But +the latter went on without pity +""Seek whom the crime will profit,' says an axiom of +jurisprudence." +"Doctor," cried Villefort, "alas, doctor, how often has +man's justice been deceived by those fatal words. I know not +why, but I feel that this crime" +"You acknowledge, then, the existence of the crime?" +"Yes, I see too plainly that it does exist. But it seems +that it is intended to affect me personally. I fear an +attack myself, after all these disasters." +"Oh, man," murmured d'Avrigny, "the most selfish of all +animals, the most personal of all creatures, who believes +the earth turns, the sun shines, and death strikes for him +alone, an ant cursing God from the top of a blade of +grass And have those who have lost their lives lost +nothing? M. de SaintMeran, Madame de SaintMeran, M. +Noirtier" +"How? M. Noirtier?" +"Yes think you it was the poor servant's life was coveted? +No, no like Shakespeare's "Polonius,' he died for another. +It was Noirtier the lemonade was intended for it is +Noirtier, logically speaking, who drank it. The other drank +it only by accident, and, although Barrois is dead, it was +Noirtier whose death was wished for." +"But why did it not kill my father?" +"I told you one evening in the garden after Madame de +SaintMeran's death because his system is accustomed to +that very poison, and the dose was trifling to him, which +would be fatal to another because no one knows, not even +the assassin, that, for the last twelve months, I have given +M. Noirtier brucine for his paralytic affection, while the +assassin is not ignorant, for he has proved that brucine is +a violent poison." +"Oh, have pity have pity" murmured Villefort, wringing +his hands. +"Follow the culprit's steps he first kills M. de +SaintMeran" +"O doctor" +"I would swear to it what I heard of his symptoms agrees +too well with what I have seen in the other cases." +Villefort ceased to contend he only groaned. "He first +kills M. de SaintMeran," repeated the doctor, "then Madame +de SaintMeran, a double fortune to inherit." Villefort +wiped the perspiration from his forehead. "Listen +attentively." +"Alas," stammered Villefort, "I do not lose a single word." +"M. Noirtier," resumed M. d'Avrigny in the same pitiless +tone, "M. Noirtier had once made a will against you +against your family in favor of the poor, in fact M. +Noirtier is spared, because nothing is expected from him. +But he has no sooner destroyed his first will and made a +second, than, for fear he should make a third, he is struck +down. The will was made the day before yesterday, I believe +you see there has been no time lost." +"Oh, mercy, M. d'Avrigny" +"No mercy, sir The physician has a sacred mission on earth +and to fulfil it he begins at the source of life, and goes +down to the mysterious darkness of the tomb. When crime has +been committed, and God, doubtless in anger, turns away his +face, it is for the physician to bring the culprit to +justice." +"Have mercy on my child, sir," murmured Villefort. +"You see it is yourself who have first named her you, her +father." +"Have pity on Valentine Listen it is impossible I would +as willingly accuse myself Valentine, whose heart is pure +as a diamond or a lily." +"No pity, procureur the crime is fragrant. Mademoiselle +herself packed all the medicines which were sent to M. de +SaintMeran and M. de SaintMeran is dead. Mademoiselle de +Villefort prepared all the cooling draughts which Madame de +SaintMeran took, and Madame de SaintMeran is dead. +Mademoiselle de Villefort took from the hands of Barrois, +who was sent out, the lemonade which M. Noirtier had every +morning, and he has escaped by a miracle. Mademoiselle de +Villefort is the culprit she is the poisoner To you, as +the king's attorney, I denounce Mademoiselle de Villefort, +do your duty." +"Doctor, I resist no longer I can no longer defend myself +I believe you but, for pity's sake, spare my life, my +honor" +"M. de Villefort," replied the doctor, with increased +vehemence, "there are occasions when I dispense with all +foolish human circumspection. If your daughter had committed +only one crime, and I saw her meditating another, I would +say "Warn her, punish her, let her pass the remainder of her +life in a convent, weeping and praying.' If she had +committed two crimes, I would say, "Here, M. de Villefort, +is a poison that the prisoner is not acquainted with, one +that has no known antidote, quick as thought, rapid as +lightning, mortal as the thunderbolt give her that poison, +recommending her soul to God, and save your honor and your +life, for it is yours she aims at and I can picture her +approaching your pillow with her hypocritical smiles and her +sweet exhortations. Woe to you, M. de Villefort, if you do +not strike first' This is what I would say had she only +killed two persons but she has seen three deaths, has +contemplated three murdered persons, has knelt by three +corpses To the scaffold with the poisoner to the +scaffold Do you talk of your honor? Do what I tell you, and +immortality awaits you" +Villefort fell on his knees. "Listen," said he "I have not +the strength of mind you have, or rather that which you +would not have, if instead of my daughter Valentine your +daughter Madeleine were concerned." The doctor turned pale. +"Doctor, every son of woman is born to suffer and to die I +am content to suffer and to await death." +"Beware," said M. d'Avrigny, "it may come slowly you will +see it approach after having struck your father, your wife, +perhaps your son." +Villefort, suffocating, pressed the doctor's arm. "Listen," +cried he "pity me help me No, my daughter is not +guilty. If you drag us both before a tribunal I will still +say, "No, my daughter is not guilty there is no crime in +my house. I will not acknowledge a crime in my house for +when crime enters a dwelling, it is like death it does +not come alone.' Listen. What does it signify to you if I am +murdered? Are you my friend? Are you a man? Have you a +heart? No, you are a physician Well, I tell you I will not +drag my daughter before a tribunal, and give her up to the +executioner The bare idea would kill me would drive me +like a madman to dig my heart out with my fingernails And +if you were mistaken, doctor if it were not my daughter +if I should come one day, pale as a spectre, and say to +you, "Assassin, you have killed my child' hold if +that should happen, although I am a Christian, M. d'Avrigny, +I should kill myself." +"Well," said the doctor, after a moment's silence, "I will +wait." Villefort looked at him as if he had doubted his +words. "Only," continued M. d'Avrigny, with a slow and +solemn tone, "if any one falls ill in your house, if you +feel yourself attacked, do not send for me, for I will come +no more. I will consent to share this dreadful secret with +you, but I will not allow shame and remorse to grow and +increase in my conscience, as crime and misery will in your +house." +"Then you abandon me, doctor?" +"Yes, for I can follow you no farther, and I only stop at +the foot of the scaffold. Some further discovery will be +made, which will bring this dreadful tragedy to a close. +Adieu." +"I entreat you, doctor" +"All the horrors that disturb my thoughts make your house +odious and fatal. Adieu, sir." +"One word one single word more, doctor You go, leaving +me in all the horror of my situation, after increasing it by +what you have revealed to me. But what will be reported of +the sudden death of the poor old servant?" +"True," said M. d'Avrigny "we will return." The doctor went +out first, followed by M. de Villefort. The terrified +servants were on the stairs and in the passage where the +doctor would pass. "Sir," said d'Avrigny to Villefort, so +loud that all might hear, "poor Barrois has led too +sedentary a life of late accustomed formerly to ride on +horseback, or in the carriage, to the four corners of +Europe, the monotonous walk around that armchair has killed +him his blood has thickened. He was stout, had a short, +thick neck he was attacked with apoplexy, and I was called +in too late. By the way," added he in a low tone, "take care +to throw away that cup of syrup of violets in the ashes." +The doctor, without shaking hands with Villefort, without +adding a word to what he had said, went out, amid the tears +and lamentations of the whole household. The same evening +all Villefort's servants, who had assembled in the kitchen, +and had a long consultation, came to tell Madame de +Villefort that they wished to leave. No entreaty, no +proposition of increased wages, could induce them to remain +to every argument they replied, "We must go, for death is in +this house." They all left, in spite of prayers and +entreaties, testifying their regret at leaving so good a +master and mistress, and especially Mademoiselle Valentine, +so good, so kind, and so gentle. Villefort looked at +Valentine as they said this. She was in tears, and, strange +as it was, in spite of the emotions he felt at the sight of +these tears, he looked also at Madame de Villefort, and it +appeared to him as if a slight gloomy smile had passed over +her thin lips, like a meteor seen passing inauspiciously +between two clouds in a stormy sky. +Chapter +The Room of the Retired Baker. +The evening of the day on which the Count of Morcerf had +left Danglars' house with feelings of shame and anger at the +rejection of the projected alliance, M. Andrea Cavalcanti, +with curled hair, mustaches in perfect order, and white +gloves which fitted admirably, had entered the courtyard of +the banker's house in La Chaussee d'Antin. He had not been +more than ten minutes in the drawingroom before he drew +Danglars aside into the recess of a bowwindow, and, after +an ingenious preamble, related to him all his anxieties and +cares since his noble father's departure. He acknowledged +the extreme kindness which had been shown him by the +banker's family, in which he had been received as a son, and +where, besides, his warmest affections had found an object +on which to centre in Mademoiselle Danglars. Danglars +listened with the most profound attention he had expected +this declaration for the last two or three days, and when at +last it came his eyes glistened as much as they had lowered +on listening to Morcerf. He would not, however, yield +immediately to the young man's request, but made a few +conscientious objections. "Are you not rather young, M. +Andrea, to think of marrying?" +"I think not, sir," replied M. Cavalcanti "in Italy the +nobility generally marry young. Life is so uncertain, that +we ought to secure happiness while it is within our reach." +"Well, sir," said Danglars, "in case your proposals, which +do me honor, are accepted by my wife and daughter, by whom +shall the preliminary arrangements be settled? So important +a negotiation should, I think, be conducted by the +respective fathers of the young people." +"Sir, my father is a man of great foresight and prudence. +Thinking that I might wish to settle in France, he left me +at his departure, together with the papers establishing my +identity, a letter promising, if he approved of my choice, +, livres per annum from the day I was married. So far +as I can judge, I suppose this to be a quarter of my +father's revenue." +"I," said Danglars, "have always intended giving my daughter +, francs as her dowry she is, besides, my sole +heiress." +"All would then be easily arranged if the baroness and her +daughter are willing. We should command an annuity of +, livres. Supposing, also, I should persuade the +marquis to give me my capital, which is not likely, but +still is possible, we would place these two or three +millions in your hands, whose talent might make it realize +ten per cent." +"I never give more than four per cent, and generally only +three and a half but to my soninlaw I would give five, +and we would share the profit." +"Very good, fatherinlaw," said Cavalcanti, yielding to his +lowborn nature, which would escape sometimes through the +aristocratic gloss with which he sought to conceal it. +Correcting himself immediately, he said, "Excuse me, sir +hope alone makes me almost mad, what will not reality +do?" +"But," said Danglars, who, on his part, did not perceive +how soon the conversation, which was at first disinterested, +was turning to a business transaction, "there is, +doubtless, a part of your fortune your father could not +refuse you?" +"Which?" asked the young man. +"That you inherit from your mother." +"Truly, from my mother, Leonora Corsinari." +"How much may it amount to?" +"Indeed, sir," said Andrea, "I assure you I have never given +the subject a thought, but I suppose it must have been at +least two millions." Danglars felt as much overcome with joy +as the miser who finds a lost treasure, or as the +shipwrecked mariner who feels himself on solid ground +instead of in the abyss which he expected would swallow him +up. +"Well, sir," said Andrea, bowing to the banker respectfully, +"may I hope?" +"You may not only hope," said Danglars, "but consider it a +settled thing, if no obstacle arises on your part." +"I am, indeed, rejoiced," said Andrea. +"But," said Danglars thoughtfully, "how is it that your +patron, M. de Monte Cristo, did not make his proposal for +you?" Andrea blushed imperceptibly. "I have just left the +count, sir," said he "he is, doubtless, a delightful man +but inconceivably peculiar in his ideas. He esteems me +highly. He even told me he had not the slightest doubt that +my father would give me the capital instead of the interest +of my property. He has promised to use his influence to +obtain it for me but he also declared that he never had +taken on himself the responsibility of making proposals for +another, and he never would. I must, however, do him the +justice to add that he assured me if ever he had regretted +the repugnance he felt to such a step it was on this +occasion, because he thought the projected union would be a +happy and suitable one. Besides, if he will do nothing +officially, he will answer any questions you propose to him. +And now," continued he, with one of his most charming +smiles, "having finished talking to the fatherinlaw, I +must address myself to the banker." +"And what may you have to say to him?" said Danglars, +laughing in his turn. +"That the day after tomorrow I shall have to draw upon you +for about four thousand francs but the count, expecting my +bachelor's revenue could not suffice for the coming month's +outlay, has offered me a draft for twenty thousand francs. +It bears his signature, as you see, which is +allsufficient." +"Bring me a million such as that," said Danglars, "I shall +be well pleased," putting the draft in his pocket. "Fix your +own hour for tomorrow, and my cashier shall call on you +with a check for eighty thousand francs." +"At ten o'clock then, if you please I should like it early, +as I am going into the country tomorrow." +"Very well, at ten o'clock you are still at the Hotel des +Princes?" +"Yes." +The following morning, with the banker's usual punctuality, +the eighty thousand francs were placed in the young man's +hands as he was on the point of starting, after having left +two hundred francs for Caderousse. He went out chiefly to +avoid this dangerous enemy, and returned as late as possible +in the evening. But scarcely had be stepped out of his +carriage when the porter met him with a parcel in his hand. +"Sir," said he, "that man has been here." +"What man?" said Andrea carelessly, apparently forgetting +him whom he but too well recollected. +"Him to whom your excellency pays that little annuity." +"Oh," said Andrea, "my father's old servant. Well, you gave +him the two hundred francs I had left for him?" +"Yes, your excellency." Andrea had expressed a wish to be +thus addressed. "But," continued the porter, "he would not +take them." Andrea turned pale, but as it was dark his +pallor was not perceptible. "What? he would not take them?" +said he with slight emotion. +"No, he wished to speak to your excellency I told him you +were gone out, and after some dispute he believed me and +gave me this letter, which he had brought with him already +sealed." +"Give it me," said Andrea, and he read by the light of his +carriagelamp, "You know where I live I expect you +tomorrow morning at nine o'clock." +Andrea examined it carefully, to ascertain if the letter had +been opened, or if any indiscreet eyes had seen its +contents but it was so carefully folded, that no one could +have read it, and the seal was perfect. "Very well," said +he. "Poor man, he is a worthy creature." He left the porter +to ponder on these words, not knowing which most to admire, +the master or the servant. "Take out the horses quickly, and +come up to me," said Andrea to his groom. In two seconds the +young man had reached his room and burnt Caderousse's +letter. The servant entered just as he had finished. "You +are about my height, Pierre," said he. +"I have that honor, your excellency." +"You had a new livery yesterday?" +"Yes, sir." +"I have an engagement with a pretty little girl for this +evening, and do not wish to be known lend me your livery +till tomorrow. I may sleep, perhaps, at an inn." Pierre +obeyed. Five minutes after, Andrea left the hotel, +completely disguised, took a cabriolet, and ordered the +driver to take him to the Cheval Rouge, at Picpus. The next +morning he left that inn as he had left the Hotel des +Princes, without being noticed, walked down the Faubourg St. +Antoine, along the boulevard to Rue Menilmontant, and +stopping at the door of the third house on the left looked +for some one of whom to make inquiry in the porter's +absence. "For whom are you looking, my fine fellow?" asked +the fruiteress on the opposite side. +"Monsieur Pailletin, if you please, my good woman," replied +Andrea. +"A retired baker?" asked the fruiteress. +"Exactly." +"He lives at the end of the yard, on the left, on the third +story." Andrea went as she directed him, and on the third +floor he found a hare's paw, which, by the hasty ringing of +the bell, it was evident he pulled with considerable +illtemper. A moment after Caderousse's face appeared at the +grating in the door. "Ah, you are punctual," said he, as he +drew back the door. +"Confound you and your punctuality" said Andrea, throwing +himself into a chair in a manner which implied that he would +rather have flung it at the head of his host. +"Come, come, my little fellow, don't be angry. See, I have +thought about you look at the good breakfast we are going +to have nothing but what you are fond of." Andrea, indeed, +inhaled the scent of something cooking which was not +unwelcome to him, hungry as he was it was that mixture of +fat and garlic peculiar to provincial kitchens of an +inferior order, added to that of dried fish, and above all, +the pungent smell of musk and cloves. These odors escaped +from two deep dishes which were covered and placed on a +stove, and from a copper pan placed in an old iron pot. In +an adjoining room Andrea saw also a tolerably clean table +prepared for two, two bottles of wine sealed, the one with +green, the other with yellow, a supply of brandy in a +decanter, and a measure of fruit in a cabbageleaf, cleverly +arranged on an earthenware plate. +"What do you think of it, my little fellow?" said +Caderousse. "Ay, that smells good You know I used to be a +famous cook do you recollect how you used to lick your +fingers? You were among the first who tasted any of my +dishes, and I think you relished them tolerably." While +speaking, Caderousse went on peeling a fresh supply of +onions. +"But," said Andrea, illtemperedly, "by my faith, if it was +only to breakfast with you, that you disturbed me, I wish +the devil had taken you" +"My boy," said Caderousse sententiously, "one can talk while +eating. And then, you ungrateful being, you are not pleased +to see an old friend? I am weeping with joy." He was truly +crying, but it would have been difficult to say whether joy +or the onions produced the greatest effect on the lachrymal +glands of the old innkeeper of the PontduGard. "Hold your +tongue, hypocrite," said Andrea "you love me" +"Yes, I do, or may the devil take me. I know it is a +weakness," said Caderousse, "but it overpowers me." +"And yet it has not prevented your sending for me to play me +some trick." +"Come," said Caderousse, wiping his large knife on his +apron, "if I did not like you, do you think I should endure +the wretched life you lead me? Think for a moment. You have +your servant's clothes on you therefore keep a servant I +have none, and am obliged to prepare my own meals. You abuse +my cookery because you dine at the table d'hote of the Hotel +des Princes, or the Cafe de Paris. Well, I too could keep a +servant I too could have a tilbury I too could dine where +I like but why do I not? Because I would not annoy my +little Benedetto. Come, just acknowledge that I could, eh?" +This address was accompanied by a look which was by no means +difficult to understand. "Well," said Andrea, "admitting +your love, why do you want me to breakfast with you?" +"That I may have the pleasure of seeing you, my little +fellow." +"What is the use of seeing me after we have made all our +arrangements?" +"Eh, dear friend," said Caderousse, "are wills ever made +without codicils? But you first came to breakfast, did you +not? Well, sit down, and let us begin with these pilchards, +and this fresh butter which I have put on some vineleaves +to please you, wicked one. Ah, yes you look at my room, my +four straw chairs, my images, three francs each. But what do +you expect? This is not the Hotel des Princes." +"Come, you are growing discontented, you are no longer +happy you, who only wish to live like a retired baker." +Caderousse sighed. "Well, what have you to say? you have +seen your dream realized." +"I can still say it is a dream a retired baker, my poor +Benedetto, is rich he has an annuity." +"Well, you have an annuity." +"I have?" +"Yes, since I bring you your two hundred francs." Caderousse +shrugged his shoulders. "It is humiliating," said he, "thus +to receive money given grudgingly, an uncertain supply +which may soon fail. You see I am obliged to economize, in +case your prosperity should cease. Well, my friend, fortune +is inconstant, as the chaplain of the regiment said. I know +your prosperity is great, you rascal you are to marry the +daughter of Danglars." +"What? of Danglars?" +"Yes, to be sure must I say Baron Danglars? I might as well +say Count Benedetto. He was an old friend of mine and if he +had not so bad a memory he ought to invite me to your +wedding, seeing he came to mine. Yes, yes, to mine gad, he +was not so proud then, he was an underclerk to the good +M. Morrel. I have dined many times with him and the Count of +Morcerf, so you see I have some high connections and were I +to cultivate them a little, we might meet in the same +drawingrooms." +"Come, your jealousy represents everything to you in the +wrong light." +"That is all very fine, Benedetto mio, but I know what I am +saying. Perhaps I may one day put on my best coat, and +presenting myself at the great gate, introduce myself. +Meanwhile let us sit down and eat." Caderousse set the +example and attacked the breakfast with good appetite, +praising each dish he set before his visitor. The latter +seemed to have resigned himself he drew the corks, and +partook largely of the fish with the garlic and fat. "Ah, +mate," said Caderousse, "you are getting on better terms +with your old landlord" +"Faith, yes," replied Andrea, whose hunger prevailed over +every other feeling. +"So you like it, you rogue?" +"So much that I wonder how a man who can cook thus can +complain of hard living." +"Do you see," said Caderousse, "all my happiness is marred +by one thought?" +"What is that?" +"That I am dependent on another, I who have always gained my +own livelihood honestly." +"Do not let that disturb you, I have enough for two." +"No, truly you may believe me if you will at the end of +every month I am tormented by remorse." +"Good Caderousse" +"So much so, that yesterday I would not take the two hundred +francs." +"Yes, you wished to speak to me but was it indeed remorse, +tell me?" +"True remorse and, besides, an idea had struck me." Andrea +shuddered he always did so at Caderousse's ideas. "It is +miserable do you see? always to wait till the end of +the month. "Oh," said Andrea philosophically, determined +to watch his companion narrowly, "does not life pass in +waiting? Do I, for instance, fare better? Well, I wait +patiently, do I not?" +"Yes because instead of expecting two hundred wretched +francs, you expect five or six thousand, perhaps ten, +perhaps even twelve, for you take care not to let any one +know the utmost. Down there, you always had little presents +and Christmasboxes which you tried to hide from your poor +friend Caderousse. Fortunately he is a cunning fellow, that +friend Caderousse." +"There you are beginning again to ramble, to talk again and +again of the past But what is the use of teasing me with +going all over that again?" +"Ah, you are only one and twenty, and can forget the past I +am fifty, and am obliged to recollect it. But let us return +to business." +"Yes." +"I was going to say, if I were in your place" +"Well." +"I would realize" +"How would you realize?" +"I would ask for six months' in advance, under pretence of +being able to purchase a farm, then with my six months I +would decamp." +"Well, well," said Andrea, "that isn't a bad idea." +"My dear friend," said Caderousse, "eat of my bread, and +take my advice you will be none the worse off, physically +or morally." +"But," said Andrea, "why do you not act on the advice you +gave me? Why do you not realize a six months', a year's +advance even, and retire to Brussels? Instead of living the +retired baker, you might live as a bankrupt, using his +privileges that would be very good." +"But how the devil would you have me retire on twelve +hundred francs?" +"Ah, Caderousse," said Andrea, "how covetous you are Two +months ago you were dying with hunger." +"The appetite grows by what it feeds on," said Caderousse, +grinning and showing his teeth, like a monkey laughing or a +tiger growling. "And," added he, biting off with his large +white teeth an enormous mouthful of bread, "I have formed a +plan." Caderousse's plans alarmed Andrea still more than his +ideas ideas were but the germ, the plan was reality. "Let +me see your plan I dare say it is a pretty one." +"Why not? Who formed the plan by which we left the +establishment of M eh? was it not I? and it was no +bad one I believe, since here we are" +"I do not say," replied Andrea, "that you never make a good +one but let us see your plan." +"Well," pursued Caderousse, "can you without expending one +sou, put me in the way of getting fifteen thousand francs? +No, fifteen thousand are not enough, I cannot again +become an honest man with less than thirty thousand francs." +"No," replied Andrea, dryly, "no, I cannot." +"I do not think you understand me," replied Caderousse, +calmly "I said without your laying out a sou." +"Do you want me to commit a robbery, to spoil all my good +fortune and yours with mine and both of us to be +dragged down there again?" +"It would make very little difference to me," said +Caderousse, "if I were retaken, I am a poor creature to live +alone, and sometimes pine for my old comrades not like you, +heartless creature, who would be glad never to see them +again." Andrea did more than tremble this time, he turned +pale. +"Come, Caderousse, no nonsense" said he. +"Don't alarm yourself, my little Benedetto, but just point +out to me some means of gaining those thirty thousand francs +without your assistance, and I will contrive it." +"Well, I'll see I'll try to contrive some way," said +Andrea. +"Meanwhile you will raise my monthly allowance to five +hundred francs, my little fellow? I have a fancy, and mean +to get a housekeeper." +"Well, you shall have your five hundred francs," said +Andrea "but it is very hard for me, my poor Caderousse +you take advantage" +"Bah," said Caderousse, "when you have access to countless +stores." One would have said Andrea anticipated his +companion's words, so did his eye flash like lightning, but +it was but for a moment. "True," he replied, "and my +protector is very kind." +"That dear protector," said Caderousse "and how much does +he give you monthly?" +"Five thousand francs." +"As many thousands as you give me hundreds Truly, it is +only bastards who are thus fortunate. Five thousand francs +per month What the devil can you do with all that?" +"Oh, it is no trouble to spend that and I am like you, I +want capital." +"Capital? yes I understand every one would like +capital." +"Well, and I shall get it." +"Who will give it to you your prince?" +"Yes, my prince. But unfortunately I must wait." +"You must wait for what?" asked Caderousse. +"For his death." +"The death of your prince?" +"Yes." +"How so?" +"Because he has made his will in my favor." +"Indeed?" +"On my honor." +"For how much?" +"For five hundred thousand." +"Only that? It's little enough." +"But so it is." +"No it cannot be" +"Are you my friend, Caderousse?" +"Yes, in life or death." +"Well, I will tell you a secret." +"What is it?" +"But remember" +"Ah, pardieu, mute as a carp." +"Well, I think" Andrea stopped and looked around. +"You think? Do not fear pardieu, we are alone." +"I think I have discovered my father." +"Your true father?" +"Yes." +"Not old Cavalcanti?" +"No, for he has gone again the true one, as you say." +"And that father is" +"Well, Caderousse, it is Monte Cristo." +"Bah" +"Yes, you understand, that explains all. He cannot +acknowledge me openly, it appears, but he does it through M. +Cavalcanti, and gives him fifty thousand francs for it." +"Fifty thousand francs for being your father? I would have +done it for half that, for twenty thousand, for fifteen +thousand why did you not think of me, ungrateful man?" +"Did I know anything about it, when it was all done when I +was down there?" +"Ah, truly? And you say that by his will" +"He leaves me five hundred thousand livres." +"Are you sure of it?" +"He showed it me but that is not all there is a codicil, +as I said just now." +"Probably." +"And in that codicil he acknowledges me." +"Oh, the good father, the brave father, the very honest +father" said Caderousse, twirling a plate in the air +between his two hands. +"Now say if I conceal anything from you?" +"No, and your confidence makes you honorable in my opinion +and your princely father, is he rich, very rich?" +"Yes, he is that he does not himself know the amount of his +fortune." +"Is it possible?" +"It is evident enough to me, who am always at his house. The +other day a banker's clerk brought him fifty thousand francs +in a portfolio about the size of your plate yesterday his +banker brought him a hundred thousand francs in gold." +Caderousse was filled with wonder the young man's words +sounded to him like metal, and he thought he could hear the +rushing of cascades of louis. "And you go into that house?" +cried he briskly. +"When I like." +Caderousse was thoughtful for a moment. It was easy to +perceive he was revolving some unfortunate idea in his mind. +Then suddenly, "How I should like to see all that," cried +he "how beautiful it must be" +"It is, in fact, magnificent," said Andrea. +"And does he not live in the ChampsElysees?" +"Yes, No. ." +"Ah," said Caderousse, "No. ." +"Yes, a fine house standing alone, between a courtyard and +a garden, you must know it." +"Possibly but it is not the exterior I care for, it is the +interior. What beautiful furniture there must be in it" +"Have you ever seen the Tuileries?" +"No." +"Well, it surpasses that." +"It must be worth one's while to stoop, Andrea, when that +good M. Monte Cristo lets fall his purse." +"It is not worth while to wait for that," said Andrea +"money is as plentiful in that house as fruit in an +orchard." +"But you should take me there one day with you." +"How can I? On what plea?" +"You are right but you have made my mouth water. I must +absolutely see it I shall find a way." +"No nonsense, Caderousse" +"I will offer myself as floorpolisher." +"The rooms are all carpeted." +"Well, then, I must be contented to imagine it." +"That is the best plan, believe me." +"Try, at least, to give me an idea of what it is." +"How can I?" +"Nothing is easier. Is it large?" +"Middling." +"How is it arranged?" +"Faith, I should require pen, ink, and paper to make a +plan." +"They are all here," said Caderousse, briskly. He fetched +from an old secretary a sheet of white paper and pen and +ink. "Here," said Caderousse, "draw me all that on the +paper, my boy." Andrea took the pen with an imperceptible +smile and began. "The house, as I said, is between the court +and the garden in this way, do you see?" Andrea drew the +garden, the court and the house. +"High walls?" +"Not more than eight or ten feet." +"That is not prudent," said Caderousse. +"In the court are orangetrees in pots, turf, and clumps of +flowers." +"And no steeltraps?" +"No." +"The stables?" +"Are on either side of the gate, which you see there." And +Andrea continued his plan. +"Let us see the ground floor," said Caderousse. +"On the groundfloor, diningroom, two drawingrooms, +billiardroom, staircase in the hall, and a little back +staircase." +"Windows?" +"Magnificent windows, so beautiful, so large, that I believe +a man of your size should pass through each frame." +"Why the devil have they any stairs with such windows?" +"Luxury has everything." +"But shutters?" +"Yes, but they are never used. That Count of Monte Cristo is +an original, who loves to look at the sky even at night." +"And where do the servants sleep?" +"Oh, they have a house to themselves. Picture to yourself a +pretty coachhouse at the righthand side where the ladders +are kept. Well, over that coachhouse are the servants' +rooms, with bells corresponding with the different +apartments." +"Ah, diable bells did you say?" +"What do you mean?" +"Oh. nothing I only say they cost a load of money to hang, +and what is the use of them, I should like to know?" +"There used to be a dog let loose in the yard at night, but +it has been taken to the house at Auteuil, to that you went +to, you know." +"Yes." +"I was saying to him only yesterday, "You are imprudent, +Monsieur Count for when you go to Auteuil and take your +servants the house is left unprotected.' Well,' said he, +"what next?' "Well, next, some day you will be robbed.'" +"What did he answer?" +"He quietly said, "What do I care if I am?'" +"Andrea, he has some secretary with a spring." +"How do you know?" +"Yes, which catches the thief in a trap and plays a tune. I +was told there were such at the last exhibition." +"He has simply a mahogany secretary, in which the key is +always kept." +"And he is not robbed?" +"No his servants are all devoted to him." +"There ought to be some money in that secretary?" +"There may be. No one knows what there is." +"And where is it?" +"On the first floor." +"Sketch me the plan of that floor, as you have done of the +ground floor, my boy." +"That is very simple." Andrea took the pen. "On the first +story, do you see, there is the anteroom and the +drawingroom to the right of the drawingroom, a library +and a study to the left, a bedroom and a dressingroom. The +famous secretary is in the dressingroom." +"Is there a window in the dressingroom?" +"Two, one here and one there." Andrea sketched two +windows in the room, which formed an angle on the plan, and +appeared as a small square added to the rectangle of the +bedroom. Caderousse became thoughtful. "Does he often go to +Auteuil?" added he. +"Two or three times a week. Tomorrow, for instance, he is +going to spend the day and night there." +"Are you sure of it?" +"He has invited me to dine there." +"There's a life for you," said Caderousse "a town house and +a country house." +"That is what it is to be rich." +"And shall you dine there?" +"Probably." +"When you dine there, do you sleep there?" +"If I like I am at home there." Caderousse looked at the +young man, as if to get at the truth from the bottom of his +heart. But Andrea drew a cigarcase from his pocket, took a +havana, quietly lit it, and began smoking. "When do you want +your twelve hundred francs?" said he to Caderousse. +"Now, if you have them." Andrea took five and twenty louis +from his pocket. +"Yellow boys?" said Caderousse "no, I thank you." +"Oh, you despise them." +"On the contrary, I esteem them, but will not have them." +"You can change them, idiot gold is worth five sous." +"Exactly and he who changes them will follow friend +Caderousse, lay hands on him, and demand what farmers pay +him their rent in gold. No nonsense, my good fellow silver +simply, round coins with the head of some monarch or other +on them. Anybody may possess a fivefranc piece." +"But do you suppose I carry five hundred francs about with +me? I should want a porter." +"Well, leave them with your porter he is to be trusted. I +will call for them." +"Today?" +"No, tomorrow I shall not have time to day." +"Well, tomorrow I will leave them when I go to Auteuil." +"May I depend on it?" +"Certainly." +"Because I shall secure my housekeeper on the strength of +it." +"Now see here, will that be all? Eh? And will you not +torment me any more?" +"Never." Caderousse had become so gloomy that Andrea feared +he should be obliged to notice the change. He redoubled his +gayety and carelessness. "How sprightly you are," said +Caderousse "One would say you were already in possession of +your property." +"No, unfortunately but when I do obtain it" +"Well?" +"I shall remember old friends, I can tell you that." +"Yes, since you have such a good memory." +"What do you want? It looks as if you were trying to fleece +me?" +"I? What an idea I, who am going to give you another piece +of good advice." +"What is it?" +"To leave behind you the diamond you have on your finger. We +shall both get into trouble. You will ruin both yourself and +me by your folly." +"How so?" said Andrea. +"How? You put on a livery, you disguise yourself as a +servant, and yet keep a diamond on your finger worth four or +five thousand francs." +"You guess well." +"I know something of diamonds I have had some." +"You do well to boast of it," said Andrea, who, without +becoming angry, as Caderousse feared, at this new extortion, +quietly resigned the ring. Caderousse looked so closely at +it that Andrea well knew that he was examining to see if all +the edges were perfect. +"It is a false diamond," said Caderousse. +"You are joking now," replied Andrea. +"Do not be angry, we can try it." Caderousse went to the +window, touched the glass with it, and found it would cut. +"Confiteor," said Caderousse, putting the diamond on his +little finger "I was mistaken but those thieves of +jewellers imitate so well that it is no longer worth while +to rob a jeweller's shop it is another branch of industry +paralyzed." +"Have you finished?" said Andrea, "do you want anything +more? will you have my waistcoat or my hat? Make free, +now you have begun." +"No you are, after all, a good companion I will not detain +you, and will try to cure myself of my ambition." +"But take care the same thing does not happen to you in +selling the diamond you feared with the gold." +"I shall not sell it do not fear." +"Not at least till the day after tomorrow," thought the +young man. +"Happy rogue," said Caderousse "you are going to find your +servants, your horses, your carriage, and your betrothed" +"Yes," said Andrea. +"Well, I hope you will make a handsome weddingpresent the +day you marry Mademoiselle Danglars." +"I have already told you it is a fancy you have taken in +your head." +"What fortune has she?" +"But I tell you" +"A million?" Andrea shrugged his shoulders. +"Let it be a million," said Caderousse "you can never have +so much as I wish you." +"Thank you," said the young man. +"Oh, I wish it you with all my heart" added Caderousse with +his hoarse laugh. "Stop, let me show you the way." +"It is not worth while." +"Yes, it is." +"Why?" +"Because there is a little secret, a precaution I thought it +desirable to take, one of Huret Fitchet's locks, revised +and improved by Gaspard Caderousse I will manufacture you a +similar one when you are a capitalist." +"Thank you," said Andrea "I will let you know a week +beforehand." They parted. Caderousse remained on the landing +until he had not only seen Andrea go down the three stories, +but also cross the court. Then he returned hastily, shut his +door carefully, and began to study, like a clever architect, +the plan Andrea had left him. +"Dear Benedetto," said he, "I think he will not be sorry to +inherit his fortune, and he who hastens the day when he can +touch his five hundred thousand will not be his worst +friend." +Chapter +The Burglary. +The day following that on which the conversation we have +related took place, the Count of Monte Cristo set out for +Auteuil, accompanied by Ali and several attendants, and also +taking with him some horses whose qualities he was desirous +of ascertaining. He was induced to undertake this journey, +of which the day before he had not even thought and which +had not occurred to Andrea either, by the arrival of +Bertuccio from Normandy with intelligence respecting the +house and sloop. The house was ready, and the sloop which +had arrived a week before lay at anchor in a small creek +with her crew of six men, who had observed all the requisite +formalities and were ready again to put to sea. +The count praised Bertuccio's zeal, and ordered him to +prepare for a speedy departure, as his stay in France would +not be prolonged more than a month. "Now," said he, "I may +require to go in one night from Paris to Treport let eight +fresh horses be in readiness on the road, which will enable +me to go fifty leagues in ten hours." +"Your highness had already expressed that wish," said +Bertuccio, "and the horses are ready. I have bought them, +and stationed them myself at the most desirable posts, that +is, in villages, where no one generally stops." +"That's well," said Monte Cristo "I remain here a day or +two arrange accordingly." As Bertuccio was leaving the +room to give the requisite orders, Baptistin opened the +door he held a letter on a silver waiter. +"What are you doing here?" asked the count, seeing him +covered with dust "I did not send for you, I think?" +Baptistin, without answering, approached the count, and +presented the letter. "Important and urgent," said he. The +count opened the letter, and read +"M. de Monte Cristo is apprised that this night a man will +enter his house in the ChampsElysees with the intention of +carrying off some papers supposed to be in the secretary in +the dressingroom. The count's wellknown courage will +render unnecessary the aid of the police, whose interference +might seriously affect him who sends this advice. The count, +by any opening from the bedroom, or by concealing himself in +the dressingroom, would be able to defend his property +himself. Many attendants or apparent precautions would +prevent the villain from the attempt, and M. de Monte Cristo +would lose the opportunity of discovering an enemy whom +chance has revealed to him who now sends this warning to the +count, a warning he might not be able to send another +time, if this first attempt should fail and another be +made." +The count's first idea was that this was an artifice a +gross deception, to draw his attention from a minor danger +in order to expose him to a greater. He was on the point of +sending the letter to the commissary of police, +notwithstanding the advice of his anonymous friend, or +perhaps because of that advice, when suddenly the idea +occurred to him that it might be some personal enemy, whom +he alone should recognize and over whom, if such were the +case, he alone would gain any advantage, as Fiesco had done +over the Moor who would have killed him. We know the Count's +vigorous and daring mind, denying anything to be impossible, +with that energy which marks the great man. From his past +life, from his resolution to shrink from nothing, the count +had acquired an inconceivable relish for the contests in +which he had engaged, sometimes against nature, that is to +say, against God, and sometimes against the world, that is, +against the devil. + The Genoese conspirator. +"They do not want my papers," said Monte Cristo, "they want +to kill me they are no robbers, but assassins. I will not +allow the prefect of police to interfere with my private +affairs. I am rich enough, forsooth, to distribute his +authority on this occasion." The count recalled Baptistin, +who had left the room after delivering the letter. "Return +to Paris," said he "assemble the servants who remain there. +I want all my household at Auteuil." +"But will no one remain in the house, my lord?" asked +Baptistin. +"Yes, the porter." +"My lord will remember that the lodge is at a distance from +the house." +"Well?" +"The house might be stripped without his hearing the least +noise." +"By whom?" +"By thieves." +"You are a fool, M. Baptistin. Thieves might strip the house +it would annoy me less than to be disobeyed." Baptistin +bowed. +"You understand me?" said the count. "Bring your comrades +here, one and all but let everything remain as usual, only +close the shutters of the ground floor." +"And those of the second floor?" +"You know they are never closed. Go" +The count signified his intention of dining alone, and that +no one but Ali should attend him. Having dined with his +usual tranquillity and moderation, the count, making a +signal to Ali to follow him, went out by the sidegate and +on reaching the Bois de Boulogne turned, apparently without +design towards Paris and at twilight found himself opposite +his house in the ChampsElysees. All was dark one solitary, +feeble light was burning in the porter's lodge, about forty +paces distant from the house, as Baptistin had said. Monte +Cristo leaned against a tree, and with that scrutinizing +glance which was so rarely deceived, looked up and down the +avenue, examined the passersby, and carefully looked down +the neighboring streets, to see that no one was concealed. +Ten minutes passed thus, and he was convinced that no one +was watching him. He hastened to the sidedoor with Ali, +entered hurriedly, and by the servants' staircase, of which +he had the key, gained his bedroom without opening or +disarranging a single curtain, without even the porter +having the slightest suspicion that the house, which he +supposed empty, contained its chief occupant. +Arrived in his bedroom, the count motioned to Ali to stop +then he passed into the dressingroom, which he examined. +Everything appeared as usual the precious secretary in +its place, and the key in the secretary. He double locked +it, took the key, returned to the bedroom door, removed the +double staple of the bolt, and went in. Meanwhile Ali had +procured the arms the count required namely, a short +carbine and a pair of doublebarrelled pistols, with which +as sure an aim might be taken as with a singlebarrelled +one. Thus armed, the count held the lives of five men in his +hands. It was about halfpast nine. The count and Ali ate in +haste a crust of bread and drank a glass of Spanish wine +then Monte Cristo slipped aside one of the movable panels, +which enabled him to see into the adjoining room. He had +within his reach his pistols and carbine, and Ali, standing +near him, held one of the small Arabian hatchets, whose form +has not varied since the Crusades. Through one of the +windows of the bedroom, on a line with that in the +dressingroom, the count could see into the street. +Two hours passed thus. It was intensely dark still Ali, +thanks to his wild nature, and the count, thanks doubtless +to his long confinement, could distinguish in the darkness +the slightest movement of the trees. The little light in the +lodge had long been extinct. It might be expected that the +attack, if indeed an attack was projected, would be made +from the staircase of the ground floor, and not from a +window in Monte Cristo's opinion, the villains sought his +life, not his money. It would be his bedroom they would +attack, and they must reach it by the back staircase, or by +the window in the dressingroom. The clock of the Invalides +struck a quarter to twelve the west wind bore on its +moistened gusts the doleful vibration of the three strokes. +As the last stroke died away, the count thought he heard a +slight noise in the dressingroom this first sound, or +rather this first grinding, was followed by a second, then a +third at the fourth, the count knew what to expect. A firm +and wellpractised hand was engaged in cutting the four +sides of a pane of glass with a diamond. The count felt his +heart beat more rapidly. Inured as men may be to danger, +forewarned as they may be of peril, they understand, by the +fluttering of the heart and the shuddering of the frame, the +enormous difference between a dream and a reality, between +the project and the execution. However, Monte Cristo only +made a sign to apprise Ali, who, understanding that danger +was approaching from the other side, drew nearer to his +master. Monte Cristo was eager to ascertain the strength and +number of his enemies. +The window whence the noise proceeded was opposite the +opening by which the count could see into the dressingroom. +He fixed his eyes on that window he distinguished a +shadow in the darkness then one of the panes became quite +opaque, as if a sheet of paper were stuck on the outside, +then the square cracked without falling. Through the opening +an arm was passed to find the fastening, then a second the +window turned on its hinges, and a man entered. He was +alone. +"That's a daring rascal," whispered the count. +At that moment Ali touched him slightly on the shoulder. He +turned Ali pointed to the window of the room in which they +were, facing the street. "I see" said he, "there are two of +them one does the work while the other stands guard." He +made a sign to Ali not to lose sight of the man in the +street, and turned to the one in the dressingroom. +The glasscutter had entered, and was feeling his way, his +arms stretched out before him. At last he appeared to have +made himself familiar with his surroundings. There were two +doors he bolted them both. +When he drew near to the bedroom door, Monte Cristo expected +that he was coming in, and raised one of his pistols but he +simply heard the sound of the bolts sliding in their copper +rings. It was only a precaution. The nocturnal visitor, +ignorant of the fact that the count had removed the staples, +might now think himself at home, and pursue his purpose with +full security. Alone and free to act as he wished, the man +then drew from his pocket something which the count could +not discern, placed it on a stand, then went straight to the +secretary, felt the lock, and contrary to his expectation +found that the key was missing. But the glasscutter was a +prudent man who had provided for all emergencies. The count +soon heard the rattling of a bunch of skeleton keys, such as +the locksmith brings when called to force a lock, and which +thieves call nightingales, doubtless from the music of their +nightly song when they grind against the bolt. "Ah, ha," +whispered Monte Cristo with a smile of disappointment, "he +is only a thief." +But the man in the dark could not find the right key. He +reached the instrument he had placed on the stand, touched a +spring, and immediately a pale light, just bright enough to +render objects distinct, was reflected on his hands and +countenance. "By heavens," exclaimed Monte Cristo, starting +back, "it is" +Ali raised his hatchet. "Don't stir," whispered Monte +Cristo, "and put down your hatchet we shall require no +arms." Then he added some words in a low tone, for the +exclamation which surprise had drawn from the count, faint +as it had been, had startled the man who remained in the +pose of the old knifegrinder. It was an order the count had +just given, for immediately Ali went noiselessly, and +returned, bearing a black dress and a threecornered hat. +Meanwhile Monte Cristo had rapidly taken off his greatcoat, +waistcoat, and shirt, and one might distinguish by the +glimmering through the open panel that he wore a pliant +tunic of steel mail, of which the last in France, where +daggers are no longer dreaded, was worn by King Louis XVI., +who feared the dagger at his breast, and whose head was +cleft with a hatchet. The tunic soon disappeared under a +long cassock, as did his hair under a priest's wig the +threecornered hat over this effectually transformed the +count into an abbe. +The man, hearing nothing more, stood erect, and while Monte +Cristo was completing his disguise had advanced straight to +the secretary, whose lock was beginning to crack under his +nightingale. +"Try again," whispered the count, who depended on the secret +spring, which was unknown to the picklock, clever as he +might be "try again, you have a few minutes' work there." +And he advanced to the window. The man whom he had seen +seated on a fence had got down, and was still pacing the +street but, strange as it appeared, he cared not for those +who might pass from the avenue of the ChampsElysees or by +the Faubourg St. Honore his attention was engrossed with +what was passing at the count's, and his only aim appeared +to be to discern every movement in the dressingroom. +Monte Cristo suddenly struck his finger on his forehead and +a smile passed over his lips then drawing near to Ali, he +whispered, +"Remain here, concealed in the dark, and whatever noise you +hear, whatever passes, only come in or show yourself if I +call you." Ali bowed in token of strict obedience. Monte +Cristo then drew a lighted taper from a closet, and when the +thief was deeply engaged with his lock, silently opened the +door, taking care that the light should shine directly on +his face. The door opened so quietly that the thief heard no +sound but, to his astonishment, the room was suddenly +illuminated. He turned. +"Ah, goodevening, my dear M. Caderousse," said Monte +Cristo "what are you doing here, at such an hour?" +"The Abbe Busoni" exclaimed Caderousse and, not knowing +how this strange apparition could have entered when he had +bolted the doors, he let fall his bunch of keys, and +remained motionless and stupefied. The count placed himself +between Caderousse and the window, thus cutting off from the +thief his only chance of retreat. "The Abbe Busoni" +repeated Caderousse, fixing his haggard gaze on the count. +"Yes, undoubtedly, the Abbe Busoni himself," replied Monte +Cristo. "And I am very glad you recognize me, dear M. +Caderousse it proves you have a good memory, for it must be +about ten years since we last met." This calmness of Busoni, +combined with his irony and boldness, staggered Caderousse. +"The abbe, the abbe" murmured he, clinching his fists, and +his teeth chattering. +"So you would rob the Count of Monte Cristo?" continued the +false abbe. +"Reverend sir," murmured Caderousse, seeking to regain the +window, which the count pitilessly blocked "reverend sir, +I don't know believe me I take my oath" +"A pane of glass out," continued the count, "a dark lantern, +a bunch of false keys, a secretary half forced it is +tolerably evident" +Caderousse was choking he looked around for some corner to +hide in, some way of escape. +"Come, come," continued the count, "I see you are still the +same, an assassin." +"Reverend sir, since you know everything, you know it was +not I it was La Carconte that was proved at the trial, +since I was only condemned to the galleys." +"Is your time, then, expired, since I find you in a fair way +to return there?" +"No, reverend sir I have been liberated by some one." +"That some one has done society a great kindness." +"Ah," said Caderousse, "I had promised" +"And you are breaking your promise" interrupted Monte +Cristo. +"Alas, yes" said Caderousse very uneasily. +"A bad relapse, that will lead you, if I mistake not, to the +Place de Greve. So much the worse, so much the worse +diavolo, as they say in my country." +"Reverend sir, I am impelled" +"Every criminal says the same thing." +"Poverty" +"Pshaw" said Busoni disdainfully "poverty may make a man +beg, steal a loaf of bread at a baker's door, but not cause +him to open a secretary in a house supposed to be inhabited. +And when the jeweller Johannes had just paid you , +francs for the diamond I had given you, and you killed him +to get the diamond and the money both, was that also +poverty?" +"Pardon, reverend sir," said Caderousse "you have saved my +life once, save me again" +"That is but poor encouragement." +"Are you alone, reverend sir, or have you there soldiers +ready to seize me?" +"I am alone," said the abbe, "and I will again have pity on +you, and will let you escape, at the risk of the fresh +miseries my weakness may lead to, if you tell me the truth." +"Ah, reverend sir," cried Caderousse, clasping his hands, +and drawing nearer to Monte Cristo, "I may indeed say you +are my deliverer" +"You mean to say you have been freed from confinement?" +"Yes, that is true, reverend sir." +"Who was your liberator?" +"An Englishman." +"What was his name?" +"Lord Wilmore." +"I know him I shall know if you lie." +"Ah, reverend sir, I tell you the simple truth." +"Was this Englishman protecting you?" +"No, not me, but a young Corsican, my companion." +"What was this young Corsican's name?" +"Benedetto." +"Is that his Christian name?" +"He had no other he was a foundling." +"Then this young man escaped with you?" +"He did." +"In what way?" +"We were working at St. Mandrier, near Toulon. Do you know +St. Mandrier?" +"I do." +"In the hour of rest, between noon and one o'clock" +"Galleyslaves having a nap after dinner We may well pity +the poor fellows" said the abbe. +"Nay," said Caderousse, "one can't always work one is not +a dog." +"So much the better for the dogs," said Monte Cristo. +"While the rest slept, then, we went away a short distance +we severed our fetters with a file the Englishman had given +us, and swam away." +"And what is become of this Benedetto?" +"I don't know." +"You ought to know." +"No, in truth we parted at Hyeres." And, to give more +weight to his protestation, Caderousse advanced another step +towards the abbe, who remained motionless in his place, as +calm as ever, and pursuing his interrogation. "You lie," +said the Abbe Busoni, with a tone of irresistible authority. +"Reverend sir" +"You lie This man is still your friend, and you, perhaps, +make use of him as your accomplice." +"Oh, reverend sir" +"Since you left Toulon what have you lived on? Answer me" +"On what I could get." +"You lie," repeated the abbe a third time, with a still more +imperative tone. Caderousse, terrified, looked at the count. +"You have lived on the money he has given you." +"True," said Caderousse "Benedetto has become the son of a +great lord." +"How can he be the son of a great lord?" +"A natural son." +"And what is that great lord's name?" +"The Count of Monte Cristo, the very same in whose house we +are." +"Benedetto the count's son?" replied Monte Cristo, +astonished in his turn. +"Well, I should think so, since the count has found him a +false father since the count gives him four thousand +francs a month, and leaves him , francs in his will." +"Ah, yes," said the factitious abbe, who began to +understand "and what name does the young man bear +meanwhile?" +"Andrea Cavalcanti." +"Is it, then, that young man whom my friend the Count of +Monte Cristo has received into his house, and who is going +to marry Mademoiselle Danglars?" +"Exactly." +"And you suffer that, you wretch you, who know his life +and his crime?" +"Why should I stand in a comrade's way?" said Caderousse. +"You are right it is not you who should apprise M. +Danglars, it is I." +"Do not do so, reverend sir." +"Why not?" +"Because you would bring us to ruin." +"And you think that to save such villains as you I will +become an abettor of their plot, an accomplice in their +crimes?" +"Reverend sir," said Caderousse, drawing still nearer. +"I will expose all." +"To whom?" +"To M. Danglars." +"By heaven" cried Caderousse, drawing from his waistcoat an +open knife, and striking the count in the breast, "you shall +disclose nothing, reverend sir" To Caderousse's great +astonishment, the knife, instead of piercing the count's +breast, flew back blunted. At the same moment the count +seized with his left hand the assassin's wrist, and wrung it +with such strength that the knife fell from his stiffened +fingers, and Caderousse uttered a cry of pain. But the +count, disregarding his cry, continued to wring the bandit's +wrist, until, his arm being dislocated, he fell first on his +knees, then flat on the floor. The count then placed his +foot on his head, saying, "I know not what restrains me from +crushing thy skull, rascal." +"Ah, mercy mercy" cried Caderousse. The count withdrew +his foot. "Rise" said he. Caderousse rose. +"What a wrist you have, reverend sir" said Caderousse. +stroking his arm, all bruised by the fleshy pincers which +had held it "what a wrist" +"Silence God gives me strength to overcome a wild beast +like you in the name of that God I act, remember that, +wretch, and to spare thee at this moment is still serving +him." +"Oh" said Caderousse, groaning with pain. +"Take this pen and paper, and write what I dictate." +"I don't know how to write, reverend sir." +"You lie Take this pen, and write" Caderousse, awed by the +superior power of the abbe, sat down and wrote +Sir, The man whom you are receiving at your house, and to +whom you intend to marry your daughter, is a felon who +escaped with me from confinement at Toulon. He was No. , +and I No. . He was called Benedetto, but he is ignorant of +his real name, having never known his parents. +"Sign it" continued the count. +"But would you ruin me?" +"If I sought your ruin, fool, I should drag you to the first +guardhouse besides, when that note is delivered, in all +probability you will have no more to fear. Sign it, then" +Caderousse signed it. "The address, "To monsieur the Baron +Danglars, banker, Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin.'" Caderousse +wrote the address. The abbe took the note. "Now," said he, +"that suffices begone" +"Which way?" +"The way you came." +"You wish me to get out at that window?" +"You got in very well." +"Oh, you have some design against me, reverend sir." +"Idiot what design can I have?" +"Why, then, not let me out by the door?" +"What would be the advantage of waking the porter?" +"Ah, reverend sir, tell me, do you wish me dead?" +"I wish what God wills." +"But swear that you will not strike me as I go down." +"Cowardly fool" +"What do you intend doing with me?" +"I ask you what can I do? I have tried to make you a happy +man, and you have turned out a murderer." +"Oh, monsieur," said Caderousse, "make one more attempt +try me once more" +"I will," said the count. "Listen you know if I may be +relied on." +"Yes," said Caderousse. +"If you arrive safely at home" +"What have I to fear, except from you?" +"If you reach your home safely, leave Paris, leave France, +and wherever you may be, so long as you conduct yourself +well, I will send you a small annuity for, if you return +home safely, then" +"Then?" asked Caderousse, shuddering. +"Then I shall believe God has forgiven you, and I will +forgive you too." +"As true as I am a Christian," stammered Caderousse, "you +will make me die of fright" +"Now begone," said the count, pointing to the window. +Caderousse, scarcely yet relying on this promise, put his +legs out of the window and stood on the ladder. "Now go +down," said the abbe, folding his arms. Understanding he had +nothing more to fear from him, Caderousse began to go down. +Then the count brought the taper to the window, that it +might be seen in the ChampsElysees that a man was getting +out of the window while another held a light. +"What are you doing, reverend sir? Suppose a watchman should +pass?" And he blew out the light. He then descended, but it +was only when he felt his foot touch the ground that he was +satisfied of his safety. +Monte Cristo returned to his bedroom, and, glancing rapidly +from the garden to the street, he saw first Caderousse, who +after walking to the end of the garden, fixed his ladder +against the wall at a different part from where he came in. +The count then looking over into the street, saw the man who +appeared to be waiting run in the same direction, and place +himself against the angle of the wall where Caderousse would +come over. Caderousse climbed the ladder slowly, and looked +over the coping to see if the street was quiet. No one could +be seen or heard. The clock of the Invalides struck one. +Then Caderousse sat astride the coping, and drawing up his +ladder passed it over the wall then he began to descend, or +rather to slide down by the two stanchions, which he did +with an ease which proved how accustomed he was to the +exercise. But, once started, he could not stop. In vain did +he see a man start from the shadow when he was halfway down +in vain did he see an arm raised as he touched the +ground. Before he could defend himself that arm struck him +so violently in the back that he let go the ladder, crying, +"Help" A second blow struck him almost immediately in the +side, and he fell, calling, "Help, murder" Then, as he +rolled on the ground, his adversary seized him by the hair, +and struck him a third blow in the chest. This time +Caderousse endeavored to call again, but he could only utter +a groan, and he shuddered as the blood flowed from his three +wounds. The assassin, finding that he no longer cried out, +lifted his head up by the hair his eyes were closed, and +the mouth was distorted. The murderer, supposing him dead, +let fall his head and disappeared. Then Caderousse, feeling +that he was leaving him, raised himself on his elbow, and +with a dying voice cried with great effort, "Murder I am +dying Help, reverend sir, help" +This mournful appeal pierced the darkness. The door of the +backstaircase opened, then the sidegate of the garden, and +Ali and his master were on the spot with lights. +Chapter +The Hand of God. +Caderousse continued to call piteously, "Help, reverend sir, +help" +"What is the matter?" asked Monte Cristo. +"Help," cried Caderousse "I am murdered" +"We are here take courage." +"Ah, it's all over You are come too late you are come to +see me die. What blows, what blood" He fainted. Ali and his +master conveyed the wounded man into a room. Monte Cristo +motioned to Ali to undress him, and he then examined his +dreadful wounds. "My God" he exclaimed, "thy vengeance is +sometimes delayed, but only that it may fall the more +effectually." Ali looked at his master for further +instructions. "Bring here immediately the king's attorney, +M. de Villefort, who lives in the Faubourg St. Honore. As +you pass the lodge, wake the porter, and send him for a +surgeon." Ali obeyed, leaving the abbe alone with +Caderousse, who had not yet revived. +When the wretched man again opened his eyes, the count +looked at him with a mournful expression of pity, and his +lips moved as if in prayer. "A surgeon, reverend sir a +surgeon" said Caderousse. +"I have sent for one," replied the abbe. +"I know he cannot save my life, but he may strengthen me to +give my evidence." +"Against whom?" +"Against my murderer." +"Did you recognize him?" +"Yes it was Benedetto." +"The young Corsican?" +"Himself." +"Your comrade?" +"Yes. After giving me the plan of this house, doubtless +hoping I should kill the count and he thus become his heir, +or that the count would kill me and I should be out of his +way, he waylaid me, and has murdered me." +"I have also sent for the procureur." +"He will not come in time I feel my life fast ebbing." +"Wait a moment," said Monte Cristo. He left the room, and +returned in five minutes with a phial. The dying man's eyes +were all the time riveted on the door, through which he +hoped succor would arrive. "Hasten, reverend sir, hasten I +shall faint again" Monte Cristo approached, and dropped on +his purple lips three or four drops of the contents of the +phial. Caderousse drew a deep breath. "Oh," said he, "that +is life to me more, more" +"Two drops more would kill you," replied the abbe. +"Oh, send for some one to whom I can denounce the wretch" +"Shall I write your deposition? You can sign it." +"Yes yes," said Caderousse and his eyes glistened at the +thought of this posthumous revenge. Monte Cristo wrote +"I die, murdered by the Corsican Benedetto, my comrade in +the galleys at Toulouse, No. ." +"Quick, quick" said Caderousse, "or I shall be unable to +sign it." +Monte Cristo gave the pen to Caderousse, who collected all +his strength, signed it, and fell back on his bed, saying +"You will relate all the rest, reverend sir you will say he +calls himself Andrea Cavalcanti. He lodges at the Hotel des +Princes. Oh, I am dying" He again fainted. The abbe made +him smell the contents of the phial, and he again opened his +eyes. His desire for revenge had not forsaken him. +"Ah, you will tell all I have said, will you not, reverend +sir?" +"Yes, and much more." +"What more will you say?" +"I will say he had doubtless given you the plan of this +house, in the hope the count would kill you. I will say, +likewise, he had apprised the count, by a note, of your +intention, and, the count being absent, I read the note and +sat up to await you." +"And he will be guillotined, will be not?" said Caderousse. +"Promise me that, and I will die with that hope." +"I will say," continued the count, "that he followed and +watched you the whole time, and when he saw you leave the +house, ran to the angle of the wall to conceal himself." +"Did you see all that?" +"Remember my words "If you return home safely, I shall +believe God has forgiven you, and I will forgive you also.'" +"And you did not warn me" cried Caderousse, raising himself +on his elbows. "You knew I should be killed on leaving this +house, and did not warn me" +"No for I saw God's justice placed in the hands of +Benedetto, and should have thought it sacrilege to oppose +the designs of providence." +"God's justice Speak not of it, reverend sir. If God were +just, you know how many would be punished who now escape." +"Patience," said the abbe, in a tone which made the dying +man shudder "have patience" Caderousse looked at him with +amazement. "Besides," said the abbe, "God is merciful to +all, as he has been to you he is first a father, then a +judge." +"Do you then believe in God?" said Caderousse. +"Had I been so unhappy as not to believe in him until now," +said Monte Cristo, "I must believe on seeing you." +Caderousse raised his clinched hands towards heaven. +"Listen," said the abbe, extending his hand over the wounded +man, as if to command him to believe "this is what the God +in whom, on your deathbed, you refuse to believe, has done +for you he gave you health, strength, regular employment, +even friends a life, in fact, which a man might enjoy +with a calm conscience. Instead of improving these gifts, +rarely granted so abundantly, this has been your course +you have given yourself up to sloth and drunkenness, and in +a fit of intoxication have ruined your best friend." +"Help" cried Caderousse "I require a surgeon, not a +priest perhaps I am not mortally wounded I may not die +perhaps they can yet save my life." +"Your wounds are so far mortal that, without the three drops +I gave you, you would now be dead. Listen, then." +"Ah," murmured Caderousse, "what a strange priest you are +you drive the dying to despair, instead of consoling them." +"Listen," continued the abbe. "When you had betrayed your +friend God began not to strike, but to warn you. Poverty +overtook you. You had already passed half your life in +coveting that which you might have honorably acquired and +already you contemplated crime under the excuse of want, +when God worked a miracle in your behalf, sending you, by my +hands, a fortune brilliant, indeed, for you, who had +never possessed any. But this unexpected, unhopedfor, +unheardof fortune sufficed you no longer when you once +possessed it you wished to double it, and how? by a +murder You succeeded, and then God snatched it from you, +and brought you to justice." +"It was not I who wished to kill the Jew," said Caderousse +"it was La Carconte." +"Yes," said Monte Cristo, "and God, I cannot say in +justice, for his justice would have slain you, but God, +in his mercy, spared your life." +"Pardieu, to transport me for life, how merciful" +"You thought it a mercy then, miserable wretch The coward +who feared death rejoiced at perpetual disgrace for like +all galleyslaves, you said, "I may escape from prison, I +cannot from the grave.' And you said truly the way was +opened for you unexpectedly. An Englishman visited Toulon, +who had vowed to rescue two men from infamy, and his choice +fell on you and your companion. You received a second +fortune, money and tranquillity were restored to you, and +you, who had been condemned to a felon's life, might live as +other men. Then, wretched creature, then you tempted God a +third time. "I have not enough,' you said, when you had more +than you before possessed, and you committed a third crime, +without reason, without excuse. God is wearied he has +punished you." Caderousse was fast sinking. "Give me drink," +said he "I thirst I burn" Monte Cristo gave him a glass +of water. "And yet that villain, Benedetto, will escape" +"No one, I tell you, will escape Benedetto will be +punished." +"Then, you, too, will be punished, for you did not do your +duty as a priest you should have prevented Benedetto from +killing me." +"I?" said the count, with a smile which petrified the dying +man, "when you had just broken your knife against the coat +of mail which protected my breast Yet perhaps if I had +found you humble and penitent, I might have prevented +Benedetto from killing you but I found you proud and +bloodthirsty, and I left you in the hands of God." +"I do not believe there is a God," howled Caderousse "you +do not believe it you lie you lie" +"Silence," said the abbe "you will force the last drop of +blood from your veins. What you do not believe in God when +he is striking you dead? you will not believe in him, who +requires but a prayer, a word, a tear, and he will forgive? +God, who might have directed the assassin's dagger so as to +end your career in a moment, has given you this quarter of +an hour for repentance. Reflect, then, wretched man, and +repent." +"No," said Caderousse, "no I will not repent. There is no +God there is no providence all comes by chance." +"There is a providence there is a God," said Monte Cristo, +"of whom you are a striking proof, as you lie in utter +despair, denying him, while I stand before you, rich, happy, +safe and entreating that God in whom you endeavor not to +believe, while in your heart you still believe in him." +"But who are you, then?" asked Caderousse, fixing his dying +eyes on the count. "Look well at me" said Monte Cristo, +putting the light near his face. "Well, the abbe the Abbe +Busoni." Monte Cristo took off the wig which disfigured him, +and let fall his black hair, which added so much to the +beauty of his pallid features. "Oh?" said Caderousse, +thunderstruck, "but for that black hair, I should say you +were the Englishman, Lord Wilmore." +"I am neither the Abbe Busoni nor Lord Wilmore," said Monte +Cristo "think again, do you not recollect me?" Those was +a magic effect in the count's words, which once more revived +the exhausted powers of the miserable man. "Yes, indeed," +said he "I think I have seen you and known you formerly." +"Yes, Caderousse, you have seen me you knew me once." +"Who, then, are you? and why, if you knew me, do you let me +die?" +"Because nothing can save you your wounds are mortal. Had +it been possible to save you, I should have considered it +another proof of God's mercy, and I would again have +endeavored to restore you, I swear by my father's tomb." +"By your father's tomb" said Caderousse, supported by a +supernatural power, and halfraising himself to see more +distinctly the man who had just taken the oath which all men +hold sacred "who, then, are you?" The count had watched the +approach of death. He knew this was the last struggle. He +approached the dying man, and, leaning over him with a calm +and melancholy look, he whispered, "I am I am" And his +almost closed lips uttered a name so low that the count +himself appeared afraid to hear it. Caderousse, who had +raised himself on his knees, and stretched out his arm, +tried to draw back, then clasping his hands, and raising +them with a desperate effort, "O my God, my God" said he, +"pardon me for having denied thee thou dost exist, thou art +indeed man's father in heaven, and his judge on earth. My +God, my Lord, I have long despised thee Pardon me, my God +receive me, O my Lord" Caderousse sighed deeply, and fell +back with a groan. The blood no longer flowed from his +wounds. He was dead. +"One" said the count mysteriously, his eyes fixed on the +corpse, disfigured by so awful a death. Ten minutes +afterwards the surgeon and the procureur arrived, the one +accompanied by the porter, the other by Ali, and were +received by the Abbe Busoni, who was praying by the side of +the corpse. +Chapter +Beauchamp. +The daring attempt to rob the count was the topic of +conversation throughout Paris for the next fortnight. The +dying man had signed a deposition declaring Benedetto to be +the assassin. The police had orders to make the strictest +search for the murderer. Caderousse's knife, dark lantern, +bunch of keys, and clothing, excepting the waistcoat, which +could not be found, were deposited at the registry the +corpse was conveyed to the morgue. The count told every one +that this adventure had happened during his absence at +Auteuil, and that he only knew what was related by the Abbe +Busoni, who that evening, by mere chance, had requested to +pass the night in his house, to examine some valuable books +in his library. Bertuccio alone turned pale whenever +Benedetto's name was mentioned in his presence, but there +was no reason why any one should notice his doing so. +Villefort, being called on to prove the crime, was preparing +his brief with the same ardor that he was accustomed to +exercise when required to speak in criminal cases. +But three weeks had already passed, and the most diligent +search had been unsuccessful the attempted robbery and the +murder of the robber by his comrade were almost forgotten in +anticipation of the approaching marriage of Mademoiselle +Danglars to the Count Andrea Cavalcanti. It was expected +that this wedding would shortly take place, as the young man +was received at the banker's as the betrothed. Letters had +been despatched to M. Cavalcanti, as the count's father, who +highly approved of the union, regretted his inability to +leave Parma at that time, and promised a wedding gift of a +hundred and fifty thousand livres. It was agreed that the +three millions should be intrusted to Danglars to invest +some persons had warned the young man of the circumstances +of his future fatherinlaw, who had of late sustained +repeated losses but with sublime disinterestedness and +confidence the young man refused to listen, or to express a +single doubt to the baron. The baron adored Count Andrea +Cavalcanti not so Mademoiselle Eugenie Danglars. With an +instinctive hatred of matrimony, she suffered Andrea's +attentions in order to get rid of Morcerf but when Andrea +urged his suit, she betrayed an entire dislike to him. The +baron might possibly have perceived it, but, attributing it +to a caprice, feigned ignorance. +The delay demanded by Beauchamp had nearly expired. Morcerf +appreciated the advice of Monte Cristo to let things die +away of their own accord. No one had taken up the remark +about the general, and no one had recognized in the officer +who betrayed the castle of Yanina the noble count in the +House of Peers. Albert, however felt no less insulted the +few lines which had irritated him were certainly intended as +an insult. Besides, the manner in which Beauchamp had closed +the conference left a bitter recollection in his heart. He +cherished the thought of the duel, hoping to conceal its +true cause even from his seconds. Beauchamp had not been +seen since the day he visited Albert, and those of whom the +latter inquired always told him he was out on a journey +which would detain him some days. Where he was no one knew. +One morning Albert was awakened by his valet de chambre, who +announced Beauchamp. Albert rubbed his eyes, ordered his +servant to introduce him into the small smokingroom on the +groundfloor, dressed himself quickly, and went down. He +found Beauchamp pacing the room on perceiving him Beauchamp +stopped. "Your arrival here, without waiting my visit at +your house today, looks well, sir," said Albert. "Tell me, +may I shake hands with you, saying, "Beauchamp, acknowledge +you have injured me, and retain my friendship,' or must I +simply propose to you a choice of arms?" +"Albert," said Beauchamp, with a look of sorrow which +stupefied the young man, "let us first sit down and talk." +"Rather, sir, before we sit down, I must demand your +answer." +"Albert," said the journalist, "these are questions which it +is difficult to answer." +"I will facilitate it by repeating the question, "Will you, +or will you not, retract?'" +"Morcerf, it is not enough to answer "yes' or "no' to +questions which concern the honor, the social interest, and +the life of such a man as Lieutenantgeneral the Count of +Morcerf, peer of France." +"What must then be done?" +"What I have done, Albert. I reasoned thus money, time, +and fatigue are nothing compared with the reputation and +interests of a whole family probabilities will not suffice, +only facts will justify a deadly combat with a friend. If I +strike with the sword, or discharge the contents of a pistol +at man with whom, for three years, I have been on terms of +intimacy, I must, at least, know why I do so I must meet +him with a heart at ease, and that quiet conscience which a +man needs when his own arm must save his life." +"Well," said Morcerf, impatiently, "what does all this +mean?" +"It means that I have just returned from Yanina." +"From Yanina?" +"Yes." +"Impossible" +"Here is my passport examine the visa Geneva, Milan, +Venice, Trieste, Delvino, Yanina. Will you believe the +government of a republic, a kingdom, and an empire?" Albert +cast his eyes on the passport, then raised them in +astonishment to Beauchamp. "You have been to Yanina?" said +he. +"Albert, had you been a stranger, a foreigner, a simple +lord, like that Englishman who came to demand satisfaction +three or four months since, and whom I killed to get rid of, +I should not have taken this trouble but I thought this +mark of consideration due to you. I took a week to go, +another to return, four days of quarantine, and fortyeight +hours to stay there that makes three weeks. I returned last +night, and here I am." +"What circumlocution How long you are before you tell me +what I most wish to know?" +"Because, in truth, Albert" +"You hesitate?" +"Yes, I fear." +"You fear to acknowledge that your correspondent his +deceived you? Oh, no selflove, Beauchamp. Acknowledge it, +Beauchamp your courage cannot be doubted." +"Not so," murmured the journalist "on the contrary" +Albert turned frightfully pale he endeavored to speak, but +the words died on his lips. "My friend," said Beauchamp, in +the most affectionate tone, "I should gladly make an +apology but, alas," +"But what?" +"The paragraph was correct, my friend." +"What? That French officer" +"Yes." +"Fernand?" +"Yes." +"The traitor who surrendered the castle of the man in whose +service he was" +"Pardon me, my friend, that man was your father" Albert +advanced furiously towards Beauchamp, but the latter +restrained him more by a mild look than by his extended +hand. +"My friend," said he, "here is a proof of it." +Albert opened the paper, it was an attestation of four +notable inhabitants of Yanina, proving that Colonel Fernand +Mondego, in the service of Ali Tepelini, had surrendered the +castle for two million crowns. The signatures were perfectly +legal. Albert tottered and fell overpowered in a chair. It +could no longer be doubted the family name was fully given. +After a moment's mournful silence, his heart overflowed, and +he gave way to a flood of tears. Beauchamp, who had watched +with sincere pity the young man's paroxysm of grief, +approached him. "Now, Albert," said he, "you understand me +do you not? I wished to see all, and to judge of +everything for myself, hoping the explanation would be in +your father's favor, and that I might do him justice. But, +on the contrary, the particulars which are given prove that +Fernand Mondego, raised by Ali Pasha to the rank of +governorgeneral, is no other than Count Fernand of Morcerf +then, recollecting the honor you had done me, in admitting +me to your friendship, I hastened to you." +Albert, still extended on the chair, covered his face with +both hands, as if to prevent the light from reaching him. "I +hastened to you," continued Beauchamp, "to tell you, Albert, +that in this changing age, the faults of a father cannot +revert upon his children. Few have passed through this +revolutionary period, in the midst of which we were born, +without some stain of infamy or blood to soil the uniform of +the soldier, or the gown of the magistrate. Now I have these +proofs, Albert, and I am in your confidence, no human power +can force me to a duel which your own conscience would +reproach you with as criminal, but I come to offer you what +you can no longer demand of me. Do you wish these proofs, +these attestations, which I alone possess, to be destroyed? +Do you wish this frightful secret to remain with us? +Confided to me, it shall never escape my lips say, Albert, +my friend, do you wish it?" +Albert threw himself on Beauchamp's neck. "Ah, noble +fellow" cried he. +"Take these," said Beauchamp, presenting the papers to +Albert. +Albert seized them with a convulsive hand, tore them in +pieces, and trembling lest the least vestige should escape +and one day appear to confront him, he approached the +waxlight, always kept burning for cigars, and burned every +fragment. "Dear, excellent friend," murmured Albert, still +burning the papers. +"Let all be forgotten as a sorrowful dream," said Beauchamp +"let it vanish as the last sparks from the blackened paper, +and disappear as the smoke from those silent ashes." +"Yes, yes," said Albert, "and may there remain only the +eternal friendship which I promised to my deliverer, which +shall be transmitted to our children's children, and shall +always remind me that I owe my life and the honor of my name +to you, for had this been known, oh, Beauchamp, I should +have destroyed myself or, no, my poor mother I could +not have killed her by the same blow, I should have fled +from my country." +"Dear Albert," said Beauchamp. But this sudden and +factitious joy soon forsook the young man, and was succeeded +by a still greater grief. +"Well," said Beauchamp, "what still oppresses you, my +friend?" +"I am brokenhearted," said Albert. "Listen, Beauchamp I +cannot thus, in a moment relinquish the respect, the +confidence, and pride with which a father's untarnished name +inspires a son. Oh, Beauchamp, Beauchamp, how shall I now +approach mine? Shall I draw back my forehead from his +embrace, or withhold my hand from his? I am the most +wretched of men. Ah, my mother, my poor mother" said +Albert, gazing through his tears at his mother's portrait +"if you know this, how much must you suffer" +"Come," said Beauchamp, taking both his hands, "take +courage, my friend." +"But how came that first note to be inserted in your +journal? Some unknown enemy an invisible foe has done +this." +"The more must you fortify yourself, Albert. Let no trace of +emotion be visible on your countenance, bear your grief as +the cloud bears within it ruin and death a fatal secret, +known only when the storm bursts. Go, my friend, reserve +your strength for the moment when the crash shall come." +"You think, then, all is not over yet?" said Albert, +horrorstricken. +"I think nothing, my friend but all things are possible. By +the way" +"What?" said Albert, seeing that Beauchamp hesitated. +"Are you going to marry Mademoiselle Danglars?" +"Why do you ask me now?" +"Because the rupture or fulfilment of this engagement is +connected with the person of whom we were speaking." +"How?" said Albert, whose brow reddened "you think M. +Danglars" +"I ask you only how your engagement stands? Pray put no +construction on my words I do not mean they should convey, +and give them no undue weight." +"No." said Albert, "the engagement is broken off." +"Well," said Beauchamp. Then, seeing the young man was about +to relapse into melancholy, "Let us go out, Albert," said +he "a ride in the wood in the phaeton, or on horseback, +will refresh you we will then return to breakfast, and you +shall attend to your affairs, and I to mine." +"Willingly," said Albert "but let us walk. I think a little +exertion would do me good." The two friends walked out on +the fortress. When arrived at the Madeleine, "Since we +are out," said Beauchamp, "let us call on M. de Monte +Cristo he is admirably adapted to revive one's spirits, +because he never interrogates, and in my opinion those who +ask no questions are the best comforters." +"Gladly," said Albert "I love him let us call." +Chapter +The Journey. +Monte Cristo uttered a joyful exclamation on seeing the +young men together. "Ah, ha" said he, "I hope all is over, +explained and settled." +"Yes," said Beauchamp "the absurd reports have died away, +and should they be renewed, I would be the first to oppose +them so let us speak no more of it." +"Albert will tell you," replied the count "that I gave him +the same advice. Look," added he. "I am finishing the most +execrable morning's work." +"What is it?" said Albert "arranging your papers, +apparently." +"My papers, thank God, no, my papers are all in capital +order, because I have none but M. Cavalcanti's." +"M. Cavalcanti's?" asked Beauchamp. +"Yes do you not know that this is a young man whom the +count is introducing?" said Morcerf. +"Let us not misunderstand each other," replied Monte Cristo +"I introduce no one, and certainly not M. Cavalcanti." +"And who," said Albert with a forced smile, "is to marry +Mademoiselle Danglars instead of me, which grieves me +cruelly." +"What? Cavalcanti is going to marry Mademoiselle Danglars?" +asked Beauchamp. +"Certainly do you come from the end of the world?" said +Monte Cristo "you, a journalist, the husband of renown? It +is the talk of all Paris." +"And you, count, have made this match?" asked Beauchamp. +"I? Silence, purveyor of gossip, do not spread that report. +I make a match? No, you do not know me I have done all in +my power to oppose it." +"Ah, I understand," said Beauchamp, "on our friend Albert's +account." +"On my account?" said the young man "oh, no, indeed, the +count will do me the justice to assert that I have, on the +contrary, always entreated him to break off my engagement, +and happily it is ended. The count pretends I have not him +to thank so be it I will erect an altar Deo ignoto." +"Listen," said Monte Cristo "I have had little to do with +it, for I am at variance both with the fatherinlaw and the +young man there is only Mademoiselle Eugenie, who appears +but little charmed with the thoughts of matrimony, and who, +seeing how little I was disposed to persuade her to renounce +her dear liberty, retains any affection for me." +"And do you say this wedding is at hand?" +"Oh, yes, in spite of all I could say. I do not know the +young man he is said to be of good family and rich, but I +never trust to vague assertions. I have warned M. Danglars +of it till I am tired, but he is fascinated with his +Luccanese. I have even informed him of a circumstance I +consider very serious the young man was either charmed by +his nurse, stolen by gypsies, or lost by his tutor, I +scarcely know which. But I do know his father lost sight of +him for more than ten years what he did during these ten +years, God only knows. Well, all that was useless. They have +commissioned me to write to the major to demand papers, and +here they are. I send them, but like Pilate washing my +hands." +"And what does Mademoiselle d'Armilly say to you for robbing +her of her pupil?" +"Oh, well, I don't know but I understand that she is going +to Italy. Madame Danglars asked me for letters of +recommendation for the impresari I gave her a few lines for +the director of the Valle Theatre, who is under some +obligation to me. But what is the matter, Albert? you look +dull are you, after all, unconsciously in love with +Mademoiselle Eugenie?" +"I am not aware of it," said Albert, smiling sorrowfully. +Beauchamp turned to look at some paintings. "But," continued +Monte Cristo, "you are not in your usual spirits?" +"I have a dreadful headache," said Albert. +"Well, my dear viscount," said Monte Cristo, "I have an +infallible remedy to propose to you." +"What is that?" asked the young man. +"A change." +"Indeed?" said Albert. +"Yes and as I am just now excessively annoyed, I shall go +from home. Shall we go together?" +"You annoyed, count?" said Beauchamp "and by what?" +"Ah, you think very lightly of it I should like to see you +with a brief preparing in your house." +"What brief?" +"The one M. de Villefort is preparing against my amiable +assassin some brigand escaped from the gallows +apparently." +"True," said Beauchamp "I saw it in the paper. Who is this +Caderousse?" +"Some provincial, it appears. M. de Villefort heard of him +at Marseilles, and M. Danglars recollects having seen him. +Consequently, the procureur is very active in the affair, +and the prefect of police very much interested and, thanks +to that interest, for which I am very grateful, they send me +all the robbers of Paris and the neighborhood, under +pretence of their being Caderousse's murderers, so that in +three months, if this continue, every robber and assassin in +France will have the plan of my house at his fingers' end. I +am resolved to desert them and go to some remote corner of +the earth, and shall be happy if you will accompany me, +viscount." +"Willingly." +"Then it is settled?" +"Yes, but where?" +"I have told you, where the air is pure, where every sound +soothes, where one is sure to be humbled, however proud may +be his nature. I love that humiliation, I, who am master of +the universe, as was Augustus." +"But where are you really going?" +"To sea, viscount you know I am a sailor. I was rocked when +an infant in the arms of old ocean, and on the bosom of the +beautiful Amphitrite I have sported with the green mantle +of the one and the azure robe of the other I love the sea +as a mistress, and pine if I do not often see her." +"Let us go, count." +"To sea?" +"Yes." +"You accept my proposal?" +"I do." +"Well, Viscount, there will be in my courtyard this evening +a good travelling britzka, with four posthorses, in which +one may rest as in a bed. M. Beauchamp, it holds four very +well, will you accompany us?" +"Thank you, I have just returned from sea." +"What? you have been to sea?" +"Yes I have just made a little excursion to the Borromean +Islands." + Lake Maggiore. +"What of that? come with us," said Albert. +"No, dear Morcerf you know I only refuse when the thing is +impossible. Besides, it is important," added he in a low +tone, "that I should remain in Paris just now to watch the +paper." +"Ah, you are a good and an excellent friend," said Albert +"yes, you are right watch, watch, Beauchamp, and try to +discover the enemy who made this disclosure." Albert and +Beauchamp parted, the last pressure of their hands +expressing what their tongues could not before a stranger. +"Beauchamp is a worthy fellow," said Monte Cristo, when the +journalist was gone "is he not, Albert?" +"Yes, and a sincere friend I love him devotedly. But now we +are alone, although it is immaterial to me, where are +we going?" +"Into Normandy, if you like." +"Delightful shall we be quite retired? have no society, no +neighbors?" +"Our companions will be ridinghorses, dogs to hunt with, +and a fishingboat." +"Exactly what I wish for I will apprise my mother of my +intention, and return to you." +"But shall you be allowed to go into Normandy?" +"I may go where I please." +"Yes, I am aware you may go alone, since I once met you in +Italy but to accompany the mysterious Monte Cristo?" +"You forget, count, that I have often told you of the deep +interest my mother takes in you." +""Woman is fickle.' said Francis I. "woman is like a wave +of the sea,' said Shakespeare both the great king and the +great poet ought to have known woman's nature well." +"Woman's, yes my mother is not woman, but a woman." +"As I am only a humble foreigner, you must pardon me if I do +not understand all the subtle refinements of your language." +"What I mean to say is, that my mother is not quick to give +her confidence, but when she does she never changes." +"Ah, yes, indeed," said Monte Cristo with a sigh "and do +you think she is in the least interested in me?" +"I repeat it, you must really be a very strange and superior +man, for my mother is so absorbed by the interest you have +excited, that when I am with her she speaks of no one else." +"And does she try to make you dislike me?" +"On the contrary, she often says, "Morcerf, I believe the +count has a noble nature try to gain his esteem.'" +"Indeed?" said Monte Cristo, sighing. +"You see, then," said Albert, "that instead of opposing, she +will encourage me." +"Adieu, then, until five o'clock be punctual, and we shall +arrive at twelve or one." +"At Treport?" +"Yes or in the neighborhood." +"But can we travel fortyeight leagues in eight hours?" +"Easily," said Monte Cristo. +"You are certainly a prodigy you will soon not only surpass +the railway, which would not be very difficult in France, +but even the telegraph." +"But, viscount, since we cannot perform the journey in less +than seven or eight hours, do not keep me waiting." +"Do not fear, I have little to prepare." Monte Cristo smiled +as he nodded to Albert, then remained a moment absorbed in +deep meditation. But passing his hand across his forehead as +if to dispel his revery, he rang the bell twice and +Bertuccio entered. "Bertuccio," said he, "I intend going +this evening to Normandy, instead of tomorrow or the next +day. You will have sufficient time before five o'clock +despatch a messenger to apprise the grooms at the first +station. M. de Morcerf will accompany me." Bertuccio obeyed +and despatched a courier to Pontoise to say the +travellingcarriage would arrive at six o'clock. From +Pontoise another express was sent to the next stage, and in +six hours all the horses stationed on the road were ready. +Before his departure, the count went to Haidee's apartments, +told her his intention, and resigned everything to her care. +Albert was punctual. The journey soon became interesting +from its rapidity, of which Morcerf had formed no previous +idea. "Truly," said Monte Cristo, "with your posthorses +going at the rate of two leagues an hour, and that absurd +law that one traveller shall not pass another without +permission, so that an invalid or illtempered traveller may +detain those who are well and active, it is impossible to +move I escape this annoyance by travelling with my own +postilion and horses do I not, Ali?" +The count put his head out of the window and whistled, and +the horses appeared to fly. The carriage rolled with a +thundering noise over the pavement, and every one turned to +notice the dazzling meteor. Ali, smiling, repeated the +sound, grasped the reins with a firm hand, and spurred his +horses, whose beautiful manes floated in the breeze. This +child of the desert was in his element, and with his black +face and sparkling eyes appeared, in the cloud of dust he +raised, like the genius of the simoom and the god of the +hurricane. "I never knew till now the delight of speed," +said Morcerf, and the last cloud disappeared from his brow +"but where the devil do you get such horses? Are they made +to order?" +"Precisely," said the count "six years since I bought a +horse in Hungary remarkable for its swiftness. The +thirtytwo that we shall use tonight are its progeny they +are all entirely black, with the exception of a star upon +the forehead." +"That is perfectly admirable but what do you do, count, +with all these horses?" +"You see, I travel with them." +"But you are not always travelling." +"When I no longer require them, Bertuccio will sell them, +and he expects to realize thirty or forty thousand francs by +the sale." +"But no monarch in Europe will be wealthy enough to purchase +them." +"Then he will sell them to some Eastern vizier, who will +empty his coffers to purchase them, and refill them by +applying the bastinado to his subjects." +"Count, may I suggest one idea to you?" +"Certainly." +"It is that, next to you, Bertuccio must be the richest +gentleman in Europe." +"You are mistaken, viscount I believe he has not a franc in +his possession." +"Then he must be a wonder. My dear count, if you tell me +many more marvellous things, I warn you I shall not believe +them." +"I countenance nothing that is marvellous, M. Albert. Tell +me, why does a steward rob his master?" +"Because, I suppose, it is his nature to do so, for the love +of robbing." +"You are mistaken it is because he has a wife and family, +and ambitious desires for himself and them. Also because he +is not sure of always retaining his situation, and wishes to +provide for the future. Now, M. Bertuccio is alone in the +world he uses my property without accounting for the use he +makes of it he is sure never to leave my service." +"Why?" +"Because I should never get a better." +"Probabilities are deceptive." +"But I deal in certainties he is the best servant over whom +one has the power of life and death." +"Do you possess that right over Bertuccio?" +"Yes." +There are words which close a conversation with an iron +door such was the count's "yes." The whole journey was +performed with equal rapidity the thirtytwo horses, +dispersed over seven stages, brought them to their +destination in eight hours. At midnight they arrived at the +gate of a beautiful park. The porter was in attendance he +had been apprised by the groom of the last stage of the +count's approach. At half past two in the morning Morcerf +was conducted to his apartments, where a bath and supper +were prepared. The servant who had travelled at the back of +the carriage waited on him Baptistin, who rode in front, +attended the count. Albert bathed, took his supper, and went +to bed. All night he was lulled by the melancholy noise of +the surf. On rising, he went to his window, which opened on +a terrace, having the sea in front, and at the back a pretty +park bounded by a small forest. In a creek lay a little +sloop, with a narrow keel and high masts, bearing on its +flag the Monte Cristo arms which were a mountain on a sea +azure, with a cross gules on the shield. Around the schooner +lay a number of small fishingboats belonging to the +fishermen of the neighboring village, like humble subjects +awaiting orders from their queen. There, as in every spot +where Monte Cristo stopped, if but for two days, luxury +abounded and life went on with the utmost ease. +Albert found in his anteroom two guns, with all the +accoutrements for hunting a lofty room on the groundfloor +containing all the ingenious instruments the English +eminent in piscatory pursuits, since they are patient and +sluggish have invented for fishing. The day passed in +pursuing those exercises in which Monte Cristo excelled. +They killed a dozen pheasants in the park, as many trout in +the stream, dined in a summerhouse overlooking the ocean, +and took tea in the library. +Towards the evening of the third day. Albert, completely +exhausted with the exercise which invigorated Monte Cristo, +was sleeping in an armchair near the window, while the +count was designing with his architect the plan of a +conservatory in his house, when the sound of a horse at full +speed on the high road made Albert look up. He was +disagreeably surprised to see his own valet de chambre, whom +he had not brought, that he might not inconvenience Monte +Cristo. +"Florentin here" cried he, starting up "is my mother ill?" +And he hastened to the door. Monte Cristo watched and saw +him approach the valet, who drew a small sealed parcel from +his pocket, containing a newspaper and a letter. "From whom +is this?" said he eagerly. "From M. Beauchamp," replied +Florentin. +"Did he send you?" +"Yes, sir he sent for me to his house, gave me money for my +journey, procured a horse, and made me promise not to stop +till I had reached you, I have come in fifteen hours." +Albert opened the letter with fear, uttered a shriek on +reading the first line, and seized the paper. His sight was +dimmed, his legs sank under him, and he would have fallen +had not Florentin supported him. +"Poor young man," said Monte Cristo in a low voice "it is +then true that the sin of the father shall fall on the +children to the third and fourth generation." Meanwhile +Albert had revived, and, continuing to read, he threw back +his head, saying, "Florentin, is your horse fit to return +immediately?" +"It is a poor lame posthorse." +"In what state was the house when you left?" +"All was quiet, but on returning from M. Beauchamp's, I +found madame in tears she had sent for me to know when you +would return. I told her my orders from M. Beauchamp she +first extended her arms to prevent me, but after a moment's +reflection, "Yes, go, Florentin,' said she, "and may he come +quickly.'" +"Yes, my mother," said Albert, "I will return, and woe to +the infamous wretch But first of all I must get there." +He went back to the room where he had left Monte Cristo. +Five minutes had sufficed to make a complete transformation +in his appearance. His voice had become rough and hoarse +his face was furrowed with wrinkles his eyes burned under +the blueveined lids, and he tottered like a drunken man. +"Count," said he, "I thank you for your hospitality, which I +would gladly have enjoyed longer but I must return to +Paris." +"What has happened?" +"A great misfortune, more important to me than life. Don't +question me, I beg of you, but lend me a horse." +"My stables are at your command, viscount but you will kill +yourself by riding on horseback. Take a postchaise or a +carriage." +"No, it would delay me, and I need the fatigue you warn me +of it will do me good." Albert reeled as if he had been +shot, and fell on a chair near the door. Monte Cristo did +not see this second manifestation of physical exhaustion he +was at the window, calling, "Ali, a horse for M. de Morcerf +quick he is in a hurry" These words restored Albert he +darted from the room, followed by the count. "Thank you" +cried he, throwing himself on his horse. "Return as soon as +you can, Florentin. Must I use any password to procure a +horse?" +"Only dismount another will be immediately saddled." Albert +hesitated a moment. "You may think my departure strange and +foolish," said the young man "you do not know how a +paragraph in a newspaper may exasperate one. Read that," +said he, "when I am gone, that you may not be witness of my +anger." +While the count picked up the paper he put spurs to his +horse, which leaped in astonishment at such an unusual +stimulus, and shot away with the rapidity of an arrow. The +count watched him with a feeling of compassion, and when he +had completely disappeared, read as follows +"The French officer in the service of Ali Pasha of Yanina +alluded to three weeks since in the Impartial, who not only +surrendered the castle of Yanina, but sold his benefactor to +the Turks, styled himself truly at that time Fernand, as our +esteemed contemporary states but he has since added to his +Christian name a title of nobility and a family name. He now +calls himself the Count of Morcerf, and ranks among the +peers." +Thus the terrible secret, which Beauchamp had so generously +destroyed, appeared again like an armed phantom and another +paper, deriving its information from some malicious source, +had published two days after Albert's departure for Normandy +the few lines which had rendered the unfortunate young man +almost crazy. +Chapter +The Trial. +At eight o'clock in the morning Albert had arrived at +Beauchamp's door. The valet de chambre had received orders +to usher him in at once. Beauchamp was in his bath. "Here I +am," said Albert. +"Well, my poor friend," replied Beauchamp, "I expected you." +"I need not say I think you are too faithful and too kind to +have spoken of that painful circumstance. Your having sent +for me is another proof of your affection. So, without +losing time, tell me, have you the slightest idea whence +this terrible blow proceeds?" +"I think I have some clew." +"But first tell me all the particulars of this shameful +plot." Beauchamp proceeded to relate to the young man, who +was overwhelmed with shame and grief, the following facts. +Two days previously, the article had appeared in another +paper besides the Impartial, and, what was more serious, one +that was well known as a government paper. Beauchamp was +breakfasting when he read the paragraph. He sent immediately +for a cabriolet, and hastened to the publisher's office. +Although professing diametrically opposite principles from +those of the editor of the other paper, Beauchamp as it +sometimes, we may say often, happens was his intimate +friend. The editor was reading, with apparent delight, a +leading article in the same paper on beetsugar, probably a +composition of his own. +"Ah, pardieu," said Beauchamp, "with the paper in your hand, +my friend, I need not tell you the cause of my visit." +"Are you interested in the sugar question?" asked the editor +of the ministerial paper. +"No," replied Beauchamp, "I have not considered the +question a totally different subject interests me." +"What is it?" +"The article relative to Morcerf." +"Indeed? Is it not a curious affair?" +"So curious, that I think you are running a great risk of a +prosecution for defamation of character." +"Not at all we have received with the information all the +requisite proofs, and we are quite sure M. de Morcerf will +not raise his voice against us besides, it is rendering a +service to one's country to denounce these wretched +criminals who are unworthy of the honor bestowed on them." +Beauchamp was thunderstruck. "Who, then, has so correctly +informed you?" asked he "for my paper, which gave the first +information on the subject, has been obliged to stop for +want of proof and yet we are more interested than you in +exposing M. de Morcerf, as he is a peer of France, and we +are of the opposition." +"Oh, that is very simple we have not sought to scandalize. +This news was brought to us. A man arrived yesterday from +Yanina, bringing a formidable array of documents and when +we hesitated to publish the accusatory article, he told us +it should be inserted in some other paper." +Beauchamp understood that nothing remained but to submit, +and left the office to despatch a courier to Morcerf. But he +had been unable to send to Albert the following particulars, +as the events had transpired after the messenger's +departure namely, that the same day a great agitation was +manifest in the House of Peers among the usually calm +members of that dignified assembly. Every one had arrived +almost before the usual hour, and was conversing on the +melancholy event which was to attract the attention of the +public towards one of their most illustrious colleagues. +Some were perusing the article, others making comments and +recalling circumstances which substantiated the charges +still more. The Count of Morcerf was no favorite with his +colleagues. Like all upstarts, he had had recourse to a +great deal of haughtiness to maintain his position. The true +nobility laughed at him, the talented repelled him, and the +honorable instinctively despised him. He was, in fact, in +the unhappy position of the victim marked for sacrifice the +finger of God once pointed at him, every one was prepared to +raise the hue and cry. +The Count of Morcerf alone was ignorant of the news. He did +not take in the paper containing the defamatory article, and +had passed the morning in writing letters and in trying a +horse. He arrived at his usual hour, with a proud look and +insolent demeanor he alighted, passed through the +corridors, and entered the house without observing the +hesitation of the doorkeepers or the coolness of his +colleagues. Business had already been going on for half an +hour when he entered. Every one held the accusing paper, +but, as usual, no one liked to take upon himself the +responsibility of the attack. At length an honorable peer, +Morcerf's acknowledged enemy, ascended the tribune with that +solemnity which announced that the expected moment had +arrived. There was an impressive silence Morcerf alone knew +not why such profound attention was given to an orator who +was not always listened to with so much complacency. The +count did not notice the introduction, in which the speaker +announced that his communication would be of that vital +importance that it demanded the undivided attention of the +House but at the mention of Yanina and Colonel Fernand, he +turned so frightfully pale that every member shuddered and +fixed his eyes upon him. Moral wounds have this peculiarity, +they may be hidden, but they never close always painful, +always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and +open in the heart. +The article having been read during the painful hush that +followed, a universal shudder pervaded the assembly, and +immediately the closest attention was given to the orator as +he resumed his remarks. He stated his scruples and the +difficulties of the case it was the honor of M. de Morcerf, +and that of the whole House, he proposed to defend, by +provoking a debate on personal questions, which are always +such painful themes of discussion. He concluded by calling +for an investigation, which might dispose of the calumnious +report before it had time to spread, and restore M. de +Morcerf to the position he had long held in public opinion. +Morcerf was so completely overwhelmed by this great and +unexpected calamity that he could scarcely stammer a few +words as he looked around on the assembly. This timidity, +which might proceed from the astonishment of innocence as +well as the shame of guilt, conciliated some in his favor +for men who are truly generous are always ready to +compassionate when the misfortune of their enemy surpasses +the limits of their hatred. +The president put it to the vote, and it was decided that +the investigation should take place. The count was asked +what time he required to prepare his defence. Morcerf's +courage had revived when he found himself alive after this +horrible blow. "My lords," answered he, "it is not by time I +could repel the attack made on me by enemies unknown to me, +and, doubtless, hidden in obscurity it is immediately, and +by a thunderbolt, that I must repel the flash of lightning +which, for a moment, startled me. Oh, that I could, instead +of taking up this defence, shed my last drop of blood to +prove to my noble colleagues that I am their equal in +worth." These words made a favorable impression on behalf of +the accused. "I demand, then, that the examination shall +take place as soon as possible, and I will furnish the house +with all necessary information." +"What day do you fix?" asked the president. +"Today I am at your service," replied the count. The +president rang the bell. "Does the House approve that the +examination should take place today?" +"Yes," was the unanimous answer. +A committee of twelve members was chosen to examine the +proofs brought forward by Morcerf. The investigation would +begin at eight o'clock that evening in the committeeroom, +and if postponement were necessary, the proceedings would be +resumed each evening at the same hour. Morcerf asked leave +to retire he had to collect the documents he had long been +preparing against this storm, which his sagacity had +foreseen. +Albert listened, trembling now with hope, then with anger, +and then again with shame, for from Beauchamp's confidence +he knew his father was guilty, and he asked himself how, +since he was guilty, he could prove his innocence. Beauchamp +hesitated to continue his narrative. "What next?" asked +Albert. +"What next? My friend, you impose a painful task on me. Must +you know all?" +"Absolutely and rather from your lips than another's." +"Muster up all your courage, then, for never have you +required it more." Albert passed his hand over his forehead, +as if to try his strength, as a man who is preparing to +defend his life proves his shield and bends his sword. He +thought himself strong enough, for he mistook fever for +energy. "Go on," said he. +"The evening arrived all Paris was in expectation. Many +said your father had only to show himself to crush the +charge against him many others said he would not appear +while some asserted that they had seen him start for +Brussels and others went to the policeoffice to inquire if +he had taken out a passport. I used all my influence with +one of the committee, a young peer of my acquaintance, to +get admission to one of the galleries. He called for me at +seven o'clock, and, before any one had arrived, asked one of +the doorkeepers to place me in a box. I was concealed by a +column, and might witness the whole of the terrible scene +which was about to take place. At eight o'clock all were in +their places, and M. de Morcerf entered at the last stroke. +He held some papers in his hand his countenance was calm, +and his step firm, and he was dressed with great care in his +military uniform, which was buttoned completely up to the +chin. His presence produced a good effect. The committee was +made up of Liberals, several of whom came forward to shake +hands with him." +Albert felt his heart bursting at these particulars, but +gratitude mingled with his sorrow he would gladly have +embraced those who had given his father this proof of esteem +at a moment when his honor was so powerfully attacked. "At +this moment one of the doorkeepers brought in a letter for +the president. "You are at liberty to speak, M. de Morcerf,' +said the president, as he unsealed the letter and the count +began his defence, I assure you, Albert, in a most eloquent +and skilful manner. He produced documents proving that the +Vizier of Yanina had up to the last moment honored him with +his entire confidence, since he had interested him with a +negotiation of life and death with the emperor. He produced +the ring, his mark of authority, with which Ali Pasha +generally sealed his letters, and which the latter had given +him, that he might, on his return at any hour of the day or +night, gain access to the presence, even in the harem. +Unfortunately, the negotiation failed, and when he returned +to defend his benefactor, he was dead. "But,' said the +count, "so great was Ali Pasha's confidence, that on his +deathbed he resigned his favorite mistress and her daughter +to my care.'" Albert started on hearing these words the +history of Haidee recurred to him, and he remembered what +she had said of that message and the ring, and the manner in +which she had been sold and made a slave. "And what effect +did this discourse produce?" anxiously inquired Albert. "I +acknowledge it affected me, and, indeed, all the committee +also," said Beauchamp. +"Meanwhile, the president carelessly opened the letter which +had been brought to him but the first lines aroused his +attention he read them again and again, and fixing his eyes +on M. de Morcerf, "Count,' said he, "you have said that the +Vizier of Yanina confided his wife and daughter to your +care?' "Yes, sir,' replied Morcerf "but in that, like +all the rest, misfortune pursued me. On my return, Vasiliki +and her daughter Haidee had disappeared.' "Did you know +them?' "My intimacy with the pasha and his unlimited +confidence had gained me an introduction to them, and I had +seen them above twenty times.' +""Have you any idea what became of them?' "Yes, sir I +heard they had fallen victims to their sorrow, and, perhaps, +to their poverty. I was not rich my life was in constant +danger I could not seek them, to my great regret.' The +president frowned imperceptibly. "Gentlemen,' said he, "you +have heard the Comte de Morcerf's defence. Can you, sir, +produce any witnesses to the truth of what you have +asserted?' "Alas, no, monsieur,' replied the count "all +those who surrounded the vizier, or who knew me at his +court, are either dead or gone away, I know not where. I +believe that I alone, of all my countrymen, survived that +dreadful war. I have only the letters of Ali Tepelini, which +I have placed before you the ring, a token of his +goodwill, which is here and, lastly, the most convincing +proof I can offer, after an anonymous attack, and that is +the absence of any witness against my veracity and the +purity of my military life.' A murmur of approbation ran +through the assembly and at this moment, Albert, had +nothing more transpired, your father's cause had been +gained. It only remained to put it to the vote, when the +president resumed "Gentlemen and you, monsieur, you will +not be displeased, I presume, to listen to one who calls +himself a very important witness, and who has just presented +himself. He is, doubtless, come to prove the perfect +innocence of our colleague. Here is a letter I have just +received on the subject shall it be read, or shall it be +passed over? and shall we take no notice of this incident?' +M. de Morcerf turned pale, and clinched his hands on the +papers he held. The committee decided to hear the letter +the count was thoughtful and silent. The president read +""Mr. President, I can furnish the committee of inquiry +into the conduct of the LieutenantGeneral the Count of +Morcerf in Epirus and in Macedonia with important +particulars.' +"The president paused, and the count turned pale. The +president looked at his auditors. "Proceed,' was heard on +all sides. The president resumed +""I was on the spot at the death of Ali Pasha. I was present +during his last moments. I know what is become of Vasiliki +and Haidee. I am at the command of the committee, and even +claim the honor of being heard. I shall be in the lobby when +this note is delivered to you.' +""And who is this witness, or rather this enemy?' asked the +count, in a tone in which there was a visible alteration. +"We shall know, sir,' replied the president. "Is the +committee willing to hear this witness?' "Yes, yes,' they +all said at once. The doorkeeper was called. "Is there any +one in the lobby?' said the president. +""Yes, sir.' "Who is it?' "A woman, accompanied by a +servant.' Every one looked at his neighbor. "Bring her in,' +said the president. Five minutes after the doorkeeper again +appeared all eyes were fixed on the door, and I," said +Beauchamp, "shared the general expectation and anxiety. +Behind the doorkeeper walked a woman enveloped in a large +veil, which completely concealed her. It was evident, from +her figure and the perfumes she had about her, that she was +young and fastidious in her tastes, but that was all. The +president requested her to throw aside her veil, and it was +then seen that she was dressed in the Grecian costume, and +was remarkably beautiful." +"Ah," said Albert, "it was she." +"Who?" +"Haidee." +"Who told you that?" +"Alas, I guess it. But go on, Beauchamp. You see I am calm +and strong. And yet we must be drawing near the disclosure." +"M. de Morcerf," continued Beauchamp, "looked at this woman +with surprise and terror. Her lips were about to pass his +sentence of life or death. To the committee the adventure +was so extraordinary and curious, that the interest they had +felt for the count's safety became now quite a secondary +matter. The president himself advanced to place a seat for +the young lady but she declined availing herself of it. As +for the count, he had fallen on his chair it was evident +that his legs refused to support him. +""Madame,' said the president, "you have engaged to furnish +the committee with some important particulars respecting the +affair at Yanina, and you have stated that you were an +eyewitness of the event.' "I was, indeed,' said the +stranger, with a tone of sweet melancholy, and with the +sonorous voice peculiar to the East. +""But allow me to say that you must have been very young +then.' "I was four years old but as those events deeply +concerned me, not a single detail has escaped my memory.' +"In what manner could these events concern you? and who are +you, that they should have made so deep an impression on +you?' "On them depended my father's life,' replied she. +"I am Haidee, the daughter of Ali Tepelini, pasha of Yanina, +and of Vasiliki, his beloved wife.' +"The blush of mingled pride and modesty which suddenly +suffused the cheeks of the young woman, the brilliancy of +her eye, and her highly important communication, produced an +indescribable effect on the assembly. As for the count, he +could not have been more overwhelmed if a thunderbolt had +fallen at his feet and opened an immense gulf before him. +"Madame,' replied the president, bowing with profound +respect, "allow me to ask one question it shall be the +last Can you prove the authenticity of what you have now +stated?' "I can, sir,' said Haidee, drawing from under +her veil a satin satchel highly perfumed "for here is the +register of my birth, signed by my father and his principal +officers, and that of my baptism, my father having consented +to my being brought up in my mother's faith, this latter +has been sealed by the grand primate of Macedonia and +Epirus and lastly and perhaps the most important, the +record of the sale of my person and that of my mother to the +Armenian merchant ElKobbir, by the French officer, who, in +his infamous bargain with the Porte, had reserved as his +part of the booty the wife and daughter of his benefactor, +whom he sold for the sum of four hundred thousand francs.' A +greenish pallor spread over the count's cheeks, and his eyes +became bloodshot at these terrible imputations, which were +listened to by the assembly with ominous silence. +"Haidee, still calm, but with a calmness more dreadful than +the anger of another would have been, handed to the +president the record of her sale, written in Arabic. It had +been supposed some of the papers might be in the Arabian, +Romaic, or Turkish language, and the interpreter of the +House was in attendance. One of the noble peers, who was +familiar with the Arabic language, having studied it during +the famous Egyptian campaign, followed with his eye as the +translator read aloud +""I, ElKobbir, a slavemerchant, and purveyor of the harem +of his highness, acknowledge having received for +transmission to the sublime emperor, from the French lord, +the Count of Monte Cristo, an emerald valued at eight +hundred thousand francs as the ransom of a young Christian +slave of eleven years of age, named Haidee, the acknowledged +daughter of the late lord Ali Tepelini, pasha of Yanina, and +of Vasiliki, his favorite she having been sold to me seven +years previously, with her mother, who had died on arriving +at Constantinople, by a French colonel in the service of the +Vizier Ali Tepelini, named Fernand Mondego. The +abovementioned purchase was made on his highness's account, +whose mandate I had, for the sum of four hundred thousand +francs. +""Given at Constantinople, by authority of his highness, in +the year of the Hegira. +""Signed ElKobbir.' +""That this record should have all due authority, it shall +bear the imperial seal, which the vendor is bound to have +affixed to it.' +"Near the merchant's signature there was, indeed, the seal +of the sublime emperor. A dreadful silence followed the +reading of this document the count could only stare, and +his gaze, fixed as if unconsciously on Haidee, seemed one of +fire and blood. "Madame,' said the president, "may reference +be made to the Count of Monte Cristo, who is now, I believe, +in Paris?' "Sir,' replied Haidee, "the Count of Monte +Cristo, my fosterfather, has been in Normandy the last +three days.' +""Who, then, has counselled you to take this step, one for +which the court is deeply indebted to you, and which is +perfectly natural, considering your birth and your +misfortunes?' "Sir,' replied Haidee, "I have been led to +take this step from a feeling of respect and grief. Although +a Christian, may God forgive me, I have always sought to +revenge my illustrious father. Since I set my foot in +France, and knew the traitor lived in Paris, I have watched +carefully. I live retired in the house of my noble +protector, but I do it from choice. I love retirement and +silence, because I can live with my thoughts and +recollections of past days. But the Count of Monte Cristo +surrounds me with every paternal care, and I am ignorant of +nothing which passes in the world. I learn all in the +silence of my apartments, for instance, I see all the +newspapers, every periodical, as well as every new piece of +music and by thus watching the course of the life of +others, I learned what had transpired this morning in the +House of Peers, and what was to take place this evening +then I wrote.' +""Then,' remarked the president, "the Count of Monte Cristo +knows nothing of your present proceedings?' "He is quite +unaware of them, and I have but one fear, which is that he +should disapprove of what I have done. But it is a glorious +day for me,' continued the young girl, raising her ardent +gaze to heaven, "that on which I find at last an opportunity +of avenging my father' +"The count had not uttered one word the whole of this time. +His colleagues looked at him, and doubtless pitied his +prospects, blighted under the perfumed breath of a woman. +His misery was depicted in sinister lines on his +countenance. "M. de Morcerf,' said the president, "do you +recognize this lady as the daughter of Ali Tepelini, pasha +of Yanina?' "No,' said Morcerf, attempting to rise, "it +is a base plot, contrived by my enemies.' Haidee, whose eyes +had been fixed on the door, as if expecting some one, turned +hastily, and, seeing the count standing, shrieked, "You do +not know me?' said she. "Well, I fortunately recognize you +You are Fernand Mondego, the French officer who led the +troops of my noble father It is you who surrendered the +castle of Yanina It is you who, sent by him to +Constantinople, to treat with the emperor for the life or +death of your benefactor, brought back a false mandate +granting full pardon It is you who, with that mandate, +obtained the pasha's ring, which gave you authority over +Selim, the firekeeper It is you who stabbed Selim. It is +you who sold us, my mother and me, to the merchant, +ElKobbir Assassin, assassin, assassin, you have still on +your brow your master's blood Look, gentlemen, all' +"These words had been pronounced with such enthusiasm and +evident truth, that every eye was fixed on the count's +forehead, and he himself passed his hand across it, as if he +felt Ali's blood still lingering there. "You positively +recognize M. de Morcerf as the officer, Fernand Mondego?' +"Indeed I do' cried Haidee. "Oh, my mother, it was you who +said, "You were free, you had a beloved father, you were +destined to be almost a queen. Look well at that man it is +he who raised your father's head on the point of a spear it +is he who sold us it is he who forsook us Look well at his +right hand, on which he has a large wound if you forgot his +features, you would know him by that hand, into which fell, +one by one, the gold pieces of the merchant ElKobbir" I +know him Ah, let him say now if he does not recognize me' +Each word fell like a dagger on Morcerf, and deprived him of +a portion of his energy as she uttered the last, he hid his +mutilated hand hastily in his bosom, and fell back on his +seat, overwhelmed by wretchedness and despair. This scene +completely changed the opinion of the assembly respecting +the accused count. +""Count of Morcerf,' said the president, "do not allow +yourself to be cast down answer. The justice of the court +is supreme and impartial as that of God it will not suffer +you to be trampled on by your enemies without giving you an +opportunity of defending yourself. Shall further inquiries +be made? Shall two members of the House be sent to Yanina? +Speak' Morcerf did not reply. Then all the members looked +at each other with terror. They knew the count's energetic +and violent temper it must be, indeed, a dreadful blow +which would deprive him of courage to defend himself. They +expected that his stupefied silence would be followed by a +fiery outburst. "Well,' asked the president, "what is your +decision?' +""I have no reply to make,' said the count in a low tone. +""Has the daughter of Ali Tepelini spoken the truth?' said +the president. "Is she, then, the terrible witness to whose +charge you dare not plead "Not guilty"? Have you really +committed the crimes of which you are accused?' The count +looked around him with an expression which might have +softened tigers, but which could not disarm his judges. Then +he raised his eyes towards the ceiling, but withdrew then, +immediately, as if he feared the roof would open and reveal +to his distressed view that second tribunal called heaven, +and that other judge named God. Then, with a hasty movement, +he tore open his coat, which seemed to stifle him, and flew +from the room like a madman his footstep was heard one +moment in the corridor, then the rattling of his +carriagewheels as he was driven rapidly away. "Gentlemen,' +said the president, when silence was restored, "is the Count +of Morcerf convicted of felony, treason, and conduct +unbecoming a member of this House?' "Yes,' replied all +the members of the committee of inquiry with a unanimous +voice. +"Haidee had remained until the close of the meeting. She +heard the count's sentence pronounced without betraying an +expression of joy or pity then drawing her veil over her +face she bowed majestically to the councillors, and left +with that dignified step which Virgil attributes to his +goddesses." +Chapter +The Challenge. +"Then," continued Beauchamp, "I took advantage of the +silence and the darkness to leave the house without being +seen. The usher who had introduced me was waiting for me at +the door, and he conducted me through the corridors to a +private entrance opening into the Rue de Vaugirard. I left +with mingled feelings of sorrow and delight. Excuse me, +Albert, sorrow on your account, and delight with that +noble girl, thus pursuing paternal vengeance. Yes, Albert, +from whatever source the blow may have proceeded it may +be from an enemy, but that enemy is only the agent of +providence." Albert held his head between his hands he +raised his face, red with shame and bathed in tears, and +seizing Beauchamp's arm, "My friend," said he, "my life is +ended. I cannot calmly say with you, "Providence has struck +the blow' but I must discover who pursues me with this +hatred, and when I have found him I shall kill him, or he +will kill me. I rely on your friendship to assist me, +Beauchamp, if contempt has not banished it from your heart." +"Contempt, my friend? How does this misfortune affect you? +No, happily that unjust prejudice is forgotten which made +the son responsible for the father's actions. Review your +life, Albert although it is only just beginning, did a +lovely summer's day ever dawn with greater purity than has +marked the commencement of your career? No, Albert, take my +advice. You are young and rich leave Paris all is soon +forgotten in this great Babylon of excitement and changing +tastes. You will return after three or four years with a +Russian princess for a bride, and no one will think more of +what occurred yesterday than if it had happened sixteen +years ago." +"Thank you, my dear Beauchamp, thank you for the excellent +feeling which prompts your advice but it cannot be. I have +told you my wish, or rather my determination. You understand +that, interested as I am in this affair, I cannot see it in +the same light as you do. What appears to you to emanate +from a celestial source, seems to me to proceed from one far +less pure. Providence appears to me to have no share in this +affair and happily so, for instead of the invisible, +impalpable agent of celestial rewards and punishments, I +shall find one both palpable and visible, on whom I shall +revenge myself, I assure you, for all I have suffered during +the last month. Now, I repeat, Beauchamp, I wish to return +to human and material existence, and if you are still the +friend you profess to be, help me to discover the hand that +struck the blow." +"Be it so," said Beauchamp "if you must have me descend to +earth, I submit and if you will seek your enemy, I will +assist you, and I will engage to find him, my honor being +almost as deeply interested as yours." +"Well, then, you understand, Beauchamp, that we begin our +search immediately. Each moment's delay is an eternity for +me. The calumniator is not yet punished, and he may hope +that he will not be but, on my honor, it he thinks so, he +deceives himself." +"Well, listen, Morcerf." +"Ah, Beauchamp, I see you know something already you will +restore me to life." +"I do not say there is any truth in what I am going to tell +you, but it is, at least, a ray of light in a dark night by +following it we may, perhaps, discover something more +certain." +"Tell me satisfy my impatience." +"Well, I will tell you what I did not like to mention on my +return from Yanina." +"Say on." +"I went, of course, to the chief banker of the town to make +inquiries. At the first word, before I had even mentioned +your father's name" +""Ah,' said he. "I guess what brings you here.' +""How, and why?' +""Because a fortnight since I was questioned on the same +subject.' +""By whom?' "By a Paris banker, my correspondent.' +""Whose name is' +""Danglars.'" +"He" cried Albert "yes, it is indeed he who has so long +pursued my father with jealous hatred. He, the man who would +be popular, cannot forgive the Count of Morcerf for being +created a peer and this marriage broken off without a +reason being assigned yes, it is all from the same +cause." +"Make inquiries, Albert, but do not be angry without reason +make inquiries, and if it be true" +"Oh, yes, if it be true," cried the young man, "he shall pay +me all I have suffered." +"Beware, Morcerf, he is already an old man." +"I will respect his age as he has respected the honor of my +family if my father had offended him, why did he not attack +him personally? Oh, no, he was afraid to encounter him face +to face." +"I do not condemn you, Albert I only restrain you. Act +prudently." +"Oh, do not fear besides, you will accompany me. Beauchamp, +solemn transactions should be sanctioned by a witness. +Before this day closes, if M. Danglars is guilty, he shall +cease to live, or I shall die. Pardieu, Beauchamp, mine +shall be a splendid funeral" +"When such resolutions are made, Albert, they should be +promptly executed. Do you wish to go to M. Danglars? Let us +go immediately." They sent for a cabriolet. On entering the +banker's mansion, they perceived the phaeton and servant of +M. Andrea Cavalcanti. "Ah, parbleu, that's good," said +Albert, with a gloomy tone. "If M. Danglars will not fight +with me, I will kill his soninlaw Cavalcanti will +certainly fight." The servant announced the young man but +the banker, recollecting what had transpired the day before, +did not wish him admitted. It was, however, too late Albert +had followed the footman, and, hearing the order given, +forced the door open, and followed by Beauchamp found +himself in the banker's study. "Sir," cried the latter, "am +I no longer at liberty to receive whom I choose in my house? +You appear to forget yourself sadly." +"No, sir," said Albert, coldly "there are circumstances in +which one cannot, except through cowardice, I offer you +that refuge, refuse to admit certain persons at least." +"What is your errand, then, with me, sir?" +"I mean," said Albert, drawing near, and without apparently +noticing Cavalcanti, who stood with his back towards the +fireplace "I mean to propose a meeting in some retired +corner where no one will interrupt us for ten minutes that +will be sufficient where two men having met, one of them +will remain on the ground." Danglars turned pale Cavalcanti +moved a step forward, and Albert turned towards him. "And +you, too," said he, "come, if you like, monsieur you have a +claim, being almost one of the family, and I will give as +many rendezvous of that kind as I can find persons willing +to accept them." Cavalcanti looked at Danglars with a +stupefied air, and the latter, making an effort, arose and +stepped between the two young men. Albert's attack on Andrea +had placed him on a different footing, and he hoped this +visit had another cause than that he had at first supposed. +"Indeed, sir," said he to Albert, "if you are come to +quarrel with this gentleman because I have preferred him to +you, I shall resign the case to the king's attorney." +"You mistake, sir," said Morcerf with a gloomy smile "I am +not referring in the least to matrimony, and I only +addressed myself to M. Cavalcanti because he appeared +disposed to interfere between us. In one respect you are +right, for I am ready to quarrel with every one today but +you have the first claim, M. Danglars." +"Sir," replied Danglars, pale with anger and fear, "I warn +you, when I have the misfortune to meet with a mad dog, I +kill it and far from thinking myself guilty of a crime, I +believe I do society a kindness. Now, if you are mad and try +to bite me, I will kill you without pity. Is it my fault +that your father has dishonored himself?" +"Yes, miserable wretch" cried Morcerf, "it is your fault." +Danglars retreated a few steps. "My fault?" said he "you +must be mad What do I know of the Grecian affair? Have I +travelled in that country? Did I advise your father to sell +the castle of Yanina to betray" +"Silence" said Albert, with a thundering voice. "No it is +not you who have directly made this exposure and brought +this sorrow on us, but you hypocritically provoked it." +"I?" +"Yes you How came it known?" +"I suppose you read it in the paper in the account from +Yanina?" +"Who wrote to Yanina?" +"To Yanina?" +"Yes. Who wrote for particulars concerning my father?" +"I imagine any one may write to Yanina." +"But one person only wrote" +"One only?" +"Yes and that was you" +"I, doubtless, wrote. It appears to me that when about to +marry your daughter to a young man, it is right to make some +inquiries respecting his family it is not only a right, but +a duty." +"You wrote, sir, knowing what answer you would receive." +"I, indeed? I assure you," cried Danglars, with a confidence +and security proceeding less from fear than from the +interest he really felt for the young man, "I solemnly +declare to you, that I should never have thought of writing +to Yanina, did I know anything of Ali Pasha's misfortunes." +"Who, then, urged you to write? Tell me." +"Pardieu, it was the most simple thing in the world. I was +speaking of your father's past history. I said the origin of +his fortune remained obscure. The person to whom I addressed +my scruples asked me where your father had acquired his +property? I answered, "In Greece.' "Then,' said he, +"write to Yanina.'" +"And who thus advised you?" +"No other than your friend, Monte Cristo." +"The Count of Monte Cristo told you to write to Yanina?" +"Yes and I wrote, and will show you my correspondence, if +you like." Albert and Beauchamp looked at each other. "Sir," +said Beauchamp, who had not yet spoken, "you appear to +accuse the count, who is absent from Paris at this moment, +and cannot justify himself." +"I accuse no one, sir," said Danglars "I relate, and I will +repeat before the count what I have said to you." +"Does the count know what answer you received?" +"Yes I showed it to him." +"Did he know my father's Christian name was Fernand, and his +family name Mondego?" +"Yes, I had told him that long since, and I did only what +any other would have done in my circumstances, and perhaps +less. When, the day after the arrival of this answer, your +father came by the advice of Monte Cristo to ask my +daughter's hand for you, I decidedly refused him, but +without any explanation or exposure. In short, why should I +have any more to do with the affair? How did the honor or +disgrace of M. de Morcerf affect me? It neither increased +nor decreased my income." +Albert felt the blood mounting to his brow there was no +doubt upon the subject. Danglars defended himself with the +baseness, but at the same time with the assurance, of a man +who speaks the truth, at least in part, if not wholly not +for conscience' sake, but through fear. Besides, what was +Morcerf seeking? It was not whether Danglars or Monte Cristo +was more or less guilty it was a man who would answer for +the offence, whether trifling or serious it was a man who +would fight, and it was evident Danglars would not fight. +And, in addition to this, everything forgotten or +unperceived before presented itself now to his recollection. +Monte Cristo knew everything, as he had bought the daughter +of Ali Pasha and, knowing everything, he had advised +Danglars to write to Yanina. The answer known, he had +yielded to Albert's wish to be introduced to Haidee, and +allowed the conversation to turn on the death of Ali, and +had not opposed Haidee's recital but having, doubtless, +warned the young girl, in the few Romaic words he spoke to +her, not to implicate Morcerf's father. Besides, had he not +begged of Morcerf not to mention his father's name before +Haidee? Lastly, he had taken Albert to Normandy when he knew +the final blow was near. There could be no doubt that all +had been calculated and previously arranged Monte Cristo +then was in league with his father's enemies. Albert took +Beauchamp aside, and communicated these ideas to him. +"You are right," said the latter "M. Danglars has only been +a secondary agent in this sad affair, and it is of M. de +Monte Cristo that you must demand an explanation." Albert +turned. "Sir," said he to Danglars, "understand that I do +not take a final leave of you I must ascertain if your +insinuations are just, and am going now to inquire of the +Count of Monte Cristo." He bowed to the banker, and went out +with Beauchamp, without appearing to notice Cavalcanti. +Danglars accompanied him to the door, where he again assured +Albert that no motive of personal hatred had influenced him +against the Count of Morcerf. +Chapter +The Insult. +At the banker's door Beauchamp stopped Morcerf. "Listen," +said he "just now I told you it was of M. de Monte Cristo +you must demand an explanation." +"Yes and we are going to his house." +"Reflect, Morcerf, one moment before you go." +"On what shall I reflect?" +"On the importance of the step you are taking." +"Is it more serious than going to M. Danglars?" +"Yes M. Danglars is a moneylover, and those who love +money, you know, think too much of what they risk to be +easily induced to fight a duel. The other is, on the +contrary, to all appearance a true nobleman but do you not +fear to find him a bully?" +"I only fear one thing namely, to find a man who will not +fight." +"Do not be alarmed," said Beauchamp "he will meet you. My +only fear is that he will be too strong for you." +"My friend," said Morcerf, with a sweet smile, "that is what +I wish. The happiest thing that could occur to me, would be +to die in my father's stead that would save us all." +"Your mother would die of grief." +"My poor mother" said Albert, passing his hand across his +eyes, "I know she would but better so than die of shame." +"Are you quite decided, Albert?" +"Yes let us go." +"But do you think we shall find the count at home?" +"He intended returning some hours after me, and doubtless he +is now at home." They ordered the driver to take them to No. + ChampsElysees. Beauchamp wished to go in alone, but +Albert observed that as this was an unusual circumstance he +might be allowed to deviate from the usual etiquette in +affairs of honor. The cause which the young man espoused was +one so sacred that Beauchamp had only to comply with all his +wishes he yielded and contented himself with following +Morcerf. Albert sprang from the porter's lodge to the steps. +He was received by Baptistin. The count had, indeed, just +arrived, but he was in his bath, and had forbidden that any +one should be admitted. "But after his bath?" asked Morcerf. +"My master will go to dinner." +"And after dinner?" +"He will sleep an hour." +"Then?" +"He is going to the opera." +"Are you sure of it?" asked Albert. +"Quite, sir my master has ordered his horses at eight +o'clock precisely." +"Very good," replied Albert "that is all I wished to know." +Then, turning towards Beauchamp, "If you have anything to +attend to, Beauchamp, do it directly if you have any +appointment for this evening, defer it till tomorrow. I +depend on you to accompany me to the opera and if you can, +bring ChateauRenaud with you." +Beauchamp availed himself of Albert's permission, and left +him, promising to call for him at a quarter before eight. On +his return home, Albert expressed his wish to Franz Debray, +and Morrel, to see them at the opera that evening. Then he +went to see his mother, who since the events of the day +before had refused to see any one, and had kept her room. He +found her in bed, overwhelmed with grief at this public +humiliation. The sight of Albert produced the effect which +might naturally be expected on Mercedes she pressed her +son's hand and sobbed aloud, but her tears relieved her. +Albert stood one moment speechless by the side of his +mother's bed. It was evident from his pale face and knit +brows that his resolution to revenge himself was growing +weaker. "My dear mother," said he, "do you know if M. de +Morcerf has any enemy?" Mercedes started she noticed that +the young man did not say "my father." "My son," she said, +"persons in the count's situation have many secret enemies. +Those who are known are not the most dangerous." +"I know it, and appeal to your penetration. You are of so +superior a mind, nothing escapes you." +"Why do you say so?" +"Because, for instance, you noticed on the evening of the +ball we gave, that M. de Monte Cristo would eat nothing in +our house." Mercedes raised herself on her feverish arm. "M. +de Monte Cristo" she exclaimed "and how is he connected +with the question you asked me?" +"You know, mother, M. de Monte Cristo is almost an Oriental, +and it is customary with the Orientals to secure full +liberty for revenge by not eating or drinking in the houses +of their enemies." +"Do you say M. de Monte Cristo is our enemy?" replied +Mercedes, becoming paler than the sheet which covered her. +"Who told you so? Why, you are mad, Albert M. de Monte +Cristo has only shown us kindness. M. de Monte Cristo saved +your life you yourself presented him to us. Oh, I entreat +you, my son, if you had entertained such an idea, dispel it +and my counsel to you nay, my prayer is to retain his +friendship." +"Mother," replied the young man, "you have especial reasons +for telling me to conciliate that man." +"I?" said Mercedes, blushing as rapidly as she had turned +pale, and again becoming paler than ever. +"Yes, doubtless and is it not that he may never do us any +harm?" Mercedes shuddered, and, fixing on her son a +scrutinizing gaze, "You speak strangely," said she to +Albert, "and you appear to have some singular prejudices. +What has the count done? Three days since you were with him +in Normandy only three days since we looked on him as our +best friend." +An ironical smile passed over Albert's lips. Mercedes saw it +and with the double instinct of woman and mother guessed +all but as she was prudent and strongminded she concealed +both her sorrows and her fears. Albert was silent an +instant after, the countess resumed "You came to inquire +after my health I will candidly acknowledge that I am not +well. You should install yourself here, and cheer my +solitude. I do not wish to be left alone." +"Mother," said the young man, "you know how gladly I would +obey your wish, but an urgent and important affair obliges +me to leave you for the whole evening." +"Well," replied Mercedes, sighing, "go, Albert I will not +make you a slave to your filial piety." Albert pretended he +did not hear, bowed to his mother, and quitted her. Scarcely +had he shut her door, when Mercedes called a confidential +servant, and ordered him to follow Albert wherever he should +go that evening, and to come and tell her immediately what +he observed. Then she rang for her lady's maid, and, weak as +she was, she dressed, in order to be ready for whatever +might happen. The footman's mission was an easy one. Albert +went to his room, and dressed with unusual care. At ten +minutes to eight Beauchamp arrived he had seen +ChateauRenaud, who had promised to be in the orchestra +before the curtain was raised. Both got into Albert's coupe +and, as the young man had no reason to conceal where he was +going, he called aloud, "To the opera." In his impatience he +arrived before the beginning of the performance. +ChateauRenaud was at his post apprised by Beauchamp of the +circumstances, he required no explanation from Albert. The +conduct of the son in seeking to avenge his father was so +natural that ChateauRenaud did not seek to dissuade him, +and was content with renewing his assurances of devotion. +Debray was not yet come, but Albert knew that he seldom lost +a scene at the opera. Albert wandered about the theatre +until the curtain was drawn up. He hoped to meet with M. de +Monte Cristo either in the lobby or on the stairs. The bell +summoned him to his seat, and he entered the orchestra with +ChateauRenaud and Beauchamp. But his eyes scarcely quitted +the box between the columns, which remained obstinately +closed during the whole of the first act. At last, as Albert +was looking at his watch for about the hundredth time, at +the beginning of the second act the door opened, and Monte +Cristo entered, dressed in black, and, leaning over the +front of the box, looked around the pit. Morrel followed +him, and looked also for his sister and brother inlaw he +soon discovered them in another box, and kissed his hand to +them. +The count, in his survey of the pit, encountered a pale face +and threatening eyes, which evidently sought to gain his +attention. He recognized Albert, but thought it better not +to notice him, as he looked so angry and discomposed. +Without communicating his thoughts to his companion, he sat +down, drew out his operaglass, and looked another way. +Although apparently not noticing Albert, he did not, +however, lose sight of him, and when the curtain fell at the +end of the second act, he saw him leave the orchestra with +his two friends. Then his head was seen passing at the back +of the boxes, and the count knew that the approaching storm +was intended to fall on him. He was at the moment conversing +cheerfully with Morrel, but he was well prepared for what +might happen. The door opened, and Monte Cristo, turning +round, saw Albert, pale and trembling, followed by Beauchamp +and ChateauRenaud. +"Well," cried he, with that benevolent politeness which +distinguished his salutation from the common civilities of +the world, "my cavalier has attained his object. +Goodevening, M. de Morcerf." The countenance of this man, +who possessed such extraordinary control over his feelings, +expressed the most perfect cordiality. Morrel only then +recollected the letter he had received from the viscount, in +which, without assigning any reason, he begged him to go to +the opera, but he understood that something terrible was +brooding. +"We are not come here, sir, to exchange hypocritical +expressions of politeness, or false professions of +friendship," said Albert, "but to demand an explanation." +The young man's trembling voice was scarcely audible. "An +explanation at the opera?" said the count, with that calm +tone and penetrating eye which characterize the man who +knows his cause is good. "Little acquainted as I am with the +habits of Parisians, I should not have thought this the +place for such a demand." +"Still, if people will shut themselves up," said Albert, +"and cannot be seen because they are bathing, dining, or +asleep, we must avail ourselves of the opportunity whenever +they are to be seen." +"I am not difficult of access, sir for yesterday, if my +memory does not deceive me, you were at my house." +"Yesterday I was at your house, sir," said the young man +"because then I knew not who you were." In pronouncing these +words Albert had raised his voice so as to be heard by those +in the adjoining boxes and in the lobby. Thus the attention +of many was attracted by this altercation. "Where are you +come from, sir? You do not appear to be in the possession of +your senses." +"Provided I understand your perfidy, sir, and succeed in +making you understand that I will be revenged, I shall be +reasonable enough," said Albert furiously. +"I do not understand you, sir," replied Monte Cristo "and +if I did, your tone is too high. I am at home here, and I +alone have a right to raise my voice above another's. Leave +the box, sir" Monte Cristo pointed towards the door with +the most commanding dignity. "Ah, I shall know how to make +you leave your home" replied Albert, clasping in his +convulsed grasp the glove, which Monte Cristo did not lose +sight of. +"Well, well," said Monte Cristo quietly, "I see you wish to +quarrel with me but I would give you one piece of advice, +which you will do well to keep in mind. It is in poor taste +to make a display of a challenge. Display is not becoming to +every one, M. de Morcerf." +At this name a murmur of astonishment passed around the +group of spectators of this scene. They had talked of no one +but Morcerf the whole day. Albert understood the allusion in +a moment, and was about to throw his glove at the count, +when Morrel seized his hand, while Beauchamp and +ChateauRenaud, fearing the scene would surpass the limits +of a challenge, held him back. But Monte Cristo, without +rising, and leaning forward in his chair, merely stretched +out his arm and, taking the damp, crushed glove from the +clinched hand of the young man, "Sir," said he in a solemn +tone, "I consider your glove thrown, and will return it to +you wrapped around a bullet. Now leave me or I will summon +my servants to throw you out at the door." +Wild, almost unconscious, and with eyes inflamed, Albert +stepped back, and Morrel closed the door. Monte Cristo took +up his glass again as if nothing had happened his face was +like marble, and his heart was like bronze. Morrel +whispered, "What have you done to him?" +"I? Nothing at least personally," said Monte Cristo. +"But there must be some cause for this strange scene." +"The Count of Morcerf's adventure exasperates the young +man." +"Have you anything to do with it?" +"It was through Haidee that the Chamber was informed of his +father's treason." +"Indeed?" said Morrel. "I had been told, but would not +credit it, that the Grecian slave I have seen with you here +in this very box was the daughter of Ali Pasha." +"It is true, nevertheless." +"Then," said Morrel, "I understand it all, and this scene +was premeditated." +"How so?" +"Yes. Albert wrote to request me to come to the opera, +doubtless that I might be a witness to the insult he meant +to offer you." +"Probably," said Monte Cristo with his imperturbable +tranquillity. +"But what shall you do with him?" +"With whom?" +"With Albert." +"What shall I do with Albert? As certainly, Maximilian, as I +now press your hand, I shall kill him before ten o'clock +tomorrow morning." Morrel, in his turn, took Monte Cristo's +hand in both of his, and he shuddered to feel how cold and +steady it was. +"Ah, Count," said he, "his father loves him so much" +"Do not speak to me of that," said Monte Cristo, with the +first movement of anger he had betrayed "I will make him +suffer." Morrel, amazed, let fall Monte Cristo's hand. +"Count, count" said he. +"Dear Maximilian," interrupted the count, "listen how +adorably Duprez is singing that line, +"O Mathilde idole de mon ame' +"I was the first to discover Duprez at Naples, and the first +to applaud him. Bravo, bravo" Morrel saw it was useless to +say more, and refrained. The curtain, which had risen at the +close of the scene with Albert, again fell, and a rap was +heard at the door. +"Come in," said Monte Cristo with a voice that betrayed not +the least emotion and immediately Beauchamp appeared. +"Goodevening, M. Beauchamp," said Monte Cristo, as if this +was the first time he had seen the journalist that evening +"be seated." +Beauchamp bowed, and, sitting down, "Sir," said he, "I just +now accompanied M. de Morcerf, as you saw." +"And that means," replied Monte Cristo, laughing, "that you +had, probably, just dined together. I am happy to see, M. +Beauchamp, that you are more sober than he was." +"Sir," said M. Beauchamp, "Albert was wrong, I acknowledge, +to betray so much anger, and I come, on my own account, to +apologize for him. And having done so, entirely on my own +account, be it understood, I would add that I believe you +too gentlemanly to refuse giving him some explanation +concerning your connection with Yanina. Then I will add two +words about the young Greek girl." Monte Cristo motioned him +to be silent. "Come," said he, laughing, "there are all my +hopes about to be destroyed." +"How so?" asked Beauchamp. +"Doubtless you wish to make me appear a very eccentric +character. I am, in your opinion, a Lara, a Manfred, a Lord +Ruthven then, just as I am arriving at the climax, you +defeat your own end, and seek to make an ordinary man of me. +You bring me down to your own level, and demand +explanations Indeed, M. Beauchamp, it is quite laughable." +"Yet," replied Beauchamp haughtily, "there are occasions +when probity commands" +"M. Beauchamp," interposed this strange man, "the Count of +Monte Cristo bows to none but the Count of Monte Cristo +himself. Say no more, I entreat you. I do what I please, M. +Beauchamp, and it is always well done." +"Sir," replied the young man, "honest men are not to be paid +with such coin. I require honorable guaranties." +"I am, sir, a living guaranty," replied Monte Cristo, +motionless, but with a threatening look "we have both blood +in our veins which we wish to shed that is our mutual +guaranty. Tell the viscount so, and that tomorrow, before +ten o'clock, I shall see what color his is." +"Then I have only to make arrangements for the duel," said +Beauchamp. +"It is quite immaterial to me," said Monte Cristo, "and it +was very unnecessary to disturb me at the opera for such a +trifle. In France people fight with the sword or pistol, in +the colonies with the carbine, in Arabia with the dagger. +Tell your client that, although I am the insulted party, in +order to carry out my eccentricity, I leave him the choice +of arms, and will accept without discussion, without +dispute, anything, even combat by drawing lots, which is +always stupid, but with me different from other people, as I +am sure to gain." +"Sure to gain" repeated Beauchamp, looking with amazement +at the count. +"Certainly," said Monte Cristo, slightly shrugging his +shoulders "otherwise I would not fight with M. de Morcerf. +I shall kill him I cannot help it. Only by a single line +this evening at my house let me know the arms and the hour +I do not like to be kept waiting." +"Pistols, then, at eight o'clock, in the Bois de Vincennes," +said Beauchamp, quite disconcerted, not knowing if he was +dealing with an arrogant braggadocio or a supernatural +being. +"Very well, sir," said Monte Cristo. "Now all that is +settled, do let me see the performance, and tell your friend +Albert not to come any more this evening he will hurt +himself with all his illchosen barbarisms let him go home +and go to sleep." Beauchamp left the box, perfectly amazed. +"Now," said Monte Cristo, turning towards Morrel, "I may +depend upon you, may I not?" +"Certainly," said Morrel, "I am at your service, count +still" +"What?" +"It is desirable I should know the real cause." +"That is to say, you would rather not?" +"No." +"The young man himself is acting blindfolded, and knows not +the true cause, which is known only to God and to me but I +give you my word, Morrel, that God, who does know it, will +be on our side." +"Enough," said Morrel "who is your second witness?" +"I know no one in Paris, Morrel, on whom I could confer that +honor besides you and your brother Emmanuel. Do you think +Emmanuel would oblige me?" +"I will answer for him, count." +"Well? that is all I require. Tomorrow morning, at seven +o'clock, you will be with me, will you not?" +"We will." +"Hush, the curtain is rising. Listen I never lose a note of +this opera if I can avoid it the music of William Tell is +so sweet." +Chapter +A Nocturnal Interview. +Monte Cristo waited, according to his usual custom, until +Duprez had sung his famous "Suivezmoi" then he rose and +went out. Morrel took leave of him at the door, renewing his +promise to be with him the next morning at seven o'clock, +and to bring Emmanuel. Then he stepped into his coupe, calm +and smiling, and was at home in five minutes. No one who +knew the count could mistake his expression when, on +entering, he said, "Ali, bring me my pistols with the ivory +cross." +Ali brought the box to his master, who examined the weapons +with a solicitude very natural to a man who is about to +intrust his life to a little powder and shot. These were +pistols of an especial pattern, which Monte Cristo had had +made for target practice in his own room. A cap was +sufficient to drive out the bullet, and from the adjoining +room no one would have suspected that the count was, as +sportsmen would say, keeping his hand in. He was just taking +one up and looking for the point to aim at on a little iron +plate which served him as a target, when his study door +opened, and Baptistin entered. Before he had spoken a word, +the count saw in the next room a veiled woman, who had +followed closely after Baptistin, and now, seeing the count +with a pistol in his hand and swords on the table, rushed +in. Baptistin looked at his master, who made a sign to him, +and he went out, closing the door after him. "Who are you, +madame?" said the count to the veiled woman. +The stranger cast one look around her, to be certain that +they were quite alone then bending as if she would have +knelt, and joining her hands, she said with an accent of +despair, "Edmond, you will not kill my son?" The count +retreated a step, uttered a slight exclamation, and let fall +the pistol he held. "What name did you pronounce then, +Madame de Morcerf?" said he. "Yours" cried she, throwing +back her veil, "yours, which I alone, perhaps, have not +forgotten. Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who is come +to you, it is Mercedes." +"Mercedes is dead, madame," said Monte Cristo "I know no +one now of that name." +"Mercedes lives, sir, and she remembers, for she alone +recognized you when she saw you, and even before she saw +you, by your voice, Edmond, by the simple sound of your +voice and from that moment she has followed your steps, +watched you, feared you, and she needs not to inquire what +hand has dealt the blow which now strikes M. de Morcerf." +"Fernand, do you mean?" replied Monte Cristo, with bitter +irony "since we are recalling names, let us remember them +all." Monte Cristo had pronounced the name of Fernand with +such an expression of hatred that Mercedes felt a thrill of +horror run through every vein. "You see, Edmond, I am not +mistaken, and have cause to say, "Spare my son'" +"And who told you, madame, that I have any hostile +intentions against your son?" +"No one, in truth but a mother has twofold sight. I guessed +all I followed him this evening to the opera, and, +concealed in a parquet box, have seen all." +"If you have seen all, madame, you know that the son of +Fernand has publicly insulted me," said Monte Cristo with +awful calmness. +"Oh, for pity's sake" +"You have seen that he would have thrown his glove in my +face if Morrel, one of my friends, had not stopped him." +"Listen to me, my son has also guessed who you are, he +attributes his father's misfortunes to you." +"Madame, you are mistaken, they are not misfortunes, it +is a punishment. It is not I who strike M. de Morcerf it is +providence which punishes him." +"And why do you represent providence?" cried Mercedes. "Why +do you remember when it forgets? What are Yanina and its +vizier to you, Edmond? What injury his Fernand Mondego done +you in betraying Ali Tepelini?" +"Ah, madame," replied Monte Cristo, "all this is an affair +between the French captain and the daughter of Vasiliki. It +does not concern me, you are right and if I have sworn to +revenge myself, it is not on the French captain, or the +Count of Morcerf, but on the fisherman Fernand, the husband +of Mercedes the Catalane." +"Ah, sir" cried the countess, "how terrible a vengeance for +a fault which fatality made me commit for I am the only +culprit, Edmond, and if you owe revenge to any one, it is to +me, who had not fortitude to bear your absence and my +solitude." +"But," exclaimed Monte Cristo, "why was I absent? And why +were you alone?" +"Because you had been arrested, Edmond, and were a +prisoner." +"And why was I arrested? Why was I a prisoner?" +"I do not know," said Mercedes. "You do not, madame at +least, I hope not. But I will tell you. I was arrested and +became a prisoner because, under the arbor of La Reserve, +the day before I was to marry you, a man named Danglars +wrote this letter, which the fisherman Fernand himself +posted." Monte Cristo went to a secretary, opened a drawer +by a spring, from which he took a paper which had lost its +original color, and the ink of which had become of a rusty +hue this he placed in the hands of Mercedes. It was +Danglars' letter to the king's attorney, which the Count of +Monte Cristo, disguised as a clerk from the house of Thomson + French, had taken from the file against Edmond Dantes, on +the day he had paid the two hundred thousand francs to M. de +Boville. Mercedes read with terror the following lines +"The king's attorney is informed by a friend to the throne +and religion that one Edmond Dantes, second in command on +board the Pharaon, this day arrived from Smyrna, after +having touched at Naples and PortoFerrajo, is the bearer of +a letter from Murat to the usurper, and of another letter +from the usurper to the Bonapartist club in Paris. Ample +corroboration of this statement may be obtained by arresting +the abovementioned Edmond Dantes, who either carries the +letter for Paris about with him, or has it at his father's +abode. Should it not be found in possession of either father +or son, then it will assuredly be discovered in the cabin +belonging to the said Dantes on board the Pharaon." +"How dreadful" said Mercedes, passing her hand across her +brow, moist with perspiration "and that letter" +"I bought it for two hundred thousand francs, madame," said +Monte Cristo "but that is a trifle, since it enables me to +justify myself to you." +"And the result of that letter" +"You well know, madame, was my arrest but you do not know +how long that arrest lasted. You do not know that I remained +for fourteen years within a quarter of a league of you, in a +dungeon in the Chateau d'If. You do not know that every day +of those fourteen years I renewed the vow of vengeance which +I had made the first day and yet I was not aware that you +had married Fernand, my calumniator, and that my father had +died of hunger" +"Can it be?" cried Mercedes, shuddering. +"That is what I heard on leaving my prison fourteen years +after I had entered it and that is why, on account of the +living Mercedes and my deceased father, I have sworn to +revenge myself on Fernand, and I have revenged myself." +"And you are sure the unhappy Fernand did that?" +"I am satisfied, madame, that he did what I have told you +besides, that is not much more odious than that a Frenchman +by adoption should pass over to the English that a Spaniard +by birth should have fought against the Spaniards that a +stipendiary of Ali should have betrayed and murdered Ali. +Compared with such things, what is the letter you have just +read? a lover's deception, which the woman who has +married that man ought certainly to forgive but not so the +lover who was to have married her. Well, the French did not +avenge themselves on the traitor, the Spaniards did not +shoot the traitor, Ali in his tomb left the traitor +unpunished but I, betrayed, sacrificed, buried, have risen +from my tomb, by the grace of God, to punish that man. He +sends me for that purpose, and here I am." The poor woman's +head and arms fell her legs bent under her, and she fell on +her knees. "Forgive, Edmond, forgive for my sake, who love +you still" +The dignity of the wife checked the fervor of the lover and +the mother. Her forehead almost touched the carpet, when the +count sprang forward and raised her. Then seated on a chair, +she looked at the manly countenance of Monte Cristo, on +which grief and hatred still impressed a threatening +expression. "Not crush that accursed race?" murmured he +"abandon my purpose at the moment of its accomplishment? +Impossible, madame, impossible" +"Edmond," said the poor mother, who tried every means, "when +I call you Edmond, why do you not call me Mercedes?" +"Mercedes" repeated Monte Cristo "Mercedes Well yes, you +are right that name has still its charms, and this is the +first time for a long period that I have pronounced it so +distinctly. Oh, Mercedes, I have uttered your name with the +sigh of melancholy, with the groan of sorrow, with the last +effort of despair I have uttered it when frozen with cold, +crouched on the straw in my dungeon I have uttered it, +consumed with heat, rolling on the stone floor of my prison. +Mercedes, I must revenge myself, for I suffered fourteen +years, fourteen years I wept, I cursed now I tell you, +Mercedes, I must revenge myself." +The count, fearing to yield to the entreaties of her he had +so ardently loved, called his sufferings to the assistance +of his hatred. "Revenge yourself, then, Edmond," cried the +poor mother "but let your vengeance fall on the culprits, +on him, on me, but not on my son" +"It is written in the good book," said Monte Cristo, "that +the sins of the fathers shall fall upon their children to +the third and fourth generation. Since God himself dictated +those words to his prophet, why should I seek to make myself +better than God?" +"Edmond," continued Mercedes, with her arms extended towards +the count, "since I first knew you, I have adored your name, +have respected your memory. Edmond, my friend, do not compel +me to tarnish that noble and pure image reflected +incessantly on the mirror of my heart. Edmond, if you knew +all the prayers I have addressed to God for you while I +thought you were living and since I have thought you must be +dead Yes, dead, alas I imagined your dead body buried at +the foot of some gloomy tower, or cast to the bottom of a +pit by hateful jailers, and I wept What could I do for you, +Edmond, besides pray and weep? Listen for ten years I +dreamed each night the same dream. I had been told that you +had endeavored to escape that you had taken the place of +another prisoner that you had slipped into the winding +sheet of a dead body that you had been thrown alive from +the top of the Chateau d'If, and that the cry you uttered as +you dashed upon the rocks first revealed to your jailers +that they were your murderers. Well, Edmond, I swear to you, +by the head of that son for whom I entreat your pity, +Edmond, for ten years I saw every night every detail of that +frightful tragedy, and for ten years I heard every night the +cry which awoke me, shuddering and cold. And I, too, Edmond +oh believe me guilty as I was oh, yes, I, too, +have suffered much" +"Have you known what it is to have your father starve to +death in your absence?" cried Monte Cristo, thrusting his +hands into his hair "have you seen the woman you loved +giving her hand to your rival, while you were perishing at +the bottom of a dungeon?" +"No," interrupted Mercedes, "but I have seen him whom I +loved on the point of murdering my son." Mercedes uttered +these words with such deep anguish, with an accent of such +intense despair, that Monte Cristo could not restrain a sob. +The lion was daunted the avenger was conquered. "What do +you ask of me?" said he, "your son's life? Well, he shall +live" Mercedes uttered a cry which made the tears start +from Monte Cristo's eyes but these tears disappeared almost +instantaneously, for, doubtless, God had sent some angel to +collect them far more precious were they in his eyes than +the richest pearls of Guzerat and Ophir. +"Oh," said she, seizing the count's hand and raising it to +her lips "oh, thank you, thank you, Edmond Now you are +exactly what I dreamt you were, the man I always loved. +Oh, now I may say so" +"So much the better," replied Monte Cristo "as that poor +Edmond will not have long to be loved by you. Death is about +to return to the tomb, the phantom to retire in darkness." +"What do you say, Edmond?" +"I say, since you command me, Mercedes, I must die." +"Die? and why so? Who talks of dying? Whence have you these +ideas of death?" +"You do not suppose that, publicly outraged in the face of a +whole theatre, in the presence of your friends and those of +your son challenged by a boy who will glory in my +forgiveness as if it were a victory you do not suppose +that I can for one moment wish to live. What I most loved +after you, Mercedes, was myself, my dignity, and that +strength which rendered me superior to other men that +strength was my life. With one word you have crushed it, and +I die." +"But the duel will not take place, Edmond, since you +forgive?" +"It will take place," said Monte Cristo, in a most solemn +tone "but instead of your son's blood to stain the ground, +mine will flow." Mercedes shrieked, and sprang towards Monte +Cristo, but, suddenly stopping, "Edmond," said she, "there +is a God above us, since you live and since I have seen you +again I trust to him from my heart. While waiting his +assistance I trust to your word you have said that my son +should live, have you not?" +"Yes, madame, he shall live," said Monte Cristo, surprised +that without more emotion Mercedes had accepted the heroic +sacrifice he made for her. Mercedes extended her hand to the +count. +"Edmond," said she, and her eyes were wet with tears while +looking at him to whom she spoke, "how noble it is of you, +how great the action you have just performed, how sublime to +have taken pity on a poor woman who appealed to you with +every chance against her, Alas, I am grown old with grief +more than with years, and cannot now remind my Edmond by a +smile, or by a look, of that Mercedes whom he once spent so +many hours in contemplating. Ah, believe me, Edmond, as I +told you, I too have suffered much I repeat, it is +melancholy to pass one's life without having one joy to +recall, without preserving a single hope but that proves +that all is not yet over. No, it is not finished I feel it +by what remains in my heart. Oh, I repeat it, Edmond what +you have just done is beautiful it is grand it is +sublime." +"Do you say so now, Mercedes? then what would you say if +you knew the extent of the sacrifice I make to you? Suppose +that the Supreme Being, after having created the world and +fertilized chaos, had paused in the work to spare an angel +the tears that might one day flow for mortal sins from her +immortal eyes suppose that when everything was in readiness +and the moment had come for God to look upon his work and +see that it was good suppose he had snuffed out the sun +and tossed the world back into eternal night then even +then, Mercedes, you could not imagine what I lose in +sacrificing my life at this moment." Mercedes looked at the +count in a way which expressed at the same time her +astonishment, her admiration, and her gratitude. Monte +Cristo pressed his forehead on his burning hands, as if his +brain could no longer bear alone the weight of its thoughts. +"Edmond," said Mercedes, "I have but one word more to say to +you." The count smiled bitterly. "Edmond," continued she, +"you will see that if my face is pale, if my eyes are dull, +if my beauty is gone if Mercedes, in short, no longer +resembles her former self in her features, you will see that +her heart is still the same. Adieu, then, Edmond I have +nothing more to ask of heaven I have seen you again, and +have found you as noble and as great as formerly you were. +Adieu, Edmond, adieu, and thank you." +But the count did not answer. Mercedes opened the door of +the study and had disappeared before he had recovered from +the painful and profound revery into which his thwarted +vengeance had plunged him. The clock of the Invalides struck +one when the carriage which conveyed Madame de Morcerf away +rolled on the pavement of the ChampsElysees, and made Monte +Cristo raise his head. "What a fool I was," said he, "not to +tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to avenge +myself" +Chapter +The Meeting. +After Mercedes had left Monte Cristo, he fell into profound +gloom. Around him and within him the flight of thought +seemed to have stopped his energetic mind slumbered, as the +body does after extreme fatigue. "What?" said he to himself, +while the lamp and the wax lights were nearly burnt out, and +the servants were waiting impatiently in the anteroom +"what? this edifice which I have been so long preparing, +which I have reared with so much care and toil, is to be +crushed by a single touch, a word, a breath Yes, this self, +of whom I thought so much, of whom I was so proud, who had +appeared so worthless in the dungeons of the Chateau d'If, +and whom I had succeeded in making so great, will be but a +lump of clay tomorrow. Alas, it is not the death of the +body I regret for is not the destruction of the vital +principle, the repose to which everything is tending, to +which every unhappy being aspires, is not this the repose +of matter after which I so long sighed, and which I was +seeking to attain by the painful process of starvation when +Faria appeared in my dungeon? What is death for me? One step +farther into rest, two, perhaps, into silence. +"No, it is not existence, then, that I regret, but the ruin +of projects so slowly carried out, so laboriously framed. +Providence is now opposed to them, when I most thought it +would be propitious. It is not God's will that they should +be accomplished. This burden, almost as heavy as a world, +which I had raised, and I had thought to bear to the end, +was too great for my strength, and I was compelled to lay it +down in the middle of my career. Oh, shall I then, again +become a fatalist, whom fourteen years of despair and ten of +hope had rendered a believer in providence? And all this +all this, because my heart, which I thought dead, was only +sleeping because it has awakened and has begun to beat +again, because I have yielded to the pain of the emotion +excited in my breast by a woman's voice. Yet," continued the +count, becoming each moment more absorbed in the +anticipation of the dreadful sacrifice for the morrow, which +Mercedes had accepted, "yet, it is impossible that so +nobleminded a woman should thus through selfishness consent +to my death when I am in the prime of life and strength it +is impossible that she can carry to such a point maternal +love, or rather delirium. There are virtues which become +crimes by exaggeration. No, she must have conceived some +pathetic scene she will come and throw herself between us +and what would be sublime here will there appear +ridiculous." The blush of pride mounted to the count's +forehead as this thought passed through his mind. +"Ridiculous?" repeated he "and the ridicule will fall on +me. I ridiculous? No, I would rather die." +By thus exaggerating to his own mind the anticipated +illfortune of the next day, to which he had condemned +himself by promising Mercedes to spare her son, the count at +last exclaimed, "Folly, folly, folly to carry generosity +so far as to put myself up as a mark for that young man to +aim at. He will never believe that my death was suicide and +yet it is important for the honor of my memory, and this +surely is not vanity, but a justifiable pride, it is +important the world should know that I have consented, by my +free will, to stop my arm, already raised to strike, and +that with the arm which has been so powerful against others +I have struck myself. It must be it shall be." +Seizing a pen, he drew a paper from a secret drawer in his +desk, and wrote at the bottom of the document which was no +other than his will, made since his arrival in Paris a sort +of codicil, clearly explaining the nature of his death. "I +do this, O my God," said he, with his eyes raised to heaven, +"as much for thy honor as for mine. I have during ten years +considered myself the agent of thy vengeance, and other +wretches, like Morcerf, Danglars, Villefort, even Morcerf +himself, must not imagine that chance has freed them from +their enemy. Let them know, on the contrary, that their +punishment, which had been decreed by providence, is only +delayed by my present determination, and although they +escape it in this world, it awaits them in another, and that +they are only exchanging time for eternity." +While he was thus agitated by gloomy uncertainties, +wretched waking dreams of grief, the first rays of +morning pierced his windows, and shone upon the pale blue +paper on which he had just inscribed his justification of +providence. It was just five o'clock in the morning when a +slight noise like a stifled sigh reached his ear. He turned +his head, looked around him, and saw no one but the sound +was repeated distinctly enough to convince him of its +reality. +He arose, and quietly opening the door of the drawingroom, +saw Haidee, who had fallen on a chair, with her arms hanging +down and her beautiful head thrown back. She had been +standing at the door, to prevent his going out without +seeing her, until sleep, which the young cannot resist, had +overpowered her frame, wearied as she was with watching. The +noise of the door did not awaken her, and Monte Cristo gazed +at her with affectionate regret. "She remembered that she +had a son," said he "and I forgot I had a daughter." Then, +shaking his head sorrowfully, "Poor Haidee," said he "she +wished to see me, to speak to me she has feared or guessed +something. Oh, I cannot go without taking leave of her I +cannot die without confiding her to some one." He quietly +regained his seat, and wrote under the other lines +"I bequeath to Maximilian Morrel, captain of Spahis, and +son of my former patron, Pierre Morrel, shipowner at +Marseilles, the sum of twenty millions, a part of which +may be offered to his sister Julia and brotherinlaw +Emmanuel, if he does not fear this increase of fortune may +mar their happiness. These twenty millions are concealed in +my grotto at Monte Cristo, of which Bertuccio knows the +secret. If his heart is free, and he will marry Haidee, the +daughter of Ali Pasha of Yanina, whom I have brought up with +the love of a father, and who has shown the love and +tenderness of a daughter for me, he will thus accomplish my +last wish. This will has already constituted Haidee heiress +of the rest of my fortune, consisting of lands, funds in +England, Austria, and Holland, furniture in my different +palaces and houses, and which without the twenty millions +and the legacies to my servants, may still amount to sixty +millions." +He was finishing the last line when a cry behind him made +him start, and the pen fell from his hand. "Haidee," said +he, "did you read it?" +"Oh, my lord," said she, "why are you writing thus at such +an hour? Why are you bequeathing all your fortune to me? Are +you going to leave me?" +"I am going on a journey, dear child," said Monte Cristo, +with an expression of infinite tenderness and melancholy +"and if any misfortune should happen to me" +The count stopped. "Well?" asked the young girl, with an +authoritative tone the count had never observed before, and +which startled him. "Well, if any misfortune happen to me," +replied Monte Cristo, "I wish my daughter to be happy." +Haidee smiled sorrowfully, and shook her head. "Do you think +of dying, my lord?" said she. +"The wise man, my child, has said, "It is good to think of +death.'" +"Well, if you die," said she, "bequeath your fortune to +others, for if you die I shall require nothing" and, taking +the paper, she tore it in four pieces, and threw it into the +middle of the room. Then, the effort having exhausted her +strength, she fell not asleep this time, but fainting on the +floor. The count leaned over her and raised her in his arms +and seeing that sweet pale face, those lovely eyes closed, +that beautiful form motionless and to all appearance +lifeless, the idea occurred to him for the first time, that +perhaps she loved him otherwise than as a daughter loves a +father. +"Alas," murmured he, with intense suffering, "I might, then, +have been happy yet." Then he carried Haidee to her room, +resigned her to the care of her attendants, and returning to +his study, which he shut quickly this time, he again copied +the destroyed will. As he was finishing, the sound of a +cabriolet entering the yard was heard. Monte Cristo +approached the window, and saw Maximilian and Emmanuel +alight. "Good," said he "it was time," and he sealed his +will with three seals. A moment afterwards he heard a noise +in the drawingroom, and went to open the door himself. +Morrel was there he had come twenty minutes before the time +appointed. "I am perhaps come too soon, count," said he, +"but I frankly acknowledge that I have not closed my eyes +all night, nor has any one in my house. I need to see you +strong in your courageous assurance, to recover myself." +Monte Cristo could not resist this proof of affection he +not only extended his hand to the young man, but flew to him +with open arms. "Morrel," said he, "it is a happy day for +me, to feel that I am beloved by such a man as you. +Goodmorning, Emmanuel you will come with me then, +Maximilian?" +"Did you doubt it?" said the young captain. +"But if I were wrong" +"I watched you during the whole scene of that challenge +yesterday I have been thinking of your firmness all night, +and I said to myself that justice must be on your side, or +man's countenance is no longer to be relied on." +"But, Morrel, Albert is your friend?" +"Simply an acquaintance, sir." +"You met on the same day you first saw me?" +"Yes, that is true but I should not have recollected it if +you had not reminded me." +"Thank you, Morrel." Then ringing the bell once, "Look." +said he to Ali, who came immediately, "take that to my +solicitor. It is my will, Morrel. When I am dead, you will +go and examine it." +"What?" said Morrel, "you dead?" +"Yes must I not be prepared for everything, dear friend? +But what did you do yesterday after you left me?" +"I went to Tortoni's, where, as I expected, I found +Beauchamp and ChateauRenaud. I own I was seeking them." +"Why, when all was arranged?" +"Listen, count the affair is serious and unavoidable." +"Did you doubt it" +"No the offence was public, and every one is already +talking of it." +"Well?" +"Well, I hoped to get an exchange of arms, to substitute +the sword for the pistol the pistol is blind." +"Have you succeeded?" asked Monte Cristo quickly, with an +imperceptible gleam of hope. +"No for your skill with the sword is so well known." +"Ah? who has betrayed me?" +"The skilful swordsman whom you have conquered." +"And you failed?" +"They positively refused." +"Morrel," said the count, "have you ever seen me fire a +pistol?" +"Never." +"Well, we have time look." Monte Cristo took the pistols he +held in his hand when Mercedes entered, and fixing an ace of +clubs against the iron plate, with four shots he +successively shot off the four sides of the club. At each +shot Morrel turned pale. He examined the bullets with which +Monte Cristo performed this dexterous feat, and saw that +they were no larger than buckshot. "It is astonishing," said +he. "Look, Emmanuel." Then turning towards Monte Cristo, +"Count," said he, "in the name of all that is dear to you, I +entreat you not to kill Albert the unhappy youth has a +mother." +"You are right," said Monte Cristo "and I have none." These +words were uttered in a tone which made Morrel shudder. "You +are the offended party, count." +"Doubtless what does that imply?" +"That you will fire first." +"I fire first?" +"Oh, I obtained, or rather claimed that we had conceded +enough for them to yield us that." +"And at what distance?" +"Twenty paces." A smile of terrible import passed over the +count's lips. "Morrel," said he, "do not forget what you +have just seen." +"The only chance for Albert's safety, then, will arise from +your emotion." +"I suffer from emotion?" said Monte Cristo. +"Or from your generosity, my friend to so good a marksman +as you are, I may say what would appear absurd to another." +"What is that?" +"Break his arm wound him but do not kill him." +"I will tell you, Morrel," said the count, "that I do not +need entreating to spare the life of M. de Morcerf he shall +be so well spared, that he will return quietly with his two +friends, while I" +"And you?" +"That will be another thing I shall be brought home." +"No, no," cried Maximilian, quite unable to restrain his +feelings. +"As I told you, my dear Morrel, M. de Morcerf will kill me." +Morrel looked at him in utter amazement. "But what has +happened, then, since last evening, count?" +"The same thing that happened to Brutus the night before the +battle of Philippi I have seen a ghost." +"And that ghost" +"Told me, Morrel, that I had lived long enough." Maximilian +and Emmanuel looked at each other. Monte Cristo drew out his +watch. "Let us go," said he "it is five minutes past seven, +and the appointment was for eight o'clock." A carriage was +in readiness at the door. Monte Cristo stepped into it with +his two friends. He had stopped a moment in the passage to +listen at a door, and Maximilian and Emmanuel, who had +considerately passed forward a few steps, thought they heard +him answer by a sigh to a sob from within. As the clock +struck eight they drove up to the place of meeting. "We are +first," said Morrel, looking out of the window. "Excuse me, +sir," said Baptistin, who had followed his master with +indescribable terror, "but I think I see a carriage down +there under the trees." +Monte Cristo sprang lightly from the carriage, and offered +his hand to assist Emmanuel and Maximilian. The latter +retained the count's hand between his. "I like," said he, +"to feel a hand like this, when its owner relies on the +goodness of his cause." +"It seems to me," said Emmanuel, "that I see two young men +down there, who are evidently, waiting." Monte Cristo drew +Morrel a step or two behind his brotherinlaw. +"Maximilian," said he, "are your affections disengaged?" +Morrel looked at Monte Cristo with astonishment. "I do not +seek your confidence, my dear friend. I only ask you a +simple question answer it that is all I require." +"I love a young girl, count." +"Do you love her much?" +"More than my life." +"Another hope defeated" said the count. Then, with a sigh, +"Poor Haidee" murmured he. +"To tell the truth, count, if I knew less of you, I should +think that you were less brave than you are." +"Because I sigh when thinking of some one I am leaving? +Come, Morrel, it is not like a soldier to be so bad a judge +of courage. Do I regret life? What is it to me, who have +passed twenty years between life and death? Moreover, do not +alarm yourself, Morrel this weakness, if it is such, is +betrayed to you alone. I know the world is a drawingroom, +from which we must retire politely and honestly that is, +with a bow, and our debts of honor paid." +"That is to the purpose. Have you brought your arms?" +"I? what for? I hope these gentlemen have theirs." +"I will inquire," said Morrel. +"Do but make no treaty you understand me?" +"You need not fear." Morrel advanced towards Beauchamp and +ChateauRenaud, who, seeing his intention, came to meet him. +The three young men bowed to each other courteously, if not +affably. +"Excuse me, gentlemen," said Morrel, "but I do not see M. de +Morcerf." +"He sent us word this morning," replied ChateauRenaud, +"that he would meet us on the ground." +"Ah," said Morrel. Beauchamp pulled out his watch. "It is +only five minutes past eight," said he to Morrel "there is +not much time lost yet." +"Oh, I made no allusion of that kind," replied Morrel. +"There is a carriage coming," said ChateauRenaud. It +advanced rapidly along one of the avenues leading towards +the open space where they were assembled. "You are doubtless +provided with pistols, gentlemen? M. de Monte Cristo yields +his right of using his." +"We had anticipated this kindness on the part of the count," +said Beauchamp, "and I have brought some weapons which I +bought eight or ten days since, thinking to want them on a +similar occasion. They are quite new, and have not yet been +used. Will you examine them." +"Oh, M. Beauchamp, if you assure me that M. de Morcerf does +not know these pistols, you may readily believe that your +word will be quite sufficient." +"Gentlemen," said ChateauRenaud, "it is not Morcerf coming +in that carriage faith, it is Franz and Debray" The two +young men he announced were indeed approaching. "What chance +brings you here, gentlemen?" said ChateauRenaud, shaking +hands with each of them. "Because," said Debray, "Albert +sent this morning to request us to come." Beauchamp and +ChateauRenaud exchanged looks of astonishment. "I think I +understand his reason," said Morrel. +"What is it?" +"Yesterday afternoon I received a letter from M. de Morcerf, +begging me to attend the opera." +"And I," said Debray. +"And I also," said Franz. +"And we, too," added Beauchamp and ChateauRenaud. +"Having wished you all to witness the challenge, he now +wishes you to be present at the combat." +"Exactly so," said the young men "you have probably guessed +right." +"But, after all these arrangements, he does not come +himself," said ChateauRenaud. "Albert is ten minutes after +time." +"There he comes," said Beauchamp, "on horseback, at full +gallop, followed by a servant." +"How imprudent," said ChateauRenaud, "to come on horseback +to fight a duel with pistols, after all the instructions I +had given him." +"And besides," said Beauchamp, "with a collar above his +cravat, an open coat and white waistcoat Why has he not +painted a spot upon his heart? it would have been more +simple." Meanwhile Albert had arrived within ten paces of +the group formed by the five young men. He jumped from his +horse, threw the bridle on his servant's arms, and joined +them. He was pale, and his eyes were red and swollen it was +evident that he had not slept. A shade of melancholy gravity +overspread his countenance, which was not natural to him. "I +thank you, gentlemen," said he, "for having complied with my +request I feel extremely grateful for this mark of +friendship." Morrel had stepped back as Morcerf approached, +and remained at a short distance. "And to you also, M. +Morrel, my thanks are due. Come, there cannot be too many." +"Sir," said Maximilian, "you are not perhaps aware that I am +M. de Monte Cristo's friend?" +"I was not sure, but I thought it might be so. So much the +better the more honorable men there are here the better I +shall be satisfied." +"M. Morrel," said ChateauRenaud, "will you apprise the +Count of Monte Cristo that M. de Morcerf is arrived, and we +are at his disposal?" Morrel was preparing to fulfil his +commission. Beauchamp had meanwhile drawn the box of pistols +from the carriage. "Stop, gentlemen," said Albert "I have +two words to say to the Count of Monte Cristo." +"In private?" asked Morrel. +"No, sir before all who are here." +Albert's witnesses looked at each other. Franz and Debray +exchanged some words in a whisper, and Morrel, rejoiced at +this unexpected incident, went to fetch the count, who was +walking in a retired path with Emmanuel. "What does he want +with me?" said Monte Cristo. +"I do not know, but he wishes to speak to you." +"Ah?" said Monte Cristo, "I trust he is not going to tempt +me by some fresh insult" +"I do not think that such is his intention," said Morrel. +The count advanced, accompanied by Maximilian and Emmanuel. +His calm and serene look formed a singular contrast to +Albert's griefstricken face, who approached also, followed +by the other four young men. When at three paces distant +from each other, Albert and the count stopped. +"Approach, gentlemen," said Albert "I wish you not to lose +one word of what I am about to have the honor of saying to +the Count of Monte Cristo, for it must be repeated by you to +all who will listen to it, strange as it may appear to you." +"Proceed, sir," said the count. +"Sir," said Albert, at first with a tremulous voice, but +which gradually became firmer, "I reproached you with +exposing the conduct of M. de Morcerf in Epirus, for guilty +as I knew he was, I thought you had no right to punish him +but I have since learned that you had that right. It is not +Fernand Mondego's treachery towards Ali Pasha which induces +me so readily to excuse you, but the treachery of the +fisherman Fernand towards you, and the almost unheardof +miseries which were its consequences and I say, and +proclaim it publicly, that you were justified in revenging +yourself on my father, and I, his son, thank you for not +using greater severity." +Had a thunderbolt fallen in the midst of the spectators of +this unexpected scene, it would not have surprised them more +than did Albert's declaration. As for Monte Cristo, his eyes +slowly rose towards heaven with an expression of infinite +gratitude. He could not understand how Albert's fiery +nature, of which he had seen so much among the Roman +bandits, had suddenly stooped to this humiliation. He +recognized the influence of Mercedes, and saw why her noble +heart had not opposed the sacrifice she knew beforehand +would be useless. "Now, sir," said Albert, "if you think my +apology sufficient, pray give me your hand. Next to the +merit of infallibility which you appear to possess, I rank +that of candidly acknowledging a fault. But this confession +concerns me only. I acted well as a man, but you have acted +better than man. An angel alone could have saved one of us +from death that angel came from heaven, if not to make us +friends which, alas, fatality renders impossible, at least +to make us esteem each other." +Monte Cristo, with moistened eye, heaving breast, and lips +half open, extended to Albert a hand which the latter +pressed with a sentiment resembling respectful fear. +"Gentlemen," said he, "M. de Monte Cristo receives my +apology. I had acted hastily towards him. Hasty actions are +generally bad ones. Now my fault is repaired. I hope the +world will not call me cowardly for acting as my conscience +dictated. But if any one should entertain a false opinion of +me," added he, drawing himself up as if he would challenge +both friends and enemies, "I shall endeavor to correct his +mistake." +"What happened during the night?" asked Beauchamp of +ChateauRenaud "we appear to make a very sorry figure +here." +"In truth, what Albert has just done is either very +despicable or very noble," replied the baron. +"What can it mean?" said Debray to Franz. "The Count of +Monte Cristo acts dishonorably to M. de Morcerf, and is +justified by his son Had I ten Yaninas in my family, I +should only consider myself the more bound to fight ten +times." As for Monte Cristo, his head was bent down, his +arms were powerless. Bowing under the weight of twentyfour +years' reminiscences, he thought not of Albert, of +Beauchamp, of ChateauRenaud, or of any of that group but +he thought of that courageous woman who had come to plead +for her son's life, to whom he had offered his, and who had +now saved it by the revelation of a dreadful family secret, +capable of destroying forever in that young man's heart +every feeling of filial piety. +"Providence still," murmured he "now only am I fully +convinced of being the emissary of God" +Chapter +Mother and Son. +The Count of Monte Cristo bowed to the five young men with a +melancholy and dignified smile, and got into his carriage +with Maximilian and Emmanuel. Albert, Beauchamp, and +ChateauRenaud remained alone. Albert looked at his two +friends, not timidly, but in a way that appeared to ask +their opinion of what he had just done. +"Indeed, my dear friend," said Beauchamp first, who had +either the most feeling or the least dissimulation, "allow +me to congratulate you this is a very unhopedfor +conclusion of a very disagreeable affair." +Albert remained silent and wrapped in thought. +ChateauRenaud contented himself with tapping his boot with +his flexible cane. "Are we not going?" said he, after this +embarrassing silence. "When you please," replied Beauchamp +"allow me only to compliment M. de Morcerf, who has given +proof today of rare chivalric generosity." +"Oh, yes," said ChateauRenaud. +"It is magnificent," continued Beauchamp, "to be able to +exercise so much selfcontrol" +"Assuredly as for me, I should have been incapable of it," +said ChateauRenaud, with most significant coolness. +"Gentlemen," interrupted Albert, "I think you did not +understand that something very serious had passed between M. +de Monte Cristo and myself." +"Possibly, possibly," said Beauchamp immediately "but every +simpleton would not be able to understand your heroism, and +sooner or later you will find yourself compelled to explain +it to them more energetically than would be convenient to +your bodily health and the duration of your life. May I give +you a friendly counsel? Set out for Naples, the Hague, or +St. Petersburg calm countries, where the point of honor +is better understood than among our hotheaded Parisians. +Seek quietude and oblivion, so that you may return peaceably +to France after a few years. Am I not right, M. de +ChateauRenaud?" +"That is quite my opinion," said the gentleman "nothing +induces serious duels so much as a duel forsworn." +"Thank you, gentlemen," replied Albert, with a smile of +indifference "I shall follow your advice not because you +give it, but because I had before intended to quit France. I +thank you equally for the service you have rendered me in +being my seconds. It is deeply engraved on my heart, and, +after what you have just said, I remember that only." +ChateauRenaud and Beauchamp looked at each other the +impression was the same on both of them, and the tone in +which Morcerf had just expressed his thanks was so +determined that the position would have become embarrassing +for all if the conversation had continued. +"Goodby, Albert," said Beauchamp suddenly, carelessly +extending his hand to the young man. The latter did not +appear to arouse from his lethargy in fact, he did not +notice the offered hand. "Goodby," said ChateauRenaud in +his turn, keeping his little cane in his left hand, and +saluting with his right. Albert's lips scarcely whispered +"Goodby," but his look was more explicit it expressed a +whole poem of restrained anger, proud disdain, and generous +indignation. He preserved his melancholy and motionless +position for some time after his two friends had regained +their carriage then suddenly unfastening his horse from the +little tree to which his servant had tied it, he mounted and +galloped off in the direction of Paris. +In a quarter of an hour he was entering the house in the Rue +du Helder. As he alighted, he thought he saw his father's +pale face behind the curtain of the count's bedroom. Albert +turned away his head with a sigh, and went to his own +apartments. He cast one lingering look on all the luxuries +which had rendered life so easy and so happy since his +infancy he looked at the pictures, whose faces seemed to +smile, and the landscapes, which appeared painted in +brighter colors. Then he took away his mother's portrait, +with its oaken frame, leaving the gilt frame from which he +took it black and empty. Then he arranged all his beautiful +Turkish arms, his fine English guns, his Japanese china, his +cups mounted in silver, his artistic bronzes by Feucheres +and Barye examined the cupboards, and placed the key in +each threw into a drawer of his secretary, which he left +open, all the pocketmoney he had about him, and with it the +thousand fancy jewels from his vases and his jewelboxes +then he made an exact inventory of everything, and placed it +in the most conspicuous part of the table, after putting +aside the books and papers which had collected there. +At the beginning of this work, his servant, notwithstanding +orders to the contrary, came to his room. "What do you +want?" asked he, with a more sorrowful than angry tone. +"Pardon me, sir," replied the valet "you had forbidden me +to disturb you, but the Count of Morcerf has called me." +"Well" said Albert. +"I did not like to go to him without first seeing you." +"Why?" +"Because the count is doubtless aware that I accompanied you +to the meeting this morning." +"It is probable," said Albert. +"And since he has sent for me, it is doubtless to question +me on what happened there. What must I answer?" +"The truth." +"Then I shall say the duel did not take place?" +"You will say I apologized to the Count of Monte Cristo. +Go." +The valet bowed and retired, and Albert returned to his +inventory. As he was finishing this work, the sound of +horses prancing in the yard, and the wheels of a carriage +shaking his window, attracted his attention. He approached +the window, and saw his father get into it, and drive away. +The door was scarcely closed when Albert bent his steps to +his mother's room and, no one being there to announce him, +he advanced to her bedchamber, and distressed by what he +saw and guessed, stopped for one moment at the door. As if +the same idea had animated these two beings, Mercedes was +doing the same in her apartments that he had just done in +his. Everything was in order, laces, dresses, jewels, +linen, money, all were arranged in the drawers, and the +countess was carefully collecting the keys. Albert saw all +these preparations and understood them, and exclaiming, "My +mother" he threw his arms around her neck. +The artist who could have depicted the expression of these +two countenances would certainly have made of them a +beautiful picture. All these proofs of an energetic +resolution, which Albert did not fear on his own account, +alarmed him for his mother. "What are you doing?" asked he. +"What were you doing?" replied she. +"Oh, my mother" exclaimed Albert, so overcome he could +scarcely speak "it is not the same with you and me you +cannot have made the same resolution I have, for I have come +to warn you that I bid adieu to your house, and and to +you." +"I also," replied Mercedes, "am going, and I acknowledge I +had depended on your accompanying me have I deceived +myself?" +"Mother," said Albert with firmness. "I cannot make you +share the fate I have planned for myself. I must live +henceforth without rank and fortune, and to begin this hard +apprenticeship I must borrow from a friend the loaf I shall +eat until I have earned one. So, my dear mother, I am going +at once to ask Franz to lend me the small sum I shall +require to supply my present wants." +"You, my poor child, suffer poverty and hunger? Oh, do not +say so it will break my resolutions." +"But not mine, mother," replied Albert. "I am young and +strong I believe I am courageous, and since yesterday I +have learned the power of will. Alas, my dear mother, some +have suffered so much, and yet live, and have raised a new +fortune on the ruin of all the promises of happiness which +heaven had made them on the fragments of all the hope +which God had given them I have seen that, mother I know +that from the gulf in which their enemies have plunged them +they have risen with so much vigor and glory that in their +turn they have ruled their former conquerors, and have +punished them. No. mother from this moment I have done with +the past, and accept nothing from it not even a name, +because you can understand that your son cannot bear the +name of a man who ought to blush for it before another." +"Albert, my child," said Mercedes, "if I had a stronger +heart that is the counsel I would have given you your +conscience has spoken when my voice became too weak listen +to its dictates. You had friends, Albert break off their +acquaintance. But do not despair you have life before you, +my dear Albert, for you are yet scarcely twentytwo years +old and as a pure heart like yours wants a spotless name, +take my father's it was Herrera. I am sure, my dear +Albert, whatever may be your career, you will soon render +that name illustrious. Then, my son, return to the world +still more brilliant because of your former sorrows and if +I am wrong, still let me cherish these hopes, for I have no +future to look forward to. For me the grave opens when I +pass the threshold of this house." +"I will fulfil all your wishes, my dear mother," said the +young man. "Yes, I share your hopes the anger of heaven +will not pursue us, since you are pure and I am innocent. +But, since our resolution is formed, let us act promptly. M. +de Morcerf went out about half an hour ago the opportunity +is favorable to avoid an explanation." +"I am ready, my son," said Mercedes. Albert ran to fetch a +carriage. He recollected that there was a small furnished +house to let in the Rue de Saints Peres, where his mother +would find a humble but decent lodging, and thither he +intended conducting the countess. As the carriage stopped at +the door, and Albert was alighting, a man approached and +gave him a letter. Albert recognized the bearer. "From the +count," said Bertuccio. Albert took the letter, opened, and +read it, then looked round for Bertuccio, but he was gone. +He returned to Mercedes with tears in his eyes and heaving +breast, and without uttering a word he gave her the letter. +Mercedes read +Albert, While showing you that I have discovered your +plans, I hope also to convince you of my delicacy. You are +free, you leave the count's house, and you take your mother +to your home but reflect, Albert, you owe her more than +your poor noble heart can pay her. Keep the struggle for +yourself, bear all the suffering, but spare her the trial of +poverty which must accompany your first efforts for she +deserves not even the shadow of the misfortune which has +this day fallen on her, and providence is not willing that +the innocent should suffer for the guilty. I know you are +going to leave the Rue du Helder without taking anything +with you. Do not seek to know how I discovered it I know it +that is sufficient. +Now, listen, Albert. Twentyfour years ago I returned, proud +and joyful, to my country. I had a betrothed, Albert, a +lovely girl whom I adored, and I was bringing to my +betrothed a hundred and fifty louis, painfully amassed by +ceaseless toil. This money was for her I destined it for +her, and, knowing the treachery of the sea I buried our +treasure in the little garden of the house my father lived +in at Marseilles, on the Allees de Meillan. Your mother, +Albert, knows that poor house well. A short time since I +passed through Marseilles, and went to see the old place, +which revived so many painful recollections and in the +evening I took a spade and dug in the corner of the garden +where I had concealed my treasure. The iron box was there +no one had touched it under a beautiful figtree my +father had planted the day I was born, which overshadowed +the spot. Well, Albert, this money, which was formerly +designed to promote the comfort and tranquillity of the +woman I adored, may now, through strange and painful +circumstances, be devoted to the same purpose. Oh, feel for +me, who could offer millions to that poor woman, but who +return her only the piece of black bread forgotten under my +poor roof since the day I was torn from her I loved. You are +a generous man, Albert, but perhaps you may be blinded by +pride or resentment if you refuse me, if you ask another +for what I have a right to offer you, I will say it is +ungenerous of you to refuse the life of your mother at the +hands of a man whose father was allowed by your father to +die in all the horrors of poverty and despair. +Albert stood pale and motionless to hear what his mother +would decide after she had finished reading this letter. +Mercedes turned her eyes with an ineffable look towards +heaven. "I accept it," said she "he has a right to pay the +dowry, which I shall take with me to some convent" Putting +the letter in her bosom, she took her son's arm, and with a +firmer step than she even herself expected she went +downstairs. +Chapter +The Suicide. +Meanwhile Monte Cristo had also returned to town with +Emmanuel and Maximilian. Their return was cheerful. Emmanuel +did not conceal his joy at the peaceful termination of the +affair, and was loud in his expressions of delight. Morrel, +in a corner of the carriage, allowed his brotherinlaw's +gayety to expend itself in words, while he felt equal inward +joy, which, however, betrayed itself only in his +countenance. At the Barriere du Trone they met Bertuccio, +who was waiting there, motionless as a sentinel at his post. +Monte Cristo put his head out of the window, exchanged a few +words with him in a low tone, and the steward disappeared. +"Count," said Emmanuel, when they were at the end of the +Place Royale, "put me down at my door, that my wife may not +have a single moment of needless anxiety on my account or +yours." +"If it were not ridiculous to make a display of our triumph, +I would invite the count to our house besides that, he +doubtless has some trembling heart to comfort. So we will +take leave of our friend, and let him hasten home." +"Stop a moment," said Monte Cristo "do not let me lose both +my companions. Return, Emmanuel, to your charming wife, and +present my best compliments to her and do you, Morrel, +accompany me to the Champs Elysees." +"Willingly," said Maximilian "particularly as I have +business in that quarter." +"Shall we wait breakfast for you?" asked Emmanuel. +"No," replied the young man. The door was closed, and the +carriage proceeded. "See what good fortune I brought you" +said Morrel, when he was alone with the count. "Have you not +thought so?" +"Yes," said Monte Cristo "for that reason I wished to keep +you near me." +"It is miraculous" continued Morrel, answering his own +thoughts. +"What?" said Monte Cristo. +"What has just happened." +"Yes," said the Count, "you are right it is miraculous." +"For Albert is brave," resumed Morrel. +"Very brave," said Monte Cristo "I have seen him sleep with +a sword suspended over his head." +"And I know he has fought two duels," said Morrel. "How can +you reconcile that with his conduct this morning?" +"All owing to your influence," replied Monte Cristo, +smiling. +"It is well for Albert he is not in the army," said Morrel. +"Why?" +"An apology on the ground" said the young captain, shaking +his head. +"Come," said the count mildly, "do not entertain the +prejudices of ordinary men, Morrel Acknowledge, that if +Albert is brave, he cannot be a coward he must then have +had some reason for acting as he did this morning, and +confess that his conduct is more heroic than otherwise." +"Doubtless, doubtless," said Morrel "but I shall say, like +the Spaniard, "He has not been so brave today as he was +yesterday.'" +"You will breakfast with me, will you not, Morrel?" said the +count, to turn the conversation. +"No I must leave you at ten o'clock." +"Your engagement was for breakfast, then?" said the count. +Morrel smiled, and shook his head. "Still you must breakfast +somewhere." +"But if I am not hungry?" said the young man. +"Oh," said the count, "I only know two things which destroy +the appetite, grief and as I am happy to see you very +cheerful, it is not that and love. Now after what you +told me this morning of your heart, I may believe" +"Well, count," replied Morrel gayly, "I will not dispute +it." +"But you will not make me your confidant, Maximilian?" said +the count, in a tone which showed how gladly he would have +been admitted to the secret. +"I showed you this morning that I had a heart, did I not, +count?" Monte Cristo only answered by extending his hand to +the young man. "Well," continued the latter, "since that +heart is no longer with you in the Bois de Vincennes, it is +elsewhere, and I must go and find it." +"Go," said the count deliberately "go, dear friend, but +promise me if you meet with any obstacle to remember that I +have some power in this world, that I am happy to use that +power in the behalf of those I love, and that I love you, +Morrel." +"I will remember it," said the young man, "as selfish +children recollect their parents when they want their aid. +When I need your assistance, and the moment arrives, I will +come to you, count." +"Well, I rely upon your promise. Goodby, then." +"Goodby, till we meet again." They had arrived in the +Champs Elysees. Monte Cristo opened the carriagedoor, +Morrel sprang out on the pavement, Bertuccio was waiting on +the steps. Morrel disappeared down the Avenue de Marigny, +and Monte Cristo hastened to join Bertuccio. +"Well?" asked he. +"She is going to leave her house," said the steward. +"And her son?" +"Florentin, his valet, thinks he is going to do the same." +"Come this way." Monte Cristo took Bertuccio into his study, +wrote the letter we have seen, and gave it to the steward. +"Go," said he quickly. "But first, let Haidee be informed +that I have returned." +"Here I am," said the young girl, who at the sound of the +carriage had run downstairs and whose face was radiant with +joy at seeing the count return safely. Bertuccio left. Every +transport of a daughter finding a father, all the delight of +a mistress seeing an adored lover, were felt by Haidee +during the first moments of this meeting, which she had so +eagerly expected. Doubtless, although less evident, Monte +Cristo's joy was not less intense. Joy to hearts which have +suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long +drought both the heart and the ground absorb that +beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is +outwardly apparent. +Monte Cristo was beginning to think, what he had not for a +long time dared to believe, that there were two Mercedes in +the world, and he might yet be happy. His eye, elate with +happiness, was reading eagerly the tearful gaze of Haidee, +when suddenly the door opened. The count knit his brow. "M. +de Morcerf" said Baptistin, as if that name sufficed for +his excuse. In fact, the count's face brightened. +"Which," asked he, "the viscount or the count?" +"The count." +"Oh," exclaimed Haidee, "is it not yet over?" +"I know not if it is finished, my beloved child," said Monte +Cristo, taking the young girl's hands "but I do know you +have nothing more to fear." +"But it is the wretched" +"That man cannot injure me, Haidee," said Monte Cristo "it +was his son alone that there was cause to fear." +"And what I have suffered," said the young girl, "you shall +never know, my lord." Monte Cristo smiled. "By my father's +tomb," said he, extending his hand over the head of the +young girl, "I swear to you, Haidee, that if any misfortune +happens, it will not be to me." +"I believe you, my lord, as implicitly as if God had spoken +to me," said the young girl, presenting her forehead to him. +Monte Cristo pressed on that pure beautiful forehead a kiss +which made two hearts throb at once, the one violently, the +other heavily. "Oh," murmured the count, "shall I then be +permitted to love again? Ask M. de Morcerf into the +drawingroom," said he to Baptistin, while he led the +beautiful Greek girl to a private staircase. +We must explain this visit, which although expected by Monte +Cristo, is unexpected to our readers. While Mercedes, as we +have said, was making a similar inventory of her property to +Albert's, while she was arranging her jewels, shutting her +drawers, collecting her keys, to leave everything in perfect +order, she did not perceive a pale and sinister face at a +glass door which threw light into the passage, from which +everything could be both seen and heard. He who was thus +looking, without being heard or seen, probably heard and saw +all that passed in Madame de Morcerf's apartments. From that +glass door the palefaced man went to the count's bedroom +and raised with a constricted hand the curtain of a window +overlooking the courtyard. He remained there ten minutes, +motionless and dumb, listening to the beating of his own +heart. For him those ten minutes were very long. It was then +Albert, returning from his meeting with the count, perceived +his father watching for his arrival behind a curtain, and +turned aside. The count's eye expanded he knew Albert had +insulted the count dreadfully, and that in every country in +the world such an insult would lead to a deadly duel. Albert +returned safely then the count was revenged. +An indescribable ray of joy illumined that wretched +countenance like the last ray of the sun before it +disappears behind the clouds which bear the aspect, not of a +downy couch, but of a tomb. But as we have said, he waited +in vain for his son to come to his apartment with the +account of his triumph. He easily understood why his son did +not come to see him before he went to avenge his father's +honor but when that was done, why did not his son come and +throw himself into his arms? +It was then, when the count could not see Albert, that he +sent for his servant, who he knew was authorized not to +conceal anything from him. Ten minutes afterwards, General +Morcerf was seen on the steps in a black coat with a +military collar, black pantaloons, and black gloves. He had +apparently given previous orders, for as he reached the +bottom step his carriage came from the coachhouse ready for +him. The valet threw into the carriage his military cloak, +in which two swords were wrapped, and, shutting the door, he +took his seat by the side of the coachman. The coachman +stooped down for his orders. +"To the Champs Elysees," said the general "the Count of +Monte Cristo's. Hurry" The horses bounded beneath the whip +and in five minutes they stopped before the count's door. M. +de Morcerf opened the door himself, and as the carriage +rolled away he passed up the walk, rang, and entered the +open door with his servant. +A moment afterwards, Baptistin announced the Count of +Morcerf to Monte Cristo, and the latter, leading Haidee +aside, ordered that Morcerf be asked into the drawingroom. +The general was pacing the room the third time when, in +turning, he perceived Monte Cristo at the door. "Ah, it is +M. de Morcerf," said Monte Cristo quietly "I thought I had +not heard aright." +"Yes, it is I," said the count, whom a frightful contraction +of the lips prevented from articulating freely. +"May I know the cause which procures me the pleasure of +seeing M. de Morcerf so early?" +"Had you not a meeting with my son this morning?" asked the +general. +"I had," replied the count. +"And I know my son had good reasons to wish to fight with +you, and to endeavor to kill you." +"Yes, sir, he had very good ones but you see that in spite +of them he has not killed me, and did not even fight." +"Yet he considered you the cause of his father's dishonor, +the cause of the fearful ruin which has fallen on my house." +"It is true, sir," said Monte Cristo with his dreadful +calmness "a secondary cause, but not the principal." +"Doubtless you made, then, some apology or explanation?" +"I explained nothing, and it is he who apologized to me." +"But to what do you attribute this conduct?" +"To the conviction, probably, that there was one more guilty +than I." +"And who was that?" +"His father." +"That may be," said the count, turning pale "but you know +the guilty do not like to find themselves convicted." +"I know it, and I expected this result." +"You expected my son would be a coward?" cried the count. +"M. Albert de Morcerf is no coward" said Monte Cristo. +"A man who holds a sword in his hand, and sees a mortal +enemy within reach of that sword, and does not fight, is a +coward Why is he not here that I may tell him so?" +"Sir." replied Monte Cristo coldly, "I did not expect that +you had come here to relate to me your little family +affairs. Go and tell M. Albert that, and he may know what to +answer you." +"Oh, no, no," said the general, smiling faintly, "I did not +come for that purpose you are right. I came to tell you +that I also look upon you as my enemy. I came to tell you +that I hate you instinctively that it seems as if I had +always known you, and always hated you and, in short, since +the young people of the present day will not fight, it +remains for us to do so. Do you think so, sir?" +"Certainly. And when I told you I had foreseen the result, +it is the honor of your visit I alluded to." +"So much the better. Are you prepared?" +"Yes, sir." +"You know that we shall fight till one of us is dead," said +the general, whose teeth were clinched with rage. "Until one +of us dies," repeated Monte Cristo, moving his head slightly +up and down. +"Let us start, then we need no witnesses." +"Very true," said Monte Cristo "it is unnecessary, we know +each other so well" +"On the contrary," said the count, "we know so little of +each other." +"Indeed?" said Monte Cristo, with the same indomitable +coolness "let us see. Are you not the soldier Fernand who +deserted on the eve of the battle of Waterloo? Are you not +the Lieutenant Fernand who served as guide and spy to the +French army in Spain? Are you not the Captain Fernand who +betrayed, sold, and murdered his benefactor, Ali? And have +not all these Fernands, united, made LieutenantGeneral, the +Count of Morcerf, peer of France?" +"Oh," cried the general, as it branded with a hot iron, +"wretch, to reproach me with my shame when about, +perhaps, to kill me No, I did not say I was a stranger to +you. I know well, demon, that you have penetrated into the +darkness of the past, and that you have read, by the light +of what torch I know not, every page of my life but perhaps +I may be more honorable in my shame than you under your +pompous coverings. No no, I am aware you know me but I +know you only as an adventurer sewn up in gold and +jewellery. You call yourself in Paris the Count of Monte +Cristo in Italy, Sinbad the Sailor in Malta, I forget +what. But it is your real name I want to know, in the midst +of your hundred names, that I may pronounce it when we meet +to fight, at the moment when I plunge my sword through your +heart." +The Count of Monte Cristo turned dreadfully pale his eye +seemed to burn with a devouring fire. He leaped towards a +dressingroom near his bedroom, and in less than a moment, +tearing off his cravat, his coat and waistcoat, he put on a +sailor's jacket and hat, from beneath which rolled his long +black hair. He returned thus, formidable and implacable, +advancing with his arms crossed on his breast, towards the +general, who could not understand why he had disappeared, +but who on seeing him again, and feeling his teeth chatter +and his legs sink under him, drew back, and only stopped +when he found a table to support his clinched hand. +"Fernand," cried he, "of my hundred names I need only tell +you one, to overwhelm you But you guess it now, do you not? +or, rather, you remember it? For, notwithstanding all my +sorrows and my tortures, I show you today a face which the +happiness of revenge makes young again a face you must +often have seen in your dreams since your marriage with +Mercedes, my betrothed" +The general, with his head thrown back, hands extended, gaze +fixed, looked silently at this dreadful apparition then +seeking the wall to support him, he glided along close to it +until he reached the door, through which he went out +backwards, uttering this single mournful, lamentable, +distressing cry, "Edmond Dantes" Then, with sighs which +were unlike any human sound, he dragged himself to the door, +reeled across the courtyard, and falling into the arms of +his valet, he said in a voice scarcely intelligible, +"Home, home." The fresh air and the shame he felt at having +exposed himself before his servants, partly recalled his +senses, but the ride was short, and as he drew near his +house all his wretchedness revived. He stopped at a short +distance from the house and alighted. +The door was wide open, a hackneycoach was standing in the +middle of the yard a strange sight before so noble a +mansion the count looked at it with terror, but without +daring to inquire its meaning, he rushed towards his +apartment. Two persons were coming down the stairs he had +only time to creep into an alcove to avoid them. It was +Mercedes leaning on her son's arm and leaving the house. +They passed close by the unhappy being, who, concealed +behind the damask curtain, almost felt Mercedes dress brush +past him, and his son's warm breath, pronouncing these +words, "Courage, mother Come, this is no longer our +home" The words died away, the steps were lost in the +distance. The general drew himself up, clinging to the +curtain he uttered the most dreadful sob which ever escaped +from the bosom of a father abandoned at the same time by his +wife and son. He soon heard the clatter of the iron step of +the hackneycoach, then the coachman's voice, and then the +rolling of the heavy vehicle shook the windows. He darted to +his bedroom to see once more all he had loved in the world +but the hackneycoach drove on and the head of neither +Mercedes nor her son appeared at the window to take a last +look at the house or the deserted father and husband. And at +the very moment when the wheels of that coach crossed the +gateway a report was heard, and a thick smoke escaped +through one of the panes of the window, which was broken by +the explosion. +Chapter +Valentine. +We may easily conceive where Morrel's appointment was. On +leaving Monte Cristo he walked slowly towards Villefort's +we say slowly, for Morrel had more than half an hour to +spare to go five hundred steps, but he had hastened to take +leave of Monte Cristo because he wished to be alone with his +thoughts. He knew his time well the hour when Valentine +was giving Noirtier his breakfast, and was sure not to be +disturbed in the performance of this pious duty. Noirtier +and Valentine had given him leave to go twice a week, and he +was now availing himself of that permission. He had arrived +Valentine was expecting him. Uneasy and almost crazed, she +seized his hand and led him to her grandfather. This +uneasiness, amounting almost to frenzy, arose from the +report Morcerf's adventure had made in the world, for the +affair at the opera was generally known. No one at +Villefort's doubted that a duel would ensue from it. +Valentine, with her woman's instinct, guessed that Morrel +would be Monte Cristo's second, and from the young man's +wellknown courage and his great affection for the count, +she feared that he would not content himself with the +passive part assigned to him. We may easily understand how +eagerly the particulars were asked for, given, and received +and Morrel could read an indescribable joy in the eyes of +his beloved, when she knew that the termination of this +affair was as happy as it was unexpected. +"Now," said Valentine, motioning to Morrel to sit down near +her grandfather, while she took her seat on his footstool, +"now let us talk about our own affairs. You know, +Maximilian, grandpapa once thought of leaving this house, +and taking an apartment away from M. de Villefort's." +"Yes," said Maximilian, "I recollect the project, of which I +highly approved." +"Well," said Valentine, "you may approve again, for +grandpapa is again thinking of it." +"Bravo," said Maximilian. +"And do you know," said Valentine, "what reason grandpapa +gives for leaving this house." Noirtier looked at Valentine +to impose silence, but she did not notice him her looks, +her eyes, her smile, were all for Morrel. +"Oh, whatever may be M. Noirtier's reason," answered Morrel, +"I can readily believe it to be a good one." +"An excellent one," said Valentine. "He pretends the air of +the Faubourg St. Honore is not good for me." +"Indeed?" said Morrel "in that M. Noirtier may be right +you have not seemed to be well for the last fortnight." +"Not very," said Valentine. "And grandpapa has become my +physician, and I have the greatest confidence in him, +because he knows everything." +"Do you then really suffer?" asked Morrel quickly. +"Oh, it must not be called suffering I feel a general +uneasiness, that is all. I have lost my appetite, and my +stomach feels as if it were struggling to get accustomed to +something." Noirtier did not lose a word of what Valentine +said. "And what treatment do you adopt for this singular +complaint?" +"A very simple one," said Valentine. "I swallow every +morning a spoonful of the mixture prepared for my +grandfather. When I say one spoonful, I began by one now +I take four. Grandpapa says it is a panacea." Valentine +smiled, but it was evident that she suffered. +Maximilian, in his devotedness, gazed silently at her. She +was very beautiful, but her usual pallor had increased her +eyes were more brilliant than ever, and her hands, which +were generally white like motherofpearl, now more +resembled wax, to which time was adding a yellowish hue. +From Valentine the young man looked towards Noirtier. The +latter watched with strange and deep interest the young +girl, absorbed by her affection, and he also, like Morrel, +followed those traces of inward suffering which was so +little perceptible to a common observer that they escaped +the notice of every one but the grandfather and the lover. +"But," said Morrel, "I thought this mixture, of which you +now take four spoonfuls, was prepared for M. Noirtier?" +"I know it is very bitter," said Valentine "so bitter, that +all I drink afterwards appears to have the same taste." +Noirtier looked inquiringly at his granddaughter. "Yes, +grandpapa," said Valentine "it is so. Just now, before I +came down to you, I drank a glass of sugared water I left +half, because it seemed so bitter." Noirtier turned pale, +and made a sign that he wished to speak. Valentine rose to +fetch the dictionary. Noirtier watched her with evident +anguish. In fact, the blood was rushing to the young girl's +head already, her cheeks were becoming red. "Oh," cried she, +without losing any of her cheerfulness, "this is singular I +can't see Did the sun shine in my eyes?" And she leaned +against the window. +"The sun is not shining," said Morrel, more alarmed by +Noirtier's expression than by Valentine's indisposition. He +ran towards her. The young girl smiled. "Cheer up," said she +to Noirtier. "Do not be alarmed, Maximilian it is nothing, +and has already passed away. But listen Do I not hear a +carriage in the courtyard?" She opened Noirtier's door, ran +to a window in the passage, and returned hastily. "Yes," +said she, "it is Madame Danglars and her daughter, who have +come to call on us. Goodby I must run away, for they +would send here for me, or, rather, farewell till I see you +again. Stay with grandpapa, Maximilian I promise you not to +persuade them to stay." +Morrel watched her as she left the room he heard her ascend +the little staircase which led both to Madame de Villefort's +apartments and to hers. As soon as she was gone, Noirtier +made a sign to Morrel to take the dictionary. Morrel obeyed +guided by Valentine, he had learned how to understand the +old man quickly. Accustomed, however, as he was to the work, +he had to repeat most of the letters of the alphabet and to +find every word in the dictionary, so that it was ten +minutes before the thought of the old man was translated by +these words, "Fetch the glass of water and the decanter from +Valentine's room." +Morrel rang immediately for the servant who had taken +Barrois's situation, and in Noirtier's name gave that order. +The servant soon returned. The decanter and the glass were +completely empty. Noirtier made a sign that he wished to +speak. "Why are the glass and decanter empty?" asked he +"Valentine said she only drank half the glassful." The +translation of this new question occupied another five +minutes. "I do not know," said the servant, "but the +housemaid is in Mademoiselle Valentine's room perhaps she +has emptied them." +"Ask her," said Morrel, translating Noirtier's thought this +time by his look. The servant went out, but returned almost +immediately. "Mademoiselle Valentine passed through the room +to go to Madame de Villefort's," said he "and in passing, +as she was thirsty, she drank what remained in the glass as +for the decanter, Master Edward had emptied that to make a +pond for his ducks." Noirtier raised his eyes to heaven, as +a gambler does who stakes his all on one stroke. From that +moment the old man's eyes were fixed on the door, and did +not quit it. +It was indeed Madame Danglars and her daughter whom +Valentine had seen they had been ushered into Madame de +Villefort's room, who had said she would receive them there. +That is why Valentine passed through her room, which was on +a level with Valentine's, and only separated from it by +Edward's. The two ladies entered the drawingroom with that +sort of official stiffness which preludes a formal +communication. Among worldly people manner is contagious. +Madame de Villefort received them with equal solemnity. +Valentine entered at this moment, and the formalities were +resumed. "My dear friend," said the baroness, while the two +young people were shaking hands, "I and Eugenie are come to +be the first to announce to you the approaching marriage of +my daughter with Prince Cavalcanti." Danglars kept up the +title of prince. The popular banker found that it answered +better than count. "Allow me to present you my sincere +congratulations," replied Madame de Villefort. "Prince +Cavalcanti appears to be a young man of rare qualities." +"Listen," said the baroness, smiling "speaking to you as a +friend I can say that the prince does not yet appear all he +will be. He has about him a little of that foreign manner by +which French persons recognize, at first sight, the Italian +or German nobleman. Besides, he gives evidence of great +kindness of disposition, much keenness of wit, and as to +suitability, M. Danglars assures me that his fortune is +majestic that is his word." +"And then," said Eugenie, while turning over the leaves of +Madame de Villefort's album, "add that you have taken a +great fancy to the young man." +"And," said Madame de Villefort, "I need not ask you if you +share that fancy." +"I?" replied Eugenie with her usual candor. "Oh, not the +least in the world, madame My wish was not to confine +myself to domestic cares, or the caprices of any man, but to +be an artist, and consequently free in heart, in person, and +in thought." Eugenie pronounced these words with so firm a +tone that the color mounted to Valentine's cheeks. The timid +girl could not understand that vigorous nature which +appeared to have none of the timidities of woman. +"At any rate," said she, "since I am to be married whether I +will or not, I ought to be thankful to providence for having +released me from my engagement with M. Albert de Morcerf, or +I should this day have been the wife of a dishonored man." +"It is true," said the baroness, with that strange +simplicity sometimes met with among fashionable ladies, and +of which plebeian intercourse can never entirely deprive +them, "it is very true that had not the Morcerfs +hesitated, my daughter would have married Monsieur Albert. +The general depended much on it he even came to force M. +Danglars. We have had a narrow escape." +"But," said Valentine, timidly, "does all the father's shame +revert upon the son? Monsieur Albert appears to me quite +innocent of the treason charged against the general." +"Excuse me," said the implacable young girl, "Monsieur +Albert claims and well deserves his share. It appears that +after having challenged M. de Monte Cristo at the Opera +yesterday, he apologized on the ground today." +"Impossible," said Madame de Villefort. +"Ah, my dear friend," said Madame Danglars, with the same +simplicity we before noticed, "it is a fact. I heard it from +M. Debray, who was present at the explanation." Valentine +also knew the truth, but she did not answer. A single word +had reminded her that Morrel was expecting her in M. +Noirtier's room. Deeply engaged with a sort of inward +contemplation, Valentine had ceased for a moment to join in +the conversation. She would, indeed, have found it +impossible to repeat what had been said the last few +minutes, when suddenly Madame Danglars' hand, pressed on her +arm, aroused her from her lethargy. +"What is it?" said she, starting at Madame Danglars' touch +as she would have done from an electric shock. "It is, my +dear Valentine," said the baroness, "that you are, +doubtless, suffering." +"I?" said the young girl, passing her hand across her +burning forehead. +"Yes, look at yourself in that glass you have turned pale +and then red successively, three or four times in one +minute." +"Indeed," cried Eugenie, "you are very pale" +"Oh, do not be alarmed I have been so for many days." +Artless as she was, the young girl knew that this was an +opportunity to leave, and besides, Madame de Villefort came +to her assistance. "Retire, Valentine," said she "you are +really suffering, and these ladies will excuse you drink a +glass of pure water, it will restore you." Valentine kissed +Eugenie, bowed to Madame Danglars, who had already risen to +take her leave, and went out. "That poor child," said Madame +de Villefort when Valentine was gone, "she makes me very +uneasy, and I should not be astonished if she had some +serious illness." +Meanwhile, Valentine, in a sort of excitement which she +could not quite understand, had crossed Edward's room +without noticing some trick of the child, and through her +own had reached the little staircase. She was within three +steps of the bottom she already heard Morrel's voice, when +suddenly a cloud passed over her eyes, her stiffened foot +missed the step, her hands had no power to hold the +baluster, and falling against the wall she lost her balance +wholly and toppled to the floor. Morrel bounded to the door, +opened it, and found Valentine stretched out at the bottom +of the stairs. Quick as a flash, he raised her in his arms +and placed her in a chair. Valentine opened her eyes. +"Oh, what a clumsy thing I am," said she with feverish +volubility "I don't know my way. I forgot there were three +more steps before the landing." +"You have hurt yourself, perhaps," said Morrel. "What can I +do for you, Valentine?" Valentine looked around her she saw +the deepest terror depicted in Noirtier's eyes. "Don't +worry, dear grandpapa," said she, endeavoring to smile "it +is nothing it is nothing I was giddy, that is all." +"Another attack of giddiness," said Morrel, clasping his +hands. "Oh, attend to it, Valentine, I entreat you." +"But no," said Valentine, "no, I tell you it is all past, +and it was nothing. Now, let me tell you some news Eugenie +is to be married in a week, and in three days there is to be +a grand feast, a betrothal festival. We are all invited, my +father, Madame de Villefort, and I at least, I understood +it so." +"When will it be our turn to think of these things? Oh, +Valentine, you who have so much influence over your +grandpapa, try to make him answer Soon." +"And do you," said Valentine, "depend on me to stimulate the +tardiness and arouse the memory of grandpapa?" +"Yes," cried Morrel, "make haste. So long as you are not +mine, Valentine, I shall always think I may lose you." +"Oh," replied Valentine with a convulsive movement, "oh, +indeed, Maximilian, you are too timid for an officer, for a +soldier who, they say, never knows fear. Ah, ha, ha" she +burst into a forced and melancholy laugh, her arms stiffened +and twisted, her head fell back on her chair, and she +remained motionless. The cry of terror which was stopped on +Noirtier's lips, seemed to start from his eyes. Morrel +understood it he knew he must call assistance. The young +man rang the bell violently the housemaid who had been in +Mademoiselle Valentine's room, and the servant who had +replaced Barrois, ran in at the same moment. Valentine was +so pale, so cold, so inanimate that without listening to +what was said to them they were seized with the fear which +pervaded that house, and they flew into the passage crying +for help. Madame Danglars and Eugenie were going out at that +moment they heard the cause of the disturbance. "I told you +so" exclaimed Madame de Villefort. "Poor child" +Chapter +Maximilian's Avowal. +At the same moment M. de Villefort's voice was heard calling +from his study, "What is the matter?" Morrel looked at +Noirtier who had recovered his selfcommand, and with a +glance indicated the closet where once before under somewhat +similar circumstances, he had taken refuge. He had only time +to get his hat and throw himself breathless into the closet +when the procureur's footstep was heard in the passage. +Villefort sprang into the room, ran to Valentine, and took +her in his arms. "A physician, a physician, M. +d'Avrigny" cried Villefort "or rather I will go for him +myself." He flew from the apartment, and Morrel at the same +moment darted out at the other door. He had been struck to +the heart by a frightful recollection the conversation he +had heard between the doctor and Villefort the night of +Madame de SaintMeran's death, recurred to him these +symptoms, to a less alarming extent, were the same which had +preceded the death of Barrois. At the same time Monte +Cristo's voice seemed to resound in his ear with the words +he had heard only two hours before, "Whatever you want, +Morrel, come to me I have great power." More rapidly than +thought, he darted down the Rue Matignon, and thence to the +Avenue des Champs Elysees. +Meanwhile M. de Villefort arrived in a hired cabriolet at M. +d'Avrigny's door. He rang so violently that the porter was +alarmed. Villefort ran upstairs without saying a word. The +porter knew him, and let him pass, only calling to him, "In +his study, Monsieur Procureur in his study" Villefort +pushed, or rather forced, the door open. "Ah," said the +doctor, "is it you?" +"Yes," said Villefort, closing the door after him, "it is I, +who am come in my turn to ask you if we are quite alone. +Doctor, my house is accursed" +"What?" said the latter with apparent coolness, but with +deep emotion, "have you another invalid?" +"Yes, doctor," cried Villefort, clutching his hair, "yes" +D'Avrigny's look implied, "I told you it would be so." Then +he slowly uttered these words, "Who is now dying in your +house? What new victim is going to accuse you of weakness +before God?" A mournful sob burst from Villefort's heart he +approached the doctor, and seizing his arm, "Valentine," +said he, "it is Valentine's turn" +"Your daughter?" cried d'Avrigny with grief and surprise. +"You see you were deceived," murmured the magistrate "come +and see her, and on her bed of agony entreat her pardon for +having suspected her." +"Each time you have applied to me," said the doctor, "it has +been too late still I will go. But let us make haste, sir +with the enemies you have to do with there is no time to be +lost." +"Oh, this time, doctor, you shall not have to reproach me +with weakness. This time I will know the assassin, and will +pursue him." +"Let us try first to save the victim before we think of +revenging her," said d'Avrigny. "Come." The same cabriolet +which had brought Villefort took them back at full speed, +and at this moment Morrel rapped at Monte Cristo's door. The +count was in his study and was reading with an angry look +something which Bertuccio had brought in haste. Hearing the +name of Morrel, who had left him only two hours before, the +count raised his head, arose, and sprang to meet him. "What +is the matter, Maximilian?" asked he "you are pale, and the +perspiration rolls from your forehead." Morrel fell into a +chair. "Yes," said he, "I came quickly I wanted to speak to +you." +"Are all your family well?" asked the count, with an +affectionate benevolence, whose sincerity no one could for a +moment doubt. +"Thank you, count thank you," said the young man, +evidently embarrassed how to begin the conversation "yes, +every one in my family is well." +"So much the better yet you have something to tell me?" +replied the count with increased anxiety. +"Yes," said Morrel, "it is true I have but now left a house +where death has just entered, to run to you." +"Are you then come from M. de Morcerf's?" asked Monte +Cristo. +"No," said Morrel "is some one dead in his house?" +"The general has just blown his brains out," replied Monte +Cristo with great coolness. +"Oh, what a dreadful event" cried Maximilian. +"Not for the countess, or for Albert," said Monte Cristo "a +dead father or husband is better than a dishonored one, +blood washes out shame." +"Poor countess," said Maximilian, "I pity her very much she +is so noble a woman" +"Pity Albert also, Maximilian for believe me he is the +worthy son of the countess. But let us return to yourself. +You have hastened to me can I have the happiness of being +useful to you?" +"Yes, I need your help that is I thought like a madman that +you could lend me your assistance in a case where God alone +can succor me." +"Tell me what it is," replied Monte Cristo. +"Oh," said Morrel, "I know not, indeed, if I may reveal this +secret to mortal ears, but fatality impels me, necessity +constrains me, count" Morrel hesitated. "Do you think I +love you?" said Monte Cristo, taking the young man's hand +affectionately in his. +"Oh, you encourage me, and something tells me there," +placing his hand on his heart, "that I ought to have no +secret from you." +"You are right, Morrel God is speaking to your heart, and +your heart speaks to you. Tell me what it says." +"Count, will you allow me to send Baptistin to inquire after +some one you know?" +"I am at your service, and still more my servants." +"Oh, I cannot live if she is not better." +"Shall I ring for Baptistin?" +"No, I will go and speak to him myself." Morrel went out, +called Baptistin, and whispered a few words to him. The +valet ran directly. "Well, have you sent?" asked Monte +Cristo, seeing Morrel return. +"Yes, and now I shall be more calm." +"You know I am waiting," said Monte Cristo, smiling. +"Yes, and I will tell you. One evening I was in a garden a +clump of trees concealed me no one suspected I was there. +Two persons passed near me allow me to conceal their +names for the present they were speaking in an undertone, +and yet I was so interested in what they said that I did not +lose a single word." +"This is a gloomy introduction, if I may judge from your +pallor and shuddering, Morrel." +"Oh, yes, very gloomy, my friend. Some one had just died in +the house to which that garden belonged. One of the persons +whose conversation I overheard was the master of the house +the other, the physician. The former was confiding to the +latter his grief and fear, for it was the second time within +a month that death had suddenly and unexpectedly entered +that house which was apparently destined to destruction by +some exterminating angel, as an object of God's anger." +"Ah, indeed?" said Monte Cristo, looking earnestly at the +young man, and by an imperceptible movement turning his +chair, so that he remained in the shade while the light fell +full on Maximilian's face. "Yes," continued Morrel, "death +had entered that house twice within one month." +"And what did the doctor answer?" asked Monte Cristo. +"He replied he replied, that the death was not a natural +one, and must be attributed" +"To what?" +"To poison." +"Indeed?" said Monte Cristo with a slight cough which in +moments of extreme emotion helped him to disguise a blush, +or his pallor, or the intense interest with which he +listened "indeed, Maximilian, did you hear that?" +"Yes, my dear count, I heard it and the doctor added that +if another death occurred in a similar way he must appeal to +justice." Monte Cristo listened, or appeared to do so, with +the greatest calmness. "Well," said Maximilian, "death came +a third time, and neither the master of the house nor the +doctor said a word. Death is now, perhaps, striking a fourth +blow. Count, what am I bound to do, being in possession of +this secret?" +"My dear friend," said Monte Cristo, "you appear to be +relating an adventure which we all know by heart. I know the +house where you heard it, or one very similar to it a house +with a garden, a master, a physician, and where there have +been three unexpected and sudden deaths. Well, I have not +intercepted your confidence, and yet I know all that as well +as you, and I have no conscientious scruples. No, it does +not concern me. You say an exterminating angel appears to +have devoted that house to God's anger well, who says +your supposition is not reality? Do not notice things which +those whose interest it is to see them pass over. If it is +God's justice, instead of his anger, which is walking +through that house, Maximilian, turn away your face and let +his justice accomplish its purpose." Morrel shuddered. There +was something mournful, solemn, and terrible in the count's +manner. "Besides," continued he, in so changed a tone that +no one would have supposed it was the same person speaking +"besides, who says that it will begin again?" +"It has returned, count," exclaimed Morrel "that is why I +hastened to you." +"Well, what do you wish me to do? Do you wish me, for +instance, to give information to the procureur?" Monte +Cristo uttered the last words with so much meaning that +Morrel, starting up, cried out, "You know of whom I speak, +count, do you not?" +"Perfectly well, my good friend and I will prove it to you +by putting the dots to the "i,' or rather by naming the +persons. You were walking one evening in M. de Villefort's +garden from what you relate, I suppose it to have been the +evening of Madame de SaintMeran's death. You heard M. de +Villefort talking to M. d'Avrigny about the death of M. de +SaintMeran, and that no less surprising, of the countess. +M. d'Avrigny said he believed they both proceeded from +poison and you, honest man, have ever since been asking +your heart and sounding your conscience to know if you ought +to expose or conceal this secret. Why do you torment them? +"Conscience, what hast thou to do with me?' as Sterne said. +My dear fellow, let them sleep on, if they are asleep let +them grow pale in their drowsiness, if they are disposed to +do so, and pray do you remain in peace, who have no remorse +to disturb you." Deep grief was depicted on Morrel's +features he seized Monte Cristo's hand. "But it is +beginning again, I say" +"Well," said the Count, astonished at his perseverance, +which he could not understand, and looking still more +earnestly at Maximilian, "let it begin again, it is like +the house of the Atreidae God has condemned them, and they +must submit to their punishment. They will all disappear, +like the fabrics children build with cards, and which fall, +one by one, under the breath of their builder, even if there +are two hundred of them. Three months since it was M. de +SaintMeran Madame de SaintMeran two months since the +other day it was Barrois today, the old Noirtier, or young +Valentine." + In the old Greek legend the Atreidae, or children of +Atreus, were doomed to punishment because of the abominable +crime of their father. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus is based +on this legend. +"You knew it?" cried Morrel, in such a paroxysm of terror +that Monte Cristo started, he whom the falling heavens +would have found unmoved "you knew it, and said nothing?" +"And what is it to me?" replied Monte Cristo, shrugging his +shoulders "do I know those people? and must I lose the one +to save the other? Faith, no, for between the culprit and +the victim I have no choice." +"But I," cried Morrel, groaning with sorrow, "I love her" +"You love? whom?" cried Monte Cristo, starting to his +feet, and seizing the two hands which Morrel was raising +towards heaven. +"I love most fondly I love madly I love as a man who +would give his lifeblood to spare her a tear I love +Valentine de Villefort, who is being murdered at this +moment Do you understand me? I love her and I ask God and +you how I can save her?" Monte Cristo uttered a cry which +those only can conceive who have heard the roar of a wounded +lion. "Unhappy man," cried he, wringing his hands in his +turn "you love Valentine, that daughter of an accursed +race" Never had Morrel witnessed such an expression +never had so terrible an eye flashed before his face +never had the genius of terror he had so often seen, either +on the battlefield or in the murderous nights of Algeria, +shaken around him more dreadful fire. He drew back +terrified. +As for Monte Cristo, after this ebullition he closed his +eyes as if dazzled by internal light. In a moment he +restrained himself so powerfully that the tempestuous +heaving of his breast subsided, as turbulent and foaming +waves yield to the sun's genial influence when the cloud has +passed. This silence, selfcontrol, and struggle lasted +about twenty seconds, then the count raised his pallid face. +"See," said he, "my dear friend, how God punishes the most +thoughtless and unfeeling men for their indifference, by +presenting dreadful scenes to their view. I, who was looking +on, an eager and curious spectator, I, who was watching +the working of this mournful tragedy, I, who like a +wicked angel was laughing at the evil men committed +protected by secrecy a secret is easily kept by the rich +and powerful, I am in my turn bitten by the serpent whose +tortuous course I was watching, and bitten to the heart" +Morrel groaned. "Come, come," continued the count, +"complaints are unavailing, be a man, be strong, be full of +hope, for I am here and will watch over you." Morrel shook +his head sorrowfully. "I tell you to hope. Do you understand +me?" cried Monte Cristo. "Remember that I never uttered a +falsehood and am never deceived. It is twelve o'clock, +Maximilian thank heaven that you came at noon rather than +in the evening, or tomorrow morning. Listen, Morrel it +is noon if Valentine is not now dead, she will not die." +"How so?" cried Morrel, "when I left her dying?" Monte +Cristo pressed his hands to his forehead. What was passing +in that brain, so loaded with dreadful secrets? What does +the angel of light or the angel of darkness say to that +mind, at once implacable and generous? God only knows. +Monte Cristo raised his head once more, and this time he was +calm as a child awaking from its sleep. "Maximilian," said +he, "return home. I command you not to stir attempt +nothing, not to let your countenance betray a thought, and I +will send you tidings. Go." +"Oh, count, you overwhelm me with that coolness. Have you, +then, power against death? Are you superhuman? Are you an +angel?" And the young man, who had never shrunk from danger, +shrank before Monte Cristo with indescribable terror. But +Monte Cristo looked at him with so melancholy and sweet a +smile, that Maximilian felt the tears filling his eyes. "I +can do much for you, my friend," replied the count. "Go I +must be alone." Morrel, subdued by the extraordinary +ascendancy Monte Cristo exercised over everything around +him, did not endeavor to resist it. He pressed the count's +hand and left. He stopped one moment at the door for +Baptistin, whom he saw in the Rue Matignon, and who was +running. +Meanwhile, Villefort and d'Avrigny had made all possible +haste, Valentine had not revived from her fainting fit on +their arrival, and the doctor examined the invalid with all +the care the circumstances demanded, and with an interest +which the knowledge of the secret intensified twofold. +Villefort, closely watching his countenance and his lips, +awaited the result of the examination. Noirtier, paler than +even the young girl, more eager than Villefort for the +decision, was watching also intently and affectionately. At +last d'Avrigny slowly uttered these words "she is still +alive" +"Still?" cried Villefort "oh, doctor, what a dreadful word +is that." +"Yes," said the physician, "I repeat it she is still alive, +and I am astonished at it." +"But is she safe?" asked the father. +"Yes, since she lives." At that moment d'Avrigny's glance +met Noirtier's eye. It glistened with such extraordinary +joy, so rich and full of thought, that the physician was +struck. He placed the young girl again on the chair, her +lips were scarcely discernible, they were so pale and white, +as well as her whole face, and remained motionless, +looking at Noirtier, who appeared to anticipate and commend +all he did. "Sir," said d'Avrigny to Villefort, "call +Mademoiselle Valentine's maid, if you please." Villefort +went himself to find her and d'Avrigny approached Noirtier. +"Have you something to tell me?" asked he. The old man +winked his eyes expressively, which we may remember was his +only way of expressing his approval. +"Privately?" +"Yes." +"Well, I will remain with you." At this moment Villefort +returned, followed by the lady's maid and after her came +Madame de Villefort. +"What is the matter, then, with this dear child? she has +just left me, and she complained of being indisposed, but I +did not think seriously of it." The young woman with tears +in her eyes and every mark of affection of a true mother, +approached Valentine and took her hand. D'Avrigny continued +to look at Noirtier he saw the eyes of the old man dilate +and become round, his cheeks turn pale and tremble the +perspiration stood in drops upon his forehead. "Ah," said +he, involuntarily following Noirtier's eyes, which were +fixed on Madame de Villefort, who repeated, "This poor +child would be better in bed. Come, Fanny, we will put her +to bed." M. d'Avrigny, who saw that would be a means of his +remaining alone with Noirtier, expressed his opinion that it +was the best thing that could be done but he forbade that +anything should be given to her except what he ordered. +They carried Valentine away she had revived, but could +scarcely move or speak, so shaken was her frame by the +attack. She had, however, just power to give one parting +look to her grandfather, who in losing her seemed to be +resigning his very soul. D'Avrigny followed the invalid, +wrote a prescription, ordered Villefort to take a cabriolet, +go in person to a chemist's to get the prescribed medicine, +bring it himself, and wait for him in his daughter's room. +Then, having renewed his injunction not to give Valentine +anything, he went down again to Noirtier, shut the doors +carefully, and after convincing himself that no one was +listening, "Do you," said he, "know anything of this +young lady's illness?" +"Yes," said the old man. +"We have no time to lose I will question, and do you answer +me." Noirtier made a sign that he was ready to answer. "Did +you anticipate the accident which has happened to your +granddaughter?" +"Yes." D'Avrigny reflected a moment then approaching +Noirtier, "Pardon what I am going to say," added he, "but +no indication should be neglected in this terrible +situation. Did you see poor Barrois die?" Noirtier raised +his eyes to heaven. "Do you know of what he died" asked +d'Avrigny, placing his hand on Noirtier's shoulder. +"Yes," replied the old man. +"Do you think he died a natural death?" A sort of smile was +discernible on the motionless lips of Noirtier. +"Then you have thought that Barrois was poisoned?" +"Yes." +"Do you think the poison he fell a victim to was intended +for him?" +"No." +"Do you think the same hand which unintentionally struck +Barrois has now attacked Valentine?" +"Yes." +"Then will she die too?" asked d'Avrigny, fixing his +penetrating gaze on Noirtier. He watched the effect of this +question on the old man. "No," replied he with an air of +triumph which would have puzzled the most clever diviner. +"Then you hope?" said d'Avrigny, with surprise. +"Yes." +"What do you hope?" The old man made him understand with his +eyes that he could not answer. "Ah, yes, it is true," +murmured d'Avrigny. Then, turning to Noirtier, "Do you +hope the assassin will be tried?" +"No." +"Then you hope the poison will take no effect on Valentine?" +"Yes." +"It is no news to you," added d'Avrigny, "to tell you that +an attempt has been made to poison her?" The old man made a +sign that he entertained no doubt upon the subject. "Then +how do you hope Valentine will escape?" Noirtier kept his +eyes steadfastly fixed on the same spot. D'Avrigny followed +the direction and saw that they were fixed on a bottle +containing the mixture which he took every morning. "Ah, +indeed?" said d'Avrigny, struck with a sudden thought, "has +it occurred to you" Noirtier did not let him finish. +"Yes," said he. "To prepare her system to resist poison?" +"Yes." +"By accustoming her by degrees" +"Yes, yes, yes," said Noirtier, delighted to be understood. +"Of course. I had told you that there was brucine in the +mixture I give you." +"Yes." +"And by accustoming her to that poison, you have endeavored +to neutralize the effect of a similar poison?" Noirtier's +joy continued. "And you have succeeded," exclaimed +d'Avrigny. "Without that precaution Valentine would have +died before assistance could have been procured. The dose +has been excessive, but she has only been shaken by it and +this time, at any rate, Valentine will not die." A +superhuman joy expanded the old man's eyes, which were +raised towards heaven with an expression of infinite +gratitude. At this moment Villefort returned. "Here, +doctor," said he, "is what you sent me for." +"Was this prepared in your presence?" +"Yes," replied the procureur. +"Have you not let it go out of your hands?" +"No." D'Avrigny took the bottle, poured some drops of the +mixture it contained in the hollow of his hand, and +swallowed them. "Well," said he, "let us go to Valentine I +will give instructions to every one, and you, M. de +Villefort, will yourself see that no one deviates from +them." +At the moment when d'Avrigny was returning to Valentine's +room, accompanied by Villefort, an Italian priest, of +serious demeanor and calm and firm tone, hired for his use +the house adjoining the hotel of M. de Villefort. No one +knew how the three former tenants of that house left it. +About two hours afterwards its foundation was reported to be +unsafe but the report did not prevent the new occupant +establishing himself there with his modest furniture the +same day at five o'clock. The lease was drawn up for three, +six, or nine years by the new tenant, who, according to the +rule of the proprietor, paid six months in advance. This new +tenant, who, as we have said, was an Italian, was called Il +Signor Giacomo Busoni. Workmen were immediately called in, +and that same night the passengers at the end of the +faubourg saw with surprise that carpenters and masons were +occupied in repairing the lower part of the tottering house. +Chapter +Father and Daughter. +We saw in a preceding chapter how Madame Danglars went +formally to announce to Madame de Villefort the approaching +marriage of Eugenie Danglars and M. Andrea Cavalcanti. This +announcement, which implied or appeared to imply, the +approval of all the persons concerned in this momentous +affair, had been preceded by a scene to which our readers +must be admitted. We beg them to take one step backward, and +to transport themselves, the morning of that day of great +catastrophes, into the showy, gilded salon we have before +shown them, and which was the pride of its owner, Baron +Danglars. In this room, at about ten o'clock in the morning, +the banker himself had been walking to and fro for some +minutes thoughtfully and in evident uneasiness, watching +both doors, and listening to every sound. When his patience +was exhausted, he called his valet. "Etienne," said he, "see +why Mademoiselle Eugenie has asked me to meet her in the +drawingroom, and why she makes me wait so long." +Having given this vent to his illhumor, the baron became +more calm Mademoiselle Danglars had that morning requested +an interview with her father, and had fixed on the gilded +drawingroom as the spot. The singularity of this step, and +above all its formality, had not a little surprised the +banker, who had immediately obeyed his daughter by repairing +first to the drawingroom. Etienne soon returned from his +errand. "Mademoiselle's lady's maid says, sir, that +mademoiselle is finishing her toilette, and will be here +shortly." +Danglars nodded, to signify that he was satisfied. To the +world and to his servants Danglars assumed the character of +the goodnatured man and the indulgent father. This was one +of his parts in the popular comedy he was performing, a +makeup he had adopted and which suited him about as well as +the masks worn on the classic stage by paternal actors, who +seen from one side, were the image of geniality, and from +the other showed lips drawn down in chronic illtemper. Let +us hasten to say that in private the genial side descended +to the level of the other, so that generally the indulgent +man disappeared to give place to the brutal husband and +domineering father. "Why the devil does that foolish girl, +who pretends to wish to speak to me, not come into my study? +and why on earth does she want to speak to me at all?" +He was turning this thought over in his brain for the +twentieth time, when the door opened and Eugenie appeared, +attired in a figured black satin dress, her hair dressed and +gloves on, as if she were going to the Italian Opera. "Well, +Eugenie, what is it you want with me? and why in this solemn +drawingroom when the study is so comfortable?" +"I quite understand why you ask, sir," said Eugenie, making +a sign that her father might be seated, "and in fact your +two questions suggest fully the theme of our conversation. I +will answer them both, and contrary to the usual method, the +last first, because it is the least difficult. I have chosen +the drawingroom, sir, as our place of meeting, in order to +avoid the disagreeable impressions and influences of a +banker's study. Those gilded cashbooks, drawers locked like +gates of fortresses, heaps of bankbills, come from I know +not where, and the quantities of letters from England, +Holland, Spain, India, China, and Peru, have generally a +strange influence on a father's mind, and make him forget +that there is in the world an interest greater and more +sacred than the good opinion of his correspondents. I have, +therefore, chosen this drawingroom, where you see, smiling +and happy in their magnificent frames, your portrait, mine, +my mother's, and all sorts of rural landscapes and touching +pastorals. I rely much on external impressions perhaps, +with regard to you, they are immaterial, but I should be no +artist if I had not some fancies." +"Very well," replied M. Danglars, who had listened to all +this preamble with imperturbable coolness, but without +understanding a word, since like every man burdened with +thoughts of the past, he was occupied with seeking the +thread of his own ideas in those of the speaker. +"There is, then, the second point cleared up, or nearly so," +said Eugenie, without the least confusion, and with that +masculine pointedness which distinguished her gesture and +her language "and you appear satisfied with the +explanation. Now, let us return to the first. You ask me why +I have requested this interview I will tell you in two +words, sir I will not marry count Andrea Cavalcanti." +Danglars leaped from his chair and raised his eyes and arms +towards heaven. +"Yes, indeed, sir," continued Eugenie, still quite calm +"you are astonished, I see for since this little affair +began, I have not manifested the slightest opposition, and +yet I am always sure, when the opportunity arrives, to +oppose a determined and absolute will to people who have not +consulted me, and things which displease me. However, this +time, my tranquillity, or passiveness as philosophers say, +proceeded from another source it proceeded from a wish, +like a submissive and devoted daughter" a slight smile was +observable on the purple lips of the young girl, "to +practice obedience." +"Well?" asked Danglars. +"Well, sir," replied Eugenie, "I have tried to the very last +and now that the moment has come, I feel in spite of all my +efforts that it is impossible." +"But," said Danglars, whose weak mind was at first quite +overwhelmed with the weight of this pitiless logic, marking +evident premeditation and force of will, "what is your +reason for this refusal, Eugenie? what reason do you +assign?" +"My reason?" replied the young girl. "Well, it is not that +the man is more ugly, more foolish, or more disagreeable +than any other no, M. Andrea Cavalcanti may appear to those +who look at men's faces and figures as a very good specimen +of his kind. It is not, either, that my heart is less +touched by him than any other that would be a schoolgirl's +reason, which I consider quite beneath me. I actually love +no one, sir you know it, do you not? I do not then see why, +without real necessity, I should encumber my life with a +perpetual companion. Has not some sage said, "Nothing too +much'? and another, "I carry all my effects with me'? I have +been taught these two aphorisms in Latin and in Greek one +is, I believe, from Phaedrus, and the other from Bias. Well, +my dear father, in the shipwreck of life for life is an +eternal shipwreck of our hopes I cast into the sea my +useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own +will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and consequently +perfectly free." +"Unhappy girl, unhappy girl" murmured Danglars, turning +pale, for he knew from long experience the solidity of the +obstacle he had so suddenly encountered. +"Unhappy girl," replied Eugenie, "unhappy girl, do you say, +sir? No, indeed the exclamation appears quite theatrical +and affected. Happy, on the contrary, for what am I in want +of The world calls me beautiful. It is something to be well +received. I like a favorable reception it expands the +countenance, and those around me do not then appear so ugly. +I possess a share of wit, and a certain relative +sensibility, which enables me to draw from life in general, +for the support of mine, all I meet with that is good, like +the monkey who cracks the nut to get at its contents. I am +rich, for you have one of the first fortunes in France. I am +your only daughter, and you are not so exacting as the +fathers of the Porte SaintMartin and Gaiete, who disinherit +their daughters for not giving them grandchildren. Besides, +the provident law has deprived you of the power to +disinherit me, at least entirely, as it has also of the +power to compel me to marry Monsieur This or Monsieur That. +And so being, beautiful, witty, somewhat talented, as the +comic operas say, and rich and that is happiness, sir +why do you call me unhappy?" +Danglars, seeing his daughter smiling, and proud even to +insolence, could not entirely repress his brutal feelings, +but they betrayed themselves only by an exclamation. Under +the fixed and inquiring gaze levelled at him from under +those beautiful black eyebrows, he prudently turned away, +and calmed himself immediately, daunted by the power of a +resolute mind. "Truly, my daughter," replied he with a +smile, "you are all you boast of being, excepting one thing +I will not too hastily tell you which, but would rather +leave you to guess it." Eugenie looked at Danglars, much +surprised that one flower of her crown of pride, with which +she had so superbly decked herself, should be disputed. "My +daughter," continued the banker, "you have perfectly +explained to me the sentiments which influence a girl like +you, who is determined she will not marry now it remains +for me to tell you the motives of a father like me, who has +decided that his daughter shall marry." Eugenie bowed, not +as a submissive daughter, but as an adversary prepared for a +discussion. +"My daughter," continued Danglars, "when a father asks his +daughter to choose a husband, he has always some reason for +wishing her to marry. Some are affected with the mania of +which you spoke just now, that of living again in their +grandchildren. This is not my weakness, I tell you at once +family joys have no charm for me. I may acknowledge this to +a daughter whom I know to be philosophical enough to +understand my indifference, and not to impute it to me as a +crime." +"This is not to the purpose," said Eugenie "let us speak +candidly, sir I admire candor." +"Oh," said Danglars, "I can, when circumstances render it +desirable, adopt your system, although it may not be my +general practice. I will therefore proceed. I have proposed +to you to marry, not for your sake, for indeed I did not +think of you in the least at the moment you admire candor, +and will now be satisfied, I hope but because it suited me +to marry you as soon as possible, on account of certain +commercial speculations I am desirous of entering into." +Eugenie became uneasy. +"It is just as I tell you, I assure you, and you must not be +angry with me, for you have sought this disclosure. I do not +willingly enter into arithmetical explanations with an +artist like you, who fears to enter my study lest she should +imbibe disagreeable or antipoetic impressions and +sensations. But in that same banker's study, where you very +willingly presented yourself yesterday to ask for the +thousand francs I give you monthly for pocketmoney, you +must know, my dear young lady, that many things may be +learned, useful even to a girl who will not marry. There one +may learn, for instance, what, out of regard to your nervous +susceptibility, I will inform you of in the drawingroom, +namely, that the credit of a banker is his physical and +moral life that credit sustains him as breath animates the +body and M. de Monte Cristo once gave me a lecture on that +subject, which I have never forgotten. There we may learn +that as credit sinks, the body becomes a corpse, and this is +what must happen very soon to the banker who is proud to own +so good a logician as you for his daughter." But Eugenie, +instead of stooping, drew herself up under the blow. +"Ruined?" said she. +"Exactly, my daughter that is precisely what I mean," said +Danglars, almost digging his nails into his breast, while he +preserved on his harsh features the smile of the heartless +though clever man "ruined yes, that is it." +"Ah" said Eugenie. +"Yes, ruined Now it is revealed, this secret so full of +horror, as the tragic poet says. Now, my daughter, learn +from my lips how you may alleviate this misfortune, so far +as it will affect you." +"Oh," cried Eugenie, "you are a bad physiognomist, if you +imagine I deplore on my own account the catastrophe of which +you warn me. I ruined? and what will that signify to me? +Have I not my talent left? Can I not, like Pasta, Malibran, +Grisi, acquire for myself what you would never have given +me, whatever might have been your fortune, a hundred or a +hundred and fifty thousand livres per annum, for which I +shall be indebted to no one but myself and which, instead +of being given as you gave me those poor twelve thousand +francs, with sour looks and reproaches for my prodigality, +will be accompanied with acclamations, with bravos, and with +flowers? And if I do not possess that talent, which your +smiles prove to me you doubt, should I not still have that +ardent love of independence, which will be a substitute for +wealth, and which in my mind supersedes even the instinct of +selfpreservation? No, I grieve not on my own account, I +shall always find a resource my books, my pencils, my +piano, all the things which cost but little, and which I +shall be able to procure, will remain my own. +"Do you think that I sorrow for Madame Danglars? Undeceive +yourself again either I am greatly mistaken, or she has +provided against the catastrophe which threatens you, and, +which will pass over without affecting her. She has taken +care for herself, at least I hope so, for her +attention has not been diverted from her projects by +watching over me. She has fostered my independence by +professedly indulging my love for liberty. Oh, no, sir from +my childhood I have seen too much, and understood too much, +of what has passed around me, for misfortune to have an +undue power over me. From my earliest recollections, I have +been beloved by no one so much the worse that has +naturally led me to love no one so much the better now +you have my profession of faith." +"Then," said Danglars, pale with anger, which was not at all +due to offended paternal love, "then, mademoiselle, you +persist in your determination to accelerate my ruin?" +"Your ruin? I accelerate your ruin? What do you mean? I do +not understand you." +"So much the better, I have a ray of hope left listen." +"I am all attention," said Eugenie, looking so earnestly at +her father that it was an effort for the latter to endure +her unrelenting gaze. +"M. Cavalcanti," continued Danglars, "is about to marry you, +and will place in my hands his fortune, amounting to three +million livres." +"That is admirable" said Eugenie with sovereign contempt, +smoothing her gloves out one upon the other. +"You think I shall deprive you of those three millions," +said Danglars "but do not fear it. They are destined to +produce at least ten. I and a brother banker have obtained a +grant of a railway, the only industrial enterprise which in +these days promises to make good the fabulous prospects that +Law once held out to the eternally deluded Parisians, in the +fantastic Mississippi scheme. As I look at it, a millionth +part of a railway is worth fully as much as an acre of waste +land on the banks of the Ohio. We make in our case a +deposit, on a mortgage, which is an advance, as you see, +since we gain at least ten, fifteen, twenty, or a hundred +livres' worth of iron in exchange for our money. Well, +within a week I am to deposit four millions for my share +the four millions, I promise you, will produce ten or +twelve." +"But during my visit to you the day before yesterday, sir, +which you appear to recollect so well," replied Eugenie, "I +saw you arranging a deposit is not that the term? of +five millions and a half you even pointed it out to me in +two drafts on the treasury, and you were astonished that so +valuable a paper did not dazzle my eyes like lightning." +"Yes, but those five millions and a half are not mine, and +are only a proof of the great confidence placed in me my +title of popular banker has gained me the confidence of +charitable institutions, and the five millions and a half +belong to them at any other time I should not have +hesitated to make use of them, but the great losses I have +recently sustained are well known, and, as I told you, my +credit is rather shaken. That deposit may be at any moment +withdrawn, and if I had employed it for another purpose, I +should bring on me a disgraceful bankruptcy. I do not +despise bankruptcies, believe me, but they must be those +which enrich, not those which ruin. Now, if you marry M. +Cavalcanti, and I get the three millions, or even if it is +thought I am going to get them, my credit will be restored, +and my fortune, which for the last month or two has been +swallowed up in gulfs which have been opened in my path by +an inconceivable fatality, will revive. Do you understand +me?" +"Perfectly you pledge me for three millions, do you not?" +"The greater the amount, the more flattering it is to you +it gives you an idea of your value." +"Thank you. One word more, sir do you promise me to make +what use you can of the report of the fortune M. Cavalcanti +will bring without touching the money? This is no act of +selfishness, but of delicacy. I am willing to help rebuild +your fortune, but I will not be an accomplice in the ruin of +others." +"But since I tell you," cried Danglars, "that with these +three million" +"Do you expect to recover your position, sir, without +touching those three million?" +"I hope so, if the marriage should take place and confirm my +credit." +"Shall you be able to pay M. Cavalcanti the five hundred +thousand francs you promise for my dowry?" +"He shall receive them on returning from the mayor's." + The performance of the civil marriage. +"Very well" +"What next? what more do you want?" +"I wish to know if, in demanding my signature, you leave me +entirely free in my person?" +"Absolutely." +"Then, as I said before, sir, very well I am ready to +marry M. Cavalcanti." +"But what are you up to?" +"Ah, that is my affair. What advantage should I have over +you, if knowing your secret I were to tell you mine?" +Danglars bit his lips. "Then," said he, "you are ready to +pay the official visits, which are absolutely +indispensable?" +"Yes," replied Eugenie. +"And to sign the contract in three days?" +"Yes." +"Then, in my turn, I also say, very well" Danglars pressed +his daughter's hand in his. But, extraordinary to relate, +the father did not say, "Thank you, my child," nor did the +daughter smile at her father. "Is the conference ended?" +asked Eugenie, rising. Danglars motioned that he had nothing +more to say. Five minutes afterwards the piano resounded to +the touch of Mademoiselle d'Armilly's fingers, and +Mademoiselle Danglars was singing Brabantio's malediction on +Desdemona. At the end of the piece Etienne entered, and +announced to Eugenie that the horses were in the carriage, +and that the baroness was waiting for her to pay her visits. +We have seen them at Villefort's they proceeded then on +their course. +Chapter +The Contract. +Three days after the scene we have just described, namely +towards five o'clock in the afternoon of the day fixed for +the signature of the contract between Mademoiselle Eugenie +Danglars and Andrea Cavalcanti, whom the banker persisted +in calling prince, a fresh breeze was stirring the leaves +in the little garden in front of the Count of Monte Cristo's +house, and the count was preparing to go out. While his +horses were impatiently pawing the ground, held in by the +coachman, who had been seated a quarter of an hour on his +box, the elegant phaeton with which we are familiar +rapidly turned the angle of the entrancegate, and cast out +on the doorsteps M. Andrea Cavalcanti, as decked up and gay +as if he were going to marry a princess. He inquired after +the count with his usual familiarity, and ascending lightly +to the second story met him at the top of the stairs. The +count stopped on seeing the young man. As for Andrea, he was +launched, and when he was once launched nothing stopped him. +"Ah, good morning, my dear count," said he. "Ah, M. Andrea," +said the latter, with his halfjesting tone "how do you +do." +"Charmingly, as you see. I am come to talk to you about a +thousand things but, first tell me, were you going out or +just returned?" +"I was going out, sir." +"Then, in order not to hinder you, I will get up with you if +you please in your carriage, and Tom shall follow with my +phaeton in tow." +"No," said the count, with an imperceptible smile of +contempt, for he had no wish to be seen in the young man's +society, "no I prefer listening to you here, my dear M. +Andrea we can chat better indoors, and there is no +coachman to overhear our conversation." The count returned +to a small drawingroom on the first floor, sat down, and +crossing his legs motioned to the young man to take a seat +also. Andrea assumed his gayest manner. "You know, my dear +count," said he, "the ceremony is to take place this +evening. At nine o'clock the contract is to be signed at my +fatherinlaw's." +"Ah, indeed?" said Monte Cristo. +"What is it news to you? Has not M. Danglars informed you +of the ceremony?" +"Oh, yes," said the count "I received a letter from him +yesterday, but I do not think the hour was mentioned." +"Possibly my fatherinlaw trusted to its general +notoriety." +"Well," said Monte Cristo, "you are fortunate, M. +Cavalcanti it is a most suitable alliance you are +contracting, and Mademoiselle Danglars is a handsome girl." +"Yes, indeed she is," replied Cavalcanti, in a very modest +tone. +"Above all, she is very rich, at least, I believe so," +said Monte Cristo. +"Very rich, do you think?" replied the young man. +"Doubtless it is said M. Danglars conceals at least half of +his fortune." +"And he acknowledges fifteen or twenty millions," said +Andrea with a look sparkling with joy. +"Without reckoning," added Monte Cristo, "that he is on the +eve of entering into a sort of speculation already in vogue +in the United States and in England, but quite novel in +France." +"Yes, yes, I know what you mean, the railway, of which he +has obtained the grant, is it not?" +"Precisely it is generally believed he will gain ten +millions by that affair." +"Ten millions Do you think so? It is magnificent" said +Cavalcanti, who was quite confounded at the metallic sound +of these golden words. "Without reckoning," replied Monte +Cristo, "that all his fortune will come to you, and justly +too, since Mademoiselle Danglars is an only daughter. +Besides, your own fortune, as your father assured me, is +almost equal to that of your betrothed. But enough of money +matters. Do you know, M. Andrea, I think you have managed +this affair rather skilfully?" +"Not badly, by any means," said the young man "I was born +for a diplomatist." +"Well, you must become a diplomatist diplomacy, you know, +is something that is not to be acquired it is instinctive. +Have you lost your heart?" +"Indeed, I fear it," replied Andrea, in the tone in which he +had heard Dorante or Valere reply to Alceste at the Theatre +Francais. +"Is your love returned?" + In Moliere's comedy, Le Misanthrope. +"I suppose so," said Andrea with a triumphant smile, "since +I am accepted. But I must not forget one grand point." +"Which?" +"That I have been singularly assisted." +"Nonsense." +"I have, indeed." +"By circumstances?" +"No by you." +"By me? Not at all, prince," said Monte Cristo laying a +marked stress on the title, "what have I done for you? Are +not your name, your social position, and your merit +sufficient?" +"No," said Andrea, "no it is useless for you to say so, +count. I maintain that the position of a man like you has +done more than my name, my social position, and my merit." +"You are completely mistaken, sir," said Monte Cristo +coldly, who felt the perfidious manoeuvre of the young man, +and understood the bearing of his words "you only acquired +my protection after the influence and fortune of your father +had been ascertained for, after all, who procured for me, +who had never seen either you or your illustrious father, +the pleasure of your acquaintance? two of my good +friends, Lord Wilmore and the Abbe Busoni. What encouraged +me not to become your surety, but to patronize you? your +father's name, so well known in Italy and so highly honored. +Personally, I do not know you." This calm tone and perfect +ease made Andrea feel that he was, for the moment, +restrained by a more muscular hand than his own, and that +the restraint could not be easily broken through. +"Oh, then my father has really a very large fortune, count?" +"It appears so, sir," replied Monte Cristo. +"Do you know if the marriage settlement he promised me has +come?" +"I have been advised of it." +"But the three millions?" +"The three millions are probably on the road." +"Then I shall really have them?" +"Oh, well," said the count, "I do not think you have yet +known the want of money." Andrea was so surprised that he +pondered the matter for a moment. Then, arousing from his +revery, "Now, sir, I have one request to make to you, +which you will understand, even if it should be disagreeable +to you." +"Proceed," said Monte Cristo. +"I have formed an acquaintance, thanks to my good fortune, +with many noted persons, and have, at least for the moment, +a crowd of friends. But marrying, as I am about to do, +before all Paris, I ought to be supported by an illustrious +name, and in the absence of the paternal hand some powerful +one ought to lead me to the altar now, my father is not +coming to Paris, is he? He is old, covered with wounds, and +suffers dreadfully, he says, in travelling." +"Indeed?" +"Well, I am come to ask a favor of you." +"Of me?" +"Yes, of you." +"And pray what may it be?" +"Well, to take his part." +"Ah, my dear sir What? after the varied relations I have +had the happiness to sustain towards you, can it be that you +know me so little as to ask such a thing? Ask me to lend you +half a million and, although such a loan is somewhat rare, +on my honor, you would annoy me less Know, then, what I +thought I had already told you, that in participation in +this world's affairs, more especially in their moral +aspects, the Count of Monte Cristo has never ceased to +entertain the scruples and even the superstitions of the +East. I, who have a seraglio at Cairo, one at Smyrna, and +one at Constantinople, preside at a wedding? never" +"Then you refuse me?" +"Decidedly and were you my son or my brother I would refuse +you in the same way." +"But what must be done?" said Andrea, disappointed. +"You said just now that you had a hundred friends." +"Very true, but you introduced me at M. Danglars'." +"Not at all Let us recall the exact facts. You met him at a +dinner party at my house, and you introduced yourself at his +house that is a totally different affair." +"Yes, but, by my marriage, you have forwarded that." +"I? not in the least, I beg you to believe. Recollect +what I told you when you asked me to propose you. "Oh, I +never make matches, my dear prince, it is my settled +principle.'" Andrea bit his lips. +"But, at least, you will be there?" +"Will all Paris be there?" +"Oh, certainly." +"Well, like all Paris, I shall be there too," said the +count. +"And will you sign the contract?" +"I see no objection to that my scruples do not go thus +far." +"Well, since you will grant me no more, I must be content +with what you give me. But one word more, count." +"What is it?" +"Advice." +"Be careful advice is worse than a service." +"Oh, you can give me this without compromising yourself." +"Tell me what it is." +"Is my wife's fortune five hundred thousand livres?" +"That is the sum M. Danglars himself announced." +"Must I receive it, or leave it in the hands of the notary?" +"This is the way such affairs are generally arranged when it +is wished to do them stylishly Your two solicitors appoint +a meeting, when the contract is signed, for the next or the +following day then they exchange the two portions, for +which they each give a receipt then, when the marriage is +celebrated, they place the amount at your disposal as the +chief member of the alliance." +"Because," said Andrea, with a certain illconcealed +uneasiness, "I thought I heard my fatherinlaw say that he +intended embarking our property in that famous railway +affair of which you spoke just now." +"Well," replied Monte Cristo, "it will be the way, everybody +says, of trebling your fortune in twelve months. Baron +Danglars is a good father, and knows how to calculate." +"In that case," said Andrea, "everything is all right, +excepting your refusal, which quite grieves me." +"You must attribute it only to natural scruples under +similar circumstances." +"Well," said Andrea, "let it be as you wish. This evening, +then, at nine o'clock." +"Adieu till then." Notwithstanding a slight resistance on +the part of Monte Cristo, whose lips turned pale, but who +preserved his ceremonious smile, Andrea seized the count's +hand, pressed it, jumped into his phaeton, and disappeared. +The four or five remaining hours before nine o'clock +arrived, Andrea employed in riding, paying visits, +designed to induce those of whom he had spoken to appear at +the banker's in their gayest equipages, dazzling them by +promises of shares in schemes which have since turned every +brain, and in which Danglars was just taking the initiative. +In fact, at halfpast eight in the evening the grand salon, +the gallery adjoining, and the three other drawingrooms on +the same floor, were filled with a perfumed crowd, who +sympathized but little in the event, but who all +participated in that love of being present wherever there is +anything fresh to be seen. An Academician would say that the +entertainments of the fashionable world are collections of +flowers which attract inconstant butterflies, famished bees, +and buzzing drones. +No one could deny that the rooms were splendidly +illuminated the light streamed forth on the gilt mouldings +and the silk hangings and all the bad taste of decorations, +which had only their richness to boast of, shone in its +splendor. Mademoiselle Eugenie was dressed with elegant +simplicity in a figured white silk dress, and a white rose +half concealed in her jet black hair was her only ornament, +unaccompanied by a single jewel. Her eyes, however, betrayed +that perfect confidence which contradicted the girlish +simplicity of this modest attire. Madame Danglars was +chatting at a short distance with Debray, Beauchamp, and +ChateauRenaud. +Debray was admitted to the house for this grand ceremony, +but on the same plane with every one else, and without any +particular privilege. M. Danglars, surrounded by deputies +and men connected with the revenue, was explaining a new +theory of taxation which he intended to adopt when the +course of events had compelled the government to call him +into the ministry. Andrea, on whose arm hung one of the most +consummate dandies of the opera, was explaining to him +rather cleverly, since he was obliged to be bold to appear +at ease, his future projects, and the new luxuries he meant +to introduce to Parisian fashions with his hundred and +seventyfive thousand livres per annum. +The crowd moved to and fro in the rooms like an ebb and flow +of turquoises, rubies, emeralds, opals, and diamonds. As +usual, the oldest women were the most decorated, and the +ugliest the most conspicuous. If there was a beautiful lily, +or a sweet rose, you had to search for it, concealed in some +corner behind a mother with a turban, or an aunt with a bird +of paradise. +At each moment, in the midst of the crowd, the buzzing, and +the laughter, the doorkeeper's voice was heard announcing +some name well known in the financial department, respected +in the army, or illustrious in the literary world, and which +was acknowledged by a slight movement in the different +groups. But for one whose privilege it was to agitate that +ocean of human waves, how many were received with a look of +indifference or a sneer of disdain At the moment when the +hand of the massive timepiece, representing Endymion +asleep, pointed to nine on its golden face, and the hammer, +the faithful type of mechanical thought, struck nine times, +the name of the Count of Monte Cristo resounded in its turn, +and as if by an electric shock all the assembly turned +towards the door. +The count was dressed in black and with his habitual +simplicity his white waistcoat displayed his expansive +noble chest and his black stock was singularly noticeable +because of its contrast with the deadly paleness of his +face. His only jewellery was a chain, so fine that the +slender gold thread was scarcely perceptible on his white +waistcoat. A circle was immediately formed around the door. +The count perceived at one glance Madame Danglars at one end +of the drawingroom, M. Danglars at the other, and Eugenie +in front of him. He first advanced towards the baroness, who +was chatting with Madame de Villefort, who had come alone, +Valentine being still an invalid and without turning aside, +so clear was the road left for him, he passed from the +baroness to Eugenie, whom he complimented in such rapid and +measured terms, that the proud artist was quite struck. Near +her was Mademoiselle Louise d'Armilly, who thanked the count +for the letters of introduction he had so kindly given her +for Italy, which she intended immediately to make use of. On +leaving these ladies he found himself with Danglars, who had +advanced to meet him. +Having accomplished these three social duties, Monte Cristo +stopped, looking around him with that expression peculiar to +a certain class, which seems to say, "I have done my duty, +now let others do theirs." Andrea, who was in an adjoining +room, had shared in the sensation caused by the arrival of +Monte Cristo, and now came forward to pay his respects to +the count. He found him completely surrounded all were +eager to speak to him, as is always the case with those +whose words are few and weighty. The solicitors arrived at +this moment and arranged their scrawled papers on the velvet +cloth embroidered with gold which covered the table prepared +for the signature it was a gilt table supported on lions' +claws. One of the notaries sat down, the other remained +standing. They were about to proceed to the reading of the +contract, which half Paris assembled was to sign. All took +their places, or rather the ladies formed a circle, while +the gentlemen more indifferent to the restraints of what +Boileau calls the "energetic style" commented on the +feverish agitation of Andrea, on M. Danglars' riveted +attention, Eugenie's composure, and the light and sprightly +manner in which the baroness treated this important affair. +The contract was read during a profound silence. But as soon +as it was finished, the buzz was redoubled through all the +drawingrooms the brilliant sums, the rolling millions +which were to be at the command of the two young people, and +which crowned the display of the wedding presents and the +young lady's diamonds, which had been made in a room +entirely appropriated for that purpose, had exercised to the +full their delusions over the envious assembly. Mademoiselle +Danglars' charms were heightened in the opinion of the young +men, and for the moment seemed to outvie the sun in +splendor. As for the ladies, it is needless to say that +while they coveted the millions, they thought they did not +need them for themselves, as they were beautiful enough +without them. Andrea, surrounded by his friends, +complimented, flattered, beginning to believe in the reality +of his dream, was almost bewildered. The notary solemnly +took the pen, flourished it above his head, and said, +"Gentlemen, we are about to sign the contract." +The baron was to sign first, then the representative of M. +Cavalcanti, senior, then the baroness, afterwards the +"future couple," as they are styled in the abominable +phraseology of legal documents. The baron took the pen and +signed, then the representative. The baroness approached, +leaning on Madame de Villefort's arm. "My dear," said she, +as she took the pen, "is it not vexatious? An unexpected +incident, in the affair of murder and theft at the Count of +Monte Cristo's, in which he nearly fell a victim, deprives +us of the pleasure of seeing M. de Villefort." +"Indeed?" said M. Danglars, in the same tone in which he +would have said, "Oh, well, what do I care?" +"As a matter of fact," said Monte Cristo, approaching, "I am +much afraid that I am the involuntary cause of his absence." +"What, you, count?" said Madame Danglars, signing "if you +are, take care, for I shall never forgive you." Andrea +pricked up his ears. +"But it is not my fault, as I shall endeavor to prove." +Every one listened eagerly Monte Cristo who so rarely +opened his lips, was about to speak. "You remember," said +the count, during the most profound silence, "that the +unhappy wretch who came to rob me died at my house the +supposition is that he was stabbed by his accomplice, on +attempting to leave it." +"Yes," said Danglars. +"In order that his wounds might be examined he was +undressed, and his clothes were thrown into a corner, where +the police picked them up, with the exception of the +waistcoat, which they overlooked." Andrea turned pale, and +drew towards the door he saw a cloud rising in the horizon, +which appeared to forebode a coming storm. +"Well, this waistcoat was discovered today, covered with +blood, and with a hole over the heart." The ladies screamed, +and two or three prepared to faint. "It was brought to me. +No one could guess what the dirty rag could be I alone +suspected that it was the waistcoat of the murdered man. My +valet, in examining this mournful relic, felt a paper in the +pocket and drew it out it was a letter addressed to you, +baron." +"To me?" cried Danglars. +"Yes, indeed, to you I succeeded in deciphering your name +under the blood with which the letter was stained," replied +Monte Cristo, amid the general outburst of amazement. +"But," asked Madame Danglars, looking at her husband with +uneasiness, "how could that prevent M. de Villefort" +"In this simple way, madame," replied Monte Cristo "the +waistcoat and the letter were both what is termed +circumstantial evidence I therefore sent them to the king's +attorney. You understand, my dear baron, that legal methods +are the safest in criminal cases it was, perhaps, some plot +against you." Andrea looked steadily at Monte Cristo and +disappeared in the second drawingroom. +"Possibly," said Danglars "was not this murdered man an old +galleyslave?" +"Yes," replied the count "a felon named Caderousse." +Danglars turned slightly pale Andrea reached the anteroom +beyond the little drawingroom. +"But go on signing," said Monte Cristo "I perceive that my +story has caused a general emotion, and I beg to apologize +to you, baroness, and to Mademoiselle Danglars." The +baroness, who had signed, returned the pen to the notary. +"Prince Cavalcanti," said the latter "Prince Cavalcanti, +where are you?" +"Andrea, Andrea," repeated several young people, who were +already on sufficiently intimate terms with him to call him +by his Christian name. +"Call the prince inform him that it is his turn to sign," +cried Danglars to one of the floorkeepers. +But at the same instant the crowd of guests rushed in alarm +into the principal salon as if some frightful monster had +entered the apartments, quaerens quem devoret. There was, +indeed, reason to retreat, to be alarmed, and to scream. An +officer was placing two soldiers at the door of each +drawingroom, and was advancing towards Danglars, preceded +by a commissary of police, girded with his scarf. Madame +Danglars uttered a scream and fainted. Danglars, who thought +himself threatened certain consciences are never calm, +Danglars even before his guests showed a countenance of +abject terror. +"What is the matter, sir?" asked Monte Cristo, advancing to +meet the commissioner. +"Which of you gentlemen," asked the magistrate, without +replying to the count, "answers to the name of Andrea +Cavalcanti?" A cry of astonishment was heard from all parts +of the room. They searched they questioned. "But who then +is Andrea Cavalcanti?" asked Danglars in amazement. +"A galleyslave, escaped from confinement at Toulon." +"And what crime has he committed?" +"He is accused," said the commissary with his inflexible +voice, "of having assassinated the man named Caderousse, his +former companion in prison, at the moment he was making his +escape from the house of the Count of Monte Cristo." Monte +Cristo cast a rapid glance around him. Andrea was gone. +Chapter +The Departure for Belgium. +A few minutes after the scene of confusion produced in the +salons of M. Danglars by the unexpected appearance of the +brigade of soldiers, and by the disclosure which had +followed, the mansion was deserted with as much rapidity as +if a case of plague or of cholera morbus had broken out +among the guests. In a few minutes, through all the doors, +down all the staircases, by every exit, every one hastened +to retire, or rather to fly for it was a situation where +the ordinary condolences, which even the best friends are +so eager to offer in great catastrophes, were seen to be +utterly futile. There remained in the banker's house only +Danglars, closeted in his study, and making his statement to +the officer of gendarmes Madame Danglars, terrified, in the +boudoir with which we are acquainted and Eugenie, who with +haughty air and disdainful lip had retired to her room with +her inseparable companion, Mademoiselle Louise d'Armilly. As +for the numerous servants more numerous that evening than +usual, for their number was augmented by cooks and butlers +from the Cafe de Paris, venting on their employers their +anger at what they termed the insult to which they had been +subjected, they collected in groups in the hall, in the +kitchens, or in their rooms, thinking very little of their +duty, which was thus naturally interrupted. Of all this +household, only two persons deserve our notice these are +Mademoiselle Eugenie Danglars and Mademoiselle Louise +d'Armilly. +The betrothed had retired, as we said, with haughty air, +disdainful lip, and the demeanor of an outraged queen, +followed by her companion, who was paler and more disturbed +than herself. On reaching her room Eugenie locked her door, +while Louise fell on a chair. "Ah, what a dreadful thing," +said the young musician "who would have suspected it? M. +Andrea Cavalcanti a murderer a galleyslave escaped a +convict" An ironical smile curled the lip of Eugenie. "In +truth I was fated," said she. "I escaped the Morcerf only to +fall into the Cavalcanti." +"Oh, do not confound the two, Eugenie." +"Hold your tongue The men are all infamous, and I am happy +to be able now to do more than detest them I despise +them." +"What shall we do?" asked Louise. +"What shall we do?" +"Yes." +"Why, the same we had intended doing three days since set +off." +"What? although you are not now going to be married, you +intend still" +"Listen, Louise. I hate this life of the fashionable world, +always ordered, measured, ruled, like our musicpaper. What +I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life +of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own +resources, and accountable only to myself. Remain here? What +for? that they may try, a month hence, to marry me again +and to whom? M. Debray, perhaps, as it was once proposed. +No, Louise, no This evening's adventure will serve for my +excuse. I did not seek one, I did not ask for one. God sends +me this, and I hail it joyfully" +"How strong and courageous you are" said the fair, frail +girl to her brunette companion. +"Did you not yet know me? Come, Louise, let us talk of our +affairs. The postchaise" +"Was happily bought three days since." +"Have you had it sent where we are to go for it?" +"Yes." +"Our passport?" +"Here it is." +And Eugenie, with her usual precision, opened a printed +paper, and read, +"M. Leon d'Armilly, twenty years of age profession, artist +hair black, eyes black travelling with his sister." +"Capital How did you get this passport?" +"When I went to ask M. de Monte Cristo for letters to the +directors of the theatres at Rome and Naples, I expressed my +fears of travelling as a woman he perfectly understood +them, and undertook to procure for me a man's passport, and +two days after I received this, to which I have added with +my own hand, "travelling with his sister.'" +"Well," said Eugenie cheerfully, "we have then only to pack +up our trunks we shall start the evening of the signing of +the contract, instead of the evening of the wedding that +is all." +"But consider the matter seriously, Eugenie" +"Oh, I am done with considering I am tired of hearing only +of market reports, of the end of the month, of the rise and +fall of Spanish funds, of Haitian bonds. Instead of that, +Louise do you understand? air, liberty, melody of +birds, plains of Lombardy, Venetian canals, Roman palaces, +the Bay of Naples. How much have we, Louise?" The young girl +to whom this question was addressed drew from an inlaid +secretary a small portfolio with a lock, in which she +counted twentythree banknotes. +"Twentythree thousand francs," said she. +"And as much, at least, in pearls, diamonds, and jewels," +said Eugenie. "We are rich. With fortyfive thousand francs +we can live like princesses for two years, and comfortably +for four but before six months you with your music, and +I with my voice we shall double our capital. Come, you +shall take charge of the money, I of the jewelbox so that +if one of us had the misfortune to lose her treasure, the +other would still have hers left. Now, the portmanteau +let us make haste the portmanteau" +"Stop" said Louise, going to listen at Madame Danglars' +door. +"What do you fear?" +"That we may be discovered." +"The door is locked." +"They may tell us to open it." +"They may if they like, but we will not." +"You are a perfect Amazon, Eugenie" And the two young girls +began to heap into a trunk all the things they thought they +should require. "There now," said Eugenie, "while I change +my costume do you lock the portmanteau." Louise pressed with +all the strength of her little hands on the top of the +portmanteau. "But I cannot," said she "I am not strong +enough do you shut it." +"Ah, you do well to ask," said Eugenie, laughing "I forgot +that I was Hercules, and you only the pale Omphale" And the +young girl, kneeling on the top, pressed the two parts of +the portmanteau together, and Mademoiselle d'Armilly passed +the bolt of the padlock through. When this was done, Eugenie +opened a drawer, of which she kept the key, and took from it +a wadded violet silk travelling cloak. "Here," said she, +"you see I have thought of everything with this cloak you +will not be cold." +"But you?" +"Oh, I am never cold, you know Besides, with these men's +clothes" +"Will you dress here?" +"Certainly." +"Shall you have time?" +"Do not be uneasy, you little coward All our servants are +busy, discussing the grand affair. Besides, what is there +astonishing, when you think of the grief I ought to be in, +that I shut myself up? tell me" +"No, truly you comfort me." +"Come and help me." +From the same drawer she took a man's complete costume, from +the boots to the coat, and a provision of linen, where there +was nothing superfluous, but every requisite. Then, with a +promptitude which indicated that this was not the first time +she had amused herself by adopting the garb of the opposite +sex, Eugenie drew on the boots and pantaloons, tied her +cravat, buttoned her waistcoat up to the throat, and put on +a coat which admirably fitted her beautiful figure. "Oh, +that is very good indeed, it is very good" said Louise, +looking at her with admiration "but that beautiful black +hair, those magnificent braids, which made all the ladies +sigh with envy, will they go under a man's hat like the +one I see down there?" +"You shall see," said Eugenie. And with her left hand +seizing the thick mass, which her long fingers could +scarcely grasp, she took in her right hand a pair of long +scissors, and soon the steel met through the rich and +splendid hair, which fell in a cluster at her feet as she +leaned back to keep it from her coat. Then she grasped the +front hair, which she also cut off, without expressing the +least regret on the contrary, her eyes sparkled with +greater pleasure than usual under her ebony eyebrows. "Oh, +the magnificent hair" said Louise, with regret. +"And am I not a hundred times better thus?" cried Eugenie, +smoothing the scattered curls of her hair, which had now +quite a masculine appearance "and do you not think me +handsomer so?" +"Oh, you are beautiful always beautiful" cried Louise. +"Now, where are you going?" +"To Brussels, if you like it is the nearest frontier. We +can go to Brussels, Liege, AixlaChapelle then up the +Rhine to Strasburg. We will cross Switzerland, and go down +into Italy by the SaintGothard. Will that do?" +"Yes." +"What are you looking at?" +"I am looking at you indeed you are adorable like that One +would say you were carrying me off." +"And they would be right, pardieu" +"Oh, I think you swore, Eugenie." And the two young girls, +whom every one might have thought plunged in grief, the one +on her own account, the other from interest in her friend, +burst out laughing, as they cleared away every visible trace +of the disorder which had naturally accompanied the +preparations for their escape. Then, having blown out the +lights, the two fugitives, looking and listening eagerly, +with outstretched necks, opened the door of a dressingroom +which led by a side staircase down to the yard, Eugenie +going first, and holding with one arm the portmanteau, which +by the opposite handle Mademoiselle d'Armilly scarcely +raised with both hands. The yard was empty the clock was +striking twelve. The porter was not yet gone to bed. Eugenie +approached softly, and saw the old man sleeping soundly in +an armchair in his lodge. She returned to Louise, took up +the portmanteau, which she had placed for a moment on the +ground, and they reached the archway under the shadow of the +wall. +Eugenie concealed Louise in an angle of the gateway, so that +if the porter chanced to awake he might see but one person. +Then placing herself in the full light of the lamp which lit +the yard, "Gate" cried she, with her finest contralto +voice, and rapping at the window. +The porter got up as Eugenie expected, and even advanced +some steps to recognize the person who was going out, but +seeing a young man striking his boot impatiently with his +ridingwhip, he opened it immediately. Louise slid through +the halfopen gate like a snake, and bounded lightly +forward. Eugenie, apparently calm, although in all +probability her heart beat somewhat faster than usual, went +out in her turn. A porter was passing and they gave him the +portmanteau then the two young girls, having told him to +take it to No. , Rue de la Victoire, walked behind this +man, whose presence comforted Louise. As for Eugenie, she +was as strong as a Judith or a Delilah. They arrived at the +appointed spot. Eugenie ordered the porter to put down the +portmanteau, gave him some pieces of money, and having +rapped at the shutter sent him away. The shutter where +Eugenie had rapped was that of a little laundress, who had +been previously warned, and was not yet gone to bed. She +opened the door. +"Mademoiselle," said Eugenie, "let the porter get the +postchaise from the coachhouse, and fetch some posthorses +from the hotel. Here are five francs for his trouble." +"Indeed," said Louise, "I admire you, and I could almost say +respect you." The laundress looked on in astonishment, but +as she had been promised twenty louis, she made no remark. +In a quarter of an hour the porter returned with a postboy +and horses, which were harnessed, and put in the postchaise +in a minute, while the porter fastened the portmanteau on +with the assistance of a cord and strap. "Here is the +passport," said the postilion, "which way are we going, +young gentleman?" +"To Fontainebleau," replied Eugenie with an almost masculine +voice. +"What do you say?" said Louise. +"I am giving them the slip," said Eugenie "this woman to +whom we have given twenty louis may betray us for forty we +will soon alter our direction." And the young girl jumped +into the britzska, which was admirably arranged for sleeping +in, without scarcely touching the step. "You are always +right," said the music teacher, seating herself by the side +of her friend. +A quarter of an hour afterwards the postilion, having been +put in the right road, passed with a crack of his whip +through the gateway of the Barriere SaintMartin. "Ah," said +Louise, breathing freely, "here we are out of Paris." +"Yes, my dear, the abduction is an accomplished fact," +replied Eugenie. "Yes, and without violence," said Louise. +"I shall bring that forward as an extenuating circumstance," +replied Eugenie. These words were lost in the noise which +the carriage made in rolling over the pavement of La +Villette. M. Danglars no longer had a daughter. +Chapter +The Bell and Bottle Tavern. +And now let us leave Mademoiselle Danglars and her friend +pursuing their way to Brussels, and return to poor Andrea +Cavalcanti, so inopportunely interrupted in his rise to +fortune. Notwithstanding his youth, Master Andrea was a very +skilful and intelligent boy. We have seen that on the first +rumor which reached the salon he had gradually approached +the door, and crossing two or three rooms at last +disappeared. But we have forgotten to mention one +circumstance, which nevertheless ought not to be omitted in +one of the rooms he crossed, the trousseau of the +brideelect was on exhibition. There were caskets of +diamonds, cashmere shawls, Valenciennes lace, English +veilings, and in fact all the tempting things, the bare +mention of which makes the hearts of young girls bound with +joy, and which is called the "corbeille." Now, in passing +through this room, Andrea proved himself not only to be +clever and intelligent, but also provident, for he helped +himself to the most valuable of the ornaments before him. + Literally, "the basket," because wedding gifts were +originally brought in such a receptacle. +Furnished with this plunder, Andrea leaped with a lighter +heart from the window, intending to slip through the hands +of the gendarmes. Tall and well proportioned as an ancient +gladiator, and muscular as a Spartan, he walked for a +quarter of an hour without knowing where to direct his +steps, actuated by the sole idea of getting away from the +spot where if he lingered he knew that he would surely be +taken. Having passed through the Rue Mont Blanc, guided by +the instinct which leads thieves always to take the safest +path, he found himself at the end of the Rue Lafayette. +There he stopped, breathless and panting. He was quite +alone on one side was the vast wilderness of the +SaintLazare, on the other, Paris enshrouded in darkness. +"Am I to be captured?" he cried "no, not if I can use more +activity than my enemies. My safety is now a mere question +of speed." At this moment he saw a cab at the top of the +Faubourg Poissonniere. The dull driver, smoking his pipe, +was plodding along toward the limits of the Faubourg +SaintDenis, where no doubt he ordinarily had his station. +"Ho, friend" said Benedetto. +"What do you want, sir?" asked the driver. +"Is your horse tired?" +"Tired? oh, yes, tired enough he has done nothing the +whole of this blessed day Four wretched fares, and twenty +sous over, making in all seven francs, are all that I have +earned, and I ought to take ten to the owner." +"Will you add these twenty francs to the seven you have?" +"With pleasure, sir twenty francs are not to be despised. +Tell me what I am to do for this." +"A very easy thing, if your horse isn't tired." +"I tell you he'll go like the wind, only tell me which +way to drive." +"Towards the Louvres." +"Ah, I know the way you get good sweetened rum over +there." +"Exactly so I merely wish to overtake one of my friends, +with whom I am going to hunt tomorrow at +ChapelleenServal. He should have waited for me here with a +cabriolet till halfpast eleven it is twelve, and, tired of +waiting, he must have gone on." +"It is likely." +"Well, will you try and overtake him?" +"Nothing I should like better." +"If you do not overtake him before we reach Bourget you +shall have twenty francs if not before Louvres, thirty." +"And if we do overtake him?" +"Forty," said Andrea, after a moment's hesitation, at the +end of which he remembered that he might safely promise. +"That's all right," said the man "hop in, and we're off +Whooop, la" +Andrea got into the cab, which passed rapidly through the +Faubourg SaintDenis, along the Faubourg SaintMartin, +crossed the barrier, and threaded its way through the +interminable Villette. They never overtook the chimerical +friend, yet Andrea frequently inquired of people on foot +whom he passed and at the inns which were not yet closed, +for a green cabriolet and bay horse and as there are a +great many cabriolets to be seen on the road to the Low +Countries, and as ninetenths of them are green, the +inquiries increased at every step. Every one had just seen +it pass it was only five hundred, two hundred, one hundred +steps in advance at length they reached it, but it was not +the friend. Once the cab was also passed by a calash rapidly +whirled along by two posthorses. "Ah," said Cavalcanti to +himself, "if I only had that britzska, those two good +posthorses, and above all the passport that carries them +on" And he sighed deeply. The calash contained Mademoiselle +Danglars and Mademoiselle d'Armilly. "Hurry, hurry" said +Andrea, "we must overtake him soon." And the poor horse +resumed the desperate gallop it had kept up since leaving +the barrier, and arrived steaming at Louvres. +"Certainly," said Andrea, "I shall not overtake my friend, +but I shall kill your horse, therefore I had better stop. +Here are thirty francs I will sleep at the Red Horse, and +will secure a place in the first coach. Goodnight, friend." +And Andrea, after placing six pieces of five francs each in +the man's hand, leaped lightly on to the pathway. The cabman +joyfully pocketed the sum, and turned back on his road to +Paris. Andrea pretended to go towards the Red Horse inn, but +after leaning an instant against the door, and hearing the +last sound of the cab, which was disappearing from view, he +went on his road, and with a lusty stride soon traversed the +space of two leagues. Then he rested he must be near +ChapelleenServal, where he pretended to be going. It was +not fatigue that stayed Andrea here it was that he might +form some resolution, adopt some plan. It would be +impossible to make use of a diligence, equally so to engage +posthorses to travel either way a passport was necessary. +It was still more impossible to remain in the department of +the Oise, one of the most open and strictly guarded in +France this was quite out of the question, especially to a +man like Andrea, perfectly conversant with criminal matters. +He sat down by the side of the moat, buried his face in his +hands and reflected. Ten minutes after he raised his head +his resolution was made. He threw some dust over the +topcoat, which he had found time to unhook from the +antechamber and button over his ball costume, and going to +ChapelleenServal he knocked loudly at the door of the only +inn in the place. The host opened. "My friend," said Andrea, +"I was coming from Montefontaine to Senlis, when my horse, +which is a troublesome creature, stumbled and threw me. I +must reach Compiegne tonight, or I shall cause deep anxiety +to my family. Could you let me hire a horse of you?" +An innkeeper has always a horse to let, whether it be good +or bad. The host called the stableboy, and ordered him to +saddle "Whitey," then he awoke his son, a child of seven +years, whom he ordered to ride before the gentleman and +bring back the horse. Andrea gave the innkeeper twenty +francs, and in taking them from his pocket dropped a +visiting card. This belonged to one of his friends at the +Cafe de Paris, so that the innkeeper, picking it up after +Andrea had left, was convinced that he had let his horse to +the Count of Mauleon, Rue SaintDominique, that being the +name and address on the card. "Whitey" was not a fast +animal, but he kept up an easy, steady pace in three hours +and a half Andrea had traversed the nine leagues which +separated him from Compiegne, and four o'clock struck as he +reached the place where the coaches stop. There is an +excellent tavern at Compiegne, well remembered by those who +have ever been there. Andrea, who had often stayed there in +his rides about Paris, recollected the Bell and Bottle inn +he turned around, saw the sign by the light of a reflected +lamp, and having dismissed the child, giving him all the +small coin he had about him, he began knocking at the door, +very reasonably concluding that having now three or four +hours before him he had best fortify himself against the +fatigues of the morrow by a sound sleep and a good supper. A +waiter opened the door. +"My friend," said Andrea, "I have been dining at +SaintJeanauBois, and expected to catch the coach which +passes by at midnight, but like a fool I have lost my way, +and have been walking for the last four hours in the forest. +Show me into one of those pretty little rooms which overlook +the court, and bring me a cold fowl and a bottle of +Bordeaux." The waiter had no suspicions Andrea spoke with +perfect composure, he had a cigar in his mouth, and his +hands in the pocket of his top coat his clothes were +fashionably made, his chin smooth, his boots irreproachable +he looked merely as if he had stayed out very late, that was +all. While the waiter was preparing his room, the hostess +arose Andrea assumed his most charming smile, and asked if +he could have No. , which he had occupied on his last stay +at Compiegne. Unfortunately, No. was engaged by a young +man who was travelling with his sister. Andrea appeared in +despair, but consoled himself when the hostess assured him +that No. , prepared for him, was situated precisely the +same as No. , and while warming his feet and chatting about +the last races at Chantilly, he waited until they announced +his room to be ready. +Andrea had not spoken without cause of the pretty rooms +looking out upon the court of the Bell Tavern, which with +its triple galleries like those of a theatre, with the +jessamine and clematis twining round the light columns, +forms one of the prettiest entrances to an inn that you can +imagine. The fowl was tender, the wine old, the fire clear +and sparkling, and Andrea was surprised to find himself +eating with as good an appetite as though nothing had +happened. Then he went to bed and almost immediately fell +into that deep sleep which is sure to visit men of twenty +years of age, even when they are torn with remorse. Now, +here we are obliged to own that Andrea ought to have felt +remorse, but that he did not. This was the plan which had +appealed to him to afford the best chance of his security. +Before daybreak he would awake, leave the inn after +rigorously paying his bill, and reaching the forest, he +would, under pretence of making studies in painting, test +the hospitality of some peasants, procure himself the dress +of a woodcutter and a hatchet, casting off the lion's skin +to assume that of the woodman then, with his hands covered +with dirt, his hair darkened by means of a leaden comb, his +complexion embrowned with a preparation for which one of his +old comrades had given him the recipe, he intended, by +following the wooded districts, to reach the nearest +frontier, walking by night and sleeping in the day in the +forests and quarries, and only entering inhabited regions to +buy a loaf from time to time. +Once past the frontier, Andrea proposed making money of his +diamonds and by uniting the proceeds to ten banknotes he +always carried about with him in case of accident, he would +then find himself possessor of about , livres, which he +philosophically considered as no very deplorable condition +after all. Moreover, he reckoned much on the interest of the +Danglars to hush up the rumor of their own misadventures. +These were the reasons which, added to the fatigue, caused +Andrea to sleep so soundly. In order that he might awaken +early he did not close the shutters, but contented himself +with bolting the door and placing on the table an unclasped +and longpointed knife, whose temper he well knew, and which +was never absent from him. About seven in the morning Andrea +was awakened by a ray of sunlight, which played, warm and +brilliant, upon his face. In all wellorganized brains, the +predominating idea and there always is one is sure to +be the last thought before sleeping, and the first upon +waking in the morning. Andrea had scarcely opened his eyes +when his predominating idea presented itself, and whispered +in his ear that he had slept too long. He jumped out of bed +and ran to the window. A gendarme was crossing the court. A +gendarme is one of the most striking objects in the world, +even to a man void of uneasiness but for one who has a +timid conscience, and with good cause too, the yellow, blue, +and white uniform is really very alarming. +"Why is that gendarme there?" asked Andrea of himself. Then, +all at once, he replied, with that logic which the reader +has, doubtless, remarked in him, "There is nothing +astonishing in seeing a gendarme at an inn instead of being +astonished, let me dress myself." And the youth dressed +himself with a facility his valet de chambre had failed to +rob him of during the two months of fashionable life he had +led in Paris. "Now then," said Andrea, while dressing +himself, "I'll wait till he leaves, and then I'll slip +away." And, saying this, Andrea, who had now put on his +boots and cravat, stole gently to the window, and a second +time lifted up the muslin curtain. Not only was the first +gendarme still there, but the young man now perceived a +second yellow, blue, and white uniform at the foot of the +staircase, the only one by which he could descend, while a +third, on horseback, holding a musket in his fist, was +posted as a sentinel at the great street door which alone +afforded the means of egress. +The appearance of the third gendarme settled the matter, for +a crowd of curious loungers was extended before him, +effectually blocking the entrance to the hotel. "They're +after me" was Andrea's first thought. "The devil" A pallor +overspread the young man's forehead, and he looked around +him with anxiety. His room, like all those on the same +floor, had but one outlet to the gallery in the sight of +everybody. "I am lost" was his second thought and, indeed, +for a man in Andrea's situation, an arrest meant the +assizes, trial, and death, death without mercy or delay. +For a moment he convulsively pressed his head within his +hands, and during that brief period he became nearly mad +with terror but soon a ray of hope glimmered in the +multitude of thoughts which bewildered his mind, and a faint +smile played upon his white lips and pallid cheeks. He +looked around and saw the objects of his search upon the +chimneypiece they were a pen, ink, and paper. With forced +composure he dipped the pen in the ink, and wrote the +following lines upon a sheet of paper +"I have no money to pay my bill, but I am not a dishonest +man I leave behind me as a pledge this pin, worth ten times +the amount. I shall be excused for leaving at daybreak, for +I was ashamed." +He then drew the pin from his cravat and placed it on the +paper. This done, instead of leaving the door fastened, he +drew back the bolts and even placed the door ajar, as though +he had left the room, forgetting to close it, and slipping +into the chimney like a man accustomed to that kind of +gymnastic exercise, having effaced the marks of his feet +upon the floor, he commenced climbing the only opening which +afforded him the means of escape. At this precise time, the +first gendarme Andrea had noticed walked upstairs, preceded +by the commissary of police, and supported by the second +gendarme who guarded the staircase and was himself +reenforced by the one stationed at the door. +Andrea was indebted for this visit to the following +circumstances. At daybreak, the telegraphs were set at work +in all directions, and almost immediately the authorities in +every district had exerted their utmost endeavors to arrest +the murderer of Caderousse. Compiegne, that royal residence +and fortified town, is well furnished with authorities, +gendarmes, and commissaries of police they therefore began +operations as soon as the telegraphic despatch arrived, and +the Bell and Bottle being the bestknown hotel in the town, +they had naturally directed their first inquiries there. +Now, besides the reports of the sentinels guarding the Hotel +de Ville, which is next door to the Bell and Bottle, it had +been stated by others that a number of travellers had +arrived during the night. The sentinel who was relieved at +six o'clock in the morning, remembered perfectly that just +as he was taking his post a few minutes past four a young +man arrived on horseback, with a little boy before him. The +young man, having dismissed the boy and horse, knocked at +the door of the hotel, which was opened, and again closed +after his entrance. This late arrival had attracted much +suspicion, and the young man being no other than Andrea, the +commissary and gendarme, who was a brigadier, directed their +steps towards his room. +They found the door ajar. "Oh, ho," said the brigadier, who +thoroughly understood the trick "a bad sign to find the +door open I would rather find it triply bolted." And, +indeed, the little note and pin upon the table confirmed, or +rather corroborated, the sad truth. Andrea had fled. We say +corroborated, because the brigadier was too experienced to +be convinced by a single proof. He glanced around, looked in +the bed, shook the curtains, opened the closets, and finally +stopped at the chimney. Andrea had taken the precaution to +leave no traces of his feet in the ashes, but still it was +an outlet, and in this light was not to be passed over +without serious investigation. +The brigadier sent for some sticks and straw, and having +filled the chimney with them, set a light to it. The fire +crackled, and the smoke ascended like the dull vapor from a +volcano but still no prisoner fell down, as they expected. +The fact was, that Andrea, at war with society ever since +his youth, was quite as deep as a gendarme, even though he +were advanced to the rank of brigadier, and quite prepared +for the fire, he had climbed out on the roof and was +crouching down against the chimneypots. At one time he +thought he was saved, for he heard the brigadier exclaim in +a loud voice, to the two gendarmes, "He is not here" But +venturing to peep, he perceived that the latter, instead of +retiring, as might have been reasonably expected upon this +announcement, were watching with increased attention. +It was now his turn to look about him the Hotel de Ville, a +massive sixteenth century building, was on his right any +one could descend from the openings in the tower, and +examine every corner of the roof below, and Andrea expected +momentarily to see the head of a gendarme appear at one of +these openings. If once discovered, he knew he would be +lost, for the roof afforded no chance of escape he +therefore resolved to descend, not through the same chimney +by which he had come up, but by a similar one conducting to +another room. He looked around for a chimney from which no +smoke issued, and having reached it, he disappeared through +the orifice without being seen by any one. At the same +minute, one of the little windows of the Hotel de Ville was +thrown open, and the head of a gendarme appeared. For an +instant it remained motionless as one of the stone +decorations of the building, then after a long sigh of +disappointment the head disappeared. The brigadier, calm and +dignified as the law he represented, passed through the +crowd, without answering the thousand questions addressed to +him, and reentered the hotel. +"Well?" asked the two gendarmes. +"Well, my boys," said the brigadier, "the brigand must +really have escaped early this morning but we will send to +the VillersCoterets and Noyon roads, and search the forest, +when we shall catch him, no doubt." The honorable +functionary had scarcely expressed himself thus, in that +intonation which is peculiar to brigadiers of the +gendarmerie, when a loud scream, accompanied by the violent +ringing of a bell, resounded through the court of the hotel. +"Ah, what is that?" cried the brigadier. +"Some traveller seems impatient," said the host. "What +number was it that rang?" +"Number ." +"Run, waiter" At this moment the screams and ringing were +redoubled. "Ah," said the brigadier, stopping the servant, +"the person who is ringing appears to want something more +than a waiter we will attend upon him with a gendarme. Who +occupies Number ?" +"The little fellow who arrived last night in a postchaise +with his sister, and who asked for an apartment with two +beds." The bell here rang for the third time, with another +shriek of anguish. +"Follow me, Mr. Commissary" said the brigadier "tread in +my steps." +"Wait an instant," said the host "Number has two +staircases, inside and outside." +"Good," said the brigadier. "I will take charge of the +inside one. Are the carbines loaded?" +"Yes, brigadier." +"Well, you guard the exterior, and if he attempts to fly, +fire upon him he must be a great criminal, from what the +telegraph says." +The brigadier, followed by the commissary, disappeared by +the inside staircase, accompanied by the noise which his +assertions respecting Andrea had excited in the crowd. This +is what had happened. Andrea had very cleverly managed to +descend twothirds of the chimney, but then his foot +slipped, and notwithstanding his endeavors, he came into the +room with more speed and noise than he intended. It would +have signified little had the room been empty, but +unfortunately it was occupied. Two ladies, sleeping in one +bed, were awakened by the noise, and fixing their eyes upon +the spot whence the sound proceeded, they saw a man. One of +these ladies, the fair one, uttered those terrible shrieks +which resounded through the house, while the other, rushing +to the bellrope, rang with all her strength. Andrea, as we +can see, was surrounded by misfortune. +"For pity's sake," he cried, pale and bewildered, without +seeing whom he was addressing, "for pity's sake do not +call assistance Save me I will not harm you." +"Andrea, the murderer" cried one of the ladies. +"Eugenie Mademoiselle Danglars" exclaimed Andrea, +stupefied. +"Help, help" cried Mademoiselle d'Armilly, taking the bell +from her companion's hand, and ringing it yet more +violently. "Save me, I am pursued" said Andrea, clasping +his hands. "For pity, for mercy's sake do not deliver me +up" +"It is too late, they are coming," said Eugenie. +"Well, conceal me somewhere you can say you were needlessly +alarmed you can turn their suspicions and save my life" +The two ladies, pressing closely to one another, and drawing +the bedclothes tightly around them, remained silent to this +supplicating voice, repugnance and fear taking possession of +their minds. +"Well, be it so," at length said Eugenie "return by the +same road you came, and we will say nothing about you, +unhappy wretch." +"Here he is, here he is" cried a voice from the landing +"here he is I see him" The brigadier had put his eye to +the keyhole, and had discovered Andrea in a posture of +entreaty. A violent blow from the butt end of the musket +burst open the lock, two more forced out the bolts, and the +broken door fell in. Andrea ran to the other door, leading +to the gallery, ready to rush out but he was stopped short, +and he stood with his body a little thrown back, pale, and +with the useless knife in his clinched hand. +"Fly, then" cried Mademoiselle d'Armilly, whose pity +returned as her fears diminished "fly" +"Or kill yourself" said Eugenie in a tone which a Vestal +in the amphitheatre would have used, when urging the +victorious gladiator to finish his vanquished adversary. +Andrea shuddered, and looked on the young girl with an +expression which proved how little he understood such +ferocious honor. "Kill myself?" he cried, throwing down his +knife "why should I do so?" +"Why, you said," answered Mademoiselle Danglars, "that you +would be condemned to die like the worst criminals." +"Bah," said Cavalcanti, crossing his arms, "one has +friends." +The brigadier advanced to him, sword in hand. "Come, come," +said Andrea, "sheathe your sword, my fine fellow there is +no occasion to make such a fuss, since I give myself up" +and he held out his hands to be manacled. The girls looked +with horror upon this shameful metamorphosis, the man of the +world shaking off his covering and appearing as a +galleyslave. Andrea turned towards them, and with an +impertinent smile asked, "Have you any message for your +father, Mademoiselle Danglars, for in all probability I +shall return to Paris?" +Eugenie covered her face with her hands. "Oh, ho" said +Andrea, "you need not be ashamed, even though you did post +after me. Was I not nearly your husband?" +And with this raillery Andrea went out, leaving the two +girls a prey to their own feelings of shame, and to the +comments of the crowd. An hour after they stepped into their +calash, both dressed in feminine attire. The gate of the +hotel had been closed to screen them from sight, but they +were forced, when the door was open, to pass through a +throng of curious glances and whispering voices. Eugenie +closed her eyes but though she could not see, she could +hear, and the sneers of the crowd reached her in the +carriage. "Oh, why is not the world a wilderness?" she +exclaimed, throwing herself into the arms of Mademoiselle +d'Armilly, her eyes sparkling with the same kind of rage +which made Nero wish that the Roman world had but one neck, +that he might sever it at a single blow. The next day they +stopped at the Hotel de Flandre, at Brussels. The same +evening Andrea was incarcerated in the Conciergerie. +Chapter +The Law. +We have seen how quietly Mademoiselle Danglars and +Mademoiselle d'Armilly accomplished their transformation and +flight the fact being that every one was too much occupied +in his or her own affairs to think of theirs. We will leave +the banker contemplating the enormous magnitude of his debt +before the phantom of bankruptcy, and follow the baroness, +who after being momentarily crushed under the weight of the +blow which had struck her, had gone to seek her usual +adviser, Lucien Debray. The baroness had looked forward to +this marriage as a means of ridding her of a guardianship +which, over a girl of Eugenie's character, could not fail to +be rather a troublesome undertaking for in the tacit +relations which maintain the bond of family union, the +mother, to maintain her ascendancy over her daughter, must +never fail to be a model of wisdom and a type of perfection. +Now, Madame Danglars feared Eugenie's sagacity and the +influence of Mademoiselle d'Armilly she had frequently +observed the contemptuous expression with which her daughter +looked upon Debray, an expression which seemed to imply +that she understood all her mother's amorous and pecuniary +relationships with the intimate secretary moreover, she saw +that Eugenie detested Debray, not only because he was a +source of dissension and scandal under the paternal roof, +but because she had at once classed him in that catalogue of +bipeds whom Plato endeavors to withdraw from the appellation +of men, and whom Diogenes designated as animals upon two +legs without feathers. +Unfortunately, in this world of ours, each person views +things through a certain medium, and so is prevented from +seeing in the same light as others, and Madame Danglars, +therefore, very much regretted that the marriage of Eugenie +had not taken place, not only because the match was good, +and likely to insure the happiness of her child, but because +it would also set her at liberty. She ran therefore to +Debray, who, after having like the rest of Paris witnessed +the contract scene and the scandal attending it, had retired +in haste to his club, where he was chatting with some +friends upon the events which served as a subject of +conversation for threefourths of that city known as the +capital of the world. +At the precise time when Madame Danglars, dressed in black +and concealed in a long veil, was ascending the stairs +leading to Debray's apartments, notwithstanding the +assurances of the concierge that the young man was not at +home, Debray was occupied in repelling the insinuations +of a friend, who tried to persuade him that after the +terrible scene which had just taken place he ought, as a +friend of the family, to marry Mademoiselle Danglars and her +two millions. Debray did not defend himself very warmly, for +the idea had sometimes crossed his mind still, when he +recollected the independent, proud spirit of Eugenie, he +positively rejected it as utterly impossible, though the +same thought again continually recurred and found a +restingplace in his heart. Tea, play, and the conversation, +which had become interesting during the discussion of such +serious affairs, lasted till one o'clock in the morning. +Meanwhile Madame Danglars, veiled and uneasy, awaited the +return of Debray in the little green room, seated between +two baskets of flowers, which she had that morning sent, and +which, it must be confessed, Debray had himself arranged and +watered with so much care that his absence was half excused +in the eyes of the poor woman. +At twenty minutes of twelve, Madame Danglars, tired of +waiting, returned home. Women of a certain grade are like +prosperous grisettes in one respect, they seldom return home +after twelve o'clock. The baroness returned to the hotel +with as much caution as Eugenie used in leaving it she ran +lightly upstairs, and with an aching heart entered her +apartment, contiguous, as we know, to that of Eugenie. She +was fearful of exciting any remark, and believed firmly in +her daughter's innocence and fidelity to the paternal roof. +She listened at Eugenie's door, and hearing no sound tried +to enter, but the bolts were in place. Madame Danglars then +concluded that the young girl had been overcome with the +terrible excitement of the evening, and had gone to bed and +to sleep. She called the maid and questioned her. +"Mademoiselle Eugenie," said the maid, "retired to her +apartment with Mademoiselle d'Armilly they then took tea +together, after which they desired me to leave, saying that +they needed me no longer." Since then the maid had been +below, and like every one else she thought the young ladies +were in their own room Madame Danglars, therefore, went to +bed without a shadow of suspicion, and began to muse over +the recent events. In proportion as her memory became +clearer, the occurrences of the evening were revealed in +their true light what she had taken for confusion was a +tumult what she had regarded as something distressing, was +in reality a disgrace. And then the baroness remembered that +she had felt no pity for poor Mercedes, who had been +afflicted with as severe a blow through her husband and son. +"Eugenie," she said to herself, "is lost, and so are we. The +affair, as it will be reported, will cover us with shame +for in a society such as ours satire inflicts a painful and +incurable wound. How fortunate that Eugenie is possessed of +that strange character which has so often made me tremble" +And her glance was turned towards heaven, where a mysterious +providence disposes all things, and out of a fault, nay, +even a vice, sometimes produces a blessing. And then her +thoughts, cleaving through space like a bird in the air, +rested on Cavalcanti. This Andrea was a wretch, a robber, an +assassin, and yet his manners showed the effects of a sort +of education, if not a complete one he had been presented +to the world with the appearance of an immense fortune, +supported by an honorable name. How could she extricate +herself from this labyrinth? To whom would she apply to help +her out of this painful situation? Debray, to whom she had +run, with the first instinct of a woman towards the man she +loves, and who yet betrays her, Debray could but give her +advice, she must apply to some one more powerful than he. +The baroness then thought of M. de Villefort. It was M. de +Villefort who had remorselessly brought misfortune into her +family, as though they had been strangers. But, no on +reflection, the procureur was not a merciless man and it +was not the magistrate, slave to his duties, but the friend, +the loyal friend, who roughly but firmly cut into the very +core of the corruption it was not the executioner, but the +surgeon, who wished to withdraw the honor of Danglars from +ignominious association with the disgraced young man they +had presented to the world as their soninlaw. And since +Villefort, the friend of Danglars, had acted in this way, no +one could suppose that he had been previously acquainted +with, or had lent himself to, any of Andrea's intrigues. +Villefort's conduct, therefore, upon reflection, appeared to +the baroness as if shaped for their mutual advantage. But +the inflexibility of the procureur should stop there she +would see him the next day, and if she could not make him +fail in his duties as a magistrate, she would, at least, +obtain all the indulgence he could allow. She would invoke +the past, recall old recollections she would supplicate him +by the remembrance of guilty, yet happy days. M. de +Villefort would stifle the affair he had only to turn his +eyes on one side, and allow Andrea to fly, and follow up the +crime under that shadow of guilt called contempt of court. +And after this reasoning she slept easily. +At nine o'clock next morning she arose, and without ringing +for her maid or giving the least sign of her activity, she +dressed herself in the same simple style as on the previous +night then running downstairs, she left the hotel, walked +to the Rue de Provence, called a cab, and drove to M. de +Villefort's house. For the last month this wretched house +had presented the gloomy appearance of a lazaretto infected +with the plague. Some of the apartments were closed within +and without the shutters were only opened to admit a +minute's air, showing the scared face of a footman, and +immediately afterwards the window would be closed, like a +gravestone falling on a sepulchre, and the neighbors would +say to each other in a low voice, "Will there be another +funeral today at the procureur's house?" Madame Danglars +involuntarily shuddered at the desolate aspect of the +mansion descending from the cab, she approached the door +with trembling knees, and rang the bell. Three times did the +bell ring with a dull, heavy sound, seeming to participate, +in the general sadness, before the concierge appeared and +peeped through the door, which he opened just wide enough to +allow his words to be heard. He saw a lady, a fashionable, +elegantly dressed lady, and yet the door remained almost +closed. +"Do you intend opening the door?" said the baroness. +"First, madame, who are you?" +"Who am I? You know me well enough." +"We no longer know any one, madame." +"You must be mad, my friend," said the baroness. +"Where do you come from?" +"Oh, this is too much" +"Madame, these are my orders excuse me. Your name?" +"The baroness Danglars you have seen me twenty times." +"Possibly, madame. And now, what do you want?" +"Oh, how extraordinary I shall complain to M. de Villefort +of the impertinence of his servants." +"Madame, this is precaution, not impertinence no one enters +here without an order from M. d'Avrigny, or without speaking +to the procureur." +"Well, I have business with the procureur." +"Is it pressing business?" +"You can imagine so, since I have not even brought my +carriage out yet. But enough of this here is my card, +take it to your master." +"Madame will await my return?" +"Yes go." The concierge closed the door, leaving Madame +Danglars in the street. She had not long to wait directly +afterwards the door was opened wide enough to admit her, and +when she had passed through, it was again shut. Without +losing sight of her for an instant, the concierge took a +whistle from his pocket as soon as they entered the court, +and blew it. The valet de chambre appeared on the +doorsteps. "You will excuse this poor fellow, madame," he +said, as he preceded the baroness, "but his orders are +precise, and M. de Villefort begged me to tell you that he +could not act otherwise." +In the court showing his merchandise, was a tradesman who +had been admitted with the same precautions. The baroness +ascended the steps she felt herself strongly infected with +the sadness which seemed to magnify her own, and still +guided by the valet de chambre, who never lost sight of her +for an instant, she was introduced to the magistrate's +study. Preoccupied as Madame Danglars had been with the +object of her visit, the treatment she had received from +these underlings appeared to her so insulting, that she +began by complaining of it. But Villefort, raising his head, +bowed down by grief, looked up at her with so sad a smile +that her complaints died upon her lips. "Forgive my +servants," he said, "for a terror I cannot blame them for +from being suspected they have become suspicious." +Madame Danglars had often heard of the terror to which the +magistrate alluded, but without the evidence of her own +eyesight she could never have believed that the sentiment +had been carried so far. "You too, then, are unhappy?" she +said. "Yes, madame," replied the magistrate. +"Then you pity me" +"Sincerely, madame." +"And you understand what brings me here?" +"You wish to speak to me about the circumstance which has +just happened?" +"Yes, sir, a fearful misfortune." +"You mean a mischance." +"A mischance?" repeated the baroness. +"Alas, madame," said the procureur with his imperturbable +calmness of manner, "I consider those alone misfortunes +which are irreparable." +"And do you suppose this will be forgotten?" +"Everything will be forgotten, madame," said Villefort. +"Your daughter will be married tomorrow, if not today +in a week, if not tomorrow and I do not think you can +regret the intended husband of your daughter." +Madame Danglars gazed on Villefort, stupefied to find him so +almost insultingly calm. "Am I come to a friend?" she asked +in a tone full of mournful dignity. "You know that you are, +madame," said Villefort, whose pale cheeks became slightly +flushed as he gave her the assurance. And truly this +assurance carried him back to different events from those +now occupying the baroness and him. "Well, then, be more +affectionate, my dear Villefort," said the baroness. "Speak +to me not as a magistrate, but as a friend and when I am in +bitter anguish of spirit, do not tell me that I ought to be +gay." Villefort bowed. "When I hear misfortunes named, +madame," he said, "I have within the last few months +contracted the bad habit of thinking of my own, and then I +cannot help drawing up an egotistical parallel in my mind. +That is the reason that by the side of my misfortunes yours +appear to me mere mischances that is why my dreadful +position makes yours appear enviable. But this annoys you +let us change the subject. You were saying, madame" +"I came to ask you, my friend," said the baroness, "what +will be done with this impostor?" +"Impostor," repeated Villefort "certainly, madame, you +appear to extenuate some cases, and exaggerate others. +Impostor, indeed M. Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather M. +Benedetto, is nothing more nor less than an assassin" +"Sir, I do not deny the justice of your correction, but the +more severely you arm yourself against that unfortunate man, +the more deeply will you strike our family. Come, forget him +for a moment, and instead of pursuing him let him go." +"You are too late, madame the orders are issued." +"Well, should he be arrested do they think they will +arrest him?" +"I hope so." +"If they should arrest him I know that sometimes prisoners +afford means of escape, will you leave him in prison?" +The procureur shook his head. "At least keep him there till +my daughter be married." +"Impossible, madame justice has its formalities." +"What, even for me?" said the baroness, half jesting, half +in earnest. "For all, even for myself among the rest," +replied Villefort. +"Ah," exclaimed the baroness, without expressing the ideas +which the exclamation betrayed. Villefort looked at her with +that piercing glance which reads the secrets of the heart. +"Yes, I know what you mean," he said "you refer to the +terrible rumors spread abroad in the world, that the deaths +which have kept me in mourning for the last three months, +and from which Valentine has only escaped by a miracle, have +not happened by natural means." +"I was not thinking of that," replied Madame Danglars +quickly. "Yes, you were thinking of it, and with justice. +You could not help thinking of it, and saying to yourself, +"you, who pursue crime so vindictively, answer now, why are +there unpunished crimes in your dwelling?'" The baroness +became pale. "You were saying this, were you not?" +"Well, I own it." +"I will answer you." +Villefort drew his armchair nearer to Madame Danglars then +resting both hands upon his desk he said in a voice more +hollow than usual "There are crimes which remain unpunished +because the criminals are unknown, and we might strike the +innocent instead of the guilty but when the culprits are +discovered" Villefort here extended his hand toward a large +crucifix placed opposite to his desk "when they are +discovered, I swear to you, by all I hold most sacred, that +whoever they may be they shall die. Now, after the oath I +have just taken, and which I will keep, madame, dare you ask +for mercy for that wretch" +"But, sir, are you sure he is as guilty as they say?" +"Listen this is his description "Benedetto, condemned, at +the age of sixteen, for five years to the galleys for +forgery.' He promised well, as you see first a runaway, +then an assassin." +"And who is this wretch?" +"Who can tell? a vagabond, a Corsican." +"Has no one owned him?" +"No one his parents are unknown." +"But who was the man who brought him from Lucca?" +"Another rascal like himself, perhaps his accomplice." The +baroness clasped her hands. "Villefort," she exclaimed in +her softest and most captivating manner. +"For heaven's sake, madame," said Villefort, with a firmness +of expression not altogether free from harshness "for +heaven's sake, do not ask pardon of me for a guilty wretch +What am I? the law. Has the law any eyes to witness your +grief? Has the law ears to be melted by your sweet voice? +Has the law a memory for all those soft recollections you +endeavor to recall? No, madame the law has commanded, and +when it commands it strikes. You will tell me that I am a +living being, and not a code a man, and not a volume. +Look at me, madame look around me. Have mankind treated +me as a brother? Have they loved me? Have they spared me? +Has any one shown the mercy towards me that you now ask at +my hands? No, madame, they struck me, always struck me +"Woman, siren that you are, do you persist in fixing on me +that fascinating eye, which reminds me that I ought to +blush? Well, be it so let me blush for the faults you know, +and perhaps perhaps for even more than those But having +sinned myself, it may be more deeply than others, I +never rest till I have torn the disguises from my +fellowcreatures, and found out their weaknesses. I have +always found them and more, I repeat it with joy, with +triumph, I have always found some proof of human +perversity or error. Every criminal I condemn seems to me +living evidence that I am not a hideous exception to the +rest. Alas, alas, alas all the world is wicked let us +therefore strike at wickedness" +Villefort pronounced these last words with a feverish rage, +which gave a ferocious eloquence to his words. +"But"' said Madame Danglars, resolving to make a last +effort, "this young man, though a murderer, is an orphan, +abandoned by everybody." +"So much the worse, or rather, so much the better it has +been so ordained that he may have none to weep his fate." +"But this is trampling on the weak, sir." +"The weakness of a murderer" +"His dishonor reflects upon us." +"Is not death in my house?" +"Oh, sir," exclaimed the baroness, "you are without pity for +others, well, then, I tell you they will have no mercy on +you" +"Be it so" said Villefort, raising his arms to heaven. +"At least, delay the trial till the next assizes we shall +then have six months before us." +"No, madame," said Villefort "instructions have been given. +There are yet five days left five days are more than I +require. Do you not think that I also long for +forgetfulness? While working night and day, I sometimes lose +all recollection of the past, and then I experience the same +sort of happiness I can imagine the dead feel still, it is +better than suffering." +"But, sir, he has fled let him escape inaction is a +pardonable offence." +"I tell you it is too late early this morning the telegraph +was employed, and at this very minute" +"Sir," said the valet de chambre, entering the room, "a +dragoon has brought this despatch from the minister of the +interior." Villefort seized the letter, and hastily broke +the seal. Madame Danglars trembled with fear Villefort +started with joy. "Arrested" he exclaimed "he was taken at +Compiegne, and all is over." Madame Danglars rose from her +seat, pale and cold. "Adieu, sir," she said. "Adieu, +madame," replied the king's attorney, as in an almost joyful +manner he conducted her to the door. Then, turning to his +desk, he said, striking the letter with the back of his +right hand, "Come, I had a forgery, three robberies, and two +cases of arson, I only wanted a murder, and here it is. It +will be a splendid session" +Chapter +The Apparition. +As the procureur had told Madame Danglars, Valentine was not +yet recovered. Bowed down with fatigue, she was indeed +confined to her bed and it was in her own room, and from +the lips of Madame de Villefort, that she heard all the +strange events we have related, we mean the flight of +Eugenie and the arrest of Andrea Cavalcanti, or rather +Benedetto, together with the accusation of murder pronounced +against him. But Valentine was so weak that this recital +scarcely produced the same effect it would have done had she +been in her usual state of health. Indeed, her brain was +only the seat of vague ideas, and confused forms, mingled +with strange fancies, alone presented themselves before her +eyes. +During the daytime Valentine's perceptions remained +tolerably clear, owing to the constant presence of M. +Noirtier, who caused himself to be carried to his +granddaughter's room, and watched her with his paternal +tenderness Villefort also, on his return from the law +courts, frequently passed an hour or two with his father and +child. At six o'clock Villefort retired to his study, at +eight M. d'Avrigny himself arrived, bringing the night +draught prepared for the young girl, and then M. Noirtier +was carried away. A nurse of the doctor's choice succeeded +them, and never left till about ten or eleven o'clock, when +Valentine was asleep. As she went downstairs she gave the +keys of Valentine's room to M. de Villefort, so that no one +could reach the sickroom excepting through that of Madame +de Villefort and little Edward. +Every morning Morrel called on Noirtier to receive news of +Valentine, and, extraordinary as it seemed, each day found +him less uneasy. Certainly, though Valentine still labored +under dreadful nervous excitement, she was better and +moreover, Monte Cristo had told him when, half distracted, +he had rushed to the count's house, that if she were not +dead in two hours she would be saved. Now four days had +elapsed, and Valentine still lived. +The nervous excitement of which we speak pursued Valentine +even in her sleep, or rather in that state of somnolence +which succeeded her waking hours it was then, in the +silence of night, in the dim light shed from the alabaster +lamp on the chimneypiece, that she saw the shadows pass and +repass which hover over the bed of sickness, and fan the +fever with their trembling wings. First she fancied she saw +her stepmother threatening her, then Morrel stretched his +arms towards her sometimes mere strangers, like the Count +of Monte Cristo came to visit her even the very furniture, +in these moments of delirium, seemed to move, and this state +lasted till about three o'clock in the morning, when a deep, +heavy slumber overcame the young girl, from which she did +not awake till daylight. On the evening of the day on which +Valentine had learned of the flight of Eugenie and the +arrest of Benedetto, Villefort having retired as well as +Noirtier and d'Avrigny, her thoughts wandered in a +confused maze, alternately reviewing her own situation and +the events she had just heard. +Eleven o'clock had struck. The nurse, having placed the +beverage prepared by the doctor within reach of the patient, +and locked the door, was listening with terror to the +comments of the servants in the kitchen, and storing her +memory with all the horrible stories which had for some +months past amused the occupants of the antechambers in the +house of the king's attorney. Meanwhile an unexpected scene +was passing in the room which had been so carefully locked. +Ten minutes had elapsed since the nurse had left Valentine, +who for the last hour had been suffering from the fever +which returned nightly, incapable of controlling her ideas, +was forced to yield to the excitement which exhausted itself +in producing and reproducing a succession and recurrence of +the same fancies and images. The nightlamp threw out +countless rays, each resolving itself into some strange form +to her disordered imagination, when suddenly by its +flickering light Valentine thought she saw the door of her +library, which was in the recess by the chimneypiece, open +slowly, though she in vain listened for the sound of the +hinges on which it turned. +At any other time Valentine would have seized the silken +bellpull and summoned assistance, but nothing astonished +her in her present situation. Her reason told her that all +the visions she beheld were but the children of her +imagination, and the conviction was strengthened by the fact +that in the morning no traces remained of the nocturnal +phantoms, who disappeared with the coming of daylight. From +behind the door a human figure appeared, but the girl was +too familiar with such apparitions to be alarmed, and +therefore only stared, hoping to recognize Morrel. The +figure advanced towards the bed and appeared to listen with +profound attention. At this moment a ray of light glanced +across the face of the midnight visitor. +"It is not he," she murmured, and waited, in the assurance +that this was but a dream, for the man to disappear or +assume some other form. Still, she felt her pulse, and +finding it throb violently she remembered that the best +method of dispelling such illusions was to drink, for a +draught of the beverage prepared by the doctor to allay her +fever seemed to cause a reaction of the brain, and for a +short time she suffered less. Valentine therefore reached +her hand towards the glass, but as soon as her trembling arm +left the bed the apparition advanced more quickly towards +her, and approached the young girl so closely that she +fancied she heard his breath, and felt the pressure of his +hand. +This time the illusion, or rather the reality, surpassed +anything Valentine had before experienced she began to +believe herself really alive and awake, and the belief that +her reason was this time not deceived made her shudder. The +pressure she felt was evidently intended to arrest her arm, +and she slowly withdrew it. Then the figure, from whom she +could not detach her eyes, and who appeared more protecting +than menacing, took the glass, and walking towards the +nightlight held it up, as if to test its transparency. This +did not seem sufficient the man, or rather the ghost for +he trod so softly that no sound was heard then poured out +about a spoonful into the glass, and drank it. Valentine +witnessed this scene with a sentiment of stupefaction. Every +minute she had expected that it would vanish and give place +to another vision but the man, instead of dissolving like a +shadow, again approached her, and said in an agitated voice, +"Now you may drink." +Valentine shuddered. It was the first time one of these +visions had ever addressed her in a living voice, and she +was about to utter an exclamation. The man placed his finger +on her lips. "The Count of Monte Cristo" she murmured. +It was easy to see that no doubt now remained in the young +girl's mind as to the reality of the scene her eyes started +with terror, her hands trembled, and she rapidly drew the +bedclothes closer to her. Still, the presence of Monte +Cristo at such an hour, his mysterious, fanciful, and +extraordinary entrance into her room through the wall, might +well seem impossibilities to her shattered reason. "Do not +call any one do not be alarmed," said the Count "do not +let a shade of suspicion or uneasiness remain in your +breast the man standing before you, Valentine for this +time it is no ghost, is nothing more than the tenderest +father and the most respectful friend you could dream of." +Valentine could not reply the voice which indicated the +real presence of a being in the room, alarmed her so much +that she feared to utter a syllable still the expression of +her eyes seemed to inquire, "If your intentions are pure, +why are you here?" The count's marvellous sagacity +understood all that was passing in the young girl's mind. +"Listen to me," he said, "or, rather, look upon me look at +my face, paler even than usual, and my eyes, red with +weariness for four days I have not closed them, for I +have been constantly watching you, to protect and preserve +you for Maximilian." The blood mounted rapidly to the cheeks +of Valentine, for the name just announced by the count +dispelled all the fear with which his presence had inspired +her. "Maximilian" she exclaimed, and so sweet did the sound +appear to her, that she repeated it "Maximilian has +he then owned all to you?" +"Everything. He told me your life was his, and I have +promised him that you shall live." +"You have promised him that I shall live?" +"Yes." +"But, sir, you spoke of vigilance and protection. Are you a +doctor?" +"Yes the best you could have at the present time, believe +me." +"But you say you have watched?" said Valentine uneasily +"where have you been? I have not seen you." The count +extended his hand towards the library. "I was hidden behind +that door," he said, "which leads into the next house, which +I have rented." Valentine turned her eyes away, and, with an +indignant expression of pride and modest fear, exclaimed +"Sir, I think you have been guilty of an unparalleled +intrusion, and that what you call protection is more like an +insult." +"Valentine," he answered, "during my long watch over you, +all I have observed has been what people visited you, what +nourishment was prepared, and what beverage was served +then, when the latter appeared dangerous to me, I entered, +as I have now done, and substituted, in the place of the +poison, a healthful draught which, instead of producing the +death intended, caused life to circulate in your veins." +"Poison death" exclaimed Valentine, half believing +herself under the influence of some feverish hallucination +"what are you saying, sir?" +"Hush, my child," said Monte Cristo, again placing his +finger upon her lips, "I did say poison and death. But drink +some of this" and the count took a bottle from his pocket, +containing a red liquid, of which he poured a few drops into +the glass. "Drink this, and then take nothing more +tonight." Valentine stretched out her hand, but scarcely +had she touched the glass when she drew back in fear. Monte +Cristo took the glass, drank half its contents, and then +presented it to Valentine, who smiled and swallowed the +rest. "Oh, yes," she exclaimed, "I recognize the flavor of +my nocturnal beverage which refreshed me so much, and seemed +to ease my aching brain. Thank you, sir, thank you" +"This is how you have lived during the last four nights, +Valentine," said the count. "But, oh, how I passed that +time Oh, the wretched hours I have endured the torture +to which I have submitted when I saw the deadly poison +poured into your glass, and how I trembled lest you should +drink it before I could find time to throw it away" +"Sir," said Valentine, at the height of her terror, "you say +you endured tortures when you saw the deadly poison poured +into my glass but if you saw this, you must also have seen +the person who poured it?" +"Yes." Valentine raised herself in bed, and drew over her +chest, which appeared whiter than snow, the embroidered +cambric, still moist with the cold dews of delirium, to +which were now added those of terror. "You saw the person?" +repeated the young girl. "Yes," repeated the count. +"What you tell me is horrible, sir. You wish to make me +believe something too dreadful. What? attempt to murder +me in my father's house, in my room, on my bed of sickness? +Oh, leave me, sir you are tempting me you make me doubt +the goodness of providence it is impossible, it cannot +be" +"Are you the first that this hand has stricken? Have you not +seen M. de SaintMeran, Madame de SaintMeran, Barrois, all +fall? would not M. Noirtier also have fallen a victim, had +not the treatment he has been pursuing for the last three +years neutralized the effects of the poison?" +"Oh, heaven," said Valentine "is this the reason why +grandpapa has made me share all his beverages during the +last month?" +"And have they all tasted of a slightly bitter flavor, like +that of dried orangepeel?" +"Oh, yes, yes" +"Then that explains all," said Monte Cristo. "Your +grandfather knows, then, that a poisoner lives here perhaps +he even suspects the person. He has been fortifying you, his +beloved child, against the fatal effects of the poison, +which has failed because your system was already impregnated +with it. But even this would have availed little against a +more deadly medium of death employed four days ago, which is +generally but too fatal." +"But who, then, is this assassin, this murderer?" +"Let me also ask you a question. Have you never seen any one +enter your room at night?" +"Oh, yes I have frequently seen shadows pass close to me, +approach, and disappear but I took them for visions raised +by my feverish imagination, and indeed when you entered I +thought I was under the influence of delirium." +"Then you do not know who it is that attempts your life?" +"No," said Valentine "who could desire my death?" +"You shall know it now, then," said Monte Cristo, listening. +"How do you mean?" said Valentine, looking anxiously around. +"Because you are not feverish or delirious tonight, but +thoroughly awake midnight is striking, which is the hour +murderers choose." +"Oh, heavens," exclaimed Valentine, wiping off the drops +which ran down her forehead. Midnight struck slowly and +sadly every hour seemed to strike with leaden weight upon +the heart of the poor girl. "Valentine," said the count, +"summon up all your courage still the beatings of your +heart do not let a sound escape you, and feign to be +asleep then you will see." Valentine seized the count's +hand. "I think I hear a noise," she said "leave me." +"Goodby, for the present," replied the count, walking upon +tiptoe towards the library door, and smiling with an +expression so sad and paternal that the young girl's heart +was filled with gratitude. Before closing the door he turned +around once more, and said, "Not a movement not a word +let them think you asleep, or perhaps you may be killed +before I have the power of helping you." And with this +fearful injunction the count disappeared through the door, +which noiselessly closed after him. +Chapter +Locusta. +Valentine was alone two other clocks, slower than that of +SaintPhilippe du Roule, struck the hour of midnight from +different directions, and excepting the rumbling of a few +carriages all was silent. Then Valentine's attention was +engrossed by the clock in her room, which marked the +seconds. She began counting them, remarking that they were +much slower than the beatings of her heart and still she +doubted, the inoffensive Valentine could not imagine that +any one should desire her death. Why should they? To what +end? What had she done to excite the malice of an enemy? +There was no fear of her falling asleep. One terrible idea +pressed upon her mind, that some one existed in the world +who had attempted to assassinate her, and who was about to +endeavor to do so again. Supposing this person, wearied at +the inefficacy of the poison, should, as Monte Cristo +intimated, have recourse to steel What if the count +should have no time to run to her rescue What if her +last moments were approaching, and she should never again +see Morrel When this terrible chain of ideas presented +itself, Valentine was nearly persuaded to ring the bell, and +call for help. But through the door she fancied she saw the +luminous eye of the count that eye which lived in her +memory, and the recollection overwhelmed her with so much +shame that she asked herself whether any amount of gratitude +could ever repay his adventurous and devoted friendship. +Twenty minutes, twenty tedious minutes, passed thus, then +ten more, and at last the clock struck the halfhour. Just +then the sound of fingernails slightly grating against the +door of the library informed Valentine that the count was +still watching, and recommended her to do the same at the +same time, on the opposite side, that is towards Edward's +room, Valentine fancied that she heard the creaking of the +floor she listened attentively, holding her breath till she +was nearly suffocated the lock turned, and the door slowly +opened. Valentine had raised herself upon her elbow, and had +scarcely time to throw herself down on the bed and shade her +eyes with her arm then, trembling, agitated, and her heart +beating with indescribable terror, she awaited the event. +Some one approached the bed and drew back the curtains. +Valentine summoned every effort, and breathed with that +regular respiration which announces tranquil sleep. +"Valentine" said a low voice. Still silent Valentine had +promised not to awake. Then everything was still, excepting +that Valentine heard the almost noiseless sound of some +liquid being poured into the glass she had just emptied. +Then she ventured to open her eyelids, and glance over her +extended arm. She saw a woman in a white dressinggown +pouring a liquor from a phial into her glass. During this +short time Valentine must have held her breath, or moved in +some slight degree, for the woman, disturbed, stopped and +leaned over the bed, in order the better to ascertain +whether Valentine slept it was Madame de Villefort. +On recognizing her stepmother, Valentine could not repress +a shudder, which caused a vibration in the bed. Madame de +Villefort instantly stepped back close to the wall, and +there, shaded by the bedcurtains, she silently and +attentively watched the slightest movement of Valentine. The +latter recollected the terrible caution of Monte Cristo she +fancied that the hand not holding the phial clasped a long +sharp knife. Then collecting all her remaining strength, she +forced herself to close her eyes but this simple operation +upon the most delicate organs of our frame, generally so +easy to accomplish, became almost impossible at this moment, +so much did curiosity struggle to retain the eyelid open and +learn the truth. Madame de Villefort, however, reassured by +the silence, which was alone disturbed by the regular +breathing of Valentine, again extended her hand, and half +hidden by the curtains succeeded in emptying the contents of +the phial into the glass. Then she retired so gently that +Valentine did not know she had left the room. She only +witnessed the withdrawal of the arm the fair round arm of +a woman but twentyfive years old, and who yet spread death +around her. +It is impossible to describe the sensations experienced by +Valentine during the minute and a half Madame de Villefort +remained in the room. The grating against the librarydoor +aroused the young girl from the stupor in which she was +plunged, and which almost amounted to insensibility. She +raised her head with an effort. The noiseless door again +turned on its hinges, and the Count of Monte Cristo +reappeared. "Well," said he, "do you still doubt?" +"Oh," murmured the young girl. +"Have you seen?" +"Alas" +"Did you recognize?" Valentine groaned. "Oh, yes" she said, +"I saw, but I cannot believe" +"Would you rather die, then, and cause Maximilian's death?" +"Oh," repeated the young girl, almost bewildered, "can I not +leave the house? can I not escape?" +"Valentine, the hand which now threatens you will pursue you +everywhere your servants will be seduced with gold, and +death will be offered to you disguised in every shape. You +will find it in the water you drink from the spring, in the +fruit you pluck from the tree." +"But did you not say that my kind grandfather's precaution +had neutralized the poison?" +"Yes, but not against a strong dose the poison will be +changed, and the quantity increased." He took the glass and +raised it to his lips. "It is already done," he said +"brucine is no longer employed, but a simple narcotic I can +recognize the flavor of the alcohol in which it has been +dissolved. If you had taken what Madame de Villefort has +poured into your glass, Valentine Valentine you would +have been doomed" +"But," exclaimed the young girl, "why am I thus pursued?" +"Why? are you so kind so good so unsuspicious of +ill, that you cannot understand, Valentine?" +"No, I have never injured her." +"But you are rich, Valentine you have , livres a +year, and you prevent her son from enjoying these , +livres." +"How so? The fortune is not her gift, but is inherited from +my relations." +"Certainly and that is why M. and Madame de SaintMeran +have died that is why M. Noirtier was sentenced the day he +made you his heir that is why you, in your turn, are to die +it is because your father would inherit your property, +and your brother, his only son, succeed to his." +"Edward? Poor child Are all these crimes committed on his +account?" +"Ah, then you at length understand?" +"Heaven grant that this may not be visited upon him" +"Valentine, you are an angel" +"But why is my grandfather allowed to live?" +"It was considered, that you dead, the fortune would +naturally revert to your brother, unless he were +disinherited and besides, the crime appearing useless, it +would be folly to commit it." +"And is it possible that this frightful combination of +crimes has been invented by a woman?" +"Do you recollect in the arbor of the Hotel des Postes, at +Perugia, seeing a man in a brown cloak, whom your stepmother +was questioning upon aqua tofana? Well, ever since then, the +infernal project has been ripening in her brain." +"Ah, then, indeed, sir," said the sweet girl, bathed in +tears, "I see that I am condemned to die" +"No, Valentine, for I have foreseen all their plots no, +your enemy is conquered since we know her, and you will +live, Valentine live to be happy yourself, and to confer +happiness upon a noble heart but to insure this you must +rely on me." +"Command me, sir what am I to do?" +"You must blindly take what I give you." +"Alas, were it only for my own sake, I should prefer to +die" +"You must not confide in any one not even in your +father." +"My father is not engaged in this fearful plot, is he, sir?" +asked Valentine, clasping her hands. +"No and yet your father, a man accustomed to judicial +accusations, ought to have known that all these deaths have +not happened naturally it is he who should have watched +over you he should have occupied my place he should +have emptied that glass he should have risen against the +assassin. Spectre against spectre" he murmured in a low +voice, as he concluded his sentence. +"Sir," said Valentine, "I will do all I can to live, for +there are two beings whose existence depends upon mine my +grandfather and Maximilian." +"I will watch over them as I have over you." +"Well, sir, do as you will with me" and then she added, in +a low voice, "oh, heavens, what will befall me?" +"Whatever may happen, Valentine, do not be alarmed though +you suffer though you lose sight, hearing, consciousness, +fear nothing though you should awake and be ignorant where +you are, still do not fear even though you should find +yourself in a sepulchral vault or coffin. Reassure yourself, +then, and say to yourself "At this moment, a friend, a +father, who lives for my happiness and that of Maximilian, +watches over me'" +"Alas, alas, what a fearful extremity" +"Valentine, would you rather denounce your stepmother?" +"I would rather die a hundred times oh, yes, die" +"No, you will not die but will you promise me, whatever +happens, that you will not complain, but hope?" +"I will think of Maximilian" +"You are my own darling child, Valentine I alone can save +you, and I will." Valentine in the extremity of her terror +joined her hands, for she felt that the moment had +arrived to ask for courage, and began to pray, and while +uttering little more than incoherent words, she forgot that +her white shoulders had no other covering than her long +hair, and that the pulsations of her heart could be seen +through the lace of her nightdress. Monte Cristo gently laid +his hand on the young girl's arm, drew the velvet coverlet +close to her throat, and said with a paternal smile, "My +child, believe in my devotion to you as you believe in the +goodness of providence and the love of Maximilian." +Then he drew from his waistcoatpocket the little emerald +box, raised the golden lid, and took from it a pastille +about the size of a pea, which he placed in her hand. She +took it, and looked attentively on the count there was an +expression on the face of her intrepid protector which +commanded her veneration. She evidently interrogated him by +her look. "Yes," said he. Valentine carried the pastille to +her mouth, and swallowed it. "And now, my dear child, adieu +for the present. I will try and gain a little sleep, for you +are saved." +"Go," said Valentine, "whatever happens, I promise you not +to fear." +Monte Cristo for some time kept his eyes fixed on the young +girl, who gradually fell asleep, yielding to the effects of +the narcotic the count had given her. Then he took the +glass, emptied three parts of the contents in the fireplace, +that it might be supposed Valentine had taken it, and +replaced it on the table then he disappeared, after +throwing a farewell glance on Valentine, who slept with the +confidence and innocence of an angel. +Chapter +Valentine. +The nightlight continued to burn on the chimneypiece, +exhausting the last drops of oil which floated on the +surface of the water. The globe of the lamp appeared of a +reddish hue, and the flame, brightening before it expired, +threw out the last flickerings which in an inanimate object +have been so often compared with the convulsions of a human +creature in its final agonies. A dull and dismal light was +shed over the bedclothes and curtains surrounding the young +girl. All noise in the streets had ceased, and the silence +was frightful. It was then that the door of Edward's room +opened, and a head we have before noticed appeared in the +glass opposite it was Madame de Villefort, who came to +witness the effects of the drink she had prepared. She +stopped in the doorway, listened for a moment to the +flickering of the lamp, the only sound in that deserted +room, and then advanced to the table to see if Valentine's +glass were empty. It was still about a quarter full, as we +before stated. Madame de Villefort emptied the contents into +the ashes, which she disturbed that they might the more +readily absorb the liquid then she carefully rinsed the +glass, and wiping it with her handkerchief replaced it on +the table. +If any one could have looked into the room just then he +would have noticed the hesitation with which Madame de +Villefort approached the bed and looked fixedly on +Valentine. The dim light, the profound silence, and the +gloomy thoughts inspired by the hour, and still more by her +own conscience, all combined to produce a sensation of fear +the poisoner was terrified at the contemplation of her own +work. At length she rallied, drew aside the curtain, and +leaning over the pillow gazed intently on Valentine. The +young girl no longer breathed, no breath issued through the +halfclosed teeth the white lips no longer quivered the +eyes were suffused with a bluish vapor, and the long black +lashes rested on a cheek white as wax. Madame de Villefort +gazed upon the face so expressive even in its stillness +then she ventured to raise the coverlet and press her hand +upon the young girl's heart. It was cold and motionless. She +only felt the pulsation in her own fingers, and withdrew her +hand with a shudder. One arm was hanging out of the bed +from shoulder to elbow it was moulded after the arms of +Germain Pillon's "Graces," but the forearm seemed to be +slightly distorted by convulsion, and the hand, so +delicately formed, was resting with stiff outstretched +fingers on the framework of the bed. The nails, too, were +turning blue. + Germain Pillon was a famous French sculptor . +His best known work is "The Three Graces," now in the +Louvre. +Madame de Villefort had no longer any doubt all was over +she had consummated the last terrible work she had to +accomplish. There was no more to do in the room, so the +poisoner retired stealthily, as though fearing to hear the +sound of her own footsteps but as she withdrew she still +held aside the curtain, absorbed in the irresistible +attraction always exerted by the picture of death, so long +as it is merely mysterious and does not excite disgust. Just +then the lamp again flickered the noise startled Madame de +Villefort, who shuddered and dropped the curtain. +Immediately afterwards the light expired, and the room was +plunged in frightful obscurity, while the clock at that +minute struck halfpast four. Overpowered with agitation, +the poisoner succeeded in groping her way to the door, and +reached her room in an agony of fear. +The darkness lasted two hours longer then by degrees a cold +light crept through the Venetian blinds, until at length it +revealed the objects in the room. About this time the +nurse's cough was heard on the stairs and the woman entered +the room with a cup in her hand. To the tender eye of a +father or a lover, the first glance would have sufficed to +reveal Valentine's condition but to this hireling, +Valentine only appeared to sleep. "Good," she exclaimed, +approaching the table, "she has taken part of her draught +the glass is threequarters empty." +Then she went to the fireplace and lit the fire, and +although she had just left her bed, she could not resist the +temptation offered by Valentine's sleep, so she threw +herself into an armchair to snatch a little more rest. The +clock striking eight awoke her. Astonished at the prolonged +slumber of the patient, and frightened to see that the arm +was still hanging out of the bed, she advanced towards +Valentine, and for the first time noticed the white lips. +She tried to replace the arm, but it moved with a frightful +rigidity which could not deceive a sicknurse. She screamed +aloud then running to the door exclaimed, "Help, help" +"What is the matter?" asked M. d'Avrigny, at the foot of the +stairs, it being the hour he usually visited her. +"What is it?" asked Villefort, rushing from his room. +"Doctor, do you hear them call for help?" +"Yes, yes let us hasten up it was in Valentine's room." +But before the doctor and the father could reach the room, +the servants who were on the same floor had entered, and +seeing Valentine pale and motionless on her bed, they lifted +up their hands towards heaven and stood transfixed, as +though struck by lightening. "Call Madame de Villefort +wake Madame de Villefort" cried the procureur from the door +of his chamber, which apparently he scarcely dared to leave. +But instead of obeying him, the servants stood watching M. +d'Avrigny, who ran to Valentine, and raised her in his arms. +"What? this one, too?" he exclaimed. "Oh, where will be +the end?" Villefort rushed into the room. "What are you +saying, doctor?" he exclaimed, raising his hands to heaven. +"I say that Valentine is dead" replied d'Avrigny, in a +voice terrible in its solemn calm. +M. de Villefort staggered and buried his head in the bed. On +the exclamation of the doctor and the cry of the father, the +servants all fled with muttered imprecations they were +heard running down the stairs and through the long passages, +then there was a rush in the court, afterwards all was +still they had, one and all, deserted the accursed house. +Just then, Madame de Villefort, in the act of slipping on +her dressinggown, threw aside the drapery and for a moment +stood motionless, as though interrogating the occupants of +the room, while she endeavored to call up some rebellious +tears. On a sudden she stepped, or rather bounded, with +outstretched arms, towards the table. She saw d'Avrigny +curiously examining the glass, which she felt certain of +having emptied during the night. It was now a third full, +just as it was when she threw the contents into the ashes. +The spectre of Valentine rising before the poisoner would +have alarmed her less. It was, indeed, the same color as the +draught she had poured into the glass, and which Valentine +had drank it was indeed the poison, which could not deceive +M. d'Avrigny, which he now examined so closely it was +doubtless a miracle from heaven, that, notwithstanding her +precautions, there should be some trace, some proof +remaining to reveal the crime. While Madame de Villefort +remained rooted to the spot like a statue of terror, and +Villefort, with his head hidden in the bedclothes, saw +nothing around him, d'Avrigny approached the window, that he +might the better examine the contents of the glass, and +dipping the tip of his finger in, tasted it. "Ah," he +exclaimed, "it is no longer brucine that is used let me see +what it is" +Then he ran to one of the cupboards in Valentine's room, +which had been transformed into a medicine closet, and +taking from its silver case a small bottle of nitric acid, +dropped a little of it into the liquor, which immediately +changed to a bloodred color. "Ah," exclaimed d'Avrigny, in +a voice in which the horror of a judge unveiling the truth +was mingled with the delight of a student making a +discovery. Madame de Villefort was overpowered, her eyes +first flashed and then swam, she staggered towards the door +and disappeared. Directly afterwards the distant sound of a +heavy weight falling on the ground was heard, but no one +paid any attention to it the nurse was engaged in watching +the chemical analysis, and Villefort was still absorbed in +grief. M. d'Avrigny alone had followed Madame de Villefort +with his eyes, and watched her hurried retreat. He lifted up +the drapery over the entrance to Edward's room, and his eye +reaching as far as Madame de Villefort's apartment, he +beheld her extended lifeless on the floor. "Go to the +assistance of Madame de Villefort," he said to the nurse. +"Madame de Villefort is ill." +"But Mademoiselle de Villefort" stammered the nurse. +"Mademoiselle de Villefort no longer requires help," said +d'Avrigny, "since she is dead." +"Dead, dead" groaned forth Villefort, in a paroxysm of +grief, which was the more terrible from the novelty of the +sensation in the iron heart of that man. +"Dead" repeated a third voice. "Who said Valentine was +dead?" +The two men turned round, and saw Morrel standing at the +door, pale and terrorstricken. This is what had happened. +At the usual time, Morrel had presented himself at the +little door leading to Noirtier's room. Contrary to custom, +the door was open, and having no occasion to ring he +entered. He waited for a moment in the hall and called for a +servant to conduct him to M. Noirtier but no one answered, +the servants having, as we know, deserted the house. Morrel +had no particular reason for uneasiness Monte Cristo had +promised him that Valentine should live, and so far he had +always fulfilled his word. Every night the count had given +him news, which was the next morning confirmed by Noirtier. +Still this extraordinary silence appeared strange to him, +and he called a second and third time still no answer. Then +he determined to go up. Noirtier's room was opened, like all +the rest. The first thing he saw was the old man sitting in +his armchair in his usual place, but his eyes expressed +alarm, which was confirmed by the pallor which overspread +his features. +"How are you, sir?" asked Morrel, with a sickness of heart. +"Well," answered the old man, by closing his eyes but his +appearance manifested increasing uneasiness. +"You are thoughtful, sir," continued Morrel "you want +something shall I call one of the servants?" +"Yes," replied Noirtier. +Morrel pulled the bell, but though he nearly broke the cord +no one answered. He turned towards Noirtier the pallor and +anguish expressed on his countenance momentarily increased. +"Oh," exclaimed Morrel, "why do they not come? Is any one +ill in the house?" The eyes of Noirtier seemed as though +they would start from their sockets. "What is the matter? +You alarm me. Valentine? Valentine?" +"Yes, yes," signed Noirtier. Maximilian tried to speak, but +he could articulate nothing he staggered, and supported +himself against the wainscot. Then he pointed to the door. +"Yes, yes, yes" continued the old man. Maximilian rushed up +the little staircase, while Noirtier's eyes seemed to say, +"Quicker, quicker" +In a minute the young man darted through several rooms, till +at length he reached Valentine's. There was no occasion to +push the door, it was wide open. A sob was the only sound he +heard. He saw as though in a mist, a black figure kneeling +and buried in a confused mass of white drapery. A terrible +fear transfixed him. It was then he heard a voice exclaim +"Valentine is dead" and another voice which, like an echo +repeated, "Dead, dead" +Chapter +Maximilian. +Villefort rose, half ashamed of being surprised in such a +paroxysm of grief. The terrible office he had held for +twentyfive years had succeeded in making him more or less +than man. His glance, at first wandering, fixed itself upon +Morrel. "Who are you, sir," he asked, "that forget that this +is not the manner to enter a house stricken with death? Go, +sir, go" But Morrel remained motionless he could not +detach his eyes from that disordered bed, and the pale +corpse of the young girl who was lying on it. "Go do you +hear?" said Villefort, while d'Avrigny advanced to lead +Morrel out. Maximilian stared for a moment at the corpse, +gazed all around the room, then upon the two men he opened +his mouth to speak, but finding it impossible to give +utterance to the innumerable ideas that occupied his brain, +he went out, thrusting his hands through his hair in such a +manner that Villefort and d'Avrigny, for a moment diverted +from the engrossing topic, exchanged glances, which seemed +to say, "He is mad" +But in less than five minutes the staircase groaned beneath +an extraordinary weight. Morrel was seen carrying, with +superhuman strength, the armchair containing Noirtier +upstairs. When he reached the landing he placed the +armchair on the floor and rapidly rolled it into +Valentine's room. This could only have been accomplished by +means of unnatural strength supplied by powerful excitement. +But the most fearful spectacle was Noirtier being pushed +towards the bed, his face expressing all his meaning, and +his eyes supplying the want of every other faculty. That +pale face and flaming glance appeared to Villefort like a +frightful apparition. Each time he had been brought into +contact with his father, something terrible had happened. +"See what they have done" cried Morrel, with one hand +leaning on the back of the chair, and the other extended +towards Valentine. "See, my father, see" +Villefort drew back and looked with astonishment on the +young man, who, almost a stranger to him, called Noirtier +his father. At this moment the whole soul of the old man +seemed centred in his eyes which became bloodshot the veins +of the throat swelled his cheeks and temples became purple, +as though he was struck with epilepsy nothing was wanting +to complete this but the utterance of a cry. And the cry +issued from his pores, if we may thus speak a cry +frightful in its silence. D'Avrigny rushed towards the old +man and made him inhale a powerful restorative. +"Sir," cried Morrel, seizing the moist hand of the +paralytic, "they ask me who I am, and what right I have to +be here. Oh, you know it, tell them, tell them" And the +young man's voice was choked by sobs. As for the old man, +his chest heaved with his panting respiration. One could +have thought that he was undergoing the agonies preceding +death. At length, happier than the young man, who sobbed +without weeping, tears glistened in the eyes of Noirtier. +"Tell them," said Morrel in a hoarse voice, "tell them that +I am her betrothed. Tell them she was my beloved, my noble +girl, my only blessing in the world. Tell them oh, tell +them, that corpse belongs to me" +The young man overwhelmed by the weight of his anguish, fell +heavily on his knees before the bed, which his fingers +grasped with convulsive energy. D'Avrigny, unable to bear +the sight of this touching emotion, turned away and +Villefort, without seeking any further explanation, and +attracted towards him by the irresistible magnetism which +draws us towards those who have loved the people for whom we +mourn, extended his hand towards the young man. But Morrel +saw nothing he had grasped the hand of Valentine, and +unable to weep vented his agony in groans as he bit the +sheets. For some time nothing was heard in that chamber but +sobs, exclamations, and prayers. At length Villefort, the +most composed of all, spoke "Sir," said he to Maximilian, +"you say you loved Valentine, that you were betrothed to +her. I knew nothing of this engagement, of this love, yet I, +her father, forgive you, for I see that your grief is real +and deep and besides my own sorrow is too great for anger +to find a place in my heart. But you see that the angel whom +you hoped for has left this earth she has nothing more to +do with the adoration of men. Take a last farewell, sir, of +her sad remains take the hand you expected to possess once +more within your own, and then separate yourself from her +forever. Valentine now requires only the ministrations of +the priest." +"You are mistaken, sir," exclaimed Morrel, raising himself +on one knee, his heart pierced by a more acute pang than any +he had yet felt "you are mistaken Valentine, dying as +she has, not only requires a priest, but an avenger. You, M. +de Villefort, send for the priest I will be the avenger." +"What do you mean, sir?" asked Villefort, trembling at the +new idea inspired by the delirium of Morrel. +"I tell you, sir, that two persons exist in you the father +has mourned sufficiently, now let the procureur fulfil his +office." +The eyes of Noirtier glistened, and d'Avrigny approached. +"Gentlemen," said Morrel, reading all that passed through +the minds of the witnesses to the scene, "I know what I am +saying, and you know as well as I do what I am about to say +Valentine has been assassinated" Villefort hung his +head, d'Avrigny approached nearer, and Noirtier said "Yes" +with his eyes. "Now, sir," continued Morrel, "in these days +no one can disappear by violent means without some inquiries +being made as to the cause of her disappearance, even were +she not a young, beautiful, and adorable creature like +Valentine. Mr. Procureur," said Morrel with increasing +vehemence, "no mercy is allowed I denounce the crime it is +your place to seek the assassin." The young man's implacable +eyes interrogated Villefort, who, on his side, glanced from +Noirtier to d'Avrigny. But instead of finding sympathy in +the eyes of the doctor and his father, he only saw an +expression as inflexible as that of Maximilian. "Yes," +indicated the old man. +"Assuredly," said d'Avrigny. +"Sir," said Villefort, striving to struggle against this +triple force and his own emotion, "sir, you are deceived +no one commits crimes here. I am stricken by fate. It is +horrible, indeed, but no one assassinates." +The eyes of Noirtier lighted up with rage, and d'Avrigny +prepared to speak. Morrel, however, extended his arm, and +commanded silence. "And I say that murders are committed +here," said Morrel, whose voice, though lower in tone, lost +none of its terrible distinctness "I tell you that this is +the fourth victim within the last four months. I tell you, +Valentine's life was attempted by poison four days ago, +though she escaped, owing to the precautions of M. Noirtier. +I tell you that the dose has been double, the poison +changed, and that this time it has succeeded. I tell you +that you know these things as well as I do, since this +gentleman has forewarned you, both as a doctor and as a +friend." +"Oh, you rave, sir," exclaimed Villefort, in vain +endeavoring to escape the net in which he was taken. +"I rave?" said Morrel "well, then, I appeal to M. d'Avrigny +himself. Ask him, sir, if he recollects the words he uttered +in the garden of this house on the night of Madame de +SaintMeran's death. You thought yourselves alone, and +talked about that tragical death, and the fatality you +mentioned then is the same which has caused the murder of +Valentine." Villefort and d'Avrigny exchanged looks. "Yes, +yes," continued Morrel "recall the scene, for the words you +thought were only given to silence and solitude fell into my +ears. Certainly, after witnessing the culpable indolence +manifested by M. de Villefort towards his own relations, I +ought to have denounced him to the authorities then I +should not have been an accomplice to thy death, as I now +am, sweet, beloved Valentine but the accomplice shall +become the avenger. This fourth murder is apparent to all, +and if thy father abandon thee, Valentine, it is I, and I +swear it, that shall pursue the assassin." And this time, as +though nature had at least taken compassion on the vigorous +frame, nearly bursting with its own strength, the words of +Morrel were stifled in his throat his breast heaved the +tears, so long rebellious, gushed from his eyes and he +threw himself weeping on his knees by the side of the bed. +Then d'Avrigny spoke. "And I, too," he exclaimed in a low +voice, "I unite with M. Morrel in demanding justice for +crime my blood boils at the idea of having encouraged a +murderer by my cowardly concession." +"Oh, merciful heavens" murmured Villefort. Morrel raised +his head, and reading the eyes of the old man, which gleamed +with unnatural lustre, "Stay," he said, "M. Noirtier +wishes to speak." +"Yes," indicated Noirtier, with an expression the more +terrible, from all his faculties being centred in his +glance. +"Do you know the assassin?" asked Morrel. +"Yes," replied Noirtier. +"And will you direct us?" exclaimed the young man. "Listen, +M. d'Avrigny, listen" Noirtier looked upon Morrel with one +of those melancholy smiles which had so often made Valentine +happy, and thus fixed his attention. Then, having riveted +the eyes of his interlocutor on his own, he glanced towards +the door. +"Do you wish me to leave?" said Morrel, sadly. +"Yes," replied Noirtier. +"Alas, alas, sir, have pity on me" +The old man's eyes remained fixed on the door. +"May I, at least, return?" asked Morrel. +"Yes." +"Must I leave alone?" +"No." +"Whom am I to take with me? The procureur?" +"No." +"The doctor?" +"Yes." +"You wish to remain alone with M. de Villefort?" +"Yes." +"But can he understand you?" +"Yes." +"Oh," said Villefort, inexpressibly delighted to think that +the inquiries were to be made by him alone, "oh, be +satisfied, I can understand my father." D'Avrigny took the +young man's arm, and led him out of the room. A more than +deathlike silence then reigned in the house. At the end of a +quarter of an hour a faltering footstep was heard, and +Villefort appeared at the door of the apartment where +d'Avrigny and Morrel had been staying, one absorbed in +meditation, the other in grief. "You can come," he said, and +led them back to Noirtier. Morrel looked attentively on +Villefort. His face was livid, large drops rolled down his +face, and in his fingers he held the fragments of a quill +pen which he had torn to atoms. +"Gentlemen," he said in a hoarse voice, "give me your word +of honor that this horrible secret shall forever remain +buried amongst ourselves" The two men drew back. +"I entreat you." continued Villefort. +"But," said Morrel, "the culprit the murderer the +assassin." +"Do not alarm yourself, sir justice will be done," said +Villefort. "My father has revealed the culprit's name my +father thirsts for revenge as much as you do, yet even he +conjures you as I do to keep this secret. Do you not, +father?" +"Yes," resolutely replied Noirtier. Morrel suffered an +exclamation of horror and surprise to escape him. "Oh, sir," +said Villefort, arresting Maximilian by the arm, "if my +father, the inflexible man, makes this request, it is +because he knows, be assured, that Valentine will be +terribly revenged. Is it not so, father?" The old man made a +sign in the affirmative. Villefort continued "He knows me, +and I have pledged my word to him. Rest assured, gentlemen, +that within three days, in a less time than justice would +demand, the revenge I shall have taken for the murder of my +child will be such as to make the boldest heart tremble" +and as he spoke these words he ground his teeth, and grasped +the old man's senseless hand. +"Will this promise be fulfilled, M. Noirtier?" asked Morrel, +while d'Avrigny looked inquiringly. +"Yes," replied Noirtier with an expression of sinister joy. +"Swear, then," said Villefort, joining the hands of Morrel +and d'Avrigny, "swear that you will spare the honor of my +house, and leave me to avenge my child." D'Avrigny turned +round and uttered a very feeble "Yes," but Morrel, +disengaging his hand, rushed to the bed, and after having +pressed the cold lips of Valentine with his own, hurriedly +left, uttering a long, deep groan of despair and anguish. We +have before stated that all the servants had fled. M. de +Villefort was therefore obliged to request M. d'Avrigny to +superintend all the arrangements consequent upon a death in +a large city, more especially a death under such suspicious +circumstances. +It was something terrible to witness the silent agony, the +mute despair of Noirtier, whose tears silently rolled down +his cheeks. Villefort retired to his study, and d'Avrigny +left to summon the doctor of the mayoralty, whose office it +is to examine bodies after decease, and who is expressly +named "the doctor of the dead." M. Noirtier could not be +persuaded to quit his grandchild. At the end of a quarter of +an hour M. d'Avrigny returned with his associate they found +the outer gate closed, and not a servant remaining in the +house Villefort himself was obliged to open to them. But he +stopped on the landing he had not the courage to again +visit the death chamber. The two doctors, therefore, entered +the room alone. Noirtier was near the bed, pale, motionless, +and silent as the corpse. The district doctor approached +with the indifference of a man accustomed to spend half his +time amongst the dead he then lifted the sheet which was +placed over the face, and just unclosed the lips. +"Alas," said d'Avrigny, "she is indeed dead, poor child" +"Yes," answered the doctor laconically, dropping the sheet +he had raised. Noirtier uttered a kind of hoarse, rattling +sound the old man's eyes sparkled, and the good doctor +understood that he wished to behold his child. He therefore +approached the bed, and while his companion was dipping the +fingers with which he had touched the lips of the corpse in +chloride of lime, he uncovered the calm and pale face, which +looked like that of a sleeping angel. A tear, which appeared +in the old man's eye, expressed his thanks to the doctor. +The doctor of the dead then laid his permit on the corner of +the table, and having fulfilled his duty, was conducted out +by d'Avrigny. Villefort met them at the door of his study +having in a few words thanked the district doctor, he turned +to d'Avrigny, and said, "And now the priest." +"Is there any particular priest you wish to pray with +Valentine?" asked d'Avrigny. +"No." said Villefort "fetch the nearest." +"The nearest," said the district doctor, "is a good Italian +abbe, who lives next door to you. Shall I call on him as I +pass?" +"D'Avrigny," said Villefort, "be so kind, I beseech you, as +to accompany this gentleman. Here is the key of the door, so +that you can go in and out as you please you will bring the +priest with you, and will oblige me by introducing him into +my child's room." +"Do you wish to see him?" +"I only wish to be alone. You will excuse me, will you not? +A priest can understand a father's grief." And M. de +Villefort, giving the key to d'Avrigny, again bade farewell +to the strange doctor, and retired to his study, where he +began to work. For some temperaments work is a remedy for +all afflictions. As the doctors entered the street, they saw +a man in a cassock standing on the threshold of the next +door. "This is the abbe of whom I spoke," said the doctor to +d'Avrigny. D'Avrigny accosted the priest. "Sir," he said, +"are you disposed to confer a great obligation on an unhappy +father who has just lost his daughter? I mean M. de +Villefort, the king's attorney." +"Ah," said the priest, in a marked Italian accent "yes, I +have heard that death is in that house." +"Then I need not tell you what kind of service he requires +of you." +"I was about to offer myself, sir," said the priest "it is +our mission to forestall our duties." +"It is a young girl." +"I know it, sir the servants who fled from the house +informed me. I also know that her name is Valentine, and I +have already prayed for her." +"Thank you, sir," said d'Avrigny "since you have commenced +your sacred office, deign to continue it. Come and watch by +the dead, and all the wretched family will be grateful to +you." +"I am going, sir and I do not hesitate to say that no +prayers will be more fervent than mine." D'Avrigny took the +priest's hand, and without meeting Villefort, who was +engaged in his study, they reached Valentine's room, which +on the following night was to be occupied by the +undertakers. On entering the room, Noirtier's eyes met those +of the abbe, and no doubt he read some particular expression +in them, for he remained in the room. D'Avrigny recommended +the attention of the priest to the living as well as to the +dead, and the abbe promised to devote his prayers to +Valentine and his attentions to Noirtier. In order, +doubtless, that he might not be disturbed while fulfilling +his sacred mission, the priest rose as soon as d'Avrigny +departed, and not only bolted the door through which the +doctor had just left, but also that leading to Madame de +Villefort's room. +Chapter +Danglars Signature. +The next morning dawned dull and cloudy. During the night +the undertakers had executed their melancholy office, and +wrapped the corpse in the windingsheet, which, whatever may +be said about the equality of death, is at least a last +proof of the luxury so pleasing in life. This windingsheet +was nothing more than a beautiful piece of cambric, which +the young girl had bought a fortnight before. During the +evening two men, engaged for the purpose, had carried +Noirtier from Valentine's room into his own, and contrary to +all expectation there was no difficulty in withdrawing him +from his child. The Abbe Busoni had watched till daylight, +and then left without calling any one. D'Avrigny returned +about eight o'clock in the morning he met Villefort on his +way to Noirtier's room, and accompanied him to see how the +old man had slept. They found him in the large armchair, +which served him for a bed, enjoying a calm, nay, almost a +smiling sleep. They both stood in amazement at the door. +"See," said d'Avrigny to Villefort, "nature knows how to +alleviate the deepest sorrow. No one can say that M. +Noirtier did not love his child, and yet he sleeps." +"Yes, you are right," replied Villefort, surprised "he +sleeps, indeed And this is the more strange, since the +least contradiction keeps him awake all night." +"Grief has stunned him," replied d'Avrigny and they both +returned thoughtfully to the procureur's study. +"See, I have not slept," said Villefort, showing his +undisturbed bed "grief does not stun me. I have not been in +bed for two nights but then look at my desk see what I +have written during these two days and nights. I have filled +those papers, and have made out the accusation against the +assassin Benedetto. Oh, work, work, my passion, my joy, +my delight, it is for thee to alleviate my sorrows" and +he convulsively grasped the hand of d'Avrigny. +"Do you require my services now?" asked d'Avrigny. +"No," said Villefort "only return again at eleven o'clock +at twelve the the oh, heavens, my poor, poor child" +and the procureur again becoming a man, lifted up his eyes +and groaned. +"Shall you be present in the reception room?" +"No I have a cousin who has undertaken this sad office. I +shall work, doctor when I work I forget everything." And, +indeed, no sooner had the doctor left the room, than he was +again absorbed in study. On the doorsteps d'Avrigny met the +cousin whom Villefort had mentioned, a personage as +insignificant in our story as in the world he occupied +one of those beings designed from their birth to make +themselves useful to others. He was punctual, dressed in +black, with crape around his hat, and presented himself at +his cousin's with a face made up for the occasion, and which +he could alter as might be required. At twelve o'clock the +mourningcoaches rolled into the paved court, and the Rue du +Faubourg SaintHonore was filled with a crowd of idlers, +equally pleased to witness the festivities or the mourning +of the rich, and who rush with the same avidity to a funeral +procession as to the marriage of a duchess. +Gradually the receptionroom filled, and some of our old +friends made their appearance we mean Debray, +ChateauRenaud, and Beauchamp, accompanied by all the +leading men of the day at the bar, in literature, or the +army, for M. de Villefort moved in the first Parisian +circles, less owing to his social position than to his +personal merit. The cousin standing at the door ushered in +the guests, and it was rather a relief to the indifferent to +see a person as unmoved as themselves, and who did not exact +a mournful face or force tears, as would have been the case +with a father, a brother, or a lover. Those who were +acquainted soon formed into little groups. One of them was +made of Debray, ChateauRenaud, and Beauchamp. +"Poor girl," said Debray, like the rest, paying an +involuntary tribute to the sad event, "poor girl, so +young, so rich, so beautiful Could you have imagined this +scene, ChateauRenaud, when we saw her, at the most three +weeks ago, about to sign that contract?" +"Indeed, no," said ChateauRenaud "Did you know her?" +"I spoke to her once or twice at Madame de Morcerf's, among +the rest she appeared to me charming, though rather +melancholy. Where is her stepmother? Do you know?" +"She is spending the day with the wife of the worthy +gentleman who is receiving us." +"Who is he?" +"Whom do you mean?" +"The gentleman who receives us? Is he a deputy?" +"Oh, no. I am condemned to witness those gentlemen every +day," said Beauchamp "but he is perfectly unknown to me." +"Have you mentioned this death in your paper?" +"It has been mentioned, but the article is not mine indeed, +I doubt if it will please M. Villefort, for it says that if +four successive deaths had happened anywhere else than in +the house of the king's attorney, he would have interested +himself somewhat more about it." +"Still," said ChateauRenaud, "Dr. d'Avrigny, who attends my +mother, declares he is in despair about it. But whom are you +seeking, Debray?" +"I am seeking the Count of Monte Cristo" said the young man. +"I met him on the boulevard, on my way here," said +Beauchamp. "I think he is about to leave Paris he was going +to his banker." +"His banker? Danglars is his banker, is he not?" asked +ChateauRenaud of Debray. +"I believe so," replied the secretary with slight +uneasiness. "But Monte Cristo is not the only one I miss +here I do not see Morrel." +"Morrel? Do they know him?" asked ChateauRenaud. "I think +he has only been introduced to Madame de Villefort." +"Still, he ought to have been here," said Debray "I wonder +what will be talked about tonight this funeral is the news +of the day. But hush, here comes our minister of justice he +will feel obliged to make some little speech to the cousin," +and the three young men drew near to listen. Beauchamp told +the truth when he said that on his way to the funeral he had +met Monte Cristo, who was directing his steps towards the +Rue de la Chausse d'Antin, to M. Danglars'. +The banker saw the carriage of the count enter the court +yard, and advanced to meet him with a sad, though affable +smile. "Well," said he, extending his hand to Monte Cristo, +"I suppose you have come to sympathize with me, for indeed +misfortune has taken possession of my house. When I +perceived you, I was just asking myself whether I had not +wished harm towards those poor Morcerfs, which would have +justified the proverb of "He who wishes misfortunes to +happen to others experiences them himself.' Well, on my word +of honor, I answered, "No' I wished no ill to Morcerf he +was a little proud, perhaps, for a man who like myself has +risen from nothing but we all have our faults. Do you know, +count, that persons of our time of life not that you +belong to the class, you are still a young man, but as I +was saying, persons of our time of life have been very +unfortunate this year. For example, look at the puritanical +procureur, who has just lost his daughter, and in fact +nearly all his family, in so singular a manner Morcerf +dishonored and dead and then myself covered with ridicule +through the villany of Benedetto besides" +"Besides what?" asked the Count. +"Alas, do you not know?" +"What new calamity?" +"My daughter" +"Mademoiselle Danglars?" +"Eugenie has left us" +"Good heavens, what are you telling me?" +"The truth, my dear count. Oh, how happy you must be in not +having either wife or children" +"Do you think so?" +"Indeed I do." +"And so Mademoiselle Danglars" +"She could not endure the insult offered to us by that +wretch, so she asked permission to travel." +"And is she gone?" +"The other night she left." +"With Madame Danglars?" +"No, with a relation. But still, we have quite lost our dear +Eugenie for I doubt whether her pride will ever allow her +to return to France." +"Still, baron," said Monte Cristo, "family griefs, or indeed +any other affliction which would crush a man whose child was +his only treasure, are endurable to a millionaire. +Philosophers may well say, and practical men will always +support the opinion, that money mitigates many trials and +if you admit the efficacy of this sovereign balm, you ought +to be very easily consoled you, the king of finance, the +focus of immeasurable power." +Danglars looked at him askance, as though to ascertain +whether he spoke seriously. "Yes," he answered, "if a +fortune brings consolation, I ought to be consoled I am +rich." +"So rich, dear sir, that your fortune resembles the +pyramids if you wished to demolish them you could not, and +if it were possible, you would not dare" Danglars smiled at +the goodnatured pleasantry of the count. "That reminds me," +he said, "that when you entered I was on the point of +signing five little bonds I have already signed two will +you allow me to do the same to the others?" +"Pray do so." +There was a moment's silence, during which the noise of the +banker's pen was alone heard, while Monte Cristo examined +the gilt mouldings on the ceiling. "Are they Spanish, +Haitian, or Neapolitan bonds?" said Monte Cristo. "No," said +Danglars, smiling, "they are bonds on the bank of France, +payable to bearer. Stay, count," he added, "you, who may be +called the emperor, if I claim the title of king of finance, +have you many pieces of paper of this size, each worth a +million?" The count took into his hands the papers, which +Danglars had so proudly presented to him, and read +"To the Governor of the Bank. Please pay to my order, from +the fund deposited by me, the sum of a million, and charge +the same to my account. +"Baron Danglars." +"One, two, three, four, five," said Monte Cristo "five +millions why what a Croesus you are" +"This is how I transact business," said Danglars. +"It is really wonderful," said the count "above all, if, as +I suppose, it is payable at sight." +"It is, indeed, said Danglars. +"It is a fine thing to have such credit really, it is only +in France these things are done. Five millions on five +little scraps of paper it must be seen to be believed." +"You do not doubt it?" +"No" +"You say so with an accent stay, you shall be convinced +take my clerk to the bank, and you will see him leave it +with an order on the Treasury for the same sum." +"No," said Monte Cristo folding the five notes, "most +decidedly not the thing is so curious, I will make the +experiment myself. I am credited on you for six millions. I +have drawn nine hundred thousand francs, you therefore still +owe me five millions and a hundred thousand francs. I will +take the five scraps of paper that I now hold as bonds, with +your signature alone, and here is a receipt in full for the +six millions between us. I had prepared it beforehand, for I +am much in want of money today." And Monte Cristo placed +the bonds in his pocket with one hand, while with the other +he held out the receipt to Danglars. If a thunderbolt had +fallen at the banker's feet, he could not have experienced +greater terror. +"What," he stammered, "do you mean to keep that money? +Excuse me, excuse me, but I owe this money to the charity +fund, a deposit which I promised to pay this morning." +"Oh, well, then," said Monte Cristo, "I am not particular +about these five notes, pay me in a different form I +wished, from curiosity, to take these, that I might be able +to say that without any advice or preparation the house of +Danglars had paid me five millions without a minute's delay +it would have been remarkable. But here are your bonds pay +me differently" and he held the bonds towards Danglars, who +seized them like a vulture extending its claws to withhold +the food that is being wrested from its grasp. Suddenly he +rallied, made a violent effort to restrain himself, and then +a smile gradually widened the features of his disturbed +countenance. +"Certainly," he said, "your receipt is money." +"Oh dear, yes and if you were at Rome, the house of Thomson + French would make no more difficulty about paying the +money on my receipt than you have just done." +"Pardon me, count, pardon me." +"Then I may keep this money?" +"Yes," said Danglars, while the perspiration started from +the roots of his hair. "Yes, keep it keep it." +Monte Cristo replaced the notes in his pocket with that +indescribable expression which seemed to say, "Come, +reflect if you repent there is still time." +"No," said Danglars, "no, decidedly no keep my signatures. +But you know none are so formal as bankers in transacting +business I intended this money for the charity fund, and I +seemed to be robbing them if I did not pay them with these +precise bonds. How absurd as if one crown were not as +good as another. Excuse me" and he began to laugh loudly, +but nervously. +"Certainly, I excuse you," said Monte Cristo graciously, +"and pocket them." And he placed the bonds in his +pocketbook. +"But," said Danglars, "there is still a sum of one hundred +thousand francs?" +"Oh, a mere nothing," said Monte Cristo. "The balance would +come to about that sum but keep it, and we shall be quits." +"Count." said Danglars, "are you speaking seriously?" +"I never joke with bankers," said Monte Cristo in a freezing +manner, which repelled impertinence and he turned to the +door, just as the valet de chambre announced, "M. de +Boville, receivergeneral of the charities." +"Ma foi," said Monte Cristo "I think I arrived just in time +to obtain your signatures, or they would have been disputed +with me." +Danglars again became pale, and hastened to conduct the +count out. Monte Cristo exchanged a ceremonious bow with M. +de Boville, who was standing in the waitingroom, and who +was introduced into Danglars' room as soon as the count had +left. The count's sad face was illumined by a faint smile, +as he noticed the portfolio which the receivergeneral held +in his hand. At the door he found his carriage, and was +immediately driven to the bank. Meanwhile Danglars, +repressing all emotion, advanced to meet the +receivergeneral. We need not say that a smile of +condescension was stamped upon his lips. "Goodmorning, +creditor," said he "for I wager anything it is the creditor +who visits me." +"You are right, baron," answered M. de Boville "the +charities present themselves to you through me the widows +and orphans depute me to receive alms to the amount of five +millions from you." +"And yet they say orphans are to be pitied," said Danglars, +wishing to prolong the jest. "Poor things" +"Here I am in their name," said M. de Boville "but did you +receive my letter yesterday?" +"Yes." +"I have brought my receipt." +"My dear M. de Boville, your widows and orphans must oblige +me by waiting twentyfour hours, since M. de Monte Cristo +whom you just saw leaving here you did see him, I think?" +"Yes well?" +"Well, M. de Monte Cristo has just carried off their five +millions." +"How so?" +"The count has an unlimited credit upon me a credit opened +by Thomson French, of Rome he came to demand five +millions at once, which I paid him with checks on the bank. +My funds are deposited there, and you can understand that if +I draw out ten millions on the same day it will appear +rather strange to the governor. Two days will be a different +thing," said Danglars, smiling. +"Come," said Boville, with a tone of entire incredulity, +"five millions to that gentleman who just left, and who +bowed to me as though he knew me?" +"Perhaps he knows you, though you do not know him M. de +Monte Cristo knows everybody." +"Five millions" +"Here is his receipt. Believe your own eyes." M. de Boville +took the paper Danglars presented him, and read +"Received of Baron Danglars the sum of five million one +hundred thousand francs, to be repaid on demand by the house +of Thomson French of Rome." +"It is really true," said M. de Boville. +"Do you know the house of Thomson French?" +"Yes, I once had business to transact with it to the amount +of , francs but since then I have not heard it +mentioned." +"It is one of the best houses in Europe," said Danglars, +carelessly throwing down the receipt on his desk. +"And he had five millions in your hands alone Why, this +Count of Monte Cristo must be a nabob?" +"Indeed I do not know what he is he has three unlimited +credits one on me, one on Rothschild, one on Lafitte +and, you see," he added carelessly, "he has given me the +preference, by leaving a balance of , francs." M. de +Boville manifested signs of extraordinary admiration. "I +must visit him," he said, "and obtain some pious grant from +him." +"Oh, you may make sure of him his charities alone amount to +, francs a month." +"It is magnificent I will set before him the example of +Madame de Morcerf and her son." +"What example?" +"They gave all their fortune to the hospitals." +"What fortune?" +"Their own M. de Morcerf's, who is deceased." +"For what reason?" +"Because they would not spend money so guiltily acquired." +"And what are they to live upon?" +"The mother retires into the country, and the son enters the +army." +"Well, I must confess, these are scruples." +"I registered their deed of gift yesterday." +"And how much did they possess?" +"Oh, not much from twelve to thirteen hundred thousand +francs. But to return to our millions." +"Certainly," said Danglars, in the most natural tone in the +world. "Are you then pressed for this money?" +"Yes for the examination of our cash takes place +tomorrow." +"Tomorrow? Why did you not tell me so before? Why, it is as +good as a century At what hour does the examination take +place?" +"At two o'clock." +"Send at twelve," said Danglars, smiling. M. de Boville said +nothing, but nodded his head, and took up the portfolio. +"Now I think of it, you can do better," said Danglars. +"How do you mean?" +"The receipt of M. de Monte Cristo is as good as money take +it to Rothschild's or Lafitte's, and they will take it off +your hands at once." +"What, though payable at Rome?" +"Certainly it will only cost you a discount of , or +, francs." The receiver started back. "Ma foi," he said, +"I prefer waiting till tomorrow. What a proposition" +"I thought, perhaps," said Danglars with supreme +impertinence, "that you had a deficiency to make up?" +"Indeed," said the receiver. +"And if that were the case it would be worth while to make +some sacrifice." +"Thank you, no, sir." +"Then it will be tomorrow." +"Yes but without fail." +"Ah, you are laughing at me send tomorrow at twelve, and +the bank shall be notified." +"I will come myself." +"Better still, since it will afford me the pleasure of +seeing you." They shook hands. "By the way," said M. de +Boville, "are you not going to the funeral of poor +Mademoiselle de Villefort, which I met on my road here?" +"No," said the banker "I have appeared rather ridiculous +since that affair of Benedetto, so I remain in the +background." +"Bah, you are wrong. How were you to blame in that affair?" +"Listen when one bears an irreproachable name, as I do, +one is rather sensitive." +"Everybody pities you, sir and, above all, Mademoiselle +Danglars" +"Poor Eugenie" said Danglars "do you know she is going to +embrace a religious life?" +"No." +"Alas, it is unhappily but too true. The day after the +event, she decided on leaving Paris with a nun of her +acquaintance they are gone to seek a very strict convent in +Italy or Spain." +"Oh, it is terrible" and M. de Boville retired with this +exclamation, after expressing acute sympathy with the +father. But he had scarcely left before Danglars, with an +energy of action those can alone understand who have seen +Robert Macaire represented by Frederic, exclaimed, +"Fool" Then enclosing Monte Cristo's receipt in a little +pocketbook, he added "Yes, come at twelve o'clock I +shall then be far away." Then he doublelocked his door, +emptied all his drawers, collected about fifty thousand +francs in banknotes, burned several papers, left others +exposed to view, and then commenced writing a letter which +he addressed +"To Madame la Baronne Danglars." + Frederic Lemaitre French actor . Robert +Macaire is the hero of two favorite melodramas "Chien de +Montargis" and "Chien d'Aubry" and the name is applied to +bold criminals as a term of derision. +"I will place it on her table myself tonight," he murmured. +Then taking a passport from his drawer he said, "Good, it +is available for two months longer." +Chapter +The Cemetery of PerelaChaise. +M. de Boville had indeed met the funeral procession which +was taking Valentine to her last home on earth. The weather +was dull and stormy, a cold wind shook the few remaining +yellow leaves from the boughs of the trees, and scattered +them among the crowd which filled the boulevards. M. de +Villefort, a true Parisian, considered the cemetery of +PerelaChaise alone worthy of receiving the mortal remains +of a Parisian family there alone the corpses belonging to +him would be surrounded by worthy associates. He had +therefore purchased a vault, which was quickly occupied by +members of his family. On the front of the monument was +inscribed "The families of SaintMeran and Villefort," for +such had been the last wish expressed by poor Renee, +Valentine's mother. The pompous procession therefore wended +its way towards PerelaChaise from the Faubourg +SaintHonore. Having crossed Paris, it passed through the +Faubourg du Temple, then leaving the exterior boulevards, it +reached the cemetery. More than fifty private carriages +followed the twenty mourningcoaches, and behind them more +than five hundred persons joined in the procession on foot. +These last consisted of all the young people whom +Valentine's death had struck like a thunderbolt, and who, +notwithstanding the raw chilliness of the season, could not +refrain from paying a last tribute to the memory of the +beautiful, chaste, and adorable girl, thus cut off in the +flower of her youth. As they left Paris, an equipage with +four horses, at full speed, was seen to draw up suddenly it +contained Monte Cristo. The count left the carriage and +mingled in the crowd who followed on foot. ChateauRenaud +perceived him and immediately alighting from his coupe, +joined him. +The count looked attentively through every opening in the +crowd he was evidently watching for some one, but his +search ended in disappointment. "Where is Morrel?" he asked +"do either of these gentlemen know where he is?" +"We have already asked that question," said ChateauRenaud, +"for none of us has seen him." The count was silent, but +continued to gaze around him. At length they arrived at the +cemetery. The piercing eye of Monte Cristo glanced through +clusters of bushes and trees, and was soon relieved from all +anxiety, for seeing a shadow glide between the yewtrees, +Monte Cristo recognized him whom he sought. One funeral is +generally very much like another in this magnificent +metropolis. Black figures are seen scattered over the long +white avenues the silence of earth and heaven is alone +broken by the noise made by the crackling branches of hedges +planted around the monuments then follows the melancholy +chant of the priests, mingled now and then with a sob of +anguish, escaping from some woman concealed behind a mass of +flowers. +The shadow Monte Cristo had noticed passed rapidly behind +the tomb of Abelard and Heloise, placed itself close to the +heads of the horses belonging to the hearse, and following +the undertaker's men, arrived with them at the spot +appointed for the burial. Each person's attention was +occupied. Monte Cristo saw nothing but the shadow, which no +one else observed. Twice the count left the ranks to see +whether the object of his interest had any concealed weapon +beneath his clothes. When the procession stopped, this +shadow was recognized as Morrel, who, with his coat buttoned +up to his throat, his face livid, and convulsively crushing +his hat between his fingers, leaned against a tree, situated +on an elevation commanding the mausoleum, so that none of +the funeral details could escape his observation. Everything +was conducted in the usual manner. A few men, the least +impressed of all by the scene, pronounced a discourse, some +deploring this premature death, others expatiating on the +grief of the father, and one very ingenious person quoting +the fact that Valentine had solicited pardon of her father +for criminals on whom the arm of justice was ready to fall +until at length they exhausted their stores of metaphor +and mournful speeches. +Monte Cristo heard and saw nothing, or rather he only saw +Morrel, whose calmness had a frightful effect on those who +knew what was passing in his heart. "See," said Beauchamp, +pointing out Morrel to Debray. "What is he doing up there?" +And they called ChateauRenaud's attention to him. +"How pale he is" said ChateauRenaud, shuddering. +"He is cold," said Debray. +"Not at all," said ChateauRenaud, slowly "I think he is +violently agitated. He is very susceptible." +"Bah," said Debray "he scarcely knew Mademoiselle de +Villefort you said so yourself." +"True. Still I remember he danced three times with her at +Madame de Morcerf's. Do you recollect that ball, count, +where you produced such an effect?" +"No, I do not," replied Monte Cristo, without even knowing +of what or to whom he was speaking, so much was he occupied +in watching Morrel, who was holding his breath with emotion. +"The discourse is over farewell, gentlemen," said the +count. And he disappeared without anyone seeing whither he +went. The funeral being over, the guests returned to Paris. +ChateauRenaud looked for a moment for Morrel but while +they were watching the departure of the count, Morrel had +quitted his post, and ChateauRenaud, failing in his search, +joined Debray and Beauchamp. +Monte Cristo concealed himself behind a large tomb and +awaited the arrival of Morrel, who by degrees approached the +tomb now abandoned by spectators and workmen. Morrel threw a +glance around, but before it reached the spot occupied by +Monte Cristo the latter had advanced yet nearer, still +unperceived. The young man knelt down. The count, with +outstretched neck and glaring eyes, stood in an attitude +ready to pounce upon Morrel upon the first occasion. Morrel +bent his head till it touched the stone, then clutching the +grating with both hands, he murmured, "Oh, Valentine" +The count's heart was pierced by the utterance of these two +words he stepped forward, and touching the young man's +shoulder, said, "I was looking for you, my friend." Monte +Cristo expected a burst of passion, but he was deceived, for +Morrel turning round, said calmly, +"You see I was praying." The scrutinizing glance of the +count searched the young man from head to foot. He then +seemed more easy. +"Shall I drive you back to Paris?" he asked. +"No, thank you." +"Do you wish anything?" +"Leave me to pray." The count withdrew without opposition, +but it was only to place himself in a situation where he +could watch every movement of Morrel, who at length arose, +brushed the dust from his knees, and turned towards Paris, +without once looking back. He walked slowly down the Rue de +la Roquette. The count, dismissing his carriage, followed +him about a hundred paces behind. Maximilian crossed the +canal and entered the Rue Meslay by the boulevards. Five +minutes after the door had been closed on Morrel's entrance, +it was again opened for the count. Julie was at the entrance +of the garden, where she was attentively watching Penelon, +who, entering with zeal into his profession of gardener, was +very busy grafting some Bengal roses. "Ah, count," she +exclaimed, with the delight manifested by every member of +the family whenever he visited the Rue Meslay. +"Maximilian has just returned, has he not, madame?" asked +the count. +"Yes, I think I saw him pass but pray, call Emmanuel." +"Excuse me, madame, but I must go up to Maximilian's room +this instant," replied Monte Cristo, "I have something of +the greatest importance to tell him." +"Go, then," she said with a charming smile, which +accompanied him until he had disappeared. Monte Cristo soon +ran up the staircase conducting from the groundfloor to +Maximilian's room when he reached the landing he listened +attentively, but all was still. Like many old houses +occupied by a single family, the room door was panelled with +glass but it was locked, Maximilian was shut in, and it was +impossible to see what was passing in the room, because a +red curtain was drawn before the glass. The count's anxiety +was manifested by a bright color which seldom appeared on +the face of that imperturbable man. +"What shall I do" he uttered, and reflected for a moment +"shall I ring? No, the sound of a bell, announcing a +visitor, will but accelerate the resolution of one in +Maximilian's situation, and then the bell would be followed +by a louder noise." Monte Cristo trembled from head to foot +and as if his determination had been taken with the rapidity +of lightning, he struck one of the panes of glass with his +elbow the glass was shivered to atoms, then withdrawing the +curtain he saw Morrel, who had been writing at his desk, +bound from his seat at the noise of the broken window. +"I beg a thousand pardons," said the count, "there is +nothing the matter, but I slipped down and broke one of your +panes of glass with my elbow. Since it is opened, I will +take advantage of it to enter your room do not disturb +yourself do not disturb yourself" And passing his hand +through the broken glass, the count opened the door. Morrel, +evidently discomposed, came to meet Monte Cristo less with +the intention of receiving him than to exclude his entry. +"Ma foi," said Monte Cristo, rubbing his elbow, "it's all +your servant's fault your stairs are so polished, it is +like walking on glass." +"Are you hurt, sir?" coldly asked Morrel. +"I believe not. But what are you about there? You were +writing." +"I?" +"Your fingers are stained with ink." +"Ah, true, I was writing. I do sometimes, soldier though I +am." +Monte Cristo advanced into the room Maximilian was obliged +to let him pass, but he followed him. "You were writing?" +said Monte Cristo with a searching look. +"I have already had the honor of telling you I was," said +Morrel. +The count looked around him. "Your pistols are beside your +desk," said Monte Cristo, pointing with his finger to the +pistols on the table. +"I am on the point of starting on a journey," replied Morrel +disdainfully. +"My friend," exclaimed Monte Cristo in a tone of exquisite +sweetness. +"Sir?" +"My friend, my dear Maximilian, do not make a hasty +resolution, I entreat you." +"I make a hasty resolution?" said Morrel, shrugging his +shoulders "is there anything extraordinary in a journey?" +"Maximilian," said the count, "let us both lay aside the +mask we have assumed. You no more deceive me with that false +calmness than I impose upon you with my frivolous +solicitude. You can understand, can you not, that to have +acted as I have done, to have broken that glass, to have +intruded on the solitude of a friend you can understand +that, to have done all this, I must have been actuated by +real uneasiness, or rather by a terrible conviction. Morrel, +you are going to destroy yourself" +"Indeed, count," said Morrel, shuddering "what has put this +into your head?" +"I tell you that you are about to destroy yourself," +continued the count, "and here is proof of what I say" and, +approaching the desk, he removed the sheet of paper which +Morrel had placed over the letter he had begun, and took the +latter in his hands. +Morrel rushed forward to tear it from him, but Monte Cristo +perceiving his intention, seized his wrist with his iron +grasp. "You wish to destroy yourself," said the count "you +have written it." +"Well," said Morrel, changing his expression of calmness for +one of violence "well, and if I do intend to turn this +pistol against myself, who shall prevent me who will dare +prevent me? All my hopes are blighted, my heart is broken, +my life a burden, everything around me is sad and mournful +earth has become distasteful to me, and human voices +distract me. It is a mercy to let me die, for if I live I +shall lose my reason and become mad. When, sir, I tell you +all this with tears of heartfelt anguish, can you reply that +I am wrong, can you prevent my putting an end to my +miserable existence? Tell me, sir, could you have the +courage to do so?" +"Yes, Morrel," said Monte Cristo, with a calmness which +contrasted strangely with the young man's excitement "yes, +I would do so." +"You?" exclaimed Morrel, with increasing anger and reproach +"you, who have deceived me with false hopes, who have +cheered and soothed me with vain promises, when I might, if +not have saved her, at least have seen her die in my arms +You, who pretend to understand everything, even the hidden +sources of knowledge, and who enact the part of a +guardian angel upon earth, and could not even find an +antidote to a poison administered to a young girl Ah, sir, +indeed you would inspire me with pity, were you not hateful +in my eyes." +"Morrel" +"Yes you tell me to lay aside the mask, and I will do so, +be satisfied When you spoke to me at the cemetery, I +answered you my heart was softened when you arrived +here, I allowed you to enter. But since you abuse my +confidence, since you have devised a new torture after I +thought I had exhausted them all, then, Count of Monte +Cristo my pretended benefactor then, Count of Monte +Cristo, the universal guardian, be satisfied, you shall +witness the death of your friend" and Morrel, with a +maniacal laugh, again rushed towards the pistols. +"And I again repeat, you shall not commit suicide." +"Prevent me, then" replied Morrel, with another struggle, +which, like the first, failed in releasing him from the +count's iron grasp. +"I will prevent you." +"And who are you, then, that arrogate to yourself this +tyrannical right over free and rational beings?" +"Who am I?" repeated Monte Cristo. "Listen I am the only +man in the world having the right to say to you, "Morrel, +your father's son shall not die today'" and Monte Cristo, +with an expression of majesty and sublimity, advanced with +arms folded toward the young man, who, involuntarily +overcome by the commanding manner of this man, recoiled a +step. +"Why do you mention my father?" stammered he "why do you +mingle a recollection of him with the affairs of today?" +"Because I am he who saved your father's life when he wished +to destroy himself, as you do today because I am the man +who sent the purse to your young sister, and the Pharaon to +old Morrel because I am the Edmond Dantes who nursed you, +a child, on my knees." Morrel made another step back, +staggering, breathless, crushed then all his strength give +way, and he fell prostrate at the feet of Monte Cristo. Then +his admirable nature underwent a complete and sudden +revulsion he arose, rushed out of the room and to the +stairs, exclaiming energetically, "Julie, Julie Emmanuel, +Emmanuel" +Monte Cristo endeavored also to leave, but Maximilian would +have died rather than relax his hold of the handle of the +door, which he closed upon the count. Julie, Emmanuel, and +some of the servants, ran up in alarm on hearing the cries +of Maximilian. Morrel seized their hands, and opening the +door exclaimed in a voice choked with sobs, "On your knees +on your knees he is our benefactor the saviour of +our father He is" +He would have added "Edmond Dantes," but the count seized +his arm and prevented him. Julie threw herself into the arms +of the count Emmanuel embraced him as a guardian angel +Morrel again fell on his knees, and struck the ground with +his forehead. Then the ironhearted man felt his heart swell +in his breast a flame seemed to rush from his throat to his +eyes, he bent his head and wept. For a while nothing was +heard in the room but a succession of sobs, while the +incense from their grateful hearts mounted to heaven. Julie +had scarcely recovered from her deep emotion when she rushed +out of the room, descended to the next floor, ran into the +drawingroom with childlike joy and raised the crystal globe +which covered the purse given by the unknown of the Allees +de Meillan. Meanwhile, Emmanuel in a broken voice said to +the count, "Oh, count, how could you, hearing us so often +speak of our unknown benefactor, seeing us pay such homage +of gratitude and adoration to his memory, how could you +continue so long without discovering yourself to us? Oh, it +was cruel to us, and dare I say it? to you also." +"Listen, my friends," said the count "I may call you so +since we have really been friends for the last eleven years +the discovery of this secret has been occasioned by a +great event which you must never know. I wish to bury it +during my whole life in my own bosom, but your brother +Maximilian wrested it from me by a violence he repents of +now, I am sure." Then turning around, and seeing that +Morrel, still on his knees, had thrown himself into an +armchair, be added in a low voice, pressing Emmanuel's hand +significantly, "Watch over him." +"Why so?" asked the young man, surprised. +"I cannot explain myself but watch over him." Emmanuel +looked around the room and caught sight of the pistols his +eyes rested on the weapons, and he pointed to them. Monte +Cristo bent his head. Emmanuel went towards the pistols. +"Leave them," said Monte Cristo. Then walking towards +Morrel, he took his hand the tumultuous agitation of the +young man was succeeded by a profound stupor. Julie +returned, holding the silken purse in her hands, while tears +of joy rolled down her cheeks, like dewdrops on the rose. +"Here is the relic," she said "do not think it will be less +dear to us now we are acquainted with our benefactor" +"My child," said Monte Cristo, coloring, "allow me to take +back that purse? Since you now know my face, I wish to be +remembered alone through the affection I hope you will grant +me. +"Oh," said Julie, pressing the purse to her heart, "no, no, +I beseech you do not take it, for some unhappy day you will +leave us, will you not?" +"You have guessed rightly, madame," replied Monte Cristo, +smiling "in a week I shall have left this country, where so +many persons who merit the vengeance of heaven lived +happily, while my father perished of hunger and grief." +While announcing his departure, the count fixed his eyes on +Morrel, and remarked that the words, "I shall have left this +country," had failed to rouse him from his lethargy. He then +saw that he must make another struggle against the grief of +his friend, and taking the hands of Emmanuel and Julie, +which he pressed within his own, he said with the mild +authority of a father, "My kind friends, leave me alone with +Maximilian." Julie saw the means offered of carrying off her +precious relic, which Monte Cristo had forgotten. She drew +her husband to the door. "Let us leave them," she said. The +count was alone with Morrel, who remained motionless as a +statue. +"Come," said MonteCristo, touching his shoulder with his +finger, "are you a man again, Maximilian?" +"Yes for I begin to suffer again." +The count frowned, apparently in gloomy hesitation. +"Maximilian, Maximilian," he said, "the ideas you yield to +are unworthy of a Christian." +"Oh, do not fear, my friend," said Morrel, raising his head, +and smiling with a sweet expression on the count "I shall +no longer attempt my life." +"Then we are to have no more pistols no more despair?" +"No I have found a better remedy for my grief than either a +bullet or a knife." +"Poor fellow, what is it?" +"My grief will kill me of itself." +"My friend," said Monte Cristo, with an expression of +melancholy equal to his own, "listen to me. One day, in a +moment of despair like yours, since it led to a similar +resolution, I also wished to kill myself one day your +father, equally desperate, wished to kill himself too. If +any one had said to your father, at the moment he raised the +pistol to his head if any one had told me, when in my +prison I pushed back the food I had not tasted for three +days if anyone had said to either of us then, "Live +the day will come when you will be happy, and will bless +life' no matter whose voice had spoken, we should have +heard him with the smile of doubt, or the anguish of +incredulity, and yet how many times has your father +blessed life while embracing you how often have I myself" +"Ah," exclaimed Morrel, interrupting the count, "you had +only lost your liberty, my father had only lost his fortune, +but I have lost Valentine." +"Look at me," said Monte Cristo, with that expression which +sometimes made him so eloquent and persuasive "look at +me. There are no tears in my eyes, nor is there fever in my +veins, yet I see you suffer you, Maximilian, whom I love +as my own son. Well, does not this tell you that in grief, +as in life, there is always something to look forward to +beyond? Now, if I entreat, if I order you to live, Morrel, +it is in the conviction that one day you will thank me for +having preserved your life." +"Oh, heavens," said the young man, "oh, heavens what are +you saying, count? Take care. But perhaps you have never +loved" +"Child" replied the count. +"I mean, as I love. You see, I have been a soldier ever +since I attained manhood. I reached the age of twentynine +without loving, for none of the feelings I before then +experienced merit the appellation of love. Well, at +twentynine I saw Valentine for two years I have loved her, +for two years I have seen written in her heart, as in a +book, all the virtues of a daughter and wife. Count, to +possess Valentine would have been a happiness too infinite, +too ecstatic, too complete, too divine for this world, since +it has been denied me but without Valentine the earth is +desolate." +"I have told you to hope," said the count. +"Then have a care, I repeat, for you seek to persuade me, +and if you succeed I should lose my reason, for I should +hope that I could again behold Valentine." The count smiled. +"My friend, my father," said Morrel with excitement, "have a +care, I again repeat, for the power you wield over me alarms +me. Weigh your words before you speak, for my eyes have +already become brighter, and my heart beats strongly be +cautious, or you will make me believe in supernatural +agencies. I must obey you, though you bade me call forth the +dead or walk upon the water." +"Hope, my friend," repeated the count. +"Ah," said Morrel, falling from the height of excitement to +the abyss of despair "ah, you are playing with me, like +those good, or rather selfish mothers who soothe their +children with honeyed words, because their screams annoy +them. No, my friend, I was wrong to caution you do not +fear, I will bury my grief so deep in my heart, I will +disguise it so, that you shall not even care to sympathize +with me. Adieu, my friend, adieu" +"On the contrary," said the count, "after this time you must +live with me you must not leave me, and in a week we +shall have left France behind us." +"And you still bid me hope?" +"I tell you to hope, because I have a method of curing you." +"Count, you render me sadder than before, if it be possible. +You think the result of this blow has been to produce an +ordinary grief, and you would cure it by an ordinary remedy +change of scene." And Morrel dropped his head with +disdainful incredulity. "What can I say more?" asked Monte +Cristo. "I have confidence in the remedy I propose, and only +ask you to permit me to assure you of its efficacy." +"Count, you prolong my agony." +"Then," said the count, "your feeble spirit will not even +grant me the trial I request? Come do you know of what +the Count of Monte Cristo is capable? do you know that he +holds terrestrial beings under his control? nay, that he can +almost work a miracle? Well, wait for the miracle I hope to +accomplish, or" +"Or?" repeated Morrel. +"Or, take care, Morrel, lest I call you ungrateful." +"Have pity on me, count" +"I feel so much pity towards you, Maximilian, that listen +to me attentively if I do not cure you in a month, to the +day, to the very hour, mark my words, Morrel, I will place +loaded pistols before you, and a cup of the deadliest +Italian poison a poison more sure and prompt than that +which has killed Valentine." +"Will you promise me?" +"Yes for I am a man, and have suffered like yourself, and +also contemplated suicide indeed, often since misfortune +has left me I have longed for the delights of an eternal +sleep." +"But you are sure you will promise me this?" said Morrel, +intoxicated. "I not only promise, but swear it" said Monte +Cristo extending his hand. +"In a month, then, on your honor, if I am not consoled, you +will let me take my life into my own hands, and whatever may +happen you will not call me ungrateful?" +"In a month, to the day, the very hour and the date are +sacred, Maximilian. I do not know whether you remember that +this is the th of September it is ten years today since I +saved your father's life, who wished to die." Morrel seized +the count's hand and kissed it the count allowed him to pay +the homage he felt due to him. "In a month you will find on +the table, at which we shall be then sitting, good pistols +and a delicious draught but, on the other hand, you must +promise me not to attempt your life before that time." +"Oh, I also swear it" Monte Cristo drew the young man +towards him, and pressed him for some time to his heart. +"And now," he said, "after today, you will come and live +with me you can occupy Haidee's apartment, and my daughter +will at least be replaced by my son." +"Haidee?" said Morrel, "what has become of her?" +"She departed last night." +"To leave you?" +"To wait for me. Hold yourself ready then to join me at the +Champs Elysees, and lead me out of this house without any +one seeing my departure." Maximilian hung his head, and +obeyed with childlike reverence. +Chapter +Dividing the Proceeds. +The apartment on the second floor of the house in the Rue +SaintGermaindesPres, where Albert de Morcerf had selected +a home for his mother, was let to a very mysterious person. +This was a man whose face the concierge himself had never +seen, for in the winter his chin was buried in one of the +large red handkerchiefs worn by gentlemen's coachmen on a +cold night, and in the summer he made a point of always +blowing his nose just as he approached the door. Contrary to +custom, this gentleman had not been watched, for as the +report ran that he was a person of high rank, and one who +would allow no impertinent interference, his incognito was +strictly respected. +His visits were tolerably regular, though occasionally he +appeared a little before or after his time, but generally, +both in summer and winter, he took possession of his +apartment about four o'clock, though he never spent the +night there. At halfpast three in the winter the fire was +lighted by the discreet servant, who had the superintendence +of the little apartment, and in the summer ices were placed +on the table at the same hour. At four o'clock, as we have +already stated, the mysterious personage arrived. Twenty +minutes afterwards a carriage stopped at the house, a lady +alighted in a black or dark blue dress, and always thickly +veiled she passed like a shadow through the lodge, and ran +upstairs without a sound escaping under the touch of her +light foot. No one ever asked her where she was going. Her +face, therefore, like that of the gentleman, was perfectly +unknown to the two concierges, who were perhaps unequalled +throughout the capital for discretion. We need not say she +stopped at the second floor. Then she tapped in a peculiar +manner at a door, which after being opened to admit her was +again fastened, and curiosity penetrated no farther. They +used the same precautions in leaving as in entering the +house. The lady always left first, and as soon as she had +stepped into her carriage, it drove away, sometimes towards +the right hand, sometimes to the left then about twenty +minutes afterwards the gentleman would also leave, buried in +his cravat or concealed by his handkerchief. +The day after Monte Cristo had called upon Danglars, the +mysterious lodger entered at ten o'clock in the morning +instead of four in the afternoon. Almost directly +afterwards, without the usual interval of time, a cab +arrived, and the veiled lady ran hastily upstairs. The door +opened, but before it could be closed, the lady exclaimed +"Oh, Lucien oh, my friend" The concierge therefore heard +for the first time that the lodger's name was Lucien still, +as he was the very perfection of a doorkeeper, he made up +his mind not to tell his wife. "Well, what is the matter, my +dear?" asked the gentleman whose name the lady's agitation +revealed "tell me what is the matter." +"Oh, Lucien, can I confide in you?" +"Of course, you know you can do so. But what can be the +matter? Your note of this morning has completely bewildered +me. This precipitation this unusual appointment. Come, +ease me of my anxiety, or else frighten me at once." +"Lucien, a great event has happened" said the lady, +glancing inquiringly at Lucien, "M. Danglars left last +night" +"Left? M. Danglars left? Where has he gone?" +"I do not know." +"What do you mean? Has he gone intending not to return?" +"Undoubtedly at ten o'clock at night his horses took him +to the barrier of Charenton there a postchaise was waiting +for him he entered it with his valet de chambre, saying +that he was going to Fontainebleau." +"Then what did you mean" +"Stay he left a letter for me." +"A letter?" +"Yes read it." And the baroness took from her pocket a +letter which she gave to Debray. Debray paused a moment +before reading, as if trying to guess its contents, or +perhaps while making up his mind how to act, whatever it +might contain. No doubt his ideas were arranged in a few +minutes, for he began reading the letter which caused so +much uneasiness in the heart of the baroness, and which ran +as follows +"Madame and most faithful wife." +Debray mechanically stopped and looked at the baroness, +whose face became covered with blushes. "Read," she said. +Debray continued +"When you receive this, you will no longer have a husband. +Oh, you need not be alarmed, you will only have lost him as +you have lost your daughter I mean that I shall be +travelling on one of the thirty or forty roads leading out +of France. I owe you some explanations for my conduct, and +as you are a woman that can perfectly understand me, I will +give them. Listen, then. I received this morning five +millions which I paid away almost directly afterwards +another demand for the same sum was presented to me I put +this creditor off till tomorrow and I intend leaving +today, to escape that tomorrow, which would be rather too +unpleasant for me to endure. You understand this, do you +not, my most precious wife? I say you understand this, +because you are as conversant with my affairs as I am +indeed, I think you understand them better, since I am +ignorant of what has become of a considerable portion of my +fortune, once very tolerable, while I am sure, madame, that +you know perfectly well. For women have infallible +instincts they can even explain the marvellous by an +algebraic calculation they have invented but I, who only +understand my own figures, know nothing more than that one +day these figures deceived me. Have you admired the rapidity +of my fall? Have you been slightly dazzled at the sudden +fusion of my ingots? I confess I have seen nothing but the +fire let us hope you have found some gold among the ashes. +With this consoling idea, I leave you, madame, and most +prudent wife, without any conscientious reproach for +abandoning you you have friends left, and the ashes I have +already mentioned, and above all the liberty I hasten to +restore to you. And here, madame, I must add another word of +explanation. So long as I hoped you were working for the +good of our house and for the fortune of our daughter, I +philosophically closed my eyes but as you have transformed +that house into a vast ruin I will not be the foundation of +another man's fortune. You were rich when I married you, but +little respected. Excuse me for speaking so very candidly, +but as this is intended only for ourselves, I do not see why +I should weigh my words. I have augmented our fortune, and +it has continued to increase during the last fifteen years, +till extraordinary and unexpected catastrophes have suddenly +overturned it, without any fault of mine, I can honestly +declare. You, madame, have only sought to increase your own, +and I am convinced that you have succeeded. I leave you, +therefore, as I took you, rich, but little respected. +Adieu I also intend from this time to work on my own +account. Accept my acknowledgments for the example you have +set me, and which I intend following. +"Your very devoted husband, +"Baron Danglars." +The baroness had watched Debray while he read this long and +painful letter, and saw him, notwithstanding his +selfcontrol, change color once or twice. When he had ended +the perusal, he folded the letter and resumed his pensive +attitude. "Well?" asked Madame Danglars, with an anxiety +easy to be understood. +"Well, madame?" unhesitatingly repeated Debray. +"With what ideas does that letter inspire you?" +"Oh, it is simple enough, madame it inspires me with the +idea that M. Danglars has left suspiciously." +"Certainly but is this all you have to say to me?" +"I do not understand you," said Debray with freezing +coldness. +"He is gone Gone, never to return" +"Oh, madame, do not think that" +"I tell you he will never return. I know his character he +is inflexible in any resolutions formed for his own +interests. If he could have made any use of me, he would +have taken me with him he leaves me in Paris, as our +separation will conduce to his benefit therefore he has +gone, and I am free forever," added Madame Danglars, in the +same supplicating tone. Debray, instead of answering, +allowed her to remain in an attitude of nervous inquiry. +"Well?" she said at length, "do you not answer me?" +"I have but one question to ask you, what do you intend +to do?" +"I was going to ask you," replied the baroness with a +beating heart. +"Ah, then, you wish to ask advice of me?" +"Yes I do wish to ask your advice," said Madame Danglars +with anxious expectation. +"Then if you wish to take my advice," said the young man +coldly, "I would recommend you to travel." +"To travel" she murmured. +"Certainly as M. Danglars says, you are rich, and perfectly +free. In my opinion, a withdrawal from Paris is absolutely +necessary after the double catastrophe of Mademoiselle +Danglars' broken contract and M. Danglars' disappearance. +The world will think you abandoned and poor, for the wife of +a bankrupt would never be forgiven, were she to keep up an +appearance of opulence. You have only to remain in Paris for +about a fortnight, telling the world you are abandoned, and +relating the details of this desertion to your best friends, +who will soon spread the report. Then you can quit your +house, leaving your jewels and giving up your jointure, and +every one's mouth will be filled with praises of your +disinterestedness. They will know you are deserted, and +think you also poor, for I alone know your real financial +position, and am quite ready to give up my accounts as an +honest partner." The dread with which the pale and +motionless baroness listened to this, was equalled by the +calm indifference with which Debray had spoken. "Deserted?" +she repeated "ah, yes, I am, indeed, deserted You are +right, sir, and no one can doubt my position." These were +the only words that this proud and violently enamoured woman +could utter in response to Debray. +"But then you are rich, very rich, indeed," continued +Debray, taking out some papers from his pocketbook, which +he spread upon the table. Madame Danglars did not see them +she was engaged in stilling the beatings of her heart, and +restraining the tears which were ready to gush forth. At +length a sense of dignity prevailed, and if she did not +entirely master her agitation, she at least succeeded in +preventing the fall of a single tear. "Madame," said Debray, +"it is nearly six months since we have been associated. You +furnished a principal of , francs. Our partnership +began in the month of April. In May we commenced operations, +and in the course of the month gained , francs. In +June the profit amounted to ,. In July we added +,, francs, it was, you know, the month of the +Spanish bonds. In August we lost , francs at the +beginning of the month, but on the th we made up for it, +and we now find that our accounts, reckoning from the first +day of partnership up to yesterday, when I closed them, +showed a capital of ,, francs, that is, ,, for +each of us. Now, madame," said Debray, delivering up his +accounts in the methodical manner of a stockbroker, "there +are still , francs, the interest of this money, in my +hands." +"But," said the baroness, "I thought you never put the money +out to interest." +"Excuse me, madame," said Debray coldly, "I had your +permission to do so, and I have made use of it. There are, +then, , francs for your share, besides the , you +furnished me to begin with, making in all ,, francs +for your portion. Now, madame, I took the precaution of +drawing out your money the day before yesterday it is not +long ago, you see, and I was in continual expectation of +being called on to deliver up my accounts. There is your +money, half in banknotes, the other half in checks +payable to bearer. I say there, for as I did not consider my +house safe enough, or lawyers sufficiently discreet, and as +landed property carries evidence with it, and moreover since +you have no right to possess anything independent of your +husband, I have kept this sum, now your whole fortune, in a +chest concealed under that closet, and for greater security +I myself concealed it there. +"Now, madame," continued Debray, first opening the closet, +then the chest "now, madame, here are notes of , +francs each, resembling, as you see, a large book bound in +iron to this I add a certificate in the funds of , +francs then, for the odd cash, making I think about , +francs, here is a check upon my banker, who, not being M. +Danglars, will pay you the amount, you may rest assured." +Madame Danglars mechanically took the check, the bond, and +the heap of banknotes. This enormous fortune made no great +appearance on the table. Madame Danglars, with tearless +eyes, but with her breast heaving with concealed emotion, +placed the banknotes in her bag, put the certificate and +check into her pocketbook, and then, standing pale and +mute, awaited one kind word of consolation. But she waited +in vain. +"Now, madame," said Debray, "you have a splendid fortune, an +income of about , livres a year, which is enormous for +a woman who cannot keep an establishment here for a year, at +least. You will be able to indulge all your fancies +besides, should you find your income insufficient, you can, +for the sake of the past, madame, make use of mine and I am +ready to offer you all I possess, on loan." +"Thank you, sir thank you," replied the baroness "you +forget that what you have just paid me is much more than a +poor woman requires, who intends for some time, at least, to +retire from the world." +Debray was, for a moment, surprised, but immediately +recovering himself, he bowed with an air which seemed to +say, "As you please, madame." +Madame Danglars had until then, perhaps, hoped for +something but when she saw the careless bow of Debray, and +the glance by which it was accompanied, together with his +significant silence, she raised her head, and without +passion or violence or even hesitation, ran downstairs, +disdaining to address a last farewell to one who could thus +part from her. "Bah," said Debray, when she had left, "these +are fine projects She will remain at home, read novels, and +speculate at cards, since she can no longer do so on the +Bourse." Then taking up his account book, he cancelled with +the greatest care all the entries of the amounts he had just +paid away. "I have ,, francs remaining," he said. +"What a pity Mademoiselle de Villefort is dead She suited +me in every respect, and I would have married her." And he +calmly waited until the twenty minutes had elapsed after +Madame Danglars' departure before he left the house. During +this time he occupied himself in making figures, with his +watch by his side. +Asmodeus that diabolical personage, who would have been +created by every fertile imagination if Le Sage had not +acquired the priority in his great masterpiece would have +enjoyed a singular spectacle, if he had lifted up the roof +of the little house in the Rue SaintGermaindesPres, while +Debray was casting up his figures. Above the room in which +Debray had been dividing two millions and a half with Madame +Danglars was another, inhabited by persons who have played +too prominent a part in the incidents we have related for +their appearance not to create some interest. Mercedes and +Albert were in that room. Mercedes was much changed within +the last few days not that even in her days of fortune she +had ever dressed with the magnificent display which makes us +no longer able to recognize a woman when she appears in a +plain and simple attire nor indeed, had she fallen into +that state of depression where it is impossible to conceal +the garb of misery no, the change in Mercedes was that her +eye no longer sparkled, her lips no longer smiled, and there +was now a hesitation in uttering the words which formerly +sprang so fluently from her ready wit. +It was not poverty which had broken her spirit it was not a +want of courage which rendered her poverty burdensome. +Mercedes, although deposed from the exalted position she had +occupied, lost in the sphere she had now chosen, like a +person passing from a room splendidly lighted into utter +darkness, appeared like a queen, fallen from her palace to a +hovel, and who, reduced to strict necessity, could neither +become reconciled to the earthen vessels she was herself +forced to place upon the table, nor to the humble pallet +which had become her bed. The beautiful Catalane and noble +countess had lost both her proud glance and charming smile, +because she saw nothing but misery around her the walls +were hung with one of the gray papers which economical +landlords choose as not likely to show the dirt the floor +was uncarpeted the furniture attracted the attention to the +poor attempt at luxury indeed, everything offended eyes +accustomed to refinement and elegance. +Madame de Morcerf had lived there since leaving her house +the continual silence of the spot oppressed her still, +seeing that Albert continually watched her countenance to +judge the state of her feelings, she constrained herself to +assume a monotonous smile of the lips alone, which, +contrasted with the sweet and beaming expression that +usually shone from her eyes, seemed like "moonlight on a +statue," yielding light without warmth. Albert, too, was +ill at ease the remains of luxury prevented him from +sinking into his actual position. If he wished to go out +without gloves, his hands appeared too white if he wished +to walk through the town, his boots seemed too highly +polished. Yet these two noble and intelligent creatures, +united by the indissoluble ties of maternal and filial love, +had succeeded in tacitly understanding one another, and +economizing their stores, and Albert had been able to tell +his mother without extorting a change of countenance, +"Mother, we have no more money." +Mercedes had never known misery she had often, in her +youth, spoken of poverty, but between want and necessity, +those synonymous words, there is a wide difference. Amongst +the Catalans, Mercedes wished for a thousand things, but +still she never really wanted any. So long as the nets were +good, they caught fish and so long as they sold their fish, +they were able to buy twine for new nets. And then, shut out +from friendship, having but one affection, which could not +be mixed up with her ordinary pursuits, she thought of +herself of no one but herself. Upon the little she earned +she lived as well as she could now there were two to be +supported, and nothing to live upon. +Winter approached. Mercedes had no fire in that cold and +naked room she, who was accustomed to stoves which heated +the house from the hall to the boudoir she had not even one +little flower she whose apartment had been a conservatory +of costly exotics. But she had her son. Hitherto the +excitement of fulfilling a duty had sustained them. +Excitement, like enthusiasm, sometimes renders us +unconscious to the things of earth. But the excitement had +calmed down, and they felt themselves obliged to descend +from dreams to reality after having exhausted the ideal, +they found they must talk of the actual. +"Mother," exclaimed Albert, just as Madame Danglars was +descending the stairs, "let us reckon our riches, if you +please I want capital to build my plans upon." +"Capital nothing" replied Mercedes with a mournful +smile. +"No, mother, capital , francs. And I have an idea of +our leading a delightful life upon this , francs." +"Child" sighed Mercedes. +"Alas, dear mother," said the young man, "I have unhappily +spent too much of your money not to know the value of it. +These , francs are enormous, and I intend building upon +this foundation a miraculous certainty for the future." +"You say this, my dear boy but do you think we ought to +accept these , francs?" said Mercedes, coloring. +"I think so," answered Albert in a firm tone. "We will +accept them the more readily, since we have them not here +you know they are buried in the garden of the little house +in the Allees de Meillan, at Marseilles. With francs we +can reach Marseilles." +"With francs? are you sure, Albert?" +"Oh, as for that, I have made inquiries respecting the +diligences and steamboats, and my calculations are made. You +will take your place in the coupe to Chalons. You see, +mother, I treat you handsomely for thirtyfive francs." +Albert then took a pen, and wrote +Frs. +Coupe, thirtyfive francs ............................ +From Chalons to Lyons you will go on by the steamboat +six francs ......................................... +From Lyons to Avignon still by steamboat, +sixteen francs ....................................... +From Avignon to Marseilles, seven franc................ +Expenses on the road, about fifty francs ............. +Total................................................ frs. +"Let us put down ," added Albert, smiling. "You see I am +generous, am I not, mother?" +"But you, my poor child?" +"I? do you not see that I reserve eighty francs for myself? +A young man does not require luxuries besides, I know what +travelling is." +"With a postchaise and valet de chambre?" +"Any way, mother." +"Well, be it so. But these francs?" +"Here they are, and more besides. See, I have sold my +watch for francs, and the guard and seals for . How +fortunate that the ornaments were worth more than the watch. +Still the same story of superfluities Now I think we are +rich, since instead of the francs we require for the +journey we find ourselves in possession of ." +"But we owe something in this house?" +"Thirty francs but I pay that out of my francs, that +is understood, and as I require only eighty francs for my +journey, you see I am overwhelmed with luxury. But that is +not all. What do you say to this, mother?" +And Albert took out of a little pocketbook with golden +clasps, a remnant of his old fancies, or perhaps a tender +souvenir from one of the mysterious and veiled ladies who +used to knock at his little door, Albert took out of this +pocketbook a note of , francs. +"What is this?" asked Mercedes. +"A thousand francs." +"But whence have you obtained them?" +"Listen to me, mother, and do not yield too much to +agitation." And Albert, rising, kissed his mother on both +cheeks, then stood looking at her. "You cannot imagine, +mother, how beautiful I think you" said the young man, +impressed with a profound feeling of filial love. "You are, +indeed, the most beautiful and most noble woman I ever saw" +"Dear child" said Mercedes, endeavoring in vain to restrain +a tear which glistened in the corner of her eye. "Indeed, +you only wanted misfortune to change my love for you to +admiration. I am not unhappy while I possess my son" +"Ah, just so," said Albert "here begins the trial. Do you +know the decision we have come to, mother?" +"Have we come to any?" +"Yes it is decided that you are to live at Marseilles, and +that I am to leave for Africa, where I will earn for myself +the right to use the name I now bear, instead of the one I +have thrown aside." Mercedes sighed. "Well, mother, I +yesterday engaged myself as substitute in the Spahis," +added the young man, lowering his eyes with a certain +feeling of shame, for even he was unconscious of the +sublimity of his selfabasement. "I thought my body was my +own, and that I might sell it. I yesterday took the place of +another. I sold myself for more than I thought I was worth," +he added, attempting to smile "I fetched , francs." + The Spahis are French cavalry reserved for service in +Africa. +"Then these , francs" said Mercedes, shuddering +"Are the half of the sum, mother the other will be paid in +a year." +Mercedes raised her eyes to heaven with an expression it +would be impossible to describe, and tears, which had +hitherto been restrained, now yielded to her emotion, and +ran down her cheeks. +"The price of his blood" she murmured. +"Yes, if I am killed," said Albert, laughing. "But I assure +you, mother, I have a strong intention of defending my +person, and I never felt half so strong an inclination to +live as I do now." +"Merciful heavens" +"Besides, mother, why should you make up your mind that I am +to be killed? Has Lamoriciere, that Ney of the South, been +killed? Has Changarnier been killed? Has Bedeau been killed? +Has Morrel, whom we know, been killed? Think of your joy, +mother, when you see me return with an embroidered uniform +I declare, I expect to look magnificent in it, and chose +that regiment only from vanity." Mercedes sighed while +endeavoring to smile the devoted mother felt that she ought +not to allow the whole weight of the sacrifice to fall upon +her son. "Well, now you understand, mother" continued +Albert "here are more than , francs settled on you +upon these you can live at least two years." +"Do you think so?" said Mercedes. These words were uttered +in so mournful a tone that their real meaning did not escape +Albert he felt his heart beat, and taking his mother's hand +within his own he said, tenderly, +"Yes, you will live" +"I shall live then you will not leave me, Albert?" +"Mother, I must go," said Albert in a firm, calm voice "you +love me too well to wish me to remain useless and idle with +you besides, I have signed." +"You will obey your own wish and the will of heaven" +"Not my own wish, mother, but reason necessity. Are we +not two despairing creatures? What is life to you? +Nothing. What is life to me? Very little without you, +mother for believe me, but for you I should have ceased to +live on the day I doubted my father and renounced his name. +Well, I will live, if you promise me still to hope and if +you grant me the care of your future prospects, you will +redouble my strength. Then I will go to the governor of +Algeria he has a royal heart, and is essentially a soldier +I will tell him my gloomy story. I will beg him to turn his +eyes now and then towards me, and if he keep his word and +interest himself for me, in six months I shall be an +officer, or dead. If I am an officer, your fortune is +certain, for I shall have money enough for both, and, +moreover, a name we shall both be proud of, since it will be +our own. If I am killed well then mother, you can also +die, and there will be an end of our misfortunes." +"It is well," replied Mercedes, with her eloquent glance +"you are right, my love let us prove to those who are +watching our actions that we are worthy of compassion." +"But let us not yield to gloomy apprehensions," said the +young man "I assure you we are, or rather we shall be, very +happy. You are a woman at once full of spirit and +resignation I have become simple in my tastes, and am +without passion, I hope. Once in service, I shall be rich +once in M. Dantes' house, you will be at rest. Let us +strive, I beseech you, let us strive to be cheerful." +"Yes, let us strive, for you ought to live, and to be happy, +Albert." +"And so our division is made, mother," said the young man, +affecting ease of mind. "We can now part come, I shall +engage your passage." +"And you, my dear boy?" +"I shall stay here for a few days longer we must accustom +ourselves to parting. I want recommendations and some +information relative to Africa. I will join you again at +Marseilles." +"Well, be it so let us part," said Mercedes, folding +around her shoulders the only shawl she had taken away, and +which accidentally happened to be a valuable black cashmere. +Albert gathered up his papers hastily, rang the bell to pay +the thirty francs he owed to the landlord, and offering his +arm to his mother, they descended the stairs. Some one was +walking down before them, and this person, hearing the +rustling of a silk dress, turned around. "Debray" muttered +Albert. +"You, Morcerf?" replied the secretary, resting on the +stairs. Curiosity had vanquished the desire of preserving +his incognito, and he was recognized. It was, indeed, +strange in this unknown spot to find the young man whose +misfortunes had made so much noise in Paris. +"Morcerf" repeated Debray. Then noticing in the dim light +the still youthful and veiled figure of Madame de Morcerf +"Pardon me," he added with a smile, "I leave you, +Albert." Albert understood his thoughts. "Mother," he said, +turning towards Mercedes, "this is M. Debray, secretary of +the minister for the interior, once a friend of mine." +"How once?" stammered Debray "what do you mean?" +"I say so, M. Debray, because I have no friends now, and I +ought not to have any. I thank you for having recognized me, +sir." Debray stepped forward, and cordially pressed the hand +of his interlocutor. "Believe me, dear Albert," he said, +with all the emotion he was capable of feeling, "believe +me, I feel deeply for your misfortunes, and if in any way I +can serve you, I am yours." +"Thank you, sir," said Albert, smiling. "In the midst of our +misfortunes, we are still rich enough not to require +assistance from any one. We are leaving Paris, and when our +journey is paid, we shall have , francs left." The blood +mounted to the temples of Debray, who held a million in his +pocketbook, and unimaginative as he was he could not help +reflecting that the same house had contained two women, one +of whom, justly dishonored, had left it poor with ,, +francs under her cloak, while the other, unjustly stricken, +but sublime in her misfortune, was yet rich with a few +deniers. This parallel disturbed his usual politeness, the +philosophy he witnessed appalled him, he muttered a few +words of general civility and ran downstairs. +That day the minister's clerks and the subordinates had a +great deal to put up with from his illhumor. But that same +night, he found himself the possessor of a fine house, +situated on the Boulevard de la Madeleine, and an income of +, livres. The next day, just as Debray was signing the +deed, that is about five o'clock in the afternoon, Madame de +Morcerf, after having affectionately embraced her son, +entered the coupe of the diligence, which closed upon her. A +man was hidden in Lafitte's bankinghouse, behind one of the +little arched windows which are placed above each desk he +saw Mercedes enter the diligence, and he also saw Albert +withdraw. Then he passed his hand across his forehead, which +was clouded with doubt. "Alas," he exclaimed, "how can I +restore the happiness I have taken away from these poor +innocent creatures? God help me" +Chapter +The Lions' Den. +One division of La Force, in which the most dangerous and +desperate prisoners are confined, is called the court of +SaintBernard. The prisoners, in their expressive language, +have named it the "Lions' Den," probably because the +captives possess teeth which frequently gnaw the bars, and +sometimes the keepers also. It is a prison within a prison +the walls are double the thickness of the rest. The gratings +are every day carefully examined by jailers, whose herculean +proportions and cold pitiless expression prove them to have +been chosen to reign over their subjects for their superior +activity and intelligence. The courtyard of this quarter is +enclosed by enormous walls, over which the sun glances +obliquely, when it deigns to penetrate into this gulf of +moral and physical deformity. On this paved yard are to be +seen, pacing to and fro from morning till night, pale, +careworn, and haggard, like so many shadows, the men whom +justice holds beneath the steel she is sharpening. There, +crouched against the side of the wall which attracts and +retains the most heat, they may be seen sometimes talking to +one another, but more frequently alone, watching the door, +which sometimes opens to call forth one from the gloomy +assemblage, or to throw in another outcast from society. +The court of SaintBernard has its own particular apartment +for the reception of guests it is a long rectangle, divided +by two upright gratings placed at a distance of three feet +from one another to prevent a visitor from shaking hands +with or passing anything to the prisoners. It is a wretched, +damp, nay, even horrible spot, more especially when we +consider the agonizing conferences which have taken place +between those iron bars. And yet, frightful though this spot +may be, it is looked upon as a kind of paradise by the men +whose days are numbered it is so rare for them to leave the +Lions' Den for any other place than the barrier +SaintJacques or the galleys +In the court which we have attempted to describe, and from +which a damp vapor was rising, a young man with his hands in +his pockets, who had excited much curiosity among the +inhabitants of the "Den," might be seen walking. The cut of +his clothes would have made him pass for an elegant man, if +those clothes had not been torn to shreds still they did +not show signs of wear, and the fine cloth, beneath the +careful hands of the prisoner, soon recovered its gloss in +the parts which were still perfect, for the wearer tried his +best to make it assume the appearance of a new coat. He +bestowed the same attention upon the cambric front of a +shirt, which had considerably changed in color since his +entrance into the prison, and he polished his varnished +boots with the corner of a handkerchief embroidered with +initials surmounted by a coronet. Some of the inmates of the +"Lions' Den" were watching the operations of the prisoner's +toilet with considerable interest. "See, the prince is +pluming himself," said one of the thieves. "He's a fine +looking fellow," said another "if he had only a comb and +hairgrease, he'd take the shine off the gentlemen in white +kids." +"His coat looks almost new, and his boots shine like a +nigger's face. It's pleasant to have such welldressed +comrades but didn't those gendarmes behave shameful? +must 'a been jealous, to tear such clothes" +"He looks like a bigbug," said another "dresses in fine +style. And, then, to be here so young Oh, what larks" +Meanwhile the object of this hideous admiration approached +the wicket, against which one of the keepers was leaning. +"Come, sir," he said, "lend me twenty francs you will soon +be paid you run no risks with me. Remember, I have +relations who possess more millions than you have deniers. +Come, I beseech you, lend me twenty francs, so that I may +buy a dressinggown it is intolerable always to be in a +coat and boots And what a coat, sir, for a prince of the +Cavalcanti" The keeper turned his back, and shrugged his +shoulders he did not even laugh at what would have caused +any one else to do so he had heard so many utter the same +things, indeed, he heard nothing else. +"Come," said Andrea, "you are a man void of compassion I'll +have you turned out." This made the keeper turn around, and +he burst into a loud laugh. The prisoners then approached +and formed a circle. "I tell you that with that wretched +sum," continued Andrea, "I could obtain a coat, and a room +in which to receive the illustrious visitor I am daily +expecting." +"Of course of course," said the prisoners "any one +can see he's a gentleman" +"Well, then, lend him the twenty francs," said the keeper, +leaning on the other shoulder "surely you will not refuse a +comrade" +"I am no comrade of these people," said the young man, +proudly, "you have no right to insult me thus." +The thieves looked at one another with low murmurs, and a +storm gathered over the head of the aristocratic prisoner, +raised less by his own words than by the manner of the +keeper. The latter, sure of quelling the tempest when the +waves became too violent, allowed them to rise to a certain +pitch that he might be revenged on the importunate Andrea, +and besides it would afford him some recreation during the +long day. The thieves had already approached Andrea, some +screaming, "La savate La savate" a cruel operation, +which consists in cuffing a comrade who may have fallen into +disgrace, not with an old shoe, but with an ironheeled one. +Others proposed the "anguille," another kind of recreation, +in which a handkerchief is filled with sand, pebbles, and +twosous pieces, when they have them, which the wretches +beat like a flail over the head and shoulders of the unhappy +sufferer. "Let us horsewhip the fine gentleman" said +others. + Savate an old shoe. +But Andrea, turning towards them, winked his eyes, rolled +his tongue around his cheeks, and smacked his lips in a +manner equivalent to a hundred words among the bandits when +forced to be silent. It was a Masonic sign Caderousse had +taught him. He was immediately recognized as one of them +the handkerchief was thrown down, and the ironheeled shoe +replaced on the foot of the wretch to whom it belonged. Some +voices were heard to say that the gentleman was right that +he intended to be civil, in his way, and that they would set +the example of liberty of conscience, and the mob +retired. The keeper was so stupefied at this scene that he +took Andrea by the hands and began examining his person, +attributing the sudden submission of the inmates of the +Lions' Den to something more substantial than mere +fascination. Andrea made no resistance, although he +protested against it. Suddenly a voice was heard at the +wicket. "Benedetto" exclaimed an inspector. The keeper +relaxed his hold. "I am called," said Andrea. "To the +visitors' room" said the same voice. +"You see some one pays me a visit. Ah, my dear sir, you will +see whether a Cavalcanti is to be treated like a common +person" And Andrea, gliding through the court like a black +shadow, rushed out through the wicket, leaving his comrades, +and even the keeper, lost in wonder. Certainly a call to the +visitors' room had scarcely astonished Andrea less than +themselves, for the wily youth, instead of making use of his +privilege of waiting to be claimed on his entry into La +Force, had maintained a rigid silence. "Everything," he +said, "proves me to be under the protection of some powerful +person, this sudden fortune, the facility with which I +have overcome all obstacles, an unexpected family and an +illustrious name awarded to me, gold showered down upon me, +and the most splendid alliances about to be entered into. An +unhappy lapse of fortune and the absence of my protector +have cast me down, certainly, but not forever. The hand +which has retreated for a while will be again stretched +forth to save me at the very moment when I shall think +myself sinking into the abyss. Why should I risk an +imprudent step? It might alienate my protector. He has two +means of extricating me from this dilemma, the one by a +mysterious escape, managed through bribery the other by +buying off my judges with gold. I will say and do nothing +until I am convinced that he has quite abandoned me, and +then" +Andrea had formed a plan which was tolerably clever. The +unfortunate youth was intrepid in the attack, and rude in +the defence. He had borne with the public prison, and with +privations of all sorts still, by degrees nature, or rather +custom, had prevailed, and he suffered from being naked, +dirty, and hungry. It was at this moment of discomfort that +the inspector's voice called him to the visitingroom. +Andrea felt his heart leap with joy. It was too soon for a +visit from the examining magistrate, and too late for one +from the director of the prison, or the doctor it must, +then, be the visitor he hoped for. Behind the grating of the +room into which Andrea had been led, he saw, while his eyes +dilated with surprise, the dark and intelligent face of M. +Bertuccio, who was also gazing with sad astonishment upon +the iron bars, the bolted doors, and the shadow which moved +behind the other grating. +"Ah," said Andrea, deeply affected. +"Good morning, Benedetto," said Bertuccio, with his deep, +hollow voice. +"You you?" said the young man, looking fearfully around +him. +"Do you not recognize me, unhappy child?" +"Silence, be silent" said Andrea, who knew the delicate +sense of hearing possessed by the walls "for heaven's sake, +do not speak so loud" +"You wish to speak with me alone, do you not?" said +Bertuccio. +"Oh, yes." +"That is well." And Bertuccio, feeling in his pocket, signed +to a keeper whom he saw through the window of the wicket. +"Read?" he said. +"What is that?" asked Andrea. +"An order to conduct you to a room, and to leave you there +to talk to me." +"Oh," cried Andrea, leaping with joy. Then he mentally +added, "Still my unknown protector I am not forgotten. +They wish for secrecy, since we are to converse in a private +room. I understand, Bertuccio has been sent by my +protector." +The keeper spoke for a moment with an official, then opened +the iron gates and conducted Andrea to a room on the first +floor. The room was whitewashed, as is the custom in +prisons, but it looked quite brilliant to a prisoner, though +a stove, a bed, a chair, and a table formed the whole of its +sumptuous furniture. Bertuccio sat down upon the chair, +Andrea threw himself upon the bed the keeper retired. +"Now," said the steward, "what have you to tell me?" +"And you?" said Andrea. +"You speak first." +"Oh, no. You must have much to tell me, since you have come +to seek me." +"Well, be it so. You have continued your course of villany +you have robbed you have assassinated." +"Well, I should say If you had me taken to a private room +only to tell me this, you might have saved yourself the +trouble. I know all these things. But there are some with +which, on the contrary, I am not acquainted. Let us talk of +those, if you please. Who sent you?" +"Come, come, you are going on quickly, M. Benedetto" +"Yes, and to the point. Let us dispense with useless words. +Who sends you?" +"No one." +"How did you know I was in prison?" +"I recognized you, some time since, as the insolent dandy +who so gracefully mounted his horse in the Champs Elysees." +"Oh, the Champs Elysees? Ah, yes we burn, as they say at +the game of pincette. The Champs Elysees? Come, let us talk +a little about my father." +"Who, then, am I?" +"You, sir? you are my adopted father. But it was not you, +I presume, who placed at my disposal , francs, which I +spent in four or five months it was not you who +manufactured an Italian gentleman for my father it was not +you who introduced me into the world, and had me invited to +a certain dinner at Auteuil, which I fancy I am eating at +this moment, in company with the most distinguished people +in Paris amongst the rest with a certain procureur, whose +acquaintance I did very wrong not to cultivate, for he would +have been very useful to me just now it was not you, in +fact, who bailed me for one or two millions, when the fatal +discovery of my little secret took place. Come, speak, my +worthy Corsican, speak" +"What do you wish me to say?" +"I will help you. You were speaking of the Champs Elysees +just now, worthy fosterfather." +"Well?" +"Well, in the Champs Elysees there resides a very rich +gentleman." +"At whose house you robbed and murdered, did you not?" +"I believe I did." +"The Count of Monte Cristo?" +"'Tis you who have named him, as M. Racine says. Well, am I +to rush into his arms, and strain him to my heart, crying, +"My father, my father' like Monsieur Pixerecourt." +"Do not let us jest," gravely replied Bertuccio, "and dare +not to utter that name again as you have pronounced it." + Guilbert de Pixerecourt, French dramatist . +"Bah," said Andrea, a little overcome, by the solemnity of +Bertuccio's manner, "why not?" +"Because the person who bears it is too highly favored by +heaven to be the father of such a wretch as you." +"Oh, these are fine words." +"And there will be fine doings, if you do not take care." +"Menaces I do not fear them. I will say" +"Do you think you are engaged with a pygmy like yourself?" +said Bertuccio, in so calm a tone, and with so steadfast a +look, that Andrea was moved to the very soul. "Do you think +you have to do with galleyslaves, or novices in the world? +Benedetto, you are fallen into terrible hands they are +ready to open for you make use of them. Do not play with +the thunderbolt they have laid aside for a moment, but which +they can take up again instantly, if you attempt to +intercept their movements." +"My father I will know who my father is," said the +obstinate youth "I will perish if I must, but I will know +it. What does scandal signify to me? What possessions, what +reputation, what "pull,' as Beauchamp says, have I? You +great people always lose something by scandal, +notwithstanding your millions. Come, who is my father?" +"I came to tell you." +"Ah," cried Benedetto, his eyes sparkling with joy. Just +then the door opened, and the jailer, addressing himself to +Bertuccio, said, "Excuse me, sir, but the examining +magistrate is waiting for the prisoner." +"And so closes our interview," said Andrea to the worthy +steward "I wish the troublesome fellow were at the devil" +"I will return tomorrow," said Bertuccio. +"Good Gendarmes, I am at your service. Ah, sir, do leave a +few crowns for me at the gate that I may have some things I +am in need of" +"It shall be done," replied Bertuccio. Andrea extended his +hand Bertuccio kept his own in his pocket, and merely +jingled a few pieces of money. "That's what I mean," said +Andrea, endeavoring to smile, quite overcome by the strange +tranquillity of Bertuccio. "Can I be deceived?" he murmured, +as he stepped into the oblong and grated vehicle which they +call "the salad basket." "Never mind, we shall see +Tomorrow, then" he added, turning towards Bertuccio. +"Tomorrow" replied the steward. +Chapter +The Judge. +We remember that the Abbe Busoni remained alone with +Noirtier in the chamber of death, and that the old man and +the priest were the sole guardians of the young girl's body. +Perhaps it was the Christian exhortations of the abbe, +perhaps his kind charity, perhaps his persuasive words, +which had restored the courage of Noirtier, for ever since +he had conversed with the priest his violent despair had +yielded to a calm resignation which surprised all who knew +his excessive affection for Valentine. M. de Villefort had +not seen his father since the morning of the death. The +whole establishment had been changed another valet was +engaged for himself, a new servant for Noirtier, two women +had entered Madame de Villefort's service, in fact, +everywhere, to the concierge and coachmen, new faces were +presented to the different masters of the house, thus +widening the division which had always existed between the +members of the same family. +The assizes, also, were about to begin, and Villefort, shut +up in his room, exerted himself with feverish anxiety in +drawing up the case against the murderer of Caderousse. This +affair, like all those in which the Count of Monte Cristo +had interfered, caused a great sensation in Paris. The +proofs were certainly not convincing, since they rested upon +a few words written by an escaped galleyslave on his +deathbed, and who might have been actuated by hatred or +revenge in accusing his companion. But the mind of the +procureur was made up he felt assured that Benedetto was +guilty, and he hoped by his skill in conducting this +aggravated case to flatter his selflove, which was about +the only vulnerable point left in his frozen heart. +The case was therefore prepared owing to the incessant labor +of Villefort, who wished it to be the first on the list in +the coming assizes. He had been obliged to seclude himself +more than ever, to evade the enormous number of applications +presented to him for the purpose of obtaining tickets of +admission to the court on the day of trial. And then so +short a time had elapsed since the death of poor Valentine, +and the gloom which overshadowed the house was so recent, +that no one wondered to see the father so absorbed in his +professional duties, which were the only means he had of +dissipating his grief. +Once only had Villefort seen his father it was the day +after that upon which Bertuccio had paid his second visit to +Benedetto, when the latter was to learn his father's name. +The magistrate, harassed and fatigued, had descended to the +garden of his house, and in a gloomy mood, similar to that +in which Tarquin lopped off the tallest poppies, he began +knocking off with his cane the long and dying branches of +the rosetrees, which, placed along the avenue, seemed like +the spectres of the brilliant flowers which had bloomed in +the past season. More than once he had reached that part of +the garden where the famous boarded gate stood overlooking +the deserted enclosure, always returning by the same path, +to begin his walk again, at the same pace and with the same +gesture, when he accidentally turned his eyes towards the +house, whence he heard the noisy play of his son, who had +returned from school to spend the Sunday and Monday with his +mother. While doing so, he observed M. Noirtier at one of +the open windows, where the old man had been placed that he +might enjoy the last rays of the sun which yet yielded some +heat, and was now shining upon the dying flowers and red +leaves of the creeper which twined around the balcony. +The eye of the old man was riveted upon a spot which +Villefort could scarcely distinguish. His glance was so full +of hate, of ferocity, and savage impatience, that Villefort +turned out of the path he had been pursuing, to see upon +what person this dark look was directed. Then he saw beneath +a thick clump of lindentrees, which were nearly divested of +foliage, Madame de Villefort sitting with a book in her +hand, the perusal of which she frequently interrupted to +smile upon her son, or to throw back his elastic ball, which +he obstinately threw from the drawingroom into the garden. +Villefort became pale he understood the old man's meaning. +Noirtier continued to look at the same object, but suddenly +his glance was transferred from the wife to the husband, and +Villefort himself had to submit to the searching +investigation of eyes, which, while changing their direction +and even their language, had lost none of their menacing +expression. Madame de Villefort, unconscious of the passions +that exhausted their fire over her head, at that moment held +her son's ball, and was making signs to him to reclaim it +with a kiss. Edward begged for a long while, the maternal +kiss probably not offering sufficient recompense for the +trouble he must take to obtain it however at length he +decided, leaped out of the window into a cluster of +heliotropes and daisies, and ran to his mother, his forehead +streaming with perspiration. Madame de Villefort wiped his +forehead, pressed her lips upon it, and sent him back with +the ball in one hand and some bonbons in the other. +Villefort, drawn by an irresistible attraction, like that of +the bird to the serpent, walked towards the house. As he +approached it, Noirtier's gaze followed him, and his eyes +appeared of such a fiery brightness that Villefort felt them +pierce to the depths of his heart. In that earnest look +might be read a deep reproach, as well as a terrible menace. +Then Noirtier raised his eyes to heaven, as though to remind +his son of a forgotten oath. "It is well, sir," replied +Villefort from below, "it is well have patience but one +day longer what I have said I will do." Noirtier seemed to +be calmed by these words, and turned his eyes with +indifference to the other side. Villefort violently +unbuttoned his greatcoat, which seemed to strangle him, and +passing his livid hand across his forehead, entered his +study. +The night was cold and still the family had all retired to +rest but Villefort, who alone remained up, and worked till +five o'clock in the morning, reviewing the last +interrogatories made the night before by the examining +magistrates, compiling the depositions of the witnesses, and +putting the finishing stroke to the deed of accusation, +which was one of the most energetic and best conceived of +any he had yet delivered. +The next day, Monday, was the first sitting of the assizes. +The morning dawned dull and gloomy, and Villefort saw the +dim gray light shine upon the lines he had traced in red +ink. The magistrate had slept for a short time while the +lamp sent forth its final struggles its flickerings awoke +him, and he found his fingers as damp and purple as though +they had been dipped in blood. He opened the window a +bright yellow streak crossed the sky, and seemed to divide +in half the poplars, which stood out in black relief on the +horizon. In the cloverfields beyond the chestnuttrees, a +lark was mounting up to heaven, while pouring out her clear +morning song. The damps of the dew bathed the head of +Villefort, and refreshed his memory. "Today," he said with +an effort, "today the man who holds the blade of justice +must strike wherever there is guilt." Involuntarily his eyes +wandered towards the window of Noirtier's room, where he had +seen him the preceding night. The curtain was drawn, and yet +the image of his father was so vivid to his mind that he +addressed the closed window as though it had been open, and +as if through the opening he had beheld the menacing old +man. "Yes," he murmured, "yes, be satisfied." +His head dropped upon his chest, and in this position he +paced his study then he threw himself, dressed as he was, +upon a sofa, less to sleep than to rest his limbs, cramped +with cold and study. By degrees every one awoke. Villefort, +from his study, heard the successive noises which accompany +the life of a house, the opening and shutting of doors, +the ringing of Madame de Villefort's bell, to summon the +waitingmaid, mingled with the first shouts of the child, +who rose full of the enjoyment of his age. Villefort also +rang his new valet brought him the papers, and with them a +cup of chocolate. +"What are you bringing me?" said he. +"A cup of chocolate." +"I did not ask for it. Who has paid me this attention?" +"My mistress, sir. She said you would have to speak a great +deal in the murder case, and that you should take something +to keep up your strength" and the valet placed the cup on +the table nearest to the sofa, which was, like all the rest, +covered with papers. The valet then left the room. Villefort +looked for an instant with a gloomy expression, then, +suddenly, taking it up with a nervous motion, he swallowed +its contents at one draught. It might have been thought that +he hoped the beverage would be mortal, and that he sought +for death to deliver him from a duty which he would rather +die than fulfil. He then rose, and paced his room with a +smile it would have been terrible to witness. The chocolate +was inoffensive, for M. de Villefort felt no effects. The +breakfasthour arrived, but M. de Villefort was not at +table. The valet reentered. +"Madame de Villefort wishes to remind you, sir," he said, +"that eleven o'clock has just struck, and that the trial +commences at twelve." +"Well," said Villefort, "what then?" +"Madame de Villefort is dressed she is quite ready, and +wishes to know if she is to accompany you, sir?" +"Where to?" +"To the Palais." +"What to do?" +"My mistress wishes much to be present at the trial." +"Ah," said Villefort, with a startling accent "does she +wish that?" The man drew back and said, "If you wish to +go alone, sir, I will go and tell my mistress." Villefort +remained silent for a moment, and dented his pale cheeks +with his nails. "Tell your mistress," he at length answered, +"that I wish to speak to her, and I beg she will wait for me +in her own room." +"Yes, sir." +"Then come to dress and shave me." +"Directly, sir." The valet reappeared almost instantly, +and, having shaved his master, assisted him to dress +entirely in black. When he had finished, he said, +"My mistress said she should expect you, sir, as soon as you +had finished dressing." +"I am going to her." And Villefort, with his papers under +his arm and hat in hand, directed his steps toward the +apartment of his wife. At the door he paused for a moment to +wipe his damp, pale brow. He then entered the room. Madame +de Villefort was sitting on an ottoman and impatiently +turning over the leaves of some newspapers and pamphlets +which young Edward, by way of amusing himself, was tearing +to pieces before his mother could finish reading them. She +was dressed to go out, her bonnet was placed beside her on a +chair, and her gloves were on her hands. +"Ah, here you are, monsieur," she said in her naturally calm +voice "but how pale you are Have you been working all +night? Why did you not come down to breakfast? Well, will +you take me, or shall I take Edward?" Madame de Villefort +had multiplied her questions in order to gain one answer, +but to all her inquiries M. de Villefort remained mute and +cold as a statue. "Edward," said Villefort, fixing an +imperious glance on the child, "go and play in the +drawingroom, my dear I wish to speak to your mamma." +Madame de Villefort shuddered at the sight of that cold +countenance, that resolute tone, and the awfully strange +preliminaries. Edward raised his head, looked at his mother, +and then, finding that she did not confirm the order, began +cutting off the heads of his leaden soldiers. +"Edward," cried M. de Villefort, so harshly that the child +started up from the floor, "do you hear me? Go" The +child, unaccustomed to such treatment, arose, pale and +trembling it would be difficult to say whether his emotion +were caused by fear or passion. His father went up to him, +took him in his arms, and kissed his forehead. "Go," he +said "go, my child." Edward ran out. M. de Villefort went +to the door, which he closed behind the child, and bolted. +"Dear me" said the young woman, endeavoring to read her +husband's inmost thoughts, while a smile passed over her +countenance which froze the impassibility of Villefort +"what is the matter?" +"Madame, where do you keep the poison you generally use?" +said the magistrate, without any introduction, placing +himself between his wife and the door. +Madame de Villefort must have experienced something of the +sensation of a bird which, looking up, sees the murderous +trap closing over its head. A hoarse, broken tone, which was +neither a cry nor a sigh, escaped from her, while she became +deadly pale. "Monsieur," she said, "I I do not understand +you." And, in her first paroxysm of terror, she had raised +herself from the sofa, in the next, stronger very likely +than the other, she fell down again on the cushions. "I +asked you," continued Villefort, in a perfectly calm tone, +"where you conceal the poison by the aid of which you have +killed my fatherinlaw, M. de SaintMeran, my +motherinlaw, Madame de SaintMeran, Barrois, and my +daughter Valentine." +"Ah, sir," exclaimed Madame de Villefort, clasping her +hands, "what do you say?" +"It is not for you to interrogate, but to answer." +"Is it to the judge or to the husband?" stammered Madame de +Villefort. "To the judge to the judge, madame" It was +terrible to behold the frightful pallor of that woman, the +anguish of her look, the trembling of her whole frame. "Ah, +sir," she muttered, "ah, sir," and this was all. +"You do not answer, madame" exclaimed the terrible +interrogator. Then he added, with a smile yet more terrible +than his anger, "It is true, then you do not deny it" She +moved forward. "And you cannot deny it" added Villefort, +extending his hand toward her, as though to seize her in the +name of justice. "You have accomplished these different +crimes with impudent address, but which could only deceive +those whose affections for you blinded them. Since the death +of Madame de SaintMeran, I have known that a poisoner lived +in my house. M. d'Avrigny warned me of it. After the death +of Barrois my suspicions were directed towards an angel, +those suspicions which, even when there is no crime, are +always alive in my heart but after the death of Valentine, +there has been no doubt in my mind, madame, and not only in +mine, but in those of others thus your crime, known by two +persons, suspected by many, will soon become public, and, as +I told you just now, you no longer speak to the husband, but +to the judge." +The young woman hid her face in her hands. "Oh, sir," she +stammered, "I beseech you, do not believe appearances." +"Are you, then, a coward?" cried Villefort, in a +contemptuous voice. "But I have always observed that +poisoners were cowards. Can you be a coward, you who have +had the courage to witness the death of two old men and a +young girl murdered by you?" +"Sir sir" +"Can you be a coward?" continued Villefort, with increasing +excitement, "you, who could count, one by one, the minutes +of four death agonies? You, who have arranged your infernal +plans, and removed the beverages with a talent and precision +almost miraculous? Have you, then, who have calculated +everything with such nicety, have you forgotten to calculate +one thing I mean where the revelation of your crimes will +lead you to? Oh, it is impossible you must have saved +some surer, more subtle and deadly poison than any other, +that you might escape the punishment that you deserve. You +have done this I hope so, at least." Madame de Villefort +stretched out her hands, and fell on her knees. +"I understand," he said, "you confess but a confession made +to the judges, a confession made at the last moment, +extorted when the crime cannot be denied, diminishes not the +punishment inflicted on the guilty" +"The punishment?" exclaimed Madame de Villefort, "the +punishment, monsieur? Twice you have pronounced that word" +"Certainly. Did you hope to escape it because you were four +times guilty? Did you think the punishment would be withheld +because you are the wife of him who pronounces it? No, +madame, no the scaffold awaits the poisoner, whoever she +may be, unless, as I just said, the poisoner has taken the +precaution of keeping for herself a few drops of her +deadliest potion." Madame de Villefort uttered a wild cry, +and a hideous and uncontrollable terror spread over her +distorted features. "Oh, do not fear the scaffold, madame," +said the magistrate "I will not dishonor you, since that +would be dishonor to myself no, if you have heard me +distinctly, you will understand that you are not to die on +the scaffold." +"No, I do not understand what do you mean?" stammered the +unhappy woman, completely overwhelmed. "I mean that the wife +of the first magistrate in the capital shall not, by her +infamy, soil an unblemished name that she shall not, with +one blow, dishonor her husband and her child." +"No, no oh, no" +"Well, madame, it will be a laudable action on your part, +and I will thank you for it" +"You will thank me for what?" +"For what you have just said." +"What did I say? Oh, my brain whirls I no longer understand +anything. Oh, my God, my God" And she rose, with her hair +dishevelled, and her lips foaming. +"Have you answered the question I put to you on entering the +room? where do you keep the poison you generally use, +madame?" Madame de Villefort raised her arms to heaven, and +convulsively struck one hand against the other. "No, no," +she vociferated, "no, you cannot wish that" +"What I do not wish, madame, is that you should perish on +the scaffold. Do you understand?" asked Villefort. +"Oh, mercy, mercy, monsieur" +"What I require is, that justice be done. I am on the earth +to punish, madame," he added, with a flaming glance "any +other woman, were it the queen herself, I would send to the +executioner but to you I shall be merciful. To you I will +say, "Have you not, madame, put aside some of the surest, +deadliest, most speedy poison?'" +"Oh, pardon me, sir let me live" +"She is cowardly," said Villefort. +"Reflect that I am your wife" +"You are a poisoner." +"In the name of heaven" +"No" +"In the name of the love you once bore me" +"No, no" +"In the name of our child Ah, for the sake of our child, +let me live" +"No, no, no, I tell you one day, if I allow you to live, +you will perhaps kill him, as you have the others" +"I? I kill my boy?" cried the distracted mother, rushing +toward Villefort "I kill my son? Ha, ha, ha" and a +frightful, demoniac laugh finished the sentence, which was +lost in a hoarse rattle. Madame de Villefort fell at her +husband's feet. He approached her. "Think of it, madame," he +said "if, on my return, justice his not been satisfied, I +will denounce you with my own mouth, and arrest you with my +own hands" She listened, panting, overwhelmed, crushed her +eye alone lived, and glared horribly. "Do you understand +me?" he said. "I am going down there to pronounce the +sentence of death against a murderer. If I find you alive on +my return, you shall sleep tonight in the conciergerie." +Madame de Villefort sighed her nerves gave way, and she +sunk on the carpet. The king's attorney seemed to experience +a sensation of pity he looked upon her less severely, and, +bowing to her, said slowly, "Farewell, madame, farewell" +That farewell struck Madame de Villefort like the +executioner's knife. She fainted. The procureur went out, +after having doublelocked the door. +Chapter +The Assizes. +The Benedetto affair, as it was called at the Palais, and by +people in general, had produced a tremendous sensation. +Frequenting the Cafe de Paris, the Boulevard de Gand, and +the Bois de Boulogne, during his brief career of splendor, +the false Cavalcanti had formed a host of acquaintances. The +papers had related his various adventures, both as the man +of fashion and the galleyslave and as every one who had +been personally acquainted with Prince Andrea Cavalcanti +experienced a lively curiosity in his fate, they all +determined to spare no trouble in endeavoring to witness the +trial of M. Benedetto for the murder of his comrade in +chains. In the eyes of many, Benedetto appeared, if not a +victim to, at least an instance of, the fallibility of the +law. M. Cavalcanti, his father, had been seen in Paris, and +it was expected that he would reappear to claim the +illustrious outcast. Many, also, who were not aware of the +circumstances attending his withdrawal from Paris, were +struck with the worthy appearance, the gentlemanly bearing, +and the knowledge of the world displayed by the old +patrician, who certainly played the nobleman very well, so +long as he said nothing, and made no arithmetical +calculations. As for the accused himself, many remembered +him as being so amiable, so handsome, and so liberal, that +they chose to think him the victim of some conspiracy, since +in this world large fortunes frequently excite the +malevolence and jealousy of some unknown enemy. Every one, +therefore, ran to the court some to witness the sight, +others to comment upon it. From seven o'clock in the morning +a crowd was stationed at the iron gates, and an hour before +the trial commenced the hall was full of the privileged. +Before the entrance of the magistrates, and indeed +frequently afterwards, a court of justice, on days when some +especial trial is to take place, resembles a drawingroom +where many persons recognize each other and converse if they +can do so without losing their seats or, if they are +separated by too great a number of lawyers, communicate by +signs. +It was one of the magnificent autumn days which make amends +for a short summer the clouds which M. de Villefort had +perceived at sunrise had all disappeared as if by magic, and +one of the softest and most brilliant days of September +shone forth in all its splendor. +Beauchamp, one of the kings of the press, and therefore +claiming the right of a throne everywhere, was eying +everybody through his monocle. He perceived ChateauRenaud +and Debray, who had just gained the good graces of a +sergeantatarms, and who had persuaded the latter to let +them stand before, instead of behind him, as they ought to +have done. The worthy sergeant had recognized the minister's +secretary and the millionnaire, and, by way of paying extra +attention to his noble neighbors, promised to keep their +places while they paid a visit to Beauchamp. +"Well," said Beauchamp, "we shall see our friend" +"Yes, indeed" replied Debray. "That worthy prince. Deuce +take those Italian princes" +"A man, too, who could boast of Dante for a genealogist, and +could reckon back to the "Divine Comedy.'" +"A nobility of the rope" said ChateauRenaud +phlegmatically. +"He will be condemned, will he not?" asked Debray of +Beauchamp. +"My dear fellow, I think we should ask you that question +you know such news much better than we do. Did you see the +president at the minister's last night?" +"Yes." +"What did he say?" +"Something which will surprise you." +"Oh, make haste and tell me, then it is a long time since +that has happened." +"Well, he told me that Benedetto, who is considered a +serpent of subtlety and a giant of cunning, is really but a +very commonplace, silly rascal, and altogether unworthy of +the experiments that will be made on his phrenological +organs after his death." +"Bah," said Beauchamp, "he played the prince very well." +"Yes, for you who detest those unhappy princes, Beauchamp, +and are always delighted to find fault with them but not +for me, who discover a gentleman by instinct, and who scent +out an aristocratic family like a very bloodhound of +heraldry." +"Then you never believed in the principality?" +"Yes. in the principality, but not in the prince." +"Not so bad," said Beauchamp "still, I assure you, he +passed very well with many people I saw him at the +ministers' houses." +"Ah, yes," said ChateauRenaud. "The idea of thinking +ministers understand anything about princes" +"There is something in what you have just said," said +Beauchamp, laughing. +"But," said Debray to Beauchamp, "if I spoke to the +president, you must have been with the procureur." +"It was an impossibility for the last week M. de Villefort +has secluded himself. It is natural enough this strange +chain of domestic afflictions, followed by the no less +strange death of his daughter" +"Strange? What do you mean, Beauchamp?" +"Oh, yes do you pretend that all this has been unobserved +at the minister's?" said Beauchamp, placing his eyeglass in +his eye, where he tried to make it remain. +"My dear sir," said ChateauRenaud, "allow me to tell you +that you do not understand that manoeuvre with the eyeglass +half so well as Debray. Give him a lesson, Debray." +"Stay," said Beauchamp, "surely I am not deceived." +"What is it?" +"It is she" +"Whom do you mean?" +"They said she had left." +"Mademoiselle Eugenie?" said ChateauRenaud "has she +returned?" +"No, but her mother." +"Madame Danglars? Nonsense Impossible" said +ChateauRenaud "only ten days after the flight of her +daughter, and three days from the bankruptcy of her +husband?" +Debray colored slightly, and followed with his eyes the +direction of Beauchamp's glance. "Come," he said, "it is +only a veiled lady, some foreign princess, perhaps the +mother of Cavalcanti. But you were just speaking on a very +interesting topic, Beauchamp." +"I?" +"Yes you were telling us about the extraordinary death of +Valentine." +"Ah, yes, so I was. But how is it that Madame de Villefort +is not here?" +"Poor, dear woman," said Debray, "she is no doubt occupied +in distilling balm for the hospitals, or in making cosmetics +for herself or friends. Do you know she spends two or three +thousand crowns a year in this amusement? But I wonder she +is not here. I should have been pleased to see her, for I +like her very much." +"And I hate her," said ChateauRenaud. +"Why?" +"I do not know. Why do we love? Why do we hate? I detest +her, from antipathy." +"Or, rather, by instinct." +"Perhaps so. But to return to what you were saying, +Beauchamp." +"Well, do you know why they die so multitudinously at M. de +Villefort's?" +""Multitudinously' [drv] is good," said ChateauRenaud. +"My good fellow, you'll find the word in SaintSimon." +"But the thing itself is at M. de Villefort's but let's get +back to the subject." +"Talking of that," said Debray, "Madame was making inquiries +about that house, which for the last three months has been +hung with black." +"Who is Madame?" asked ChateauRenaud. +"The minister's wife, pardieu" +"Oh, your pardon I never visit ministers I leave that to +the princes." +"Really, You were only before sparkling, but now you are +brilliant take compassion on us, or, like Jupiter, you will +wither us up." +"I will not speak again," said ChateauRenaud "pray have +compassion upon me, and do not take up every word I say." +"Come, let us endeavor to get to the end of our story, +Beauchamp I told you that yesterday Madame made inquiries +of me upon the subject enlighten me, and I will then +communicate my information to her." +"Well, gentlemen, the reason people die so multitudinously +I like the word at M. de Villefort's is that there is an +assassin in the house" The two young men shuddered, for the +same idea had more than once occurred to them. "And who is +the assassin" they asked together. +"Young Edward" A burst of laughter from the auditors did +not in the least disconcert the speaker, who continued, +"Yes, gentlemen Edward, the infant phenomenon, who is quite +an adept in the art of killing." +"You are jesting." +"Not at all. I yesterday engaged a servant, who had just +left M. de Villefort I intend sending him away tomorrow, +for he eats so enormously, to make up for the fast imposed +upon him by his terror in that house. Well, now listen." +"We are listening." +"It appears the dear child has obtained possession of a +bottle containing some drug, which he every now and then +uses against those who have displeased him. First, M. and +Madame de SaintMeran incurred his displeasure, so he poured +out three drops of his elixir three drops were +sufficient then followed Barrois, the old servant of M. +Noirtier, who sometimes rebuffed this little wretch he +therefore received the same quantity of the elixir the same +happened to Valentine, of whom he was jealous he gave her +the same dose as the others, and all was over for her as +well as the rest." +"Why, what nonsense are you telling us?" said +ChateauRenaud. +"Yes, it is an extraordinary story," said Beauchamp "is it +not?" +"It is absurd," said Debray. +"Ah," said Beauchamp, "you doubt me? Well, you can ask my +servant, or rather him who will no longer be my servant +tomorrow, it was the talk of the house." +"And this elixir, where is it? what is it?" +"The child conceals it." +"But where did he find it?" +"In his mother's laboratory." +"Does his mother then, keep poisons in her laboratory?" +"How can I tell? You are questioning me like a king's +attorney. I only repeat what I have been told, and like my +informant I can do no more. The poor devil would eat +nothing, from fear." +"It is incredible" +"No, my dear fellow, it is not at all incredible. You saw +the child pass through the Rue Richelieu last year, who +amused himself with killing his brothers and sisters by +sticking pins in their ears while they slept. The generation +who follow us are very precocious." +"Come, Beauchamp," said ChateauRenaud, "I will bet anything +you do not believe a word of all you have been telling us." +"I do not see the Count of Monte Cristo here." +"He is worn out," said Debray "besides, he could not well +appear in public, since he has been the dupe of the +Cavalcanti, who, it appears, presented themselves to him +with false letters of credit, and cheated him out of , +francs upon the hypothesis of this principality." +"By the way, M. de ChateauRenaud," asked Beauchamp, "how is +Morrel?" +"Ma foi, I have called three times without once seeing him. +Still, his sister did not seem uneasy, and told me that +though she had not seen him for two or three days, she was +sure he was well." +"Ah, now I think of it, the Count of Monte Cristo cannot +appear in the hall," said Beauchamp. +"Why not?" +"Because he is an actor in the drama." +"Has he assassinated any one, then?" +"No, on the contrary, they wished to assassinate him. You +know that it was in leaving his house that M. de Caderousse +was murdered by his friend Benedetto. You know that the +famous waistcoat was found in his house, containing the +letter which stopped the signature of the marriagecontract. +Do you see the waistcoat? There it is, all bloodstained, on +the desk, as a testimony of the crime." +"Ah, very good." +"Hush, gentlemen, here is the court let us go back to our +places." A noise was heard in the hall the sergeant called +his two patrons with an energetic "hem" and the doorkeeper +appearing, called out with that shrill voice peculiar to his +order, ever since the days of Beaumarchais, "The court, +gentlemen" +Chapter +The Indictment. +The judges took their places in the midst of the most +profound silence the jury took their seats M. de +Villefort, the object of unusual attention, and we had +almost said of general admiration, sat in the armchair and +cast a tranquil glance around him. Every one looked with +astonishment on that grave and severe face, whose calm +expression personal griefs had been unable to disturb, and +the aspect of a man who was a stranger to all human emotions +excited something very like terror. +"Gendarmes," said the president, "lead in the accused." +At these words the public attention became more intense, and +all eyes were turned towards the door through which +Benedetto was to enter. The door soon opened and the accused +appeared. The same impression was experienced by all +present, and no one was deceived by the expression of his +countenance. His features bore no sign of that deep emotion +which stops the beating of the heart and blanches the cheek. +His hands, gracefully placed, one upon his hat, the other in +the opening of his white waistcoat, were not at all +tremulous his eye was calm and even brilliant. Scarcely had +he entered the hall when he glanced at the whole body of +magistrates and assistants his eye rested longer on the +president, and still more so on the king's attorney. By the +side of Andrea was stationed the lawyer who was to conduct +his defence, and who had been appointed by the court, for +Andrea disdained to pay any attention to those details, to +which he appeared to attach no importance. The lawyer was a +young man with light hair whose face expressed a hundred +times more emotion than that which characterized the +prisoner. +The president called for the indictment, revised as we know, +by the clever and implacable pen of Villefort. During the +reading of this, which was long, the public attention was +continually drawn towards Andrea, who bore the inspection +with Spartan unconcern. Villefort had never been so concise +and eloquent. The crime was depicted in the most vivid +colors the former life of the prisoner, his transformation, +a review of his life from the earliest period, were set +forth with all the talent that a knowledge of human life +could furnish to a mind like that of the procureur. +Benedetto was thus forever condemned in public opinion +before the sentence of the law could be pronounced. Andrea +paid no attention to the successive charges which were +brought against him. M. de Villefort, who examined him +attentively, and who no doubt practiced upon him all the +psychological studies he was accustomed to use, in vain +endeavored to make him lower his eyes, notwithstanding the +depth and profundity of his gaze. At length the reading of +the indictment was ended. +"Accused," said the president, "your name and surname?" +Andrea arose. "Excuse me, Mr. President," he said, in a +clear voice, "but I see you are going to adopt a course of +questions through which I cannot follow you. I have an idea, +which I will explain by and by, of making an exception to +the usual form of accusation. Allow me, then, if you please, +to answer in different order, or I will not do so at all." +The astonished president looked at the jury, who in turn +looked at Villefort. The whole assembly manifested great +surprise, but Andrea appeared quite unmoved. "Your age?" +said the president "will you answer that question?" +"I will answer that question, as well as the rest, Mr. +President, but in its turn." +"Your age?" repeated the president. +"I am twentyone years old, or rather I shall be in a few +days, as I was born the night of the th of September, +." M. de Villefort, who was busy taking down some notes, +raised his head at the mention of this date. "Where were you +born?" continued the president. +"At Auteuil, near Paris." M. de Villefort a second time +raised his head, looked at Benedetto as if he had been +gazing at the head of Medusa, and became livid. As for +Benedetto, he gracefully wiped his lips with a fine cambric +pockethandkerchief. "Your profession?" +"First I was a forger," answered Andrea, as calmly as +possible "then I became a thief, and lately have become an +assassin." A murmur, or rather storm, of indignation burst +from all parts of the assembly. The judges themselves +appeared to be stupefied, and the jury manifested tokens of +disgust for cynicism so unexpected in a man of fashion. M. +de Villefort pressed his hand upon his brow, which, at first +pale, had become red and burning then he suddenly arose and +looked around as though he had lost his senses he wanted +air. +"Are you looking for anything, Mr. Procureur?" asked +Benedetto, with his most ingratiating smile. M. de Villefort +answered nothing, but sat, or rather threw himself down +again upon his chair. "And now, prisoner, will you consent +to tell your name?" said the president. "The brutal +affectation with which you have enumerated and classified +your crimes calls for a severe reprimand on the part of the +court, both in the name of morality, and for the respect due +to humanity. You appear to consider this a point of honor, +and it may be for this reason, that you have delayed +acknowledging your name. You wished it to be preceded by all +these titles." +"It is quite wonderful, Mr. President, how entirely you have +read my thoughts," said Benedetto, in his softest voice and +most polite manner. "This is, indeed, the reason why I +begged you to alter the order of the questions." The public +astonishment had reached its height. There was no longer any +deceit or bravado in the manner of the accused. The audience +felt that a startling revelation was to follow this ominous +prelude. +"Well," said the president "your name?" +"I cannot tell you my name, since I do not know it but I +know my father's, and can tell it to you." +A painful giddiness overwhelmed Villefort great drops of +acrid sweat fell from his face upon the papers which he held +in his convulsed hand. +"Repeat your father's name," said the president. Not a +whisper, not a breath, was heard in that vast assembly +every one waited anxiously. +"My father is king's attorney," replied Andrea calmly. +"King's attorney?" said the president, stupefied, and +without noticing the agitation which spread over the face of +M. de Villefort "king's attorney?" +"Yes and if you wish to know his name, I will tell it, +he is named Villefort." The explosion, which had been so +long restrained from a feeling of respect to the court of +justice, now burst forth like thunder from the breasts of +all present the court itself did not seek to restrain the +feelings of the audience. The exclamations, the insults +addressed to Benedetto, who remained perfectly unconcerned, +the energetic gestures, the movement of the gendarmes, the +sneers of the scum of the crowd always sure to rise to the +surface in case of any disturbance all this lasted five +minutes, before the doorkeepers and magistrates were able +to restore silence. In the midst of this tumult the voice of +the president was heard to exclaim, "Are you playing with +justice, accused, and do you dare set your fellowcitizens +an example of disorder which even in these times has never +been equalled?" +Several persons hurried up to M. de Villefort, who sat half +bowed over in his chair, offering him consolation, +encouragement, and protestations of zeal and sympathy. Order +was reestablished in the hall, except that a few people +still moved about and whispered to one another. A lady, it +was said, had just fainted they had supplied her with a +smellingbottle, and she had recovered. During the scene of +tumult, Andrea had turned his smiling face towards the +assembly then, leaning with one hand on the oaken rail of +the dock, in the most graceful attitude possible, he said +"Gentlemen, I assure you I had no idea of insulting the +court, or of making a useless disturbance in the presence of +this honorable assembly. They ask my age I tell it. They +ask where I was born I answer. They ask my name, I cannot +give it, since my parents abandoned me. But though I cannot +give my own name, not possessing one, I can tell them my +father's. Now I repeat, my father is named M. de Villefort, +and I am ready to prove it." +There was an energy, a conviction, and a sincerity in the +manner of the young man, which silenced the tumult. All eyes +were turned for a moment towards the procureur, who sat as +motionless as though a thunderbolt had changed him into a +corpse. "Gentlemen," said Andrea, commanding silence by his +voice and manner "I owe you the proofs and explanations of +what I have said." +"But," said the irritated president, "you called yourself +Benedetto, declared yourself an orphan, and claimed Corsica +as your country." +"I said anything I pleased, in order that the solemn +declaration I have just made should not be withheld, which +otherwise would certainly have been the case. I now repeat +that I was born at Auteuil on the night of the th of +September, , and that I am the son of the procureur, M. +de Villefort. Do you wish for any further details? I will +give them. I was born in No. , Rue de la Fontaine, in a +room hung with red damask my father took me in his arms, +telling my mother I was dead, wrapped me in a napkin marked +with an H and an N, and carried me into a garden, where he +buried me alive." +A shudder ran through the assembly when they saw that the +confidence of the prisoner increased in proportion to the +terror of M. de Villefort. "But how have you become +acquainted with all these details?" asked the president. +"I will tell you, Mr. President. A man who had sworn +vengeance against my father, and had long watched his +opportunity to kill him, had introduced himself that night +into the garden in which my father buried me. He was +concealed in a thicket he saw my father bury something in +the ground, and stabbed him then thinking the deposit might +contain some treasure he turned up the ground, and found me +still living. The man carried me to the foundling asylum, +where I was registered under the number . Three months +afterwards, a woman travelled from Rogliano to Paris to +fetch me, and having claimed me as her son, carried me away. +Thus, you see, though born in Paris, I was brought up in +Corsica." +There was a moment's silence, during which one could have +fancied the hall empty, so profound was the stillness. +"Proceed," said the president. +"Certainly, I might have lived happily amongst those good +people, who adored me, but my perverse disposition prevailed +over the virtues which my adopted mother endeavored to +instil into my heart. I increased in wickedness till I +committed crime. One day when I cursed providence for making +me so wicked, and ordaining me to such a fate, my adopted +father said to me, "Do not blaspheme, unhappy child, the +crime is that of your father, not yours, of your father, +who consigned you to hell if you died, and to misery if a +miracle preserved you alive.' After that I ceased to +blaspheme, but I cursed my father. That is why I have +uttered the words for which you blame me that is why I have +filled this whole assembly with horror. If I have committed +an additional crime, punish me, but if you will allow that +ever since the day of my birth my fate has been sad, bitter, +and lamentable, then pity me." +"But your mother?" asked the president. +"My mother thought me dead she is not guilty. I did not +even wish to know her name, nor do I know it." Just then a +piercing cry, ending in a sob, burst from the centre of the +crowd, who encircled the lady who had before fainted, and +who now fell into a violent fit of hysterics. She was +carried out of the hall, the thick veil which concealed her +face dropped off, and Madame Danglars was recognized. +Notwithstanding his shattered nerves, the ringing sensation +in his ears, and the madness which turned his brain, +Villefort rose as he perceived her. "The proofs, the +proofs" said the president "remember this tissue of +horrors must be supported by the clearest proofs " +"The proofs?" said Benedetto, laughing "do you want +proofs?" +"Yes." +"Well, then, look at M. de Villefort, and then ask me for +proofs." +Every one turned towards the procureur, who, unable to bear +the universal gaze now riveted on him alone, advanced +staggering into the midst of the tribunal, with his hair +dishevelled and his face indented with the mark of his +nails. The whole assembly uttered a long murmur of +astonishment. "Father," said Benedetto, "I am asked for +proofs, do you wish me to give them?" +"No, no, it is useless," stammered M. de Villefort in a +hoarse voice "no, it is useless" +"How useless?" cried the president, "what do you mean?" +"I mean that I feel it impossible to struggle against this +deadly weight which crushes me. Gentlemen, I know I am in +the hands of an avenging God We need no proofs everything +relating to this young man is true." A dull, gloomy silence, +like that which precedes some awful phenomenon of nature, +pervaded the assembly, who shuddered in dismay. "What, M. de +Villefort," cried the president, "do you yield to an +hallucination? What, are you no longer in possession of your +senses? This strange, unexpected, terrible accusation has +disordered your reason. Come, recover." +The procureur dropped his head his teeth chattered like +those of a man under a violent attack of fever, and yet he +was deadly pale. +"I am in possession of all my senses, sir," he said "my +body alone suffers, as you may suppose. I acknowledge myself +guilty of all the young man has brought against me, and from +this hour hold myself under the authority of the procureur +who will succeed me." +And as he spoke these words with a hoarse, choking voice, he +staggered towards the door, which was mechanically opened by +a doorkeeper. The whole assembly were dumb with +astonishment at the revelation and confession which had +produced a catastrophe so different from that which had been +expected during the last fortnight by the Parisian world. +"Well," said Beauchamp, "let them now say that drama is +unnatural" +"Ma foi" said ChateauRenaud, "I would rather end my career +like M. de Morcerf a pistolshot seems quite delightful +compared with this catastrophe." +"And moreover, it kills," said Beauchamp. +"And to think that I had an idea of marrying his daughter," +said Debray. "She did well to die, poor girl" +"The sitting is adjourned, gentlemen," said the president +"fresh inquiries will be made, and the case will be tried +next session by another magistrate." As for Andrea, who was +calm and more interesting than ever, he left the hall, +escorted by gendarmes, who involuntarily paid him some +attention. "Well, what do you think of this, my fine +fellow?" asked Debray of the sergeantatarms, slipping a +louis into his hand. "There will be extenuating +circumstances," he replied. +Chapter +Expiation. +Notwithstanding the density of the crowd, M. de Villefort +saw it open before him. There is something so aweinspiring +in great afflictions that even in the worst times the first +emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathize with the +sufferer in a great catastrophe. Many people have been +assassinated in a tumult, but even criminals have rarely +been insulted during trial. Thus Villefort passed through +the mass of spectators and officers of the Palais, and +withdrew. Though he had acknowledged his guilt, he was +protected by his grief. There are some situations which men +understand by instinct, but which reason is powerless to +explain in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives +utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of +sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed +as if they listened to an entire poem, and when the sufferer +is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as +sublime. +It would be difficult to describe the state of stupor in +which Villefort left the Palais. Every pulse beat with +feverish excitement, every nerve was strained, every vein +swollen, and every part of his body seemed to suffer +distinctly from the rest, thus multiplying his agony a +thousandfold. He made his way along the corridors through +force of habit he threw aside his magisterial robe, not out +of deference to etiquette, but because it was an unbearable +burden, a veritable garb of Nessus, insatiate in torture. +Having staggered as far as the Rue Dauphine, he perceived +his carriage, awoke his sleeping coachman by opening the +door himself, threw himself on the cushions, and pointed +towards the Faubourg SaintHonore the carriage drove on. +The weight of his fallen fortunes seemed suddenly to crush +him he could not foresee the consequences he could not +contemplate the future with the indifference of the hardened +criminal who merely faces a contingency already familiar. +God was still in his heart. "God," he murmured, not knowing +what he said, "God God" Behind the event that had +overwhelmed him he saw the hand of God. The carriage rolled +rapidly onward. Villefort, while turning restlessly on the +cushions, felt something press against him. He put out his +hand to remove the object it was a fan which Madame de +Villefort had left in the carriage this fan awakened a +recollection which darted through his mind like lightning. +He thought of his wife. +"Oh" he exclaimed, as though a redhot iron were piercing +his heart. During the last hour his own crime had alone been +presented to his mind now another object, not less +terrible, suddenly presented itself. His wife He had just +acted the inexorable judge with her, he had condemned her to +death, and she, crushed by remorse, struck with terror, +covered with the shame inspired by the eloquence of his +irreproachable virtue, she, a poor, weak woman, without +help or the power of defending herself against his absolute +and supreme will, she might at that very moment, perhaps, +be preparing to die An hour had elapsed since her +condemnation at that moment, doubtless, she was recalling +all her crimes to her memory she was asking pardon for her +sins perhaps she was even writing a letter imploring +forgiveness from her virtuous husband a forgiveness she +was purchasing with her death Villefort again groaned with +anguish and despair. "Ah," he exclaimed, "that woman became +criminal only from associating with me I carried the +infection of crime with me, and she has caught it as she +would the typhus fever, the cholera, the plague And yet I +have punished her I have dared to tell her I have +"Repent and die' But no, she must not die she shall live, +and with me. We will flee from Paris and go as far as the +earth reaches. I told her of the scaffold oh, heavens, I +forgot that it awaits me also How could I pronounce that +word? Yes, we will fly I will confess all to her, I will +tell her daily that I also have committed a crime Oh, +what an alliance the tiger and the serpent worthy wife +of such as I am She must live that my infamy may diminish +hers." And Villefort dashed open the window in front of the +carriage. +"Faster, faster" he cried, in a tone which electrified the +coachman. The horses, impelled by fear, flew towards the +house. +"Yes, yes," repeated Villefort, as he approached his home +"yes, that woman must live she must repent, and educate my +son, the sole survivor, with the exception of the +indestructible old man, of the wreck of my house. She loves +him it was for his sake she has committed these crimes. We +ought never to despair of softening the heart of a mother +who loves her child. She will repent, and no one will know +that she has been guilty. The events which have taken place +in my house, though they now occupy the public mind, will be +forgotten in time, or if, indeed, a few enemies should +persist in remembering them, why then I will add them to my +list of crimes. What will it signify if one, two, or three +more are added? My wife and child shall escape from this +gulf, carrying treasures with them she will live and may +yet be happy, since her child, in whom all her love is +centred, will be with her. I shall have performed a good +action, and my heart will be lighter." And the procureur +breathed more freely than he had done for some time. +The carriage stopped at the door of the house. Villefort +leaped out of the carriage, and saw that his servants were +surprised at his early return he could read no other +expression on their features. Neither of them spoke to him +they merely stood aside to let him pass by, as usual, +nothing more. As he passed by M. Noirtier's room, he +perceived two figures through the halfopen door but he +experienced no curiosity to know who was visiting his +father anxiety carried him on further. +"Come," he said, as he ascended the stairs leading to his +wife's room, "nothing is changed here." He then closed the +door of the landing. "No one must disturb us," he said "I +must speak freely to her, accuse myself, and say" he +approached the door, touched the crystal handle, which +yielded to his hand. "Not locked," he cried "that is well." +And he entered the little room in which Edward slept for +though the child went to school during the day, his mother +could not allow him to be separated from her at night. With +a single glance Villefort's eye ran through the room. "Not +here," he said "doubtless she is in her bedroom." He rushed +towards the door, found it bolted, and stopped, shuddering. +"Heloise" he cried. He fancied he heard the sound of a +piece of furniture being removed. "Heloise" he repeated. +"Who is there?" answered the voice of her he sought. He +thought that voice more feeble than usual. +"Open the door" cried Villefort. "Open it is I." But +notwithstanding this request, notwithstanding the tone of +anguish in which it was uttered, the door remained closed. +Villefort burst it open with a violent blow. At the entrance +of the room which led to her boudoir, Madame de Villefort +was standing erect, pale, her features contracted, and her +eyes glaring horribly. "Heloise, Heloise" he said, "what is +the matter? Speak" The young woman extended her stiff white +hands towards him. "It is done, monsieur," she said with a +rattling noise which seemed to tear her throat. "What more +do you want?" and she fell full length on the floor. +Villefort ran to her and seized her hand, which convulsively +clasped a crystal bottle with a golden stopper. Madame de +Villefort was dead. Villefort, maddened with horror, stepped +back to the threshhold of the door, fixing his eyes on the +corpse "My son" he exclaimed suddenly, "where is my son? +Edward, Edward" and he rushed out of the room, still +crying, "Edward, Edward" The name was pronounced in such a +tone of anguish that the servants ran up. +"Where is my son?" asked Villefort "let him be removed from +the house, that he may not see" +"Master Edward is not downstairs, sir," replied the valet. +"Then he must be playing in the garden go and see." +"No, sir Madame de Villefort sent for him half an hour ago +he went into her room, and has not been downstairs since." +A cold perspiration burst out on Villefort's brow his legs +trembled, and his thoughts flew about madly in his brain +like the wheels of a disordered watch. "In Madame de +Villefort's room?" he murmured and slowly returned, with one +hand wiping his forehead, and with the other supporting +himself against the wall. To enter the room he must again +see the body of his unfortunate wife. To call Edward he must +reawaken the echo of that room which now appeared like a +sepulchre to speak seemed like violating the silence of the +tomb. His tongue was paralyzed in his mouth. +"Edward" he stammered "Edward" The child did not +answer. Where, then, could he be, if he had entered his +mother's room and not since returned? He stepped forward. +The corpse of Madame de Villefort was stretched across the +doorway leading to the room in which Edward must be those +glaring eyes seemed to watch over the threshold, and the +lips bore the stamp of a terrible and mysterious irony. +Through the open door was visible a portion of the boudoir, +containing an upright piano and a blue satin couch. +Villefort stepped forward two or three paces, and beheld his +child lying no doubt asleep on the sofa. The unhappy +man uttered an exclamation of joy a ray of light seemed to +penetrate the abyss of despair and darkness. He had only to +step over the corpse, enter the boudoir, take the child in +his arms, and flee far, far away. +Villefort was no longer the civilized man he was a tiger +hurt unto death, gnashing his teeth in his wound. He no +longer feared realities, but phantoms. He leaped over the +corpse as if it had been a burning brazier. He took the +child in his arms, embraced him, shook him, called him, but +the child made no response. He pressed his burning lips to +the cheeks, but they were icy cold and pale he felt the +stiffened limbs he pressed his hand upon the heart, but it +no longer beat, the child was dead. A folded paper fell +from Edward's breast. Villefort, thunderstruck, fell upon +his knees the child dropped from his arms, and rolled on +the floor by the side of its mother. He picked up the paper, +and, recognizing his wife's writing, ran his eyes rapidly +over its contents it ran as follows +"You know that I was a good mother, since it was for my +son's sake I became criminal. A good mother cannot depart +without her son." +Villefort could not believe his eyes, he could not +believe his reason he dragged himself towards the child's +body, and examined it as a lioness contemplates its dead +cub. Then a piercing cry escaped from his breast, and he +cried, "Still the hand of God." The presence of the two +victims alarmed him he could not bear solitude shared only +by two corpses. Until then he had been sustained by rage, by +his strength of mind, by despair, by the supreme agony which +led the Titans to scale the heavens, and Ajax to defy the +gods. He now arose, his head bowed beneath the weight of +grief, and, shaking his damp, dishevelled hair, he who had +never felt compassion for any one determined to seek his +father, that he might have some one to whom he could relate +his misfortunes, some one by whose side he might weep. He +descended the little staircase with which we are acquainted, +and entered Noirtier's room. The old man appeared to be +listening attentively and as affectionately as his +infirmities would allow to the Abbe Busoni, who looked cold +and calm, as usual. Villefort, perceiving the abbe, passed +his hand across his brow. He recollected the call he had +made upon him after the dinner at Auteuil, and then the +visit the abbe had himself paid to his house on the day of +Valentine's death. "You here, sir" he exclaimed "do you, +then, never appear but to act as an escort to death?" +Busoni turned around, and, perceiving the excitement +depicted on the magistrate's face, the savage lustre of his +eyes, he understood that the revelation had been made at the +assizes but beyond this he was ignorant. "I came to pray +over the body of your daughter." +"And now why are you here?" +"I come to tell you that you have sufficiently repaid your +debt, and that from this moment I will pray to God to +forgive you, as I do." +"Good heavens" exclaimed Villefort, stepping back +fearfully, "surely that is not the voice of the Abbe +Busoni" +"No" The abbe threw off his wig, shook his head, and his +hair, no longer confined, fell in black masses around his +manly face. +"It is the face of the Count of Monte Cristo" exclaimed the +procureur, with a haggard expression. +"You are not exactly right, M. Procureur you must go +farther back." +"That voice, that voice where did I first hear it?" +"You heard it for the first time at Marseilles, twentythree +years ago, the day of your marriage with Mademoiselle de +SaintMeran. Refer to your papers." +"You are not Busoni? you are not Monte Cristo? Oh, +heavens you are, then, some secret, implacable, and +mortal enemy I must have wronged you in some way at +Marseilles. Oh, woe to me" +"Yes you are now on the right path," said the count, +crossing his arms over his broad chest "search search" +"But what have I done to you?" exclaimed Villefort, whose +mind was balancing between reason and insanity, in that +cloud which is neither a dream nor reality "what have I +done to you? Tell me, then Speak" +"You condemned me to a horrible, tedious death you killed +my father you deprived me of liberty, of love, and +happiness." +"Who are you, then? Who are you?" +"I am the spectre of a wretch you buried in the dungeons of +the Chateau d'If. God gave that spectre the form of the +Count of Monte Cristo when he at length issued from his +tomb, enriched him with gold and diamonds, and led him to +you" +"Ah, I recognize you I recognize you" exclaimed the +king's attorney "you are" +"I am Edmond Dantes" +"You are Edmond Dantes," cried Villefort, seizing the count +by the wrist "then come here" And up the stairs he dragged +Monte Cristo who, ignorant of what had happened, followed +him in astonishment, foreseeing some new catastrophe. +"There, Edmond Dantes" he said, pointing to the bodies of +his wife and child, "see, are you well avenged?" Monte +Cristo became pale at this horrible sight he felt that he +had passed beyond the bounds of vengeance, and that he could +no longer say, "God is for and with me." With an expression +of indescribable anguish he threw himself upon the body of +the child, reopened its eyes, felt its pulse, and then +rushed with him into Valentine's room, of which he +doublelocked the door. "My child," cried Villefort, "he +carries away the body of my child Oh, curses, woe, death to +you" and he tried to follow Monte Cristo but as though in +a dream he was transfixed to the spot, his eyes glared as +though they were starting through the sockets he griped the +flesh on his chest until his nails were stained with blood +the veins of his temples swelled and boiled as though they +would burst their narrow boundary, and deluge his brain with +living fire. This lasted several minutes, until the +frightful overturn of reason was accomplished then uttering +a loud cry followed by a burst of laughter, he rushed down +the stairs. +A quarter of an hour afterwards the door of Valentine's room +opened, and Monte Cristo reappeared. Pale, with a dull eye +and heavy heart, all the noble features of that face, +usually so calm and serene, were overcast by grief. In his +arms he held the child, whom no skill had been able to +recall to life. Bending on one knee, he placed it reverently +by the side of its mother, with its head upon her breast. +Then, rising, he went out, and meeting a servant on the +stairs, he asked, "Where is M. de Villefort?" +The servant, instead of answering, pointed to the garden. +Monte Cristo ran down the steps, and advancing towards the +spot designated beheld Villefort, encircled by his servants, +with a spade in his hand, and digging the earth with fury. +"It is not here" he cried. "It is not here" And then he +moved farther on, and began again to dig. +Monte Cristo approached him, and said in a low voice, with +an expression almost humble, "Sir, you have indeed lost a +son but" +Villefort interrupted him he had neither listened nor +heard. "Oh, I will find it," he cried "you may pretend he +is not here, but I will find him, though I dig forever" +Monte Cristo drew back in horror. "Oh," he said, "he is +mad" And as though he feared that the walls of the accursed +house would crumble around him, he rushed into the street, +for the first time doubting whether he had the right to do +as he had done. "Oh, enough of this, enough of this," he +cried "let me save the last." On entering his house, he met +Morrel, who wandered about like a ghost awaiting the +heavenly mandate for return to the tomb. "Prepare yourself, +Maximilian," he said with a smile "we leave Paris +tomorrow." +"Have you nothing more to do there?" asked Morrel. +"No," replied Monte Cristo "God grant I may not have done +too much already." +The next day they indeed left, accompanied only by +Baptistin. Haidee had taken away Ali, and Bertuccio remained +with Noirtier. +Chapter +The Departure. +The recent event formed the theme of conversation throughout +all Paris. Emmanuel and his wife conversed with natural +astonishment in their little apartment in the Rue Meslay +upon the three successive, sudden, and most unexpected +catastrophes of Morcerf, Danglars, and Villefort. +Maximilian, who was paying them a visit, listened to their +conversation, or rather was present at it, plunged in his +accustomed state of apathy. "Indeed," said Julie, "might we +not almost fancy, Emmanuel, that those people, so rich, so +happy but yesterday, had forgotten in their prosperity that +an evil genius like the wicked fairies in Perrault's +stories who present themselves unbidden at a wedding or +baptism hovered over them, and appeared all at once to +revenge himself for their fatal neglect?" +"What a dire misfortune" said Emmanuel, thinking of Morcerf +and Danglars. +"What dreadful sufferings" said Julie, remembering +Valentine, but whom, with a delicacy natural to women, she +did not name before her brother. +"If the Supreme Being has directed the fatal blow," said +Emmanuel, "it must be that he in his great goodness has +perceived nothing in the past lives of these people to merit +mitigation of their awful punishment." +"Do you not form a very rash judgment, Emmanuel?" said +Julie. "When my father, with a pistol in his hand, was once +on the point of committing suicide, had any one then said, +"This man deserves his misery,' would not that person have +been deceived?" +"Yes but your father was not allowed to fall. A being was +commissioned to arrest the fatal hand of death about to +descend on him." +Emmanuel had scarcely uttered these words when the sound of +the bell was heard, the wellknown signal given by the +porter that a visitor had arrived. Nearly at the same +instant the door was opened and the Count of Monte Cristo +appeared on the threshold. The young people uttered a cry of +joy, while Maximilian raised his head, but let it fall again +immediately. "Maximilian," said the count, without appearing +to notice the different impressions which his presence +produced on the little circle, "I come to seek you." +"To seek me?" repeated Morrel, as if awakening from a dream. +"Yes," said Monte Cristo "has it not been agreed that I +should take you with me, and did I not tell you yesterday to +prepare for departure?" +"I am ready," said Maximilian "I came expressly to wish +them farewell." +"Whither are you going, count?" asked Julie. +"In the first instance to Marseilles, madame." +"To Marseilles" exclaimed the young couple. +"Yes, and I take your brother with me." +"Oh, count." said Julie, "will you restore him to us cured +of his melancholy?" Morrel turned away to conceal the +confusion of his countenance. +"You perceive, then, that he is not happy?" said the count. +"Yes," replied the young woman "and fear much that he finds +our home but a dull one." +"I will undertake to divert him," replied the count. +"I am ready to accompany you, sir," said Maximilian. "Adieu, +my kind friends Emmanuel Julie farewell" +"How farewell?" exclaimed Julie "do you leave us thus, so +suddenly, without any preparations for your journey, without +even a passport?" +"Needless delays but increase the grief of parting," said +Monte Cristo, "and Maximilian has doubtless provided himself +with everything requisite at least, I advised him to do +so." +"I have a passport, and my clothes are ready packed," said +Morrel in his tranquil but mournful manner. +"Good," said Monte Cristo, smiling "in these prompt +arrangements we recognize the order of a welldisciplined +soldier." +"And you leave us," said Julie, "at a moment's warning? you +do not give us a day no, not even an hour before your +departure?" +"My carriage is at the door, madame, and I must be in Rome +in five days." +"But does Maximilian go to Rome?" exclaimed Emmanuel. +"I am going wherever it may please the count to take me," +said Morrel, with a smile full of grief "I am under his +orders for the next month." +"Oh, heavens, how strangely he expresses himself, count" +said Julie. +"Maximilian goes with me," said the count, in his kindest +and most persuasive manner "therefore do not make yourself +uneasy on your brother's account." +"Once more farewell, my dear sister Emmanuel, adieu" +Morrel repeated. +"His carelessness and indifference touch me to the heart," +said Julie. "Oh, Maximilian, Maximilian, you are certainly +concealing something from us." +"Pshaw" said Monte Cristo, "you will see him return to you +gay, smiling, and joyful." +Maximilian cast a look of disdain, almost of anger, on the +count. +"We must leave you," said Monte Cristo. +"Before you quit us, count," said Julie, "will you permit us +to express to you all that the other day" +"Madame," interrupted the count, taking her two hands in +his, "all that you could say in words would never express +what I read in your eyes the thoughts of your heart are +fully understood by mine. Like benefactors in romances, I +should have left you without seeing you again, but that +would have been a virtue beyond my strength, because I am a +weak and vain man, fond of the tender, kind, and thankful +glances of my fellowcreatures. On the eve of departure I +carry my egotism so far as to say, "Do not forget me, my +kind friends, for probably you will never see me again.'" +"Never see you again?" exclaimed Emmanuel, while two large +tears rolled down Julie's cheeks, "never behold you again? +It is not a man, then, but some angel that leaves us, and +this angel is on the point of returning to heaven after +having appeared on earth to do good." +"Say not so," quickly returned Monte Cristo "say not so, +my friends angels never err, celestial beings remain where +they wish to be. Fate is not more powerful than they it is +they who, on the contrary, overcome fate. No, Emmanuel, I am +but a man, and your admiration is as unmerited as your words +are sacrilegious." And pressing his lips on the hand of +Julie, who rushed into his arms, he extended his other hand +to Emmanuel then tearing himself from this abode of peace +and happiness, he made a sign to Maximilian, who followed +him passively, with the indifference which had been +perceptible in him ever since the death of Valentine had so +stunned him. "Restore my brother to peace and happiness," +whispered Julie to Monte Cristo. And the count pressed her +hand in reply, as he had done eleven years before on the +staircase leading to Morrel's study. +"You still confide, then, in Sinbad the Sailor?" asked he, +smiling. +"Oh, yes," was the ready answer. +"Well, then, sleep in peace, and put your trust in heaven." +As we have before said, the postchaise was waiting four +powerful horses were already pawing the ground with +impatience, while Ali, apparently just arrived from a long +walk, was standing at the foot of the steps, his face bathed +in perspiration. "Well," asked the count in Arabic, "have +you been to see the old man?" Ali made a sign in the +affirmative. +"And have you placed the letter before him, as I ordered you +to do?" +The slave respectfully signalized that he had. "And what did +he say, or rather do?" Ali placed himself in the light, so +that his master might see him distinctly, and then imitating +in his intelligent manner the countenance of the old man, he +closed his eyes, as Noirtier was in the custom of doing when +saying "Yes." +"Good he accepts," said Monte Cristo. "Now let us go." +These words had scarcely escaped him, when the carriage was +on its way, and the feet of the horses struck a shower of +sparks from the pavement. Maximilian settled himself in his +corner without uttering a word. Half an hour had passed when +the carriage stopped suddenly the count had just pulled the +silken checkstring, which was fastened to Ali's finger. The +Nubian immediately descended and opened the carriage door. +It was a lovely starlight night they had just reached the +top of the hill Villejuif, from whence Paris appears like a +sombre sea tossing its millions of phosphoric waves into +light waves indeed more noisy, more passionate, more +changeable, more furious, more greedy, than those of the +tempestuous ocean, waves which never rest as those of the +sea sometimes do, waves ever dashing, ever foaming, ever +ingulfing what falls within their grasp. The count stood +alone, and at a sign from his hand, the carriage went on for +a short distance. With folded arms, he gazed for some time +upon the great city. When he had fixed his piercing look on +this modern Babylon, which equally engages the contemplation +of the religious enthusiast, the materialist, and the +scoffer, "Great city," murmured he, inclining his head, +and joining his hands as if in prayer, "less than six months +have elapsed since first I entered thy gates. I believe that +the Spirit of God led my steps to thee and that he also +enables me to quit thee in triumph the secret cause of my +presence within thy walls I have confided alone to him who +only has had the power to read my heart. God only knows that +I retire from thee without pride or hatred, but not without +many regrets he only knows that the power confided to me +has never been made subservient to my personal good or to +any useless cause. Oh, great city, it is in thy palpitating +bosom that I have found that which I sought like a patient +miner, I have dug deep into thy very entrails to root out +evil thence. Now my work is accomplished, my mission is +terminated, now thou canst neither afford me pain nor +pleasure. Adieu, Paris, adieu" +His look wandered over the vast plain like that of some +genius of the night he passed his hand over his brow, got +into the carriage, the door was closed on him, and the +vehicle quickly disappeared down the other side of the hill +in a whirlwind of noise and dust. +Ten leagues were passed and not a single word was uttered. +Morrel was dreaming, and Monte Cristo was looking at the +dreamer. +"Morrel," said the count to him at length, "do you repent +having followed me?" +"No, count but to leave Paris" +"If I thought happiness might await you in Paris, Morrel, I +would have left you there." +"Valentine reposes within the walls of Paris, and to leave +Paris is like losing her a second time." +"Maximilian," said the count, "the friends that we have lost +do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep +in our hearts, and it has been thus ordained that we may +always be accompanied by them. I have two friends, who in +this way never depart from me the one who gave me being, +and the other who conferred knowledge and intelligence on +me. Their spirits live in me. I consult them when doubtful, +and if I ever do any good, it is due to their beneficent +counsels. Listen to the voice of your heart, Morrel, and ask +it whether you ought to preserve this melancholy exterior +towards me." +"My friend," said Maximilian, "the voice of my heart is very +sorrowful, and promises me nothing but misfortune." +"It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a +black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons your soul is +darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears +stormy and unpromising." +"That may possibly be true," said Maximilian, and he again +subsided into his thoughtful mood. +The journey was performed with that marvellous rapidity +which the unlimited power of the count ever commanded. Towns +fled from them like shadows on their path, and trees shaken +by the first winds of autumn seemed like giants madly +rushing on to meet them, and retreating as rapidly when once +reached. The following morning they arrived at Chalons, +where the count's steamboat waited for them. Without the +loss of an instant, the carriage was placed on board and the +two travellers embarked without delay. The boat was built +for speed her two paddlewheels were like two wings with +which she skimmed the water like a bird. Morrel was not +insensible to that sensation of delight which is generally +experienced in passing rapidly through the air, and the wind +which occasionally raised the hair from his forehead seemed +on the point of dispelling momentarily the clouds collected +there. +As the distance increased between the travellers and Paris, +almost superhuman serenity appeared to surround the count +he might have been taken for an exile about to revisit his +native land. Ere long Marseilles presented herself to view, +Marseilles, white, fervid, full of life and energy, +Marseilles, the younger sister of Tyre and Carthage, the +successor to them in the empire of the Mediterranean, +Marseilles, old, yet always young. Powerful memories were +stirred within them by the sight of the round tower, Fort +SaintNicolas, the City Hall designed by Puget, the port +with its brick quays, where they had both played in +childhood, and it was with one accord that they stopped on +the Cannebiere. A vessel was setting sail for Algiers, on +board of which the bustle usually attending departure +prevailed. The passengers and their relations crowded on the +deck, friends taking a tender but sorrowful leave of each +other, some weeping, others noisy in their grief, the whole +forming a spectacle that might be exciting even to those who +witnessed similar sights daily, but which had no power to +disturb the current of thought that had taken possession of +the mind of Maximilian from the moment he had set foot on +the broad pavement of the quay. + Pierre Puget, the sculptorarchitect, was born at +Marseilles in . +"Here," said he, leaning heavily on the arm of Monte Cristo, +"here is the spot where my father stopped, when the +Pharaon entered the port it was here that the good old man, +whom you saved from death and dishonor, threw himself into +my arms. I yet feel his warm tears on my face, and his were +not the only tears shed, for many who witnessed our meeting +wept also." Monte Cristo gently smiled and said, "I was +there" at the same time pointing to the corner of a street. +As he spoke, and in the very direction he indicated, a +groan, expressive of bitter grief, was heard, and a woman +was seen waving her hand to a passenger on board the vessel +about to sail. Monte Cristo looked at her with an emotion +that must have been remarked by Morrel had not his eyes been +fixed on the vessel. +"Oh, heavens" exclaimed Morrel, "I do not deceive myself +that young man who is waving his hat, that youth in the +uniform of a lieutenant, is Albert de Morcerf" +"Yes," said Monte Cristo, "I recognized him." +"How so? you were looking the other way." the count +smiled, as he was in the habit of doing when he did not want +to make any reply, and he again turned towards the veiled +woman, who soon disappeared at the corner of the street. +Turning to his friend, "Dear Maximilian," said the count, +"have you nothing to do in this land?" +"I have to weep over the grave of my father," replied Morrel +in a broken voice. +"Well, then, go, wait for me there, and I will soon join +you." +"You leave me, then?" +"Yes I also have a pious visit to pay." +Morrel allowed his hand to fall into that which the count +extended to him then with an inexpressibly sorrowful +inclination of the head he quitted the count and bent his +steps to the east of the city. Monte Cristo remained on the +same spot until Maximilian was out of sight he then walked +slowly towards the Allees de Meillan to seek out a small +house with which our readers were made familiar at the +beginning of this story. It yet stood, under the shade of +the fine avenue of limetrees, which forms one of the most +frequent walks of the idlers of Marseilles, covered by an +immense vine, which spreads its aged and blackened branches +over the stone front, burnt yellow by the ardent sun of the +south. Two stone steps worn away by the friction of many +feet led to the door, which was made of three planks the +door had never been painted or varnished, so great cracks +yawned in it during the dry season to close again when the +rains came on. The house, with all its crumbling antiquity +and apparent misery, was yet cheerful and picturesque, and +was the same that old Dantes formerly inhabited the only +difference being that the old man occupied merely the +garret, while the whole house was now placed at the command +of Mercedes by the count. +The woman whom the count had seen leave the ship with so +much regret entered this house she had scarcely closed the +door after her when Monte Cristo appeared at the corner of a +street, so that he found and lost her again almost at the +same instant. The worn out steps were old acquaintances of +his he knew better than any one else how to open that +weatherbeaten door with the large headed nail which served +to raise the latch within. He entered without knocking, or +giving any other intimation of his presence, as if he had +been a friend or the master of the place. At the end of a +passage paved with bricks, was a little garden, bathed in +sunshine, and rich in warmth and light. In this garden +Mercedes had found, at the place indicated by the count, the +sum of money which he, through a sense of delicacy, had +described as having been placed there twentyfour years +previously. The trees of the garden were easily seen from +the steps of the streetdoor. Monte Cristo, on stepping into +the house, heard a sigh that was almost a deep sob he +looked in the direction whence it came, and there under an +arbor of Virginia jessamine, with its thick foliage and +beautiful long purple flowers, he saw Mercedes seated, with +her head bowed, and weeping bitterly. She had raised her +veil, and with her face hidden by her hands was giving free +scope to the sighs and tears which had been so long +restrained by the presence of her son. Monte Cristo advanced +a few steps, which were heard on the gravel. Mercedes raised +her head, and uttered a cry of terror on beholding a man +before her. + The Carolina not Virginia jessamine, gelsemium +sempervirens properly speaking not a jessamine at all has +yellow blossoms. The reference is no doubt to the Wistaria +frutescens. Ed. +"Madame," said the count, "it is no longer in my power to +restore you to happiness, but I offer you consolation will +you deign to accept it as coming from a friend?" +"I am, indeed, most wretched," replied Mercedes. "Alone in +the world, I had but my son, and he has left me" +"He possesses a noble heart, madame," replied the count, +"and he has acted rightly. He feels that every man owes a +tribute to his country some contribute their talents, +others their industry these devote their blood, those their +nightly labors, to the same cause. Had he remained with you, +his life must have become a hateful burden, nor would he +have participated in your griefs. He will increase in +strength and honor by struggling with adversity, which he +will convert into prosperity. Leave him to build up the +future for you, and I venture to say you will confide it to +safe hands." +"Oh," replied the wretched woman, mournfully shaking her +head, "the prosperity of which you speak, and which, from +the bottom of my heart, I pray God in his mercy to grant +him, I can never enjoy. The bitter cup of adversity has been +drained by me to the very dregs, and I feel that the grave +is not far distant. You have acted kindly, count, in +bringing me back to the place where I have enjoyed so much +bliss. I ought to meet death on the same spot where +happiness was once all my own." +"Alas," said Monte Cristo, "your words sear and embitter my +heart, the more so as you have every reason to hate me. I +have been the cause of all your misfortunes but why do you +pity, instead of blaming me? You render me still more +unhappy" +"Hate you, blame you you, Edmond Hate, reproach, the man +that has spared my son's life For was it not your fatal and +sanguinary intention to destroy that son of whom M. de +Morcerf was so proud? Oh, look at me closely, and discover +if you can even the semblance of a reproach in me." The +count looked up and fixed his eyes on Mercedes, who arose +partly from her seat and extended both her hands towards +him. "Oh, look at me," continued she, with a feeling of +profound melancholy, "my eyes no longer dazzle by their +brilliancy, for the time has long fled since I used to smile +on Edmond Dantes, who anxiously looked out for me from the +window of yonder garret, then inhabited by his old father. +Years of grief have created an abyss between those days and +the present. I neither reproach you nor hate you, my friend. +Oh, no, Edmond, it is myself that I blame, myself that I +hate Oh, miserable creature that I am" cried she, clasping +her hands, and raising her eyes to heaven. "I once possessed +piety, innocence, and love, the three ingredients of the +happiness of angels, and now what am I?" Monte Cristo +approached her, and silently took her hand. "No," said she, +withdrawing it gently "no, my friend, touch me not. You +have spared me, yet of all those who have fallen under your +vengeance I was the most guilty. They were influenced by +hatred, by avarice, and by selflove but I was base, and +for want of courage acted against my judgment. Nay, do not +press my hand, Edmond you are thinking, I am sure, of some +kind speech to console me, but do not utter it to me, +reserve it for others more worthy of your kindness. See" +and she exposed her face completely to view "see, +misfortune has silvered my hair, my eyes have shed so many +tears that they are encircled by a rim of purple, and my +brow is wrinkled. You, Edmond, on the contrary, you are +still young, handsome, dignified it is because you have had +faith because you have had strength, because you have had +trust in God, and God has sustained you. But as for me, I +have been a coward I have denied God and he has abandoned +me." +Mercedes burst into tears her woman's heart was breaking +under its load of memories. Monte Cristo took her hand and +imprinted a kiss on it but she herself felt that it was a +kiss of no greater warmth than he would have bestowed on the +hand of some marble statue of a saint. "It often happens," +continued she, "that a first fault destroys the prospects of +a whole life. I believed you dead why did I survive you? +What good has it done me to mourn for you eternally in the +secret recesses of my heart? only to make a woman of +thirtynine look like a woman of fifty. Why, having +recognized you, and I the only one to do so why was I +able to save my son alone? Ought I not also to have rescued +the man that I had accepted for a husband, guilty though he +were? Yet I let him die What do I say? Oh, merciful +heavens, was I not accessory to his death by my supine +insensibility, by my contempt for him, not remembering, or +not willing to remember, that it was for my sake he had +become a traitor and a perjurer? In what am I benefited by +accompanying my son so far, since I now abandon him, and +allow him to depart alone to the baneful climate of Africa? +Oh, I have been base, cowardly, I tell you I have abjured +my affections, and like all renegades I am of evil omen to +those who surround me" +"No, Mercedes," said Monte Cristo, "no you judge yourself +with too much severity. You are a nobleminded woman, and it +was your grief that disarmed me. Still I was but an agent, +led on by an invisible and offended Deity, who chose not to +withhold the fatal blow that I was destined to hurl. I take +that God to witness, at whose feet I have prostrated myself +daily for the last ten years, that I would have sacrificed +my life to you, and with my life the projects that were +indissolubly linked with it. But and I say it with some +pride, Mercedes God needed me, and I lived. Examine the +past and the present, and endeavor to dive into futurity, +and then say whether I am not a divine instrument. The most +dreadful misfortunes, the most frightful sufferings, the +abandonment of all those who loved me, the persecution of +those who did not know me, formed the trials of my youth +when suddenly, from captivity, solitude, misery, I was +restored to light and liberty, and became the possessor of a +fortune so brilliant, so unbounded, so unheardof, that I +must have been blind not to be conscious that God had +endowed me with it to work out his own great designs. From +that time I looked upon this fortune as something confided +to me for an especial purpose. Not a thought was given to a +life which you once, Mercedes, had the power to render +blissful not one hour of peaceful calm was mine but I felt +myself driven on like an exterminating angel. Like +adventurous captains about to embark on some enterprise full +of danger, I laid in my provisions, I loaded my weapons, I +collected every means of attack and defence I inured my +body to the most violent exercises, my soul to the bitterest +trials I taught my arm to slay, my eyes to behold +excruciating sufferings, and my mouth to smile at the most +horrid spectacles. Goodnatured, confiding, and forgiving as +I had been, I became revengeful, cunning, and wicked, or +rather, immovable as fate. Then I launched out into the path +that was opened to me. I overcame every obstacle, and +reached the goal but woe to those who stood in my pathway" +"Enough," said Mercedes "enough, Edmond Believe me, that +she who alone recognized you has been the only one to +comprehend you and had she crossed your path, and you had +crushed her like glass, still, Edmond, still she must have +admired you Like the gulf between me and the past, there is +an abyss between you, Edmond, and the rest of mankind and I +tell you freely that the comparison I draw between you and +other men will ever be one of my greatest tortures. No, +there is nothing in the world to resemble you in worth and +goodness But we must say farewell, Edmond, and let us +part." +"Before I leave you, Mercedes, have you no request to make?" +said the count. +"I desire but one thing in this world, Edmond, the +happiness of my son." +"Pray to the Almighty to spare his life, and I will take +upon myself to promote his happiness." +"Thank you, Edmond." +"But have you no request to make for yourself, Mercedes?" +"For myself I want nothing. I live, as it were, between two +graves. One is that of Edmond Dantes, lost to me long, long +since. He had my love That word ill becomes my faded lip +now, but it is a memory dear to my heart, and one that I +would not lose for all that the world contains. The other +grave is that of the man who met his death from the hand of +Edmond Dantes. I approve of the deed, but I must pray for +the dead." +"Your son shall be happy, Mercedes," repeated the count. +"Then I shall enjoy as much happiness as this world can +possibly confer." +"But what are your intentions?" +"To say that I shall live here, like the Mercedes of other +times, gaining my bread by labor, would not be true, nor +would you believe me. I have no longer the strength to do +anything but to spend my days in prayer. However, I shall +have no occasion to work, for the little sum of money buried +by you, and which I found in the place you mentioned, will +be sufficient to maintain me. Rumor will probably be busy +respecting me, my occupations, my manner of living that +will signify but little." +"Mercedes," said the count, "I do not say it to blame you, +but you made an unnecessary sacrifice in relinquishing the +whole of the fortune amassed by M. de Morcerf half of it at +least by right belonged to you, in virtue of your vigilance +and economy." +"I perceive what you are intending to propose to me but I +cannot accept it, Edmond my son would not permit it." +"Nothing shall be done without the full approbation of +Albert de Morcerf. I will make myself acquainted with his +intentions and will submit to them. But if he be willing to +accept my offers, will you oppose them?" +"You well know, Edmond, that I am no longer a reasoning +creature I have no will, unless it be the will never to +decide. I have been so overwhelmed by the many storms that +have broken over my head, that I am become passive in the +hands of the Almighty, like a sparrow in the talons of an +eagle. I live, because it is not ordained for me to die. If +succor be sent to me, I will accept it." +"Ah, madame," said Monte Cristo, "you should not talk thus +It is not so we should evince our resignation to the will of +heaven on the contrary, we are all free agents." +"Alas" exclaimed Mercedes, "if it were so, if I possessed +freewill, but without the power to render that will +efficacious, it would drive me to despair." Monte Cristo +dropped his head and shrank from the vehemence of her grief. +"Will you not even say you will see me again?" he asked. +"On the contrary, we shall meet again," said Mercedes, +pointing to heaven with solemnity. "I tell you so to prove +to you that I still hope." And after pressing her own +trembling hand upon that of the count, Mercedes rushed up +the stairs and disappeared. Monte Cristo slowly left the +house and turned towards the quay. But Mercedes did not +witness his departure, although she was seated at the little +window of the room which had been occupied by old Dantes. +Her eyes were straining to see the ship which was carrying +her son over the vast sea but still her voice involuntarily +murmured softly, "Edmond, Edmond, Edmond" +Chapter +The Past. +The count departed with a sad heart from the house in which +he had left Mercedes, probably never to behold her again. +Since the death of little Edward a great change had taken +place in Monte Cristo. Having reached the summit of his +vengeance by a long and tortuous path, he saw an abyss of +doubt yawning before him. More than this, the conversation +which had just taken place between Mercedes and himself had +awakened so many recollections in his heart that he felt it +necessary to combat with them. A man of the count's +temperament could not long indulge in that melancholy which +can exist in common minds, but which destroys superior ones. +He thought he must have made an error in his calculations if +he now found cause to blame himself. +"I cannot have deceived myself," he said "I must look upon +the past in a false light. What" he continued, "can I have +been following a false path? can the end which I proposed +be a mistaken end? can one hour have sufficed to prove to +an architect that the work upon which he founded all his +hopes was an impossible, if not a sacrilegious, undertaking? +I cannot reconcile myself to this idea it would madden +me. The reason why I am now dissatisfied is that I have not +a clear appreciation of the past. The past, like the country +through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My +position is like that of a person wounded in a dream he +feels the wound, though he cannot recollect when he received +it. Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant +prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou allpowerful +visionary, thou invincible millionaire, once again review +thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the +scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and where +despair received thee. Too many diamonds, too much gold and +splendor, are now reflected by the mirror in which Monte +Cristo seeks to behold Dantes. Hide thy diamonds, bury thy +gold, shroud thy splendor, exchange riches for poverty, +liberty for a prison, a living body for a corpse" As he +thus reasoned, Monte Cristo walked down the Rue de la +Caisserie. It was the same through which, twentyfour years +ago, he had been conducted by a silent and nocturnal guard +the houses, today so smiling and animated, were on that +night dark, mute, and closed. "And yet they were the same," +murmured Monte Cristo, "only now it is broad daylight +instead of night it is the sun which brightens the place, +and makes it appear so cheerful." +He proceeded towards the quay by the Rue SaintLaurent, and +advanced to the Consigne it was the point where he had +embarked. A pleasureboat with striped awning was going by. +Monte Cristo called the owner, who immediately rowed up to +him with the eagerness of a boatman hoping for a good fare. +The weather was magnificent, and the excursion a treat. +The sun, red and flaming, was sinking into the embrace of +the welcoming ocean. The sea, smooth as crystal, was now and +then disturbed by the leaping of fish, which were pursued by +some unseen enemy and sought for safety in another element +while on the extreme verge of the horizon might be seen the +fishermen's boats, white and graceful as the seagull, or +the merchant vessels bound for Corsica or Spain. +But notwithstanding the serene sky, the gracefully formed +boats, and the golden light in which the whole scene was +bathed, the Count of Monte Cristo, wrapped in his cloak, +could think only of this terrible voyage, the details of +which were one by one recalled to his memory. The solitary +light burning at the Catalans that first sight of the +Chateau d'If, which told him whither they were leading him +the struggle with the gendarmes when he wished to throw +himself overboard his despair when he found himself +vanquished, and the sensation when the muzzle of the carbine +touched his forehead all these were brought before him in +vivid and frightful reality. Like the streams which the heat +of the summer has dried up, and which after the autumnal +storms gradually begin oozing drop by drop, so did the count +feel his heart gradually fill with the bitterness which +formerly nearly overwhelmed Edmond Dantes. Clear sky, +swiftflitting boats, and brilliant sunshine disappeared +the heavens were hung with black, and the gigantic structure +of the Chateau d'If seemed like the phantom of a mortal +enemy. As they reached the shore, the count instinctively +shrunk to the extreme end of the boat, and the owner was +obliged to call out, in his sweetest tone of voice, "Sir, we +are at the landing." +Monte Cristo remembered that on that very spot, on the same +rock, he had been violently dragged by the guards, who +forced him to ascend the slope at the points of their +bayonets. The journey had seemed very long to Dantes, but +Monte Cristo found it equally short. Each stroke of the oar +seemed to awaken a new throng of ideas, which sprang up with +the flying spray of the sea. +There had been no prisoners confined in the Chateau d'If +since the revolution of July it was only inhabited by a +guard, kept there for the prevention of smuggling. A +concierge waited at the door to exhibit to visitors this +monument of curiosity, once a scene of terror. The count +inquired whether any of the ancient jailers were still +there but they had all been pensioned, or had passed on to +some other employment. The concierge who attended him had +only been there since . He visited his own dungeon. He +again beheld the dull light vainly endeavoring to penetrate +the narrow opening. His eyes rested upon the spot where had +stood his bed, since then removed, and behind the bed the +new stones indicated where the breach made by the Abbe Faria +had been. Monte Cristo felt his limbs tremble he seated +himself upon a log of wood. +"Are there any stories connected with this prison besides +the one relating to the poisoning of Mirabeau?" asked the +count "are there any traditions respecting these dismal +abodes, in which it is difficult to believe men can ever +have imprisoned their fellowcreatures?" +"Yes, sir indeed, the jailer Antoine told me one connected +with this very dungeon." +Monte Cristo shuddered Antoine had been his jailer. He had +almost forgotten his name and face, but at the mention of +the name he recalled his person as he used to see it, the +face encircled by a beard, wearing the brown jacket, the +bunch of keys, the jingling of which he still seemed to +hear. The count turned around, and fancied he saw him in the +corridor, rendered still darker by the torch carried by the +concierge. "Would you like to hear the story, sir?" +"Yes relate it," said Monte Cristo, pressing his hand to +his heart to still its violent beatings he felt afraid of +hearing his own history. +"This dungeon," said the concierge, "was, it appears, some +time ago occupied by a very dangerous prisoner, the more so +since he was full of industry. Another person was confined +in the Chateau at the same time, but he was not wicked, he +was only a poor mad priest." +"Ah, indeed? mad" repeated Monte Cristo "and what was +his mania?" +"He offered millions to any one who would set him at +liberty." +Monte Cristo raised his eyes, but he could not see the +heavens there was a stone veil between him and the +firmament. He thought that there had been no less thick a +veil before the eyes of those to whom Faria offered the +treasures. "Could the prisoners see each other?" he asked. +"Oh, no, sir, it was expressly forbidden but they eluded +the vigilance of the guards, and made a passage from one +dungeon to the other." +"And which of them made this passage?" +"Oh, it must have been the young man, certainly, for he was +strong and industrious, while the abbe was aged and weak +besides, his mind was too vacillating to allow him to carry +out an idea." +"Blind fools" murmured the count. +"However, be that as it may, the young man made a tunnel, +how or by what means no one knows but he made it, and there +is the evidence yet remaining of his work. Do you see it?" +and the man held the torch to the wall. +"Ah, yes I see," said the count, in a voice hoarse from +emotion. +"The result was that the two men communicated with one +another how long they did so, nobody knows. One day the old +man fell ill and died. Now guess what the young one did?" +"Tell me." +"He carried off the corpse, which he placed in his own bed +with its face to the wall then he entered the empty +dungeon, closed the entrance, and slipped into the sack +which had contained the dead body. Did you ever hear of such +an idea?" Monte Cristo closed his eyes, and seemed again to +experience all the sensations he had felt when the coarse +canvas, yet moist with the cold dews of death, had touched +his face. The jailer continued "Now this was his project. +He fancied that they buried the dead at the Chateau d'If, +and imagining they would not expend much labor on the grave +of a prisoner, he calculated on raising the earth with his +shoulders, but unfortunately their arrangements at the +Chateau frustrated his projects. They never buried the dead +they merely attached a heavy cannonball to the feet, and +then threw them into the sea. This is what was done. The +young man was thrown from the top of the rock the corpse +was found on the bed next day, and the whole truth was +guessed, for the men who performed the office then mentioned +what they had not dared to speak of before, that at the +moment the corpse was thrown into the deep, they heard a +shriek, which was almost immediately stifled by the water in +which it disappeared." The count breathed with difficulty +the cold drops ran down his forehead, and his heart was full +of anguish. +"No," he muttered, "the doubt I felt was but the +commencement of forgetfulness but here the wound reopens, +and the heart again thirsts for vengeance. And the +prisoner," he continued aloud, "was he ever heard of +afterwards?" +"Oh, no of course not. You can understand that one of two +things must have happened he must either have fallen flat, +in which case the blow, from a height of ninety feet, must +have killed him instantly, or he must have fallen upright, +and then the weight would have dragged him to the bottom, +where he remained poor fellow" +"Then you pity him?" said the count. +"Ma foi, yes though he was in his own element." +"What do you mean?" +"The report was that he had been a naval officer, who had +been confined for plotting with the Bonapartists." +"Great is truth," muttered the count, "fire cannot burn, nor +water drown it Thus the poor sailor lives in the +recollection of those who narrate his history his terrible +story is recited in the chimneycorner, and a shudder is +felt at the description of his transit through the air to be +swallowed by the deep." Then, the count added aloud, "Was +his name ever known?" +"Oh, yes but only as No. ." +"Oh, Villefort, Villefort," murmured the count, "this scene +must often have haunted thy sleepless hours" +"Do you wish to see anything more, sir?" said the concierge. +"Yes, especially if you will show me the poor abbe's room." +"Ah No. ." +"Yes No. ." repeated the count, who seemed to hear the +voice of the abbe answering him in those very words through +the wall when asked his name. +"Come, sir." +"Wait," said Monte Cristo, "I wish to take one final glance +around this room." +"This is fortunate," said the guide "I have forgotten the +other key." +"Go and fetch it." +"I will leave you the torch, sir." +"No, take it away I can see in the dark." +"Why, you are like No. . They said he was so accustomed to +darkness that he could see a pin in the darkest corner of +his dungeon." +"He spent fourteen years to arrive at that," muttered the +count. +The guide carried away the torch. The count had spoken +correctly. Scarcely had a few seconds elapsed, ere he saw +everything as distinctly as by daylight. Then he looked +around him, and really recognized his dungeon. +"Yes," he said, "there is the stone upon which I used to +sit there is the impression made by my shoulders on the +wall there is the mark of my blood made when one day I +dashed my head against the wall. Oh, those figures, how well +I remember them I made them one day to calculate the age of +my father, that I might know whether I should find him still +living, and that of Mercedes, to know if I should find her +still free. After finishing that calculation, I had a +minute's hope. I did not reckon upon hunger and infidelity" +and a bitter laugh escaped the count. He saw in fancy the +burial of his father, and the marriage of Mercedes. On the +other side of the dungeon he perceived an inscription, the +white letters of which were still visible on the green wall. +""O God,'" he read, ""preserve my memory' Oh, yes," he +cried, "that was my only prayer at last I no longer begged +for liberty, but memory I dreaded to become mad and +forgetful. O God, thou hast preserved my memory I thank +thee, I thank thee" At this moment the light of the torch +was reflected on the wall the guide was coming Monte +Cristo went to meet him. +"Follow me, sir" and without ascending the stairs the guide +conducted him by a subterraneous passage to another +entrance. There, again, Monte Cristo was assailed by a +multitude of thoughts. The first thing that met his eye was +the meridian, drawn by the abbe on the wall, by which he +calculated the time then he saw the remains of the bed on +which the poor prisoner had died. The sight of this, instead +of exciting the anguish experienced by the count in the +dungeon, filled his heart with a soft and grateful +sentiment, and tears fell from his eyes. +"This is where the mad abbe was kept, sir, and that is where +the young man entered "and the guide pointed to the +opening, which had remained unclosed. "From the appearance +of the stone," he continued, "a learned gentleman discovered +that the prisoners might have communicated together for ten +years. Poor things Those must have been ten weary years." +Dantes took some louis from his pocket, and gave them to the +man who had twice unconsciously pitied him. The guide took +them, thinking them merely a few pieces of little value but +the light of the torch revealed their true worth. "Sir," he +said, "you have made a mistake you have given me gold." +"I know it." The concierge looked upon the count with +surprise. "Sir," he cried, scarcely able to believe his good +fortune "sir, I cannot understand your generosity" +"Oh, it is very simple, my good fellow I have been a +sailor, and your story touched me more than it would +others." +"Then, sir, since you are so liberal, I ought to offer you +something." +"What have you to offer to me, my friend? Shells? +Strawwork? Thank you" +"No, sir, neither of those something connected with this +story." +"Really? What is it?" +"Listen," said the guide "I said to myself, "Something is +always left in a cell inhabited by one prisoner for fifteen +years,' so I began to sound the wall." +"Ah," cried Monte Cristo, remembering the abbe's two +hidingplaces. +"After some search, I found that the floor gave a hollow +sound near the head of the bed, and at the hearth." +"Yes," said the count, "yes." +"I raised the stones, and found" +"A ropeladder and some tools?" +"How do you know that?" asked the guide in astonishment. +"I do not know I only guess it, because that sort of +thing is generally found in prisoners' cells." +"Yes, sir, a ropeladder and tools." +"And have you them yet?" +"No, sir I sold them to visitors, who considered them great +curiosities but I have still something left." +"What is it?" asked the count, impatiently. +"A sort of book, written upon strips of cloth." +"Go and fetch it, my good fellow and if it be what I hope, +you will do well." +"I will run for it, sir" and the guide went out. Then the +count knelt down by the side of the bed, which death had +converted into an altar. "Oh, second father," he exclaimed, +"thou who hast given me liberty, knowledge, riches thou +who, like beings of a superior order to ourselves, couldst +understand the science of good and evil if in the depths of +the tomb there still remain something within us which can +respond to the voice of those who are left on earth if +after death the soul ever revisit the places where we have +lived and suffered, then, noble heart, sublime soul, then +I conjure thee by the paternal love thou didst bear me, by +the filial obedience I vowed to thee, grant me some sign, +some revelation Remove from me the remains of doubt, which, +if it change not to conviction, must become remorse" The +count bowed his head, and clasped his hands together. +"Here, sir," said a voice behind him. +Monte Cristo shuddered, and arose. The concierge held out +the strips of cloth upon which the Abbe Faria had spread the +riches of his mind. The manuscript was the great work by the +Abbe Faria upon the kingdoms of Italy. The count seized it +hastily, his eyes immediately fell upon the epigraph, and he +read, ""Thou shalt tear out the dragons' teeth, and shall +trample the lions under foot, saith the Lord.'" +"Ah," he exclaimed, "here is my answer. Thanks, father, +thanks." And feeling in his pocket, he took thence a small +pocketbook, which contained ten banknotes, each of , +francs. +"Here," he said, "take this pocketbook." +"Do you give it to me?" +"Yes but only on condition that you will not open it till I +am gone" and placing in his breast the treasure he had just +found, which was more valuable to him than the richest +jewel, he rushed out of the corridor, and reaching his boat, +cried, "To Marseilles" Then, as he departed, he fixed his +eyes upon the gloomy prison. "Woe," he cried, "to those who +confined me in that wretched prison and woe to those who +forgot that I was there" As he repassed the Catalans, the +count turned around and burying his head in his cloak +murmured the name of a woman. The victory was complete +twice he had overcome his doubts. The name he pronounced, in +a voice of tenderness, amounting almost to love, was that of +Haidee. +On landing, the count turned towards the cemetery, where he +felt sure of finding Morrel. He, too, ten years ago, had +piously sought out a tomb, and sought it vainly. He, who +returned to France with millions, had been unable to find +the grave of his father, who had perished from hunger. +Morrel had indeed placed a cross over the spot, but it had +fallen down and the gravedigger had burnt it, as he did all +the old wood in the churchyard. The worthy merchant had been +more fortunate. Dying in the arms of his children, he had +been by them laid by the side of his wife, who had preceded +him in eternity by two years. Two large slabs of marble, on +which were inscribed their names, were placed on either side +of a little enclosure, railed in, and shaded by four +cypresstrees. Morrel was leaning against one of these, +mechanically fixing his eyes on the graves. His grief was so +profound that he was nearly unconscious. "Maximilian," said +the count, "you should not look on the graves, but there" +and he pointed upwards. +"The dead are everywhere," said Morrel "did you not +yourself tell me so as we left Paris?" +"Maximilian," said the count, "you asked me during the +journey to allow you to remain some days at Marseilles. Do +you still wish to do so?" +"I have no wishes, count only I fancy I could pass the time +less painfully here than anywhere else." +"So much the better, for I must leave you but I carry your +word with me, do I not?" +"Ah, count, I shall forget it." +"No, you will not forget it, because you are a man of honor, +Morrel, because you have taken an oath, and are about to do +so again." +"Oh, count, have pity upon me. I am so unhappy." +"I have known a man much more unfortunate than you, Morrel." +"Impossible" +"Alas," said Monte Cristo, "it is the infirmity of our +nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than +those who groan by our sides" +"What can be more wretched than the man who has lost all he +loved and desired in the world?" +"Listen, Morrel, and pay attention to what I am about to +tell you. I knew a man who like you had fixed all his hopes +of happiness upon a woman. He was young, he had an old +father whom he loved, a betrothed bride whom he adored. He +was about to marry her, when one of the caprices of fate, +which would almost make us doubt the goodness of providence, +if that providence did not afterwards reveal itself by +proving that all is but a means of conducting to an end, +one of those caprices deprived him of his mistress, of the +future of which he had dreamed for in his blindness he +forgot he could only read the present, and cast him into a +dungeon." +"Ah," said Morrel, "one quits a dungeon in a week, a month, +or a year." +"He remained there fourteen years, Morrel," said the count, +placing his hand on the young man's shoulder. Maximilian +shuddered. +"Fourteen years" he muttered "Fourteen years" repeated +the count. "During that time he had many moments of despair. +He also, Morrel, like you, considered himself the unhappiest +of men." +"Well?" asked Morrel. +"Well, at the height of his despair God assisted him through +human means. At first, perhaps, he did not recognize the +infinite mercy of the Lord, but at last he took patience and +waited. One day he miraculously left the prison, +transformed, rich, powerful. His first cry was for his +father but that father was dead." +"My father, too, is dead," said Morrel. +"Yes but your father died in your arms, happy, respected, +rich, and full of years his father died poor, despairing, +almost doubtful of providence and when his son sought his +grave ten years afterwards, his tomb had disappeared, and no +one could say, "There sleeps the father you so well loved.'" +"Oh" exclaimed Morrel. +"He was, then, a more unhappy son than you, Morrel, for he +could not even find his father's grave." +"But then he had the woman he loved still remaining?" +"You are deceived, Morrel, that woman" +"She was dead?" +"Worse than that, she was faithless, and had married one of +the persecutors of her betrothed. You see, then, Morrel, +that he was a more unhappy lover than you." +"And has he found consolation?" +"He has at least found peace." +"And does he ever expect to be happy?" +"He hopes so, Maximilian." The young man's head fell on his +breast. +"You have my promise," he said, after a minute's pause, +extending his hand to Monte Cristo. "Only remember" +"On the th of October, Morrel, I shall expect you at the +Island of Monte Cristo. On the th a yacht will wait for you +in the port of Bastia, it will be called the Eurus. You will +give your name to the captain, who will bring you to me. It +is understood is it not?" +"But, count, do you remember that the th of October" +"Child," replied the count, "not to know the value of a +man's word I have told you twenty times that if you wish to +die on that day, I will assist you. Morrel, farewell" +"Do you leave me?" +"Yes I have business in Italy. I leave you alone with your +misfortunes, and with hope, Maximilian." +"When do you leave?" +"Immediately the steamer waits, and in an hour I shall be +far from you. Will you accompany me to the harbor, +Maximilian?" +"I am entirely yours, count." Morrel accompanied the count +to the harbor. The white steam was ascending like a plume of +feathers from the black chimney. The steamer soon +disappeared, and in an hour afterwards, as the count had +said, was scarcely distinguishable in the horizon amidst the +fogs of the night. +Chapter +Peppino. +At the same time that the steamer disappeared behind Cape +Morgion, a man travelling post on the road from Florence to +Rome had just passed the little town of Aquapendente. He was +travelling fast enough to cover a great deal of ground +without exciting suspicion. This man was dressed in a +greatcoat, or rather a surtout, a little worse for the +journey, but which exhibited the ribbon of the Legion of +Honor still fresh and brilliant, a decoration which also +ornamented the under coat. He might be recognized, not only +by these signs, but also from the accent with which he spoke +to the postilion, as a Frenchman. Another proof that he was +a native of the universal country was apparent in the fact +of his knowing no other Italian words than the terms used in +music, and which like the "goddam" of Figaro, served all +possible linguistic requirements. "Allegro" he called out +to the postilions at every ascent. "Moderato" he cried as +they descended. And heaven knows there are hills enough +between Rome and Florence by the way of Aquapendente These +two words greatly amused the men to whom they were +addressed. On reaching La Storta, the point from whence Rome +is first visible, the traveller evinced none of the +enthusiastic curiosity which usually leads strangers to +stand up and endeavor to catch sight of the dome of St. +Peter's, which may be seen long before any other object is +distinguishable. No, he merely drew a pocketbook from his +pocket, and took from it a paper folded in four, and after +having examined it in a manner almost reverential, he said +"Good I have it still" +The carriage entered by the Porto del Popolo, turned to the +left, and stopped at the Hotel d'Espagne. Old Pastrini, our +former acquaintance, received the traveller at the door, hat +in hand. The traveller alighted, ordered a good dinner, and +inquired the address of the house of Thomson French, which +was immediately given to him, as it was one of the most +celebrated in Rome. It was situated in the Via dei Banchi, +near St. Peter's. In Rome, as everywhere else, the arrival +of a postchaise is an event. Ten young descendants of +Marius and the Gracchi, barefooted and out at elbows, with +one hand resting on the hip and the other gracefully curved +above the head, stared at the traveller, the postchaise, +and the horses to these were added about fifty little +vagabonds from the Papal States, who earned a pittance by +diving into the Tiber at high water from the bridge of St. +Angelo. Now, as these street Arabs of Rome, more fortunate +than those of Paris, understand every language, more +especially the French, they heard the traveller order an +apartment, a dinner, and finally inquire the way to the +house of Thomson French. The result was that when the +newcomer left the hotel with the cicerone, a man detached +himself from the rest of the idlers, and without having been +seen by the traveller, and appearing to excite no attention +from the guide, followed the stranger with as much skill as +a Parisian police agent would have used. +The Frenchman had been so impatient to reach the house of +Thomson French that he would not wait for the horses to be +harnessed, but left word for the carriage to overtake him on +the road, or to wait for him at the bankers' door. He +reached it before the carriage arrived. The Frenchman +entered, leaving in the anteroom his guide, who immediately +entered into conversation with two or three of the +industrious idlers who are always to be found in Rome at the +doors of bankinghouses, churches, museums, or theatres. +With the Frenchman, the man who had followed him entered +too the Frenchman knocked at the inner door, and entered +the first room his shadow did the same. +"Messrs. Thomson French?" inquired the stranger. +An attendant arose at a sign from a confidential clerk at +the first desk. "Whom shall I announce?" said the attendant. +"Baron Danglars." +"Follow me," said the man. A door opened, through which the +attendant and the baron disappeared. The man who had +followed Danglars sat down on a bench. The clerk continued +to write for the next five minutes the man preserved +profound silence, and remained perfectly motionless. Then +the pen of the clerk ceased to move over the paper he +raised his head, and appearing to be perfectly sure of +privacy, "Ah, ha," he said, "here you are, Peppino" +"Yes," was the laconic reply. "You have found out that there +is something worth having about this large gentleman?" +"There is no great merit due to me, for we were informed of +it." +"You know his business here, then." +"Pardieu, he has come to draw, but I don't know how much" +"You will know presently, my friend." +"Very well, only do not give me false information as you did +the other day." +"What do you mean? of whom do you speak? Was it the +Englishman who carried off , crowns from here the other +day?" +"No he really had , crowns, and we found them. I mean +the Russian prince, who you said had , livres, and we +only found ,." +"You must have searched badly." +"Luigi Vampa himself searched." +"Indeed? But you must let me make my observations, or the +Frenchman will transact his business without my knowing the +sum." Peppino nodded, and taking a rosary from his pocket +began to mutter a few prayers while the clerk disappeared +through the same door by which Danglars and the attendant +had gone out. At the expiration of ten minutes the clerk +returned with a beaming countenance. "Well?" asked Peppino +of his friend. +"Joy, joy the sum is large" +"Five or six millions, is it not?" +"Yes, you know the amount." +"On the receipt of the Count of Monte Cristo?" +"Why, how came you to be so well acquainted with all this?" +"I told you we were informed beforehand." +"Then why do you apply to me?" +"That I may be sure I have the right man." +"Yes, it is indeed he. Five millions a pretty sum, eh, +Peppino?" +"Hush here is our man" The clerk seized his pen, and +Peppino his beads one was writing and the other praying +when the door opened. Danglars looked radiant with joy the +banker accompanied him to the door. Peppino followed +Danglars. +According to the arrangements, the carriage was waiting at +the door. The guide held the door open. Guides are useful +people, who will turn their hands to anything. Danglars +leaped into the carriage like a young man of twenty. The +cicerone reclosed the door, and sprang up by the side of the +coachman. Peppino mounted the seat behind. +"Will your excellency visit St. Peter's?" asked the +cicerone. +"I did not come to Rome to see," said Danglars aloud then +he added softly, with an avaricious smile, "I came to +touch" and he rapped his pocketbook, in which he had just +placed a letter. +"Then your excellency is going" +"To the hotel." +"Casa Pastrini" said the cicerone to the coachman, and the +carriage drove rapidly on. Ten minutes afterwards the baron +entered his apartment, and Peppino stationed himself on the +bench outside the door of the hotel, after having whispered +something in the ear of one of the descendants of Marius and +the Gracchi whom we noticed at the beginning of the chapter, +who immediately ran down the road leading to the Capitol at +his fullest speed. Danglars was tired and sleepy he +therefore went to bed, placing his pocketbook under his +pillow. Peppino had a little spare time, so he had a game of +mora with the facchini, lost three crowns, and then to +console himself drank a bottle of Orvieto. +The next morning Danglars awoke late, though he went to bed +so early he had not slept well for five or six nights, even +if he had slept at all. He breakfasted heartily, and caring +little, as he said, for the beauties of the Eternal City, +ordered posthorses at noon. But Danglars had not reckoned +upon the formalities of the police and the idleness of the +postingmaster. The horses only arrived at two o'clock, and +the cicerone did not bring the passport till three. All +these preparations had collected a number of idlers round +the door of Signor Pastrini's the descendants of Marius and +the Gracchi were also not wanting. The baron walked +triumphantly through the crowd, who for the sake of gain +styled him "your excellency." As Danglars had hitherto +contented himself with being called a baron, he felt rather +flattered at the title of excellency, and distributed a +dozen silver coins among the beggars, who were ready, for +twelve more, to call him "your highness." +"Which road?" asked the postilion in Italian. "The Ancona +road," replied the baron. Signor Pastrini interpreted the +question and answer, and the horses galloped off. Danglars +intended travelling to Venice, where he would receive one +part of his fortune, and then proceeding to Vienna, where he +would find the rest, he meant to take up his residence in +the latter town, which he had been told was a city of +pleasure. +He had scarcely advanced three leagues out of Rome when +daylight began to disappear. Danglars had not intended +starting so late, or he would have remained he put his head +out and asked the postilion how long it would be before they +reached the next town. "Non capisco" do not understand, +was the reply. Danglars bent his head, which he meant to +imply, "Very well." The carriage again moved on. "I will +stop at the first postinghouse," said Danglars to himself. +He still felt the same selfsatisfaction which he had +experienced the previous evening, and which had procured him +so good a night's rest. He was luxuriously stretched in a +good English calash, with double springs he was drawn by +four good horses, at full gallop he knew the relay to be at +a distance of seven leagues. What subject of meditation +could present itself to the banker, so fortunately become +bankrupt? +Danglars thought for ten minutes about his wife in Paris +another ten minutes about his daughter travelling with +Mademoiselle d'Armilly the same period was given to his +creditors, and the manner in which he intended spending +their money and then, having no subject left for +contemplation, he shut his eyes, and fell asleep. Now and +then a jolt more violent than the rest caused him to open +his eyes then he felt that he was still being carried with +great rapidity over the same country, thickly strewn with +broken aqueducts, which looked like granite giants petrified +while running a race. But the night was cold, dull, and +rainy, and it was much more pleasant for a traveller to +remain in the warm carriage than to put his head out of the +window to make inquiries of a postilion whose only answer +was "Non capisco." +Danglars therefore continued to sleep, saying to himself +that he would be sure to awake at the postinghouse. The +carriage stopped. Danglars fancied that they had reached the +longdesired point he opened his eyes and looked through +the window, expecting to find himself in the midst of some +town, or at least village but he saw nothing except what +seemed like a ruin, where three or four men went and came +like shadows. Danglars waited a moment, expecting the +postilion to come and demand payment with the termination of +his stage. He intended taking advantage of the opportunity +to make fresh inquiries of the new conductor but the horses +were unharnessed, and others put in their places, without +any one claiming money from the traveller. Danglars, +astonished, opened the door but a strong hand pushed him +back, and the carriage rolled on. The baron was completely +roused. "Eh?" he said to the postilion, "eh, mio caro?" +This was another little piece of Italian the baron had +learned from hearing his daughter sing Italian duets with +Cavalcanti. But mio caro did not reply. Danglars then opened +the window. +"Come, my friend," he said, thrusting his hand through the +opening, "where are we going?" +"Dentro la testa" answered a solemn and imperious voice, +accompanied by a menacing gesture. Danglars thought dentro +la testa meant, "Put in your head" He was making rapid +progress in Italian. He obeyed, not without some uneasiness, +which, momentarily increasing, caused his mind, instead of +being as unoccupied as it was when he began his journey, to +fill with ideas which were very likely to keep a traveller +awake, more especially one in such a situation as Danglars. +His eyes acquired that quality which in the first moment of +strong emotion enables them to see distinctly, and which +afterwards fails from being too much taxed. Before we are +alarmed, we see correctly when we are alarmed, we see +double and when we have been alarmed, we see nothing but +trouble. Danglars observed a man in a cloak galloping at the +right hand of the carriage. +"Some gendarme" he exclaimed. "Can I have been intercepted +by French telegrams to the pontifical authorities?" He +resolved to end his anxiety. "Where are you taking me?" he +asked. "Dentro la testa," replied the same voice, with the +same menacing accent. +Danglars turned to the left another man on horseback was +galloping on that side. "Decidedly," said Danglars, with the +perspiration on his forehead, "I must be under arrest." And +he threw himself back in the calash, not this time to sleep, +but to think. Directly afterwards the moon rose. He then saw +the great aqueducts, those stone phantoms which he had +before remarked, only then they were on the right hand, now +they were on the left. He understood that they had described +a circle, and were bringing him back to Rome. "Oh, +unfortunate" he cried, "they must have obtained my arrest." +The carriage continued to roll on with frightful speed. An +hour of terror elapsed, for every spot they passed showed +that they were on the road back. At length he saw a dark +mass, against which it seemed as if the carriage was about +to dash but the vehicle turned to one side, leaving the +barrier behind and Danglars saw that it was one of the +ramparts encircling Rome. +"Mon dieu" cried Danglars, "we are not returning to Rome +then it is not justice which is pursuing me Gracious +heavens another idea presents itself what if they should +be" +His hair stood on end. He remembered those interesting +stories, so little believed in Paris, respecting Roman +bandits he remembered the adventures that Albert de Morcerf +had related when it was intended that he should marry +Mademoiselle Eugenie. "They are robbers, perhaps," he +muttered. Just then the carriage rolled on something harder +than gravel road. Danglars hazarded a look on both sides of +the road, and perceived monuments of a singular form, and +his mind now recalled all the details Morcerf had related, +and comparing them with his own situation, he felt sure that +he must be on the Appian Way. On the left, in a sort of +valley, he perceived a circular excavation. It was +Caracalla's circus. On a word from the man who rode at the +side of the carriage, it stopped. At the same time the door +was opened. "Scendi" exclaimed a commanding voice. Danglars +instantly descended although he did not yet speak Italian, +he understood it very well. More dead than alive, he looked +around him. Four men surrounded him, besides the postilion. +"Di qua," said one of the men, descending a little path +leading out of the Appian Way. Danglars followed his guide +without opposition, and had no occasion to turn around to +see whether the three others were following him. Still it +appeared as though they were stationed at equal distances +from one another, like sentinels. After walking for about +ten minutes, during which Danglars did not exchange a single +word with his guide, he found himself between a hillock and +a clump of high weeds three men, standing silent, formed a +triangle, of which he was the centre. He wished to speak, +but his tongue refused to move. "Avanti" said the same +sharp and imperative voice. +This time Danglars had double reason to understand, for if +the word and gesture had not explained the speaker's +meaning, it was clearly expressed by the man walking behind +him, who pushed him so rudely that he struck against the +guide. This guide was our friend Peppino, who dashed into +the thicket of high weeds, through a path which none but +lizards or polecats could have imagined to be an open road. +Peppino stopped before a pit overhung by thick hedges the +pit, half open, afforded a passage to the young man, who +disappeared like the evil spirits in the fairy tales. The +voice and gesture of the man who followed Danglars ordered +him to do the same. There was no longer any doubt, the +bankrupt was in the hands of Roman banditti. Danglars +acquitted himself like a man placed between two dangerous +positions, and who is rendered brave by fear. +Notwithstanding his large stomach, certainly not intended to +penetrate the fissures of the Campagna, he slid down like +Peppino, and closing his eyes fell upon his feet. As he +touched the ground, he opened his eyes. The path was wide, +but dark. Peppino, who cared little for being recognized now +that he was in his own territories, struck a light and lit a +torch. Two other men descended after Danglars forming the +rearguard, and pushing Danglars whenever he happened to +stop, they came by a gentle declivity to the intersection of +two corridors. The walls were hollowed out in sepulchres, +one above the other, and which seemed in contrast with the +white stones to open their large dark eyes, like those which +we see on the faces of the dead. A sentinel struck the rings +of his carbine against his left hand. "Who comes there?" he +cried. +"A friend, a friend" said Peppino "but where is the +captain?" +"There," said the sentinel, pointing over his shoulder to a +spacious crypt, hollowed out of the rock, the lights from +which shone into the passage through the large arched +openings. "Fine spoil, captain, fine spoil" said Peppino in +Italian, and taking Danglars by the collar of his coat he +dragged him to an opening resembling a door, through which +they entered the apartment which the captain appeared to +have made his dwellingplace. +"Is this the man?" asked the captain, who was attentively +reading Plutarch's "Life of Alexander." +"Himself, captain himself." +"Very well, show him to me." At this rather impertinent +order, Peppino raised his torch to the face of Danglars, who +hastily withdrew that he might not have his eyelashes burnt. +His agitated features presented the appearance of pale and +hideous terror. "The man is tired," said the captain, +"conduct him to his bed." +"Oh," murmured Danglars," that bed is probably one of the +coffins hollowed in the wall, and the sleep I shall enjoy +will be death from one of the poniards I see glistening in +the darkness." +From their beds of dried leaves or wolfskins at the back of +the chamber now arose the companions of the man who had been +found by Albert de Morcerf reading "Caesar's Commentaries," +and by Danglars studying the "Life of Alexander." The banker +uttered a groan and followed his guide he neither +supplicated nor exclaimed. He no longer possessed strength, +will, power, or feeling he followed where they led him. At +length he found himself at the foot of a staircase, and he +mechanically lifted his foot five or six times. Then a low +door was opened before him, and bending his head to avoid +striking his forehead he entered a small room cut out of the +rock. The cell was clean, though empty, and dry, though +situated at an immeasurable distance under the earth. A bed +of dried grass covered with goatskins was placed in one +corner. Danglars brightened up on beholding it, fancying +that it gave some promise of safety. "Oh, God be praised," +he said "it is a real bed" +"Ecco" said the guide, and pushing Danglars into the cell, +he closed the door upon him. A bolt grated and Danglars was +a prisoner. If there had been no bolt, it would have been +impossible for him to pass through the midst of the garrison +who held the catacombs of St. Sebastian, encamped round a +master whom our readers must have recognized as the famous +Luigi Vampa. Danglars, too, had recognized the bandit, whose +existence he would not believe when Albert de Morcerf +mentioned him in Paris and not only did he recognize him, +but the cell in which Albert had been confined, and which +was probably kept for the accommodation of strangers. These +recollections were dwelt upon with some pleasure by +Danglars, and restored him to some degree of tranquillity. +Since the bandits had not despatched him at once, he felt +that they would not kill him at all. They had arrested him +for the purpose of robbery, and as he had only a few louis +about him, he doubted not he would be ransomed. He +remembered that Morcerf had been taxed at , crowns, and +as he considered himself of much greater importance than +Morcerf he fixed his own price at , crowns. Eight +thousand crowns amounted to , livres he would then +have about ,, francs left. With this sum he could +manage to keep out of difficulties. Therefore, tolerably +secure in being able to extricate himself from his position, +provided he were not rated at the unreasonable sum of +,, francs, he stretched himself on his bed, and after +turning over two or three times, fell asleep with the +tranquillity of the hero whose life Luigi Vampa was +studying. +Chapter +Luigi Vampa's Bill of Fare. +We awake from every sleep except the one dreaded by +Danglars. He awoke. To a Parisian accustomed to silken +curtains, walls hung with velvet drapery, and the soft +perfume of burning wood, the white smoke of which diffuses +itself in graceful curves around the room, the appearance of +the whitewashed cell which greeted his eyes on awakening +seemed like the continuation of some disagreeable dream. But +in such a situation a single moment suffices to change the +strongest doubt into certainty. "Yes, yes," he murmured, "I +am in the hands of the brigands of whom Albert de Morcerf +spoke." His first idea was to breathe, that he might know +whether he was wounded. He borrowed this from "Don Quixote," +the only book he had ever read, but which he still slightly +remembered. +"No," he cried, "they have not wounded, but perhaps they +have robbed me" and he thrust his hands into his pockets. +They were untouched the hundred louis he had reserved for +his journey from Rome to Venice were in his trousers pocket, +and in that of his greatcoat he found the little notecase +containing his letter of credit for ,, francs. +"Singular bandits" he exclaimed "they have left me my +purse and pocketbook. As I was saying last night, they +intend me to be ransomed. Hallo, here is my watch Let me +see what time it is." Danglars' watch, one of Breguet's +repeaters, which he had carefully wound up on the previous +night, struck half past five. Without this, Danglars would +have been quite ignorant of the time, for daylight did not +reach his cell. Should he demand an explanation from the +bandits, or should he wait patiently for them to propose it? +The last alternative seemed the most prudent, so he waited +until twelve o'clock. During all this time a sentinel, who +had been relieved at eight o'clock, had been watching his +door. Danglars suddenly felt a strong inclination to see the +person who kept watch over him. He had noticed that a few +rays, not of daylight, but from a lamp, penetrated through +the illjoined planks of the door he approached just as the +brigand was refreshing himself with a mouthful of brandy, +which, owing to the leathern bottle containing it, sent +forth an odor which was extremely unpleasant to Danglars. +"Faugh" he exclaimed, retreating to the farther corner of +his cell. +At twelve this man was replaced by another functionary, and +Danglars, wishing to catch sight of his new guardian, +approached the door again. He was an athletic, gigantic +bandit, with large eyes, thick lips, and a flat nose his +red hair fell in dishevelled masses like snakes around his +shoulders. "Ah, ha," cried Danglars, "this fellow is more +like an ogre than anything else however, I am rather too +old and tough to be very good eating" We see that Danglars +was collected enough to jest at the same time, as though to +disprove the ogreish propensities, the man took some black +bread, cheese, and onions from his wallet, which he began +devouring voraciously. "May I be hanged," said Danglars, +glancing at the bandit's dinner through the crevices of the +door, "may I be hanged if I can understand how people can +eat such filth" and he withdrew to seat himself upon his +goatskin, which reminded him of the smell of the brandy. +But the mysteries of nature are incomprehensible, and there +are certain invitations contained in even the coarsest food +which appeal very irresistibly to a fasting stomach. +Danglars felt his own not to be very well supplied just +then, and gradually the man appeared less ugly, the bread +less black, and the cheese more fresh, while those dreadful +vulgar onions recalled to his mind certain sauces and +sidedishes, which his cook prepared in a very superior +manner whenever he said, "Monsieur Deniseau, let me have a +nice little fricassee today." He got up and knocked on the +door the bandit raised his head. Danglars knew that he was +heard, so he redoubled his blows. "Che cosa?" asked the +bandit. "Come, come," said Danglars, tapping his fingers +against the door, "I think it is quite time to think of +giving me something to eat" But whether he did not +understand him, or whether he had received no orders +respecting the nourishment of Danglars, the giant, without +answering, went on with his dinner. Danglars' feelings were +hurt, and not wishing to put himself under obligations to +the brute, the banker threw himself down again on his +goatskin and did not breathe another word. +Four hours passed by and the giant was replaced by another +bandit. Danglars, who really began to experience sundry +gnawings at the stomach, arose softly, again applied his eye +to the crack of the door, and recognized the intelligent +countenance of his guide. It was, indeed, Peppino who was +preparing to mount guard as comfortably as possible by +seating himself opposite to the door, and placing between +his legs an earthen pan, containing chickpease stewed with +bacon. Near the pan he also placed a pretty little basket of +Villetri grapes and a flask of Orvieto. Peppino was +decidedly an epicure. Danglars watched these preparations +and his mouth watered. "Come," he said to himself, "let me +try if he will be more tractable than the other" and he +tapped gently at the door. "On y va," coming exclaimed +Peppino, who from frequenting the house of Signor Pastrini +understood French perfectly in all its idioms. +Danglars immediately recognized him as the man who had +called out in such a furious manner, "Put in your head" But +this was not the time for recrimination, so he assumed his +most agreeable manner and said with a gracious smile, +"Excuse me, sir, but are they not going to give me any +dinner?" +"Does your excellency happen to be hungry?" +"Happen to be hungry, that's pretty good, when I haven't +eaten for twentyfour hours" muttered Danglars. Then he +added aloud, "Yes, sir, I am hungry very hungry." +"What would your excellency like?" and Peppino placed his +pan on the ground, so that the steam rose directly under the +nostrils of Danglars. "Give your orders." +"Have you kitchens here?" +"Kitchens? of course complete ones." +"And cooks?" +"Excellent" +"Well, a fowl, fish, game, it signifies little, so that I +eat." +"As your excellency pleases. You mentioned a fowl, I think?" +"Yes, a fowl." Peppino, turning around, shouted, "A fowl for +his excellency" His voice yet echoed in the archway when a +handsome, graceful, and halfnaked young man appeared, +bearing a fowl in a silver dish on his head, without the +assistance of his hands. "I could almost believe myself at +the Cafe de Paris," murmured Danglars. +"Here, your excellency," said Peppino, taking the fowl from +the young bandit and placing it on the wormeaten table, +which with the stool and the goatskin bed formed the entire +furniture of the cell. Danglars asked for a knife and fork. +"Here, excellency," said Peppino, offering him a little +blunt knife and a boxwood fork. Danglars took the knife in +one hand and the fork in the other, and was about to cut up +the fowl. "Pardon me, excellency," said Peppino, placing his +hand on the banker's shoulder "people pay here before they +eat. They might not be satisfied, and" +"Ah, ha," thought Danglars, "this is not so much like Paris, +except that I shall probably be skinned Never mind, I'll +fix that all right. I have always heard how cheap poultry is +in Italy I should think a fowl is worth about twelve sous +at Rome. There," he said, throwing a louis down. Peppino +picked up the louis, and Danglars again prepared to carve +the fowl. "Stay a moment, your excellency," said Peppino, +rising "you still owe me something." +"I said they would skin me," thought Danglars but resolving +to resist the extortion, he said, "Come, how much do I owe +you for this fowl?" +"Your excellency has given me a louis on account." +"A louis on account for a fowl?" +"Certainly and your excellency now owes me , louis." +Danglars opened his enormous eyes on hearing this gigantic +joke. "Come, come, this is very droll very amusing I +allow but, as I am very hungry, pray allow me to eat. Stay, +here is another louis for you." +"Then that will make only , louis more," said Peppino +with the same indifference. "I shall get them all in time." +"Oh, as for that," said Danglars, angry at this prolongation +of the jest, "as for that you won't get them at all. Go +to the devil You do not know with whom you have to deal" +Peppino made a sign, and the youth hastily removed the fowl. +Danglars threw himself upon his goatskin, and Peppino, +reclosing the door, again began eating his pease and bacon. +Though Danglars could not see Peppino, the noise of his +teeth allowed no doubt as to his occupation. He was +certainly eating, and noisily too, like an illbred man. +"Brute" said Danglars. Peppino pretended not to hear him, +and without even turning his head continued to eat slowly. +Danglars' stomach felt so empty, that it seemed as if it +would be impossible ever to fill it again still he had +patience for another halfhour, which appeared to him like a +century. He again arose and went to the door. "Come, sir, do +not keep me starving here any longer, but tell me what they +want." +"Nay, your excellency, it is you who should tell us what you +want. Give your orders, and we will execute them." +"Then open the door directly." Peppino obeyed. "Now look +here, I want something to eat To eat do you hear?" +"Are you hungry?" +"Come, you understand me." +"What would your excellency like to eat?" +"A piece of dry bread, since the fowls are beyond all price +in this accursed place." +"Bread? Very well. Hallo, there, some bread" he called. The +youth brought a small loaf. "How much?" asked Danglars. +"Four thousand nine hundred and ninetyeight louis," said +Peppino "You have paid two louis in advance." +"What? One hundred thousand francs for a loaf?" +"One hundred thousand francs," repeated Peppino. +"But you only asked , francs for a fowl" +"We have a fixed price for all our provisions. It signifies +nothing whether you eat much or little whether you have +ten dishes or one it is always the same price." +"What, still keeping up this silly jest? My dear fellow, it +is perfectly ridiculous stupid You had better tell me at +once that you intend starving me to death." +"Oh, dear, no, your excellency, unless you intend to commit +suicide. Pay and eat." +"And what am I to pay with, brute?" said Danglars, enraged. +"Do you suppose I carry , francs in my pocket?" +"Your excellency has ,, francs in your pocket that +will be fifty fowls at , francs apiece, and half a +fowl for the ,." +Danglars shuddered. The bandage fell from his eyes, and he +understood the joke, which he did not think quite so stupid +as he had done just before. "Come," he said, "if I pay you +the , francs, will you be satisfied, and allow me to +eat at my ease?" +"Certainly," said Peppino. +"But how can I pay them?" +"Oh, nothing easier you have an account open with Messrs. +Thomson French, Via dei Banchi, Rome give me a draft for +, louis on these gentlemen, and our banker shall take +it." Danglars thought it as well to comply with a good +grace, so he took the pen, ink, and paper Peppino offered +him, wrote the draft, and signed it. "Here," he said, "here +is a draft at sight." +"And here is your fowl." Danglars sighed while he carved the +fowl it appeared very thin for the price it had cost. As +for Peppino, he examined the paper attentively, put it into +his pocket, and continued eating his pease. +Chapter +The Pardon. +The next day Danglars was again hungry certainly the air of +that dungeon was very provocative of appetite. The prisoner +expected that he would be at no expense that day, for like +an economical man he had concealed half of his fowl and a +piece of the bread in the corner of his cell. But he had no +sooner eaten than he felt thirsty he had forgotten that. He +struggled against his thirst till his tongue clave to the +roof of his mouth then, no longer able to resist, he called +out. The sentinel opened the door it was a new face. He +thought it would be better to transact business with his old +acquaintance, so he sent for Peppino. "Here I am, your +excellency," said Peppino, with an eagerness which Danglars +thought favorable to him. "What do you want?" +"Something to drink." +"Your excellency knows that wine is beyond all price near +Rome." +"Then give me water," cried Danglars, endeavoring to parry +the blow. +"Oh, water is even more scarce than wine, your excellency, +there has been such a drought." +"Come," thought Danglars, "it is the same old story." And +while he smiled as he attempted to regard the affair as a +joke, he felt his temples get moist with perspiration. +"Come, my friend," said Danglars, seeing that he made no +impression on Peppino, "you will not refuse me a glass of +wine?" +"I have already told you that we do not sell at retail." +"Well, then, let me have a bottle of the least expensive." +"They are all the same price." +"And what is that?" +"Twentyfive thousand francs a bottle." +"Tell me," cried Danglars, in a tone whose bitterness +Harpagon alone has been capable of revealing "tell me +that you wish to despoil me of all it will be sooner over +than devouring me piecemeal." + The miser in Moliere's comedy of "L'Avare." Ed. +"It is possible such may be the master's intention." +"The master? who is he?" +"The person to whom you were conducted yesterday." +"Where is he?" +"Here." +"Let me see him." +"Certainly." And the next moment Luigi Vampa appeared before +Danglars. +"You sent for me?" he said to the prisoner. +"Are you, sir, the chief of the people who brought me here?" +"Yes, your excellency. What then?" +"How much do you require for my ransom?" +"Merely the ,, you have about you." Danglars felt a +dreadful spasm dart through his heart. "But this is all I +have left in the world," he said, "out of an immense +fortune. If you deprive me of that, take away my life also." +"We are forbidden to shed your blood." +"And by whom are you forbidden?" +"By him we obey." +"You do, then, obey some one?" +"Yes, a chief." +"I thought you said you were the chief?" +"So I am of these men but there is another over me." +"And did your superior order you to treat me in this way?" +"Yes." +"But my purse will be exhausted." +"Probably." +"Come," said Danglars, "will you take a million?" +"No." +"Two millions? three? four? Come, four? I will give +them to you on condition that you let me go." +"Why do you offer me ,, for what is worth ,,? +This is a kind of usury, banker, that I do not understand." +"Take all, then take all, I tell you, and kill me" +"Come, come, calm yourself. You will excite your blood, and +that would produce an appetite it would require a million a +day to satisfy. Be more economical." +"But when I have no more money left to pay you?" asked the +infuriated Danglars. +"Then you must suffer hunger." +"Suffer hunger?" said Danglars, becoming pale. +"Most likely," replied Vampa coolly. +"But you say you do not wish to kill me?" +"No." +"And yet you will let me perish with hunger?" +"Ah, that is a different thing." +"Well, then, wretches," cried Danglars, "I will defy your +infamous calculations I would rather die at once You may +torture, torment, kill me, but you shall not have my +signature again" +"As your excellency pleases," said Vampa, as he left the +cell. Danglars, raving, threw himself on the goatskin. Who +could these men be? Who was the invisible chief? What could +be his intentions towards him? And why, when every one else +was allowed to be ransomed, might he not also be? Oh, yes +certainly a speedy, violent death would be a fine means of +deceiving these remorseless enemies, who appeared to pursue +him with such incomprehensible vengeance. But to die? For +the first time in his life, Danglars contemplated death with +a mixture of dread and desire the time had come when the +implacable spectre, which exists in the mind of every human +creature, arrested his attention and called out with every +pulsation of his heart, "Thou shalt die" +Danglars resembled a timid animal excited in the chase +first it flies, then despairs, and at last, by the very +force of desperation, sometimes succeeds in eluding its +pursuers. Danglars meditated an escape but the walls were +solid rock, a man was sitting reading at the only outlet to +the cell, and behind that man shapes armed with guns +continually passed. His resolution not to sign lasted two +days, after which he offered a million for some food. They +sent him a magnificent supper, and took his million. +From this time the prisoner resolved to suffer no longer, +but to have everything he wanted. At the end of twelve days, +after having made a splendid dinner, he reckoned his +accounts, and found that he had only , francs left. +Then a strange reaction took place he who had just +abandoned ,, endeavored to save the , francs he +had left, and sooner than give them up he resolved to enter +again upon a life of privation he was deluded by the +hopefulness that is a premonition of madness. He who for so +long a time had forgotten God, began to think that miracles +were possible that the accursed cavern might be +discovered by the officers of the Papal States, who would +release him that then he would have , remaining, which +would be sufficient to save him from starvation and finally +he prayed that this sum might be preserved to him, and as he +prayed he wept. Three days passed thus, during which his +prayers were frequent, if not heartfelt. Sometimes he was +delirious, and fancied he saw an old man stretched on a +pallet he, also, was dying of hunger. +On the fourth, he was no longer a man, but a living corpse. +He had picked up every crumb that had been left from his +former meals, and was beginning to eat the matting which +covered the floor of his cell. Then he entreated Peppino, as +he would a guardian angel, to give him food he offered him +, francs for a mouthful of bread. But Peppino did not +answer. On the fifth day he dragged himself to the door of +the cell. +"Are you not a Christian?" he said, falling on his knees. +"Do you wish to assassinate a man who, in the eyes of +heaven, is a brother? Oh, my former friends, my former +friends" he murmured, and fell with his face to the ground. +Then rising in despair, he exclaimed, "The chief, the +chief" +"Here I am," said Vampa, instantly appearing "what do you +want?" +"Take my last gold," muttered Danglars, holding out his +pocketbook, "and let me live here I ask no more for +liberty I only ask to live" +"Then you suffer a great deal?" +"Oh, yes, yes, cruelly" +"Still, there have been men who suffered more than you." +"I do not think so." +"Yes those who have died of hunger." +Danglars thought of the old man whom, in his hours of +delirium, he had seen groaning on his bed. He struck his +forehead on the ground and groaned. "Yes," he said, "there +have been some who have suffered more than I have, but then +they must have been martyrs at least." +"Do you repent?" asked a deep, solemn voice, which caused +Danglars' hair to stand on end. His feeble eyes endeavored +to distinguish objects, and behind the bandit he saw a man +enveloped in a cloak, half lost in the shadow of a stone +column. +"Of what must I repent?" stammered Danglars. +"Of the evil you have done," said the voice. +"Oh, yes oh, yes, I do indeed repent." And he struck his +breast with his emaciated fist. +"Then I forgive you," said the man, dropping his cloak, and +advancing to the light. +"The Count of Monte Cristo" said Danglars, more pale from +terror than he had been just before from hunger and misery. +"You are mistaken I am not the Count of Monte Cristo." +"Then who are you?" +"I am he whom you sold and dishonored I am he whose +betrothed you prostituted I am he upon whom you trampled +that you might raise yourself to fortune I am he whose +father you condemned to die of hunger I am he whom you +also condemned to starvation, and who yet forgives you, +because he hopes to be forgiven I am Edmond Dantes" +Danglars uttered a cry, and fell prostrate. "Rise," said the +count, "your life is safe the same good fortune has not +happened to your accomplices one is mad, the other dead. +Keep the , francs you have left I give them to you. +The ,, you stole from the hospitals has been restored +to them by an unknown hand. And now eat and drink I will +entertain you tonight. Vampa, when this man is satisfied, +let him be free." Danglars remained prostrate while the +count withdrew when he raised his head he saw disappearing +down the passage nothing but a shadow, before which the +bandits bowed. According to the count's directions, Danglars +was waited on by Vampa, who brought him the best wine and +fruits of Italy then, having conducted him to the road, and +pointed to the postchaise, left him leaning against a tree. +He remained there all night, not knowing where he was. When +daylight dawned he saw that he was near a stream he was +thirsty, and dragged himself towards it. As he stooped down +to drink, he saw that his hair had become entirely white. +Chapter +The Fifth of October. +It was about six o'clock in the evening an opalcolored +light, through which an autumnal sun shed its golden rays, +descended on the blue ocean. The heat of the day had +gradually decreased, and a light breeze arose, seeming like +the respiration of nature on awakening from the burning +siesta of the south. A delicious zephyr played along the +coasts of the Mediterranean, and wafted from shore to shore +the sweet perfume of plants, mingled with the fresh smell of +the sea. +A light yacht, chaste and elegant in its form, was gliding +amidst the first dews of night over the immense lake, +extending from Gibraltar to the Dardanelles, and from Tunis +to Venice. The vessel resembled a swan with its wings opened +towards the wind, gliding on the water. It advanced swiftly +and gracefully, leaving behind it a glittering stretch of +foam. By degrees the sun disappeared behind the western +horizon but as though to prove the truth of the fanciful +ideas in heathen mythology, its indiscreet rays reappeared +on the summit of every wave, as if the god of fire had just +sunk upon the bosom of Amphitrite, who in vain endeavored to +hide her lover beneath her azure mantle. The yacht moved +rapidly on, though there did not appear to be sufficient +wind to ruffle the curls on the head of a young girl. +Standing on the prow was a tall man, of a dark complexion, +who saw with dilating eyes that they were approaching a dark +mass of land in the shape of a cone, which rose from the +midst of the waves like the hat of a Catalan. "Is that Monte +Cristo?" asked the traveller, to whose orders the yacht was +for the time submitted, in a melancholy voice. +"Yes, your excellency," said the captain, "we have reached +it." +"We have reached it" repeated the traveller in an accent of +indescribable sadness. Then he added, in a low tone, "Yes +that is the haven." And then he again plunged into a train +of thought, the character of which was better revealed by a +sad smile, than it would have been by tears. A few minutes +afterwards a flash of light, which was extinguished +instantly, was seen on the land, and the sound of firearms +reached the yacht. +"Your excellency," said the captain, "that was the land +signal, will you answer yourself?" +"What signal?" The captain pointed towards the island, up +the side of which ascended a volume of smoke, increasing as +it rose. "Ah, yes," he said, as if awaking from a dream. +"Give it to me." +The captain gave him a loaded carbine the traveller slowly +raised it, and fired in the air. Ten minutes afterwards, the +sails were furled, and they cast anchor about a hundred +fathoms from the little harbor. The gig was already lowered, +and in it were four oarsmen and a coxswain. The traveller +descended, and instead of sitting down at the stern of the +boat, which had been decorated with a blue carpet for his +accommodation, stood up with his arms crossed. The rowers +waited, their oars half lifted out of the water, like birds +drying their wings. +"Give way," said the traveller. The eight oars fell into the +sea simultaneously without splashing a drop of water, and +the boat, yielding to the impulsion, glided forward. In an +instant they found themselves in a little harbor, formed in +a natural creek the boat grounded on the fine sand. +"Will your excellency be so good as to mount the shoulders +of two of our men, they will carry you ashore?" The young +man answered this invitation with a gesture of indifference, +and stepped out of the boat the sea immediately rose to his +waist. "Ah, your excellency," murmured the pilot, "you +should not have done so our master will scold us for it." +The young man continued to advance, following the sailors, +who chose a firm footing. Thirty strides brought them to dry +land the young man stamped on the ground to shake off the +wet, and looked around for some one to show him his road, +for it was quite dark. Just as he turned, a hand rested on +his shoulder, and a voice which made him shudder exclaimed, +"Goodevening, Maximilian you are punctual, thank you" +"Ah, is it you, count?" said the young man, in an almost +joyful accent, pressing Monte Cristo's hand with both his +own. +"Yes you see I am as exact as you are. But you are +dripping, my dear fellow you must change your clothes, as +Calypso said to Telemachus. Come, I have a habitation +prepared for you in which you will soon forget fatigue and +cold." Monte Cristo perceived that the young man had turned +around indeed, Morrel saw with surprise that the men who +had brought him had left without being paid, or uttering a +word. Already the sound of their oars might be heard as they +returned to the yacht. +"Oh, yes," said the count, "you are looking for the +sailors." +"Yes, I paid them nothing, and yet they are gone." +"Never mind that, Maximilian," said Monte Cristo, smiling. +"I have made an agreement with the navy, that the access to +my island shall be free of all charge. I have made a +bargain." Morrel looked at the count with surprise. "Count," +he said, "you are not the same here as in Paris." +"How so?" +"Here you laugh." The count's brow became clouded. "You are +right to recall me to myself, Maximilian," he said "I was +delighted to see you again, and forgot for the moment that +all happiness is fleeting." +"Oh, no, no, count," cried Maximilian, seizing the count's +hands, "pray laugh be happy, and prove to me, by your +indifference, that life is endurable to sufferers. Oh, how +charitable, kind, and good you are you affect this gayety +to inspire me with courage." +"You are wrong, Morrel I was really happy." +"Then you forget me, so much the better." +"How so?" +"Yes for as the gladiator said to the emperor, when he +entered the arena, "He who is about to die salutes you.'" +"Then you are not consoled?" asked the count, surprised. +"Oh," exclaimed Morrel, with a glance full of bitter +reproach, "do you think it possible that I could be?" +"Listen," said the count. "Do you understand the meaning of +my words? You cannot take me for a commonplace man, a mere +rattle, emitting a vague and senseless noise. When I ask you +if you are consoled, I speak to you as a man for whom the +human heart has no secrets. Well, Morrel, let us both +examine the depths of your heart. Do you still feel the same +feverish impatience of grief which made you start like a +wounded lion? Have you still that devouring thirst which can +only be appeased in the grave? Are you still actuated by the +regret which drags the living to the pursuit of death or +are you only suffering from the prostration of fatigue and +the weariness of hope deferred? Has the loss of memory +rendered it impossible for you to weep? Oh, my dear friend, +if this be the case, if you can no longer weep, if your +frozen heart be dead, if you put all your trust in God, +then, Maximilian, you are consoled do not complain." +"Count," said Morrel, in a firm and at the same time soft +voice, "listen to me, as to a man whose thoughts are raised +to heaven, though he remains on earth I come to die in the +arms of a friend. Certainly, there are people whom I love. I +love my sister Julie, I love her husband Emmanuel but I +require a strong mind to smile on my last moments. My sister +would be bathed in tears and fainting I could not bear to +see her suffer. Emmanuel would tear the weapon from my hand, +and alarm the house with his cries. You, count, who are more +than mortal, will, I am sure, lead me to death by a pleasant +path, will you not?" +"My friend," said the count, "I have still one doubt, are +you weak enough to pride yourself upon your sufferings?" +"No, indeed, I am calm," said Morrel, giving his hand to +the count "my pulse does not beat slower or faster than +usual. No, I feel that I have reached the goal, and I will +go no farther. You told me to wait and hope do you know +what you did, unfortunate adviser? I waited a month, or +rather I suffered for a month I did hope man is a poor +wretched creature, I did hope. What I cannot tell, +something wonderful, an absurdity, a miracle, of what +nature he alone can tell who has mingled with our reason +that folly we call hope. Yes, I did wait yes, I did hope, +count, and during this quarter of an hour we have been +talking together, you have unconsciously wounded, tortured +my heart, for every word you have uttered proved that there +was no hope for me. Oh, count, I shall sleep calmly, +deliciously in the arms of death." Morrel uttered these +words with an energy which made the count shudder. "My +friend," continued Morrel, "you named the fifth of October +as the end of the period of waiting, today is the fifth +of October," he took out his watch, "it is now nine o'clock, +I have yet three hours to live." +"Be it so," said the count, "come." Morrel mechanically +followed the count, and they had entered the grotto before +he perceived it. He felt a carpet under his feet, a door +opened, perfumes surrounded him, and a brilliant light +dazzled his eyes. Morrel hesitated to advance he dreaded +the enervating effect of all that he saw. Monte Cristo drew +him in gently. "Why should we not spend the last three hours +remaining to us of life, like those ancient Romans, who when +condemned by Nero, their emperor and heir, sat down at a +table covered with flowers, and gently glided into death, +amid the perfume of heliotropes and roses?" Morrel smiled. +"As you please," he said "death is always death, that is +forgetfulness, repose, exclusion from life, and therefore +from grief." He sat down, and Monte Cristo placed himself +opposite to him. They were in the marvellous diningroom +before described, where the statues had baskets on their +heads always filled with fruits and flowers. Morrel had +looked carelessly around, and had probably noticed nothing. +"Let us talk like men," he said, looking at the count. +"Go on" +"Count," said Morrel, "you are the epitome of all human +knowledge, and you seem like a being descended from a wiser +and more advanced world than ours." +"There is something true in what you say," said the count, +with that smile which made him so handsome "I have +descended from a planet called grief." +"I believe all you tell me without questioning its meaning +for instance, you told me to live, and I did live you told +me to hope, and I almost did so. I am almost inclined to ask +you, as though you had experienced death, "is it painful to +die?'" +Monte Cristo looked upon Morrel with indescribable +tenderness. "Yes," he said, "yes, doubtless it is painful, +if you violently break the outer covering which obstinately +begs for life. If you plunge a dagger into your flesh, if +you insinuate a bullet into your brain, which the least +shock disorders, then certainly, you will suffer pain, +and you will repent quitting a life for a repose you have +bought at so dear a price." +"Yes I know that there is a secret of luxury and pain in +death, as well as in life the only thing is to understand +it." +"You have spoken truly, Maximilian according to the care we +bestow upon it, death is either a friend who rocks us gently +as a nurse, or an enemy who violently drags the soul from +the body. Some day, when the world is much older, and when +mankind will be masters of all the destructive powers in +nature, to serve for the general good of humanity when +mankind, as you were just saying, have discovered the +secrets of death, then that death will become as sweet and +voluptuous as a slumber in the arms of your beloved." +"And if you wished to die, you would choose this death, +count?" +"Yes." +Morrel extended his hand. "Now I understand," he said, "why +you had me brought here to this desolate spot, in the midst +of the ocean, to this subterranean palace it was because +you loved me, was it not, count? It was because you loved me +well enough to give me one of those sweet means of death of +which we were speaking a death without agony, a death which +allows me to fade away while pronouncing Valentine's name +and pressing your hand." +"Yes, you have guessed rightly, Morrel," said the count, +"that is what I intended." +"Thanks the idea that tomorrow I shall no longer suffer, is +sweet to my heart." +"Do you then regret nothing?" +"No," replied Morrel. +"Not even me?" asked the count with deep emotion. Morrel's +clear eye was for the moment clouded, then it shone with +unusual lustre, and a large tear rolled down his cheek. +"What," said the count, "do you still regret anything in the +world, and yet die?" +"Oh, I entreat you," exclaimed Morrel in a low voice, "do +not speak another word, count do not prolong my +punishment." The count fancied that he was yielding, and +this belief revived the horrible doubt that had overwhelmed +him at the Chateau d'If. "I am endeavoring," he thought, "to +make this man happy I look upon this restitution as a +weight thrown into the scale to balance the evil I have +wrought. Now, supposing I am deceived, supposing this man +has not been unhappy enough to merit happiness. Alas, what +would become of me who can only atone for evil by doing +good?" Then he said aloud "Listen, Morrel, I see your grief +is great, but still you do not like to risk your soul." +Morrel smiled sadly. "Count," he said, "I swear to you my +soul is no longer my own." +"Maximilian, you know I have no relation in the world. I +have accustomed myself to regard you as my son well, then, +to save my son, I will sacrifice my life, nay, even my +fortune." +"What do you mean?" +"I mean, that you wish to quit life because you do not +understand all the enjoyments which are the fruits of a +large fortune. Morrel, I possess nearly a hundred millions +and I give them to you with such a fortune you can attain +every wish. Are you ambitious? Every career is open to you. +Overturn the world, change its character, yield to mad +ideas, be even criminal but live." +"Count, I have your word," said Morrel coldly then taking +out his watch, he added, "It is halfpast eleven." +"Morrel, can you intend it in my house, under my very eyes?" +"Then let me go," said Maximilian, "or I shall think you did +not love me for my own sake, but for yours" and he arose. +"It is well," said Monte Cristo whose countenance brightened +at these words "you wish you are inflexible. Yes, as you +said, you are indeed wretched and a miracle alone can cure +you. Sit down, Morrel, and wait." +Morrel obeyed the count arose, and unlocking a closet with +a key suspended from his gold chain, took from it a little +silver casket, beautifully carved and chased, the corners of +which represented four bending figures, similar to the +Caryatides, the forms of women, symbols of the angels +aspiring to heaven. He placed the casket on the table then +opening it took out a little golden box, the top of which +flew open when touched by a secret spring. This box +contained an unctuous substance partly solid, of which it +was impossible to discover the color, owing to the +reflection of the polished gold, sapphires, rubies, +emeralds, which ornamented the box. It was a mixed mass of +blue, red, and gold. The count took out a small quantity of +this with a gilt spoon, and offered it to Morrel, fixing a +long steadfast glance upon him. It was then observable that +the substance was greenish. +"This is what you asked for," he said, "and what I promised +to give you." +"I thank you from the depths of my heart," said the young +man, taking the spoon from the hands of Monte Cristo. The +count took another spoon, and again dipped it into the +golden box. "What are you going to do, my friend?" asked +Morrel, arresting his hand. +"Well, the fact is, Morrel, I was thinking that I too am +weary of life, and since an opportunity presents itself" +"Stay" said the young man. "You who love, and are beloved +you, who have faith and hope, oh, do not follow my +example. In your case it would be a crime. Adieu, my noble +and generous friend, adieu I will go and tell Valentine +what you have done for me." And slowly, though without any +hesitation, only waiting to press the count's hand +fervently, he swallowed the mysterious substance offered by +Monte Cristo. Then they were both silent. Ali, mute and +attentive, brought the pipes and coffee, and disappeared. By +degrees, the light of the lamps gradually faded in the hands +of the marble statues which held them, and the perfumes +appeared less powerful to Morrel. Seated opposite to him, +Monte Cristo watched him in the shadow, and Morrel saw +nothing but the bright eyes of the count. An overpowering +sadness took possession of the young man, his hands relaxed +their hold, the objects in the room gradually lost their +form and color, and his disturbed vision seemed to perceive +doors and curtains open in the walls. +"Friend," he cried, "I feel that I am dying thanks" He +made a last effort to extend his hand, but it fell powerless +beside him. Then it appeared to him that Monte Cristo +smiled, not with the strange and fearful expression which +had sometimes revealed to him the secrets of his heart, but +with the benevolent kindness of a father for a child. At the +same time the count appeared to increase in stature, his +form, nearly double its usual height, stood out in relief +against the red tapestry, his black hair was thrown back, +and he stood in the attitude of an avenging angel. Morrel, +overpowered, turned around in the armchair a delicious +torpor permeated every vein. A change of ideas presented +themselves to his brain, like a new design on the +kaleidoscope. Enervated, prostrate, and breathless, he +became unconscious of outward objects he seemed to be +entering that vague delirium preceding death. He wished once +again to press the count's hand, but his own was immovable. +He wished to articulate a last farewell, but his tongue lay +motionless and heavy in his throat, like a stone at the +mouth of a sepulchre. Involuntarily his languid eyes closed, +and still through his eyelashes a wellknown form seemed to +move amid the obscurity with which he thought himself +enveloped. +The count had just opened a door. Immediately a brilliant +light from the next room, or rather from the palace +adjoining, shone upon the room in which he was gently +gliding into his last sleep. Then he saw a woman of +marvellous beauty appear on the threshold of the door +separating the two rooms. Pale, and sweetly smiling, she +looked like an angel of mercy conjuring the angel of +vengeance. "Is it heaven that opens before me?" thought the +dying man "that angel resembles the one I have lost." Monte +Cristo pointed out Morrel to the young woman, who advanced +towards him with clasped hands and a smile upon her lips. +"Valentine, Valentine" he mentally ejaculated but his lips +uttered no sound, and as though all his strength were +centred in that internal emotion, he sighed and closed his +eyes. Valentine rushed towards him his lips again moved. +"He is calling you," said the count "he to whom you have +confided your destiny he from whom death would have +separated you, calls you to him. Happily, I vanquished +death. Henceforth, Valentine, you will never again be +separated on earth, since he has rushed into death to find +you. Without me, you would both have died. May God accept my +atonement in the preservation of these two existences" +Valentine seized the count's hand, and in her irresistible +impulse of joy carried it to her lips. +"Oh, thank me again" said the count "tell me till you are +weary, that I have restored you to happiness you do not +know how much I require this assurance." +"Oh, yes, yes, I thank you with all my heart," said +Valentine "and if you doubt the sincerity of my gratitude, +oh, then, ask Haidee ask my beloved sister Haidee, who ever +since our departure from France, has caused me to wait +patiently for this happy day, while talking to me of you." +"You then love Haidee?" asked Monte Cristo with an emotion +he in vain endeavored to dissimulate. +"Oh, yes, with all my soul." +"Well, then, listen, Valentine," said the count "I have a +favor to ask of you." +"Of me? Oh, am I happy enough for that?" +"Yes you have called Haidee your sister, let her become +so indeed, Valentine render her all the gratitude you fancy +that you owe to me protect her, for" the count's voice was +thick with emotion "henceforth she will be alone in the +world." +"Alone in the world" repeated a voice behind the count, +"and why?" +Monte Cristo turned around Haidee was standing pale, +motionless, looking at the count with an expression of +fearful amazement. +"Because tomorrow, Haidee, you will be free you will then +assume your proper position in society, for I will not allow +my destiny to overshadow yours. Daughter of a prince, I +restore to you the riches and name of your father." +Haidee became pale, and lifting her transparent hands to +heaven, exclaimed in a voice stifled with tears, "Then you +leave me, my lord?" +"Haidee, Haidee, you are young and beautiful forget even my +name, and be happy." +"It is well," said Haidee "your order shall be executed, my +lord I will forget even your name, and be happy." And she +stepped back to retire. +"Oh, heavens," exclaimed Valentine, who was supporting the +head of Morrel on her shoulder, "do you not see how pale she +is? Do you not see how she suffers?" +Haidee answered with a heartrending expression, "Why should +he understand this, my sister? He is my master, and I am his +slave he has the right to notice nothing." +The count shuddered at the tones of a voice which penetrated +the inmost recesses of his heart his eyes met those of the +young girl and he could not bear their brilliancy. "Oh, +heavens," exclaimed Monte Cristo, "can my suspicions be +correct? Haidee, would it please you not to leave me?" +"I am young," gently replied Haidee "I love the life you +have made so sweet to me, and I should be sorry to die." +"You mean, then, that if I leave you, Haidee" +"I should die yes, my lord." +"Do you then love me?" +"Oh, Valentine, he asks if I love him. Valentine, tell him +if you love Maximilian." The count felt his heart dilate and +throb he opened his arms, and Haidee, uttering a cry, +sprang into them. "Oh, yes," she cried, "I do love you I +love you as one loves a father, brother, husband I love you +as my life, for you are the best, the noblest of created +beings" +"Let it be, then, as you wish, sweet angel God has +sustained me in my struggle with my enemies, and has given +me this reward he will not let me end my triumph in +suffering I wished to punish myself, but he has pardoned +me. Love me then, Haidee Who knows? perhaps your love will +make me forget all that I do not wish to remember." +"What do you mean, my lord?" +"I mean that one word from you has enlightened me more than +twenty years of slow experience I have but you in the +world, Haidee through you I again take hold on life, +through you I shall suffer, through you rejoice." +"Do you hear him, Valentine?" exclaimed Haidee "he says +that through me he will suffer through me, who would +yield my life for his." The count withdrew for a moment. +"Have I discovered the truth?" he said "but whether it be +for recompense or punishment, I accept my fate. Come, +Haidee, come" and throwing his arm around the young girl's +waist, he pressed the hand of Valentine, and disappeared. +An hour had nearly passed, during which Valentine, +breathless and motionless, watched steadfastly over Morrel. +At length she felt his heart beat, a faint breath played +upon his lips, a slight shudder, announcing the return of +life, passed through the young man's frame. At length his +eyes opened, but they were at first fixed and +expressionless then sight returned, and with it feeling and +grief. "Oh," he cried, in an accent of despair, "the count +has deceived me I am yet living" and extending his hand +towards the table, he seized a knife. +"Dearest," exclaimed Valentine, with her adorable smile, +"awake, and look at me" Morrel uttered a loud exclamation, +and frantic, doubtful, dazzled, as though by a celestial +vision, he fell upon his knees. +The next morning at daybreak, Valentine and Morrel were +walking arminarm on the seashore, Valentine relating how +Monte Cristo had appeared in her room, explained everything, +revealed the crime, and, finally, how he had saved her life +by enabling her to simulate death. They had found the door +of the grotto opened, and gone forth on the azure dome of +heaven still glittered a few remaining stars. Morrel soon +perceived a man standing among the rocks, apparently +awaiting a sign from them to advance, and pointed him out to +Valentine. "Ah, it is Jacopo," she said, "the captain of the +yacht" and she beckoned him towards them. +"Do you wish to speak to us?" asked Morrel. +"I have a letter to give you from the count." +"From the count" murmured the two young people. +"Yes read it." Morrel opened the letter, and read +"My Dear Maximilian, +"There is a felucca for you at anchor. Jacopo will carry you +to Leghorn, where Monsieur Noirtier awaits his +granddaughter, whom he wishes to bless before you lead her +to the altar. All that is in this grotto, my friend, my +house in the Champs Elysees, and my chateau at Treport, are +the marriage gifts bestowed by Edmond Dantes upon the son of +his old master, Morrel. Mademoiselle de Villefort will share +them with you for I entreat her to give to the poor the +immense fortune reverting to her from her father, now a +madman, and her brother who died last September with his +mother. Tell the angel who will watch over your future +destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man, who like Satan +thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now +acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone +possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom. Perhaps those +prayers may soften the remorse he feels in his heart. As for +you, Morrel, this is the secret of my conduct towards you. +There is neither happiness nor misery in the world there is +only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. +He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience +supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, +Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living. +"Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and +never forget that until the day when God shall deign to +reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in +these two words, "Wait and hope.' Your friend, +"Edmond Dantes, Count of Monte Cristo." +During the perusal of this letter, which informed Valentine +for the first time of the madness of her father and the +death of her brother, she became pale, a heavy sigh escaped +from her bosom, and tears, not the less painful because they +were silent, ran down her cheeks her happiness cost her +very dear. Morrel looked around uneasily. "But," he said, +"the count's generosity is too overwhelming Valentine will +be satisfied with my humble fortune. Where is the count, +friend? Lead me to him." Jacopo pointed towards the horizon. +"What do you mean?" asked Valentine. "Where is the count? +where is Haidee?" +"Look" said Jacopo. +The eyes of both were fixed upon the spot indicated by the +sailor, and on the blue line separating the sky from the +Mediterranean Sea, they perceived a large white sail. +"Gone," said Morrel "gone adieu, my friend adieu, my +father" +"Gone," murmured Valentine "adieu, my sweet Haidee +adieu, my sister" +"Who can say whether we shall ever see them again?" said +Morrel with tearful eyes. +"Darling," replied Valentine, "has not the count just told +us that all human wisdom is summed up in two words? "Wait +and hope.'" +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen + in our series by Jane Austen +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. +Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts +eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since +These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers +Title Pride and Prejudice +Author Jane Austen +Release Date Jun, [EBook ] +[Most recently updated April , ] +Edition +Language English +Character set encoding ASCII + START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE +Pride and Prejudice +by Jane Austen +Chapter +It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in +possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. +However little known the feelings or views of such a man may +be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well +fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered +the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. +"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you +heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?" +Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. +"But it is," returned she "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and +she told me all about it." +Mr. Bennet made no answer. +"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife +impatiently. +"You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it." +This was invitation enough. +"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield +is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of +England that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to +see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed +with Mr. Morris immediately that he is to take possession +before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the +house by the end of next week." +"What is his name?" +"Bingley." +"Is he married or single?" +"Oh Single, my dear, to be sure A single man of large +fortune four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our +girls" +"How so? How can it affect them?" +"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so +tiresome You must know that I am thinking of his marrying +one of them." +"Is that his design in settling here?" +"Design Nonsense, how can you talk so But it is very likely +that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you +must visit him as soon as he comes." +"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you +may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still +better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley +may like you the best of the party." +"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of +beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. +When a woman has five grownup daughters, she ought to give +over thinking of her own beauty." +"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of." +"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when +he comes into the neighbourhood." +"It is more than I engage for, I assure you." +"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment +it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are +determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you +know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will +be impossible for us to visit him if you do not." +"You are overscrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will +be very glad to see you and I will send a few lines by you to +assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he +chooses of the girls though I must throw in a good word for +my little Lizzy." +"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better +than the others and I am sure she is not half so handsome as +Jane, nor half so goodhumoured as Lydia. But you are always +giving her the preference." +"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he +"they are all silly and ignorant like other girls but Lizzy +has something more of quickness than her sisters." +"Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a +way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion +for my poor nerves." +"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your +nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention +them with consideration these last twenty years at least." +"Ah, you do not know what I suffer." +"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young +men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood." +"It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since +you will not visit them." +"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will +visit them all." +Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, +reserve, and caprice, that the experience of threeandtwenty +years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his +character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a +woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain +temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. +The business of her life was to get her daughters married its +solace was visiting and news. +Chapter +Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. +Bingley. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last +always assuring his wife that he should not go and till the +evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it. +It was then disclosed in the following manner. Observing his +second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly +addressed her with +"I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy." +"We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes," said +her mother resentfully, "since we are not to visit." +"But you forget, mamma," said Elizabeth, "that we shall meet +him at the assemblies, and that Mrs. Long promised to introduce +him." +"I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two +nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I +have no opinion of her." +"No more have I," said Mr. Bennet "and I am glad to find that +you do not depend on her serving you." +Mrs. Bennet deigned not to make any reply, but, unable to +contain herself, began scolding one of her daughters. +"Don't keep coughing so, Kitty, for Heaven's sake Have a little +compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces." +"Kitty has no discretion in her coughs," said her father "she +times them ill." +"I do not cough for my own amusement," replied Kitty fretfully. +"When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?" +"Tomorrow fortnight." +"Aye, so it is," cried her mother, "and Mrs. Long does not come +back till the day before so it will be impossible for her to +introduce him, for she will not know him herself." +"Then, my dear, you may have the advantage of your friend, and +introduce Mr. Bingley to her." +"Impossible, Mr. Bennet, impossible, when I am not acquainted +with him myself how can you be so teasing?" +"I honour your circumspection. A fortnight's acquaintance is +certainly very little. One cannot know what a man really is by +the end of a fortnight. But if we do not venture somebody else +will and after all, Mrs. Long and her daughters must stand their +chance and, therefore, as she will think it an act of kindness, +if you decline the office, I will take it on myself." +The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Bennet said only, +"Nonsense, nonsense" +"What can be the meaning of that emphatic exclamation?" cried +he. "Do you consider the forms of introduction, and the stress +that is laid on them, as nonsense? I cannot quite agree with +you there. What say you, Mary? For you are a young lady of +deep reflection, I know, and read great books and make extracts." +Mary wished to say something sensible, but knew not how. +"While Mary is adjusting her ideas," he continued, "let us return +to Mr. Bingley." +"I am sick of Mr. Bingley," cried his wife. +"I am sorry to hear that but why did not you tell me that +before? If I had known as much this morning I certainly would +not have called on him. It is very unlucky but as I have +actually paid the visit, we cannot escape the acquaintance now." +The astonishment of the ladies was just what he wished that of +Mrs. Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest though, when the first +tumult of joy was over, she began to declare that it was what she +had expected all the while. +"How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Bennet But I knew I should +persuade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well +to neglect such an acquaintance. Well, how pleased I am and it +is such a good joke, too, that you should have gone this morning +and never said a word about it till now." +"Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you choose," said Mr. +Bennet and, as he spoke, he left the room, fatigued with the +raptures of his wife. +"What an excellent father you have, girls" said she, when the +door was shut. "I do not know how you will ever make him +amends for his kindness or me, either, for that matter. At our +time of life it is not so pleasant, I can tell you, to be making +new acquaintances every day but for your sakes, we would do +anything. Lydia, my love, though you are the youngest, I dare +say Mr. Bingley will dance with you at the next ball." +"Oh" said Lydia stoutly, "I am not afraid for though I am the +youngest, I'm the tallest." +The rest of the evening was spent in conjecturing how soon he +would return Mr. Bennet's visit, and determining when they +should ask him to dinner. +Chapter +Not all that Mrs. Bennet, however, with the assistance of her +five daughters, could ask on the subject, was sufficient to draw +from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley. +They attacked him in various wayswith barefaced questions, +ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises but he eluded the +skill of them all, and they were at last obliged to accept the +secondhand intelligence of their neighbour, Lady Lucas. Her +report was highly favourable. Sir William had been delighted +with him. He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely +agreeable, and, to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next +assembly with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful +To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love +and very lively hopes of Mr. Bingley's heart were entertained. +"If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at +Netherfield," said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, "and all the +others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for." +In a few days Mr. Bingley returned Mr. Bennet's visit, and sat +about ten minutes with him in his library. He had entertained +hopes of being admitted to a sight of the young ladies, of +whose beauty he had heard much but he saw only the father. +The ladies were somewhat more fortunate, for they had the +advantage of ascertaining from an upper window that he wore +a blue coat, and rode a black horse. +An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched and +already had Mrs. Bennet planned the courses that were to do +credit to her housekeeping, when an answer arrived which +deferred it all. Mr. Bingley was obliged to be in town the +following day, and, consequently, unable to accept the honour +of their invitation, etc. Mrs. Bennet was quite disconcerted. +She could not imagine what business he could have in town so +soon after his arrival in Hertfordshire and she began to fear +that he might be always flying about from one place to another, +and never settled at Netherfield as he ought to be. Lady Lucas +quieted her fears a little by starting the idea of his being gone +to London only to get a large party for the ball and a report +soon followed that Mr. Bingley was to bring twelve ladies and +seven gentlemen with him to the assembly. The girls grieved +over such a number of ladies, but were comforted the day +before the ball by hearing, that instead of twelve he brought +only six with him from Londonhis five sisters and a cousin. +And when the party entered the assembly room it consisted of +only five altogetherMr. Bingley, his two sisters, the husband +of the eldest, and another young man. +Mr. Bingley was goodlooking and gentlemanlike he had a pleasant +countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine +women, with an air of decided fashion. His brotherinlaw, Mr. +Hurst, merely looked the gentleman but his friend Mr. Darcy soon +drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome +features, noble mien, and the report which was in general +circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having +ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine +figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than +Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about +half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned +the tide of his popularity for he was discovered to be proud +to be above his company, and above being pleased and not all his +large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most +forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be +compared with his friend. +Mr. Bingley had soon made himself acquainted with all the +principal people in the room he was lively and unreserved, +danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, +and talked of giving one himself at Netherfield. Such amiable +qualities must speak for themselves. What a contrast between +him and his friend Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst +and once with Miss Bingley, declined being introduced to any +other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in walking about +the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party. His +character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable +man in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come +there again. Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs. +Bennet, whose dislike of his general behaviour was sharpened +into particular resentment by his having slighted one of her +daughters. +Elizabeth Bennet had been obliged, by the scarcity of gentlemen, +to sit down for two dances and during part of that time, +Mr. Darcy had been standing near enough for her to hear a +conversation between him and Mr. Bingley, who came from the +dance for a few minutes, to press his friend to join it. +"Come, Darcy," said he, "I must have you dance. I hate to see +you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had +much better dance." +"I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am +particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as +this it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and +there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a +punishment to me to stand up with." +"I would not be so fastidious as you are," cried Mr. Bingley, +"for a kingdom Upon my honour, I never met with so many +pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening and there are +several of them you see uncommonly pretty." +"You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room," +said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet. +"Oh She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld But +there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is +very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my +partner to introduce you." +"Which do you mean?" and turning round he looked for a +moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own +and coldly said "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to +tempt me I am in no humour at present to give consequence +to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better +return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting +your time with me." +Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off and +Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings toward him. +She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends +for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in +anything ridiculous. +The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole +family. Mrs. Bennet had seen her eldest daughter much +admired by the Netherfield party. Mr. Bingley had danced with +her twice, and she had been distinguished by his sisters. Jane +was as much gratified by this as her mother could be, though in +a quieter way. Elizabeth felt Jane's pleasure. Mary had heard +herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most accomplished +girl in the neighbourhood and Catherine and Lydia had been +fortunate enough never to be without partners, which was all +that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball. They returned, +therefore, in good spirits to Longbourn, the village where they +lived, and of which they were the principal inhabitants. They +found Mr. Bennet still up. With a book he was regardless of +time and on the present occasion he had a good deal of +curiosity as to the events of an evening which had raised such +splendid expectations. He had rather hoped that his wife's +views on the stranger would be disappointed but he soon +found out that he had a different story to hear. +"Oh my dear Mr. Bennet," as she entered the room, "we have +had a most delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you +had been there. Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it. +Everybody said how well she looked and Mr. Bingley thought +her quite beautiful, and danced with her twice Only think of +that, my dear he actually danced with her twice and she was +the only creature in the room that he asked a second time. +First of all, he asked Miss Lucas. I was so vexed to see him +stand up with her But, however, he did not admire her at all +indeed, nobody can, you know and he seemed quite struck with +Jane as she was going down the dance. So he inquired who she +was, and got introduced, and asked her for the two next. Then +the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with +Maria Lucas, and the two fifth with Jane again, and the two +sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger" +"If he had had any compassion for me," cried her husband +impatiently, "he would not have danced half so much For God's +sake, say no more of his partners. O that he had sprained +his ankle in the first place" +"Oh my dear, I am quite delighted with him. He is so +excessively handsome And his sisters are charming women. +I never in my life saw anything more elegant than their dresses. +I dare say the lace upon Mrs. Hurst's gown" +Here she was interrupted again. Mr. Bennet protested against +any description of finery. She was therefore obliged to seek +another branch of the subject, and related, with much bitterness +of spirit and some exaggeration, the shocking rudeness of Mr. +Darcy. +"But I can assure you," she added, "that Lizzy does not lose +much by not suiting his fancy for he is a most disagreeable, +horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited +that there was no enduring him He walked here, and he walked +there, fancying himself so very great Not handsome enough to +dance with I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given +him one of your setdowns. I quite detest the man." +Chapter +When Jane and Elizabeth were alone, the former, who had been +cautious in her praise of Mr. Bingley before, expressed to her +sister just how very much she admired him. +"He is just what a young man ought to be," said she, "sensible, +goodhumoured, lively and I never saw such happy mannersso +much ease, with such perfect good breeding" +"He is also handsome," replied Elizabeth, "which a young man +ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby +complete." +"I was very much flattered by his asking me to dance a second +time. I did not expect such a compliment." +"Did not you? I did for you. But that is one great difference +between us. Compliments always take you by surprise, and +me never. What could be more natural than his asking you +again? He could not help seeing that you were about five times +as pretty as every other woman in the room. No thanks to his +gallantry for that. Well, he certainly is very agreeable, and I +give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider +person." +"Dear Lizzy" +"Oh you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in +general. You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are +good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of +a human being in your life." +"I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone but I always +speak what I think." +"I know you do and it is that which makes the wonder. With your +good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense +of others Affectation of candour is common enoughone meets +with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or +designto take the good of everybody's character and make it +still better, and say nothing of the badbelongs to you alone. +And so you like this man's sisters, too, do you? Their manners +are not equal to his." +"Certainly notat first. But they are very pleasing women when +you converse with them. Miss Bingley is to live with her +brother, and keep his house and I am much mistaken if we shall +not find a very charming neighbour in her." +Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced their +behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in +general and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy +of temper than her sister, and with a judgement too unassailed by +any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve +them. They were in fact very fine ladies not deficient in good +humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of making +themselves agreeable when they chose it, but proud and +conceited. They were rather handsome, had been educated in +one of the first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of +twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more +than they ought, and of associating with people of rank, and +were therefore in every respect entitled to think well of +themselves, and meanly of others. They were of a respectable +family in the north of England a circumstance more deeply +impressed on their memories than that their brother's fortune +and their own had been acquired by trade. +Mr. Bingley inherited property to the amount of nearly a +hundred thousand pounds from his father, who had intended to +purchase an estate, but did not live to do it. Mr. Bingley +intended it likewise, and sometimes made choice of his county +but as he was now provided with a good house and the liberty of +a manor, it was doubtful to many of those who best knew the +easiness of his temper, whether he might not spend the +remainder of his days at Netherfield, and leave the next +generation to purchase. +His sisters were anxious for his having an estate of his own but, +though he was now only established as a tenant, Miss Bingley +was by no means unwilling to preside at his tablenor was Mrs. +Hurst, who had married a man of more fashion than fortune, less +disposed to consider his house as her home when it suited her. +Mr. Bingley had not been of age two years, when he was tempted +by an accidental recommendation to look at Netherfield House. +He did look at it, and into it for halfanhourwas pleased with +the situation and the principal rooms, satisfied with what the +owner said in its praise, and took it immediately. +Between him and Darcy there was a very steady friendship, in +spite of great opposition of character. Bingley was endeared to +Darcy by the easiness, openness, and ductility of his temper, +though no disposition could offer a greater contrast to his own, +and though with his own he never appeared dissatisfied. On the +strength of Darcy's regard, Bingley had the firmest reliance, and +of his judgement the highest opinion. In understanding, Darcy +was the superior. Bingley was by no means deficient, but Darcy +was clever. He was at the same time haughty, reserved, and +fastidious, and his manners, though wellbred, were not inviting. +In that respect his friend had greatly the advantage. Bingley was +sure of being liked wherever he appeared, Darcy was continually +giving offense. +The manner in which they spoke of the Meryton assembly was +sufficiently characteristic. Bingley had never met with more +pleasant people or prettier girls in his life everybody had been +most kind and attentive to him there had been no formality, no +stiffness he had soon felt acquainted with all the room and, as +to Miss Bennet, he could not conceive an angel more beautiful. +Darcy, on the contrary, had seen a collection of people in whom +there was little beauty and no fashion, for none of whom he had +felt the smallest interest, and from none received either attention +or pleasure. Miss Bennet he acknowledged to be pretty, but she +smiled too much. +Mrs. Hurst and her sister allowed it to be sobut still they +admired her and liked her, and pronounced her to be a sweet +girl, and one whom they would not object to know more of. +Miss Bennet was therefore established as a sweet girl, and their +brother felt authorized by such commendation to think of her as +he chose. +Chapter +Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom +the Bennets were particularly intimate. Sir William Lucas +had been formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a +tolerable fortune, and risen to the honour of knighthood by an +address to the king during his mayoralty. The distinction had +perhaps been felt too strongly. It had given him a disgust +to his business, and to his residence in a small market town +and, in quitting them both, he had removed with his family +to a house about a mile from Meryton, denominated from that +period Lucas Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his +own importance, and, unshackled by business, occupy himself +solely in being civil to all the world. For, though elated by his +rank, it did not render him supercilious on the contrary, he was +all attention to everybody. By nature inoffensive, friendly, and +obliging, his presentation at St. James's had made him courteous. +Lady Lucas was a very good kind of woman, not too clever to +be a valuable neighbour to Mrs. Bennet. They had several +children. The eldest of them, a sensible, intelligent young +woman, about twentyseven, was Elizabeth's intimate friend. +That the Miss Lucases and the Miss Bennets should meet to +talk over a ball was absolutely necessary and the morning after +the assembly brought the former to Longbourn to hear and to +communicate. +"You began the evening well, Charlotte," said Mrs. Bennet with +civil selfcommand to Miss Lucas. "You were Mr. Bingley's +first choice." +"Yes but he seemed to like his second better." +"Oh you mean Jane, I suppose, because he danced with her +twice. To be sure that did seem as if he admired herindeed +I rather believe he didI heard something about itbut I +hardly know whatsomething about Mr. Robinson." +"Perhaps you mean what I overheard between him and Mr. Robinson +did not I mention it to you? Mr. Robinson's asking him how he +liked our Meryton assemblies, and whether he did not think there +were a great many pretty women in the room, and which he thought +the prettiest? and his answering immediately to the last +question 'Oh the eldest Miss Bennet, beyond a doubt there +cannot be two opinions on that point.'" +"Upon my word Well, that is very decided indeedthat does +seem as ifbut, however, it may all come to nothing, you know." +"My overhearings were more to the purpose than yours, Eliza," +said Charlotte. "Mr. Darcy is not so well worth listening to +as his friend, is he?poor Elizato be only just tolerable." +"I beg you would not put it into Lizzy's head to be vexed by +his illtreatment, for he is such a disagreeable man, that it +would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him. Mrs. Long +told me last night that he sat close to her for halfanhour +without once opening his lips." +"Are you quite sure, ma'am?is not there a little mistake?" +said Jane. "I certainly saw Mr. Darcy speaking to her." +"Ayebecause she asked him at last how he liked Netherfield, +and he could not help answering her but she said he seemed +quite angry at being spoke to." +"Miss Bingley told me," said Jane, "that he never speaks much, +unless among his intimate acquaintances. With them he is +remarkably agreeable." +"I do not believe a word of it, my dear. If he had been so very +agreeable, he would have talked to Mrs. Long. But I can guess +how it was everybody says that he is eat up with pride, and I +dare say he had heard somehow that Mrs. Long does not keep +a carriage, and had come to the ball in a hack chaise." +"I do not mind his not talking to Mrs. Long," said Miss Lucas, +"but I wish he had danced with Eliza." +"Another time, Lizzy," said her mother, "I would not dance +with him, if I were you." +"I believe, ma'am, I may safely promise you never to dance +with him." +"His pride," said Miss Lucas, "does not offend me so much as +pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot +wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, +everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I +may so express it, he has a right to be proud." +"That is very true," replied Elizabeth, "and I could easily +forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine." +"Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity +of her reflections, "is a very common failing, I believe. By +all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common +indeed that human nature is particularly prone to it, and +that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of +selfcomplacency on the score of some quality or other, real +or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though +the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud +without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of +ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." +"If I were as rich as Mr. Darcy," cried a young Lucas, who +came with his sisters, "I should not care how proud I was. I +would keep a pack of foxhounds, and drink a bottle of wine a +day." +"Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought," said +Mrs. Bennet "and if I were to see you at it, I should take away +your bottle directly." +The boy protested that she should not she continued to declare +that she would, and the argument ended only with the visit. +Chapter +The ladies of Longbourn soon waited on those of Netherfield. +The visit was soon returned in due form. Miss Bennet's +pleasing manners grew on the goodwill of Mrs. Hurst and Miss +Bingley and though the mother was found to be intolerable, +and the younger sisters not worth speaking to, a wish of +being better acquainted with them was expressed towards +the two eldest. By Jane, this attention was received with the +greatest pleasure, but Elizabeth still saw superciliousness in +their treatment of everybody, hardly excepting even her sister, +and could not like them though their kindness to Jane, such as it +was, had a value as arising in all probability from the influence +of their brother's admiration. It was generally evident +whenever they met, that he did admire her and to her it was +equally evident that Jane was yielding to the preference which +she had begun to entertain for him from the first, and was in a +way to be very much in love but she considered with pleasure +that it was not likely to be discovered by the world in general, +since Jane united, with great strength of feeling, a composure +of temper and a uniform cheerfulness of manner which would +guard her from the suspicions of the impertinent. She +mentioned this to her friend Miss Lucas. +"It may perhaps be pleasant," replied Charlotte, "to be able to +impose on the public in such a case but it is sometimes a +disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her +affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose +the opportunity of fixing him and it will then be but poor +consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is +so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that +it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin freelya +slight preference is natural enough but there are very few of us +who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. +In nine cases out of ten a women had better show more affection +than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly but he +may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on." +"But she does help him on, as much as her nature will allow. +If I can perceive her regard for him, he must be a simpleton, +indeed, not to discover it too." +"Remember, Eliza, that he does not know Jane's disposition as +you do." +"But if a woman is partial to a man, and does not endeavour to +conceal it, he must find it out." +"Perhaps he must, if he sees enough of her. But, though +Bingley and Jane meet tolerably often, it is never for many +hours together and, as they always see each other in large +mixed parties, it is impossible that every moment should be +employed in conversing together. Jane should therefore make +the most of every halfhour in which she can command his +attention. When she is secure of him, there will be more leisure +for falling in love as much as she chooses." +"Your plan is a good one," replied Elizabeth, "where nothing is +in question but the desire of being well married, and if I were +determined to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I +should adopt it. But these are not Jane's feelings she is not +acting by design. As yet, she cannot even be certain of the +degree of her own regard nor of its reasonableness. She has +known him only a fortnight. She danced four dances with him +at Meryton she saw him one morning at his own house, and +has since dined with him in company four times. This is not +quite enough to make her understand his character." +"Not as you represent it. Had she merely dined with him, she +might only have discovered whether he had a good appetite but +you must remember that four evenings have also been spent +togetherand four evenings may do a great deal." +"Yes these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that +they both like Vingtun better than Commerce but with respect +to any other leading characteristic, I do not imagine that much +has been unfolded." +"Well," said Charlotte, "I wish Jane success with all my heart +and if she were married to him tomorrow, I should think she +had as good a chance of happiness as if she were to be studying +his character for a twelvemonth. Happiness in marriage is +entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties +are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, +it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always +continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their +share of vexation and it is better to know as little as possible +of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life." +"You make me laugh, Charlotte but it is not sound. You know +it is not sound, and that you would never act in this way +yourself." +Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, +Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming +an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy +had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty he had looked at +her without admiration at the ball and when they next met, he +looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it +clear to himself and his friends that she hardly had a good feature +in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly +intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this +discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he +had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect +symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure +to be light and pleasing and in spite of his asserting that her +manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught +by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware +to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, +and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with. +He began to wish to know more of her, and as a step towards +conversing with her himself, attended to her conversation with +others. His doing so drew her notice. It was at Sir William +Lucas's, where a large party were assembled. +"What does Mr. Darcy mean," said she to Charlotte, "by +listening to my conversation with Colonel Forster?" +"That is a question which Mr. Darcy only can answer." +"But if he does it any more I shall certainly let him know that I +see what he is about. He has a very satirical eye, and if I do not +begin by being impertinent myself, I shall soon grow afraid of +him." +On his approaching them soon afterwards, though without +seeming to have any intention of speaking, Miss Lucas defied +her friend to mention such a subject to him which immediately +provoking Elizabeth to do it, she turned to him and said +"Did you not think, Mr. Darcy, that I expressed myself +uncommonly well just now, when I was teasing Colonel Forster +to give us a ball at Meryton?" +"With great energy but it is always a subject which makes a lady +energetic." +"You are severe on us." +"It will be her turn soon to be teased," said Miss Lucas. "I +am going to open the instrument, Eliza, and you know what +follows." +"You are a very strange creature by way of a friendalways +wanting me to play and sing before anybody and everybody +If my vanity had taken a musical turn, you would have been +invaluable but as it is, I would really rather not sit down +before those who must be in the habit of hearing the very best +performers." On Miss Lucas's persevering, however, she added, +"Very well, if it must be so, it must." And gravely glancing at +Mr. Darcy, "There is a fine old saying, which everybody here is of +course familiar with 'Keep your breath to cool your porridge' +and I shall keep mine to swell my song." +Her performance was pleasing, though by no means capital. +After a song or two, and before she could reply to the entreaties +of several that she would sing again, she was eagerly succeeded +at the instrument by her sister Mary, who having, in consequence +of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for +knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for +display. +Mary had neither genius nor taste and though vanity had given +her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and +conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of +excellence than she had reached. Elizabeth, easy and unaffected, +had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not +playing half so well and Mary, at the end of a long concerto, +was glad to purchase praise and gratitude by Scotch and Irish +airs, at the request of her younger sisters, who, with some of the +Lucases, and two or three officers, joined eagerly in dancing at +one end of the room. +Mr. Darcy stood near them in silent indignation at such a mode +of passing the evening, to the exclusion of all conversation, and +was too much engrossed by his thoughts to perceive that Sir +William Lucas was his neighbour, till Sir William thus began +"What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy +There is nothing like dancing after all. I consider it as one +of the first refinements of polished society." +"Certainly, sir and it has the advantage also of being in vogue +amongst the less polished societies of the world. Every savage +can dance." +Sir William only smiled. "Your friend performs delightfully," he +continued after a pause, on seeing Bingley join the group "and I +doubt not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr. +Darcy." +"You saw me dance at Meryton, I believe, sir." +"Yes, indeed, and received no inconsiderable pleasure from the +sight. Do you often dance at St. James's?" +"Never, sir." +"Do you not think it would be a proper compliment to the +place?" +"It is a compliment which I never pay to any place if I can +avoid it." +"You have a house in town, I conclude?" +Mr. Darcy bowed. +"I had once had some thought of fixing in town myselffor I am +fond of superior society but I did not feel quite certain that the +air of London would agree with Lady Lucas." +He paused in hopes of an answer but his companion was not +disposed to make any and Elizabeth at that instant moving +towards them, he was struck with the action of doing a very +gallant thing, and called out to her +"My dear Miss Eliza, why are you not dancing? Mr. Darcy, you +must allow me to present this young lady to you as a very +desirable partner. You cannot refuse to dance, I am sure when +so much beauty is before you." And, taking her hand, he would +have given it to Mr. Darcy who, though extremely surprised, +was not unwilling to receive it, when she instantly drew back, +and said with some discomposure to Sir William +"Indeed, sir, I have not the least intention of dancing. I entreat +you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a +partner." +Mr. Darcy, with grave propriety, requested to be allowed the +honour of her hand, but in vain. Elizabeth was determined nor +did Sir William at all shake her purpose by his attempt at +persuasion. +"You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza, that it is cruel to +deny me the happiness of seeing you and though this gentleman +dislikes the amusement in general, he can have no objection, I +am sure, to oblige us for one halfhour." +"Mr. Darcy is all politeness," said Elizabeth, smiling. +"He is, indeed but, considering the inducement, my dear Miss +Eliza, we cannot wonder at his complaisancefor who would +object to such a partner?" +Elizabeth looked archly, and turned away. Her resistance had +not injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her +with some complacency, when thus accosted by Miss Bingley +"I can guess the subject of your reverie." +"I should imagine not." +"You are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many +evenings in this mannerin such society and indeed I am quite +of your opinion. I was never more annoyed The insipidity, and +yet the noisethe nothingness, and yet the selfimportance of all +those people What would I give to hear your strictures on them" +"You conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was +more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very +great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty +woman can bestow." +Miss Bingley immediately fixed her eyes on his face, and desired +he would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such +reflections. Mr. Darcy replied with great intrepidity +"Miss Elizabeth Bennet." +"Miss Elizabeth Bennet" repeated Miss Bingley. "I am all +astonishment. How long has she been such a favourite?and +pray, when am I to wish you joy?" +"That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A +lady's imagination is very rapid it jumps from admiration to +love, from love to matrimony, in a moment. I knew you would +be wishing me joy." +"Nay, if you are serious about it, I shall consider the matter is +absolutely settled. You will be having a charming motherinlaw, +indeed and, of course, she will always be at Pemberley with you." +He listened to her with perfect indifference while she chose to +entertain herself in this manner and as his composure convinced +her that all was safe, her wit flowed long. +Chapter +Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of +two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was +entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation and their +mother's fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could +but ill supply the deficiency of his. Her father had been an +attorney in Meryton, and had left her four thousand pounds. +She had a sister married to a Mr. Phillips, who had been a clerk +to their father and succeeded him in the business, and a brother +settled in London in a respectable line of trade. +The village of Longbourn was only one mile from Meryton a +most convenient distance for the young ladies, who were usually +tempted thither three or four times a week, to pay their duty to +their aunt and to a milliner's shop just over the way. The two +youngest of the family, Catherine and Lydia, were particularly +frequent in these attentions their minds were more vacant than +their sisters', and when nothing better offered, a walk to +Meryton was necessary to amuse their morning hours and +furnish conversation for the evening and however bare of news +the country in general might be, they always contrived to learn +some from their aunt. At present, indeed, they were well +supplied both with news and happiness by the recent arrival of +a militia regiment in the neighbourhood it was to remain the +whole winter, and Meryton was the headquarters. +Their visits to Mrs. Phillips were now productive of the most +interesting intelligence. Every day added something to their +knowledge of the officers' names and connections. Their +lodgings were not long a secret, and at length they began to +know the officers themselves. Mr. Phillips visited them all, and +this opened to his nieces a store of felicity unknown before. +They could talk of nothing but officers and Mr. Bingley's large +fortune, the mention of which gave animation to their mother, +was worthless in their eyes when opposed to the regimentals of +an ensign. +After listening one morning to their effusions on this subject, Mr. +Bennet coolly observed +"From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must +be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it +some time, but I am now convinced." +Catherine was disconcerted, and made no answer but Lydia, +with perfect indifference, continued to express her admiration of +Captain Carter, and her hope of seeing him in the course of the +day, as he was going the next morning to London. +"I am astonished, my dear," said Mrs. Bennet, "that you should +be so ready to think your own children silly. If I wished to think +slightingly of anybody's children, it should not be of my own, +however." +"If my children are silly, I must hope to be always sensible of it." +"Yesbut as it happens, they are all of them very clever." +"This is the only point, I flatter myself, on which we do not +agree. I had hoped that our sentiments coincided in every +particular, but I must so far differ from you as to think our two +youngest daughters uncommonly foolish." +"My dear Mr. Bennet, you must not expect such girls to have +the sense of their father and mother. When they get to our age, I +dare say they will not think about officers any more than we do. +I remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very welland, +indeed, so I do still at my heart and if a smart young colonel, +with five or six thousand a year, should want one of my girls I +shall not say nay to him and I thought Colonel Forster looked +very becoming the other night at Sir William's in his regimentals." +"Mamma," cried Lydia, "my aunt says that Colonel Forster and +Captain Carter do not go so often to Miss Watson's as they did +when they first came she sees them now very often standing in +Clarke's library." +Mrs. Bennet was prevented replying by the entrance of the +footman with a note for Miss Bennet it came from Netherfield, +and the servant waited for an answer. Mrs. Bennet's eyes +sparkled with pleasure, and she was eagerly calling out, while +her daughter read, +"Well, Jane, who is it from? What is it about? What does he +say? Well, Jane, make haste and tell us make haste, my love." +"It is from Miss Bingley," said Jane, and then read it aloud. +"MY DEAR FRIEND, +"If you are not so compassionate as to dine today with Louisa +and me, we shall be in danger of hating each other for the rest +of our lives, for a whole day's teteatete between two women +can never end without a quarrel. Come as soon as you can on +receipt of this. My brother and the gentlemen are to dine with +the officers.Yours ever, +"CAROLINE BINGLEY" +"With the officers" cried Lydia. "I wonder my aunt did not tell +us of that." +"Dining out," said Mrs. Bennet, "that is very unlucky." +"Can I have the carriage?" said Jane. +"No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems +likely to rain and then you must stay all night." +"That would be a good scheme," said Elizabeth, "if you were +sure that they would not offer to send her home." +"Oh but the gentlemen will have Mr. Bingley's chaise to go to +Meryton, and the Hursts have no horses to theirs." +"I had much rather go in the coach." +"But, my dear, your father cannot spare the horses, I am sure. +They are wanted in the farm, Mr. Bennet, are they not?" +"They are wanted in the farm much oftener than I can get them." +"But if you have got them today," said Elizabeth, "my mother's +purpose will be answered." +She did at last extort from her father an acknowledgment that +the horses were engaged. Jane was therefore obliged to go on +horseback, and her mother attended her to the door with many +cheerful prognostics of a bad day. Her hopes were answered +Jane had not been gone long before it rained hard. Her sisters +were uneasy for her, but her mother was delighted. The rain +continued the whole evening without intermission Jane certainly +could not come back. +"This was a lucky idea of mine, indeed" said Mrs. Bennet more +than once, as if the credit of making it rain were all her own. Till +the next morning, however, she was not aware of all the felicity +of her contrivance. Breakfast was scarcely over when a servant +from Netherfield brought the following note for Elizabeth +"MY DEAREST LIZZY, +"I find myself very unwell this morning, which, I suppose, is to +be imputed to my getting wet through yesterday. My kind friends +will not hear of my returning till I am better. They insist also +on my seeing Mr. Jonestherefore do not be alarmed if you should +hear of his having been to meand, excepting a sore throat and +headache, there is not much the matter with me.Yours, etc." +"Well, my dear," said Mr. Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the +note aloud, "if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of +illnessif she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it +was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley, and under your orders." +"Oh I am not afraid of her dying. People do not die of little +trifling colds. She will be taken good care of. As long as she +stays there, it is all very well. I would go and see her if I could +have the carriage." +Elizabeth, feeling really anxious, was determined to go to her, +though the carriage was not to be had and as she was no +horsewoman, walking was her only alternative. She declared her +resolution. +"How can you be so silly," cried her mother, "as to think of such +a thing, in all this dirt You will not be fit to be seen when you +get there." +"I shall be very fit to see Janewhich is all I want." +"Is this a hint to me, Lizzy," said her father, "to send for +the horses?" +"No, indeed, I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is +nothing when one has a motive only three miles. I shall be back +by dinner." +"I admire the activity of your benevolence," observed Mary, "but +every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason and, in my +opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is +required." +"We will go as far as Meryton with you," said Catherine and +Lydia. Elizabeth accepted their company, and the three young +ladies set off together. +"If we make haste," said Lydia, as they walked along, "perhaps +we may see something of Captain Carter before he goes." +In Meryton they parted the two youngest repaired to the lodgings of +one of the officers' wives, and Elizabeth continued her walk alone, +crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles +and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and finding +herself at last within view of the house, with weary ankles, dirty +stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise. +She was shown into the breakfastparlour, where all but Jane +were assembled, and where her appearance created a great deal +of surprise. That she should have walked three miles so early +in the day, in such dirty weather, and by herself, was almost +incredible to Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley and Elizabeth was +convinced that they held her in contempt for it. She was +received, however, very politely by them and in their brother's +manners there was something better than politeness there was +good humour and kindness. Mr. Darcy said very little, and Mr. +Hurst nothing at all. The former was divided between admiration +of the brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion, +and doubt as to the occasion's justifying her coming so far +alone. The latter was thinking only of his breakfast. +Her inquiries after her sister were not very favourably answered. +Miss Bennet had slept ill, and though up, was very feverish, and +not well enough to leave her room. Elizabeth was glad to be +taken to her immediately and Jane, who had only been withheld +by the fear of giving alarm or inconvenience from expressing in +her note how much she longed for such a visit, was delighted at +her entrance. She was not equal, however, to much conversation, +and when Miss Bingley left them together, could attempt little +besides expressions of gratitude for the extraordinary kindness +she was treated with. Elizabeth silently attended her. +When breakfast was over they were joined by the sisters and +Elizabeth began to like them herself, when she saw how much +affection and solicitude they showed for Jane. The apothecary +came, and having examined his patient, said, as might be +supposed, that she had caught a violent cold, and that they must +endeavour to get the better of it advised her to return to bed, +and promised her some draughts. The advice was followed +readily, for the feverish symptoms increased, and her head ached +acutely. Elizabeth did not quit her room for a moment nor were +the other ladies often absent the gentlemen being out, they had, +in fact, nothing to do elsewhere. +When the clock struck three, Elizabeth felt that she must go, and +very unwillingly said so. Miss Bingley offered her the carriage, +and she only wanted a little pressing to accept it, when Jane +testified such concern in parting with her, that Miss Bingley was +obliged to convert the offer of the chaise to an invitation to +remain at Netherfield for the present. Elizabeth most thankfully +consented, and a servant was dispatched to Longbourn to +acquaint the family with her stay and bring back a supply of +clothes. +Chapter +At five o'clock the two ladies retired to dress, and at halfpast +six Elizabeth was summoned to dinner. To the civil inquiries +which then poured in, and amongst which she had the pleasure +of distinguishing the much superior solicitude of Mr. Bingley's, +she could not make a very favourable answer. Jane was by no +means better. The sisters, on hearing this, repeated three or four +times how much they were grieved, how shocking it was to have +a bad cold, and how excessively they disliked being ill +themselves and then thought no more of the matter and their +indifference towards Jane when not immediately before them +restored Elizabeth to the enjoyment of all her former dislike. +Their brother, indeed, was the only one of the party whom she +could regard with any complacency. His anxiety for Jane was +evident, and his attentions to herself most pleasing, and +they prevented her feeling herself so much an intruder as she +believed she was considered by the others. She had very little +notice from any but him. Miss Bingley was engrossed by Mr. +Darcy, her sister scarcely less so and as for Mr. Hurst, by +whom Elizabeth sat, he was an indolent man, who lived only to +eat, drink, and play at cards who, when he found her to prefer +a plain dish to a ragout, had nothing to say to her. +When dinner was over, she returned directly to Jane, and Miss +Bingley began abusing her as soon as she was out of the room. +Her manners were pronounced to be very bad indeed, a mixture +of pride and impertinence she had no conversation, no style, no +beauty. Mrs. Hurst thought the same, and added +"She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an +excellent walker. I shall never forget her appearance this +morning. She really looked almost wild." +"She did, indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance. +Very nonsensical to come at all Why must she be scampering +about the country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair, so +untidy, so blowsy" +"Yes, and her petticoat I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches +deep in mud, I am absolutely certain and the gown which had +been let down to hide it not doing its office." +"Your picture may be very exact, Louisa," said Bingley "but +this was all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet +looked remarkably well when she came into the room this +morning. Her dirty petticoat quite escaped my notice." +"You observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure," said Miss Bingley +"and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to see +your sister make such an exhibition." +"Certainly not." +"To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it +is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone What could +she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of +conceited independence, a most countrytown indifference to +decorum." +"It shows an affection for her sister that is very pleasing," said +Bingley. +"I am afraid, Mr. Darcy," observed Miss Bingley in a half +whisper, "that this adventure has rather affected your +admiration of her fine eyes." +"Not at all," he replied "they were brightened by the exercise." +A short pause followed this speech, and Mrs. Hurst began again +"I have a excessive regard for Miss Jane Bennet, she is really +a very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well +settled. But with such a father and mother, and such low +connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it." +"I think I have heard you say that their uncle is an attorney on +Meryton." +"Yes and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside." +"That is capital," added her sister, and they both laughed heartily. +"If they had uncles enough to fill all Cheapside," cried +Bingley, "it would not make them one jot less agreeable." +"But it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men +of any consideration in the world," replied Darcy. +To this speech Bingley made no answer but his sisters gave it +their hearty assent, and indulged their mirth for some time at the +expense of their dear friend's vulgar relations. +With a renewal of tenderness, however, they returned to her +room on leaving the diningparlour, and sat with her till +summoned to coffee. She was still very poorly, and Elizabeth +would not quit her at all, till late in the evening, when she had +the comfort of seeing her sleep, and when it seemed to her rather +right than pleasant that she should go downstairs herself. On +entering the drawingroom she found the whole party at loo, and +was immediately invited to join them but suspecting them to be +playing high she declined it, and making her sister the excuse, +said she would amuse herself for the short time she could stay +below, with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with astonishment. +"Do you prefer reading to cards?" said he "that is rather +singular." +"Miss Eliza Bennet," said Miss Bingley, "despises cards. She is +a great reader, and has no pleasure in anything else." +"I deserve neither such praise nor such censure," cried Elizabeth +"I am not a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things." +"In nursing your sister I am sure you have pleasure," said Bingley +"and I hope it will be soon increased by seeing her quite well." +Elizabeth thanked him from her heart, and then walked towards +the table where a few books were lying. He immediately offered +to fetch her othersall that his library afforded. +"And I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my +own credit but I am an idle fellow, and though I have not many, +I have more than I ever looked into." +Elizabeth assured him that she could suit herself perfectly with +those in the room. +"I am astonished," said Miss Bingley, "that my father should +have left so small a collection of books. What a delightful library +you have at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy" +"It ought to be good," he replied, "it has been the work of many +generations." +"And then you have added so much to it yourself, you are +always buying books." +"I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days +as these." +"Neglect I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the +beauties of that noble place. Charles, when you build your +house, I wish it may be half as delightful as Pemberley." +"I wish it may." +"But I would really advise you to make your purchase in that +neighbourhood, and take Pemberley for a kind of model. There +is not a finer county in England than Derbyshire." +"With all my heart I will buy Pemberley itself if Darcy will +sell it." +"I am talking of possibilities, Charles." +"Upon my word, Caroline, I should think it more possible to get +Pemberley by purchase than by imitation." +Elizabeth was so much caught with what passed, as to leave her +very little attention for her book and soon laying it wholly +aside, she drew near the cardtable, and stationed herself +between Mr. Bingley and his eldest sister, to observe the game. +"Is Miss Darcy much grown since the spring?" said Miss +Bingley "will she be as tall as I am?" +"I think she will. She is now about Miss Elizabeth Bennet's +height, or rather taller." +"How I long to see her again I never met with anybody who +delighted me so much. Such a countenance, such manners And +so extremely accomplished for her age Her performance on the +pianoforte is exquisite." +"It is amazing to me," said Bingley, "how young ladies can have +patience to be so very accomplished as they all are." +"All young ladies accomplished My dear Charles, what do you mean?" +"Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, +and net purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do all this, +and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first +time, without being informed that she was very accomplished." +"Your list of the common extent of accomplishments," said Darcy, +"has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who +deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering +a screen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your +estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing +more than halfadozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, +that are really accomplished." +"Nor I, I am sure," said Miss Bingley. +"Then," observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal +in your idea of an accomplished woman." +"Yes, I do comprehend a great deal in it." +"Oh certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can be really +esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is +usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of +music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to +deserve the word and besides all this, she must possess a certain +something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her +voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but +halfdeserved." +"All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she +must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of +her mind by extensive reading." +"I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished +women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any." +"Are you so severe upon your own sex as to doubt the possibility +of all this?" +"I never saw such a woman. I never saw such capacity, and +taste, and application, and elegance, as you describe united." +Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley both cried out against the injustice +of her implied doubt, and were both protesting that they knew +many women who answered this description, when Mr. Hurst +called them to order, with bitter complaints of their inattention +to what was going forward. As all conversation was thereby at +an end, Elizabeth soon afterwards left the room. +"Elizabeth Bennet," said Miss Bingley, when the door was +closed on her, "is one of those young ladies who seek to +recommend themselves to the other sex by undervaluing their +own and with many men, I dare say, it succeeds. But, in my +opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art." +"Undoubtedly," replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly +addressed, "there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies +sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. Whatever +bears affinity to cunning is despicable." +Miss Bingley was not so entirely satisfied with this reply as to +continue the subject. +Elizabeth joined them again only to say that her sister was worse, +and that she could not leave her. Bingley urged Mr. Jones being +sent for immediately while his sisters, convinced that no country +advice could be of any service, recommended an express to town for +one of the most eminent physicians. This she would not hear of +but she was not so unwilling to comply with their brother's +proposal and it was settled that Mr. Jones should be sent for +early in the morning, if Miss Bennet were not decidedly better. +Bingley was quite uncomfortable his sisters declared that they +were miserable. They solaced their wretchedness, however, by +duets after supper, while he could find no better relief to his +feelings than by giving his housekeeper directions that every +attention might be paid to the sick lady and her sister. +Chapter +Elizabeth passed the chief of the night in her sister's room, and +in the morning had the pleasure of being able to send a tolerable +answer to the inquiries which she very early received from Mr. +Bingley by a housemaid, and some time afterwards from the two +elegant ladies who waited on his sisters. In spite of this +amendment, however, she requested to have a note sent to Longbourn, +desiring her mother to visit Jane, and form her own judgement of +her situation. The note was immediately dispatched, and its +contents as quickly complied with. Mrs. Bennet, accompanied by +her two youngest girls, reached Netherfield soon after the family +breakfast. +Had she found Jane in any apparent danger, Mrs. Bennet would +have been very miserable but being satisfied on seeing her that +her illness was not alarming, she had no wish of her recovering +immediately, as her restoration to health would probably remove +her from Netherfield. She would not listen, therefore, to her +daughter's proposal of being carried home neither did the +apothecary, who arrived about the same time, think it at all +advisable. After sitting a little while with Jane, on Miss +Bingley's appearance and invitation, the mother and three +daughter all attended her into the breakfast parlour. Bingley met +them with hopes that Mrs. Bennet had not found Miss Bennet +worse than she expected. +"Indeed I have, sir," was her answer. "She is a great deal too +ill to be moved. Mr. Jones says we must not think of moving her. +We must trespass a little longer on your kindness." +"Removed" cried Bingley. "It must not be thought of. My +sister, I am sure, will not hear of her removal." +"You may depend upon it, Madam," said Miss Bingley, with cold +civility, "that Miss Bennet will receive every possible attention +while she remains with us." +Mrs. Bennet was profuse in her acknowledgments. +"I am sure," she added, "if it was not for such good friends I do +not know what would become of her, for she is very ill indeed, +and suffers a vast deal, though with the greatest patience in the +world, which is always the way with her, for she has, without +exception, the sweetest temper I have ever met with. I often tell +my other girls they are nothing to her. You have a sweet room +here, Mr. Bingley, and a charming prospect over the gravel walk. +I do not know a place in the country that is equal to Netherfield. +You will not think of quitting it in a hurry, I hope, though you +have but a short lease." +"Whatever I do is done in a hurry," replied he "and therefore if I +should resolve to quit Netherfield, I should probably be off in +five minutes. At present, however, I consider myself as quite +fixed here." +"That is exactly what I should have supposed of you," said +Elizabeth. +"You begin to comprehend me, do you?" cried he, turning +towards her. +"Oh yesI understand you perfectly." +"I wish I might take this for a compliment but to be so easily +seen through I am afraid is pitiful." +"That is as it happens. It does not follow that a deep, intricate +character is more or less estimable than such a one as yours." +"Lizzy," cried her mother, "remember where you are, and do not +run on in the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home." +"I did not know before," continued Bingley immediately, "that +you were a studier of character. It must be an amusing study." +"Yes, but intricate characters are the most amusing. They +have at least that advantage." +"The country," said Darcy, "can in general supply but a few +subjects for such a study. In a country neighbourhood you move +in a very confined and unvarying society." +"But people themselves alter so much, that there is something +new to be observed in them for ever." +"Yes, indeed," cried Mrs. Bennet, offended by his manner of +mentioning a country neighbourhood. "I assure you there is +quite as much of that going on in the country as in town." +Everybody was surprised, and Darcy, after looking at her for a +moment, turned silently away. Mrs. Bennet, who fancied she +had gained a complete victory over him, continued her triumph. +"I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the +country, for my part, except the shops and public places. The +country is a vast deal pleasanter, is it not, Mr. Bingley?" +"When I am in the country," he replied, "I never wish to leave it +and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have +each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either." +"Ayethat is because you have the right disposition. But that +gentleman," looking at Darcy, "seemed to think the country was +nothing at all." +"Indeed, Mamma, you are mistaken," said Elizabeth, blushing for +her mother. "You quite mistook Mr. Darcy. He only meant that +there was not such a variety of people to be met with in the +country as in the town, which you must acknowledge to be +true." +"Certainly, my dear, nobody said there were but as to not +meeting with many people in this neighbourhood, I believe +there are few neighbourhoods larger. I know we dine with +fourandtwenty families." +Nothing but concern for Elizabeth could enable Bingley to keep +his countenance. His sister was less delicate, and directed her +eyes towards Mr. Darcy with a very expressive smile. Elizabeth, +for the sake of saying something that might turn her mother's +thoughts, now asked her if Charlotte Lucas had been at +Longbourn since her coming away. +"Yes, she called yesterday with her father. What an agreeable +man Sir William is, Mr. Bingley, is not he? So much the man of +fashion So genteel and easy He had always something to say +to everybody. That is my idea of good breeding and those +persons who fancy themselves very important, and never open +their mouths, quite mistake the matter." +"Did Charlotte dine with you?" +"No, she would go home. I fancy she was wanted about the +mincepies. For my part, Mr. Bingley, I always keep servants +that can do their own work my daughters are brought up very +differently. But everybody is to judge for themselves, and the +Lucases are a very good sort of girls, I assure you. It is a pity +they are not handsome Not that I think Charlotte so very +plainbut then she is our particular friend." +"She seems a very pleasant young woman." +"Oh dear, yes but you must own she is very plain. Lady Lucas +herself has often said so, and envied me Jane's beauty. I do not +like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Janeone does +not often see anybody better looking. It is what everybody says. +I do not trust my own partiality. When she was only fifteen, +there was a man at my brother Gardiner's in town so much in +love with her that my sisterinlaw was sure he would make her +an offer before we came away. But, however, he did not. +Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some +verses on her, and very pretty they were." +"And so ended his affection," said Elizabeth impatiently. "There +has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I +wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving +away love" +"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said +Darcy. +"Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes +what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of +inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it +entirely away." +Darcy only smiled and the general pause which ensued made +Elizabeth tremble lest her mother should be exposing herself +again. She longed to speak, but could think of nothing to say +and after a short silence Mrs. Bennet began repeating her thanks +to Mr. Bingley for his kindness to Jane, with an apology for +troubling him also with Lizzy. Mr. Bingley was unaffectedly +civil in his answer, and forced his younger sister to be civil +also, and say what the occasion required. She performed her +part indeed without much graciousness, but Mrs. Bennet was +satisfied, and soon afterwards ordered her carriage. Upon this +signal, the youngest of her daughters put herself forward. The +two girls had been whispering to each other during the whole +visit, and the result of it was, that the youngest should tax +Mr. Bingley with having promised on his first coming into the +country to give a ball at Netherfield. +Lydia was a stout, wellgrown girl of fifteen, with a fine +complexion and goodhumoured countenance a favourite with her +mother, whose affection had brought her into public at an early +age. She had high animal spirits, and a sort of natural +selfconsequence, which the attention of the officers, to whom +her uncle's good dinners, and her own easy manners recommended +her, had increased into assurance. She was very equal, +therefore, to address Mr. Bingley on the subject of the ball, and +abruptly reminded him of his promise adding, that it would be +the most shameful thing in the world if he did not keep it. His +answer to this sudden attack was delightful to their mother's ear +"I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement and +when your sister is recovered, you shall, if you please, name the +very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing +when she is ill." +Lydia declared herself satisfied. "Oh yesit would be much +better to wait till Jane was well, and by that time most likely +Captain Carter would be at Meryton again. And when you have +given your ball," she added, "I shall insist on their giving one +also. I shall tell Colonel Forster it will be quite a shame if he +does not." +Mrs. Bennet and her daughters then departed, and Elizabeth +returned instantly to Jane, leaving her own and her relations' +behaviour to the remarks of the two ladies and Mr. Darcy the +latter of whom, however, could not be prevailed on to join in +their censure of her, in spite of all Miss Bingley's witticisms on +fine eyes. +Chapter +The day passed much as the day before had done. Mrs. Hurst +and Miss Bingley had spent some hours of the morning with the +invalid, who continued, though slowly, to mend and in the +evening Elizabeth joined their party in the drawingroom. The +lootable, however, did not appear. Mr. Darcy was writing, and +Miss Bingley, seated near him, was watching the progress of his +letter and repeatedly calling off his attention by messages to +his sister. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs. +Hurst was observing their game. +Elizabeth took up some needlework, and was sufficiently +amused in attending to what passed between Darcy and his +companion. The perpetual commendations of the lady, either on +his handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length +of his letter, with the perfect unconcern with which her praises +were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in +union with her opinion of each. +"How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter" +He made no answer. +"You write uncommonly fast." +"You are mistaken. I write rather slowly." +"How many letters you must have occasion to write in the +course of a year Letters of business, too How odious I should +think them" +"It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of yours." +"Pray tell your sister that I long to see her." +"I have already told her so once, by your desire." +"I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. +I mend pens remarkably well." +"Thank youbut I always mend my own." +"How can you contrive to write so even?" +He was silent. +"Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on +the harp and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with +her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely +superior to Miss Grantley's." +"Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? +At present I have not room to do them justice." +"Oh it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do +you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?" +"They are generally long but whether always charming it is not +for me to determine." +"It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter +with ease, cannot write ill." +"That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline," cried +her brother, "because he does not write with ease. He studies +too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?" +"My style of writing is very different from yours." +"Oh" cried Miss Bingley, "Charles writes in the most careless +way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the +rest." +"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express +themby which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas +at all to my correspondents." +"Your humility, Mr. Bingley," said Elizabeth, "must disarm +reproof." +"Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of +humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes +an indirect boast." +"And which of the two do you call my little recent piece of +modesty?" +"The indirect boast for you are really proud of your defects in +writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a +rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not +estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of +doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the +possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of +the performance. When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that +if you ever resolved upon quitting Netherfield you should be +gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of panegyric, of +compliment to yourselfand yet what is there so very laudable +in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business +undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone +else?" +"Nay," cried Bingley, "this is too much, to remember at night all +the foolish things that were said in the morning. And yet, upon +my honour, I believe what I said of myself to be true, and I +believe it at this moment. At least, therefore, I did not assume +the character of needless precipitance merely to show off before +the ladies." +"I dare say you believed it but I am by no means convinced that +you would be gone with such celerity. Your conduct would be +quite as dependent on chance as that of any man I know and if, +as you were mounting your horse, a friend were to say, 'Bingley, +you had better stay till next week,' you would probably do it, +you would probably not goand at another word, might stay a +month." +"You have only proved by this," cried Elizabeth, "that Mr. +Bingley did not do justice to his own disposition. You have +shown him off now much more than he did himself." +"I am exceedingly gratified," said Bingley, "by your converting +what my friend says into a compliment on the sweetness of my +temper. But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that +gentleman did by no means intend for he would certainly think +better of me, if under such a circumstance I were to give a flat +denial, and ride off as fast as I could." +"Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original +intentions as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?" +"Upon my word, I cannot exactly explain the matter Darcy must +speak for himself." +"You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to +call mine, but which I have never acknowledged. Allowing the +case, however, to stand according to your representation, you +must remember, Miss Bennet, that the friend who is supposed to +desire his return to the house, and the delay of his plan, has +merely desired it, asked it without offering one argument in +favour of its propriety." +"To yield readilyeasilyto the persuasion of a friend is +no merit with you." +"To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding +of either." +"You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the +influence of friendship and affection. A regard for the requester +would often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting +for arguments to reason one into it. I am not particularly +speaking of such a case as you have supposed about Mr. +Bingley. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance +occurs before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour +thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and +friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a +resolution of no very great moment, should you think ill of that +person for complying with the desire, without waiting to be +argued into it?" +"Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to +arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance +which is to appertain to this request, as well as the degree of +intimacy subsisting between the parties?" +"By all means," cried Bingley "let us hear all the particulars, +not forgetting their comparative height and size for that will +have more weight in the argument, Miss Bennet, than you may be +aware of. I assure you, that if Darcy were not such a great tall +fellow, in comparison with myself, I should not pay him half so +much deference. I declare I do not know a more awful object +than Darcy, on particular occasions, and in particular places at +his own house especially, and of a Sunday evening, when he has +nothing to do." +Mr. Darcy smiled but Elizabeth thought she could perceive that +he was rather offended, and therefore checked her laugh. Miss +Bingley warmly resented the indignity he had received, in an +expostulation with her brother for talking such nonsense. +"I see your design, Bingley," said his friend. "You dislike an +argument, and want to silence this." +"Perhaps I do. Arguments are too much like disputes. If you and +Miss Bennet will defer yours till I am out of the room, I shall +be very thankful and then you may say whatever you like of me." +"What you ask," said Elizabeth, "is no sacrifice on my side and +Mr. Darcy had much better finish his letter." +Mr. Darcy took her advice, and did finish his letter. +When that business was over, he applied to Miss Bingley and +Elizabeth for an indulgence of some music. Miss Bingley moved +with some alacrity to the pianoforte and, after a polite request +that Elizabeth would lead the way which the other as politely +and more earnestly negatived, she seated herself. +Mrs. Hurst sang with her sister, and while they were thus +employed, Elizabeth could not help observing, as she turned +over some musicbooks that lay on the instrument, how frequently +Mr. Darcy's eyes were fixed on her. She hardly knew how to +suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a +man and yet that he should look at her because he disliked her, +was still more strange. She could only imagine, however, at last +that she drew his notice because there was something more wrong +and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in any +other person present. The supposition did not pain her. She +liked him too little to care for his approbation. +After playing some Italian songs, Miss Bingley varied the charm +by a lively Scotch air and soon afterwards Mr. Darcy, drawing +near Elizabeth, said to her +"Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such +an opportunity of dancing a reel?" +She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, with +some surprise at her silence. +"Oh" said she, "I heard you before, but I could not immediately +determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say +'Yes,' that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste +but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, +and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have, +therefore, made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to +dance a reel at alland now despise me if you dare." +"Indeed I do not dare." +Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at +his gallantry but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness +in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody +and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he +was by her. He really believed, that were it not for the +inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger. +Miss Bingley saw, or suspected enough to be jealous and her +great anxiety for the recovery of her dear friend Jane received +some assistance from her desire of getting rid of Elizabeth. +She often tried to provoke Darcy into disliking her guest, by +talking of their supposed marriage, and planning his happiness in +such an alliance. +"I hope," said she, as they were walking together in the +shrubbery the next day, "you will give your motherinlaw a few +hints, when this desirable event takes place, as to the advantage +of holding her tongue and if you can compass it, do cure the +younger girls of running after officers. And, if I may mention so +delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something, +bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady +possesses." +"Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?" +"Oh yes. Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Phillips be +placed in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your +greatuncle the judge. They are in the same profession, you +know, only in different lines. As for your Elizabeth's picture, you +must not have it taken, for what painter could do justice to those +beautiful eyes?" +"It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but their +colour and shape, and the eyelashes, so remarkably fine, might +be copied." +At that moment they were met from another walk by Mrs. Hurst +and Elizabeth herself. +"I did not know that you intended to walk," said Miss Bingley, +in some confusion, lest they had been overheard. +"You used us abominably ill," answered Mrs. Hurst, "running +away without telling us that you were coming out." +Then taking the disengaged arm of Mr. Darcy, she left Elizabeth +to walk by herself. The path just admitted three. Mr. Darcy felt +their rudeness, and immediately said +"This walk is not wide enough for our party. We had better go +into the avenue." +But Elizabeth, who had not the least inclination to remain with +them, laughingly answered +"No, no stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and +appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be +spoilt by admitting a fourth. Goodbye." +She then ran gaily off, rejoicing as she rambled about, in the +hope of being at home again in a day or two. Jane was already +so much recovered as to intend leaving her room for a couple of +hours that evening. +Chapter +When the ladies removed after dinner, Elizabeth ran up to her +sister, and seeing her well guarded from cold, attended her into +the drawingroom, where she was welcomed by her two friends +with many professions of pleasure and Elizabeth had never seen +them so agreeable as they were during the hour which passed +before the gentlemen appeared. Their powers of conversation +were considerable. They could describe an entertainment with +accuracy, relate an anecdote with humour, and laugh at their +acquaintance with spirit. +But when the gentlemen entered, Jane was no longer the first +object Miss Bingley's eyes were instantly turned toward Darcy, +and she had something to say to him before he had advanced +many steps. He addressed himself to Miss Bennet, with a polite +congratulation Mr. Hurst also made her a slight bow, and said +he was "very glad" but diffuseness and warmth remained for +Bingley's salutation. He was full of joy and attention. The first +halfhour was spent in piling up the fire, lest she should suffer +from the change of room and she removed at his desire to the +other side of the fireplace, that she might be further from the +door. He then sat down by her, and talked scarcely to anyone +else. Elizabeth, at work in the opposite corner, saw it all with +great delight. +When tea was over, Mr. Hurst reminded his sisterinlaw of the +cardtablebut in vain. She had obtained private intelligence +that Mr. Darcy did not wish for cards and Mr. Hurst soon found +even his open petition rejected. She assured him that no one +intended to play, and the silence of the whole party on the +subject seemed to justify her. Mr. Hurst had therefore nothing +to do, but to stretch himself on one of the sofas and go to +sleep. Darcy took up a book Miss Bingley did the same and +Mrs. Hurst, principally occupied in playing with her bracelets +and rings, joined now and then in her brother's conversation +with Miss Bennet. +Miss Bingley's attention was quite as much engaged in watching +Mr. Darcy's progress through his book, as in reading her own +and she was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking +at his page. She could not win him, however, to any conversation +he merely answered her question, and read on. At length, quite +exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which +she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, +she gave a great yawn and said, "How pleasant it is to spend an +evening in this way I declare after all there is no enjoyment +like reading How much sooner one tires of anything than of a +book When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if +I have not an excellent library." +No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her +book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest for some +amusement when hearing her brother mentioning a ball to Miss +Bennet, she turned suddenly towards him and said +"By the bye, Charles, are you really serious in meditating a dance +at Netherfield? I would advise you, before you determine on it, +to consult the wishes of the present party I am much mistaken if +there are not some among us to whom a ball would be rather a +punishment than a pleasure." +"If you mean Darcy," cried her brother, "he may go to bed, if he +chooses, before it beginsbut as for the ball, it is quite a settled +thing and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough, I +shall send round my cards." +"I should like balls infinitely better," she replied, "if they +were carried on in a different manner but there is something +insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It +would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of +dancing were made the order of the day." +"Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would +not be near so much like a ball." +Miss Bingley made no answer, and soon afterwards she got up +and walked about the room. Her figure was elegant, and she +walked well but Darcy, at whom it was all aimed, was still +inflexibly studious. In the desperation of her feelings, she +resolved on one effort more, and, turning to Elizabeth, said +"Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, +and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very +refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude." +Elizabeth was surprised, but agreed to it immediately. Miss +Bingley succeeded no less in the real object of her civility +Mr. Darcy looked up. He was as much awake to the novelty of +attention in that quarter as Elizabeth herself could be, and +unconsciously closed his book. He was directly invited to join +their party, but he declined it, observing that he could imagine +but two motives for their choosing to walk up and down the +room together, with either of which motives his joining them +would interfere. "What could he mean? She was dying to know +what could be his meaning?"and asked Elizabeth whether she +could at all understand him? +"Not at all," was her answer "but depend upon it, he means to +be severe on us, and our surest way of disappointing him will be +to ask nothing about it." +Miss Bingley, however, was incapable of disappointing Mr. +Darcy in anything, and persevered therefore in requiring an +explanation of his two motives. +"I have not the smallest objection to explaining them," said he, +as soon as she allowed him to speak. "You either choose this +method of passing the evening because you are in each other's +confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are +conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in +walking if the first, I would be completely in your way, and if +the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire." +"Oh shocking" cried Miss Bingley. "I never heard anything so +abominable. How shall we punish him for such a speech?" +"Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination," said Elizabeth. +"We can all plague and punish one another. Tease himlaugh +at him. Intimate as you are, you must know how it is to be +done." +"But upon my honour, I do not. I do assure you that my +intimacy has not yet taught me that. Tease calmness of +manner and presence of mind No, nofeel he may defy us +there. And as to laughter, we will not expose ourselves, if you +please, by attempting to laugh without a subject. Mr. Darcy may +hug himself." +"Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at" cried Elizabeth. "That is +an uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for +it would be a great loss to me to have many such acquaintances. +I dearly love a laugh." +"Miss Bingley," said he, "has given me more credit than can be. +The wisest and the best of mennay, the wisest and best of their +actionsmay be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first +object in life is a joke." +"Certainly," replied Elizabeth"there are such people, but I +hope I am not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is +wise and good. Follies and nonsense, whims and +inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them +whenever I can. But these, I suppose, are precisely what you +are without." +"Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has been the +study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a +strong understanding to ridicule." +"Such as vanity and pride." +"Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pridewhere there is a +real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good +regulation." +Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile. +"Your examination of Mr. Darcy is over, I presume," said Miss +Bingley "and pray what is the result?" +"I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. +He owns it himself without disguise." +"No," said Darcy, "I have made no such pretension. I have +faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. +My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little +yieldingcertainly too little for the convenience of the world. +I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, +nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed +about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be +called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever." +"That is a failing indeed" cried Elizabeth. "Implacable +resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your +fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me." +"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some +particular evila natural defect, which not even the best +education can overcome." +"And your defect is to hate everybody." +"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to +misunderstand them." +"Do let us have a little music," cried Miss Bingley, tired of a +conversation in which she had no share. "Louisa, you will not +mind my waking Mr. Hurst?" +Her sister had not the smallest objection, and the pianoforte was +opened and Darcy, after a few moments' recollection, was not +sorry for it. He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too +much attention. +Chapter +In consequence of an agreement between the sisters, Elizabeth +wrote the next morning to their mother, to beg that the carriage +might be sent for them in the course of the day. But Mrs. +Bennet, who had calculated on her daughters remaining at +Netherfield till the following Tuesday, which would exactly +finish Jane's week, could not bring herself to receive them with +pleasure before. Her answer, therefore, was not propitious, at +least not to Elizabeth's wishes, for she was impatient to get +home. Mrs. Bennet sent them word that they could not possibly +have the carriage before Tuesday and in her postscript it was +added, that if Mr. Bingley and his sister pressed them to stay +longer, she could spare them very well. Against staying longer, +however, Elizabeth was positively resolvednor did she much +expect it would be asked and fearful, on the contrary, as being +considered as intruding themselves needlessly long, she urged +Jane to borrow Mr. Bingley's carriage immediately, and at +length it was settled that their original design of leaving +Netherfield that morning should be mentioned, and the request +made. +The communication excited many professions of concern and +enough was said of wishing them to stay at least till the +following day to work on Jane and till the morrow their going +was deferred. Miss Bingley was then sorry that she had +proposed the delay, for her jealousy and dislike of one sister +much exceeded her affection for the other. +The master of the house heard with real sorrow that they were +to go so soon, and repeatedly tried to persuade Miss Bennet that +it would not be safe for herthat she was not enough recovered +but Jane was firm where she felt herself to be right. +To Mr. Darcy it was welcome intelligenceElizabeth had been +at Netherfield long enough. She attracted him more than he +likedand Miss Bingley was uncivil to her, and more teasing +than usual to himself. He wisely resolved to be particularly +careful that no sign of admiration should now escape him, +nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his +felicity sensible that if such an idea had been suggested, +his behaviour during the last day must have material weight in +confirming or crushing it. Steady to his purpose, he scarcely +spoke ten words to her through the whole of Saturday, and +though they were at one time left by themselves for halfanhour, +he adhered most conscientiously to his book, and would not +even look at her. +On Sunday, after morning service, the separation, so agreeable +to almost all, took place. Miss Bingley's civility to Elizabeth +increased at last very rapidly, as well as her affection for Jane +and when they parted, after assuring the latter of the pleasure +it would always give her to see her either at Longbourn or +Netherfield, and embracing her most tenderly, she even shook +hands with the former. Elizabeth took leave of the whole party +in the liveliest of spirits. +They were not welcomed home very cordially by their mother. +Mrs. Bennet wondered at their coming, and thought them very +wrong to give so much trouble, and was sure Jane would have +caught cold again. But their father, though very laconic in his +expressions of pleasure, was really glad to see them he had felt +their importance in the family circle. The evening conversation, +when they were all assembled, had lost much of its animation, +and almost all its sense by the absence of Jane and Elizabeth. +They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thoroughbass +and human nature and had some extracts to admire, and some +new observations of threadbare morality to listen to. Catherine +and Lydia had information for them of a different sort. Much +had been done and much had been said in the regiment since the +preceding Wednesday several of the officers had dined lately +with their uncle, a private had been flogged, and it had actually +been hinted that Colonel Forster was going to be married. +Chapter +"I hope, my dear," said Mr. Bennet to his wife, as they were +at breakfast the next morning, "that you have ordered a good +dinner today, because I have reason to expect an addition to +our family party." +"Who do you mean, my dear? I know of nobody that is coming, +I am sure, unless Charlotte Lucas should happen to call inand +I hope my dinners are good enough for her. I do not believe +she often sees such at home." +"The person of whom I speak is a gentleman, and a stranger." +Mrs. Bennet's eyes sparkled. "A gentleman and a stranger It is +Mr. Bingley, I am sure Well, I am sure I shall be extremely glad +to see Mr. Bingley. Butgood Lord how unlucky There is not +a bit of fish to be got today. Lydia, my love, ring the bellI +must speak to Hill this moment." +"It is not Mr. Bingley," said her husband "it is a person whom +I never saw in the whole course of my life." +This roused a general astonishment and he had the pleasure of +being eagerly questioned by his wife and his five daughters at +once. +After amusing himself some time with their curiosity, he thus +explained +"About a month ago I received this letter and about a fortnight +ago I answered it, for I thought it a case of some delicacy, and +requiring early attention. It is from my cousin, Mr. Collins, who, +when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house as soon as he +pleases." +"Oh my dear," cried his wife, "I cannot bear to hear that +mentioned. Pray do not talk of that odious man. I do think it is +the hardest thing in the world, that your estate should be entailed +away from your own children and I am sure, if I had been you, I +should have tried long ago to do something or other about it." +Jane and Elizabeth tried to explain to her the nature of an entail. +They had often attempted to do it before, but it was a subject +on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason, and she +continued to rail bitterly against the cruelty of settling an +estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man +whom nobody cared anything about. +"It certainly is a most iniquitous affair," said Mr. Bennet, +"and nothing can clear Mr. Collins from the guilt of inheriting +Longbourn. But if you will listen to his letter, you may perhaps +be a little softened by his manner of expressing himself." +"No, that I am sure I shall not and I think it is very impertinent +of him to write to you at all, and very hypocritical. I hate such +false friends. Why could he not keep on quarreling with you, as +his father did before him?" +"Why, indeed he does seem to have had some filial scruples on +that head, as you will hear." +"Hunsford, near Westerham, Kent, +th October. +"Dear Sir, +"The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late +honoured father always gave me much uneasiness, and since I +have had the misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished +to heal the breach but for some time I was kept back by my own +doubts, fearing lest it might seem disrespectful to his memory +for me to be on good terms with anyone with whom it had always +pleased him to be at variance.'There, Mrs. Bennet.'My +mind, however, is now made up on the subject, for having +received ordination at Easter, I have been so fortunate as to +be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady +Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose +bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory +of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean +myself with grateful respect towards her ladyship, and be ever +ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which are instituted +by the Church of England. As a clergyman, moreover, I feel it +my duty to promote and establish the blessing of peace in all +families within the reach of my influence and on these +grounds I flatter myself that my present overtures are highly +commendable, and that the circumstance of my being next in the +entail of Longbourn estate will be kindly overlooked on your +side, and not lead you to reject the offered olivebranch. +I cannot be otherwise than concerned at being the means of +injuring your amiable daughters, and beg leave to apologise for +it, as well as to assure you of my readiness to make them every +possible amendsbut of this hereafter. If you should have +no objection to receive me into your house, I propose myself +the satisfaction of waiting on you and your family, Monday, +November th, by four o'clock, and shall probably trespass on +your hospitality till the Saturday se'ennight following, which I +can do without any inconvenience, as Lady Catherine is far from +objecting to my occasional absence on a Sunday, provided that +some other clergyman is engaged to do the duty of the day.I +remain, dear sir, with respectful compliments to your lady and +daughters, your wellwisher and friend, +"WILLIAM COLLINS" +"At four o'clock, therefore, we may expect this peacemaking +gentleman," said Mr. Bennet, as he folded up the letter. "He +seems to be a most conscientious and polite young man, upon +my word, and I doubt not will prove a valuable acquaintance, +especially if Lady Catherine should be so indulgent as to let +him come to us again." +"There is some sense in what he says about the girls, however, +and if he is disposed to make them any amends, I shall not be +the person to discourage him." +"Though it is difficult," said Jane, "to guess in what way he can +mean to make us the atonement he thinks our due, the wish is +certainly to his credit." +Elizabeth was chiefly struck by his extraordinary deference for +Lady Catherine, and his kind intention of christening, marrying, +and burying his parishioners whenever it were required. +"He must be an oddity, I think," said she. "I cannot make him +out.There is something very pompous in his style.And what +can he mean by apologising for being next in the entail?We +cannot suppose he would help it if he could.Could he be a +sensible man, sir?" +"No, my dear, I think not. I have great hopes of finding him +quite the reverse. There is a mixture of servility and +selfimportance in his letter, which promises well. I am +impatient to see him." +"In point of composition," said Mary, "the letter does not seem +defective. The idea of the olivebranch perhaps is not wholly +new, yet I think it is well expressed." +To Catherine and Lydia, neither the letter nor its writer were +in any degree interesting. It was next to impossible that their +cousin should come in a scarlet coat, and it was now some +weeks since they had received pleasure from the society of a +man in any other colour. As for their mother, Mr. Collins's +letter had done away much of her illwill, and she was preparing +to see him with a degree of composure which astonished her +husband and daughters. +Mr. Collins was punctual to his time, and was received with +great politeness by the whole family. Mr. Bennet indeed said +little but the ladies were ready enough to talk, and Mr. Collins +seemed neither in need of encouragement, nor inclined to be +silent himself. He was a tall, heavylooking young man of +fiveandtwenty. His air was grave and stately, and his +manners were very formal. He had not been long seated before +he complimented Mrs. Bennet on having so fine a family of +daughters said he had heard much of their beauty, but that in +this instance fame had fallen short of the truth and added, +that he did not doubt her seeing them all in due time disposed +of in marriage. This gallantry was not much to the taste of +some of his hearers but Mrs. Bennet, who quarreled with no +compliments, answered most readily. +"You are very kind, I am sure and I wish with all my heart it +may prove so, for else they will be destitute enough. Things are +settled so oddly." +"You allude, perhaps, to the entail of this estate." +"Ah sir, I do indeed. It is a grievous affair to my poor girls, +you must confess. Not that I mean to find fault with you, for +such things I know are all chance in this world. There is no +knowing how estates will go when once they come to be entailed." +"I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins, +and could say much on the subject, but that I am cautious of +appearing forward and precipitate. But I can assure the young +ladies that I come prepared to admire them. At present I will +not say more but, perhaps, when we are better acquainted" +He was interrupted by a summons to dinner and the girls smiled +on each other. They were not the only objects of Mr. Collins's +admiration. The hall, the diningroom, and all its furniture, +were examined and praised and his commendation of everything +would have touched Mrs. Bennet's heart, but for the mortifying +supposition of his viewing it all as his own future property. +The dinner too in its turn was highly admired and he begged to +know to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its cooking +was owing. But he was set right there by Mrs. Bennet, who +assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to +keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in +the kitchen. He begged pardon for having displeased her. In a +softened tone she declared herself not at all offended but he +continued to apologise for about a quarter of an hour. +Chapter +During dinner, Mr. Bennet scarcely spoke at all but when the +servants were withdrawn, he thought it time to have some +conversation with his guest, and therefore started a subject in +which he expected him to shine, by observing that he seemed +very fortunate in his patroness. Lady Catherine de Bourgh's +attention to his wishes, and consideration for his comfort, +appeared very remarkable. Mr. Bennet could not have chosen +better. Mr. Collins was eloquent in her praise. The subject +elevated him to more than usual solemnity of manner, and with a +most important aspect he protested that "he had never in his life +witnessed such behaviour in a person of ranksuch affability +and condescension, as he had himself experienced from Lady +Catherine. She had been graciously pleased to approve of both +of the discourses which he had already had the honour of +preaching before her. She had also asked him twice to dine at +Rosings, and had sent for him only the Saturday before, to make +up her pool of quadrille in the evening. Lady Catherine was +reckoned proud by many people he knew, but he had never +seen anything but affability in her. She had always spoken to +him as she would to any other gentleman she made not the +smallest objection to his joining in the society of the +neighbourhood nor to his leaving the parish occasionally for a +week or two, to visit his relations. She had even condescended +to advise him to marry as soon as he could, provided he chose +with discretion and had once paid him a visit in his humble +parsonage, where she had perfectly approved all the alterations +he had been making, and had even vouchsafed to suggest some +herselfsome shelves in the closet upstairs." +"That is all very proper and civil, I am sure," said Mrs. Bennet, +"and I dare say she is a very agreeable woman. It is a pity that +great ladies in general are not more like her. Does she live near +you, sir?" +"The garden in which stands my humble abode is separated only +by a lane from Rosings Park, her ladyship's residence." +"I think you said she was a widow, sir? Has she any family?" +"She has only one daughter, the heiress of Rosings, and of very +extensive property." +"Ah" said Mrs. Bennet, shaking her head, "then she is better off +than many girls. And what sort of young lady is she? Is she +handsome?" +"She is a most charming young lady indeed. Lady Catherine +herself says that, in point of true beauty, Miss de Bourgh is far +superior to the handsomest of her sex, because there is that in +her features which marks the young lady of distinguished birth. +She is unfortunately of a sickly constitution, which has prevented +her from making that progress in many accomplishments which +she could not have otherwise failed of, as I am informed by the +lady who superintended her education, and who still resides with +them. But she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends to +drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies." +"Has she been presented? I do not remember her name among +the ladies at court." +"Her indifferent state of health unhappily prevents her being +in town and by that means, as I told Lady Catherine one day, +has deprived the British court of its brightest ornaments. +Her ladyship seemed pleased with the idea and you may imagine +that I am happy on every occasion to offer those little +delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. +I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine, that her +charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the +most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would +be adorned by her. These are the kind of little things which +please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I +conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay." +"You judge very properly," said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for +you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I +ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse +of the moment, or are the result of previous study?" +"They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though +I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such +little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, +I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible." +Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was +as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the +keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most +resolute composure of countenance, and, except in an occasional +glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure. +By teatime, however, the dose had been enough, and Mr. +Bennet was glad to take his guest into the drawingroom again, +and, when tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the +ladies. Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced +but, on beholding it for everything announced it to be from a +circulating library, he started back, and begging pardon, +protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at him, and +Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some +deliberation he chose Fordyce's Sermons. Lydia gaped as he +opened the volume, and before he had, with very monotonous +solemnity, read three pages, she interrupted him with +"Do you know, mamma, that my uncle Phillips talks of turning +away Richard and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My +aunt told me so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton +tomorrow to hear more about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny +comes back from town." +Lydia was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue but +Mr. Collins, much offended, laid aside his book, and said +"I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by +books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. +It amazes me, I confess for, certainly, there can be nothing so +advantageous to them as instruction. But I will no longer +importune my young cousin." +Then turning to Mr. Bennet, he offered himself as his antagonist +at backgammon. Mr. Bennet accepted the challenge, observing +that he acted very wisely in leaving the girls to their own trifling +amusements. Mrs. Bennet and her daughters apologised most +civilly for Lydia's interruption, and promised that it should not +occur again, if he would resume his book but Mr. Collins, after +assuring them that he bore his young cousin no illwill, and +should never resent her behaviour as any affront, seated himself +at another table with Mr. Bennet, and prepared for backgammon. +Chapter +Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature +had been but little assisted by education or society the greatest +part of his life having been spent under the guidance of an +illiterate and miserly father and though he belonged to one of +the universities, he had merely kept the necessary terms, without +forming at it any useful acquaintance. The subjection in which +his father had brought him up had given him originally great +humility of manner but it was now a good deal counteracted by +the selfconceit of a weak head, living in retirement, and the +consequential feelings of early and unexpected prosperity. A +fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de +Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant and the respect +which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his +patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his +authority as a clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him +altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, +selfimportance and humility. +Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, he +intended to marry and in seeking a reconciliation with the +Longbourn family he had a wife in view, as he meant to choose +one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable +as they were represented by common report. This was his plan +of amendsof atonementfor inheriting their father's estate +and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and +suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his +own part. +His plan did not vary on seeing them. Miss Bennet's lovely face +confirmed his views, and established all his strictest notions of +what was due to seniority and for the first evening she was his +settled choice. The next morning, however, made an alteration +for in a quarter of an hour's teteatete with Mrs. Bennet before +breakfast, a conversation beginning with his parsonagehouse, +and leading naturally to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress +might be found for it at Longbourn, produced from her, amid +very complaisant smiles and general encouragement, a caution +against the very Jane he had fixed on. "As to her younger +daughters, she could not take upon her to sayshe could not +positively answerbut she did not know of any prepossession +her eldest daughter, she must just mentionshe felt it +incumbent on her to hint, was likely to be very soon engaged." +Mr. Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabethand it +was soon donedone while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire. +Elizabeth, equally next to Jane in birth and beauty, succeeded +her of course. +Mrs. Bennet treasured up the hint, and trusted that she might +soon have two daughters married and the man whom she could +not bear to speak of the day before was now high in her good +graces. +Lydia's intention of walking to Meryton was not forgotten +every sister except Mary agreed to go with her and Mr. Collins +was to attend them, at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most +anxious to get rid of him, and have his library to himself for +thither Mr. Collins had followed him after breakfast and there he +would continue, nominally engaged with one of the largest folios +in the collection, but really talking to Mr. Bennet, with little +cessation, of his house and garden at Hunsford. Such doings +discomposed Mr. Bennet exceedingly. In his library he had been +always sure of leisure and tranquillity and though prepared, as +he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other +room of the house, he was used to be free from them there his +civility, therefore, was most prompt in inviting Mr. Collins to +join his daughters in their walk and Mr. Collins, being in fact +much better fitted for a walker than a reader, was extremely +pleased to close his large book, and go. +In pompous nothings on his side, and civil assents on that of +his cousins, their time passed till they entered Meryton. The +attention of the younger ones was then no longer to be gained by +him. Their eyes were immediately wandering up in the street in +quest of the officers, and nothing less than a very smart bonnet +indeed, or a really new muslin in a shop window, could recall +them. +But the attention of every lady was soon caught by a young man, +whom they had never seen before, of most gentlemanlike +appearance, walking with another officer on the other side of the +way. The officer was the very Mr. Denny concerning whose +return from London Lydia came to inquire, and he bowed as +they passed. All were struck with the stranger's air, all +wondered who he could be and Kitty and Lydia, determined if +possible to find out, led the way across the street, under pretense +of wanting something in an opposite shop, and fortunately had +just gained the pavement when the two gentlemen, turning back, +had reached the same spot. Mr. Denny addressed them directly, +and entreated permission to introduce his friend, Mr. Wickham, +who had returned with him the day before from town, and he +was happy to say had accepted a commission in their corps. +This was exactly as it should be for the young man wanted only +regimentals to make him completely charming. His appearance +was greatly in his favour he had all the best part of beauty, a +fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address. The +introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness of +conversationa readiness at the same time perfectly correct and +unassuming and the whole party were still standing and talking +together very agreeably, when the sound of horses drew their +notice, and Darcy and Bingley were seen riding down the street. +On distinguishing the ladies of the group, the two gentlemen +came directly towards them, and began the usual civilities. +Bingley was the principal spokesman, and Miss Bennet the +principal object. He was then, he said, on his way to Longbourn +on purpose to inquire after her. Mr. Darcy corroborated it with +a bow, and was beginning to determine not to fix his eyes on +Elizabeth, when they were suddenly arrested by the sight of the +stranger, and Elizabeth happening to see the countenance of +both as they looked at each other, was all astonishment at the +effect of the meeting. Both changed colour, one looked white, +the other red. Mr. Wickham, after a few moments, touched his +hata salutation which Mr. Darcy just deigned to return. What +could be the meaning of it? It was impossible to imagine it was +impossible not to long to know. +In another minute, Mr. Bingley, but without seeming to have +noticed what passed, took leave and rode on with his friend. +Mr. Denny and Mr. Wickham walked with the young ladies to +the door of Mr. Phillip's house, and then made their bows, in +spite of Miss Lydia's pressing entreaties that they should come +in, and even in spite of Mrs. Phillips's throwing up the parlour +window and loudly seconding the invitation. +Mrs. Phillips was always glad to see her nieces and the two +eldest, from their recent absence, were particularly welcome, and +she was eagerly expressing her surprise at their sudden return +home, which, as their own carriage had not fetched them, she +should have known nothing about, if she had not happened to +see Mr. Jones's shopboy in the street, who had told her that +they were not to send any more draughts to Netherfield because +the Miss Bennets were come away, when her civility was +claimed towards Mr. Collins by Jane's introduction of him. She +received him with her very best politeness, which he returned +with as much more, apologising for his intrusion, without any +previous acquaintance with her, which he could not help +flattering himself, however, might be justified by his relationship +to the young ladies who introduced him to her notice. Mrs. +Phillips was quite awed by such an excess of good breeding but +her contemplation of one stranger was soon put to an end by +exclamations and inquiries about the other of whom, however, +she could only tell her nieces what they already knew, that Mr. +Denny had brought him from London, and that he was to have a +lieutenant's commission in the shire. She had been watching +him the last hour, she said, as he walked up and down the street, +and had Mr. Wickham appeared, Kitty and Lydia would certainly +have continued the occupation, but unluckily no one passed +windows now except a few of the officers, who, in comparison +with the stranger, were become "stupid, disagreeable fellows." +Some of them were to dine with the Phillipses the next day, and +their aunt promised to make her husband call on Mr. Wickham, +and give him an invitation also, if the family from Longbourn +would come in the evening. This was agreed to, and Mrs. +Phillips protested that they would have a nice comfortable noisy +game of lottery tickets, and a little bit of hot supper afterwards. +The prospect of such delights was very cheering, and they parted +in mutual good spirits. Mr. Collins repeated his apologies in +quitting the room, and was assured with unwearying civility that +they were perfectly needless. +As they walked home, Elizabeth related to Jane what she had +seen pass between the two gentlemen but though Jane would +have defended either or both, had they appeared to be in the +wrong, she could no more explain such behaviour than her sister. +Mr. Collins on his return highly gratified Mrs. Bennet by +admiring Mrs. Phillips's manners and politeness. He protested +that, except Lady Catherine and her daughter, he had never seen +a more elegant woman for she had not only received him with +the utmost civility, but even pointedly included him in her +invitation for the next evening, although utterly unknown to her +before. Something, he supposed, might be attributed to his +connection with them, but yet he had never met with so much +attention in the whole course of his life. +Chapter +As no objection was made to the young people's engagement +with their aunt, and all Mr. Collins's scruples of leaving Mr. +and Mrs. Bennet for a single evening during his visit were most +steadily resisted, the coach conveyed him and his five cousins +at a suitable hour to Meryton and the girls had the pleasure of +hearing, as they entered the drawingroom, that Mr. Wickham +had accepted their uncle's invitation, and was then in the house. +When this information was given, and they had all taken their +seats, Mr. Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire, +and he was so much struck with the size and furniture of the +apartment, that he declared he might almost have supposed +himself in the small summer breakfast parlour at Rosings a +comparison that did not at first convey much gratification but +when Mrs. Phillips understood from him what Rosings was, and +who was its proprietorwhen she had listened to the description +of only one of Lady Catherine's drawingrooms, and found that +the chimneypiece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt +all the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented +a comparison with the housekeeper's room. +In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her +mansion, with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble +abode, and the improvements it was receiving, he was happily +employed until the gentlemen joined them and he found in +Mrs. Phillips a very attentive listener, whose opinion of +his consequence increased with what she heard, and who was +resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she +could. To the girls, who could not listen to their cousin, +and who had nothing to do but to wish for an instrument, and +examine their own indifferent imitations of china on the +mantelpiece, the interval of waiting appeared very long. It was +over at last, however. The gentlemen did approach, and when +Mr. Wickham walked into the room, Elizabeth felt that she had +neither been seeing him before, nor thinking of him since, with +the smallest degree of unreasonable admiration. The officers of +the shire were in general a very creditable, gentlemanlike +set, and the best of them were of the present party but Mr. +Wickham was as far beyond them all in person, countenance, air, +and walk, as they were superior to the broadfaced, stuffy +uncle Phillips, breathing port wine, who followed them into +the room. +Mr. Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every +female eye was turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by +whom he finally seated himself and the agreeable manner in +which he immediately fell into conversation, though it was only +on its being a wet night, made her feel that the commonest, +dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by +the skill of the speaker. +With such rivals for the notice of the fair as Mr. Wickham and +the officers, Mr. Collins seemed to sink into insignificance to +the young ladies he certainly was nothing but he had still at +intervals a kind listener in Mrs. Phillips, and was by her +watchfulness, most abundantly supplied with coffee and muffin. +When the cardtables were placed, he had the opportunity of +obliging her in turn, by sitting down to whist. +"I know little of the game at present," said he, "but I shall be +glad to improve myself, for in my situation in life" Mrs. Phillips +was very glad for his compliance, but could not wait for his +reason. +Mr. Wickham did not play at whist, and with ready delight was he +received at the other table between Elizabeth and Lydia. At first +there seemed danger of Lydia's engrossing him entirely, for she +was a most determined talker but being likewise extremely fond +of lottery tickets, she soon grew too much interested in the +game, too eager in making bets and exclaiming after prizes to +have attention for anyone in particular. Allowing for the +common demands of the game, Mr. Wickham was therefore at leisure +to talk to Elizabeth, and she was very willing to hear him, +though what she chiefly wished to hear she could not hope to be +toldthe history of his acquaintance with Mr. Darcy. She dared +not even mention that gentleman. Her curiosity, however, was +unexpectedly relieved. Mr. Wickham began the subject himself. +He inquired how far Netherfield was from Meryton and, after +receiving her answer, asked in a hesitating manner how long +Mr. Darcy had been staying there. +"About a month," said Elizabeth and then, unwilling to let the +subject drop, added, "He is a man of very large property in +Derbyshire, I understand." +"Yes," replied Mr. Wickham "his estate there is a noble one. +A clear ten thousand per annum. You could not have met with a +person more capable of giving you certain information on that +head than myself, for I have been connected with his family in +a particular manner from my infancy." +Elizabeth could not but look surprised. +"You may well be surprised, Miss Bennet, at such an assertion, +after seeing, as you probably might, the very cold manner of our +meeting yesterday. Are you much acquainted with Mr. Darcy?" +"As much as I ever wish to be," cried Elizabeth very warmly. +"I have spent four days in the same house with him, and I think +him very disagreeable." +"I have no right to give my opinion," said Wickham, "as to his +being agreeable or otherwise. I am not qualified to form one. I +have known him too long and too well to be a fair judge. It is +impossible for me to be impartial. But I believe your opinion +of him would in general astonishand perhaps you would not +express it quite so strongly anywhere else. Here you are in your +own family." +"Upon my word, I say no more here than I might say in any +house in the neighbourhood, except Netherfield. He is not at all +liked in Hertfordshire. Everybody is disgusted with his pride. +You will not find him more favourably spoken of by anyone." +"I cannot pretend to be sorry," said Wickham, after a short +interruption, "that he or that any man should not be estimated +beyond their deserts but with him I believe it does not often +happen. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence, +or frightened by his high and imposing manners, and sees him +only as he chooses to be seen." +"I should take him, even on my slight acquaintance, to be an +illtempered man." Wickham only shook his head. +"I wonder," said he, at the next opportunity of speaking, +"whether he is likely to be in this country much longer." +"I do not at all know but I heard nothing of his going away +when I was at Netherfield. I hope your plans in favour of the +shire will not be affected by his being in the neighbourhood." +"Oh noit is not for me to be driven away by Mr. Darcy. If +he wishes to avoid seeing me, he must go. We are not on +friendly terms, and it always gives me pain to meet him, but I +have no reason for avoiding him but what I might proclaim +before all the world, a sense of very great illusage, and most +painful regrets at his being what he is. His father, Miss Bennet, +the late Mr. Darcy, was one of the best men that ever breathed, +and the truest friend I ever had and I can never be in company +with this Mr. Darcy without being grieved to the soul by a +thousand tender recollections. His behaviour to myself has been +scandalous but I verily believe I could forgive him anything and +everything, rather than his disappointing the hopes and +disgracing the memory of his father." +Elizabeth found the interest of the subject increase, and listened +with all her heart but the delicacy of it prevented further inquiry. +Mr. Wickham began to speak on more general topics, Meryton, +the neighbourhood, the society, appearing highly pleased with all +that he had yet seen, and speaking of the latter with gentle but +very intelligible gallantry. +"It was the prospect of constant society, and good society," he +added, "which was my chief inducement to enter the shire. +I knew it to be a most respectable, agreeable corps, and my +friend Denny tempted me further by his account of their +present quarters, and the very great attentions and excellent +acquaintances Meryton had procured them. Society, I own, is +necessary to me. I have been a disappointed man, and my spirits +will not bear solitude. I must have employment and society. +A military life is not what I was intended for, but circumstances +have now made it eligible. The church ought to have been +my professionI was brought up for the church, and I should at +this time have been in possession of a most valuable living, had +it pleased the gentleman we were speaking of just now." +"Indeed" +"Yesthe late Mr. Darcy bequeathed me the next presentation +of the best living in his gift. He was my godfather, and +excessively attached to me. I cannot do justice to his kindness. +He meant to provide for me amply, and thought he had done it +but when the living fell, it was given elsewhere." +"Good heavens" cried Elizabeth "but how could that be? +How could his will be disregarded? Why did you not seek legal +redress?" +"There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest +as to give me no hope from law. A man of honour could not have +doubted the intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt itor to +treat it as a merely conditional recommendation, and to assert that +I had forfeited all claim to it by extravagance, imprudencein +short anything or nothing. Certain it is, that the living became +vacant two years ago, exactly as I was of an age to hold it, and +that it was given to another man and no less certain is it, that +I cannot accuse myself of having really done anything to deserve +to lose it. I have a warm, unguarded temper, and I may have +spoken my opinion of him, and to him, too freely. I can recall +nothing worse. But the fact is, that we are very different sort +of men, and that he hates me." +"This is quite shocking He deserves to be publicly disgraced." +"Some time or other he will bebut it shall not be by me. +Till I can forget his father, I can never defy or expose him." +Elizabeth honoured him for such feelings, and thought him +handsomer than ever as he expressed them. +"But what," said she, after a pause, "can have been his motive? +What can have induced him to behave so cruelly?" +"A thorough, determined dislike of mea dislike which I cannot +but attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. +Darcy liked me less, his son might have borne with me better +but his father's uncommon attachment to me irritated him, I +believe, very early in life. He had not a temper to bear the sort of +competition in which we stoodthe sort of preference which +was often given me." +"I had not thought Mr. Darcy so bad as thisthough I have +never liked him. I had not thought so very ill of him. I had +supposed him to be despising his fellowcreatures in general, but +did not suspect him of descending to such malicious revenge, +such injustice, such inhumanity as this." +After a few minutes' reflection, however, she continued, +"I do remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the +implacability of his resentments, of his having an unforgiving +temper. His disposition must be dreadful." +"I will not trust myself on the subject," replied Wickham "I +can hardly be just to him." +Elizabeth was again deep in thought, and after a time exclaimed, +"To treat in such a manner the godson, the friend, the favourite +of his father" She could have added, "A young man, too, +like you, whose very countenance may vouch for your being +amiable"but she contented herself with, "and one, too, who +had probably been his companion from childhood, connected +together, as I think you said, in the closest manner" +"We were born in the same parish, within the same park the +greatest part of our youth was passed together inmates of the +same house, sharing the same amusements, objects of the same +parental care. My father began life in the profession which +your uncle, Mr. Phillips, appears to do so much credit tobut +he gave up everything to be of use to the late Mr. Darcy and +devoted all his time to the care of the Pemberley property. +He was most highly esteemed by Mr. Darcy, a most intimate, +confidential friend. Mr. Darcy often acknowledged himself +to be under the greatest obligations to my father's active +superintendence, and when, immediately before my father's +death, Mr. Darcy gave him a voluntary promise of providing for +me, I am convinced that he felt it to be as much a debt of +gratitude to him, as of his affection to myself." +"How strange" cried Elizabeth. "How abominable I wonder +that the very pride of this Mr. Darcy has not made him just to +you If from no better motive, that he should not have been too +proud to be dishonestfor dishonesty I must call it." +"It is wonderful," replied Wickham, "for almost all his actions +may be traced to pride and pride had often been his best friend. +It has connected him nearer with virtue than with any other +feeling. But we are none of us consistent, and in his behaviour +to me there were stronger impulses even than pride." +"Can such abominable pride as his have ever done him good?" +"Yes. It has often led him to be liberal and generous, to give his +money freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, and +relieve the poor. Family pride, and filial pridefor he is very +proud of what his father washave done this. Not to appear to +disgrace his family, to degenerate from the popular qualities, or +lose the influence of the Pemberley House, is a powerful motive. +He has also brotherly pride, which, with some brotherly +affection, makes him a very kind and careful guardian of his +sister, and you will hear him generally cried up as the most +attentive and best of brothers." +"What sort of girl is Miss Darcy?" +He shook his head. "I wish I could call her amiable. It gives +me pain to speak ill of a Darcy. But she is too much like her +brothervery, very proud. As a child, she was affectionate +and pleasing, and extremely fond of me and I have devoted hours +and hours to her amusement. But she is nothing to me now. +She is a handsome girl, about fifteen or sixteen, and, I +understand, highly accomplished. Since her father's death, +her home has been London, where a lady lives with her, and +superintends her education." +After many pauses and many trials of other subjects, Elizabeth +could not help reverting once more to the first, and saying +"I am astonished at his intimacy with Mr. Bingley How can Mr. +Bingley, who seems good humour itself, and is, I really believe, +truly amiable, be in friendship with such a man? How can they +suit each other? Do you know Mr. Bingley?" +"Not at all." +"He is a sweettempered, amiable, charming man. He cannot +know what Mr. Darcy is." +"Probably not but Mr. Darcy can please where he chooses. He +does not want abilities. He can be a conversible companion if he +thinks it worth his while. Among those who are at all his equals +in consequence, he is a very different man from what he is to the +less prosperous. His pride never deserts him but with the rich +he is liberalminded, just, sincere, rational, honourable, and +perhaps agreeableallowing something for fortune and figure." +The whist party soon afterwards breaking up, the players +gathered round the other table and Mr. Collins took his station +between his cousin Elizabeth and Mrs. Phillips. The usual +inquiries as to his success was made by the latter. It had not +been very great he had lost every point but when Mrs. Phillips +began to express her concern thereupon, he assured her with +much earnest gravity that it was not of the least importance, that +he considered the money as a mere trifle, and begged that she +would not make herself uneasy. +"I know very well, madam," said he, "that when persons sit down +to a cardtable, they must take their chances of these things, and +happily I am not in such circumstances as to make five shillings +any object. There are undoubtedly many who could not say the +same, but thanks to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, I am removed +far beyond the necessity of regarding little matters." +Mr. Wickham's attention was caught and after observing Mr. +Collins for a few moments, he asked Elizabeth in a low voice +whether her relation was very intimately acquainted with the +family of de Bourgh. +"Lady Catherine de Bourgh," she replied, "has very lately given +him a living. I hardly know how Mr. Collins was first +introduced to her notice, but he certainly has not known her +long." +"You know of course that Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady +Anne Darcy were sisters consequently that she is aunt to the +present Mr. Darcy." +"No, indeed, I did not. I knew nothing at all of Lady Catherine's +connections. I never heard of her existence till the day before +yesterday." +"Her daughter, Miss de Bourgh, will have a very large fortune, +and it is believed that she and her cousin will unite the two +estates." +This information made Elizabeth smile, as she thought of poor +Miss Bingley. Vain indeed must be all her attentions, vain and +useless her affection for his sister and her praise of himself, +if he were already selfdestined for another. +"Mr. Collins," said she, "speaks highly both of Lady Catherine +and her daughter but from some particulars that he has related +of her ladyship, I suspect his gratitude misleads him, and that in +spite of her being his patroness, she is an arrogant, conceited +woman." +"I believe her to be both in a great degree," replied Wickham +"I have not seen her for many years, but I very well remember that +I never liked her, and that her manners were dictatorial and +insolent. She has the reputation of being remarkably sensible +and clever but I rather believe she derives part of her abilities +from her rank and fortune, part from her authoritative manner, +and the rest from the pride for her nephew, who chooses that +everyone connected with him should have an understanding of +the first class." +Elizabeth allowed that he had given a very rational account of it, +and they continued talking together, with mutual satisfaction +till supper put an end to cards, and gave the rest of the ladies +their share of Mr. Wickham's attentions. There could be no +conversation in the noise of Mrs. Phillips's supper party, but +his manners recommended him to everybody. Whatever he said, +was said well and whatever he did, done gracefully. Elizabeth +went away with her head full of him. She could think of nothing +but of Mr. Wickham, and of what he had told her, all the way +home but there was not time for her even to mention his name +as they went, for neither Lydia nor Mr. Collins were once silent. +Lydia talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had +lost and the fish she had won and Mr. Collins in describing the +civility of Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, protesting that he did not in +the least regard his losses at whist, enumerating all the dishes +at supper, and repeatedly fearing that he crowded his cousins, +had more to say than he could well manage before the carriage +stopped at Longbourn House. +Chapter +Elizabeth related to Jane the next day what had passed between +Mr. Wickham and herself. Jane listened with astonishment and +concern she knew not how to believe that Mr. Darcy could be +so unworthy of Mr. Bingley's regard and yet, it was not in her +nature to question the veracity of a young man of such amiable +appearance as Wickham. The possibility of his having endured +such unkindness, was enough to interest all her tender feelings +and nothing remained therefore to be done, but to think well of +them both, to defend the conduct of each, and throw into the +account of accident or mistake whatever could not be otherwise +explained. +"They have both," said she, "been deceived, I dare say, in some +way or other, of which we can form no idea. Interested people +have perhaps misrepresented each to the other. It is, in short, +impossible for us to conjecture the causes or circumstances +which may have alienated them, without actual blame on either +side." +"Very true, indeed and now, my dear Jane, what have you got +to say on behalf of the interested people who have probably been +concerned in the business? Do clear them too, or we shall be +obliged to think ill of somebody." +"Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of +my opinion. My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a +disgraceful light it places Mr. Darcy, to be treating his father's +favourite in such a manner, one whom his father had promised to +provide for. It is impossible. No man of common humanity, no +man who had any value for his character, could be capable of it. +Can his most intimate friends be so excessively deceived in him? +Oh no." +"I can much more easily believe Mr. Bingley's being imposed on, +than that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself +as he gave me last night names, facts, everything mentioned +without ceremony. If it be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. +Besides, there was truth in his looks." +"It is difficult indeedit is distressing. One does not know what +to think." +"I beg your pardon one knows exactly what to think." +But Jane could think with certainty on only one pointthat Mr. +Bingley, if he had been imposed on, would have much to suffer +when the affair became public. +The two young ladies were summoned from the shrubbery, +where this conversation passed, by the arrival of the very +persons of whom they had been speaking Mr. Bingley and his +sisters came to give their personal invitation for the +longexpected ball at Netherfield, which was fixed for the +following Tuesday. The two ladies were delighted to see their +dear friend again, called it an age since they had met, and +repeatedly asked what she had been doing with herself since +their separation. To the rest of the family they paid little +attention avoiding Mrs. Bennet as much as possible, saying not +much to Elizabeth, and nothing at all to the others. They were +soon gone again, rising from their seats with an activity which +took their brother by surprise, and hurrying off as if eager to +escape from Mrs. Bennet's civilities. +The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to +every female of the family. Mrs. Bennet chose to consider it as +given in compliment to her eldest daughter, and was particularly +flattered by receiving the invitation from Mr. Bingley himself, +instead of a ceremonious card. Jane pictured to herself a happy +evening in the society of her two friends, and the attentions of +her brother and Elizabeth thought with pleasure of dancing a +great deal with Mr. Wickham, and of seeing a confirmation of +everything in Mr. Darcy's look and behavior. The happiness +anticipated by Catherine and Lydia depended less on any single +event, or any particular person, for though they each, like +Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham, +he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and +a ball was, at any rate, a ball. And even Mary could assure her +family that she had no disinclination for it. +"While I can have my mornings to myself," said she, "it is +enoughI think it is no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening +engagements. Society has claims on us all and I profess myself +one of those who consider intervals of recreation and amusement +as desirable for everybody." +Elizabeth's spirits were so high on this occasion, that though she +did not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Collins, she could not +help asking him whether he intended to accept Mr. Bingley's +invitation, and if he did, whether he would think it proper to join +in the evening's amusement and she was rather surprised to find +that he entertained no scruple whatever on that head, and was +very far from dreading a rebuke either from the Archbishop, or +Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by venturing to dance. +"I am by no means of the opinion, I assure you," said he, "that +a ball of this kind, given by a young man of character, to +respectable people, can have any evil tendency and I am so +far from objecting to dancing myself, that I shall hope to be +honoured with the hands of all my fair cousins in the course of +the evening and I take this opportunity of soliciting yours, Miss +Elizabeth, for the two first dances especially, a preference which +I trust my cousin Jane will attribute to the right cause, and not +to any disrespect for her." +Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in. She had fully +proposed being engaged by Mr. Wickham for those very dances +and to have Mr. Collins instead her liveliness had never been +worse timed. There was no help for it, however. Mr. Wickham's +happiness and her own were perforce delayed a little longer, +and Mr. Collins's proposal accepted with as good a grace as she +could. She was not the better pleased with his gallantry from +the idea it suggested of something more. It now first struck +her, that she was selected from among her sisters as worthy of +being mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form +a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible +visitors. The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed +his increasing civilities toward herself, and heard his +frequent attempt at a compliment on her wit and vivacity and +though more astonished than gratified herself by this effect +of her charms, it was not long before her mother gave her to +understand that the probability of their marriage was extremely +agreeable to her. Elizabeth, however, did not choose to take +the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the +consequence of any reply. Mr. Collins might never make the +offer, and till he did, it was useless to quarrel about him. +If there had not been a Netherfield ball to prepare for and talk +of, the younger Miss Bennets would have been in a very pitiable +state at this time, for from the day of the invitation, to the day +of the ball, there was such a succession of rain as prevented their +walking to Meryton once. No aunt, no officers, no news could +be sought afterthe very shoeroses for Netherfield were got +by proxy. Even Elizabeth might have found some trial of her +patience in weather which totally suspended the improvement of +her acquaintance with Mr. Wickham and nothing less than a +dance on Tuesday, could have made such a Friday, Saturday, +Sunday, and Monday endurable to Kitty and Lydia. +Chapter +Till Elizabeth entered the drawingroom at Netherfield, and +looked in vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats +there assembled, a doubt of his being present had never occurred +to her. The certainty of meeting him had not been checked by +any of those recollections that might not unreasonably have +alarmed her. She had dressed with more than usual care, and +prepared in the highest spirits for the conquest of all that +remained unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more +than might be won in the course of the evening. But in an +instant arose the dreadful suspicion of his being purposely +omitted for Mr. Darcy's pleasure in the Bingleys' invitation +to the officers and though this was not exactly the case, the +absolute fact of his absence was pronounced by his friend Denny, +to whom Lydia eagerly applied, and who told them that Wickham +had been obliged to go to town on business the day before, and +was not yet returned adding, with a significant smile, "I do not +imagine his business would have called him away just now, if he +had not wanted to avoid a certain gentleman here." +This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was +caught by Elizabeth, and, as it assured her that Darcy was not +less answerable for Wickham's absence than if her first surmise +had been just, every feeling of displeasure against the former +was so sharpened by immediate disappointment, that she could +hardly reply with tolerable civility to the polite inquiries +which he directly afterwards approached to make. Attendance, +forbearance, patience with Darcy, was injury to Wickham. She +was resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and +turned away with a degree of illhumour which she could not +wholly surmount even in speaking to Mr. Bingley, whose blind +partiality provoked her. +But Elizabeth was not formed for illhumour and though every +prospect of her own was destroyed for the evening, it could not +dwell long on her spirits and having told all her griefs to +Charlotte Lucas, whom she had not seen for a week, she was +soon able to make a voluntary transition to the oddities of her +cousin, and to point him out to her particular notice. The first +two dances, however, brought a return of distress they were +dances of mortification. Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn, +apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong +without being aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery +which a disagreeable partner for a couple of dances can give. +The moment of her release from him was ecstasy. +She danced next with an officer, and had the refreshment of +talking of Wickham, and of hearing that he was universally liked. +When those dances were over, she returned to Charlotte Lucas, +and was in conversation with her, when she found herself +suddenly addressed by Mr. Darcy who took her so much by surprise +in his application for her hand, that, without knowing what she +did, she accepted him. He walked away again immediately, and +she was left to fret over her own want of presence of mind +Charlotte tried to console her +"I dare say you will find him very agreeable." +"Heaven forbid That would be the greatest misfortune of all +To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate Do not +wish me such an evil." +When the dancing recommenced, however, and Darcy approached to +claim her hand, Charlotte could not help cautioning her in a +whisper, not to be a simpleton, and allow her fancy for Wickham +to make her appear unpleasant in the eyes of a man ten times his +consequence. Elizabeth made no answer, and took her place in +the set, amazed at the dignity to which she was arrived in being +allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Darcy, and reading in her +neighbours' looks, their equal amazement in beholding it. They +stood for some time without speaking a word and she began to +imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, +and at first was resolved not to break it till suddenly +fancying that it would be the greater punishment to her partner +to oblige him to talk, she made some slight observation on the +dance. He replied, and was again silent. After a pause of +some minutes, she addressed him a second time with"It is +your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about +the dance, and you ought to make some sort of remark on the +size of the room, or the number of couples." +He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say +should be said. +"Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and +by I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than +public ones. But now we may be silent." +"Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?" +"Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look +odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together and yet for +the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged, as +that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible." +"Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do +you imagine that you are gratifying mine?" +"Both," replied Elizabeth archly "for I have always seen a great +similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, +taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say +something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down +to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb." +"This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, +I am sure," said he. "How near it may be to mine, I cannot +pretend to say. You think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly." +"I must not decide on my own performance." +He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone +down the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not +very often walk to Meryton. She answered in the affirmative, +and, unable to resist the temptation, added, "When you met us +there the other day, we had just been forming a new acquaintance." +The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of hauteur overspread +his features, but he said not a word, and Elizabeth, though +blaming herself for her own weakness, could not go on. At +length Darcy spoke, and in a constrained manner said, "Mr. +Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his +making friendswhether he may be equally capable of retaining +them, is less certain." +"He has been so unlucky as to lose your friendship," replied +Elizabeth with emphasis, "and in a manner which he is likely to +suffer from all his life." +Darcy made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the +subject. At that moment, Sir William Lucas appeared close to +them, meaning to pass through the set to the other side of the +room but on perceiving Mr. Darcy, he stopped with a bow of +superior courtesy to compliment him on his dancing and his +partner. +"I have been most highly gratified indeed, my dear sir. Such +very superior dancing is not often seen. It is evident that you +belong to the first circles. Allow me to say, however, that your +fair partner does not disgrace you, and that I must hope to have +this pleasure often repeated, especially when a certain desirable +event, my dear Eliza glancing at her sister and Bingley shall +take place. What congratulations will then flow in I appeal to +Mr. Darcybut let me not interrupt you, sir. You will not +thank me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that +young lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me." +The latter part of this address was scarcely heard by Darcy +but Sir William's allusion to his friend seemed to strike him +forcibly, and his eyes were directed with a very serious +expression towards Bingley and Jane, who were dancing together. +Recovering himself, however, shortly, he turned to his partner, +and said, "Sir William's interruption has made me forget what +we were talking of." +"I do not think we were speaking at all. Sir William could not +have interrupted two people in the room who had less to say for +themselves. We have tried two or three subjects already without +success, and what we are to talk of next I cannot imagine." +"What think you of books?" said he, smiling. +"Booksoh no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with +the same feelings." +"I am sorry you think so but if that be the case, there can at +least be no want of subject. We may compare our different +opinions." +"NoI cannot talk of books in a ballroom my head is always +full of something else." +"The present always occupies you in such scenesdoes it?" +said he, with a look of doubt. +"Yes, always," she replied, without knowing what she said, +for her thoughts had wandered far from the subject, as soon +afterwards appeared by her suddenly exclaiming, "I remember +hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgave, +that your resentment once created was unappeasable. You are +very cautious, I suppose, as to its being created." +"I am," said he, with a firm voice. +"And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?" +"I hope not." +"It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their +opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first." +"May I ask to what these questions tend?" +"Merely to the illustration of your character," said she, +endeavouring to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make +it out." +"And what is your success?" +She shook her head. "I do not get on at all. I hear such +different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly." +"I can readily believe," answered he gravely, "that reports may +vary greatly with respect to me and I could wish, Miss Bennet, +that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, +as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no +credit on either." +"But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have +another opportunity." +"I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," he coldly +replied. She said no more, and they went down the other dance +and parted in silence and on each side dissatisfied, though not +to an equal degree, for in Darcy's breast there was a tolerable +powerful feeling towards her, which soon procured her pardon, +and directed all his anger against another. +They had not long separated, when Miss Bingley came towards +her, and with an expression of civil disdain accosted her +"So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George +Wickham Your sister has been talking to me about him, and +asking me a thousand questions and I find that the young man +quite forgot to tell you, among his other communication, that +he was the son of old Wickham, the late Mr. Darcy's steward. +Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit +confidence to all his assertions for as to Mr. Darcy's using +him ill, it is perfectly false for, on the contrary, he has +always been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has +treated Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner. I do not know the +particulars, but I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the +least to blame, that he cannot bear to hear George Wickham +mentioned, and that though my brother thought that he could not +well avoid including him in his invitation to the officers, he +was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself out of the +way. His coming into the country at all is a most insolent thing, +indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you, +Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite's guilt but +really, considering his descent, one could not expect much better." +"His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the +same," said Elizabeth angrily "for I have heard you accuse him +of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, +and of that, I can assure you, he informed me himself." +"I beg your pardon," replied Miss Bingley, turning away with a +sneer. "Excuse my interferenceit was kindly meant." +"Insolent girl" said Elizabeth to herself. "You are much +mistaken if you expect to influence me by such a paltry attack +as this. I see nothing in it but your own wilful ignorance and +the malice of Mr. Darcy." She then sought her eldest sister, who +has undertaken to make inquiries on the same subject of Bingley. +Jane met her with a smile of such sweet complacency, a glow of +such happy expression, as sufficiently marked how well she was +satisfied with the occurrences of the evening. Elizabeth instantly +read her feelings, and at that moment solicitude for Wickham, +resentment against his enemies, and everything else, gave way +before the hope of Jane's being in the fairest way for happiness. +"I want to know," said she, with a countenance no less smiling +than her sister's, "what you have learnt about Mr. Wickham. +But perhaps you have been too pleasantly engaged to think of +any third person in which case you may be sure of my pardon." +"No," replied Jane, "I have not forgotten him but I have nothing +satisfactory to tell you. Mr. Bingley does not know the whole of +his history, and is quite ignorant of the circumstances which have +principally offended Mr. Darcy but he will vouch for the good +conduct, the probity, and honour of his friend, and is perfectly +convinced that Mr. Wickham has deserved much less attention +from Mr. Darcy than he has received and I am sorry to say by +his account as well as his sister's, Mr. Wickham is by no means a +respectable young man. I am afraid he has been very imprudent, +and has deserved to lose Mr. Darcy's regard." +"Mr. Bingley does not know Mr. Wickham himself?" +"No he never saw him till the other morning at Meryton." +"This account then is what he has received from Mr. Darcy. +I am satisfied. But what does he say of the living?" +"He does not exactly recollect the circumstances, though he has +heard them from Mr. Darcy more than once, but he believes that +it was left to him conditionally only." +"I have not a doubt of Mr. Bingley's sincerity," said Elizabeth +warmly "but you must excuse my not being convinced by +assurances only. Mr. Bingley's defense of his friend was a very +able one, I dare say but since he is unacquainted with several +parts of the story, and has learnt the rest from that friend +himself, I shall venture to still think of both gentlemen as I +did before." +She then changed the discourse to one more gratifying to each, +and on which there could be no difference of sentiment. +Elizabeth listened with delight to the happy, though modest +hopes which Jane entertained of Mr. Bingley's regard, and said +all in her power to heighten her confidence in it. On their being +joined by Mr. Bingley himself, Elizabeth withdrew to Miss +Lucas to whose inquiry after the pleasantness of her last partner +she had scarcely replied, before Mr. Collins came up to them, +and told her with great exultation that he had just been so +fortunate as to make a most important discovery. +"I have found out," said he, "by a singular accident, that there +is now in the room a near relation of my patroness. I happened +to overhear the gentleman himself mentioning to the young lady who +does the honours of the house the names of his cousin Miss de +Bourgh, and of her mother Lady Catherine. How wonderfully these +sort of things occur Who would have thought of my meeting with, +perhaps, a nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in this assembly +I am most thankful that the discovery is made in time for me to +pay my respects to him, which I am now going to do, and trust +he will excuse my not having done it before. My total ignorance +of the connection must plead my apology." +"You are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Darcy" +"Indeed I am. I shall entreat his pardon for not having done it +earlier. I believe him to be Lady Catherine's nephew. It will +be in my power to assure him that her ladyship was quite well +yesterday se'nnight." +Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme, +assuring him that Mr. Darcy would consider his addressing him +without introduction as an impertinent freedom, rather than a +compliment to his aunt that it was not in the least necessary +there should be any notice on either side and that if it were, +it must belong to Mr. Darcy, the superior in consequence, to +begin the acquaintance. Mr. Collins listened to her with the +determined air of following his own inclination, and, when she +ceased speaking, replied thus +"My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world +in your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of +your understanding but permit me to say, that there must be a +wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst +the laity, and those which regulate the clergy for, give me +leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in +point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdomprovided +that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time +maintained. You must therefore allow me to follow the dictates +of my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to perform what +I look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to profit +by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant +guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted +by education and habitual study to decide on what is right than +a young lady like yourself." And with a low bow he left her to +attack Mr. Darcy, whose reception of his advances she eagerly +watched, and whose astonishment at being so addressed was very +evident. Her cousin prefaced his speech with a solemn bow and +though she could not hear a word of it, she felt as if hearing +it all, and saw in the motion of his lips the words "apology," +"Hunsford," and "Lady Catherine de Bourgh." It vexed her to +see him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Darcy was eyeing him +with unrestrained wonder, and when at last Mr. Collins allowed +him time to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr. +Collins, however, was not discouraged from speaking again, and +Mr. Darcy's contempt seemed abundantly increasing with the length +of his second speech, and at the end of it he only made him a +slight bow, and moved another way. Mr. Collins then returned +to Elizabeth. +"I have no reason, I assure you," said he, "to be dissatisfied +with my reception. Mr. Darcy seemed much pleased with the +attention. He answered me with the utmost civility, and even +paid me the compliment of saying that he was so well convinced +of Lady Catherine's discernment as to be certain she could never +bestow a favour unworthily. It was really a very handsome +thought. Upon the whole, I am much pleased with him." +As Elizabeth had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, +she turned her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr. +Bingley and the train of agreeable reflections which her +observations gave birth to, made her perhaps almost as happy as +Jane. She saw her in idea settled in that very house, in all the +felicity which a marriage of true affection could bestow and she +felt capable, under such circumstances, of endeavouring even to +like Bingley's two sisters. Her mother's thoughts she plainly +saw were bent the same way, and she determined not to venture +near her, lest she might hear too much. When they sat down to +supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness +which placed them within one of each other and deeply was she +vexed to find that her mother was talking to that one person +Lady Lucas freely, openly, and of nothing else but her +expectation that Jane would soon be married to Mr. Bingley. It +was an animating subject, and Mrs. Bennet seemed incapable of +fatigue while enumerating the advantages of the match. His +being such a charming young man, and so rich, and living but +three miles from them, were the first points of selfgratulation +and then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters +were of Jane, and to be certain that they must desire the +connection as much as she could do. It was, moreover, such a +promising thing for her younger daughters, as Jane's marrying so +greatly must throw them in the way of other rich men and lastly, +it was so pleasant at her time of life to be able to consign her +single daughters to the care of their sister, that she might not +be obliged to go into company more than she liked. It was +necessary to make this circumstance a matter of pleasure, +because on such occasions it is the etiquette but no one was less +likely than Mrs. Bennet to find comfort in staying home at any +period of her life. She concluded with many good wishes that +Lady Lucas might soon be equally fortunate, though evidently +and triumphantly believing there was no chance of it. +In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her +mother's words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a +less audible whisper for, to her inexpressible vexation, she +could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, +who sat opposite to them. Her mother only scolded her for +being nonsensical. +"What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? +I am sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged +to say nothing he may not like to hear." +"For heaven's sake, madam, speak lower. What advantage can +it be for you to offend Mr. Darcy? You will never recommend +yourself to his friend by so doing" +Nothing that she could say, however, had any influence. Her +mother would talk of her views in the same intelligible tone. +Elizabeth blushed and blushed again with shame and vexation. +She could not help frequently glancing her eye at Mr. Darcy, +though every glance convinced her of what she dreaded for +though he was not always looking at her mother, she was +convinced that his attention was invariably fixed by her. +The expression of his face changed gradually from indignant +contempt to a composed and steady gravity. +At length, however, Mrs. Bennet had no more to say and Lady +Lucas, who had been long yawning at the repetition of delights +which she saw no likelihood of sharing, was left to the comforts +of cold ham and chicken. Elizabeth now began to revive. But +not long was the interval of tranquillity for, when supper was +over, singing was talked of, and she had the mortification of +seeing Mary, after very little entreaty, preparing to oblige the +company. By many significant looks and silent entreaties, did +she endeavour to prevent such a proof of complaisance, but in +vain Mary would not understand them such an opportunity of +exhibiting was delightful to her, and she began her song. +Elizabeth's eyes were fixed on her with most painful sensations, +and she watched her progress through the several stanzas with +an impatience which was very ill rewarded at their close for +Mary, on receiving, amongst the thanks of the table, the hint of +a hope that she might be prevailed on to favour them again, after +the pause of half a minute began another. Mary's powers were +by no means fitted for such a display her voice was weak, and +her manner affected. Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at +Jane, to see how she bore it but Jane was very composedly +talking to Bingley. She looked at his two sisters, and saw +them making signs of derision at each other, and at Darcy, who +continued, however, imperturbably grave. She looked at her +father to entreat his interference, lest Mary should be singing all +night. He took the hint, and when Mary had finished her second +song, said aloud, "That will do extremely well, child. You have +delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time +to exhibit." +Mary, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted +and Elizabeth, sorry for her, and sorry for her father's speech, +was afraid her anxiety had done no good. Others of the party +were now applied to. +"If I," said Mr. Collins, "were so fortunate as to be able to sing, +I should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the company +with an air for I consider music as a very innocent diversion, +and perfectly compatible with the profession of a clergyman. I do +not mean, however, to assert that we can be justified in devoting +too much of our time to music, for there are certainly other things +to be attended to. The rector of a parish has much to do. In the +first place, he must make such an agreement for tithes as may be +beneficial to himself and not offensive to his patron. He must +write his own sermons and the time that remains will not be too +much for his parish duties, and the care and improvement of his +dwelling, which he cannot be excused from making as comfortable +as possible. And I do not think it of light importance that he +should have attentive and conciliatory manner towards everybody, +especially towards those to whom he owes his preferment. I +cannot acquit him of that duty nor could I think well of the +man who should omit an occasion of testifying his respect +towards anybody connected with the family." And with a bow to +Mr. Darcy, he concluded his speech, which had been spoken so +loud as to be heard by half the room. Many staredmany smiled +but no one looked more amused than Mr. Bennet himself, while +his wife seriously commended Mr. Collins for having spoken so +sensibly, and observed in a halfwhisper to Lady Lucas, that he +was a remarkably clever, good kind of young man. +To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement +to expose themselves as much as they could during the +evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their +parts with more spirit or finer success and happy did she think +it for Bingley and her sister that some of the exhibition had +escaped his notice, and that his feelings were not of a sort to +be much distressed by the folly which he must have witnessed. +That his two sisters and Mr. Darcy, however, should have such +an opportunity of ridiculing her relations, was bad enough, and +she could not determine whether the silent contempt of the +gentleman, or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more +intolerable. +The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was +teased by Mr. Collins, who continued most perseveringly by her +side, and though he could not prevail on her to dance with him +again, put it out of her power to dance with others. In vain +did she entreat him to stand up with somebody else, and offer to +introduce him to any young lady in the room. He assured her, +that as to dancing, he was perfectly indifferent to it that his +chief object was by delicate attentions to recommend himself to +her and that he should therefore make a point of remaining close +to her the whole evening. There was no arguing upon such a +project. She owed her greatest relief to her friend Miss Lucas, +who often joined them, and goodnaturedly engaged Mr. Collins's +conversation to herself. +She was at least free from the offense of Mr. Darcy's further +notice though often standing within a very short distance of her, +quite disengaged, he never came near enough to speak. She felt +it to be the probable consequence of her allusions to Mr. Wickham, +and rejoiced in it. +The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart, +and, by a manoeuvre of Mrs. Bennet, had to wait for their +carriage a quarter of an hour after everybody else was gone, +which gave them time to see how heartily they were wished +away by some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her sister scarcely +opened their mouths, except to complain of fatigue, and were +evidently impatient to have the house to themselves. They +repulsed every attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation, and by +so doing threw a languor over the whole party, which was very +little relieved by the long speeches of Mr. Collins, who was +complimenting Mr. Bingley and his sisters on the elegance of +their entertainment, and the hospitality and politeness which had +marked their behaviour to their guests. Darcy said nothing at all. +Mr. Bennet, in equal silence, was enjoying the scene. Mr. +Bingley and Jane were standing together, a little detached from +the rest, and talked only to each other. Elizabeth preserved as +steady a silence as either Mrs. Hurst or Miss Bingley and even +Lydia was too much fatigued to utter more than the occasional +exclamation of "Lord, how tired I am" accompanied by a +violent yawn. +When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Bennet was most +pressingly civil in her hope of seeing the whole family soon +at Longbourn, and addressed herself especially to Mr. Bingley, +to assure him how happy he would make them by eating a family +dinner with them at any time, without the ceremony of a formal +invitation. Bingley was all grateful pleasure, and he readily +engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on her, +after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the +next day for a short time. +Mrs. Bennet was perfectly satisfied, and quitted the house under +the delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary +preparations of settlements, new carriages, and wedding clothes, +she should undoubtedly see her daughter settled at Netherfield in +the course of three or four months. Of having another daughter +married to Mr. Collins, she thought with equal certainty, and +with considerable, though not equal, pleasure. Elizabeth was the +least dear to her of all her children and though the man and the +match were quite good enough for her, the worth of each was +eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield. +Chapter +The next day opened a new scene at Longbourn. Mr. Collins +made his declaration in form. Having resolved to do it without +loss of time, as his leave of absence extended only to the +following Saturday, and having no feelings of diffidence to make +it distressing to himself even at the moment, he set about it +in a very orderly manner, with all the observances, which +he supposed a regular part of the business. On finding Mrs. +Bennet, Elizabeth, and one of the younger girls together, soon +after breakfast, he addressed the mother in these words +"May I hope, madam, for your interest with your fair daughter +Elizabeth, when I solicit for the honour of a private audience +with her in the course of this morning?" +Before Elizabeth had time for anything but a blush of surprise, +Mrs. Bennet answered instantly, "Oh dearyescertainly. I +am sure Lizzy will be very happyI am sure she can have no +objection. Come, Kitty, I want you upstairs." And, gathering +her work together, she was hastening away, when Elizabeth +called out +"Dear madam, do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins +must excuse me. He can have nothing to say to me that anybody +need not hear. I am going away myself." +"No, no, nonsense, Lizzy. I desire you to stay where you are." +And upon Elizabeth's seeming really, with vexed and embarrassed +looks, about to escape, she added "Lizzy, I insist upon your +staying and hearing Mr. Collins." +Elizabeth would not oppose such an injunctionand a moment's +consideration making her also sensible that it would be wisest to +get it over as soon and as quietly as possible, she sat down again +and tried to conceal, by incessant employment the feelings which +were divided between distress and diversion. Mrs. Bennet and Kitty +walked off, and as soon as they were gone, Mr. Collins began. +"Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far +from doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other +perfections. You would have been less amiable in my eyes had +there not been this little unwillingness but allow me to assure +you, that I have your respected mother's permission for this +address. You can hardly doubt the purport of my discourse, +however your natural delicacy may lead you to dissemble my +attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as soon +as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of +my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on +this subject, perhaps it would be advisable for me to state my +reasons for marryingand, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire +with the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did." +The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn composure, being +run away with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing, +that she could not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt +to stop him further, and he continued +"My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right +thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances like myself to +set the example of matrimony in his parish secondly, that I am +convinced that it will add very greatly to my happiness and +thirdlywhich perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that +it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble +lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness. Twice has +she condescended to give me her opinion unasked too on this +subject and it was but the very Saturday night before I left +Hunsfordbetween our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson +was arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool, that she said, 'Mr. +Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. +Choose properly, choose a gentlewoman for my sake and for +your own, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought +up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is +my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to +Hunsford, and I will visit her.' Allow me, by the way, to +observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice and +kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the +advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manners +beyond anything I can describe and your wit and vivacity, I +think, must be acceptable to her, especially when tempered with +the silence and respect which her rank will inevitably excite. +Thus much for my general intention in favour of matrimony +it remains to be told why my views were directed towards +Longbourn instead of my own neighbourhood, where I can +assure you there are many amiable young women. But the fact +is, that being, as I am, to inherit this estate after the death of +your honoured father who, however, may live many years +longer, I could not satisfy myself without resolving to choose a +wife from among his daughters, that the loss to them might be as +little as possible, when the melancholy event takes placewhich, +however, as I have already said, may not be for several years. +This has been my motive, my fair cousin, and I flatter myself it +will not sink me in your esteem. And now nothing remains +for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the +violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, +and shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I +am well aware that it could not be complied with and that one +thousand pounds in the four per cents, which will not be yours +till after your mother's decease, is all that you may ever be +entitled to. On that head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent +and you may assure yourself that no ungenerous reproach shall +ever pass my lips when we are married." +It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now. +"You are too hasty, sir," she cried. "You forget that I have +made no answer. Let me do it without further loss of time. +Accept my thanks for the compliment you are paying me. I am +very sensible of the honour of your proposals, but it is +impossible for me to do otherwise than to decline them." +"I am not now to learn," replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave +of the hand, "that it is usual with young ladies to reject the +addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when +he first applies for their favour and that sometimes the refusal +is repeated a second, or even a third time. I am therefore by no +means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to +lead you to the altar ere long." +"Upon my word, sir," cried Elizabeth, "your hope is a rather +extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I +am not one of those young ladies if such young ladies there are +who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of +being asked a second time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. +You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am +the last woman in the world who could make you so. Nay, were +your friend Lady Catherine to know me, I am persuaded she +would find me in every respect ill qualified for the situation." +"Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so," said Mr. +Collins very gravely"but I cannot imagine that her ladyship +would at all disapprove of you. And you may be certain when I +have the honour of seeing her again, I shall speak in the very +highest terms of your modesty, economy, and other amiable +qualification." +"Indeed, Mr. Collins, all praise of me will be unnecessary. +You must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the +compliment of believing what I say. I wish you very happy and +very rich, and by refusing your hand, do all in my power to +prevent your being otherwise. In making me the offer, you must +have satisfied the delicacy of your feelings with regard to my +family, and may take possession of Longbourn estate whenever +it falls, without any selfreproach. This matter may be +considered, therefore, as finally settled." And rising as she +thus spoke, she would have quitted the room, had Mr. Collins +not thus addressed her +"When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on the +subject, I shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than +you have now given me though I am far from accusing you of +cruelty at present, because I know it to be the established +custom of your sex to reject a man on the first application, and +perhaps you have even now said as much to encourage my suit +as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the female +character." +"Really, Mr. Collins," cried Elizabeth with some warmth, "you +puzzle me exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear +to you in the form of encouragement, I know not how to express +my refusal in such a way as to convince you of its being one." +"You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that +your refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. My +reasons for believing it are briefly these It does not appear +to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the +establishment I can offer would be any other than highly +desirable. My situation in life, my connections with the family +of de Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances +highly in my favour and you should take it into further +consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is +by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be +made you. Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in +all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable +qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not +serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it +to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the +usual practice of elegant females." +"I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that +kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. +I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. +I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in +your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My +feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not +consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, +but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart." +"You are uniformly charming" cried he, with an air of awkward +gallantry "and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the +express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals +will not fail of being acceptable." +To such perseverance in wilful selfdeception Elizabeth would +make no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew +determined, if he persisted in considering her repeated +refusals as flattering encouragement, to apply to her father, +whose negative might be uttered in such a manner as to be +decisive, and whose behavior at least could not be mistaken +for the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female. +Chapter +Mr. Collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his +successful love for Mrs. Bennet, having dawdled about in the +vestibule to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw +Elizabeth open the door and with quick step pass her towards +the staircase, than she entered the breakfastroom, and +congratulated both him and herself in warm terms on the happy +prospect or their nearer connection. Mr. Collins received and +returned these felicitations with equal pleasure, and then +proceeded to relate the particulars of their interview, with the +result of which he trusted he had every reason to be satisfied, +since the refusal which his cousin had steadfastly given him +would naturally flow from her bashful modesty and the genuine +delicacy of her character. +This information, however, startled Mrs. Bennet she would +have been glad to be equally satisfied that her daughter had +meant to encourage him by protesting against his proposals, +but she dared not believe it, and could not help saying so. +"But, depend upon it, Mr. Collins," she added, "that Lizzy shall +be brought to reason. I will speak to her about it directly. +She is a very headstrong, foolish girl, and does not know her +own interest but I will make her know it." +"Pardon me for interrupting you, madam," cried Mr. Collins +"but if she is really headstrong and foolish, I know not whether +she would altogether be a very desirable wife to a man in my +situation, who naturally looks for happiness in the marriage +state. If therefore she actually persists in rejecting my suit, +perhaps it were better not to force her into accepting me, +because if liable to such defects of temper, she could not +contribute much to my felicity." +"Sir, you quite misunderstand me," said Mrs. Bennet, alarmed. +"Lizzy is only headstrong in such matters as these. In everything +else she is as goodnatured a girl as ever lived. I will go +directly to Mr. Bennet, and we shall very soon settle it with her, +I am sure." +She would not give him time to reply, but hurrying instantly to +her husband, called out as she entered the library, "Oh Mr. +Bennet, you are wanted immediately we are all in an uproar. +You must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows +she will not have him, and if you do not make haste he will +change his mind and not have her." +Mr. Bennet raised his eyes from his book as she entered, and +fixed them on her face with a calm unconcern which was not in +the least altered by her communication. +"I have not the pleasure of understanding you," said he, when +she had finished her speech. "Of what are you talking?" +"Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have +Mr. Collins, and Mr. Collins begins to say that he will not +have Lizzy." +"And what am I to do on the occasion? It seems an hopeless +business." +"Speak to Lizzy about it yourself. Tell her that you insist upon +her marrying him." +"Let her be called down. She shall hear my opinion." +Mrs. Bennet rang the bell, and Miss Elizabeth was summoned to +the library. +"Come here, child," cried her father as she appeared. "I have +sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. +Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?" Elizabeth +replied that it was. "Very welland this offer of marriage you +have refused?" +"I have, sir." +"Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists +upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?" +"Yes, or I will never see her again." +"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day +you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will +never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will +never see you again if you do." +Elizabeth could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a +beginning, but Mrs. Bennet, who had persuaded herself that her +husband regarded the affair as she wished, was excessively +disappointed. +"What do you mean, Mr. Bennet, in talking this way? You +promised me to insist upon her marrying him." +"My dear," replied her husband, "I have two small favours to +request. First, that you will allow me the free use of my +understanding on the present occasion and secondly, of my +room. I shall be glad to have the library to myself as soon as +may be." +Not yet, however, in spite of her disappointment in her husband, +did Mrs. Bennet give up the point. She talked to Elizabeth again +and again coaxed and threatened her by turns. She endeavoured +to secure Jane in her interest but Jane, with all possible +mildness, declined interfering and Elizabeth, sometimes with +real earnestness, and sometimes with playful gaiety, replied to +her attacks. Though her manner varied, however, her determination +never did. +Mr. Collins, meanwhile, was meditating in solitude on what had +passed. He thought too well of himself to comprehend on what +motives his cousin could refuse him and though his pride was +hurt, he suffered in no other way. His regard for her was quite +imaginary and the possibility of her deserving her mother's +reproach prevented his feeling any regret. +While the family were in this confusion, Charlotte Lucas came to +spend the day with them. She was met in the vestibule by Lydia, +who, flying to her, cried in a half whisper, "I am glad you are +come, for there is such fun here What do you think has +happened this morning? Mr. Collins has made an offer to Lizzy, +and she will not have him." +Charlotte hardly had time to answer, before they were joined by +Kitty, who came to tell the same news and no sooner had they +entered the breakfastroom, where Mrs. Bennet was alone, than +she likewise began on the subject, calling on Miss Lucas for her +compassion, and entreating her to persuade her friend Lizzy to +comply with the wishes of all her family. "Pray do, my dear +Miss Lucas," she added in a melancholy tone, "for nobody is on +my side, nobody takes part with me. I am cruelly used, nobody +feels for my poor nerves." +Charlotte's reply was spared by the entrance of Jane and +Elizabeth. +"Aye, there she comes," continued Mrs. Bennet, "looking as +unconcerned as may be, and caring no more for us than if we +were at York, provided she can have her own way. But I tell +you, Miss Lizzyif you take it into your head to go on refusing +every offer of marriage in this way, you will never get a husband +at alland I am sure I do not know who is to maintain you +when your father is dead. I shall not be able to keep youand +so I warn you. I have done with you from this very day. I told +you in the library, you know, that I should never speak to you +again, and you will find me as good as my word. I have no +pleasure in talking to undutiful children. Not that I have much +pleasure, indeed, in talking to anybody. People who suffer as +I do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for +talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer But it is always so. +Those who do not complain are never pitied." +Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible +that any attempt to reason with her or soothe her would only +increase the irritation. She talked on, therefore, without +interruption from any of them, till they were joined by Mr. +Collins, who entered the room with an air more stately than +usual, and on perceiving whom, she said to the girls, "Now, I do +insist upon it, that you, all of you, hold your tongues, and +let me and Mr. Collins have a little conversation together." +Elizabeth passed quietly out of the room, Jane and Kitty +followed, but Lydia stood her ground, determined to hear all she +could and Charlotte, detained first by the civility of Mr. Collins, +whose inquiries after herself and all her family were very minute, +and then by a little curiosity, satisfied herself with walking to +the window and pretending not to hear. In a doleful voice Mrs. +Bennet began the projected conversation "Oh Mr. Collins" +"My dear madam," replied he, "let us be for ever silent on this +point. Far be it from me," he presently continued, in a voice that +marked his displeasure, "to resent the behaviour of your daughter. +Resignation to inevitable evils is the evil duty of us all the +peculiar duty of a young man who has been so fortunate as I +have been in early preferment and I trust I am resigned. +Perhaps not the less so from feeling a doubt of my positive +happiness had my fair cousin honoured me with her hand for I +have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when +the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our +estimation. You will not, I hope, consider me as showing any +disrespect to your family, my dear madam, by thus withdrawing +my pretensions to your daughter's favour, without having paid +yourself and Mr. Bennet the compliment of requesting you to +interpose your authority in my behalf. My conduct may, I fear, +be objectionable in having accepted my dismission from your +daughter's lips instead of your own. But we are all liable to +error. I have certainly meant well through the whole affair. My +object has been to secure an amiable companion for myself, with +due consideration for the advantage of all your family, and if +my manner has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to +apologise." +Chapter +The discussion of Mr. Collins's offer was now nearly at an end, +and Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings +necessarily attending it, and occasionally from some peevish +allusions of her mother. As for the gentleman himself, his +feelings were chiefly expressed, not by embarrassment or +dejection, or by trying to avoid her, but by stiffness of manner +and resentful silence. He scarcely ever spoke to her, and the +assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of himself +were transferred for the rest of the day to Miss Lucas, whose +civility in listening to him was a seasonable relief to them all, +and especially to her friend. +The morrow produced no abatement of Mrs. Bennet's illhumour +or ill health. Mr. Collins was also in the same state of angry +pride. Elizabeth had hoped that his resentment might shorten his +visit, but his plan did not appear in the least affected by it. +He was always to have gone on Saturday, and to Saturday he meant +to stay. +After breakfast, the girls walked to Meryton to inquire if Mr. +Wickham were returned, and to lament over his absence from +the Netherfield ball. He joined them on their entering the town, +and attended them to their aunt's where his regret and vexation, +and the concern of everybody, was well talked over. To +Elizabeth, however, he voluntarily acknowledged that the +necessity of his absence had been selfimposed. +"I found," said he, "as the time drew near that I had better not +meet Mr. Darcy that to be in the same room, the same party +with him for so many hours together, might be more than I could +bear, and that scenes might arise unpleasant to more than +myself." +She highly approved his forbearance, and they had leisure for a +full discussion of it, and for all the commendation which they +civilly bestowed on each other, as Wickham and another officer +walked back with them to Longbourn, and during the walk he +particularly attended to her. His accompanying them was a +double advantage she felt all the compliment it offered to +herself, and it was most acceptable as an occasion of introducing +him to her father and mother. +Soon after their return, a letter was delivered to Miss Bennet +it came from Netherfield. The envelope contained a sheet of +elegant, little, hotpressed paper, well covered with a lady's fair, +flowing hand and Elizabeth saw her sister's countenance change +as she read it, and saw her dwelling intently on some particular +passages. Jane recollected herself soon, and putting the letter +away, tried to join with her usual cheerfulness in the general +conversation but Elizabeth felt an anxiety on the subject which +drew off her attention even from Wickham and no sooner had +he and his companion taken leave, than a glance from Jane +invited her to follow her upstairs. When they had gained their +own room, Jane, taking out the letter, said +"This is from Caroline Bingley what it contains has surprised me +a good deal. The whole party have left Netherfield by this time, +and are on their way to townand without any intention of coming +back again. You shall hear what she says." +She then read the first sentence aloud, which comprised the +information of their having just resolved to follow their brother +to town directly, and of their meaning to dine in Grosvenor +Street, where Mr. Hurst had a house. The next was in these +words "I do not pretend to regret anything I shall leave in +Hertfordshire, except your society, my dearest friend but we +will hope, at some future period, to enjoy many returns of that +delightful intercourse we have known, and in the meanwhile may +lessen the pain of separation by a very frequent and most +unreserved correspondence. I depend on you for that." To +these highflown expressions Elizabeth listened with all the +insensibility of distrust and though the suddenness of their +removal surprised her, she saw nothing in it really to lament +it was not to be supposed that their absence from Netherfield +would prevent Mr. Bingley's being there and as to the loss of +their society, she was persuaded that Jane must cease to regard +it, in the enjoyment of his. +"It is unlucky," said she, after a short pause, "that you should +not be able to see your friends before they leave the country. +But may we not hope that the period of future happiness to +which Miss Bingley looks forward may arrive earlier than she is +aware, and that the delightful intercourse you have known as +friends will be renewed with yet greater satisfaction as sisters? +Mr. Bingley will not be detained in London by them." +"Caroline decidedly says that none of the party will return into +Hertfordshire this winter. I will read it to you" +"When my brother left us yesterday, he imagined that the +business which took him to London might be concluded in three +or four days but as we are certain it cannot be so, and at the +same time convinced that when Charles gets to town he will be +in no hurry to leave it again, we have determined on following +him thither, that he may not be obliged to spend his vacant hours +in a comfortless hotel. Many of my acquaintances are already +there for the winter I wish that I could hear that you, my dearest +friend, had any intention of making one of the crowdbut of +that I despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire +may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, +and that your beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your +feeling the loss of the three of whom we shall deprive you." +"It is evident by this," added Jane, "that he comes back no more +this winter." +"It is only evident that Miss Bingley does not mean that he +should." +"Why will you think so? It must be his own doing. He is his +own master. But you do not know all. I will read you the +passage which particularly hurts me. I will have no reserves +from you." +"Mr. Darcy is impatient to see his sister and, to confess the +truth, we are scarcely less eager to meet her again. I really do +not think Georgiana Darcy has her equal for beauty, elegance, +and accomplishments and the affection she inspires in Louisa +and myself is heightened into something still more interesting, +from the hope we dare entertain of her being hereafter our +sister. I do not know whether I ever before mentioned to you +my feelings on this subject but I will not leave the country +without confiding them, and I trust you will not esteem them +unreasonable. My brother admires her greatly already he will +have frequent opportunity now of seeing her on the most +intimate footing her relations all wish the connection as much as +his own and a sister's partiality is not misleading me, I think, +when I call Charles most capable of engaging any woman's +heart. With all these circumstances to favour an attachment, and +nothing to prevent it, am I wrong, my dearest Jane, in indulging +the hope of an event which will secure the happiness of so many?" +"What do you think of this sentence, my dear Lizzy?" said +Jane as she finished it. "Is it not clear enough? Does it not +expressly declare that Caroline neither expects nor wishes me to +be her sister that she is perfectly convinced of her brother's +indifference and that if she suspects the nature of my feelings +for him, she means most kindly to put me on my guard? Can +there be any other opinion on the subject?" +"Yes, there can for mine is totally different. Will you hear it?" +"Most willingly." +"You shall have it in a few words. Miss Bingley sees that her +brother is in love with you, and wants him to marry Miss Darcy. +She follows him to town in hope of keeping him there, and tries +to persuade you that he does not care about you." +Jane shook her head. +"Indeed, Jane, you ought to believe me. No one who has ever +seen you together can doubt his affection. Miss Bingley, I am +sure, cannot. She is not such a simpleton. Could she have seen +half as much love in Mr. Darcy for herself, she would have +ordered her wedding clothes. But the case is this We are not +rich enough or grand enough for them and she is the more +anxious to get Miss Darcy for her brother, from the notion that +when there has been one intermarriage, she may have less +trouble in achieving a second in which there is certainly some +ingenuity, and I dare say it would succeed, if Miss de Bourgh +were out of the way. But, my dearest Jane, you cannot seriously +imagine that because Miss Bingley tells you her brother greatly +admires Miss Darcy, he is in the smallest degree less sensible +of your merit than when he took leave of you on Tuesday, or +that it will be in her power to persuade him that, instead of +being in love with you, he is very much in love with her friend." +"If we thought alike of Miss Bingley," replied Jane, "your +representation of all this might make me quite easy. But I know +the foundation is unjust. Caroline is incapable of wilfully +deceiving anyone and all that I can hope in this case is that +she is deceiving herself." +"That is right. You could not have started a more happy idea, +since you will not take comfort in mine. Believe her to be +deceived, by all means. You have now done your duty by her, +and must fret no longer." +"But, my dear sister, can I be happy, even supposing the best, in +accepting a man whose sisters and friends are all wishing him to +marry elsewhere?" +"You must decide for yourself," said Elizabeth "and if, upon +mature deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his +two sisters is more than equivalent to the happiness of being his +wife, I advise you by all means to refuse him." +"How can you talk so?" said Jane, faintly smiling. "You must +know that though I should be exceedingly grieved at their +disapprobation, I could not hesitate." +"I did not think you would and that being the case, I cannot +consider your situation with much compassion." +"But if he returns no more this winter, my choice will never be +required. A thousand things may arise in six months" +The idea of his returning no more Elizabeth treated with the +utmost contempt. It appeared to her merely the suggestion of +Caroline's interested wishes, and she could not for a moment +suppose that those wishes, however openly or artfully spoken, +could influence a young man so totally independent of everyone. +She represented to her sister as forcibly as possible what she +felt on the subject, and had soon the pleasure of seeing its +happy effect. Jane's temper was not desponding, and she was +gradually led to hope, though the diffidence of affection +sometimes overcame the hope, that Bingley would return to +Netherfield and answer every wish of her heart. +They agreed that Mrs. Bennet should only hear of the departure +of the family, without being alarmed on the score of the +gentleman's conduct but even this partial communication gave +her a great deal of concern, and she bewailed it as exceedingly +unlucky that the ladies should happen to go away just as they +were all getting so intimate together. After lamenting it, +however, at some length, she had the consolation that Mr. +Bingley would be soon down again and soon dining at Longbourn, +and the conclusion of all was the comfortable declaration, +that though he had been invited only to a family dinner, she +would take care to have two full courses. +Chapter +The Bennets were engaged to dine with the Lucases and again +during the chief of the day was Miss Lucas so kind as to listen +to Mr. Collins. Elizabeth took an opportunity of thanking her. +"It keeps him in good humour," said she, "and I am more obliged +to you than I can express." Charlotte assured her friend of +her satisfaction in being useful, and that it amply repaid her +for the little sacrifice of her time. This was very amiable, +but Charlotte's kindness extended farther than Elizabeth had +any conception of its object was nothing else than to secure +her from any return of Mr. Collins's addresses, by engaging +them towards herself. Such was Miss Lucas's scheme and +appearances were so favourable, that when they parted at night, +she would have felt almost secure of success if he had not been +to leave Hertfordshire so very soon. But here she did injustice +to the fire and independence of his character, for it led +him to escape out of Longbourn House the next morning with +admirable slyness, and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw himself +at her feet. He was anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins, +from a conviction that if they saw him depart, they could not +fail to conjecture his design, and he was not willing to have +the attempt known till its success might be known likewise for +though feeling almost secure, and with reason, for Charlotte had +been tolerably encouraging, he was comparatively diffident since +the adventure of Wednesday. His reception, however, was of +the most flattering kind. Miss Lucas perceived him from an +upper window as he walked towards the house, and instantly set +out to meet him accidentally in the lane. But little had she +dared to hope that so much love and eloquence awaited her there. +In as short a time as Mr. Collins's long speeches would allow, +everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both +and as they entered the house he earnestly entreated her to name +the day that was to make him the happiest of men and though +such a solicitation must be waived for the present, the lady felt +no inclination to trifle with his happiness. The stupidity with +which he was favoured by nature must guard his courtship from +any charm that could make a woman wish for its continuance +and Miss Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure and +disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon +that establishment were gained. +Sir William and Lady Lucas were speedily applied to for their +consent and it was bestowed with a most joyful alacrity. Mr. +Collins's present circumstances made it a most eligible match for +their daughter, to whom they could give little fortune and his +prospects of future wealth were exceedingly fair. Lady Lucas +began directly to calculate, with more interest than the +matter had ever excited before, how many years longer Mr. +Bennet was likely to live and Sir William gave it as his decided +opinion, that whenever Mr. Collins should be in possession of the +Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and +his wife should make their appearance at St. James's. The whole +family, in short, were properly overjoyed on the occasion. +The younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two +sooner than they might otherwise have done and the boys were +relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte's dying an old +maid. Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had +gained her point, and had time to consider of it. Her reflections +were in general satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure, was +neither sensible nor agreeable his society was irksome, and his +attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her +husband. Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, +marriage had always been her object it was the only provision +for welleducated young women of small fortune, and however +uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest +preservative from want. This preservative she had now +obtained and at the age of twentyseven, without having ever +been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it. The least +agreeable circumstance in the business was the surprise it must +occasion to Elizabeth Bennet, whose friendship she valued +beyond that of any other person. Elizabeth would wonder, and +probably would blame her and though her resolution was not to +be shaken, her feelings must be hurt by such a disapprobation. +She resolved to give her the information herself, and therefore +charged Mr. Collins, when he returned to Longbourn to dinner, +to drop no hint of what had passed before any of the family. A +promise of secrecy was of course very dutifully given, but it +could not be kept without difficulty for the curiosity excited +by his long absence burst forth in such very direct questions on +his return as required some ingenuity to evade, and he was at the +same time exercising great selfdenial, for he was longing to +publish his prosperous love. +As he was to begin his journey too early on the morrow to see +any of the family, the ceremony of leavetaking was performed +when the ladies moved for the night and Mrs. Bennet, with +great politeness and cordiality, said how happy they should be +to see him at Longbourn again, whenever his engagements might +allow him to visit them. +"My dear madam," he replied, "this invitation is particularly +gratifying, because it is what I have been hoping to receive and +you may be very certain that I shall avail myself of it as soon +as possible." +They were all astonished and Mr. Bennet, who could by no +means wish for so speedy a return, immediately said +"But is there not danger of Lady Catherine's disapprobation +here, my good sir? You had better neglect your relations than +run the risk of offending your patroness." +"My dear sir," replied Mr. Collins, "I am particularly obliged +to you for this friendly caution, and you may depend upon my not +taking so material a step without her ladyship's concurrence." +"You cannot be too much upon your guard. Risk anything +rather than her displeasure and if you find it likely to be raised +by your coming to us again, which I should think exceedingly +probable, stay quietly at home, and be satisfied that we shall +take no offence." +"Believe me, my dear sir, my gratitude is warmly excited by +such affectionate attention and depend upon it, you will speedily +receive from me a letter of thanks for this, and for every other +mark of your regard during my stay in Hertfordshire. As for my +fair cousins, though my absence may not be long enough to +render it necessary, I shall now take the liberty of wishing them +health and happiness, not excepting my cousin Elizabeth." +With proper civilities the ladies then withdrew all of them +equally surprised that he meditated a quick return. Mrs. Bennet +wished to understand by it that he thought of paying his +addresses to one of her younger girls, and Mary might have been +prevailed on to accept him. She rated his abilities much higher +than any of the others there was a solidity in his reflections +which often struck her, and though by no means so clever as +herself, she thought that if encouraged to read and improve +himself by such an example as hers, he might become a very +agreeable companion. But on the following morning, every +hope of this kind was done away. Miss Lucas called soon after +breakfast, and in a private conference with Elizabeth related the +event of the day before. +The possibility of Mr. Collins's fancying himself in love with her +friend had once occurred to Elizabeth within the last day or two +but that Charlotte could encourage him seemed almost as far +from possibility as she could encourage him herself, and her +astonishment was consequently so great as to overcome at first +the bounds of decorum, and she could not help crying out +"Engaged to Mr. Collins My dear Charlotteimpossible" +The steady countenance which Miss Lucas had commanded in +telling her story, gave way to a momentary confusion here on +receiving so direct a reproach though, as it was no more than +she expected, she soon regained her composure, and calmly +replied +"Why should you be surprised, my dear Eliza? Do you think it +incredible that Mr. Collins should be able to procure any +woman's good opinion, because he was not so happy as to +succeed with you?" +But Elizabeth had now recollected herself, and making a strong +effort for it, was able to assure with tolerable firmness that the +prospect of their relationship was highly grateful to her, and +that she wished her all imaginable happiness. +"I see what you are feeling," replied Charlotte. "You must be +surprised, very much surprisedso lately as Mr. Collins was +wishing to marry you. But when you have had time to think it +over, I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done. I am +not romantic, you know I never was. I ask only a comfortable +home and considering Mr. Collins's character, connection, and +situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness +with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the +marriage state." +Elizabeth quietly answered "Undoubtedly" and after an +awkward pause, they returned to the rest of the family. +Charlotte did not stay much longer, and Elizabeth was then left +to reflect on what she had heard. It was a long time before she +became at all reconciled to the idea of so unsuitable a match. +The strangeness of Mr. Collins's making two offers of marriage +within three days was nothing in comparison of his being now +accepted. She had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of +matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she had not +supposed it to be possible that, when called into action, she +would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage. +Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins was a most humiliating picture +And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her +esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it was +impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot +she had chosen. +Chapter +Elizabeth was sitting with her mother and sisters, reflecting on +what she had heard, and doubting whether she was authorised to +mention it, when Sir William Lucas himself appeared, sent by his +daughter, to announce her engagement to the family. With many +compliments to them, and much selfgratulation on the prospect +of a connection between the houses, he unfolded the matterto +an audience not merely wondering, but incredulous for Mrs. +Bennet, with more perseverance than politeness, protested he +must be entirely mistaken and Lydia, always unguarded and +often uncivil, boisterously exclaimed +"Good Lord Sir William, how can you tell such a story? Do not +you know that Mr. Collins wants to marry Lizzy?" +Nothing less than the complaisance of a courtier could have +borne without anger such treatment but Sir William's good +breeding carried him through it all and though he begged leave +to be positive as to the truth of his information, he listened +to all their impertinence with the most forbearing courtesy. +Elizabeth, feeling it incumbent on her to relieve him from so +unpleasant a situation, now put herself forward to confirm his +account, by mentioning her prior knowledge of it from Charlotte +herself and endeavoured to put a stop to the exclamations of her +mother and sisters by the earnestness of her congratulations to +Sir William, in which she was readily joined by Jane, and by +making a variety of remarks on the happiness that might be +expected from the match, the excellent character of Mr. Collins, +and the convenient distance of Hunsford from London. +Mrs. Bennet was in fact too much overpowered to say a great +deal while Sir William remained but no sooner had he left them +than her feelings found a rapid vent. In the first place, she +persisted in disbelieving the whole of the matter secondly, she +was very sure that Mr. Collins had been taken in thirdly, she +trusted that they would never be happy together and fourthly, +that the match might be broken off. Two inferences, however, +were plainly deduced from the whole one, that Elizabeth was +the real cause of the mischief and the other that she herself had +been barbarously misused by them all and on these two points +she principally dwelt during the rest of the day. Nothing could +console and nothing could appease her. Nor did that day wear +out her resentment. A week elapsed before she could see +Elizabeth without scolding her, a month passed away before she +could speak to Sir William or Lady Lucas without being rude, +and many months were gone before she could at all forgive their +daughter. +Mr. Bennet's emotions were much more tranquil on the occasion, +and such as he did experience he pronounced to be of a most +agreeable sort for it gratified him, he said, to discover that +Charlotte Lucas, whom he had been used to think tolerably +sensible, was as foolish as his wife, and more foolish than his +daughter +Jane confessed herself a little surprised at the match but she +said less of her astonishment than of her earnest desire for their +happiness nor could Elizabeth persuade her to consider it as +improbable. Kitty and Lydia were far from envying Miss Lucas, +for Mr. Collins was only a clergyman and it affected them in no +other way than as a piece of news to spread at Meryton. +Lady Lucas could not be insensible of triumph on being able to +retort on Mrs. Bennet the comfort of having a daughter well +married and she called at Longbourn rather oftener than usual +to say how happy she was, though Mrs. Bennet's sour looks and +illnatured remarks might have been enough to drive happiness +away. +Between Elizabeth and Charlotte there was a restraint which +kept them mutually silent on the subject and Elizabeth felt +persuaded that no real confidence could ever subsist between +them again. Her disappointment in Charlotte made her turn with +fonder regard to her sister, of whose rectitude and delicacy +she was sure her opinion could never be shaken, and for whose +happiness she grew daily more anxious, as Bingley had now been +gone a week and nothing more was heard of his return. +Jane had sent Caroline an early answer to her letter, and was +counting the days till she might reasonably hope to hear again. +The promised letter of thanks from Mr. Collins arrived on +Tuesday, addressed to their father, and written with all the +solemnity of gratitude which a twelvemonth's abode in the +family might have prompted. After discharging his conscience +on that head, he proceeded to inform them, with many rapturous +expressions, of his happiness in having obtained the affection of +their amiable neighbour, Miss Lucas, and then explained that it +was merely with the view of enjoying her society that he had +been so ready to close with their kind wish of seeing him again +at Longbourn, whither he hoped to be able to return on Monday +fortnight for Lady Catherine, he added, so heartily approved +his marriage, that she wished it to take place as soon as possible, +which he trusted would be an unanswerable argument with his +amiable Charlotte to name an early day for making him the +happiest of men. +Mr. Collins's return into Hertfordshire was no longer a matter +of pleasure to Mrs. Bennet. On the contrary, she was as much +disposed to complain of it as her husband. It was very strange +that he should come to Longbourn instead of to Lucas Lodge it +was also very inconvenient and exceedingly troublesome. She +hated having visitors in the house while her health was so +indifferent, and lovers were of all people the most disagreeable. +Such were the gentle murmurs of Mrs. Bennet, and they gave way +only to the greater distress of Mr. Bingley's continued absence. +Neither Jane nor Elizabeth were comfortable on this subject. +Day after day passed away without bringing any other tidings of +him than the report which shortly prevailed in Meryton of his +coming no more to Netherfield the whole winter a report which +highly incensed Mrs. Bennet, and which she never failed to +contradict as a most scandalous falsehood. +Even Elizabeth began to fearnot that Bingley was indifferentbut +that his sisters would be successful in keeping him away. +Unwilling as she was to admit an idea so destructive of Jane's +happiness, and so dishonorable to the stability of her lover, she +could not prevent its frequently occurring. The united efforts of +his two unfeeling sisters and of his overpowering friend, assisted +by the attractions of Miss Darcy and the amusements of London +might be too much, she feared, for the strength of his attachment. +As for Jane, her anxiety under this suspense was, of course, +more painful than Elizabeth's, but whatever she felt she was +desirous of concealing, and between herself and Elizabeth, +therefore, the subject was never alluded to. But as no such +delicacy restrained her mother, an hour seldom passed in which +she did not talk of Bingley, express her impatience for his arrival, +or even require Jane to confess that if he did not come back she +would think herself very ill used. It needed all Jane's steady +mildness to bear these attacks with tolerable tranquillity. +Mr. Collins returned most punctually on Monday fortnight, but +his reception at Longbourn was not quite so gracious as it had +been on his first introduction. He was too happy, however, to +need much attention and luckily for the others, the business +of lovemaking relieved them from a great deal of his company. +The chief of every day was spent by him at Lucas Lodge, and he +sometimes returned to Longbourn only in time to make an +apology for his absence before the family went to bed. +Mrs. Bennet was really in a most pitiable state. The very +mention of anything concerning the match threw her into an +agony of illhumour, and wherever she went she was sure of +hearing it talked of. The sight of Miss Lucas was odious to +her. As her successor in that house, she regarded her with +jealous abhorrence. Whenever Charlotte came to see them, +she concluded her to be anticipating the hour of possession +and whenever she spoke in a low voice to Mr. Collins, was +convinced that they were talking of the Longbourn estate, and +resolving to turn herself and her daughters out of the house, +as soon as Mr. Bennet were dead. She complained bitterly of +all this to her husband. +"Indeed, Mr. Bennet," said she, "it is very hard to think that +Charlotte Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that I +should be forced to make way for her, and live to see her take +her place in it" +"My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us +hope for better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be +the survivor." +This was not very consoling to Mrs. Bennet, and therefore, instead +of making any answer, she went on as before. +"I cannot bear to think that they should have all this estate. +If it was not for the entail, I should not mind it." +"What should not you mind?" +"I should not mind anything at all." +"Let us be thankful that you are preserved from a state of such +insensibility." +"I never can be thankful, Mr. Bennet, for anything about the +entail. How anyone could have the conscience to entail away an +estate from one's own daughters, I cannot understand and all +for the sake of Mr. Collins too Why should he have it more +than anybody else?" +"I leave it to yourself to determine," said Mr. Bennet. +Chapter +Miss Bingley's letter arrived, and put an end to doubt. The very +first sentence conveyed the assurance of their being all settled +in London for the winter, and concluded with her brother's regret +at not having had time to pay his respects to his friends in +Hertfordshire before he left the country. +Hope was over, entirely over and when Jane could attend to the +rest of the letter, she found little, except the professed affection +of the writer, that could give her any comfort. Miss Darcy's +praise occupied the chief of it. Her many attractions were again +dwelt on, and Caroline boasted joyfully of their increasing +intimacy, and ventured to predict the accomplishment of the +wishes which had been unfolded in her former letter. She wrote +also with great pleasure of her brother's being an inmate of Mr. +Darcy's house, and mentioned with raptures some plans of the +latter with regard to new furniture. +Elizabeth, to whom Jane very soon communicated the chief of +all this, heard it in silent indignation. Her heart was divided +between concern for her sister, and resentment against all others. +To Caroline's assertion of her brother's being partial to Miss +Darcy she paid no credit. That he was really fond of Jane, she +doubted no more than she had ever done and much as she had +always been disposed to like him, she could not think without +anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness of temper, that +want of proper resolution, which now made him the slave of his +designing friends, and led him to sacrifice of his own happiness +to the caprice of their inclination. Had his own happiness, +however, been the only sacrifice, he might have been allowed to +sport with it in whatever manner he thought best, but her sister's +was involved in it, as she thought he must be sensible himself. +It was a subject, in short, on which reflection would be long +indulged, and must be unavailing. She could think of nothing +else and yet whether Bingley's regard had really died away, or +were suppressed by his friends' interference whether he had +been aware of Jane's attachment, or whether it had escaped his +observation whatever were the case, though her opinion of him +must be materially affected by the difference, her sister's +situation remained the same, her peace equally wounded. +A day or two passed before Jane had courage to speak of her +feelings to Elizabeth but at last, on Mrs. Bennet's leaving them +together, after a longer irritation than usual about Netherfield +and its master, she could not help saying +"Oh, that my dear mother had more command over herself She +can have no idea of the pain she gives me by her continual +reflections on him. But I will not repine. It cannot last long. +He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before." +Elizabeth looked at her sister with incredulous solicitude, but +said nothing. +"You doubt me," cried Jane, slightly colouring "indeed, you +have no reason. He may live in my memory as the most amiable +man of my acquaintance, but that is all. I have nothing either +to hope or fear, and nothing to reproach him with. Thank God I +have not that pain. A little time, thereforeI shall certainly +try to get the better." +With a stronger voice she soon added, "I have this comfort +immediately, that it has not been more than an error of fancy on +my side, and that it has done no harm to anyone but myself." +"My dear Jane" exclaimed Elizabeth, "you are too good. Your +sweetness and disinterestedness are really angelic I do not know +what to say to you. I feel as if I had never done you justice, or +loved you as you deserve." +Miss Bennet eagerly disclaimed all extraordinary merit, and +threw back the praise on her sister's warm affection. +"Nay," said Elizabeth, "this is not fair. You wish to think all +the world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of anybody. I +only want to think you perfect, and you set yourself against it. +Do not be afraid of my running into any excess, of my encroaching +on your privilege of universal goodwill. You need not. There +are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think +well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied +with it and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of +all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be +placed on the appearance of merit or sense. I have met with two +instances lately, one I will not mention the other is Charlotte's +marriage. It is unaccountable In every view it is unaccountable" +"My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They +will ruin your happiness. You do not make allowance enough +for difference of situation and temper. Consider Mr. Collins's +respectability, and Charlotte's steady, prudent character. +Remember that she is one of a large family that as to fortune, +it is a most eligible match and be ready to believe, for +everybody's sake, that she may feel something like regard and +esteem for our cousin." +"To oblige you, I would try to believe almost anything, but no +one else could be benefited by such a belief as this for were I +persuaded that Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only +think worse of her understanding than I now do of her heart. +My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrowminded, +silly man you know he is, as well as I do and you must feel, +as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a +proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is +Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, +change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to +persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and +insensibility of danger security for happiness." +"I must think your language too strong in speaking of both," +replied Jane "and I hope you will be convinced of it by seeing +them happy together. But enough of this. You alluded to +something else. You mentioned two instances. I cannot +misunderstand you, but I entreat you, dear Lizzy, not to pain +me by thinking that person to blame, and saying your opinion +of him is sunk. We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves +intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to +be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing +but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration +means more than it does." +"And men take care that they should." +"If it is designedly done, they cannot be justified but I have no +idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons +imagine." +"I am far from attributing any part of Mr. Bingley's conduct to +design," said Elizabeth "but without scheming to do wrong, or +to make others unhappy, there may be error, and there may be +misery. Thoughtlessness, want of attention to other people's +feelings, and want of resolution, will do the business." +"And do you impute it to either of those?" +"Yes to the last. But if I go on, I shall displease you by saying +what I think of persons you esteem. Stop me whilst you can." +"You persist, then, in supposing his sisters influence him?" +"Yes, in conjunction with his friend." +"I cannot believe it. Why should they try to influence him? +They can only wish his happiness and if he is attached to me, +no other woman can secure it." +"Your first position is false. They may wish many things besides +his happiness they may wish his increase of wealth and +consequence they may wish him to marry a girl who has all the +importance of money, great connections, and pride." +"Beyond a doubt, they do wish him to choose Miss Darcy," +replied Jane "but this may be from better feelings than you are +supposing. They have known her much longer than they have +known me no wonder if they love her better. But, whatever +may be their own wishes, it is very unlikely they should have +opposed their brother's. What sister would think herself at +liberty to do it, unless there were something very objectionable? +If they believed him attached to me, they would not try to part +us if he were so, they could not succeed. By supposing such +an affection, you make everybody acting unnaturally and wrong, +and me most unhappy. Do not distress me by the idea. I am not +ashamed of having been mistakenor, at least, it is light, it +is nothing in comparison of what I should feel in thinking ill +of him or his sisters. Let me take it in the best light, in +the light in which it may be understood." +Elizabeth could not oppose such a wish and from this time +Mr. Bingley's name was scarcely ever mentioned between them. +Mrs. Bennet still continued to wonder and repine at his returning +no more, and though a day seldom passed in which Elizabeth did +not account for it clearly, there was little chance of her ever +considering it with less perplexity. Her daughter endeavoured +to convince her of what she did not believe herself, that his +attentions to Jane had been merely the effect of a common and +transient liking, which ceased when he saw her no more but +though the probability of the statement was admitted at the time, +she had the same story to repeat every day. Mrs. Bennet's best +comfort was that Mr. Bingley must be down again in the +summer. +Mr. Bennet treated the matter differently. "So, Lizzy," said he +one day, "your sister is crossed in love, I find. I congratulate +her. Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little in +love now and then. It is something to think of, and it gives her a +sort of distinction among her companions. When is your turn to +come? You will hardly bear to be long outdone by Jane. Now is +your time. Here are officers enough in Meryton to disappoint all +the young ladies in the country. Let Wickham be your man. He +is a pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably." +"Thank you, sir, but a less agreeable man would satisfy me. We +must not all expect Jane's good fortune." +"True," said Mr. Bennet, "but it is a comfort to think that +whatever of that kind may befall you, you have an affectionate +mother who will make the most of it." +Mr. Wickham's society was of material service in dispelling the +gloom which the late perverse occurrences had thrown on many +of the Longbourn family. They saw him often, and to his other +recommendations was now added that of general unreserve. +The whole of what Elizabeth had already heard, his claims on +Mr. Darcy, and all that he had suffered from him, was now +openly acknowledged and publicly canvassed and everybody +was pleased to know how much they had always disliked Mr. +Darcy before they had known anything of the matter. +Miss Bennet was the only creature who could suppose there might +be any extenuating circumstances in the case, unknown to the +society of Hertfordshire her mild and steady candour always +pleaded for allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakesbut +by everybody else Mr. Darcy was condemned as the worst of men. +Chapter +After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity, +Mr. Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by the arrival +of Saturday. The pain of separation, however, might be +alleviated on his side, by preparations for the reception of his +bride as he had reason to hope, that shortly after his return into +Hertfordshire, the day would be fixed that was to make him the +happiest of men. He took leave of his relations at Longbourn +with as much solemnity as before wished his fair cousins health +and happiness again, and promised their father another letter of +thanks. +On the following Monday, Mrs. Bennet had the pleasure of +receiving her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend +the Christmas at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner was a sensible, +gentlemanlike man, greatly superior to his sister, as well by +nature as education. The Netherfield ladies would have had +difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade, and within +view of his own warehouses, could have been so wellbred and +agreeable. Mrs. Gardiner, who was several years younger than +Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Phillips, was an amiable, intelligent, +elegant woman, and a great favourite with all her Longbourn +nieces. Between the two eldest and herself especially, there +subsisted a particular regard. They had frequently been staying +with her in town. +The first part of Mrs. Gardiner's business on her arrival was to +distribute her presents and describe the newest fashions. When +this was done she had a less active part to play. It became her +turn to listen. Mrs. Bennet had many grievances to relate, and +much to complain of. They had all been very illused since she +last saw her sister. Two of her girls had been upon the point of +marriage, and after all there was nothing in it. +"I do not blame Jane," she continued, "for Jane would have got +Mr. Bingley if she could. But Lizzy Oh, sister It is very hard +to think that she might have been Mr. Collins's wife by this time, +had it not been for her own perverseness. He made her an offer +in this very room, and she refused him. The consequence of it is, +that Lady Lucas will have a daughter married before I have, and +that the Longbourn estate is just as much entailed as ever. The +Lucases are very artful people indeed, sister. They are all for +what they can get. I am sorry to say it of them, but so it is. +It makes me very nervous and poorly, to be thwarted so in my own +family, and to have neighbours who think of themselves before +anybody else. However, your coming just at this time is the +greatest of comforts, and I am very glad to hear what you tell us, +of long sleeves." +Mrs. Gardiner, to whom the chief of this news had been given +before, in the course of Jane and Elizabeth's correspondence +with her, made her sister a slight answer, and, in compassion to +her nieces, turned the conversation. +When alone with Elizabeth afterwards, she spoke more on the +subject. "It seems likely to have been a desirable match for +Jane," said she. "I am sorry it went off. But these things +happen so often A young man, such as you describe Mr. Bingley, +so easily falls in love with a pretty girl for a few weeks, and +when accident separates them, so easily forgets her, that these +sort of inconsistencies are very frequent." +"An excellent consolation in its way," said Elizabeth, "but it will +not do for us. We do not suffer by accident. It does not often +happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young +man of independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he +was violently in love with only a few days before." +"But that expression of 'violently in love' is so hackneyed, +so doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea. +It is as often applied to feelings which arise from a halfhour's +acquaintance, as to a real, strong attachment. Pray, how +violent was Mr. Bingley's love?" +"I never saw a more promising inclination he was growing quite +inattentive to other people, and wholly engrossed by her. Every +time they met, it was more decided and remarkable. At his own +ball he offended two or three young ladies, by not asking them to +dance and I spoke to him twice myself, without receiving an answer. +Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very +essence of love?" +"Oh, yesof that kind of love which I suppose him to have felt. +Poor Jane I am sorry for her, because, with her disposition, she +may not get over it immediately. It had better have happened to +you, Lizzy you would have laughed yourself out of it sooner. +But do you think she would be prevailed upon to go back with +us? Change of scene might be of serviceand perhaps a little +relief from home may be as useful as anything." +Elizabeth was exceedingly pleased with this proposal, and felt +persuaded of her sister's ready acquiescence. +"I hope," added Mrs. Gardiner, "that no consideration with +regard to this young man will influence her. We live in so +different a part of town, all our connections are so different, and, +as you well know, we go out so little, that it is very improbable +that they should meet at all, unless he really comes to see her." +"And that is quite impossible for he is now in the custody of +his friend, and Mr. Darcy would no more suffer him to call on +Jane in such a part of London My dear aunt, how could you +think of it? Mr. Darcy may perhaps have heard of such a +place as Gracechurch Street, but he would hardly think a +month's ablution enough to cleanse him from its impurities, were +he once to enter it and depend upon it, Mr. Bingley never stirs +without him." +"So much the better. I hope they will not meet at all. But does +not Jane correspond with his sister? She will not be able to +help calling." +"She will drop the acquaintance entirely." +But in spite of the certainty in which Elizabeth affected to place +this point, as well as the still more interesting one of Bingley's +being withheld from seeing Jane, she felt a solicitude on the +subject which convinced her, on examination, that she did not +consider it entirely hopeless. It was possible, and sometimes she +thought it probable, that his affection might be reanimated, and +the influence of his friends successfully combated by the more +natural influence of Jane's attractions. +Miss Bennet accepted her aunt's invitation with pleasure and +the Bingleys were no otherwise in her thoughts at the same time, +than as she hoped by Caroline's not living in the same house +with her brother, she might occasionally spend a morning with +her, without any danger of seeing him. +The Gardiners stayed a week at Longbourn and what with the +Phillipses, the Lucases, and the officers, there was not a day +without its engagement. Mrs. Bennet had so carefully provided +for the entertainment of her brother and sister, that they did +not once sit down to a family dinner. When the engagement was +for home, some of the officers always made part of itof +which officers Mr. Wickham was sure to be one and on these +occasion, Mrs. Gardiner, rendered suspicious by Elizabeth's +warm commendation, narrowly observed them both. Without +supposing them, from what she saw, to be very seriously in love, +their preference of each other was plain enough to make her a +little uneasy and she resolved to speak to Elizabeth on the +subject before she left Hertfordshire, and represent to her the +imprudence of encouraging such an attachment. +To Mrs. Gardiner, Wickham had one means of affording pleasure, +unconnected with his general powers. About ten or a dozen years +ago, before her marriage, she had spent a considerable time in +that very part of Derbyshire to which he belonged. They had, +therefore, many acquaintances in common and though Wickham had +been little there since the death of Darcy's father, it was yet +in his power to give her fresher intelligence of her former +friends than she had been in the way of procuring. +Mrs. Gardiner had seen Pemberley, and known the late Mr. Darcy +by character perfectly well. Here consequently was an +inexhaustible subject of discourse. In comparing her recollection +of Pemberley with the minute description which Wickham could +give, and in bestowing her tribute of praise on the character of +its late possessor, she was delighting both him and herself. On +being made acquainted with the present Mr. Darcy's treatment +of him, she tried to remember some of that gentleman's reputed +disposition when quite a lad which might agree with it, and was +confident at last that she recollected having heard Mr. +Fitzwilliam Darcy formerly spoken of as a very proud, illnatured +boy. +Chapter +Mrs. Gardiner's caution to Elizabeth was punctually and kindly +given on the first favourable opportunity of speaking to her +alone after honestly telling her what she thought, she thus went +on +"You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely because +you are warned against it and, therefore, I am not afraid of +speaking openly. Seriously, I would have you be on your guard. +Do not involve yourself or endeavour to involve him in an +affection which the want of fortune would make so very +imprudent. I have nothing to say against him he is a most +interesting young man and if he had the fortune he ought to +have, I should think you could not do better. But as it is, you +must not let your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and +we all expect you to use it. Your father would depend on +your resolution and good conduct, I am sure. You must not +disappoint your father." +"My dear aunt, this is being serious indeed." +"Yes, and I hope to engage you to be serious likewise." +"Well, then, you need not be under any alarm. I will take care +of myself, and of Mr. Wickham too. He shall not be in love with +me, if I can prevent it." +"Elizabeth, you are not serious now." +"I beg your pardon, I will try again. At present I am not in +love with Mr. Wickham no, I certainly am not. But he is, beyond +all comparison, the most agreeable man I ever sawand if he +becomes really attached to meI believe it will be better that +he should not. I see the imprudence of it. Oh that abominable +Mr. Darcy My father's opinion of me does me the greatest +honour, and I should be miserable to forfeit it. My father, +however, is partial to Mr. Wickham. In short, my dear aunt, +I should be very sorry to be the means of making any of you +unhappy but since we see every day that where there is +affection, young people are seldom withheld by immediate want +of fortune from entering into engagements with each other, how +can I promise to be wiser than so many of my fellowcreatures +if I am tempted, or how am I even to know that it would be +wisdom to resist? All that I can promise you, therefore, is not +to be in a hurry. I will not be in a hurry to believe myself his +first object. When I am in company with him, I will not be +wishing. In short, I will do my best." +"Perhaps it will be as well if you discourage his coming here so +very often. At least, you should not remind your mother of +inviting him." +"As I did the other day," said Elizabeth with a conscious smile +"very true, it will be wise in me to refrain from that. But do +not imagine that he is always here so often. It is on your +account that he has been so frequently invited this week. You +know my mother's ideas as to the necessity of constant company +for her friends. But really, and upon my honour, I will try to do +what I think to be the wisest and now I hope you are satisfied." +Her aunt assured her that she was, and Elizabeth having thanked +her for the kindness of her hints, they parted a wonderful +instance of advice being given on such a point, without being +resented. +Mr. Collins returned into Hertfordshire soon after it had been +quitted by the Gardiners and Jane but as he took up his abode +with the Lucases, his arrival was no great inconvenience to Mrs. +Bennet. His marriage was now fast approaching, and she was at +length so far resigned as to think it inevitable, and even +repeatedly to say, in an illnatured tone, that she "wished they +might be happy." Thursday was to be the wedding day, and on +Wednesday Miss Lucas paid her farewell visit and when she +rose to take leave, Elizabeth, ashamed of her mother's +ungracious and reluctant good wishes, and sincerely affected +herself, accompanied her out of the room. As they went +downstairs together, Charlotte said +"I shall depend on hearing from you very often, Eliza." +"That you certainly shall." +"And I have another favour to ask you. Will you come and see +me?" +"We shall often meet, I hope, in Hertfordshire." +"I am not likely to leave Kent for some time. Promise me, +therefore, to come to Hunsford." +Elizabeth could not refuse, though she foresaw little pleasure +in the visit. +"My father and Maria are coming to me in March," added +Charlotte, "and I hope you will consent to be of the party. +Indeed, Eliza, you will be as welcome as either of them." +The wedding took place the bride and bridegroom set off for +Kent from the church door, and everybody had as much to say, +or to hear, on the subject as usual. Elizabeth soon heard from +her friend and their correspondence was as regular and frequent +as it had ever been that it should be equally unreserved was +impossible. Elizabeth could never address her without feeling +that all the comfort of intimacy was over, and though determined +not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the sake of what +had been, rather than what was. Charlotte's first letters were +received with a good deal of eagerness there could not but be +curiosity to know how she would speak of her new home, how +she would like Lady Catherine, and how happy she would dare +pronounce herself to be though, when the letters were read, +Elizabeth felt that Charlotte expressed herself on every point +exactly as she might have foreseen. She wrote cheerfully, +seemed surrounded with comforts, and mentioned nothing which +she could not praise. The house, furniture, neighbourhood, and +roads, were all to her taste, and Lady Catherine's behaviour +was most friendly and obliging. It was Mr. Collins's picture +of Hunsford and Rosings rationally softened and Elizabeth +perceived that she must wait for her own visit there to know the +rest. +Jane had already written a few lines to her sister to announce +their safe arrival in London and when she wrote again, Elizabeth +hoped it would be in her power to say something of the +Bingleys. +Her impatience for this second letter was as well rewarded as +impatience generally is. Jane had been a week in town without +either seeing or hearing from Caroline. She accounted for it, +however, by supposing that her last letter to her friend from +Longbourn had by some accident been lost. +"My aunt," she continued, "is going tomorrow into that part of +the town, and I shall take the opportunity of calling in Grosvenor +Street." +She wrote again when the visit was paid, and she had seen Miss +Bingley. "I did not think Caroline in spirits," were her words, +"but she was very glad to see me, and reproached me for giving +her no notice of my coming to London. I was right, therefore, +my last letter had never reached her. I inquired after their +brother, of course. He was well, but so much engaged with Mr. +Darcy that they scarcely ever saw him. I found that Miss Darcy +was expected to dinner. I wish I could see her. My visit was +not long, as Caroline and Mrs. Hurst were going out. I dare say +I shall see them soon here." +Elizabeth shook her head over this letter. It convinced her that +accident only could discover to Mr. Bingley her sister's being in +town. +Four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him. She +endeavoured to persuade herself that she did not regret it but +she could no longer be blind to Miss Bingley's inattention. After +waiting at home every morning for a fortnight, and inventing +every evening a fresh excuse for her, the visitor did at last +appear but the shortness of her stay, and yet more, the alteration +of her manner would allow Jane to deceive herself no longer. +The letter which she wrote on this occasion to her sister will +prove what she felt. +"My dearest Lizzy will, I am sure, be incapable of triumphing in +her better judgement, at my expense, when I confess myself to +have been entirely deceived in Miss Bingley's regard for me. +But, my dear sister, though the event has proved you right, do +not think me obstinate if I still assert that, considering what +her behaviour was, my confidence was as natural as your suspicion. +I do not at all comprehend her reason for wishing to be intimate +with me but if the same circumstances were to happen again, I +am sure I should be deceived again. Caroline did not return my +visit till yesterday and not a note, not a line, did I receive +in the meantime. When she did come, it was very evident that she +had no pleasure in it she made a slight, formal apology, for not +calling before, said not a word of wishing to see me again, and +was in every respect so altered a creature, that when she went +away I was perfectly resolved to continue the acquaintance no +longer. I pity, though I cannot help blaming her. She was very +wrong in singling me out as she did I can safely say that every +advance to intimacy began on her side. But I pity her, because +she must feel that she has been acting wrong, and because I am +very sure that anxiety for her brother is the cause of it. I need +not explain myself farther and though we know this anxiety to +be quite needless, yet if she feels it, it will easily account +for her behaviour to me and so deservedly dear as he is to his +sister, whatever anxiety she must feel on his behalf is natural +and amiable. I cannot but wonder, however, at her having any +such fears now, because, if he had at all cared about me, we +must have met, long ago. He knows of my being in town, I am +certain, from something she said herself and yet it would seem, +by her manner of talking, as if she wanted to persuade herself +that he is really partial to Miss Darcy. I cannot understand it. +If I were not afraid of judging harshly, I should be almost +tempted to say that there is a strong appearance of duplicity in +all this. But I will endeavour to banish every painful thought, +and think only of what will make me happyyour affection, and +the invariable kindness of my dear uncle and aunt. Let me hear +from you very soon. Miss Bingley said something of his never +returning to Netherfield again, of giving up the house, but not +with any certainty. We had better not mention it. I am extremely +glad that you have such pleasant accounts from our friends at +Hunsford. Pray go to see them, with Sir William and Maria. I am +sure you will be very comfortable there.Yours, etc." +This letter gave Elizabeth some pain but her spirits returned as +she considered that Jane would no longer be duped, by the sister +at least. All expectation from the brother was now absolutely +over. She would not even wish for a renewal of his attentions. +His character sunk on every review of it and as a punishment for +him, as well as a possible advantage to Jane, she seriously hoped +he might really soon marry Mr. Darcy's sister, as by Wickham's +account, she would make him abundantly regret what he had +thrown away. +Mrs. Gardiner about this time reminded Elizabeth of her promise +concerning that gentleman, and required information and +Elizabeth had such to send as might rather give contentment to +her aunt than to herself. His apparent partiality had subsided, +his attentions were over, he was the admirer of some one else. +Elizabeth was watchful enough to see it all, but she could see it +and write of it without material pain. Her heart had been but +slightly touched, and her vanity was satisfied with believing that +she would have been his only choice, had fortune permitted it. +The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most +remarkable charm of the young lady to whom he was now rendering +himself agreeable but Elizabeth, less clearsighted perhaps in +this case than in Charlotte's, did not quarrel with him for his +wish of independence. Nothing, on the contrary, could be more +natural and while able to suppose that it cost him a few struggles +to relinquish her, she was ready to allow it a wise and desirable +measure for both, and could very sincerely wish him happy. +All this was acknowledged to Mrs. Gardiner and after relating +the circumstances, she thus went on "I am now convinced, my +dear aunt, that I have never been much in love for had I really +experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present +detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my +feelings are not only cordial towards him they are even +impartial towards Miss King. I cannot find out that I hate her at +all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good +sort of girl. There can be no love in all this. My watchfulness +has been effectual and though I certainly should be a more +interesting object to all my acquaintances were I distractedly +in love with him, I cannot say that I regret my comparative +insignificance. Importance may sometimes be purchased too +dearly. Kitty and Lydia take his defection much more to heart +than I do. They are young in the ways of the world, and not +yet open to the mortifying conviction that handsome young men +must have something to live on as well as the plain." +Chapter +With no greater events than these in the Longbourn family, and +otherwise diversified by little beyond the walks to Meryton, +sometimes dirty and sometimes cold, did January and February +pass away. March was to take Elizabeth to Hunsford. She had +not at first thought very seriously of going thither but Charlotte, +she soon found, was depending on the plan and she gradually +learned to consider it herself with greater pleasure as well as +greater certainty. Absence had increased her desire of seeing +Charlotte again, and weakened her disgust of Mr. Collins. There +was novelty in the scheme, and as, with such a mother and such +uncompanionable sisters, home could not be faultless, a little +change was not unwelcome for its own sake. The journey +would moreover give her a peep at Jane and, in short, as the +time drew near, she would have been very sorry for any delay. +Everything, however, went on smoothly, and was finally settled +according to Charlotte's first sketch. She was to accompany Sir +William and his second daughter. The improvement of spending +a night in London was added in time, and the plan became +perfect as plan could be. +The only pain was in leaving her father, who would certainly +miss her, and who, when it came to the point, so little liked her +going, that he told her to write to him, and almost promised to +answer her letter. +The farewell between herself and Mr. Wickham was perfectly +friendly on his side even more. His present pursuit could not +make him forget that Elizabeth had been the first to excite and to +deserve his attention, the first to listen and to pity, the first +to be admired and in his manner of bidding her adieu, wishing +her every enjoyment, reminding her of what she was to expect in +Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and trusting their opinion of hertheir +opinion of everybodywould always coincide, there was a solicitude, +an interest which she felt must ever attach her to him with a most +sincere regard and she parted from him convinced that, whether +married or single, he must always be her model of the amiable and +pleasing. +Her fellowtravellers the next day were not of a kind to make her +think him less agreeable. Sir William Lucas, and his daughter +Maria, a goodhumoured girl, but as emptyheaded as himself, +had nothing to say that could be worth hearing, and were +listened to with about as much delight as the rattle of the chaise. +Elizabeth loved absurdities, but she had known Sir William's too +long. He could tell her nothing new of the wonders of his +presentation and knighthood and his civilities were worn out, +like his information. +It was a journey of only twentyfour miles, and they began it so +early as to be in Gracechurch Street by noon. As they drove +to Mr. Gardiner's door, Jane was at a drawingroom window +watching their arrival when they entered the passage she was +there to welcome them, and Elizabeth, looking earnestly in her +face, was pleased to see it healthful and lovely as ever. On the +stairs were a troop of little boys and girls, whose eagerness for +their cousin's appearance would not allow them to wait in the +drawingroom, and whose shyness, as they had not seen her for +a twelvemonth, prevented their coming lower. All was joy and +kindness. The day passed most pleasantly away the morning in +bustle and shopping, and the evening at one of the theatres. +Elizabeth then contrived to sit by her aunt. Their first object was +her sister and she was more grieved than astonished to hear, in +reply to her minute inquiries, that though Jane always struggled +to support her spirits, there were periods of dejection. It was +reasonable, however, to hope that they would not continue long. +Mrs. Gardiner gave her the particulars also of Miss Bingley's +visit in Gracechurch Street, and repeated conversations +occurring at different times between Jane and herself, which +proved that the former had, from her heart, given up the +acquaintance. +Mrs. Gardiner then rallied her niece on Wickham's desertion, +and complimented her on bearing it so well. +"But my dear Elizabeth," she added, "what sort of girl is Miss +King? I should be sorry to think our friend mercenary." +"Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial +affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where +does discretion end, and avarice begin? Last Christmas you +were afraid of his marrying me, because it would be imprudent +and now, because he is trying to get a girl with only ten +thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is mercenary." +"If you will only tell me what sort of girl Miss King is, I shall +know what to think." +"She is a very good kind of girl, I believe. I know no harm of +her." +"But he paid her not the smallest attention till her grandfather's +death made her mistress of this fortune." +"Nowhat should he? If it were not allowable for him to gain +my affections because I had no money, what occasion could +there be for making love to a girl whom he did not care about, +and who was equally poor?" +"But there seems an indelicacy in directing his attentions +towards her so soon after this event." +"A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those +elegant decorums which other people may observe. If she does +not object to it, why should we?" +"Her not objecting does not justify him. It only shows her +being deficient in something herselfsense or feeling." +"Well," cried Elizabeth, "have it as you choose. He shall be +mercenary, and she shall be foolish." +"No, Lizzy, that is what I do not choose. I should be sorry, +you know, to think ill of a young man who has lived so long in +Derbyshire." +"Oh if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men +who live in Derbyshire and their intimate friends who live +in Hertfordshire are not much better. I am sick of them all. +Thank Heaven I am going tomorrow where I shall find a man +who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor +sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth +knowing, after all." +"Take care, Lizzy that speech savours strongly of disappointment." +Before they were separated by the conclusion of the play, she +had the unexpected happiness of an invitation to accompany her +uncle and aunt in a tour of pleasure which they proposed taking +in the summer. +"We have not determined how far it shall carry us," said Mrs. +Gardiner, "but, perhaps, to the Lakes." +No scheme could have been more agreeable to Elizabeth, and +her acceptance of the invitation was most ready and grateful. +"Oh, my dear, dear aunt," she rapturously cried, "what delight +what felicity You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to +disappointment and spleen. What are young men to rocks and +mountains? Oh what hours of transport we shall spend And +when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, +without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We +will know where we have gonewe will recollect what we have +seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together +in our imaginations nor when we attempt to describe any +particular scene, will we begin quarreling about its relative +situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than +those of the generality of travellers." +Chapter +Every object in the next day's journey was new and interesting +to Elizabeth and her spirits were in a state of enjoyment for +she had seen her sister looking so well as to banish all fear for +her health, and the prospect of her northern tour was a constant +source of delight. +When they left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, every eye +was in search of the Parsonage, and every turning expected to +bring it in view. The palings of Rosings Park was their boundary +on one side. Elizabeth smiled at the recollection of all that she +had heard of its inhabitants. +At length the Parsonage was discernible. The garden sloping to +the road, the house standing in it, the green pales, and the laurel +hedge, everything declared they were arriving. Mr. Collins and +Charlotte appeared at the door, and the carriage stopped at the +small gate which led by a short gravel walk to the house, amidst +the nods and smiles of the whole party. In a moment they were +all out of the chaise, rejoicing at the sight of each other. +Mrs. Collins welcomed her friend with the liveliest pleasure, +and Elizabeth was more and more satisfied with coming when she +found herself so affectionately received. She saw instantly that +her cousin's manners were not altered by his marriage his formal +civility was just what it had been, and he detained her some +minutes at the gate to hear and satisfy his inquiries after +all her family. They were then, with no other delay than his +pointing out the neatness of the entrance, taken into the house +and as soon as they were in the parlour, he welcomed them a +second time, with ostentatious formality to his humble abode, +and punctually repeated all his wife's offers of refreshment. +Elizabeth was prepared to see him in his glory and she could +not help in fancying that in displaying the good proportion of +the room, its aspect and its furniture, he addressed himself +particularly to her, as if wishing to make her feel what she +had lost in refusing him. But though everything seemed neat +and comfortable, she was not able to gratify him by any sigh of +repentance, and rather looked with wonder at her friend that +she could have so cheerful an air with such a companion. When +Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be +ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily +turned her eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern +a faint blush but in general Charlotte wisely did not hear. +After sitting long enough to admire every article of furniture in +the room, from the sideboard to the fender, to give an account +of their journey, and of all that had happened in London, Mr. +Collins invited them to take a stroll in the garden, which was +large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of which he +attended himself. To work in this garden was one of his most +respectable pleasures and Elizabeth admired the command of +countenance with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of +the exercise, and owned she encouraged it as much as possible. +Here, leading the way through every walk and cross walk, and +scarcely allowing them an interval to utter the praises he asked +for, every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left +beauty entirely behind. He could number the fields in every +direction, and could tell how many tress there were in the most +distant clump. But of all the views which his garden, or which +the country or kingdom could boast, none were to be compared +with the prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees +that bordered the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It +was a handsome modern building, well situated on rising ground. +From his garden, Mr. Collins would have led them round his two +meadows but the ladies, not having shoes to encounter the +remains of a white frost, turned back and while Sir William +accompanied him, Charlotte took her sister and friend over the +house, extremely well pleased, probably, to have the opportunity +of showing it without her husband's help. It was rather small, +but well built and convenient and everything was fitted up and +arranged with a neatness and consistency of which Elizabeth +gave Charlotte all the credit. When Mr. Collins could be +forgotten, there was really an air of great comfort throughout, +and by Charlotte's evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed +he must be often forgotten. +She had already learnt that Lady Catherine was still in the +country. It was spoken of again while they were at dinner, +when Mr. Collins joining in, observed +"Yes, Miss Elizabeth, you will have the honour of seeing Lady +Catherine de Bourgh on the ensuing Sunday at church, and I +need not say you will be delighted with her. She is all affability +and condescension, and I doubt not but you will be honoured +with some portion of her notice when service is over. I have +scarcely any hesitation in saying she will include you and my +sister Maria in every invitation with which she honours us during +your stay here. Her behaviour to my dear Charlotte is charming. +We dine at Rosings twice every week, and are never allowed to +walk home. Her ladyship's carriage is regularly ordered for us. +I should say, one of her ladyship's carriages, for she has +several." +"Lady Catherine is a very respectable, sensible woman indeed," +added Charlotte, "and a most attentive neighbour." +"Very true, my dear, that is exactly what I say. She is the sort +of woman whom one cannot regard with too much deference." +The evening was spent chiefly in talking over Hertfordshire +news, and telling again what had already been written and when +it closed, Elizabeth, in the solitude of her chamber, had to +meditate upon Charlotte's degree of contentment, to understand +her address in guiding, and composure in bearing with, her +husband, and to acknowledge that it was all done very well. She +had also to anticipate how her visit would pass, the quiet tenor +of their usual employments, the vexatious interruptions of Mr. +Collins, and the gaieties of their intercourse with Rosings. +A lively imagination soon settled it all. +About the middle of the next day, as she was in her room getting +ready for a walk, a sudden noise below seemed to speak the +whole house in confusion and, after listening a moment, she +heard somebody running upstairs in a violent hurry, and calling +loudly after her. She opened the door and met Maria in the +landing place, who, breathless with agitation, cried out +"Oh, my dear Eliza pray make haste and come into the diningroom, +for there is such a sight to be seen I will not tell you what +it is. Make haste, and come down this moment." +Elizabeth asked questions in vain Maria would tell her nothing +more, and down they ran into the diningroom, which fronted +the lane, in quest of this wonder It was two ladies stopping in +a low phaeton at the garden gate. +"And is this all?" cried Elizabeth. "I expected at least that the +pigs were got into the garden, and here is nothing but Lady +Catherine and her daughter." +"La my dear," said Maria, quite shocked at the mistake, "it is +not Lady Catherine. The old lady is Mrs. Jenkinson, who lives +with them the other is Miss de Bourgh. Only look at her. She +is quite a little creature. Who would have thought that she could +be so thin and small?" +"She is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all this +wind. Why does she not come in?" +"Oh, Charlotte says she hardly ever does. It is the greatest of +favours when Miss de Bourgh comes in." +"I like her appearance," said Elizabeth, struck with other ideas. +"She looks sickly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well. +She will make him a very proper wife." +Mr. Collins and Charlotte were both standing at the gate in +conversation with the ladies and Sir William, to Elizabeth's +high diversion, was stationed in the doorway, in earnest +contemplation of the greatness before him, and constantly +bowing whenever Miss de Bourgh looked that way. +At length there was nothing more to be said the ladies drove on, +and the others returned into the house. Mr. Collins no sooner +saw the two girls than he began to congratulate them on their +good fortune, which Charlotte explained by letting them know +that the whole party was asked to dine at Rosings the next day. +Chapter +Mr. Collins's triumph, in consequence of this invitation, was +complete. The power of displaying the grandeur of his patroness +to his wondering visitors, and of letting them see her civility +towards himself and his wife, was exactly what he had wished +for and that an opportunity of doing it should be given so soon, +was such an instance of Lady Catherine's condescension, as he +knew not how to admire enough. +"I confess," said he, "that I should not have been at all surprised +by her ladyship's asking us on Sunday to drink tea and spend the +evening at Rosings. I rather expected, from my knowledge of +her affability, that it would happen. But who could have +foreseen such an attention as this? Who could have imagined +that we should receive an invitation to dine there an invitation, +moreover, including the whole party so immediately after your +arrival" +"I am the less surprised at what has happened," replied Sir +William, "from that knowledge of what the manners of the great +really are, which my situation in life has allowed me to acquire. +About the court, such instances of elegant breeding are not +uncommon." +Scarcely anything was talked of the whole day or next morning +but their visit to Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing +them in what they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms, +so many servants, and so splendid a dinner, might not wholly +overpower them. +When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to +Elizabeth +"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your +apparel. Lady Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of +dress in us which becomes herself and her daughter. I would +advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior +to the restthere is no occasion for anything more. Lady +Catherine will not think the worse of you for being simply +dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved." +While they were dressing, he came two or three times to their +different doors, to recommend their being quick, as Lady +Catherine very much objected to be kept waiting for her dinner. +Such formidable accounts of her ladyship, and her manner of +living, quite frightened Maria Lucas who had been little used to +company, and she looked forward to her introduction at Rosings +with as much apprehension as her father had done to his +presentation at St. James's. +As the weather was fine, they had a pleasant walk of about half +a mile across the park. Every park has its beauty and its +prospects and Elizabeth saw much to be pleased with, though +she could not be in such raptures as Mr. Collins expected the +scene to inspire, and was but slightly affected by his enumeration +of the windows in front of the house, and his relation of what the +glazing altogether had originally cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh. +When they ascended the steps to the hall, Maria's alarm was +every moment increasing, and even Sir William did not look +perfectly calm. Elizabeth's courage did not fail her. She had +heard nothing of Lady Catherine that spoke her awful from any +extraordinary talents or miraculous virtue, and the mere +stateliness of money or rank she thought she could witness +without trepidation. +From the entrancehall, of which Mr. Collins pointed out, with a +rapturous air, the fine proportion and the finished ornaments, +they followed the servants through an antechamber, to the room +where Lady Catherine, her daughter, and Mrs. Jenkinson were +sitting. Her ladyship, with great condescension, arose to receive +them and as Mrs. Collins had settled it with her husband that the +office of introduction should be hers, it was performed in a +proper manner, without any of those apologies and thanks which +he would have thought necessary. +In spite of having been at St. James's Sir William was so +completely awed by the grandeur surrounding him, that he had +but just courage enough to make a very low bow, and take his +seat without saying a word and his daughter, frightened almost +out of her senses, sat on the edge of her chair, not knowing +which way to look. Elizabeth found herself quite equal to the +scene, and could observe the three ladies before her composedly. +Lady Catherine was a tall, large woman, with stronglymarked +features, which might once have been handsome. Her air was +not conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them such as +to make her visitors forget their inferior rank. She was not +rendered formidable by silence but whatever she said was +spoken in so authoritative a tone, as marked her selfimportance, +and brought Mr. Wickham immediately to Elizabeth's mind and +from the observation of the day altogether, she believed Lady +Catherine to be exactly what he represented. +When, after examining the mother, in whose countenance and +deportment she soon found some resemblance of Mr. Darcy, she +turned her eyes on the daughter, she could almost have joined +in Maria's astonishment at her being so thin and so small. There +was neither in figure nor face any likeness between the ladies. +Miss de Bourgh was pale and sickly her features, though not +plain, were insignificant and she spoke very little, except in +a low voice, to Mrs. Jenkinson, in whose appearance there was +nothing remarkable, and who was entirely engaged in listening to +what she said, and placing a screen in the proper direction before +her eyes. +After sitting a few minutes, they were all sent to one of the +windows to admire the view, Mr. Collins attending them to +point out its beauties, and Lady Catherine kindly informing +them that it was much better worth looking at in the summer. +The dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were all the +servants and all the articles of plate which Mr. Collins had +promised and, as he had likewise foretold, he took his seat at +the bottom of the table, by her ladyship's desire, and looked as +if he felt that life could furnish nothing greater. He carved, +and ate, and praised with delighted alacrity and every dish was +commended, first by him and then by Sir William, who was now +enough recovered to echo whatever his soninlaw said, in a +manner which Elizabeth wondered Lady Catherine could bear. +But Lady Catherine seemed gratified by their excessive admiration, +and gave most gracious smiles, especially when any dish on the +table proved a novelty to them. The party did not supply much +conversation. Elizabeth was ready to speak whenever there was +an opening, but she was seated between Charlotte and Miss de +Bourghthe former of whom was engaged in listening to Lady +Catherine, and the latter said not a word to her all dinnertime. +Mrs. Jenkinson was chiefly employed in watching how little Miss +de Bourgh ate, pressing her to try some other dish, and fearing +she was indisposed. Maria thought speaking out of the question, +and the gentlemen did nothing but eat and admire. +When the ladies returned to the drawingroom, there was little +to be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did +without any intermission till coffee came in, delivering her +opinion on every subject in so decisive a manner, as proved +that she was not used to have her judgement controverted. She +inquired into Charlotte's domestic concerns familiarly and +minutely, gave her a great deal of advice as to the management +of them all told her how everything ought to be regulated in so +small a family as hers, and instructed her as to the care of her +cows and her poultry. Elizabeth found that nothing was beneath +this great lady's attention, which could furnish her with an +occasion of dictating to others. In the intervals of her discourse +with Mrs. Collins, she addressed a variety of questions to Maria +and Elizabeth, but especially to the latter, of whose connections +she knew the least, and who she observed to Mrs. Collins was a +very genteel, pretty kind of girl. She asked her, at different +times, how many sisters she had, whether they were older or +younger than herself, whether any of them were likely to be +married, whether they were handsome, where they had been +educated, what carriage her father kept, and what had been her +mother's maiden name? Elizabeth felt all the impertinence of her +questions but answered them very composedly. Lady Catherine +then observed, +"Your father's estate is entailed on Mr. Collins, I think. For +your sake," turning to Charlotte, "I am glad of it but otherwise I +see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line. It was +not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family. Do you +play and sing, Miss Bennet?" +"A little." +"Oh thensome time or other we shall be happy to hear you. +Our instrument is a capital one, probably superior toYou +shall try it some day. Do your sisters play and sing?" +"One of them does." +"Why did not you all learn? You ought all to have learned. The +Miss Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an income +as yours. Do you draw?" +"No, not at all." +"What, none of you?" +"Not one." +"That is very strange. But I suppose you had no opportunity. +Your mother should have taken you to town every spring for the +benefit of masters." +"My mother would have had no objection, but my father hates +London." +"Has your governess left you?" +"We never had any governess." +"No governess How was that possible? Five daughters brought +up at home without a governess I never heard of such a thing. +Your mother must have been quite a slave to your education." +Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had +not been the case. +"Then, who taught you? who attended to you? Without a +governess, you must have been neglected." +"Compared with some families, I believe we were but such of us +as wished to learn never wanted the means. We were always +encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary. +Those who chose to be idle, certainly might." +"Aye, no doubt but that is what a governess will prevent, and +if I had known your mother, I should have advised her most +strenuously to engage one. I always say that nothing is to be +done in education without steady and regular instruction, and +nobody but a governess can give it. It is wonderful how many +families I have been the means of supplying in that way. I am +always glad to get a young person well placed out. Four nieces +of Mrs. Jenkinson are most delightfully situated through my +means and it was but the other day that I recommended another +young person, who was merely accidentally mentioned to me, +and the family are quite delighted with her. Mrs. Collins, did I +tell you of Lady Metcalf's calling yesterday to thank me? She +finds Miss Pope a treasure. 'Lady Catherine,' said she, 'you +have given me a treasure.' Are any of your younger sisters out, +Miss Bennet?" +"Yes, ma'am, all." +"All What, all five out at once? Very odd And you only +the second. The younger ones out before the elder ones are +married Your younger sisters must be very young?" +"Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps she is full young to +be much in company. But really, ma'am, I think it would be +very hard upon younger sisters, that they should not have their +share of society and amusement, because the elder may not have +the means or inclination to marry early. The lastborn has as +good a right to the pleasures of youth at the first. And to be +kept back on such a motive I think it would not be very likely +to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind." +"Upon my word," said her ladyship, "you give your opinion very +decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?" +"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth, +smiling, "your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it." +Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct +answer and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature +who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence. +"You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure, therefore you need +not conceal your age." +"I am not oneandtwenty." +When the gentlemen had joined them, and tea was over, the +cardtables were placed. Lady Catherine, Sir William, and Mr. +and Mrs. Collins sat down to quadrille and as Miss de Bourgh +chose to play at cassino, the two girls had the honour of +assisting Mrs. Jenkinson to make up her party. Their table was +superlatively stupid. Scarcely a syllable was uttered that did +not relate to the game, except when Mrs. Jenkinson expressed her +fears of Miss de Bourgh's being too hot or too cold, or having +too much or too little light. A great deal more passed at the +other table. Lady Catherine was generally speakingstating +the mistakes of the three others, or relating some anecdote of +herself. Mr. Collins was employed in agreeing to everything +her ladyship said, thanking her for every fish he won, and +apologising if he thought he won too many. Sir William did not +say much. He was storing his memory with anecdotes and noble +names. +When Lady Catherine and her daughter had played as long as +they chose, the tables were broken up, the carriage was offered +to Mrs. Collins, gratefully accepted and immediately ordered. +The party then gathered round the fire to hear Lady Catherine +determine what weather they were to have on the morrow. From +these instructions they were summoned by the arrival of the +coach and with many speeches of thankfulness on Mr. Collins's +side and as many bows on Sir William's they departed. As soon +as they had driven from the door, Elizabeth was called on by her +cousin to give her opinion of all that she had seen at Rosings, +which, for Charlotte's sake, she made more favourable than it +really was. But her commendation, though costing her some +trouble, could by no means satisfy Mr. Collins, and he was very +soon obliged to take her ladyship's praise into his own hands. +Chapter +Sir William stayed only a week at Hunsford, but his visit was +long enough to convince him of his daughter's being most +comfortably settled, and of her possessing such a husband and +such a neighbour as were not often met with. While Sir William +was with them, Mr. Collins devoted his morning to driving him +out in his gig, and showing him the country but when he went +away, the whole family returned to their usual employments, and +Elizabeth was thankful to find that they did not see more of +her cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between +breakfast and dinner was now passed by him either at work in +the garden or in reading and writing, and looking out of the +window in his own bookroom, which fronted the road. The +room in which the ladies sat was backwards. Elizabeth had at +first rather wondered that Charlotte should not prefer the +diningparlour for common use it was a better sized room, and +had a more pleasant aspect but she soon saw that her friend +had an excellent reason for what she did, for Mr. Collins would +undoubtedly have been much less in his own apartment, had they +sat in one equally lively and she gave Charlotte credit for +the arrangement. +From the drawingroom they could distinguish nothing in the +lane, and were indebted to Mr. Collins for the knowledge of +what carriages went along, and how often especially Miss de +Bourgh drove by in her phaeton, which he never failed coming +to inform them of, though it happened almost every day. She +not unfrequently stopped at the Parsonage, and had a few +minutes' conversation with Charlotte, but was scarcely ever +prevailed upon to get out. +Very few days passed in which Mr. Collins did not walk to +Rosings, and not many in which his wife did not think it +necessary to go likewise and till Elizabeth recollected that +there might be other family livings to be disposed of, she could +not understand the sacrifice of so many hours. Now and then +they were honoured with a call from her ladyship, and nothing +escaped her observation that was passing in the room during +these visits. She examined into their employments, looked at +their work, and advised them to do it differently found fault +with the arrangement of the furniture or detected the housemaid +in negligence and if she accepted any refreshment, seemed to do +it only for the sake of finding out that Mrs. Collins's joints of +meat were too large for her family. +Elizabeth soon perceived, that though this great lady was not in +commission of the peace of the county, she was a most active +magistrate in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which +were carried to her by Mr. Collins and whenever any of the +cottagers were disposed to be quarrelsome, discontented, or +too poor, she sallied forth into the village to settle their +differences, silence their complaints, and scold them into +harmony and plenty. +The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated about twice +a week and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, and there being +only one cardtable in the evening, every such entertainment was +the counterpart of the first. Their other engagements were few, +as the style of living in the neighbourhood in general was beyond +Mr. Collins's reach. This, however, was no evil to Elizabeth, +and upon the whole she spent her time comfortably enough +there were halfhours of pleasant conversation with Charlotte, +and the weather was so fine for the time of year that she had +often great enjoyment out of doors. Her favourite walk, and +where she frequently went while the others were calling on Lady +Catherine, was along the open grove which edged that side of +the park, where there was a nice sheltered path, which no one +seemed to value but herself, and where she felt beyond the reach +of Lady Catherine's curiosity. +In this quiet way, the first fortnight of her visit soon passed +away. Easter was approaching, and the week preceding it was +to bring an addition to the family at Rosings, which in so small +a circle must be important. Elizabeth had heard soon after her +arrival that Mr. Darcy was expected there in the course of a few +weeks, and though there were not many of her acquaintances whom +she did not prefer, his coming would furnish one comparatively +new to look at in their Rosings parties, and she might be amused +in seeing how hopeless Miss Bingley's designs on him were, by +his behaviour to his cousin, for whom he was evidently destined +by Lady Catherine, who talked of his coming with the greatest +satisfaction, spoke of him in terms of the highest admiration, +and seemed almost angry to find that he had already been +frequently seen by Miss Lucas and herself. +His arrival was soon known at the Parsonage for Mr. Collins +was walking the whole morning within view of the lodges +opening into Hunsford Lane, in order to have the earliest +assurance of it, and after making his bow as the carriage turned +into the Park, hurried home with the great intelligence. On the +following morning he hastened to Rosings to pay his respects. +There were two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for +Mr. Darcy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the +younger son of his uncle Lord , and, to the great surprise +of all the party, when Mr. Collins returned, the gentleman +accompanied him. Charlotte had seen them from her husband's +room, crossing the road, and immediately running into the other, +told the girls what an honour they might expect, adding +"I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy +would never have come so soon to wait upon me." +Elizabeth had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the +compliment, before their approach was announced by the +doorbell, and shortly afterwards the three gentlemen entered +the room. Colonel Fitzwilliam, who led the way, was about +thirty, not handsome, but in person and address most truly the +gentleman. Mr. Darcy looked just as he had been used to look +in Hertfordshirepaid his compliments, with his usual reserve, +to Mrs. Collins, and whatever might be his feelings toward her +friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Elizabeth +merely curtseyed to him without saying a word. +Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with +the readiness and ease of a wellbred man, and talked very +pleasantly but his cousin, after having addressed a slight +observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for +some time without speaking to anybody. At length, however, +his civility was so far awakened as to inquire of Elizabeth after +the health of her family. She answered him in the usual way, +and after a moment's pause, added +"My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have +you never happened to see her there?" +She was perfectly sensible that he never had but she wished +to see whether he would betray any consciousness of what had +passed between the Bingleys and Jane, and she thought he +looked a little confused as he answered that he had never been +so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet. The subject was pursued +no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went away. +Chapter +Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners were very much admired at the +Parsonage, and the ladies all felt that he must add considerably +to the pleasures of their engagements at Rosings. It was some +days, however, before they received any invitation thitherfor +while there were visitors in the house, they could not be +necessary and it was not till Easterday, almost a week after the +gentlemen's arrival, that they were honoured by such an +attention, and then they were merely asked on leaving church to +come there in the evening. For the last week they had seen very +little of Lady Catherine or her daughter. Colonel Fitzwilliam had +called at the Parsonage more than once during the time, but Mr. +Darcy they had seen only at church. +The invitation was accepted of course, and at a proper hour they +joined the party in Lady Catherine's drawingroom. Her ladyship +received them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by +no means so acceptable as when she could get nobody else and +she was, in fact, almost engrossed by her nephews, speaking to +them, especially to Darcy, much more than to any other person +in the room. +Colonel Fitzwilliam seemed really glad to see them anything +was a welcome relief to him at Rosings and Mrs. Collins's +pretty friend had moreover caught his fancy very much. He now +seated himself by her, and talked so agreeably of Kent and +Hertfordshire, of travelling and staying at home, of new books +and music, that Elizabeth had never been half so well entertained +in that room before and they conversed with so much spirit and +flow, as to draw the attention of Lady Catherine herself, as well +as of Mr. Darcy. His eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned +towards them with a look of curiosity and that her ladyship, +after a while, shared the feeling, was more openly acknowledged, +for she did not scruple to call out +"What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are +talking of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear +what it is." +"We are speaking of music, madam," said he, when no longer +able to avoid a reply. +"Of music Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my +delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are +speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, +who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better +natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great +proficient. And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to +apply. I am confident that she would have performed delightfully. +How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?" +Mr. Darcy spoke with affectionate praise of his sister's +proficiency. +"I am very glad to hear such a good account of her," said Lady +Catherine "and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to +excel if she does not practice a good deal." +"I assure you, madam," he replied, "that she does not need such +advice. She practises very constantly." +"So much the better. It cannot be done too much and when I +next write to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any +account. I often tell young ladies that no excellence in music +is to be acquired without constant practice. I have told Miss +Bennet several times, that she will never play really well unless +she practises more and though Mrs. Collins has no instrument, +she is very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings +every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs. Jenkinson's room. +She would be in nobody's way, you know, in that part of the house." +Mr. Darcy looked a little ashamed of his aunt's illbreeding, and +made no answer. +When coffee was over, Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth +of having promised to play to him and she sat down directly to +the instrument. He drew a chair near her. Lady Catherine +listened to half a song, and then talked, as before, to her other +nephew till the latter walked away from her, and making with +his usual deliberation towards the pianoforte stationed himself +so as to command a full view of the fair performer's countenance. +Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first convenient +pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said +"You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state +to hear me? I will not be alarmed though your sister does play +so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to +be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at +every attempt to intimidate me." +"I shall not say you are mistaken," he replied, "because you +could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming +you and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long +enough to know that you find great enjoyment in occasionally +professing opinions which in fact are not your own." +Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to +Colonel Fitzwilliam, "Your cousin will give you a very pretty +notion of me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am +particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so able to expose +my real character, in a part of the world where I had hoped to +pass myself off with some degree of credit. Indeed, Mr. Darcy, +it is very ungenerous in you to mention all that you knew to my +disadvantage in Hertfordshireand, give me leave to say, very +impolitic toofor it is provoking me to retaliate, and such +things may come out as will shock your relations to hear." +"I am not afraid of you," said he, smilingly. +"Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of," cried +Colonel Fitzwilliam. "I should like to know how he behaves +among strangers." +"You shall hear thenbut prepare yourself for something very +dreadful. The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, +you must know, was at a balland at this ball, what do you +think he did? He danced only four dances, though gentlemen +were scarce and, to my certain knowledge, more than one +young lady was sitting down in want of a partner. Mr. Darcy, +you cannot deny the fact." +"I had not at that time the honour of knowing any lady in the +assembly beyond my own party." +"True and nobody can ever be introduced in a ballroom. Well, +Colonel Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your +orders." +"Perhaps," said Darcy, "I should have judged better, had I +sought an introduction but I am illqualified to recommend +myself to strangers." +"Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?" said Elizabeth, +still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. "Shall we ask him why a +man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is +ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?" +"I can answer your question," said Fitzwilliam, "without +applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the +trouble." +"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said +Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. +I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested +in their concerns, as I often see done." +"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument +in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They +have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the +same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my +own faultbecause I will not take the trouble of practising. +It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any +other woman's of superior execution." +Darcy smiled and said, "You are perfectly right. You have +employed your time much better. No one admitted to the +privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither +of us perform to strangers." +Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to +know what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began +playing again. Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening +for a few minutes, said to Darcy +"Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss if she practised more, +and could have the advantage of a London master. She has a +very good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to +Anne's. Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her +health allowed her to learn." +Elizabeth looked at Darcy to see how cordially he assented to +his cousin's praise but neither at that moment nor at any other +could she discern any symptom of love and from the whole of +his behaviour to Miss de Bourgh she derived this comfort for +Miss Bingley, that he might have been just as likely to marry +her, had she been his relation. +Lady Catherine continued her remarks on Elizabeth's performance, +mixing with them many instructions on execution and taste. +Elizabeth received them with all the forbearance of civility, +and, at the request of the gentlemen, remained at the instrument +till her ladyship's carriage was ready to take them all home. +Chapter +Elizabeth was sitting by herself the next morning, and writing to +Jane while Mrs. Collins and Maria were gone on business into +the village, when she was startled by a ring at the door, the +certain signal of a visitor. As she had heard no carriage, she +thought it not unlikely to be Lady Catherine, and under that +apprehension was putting away her halffinished letter that she +might escape all impertinent questions, when the door opened, +and, to her very great surprise, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Darcy only, +entered the room. +He seemed astonished too on finding her alone, and apologised +for his intrusion by letting her know that he had understood all +the ladies were to be within. +They then sat down, and when her inquiries after Rosings were +made, seemed in danger of sinking into total silence. It was +absolutely necessary, therefore, to think of something, and in +this emergence recollecting when she had seen him last in +Hertfordshire, and feeling curious to know what he would say +on the subject of their hasty departure, she observed +"How very suddenly you all quitted Netherfield last November, +Mr. Darcy It must have been a most agreeable surprise to Mr. +Bingley to see you all after him so soon for, if I recollect right, +he went but the day before. He and his sisters were well, I hope, +when you left London?" +"Perfectly so, I thank you." +She found that she was to receive no other answer, and, after a +short pause added +"I think I have understood that Mr. Bingley has not much idea of +ever returning to Netherfield again?" +"I have never heard him say so but it is probable that he may +spend very little of his time there in the future. He has many +friends, and is at a time of life when friends and engagements are +continually increasing." +"If he means to be but little at Netherfield, it would be better for +the neighbourhood that he should give up the place entirely, for +then we might possibly get a settled family there. But, perhaps, +Mr. Bingley did not take the house so much for the convenience +of the neighbourhood as for his own, and we must expect him to +keep it or quit it on the same principle." +"I should not be surprised," said Darcy, "if he were to give it up +as soon as any eligible purchase offers." +Elizabeth made no answer. She was afraid of talking longer of +his friend and, having nothing else to say, was now determined +to leave the trouble of finding a subject to him. +He took the hint, and soon began with, "This seems a very +comfortable house. Lady Catherine, I believe, did a great deal to +it when Mr. Collins first came to Hunsford." +"I believe she didand I am sure she could not have bestowed +her kindness on a more grateful object." +"Mr. Collins appears to be very fortunate in his choice of a wife." +"Yes, indeed, his friends may well rejoice in his having met with +one of the very few sensible women who would have accepted +him, or have made him happy if they had. My friend has an +excellent understandingthough I am not certain that I consider +her marrying Mr. Collins as the wisest thing she ever did. She +seems perfectly happy, however, and in a prudential light it is +certainly a very good match for her." +"It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a +distance of her own family and friends." +"An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles." +"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a +day's journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance." +"I should never have considered the distance as one of the +advantages of the match," cried Elizabeth. "I should never +have said Mrs. Collins was settled near her family." +"It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. +Anything beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I +suppose, would appear far." +As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied +she understood he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane +and Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered +"I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near +her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on +many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the +expenses of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. +But that is not the case here. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a +comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent +journeysand I am persuaded my friend would not call herself +near her family under less than half the present distance." +Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, "You +cannot have a right to such very strong local attachment. +You cannot have been always at Longbourn." +Elizabeth looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some +change of feeling he drew back his chair, took a newspaper +from the table, and glancing over it, said, in a colder voice +"Are you pleased with Kent?" +A short dialogue on the subject of the country ensued, on either +side calm and conciseand soon put an end to by the entrance +of Charlotte and her sister, just returned from her walk. The +teteatete surprised them. Mr. Darcy related the mistake which +had occasioned his intruding on Miss Bennet, and after sitting a +few minutes longer without saying much to anybody, went away. +"What can be the meaning of this?" said Charlotte, as soon as he +was gone. "My dear, Eliza, he must be in love with you, or he +would never have called us in this familiar way." +But when Elizabeth told of his silence it did not seem very +likely, even to Charlotte's wishes, to be the case and after +various conjectures, they could at last only suppose his visit to +proceed from the difficulty of finding anything to do, which was +the more probable from the time of year. All field sports were +over. Within doors there was Lady Catherine, books, and a +billiardtable, but gentlemen cannot always be within doors and +in the nearness of the Parsonage, or the pleasantness of the walk +to it, or of the people who lived in it, the two cousins found a +temptation from this period of walking thither almost every day. +They called at various times of the morning, sometimes +separately, sometimes together, and now and then accompanied +by their aunt. It was plain to them all that Colonel Fitzwilliam +came because he had pleasure in their society, a persuasion +which of course recommended him still more and Elizabeth was +reminded by her own satisfaction in being with him, as well as by +his evident admiration of her, of her former favourite George +Wickham and though, in comparing them, she saw there was +less captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners, she +believed he might have the best informed mind. +But why Mr. Darcy came so often to the Parsonage, it was more +difficult to understand. It could not be for society, as he +frequently sat there ten minutes together without opening his +lips and when he did speak, it seemed the effect of necessity +rather than of choicea sacrifice to propriety, not a pleasure +to himself. He seldom appeared really animated. Mrs. Collins +knew not what to make of him. Colonel Fitzwilliam's occasionally +laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was generally different, +which her own knowledge of him could not have told her and as +she would liked to have believed this change the effect of love, +and the object of that love her friend Eliza, she set herself +seriously to work to find it out. She watched him whenever they +were at Rosings, and whenever he came to Hunsford but without +much success. He certainly looked at her friend a great deal, +but the expression of that look was disputable. It was an +earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often doubted whether there +were much admiration in it, and sometimes it seemed nothing but +absence of mind. +She had once or twice suggested to Elizabeth the possibility of +his being partial to her, but Elizabeth always laughed at the idea +and Mrs. Collins did not think it right to press the subject, from +the danger of raising expectations which might only end in +disappointment for in her opinion it admitted not of a doubt, +that all her friend's dislike would vanish, if she could suppose +him to be in her power. +In her kind schemes for Elizabeth, she sometimes planned her +marrying Colonel Fitzwilliam. He was beyond comparison the +most pleasant man he certainly admired her, and his situation in +life was most eligible but, to counterbalance these advantages, +Mr. Darcy had considerable patronage in the church, and his +cousin could have none at all. +Chapter +More than once did Elizabeth, in her ramble within the park, +unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. She felt all the perverseness of +the mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought, +and, to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him +at first that it was a favourite haunt of hers. How it could occur +a second time, therefore, was very odd Yet it did, and even a +third. It seemed like wilful illnature, or a voluntary penance, +for on these occasions it was not merely a few formal inquiries +and an awkward pause and then away, but he actually thought it +necessary to turn back and walk with her. He never said a great +deal, nor did she give herself the trouble of talking or of +listening much but it struck her in the course of their third +rencontre that he was asking some odd unconnected questionsabout +her pleasure in being at Hunsford, her love of solitary walks, and +her opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Collins's happiness and that in +speaking of Rosings and her not perfectly understanding the house, +he seemed to expect that whenever she came into Kent again she +would be staying there too. His words seemed to imply it. Could +he have Colonel Fitzwilliam in his thoughts? She supposed, if he +meant anything, he must mean an allusion to what might arise in +that quarter. It distressed her a little, and she was quite glad +to find herself at the gate in the pales opposite the Parsonage. +She was engaged one day as she walked, in perusing Jane's last +letter, and dwelling on some passages which proved that Jane +had not written in spirits, when, instead of being again surprised +by Mr. Darcy, she saw on looking up that Colonel Fitzwilliam +was meeting her. Putting away the letter immediately and +forcing a smile, she said +"I did not know before that you ever walked this way." +"I have been making the tour of the park," he replied, "as I +generally do every year, and intend to close it with a call at the +Parsonage. Are you going much farther?" +"No, I should have turned in a moment." +And accordingly she did turn, and they walked towards the +Parsonage together. +"Do you certainly leave Kent on Saturday?" said she. +"Yesif Darcy does not put it off again. But I am at his +disposal. He arranges the business just as he pleases." +"And if not able to please himself in the arrangement, he has +at least pleasure in the great power of choice. I do not know +anybody who seems more to enjoy the power of doing what he +likes than Mr. Darcy." +"He likes to have his own way very well," replied Colonel +Fitzwilliam. "But so we all do. It is only that he has better +means of having it than many others, because he is rich, and +many others are poor. I speak feelingly. A younger son, you +know, must be inured to selfdenial and dependence." +"In my opinion, the younger son of an earl can know very +little of either. Now seriously, what have you ever known of +selfdenial and dependence? When have you been prevented by +want of money from going wherever you chose, or procuring +anything you had a fancy for?" +"These are home questionsand perhaps I cannot say that I +have experienced many hardships of that nature. But in matters +of greater weight, I may suffer from want of money. Younger +sons cannot marry where they like." +"Unless where they like women of fortune, which I think they +very often do." +"Our habits of expense make us too dependent, and there are not +many in my rank of life who can afford to marry without some +attention to money." +"Is this," thought Elizabeth, "meant for me?" and she coloured +at the idea but, recovering herself, said in a lively tone, "And +pray, what is the usual price of an earl's younger son? Unless +the elder brother is very sickly, I suppose you would not ask +above fifty thousand pounds." +He answered her in the same style, and the subject dropped. To +interrupt a silence which might make him fancy her affected with +what had passed, she soon afterwards said +"I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for +the sake of having someone at his disposal. I wonder he does +not marry, to secure a lasting convenience of that kind. But, +perhaps, his sister does as well for the present, and, as she is +under his sole care, he may do what he likes with her." +"No," said Colonel Fitzwilliam, "that is an advantage which he +must divide with me. I am joined with him in the guardianship +of Miss Darcy." +"Are you indeed? And pray what sort of guardians do you +make? Does your charge give you much trouble? Young ladies +of her age are sometimes a little difficult to manage, and if she +has the true Darcy spirit, she may like to have her own way." +As she spoke she observed him looking at her earnestly and +the manner in which he immediately asked her why she supposed +Miss Darcy likely to give them any uneasiness, convinced her +that she had somehow or other got pretty near the truth. She +directly replied +"You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her and +I dare say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world. +She is a very great favourite with some ladies of my acquaintance, +Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley. I think I have heard you say that +you know them." +"I know them a little. Their brother is a pleasant gentlemanlike +manhe is a great friend of Darcy's." +"Oh yes," said Elizabeth drily "Mr. Darcy is uncommonly kind +to Mr. Bingley, and takes a prodigious deal of care of him." +"Care of him Yes, I really believe Darcy does take care of +him in those points where he most wants care. From something +that he told me in our journey hither, I have reason to think +Bingley very much indebted to him. But I ought to beg his +pardon, for I have no right to suppose that Bingley was the +person meant. It was all conjecture." +"What is it you mean?" +"It is a circumstance which Darcy could not wish to be generally +known, because if it were to get round to the lady's family, it +would be an unpleasant thing." +"You may depend upon my not mentioning it." +"And remember that I have not much reason for supposing it +to be Bingley. What he told me was merely this that he +congratulated himself on having lately saved a friend from +the inconveniences of a most imprudent marriage, but without +mentioning names or any other particulars, and I only suspected +it to be Bingley from believing him the kind of young man to get +into a scrape of that sort, and from knowing them to have been +together the whole of last summer." +"Did Mr. Darcy give you reasons for this interference?" +"I understood that there were some very strong objections +against the lady." +"And what arts did he use to separate them?" +"He did not talk to me of his own arts," said Fitzwilliam, smiling. +"He only told me what I have now told you." +Elizabeth made no answer, and walked on, her heart swelling +with indignation. After watching her a little, Fitzwilliam asked +her why she was so thoughtful. +"I am thinking of what you have been telling me," said she. +"Your cousin's conduct does not suit my feelings. Why was he +to be the judge?" +"You are rather disposed to call his interference officious?" +"I do not see what right Mr. Darcy had to decide on the +propriety of his friend's inclination, or why, upon his own +judgement alone, he was to determine and direct in what manner +his friend was to be happy. But," she continued, recollecting +herself, "as we know none of the particulars, it is not fair to +condemn him. It is not to be supposed that there was much +affection in the case." +"That is not an unnatural surmise," said Fitzwilliam, "but it is a +lessening of the honour of my cousin's triumph very sadly." +This was spoken jestingly but it appeared to her so just a picture +of Mr. Darcy, that she would not trust herself with an answer, +and therefore, abruptly changing the conversation talked on +indifferent matters until they reached the Parsonage. There, shut +into her own room, as soon as their visitor left them, she could +think without interruption of all that she had heard. It was not +to be supposed that any other people could be meant than those +with whom she was connected. There could not exist in the +world two men over whom Mr. Darcy could have such boundless +influence. That he had been concerned in the measures taken to +separate Bingley and Jane she had never doubted but she had +always attributed to Miss Bingley the principal design and +arrangement of them. If his own vanity, however, did not mislead +him, he was the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of +all that Jane had suffered, and still continued to suffer. He +had ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most +affectionate, generous heart in the world and no one could say +how lasting an evil he might have inflicted. +"There were some very strong objections against the lady," +were Colonel Fitzwilliam's words and those strong objections +probably were, her having one uncle who was a country attorney, +and another who was in business in London. +"To Jane herself," she exclaimed, "there could be no possibility +of objection all loveliness and goodness as she isher +understanding excellent, her mind improved, and her manners +captivating. Neither could anything be urged against my father, +who, though with some peculiarities, has abilities Mr. Darcy +himself need not disdain, and respectability which he will +probably never each." When she thought of her mother, her +confidence gave way a little but she would not allow that any +objections there had material weight with Mr. Darcy, whose +pride, she was convinced, would receive a deeper wound from +the want of importance in his friend's connections, than from +their want of sense and she was quite decided, at last, that he +had been partly governed by this worst kind of pride, and partly +by the wish of retaining Mr. Bingley for his sister. +The agitation and tears which the subject occasioned, brought on +a headache and it grew so much worse towards the evening, +that, added to her unwillingness to see Mr. Darcy, it determined +her not to attend her cousins to Rosings, where they were +engaged to drink tea. Mrs. Collins, seeing that she was really +unwell, did not press her to go and as much as possible +prevented her husband from pressing her but Mr. Collins could +not conceal his apprehension of Lady Catherine's being rather +displeased by her staying at home. +Chapter +When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate +herself as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her +employment the examination of all the letters which Jane had +written to her since her being in Kent. They contained no actual +complaint, nor was there any revival of past occurrences, or any +communication of present suffering. But in all, and in almost +every line of each, there was a want of that cheerfulness which +had been used to characterise her style, and which, proceeding +from the serenity of a mind at ease with itself and kindly +disposed towards everyone, had been scarcely ever clouded. +Elizabeth noticed every sentence conveying the idea of uneasiness, +with an attention which it had hardly received on the first +perusal. Mr. Darcy's shameful boast of what misery he had been +able to inflict, gave her a keener sense of her sister's +sufferings. It was some consolation to think that his visit +to Rosings was to end on the day after the nextand, a still +greater, that in less than a fortnight she should herself be with +Jane again, and enabled to contribute to the recovery of her +spirits, by all that affection could do. +She could not think of Darcy's leaving Kent without remembering +that his cousin was to go with him but Colonel Fitzwilliam had +made it clear that he had no intentions at all, and agreeable +as he was, she did not mean to be unhappy about him. +While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound +of the doorbell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the +idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once +before called late in the evening, and might now come to inquire +particularly after her. But this idea was soon banished, and +her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter +amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an +hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her health, +imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. +She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few +moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth +was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of +several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, +and thus began +"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not +be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire +and love you." +Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, +coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient +encouragement and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long +felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well but there +were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed and he +was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. +His sense of her inferiorityof its being a degradationof the +family obstacles which had always opposed to inclination, were +dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he +was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit. +In spite of her deeplyrooted dislike, she could not be insensible +to the compliment of such a man's affection, and though her +intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for +the pain he was to receive till, roused to resentment by his +subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger. She +tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with patience, +when he should have done. He concluded with representing to +her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his +endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer and with +expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her +acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily +see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of +apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real +security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, +and, when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she +said +"In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode +to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, +however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that +obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would +now thank you. But I cannotI have never desired your good +opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I +am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most +unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short +duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented +the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in +overcoming it after this explanation." +Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his +eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less +resentment than surprise. His complexion became pale with +anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every +feature. He was struggling for the appearance of composure, +and would not open his lips till he believed himself to have +attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth's feelings dreadful. +At length, with a voice of forced calmness, he said +"And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of +expecting I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so +little endeavour at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of +small importance." +"I might as well inquire," replied she, "why with so evident a +desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that +you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even +against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility, +if I was uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I +have. Had not my feelings decided against youhad they been +indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that +any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has +been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a +most beloved sister?" +As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed colour but +the emotion was short, and he listened without attempting +to interrupt her while she continued +"I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive +can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there. +You dare not, you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, +if not the only means of dividing them from each otherof +exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and +instability, and the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, +and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind." +She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was +listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any +feeling of remorse. He even looked at her with a smile of +affected incredulity. +"Can you deny that you have done it?" she repeated. +With assumed tranquillity he then replied "I have no wish of +denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend +from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards him +I have been kinder than towards myself." +Elizabeth disdained the appearance of noticing this civil +reflection, but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to +conciliate her. +"But it is not merely this affair," she continued, "on which my +dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion +of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital +which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this +subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act +of friendship can you here defend yourself? or under what +misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?" +"You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns," said +Darcy, in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour. +"Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help +feeling an interest in him?" +"His misfortunes" repeated Darcy contemptuously "yes, his +misfortunes have been great indeed." +"And of your infliction," cried Elizabeth with energy. "You +have reduced him to his present state of povertycomparative +poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must +know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the +best years of his life of that independence which was no less his +due than his desert. You have done all this and yet you can +treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and ridicule." +"And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across +the room, "is your opinion of me This is the estimation in +which you hold me I thank you for explaining it so fully. My +faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed But +perhaps," added he, stopping in his walk, and turning towards +her, "these offenses might have been overlooked, had not your +pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had +long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter +accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater +policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief +of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination by +reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort +is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. +They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in +the inferiority of your connections?to congratulate myself on +the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly +beneath my own?" +Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment yet she +tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said +"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of +your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared +the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you +behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner." +She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued +"You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible +way that would have tempted me to accept it." +Again his astonishment was obvious and he looked at her with +an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went +on +"From the very beginningfrom the first moment, I may almost +sayof my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me +with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your +selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the +groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have +built so immovable a dislike and I had not known you a month +before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I +could ever be prevailed on to marry." +"You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend +your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own +have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your +time, and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness." +And with these words he hastily left the room, and Elizabeth +heard him the next moment open the front door and quit the +house. +The tumult of her mind, was now painfully great. She knew not +how to support herself, and from actual weakness sat down and +cried for halfanhour. Her astonishment, as she reflected on +what had passed, was increased by every review of it. That she +should receive an offer of marriage from Mr. Darcy That he +should have been in love with her for so many months So much +in love as to wish to marry her in spite of all the objections +which had made him prevent his friend's marrying her sister, +and which must appear at least with equal force in his own +casewas almost incredible It was gratifying to have inspired +unconsciously so strong an affection. But his pride, his +abominable pridehis shameless avowal of what he had done with +respect to Janehis unpardonable assurance in acknowledging, +though he could not justify it, and the unfeeling manner in +which he had mentioned Mr. Wickham, his cruelty towards whom +he had not attempted to deny, soon overcame the pity which the +consideration of his attachment had for a moment excited. She +continued in very agitated reflections till the sound of Lady +Catherine's carriage made her feel how unequal she was to +encounter Charlotte's observation, and hurried her away to +her room. +Chapter +Elizabeth awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and +meditations which had at length closed her eyes. She could +not yet recover from the surprise of what had happened it was +impossible to think of anything else and, totally indisposed +for employment, she resolved, soon after breakfast, to indulge +herself in air and exercise. She was proceeding directly to her +favourite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Darcy's sometimes +coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park, she +turned up the lane, which led farther from the turnpikeroad. +The park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she +soon passed one of the gates into the ground. +After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she +was tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the +gates and look into the park. The five weeks which she had now +passed in Kent had made a great difference in the country, and +every day was adding to the verdure of the early trees. She was +on the point of continuing her walk, when she caught a glimpse +of a gentleman within the sort of grove which edged the park +he was moving that way and, fearful of its being Mr. Darcy, +she was directly retreating. But the person who advanced was +now near enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness, +pronounced her name. She had turned away but on hearing +herself called, though in a voice which proved it to be Mr. +Darcy, she moved again towards the gate. He had by that time +reached it also, and, holding out a letter, which she instinctively +took, said, with a look of haughty composure, "I have been +walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will +you do me the honour of reading that letter?" And then, with a +slight bow, turned again into the plantation, and was soon out of +sight. +With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity, +Elizabeth opened the letter, and, to her still increasing wonder, +perceived an envelope containing two sheets of letterpaper, +written quite through, in a very close hand. The envelope itself +was likewise full. Pursuing her way along the lane, she then +began it. It was dated from Rosings, at eight o'clock in the +morning, and was as follows +"Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the +apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments +or renewal of those offers which were last night so disgusting to +you. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling +myself, by dwelling on wishes which, for the happiness of both, +cannot be too soon forgotten and the effort which the formation +and the perusal of this letter must occasion, should have been +spared, had not my character required it to be written and read. +You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand +your attention your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, +but I demand it of your justice. +"Two offenses of a very different nature, and by no means of +equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first +mentioned was, that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had +detached Mr. Bingley from your sister, and the other, that I had, +in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honour and +humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity and blasted the +prospects of Mr. Wickham. Wilfully and wantonly to have +thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged +favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other +dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought +up to expect its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the +separation of two young persons, whose affection could be the +growth of only a few weeks, could bear no comparison. But +from the severity of that blame which was last night so liberally +bestowed, respecting each circumstance, I shall hope to be in the +future secured, when the following account of my actions and +their motives has been read. If, in the explanation of them, +which is due to myself, I am under the necessity of relating +feelings which may be offensive to yours, I can only say that I +am sorry. The necessity must be obeyed, and further apology +would be absurd. +"I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common +with others, that Bingley preferred your elder sister to any other +young woman in the country. But it was not till the evening of +the dance at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his +feeling a serious attachment. I had often seen him in love before. +At that ball, while I had the honour of dancing with you, I was +first made acquainted, by Sir William Lucas's accidental +information, that Bingley's attentions to your sister had given +rise to a general expectation of their marriage. He spoke of it +as a certain event, of which the time alone could be undecided. +From that moment I observed my friend's behaviour attentively +and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss Bennet +was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I +also watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful, and +engaging as ever, but without any symptom of peculiar regard, +and I remained convinced from the evening's scrutiny, that +though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did not +invite them by any participation of sentiment. If you have not +been mistaken here, I must have been in error. Your superior +knowledge of your sister must make the latter probable. If it be +so, if I have been misled by such error to inflict pain on her, +your resentment has not been unreasonable. But I shall not scruple +to assert, that the serenity of your sister's countenance and air +was such as might have given the most acute observer a conviction +that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be +easily touched. That I was desirous of believing her indifferent +is certainbut I will venture to say that my investigation and +decisions are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears. I did +not believe her to be indifferent because I wished it I believed +it on impartial conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason. +My objections to the marriage were not merely those which I last +night acknowledged to have the utmost force of passion to put +aside, in my own case the want of connection could not be so +great an evil to my friend as to me. But there were other causes +of repugnance causes which, though still existing, and existing +to an equal degree in both instances, I had myself endeavoured +to forget, because they were not immediately before me. These +causes must be stated, though briefly. The situation of +your mother's family, though objectionable, was nothing in +comparison to that total want of propriety so frequently, so +almost uniformly betrayed by herself, by your three younger +sisters, and occasionally even by your father. Pardon me. It +pains me to offend you. But amidst your concern for the defects +of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this +representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider +that, to have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of +the like censure, is praise no less generally bestowed on you and +your elder sister, than it is honourable to the sense and +disposition of both. I will only say farther that from what passed +that evening, my opinion of all parties was confirmed, and every +inducement heightened which could have led me before, to +preserve my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy +connection. He left Netherfield for London, on the day +following, as you, I am certain, remember, with the design of +soon returning. +"The part which I acted is now to be explained. His sisters' +uneasiness had been equally excited with my own our coincidence +of feeling was soon discovered, and, alike sensible that no time +was to be lost in detaching their brother, we shortly resolved +on joining him directly in London. We accordingly wentand +there I readily engaged in the office of pointing out to my +friend the certain evils of such a choice. I described, and +enforced them earnestly. But, however this remonstrance might +have staggered or delayed his determination, I do not suppose +that it would ultimately have prevented the marriage, had it not +been seconded by the assurance that I hesitated not in giving, of +your sister's indifference. He had before believed her to return +his affection with sincere, if not with equal regard. But Bingley +has great natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my +judgement than on his own. To convince him, therefore, that he +had deceived himself, was no very difficult point. To persuade +him against returning into Hertfordshire, when that conviction +had been given, was scarcely the work of a moment. I cannot +blame myself for having done thus much. There is but one part +of my conduct in the whole affair on which I do not reflect with +satisfaction it is that I condescended to adopt the measures of +art so far as to conceal from him your sister's being in town. I +knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Bingley but her brother +is even yet ignorant of it. That they might have met without ill +consequence is perhaps probable but his regard did not appear +to me enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger. +Perhaps this concealment, this disguise was beneath me it is +done, however, and it was done for the best. On this subject +I have nothing more to say, no other apology to offer. If I +have wounded your sister's feelings, it was unknowingly done and +though the motives which governed me may to you very naturally +appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn them. +"With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having +injured Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you +the whole of his connection with my family. Of what he has +particularly accused me I am ignorant but of the truth of +what I shall relate, I can summon more than one witness of +undoubted veracity. +"Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for +many years the management of all the Pemberley estates, and +whose good conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally +inclined my father to be of service to him and on George +Wickham, who was his godson, his kindness was therefore +liberally bestowed. My father supported him at school, and +afterwards at Cambridgemost important assistance, as his own +father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would +have been unable to give him a gentleman's education. My +father was not only fond of this young man's society, whose +manner were always engaging he had also the highest opinion of +him, and hoping the church would be his profession, intended to +provide for him in it. As for myself, it is many, many years since +I first began to think of him in a very different manner. The +vicious propensitiesthe want of principle, which he was careful +to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape +the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with +himself, and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded +moments, which Mr. Darcy could not have. Here again I shall +give you painto what degree you only can tell. But whatever +may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham has created, a +suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from unfolding +his real characterit adds even another motive. +"My excellent father died about five years ago and his attachment +to Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his will he +particularly recommended it to me, to promote his advancement in +the best manner that his profession might allowand if he took +orders, desired that a valuable family living might be his as soon +as it became vacant. There was also a legacy of one thousand +pounds. His own father did not long survive mine, and within half +a year from these events, Mr. Wickham wrote to inform me that, +having finally resolved against taking orders, he hoped I should +not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more immediate +pecuniary advantage, in lieu of the preferment, by which he could +not be benefited. He had some intention, he added, of studying +law, and I must be aware that the interest of one thousand pounds +would be a very insufficient support therein. I rather wished, +than believed him to be sincere but, at any rate, was perfectly +ready to accede to his proposal. I knew that Mr. Wickham +ought not to be a clergyman the business was therefore soon +settledhe resigned all claim to assistance in the church, were +it possible that he could ever be in a situation to receive it, +and accepted in return three thousand pounds. All connection +between us seemed now dissolved. I thought too ill of him to +invite him to Pemberley, or admit his society in town. In town +I believe he chiefly lived, but his studying the law was a mere +pretence, and being now free from all restraint, his life was a +life of idleness and dissipation. For about three years I heard +little of him but on the decease of the incumbent of the living +which had been designed for him, he applied to me again by letter +for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured me, and I +had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He had +found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely +resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living +in questionof which he trusted there could be little doubt, as +he was well assured that I had no other person to provide for, +and I could not have forgotten my revered father's intentions. +You will hardly blame me for refusing to comply with this entreaty, +or for resisting every repetition to it. His resentment was in +proportion to the distress of his circumstancesand he was +doubtless as violent in his abuse of me to others as in his +reproaches to myself. After this period every appearance of +acquaintance was dropped. How he lived I know not. But last +summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice. +"I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to +forget myself, and which no obligation less than the present +should induce me to unfold to any human being. Having said +thus much, I feel no doubt of your secrecy. My sister, who is +more than ten years my junior, was left to the guardianship of +my mother's nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and myself. About a +year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment +formed for her in London and last summer she went with the +lady who presided over it, to Ramsgate and thither also went +Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by design for there proved to have +been a prior acquaintance between him and Mrs. Younge, in +whose character we were most unhappily deceived and by +her connivance and aid, he so far recommended himself to +Georgiana, whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression +of his kindness to her as a child, that she was persuaded to +believe herself in love, and to consent to an elopement. She was +then but fifteen, which must be her excuse and after stating her +imprudence, I am happy to add, that I owed the knowledge of it +to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two before the +intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the +idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost +looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You +may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my sister's +credit and feelings prevented any public exposure but I wrote +to Mr. Wickham, who left the place immediately, and Mrs. Younge +was of course removed from her charge. Mr. Wickham's chief +object was unquestionably my sister's fortune, which is thirty +thousand pounds but I cannot help supposing that the hope of +revenging himself on me was a strong inducement. His revenge +would have been complete indeed. +"This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which +we have been concerned together and if you do not absolutely +reject it as false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth +of cruelty towards Mr. Wickham. I know not in what manner, +under what form of falsehood he had imposed on you but his +success is not perhaps to be wondered at. Ignorant as you +previously were of everything concerning either, detection +could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in +your inclination. +"You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last +night but I was not then master enough of myself to know what +could or ought to be revealed. For the truth of everything here +related, I can appeal more particularly to the testimony of +Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our near relationship and +constant intimacy, and, still more, as one of the executors of +my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every +particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of me +should make my assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented +by the same cause from confiding in my cousin and that there +may be the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to +find some opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in +the course of the morning. I will only add, God bless you. +"FITZWILLIAM DARCY" +Chapter +If Elizabeth, when Mr. Darcy gave her the letter, did not expect +it to contain a renewal of his offers, she had formed no +expectation at all of its contents. But such as they were, it +may well be supposed how eagerly she went through them, and what +a contrariety of emotion they excited. Her feelings as she +read were scarcely to be defined. With amazement did she first +understand that he believed any apology to be in his power and +steadfastly was she persuaded, that he could have no explanation +to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal. With a +strong prejudice against everything he might say, she began his +account of what had happened at Netherfield. She read with an +eagerness which hardly left her power of comprehension, and +from impatience of knowing what the next sentence might bring, +was incapable of attending to the sense of the one before her +eyes. His belief of her sister's insensibility she instantly +resolved to be false and his account of the real, the worst +objections to the match, made her too angry to have any wish of +doing him justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done +which satisfied her his style was not penitent, but haughty. +It was all pride and insolence. +But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr. +Wickhamwhen she read with somewhat clearer attention a +relation of events which, if true, must overthrow every cherished +opinion of his worth, and which bore so alarming an affinity to +his own history of himselfher feelings were yet more acutely +painful and more difficult of definition. Astonishment, +apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She wished to +discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, "This must be false +This cannot be This must be the grossest falsehood"and +when she had gone through the whole letter, though scarcely +knowing anything of the last page or two, put it hastily away, +protesting that she would not regard it, that she would never +look in it again. +In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on +nothing, she walked on but it would not do in half a minute the +letter was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she +could, she again began the mortifying perusal of all that related +to Wickham, and commanded herself so far as to examine the +meaning of every sentence. The account of his connection with +the Pemberley family was exactly what he had related himself +and the kindness of the late Mr. Darcy, though she had not +before known its extent, agreed equally well with his own +words. So far each recital confirmed the other but when she +came to the will, the difference was great. What Wickham had +said of the living was fresh in her memory, and as she recalled +his very words, it was impossible not to feel that there was gross +duplicity on one side or the other and, for a few moments, she +flattered herself that her wishes did not err. But when she +read and reread with the closest attention, the particulars +immediately following of Wickham's resigning all pretensions to +the living, of his receiving in lieu so considerable a sum as +three thousand pounds, again was she forced to hesitate. She +put down the letter, weighed every circumstance with what she +meant to be impartialitydeliberated on the probability of each +statementbut with little success. On both sides it was only +assertion. Again she read on but every line proved more clearly +that the affair, which she had believed it impossible that any +contrivance could so represent as to render Mr. Darcy's conduct +in it less than infamous, was capable of a turn which must make +him entirely blameless throughout the whole. +The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not +to lay at Mr. Wickham's charge, exceedingly shocked her the +more so, as she could bring no proof of its injustice. She had +never heard of him before his entrance into the shire Militia, +in which he had engaged at the persuasion of the young man +who, on meeting him accidentally in town, had there renewed a +slight acquaintance. Of his former way of life nothing had been +known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As to his real +character, had information been in her power, she had never felt +a wish of inquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had +established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She +tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished +trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the +attacks of Mr. Darcy or at least, by the predominance of virtue, +atone for those casual errors under which she would endeavour +to class what Mr. Darcy had described as the idleness and vice +of many years' continuance. But no such recollection befriended +her. She could see him instantly before her, in every charm of +air and address but she could remember no more substantial +good than the general approbation of the neighbourhood, and +the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess. +After pausing on this point a considerable while, she once more +continued to read. But, alas the story which followed, of his +designs on Miss Darcy, received some confirmation from what +had passed between Colonel Fitzwilliam and herself only the +morning before and at last she was referred for the truth of +every particular to Colonel Fitzwilliam himselffrom whom she +had previously received the information of his near concern in +all his cousin's affairs, and whose character she had no reason +to question. At one time she had almost resolved on applying +to him, but the idea was checked by the awkwardness of the +application, and at length wholly banished by the conviction +that Mr. Darcy would never have hazarded such a proposal, if +he had not been well assured of his cousin's corroboration. +She perfectly remembered everything that had passed in +conversation between Wickham and herself, in their first evening +at Mr. Phillips's. Many of his expressions were still fresh in +her memory. She was now struck with the impropriety of such +communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her +before. She saw the indelicacy of putting himself forward as +he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions with his +conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear +of seeing Mr. Darcythat Mr. Darcy might leave the country, +but that he should stand his ground yet he had avoided the +Netherfield ball the very next week. She remembered also that, +till the Netherfield family had quitted the country, he had told +his story to no one but herself but that after their removal it +had been everywhere discussed that he had then no reserves, no +scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy's character, though he had assured +her that respect for the father would always prevent his exposing +the son. +How differently did everything now appear in which he was +concerned His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence +of views solely and hatefully mercenary and the mediocrity of +her fortune proved no longer the moderation of his wishes, but +his eagerness to grasp at anything. His behaviour to herself +could now have had no tolerable motive he had either been +deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying his +vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had +most incautiously shown. Every lingering struggle in his favour +grew fainter and fainter and in farther justification of Mr. +Darcy, she could not but allow Mr. Bingley, when questioned +by Jane, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair +that proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in +the whole course of their acquaintancean acquaintance which +had latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of +intimacy with his waysseen anything that betrayed him to be +unprincipled or unjustanything that spoke him of irreligious +or immoral habits that among his own connections he was +esteemed and valuedthat even Wickham had allowed him +merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so +affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of some +amiable feeling that had his actions been what Mr. Wickham +represented them, so gross a violation of everything right could +hardly have been concealed from the world and that friendship +between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man as Mr. +Bingley, was incomprehensible. +She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor +Wickham could she think without feeling she had been blind, +partial, prejudiced, absurd. +"How despicably I have acted" she cried "I, who have prided +myself on my discernment I, who have valued myself on my +abilities who have often disdained the generous candour of my +sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust +How humiliating is this discovery Yet, how just a humiliation +Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind +But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the +preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, +on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted +prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where +either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself." +From herself to Janefrom Jane to Bingley, her thoughts were +in a line which soon brought to her recollection that Mr. Darcy's +explanation there had appeared very insufficient, and she read +it again. Widely different was the effect of a second perusal. +How could she deny that credit to his assertions in one instance, +which she had been obliged to give in the other? He declared +himself to be totally unsuspicious of her sister's attachment +and she could not help remembering what Charlotte's opinion +had always been. Neither could she deny the justice of his +description of Jane. She felt that Jane's feelings, though fervent, +were little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency +in her air and manner not often united with great sensibility. +When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were +mentioned in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her +sense of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her +too forcibly for denial, and the circumstances to which he +particularly alluded as having passed at the Netherfield ball, +and as confirming all his first disapprobation, could not have +made a stronger impression on his mind than on hers. +The compliment to herself and her sister was not unfelt. It +soothed, but it could not console her for the contempt which had +thus been selfattracted by the rest of her family and as she +considered that Jane's disappointment had in fact been the work +of her nearest relations, and reflected how materially the credit +of both must be hurt by such impropriety of conduct, she felt +depressed beyond anything she had ever known before. +After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to +every variety of thoughtreconsidering events, determining +probabilities, and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to +a change so sudden and so important, fatigue, and a recollection +of her long absence, made her at length return home and she +entered the house with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual, +and the resolution of repressing such reflections as must make +her unfit for conversation. +She was immediately told that the two gentlemen from Rosings +had each called during her absence Mr. Darcy, only for a few +minutes, to take leavebut that Colonel Fitzwilliam had been +sitting with them at least an hour, hoping for her return, and +almost resolving to walk after her till she could be found. +Elizabeth could but just affect concern in missing him she +really rejoiced at it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was no longer an +object she could think only of her letter. +Chapter +The two gentlemen left Rosings the next morning, and Mr. +Collins having been in waiting near the lodges, to make them +his parting obeisance, was able to bring home the pleasing +intelligence, of their appearing in very good health, and in as +tolerable spirits as could be expected, after the melancholy scene +so lately gone through at Rosings. To Rosings he then hastened, +to console Lady Catherine and her daughter and on his return +brought back, with great satisfaction, a message from her +ladyship, importing that she felt herself so dull as to make +her very desirous of having them all to dine with her. +Elizabeth could not see Lady Catherine without recollecting that, +had she chosen it, she might by this time have been presented to +her as her future niece nor could she think, without a smile, of +what her ladyship's indignation would have been. "What would +she have said? how would she have behaved?" were questions with +which she amused herself. +Their first subject was the diminution of the Rosings party. +"I assure you, I feel it exceedingly," said Lady Catherine "I +believe no one feels the loss of friends so much as I do. But +I am particularly attached to these young men, and know them to +be so much attached to me They were excessively sorry to go +But so they always are. The dear Colonel rallied his spirits +tolerably till just at last but Darcy seemed to feel it most +acutely, more, I think, than last year. His attachment to +Rosings certainly increases." +Mr. Collins had a compliment, and an allusion to throw in here, +which were kindly smiled on by the mother and daughter. +Lady Catherine observed, after dinner, that Miss Bennet seemed +out of spirits, and immediately accounting for it by herself, +by supposing that she did not like to go home again so soon, +she added +"But if that is the case, you must write to your mother and beg +that you may stay a little longer. Mrs. Collins will be very glad +of your company, I am sure." +"I am much obliged to your ladyship for your kind invitation," +replied Elizabeth, "but it is not in my power to accept it. +I must be in town next Saturday." +"Why, at that rate, you will have been here only six weeks. I +expected you to stay two months. I told Mrs. Collins so before +you came. There can be no occasion for your going so soon. +Mrs. Bennet could certainly spare you for another fortnight." +"But my father cannot. He wrote last week to hurry my return." +"Oh your father of course may spare you, if your mother can. +Daughters are never of so much consequence to a father. And if +you will stay another month complete, it will be in my power +to take one of you as far as London, for I am going there early +in June, for a week and as Dawson does not object to the +barouchebox, there will be very good room for one of youand +indeed, if the weather should happen to be cool, I should not +object to taking you both, as you are neither of you large." +"You are all kindness, madam but I believe we must abide by +our original plan." +Lady Catherine seemed resigned. "Mrs. Collins, you must send +a servant with them. You know I always speak my mind, and I +cannot bear the idea of two young women travelling post by +themselves. It is highly improper. You must contrive to send +somebody. I have the greatest dislike in the world to that sort +of thing. Young women should always be properly guarded and +attended, according to their situation in life. When my niece +Georgiana went to Ramsgate last summer, I made a point of her +having two menservants go with her. Miss Darcy, the daughter +of Mr. Darcy, of Pemberley, and Lady Anne, could not have +appeared with propriety in a different manner. I am excessively +attentive to all those things. You must send John with the young +ladies, Mrs. Collins. I am glad it occurred to me to mention it +for it would really be discreditable to you to let them go +alone." +"My uncle is to send a servant for us." +"Oh Your uncle He keeps a manservant, does he? I am very +glad you have somebody who thinks of these things. Where +shall you change horses? Oh Bromley, of course. If you +mention my name at the Bell, you will be attended to." +Lady Catherine had many other questions to ask respecting their +journey, and as she did not answer them all herself, attention was +necessary, which Elizabeth believed to be lucky for her or, with +a mind so occupied, she might have forgotten where she was. +Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours whenever she +was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief and not a +day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge +in all the delight of unpleasant recollections. +Mr. Darcy's letter she was in a fair way of soon knowing by +heart. She studied every sentence and her feelings towards its +writer were at times widely different. When she remembered the +style of his address, she was still full of indignation but when +she considered how unjustly she had condemned and upbraided him, +her anger was turned against herself and his disappointed +feelings became the object of compassion. His attachment +excited gratitude, his general character respect but she could +not approve him nor could she for a moment repent her refusal, +or feel the slightest inclination ever to see him again. In +her own past behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation +and regret and in the unhappy defects of her family, a subject +of yet heavier chagrin. They were hopeless of remedy. Her father, +contented with laughing at them, would never exert himself to +restrain the wild giddiness of his youngest daughters and her +mother, with manners so far from right herself, was entirely +insensible of the evil. Elizabeth had frequently united with Jane +in an endeavour to check the imprudence of Catherine and Lydia +but while they were supported by their mother's indulgence, what +chance could there be of improvement? Catherine, weakspirited, +irritable, and completely under Lydia's guidance, had been always +affronted by their advice and Lydia, selfwilled and careless, +would scarcely give them a hearing. They were ignorant, idle, and +vain. While there was an officer in Meryton, they would flirt +with him and while Meryton was within a walk of Longbourn, they +would be going there forever. +Anxiety on Jane's behalf was another prevailing concern and +Mr. Darcy's explanation, by restoring Bingley to all her former +good opinion, heightened the sense of what Jane had lost. His +affection was proved to have been sincere, and his conduct +cleared of all blame, unless any could attach to the implicitness +of his confidence in his friend. How grievous then was the +thought that, of a situation so desirable in every respect, so +replete with advantage, so promising for happiness, Jane had +been deprived, by the folly and indecorum of her own family +When to these recollections was added the development of Wickham's +character, it may be easily believed that the happy spirits which +had seldom been depressed before, were now so much affected as to +make it almost impossible for her to appear tolerably cheerful. +Their engagements at Rosings were as frequent during the last +week of her stay as they had been at first. The very last evening +was spent there and her ladyship again inquired minutely into +the particulars of their journey, gave them directions as to the +best method of packing, and was so urgent on the necessity of +placing gowns in the only right way, that Maria thought herself +obliged, on her return, to undo all the work of the morning, and +pack her trunk afresh. +When they parted, Lady Catherine, with great condescension, +wished them a good journey, and invited them to come to +Hunsford again next year and Miss de Bourgh exerted herself +so far as to curtsey and hold out her hand to both. +Chapter +On Saturday morning Elizabeth and Mr. Collins met for breakfast +a few minutes before the others appeared and he took the +opportunity of paying the parting civilities which he deemed +indispensably necessary. +"I know not, Miss Elizabeth," said he, "whether Mrs. Collins has +yet expressed her sense of your kindness in coming to us but I +am very certain you will not leave the house without receiving +her thanks for it. The favor of your company has been much +felt, I assure you. We know how little there is to tempt anyone +to our humble abode. Our plain manner of living, our small +rooms and few domestics, and the little we see of the world, +must make Hunsford extremely dull to a young lady like +yourself but I hope you will believe us grateful for the +condescension, and that we have done everything in our power +to prevent your spending your time unpleasantly." +Elizabeth was eager with her thanks and assurances of happiness. +She had spent six weeks with great enjoyment and the pleasure +of being with Charlotte, and the kind attentions she had received, +must make her feel the obliged. Mr. Collins was gratified, and +with a more smiling solemnity replied +"It gives me great pleasure to hear that you have passed your +time not disagreeably. We have certainly done our best and +most fortunately having it in our power to introduce you to very +superior society, and, from our connection with Rosings, the +frequent means of varying the humble home scene, I think we +may flatter ourselves that your Hunsford visit cannot have been +entirely irksome. Our situation with regard to Lady Catherine's +family is indeed the sort of extraordinary advantage and blessing +which few can boast. You see on what a footing we are. You +see how continually we are engaged there. In truth I must +acknowledge that, with all the disadvantages of this humble +parsonage, I should not think anyone abiding in it an object of +compassion, while they are sharers of our intimacy at Rosings." +Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings and +he was obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to +unite civility and truth in a few short sentences. +"You may, in fact, carry a very favourable report of us into +Hertfordshire, my dear cousin. I flatter myself at least that you +will be able to do so. Lady Catherine's great attentions to Mrs. +Collins you have been a daily witness of and altogether I trust +it does not appear that your friend has drawn an unfortunatebut +on this point it will be as well to be silent. Only let me +assure you, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that I can from my heart most +cordially wish you equal felicity in marriage. My dear Charlotte +and I have but one mind and one way of thinking. There is in +everything a most remarkable resemblance of character and ideas +between us. We seem to have been designed for each other." +Elizabeth could safely say that it was a great happiness where +that was the case, and with equal sincerity could add, that she +firmly believed and rejoiced in his domestic comforts. She was +not sorry, however, to have the recital of them interrupted by +the lady from whom they sprang. Poor Charlotte it was +melancholy to leave her to such society But she had chosen it +with her eyes open and though evidently regretting that her +visitors were to go, she did not seem to ask for compassion. +Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and +all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms. +At length the chaise arrived, the trunks were fastened on, the +parcels placed within, and it was pronounced to be ready. After +an affectionate parting between the friends, Elizabeth was +attended to the carriage by Mr. Collins, and as they walked +down the garden he was commissioning her with his best +respects to all her family, not forgetting his thanks for the +kindness he had received at Longbourn in the winter, and his +compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, though unknown. He +then handed her in, Maria followed, and the door was on the +point of being closed, when he suddenly reminded them, with +some consternation, that they had hitherto forgotten to leave +any message for the ladies at Rosings. +"But," he added, "you will of course wish to have your humble +respects delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their +kindness to you while you have been here." +Elizabeth made no objection the door was then allowed to be +shut, and the carriage drove off. +"Good gracious" cried Maria, after a few minutes' silence, "it +seems but a day or two since we first came and yet how many +things have happened" +"A great many indeed," said her companion with a sigh. +"We have dined nine times at Rosings, besides drinking tea there +twice How much I shall have to tell" +Elizabeth added privately, "And how much I shall have to conceal" +Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any +alarm and within four hours of their leaving Hunsford they +reached Mr. Gardiner's house, where they were to remain a few +days. +Jane looked well, and Elizabeth had little opportunity of +studying her spirits, amidst the various engagements which the +kindness of her aunt had reserved for them. But Jane was to go +home with her, and at Longbourn there would be leisure enough +for observation. +It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait +even for Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy's +proposals. To know that she had the power of revealing what +would so exceedingly astonish Jane, and must, at the same time, +so highly gratify whatever of her own vanity she had not yet +been able to reason away, was such a temptation to openness +as nothing could have conquered but the state of indecision +in which she remained as to the extent of what she should +communicate and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, +of being hurried into repeating something of Bingley which +might only grieve her sister further. +Chapter +It was the second week in May, in which the three young ladies +set out together from Gracechurch Street for the town of , +in Hertfordshire and, as they drew near the appointed inn where +Mr. Bennet's carriage was to meet them, they quickly perceived, +in token of the coachman's punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia +looking out of a diningroom upstairs. These two girls had been +above an hour in the place, happily employed in visiting an +opposite milliner, watching the sentinel on guard, and dressing a +salad and cucumber. +After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table +set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, +exclaiming, "Is not this nice? Is not this an agreeable surprise?" +"And we mean to treat you all," added Lydia, "but you must lend +us the money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there." +Then, showing her purchases"Look here, I have bought this bonnet. +I do not think it is very pretty but I thought I might as well +buy it as not. I shall pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, +and see if I can make it up any better." +And when her sisters abused it as ugly, she added, with perfect +unconcern, "Oh but there were two or three much uglier in the +shop and when I have bought some prettiercoloured satin to +trim it with fresh, I think it will be very tolerable. Besides, +it will not much signify what one wears this summer, after the +shire have left Meryton, and they are going in a fortnight." +"Are they indeed" cried Elizabeth, with the greatest satisfaction. +"They are going to be encamped near Brighton and I do so +want papa to take us all there for the summer It would be such +a delicious scheme and I dare say would hardly cost anything at +all. Mamma would like to go too of all things Only think what +a miserable summer else we shall have" +"Yes," thought Elizabeth, "that would be a delightful scheme +indeed, and completely do for us at once. Good Heaven +Brighton, and a whole campful of soldiers, to us, who have been +overset already by one poor regiment of militia, and the monthly +balls of Meryton" +"Now I have got some news for you," said Lydia, as they sat down +at table. "What do you think? It is excellent newscapital +newsand about a certain person we all like" +Jane and Elizabeth looked at each other, and the waiter was told +he need not stay. Lydia laughed, and said +"Aye, that is just like your formality and discretion. You +thought the waiter must not hear, as if he cared I dare say he +often hears worse things said than I am going to say. But he is +an ugly fellow I am glad he is gone. I never saw such a long +chin in my life. Well, but now for my news it is about dear +Wickham too good for the waiter, is it not? There is no danger +of Wickham's marrying Mary King. There's for you She is gone +down to her uncle at Liverpool gone to stay. Wickham is safe." +"And Mary King is safe" added Elizabeth "safe from a +connection imprudent as to fortune." +"She is a great fool for going away, if she liked him." +"But I hope there is no strong attachment on either side," +said Jane. +"I am sure there is not on his. I will answer for it, he never +cared three straws about herwho could about such a nasty +little freckled thing?" +Elizabeth was shocked to think that, however incapable of +such coarseness of expression herself, the coarseness of the +sentiment was little other than her own breast had harboured +and fancied liberal +As soon as all had ate, and the elder ones paid, the carriage was +ordered and after some contrivance, the whole party, with all +their boxes, workbags, and parcels, and the unwelcome addition +of Kitty's and Lydia's purchases, were seated in it. +"How nicely we are all crammed in," cried Lydia. "I am glad I +bought my bonnet, if it is only for the fun of having another +bandbox Well, now let us be quite comfortable and snug, and +talk and laugh all the way home. And in the first place, let +us hear what has happened to you all since you went away. Have +you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any flirting? I was +in great hopes that one of you would have got a husband before +you came back. Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare. +She is almost threeandtwenty Lord, how ashamed I should be of +not being married before threeandtwenty My aunt Phillips wants +you so to get husbands, you can't think. She says Lizzy had +better have taken Mr. Collins but I do not think there would +have been any fun in it. Lord how I should like to be married +before any of you and then I would chaperon you about to all +the balls. Dear me we had such a good piece of fun the other +day at Colonel Forster's. Kitty and me were to spend the day +there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a little dance in the +evening by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are such friends and +so she asked the two Harringtons to come, but Harriet was ill, +and so Pen was forced to come by herself and then, what do you +think we did? We dressed up Chamberlayne in woman's clothes on +purpose to pass for a lady, only think what fun Not a soul +knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty and me, +except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow one of her gowns +and you cannot imagine how well he looked When Denny, and +Wickham, and Pratt, and two or three more of the men came in, +they did not know him in the least. Lord how I laughed and +so did Mrs. Forster. I thought I should have died. And that +made the men suspect something, and then they soon found out +what was the matter." +With such kinds of histories of their parties and good jokes, did +Lydia, assisted by Kitty's hints and additions, endeavour to +amuse her companions all the way to Longbourn. Elizabeth +listened as little as she could, but there was no escaping the +frequent mention of Wickham's name. +Their reception at home was most kind. Mrs. Bennet rejoiced to +see Jane in undiminished beauty and more than once during +dinner did Mr. Bennet say voluntarily to Elizabeth +"I am glad you are come back, Lizzy." +Their party in the diningroom was large, for almost all the +Lucases came to meet Maria and hear the news and various +were the subjects that occupied them Lady Lucas was inquiring +of Maria, after the welfare and poultry of her eldest daughter +Mrs. Bennet was doubly engaged, on one hand collecting an +account of the present fashions from Jane, who sat some way +below her, and, on the other, retailing them all to the younger +Lucases and Lydia, in a voice rather louder than any other +person's, was enumerating the various pleasures of the morning +to anybody who would hear her. +"Oh Mary," said she, "I wish you had gone with us, for we had +such fun As we went along, Kitty and I drew up the blinds, +and pretended there was nobody in the coach and I should have +gone so all the way, if Kitty had not been sick and when we got +to the George, I do think we behaved very handsomely, for we +treated the other three with the nicest cold luncheon in the +world, and if you would have gone, we would have treated you +too. And then when we came away it was such fun I thought +we never should have got into the coach. I was ready to die +of laughter. And then we were so merry all the way home we +talked and laughed so loud, that anybody might have heard us +ten miles off" +To this Mary very gravely replied, "Far be it from me, my dear +sister, to depreciate such pleasures They would doubtless be +congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess +they would have no charms for meI should infinitely prefer a +book." +But of this answer Lydia heard not a word. She seldom listened +to anybody for more than half a minute, and never attended to +Mary at all. +In the afternoon Lydia was urgent with the rest of the girls +to walk to Meryton, and to see how everybody went on but +Elizabeth steadily opposed the scheme. It should not be said +that the Miss Bennets could not be at home half a day before +they were in pursuit of the officers. There was another reason +too for her opposition. She dreaded seeing Mr. Wickham again, +and was resolved to avoid it as long as possible. The comfort +to her of the regiment's approaching removal was indeed beyond +expression. In a fortnight they were to goand once gone, she +hoped there could be nothing more to plague her on his account. +She had not been many hours at home before she found that the +Brighton scheme, of which Lydia had given them a hint at the inn, +was under frequent discussion between her parents. Elizabeth +saw directly that her father had not the smallest intention of +yielding but his answers were at the same time so vague and +equivocal, that her mother, though often disheartened, had never +yet despaired of succeeding at last. +Chapter +Elizabeth's impatience to acquaint Jane with what had happened +could no longer be overcome and at length, resolving to +suppress every particular in which her sister was concerned, +and preparing her to be surprised, she related to her the next +morning the chief of the scene between Mr. Darcy and herself. +Miss Bennet's astonishment was soon lessened by the strong +sisterly partiality which made any admiration of Elizabeth appear +perfectly natural and all surprise was shortly lost in other +feelings. She was sorry that Mr. Darcy should have delivered his +sentiments in a manner so little suited to recommend them but +still more was she grieved for the unhappiness which her sister's +refusal must have given him. +"His being so sure of succeeding was wrong," said she, "and +certainly ought not to have appeared but consider how much it +must increase his disappointment" +"Indeed," replied Elizabeth, "I am heartily sorry for him but he +has other feelings, which will probably soon drive away his +regard for me. You do not blame me, however, for refusing him?" +"Blame you Oh, no." +"But you blame me for having spoken so warmly of Wickham?" +"NoI do not know that you were wrong in saying what you +did." +"But you will know it, when I tell you what happened the very +next day." +She then spoke of the letter, repeating the whole of its contents +as far as they concerned George Wickham. What a stroke was +this for poor Jane who would willingly have gone through the +world without believing that so much wickedness existed in the +whole race of mankind, as was here collected in one individual. +Nor was Darcy's vindication, though grateful to her feelings, +capable of consoling her for such discovery. Most earnestly did +she labour to prove the probability of error, and seek to clear the +one without involving the other. +"This will not do," said Elizabeth "you never will be able to +make both of them good for anything. Take your choice, but +you must be satisfied with only one. There is but such a quantity +of merit between them just enough to make one good sort of +man and of late it has been shifting about pretty much. For my +part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy's but you shall do +as you choose." +It was some time, however, before a smile could be extorted +from Jane. +"I do not know when I have been more shocked," said she. +"Wickham so very bad It is almost past belief. And poor Mr. +Darcy Dear Lizzy, only consider what he must have suffered. +Such a disappointment and with the knowledge of your ill +opinion, too and having to relate such a thing of his sister +It is really too distressing. I am sure you must feel it so." +"Oh no, my regret and compassion are all done away by seeing +you so full of both. I know you will do him such ample justice, +that I am growing every moment more unconcerned and indifferent. +Your profusion makes me saving and if you lament over him much +longer, my heart will be as light as a feather." +"Poor Wickham there is such an expression of goodness in his +countenance such an openness and gentleness in his manner" +"There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education +of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the +other all the appearance of it." +"I never thought Mr. Darcy so deficient in the appearance +of it as you used to do." +"And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided +a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's +genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. +One may be continually abusive without saying anything just but +one cannot always be laughing at a man without now and then +stumbling on something witty." +"Lizzy, when you first read that letter, I am sure you could not +treat the matter as you do now." +"Indeed, I could not. I was uncomfortable enough, I may say +unhappy. And with no one to speak to about what I felt, no +Jane to comfort me and say that I had not been so very weak and +vain and nonsensical as I knew I had Oh how I wanted you" +"How unfortunate that you should have used such very strong +expressions in speaking of Wickham to Mr. Darcy, for now they +do appear wholly undeserved." +"Certainly. But the misfortune of speaking with bitterness +is a most natural consequence of the prejudices I had been +encouraging. There is one point on which I want your advice. +I want to be told whether I ought, or ought not, to make our +acquaintances in general understand Wickham's character." +Miss Bennet paused a little, and then replied, "Surely there can +be no occasion for exposing him so dreadfully. What is your +opinion?" +"That it ought not to be attempted. Mr. Darcy has not +authorised me to make his communication public. On the +contrary, every particular relative to his sister was meant to +be kept as much as possible to myself and if I endeavour to +undeceive people as to the rest of his conduct, who will believe +me? The general prejudice against Mr. Darcy is so violent, that +it would be the death of half the good people in Meryton to +attempt to place him in an amiable light. I am not equal to it. +Wickham will soon be gone and therefore it will not signify to +anyone here what he really is. Some time hence it will be all +found out, and then we may laugh at their stupidity in not +knowing it before. At present I will say nothing about it." +"You are quite right. To have his errors made public might ruin +him for ever. He is now, perhaps, sorry for what he has done, +and anxious to reestablish a character. We must not make him +desperate." +The tumult of Elizabeth's mind was allayed by this conversation. +She had got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her +for a fortnight, and was certain of a willing listener in Jane, +whenever she might wish to talk again of either. But there was +still something lurking behind, of which prudence forbade the +disclosure. She dared not relate the other half of Mr. Darcy's +letter, nor explain to her sister how sincerely she had been +valued by her friend. Here was knowledge in which no one +could partake and she was sensible that nothing less than a +perfect understanding between the parties could justify her in +throwing off this last encumbrance of mystery. "And then," said +she, "if that very improbable event should ever take place, I +shall merely be able to tell what Bingley may tell in a much more +agreeable manner himself. The liberty of communication cannot +be mine till it has lost all its value" +She was now, on being settled at home, at leisure to observe the +real state of her sister's spirits. Jane was not happy. She still +cherished a very tender affection for Bingley. Having never even +fancied herself in love before, her regard had all the warmth of +first attachment, and, from her age and disposition, greater +steadiness than most first attachments often boast and so +fervently did she value his remembrance, and prefer him to every +other man, that all her good sense, and all her attention to the +feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the indulgence of +those regrets which must have been injurious to her own health +and their tranquillity. +"Well, Lizzy," said Mrs. Bennet one day, "what is your opinion +now of this sad business of Jane's? For my part, I am +determined never to speak of it again to anybody. I told my +sister Phillips so the other day. But I cannot find out that Jane +saw anything of him in London. Well, he is a very undeserving +young manand I do not suppose there's the least chance in the +world of her ever getting him now. There is no talk of his +coming to Netherfield again in the summer and I have inquired +of everybody, too, who is likely to know." +"I do not believe he will ever live at Netherfield any more." +"Oh well it is just as he chooses. Nobody wants him to come. +Though I shall always say he used my daughter extremely ill and +if I was her, I would not have put up with it. Well, my comfort +is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart and then he will +be sorry for what he has done." +But as Elizabeth could not receive comfort from any such +expectation, she made no answer. +"Well, Lizzy," continued her mother, soon afterwards, "and so +the Collinses live very comfortable, do they? Well, well, I only +hope it will last. And what sort of table do they keep? Charlotte +is an excellent manager, I dare say. If she is half as sharp as +her mother, she is saving enough. There is nothing extravagant in +their housekeeping, I dare say." +"No, nothing at all." +"A great deal of good management, depend upon it. Yes, yes. +they will take care not to outrun their income. They will +never be distressed for money. Well, much good may it do +them And so, I suppose, they often talk of having Longbourn +when your father is dead. They look upon it as quite their own, +I dare say, whenever that happens." +"It was a subject which they could not mention before me." +"No it would have been strange if they had but I make no +doubt they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they +can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so +much the better. I should be ashamed of having one that was +only entailed on me." +Chapter +The first week of their return was soon gone. The second began. +It was the last of the regiment's stay in Meryton, and all the +young ladies in the neighbourhood were drooping apace. The +dejection was almost universal. The elder Miss Bennets alone +were still able to eat, drink, and sleep, and pursue the usual +course of their employments. Very frequently were they +reproached for this insensibility by Kitty and Lydia, whose +own misery was extreme, and who could not comprehend such +hardheartedness in any of the family. +"Good Heaven what is to become of us? What are we to do?" +would they often exclaim in the bitterness of woe. "How can +you be smiling so, Lizzy?" +Their affectionate mother shared all their grief she remembered +what she had herself endured on a similar occasion, fiveandtwenty +years ago. +"I am sure," said she, "I cried for two days together when +Colonel Miller's regiment went away. I thought I should have +broken my heart." +"I am sure I shall break mine," said Lydia. +"If one could but go to Brighton" observed Mrs. Bennet. +"Oh, yesif one could but go to Brighton But papa is so +disagreeable." +"A little seabathing would set me up forever." +"And my aunt Phillips is sure it would do me a great deal of +good," added Kitty. +Such were the kind of lamentations resounding perpetually +through Longbourn House. Elizabeth tried to be diverted by +them but all sense of pleasure was lost in shame. She felt anew +the justice of Mr. Darcy's objections and never had she been so +much disposed to pardon his interference in the views of his +friend. +But the gloom of Lydia's prospect was shortly cleared away for +she received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the +colonel of the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton. This +invaluable friend was a very young woman, and very lately +married. A resemblance in good humour and good spirits had +recommended her and Lydia to each other, and out of their +three months' acquaintance they had been intimate two. +The rapture of Lydia on this occasion, her adoration of Mrs. +Forster, the delight of Mrs. Bennet, and the mortification of +Kitty, are scarcely to be described. Wholly inattentive to her +sister's feelings, Lydia flew about the house in restless ecstasy, +calling for everyone's congratulations, and laughing and talking +with more violence than ever whilst the luckless Kitty continued +in the parlour repined at her fate in terms as unreasonable as her +accent was peevish. +"I cannot see why Mrs. Forster should not ask me as well as +Lydia," said she, "Though I am not her particular friend. I +have just as much right to be asked as she has, and more too, +for I am two years older." +In vain did Elizabeth attempt to make her reasonable, and Jane +to make her resigned. As for Elizabeth herself, this invitation +was so far from exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother +and Lydia, that she considered it as the death warrant of all +possibility of common sense for the latter and detestable as such +a step must make her were it known, she could not help secretly +advising her father not to let her go. She represented to him all +the improprieties of Lydia's general behaviour, the little +advantage she could derive from the friendship of such a woman +as Mrs. Forster, and the probability of her being yet more +imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the +temptations must be greater than at home. He heard her +attentively, and then said +"Lydia will never be easy until she has exposed herself in some +public place or other, and we can never expect her to do it with +so little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the +present circumstances." +"If you were aware," said Elizabeth, "of the very great +disadvantage to us all which must arise from the public notice +of Lydia's unguarded and imprudent mannernay, which has +already arisen from it, I am sure you would judge differently in +the affair." +"Already arisen?" repeated Mr. Bennet. "What, has she +frightened away some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy But do +not be cast down. Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be +connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret. Come, +let me see the list of pitiful fellows who have been kept aloof +by Lydia's folly." +"Indeed you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. +It is not of particular, but of general evils, which I am now +complaining. Our importance, our respectability in the world must +be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of +all restraint which mark Lydia's character. Excuse me, for I must +speak plainly. If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble +of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her +present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will +soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will be +fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt that +ever made herself or her family ridiculous a flirt, too, in the +worst and meanest degree of flirtation without any attraction +beyond youth and a tolerable person and, from the ignorance and +emptiness of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of +that universal contempt which her rage for admiration will excite. +In this danger Kitty also is comprehended. She will follow wherever +Lydia leads. Vain, ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled +Oh my dear father, can you suppose it possible that they will not +be censured and despised wherever they are known, and that their +sisters will not be often involved in the disgrace?" +Mr. Bennet saw that her whole heart was in the subject, and +affectionately taking her hand said in reply +"Do not make yourself uneasy, my love. Wherever you and Jane +are known you must be respected and valued and you will not +appear to less advantage for having a couple ofor I may say, +threevery silly sisters. We shall have no peace at Longbourn +if Lydia does not go to Brighton. Let her go, then. Colonel +Forster is a sensible man, and will keep her out of any real +mischief and she is luckily too poor to be an object of prey +to anybody. At Brighton she will be of less importance even as +a common flirt than she has been here. The officers will find +women better worth their notice. Let us hope, therefore, that +her being there may teach her her own insignificance. At any +rate, she cannot grow many degrees worse, without authorising +us to lock her up for the rest of her life." +With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content but her +own opinion continued the same, and she left him disappointed +and sorry. It was not in her nature, however, to increase her +vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having +performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or +augment them by anxiety, was no part of her disposition. +Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of her conference +with her father, their indignation would hardly have found +expression in their united volubility. In Lydia's imagination, +a visit to Brighton comprised every possibility of earthly +happiness. She saw, with the creative eye of fancy, the streets +of that gay bathingplace covered with officers. She saw +herself the object of attention, to tens and to scores of them +at present unknown. She saw all the glories of the campits +tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded +with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet and, to +complete the view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly +flirting with at least six officers at once. +Had she known her sister sought to tear her from such prospects +and such realities as these, what would have been her sensations? +They could have been understood only by her mother, who might +have felt nearly the same. Lydia's going to Brighton was all +that consoled her for her melancholy conviction of her husband's +never intending to go there himself. +But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed and their +raptures continued, with little intermission, to the very day of +Lydia's leaving home. +Elizabeth was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time. +Having been frequently in company with him since her return, +agitation was pretty well over the agitations of formal partiality +entirely so. She had even learnt to detect, in the very gentleness +which had first delighted her, an affectation and a sameness to +disgust and weary. In his present behaviour to herself, +moreover, she had a fresh source of displeasure, for the +inclination he soon testified of renewing those intentions which +had marked the early part of their acquaintance could only serve, +after what had since passed, to provoke her. She lost all concern +for him in finding herself thus selected as the object of such idle +and frivolous gallantry and while she steadily repressed it, could +not but feel the reproof contained in his believing, that however +long, and for whatever cause, his attentions had been withdrawn, +her vanity would be gratified, and her preference secured at any +time by their renewal. +On the very last day of the regiment's remaining at Meryton, he +dined, with other of the officers, at Longbourn and so little +was Elizabeth disposed to part from him in good humour, that on +his making some inquiry as to the manner in which her time had +passed at Hunsford, she mentioned Colonel Fitzwilliam's and +Mr. Darcy's having both spent three weeks at Rosings, and +asked him, if he was acquainted with the former. +He looked surprised, displeased, alarmed but with a moment's +recollection and a returning smile, replied, that he had formerly +seen him often and, after observing that he was a very +gentlemanlike man, asked her how she had liked him. Her +answer was warmly in his favour. With an air of indifference he +soon afterwards added +"How long did you say he was at Rosings?" +"Nearly three weeks." +"And you saw him frequently?" +"Yes, almost every day." +"His manners are very different from his cousin's." +"Yes, very different. But I think Mr. Darcy improves upon +acquaintance." +"Indeed" cried Mr. Wickham with a look which did not escape +her. "And pray, may I ask?" But checking himself, he added, +in a gayer tone, "Is it in address that he improves? Has he +deigned to add aught of civility to his ordinary style?for I +dare not hope," he continued in a lower and more serious tone, +"that he is improved in essentials." +"Oh, no" said Elizabeth. "In essentials, I believe, he is very +much what he ever was." +While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing +whether to rejoice over her words, or to distrust their meaning. +There was a something in her countenance which made him listen +with an apprehensive and anxious attention, while she added +"When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean +that his mind or his manners were in a state of improvement, but +that, from knowing him better, his disposition was better +understood." +Wickham's alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and +agitated look for a few minutes he was silent, till, shaking +off his embarrassment, he turned to her again, and said in the +gentlest of accents +"You, who so well know my feeling towards Mr. Darcy, will +readily comprehend how sincerely I must rejoice that he is +wise enough to assume even the appearance of what is right. +His pride, in that direction, may be of service, if not to himself, +to many others, for it must only deter him from such foul +misconduct as I have suffered by. I only fear that the sort of +cautiousness to which you, I imagine, have been alluding, is +merely adopted on his visits to his aunt, of whose good opinion +and judgement he stands much in awe. His fear of her has +always operated, I know, when they were together and a good +deal is to be imputed to his wish of forwarding the match with +Miss de Bourgh, which I am certain he has very much at heart." +Elizabeth could not repress a smile at this, but she answered only +by a slight inclination of the head. She saw that he wanted to +engage her on the old subject of his grievances, and she was in +no humour to indulge him. The rest of the evening passed with +the appearance, on his side, of usual cheerfulness, but with +no further attempt to distinguish Elizabeth and they parted at +last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never +meeting again. +When the party broke up, Lydia returned with Mrs. Forster to +Meryton, from whence they were to set out early the next +morning. The separation between her and her family was rather +noisy than pathetic. Kitty was the only one who shed tears but +she did weep from vexation and envy. Mrs. Bennet was diffuse +in her good wishes for the felicity of her daughter, and +impressive in her injunctions that she should not miss the +opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possibleadvice +which there was every reason to believe would be well attended +to and in the clamorous happiness of Lydia herself in bidding +farewell, the more gentle adieus of her sisters were uttered +without being heard. +Chapter +Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, +she could not have formed a very pleasing opinion of conjugal +felicity or domestic comfort. Her father, captivated by youth +and beauty, and that appearance of good humour which youth +and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak +understanding and illiberal mind had very early in their marriage +put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and +confidence had vanished for ever and all his views of domestic +happiness were overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of a +disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his +own imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which +too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice. +He was fond of the country and of books and from these tastes had +arisen his principal enjoyments. To his wife he was very little +otherwise indebted, than as her ignorance and folly had +contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness +which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife but +where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true +philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given. +Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of +her father's behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with +pain but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate +treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could +not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual +breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing +his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly +reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now the +disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a +marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from +so illjudged a direction of talents talents, which, rightly used, +might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, +even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife. +When Elizabeth had rejoiced over Wickham's departure she +found little other cause for satisfaction in the loss of the +regiment. Their parties abroad were less varied than before, and +at home she had a mother and sister whose constant repinings at +the dullness of everything around them threw a real gloom over +their domestic circle and, though Kitty might in time regain her +natural degree of sense, since the disturbers of her brain were +removed, her other sister, from whose disposition greater evil +might be apprehended, was likely to be hardened in all her +folly and assurance by a situation of such double danger as a +wateringplace and a camp. Upon the whole, therefore, she +found, what has been sometimes found before, that an event +to which she had been looking with impatient desire did not, +in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised +herself. It was consequently necessary to name some other +period for the commencement of actual felicityto have some +other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and +by again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for +the present, and prepare for another disappointment. Her tour +to the Lakes was now the object of her happiest thoughts it was +her best consolation for all the uncomfortable hours which the +discontentedness of her mother and Kitty made inevitable and +could she have included Jane in the scheme, every part of it +would have been perfect. +"But it is fortunate," thought she, "that I have something to wish +for. Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment +would be certain. But here, by carrying with me one ceaseless +source of regret in my sister's absence, I may reasonably hope to +have all my expectations of pleasure realised. A scheme of +which every part promises delight can never be successful and +general disappointment is only warded off by the defence of +some little peculiar vexation." +When Lydia went away she promised to write very often and +very minutely to her mother and Kitty but her letters were +always long expected, and always very short. Those to her +mother contained little else than that they were just returned +from the library, where such and such officers had attended +them, and where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as made +her quite wild that she had a new gown, or a new parasol, which +she would have described more fully, but was obliged to leave +off in a violent hurry, as Mrs. Forster called her, and they were +going off to the camp and from her correspondence with her +sister, there was still less to be learntfor her letters to +Kitty, though rather longer, were much too full of lines under the +words to be made public. +After the first fortnight or three weeks of her absence, health, +good humour, and cheerfulness began to reappear at Longbourn. +Everything wore a happier aspect. The families who had been in +town for the winter came back again, and summer finery and +summer engagements arose. Mrs. Bennet was restored to her +usual querulous serenity and, by the middle of June, Kitty was +so much recovered as to be able to enter Meryton without tears +an event of such happy promise as to make Elizabeth hope that +by the following Christmas she might be so tolerably reasonable +as not to mention an officer above once a day, unless, by some +cruel and malicious arrangement at the War Office, another +regiment should be quartered in Meryton. +The time fixed for the beginning of their northern tour was now +fast approaching, and a fortnight only was wanting of it, when +a letter arrived from Mrs. Gardiner, which at once delayed its +commencement and curtailed its extent. Mr. Gardiner would be +prevented by business from setting out till a fortnight later in +July, and must be in London again within a month, and as that +left too short a period for them to go so far, and see so much +as they had proposed, or at least to see it with the leisure and +comfort they had built on, they were obliged to give up the +Lakes, and substitute a more contracted tour, and, according +to the present plan, were to go no farther northwards than +Derbyshire. In that county there was enough to be seen to +occupy the chief of their three weeks and to Mrs. Gardiner it +had a peculiarly strong attraction. The town where she had +formerly passed some years of her life, and where they were now +to spend a few days, was probably as great an object of her +curiosity as all the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth, +Dovedale, or the Peak. +Elizabeth was excessively disappointed she had set her heart on +seeing the Lakes, and still thought there might have been time +enough. But it was her business to be satisfiedand certainly +her temper to be happy and all was soon right again. +With the mention of Derbyshire there were many ideas connected. +It was impossible for her to see the word without thinking of +Pemberley and its owner. "But surely," said she, "I may enter +his county without impunity, and rob it of a few petrified spars +without his perceiving me." +The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to +pass away before her uncle and aunt's arrival. But they did pass +away, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did +at length appear at Longbourn. The children, two girls of six +and eight years old, and two younger boys, were to be left under +the particular care of their cousin Jane, who was the general +favourite, and whose steady sense and sweetness of temper exactly +adapted her for attending to them in every wayteaching them, +playing with them, and loving them. +The Gardiners stayed only one night at Longbourn, and set off +the next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and +amusement. One enjoyment was certainthat of suitableness +of companions a suitableness which comprehended health and +temper to bear inconveniencescheerfulness to enhance every +pleasureand affection and intelligence, which might supply +it among themselves if there were disappointments abroad. +It is not the object of this work to give a description of +Derbyshire, nor of any of the remarkable places through which +their route thither lay Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenilworth, +Birmingham, etc. are sufficiently known. A small part of +Derbyshire is all the present concern. To the little town of +Lambton, the scene of Mrs. Gardiner's former residence, and +where she had lately learned some acquaintance still remained, +they bent their steps, after having seen all the principal wonders +of the country and within five miles of Lambton, Elizabeth +found from her aunt that Pemberley was situated. It was not in +their direct road, nor more than a mile or two out of it. In +talking over their route the evening before, Mrs. Gardiner +expressed an inclination to see the place again. Mr. Gardiner +declared his willingness, and Elizabeth was applied to for her +approbation. +"My love, should not you like to see a place of which you have +heard so much?" said her aunt "a place, too, with which so +many of your acquaintances are connected. Wickham passed all +his youth there, you know." +Elizabeth was distressed. She felt that she had no business at +Pemberley, and was obliged to assume a disinclination for seeing +it. She must own that she was tired of seeing great houses after +going over so many, she really had no pleasure in fine carpets or +satin curtains. +Mrs. Gardiner abused her stupidity. "If it were merely a fine +house richly furnished," said she, "I should not care about it +myself but the grounds are delightful. They have some of the +finest woods in the country." +Elizabeth said no morebut her mind could not acquiesce. +The possibility of meeting Mr. Darcy, while viewing the place, +instantly occurred. It would be dreadful She blushed at the +very idea, and thought it would be better to speak openly to +her aunt than to run such a risk. But against this there were +objections and she finally resolved that it could be the last +resource, if her private inquiries to the absence of the family +were unfavourably answered. +Accordingly, when she retired at night, she asked the chambermaid +whether Pemberley were not a very fine place? what was the name +of its proprietor? and, with no little alarm, whether the family +were down for the summer? A most welcome negative followed the +last questionand her alarms now being removed, she was at +leisure to feel a great deal of curiosity to see the house herself +and when the subject was revived the next morning, and she was +again applied to, could readily answer, and with a proper air of +indifference, that she had not really any dislike to the scheme. +To Pemberley, therefore, they were to go. +Chapter +Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance +of Pemberley Woods with some perturbation and when at +length they turned in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high +flutter. +The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. +They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some +time through a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent. +Elizabeth's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and +admired every remarkable spot and point of view. They +gradually ascended for halfamile, and then found themselves +at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, +and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated +on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road with some +abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone building, +standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high +woody hills and in front, a stream of some natural importance +was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. +Its banks were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth +was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature +had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little +counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm +in their admiration and at that moment she felt that to be +mistress of Pemberley might be something +They descended the hill, crossed the bridge, and drove to the +door and, while examining the nearer aspect of the house, all +her apprehension of meeting its owner returned. She dreaded +lest the chambermaid had been mistaken. On applying to see +the place, they were admitted into the hall and Elizabeth, as +they waited for the housekeeper, had leisure to wonder at her +being where she was. +The housekeeper came a respectablelooking elderly woman, +much less fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of +finding her. They followed her into the diningparlour. +It was a large, well proportioned room, handsomely fitted up. +Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy +its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, which they had +descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, +was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was +good and she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees +scattered on its banks and the winding of the valley, as far as +she could trace it, with delight. As they passed into other +rooms these objects were taking different positions but from +every window there were beauties to be seen. The rooms were +lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune +of its proprietor but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, +that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine with less of +splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings. +"And of this place," thought she, "I might have been mistress +With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted +Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced +in them as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle +and aunt. But no,"recollecting herself"that could never +be my uncle and aunt would have been lost to me I should not +have been allowed to invite them." +This was a lucky recollectionit saved her from something +very like regret. +She longed to inquire of the housekeeper whether her master +was really absent, but had not the courage for it. At length +however, the question was asked by her uncle and she turned +away with alarm, while Mrs. Reynolds replied that he was, +adding, "But we expect him tomorrow, with a large party of +friends." How rejoiced was Elizabeth that their own journey +had not by any circumstance been delayed a day +Her aunt now called her to look at a picture. She approached +and saw the likeness of Mr. Wickham, suspended, amongst +several other miniatures, over the mantelpiece. Her aunt asked +her, smilingly, how she liked it. The housekeeper came forward, +and told them it was a picture of a young gentleman, the son of +her late master's steward, who had been brought up by him at +his own expense. "He is now gone into the army," she added +"but I am afraid he has turned out very wild." +Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece with a smile, but Elizabeth +could not return it. +"And that," said Mrs. Reynolds, pointing to another of the +miniatures, "is my masterand very like him. It was drawn at +the same time as the otherabout eight years ago." +"I have heard much of your master's fine person," said Mrs. +Gardiner, looking at the picture "it is a handsome face. +But, Lizzy, you can tell us whether it is like or not." +Mrs. Reynolds respect for Elizabeth seemed to increase on this +intimation of her knowing her master. +"Does that young lady know Mr. Darcy?" +Elizabeth coloured, and said "A little." +"And do not you think him a very handsome gentleman, ma'am?" +"Yes, very handsome." +"I am sure I know none so handsome but in the gallery +upstairs you will see a finer, larger picture of him than this. +This room was my late master's favourite room, and these +miniatures are just as they used to be then. He was very fond +of them." +This accounted to Elizabeth for Mr. Wickham's being among them. +Mrs. Reynolds then directed their attention to one of Miss Darcy, +drawn when she was only eight years old. +"And is Miss Darcy as handsome as her brother?" said Mrs. Gardiner. +"Oh yesthe handsomest young lady that ever was seen and +so accomplishedShe plays and sings all day long. In the next +room is a new instrument just come down for hera present +from my master she comes here tomorrow with him." +Mr. Gardiner, whose manners were very easy and pleasant, +encouraged her communicativeness by his questions and remarks +Mrs. Reynolds, either by pride or attachment, had evidently +great pleasure in talking of her master and his sister. +"Is your master much at Pemberley in the course of the year?" +"Not so much as I could wish, sir but I dare say he may spend +half his time here and Miss Darcy is always down for the +summer months." +"Except," thought Elizabeth, "when she goes to Ramsgate." +"If your master would marry, you might see more of him." +"Yes, sir but I do not know when that will be. I do not +know who is good enough for him." +Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner smiled. Elizabeth could not help saying, +"It is very much to his credit, I am sure, that you should think +so." +"I say no more than the truth, and everybody will say that +knows him," replied the other. Elizabeth thought this was +going pretty far and she listened with increasing astonishment +as the housekeeper added, "I have never known a cross word +from him in my life, and I have known him ever since he was +four years old." +This was praise, of all others most extraordinary, most opposite +to her ideas. That he was not a goodtempered man had been +her firmest opinion. Her keenest attention was awakened she +longed to hear more, and was grateful to her uncle for saying +"There are very few people of whom so much can be said. You +are lucky in having such a master." +"Yes, sir, I know I am. If I were to go through the world, I +could not meet with a better. But I have always observed, that +they who are goodnatured when children, are goodnatured +when they grow up and he was always the sweetesttempered, +most generoushearted boy in the world." +Elizabeth almost stared at her. "Can this be Mr. Darcy?" +thought she. +"His father was an excellent man," said Mrs. Gardiner. +"Yes, ma'am, that he was indeed and his son will be just like +himjust as affable to the poor." +Elizabeth listened, wondered, doubted, and was impatient for +more. Mrs. Reynolds could interest her on no other point. She +related the subjects of the pictures, the dimensions of the rooms, +and the price of the furniture, in vain, Mr. Gardiner, highly +amused by the kind of family prejudice to which he attributed +her excessive commendation of her master, soon led again to +the subject and she dwelt with energy on his many merits as +they proceeded together up the great staircase. +"He is the best landlord, and the best master," said she, "that +ever lived not like the wild young men nowadays, who think of +nothing but themselves. There is not one of his tenants or +servants but will give him a good name. Some people call him +proud but I am sure I never saw anything of it. To my fancy, it +is only because he does not rattle away like other young men." +"In what an amiable light does this place him" thought +Elizabeth. +"This fine account of him," whispered her aunt as they walked, +"is not quite consistent with his behaviour to our poor friend." +"Perhaps we might be deceived." +"That is not very likely our authority was too good." +On reaching the spacious lobby above they were shown into a +very pretty sittingroom, lately fitted up with greater elegance +and lightness than the apartments below and were informed that +it was but just done to give pleasure to Miss Darcy, who had +taken a liking to the room when last at Pemberley. +"He is certainly a good brother," said Elizabeth, as she walked +towards one of the windows. +Mrs. Reynolds anticipated Miss Darcy's delight, when she +should enter the room. "And this is always the way with him," +she added. "Whatever can give his sister any pleasure is sure +to be done in a moment. There is nothing he would not do for +her." +The picturegallery, and two or three of the principal bedrooms, +were all that remained to be shown. In the former were many +good paintings but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art and from +such as had been already visible below, she had willingly turned +to look at some drawings of Miss Darcy's, in crayons, whose +subjects were usually more interesting, and also more intelligible. +In the gallery there were many family portraits, but they could +have little to fix the attention of a stranger. Elizabeth walked +in quest of the only face whose features would be known to her. +At last it arrested herand she beheld a striking resemblance +to Mr. Darcy, with such a smile over the face as she remembered +to have sometimes seen when he looked at her. She stood +several minutes before the picture, in earnest contemplation, +and returned to it again before they quitted the gallery. Mrs. +Reynolds informed them that it had been taken in his father's +lifetime. +There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth's mind, a more +gentle sensation towards the original than she had ever felt at +the height of their acquaintance. The commendation bestowed +on him by Mrs. Reynolds was of no trifling nature. What praise +is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant? As a +brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's +happiness were in his guardianshiphow much of pleasure or +pain was it in his power to bestowhow much of good or evil +must be done by him Every idea that had been brought forward +by the housekeeper was favourable to his character, and as she +stood before the canvas on which he was represented, and fixed +his eyes upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper +sentiment of gratitude than it had ever raised before she +remembered its warmth, and softened its impropriety of +expression. +When all of the house that was open to general inspection had +been seen, they returned downstairs, and, taking leave of the +housekeeper, were consigned over to the gardener, who met +them at the halldoor. +As they walked across the hall towards the river, Elizabeth +turned back to look again her uncle and aunt stopped also, and +while the former was conjecturing as to the date of the building, +the owner of it himself suddenly came forward from the road, +which led behind it to the stables. +They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was +his appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their +eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with +the deepest blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment +seemed immovable from surprise but shortly recovering himself, +advanced towards the party, and spoke to Elizabeth, if not in +terms of perfect composure, at least of perfect civility. +She had instinctively turned away but stopping on his approach, +received his compliments with an embarrassment impossible to +be overcome. Had his first appearance, or his resemblance to +the picture they had just been examining, been insufficient +to assure the other two that they now saw Mr. Darcy, the +gardener's expression of surprise, on beholding his master, +must immediately have told it. They stood a little aloof while +he was talking to their niece, who, astonished and confused, +scarcely dared lift her eyes to his face, and knew not what +answer she returned to his civil inquiries after her family. +Amazed at the alteration of his manner since they last parted, +every sentence that he uttered was increasing her embarrassment +and every idea of the impropriety of her being found there +recurring to her mind, the few minutes in which they continued +were some of the most uncomfortable in her life. Nor did he +seem much more at ease when he spoke, his accent had none of +its usual sedateness and he repeated his inquiries as to the +time of her having left Longbourn, and of her having stayed in +Derbyshire, so often, and in so hurried a way, as plainly spoke +the distraction of his thoughts. +At length every idea seemed to fail him and, after standing a +few moments without saying a word, he suddenly recollected +himself, and took leave. +The others then joined her, and expressed admiration of his +figure but Elizabeth heard not a word, and wholly engrossed +by her own feelings, followed them in silence. She was +overpowered by shame and vexation. Her coming there was +the most unfortunate, the most illjudged thing in the world +How strange it must appear to him In what a disgraceful light +might it not strike so vain a man It might seem as if she +had purposely thrown herself in his way again Oh why did she +come? Or, why did he thus come a day before he was expected? +Had they been only ten minutes sooner, they should have been +beyond the reach of his discrimination for it was plain that +he was that moment arrivedthat moment alighted from his +horse or his carriage. She blushed again and again over the +perverseness of the meeting. And his behaviour, so strikingly +alteredwhat could it mean? That he should even speak to her +was amazingbut to speak with such civility, to inquire after +her family Never in her life had she seen his manners so little +dignified, never had he spoken with such gentleness as on this +unexpected meeting. What a contrast did it offer to his last +address in Rosings Park, when he put his letter into her hand +She knew not what to think, or how to account for it. +They had now entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water, +and every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or +a finer reach of the woods to which they were approaching but +it was some time before Elizabeth was sensible of any of it +and, though she answered mechanically to the repeated appeals +of her uncle and aunt, and seemed to direct her eyes to such +objects as they pointed out, she distinguished no part of +the scene. Her thoughts were all fixed on that one spot of +Pemberley House, whichever it might be, where Mr. Darcy then +was. She longed to know what at the moment was passing in +his mindin what manner he thought of her, and whether, in +defiance of everything, she was still dear to him. Perhaps he +had been civil only because he felt himself at ease yet there +had been that in his voice which was not like ease. Whether he +had felt more of pain or of pleasure in seeing her she could +not tell, but he certainly had not seen her with composure. +At length, however, the remarks of her companions on her +absence of mind aroused her, and she felt the necessity of +appearing more like herself. +They entered the woods, and bidding adieu to the river for a +while, ascended some of the higher grounds when, in spots where +the opening of the trees gave the eye power to wander, were many +charming views of the valley, the opposite hills, with the long +range of woods overspreading many, and occasionally part of the +stream. Mr. Gardiner expressed a wish of going round the whole +park, but feared it might be beyond a walk. With a triumphant +smile they were told that it was ten miles round. It settled the +matter and they pursued the accustomed circuit which brought +them again, after some time, in a descent among hanging woods, +to the edge of the water, and one of its narrowest parts. They +crossed it by a simple bridge, in character with the general air +of the scene it was a spot less adorned than any they had yet +visited and the valley, here contracted into a glen, allowed +room only for the stream, and a narrow walk amidst the rough +coppicewood which bordered it. Elizabeth longed to explore its +windings but when they had crossed the bridge, and perceived +their distance from the house, Mrs. Gardiner, who was not a +great walker, could go no farther, and thought only of returning +to the carriage as quickly as possible. Her niece was, therefore, +obliged to submit, and they took their way towards the house on +the opposite side of the river, in the nearest direction but +their progress was slow, for Mr. Gardiner, though seldom able to +indulge the taste, was very fond of fishing, and was so much +engaged in watching the occasional appearance of some trout in +the water, and talking to the man about them, that he advanced +but little. Whilst wandering on in this slow manner, they were +again surprised, and Elizabeth's astonishment was quite equal to +what it had been at first, by the sight of Mr. Darcy approaching +them, and at no great distance. The walk here being here less +sheltered than on the other side, allowed them to see him before +they met. Elizabeth, however astonished, was at least more +prepared for an interview than before, and resolved to appear +and to speak with calmness, if he really intended to meet them. +For a few moments, indeed, she felt that he would probably strike +into some other path. The idea lasted while a turning in the +walk concealed him from their view the turning past, he was +immediately before them. With a glance, she saw that he had lost +none of his recent civility and, to imitate his politeness, she +began, as they met, to admire the beauty of the place but she +had not got beyond the words "delightful," and "charming," when +some unlucky recollections obtruded, and she fancied that praise +of Pemberley from her might be mischievously construed. Her +colour changed, and she said no more. +Mrs. Gardiner was standing a little behind and on her pausing, +he asked her if she would do him the honour of introducing him +to her friends. This was a stroke of civility for which she +was quite unprepared and she could hardly suppress a smile at +his being now seeking the acquaintance of some of those very +people against whom his pride had revolted in his offer to +herself. "What will be his surprise," thought she, "when he +knows who they are? He takes them now for people of fashion." +The introduction, however, was immediately made and as she +named their relationship to herself, she stole a sly look at +him, to see how he bore it, and was not without the expectation +of his decamping as fast as he could from such disgraceful +companions. That he was surprised by the connection was +evident he sustained it, however, with fortitude, and so far +from going away, turned his back with them, and entered into +conversation with Mr. Gardiner. Elizabeth could not but be +pleased, could not but triumph. It was consoling that he should +know she had some relations for whom there was no need to +blush. She listened most attentively to all that passed between +them, and gloried in every expression, every sentence of her +uncle, which marked his intelligence, his taste, or his good +manners. +The conversation soon turned upon fishing and she heard Mr. +Darcy invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as often +as he chose while he continued in the neighbourhood, offering +at the same time to supply him with fishing tackle, and pointing +out those parts of the stream where there was usually most +sport. Mrs. Gardiner, who was walking arminarm with +Elizabeth, gave her a look expressive of wonder. Elizabeth +said nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly the compliment +must be all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was +extreme, and continually was she repeating, "Why is he so +altered? From what can it proceed? It cannot be for meit +cannot be for my sake that his manners are thus softened. My +reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a change as this. +It is impossible that he should still love me." +After walking some time in this way, the two ladies in front, +the two gentlemen behind, on resuming their places, after +descending to the brink of the river for the better inspection of +some curious waterplant, there chanced to be a little alteration. +It originated in Mrs. Gardiner, who, fatigued by the exercise of +the morning, found Elizabeth's arm inadequate to her support, and +consequently preferred her husband's. Mr. Darcy took her place +by her niece, and they walked on together. After a short silence, +the lady first spoke. She wished him to know that she had +been assured of his absence before she came to the place, and +accordingly began by observing, that his arrival had been very +unexpected"for your housekeeper," she added, "informed us that +you would certainly not be here till tomorrow and indeed, before +we left Bakewell, we understood that you were not immediately +expected in the country." He acknowledged the truth of it all, +and said that business with his steward had occasioned his coming +forward a few hours before the rest of the party with whom he +had been travelling. "They will join me early tomorrow," he +continued, "and among them are some who will claim an acquaintance +with youMr. Bingley and his sisters." +Elizabeth answered only by a slight bow. Her thoughts were +instantly driven back to the time when Mr. Bingley's name had +been the last mentioned between them and, if she might judge +by his complexion, his mind was not very differently engaged. +"There is also one other person in the party," he continued after +a pause, "who more particularly wishes to be known to you. +Will you allow me, or do I ask too much, to introduce my sister +to your acquaintance during your stay at Lambton?" +The surprise of such an application was great indeed it was too +great for her to know in what manner she acceded to it. She +immediately felt that whatever desire Miss Darcy might have of +being acquainted with her must be the work of her brother, and, +without looking farther, it was satisfactory it was gratifying to +know that his resentment had not made him think really ill of her. +They now walked on in silence, each of them deep in thought. +Elizabeth was not comfortable that was impossible but she was +flattered and pleased. His wish of introducing his sister to her +was a compliment of the highest kind. They soon outstripped the +others, and when they had reached the carriage, Mr. and Mrs. +Gardiner were half a quarter of a mile behind. +He then asked her to walk into the housebut she declared +herself not tired, and they stood together on the lawn. At +such a time much might have been said, and silence was very +awkward. She wanted to talk, but there seemed to be an +embargo on every subject. At last she recollected that she had +been travelling, and they talked of Matlock and Dove Dale with +great perseverance. Yet time and her aunt moved slowlyand +her patience and her ideas were nearly worn our before the +teteatete was over. On Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's coming up +they were all pressed to go into the house and take some +refreshment but this was declined, and they parted on each +side with utmost politeness. Mr. Darcy handed the ladies into +the carriage and when it drove off, Elizabeth saw him walking +slowly towards the house. +The observations of her uncle and aunt now began and each of +them pronounced him to be infinitely superior to anything they +had expected. "He is perfectly well behaved, polite, and +unassuming," said her uncle. +"There is something a little stately in him, to be sure," replied +her aunt, "but it is confined to his air, and is not unbecoming. +I can now say with the housekeeper, that though some people may +call him proud, I have seen nothing of it." +"I was never more surprised than by his behaviour to us. It was +more than civil it was really attentive and there was no +necessity for such attention. His acquaintance with Elizabeth +was very trifling." +"To be sure, Lizzy," said her aunt, "he is not so handsome as +Wickham or, rather, he has not Wickham's countenance, for +his features are perfectly good. But how came you to tell me +that he was so disagreeable?" +Elizabeth excused herself as well as she could said that she had +liked him better when they had met in Kent than before, and that +she had never seen him so pleasant as this morning. +"But perhaps he may be a little whimsical in his civilities," +replied her uncle. "Your great men often are and therefore I +shall not take him at his word, as he might change his mind +another day, and warn me off his grounds." +Elizabeth felt that they had entirely misunderstood his character, +but said nothing. +"From what we have seen of him," continued Mrs. Gardiner, "I +really should not have thought that he could have behaved in so +cruel a way by anybody as he has done by poor Wickham. He +has not an illnatured look. On the contrary, there is something +pleasing about his mouth when he speaks. And there is something +of dignity in his countenance that would not give one an +unfavourable idea of his heart. But, to be sure, the good lady +who showed us his house did give him a most flaming character +I could hardly help laughing aloud sometimes. But he is a +liberal master, I suppose, and that in the eye of a servant +comprehends every virtue." +Elizabeth here felt herself called on to say something in +vindication of his behaviour to Wickham and therefore gave +them to understand, in as guarded a manner as she could, that +by what she had heard from his relations in Kent, his actions +were capable of a very different construction and that his +character was by no means so faulty, nor Wickham's so amiable, +as they had been considered in Hertfordshire. In confirmation +of this, she related the particulars of all the pecuniary +transactions in which they had been connected, without actually +naming her authority, but stating it to be such as might be +relied on. +Mrs. Gardiner was surprised and concerned but as they were +now approaching the scene of her former pleasures, every idea +gave way to the charm of recollection and she was too much +engaged in pointing out to her husband all the interesting spots +in its environs to think of anything else. Fatigued as she had +been by the morning's walk they had no sooner dined than she +set off again in quest of her former acquaintance, and the +evening was spent in the satisfactions of a intercourse renewed +after many years' discontinuance. +The occurrences of the day were too full of interest to leave +Elizabeth much attention for any of these new friends and she +could do nothing but think, and think with wonder, of Mr. +Darcy's civility, and, above all, of his wishing her to be +acquainted with his sister. +Chapter +Elizabeth had settled it that Mr. Darcy would bring his sister +to visit her the very day after her reaching Pemberley and was +consequently resolved not to be out of sight of the inn the whole +of that morning. But her conclusion was false for on the very +morning after their arrival at Lambton, these visitors came. +They had been walking about the place with some of their new +friends, and were just returning to the inn to dress themselves +for dining with the same family, when the sound of a carriage +drew them to a window, and they saw a gentleman and a lady +in a curricle driving up the street. Elizabeth immediately +recognizing the livery, guessed what it meant, and imparted no +small degree of her surprise to her relations by acquainting +them with the honour which she expected. Her uncle and aunt +were all amazement and the embarrassment of her manner as +she spoke, joined to the circumstance itself, and many of the +circumstances of the preceding day, opened to them a new idea +on the business. Nothing had ever suggested it before, but they +felt that there was no other way of accounting for such attentions +from such a quarter than by supposing a partiality for their +niece. While these newlyborn notions were passing in their heads, +the perturbation of Elizabeth's feelings was at every moment +increasing. She was quite amazed at her own discomposure but +amongst other causes of disquiet, she dreaded lest the partiality +of the brother should have said too much in her favour and, more +than commonly anxious to please, she naturally suspected that +every power of pleasing would fail her. +She retreated from the window, fearful of being seen and as +she walked up and down the room, endeavouring to compose +herself, saw such looks of inquiring surprise in her uncle and +aunt as made everything worse. +Miss Darcy and her brother appeared, and this formidable +introduction took place. With astonishment did Elizabeth see +that her new acquaintance was at least as much embarrassed as +herself. Since her being at Lambton, she had heard that Miss +Darcy was exceedingly proud but the observation of a very few +minutes convinced her that she was only exceedingly shy. She +found it difficult to obtain even a word from her beyond a +monosyllable. +Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth +and, though little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, +and her appearance womanly and graceful. She was less handsome +than her brother but there was sense and good humour in her +face, and her manners were perfectly unassuming and gentle. +Elizabeth, who had expected to find in her as acute and +unembarrassed an observer as ever Mr. Darcy had been, was +much relieved by discerning such different feelings. +They had not long been together before Mr. Darcy told her that +Bingley was also coming to wait on her and she had barely time +to express her satisfaction, and prepare for such a visitor, when +Bingley's quick step was heard on the stairs, and in a moment he +entered the room. All Elizabeth's anger against him had been +long done away but had she still felt any, it could hardly have +stood its ground against the unaffected cordiality with which he +expressed himself on seeing her again. He inquired in a friendly, +though general way, after her family, and looked and spoke with +the same goodhumoured ease that he had ever done. +To Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner he was scarcely a less interesting +personage than to herself. They had long wished to see him. +The whole party before them, indeed, excited a lively attention. +The suspicions which had just arisen of Mr. Darcy and their niece +directed their observation towards each with an earnest though +guarded inquiry and they soon drew from those inquiries the full +conviction that one of them at least knew what it was to love. +Of the lady's sensations they remained a little in doubt but that +the gentleman was overflowing with admiration was evident enough. +Elizabeth, on her side, had much to do. She wanted to +ascertain the feelings of each of her visitors she wanted to +compose her own, and to make herself agreeable to all and in +the latter object, where she feared most to fail, she was most +sure of success, for those to whom she endeavoured to give +pleasure were prepossessed in her favour. Bingley was ready, +Georgiana was eager, and Darcy determined, to be pleased. +In seeing Bingley, her thoughts naturally flew to her sister +and, oh how ardently did she long to know whether any of his were +directed in a like manner. Sometimes she could fancy that he +talked less than on former occasions, and once or twice pleased +herself with the notion that, as he looked at her, he was trying +to trace a resemblance. But, though this might be imaginary, +she could not be deceived as to his behaviour to Miss Darcy, who +had been set up as a rival to Jane. No look appeared on either +side that spoke particular regard. Nothing occurred between +them that could justify the hopes of his sister. On this point +she was soon satisfied and two or three little circumstances +occurred ere they parted, which, in her anxious interpretation, +denoted a recollection of Jane not untinctured by tenderness, +and a wish of saying more that might lead to the mention of her, +had he dared. He observed to her, at a moment when the others +were talking together, and in a tone which had something of real +regret, that it "was a very long time since he had had the +pleasure of seeing her" and, before she could reply, he added, +"It is above eight months. We have not met since the th of +November, when we were all dancing together at Netherfield." +Elizabeth was pleased to find his memory so exact and he +afterwards took occasion to ask her, when unattended to by +any of the rest, whether all her sisters were at Longbourn. +There was not much in the question, nor in the preceding +remark but there was a look and a manner which gave them +meaning. +It was not often that she could turn her eyes on Mr. Darcy +himself but, whenever she did catch a glimpse, she saw an +expression of general complaisance, and in all that he said +she heard an accent so removed from hauteur or disdain of his +companions, as convinced her that the improvement of manners +which she had yesterday witnessed however temporary its +existence might prove, had at least outlived one day. When she +saw him thus seeking the acquaintance and courting the good +opinion of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago +would have been a disgracewhen she saw him thus civil, not +only to herself, but to the very relations whom he had openly +disdained, and recollected their last lively scene in Hunsford +Parsonagethe difference, the change was so great, and struck +so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly restrain her +astonishment from being visible. Never, even in the company +of his dear friends at Netherfield, or his dignified relations +at Rosings, had she seen him so desirous to please, so free +from selfconsequence or unbending reserve, as now, when no +importance could result from the success of his endeavours, and +when even the acquaintance of those to whom his attentions +were addressed would draw down the ridicule and censure of +the ladies both of Netherfield and Rosings. +Their visitors stayed with them above halfanhour and when +they arose to depart, Mr. Darcy called on his sister to join him +in expressing their wish of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, and +Miss Bennet, to dinner at Pemberley, before they left the +country. Miss Darcy, though with a diffidence which marked +her little in the habit of giving invitations, readily obeyed. +Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece, desirous of knowing how she, +whom the invitation most concerned, felt disposed as to its +acceptance, but Elizabeth had turned away her head. Presuming +however, that this studied avoidance spoke rather a momentary +embarrassment than any dislike of the proposal, and seeing in +her husband, who was fond of society, a perfect willingness to +accept it, she ventured to engage for her attendance, and the +day after the next was fixed on. +Bingley expressed great pleasure in the certainty of seeing +Elizabeth again, having still a great deal to say to her, and many +inquiries to make after all their Hertfordshire friends. Elizabeth, +construing all this into a wish of hearing her speak of her sister, +was pleased, and on this account, as well as some others, found +herself, when their visitors left them, capable of considering +the last halfhour with some satisfaction, though while it was +passing, the enjoyment of it had been little. Eager to be alone, +and fearful of inquiries or hints from her uncle and aunt, she +stayed with them only long enough to hear their favourable +opinion of Bingley, and then hurried away to dress. +But she had no reason to fear Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's curiosity +it was not their wish to force her communication. It was evident +that she was much better acquainted with Mr. Darcy than they +had before any idea of it was evident that he was very much in +love with her. They saw much to interest, but nothing to justify +inquiry. +Of Mr. Darcy it was now a matter of anxiety to think well and, +as far as their acquaintance reached, there was no fault to find. +They could not be untouched by his politeness and had they +drawn his character from their own feelings and his servant's +report, without any reference to any other account, the circle +in Hertfordshire to which he was known would not have recognized +it for Mr. Darcy. There was now an interest, however, in +believing the housekeeper and they soon became sensible that +the authority of a servant who had known him since he was four +years old, and whose own manners indicated respectability, was +not to be hastily rejected. Neither had anything occurred in +the intelligence of their Lambton friends that could materially +lessen its weight. They had nothing to accuse him of but pride +pride he probably had, and if not, it would certainly be imputed +by the inhabitants of a small markettown where the family did +not visit. It was acknowledged, however, that he was a liberal +man, and did much good among the poor. +With respect to Wickham, the travellers soon found that he was +not held there in much estimation for though the chief of his +concerns with the son of his patron were imperfectly understood, +it was yet a wellknown fact that, on his quitting Derbyshire, +he had left many debts behind him, which Mr. Darcy afterwards +discharged. +As for Elizabeth, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening +more than the last and the evening, though as it passed it +seemed long, was not long enough to determine her feelings +towards one in that mansion and she lay awake two whole +hours endeavouring to make them out. She certainly did not +hate him. No hatred had vanished long ago, and she had +almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against +him, that could be so called. The respect created by the +conviction of his valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly +admitted, had for some time ceased to be repugnant to her +feeling and it was now heightened into somewhat of a friendlier +nature, by the testimony so highly in his favour, and bringing +forward his disposition in so amiable a light, which yesterday +had produced. But above all, above respect and esteem, there +was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be +overlooked. It was gratitude gratitude, not merely for having +once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive +all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and +all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, +she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, +seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the +acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or +any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were +concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, +and bent on making her known to his sister. Such a change +in a man of so much pride exciting not only astonishment but +gratitudefor to love, ardent love, it must be attributed and +as such its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as +by no means unpleasing, though it could not be exactly defined. +She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt +a real interest in his welfare and she only wanted to know how +far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far +it would be for the happiness of both that she should employ the +power, which her fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing +on her the renewal of his addresses. +It had been settled in the evening between the aunt and the +niece, that such a striking civility as Miss Darcy's in coming to +see them on the very day of her arrival at Pemberley, for she +had reached it only to a late breakfast, ought to be imitated, +though it could not be equalled, by some exertion of politeness +on their side and, consequently, that it would be highly +expedient to wait on her at Pemberley the following morning. +They were, therefore, to go. Elizabeth was pleased though +when she asked herself the reason, she had very little to say in +reply. +Mr. Gardiner left them soon after breakfast. The fishing scheme +had been renewed the day before, and a positive engagement +made of his meeting some of the gentlemen at Pemberley before +noon. +Chapter +Convinced as Elizabeth now was that Miss Bingley's dislike of +her had originated in jealousy, she could not help feeling how +unwelcome her appearance at Pemberley must be to her, and +was curious to know with how much civility on that lady's side +the acquaintance would now be renewed. +On reaching the house, they were shown through the hall into +the saloon, whose northern aspect rendered it delightful for +summer. Its windows opening to the ground, admitted a most +refreshing view of the high woody hills behind the house, +and of the beautiful oaks and Spanish chestnuts which were +scattered over the intermediate lawn. +In this house they were received by Miss Darcy, who was +sitting there with Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, and the lady +with whom she lived in London. Georgiana's reception of them +was very civil, but attended with all the embarrassment which, +though proceeding from shyness and the fear of doing wrong, +would easily give to those who felt themselves inferior the +belief of her being proud and reserved. Mrs. Gardiner and her +niece, however, did her justice, and pitied her. +By Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley they were noticed only by a +curtsey and, on their being seated, a pause, awkward as such +pauses must always be, succeeded for a few moments. It was +first broken by Mrs. Annesley, a genteel, agreeablelooking +woman, whose endeavour to introduce some kind of discourse +proved her to be more truly wellbred than either of the others +and between her and Mrs. Gardiner, with occasional help from +Elizabeth, the conversation was carried on. Miss Darcy looked +as if she wished for courage enough to join in it and sometimes +did venture a short sentence when there was least danger of its +being heard. +Elizabeth soon saw that she was herself closely watched by Miss +Bingley, and that she could not speak a word, especially to Miss +Darcy, without calling her attention. This observation would not +have prevented her from trying to talk to the latter, had they +not been seated at an inconvenient distance but she was not sorry +to be spared the necessity of saying much. Her own thoughts +were employing her. She expected every moment that some of the +gentlemen would enter the room. She wished, she feared that +the master of the house might be amongst them and whether +she wished or feared it most, she could scarcely determine. +After sitting in this manner a quarter of an hour without hearing +Miss Bingley's voice, Elizabeth was roused by receiving from +her a cold inquiry after the health of her family. She answered +with equal indifference and brevity, and the others said no more. +The next variation which their visit afforded was produced by +the entrance of servants with cold meat, cake, and a variety of +all the finest fruits in season but this did not take place till +after many a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley to +Miss Darcy had been given, to remind her of her post. There was +now employment for the whole partyfor though they could not all +talk, they could all eat and the beautiful pyramids of grapes, +nectarines, and peaches soon collected them round the table. +While thus engaged, Elizabeth had a fair opportunity of deciding +whether she most feared or wished for the appearance of Mr. +Darcy, by the feelings which prevailed on his entering the room +and then, though but a moment before she had believed her +wishes to predominate, she began to regret that he came. +He had been some time with Mr. Gardiner, who, with two or +three other gentlemen from the house, was engaged by the river, +and had left him only on learning that the ladies of the family +intended a visit to Georgiana that morning. No sooner did he +appear than Elizabeth wisely resolved to be perfectly easy and +unembarrassed a resolution the more necessary to be made, but +perhaps not the more easily kept, because she saw that the +suspicions of the whole party were awakened against them, and +that there was scarcely an eye which did not watch his +behaviour when he first came into the room. In no countenance +was attentive curiosity so strongly marked as in Miss Bingley's, +in spite of the smiles which overspread her face whenever she +spoke to one of its objects for jealousy had not yet made her +desperate, and her attentions to Mr. Darcy were by no means +over. Miss Darcy, on her brother's entrance, exerted herself +much more to talk, and Elizabeth saw that he was anxious for +his sister and herself to get acquainted, and forwarded as much +as possible, every attempt at conversation on either side. Miss +Bingley saw all this likewise and, in the imprudence of anger, +took the first opportunity of saying, with sneering civility +"Pray, Miss Eliza, are not the shire Militia removed from +Meryton? They must be a great loss to your family." +In Darcy's presence she dared not mention Wickham's name +but Elizabeth instantly comprehended that he was uppermost in +her thoughts and the various recollections connected with him +gave her a moment's distress but exerting herself vigorously to +repel the illnatured attack, she presently answered the question +in a tolerably detached tone. While she spoke, an involuntary +glance showed her Darcy, with a heightened complexion, +earnestly looking at her, and his sister overcome with confusion, +and unable to lift up her eyes. Had Miss Bingley known what +pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly +would have refrained from the hint but she had merely intended +to discompose Elizabeth by bringing forward the idea of a man +to whom she believed her partial, to make her betray a sensibility +which might injure her in Darcy's opinion, and, perhaps, to +remind the latter of all the follies and absurdities by which +some part of her family were connected with that corps. Not a +syllable had ever reached her of Miss Darcy's meditated +elopement. To no creature had it been revealed, where secrecy +was possible, except to Elizabeth and from all Bingley's +connections her brother was particularly anxious to conceal it, +from the very wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to +him, of their becoming hereafter her own. He had certainly +formed such a plan, and without meaning that it should effect +his endeavour to separate him from Miss Bennet, it is probable +that it might add something to his lively concern for the welfare +of his friend. +Elizabeth's collected behaviour, however, soon quieted his +emotion and as Miss Bingley, vexed and disappointed, dared +not approach nearer to Wickham, Georgiana also recovered in +time, though not enough to be able to speak any more. Her +brother, whose eye she feared to meet, scarcely recollected her +interest in the affair, and the very circumstance which had +been designed to turn his thoughts from Elizabeth seemed to +have fixed them on her more and more cheerfully. +Their visit did not continue long after the question and answer +above mentioned and while Mr. Darcy was attending them to +their carriage Miss Bingley was venting her feelings in criticisms +on Elizabeth's person, behaviour, and dress. But Georgiana +would not join her. Her brother's recommendation was enough +to ensure her favour his judgement could not err. And he had +spoken in such terms of Elizabeth as to leave Georgiana without +the power of finding her otherwise than lovely and amiable. +When Darcy returned to the saloon, Miss Bingley could not help +repeating to him some part of what she had been saying to his +sister. +"How very ill Miss Eliza Bennet looks this morning, Mr. Darcy," +she cried "I never in my life saw anyone so much altered as she +is since the winter. She is grown so brown and coarse Louisa +and I were agreeing that we should not have known her again." +However little Mr. Darcy might have liked such an address, he +contented himself with coolly replying that he perceived no +other alteration than her being rather tanned, no miraculous +consequence of travelling in the summer. +"For my own part," she rejoined, "I must confess that I never +could see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin her +complexion has no brilliancy and her features are not at all +handsome. Her nose wants characterthere is nothing marked +in its lines. Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common +way and as for her eyes, which have sometimes been called so +fine, I could never see anything extraordinary in them. They +have a sharp, shrewish look, which I do not like at all and in her +air altogether there is a selfsufficiency without fashion, which +is intolerable." +Persuaded as Miss Bingley was that Darcy admired Elizabeth, +this was not the best method of recommending herself but +angry people are not always wise and in seeing him at last look +somewhat nettled, she had all the success she expected. He was +resolutely silent, however, and, from a determination of making +him speak, she continued +"I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how +amazed we all were to find that she was a reputed beauty and I +particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been +dining at Netherfield, 'She a beautyI should as soon call her +mother a wit.' But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, +and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time." +"Yes," replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, +"but that was only when I first saw her, for it is many months +since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of +my acquaintance." +He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the +satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any +pain but herself. +Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth talked of all that had occurred during +their visit, as they returned, except what had particularly +interested them both. The look and behaviour of everybody they +had seen were discussed, except of the person who had mostly +engaged their attention. They talked of his sister, his friends, +his house, his fruitof everything but himself yet Elizabeth +was longing to know what Mrs. Gardiner thought of him, and Mrs. +Gardiner would have been highly gratified by her niece's beginning +the subject. +Chapter +Elizabeth had been a good deal disappointed in not finding a +letter from Jane on their first arrival at Lambton and this +disappointment had been renewed on each of the mornings that +had now been spent there but on the third her repining was +over, and her sister justified, by the receipt of two letters +from her at once, on one of which was marked that it had been +missent elsewhere. Elizabeth was not surprised at it, as Jane +had written the direction remarkably ill. +They had just been preparing to walk as the letters came in +and her uncle and aunt, leaving her to enjoy them in quiet, set +off by themselves. The one missent must first be attended to +it had been written five days ago. The beginning contained an +account of all their little parties and engagements, with such +news as the country afforded but the latter half, which was +dated a day later, and written in evident agitation, gave more +important intelligence. It was to this effect +"Since writing the above, dearest Lizzy, something has occurred +of a most unexpected and serious nature but I am afraid of +alarming yoube assured that we are all well. What I have to +say relates to poor Lydia. An express came at twelve last night, +just as we were all gone to bed, from Colonel Forster, to +inform us that she was gone off to Scotland with one of his +officers to own the truth, with Wickham Imagine our surprise. +To Kitty, however, it does not seem so wholly unexpected. I +am very, very sorry. So imprudent a match on both sides But +I am willing to hope the best, and that his character has been +misunderstood. Thoughtless and indiscreet I can easily believe +him, but this step and let us rejoice over it marks nothing bad +at heart. His choice is disinterested at least, for he must know +my father can give her nothing. Our poor mother is sadly +grieved. My father bears it better. How thankful am I that we +never let them know what has been said against him we must +forget it ourselves. They were off Saturday night about twelve, +as is conjectured, but were not missed till yesterday morning at +eight. The express was sent off directly. My dear Lizzy, they +must have passed within ten miles of us. Colonel Forster gives +us reason to expect him here soon. Lydia left a few lines for +his wife, informing her of their intention. I must conclude, for +I cannot be long from my poor mother. I am afraid you will not +be able to make it out, but I hardly know what I have written." +Without allowing herself time for consideration, and scarcely +knowing what she felt, Elizabeth on finishing this letter instantly +seized the other, and opening it with the utmost impatience, read +as follows it had been written a day later than the conclusion of +the first. +"By this time, my dearest sister, you have received my hurried +letter I wish this may be more intelligible, but though not +confined for time, my head is so bewildered that I cannot answer +for being coherent. Dearest Lizzy, I hardly know what I would +write, but I have bad news for you, and it cannot be delayed. +Imprudent as the marriage between Mr. Wickham and our poor +Lydia would be, we are now anxious to be assured it has taken +place, for there is but too much reason to fear they are not gone +to Scotland. Colonel Forster came yesterday, having left +Brighton the day before, not many hours after the express. +Though Lydia's short letter to Mrs. F. gave them to understand +that they were going to Gretna Green, something was dropped +by Denny expressing his belief that W. never intended to go +there, or to marry Lydia at all, which was repeated to Colonel +F., who, instantly taking the alarm, set off from B. intending to +trace their route. He did trace them easily to Clapham, but no +further for on entering that place, they removed into a hackney +coach, and dismissed the chaise that brought them from Epsom. +All that is known after this is, that they were seen to continue +the London road. I know not what to think. After making every +possible inquiry on that side London, Colonel F. came on into +Hertfordshire, anxiously renewing them at all the turnpikes, and +at the inns in Barnet and Hatfield, but without any successno +such people had been seen to pass through. With the kindest +concern he came on to Longbourn, and broke his apprehensions +to us in a manner most creditable to his heart. I am sincerely +grieved for him and Mrs. F., but no one can throw any blame +on them. Our distress, my dear Lizzy, is very great. My father +and mother believe the worst, but I cannot think so ill of him. +Many circumstances might make it more eligible for them to be +married privately in town than to pursue their first plan +and even if he could form such a design against a young woman +of Lydia's connections, which is not likely, can I suppose her +so lost to everything? Impossible I grieve to find, however, +that Colonel F. is not disposed to depend upon their marriage +he shook his head when I expressed my hopes, and said he feared +W. was not a man to be trusted. My poor mother is really ill, +and keeps her room. Could she exert herself, it would be better +but this is not to be expected. And as to my father, I never in +my life saw him so affected. Poor Kitty has anger for having +concealed their attachment but as it was a matter of confidence, +one cannot wonder. I am truly glad, dearest Lizzy, that you +have been spared something of these distressing scenes but +now, as the first shock is over, shall I own that I long for +your return? I am not so selfish, however, as to press for it, +if inconvenient. Adieu I take up my pen again to do what I +have just told you I would not but circumstances are such that +I cannot help earnestly begging you all to come here as soon as +possible. I know my dear uncle and aunt so well, that I am not +afraid of requesting it, though I have still something more to +ask of the former. My father is going to London with Colonel +Forster instantly, to try to discover her. What he means to do +I am sure I know not but his excessive distress will not allow +him to pursue any measure in the best and safest way, and +Colonel Forster is obliged to be at Brighton again tomorrow +evening. In such an exigence, my uncle's advice and assistance +would be everything in the world he will immediately comprehend +what I must feel, and I rely upon his goodness." +"Oh where, where is my uncle?" cried Elizabeth, darting from +her seat as she finished the letter, in eagerness to follow him, +without losing a moment of the time so precious but as she +reached the door it was opened by a servant, and Mr. Darcy +appeared. Her pale face and impetuous manner made him start, +and before he could recover himself to speak, she, in whose +mind every idea was superseded by Lydia's situation, hastily +exclaimed, "I beg your pardon, but I must leave you. I must +find Mr. Gardiner this moment, on business that cannot be +delayed I have not an instant to lose." +"Good God what is the matter?" cried he, with more feeling +than politeness then recollecting himself, "I will not detain you +a minute but let me, or let the servant go after Mr. and Mrs. +Gardiner. You are not well enough you cannot go yourself." +Elizabeth hesitated, but her knees trembled under her and she +felt how little would be gained by her attempting to pursue them. +Calling back the servant, therefore, she commissioned him, +though in so breathless an accent as made her almost unintelligible, +to fetch his master and mistress home instantly. +On his quitting the room she sat down, unable to support +herself, and looking so miserably ill, that it was impossible +for Darcy to leave her, or to refrain from saying, in a tone +of gentleness and commiseration, "Let me call your maid. Is +there nothing you could take to give you present relief? A +glass of wine shall I get you one? You are very ill." +"No, I thank you," she replied, endeavouring to recover herself. +"There is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well I am +only distressed by some dreadful news which I have just +received from Longbourn." +She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes +could not speak another word. Darcy, in wretched suspense, +could only say something indistinctly of his concern, and +observe her in compassionate silence. At length she spoke +again. "I have just had a letter from Jane, with such dreadful +news. It cannot be concealed from anyone. My younger sister +has left all her friendshas eloped has thrown herself into +the power ofof Mr. Wickham. They are gone off together from +Brighton. You know him too well to doubt the rest. She has +no money, no connections, nothing that can tempt him toshe +is lost for ever." +Darcy was fixed in astonishment. "When I consider," she added +in a yet more agitated voice, "that I might have prevented it +I, who knew what he was. Had I but explained some part of +it onlysome part of what I learnt, to my own family Had his +character been known, this could not have happened. But it is +allall too late now." +"I am grieved indeed," cried Darcy "grievedshocked. But is +it certainabsolutely certain?" +"Oh, yes They left Brighton together on Sunday night, and +were traced almost to London, but not beyond they are +certainly not gone to Scotland." +"And what has been done, what has been attempted, to recover +her?" +"My father is gone to London, and Jane has written to beg my +uncle's immediate assistance and we shall be off, I hope, in +halfanhour. But nothing can be doneI know very well that +nothing can be done. How is such a man to be worked on? How +are they even to be discovered? I have not the smallest hope. +It is every way horrible" +Darcy shook his head in silent acquiescence. +"When my eyes were opened to his real characterOh had I +known what I ought, what I dared to do But I knew notI +was afraid of doing too much. Wretched, wretched mistake" +Darcy made no answer. He seemed scarcely to hear her, and +was walking up and down the room in earnest meditation, his +brow contracted, his air gloomy. Elizabeth soon observed, and +instantly understood it. Her power was sinking everything +must sink under such a proof of family weakness, such an +assurance of the deepest disgrace. She could neither wonder +nor condemn, but the belief of his selfconquest brought nothing +consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her +distress. It was, on the contrary, exactly calculated to make +her understand her own wishes and never had she so honestly felt +that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be vain. +But self, though it would intrude, could not engross her. +Lydiathe humiliation, the misery she was bringing on them all, +soon swallowed up every private care and covering her face with +her handkerchief, Elizabeth was soon lost to everything else +and, after a pause of several minutes, was only recalled to a +sense of her situation by the voice of her companion, who, in a +manner which, though it spoke compassion, spoke likewise restraint, +said, "I am afraid you have been long desiring my absence, nor +have I anything to plead in excuse of my stay, but real, though +unavailing concern. Would to Heaven that anything could be +either said or done on my part that might offer consolation to +such distress But I will not torment you with vain wishes, which +may seem purposely to ask for your thanks. This unfortunate +affair will, I fear, prevent my sister's having the pleasure of +seeing you at Pemberley today." +"Oh, yes. Be so kind as to apologise for us to Miss Darcy. Say +that urgent business calls us home immediately. Conceal the +unhappy truth as long as it is possible, I know it cannot be long." +He readily assured her of his secrecy again expressed his sorrow +for her distress, wished it a happier conclusion than there was +at present reason to hope, and leaving his compliments for her +relations, with only one serious, parting look, went away. +As he quitted the room, Elizabeth felt how improbable it was +that they should ever see each other again on such terms of +cordiality as had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire +and as she threw a retrospective glance over the whole of their +acquaintance, so full of contradictions and varieties, sighed +at the perverseness of those feelings which would now have +promoted its continuance, and would formerly have rejoiced in +its termination. +If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, +Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor +faulty. But if otherwiseif regard springing from such sources +is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often +described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even +before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in +her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the +latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill +success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less +interesting mode of attachment. Be that as it may, she saw him +go with regret and in this early example of what Lydia's infamy +must produce, found additional anguish as she reflected on that +wretched business. Never, since reading Jane's second letter, +had she entertained a hope of Wickham's meaning to marry her. +No one but Jane, she thought, could flatter herself with such an +expectation. Surprise was the least of her feelings on this +development. While the contents of the first letter remained in +her mind, she was all surpriseall astonishment that Wickham +should marry a girl whom it was impossible he could marry +for money and how Lydia could ever have attached him had +appeared incomprehensible. But now it was all too natural. For +such an attachment as this she might have sufficient charms and +though she did not suppose Lydia to be deliberately engaging in +an elopement without the intention of marriage, she had no +difficulty in believing that neither her virtue nor her +understanding would preserve her from falling an easy prey. +She had never perceived, while the regiment was in Hertfordshire, +that Lydia had any partiality for him but she was convinced that +Lydia wanted only encouragement to attach herself to anybody. +Sometimes one officer, sometimes another, had been her favourite, +as their attentions raised them in her opinion. Her affections +had continually been fluctuating but never without an object. +The mischief of neglect and mistaken indulgence towards such a +girloh how acutely did she now feel it +She was wild to be at hometo hear, to see, to be upon the +spot to share with Jane in the cares that must now fall wholly +upon her, in a family so deranged, a father absent, a mother +incapable of exertion, and requiring constant attendance and +though almost persuaded that nothing could be done for Lydia, +her uncle's interference seemed of the utmost importance, and +till he entered the room her impatience was severe. Mr. and +Mrs. Gardiner had hurried back in alarm, supposing by the +servant's account that their niece was taken suddenly ill but +satisfying them instantly on that head, she eagerly communicated +the cause of their summons, reading the two letters aloud, and +dwelling on the postscript of the last with trembling energy, +though Lydia had never been a favourite with them, Mr. and +Mrs. Gardiner could not but be deeply afflicted. Not Lydia +only, but all were concerned in it and after the first +exclamations of surprise and horror, Mr. Gardiner promised +every assistance in his power. Elizabeth, though expecting no +less, thanked him with tears of gratitude and all three being +actuated by one spirit, everything relating to their journey was +speedily settled. They were to be off as soon as possible. "But +what is to be done about Pemberley?" cried Mrs. Gardiner. +"John told us Mr. Darcy was here when you sent for us was it +so?" +"Yes and I told him we should not be able to keep our +engagement. That is all settled." +"What is all settled?" repeated the other, as she ran into her +room to prepare. "And are they upon such terms as for her to +disclose the real truth? Oh, that I knew how it was" +But wishes were vain, or at least could only serve to amuse her +in the hurry and confusion of the following hour. Had Elizabeth +been at leisure to be idle, she would have remained certain that +all employment was impossible to one so wretched as herself +but she had her share of business as well as her aunt, and +amongst the rest there were notes to be written to all their +friends at Lambton, with false excuses for their sudden +departure. An hour, however, saw the whole completed and +Mr. Gardiner meanwhile having settled his account at the inn, +nothing remained to be done but to go and Elizabeth, after all +the misery of the morning, found herself, in a shorter space of +time than she could have supposed, seated in the carriage, and +on the road to Longbourn. +Chapter +"I have been thinking it over again, Elizabeth," said her uncle, +as they drove from the town "and really, upon serious +consideration, I am much more inclined than I was to judge as +your eldest sister does on the matter. It appears to me so very +unlikely that any young man should form such a design against +a girl who is by no means unprotected or friendless, and who +was actually staying in his colonel's family, that I am strongly +inclined to hope the best. Could he expect that her friends +would not step forward? Could he expect to be noticed again +by the regiment, after such an affront to Colonel Forster? His +temptation is not adequate to the risk" +"Do you really think so?" cried Elizabeth, brightening up for a +moment. +"Upon my word," said Mrs. Gardiner, "I begin to be of your +uncle's opinion. It is really too great a violation of decency, +honour, and interest, for him to be guilty of. I cannot think +so very ill of Wickham. Can you yourself, Lizzy, so wholly give +him up, as to believe him capable of it?" +"Not, perhaps, of neglecting his own interest but of every other +neglect I can believe him capable. If, indeed, it should be so +But I dare not hope it. Why should they not go on to Scotland +if that had been the case?" +"In the first place," replied Mr. Gardiner, "there is no absolute +proof that they are not gone to Scotland." +"Oh but their removing from the chaise into a hackney coach is +such a presumption And, besides, no traces of them were to be +found on the Barnet road." +"Well, thensupposing them to be in London. They may be there, +though for the purpose of concealment, for no more exceptional +purpose. It is not likely that money should be very abundant on +either side and it might strike them that they could be more +economically, though less expeditiously, married in London +than in Scotland." +"But why all this secrecy? Why any fear of detection? Why must +their marriage be private? Oh, no, nothis is not likely. +His most particular friend, you see by Jane's account, was +persuaded of his never intending to marry her. Wickham will +never marry a woman without some money. He cannot afford +it. And what claims has Lydiawhat attraction has she beyond +youth, health, and good humour that could make him, for her +sake, forego every chance of benefiting himself by marrying +well? As to what restraint the apprehensions of disgrace in the +corps might throw on a dishonourable elopement with her, I am +not able to judge for I know nothing of the effects that such a +step might produce. But as to your other objection, I am afraid +it will hardly hold good. Lydia has no brothers to step forward +and he might imagine, from my father's behaviour, from his +indolence and the little attention he has ever seemed to give +to what was going forward in his family, that he would do as +little, and think as little about it, as any father could do, +in such a matter." +"But can you think that Lydia is so lost to everything but love +of him as to consent to live with him on any terms other than +marriage?" +"It does seem, and it is most shocking indeed," replied Elizabeth, +with tears in her eyes, "that a sister's sense of decency and +virtue in such a point should admit of doubt. But, really, +I know not what to say. Perhaps I am not doing her justice. +But she is very young she has never been taught to think +on serious subjects and for the last halfyear, nay, for a +twelvemonthshe has been given up to nothing but amusement +and vanity. She has been allowed to dispose of her time in the +most idle and frivolous manner, and to adopt any opinions that +came in her way. Since the shire were first quartered in +Meryton, nothing but love, flirtation, and officers have been +in her head. She has been doing everything in her power by +thinking and talking on the subject, to give greaterwhat shall +I call it? susceptibility to her feelings which are naturally +lively enough. And we all know that Wickham has every charm of +person and address that can captivate a woman." +"But you see that Jane," said her aunt, "does not think so very +ill of Wickham as to believe him capable of the attempt." +"Of whom does Jane ever think ill? And who is there, whatever +might be their former conduct, that she would think capable of +such an attempt, till it were proved against them? But Jane +knows, as well as I do, what Wickham really is. We both know +that he has been profligate in every sense of the word that he +has neither integrity nor honour that he is as false and +deceitful as he is insinuating." +"And do you really know all this?" cried Mrs. Gardiner, whose +curiosity as to the mode of her intelligence was all alive. +"I do indeed," replied Elizabeth, colouring. "I told you, the +other day, of his infamous behaviour to Mr. Darcy and you +yourself, when last at Longbourn, heard in what manner he +spoke of the man who had behaved with such forbearance and +liberality towards him. And there are other circumstances which +I am not at libertywhich it is not worth while to relate but +his lies about the whole Pemberley family are endless. From what +he said of Miss Darcy I was thoroughly prepared to see a proud, +reserved, disagreeable girl. Yet he knew to the contrary himself. +He must know that she was as amiable and unpretending as we +have found her." +"But does Lydia know nothing of this? can she be ignorant of +what you and Jane seem so well to understand?" +"Oh, yesthat, that is the worst of all. Till I was in Kent, +and saw so much both of Mr. Darcy and his relation Colonel +Fitzwilliam, I was ignorant of the truth myself. And when I +returned home, the shire was to leave Meryton in a week or +fortnight's time. As that was the case, neither Jane, to whom +I related the whole, nor I, thought it necessary to make our +knowledge public for of what use could it apparently be to any +one, that the good opinion which all the neighbourhood had of +him should then be overthrown? And even when it was settled +that Lydia should go with Mrs. Forster, the necessity of opening +her eyes to his character never occurred to me. That she could +be in any danger from the deception never entered my head. +That such a consequence as this could ensue, you may easily +believe, was far enough from my thoughts." +"When they all removed to Brighton, therefore, you had no +reason, I suppose, to believe them fond of each other?" +"Not the slightest. I can remember no symptom of affection on +either side and had anything of the kind been perceptible, you +must be aware that ours is not a family on which it could be +thrown away. When first he entered the corps, she was ready +enough to admire him but so we all were. Every girl in or +near Meryton was out of her senses about him for the first +two months but he never distinguished her by any particular +attention and, consequently, after a moderate period of +extravagant and wild admiration, her fancy for him gave +way, and others of the regiment, who treated her with more +distinction, again became her favourites." +It may be easily believed, that however little of novelty could be +added to their fears, hopes, and conjectures, on this interesting +subject, by its repeated discussion, no other could detain them +from it long, during the whole of the journey. From Elizabeth's +thoughts it was never absent. Fixed there by the keenest of all +anguish, selfreproach, she could find no interval of ease or +forgetfulness. +They travelled as expeditiously as possible, and, sleeping one +night on the road, reached Longbourn by dinner time the next +day. It was a comfort to Elizabeth to consider that Jane could +not have been wearied by long expectations. +The little Gardiners, attracted by the sight of a chaise, were +standing on the steps of the house as they entered the paddock +and, when the carriage drove up to the door, the joyful surprise +that lighted up their faces, and displayed itself over their whole +bodies, in a variety of capers and frisks, was the first pleasing +earnest of their welcome. +Elizabeth jumped out and, after giving each of them a hasty +kiss, hurried into the vestibule, where Jane, who came running +down from her mother's apartment, immediately met her. +Elizabeth, as she affectionately embraced her, whilst tears filled +the eyes of both, lost not a moment in asking whether anything +had been heard of the fugitives. +"Not yet," replied Jane. "But now that my dear uncle is come, +I hope everything will be well." +"Is my father in town?" +"Yes, he went on Tuesday, as I wrote you word." +"And have you heard from him often?" +"We have heard only twice. He wrote me a few lines on +Wednesday to say that he had arrived in safety, and to give me +his directions, which I particularly begged him to do. He merely +added that he should not write again till he had something of +importance to mention." +"And my motherhow is she? How are you all?" +"My mother is tolerably well, I trust though her spirits are +greatly shaken. She is upstairs and will have great satisfaction +in seeing you all. She does not yet leave her dressingroom. +Mary and Kitty, thank Heaven, are quite well." +"But youhow are you?" cried Elizabeth. "You look pale. +How much you must have gone through" +Her sister, however, assured her of her being perfectly well +and their conversation, which had been passing while Mr. and +Mrs. Gardiner were engaged with their children, was now put an +end to by the approach of the whole party. Jane ran to her uncle +and aunt, and welcomed and thanked them both, with alternate +smiles and tears. +When they were all in the drawingroom, the questions which +Elizabeth had already asked were of course repeated by the +others, and they soon found that Jane had no intelligence +to give. The sanguine hope of good, however, which the +benevolence of her heart suggested had not yet deserted her +she still expected that it would all end well, and that every +morning would bring some letter, either from Lydia or her +father, to explain their proceedings, and, perhaps, announce +their marriage. +Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few +minutes' conversation together, received them exactly as might +be expected with tears and lamentations of regret, invectives +against the villainous conduct of Wickham, and complaints of +her own sufferings and illusage blaming everybody but the +person to whose illjudging indulgence the errors of her +daughter must principally be owing. +"If I had been able," said she, "to carry my point in going to +Brighton, with all my family, this would not have happened +but poor dear Lydia had nobody to take care of her. Why did +the Forsters ever let her go out of their sight? I am sure there +was some great neglect or other on their side, for she is not the +kind of girl to do such a thing if she had been well looked after. +I always thought they were very unfit to have the charge of her +but I was overruled, as I always am. Poor dear child And +now here's Mr. Bennet gone away, and I know he will fight +Wickham, wherever he meets him and then he will be killed, and +what is to become of us all? The Collinses will turn us out +before he is cold in his grave, and if you are not kind to us, +brother, I do not know what we shall do." +They all exclaimed against such terrific ideas and Mr. Gardiner, +after general assurances of his affection for her and all her +family, told her that he meant to be in London the very next day, +and would assist Mr. Bennet in every endeavour for recovering +Lydia. +"Do not give way to useless alarm," added he "though it is +right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look +on it as certain. It is not quite a week since they left Brighton. +In a few days more we may gain some news of them and till we +know that they are not married, and have no design of marrying, +do not let us give the matter over as lost. As soon as I get to +town I shall go to my brother, and make him come home with +me to Gracechurch Street and then we may consult together as +to what is to be done." +"Oh my dear brother," replied Mrs. Bennet, "that is exactly +what I could most wish for. And now do, when you get to +town, find them out, wherever they may be and if they are +not married already, make them marry. And as for wedding +clothes, do not let them wait for that, but tell Lydia she +shall have as much money as she chooses to buy them, after they +are married. And, above all, keep Mr. Bennet from fighting. +Tell him what a dreadful state I am in, that I am frighted out +of my witsand have such tremblings, such flutterings, all +over mesuch spasms in my side and pains in my head, and +such beatings at heart, that I can get no rest by night nor by +day. And tell my dear Lydia not to give any directions about +her clothes till she has seen me, for she does not know which +are the best warehouses. Oh, brother, how kind you are I +know you will contrive it all." +But Mr. Gardiner, though he assured her again of his earnest +endeavours in the cause, could not avoid recommending moderation +to her, as well in her hopes as her fear and after talking with +her in this manner till dinner was on the table, they all left +her to vent all her feelings on the housekeeper, who attended +in the absence of her daughters. +Though her brother and sister were persuaded that there was no +real occasion for such a seclusion from the family, they did not +attempt to oppose it, for they knew that she had not prudence +enough to hold her tongue before the servants, while they +waited at table, and judged it better that one only of the +household, and the one whom they could most trust should +comprehend all her fears and solicitude on the subject. +In the diningroom they were soon joined by Mary and Kitty, +who had been too busily engaged in their separate apartments +to make their appearance before. One came from her books, +and the other from her toilette. The faces of both, however, +were tolerably calm and no change was visible in either, except +that the loss of her favourite sister, or the anger which she had +herself incurred in this business, had given more of fretfulness +than usual to the accents of Kitty. As for Mary, she was +mistress enough of herself to whisper to Elizabeth, with a +countenance of grave reflection, soon after they were seated +at table +"This is a most unfortunate affair, and will probably be much +talked of. But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into +the wounded bosoms of each other the balm of sisterly consolation." +Then, perceiving in Elizabeth no inclination of replying, she +added, "Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw +from it this useful lesson that loss of virtue in a female is +irretrievable that one false step involves her in endless ruin +that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful and +that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the +undeserving of the other sex." +Elizabeth lifted up her eyes in amazement, but was too much +oppressed to make any reply. Mary, however, continued to +console herself with such kind of moral extractions from the +evil before them. +In the afternoon, the two elder Miss Bennets were able to be +for halfanhour by themselves and Elizabeth instantly availed +herself of the opportunity of making any inquiries, which Jane +was equally eager to satisfy. After joining in general +lamentations over the dreadful sequel of this event, which +Elizabeth considered as all but certain, and Miss Bennet could +not assert to be wholly impossible, the former continued the +subject, by saying, "But tell me all and everything about it +which I have not already heard. Give me further particulars. +What did Colonel Forster say? Had they no apprehension of +anything before the elopement took place? They must have seen +them together for ever." +"Colonel Forster did own that he had often suspected some +partiality, especially on Lydia's side, but nothing to give him any +alarm. I am so grieved for him His behaviour was attentive and +kind to the utmost. He was coming to us, in order to assure us +of his concern, before he had any idea of their not being gone to +Scotland when that apprehension first got abroad, it hastened +his journey." +"And was Denny convinced that Wickham would not marry? Did +he know of their intending to go off? Had Colonel Forster +seen Denny himself?" +"Yes but, when questioned by him, Denny denied knowing +anything of their plans, and would not give his real opinion +about it. He did not repeat his persuasion of their not +marryingand from that, I am inclined to hope, he might +have been misunderstood before." +"And till Colonel Forster came himself, not one of you +entertained a doubt, I suppose, of their being really married?" +"How was it possible that such an idea should enter our brains? +I felt a little uneasya little fearful of my sister's happiness +with him in marriage, because I knew that his conduct had not been +always quite right. My father and mother knew nothing of that +they only felt how imprudent a match it must be. Kitty then +owned, with a very natural triumph on knowing more than the +rest of us, that in Lydia's last letter she had prepared her for +such a step. She had known, it seems, of their being in love with +each other, many weeks." +"But not before they went to Brighton?" +"No, I believe not." +"And did Colonel Forster appear to think well of Wickham +himself? Does he know his real character?" +"I must confess that he did not speak so well of Wickham as he +formerly did. He believed him to be imprudent and extravagant. +And since this sad affair has taken place, it is said that he +left Meryton greatly in debt but I hope this may be false." +"Oh, Jane, had we been less secret, had we told what we knew +of him, this could not have happened" +"Perhaps it would have been better," replied her sister. "But to +expose the former faults of any person without knowing what +their present feelings were, seemed unjustifiable. We acted with +the best intentions." +"Could Colonel Forster repeat the particulars of Lydia's note to +his wife?" +"He brought it with him for us to see." +Jane then took it from her pocketbook, and gave it to Elizabeth. +These were the contents +"MY DEAR HARRIET, +"You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot +help laughing myself at your surprise tomorrow morning, as +soon as I am missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you +cannot guess with who, I shall think you a simpleton, for there +is but one man in the world I love, and he is an angel. I should +never be happy without him, so think it no harm to be off. You +need not send them word at Longbourn of my going, if you do +not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater, when I +write to them and sign my name 'Lydia Wickham.' What a good +joke it will be I can hardly write for laughing. Pray make +my excuses to Pratt for not keeping my engagement, and dancing +with him tonight. Tell him I hope he will excuse me when he +knows all and tell him I will dance with him at the next ball +we meet, with great pleasure. I shall send for my clothes when +I get to Longbourn but I wish you would tell Sally to mend a +great slit in my worked muslin gown before they are packed up. +Goodbye. Give my love to Colonel Forster. I hope you will +drink to our good journey. +"Your affectionate friend, +"LYDIA BENNET." +"Oh thoughtless, thoughtless Lydia" cried Elizabeth when she +had finished it. "What a letter is this, to be written at such +a moment But at least it shows that she was serious on the +subject of their journey. Whatever he might afterwards +persuade her to, it was not on her side a scheme of infamy. +My poor father how he must have felt it" +"I never saw anyone so shocked. He could not speak a word +for full ten minutes. My mother was taken ill immediately, +and the whole house in such confusion" +"Oh Jane," cried Elizabeth, "was there a servant belonging to it +who did not know the whole story before the end of the day?" +"I do not know. I hope there was. But to be guarded at such a +time is very difficult. My mother was in hysterics, and though +I endeavoured to give her every assistance in my power, I am +afraid I did not do so much as I might have done But the +horror of what might possibly happen almost took from me +my faculties." +"Your attendance upon her has been too much for you. You do +not look well. Oh that I had been with you you have had +every care and anxiety upon yourself alone." +"Mary and Kitty have been very kind, and would have shared in +every fatigue, I am sure but I did not think it right for either +of them. Kitty is slight and delicate and Mary studies so much, +that her hours of repose should not be broken in on. My aunt +Phillips came to Longbourn on Tuesday, after my father went +away and was so good as to stay till Thursday with me. She +was of great use and comfort to us all. And Lady Lucas has +been very kind she walked here on Wednesday morning to +condole with us, and offered her services, or any of her +daughters', if they should be of use to us." +"She had better have stayed at home," cried Elizabeth "perhaps +she meant well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one +cannot see too little of one's neighbours. Assistance is +impossible condolence insufferable. Let them triumph over us +at a distance, and be satisfied." +She then proceeded to inquire into the measures which her +father had intended to pursue, while in town, for the recovery +of his daughter. +"He meant I believe," replied Jane, "to go to Epsom, the place +where they last changed horses, see the postilions and try if +anything could be made out from them. His principal object +must be to discover the number of the hackney coach which +took them from Clapham. It had come with a fare from London +and as he thought that the circumstance of a gentleman and lady's +removing from one carriage into another might be remarked he +meant to make inquiries at Clapham. If he could anyhow discover +at what house the coachman had before set down his fare, he +determined to make inquiries there, and hoped it might not be +impossible to find out the stand and number of the coach. I do +not know of any other designs that he had formed but he was in +such a hurry to be gone, and his spirits so greatly discomposed, +that I had difficulty in finding out even so much as this." +Chapter +The whole party were in hopes of a letter from Mr. Bennet the +next morning, but the post came in without bringing a single line +from him. His family knew him to be, on all common occasions, +a most negligent and dilatory correspondent but at such a time +they had hoped for exertion. They were forced to conclude that +he had no pleasing intelligence to send but even of that they +would have been glad to be certain. Mr. Gardiner had waited +only for the letters before he set off. +When he was gone, they were certain at least of receiving +constant information of what was going on, and their uncle +promised, at parting, to prevail on Mr. Bennet to return to +Longbourn, as soon as he could, to the great consolation of his +sister, who considered it as the only security for her husband's +not being killed in a duel. +Mrs. Gardiner and the children were to remain in Hertfordshire +a few days longer, as the former thought her presence might be +serviceable to her nieces. She shared in their attendance on +Mrs. Bennet, and was a great comfort to them in their hours of +freedom. Their other aunt also visited them frequently, and +always, as she said, with the design of cheering and heartening +them upthough, as she never came without reporting some +fresh instance of Wickham's extravagance or irregularity, she +seldom went away without leaving them more dispirited than +she found them. +All Meryton seemed striving to blacken the man who, but three +months before, had been almost an angel of light. He was +declared to be in debt to every tradesman in the place, and his +intrigues, all honoured with the title of seduction, had been +extended into every tradesman's family. Everybody declared +that he was the wickedest young man in the world and everybody +began to find out that they had always distrusted the appearance +of his goodness. Elizabeth, though she did not credit above +half of what was said, believed enough to make her former +assurance of her sister's ruin more certain and even Jane, +who believed still less of it, became almost hopeless, more +especially as the time was now come when, if they had gone to +Scotland, which she had never before entirely despaired of, +they must in all probability have gained some news of them. +Mr. Gardiner left Longbourn on Sunday on Tuesday his wife +received a letter from him it told them that, on his arrival, +he had immediately found out his brother, and persuaded him to +come to Gracechurch Street that Mr. Bennet had been to +Epsom and Clapham, before his arrival, but without gaining +any satisfactory information and that he was now determined +to inquire at all the principal hotels in town, as Mr. Bennet +thought it possible they might have gone to one of them, on +their first coming to London, before they procured lodgings. +Mr. Gardiner himself did not expect any success from this +measure, but as his brother was eager in it, he meant to assist +him in pursuing it. He added that Mr. Bennet seemed wholly +disinclined at present to leave London and promised to write +again very soon. There was also a postscript to this effect +"I have written to Colonel Forster to desire him to find out, +if possible, from some of the young man's intimates in the +regiment, whether Wickham has any relations or connections +who would be likely to know in what part of town he has now +concealed himself. If there were anyone that one could apply +to with a probability of gaining such a clue as that, it might be +of essential consequence. At present we have nothing to guide +us. Colonel Forster will, I dare say, do everything in his power +to satisfy us on this head. But, on second thoughts, perhaps, +Lizzy could tell us what relations he has now living, better than +any other person." +Elizabeth was at no loss to understand from whence this +deference to her authority proceeded but it was not in her +power to give any information of so satisfactory a nature as the +compliment deserved. She had never heard of his having had +any relations, except a father and mother, both of whom had +been dead many years. It was possible, however, that some of +his companions in the shire might be able to give more +information and though she was not very sanguine in expecting +it, the application was a something to look forward to. +Every day at Longbourn was now a day of anxiety but the most +anxious part of each was when the post was expected. The +arrival of letters was the grand object of every morning's +impatience. Through letters, whatever of good or bad was to +be told would be communicated, and every succeeding day was +expected to bring some news of importance. +But before they heard again from Mr. Gardiner, a letter arrived +for their father, from a different quarter, from Mr. Collins +which, as Jane had received directions to open all that came for +him in his absence, she accordingly read and Elizabeth, who +knew what curiosities his letters always were, looked over her, +and read it likewise. It was as follows +"MY DEAR SIR, +"I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my situation +in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now +suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter +from Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs. Collins +and myself sincerely sympathise with you and all your respectable +family, in your present distress, which must be of the bitterest +kind, because proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. +No arguments shall be wanting on my part that can alleviate so +severe a misfortuneor that may comfort you, under a circumstance +that must be of all others the most afflicting to a parent's mind. +The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison +of this. And it is the more to be lamented, because there is +reason to suppose as my dear Charlotte informs me, that this +licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has proceeded from +a faulty degree of indulgence though, at the same time, for the +consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think +that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not +be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. Howsoever that +may be, you are grievously to be pitied in which opinion I am not +only joined by Mrs. Collins, but likewise by Lady Catherine and +her daughter, to whom I have related the affair. They agree with +me in apprehending that this false step in one daughter will be +injurious to the fortunes of all the others for who, as Lady +Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves +with such a family? And this consideration leads me moreover +to reflect, with augmented satisfaction, on a certain event +of last November for had it been otherwise, I must have been +involved in all your sorrow and disgrace. Let me then advise you, +dear sir, to console yourself as much as possible, to throw off +your unworthy child from your affection for ever, and leave her +to reap the fruits of her own heinous offense. +"I am, dear sir, etc., etc." +Mr. Gardiner did not write again till he had received an answer +from Colonel Forster and then he had nothing of a pleasant +nature to send. It was not known that Wickham had a single +relationship with whom he kept up any connection, and it +was certain that he had no near one living. His former +acquaintances had been numerous but since he had been in the +militia, it did not appear that he was on terms of particular +friendship with any of them. There was no one, therefore, who +could be pointed out as likely to give any news of him. And +in the wretched state of his own finances, there was a very +powerful motive for secrecy, in addition to his fear of discovery +by Lydia's relations, for it had just transpired that he had +left gaming debts behind him to a very considerable amount. +Colonel Forster believed that more than a thousand pounds +would be necessary to clear his expenses at Brighton. He owed +a good deal in town, but his debts of honour were still more +formidable. Mr. Gardiner did not attempt to conceal these +particulars from the Longbourn family. Jane heard them with +horror. "A gamester" she cried. "This is wholly unexpected. +I had not an idea of it." +Mr. Gardiner added in his letter, that they might expect to see +their father at home on the following day, which was Saturday. +Rendered spiritless by the illsuccess of all their endeavours, he +had yielded to his brotherinlaw's entreaty that he would return +to his family, and leave it to him to do whatever occasion might +suggest to be advisable for continuing their pursuit. When Mrs. +Bennet was told of this, she did not express so much satisfaction +as her children expected, considering what her anxiety for his +life had been before. +"What, is he coming home, and without poor Lydia?" she cried. +"Sure he will not leave London before he has found them. Who +is to fight Wickham, and make him marry her, if he comes away?" +As Mrs. Gardiner began to wish to be at home, it was settled +that she and the children should go to London, at the same time +that Mr. Bennet came from it. The coach, therefore, took them +the first stage of their journey, and brought its master back +to Longbourn. +Mrs. Gardiner went away in all the perplexity about Elizabeth +and her Derbyshire friend that had attended her from that part +of the world. His name had never been voluntarily mentioned +before them by her niece and the kind of halfexpectation which +Mrs. Gardiner had formed, of their being followed by a letter +from him, had ended in nothing. Elizabeth had received none +since her return that could come from Pemberley. +The present unhappy state of the family rendered any other +excuse for the lowness of her spirits unnecessary nothing, +therefore, could be fairly conjectured from that, though +Elizabeth, who was by this time tolerably well acquainted with +her own feelings, was perfectly aware that, had she known +nothing of Darcy, she could have borne the dread of Lydia's +infamy somewhat better. It would have spared her, she thought, +one sleepless night out of two. +When Mr. Bennet arrived, he had all the appearance of his usual +philosophic composure. He said as little as he had ever been in +the habit of saying made no mention of the business that had +taken him away, and it was some time before his daughters had +courage to speak of it. +It was not till the afternoon, when he had joined them at tea, +that Elizabeth ventured to introduce the subject and then, on +her briefly expressing her sorrow for what he must have +endured, he replied, "Say nothing of that. Who should suffer +but myself? It has been my own doing, and I ought to feel it." +"You must not be too severe upon yourself," replied Elizabeth. +"You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is +so prone to fall into it No, Lizzy, let me once in my life +feel how much I have been to blame. I am not afraid of being +overpowered by the impression. It will pass away soon enough." +"Do you suppose them to be in London?" +"Yes where else can they be so well concealed?" +"And Lydia used to want to go to London," added Kitty. +"She is happy then," said her father drily "and her residence +there will probably be of some duration." +Then after a short silence he continued +"Lizzy, I bear you no illwill for being justified in your advice +to me last May, which, considering the event, shows some +greatness of mind." +They were interrupted by Miss Bennet, who came to fetch her +mother's tea. +"This is a parade," he cried, "which does one good it gives such +an elegance to misfortune Another day I will do the same I +will sit in my library, in my nightcap and powdering gown, and +give as much trouble as I can or, perhaps, I may defer it till +Kitty runs away." +"I am not going to run away, papa," said Kitty fretfully. "If I +should ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia." +"You go to Brighton. I would not trust you so near it as +Eastbourne for fifty pounds No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to +be cautious, and you will feel the effects of it. No officer is ever +to enter into my house again, nor even to pass through the +village. Balls will be absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up +with one of your sisters. And you are never to stir out of doors +till you can prove that you have spent ten minutes of every day +in a rational manner." +Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to cry. +"Well, well," said he, "do not make yourself unhappy. If you +are a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review +at the end of them." +Chapter +Two days after Mr. Bennet's return, as Jane and Elizabeth were +walking together in the shrubbery behind the house, they saw +the housekeeper coming towards them, and, concluding that she +came to call them to their mother, went forward to meet her +but, instead of the expected summons, when they approached +her, she said to Miss Bennet, "I beg your pardon, madam, for +interrupting you, but I was in hopes you might have got some +good news from town, so I took the liberty of coming to ask." +"What do you mean, Hill? We have heard nothing from town." +"Dear madam," cried Mrs. Hill, in great astonishment, "don't +you know there is an express come for master from Mr. Gardiner? +He has been here this halfhour, and master has had a letter." +Away ran the girls, too eager to get in to have time for speech. +They ran through the vestibule into the breakfastroom from +thence to the library their father was in neither and they +were on the point of seeking him upstairs with their mother, +when they were met by the butler, who said +"If you are looking for my master, ma'am, he is walking +towards the little copse." +Upon this information, they instantly passed through the hall +once more, and ran across the lawn after their father, who was +deliberately pursuing his way towards a small wood on one side +of the paddock. +Jane, who was not so light nor so much in the habit of running +as Elizabeth, soon lagged behind, while her sister, panting for +breath, came up with him, and eagerly cried out +"Oh, papa, what newswhat news? Have you heard from my +uncle?" +"Yes I have had a letter from him by express." +"Well, and what news does it bringgood or bad?" +"What is there of good to be expected?" said he, taking the +letter from his pocket. "But perhaps you would like to read it." +Elizabeth impatiently caught it from his hand. Jane now came up. +"Read it aloud," said their father, "for I hardly know myself what +it is about." +"Gracechurch Street, Monday, +August . +"MY DEAR BROTHER, +"At last I am able to send you some tidings of my niece, and +such as, upon the whole, I hope it will give you satisfaction. +Soon after you left me on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to +find out in what part of London they were. The particulars I +reserve till we meet it is enough to know they are discovered. +I have seen them both" +"Then it is as I always hoped," cried Jane "they are married" +Elizabeth read on +"I have seen them both. They are not married, nor can I find +there was any intention of being so but if you are willing to +perform the engagements which I have ventured to make on your +side, I hope it will not be long before they are. All that is +required of you is, to assure to your daughter, by settlement, +her equal share of the five thousand pounds secured among your +children after the decease of yourself and my sister and, +moreover, to enter into an engagement of allowing her, during +your life, one hundred pounds per annum. These are conditions +which, considering everything, I had no hesitation in complying +with, as far as I thought myself privileged, for you. I shall +send this by express, that no time may be lost in bringing me +your answer. You will easily comprehend, from these particulars, +that Mr. Wickham's circumstances are not so hopeless as they +are generally believed to be. The world has been deceived in +that respect and I am happy to say there will be some little +money, even when all his debts are discharged, to settle on my +niece, in addition to her own fortune. If, as I conclude will +be the case, you send me full powers to act in your name +throughout the whole of this business, I will immediately give +directions to Haggerston for preparing a proper settlement. +There will not be the smallest occasion for your coming to town +again therefore stay quiet at Longbourn, and depend on my +diligence and care. Send back your answer as fast as you can, +and be careful to write explicitly. We have judged it best that +my niece should be married from this house, of which I hope +you will approve. She comes to us today. I shall write again +as soon as anything more is determined on. Yours, etc., +"EDW. GARDINER." +"Is it possible?" cried Elizabeth, when she had finished. "Can it +be possible that he will marry her?" +"Wickham is not so undeserving, then, as we thought him," said +her sister. "My dear father, I congratulate you." +"And have you answered the letter?" cried Elizabeth. +"No but it must be done soon." +Most earnestly did she then entreaty him to lose no more time +before he wrote. +"Oh my dear father," she cried, "come back and write immediately. +Consider how important every moment is in such a case." +"Let me write for you," said Jane, "if you dislike the trouble +yourself." +"I dislike it very much," he replied "but it must be done." +And so saying, he turned back with them, and walked towards +the house. +"And may I ask" said Elizabeth "but the terms, I suppose, +must be complied with." +"Complied with I am only ashamed of his asking so little." +"And they must marry Yet he is such a man" +"Yes, yes, they must marry. There is nothing else to be done. +But there are two things that I want very much to know one is, +how much money your uncle has laid down to bring it about +and the other, how am I ever to pay him." +"Money My uncle" cried Jane, "what do you mean, sir?" +"I mean, that no man in his senses would marry Lydia on so +slight a temptation as one hundred a year during my life, and +fifty after I am gone." +"That is very true," said Elizabeth "though it had not occurred +to me before. His debts to be discharged, and something still +to remain Oh it must be my uncle's doings Generous, good +man, I am afraid he has distressed himself. A small sum could +not do all this." +"No," said her father "Wickham's a fool if he takes her with a +farthing less than ten thousand pounds. I should be sorry to +think so ill of him, in the very beginning of our relationship." +"Ten thousand pounds Heaven forbid How is half such a +sum to be repaid?" +Mr. Bennet made no answer, and each of them, deep in thought, +continued silent till they reached the house. Their father then +went on to the library to write, and the girls walked into the +breakfastroom. +"And they are really to be married" cried Elizabeth, as soon +as they were by themselves. "How strange this is And for +this we are to be thankful. That they should marry, small as +is their chance of happiness, and wretched as is his character, +we are forced to rejoice. Oh, Lydia" +"I comfort myself with thinking," replied Jane, "that he certainly +would not marry Lydia if he had not a real regard for her. +Though our kind uncle has done something towards clearing +him, I cannot believe that ten thousand pounds, or anything like +it, has been advanced. He has children of his own, and may +have more. How could he spare half ten thousand pounds?" +"If he were ever able to learn what Wickham's debts have been," +said Elizabeth, "and how much is settled on his side on our +sister, we shall exactly know what Mr. Gardiner has done for +them, because Wickham has not sixpence of his own. The +kindness of my uncle and aunt can never be requited. Their +taking her home, and affording her their personal protection +and countenance, is such a sacrifice to her advantage as years +of gratitude cannot enough acknowledge. By this time she +is actually with them If such goodness does not make her +miserable now, she will never deserve to be happy What a +meeting for her, when she first sees my aunt" +"We must endeavour to forget all that has passed on either side," +said Jane "I hope and trust they will yet be happy. His +consenting to marry her is a proof, I will believe, that he is +come to a right way of thinking. Their mutual affection will +steady them and I flatter myself they will settle so quietly, +and live in so rational a manner, as may in time make their +past imprudence forgotten." +"Their conduct has been such," replied Elizabeth, "as neither +you, nor I, nor anybody can ever forget. It is useless to talk +of it." +It now occurred to the girls that their mother was in all +likelihood perfectly ignorant of what had happened. They went +to the library, therefore, and asked their father whether he +would not wish them to make it known to her. He was writing +and, without raising his head, coolly replied +"Just as you please." +"May we take my uncle's letter to read to her?" +"Take whatever you like, and get away." +Elizabeth took the letter from his writingtable, and they went +upstairs together. Mary and Kitty were both with Mrs. Bennet +one communication would, therefore, do for all. After a slight +preparation for good news, the letter was read aloud. Mrs. +Bennet could hardly contain herself. As soon as Jane had read +Mr. Gardiner's hope of Lydia's being soon married, her joy +burst forth, and every following sentence added to its +exuberance. She was now in an irritation as violent from +delight, as she had ever been fidgety from alarm and vexation. +To know that her daughter would be married was enough. She +was disturbed by no fear for her felicity, nor humbled by any +remembrance of her misconduct. +"My dear, dear Lydia" she cried. "This is delightful indeed +She will be married I shall see her again She will be married +at sixteen My good, kind brother I knew how it would be. I +knew he would manage everything How I long to see her and +to see dear Wickham too But the clothes, the wedding clothes +I will write to my sister Gardiner about them directly. Lizzy, +my dear, run down to your father, and ask him how much he will +give her. Stay, stay, I will go myself. Ring the bell, Kitty, for +Hill. I will put on my things in a moment. My dear, dear Lydia +How merry we shall be together when we meet" +Her eldest daughter endeavoured to give some relief to the +violence of these transports, by leading her thoughts to the +obligations which Mr. Gardiner's behaviour laid them all under. +"For we must attribute this happy conclusion," she added, "in a +great measure to his kindness. We are persuaded that he has +pledged himself to assist Mr. Wickham with money." +"Well," cried her mother, "it is all very right who should do it +but her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and +my children must have had all his money, you know and it is the +first time we have ever had anything from him, except a few +presents. Well I am so happy In a short time I shall have +a daughter married. Mrs. Wickham How well it sounds And +she was only sixteen last June. My dear Jane, I am in such a +flutter, that I am sure I can't write so I will dictate, and you +write for me. We will settle with your father about the money +afterwards but the things should be ordered immediately." +She was then proceeding to all the particulars of calico, +muslin, and cambric, and would shortly have dictated some very +plentiful orders, had not Jane, though with some difficulty, +persuaded her to wait till her father was at leisure to be +consulted. One day's delay, she observed, would be of small +importance and her mother was too happy to be quite so +obstinate as usual. Other schemes, too, came into her head. +"I will go to Meryton," said she, "as soon as I am dressed, and +tell the good, good news to my sister Philips. And as I come +back, I can call on Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long. Kitty, run down +and order the carriage. An airing would do me a great deal of +good, I am sure. Girls, can I do anything for you in Meryton? +Oh Here comes Hill My dear Hill, have you heard the good +news? Miss Lydia is going to be married and you shall all have +a bowl of punch to make merry at her wedding." +Mrs. Hill began instantly to express her joy. Elizabeth received +her congratulations amongst the rest, and then, sick of this folly, +took refuge in her own room, that she might think with freedom. +Poor Lydia's situation must, at best, be bad enough but that +it was no worse, she had need to be thankful. She felt it so +and though, in looking forward, neither rational happiness nor +worldly prosperity could be justly expected for her sister, in +looking back to what they had feared, only two hours ago, she +felt all the advantages of what they had gained. +Chapter +Mr. Bennet had very often wished before this period of his life +that, instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an +annual sum for the better provision of his children, and of his +wife, if she survived him. He now wished it more than ever. +Had he done his duty in that respect, Lydia need not have been +indebted to her uncle for whatever of honour or credit could +now be purchased for her. The satisfaction of prevailing on +one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be her +husband might then have rested in its proper place. +He was seriously concerned that a cause of so little advantage +to anyone should be forwarded at the sole expense of his +brotherinlaw, and he was determined, if possible, to find out +the extent of his assistance, and to discharge the obligation +as soon as he could. +When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be +perfectly useless, for, of course, they were to have a son. The +son was to join in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should +be of age, and the widow and younger children would by that +means be provided for. Five daughters successively entered the +world, but yet the son was to come and Mrs. Bennet, for many +years after Lydia's birth, had been certain that he would. This +event had at last been despaired of, but it was then too late to +be saving. Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and her +husband's love of independence had alone prevented their +exceeding their income. +Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs. +Bennet and the children. But in what proportions it should be +divided amongst the latter depended on the will of the parents. +This was one point, with regard to Lydia, at least, which was +now to be settled, and Mr. Bennet could have no hesitation in +acceding to the proposal before him. In terms of grateful +acknowledgment for the kindness of his brother, though +expressed most concisely, he then delivered on paper his perfect +approbation of all that was done, and his willingness to fulfil +the engagements that had been made for him. He had never before +supposed that, could Wickham be prevailed on to marry his +daughter, it would be done with so little inconvenience to +himself as by the present arrangement. He would scarcely be +ten pounds a year the loser by the hundred that was to be paid +them for, what with her board and pocket allowance, and the +continual presents in money which passed to her through her +mother's hands, Lydia's expenses had been very little within +that sum. +That it would be done with such trifling exertion on his side, +too, was another very welcome surprise for his wish at present +was to have as little trouble in the business as possible. When +the first transports of rage which had produced his activity in +seeking her were over, he naturally returned to all his former +indolence. His letter was soon dispatched for, though dilatory +in undertaking business, he was quick in its execution. He +begged to know further particulars of what he was indebted to +his brother, but was too angry with Lydia to send any message +to her. +The good news spread quickly through the house, and with +proportionate speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne +in the latter with decent philosophy. To be sure, it would +have been more for the advantage of conversation had Miss Lydia +Bennet come upon the town or, as the happiest alternative, +been secluded from the world, in some distant farmhouse. +But there was much to be talked of in marrying her and the +goodnatured wishes for her welldoing which had proceeded +before from all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton lost but a +little of their spirit in this change of circumstances, because +with such an husband her misery was considered certain. +It was a fortnight since Mrs. Bennet had been downstairs but on +this happy day she again took her seat at the head of her table, +and in spirits oppressively high. No sentiment of shame gave +a damp to her triumph. The marriage of a daughter, which had +been the first object of her wishes since Jane was sixteen, was +now on the point of accomplishment, and her thoughts and her +words ran wholly on those attendants of elegant nuptials, fine +muslins, new carriages, and servants. She was busily searching +through the neighbourhood for a proper situation for her +daughter, and, without knowing or considering what their +income might be, rejected many as deficient in size and +importance. +"Haye Park might do," said she, "if the Gouldings could quit itor +the great house at Stoke, if the drawingroom were larger but +Ashworth is too far off I could not bear to have her ten miles +from me and as for Pulvis Lodge, the attics are dreadful." +Her husband allowed her to talk on without interruption while +the servants remained. But when they had withdrawn, he said +to her "Mrs. Bennet, before you take any or all of these houses +for your son and daughter, let us come to a right understanding. +Into one house in this neighbourhood they shall never have +admittance. I will not encourage the impudence of either, +by receiving them at Longbourn." +A long dispute followed this declaration but Mr. Bennet was +firm. It soon led to another and Mrs. Bennet found, with +amazement and horror, that her husband would not advance a +guinea to buy clothes for his daughter. He protested that she +should receive from him no mark of affection whatever on the +occasion. Mrs. Bennet could hardly comprehend it. That his +anger could be carried to such a point of inconceivable +resentment as to refuse his daughter a privilege without which +her marriage would scarcely seem valid, exceeded all she could +believe possible. She was more alive to the disgrace which her +want of new clothes must reflect on her daughter's nuptials, than +to any sense of shame at her eloping and living with Wickham a +fortnight before they took place. +Elizabeth was now most heartily sorry that she had, from the +distress of the moment, been led to make Mr. Darcy acquainted +with their fears for her sister for since her marriage would +so shortly give the proper termination to the elopement, they +might hope to conceal its unfavourable beginning from all those +who were not immediately on the spot. +She had no fear of its spreading farther through his means. +There were few people on whose secrecy she would have more +confidently depended but, at the same time, there was no one +whose knowledge of a sister's frailty would have mortified her +so muchnot, however, from any fear of disadvantage from it +individually to herself, for, at any rate, there seemed a gulf +impassable between them. Had Lydia's marriage been concluded +on the most honourable terms, it was not to be supposed that +Mr. Darcy would connect himself with a family where, to every +other objection, would now be added an alliance and relationship +of the nearest kind with a man whom he so justly scorned. +From such a connection she could not wonder that he would shrink. +The wish of procuring her regard, which she had assured herself +of his feeling in Derbyshire, could not in rational expectation +survive such a blow as this. She was humbled, she was grieved +she repented, though she hardly knew of what. She became jealous +of his esteem, when she could no longer hope to be benefited by it. +She wanted to hear of him, when there seemed the least chance of +gaining intelligence. She was convinced that she could have been +happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet. +What a triumph for him, as she often thought, could he know +that the proposals which she had proudly spurned only four +months ago, would now have been most gladly and gratefully +received He was as generous, she doubted not, as the most +generous of his sex but while he was mortal, there must be a +triumph. +She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man +who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His +understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have +answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been +to the advantage of both by her ease and liveliness, his mind +might have been softened, his manners improved and from his +judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she must +have received benefit of greater importance. +But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring +multitude what connubial felicity really was. An union of a +different tendency, and precluding the possibility of the +other, was soon to be formed in their family. +How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable +independence, she could not imagine. But how little of +permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only +brought together because their passions were stronger than +their virtue, she could easily conjecture. +Mr. Gardiner soon wrote again to his brother. To Mr. Bennet's +acknowledgments he briefly replied, with assurance of his +eagerness to promote the welfare of any of his family and +concluded with entreaties that the subject might never be +mentioned to him again. The principal purport of his letter was +to inform them that Mr. Wickham had resolved on quitting the +militia. +"It was greatly my wish that he should do so," he added, "as +soon as his marriage was fixed on. And I think you will agree +with me, in considering the removal from that corps as highly +advisable, both on his account and my niece's. It is Mr. Wickham's +intention to go into the regulars and among his former friends, +there are still some who are able and willing to assist him in +the army. He has the promise of an ensigncy in General 's +regiment, now quartered in the North. It is an advantage to have +it so far from this part of the kingdom. He promises fairly and +I hope among different people, where they may each have a character +to preserve, they will both be more prudent. I have written to +Colonel Forster, to inform him of our present arrangements, and to +request that he will satisfy the various creditors of Mr. Wickham +in and near Brighton, with assurances of speedy payment, for which +I have pledged myself. And will you give yourself the trouble of +carrying similar assurances to his creditors in Meryton, of whom +I shall subjoin a list according to his information? He has +given in all his debts I hope at least he has not deceived us. +Haggerston has our directions, and all will be completed in a week. +They will then join his regiment, unless they are first invited to +Longbourn and I understand from Mrs. Gardiner, that my niece is +very desirous of seeing you all before she leaves the South. She +is well, and begs to be dutifully remembered to you and your +mother.Yours, etc., +"E. GARDINER." +Mr. Bennet and his daughters saw all the advantages of Wickham's +removal from the shire as clearly as Mr. Gardiner could do. +But Mrs. Bennet was not so well pleased with it. Lydia's being +settled in the North, just when she had expected most pleasure and +pride in her company, for she had by no means given up her plan +of their residing in Hertfordshire, was a severe disappointment +and, besides, it was such a pity that Lydia should be taken from +a regiment where she was acquainted with everybody, and had so +many favourites. +"She is so fond of Mrs. Forster," said she, "it will be quite +shocking to send her away And there are several of the young +men, too, that she likes very much. The officers may not be so +pleasant in General's regiment." +His daughter's request, for such it might be considered, of being +admitted into her family again before she set off for the North, +received at first an absolute negative. But Jane and Elizabeth, +who agreed in wishing, for the sake of their sister's feelings and +consequence, that she should be noticed on her marriage by her +parents, urged him so earnestly yet so rationally and so mildly, +to receive her and her husband at Longbourn, as soon as they +were married, that he was prevailed on to think as they thought, +and act as they wished. And their mother had the satisfaction +of knowing that she would be able to show her married daughter +in the neighbourhood before she was banished to the North. When +Mr. Bennet wrote again to his brother, therefore, he sent his +permission for them to come and it was settled, that as soon +as the ceremony was over, they should proceed to Longbourn. +Elizabeth was surprised, however, that Wickham should consent +to such a scheme, and had she consulted only her own inclination, +any meeting with him would have been the last object of her wishes. +Chapter +Their sister's wedding day arrived and Jane and Elizabeth felt +for her probably more than she felt for herself. The carriage +was sent to meet them at , and they were to return in it +by dinnertime. Their arrival was dreaded by the elder Miss +Bennets, and Jane more especially, who gave Lydia the feelings +which would have attended herself, had she been the culprit, +and was wretched in the thought of what her sister must endure. +They came. The family were assembled in the breakfast room to +receive them. Smiles decked the face of Mrs. Bennet as the +carriage drove up to the door her husband looked impenetrably +grave her daughters, alarmed, anxious, uneasy. +Lydia's voice was heard in the vestibule the door was thrown +open, and she ran into the room. Her mother stepped forwards, +embraced her, and welcomed her with rapture gave her hand, +with an affectionate smile, to Wickham, who followed his lady +and wished them both joy with an alacrity which shewed no doubt +of their happiness. +Their reception from Mr. Bennet, to whom they then turned, was +not quite so cordial. His countenance rather gained in austerity +and he scarcely opened his lips. The easy assurance of the +young couple, indeed, was enough to provoke him. Elizabeth was +disgusted, and even Miss Bennet was shocked. Lydia was Lydia +still untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless. She turned +from sister to sister, demanding their congratulations and when +at length they all sat down, looked eagerly round the room, took +notice of some little alteration in it, and observed, with a +laugh, that it was a great while since she had been there. +Wickham was not at all more distressed than herself, but his +manners were always so pleasing, that had his character and his +marriage been exactly what they ought, his smiles and his easy +address, while he claimed their relationship, would have +delighted them all. Elizabeth had not before believed him +quite equal to such assurance but she sat down, resolving +within herself to draw no limits in future to the impudence of +an impudent man. She blushed, and Jane blushed but the +cheeks of the two who caused their confusion suffered no +variation of colour. +There was no want of discourse. The bride and her mother could +neither of them talk fast enough and Wickham, who happened to +sit near Elizabeth, began inquiring after his acquaintance in +that neighbourhood, with a good humoured ease which she felt +very unable to equal in her replies. They seemed each of them +to have the happiest memories in the world. Nothing of the +past was recollected with pain and Lydia led voluntarily to +subjects which her sisters would not have alluded to for the +world. +"Only think of its being three months," she cried, "since I +went away it seems but a fortnight I declare and yet there +have been things enough happened in the time. Good gracious +when I went away, I am sure I had no more idea of being married +till I came back again though I thought it would be very good +fun if I was." +Her father lifted up his eyes. Jane was distressed. Elizabeth +looked expressively at Lydia but she, who never heard nor saw +anything of which she chose to be insensible, gaily continued, +"Oh mamma, do the people hereabouts know I am married +today? I was afraid they might not and we overtook William +Goulding in his curricle, so I was determined he should know +it, and so I let down the sideglass next to him, and took off +my glove, and let my hand just rest upon the window frame, so +that he might see the ring, and then I bowed and smiled like +anything." +Elizabeth could bear it no longer. She got up, and ran out of +the room and returned no more, till she heard them passing +through the hall to the dining parlour. She then joined them +soon enough to see Lydia, with anxious parade, walk up to her +mother's right hand, and hear her say to her eldest sister, +"Ah Jane, I take your place now, and you must go lower, +because I am a married woman." +It was not to be supposed that time would give Lydia that +embarrassment from which she had been so wholly free at first. +Her ease and good spirits increased. She longed to see Mrs. +Phillips, the Lucases, and all their other neighbours, and to +hear herself called "Mrs. Wickham" by each of them and in the +mean time, she went after dinner to show her ring, and boast +of being married, to Mrs. Hill and the two housemaids. +"Well, mamma," said she, when they were all returned to the +breakfast room, "and what do you think of my husband? Is not +he a charming man? I am sure my sisters must all envy me. I +only hope they may have half my good luck. They must all go to +Brighton. That is the place to get husbands. What a pity it +is, mamma, we did not all go." +"Very true and if I had my will, we should. But my dear +Lydia, I don't at all like your going such a way off. Must +it be so?" +"Oh, lord yesthere is nothing in that. I shall like it +of all things. You and papa, and my sisters, must come down +and see us. We shall be at Newcastle all the winter, and I +dare say there will be some balls, and I will take care to get +good partners for them all." +"I should like it beyond anything" said her mother. +"And then when you go away, you may leave one or two of my +sisters behind you and I dare say I shall get husbands for +them before the winter is over." +"I thank you for my share of the favour," said Elizabeth +"but I do not particularly like your way of getting husbands." +Their visitors were not to remain above ten days with them. +Mr. Wickham had received his commission before he left London, +and he was to join his regiment at the end of a fortnight. +No one but Mrs. Bennet regretted that their stay would be so +short and she made the most of the time by visiting about with +her daughter, and having very frequent parties at home. These +parties were acceptable to all to avoid a family circle was +even more desirable to such as did think, than such as did not. +Wickham's affection for Lydia was just what Elizabeth had +expected to find it not equal to Lydia's for him. She had +scarcely needed her present observation to be satisfied, from +the reason of things, that their elopement had been brought on +by the strength of her love, rather than by his and she would +have wondered why, without violently caring for her, he chose +to elope with her at all, had she not felt certain that his +flight was rendered necessary by distress of circumstances +and if that were the case, he was not the young man to resist +an opportunity of having a companion. +Lydia was exceedingly fond of him. He was her dear Wickham on +every occasion no one was to be put in competition with him. +He did every thing best in the world and she was sure he would +kill more birds on the first of September, than any body else +in the country. +One morning, soon after their arrival, as she was sitting with +her two elder sisters, she said to Elizabeth +"Lizzy, I never gave you an account of my wedding, I believe. +You were not by, when I told mamma and the others all about it. +Are not you curious to hear how it was managed?" +"No really," replied Elizabeth "I think there cannot be too +little said on the subject." +"La You are so strange But I must tell you how it went off. +We were married, you know, at St. Clement's, because Wickham's +lodgings were in that parish. And it was settled that we +should all be there by eleven o'clock. My uncle and aunt and +I were to go together and the others were to meet us at the +church. Well, Monday morning came, and I was in such a fuss +I was so afraid, you know, that something would happen to put +it off, and then I should have gone quite distracted. And +there was my aunt, all the time I was dressing, preaching and +talking away just as if she was reading a sermon. However, I +did not hear above one word in ten, for I was thinking, you may +suppose, of my dear Wickham. I longed to know whether he would +be married in his blue coat." +"Well, and so we breakfasted at ten as usual I thought it +would never be over for, by the bye, you are to understand, +that my uncle and aunt were horrid unpleasant all the time I +was with them. If you'll believe me, I did not once put my +foot out of doors, though I was there a fortnight. Not one +party, or scheme, or anything. To be sure London was rather +thin, but, however, the Little Theatre was open. Well, and so +just as the carriage came to the door, my uncle was called away +upon business to that horrid man Mr. Stone. And then, you +know, when once they get together, there is no end of it. +Well, I was so frightened I did not know what to do, for my +uncle was to give me away and if we were beyond the hour, we +could not be married all day. But, luckily, he came back again +in ten minutes' time, and then we all set out. However, I +recollected afterwards that if he had been prevented going, +the wedding need not be put off, for Mr. Darcy might have done +as well." +"Mr. Darcy" repeated Elizabeth, in utter amazement. +"Oh, yeshe was to come there with Wickham, you know. But +gracious me I quite forgot I ought not to have said a word +about it. I promised them so faithfully What will Wickham +say? It was to be such a secret" +"If it was to be secret," said Jane, "say not another word on +the subject. You may depend upon my seeking no further." +"Oh certainly," said Elizabeth, though burning with curiosity +"we will ask you no questions." +"Thank you," said Lydia, "for if you did, I should certainly +tell you all, and then Wickham would be angry." +On such encouragement to ask, Elizabeth was forced to put it +out of her power, by running away. +But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible or at +least it was impossible not to try for information. Mr. Darcy +had been at her sister's wedding. It was exactly a scene, and +exactly among people, where he had apparently least to do, and +least temptation to go. Conjectures as to the meaning of it, +rapid and wild, hurried into her brain but she was satisfied +with none. Those that best pleased her, as placing his conduct +in the noblest light, seemed most improbable. She could not +bear such suspense and hastily seizing a sheet of paper, wrote +a short letter to her aunt, to request an explanation of what +Lydia had dropt, if it were compatible with the secrecy which +had been intended. +"You may readily comprehend," she added, "what my curiosity +must be to know how a person unconnected with any of us, and +comparatively speaking a stranger to our family, should have +been amongst you at such a time. Pray write instantly, and +let me understand itunless it is, for very cogent reasons, +to remain in the secrecy which Lydia seems to think necessary +and then I must endeavour to be satisfied with ignorance." +"Not that I shall, though," she added to herself, as she +finished the letter "and my dear aunt, if you do not tell me +in an honourable manner, I shall certainly be reduced to tricks +and stratagems to find it out." +Jane's delicate sense of honour would not allow her to speak to +Elizabeth privately of what Lydia had let fall Elizabeth was +glad of ittill it appeared whether her inquiries would +receive any satisfaction, she had rather be without a confidante. +Chapter +Elizabeth had the satisfaction of receiving an answer to her +letter as soon as she possibly could. She was no sooner in +possession of it than, hurrying into the little copse, where +she was least likely to be interrupted, she sat down on one of +the benches and prepared to be happy for the length of the +letter convinced her that it did not contain a denial. +"Gracechurch street, Sept. . +"MY DEAR NIECE, +"I have just received your letter, and shall devote this whole +morning to answering it, as I foresee that a little writing +will not comprise what I have to tell you. I must confess +myself surprised by your application I did not expect it from +you. Don't think me angry, however, for I only mean to let +you know that I had not imagined such inquiries to be necessary +on your side. If you do not choose to understand me, forgive +my impertinence. Your uncle is as much surprised as I amand +nothing but the belief of your being a party concerned would +have allowed him to act as he has done. But if you are really +innocent and ignorant, I must be more explicit. +"On the very day of my coming home from Longbourn, your uncle had a +most unexpected visitor. Mr. Darcy called, and was shut up with him +several hours. It was all over before I arrived so my curiosity was +not so dreadfully racked as your's seems to have been. He came to +tell Mr. Gardiner that he had found out where your sister and +Mr. Wickham were, and that he had seen and talked with them both +Wickham repeatedly, Lydia once. From what I can collect, he left +Derbyshire only one day after ourselves, and came to town with the +resolution of hunting for them. The motive professed was his +conviction of its being owing to himself that Wickham's worthlessness +had not been so well known as to make it impossible for any young +woman of character to love or confide in him. He generously imputed +the whole to his mistaken pride, and confessed that he had before +thought it beneath him to lay his private actions open to the world. +His character was to speak for itself. He called it, therefore, his +duty to step forward, and endeavour to remedy an evil which had been +brought on by himself. If he had another motive, I am sure it would +never disgrace him. He had been some days in town, before he was able +to discover them but he had something to direct his search, which was +more than we had and the consciousness of this was another reason for +his resolving to follow us. +"There is a lady, it seems, a Mrs. Younge, who was some time ago +governess to Miss Darcy, and was dismissed from her charge on some +cause of disapprobation, though he did not say what. She then took a +large house in Edwardstreet, and has since maintained herself by +letting lodgings. This Mrs. Younge was, he knew, intimately +acquainted with Wickham and he went to her for intelligence of him as +soon as he got to town. But it was two or three days before he could +get from her what he wanted. She would not betray her trust, I +suppose, without bribery and corruption, for she really did know where +her friend was to be found. Wickham indeed had gone to her on their +first arrival in London, and had she been able to receive them into +her house, they would have taken up their abode with her. At length, +however, our kind friend procured the wishedfor direction. They were +in street. He saw Wickham, and afterwards insisted on seeing +Lydia. His first object with her, he acknowledged, had been to +persuade her to quit her present disgraceful situation, and return to +her friends as soon as they could be prevailed on to receive her, +offering his assistance, as far as it would go. But he found Lydia +absolutely resolved on remaining where she was. She cared for none of +her friends she wanted no help of his she would not hear of leaving +Wickham. She was sure they should be married some time or other, and +it did not much signify when. Since such were her feelings, it only +remained, he thought, to secure and expedite a marriage, which, in his +very first conversation with Wickham, he easily learnt had never been +his design. He confessed himself obliged to leave the regiment, on +account of some debts of honour, which were very pressing and +scrupled not to lay all the illconsequences of Lydia's flight on her +own folly alone. He meant to resign his commission immediately and +as to his future situation, he could conjecture very little about it. +He must go somewhere, but he did not know where, and he knew he should +have nothing to live on. +"Mr. Darcy asked him why he had not married your sister at once. +Though Mr. Bennet was not imagined to be very rich, he would have been +able to do something for him, and his situation must have been +benefited by marriage. But he found, in reply to this question, that +Wickham still cherished the hope of more effectually making his +fortune by marriage in some other country. Under such circumstances, +however, he was not likely to be proof against the temptation of +immediate relief. +"They met several times, for there was much to be discussed. +Wickham of course wanted more than he could get but at length +was reduced to be reasonable. +"Every thing being settled between them, Mr. Darcy's next step was to +make your uncle acquainted with it, and he first called in Gracechurch +street the evening before I came home. But Mr. Gardiner could not be +seen, and Mr. Darcy found, on further inquiry, that your father was +still with him, but would quit town the next morning. He did not +judge your father to be a person whom he could so properly consult as +your uncle, and therefore readily postponed seeing him till after the +departure of the former. He did not leave his name, and till the next +day it was only known that a gentleman had called on business. +"On Saturday he came again. Your father was gone, your uncle at home, +and, as I said before, they had a great deal of talk together. +"They met again on Sunday, and then I saw him too. It was not all +settled before Monday as soon as it was, the express was sent off to +Longbourn. But our visitor was very obstinate. I fancy, Lizzy, that +obstinacy is the real defect of his character, after all. He has been +accused of many faults at different times, but this is the true one. +Nothing was to be done that he did not do himself though I am sure +and I do not speak it to be thanked, therefore say nothing about it, +your uncle would most readily have settled the whole. +"They battled it together for a long time, which was more than either +the gentleman or lady concerned in it deserved. But at last your +uncle was forced to yield, and instead of being allowed to be of use +to his niece, was forced to put up with only having the probable +credit of it, which went sorely against the grain and I really +believe your letter this morning gave him great pleasure, because it +required an explanation that would rob him of his borrowed feathers, +and give the praise where it was due. But, Lizzy, this must go no +farther than yourself, or Jane at most. +"You know pretty well, I suppose, what has been done for the young +people. His debts are to be paid, amounting, I believe, to +considerably more than a thousand pounds, another thousand in addition +to her own settled upon her, and his commission purchased. The reason +why all this was to be done by him alone, was such as I have given +above. It was owing to him, to his reserve and want of proper +consideration, that Wickham's character had been so misunderstood, and +consequently that he had been received and noticed as he was. Perhaps +there was some truth in this though I doubt whether his reserve, or +anybody's reserve, can be answerable for the event. But in spite of +all this fine talking, my dear Lizzy, you may rest perfectly assured +that your uncle would never have yielded, if we had not given him +credit for another interest in the affair. +"When all this was resolved on, he returned again to his friends, who +were still staying at Pemberley but it was agreed that he should be +in London once more when the wedding took place, and all money matters +were then to receive the last finish. +"I believe I have now told you every thing. It is a relation which you +tell me is to give you great surprise I hope at least it will not +afford you any displeasure. Lydia came to us and Wickham had +constant admission to the house. He was exactly what he had been, +when I knew him in Hertfordshire but I would not tell you how little +I was satisfied with her behaviour while she staid with us, if I had +not perceived, by Jane's letter last Wednesday, that her conduct on +coming home was exactly of a piece with it, and therefore what I now +tell you can give you no fresh pain. I talked to her repeatedly in +the most serious manner, representing to her all the wickedness of +what she had done, and all the unhappiness she had brought on her +family. If she heard me, it was by good luck, for I am sure she did +not listen. I was sometimes quite provoked, but then I recollected my +dear Elizabeth and Jane, and for their sakes had patience with her. +"Mr. Darcy was punctual in his return, and as Lydia informed you, +attended the wedding. He dined with us the next day, and was to leave +town again on Wednesday or Thursday. Will you be very angry with me, +my dear Lizzy, if I take this opportunity of saying what I was never +bold enough to say before how much I like him. His behaviour to us +has, in every respect, been as pleasing as when we were in Derbyshire. +His understanding and opinions all please me he wants nothing but a +little more liveliness, and that, if he marry prudently, his wife +may teach him. I thought him very slyhe hardly ever mentioned your +name. But slyness seems the fashion. +"Pray forgive me if I have been very presuming, or at least do not +punish me so far as to exclude me from P. I shall never be quite +happy till I have been all round the park. A low phaeton, with a nice +little pair of ponies, would be the very thing. +"But I must write no more. The children have been wanting me this half +hour. +"Yours, very sincerely, +"M. GARDINER." +The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter +of spirits, in which it was difficult to determine whether +pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and +unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what +Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's match, +which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness +too great to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be +just, from the pain of obligation, were proved beyond their +greatest extent to be true He had followed them purposely to +town, he had taken on himself all the trouble and mortification +attendant on such a research in which supplication had been +necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and despise, and +where he was reduced to meet, frequently meet, reason with, +persuade, and finally bribe, the man whom he always most wished +to avoid, and whose very name it was punishment to him to +pronounce. He had done all this for a girl whom he could +neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper that he had +done it for her. But it was a hope shortly checked by other +considerations, and she soon felt that even her vanity was +insufficient, when required to depend on his affection for her +for a woman who had already refused himas able to overcome +a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against relationship with +Wickham. Brotherinlaw of Wickham Every kind of pride must +revolt from the connection. He had, to be sure, done much. +She was ashamed to think how much. But he had given a reason +for his interference, which asked no extraordinary stretch of +belief. It was reasonable that he should feel he had been wrong +he had liberality, and he had the means of exercising it and +though she would not place herself as his principal inducement, +she could, perhaps, believe that remaining partiality for her +might assist his endeavours in a cause where her peace of mind +must be materially concerned. It was painful, exceedingly +painful, to know that they were under obligations to a person +who could never receive a return. They owed the restoration of +Lydia, her character, every thing, to him. Oh how heartily +did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever +encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. +For herself she was humbled but she was proud of him. Proud +that in a cause of compassion and honour, he had been able to get +the better of himself. She read over her aunt's commendation +of him again and again. It was hardly enough but it pleased +her. She was even sensible of some pleasure, though mixed with +regret, on finding how steadfastly both she and her uncle had +been persuaded that affection and confidence subsisted between +Mr. Darcy and herself. +She was roused from her seat, and her reflections, by some +one's approach and before she could strike into another path, +she was overtaken by Wickham. +"I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister?" +said he, as he joined her. +"You certainly do," she replied with a smile "but it does not +follow that the interruption must be unwelcome." +"I should be sorry indeed, if it were. We were always good +friends and now we are better." +"True. Are the others coming out?" +"I do not know. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia are going in the +carriage to Meryton. And so, my dear sister, I find, from +our uncle and aunt, that you have actually seen Pemberley." +She replied in the affirmative. +"I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would +be too much for me, or else I could take it in my way to +Newcastle. And you saw the old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor +Reynolds, she was always very fond of me. But of course she +did not mention my name to you." +"Yes, she did." +"And what did she say?" +"That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid had +not turned out well. At such a distance as that, you +know, things are strangely misrepresented." +"Certainly," he replied, biting his lips. Elizabeth hoped she +had silenced him but he soon afterwards said +"I was surprised to see Darcy in town last month. We passed +each other several times. I wonder what he can be doing +there." +"Perhaps preparing for his marriage with Miss de Bourgh," said +Elizabeth. "It must be something particular, to take him there +at this time of year." +"Undoubtedly. Did you see him while you were at Lambton? +I thought I understood from the Gardiners that you had." +"Yes he introduced us to his sister." +"And do you like her?" +"Very much." +"I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within +this year or two. When I last saw her, she was not very +promising. I am very glad you liked her. I hope she will turn +out well." +"I dare say she will she has got over the most trying age." +"Did you go by the village of Kympton?" +"I do not recollect that we did." +"I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have +had. A most delightful placeExcellent Parsonage House +It would have suited me in every respect." +"How should you have liked making sermons?" +"Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my +duty, and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought +not to repinebut, to be sure, it would have been such a +thing for me The quiet, the retirement of such a life would +have answered all my ideas of happiness But it was not to be. +Did you ever hear Darcy mention the circumstance, when you were +in Kent?" +"I have heard from authority, which I thought as good, +that it was left you conditionally only, and at the will of the +present patron." +"You have. Yes, there was something in that I told you so +from the first, you may remember." +"I did hear, too, that there was a time, when sermonmaking +was not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present that +you actually declared your resolution of never taking orders, +and that the business had been compromised accordingly." +"You did and it was not wholly without foundation. You may +remember what I told you on that point, when first we talked +of it." +They were now almost at the door of the house, for she +had walked fast to get rid of him and unwilling, for her +sister's sake, to provoke him, she only said in reply, with +a goodhumoured smile +"Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. +Do not let us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we +shall be always of one mind." +She held out her hand he kissed it with affectionate gallantry, +though he hardly knew how to look, and they entered the house. +Chapter +Mr. Wickham was so perfectly satisfied with this conversation +that he never again distressed himself, or provoked his dear +sister Elizabeth, by introducing the subject of it and she was +pleased to find that she had said enough to keep him quiet. +The day of his and Lydia's departure soon came, and Mrs. Bennet +was forced to submit to a separation, which, as her husband by +no means entered into her scheme of their all going to +Newcastle, was likely to continue at least a twelvemonth. +"Oh my dear Lydia," she cried, "when shall we meet again?" +"Oh, lord I don't know. Not these two or three years, +perhaps." +"Write to me very often, my dear." +"As often as I can. But you know married women have never much +time for writing. My sisters may write to me. They will +have nothing else to do." +Mr. Wickham's adieus were much more affectionate than his +wife's. He smiled, looked handsome, and said many pretty +things. +"He is as fine a fellow," said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were +out of the house, "as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and +makes love to us all. I am prodigiously proud of him. I defy +even Sir William Lucas himself to produce a more valuable +soninlaw." +The loss of her daughter made Mrs. Bennet very dull for +several days. +"I often think," said she, "that there is nothing so bad as +parting with one's friends. One seems so forlorn without +them." +"This is the consequence, you see, Madam, of marrying a daughter," +said Elizabeth. "It must make you better satisfied that your +other four are single." +"It is no such thing. Lydia does not leave me because she is +married, but only because her husband's regiment happens to be +so far off. If that had been nearer, she would not have gone +so soon." +But the spiritless condition which this event threw her into +was shortly relieved, and her mind opened again to the +agitation of hope, by an article of news which then began to be +in circulation. The housekeeper at Netherfield had received +orders to prepare for the arrival of her master, who was coming +down in a day or two, to shoot there for several weeks. +Mrs. Bennet was quite in the fidgets. She looked at Jane, and +smiled and shook her head by turns. +"Well, well, and so Mr. Bingley is coming down, sister," +for Mrs. Phillips first brought her the news. "Well, so +much the better. Not that I care about it, though. He is +nothing to us, you know, and I am sure I never want to +see him again. But, however, he is very welcome to come +to Netherfield, if he likes it. And who knows what may +happen? But that is nothing to us. You know, sister, we +agreed long ago never to mention a word about it. And so, +is it quite certain he is coming?" +"You may depend on it," replied the other, "for Mrs. Nicholls +was in Meryton last night I saw her passing by, and went out +myself on purpose to know the truth of it and she told me that +it was certain true. He comes down on Thursday at the latest, +very likely on Wednesday. She was going to the butcher's, she +told me, on purpose to order in some meat on Wednesday, and she +has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed." +Miss Bennet had not been able to hear of his coming without +changing colour. It was many months since she had mentioned +his name to Elizabeth but now, as soon as they were alone +together, she said +"I saw you look at me today, Lizzy, when my aunt told us of +the present report and I know I appeared distressed. But +don't imagine it was from any silly cause. I was only confused +for the moment, because I felt that I should be looked at. +I do assure you that the news does not affect me either with +pleasure or pain. I am glad of one thing, that he comes alone +because we shall see the less of him. Not that I am afraid of +myself, but I dread other people's remarks." +Elizabeth did not know what to make of it. Had she not seen +him in Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of +coming there with no other view than what was acknowledged but +she still thought him partial to Jane, and she wavered as to +the greater probability of his coming there with his friend's +permission, or being bold enough to come without it. +"Yet it is hard," she sometimes thought, "that this poor man +cannot come to a house which he has legally hired, without +raising all this speculation I will leave him to himself." +In spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be +her feelings in the expectation of his arrival, Elizabeth could +easily perceive that her spirits were affected by it. They +were more disturbed, more unequal, than she had often seen them. +The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their +parents, about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward +again. +"As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear," said Mrs. Bennet, +"you will wait on him of course." +"No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and +promised, if I went to see him, he should marry one of my +daughters. But it ended in nothing, and I will not be sent on +a fool's errand again." +His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an +attention would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his +returning to Netherfield. +"'Tis an etiquette I despise," said he. "If he wants our +society, let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not +spend my hours in running after my neighbours every time they +go away and come back again." +"Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do +not wait on him. But, however, that shan't prevent my asking +him to dine here, I am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and +the Gouldings soon. That will make thirteen with ourselves, so +there will be just room at table for him." +Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear +her husband's incivility though it was very mortifying to know +that her neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence +of it, before they did. As the day of his arrival drew near +"I begin to be sorry that he comes at all," said Jane to her +sister. "It would be nothing I could see him with perfect +indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually +talked of. My mother means well but she does not know, no one +can know, how much I suffer from what she says. Happy shall I +be, when his stay at Netherfield is over" +"I wish I could say anything to comfort you," replied Elizabeth +"but it is wholly out of my power. You must feel it and the +usual satisfaction of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied +me, because you have always so much." +Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of +servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that +the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side might be as +long as it could. She counted the days that must intervene +before their invitation could be sent hopeless of seeing +him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in +Hertfordshire, she saw him, from her dressingroom window, +enter the paddock and ride towards the house. +Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane +resolutely kept her place at the table but Elizabeth, to +satisfy her mother, went to the windowshe looked,she +saw Mr. Darcy with him, and sat down again by her sister. +"There is a gentleman with him, mamma," said Kitty "who can it be?" +"Some acquaintance or other, my dear, I suppose I am sure I +do not know." +"La" replied Kitty, "it looks just like that man that used to +be with him before. Mr. what'shisname. That tall, proud +man." +"Good gracious Mr. Darcyand so it does, I vow. Well, +any friend of Mr. Bingley's will always be welcome here, to be +sure but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him." +Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern. She knew +but little of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt +for the awkwardness which must attend her sister, in seeing him +almost for the first time after receiving his explanatory +letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable enough. Each felt +for the other, and of course for themselves and their mother +talked on, of her dislike of Mr. Darcy, and her resolution +to be civil to him only as Mr. Bingley's friend, without +being heard by either of them. But Elizabeth had sources of +uneasiness which could not be suspected by Jane, to whom she +had never yet had courage to shew Mrs. Gardiner's letter, or +to relate her own change of sentiment towards him. To Jane, +he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused, and +whose merit she had undervalued but to her own more extensive +information, he was the person to whom the whole family were +indebted for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded +herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at least +as reasonable and just as what Jane felt for Bingley. Her +astonishment at his comingat his coming to Netherfield, to +Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again, was almost equal +to what she had known on first witnessing his altered behaviour +in Derbyshire. +The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for +half a minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight +added lustre to her eyes, as she thought for that space of time +that his affection and wishes must still be unshaken. But she +would not be secure. +"Let me first see how he behaves," said she "it will then be +early enough for expectation." +She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without +daring to lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them +to the face of her sister as the servant was approaching the +door. Jane looked a little paler than usual, but more sedate +than Elizabeth had expected. On the gentlemen's appearing, her +colour increased yet she received them with tolerable ease, +and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any symptom +of resentment or any unnecessary complaisance. +Elizabeth said as little to either as civility would allow, and +sat down again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not +often command. She had ventured only one glance at Darcy. He +looked serious, as usual and, she thought, more as he had been +used to look in Hertfordshire, than as she had seen him at +Pemberley. But, perhaps he could not in her mother's presence +be what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, +but not an improbable, conjecture. +Bingley, she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that +short period saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He +was received by Mrs. Bennet with a degree of civility which +made her two daughters ashamed, especially when contrasted with +the cold and ceremonious politeness of her curtsey and address +to his friend. +Elizabeth, particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the +latter the preservation of her favourite daughter from +irremediable infamy, was hurt and distressed to a most painful +degree by a distinction so ill applied. +Darcy, after inquiring of her how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner did, a +question which she could not answer without confusion, said +scarcely anything. He was not seated by her perhaps that +was the reason of his silence but it had not been so in +Derbyshire. There he had talked to her friends, when he could +not to herself. But now several minutes elapsed without +bringing the sound of his voice and when occasionally, unable +to resist the impulse of curiosity, she raised he eyes to his +face, she as often found him looking at Jane as at herself, and +frequently on no object but the ground. More thoughtfulness +and less anxiety to please, than when they last met, were +plainly expressed. She was disappointed, and angry with +herself for being so. +"Could I expect it to be otherwise" said she. "Yet why did +he come?" +She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself +and to him she had hardly courage to speak. +She inquired after his sister, but could do no more. +"It is a long time, Mr. Bingley, since you went away," said +Mrs. Bennet. +He readily agreed to it. +"I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People +did say you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas +but, however, I hope it is not true. A great many changes have +happened in the neighbourhood, since you went away. Miss Lucas +is married and settled. And one of my own daughters. I suppose +you have heard of it indeed, you must have seen it in the +papers. It was in The Times and The Courier, I know though +it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, 'Lately, +George Wickham, Esq. to Miss Lydia Bennet,' without there being +a syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or +anything. It was my brother Gardiner's drawing up too, and I +wonder how he came to make such an awkward business of it. Did +you see it?" +Bingley replied that he did, and made his congratulations. +Elizabeth dared not lift up her eyes. How Mr. Darcy looked, +therefore, she could not tell. +"It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter +well married," continued her mother, "but at the same time, +Mr. Bingley, it is very hard to have her taken such a way from +me. They are gone down to Newcastle, a place quite northward, +it seems, and there they are to stay I do not know how long. +His regiment is there for I suppose you have heard of his +leaving the shire, and of his being gone into the regulars. +Thank Heaven he has some friends, though perhaps not so +many as he deserves." +Elizabeth, who knew this to be levelled at Mr. Darcy, was +in such misery of shame, that she could hardly keep her seat. +It drew from her, however, the exertion of speaking, which +nothing else had so effectually done before and she asked +Bingley whether he meant to make any stay in the country at +present. A few weeks, he believed. +"When you have killed all your own birds, Mr. Bingley," +said her mother, "I beg you will come here, and shoot as +many as you please on Mr. Bennet's manor. I am sure he +will be vastly happy to oblige you, and will save all the +best of the covies for you." +Elizabeth's misery increased, at such unnecessary, such +officious attention Were the same fair prospect to arise at +present as had flattered them a year ago, every thing, she was +persuaded, would be hastening to the same vexatious conclusion. +At that instant, she felt that years of happiness could not +make Jane or herself amends for moments of such painful +confusion. +"The first wish of my heart," said she to herself, "is never +more to be in company with either of them. Their society can +afford no pleasure that will atone for such wretchedness as +this Let me never see either one or the other again" +Yet the misery, for which years of happiness were to offer no +compensation, received soon afterwards material relief, from +observing how much the beauty of her sister rekindled the +admiration of her former lover. When first he came in, he had +spoken to her but little but every five minutes seemed to be +giving her more of his attention. He found her as handsome as +she had been last year as good natured, and as unaffected, +though not quite so chatty. Jane was anxious that no difference +should be perceived in her at all, and was really persuaded that +she talked as much as ever. But her mind was so busily engaged, +that she did not always know when she was silent. +When the gentlemen rose to go away, Mrs. Bennet was mindful of +her intended civility, and they were invited and engaged to +dine at Longbourn in a few days time. +"You are quite a visit in my debt, Mr. Bingley," she added, +"for when you went to town last winter, you promised to take +a family dinner with us, as soon as you returned. I have not +forgot, you see and I assure you, I was very much disappointed +that you did not come back and keep your engagement." +Bingley looked a little silly at this reflection, and said +something of his concern at having been prevented by business. +They then went away. +Mrs. Bennet had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and +dine there that day but, though she always kept a very good +table, she did not think anything less than two courses could +be good enough for a man on whom she had such anxious designs, +or satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had ten thousand a +year. +Chapter +As soon as they were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover +her spirits or in other words, to dwell without interruption +on those subjects that must deaden them more. Mr. Darcy's +behaviour astonished and vexed her. +"Why, if he came only to be silent, grave, and indifferent," +said she, "did he come at all?" +She could settle it in no way that gave her pleasure. +"He could be still amiable, still pleasing, to my uncle and +aunt, when he was in town and why not to me? If he fears me, +why come hither? If he no longer cares for me, why silent? +Teasing, teasing, man I will think no more about him." +Her resolution was for a short time involuntarily kept by +the approach of her sister, who joined her with a cheerful +look, which showed her better satisfied with their visitors, +than Elizabeth. +"Now," said she, "that this first meeting is over, I feel +perfectly easy. I know my own strength, and I shall never be +embarrassed again by his coming. I am glad he dines here on +Tuesday. It will then be publicly seen that, on both sides, +we meet only as common and indifferent acquaintance." +"Yes, very indifferent indeed," said Elizabeth, laughingly. +"Oh, Jane, take care." +"My dear Lizzy, you cannot think me so weak, as to be in danger +now?" +"I think you are in very great danger of making him as much +in love with you as ever." +They did not see the gentlemen again till Tuesday and +Mrs. Bennet, in the meanwhile, was giving way to all the +happy schemes, which the good humour and common politeness +of Bingley, in half an hour's visit, had revived. +On Tuesday there was a large party assembled at Longbourn +and the two who were most anxiously expected, to the credit of +their punctuality as sportsmen, were in very good time. When +they repaired to the diningroom, Elizabeth eagerly watched to +see whether Bingley would take the place, which, in all their +former parties, had belonged to him, by her sister. Her +prudent mother, occupied by the same ideas, forbore to invite +him to sit by herself. On entering the room, he seemed to +hesitate but Jane happened to look round, and happened to +smile it was decided. He placed himself by her. +Elizabeth, with a triumphant sensation, looked towards his +friend. He bore it with noble indifference, and she would have +imagined that Bingley had received his sanction to be happy, +had she not seen his eyes likewise turned towards Mr. Darcy, +with an expression of halflaughing alarm. +His behaviour to her sister was such, during dinner time, as +showed an admiration of her, which, though more guarded than +formerly, persuaded Elizabeth, that if left wholly to himself, +Jane's happiness, and his own, would be speedily secured. +Though she dared not depend upon the consequence, she yet +received pleasure from observing his behaviour. It gave her +all the animation that her spirits could boast for she was in +no cheerful humour. Mr. Darcy was almost as far from her as +the table could divide them. He was on one side of her mother. +She knew how little such a situation would give pleasure to +either, or make either appear to advantage. She was not near +enough to hear any of their discourse, but she could see how +seldom they spoke to each other, and how formal and cold was +their manner whenever they did. Her mother's ungraciousness, +made the sense of what they owed him more painful to Elizabeth's +mind and she would, at times, have given anything to be +privileged to tell him that his kindness was neither unknown +nor unfelt by the whole of the family. +She was in hopes that the evening would afford some opportunity +of bringing them together that the whole of the visit would +not pass away without enabling them to enter into something +more of conversation than the mere ceremonious salutation +attending his entrance. Anxious and uneasy, the period which +passed in the drawingroom, before the gentlemen came, was +wearisome and dull to a degree that almost made her uncivil. +She looked forward to their entrance as the point on which all +her chance of pleasure for the evening must depend. +"If he does not come to me, then," said she, "I shall give +him up for ever." +The gentlemen came and she thought he looked as if he would +have answered her hopes but, alas the ladies had crowded +round the table, where Miss Bennet was making tea, and +Elizabeth pouring out the coffee, in so close a confederacy +that there was not a single vacancy near her which would admit +of a chair. And on the gentlemen's approaching, one of the +girls moved closer to her than ever, and said, in a whisper +"The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want +none of them do we?" +Darcy had walked away to another part of the room. She +followed him with her eyes, envied everyone to whom he spoke, +had scarcely patience enough to help anybody to coffee and +then was enraged against herself for being so silly +"A man who has once been refused How could I ever be foolish +enough to expect a renewal of his love? Is there one among the +sex, who would not protest against such a weakness as a second +proposal to the same woman? There is no indignity so abhorrent +to their feelings" +She was a little revived, however, by his bringing back his +coffee cup himself and she seized the opportunity of saying +"Is your sister at Pemberley still?" +"Yes, she will remain there till Christmas." +"And quite alone? Have all her friends left her?" +"Mrs. Annesley is with her. The others have been gone on to +Scarborough, these three weeks." +She could think of nothing more to say but if he wished to +converse with her, he might have better success. He stood by +her, however, for some minutes, in silence and, at last, on +the young lady's whispering to Elizabeth again, he walked away. +When the teathings were removed, and the cardtables placed, +the ladies all rose, and Elizabeth was then hoping to be soon +joined by him, when all her views were overthrown by seeing him +fall a victim to her mother's rapacity for whist players, and +in a few moments after seated with the rest of the party. She +now lost every expectation of pleasure. They were confined for +the evening at different tables, and she had nothing to hope, +but that his eyes were so often turned towards her side of the +room, as to make him play as unsuccessfully as herself. +Mrs. Bennet had designed to keep the two Netherfield gentlemen +to supper but their carriage was unluckily ordered before any +of the others, and she had no opportunity of detaining them. +"Well girls," said she, as soon as they were left to themselves, +"What say you to the day? I think every thing has passed off +uncommonly well, I assure you. The dinner was as well dressed +as any I ever saw. The venison was roasted to a turnand +everybody said they never saw so fat a haunch. The soup was +fifty times better than what we had at the Lucases' last week +and even Mr. Darcy acknowledged, that the partridges were +remarkably well done and I suppose he has two or three French +cooks at least. And, my dear Jane, I never saw you look in +greater beauty. Mrs. Long said so too, for I asked her whether +you did not. And what do you think she said besides? 'Ah Mrs. +Bennet, we shall have her at Netherfield at last.' She did +indeed. I do think Mrs. Long is as good a creature as ever +livedand her nieces are very pretty behaved girls, and not +at all handsome I like them prodigiously." +Mrs. Bennet, in short, was in very great spirits she had seen +enough of Bingley's behaviour to Jane, to be convinced that she +would get him at last and her expectations of advantage to her +family, when in a happy humour, were so far beyond reason, that +she was quite disappointed at not seeing him there again the +next day, to make his proposals. +"It has been a very agreeable day," said Miss Bennet to +Elizabeth. "The party seemed so well selected, so suitable +one with the other. I hope we may often meet again." +Elizabeth smiled. +"Lizzy, you must not do so. You must not suspect me. It +mortifies me. I assure you that I have now learnt to enjoy +his conversation as an agreeable and sensible young man, +without having a wish beyond it. I am perfectly satisfied, +from what his manners now are, that he never had any design +of engaging my affection. It is only that he is blessed +with greater sweetness of address, and a stronger desire of +generally pleasing, than any other man." +"You are very cruel," said her sister, "you will not let me +smile, and are provoking me to it every moment." +"How hard it is in some cases to be believed" +"And how impossible in others" +"But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I +acknowledge?" +"That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all +love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth +knowing. Forgive me and if you persist in indifference, do +not make me your confidante." +Chapter +A few days after this visit, Mr. Bingley called again, and +alone. His friend had left him that morning for London, but +was to return home in ten days time. He sat with them above an +hour, and was in remarkably good spirits. Mrs. Bennet invited +him to dine with them but, with many expressions of concern, +he confessed himself engaged elsewhere. +"Next time you call," said she, "I hope we shall be more +lucky." +He should be particularly happy at any time, etc. etc. and if +she would give him leave, would take an early opportunity of +waiting on them. +"Can you come tomorrow?" +Yes, he had no engagement at all for tomorrow and her +invitation was accepted with alacrity. +He came, and in such very good time that the ladies were none +of them dressed. In ran Mrs. Bennet to her daughter's room, in +her dressing gown, and with her hair half finished, crying out +"My dear Jane, make haste and hurry down. He is comeMr. +Bingley is come. He is, indeed. Make haste, make haste. +Here, Sarah, come to Miss Bennet this moment, and help her +on with her gown. Never mind Miss Lizzy's hair." +"We will be down as soon as we can," said Jane "but I dare say +Kitty is forwarder than either of us, for she went up stairs +half an hour ago." +"Oh hang Kitty what has she to do with it? Come be quick, +be quick Where is your sash, my dear?" +But when her mother was gone, Jane would not be prevailed on to +go down without one of her sisters. +The same anxiety to get them by themselves was visible again +in the evening. After tea, Mr. Bennet retired to the library, +as was his custom, and Mary went up stairs to her instrument. +Two obstacles of the five being thus removed, Mrs. Bennet +sat looking and winking at Elizabeth and Catherine for a +considerable time, without making any impression on them. +Elizabeth would not observe her and when at last Kitty did, +she very innocently said, "What is the matter mamma? What do +you keep winking at me for? What am I to do?" +"Nothing child, nothing. I did not wink at you." She then sat +still five minutes longer but unable to waste such a precious +occasion, she suddenly got up, and saying to Kitty, "Come here, +my love, I want to speak to you," took her out of the room. +Jane instantly gave a look at Elizabeth which spoke her +distress at such premeditation, and her entreaty that she +would not give in to it. In a few minutes, Mrs. Bennet +halfopened the door and called out +"Lizzy, my dear, I want to speak with you." +Elizabeth was forced to go. +"We may as well leave them by themselves you know" said her +mother, as soon as she was in the hall. "Kitty and I are going +upstairs to sit in my dressingroom." +Elizabeth made no attempt to reason with her mother, but +remained quietly in the hall, till she and Kitty were out of +sight, then returned into the drawingroom. +Mrs. Bennet's schemes for this day were ineffectual. Bingley +was every thing that was charming, except the professed lover +of her daughter. His ease and cheerfulness rendered him a +most agreeable addition to their evening party and he bore +with the illjudged officiousness of the mother, and heard all +her silly remarks with a forbearance and command of countenance +particularly grateful to the daughter. +He scarcely needed an invitation to stay supper and before he +went away, an engagement was formed, chiefly through his own +and Mrs. Bennet's means, for his coming next morning to shoot +with her husband. +After this day, Jane said no more of her indifference. +Not a word passed between the sisters concerning Bingley +but Elizabeth went to bed in the happy belief that all must +speedily be concluded, unless Mr. Darcy returned within the +stated time. Seriously, however, she felt tolerably persuaded +that all this must have taken place with that gentleman's +concurrence. +Bingley was punctual to his appointment and he and Mr. Bennet +spent the morning together, as had been agreed on. The latter +was much more agreeable than his companion expected. There was +nothing of presumption or folly in Bingley that could provoke +his ridicule, or disgust him into silence and he was more +communicative, and less eccentric, than the other had ever seen +him. Bingley of course returned with him to dinner and in the +evening Mrs. Bennet's invention was again at work to get every +body away from him and her daughter. Elizabeth, who had a +letter to write, went into the breakfast room for that purpose +soon after tea for as the others were all going to sit down to +cards, she could not be wanted to counteract her mother's +schemes. +But on returning to the drawingroom, when her letter was +finished, she saw, to her infinite surprise, there was +reason to fear that her mother had been too ingenious for +her. On opening the door, she perceived her sister and +Bingley standing together over the hearth, as if engaged in +earnest conversation and had this led to no suspicion, the +faces of both, as they hastily turned round and moved away +from each other, would have told it all. Their situation +was awkward enough but her's she thought was still worse. +Not a syllable was uttered by either and Elizabeth was on +the point of going away again, when Bingley, who as well as +the other had sat down, suddenly rose, and whispering a few +words to her sister, ran out of the room. +Jane could have no reserves from Elizabeth, where confidence +would give pleasure and instantly embracing her, acknowledged, +with the liveliest emotion, that she was the happiest creature +in the world. +"'Tis too much" she added, "by far too much. I do not +deserve it. Oh why is not everybody as happy?" +Elizabeth's congratulations were given with a sincerity, a +warmth, a delight, which words could but poorly express. Every +sentence of kindness was a fresh source of happiness to Jane. +But she would not allow herself to stay with her sister, or say +half that remained to be said for the present. +"I must go instantly to my mother" she cried. "I would not on +any account trifle with her affectionate solicitude or allow +her to hear it from anyone but myself. He is gone to my +father already. Oh Lizzy, to know that what I have to relate +will give such pleasure to all my dear family how shall I +bear so much happiness" +She then hastened away to her mother, who had purposely broken +up the card party, and was sitting up stairs with Kitty. +Elizabeth, who was left by herself, now smiled at the rapidity +and ease with which an affair was finally settled, that had +given them so many previous months of suspense and vexation. +"And this," said she, "is the end of all his friend's anxious +circumspection of all his sister's falsehood and contrivance +the happiest, wisest, most reasonable end" +In a few minutes she was joined by Bingley, whose conference +with her father had been short and to the purpose. +"Where is your sister?" said he hastily, as he opened the door. +"With my mother up stairs. She will be down in a moment, +I dare say." +He then shut the door, and, coming up to her, claimed the good +wishes and affection of a sister. Elizabeth honestly and +heartily expressed her delight in the prospect of their +relationship. They shook hands with great cordiality and +then, till her sister came down, she had to listen to all he +had to say of his own happiness, and of Jane's perfections +and in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed +all his expectations of felicity to be rationally founded, +because they had for basis the excellent understanding, and +superexcellent disposition of Jane, and a general similarity +of feeling and taste between her and himself. +It was an evening of no common delight to them all the +satisfaction of Miss Bennet's mind gave a glow of such sweet +animation to her face, as made her look handsomer than ever. +Kitty simpered and smiled, and hoped her turn was coming soon. +Mrs. Bennet could not give her consent or speak her approbation +in terms warm enough to satisfy her feelings, though she talked +to Bingley of nothing else for half an hour and when Mr. +Bennet joined them at supper, his voice and manner plainly +showed how really happy he was. +Not a word, however, passed his lips in allusion to it, till +their visitor took his leave for the night but as soon as he +was gone, he turned to his daughter, and said +"Jane, I congratulate you. You will be a very happy woman." +Jane went to him instantly, kissed him, and thanked him for his +goodness. +"You are a good girl" he replied, "and I have great pleasure +in thinking you will be so happily settled. I have not a doubt +of your doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means +unlike. You are each of you so complying, that nothing will +ever be resolved on so easy, that every servant will cheat +you and so generous, that you will always exceed your income." +"I hope not so. Imprudence or thoughtlessness in money matters +would be unpardonable in me." +"Exceed their income My dear Mr. Bennet," cried his wife, +"what are you talking of? Why, he has four or five thousand a +year, and very likely more." Then addressing her daughter, +"Oh my dear, dear Jane, I am so happy I am sure I shan't +get a wink of sleep all night. I knew how it would be. I +always said it must be so, at last. I was sure you could not +be so beautiful for nothing I remember, as soon as ever I saw +him, when he first came into Hertfordshire last year, I thought +how likely it was that you should come together. Oh he is +the handsomest young man that ever was seen" +Wickham, Lydia, were all forgotten. Jane was beyond competition +her favourite child. At that moment, she cared for no other. Her +younger sisters soon began to make interest with her for objects +of happiness which she might in future be able to dispense. +Mary petitioned for the use of the library at Netherfield and +Kitty begged very hard for a few balls there every winter. +Bingley, from this time, was of course a daily visitor at +Longbourn coming frequently before breakfast, and always +remaining till after supper unless when some barbarous +neighbour, who could not be enough detested, had given him +an invitation to dinner which he thought himself obliged to +accept. +Elizabeth had now but little time for conversation with her +sister for while he was present, Jane had no attention to +bestow on anyone else but she found herself considerably +useful to both of them in those hours of separation that must +sometimes occur. In the absence of Jane, he always attached +himself to Elizabeth, for the pleasure of talking of her and +when Bingley was gone, Jane constantly sought the same means +of relief. +"He has made me so happy," said she, one evening, "by telling +me that he was totally ignorant of my being in town last +spring I had not believed it possible." +"I suspected as much," replied Elizabeth. "But how did he +account for it?" +"It must have been his sister's doing. They were certainly no +friends to his acquaintance with me, which I cannot wonder at, +since he might have chosen so much more advantageously in many +respects. But when they see, as I trust they will, that their +brother is happy with me, they will learn to be contented, and +we shall be on good terms again though we can never be what we +once were to each other." +"That is the most unforgiving speech," said Elizabeth, "that +I ever heard you utter. Good girl It would vex me, indeed, +to see you again the dupe of Miss Bingley's pretended regard." +"Would you believe it, Lizzy, that when he went to town last +November, he really loved me, and nothing but a persuasion of +my being indifferent would have prevented his coming down +again" +"He made a little mistake to be sure but it is to the credit +of his modesty." +This naturally introduced a panegyric from Jane on his +diffidence, and the little value he put on his own good +qualities. Elizabeth was pleased to find that he had not +betrayed the interference of his friend for, though Jane had +the most generous and forgiving heart in the world, she knew +it was a circumstance which must prejudice her against him. +"I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed" +cried Jane. "Oh Lizzy, why am I thus singled from my family, +and blessed above them all If I could but see you as happy +If there were but such another man for you" +"If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so +happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, +I never can have your happiness. No, no, let me shift for +myself and, perhaps, if I have very good luck, I may meet +with another Mr. Collins in time." +The situation of affairs in the Longbourn family could not be +long a secret. Mrs. Bennet was privileged to whisper it to +Mrs. Phillips, and she ventured, without any permission, to do +the same by all her neighbours in Meryton. +The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family +in the world, though only a few weeks before, when Lydia had +first run away, they had been generally proved to be marked out +for misfortune. +Chapter +One morning, about a week after Bingley's engagement with +Jane had been formed, as he and the females of the family +were sitting together in the diningroom, their attention +was suddenly drawn to the window, by the sound of a carriage +and they perceived a chaise and four driving up the lawn. +It was too early in the morning for visitors, and besides, the +equipage did not answer to that of any of their neighbours. +The horses were post and neither the carriage, nor the livery +of the servant who preceded it, were familiar to them. As it +was certain, however, that somebody was coming, Bingley +instantly prevailed on Miss Bennet to avoid the confinement of +such an intrusion, and walk away with him into the shrubbery. +They both set off, and the conjectures of the remaining three +continued, though with little satisfaction, till the door was +thrown open and their visitor entered. It was Lady Catherine +de Bourgh. +They were of course all intending to be surprised but their +astonishment was beyond their expectation and on the part of +Mrs. Bennet and Kitty, though she was perfectly unknown to +them, even inferior to what Elizabeth felt. +She entered the room with an air more than usually ungracious, +made no other reply to Elizabeth's salutation than a slight +inclination of the head, and sat down without saying a word. +Elizabeth had mentioned her name to her mother on her ladyship's +entrance, though no request of introduction had been made. +Mrs. Bennet, all amazement, though flattered by having a +guest of such high importance, received her with the utmost +politeness. After sitting for a moment in silence, she said +very stiffly to Elizabeth, +"I hope you are well, Miss Bennet. That lady, I suppose, +is your mother." +Elizabeth replied very concisely that she was. +"And that I suppose is one of your sisters." +"Yes, madam," said Mrs. Bennet, delighted to speak to a Lady +Catherine. "She is my youngest girl but one. My youngest of +all is lately married, and my eldest is somewhere about the +grounds, walking with a young man who, I believe, will soon +become a part of the family." +"You have a very small park here," returned Lady Catherine +after a short silence. +"It is nothing in comparison of Rosings, my lady, I dare say +but I assure you it is much larger than Sir William Lucas's." +"This must be a most inconvenient sitting room for the evening, +in summer the windows are full west." +Mrs. Bennet assured her that they never sat there after dinner, +and then added +"May I take the liberty of asking your ladyship whether you +left Mr. and Mrs. Collins well." +"Yes, very well. I saw them the night before last." +Elizabeth now expected that she would produce a letter for +her from Charlotte, as it seemed the only probable motive for +her calling. But no letter appeared, and she was completely +puzzled. +Mrs. Bennet, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take +some refreshment but Lady Catherine very resolutely, and not +very politely, declined eating anything and then, rising up, +said to Elizabeth, +"Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little +wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take +a turn in it, if you will favour me with your company." +"Go, my dear," cried her mother, "and show her ladyship about +the different walks. I think she will be pleased with the +hermitage." +Elizabeth obeyed, and running into her own room for her +parasol, attended her noble guest downstairs. As they passed +through the hall, Lady Catherine opened the doors into the +diningparlour and drawingroom, and pronouncing them, after +a short survey, to be decent looking rooms, walked on. +Her carriage remained at the door, and Elizabeth saw that her +waitingwoman was in it. They proceeded in silence along the +gravel walk that led to the copse Elizabeth was determined to +make no effort for conversation with a woman who was now more +than usually insolent and disagreeable. +"How could I ever think her like her nephew?" said she, as she +looked in her face. +As soon as they entered the copse, Lady Catherine began in the +following manner +"You can be at no loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason +of my journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, +must tell you why I come." +Elizabeth looked with unaffected astonishment. +"Indeed, you are mistaken, Madam. I have not been at all able +to account for the honour of seeing you here." +"Miss Bennet," replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, "you +ought to know, that I am not to be trifled with. But however +insincere you may choose to be, you shall not find me so. +My character has ever been celebrated for its sincerity and +frankness, and in a cause of such moment as this, I shall +certainly not depart from it. A report of a most alarming +nature reached me two days ago. I was told that not only your +sister was on the point of being most advantageously married, +but that you, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet, would, in all +likelihood, be soon afterwards united to my nephew, my own +nephew, Mr. Darcy. Though I know it must be a scandalous +falsehood, though I would not injure him so much as to suppose +the truth of it possible, I instantly resolved on setting off +for this place, that I might make my sentiments known to you." +"If you believed it impossible to be true," said Elizabeth, +colouring with astonishment and disdain, "I wonder you took the +trouble of coming so far. What could your ladyship propose by +it?" +"At once to insist upon having such a report universally +contradicted." +"Your coming to Longbourn, to see me and my family," said +Elizabeth coolly, "will be rather a confirmation of it if, +indeed, such a report is in existence." +"If Do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not +been industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know +that such a report is spread abroad?" +"I never heard that it was." +"And can you likewise declare, that there is no foundation +for it?" +"I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship. +You may ask questions which I shall not choose to answer." +"This is not to be borne. Miss Bennet, I insist on being +satisfied. Has he, has my nephew, made you an offer of +marriage?" +"Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible." +"It ought to be so it must be so, while he retains the use of +his reason. But your arts and allurements may, in a moment +of infatuation, have made him forget what he owes to himself +and to all his family. You may have drawn him in." +"If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it." +"Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? I have not been accustomed +to such language as this. I am almost the nearest relation he has +in the world, and am entitled to know all his dearest concerns." +"But you are not entitled to know mine nor will such behaviour +as this, ever induce me to be explicit." +"Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have +the presumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. +Mr. Darcy is engaged to my daughter. Now what have you to say?" +"Only this that if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose +he will make an offer to me." +Lady Catherine hesitated for a moment, and then replied +"The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. From their +infancy, they have been intended for each other. It was the +favourite wish of his mother, as well as of her's. While in +their cradles, we planned the union and now, at the moment +when the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished in their +marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth, +of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the +family Do you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? +To his tacit engagement with Miss de Bourgh? Are you lost to +every feeling of propriety and delicacy? Have you not heard +me say that from his earliest hours he was destined for his +cousin?" +"Yes, and I had heard it before. But what is that to me? If +there is no other objection to my marrying your nephew, I shall +certainly not be kept from it by knowing that his mother and +aunt wished him to marry Miss de Bourgh. You both did as much +as you could in planning the marriage. Its completion depended +on others. If Mr. Darcy is neither by honour nor inclination +confined to his cousin, why is not he to make another choice? +And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?" +"Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. +Yes, Miss Bennet, interest for do not expect to be noticed +by his family or friends, if you wilfully act against the +inclinations of all. You will be censured, slighted, and +despised, by everyone connected with him. Your alliance will +be a disgrace your name will never even be mentioned by any +of us." +"These are heavy misfortunes," replied Elizabeth. "But the +wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of +happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she +could, upon the whole, have no cause to repine." +"Obstinate, headstrong girl I am ashamed of you Is this +your gratitude for my attentions to you last spring? Is +nothing due to me on that score? Let us sit down. You are to +understand, Miss Bennet, that I came here with the determined +resolution of carrying my purpose nor will I be dissuaded +from it. I have not been used to submit to any person's whims. +I have not been in the habit of brooking disappointment." +"That will make your ladyship's situation at present more +pitiable but it will have no effect on me." +"I will not be interrupted. Hear me in silence. My daughter +and my nephew are formed for each other. They are descended, +on the maternal side, from the same noble line and, on the +father's, from respectable, honourable, and ancientthough +untitledfamilies. Their fortune on both sides is splendid. +They are destined for each other by the voice of every member +of their respective houses and what is to divide them? +The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, +connections, or fortune. Is this to be endured But it +must not, shall not be. If you were sensible of your own +good, you would not wish to quit the sphere in which you +have been brought up." +"In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as +quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman I am a gentleman's +daughter so far we are equal." +"True. You are a gentleman's daughter. But who was your +mother? Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me +ignorant of their condition." +"Whatever my connections may be," said Elizabeth, "if your +nephew does not object to them, they can be nothing to you." +"Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?" +Though Elizabeth would not, for the mere purpose of obliging +Lady Catherine, have answered this question, she could not but +say, after a moment's deliberation +"I am not." +Lady Catherine seemed pleased. +"And will you promise me, never to enter into such an engagement?" +"I will make no promise of the kind." +"Miss Bennet I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a +more reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into +a belief that I will ever recede. I shall not go away till you +have given me the assurance I require." +"And I certainly never shall give it. I am not to be intimidated +into anything so wholly unreasonable. Your ladyship wants +Mr. Darcy to marry your daughter but would my giving you the +wishedfor promise make their marriage at all more probable? +Supposing him to be attached to me, would my refusing to accept +his hand make him wish to bestow it on his cousin? Allow me to +say, Lady Catherine, that the arguments with which you have +supported this extraordinary application have been as frivolous +as the application was illjudged. You have widely mistaken my +character, if you think I can be worked on by such persuasions +as these. How far your nephew might approve of your interference +in his affairs, I cannot tell but you have certainly no right +to concern yourself in mine. I must beg, therefore, to be +importuned no farther on the subject." +"Not so hasty, if you please. I have by no means done. +To all the objections I have already urged, I have still +another to add. I am no stranger to the particulars of your +youngest sister's infamous elopement. I know it all that +the young man's marrying her was a patchedup business, at the +expence of your father and uncles. And is such a girl to be +my nephew's sister? Is her husband, is the son of his late +father's steward, to be his brother? Heaven and earthof +what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be +thus polluted?" +"You can now have nothing further to say," she resentfully +answered. "You have insulted me in every possible method. +I must beg to return to the house." +And she rose as she spoke. Lady Catherine rose also, and they +turned back. Her ladyship was highly incensed. +"You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of my +nephew Unfeeling, selfish girl Do you not consider that +a connection with you must disgrace him in the eyes of +everybody?" +"Lady Catherine, I have nothing further to say. You know my +sentiments." +"You are then resolved to have him?" +"I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that +manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, +without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected +with me." +"It is well. You refuse, then, to oblige me. You refuse to +obey the claims of duty, honour, and gratitude. You are +determined to ruin him in the opinion of all his friends, +and make him the contempt of the world." +"Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude," replied Elizabeth, +"have any possible claim on me, in the present instance. No +principle of either would be violated by my marriage with +Mr. Darcy. And with regard to the resentment of his family, or +the indignation of the world, if the former were excited by his +marrying me, it would not give me one moment's concernand +the world in general would have too much sense to join in the +scorn." +"And this is your real opinion This is your final resolve +Very well. I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss +Bennet, that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to +try you. I hoped to find you reasonable but, depend upon it, +I will carry my point." +In this manner Lady Catherine talked on, till they were at the +door of the carriage, when, turning hastily round, she added, +"I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to +your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most +seriously displeased." +Elizabeth made no answer and without attempting to persuade +her ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it +herself. She heard the carriage drive away as she proceeded +up stairs. Her mother impatiently met her at the door of the +dressingroom, to ask why Lady Catherine would not come in +again and rest herself. +"She did not choose it," said her daughter, "she would go." +"She is a very finelooking woman and her calling here was +prodigiously civil for she only came, I suppose, to tell us +the Collinses were well. She is on her road somewhere, I dare +say, and so, passing through Meryton, thought she might as well +call on you. I suppose she had nothing particular to say to +you, Lizzy?" +Elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here +for to acknowledge the substance of their conversation was +impossible. +Chapter +The discomposure of spirits which this extraordinary visit +threw Elizabeth into, could not be easily overcome nor +could she, for many hours, learn to think of it less than +incessantly. Lady Catherine, it appeared, had actually taken +the trouble of this journey from Rosings, for the sole purpose +of breaking off her supposed engagement with Mr. Darcy. It was +a rational scheme, to be sure but from what the report of +their engagement could originate, Elizabeth was at a loss to +imagine till she recollected that his being the intimate +friend of Bingley, and her being the sister of Jane, was +enough, at a time when the expectation of one wedding made +everybody eager for another, to supply the idea. She had not +herself forgotten to feel that the marriage of her sister must +bring them more frequently together. And her neighbours at +Lucas Lodge, therefore for through their communication with +the Collinses, the report, she concluded, had reached lady +Catherine, had only set that down as almost certain and +immediate, which she had looked forward to as possible at +some future time. +In revolving Lady Catherine's expressions, however, she could +not help feeling some uneasiness as to the possible consequence +of her persisting in this interference. From what she had said +of her resolution to prevent their marriage, it occurred to +Elizabeth that she must meditate an application to her nephew +and how he might take a similar representation of the evils +attached to a connection with her, she dared not pronounce. +She knew not the exact degree of his affection for his aunt, or +his dependence on her judgment, but it was natural to suppose +that he thought much higher of her ladyship than she could +do and it was certain that, in enumerating the miseries of a +marriage with one, whose immediate connections were so unequal +to his own, his aunt would address him on his weakest side. +With his notions of dignity, he would probably feel that the +arguments, which to Elizabeth had appeared weak and ridiculous, +contained much good sense and solid reasoning. +If he had been wavering before as to what he should do, which +had often seemed likely, the advice and entreaty of so near a +relation might settle every doubt, and determine him at once to +be as happy as dignity unblemished could make him. In that +case he would return no more. Lady Catherine might see him in +her way through town and his engagement to Bingley of coming +again to Netherfield must give way. +"If, therefore, an excuse for not keeping his promise should +come to his friend within a few days," she added, "I shall +know how to understand it. I shall then give over every +expectation, every wish of his constancy. If he is satisfied +with only regretting me, when he might have obtained my +affections and hand, I shall soon cease to regret him at all." +The surprise of the rest of the family, on hearing who their +visitor had been, was very great but they obligingly satisfied +it, with the same kind of supposition which had appeased +Mrs. Bennet's curiosity and Elizabeth was spared from much +teasing on the subject. +The next morning, as she was going downstairs, she was met by +her father, who came out of his library with a letter in his +hand. +"Lizzy," said he, "I was going to look for you come into my +room." +She followed him thither and her curiosity to know what he +had to tell her was heightened by the supposition of its being +in some manner connected with the letter he held. It suddenly +struck her that it might be from Lady Catherine and she +anticipated with dismay all the consequent explanations. +She followed her father to the fire place, and they both sat +down. He then said, +"I have received a letter this morning that has astonished me +exceedingly. As it principally concerns yourself, you ought +to know its contents. I did not know before, that I had two +daughters on the brink of matrimony. Let me congratulate you +on a very important conquest." +The colour now rushed into Elizabeth's cheeks in the instantaneous +conviction of its being a letter from the nephew, instead of the +aunt and she was undetermined whether most to be pleased that +he explained himself at all, or offended that his letter was not +rather addressed to herself when her father continued +"You look conscious. Young ladies have great penetration in +such matters as these but I think I may defy even your +sagacity, to discover the name of your admirer. This letter +is from Mr. Collins." +"From Mr. Collins and what can he have to say?" +"Something very much to the purpose of course. He begins with +congratulations on the approaching nuptials of my eldest daughter, +of which, it seems, he has been told by some of the goodnatured, +gossiping Lucases. I shall not sport with your impatience, by +reading what he says on that point. What relates to yourself, is +as follows 'Having thus offered you the sincere congratulations +of Mrs. Collins and myself on this happy event, let me now add +a short hint on the subject of another of which we have been +advertised by the same authority. Your daughter Elizabeth, it is +presumed, will not long bear the name of Bennet, after her elder +sister has resigned it, and the chosen partner of her fate may be +reasonably looked up to as one of the most illustrious personages +in this land.' +"Can you possibly guess, Lizzy, who is meant by this?" 'This +young gentleman is blessed, in a peculiar way, with every thing +the heart of mortal can most desire,splendid property, +noble kindred, and extensive patronage. Yet in spite of all +these temptations, let me warn my cousin Elizabeth, and +yourself, of what evils you may incur by a precipitate closure +with this gentleman's proposals, which, of course, you will be +inclined to take immediate advantage of.' +"Have you any idea, Lizzy, who this gentleman is? But now it +comes out +"'My motive for cautioning you is as follows. We have reason to +imagine that his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, does not look +on the match with a friendly eye.' +"Mr. Darcy, you see, is the man Now, Lizzy, I think I +have surprised you. Could he, or the Lucases, have pitched +on any man within the circle of our acquaintance, whose name +would have given the lie more effectually to what they related? +Mr. Darcy, who never looks at any woman but to see a blemish, +and who probably never looked at you in his life It is +admirable" +Elizabeth tried to join in her father's pleasantry, but could +only force one most reluctant smile. Never had his wit been +directed in a manner so little agreeable to her. +"Are you not diverted?" +"Oh yes. Pray read on." +"'After mentioning the likelihood of this marriage to her ladyship +last night, she immediately, with her usual condescension, +expressed what she felt on the occasion when it became apparent, +that on the score of some family objections on the part of my +cousin, she would never give her consent to what she termed so +disgraceful a match. I thought it my duty to give the speediest +intelligence of this to my cousin, that she and her noble +admirer may be aware of what they are about, and not run +hastily into a marriage which has not been properly sanctioned.' +Mr. Collins moreover adds, 'I am truly rejoiced that my cousin +Lydia's sad business has been so well hushed up, and am only +concerned that their living together before the marriage took +place should be so generally known. I must not, however, +neglect the duties of my station, or refrain from declaring my +amazement at hearing that you received the young couple into +your house as soon as they were married. It was an encouragement +of vice and had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should very +strenuously have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them, +as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow +their names to be mentioned in your hearing.' That is his notion +of Christian forgiveness The rest of his letter is only about +his dear Charlotte's situation, and his expectation of a young +olivebranch. But, Lizzy, you look as if you did not enjoy it. +You are not going to be missish, I hope, and pretend to be +affronted at an idle report. For what do we live, but to make +sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?" +"Oh" cried Elizabeth, "I am excessively diverted. But it is +so strange" +"Yesthat is what makes it amusing. Had they fixed on any other +man it would have been nothing but his perfect indifference, +and your pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd Much +as I abominate writing, I would not give up Mr. Collins's +correspondence for any consideration. Nay, when I read a letter +of his, I cannot help giving him the preference even over Wickham, +much as I value the impudence and hypocrisy of my soninlaw. +And pray, Lizzy, what said Lady Catherine about this report? +Did she call to refuse her consent?" +To this question his daughter replied only with a laugh and +as it had been asked without the least suspicion, she was not +distressed by his repeating it. Elizabeth had never been +more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. +It was necessary to laugh, when she would rather have cried. +Her father had most cruelly mortified her, by what he said of +Mr. Darcy's indifference, and she could do nothing but wonder +at such a want of penetration, or fear that perhaps, instead +of his seeing too little, she might have fancied too much. +Chapter +Instead of receiving any such letter of excuse from his friend, +as Elizabeth half expected Mr. Bingley to do, he was able to +bring Darcy with him to Longbourn before many days had passed +after Lady Catherine's visit. The gentlemen arrived early +and, before Mrs. Bennet had time to tell him of their having +seen his aunt, of which her daughter sat in momentary dread, +Bingley, who wanted to be alone with Jane, proposed their +all walking out. It was agreed to. Mrs. Bennet was not in +the habit of walking Mary could never spare time but the +remaining five set off together. Bingley and Jane, however, +soon allowed the others to outstrip them. They lagged behind, +while Elizabeth, Kitty, and Darcy were to entertain each other. +Very little was said by either Kitty was too much afraid of +him to talk Elizabeth was secretly forming a desperate +resolution and perhaps he might be doing the same. +They walked towards the Lucases, because Kitty wished to call +upon Maria and as Elizabeth saw no occasion for making it a +general concern, when Kitty left them she went boldly on with +him alone. Now was the moment for her resolution to be +executed, and, while her courage was high, she immediately +said +"Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish creature and, for the sake of +giving relief to my own feelings, care not how much I may be +wounding your's. I can no longer help thanking you for your +unexampled kindness to my poor sister. Ever since I have +known it, I have been most anxious to acknowledge to you how +gratefully I feel it. Were it known to the rest of my family, +I should not have merely my own gratitude to express." +"I am sorry, exceedingly sorry," replied Darcy, in a tone of +surprise and emotion, "that you have ever been informed of what +may, in a mistaken light, have given you uneasiness. I did not +think Mrs. Gardiner was so little to be trusted." +"You must not blame my aunt. Lydia's thoughtlessness first +betrayed to me that you had been concerned in the matter and, +of course, I could not rest till I knew the particulars. Let +me thank you again and again, in the name of all my family, +for that generous compassion which induced you to take so much +trouble, and bear so many mortifications, for the sake of +discovering them." +"If you will thank me," he replied, "let it be for yourself +alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add +force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not +attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as +I respect them, I believe I thought only of you." +Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word. After a +short pause, her companion added, "You are too generous to +trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were +last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes +are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this +subject for ever." +Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and +anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak and +immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand +that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since +the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with +gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness +which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never +felt before and he expressed himself on the occasion as +sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be +supposed to do. Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his +eye, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt +delight, diffused over his face, became him but, though she +could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings, +which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his +affection every moment more valuable. +They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was +too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to +any other objects. She soon learnt that they were indebted +for their present good understanding to the efforts of his +aunt, who did call on him in her return through London, +and there relate her journey to Longbourn, its motive, and +the substance of her conversation with Elizabeth dwelling +emphatically on every expression of the latter which, in her +ladyship's apprehension, peculiarly denoted her perverseness +and assurance in the belief that such a relation must assist +her endeavours to obtain that promise from her nephew which +she had refused to give. But, unluckily for her ladyship, +its effect had been exactly contrariwise. +"It taught me to hope," said he, "as I had scarcely ever allowed +myself to hope before. I knew enough of your disposition to +be certain that, had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided +against me, you would have acknowledged it to Lady Catherine, +frankly and openly." +Elizabeth coloured and laughed as she replied, "Yes, you know +enough of my frankness to believe me capable of that. +After abusing you so abominably to your face, I could have no +scruple in abusing you to all your relations." +"What did you say of me, that I did not deserve? For, though +your accusations were illfounded, formed on mistaken premises, +my behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest +reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without +abhorrence." +"We will not quarrel for the greater share of blame annexed to +that evening," said Elizabeth. "The conduct of neither, if +strictly examined, will be irreproachable but since then, we +have both, I hope, improved in civility." +"I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself. The recollection +of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions +during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, +inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I +shall never forget 'had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike +manner.' Those were your words. You know not, you can +scarcely conceive, how they have tortured methough it was +some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow +their justice." +"I was certainly very far from expecting them to make so strong +an impression. I had not the smallest idea of their being ever +felt in such a way." +"I can easily believe it. You thought me then devoid of +every proper feeling, I am sure you did. The turn of your +countenance I shall never forget, as you said that I could +not have addressed you in any possible way that would induce +you to accept me." +"Oh do not repeat what I then said. These recollections +will not do at all. I assure you that I have long been most +heartily ashamed of it." +Darcy mentioned his letter. "Did it," said he, "did it soon +make you think better of me? Did you, on reading it, give any +credit to its contents?" +She explained what its effect on her had been, and how gradually +all her former prejudices had been removed. +"I knew," said he, "that what I wrote must give you pain, +but it was necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter. +There was one part especially, the opening of it, which I +should dread your having the power of reading again. I can +remember some expressions which might justly make you hate me." +"The letter shall certainly be burnt, if you believe it +essential to the preservation of my regard but, though we have +both reason to think my opinions not entirely unalterable, they +are not, I hope, quite so easily changed as that implies." +"When I wrote that letter," replied Darcy, "I believed myself +perfectly calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was +written in a dreadful bitterness of spirit." +"The letter, perhaps, began in bitterness, but it did not end +so. The adieu is charity itself. But think no more of the +letter. The feelings of the person who wrote, and the person +who received it, are now so widely different from what they +were then, that every unpleasant circumstance attending it +ought to be forgotten. You must learn some of my philosophy. +Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure." +"I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind. +Your retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that +the contentment arising from them is not of philosophy, but, +what is much better, of innocence. But with me, it is not +so. Painful recollections will intrude which cannot, which +ought not, to be repelled. I have been a selfish being all my +life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was +taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my +temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them +in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son for many +years an only child, I was spoilt by my parents, who, though +good themselves my father, particularly, all that was +benevolent and amiable, allowed, encouraged, almost taught me +to be selfish and overbearing to care for none beyond my own +family circle to think meanly of all the rest of the world +to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth +compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and +twenty and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, +loveliest Elizabeth What do I not owe you You taught me a +lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, +I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my +reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my +pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased." +"Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?" +"Indeed I had. What will you think of my vanity? I believed +you to be wishing, expecting my addresses." +"My manners must have been in fault, but not intentionally, +I assure you. I never meant to deceive you, but my spirits +might often lead me wrong. How you must have hated me after +that evening?" +"Hate you I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon +began to take a proper direction." +"I am almost afraid of asking what you thought of me, when we +met at Pemberley. You blamed me for coming?" +"No indeed I felt nothing but surprise." +"Your surprise could not be greater than mine in being +noticed by you. My conscience told me that I deserved no +extraordinary politeness, and I confess that I did not expect +to receive more than my due." +"My object then," replied Darcy, "was to show you, by every +civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the +past and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your +ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been +attended to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves +I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an hour after +I had seen you." +He then told her of Georgiana's delight in her acquaintance, +and of her disappointment at its sudden interruption which +naturally leading to the cause of that interruption, she soon +learnt that his resolution of following her from Derbyshire in +quest of her sister had been formed before he quitted the inn, +and that his gravity and thoughtfulness there had arisen from +no other struggles than what such a purpose must comprehend. +She expressed her gratitude again, but it was too painful a +subject to each, to be dwelt on farther. +After walking several miles in a leisurely manner, and too busy +to know anything about it, they found at last, on examining +their watches, that it was time to be at home. +"What could become of Mr. Bingley and Jane" was a wonder +which introduced the discussion of their affairs. Darcy +was delighted with their engagement his friend had given +him the earliest information of it. +"I must ask whether you were surprised?" said Elizabeth. +"Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon +happen." +"That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as +much." And though he exclaimed at the term, she found that it +had been pretty much the case. +"On the evening before my going to London," said he, "I made a +confession to him, which I believe I ought to have made long +ago. I told him of all that had occurred to make my former +interference in his affairs absurd and impertinent. His +surprise was great. He had never had the slightest suspicion. +I told him, moreover, that I believed myself mistaken in +supposing, as I had done, that your sister was indifferent to +him and as I could easily perceive that his attachment to her +was unabated, I felt no doubt of their happiness together." +Elizabeth could not help smiling at his easy manner of +directing his friend. +"Did you speak from your own observation," said she, "when +you told him that my sister loved him, or merely from my +information last spring?" +"From the former. I had narrowly observed her during the two +visits which I had lately made here and I was convinced of her +affection." +"And your assurance of it, I suppose, carried immediate +conviction to him." +"It did. Bingley is most unaffectedly modest. His diffidence +had prevented his depending on his own judgment in so anxious +a case, but his reliance on mine made every thing easy. I +was obliged to confess one thing, which for a time, and not +unjustly, offended him. I could not allow myself to conceal +that your sister had been in town three months last winter, +that I had known it, and purposely kept it from him. He was +angry. But his anger, I am persuaded, lasted no longer than +he remained in any doubt of your sister's sentiments. He has +heartily forgiven me now." +Elizabeth longed to observe that Mr. Bingley had been a most +delightful friend so easily guided that his worth was +invaluable but she checked herself. She remembered that he +had yet to learn to be laughed at, and it was rather too early +to begin. In anticipating the happiness of Bingley, which of +course was to be inferior only to his own, he continued the +conversation till they reached the house. In the hall they +parted. +Chapter +"My dear Lizzy, where can you have been walking to?" was a +question which Elizabeth received from Jane as soon as she +entered their room, and from all the others when they sat down +to table. She had only to say in reply, that they had wandered +about, till she was beyond her own knowledge. She coloured as +she spoke but neither that, nor anything else, awakened a +suspicion of the truth. +The evening passed quietly, unmarked by anything extraordinary. +The acknowledged lovers talked and laughed, the unacknowledged +were silent. Darcy was not of a disposition in which happiness +overflows in mirth and Elizabeth, agitated and confused, rather +knew that she was happy than felt herself to be so for, besides +the immediate embarrassment, there were other evils before her. +She anticipated what would be felt in the family when her +situation became known she was aware that no one liked him but +Jane and even feared that with the others it was a dislike +which not all his fortune and consequence might do away. +At night she opened her heart to Jane. Though suspicion was +very far from Miss Bennet's general habits, she was absolutely +incredulous here. +"You are joking, Lizzy. This cannot beengaged to Mr. Darcy +No, no, you shall not deceive me. I know it to be impossible." +"This is a wretched beginning indeed My sole dependence was +on you and I am sure nobody else will believe me, if you do +not. Yet, indeed, I am in earnest. I speak nothing but the +truth. He still loves me, and we are engaged." +Jane looked at her doubtingly. "Oh, Lizzy it cannot be. +I know how much you dislike him." +"You know nothing of the matter. That is all to be forgot. +Perhaps I did not always love him so well as I do now. But in +such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable. This is +the last time I shall ever remember it myself." +Miss Bennet still looked all amazement. Elizabeth again, and +more seriously assured her of its truth. +"Good Heaven can it be really so Yet now I must believe +you," cried Jane. "My dear, dear Lizzy, I wouldI do +congratulate youbut are you certain? forgive the question +are you quite certain that you can be happy with him?" +"There can be no doubt of that. It is settled between us +already, that we are to be the happiest couple in the world. +But are you pleased, Jane? Shall you like to have such a +brother?" +"Very, very much. Nothing could give either Bingley or +myself more delight. But we considered it, we talked of it as +impossible. And do you really love him quite well enough? +Oh, Lizzy do anything rather than marry without affection. +Are you quite sure that you feel what you ought to do?" +"Oh, yes You will only think I feel more than I ought to +do, when I tell you all." +"What do you mean?" +"Why, I must confess that I love him better than I do Bingley. +I am afraid you will be angry." +"My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very +seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without +delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?" +"It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it +began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his +beautiful grounds at Pemberley." +Another entreaty that she would be serious, however, produced +the desired effect and she soon satisfied Jane by her solemn +assurances of attachment. When convinced on that article, Miss +Bennet had nothing further to wish. +"Now I am quite happy," said she, "for you will be as happy as +myself. I always had a value for him. Were it for nothing but +his love of you, I must always have esteemed him but now, as +Bingley's friend and your husband, there can be only Bingley +and yourself more dear to me. But Lizzy, you have been very +sly, very reserved with me. How little did you tell me of what +passed at Pemberley and Lambton I owe all that I know of it +to another, not to you." +Elizabeth told her the motives of her secrecy. She had been +unwilling to mention Bingley and the unsettled state of her +own feelings had made her equally avoid the name of his friend. +But now she would no longer conceal from her his share in +Lydia's marriage. All was acknowledged, and half the night +spent in conversation. +"Good gracious" cried Mrs. Bennet, as she stood at a window +the next morning, "if that disagreeable Mr. Darcy is not coming +here again with our dear Bingley What can he mean by being so +tiresome as to be always coming here? I had no notion but he +would go ashooting, or something or other, and not disturb us +with his company. What shall we do with him? Lizzy, you must +walk out with him again, that he may not be in Bingley's way." +Elizabeth could hardly help laughing at so convenient a +proposal yet was really vexed that her mother should be +always giving him such an epithet. +As soon as they entered, Bingley looked at her so expressively, +and shook hands with such warmth, as left no doubt of his good +information and he soon afterwards said aloud, "Mrs. Bennet, +have you no more lanes hereabouts in which Lizzy may lose her +way again today?" +"I advise Mr. Darcy, and Lizzy, and Kitty," said Mrs. Bennet, +"to walk to Oakham Mount this morning. It is a nice long walk, +and Mr. Darcy has never seen the view." +"It may do very well for the others," replied Mr. Bingley "but +I am sure it will be too much for Kitty. Won't it, Kitty?" +Kitty owned that she had rather stay at home. Darcy professed +a great curiosity to see the view from the Mount, and Elizabeth +silently consented. As she went up stairs to get ready, +Mrs. Bennet followed her, saying +"I am quite sorry, Lizzy, that you should be forced to have +that disagreeable man all to yourself. But I hope you will not +mind it it is all for Jane's sake, you know and there is no +occasion for talking to him, except just now and then. So, do +not put yourself to inconvenience." +During their walk, it was resolved that Mr. Bennet's consent +should be asked in the course of the evening. Elizabeth +reserved to herself the application for her mother's. She +could not determine how her mother would take it sometimes +doubting whether all his wealth and grandeur would be enough +to overcome her abhorrence of the man. But whether she were +violently set against the match, or violently delighted with +it, it was certain that her manner would be equally ill adapted +to do credit to her sense and she could no more bear that +Mr. Darcy should hear the first raptures of her joy, than the +first vehemence of her disapprobation. +In the evening, soon after Mr. Bennet withdrew to the library, +she saw Mr. Darcy rise also and follow him, and her agitation +on seeing it was extreme. She did not fear her father's +opposition, but he was going to be made unhappy and that it +should be through her meansthat she, his favourite child, +should be distressing him by her choice, should be filling him +with fears and regrets in disposing of herwas a wretched +reflection, and she sat in misery till Mr. Darcy appeared +again, when, looking at him, she was a little relieved by his +smile. In a few minutes he approached the table where she was +sitting with Kitty and, while pretending to admire her work +said in a whisper, "Go to your father, he wants you in the +library." She was gone directly. +Her father was walking about the room, looking grave and +anxious. "Lizzy," said he, "what are you doing? Are you out +of your senses, to be accepting this man? Have not you always +hated him?" +How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had +been more reasonable, her expressions more moderate It would +have spared her from explanations and professions which it was +exceedingly awkward to give but they were now necessary, and +she assured him, with some confusion, of her attachment to +Mr. Darcy. +"Or, in other words, you are determined to have him. He is +rich, to be sure, and you may have more fine clothes and fine +carriages than Jane. But will they make you happy?" +"Have you any other objection," said Elizabeth, "than your +belief of my indifference?" +"None at all. We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort +of man but this would be nothing if you really liked him." +"I do, I do like him," she replied, with tears in her eyes, +"I love him. Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly +amiable. You do not know what he really is then pray do not +pain me by speaking of him in such terms." +"Lizzy," said her father, "I have given him my consent. +He is the kind of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare +refuse anything, which he condescended to ask. I now give it +to you, if you are resolved on having him. But let me advise +you to think better of it. I know your disposition, Lizzy. +I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless +you truly esteemed your husband unless you looked up to him +as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the +greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely +escape discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the +grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life. +You know not what you are about." +Elizabeth, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her +reply and at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Darcy was +really the object of her choice, by explaining the gradual +change which her estimation of him had undergone, relating her +absolute certainty that his affection was not the work of a +day, but had stood the test of many months' suspense, and +enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did conquer +her father's incredulity, and reconcile him to the match. +"Well, my dear," said he, when she ceased speaking, "I have no +more to say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could +not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy." +To complete the favourable impression, she then told him what +Mr. Darcy had voluntarily done for Lydia. He heard her with +astonishment. +"This is an evening of wonders, indeed And so, Darcy did +every thing made up the match, gave the money, paid the +fellow's debts, and got him his commission So much the +better. It will save me a world of trouble and economy. +Had it been your uncle's doing, I must and would have paid +him but these violent young lovers carry every thing their +own way. I shall offer to pay him tomorrow he will rant +and storm about his love for you, and there will be an end +of the matter." +He then recollected her embarrassment a few days before, on his +reading Mr. Collins's letter and after laughing at her some +time, allowed her at last to gosaying, as she quitted the +room, "If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, +for I am quite at leisure." +Elizabeth's mind was now relieved from a very heavy weight +and, after half an hour's quiet reflection in her own room, +she was able to join the others with tolerable composure. +Every thing was too recent for gaiety, but the evening passed +tranquilly away there was no longer anything material to +be dreaded, and the comfort of ease and familiarity would +come in time. +When her mother went up to her dressingroom at night, she +followed her, and made the important communication. Its effect +was most extraordinary for on first hearing it, Mrs. Bennet +sat quite still, and unable to utter a syllable. Nor was it +under many, many minutes that she could comprehend what she +heard though not in general backward to credit what was for +the advantage of her family, or that came in the shape of a +lover to any of them. She began at length to recover, to +fidget about in her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, +and bless herself. +"Good gracious Lord bless me only think dear me +Mr. Darcy Who would have thought it And is it really true? +Oh my sweetest Lizzy how rich and how great you will be +What pinmoney, what jewels, what carriages you will have +Jane's is nothing to itnothing at all. I am so pleasedso +happy. Such a charming manso handsome so tallOh, my +dear Lizzy pray apologise for my having disliked him so much +before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house +in town Every thing that is charming Three daughters +married Ten thousand a year Oh, Lord What will become of +me. I shall go distracted." +This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be +doubted and Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was +heard only by herself, soon went away. But before she had +been three minutes in her own room, her mother followed her. +"My dearest child," she cried, "I can think of nothing else +Ten thousand a year, and very likely more 'Tis as good as a +Lord And a special licence. You must and shall be married +by a special licence. But my dearest love, tell me what dish +Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of, that I may have it tomorrow." +This was a sad omen of what her mother's behaviour to the +gentleman himself might be and Elizabeth found that, though in +the certain possession of his warmest affection, and secure of +her relations' consent, there was still something to be wished +for. But the morrow passed off much better than she expected +for Mrs. Bennet luckily stood in such awe of her intended +soninlaw that she ventured not to speak to him, unless it was +in her power to offer him any attention, or mark her deference +for his opinion. +Elizabeth had the satisfaction of seeing her father taking +pains to get acquainted with him and Mr. Bennet soon assured +her that he was rising every hour in his esteem. +"I admire all my three sonsinlaw highly," said he. "Wickham, +perhaps, is my favourite but I think I shall like your husband +quite as well as Jane's." +Chapter +Elizabeth's spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she +wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love +with her. "How could you begin?" said she. "I can comprehend +your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning +but what could set you off in the first place?" +"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the +words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was +in the middle before I knew that I had begun." +"My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my mannersmy +behaviour to you was at least always bordering on the uncivil, +and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain +than not. Now be sincere did you admire me for my impertinence?" +"For the liveliness of your mind, I did." +"You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very +little less. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of +deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with +the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking +for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, +because I was so unlike them. Had you not been really +amiable, you would have hated me for it but in spite of the +pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always +noble and just and in your heart, you thoroughly despised the +persons who so assiduously courted you. ThereI have saved +you the trouble of accounting for it and really, all things +considered, I begin to think it perfectly reasonable. To be +sure, you knew no actual good of mebut nobody thinks of +that when they fall in love." +"Was there no good in your affectionate behaviour to Jane while +she was ill at Netherfield?" +"Dearest Jane who could have done less for her? But make a +virtue of it by all means. My good qualities are under your +protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible +and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasions for teasing +and quarrelling with you as often as may be and I shall begin +directly by asking you what made you so unwilling to come to +the point at last. What made you so shy of me, when you first +called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you +called, did you look as if you did not care about me?" +"Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement." +"But I was embarrassed." +"And so was I." +"You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner." +"A man who had felt less, might." +"How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give, +and that I should be so reasonable as to admit it But I +wonder how long you would have gone on, if you had been left +to yourself. I wonder when you would have spoken, if I +had not asked you My resolution of thanking you for your +kindness to Lydia had certainly great effect. Too much, I am +afraid for what becomes of the moral, if our comfort springs +from a breach of promise? for I ought not to have mentioned +the subject. This will never do." +"You need not distress yourself. The moral will be perfectly +fair. Lady Catherine's unjustifiable endeavours to separate us +were the means of removing all my doubts. I am not indebted +for my present happiness to your eager desire of expressing +your gratitude. I was not in a humour to wait for any opening +of your's. My aunt's intelligence had given me hope, and I was +determined at once to know every thing." +"Lady Catherine has been of infinite use, which ought to make +her happy, for she loves to be of use. But tell me, what did +you come down to Netherfield for? Was it merely to ride to +Longbourn and be embarrassed? or had you intended any more +serious consequence?" +"My real purpose was to see you, and to judge, if I could, +whether I might ever hope to make you love me. My avowed one, +or what I avowed to myself, was to see whether your sister were +still partial to Bingley, and if she were, to make the +confession to him which I have since made." +"Shall you ever have courage to announce to Lady Catherine +what is to befall her?" +"I am more likely to want more time than courage, Elizabeth. +But it ought to be done, and if you will give me a sheet of paper, +it shall be done directly." +"And if I had not a letter to write myself, I might sit by you +and admire the evenness of your writing, as another young lady +once did. But I have an aunt, too, who must not be longer +neglected." +From an unwillingness to confess how much her intimacy with +Mr. Darcy had been overrated, Elizabeth had never yet +answered Mrs. Gardiner's long letter but now, having that +to communicate which she knew would be most welcome, she was +almost ashamed to find that her uncle and aunt had already lost +three days of happiness, and immediately wrote as follows +"I would have thanked you before, my dear aunt, as I ought +to have done, for your long, kind, satisfactory, detail of +particulars but to say the truth, I was too cross to write. +You supposed more than really existed. But now suppose as +much as you choose give a loose rein to your fancy, indulge your +imagination in every possible flight which the subject will +afford, and unless you believe me actually married, you cannot +greatly err. You must write again very soon, and praise him a +great deal more than you did in your last. I thank you, again +and again, for not going to the Lakes. How could I be so silly +as to wish it Your idea of the ponies is delightful. We will +go round the Park every day. I am the happiest creature in the +world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one +with such justice. I am happier even than Jane she only +smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world +that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at +Christmas. Yours, etc." +Mr. Darcy's letter to Lady Catherine was in a different style +and still different from either was what Mr. Bennet sent to +Mr. Collins, in reply to his last. +"DEAR SIR, +"I must trouble you once more for congratulations. Elizabeth +will soon be the wife of Mr. Darcy. Console Lady Catherine +as well as you can. But, if I were you, I would stand by the +nephew. He has more to give. +"Yours sincerely, etc." +Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching +marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere. She +wrote even to Jane on the occasion, to express her delight, and +repeat all her former professions of regard. Jane was not +deceived, but she was affected and though feeling no reliance +on her, could not help writing her a much kinder answer than +she knew was deserved. +The joy which Miss Darcy expressed on receiving similar +information, was as sincere as her brother's in sending it. +Four sides of paper were insufficient to contain all her +delight, and all her earnest desire of being loved by her +sister. +Before any answer could arrive from Mr. Collins, or any +congratulations to Elizabeth from his wife, the Longbourn +family heard that the Collinses were come themselves to Lucas +Lodge. The reason of this sudden removal was soon evident. +Lady Catherine had been rendered so exceedingly angry by +the contents of her nephew's letter, that Charlotte, really +rejoicing in the match, was anxious to get away till the +storm was blown over. At such a moment, the arrival of +her friend was a sincere pleasure to Elizabeth, though in +the course of their meetings she must sometimes think the +pleasure dearly bought, when she saw Mr. Darcy exposed to all +the parading and obsequious civility of her husband. He bore +it, however, with admirable calmness. He could even listen to +Sir William Lucas, when he complimented him on carrying away +the brightest jewel of the country, and expressed his hopes of +their all meeting frequently at St. James's, with very decent +composure. If he did shrug his shoulders, it was not till Sir +William was out of sight. +Mrs. Phillips's vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, +tax on his forbearance and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as +her sister, stood in too much awe of him to speak with the +familiarity which Bingley's good humour encouraged, yet, +whenever she did speak, she must be vulgar. Nor was her +respect for him, though it made her more quiet, at all likely +to make her more elegant. Elizabeth did all she could to +shield him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever +anxious to keep him to herself, and to those of her family with +whom he might converse without mortification and though the +uncomfortable feelings arising from all this took from the +season of courtship much of its pleasure, it added to the hope +of the future and she looked forward with delight to the time +when they should be removed from society so little pleasing to +either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party +at Pemberley. +Chapter +Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which +Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters. +With what delighted pride she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley, +and talked of Mrs. Darcy, may be guessed. I wish I could say, +for the sake of her family, that the accomplishment of her +earnest desire in the establishment of so many of her children +produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible, amiable, +wellinformed woman for the rest of her life though perhaps it +was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic +felicity in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally +nervous and invariably silly. +Mr. Bennet missed his second daughter exceedingly his +affection for her drew him oftener from home than anything +else could do. He delighted in going to Pemberley, especially +when he was least expected. +Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. +So near a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not +desirable even to his easy temper, or her affectionate heart. +The darling wish of his sisters was then gratified he bought +an estate in a neighbouring county to Derbyshire, and Jane and +Elizabeth, in addition to every other source of happiness, were +within thirty miles of each other. +Kitty, to her very material advantage, spent the chief of her +time with her two elder sisters. In society so superior to +what she had generally known, her improvement was great. She +was not of so ungovernable a temper as Lydia and, removed from +the influence of Lydia's example, she became, by proper +attention and management, less irritable, less ignorant, and +less insipid. From the further disadvantage of Lydia's society +she was of course carefully kept, and though Mrs. Wickham +frequently invited her to come and stay with her, with the +promise of balls and young men, her father would never consent +to her going. +Mary was the only daughter who remained at home and she was +necessarily drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by +Mrs. Bennet's being quite unable to sit alone. Mary was +obliged to mix more with the world, but she could still +moralize over every morning visit and as she was no longer +mortified by comparisons between her sisters' beauty and her +own, it was suspected by her father that she submitted to +the change without much reluctance. +As for Wickham and Lydia, their characters suffered no +revolution from the marriage of her sisters. He bore with +philosophy the conviction that Elizabeth must now become +acquainted with whatever of his ingratitude and falsehood +had before been unknown to her and in spite of every thing, +was not wholly without hope that Darcy might yet be prevailed +on to make his fortune. The congratulatory letter which +Elizabeth received from Lydia on her marriage, explained to +her that, by his wife at least, if not by himself, such a +hope was cherished. The letter was to this effect +"MY DEAR LIZZY, +"I wish you joy. If you love Mr. Darcy half as well as I do my +dear Wickham, you must be very happy. It is a great comfort to +have you so rich, and when you have nothing else to do, I hope +you will think of us. I am sure Wickham would like a place at +court very much, and I do not think we shall have quite money +enough to live upon without some help. Any place would do, of +about three or four hundred a year but however, do not speak +to Mr. Darcy about it, if you had rather not. +"Yours, etc." +As it happened that Elizabeth had much rather not, she +endeavoured in her answer to put an end to every entreaty +and expectation of the kind. Such relief, however, as it +was in her power to afford, by the practice of what might be +called economy in her own private expences, she frequently +sent them. It had always been evident to her that such an +income as theirs, under the direction of two persons so +extravagant in their wants, and heedless of the future, must +be very insufficient to their support and whenever they +changed their quarters, either Jane or herself were sure of +being applied to for some little assistance towards discharging +their bills. Their manner of living, even when the restoration +of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the +extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest +of a cheap situation, and always spending more than they ought. +His affection for her soon sunk into indifference her's lasted +a little longer and in spite of her youth and her manners, she +retained all the claims to reputation which her marriage had +given her. +Though Darcy could never receive him at Pemberley, yet, for +Elizabeth's sake, he assisted him further in his profession. +Lydia was occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was +gone to enjoy himself in London or Bath and with the Bingleys +they both of them frequently staid so long, that even Bingley's +good humour was overcome, and he proceeded so far as to talk +of giving them a hint to be gone. +Miss Bingley was very deeply mortified by Darcy's marriage but +as she thought it advisable to retain the right of visiting at +Pemberley, she dropt all her resentment was fonder than ever +of Georgiana, almost as attentive to Darcy as heretofore, and +paid off every arrear of civility to Elizabeth. +Pemberley was now Georgiana's home and the attachment of the +sisters was exactly what Darcy had hoped to see. They were able +to love each other even as well as they intended. Georgiana had +the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth though at first +she often listened with an astonishment bordering on alarm at +her lively, sportive, manner of talking to her brother. He, who +had always inspired in herself a respect which almost overcame +her affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry. Her +mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way. +By Elizabeth's instructions, she began to comprehend that a woman +may take liberties with her husband which a brother will not +always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself. +Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her +nephew and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her +character in her reply to the letter which announced its +arrangement, she sent him language so very abusive, especially +of Elizabeth, that for some time all intercourse was at an end. +But at length, by Elizabeth's persuasion, he was prevailed on +to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation and, after +a little further resistance on the part of his aunt, her +resentment gave way, either to her affection for him, or her +curiosity to see how his wife conducted herself and she +condescended to wait on them at Pemberley, in spite of that +pollution which its woods had received, not merely from the +presence of such a mistress, but the visits of her uncle and +aunt from the city. +With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate +terms. 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Kramer, Attorney +Internet .compuserve.com TEL +ENDTHE SMALL PRINT FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTSVer...END +SENSE AND SENSIBILITY +by Jane Austen +CHAPTER +The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. +Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, +in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, +they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage +the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. +The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived +to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, +had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. +But her death, which happened ten years before his own, +produced a great alteration in his home for to supply +her loss, he invited and received into his house the family +of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor +of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended +to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, +and their children, the old Gentleman's days were +comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. +The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood +to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, +but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid +comfort which his age could receive and the cheerfulness +of the children added a relish to his existence. +By a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one +son by his present lady, three daughters. The son, +a steady respectable young man, was amply provided +for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large, +and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. +By his own marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, +he added to his wealth. To him therefore the succession +to the Norland estate was not so really important as to +his sisters for their fortune, independent of what might +arise to them from their father's inheriting that property, +could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their +father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal +for the remaining moiety of his first wife's fortune was +also secured to her child, and he had only a lifeinterest +in it. +The old gentleman died his will was read, and +like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment +as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, +as to leave his estate from his nephewbut he left it to him +on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. +Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his +wife and daughters than for himself or his sonbut to +his son, and his son's son, a child of four years old, +it was secured, in such a way, as to leave to himself +no power of providing for those who were most dear +to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge +on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. +The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, +in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, +had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, +by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children +of two or three years old an imperfect articulation, +an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, +and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value +of all the attention which, for years, he had received +from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to +be unkind, however, and, as a mark of his affection +for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds apiece. +Mr. Dashwood's disappointment was, at first, severe +but his temper was cheerful and sanguine and he might +reasonably hope to live many years, and by living economically, +lay by a considerable sum from the produce of an estate +already large, and capable of almost immediate improvement. +But the fortune, which had been so tardy in coming, was his +only one twelvemonth. He survived his uncle no longer +and ten thousand pounds, including the late legacies, +was all that remained for his widow and daughters. +His son was sent for as soon as his danger was known, +and to him Mr. Dashwood recommended, with all the strength +and urgency which illness could command, the interest +of his motherinlaw and sisters. +Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the +rest of the family but he was affected by a recommendation +of such a nature at such a time, and he promised to do +every thing in his power to make them comfortable. +His father was rendered easy by such an assurance, +and Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how +much there might prudently be in his power to do for them. +He was not an illdisposed young man, unless to +be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be +illdisposed but he was, in general, well respected +for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge +of his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, +he might have been made still more respectable than he +washe might even have been made amiable himself for he +was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. +But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself +more narrowminded and selfish. +When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated +within himself to increase the fortunes of his sisters +by the present of a thousand pounds apiece. He then +really thought himself equal to it. The prospect of four +thousand ayear, in addition to his present income, +besides the remaining half of his own mother's fortune, +warmed his heart, and made him feel capable of generosity. +"Yes, he would give them three thousand pounds it would +be liberal and handsome It would be enough to make +them completely easy. Three thousand pounds he could +spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience." +He thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, +and he did not repent. +No sooner was his father's funeral over, than Mrs. John +Dashwood, without sending any notice of her intention to her +motherinlaw, arrived with her child and their attendants. +No one could dispute her right to come the house was +her husband's from the moment of his father's decease +but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the greater, +and to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood's situation, with only +common feelings, must have been highly unpleasing +but in HER mind there was a sense of honor so keen, +a generosity so romantic, that any offence of the kind, +by whomsoever given or received, was to her a source +of immoveable disgust. Mrs. John Dashwood had never +been a favourite with any of her husband's family +but she had had no opportunity, till the present, +of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort +of other people she could act when occasion required it. +So acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious +behaviour, and so earnestly did she despise her +daughterinlaw for it, that, on the arrival of the latter, +she would have quitted the house for ever, had not the +entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect +on the propriety of going, and her own tender love for all +her three children determined her afterwards to stay, +and for their sakes avoid a breach with their brother. +Elinor, this eldest daughter, whose advice was +so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, +and coolness of judgment, which qualified her, +though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, +and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage +of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood +which must generally have led to imprudence. She had +an excellent hearther disposition was affectionate, +and her feelings were strong but she knew how to govern +them it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn +and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught. +Marianne's abilities were, in many respects, +quite equal to Elinor's. She was sensible and clever +but eager in everything her sorrows, her joys, could have +no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting she +was everything but prudent. The resemblance between +her and her mother was strikingly great. +Elinor saw, with concern, the excess of her +sister's sensibility but by Mrs. Dashwood it was valued +and cherished. They encouraged each other now in the +violence of their affliction. The agony of grief +which overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, +was sought for, was created again and again. They gave +themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase +of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, +and resolved against ever admitting consolation +in future. Elinor, too, was deeply afflicted but still +she could struggle, she could exert herself. She could +consult with her brother, could receive her sisterinlaw +on her arrival, and treat her with proper attention +and could strive to rouse her mother to similar exertion, +and encourage her to similar forbearance. +Margaret, the other sister, was a goodhumored, +welldisposed girl but as she had already imbibed +a good deal of Marianne's romance, without having +much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair +to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life. +CHAPTER +Mrs. John Dashwood now installed herself mistress +of Norland and her mother and sistersinlaw were degraded +to the condition of visitors. As such, however, they were +treated by her with quiet civility and by her husband +with as much kindness as he could feel towards anybody +beyond himself, his wife, and their child. He really +pressed them, with some earnestness, to consider Norland +as their home and, as no plan appeared so eligible +to Mrs. Dashwood as remaining there till she could +accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, +his invitation was accepted. +A continuance in a place where everything reminded +her of former delight, was exactly what suited her mind. +In seasons of cheerfulness, no temper could be more cheerful +than hers, or possess, in a greater degree, that sanguine +expectation of happiness which is happiness itself. +But in sorrow she must be equally carried away by her fancy, +and as far beyond consolation as in pleasure she was +beyond alloy. +Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her +husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three +thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy +would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. +She begged him to think again on the subject. How could +he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only +child too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim +could the Miss Dashwoods, who were related to him only by +half blood, which she considered as no relationship at all, +have on his generosity to so large an amount. It was very +well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist +between the children of any man by different marriages +and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, +by giving away all his money to his half sisters? +"It was my father's last request to me," replied +her husband, "that I should assist his widow and daughters." +"He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say +ten to one but he was lightheaded at the time. +Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought +of such a thing as begging you to give away half your +fortune from your own child." +"He did not stipulate for any particular sum, +my dear Fanny he only requested me, in general terms, +to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable +than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would +have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. +He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. +But as he required the promise, I could not do less +than give it at least I thought so at the time. +The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. +Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland +and settle in a new home." +"Well, then, LET something be done for them +but THAT something need not be three thousand pounds. +Consider," she added, "that when the money is once +parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, +and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could +be restored to our poor little boy" +"Why, to be sure," said her husband, very gravely, +"that would make great difference. The time may come when +Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. +If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would +be a very convenient addition." +"To be sure it would." +"Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, +if the sum were diminished one half.Five hundred pounds +would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes" +"Oh beyond anything great What brother on earth +would do half so much for his sisters, even if REALLY +his sisters And as it isonly half bloodBut you +have such a generous spirit" +"I would not wish to do any thing mean," he replied. +"One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than +too little. No one, at least, can think I have not +done enough for them even themselves, they can hardly +expect more." +"There is no knowing what THEY may expect," +said the lady, "but we are not to think of their +expectations the question is, what you can afford to do." +"Certainlyand I think I may afford to give them five +hundred pounds apiece. As it is, without any addition +of mine, they will each have about three thousand pounds +on their mother's deatha very comfortable fortune +for any young woman." +"To be sure it is and, indeed, it strikes me that +they can want no addition at all. They will have ten +thousand pounds divided amongst them. If they marry, +they will be sure of doing well, and if they do not, +they may all live very comfortably together on the interest +of ten thousand pounds." +"That is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, +upon the whole, it would not be more advisable to do +something for their mother while she lives, rather than +for themsomething of the annuity kind I mean.My sisters +would feel the good effects of it as well as herself. +A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable." +His wife hesitated a little, however, in giving +her consent to this plan. +"To be sure," said she, "it is better than parting with +fifteen hundred pounds at once. But, then, if Mrs. Dashwood +should live fifteen years we shall be completely taken in." +"Fifteen years my dear Fanny her life cannot +be worth half that purchase." +"Certainly not but if you observe, people always +live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them +and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. +An annuity is a very serious business it comes over +and over every year, and there is no getting rid +of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. +I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities +for my mother was clogged with the payment of three +to old superannuated servants by my father's will, +and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. +Twice every year these annuities were to be paid and then +there was the trouble of getting it to them and then one +of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned +out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. +Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual +claims on it and it was the more unkind in my father, +because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at +my mother's disposal, without any restriction whatever. +It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am +sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for +all the world." +"It is certainly an unpleasant thing," replied Mr. Dashwood, +"to have those kind of yearly drains on one's income. +One's fortune, as your mother justly says, is NOT one's own. +To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, +on every rent day, is by no means desirable it takes away +one's independence." +"Undoubtedly and after all you have no thanks for it. +They think themselves secure, you do no more than what +is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were you, +whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. +I would not bind myself to allow them any thing yearly. +It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, +or even fifty pounds from our own expenses." +"I believe you are right, my love it will be better +that there should by no annuity in the case whatever I +may give them occasionally will be of far greater assistance +than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge +their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, +and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end +of the year. It will certainly be much the best way. +A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent +their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, +be amply discharging my promise to my father." +"To be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, +I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea +of your giving them any money at all. The assistance +he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might be +reasonably expected of you for instance, such as looking +out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them +to move their things, and sending them presents of fish +and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season. +I'll lay my life that he meant nothing farther indeed, +it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. +Do but consider, my dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively +comfortable your motherinlaw and her daughters may live +on the interest of seven thousand pounds, besides the +thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which brings +them in fifty pounds a year apiece, and, of course, +they will pay their mother for their board out of it. +Altogether, they will have five hundred ayear amongst them, +and what on earth can four women want for more than +that?They will live so cheap Their housekeeping will +be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, +and hardly any servants they will keep no company, +and can have no expenses of any kind Only conceive +how comfortable they will be Five hundred a year I am +sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it +and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think +of it. They will be much more able to give YOU something." +"Upon my word," said Mr. Dashwood, "I believe you +are perfectly right. My father certainly could mean +nothing more by his request to me than what you say. +I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil +my engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness +to them as you have described. When my mother removes +into another house my services shall be readily given +to accommodate her as far as I can. Some little present +of furniture too may be acceptable then." +"Certainly," returned Mrs. John Dashwood. "But, however, +ONE thing must be considered. When your father and mother +moved to Norland, though the furniture of Stanhill +was sold, all the china, plate, and linen was saved, +and is now left to your mother. Her house will therefore +be almost completely fitted up as soon as she takes it." +"That is a material consideration undoubtedly. +A valuable legacy indeed And yet some of the plate would +have been a very pleasant addition to our own stock here." +"Yes and the set of breakfast china is twice +as handsome as what belongs to this house. A great +deal too handsome, in my opinion, for any place THEY +can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. +Your father thought only of THEM. And I must say this +that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention +to his wishes for we very well know that if he could, +he would have left almost everything in the world to THEM." +This argument was irresistible. It gave to his +intentions whatever of decision was wanting before and he +finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, +if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow +and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly +acts as his own wife pointed out. +CHAPTER +Mrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months +not from any disinclination to move when the sight of every +well known spot ceased to raise the violent emotion which it +produced for a while for when her spirits began to revive, +and her mind became capable of some other exertion than that +of heightening its affliction by melancholy remembrances, +she was impatient to be gone, and indefatigable in her inquiries +for a suitable dwelling in the neighbourhood of Norland +for to remove far from that beloved spot was impossible. +But she could hear of no situation that at once answered +her notions of comfort and ease, and suited the prudence +of her eldest daughter, whose steadier judgment rejected +several houses as too large for their income, which her +mother would have approved. +Mrs. Dashwood had been informed by her husband of the +solemn promise on the part of his son in their favour, +which gave comfort to his last earthly reflections. +She doubted the sincerity of this assurance no more than he +had doubted it himself, and she thought of it for her daughters' +sake with satisfaction, though as for herself she was +persuaded that a much smaller provision than L would +support her in affluence. For their brother's sake, too, +for the sake of his own heart, she rejoiced and she +reproached herself for being unjust to his merit before, +in believing him incapable of generosity. His attentive +behaviour to herself and his sisters convinced her that +their welfare was dear to him, and, for a long time, +she firmly relied on the liberality of his intentions. +The contempt which she had, very early in their acquaintance, +felt for her daughterinlaw, was very much increased +by the farther knowledge of her character, which half +a year's residence in her family afforded and perhaps +in spite of every consideration of politeness or maternal +affection on the side of the former, the two ladies might +have found it impossible to have lived together so long, +had not a particular circumstance occurred to give +still greater eligibility, according to the opinions +of Mrs. Dashwood, to her daughters' continuance at Norland. +This circumstance was a growing attachment between +her eldest girl and the brother of Mrs. John Dashwood, +a gentlemanlike and pleasing young man, who was introduced +to their acquaintance soon after his sister's establishment +at Norland, and who had since spent the greatest part +of his time there. +Some mothers might have encouraged the intimacy from +motives of interest, for Edward Ferrars was the eldest son +of a man who had died very rich and some might have repressed +it from motives of prudence, for, except a trifling sum, +the whole of his fortune depended on the will of his mother. +But Mrs. Dashwood was alike uninfluenced by either consideration. +It was enough for her that he appeared to be amiable, +that he loved her daughter, and that Elinor returned +the partiality. It was contrary to every doctrine of +her's that difference of fortune should keep any couple +asunder who were attracted by resemblance of disposition +and that Elinor's merit should not be acknowledged +by every one who knew her, was to her comprehension impossible. +Edward Ferrars was not recommended to their good +opinion by any peculiar graces of person or address. +He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy +to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice +to himself but when his natural shyness was overcome, +his behaviour gave every indication of an open, +affectionate heart. His understanding was good, +and his education had given it solid improvement. +But he was neither fitted by abilities nor disposition +to answer the wishes of his mother and sister, who longed +to see him distinguishedasthey hardly knew what. +They wanted him to make a fine figure in the world in some +manner or other. His mother wished to interest him in +political concerns, to get him into parliament, or to see +him connected with some of the great men of the day. +Mrs. John Dashwood wished it likewise but in the mean while, +till one of these superior blessings could be attained, it would +have quieted her ambition to see him driving a barouche. +But Edward had no turn for great men or barouches. +All his wishes centered in domestic comfort and the quiet +of private life. Fortunately he had a younger brother +who was more promising. +Edward had been staying several weeks in the house +before he engaged much of Mrs. Dashwood's attention +for she was, at that time, in such affliction as rendered +her careless of surrounding objects. She saw only that he +was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. +He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by +illtimed conversation. She was first called to observe +and approve him farther, by a reflection which Elinor +chanced one day to make on the difference between him +and his sister. It was a contrast which recommended him +most forcibly to her mother. +"It is enough," said she "to say that he is unlike +Fanny is enough. It implies everything amiable. +I love him already." +"I think you will like him," said Elinor, "when you +know more of him." +"Like him" replied her mother with a smile. +"I feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love." +"You may esteem him." +"I have never yet known what it was to separate +esteem and love." +Mrs. Dashwood now took pains to get acquainted with him. +Her manners were attaching, and soon banished his reserve. +She speedily comprehended all his merits the persuasion +of his regard for Elinor perhaps assisted her penetration +but she really felt assured of his worth and even that +quietness of manner, which militated against all her +established ideas of what a young man's address ought to be, +was no longer uninteresting when she knew his heart to be +warm and his temper affectionate. +No sooner did she perceive any symptom of love +in his behaviour to Elinor, than she considered their +serious attachment as certain, and looked forward +to their marriage as rapidly approaching. +"In a few months, my dear Marianne." said she, +"Elinor will, in all probability be settled for life. +We shall miss her but SHE will be happy." +"Oh Mamma, how shall we do without her?" +"My love, it will be scarcely a separation. +We shall live within a few miles of each other, and shall +meet every day of our lives. You will gain a brother, +a real, affectionate brother. I have the highest opinion +in the world of Edward's heart. But you look grave, +Marianne do you disapprove your sister's choice?" +"Perhaps," said Marianne, "I may consider it +with some surprise. Edward is very amiable, and I love +him tenderly. But yethe is not the kind of young +manthere is something wantinghis figure is not striking +it has none of that grace which I should expect +in the man who could seriously attach my sister. +His eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once +announce virtue and intelligence. And besides all this, +I am afraid, Mamma, he has no real taste. Music seems +scarcely to attract him, and though he admires Elinor's +drawings very much, it is not the admiration of a person +who can understand their worth. It is evident, in spite of +his frequent attention to her while she draws, that in fact +he knows nothing of the matter. He admires as a lover, +not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters +must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose +taste did not in every point coincide with my own. +He must enter into all my feelings the same books, +the same music must charm us both. Oh mama, how spiritless, +how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night +I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it +with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. +I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines +which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced +with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference" +"He would certainly have done more justice to +simple and elegant prose. I thought so at the time +but you WOULD give him Cowper." +"Nay, Mamma, if he is not to be animated by Cowper +but we must allow for difference of taste. Elinor has +not my feelings, and therefore she may overlook it, and +be happy with him. But it would have broke MY heart, +had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility. +Mama, the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced +that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. +I require so much He must have all Edward's virtues, +and his person and manners must ornament his goodness +with every possible charm." +"Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen. +It is yet too early in life to despair of such a happiness. +Why should you be less fortunate than your mother? In +one circumstance only, my Marianne, may your destiny be +different from her's" +CHAPTER +"What a pity it is, Elinor," said Marianne, +"that Edward should have no taste for drawing." +"No taste for drawing" replied Elinor, "why should +you think so? He does not draw himself, indeed, but he has +great pleasure in seeing the performances of other people, +and I assure you he is by no means deficient in natural taste, +though he has not had opportunities of improving it. +Had he ever been in the way of learning, I think he would +have drawn very well. He distrusts his own judgment +in such matters so much, that he is always unwilling +to give his opinion on any picture but he has an innate +propriety and simplicity of taste, which in general +direct him perfectly right." +Marianne was afraid of offending, and said no more +on the subject but the kind of approbation which Elinor +described as excited in him by the drawings of other +people, was very far from that rapturous delight, which, +in her opinion, could alone be called taste. Yet, though +smiling within herself at the mistake, she honoured +her sister for that blind partiality to Edward which produced it. +"I hope, Marianne," continued Elinor, "you do not +consider him as deficient in general taste. Indeed, I think +I may say that you cannot, for your behaviour to him +is perfectly cordial, and if THAT were your opinion, +I am sure you could never be civil to him." +Marianne hardly knew what to say. She would +not wound the feelings of her sister on any account, +and yet to say what she did not believe was impossible. +At length she replied +"Do not be offended, Elinor, if my praise of him +is not in every thing equal to your sense of his merits. +I have not had so many opportunities of estimating the minuter +propensities of his mind, his inclinations and tastes, +as you have but I have the highest opinion in the world +of his goodness and sense. I think him every thing that is +worthy and amiable." +"I am sure," replied Elinor, with a smile, +"that his dearest friends could not be dissatisfied +with such commendation as that. I do not perceive +how you could express yourself more warmly." +Marianne was rejoiced to find her sister so easily pleased. +"Of his sense and his goodness," continued Elinor, +"no one can, I think, be in doubt, who has seen him +often enough to engage him in unreserved conversation. +The excellence of his understanding and his principles +can be concealed only by that shyness which too often +keeps him silent. You know enough of him to do justice +to his solid worth. But of his minuter propensities, +as you call them you have from peculiar circumstances +been kept more ignorant than myself. He and I have +been at times thrown a good deal together, while you +have been wholly engrossed on the most affectionate +principle by my mother. I have seen a great deal of him, +have studied his sentiments and heard his opinion on +subjects of literature and taste and, upon the whole, +I venture to pronounce that his mind is wellinformed, +enjoyment of books exceedingly great, his imagination lively, +his observation just and correct, and his taste delicate +and pure. His abilities in every respect improve +as much upon acquaintance as his manners and person. +At first sight, his address is certainly not striking +and his person can hardly be called handsome, till the +expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly good, +and the general sweetness of his countenance, is perceived. +At present, I know him so well, that I think him +really handsome or at least, almost so. What say you, +Marianne?" +"I shall very soon think him handsome, Elinor, if I +do not now. When you tell me to love him as a brother, +I shall no more see imperfection in his face, than I now do +in his heart." +Elinor started at this declaration, and was sorry for +the warmth she had been betrayed into, in speaking of him. +She felt that Edward stood very high in her opinion. +She believed the regard to be mutual but she required +greater certainty of it to make Marianne's conviction +of their attachment agreeable to her. She knew that +what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, +they believed the nextthat with them, to wish was to hope, +and to hope was to expect. She tried to explain the real +state of the case to her sister. +"I do not attempt to deny," said she, "that I think +very highly of himthat I greatly esteem, that I like him." +Marianne here burst forth with indignation +"Esteem him Like him Coldhearted Elinor Oh +worse than coldhearted Ashamed of being otherwise. +Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment." +Elinor could not help laughing. "Excuse me," +said she "and be assured that I meant no offence to you, +by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings. +Believe them to be stronger than I have declared +believe them, in short, to be such as his merit, and the +suspicionthe hope of his affection for me may warrant, +without imprudence or folly. But farther than this you must +not believe. I am by no means assured of his regard for me. +There are moments when the extent of it seems doubtful +and till his sentiments are fully known, you cannot wonder +at my wishing to avoid any encouragement of my own partiality, +by believing or calling it more than it is. In my heart +I feel littlescarcely any doubt of his preference. +But there are other points to be considered besides +his inclination. He is very far from being independent. +What his mother really is we cannot know but, from Fanny's +occasional mention of her conduct and opinions, we have +never been disposed to think her amiable and I am very +much mistaken if Edward is not himself aware that there +would be many difficulties in his way, if he were to wish +to marry a woman who had not either a great fortune or +high rank." +Marianne was astonished to find how much the imagination +of her mother and herself had outstripped the truth. +"And you really are not engaged to him" said she. +"Yet it certainly soon will happen. But two advantages +will proceed from this delay. I shall not lose you so soon, +and Edward will have greater opportunity of improving +that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must +be so indispensably necessary to your future felicity. +Oh if he should be so far stimulated by your genius as to +learn to draw himself, how delightful it would be" +Elinor had given her real opinion to her sister. +She could not consider her partiality for Edward +in so prosperous a state as Marianne had believed it. +There was, at times, a want of spirits about him which, +if it did not denote indifference, spoke of something almost +as unpromising. A doubt of her regard, supposing him +to feel it, need not give him more than inquietude. +It would not be likely to produce that dejection of mind +which frequently attended him. A more reasonable cause +might be found in the dependent situation which forbade +the indulgence of his affection. She knew that his mother +neither behaved to him so as to make his home comfortable +at present, nor to give him any assurance that he might form +a home for himself, without strictly attending to her views +for his aggrandizement. With such a knowledge as this, +it was impossible for Elinor to feel easy on the subject. +She was far from depending on that result of his preference +of her, which her mother and sister still considered +as certain. Nay, the longer they were together the more +doubtful seemed the nature of his regard and sometimes, +for a few painful minutes, she believed it to be no more +than friendship. +But, whatever might really be its limits, it was enough, +when perceived by his sister, to make her uneasy, +and at the same time, which was still more common, +to make her uncivil. She took the first opportunity of +affronting her motherinlaw on the occasion, talking to +her so expressively of her brother's great expectations, +of Mrs. Ferrars's resolution that both her sons should +marry well, and of the danger attending any young woman +who attempted to DRAW HIM IN that Mrs. Dashwood could +neither pretend to be unconscious, nor endeavor to be calm. +She gave her an answer which marked her contempt, +and instantly left the room, resolving that, whatever might +be the inconvenience or expense of so sudden a removal, +her beloved Elinor should not be exposed another week +to such insinuations. +In this state of her spirits, a letter was delivered +to her from the post, which contained a proposal +particularly well timed. It was the offer of a small house, +on very easy terms, belonging to a relation of her own, +a gentleman of consequence and property in Devonshire. +The letter was from this gentleman himself, and written +in the true spirit of friendly accommodation. +He understood that she was in need of a dwelling +and though the house he now offered her was merely a cottage, +he assured her that everything should be done to it which +she might think necessary, if the situation pleased her. +He earnestly pressed her, after giving the particulars +of the house and garden, to come with her daughters to +Barton Park, the place of his own residence, from whence +she might judge, herself, whether Barton Cottage, for the +houses were in the same parish, could, by any alteration, +be made comfortable to her. He seemed really anxious to +accommodate them and the whole of his letter was written +in so friendly a style as could not fail of giving pleasure +to his cousin more especially at a moment when she was +suffering under the cold and unfeeling behaviour of her +nearer connections. She needed no time for deliberation +or inquiry. Her resolution was formed as she read. +The situation of Barton, in a county so far distant from +Sussex as Devonshire, which, but a few hours before, +would have been a sufficient objection to outweigh every +possible advantage belonging to the place, was now its +first recommendation. To quit the neighbourhood of Norland +was no longer an evil it was an object of desire +it was a blessing, in comparison of the misery of continuing +her daughterinlaw's guest and to remove for ever +from that beloved place would be less painful than to +inhabit or visit it while such a woman was its mistress. +She instantly wrote Sir John Middleton her acknowledgment +of his kindness, and her acceptance of his proposal +and then hastened to shew both letters to her daughters, +that she might be secure of their approbation before her +answer were sent. +Elinor had always thought it would be more prudent +for them to settle at some distance from Norland, +than immediately amongst their present acquaintance. +On THAT head, therefore, it was not for her to oppose +her mother's intention of removing into Devonshire. +The house, too, as described by Sir John, was on so +simple a scale, and the rent so uncommonly moderate, +as to leave her no right of objection on either point +and, therefore, though it was not a plan which brought +any charm to her fancy, though it was a removal from +the vicinity of Norland beyond her wishes, she made +no attempt to dissuade her mother from sending a letter +of acquiescence. +CHAPTER +No sooner was her answer dispatched, than Mrs. Dashwood +indulged herself in the pleasure of announcing to her +soninlaw and his wife that she was provided with a house, +and should incommode them no longer than till every thing were +ready for her inhabiting it. They heard her with surprise. +Mrs. John Dashwood said nothing but her husband civilly +hoped that she would not be settled far from Norland. +She had great satisfaction in replying that she was going +into Devonshire.Edward turned hastily towards her, +on hearing this, and, in a voice of surprise and concern, +which required no explanation to her, repeated, +"Devonshire Are you, indeed, going there? So far from hence +And to what part of it?" She explained the situation. +It was within four miles northward of Exeter. +"It is but a cottage," she continued, "but I hope +to see many of my friends in it. A room or two can +easily be added and if my friends find no difficulty +in travelling so far to see me, I am sure I will find +none in accommodating them." +She concluded with a very kind invitation to +Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood to visit her at Barton +and to Edward she gave one with still greater affection. +Though her late conversation with her daughterinlaw had +made her resolve on remaining at Norland no longer than +was unavoidable, it had not produced the smallest effect +on her in that point to which it principally tended. +To separate Edward and Elinor was as far from being her +object as ever and she wished to show Mrs. John Dashwood, +by this pointed invitation to her brother, how totally she +disregarded her disapprobation of the match. +Mr. John Dashwood told his mother again and again +how exceedingly sorry he was that she had taken a house at +such a distance from Norland as to prevent his being of any +service to her in removing her furniture. He really felt +conscientiously vexed on the occasion for the very exertion +to which he had limited the performance of his promise to +his father was by this arrangement rendered impracticable. +The furniture was all sent around by water. It chiefly +consisted of household linen, plate, china, and books, +with a handsome pianoforte of Marianne's. Mrs. John +Dashwood saw the packages depart with a sigh she could +not help feeling it hard that as Mrs. Dashwood's income +would be so trifling in comparison with their own, +she should have any handsome article of furniture. +Mrs. Dashwood took the house for a twelvemonth it was +ready furnished, and she might have immediate possession. +No difficulty arose on either side in the agreement and she +waited only for the disposal of her effects at Norland, +and to determine her future household, before she set +off for the west and this, as she was exceedingly rapid +in the performance of everything that interested her, +was soon done.The horses which were left her by her husband +had been sold soon after his death, and an opportunity +now offering of disposing of her carriage, she agreed +to sell that likewise at the earnest advice of her +eldest daughter. For the comfort of her children, had she +consulted only her own wishes, she would have kept it +but the discretion of Elinor prevailed. HER wisdom +too limited the number of their servants to three +two maids and a man, with whom they were speedily provided +from amongst those who had formed their establishment +at Norland. +The man and one of the maids were sent off immediately +into Devonshire, to prepare the house for their mistress's +arrival for as Lady Middleton was entirely unknown +to Mrs. Dashwood, she preferred going directly to the +cottage to being a visitor at Barton Park and she relied +so undoubtingly on Sir John's description of the house, +as to feel no curiosity to examine it herself till she +entered it as her own. Her eagerness to be gone from Norland +was preserved from diminution by the evident satisfaction +of her daughterinlaw in the prospect of her removal +a satisfaction which was but feebly attempted to be concealed +under a cold invitation to her to defer her departure. +Now was the time when her soninlaw's promise to his +father might with particular propriety be fulfilled. +Since he had neglected to do it on first coming to +the estate, their quitting his house might be looked +on as the most suitable period for its accomplishment. +But Mrs. Dashwood began shortly to give over every +hope of the kind, and to be convinced, from the general +drift of his discourse, that his assistance extended no +farther than their maintenance for six months at Norland. +He so frequently talked of the increasing expenses +of housekeeping, and of the perpetual demands upon his purse, +which a man of any consequence in the world was beyond +calculation exposed to, that he seemed rather to stand +in need of more money himself than to have any design of +giving money away. +In a very few weeks from the day which brought Sir +John Middleton's first letter to Norland, every thing was +so far settled in their future abode as to enable +Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters to begin their journey. +Many were the tears shed by them in their last +adieus to a place so much beloved. "Dear, dear Norland" +said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, +on the last evening of their being there "when shall I cease +to regret youwhen learn to feel a home elsewhereOh +happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing +you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view +you no moreAnd you, ye wellknown treesbut you +will continue the same.No leaf will decay because we +are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we +can observe you no longerNo you will continue the same +unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, +and insensible of any change in those who walk under your +shadeBut who will remain to enjoy you?" +CHAPTER +The first part of their journey was performed in too +melancholy a disposition to be otherwise than tedious +and unpleasant. But as they drew towards the end of it, +their interest in the appearance of a country which they +were to inhabit overcame their dejection, and a view of +Barton Valley as they entered it gave them cheerfulness. +It was a pleasant fertile spot, well wooded, and rich +in pasture. After winding along it for more than a mile, +they reached their own house. A small green court was +the whole of its demesne in front and a neat wicket gate +admitted them into it. +As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable +and compact but as a cottage it was defective, for the +building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window +shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered +with honeysuckles. A narrow passage led directly through +the house into the garden behind. On each side of the +entrance was a sitting room, about sixteen feet square +and beyond them were the offices and the stairs. +Four bedrooms and two garrets formed the rest of the house. +It had not been built many years and was in good repair. +In comparison of Norland, it was poor and small indeedbut +the tears which recollection called forth as they entered +the house were soon dried away. They were cheered +by the joy of the servants on their arrival, and each +for the sake of the others resolved to appear happy. +It was very early in September the season was fine, +and from first seeing the place under the advantage +of good weather, they received an impression in its +favour which was of material service in recommending +it to their lasting approbation. +The situation of the house was good. High hills rose +immediately behind, and at no great distance on each side +some of which were open downs, the others cultivated and woody. +The village of Barton was chiefly on one of these hills, +and formed a pleasant view from the cottage windows. +The prospect in front was more extensive it commanded the +whole of the valley, and reached into the country beyond. +The hills which surrounded the cottage terminated +the valley in that direction under another name, +and in another course, it branched out again between two +of the steepest of them. +With the size and furniture of the house Mrs. Dashwood +was upon the whole well satisfied for though her former +style of life rendered many additions to the latter +indispensable, yet to add and improve was a delight to her +and she had at this time ready money enough to supply all +that was wanted of greater elegance to the apartments. +"As for the house itself, to be sure," said she, "it is +too small for our family, but we will make ourselves +tolerably comfortable for the present, as it is too late +in the year for improvements. Perhaps in the spring, +if I have plenty of money, as I dare say I shall, we may +think about building. These parlors are both too small +for such parties of our friends as I hope to see often +collected here and I have some thoughts of throwing the +passage into one of them with perhaps a part of the other, +and so leave the remainder of that other for an entrance +this, with a new drawing room which may be easily added, +and a bedchamber and garret above, will make it a very snug +little cottage. I could wish the stairs were handsome. +But one must not expect every thing though I suppose it +would be no difficult matter to widen them. I shall see +how much I am beforehand with the world in the spring, +and we will plan our improvements accordingly." +In the mean time, till all these alterations could +be made from the savings of an income of five hundred +ayear by a woman who never saved in her life, they were +wise enough to be contented with the house as it was +and each of them was busy in arranging their particular +concerns, and endeavoring, by placing around them books +and other possessions, to form themselves a home. +Marianne's pianoforte was unpacked and properly disposed of +and Elinor's drawings were affixed to the walls of their +sitting room. +In such employments as these they were interrupted +soon after breakfast the next day by the entrance of +their landlord, who called to welcome them to Barton, +and to offer them every accommodation from his own house +and garden in which theirs might at present be deficient. +Sir John Middleton was a good looking man about forty. +He had formerly visited at Stanhill, but it was too long +for his young cousins to remember him. His countenance +was thoroughly goodhumoured and his manners were +as friendly as the style of his letter. Their arrival +seemed to afford him real satisfaction, and their comfort +to be an object of real solicitude to him. He said much +of his earnest desire of their living in the most sociable +terms with his family, and pressed them so cordially +to dine at Barton Park every day till they were better +settled at home, that, though his entreaties were carried +to a point of perseverance beyond civility, they could +not give offence. His kindness was not confined to words +for within an hour after he left them, a large basket +full of garden stuff and fruit arrived from the park, +which was followed before the end of the day by a present +of game. He insisted, moreover, on conveying all their +letters to and from the post for them, and would not be +denied the satisfaction of sending them his newspaper +every day. +Lady Middleton had sent a very civil message by him, +denoting her intention of waiting on Mrs. Dashwood as soon as +she could be assured that her visit would be no inconvenience +and as this message was answered by an invitation +equally polite, her ladyship was introduced to them the next day. +They were, of course, very anxious to see a person on +whom so much of their comfort at Barton must depend and the +elegance of her appearance was favourable to their wishes. +Lady Middleton was not more than six or seven and twenty +her face was handsome, her figure tall and striking, +and her address graceful. Her manners had all the elegance +which her husband's wanted. But they would have been +improved by some share of his frankness and warmth +and her visit was long enough to detract something from +their first admiration, by shewing that, though perfectly +wellbred, she was reserved, cold, and had nothing to say +for herself beyond the most commonplace inquiry or remark. +Conversation however was not wanted, for Sir John +was very chatty, and Lady Middleton had taken the wise +precaution of bringing with her their eldest child, a fine +little boy about six years old, by which means there was +one subject always to be recurred to by the ladies in case +of extremity, for they had to enquire his name and age, +admire his beauty, and ask him questions which his mother +answered for him, while he hung about her and held +down his head, to the great surprise of her ladyship, +who wondered at his being so shy before company, as he +could make noise enough at home. On every formal visit +a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision +for discourse. In the present case it took up ten minutes +to determine whether the boy were most like his father +or mother, and in what particular he resembled either, +for of course every body differed, and every body was +astonished at the opinion of the others. +An opportunity was soon to be given to the Dashwoods +of debating on the rest of the children, as Sir John +would not leave the house without securing their promise +of dining at the park the next day. +CHAPTER +Barton Park was about half a mile from the cottage. +The ladies had passed near it in their way along the valley, +but it was screened from their view at home by the +projection of a hill. The house was large and handsome +and the Middletons lived in a style of equal hospitality +and elegance. The former was for Sir John's gratification, +the latter for that of his lady. They were scarcely +ever without some friends staying with them in the house, +and they kept more company of every kind than any other +family in the neighbourhood. It was necessary to the +happiness of both for however dissimilar in temper +and outward behaviour, they strongly resembled each other +in that total want of talent and taste which confined +their employments, unconnected with such as society produced, +within a very narrow compass. Sir John was a sportsman, +Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted and shot, and she +humoured her children and these were their only resources. +Lady Middleton had the advantage of being able to spoil her +children all the year round, while Sir John's independent +employments were in existence only half the time. +Continual engagements at home and abroad, however, +supplied all the deficiencies of nature and education +supported the good spirits of Sir John, and gave exercise +to the good breeding of his wife. +Lady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance +of her table, and of all her domestic arrangements +and from this kind of vanity was her greatest enjoyment +in any of their parties. But Sir John's satisfaction +in society was much more real he delighted in collecting +about him more young people than his house would hold, +and the noisier they were the better was he pleased. +He was a blessing to all the juvenile part of the neighbourhood, +for in summer he was for ever forming parties to eat cold +ham and chicken out of doors, and in winter his private +balls were numerous enough for any young lady who was not +suffering under the unsatiable appetite of fifteen. +The arrival of a new family in the country was always +a matter of joy to him, and in every point of view he was +charmed with the inhabitants he had now procured for his +cottage at Barton. The Miss Dashwoods were young, pretty, +and unaffected. It was enough to secure his good opinion +for to be unaffected was all that a pretty girl could +want to make her mind as captivating as her person. +The friendliness of his disposition made him happy in +accommodating those, whose situation might be considered, +in comparison with the past, as unfortunate. In showing +kindness to his cousins therefore he had the real satisfaction +of a good heart and in settling a family of females only +in his cottage, he had all the satisfaction of a sportsman +for a sportsman, though he esteems only those of his sex who +are sportsmen likewise, is not often desirous of encouraging +their taste by admitting them to a residence within his own +manor. +Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters were met at the door +of the house by Sir John, who welcomed them to Barton +Park with unaffected sincerity and as he attended them +to the drawing room repeated to the young ladies the concern +which the same subject had drawn from him the day before, +at being unable to get any smart young men to meet them. +They would see, he said, only one gentleman there +besides himself a particular friend who was staying at +the park, but who was neither very young nor very gay. +He hoped they would all excuse the smallness of the party, +and could assure them it should never happen so again. +He had been to several families that morning in hopes +of procuring some addition to their number, but it +was moonlight and every body was full of engagements. +Luckily Lady Middleton's mother had arrived at Barton +within the last hour, and as she was a very cheerful +agreeable woman, he hoped the young ladies would not find +it so very dull as they might imagine. The young ladies, +as well as their mother, were perfectly satisfied with +having two entire strangers of the party, and wished for +no more. +Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, was a +goodhumoured, merry, fat, elderly woman, who talked a +great deal, seemed very happy, and rather vulgar. She was full +of jokes and laughter, and before dinner was over had said +many witty things on the subject of lovers and husbands +hoped they had not left their hearts behind them in Sussex, +and pretended to see them blush whether they did or not. +Marianne was vexed at it for her sister's sake, and turned +her eyes towards Elinor to see how she bore these attacks, +with an earnestness which gave Elinor far more pain than +could arise from such commonplace raillery as Mrs. Jennings's. +Colonel Brandon, the friend of Sir John, seemed no +more adapted by resemblance of manner to be his friend, +than Lady Middleton was to be his wife, or Mrs. Jennings +to be Lady Middleton's mother. He was silent and grave. +His appearance however was not unpleasing, in spite +of his being in the opinion of Marianne and Margaret +an absolute old bachelor, for he was on the wrong side +of five and thirty but though his face was not handsome, +his countenance was sensible, and his address was +particularly gentlemanlike. +There was nothing in any of the party which could +recommend them as companions to the Dashwoods but the cold +insipidity of Lady Middleton was so particularly repulsive, +that in comparison of it the gravity of Colonel Brandon, +and even the boisterous mirth of Sir John and his +motherinlaw was interesting. Lady Middleton seemed +to be roused to enjoyment only by the entrance of her +four noisy children after dinner, who pulled her about, +tore her clothes, and put an end to every kind of discourse +except what related to themselves. +In the evening, as Marianne was discovered to be musical, +she was invited to play. The instrument was unlocked, +every body prepared to be charmed, and Marianne, +who sang very well, at their request went through the +chief of the songs which Lady Middleton had brought into +the family on her marriage, and which perhaps had lain +ever since in the same position on the pianoforte, +for her ladyship had celebrated that event by giving +up music, although by her mother's account, she had +played extremely well, and by her own was very fond of it. +Marianne's performance was highly applauded. +Sir John was loud in his admiration at the end of every song, +and as loud in his conversation with the others while every +song lasted. Lady Middleton frequently called him to order, +wondered how any one's attention could be diverted from music +for a moment, and asked Marianne to sing a particular song +which Marianne had just finished. Colonel Brandon alone, +of all the party, heard her without being in raptures. +He paid her only the compliment of attention and she felt +a respect for him on the occasion, which the others had +reasonably forfeited by their shameless want of taste. +His pleasure in music, though it amounted not to that +ecstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own, +was estimable when contrasted against the horrible +insensibility of the others and she was reasonable enough +to allow that a man of five and thirty might well have +outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite +power of enjoyment. She was perfectly disposed to make +every allowance for the colonel's advanced state of life +which humanity required. +CHAPTER +Mrs. Jennings was a widow with an ample jointure. +She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived +to see respectably married, and she had now therefore +nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world. +In the promotion of this object she was zealously active, +as far as her ability reached and missed no opportunity +of projecting weddings among all the young people +of her acquaintance. She was remarkably quick in the +discovery of attachments, and had enjoyed the advantage +of raising the blushes and the vanity of many a young +lady by insinuations of her power over such a young man +and this kind of discernment enabled her soon after her +arrival at Barton decisively to pronounce that Colonel +Brandon was very much in love with Marianne Dashwood. +She rather suspected it to be so, on the very first +evening of their being together, from his listening +so attentively while she sang to them and when the visit +was returned by the Middletons' dining at the cottage, +the fact was ascertained by his listening to her again. +It must be so. She was perfectly convinced of it. +It would be an excellent match, for HE was rich, and SHE +was handsome. Mrs. Jennings had been anxious to see +Colonel Brandon well married, ever since her connection +with Sir John first brought him to her knowledge +and she was always anxious to get a good husband for every +pretty girl. +The immediate advantage to herself was by no means +inconsiderable, for it supplied her with endless jokes +against them both. At the park she laughed at the colonel, +and in the cottage at Marianne. To the former her +raillery was probably, as far as it regarded only himself, +perfectly indifferent but to the latter it was at +first incomprehensible and when its object was understood, +she hardly knew whether most to laugh at its absurdity, +or censure its impertinence, for she considered it as an +unfeeling reflection on the colonel's advanced years, +and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor. +Mrs. Dashwood, who could not think a man five years +younger than herself, so exceedingly ancient as he appeared +to the youthful fancy of her daughter, ventured to clear +Mrs. Jennings from the probability of wishing to throw +ridicule on his age. +"But at least, Mamma, you cannot deny the absurdity +of the accusation, though you may not think it intentionally +illnatured. Colonel Brandon is certainly younger than +Mrs. Jennings, but he is old enough to be MY father +and if he were ever animated enough to be in love, +must have long outlived every sensation of the kind. +It is too ridiculous When is a man to be safe from such wit, +if age and infirmity will not protect him?" +"Infirmity" said Elinor, "do you call Colonel Brandon +infirm? I can easily suppose that his age may appear much +greater to you than to my mother but you can hardly +deceive yourself as to his having the use of his limbs" +"Did not you hear him complain of the rheumatism? +and is not that the commonest infirmity of declining life?" +"My dearest child," said her mother, laughing, +"at this rate you must be in continual terror of MY decay +and it must seem to you a miracle that my life has been +extended to the advanced age of forty." +"Mamma, you are not doing me justice. I know very well +that Colonel Brandon is not old enough to make his friends +yet apprehensive of losing him in the course of nature. +He may live twenty years longer. But thirtyfive has +nothing to do with matrimony." +"Perhaps," said Elinor, "thirtyfive and seventeen had +better not have any thing to do with matrimony together. +But if there should by any chance happen to be a woman +who is single at seven and twenty, I should not think +Colonel Brandon's being thirtyfive any objection to his +marrying HER." +"A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, +after pausing a moment, "can never hope to feel or inspire +affection again, and if her home be uncomfortable, +or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might +bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse, +for the sake of the provision and security of a wife. +In his marrying such a woman therefore there would be +nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of convenience, +and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would +be no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. +To me it would seem only a commercial exchange, in which +each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other." +"It would be impossible, I know," replied Elinor, +"to convince you that a woman of seven and twenty could +feel for a man of thirtyfive anything near enough +to love, to make him a desirable companion to her. +But I must object to your dooming Colonel Brandon and +his wife to the constant confinement of a sick chamber, +merely because he chanced to complain yesterday a +very cold damp day of a slight rheumatic feel in one +of his shoulders." +"But he talked of flannel waistcoats," said Marianne +"and with me a flannel waistcoat is invariably connected +with aches, cramps, rheumatisms, and every species of +ailment that can afflict the old and the feeble." +"Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not +have despised him half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not +there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, +hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?" +Soon after this, upon Elinor's leaving the room, +"Mamma," said Marianne, "I have an alarm on the subject +of illness which I cannot conceal from you. I am sure +Edward Ferrars is not well. We have now been here almost +a fortnight, and yet he does not come. Nothing but real +indisposition could occasion this extraordinary delay. +What else can detain him at Norland?" +"Had you any idea of his coming so soon?" +said Mrs. Dashwood. "I had none. On the contrary, +if I have felt any anxiety at all on the subject, it has +been in recollecting that he sometimes showed a want +of pleasure and readiness in accepting my invitation, +when I talked of his coming to Barton. Does Elinor +expect him already?" +"I have never mentioned it to her, but of course +she must." +"I rather think you are mistaken, for when I +was talking to her yesterday of getting a new grate +for the spare bedchamber, she observed that there +was no immediate hurry for it, as it was not likely +that the room would be wanted for some time." +"How strange this is what can be the meaning of it +But the whole of their behaviour to each other has been +unaccountable How cold, how composed were their last +adieus How languid their conversation the last evening +of their being together In Edward's farewell there was no +distinction between Elinor and me it was the good wishes +of an affectionate brother to both. Twice did I leave +them purposely together in the course of the last morning, +and each time did he most unaccountably follow me out +of the room. And Elinor, in quitting Norland and Edward, +cried not as I did. Even now her selfcommand is invariable. +When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try +to avoid society, or appear restless and dissatisfied +in it?" +CHAPTER +The Dashwoods were now settled at Barton with tolerable +comfort to themselves. The house and the garden, with all +the objects surrounding them, were now become familiar, +and the ordinary pursuits which had given to Norland +half its charms were engaged in again with far greater +enjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the +loss of their father. Sir John Middleton, who called +on them every day for the first fortnight, and who was +not in the habit of seeing much occupation at home, +could not conceal his amazement on finding them always employed. +Their visitors, except those from Barton Park, +were not many for, in spite of Sir John's urgent entreaties +that they would mix more in the neighbourhood, and repeated +assurances of his carriage being always at their service, +the independence of Mrs. Dashwood's spirit overcame the +wish of society for her children and she was resolute +in declining to visit any family beyond the distance +of a walk. There were but few who could be so classed +and it was not all of them that were attainable. +About a mile and a half from the cottage, along the narrow +winding valley of Allenham, which issued from that of Barton, +as formerly described, the girls had, in one of their +earliest walks, discovered an ancient respectable looking +mansion which, by reminding them a little of Norland, +interested their imagination and made them wish to be +better acquainted with it. But they learnt, on enquiry, +that its possessor, an elderly lady of very good character, +was unfortunately too infirm to mix with the world, +and never stirred from home. +The whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. +The high downs which invited them from almost every window +of the cottage to seek the exquisite enjoyment of air +on their summits, were a happy alternative when the dirt +of the valleys beneath shut up their superior beauties +and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret +one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the +partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear +the confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding +days had occasioned. The weather was not tempting enough +to draw the two others from their pencil and their book, +in spite of Marianne's declaration that the day would +be lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would +be drawn off from their hills and the two girls set off +together. +They gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own +penetration at every glimpse of blue sky and when they +caught in their faces the animating gales of a high +southwesterly wind, they pitied the fears which had prevented +their mother and Elinor from sharing such delightful sensations. +"Is there a felicity in the world," said Marianne, +"superior to this?Margaret, we will walk here at least +two hours." +Margaret agreed, and they pursued their way against +the wind, resisting it with laughing delight for about +twenty minutes longer, when suddenly the clouds united over +their heads, and a driving rain set full in their face. +Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged, though unwillingly, +to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own house. +One consolation however remained for them, to which the +exigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety +it was that of running with all possible speed down the steep +side of the hill which led immediately to their garden gate. +They set off. Marianne had at first the advantage, +but a false step brought her suddenly to the ground +and Margaret, unable to stop herself to assist her, +was involuntarily hurried along, and reached the bottom +in safety. +A gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers +playing round him, was passing up the hill and within +a few yards of Marianne, when her accident happened. +He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She had +raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been +twisted in her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. +The gentleman offered his services and perceiving that her +modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, +took her up in his arms without farther delay, and carried +her down the hill. Then passing through the garden, +the gate of which had been left open by Margaret, he bore her +directly into the house, whither Margaret was just arrived, +and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair +in the parlour. +Elinor and her mother rose up in amazement at +their entrance, and while the eyes of both were fixed +on him with an evident wonder and a secret admiration +which equally sprung from his appearance, he apologized +for his intrusion by relating its cause, in a manner +so frank and so graceful that his person, which was +uncommonly handsome, received additional charms from his voice +and expression. Had he been even old, ugly, and vulgar, +the gratitude and kindness of Mrs. Dashwood would +have been secured by any act of attention to her child +but the influence of youth, beauty, and elegance, +gave an interest to the action which came home to her feelings. +She thanked him again and again and, with a sweetness +of address which always attended her, invited him to +be seated. But this he declined, as he was dirty and wet. +Mrs. Dashwood then begged to know to whom she was obliged. +His name, he replied, was Willoughby, and his present +home was at Allenham, from whence he hoped she would +allow him the honour of calling tomorrow to enquire +after Miss Dashwood. The honour was readily granted, +and he then departed, to make himself still more interesting, +in the midst of a heavy rain. +His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness +were instantly the theme of general admiration, +and the laugh which his gallantry raised against Marianne +received particular spirit from his exterior attractions. +Marianne herself had seen less of his person that the rest, +for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his +lifting her up, had robbed her of the power of regarding +him after their entering the house. But she had seen +enough of him to join in all the admiration of the others, +and with an energy which always adorned her praise. +His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever +drawn for the hero of a favourite story and in his carrying +her into the house with so little previous formality, there +was a rapidity of thought which particularly recommended +the action to her. Every circumstance belonging to him +was interesting. His name was good, his residence was in +their favourite village, and she soon found out that of all +manly dresses a shootingjacket was the most becoming. +Her imagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, +and the pain of a sprained ankle was disregarded. +Sir John called on them as soon as the next interval +of fair weather that morning allowed him to get out +of doors and Marianne's accident being related to him, +he was eagerly asked whether he knew any gentleman +of the name of Willoughby at Allenham. +"Willoughby" cried Sir John "what, is HE +in the country? That is good news however I will +ride over tomorrow, and ask him to dinner on Thursday." +"You know him then," said Mrs. Dashwood. +"Know him to be sure I do. Why, he is down here +every year." +"And what sort of a young man is he?" +"As good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. +A very decent shot, and there is not a bolder rider +in England." +"And is that all you can say for him?" cried Marianne, +indignantly. "But what are his manners on more intimate +acquaintance? What his pursuits, his talents, and genius?" +Sir John was rather puzzled. +"Upon my soul," said he, "I do not know much about him +as to all THAT. But he is a pleasant, good humoured fellow, +and has got the nicest little black bitch of a pointer +I ever saw. Was she out with him today?" +But Marianne could no more satisfy him as to the +colour of Mr. Willoughby's pointer, than he could +describe to her the shades of his mind. +"But who is he?" said Elinor. "Where does he come +from? Has he a house at Allenham?" +On this point Sir John could give more certain intelligence +and he told them that Mr. Willoughby had no property +of his own in the country that he resided there only +while he was visiting the old lady at Allenham Court, +to whom he was related, and whose possessions he was +to inherit adding, "Yes, yes, he is very well worth +catching I can tell you, Miss Dashwood he has a pretty +little estate of his own in Somersetshire besides +and if I were you, I would not give him up to my +younger sister, in spite of all this tumbling down hills. +Miss Marianne must not expect to have all the men to herself. +Brandon will be jealous, if she does not take care." +"I do not believe," said Mrs. Dashwood, with a +good humoured smile, "that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded +by the attempts of either of MY daughters towards what +you call CATCHING him. It is not an employment to which +they have been brought up. Men are very safe with us, +let them be ever so rich. I am glad to find, however, +from what you say, that he is a respectable young man, +and one whose acquaintance will not be ineligible." +"He is as good a sort of fellow, I believe, +as ever lived," repeated Sir John. "I remember +last Christmas at a little hop at the park, he danced +from eight o'clock till four, without once sitting down." +"Did he indeed?" cried Marianne with sparkling eyes, +"and with elegance, with spirit?" +"Yes and he was up again at eight to ride to covert." +"That is what I like that is what a young man ought +to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them +should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue." +"Aye, aye, I see how it will be," said Sir John, "I see +how it will be. You will be setting your cap at him now, +and never think of poor Brandon." +"That is an expression, Sir John," said Marianne, +warmly, "which I particularly dislike. I abhor every +commonplace phrase by which wit is intended and 'setting +one's cap at a man,' or 'making a conquest,' are the most +odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal +and if their construction could ever be deemed clever, +time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity." +Sir John did not much understand this reproof +but he laughed as heartily as if he did, and then replied, +"Ay, you will make conquests enough, I dare say, +one way or other. Poor Brandon he is quite smitten already, +and he is very well worth setting your cap at, I can +tell you, in spite of all this tumbling about and spraining +of ankles." +CHAPTER +Marianne's preserver, as Margaret, with more elegance +than precision, styled Willoughby, called at the cottage +early the next morning to make his personal enquiries. +He was received by Mrs. Dashwood with more than politeness +with a kindness which Sir John's account of him and her own +gratitude prompted and every thing that passed during +the visit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, +mutual affection, and domestic comfort of the family +to whom accident had now introduced him. Of their +personal charms he had not required a second interview +to be convinced. +Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, +regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. +Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so +correct as her sister's, in having the advantage of height, +was more striking and her face was so lovely, that when +in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, +truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. +Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, +her complexion was uncommonly brilliant her features +were all good her smile was sweet and attractive +and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, +a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardily be seen +without delight. From Willoughby their expression was at +first held back, by the embarrassment which the remembrance +of his assistance created. But when this passed away, +when her spirits became collected, when she saw that to the +perfect goodbreeding of the gentleman, he united frankness +and vivacity, and above all, when she heard him declare, +that of music and dancing he was passionately fond, +she gave him such a look of approbation as secured the +largest share of his discourse to herself for the rest +of his stay. +It was only necessary to mention any favourite +amusement to engage her to talk. She could not be +silent when such points were introduced, and she +had neither shyness nor reserve in their discussion. +They speedily discovered that their enjoyment of dancing +and music was mutual, and that it arose from a general +conformity of judgment in all that related to either. +Encouraged by this to a further examination of his opinions, +she proceeded to question him on the subject of books +her favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt +upon with so rapturous a delight, that any young man of +five and twenty must have been insensible indeed, not to +become an immediate convert to the excellence of such works, +however disregarded before. Their taste was strikingly alike. +The same books, the same passages were idolized by each +or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, +it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments +and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed. +He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm +and long before his visit concluded, they conversed +with the familiarity of a longestablished acquaintance. +"Well, Marianne," said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, +"for ONE morning I think you have done pretty well. +You have already ascertained Mr. Willoughby's opinion in +almost every matter of importance. You know what he thinks +of Cowper and Scott you are certain of his estimating +their beauties as he ought, and you have received every +assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper. +But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such +extraordinary despatch of every subject for discourse? +You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. +Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments +on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and then +you can have nothing farther to ask." +"Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this +just? are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. +I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. +I have erred against every commonplace notion of decorum +I have been open and sincere where I ought to have +been reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitfulhad +I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I +spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have +been spared." +"My love," said her mother, "you must not be offended +with Elinorshe was only in jest. I should scold +her myself, if she were capable of wishing to check +the delight of your conversation with our new friend." +Marianne was softened in a moment. +Willoughby, on his side, gave every proof of his +pleasure in their acquaintance, which an evident wish +of improving it could offer. He came to them every day. +To enquire after Marianne was at first his excuse but the +encouragement of his reception, to which every day gave +greater kindness, made such an excuse unnecessary before it +had ceased to be possible, by Marianne's perfect recovery. +She was confined for some days to the house but never had +any confinement been less irksome. Willoughby was a young +man of good abilities, quick imagination, lively spirits, +and open, affectionate manners. He was exactly formed +to engage Marianne's heart, for with all this, he joined +not only a captivating person, but a natural ardour +of mind which was now roused and increased by the example +of her own, and which recommended him to her affection +beyond every thing else. +His society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. +They read, they talked, they sang together his musical +talents were considerable and he read with all the +sensibility and spirit which Edward had unfortunately wanted. +In Mrs. Dashwood's estimation he was as faultless +as in Marianne's and Elinor saw nothing to censure in him +but a propensity, in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly +delighted her sister, of saying too much what he thought on +every occasion, without attention to persons or circumstances. +In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, +in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment +of undivided attention where his heart was engaged, +and in slighting too easily the forms of worldly propriety, +he displayed a want of caution which Elinor could not approve, +in spite of all that he and Marianne could say in its support. +Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation +which had seized her at sixteen and a half, of ever +seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection, +had been rash and unjustifiable. Willoughby was all +that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour +and in every brighter period, as capable of attaching her +and his behaviour declared his wishes to be in that respect +as earnest, as his abilities were strong. +Her mother too, in whose mind not one speculative +thought of their marriage had been raised, by his prospect +of riches, was led before the end of a week to hope and +expect it and secretly to congratulate herself on having +gained two such sonsinlaw as Edward and Willoughby. +Colonel Brandon's partiality for Marianne, which had +so early been discovered by his friends, now first became +perceptible to Elinor, when it ceased to be noticed +by them. Their attention and wit were drawn off to his +more fortunate rival and the raillery which the other +had incurred before any partiality arose, was removed +when his feelings began really to call for the ridicule +so justly annexed to sensibility. Elinor was obliged, +though unwillingly, to believe that the sentiments which +Mrs. Jennings had assigned him for her own satisfaction, +were now actually excited by her sister and that however +a general resemblance of disposition between the parties +might forward the affection of Mr. Willoughby, an equally +striking opposition of character was no hindrance to the +regard of Colonel Brandon. She saw it with concern +for what could a silent man of five and thirty hope, +when opposed to a very lively one of five and twenty? and as +she could not even wish him successful, she heartily wished +him indifferent. She liked himin spite of his gravity +and reserve, she beheld in him an object of interest. +His manners, though serious, were mild and his reserve +appeared rather the result of some oppression of spirits +than of any natural gloominess of temper. Sir John +had dropped hints of past injuries and disappointments, +which justified her belief of his being an unfortunate man, +and she regarded him with respect and compassion. +Perhaps she pitied and esteemed him the more +because he was slighted by Willoughby and Marianne, +who, prejudiced against him for being neither lively +nor young, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits. +"Brandon is just the kind of man," said Willoughby +one day, when they were talking of him together, +"whom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about +whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers +to talk to." +"That is exactly what I think of him," cried Marianne. +"Do not boast of it, however," said Elinor, "for it +is injustice in both of you. He is highly esteemed +by all the family at the park, and I never see him myself +without taking pains to converse with him." +"That he is patronised by YOU," replied Willoughby, +"is certainly in his favour but as for the esteem +of the others, it is a reproach in itself. Who would +submit to the indignity of being approved by such a woman +as Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, that could command +the indifference of any body else?" +"But perhaps the abuse of such people as yourself +and Marianne will make amends for the regard of Lady +Middleton and her mother. If their praise is censure, +your censure may be praise, for they are not more undiscerning, +than you are prejudiced and unjust." +"In defence of your protege you can even be saucy." +"My protege, as you call him, is a sensible man +and sense will always have attractions for me. +Yes, Marianne, even in a man between thirty and forty. +He has seen a great deal of the world has been abroad, +has read, and has a thinking mind. I have found him +capable of giving me much information on various subjects +and he has always answered my inquiries with readiness of +goodbreeding and good nature." +"That is to say," cried Marianne contemptuously, +"he has told you, that in the East Indies the climate is hot, +and the mosquitoes are troublesome." +"He WOULD have told me so, I doubt not, had I made +any such inquiries, but they happened to be points +on which I had been previously informed." +"Perhaps," said Willoughby, "his observations may +have extended to the existence of nabobs, gold mohrs, +and palanquins." +"I may venture to say that HIS observations +have stretched much further than your candour. +But why should you dislike him?" +"I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, +as a very respectable man, who has every body's good word, +and nobody's notice who, has more money than he can spend, +more time than he knows how to employ, and two new coats +every year." +"Add to which," cried Marianne, "that he has +neither genius, taste, nor spirit. That his understanding +has no brilliancy, his feelings no ardour, and his voice +no expression." +"You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass," +replied Elinor, "and so much on the strength of your +own imagination, that the commendation I am able to give +of him is comparatively cold and insipid. I can only +pronounce him to be a sensible man, wellbred, wellinformed, +of gentle address, and, I believe, possessing an amiable heart." +"Miss Dashwood," cried Willoughby, "you are now using +me unkindly. You are endeavouring to disarm me by reason, +and to convince me against my will. But it will not do. +You shall find me as stubborn as you can be artful. I have +three unanswerable reasons for disliking Colonel Brandon +he threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine +he has found fault with the hanging of my curricle, +and I cannot persuade him to buy my brown mare. If it +will be any satisfaction to you, however, to be told, +that I believe his character to be in other respects +irreproachable, I am ready to confess it. And in return +for an acknowledgment, which must give me some pain, +you cannot deny me the privilege of disliking him as much +as ever." +CHAPTER +Little had Mrs. Dashwood or her daughters imagined +when they first came into Devonshire, that so many +engagements would arise to occupy their time as shortly +presented themselves, or that they should have such frequent +invitations and such constant visitors as to leave them little +leisure for serious employment. Yet such was the case. +When Marianne was recovered, the schemes of amusement at home +and abroad, which Sir John had been previously forming, +were put into execution. The private balls at the park +then began and parties on the water were made and +accomplished as often as a showery October would allow. +In every meeting of the kind Willoughby was included +and the ease and familiarity which naturally attended +these parties were exactly calculated to give increasing +intimacy to his acquaintance with the Dashwoods, to afford +him opportunity of witnessing the excellencies of Marianne, +of marking his animated admiration of her, and of receiving, +in her behaviour to himself, the most pointed assurance +of her affection. +Elinor could not be surprised at their attachment. +She only wished that it were less openly shewn and once +or twice did venture to suggest the propriety of some +selfcommand to Marianne. But Marianne abhorred all +concealment where no real disgrace could attend unreserve +and to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were not +in themselves illaudable, appeared to her not merely +an unnecessary effort, but a disgraceful subjection +of reason to commonplace and mistaken notions. +Willoughby thought the same and their behaviour at +all times, was an illustration of their opinions. +When he was present she had no eyes for any one else. +Every thing he did, was right. Every thing he said, was clever. +If their evenings at the park were concluded with cards, +he cheated himself and all the rest of the party to get +her a good hand. If dancing formed the amusement +of the night, they were partners for half the time +and when obliged to separate for a couple of dances, +were careful to stand together and scarcely spoke a word +to any body else. Such conduct made them of course +most exceedingly laughed at but ridicule could not shame, +and seemed hardly to provoke them. +Mrs. Dashwood entered into all their feelings with +a warmth which left her no inclination for checking this +excessive display of them. To her it was but the natural +consequence of a strong affection in a young and ardent mind. +This was the season of happiness to Marianne. +Her heart was devoted to Willoughby, and the fond attachment +to Norland, which she brought with her from Sussex, +was more likely to be softened than she had thought it +possible before, by the charms which his society bestowed +on her present home. +Elinor's happiness was not so great. Her heart was not +so much at ease, nor her satisfaction in their amusements +so pure. They afforded her no companion that could make +amends for what she had left behind, nor that could teach +her to think of Norland with less regret than ever. +Neither Lady Middleton nor Mrs. Jennings could supply +to her the conversation she missed although the latter +was an everlasting talker, and from the first had regarded +her with a kindness which ensured her a large share of +her discourse. She had already repeated her own history +to Elinor three or four times and had Elinor's memory been +equal to her means of improvement, she might have known +very early in their acquaintance all the particulars of +Mr. Jenning's last illness, and what he said to his wife +a few minutes before he died. Lady Middleton was more +agreeable than her mother only in being more silent. +Elinor needed little observation to perceive that her +reserve was a mere calmness of manner with which sense +had nothing to do. Towards her husband and mother she +was the same as to them and intimacy was therefore +neither to be looked for nor desired. She had nothing +to say one day that she had not said the day before. +Her insipidity was invariable, for even her spirits were +always the same and though she did not oppose the parties +arranged by her husband, provided every thing were conducted +in style and her two eldest children attended her, +she never appeared to receive more enjoyment from them +than she might have experienced in sitting at home +and so little did her presence add to the pleasure +of the others, by any share in their conversation, +that they were sometimes only reminded of her being +amongst them by her solicitude about her troublesome boys. +In Colonel Brandon alone, of all her new acquaintance, +did Elinor find a person who could in any degree claim the +respect of abilities, excite the interest of friendship, +or give pleasure as a companion. Willoughby was out +of the question. Her admiration and regard, even her +sisterly regard, was all his own but he was a lover +his attentions were wholly Marianne's, and a far less +agreeable man might have been more generally pleasing. +Colonel Brandon, unfortunately for himself, had no such +encouragement to think only of Marianne, and in conversing +with Elinor he found the greatest consolation for the +indifference of her sister. +Elinor's compassion for him increased, as she had reason +to suspect that the misery of disappointed love had already +been known to him. This suspicion was given by some words +which accidently dropped from him one evening at the park, +when they were sitting down together by mutual consent, +while the others were dancing. His eyes were fixed +on Marianne, and, after a silence of some minutes, +he said, with a faint smile, "Your sister, I understand, +does not approve of second attachments." +"No," replied Elinor, "her opinions are all romantic." +"Or rather, as I believe, she considers them +impossible to exist." +"I believe she does. But how she contrives it +without reflecting on the character of her own father, +who had himself two wives, I know not. A few years +however will settle her opinions on the reasonable basis +of common sense and observation and then they may be +more easy to define and to justify than they now are, +by any body but herself." +"This will probably be the case," he replied +"and yet there is something so amiable in the prejudices +of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way +to the reception of more general opinions." +"I cannot agree with you there," said Elinor. +"There are inconveniences attending such feelings +as Marianne's, which all the charms of enthusiasm and +ignorance of the world cannot atone for. Her systems have +all the unfortunate tendency of setting propriety at nought +and a better acquaintance with the world is what I look +forward to as her greatest possible advantage." +After a short pause he resumed the conversation +by saying, +"Does your sister make no distinction in her objections +against a second attachment? or is it equally criminal +in every body? Are those who have been disappointed +in their first choice, whether from the inconstancy +of its object, or the perverseness of circumstances, +to be equally indifferent during the rest of their lives?" +"Upon my word, I am not acquainted with the minutiae +of her principles. I only know that I never yet heard her +admit any instance of a second attachment's being pardonable." +"This," said he, "cannot hold but a change, +a total change of sentimentsNo, no, do not desire it +for when the romantic refinements of a young mind +are obliged to give way, how frequently are they +succeeded by such opinions as are but too common, and too +dangerous I speak from experience. I once knew a lady +who in temper and mind greatly resembled your sister, +who thought and judged like her, but who from an inforced +changefrom a series of unfortunate circumstances" +Here he stopt suddenly appeared to think that he had said +too much, and by his countenance gave rise to conjectures, +which might not otherwise have entered Elinor's head. +The lady would probably have passed without suspicion, +had he not convinced Miss Dashwood that what concerned +her ought not to escape his lips. As it was, +it required but a slight effort of fancy to connect his +emotion with the tender recollection of past regard. +Elinor attempted no more. But Marianne, in her place, +would not have done so little. The whole story would +have been speedily formed under her active imagination +and every thing established in the most melancholy order +of disastrous love. +CHAPTER +As Elinor and Marianne were walking together the +next morning the latter communicated a piece of news +to her sister, which in spite of all that she knew +before of Marianne's imprudence and want of thought, +surprised her by its extravagant testimony of both. +Marianne told her, with the greatest delight, that +Willoughby had given her a horse, one that he had bred +himself on his estate in Somersetshire, and which was +exactly calculated to carry a woman. Without considering +that it was not in her mother's plan to keep any horse, +that if she were to alter her resolution in favour of +this gift, she must buy another for the servant, and +keep a servant to ride it, and after all, build a stable +to receive them, she had accepted the present without +hesitation, and told her sister of it in raptures. +"He intends to send his groom into Somersetshire +immediately for it," she added, "and when it arrives we +will ride every day. You shall share its use with me. +Imagine to yourself, my dear Elinor, the delight of a gallop +on some of these downs." +Most unwilling was she to awaken from such a dream of +felicity to comprehend all the unhappy truths which attended +the affair and for some time she refused to submit to them. +As to an additional servant, the expense would be a trifle +Mamma she was sure would never object to it and any horse +would do for HIM he might always get one at the park +as to a stable, the merest shed would be sufficient. +Elinor then ventured to doubt the propriety of her receiving +such a present from a man so little, or at least so lately +known to her. This was too much. +"You are mistaken, Elinor," said she warmly, +"in supposing I know very little of Willoughby. +I have not known him long indeed, but I am much better +acquainted with him, than I am with any other creature +in the world, except yourself and mama. It is not +time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy +it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient +to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven +days are more than enough for others. I should hold +myself guilty of greater impropriety in accepting a horse +from my brother, than from Willoughby. Of John I know +very little, though we have lived together for years +but of Willoughby my judgment has long been formed." +Elinor thought it wisest to touch that point no more. +She knew her sister's temper. Opposition on so tender a +subject would only attach her the more to her own opinion. +But by an appeal to her affection for her mother, +by representing the inconveniences which that indulgent +mother must draw on herself, if as would probably be +the case she consented to this increase of establishment, +Marianne was shortly subdued and she promised not to +tempt her mother to such imprudent kindness by mentioning +the offer, and to tell Willoughby when she saw him next, +that it must be declined. +She was faithful to her word and when Willoughby +called at the cottage, the same day, Elinor heard her +express her disappointment to him in a low voice, on +being obliged to forego the acceptance of his present. +The reasons for this alteration were at the same time related, +and they were such as to make further entreaty on his +side impossible. His concern however was very apparent +and after expressing it with earnestness, he added, +in the same low voice,"But, Marianne, the horse is +still yours, though you cannot use it now. I shall keep +it only till you can claim it. When you leave Barton +to form your own establishment in a more lasting home, +Queen Mab shall receive you." +This was all overheard by Miss Dashwood and in the +whole of the sentence, in his manner of pronouncing it, +and in his addressing her sister by her Christian name alone, +she instantly saw an intimacy so decided, a meaning +so direct, as marked a perfect agreement between them. +From that moment she doubted not of their being engaged +to each other and the belief of it created no other surprise +than that she, or any of their friends, should be left +by tempers so frank, to discover it by accident. +Margaret related something to her the next day, +which placed this matter in a still clearer light. +Willoughby had spent the preceding evening with them, +and Margaret, by being left some time in the parlour +with only him and Marianne, had had opportunity +for observations, which, with a most important face, +she communicated to her eldest sister, when they were +next by themselves. +"Oh, Elinor" she cried, "I have such a secret to +tell you about Marianne. I am sure she will be married +to Mr. Willoughby very soon." +"You have said so," replied Elinor, "almost every +day since they first met on Highchurch Down and they +had not known each other a week, I believe, before you +were certain that Marianne wore his picture round her neck +but it turned out to be only the miniature of our great uncle." +"But indeed this is quite another thing. I am sure +they will be married very soon, for he has got a lock +of her hair." +"Take care, Margaret. It may be only the hair +of some great uncle of HIS." +"But, indeed, Elinor, it is Marianne's. I am almost +sure it is, for I saw him cut it off. Last night +after tea, when you and mama went out of the room, +they were whispering and talking together as fast as +could be, and he seemed to be begging something of her, +and presently he took up her scissors and cut off a long +lock of her hair, for it was all tumbled down her back +and he kissed it, and folded it up in a piece of white paper +and put it into his pocketbook." +For such particulars, stated on such authority, +Elinor could not withhold her credit nor was she disposed +to it, for the circumstance was in perfect unison with +what she had heard and seen herself. +Margaret's sagacity was not always displayed in a +way so satisfactory to her sister. When Mrs. Jennings +attacked her one evening at the park, to give the name +of the young man who was Elinor's particular favourite, +which had been long a matter of great curiosity to her, +Margaret answered by looking at her sister, and saying, +"I must not tell, may I, Elinor?" +This of course made every body laugh and Elinor +tried to laugh too. But the effort was painful. +She was convinced that Margaret had fixed on a person +whose name she could not bear with composure to become +a standing joke with Mrs. Jennings. +Marianne felt for her most sincerely but she did +more harm than good to the cause, by turning very red +and saying in an angry manner to Margaret, +"Remember that whatever your conjectures may be, +you have no right to repeat them." +"I never had any conjectures about it," replied Margaret +"it was you who told me of it yourself." +This increased the mirth of the company, and Margaret +was eagerly pressed to say something more. +"Oh pray, Miss Margaret, let us know all about it," +said Mrs. Jennings. "What is the gentleman's name?" +"I must not tell, ma'am. But I know very well what it is +and I know where he is too." +"Yes, yes, we can guess where he is at his own house +at Norland to be sure. He is the curate of the parish +I dare say." +"No, THAT he is not. He is of no profession at all." +"Margaret," said Marianne with great warmth, +"you know that all this is an invention of your own, +and that there is no such person in existence." +"Well, then, he is lately dead, Marianne, for I +am sure there was such a man once, and his name begins +with an F." +Most grateful did Elinor feel to Lady Middleton +for observing, at this moment, "that it rained very hard," +though she believed the interruption to proceed less from +any attention to her, than from her ladyship's great dislike +of all such inelegant subjects of raillery as delighted +her husband and mother. The idea however started by her, +was immediately pursued by Colonel Brandon, who was +on every occasion mindful of the feelings of others +and much was said on the subject of rain by both of them. +Willoughby opened the pianoforte, and asked Marianne +to sit down to it and thus amidst the various endeavours +of different people to quit the topic, it fell to the ground. +But not so easily did Elinor recover from the alarm into +which it had thrown her. +A party was formed this evening for going on the +following day to see a very fine place about twelve miles +from Barton, belonging to a brotherinlaw of Colonel Brandon, +without whose interest it could not be seen, as the proprietor, +who was then abroad, had left strict orders on that head. +The grounds were declared to be highly beautiful, +and Sir John, who was particularly warm in their praise, +might be allowed to be a tolerable judge, for he had +formed parties to visit them, at least, twice every summer +for the last ten years. They contained a noble piece +of water a sail on which was to a form a great part of +the morning's amusement cold provisions were to be taken, +open carriages only to be employed, and every thing +conducted in the usual style of a complete party of pleasure. +To some few of the company it appeared rather +a bold undertaking, considering the time of year, +and that it had rained every day for the last fortnight +and Mrs. Dashwood, who had already a cold, was persuaded +by Elinor to stay at home. +CHAPTER +Their intended excursion to Whitwell turned out +very different from what Elinor had expected. She was +prepared to be wet through, fatigued, and frightened +but the event was still more unfortunate, for they did +not go at all. +By ten o'clock the whole party was assembled at +the park, where they were to breakfast. The morning +was rather favourable, though it had rained all night, +as the clouds were then dispersing across the sky, +and the sun frequently appeared. They were all in high +spirits and good humour, eager to be happy, and determined +to submit to the greatest inconveniences and hardships +rather than be otherwise. +While they were at breakfast the letters were brought in. +Among the rest there was one for Colonel Brandonhe +took it, looked at the direction, changed colour, +and immediately left the room. +"What is the matter with Brandon?" said Sir John. +Nobody could tell. +"I hope he has had no bad news," said Lady Middleton. +"It must be something extraordinary that could make Colonel +Brandon leave my breakfast table so suddenly." +In about five minutes he returned. +"No bad news, Colonel, I hope" said Mrs. Jennings, +as soon as he entered the room. +"None at all, ma'am, I thank you." +"Was it from Avignon? I hope it is not to say +that your sister is worse." +"No, ma'am. It came from town, and is merely +a letter of business." +"But how came the hand to discompose you so much, +if it was only a letter of business? Come, come, +this won't do, Colonel so let us hear the truth of it." +"My dear madam," said Lady Middleton, "recollect what +you are saying." +"Perhaps it is to tell you that your cousin Fanny +is married?" said Mrs. Jennings, without attending +to her daughter's reproof. +"No, indeed, it is not." +"Well, then, I know who it is from, Colonel. And I +hope she is well." +"Whom do you mean, ma'am?" said he, colouring a little. +"Oh you know who I mean." +"I am particularly sorry, ma'am," said he, +addressing Lady Middleton, "that I should receive this +letter today, for it is on business which requires +my immediate attendance in town." +"In town" cried Mrs. Jennings. "What can you +have to do in town at this time of year?" +"My own loss is great," he continued, "in being obliged +to leave so agreeable a party but I am the more concerned, +as I fear my presence is necessary to gain your admittance +at Whitwell." +What a blow upon them all was this +"But if you write a note to the housekeeper, Mr. Brandon," +said Marianne, eagerly, "will it not be sufficient?" +He shook his head. +"We must go," said Sir John."It shall not be put +off when we are so near it. You cannot go to town till +tomorrow, Brandon, that is all." +"I wish it could be so easily settled. But it +is not in my power to delay my journey for one day" +"If you would but let us know what your business is," +said Mrs. Jennings, "we might see whether it could be put +off or not." +"You would not be six hours later," said Willoughby, +"if you were to defer your journey till our return." +"I cannot afford to lose ONE hour." +Elinor then heard Willoughby say, in a low voice to Marianne, +"There are some people who cannot bear a party of pleasure. +Brandon is one of them. He was afraid of catching cold +I dare say, and invented this trick for getting out of it. +I would lay fifty guineas the letter was of his own writing." +"I have no doubt of it," replied Marianne. +"There is no persuading you to change your mind, +Brandon, I know of old," said Sir John, "when once you +are determined on anything. But, however, I hope you +will think better of it. Consider, here are the two Miss +Careys come over from Newton, the three Miss Dashwoods +walked up from the cottage, and Mr. Willoughby got up +two hours before his usual time, on purpose to go to Whitwell." +Colonel Brandon again repeated his sorrow at being +the cause of disappointing the party but at the same +time declared it to be unavoidable. +"Well, then, when will you come back again?" +"I hope we shall see you at Barton," added her ladyship, +"as soon as you can conveniently leave town and we must +put off the party to Whitwell till you return." +"You are very obliging. But it is so uncertain, +when I may have it in my power to return, that I dare +not engage for it at all." +"Oh he must and shall come back," cried Sir John. +"If he is not here by the end of the week, I shall go +after him." +"Ay, so do, Sir John," cried Mrs. Jennings, "and then +perhaps you may find out what his business is." +"I do not want to pry into other men's concerns. +I suppose it is something he is ashamed of." +Colonel Brandon's horses were announced. +"You do not go to town on horseback, do you?" +added Sir John. +"No. Only to Honiton. I shall then go post." +"Well, as you are resolved to go, I wish you +a good journey. But you had better change your mind." +"I assure you it is not in my power." +He then took leave of the whole party. +"Is there no chance of my seeing you and your sisters +in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?" +"I am afraid, none at all." +"Then I must bid you farewell for a longer time +than I should wish to do." +To Marianne, he merely bowed and said nothing. +"Come Colonel," said Mrs. Jennings, "before you go, +do let us know what you are going about." +He wished her a good morning, and, attended by Sir John, +left the room. +The complaints and lamentations which politeness +had hitherto restrained, now burst forth universally +and they all agreed again and again how provoking it was +to be so disappointed. +"I can guess what his business is, however," +said Mrs. Jennings exultingly. +"Can you, ma'am?" said almost every body. +"Yes it is about Miss Williams, I am sure." +"And who is Miss Williams?" asked Marianne. +"What do not you know who Miss Williams is? I am +sure you must have heard of her before. She is a relation +of the Colonel's, my dear a very near relation. We will +not say how near, for fear of shocking the young ladies." +Then, lowering her voice a little, she said to Elinor, +"She is his natural daughter." +"Indeed" +"Oh, yes and as like him as she can stare. +I dare say the Colonel will leave her all his fortune." +When Sir John returned, he joined most heartily +in the general regret on so unfortunate an event +concluding however by observing, that as they were +all got together, they must do something by way of +being happy and after some consultation it was agreed, +that although happiness could only be enjoyed at Whitwell, +they might procure a tolerable composure of mind by driving +about the country. The carriages were then ordered +Willoughby's was first, and Marianne never looked +happier than when she got into it. He drove through +the park very fast, and they were soon out of sight +and nothing more of them was seen till their return, +which did not happen till after the return of all the rest. +They both seemed delighted with their drive but said +only in general terms that they had kept in the lanes, +while the others went on the downs. +It was settled that there should be a dance in the evening, +and that every body should be extremely merry all day long. +Some more of the Careys came to dinner, and they had the +pleasure of sitting down nearly twenty to table, which Sir +John observed with great contentment. Willoughby took +his usual place between the two elder Miss Dashwoods. +Mrs. Jennings sat on Elinor's right hand and they had not +been long seated, before she leant behind her and Willoughby, +and said to Marianne, loud enough for them both to hear, +"I have found you out in spite of all your tricks. +I know where you spent the morning." +Marianne coloured, and replied very hastily, +"Where, pray?" +"Did not you know," said Willoughby, "that we had +been out in my curricle?" +"Yes, yes, Mr. Impudence, I know that very well, +and I was determined to find out WHERE you had been to. +I hope you like your house, Miss Marianne. It is a very +large one, I know and when I come to see you, I hope you +will have newfurnished it, for it wanted it very much +when I was there six years ago." +Marianne turned away in great confusion. +Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily and Elinor found that in her +resolution to know where they had been, she had actually +made her own woman enquire of Mr. Willoughby's groom +and that she had by that method been informed that they +had gone to Allenham, and spent a considerable time there +in walking about the garden and going all over the house. +Elinor could hardly believe this to be true, +as it seemed very unlikely that Willoughby should propose, +or Marianne consent, to enter the house while Mrs. Smith was +in it, with whom Marianne had not the smallest acquaintance. +As soon as they left the diningroom, Elinor enquired +of her about it and great was her surprise when she +found that every circumstance related by Mrs. Jennings +was perfectly true. Marianne was quite angry with her +for doubting it. +"Why should you imagine, Elinor, that we did not +go there, or that we did not see the house? Is not it +what you have often wished to do yourself?" +"Yes, Marianne, but I would not go while Mrs. Smith +was there, and with no other companion than Mr. Willoughby." +"Mr. Willoughby however is the only person who can +have a right to shew that house and as he went in an open +carriage, it was impossible to have any other companion. +I never spent a pleasanter morning in my life." +"I am afraid," replied Elinor, "that the pleasantness +of an employment does not always evince its propriety." +"On the contrary, nothing can be a stronger proof +of it, Elinor for if there had been any real impropriety +in what I did, I should have been sensible of it at +the time, for we always know when we are acting wrong, +and with such a conviction I could have had no pleasure." +"But, my dear Marianne, as it has already exposed you +to some very impertinent remarks, do you not now begin +to doubt the discretion of your own conduct?" +"If the impertinent remarks of Mrs. Jennings are +to be the proof of impropriety in conduct, we are all +offending every moment of our lives. I value not her +censure any more than I should do her commendation. +I am not sensible of having done anything wrong in walking +over Mrs. Smith's grounds, or in seeing her house. +They will one day be Mr. Willoughby's, and" +"If they were one day to be your own, Marianne, +you would not be justified in what you have done." +She blushed at this hint but it was even visibly +gratifying to her and after a ten minutes' interval of +earnest thought, she came to her sister again, and said +with great good humour, "Perhaps, Elinor, it WAS rather +illjudged in me to go to Allenham but Mr. Willoughby wanted +particularly to shew me the place and it is a charming house, +I assure you.There is one remarkably pretty sitting room +up stairs of a nice comfortable size for constant use, +and with modern furniture it would be delightful. +It is a corner room, and has windows on two sides. +On one side you look across the bowlinggreen, behind +the house, to a beautiful hanging wood, and on the other you +have a view of the church and village, and, beyond them, +of those fine bold hills that we have so often admired. +I did not see it to advantage, for nothing could be +more forlorn than the furniture,but if it were newly +fitted upa couple of hundred pounds, Willoughby says, +would make it one of the pleasantest summerrooms +in England." +Could Elinor have listened to her without interruption +from the others, she would have described every room +in the house with equal delight. +CHAPTER +The sudden termination of Colonel Brandon's visit +at the park, with his steadiness in concealing its cause, +filled the mind, and raised the wonder of Mrs. Jennings +for two or three days she was a great wonderer, as every +one must be who takes a very lively interest in all the +comings and goings of all their acquaintance. She wondered, +with little intermission what could be the reason of it +was sure there must be some bad news, and thought over +every kind of distress that could have befallen him, +with a fixed determination that he should not escape +them all. +"Something very melancholy must be the matter, +I am sure," said she. "I could see it in his face. +Poor man I am afraid his circumstances may be bad. +The estate at Delaford was never reckoned more than two thousand +a year, and his brother left everything sadly involved. +I do think he must have been sent for about money matters, +for what else can it be? I wonder whether it is so. +I would give anything to know the truth of it. Perhaps it +is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I dare say it is, +because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her. +May be she is ill in town nothing in the world more likely, +for I have a notion she is always rather sickly. +I would lay any wager it is about Miss Williams. +It is not so very likely he should be distressed in +his circumstances NOW, for he is a very prudent man, +and to be sure must have cleared the estate by this time. +I wonder what it can be May be his sister is worse +at Avignon, and has sent for him over. His setting off +in such a hurry seems very like it. Well, I wish him out +of all his trouble with all my heart, and a good wife into +the bargain." +So wondered, so talked Mrs. Jennings. Her opinion +varying with every fresh conjecture, and all seeming +equally probable as they arose. Elinor, though she felt +really interested in the welfare of Colonel Brandon, +could not bestow all the wonder on his going so suddenly +away, which Mrs. Jennings was desirous of her feeling +for besides that the circumstance did not in her opinion +justify such lasting amazement or variety of speculation, +her wonder was otherwise disposed of. It was engrossed +by the extraordinary silence of her sister and Willoughby +on the subject, which they must know to be peculiarly +interesting to them all. As this silence continued, +every day made it appear more strange and more incompatible +with the disposition of both. Why they should not openly +acknowledge to her mother and herself, what their constant +behaviour to each other declared to have taken place, +Elinor could not imagine. +She could easily conceive that marriage might not +be immediately in their power for though Willoughby +was independent, there was no reason to believe him rich. +His estate had been rated by Sir John at about six or seven +hundred a year but he lived at an expense to which that income +could hardly be equal, and he had himself often complained +of his poverty. But for this strange kind of secrecy +maintained by them relative to their engagement, which +in fact concealed nothing at all, she could not account +and it was so wholly contradictory to their general +opinions and practice, that a doubt sometimes entered +her mind of their being really engaged, and this doubt +was enough to prevent her making any inquiry of Marianne. +Nothing could be more expressive of attachment +to them all, than Willoughby's behaviour. To Marianne +it had all the distinguishing tenderness which a lover's +heart could give, and to the rest of the family it was the +affectionate attention of a son and a brother. The cottage +seemed to be considered and loved by him as his home +many more of his hours were spent there than at Allenham +and if no general engagement collected them at the park, +the exercise which called him out in the morning was +almost certain of ending there, where the rest of the day +was spent by himself at the side of Marianne, and by his +favourite pointer at her feet. +One evening in particular, about a week after +Colonel Brandon left the country, his heart seemed +more than usually open to every feeling of attachment +to the objects around him and on Mrs. Dashwood's +happening to mention her design of improving the cottage +in the spring, he warmly opposed every alteration +of a place which affection had established as perfect with him. +"What" he exclaimed"Improve this dear cottage +No. THAT I will never consent to. Not a stone must +be added to its walls, not an inch to its size, +if my feelings are regarded." +"Do not be alarmed," said Miss Dashwood, +"nothing of the kind will be done for my mother +will never have money enough to attempt it." +"I am heartily glad of it," he cried. "May she +always be poor, if she can employ her riches no better." +"Thank you, Willoughby. But you may be assured that I +would not sacrifice one sentiment of local attachment +of yours, or of any one whom I loved, for all the improvements +in the world. Depend upon it that whatever unemployed +sum may remain, when I make up my accounts in the spring, +I would even rather lay it uselessly by than dispose +of it in a manner so painful to you. But are you really +so attached to this place as to see no defect in it?" +"I am," said he. "To me it is faultless. Nay, more, +I consider it as the only form of building in which happiness +is attainable, and were I rich enough I would instantly pull +Combe down, and build it up again in the exact plan of this +cottage." +"With dark narrow stairs and a kitchen that smokes, +I suppose," said Elinor. +"Yes," cried he in the same eager tone, "with all +and every thing belonging to itin no one convenience +or INconvenience about it, should the least variation +be perceptible. Then, and then only, under such a roof, I +might perhaps be as happy at Combe as I have been at Barton." +"I flatter myself," replied Elinor, "that even under +the disadvantage of better rooms and a broader staircase, +you will hereafter find your own house as faultless as you +now do this." +"There certainly are circumstances," said Willoughby, +"which might greatly endear it to me but this place will +always have one claim of my affection, which no other can +possibly share." +Mrs. Dashwood looked with pleasure at Marianne, +whose fine eyes were fixed so expressively on Willoughby, +as plainly denoted how well she understood him. +"How often did I wish," added he, "when I was at +Allenham this time twelvemonth, that Barton cottage were +inhabited I never passed within view of it without admiring +its situation, and grieving that no one should live in it. +How little did I then think that the very first news +I should hear from Mrs. Smith, when I next came into +the country, would be that Barton cottage was taken and I +felt an immediate satisfaction and interest in the event, +which nothing but a kind of prescience of what happiness I +should experience from it, can account for. Must it not have +been so, Marianne?" speaking to her in a lowered voice. +Then continuing his former tone, he said, "And yet this +house you would spoil, Mrs. Dashwood? You would rob it +of its simplicity by imaginary improvement and this dear +parlour in which our acquaintance first began, and in which +so many happy hours have been since spent by us together, +you would degrade to the condition of a common entrance, +and every body would be eager to pass through the room +which has hitherto contained within itself more real +accommodation and comfort than any other apartment of +the handsomest dimensions in the world could possibly afford." +Mrs. Dashwood again assured him that no alteration +of the kind should be attempted. +"You are a good woman," he warmly replied. +"Your promise makes me easy. Extend it a little farther, +and it will make me happy. Tell me that not only your +house will remain the same, but that I shall ever find +you and yours as unchanged as your dwelling and that you +will always consider me with the kindness which has made +everything belonging to you so dear to me." +The promise was readily given, and Willoughby's +behaviour during the whole of the evening declared +at once his affection and happiness. +"Shall we see you tomorrow to dinner?" said Mrs. Dashwood, +when he was leaving them. "I do not ask you to come in +the morning, for we must walk to the park, to call on Lady +Middleton." +He engaged to be with them by four o'clock. +CHAPTER +Mrs. Dashwood's visit to Lady Middleton took place +the next day, and two of her daughters went with her +but Marianne excused herself from being of the party, +under some trifling pretext of employment and her mother, +who concluded that a promise had been made by Willoughby +the night before of calling on her while they were absent, +was perfectly satisfied with her remaining at home. +On their return from the park they found Willoughby's +curricle and servant in waiting at the cottage, +and Mrs. Dashwood was convinced that her conjecture +had been just. So far it was all as she had foreseen +but on entering the house she beheld what no foresight +had taught her to expect. They were no sooner in the +passage than Marianne came hastily out of the parlour +apparently in violent affliction, with her handkerchief +at her eyes and without noticing them ran up stairs. +Surprised and alarmed they proceeded directly into the room +she had just quitted, where they found only Willoughby, +who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his back +towards them. He turned round on their coming in, +and his countenance shewed that he strongly partook +of the emotion which overpowered Marianne. +"Is anything the matter with her?" cried Mrs. Dashwood +as she entered"is she ill?" +"I hope not," he replied, trying to look cheerful +and with a forced smile presently added, "It is I who may +rather expect to be illfor I am now suffering under a +very heavy disappointment" +"Disappointment?" +"Yes, for I am unable to keep my engagement with you. +Mrs. Smith has this morning exercised the privilege +of riches upon a poor dependent cousin, by sending me on +business to London. I have just received my dispatches, +and taken my farewell of Allenham and by way of exhilaration +I am now come to take my farewell of you." +"To Londonand are you going this morning?" +"Almost this moment." +"This is very unfortunate. But Mrs. Smith must +be obligedand her business will not detain you from +us long I hope." +He coloured as he replied, "You are very kind, but I +have no idea of returning into Devonshire immediately. +My visits to Mrs. Smith are never repeated within +the twelvemonth." +"And is Mrs. Smith your only friend? Is Allenham the only +house in the neighbourhood to which you will be welcome? +For shame, Willoughby, can you wait for an invitation here?" +His colour increased and with his eyes fixed +on the ground he only replied, "You are too good." +Mrs. Dashwood looked at Elinor with surprise. +Elinor felt equal amazement. For a few moments every one +was silent. Mrs. Dashwood first spoke. +"I have only to add, my dear Willoughby, that at +Barton cottage you will always be welcome for I will not +press you to return here immediately, because you only +can judge how far THAT might be pleasing to Mrs. Smith +and on this head I shall be no more disposed to question +your judgment than to doubt your inclination." +"My engagements at present," replied Willoughby, +confusedly, "are of such a naturethatI dare not flatter +myself" +He stopt. Mrs. Dashwood was too much astonished +to speak, and another pause succeeded. This was broken +by Willoughby, who said with a faint smile, "It is folly +to linger in this manner. I will not torment myself +any longer by remaining among friends whose society +it is impossible for me now to enjoy." +He then hastily took leave of them all and left +the room. They saw him step into his carriage, +and in a minute it was out of sight. +Mrs. Dashwood felt too much for speech, and instantly +quitted the parlour to give way in solitude to the concern +and alarm which this sudden departure occasioned. +Elinor's uneasiness was at least equal to her mother's. +She thought of what had just passed with anxiety and distrust. +Willoughby's behaviour in taking leave of them, his +embarrassment, +and affectation of cheerfulness, and, above all, his +unwillingness +to accept her mother's invitation, a backwardness so unlike a +lover, +so unlike himself, greatly disturbed her. One moment she feared +that no serious design had ever been formed on his side and the +next that some unfortunate quarrel had taken place between him +and +her sisterthe distress in which Marianne had quitted the room +was such as a serious quarrel could most reasonably account for, +though when she considered what Marianne's love for him was, +a quarrel seemed almost impossible. +But whatever might be the particulars of their separation, +her sister's affliction was indubitable and she thought +with the tenderest compassion of that violent sorrow +which Marianne was in all probability not merely giving +way to as a relief, but feeding and encouraging as a duty. +In about half an hour her mother returned, and though +her eyes were red, her countenance was not uncheerful. +"Our dear Willoughby is now some miles from Barton, Elinor," +said she, as she sat down to work, "and with how heavy a heart +does he travel?" +"It is all very strange. So suddenly to be gone It +seems but the work of a moment. And last night he was +with us so happy, so cheerful, so affectionate? And now, +after only ten minutes noticeGone too without intending +to returnSomething more than what he owned to us must +have happened. He did not speak, he did not behave +like himself. YOU must have seen the difference as well as I. +What can it be? Can they have quarrelled? Why else should he +have shewn such unwillingness to accept your invitation here?" +"It was not inclination that he wanted, Elinor I could +plainly see THAT. He had not the power of accepting it. +I have thought it all over I assure you, and I can +perfectly account for every thing that at first seemed +strange to me as well as to you." +"Can you, indeed" +"Yes. I have explained it to myself in the most +satisfactory waybut you, Elinor, who love to doubt +where you canit will not satisfy YOU, I know but you +shall not talk ME out of my trust in it. I am persuaded +that Mrs. Smith suspects his regard for Marianne, +disapproves of it, perhaps because she has other views +for him, and on that account is eager to get him away +and that the business which she sends him off to transact +is invented as an excuse to dismiss him. This is what I +believe to have happened. He is, moreover, aware that she +DOES disapprove the connection, he dares not therefore +at present confess to her his engagement with Marianne, +and he feels himself obliged, from his dependent situation, +to give into her schemes, and absent himself from +Devonshire for a while. You will tell me, I know, +that this may or may NOT have happened but I will listen +to no cavil, unless you can point out any other method +of understanding the affair as satisfactory at this. +And now, Elinor, what have you to say?" +"Nothing, for you have anticipated my answer." +"Then you would have told me, that it might or might not +have happened. Oh, Elinor, how incomprehensible are your +feelings You had rather take evil upon credit than good. +You had rather look out for misery for Marianne, and guilt +for poor Willoughby, than an apology for the latter. +You are resolved to think him blameable, because he took +leave of us with less affection than his usual behaviour +has shewn. And is no allowance to be made for inadvertence, +or for spirits depressed by recent disappointment? Are +no probabilities to be accepted, merely because they +are not certainties? Is nothing due to the man whom we +have all such reason to love, and no reason in the world +to think ill of? To the possibility of motives unanswerable +in themselves, though unavoidably secret for a while? And, +after all, what is it you suspect him of?" +"I can hardly tell myself. But suspicion of +something unpleasant is the inevitable consequence +of such an alteration as we just witnessed in him. +There is great truth, however, in what you have now urged +of the allowances which ought to be made for him, and it +is my wish to be candid in my judgment of every body. +Willoughby may undoubtedly have very sufficient +reasons for his conduct, and I will hope that he has. +But it would have been more like Willoughby to acknowledge +them at once. Secrecy may be advisable but still I +cannot help wondering at its being practiced by him." +"Do not blame him, however, for departing from +his character, where the deviation is necessary. +But you really do admit the justice of what I have said +in his defence?I am happyand he is acquitted." +"Not entirely. It may be proper to conceal their +engagement if they ARE engaged from Mrs. Smith +and if that is the case, it must be highly expedient +for Willoughby to be but little in Devonshire at present. +But this is no excuse for their concealing it from us." +"Concealing it from us my dear child, do you accuse +Willoughby and Marianne of concealment? This is strange +indeed, when your eyes have been reproaching them every day +for incautiousness." +"I want no proof of their affection," said Elinor +"but of their engagement I do." +"I am perfectly satisfied of both." +"Yet not a syllable has been said to you on the +subject, by either of them." +"I have not wanted syllables where actions have +spoken so plainly. Has not his behaviour to Marianne +and to all of us, for at least the last fortnight, +declared that he loved and considered her as his future wife, +and that he felt for us the attachment of the nearest +relation? Have we not perfectly understood each other? +Has not my consent been daily asked by his looks, his manner, +his attentive and affectionate respect? My Elinor, +is it possible to doubt their engagement? How could +such a thought occur to you? How is it to be supposed +that Willoughby, persuaded as he must be of your +sister's love, should leave her, and leave her perhaps +for months, without telling her of his affectionthat +they should part without a mutual exchange of confidence?" +"I confess," replied Elinor, "that every circumstance +except ONE is in favour of their engagement +but that ONE is the total silence of both on the subject, +and with me it almost outweighs every other." +"How strange this is You must think wretchedly indeed +of Willoughby, if, after all that has openly passed between them, +you can doubt the nature of the terms on which they are together. +Has he been acting a part in his behaviour to your sister +all this time? Do you suppose him really indifferent to her?" +"No, I cannot think that. He must and does love her +I am sure." +"But with a strange kind of tenderness, if he can +leave her with such indifference, such carelessness +of the future, as you attribute to him." +"You must remember, my dear mother, that I have never +considered this matter as certain. I have had my doubts, +I confess but they are fainter than they were, and they +may soon be entirely done away. If we find they correspond, +every fear of mine will be removed." +"A mighty concession indeed If you were to see +them at the altar, you would suppose they were going to +be married. Ungracious girl But I require no such proof. +Nothing in my opinion has ever passed to justify doubt +no secrecy has been attempted all has been uniformly open +and unreserved. You cannot doubt your sister's wishes. +It must be Willoughby therefore whom you suspect. But why? +Is he not a man of honour and feeling? Has there been any +inconsistency on his side to create alarm? can he be deceitful?" +"I hope not, I believe not," cried Elinor. +"I love Willoughby, sincerely love him and suspicion of his +integrity cannot be more painful to yourself than to me. +It has been involuntary, and I will not encourage it. +I was startled, I confess, by the alteration in his +manners this morninghe did not speak like himself, +and did not return your kindness with any cordiality. +But all this may be explained by such a situation of his +affairs as you have supposed. He had just parted from +my sister, had seen her leave him in the greatest affliction +and if he felt obliged, from a fear of offending Mrs. Smith, +to resist the temptation of returning here soon, and yet +aware that by declining your invitation, by saying +that he was going away for some time, he should seem +to act an ungenerous, a suspicious part by our family, +he might well be embarrassed and disturbed. In such a case, +a plain and open avowal of his difficulties would have been +more to his honour I think, as well as more consistent +with his general characterbut I will not raise objections +against any one's conduct on so illiberal a foundation, +as a difference in judgment from myself, or a deviation from +what I may think right and consistent." +"You speak very properly. Willoughby certainly does +not deserve to be suspected. Though WE have not known +him long, he is no stranger in this part of the world +and who has ever spoken to his disadvantage? Had he been +in a situation to act independently and marry immediately, +it might have been odd that he should leave us without +acknowledging everything to me at once but this is not the case. +It is an engagement in some respects not prosperously begun, +for their marriage must be at a very uncertain distance +and even secrecy, as far as it can be observed, may now +be very advisable." +They were interrupted by the entrance of Margaret +and Elinor was then at liberty to think over the representations +of her mother, to acknowledge the probability of many, +and hope for the justice of all. +They saw nothing of Marianne till dinner time, +when she entered the room and took her place at the table +without saying a word. Her eyes were red and swollen +and it seemed as if her tears were even then restrained +with difficulty. She avoided the looks of them all, +could neither eat nor speak, and after some time, on her +mother's silently pressing her hand with tender compassion, +her small degree of fortitude was quite overcome, she burst +into tears and left the room. +This violent oppression of spirits continued the +whole evening. She was without any power, because she +was without any desire of command over herself. +The slightest mention of anything relative to Willoughby +overpowered her in an instant and though her family +were most anxiously attentive to her comfort, it was +impossible for them, if they spoke at all, to keep clear +of every subject which her feelings connected with him. +CHAPTER +Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable +had she been able to sleep at all the first night +after parting from Willoughby. She would have been +ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, +had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose +than when she lay down in it. But the feelings which +made such composure a disgrace, left her in no danger +of incurring it. She was awake the whole night, and she +wept the greatest part of it. She got up with a headache, +was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment +giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, +and forbidding all attempt at consolation from either. +Her sensibility was potent enough +When breakfast was over she walked out by herself, +and wandered about the village of Allenham, indulging the +recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present +reverse for the chief of the morning. +The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. +She played over every favourite song that she had been used +to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices +had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing +on every line of music that he had written out for her, +till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness +could be gained and this nourishment of grief was every +day applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte +alternately singing and crying her voice often totally +suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in music, +she courted the misery which a contrast between the past +and present was certain of giving. She read nothing +but what they had been used to read together. +Such violence of affliction indeed could not be supported +for ever it sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy +but these employments, to which she daily recurred, +her solitary walks and silent meditations, still produced +occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever. +No letter from Willoughby came and none seemed expected +by Marianne. Her mother was surprised, and Elinor again +became uneasy. But Mrs. Dashwood could find explanations +whenever she wanted them, which at least satisfied herself. +"Remember, Elinor," said she, "how very often Sir John +fetches our letters himself from the post, and carries them +to it. We have already agreed that secrecy may be necessary, +and we must acknowledge that it could not be maintained if +their correspondence were to pass through Sir John's hands." +Elinor could not deny the truth of this, and she tried +to find in it a motive sufficient for their silence. +But there was one method so direct, so simple, and in +her opinion so eligible of knowing the real state +of the affair, and of instantly removing all mystery, +that she could not help suggesting it to her mother. +"Why do you not ask Marianne at once," said she, +"whether she is or she is not engaged to Willoughby? From you, +her mother, and so kind, so indulgent a mother, the question +could not give offence. It would be the natural result +of your affection for her. She used to be all unreserve, +and to you more especially." +"I would not ask such a question for the world. +Supposing it possible that they are not engaged, +what distress would not such an enquiry inflict At any +rate it would be most ungenerous. I should never deserve +her confidence again, after forcing from her a confession +of what is meant at present to be unacknowledged to any one. +I know Marianne's heart I know that she dearly loves me, +and that I shall not be the last to whom the affair is made +known, +when circumstances make the revealment of it eligible. +I would not attempt to force the confidence of any one +of a child much less because a sense of duty would prevent +the denial which her wishes might direct." +Elinor thought this generosity overstrained, +considering her sister's youth, and urged the matter farther, +but in vain common sense, common care, common prudence, +were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood's romantic delicacy. +It was several days before Willoughby's name +was mentioned before Marianne by any of her family +Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, indeed, were not so nice +their witticisms added pain to many a painful hour +but one evening, Mrs. Dashwood, accidentally taking up a +volume of Shakespeare, exclaimed, +"We have never finished Hamlet, Marianne our dear +Willoughby went away before we could get through it. +We will put it by, that when he comes again...But it may +be months, perhaps, before THAT happens." +"Months" cried Marianne, with strong surprise. +"Nonor many weeks." +Mrs. Dashwood was sorry for what she had said +but it gave Elinor pleasure, as it produced a reply +from Marianne so expressive of confidence in Willoughby +and knowledge of his intentions. +One morning, about a week after his leaving the country, +Marianne was prevailed on to join her sisters in their +usual walk, instead of wandering away by herself. +Hitherto she had carefully avoided every companion in +her rambles. If her sisters intended to walk on the downs, +she directly stole away towards the lanes if they talked +of the valley, she was as speedy in climbing the hills, +and could never be found when the others set off. +But at length she was secured by the exertions of Elinor, +who greatly disapproved such continual seclusion. They walked +along the road through the valley, and chiefly in silence, +for Marianne's MIND could not be controlled, and Elinor, +satisfied with gaining one point, would not then attempt more. +Beyond the entrance of the valley, where the country, +though still rich, was less wild and more open, a long +stretch of the road which they had travelled on first coming +to Barton, lay before them and on reaching that point, +they stopped to look around them, and examine a prospect +which formed the distance of their view from the cottage, +from a spot which they had never happened to reach in any +of their walks before. +Amongst the objects in the scene, they soon discovered +an animated one it was a man on horseback riding towards them. +In a few minutes they could distinguish him to be a gentleman +and in a moment afterwards Marianne rapturously exclaimed, +"It is he it is indeedI know it is"and was +hastening to meet him, when Elinor cried out, +"Indeed, Marianne, I think you are mistaken. It is +not Willoughby. The person is not tall enough for him, +and has not his air." +"He has, he has," cried Marianne, "I am sure he has. +His air, his coat, his horse. I knew how soon he would come." +She walked eagerly on as she spoke and Elinor, +to screen Marianne from particularity, as she felt almost +certain of its not being Willoughby, quickened her +pace and kept up with her. They were soon within +thirty yards of the gentleman. Marianne looked again +her heart sunk within her and abruptly turning round, +she was hurrying back, when the voices of both her sisters +were raised to detain her a third, almost as well known +as Willoughby's, joined them in begging her to stop, +and she turned round with surprise to see and welcome +Edward Ferrars. +He was the only person in the world who could +at that moment be forgiven for not being Willoughby +the only one who could have gained a smile from her +but she dispersed her tears to smile on HIM, and in her +sister's happiness forgot for a time her own disappointment. +He dismounted, and giving his horse to his servant, +walked back with them to Barton, whither he was purposely +coming to visit them. +He was welcomed by them all with great cordiality, +but especially by Marianne, who showed more warmth of +regard in her reception of him than even Elinor herself. +To Marianne, indeed, the meeting between Edward and her sister +was but a continuation of that unaccountable coldness which she +had often observed at Norland in their mutual behaviour. +On Edward's side, more particularly, there was a deficiency +of all that a lover ought to look and say on such an occasion. +He was confused, seemed scarcely sensible of pleasure +in seeing them, looked neither rapturous nor gay, +said little but what was forced from him by questions, +and distinguished Elinor by no mark of affection. +Marianne saw and listened with increasing surprise. +She began almost to feel a dislike of Edward and it ended, +as every feeling must end with her, by carrying back her +thoughts to Willoughby, whose manners formed a contrast +sufficiently striking to those of his brother elect. +After a short silence which succeeded the first +surprise and enquiries of meeting, Marianne asked +Edward if he came directly from London. No, he had +been in Devonshire a fortnight. +"A fortnight" she repeated, surprised at his being +so long in the same county with Elinor without seeing +her before. +He looked rather distressed as he added, that he +had been staying with some friends near Plymouth. +"Have you been lately in Sussex?" said Elinor. +"I was at Norland about a month ago." +"And how does dear, dear Norland look?" cried Marianne. +"Dear, dear Norland," said Elinor, "probably looks +much as it always does at this time of the year. +The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves." +"Oh," cried Marianne, "with what transporting sensation +have I formerly seen them fall How have I delighted, +as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me +by the wind What feelings have they, the season, the air +altogether inspired Now there is no one to regard them. +They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, +and driven as much as possible from the sight." +"It is not every one," said Elinor, "who has your +passion for dead leaves." +"No my feelings are not often shared, not often +understood. But SOMETIMES they are."As she said this, +she sunk into a reverie for a few momentsbut rousing +herself again, "Now, Edward," said she, calling his attention +to the prospect, "here is Barton valley. Look up to it, +and be tranquil if you can. Look at those hills +Did you ever see their equals? To the left is Barton park, +amongst those woods and plantations. You may see the end +of the house. And there, beneath that farthest hill, +which rises with such grandeur, is our cottage." +"It is a beautiful country," he replied "but these +bottoms must be dirty in winter." +"How can you think of dirt, with such objects before you?" +"Because," replied he, smiling, "among the rest of the +objects before me, I see a very dirty lane." +"How strange" said Marianne to herself as she walked on. +"Have you an agreeable neighbourhood here? Are the +Middletons pleasant people?" +"No, not all," answered Marianne "we could not +be more unfortunately situated." +"Marianne," cried her sister, "how can you say so? How can +you be so unjust? They are a very respectable family, Mr. +Ferrars +and towards us have behaved in the friendliest manner. Have you +forgot, Marianne, how many pleasant days we have owed to them?" +"No," said Marianne, in a low voice, "nor how many +painful moments." +Elinor took no notice of this and directing +her attention to their visitor, endeavoured to support +something like discourse with him, by talking of their +present residence, its conveniences, c. extorting from him +occasional questions and remarks. His coldness and reserve +mortified her severely she was vexed and half angry +but resolving to regulate her behaviour to him by the past +rather than the present, she avoided every appearance +of resentment or displeasure, and treated him as she +thought he ought to be treated from the family connection. +CHAPTER +Mrs. Dashwood was surprised only for a moment at +seeing him for his coming to Barton was, in her opinion, +of all things the most natural. Her joy and expression +of regard long outlived her wonder. He received the kindest +welcome from her and shyness, coldness, reserve could not +stand against such a reception. They had begun to fail him +before he entered the house, and they were quite overcome +by the captivating manners of Mrs. Dashwood. Indeed a man +could not very well be in love with either of her daughters, +without extending the passion to her and Elinor had the +satisfaction of seeing him soon become more like himself. +His affections seemed to reanimate towards them all, +and his interest in their welfare again became perceptible. +He was not in spirits, however he praised their house, +admired its prospect, was attentive, and kind but still +he was not in spirits. The whole family perceived it, +and Mrs. Dashwood, attributing it to some want of liberality +in his mother, sat down to table indignant against all +selfish parents. +"What are Mrs. Ferrars's views for you at present, Edward?" +said she, when dinner was over and they had drawn round +the fire "are you still to be a great orator in spite of +yourself?" +"No. I hope my mother is now convinced that I have +no more talents than inclination for a public life" +"But how is your fame to be established? for famous you +must be to satisfy all your family and with no inclination +for expense, no affection for strangers, no profession, +and no assurance, you may find it a difficult matter." +"I shall not attempt it. I have no wish to be +distinguished and have every reason to hope I never shall. +Thank Heaven I cannot be forced into genius and eloquence." +"You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes +are all moderate." +"As moderate as those of the rest of the world, +I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be +perfectly happy but, like every body else it must be +in my own way. Greatness will not make me so." +"Strange that it would" cried Marianne. "What have +wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?" +"Grandeur has but little," said Elinor, "but wealth +has much to do with it." +"Elinor, for shame" said Marianne, "money can only +give happiness where there is nothing else to give it. +Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, +as far as mere self is concerned." +"Perhaps," said Elinor, smiling, "we may come +to the same point. YOUR competence and MY wealth +are very much alike, I dare say and without them, +as the world goes now, we shall both agree that every +kind of external comfort must be wanting. Your ideas +are only more noble than mine. Come, what is your competence?" +"About eighteen hundred or two thousand a year +not more than THAT." +Elinor laughed. "TWO thousand a year ONE is my +wealth I guessed how it would end." +"And yet two thousand ayear is a very moderate income," +said Marianne. "A family cannot well be maintained on +a smaller. I am sure I am not extravagant in my demands. +A proper establishment of servants, a carriage, perhaps two, +and hunters, cannot be supported on less." +Elinor smiled again, to hear her sister describing +so accurately their future expenses at Combe Magna. +"Hunters" repeated Edward"but why must you have +hunters? Every body does not hunt." +Marianne coloured as she replied, "But most people do." +"I wish," said Margaret, striking out a novel thought, +"that somebody would give us all a large fortune apiece" +"Oh that they would" cried Marianne, her eyes +sparkling with animation, and her cheeks glowing +with the delight of such imaginary happiness. +"We are all unanimous in that wish, I suppose," +said Elinor, "in spite of the insufficiency of wealth." +"Oh dear" cried Margaret, "how happy I should be +I wonder what I should do with it" +Marianne looked as if she had no doubt on that point. +"I should be puzzled to spend so large a fortune myself," +said Mrs. Dashwood, "if my children were all to be rich +my help." +"You must begin your improvements on this house," +observed Elinor, "and your difficulties will soon vanish." +"What magnificent orders would travel from this family +to London," said Edward, "in such an event What a happy +day for booksellers, musicsellers, and printshops You, +Miss Dashwood, would give a general commission for every +new print of merit to be sent youand as for Marianne, +I know her greatness of soul, there would not be music enough +in London to content her. And booksThomson, Cowper, +Scottshe would buy them all over and over again she +would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their +falling into unworthy hands and she would have every +book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree. +Should not you, Marianne? Forgive me, if I am very saucy. +But I was willing to shew you that I had not forgot our +old disputes." +"I love to be reminded of the past, Edwardwhether it +be melancholy or gay, I love to recall itand you +will never offend me by talking of former times. +You are very right in supposing how my money would be +spentsome of it, at leastmy loose cash would certainly +be employed in improving my collection of music and books." +"And the bulk of your fortune would be laid out +in annuities on the authors or their heirs." +"No, Edward, I should have something else to do +with it." +"Perhaps, then, you would bestow it as a reward on that +person who wrote the ablest defence of your favourite maxim, +that no one can ever be in love more than once in their +lifeyour opinion on that point is unchanged, I presume?" +"Undoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. +It is not likely that I should now see or hear any thing to +change them." +"Marianne is as steadfast as ever, you see," said Elinor, +"she is not at all altered." +"She is only grown a little more grave than she was." +"Nay, Edward," said Marianne, "you need not reproach me. +You are not very gay yourself." +"Why should you think so" replied he, with a sigh. +"But gaiety never was a part of MY character." +"Nor do I think it a part of Marianne's," said Elinor +"I should hardly call her a lively girlshe is very earnest, +very eager in all she doessometimes talks a great deal +and always with animationbut she is not often really merry." +"I believe you are right," he replied, "and yet I +have always set her down as a lively girl." +"I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes," +said Elinor, "in a total misapprehension of character in some +point or other fancying people so much more gay or grave, +or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can +hardly tell why or in what the deception originated. +Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, +and very frequently by what other people say of them, +without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge." +"But I thought it was right, Elinor," said Marianne, +"to be guided wholly by the opinion of other people. +I thought our judgments were given us merely to be subservient +to those of neighbours. This has always been your doctrine, +I am sure." +"No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed +at the subjection of the understanding. All I have +ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour. +You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess, +of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance +in general with greater attention but when have I advised +you to adopt their sentiments or to conform to their +judgment in serious matters?" +"You have not been able to bring your sister over to your +plan of general civility," said Edward to Elinor, "Do you gain +no ground?" +"Quite the contrary," replied Elinor, +looking expressively at Marianne. +"My judgment," he returned, "is all on your side +of the question but I am afraid my practice is much +more on your sister's. I never wish to offend, but I +am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, +when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. +I have frequently thought that I must have been intended +by nature to be fond of low company, I am so little at +my ease among strangers of gentility" +"Marianne has not shyness to excuse any inattention +of hers," said Elinor. +"She knows her own worth too well for false shame," +replied Edward. "Shyness is only the effect of a sense +of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade +myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, +I should not be shy." +"But you would still be reserved," said Marianne, +"and that is worse." +Edward started"Reserved Am I reserved, Marianne?" +"Yes, very." +"I do not understand you," replied he, colouring. +"Reservedhow, in what manner? What am I to tell you? +What can you suppose?" +Elinor looked surprised at his emotion but trying +to laugh off the subject, she said to him, "Do not you +know my sister well enough to understand what she means? +Do not you know she calls every one reserved who does not +talk as fast, and admire what she admires as rapturously +as herself?" +Edward made no answer. His gravity and thoughtfulness +returned on him in their fullest extentand he sat +for some time silent and dull. +CHAPTER +Elinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits +of her friend. His visit afforded her but a very +partial satisfaction, while his own enjoyment in it +appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was unhappy +she wished it were equally evident that he still +distinguished her by the same affection which once +she had felt no doubt of inspiring but hitherto the +continuance of his preference seemed very uncertain +and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted +one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding +one. +He joined her and Marianne in the breakfastroom +the next morning before the others were down and Marianne, +who was always eager to promote their happiness as far +as she could, soon left them to themselves. But before she +was half way upstairs she heard the parlour door open, and, +turning round, was astonished to see Edward himself come out. +"I am going into the village to see my horses," +said he, "as you are not yet ready for breakfast I shall +be back again presently." +Edward returned to them with fresh admiration +of the surrounding country in his walk to the village, +he had seen many parts of the valley to advantage +and the village itself, in a much higher situation than +the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole, which had +exceedingly pleased him. This was a subject which ensured +Marianne's attention, and she was beginning to describe +her own admiration of these scenes, and to question him more +minutely on the objects that had particularly struck him, +when Edward interrupted her by saying, "You must not +enquire too far, Marianneremember I have no knowledge +in the picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance +and want of taste if we come to particulars. I shall call +hills steep, which ought to be bold surfaces strange +and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged +and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be +indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. +You must be satisfied with such admiration as I can +honestly give. I call it a very fine countrythe +hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine timber, +and the valley looks comfortable and snugwith rich +meadows and several neat farm houses scattered here +and there. It exactly answers my idea of a fine country, +because it unites beauty with utilityand I dare say it +is a picturesque one too, because you admire it I can +easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, +grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. +I know nothing of the picturesque." +"I am afraid it is but too true," said Marianne +"but why should you boast of it?" +"I suspect," said Elinor, "that to avoid one kind +of affectation, Edward here falls into another. Because he +believes many people pretend to more admiration of the beauties +of nature than they really feel, and is disgusted with +such pretensions, he affects greater indifference and less +discrimination in viewing them himself than he possesses. +He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own." +"It is very true," said Marianne, "that admiration +of landscape scenery is become a mere jargon. +Every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with +the taste and elegance of him who first defined what +picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, +and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, +because I could find no language to describe them +in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning." +"I am convinced," said Edward, "that you really feel +all the delight in a fine prospect which you profess +to feel. But, in return, your sister must allow me +to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, +but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, +twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they +are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, +tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles, +or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug +farmhouse than a watchtowerand a troop of tidy, +happy villages please me better than the finest banditti +in the world." +Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, +with compassion at her sister. Elinor only laughed. +The subject was continued no farther and Marianne +remained thoughtfully silent, till a new object suddenly +engaged her attention. She was sitting by Edward, and +in taking his tea from Mrs. Dashwood, his hand passed +so directly before her, as to make a ring, with a plait +of hair in the centre, very conspicuous on one of his fingers. +"I never saw you wear a ring before, Edward," she cried. +"Is that Fanny's hair? I remember her promising to give +you some. But I should have thought her hair had been darker." +Marianne spoke inconsiderately what she really felt +but when she saw how much she had pained Edward, her own +vexation at her want of thought could not be surpassed +by his. He coloured very deeply, and giving a momentary +glance at Elinor, replied, "Yes it is my sister's hair. +The setting always casts a different shade on it, +you know." +Elinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise. +That the hair was her own, she instantaneously felt as +well satisfied as Marianne the only difference in their +conclusions was, that what Marianne considered as a free +gift from her sister, Elinor was conscious must have been +procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself. +She was not in a humour, however, to regard it as an affront, +and affecting to take no notice of what passed, +by instantly talking of something else, she internally +resolved henceforward to catch every opportunity of eyeing +the hair and of satisfying herself, beyond all doubt, +that it was exactly the shade of her own. +Edward's embarrassment lasted some time, and it +ended in an absence of mind still more settled. +He was particularly grave the whole morning. +Marianne severely censured herself for what she had said +but her own forgiveness might have been more speedy, +had she known how little offence it had given her sister. +Before the middle of the day, they were visited by Sir +John and Mrs. Jennings, who, having heard of the arrival +of a gentleman at the cottage, came to take a survey +of the guest. With the assistance of his motherinlaw, +Sir John was not long in discovering that the name of +Ferrars began with an F. and this prepared a future mine +of raillery against the devoted Elinor, which nothing but +the newness of their acquaintance with Edward could have +prevented from being immediately sprung. But, as it was, +she only learned, from some very significant looks, how far +their penetration, founded on Margaret's instructions, extended. +Sir John never came to the Dashwoods without either +inviting them to dine at the park the next day, or to drink +tea with them that evening. On the present occasion, +for the better entertainment of their visitor, towards +whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute, +he wished to engage them for both. +"You MUST drink tea with us to night," said he, +"for we shall be quite aloneand tomorrow you must +absolutely dine with us, for we shall be a large party." +Mrs. Jennings enforced the necessity. "And who knows +but you may raise a dance," said she. "And that will +tempt YOU, Miss Marianne." +"A dance" cried Marianne. "Impossible Who is to dance?" +"Who why yourselves, and the Careys, and Whitakers +to be sure.What you thought nobody could dance +because a certain person that shall be nameless is gone" +"I wish with all my soul," cried Sir John, +"that Willoughby were among us again." +This, and Marianne's blushing, gave new suspicions +to Edward. "And who is Willoughby?" said he, in a low voice, +to Miss Dashwood, by whom he was sitting. +She gave him a brief reply. Marianne's countenance +was more communicative. Edward saw enough to comprehend, +not only the meaning of others, but such of Marianne's +expressions as had puzzled him before and when their +visitors left them, he went immediately round her, and said, +in a whisper, "I have been guessing. Shall I tell you +my guess?" +"What do you mean?" +"Shall I tell you." +"Certainly." +"Well then I guess that Mr. Willoughby hunts." +Marianne was surprised and confused, yet she could +not help smiling at the quiet archness of his manner, +and after a moment's silence, said, +"Oh, Edward How can you?But the time will come +I hope...I am sure you will like him." +"I do not doubt it," replied he, rather astonished +at her earnestness and warmth for had he not imagined it +to be a joke for the good of her acquaintance in general, +founded only on a something or a nothing between Mr. Willoughby +and herself, he would not have ventured to mention it. +CHAPTER +Edward remained a week at the cottage he was earnestly +pressed by Mrs. Dashwood to stay longer but, as if he +were bent only on selfmortification, he seemed resolved +to be gone when his enjoyment among his friends was at +the height. His spirits, during the last two or three days, +though still very unequal, were greatly improvedhe grew +more and more partial to the house and environsnever +spoke of going away without a sighdeclared his time +to be wholly disengagedeven doubted to what place he +should go when he left thembut still, go he must. +Never had any week passed so quicklyhe could hardly +believe it to be gone. He said so repeatedly other things +he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave +the lie to his actions. He had no pleasure at Norland +he detested being in town but either to Norland or London, +he must go. He valued their kindness beyond any thing, +and his greatest happiness was in being with them. +Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite +of their wishes and his own, and without any restraint +on his time. +Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this +way of acting to his mother's account and it was +happy for her that he had a mother whose character +was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general +excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son. +Disappointed, however, and vexed as she was, and sometimes +displeased with his uncertain behaviour to herself, +she was very well disposed on the whole to regard his actions +with all the candid allowances and generous qualifications, +which had been rather more painfully extorted from her, +for Willoughby's service, by her mother. His want of spirits, +of openness, and of consistency, were most usually +attributed to his want of independence, and his better +knowledge of Mrs. Ferrars's disposition and designs. +The shortness of his visit, the steadiness of his purpose +in leaving them, originated in the same fettered inclination, +the same inevitable necessity of temporizing with his mother. +The old wellestablished grievance of duty against will, +parent against child, was the cause of all. She would have +been glad to know when these difficulties were to cease, +this opposition was to yield,when Mrs. Ferrars would +be reformed, and her son be at liberty to be happy. +But from such vain wishes she was forced to turn for comfort +to the renewal of her confidence in Edward's affection, +to the remembrance of every mark of regard in look or word +which fell from him while at Barton, and above all +to that flattering proof of it which he constantly wore +round his finger. +"I think, Edward," said Mrs. Dashwood, as they were +at breakfast the last morning, "you would be a happier man +if you had any profession to engage your time and give +an interest to your plans and actions. Some inconvenience +to your friends, indeed, might result from ityou +would not be able to give them so much of your time. +But with a smile you would be materially benefited +in one particular at leastyou would know where to go +when you left them." +"I do assure you," he replied, "that I have long +thought on this point, as you think now. It has been, +and is, and probably will always be a heavy misfortune +to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage me, +no profession to give me employment, or afford me any +thing like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, +and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, +an idle, helpless being. We never could agree in our +choice of a profession. I always preferred the church, +as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. +They recommended the army. That was a great deal +too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel +enough many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, +made a very good appearance in the first circles, +and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had +no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse +study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, +it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the +subject was first started to enter itand, at length, +as there was no necessity for my having any profession +at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without +a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced +on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, +and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly +bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his +friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford +and have been properly idle ever since." +"The consequence of which, I suppose, will be," +said Mrs. Dashwood, "since leisure has not promoted +your own happiness, that your sons will be brought up +to as many pursuits, employments, professions, and trades +as Columella's." +"They will be brought up," said he, in a serious accent, +"to be as unlike myself as is possible. In feeling, +in action, in condition, in every thing." +"Come, come this is all an effusion of immediate +want of spirits, Edward. You are in a melancholy humour, +and fancy that any one unlike yourself must be happy. +But remember that the pain of parting from friends +will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their +education or state. Know your own happiness. You want +nothing but patienceor give it a more fascinating name, +call it hope. Your mother will secure to you, in time, +that independence you are so anxious for it is her duty, +and it will, it must ere long become her happiness to +prevent your whole youth from being wasted in discontent. +How much may not a few months do?" +"I think," replied Edward, "that I may defy many +months to produce any good to me." +This desponding turn of mind, though it could not +be communicated to Mrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain +to them all in the parting, which shortly took place, +and left an uncomfortable impression on Elinor's +feelings especially, which required some trouble and time +to subdue. But as it was her determination to subdue it, +and to prevent herself from appearing to suffer more than +what all her family suffered on his going away, she did +not adopt the method so judiciously employed by Marianne, +on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, +by seeking silence, solitude and idleness. Their means +were as different as their objects, and equally suited +to the advancement of each. +Elinor sat down to her drawingtable as soon as he +was out of the house, busily employed herself the whole day, +neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, +appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the +general concerns of the family, and if, by this conduct, +she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented +from unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters +were spared much solicitude on her account. +Such behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse +of her own, appeared no more meritorious to Marianne, +than her own had seemed faulty to her. The business +of selfcommand she settled very easilywith strong +affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could +have no merit. That her sister's affections WERE calm, +she dared not deny, though she blushed to acknowledge it +and of the strength of her own, she gave a very striking proof, +by still loving and respecting that sister, in spite +of this mortifying conviction. +Without shutting herself up from her family, +or leaving the house in determined solitude to avoid them, +or lying awake the whole night to indulge meditation, +Elinor found every day afforded her leisure enough +to think of Edward, and of Edward's behaviour, in every +possible variety which the different state of her spirits +at different times could produce,with tenderness, +pity, approbation, censure, and doubt. There were moments +in abundance, when, if not by the absence of her mother +and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments, +conversation was forbidden among them, and every effect +of solitude was produced. Her mind was inevitably +at liberty her thoughts could not be chained elsewhere +and the past and the future, on a subject so interesting, +must be before her, must force her attention, and engross +her memory, her reflection, and her fancy. +From a reverie of this kind, as she sat at her +drawingtable, she was roused one morning, soon after +Edward's leaving them, by the arrival of company. +She happened to be quite alone. The closing of the +little gate, at the entrance of the green court in front +of the house, drew her eyes to the window, and she saw +a large party walking up to the door. Amongst them +were Sir John and Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, +but there were two others, a gentleman and lady, who were +quite unknown to her. She was sitting near the window, +and as soon as Sir John perceived her, he left the rest +of the party to the ceremony of knocking at the door, +and stepping across the turf, obliged her to open the +casement to speak to him, though the space was so short +between the door and the window, as to make it hardly +possible to speak at one without being heard at the other. +"Well," said he, "we have brought you some strangers. +How do you like them?" +"Hush they will hear you." +"Never mind if they do. It is only the Palmers. +Charlotte is very pretty, I can tell you. You may see her +if you look this way." +As Elinor was certain of seeing her in a couple +of minutes, without taking that liberty, she begged +to be excused. +"Where is Marianne? Has she run away because we +are come? I see her instrument is open." +"She is walking, I believe." +They were now joined by Mrs. Jennings, who had not +patience enough to wait till the door was opened before +she told HER story. She came hallooing to the window, +"How do you do, my dear? How does Mrs. Dashwood do? +And where are your sisters? What all alone you +will be glad of a little company to sit with you. +I have brought my other son and daughter to see you. +Only think of their coming so suddenly I thought I heard +a carriage last night, while we were drinking our tea, +but it never entered my head that it could be them. +I thought of nothing but whether it might not be Colonel +Brandon come back again so I said to Sir John, I do think +I hear a carriage perhaps it is Colonel Brandon come +back again" +Elinor was obliged to turn from her, in the middle +of her story, to receive the rest of the party Lady +Middleton introduced the two strangers Mrs. Dashwood +and Margaret came down stairs at the same time, and they +all sat down to look at one another, while Mrs. Jennings +continued her story as she walked through the passage +into the parlour, attended by Sir John. +Mrs. Palmer was several years younger than Lady +Middleton, and totally unlike her in every respect. +She was short and plump, had a very pretty face, +and the finest expression of good humour in it that could +possibly be. Her manners were by no means so elegant +as her sister's, but they were much more prepossessing. +She came in with a smile, smiled all the time of her visit, +except when she laughed, and smiled when she went away. +Her husband was a grave looking young man of five or six +and twenty, with an air of more fashion and sense than +his wife, but of less willingness to please or be pleased. +He entered the room with a look of selfconsequence, +slightly bowed to the ladies, without speaking a word, +and, after briefly surveying them and their apartments, +took up a newspaper from the table, and continued to read it +as long as he staid. +Mrs. Palmer, on the contrary, who was strongly endowed +by nature with a turn for being uniformly civil and happy, +was hardly seated before her admiration of the parlour +and every thing in it burst forth. +"Well what a delightful room this is I never +saw anything so charming Only think, Mamma, how it +is improved since I was here last I always thought it +such a sweet place, ma'am turning to Mrs. Dashwood +but you have made it so charming Only look, sister, +how delightful every thing is How I should like such +a house for myself Should not you, Mr. Palmer?" +Mr. Palmer made her no answer, and did not even raise +his eyes from the newspaper. +"Mr. Palmer does not hear me," said she, laughing +"he never does sometimes. It is so ridiculous" +This was quite a new idea to Mrs. Dashwood she had +never been used to find wit in the inattention of any one, +and could not help looking with surprise at them both. +Mrs. Jennings, in the meantime, talked on as loud +as she could, and continued her account of their surprise, +the evening before, on seeing their friends, without +ceasing till every thing was told. Mrs. Palmer laughed +heartily at the recollection of their astonishment, +and every body agreed, two or three times over, that it +had been quite an agreeable surprise. +"You may believe how glad we all were to see them," +added Mrs. Jennings, leaning forward towards Elinor, +and speaking in a low voice as if she meant to be heard +by no one else, though they were seated on different sides +of the room "but, however, I can't help wishing they had +not travelled quite so fast, nor made such a long journey +of it, for they came all round by London upon account +of some business, for you know nodding significantly and +pointing to her daughter it was wrong in her situation. +I wanted her to stay at home and rest this morning, +but she would come with us she longed so much to see +you all" +Mrs. Palmer laughed, and said it would not do her +any harm. +"She expects to be confined in February," +continued Mrs. Jennings. +Lady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, +and therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there +was any news in the paper. +"No, none at all," he replied, and read on. +"Here comes Marianne," cried Sir John. "Now, Palmer, +you shall see a monstrous pretty girl." +He immediately went into the passage, opened the front door, +and ushered her in himself. Mrs. Jennings asked her, +as soon as she appeared, if she had not been to Allenham +and Mrs. Palmer laughed so heartily at the question, +as to show she understood it. Mr. Palmer looked up +on her entering the room, stared at her some minutes, +and then returned to his newspaper. Mrs. Palmer's eye +was now caught by the drawings which hung round the room. +She got up to examine them. +"Oh dear, how beautiful these are Well how delightful +Do but look, mama, how sweet I declare they are quite charming +I could look at them for ever." And then sitting down again, +she very soon forgot that there were any such things in the room. +When Lady Middleton rose to go away, Mr. Palmer +rose also, laid down the newspaper, stretched himself +and looked at them all around. +"My love, have you been asleep?" said his wife, laughing. +He made her no answer and only observed, after again +examining the room, that it was very low pitched, +and that the ceiling was crooked. He then made his bow, +and departed with the rest. +Sir John had been very urgent with them all to +spend the next day at the park. Mrs. Dashwood, who did +not chuse to dine with them oftener than they dined +at the cottage, absolutely refused on her own account +her daughters might do as they pleased. But they had no +curiosity to see how Mr. and Mrs. Palmer ate their dinner, +and no expectation of pleasure from them in any other way. +They attempted, therefore, likewise, to excuse themselves +the weather was uncertain, and not likely to be good. +But Sir John would not be satisfiedthe carriage should +be sent for them and they must come. Lady Middleton too, +though she did not press their mother, pressed them. +Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer joined their entreaties, all +seemed equally anxious to avoid a family party and the young +ladies were obliged to yield. +"Why should they ask us?" said Marianne, as soon as they +were gone. "The rent of this cottage is said to be low +but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine +at the park whenever any one is staying either with them, +or with us." +"They mean no less to be civil and kind to us now," +said Elinor, "by these frequent invitations, than by +those which we received from them a few weeks ago. +The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown +tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere." +CHAPTER +As the Miss Dashwoods entered the drawingroom of the park +the next day, at one door, Mrs. Palmer came running in at +the other, looking as good humoured and merry as before. +She took them all most affectionately by the hand, +and expressed great delight in seeing them again. +"I am so glad to see you" said she, seating herself +between Elinor and Marianne, "for it is so bad a day I was +afraid you might not come, which would be a shocking thing, +as we go away again tomorrow. We must go, for the Westons +come to us next week you know. It was quite a sudden thing +our coming at all, and I knew nothing of it till the carriage +was coming to the door, and then Mr. Palmer asked me if I +would go with him to Barton. He is so droll He never +tells me any thing I am so sorry we cannot stay longer +however we shall meet again in town very soon, I hope." +They were obliged to put an end to such an expectation. +"Not go to town" cried Mrs. Palmer, with a laugh, +"I shall be quite disappointed if you do not. I could +get the nicest house in world for you, next door to ours, +in Hanoversquare. You must come, indeed. I am sure +I shall be very happy to chaperon you at any time till +I am confined, if Mrs. Dashwood should not like to go +into public." +They thanked her but were obliged to resist all +her entreaties. +"Oh, my love," cried Mrs. Palmer to her husband, +who just then entered the room"you must help me to +persuade the Miss Dashwoods to go to town this winter." +Her love made no answer and after slightly bowing +to the ladies, began complaining of the weather. +"How horrid all this is" said he. "Such weather +makes every thing and every body disgusting. Dullness +is as much produced within doors as without, by rain. +It makes one detest all one's acquaintance. What the +devil does Sir John mean by not having a billiard room +in his house? How few people know what comfort is Sir +John is as stupid as the weather." +The rest of the company soon dropt in. +"I am afraid, Miss Marianne," said Sir John, "you have +not been able to take your usual walk to Allenham today." +Marianne looked very grave and said nothing. +"Oh, don't be so sly before us," said Mrs. Palmer +"for we know all about it, I assure you and I admire your +taste very much, for I think he is extremely handsome. +We do not live a great way from him in the country, you know. +Not above ten miles, I dare say." +"Much nearer thirty," said her husband. +"Ah, well there is not much difference. +I never was at his house but they say it is a sweet +pretty place." +"As vile a spot as I ever saw in my life," +said Mr. Palmer. +Marianne remained perfectly silent, though her +countenance betrayed her interest in what was said. +"Is it very ugly?" continued Mrs. Palmer"then it +must be some other place that is so pretty I suppose." +When they were seated in the dining room, Sir John +observed with regret that they were only eight all together. +"My dear," said he to his lady, "it is very provoking +that we should be so few. Why did not you ask the Gilberts +to come to us today?" +"Did not I tell you, Sir John, when you spoke to me +about it before, that it could not be done? They dined +with us last." +"You and I, Sir John," said Mrs. Jennings, +"should not stand upon such ceremony." +"Then you would be very illbred," cried Mr. Palmer. +"My love you contradict every body," said his wife +with her usual laugh. "Do you know that you are quite rude?" +"I did not know I contradicted any body in calling +your mother illbred." +"Ay, you may abuse me as you please," said the goodnatured +old lady, "you have taken Charlotte off my hands, and cannot +give her back again. So there I have the whip hand of you." +Charlotte laughed heartily to think that her +husband could not get rid of her and exultingly said, +she did not care how cross he was to her, as they must +live together. It was impossible for any one to be more +thoroughly goodnatured, or more determined to be happy +than Mrs. Palmer. The studied indifference, insolence, +and discontent of her husband gave her no pain +and when he scolded or abused her, she was highly diverted. +"Mr. Palmer is so droll" said she, in a whisper, +to Elinor. "He is always out of humour." +Elinor was not inclined, after a little observation, +to give him credit for being so genuinely and unaffectedly +illnatured or illbred as he wished to appear. +His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, +like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable +bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly +woman,but she knew that this kind of blunder was too +common for any sensible man to be lastingly hurt by it. +It was rather a wish of distinction, she believed, +which produced his contemptuous treatment of every body, +and his general abuse of every thing before him. +It was the desire of appearing superior to other people. +The motive was too common to be wondered at but the means, +however they might succeed by establishing his superiority +in illbreeding, were not likely to attach any one to him +except his wife. +"Oh, my dear Miss Dashwood," said Mrs. Palmer soon afterwards, +"I have got such a favour to ask of you and your sister. +Will you come and spend some time at Cleveland this +Christmas? Now, pray do,and come while the Westons are +with us. You cannot think how happy I shall be It will +be quite delightfulMy love," applying to her husband, +"don't you long to have the Miss Dashwoods come to Cleveland?" +"Certainly," he replied, with a sneer"I came +into Devonshire with no other view." +"There now,"said his lady, "you see Mr. Palmer +expects you so you cannot refuse to come." +They both eagerly and resolutely declined her invitation. +"But indeed you must and shall come. I am sure you +will like it of all things. The Westons will be with us, +and it will be quite delightful. You cannot think +what a sweet place Cleveland is and we are so gay now, +for Mr. Palmer is always going about the country canvassing +against the election and so many people came to dine +with us that I never saw before, it is quite charming But, +poor fellow it is very fatiguing to him for he is forced +to make every body like him." +Elinor could hardly keep her countenance as she +assented to the hardship of such an obligation. +"How charming it will be," said Charlotte, "when he +is in Parliamentwon't it? How I shall laugh It will +be so ridiculous to see all his letters directed to him +with an M.P.But do you know, he says, he will never frank +for me? He declares he won't. Don't you, Mr. Palmer?" +Mr. Palmer took no notice of her. +"He cannot bear writing, you know," she continued +"he says it is quite shocking." +"No," said he, "I never said any thing so irrational. +Don't palm all your abuses of languages upon me." +"There now you see how droll he is. This is always +the way with him Sometimes he won't speak to me for half +a day together, and then he comes out with something +so drollall about any thing in the world." +She surprised Elinor very much as they returned +into the drawingroom, by asking her whether she did +not like Mr. Palmer excessively. +"Certainly," said Elinor "he seems very agreeable." +"WellI am so glad you do. I thought you would, +he is so pleasant and Mr. Palmer is excessively pleased +with you and your sisters I can tell you, and you can't +think how disappointed he will be if you don't come +to Cleveland.I can't imagine why you should object +to it." +Elinor was again obliged to decline her invitation +and by changing the subject, put a stop to her entreaties. +She thought it probable that as they lived in the +same county, Mrs. Palmer might be able to give some +more particular account of Willoughby's general +character, than could be gathered from the Middletons' +partial acquaintance with him and she was eager to gain +from any one, such a confirmation of his merits as might +remove the possibility of fear from Marianne. She began +by inquiring if they saw much of Mr. Willoughby at Cleveland, +and whether they were intimately acquainted with him. +"Oh dear, yes I know him extremely well," +replied Mrs. Palmer"Not that I ever spoke +to him, indeed but I have seen him for ever in town. +Somehow or other I never happened to be staying at Barton +while he was at Allenham. Mama saw him here once before +but I was with my uncle at Weymouth. However, I dare say +we should have seen a great deal of him in Somersetshire, +if it had not happened very unluckily that we should never +have been in the country together. He is very little +at Combe, I believe but if he were ever so much there, +I do not think Mr. Palmer would visit him, for he is +in the opposition, you know, and besides it is such a +way off. I know why you inquire about him, very well +your sister is to marry him. I am monstrous glad of it, +for then I shall have her for a neighbour you know." +"Upon my word," replied Elinor, "you know much +more of the matter than I do, if you have any reason +to expect such a match." +"Don't pretend to deny it, because you know it is +what every body talks of. I assure you I heard of it +in my way through town." +"My dear Mrs. Palmer" +"Upon my honour I did.I met Colonel Brandon +Monday morning in Bondstreet, just before we left town, +and he told me of it directly." +"You surprise me very much. Colonel Brandon tell +you of it Surely you must be mistaken. To give such +intelligence to a person who could not be interested in it, +even if it were true, is not what I should expect Colonel +Brandon to do." +"But I do assure you it was so, for all that, +and I will tell you how it happened. When we met him, +he turned back and walked with us and so we began talking +of my brother and sister, and one thing and another, +and I said to him, 'So, Colonel, there is a new family +come to Barton cottage, I hear, and mama sends me word +they are very pretty, and that one of them is going to be +married to Mr. Willoughby of Combe Magna. Is it true, +pray? for of course you must know, as you have been in +Devonshire so lately.'" +"And what did the Colonel say?" +"Ohhe did not say much but he looked as if he +knew it to be true, so from that moment I set it down +as certain. It will be quite delightful, I declare +When is it to take place?" +"Mr. Brandon was very well I hope?" +"Oh yes, quite well and so full of your praises, +he did nothing but say fine things of you." +"I am flattered by his commendation. He seems +an excellent man and I think him uncommonly pleasing." +"So do I.He is such a charming man, that it +is quite a pity he should be so grave and so dull. +Mamma says HE was in love with your sister too. +I assure you it was a great compliment if he was, for he +hardly ever falls in love with any body." +"Is Mr. Willoughby much known in your part +of Somersetshire?" said Elinor. +"Oh yes, extremely well that is, I do not believe +many people are acquainted with him, because Combe Magna +is so far off but they all think him extremely agreeable +I assure you. Nobody is more liked than Mr. Willoughby +wherever he goes, and so you may tell your sister. +She is a monstrous lucky girl to get him, upon my honour +not but that he is much more lucky in getting her, +because she is so very handsome and agreeable, that nothing +can be good enough for her. However, I don't think +her hardly at all handsomer than you, I assure you +for I think you both excessively pretty, and so does +Mr. Palmer too I am sure, though we could not get him +to own it last night." +Mrs. Palmer's information respecting Willoughby +was not very material but any testimony in his favour, +however small, was pleasing to her. +"I am so glad we are got acquainted at last," +continued Charlotte."And now I hope we shall always be +great friends. You can't think how much I longed to see you +It is so delightful that you should live at the cottage +Nothing can be like it, to be sure And I am so glad +your sister is going to be well married I hope you will +be a great deal at Combe Magna. It is a sweet place, +by all accounts." +"You have been long acquainted with Colonel Brandon, +have not you?" +"Yes, a great while ever since my sister married. +He was a particular friend of Sir John's. I believe," +she added in a low voice, "he would have been very +glad to have had me, if he could. Sir John and Lady +Middleton wished it very much. But mama did not think +the match good enough for me, otherwise Sir John would +have mentioned it to the Colonel, and we should have been +married immediately." +"Did not Colonel Brandon know of Sir John's proposal +to your mother before it was made? Had he never owned +his affection to yourself?" +"Oh, no but if mama had not objected to it, +I dare say he would have liked it of all things. +He had not seen me then above twice, for it was before +I left school. However, I am much happier as I am. +Mr. Palmer is the kind of man I like." +CHAPTER +The Palmers returned to Cleveland the next day, +and the two families at Barton were again left to entertain +each other. But this did not last long Elinor had hardly +got their last visitors out of her head, had hardly done +wondering at Charlotte's being so happy without a cause, +at Mr. Palmer's acting so simply, with good abilities, +and at the strange unsuitableness which often existed between +husband and wife, before Sir John's and Mrs. Jennings's +active zeal in the cause of society, procured her some +other new acquaintance to see and observe. +In a morning's excursion to Exeter, they had met with +two young ladies, whom Mrs. Jennings had the satisfaction +of discovering to be her relations, and this was enough +for Sir John to invite them directly to the park, +as soon as their present engagements at Exeter were over. +Their engagements at Exeter instantly gave way before +such an invitation, and Lady Middleton was thrown into +no little alarm on the return of Sir John, by hearing +that she was very soon to receive a visit from two girls +whom she had never seen in her life, and of whose elegance, +whose tolerable gentility even, she could have no proof +for the assurances of her husband and mother on that subject +went for nothing at all. Their being her relations too +made it so much the worse and Mrs. Jennings's attempts +at consolation were therefore unfortunately founded, +when she advised her daughter not to care about their being +so fashionable because they were all cousins and must put +up with one another. As it was impossible, however, now to +prevent their coming, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the +idea of it, with all the philosophy of a wellbred woman, +contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle +reprimand on the subject five or six times every day. +The young ladies arrived their appearance was by +no means ungenteel or unfashionable. Their dress was +very smart, their manners very civil, they were delighted +with the house, and in raptures with the furniture, +and they happened to be so doatingly fond of children +that Lady Middleton's good opinion was engaged in their +favour before they had been an hour at the Park. +She declared them to be very agreeable girls indeed, +which for her ladyship was enthusiastic admiration. +Sir John's confidence in his own judgment rose with this +animated praise, and he set off directly for the cottage +to tell the Miss Dashwoods of the Miss Steeles' arrival, +and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls +in the world. From such commendation as this, however, +there was not much to be learned Elinor well knew +that the sweetest girls in the world were to be met +with in every part of England, under every possible +variation of form, face, temper and understanding. +Sir John wanted the whole family to walk to the Park directly +and look at his guests. Benevolent, philanthropic man It +was painful to him even to keep a third cousin to himself. +"Do come now," said he"pray comeyou must comeI +declare you shall comeYou can't think how you will +like them. Lucy is monstrous pretty, and so good humoured +and agreeable The children are all hanging about her already, +as if she was an old acquaintance. And they both long +to see you of all things, for they have heard at Exeter +that you are the most beautiful creatures in the world +and I have told them it is all very true, and a great +deal more. You will be delighted with them I am sure. +They have brought the whole coach full of playthings +for the children. How can you be so cross as not to come? +Why they are your cousins, you know, after a fashion. +YOU are my cousins, and they are my wife's, so you must +be related." +But Sir John could not prevail. He could only obtain +a promise of their calling at the Park within a day or two, +and then left them in amazement at their indifference, +to walk home and boast anew of their attractions to the +Miss Steeles, as he had been already boasting of the Miss +Steeles to them. +When their promised visit to the Park and consequent +introduction to these young ladies took place, they found +in the appearance of the eldest, who was nearly thirty, +with a very plain and not a sensible face, nothing to admire +but in the other, who was not more than two or three +and twenty, they acknowledged considerable beauty her +features were pretty, and she had a sharp quick eye, +and a smartness of air, which though it did not give +actual elegance or grace, gave distinction to her person. +Their manners were particularly civil, and Elinor soon +allowed them credit for some kind of sense, when she +saw with what constant and judicious attention they +were making themselves agreeable to Lady Middleton. +With her children they were in continual raptures, +extolling their beauty, courting their notice, and humouring +their whims and such of their time as could be spared from +the importunate demands which this politeness made on it, +was spent in admiration of whatever her ladyship was doing, +if she happened to be doing any thing, or in taking patterns +of some elegant new dress, in which her appearance +the day before had thrown them into unceasing delight. +Fortunately for those who pay their court through +such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise +for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, +is likewise the most credulous her demands are exorbitant +but she will swallow any thing and the excessive +affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards +her offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton +without the smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with +maternal complacency all the impertinent encroachments +and mischievous tricks to which her cousins submitted. +She saw their sashes untied, their hair pulled about +their ears, their workbags searched, and their knives +and scissors stolen away, and felt no doubt of its being +a reciprocal enjoyment. It suggested no other surprise +than that Elinor and Marianne should sit so composedly by, +without claiming a share in what was passing. +"John is in such spirits today" said she, on his +taking Miss Steeles's pocket handkerchief, and throwing +it out of window"He is full of monkey tricks." +And soon afterwards, on the second boy's violently +pinching one of the same lady's fingers, she fondly observed, +"How playful William is" +"And here is my sweet little Annamaria," she added, +tenderly caressing a little girl of three years old, +who had not made a noise for the last two minutes +"And she is always so gentle and quietNever was there +such a quiet little thing" +But unfortunately in bestowing these embraces, +a pin in her ladyship's head dress slightly scratching +the child's neck, produced from this pattern of gentleness +such violent screams, as could hardly be outdone by any +creature professedly noisy. The mother's consternation +was excessive but it could not surpass the alarm of the +Miss Steeles, and every thing was done by all three, +in so critical an emergency, which affection could suggest +as likely to assuage the agonies of the little sufferer. +She was seated in her mother's lap, covered with kisses, +her wound bathed with lavenderwater, by one of the +Miss Steeles, who was on her knees to attend her, +and her mouth stuffed with sugar plums by the other. +With such a reward for her tears, the child was too wise +to cease crying. She still screamed and sobbed lustily, +kicked her two brothers for offering to touch her, and all +their united soothings were ineffectual till Lady Middleton +luckily remembering that in a scene of similar distress +last week, some apricot marmalade had been successfully +applied for a bruised temple, the same remedy was eagerly +proposed for this unfortunate scratch, and a slight +intermission of screams in the young lady on hearing it, +gave them reason to hope that it would not be rejected. +She was carried out of the room therefore in her +mother's arms, in quest of this medicine, and as the +two boys chose to follow, though earnestly entreated +by their mother to stay behind, the four young ladies +were left in a quietness which the room had not known for +many hours. +"Poor little creatures" said Miss Steele, as soon +as they were gone. "It might have been a very sad accident." +"Yet I hardly know how," cried Marianne, "unless it +had been under totally different circumstances. +But this is the usual way of heightening alarm, where there +is nothing to be alarmed at in reality." +"What a sweet woman Lady Middleton is" said Lucy Steele. +Marianne was silent it was impossible for her to say +what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion +and upon Elinor therefore the whole task of telling lies +when politeness required it, always fell. She did her +best when thus called on, by speaking of Lady Middleton +with more warmth than she felt, though with far less than +Miss Lucy. +"And Sir John too," cried the elder sister, +"what a charming man he is" +Here too, Miss Dashwood's commendation, being only +simple and just, came in without any eclat. She merely +observed that he was perfectly good humoured and friendly. +"And what a charming little family they have I +never saw such fine children in my life.I declare I +quite doat upon them already, and indeed I am always +distractedly fond of children." +"I should guess so," said Elinor, with a smile, +"from what I have witnessed this morning." +"I have a notion," said Lucy, "you think the little +Middletons rather too much indulged perhaps they may be the +outside of enough but it is so natural in Lady Middleton +and for my part, I love to see children full of life +and spirits I cannot bear them if they are tame and quiet." +"I confess," replied Elinor, "that while I am at +Barton Park, I never think of tame and quiet children +with any abhorrence." +A short pause succeeded this speech, which was first +broken by Miss Steele, who seemed very much disposed +for conversation, and who now said rather abruptly, +"And how do you like Devonshire, Miss Dashwood? I suppose +you were very sorry to leave Sussex." +In some surprise at the familiarity of this question, +or at least of the manner in which it was spoken, +Elinor replied that she was. +"Norland is a prodigious beautiful place, is not it?" +added Miss Steele. +"We have heard Sir John admire it excessively," +said Lucy, who seemed to think some apology necessary +for the freedom of her sister. +"I think every one MUST admire it," replied Elinor, +"who ever saw the place though it is not to be supposed +that any one can estimate its beauties as we do." +"And had you a great many smart beaux there? I +suppose you have not so many in this part of the world +for my part, I think they are a vast addition always." +"But why should you think," said Lucy, looking ashamed +of her sister, "that there are not as many genteel young +men in Devonshire as Sussex?" +"Nay, my dear, I'm sure I don't pretend to say that there +an't. I'm sure there's a vast many smart beaux in Exeter +but you know, how could I tell what smart beaux there +might be about Norland and I was only afraid the Miss +Dashwoods might find it dull at Barton, if they had not +so many as they used to have. But perhaps you young ladies +may not care about the beaux, and had as lief be without +them as with them. For my part, I think they are vastly +agreeable, provided they dress smart and behave civil. +But I can't bear to see them dirty and nasty. Now there's +Mr. Rose at Exeter, a prodigious smart young man, +quite a beau, clerk to Mr. Simpson, you know, and yet if you +do but meet him of a morning, he is not fit to be seen. +I suppose your brother was quite a beau, Miss Dashwood, +before he married, as he was so rich?" +"Upon my word," replied Elinor, "I cannot tell you, +for I do not perfectly comprehend the meaning of the word. +But this I can say, that if he ever was a beau before +he married, he is one still for there is not the smallest +alteration in him." +"Oh dear one never thinks of married men's being +beauxthey have something else to do." +"Lord Anne," cried her sister, "you can talk of +nothing but beauxyou will make Miss Dashwood believe you +think of nothing else." And then to turn the discourse, +she began admiring the house and the furniture. +This specimen of the Miss Steeles was enough. +The vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest left +her no recommendation, and as Elinor was not blinded +by the beauty, or the shrewd look of the youngest, +to her want of real elegance and artlessness, she left +the house without any wish of knowing them better. +Not so the Miss Steeles.They came from Exeter, well +provided with admiration for the use of Sir John Middleton, +his family, and all his relations, and no niggardly +proportion was now dealt out to his fair cousins, whom they +declared to be the most beautiful, elegant, accomplished, +and agreeable girls they had ever beheld, and with whom +they were particularly anxious to be better acquainted. +And to be better acquainted therefore, Elinor soon found +was their inevitable lot, for as Sir John was entirely +on the side of the Miss Steeles, their party would be +too strong for opposition, and that kind of intimacy +must be submitted to, which consists of sitting an hour +or two together in the same room almost every day. +Sir John could do no more but he did not know that any +more was required to be together was, in his opinion, +to be intimate, and while his continual schemes for their +meeting were effectual, he had not a doubt of their being +established friends. +To do him justice, he did every thing in his power +to promote their unreserve, by making the Miss Steeles +acquainted with whatever he knew or supposed of his cousins' +situations in the most delicate particulars,and Elinor +had not seen them more than twice, before the eldest of +them wished her joy on her sister's having been so lucky +as to make a conquest of a very smart beau since she +came to Barton. +"'Twill be a fine thing to have her married so young +to be sure," said she, "and I hear he is quite a beau, +and prodigious handsome. And I hope you may have as good +luck yourself soon,but perhaps you may have a friend +in the corner already." +Elinor could not suppose that Sir John would be more +nice in proclaiming his suspicions of her regard for Edward, +than he had been with respect to Marianne indeed it was +rather his favourite joke of the two, as being somewhat +newer and more conjectural and since Edward's visit, +they had never dined together without his drinking to her +best affections with so much significancy and so many nods +and winks, as to excite general attention. The letter F +had been likewise invariably brought forward, and found +productive of such countless jokes, that its character +as the wittiest letter in the alphabet had been long +established with Elinor. +The Miss Steeles, as she expected, had now all the +benefit of these jokes, and in the eldest of them they +raised a curiosity to know the name of the gentleman +alluded to, which, though often impertinently expressed, +was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness +into the concerns of their family. But Sir John did not +sport long with the curiosity which he delighted to raise, +for he had at least as much pleasure in telling the name, +as Miss Steele had in hearing it. +"His name is Ferrars," said he, in a very audible whisper +"but pray do not tell it, for it's a great secret." +"Ferrars" repeated Miss Steele "Mr. Ferrars is +the happy man, is he? What your sisterinlaw's brother, +Miss Dashwood? a very agreeable young man to be sure +I know him very well." +"How can you say so, Anne?" cried Lucy, who generally +made an amendment to all her sister's assertions. +"Though we have seen him once or twice at my uncle's, it +is rather too much to pretend to know him very well." +Elinor heard all this with attention and surprise. +"And who was this uncle? Where did he live? How came +they acquainted?" She wished very much to have the subject +continued, though she did not chuse to join in it herself +but nothing more of it was said, and for the first time +in her life, she thought Mrs. Jennings deficient either +in curiosity after petty information, or in a disposition +to communicate it. The manner in which Miss Steele had +spoken of Edward, increased her curiosity for it struck +her as being rather illnatured, and suggested the suspicion +of that lady's knowing, or fancying herself to know something +to his disadvantage.But her curiosity was unavailing, +for no farther notice was taken of Mr. Ferrars's name by +Miss Steele when alluded to, or even openly mentioned by Sir +John. +CHAPTER +Marianne, who had never much toleration for any +thing like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, +or even difference of taste from herself, was at +this time particularly illdisposed, from the state +of her spirits, to be pleased with the Miss Steeles, +or to encourage their advances and to the invariable +coldness of her behaviour towards them, which checked every +endeavour at intimacy on their side, Elinor principally +attributed that preference of herself which soon became +evident in the manners of both, but especially of Lucy, +who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, +or of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy +and frank communication of her sentiments. +Lucy was naturally clever her remarks were often +just and amusing and as a companion for half an hour +Elinor frequently found her agreeable but her powers +had received no aid from education she was ignorant +and illiterate and her deficiency of all mental improvement, +her want of information in the most common particulars, +could not be concealed from Miss Dashwood, in spite of her +constant endeavour to appear to advantage. Elinor saw, +and pitied her for, the neglect of abilities which education +might have rendered so respectable but she saw, with less +tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy, +of rectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions, +her assiduities, her flatteries at the Park betrayed +and she could have no lasting satisfaction in the company +of a person who joined insincerity with ignorance +whose want of instruction prevented their meeting +in conversation on terms of equality, and whose conduct +toward others made every shew of attention and deference +towards herself perfectly valueless. +"You will think my question an odd one, I dare say," +said Lucy to her one day, as they were walking together +from the park to the cottage"but pray, are you +personally acquainted with your sisterinlaw's mother, +Mrs. Ferrars?" +Elinor DID think the question a very odd one, +and her countenance expressed it, as she answered that she +had never seen Mrs. Ferrars. +"Indeed" replied Lucy "I wonder at that, for I +thought you must have seen her at Norland sometimes. +Then, perhaps, you cannot tell me what sort of a woman +she is?" +"No," returned Elinor, cautious of giving her real +opinion of Edward's mother, and not very desirous +of satisfying what seemed impertinent curiosity +"I know nothing of her." +"I am sure you think me very strange, for enquiring +about her in such a way," said Lucy, eyeing Elinor attentively +as she spoke "but perhaps there may be reasonsI wish +I might venture but however I hope you will do me the justice +of believing that I do not mean to be impertinent." +Elinor made her a civil reply, and they walked on +for a few minutes in silence. It was broken by Lucy, +who renewed the subject again by saying, with some +hesitation, +"I cannot bear to have you think me impertinently curious. +I am sure I would rather do any thing in the world than be +thought so by a person whose good opinion is so well worth +having as yours. And I am sure I should not have the smallest +fear of trusting YOU indeed, I should be very glad of your +advice how to manage in such and uncomfortable situation +as I am but, however, there is no occasion to trouble YOU. +I am sorry you do not happen to know Mrs. Ferrars." +"I am sorry I do NOT," said Elinor, in great astonishment, +"if it could be of any use to YOU to know my opinion of her. +But really I never understood that you were at all connected +with that family, and therefore I am a little surprised, +I confess, at so serious an inquiry into her character." +"I dare say you are, and I am sure I do not at all +wonder at it. But if I dared tell you all, you would not be +so much surprised. Mrs. Ferrars is certainly nothing to me +at presentbut the time MAY comehow soon it will come +must depend upon herselfwhen we may be very intimately +connected." +She looked down as she said this, amiably bashful, +with only one side glance at her companion to observe its +effect on her. +"Good heavens" cried Elinor, "what do you mean? +Are you acquainted with Mr. Robert Ferrars? Can you be?" +And she did not feel much delighted with the idea of such +a sisterinlaw. +"No," replied Lucy, "not to Mr. ROBERT FerrarsI +never saw him in my life but," fixing her eyes upon Elinor, +"to his eldest brother." +What felt Elinor at that moment? Astonishment, +that would have been as painful as it was strong, had not +an immediate disbelief of the assertion attended it. +She turned towards Lucy in silent amazement, unable to divine +the reason or object of such a declaration and though +her complexion varied, she stood firm in incredulity, +and felt in no danger of an hysterical fit, or a swoon. +"You may well be surprised," continued Lucy +"for to be sure you could have had no idea of it before +for I dare say he never dropped the smallest hint of it +to you or any of your family because it was always meant +to be a great secret, and I am sure has been faithfully +kept so by me to this hour. Not a soul of all my relations +know of it but Anne, and I never should have mentioned +it to you, if I had not felt the greatest dependence +in the world upon your secrecy and I really thought my +behaviour in asking so many questions about Mrs. Ferrars +must seem so odd, that it ought to be explained. +And I do not think Mr. Ferrars can be displeased, +when he knows I have trusted you, because I know he has +the highest opinion in the world of all your family, +and looks upon yourself and the other Miss Dashwoods quite +as his own sisters."She paused. +Elinor for a few moments remained silent. +Her astonishment at what she heard was at first too +great for words but at length forcing herself to speak, +and to speak cautiously, she said, with calmness of manner, +which tolerably well concealed her surprise and solicitude +"May I ask if your engagement is of long standing?" +"We have been engaged these four years." +"Four years" +"Yes." +Elinor, though greatly shocked, still felt unable +to believe it. +"I did not know," said she, "that you were even +acquainted till the other day." +"Our acquaintance, however, is of many years date. +He was under my uncle's care, you know, a considerable while." +"Your uncle" +"Yes Mr. Pratt. Did you never hear him talk +of Mr. Pratt?" +"I think I have," replied Elinor, with an exertion +of spirits, which increased with her increase of emotion. +"He was four years with my uncle, who lives at Longstaple, +near Plymouth. It was there our acquaintance begun, +for my sister and me was often staying with my uncle, +and it was there our engagement was formed, though not till +a year after he had quitted as a pupil but he was almost +always with us afterwards. I was very unwilling to enter +into it, as you may imagine, without the knowledge and +approbation of his mother but I was too young, and loved +him too well, to be so prudent as I ought to have been. +Though you do not know him so well as me, Miss Dashwood, +you must have seen enough of him to be sensible he is +very capable of making a woman sincerely attached to him." +"Certainly," answered Elinor, without knowing what +she said but after a moment's reflection, she added, +with revived security of Edward's honour and love, +and her companion's falsehood"Engaged to Mr. Edward +FerrarsI confess myself so totally surprised at +what you tell me, that reallyI beg your pardon +but surely there must be some mistake of person or name. +We cannot mean the same Mr. Ferrars." +"We can mean no other," cried Lucy, smiling. "Mr. Edward +Ferrars, the eldest son of Mrs. Ferrars, of Park Street, +and brother of your sisterinlaw, Mrs. John Dashwood, +is the person I mean you must allow that I am not likely +to be deceived as to the name of the man on who all my happiness +depends." +"It is strange," replied Elinor, in a most painful perplexity, +"that I should never have heard him even mention your name." +"No considering our situation, it was not strange. +Our first care has been to keep the matter secret. +You knew nothing of me, or my family, and, therefore, +there could be no OCCASION for ever mentioning my name +to you and, as he was always particularly afraid of his +sister's suspecting any thing, THAT was reason enough +for his not mentioning it." +She was silent.Elinor's security sunk but her +selfcommand did not sink with it. +"Four years you have been engaged," said she +with a firm voice. +"Yes and heaven knows how much longer we may have +to wait. Poor Edward It puts him quite out of heart." +Then taking a small miniature from her pocket, she added, +"To prevent the possibility of mistake, be so good as to look +at this face. It does not do him justice, to be sure, +but yet I think you cannot be deceived as to the person +it was drew for.I have had it above these three years." +She put it into her hands as she spoke and when Elinor +saw the painting, whatever other doubts her fear of a +too hasty decision, or her wish of detecting falsehood +might suffer to linger in her mind, she could have none of +its being Edward's face. She returned it almost instantly, +acknowledging the likeness. +"I have never been able," continued Lucy, "to give +him my picture in return, which I am very much vexed at, +for he has been always so anxious to get it But I am +determined to set for it the very first opportunity." +"You are quite in the right," replied Elinor calmly. +They then proceeded a few paces in silence. Lucy spoke first. +"I am sure," said she, "I have no doubt in the world +of your faithfully keeping this secret, because you must +know of what importance it is to us, not to have it reach +his mother for she would never approve of it, I dare say. +I shall have no fortune, and I fancy she is an exceeding +proud woman." +"I certainly did not seek your confidence," said Elinor +"but you do me no more than justice in imagining that I +may be depended on. Your secret is safe with me +but pardon me if I express some surprise at so unnecessary +a communication. You must at least have felt that my +being acquainted with it could not add to its safety." +As she said this, she looked earnestly at Lucy, +hoping to discover something in her countenance perhaps the +falsehood of the greatest part of what she had been saying +but Lucy's countenance suffered no change. +"I was afraid you would think I was taking a great +liberty with you," said she, "in telling you all this. +I have not known you long to be sure, personally at least, +but I have known you and all your family by description +a great while and as soon as I saw you, I felt almost as if +you was an old acquaintance. Besides in the present case, +I really thought some explanation was due to you after my +making such particular inquiries about Edward's mother +and I am so unfortunate, that I have not a creature whose +advice I can ask. Anne is the only person that knows of it, +and she has no judgment at all indeed, she does me a great +deal more harm than good, for I am in constant fear of her +betraying me. She does not know how to hold her tongue, +as you must perceive, and I am sure I was in the greatest +fright in the world t'other day, when Edward's name was +mentioned by Sir John, lest she should out with it all. +You can't think how much I go through in my mind from +it altogether. I only wonder that I am alive after what +I have suffered for Edward's sake these last four years. +Every thing in such suspense and uncertainty and seeing +him so seldomwe can hardly meet above twice ayear. +I am sure I wonder my heart is not quite broke." +Here she took out her handkerchief but Elinor did +not feel very compassionate. +"Sometimes." continued Lucy, after wiping her eyes, +"I think whether it would not be better for us both +to break off the matter entirely." As she said this, +she looked directly at her companion. "But then +at other times I have not resolution enough for it. +I cannot bear the thoughts of making him so miserable, +as I know the very mention of such a thing would do. +And on my own account tooso dear as he is to meI don't +think I could be equal to it. What would you advise +me to do in such a case, Miss Dashwood? What would you +do yourself?" +"Pardon me," replied Elinor, startled by the question +"but I can give you no advice under such circumstances. +Your own judgment must direct you." +"To be sure," continued Lucy, after a few minutes +silence on both sides, "his mother must provide for him +sometime or other but poor Edward is so cast down by it +Did you not think him dreadful lowspirited when he was at +Barton? He was so miserable when he left us at Longstaple, +to go to you, that I was afraid you would think him quite ill." +"Did he come from your uncle's, then, when he visited us?" +"Oh, yes he had been staying a fortnight with us. +Did you think he came directly from town?" +"No," replied Elinor, most feelingly sensible of +every fresh circumstance in favour of Lucy's veracity +"I remember he told us, that he had been staying +a fortnight with some friends near Plymouth." +She remembered too, her own surprise at the time, +at his mentioning nothing farther of those friends, +at his total silence with respect even to their names. +"Did not you think him sadly out of spirits?" +repeated Lucy. +"We did, indeed, particularly so when he first arrived." +"I begged him to exert himself for fear you +should suspect what was the matter but it made him +so melancholy, not being able to stay more than a +fortnight with us, and seeing me so much affected. +Poor fellowI am afraid it is just the same with him now +for he writes in wretched spirits. I heard from him just +before I left Exeter" taking a letter from her pocket +and carelessly showing the direction to Elinor. +"You know his hand, I dare say, a charming one it is +but that is not written so well as usual.He was tired, +I dare say, for he had just filled the sheet to me as full +as possible." +Elinor saw that it WAS his hand, and she could doubt +no longer. This picture, she had allowed herself to believe, +might have been accidentally obtained it might not have +been Edward's gift but a correspondence between them +by letter, could subsist only under a positive engagement, +could be authorised by nothing else for a few moments, she +was almost overcomeher heart sunk within her, and she could +hardly stand but exertion was indispensably necessary +and she struggled so resolutely against the oppression +of her feelings, that her success was speedy, and for +the time complete. +"Writing to each other," said Lucy, returning the +letter into her pocket, "is the only comfort we have +in such long separations. Yes, I have one other comfort +in his picture, but poor Edward has not even THAT. +If he had but my picture, he says he should be easy. +I gave him a lock of my hair set in a ring when he was at +Longstaple last, and that was some comfort to him, he said, +but not equal to a picture. Perhaps you might notice +the ring when you saw him?" +"I did," said Elinor, with a composure of voice, +under which was concealed an emotion and distress beyond +any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified, +shocked, confounded. +Fortunately for her, they had now reached the cottage, +and the conversation could be continued no farther. +After sitting with them a few minutes, the Miss Steeles +returned to the Park, and Elinor was then at liberty +to think and be wretched. +[At this point in the first and second editions, Volume ends.] +CHAPTER +However small Elinor's general dependence on +Lucy's veracity might be, it was impossible for her +on serious reflection to suspect it in the present case, +where no temptation could be answerable to the folly +of inventing a falsehood of such a description. What Lucy +had asserted to be true, therefore, Elinor could not, +dared not longer doubt supported as it was too on every +side by such probabilities and proofs, and contradicted +by nothing but her own wishes. Their opportunity of +acquaintance in the house of Mr. Pratt was a foundation +for the rest, at once indisputable and alarming and Edward's +visit near Plymouth, his melancholy state of mind, +his dissatisfaction at his own prospects, his uncertain +behaviour towards herself, the intimate knowledge of the +Miss Steeles as to Norland and their family connections, +which had often surprised her, the picture, the letter, +the ring, formed altogether such a body of evidence, +as overcame every fear of condemning him unfairly, +and established as a fact, which no partiality could +set aside, his illtreatment of herself.Her resentment +of such behaviour, her indignation at having been its dupe, +for a short time made her feel only for herself +but other ideas, other considerations, soon arose. +Had Edward been intentionally deceiving her? Had he feigned +a regard for her which he did not feel? Was his engagement +to Lucy an engagement of the heart? No whatever it might +once have been, she could not believe it such at present. +His affection was all her own. She could not be deceived +in that. Her mother, sisters, Fanny, all had been +conscious of his regard for her at Norland it was not +an illusion of her own vanity. He certainly loved her. +What a softener of the heart was this persuasion How much +could it not tempt her to forgive He had been blamable, +highly blamable, in remaining at Norland after he first +felt her influence over him to be more than it ought +to be. In that, he could not be defended but if he +had injured her, how much more had he injured himself +if her case were pitiable, his was hopeless. +His imprudence had made her miserable for a while but it +seemed to have deprived himself of all chance of ever +being otherwise. She might in time regain tranquillity +but HE, what had he to look forward to? Could he +ever be tolerably happy with Lucy Steele could he, +were his affection for herself out of the question, +with his integrity, his delicacy, and wellinformed mind, +be satisfied with a wife like herilliterate, artful, +and selfish? +The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally +blind him to every thing but her beauty and good nature +but the four succeeding yearsyears, which if rationally +spent, give such improvement to the understanding, must +have opened his eyes to her defects of education, +while the same period of time, spent on her side +in inferior society and more frivolous pursuits, +had perhaps robbed her of that simplicity which might +once have given an interesting character to her beauty. +If in the supposition of his seeking to marry herself, +his difficulties from his mother had seemed great, +how much greater were they now likely to be, when +the object of his engagement was undoubtedly inferior +in connections, and probably inferior in fortune to herself. +These difficulties, indeed, with a heart so alienated +from Lucy, might not press very hard upon his patience +but melancholy was the state of the person by whom the +expectation of family opposition and unkindness, could +be felt as a relief +As these considerations occurred to her in painful +succession, she wept for him, more than for herself. +Supported by the conviction of having done nothing to +merit her present unhappiness, and consoled by the belief +that Edward had done nothing to forfeit her esteem, +she thought she could even now, under the first smart +of the heavy blow, command herself enough to guard every +suspicion of the truth from her mother and sisters. +And so well was she able to answer her own expectations, +that when she joined them at dinner only two hours +after she had first suffered the extinction of all her +dearest hopes, no one would have supposed from the +appearance of the sisters, that Elinor was mourning +in secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever +from the object of her love, and that Marianne was +internally dwelling on the perfections of a man, of whose +whole heart she felt thoroughly possessed, and whom she +expected to see in every carriage which drove near their house. +The necessity of concealing from her mother and +Marianne, what had been entrusted in confidence to herself, +though it obliged her to unceasing exertion, was no +aggravation of Elinor's distress. On the contrary +it was a relief to her, to be spared the communication +of what would give such affliction to them, and to be +saved likewise from hearing that condemnation of Edward, +which would probably flow from the excess of their partial +affection for herself, and which was more than she felt +equal to support. +From their counsel, or their conversation, she knew +she could receive no assistance, their tenderness and +sorrow must add to her distress, while her selfcommand +would neither receive encouragement from their example +nor from their praise. She was stronger alone, +and her own good sense so well supported her, that her +firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness +as invariable, as with regrets so poignant and so fresh, +it was possible for them to be. +Much as she had suffered from her first conversation +with Lucy on the subject, she soon felt an earnest wish +of renewing it and this for more reasons than one. +She wanted to hear many particulars of their engagement +repeated again, she wanted more clearly to understand +what Lucy really felt for Edward, whether there were any +sincerity in her declaration of tender regard for him, +and she particularly wanted to convince Lucy, by her +readiness to enter on the matter again, and her calmness +in conversing on it, that she was no otherwise interested +in it than as a friend, which she very much feared +her involuntary agitation, in their morning discourse, +must have left at least doubtful. That Lucy was disposed +to be jealous of her appeared very probable it was plain +that Edward had always spoken highly in her praise, +not merely from Lucy's assertion, but from her venturing +to trust her on so short a personal acquaintance, +with a secret so confessedly and evidently important. +And even Sir John's joking intelligence must have had +some weight. But indeed, while Elinor remained so well +assured within herself of being really beloved by Edward, +it required no other consideration of probabilities +to make it natural that Lucy should be jealous +and that she was so, her very confidence was a proof. +What other reason for the disclosure of the affair could +there be, but that Elinor might be informed by it of Lucy's +superior claims on Edward, and be taught to avoid him +in future? She had little difficulty in understanding thus +much of her rival's intentions, and while she was firmly +resolved to act by her as every principle of honour and +honesty directed, to combat her own affection for Edward +and to see him as little as possible she could not deny +herself the comfort of endeavouring to convince Lucy +that her heart was unwounded. And as she could now have +nothing more painful to hear on the subject than had already +been told, she did not mistrust her own ability of going +through a repetition of particulars with composure. +But it was not immediately that an opportunity +of doing so could be commanded, though Lucy was as well +disposed as herself to take advantage of any that occurred +for the weather was not often fine enough to allow +of their joining in a walk, where they might most easily +separate themselves from the others and though they +met at least every other evening either at the park +or cottage, and chiefly at the former, they could +not be supposed to meet for the sake of conversation. +Such a thought would never enter either Sir John or Lady +Middleton's head and therefore very little leisure +was ever given for a general chat, and none at all for +particular discourse. They met for the sake of eating, +drinking, and laughing together, playing at cards, +or consequences, or any other game that was sufficiently noisy. +One or two meetings of this kind had taken place, +without affording Elinor any chance of engaging Lucy +in private, when Sir John called at the cottage one morning, +to beg, in the name of charity, that they would all +dine with Lady Middleton that day, as he was obliged +to attend the club at Exeter, and she would otherwise be +quite alone, except her mother and the two Miss Steeles. +Elinor, who foresaw a fairer opening for the point she +had in view, in such a party as this was likely to be, +more at liberty among themselves under the tranquil +and wellbred direction of Lady Middleton than when +her husband united them together in one noisy purpose, +immediately accepted the invitation Margaret, with her +mother's permission, was equally compliant, and Marianne, +though always unwilling to join any of their parties, +was persuaded by her mother, who could not bear to have her +seclude herself from any chance of amusement, to go likewise. +The young ladies went, and Lady Middleton was happily +preserved from the frightful solitude which had threatened her. +The insipidity of the meeting was exactly such as Elinor +had expected it produced not one novelty of thought +or expression, and nothing could be less interesting +than the whole of their discourse both in the dining +parlour and drawing room to the latter, the children +accompanied them, and while they remained there, she was +too well convinced of the impossibility of engaging Lucy's +attention to attempt it. They quitted it only with the +removal of the teathings. The cardtable was then placed, +and Elinor began to wonder at herself for having ever +entertained a hope of finding time for conversation +at the park. They all rose up in preparation for a round game. +"I am glad," said Lady Middleton to Lucy, +"you are not going to finish poor little Annamaria's +basket this evening for I am sure it must hurt your +eyes to work filigree by candlelight. And we will make +the dear little love some amends for her disappointment +tomorrow, and then I hope she will not much mind it." +This hint was enough, Lucy recollected herself instantly +and replied, "Indeed you are very much mistaken, +Lady Middleton I am only waiting to know whether you can +make your party without me, or I should have been at my +filigree already. I would not disappoint the little angel +for all the world and if you want me at the cardtable now, +I am resolved to finish the basket after supper." +"You are very good, I hope it won't hurt your eyes +will you ring the bell for some working candles? +My poor little girl would be sadly disappointed, I know, +if the basket was not finished tomorrow, for though I +told her it certainly would not, I am sure she depends +upon having it done." +Lucy directly drew her work table near her +and reseated herself with an alacrity and cheerfulness +which seemed to infer that she could taste no greater +delight than in making a filigree basket for a spoilt child. +Lady Middleton proposed a rubber of Casino to the others. +No one made any objection but Marianne, who with her usual +inattention to the forms of general civility, exclaimed, +"Your Ladyship will have the goodness to excuse MEyou +know I detest cards. I shall go to the pianoforte +I have not touched it since it was tuned." And without +farther ceremony, she turned away and walked to the instrument. +Lady Middleton looked as if she thanked heaven +that SHE had never made so rude a speech. +"Marianne can never keep long from that instrument +you know, ma'am," said Elinor, endeavouring to smooth +away the offence "and I do not much wonder at it for it +is the very best toned pianoforte I ever heard." +The remaining five were now to draw their cards. +"Perhaps," continued Elinor, "if I should happen +to cut out, I may be of some use to Miss Lucy Steele, +in rolling her papers for her and there is so much still +to be done to the basket, that it must be impossible +I think for her labour singly, to finish it this evening. +I should like the work exceedingly, if she would allow +me a share in it." +"Indeed I shall be very much obliged to you +for your help," cried Lucy, "for I find there is more +to be done to it than I thought there was and it would +be a shocking thing to disappoint dear Annamaria after all." +"Oh that would be terrible, indeed," said Miss Steele +"Dear little soul, how I do love her" +"You are very kind," said Lady Middleton to Elinor +"and as you really like the work, perhaps you will be +as well pleased not to cut in till another rubber, +or will you take your chance now?" +Elinor joyfully profited by the first of these proposals, +and thus by a little of that address which Marianne +could never condescend to practise, gained her own end, +and pleased Lady Middleton at the same time. Lucy made room +for her with ready attention, and the two fair rivals were +thus seated side by side at the same table, and, with the +utmost harmony, engaged in forwarding the same work. +The pianoforte at which Marianne, wrapped up in her own +music and her own thoughts, had by this time forgotten +that any body was in the room besides herself, was luckily +so near them that Miss Dashwood now judged she might safely, +under the shelter of its noise, introduce the interesting +subject, without any risk of being heard at the cardtable. +CHAPTER +In a firm, though cautious tone, Elinor thus began. +"I should be undeserving of the confidence you have +honoured me with, if I felt no desire for its continuance, +or no farther curiosity on its subject. I will +not apologize therefore for bringing it forward again." +"Thank you," cried Lucy warmly, "for breaking +the ice you have set my heart at ease by it for I was +somehow or other afraid I had offended you by what I +told you that Monday." +"Offended me How could you suppose so? Believe me," +and Elinor spoke it with the truest sincerity, +"nothing could be farther from my intention than to give +you such an idea. Could you have a motive for the trust, +that was not honourable and flattering to me?" +"And yet I do assure you," replied Lucy, her little +sharp eyes full of meaning, "there seemed to me to be +a coldness and displeasure in your manner that made me +quite uncomfortable. I felt sure that you was angry with me +and have been quarrelling with myself ever since, for having +took such a liberty as to trouble you with my affairs. +But I am very glad to find it was only my own fancy, +and that you really do not blame me. If you knew what a +consolation it was to me to relieve my heart speaking to you +of what I am always thinking of every moment of my life, +your compassion would make you overlook every thing else +I am sure." +"Indeed, I can easily believe that it was a very great +relief to you, to acknowledge your situation to me, and be +assured that you shall never have reason to repent it. +Your case is a very unfortunate one you seem to me to +be surrounded with difficulties, and you will have need +of all your mutual affection to support you under them. +Mr. Ferrars, I believe, is entirely dependent on his mother." +"He has only two thousand pounds of his own it would +be madness to marry upon that, though for my own part, +I could give up every prospect of more without a sigh. +I have been always used to a very small income, and could +struggle with any poverty for him but I love him too well +to be the selfish means of robbing him, perhaps, of all that +his mother might give him if he married to please her. +We must wait, it may be for many years. With almost every +other man in the world, it would be an alarming prospect +but Edward's affection and constancy nothing can deprive me of +I know." +"That conviction must be every thing to you +and he is undoubtedly supported by the same trust in your's. +If the strength of your reciprocal attachment had failed, +as between many people, and under many circumstances +it naturally would during a four years' engagement, +your situation would have been pitiable, indeed." +Lucy here looked up but Elinor was careful +in guarding her countenance from every expression +that could give her words a suspicious tendency. +"Edward's love for me," said Lucy, "has been pretty +well put to the test, by our long, very long absence +since we were first engaged, and it has stood the trial +so well, that I should be unpardonable to doubt it now. +I can safely say that he has never gave me one moment's +alarm on that account from the first." +Elinor hardly knew whether to smile or sigh +at this assertion. +Lucy went on. "I am rather of a jealous temper too +by nature, and from our different situations in life, +from his being so much more in the world than me, and our +continual separation, I was enough inclined for suspicion, +to have found out the truth in an instant, if there had been +the slightest alteration in his behaviour to me when we met, +or any lowness of spirits that I could not account for, +or if he had talked more of one lady than another, +or seemed in any respect less happy at Longstaple than he +used to be. I do not mean to say that I am particularly +observant or quicksighted in general, but in such a case +I am sure I could not be deceived." +"All this," thought Elinor, "is very pretty +but it can impose upon neither of us." +"But what," said she after a short silence, +"are your views? or have you none but that of waiting for +Mrs. Ferrars's death, which is a melancholy and shocking +extremity?Is her son determined to submit to this, +and to all the tediousness of the many years of suspense +in which it may involve you, rather than run the risk +of her displeasure for a while by owning the truth?" +"If we could be certain that it would be only +for a while But Mrs. Ferrars is a very headstrong +proud woman, and in her first fit of anger upon hearing +it, would very likely secure every thing to Robert, +and the idea of that, for Edward's sake, frightens away +all my inclination for hasty measures." +"And for your own sake too, or you are carrying +your disinterestedness beyond reason." +Lucy looked at Elinor again, and was silent. +"Do you know Mr. Robert Ferrars?" asked Elinor. +"Not at allI never saw him but I fancy he +is very unlike his brothersilly and a great coxcomb." +"A great coxcomb" repeated Miss Steele, whose ear had +caught those words by a sudden pause in Marianne's music. +"Oh, they are talking of their favourite beaux, I dare say." +"No sister," cried Lucy, "you are mistaken there, our +favourite beaux are NOT great coxcombs." +"I can answer for it that Miss Dashwood's is not," +said Mrs. Jennings, laughing heartily "for he is one +of the modestest, prettiest behaved young men I ever saw +but as for Lucy, she is such a sly little creature, +there is no finding out who SHE likes." +"Oh," cried Miss Steele, looking significantly round +at them, "I dare say Lucy's beau is quite as modest +and pretty behaved as Miss Dashwood's." +Elinor blushed in spite of herself. Lucy bit her lip, +and looked angrily at her sister. A mutual silence took +place for some time. Lucy first put an end to it by saying +in a lower tone, though Marianne was then giving them +the powerful protection of a very magnificent concerto +"I will honestly tell you of one scheme which has +lately come into my head, for bringing matters to bear +indeed I am bound to let you into the secret, for you +are a party concerned. I dare say you have seen enough +of Edward to know that he would prefer the church to every +other profession now my plan is that he should take +orders as soon as he can, and then through your interest, +which I am sure you would be kind enough to use out of +friendship for him, and I hope out of some regard to me, +your brother might be persuaded to give him Norland living +which I understand is a very good one, and the present +incumbent not likely to live a great while. That would +be enough for us to marry upon, and we might trust to time +and chance for the rest." +"I should always be happy," replied Elinor, "to show +any mark of my esteem and friendship for Mr. Ferrars +but do you not perceive that my interest on such an +occasion would be perfectly unnecessary? He is brother +to Mrs. John DashwoodTHAT must be recommendation enough +to her husband." +"But Mrs. John Dashwood would not much approve +of Edward's going into orders." +"Then I rather suspect that my interest would +do very little." +They were again silent for many minutes. At length +Lucy exclaimed with a deep sigh, +"I believe it would be the wisest way to put an end +to the business at once by dissolving the engagement. +We seem so beset with difficulties on every side, +that though it would make us miserable for a time, +we should be happier perhaps in the end. But you will +not give me your advice, Miss Dashwood?" +"No," answered Elinor, with a smile, which concealed +very agitated feelings, "on such a subject I certainly +will not. You know very well that my opinion would have +no weight with you, unless it were on the side of your wishes." +"Indeed you wrong me," replied Lucy, with great +solemnity "I know nobody of whose judgment I think +so highly as I do of yours and I do really believe, +that if you was to say to me, 'I advise you by all means +to put an end to your engagement with Edward Ferrars, +it will be more for the happiness of both of you,' +I should resolve upon doing it immediately." +Elinor blushed for the insincerity of Edward's +future wife, and replied, "This compliment would effectually +frighten me from giving any opinion on the subject +had I formed one. It raises my influence much too high +the power of dividing two people so tenderly attached +is too much for an indifferent person." +"'Tis because you are an indifferent person," said Lucy, +with some pique, and laying a particular stress on those words, +"that your judgment might justly have such weight with me. +If you could be supposed to be biased in any respect +by your own feelings, your opinion would not be worth having." +Elinor thought it wisest to make no answer to this, +lest they might provoke each other to an unsuitable increase +of ease and unreserve and was even partly determined +never to mention the subject again. Another pause +therefore of many minutes' duration, succeeded this speech, +and Lucy was still the first to end it. +"Shall you be in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?" +said she with all her accustomary complacency. +"Certainly not." +"I am sorry for that," returned the other, +while her eyes brightened at the information, +"it would have gave me such pleasure to meet you there +But I dare say you will go for all that. To be sure, +your brother and sister will ask you to come to them." +"It will not be in my power to accept their invitation +if they do." +"How unlucky that is I had quite depended upon +meeting you there. Anne and me are to go the latter end +of January to some relations who have been wanting us to +visit them these several years But I only go for the sake +of seeing Edward. He will be there in February, otherwise +London would have no charms for me I have not spirits for it." +Elinor was soon called to the cardtable by the +conclusion of the first rubber, and the confidential +discourse of the two ladies was therefore at an end, +to which both of them submitted without any reluctance, +for nothing had been said on either side to make them +dislike each other less than they had done before +and Elinor sat down to the card table with the melancholy +persuasion that Edward was not only without affection +for the person who was to be his wife but that he had +not even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage, +which sincere affection on HER side would have given, +for selfinterest alone could induce a woman to keep a man +to an engagement, of which she seemed so thoroughly aware +that he was weary. +From this time the subject was never revived by Elinor, +and when entered on by Lucy, who seldom missed an opportunity +of introducing it, and was particularly careful to inform +her confidante, of her happiness whenever she received a letter +from Edward, it was treated by the former with calmness +and caution, and dismissed as soon as civility would allow +for she felt such conversations to be an indulgence which +Lucy did not deserve, and which were dangerous to herself. +The visit of the Miss Steeles at Barton Park was +lengthened far beyond what the first invitation implied. +Their favour increased they could not be spared +Sir John would not hear of their going and in spite +of their numerous and long arranged engagements in Exeter, +in spite of the absolute necessity of returning to fulfill +them immediately, which was in full force at the end +of every week, they were prevailed on to stay nearly two +months at the park, and to assist in the due celebration +of that festival which requires a more than ordinary +share of private balls and large dinners to proclaim +its importance. +CHAPTER +Though Mrs. Jennings was in the habit of spending a large +portion of the year at the houses of her children and friends, +she was not without a settled habitation of her own. +Since the death of her husband, who had traded with success +in a less elegant part of the town, she had resided every +winter in a house in one of the streets near Portman Square. +Towards this home, she began on the approach of January +to turn her thoughts, and thither she one day abruptly, +and very unexpectedly by them, asked the elder Misses +Dashwood to accompany her. Elinor, without observing +the varying complexion of her sister, and the animated look +which spoke no indifference to the plan, immediately gave +a grateful but absolute denial for both, in which she +believed herself to be speaking their united inclinations. +The reason alleged was their determined resolution +of not leaving their mother at that time of the year. +Mrs. Jennings received the refusal with some surprise, +and repeated her invitation immediately. +"Oh, Lord I am sure your mother can spare you +very well, and I DO beg you will favour me with +your company, for I've quite set my heart upon it. +Don't fancy that you will be any inconvenience to me, +for I shan't put myself at all out of my way for you. +It will only be sending Betty by the coach, and I +hope I can afford THAT. We three shall be able to go +very well in my chaise and when we are in town, +if you do not like to go wherever I do, well and good, +you may always go with one of my daughters. I am sure +your mother will not object to it for I have had such +good luck in getting my own children off my hands that she +will think me a very fit person to have the charge of you +and if I don't get one of you at least well married +before I have done with you, it shall not be my fault. +I shall speak a good word for you to all the young men, +you may depend upon it." +"I have a notion," said Sir John, "that Miss Marianne +would not object to such a scheme, if her elder sister +would come into it. It is very hard indeed that she +should not have a little pleasure, because Miss Dashwood +does not wish it. So I would advise you two, to set off +for town, when you are tired of Barton, without saying +a word to Miss Dashwood about it." +"Nay," cried Mrs. Jennings, "I am sure I shall be +monstrous glad of Miss Marianne's company, whether Miss +Dashwood will go or not, only the more the merrier say I, +and I thought it would be more comfortable for them to +be together because, if they got tired of me, they might talk +to one another, and laugh at my old ways behind my back. +But one or the other, if not both of them, I must have. +Lord bless me how do you think I can live poking by myself, +I who have been always used till this winter to have +Charlotte with me. Come, Miss Marianne, let us strike +hands upon the bargain, and if Miss Dashwood will change +her mind by and bye, why so much the better." +"I thank you, ma'am, sincerely thank you," said Marianne, +with warmth "your invitation has insured my gratitude for ever, +and it would give me such happiness, yes, almost the greatest +happiness I am capable of, to be able to accept it. +But my mother, my dearest, kindest mother,I feel the +justice of what Elinor has urged, and if she were to be +made less happy, less comfortable by our absenceOh no, +nothing should tempt me to leave her. It should not, +must not be a struggle." +Mrs. Jennings repeated her assurance that Mrs. Dashwood +could spare them perfectly well and Elinor, who now +understood her sister, and saw to what indifference to +almost every thing else she was carried by her eagerness +to be with Willoughby again, made no farther direct +opposition to the plan, and merely referred it to her +mother's decision, from whom however she scarcely expected +to receive any support in her endeavour to prevent a visit, +which she could not approve of for Marianne, and which +on her own account she had particular reasons to avoid. +Whatever Marianne was desirous of, her mother would be eager +to promoteshe could not expect to influence the latter +to cautiousness of conduct in an affair respecting which she +had never been able to inspire her with distrust and she +dared not explain the motive of her own disinclination +for going to London. That Marianne, fastidious as she was, +thoroughly acquainted with Mrs. Jennings' manners, +and invariably disgusted by them, should overlook every +inconvenience of that kind, should disregard whatever +must be most wounding to her irritable feelings, in her +pursuit of one object, was such a proof, so strong, +so full, of the importance of that object to her, as Elinor, +in spite of all that had passed, was not prepared to witness. +On being informed of the invitation, Mrs. Dashwood, +persuaded that such an excursion would be productive +of much amusement to both her daughters, and perceiving +through all her affectionate attention to herself, +how much the heart of Marianne was in it, would not hear +of their declining the offer upon HER account insisted on +their both accepting it directly and then began to foresee, +with her usual cheerfulness, a variety of advantages that +would accrue to them all, from this separation. +"I am delighted with the plan," she cried, +"it is exactly what I could wish. Margaret and I shall +be as much benefited by it as yourselves. When you +and the Middletons are gone, we shall go on so quietly +and happily together with our books and our music You +will find Margaret so improved when you come back again +I have a little plan of alteration for your bedrooms too, +which may now be performed without any inconvenience +to any one. It is very right that you SHOULD go to town +I would have every young woman of your condition in life +acquainted with the manners and amusements of London. +You will be under the care of a motherly good sort +of woman, of whose kindness to you I can have no doubt. +And in all probability you will see your brother, +and whatever may be his faults, or the faults of his wife, +when I consider whose son he is, I cannot bear to have you so +wholly estranged from each other." +"Though with your usual anxiety for our happiness," +said Elinor, "you have been obviating every impediment +to the present scheme which occurred to you, there is +still one objection which, in my opinion, cannot be so +easily removed." +Marianne's countenance sunk. +"And what," said Mrs. Dashwood, "is my dear prudent +Elinor going to suggest? What formidable obstacle is she +now to bring forward? Do let me hear a word about the +expense of it." +"My objection is this though I think very well of +Mrs. Jennings's heart, she is not a woman whose society +can afford us pleasure, or whose protection will give +us consequence." +"That is very true," replied her mother, "but of +her society, separately from that of other people, +you will scarcely have any thing at all, and you will +almost always appear in public with Lady Middleton." +"If Elinor is frightened away by her dislike of +Mrs. Jennings," said Marianne, "at least it need not prevent +MY accepting her invitation. I have no such scruples, +and I am sure I could put up with every unpleasantness +of that kind with very little effort." +Elinor could not help smiling at this display of +indifference towards the manners of a person, to whom she +had often had difficulty in persuading Marianne to behave +with tolerable politeness and resolved within herself, +that if her sister persisted in going, she would +go likewise, as she did not think it proper that Marianne +should be left to the sole guidance of her own judgment, +or that Mrs. Jennings should be abandoned to the mercy +of Marianne for all the comfort of her domestic hours. +To this determination she was the more easily reconciled, +by recollecting that Edward Ferrars, by Lucy's account, +was not to be in town before February and that +their visit, without any unreasonable abridgement, +might be previously finished. +"I will have you BOTH go," said Mrs. Dashwood +"these objections are nonsensical. You will have much +pleasure in being in London, and especially in being together +and if Elinor would ever condescend to anticipate enjoyment, +she would foresee it there from a variety of sources +she would, perhaps, expect some from improving her +acquaintance with her sisterinlaw's family." +Elinor had often wished for an opportunity of +attempting to weaken her mother's dependence on the +attachment of Edward and herself, that the shock might +be less when the whole truth were revealed, and now +on this attack, though almost hopeless of success, +she forced herself to begin her design by saying, +as calmly as she could, "I like Edward Ferrars very much, +and shall always be glad to see him but as to the rest +of the family, it is a matter of perfect indifference +to me, whether I am ever known to them or not." +Mrs. Dashwood smiled, and said nothing. +Marianne lifted up her eyes in astonishment, and Elinor +conjectured that she might as well have held her tongue. +After very little farther discourse, it was finally +settled that the invitation should be fully accepted. +Mrs. Jennings received the information with a great +deal of joy, and many assurances of kindness and care +nor was it a matter of pleasure merely to her. Sir John +was delighted for to a man, whose prevailing anxiety +was the dread of being alone, the acquisition of two, +to the number of inhabitants in London, was something. +Even Lady Middleton took the trouble of being delighted, +which was putting herself rather out of her way +and as for the Miss Steeles, especially Lucy, they had +never been so happy in their lives as this intelligence +made them. +Elinor submitted to the arrangement which counteracted +her wishes with less reluctance than she had expected +to feel. With regard to herself, it was now a matter +of unconcern whether she went to town or not, and when +she saw her mother so thoroughly pleased with the plan, +and her sister exhilarated by it in look, voice, and manner, +restored to all her usual animation, and elevated to more +than her usual gaiety, she could not be dissatisfied +with the cause, and would hardly allow herself to distrust +the consequence. +Marianne's joy was almost a degree beyond happiness, +so great was the perturbation of her spirits and her +impatience to be gone. Her unwillingness to quit her +mother was her only restorative to calmness and at the +moment of parting her grief on that score was excessive. +Her mother's affliction was hardly less, and Elinor +was the only one of the three, who seemed to consider +the separation as any thing short of eternal. +Their departure took place in the first week in January. +The Middletons were to follow in about a week. The Miss +Steeles kept their station at the park, and were to quit +it only with the rest of the family. +CHAPTER +Elinor could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs. Jennings, +and beginning a journey to London under her protection, +and as her guest, without wondering at her own situation, +so short had their acquaintance with that lady been, +so wholly unsuited were they in age and disposition, +and so many had been her objections against such a measure +only a few days before But these objections had all, +with that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother +equally shared, been overcome or overlooked and Elinor, +in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy, +could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation +which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes +of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, +how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, +and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of +Marianne's situation to have the same animating object +in view, the same possibility of hope. A short, a very +short time however must now decide what Willoughby's +intentions were in all probability he was already in town. +Marianne's eagerness to be gone declared her dependence +on finding him there and Elinor was resolved not only upon +gaining every new light as to his character which her +own observation or the intelligence of others could give her, +but likewise upon watching his behaviour to her sister +with such zealous attention, as to ascertain what he was +and what he meant, before many meetings had taken place. +Should the result of her observations be unfavourable, +she was determined at all events to open the eyes +of her sister should it be otherwise, her exertions +would be of a different natureshe must then learn +to avoid every selfish comparison, and banish every regret +which might lessen her satisfaction in the happiness of Marianne. +They were three days on their journey, and Marianne's +behaviour as they travelled was a happy specimen of what +future complaisance and companionableness to Mrs. Jennings +might be expected to be. She sat in silence almost all +the way, wrapt in her own meditations, and scarcely ever +voluntarily speaking, except when any object of picturesque +beauty within their view drew from her an exclamation +of delight exclusively addressed to her sister. To atone +for this conduct therefore, Elinor took immediate possession +of the post of civility which she had assigned herself, +behaved with the greatest attention to Mrs. Jennings, +talked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her +whenever she could and Mrs. Jennings on her side +treated them both with all possible kindness, was solicitous +on every occasion for their ease and enjoyment, and only +disturbed that she could not make them choose their own +dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their +preferring salmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets. +They reached town by three o'clock the third day, glad to +be released, after such a journey, from the confinement +of a carriage, and ready to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire. +The house was handsome, and handsomely fitted up, +and the young ladies were immediately put in possession +of a very comfortable apartment. It had formerly +been Charlotte's, and over the mantelpiece still hung +a landscape in coloured silks of her performance, +in proof of her having spent seven years at a great school +in town to some effect. +As dinner was not to be ready in less than two +hours from their arrival, Elinor determined to employ +the interval in writing to her mother, and sat down for +that purpose. In a few moments Marianne did the same. +"I am writing home, Marianne," said Elinor "had not you +better defer your letter for a day or two?" +"I am NOT going to write to my mother," +replied Marianne, hastily, and as if wishing to avoid +any farther inquiry. Elinor said no more it immediately +struck her that she must then be writing to Willoughby +and the conclusion which as instantly followed was, +that, however mysteriously they might wish to conduct +the affair, they must be engaged. This conviction, +though not entirely satisfactory, gave her pleasure, +and she continued her letter with greater alacrity. +Marianne's was finished in a very few minutes +in length it could be no more than a note it was then +folded up, sealed, and directed with eager rapidity. +Elinor thought she could distinguish a large W in +the direction and no sooner was it complete than Marianne, +ringing the bell, requested the footman who answered it +to get that letter conveyed for her to the twopenny post. +This decided the matter at once. +Her spirits still continued very high but there +was a flutter in them which prevented their giving much +pleasure to her sister, and this agitation increased as +the evening drew on. She could scarcely eat any dinner, +and when they afterwards returned to the drawing room, +seemed anxiously listening to the sound of every carriage. +It was a great satisfaction to Elinor that Mrs. Jennings, +by being much engaged in her own room, could see little +of what was passing. The tea things were brought in, +and already had Marianne been disappointed more than once +by a rap at a neighbouring door, when a loud one was suddenly +heard which could not be mistaken for one at any other house, +Elinor felt secure of its announcing Willoughby's approach, +and Marianne, starting up, moved towards the door. +Every thing was silent this could not be borne many seconds +she opened the door, advanced a few steps towards the stairs, +and after listening half a minute, returned into the room +in all the agitation which a conviction of having heard +him would naturally produce in the ecstasy of her +feelings at that instant she could not help exclaiming, +"Oh, Elinor, it is Willoughby, indeed it is" and seemed +almost ready to throw herself into his arms, when Colonel +Brandon appeared. +It was too great a shock to be borne with calmness, +and she immediately left the room. Elinor was disappointed too +but at the same time her regard for Colonel Brandon ensured +his welcome with her and she felt particularly hurt that +a man so partial to her sister should perceive that she +experienced nothing but grief and disappointment in seeing him. +She instantly saw that it was not unnoticed by him, +that he even observed Marianne as she quitted the room, +with such astonishment and concern, as hardly left him +the recollection of what civility demanded towards herself. +"Is your sister ill?" said he. +Elinor answered in some distress that she was, +and then talked of headaches, low spirits, and over fatigues +and of every thing to which she could decently attribute +her sister's behaviour. +He heard her with the most earnest attention, +but seeming to recollect himself, said no more on the subject, +and began directly to speak of his pleasure at seeing them +in London, making the usual inquiries about their journey, +and the friends they had left behind. +In this calm kind of way, with very little interest +on either side, they continued to talk, both of them out +of spirits, and the thoughts of both engaged elsewhere. +Elinor wished very much to ask whether Willoughby were +then in town, but she was afraid of giving him pain +by any enquiry after his rival and at length, by way +of saying something, she asked if he had been in London +ever since she had seen him last. "Yes," he replied, +with some embarrassment, "almost ever since I have been +once or twice at Delaford for a few days, but it has never +been in my power to return to Barton." +This, and the manner in which it was said, +immediately brought back to her remembrance all the +circumstances of his quitting that place, with the +uneasiness and suspicions they had caused to Mrs. Jennings, +and she was fearful that her question had implied +much more curiosity on the subject than she had ever felt. +Mrs. Jennings soon came in. "Oh Colonel," said she, +with her usual noisy cheerfulness, "I am monstrous glad +to see yousorry I could not come beforebeg your +pardon, but I have been forced to look about me a little, +and settle my matters for it is a long while since I +have been at home, and you know one has always a world +of little odd things to do after one has been away for +any time and then I have had Cartwright to settle with +Lord, I have been as busy as a bee ever since dinner +But pray, Colonel, how came you to conjure out that I should +be in town today?" +"I had the pleasure of hearing it at Mr. Palmer's, +where I have been dining." +"Oh, you did well, and how do they all do at their +house? How does Charlotte do? I warrant you she is a fine +size by this time." +"Mrs. Palmer appeared quite well, and I am commissioned +to tell you, that you will certainly see her tomorrow." +"Ay, to be sure, I thought as much. Well, Colonel, +I have brought two young ladies with me, you seethat is, +you see but one of them now, but there is another somewhere. +Your friend, Miss Marianne, toowhich you will not be +sorry to hear. I do not know what you and Mr. Willoughby +will do between you about her. Ay, it is a fine thing +to be young and handsome. Well I was young once, but I +never was very handsomeworse luck for me. However, I got +a very good husband, and I don't know what the greatest +beauty can do more. Ah poor man he has been dead +these eight years and better. But Colonel, where have +you been to since we parted? And how does your business +go on? Come, come, let's have no secrets among friends." +He replied with his accustomary mildness to all +her inquiries, but without satisfying her in any. +Elinor now began to make the tea, and Marianne was +obliged to appear again. +After her entrance, Colonel Brandon became +more thoughtful and silent than he had been before, +and Mrs. Jennings could not prevail on him to stay long. +No other visitor appeared that evening, and the ladies +were unanimous in agreeing to go early to bed. +Marianne rose the next morning with recovered spirits +and happy looks. The disappointment of the evening before +seemed forgotten in the expectation of what was to happen +that day. They had not long finished their breakfast before +Mrs. Palmer's barouche stopped at the door, and in a few +minutes she came laughing into the room so delighted +to see them all, that it was hard to say whether she +received most pleasure from meeting her mother or the Miss +Dashwoods again. So surprised at their coming to town, +though it was what she had rather expected all along +so angry at their accepting her mother's invitation +after having declined her own, though at the same time +she would never have forgiven them if they had not come +"Mr. Palmer will be so happy to see you," +said she "What do you think he said when he heard +of your coming with Mamma? I forget what it was now, +but it was something so droll" +After an hour or two spent in what her mother called +comfortable chat, or in other words, in every variety of inquiry +concerning all their acquaintance on Mrs. Jennings's side, +and in laughter without cause on Mrs. Palmer's, it was +proposed by the latter that they should all accompany +her to some shops where she had business that morning, +to which Mrs. Jennings and Elinor readily consented, +as having likewise some purchases to make themselves +and Marianne, though declining it at first was induced +to go likewise. +Wherever they went, she was evidently always on +the watch. In Bond Street especially, where much of +their business lay, her eyes were in constant inquiry +and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind was +equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, +from all that interested and occupied the others. +Restless and dissatisfied every where, her sister could +never obtain her opinion of any article of purchase, +however it might equally concern them both she received +no pleasure from anything was only impatient to be at +home again, and could with difficulty govern her vexation +at the tediousness of Mrs. Palmer, whose eye was caught +by every thing pretty, expensive, or new who was wild +to buy all, could determine on none, and dawdled away her +time in rapture and indecision. +It was late in the morning before they returned home +and no sooner had they entered the house than Marianne flew +eagerly up stairs, and when Elinor followed, she found +her turning from the table with a sorrowful countenance, +which declared that no Willoughby had been there. +"Has no letter been left here for me since we went out?" +said she to the footman who then entered with the parcels. +She was answered in the negative. "Are you quite sure +of it?" she replied. "Are you certain that no servant, +no porter has left any letter or note?" +The man replied that none had. +"How very odd" said she, in a low and disappointed +voice, as she turned away to the window. +"How odd, indeed" repeated Elinor within herself, +regarding her sister with uneasiness. "If she had not +known him to be in town she would not have written to him, +as she did she would have written to Combe Magna +and if he is in town, how odd that he should neither +come nor write Oh my dear mother, you must be wrong +in permitting an engagement between a daughter so young, +a man so little known, to be carried on in so doubtful, +so mysterious a manner I long to inquire and how will MY +interference be borne." +She determined, after some consideration, that if +appearances continued many days longer as unpleasant as they +now were, she would represent in the strongest manner +to her mother the necessity of some serious enquiry into the +affair. +Mrs. Palmer and two elderly ladies of Mrs. Jennings's +intimate acquaintance, whom she had met and invited +in the morning, dined with them. The former left them +soon after tea to fulfill her evening engagements +and Elinor was obliged to assist in making a whist table +for the others. Marianne was of no use on these occasions, +as she would never learn the game but though her time +was therefore at her own disposal, the evening was by no +means more productive of pleasure to her than to Elinor, +for it was spent in all the anxiety of expectation and the +pain of disappointment. She sometimes endeavoured for a +few minutes to read but the book was soon thrown aside, +and she returned to the more interesting employment +of walking backwards and forwards across the room, +pausing for a moment whenever she came to the window, +in hopes of distinguishing the longexpected rap. +CHAPTER +"If this open weather holds much longer," said Mrs. Jennings, +when they met at breakfast the following morning, +"Sir John will not like leaving Barton next week +'tis a sad thing for sportsmen to lose a day's pleasure. +Poor souls I always pity them when they do they seem +to take it so much to heart." +"That is true," cried Marianne, in a cheerful voice, +and walking to the window as she spoke, to examine the day. +"I had not thought of that. This weather will keep many +sportsmen in the country." +It was a lucky recollection, all her good spirits were +restored by it. "It is charming weather for THEM indeed," +she continued, as she sat down to the breakfast table +with a happy countenance. "How much they must enjoy +it But" with a little return of anxiety "it cannot +be expected to last long. At this time of the year, +and after such a series of rain, we shall certainly +have very little more of it. Frosts will soon set in, +and in all probability with severity. In another day +or two perhaps this extreme mildness can hardly last +longernay, perhaps it may freeze tonight" +"At any rate," said Elinor, wishing to prevent +Mrs. Jennings from seeing her sister's thoughts as clearly +as she did, "I dare say we shall have Sir John and Lady +Middleton in town by the end of next week." +"Ay, my dear, I'll warrant you we do. Mary always +has her own way." +"And now," silently conjectured Elinor, "she will +write to Combe by this day's post." +But if she DID, the letter was written and sent away +with a privacy which eluded all her watchfulness to ascertain +the fact. Whatever the truth of it might be, and far +as Elinor was from feeling thorough contentment about it, +yet while she saw Marianne in spirits, she could not be +very uncomfortable herself. And Marianne was in spirits +happy in the mildness of the weather, and still happier +in her expectation of a frost. +The morning was chiefly spent in leaving cards at +the houses of Mrs. Jennings's acquaintance to inform +them of her being in town and Marianne was all the time +busy in observing the direction of the wind, watching the +variations of the sky and imagining an alteration in the air. +"Don't you find it colder than it was in the morning, +Elinor? There seems to me a very decided difference. +I can hardly keep my hands warm even in my muff. It was +not so yesterday, I think. The clouds seem parting too, +the sun will be out in a moment, and we shall have a +clear afternoon." +Elinor was alternately diverted and pained +but Marianne persevered, and saw every night in the +brightness of the fire, and every morning in the appearance +of the atmosphere, the certain symptoms of approaching frost. +The Miss Dashwoods had no greater reason to be +dissatisfied with Mrs. Jennings's style of living, and set +of acquaintance, than with her behaviour to themselves, +which was invariably kind. Every thing in her household +arrangements was conducted on the most liberal plan, +and excepting a few old city friends, whom, to Lady +Middleton's regret, she had never dropped, she visited +no one to whom an introduction could at all discompose +the feelings of her young companions. Pleased to find +herself more comfortably situated in that particular than +she had expected, Elinor was very willing to compound +for the want of much real enjoyment from any of their +evening parties, which, whether at home or abroad, +formed only for cards, could have little to amuse her. +Colonel Brandon, who had a general invitation +to the house, was with them almost every day he came +to look at Marianne and talk to Elinor, who often derived +more satisfaction from conversing with him than from any +other daily occurrence, but who saw at the same time +with much concern his continued regard for her sister. +She feared it was a strengthening regard. It grieved her +to see the earnestness with which he often watched Marianne, +and his spirits were certainly worse than when at Barton. +About a week after their arrival, it became +certain that Willoughby was also arrived. His card +was on the table when they came in from the morning's drive. +"Good God" cried Marianne, "he has been here while +we were out." Elinor, rejoiced to be assured of his +being in London, now ventured to say, "Depend upon it, +he will call again tomorrow." But Marianne seemed +hardly to hear her, and on Mrs. Jenning's entrance, +escaped with the precious card. +This event, while it raised the spirits of Elinor, +restored to those of her sister all, and more than all, +their former agitation. From this moment her mind was +never quiet the expectation of seeing him every hour +of the day, made her unfit for any thing. She insisted +on being left behind, the next morning, when the others +went out. +Elinor's thoughts were full of what might be passing +in Berkeley Street during their absence but a moment's +glance at her sister when they returned was enough to +inform her, that Willoughby had paid no second visit there. +A note was just then brought in, and laid on the table, +"For me" cried Marianne, stepping hastily forward. +"No, ma'am, for my mistress." +But Marianne, not convinced, took it instantly up. +"It is indeed for Mrs. Jennings how provoking" +"You are expecting a letter, then?" said Elinor, +unable to be longer silent. +"Yes, a littlenot much." +After a short pause. "You have no confidence +in me, Marianne." +"Nay, Elinor, this reproach from YOUyou who have +confidence in no one" +"Me" returned Elinor in some confusion "indeed, +Marianne, I have nothing to tell." +"Nor I," answered Marianne with energy, "our situations +then are alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell +you, because you do not communicate, and I, because +I conceal nothing." +Elinor, distressed by this charge of reserve in herself, +which she was not at liberty to do away, knew not how, +under such circumstances, to press for greater openness +in Marianne. +Mrs. Jennings soon appeared, and the note being +given her, she read it aloud. It was from Lady Middleton, +announcing their arrival in Conduit Street the night before, +and requesting the company of her mother and cousins +the following evening. Business on Sir John's part, +and a violent cold on her own, prevented their calling +in Berkeley Street. The invitation was accepted +but when the hour of appointment drew near, necessary as +it was in common civility to Mrs. Jennings, that they +should both attend her on such a visit, Elinor had some +difficulty in persuading her sister to go, for still +she had seen nothing of Willoughby and therefore was +not more indisposed for amusement abroad, than unwilling +to run the risk of his calling again in her absence. +Elinor found, when the evening was over, +that disposition is not materially altered by a change +of abode, for although scarcely settled in town, +Sir John had contrived to collect around him, nearly twenty +young people, and to amuse them with a ball. This was +an affair, however, of which Lady Middleton did not approve. +In the country, an unpremeditated dance was very allowable +but in London, where the reputation of elegance was more +important and less easily attained, it was risking too much +for the gratification of a few girls, to have it known that +Lady Middleton had given a small dance of eight or nine couple, +with two violins, and a mere sideboard collation. +Mr. and Mrs. Palmer were of the party from the former, +whom they had not seen before since their arrival in town, +as he was careful to avoid the appearance of any attention +to his motherinlaw, and therefore never came near her, +they received no mark of recognition on their entrance. +He looked at them slightly, without seeming to know +who they were, and merely nodded to Mrs. Jennings from +the other side of the room. Marianne gave one glance +round the apartment as she entered it was enoughHE +was not thereand she sat down, equally illdisposed +to receive or communicate pleasure. After they had been +assembled about an hour, Mr. Palmer sauntered towards +the Miss Dashwoods to express his surprise on seeing them +in town, though Colonel Brandon had been first informed +of their arrival at his house, and he had himself said +something very droll on hearing that they were to come. +"I thought you were both in Devonshire," said he. +"Did you?" replied Elinor. +"When do you go back again?" +"I do not know." And thus ended their discourse. +Never had Marianne been so unwilling to dance +in her life, as she was that evening, and never so much +fatigued by the exercise. She complained of it +as they returned to Berkeley Street. +"Aye, aye," said Mrs. Jennings, "we know the reason +of all that very well if a certain person who shall +be nameless, had been there, you would not have been a +bit tired and to say the truth it was not very pretty +of him not to give you the meeting when he was invited." +"Invited" cried Marianne. +"So my daughter Middleton told me, for it seems Sir +John met him somewhere in the street this morning." +Marianne said no more, but looked exceedingly hurt. +Impatient in this situation to be doing something +that might lead to her sister's relief, Elinor resolved +to write the next morning to her mother, and hoped +by awakening her fears for the health of Marianne, +to procure those inquiries which had been so long delayed +and she was still more eagerly bent on this measure +by perceiving after breakfast on the morrow, that Marianne +was again writing to Willoughby, for she could not suppose +it to be to any other person. +About the middle of the day, Mrs. Jennings went out by +herself on business, and Elinor began her letter directly, +while Marianne, too restless for employment, too anxious +for conversation, walked from one window to the other, +or sat down by the fire in melancholy meditation. +Elinor was very earnest in her application to her mother, +relating all that had passed, her suspicions of +Willoughby's inconstancy, urging her by every plea +of duty and affection to demand from Marianne an account +of her real situation with respect to him. +Her letter was scarcely finished, when a rap +foretold a visitor, and Colonel Brandon was announced. +Marianne, who had seen him from the window, and who hated +company of any kind, left the room before he entered it. +He looked more than usually grave, and though expressing +satisfaction at finding Miss Dashwood alone, as if he +had somewhat in particular to tell her, sat for some +time without saying a word. Elinor, persuaded that he +had some communication to make in which her sister +was concerned, impatiently expected its opening. +It was not the first time of her feeling the same kind +of conviction for, more than once before, beginning with +the observation of "your sister looks unwell today," +or "your sister seems out of spirits," he had appeared +on the point, either of disclosing, or of inquiring, +something particular about her. After a pause of several +minutes, their silence was broken, by his asking her +in a voice of some agitation, when he was to congratulate +her on the acquisition of a brother? Elinor was not +prepared for such a question, and having no answer ready, +was obliged to adopt the simple and common expedient, +of asking what he meant? He tried to smile as he replied, +"your sister's engagement to Mr. Willoughby is very generally +known." +"It cannot be generally known," returned Elinor, +"for her own family do not know it." +He looked surprised and said, "I beg your pardon, +I am afraid my inquiry has been impertinent but I had not +supposed any secrecy intended, as they openly correspond, +and their marriage is universally talked of." +"How can that be? By whom can you have heard +it mentioned?" +"By manyby some of whom you know nothing, by others +with whom you are most intimate, Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Palmer, +and the Middletons. But still I might not have believed it, +for where the mind is perhaps rather unwilling to +be convinced, it will always find something to support +its doubts, if I had not, when the servant let me in today, +accidentally seen a letter in his hand, directed to +Mr. Willoughby in your sister's writing. I came to inquire, +but I was convinced before I could ask the question. +Is every thing finally settled? Is it impossible to? +But I have no right, and I could have no chance of succeeding. +Excuse me, Miss Dashwood. I believe I have been wrong +in saying so much, but I hardly know what to do, and on +your prudence I have the strongest dependence. Tell me +that it is all absolutely resolved on, that any attempt, +that in short concealment, if concealment be possible, +is all that remains." +These words, which conveyed to Elinor a direct avowal +of his love for her sister, affected her very much. +She was not immediately able to say anything, and even +when her spirits were recovered, she debated for a short +time, on the answer it would be most proper to give. +The real state of things between Willoughby and her sister +was so little known to herself, that in endeavouring +to explain it, she might be as liable to say too much +as too little. Yet as she was convinced that Marianne's +affection for Willoughby, could leave no hope of Colonel +Brandon's success, whatever the event of that affection +might be, and at the same time wished to shield her conduct +from censure, she thought it most prudent and kind, +after some consideration, to say more than she really knew +or believed. She acknowledged, therefore, that though +she had never been informed by themselves of the terms +on which they stood with each other, of their mutual +affection she had no doubt, and of their correspondence +she was not astonished to hear. +He listened to her with silent attention, and on +her ceasing to speak, rose directly from his seat, +and after saying in a voice of emotion, "to your sister +I wish all imaginable happiness to Willoughby that he +may endeavour to deserve her,"took leave, and went away. +Elinor derived no comfortable feelings from this +conversation, to lessen the uneasiness of her mind on +other points she was left, on the contrary, with a +melancholy impression of Colonel Brandon's unhappiness, +and was prevented even from wishing it removed, +by her anxiety for the very event that must confirm it. +CHAPTER +Nothing occurred during the next three or four days, +to make Elinor regret what she had done, in applying +to her mother for Willoughby neither came nor wrote. +They were engaged about the end of that time to attend +Lady Middleton to a party, from which Mrs. Jennings was +kept away by the indisposition of her youngest daughter +and for this party, Marianne, wholly dispirited, +careless of her appearance, and seeming equally indifferent +whether she went or staid, prepared, without one look +of hope or one expression of pleasure. She sat by the +drawingroom fire after tea, till the moment of Lady +Middleton's arrival, without once stirring from her seat, +or altering her attitude, lost in her own thoughts, +and insensible of her sister's presence and when at +last they were told that Lady Middleton waited for them +at the door, she started as if she had forgotten that +any one was expected. +They arrived in due time at the place of destination, +and as soon as the string of carriages before them +would allow, alighted, ascended the stairs, heard their +names announced from one landingplace to another in an +audible voice, and entered a room splendidly lit up, +quite full of company, and insufferably hot. When they had +paid their tribute of politeness by curtsying to the lady +of the house, they were permitted to mingle in the crowd, +and take their share of the heat and inconvenience, to +which their arrival must necessarily add. After some time +spent in saying little or doing less, Lady Middleton sat +down to Cassino, and as Marianne was not in spirits for +moving about, she and Elinor luckily succeeding to chairs, +placed themselves at no great distance from the table. +They had not remained in this manner long, before Elinor +perceived Willoughby, standing within a few yards +of them, in earnest conversation with a very fashionable +looking young woman. She soon caught his eye, and he +immediately bowed, but without attempting to speak to her, +or to approach Marianne, though he could not but see her +and then continued his discourse with the same lady. +Elinor turned involuntarily to Marianne, to see whether +it could be unobserved by her. At that moment she first +perceived him, and her whole countenance glowing with +sudden delight, she would have moved towards him instantly, +had not her sister caught hold of her. +"Good heavens" she exclaimed, "he is therehe +is thereOh why does he not look at me? why cannot +I speak to him?" +"Pray, pray be composed," cried Elinor, "and do +not betray what you feel to every body present. +Perhaps he has not observed you yet." +This however was more than she could believe herself +and to be composed at such a moment was not only beyond +the reach of Marianne, it was beyond her wish. She sat +in an agony of impatience which affected every feature. +At last he turned round again, and regarded them both +she started up, and pronouncing his name in a tone +of affection, held out her hand to him. He approached, +and addressing himself rather to Elinor than Marianne, +as if wishing to avoid her eye, and determined not to +observe her attitude, inquired in a hurried manner after +Mrs. Dashwood, and asked how long they had been in town. +Elinor was robbed of all presence of mind by such an address, +and was unable to say a word. But the feelings of her sister +were instantly expressed. Her face was crimsoned over, +and she exclaimed, in a voice of the greatest emotion, +"Good God Willoughby, what is the meaning of this? +Have you not received my letters? Will you not shake +hands with me?" +He could not then avoid it, but her touch seemed +painful to him, and he held her hand only for a moment. +During all this time he was evidently struggling for composure. +Elinor watched his countenance and saw its expression +becoming more tranquil. After a moment's pause, he spoke +with calmness. +"I did myself the honour of calling in Berkeley +Street last Tuesday, and very much regretted that I was +not fortunate enough to find yourselves and Mrs. Jennings +at home. My card was not lost, I hope." +"But have you not received my notes?" cried Marianne +in the wildest anxiety. "Here is some mistake I am +suresome dreadful mistake. What can be the meaning +of it? Tell me, Willoughby for heaven's sake tell me, +what is the matter?" +He made no reply his complexion changed and all his +embarrassment returned but as if, on catching the eye +of the young lady with whom he had been previously talking, +he felt the necessity of instant exertion, he recovered +himself again, and after saying, "Yes, I had the pleasure +of receiving the information of your arrival in town, +which you were so good as to send me," turned hastily away +with a slight bow and joined his friend. +Marianne, now looking dreadfully white, and unable +to stand, sunk into her chair, and Elinor, expecting every +moment to see her faint, tried to screen her from the +observation of others, while reviving her with lavender water. +"Go to him, Elinor," she cried, as soon as she +could speak, "and force him to come to me. Tell him +I must see him againmust speak to him instantly. +I cannot restI shall not have a moment's peace till this +is explainedsome dreadful misapprehension or other. +Oh go to him this moment." +"How can that be done? No, my dearest Marianne, +you must wait. This is not the place for explanations. +Wait only till tomorrow." +With difficulty however could she prevent her +from following him herself and to persuade her to check +her agitation, to wait, at least, with the appearance +of composure, till she might speak to him with more privacy +and more effect, was impossible for Marianne continued +incessantly to give way in a low voice to the misery +of her feelings, by exclamations of wretchedness. +In a short time Elinor saw Willoughby quit the room by the +door towards the staircase, and telling Marianne that he +was gone, urged the impossibility of speaking to him again +that evening, as a fresh argument for her to be calm. +She instantly begged her sister would entreat Lady +Middleton to take them home, as she was too miserable +to stay a minute longer. +Lady Middleton, though in the middle of a rubber, +on being informed that Marianne was unwell, was too +polite to object for a moment to her wish of going away, +and making over her cards to a friend, they departed +as soon the carriage could be found. Scarcely a word +was spoken during their return to Berkeley Street. +Marianne was in a silent agony, too much oppressed even +for tears but as Mrs. Jennings was luckily not come home, +they could go directly to their own room, where hartshorn +restored her a little to herself. She was soon undressed +and in bed, and as she seemed desirous of being alone, +her sister then left her, and while she waited the return +of Mrs. Jennings, had leisure enough for thinking over +the past. +That some kind of engagement had subsisted +between Willoughby and Marianne she could not doubt, +and that Willoughby was weary of it, seemed equally clear +for however Marianne might still feed her own wishes, +SHE could not attribute such behaviour to mistake +or misapprehension of any kind. Nothing but a thorough +change of sentiment could account for it. Her indignation +would have been still stronger than it was, had she +not witnessed that embarrassment which seemed to speak +a consciousness of his own misconduct, and prevented +her from believing him so unprincipled as to have been +sporting with the affections of her sister from the first, +without any design that would bear investigation. +Absence might have weakened his regard, and convenience +might have determined him to overcome it, but that such +a regard had formerly existed she could not bring herself +to doubt. +As for Marianne, on the pangs which so unhappy a meeting +must already have given her, and on those still more +severe which might await her in its probable consequence, +she could not reflect without the deepest concern. +Her own situation gained in the comparison for while she +could ESTEEM Edward as much as ever, however they might be +divided in future, her mind might be always supported. +But every circumstance that could embitter such an evil +seemed uniting to heighten the misery of Marianne +in a final separation from Willoughbyin an immediate +and irreconcilable rupture with him. +CHAPTER +Before the housemaid had lit their fire the next day, +or the sun gained any power over a cold, gloomy morning +in January, Marianne, only half dressed, was kneeling +against one of the windowseats for the sake of all +the little light she could command from it, and writing +as fast as a continual flow of tears would permit her. +In this situation, Elinor, roused from sleep by her agitation +and sobs, first perceived her and after observing her +for a few moments with silent anxiety, said, in a tone +of the most considerate gentleness, +"Marianne, may I ask?" +"No, Elinor," she replied, "ask nothing you will +soon know all." +The sort of desperate calmness with which this was said, +lasted no longer than while she spoke, and was immediately +followed by a return of the same excessive affliction. +It was some minutes before she could go on with her letter, +and the frequent bursts of grief which still obliged her, +at intervals, to withhold her pen, were proofs enough of her +feeling how more than probable it was that she was writing +for the last time to Willoughby. +Elinor paid her every quiet and unobtrusive attention +in her power and she would have tried to sooth and +tranquilize her still more, had not Marianne entreated her, +with all the eagerness of the most nervous irritability, +not to speak to her for the world. In such circumstances, +it was better for both that they should not be long together +and the restless state of Marianne's mind not only prevented +her from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, +but requiring at once solitude and continual change of place, +made her wander about the house till breakfast time, avoiding +the sight of every body. +At breakfast she neither ate, nor attempted to eat +any thing and Elinor's attention was then all employed, +not in urging her, not in pitying her, nor in appearing +to regard her, but in endeavouring to engage Mrs. Jenning's +notice entirely to herself. +As this was a favourite meal with Mrs. Jennings, +it lasted a considerable time, and they were just setting +themselves, after it, round the common working table, when a +letter was delivered to Marianne, which she eagerly caught +from the servant, and, turning of a deathlike paleness, +instantly ran out of the room. Elinor, who saw as plainly +by this, as if she had seen the direction, that it must +come from Willoughby, felt immediately such a sickness +at heart as made her hardly able to hold up her head, +and sat in such a general tremour as made her fear it +impossible to escape Mrs. Jenning's notice. That good lady, +however, saw only that Marianne had received a letter +from Willoughby, which appeared to her a very good joke, +and which she treated accordingly, by hoping, with a laugh, +that she would find it to her liking. Of Elinor's distress, +she was too busily employed in measuring lengths of worsted +for her rug, to see any thing at all and calmly continuing +her talk, as soon as Marianne disappeared, she said, +"Upon my word, I never saw a young woman so +desperately in love in my life MY girls were nothing +to her, and yet they used to be foolish enough but as +for Miss Marianne, she is quite an altered creature. +I hope, from the bottom of my heart, he won't keep her +waiting much longer, for it is quite grievous to see her +look so ill and forlorn. Pray, when are they to be married?" +Elinor, though never less disposed to speak than at +that moment, obliged herself to answer such an attack +as this, and, therefore, trying to smile, replied, "And have +you really, Ma'am, talked yourself into a persuasion +of my sister's being engaged to Mr. Willoughby? I thought +it had been only a joke, but so serious a question seems +to imply more and I must beg, therefore, that you will not +deceive yourself any longer. I do assure you that nothing +would surprise me more than to hear of their being going +to be married." +"For shame, for shame, Miss Dashwood how can you +talk so? Don't we all know that it must be a match, that +they were over head and ears in love with each other from +the first moment they met? Did not I see them together +in Devonshire every day, and all day long and did not I +know that your sister came to town with me on purpose +to buy wedding clothes? Come, come, this won't do. +Because you are so sly about it yourself, you think nobody +else has any senses but it is no such thing, I can tell you, +for it has been known all over town this ever so long. +I tell every body of it and so does Charlotte." +"Indeed, Ma'am," said Elinor, very seriously, +"you are mistaken. Indeed, you are doing a very unkind thing +in spreading the report, and you will find that you have +though you will not believe me now." +Mrs. Jennings laughed again, but Elinor had not +spirits to say more, and eager at all events to know +what Willoughby had written, hurried away to their room, +where, on opening the door, she saw Marianne stretched on +the bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand, +and two or three others laying by her. Elinor drew near, +but without saying a word and seating herself on the bed, +took her hand, kissed her affectionately several times, +and then gave way to a burst of tears, which at first +was scarcely less violent than Marianne's. The latter, +though unable to speak, seemed to feel all the tenderness +of this behaviour, and after some time thus spent in +joint affliction, she put all the letters into Elinor's hands +and then covering her face with her handkerchief, +almost screamed with agony. Elinor, who knew that such grief, +shocking as it was to witness it, must have its course, +watched by her till this excess of suffering had somewhat +spent itself, and then turning eagerly to Willoughby's letter, +read as follows +"Bond Street, January. +"MY DEAR MADAM, +"I have just had the honour of receiving your +letter, for which I beg to return my sincere +acknowledgments. I am much concerned to find there +was anything in my behaviour last night that did +not meet your approbation and though I am quite at +a loss to discover in what point I could be so +unfortunate as to offend you, I entreat your +forgiveness of what I can assure you to have been +perfectly unintentional. I shall never reflect on +my former acquaintance with your family in Devonshire +without the most grateful pleasure, and flatter +myself it will not be broken by any mistake or +misapprehension of my actions. My esteem for your +whole family is very sincere but if I have been so +unfortunate as to give rise to a belief of more than +I felt, or meant to express, I shall reproach myself +for not having been more guarded in my professions +of that esteem. That I should ever have meant more +you will allow to be impossible, when you understand +that my affections have been long engaged elsewhere, +and it will not be many weeks, I believe, before +this engagement is fulfilled. It is with great +regret that I obey your commands in returning the +letters with which I have been honoured from you, +and the lock of hair, which you so obligingly bestowed +on me. +"I am, dear Madam, +"Your most obedient +"humble servant, +"JOHN WILLOUGHBY." +With what indignation such a letter as this must +be read by Miss Dashwood, may be imagined. Though aware, +before she began it, that it must bring a confession +of his inconstancy, and confirm their separation for ever, +she was not aware that such language could be suffered +to announce it nor could she have supposed Willoughby +capable of departing so far from the appearance of every +honourable and delicate feelingso far from the common +decorum of a gentleman, as to send a letter so impudently +cruel a letter which, instead of bringing with his desire +of a release any professions of regret, acknowledged no +breach of faith, denied all peculiar affection whatever +a letter of which every line was an insult, and which +proclaimed its writer to be deep in hardened villainy. +She paused over it for some time with indignant +astonishment then read it again and again but every +perusal only served to increase her abhorrence of the man, +and so bitter were her feelings against him, that she +dared not trust herself to speak, lest she might wound +Marianne still deeper by treating their disengagement, +not as a loss to her of any possible good but as an +escape from the worst and most irremediable of all +evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled man, +as a deliverance the most real, a blessing the most important. +In her earnest meditations on the contents of the letter, +on the depravity of that mind which could dictate it, +and probably, on the very different mind of a very different +person, who had no other connection whatever with the affair +than what her heart gave him with every thing that passed, +Elinor forgot the immediate distress of her sister, +forgot that she had three letters on her lap yet unread, +and so entirely forgot how long she had been in the room, +that when on hearing a carriage drive up to the door, +she went to the window to see who could be coming so +unreasonably early, she was all astonishment to perceive +Mrs. Jennings's chariot, which she knew had not been +ordered till one. Determined not to quit Marianne, +though hopeless of contributing, at present, to her ease, +she hurried away to excuse herself from attending +Mrs. Jennings, on account of her sister being indisposed. +Mrs. Jennings, with a thoroughly goodhumoured concern +for its cause, admitted the excuse most readily, and Elinor, +after seeing her safe off, returned to Marianne, whom she +found attempting to rise from the bed, and whom she reached +just in time to prevent her from falling on the floor, +faint and giddy from a long want of proper rest and food +for it was many days since she had any appetite, and many +nights since she had really slept and now, when her +mind was no longer supported by the fever of suspense, +the consequence of all this was felt in an aching head, +a weakened stomach, and a general nervous faintness. +A glass of wine, which Elinor procured for her directly, +made her more comfortable, and she was at last able to express +some sense of her kindness, by saying, +"Poor Elinor how unhappy I make you" +"I only wish," replied her sister, "there were +any thing I COULD do, which might be of comfort to you." +This, as every thing else would have been, +was too much for Marianne, who could only exclaim, +in the anguish of her heart, "Oh Elinor, I am miserable, +indeed," before her voice was entirely lost in sobs. +Elinor could no longer witness this torrent +of unresisted grief in silence. +"Exert yourself, dear Marianne," she cried, +"if you would not kill yourself and all who love you. +Think of your mother think of her misery while YOU suffer +for her sake you must exert yourself." +"I cannot, I cannot," cried Marianne "leave me, +leave me, if I distress you leave me, hate me, forget me +but do not torture me so. Oh how easy for those, +who have no sorrow of their own to talk of exertion Happy, +happy Elinor, YOU cannot have an idea of what I suffer." +"Do you call ME happy, Marianne? Ah if you knewAnd +can you believe me to be so, while I see you so wretched" +"Forgive me, forgive me," throwing her arms round +her sister's neck "I know you feel for me I know what +a heart you have but yet you areyou must be happy +Edward loves youwhat, oh what, can do away such happiness +as that?" +"Many, many circumstances," said Elinor, solemnly. +"No, no, no," cried Marianne wildly, "he loves you, +and only you. You CAN have no grief." +"I can have no pleasure while I see you in this state." +"And you will never see me otherwise. Mine is +a misery which nothing can do away." +"You must not talk so, Marianne. Have you no +comforts? no friends? Is your loss such as leaves +no opening for consolation? Much as you suffer now, +think of what you would have suffered if the discovery +of his character had been delayed to a later period +if your engagement had been carried on for months and months, +as it might have been, before he chose to put an end to it. +Every additional day of unhappy confidence, on your side, +would have made the blow more dreadful." +"Engagement" cried Marianne, "there has been +no engagement." +"No engagement" +"No, he is not so unworthy as you believe him. +He has broken no faith with me." +"But he told you that he loved you." +"Yesnonever absolutely. It was every day implied, +but never professedly declared. Sometimes I thought it +had beenbut it never was." +"Yet you wrote to him?" +"Yescould that be wrong after all that had passed? +But I cannot talk." +Elinor said no more, and turning again to the three +letters which now raised a much stronger curiosity +than before, directly ran over the contents of all. +The first, which was what her sister had sent him +on their arrival in town, was to this effect. +Berkeley Street, January. +"How surprised you will be, Willoughby, on +receiving this and I think you will feel something +more than surprise, when you know that I am in town. +An opportunity of coming hither, though with Mrs. +Jennings, was a temptation we could not resist. +I wish you may receive this in time to come here +tonight, but I will not depend on it. At any rate +I shall expect you tomorrow. For the present, adieu. +"M.D." +Her second note, which had been written on the morning +after the dance at the Middletons', was in these words +"I cannot express my disappointment in having +missed you the day before yesterday, nor my astonishment +at not having received any answer to a note which +I sent you above a week ago. I have been expecting +to hear from you, and still more to see you, every +hour of the day. Pray call again as soon as possible, +and explain the reason of my having expected this +in vain. You had better come earlier another time, +because we are generally out by one. We were last +night at Lady Middleton's, where there was a dance. +I have been told that you were asked to be of the +party. But could it be so? You must be very much +altered indeed since we parted, if that could be +the case, and you not there. But I will not suppose +this possible, and I hope very soon to receive your +personal assurance of its being otherwise. +"M.D." +The contents of her last note to him were these +"What am I to imagine, Willoughby, by your +behaviour last night? Again I demand an explanation +of it. I was prepared to meet you with the pleasure +which our separation naturally produced, with the +familiarity which our intimacy at Barton appeared +to me to justify. I was repulsed indeed I have +passed a wretched night in endeavouring to excuse +a conduct which can scarcely be called less than +insulting but though I have not yet been able to +form any reasonable apology for your behaviour, +I am perfectly ready to hear your justification of +it. You have perhaps been misinformed, or purposely +deceived, in something concerning me, which may have +lowered me in your opinion. Tell me what it is, +explain the grounds on which you acted, and I shall +be satisfied, in being able to satisfy you. It +would grieve me indeed to be obliged to think ill +of you but if I am to do it, if I am to learn that +you are not what we have hitherto believed you, that +your regard for us all was insincere, that your +behaviour to me was intended only to deceive, let +it be told as soon as possible. My feelings are at +present in a state of dreadful indecision I wish +to acquit you, but certainty on either side will be +ease to what I now suffer. If your sentiments are +no longer what they were, you will return my notes, +and the lock of my hair which is in your possession. +"M.D." +That such letters, so full of affection and confidence, +could have been so answered, Elinor, for Willoughby's sake, +would have been unwilling to believe. But her condemnation +of him did not blind her to the impropriety of their +having been written at all and she was silently grieving +over the imprudence which had hazarded such unsolicited +proofs of tenderness, not warranted by anything preceding, +and most severely condemned by the event, when Marianne, +perceiving that she had finished the letters, observed to +her that they contained nothing but what any one would +have written in the same situation. +"I felt myself," she added, "to be as solemnly +engaged to him, as if the strictest legal covenant +had bound us to each other." +"I can believe it," said Elinor "but unfortunately +he did not feel the same." +"He DID feel the same, Elinorfor weeks and weeks he +felt it. I know he did. Whatever may have changed him now, and +nothing but the blackest art employed against me can have done +it, I was once as dear to him as my own soul could wish. +This lock of hair, which now he can so readily give up, +was begged of me with the most earnest supplication. +Had you seen his look, his manner, had you heard his voice +at that moment Have you forgot the last evening of our +being together at Barton? The morning that we parted +too When he told me that it might be many weeks before +we met againhis distresscan I ever forget his distress?" +For a moment or two she could say no more +but when this emotion had passed away, she added, +in a firmer tone, +"Elinor, I have been cruelly used but not by Willoughby." +"Dearest Marianne, who but himself? By whom can he +have been instigated?" +"By all the world, rather than by his own heart. +I could rather believe every creature of my acquaintance +leagued together to ruin me in his opinion, than believe +his nature capable of such cruelty. This woman of whom he +writeswhoever she beor any one, in short, but your own +dear self, mama, and Edward, may have been so barbarous +to bely me. Beyond you three, is there a creature +in the world whom I would not rather suspect of evil +than Willoughby, whose heart I know so well?" +Elinor would not contend, and only replied, +"Whoever may have been so detestably your enemy, let them +be cheated of their malignant triumph, my dear sister, +by seeing how nobly the consciousness of your own +innocence and good intentions supports your spirits. +It is a reasonable and laudable pride which resists +such malevolence." +"No, no," cried Marianne, "misery such as mine has +no pride. I care not who knows that I am wretched. +The triumph of seeing me so may be open to all the world. +Elinor, Elinor, they who suffer little may be proud and +independent as they likemay resist insult, or return +mortificationbut I cannot. I must feelI must be +wretchedand they are welcome to enjoy the consciousness +of it that can." +"But for my mother's sake and mine" +"I would do more than for my own. But to appear +happy when I am so miserableOh who can require it?" +Again they were both silent. Elinor was employed +in walking thoughtfully from the fire to the window, +from the window to the fire, without knowing that she +received warmth from one, or discerning objects through +the other and Marianne, seated at the foot of the bed, +with her head leaning against one of its posts, +again took up Willoughby's letter, and, after shuddering +over every sentence, exclaimed +"It is too much Oh, Willoughby, Willoughby, could this +be yours Cruel, cruelnothing can acquit you. Elinor, +nothing can. Whatever he might have heard against me +ought he not to have suspended his belief? ought he not to +have told me of it, to have given me the power of clearing +myself? 'The lock of hair, repeating it from the letter, +which you so obligingly bestowed on me'That is unpardonable. +Willoughby, where was your heart when you wrote those words? +Oh, barbarously insolentElinor, can he be justified?" +"No, Marianne, in no possible way." +"And yet this womanwho knows what her art may +have been?how long it may have been premeditated, +and how deeply contrived by herWho is she?Who can +she be?Whom did I ever hear him talk of as young and +attractive among his female acquaintance?Oh no one, +no onehe talked to me only of myself." +Another pause ensued Marianne was greatly agitated, +and it ended thus. +"Elinor, I must go home. I must go and comfort mama. +Can not we be gone tomorrow?" +"Tomorrow, Marianne" +"Yes, why should I stay here? I came only for +Willoughby's sakeand now who cares for me? Who regards me?" +"It would be impossible to go tomorrow. We owe +Mrs. Jennings much more than civility and civility of +the commonest kind must prevent such a hasty removal as that." +"Well then, another day or two, perhaps but I cannot +stay here long, I cannot stay to endure the questions +and remarks of all these people. The Middletons and +Palmershow am I to bear their pity? The pity of such +a woman as Lady Middleton Oh, what would HE say to that" +Elinor advised her to lie down again, and for a +moment she did so but no attitude could give her ease +and in restless pain of mind and body she moved from one +posture to another, till growing more and more hysterical, +her sister could with difficulty keep her on the bed at all, +and for some time was fearful of being constrained to call +for assistance. Some lavender drops, however, which she +was at length persuaded to take, were of use and from +that time till Mrs. Jennings returned, she continued +on the bed quiet and motionless. +CHAPTER +Mrs. Jennings came immediately to their room on her return, +and without waiting to have her request of admittance answered, +opened the door and walked in with a look of real concern. +"How do you do my dear?"said she in a voice of great +compassion to Marianne, who turned away her face without +attempting to answer. +"How is she, Miss Dashwood?Poor thing she looks very bad. +No wonder. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be married +very soona goodfornothing fellow I have no patience +with him. Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, +and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss +Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it +and I was almost ready to sink as it was. Well, said I, +all I can say is, that if this be true, he has used +a young lady of my acquaintance abominably ill, and I +wish with all my soul his wife may plague his heart out. +And so I shall always say, my dear, you may depend on it. +I have no notion of men's going on in this way and if ever +I meet him again, I will give him such a dressing as he +has not had this many a day. But there is one comfort, +my dear Miss Marianne he is not the only young man +in the world worth having and with your pretty face +you will never want admirers. Well, poor thing I won't +disturb her any longer, for she had better have her cry +out at once and have done with. The Parrys and Sandersons +luckily are coming tonight you know, and that will amuse her." +She then went away, walking on tiptoe out of the room, +as if she supposed her young friend's affliction could +be increased by noise. +Marianne, to the surprise of her sister, +determined on dining with them. Elinor even advised +her against it. But "no, she would go down she could +bear it very well, and the bustle about her would +be less." Elinor, pleased to have her governed for a +moment by such a motive, though believing it hardly +possible that she could sit out the dinner, said no more +and adjusting her dress for her as well as she could, +while Marianne still remained on the bed, was ready +to assist her into the dining room as soon as they were +summoned to it. +When there, though looking most wretchedly, +she ate more and was calmer than her sister had expected. +Had she tried to speak, or had she been conscious of half +Mrs. Jennings's wellmeant but illjudged attentions +to her, this calmness could not have been maintained +but not a syllable escaped her lips and the abstraction +of her thoughts preserved her in ignorance of every thing +that was passing before her. +Elinor, who did justice to Mrs. Jennings's kindness, +though its effusions were often distressing, and sometimes +almost ridiculous, made her those acknowledgments, +and returned her those civilities, which her sister could +not make or return for herself. Their good friend saw +that Marianne was unhappy, and felt that every thing +was due to her which might make her at all less so. +She treated her therefore, with all the indulgent fondness +of a parent towards a favourite child on the last day of +its holidays. Marianne was to have the best place by the fire, +was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy in the house, +and to be amused by the relation of all the news of the day. +Had not Elinor, in the sad countenance of her sister, +seen a check to all mirth, she could have been entertained +by Mrs. Jennings's endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, +by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire. +As soon, however, as the consciousness of all this was +forced by continual repetition on Marianne, she could +stay no longer. With a hasty exclamation of Misery, +and a sign to her sister not to follow her, she directly got +up and hurried out of the room. +"Poor soul" cried Mrs. Jennings, as soon as she was gone, +"how it grieves me to see her And I declare if she is +not gone away without finishing her wine And the dried +cherries too Lord nothing seems to do her any good. +I am sure if I knew of any thing she would like, I would +send all over the town for it. Well, it is the oddest +thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty girl +so ill But when there is plenty of money on one side, +and next to none on the other, Lord bless you they care +no more about such things" +"The lady thenMiss Grey I think you called her +is very rich?" +"Fifty thousand pounds, my dear. Did you ever see +her? a smart, stylish girl they say, but not handsome. +I remember her aunt very well, Biddy Henshawe she married +a very wealthy man. But the family are all rich together. +Fifty thousand pounds and by all accounts, it won't come +before it's wanted for they say he is all to pieces. +No wonder dashing about with his curricle and hunters +Well, it don't signify talking but when a young man, +be who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, +and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off +from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer +girl is ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, +sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, +and make a thorough reform at once? I warrant you, +Miss Marianne would have been ready to wait till matters +came round. But that won't do nowadays nothing in the +way of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of +this age." +"Do you know what kind of a girl Miss Grey is? +Is she said to be amiable?" +"I never heard any harm of her indeed I hardly ever +heard her mentioned except that Mrs. Taylor did say +this morning, that one day Miss Walker hinted to her, +that she believed Mr. and Mrs. Ellison would not be sorry +to have Miss Grey married, for she and Mrs. Ellison could +never agree." +"And who are the Ellisons?" +"Her guardians, my dear. But now she is of age +and may choose for herself and a pretty choice she has +madeWhat now," after pausing a moment"your poor sister +is gone to her own room, I suppose, to moan by herself. +Is there nothing one can get to comfort her? Poor dear, +it seems quite cruel to let her be alone. Well, byandby we +shall have a few friends, and that will amuse her a little. +What shall we play at? She hates whist I know but is there +no round game she cares for?" +"Dear ma'am, this kindness is quite unnecessary. +Marianne, I dare say, will not leave her room again +this evening. I shall persuade her if I can to go +early to bed, for I am sure she wants rest." +"Aye, I believe that will be best for her. Let her name +her own supper, and go to bed. Lord no wonder she has +been looking so bad and so cast down this last week or two, +for this matter I suppose has been hanging over her head as +long as that. And so the letter that came today finished it +Poor soul I am sure if I had had a notion of it, +I would not have joked her about it for all my money. +But then you know, how should I guess such a thing? I made +sure of its being nothing but a common love letter, and +you know young people like to be laughed at about them. Lord +how concerned Sir John and my daughters will be when they +hear it If I had my senses about me I might have called +in Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it. +But I shall see them tomorrow." +"It would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution +Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, +or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, +before my sister. Their own goodnature must point out +to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing +about it when she is present and the less that may ever +be said to myself on the subject, the more my feelings +will be spared, as you my dear madam will easily believe." +"Oh Lord yes, that I do indeed. It must be terrible +for you to hear it talked of and as for your sister, +I am sure I would not mention a word about it to her +for the world. You saw I did not all dinner time. +No more would Sir John, nor my daughters, for they are +all very thoughtful and considerate especially if I +give them a hint, as I certainly will. For my part, +I think the less that is said about such things, the better, +the sooner 'tis blown over and forgot. And what does +talking ever do you know?" +"In this affair it can only do harm more so +perhaps than in many cases of a similar kind, for it +has been attended by circumstances which, for the sake +of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to become +the public conversation. I must do THIS justice to +Mr. Willoughbyhe has broken no positive engagement +with my sister." +"Law, my dear Don't pretend to defend him. +No positive engagement indeed after taking her all +over Allenham House, and fixing on the very rooms they +were to live in hereafter" +Elinor, for her sister's sake, could not press the +subject farther, and she hoped it was not required of her +for Willoughby's since, though Marianne might lose much, +he could gain very little by the enforcement of the real truth. +After a short silence on both sides, Mrs. Jennings, +with all her natural hilarity, burst forth again. +"Well, my dear, 'tis a true saying about an illwind, +for it will be all the better for Colonel Brandon. +He will have her at last aye, that he will. Mind me, +now, if they an't married by Midsummer. Lord how he'll +chuckle over this news I hope he will come tonight. +It will be all to one a better match for your sister. +Two thousand a year without debt or drawbackexcept +the little lovechild, indeed aye, I had forgot her +but she may be 'prenticed out at a small cost, and then +what does it signify? Delaford is a nice place, I can +tell you exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, +full of comforts and conveniences quite shut in with great +garden walls that are covered with the best fruittrees +in the country and such a mulberry tree in one corner +Lord how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we +were there Then, there is a dovecote, some delightful +stewponds, and a very pretty canal and every thing, +in short, that one could wish for and, moreover, it is +close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile from +the turnpikeroad, so 'tis never dull, for if you only +go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, +you may see all the carriages that pass along. +Oh 'tis a nice place A butcher hard by in the village, +and the parsonagehouse within a stone's throw. +To my fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, +where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, +and have not a neighbour nearer than your mother. +Well, I shall spirit up the Colonel as soon as I can. +One shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down. +If we CAN but put Willoughby out of her head" +"Ay, if we can do THAT, Ma'am," said Elinor, +"we shall do very well with or without Colonel Brandon." +And then rising, she went away to join Marianne, +whom she found, as she expected, in her own room, leaning, +in silent misery, over the small remains of a fire, +which, till Elinor's entrance, had been her only light. +"You had better leave me," was all the notice +that her sister received from her. +"I will leave you," said Elinor, "if you will go +to bed." But this, from the momentary perverseness +of impatient suffering, she at first refused to do. +Her sister's earnest, though gentle persuasion, however, +soon softened her to compliance, and Elinor saw her +lay her aching head on the pillow, and as she hoped, +in a way to get some quiet rest before she left her. +In the drawingroom, whither she then repaired, +she was soon joined by Mrs. Jennings, with a wineglass, +full of something, in her hand. +"My dear," said she, entering, "I have just recollected +that I have some of the finest old Constantia wine in the +house that ever was tasted, so I have brought a glass of it +for your sister. My poor husband how fond he was of it +Whenever he had a touch of his old colicky gout, he said +it did him more good than any thing else in the world. +Do take it to your sister." +"Dear Ma'am," replied Elinor, smiling at the difference +of the complaints for which it was recommended, "how good +you are But I have just left Marianne in bed, and, I hope, +almost asleep and as I think nothing will be of so much +service to her as rest, if you will give me leave, +I will drink the wine myself." +Mrs. Jennings, though regretting that she had not been +five minutes earlier, was satisfied with the compromise +and Elinor, as she swallowed the chief of it, reflected, +that though its effects on a colicky gout were, at present, +of little importance to her, its healing powers, +on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried +on herself as on her sister. +Colonel Brandon came in while the party were at tea, +and by his manner of looking round the room for Marianne, +Elinor immediately fancied that he neither expected +nor wished to see her there, and, in short, that he +was already aware of what occasioned her absence. +Mrs. Jennings was not struck by the same thought +for soon after his entrance, she walked across the room +to the teatable where Elinor presided, and whispered +"The Colonel looks as grave as ever you see. He knows +nothing of it do tell him, my dear." +He shortly afterwards drew a chair close to her's, +and, with a look which perfectly assured her of his +good information, inquired after her sister. +"Marianne is not well," said she. "She has been +indisposed all day, and we have persuaded her to go to bed." +"Perhaps, then," he hesitatingly replied, "what I +heard this morning may bethere may be more truth in it +than I could believe possible at first." +"What did you hear?" +"That a gentleman, whom I had reason to thinkin short, +that a man, whom I KNEW to be engagedbut how shall I +tell you? If you know it already, as surely you must, +I may be spared." +"You mean," answered Elinor, with forced calmness, +"Mr. Willoughby's marriage with Miss Grey. Yes, we DO +know it all. This seems to have been a day of general +elucidation, for this very morning first unfolded it to us. +Mr. Willoughby is unfathomable Where did you hear it?" +"In a stationer's shop in Pall Mall, where I +had business. Two ladies were waiting for their carriage, +and one of them was giving the other an account of the +intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, +that it was impossible for me not to hear all. The name +of Willoughby, John Willoughby, frequently repeated, +first caught my attention and what followed was a positive +assertion that every thing was now finally settled +respecting his marriage with Miss Greyit was no longer +to be a secretit would take place even within a few weeks, +with many particulars of preparations and other matters. +One thing, especially, I remember, because it served +to identify the man still moreas soon as the ceremony +was over, they were to go to Combe Magna, his seat +in Somersetshire. My astonishmentbut it would be +impossible to describe what I felt. The communicative +lady I learnt, on inquiry, for I stayed in the shop +till they were gone, was a Mrs. Ellison, and that, as I +have been since informed, is the name of Miss Grey's guardian." +"It is. But have you likewise heard that Miss Grey +has fifty thousand pounds? In that, if in any thing, +we may find an explanation." +"It may be so but Willoughby is capableat least +I think"he stopped a moment then added in a voice +which seemed to distrust itself, "And your sister +how did she" +"Her sufferings have been very severe. I have +only to hope that they may be proportionately short. +It has been, it is a most cruel affliction. Till yesterday, +I believe, she never doubted his regard and even now, +perhapsbut I am almost convinced that he never was +really attached to her. He has been very deceitful and, +in some points, there seems a hardness of heart about him." +"Ah" said Colonel Brandon, "there is, indeed But +your sister does notI think you said soshe does +not consider quite as you do?" +"You know her disposition, and may believe how eagerly +she would still justify him if she could." +He made no answer and soon afterwards, by the removal +of the teathings, and the arrangement of the card parties, +the subject was necessarily dropped. Mrs. Jennings, who had +watched them with pleasure while they were talking, and who +expected to see the effect of Miss Dashwood's communication, +in such an instantaneous gaiety on Colonel Brandon's side, +as might have become a man in the bloom of youth, of hope +and happiness, saw him, with amazement, remain the whole +evening more serious and thoughtful than usual. +CHAPTER +From a night of more sleep than she had expected, +Marianne awoke the next morning to the same consciousness +of misery in which she had closed her eyes. +Elinor encouraged her as much as possible to talk +of what she felt and before breakfast was ready, they had +gone through the subject again and again and with the same +steady conviction and affectionate counsel on Elinor's side, +the same impetuous feelings and varying opinions on +Marianne's, as before. Sometimes she could believe +Willoughby to be as unfortunate and as innocent as herself, +and at others, lost every consolation in the impossibility +of acquitting him. At one moment she was absolutely +indifferent to the observation of all the world, at another +she would seclude herself from it for ever, and at a third +could resist it with energy. In one thing, however, +she was uniform, when it came to the point, in avoiding, +where it was possible, the presence of Mrs. Jennings, +and in a determined silence when obliged to endure it. +Her heart was hardened against the belief of Mrs. Jennings's +entering into her sorrows with any compassion. +"No, no, no, it cannot be," she cried +"she cannot feel. Her kindness is not sympathy +her goodnature is not tenderness. All that she wants +is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it." +Elinor had not needed this to be assured of the injustice +to which her sister was often led in her opinion of others, +by the irritable refinement of her own mind, and the too +great importance placed by her on the delicacies of a +strong sensibility, and the graces of a polished manner. +Like half the rest of the world, if more than half there +be that are clever and good, Marianne, with excellent +abilities and an excellent disposition, was neither +reasonable nor candid. She expected from other people +the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged +of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions +on herself. Thus a circumstance occurred, while the +sisters were together in their own room after breakfast, +which sunk the heart of Mrs. Jennings still lower +in her estimation because, through her own weakness, +it chanced to prove a source of fresh pain to herself, +though Mrs. Jennings was governed in it by an impulse +of the utmost goodwill. +With a letter in her outstretched hand, and countenance +gaily smiling, from the persuasion of bringing comfort, +she entered their room, saying, +"Now, my dear, I bring you something that I am sure +will do you good." +Marianne heard enough. In one moment her imagination +placed before her a letter from Willoughby, full of tenderness +and contrition, explanatory of all that had passed, satisfactory, +convincing and instantly followed by Willoughby himself, +rushing eagerly into the room to inforce, at her feet, +by the eloquence of his eyes, the assurances of his letter. +The work of one moment was destroyed by the next. +The hand writing of her mother, never till then unwelcome, +was before her and, in the acuteness of the disappointment +which followed such an ecstasy of more than hope, +she felt as if, till that instant, she had never suffered. +The cruelty of Mrs. Jennings no language, within +her reach in her moments of happiest eloquence, +could have expressed and now she could reproach her +only by the tears which streamed from her eyes with +passionate violencea reproach, however, so entirely +lost on its object, that after many expressions of pity, +she withdrew, still referring her to the letter of comfort. +But the letter, when she was calm enough to read it, +brought little comfort. Willoughby filled every page. +Her mother, still confident of their engagement, and relying +as warmly as ever on his constancy, had only been roused +by Elinor's application, to intreat from Marianne greater +openness towards them both and this, with such tenderness +towards her, such affection for Willoughby, and such +a conviction of their future happiness in each other, +that she wept with agony through the whole of it. +All her impatience to be at home again now returned +her mother was dearer to her than ever dearer through +the very excess of her mistaken confidence in Willoughby, +and she was wildly urgent to be gone. Elinor, unable herself +to determine whether it were better for Marianne to be +in London or at Barton, offered no counsel of her own +except of patience till their mother's wishes could be known +and at length she obtained her sister's consent to wait +for that knowledge. +Mrs. Jennings left them earlier than usual for she +could not be easy till the Middletons and Palmers were able +to grieve as much as herself and positively refusing +Elinor's offered attendance, went out alone for the rest +of the morning. Elinor, with a very heavy heart, aware of +the pain she was going to communicate, and perceiving, +by Marianne's letter, how ill she had succeeded in laying +any foundation for it, then sat down to write her mother +an account of what had passed, and entreat her directions +for the future while Marianne, who came into the drawingroom +on Mrs. Jennings's going away, remained fixed at the table +where Elinor wrote, watching the advancement of her pen, +grieving over her for the hardship of such a task, +and grieving still more fondly over its effect on her mother. +In this manner they had continued about a quarter +of an hour, when Marianne, whose nerves could not then +bear any sudden noise, was startled by a rap at the door. +"Who can this be?" cried Elinor. "So early too I +thought we HAD been safe." +Marianne moved to the window +"It is Colonel Brandon" said she, with vexation. +"We are never safe from HIM." +"He will not come in, as Mrs. Jennings is from home." +"I will not trust to THAT," retreating to her own room. +"A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no +conscience in his intrusion on that of others." +The event proved her conjecture right, though it +was founded on injustice and error for Colonel Brandon +DID come in and Elinor, who was convinced that +solicitude for Marianne brought him thither, and who saw +THAT solicitude in his disturbed and melancholy look, +and in his anxious though brief inquiry after her, +could not forgive her sister for esteeming him so lightly. +"I met Mrs. Jennings in Bond Street," said he, +after the first salutation, "and she encouraged me +to come on and I was the more easily encouraged, +because I thought it probable that I might find you alone, +which I was very desirous of doing. My objectmy +wishmy sole wish in desiring itI hope, I believe +it isis to be a means of giving comfortno, I must +not say comfortnot present comfortbut conviction, +lasting conviction to your sister's mind. My regard for her, +for yourself, for your motherwill you allow me to prove it, +by relating some circumstances which nothing but a VERY +sincere regardnothing but an earnest desire of being +usefulI think I am justifiedthough where so many hours +have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, +is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?" +He stopped. +"I understand you," said Elinor. "You have something +to tell me of Mr. Willoughby, that will open his character +farther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship +that can be shewn Marianne. MY gratitude will be insured +immediately by any information tending to that end, and HERS +must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it." +"You shall and, to be brief, when I quitted Barton +last October,but this will give you no ideaI must go +farther back. You will find me a very awkward narrator, +Miss Dashwood I hardly know where to begin. A short +account of myself, I believe, will be necessary, and it +SHALL be a short one. On such a subject," sighing heavily, +"can I have little temptation to be diffuse." +He stopt a moment for recollection, and then, +with another sigh, went on. +"You have probably entirely forgotten a conversation +it is not to be supposed that it could make any impression +on youa conversation between us one evening at Barton +Parkit was the evening of a dancein which I alluded +to a lady I had once known, as resembling, in some measure, +your sister Marianne." +"Indeed," answered Elinor, "I have NOT forgotten it." +He looked pleased by this remembrance, and added, +"If I am not deceived by the uncertainty, the partiality +of tender recollection, there is a very strong resemblance +between them, as well in mind as person. The same warmth +of heart, the same eagerness of fancy and spirits. +This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from +her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father. +Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years +we were playfellows and friends. I cannot remember the +time when I did not love Eliza and my affection for her, +as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from my +present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me +incapable of having ever felt. Her's, for me, was, I believe, +fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby +and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate. +At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was +marriedmarried against her inclination to my brother. +Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. +And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the +conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian. +My brother did not deserve her he did not even love her. +I had hoped that her regard for me would support her +under any difficulty, and for some time it did but at +last the misery of her situation, for she experienced +great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though +she had promised me that nothingbut how blindly I +relate I have never told you how this was brought on. +We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. +The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin's maid betrayed us. +I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, +and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, +till my father's point was gained. I had depended on her +fortitude too far, and the blow was a severe one +but had her marriage been happy, so young as I then was, +a few months must have reconciled me to it, or at least +I should not have now to lament it. This however +was not the case. My brother had no regard for her +his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, +and from the first he treated her unkindly. The consequence +of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced +as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned +herself at first to all the misery of her situation +and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those +regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned. But can we +wonder that, with such a husband to provoke inconstancy, +and without a friend to advise or restrain her for +my father lived only a few months after their marriage, +and I was with my regiment in the East Indies she +should fall? Had I remained in England, perhapsbut I +meant to promote the happiness of both by removing +from her for years, and for that purpose had procured +my exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me," +he continued, in a voice of great agitation, "was of +trifling weightwas nothing to what I felt when I heard, +about two years afterwards, of her divorce. It was +THAT which threw this gloom,even now the recollection +of what I suffered" +He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few +minutes about the room. Elinor, affected by his relation, +and still more by his distress, could not speak. He saw +her concern, and coming to her, took her hand, pressed it, +and kissed it with grateful respect. A few minutes more +of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure. +"It was nearly three years after this unhappy +period before I returned to England. My first care, +when I DID arrive, was of course to seek for her +but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy. +I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there +was every reason to fear that she had removed from him +only to sink deeper in a life of sin. Her legal allowance +was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her +comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that +the power of receiving it had been made over some months +before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he +imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, +had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief. +At last, however, and after I had been six months in England, +I DID find her. Regard for a former servant of my own, +who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to visit +him in a spunginghouse, where he was confined for debt +and there, the same house, under a similar confinement, +was my unfortunate sister. So alteredso fadedworn +down by acute suffering of every kind hardly could I +believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, +to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, +on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding +herbut I have no right to wound your feelings by attempting +to describe itI have pained you too much already. +That she was, to all appearance, in the last stage +of a consumption, wasyes, in such a situation it was +my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, +beyond giving time for a better preparation for death +and that was given. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, +and under proper attendants I visited her every day +during the rest of her short life I was with her in her +last moments." +Again he stopped to recover himself and Elinor +spoke her feelings in an exclamation of tender concern, +at the fate of his unfortunate friend. +"Your sister, I hope, cannot be offended," said he, +"by the resemblance I have fancied between her and my +poor disgraced relation. Their fates, their fortunes, +cannot be the same and had the natural sweet +disposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind, +or a happier marriage, she might have been all that you +will live to see the other be. But to what does all this +lead? I seem to have been distressing you for nothing. +Ah Miss Dashwooda subject such as thisuntouched +for fourteen yearsit is dangerous to handle it at all +I WILL be more collectedmore concise. She left to my care +her only child, a little girl, the offspring of her first +guilty connection, who was then about three years old. +She loved the child, and had always kept it with her. +It was a valued, a precious trust to me and gladly +would I have discharged it in the strictest sense, +by watching over her education myself, had the nature +of our situations allowed it but I had no family, no home +and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. +I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my +brother, which happened about five years ago, and which +left to me the possession of the family property, she +visited me at Delaford. I called her a distant relation +but I am well aware that I have in general been suspected +of a much nearer connection with her. It is now three +years ago she had just reached her fourteenth year, +that I removed her from school, to place her under the care +of a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire, +who had the charge of four or five other girls of about +the same time of life and for two years I had every reason +to be pleased with her situation. But last February, +almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. +I had allowed her, imprudently, as it has since turned +out, at her earnest desire, to go to Bath with one of +her young friends, who was attending her father there +for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man, +and I thought well of his daughterbetter than she deserved, +for, with a most obstinate and illjudged secrecy, +she would tell nothing, would give no clue, though she +certainly knew all. He, her father, a wellmeaning, +but not a quicksighted man, could really, I believe, +give no information for he had been generally confined +to the house, while the girls were ranging over the town +and making what acquaintance they chose and he tried +to convince me, as thoroughly as he was convinced himself, +of his daughter's being entirely unconcerned in the business. +In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone +all the rest, for eight long months, was left to conjecture. +What I thought, what I feared, may be imagined and what I +suffered too." +"Good heavens" cried Elinor, "could it becould +Willoughby" +"The first news that reached me of her," he continued, +"came in a letter from herself, last October. +It was forwarded to me from Delaford, and I received it +on the very morning of our intended party to Whitwell +and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly, +which I am sure must at the time have appeared strange +to every body, and which I believe gave offence to some. +Little did Mr. Willoughby imagine, I suppose, when his +looks censured me for incivility in breaking up the party, +that I was called away to the relief of one whom he +had made poor and miserable but HAD he known it, +what would it have availed? Would he have been less +gay or less happy in the smiles of your sister? No, +he had already done that, which no man who CAN feel +for another would do. He had left the girl whose +youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of +the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, +no friends, ignorant of his address He had left her, +promising to return he neither returned, nor wrote, +nor relieved her." +"This is beyond every thing" exclaimed Elinor. +"His character is now before you expensive, dissipated, +and worse than both. Knowing all this, as I have now +known it many weeks, guess what I must have felt on seeing +your sister as fond of him as ever, and on being assured +that she was to marry him guess what I must have felt +for all your sakes. When I came to you last week and +found you alone, I came determined to know the truth +though irresolute what to do when it WAS known. +My behaviour must have seemed strange to you then +but now you will comprehend it. To suffer you all to be +so deceived to see your sisterbut what could I do? +I had no hope of interfering with success and sometimes +I thought your sister's influence might yet reclaim him. +But now, after such dishonorable usage, who can tell what +were his designs on her. Whatever they may have been, +however, she may now, and hereafter doubtless WILL +turn with gratitude towards her own condition, when she +compares it with that of my poor Eliza, when she considers +the wretched and hopeless situation of this poor girl, +and pictures her to herself, with an affection for him so strong, +still as strong as her own, and with a mind tormented +by selfreproach, which must attend her through life. +Surely this comparison must have its use with her. +She will feel her own sufferings to be nothing. They +proceed from no misconduct, and can bring no disgrace. +On the contrary, every friend must be made still more +her friend by them. Concern for her unhappiness, +and respect for her fortitude under it, must strengthen +every attachment. Use your own discretion, however, +in communicating to her what I have told you. You must +know best what will be its effect but had I not seriously, +and from my heart believed it might be of service, +might lessen her regrets, I would not have suffered +myself to trouble you with this account of my family +afflictions, with a recital which may seem to have been +intended to raise myself at the expense of others." +Elinor's thanks followed this speech with grateful +earnestness attended too with the assurance of her +expecting material advantage to Marianne, from the +communication of what had passed. +"I have been more pained," said she, "by her +endeavors to acquit him than by all the rest for it +irritates her mind more than the most perfect conviction +of his unworthiness can do. Now, though at first she +will suffer much, I am sure she will soon become easier. +Have you," she continued, after a short silence, +"ever seen Mr. Willoughby since you left him at Barton?" +"Yes," he replied gravely, "once I have. One meeting +was unavoidable." +Elinor, startled by his manner, looked at him anxiously, +saying, +"What? have you met him to" +"I could meet him no other way. Eliza had confessed +to me, though most reluctantly, the name of her lover +and when he returned to town, which was within a fortnight +after myself, we met by appointment, he to defend, +I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded, +and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad." +Elinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this +but to a man and a soldier she presumed not to censure it. +"Such," said Colonel Brandon, after a pause, +"has been the unhappy resemblance between the fate of mother +and daughter and so imperfectly have I discharged my trust" +"Is she still in town?" +"No as soon as she recovered from her lyingin, +for I found her near her delivery, I removed her and her +child into the country, and there she remains." +Recollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably +dividing Elinor from her sister, he put an end to his visit, +receiving from her again the same grateful acknowledgments, +and leaving her full of compassion and esteem for him. +CHAPTER +When the particulars of this conversation were repeated +by Miss Dashwood to her sister, as they very soon were, +the effect on her was not entirely such as the former +had hoped to see. Not that Marianne appeared to distrust +the truth of any part of it, for she listened to it all +with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither +objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby, +and seemed to shew by her tears that she felt it to +be impossible. But though this behaviour assured Elinor +that the conviction of this guilt WAS carried home to +her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the effect of it, +in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he called, +in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, +with a kind of compassionate respect, and though she +saw her spirits less violently irritated than before, +she did not see her less wretched. Her mind did become +settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection. +She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily +than she had felt the loss of his heart his seduction and +desertion of Miss Williams, the misery of that poor girl, +and the doubt of what his designs might ONCE have been +on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits, +that she could not bring herself to speak of what she felt +even to Elinor and, brooding over her sorrows in silence, +gave more pain to her sister than could have been communicated +by the most open and most frequent confession of them. +To give the feelings or the language of Mrs. Dashwood +on receiving and answering Elinor's letter would be only +to give a repetition of what her daughters had already felt +and said of a disappointment hardly less painful than +Marianne's, and an indignation even greater than Elinor's. +Long letters from her, quickly succeeding each other, +arrived to tell all that she suffered and thought +to express her anxious solicitude for Marianne, and entreat +she would bear up with fortitude under this misfortune. +Bad indeed must the nature of Marianne's affliction be, +when her mother could talk of fortitude mortifying +and humiliating must be the origin of those regrets, +which SHE could wish her not to indulge +Against the interest of her own individual comfort, +Mrs. Dashwood had determined that it would be better for +Marianne to be any where, at that time, than at Barton, +where every thing within her view would be bringing back +the past in the strongest and most afflicting manner, +by constantly placing Willoughby before her, such as +she had always seen him there. She recommended it to +her daughters, therefore, by all means not to shorten their +visit to Mrs. Jennings the length of which, though never +exactly fixed, had been expected by all to comprise at least +five or six weeks. A variety of occupations, of objects, +and of company, which could not be procured at Barton, +would be inevitable there, and might yet, she hoped, +cheat Marianne, at times, into some interest beyond herself, +and even into some amusement, much as the ideas of both +might now be spurned by her. +From all danger of seeing Willoughby again, +her mother considered her to be at least equally safe +in town as in the country, since his acquaintance must +now be dropped by all who called themselves her friends. +Design could never bring them in each other's way +negligence could never leave them exposed to a surprise +and chance had less in its favour in the crowd of London +than even in the retirement of Barton, where it might +force him before her while paying that visit at Allenham +on his marriage, which Mrs. Dashwood, from foreseeing at +first as a probable event, had brought herself to expect +as a certain one. +She had yet another reason for wishing her children +to remain where they were a letter from her soninlaw +had told her that he and his wife were to be in town +before the middle of February, and she judged it right +that they should sometimes see their brother. +Marianne had promised to be guided by her mother's opinion, +and she submitted to it therefore without opposition, +though it proved perfectly different from what she wished +and expected, though she felt it to be entirely wrong, +formed on mistaken grounds, and that by requiring her +longer continuance in London it deprived her of the only +possible alleviation of her wretchedness, the personal +sympathy of her mother, and doomed her to such society and +such scenes as must prevent her ever knowing a moment's rest. +But it was a matter of great consolation to her, +that what brought evil to herself would bring good to +her sister and Elinor, on the other hand, suspecting that +it would not be in her power to avoid Edward entirely, +comforted herself by thinking, that though their longer +stay would therefore militate against her own happiness, +it would be better for Marianne than an immediate return +into Devonshire. +Her carefulness in guarding her sister from ever +hearing Willoughby's name mentioned, was not thrown away. +Marianne, though without knowing it herself, reaped all +its advantage for neither Mrs. Jennings, nor Sir John, +nor even Mrs. Palmer herself, ever spoke of him before her. +Elinor wished that the same forbearance could have extended +towards herself, but that was impossible, and she was +obliged to listen day after day to the indignation of them all. +Sir John, could not have thought it possible. +"A man of whom he had always had such reason to think well +Such a goodnatured fellow He did not believe there was a +bolder rider in England It was an unaccountable business. +He wished him at the devil with all his heart. He would +not speak another word to him, meet him where he might, +for all the world No, not if it were to be by the side +of Barton covert, and they were kept watching for two +hours together. Such a scoundrel of a fellow such +a deceitful dog It was only the last time they met +that he had offered him one of Folly's puppies and this +was the end of it" +Mrs. Palmer, in her way, was equally angry. +"She was determined to drop his acquaintance immediately, +and she was very thankful that she had never been acquainted +with him at all. She wished with all her heart Combe +Magna was not so near Cleveland but it did not signify, +for it was a great deal too far off to visit she hated +him so much that she was resolved never to mention +his name again, and she should tell everybody she saw, +how goodfornothing he was." +The rest of Mrs. Palmer's sympathy was shewn in procuring +all the particulars in her power of the approaching marriage, +and communicating them to Elinor. She could soon tell +at what coachmaker's the new carriage was building, +by what painter Mr. Willoughby's portrait was drawn, +and at what warehouse Miss Grey's clothes might be seen. +The calm and polite unconcern of Lady Middleton +on the occasion was a happy relief to Elinor's spirits, +oppressed as they often were by the clamorous kindness +of the others. It was a great comfort to her to be sure +of exciting no interest in ONE person at least among their +circle of friends a great comfort to know that there +was ONE who would meet her without feeling any curiosity +after particulars, or any anxiety for her sister's health. +Every qualification is raised at times, by the +circumstances of the moment, to more than its real value +and she was sometimes worried down by officious condolence +to rate goodbreeding as more indispensable to comfort +than goodnature. +Lady Middleton expressed her sense of the affair +about once every day, or twice, if the subject occurred +very often, by saying, "It is very shocking, indeed" +and by the means of this continual though gentle vent, +was able not only to see the Miss Dashwoods from the +first without the smallest emotion, but very soon +to see them without recollecting a word of the matter +and having thus supported the dignity of her own sex, +and spoken her decided censure of what was wrong +in the other, she thought herself at liberty to attend +to the interest of her own assemblies, and therefore +determined though rather against the opinion of Sir John +that as Mrs. Willoughby would at once be a woman of elegance +and fortune, to leave her card with her as soon as she married. +Colonel Brandon's delicate, unobtrusive enquiries +were never unwelcome to Miss Dashwood. He had abundantly +earned the privilege of intimate discussion of her +sister's disappointment, by the friendly zeal with +which he had endeavoured to soften it, and they always +conversed with confidence. His chief reward for the +painful exertion of disclosing past sorrows and present +humiliations, was given in the pitying eye with which +Marianne sometimes observed him, and the gentleness +of her voice whenever though it did not often happen +she was obliged, or could oblige herself to speak to him. +THESE assured him that his exertion had produced an +increase of goodwill towards himself, and THESE gave +Elinor hopes of its being farther augmented hereafter +but Mrs. Jennings, who knew nothing of all this, who knew +only that the Colonel continued as grave as ever, and that +she could neither prevail on him to make the offer himself, +nor commission her to make it for him, began, at the +end of two days, to think that, instead of Midsummer, +they would not be married till Michaelmas, and by the +end of a week that it would not be a match at all. +The good understanding between the Colonel and Miss +Dashwood seemed rather to declare that the honours +of the mulberrytree, the canal, and the yew arbour, +would all be made over to HER and Mrs. Jennings had, +for some time ceased to think at all of Mrs. Ferrars. +Early in February, within a fortnight from the +receipt of Willoughby's letter, Elinor had the painful +office of informing her sister that he was married. +She had taken care to have the intelligence conveyed +to herself, as soon as it was known that the ceremony +was over, as she was desirous that Marianne should not +receive the first notice of it from the public papers, +which she saw her eagerly examining every morning. +She received the news with resolute composure +made no observation on it, and at first shed no tears +but after a short time they would burst out, and for the +rest of the day, she was in a state hardly less pitiable +than when she first learnt to expect the event. +The Willoughbys left town as soon as they were married +and Elinor now hoped, as there could be no danger +of her seeing either of them, to prevail on her sister, +who had never yet left the house since the blow first fell, +to go out again by degrees as she had done before. +About this time the two Miss Steeles, lately arrived +at their cousin's house in Bartlett's Buildings, +Holburn, presented themselves again before their more +grand relations in Conduit and Berkeley Streets +and were welcomed by them all with great cordiality. +Elinor only was sorry to see them. Their presence +always gave her pain, and she hardly knew how to make +a very gracious return to the overpowering delight of Lucy +in finding her STILL in town. +"I should have been quite disappointed if I had not +found you here STILL," said she repeatedly, with a strong +emphasis on the word. "But I always thought I SHOULD. +I was almost sure you would not leave London yet awhile +though you TOLD me, you know, at Barton, that you should +not stay above a MONTH. But I thought, at the time, +that you would most likely change your mind when it came +to the point. It would have been such a great pity +to have went away before your brother and sister came. +And now to be sure you will be in no hurry to be gone. +I am amazingly glad you did not keep to YOUR WORD." +Elinor perfectly understood her, and was forced +to use all her selfcommand to make it appear that she +did NOT. +"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Jennings, "and how did +you travel?" +"Not in the stage, I assure you," replied Miss Steele, +with quick exultation "we came post all the way, and had +a very smart beau to attend us. Dr. Davies was coming +to town, and so we thought we'd join him in a postchaise +and he behaved very genteelly, and paid ten or twelve +shillings more than we did." +"Oh, oh" cried Mrs. Jennings "very pretty, +indeed and the Doctor is a single man, I warrant you." +"There now," said Miss Steele, affectedly simpering, +"everybody laughs at me so about the Doctor, and I +cannot think why. My cousins say they are sure I have +made a conquest but for my part I declare I never think +about him from one hour's end to another. 'Lord here +comes your beau, Nancy,' my cousin said t'other day, +when she saw him crossing the street to the house. +My beau, indeed said II cannot think who you mean. +The Doctor is no beau of mine." +"Aye, aye, that is very pretty talkingbut it won't do +the Doctor is the man, I see." +"No, indeed" replied her cousin, with affected earnestness, +"and I beg you will contradict it, if you ever hear it talked +of." +Mrs. Jennings directly gave her the gratifying +assurance that she certainly would NOT, and Miss Steele +was made completely happy. +"I suppose you will go and stay with your brother +and sister, Miss Dashwood, when they come to town," +said Lucy, returning, after a cessation of hostile hints, +to the charge. +"No, I do not think we shall." +"Oh, yes, I dare say you will." +Elinor would not humour her by farther opposition. +"What a charming thing it is that Mrs. Dashwood can +spare you both for so long a time together" +"Long a time, indeed" interposed Mrs. Jennings. +"Why, their visit is but just begun" +Lucy was silenced. +"I am sorry we cannot see your sister, Miss Dashwood," +said Miss Steele. "I am sorry she is not well" +for Marianne had left the room on their arrival. +"You are very good. My sister will be equally +sorry to miss the pleasure of seeing you but she has +been very much plagued lately with nervous headaches, +which make her unfit for company or conversation." +"Oh, dear, that is a great pity but such old +friends as Lucy and meI think she might see US +and I am sure we would not speak a word." +Elinor, with great civility, declined the proposal. +Her sister was perhaps laid down upon the bed, or in her +dressing gown, and therefore not able to come to them. +"Oh, if that's all," cried Miss Steele, "we can +just as well go and see HER." +Elinor began to find this impertinence too much for +her temper but she was saved the trouble of checking it, +by Lucy's sharp reprimand, which now, as on many occasions, +though it did not give much sweetness to the manners +of one sister, was of advantage in governing those of +the other. +CHAPTER +After some opposition, Marianne yielded to her +sister's entreaties, and consented to go out with her +and Mrs. Jennings one morning for half an hour. She +expressly conditioned, however, for paying no visits, +and would do no more than accompany them to Gray's in +Sackville Street, where Elinor was carrying on a negotiation +for the exchange of a few oldfashioned jewels of her mother. +When they stopped at the door, Mrs. Jennings recollected +that there was a lady at the other end of the street +on whom she ought to call and as she had no business +at Gray's, it was resolved, that while her young friends +transacted their's, she should pay her visit and +return for them. +On ascending the stairs, the Miss Dashwoods found +so many people before them in the room, that there was +not a person at liberty to tend to their orders and they +were obliged to wait. All that could be done was, to sit +down at that end of the counter which seemed to promise the +quickest succession one gentleman only was standing there, +and it is probable that Elinor was not without hope +of exciting his politeness to a quicker despatch. +But the correctness of his eye, and the delicacy +of his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness. +He was giving orders for a toothpickcase for himself, +and till its size, shape, and ornaments were determined, +all of which, after examining and debating for a quarter +of an hour over every toothpickcase in the shop, +were finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had +no leisure to bestow any other attention on the two ladies, +than what was comprised in three or four very broad stares +a kind of notice which served to imprint on Elinor +the remembrance of a person and face, of strong, +natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in +the first style of fashion. +Marianne was spared from the troublesome feelings +of contempt and resentment, on this impertinent examination +of their features, and on the puppyism of his manner +in deciding on all the different horrors of the different +toothpickcases presented to his inspection, by remaining +unconscious of it all for she was as well able to collect +her thoughts within herself, and be as ignorant of what was +passing around her, in Mr. Gray's shop, as in her own bedroom. +At last the affair was decided. The ivory, +the gold, and the pearls, all received their appointment, +and the gentleman having named the last day on which his +existence could be continued without the possession of the +toothpickcase, drew on his gloves with leisurely care, +and bestowing another glance on the Miss Dashwoods, but such +a one as seemed rather to demand than express admiration, +walked off with a happy air of real conceit and affected +indifference. +Elinor lost no time in bringing her business forward, +was on the point of concluding it, when another gentleman +presented himself at her side. She turned her eyes towards +his face, and found him with some surprise to be her brother. +Their affection and pleasure in meeting was just enough +to make a very creditable appearance in Mr. Gray's shop. +John Dashwood was really far from being sorry to see +his sisters again it rather gave them satisfaction +and his inquiries after their mother were respectful +and attentive. +Elinor found that he and Fanny had been in town +two days. +"I wished very much to call upon you yesterday," +said he, "but it was impossible, for we were obliged +to take Harry to see the wild beasts at Exeter Exchange +and we spent the rest of the day with Mrs. Ferrars. +Harry was vastly pleased. THIS morning I had fully intended +to call on you, if I could possibly find a spare half hour, +but one has always so much to do on first coming to town. +I am come here to bespeak Fanny a seal. But tomorrow I +think I shall certainly be able to call in Berkeley Street, +and be introduced to your friend Mrs. Jennings. +I understand she is a woman of very good fortune. +And the Middletons too, you must introduce me to THEM. +As my motherinlaw's relations, I shall be happy to show +them every respect. They are excellent neighbours to you in +the country, I understand." +"Excellent indeed. Their attention to our comfort, +their friendliness in every particular, is more than I +can express." +"I am extremely glad to hear it, upon my word +extremely glad indeed. But so it ought to be they are +people of large fortune, they are related to you, and +every civility and accommodation that can serve to make +your situation pleasant might be reasonably expected. +And so you are most comfortably settled in your little cottage +and want for nothing Edward brought us a most charming +account of the place the most complete thing of its kind, +he said, that ever was, and you all seemed to enjoy it beyond +any thing. It was a great satisfaction to us to hear it, +I assure you." +Elinor did feel a little ashamed of her brother +and was not sorry to be spared the necessity of answering him, +by the arrival of Mrs. Jennings's servant, who came to tell +her that his mistress waited for them at the door. +Mr. Dashwood attended them down stairs, was introduced +to Mrs. Jennings at the door of her carriage, and repeating +his hope of being able to call on them the next day, +took leave. +His visit was duly paid. He came with a pretence at +an apology from their sisterinlaw, for not coming too +"but she was so much engaged with her mother, that really +she had no leisure for going any where." Mrs. Jennings, +however, assured him directly, that she should not stand +upon ceremony, for they were all cousins, or something +like it, and she should certainly wait on Mrs. John +Dashwood very soon, and bring her sisters to see her. +His manners to THEM, though calm, were perfectly kind +to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil and on Colonel +Brandon's coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a +curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know +him to be rich, to be equally civil to HIM. +After staying with them half an hour, he asked +Elinor to walk with him to Conduit Street, and introduce +him to Sir John and Lady Middleton. The weather was +remarkably fine, and she readily consented. As soon +as they were out of the house, his enquiries began. +"Who is Colonel Brandon? Is he a man of fortune?" +"Yes he has very good property in Dorsetshire." +"I am glad of it. He seems a most gentlemanlike man +and I think, Elinor, I may congratulate you on the prospect +of a very respectable establishment in life." +"Me, brother what do you mean?" +"He likes you. I observed him narrowly, and am +convinced of it. What is the amount of his fortune?" +"I believe about two thousand a year." +"Two thousand ayear" and then working himself +up to a pitch of enthusiastic generosity, he added, +"Elinor, I wish with all my heart it were TWICE as much, +for your sake." +"Indeed I believe you," replied Elinor "but I am +very sure that Colonel Brandon has not the smallest wish +of marrying ME." +"You are mistaken, Elinor you are very much mistaken. +A very little trouble on your side secures him. +Perhaps just at present he may be undecided the smallness +of your fortune may make him hang back his friends +may all advise him against it. But some of those little +attentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily +give will fix him, in spite of himself. And there can be +no reason why you should not try for him. It is not to be +supposed that any prior attachment on your sidein short, +you know as to an attachment of that kind, it is quite +out of the question, the objections are insurmountable +you have too much sense not to see all that. Colonel Brandon +must be the man and no civility shall be wanting on +my part to make him pleased with you and your family. +It is a match that must give universal satisfaction. +In short, it is a kind of thing that"lowering his voice +to an important whisper"will be exceedingly welcome +to ALL PARTIES." Recollecting himself, however, he added, +"That is, I mean to sayyour friends are all truly +anxious to see you well settled Fanny particularly, +for she has your interest very much at heart, I assure you. +And her mother too, Mrs. Ferrars, a very goodnatured woman, +I am sure it would give her great pleasure she said as much +the other day." +Elinor would not vouchsafe any answer. +"It would be something remarkable, now," he continued, +"something droll, if Fanny should have a brother and I +a sister settling at the same time. And yet it is not +very unlikely." +"Is Mr. Edward Ferrars," said Elinor, with resolution, +"going to be married?" +"It is not actually settled, but there is such +a thing in agitation. He has a most excellent mother. +Mrs. Ferrars, with the utmost liberality, will come forward, +and settle on him a thousand a year, if the match +takes place. The lady is the Hon. Miss Morton, only daughter +of the late Lord Morton, with thirty thousand pounds. +A very desirable connection on both sides, and I have not +a doubt of its taking place in time. A thousand ayear +is a great deal for a mother to give away, to make over +for ever but Mrs. Ferrars has a noble spirit. To give +you another instance of her liberalityThe other day, +as soon as we came to town, aware that money could +not be very plenty with us just now, she put banknotes +into Fanny's hands to the amount of two hundred pounds. +And extremely acceptable it is, for we must live at a great +expense while we are here." +He paused for her assent and compassion and she +forced herself to say, +"Your expenses both in town and country must certainly +be considerable but your income is a large one." +"Not so large, I dare say, as many people suppose. +I do not mean to complain, however it is undoubtedly +a comfortable one, and I hope will in time be better. +The enclosure of Norland Common, now carrying on, +is a most serious drain. And then I have made a little +purchase within this half year East Kingham Farm, +you must remember the place, where old Gibson used to live. +The land was so very desirable for me in every respect, +so immediately adjoining my own property, that I felt it +my duty to buy it. I could not have answered it to my +conscience to let it fall into any other hands. A man must +pay for his convenience and it HAS cost me a vast deal +of money." +"More than you think it really and intrinsically worth." +"Why, I hope not that. I might have sold it again, +the next day, for more than I gave but, with regard to the +purchasemoney, I might have been very unfortunate indeed +for the stocks were at that time so low, that if I had not +happened to have the necessary sum in my banker's hands, +I must have sold out to very great loss." +Elinor could only smile. +"Other great and inevitable expenses too we have +had on first coming to Norland. Our respected father, +as you well know, bequeathed all the Stanhill effects +that remained at Norland and very valuable they were +to your mother. Far be it from me to repine at his +doing so he had an undoubted right to dispose of his +own property as he chose, but, in consequence of it, +we have been obliged to make large purchases of linen, +china, c. to supply the place of what was taken away. +You may guess, after all these expenses, how very far we +must be from being rich, and how acceptable Mrs. Ferrars's +kindness is." +"Certainly," said Elinor "and assisted by her liberality, +I hope you may yet live to be in easy circumstances." +"Another year or two may do much towards it," +he gravely replied "but however there is still a great +deal to be done. There is not a stone laid of Fanny's +greenhouse, and nothing but the plan of the flowergarden +marked out." +"Where is the greenhouse to be?" +"Upon the knoll behind the house. The old +walnut trees are all come down to make room for it. +It will be a very fine object from many parts of the park, +and the flowergarden will slope down just before it, +and be exceedingly pretty. We have cleared away all the old +thorns that grew in patches over the brow." +Elinor kept her concern and her censure to herself +and was very thankful that Marianne was not present, +to share the provocation. +Having now said enough to make his poverty clear, +and to do away the necessity of buying a pair of earrings +for each of his sisters, in his next visit at Gray's +his thoughts took a cheerfuller turn, and he began to +congratulate Elinor on having such a friend as Mrs. Jennings. +"She seems a most valuable woman indeedHer house, +her style of living, all bespeak an exceeding good income +and it is an acquaintance that has not only been +of great use to you hitherto, but in the end may prove +materially advantageous.Her inviting you to town is +certainly a vast thing in your favour and indeed, it +speaks altogether so great a regard for you, that in all +probability when she dies you will not be forgotten. +She must have a great deal to leave." +"Nothing at all, I should rather suppose for she has +only her jointure, which will descend to her children." +"But it is not to be imagined that she lives up to +her income. Few people of common prudence will do THAT +and whatever she saves, she will be able to dispose of." +"And do you not think it more likely that she +should leave it to her daughters, than to us?" +"Her daughters are both exceedingly well married, +and therefore I cannot perceive the necessity of her +remembering them farther. Whereas, in my opinion, by her +taking so much notice of you, and treating you in this +kind of way, she has given you a sort of claim on her +future consideration, which a conscientious woman would +not disregard. Nothing can be kinder than her behaviour +and she can hardly do all this, without being aware +of the expectation it raises." +"But she raises none in those most concerned. +Indeed, brother, your anxiety for our welfare and prosperity +carries you too far." +"Why, to be sure," said he, seeming to recollect himself, +"people have little, have very little in their power. +But, my dear Elinor, what is the matter with Marianne? +she looks very unwell, has lost her colour, and is grown +quite thin. Is she ill?" +"She is not well, she has had a nervous complaint +on her for several weeks." +"I am sorry for that. At her time of life, +any thing of an illness destroys the bloom for ever +Her's has been a very short one She was as handsome a girl +last September, as I ever saw and as likely to attract +the man. There was something in her style of beauty, +to please them particularly. I remember Fanny used to say +that she would marry sooner and better than you did +not but what she is exceedingly fond of YOU, but so it +happened to strike her. She will be mistaken, however. +I question whether Marianne NOW, will marry a man worth +more than five or six hundred ayear, at the utmost, +and I am very much deceived if YOU do not do better. +Dorsetshire I know very little of Dorsetshire but, my dear +Elinor, I shall be exceedingly glad to know more of it +and I think I can answer for your having Fanny and myself +among the earliest and best pleased of your visitors." +Elinor tried very seriously to convince him that +there was no likelihood of her marrying Colonel Brandon +but it was an expectation of too much pleasure to himself +to be relinquished, and he was really resolved on seeking +an intimacy with that gentleman, and promoting the marriage +by every possible attention. He had just compunction +enough for having done nothing for his sisters himself, +to be exceedingly anxious that everybody else should +do a great deal and an offer from Colonel Brandon, +or a legacy from Mrs. Jennings, was the easiest means +of atoning for his own neglect. +They were lucky enough to find Lady Middleton +at home, and Sir John came in before their visit ended. +Abundance of civilities passed on all sides. Sir John +was ready to like anybody, and though Mr. Dashwood did +not seem to know much about horses, he soon set him +down as a very goodnatured fellow while Lady Middleton +saw enough of fashion in his appearance to think his +acquaintance worth having and Mr. Dashwood went away +delighted with both. +"I shall have a charming account to carry +to Fanny," said he, as he walked back with his sister. +"Lady Middleton is really a most elegant woman Such +a woman as I am sure Fanny will be glad to know. +And Mrs. Jennings too, an exceedingly wellbehaved woman, +though not so elegant as her daughter. Your sister need +not have any scruple even of visiting HER, which, to say +the truth, has been a little the case, and very naturally +for we only knew that Mrs. Jennings was the widow of a man +who had got all his money in a low way and Fanny and +Mrs. Ferrars were both strongly prepossessed, that neither +she nor her daughters were such kind of women as Fanny +would like to associate with. But now I can carry her +a most satisfactory account of both." +CHAPTER +Mrs. John Dashwood had so much confidence in her +husband's judgment, that she waited the very next day +both on Mrs. Jennings and her daughter and her +confidence was rewarded by finding even the former, +even the woman with whom her sisters were staying, +by no means unworthy her notice and as for Lady Middleton, +she found her one of the most charming women in the world +Lady Middleton was equally pleased with Mrs. Dashwood. +There was a kind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, +which mutually attracted them and they sympathised +with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanor, +and a general want of understanding. +The same manners, however, which recommended Mrs. John +Dashwood to the good opinion of Lady Middleton did not suit +the fancy of Mrs. Jennings, and to HER she appeared nothing +more than a little proudlooking woman of uncordial address, +who met her husband's sisters without any affection, +and almost without having anything to say to them +for of the quarter of an hour bestowed on Berkeley Street, +she sat at least seven minutes and a half in silence. +Elinor wanted very much to know, though she did +not chuse to ask, whether Edward was then in town +but nothing would have induced Fanny voluntarily +to mention his name before her, till able to tell her +that his marriage with Miss Morton was resolved on, +or till her husband's expectations on Colonel Brandon +were answered because she believed them still so very +much attached to each other, that they could not be too +sedulously divided in word and deed on every occasion. +The intelligence however, which SHE would not give, +soon flowed from another quarter. Lucy came very shortly +to claim Elinor's compassion on being unable to see Edward, +though he had arrived in town with Mr. and Mrs. Dashwood. +He dared not come to Bartlett's Buildings for fear +of detection, and though their mutual impatience to meet, +was not to be told, they could do nothing at present +but write. +Edward assured them himself of his being in town, +within a very short time, by twice calling in Berkeley Street. +Twice was his card found on the table, when they returned +from their morning's engagements. Elinor was pleased +that he had called and still more pleased that she had +missed him. +The Dashwoods were so prodigiously delighted +with the Middletons, that, though not much in the habit +of giving anything, they determined to give them +a dinner and soon after their acquaintance began, +invited them to dine in Harley Street, where they had +taken a very good house for three months. Their sisters +and Mrs. Jennings were invited likewise, and John Dashwood +was careful to secure Colonel Brandon, who, always glad +to be where the Miss Dashwoods were, received his eager +civilities with some surprise, but much more pleasure. +They were to meet Mrs. Ferrars but Elinor could not learn +whether her sons were to be of the party. The expectation +of seeing HER, however, was enough to make her interested +in the engagement for though she could now meet Edward's +mother without that strong anxiety which had once promised +to attend such an introduction, though she could now see +her with perfect indifference as to her opinion of herself, +her desire of being in company with Mrs. Ferrars, +her curiosity to know what she was like, was as lively as ever. +The interest with which she thus anticipated the +party, was soon afterwards increased, more powerfully +than pleasantly, by her hearing that the Miss Steeles +were also to be at it. +So well had they recommended themselves to Lady Middleton, +so agreeable had their assiduities made them to her, +that though Lucy was certainly not so elegant, and her +sister not even genteel, she was as ready as Sir John +to ask them to spend a week or two in Conduit Street +and it happened to be particularly convenient to the Miss +Steeles, as soon as the Dashwoods' invitation was known, +that their visit should begin a few days before the party +took place. +Their claims to the notice of Mrs. John Dashwood, +as the nieces of the gentleman who for many years had +had the care of her brother, might not have done much, +however, towards procuring them seats at her table +but as Lady Middleton's guests they must be welcome and Lucy, +who had long wanted to be personally known to the family, +to have a nearer view of their characters and her own +difficulties, and to have an opportunity of endeavouring +to please them, had seldom been happier in her life, +than she was on receiving Mrs. John Dashwood's card. +On Elinor its effect was very different. She began +immediately to determine, that Edward who lived with +his mother, must be asked as his mother was, to a party +given by his sister and to see him for the first time, +after all that passed, in the company of Lucyshe hardly +knew how she could bear it +These apprehensions, perhaps, were not founded +entirely on reason, and certainly not at all on truth. +They were relieved however, not by her own recollection, +but by the good will of Lucy, who believed herself to be +inflicting a severe disappointment when she told her +that Edward certainly would not be in Harley Street on Tuesday, +and even hoped to be carrying the pain still farther +by persuading her that he was kept away by the extreme +affection for herself, which he could not conceal when they +were together. +The important Tuesday came that was to introduce +the two young ladies to this formidable motherinlaw. +"Pity me, dear Miss Dashwood" said Lucy, as they +walked up the stairs togetherfor the Middletons arrived +so directly after Mrs. Jennings, that they all followed +the servant at the same time"There is nobody here but +you, that can feel for me.I declare I can hardly stand. +Good graciousIn a moment I shall see the person that all +my happiness depends onthat is to be my mother" +Elinor could have given her immediate relief +by suggesting the possibility of its being Miss Morton's mother, +rather than her own, whom they were about to behold +but instead of doing that, she assured her, and with +great sincerity, that she did pity herto the utter +amazement of Lucy, who, though really uncomfortable herself, +hoped at least to be an object of irrepressible envy to Elinor. +Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, +even to formality, in her figure, and serious, +even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion was sallow +and her features small, without beauty, and naturally +without expression but a lucky contraction of the brow +had rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, +by giving it the strong characters of pride and ill nature. +She was not a woman of many words for, unlike people +in general, she proportioned them to the number of +her ideas and of the few syllables that did escape her, +not one fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed +with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events. +Elinor could not NOW be made unhappy by this behaviour. +A few months ago it would have hurt her exceedingly but it +was not in Mrs. Ferrars' power to distress her by it now +and the difference of her manners to the Miss Steeles, +a difference which seemed purposely made to humble her more, +only amused her. She could not but smile to see the graciousness +of both mother and daughter towards the very person +for Lucy was particularly distinguishedwhom of all others, +had they known as much as she did, they would have been most +anxious to mortify while she herself, who had comparatively +no power to wound them, sat pointedly slighted by both. +But while she smiled at a graciousness so misapplied, +she could not reflect on the meanspirited folly from +which it sprung, nor observe the studied attentions +with which the Miss Steeles courted its continuance, +without thoroughly despising them all four. +Lucy was all exultation on being so honorably +distinguished and Miss Steele wanted only to be teazed +about Dr. Davies to be perfectly happy. +The dinner was a grand one, the servants were numerous, +and every thing bespoke the Mistress's inclination +for show, and the Master's ability to support it. +In spite of the improvements and additions which were +making to the Norland estate, and in spite of its owner +having once been within some thousand pounds of being +obliged to sell out at a loss, nothing gave any symptom +of that indigence which he had tried to infer from it +no poverty of any kind, except of conversation, appeared +but there, the deficiency was considerable. John Dashwood +had not much to say for himself that was worth hearing, +and his wife had still less. But there was no peculiar +disgrace in this for it was very much the case with +the chief of their visitors, who almost all laboured +under one or other of these disqualifications for being +agreeableWant of sense, either natural or improvedwant +of elegancewant of spiritsor want of temper. +When the ladies withdrew to the drawingroom +after dinner, this poverty was particularly evident, +for the gentlemen HAD supplied the discourse with some +varietythe variety of politics, inclosing land, +and breaking horsesbut then it was all over and one +subject only engaged the ladies till coffee came in, +which was the comparative heights of Harry Dashwood, +and Lady Middleton's second son William, who were nearly +of the same age. +Had both the children been there, the affair might +have been determined too easily by measuring them at once +but as Harry only was present, it was all conjectural +assertion on both sides and every body had a right to +be equally positive in their opinion, and to repeat it +over and over again as often as they liked. +The parties stood thus +The two mothers, though each really convinced that +her own son was the tallest, politely decided in favour +of the other. +The two grandmothers, with not less partiality, +but more sincerity, were equally earnest in support +of their own descendant. +Lucy, who was hardly less anxious to please one parent +than the other, thought the boys were both remarkably tall +for their age, and could not conceive that there could +be the smallest difference in the world between them +and Miss Steele, with yet greater address gave it, +as fast as she could, in favour of each. +Elinor, having once delivered her opinion on +William's side, by which she offended Mrs. Ferrars and +Fanny still more, did not see the necessity of enforcing +it by any farther assertion and Marianne, when called +on for her's, offended them all, by declaring that she +had no opinion to give, as she had never thought about it. +Before her removing from Norland, Elinor had painted +a very pretty pair of screens for her sisterinlaw, +which being now just mounted and brought home, +ornamented her present drawing room and these screens, +catching the eye of John Dashwood on his following +the other gentlemen into the room, were officiously +handed by him to Colonel Brandon for his admiration. +"These are done by my eldest sister," said he "and you, +as a man of taste, will, I dare say, be pleased with them. +I do not know whether you have ever happened to see any +of her performances before, but she is in general reckoned +to draw extremely well." +The Colonel, though disclaiming all pretensions +to connoisseurship, warmly admired the screens, as he +would have done any thing painted by Miss Dashwood +and on the curiosity of the others being of course excited, +they were handed round for general inspection. +Mrs. Ferrars, not aware of their being Elinor's work, +particularly requested to look at them and after they had +received gratifying testimony of Lady Middletons's approbation, +Fanny presented them to her mother, considerately informing +her, at the same time, that they were done by Miss Dashwood. +"Hum"said Mrs. Ferrars"very pretty,"and without +regarding them at all, returned them to her daughter. +Perhaps Fanny thought for a moment that her mother +had been quite rude enough,for, colouring a little, +she immediately said, +"They are very pretty, ma'aman't they?" But then again, +the dread of having been too civil, too encouraging herself, +probably came over her, for she presently added, +"Do you not think they are something in Miss +Morton's style of painting, Ma'am?She DOES paint most +delightfullyHow beautifully her last landscape is done" +"Beautifully indeed But SHE does every thing well." +Marianne could not bear this.She was already +greatly displeased with Mrs. Ferrars and such illtimed +praise of another, at Elinor's expense, though she +had not any notion of what was principally meant by it, +provoked her immediately to say with warmth, +"This is admiration of a very particular kind +what is Miss Morton to us?who knows, or who cares, +for her?it is Elinor of whom WE think and speak." +And so saying, she took the screens out of her +sisterinlaw's hands, to admire them herself as they +ought to be admired. +Mrs. Ferrars looked exceedingly angry, and drawing +herself up more stiffly than ever, pronounced in retort +this bitter philippic, "Miss Morton is Lord Morton's daughter." +Fanny looked very angry too, and her husband was +all in a fright at his sister's audacity. Elinor was +much more hurt by Marianne's warmth than she had been +by what produced it but Colonel Brandon's eyes, as they +were fixed on Marianne, declared that he noticed only +what was amiable in it, the affectionate heart which could +not bear to see a sister slighted in the smallest point. +Marianne's feelings did not stop here. The cold +insolence of Mrs. Ferrars's general behaviour to her sister, +seemed, to her, to foretell such difficulties and distresses +to Elinor, as her own wounded heart taught her to think +of with horror and urged by a strong impulse of +affectionate sensibility, she moved after a moment, +to her sister's chair, and putting one arm round her neck, +and one cheek close to hers, said in a low, but eager, +voice, +"Dear, dear Elinor, don't mind them. Don't let them +make YOU unhappy." +She could say no more her spirits were quite overcome, +and hiding her face on Elinor's shoulder, she burst +into tears. Every body's attention was called, and almost +every body was concerned.Colonel Brandon rose up and went +to them without knowing what he did.Mrs. Jennings, +with a very intelligent "Ah poor dear," immediately gave +her her salts and Sir John felt so desperately enraged +against the author of this nervous distress, that he +instantly changed his seat to one close by Lucy Steele, +and gave her, in a whisper, a brief account of the whole +shocking affair. +In a few minutes, however, Marianne was recovered +enough to put an end to the bustle, and sit down among +the rest though her spirits retained the impression +of what had passed, the whole evening. +"Poor Marianne" said her brother to Colonel Brandon, +in a low voice, as soon as he could secure his attention, +"She has not such good health as her sister,she is very +nervous,she has not Elinor's constitutionand one must +allow that there is something very trying to a young woman +who HAS BEEN a beauty in the loss of her personal attractions. +You would not think it perhaps, but Marianne WAS remarkably +handsome a few months ago quite as handsome as Elinor. +Now you see it is all gone." +CHAPTER +Elinor's curiosity to see Mrs. Ferrars was satisfied. +She had found in her every thing that could tend to make +a farther connection between the families undesirable. +She had seen enough of her pride, her meanness, and her +determined prejudice against herself, to comprehend all +the difficulties that must have perplexed the engagement, +and retarded the marriage, of Edward and herself, had he been +otherwise freeand she had seen almost enough to be thankful +for her OWN sake, that one greater obstacle preserved her +from suffering under any other of Mrs. Ferrars's creation, +preserved her from all dependence upon her caprice, or any +solicitude for her good opinion. Or at least, if she did not +bring herself quite to rejoice in Edward's being fettered +to Lucy, she determined, that had Lucy been more amiable, +she OUGHT to have rejoiced. +She wondered that Lucy's spirits could be so very much +elevated by the civility of Mrs. Ferrarsthat her interest +and her vanity should so very much blind her as to make +the attention which seemed only paid her because she was +NOT ELINOR, appear a compliment to herselfor to allow +her to derive encouragement from a preference only given her, +because her real situation was unknown. But that it was so, +had not only been declared by Lucy's eyes at the time, +but was declared over again the next morning more openly, +for at her particular desire, Lady Middleton set her down +in Berkeley Street on the chance of seeing Elinor alone, +to tell her how happy she was. +The chance proved a lucky one, for a message from +Mrs. Palmer soon after she arrived, carried Mrs. Jennings away. +"My dear friend," cried Lucy, as soon as they were +by themselves, "I come to talk to you of my happiness. +Could anything be so flattering as Mrs. Ferrars's way +of treating me yesterday? So exceeding affable as she +wasYou know how I dreaded the thoughts of seeing her +but the very moment I was introduced, there was such an +affability in her behaviour as really should seem to say, +she had quite took a fancy to me. Now was not it so? +You saw it all and was not you quite struck with it?" +"She was certainly very civil to you." +"CivilDid you see nothing but only civility? +I saw a vast deal more. Such kindness as fell to the share +of nobody but meNo pride, no hauteur, and your sister +just the sameall sweetness and affability" +Elinor wished to talk of something else, but Lucy still +pressed her to own that she had reason for her happiness +and Elinor was obliged to go on. +"Undoubtedly, if they had known your engagement," +said she, "nothing could be more flattering than their +treatment of youbut as that was not the case" +"I guessed you would say so"replied Lucy +quickly"but there was no reason in the world why +Mrs. Ferrars should seem to like me, if she did not, +and her liking me is every thing. You shan't talk me +out of my satisfaction. I am sure it will all end well, +and there will be no difficulties at all, to what I +used to think. Mrs. Ferrars is a charming woman, +and so is your sister. They are both delightful women, +indeedI wonder I should never hear you say how agreeable +Mrs. Dashwood was" +To this Elinor had no answer to make, and did not +attempt any. +"Are you ill, Miss Dashwood?you seem lowyou +don't speaksure you an't well." +"I never was in better health." +"I am glad of it with all my heart but really you did +not look it. I should be sorry to have YOU ill you, that have +been the greatest comfort to me in the worldHeaven +knows what I should have done without your friendship." +Elinor tried to make a civil answer, though doubting +her own success. But it seemed to satisfy Lucy, for she +directly replied, +"Indeed I am perfectly convinced of your regard +for me, and next to Edward's love, it is the greatest +comfort I have.Poor EdwardBut now there is one +good thing, we shall be able to meet, and meet pretty often, +for Lady Middleton's delighted with Mrs. Dashwood, +so we shall be a good deal in Harley Street, I dare say, +and Edward spends half his time with his sisterbesides, +Lady Middleton and Mrs. Ferrars will visit now +and Mrs. Ferrars and your sister were both so good to say +more than once, they should always be glad to see me. +They are such charming womenI am sure if ever you +tell your sister what I think of her, you cannot speak +too high." +But Elinor would not give her any encouragement +to hope that she SHOULD tell her sister. Lucy continued. +"I am sure I should have seen it in a moment, +if Mrs. Ferrars had took a dislike to me. If she had only +made me a formal courtesy, for instance, without saying +a word, and never after had took any notice of me, +and never looked at me in a pleasant wayyou know +what I meanif I had been treated in that forbidding +sort of way, I should have gave it all up in despair. +I could not have stood it. For where she DOES dislike, +I know it is most violent." +Elinor was prevented from making any reply to this +civil triumph, by the door's being thrown open, the servant's +announcing Mr. Ferrars, and Edward's immediately walking in. +It was a very awkward moment and the countenance of each +shewed that it was so. They all looked exceedingly foolish +and Edward seemed to have as great an inclination to walk +out of the room again, as to advance farther into it. +The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest form, +which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, +had fallen on them.They were not only all three together, +but were together without the relief of any other person. +The ladies recovered themselves first. It was not Lucy's +business to put herself forward, and the appearance of +secrecy must still be kept up. She could therefore only +LOOK her tenderness, and after slightly addressing him, +said no more. +But Elinor had more to do and so anxious was she, +for his sake and her own, to do it well, that she +forced herself, after a moment's recollection, +to welcome him, with a look and manner that were almost easy, +and almost open and another struggle, another effort still +improved them. She would not allow the presence of Lucy, +nor the consciousness of some injustice towards herself, +to deter her from saying that she was happy to see him, +and that she had very much regretted being from home, +when he called before in Berkeley Street. She would +not be frightened from paying him those attentions which, +as a friend and almost a relation, were his due, by the +observant eyes of Lucy, though she soon perceived them +to be narrowly watching her. +Her manners gave some reassurance to Edward, and he +had courage enough to sit down but his embarrassment still +exceeded that of the ladies in a proportion, which the case +rendered reasonable, though his sex might make it rare +for his heart had not the indifference of Lucy's, nor +could his conscience have quite the ease of Elinor's. +Lucy, with a demure and settled air, seemed determined +to make no contribution to the comfort of the others, +and would not say a word and almost every thing that WAS +said, proceeded from Elinor, who was obliged to volunteer +all the information about her mother's health, their coming +to town, c. which Edward ought to have inquired about, +but never did. +Her exertions did not stop here for she soon +afterwards felt herself so heroically disposed as +to determine, under pretence of fetching Marianne, +to leave the others by themselves and she really did it, +and THAT in the handsomest manner, for she loitered away +several minutes on the landingplace, with the most +highminded fortitude, before she went to her sister. +When that was once done, however, it was time for the raptures +of Edward to cease for Marianne's joy hurried her into +the drawingroom immediately. Her pleasure in seeing him +was like every other of her feelings, strong in itself, +and strongly spoken. She met him with a hand that would +be taken, and a voice that expressed the affection of a sister. +"Dear Edward" she cried, "this is a moment of great +happinessThis would almost make amends for every thing?" +Edward tried to return her kindness as it deserved, +but before such witnesses he dared not say half what he +really felt. Again they all sat down, and for a moment +or two all were silent while Marianne was looking with the +most speaking tenderness, sometimes at Edward and sometimes +at Elinor, regretting only that their delight in each +other should be checked by Lucy's unwelcome presence. +Edward was the first to speak, and it was to notice +Marianne's altered looks, and express his fear of her +not finding London agree with her. +"Oh, don't think of me" she replied with spirited +earnestness, though her eyes were filled with tears +as she spoke, "don't think of MY health. Elinor is well, +you see. That must be enough for us both." +This remark was not calculated to make Edward or +Elinor more easy, nor to conciliate the good will of Lucy, +who looked up at Marianne with no very benignant expression. +"Do you like London?" said Edward, willing to say +any thing that might introduce another subject. +"Not at all. I expected much pleasure in it, +but I have found none. The sight of you, Edward, is the +only comfort it has afforded and thank Heaven you +are what you always were" +She pausedno one spoke. +"I think, Elinor," she presently added, "we must +employ Edward to take care of us in our return to Barton. +In a week or two, I suppose, we shall be going and, I trust, +Edward will not be very unwilling to accept the charge." +Poor Edward muttered something, but what it was, +nobody knew, not even himself. But Marianne, who saw +his agitation, and could easily trace it to whatever +cause best pleased herself, was perfectly satisfied, +and soon talked of something else. +"We spent such a day, Edward, in Harley Street +yesterday So dull, so wretchedly dullBut I have much +to say to you on that head, which cannot be said now." +And with this admirable discretion did she defer +the assurance of her finding their mutual relatives more +disagreeable than ever, and of her being particularly +disgusted with his mother, till they were more in private. +"But why were you not there, Edward?Why did you +not come?" +"I was engaged elsewhere." +"Engaged But what was that, when such friends +were to be met?" +"Perhaps, Miss Marianne," cried Lucy, eager to take +some revenge on her, "you think young men never stand +upon engagements, if they have no mind to keep them, +little as well as great." +Elinor was very angry, but Marianne seemed entirely +insensible of the sting for she calmly replied, +"Not so, indeed for, seriously speaking, I am very +sure that conscience only kept Edward from Harley Street. +And I really believe he HAS the most delicate conscience +in the world the most scrupulous in performing +every engagement, however minute, and however it +may make against his interest or pleasure. He is the +most fearful of giving pain, of wounding expectation, +and the most incapable of being selfish, of any body +I ever saw. Edward, it is so, and I will say it. +What are you never to hear yourself praisedThen you +must be no friend of mine for those who will accept +of my love and esteem, must submit to my open commendation." +The nature of her commendation, in the present case, +however, happened to be particularly illsuited to the +feelings of two thirds of her auditors, and was so very +unexhilarating to Edward, that he very soon got up to go away. +"Going so soon" said Marianne "my dear Edward, +this must not be." +And drawing him a little aside, she whispered +her persuasion that Lucy could not stay much longer. +But even this encouragement failed, for he would go +and Lucy, who would have outstaid him, had his visit lasted +two hours, soon afterwards went away. +"What can bring her here so often?" said Marianne, +on her leaving them. "Could not she see that we wanted +her gonehow teazing to Edward" +"Why so?we were all his friends, and Lucy has been +the longest known to him of any. It is but natural +that he should like to see her as well as ourselves." +Marianne looked at her steadily, and said, "You know, +Elinor, that this is a kind of talking which I cannot bear. +If you only hope to have your assertion contradicted, +as I must suppose to be the case, you ought to recollect +that I am the last person in the world to do it. +I cannot descend to be tricked out of assurances, that are +not really wanted." +She then left the room and Elinor dared not follow +her to say more, for bound as she was by her promise +of secrecy to Lucy, she could give no information that +would convince Marianne and painful as the consequences +of her still continuing in an error might be, she was +obliged to submit to it. All that she could hope, was +that Edward would not often expose her or himself to the +distress of hearing Marianne's mistaken warmth, nor to the +repetition of any other part of the pain that had attended +their recent meetingand this she had every reason to expect. +CHAPTER +Within a few days after this meeting, the newspapers +announced to the world, that the lady of Thomas Palmer, +Esq. was safely delivered of a son and heir a very +interesting and satisfactory paragraph, at least to all +those intimate connections who knew it before. +This event, highly important to Mrs. Jennings's happiness, +produced a temporary alteration in the disposal of her time, +and influenced, in a like degree, the engagements +of her young friends for as she wished to be as much +as possible with Charlotte, she went thither every morning +as soon as she was dressed, and did not return till late +in the evening and the Miss Dashwoods, at the particular +request of the Middletons, spent the whole of every day, +in every day in Conduit Street. For their own comfort +they would much rather have remained, at least all +the morning, in Mrs. Jennings's house but it was not +a thing to be urged against the wishes of everybody. +Their hours were therefore made over to Lady Middleton +and the two Miss Steeles, by whom their company, in fact +was as little valued, as it was professedly sought. +They had too much sense to be desirable companions +to the former and by the latter they were considered with +a jealous eye, as intruding on THEIR ground, and sharing +the kindness which they wanted to monopolize. Though nothing +could be more polite than Lady Middleton's behaviour to +Elinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all. +Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, +she could not believe them goodnatured and because they +were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical perhaps +without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical +but THAT did not signify. It was censure in common use, +and easily given. +Their presence was a restraint both on her and on Lucy. +It checked the idleness of one, and the business of the other. +Lady Middleton was ashamed of doing nothing before them, +and the flattery which Lucy was proud to think of +and administer at other times, she feared they would despise +her for offering. Miss Steele was the least discomposed +of the three, by their presence and it was in their power +to reconcile her to it entirely. Would either of them +only have given her a full and minute account of the whole +affair between Marianne and Mr. Willoughby, she would +have thought herself amply rewarded for the sacrifice +of the best place by the fire after dinner, which their +arrival occasioned. But this conciliation was not granted +for though she often threw out expressions of pity for her +sister to Elinor, and more than once dropt a reflection +on the inconstancy of beaux before Marianne, no effect +was produced, but a look of indifference from the former, +or of disgust in the latter. An effort even yet lighter +might have made her their friend. Would they only have +laughed at her about the Doctor But so little were they, +anymore than the others, inclined to oblige her, +that if Sir John dined from home, she might spend a whole +day without hearing any other raillery on the subject, +than what she was kind enough to bestow on herself. +All these jealousies and discontents, however, were so +totally unsuspected by Mrs. Jennings, that she thought +it a delightful thing for the girls to be together +and generally congratulated her young friends every night, +on having escaped the company of a stupid old woman so long. +She joined them sometimes at Sir John's, sometimes +at her own house but wherever it was, she always came +in excellent spirits, full of delight and importance, +attributing Charlotte's well doing to her own care, and ready +to give so exact, so minute a detail of her situation, +as only Miss Steele had curiosity enough to desire. +One thing DID disturb her and of that she made her +daily complaint. Mr. Palmer maintained the common, +but unfatherly opinion among his sex, of all infants being alike +and though she could plainly perceive, at different times, +the most striking resemblance between this baby and every +one of his relations on both sides, there was no convincing +his father of it no persuading him to believe that it +was not exactly like every other baby of the same age +nor could he even be brought to acknowledge the simple +proposition of its being the finest child in the world. +I come now to the relation of a misfortune, +which about this time befell Mrs. John Dashwood. +It so happened that while her two sisters with +Mrs. Jennings were first calling on her in Harley Street, +another of her acquaintance had dropt ina circumstance +in itself not apparently likely to produce evil to her. +But while the imaginations of other people will carry +them away to form wrong judgments of our conduct, +and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness +must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance. +In the present instance, this lastarrived lady allowed +her fancy to so far outrun truth and probability, +that on merely hearing the name of the Miss Dashwoods, +and understanding them to be Mr. Dashwood's sisters, +she immediately concluded them to be staying in Harley Street +and this misconstruction produced within a day +or two afterwards, cards of invitation for them +as well as for their brother and sister, to a small +musical party at her house. The consequence of which was, +that Mrs. John Dashwood was obliged to submit not only +to the exceedingly great inconvenience of sending her +carriage for the Miss Dashwoods, but, what was still worse, +must be subject to all the unpleasantness of appearing +to treat them with attention and who could tell that they +might not expect to go out with her a second time? The power +of disappointing them, it was true, must always be her's. +But that was not enough for when people are determined +on a mode of conduct which they know to be wrong, they feel +injured by the expectation of any thing better from them. +Marianne had now been brought by degrees, so much +into the habit of going out every day, that it was become +a matter of indifference to her, whether she went or not +and she prepared quietly and mechanically for every +evening's engagement, though without expecting the smallest +amusement from any, and very often without knowing, +till the last moment, where it was to take her. +To her dress and appearance she was grown so perfectly +indifferent, as not to bestow half the consideration on it, +during the whole of her toilet, which it received from +Miss Steele in the first five minutes of their being +together, when it was finished. Nothing escaped HER minute +observation and general curiosity she saw every thing, +and asked every thing was never easy till she knew the price +of every part of Marianne's dress could have guessed the +number of her gowns altogether with better judgment than +Marianne herself, and was not without hopes of finding out +before they parted, how much her washing cost per week, +and how much she had every year to spend upon herself. +The impertinence of these kind of scrutinies, moreover, +was generally concluded with a compliment, which +though meant as its douceur, was considered by Marianne +as the greatest impertinence of all for after undergoing +an examination into the value and make of her gown, +the colour of her shoes, and the arrangement of her hair, +she was almost sure of being told that upon "her word +she looked vastly smart, and she dared to say she would +make a great many conquests." +With such encouragement as this, was she dismissed +on the present occasion, to her brother's carriage +which they were ready to enter five minutes after it +stopped at the door, a punctuality not very agreeable +to their sisterinlaw, who had preceded them to the house +of her acquaintance, and was there hoping for some delay +on their part that might inconvenience either herself +or her coachman. +The events of this evening were not very remarkable. +The party, like other musical parties, comprehended a +great many people who had real taste for the performance, +and a great many more who had none at all and the performers +themselves were, as usual, in their own estimation, +and that of their immediate friends, the first private +performers in England. +As Elinor was neither musical, nor affecting to be so, +she made no scruple of turning her eyes from the grand +pianoforte, whenever it suited her, and unrestrained even +by the presence of a harp, and violoncello, would fix +them at pleasure on any other object in the room. In one +of these excursive glances she perceived among a group +of young men, the very he, who had given them a lecture +on toothpickcases at Gray's. She perceived him soon +afterwards looking at herself, and speaking familiarly +to her brother and had just determined to find out his +name from the latter, when they both came towards her, +and Mr. Dashwood introduced him to her as Mr. Robert Ferrars. +He addressed her with easy civility, and twisted +his head into a bow which assured her as plainly as +words could have done, that he was exactly the coxcomb +she had heard him described to be by Lucy. Happy had +it been for her, if her regard for Edward had depended +less on his own merit, than on the merit of his nearest +relations For then his brother's bow must have given +the finishing stroke to what the illhumour of his mother +and sister would have begun. But while she wondered +at the difference of the two young men, she did not find +that the emptiness of conceit of the one, put her out +of all charity with the modesty and worth of the other. +Why they WERE different, Robert exclaimed to her himself +in the course of a quarter of an hour's conversation +for, talking of his brother, and lamenting the extreme +GAUCHERIE which he really believed kept him from mixing +in proper society, he candidly and generously attributed it +much less to any natural deficiency, than to the misfortune +of a private education while he himself, though probably +without any particular, any material superiority +by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school, +was as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man. +"Upon my soul," he added, "I believe it is nothing more +and so I often tell my mother, when she is grieving +about it. 'My dear Madam,' I always say to her, 'you must +make yourself easy. The evil is now irremediable, +and it has been entirely your own doing. Why would +you be persuaded by my uncle, Sir Robert, against your +own judgment, to place Edward under private tuition, +at the most critical time of his life? If you had only sent +him to Westminster as well as myself, instead of sending +him to Mr. Pratt's, all this would have been prevented.' +This is the way in which I always consider the matter, +and my mother is perfectly convinced of her error." +Elinor would not oppose his opinion, because, +whatever might be her general estimation of the advantage +of a public school, she could not think of Edward's +abode in Mr. Pratt's family, with any satisfaction. +"You reside in Devonshire, I think,"was his +next observation, "in a cottage near Dawlish." +Elinor set him right as to its situation +and it seemed rather surprising to him that anybody +could live in Devonshire, without living near Dawlish. +He bestowed his hearty approbation however on their +species of house. +"For my own part," said he, "I am excessively fond +of a cottage there is always so much comfort, so much +elegance about them. And I protest, if I had any money +to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, +within a short distance of London, where I might drive +myself down at any time, and collect a few friends +about me, and be happy. I advise every body who is going +to build, to build a cottage. My friend Lord Courtland +came to me the other day on purpose to ask my advice, +and laid before me three different plans of Bonomi's. +I was to decide on the best of them. 'My dear Courtland,' +said I, immediately throwing them all into the fire, 'do not +adopt either of them, but by all means build a cottage.' +And that I fancy, will be the end of it. +"Some people imagine that there can be no accommodations, +no space in a cottage but this is all a mistake. +I was last month at my friend Elliott's, near Dartford. +Lady Elliott wished to give a dance. 'But how can it +be done?' said she 'my dear Ferrars, do tell me how it +is to be managed. There is not a room in this cottage +that will hold ten couple, and where can the supper be?' +I immediately saw that there could be no difficulty in it, +so I said, 'My dear Lady Elliott, do not be uneasy. +The dining parlour will admit eighteen couple with ease +cardtables may be placed in the drawingroom the library +may be open for tea and other refreshments and let the +supper be set out in the saloon.' Lady Elliott was delighted +with the thought. We measured the diningroom, and found +it would hold exactly eighteen couple, and the affair +was arranged precisely after my plan. So that, in fact, +you see, if people do but know how to set about it, +every comfort may be as well enjoyed in a cottage +as in the most spacious dwelling." +Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think +he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. +As John Dashwood had no more pleasure in music than his +eldest sister, his mind was equally at liberty to fix on +any thing else and a thought struck him during the evening, +which he communicated to his wife, for her approbation, +when they got home. The consideration of Mrs. Dennison's +mistake, +in supposing his sisters their guests, had suggested the +propriety of their being really invited to become such, +while Mrs. Jenning's engagements kept her from home. +The expense would be nothing, the inconvenience not more +and it was altogether an attention which the delicacy +of his conscience pointed out to be requisite to its +complete enfranchisement from his promise to his father. +Fanny was startled at the proposal. +"I do not see how it can be done," said she, +"without affronting Lady Middleton, for they spend every day +with her otherwise I should be exceedingly glad to do it. +You know I am always ready to pay them any attention +in my power, as my taking them out this evening shews. +But they are Lady Middleton's visitors. How can I ask them +away from her?" +Her husband, but with great humility, did not see +the force of her objection. "They had already spent a week +in this manner in Conduit Street, and Lady Middleton +could not be displeased at their giving the same number +of days to such near relations." +Fanny paused a moment, and then, with fresh vigor, said, +"My love I would ask them with all my heart, if it +was in my power. But I had just settled within myself +to ask the Miss Steeles to spend a few days with us. +They are very well behaved, good kind of girls and I think +the attention is due to them, as their uncle did so very +well by Edward. We can ask your sisters some other year, +you know but the Miss Steeles may not be in town any more. +I am sure you will like them indeed, you DO like them, +you know, very much already, and so does my mother and they +are such favourites with Harry" +Mr. Dashwood was convinced. He saw the necessity +of inviting the Miss Steeles immediately, and his conscience +was pacified by the resolution of inviting his sisters +another year at the same time, however, slyly suspecting +that another year would make the invitation needless, +by bringing Elinor to town as Colonel Brandon's wife, +and Marianne as THEIR visitor. +Fanny, rejoicing in her escape, and proud of the ready +wit that had procured it, wrote the next morning to Lucy, +to request her company and her sister's, for some days, +in Harley Street, as soon as Lady Middleton could spare them. +This was enough to make Lucy really and reasonably happy. +Mrs. Dashwood seemed actually working for her, herself +cherishing all her hopes, and promoting all her views +Such an opportunity of being with Edward and his family was, +above all things, the most material to her interest, +and such an invitation the most gratifying to her +feelings It was an advantage that could not be too +gratefully acknowledged, nor too speedily made use of +and the visit to Lady Middleton, which had not before had +any precise limits, was instantly discovered to have been +always meant to end in two days' time. +When the note was shown to Elinor, as it was within ten +minutes after its arrival, it gave her, for the first time, +some share in the expectations of Lucy for such a mark +of uncommon kindness, vouchsafed on so short an acquaintance, +seemed to declare that the goodwill towards her arose +from something more than merely malice against herself +and might be brought, by time and address, to do +every thing that Lucy wished. Her flattery had already +subdued the pride of Lady Middleton, and made an entry +into the close heart of Mrs. John Dashwood and these +were effects that laid open the probability of greater. +The Miss Steeles removed to Harley Street, and all +that reached Elinor of their influence there, strengthened +her expectation of the event. Sir John, who called on +them more than once, brought home such accounts of the +favour they were in, as must be universally striking. +Mrs. Dashwood had never been so much pleased with any +young women in her life, as she was with them had given +each of them a needle book made by some emigrant +called Lucy by her Christian name and did not know +whether she should ever be able to part with them. +[At this point in the first and second editions, Volume II ended.] +CHAPTER +Mrs. Palmer was so well at the end of a fortnight, +that her mother felt it no longer necessary to give up +the whole of her time to her and, contenting herself with +visiting her once or twice a day, returned from that period +to her own home, and her own habits, in which she found +the Miss Dashwoods very ready to resume their former share. +About the third or fourth morning after their +being thus resettled in Berkeley Street, Mrs. Jennings, +on returning from her ordinary visit to Mrs. Palmer, +entered the drawingroom, where Elinor was sitting +by herself, with an air of such hurrying importance +as prepared her to hear something wonderful and giving her +time only to form that idea, began directly to justify it, +by saying, +"Lord my dear Miss Dashwood have you heard the news?" +"No, ma'am. What is it?" +"Something so strange But you shall hear it all. +When I got to Mr. Palmer's, I found Charlotte quite +in a fuss about the child. She was sure it was very +illit cried, and fretted, and was all over pimples. +So I looked at it directly, and, 'Lord my dear,' +says I, 'it is nothing in the world, but the red gum' +and nurse said just the same. But Charlotte, she would +not be satisfied, so Mr. Donavan was sent for and luckily +he happened to just come in from Harley Street, so he +stepped over directly, and as soon as ever he saw the child, +be said just as we did, that it was nothing in the world +but the red gum, and then Charlotte was easy. And so, +just as he was going away again, it came into my head, +I am sure I do not know how I happened to think of it, +but it came into my head to ask him if there was any news. +So upon that, he smirked, and simpered, and looked grave, +and seemed to know something or other, and at last he +said in a whisper, 'For fear any unpleasant report +should reach the young ladies under your care as to their +sister's indisposition, I think it advisable to say, +that I believe there is no great reason for alarm I hope +Mrs. Dashwood will do very well.'" +"What is Fanny ill?" +"That is exactly what I said, my dear. 'Lord' says I, +'is Mrs. Dashwood ill?' So then it all came out and the +long and the short of the matter, by all I can learn, +seems to be this. Mr. Edward Ferrars, the very young +man I used to joke with you about but however, as it +turns out, I am monstrous glad there was never any thing +in it, Mr. Edward Ferrars, it seems, has been engaged +above this twelvemonth to my cousin LucyThere's for you, +my dearAnd not a creature knowing a syllable of the matter, +except NancyCould you have believed such a thing possible? +There is no great wonder in their liking one another +but that matters should be brought so forward between them, +and nobody suspect itTHAT is strangeI never happened +to see them together, or I am sure I should have found it +out directly. Well, and so this was kept a great secret, +for fear of Mrs. Ferrars, and neither she nor your +brother or sister suspected a word of the matter +till this very morning, poor Nancy, who, you know, is a +wellmeaning creature, but no conjurer, popt it all out. +'Lord' thinks she to herself, 'they are all so fond +of Lucy, to be sure they will make no difficulty about it' +and so, away she went to your sister, who was sitting all +alone at her carpetwork, little suspecting what was to +comefor she had just been saying to your brother, only five +minutes before, that she thought to make a match between +Edward and some Lord's daughter or other, I forget who. +So you may think what a blow it was to all her vanity +and pride. She fell into violent hysterics immediately, +with such screams as reached your brother's ears, +as he was sitting in his own dressingroom down stairs, +thinking about writing a letter to his steward in the country. +So up he flew directly, and a terrible scene took place, +for Lucy was come to them by that time, little dreaming +what was going on. Poor soul I pity HER. And I must say, +I think she was used very hardly for your sister scolded +like any fury, and soon drove her into a fainting fit. +Nancy, she fell upon her knees, and cried bitterly +and your brother, he walked about the room, and said +he did not know what to do. Mrs. Dashwood declared +they should not stay a minute longer in the house, +and your brother was forced to go down upon HIS knees too, +to persuade her to let them stay till they had packed +up their clothes. THEN she fell into hysterics again, +and he was so frightened that he would send for Mr. Donavan, +and Mr. Donavan found the house in all this uproar. +The carriage was at the door ready to take my poor +cousins away, and they were just stepping in as he +came off poor Lucy in such a condition, he says, +she could hardly walk and Nancy, she was almost as bad. +I declare, I have no patience with your sister and I hope, +with all my heart, it will be a match in spite of her. +Lord what a taking poor Mr. Edward will be in when he +hears of it To have his love used so scornfully for +they say he is monstrous fond of her, as well he may. +I should not wonder, if he was to be in the greatest +passionand Mr. Donavan thinks just the same. He and I +had a great deal of talk about it and the best of all is, +that he is gone back again to Harley Street, that he may +be within call when Mrs. Ferrars is told of it, for she +was sent for as soon as ever my cousins left the house, +for your sister was sure SHE would be in hysterics too +and so she may, for what I care. I have no pity for +either of them. I have no notion of people's making +such a todo about money and greatness. There is no +reason on earth why Mr. Edward and Lucy should not marry +for I am sure Mrs. Ferrars may afford to do very well +by her son, and though Lucy has next to nothing herself, +she knows better than any body how to make the most +of every thing I dare say, if Mrs. Ferrars would only +allow him five hundred ayear, she would make as good +an appearance with it as any body else would with eight. +Lord how snug they might live in such another cottage +as yoursor a little biggerwith two maids, and two men +and I believe I could help them to a housemaid, for my +Betty has a sister out of place, that would fit them +exactly." +Here Mrs. Jennings ceased, and as Elinor had had +time enough to collect her thoughts, she was able +to give such an answer, and make such observations, +as the subject might naturally be supposed to produce. +Happy to find that she was not suspected of any extraordinary +interest in it that Mrs. Jennings as she had of late +often hoped might be the case had ceased to imagine her +at all attached to Edward and happy above all the rest, +in the absence of Marianne, she felt very well able +to speak of the affair without embarrassment, and to +give her judgment, as she believed, with impartiality +on the conduct of every one concerned in it. +She could hardly determine what her own expectation +of its event really was though she earnestly tried +to drive away the notion of its being possible to end +otherwise at last, than in the marriage of Edward and Lucy. +What Mrs. Ferrars would say and do, though there could +not be a doubt of its nature, she was anxious to hear +and still more anxious to know how Edward would +conduct himself. For HIM she felt much compassion +for Lucy very littleand it cost her some pains to procure +that littlefor the rest of the party none at all. +As Mrs. Jennings could talk on no other subject, +Elinor soon saw the necessity of preparing Marianne for +its discussion. No time was to be lost in undeceiving her, +in making her acquainted with the real truth, and in +endeavouring to bring her to hear it talked of by others, +without betraying that she felt any uneasiness for her sister, +or any resentment against Edward. +Elinor's office was a painful one.She was going +to remove what she really believed to be her sister's +chief consolation,to give such particulars of Edward as she +feared would ruin him for ever in her good opinion,and +to make Marianne, by a resemblance in their situations, +which to HER fancy would seem strong, feel all her own +disappointment over again. But unwelcome as such a task +must be, it was necessary to be done, and Elinor therefore +hastened to perform it. +She was very far from wishing to dwell on her own +feelings, or to represent herself as suffering much, +any otherwise than as the selfcommand she had practised +since her first knowledge of Edward's engagement, might +suggest a hint of what was practicable to Marianne. +Her narration was clear and simple and though it could +not be given without emotion, it was not accompanied +by violent agitation, nor impetuous grief.THAT belonged +rather to the hearer, for Marianne listened with horror, +and cried excessively. Elinor was to be the comforter +of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs +and all the comfort that could be given by assurances +of her own composure of mind, and a very earnest +vindication of Edward from every charge but of imprudence, +was readily offered. +But Marianne for some time would give credit to neither. +Edward seemed a second Willoughby and acknowledging +as Elinor did, that she HAD loved him most sincerely, +could she feel less than herself As for Lucy Steele, +she considered her so totally unamiable, so absolutely +incapable of attaching a sensible man, that she could +not be persuaded at first to believe, and afterwards +to pardon, any former affection of Edward for her. +She would not even admit it to have been natural +and Elinor left her to be convinced that it was so, +by that which only could convince her, a better knowledge +of mankind. +Her first communication had reached no farther than +to state the fact of the engagement, and the length of time +it had existed.Marianne's feelings had then broken in, +and put an end to all regularity of detail and for some +time all that could be done was to soothe her distress, +lessen her alarms, and combat her resentment. The first +question on her side, which led to farther particulars, +was, +"How long has this been known to you, Elinor? has +he written to you?" +"I have known it these four months. When Lucy +first came to Barton Park last November, she told me +in confidence of her engagement." +At these words, Marianne's eyes expressed the astonishment +which her lips could not utter. After a pause of wonder, +she exclaimed +"Four monthsHave you known of this four months?" +Elinor confirmed it. +"Whatwhile attending me in all my misery, has this +been on your heart?And I have reproached you for being +happy" +"It was not fit that you should then know how much +I was the reverse" +"Four months"cried Marianne again."So calm +so cheerfulhow have you been supported?" +"By feeling that I was doing my duty.My promise to +Lucy, obliged me to be secret. I owed it to her, therefore, +to avoid giving any hint of the truth and I owed it to my +family and friends, not to create in them a solicitude about me, +which it could not be in my power to satisfy." +Marianne seemed much struck. +"I have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my +mother," added Elinor "and once or twice I have attempted it +but without betraying my trust, I never could have convinced +you." +"Four monthsand yet you loved him" +"Yes. But I did not love only himand while the comfort +of others was dear to me, I was glad to spare them from knowing +how much I felt. Now, I can think and speak of it with +little emotion. I would not have you suffer on my account +for I assure you I no longer suffer materially myself. +I have many things to support me. I am not conscious of having +provoked the disappointment by any imprudence of my own, +I have borne it as much as possible without spreading +it farther. I acquit Edward of essential misconduct. +I wish him very happy and I am so sure of his always +doing his duty, that though now he may harbour some regret, +in the end he must become so. Lucy does not want sense, +and that is the foundation on which every thing good may +be built.And after all, Marianne, after all that is +bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, +and all that can be said of one's happiness depending +entirely on any particular person, it is not meantit +is not fitit is not possible that it should be so. +Edward will marry Lucy he will marry a woman superior +in person and understanding to half her sex and time +and habit will teach him to forget that he ever thought +another superior to HER." +"If such is your way of thinking," said Marianne, +"if the loss of what is most valued is so easily +to be made up by something else, your resolution, +your selfcommand, are, perhaps, a little less to be +wondered at.They are brought more within my comprehension." +"I understand you.You do not suppose that I have ever +felt much.For four months, Marianne, I have had all this +hanging on my mind, without being at liberty to speak +of it to a single creature knowing that it would make +you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained +to you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least. +It was told me,it was in a manner forced on me by the +very person herself, whose prior engagement ruined all +my prospects and told me, as I thought, with triumph. +This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose, +by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most +deeply interestedand it has not been only onceI have +had her hopes and exultation to listen to again and again. +I have known myself to be divided from Edward for ever, +without hearing one circumstance that could make me less +desire the connection.Nothing has proved him unworthy +nor has anything declared him indifferent to me. +I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, +and the insolence of his mother and have suffered the +punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages. +And all this has been going on at a time, when, as you +know too well, it has not been my only unhappiness. +If you can think me capable of ever feelingsurely you +may suppose that I have suffered NOW. The composure +of mind with which I have brought myself at present +to consider the matter, the consolation that I have been +willing to admit, have been the effect of constant and +painful exertionthey did not spring up of themselves +they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first. +No, Marianne.THEN, if I had not been bound to silence, +perhaps nothing could have kept me entirelynot even what I +owed to my dearest friendsfrom openly shewing that I was +VERY unhappy." +Marianne was quite subdued. +"Oh Elinor," she cried, "you have made me hate +myself for ever.How barbarous have I been to you +you, who have been my only comfort, who have borne with me +in all my misery, who have seemed to be only suffering +for meIs this my gratitude?Is this the only return I +can make you?Because your merit cries out upon myself, +I have been trying to do it away." +The tenderest caresses followed this confession. +In such a frame of mind as she was now in, Elinor had +no difficulty in obtaining from her whatever promise +she required and at her request, Marianne engaged +never to speak of the affair to any one with the least +appearance of bitternessto meet Lucy without betraying +the smallest increase of dislike to herand even to see +Edward himself, if chance should bring them together, +without any diminution of her usual cordiality. +These were great concessionsbut where Marianne felt +that she had injured, no reparation could be too much +for her to make. +She performed her promise of being discreet, +to admiration.She attended to all that Mrs. Jennings +had to say upon the subject, with an unchanging complexion, +dissented from her in nothing, and was heard three +times to say, "Yes, ma'am."She listened to her praise +of Lucy with only moving from one chair to another, +and when Mrs. Jennings talked of Edward's affection, +it cost her only a spasm in her throat.Such advances +towards heroism in her sister, made Elinor feel equal +to any thing herself. +The next morning brought a farther trial of it, +in a visit from their brother, who came with a most serious +aspect to talk over the dreadful affair, and bring them +news of his wife. +"You have heard, I suppose," said he with great solemnity, +as soon as he was seated, "of the very shocking discovery +that took place under our roof yesterday." +They all looked their assent it seemed too awful +a moment for speech. +"Your sister," he continued, "has suffered dreadfully. +Mrs. Ferrars tooin short it has been a scene of such +complicated distressbut I will hope that the storm may +be weathered without our being any of us quite overcome. +Poor Fanny she was in hysterics all yesterday. +But I would not alarm you too much. Donavan says there +is nothing materially to be apprehended her constitution +is a good one, and her resolution equal to any thing. +She has borne it all, with the fortitude of an angel +She says she never shall think well of anybody again +and one cannot wonder at it, after being so deceived +meeting with such ingratitude, where so much kindness +had been shewn, so much confidence had been placed It +was quite out of the benevolence of her heart, that she +had asked these young women to her house merely because +she thought they deserved some attention, were harmless, +wellbehaved girls, and would be pleasant companions +for otherwise we both wished very much to have invited you +and Marianne to be with us, while your kind friend there, +was attending her daughter. And now to be so rewarded +'I wish, with all my heart,' says poor Fanny in her +affectionate way, 'that we had asked your sisters instead +of them.'" +Here he stopped to be thanked which being done, +he went on. +"What poor Mrs. Ferrars suffered, when first Fanny +broke it to her, is not to be described. While she with +the truest affection had been planning a most eligible +connection for him, was it to be supposed that he could +be all the time secretly engaged to another personsuch +a suspicion could never have entered her head If she +suspected ANY prepossession elsewhere, it could not be +in THAT quarter. 'THERE, to be sure,' said she, 'I might +have thought myself safe.' She was quite in an agony. +We consulted together, however, as to what should be done, +and at last she determined to send for Edward. +He came. But I am sorry to relate what ensued. +All that Mrs. Ferrars could say to make him put an end +to the engagement, assisted too as you may well suppose +by my arguments, and Fanny's entreaties, was of +no avail. Duty, affection, every thing was disregarded. +I never thought Edward so stubborn, so unfeeling before. +His mother explained to him her liberal designs, in case +of his marrying Miss Morton told him she would settle on +him the Norfolk estate, which, clear of landtax, brings +in a good thousand ayear offered even, when matters +grew desperate, to make it twelve hundred and in opposition +to this, if he still persisted in this low connection, +represented to him the certain penury that must attend +the match. His own two thousand pounds she protested +should be his all she would never see him again and so far +would she be from affording him the smallest assistance, +that if he were to enter into any profession with a view +of better support, she would do all in her power to prevent +him advancing in it." +Here Marianne, in an ecstasy of indignation, +clapped her hands together, and cried, "Gracious God +can this be possible" +"Well may you wonder, Marianne," replied her brother, +"at the obstinacy which could resist such arguments as these. +Your exclamation is very natural." +Marianne was going to retort, but she remembered +her promises, and forbore. +"All this, however," he continued, "was urged in vain. +Edward said very little but what he did say, was in +the most determined manner. Nothing should prevail on +him to give up his engagement. He would stand to it, +cost him what it might." +"Then," cried Mrs. Jennings with blunt sincerity, +no longer able to be silent, "he has acted like an honest +man I beg your pardon, Mr. Dashwood, but if he had +done otherwise, I should have thought him a rascal. +I have some little concern in the business, as well +as yourself, for Lucy Steele is my cousin, and I believe +there is not a better kind of girl in the world, nor one +who more deserves a good husband." +John Dashwood was greatly astonished but his nature +was calm, not open to provocation, and he never wished +to offend anybody, especially anybody of good fortune. +He therefore replied, without any resentment, +"I would by no means speak disrespectfully of any +relation of yours, madam. Miss Lucy Steele is, I dare say, +a very deserving young woman, but in the present case +you know, the connection must be impossible. +And to have entered into a secret engagement with a +young man under her uncle's care, the son of a woman +especially of such very large fortune as Mrs. Ferrars, +is perhaps, altogether a little extraordinary. In short, +I do not mean to reflect upon the behaviour of any person +whom you have a regard for, Mrs. Jennings. We all wish +her extremely happy and Mrs. Ferrars's conduct throughout +the whole, has been such as every conscientious, good mother, +in like circumstances, would adopt. It has been dignified +and liberal. Edward has drawn his own lot, and I fear +it will be a bad one." +Marianne sighed out her similar apprehension +and Elinor's heart wrung for the feelings of Edward, +while braving his mother's threats, for a woman who could +not reward him. +"Well, sir," said Mrs. Jennings, "and how did it end?" +"I am sorry to say, ma'am, in a most unhappy rupture +Edward is dismissed for ever from his mother's notice. +He left her house yesterday, but where he is gone, or whether +he is still in town, I do not know for WE of course can +make no inquiry." +"Poor young manand what is to become of him?" +"What, indeed, ma'am It is a melancholy consideration. +Born to the prospect of such affluence I cannot conceive +a situation more deplorable. The interest of two thousand +poundshow can a man live on it?and when to that is added +the recollection, that he might, but for his own folly, +within three months have been in the receipt of two +thousand, five hundred ayear for Miss Morton has +thirty thousand pounds, I cannot picture to myself +a more wretched condition. We must all feel for him +and the more so, because it is totally out of our power +to assist him." +"Poor young man" cried Mrs. Jennings, "I am sure +he should be very welcome to bed and board at my house +and so I would tell him if I could see him. It is not fit +that he should be living about at his own charge now, +at lodgings and taverns." +Elinor's heart thanked her for such kindness towards Edward, +though she could not forbear smiling at the form of it. +"If he would only have done as well by himself," +said John Dashwood, "as all his friends were disposed to do +by him, he might now have been in his proper situation, +and would have wanted for nothing. But as it is, it must +be out of anybody's power to assist him. And there is one +thing more preparing against him, which must be worse than +allhis mother has determined, with a very natural kind +of spirit, to settle THAT estate upon Robert immediately, +which might have been Edward's, on proper conditions. +I left her this morning with her lawyer, talking over +the business." +"Well" said Mrs. Jennings, "that is HER revenge. +Everybody has a way of their own. But I don't think mine +would be, to make one son independent, because another had +plagued me." +Marianne got up and walked about the room. +"Can anything be more galling to the spirit of a man," +continued John, "than to see his younger brother in +possession of an estate which might have been his own? +Poor Edward I feel for him sincerely." +A few minutes more spent in the same kind of effusion, +concluded his visit and with repeated assurances to his +sisters that he really believed there was no material +danger in Fanny's indisposition, and that they need +not therefore be very uneasy about it, he went away +leaving the three ladies unanimous in their sentiments +on the present occasion, as far at least as it regarded +Mrs. Ferrars's conduct, the Dashwoods', and Edward's. +Marianne's indignation burst forth as soon as he +quitted the room and as her vehemence made reserve +impossible in Elinor, and unnecessary in Mrs. Jennings, +they all joined in a very spirited critique upon the party. +CHAPTER +Mrs. Jennings was very warm in her praise of Edward's +conduct, but only Elinor and Marianne understood its +true merit. THEY only knew how little he had had to tempt +him to be disobedient, and how small was the consolation, +beyond the consciousness of doing right, that could +remain to him in the loss of friends and fortune. +Elinor gloried in his integrity and Marianne forgave all +his offences in compassion for his punishment. But though +confidence between them was, by this public discovery, +restored to its proper state, it was not a subject on +which either of them were fond of dwelling when alone. +Elinor avoided it upon principle, as tending to fix still +more upon her thoughts, by the too warm, too positive +assurances of Marianne, that belief of Edward's continued +affection for herself which she rather wished to do away +and Marianne's courage soon failed her, in trying +to converse upon a topic which always left her more +dissatisfied with herself than ever, by the comparison +it necessarily produced between Elinor's conduct and her own. +She felt all the force of that comparison but not +as her sister had hoped, to urge her to exertion now +she felt it with all the pain of continual selfreproach, +regretted most bitterly that she had never exerted +herself before but it brought only the torture of penitence, +without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened +that she still fancied present exertion impossible, +and therefore it only dispirited her more. +Nothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, +of affairs in Harley Street, or Bartlett's Buildings. +But though so much of the matter was known to them already, +that Mrs. Jennings might have had enough to do in spreading +that knowledge farther, without seeking after more, +she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort +and inquiry to her cousins as soon as she could +and nothing but the hindrance of more visitors than usual, +had prevented her going to them within that time. +The third day succeeding their knowledge of the +particulars, was so fine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw +many to Kensington Gardens, though it was only the second +week in March. Mrs. Jennings and Elinor were of the number +but Marianne, who knew that the Willoughbys were again +in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, +chose rather to stay at home, than venture into so public +a place. +An intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Jennings joined +them soon after they entered the Gardens, and Elinor was +not sorry that by her continuing with them, and engaging +all Mrs. Jennings's conversation, she was herself left +to quiet reflection. She saw nothing of the Willoughbys, +nothing of Edward, and for some time nothing of anybody +who could by any chance whether grave or gay, be interesting +to her. But at last she found herself with some surprise, +accosted by Miss Steele, who, though looking rather shy, +expressed great satisfaction in meeting them, and on receiving +encouragement from the particular kindness of Mrs. Jennings, +left her own party for a short time, to join their's. +Mrs. Jennings immediately whispered to Elinor, +"Get it all out of her, my dear. She will tell you +any thing if you ask. You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke." +It was lucky, however, for Mrs. Jennings's curiosity +and Elinor's too, that she would tell any thing WITHOUT +being asked for nothing would otherwise have been learnt. +"I am so glad to meet you" said Miss Steele, +taking her familiarly by the arm"for I wanted to see you +of all things in the world." And then lowering her voice, +"I suppose Mrs. Jennings has heard all about it. +Is she angry?" +"Not at all, I believe, with you." +"That is a good thing. And Lady Middleton, is SHE angry?" +"I cannot suppose it possible that she should." +"I am monstrous glad of it. Good gracious I have +had such a time of it I never saw Lucy in such a rage +in my life. She vowed at first she would never trim me +up a new bonnet, nor do any thing else for me again, +so long as she lived but now she is quite come to, +and we are as good friends as ever. Look, she made me +this bow to my hat, and put in the feather last night. +There now, YOU are going to laugh at me too. But why +should not I wear pink ribbons? I do not care if it IS +the Doctor's favourite colour. I am sure, for my part, +I should never have known he DID like it better than +any other colour, if he had not happened to say so. +My cousins have been so plaguing me I declare sometimes +I do not know which way to look before them." +She had wandered away to a subject on which Elinor +had nothing to say, and therefore soon judged it expedient +to find her way back again to the first. +"Well, but Miss Dashwood," speaking triumphantly, +"people may say what they chuse about Mr. Ferrars's +declaring he would not have Lucy, for it is no such thing +I can tell you and it is quite a shame for such illnatured +reports to be spread abroad. Whatever Lucy might think +about it herself, you know, it was no business of other +people to set it down for certain." +"I never heard any thing of the kind hinted at before, +I assure you," said Elinor. +"Oh, did not you? But it WAS said, I know, very well, +and by more than one for Miss Godby told Miss Sparks, +that nobody in their senses could expect Mr. Ferrars +to give up a woman like Miss Morton, with thirty thousand +pounds to her fortune, for Lucy Steele that had +nothing at all and I had it from Miss Sparks myself. +And besides that, my cousin Richard said himself, +that when it came to the point he was afraid Mr. Ferrars +would be off and when Edward did not come near us +for three days, I could not tell what to think myself +and I believe in my heart Lucy gave it up all for lost +for we came away from your brother's Wednesday, +and we saw nothing of him not all Thursday, Friday, +and Saturday, and did not know what was become of him. +Once Lucy thought to write to him, but then her spirits +rose against that. However this morning he came just +as we came home from church and then it all came out, +how he had been sent for Wednesday to Harley Street, +and been talked to by his mother and all of them, +and how he had declared before them all that he loved +nobody but Lucy, and nobody but Lucy would he have. +And how he had been so worried by what passed, +that as soon as he had went away from his mother's house, +he had got upon his horse, and rid into the country, +some where or other and how he had stayed about at an inn +all Thursday and Friday, on purpose to get the better +of it. And after thinking it all over and over again, +he said, it seemed to him as if, now he had no fortune, +and no nothing at all, it would be quite unkind to keep +her on to the engagement, because it must be for her loss, +for he had nothing but two thousand pounds, and no hope +of any thing else and if he was to go into orders, +as he had some thoughts, he could get nothing but a curacy, +and how was they to live upon that?He could not bear +to think of her doing no better, and so he begged, +if she had the least mind for it, to put an end to the +matter directly, and leave him shift for himself. +I heard him say all this as plain as could possibly be. +And it was entirely for HER sake, and upon HER account, +that he said a word about being off, and not upon his own. +I will take my oath he never dropt a syllable of being +tired of her, or of wishing to marry Miss Morton, or any +thing like it. But, to be sure, Lucy would not give +ear to such kind of talking so she told him directly +with a great deal about sweet and love, you know, +and all thatOh, la one can't repeat such kind of things +you knowshe told him directly, she had not the least +mind in the world to be off, for she could live with him +upon a trifle, and how little so ever he might have, +she should be very glad to have it all, you know, +or something of the kind. So then he was monstrous happy, +and talked on some time about what they should do, +and they agreed he should take orders directly, +and they must wait to be married till he got a living. +And just then I could not hear any more, for my cousin +called from below to tell me Mrs. Richardson was come in +her coach, and would take one of us to Kensington Gardens +so I was forced to go into the room and interrupt them, +to ask Lucy if she would like to go, but she did not +care to leave Edward so I just run up stairs and put +on a pair of silk stockings and came off with the Richardsons." +"I do not understand what you mean by interrupting them," +said Elinor "you were all in the same room together, +were not you?" +"No, indeed, not us. La Miss Dashwood, do you +think people make love when any body else is by? Oh, +for shameTo be sure you must know better than that. +Laughing affectedly.No, no they were shut up in the +drawingroom together, and all I heard was only by listening +at the door." +"How" cried Elinor "have you been repeating to me +what you only learnt yourself by listening at the door? +I am sorry I did not know it before for I certainly +would not have suffered you to give me particulars of a +conversation which you ought not to have known yourself. +How could you behave so unfairly by your sister?" +"Oh, la there is nothing in THAT. I only stood at +the door, and heard what I could. And I am sure Lucy would +have done just the same by me for a year or two back, +when Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets together, +she never made any bones of hiding in a closet, or behind +a chimneyboard, on purpose to hear what we said." +Elinor tried to talk of something else but Miss +Steele could not be kept beyond a couple of minutes, +from what was uppermost in her mind. +"Edward talks of going to Oxford soon," said she +"but now he is lodging at No. , Pall Mall. What an +illnatured woman his mother is, an't she? And your +brother and sister were not very kind However, +I shan't say anything against them to YOU and to be sure +they did send us home in their own chariot, which +was more than I looked for. And for my part, I was all +in a fright for fear your sister should ask us for the +huswifes she had gave us a day or two before but, however, +nothing was said about them, and I took care to keep mine +out of sight. Edward have got some business at Oxford, +he says so he must go there for a time and after THAT, +as soon as he can light upon a Bishop, he will be ordained. +I wonder what curacy he will getGood gracious +giggling as she spoke I'd lay my life I know what +my cousins will say, when they hear of it. They will +tell me I should write to the Doctor, to get Edward +the curacy of his new living. I know they will but I am +sure I would not do such a thing for all the world. +'La' I shall say directly, 'I wonder how you could think +of such a thing? I write to the Doctor, indeed'" +"Well," said Elinor, "it is a comfort to be prepared +against the worst. You have got your answer ready." +Miss Steele was going to reply on the same subject, +but the approach of her own party made another more necessary. +"Oh, la here come the Richardsons. I had a vast deal +more to say to you, but I must not stay away from them not +any longer. I assure you they are very genteel people. +He makes a monstrous deal of money, and they keep their +own coach. I have not time to speak to Mrs. Jennings about +it myself, but pray tell her I am quite happy to hear she +is not in anger against us, and Lady Middleton the same +and if anything should happen to take you and your +sister away, and Mrs. Jennings should want company, +I am sure we should be very glad to come and stay with her +for as long a time as she likes. I suppose Lady Middleton +won't ask us any more this bout. Goodby I am sorry +Miss Marianne was not here. Remember me kindly to her. +La if you have not got your spotted muslin onI wonder +you was not afraid of its being torn." +Such was her parting concern for after this, she had +time only to pay her farewell compliments to Mrs. Jennings, +before her company was claimed by Mrs. Richardson +and Elinor was left in possession of knowledge which +might feed her powers of reflection some time, though she +had learnt very little more than what had been already +foreseen and foreplanned in her own mind. Edward's marriage +with Lucy was as firmly determined on, and the time +of its taking place remained as absolutely uncertain, +as she had concluded it would beevery thing depended, +exactly after her expectation, on his getting that preferment, +of which, at present, there seemed not the smallest chance. +As soon as they returned to the carriage, +Mrs. Jennings was eager for information but as Elinor +wished to spread as little as possible intelligence +that had in the first place been so unfairly obtained, +she confined herself to the brief repetition of such +simple particulars, as she felt assured that Lucy, +for the sake of her own consequence, would choose +to have known. The continuance of their engagement, +and the means that were able to be taken for promoting +its end, was all her communication and this produced +from Mrs. Jennings the following natural remark. +"Wait for his having a livingay, we all know how +THAT will endthey will wait a twelvemonth, and finding +no good comes of it, will set down upon a curacy of fifty +pounds ayear, with the interest of his two thousand pounds, +and what little matter Mr. Steele and Mr. Pratt can +give her.Then they will have a child every year and +Lord help 'em how poor they will beI must see +what I can give them towards furnishing their house. +Two maids and two men, indeedas I talked of t'other +day.No, no, they must get a stout girl of all works. +Betty's sister would never do for them NOW." +The next morning brought Elinor a letter by the +twopenny post from Lucy herself. It was as follows +"Bartlett's Building, March. +"I hope my dear Miss Dashwood will excuse the +liberty I take of writing to her but I know your +friendship for me will make you pleased to hear such +a good account of myself and my dear Edward, after +all the troubles we have went through lately, +therefore will make no more apologies, but proceed +to say that, thank God though we have suffered +dreadfully, we are both quite well now, and as happy +as we must always be in one another's love. We have +had great trials, and great persecutions, but +however, at the same time, gratefully acknowledge +many friends, yourself not the least among them, +whose great kindness I shall always thankfully +remember, as will Edward too, who I have told of +it. I am sure you will be glad to hear, as likewise +dear Mrs. Jennings, I spent two happy hours with +him yesterday afternoon, he would not hear of our +parting, though earnestly did I, as I thought my +duty required, urge him to it for prudence sake, +and would have parted for ever on the spot, would +he consent to it but he said it should never be, +he did not regard his mother's anger, while he could +have my affections our prospects are not very +bright, to be sure, but we must wait, and hope for +the best he will be ordained shortly and should +it ever be in your power to recommend him to any +body that has a living to bestow, am very sure you +will not forget us, and dear Mrs. Jennings too, +trust she will speak a good word for us to Sir John, +or Mr. Palmer, or any friend that may be able to +assist us.Poor Anne was much to blame for what +she did, but she did it for the best, so I say +nothing hope Mrs. Jennings won't think it too much +trouble to give us a call, should she come this way +any morning, 'twould be a great kindness, and my +cousins would be proud to know her.My paper reminds +me to conclude and begging to be most gratefully +and respectfully remembered to her, and to Sir John, +and Lady Middleton, and the dear children, when you +chance to see them, and love to Miss Marianne, +"I am, c." +As soon as Elinor had finished it, she performed +what she concluded to be its writer's real design, +by placing it in the hands of Mrs. Jennings, who read it +aloud with many comments of satisfaction and praise. +"Very well indeedhow prettily she writesaye, +that was quite proper to let him be off if he would. +That was just like Lucy.Poor soul I wish I COULD get +him a living, with all my heart.She calls me dear +Mrs. Jennings, you see. She is a goodhearted girl +as ever lived.Very well upon my word. That sentence +is very prettily turned. Yes, yes, I will go and see her, +sure enough. How attentive she is, to think of every +bodyThank you, my dear, for shewing it me. It is +as pretty a letter as ever I saw, and does Lucy's head +and heart great credit." +CHAPTER +The Miss Dashwoods had now been rather more than +two months in town, and Marianne's impatience to be gone +increased every day. She sighed for the air, the liberty, +the quiet of the country and fancied that if any place +could give her ease, Barton must do it. Elinor was hardly +less anxious than herself for their removal, and only so much +less bent on its being effected immediately, as that she +was conscious of the difficulties of so long a journey, +which Marianne could not be brought to acknowledge. +She began, however, seriously to turn her thoughts towards +its accomplishment, and had already mentioned their wishes +to their kind hostess, who resisted them with all the +eloquence of her goodwill, when a plan was suggested, +which, though detaining them from home yet a few weeks +longer, appeared to Elinor altogether much more eligible +than any other. The Palmers were to remove to Cleveland +about the end of March, for the Easter holidays +and Mrs. Jennings, with both her friends, received a very +warm invitation from Charlotte to go with them. This would +not, in itself, have been sufficient for the delicacy of +Miss Dashwoodbut it was inforced with so much real +politeness by Mr. Palmer himself, as, joined to the very +great amendment of his manners towards them since her +sister had been known to be unhappy, induced her to accept +it with pleasure. +When she told Marianne what she had done, however, +her first reply was not very auspicious. +"Cleveland"she cried, with great agitation. +"No, I cannot go to Cleveland." +"You forget," said Elinor gently, "that its situation +is not...that it is not in the neighbourhood of..." +"But it is in Somersetshire.I cannot go +into Somersetshire.There, where I looked forward +to going...No, Elinor, you cannot expect me to go there." +Elinor would not argue upon the propriety of overcoming +such feelingsshe only endeavoured to counteract them by +working on othersrepresented it, therefore, as a measure +which would fix the time of her returning to that dear mother, +whom she so much wished to see, in a more eligible, +more comfortable manner, than any other plan could do, +and perhaps without any greater delay. From Cleveland, +which was within a few miles of Bristol, the distance to +Barton was not beyond one day, though a long day's journey +and their mother's servant might easily come there to attend +them down and as there could be no occasion of their +staying above a week at Cleveland, they might now be at +home in little more than three weeks' time. As Marianne's +affection for her mother was sincere, it must triumph +with little difficulty, over the imaginary evils she had started. +Mrs. Jennings was so far from being weary of her guest, +that she pressed them very earnestly to return with her again +from Cleveland. Elinor was grateful for the attention, +but it could not alter her design and their mother's +concurrence being readily gained, every thing relative +to their return was arranged as far as it could be +and Marianne found some relief in drawing up a statement +of the hours that were yet to divide her from Barton. +"Ah Colonel, I do not know what you and I shall +do without the Miss Dashwoods"was Mrs. Jennings's +address to him when he first called on her, after their +leaving her was settled"for they are quite resolved +upon going home from the Palmersand how forlorn we +shall be, when I come backLord we shall sit and gape +at one another as dull as two cats." +Perhaps Mrs. Jennings was in hopes, by this vigorous +sketch of their future ennui, to provoke him to make +that offer, which might give himself an escape from it +and if so, she had soon afterwards good reason to think +her object gained for, on Elinor's moving to the window +to take more expeditiously the dimensions of a print, +which she was going to copy for her friend, he followed +her to it with a look of particular meaning, and conversed +with her there for several minutes. The effect of his +discourse on the lady too, could not escape her observation, +for though she was too honorable to listen, and had even +changed her seat, on purpose that she might NOT hear, +to one close by the piano forte on which Marianne +was playing, she could not keep herself from seeing +that Elinor changed colour, attended with agitation, +and was too intent on what he said to pursue her employment. +Still farther in confirmation of her hopes, in the interval +of Marianne's turning from one lesson to another, +some words of the Colonel's inevitably reached her ear, +in which he seemed to be apologising for the badness +of his house. This set the matter beyond a doubt. +She wondered, indeed, at his thinking it necessary +to do so but supposed it to be the proper etiquette. +What Elinor said in reply she could not distinguish, +but judged from the motion of her lips, that she did +not think THAT any material objectionand Mrs. Jennings +commended her in her heart for being so honest. +They then talked on for a few minutes longer without her +catching a syllable, when another lucky stop in Marianne's +performance brought her these words in the Colonel's calm voice, +"I am afraid it cannot take place very soon." +Astonished and shocked at so unloverlike a speech, +she was almost ready to cry out, "Lord what should +hinder it?"but checking her desire, confined herself +to this silent ejaculation. +"This is very strangesure he need not wait to be older." +This delay on the Colonel's side, however, did not +seem to offend or mortify his fair companion in the least, +for on their breaking up the conference soon afterwards, +and moving different ways, Mrs. Jennings very plainly heard +Elinor say, and with a voice which shewed her to feel what she said, +"I shall always think myself very much obliged to you." +Mrs. Jennings was delighted with her gratitude, +and only wondered that after hearing such a sentence, +the Colonel should be able to take leave of them, as he +immediately did, with the utmost sangfroid, and go away +without making her any replyShe had not thought her old +friend could have made so indifferent a suitor. +What had really passed between them was to this effect. +"I have heard," said he, with great compassion, +"of the injustice your friend Mr. Ferrars has suffered +from his family for if I understand the matter right, +he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering +in his engagement with a very deserving young woman. +Have I been rightly informed?Is it so?" +Elinor told him that it was. +"The cruelty, the impolitic cruelty,"he replied, +with great feeling,"of dividing, or attempting to divide, +two young people long attached to each other, is terrible. +Mrs. Ferrars does not know what she may be doingwhat +she may drive her son to. I have seen Mr. Ferrars two +or three times in Harley Street, and am much pleased +with him. He is not a young man with whom one can +be intimately acquainted in a short time, but I have +seen enough of him to wish him well for his own sake, +and as a friend of yours, I wish it still more. +I understand that he intends to take orders. Will you +be so good as to tell him that the living of Delaford, +now just vacant, as I am informed by this day's post, +is his, if he think it worth his acceptancebut THAT, +perhaps, so unfortunately circumstanced as he is now, +it may be nonsense to appear to doubt I only wish it +were more valuable. It is a rectory, but a small one +the late incumbent, I believe, did not make more than + L per annum, and though it is certainly capable +of improvement, I fear, not to such an amount as +to afford him a very comfortable income. Such as it is, +however, my pleasure in presenting him to it, +will be very great. Pray assure him of it." +Elinor's astonishment at this commission could +hardly have been greater, had the Colonel been really +making her an offer of his hand. The preferment, +which only two days before she had considered as hopeless +for Edward, was already provided to enable him to marry +and SHE, of all people in the world, was fixed on to +bestow itHer emotion was such as Mrs. Jennings had +attributed to a very different causebut whatever minor +feelings less pure, less pleasing, might have a share +in that emotion, her esteem for the general benevolence, +and her gratitude for the particular friendship, +which together prompted Colonel Brandon to this act, +were strongly felt, and warmly expressed. She thanked him +for it with all her heart, spoke of Edward's principles and +disposition with that praise which she knew them to deserve +and promised to undertake the commission with pleasure, +if it were really his wish to put off so agreeable an office +to another. But at the same time, she could not help +thinking that no one could so well perform it as himself. +It was an office in short, from which, unwilling to give +Edward the pain of receiving an obligation from HER, +she would have been very glad to be spared herself +but Colonel Brandon, on motives of equal delicacy, +declining it likewise, still seemed so desirous of its being +given through her means, that she would not on any account +make farther opposition. Edward, she believed, was still in +town, +and fortunately she had heard his address from Miss Steele. +She could undertake therefore to inform him of it, +in the course of the day. After this had been settled, +Colonel Brandon began to talk of his own advantage +in securing so respectable and agreeable a neighbour, +and THEN it was that he mentioned with regret, that the +house was small and indifferentan evil which Elinor, +as Mrs. Jennings had supposed her to do, made very light of, +at least as far as regarded its size. +"The smallness of the house," said she, +"I cannot imagine any inconvenience to them, +for it will be in proportion to their family and income." +By which the Colonel was surprised to find that SHE +was considering Mr. Ferrars's marriage as the certain +consequence of the presentation for he did not suppose it +possible that Delaford living could supply such an income, +as anybody in his style of life would venture to settle on +and he said so. +"This little rectory CAN do no more than make Mr. Ferrars +comfortable as a bachelor it cannot enable him to marry. +I am sorry to say that my patronage ends with this +and my interest is hardly more extensive. If, however, +by an unforeseen chance it should be in my power to serve +him farther, I must think very differently of him +from what I now do, if I am not as ready to be useful +to him then as I sincerely wish I could be at present. +What I am now doing indeed, seems nothing at all, +since it can advance him so little towards what must +be his principal, his only object of happiness. +His marriage must still be a distant goodat least, +I am afraid it cannot take place very soon." +Such was the sentence which, when misunderstood, +so justly offended the delicate feelings of Mrs. Jennings +but after this narration of what really passed between +Colonel Brandon and Elinor, while they stood at the window, +the gratitude expressed by the latter on their parting, may +perhaps appear in general, not less reasonably excited, +nor less properly worded than if it had arisen from +an offer of marriage. +CHAPTER +"Well, Miss Dashwood," said Mrs. Jennings, +sagaciously smiling, as soon as the gentleman had withdrawn, +"I do not ask you what the Colonel has been saying to you +for though, upon my honour, I TRIED to keep out of hearing, +I could not help catching enough to understand his business. +And I assure you I never was better pleased in my life, +and I wish you joy of it with all my heart." +"Thank you, ma'am," said Elinor. "It is a matter +of great joy to me and I feel the goodness of Colonel +Brandon most sensibly. There are not many men who would +act as he has done. Few people who have so compassionate +a heart I never was more astonished in my life." +"Lord my dear, you are very modest. I an't the least +astonished at it in the world, for I have often thought +of late, there was nothing more likely to happen." +"You judged from your knowledge of the Colonel's +general benevolence but at least you could not foresee +that the opportunity would so very soon occur." +"Opportunity" repeated Mrs. Jennings"Oh as to that, +when a man has once made up his mind to such a thing, +somehow or other he will soon find an opportunity. +Well, my dear, I wish you joy of it again and again +and if ever there was a happy couple in the world, I think +I shall soon know where to look for them." +"You mean to go to Delaford after them I suppose," +said Elinor, with a faint smile. +"Aye, my dear, that I do, indeed. And as to the house +being a bad one, I do not know what the Colonel would be at, +for it is as good a one as ever I saw." +"He spoke of its being out of repair." +"Well, and whose fault is that? why don't he repair it? +who should do it but himself?" +They were interrupted by the servant's coming in to +announce the carriage being at the door and Mrs. Jennings +immediately preparing to go, said, +"Well, my dear, I must be gone before I have had half +my talk out. But, however, we may have it all over in +the evening for we shall be quite alone. I do not ask +you to go with me, for I dare say your mind is too full +of the matter to care for company and besides, you must +long to tell your sister all about it." +Marianne had left the room before the conversation began. +"Certainly, ma'am, I shall tell Marianne of it +but I shall not mention it at present to any body else." +"Oh very well," said Mrs. Jennings rather disappointed. +"Then you would not have me tell it to Lucy, for I think +of going as far as Holborn today." +"No, ma'am, not even Lucy if you please. +One day's delay will not be very material and till I +have written to Mr. Ferrars, I think it ought not to be +mentioned to any body else. I shall do THAT directly. +It is of importance that no time should be lost with him, +for he will of course have much to do relative to +his ordination." +This speech at first puzzled Mrs. Jennings exceedingly. +Why Mr. Ferrars was to have been written to about it +in such a hurry, she could not immediately comprehend. +A few moments' reflection, however, produced a very happy idea, +and she exclaimed +"Oh, hoI understand you. Mr. Ferrars is to be +the man. Well, so much the better for him. Ay, to be sure, +he must be ordained in readiness and I am very glad +to find things are so forward between you. But, my dear, +is not this rather out of character? Should not the Colonel +write himself?sure, he is the proper person." +Elinor did not quite understand the beginning of +Mrs. Jennings's speech, neither did she think it worth +inquiring into and therefore only replied to its conclusion. +"Colonel Brandon is so delicate a man, that he rather +wished any one to announce his intentions to Mr. Ferrars +than himself." +"And so YOU are forced to do it. Well THAT is an odd +kind of delicacy However, I will not disturb you seeing +her preparing to write. You know your own concerns best. +So goodby, my dear. I have not heard of any thing to +please me so well since Charlotte was brought to bed." +And away she went but returning again in a moment, +"I have just been thinking of Betty's sister, my dear. +I should be very glad to get her so good a mistress. +But whether she would do for a lady's maid, I am sure I +can't tell. She is an excellent housemaid, and works +very well at her needle. However, you will think of all +that at your leisure." +"Certainly, ma'am," replied Elinor, not hearing +much of what she said, and more anxious to be alone, +than to be mistress of the subject. +How she should beginhow she should express +herself in her note to Edward, was now all her concern. +The particular circumstances between them made +a difficulty of that which to any other person would +have been the easiest thing in the world but she +equally feared to say too much or too little, and sat +deliberating over her paper, with the pen in her hand, +till broken in on by the entrance of Edward himself. +He had met Mrs. Jennings at the door in her way to +the carriage, as he came to leave his farewell card and she, +after apologising for not returning herself, had obliged +him to enter, by saying that Miss Dashwood was above, +and wanted to speak with him on very particular business. +Elinor had just been congratulating herself, +in the midst of her perplexity, that however difficult it +might be to express herself properly by letter, it was +at least preferable to giving the information by word +of mouth, when her visitor entered, to force her upon this +greatest exertion of all. Her astonishment and confusion +were very great on his so sudden appearance. She had +not seen him before since his engagement became public, +and therefore not since his knowing her to be acquainted +with it which, with the consciousness of what she +had been thinking of, and what she had to tell him, +made her feel particularly uncomfortable for some minutes. +He too was much distressed and they sat down together +in a most promising state of embarrassment.Whether he +had asked her pardon for his intrusion on first coming +into the room, he could not recollect but determining +to be on the safe side, he made his apology in form +as soon as he could say any thing, after taking a chair. +"Mrs. Jennings told me," said he, "that you wished +to speak with me, at least I understood her soor I +certainly should not have intruded on you in such a manner +though at the same time, I should have been extremely +sorry to leave London without seeing you and your sister +especially as it will most likely be some timeit +is not probable that I should soon have the pleasure +of meeting you again. I go to Oxford tomorrow." +"You would not have gone, however," said Elinor, +recovering herself, and determined to get over what she +so much dreaded as soon as possible, "without receiving +our good wishes, even if we had not been able to give them +in person. Mrs. Jennings was quite right in what she said. +I have something of consequence to inform you of, +which I was on the point of communicating by paper. +I am charged with a most agreeable office breathing +rather faster than usual as she spoke. Colonel Brandon, +who was here only ten minutes ago, has desired me to say, +that understanding you mean to take orders, he has +great pleasure in offering you the living of Delaford +now just vacant, and only wishes it were more valuable. +Allow me to congratulate you on having so respectable +and welljudging a friend, and to join in his wish that +the livingit is about two hundred ayearwere much +more considerable, and such as might better enable you +toas might be more than a temporary accommodation to +yourselfsuch, in short, as might establish all your views +of happiness." +What Edward felt, as he could not say it himself, +it cannot be expected that any one else should say for him. +He LOOKED all the astonishment which such unexpected, +such unthoughtof information could not fail of exciting +but he said only these two words, +"Colonel Brandon" +"Yes," continued Elinor, gathering more resolution, +as some of the worst was over, "Colonel Brandon means +it as a testimony of his concern for what has lately +passedfor the cruel situation in which the unjustifiable +conduct of your family has placed youa concern +which I am sure Marianne, myself, and all your friends, +must share and likewise as a proof of his high esteem +for your general character, and his particular approbation +of your behaviour on the present occasion." +"Colonel Brandon give ME a livingCan it be possible?" +"The unkindness of your own relations has made you +astonished to find friendship any where." +"No," replied be, with sudden consciousness, "not to +find it in YOU for I cannot be ignorant that to you, +to your goodness, I owe it all.I feel itI would express +it if I couldbut, as you well know, I am no orator." +"You are very much mistaken. I do assure you +that you owe it entirely, at least almost entirely, +to your own merit, and Colonel Brandon's discernment +of it. I have had no hand in it. I did not even know, +till I understood his design, that the living was vacant +nor had it ever occurred to me that he might have +had such a living in his gift. As a friend of mine, +of my family, he may, perhapsindeed I know he HAS, +still greater pleasure in bestowing it but, upon my word, +you owe nothing to my solicitation." +Truth obliged her to acknowledge some small share +in the action, but she was at the same time so unwilling +to appear as the benefactress of Edward, that she acknowledged +it with hesitation which probably contributed to fix +that suspicion in his mind which had recently entered it. +For a short time he sat deep in thought, after Elinor had ceased +to speakat last, and as if it were rather an effort, he said, +"Colonel Brandon seems a man of great worth and respectability. +I have always heard him spoken of as such, and your brother +I know esteems him highly. He is undoubtedly a sensible man, +and in his manners perfectly the gentleman." +"Indeed," replied Elinor, "I believe that you will find him, +on farther acquaintance, all that you have heard him to be, +and as you will be such very near neighbours for I understand +the parsonage is almost close to the mansionhouse, +it is particularly important that he SHOULD be all this." +Edward made no answer but when she had turned +away her head, gave her a look so serious, so earnest, +so uncheerful, as seemed to say, that he might hereafter wish +the distance between the parsonage and the mansionhouse +much greater. +"Colonel Brandon, I think, lodges in St. James Street," +said he, soon afterwards, rising from his chair. +Elinor told him the number of the house. +"I must hurry away then, to give him those thanks +which you will not allow me to give YOU to assure him +that he has made me a veryan exceedingly happy man." +Elinor did not offer to detain him and they parted, +with a very earnest assurance on HER side of her unceasing +good wishes for his happiness in every change of situation +that might befall him on HIS, with rather an attempt to +return the same good will, than the power of expressing it. +"When I see him again," said Elinor to herself, +as the door shut him out, "I shall see him the husband +of Lucy." +And with this pleasing anticipation, she sat down +to reconsider the past, recall the words and endeavour +to comprehend all the feelings of Edward and, of course, +to reflect on her own with discontent. +When Mrs. Jennings came home, though she returned +from seeing people whom she had never seen before, +and of whom therefore she must have a great deal to say, +her mind was so much more occupied by the important secret +in her possession, than by anything else, that she +reverted to it again as soon as Elinor appeared. +"Well, my dear," she cried, "I sent you up to the +young man. Did not I do right?And I suppose you had +no great difficultyYou did not find him very unwilling +to accept your proposal?" +"No, ma'am THAT was not very likely." +"Well, and how soon will he be ready?For it seems +all to depend upon that." +"Really," said Elinor, "I know so little of these kind +of forms, that I can hardly even conjecture as to the time, +or the preparation necessary but I suppose two or three +months will complete his ordination." +"Two or three months" cried Mrs. Jennings "Lord my dear, +how calmly you talk of it and can the Colonel wait two +or three months Lord bless meI am sure it would put ME +quite out of patienceAnd though one would be very glad +to do a kindness by poor Mr. Ferrars, I do think it is +not worth while to wait two or three months for him. +Sure somebody else might be found that would do as well +somebody that is in orders already." +"My dear ma'am," said Elinor, "what can you be thinking of? +Why, Colonel Brandon's only object is to be of use to Mr. Ferrars." +"Lord bless you, my dearSure you do not mean to persuade +me that the Colonel only marries you for the sake of giving +ten guineas to Mr. Ferrars" +The deception could not continue after this +and an explanation immediately took place, by which both +gained considerable amusement for the moment, without any +material loss of happiness to either, for Mrs. Jennings +only exchanged one form of delight for another, and still +without forfeiting her expectation of the first. +"Aye, aye, the parsonage is but a small one," said she, +after the first ebullition of surprise and satisfaction +was over, "and very likely MAY be out of repair but to hear +a man apologising, as I thought, for a house that to my +knowledge has five sitting rooms on the groundfloor, and I +think the housekeeper told me could make up fifteen beds +and to you too, that had been used to live in Barton cottage +It seems quite ridiculous. But, my dear, we must +touch up the Colonel to do some thing to the parsonage, +and make it comfortable for them, before Lucy goes to it." +"But Colonel Brandon does not seem to have any idea +of the living's being enough to allow them to marry." +"The Colonel is a ninny, my dear because he has two +thousand ayear himself, he thinks that nobody else can marry +on less. Take my word for it, that, if I am alive, I shall +be paying a visit at Delaford Parsonage before Michaelmas +and I am sure I shan't go if Lucy an't there." +Elinor was quite of her opinion, as to the probability +of their not waiting for any thing more. +CHAPTER +Edward, having carried his thanks to Colonel Brandon, +proceeded with his happiness to Lucy and such was the +excess of it by the time he reached Bartlett's Buildings, +that she was able to assure Mrs. Jennings, who called +on her again the next day with her congratulations, +that she had never seen him in such spirits before +in her life. +Her own happiness, and her own spirits, were at +least very certain and she joined Mrs. Jennings most +heartily in her expectation of their being all comfortably +together in Delaford Parsonage before Michaelmas. +So far was she, at the same time, from any backwardness +to give Elinor that credit which Edward WOULD give her, +that she spoke of her friendship for them both with the most +grateful warmth, was ready to own all their obligation +to her, and openly declared that no exertion for their +good on Miss Dashwood's part, either present or future, +would ever surprise her, for she believed her capable of +doing any thing in the world for those she really valued. +As for Colonel Brandon, she was not only ready to worship +him as a saint, but was moreover truly anxious that +he should be treated as one in all worldly concerns +anxious that his tithes should be raised to the utmost +and scarcely resolved to avail herself, at Delaford, +as far as she possibly could, of his servants, his carriage, +his cows, and his poultry. +It was now above a week since John Dashwood had +called in Berkeley Street, and as since that time no notice +had been taken by them of his wife's indisposition, +beyond one verbal enquiry, Elinor began to feel it +necessary to pay her a visit.This was an obligation, +however, which not only opposed her own inclination, +but which had not the assistance of any encouragement +from her companions. Marianne, not contented with +absolutely refusing to go herself, was very urgent +to prevent her sister's going at all and Mrs. Jennings, +though her carriage was always at Elinor's service, +so very much disliked Mrs. John Dashwood, that not even her +curiosity to see how she looked after the late discovery, +nor her strong desire to affront her by taking Edward's part, +could overcome her unwillingness to be in her company again. +The consequence was, that Elinor set out by herself +to pay a visit, for which no one could really have +less inclination, and to run the risk of a teteatete +with a woman, whom neither of the others had so much +reason to dislike. +Mrs. Dashwood was denied but before the carriage could +turn from the house, her husband accidentally came out. +He expressed great pleasure in meeting Elinor, told her +that he had been just going to call in Berkeley Street, +and, assuring her that Fanny would be very glad to see her, +invited her to come in. +They walked up stairs in to the drawingroom.Nobody was there. +"Fanny is in her own room, I suppose," said he"I +will go to her presently, for I am sure she will not +have the least objection in the world to seeing YOU. +Very far from it, indeed. NOW especially there +cannot bebut however, you and Marianne were always +great favourites.Why would not Marianne come?" +Elinor made what excuse she could for her. +"I am not sorry to see you alone," he replied, +"for I have a good deal to say to you. This living +of Colonel Brandon'scan it be true?has he really given +it to Edward?I heard it yesterday by chance, and was +coming to you on purpose to enquire farther about it." +"It is perfectly true.Colonel Brandon has given +the living of Delaford to Edward." +"ReallyWell, this is very astonishingno +relationshipno connection between themand now +that livings fetch such a pricewhat was the value of this?" +"About two hundred a year." +"Very welland for the next presentation to a living +of that valuesupposing the late incumbent to have +been old and sickly, and likely to vacate it soonhe +might have got I dare sayfourteen hundred pounds. +And how came he not to have settled that matter before this +person's death?NOW indeed it would be too late to sell it, +but a man of Colonel Brandon's senseI wonder he should +be so improvident in a point of such common, such natural, +concernWell, I am convinced that there is a vast deal +of inconsistency in almost every human character. I suppose, +howeveron recollectionthat the case may probably be THIS. +Edward is only to hold the living till the person to whom +the Colonel has really sold the presentation, is old enough +to take it.Aye, aye, that is the fact, depend upon it." +Elinor contradicted it, however, very positively +and by relating that she had herself been employed +in conveying the offer from Colonel Brandon to Edward, +and, therefore, must understand the terms on which it +was given, obliged him to submit to her authority. +"It is truly astonishing"he cried, after hearing +what she said"what could be the Colonel's motive?" +"A very simple oneto be of use to Mr. Ferrars." +"Well, well whatever Colonel Brandon may be, +Edward is a very lucky man.You will not mention the matter +to Fanny, however, for though I have broke it to her, +and she bears it vastly well,she will not like to hear +it much talked of." +Elinor had some difficulty here to refrain from observing, +that she thought Fanny might have borne with composure, +an acquisition of wealth to her brother, by which neither +she nor her child could be possibly impoverished. +"Mrs. Ferrars," added he, lowering his voice to the +tone becoming so important a subject, "knows nothing +about it at present, and I believe it will be best to +keep it entirely concealed from her as long as may be. +When the marriage takes place, I fear she must hear +of it all." +"But why should such precaution be used?Though +it is not to be supposed that Mrs. Ferrars can have +the smallest satisfaction in knowing that her son has +money enough to live upon,for THAT must be quite +out of the question yet why, upon her late behaviour, +is she supposed to feel at all?She has done with her +son, she cast him off for ever, and has made all those +over whom she had any influence, cast him off likewise. +Surely, after doing so, she cannot be imagined liable +to any impression of sorrow or of joy on his account +she cannot be interested in any thing that befalls him. +She would not be so weak as to throw away the comfort +of a child, and yet retain the anxiety of a parent" +"Ah Elinor," said John, "your reasoning is very good, +but it is founded on ignorance of human nature. +When Edward's unhappy match takes place, depend upon it +his mother will feel as much as if she had never discarded him +and, therefore every circumstance that may accelerate that +dreadful event, must be concealed from her as much as possible. +Mrs. Ferrars can never forget that Edward is her son." +"You surprise me I should think it must nearly +have escaped her memory by THIS time." +"You wrong her exceedingly. Mrs. Ferrars is one +of the most affectionate mothers in the world." +Elinor was silent. +"We think NOW,"said Mr. Dashwood, after a short pause, +"of ROBERT'S marrying Miss Morton." +Elinor, smiling at the grave and decisive importance +of her brother's tone, calmly replied, +"The lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair." +"Choicehow do you mean?" +"I only mean that I suppose, from your manner +of speaking, it must be the same to Miss Morton whether +she marry Edward or Robert." +"Certainly, there can be no difference for Robert +will now to all intents and purposes be considered +as the eldest sonand as to any thing else, they are +both very agreeable young men I do not know that one +is superior to the other." +Elinor said no more, and John was also for a short +time silent.His reflections ended thus. +"Of ONE thing, my dear sister," kindly taking her hand, +and speaking in an awful whisper,"I may assure you +and I WILL do it, because I know it must gratify you. +I have good reason to thinkindeed I have it from the +best authority, or I should not repeat it, for otherwise +it would be very wrong to say any thing about itbut +I have it from the very best authoritynot that I ever +precisely heard Mrs. Ferrars say it herselfbut her +daughter DID, and I have it from herThat in short, +whatever objections there might be against a certaina +certain connectionyou understand meit would have been +far preferable to her, it would not have given her half +the vexation that THIS does. I was exceedingly pleased +to hear that Mrs. Ferrars considered it in that light +a very gratifying circumstance you know to us all. +'It would have been beyond comparison,' she said, 'the least +evil of the two, and she would be glad to compound NOW +for nothing worse.' But however, all that is quite out +of the questionnot to be thought of or mentioned +as to any attachment you knowit never could beall +that is gone by. But I thought I would just tell you +of this, because I knew how much it must please you. +Not that you have any reason to regret, my dear Elinor. There +is no doubt of your doing exceedingly wellquite as well, +or better, perhaps, all things considered. Has Colonel +Brandon been with you lately?" +Elinor had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity, +and raise her selfimportance, to agitate her nerves +and fill her mindand she was therefore glad to be +spared from the necessity of saying much in reply herself, +and from the danger of hearing any thing more from +her brother, by the entrance of Mr. Robert Ferrars. +After a few moments' chat, John Dashwood, recollecting that +Fanny was yet uninformed of her sister's being there, +quitted the room in quest of her and Elinor was left +to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the +gay unconcern, the happy selfcomplacency of his manner +while enjoying so unfair a division of his mother's love +and liberality, to the prejudice of his banished brother, +earned only by his own dissipated course of life, and that +brother's integrity, was confirming her most unfavourable +opinion of his head and heart. +They had scarcely been two minutes by themselves, +before he began to speak of Edward for he, too, had heard +of the living, and was very inquisitive on the subject. +Elinor repeated the particulars of it, as she had given them +to John and their effect on Robert, though very different, +was not less striking than it had been on HIM. He laughed +most immoderately. The idea of Edward's being a clergyman, +and living in a small parsonagehouse, diverted him +beyond measureand when to that was added the fanciful +imagery of Edward reading prayers in a white surplice, +and publishing the banns of marriage between John Smith and +Mary Brown, he could conceive nothing more ridiculous. +Elinor, while she waited in silence and immovable +gravity, the conclusion of such folly, could not restrain +her eyes from being fixed on him with a look that spoke +all the contempt it excited. It was a look, however, +very well bestowed, for it relieved her own feelings, and gave +no intelligence to him. He was recalled from wit to wisdom, +not by any reproof of her's, but by his own sensibility. +"We may treat it as a joke," said he, at last, +recovering from the affected laugh which had considerably +lengthened out the genuine gaiety of the moment"but, upon +my soul, it is a most serious business. Poor Edward +he is ruined for ever. I am extremely sorry for it +for I know him to be a very goodhearted creature as +wellmeaning a fellow perhaps, as any in the world. +You must not judge of him, Miss Dashwood, from YOUR +slight acquaintance.Poor EdwardHis manners are certainly +not the happiest in nature.But we are not all born, +you know, with the same powers,the same address. +Poor fellowto see him in a circle of strangers +to be sure it was pitiable enoughbut upon my soul, +I believe he has as good a heart as any in the kingdom +and I declare and protest to you I never was so shocked in my +life, as when it all burst forth. I could not believe it. +My mother was the first person who told me of it +and I, feeling myself called on to act with resolution, +immediately said to her, 'My dear madam, I do not know +what you may intend to do on the occasion, but as for myself, +I must say, that if Edward does marry this young woman, +I never will see him again.' That was what I said immediately. +I was most uncommonly shocked, indeedPoor Edwardhe has +done for himself completelyshut himself out for ever from +all decent societybut, as I directly said to my mother, +I am not in the least surprised at it from his style +of education, it was always to be expected. My poor mother +was half frantic." +"Have you ever seen the lady?" +"Yes once, while she was staying in this house, +I happened to drop in for ten minutes and I saw +quite enough of her. The merest awkward country girl, +without style, or elegance, and almost without beauty. +I remember her perfectly. Just the kind of girl I +should suppose likely to captivate poor Edward. +I offered immediately, as soon as my mother related +the affair to me, to talk to him myself, and dissuade +him from the match but it was too late THEN, I found, +to do any thing, for unluckily, I was not in the way +at first, and knew nothing of it till after the breach +had taken place, when it was not for me, you know, +to interfere. But had I been informed of it a few +hours earlierI think it is most probablethat something +might have been hit on. I certainly should have represented +it to Edward in a very strong light. 'My dear fellow,' +I should have said, 'consider what you are doing. +You are making a most disgraceful connection, and such a one +as your family are unanimous in disapproving.' I cannot +help thinking, in short, that means might have been found. +But now it is all too late. He must be starved, you know +that is certain absolutely starved." +He had just settled this point with great composure, +when the entrance of Mrs. John Dashwood put an end to the +subject. +But though SHE never spoke of it out of her own family, +Elinor could see its influence on her mind, in the something +like confusion of countenance with which she entered, +and an attempt at cordiality in her behaviour to herself. +She even proceeded so far as to be concerned to find +that Elinor and her sister were so soon to leave town, +as she had hoped to see more of theman exertion +in which her husband, who attended her into the room, +and hung enamoured over her accents, seemed to distinguish +every thing that was most affectionate and graceful. +CHAPTER +One other short call in Harley Street, in which Elinor +received her brother's congratulations on their travelling +so far towards Barton without any expense, and on Colonel +Brandon's being to follow them to Cleveland in a day or two, +completed the intercourse of the brother and sisters +in townand a faint invitation from Fanny, to come +to Norland whenever it should happen to be in their way, +which of all things was the most unlikely to occur, +with a more warm, though less public, assurance, from John +to Elinor, of the promptitude with which he should come +to see her at Delaford, was all that foretold any meeting +in the country. +It amused her to observe that all her friends seemed +determined to send her to Delaforda place, in which, +of all others, she would now least chuse to visit, +or wish to reside for not only was it considered as +her future home by her brother and Mrs. Jennings, but even Lucy, +when they parted, gave her a pressing invitation to visit her there. +Very early in April, and tolerably early in the day, +the two parties from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set +out from their respective homes, to meet, by appointment, +on the road. For the convenience of Charlotte and her child, +they were to be more than two days on their journey, +and Mr. Palmer, travelling more expeditiously with Colonel Brandon, +was to join them at Cleveland soon after their arrival. +Marianne, few as had been her hours of comfort +in London, and eager as she had long been to quit it, +could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu to +the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed +those hopes, and that confidence, in Willoughby, +which were now extinguished for ever, without great pain. +Nor could she leave the place in which Willoughby remained, +busy in new engagements, and new schemes, in which SHE +could have no share, without shedding many tears. +Elinor's satisfaction, at the moment of removal, +was more positive. She had no such object for her lingering +thoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whom +it would give her a moment's regret to be divided for ever, +she was pleased to be free herself from the persecution +of Lucy's friendship, she was grateful for bringing +her sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, +and she looked forward with hope to what a few months +of tranquility at Barton might do towards restoring +Marianne's peace of mind, and confirming her own. +Their journey was safely performed. The second +day brought them into the cherished, or the prohibited, +county of Somerset, for as such was it dwelt on by turns +in Marianne's imagination and in the forenoon of the third +they drove up to Cleveland. +Cleveland was a spacious, modernbuilt house, +situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the +pleasuregrounds were tolerably extensive and like +every other place of the same degree of importance, +it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, +a road of smooth gravel winding round a plantation, +led to the front, the lawn was dotted over with timber, +the house itself was under the guardianship of the fir, +the mountainash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of +them altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, +shut out the offices. +Marianne entered the house with a heart swelling +with emotion from the consciousness of being only eighty +miles from Barton, and not thirty from Combe Magna +and before she had been five minutes within its walls, +while the others were busily helping Charlotte to show +her child to the housekeeper, she quitted it again, +stealing away through the winding shrubberies, now just +beginning to be in beauty, to gain a distant eminence +where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering over +a wide tract of country to the southeast, could fondly +rest on the farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, +and fancy that from their summits Combe Magna might be seen. +In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, +she rejoiced in tears of agony to be at Cleveland +and as she returned by a different circuit to the house, +feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, +of wandering from place to place in free and luxurious solitude, +she resolved to spend almost every hour of every day +while she remained with the Palmers, in the indulgence of +such solitary rambles. +She returned just in time to join the others +as they quitted the house, on an excursion through its +more immediate premises and the rest of the morning was +easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen garden, +examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to the +gardener's lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through +the greenhouse, where the loss of her favourite plants, +unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, +raised the laughter of Charlotte,and in visiting her +poultryyard, where, in the disappointed hopes of her +dairymaid, by hens forsaking their nests, or being +stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising +young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment. +The morning was fine and dry, and Marianne, +in her plan of employment abroad, had not calculated +for any change of weather during their stay at Cleveland. +With great surprise therefore, did she find herself prevented +by a settled rain from going out again after dinner. +She had depended on a twilight walk to the Grecian temple, +and perhaps all over the grounds, and an evening merely +cold or damp would not have deterred her from it +but a heavy and settled rain even SHE could not fancy dry +or pleasant weather for walking. +Their party was small, and the hours passed quietly away. +Mrs. Palmer had her child, and Mrs. Jennings her carpetwork +they talked of the friends they had left behind, +arranged Lady Middleton's engagements, and wondered +whether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon would get farther +than Reading that night. Elinor, however little concerned +in it, joined in their discourse and Marianne, who had +the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, +however it might be avoided by the family in general, +soon procured herself a book. +Nothing was wanting on Mrs. Palmer's side that constant +and friendly good humour could do, to make them feel +themselves welcome. The openness and heartiness of her +manner more than atoned for that want of recollection +and elegance which made her often deficient in the forms +of politeness her kindness, recommended by so pretty +a face, was engaging her folly, though evident +was not disgusting, because it was not conceited +and Elinor could have forgiven every thing but her laugh. +The two gentlemen arrived the next day to a very +late dinner, affording a pleasant enlargement of the party, +and a very welcome variety to their conversation, which a +long morning of the same continued rain had reduced very low. +Elinor had seen so little of Mr. Palmer, and in that +little had seen so much variety in his address to her +sister and herself, that she knew not what to expect +to find him in his own family. She found him, however, +perfectly the gentleman in his behaviour to all his visitors, +and only occasionally rude to his wife and her mother +she found him very capable of being a pleasant companion, +and only prevented from being so always, by too great +an aptitude to fancy himself as much superior to people +in general, as he must feel himself to be to Mrs. Jennings +and Charlotte. For the rest of his character and habits, +they were marked, as far as Elinor could perceive, +with no traits at all unusual in his sex and time of life. +He was nice in his eating, uncertain in his hours +fond of his child, though affecting to slight it +and idled away the mornings at billiards, which ought +to have been devoted to business. She liked him, however, +upon the whole, much better than she had expected, and in +her heart was not sorry that she could like him no more +not sorry to be driven by the observation of his Epicurism, +his selfishness, and his conceit, to rest with complacency +on the remembrance of Edward's generous temper, simple taste, +and diffident feelings. +Of Edward, or at least of some of his concerns, +she now received intelligence from Colonel Brandon, +who had been into Dorsetshire lately and who, +treating her at once as the disinterested friend +of Mr. Ferrars, and the kind of confidant of himself, +talked to her a great deal of the parsonage at Delaford, +described its deficiencies, and told her what he meant +to do himself towards removing them.His behaviour +to her in this, as well as in every other particular, +his open pleasure in meeting her after an absence +of only ten days, his readiness to converse with her, +and his deference for her opinion, might very well +justify Mrs. Jennings's persuasion of his attachment, +and would have been enough, perhaps, had not Elinor still, +as from the first, believed Marianne his real favourite, +to make her suspect it herself. But as it was, +such a notion had scarcely ever entered her head, +except by Mrs. Jennings's suggestion and she could +not help believing herself the nicest observer of the +twoshe watched his eyes, while Mrs. Jennings thought +only of his behaviourand while his looks of anxious +solicitude on Marianne's feeling, in her head and throat, +the beginning of a heavy cold, because unexpressed by words, +entirely escaped the latter lady's observationSHE could +discover in them the quick feelings, and needless alarm +of a lover. +Two delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth +evenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravel +of the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especially +in the most distant parts of them, where there was something +more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were +the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest, +hadassisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting +in her wet shoes and stockingsgiven Marianne a cold +so violent as, though for a day or two trifled with +or denied, would force itself by increasing ailments on +the concern of every body, and the notice of herself. +Prescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual, +were all declined. Though heavy and feverish, with a pain +in her limbs, and a cough, and a sore throat, a good night's +rest was to cure her entirely and it was with difficulty +that Elinor prevailed on her, when she went to bed, +to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies. +CHAPTER +Marianne got up the next morning at her usual time +to every inquiry replied that she was better, and tried to +prove herself so, by engaging in her accustomary employments. +But a day spent in sitting shivering over the fire +with a book in her hand, which she was unable to read, +or in lying, weary and languid, on a sofa, did not speak +much in favour of her amendment and when, at last, +she went early to bed, more and more indisposed, Colonel +Brandon was only astonished at her sister's composure, +who, though attending and nursing her the whole day, +against Marianne's inclination, and forcing proper medicines +on her at night, trusted, like Marianne, to the certainty +and efficacy of sleep, and felt no real alarm. +A very restless and feverish night, however, +disappointed the expectation of both and when Marianne, +after persisting in rising, confessed herself unable +to sit up, and returned voluntarily to her bed, +Elinor was very ready to adopt Mrs. Jennings's advice, +of sending for the Palmers' apothecary. +He came, examined his patient, and though encouraging +Miss Dashwood to expect that a very few days would restore +her sister to health, yet, by pronouncing her disorder +to have a putrid tendency, and allowing the word "infection" +to pass his lips, gave instant alarm to Mrs. Palmer, +on her baby's account. Mrs. Jennings, who had been inclined +from the first to think Marianne's complaint more serious +than Elinor, now looked very grave on Mr. Harris's report, +and confirming Charlotte's fears and caution, urged the +necessity of her immediate removal with her infant +and Mr. Palmer, though treating their apprehensions as idle, +found the anxiety and importunity of his wife too great +to be withstood. Her departure, therefore, was fixed on +and within an hour after Mr. Harris's arrival, she set off, +with her little boy and his nurse, for the house of a +near relation of Mr. Palmer's, who lived a few miles +on the other side of Bath whither her husband promised, +at her earnest entreaty, to join her in a day or two +and whither she was almost equally urgent with her +mother to accompany her. Mrs. Jennings, however, with a +kindness of heart which made Elinor really love her, +declared her resolution of not stirring from Cleveland +as long as Marianne remained ill, and of endeavouring, +by her own attentive care, to supply to her the place +of the mother she had taken her from and Elinor found her +on every occasion a most willing and active helpmate, +desirous to share in all her fatigues, and often by her +better experience in nursing, of material use. +Poor Marianne, languid and low from the nature +of her malady, and feeling herself universally ill, +could no longer hope that tomorrow would find her recovered +and the idea of what tomorrow would have produced, +but for this unlucky illness, made every ailment severe +for on that day they were to have begun their journey home +and, attended the whole way by a servant of Mrs. Jennings, +were to have taken their mother by surprise on the +following forenoon. The little she said was all in +lamentation of this inevitable delay though Elinor tried +to raise her spirits, and make her believe, as she THEN +really believed herself, that it would be a very short one. +The next day produced little or no alteration in the +state of the patient she certainly was not better, and, +except that there was no amendment, did not appear worse. +Their party was now farther reduced for Mr. Palmer, +though very unwilling to go as well from real humanity +and goodnature, as from a dislike of appearing to be +frightened away by his wife, was persuaded at last +by Colonel Brandon to perform his promise of following her +and while he was preparing to go, Colonel Brandon himself, +with a much greater exertion, began to talk of going +likewise.Here, however, the kindness of Mrs. Jennings +interposed most acceptably for to send the Colonel away +while his love was in so much uneasiness on her sister's +account, would be to deprive them both, she thought, +of every comfort and therefore telling him at once +that his stay at Cleveland was necessary to herself, +that she should want him to play at piquet of an evening, +while Miss Dashwood was above with her sister, c. she +urged him so strongly to remain, that he, who was gratifying +the first wish of his own heart by a compliance, could not +long even affect to demur especially as Mrs. Jennings's +entreaty was warmly seconded by Mr. Palmer, who seemed +to feel a relief to himself, in leaving behind him a person +so well able to assist or advise Miss Dashwood in any emergence. +Marianne was, of course, kept in ignorance of all +these arrangements. She knew not that she had been +the means of sending the owners of Cleveland away, +in about seven days from the time of their arrival. +It gave her no surprise that she saw nothing +of Mrs. Palmer and as it gave her likewise no concern, +she never mentioned her name. +Two days passed away from the time of Mr. Palmer's departure, +and her situation continued, with little variation, +the same. Mr. Harris, who attended her every day, +still talked boldly of a speedy recovery, and Miss Dashwood +was equally sanguine but the expectation of the others +was by no means so cheerful. Mrs. Jennings had determined +very early in the seizure that Marianne would never +get over it, and Colonel Brandon, who was chiefly +of use in listening to Mrs. Jennings's forebodings, +was not in a state of mind to resist their influence. +He tried to reason himself out of fears, which the different +judgment of the apothecary seemed to render absurd +but the many hours of each day in which he was left +entirely alone, were but too favourable for the admission +of every melancholy idea, and he could not expel from +his mind the persuasion that he should see Marianne no more. +On the morning of the third day however, the gloomy +anticipations of both were almost done away for when +Mr. Harris arrived, he declared his patient materially better. +Her pulse was much stronger, and every symptom more favourable +than on the preceding visit. Elinor, confirmed in every +pleasant hope, was all cheerfulness rejoicing that +in her letters to her mother, she had pursued her own +judgment rather than her friend's, in making very light +of the indisposition which delayed them at Cleveland +and almost fixing on the time when Marianne would be +able to travel. +But the day did not close so auspiciously as it began. +Towards the evening Marianne became ill again, growing +more heavy, restless, and uncomfortable than before. +Her sister, however, still sanguine, was willing to +attribute the change to nothing more than the fatigue +of having sat up to have her bed made and carefully +administering the cordials prescribed, saw her, with +satisfaction, sink at last into a slumber, from which +she expected the most beneficial effects. Her sleep, +though not so quiet as Elinor wished to see it, +lasted a considerable time and anxious to observe +the result of it herself, she resolved to sit with her +during the whole of it. Mrs. Jennings, knowing nothing +of any change in the patient, went unusually early to bed +her maid, who was one of the principal nurses, was recreating +herself in the housekeeper's room, and Elinor remained +alone with Marianne. +The repose of the latter became more and more disturbed +and her sister, who watched, with unremitting attention +her continual change of posture, and heard the frequent +but inarticulate sounds of complaint which passed her lips, +was almost wishing to rouse her from so painful a slumber, +when Marianne, suddenly awakened by some accidental noise +in the house, started hastily up, and, with feverish wildness, +cried out, +"Is mama coming?" +"Not yet," cried the other, concealing her terror, +and assisting Marianne to lie down again, "but she will +be here, I hope, before it is long. It is a great way, +you know, from hence to Barton." +"But she must not go round by London," cried Marianne, +in the same hurried manner. "I shall never see her, +if she goes by London." +Elinor perceived with alarm that she was not +quite herself, and, while attempting to soothe her, +eagerly felt her pulse. It was lower and quicker than ever +and Marianne, still talking wildly of mama, her alarm +increased so rapidly, as to determine her on sending +instantly for Mr. Harris, and despatching a messenger +to Barton for her mother. To consult with Colonel Brandon +on the best means of effecting the latter, was a thought +which immediately followed the resolution of its performance +and as soon she had rung up the maid to take her place +by her sister, she hastened down to the drawingroom, +where she knew he was generally to be found at a much +later hour than the present. +It was no time for hesitation. Her fears and her +difficulties were immediately before him. Her fears, +he had no courage, no confidence to attempt the removal of +he listened to them in silent despondencebut her +difficulties were instantly obviated, for with a readiness +that seemed to speak the occasion, and the service +prearranged in his mind, he offered himself as the +messenger who should fetch Mrs. Dashwood. Elinor made no +resistance that was not easily overcome. She thanked him +with brief, though fervent gratitude, and while he went +to hurry off his servant with a message to Mr. Harris, and +an order for posthorses directly, she wrote a few lines +to her mother. +The comfort of such a friend at that moment as Colonel +Brandonor such a companion for her mother,how gratefully +was it felta companion whose judgment would guide, +whose attendance must relieve, and whose friendship might +soothe heras far as the shock of such a summons COULD +be lessened to her, his presence, his manners, his assistance, +would lessen it. +HE, meanwhile, whatever he might feel, acted with all +the firmness of a collected mind, made every necessary +arrangement with the utmost despatch, and calculated +with exactness the time in which she might look for +his return. Not a moment was lost in delay of any kind. +The horses arrived, even before they were expected, +and Colonel Brandon only pressing her hand with a look +of solemnity, and a few words spoken too low to reach her ear, +hurried into the carriage. It was then about twelve +o'clock, and she returned to her sister's apartment to wait +for the arrival of the apothecary, and to watch by her +the rest of the night. It was a night of almost equal +suffering to both. Hour after hour passed away in sleepless +pain and delirium on Marianne's side, and in the most +cruel anxiety on Elinor's, before Mr. Harris appeared. +Her apprehensions once raised, paid by their excess for all +her former security and the servant who sat up with her, +for she would not allow Mrs. Jennings to be called, +only tortured her more, by hints of what her mistress +had always thought. +Marianne's ideas were still, at intervals, +fixed incoherently on her mother, and whenever she +mentioned her name, it gave a pang to the heart of +poor Elinor, who, reproaching herself for having trifled +with so many days of illness, and wretched for some +immediate relief, fancied that all relief might soon +be in vain, that every thing had been delayed too long, +and pictured to herself her suffering mother arriving +too late to see this darling child, or to see her rational. +She was on the point of sending again for Mr. Harris, +or if HE could not come, for some other advice, +when the formerbut not till after five o'clockarrived. +His opinion, however, made some little amends for his delay, +for though acknowledging a very unexpected and unpleasant +alteration in his patient, he would not allow the danger +to be material, and talked of the relief which a fresh +mode of treatment must procure, with a confidence which, +in a lesser degree, was communicated to Elinor. He promised +to call again in the course of three or four hours, +and left both the patient and her anxious attendant more +composed than he had found them. +With strong concern, and with many reproaches for not +being called to their aid, did Mrs. Jennings hear in the +morning of what had passed. Her former apprehensions, +now with greater reason restored, left her no doubt of +the event and though trying to speak comfort to Elinor, +her conviction of her sister's danger would not allow her +to offer the comfort of hope. Her heart was really grieved. +The rapid decay, the early death of a girl so young, +so lovely as Marianne, must have struck a less interested +person with concern. On Mrs. Jennings's compassion +she had other claims. She had been for three months +her companion, was still under her care, and she was +known to have been greatly injured, and long unhappy. +The distress of her sister too, particularly a favourite, +was before herand as for their mother, when Mrs. Jennings +considered that Marianne might probably be to HER what +Charlotte was to herself, her sympathy in HER sufferings +was very sincere. +Mr. Harris was punctual in his second visit +but he came to be disappointed in his hopes of what the +last would produce. His medicines had failedthe fever +was unabated and Marianne only more quietnot more +herselfremained in a heavy stupor. Elinor, catching all, +and more than all, his fears in a moment, proposed to call +in further advice. But he judged it unnecessary he had +still something more to try, some more fresh application, +of whose success he was as confident as the last, and his +visit concluded with encouraging assurances which reached +the ear, but could not enter the heart of Miss Dashwood. +She was calm, except when she thought of her mother +but she was almost hopeless and in this state she continued +till noon, scarcely stirring from her sister's bed, +her thoughts wandering from one image of grief, +one suffering friend to another, and her spirits oppressed +to the utmost by the conversation of Mrs. Jennings, +who scrupled not to attribute the severity and danger +of this attack to the many weeks of previous indisposition +which Marianne's disappointment had brought on. +Elinor felt all the reasonableness of the idea, and it +gave fresh misery to her reflections. +About noon, however, she beganbut with a cautiona +dread of disappointment which for some time kept her silent, +even to her friendto fancy, to hope she could perceive +a slight amendment in her sister's pulseshe waited, +watched, and examined it again and againand at last, +with an agitation more difficult to bury under exterior calmness, +than all her foregoing distress, ventured to communicate +her hopes. Mrs. Jennings, though forced, on examination, +to acknowledge a temporary revival, tried to keep her +young friend from indulging a thought of its continuance +and Elinor, conning over every injunction of distrust, +told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. +Hope had already entered and feeling all its anxious flutter, +she bent over her sister to watchshe hardly knew for what. +Half an hour passed away, and the favourable symptom +yet blessed her. Others even arose to confirm it. +Her breath, her skin, her lips, all flattered Elinor +with signs of amendment and Marianne fixed her eyes on +her with a rational, though languid, gaze. Anxiety and +hope now oppressed her in equal degrees, and left her no +moment of tranquillity till the arrival of Mr. Harris at +four o'clockwhen his assurances, his felicitations on +a recovery in her sister even surpassing his expectation, +gave her confidence, comfort, and tears of joy. +Marianne was in every respect materially better, +and he declared her entirely out of danger. Mrs. Jennings, +perhaps satisfied with the partial justification of her +forebodings which had been found in their late alarm, +allowed herself to trust in his judgment, and admitted, +with unfeigned joy, and soon with unequivocal cheerfulness, +the probability of an entire recovery. +Elinor could not be cheerful. Her joy was of a +different kind, and led to any thing rather than to gaiety. +Marianne restored to life, health, friends, and to her +doting mother, was an idea to fill her heart with sensations +of exquisite comfort, and expand it in fervent gratitude +but it lead to no outward demonstrations of joy, no words, +no smiles. All within Elinor's breast was satisfaction, +silent and strong. +She continued by the side of her sister, with little +intermission the whole afternoon, calming every fear, +satisfying every inquiry of her enfeebled spirits, +supplying every succour, and watching almost every look and +every breath. The possibility of a relapse would of course, +in some moments, occur to remind her of what anxiety was +but when she saw, on her frequent and minute examination, +that every symptom of recovery continued, and saw Marianne +at six o'clock sink into a quiet, steady, and to all +appearance comfortable, sleep, she silenced every doubt. +The time was now drawing on, when Colonel Brandon +might be expected back. At ten o'clock, she trusted, +or at least not much later her mother would be relieved +from the dreadful suspense in which she must now be +travelling towards them. The Colonel, tooperhaps scarcely +less an object of pityOhhow slow was the progress +of time which yet kept them in ignorance +At seven o'clock, leaving Marianne still sweetly asleep, +she joined Mrs. Jennings in the drawingroom to tea. +Of breakfast she had been kept by her fears, and of +dinner by their sudden reverse, from eating much +and the present refreshment, therefore, with such feelings +of content as she brought to it, was particularly welcome. +Mrs. Jennings would have persuaded her, at its conclusion, +to take some rest before her mother's arrival, and allow HER to +take her place by Marianne but Elinor had no sense of fatigue, +no capability of sleep at that moment about her, and she was +not to be kept away from her sister an unnecessary instant. +Mrs. Jennings therefore attending her up stairs into the +sick chamber, to satisfy herself that all continued right, +left her there again to her charge and her thoughts, +and retired to her own room to write letters and sleep. +The night was cold and stormy. The wind roared +round the house, and the rain beat against the windows +but Elinor, all happiness within, regarded it not. +Marianne slept through every blast and the travellers +they had a rich reward in store, for every present inconvenience. +The clock struck eight. Had it been ten, +Elinor would have been convinced that at that moment +she heard a carriage driving up to the house +and so strong was the persuasion that she DID, in spite +of the ALMOST impossibility of their being already come, +that she moved into the adjoining dressingcloset and +opened a window shutter, to be satisfied of the truth. +She instantly saw that her ears had not deceived her. +The flaring lamps of a carriage were immediately in view. +By their uncertain light she thought she could discern it +to be drawn by four horses and this, while it told the +excess of her poor mother's alarm, gave some explanation +to such unexpected rapidity. +Never in her life had Elinor found it so difficult +to be calm, as at that moment. The knowledge of what her +mother must be feeling as the carriage stopt at the door +of her doubther dreadperhaps her despairand +of what SHE had to tellwith such knowledge it was +impossible to be calm. All that remained to be done +was to be speedy and, therefore staying only till +she could leave Mrs. Jennings's maid with her sister, +she hurried down stairs. +The bustle in the vestibule, as she passed along +an inner lobby, assured her that they were already +in the house. She rushed to the drawingroom,she +entered it,and saw only Willoughby. +CHAPTER +Elinor, starting back with a look of horror at +the sight of him, obeyed the first impulse of her heart +in turning instantly to quit the room, and her hand +was already on the lock, when its action was suspended +by his hastily advancing, and saying, in a voice rather +of command than supplication, +"Miss Dashwood, for half an hourfor ten minutes +I entreat you to stay." +"No, sir," she replied with firmness, "I shall NOT stay. +Your business cannot be with ME. The servants, I suppose, +forgot to tell you that Mr. Palmer was not in the house." +"Had they told me," he cried with vehemence, +"that Mr. Palmer and all his relations were at the devil, +it would not have turned me from the door. My business +is with you, and only you." +"With me"in the utmost amazement"well, sir, +be quickand if you canless violent." +"Sit down, and I will be both." +She hesitated she knew not what to do. The possibility +of Colonel Brandon's arriving and finding her there, +came across her. But she had promised to hear him, +and her curiosity no less than her honor was engaged. +After a moment's recollection, therefore, concluding that +prudence required dispatch, and that her acquiescence would +best promote it, she walked silently towards the table, +and sat down. He took the opposite chair, and for half +a minute not a word was said by either. +"Pray be quick, sir,"said Elinor, impatiently +"I have no time to spare." +He was sitting in an attitude of deep meditation, +and seemed not to hear her. +"Your sister," said he, with abruptness, a moment +afterwards"is out of danger. I heard it from the servant. +God be praisedBut is it true? is it really true?" +Elinor would not speak. He repeated the inquiry with +yet greater eagerness. +"For God's sake tell me, is she out of danger, or is she not?" +"We hope she is." +He rose up, and walked across the room. +"Had I known as much half an hour agoBut +since I AM here,"speaking with a forced vivacity as he +returned to his seat"what does it signify?For once, +Miss Dashwoodit will be the last time, perhapslet us +be cheerful together.I am in a fine mood for gaiety. +Tell me honestly"a deeper glow overspreading his cheeks +"do you think me most a knave or a fool?" +Elinor looked at him with greater astonishment than ever. +She began to think that he must be in liquorthe +strangeness of such a visit, and of such manners, +seemed no otherwise intelligible and with this impression +she immediately rose, saying, +"Mr. Willoughby, I advise you at present to return +to CombeI am not at leisure to remain with you longer. +Whatever your business may be with me, will it be better +recollected and explained tomorrow." +"I understand you," he replied, with an expressive smile, +and a voice perfectly calm "yes, I am very drunk. +A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was +enough to overset me." +"At Marlborough"cried Elinor, more and more at +a loss to understand what he would be at. +"Yes,I left London this morning at eight o'clock, +and the only ten minutes I have spent out of my chaise +since that time procured me a nuncheon at Marlborough." +The steadiness of his manner, and the intelligence +of his eye as he spoke, convincing Elinor, that whatever +other unpardonable folly might bring him to Cleveland, +he was not brought there by intoxication, she said, +after a moment's recollection, +"Mr. Willoughby, you OUGHT to feel, and I certainly +DOthat after what has passedyour coming here in +this manner, and forcing yourself upon my notice, +requires a very particular excuse.What is it, +that you mean by it?" +"I mean,"said he, with serious energy"if I can, +to make you hate me one degree less than you do NOW. +I mean to offer some kind of explanation, some kind +of apology, for the past to open my whole heart to you, +and by convincing you, that though I have been always +a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal, to obtain +something like forgiveness from Mafrom your sister." +"Is this the real reason of your coming?" +"Upon my soul it is,"was his answer, with a warmth +which brought all the former Willoughby to her remembrance, +and in spite of herself made her think him sincere. +"If that is all, you may be satisfied already, +for Marianne DOESshe has LONG forgiven you." +"Has she?"he cried, in the same eager tone. +"Then she has forgiven me before she ought to have done it. +But she shall forgive me again, and on more reasonable +grounds.NOW will you listen to me?" +Elinor bowed her assent. +"I do not know," said he, after a pause of expectation +on her side, and thoughtfulness on his own,"how YOU +may have accounted for my behaviour to your sister, +or what diabolical motive you may have imputed to me. +Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me,it is +worth the trial however, and you shall hear every thing. +When I first became intimate in your family, I had no +other intention, no other view in the acquaintance +than to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged to remain +in Devonshire, more pleasantly than I had ever done before. +Your sister's lovely person and interesting manners +could not but please me and her behaviour to me almost +from the first, was of a kindIt is astonishing, +when I reflect on what it was, and what SHE was, that my +heart should have been so insensible But at first +I must confess, my vanity only was elevated by it. +Careless of her happiness, thinking only of my own amusement, +giving way to feelings which I had always been too much +in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by every means +in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any +design of returning her affection." +Miss Dashwood, at this point, turning her eyes on him +with the most angry contempt, stopped him, by saying, +"It is hardly worth while, Mr. Willoughby, +for you to relate, or for me to listen any longer. +Such a beginning as this cannot be followed by any thing. +Do not let me be pained by hearing any thing more on +the subject." +"I insist on you hearing the whole of it," he replied, +"My fortune was never large, and I had always been expensive, +always in the habit of associating with people of better +income than myself. Every year since my coming of age, +or even before, I believe, had added to my debts and though +the death of my old cousin, Mrs. Smith, was to set me free +yet that event being uncertain, and possibly far distant, +it had been for some time my intention to reestablish my +circumstances by marrying a woman of fortune. To attach +myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be +thought ofand with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty +which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, +Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too muchI was acting +in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a +thought of returning it.But one thing may be said +for me even in that horrid state of selfish vanity, +I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated, +because I did not THEN know what it was to love. +But have I ever known it?Well may it be doubted for, had I +really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, +to avarice?or, what is more, could I have sacrificed hers? +But I have done it. To avoid a comparative poverty, +which her affection and her society would have deprived +of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, +lost every thing that could make it a blessing." +"You did then," said Elinor, a little softened, +"believe yourself at one time attached to her?" +"To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood +such tendernessIs there a man on earth who could have +done it?Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, +sincerely fond of her and the happiest hours of my life +were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions +were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. +Even THEN, however, when fully determined on paying +my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly +to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, +from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement +while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. +I will not reason herenor will I stop for YOU to expatiate +on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling +to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. +The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, +providing with great circumspection for a possible +opportunity of making myself contemptible and wretched +for ever. At last, however, my resolution was taken, +and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, +to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, +and openly assure her of an affection which I had already +taken such pains to display. But in the interimin the +interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I +could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private +a circumstance occurredan unlucky circumstance, to ruin +all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery +took place,"here he hesitated and looked down."Mrs. Smith +had somehow or other been informed, I imagine by some +distant relation, whose interest it was to deprive me of +her favour, of an affair, a connectionbut I need not +explain myself farther," he added, looking at her with an +heightened colour and an enquiring eye"your particular +intimacyyou have probably heard the whole story long ago." +"I have," returned Elinor, colouring likewise, +and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him, +"I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any +part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess +is beyond my comprehension." +"Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received +the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge +that her situation and her character ought to have been +respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at +the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing +to urgethat because she was injured she was irreproachable, +and because I was a libertine, SHE must be a saint. +If the violence of her passions, the weakness of her +understandingI do not mean, however, to defend myself. +Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, +with great selfreproach, recall the tenderness which, +for a very short time, had the power of creating any return. +I wishI heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured +more than herself and I have injured one, whose affection +for memay I say it? was scarcely less warm than hers +and whose mindOh how infinitely superior" +"Your indifference, however, towards that unfortunate +girlI must say it, unpleasant to me as the discussion +of such a subject may well beyour indifference is no +apology for your cruel neglect of her. Do not think yourself +excused by any weakness, any natural defect of understanding +on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours. +You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself +in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, +always happy, she was reduced to the extremest indigence." +"But, upon my soul, I did NOT know it," he warmly +replied "I did not recollect that I had omitted to give +her my direction and common sense might have told her +how to find it out." +"Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?" +"She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion +may be guessed. The purity of her life, the formality +of her notions, her ignorance of the worldevery thing +was against me. The matter itself I could not deny, +and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was +previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my +conduct in general, and was moreover discontented with +the very little attention, the very little portion of my +time that I had bestowed on her, in my present visit. +In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I +might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, +good woman she offered to forgive the past, if I would +marry Eliza. That could not beand I was formally +dismissed from her favour and her house. The night +following this affairI was to go the next morning +was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct +should be. The struggle was greatbut it ended too soon. +My affection for Marianne, my thorough conviction of her +attachment to meit was all insufficient to outweigh +that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false +ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally +inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased. +I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, +if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think +that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. +A heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave +DevonshireI was engaged to dine with you on that very day +some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking +this engagement. But whether I should write this apology, +or deliver it in person, was a point of long debate. +To see Marianne, I felt, would be dreadful, and I even doubted +whether I could see her again, and keep to my resolution. +In that point, however, I undervalued my own magnanimity, +as the event declared for I went, I saw her, and saw +her miserable, and left her miserableand left her hoping +never to see her again." +"Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?" said Elinor, +reproachfully "a note would have answered every purpose. +Why was it necessary to call?" +"It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear +to leave the country in a manner that might lead you, +or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part +of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself +and I resolved therefore on calling at the cottage, +in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, +however, was really dreadful and, to heighten the matter, +I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. +I had left her only the evening before, so fully, +so firmly resolved within my self on doing right +A few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever +and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I +walked from the cottage to Allenham, satisfied with myself, +delighted with every body But in this, our last interview +of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt +that almost took from me the power of dissembling. +Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told +her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediatelyI +never shall forget itunited too with such reliance, +such confidence in meOh, Godwhat a hardhearted +rascal I was" +They were both silent for a few moments. +Elinor first spoke. +"Did you tell her that you should soon return?" +"I do not know what I told her," he replied, impatiently +"less than was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all +likelihood much more than was justified by the future. +I cannot think of it.It won't do.Then came your dear mother +to torture me farther, with all her kindness and confidence. +Thank Heaven it DID torture me. I was miserable. +Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it +gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge +to myself for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, +that all my past sufferings under it are only triumph and +exultation to me now. Well, I went, left all that I loved, +and went to those to whom, at best, I was only indifferent. +My journey to towntravelling with my own horses, +and therefore so tediouslyno creature to speak tomy +own reflections so cheerfulwhen I looked forward +every thing so invitingwhen I looked back at Barton, +the picture so soothingoh, it was a blessed journey" +He stopped. +"Well, sir," said Elinor, who, though pitying him, +grew impatient for his departure, "and this is all?" +"Ahno,have you forgot what passed in town? +That infamous letterDid she shew it you?" +"Yes, I saw every note that passed." +"When the first of hers reached me as it immediately did, +for I was in town the whole time, what I felt is +in the common phrase, not to be expressed in a more +simple oneperhaps too simple to raise any emotion +my feelings were very, very painful.Every line, every word +wasin the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, +were she here, would forbida dagger to my heart. +To know that Marianne was in town wasin the same language +a thunderbolt.Thunderbolts and daggerswhat a reproof +would she have given meher taste, her opinionsI believe +they are better known to me than my own,and I am sure +they are dearer." +Elinor's heart, which had undergone many changes +in the course of this extraordinary conversation, +was now softened againyet she felt it her duty to check +such ideas in her companion as the last. +"This is not right, Mr. Willoughby.Remember that +you are married. Relate only what in your conscience +you think necessary for me to hear." +"Marianne's note, by assuring me that I was still +as dear to her as in former days, that in spite of the many, +many weeks we had been separated, she was as constant +in her own feelings, and as full of faith in the constancy +of mine as ever, awakened all my remorse. I say awakened, +because time and London, business and dissipation, +had in some measure quieted it, and I had been growing +a fine hardened villain, fancying myself indifferent to her, +and chusing to fancy that she too must have become +indifferent to me talking to myself of our past attachment +as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my shoulders +in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach, +overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, +'I shall be heartily glad to hear she is well married.' +But this note made me know myself better. I felt that +she was infinitely dearer to me than any other woman +in the world, and that I was using her infamously. +But every thing was then just settled between Miss Grey +and me. To retreat was impossible. All that I had to do, +was to avoid you both. I sent no answer to Marianne, +intending by that to preserve myself from her farther notice +and for some time I was even determined not to call in +Berkeley Streetbut at last, judging it wiser to affect +the air of a cool, common acquaintance than anything else, +I watched you all safely out of the house one morning, +and left my name." +"Watched us out of the house" +"Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often +I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling +in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, +as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street, +there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse +of one or other of you and nothing but the most constant +watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing +desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us +so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible, +as well as everybody else who was likely to prove +an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being +in town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, +the first day of his coming, and the day after I had called +at Mrs. Jennings's. He asked me to a party, a dance at his +house in the evening.Had he NOT told me as an inducement +that you and your sister were to be there, I should have +felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. +The next morning brought another short note from Marianne +still affectionate, open, artless, confidingeverything +that could make MY conduct most hateful. I could not +answer it. I triedbut could not frame a sentence. +But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. +If you CAN pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it +was THEN. With my head and heart full of your sister, +I was forced to play the happy lover to another womanThose +three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, +as I need not tell you, you were forced on me and what a +sweet figure I cutwhat an evening of agony it was +Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me +Willoughby in such a toneOh, Godholding out her hand +to me, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching +eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my faceand +Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, looking +all that wasWell, it does not signify it is over now. +Such an eveningI ran away from you all as soon as I could +but not before I had seen Marianne's sweet face as white +as death.THAT was the last, last look I ever had of her +the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid +sightyet when I thought of her today as really dying, +it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew +exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last +in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, +as I travelled, in the same look and hue." +A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. +Willoughby first rousing himself, broke it thus +"Well, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister +is certainly better, certainly out of danger?" +"We are assured of it." +"Your poor mother, toodoting on Marianne." +"But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter +have you any thing to say about that?" +"Yes, yes, THAT in particular. Your sister +wrote to me again, you know, the very next morning. +You saw what she said. I was breakfasting at the +Ellisons,and her letter, with some others, was brought +to me there from my lodgings. It happened to catch +Sophia's eye before it caught mineand its size, +the elegance of the paper, the handwriting altogether, +immediately gave her a suspicion. Some vague report had +reached her before of my attachment to some young lady +in Devonshire, and what had passed within her observation +the preceding evening had marked who the young lady was, +and made her more jealous than ever. Affecting that air +of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a woman +one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read +its contents. She was well paid for her impudence. +She read what made her wretched. Her wretchedness I could +have borne, but her passionher maliceAt all events it +must be appeased. And, in shortwhat do you think of my +wife's style of letterwriting?delicatetender +truly femininewas it not?" +"Your wifeThe letter was in your own handwriting." +"Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying +such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to. +The original was all her ownher own happy thoughts +and gentle diction. But what could I dowe were engaged, +every thing in preparation, the day almost fixedBut I am +talking like a fool. PreparationdayIn honest words, +her money was necessary to me, and in a situation like +mine, any thing was to be done to prevent a rupture. +And after all, what did it signify to my character +in the opinion of Marianne and her friends, in what language +my answer was couched?It must have been only to one end. +My business was to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether +I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance. +'I am ruined for ever in their opinion' said I to +myself'I am shut out for ever from their society, +they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter +will only make them think me a blackguard one.' Such were +my reasonings, as, in a sort of desperate carelessness, +I copied my wife's words, and parted with the last relics +of Marianne. Her three notesunluckily they were all +in my pocketbook, or I should have denied their existence, +and hoarded them for everI was forced to put them up, +and could not even kiss them. And the lock of hairthat too +I had always carried about me in the same pocketbook, +which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating +virulence,the dear lockall, every memento was torn from me." +"You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable," +said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, +betrayed her compassionate emotion "you ought not to speak +in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. +You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. +Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, +at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not +have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak +of her slightingly is no atonement to Mariannenor can I +suppose it a relief to your own conscience." +"Do not talk to me of my wife," said he with a heavy sigh. +"She does not deserve your compassion.She knew I had no +regard for her when we married.Well, married we were, +and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards +returned to town to be gay.And now do you pity me, +Miss Dashwood?or have I said all this to no purpose? +Am Ibe it only one degreeam I less guilty in your opinion +than I was before?My intentions were not always wrong. +Have I explained away any part of my guilt?" +"Yes, you have certainly removed somethinga little. +You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than +I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, +much less wicked. But I hardly knowthe misery that +you have inflictedI hardly know what could have made +it worse." +"Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, +what I have been telling you?Let me be a little lightened +too in her opinion as well as in yours. You tell me that +she has forgiven me already. Let me be able to fancy that +a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present feelings, +will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more +gentle, less dignified, forgiveness. Tell her of my misery +and my penitencetell her that my heart was never inconstant +to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer +to me than ever." +"I will tell her all that is necessary to what may +comparatively be called, your justification. But you have +not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, +nor how you heard of her illness." +"Last night, in Drury Lane lobby, I ran against Sir +John Middleton, and when he saw who I wasfor the first +time these two monthshe spoke to me.That he had cut +me ever since my marriage, I had seen without surprise +or resentment. Now, however, his goodnatured, honest, +stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern +for your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling +me what he knew ought tothough probably he did not +think it WOULDvex me horridly. As bluntly as he could +speak it, therefore, he told me that Marianne Dashwood +was dying of a putrid fever at Clevelanda letter that +morning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger +most imminentthe Palmers are all gone off in a fright, +c.I was too much shocked to be able to pass myself +off as insensible even to the undiscerning Sir John. +His heart was softened in seeing mine suffer and so much +of his illwill was done away, that when we parted, +he almost shook me by the hand while he reminded me of an +old promise about a pointer puppy. What I felt on hearing +that your sister was dyingand dying too, believing me +the greatest villain upon earth, scorning, hating me +in her latest momentsfor how could I tell what horrid +projects might not have been imputed? ONE person I +was sure would represent me as capable of any thing +What I felt was dreadfulMy resolution was soon made, +and at eight o'clock this morning I was in my carriage. +Now you know all." +Elinor made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed +on the irreparable injury which too early an independence +and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, +had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, +of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, +united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a +feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him +extravagant and vainExtravagance and vanity had made him +coldhearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own +guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved +him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least +its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. +Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led +him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which +against honour, against feeling, against every better interest +he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, +governed every thought and the connection, for the sake +of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister +to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness +to himself of a far more incurable nature. From a reverie +of this kind she was recalled at the end of some minutes +by Willoughby, who, rousing himself from a reverie at least +equally painful, started up in preparation for going, and said +"There is no use in staying here I must be off." +"Are you going back to town?" +"Noto Combe Magna. I have business there +from thence to town in a day or two. Good bye." +He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give +him hers'she pressed it with affection. +"And you DO think something better of me than +you did?"said he, letting it fall, and leaning against +the mantelpiece as if forgetting he was to go. +Elinor assured him that she didthat she forgave, +pitied, wished him wellwas even interested in his +happinessand added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour +most likely to promote it. His answer was not very encouraging. +"As to that," said he, "I must rub through the world +as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. +If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel +an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the meansit +may put me on my guardat least, it may be something to +live for. Marianne to be sure is lost to me for ever. +Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again" +Elinor stopped him with a reproof. +"Well,"he replied"once more good bye. I shall +now go away and live in dread of one event." +"What do you mean?" +"Your sister's marriage." +"You are very wrong. She can never be more lost +to you than she is now." +"But she will be gained by some one else. And if +that some one should be the very he whom, of all others, +I could least bearbut I will not stay to rob myself +of all your compassionate goodwill, by shewing +that where I have most injured I can least forgive. +Good bye,God bless you" +And with these words, he almost ran out of the room. +CHAPTER +Elinor, for some time after he left her, for some time +even after the sound of his carriage had died away, remained +too much oppressed by a crowd of ideas, widely differing in +themselves, but of which sadness was the general result, +to think even of her sister. +Willoughby, he, whom only half an hour ago she had +abhorred as the most worthless of men, Willoughby, in spite +of all his faults, excited a degree of commiseration +for the sufferings produced by them, which made her +think of him as now separated for ever from her family, +with a tenderness, a regret, rather in proportion, as she +soon acknowledged within herselfto his wishes than to +his merits. She felt that his influence over her mind +was heightened by circumstances which ought not in reason +to have weight by that person of uncommon attraction, +that open, affectionate, and lively manner which it +was no merit to possess and by that still ardent love +for Marianne, which it was not even innocent to indulge. +But she felt that it was so, long, long before she could +feel his influence less. +When at last she returned to the unconscious Marianne, +she found her just awaking, refreshed by so long and sweet +a sleep to the extent of her hopes. Elinor's heart was full. +The past, the present, the future, Willoughby's visit, +Marianne's safety, and her mother's expected arrival, +threw her altogether into an agitation of spirits +which kept off every indication of fatigue, and made +her only fearful of betraying herself to her sister. +Short was the time, however, in which that fear could +affect her, for within half an hour after Willoughby's +leaving the house, she was again called down stairs +by the sound of another carriage.Eager to save her +mother from every unnecessary moment's horrible suspense, +she ran immediately into the hall, and reached the outward +door just in time to receive and support her as she entered it. +Mrs. Dashwood, whose terror as they drew near the +house had produced almost the conviction of Marianne's +being no more, had no voice to inquire after her, +no voice even for Elinor but SHE, waiting neither for +salutation nor inquiry, instantly gave the joyful relief +and her mother, catching it with all her usual warmth, +was in a moment as much overcome by her happiness, as she +had been before by her fears. She was supported into +the drawingroom between her daughter and her friend +and there, shedding tears of joy, though still unable +to speak, embraced Elinor again and again, turning from her +at intervals to press Colonel Brandon's hand, with a look +which spoke at once her gratitude, and her conviction +of his sharing with herself in the bliss of the moment. +He shared it, however, in a silence even greater than her own. +As soon as Mrs. Dashwood had recovered herself, +to see Marianne was her first desire and in two minutes she +was with her beloved child, rendered dearer to her than ever +by absence, unhappiness, and danger. Elinor's delight, +as she saw what each felt in the meeting, was only checked +by an apprehension of its robbing Marianne of farther sleep +but Mrs. Dashwood could be calm, could be even prudent, +when the life of a child was at stake, and Marianne, +satisfied in knowing her mother was near her, and conscious +of being too weak for conversation, submitted readily to the +silence and quiet prescribed by every nurse around her. +Mrs. Dashwood WOULD sit up with her all night and Elinor, +in compliance with her mother's entreaty, went to bed. +But the rest, which one night entirely sleepless, +and many hours of the most wearing anxiety seemed to +make requisite, was kept off by irritation of spirits. +Willoughby, "poor Willoughby," as she now allowed +herself to call him, was constantly in her thoughts she +would not but have heard his vindication for the world, +and now blamed, now acquitted herself for having judged him +so harshly before. But her promise of relating it to her +sister was invariably painful. She dreaded the performance +of it, dreaded what its effect on Marianne might be +doubted whether after such an explanation she could ever +be happy with another and for a moment wished Willoughby +a widower. Then, remembering Colonel Brandon, reproved herself, +felt that to HIS sufferings and his constancy far more +than to his rival's, the reward of her sister was due, +and wished any thing rather than Mrs. Willoughby's death. +The shock of Colonel Brandon's errand at Barton had been +much softened to Mrs. Dashwood by her own previous alarm +for so great was her uneasiness about Marianne, that she +had already determined to set out for Cleveland on that +very day, without waiting for any further intelligence, +and had so far settled her journey before his arrival, +that the Careys were then expected every moment to fetch +Margaret away, as her mother was unwilling to take her +where there might be infection. +Marianne continued to mend every day, and the brilliant +cheerfulness of Mrs. Dashwood's looks and spirits proved +her to be, as she repeatedly declared herself, one of +the happiest women in the world. Elinor could not hear +the declaration, nor witness its proofs without sometimes +wondering whether her mother ever recollected Edward. +But Mrs. Dashwood, trusting to the temperate account +of her own disappointment which Elinor had sent her, +was led away by the exuberance of her joy to think only +of what would increase it. Marianne was restored to her +from a danger in which, as she now began to feel, +her own mistaken judgment in encouraging the unfortunate +attachment to Willoughby, had contributed to place her +and in her recovery she had yet another source of joy +unthought of by Elinor. It was thus imparted to her, +as soon as any opportunity of private conference +between them occurred. +"At last we are alone. My Elinor, you do not yet +know all my happiness. Colonel Brandon loves Marianne. +He has told me so himself." +Her daughter, feeling by turns both pleased and pained, +surprised and not surprised, was all silent attention. +"You are never like me, dear Elinor, or I should +wonder at your composure now. Had I sat down to wish +for any possible good to my family, I should have fixed +on Colonel Brandon's marrying one of you as the object +most desirable. And I believe Marianne will be the most +happy with him of the two." +Elinor was half inclined to ask her reason for thinking so, +because satisfied that none founded on an impartial +consideration of their age, characters, or feelings, +could be givenbut her mother must always be carried +away by her imagination on any interesting subject, +and therefore instead of an inquiry, she passed it off with a +smile. +"He opened his whole heart to me yesterday as we travelled. +It came out quite unawares, quite undesignedly. I, you may +well believe, could talk of nothing but my childhe could +not conceal his distress I saw that it equalled my own, +and he perhaps, thinking that mere friendship, as the world +now goes, would not justify so warm a sympathyor rather, +not thinking at all, I supposegiving way to irresistible +feelings, made me acquainted with his earnest, tender, constant, +affection for Marianne. He has loved her, my Elinor, ever since +the first moment of seeing her." +Here, however, Elinor perceived,not the language, +not the professions of Colonel Brandon, but the natural +embellishments of her mother's active fancy, which fashioned +every thing delightful to her as it chose. +"His regard for her, infinitely surpassing anything +that Willoughby ever felt or feigned, as much more warm, +as more sincere or constantwhich ever we are to call it +has subsisted through all the knowledge of dear Marianne's +unhappy prepossession for that worthless young manand +without selfishnesswithout encouraging a hopecould +he have seen her happy with anotherSuch a noble mind +such openness, such sincerityno one can be deceived +in HIM." +"Colonel Brandon's character," said Elinor, +"as an excellent man, is well established." +"I know it is"replied her mother seriously, "or +after such a warning, I should be the last to encourage +such affection, or even to be pleased by it. But his coming +for me as he did, with such active, such ready friendship, +is enough to prove him one of the worthiest of men." +"His character, however," answered Elinor, "does not rest +on ONE act of kindness, to which his affection for Marianne, +were humanity out of the case, would have prompted him. +To Mrs. Jennings, to the Middletons, he has been long +and intimately known they equally love and respect him +and even my own knowledge of him, though lately acquired, +is very considerable and so highly do I value and esteem him, +that if Marianne can be happy with him, I shall be as ready +as yourself to think our connection the greatest blessing +to us in the world. What answer did you give him?Did you +allow him to hope?" +"Oh my love, I could not then talk of hope to him +or to myself. Marianne might at that moment be dying. +But he did not ask for hope or encouragement. His was +an involuntary confidence, an irrepressible effusion +to a soothing friendnot an application to a parent. +Yet after a time I DID say, for at first I was quite +overcomethat if she lived, as I trusted she might, +my greatest happiness would lie in promoting their marriage +and since our arrival, since our delightful security, +I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every +encouragement in my power. Time, a very little time, +I tell him, will do everythingMarianne's heart is +not to be wasted for ever on such a man as Willoughby. +His own merits must soon secure it." +"To judge from the Colonel's spirits, however, +you have not yet made him equally sanguine." +"No.He thinks Marianne's affection too deeply +rooted for any change in it under a great length of time, +and even supposing her heart again free, is too diffident +of himself to believe, that with such a difference of age +and disposition he could ever attach her. There, however, +he is quite mistaken. His age is only so much beyond +hers as to be an advantage, as to make his character and +principles fixedand his disposition, I am well convinced, +is exactly the very one to make your sister happy. +And his person, his manners too, are all in his favour. +My partiality does not blind me he certainly is not +so handsome as Willoughbybut at the same time, +there is something much more pleasing in his countenance. +There was always a something,if you remember,in Willoughby's +eyes at times, which I did not like." +Elinor could NOT remember itbut her mother, +without waiting for her assent, continued, +"And his manners, the Colonel's manners are not only +more pleasing to me than Willoughby's ever were, but they +are of a kind I well know to be more solidly attaching +to Marianne. Their gentleness, their genuine attention +to other people, and their manly unstudied simplicity +is much more accordant with her real disposition, than +the livelinessoften artificial, and often illtimed +of the other. I am very sure myself, that had Willoughby +turned out as really amiable, as he has proved himself +the contrary, Marianne would yet never have been so happy +with HIM, as she will be with Colonel Brandon." +She paused.Her daughter could not quite agree +with her, but her dissent was not heard, and therefore +gave no offence. +"At Delaford, she will be within an easy distance of me," +added Mrs. Dashwood, "even if I remain at Barton and in all +probability,for I hear it is a large village,indeed there +certainly MUST be some small house or cottage close by, +that would suit us quite as well as our present situation." +Poor Elinorhere was a new scheme for getting +her to Delafordbut her spirit was stubborn. +"His fortune toofor at my time of life you know, +everybody cares about THATand though I neither know +nor desire to know, what it really is, I am sure it must be +a good one." +Here they were interrupted by the entrance of a +third person, and Elinor withdrew to think it all over +in private, to wish success to her friend, and yet +in wishing it, to feel a pang for Willoughby. +CHAPTER +Marianne's illness, though weakening in its kind, +had not been long enough to make her recovery slow +and with youth, natural strength, and her mother's presence +in aid, it proceeded so smoothly as to enable her to remove, +within four days after the arrival of the latter, +into Mrs. Palmer's dressingroom. When there, at her own +particular request, for she was impatient to pour forth +her thanks to him for fetching her mother, Colonel Brandon +was invited to visit her. +His emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered +looks, and in receiving the pale hand which she immediately +held out to him, was such, as, in Elinor's conjecture, +must arise from something more than his affection for Marianne, +or the consciousness of its being known to others +and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying +complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable +recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind, +brought back by that resemblance between Marianne and Eliza +already acknowledged, and now strengthened by the hollow eye, +the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness, +and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation. +Mrs. Dashwood, not less watchful of what passed than +her daughter, but with a mind very differently influenced, +and therefore watching to very different effect, +saw nothing in the Colonel's behaviour but what arose +from the most simple and selfevident sensations, while in +the actions and words of Marianne she persuaded herself +to think that something more than gratitude already dawned. +At the end of another day or two, Marianne growing +visibly stronger every twelve hours, Mrs. Dashwood, +urged equally by her own and her daughter's wishes, +began to talk of removing to Barton. On HER measures +depended those of her two friends Mrs. Jennings could +not quit Cleveland during the Dashwoods' stay and Colonel +Brandon was soon brought, by their united request, +to consider his own abode there as equally determinate, +if not equally indispensable. At his and Mrs. Jennings's +united request in return, Mrs. Dashwood was prevailed +on to accept the use of his carriage on her journey back, +for the better accommodation of her sick child and the Colonel, +at the joint invitation of Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings, +whose active goodnature made her friendly and hospitable +for other people as well as herself, engaged with pleasure +to redeem it by a visit at the cottage, in the course +of a few weeks. +The day of separation and departure arrived +and Marianne, after taking so particular and lengthened +a leave of Mrs. Jennings, one so earnestly grateful, so full +of respect and kind wishes as seemed due to her own heart +from a secret acknowledgment of past inattention, and bidding +Colonel Brandon farewell with a cordiality of a friend, +was carefully assisted by him into the carriage, of which he +seemed anxious that she should engross at least half. +Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor then followed, and the others +were left by themselves, to talk of the travellers, +and feel their own dullness, till Mrs. Jennings was summoned +to her chaise to take comfort in the gossip of her maid +for the loss of her two young companions and Colonel Brandon +immediately afterwards took his solitary way to Delaford. +The Dashwoods were two days on the road, and Marianne +bore her journey on both, without essential fatigue. +Every thing that the most zealous affection, the most +solicitous care could do to render her comfortable, +was the office of each watchful companion, and each +found their reward in her bodily ease, and her calmness +of spirits. To Elinor, the observation of the latter +was particularly grateful. She, who had seen her week +after week so constantly suffering, oppressed by anguish +of heart which she had neither courage to speak of, +nor fortitude to conceal, now saw with a joy, which no other +could equally share, an apparent composure of mind, which, +in being the result as she trusted of serious reflection, +must eventually lead her to contentment and cheerfulness. +As they approached Barton, indeed, and entered +on scenes of which every field and every tree brought +some peculiar, some painful recollection, she grew silent +and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their notice, +sat earnestly gazing through the window. But here, +Elinor could neither wonder nor blame and when she saw, +as she assisted Marianne from the carriage, that she +had been crying, she saw only an emotion too natural +in itself to raise any thing less tender than pity, +and in its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise. In the +whole of her subsequent manner, she traced the direction +of a mind awakened to reasonable exertion for no sooner +had they entered their common sittingroom, than Marianne +turned her eyes around it with a look of resolute firmness, +as if determined at once to accustom herself to the sight +of every object with which the remembrance of Willoughby could +be connected.She said little, but every sentence aimed +at cheerfulness, and though a sigh sometimes escaped her, +it never passed away without the atonement of a smile. +After dinner she would try her pianoforte. She went to it +but the music on which her eye first rested was an opera, +procured for her by Willoughby, containing some of their +favourite duets, and bearing on its outward leaf her own name +in his handwriting.That would not do.She shook her head, +put the music aside, and after running over the keys +for a minute, complained of feebleness in her fingers, +and closed the instrument again declaring however with firmness +as she did so, that she should in future practice much. +The next morning produced no abatement in these +happy symptoms. On the contrary, with a mind and body +alike strengthened by rest, she looked and spoke with +more genuine spirit, anticipating the pleasure of +Margaret's return, and talking of the dear family party +which would then be restored, of their mutual pursuits +and cheerful society, as the only happiness worth a wish. +"When the weather is settled, and I have recovered +my strength," said she, "we will take long walks together +every day. We will walk to the farm at the edge of the down, +and see how the children go on we will walk to Sir John's +new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland +and we will often go the old ruins of the Priory, +and try to trace its foundations as far as we are told +they once reached. I know we shall be happy. I know +the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to be +later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner +I shall divide every moment between music and reading. +I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course +of serious study. Our own library is too well known to me, +to be resorted to for any thing beyond mere amusement. +But there are many works well worth reading at the Park +and there are others of more modern production which I +know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon. By reading only six +hours aday, I shall gain in the course of a twelvemonth +a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want." +Elinor honoured her for a plan which originated +so nobly as this though smiling to see the same eager +fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid +indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing +excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous +selfcontrol. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she +remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, +and feared she had that to communicate which might again +unsettle the mind of Marianne, and ruin at least for a time +this fair prospect of busy tranquillity. Willing therefore +to delay the evil hour, she resolved to wait till her +sister's health were more secure, before she appointed it. +But the resolution was made only to be broken. +Marianne had been two or three days at home, before +the weather was fine enough for an invalid like herself +to venture out. But at last a soft, genial morning appeared +such as might tempt the daughter's wishes and the +mother's confidence and Marianne, leaning on Elinor's arm, +was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue, +in the lane before the house. +The sisters set out at a pace, slow as the feebleness +of Marianne in an exercise hitherto untried since her +illness requiredand they had advanced only so far +beyond the house as to admit a full view of the hill, +the important hill behind, when pausing with her eyes +turned towards it, Marianne calmly said, +"There, exactly there,"pointing with one hand, +"on that projecting mound,there I fell and there +I first saw Willoughby." +Her voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added, +"I am thankful to find that I can look with so little pain +on the spotshall we ever talk on that subject, Elinor?" +hesitatingly it was said."Or will it be wrong?I can talk +of it now, I hope, as I ought to do." +Elinor tenderly invited her to be open. +"As for regret," said Marianne, "I have done with that, +as far as HE is concerned. I do not mean to talk to you +of what my feelings have been for him, but what they +are NOW.At present, if I could be satisfied on one point, +if I could be allowed to think that he was not ALWAYS +acting a part, not ALWAYS deceiving mebut above all, +if I could be assured that he never was so VERY wicked +as my fears have sometimes fancied him, since the story +of that unfortunate girl" +She stopt. Elinor joyfully treasured her words +as she answered, +"If you could be assured of that, you think you +should be easy." +"Yes. My peace of mind is doubly involved in it +for not only is it horrible to suspect a person, who has +been what HE has been to ME, of such designs,but what must +it make me appear to myself?What in a situation like mine, +but a most shamefully unguarded affection could expose +me to" +"How then," asked her sister, "would you account +for his behaviour?" +"I would suppose him,Oh, how gladly would I suppose him, +only fickle, very, very fickle." +Elinor said no more. She was debating within herself +on the eligibility of beginning her story directly, +or postponing it till Marianne were in stronger health +and they crept on for a few minutes in silence. +"I am not wishing him too much good," said Marianne +at last with a sigh, "when I wish his secret reflections +may be no more unpleasant than my own. He will suffer +enough in them." +"Do you compare your conduct with his?" +"No. I compare it with what it ought to have been +I compare it with yours." +"Our situations have borne little resemblance." +"They have borne more than our conduct.Do not, +my dearest Elinor, let your kindness defend what I know +your judgment must censure. My illness has made me think +It has given me leisure and calmness for serious recollection. +Long before I was enough recovered to talk, I was perfectly +able to reflect. I considered the past I saw in my +own behaviour, since the beginning of our acquaintance +with him last autumn, nothing but a series of imprudence +towards myself, and want of kindness to others. +I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings, +and that my want of fortitude under them had almost led +me to the grave. My illness, I well knew, had been +entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my +own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. +Had I died,it would have been selfdestruction. I +did not know my danger till the danger was removed +but with such feelings as these reflections gave me, +I wonder at my recovery,wonder that the very eagerness +of my desire to live, to have time for atonement to my God, +and to you all, did not kill me at once. Had I died, +in what peculiar misery should I have left you, my nurse, +my friend, my sisterYou, who had seen all the fretful +selfishness of my latter days who had known all the +murmurings of my heartHow should I have lived in YOUR +remembranceMy mother too How could you have consoled +herI cannot express my own abhorrence of myself. +Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, +or some failing indulged. Every body seemed injured by me. +The kindness, the unceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, +I had repaid with ungrateful contempt. To the Middletons, +to the Palmers, the Steeles, to every common acquaintance even, +I had been insolent and unjust with a heart hardened +against their merits, and a temper irritated by their +very attention.To John, to Fanny,yes, even to them, +little as they deserve, I had given less than their due. +But you,you above all, above my mother, had been wronged +by me. I, and only I, knew your heart and its sorrows +yet to what did it influence me?not to any compassion +that could benefit you or myself.Your example was +before me but to what avail?Was I more considerate +of you and your comfort? Did I imitate your forbearance, +or lessen your restraints, by taking any part in those +offices of general complaisance or particular gratitude +which you had hitherto been left to discharge alone?No +not less when I knew you to be unhappy, than when I +had believed you at ease, did I turn away from every +exertion of duty or friendship scarcely allowing sorrow +to exist but with me, regretting only THAT heart +which had deserted and wronged me, and leaving you, +for or I professed an unbounded affection, to be miserable +for my sake." +Here ceased the rapid flow of her selfreproving spirit +and Elinor, impatient to soothe, though too honest +to flatter, gave her instantly that praise and support +which her frankness and her contrition so well deserved. +Marianne pressed her hand and replied, +"You are very good.The future must be my proof. +I have laid down my plan, and if I am capable of adhering +to itmy feelings shall be governed and my temper improved. +They shall no longer worry others, nor torture myself. +I shall now live solely for my family. You, my mother, +and Margaret, must henceforth be all the world to me +you will share my affections entirely between you. +From you, from my home, I shall never again have the smallest +incitement to move and if I do mix in other society, +it will be only to shew that my spirit is humbled, +my heart amended, and that I can practise the civilities, +the lesser duties of life, with gentleness and forbearance. +As for Willoughbyto say that I shall soon or that I shall +ever forget him, would be idle. His remembrance can be overcome +by no change of circumstances or opinions. But it shall +be regulated, it shall be checked by religion, by reason, +by constant employment." +She pausedand added in a low voice, "If I could +but know HIS heart, everything would become easy." +Elinor, who had now been for some time reflecting +on the propriety or impropriety of speedily hazarding +her narration, without feeling at all nearer decision than +at first, heard this and perceiving that as reflection +did nothing, resolution must do all, soon found herself +leading to the fact. +She managed the recital, as she hoped, with address +prepared her anxious listener with caution related simply +and honestly the chief points on which Willoughby +grounded his apology did justice to his repentance, +and softened only his protestations of present regard. +Marianne said not a word.She trembled, her eyes +were fixed on the ground, and her lips became whiter +than even sickness had left them. A thousand inquiries +sprung up from her heart, but she dared not urge one. +She caught every syllable with panting eagerness her hand, +unknowingly to herself, closely pressed her sister's, and +tears covered her cheeks. +Elinor, dreading her being tired, led her towards home +and till they reached the door of the cottage, +easily conjecturing what her curiosity must be +though no question was suffered to speak it, talked of +nothing but Willoughby, and their conversation together +and was carefully minute in every particular of speech +and look, where minuteness could be safely indulged. +As soon as they entered the house, Marianne with a kiss +of gratitude and these two words just articulate through +her tears, "Tell mama," withdrew from her sister and +walked slowly up stairs. Elinor would not attempt +to disturb a solitude so reasonable as what she now sought +and with a mind anxiously prearranging its result, +and a resolution of reviving the subject again, +should Marianne fail to do it, she turned into the parlour +to fulfill her parting injunction. +CHAPTER +Mrs. Dashwood did not hear unmoved the vindication +of her former favourite. She rejoiced in his being +cleared from some part of his imputed guiltshe was +sorry for himshe wished him happy. But the feelings +of the past could not be recalled.Nothing could restore +him with a faith unbrokena character unblemished, +to Marianne. Nothing could do away the knowledge +of what the latter had suffered through his means, +nor remove the guilt of his conduct towards Eliza. +Nothing could replace him, therefore, in her former esteem, +nor injure the interests of Colonel Brandon. +Had Mrs. Dashwood, like her daughter, heard Willoughby's +story from himselfhad she witnessed his distress, +and been under the influence of his countenance and his +manner, it is probable that her compassion would have +been greater. But it was neither in Elinor's power, +nor in her wish, to rouse such feelings in another, by her +retailed explanation, as had at first been called forth +in herself. Reflection had given calmness to her judgment, +and sobered her own opinion of Willoughby's deserts +she wished, therefore, to declare only the simple truth, +and lay open such facts as were really due to his character, +without any embellishment of tenderness to lead the +fancy astray. +In the evening, when they were all three together, +Marianne began voluntarily to speak of him again +but that it was not without an effort, the restless, +unquiet thoughtfulness in which she had been for some time +previously sittingher rising colour, as she spoke, +and her unsteady voice, plainly shewed. +"I wish to assure you both," said she, "that I see +every thingas you can desire me to do." +Mrs. Dashwood would have interrupted her instantly +with soothing tenderness, had not Elinor, who really wished +to hear her sister's unbiased opinion, by an eager sign, +engaged her silence. Marianne slowly continued +"It is a great relief to mewhat Elinor told +me this morningI have now heard exactly what I +wished to hear."For some moments her voice was lost +but recovering herself, she added, and with greater +calmness than before"I am now perfectly satisfied, +I wish for no change. I never could have been happy +with him, after knowing, as sooner or later I must +have known, all this.I should have had no confidence, +no esteem. Nothing could have done it away to my feelings." +"I know itI know it," cried her mother. +"Happy with a man of libertine practicesWith one +who so injured the peace of the dearest of our friends, +and the best of menNomy Marianne has not a heart +to be made happy with such a manHer conscience, her +sensitive conscience, would have felt all that the +conscience of her husband ought to have felt." +Marianne sighed, and repeated, "I wish for no change." +"You consider the matter," said Elinor, "exactly as +a good mind and a sound understanding must consider it +and I dare say you perceive, as well as myself, not only +in this, but in many other circumstances, reason enough +to be convinced that your marriage must have involved you +in many certain troubles and disappointments, in which +you would have been poorly supported by an affection, +on his side, much less certain. Had you married, +you must have been always poor. His expensiveness is +acknowledged even by himself, and his whole conduct declares +that selfdenial is a word hardly understood by him. +His demands and your inexperience together, on a small, +very small income, must have brought on distresses which +would not be the LESS grievous to you, from having been +entirely unknown and unthought of before. YOUR sense +of honour and honesty would have led you, I know, +when aware of your situation, to attempt all the economy +that would appear to you possible and, perhaps, as long +as your frugality retrenched only on your own comfort, +you might have been suffered to practice it, but beyond that +and how little could the utmost of your single management +do to stop the ruin which had begun before your marriage? +Beyond THAT, had you endeavoured, however reasonably, +to abridge HIS enjoyments, is it not to be feared, that instead +of prevailing on feelings so selfish to consent to it, +you would have lessened your own influence on his heart, +and made him regret the connection which had involved him +in such difficulties?" +Marianne's lips quivered, and she repeated the word +"Selfish?" in a tone that implied"do you really think +him selfish?" +"The whole of his behaviour," replied Elinor, +"from the beginning to the end of the affair, has been +grounded on selfishness. It was selfishness which first +made him sport with your affections which afterwards, +when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession +of it, and which finally carried him from Barton. +His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, +his ruling principle." +"It is very true. MY happiness never was his object." +"At present," continued Elinor, "he regrets what he +has done. And why does he regret it?Because he finds +it has not answered towards himself. It has not made +him happy. His circumstances are now unembarrassedhe +suffers from no evil of that kind and he thinks only +that he has married a woman of a less amiable temper +than yourself. But does it follow that had he married you, +he would have been happy?The inconveniences would have +been different. He would then have suffered under the +pecuniary distresses which, because they are removed, +he now reckons as nothing. He would have had a wife +of whose temper he could make no complaint, but he would +have been always necessitousalways poor and probably +would soon have learned to rank the innumerable comforts +of a clear estate and good income as of far more importance, +even to domestic happiness, than the mere temper of a wife." +"I have not a doubt of it," said Marianne "and I +have nothing to regretnothing but my own folly." +"Rather say your mother's imprudence, my child," +said Mrs. Dashwood "SHE must be answerable." +Marianne would not let her proceedand Elinor, +satisfied that each felt their own error, wished to avoid +any survey of the past that might weaken her sister's +spirits she, therefore, pursuing the first subject, +immediately continued, +"One observation may, I think, be fairly drawn from +the whole of the storythat all Willoughby's difficulties +have arisen from the first offence against virtue, in his +behaviour to Eliza Williams. That crime has been the origin +of every lesser one, and of all his present discontents." +Marianne assented most feelingly to the remark +and her mother was led by it to an enumeration of Colonel +Brandon's injuries and merits, warm as friendship +and design could unitedly dictate. Her daughter did +not look, however, as if much of it were heard by her. +Elinor, according to her expectation, saw on the two +or three following days, that Marianne did not continue +to gain strength as she had done but while her resolution +was unsubdued, and she still tried to appear cheerful +and easy, her sister could safely trust to the effect +of time upon her health. +Margaret returned, and the family were again all +restored to each other, again quietly settled at the cottage +and if not pursuing their usual studies with quite +so much vigour as when they first came to Barton, +at least planning a vigorous prosecution of them in future. +Elinor grew impatient for some tidings of Edward. +She had heard nothing of him since her leaving London, +nothing new of his plans, nothing certain even of his +present abode. Some letters had passed between her +and her brother, in consequence of Marianne's illness +and in the first of John's, there had been this sentence +"We know nothing of our unfortunate Edward, and can make no +enquiries on so prohibited a subject, but conclude him +to be still at Oxford" which was all the intelligence +of Edward afforded her by the correspondence, for his name +was not even mentioned in any of the succeeding letters. +She was not doomed, however, to be long in ignorance of +his measures. +Their manservant had been sent one morning to Exeter +on business and when, as he waited at table, he had +satisfied the inquiries of his mistress as to the event +of his errand, this was his voluntary communication +"I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is married." +Marianne gave a violent start, fixed her eyes +upon Elinor, saw her turning pale, and fell back in her +chair in hysterics. Mrs. Dashwood, whose eyes, as she +answered the servant's inquiry, had intuitively taken +the same direction, was shocked to perceive by Elinor's +countenance how much she really suffered, and a moment +afterwards, alike distressed by Marianne's situation, +knew not on which child to bestow her principal attention. +The servant, who saw only that Miss Marianne was +taken ill, had sense enough to call one of the maids, +who, with Mrs. Dashwood's assistance, supported her into +the other room. By that time, Marianne was rather better, +and her mother leaving her to the care of Margaret +and the maid, returned to Elinor, who, though still +much disordered, had so far recovered the use of her reason +and voice as to be just beginning an inquiry of Thomas, +as to the source of his intelligence. Mrs. Dashwood +immediately took all that trouble on herself and Elinor +had the benefit of the information without the exertion +of seeking it. +"Who told you that Mr. Ferrars was married, Thomas?" +"I see Mr. Ferrars myself, ma'am, this morning +in Exeter, and his lady too, Miss Steele as was. They was +stopping in a chaise at the door of the New London Inn, +as I went there with a message from Sally at the Park +to her brother, who is one of the postboys. I happened +to look up as I went by the chaise, and so I see directly +it was the youngest Miss Steele so I took off my hat, +and she knew me and called to me, and inquired after you, +ma'am, and the young ladies, especially Miss Marianne, +and bid me I should give her compliments and Mr. Ferrars's, +their best compliments and service, and how sorry they +was they had not time to come on and see you, but they was +in a great hurry to go forwards, for they was going further +down for a little while, but howsever, when they come back, +they'd make sure to come and see you." +"But did she tell you she was married, Thomas?" +"Yes, ma'am. She smiled, and said how she +had changed her name since she was in these parts. +She was always a very affable and freespoken young lady, +and very civil behaved. So, I made free to wish her joy." +"Was Mr. Ferrars in the carriage with her?" +"Yes, ma'am, I just see him leaning back in it, +but he did not look uphe never was a gentleman much +for talking." +Elinor's heart could easily account for his not +putting himself forward and Mrs. Dashwood probably +found the same explanation. +"Was there no one else in the carriage?" +"No, ma'am, only they two." +"Do you know where they came from?" +"They come straight from town, as Miss Lucy +Mrs. Ferrars told me." +"And are they going farther westward?" +"Yes, ma'ambut not to bide long. They will soon +be back again, and then they'd be sure and call here." +Mrs. Dashwood now looked at her daughter +but Elinor knew better than to expect them. +She recognised the whole of Lucy in the message, and was +very confident that Edward would never come near them. +She observed in a low voice, to her mother, that they +were probably going down to Mr. Pratt's, near Plymouth. +Thomas's intelligence seemed over. Elinor looked +as if she wished to hear more. +"Did you see them off, before you came away?" +"No, ma'amthe horses were just coming out, but I +could not bide any longer I was afraid of being late." +"Did Mrs. Ferrars look well?" +"Yes, ma'am, she said how she was very well +and to my mind she was always a very handsome young +ladyand she seemed vastly contented." +Mrs. Dashwood could think of no other question, +and Thomas and the tablecloth, now alike needless, +were soon afterwards dismissed. Marianne had already sent +to say, that she should eat nothing more. Mrs. Dashwood's +and Elinor's appetites were equally lost, and Margaret +might think herself very well off, that with so much +uneasiness as both her sisters had lately experienced, +so much reason as they had often had to be careless +of their meals, she had never been obliged to go without +her dinner before. +When the dessert and the wine were arranged, +and Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor were left by themselves, +they remained long together in a similarity of thoughtfulness +and silence. Mrs. Dashwood feared to hazard any remark, +and ventured not to offer consolation. She now found +that she had erred in relying on Elinor's representation +of herself and justly concluded that every thing +had been expressly softened at the time, to spare her +from an increase of unhappiness, suffering as she then +had suffered for Marianne. She found that she had been +misled by the careful, the considerate attention of +her daughter, to think the attachment, which once she +had so well understood, much slighter in reality, than +she had been wont to believe, or than it was now proved +to be. She feared that under this persuasion she had +been unjust, inattentive, nay, almost unkind, to her Elinor +that Marianne's affliction, because more acknowledged, +more immediately before her, had too much engrossed +her tenderness, and led her away to forget that in Elinor +she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, +certainly with less selfprovocation, and greater fortitude. +CHAPTER +Elinor now found the difference between the expectation +of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told +to consider it, and certainty itself. She now found, that +in spite of herself, she had always admitted a hope, +while Edward remained single, that something would occur +to prevent his marrying Lucy that some resolution of +his own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible +opportunity of establishment for the lady, would arise +to assist the happiness of all. But he was now married +and she condemned her heart for the lurking flattery, +which so much heightened the pain of the intelligence. +That he should be married soon, before as she imagined +he could be in orders, and consequently before he could +be in possession of the living, surprised her a little +at first. But she soon saw how likely it was that Lucy, +in her selfprovident care, in her haste to secure him, +should overlook every thing but the risk of delay. +They were married, married in town, and now hastening +down to her uncle's. What had Edward felt on being within +four miles from Barton, on seeing her mother's servant, +on hearing Lucy's message +They would soon, she supposed, be settled at +Delaford.Delaford,that place in which so much +conspired to give her an interest which she wished +to be acquainted with, and yet desired to avoid. +She saw them in an instant in their parsonagehouse saw +in Lucy, the active, contriving manager, uniting at once +a desire of smart appearance with the utmost frugality, +and ashamed to be suspected of half her economical practices +pursuing her own interest in every thought, courting the +favour of Colonel Brandon, of Mrs. Jennings, and of every +wealthy friend. In Edwardshe knew not what she saw, +nor what she wished to seehappy or unhappy,nothing +pleased her she turned away her head from every sketch of him. +Elinor flattered herself that some one of their +connections in London would write to them to announce +the event, and give farther particulars,but day after +day passed off, and brought no letter, no tidings. +Though uncertain that any one were to blame, she found +fault with every absent friend. They were all thoughtless +or indolent. +"When do you write to Colonel Brandon, ma'am?" +was an inquiry which sprung from the impatience +of her mind to have something going on. +"I wrote to him, my love, last week, and rather +expect to see, than to hear from him again. I earnestly +pressed his coming to us, and should not be surprised +to see him walk in today or tomorrow, or any day." +This was gaining something, something to look forward to. +Colonel Brandon must have some information to give. +Scarcely had she so determined it, when the figure +of a man on horseback drew her eyes to the window. +He stopt at their gate. It was a gentleman, it +was Colonel Brandon himself. Now she could hear more +and she trembled in expectation of it. Butit was +NOT Colonel Brandonneither his airnor his height. +Were it possible, she must say it must be Edward. +She looked again. He had just dismountedshe could not be +mistaken,it WAS Edward. She moved away and sat down. +"He comes from Mr. Pratt's purposely to see us. I WILL be +calm I WILL be mistress of myself." +In a moment she perceived that the others were likewise +aware of the mistake. She saw her mother and Marianne +change colour saw them look at herself, and whisper +a few sentences to each other. She would have given +the world to be able to speakand to make them understand +that she hoped no coolness, no slight, would appear +in their behaviour to himbut she had no utterance, +and was obliged to leave all to their own discretion. +Not a syllable passed aloud. They all waited +in silence for the appearance of their visitor. +His footsteps were heard along the gravel path in a moment +he was in the passage, and in another he was before them. +His countenance, as he entered the room, was not +too happy, even for Elinor. His complexion was white +with agitation, and he looked as if fearful of his +reception, and conscious that he merited no kind one. +Mrs. Dashwood, however, conforming, as she trusted, +to the wishes of that daughter, by whom she then meant +in the warmth of her heart to be guided in every thing, +met with a look of forced complacency, gave him her hand, +and wished him joy. +He coloured, and stammered out an unintelligible reply. +Elinor's lips had moved with her mother's, and, when the +moment of action was over, she wished that she had shaken +hands with him too. But it was then too late, and with a +countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again +and talked of the weather. +Marianne had retreated as much as possible +out of sight, to conceal her distress and Margaret, +understanding some part, but not the whole of the case, +thought it incumbent on her to be dignified, and therefore +took a seat as far from him as she could, and maintained +a strict silence. +When Elinor had ceased to rejoice in the dryness +of the season, a very awful pause took place. It was put +an end to by Mrs. Dashwood, who felt obliged to hope that he +had left Mrs. Ferrars very well. In a hurried manner, +he replied in the affirmative. +Another pause. +Elinor resolving to exert herself, though fearing +the sound of her own voice, now said, +"Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?" +"At Longstaple" he replied, with an air of surprise. +"No, my mother is in town." +"I meant," said Elinor, taking up some work from +the table, "to inquire for Mrs. EDWARD Ferrars." +She dared not look upbut her mother and Marianne both +turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, +looked doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said, +"Perhaps you meanmy brotheryou mean Mrs.Mrs. +ROBERT Ferrars." +"Mrs. Robert Ferrars"was repeated by Marianne and her +mother in an accent of the utmost amazementand though +Elinor could not speak, even HER eyes were fixed on him +with the same impatient wonder. He rose from his seat, +and walked to the window, apparently from not knowing +what to do took up a pair of scissors that lay there, +and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting +the latter to pieces as he spoke, said, in a hurried voice, +"Perhaps you do not knowyou may not have heard +that my brother is lately married toto the youngestto +Miss Lucy Steele." +His words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment +by all but Elinor, who sat with her head leaning over +her work, in a state of such agitation as made her hardly +know where she was. +"Yes," said he, "they were married last week, +and are now at Dawlish." +Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran +out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, +burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would +never cease. Edward, who had till then looked any where, +rather than at her, saw her hurry away, and perhaps saw +or even heard, her emotion for immediately afterwards +he fell into a reverie, which no remarks, no inquiries, +no affectionate address of Mrs. Dashwood could penetrate, +and at last, without saying a word, quitted the room, +and walked out towards the villageleaving the others +in the greatest astonishment and perplexity on a change +in his situation, so wonderful and so suddena perplexity +which they had no means of lessening but by their +own conjectures. +CHAPTER +Unaccountable, however, as the circumstances of his +release might appear to the whole family, it was certain +that Edward was free and to what purpose that freedom would +be employed was easily predetermined by allfor after +experiencing the blessings of ONE imprudent engagement, +contracted without his mother's consent, as he had already +done for more than four years, nothing less could be expected +of him in the failure of THAT, than the immediate contraction +of another. +His errand at Barton, in fact, was a simple one. +It was only to ask Elinor to marry himand considering +that he was not altogether inexperienced in such a question, +it might be strange that he should feel so uncomfortable +in the present case as he really did, so much in need of +encouragement and fresh air. +How soon he had walked himself into the proper +resolution, however, how soon an opportunity of exercising +it occurred, in what manner he expressed himself, +and how he was received, need not be particularly told. +This only need be saidthat when they all sat down to +table at four o'clock, about three hours after his arrival, +he had secured his lady, engaged her mother's consent, +and was not only in the rapturous profession of +the lover, but, in the reality of reason and truth, +one of the happiest of men. His situation indeed was +more than commonly joyful. He had more than the ordinary +triumph of accepted love to swell his heart, and raise +his spirits. He was released without any reproach +to himself, from an entanglement which had long formed +his misery, from a woman whom he had long ceased to love +and elevated at once to that security with another, +which he must have thought of almost with despair, +as soon as he had learnt to consider it with desire. +He was brought, not from doubt or suspense, but from +misery to happinessand the change was openly spoken +in such a genuine, flowing, grateful cheerfulness, +as his friends had never witnessed in him before. +His heart was now open to Elinor, all its weaknesses, +all its errors confessed, and his first boyish attachment +to Lucy treated with all the philosophic dignity of twentyfour. +"It was a foolish, idle inclination on my side," +said he, "the consequence of ignorance of the world +and want of employment. Had my brother given me +some active profession when I was removed at eighteen +from the care of Mr. Pratt, I thinknay, I am sure, +it would never have happened for though I left Longstaple +with what I thought, at the time, a most unconquerable +preference for his niece, yet had I then had any pursuit, +any object to engage my time and keep me at a distance +from her for a few months, I should very soon have +outgrown the fancied attachment, especially by mixing +more with the world, as in such case I must have done. +But instead of having any thing to do, instead of having any +profession chosen for me, or being allowed to chuse any myself, +I returned home to be completely idle and for the first +twelvemonth afterwards I had not even the nominal employment, +which belonging to the university would have given me +for I was not entered at Oxford till I was nineteen. +I had therefore nothing in the world to do, but to fancy +myself in love and as my mother did not make my home +in every respect comfortable, as I had no friend, +no companion in my brother, and disliked new acquaintance, +it was not unnatural for me to be very often at Longstaple, +where I always felt myself at home, and was always sure +of a welcome and accordingly I spent the greatest part +of my time there from eighteen to nineteen Lucy appeared +everything that was amiable and obliging. She was pretty +tooat least I thought so THEN and I had seen so little +of other women, that I could make no comparisons, and see +no defects. Considering everything, therefore, I hope, +foolish as our engagement was, foolish as it has since +in every way been proved, it was not at the time an unnatural +or an inexcusable piece of folly." +The change which a few hours had wrought in the minds +and the happiness of the Dashwoods, was suchso greatas +promised them all, the satisfaction of a sleepless night. +Mrs. Dashwood, too happy to be comfortable, knew not how +to love Edward, nor praise Elinor enough, how to be enough +thankful for his release without wounding his delicacy, +nor how at once to give them leisure for unrestrained +conversation together, and yet enjoy, as she wished, +the sight and society of both. +Marianne could speak HER happiness only by tears. +Comparisons would occurregrets would ariseand her joy, +though sincere as her love for her sister, was of a kind to +give her neither spirits nor language. +But Elinorhow are HER feelings to be described?From +the moment of learning that Lucy was married to another, +that Edward was free, to the moment of his justifying +the hopes which had so instantly followed, she was every +thing by turns but tranquil. But when the second moment +had passed, when she found every doubt, every solicitude +removed, compared her situation with what so lately it +had been,saw him honourably released from his former +engagement, saw him instantly profiting by the release, +to address herself and declare an affection as tender, +as constant as she had ever supposed it to be,she +was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity +and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily +familiarized with any change for the better, it required +several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any +degree of tranquillity to her heart. +Edward was now fixed at the cottage at least for +a weekfor whatever other claims might be made on him, +it was impossible that less than a week should be given +up to the enjoyment of Elinor's company, or suffice +to say half that was to be said of the past, the present, +and the futurefor though a very few hours spent in +the hard labor of incessant talking will despatch more +subjects than can really be in common between any two +rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. +Between THEM no subject is finished, no communication +is even made, till it has been made at least twenty +times over. +Lucy's marriage, the unceasing and reasonable wonder +among them all, formed of course one of the earliest +discussions of the loversand Elinor's particular knowledge +of each party made it appear to her in every view, as one +of the most extraordinary and unaccountable circumstances +she had ever heard. How they could be thrown together, +and by what attraction Robert could be drawn on to marry +a girl, of whose beauty she had herself heard him speak +without any admiration,a girl too already engaged +to his brother, and on whose account that brother had been +thrown off by his familyit was beyond her comprehension +to make out. To her own heart it was a delightful affair, +to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but +to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle. +Edward could only attempt an explanation by supposing, +that, perhaps, at first accidentally meeting, the vanity +of the one had been so worked on by the flattery +of the other, as to lead by degrees to all the rest. +Elinor remembered what Robert had told her in Harley Street, +of his opinion of what his own mediation in his brother's +affairs might have done, if applied to in time. +She repeated it to Edward. +"THAT was exactly like Robert,"was his immediate +observation."And THAT," he presently added, "might +perhaps be in HIS head when the acquaintance between +them first began. And Lucy perhaps at first might +think only of procuring his good offices in my favour. +Other designs might afterward arise." +How long it had been carrying on between them, +however, he was equally at a loss with herself to make out +for at Oxford, where he had remained for choice ever since +his quitting London, he had had no means of hearing of her +but from herself, and her letters to the very last were +neither less frequent, nor less affectionate than usual. +Not the smallest suspicion, therefore, had ever occurred +to prepare him for what followedand when at last it +burst on him in a letter from Lucy herself, he had been +for some time, he believed, half stupified between +the wonder, the horror, and the joy of such a deliverance. +He put the letter into Elinor's hands. +"DEAR SIR, +"Being very sure I have long lost your affections, +I have thought myself at liberty to bestow my own +on another, and have no doubt of being as happy with +him as I once used to think I might be with you +but I scorn to accept a hand while the heart was +another's. Sincerely wish you happy in your choice, +and it shall not be my fault if we are not always +good friends, as our near relationship now makes +proper. I can safely say I owe you no illwill, +and am sure you will be too generous to do us any +ill offices. Your brother has gained my affections +entirely, and as we could not live without one +another, we are just returned from the altar, and +are now on our way to Dawlish for a few weeks, which +place your dear brother has great curiosity to see, +but thought I would first trouble you with these +few lines, and shall always remain, +"Your sincere wellwisher, friend, and sister, +"LUCY FERRARS. +"I have burnt all your letters, and will return +your picture the first opportunity. Please to destroy +my scrawlsbut the ring with my hair you are very +welcome to keep." +Elinor read and returned it without any comment. +"I will not ask your opinion of it as a composition," +said Edward."For worlds would not I have had a letter +of hers seen by YOU in former days.In a sister it +is bad enough, but in a wifehow I have blushed over +the pages of her writingand I believe I may say that +since the first half year of our foolishbusinessthis +is the only letter I ever received from her, of which +the substance made me any amends for the defect of the style." +"However it may have come about," said Elinor, +after a pause,"they are certainly married. And your mother +has brought on herself a most appropriate punishment. +The independence she settled on Robert, through resentment +against you, has put it in his power to make his own choice +and she has actually been bribing one son with a thousand +ayear, to do the very deed which she disinherited the +other for intending to do. She will hardly be less hurt, +I suppose, by Robert's marrying Lucy, than she would have +been by your marrying her." +"She will be more hurt by it, for Robert always +was her favourite.She will be more hurt by it, +and on the same principle will forgive him much sooner." +In what state the affair stood at present between them, +Edward knew not, for no communication with any of his family +had yet been attempted by him. He had quitted Oxford +within four and twenty hours after Lucy's letter arrived, +and with only one object before him, the nearest road +to Barton, had had no leisure to form any scheme of conduct, +with which that road did not hold the most intimate connection. +He could do nothing till he were assured of his fate with +Miss Dashwood and by his rapidity in seeking THAT fate, +it is to be supposed, in spite of the jealousy with +which he had once thought of Colonel Brandon, in spite +of the modesty with which he rated his own deserts, +and the politeness with which he talked of his doubts, +he did not, upon the whole, expect a very cruel reception. +It was his business, however, to say that he DID, and he +said it very prettily. What he might say on the subject +a twelvemonth after, must be referred to the imagination +of husbands and wives. +That Lucy had certainly meant to deceive, to go off +with a flourish of malice against him in her message +by Thomas, was perfectly clear to Elinor and Edward himself, +now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no +scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness +of wanton illnature. Though his eyes had been long opened, +even before his acquaintance with Elinor began, to her +ignorance and a want of liberality in some of her opinions +they had been equally imputed, by him, to her want +of education and till her last letter reached him, +he had always believed her to be a welldisposed, +goodhearted girl, and thoroughly attached to himself. +Nothing but such a persuasion could have prevented +his putting an end to an engagement, which, long before +the discovery of it laid him open to his mother's anger, +had been a continual source of disquiet and regret to him. +"I thought it my duty," said he, "independent of my feelings, +to give her the option of continuing the engagement or not, +when I was renounced by my mother, and stood to all +appearance without a friend in the world to assist me. +In such a situation as that, where there seemed nothing +to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living creature, +how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly insisted +on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing +but the most disinterested affection was her inducement? +And even now, I cannot comprehend on what motive she acted, +or what fancied advantage it could be to her, to be +fettered to a man for whom she had not the smallest regard, +and who had only two thousand pounds in the world. +She could not foresee that Colonel Brandon would give me a +living." +"No but she might suppose that something would occur +in your favour that your own family might in time relent. +And at any rate, she lost nothing by continuing the engagement, +for she has proved that it fettered neither her inclination +nor her actions. The connection was certainly a +respectable one, and probably gained her consideration among +her friends and, if nothing more advantageous occurred, +it would be better for her to marry YOU than be single." +Edward was, of course, immediately convinced that +nothing could have been more natural than Lucy's conduct, +nor more selfevident than the motive of it. +Elinor scolded him, harshly as ladies always scold +the imprudence which compliments themselves, for having +spent so much time with them at Norland, when he must +have felt his own inconstancy. +"Your behaviour was certainly very wrong," said she +"becauseto say nothing of my own conviction, our relations +were all led away by it to fancy and expect WHAT, as you +were THEN situated, could never be." +He could only plead an ignorance of his own heart, +and a mistaken confidence in the force of his engagement. +"I was simple enough to think, that because my FAITH +was plighted to another, there could be no danger in my being +with you and that the consciousness of my engagement was +to keep my heart as safe and sacred as my honour. I felt +that I admired you, but I told myself it was only friendship +and till I began to make comparisons between yourself +and Lucy, I did not know how far I was got. After that, +I suppose, I WAS wrong in remaining so much in Sussex, +and the arguments with which I reconciled myself to the +expediency of it, were no better than theseThe danger +is my own I am doing no injury to anybody but myself." +Elinor smiled, and shook her head. +Edward heard with pleasure of Colonel Brandon's +being expected at the Cottage, as he really wished +not only to be better acquainted with him, but to have an +opportunity of convincing him that he no longer resented +his giving him the living of Delaford"Which, at present," +said he, "after thanks so ungraciously delivered as mine +were on the occasion, he must think I have never forgiven +him for offering." +NOW he felt astonished himself that he had never yet +been to the place. But so little interest had be taken +in the matter, that he owed all his knowledge of the house, +garden, and glebe, extent of the parish, condition of +the land, and rate of the tithes, to Elinor herself, +who had heard so much of it from Colonel Brandon, +and heard it with so much attention, as to be entirely +mistress of the subject. +One question after this only remained undecided, +between them, one difficulty only was to be overcome. +They were brought together by mutual affection, +with the warmest approbation of their real friends +their intimate knowledge of each other seemed to make +their happiness certainand they only wanted something +to live upon. Edward had two thousand pounds, and Elinor +one, which, with Delaford living, was all that they could +call their own for it was impossible that Mrs. Dashwood +should advance anything and they were neither of them +quite enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty +pounds ayear would supply them with the comforts of life. +Edward was not entirely without hopes of some +favourable change in his mother towards him and on THAT +he rested for the residue of their income. But Elinor +had no such dependence for since Edward would still +be unable to marry Miss Morton, and his chusing herself +had been spoken of in Mrs. Ferrars's flattering language +as only a lesser evil than his chusing Lucy Steele, +she feared that Robert's offence would serve no other +purpose than to enrich Fanny. +About four days after Edward's arrival Colonel +Brandon appeared, to complete Mrs. Dashwood's satisfaction, +and to give her the dignity of having, for the first time +since her living at Barton, more company with her than +her house would hold. Edward was allowed to retain the +privilege of first comer, and Colonel Brandon therefore +walked every night to his old quarters at the Park +from whence he usually returned in the morning, early enough +to interrupt the lovers' first teteatete before breakfast. +A three weeks' residence at Delaford, where, +in his evening hours at least, he had little to do +but to calculate the disproportion between thirtysix +and seventeen, brought him to Barton in a temper of mind +which needed all the improvement in Marianne's looks, +all the kindness of her welcome, and all the encouragement +of her mother's language, to make it cheerful. +Among such friends, however, and such flattery, he did revive. +No rumour of Lucy's marriage had yet reached himhe knew +nothing of what had passed and the first hours of his +visit were consequently spent in hearing and in wondering. +Every thing was explained to him by Mrs. Dashwood, +and he found fresh reason to rejoice in what he had done +for Mr. Ferrars, since eventually it promoted the interest +of Elinor. +It would be needless to say, that the gentlemen advanced +in the good opinion of each other, as they advanced in each +other's acquaintance, for it could not be otherwise. +Their resemblance in good principles and good sense, +in disposition and manner of thinking, would probably +have been sufficient to unite them in friendship, +without any other attraction but their being in love +with two sisters, and two sisters fond of each other, +made that mutual regard inevitable and immediate, +which might otherwise have waited the effect of time +and judgment. +The letters from town, which a few days before would +have made every nerve in Elinor's body thrill with transport, +now arrived to be read with less emotion that mirth. +Mrs. Jennings wrote to tell the wonderful tale, to vent her +honest indignation against the jilting girl, and pour forth +her compassion towards poor Mr. Edward, who, she was sure, +had quite doted upon the worthless hussy, and was now, +by all accounts, almost brokenhearted, at Oxford. +"I do think," she continued, "nothing was ever carried +on so sly for it was but two days before Lucy called +and sat a couple of hours with me. Not a soul suspected +anything of the matter, not even Nancy, who, poor soul +came crying to me the day after, in a great fright +for fear of Mrs. Ferrars, as well as not knowing how to +get to Plymouth for Lucy it seems borrowed all her +money before she went off to be married, on purpose +we suppose to make a show with, and poor Nancy had not +seven shillings in the worldso I was very glad to give +her five guineas to take her down to Exeter, where she +thinks of staying three or four weeks with Mrs. Burgess, +in hopes, as I tell her, to fall in with the Doctor again. +And I must say that Lucy's crossness not to take them +along with them in the chaise is worse than all. +Poor Mr. Edward I cannot get him out of my head, but you +must send for him to Barton, and Miss Marianne must try to +comfort him." +Mr. Dashwood's strains were more solemn. +Mrs. Ferrars was the most unfortunate of womenpoor +Fanny had suffered agonies of sensibilityand he +considered the existence of each, under such a blow, +with grateful wonder. Robert's offence was unpardonable, +but Lucy's was infinitely worse. Neither of them were +ever again to be mentioned to Mrs. Ferrars and even, +if she might hereafter be induced to forgive her son, +his wife should never be acknowledged as her daughter, +nor be permitted to appear in her presence. The secrecy +with which everything had been carried on between them, +was rationally treated as enormously heightening +the crime, because, had any suspicion of it occurred +to the others, proper measures would have been taken +to prevent the marriage and he called on Elinor to join +with him in regretting that Lucy's engagement with Edward +had not rather been fulfilled, than that she should thus +be the means of spreading misery farther in the family. +He thus continued +"Mrs. Ferrars has never yet mentioned Edward's name, +which does not surprise us but, to our great astonishment, +not a line has been received from him on the occasion. +Perhaps, however, he is kept silent by his fear of offending, +and I shall, therefore, give him a hint, by a line +to Oxford, that his sister and I both think a letter +of proper submission from him, addressed perhaps to Fanny, +and by her shewn to her mother, might not be taken amiss +for we all know the tenderness of Mrs. Ferrars's heart, +and that she wishes for nothing so much as to be on good terms +with her children." +This paragraph was of some importance to the +prospects and conduct of Edward. It determined him +to attempt a reconciliation, though not exactly +in the manner pointed out by their brother and sister. +"A letter of proper submission" repeated he +"would they have me beg my mother's pardon for Robert's +ingratitude to HER, and breach of honour to ME?I can +make no submissionI am grown neither humble nor +penitent by what has passed.I am grown very happy +but that would not interest.I know of no submission +that IS proper for me to make." +"You may certainly ask to be forgiven," said Elinor, +"because you have offendedand I should think you +might NOW venture so far as to profess some concern +for having ever formed the engagement which drew on you +your mother's anger." +He agreed that he might. +"And when she has forgiven you, perhaps a little humility +may be convenient while acknowledging a second engagement, +almost as imprudent in HER eyes as the first." +He had nothing to urge against it, but still +resisted the idea of a letter of proper submission +and therefore, to make it easier to him, as he declared +a much greater willingness to make mean concessions +by word of mouth than on paper, it was resolved that, +instead of writing to Fanny, he should go to London, +and personally intreat her good offices in his favour. +"And if they really DO interest themselves," said Marianne, +in her new character of candour, "in bringing about +a reconciliation, I shall think that even John and Fanny +are not entirely without merit." +After a visit on Colonel Brandon's side of only three +or four days, the two gentlemen quitted Barton together. +They were to go immediately to Delaford, that Edward +might have some personal knowledge of his future home, +and assist his patron and friend in deciding on what +improvements were needed to it and from thence, +after staying there a couple of nights, he was to proceed +on his journey to town. +CHAPTER +After a proper resistance on the part of Mrs. Ferrars, +just so violent and so steady as to preserve her from that +reproach which she always seemed fearful of incurring, +the reproach of being too amiable, Edward was admitted +to her presence, and pronounced to be again her son. +Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. +For many years of her life she had had two sons +but the crime and annihilation of Edward a few weeks ago, +had robbed her of one the similar annihilation of Robert +had left her for a fortnight without any and now, +by the resuscitation of Edward, she had one again. +In spite of his being allowed once more to live, +however, he did not feel the continuance of his existence +secure, till he had revealed his present engagement +for the publication of that circumstance, he feared, +might give a sudden turn to his constitution, and carry +him off as rapidly as before. With apprehensive caution +therefore it was revealed, and he was listened to with +unexpected calmness. Mrs. Ferrars at first reasonably +endeavoured to dissuade him from marrying Miss Dashwood, +by every argument in her powertold him, that in Miss Morton +he would have a woman of higher rank and larger fortune +and enforced the assertion, by observing that Miss Morton +was the daughter of a nobleman with thirty thousand pounds, +while Miss Dashwood was only the daughter of a private +gentleman with no more than THREE but when she found that, +though perfectly admitting the truth of her representation, +he was by no means inclined to be guided by it, +she judged it wisest, from the experience of the past, +to submitand therefore, after such an ungracious delay +as she owed to her own dignity, and as served to prevent +every suspicion of goodwill, she issued her decree +of consent to the marriage of Edward and Elinor. +What she would engage to do towards augmenting +their income was next to be considered and here it +plainly appeared, that though Edward was now her only son, +he was by no means her eldest for while Robert was +inevitably endowed with a thousand pounds ayear, +not the smallest objection was made against Edward's taking +orders for the sake of two hundred and fifty at the utmost +nor was anything promised either for the present or in future, +beyond the ten thousand pounds, which had been given with Fanny. +It was as much, however, as was desired, +and more than was expected, by Edward and Elinor +and Mrs. Ferrars herself, by her shuffling excuses, +seemed the only person surprised at her not giving more. +With an income quite sufficient to their wants +thus secured to them, they had nothing to wait for +after Edward was in possession of the living, but the +readiness of the house, to which Colonel Brandon, +with an eager desire for the accommodation of Elinor, +was making considerable improvements and after waiting +some time for their completion, after experiencing, +as usual, a thousand disappointments and delays +from the unaccountable dilatoriness of the workmen, Elinor, +as usual, broke through the first positive resolution +of not marrying till every thing was ready, and the +ceremony took place in Barton church early in the autumn. +The first month after their marriage was spent +with their friend at the Mansionhouse from whence +they could superintend the progress of the Parsonage, +and direct every thing as they liked on the spot +could chuse papers, project shrubberies, and invent a sweep. +Mrs. Jennings's prophecies, though rather jumbled together, +were chiefly fulfilled for she was able to visit Edward +and his wife in their Parsonage by Michaelmas, and she +found in Elinor and her husband, as she really believed, +one of the happiest couples in the world. They had +in fact nothing to wish for, but the marriage of Colonel +Brandon and Marianne, and rather better pasturage for +their cows. +They were visited on their first settling by almost +all their relations and friends. Mrs. Ferrars came +to inspect the happiness which she was almost ashamed +of having authorised and even the Dashwoods were at +the expense of a journey from Sussex to do them honour. +"I will not say that I am disappointed, my dear sister," +said John, as they were walking together one morning before +the gates of Delaford House, "THAT would be saying too much, +for certainly you have been one of the most fortunate young +women in the world, as it is. But, I confess, it would +give me great pleasure to call Colonel Brandon brother. +His property here, his place, his house, every thing is in +such respectable and excellent conditionand his woodsI +have not seen such timber any where in Dorsetshire, as there +is now standing in Delaford HangerAnd though, perhaps, +Marianne may not seem exactly the person to attract him +yet I think it would altogether be advisable for you to +have them now frequently staying with you, for as Colonel +Brandon seems a great deal at home, nobody can tell what +may happenfor, when people are much thrown together, +and see little of anybody elseand it will always be +in your power to set her off to advantage, and so forth +in short, you may as well give her a chanceYou understand +me." +But though Mrs. Ferrars DID come to see them, and always +treated them with the makebelieve of decent affection, +they were never insulted by her real favour and preference. +THAT was due to the folly of Robert, and the cunning +of his wife and it was earned by them before many months +had passed away. The selfish sagacity of the latter, +which had at first drawn Robert into the scrape, +was the principal instrument of his deliverance from it +for her respectful humility, assiduous attentions, +and endless flatteries, as soon as the smallest opening +was given for their exercise, reconciled Mrs. Ferrars +to his choice, and reestablished him completely in +her favour. +The whole of Lucy's behaviour in the affair, +and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held +forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, +an unceasing attention to selfinterest, however its progress +may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every +advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time +and conscience. When Robert first sought her acquaintance, +and privately visited her in Bartlett's Buildings, +it was only with the view imputed to him by his brother. +He merely meant to persuade her to give up the engagement +and as there could be nothing to overcome but the affection +of both, he naturally expected that one or two interviews +would settle the matter. In that point, however, +and that only, he erredfor though Lucy soon gave him +hopes that his eloquence would convince her in TIME, +another visit, another conversation, was always wanted +to produce this conviction. Some doubts always lingered +in her mind when they parted, which could only be +removed by another half hour's discourse with himself. +His attendance was by this means secured, and the rest +followed in course. Instead of talking of Edward, +they came gradually to talk only of Robert,a subject +on which he had always more to say than on any other, +and in which she soon betrayed an interest even equal +to his own and in short, it became speedily evident +to both, that he had entirely supplanted his brother. +He was proud of his conquest, proud of tricking Edward, +and very proud of marrying privately without his +mother's consent. What immediately followed is known. +They passed some months in great happiness at Dawlish +for she had many relations and old acquaintances to +cutand he drew several plans for magnificent cottages +and from thence returning to town, procured the forgiveness +of Mrs. Ferrars, by the simple expedient of asking it, +which, at Lucy's instigation, was adopted. The forgiveness, +at first, indeed, as was reasonable, comprehended only Robert +and Lucy, who had owed his mother no duty and therefore +could have transgressed none, still remained some weeks +longer unpardoned. But perseverance in humility of conduct +and messages, in selfcondemnation for Robert's offence, +and gratitude for the unkindness she was treated with, +procured her in time the haughty notice which overcame +her by its graciousness, and led soon afterwards, by rapid +degrees, to the highest state of affection and influence. +Lucy became as necessary to Mrs. Ferrars, as either Robert +or Fanny and while Edward was never cordially forgiven +for having once intended to marry her, and Elinor, +though superior to her in fortune and birth, was spoken +of as an intruder, SHE was in every thing considered, +and always openly acknowledged, to be a favourite child. +They settled in town, received very liberal assistance +from Mrs. Ferrars, were on the best terms imaginable +with the Dashwoods and setting aside the jealousies +and illwill continually subsisting between Fanny and Lucy, +in which their husbands of course took a part, as well +as the frequent domestic disagreements between Robert and +Lucy themselves, nothing could exceed the harmony in which +they all lived together. +What Edward had done to forfeit the right of eldest +son, might have puzzled many people to find out and what +Robert had done to succeed to it, might have puzzled them +still more. It was an arrangement, however, justified in +its effects, if not in its cause for nothing ever +appeared in Robert's style of living or of talking to give +a suspicion of his regretting the extent of his income, +as either leaving his brother too little, or bringing +himself too muchand if Edward might be judged from +the ready discharge of his duties in every particular, +from an increasing attachment to his wife and his home, +and from the regular cheerfulness of his spirits, +he might be supposed no less contented with his lot, +no less free from every wish of an exchange. +Elinor's marriage divided her as little from her +family as could well be contrived, without rendering +the cottage at Barton entirely useless, for her mother +and sisters spent much more than half their time with her. +Mrs. Dashwood was acting on motives of policy as well +as pleasure in the frequency of her visits at Delaford +for her wish of bringing Marianne and Colonel Brandon together +was hardly less earnest, though rather more liberal than +what John had expressed. It was now her darling object. +Precious as was the company of her daughter to her, +she desired nothing so much as to give up its constant +enjoyment to her valued friend and to see Marianne settled at +the mansionhouse was equally the wish of Edward and Elinor. +They each felt his sorrows, and their own obligations, +and Marianne, by general consent, was to be the reward +of all. +With such a confederacy against herwith a knowledge +so intimate of his goodnesswith a conviction of his fond +attachment to herself, which at last, though long after it +was observable to everybody elseburst on herwhat could she +do? +Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. +She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, +and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. +She was born to overcome an affection formed so late +in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment +superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, +voluntarily to give her hand to anotherand THAT other, +a man who had suffered no less than herself under the +event of a former attachment, whom, two years before, +she had considered too old to be married,and who still +sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat +But so it was. Instead of falling a sacrifice +to an irresistible passion, as once she had fondly +flattered herself with expecting,instead of remaining +even for ever with her mother, and finding her only +pleasures in retirement and study, as afterwards in her +more calm and sober judgment she had determined on, +she found herself at nineteen, submitting to new attachments, +entering on new duties, placed in a new home, a wife, +the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village. +Colonel Brandon was now as happy, as all those who best +loved him, believed he deserved to bein Marianne he +was consoled for every past afflictionher regard and her +society restored his mind to animation, and his spirits +to cheerfulness and that Marianne found her own happiness +in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight +of each observing friend. Marianne could never love +by halves and her whole heart became, in time, as much +devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby. +Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without +a pang and his punishment was soon afterwards complete +in the voluntary forgiveness of Mrs. Smith, who, by stating +his marriage with a woman of character, as the source +of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had he +behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have +been happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, +which thus brought its own punishment, was sincere, +need not be doubtednor that he long thought of Colonel +Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret. But that +he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, +or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a +broken heart, must not be depended onfor he did neither. +He lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. +His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home +always uncomfortable and in his breed of horses and dogs, +and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable +degree of domestic felicity. +For Marianne, howeverin spite of his incivility +in surviving her losshe always retained that decided +regard which interested him in every thing that befell her, +and made her his secret standard of perfection in woman +and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him in +afterdays as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon. +Mrs. Dashwood was prudent enough to remain at the cottage, +without attempting a removal to Delaford and fortunately for +Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, when Marianne was taken from them, +Margaret had reached an age highly suitable for dancing, +and not very ineligible for being supposed to have a lover. +Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant +communication which strong family affection would +naturally dictateand among the merits and the happiness +of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least +considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within +sight of each other, they could live without disagreement +between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands. +THE END +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Sense and Sensibility +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes +by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle + in our series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. +Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts +eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since +These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers +Title The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes +Author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle +Release Date March, [EBook ] +[Most recently updated November , ] +Edition +Language English +Character set encoding ASCII + START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES +Additional editing by Jose Menendez +THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE +I. A Scandal in Bohemia +II. The Redheaded League +III. A Case of Identity +IV. The Boscombe Valley Mystery +V. The Five Orange Pips +VI. The Man with the Twisted Lip +VII. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle +VIII. The Adventure of the Speckled Band +IX. The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb +X. The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor +XI. The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet +XII. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches +ADVENTURE I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA +I. +To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard +him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses +and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt +any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that +one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but +admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect +reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a +lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never +spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They +were admirable things for the observerexcellent for drawing the +veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner +to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely +adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which +might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a +sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own highpower +lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a +nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and +that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable +memory. +I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us +away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the +homecentred interests which rise up around the man who first +finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to +absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of +society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in +Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from +week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the +drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, +as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his +immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in +following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which +had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time +to time I heard some vague account of his doings of his summons +to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up +of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, +and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so +delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. +Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely +shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of +my former friend and companion. +One nightit was on the twentieth of March, I was +returning from a journey to a patient for I had now returned to +civil practice, when my way led me through Baker Street. As I +passed the wellremembered door, which must always be associated +in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the +Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes +again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. +His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw +his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against +the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head +sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who +knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their +own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his +drugcreated dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new +problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which +had formerly been in part my own. +His manner was not effusive. It seldom was but he was glad, I +think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly +eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, +and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he +stood before the fire and looked me over in his singular +introspective fashion. +"Wedlock suits you," he remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have +put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you." +"Seven" I answered. +"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, +I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not +tell me that you intended to go into harness." +"Then, how do you know?" +"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting +yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and +careless servant girl?" +"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly +have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true +that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful +mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can't imagine how you +deduce it. As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has +given her notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it +out." +He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands +together. +"It is simplicity itself," said he "my eyes tell me that on the +inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, +the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they +have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round +the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. +Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile +weather, and that you had a particularly malignant bootslitting +specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a +gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black +mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge +on the right side of his tophat to show where he has secreted +his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce +him to be an active member of the medical profession." +I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his +process of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I +remarked, "the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously +simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each +successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you +explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good +as yours." +"Quite so," he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing +himself down into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. +The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen +the steps which lead up from the hall to this room." +"Frequently." +"How often?" +"Well, some hundreds of times." +"Then how many are there?" +"How many? I don't know." +"Quite so You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is +just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, +because I have both seen and observed. Bytheway, since you are +interested in these little problems, and since you are good +enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences, you +may be interested in this." He threw over a sheet of thick, +pinktinted notepaper which had been lying open upon the table. +"It came by the last post," said he. "Read it aloud." +The note was undated, and without either signature or address. +"There will call upon you tonight, at a quarter to eight +o'clock," it said, "a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a +matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of +the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may +safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which +can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all +quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do +not take it amiss if your visitor wear a mask." +"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that +it means?" +"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before +one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit +theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. +What do you deduce from it?" +I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was +written. +"The man who wrote it was presumably well to do," I remarked, +endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. "Such paper +could not be bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly +strong and stiff." +"Peculiarthat is the very word," said Holmes. "It is not an +English paper at all. Hold it up to the light." +I did so, and saw a large "E" with a small "g," a "P," and a +large "G" with a small "t" woven into the texture of the paper. +"What do you make of that?" asked Holmes. +"The name of the maker, no doubt or his monogram, rather." +"Not at all. The 'G' with the small 't' stands for +'Gesellschaft,' which is the German for 'Company.' It is a +customary contraction like our 'Co.' 'P,' of course, stands for +'Papier.' Now for the 'Eg.' Let us glance at our Continental +Gazetteer." He took down a heavy brown volume from his shelves. +"Eglow, Eglonitzhere we are, Egria. It is in a Germanspeaking +countryin Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad. 'Remarkable as being +the scene of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous +glassfactories and papermills.' Ha, ha, my boy, what do you +make of that?" His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue +triumphant cloud from his cigarette. +"The paper was made in Bohemia," I said. +"Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you +note the peculiar construction of the sentence'This account of +you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian +could not have written that. It is the German who is so +uncourteous to his verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover +what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper and +prefers wearing a mask to showing his face. And here he comes, if +I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts." +As he spoke there was the sharp sound of horses' hoofs and +grating wheels against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the +bell. Holmes whistled. +"A pair, by the sound," said he. "Yes," he continued, glancing +out of the window. "A nice little brougham and a pair of +beauties. A hundred and fifty guineas apiece. There's money in +this case, Watson, if there is nothing else." +"I think that I had better go, Holmes." +"Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my +Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity +to miss it." +"But your client" +"Never mind him. I may want your help, and so may he. Here he +comes. Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best +attention." +A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and +in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there +was a loud and authoritative tap. +"Come in" said Holmes. +A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six +inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His +dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked +upon as akin to bad taste. Heavy bands of astrakhan were slashed +across the sleeves and fronts of his doublebreasted coat, while +the deep blue cloak which was thrown over his shoulders was lined +with flamecoloured silk and secured at the neck with a brooch +which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended +halfway up his calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with +rich brown fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence +which was suggested by his whole appearance. He carried a +broadbrimmed hat in his hand, while he wore across the upper +part of his face, extending down past the cheekbones, a black +vizard mask, which he had apparently adjusted that very moment, +for his hand was still raised to it as he entered. From the lower +part of the face he appeared to be a man of strong character, +with a thick, hanging lip, and a long, straight chin suggestive +of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy. +"You had my note?" he asked with a deep harsh voice and a +strongly marked German accent. "I told you that I would call." He +looked from one to the other of us, as if uncertain which to +address. +"Pray take a seat," said Holmes. "This is my friend and +colleague, Dr. Watson, who is occasionally good enough to help me +in my cases. Whom have I the honour to address?" +"You may address me as the Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman. +I understand that this gentleman, your friend, is a man of honour +and discretion, whom I may trust with a matter of the most +extreme importance. If not, I should much prefer to communicate +with you alone." +I rose to go, but Holmes caught me by the wrist and pushed me +back into my chair. "It is both, or none," said he. "You may say +before this gentleman anything which you may say to me." +The Count shrugged his broad shoulders. "Then I must begin," said +he, "by binding you both to absolute secrecy for two years at +the end of that time the matter will be of no importance. At +present it is not too much to say that it is of such weight it +may have an influence upon European history." +"I promise," said Holmes. +"And I." +"You will excuse this mask," continued our strange visitor. "The +august person who employs me wishes his agent to be unknown to +you, and I may confess at once that the title by which I have +just called myself is not exactly my own." +"I was aware of it," said Holmes dryly. +"The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution +has to be taken to quench what might grow to be an immense +scandal and seriously compromise one of the reigning families of +Europe. To speak plainly, the matter implicates the great House +of Ormstein, hereditary kings of Bohemia." +"I was also aware of that," murmured Holmes, settling himself +down in his armchair and closing his eyes. +Our visitor glanced with some apparent surprise at the languid, +lounging figure of the man who had been no doubt depicted to him +as the most incisive reasoner and most energetic agent in Europe. +Holmes slowly reopened his eyes and looked impatiently at his +gigantic client. +"If your Majesty would condescend to state your case," he +remarked, "I should be better able to advise you." +The man sprang from his chair and paced up and down the room in +uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he +tore the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground. "You +are right," he cried "I am the King. Why should I attempt to +conceal it?" +"Why, indeed?" murmured Holmes. "Your Majesty had not spoken +before I was aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich +Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of CasselFelstein, and +hereditary King of Bohemia." +"But you can understand," said our strange visitor, sitting down +once more and passing his hand over his high white forehead, "you +can understand that I am not accustomed to doing such business in +my own person. Yet the matter was so delicate that I could not +confide it to an agent without putting myself in his power. I +have come incognito from Prague for the purpose of consulting +you." +"Then, pray consult," said Holmes, shutting his eyes once more. +"The facts are briefly these Some five years ago, during a +lengthy visit to Warsaw, I made the acquaintance of the wellknown +adventuress, Irene Adler. The name is no doubt familiar to you." +"Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor," murmured Holmes without +opening his eyes. For many years he had adopted a system of +docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it +was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could not +at once furnish information. In this case I found her biography +sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a +staffcommander who had written a monograph upon the deepsea +fishes. +"Let me see" said Holmes. "Hum Born in New Jersey in the year +. Contraltohum La Scala, hum Prima donna Imperial Opera +of Warsawyes Retired from operatic stageha Living in +Londonquite so Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled +with this young person, wrote her some compromising letters, and +is now desirous of getting those letters back." +"Precisely so. But how" +"Was there a secret marriage?" +"None." +"No legal papers or certificates?" +"None." +"Then I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should +produce her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is +she to prove their authenticity?" +"There is the writing." +"Pooh, pooh Forgery." +"My private notepaper." +"Stolen." +"My own seal." +"Imitated." +"My photograph." +"Bought." +"We were both in the photograph." +"Oh, dear That is very bad Your Majesty has indeed committed an +indiscretion." +"I was madinsane." +"You have compromised yourself seriously." +"I was only Crown Prince then. I was young. I am but thirty now." +"It must be recovered." +"We have tried and failed." +"Your Majesty must pay. It must be bought." +"She will not sell." +"Stolen, then." +"Five attempts have been made. Twice burglars in my pay ransacked +her house. Once we diverted her luggage when she travelled. Twice +she has been waylaid. There has been no result." +"No sign of it?" +"Absolutely none." +Holmes laughed. "It is quite a pretty little problem," said he. +"But a very serious one to me," returned the King reproachfully. +"Very, indeed. And what does she propose to do with the +photograph?" +"To ruin me." +"But how?" +"I am about to be married." +"So I have heard." +"To Clotilde Lothman von SaxeMeningen, second daughter of the +King of Scandinavia. You may know the strict principles of her +family. She is herself the very soul of delicacy. A shadow of a +doubt as to my conduct would bring the matter to an end." +"And Irene Adler?" +"Threatens to send them the photograph. And she will do it. I +know that she will do it. You do not know her, but she has a soul +of steel. She has the face of the most beautiful of women, and +the mind of the most resolute of men. Rather than I should marry +another woman, there are no lengths to which she would not +gonone." +"You are sure that she has not sent it yet?" +"I am sure." +"And why?" +"Because she has said that she would send it on the day when the +betrothal was publicly proclaimed. That will be next Monday." +"Oh, then we have three days yet," said Holmes with a yawn. "That +is very fortunate, as I have one or two matters of importance to +look into just at present. Your Majesty will, of course, stay in +London for the present?" +"Certainly. You will find me at the Langham under the name of the +Count Von Kramm." +"Then I shall drop you a line to let you know how we progress." +"Pray do so. I shall be all anxiety." +"Then, as to money?" +"You have carte blanche." +"Absolutely?" +"I tell you that I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom +to have that photograph." +"And for present expenses?" +The King took a heavy chamois leather bag from under his cloak +and laid it on the table. +"There are three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in +notes," he said. +Holmes scribbled a receipt upon a sheet of his notebook and +handed it to him. +"And Mademoiselle's address?" he asked. +"Is Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St. John's Wood." +Holmes took a note of it. "One other question," said he. "Was the +photograph a cabinet?" +"It was." +"Then, goodnight, your Majesty, and I trust that we shall soon +have some good news for you. And goodnight, Watson," he added, +as the wheels of the royal brougham rolled down the street. "If +you will be good enough to call tomorrow afternoon at three +o'clock I should like to chat this little matter over with you." +II. +At three o'clock precisely I was at Baker Street, but Holmes had +not yet returned. The landlady informed me that he had left the +house shortly after eight o'clock in the morning. I sat down +beside the fire, however, with the intention of awaiting him, +however long he might be. I was already deeply interested in his +inquiry, for, though it was surrounded by none of the grim and +strange features which were associated with the two crimes which +I have already recorded, still, the nature of the case and the +exalted station of his client gave it a character of its own. +Indeed, apart from the nature of the investigation which my +friend had on hand, there was something in his masterly grasp of +a situation, and his keen, incisive reasoning, which made it a +pleasure to me to study his system of work, and to follow the +quick, subtle methods by which he disentangled the most +inextricable mysteries. So accustomed was I to his invariable +success that the very possibility of his failing had ceased to +enter into my head. +It was close upon four before the door opened, and a +drunkenlooking groom, illkempt and sidewhiskered, with an +inflamed face and disreputable clothes, walked into the room. +Accustomed as I was to my friend's amazing powers in the use of +disguises, I had to look three times before I was certain that it +was indeed he. With a nod he vanished into the bedroom, whence he +emerged in five minutes tweedsuited and respectable, as of old. +Putting his hands into his pockets, he stretched out his legs in +front of the fire and laughed heartily for some minutes. +"Well, really" he cried, and then he choked and laughed again +until he was obliged to lie back, limp and helpless, in the +chair. +"What is it?" +"It's quite too funny. I am sure you could never guess how I +employed my morning, or what I ended by doing." +"I can't imagine. I suppose that you have been watching the +habits, and perhaps the house, of Miss Irene Adler." +"Quite so but the sequel was rather unusual. I will tell you, +however. I left the house a little after eight o'clock this +morning in the character of a groom out of work. There is a +wonderful sympathy and freemasonry among horsey men. Be one of +them, and you will know all that there is to know. I soon found +Briony Lodge. It is a bijou villa, with a garden at the back, but +built out in front right up to the road, two stories. Chubb lock +to the door. Large sittingroom on the right side, well +furnished, with long windows almost to the floor, and those +preposterous English window fasteners which a child could open. +Behind there was nothing remarkable, save that the passage window +could be reached from the top of the coachhouse. I walked round +it and examined it closely from every point of view, but without +noting anything else of interest. +"I then lounged down the street and found, as I expected, that +there was a mews in a lane which runs down by one wall of the +garden. I lent the ostlers a hand in rubbing down their horses, +and received in exchange twopence, a glass of half and half, two +fills of shag tobacco, and as much information as I could desire +about Miss Adler, to say nothing of half a dozen other people in +the neighbourhood in whom I was not in the least interested, but +whose biographies I was compelled to listen to." +"And what of Irene Adler?" I asked. +"Oh, she has turned all the men's heads down in that part. She is +the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet. So say the +Serpentinemews, to a man. She lives quietly, sings at concerts, +drives out at five every day, and returns at seven sharp for +dinner. Seldom goes out at other times, except when she sings. +Has only one male visitor, but a good deal of him. He is dark, +handsome, and dashing, never calls less than once a day, and +often twice. He is a Mr. Godfrey Norton, of the Inner Temple. See +the advantages of a cabman as a confidant. They had driven him +home a dozen times from Serpentinemews, and knew all about him. +When I had listened to all they had to tell, I began to walk up +and down near Briony Lodge once more, and to think over my plan +of campaign. +"This Godfrey Norton was evidently an important factor in the +matter. He was a lawyer. That sounded ominous. What was the +relation between them, and what the object of his repeated +visits? Was she his client, his friend, or his mistress? If the +former, she had probably transferred the photograph to his +keeping. If the latter, it was less likely. On the issue of this +question depended whether I should continue my work at Briony +Lodge, or turn my attention to the gentleman's chambers in the +Temple. It was a delicate point, and it widened the field of my +inquiry. I fear that I bore you with these details, but I have to +let you see my little difficulties, if you are to understand the +situation." +"I am following you closely," I answered. +"I was still balancing the matter in my mind when a hansom cab +drove up to Briony Lodge, and a gentleman sprang out. He was a +remarkably handsome man, dark, aquiline, and moustached +evidently the man of whom I had heard. He appeared to be in a +great hurry, shouted to the cabman to wait, and brushed past the +maid who opened the door with the air of a man who was thoroughly +at home. +"He was in the house about half an hour, and I could catch +glimpses of him in the windows of the sittingroom, pacing up and +down, talking excitedly, and waving his arms. Of her I could see +nothing. Presently he emerged, looking even more flurried than +before. As he stepped up to the cab, he pulled a gold watch from +his pocket and looked at it earnestly, 'Drive like the devil,' he +shouted, 'first to Gross Hankey's in Regent Street, and then to +the Church of St. Monica in the Edgeware Road. Half a guinea if +you do it in twenty minutes' +"Away they went, and I was just wondering whether I should not do +well to follow them when up the lane came a neat little landau, +the coachman with his coat only halfbuttoned, and his tie under +his ear, while all the tags of his harness were sticking out of +the buckles. It hadn't pulled up before she shot out of the hall +door and into it. I only caught a glimpse of her at the moment, +but she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for. +"'The Church of St. Monica, John,' she cried, 'and half a +sovereign if you reach it in twenty minutes.' +"This was quite too good to lose, Watson. I was just balancing +whether I should run for it, or whether I should perch behind her +landau when a cab came through the street. The driver looked +twice at such a shabby fare, but I jumped in before he could +object. 'The Church of St. Monica,' said I, 'and half a sovereign +if you reach it in twenty minutes.' It was twentyfive minutes to +twelve, and of course it was clear enough what was in the wind. +"My cabby drove fast. I don't think I ever drove faster, but the +others were there before us. The cab and the landau with their +steaming horses were in front of the door when I arrived. I paid +the man and hurried into the church. There was not a soul there +save the two whom I had followed and a surpliced clergyman, who +seemed to be expostulating with them. They were all three +standing in a knot in front of the altar. I lounged up the side +aisle like any other idler who has dropped into a church. +Suddenly, to my surprise, the three at the altar faced round to +me, and Godfrey Norton came running as hard as he could towards +me. +"'Thank God,' he cried. 'You'll do. Come Come' +"'What then?' I asked. +"'Come, man, come, only three minutes, or it won't be legal.' +"I was halfdragged up to the altar, and before I knew where I was +I found myself mumbling responses which were whispered in my ear, +and vouching for things of which I knew nothing, and generally +assisting in the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to +Godfrey Norton, bachelor. It was all done in an instant, and +there was the gentleman thanking me on the one side and the lady +on the other, while the clergyman beamed on me in front. It was +the most preposterous position in which I ever found myself in my +life, and it was the thought of it that started me laughing just +now. It seems that there had been some informality about their +license, that the clergyman absolutely refused to marry them +without a witness of some sort, and that my lucky appearance +saved the bridegroom from having to sally out into the streets in +search of a best man. The bride gave me a sovereign, and I mean +to wear it on my watchchain in memory of the occasion." +"This is a very unexpected turn of affairs," said I "and what +then?" +"Well, I found my plans very seriously menaced. It looked as if +the pair might take an immediate departure, and so necessitate +very prompt and energetic measures on my part. At the church +door, however, they separated, he driving back to the Temple, and +she to her own house. 'I shall drive out in the park at five as +usual,' she said as she left him. I heard no more. They drove +away in different directions, and I went off to make my own +arrangements." +"Which are?" +"Some cold beef and a glass of beer," he answered, ringing the +bell. "I have been too busy to think of food, and I am likely to +be busier still this evening. By the way, Doctor, I shall want +your cooperation." +"I shall be delighted." +"You don't mind breaking the law?" +"Not in the least." +"Nor running a chance of arrest?" +"Not in a good cause." +"Oh, the cause is excellent" +"Then I am your man." +"I was sure that I might rely on you." +"But what is it you wish?" +"When Mrs. Turner has brought in the tray I will make it clear to +you. Now," he said as he turned hungrily on the simple fare that +our landlady had provided, "I must discuss it while I eat, for I +have not much time. It is nearly five now. In two hours we must +be on the scene of action. Miss Irene, or Madame, rather, returns +from her drive at seven. We must be at Briony Lodge to meet her." +"And what then?" +"You must leave that to me. I have already arranged what is to +occur. There is only one point on which I must insist. You must +not interfere, come what may. You understand?" +"I am to be neutral?" +"To do nothing whatever. There will probably be some small +unpleasantness. Do not join in it. It will end in my being +conveyed into the house. Four or five minutes afterwards the +sittingroom window will open. You are to station yourself close +to that open window." +"Yes." +"You are to watch me, for I will be visible to you." +"Yes." +"And when I raise my handsoyou will throw into the room what +I give you to throw, and will, at the same time, raise the cry of +fire. You quite follow me?" +"Entirely." +"It is nothing very formidable," he said, taking a long cigar +shaped roll from his pocket. "It is an ordinary plumber's smoke +rocket, fitted with a cap at either end to make it selflighting. +Your task is confined to that. When you raise your cry of fire, +it will be taken up by quite a number of people. You may then +walk to the end of the street, and I will rejoin you in ten +minutes. I hope that I have made myself clear?" +"I am to remain neutral, to get near the window, to watch you, +and at the signal to throw in this object, then to raise the cry +of fire, and to wait you at the corner of the street." +"Precisely." +"Then you may entirely rely on me." +"That is excellent. I think, perhaps, it is almost time that I +prepare for the new role I have to play." +He disappeared into his bedroom and returned in a few minutes in +the character of an amiable and simpleminded Nonconformist +clergyman. His broad black hat, his baggy trousers, his white +tie, his sympathetic smile, and general look of peering and +benevolent curiosity were such as Mr. John Hare alone could have +equalled. It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His +expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every +fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as +science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in +crime. +It was a quarter past six when we left Baker Street, and it still +wanted ten minutes to the hour when we found ourselves in +Serpentine Avenue. It was already dusk, and the lamps were just +being lighted as we paced up and down in front of Briony Lodge, +waiting for the coming of its occupant. The house was just such +as I had pictured it from Sherlock Holmes' succinct description, +but the locality appeared to be less private than I expected. On +the contrary, for a small street in a quiet neighbourhood, it was +remarkably animated. There was a group of shabbily dressed men +smoking and laughing in a corner, a scissorsgrinder with his +wheel, two guardsmen who were flirting with a nursegirl, and +several welldressed young men who were lounging up and down with +cigars in their mouths. +"You see," remarked Holmes, as we paced to and fro in front of +the house, "this marriage rather simplifies matters. The +photograph becomes a doubleedged weapon now. The chances are +that she would be as averse to its being seen by Mr. Godfrey +Norton, as our client is to its coming to the eyes of his +princess. Now the question is, Where are we to find the +photograph?" +"Where, indeed?" +"It is most unlikely that she carries it about with her. It is +cabinet size. Too large for easy concealment about a woman's +dress. She knows that the King is capable of having her waylaid +and searched. Two attempts of the sort have already been made. We +may take it, then, that she does not carry it about with her." +"Where, then?" +"Her banker or her lawyer. There is that double possibility. But +I am inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive, +and they like to do their own secreting. Why should she hand it +over to anyone else? She could trust her own guardianship, but +she could not tell what indirect or political influence might be +brought to bear upon a business man. Besides, remember that she +had resolved to use it within a few days. It must be where she +can lay her hands upon it. It must be in her own house." +"But it has twice been burgled." +"Pshaw They did not know how to look." +"But how will you look?" +"I will not look." +"What then?" +"I will get her to show me." +"But she will refuse." +"She will not be able to. But I hear the rumble of wheels. It is +her carriage. Now carry out my orders to the letter." +As he spoke the gleam of the sidelights of a carriage came round +the curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which +rattled up to the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up, one of +the loafing men at the corner dashed forward to open the door in +the hope of earning a copper, but was elbowed away by another +loafer, who had rushed up with the same intention. A fierce +quarrel broke out, which was increased by the two guardsmen, who +took sides with one of the loungers, and by the scissorsgrinder, +who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was struck, and +in an instant the lady, who had stepped from her carriage, was +the centre of a little knot of flushed and struggling men, who +struck savagely at each other with their fists and sticks. Holmes +dashed into the crowd to protect the lady but just as he reached +her he gave a cry and dropped to the ground, with the blood +running freely down his face. At his fall the guardsmen took to +their heels in one direction and the loungers in the other, while +a number of betterdressed people, who had watched the scuffle +without taking part in it, crowded in to help the lady and to +attend to the injured man. Irene Adler, as I will still call her, +had hurried up the steps but she stood at the top with her +superb figure outlined against the lights of the hall, looking +back into the street. +"Is the poor gentleman much hurt?" she asked. +"He is dead," cried several voices. +"No, no, there's life in him" shouted another. "But he'll be +gone before you can get him to hospital." +"He's a brave fellow," said a woman. "They would have had the +lady's purse and watch if it hadn't been for him. They were a +gang, and a rough one, too. Ah, he's breathing now." +"He can't lie in the street. May we bring him in, marm?" +"Surely. Bring him into the sittingroom. There is a comfortable +sofa. This way, please" +Slowly and solemnly he was borne into Briony Lodge and laid out +in the principal room, while I still observed the proceedings +from my post by the window. The lamps had been lit, but the +blinds had not been drawn, so that I could see Holmes as he lay +upon the couch. I do not know whether he was seized with +compunction at that moment for the part he was playing, but I +know that I never felt more heartily ashamed of myself in my life +than when I saw the beautiful creature against whom I was +conspiring, or the grace and kindliness with which she waited +upon the injured man. And yet it would be the blackest treachery +to Holmes to draw back now from the part which he had intrusted +to me. I hardened my heart, and took the smokerocket from under +my ulster. After all, I thought, we are not injuring her. We are +but preventing her from injuring another. +Holmes had sat up upon the couch, and I saw him motion like a man +who is in need of air. A maid rushed across and threw open the +window. At the same instant I saw him raise his hand and at the +signal I tossed my rocket into the room with a cry of "Fire" The +word was no sooner out of my mouth than the whole crowd of +spectators, well dressed and illgentlemen, ostlers, and +servantmaidsjoined in a general shriek of "Fire" Thick clouds +of smoke curled through the room and out at the open window. I +caught a glimpse of rushing figures, and a moment later the voice +of Holmes from within assuring them that it was a false alarm. +Slipping through the shouting crowd I made my way to the corner +of the street, and in ten minutes was rejoiced to find my +friend's arm in mine, and to get away from the scene of uproar. +He walked swiftly and in silence for some few minutes until we +had turned down one of the quiet streets which lead towards the +Edgeware Road. +"You did it very nicely, Doctor," he remarked. "Nothing could +have been better. It is all right." +"You have the photograph?" +"I know where it is." +"And how did you find out?" +"She showed me, as I told you she would." +"I am still in the dark." +"I do not wish to make a mystery," said he, laughing. "The matter +was perfectly simple. You, of course, saw that everyone in the +street was an accomplice. They were all engaged for the evening." +"I guessed as much." +"Then, when the row broke out, I had a little moist red paint in +the palm of my hand. I rushed forward, fell down, clapped my hand +to my face, and became a piteous spectacle. It is an old trick." +"That also I could fathom." +"Then they carried me in. She was bound to have me in. What else +could she do? And into her sittingroom, which was the very room +which I suspected. It lay between that and her bedroom, and I was +determined to see which. They laid me on a couch, I motioned for +air, they were compelled to open the window, and you had your +chance." +"How did that help you?" +"It was allimportant. When a woman thinks that her house is on +fire, her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she +values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have +more than once taken advantage of it. In the case of the +Darlington substitution scandal it was of use to me, and also in +the Arnsworth Castle business. A married woman grabs at her baby +an unmarried one reaches for her jewelbox. Now it was clear to +me that our lady of today had nothing in the house more precious +to her than what we are in quest of. She would rush to secure it. +The alarm of fire was admirably done. The smoke and shouting were +enough to shake nerves of steel. She responded beautifully. The +photograph is in a recess behind a sliding panel just above the +right bellpull. She was there in an instant, and I caught a +glimpse of it as she halfdrew it out. When I cried out that it +was a false alarm, she replaced it, glanced at the rocket, rushed +from the room, and I have not seen her since. I rose, and, making +my excuses, escaped from the house. I hesitated whether to +attempt to secure the photograph at once but the coachman had +come in, and as he was watching me narrowly it seemed safer to +wait. A little overprecipitance may ruin all." +"And now?" I asked. +"Our quest is practically finished. I shall call with the King +tomorrow, and with you, if you care to come with us. We will be +shown into the sittingroom to wait for the lady, but it is +probable that when she comes she may find neither us nor the +photograph. It might be a satisfaction to his Majesty to regain +it with his own hands." +"And when will you call?" +"At eight in the morning. She will not be up, so that we shall +have a clear field. Besides, we must be prompt, for this marriage +may mean a complete change in her life and habits. I must wire to +the King without delay." +We had reached Baker Street and had stopped at the door. He was +searching his pockets for the key when someone passing said +"Goodnight, Mister Sherlock Holmes." +There were several people on the pavement at the time, but the +greeting appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had +hurried by. +"I've heard that voice before," said Holmes, staring down the +dimly lit street. "Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have +been." +III. +I slept at Baker Street that night, and we were engaged upon our +toast and coffee in the morning when the King of Bohemia rushed +into the room. +"You have really got it" he cried, grasping Sherlock Holmes by +either shoulder and looking eagerly into his face. +"Not yet." +"But you have hopes?" +"I have hopes." +"Then, come. I am all impatience to be gone." +"We must have a cab." +"No, my brougham is waiting." +"Then that will simplify matters." We descended and started off +once more for Briony Lodge. +"Irene Adler is married," remarked Holmes. +"Married When?" +"Yesterday." +"But to whom?" +"To an English lawyer named Norton." +"But she could not love him." +"I am in hopes that she does." +"And why in hopes?" +"Because it would spare your Majesty all fear of future +annoyance. If the lady loves her husband, she does not love your +Majesty. If she does not love your Majesty, there is no reason +why she should interfere with your Majesty's plan." +"It is true. And yetWell I wish she had been of my own +station What a queen she would have made" He relapsed into a +moody silence, which was not broken until we drew up in +Serpentine Avenue. +The door of Briony Lodge was open, and an elderly woman stood +upon the steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as we stepped +from the brougham. +"Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I believe?" said she. +"I am Mr. Holmes," answered my companion, looking at her with a +questioning and rather startled gaze. +"Indeed My mistress told me that you were likely to call. She +left this morning with her husband by the train from Charing +Cross for the Continent." +"What" Sherlock Holmes staggered back, white with chagrin and +surprise. "Do you mean that she has left England?" +"Never to return." +"And the papers?" asked the King hoarsely. "All is lost." +"We shall see." He pushed past the servant and rushed into the +drawingroom, followed by the King and myself. The furniture was +scattered about in every direction, with dismantled shelves and +open drawers, as if the lady had hurriedly ransacked them before +her flight. Holmes rushed at the bellpull, tore back a small +sliding shutter, and, plunging in his hand, pulled out a +photograph and a letter. The photograph was of Irene Adler +herself in evening dress, the letter was superscribed to +"Sherlock Holmes, Esq. To be left till called for." My friend +tore it open and we all three read it together. It was dated at +midnight of the preceding night and ran in this way +"MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES,You really did it very well. You +took me in completely. Until after the alarm of fire, I had not a +suspicion. But then, when I found how I had betrayed myself, I +began to think. I had been warned against you months ago. I had +been told that if the King employed an agent it would certainly +be you. And your address had been given me. Yet, with all this, +you made me reveal what you wanted to know. Even after I became +suspicious, I found it hard to think evil of such a dear, kind +old clergyman. But, you know, I have been trained as an actress +myself. Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage +of the freedom which it gives. I sent John, the coachman, to +watch you, ran up stairs, got into my walkingclothes, as I call +them, and came down just as you departed. +"Well, I followed you to your door, and so made sure that I was +really an object of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sherlock +Holmes. Then I, rather imprudently, wished you goodnight, and +started for the Temple to see my husband. +"We both thought the best resource was flight, when pursued by +so formidable an antagonist so you will find the nest empty when +you call tomorrow. As to the photograph, your client may rest in +peace. I love and am loved by a better man than he. The King may +do what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly +wronged. I keep it only to safeguard myself, and to preserve a +weapon which will always secure me from any steps which he might +take in the future. I leave a photograph which he might care to +possess and I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes, +"Very truly yours, +"IRENE NORTON, ne ADLER." +"What a womanoh, what a woman" cried the King of Bohemia, when +we had all three read this epistle. "Did I not tell you how quick +and resolute she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? +Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?" +"From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a +very different level to your Majesty," said Holmes coldly. "I am +sorry that I have not been able to bring your Majesty's business +to a more successful conclusion." +"On the contrary, my dear sir," cried the King "nothing could be +more successful. I know that her word is inviolate. The +photograph is now as safe as if it were in the fire." +"I am glad to hear your Majesty say so." +"I am immensely indebted to you. Pray tell me in what way I can +reward you. This ring" He slipped an emerald snake ring from +his finger and held it out upon the palm of his hand. +"Your Majesty has something which I should value even more +highly," said Holmes. +"You have but to name it." +"This photograph" +The King stared at him in amazement. +"Irene's photograph" he cried. "Certainly, if you wish it." +"I thank your Majesty. Then there is no more to be done in the +matter. I have the honour to wish you a very goodmorning." He +bowed, and, turning away without observing the hand which the +King had stretched out to him, he set off in my company for his +chambers. +And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom +of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were +beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the +cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And +when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her +photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman. +ADVENTURE II. THE REDHEADED LEAGUE +I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the +autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a +very stout, floridfaced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair. +With an apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw when +Holmes pulled me abruptly into the room and closed the door +behind me. +"You could not possibly have come at a better time, my dear +Watson," he said cordially. +"I was afraid that you were engaged." +"So I am. Very much so." +"Then I can wait in the next room." +"Not at all. This gentleman, Mr. Wilson, has been my partner and +helper in many of my most successful cases, and I have no +doubt that he will be of the utmost use to me in yours also." +The stout gentleman half rose from his chair and gave a bob of +greeting, with a quick little questioning glance from his small +fatencircled eyes. +"Try the settee," said Holmes, relapsing into his armchair and +putting his fingertips together, as was his custom when in +judicial moods. "I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love +of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum +routine of everyday life. You have shown your relish for it by +the enthusiasm which has prompted you to chronicle, and, if you +will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish so many of my own +little adventures." +"Your cases have indeed been of the greatest interest to me," I +observed. +"You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we +went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary +Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary +combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more +daring than any effort of the imagination." +"A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting." +"You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my +view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you +until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to +be right. Now, Mr. Jabez Wilson here has been good enough to call +upon me this morning, and to begin a narrative which promises to +be one of the most singular which I have listened to for some +time. You have heard me remark that the strangest and most unique +things are very often connected not with the larger but with the +smaller crimes, and occasionally, indeed, where there is room for +doubt whether any positive crime has been committed. As far as I +have heard it is impossible for me to say whether the present +case is an instance of crime or not, but the course of events is +certainly among the most singular that I have ever listened to. +Perhaps, Mr. Wilson, you would have the great kindness to +recommence your narrative. I ask you not merely because my friend +Dr. Watson has not heard the opening part but also because the +peculiar nature of the story makes me anxious to have every +possible detail from your lips. As a rule, when I have heard some +slight indication of the course of events, I am able to guide +myself by the thousands of other similar cases which occur to my +memory. In the present instance I am forced to admit that the +facts are, to the best of my belief, unique." +The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of some +little pride and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the +inside pocket of his greatcoat. As he glanced down the +advertisement column, with his head thrust forward and the paper +flattened out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man and +endeavoured, after the fashion of my companion, to read the +indications which might be presented by his dress or appearance. +I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor +bore every mark of being an average commonplace British +tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy grey +shepherd's check trousers, a not overclean black frockcoat, +unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy +Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as +an ornament. A frayed tophat and a faded brown overcoat with a +wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside him. Altogether, +look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man save +his blazing red head, and the expression of extreme chagrin and +discontent upon his features. +Sherlock Holmes' quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook +his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. +"Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual +labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has +been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of +writing lately, I can deduce nothing else." +Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger +upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion. +"How, in the name of goodfortune, did you know all that, Mr. +Holmes?" he asked. "How did you know, for example, that I did +manual labour. It's as true as gospel, for I began as a ship's +carpenter." +"Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger +than your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more +developed." +"Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?" +"I won't insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that, +especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you +use an arcandcompass breastpin." +"Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?" +"What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for +five inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the +elbow where you rest it upon the desk?" +"Well, but China?" +"The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right +wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small +study of tattoo marks and have even contributed to the literature +of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes' scales of a +delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I +see a Chinese coin hanging from your watchchain, the matter +becomes even more simple." +Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. "Well, I never" said he. "I +thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see +that there was nothing in it, after all." +"I begin to think, Watson," said Holmes, "that I make a mistake +in explaining. 'Omne ignotum pro magnifico,' you know, and my +poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I +am so candid. Can you not find the advertisement, Mr. Wilson?" +"Yes, I have got it now," he answered with his thick red finger +planted halfway down the column. "Here it is. This is what began +it all. You just read it for yourself, sir." +I took the paper from him and read as follows +"TO THE REDHEADED LEAGUE On account of the bequest of the late +Ezekiah Hopkins, of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, U. S. A., there is now +another vacancy open which entitles a member of the League to a +salary of pounds a week for purely nominal services. All +redheaded men who are sound in body and mind and above the age +of twentyone years, are eligible. Apply in person on Monday, at +eleven o'clock, to Duncan Ross, at the offices of the League, +Pope's Court, Fleet Street." +"What on earth does this mean?" I ejaculated after I had twice +read over the extraordinary announcement. +Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit when +in high spirits. "It is a little off the beaten track, isn't it?" +said he. "And now, Mr. Wilson, off you go at scratch and tell us +all about yourself, your household, and the effect which this +advertisement had upon your fortunes. You will first make a note, +Doctor, of the paper and the date." +"It is The Morning Chronicle of April , . Just two months +ago." +"Very good. Now, Mr. Wilson?" +"Well, it is just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock +Holmes," said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead "I have a small +pawnbroker's business at Coburg Square, near the City. It's not a +very large affair, and of late years it has not done more than +just give me a living. I used to be able to keep two assistants, +but now I only keep one and I would have a job to pay him but +that he is willing to come for half wages so as to learn the +business." +"What is the name of this obliging youth?" asked Sherlock Holmes. +"His name is Vincent Spaulding, and he's not such a youth, +either. It's hard to say his age. I should not wish a smarter +assistant, Mr. Holmes and I know very well that he could better +himself and earn twice what I am able to give him. But, after +all, if he is satisfied, why should I put ideas in his head?" +"Why, indeed? You seem most fortunate in having an employ who +comes under the full market price. It is not a common experience +among employers in this age. I don't know that your assistant is +not as remarkable as your advertisement." +"Oh, he has his faults, too," said Mr. Wilson. "Never was such a +fellow for photography. Snapping away with a camera when he ought +to be improving his mind, and then diving down into the cellar +like a rabbit into its hole to develop his pictures. That is his +main fault, but on the whole he's a good worker. There's no vice +in him." +"He is still with you, I presume?" +"Yes, sir. He and a girl of fourteen, who does a bit of simple +cooking and keeps the place cleanthat's all I have in the +house, for I am a widower and never had any family. We live very +quietly, sir, the three of us and we keep a roof over our heads +and pay our debts, if we do nothing more. +"The first thing that put us out was that advertisement. +Spaulding, he came down into the office just this day eight +weeks, with this very paper in his hand, and he says +"'I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a redheaded man.' +"'Why that?' I asks. +"'Why,' says he, 'here's another vacancy on the League of the +Redheaded Men. It's worth quite a little fortune to any man who +gets it, and I understand that there are more vacancies than +there are men, so that the trustees are at their wits' end what +to do with the money. If my hair would only change colour, here's +a nice little crib all ready for me to step into.' +"'Why, what is it, then?' I asked. You see, Mr. Holmes, I am a +very stayathome man, and as my business came to me instead of +my having to go to it, I was often weeks on end without putting +my foot over the doormat. In that way I didn't know much of what +was going on outside, and I was always glad of a bit of news. +"'Have you never heard of the League of the Redheaded Men?' he +asked with his eyes open. +"'Never.' +"'Why, I wonder at that, for you are eligible yourself for one +of the vacancies.' +"'And what are they worth?' I asked. +"'Oh, merely a couple of hundred a year, but the work is slight, +and it need not interfere very much with one's other +occupations.' +"Well, you can easily think that that made me prick up my ears, +for the business has not been overgood for some years, and an +extra couple of hundred would have been very handy. +"'Tell me all about it,' said I. +"'Well,' said he, showing me the advertisement, 'you can see for +yourself that the League has a vacancy, and there is the address +where you should apply for particulars. As far as I can make out, +the League was founded by an American millionaire, Ezekiah +Hopkins, who was very peculiar in his ways. He was himself +redheaded, and he had a great sympathy for all redheaded men +so when he died it was found that he had left his enormous +fortune in the hands of trustees, with instructions to apply the +interest to the providing of easy berths to men whose hair is of +that colour. From all I hear it is splendid pay and very little to +do.' +"'But,' said I, 'there would be millions of redheaded men who +would apply.' +"'Not so many as you might think,' he answered. 'You see it is +really confined to Londoners, and to grown men. This American had +started from London when he was young, and he wanted to do the +old town a good turn. Then, again, I have heard it is no use your +applying if your hair is light red, or dark red, or anything but +real bright, blazing, fiery red. Now, if you cared to apply, Mr. +Wilson, you would just walk in but perhaps it would hardly be +worth your while to put yourself out of the way for the sake of a +few hundred pounds.' +"Now, it is a fact, gentlemen, as you may see for yourselves, +that my hair is of a very full and rich tint, so that it seemed +to me that if there was to be any competition in the matter I +stood as good a chance as any man that I had ever met. Vincent +Spaulding seemed to know so much about it that I thought he might +prove useful, so I just ordered him to put up the shutters for +the day and to come right away with me. He was very willing to +have a holiday, so we shut the business up and started off for +the address that was given us in the advertisement. +"I never hope to see such a sight as that again, Mr. Holmes. From +north, south, east, and west every man who had a shade of red in +his hair had tramped into the city to answer the advertisement. +Fleet Street was choked with redheaded folk, and Pope's Court +looked like a coster's orange barrow. I should not have thought +there were so many in the whole country as were brought together +by that single advertisement. Every shade of colour they +werestraw, lemon, orange, brick, Irishsetter, liver, clay +but, as Spaulding said, there were not many who had the real +vivid flamecoloured tint. When I saw how many were waiting, I +would have given it up in despair but Spaulding would not hear +of it. How he did it I could not imagine, but he pushed and +pulled and butted until he got me through the crowd, and right up +to the steps which led to the office. There was a double stream +upon the stair, some going up in hope, and some coming back +dejected but we wedged in as well as we could and soon found +ourselves in the office." +"Your experience has been a most entertaining one," remarked +Holmes as his client paused and refreshed his memory with a huge +pinch of snuff. "Pray continue your very interesting statement." +"There was nothing in the office but a couple of wooden chairs +and a deal table, behind which sat a small man with a head that +was even redder than mine. He said a few words to each candidate +as he came up, and then he always managed to find some fault in +them which would disqualify them. Getting a vacancy did not seem +to be such a very easy matter, after all. However, when our turn +came the little man was much more favourable to me than to any of +the others, and he closed the door as we entered, so that he +might have a private word with us. +"'This is Mr. Jabez Wilson,' said my assistant, 'and he is +willing to fill a vacancy in the League.' +"'And he is admirably suited for it,' the other answered. 'He has +every requirement. I cannot recall when I have seen anything so +fine.' He took a step backward, cocked his head on one side, and +gazed at my hair until I felt quite bashful. Then suddenly he +plunged forward, wrung my hand, and congratulated me warmly on my +success. +"'It would be injustice to hesitate,' said he. 'You will, +however, I am sure, excuse me for taking an obvious precaution.' +With that he seized my hair in both his hands, and tugged until I +yelled with the pain. 'There is water in your eyes,' said he as +he released me. 'I perceive that all is as it should be. But we +have to be careful, for we have twice been deceived by wigs and +once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler's wax which +would disgust you with human nature.' He stepped over to the +window and shouted through it at the top of his voice that the +vacancy was filled. A groan of disappointment came up from below, +and the folk all trooped away in different directions until there +was not a redhead to be seen except my own and that of the +manager. +"'My name,' said he, 'is Mr. Duncan Ross, and I am myself one of +the pensioners upon the fund left by our noble benefactor. Are +you a married man, Mr. Wilson? Have you a family?' +"I answered that I had not. +"His face fell immediately. +"'Dear me' he said gravely, 'that is very serious indeed I am +sorry to hear you say that. The fund was, of course, for the +propagation and spread of the redheads as well as for their +maintenance. It is exceedingly unfortunate that you should be a +bachelor.' +"My face lengthened at this, Mr. Holmes, for I thought that I was +not to have the vacancy after all but after thinking it over for +a few minutes he said that it would be all right. +"'In the case of another,' said he, 'the objection might be +fatal, but we must stretch a point in favour of a man with such a +head of hair as yours. When shall you be able to enter upon your +new duties?' +"'Well, it is a little awkward, for I have a business already,' +said I. +"'Oh, never mind about that, Mr. Wilson' said Vincent Spaulding. +'I should be able to look after that for you.' +"'What would be the hours?' I asked. +"'Ten to two.' +"Now a pawnbroker's business is mostly done of an evening, Mr. +Holmes, especially Thursday and Friday evening, which is just +before payday so it would suit me very well to earn a little in +the mornings. Besides, I knew that my assistant was a good man, +and that he would see to anything that turned up. +"'That would suit me very well,' said I. 'And the pay?' +"'Is pounds a week.' +"'And the work?' +"'Is purely nominal.' +"'What do you call purely nominal?' +"'Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in the +building, the whole time. If you leave, you forfeit your whole +position forever. The will is very clear upon that point. You +don't comply with the conditions if you budge from the office +during that time.' +"'It's only four hours a day, and I should not think of leaving,' +said I. +"'No excuse will avail,' said Mr. Duncan Ross 'neither sickness +nor business nor anything else. There you must stay, or you lose +your billet.' +"'And the work?' +"'Is to copy out the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." There is the first +volume of it in that press. You must find your own ink, pens, and +blottingpaper, but we provide this table and chair. Will you be +ready tomorrow?' +"'Certainly,' I answered. +"'Then, goodbye, Mr. Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate you +once more on the important position which you have been fortunate +enough to gain.' He bowed me out of the room and I went home with +my assistant, hardly knowing what to say or do, I was so pleased +at my own good fortune. +"Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by evening I was in +low spirits again for I had quite persuaded myself that the +whole affair must be some great hoax or fraud, though what its +object might be I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past +belief that anyone could make such a will, or that they would pay +such a sum for doing anything so simple as copying out the +'Encyclopaedia Britannica.' Vincent Spaulding did what he could to +cheer me up, but by bedtime I had reasoned myself out of the +whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look +at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a +quillpen, and seven sheets of foolscap paper, I started off for +Pope's Court. +"Well, to my surprise and delight, everything was as right as +possible. The table was set out ready for me, and Mr. Duncan Ross +was there to see that I got fairly to work. He started me off +upon the letter A, and then he left me but he would drop in from +time to time to see that all was right with me. At two o'clock he +bade me goodday, complimented me upon the amount that I had +written, and locked the door of the office after me. +"This went on day after day, Mr. Holmes, and on Saturday the +manager came in and planked down four golden sovereigns for my +week's work. It was the same next week, and the same the week +after. Every morning I was there at ten, and every afternoon I +left at two. By degrees Mr. Duncan Ross took to coming in only +once of a morning, and then, after a time, he did not come in at +all. Still, of course, I never dared to leave the room for an +instant, for I was not sure when he might come, and the billet +was such a good one, and suited me so well, that I would not risk +the loss of it. +"Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about +Abbots and Archery and Armour and Architecture and Attica, and +hoped with diligence that I might get on to the B's before very +long. It cost me something in foolscap, and I had pretty nearly +filled a shelf with my writings. And then suddenly the whole +business came to an end." +"To an end?" +"Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I went to my work as +usual at ten o'clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a +little square of cardboard hammered on to the middle of the +panel with a tack. Here it is, and you can read for yourself." +He held up a piece of white cardboard about the size of a sheet +of notepaper. It read in this fashion +THE REDHEADED LEAGUE +IS +DISSOLVED. +October , . +Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the +rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so +completely overtopped every other consideration that we both +burst out into a roar of laughter. +"I cannot see that there is anything very funny," cried our +client, flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. "If you can +do nothing better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere." +"No, no," cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from +which he had half risen. "I really wouldn't miss your case for +the world. It is most refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you +will excuse my saying so, something just a little funny about it. +Pray what steps did you take when you found the card upon the +door?" +"I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called +at the offices round, but none of them seemed to know anything +about it. Finally, I went to the landlord, who is an accountant +living on the groundfloor, and I asked him if he could tell me +what had become of the Redheaded League. He said that he had +never heard of any such body. Then I asked him who Mr. Duncan +Ross was. He answered that the name was new to him. +"'Well,' said I, 'the gentleman at No. .' +"'What, the redheaded man?' +"'Yes.' +"'Oh,' said he, 'his name was William Morris. He was a solicitor +and was using my room as a temporary convenience until his new +premises were ready. He moved out yesterday.' +"'Where could I find him?' +"'Oh, at his new offices. He did tell me the address. Yes, +King Edward Street, near St. Paul's.' +"I started off, Mr. Holmes, but when I got to that address it was +a manufactory of artificial kneecaps, and no one in it had ever +heard of either Mr. William Morris or Mr. Duncan Ross." +"And what did you do then?" asked Holmes. +"I went home to SaxeCoburg Square, and I took the advice of my +assistant. But he could not help me in any way. He could only say +that if I waited I should hear by post. But that was not quite +good enough, Mr. Holmes. I did not wish to lose such a place +without a struggle, so, as I had heard that you were good enough +to give advice to poor folk who were in need of it, I came right +away to you." +"And you did very wisely," said Holmes. "Your case is an +exceedingly remarkable one, and I shall be happy to look into it. +From what you have told me I think that it is possible that +graver issues hang from it than might at first sight appear." +"Grave enough" said Mr. Jabez Wilson. "Why, I have lost four +pound a week." +"As far as you are personally concerned," remarked Holmes, "I do +not see that you have any grievance against this extraordinary +league. On the contrary, you are, as I understand, richer by some + pounds, to say nothing of the minute knowledge which you have +gained on every subject which comes under the letter A. You have +lost nothing by them." +"No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are, +and what their object was in playing this prankif it was a +prankupon me. It was a pretty expensive joke for them, for it +cost them two and thirty pounds." +"We shall endeavour to clear up these points for you. And, first, +one or two questions, Mr. Wilson. This assistant of yours who +first called your attention to the advertisementhow long had he +been with you?" +"About a month then." +"How did he come?" +"In answer to an advertisement." +"Was he the only applicant?" +"No, I had a dozen." +"Why did you pick him?" +"Because he was handy and would come cheap." +"At halfwages, in fact." +"Yes." +"What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?" +"Small, stoutbuilt, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face, +though he's not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon +his forehead." +Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. "I thought +as much," said he. "Have you ever observed that his ears are +pierced for earrings?" +"Yes, sir. He told me that a gipsy had done it for him when he +was a lad." +"Hum" said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought. "He is still +with you?" +"Oh, yes, sir I have only just left him." +"And has your business been attended to in your absence?" +"Nothing to complain of, sir. There's never very much to do of a +morning." +"That will do, Mr. Wilson. I shall be happy to give you an +opinion upon the subject in the course of a day or two. Today is +Saturday, and I hope that by Monday we may come to a conclusion." +"Well, Watson," said Holmes when our visitor had left us, "what +do you make of it all?" +"I make nothing of it," I answered frankly. "It is a most +mysterious business." +"As a rule," said Holmes, "the more bizarre a thing is the less +mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless +crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is +the most difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this +matter." +"What are you going to do, then?" I asked. +"To smoke," he answered. "It is quite a three pipe problem, and I +beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes." He curled +himself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his +hawklike nose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his +black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird. +I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and +indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his +chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his mind and put +his pipe down upon the mantelpiece. +"Sarasate plays at the St. James's Hall this afternoon," he +remarked. "What do you think, Watson? Could your patients spare +you for a few hours?" +"I have nothing to do today. My practice is never very +absorbing." +"Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the City +first, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that +there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is +rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is +introspective, and I want to introspect. Come along" +We travelled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate and a short +walk took us to SaxeCoburg Square, the scene of the singular +story which we had listened to in the morning. It was a poky, +little, shabbygenteel place, where four lines of dingy +twostoried brick houses looked out into a small railedin +enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded +laurelbushes made a hard fight against a smokeladen and +uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with +"JABEZ WILSON" in white letters, upon a corner house, announced +the place where our redheaded client carried on his business. +Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side +and looked it all over, with his eyes shining brightly between +puckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the street, and then down +again to the corner, still looking keenly at the houses. Finally +he returned to the pawnbroker's, and, having thumped vigorously +upon the pavement with his stick two or three times, he went up +to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a +brightlooking, cleanshaven young fellow, who asked him to step +in. +"Thank you," said Holmes, "I only wished to ask you how you would +go from here to the Strand." +"Third right, fourth left," answered the assistant promptly, +closing the door. +"Smart fellow, that," observed Holmes as we walked away. "He is, +in my judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring +I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have known +something of him before." +"Evidently," said I, "Mr. Wilson's assistant counts for a good +deal in this mystery of the Redheaded League. I am sure that you +inquired your way merely in order that you might see him." +"Not him." +"What then?" +"The knees of his trousers." +"And what did you see?" +"What I expected to see." +"Why did you beat the pavement?" +"My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We +are spies in an enemy's country. We know something of SaxeCoburg +Square. Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it." +The road in which we found ourselves as we turned round the +corner from the retired SaxeCoburg Square presented as great a +contrast to it as the front of a picture does to the back. It was +one of the main arteries which conveyed the traffic of the City +to the north and west. The roadway was blocked with the immense +stream of commerce flowing in a double tide inward and outward, +while the footpaths were black with the hurrying swarm of +pedestrians. It was difficult to realise as we looked at the line +of fine shops and stately business premises that they really +abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square +which we had just quitted. +"Let me see," said Holmes, standing at the corner and glancing +along the line, "I should like just to remember the order of the +houses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of +London. There is Mortimer's, the tobacconist, the little +newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, +the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane's carriagebuilding +depot. That carries us right on to the other block. And now, +Doctor, we've done our work, so it's time we had some play. A +sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violinland, where +all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no +redheaded clients to vex us with their conundrums." +My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a +very capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All +the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect +happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the +music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes +were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuthhound, Holmes the +relentless, keenwitted, readyhanded criminal agent, as it was +possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature +alternately asserted itself, and his extreme exactness and +astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction +against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally +predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from +extreme languor to devouring energy and, as I knew well, he was +never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been +lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his +blackletter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase +would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning +power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were +unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a +man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him +that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James's Hall I +felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set +himself to hunt down. +"You want to go home, no doubt, Doctor," he remarked as we +emerged. +"Yes, it would be as well." +"And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This +business at Coburg Square is serious." +"Why serious?" +"A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to +believe that we shall be in time to stop it. But today being +Saturday rather complicates matters. I shall want your help +tonight." +"At what time?" +"Ten will be early enough." +"I shall be at Baker Street at ten." +"Very well. And, I say, Doctor, there may be some little danger, +so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket." He waved his +hand, turned on his heel, and disappeared in an instant among the +crowd. +I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was +always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings +with Sherlock Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had +seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that +he saw clearly not only what had happened but what was about to +happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and +grotesque. As I drove home to my house in Kensington I thought +over it all, from the extraordinary story of the redheaded +copier of the "Encyclopaedia" down to the visit to SaxeCoburg +Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. +What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? +Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from +Holmes that this smoothfaced pawnbroker's assistant was a +formidable mana man who might play a deep game. I tried to +puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair and set the matter aside +until night should bring an explanation. +It was a quarterpast nine when I started from home and made my +way across the Park, and so through Oxford Street to Baker +Street. Two hansoms were standing at the door, and as I entered +the passage I heard the sound of voices from above. On entering +his room I found Holmes in animated conversation with two men, +one of whom I recognised as Peter Jones, the official police +agent, while the other was a long, thin, sadfaced man, with a +very shiny hat and oppressively respectable frockcoat. +"Ha Our party is complete," said Holmes, buttoning up his +peajacket and taking his heavy hunting crop from the rack. +"Watson, I think you know Mr. Jones, of Scotland Yard? Let me +introduce you to Mr. Merryweather, who is to be our companion in +tonight's adventure." +"We're hunting in couples again, Doctor, you see," said Jones in +his consequential way. "Our friend here is a wonderful man for +starting a chase. All he wants is an old dog to help him to do +the running down." +"I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of our chase," +observed Mr. Merryweather gloomily. +"You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir," said +the police agent loftily. "He has his own little methods, which +are, if he won't mind my saying so, just a little too theoretical +and fantastic, but he has the makings of a detective in him. It +is not too much to say that once or twice, as in that business of +the Sholto murder and the Agra treasure, he has been more nearly +correct than the official force." +"Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right," said the +stranger with deference. "Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. +It is the first Saturday night for sevenandtwenty years that I +have not had my rubber." +"I think you will find," said Sherlock Holmes, "that you will +play for a higher stake tonight than you have ever done yet, and +that the play will be more exciting. For you, Mr. Merryweather, +the stake will be some , pounds and for you, Jones, it will +be the man upon whom you wish to lay your hands." +"John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He's a +young man, Mr. Merryweather, but he is at the head of his +profession, and I would rather have my bracelets on him than on +any criminal in London. He's a remarkable man, is young John +Clay. His grandfather was a royal duke, and he himself has been +to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as his fingers, and +though we meet signs of him at every turn, we never know where to +find the man himself. He'll crack a crib in Scotland one week, +and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next. +I've been on his track for years and have never set eyes on him +yet." +"I hope that I may have the pleasure of introducing you tonight. +I've had one or two little turns also with Mr. John Clay, and I +agree with you that he is at the head of his profession. It is +past ten, however, and quite time that we started. If you two +will take the first hansom, Watson and I will follow in the +second." +Sherlock Holmes was not very communicative during the long drive +and lay back in the cab humming the tunes which he had heard in +the afternoon. We rattled through an endless labyrinth of gaslit +streets until we emerged into Farrington Street. +"We are close there now," my friend remarked. "This fellow +Merryweather is a bank director, and personally interested in the +matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is +not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. +He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog and as +tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon anyone. Here we +are, and they are waiting for us." +We had reached the same crowded thoroughfare in which we had +found ourselves in the morning. Our cabs were dismissed, and, +following the guidance of Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a +narrow passage and through a side door, which he opened for us. +Within there was a small corridor, which ended in a very massive +iron gate. This also was opened, and led down a flight of winding +stone steps, which terminated at another formidable gate. Mr. +Merryweather stopped to light a lantern, and then conducted us +down a dark, earthsmelling passage, and so, after opening a +third door, into a huge vault or cellar, which was piled all +round with crates and massive boxes. +"You are not very vulnerable from above," Holmes remarked as he +held up the lantern and gazed about him. +"Nor from below," said Mr. Merryweather, striking his stick upon +the flags which lined the floor. "Why, dear me, it sounds quite +hollow" he remarked, looking up in surprise. +"I must really ask you to be a little more quiet" said Holmes +severely. "You have already imperilled the whole success of our +expedition. Might I beg that you would have the goodness to sit +down upon one of those boxes, and not to interfere?" +The solemn Mr. Merryweather perched himself upon a crate, with a +very injured expression upon his face, while Holmes fell upon his +knees upon the floor and, with the lantern and a magnifying lens, +began to examine minutely the cracks between the stones. A few +seconds sufficed to satisfy him, for he sprang to his feet again +and put his glass in his pocket. +"We have at least an hour before us," he remarked, "for they can +hardly take any steps until the good pawnbroker is safely in bed. +Then they will not lose a minute, for the sooner they do their +work the longer time they will have for their escape. We are at +present, Doctoras no doubt you have divinedin the cellar of +the City branch of one of the principal London banks. Mr. +Merryweather is the chairman of directors, and he will explain to +you that there are reasons why the more daring criminals of +London should take a considerable interest in this cellar at +present." +"It is our French gold," whispered the director. "We have had +several warnings that an attempt might be made upon it." +"Your French gold?" +"Yes. We had occasion some months ago to strengthen our resources +and borrowed for that purpose , napoleons from the Bank of +France. It has become known that we have never had occasion to +unpack the money, and that it is still lying in our cellar. The +crate upon which I sit contains , napoleons packed between +layers of lead foil. Our reserve of bullion is much larger at +present than is usually kept in a single branch office, and the +directors have had misgivings upon the subject." +"Which were very well justified," observed Holmes. "And now it is +time that we arranged our little plans. I expect that within an +hour matters will come to a head. In the meantime Mr. +Merryweather, we must put the screen over that dark lantern." +"And sit in the dark?" +"I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and +I thought that, as we were a partie carre, you might have your +rubber after all. But I see that the enemy's preparations have +gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, +first of all, we must choose our positions. These are daring men, +and though we shall take them at a disadvantage, they may do us +some harm unless we are careful. I shall stand behind this crate, +and do you conceal yourselves behind those. Then, when I flash a +light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson, have no +compunction about shooting them down." +I placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case +behind which I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front +of his lantern and left us in pitch darknesssuch an absolute +darkness as I have never before experienced. The smell of hot +metal remained to assure us that the light was still there, ready +to flash out at a moment's notice. To me, with my nerves worked +up to a pitch of expectancy, there was something depressing and +subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold dank air of the +vault. +"They have but one retreat," whispered Holmes. "That is back +through the house into SaxeCoburg Square. I hope that you have +done what I asked you, Jones?" +"I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door." +"Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we must be silent +and wait." +What a time it seemed From comparing notes afterwards it was but +an hour and a quarter, yet it appeared to me that the night must +have almost gone and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs +were weary and stiff, for I feared to change my position yet my +nerves were worked up to the highest pitch of tension, and my +hearing was so acute that I could not only hear the gentle +breathing of my companions, but I could distinguish the deeper, +heavier inbreath of the bulky Jones from the thin, sighing note +of the bank director. From my position I could look over the case +in the direction of the floor. Suddenly my eyes caught the glint +of a light. +At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then +it lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, +without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand +appeared, a white, almost womanly hand, which felt about in the +centre of the little area of light. For a minute or more the +hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then +it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark +again save the single lurid spark which marked a chink between +the stones. +Its disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending, +tearing sound, one of the broad, white stones turned over upon +its side and left a square, gaping hole, through which streamed +the light of a lantern. Over the edge there peeped a cleancut, +boyish face, which looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand +on either side of the aperture, drew itself shoulderhigh and +waisthigh, until one knee rested upon the edge. In another +instant he stood at the side of the hole and was hauling after +him a companion, lithe and small like himself, with a pale face +and a shock of very red hair. +"It's all clear," he whispered. "Have you the chisel and the +bags? Great Scott Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it" +Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the +collar. The other dived down the hole, and I heard the sound of +rending cloth as Jones clutched at his skirts. The light flashed +upon the barrel of a revolver, but Holmes' hunting crop came +down on the man's wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone +floor. +"It's no use, John Clay," said Holmes blandly. "You have no +chance at all." +"So I see," the other answered with the utmost coolness. "I fancy +that my pal is all right, though I see you have got his +coattails." +"There are three men waiting for him at the door," said Holmes. +"Oh, indeed You seem to have done the thing very completely. I +must compliment you." +"And I you," Holmes answered. "Your redheaded idea was very new +and effective." +"You'll see your pal again presently," said Jones. "He's quicker +at climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the +derbies." +"I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands," +remarked our prisoner as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists. +"You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have +the goodness, also, when you address me always to say 'sir' and +'please.'" +"All right," said Jones with a stare and a snigger. "Well, would +you please, sir, march upstairs, where we can get a cab to carry +your Highness to the policestation?" +"That is better," said John Clay serenely. He made a sweeping bow +to the three of us and walked quietly off in the custody of the +detective. +"Really, Mr. Holmes," said Mr. Merryweather as we followed them +from the cellar, "I do not know how the bank can thank you or +repay you. There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated +in the most complete manner one of the most determined attempts +at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience." +"I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. +John Clay," said Holmes. "I have been at some small expense over +this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond +that I am amply repaid by having had an experience which is in +many ways unique, and by hearing the very remarkable narrative of +the Redheaded League." +"You see, Watson," he explained in the early hours of the morning +as we sat over a glass of whisky and soda in Baker Street, "it +was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible +object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of +the League, and the copying of the 'Encyclopaedia,' must be to get +this not overbright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of +hours every day. It was a curious way of managing it, but, +really, it would be difficult to suggest a better. The method was +no doubt suggested to Clay's ingenious mind by the colour of his +accomplice's hair. The pounds a week was a lure which must draw +him, and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands? +They put in the advertisement, one rogue has the temporary +office, the other rogue incites the man to apply for it, and +together they manage to secure his absence every morning in the +week. From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for +half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive +for securing the situation." +"But how could you guess what the motive was?" +"Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a +mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The +man's business was a small one, and there was nothing in his +house which could account for such elaborate preparations, and +such an expenditure as they were at. It must, then, be something +out of the house. What could it be? I thought of the assistant's +fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the +cellar. The cellar There was the end of this tangled clue. Then +I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant and found that I +had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in +London. He was doing something in the cellarsomething which +took many hours a day for months on end. What could it be, once +more? I could think of nothing save that he was running a tunnel +to some other building. +"So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action. I +surprised you by beating upon the pavement with my stick. I was +ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind. +It was not in front. Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the +assistant answered it. We have had some skirmishes, but we had +never set eyes upon each other before. I hardly looked at his +face. His knees were what I wished to see. You must yourself have +remarked how worn, wrinkled, and stained they were. They spoke of +those hours of burrowing. The only remaining point was what they +were burrowing for. I walked round the corner, saw the City and +Suburban Bank abutted on our friend's premises, and felt that I +had solved my problem. When you drove home after the concert I +called upon Scotland Yard and upon the chairman of the bank +directors, with the result that you have seen." +"And how could you tell that they would make their attempt +tonight?" I asked. +"Well, when they closed their League offices that was a sign that +they cared no longer about Mr. Jabez Wilson's presencein other +words, that they had completed their tunnel. But it was essential +that they should use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the +bullion might be removed. Saturday would suit them better than +any other day, as it would give them two days for their escape. +For all these reasons I expected them to come tonight." +"You reasoned it out beautifully," I exclaimed in unfeigned +admiration. "It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings +true." +"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas I already +feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort +to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little +problems help me to do so." +"And you are a benefactor of the race," said I. +He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, perhaps, after all, it is of +some little use," he remarked. "'L'homme c'est rienl'oeuvre +c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand." +ADVENTURE III. A CASE OF IDENTITY +"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side +of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely +stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We +would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere +commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window +hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the +roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the +strange coincidences, the plannings, the crosspurposes, the +wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and +leading to the most outr results, it would make all fiction with +its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and +unprofitable." +"And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered. "The cases which +come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and +vulgar enough. We have in our police reports realism pushed to +its extreme limits, and yet the result is, it must be confessed, +neither fascinating nor artistic." +"A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a +realistic effect," remarked Holmes. "This is wanting in the +police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the +platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an +observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend +upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace." +I smiled and shook my head. "I can quite understand your thinking +so." I said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser +and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout +three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is +strange and bizarre. But here"I picked up the morning paper +from the ground"let us put it to a practical test. Here is the +first heading upon which I come. 'A husband's cruelty to his +wife.' There is half a column of print, but I know without +reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of +course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the +bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of +writers could invent nothing more crude." +"Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument," +said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. "This +is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged +in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The +husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the +conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of +winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling +them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely +to occur to the imagination of the average storyteller. Take a +pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over +you in your example." +He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in +the centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his +homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon +it. +"Ah," said he, "I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. +It is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return for my +assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers." +"And the ring?" I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which +sparkled upon his finger. +"It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in +which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it +even to you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of +my little problems." +"And have you any on hand just now?" I asked with interest. +"Some ten or twelve, but none which present any feature of +interest. They are important, you understand, without being +interesting. Indeed, I have found that it is usually in +unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, +and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the +charm to an investigation. The larger crimes are apt to be the +simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a rule, is +the motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate matter +which has been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing +which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however, +that I may have something better before very many minutes are +over, for this is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken." +He had risen from his chair and was standing between the parted +blinds gazing down into the dull neutraltinted London street. +Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite +there stood a large woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck, +and a large curling red feather in a broadbrimmed hat which was +tilted in a coquettish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over her +ear. From under this great panoply she peeped up in a nervous, +hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated +backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove +buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves +the bank, she hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp +clang of the bell. +"I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his +cigarette into the fire. "Oscillation upon the pavement always +means an affaire de coeur. She would like advice, but is not sure +that the matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet +even here we may discriminate. When a woman has been seriously +wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom +is a broken bell wire. Here we may take it that there is a love +matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed, or +grieved. But here she comes in person to resolve our doubts." +As he spoke there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons +entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself +loomed behind his small black figure like a fullsailed +merchantman behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed +her with the easy courtesy for which he was remarkable, and, +having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair, he looked +her over in the minute and yet abstracted fashion which was +peculiar to him. +"Do you not find," he said, "that with your short sight it is a +little trying to do so much typewriting?" +"I did at first," she answered, "but now I know where the letters +are without looking." Then, suddenly realising the full purport +of his words, she gave a violent start and looked up, with fear +and astonishment upon her broad, goodhumoured face. "You've +heard about me, Mr. Holmes," she cried, "else how could you know +all that?" +"Never mind," said Holmes, laughing "it is my business to know +things. Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others +overlook. If not, why should you come to consult me?" +"I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etherege, +whose husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had +given him up for dead. Oh, Mr. Holmes, I wish you would do as +much for me. I'm not rich, but still I have a hundred a year in +my own right, besides the little that I make by the machine, and +I would give it all to know what has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel." +"Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?" asked +Sherlock Holmes, with his fingertips together and his eyes to +the ceiling. +Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss +Mary Sutherland. "Yes, I did bang out of the house," she said, +"for it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr. +Windibankthat is, my fathertook it all. He would not go to +the police, and he would not go to you, and so at last, as he +would do nothing and kept on saying that there was no harm done, +it made me mad, and I just on with my things and came right away +to you." +"Your father," said Holmes, "your stepfather, surely, since the +name is different." +"Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, +too, for he is only five years and two months older than myself." +"And your mother is alive?" +"Oh, yes, mother is alive and well. I wasn't best pleased, Mr. +Holmes, when she married again so soon after father's death, and +a man who was nearly fifteen years younger than herself. Father +was a plumber in the Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy +business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy, the +foreman but when Mr. Windibank came he made her sell the +business, for he was very superior, being a traveller in wines. +They got pounds for the goodwill and interest, which wasn't +near as much as father could have got if he had been alive." +I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this +rambling and inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he +had listened with the greatest concentration of attention. +"Your own little income," he asked, "does it come out of the +business?" +"Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate and was left me by my uncle +Ned in Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying / per +cent. Two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can +only touch the interest." +"You interest me extremely," said Holmes. "And since you draw so +large a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the +bargain, you no doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in +every way. I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely +upon an income of about pounds." +"I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes, but you +understand that as long as I live at home I don't wish to be a +burden to them, and so they have the use of the money just while +I am staying with them. Of course, that is only just for the +time. Mr. Windibank draws my interest every quarter and pays it +over to mother, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I +earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a sheet, and I can +often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day." +"You have made your position very clear to me," said Holmes. +"This is my friend, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as +freely as before myself. Kindly tell us now all about your +connection with Mr. Hosmer Angel." +A flush stole over Miss Sutherland's face, and she picked +nervously at the fringe of her jacket. "I met him first at the +gasfitters' ball," she said. "They used to send father tickets +when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us, and +sent them to mother. Mr. Windibank did not wish us to go. He +never did wish us to go anywhere. He would get quite mad if I +wanted so much as to join a Sundayschool treat. But this time I +was set on going, and I would go for what right had he to +prevent? He said the folk were not fit for us to know, when all +father's friends were to be there. And he said that I had nothing +fit to wear, when I had my purple plush that I had never so much +as taken out of the drawer. At last, when nothing else would do, +he went off to France upon the business of the firm, but we went, +mother and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it +was there I met Mr. Hosmer Angel." +"I suppose," said Holmes, "that when Mr. Windibank came back from +France he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball." +"Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember, and +shrugged his shoulders, and said there was no use denying +anything to a woman, for she would have her way." +"I see. Then at the gasfitters' ball you met, as I understand, a +gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel." +"Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to ask if +we had got home all safe, and after that we met himthat is to +say, Mr. Holmes, I met him twice for walks, but after that father +came back again, and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the house +any more." +"No?" +"Well, you know father didn't like anything of the sort. He +wouldn't have any visitors if he could help it, and he used to +say that a woman should be happy in her own family circle. But +then, as I used to say to mother, a woman wants her own circle to +begin with, and I had not got mine yet." +"But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to see +you?" +"Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and Hosmer +wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see each +other until he had gone. We could write in the meantime, and he +used to write every day. I took the letters in in the morning, so +there was no need for father to know." +"Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?" +"Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that +we took. HosmerMr. Angelwas a cashier in an office in +Leadenhall Streetand" +"What office?" +"That's the worst of it, Mr. Holmes, I don't know." +"Where did he live, then?" +"He slept on the premises." +"And you don't know his address?" +"Noexcept that it was Leadenhall Street." +"Where did you address your letters, then?" +"To the Leadenhall Street Post Office, to be left till called +for. He said that if they were sent to the office he would be +chaffed by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady, +so I offered to typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn't +have that, for he said that when I wrote them they seemed to come +from me, but when they were typewritten he always felt that the +machine had come between us. That will just show you how fond he +was of me, Mr. Holmes, and the little things that he would think +of." +"It was most suggestive," said Holmes. "It has long been an axiom +of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. +Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?" +"He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me +in the evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated to +be conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his +voice was gentle. He'd had the quinsy and swollen glands when he +was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat, +and a hesitating, whispering fashion of speech. He was always +well dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just +as mine are, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare." +"Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather, +returned to France?" +"Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again and proposed that we +should marry before father came back. He was in dreadful earnest +and made me swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever +happened I would always be true to him. Mother said he was quite +right to make me swear, and that it was a sign of his passion. +Mother was all in his favour from the first and was even fonder +of him than I was. Then, when they talked of marrying within the +week, I began to ask about father but they both said never to +mind about father, but just to tell him afterwards, and mother +said she would make it all right with him. I didn't quite like +that, Mr. Holmes. It seemed funny that I should ask his leave, as +he was only a few years older than me but I didn't want to do +anything on the sly, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux, where the +company has its French offices, but the letter came back to me on +the very morning of the wedding." +"It missed him, then?" +"Yes, sir for he had started to England just before it arrived." +"Ha that was unfortunate. Your wedding was arranged, then, for +the Friday. Was it to be in church?" +"Yes, sir, but very quietly. It was to be at St. Saviour's, near +King's Cross, and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St. +Pancras Hotel. Hosmer came for us in a hansom, but as there were +two of us he put us both into it and stepped himself into a +fourwheeler, which happened to be the only other cab in the +street. We got to the church first, and when the fourwheeler +drove up we waited for him to step out, but he never did, and +when the cabman got down from the box and looked there was no one +there The cabman said that he could not imagine what had become +of him, for he had seen him get in with his own eyes. That was +last Friday, Mr. Holmes, and I have never seen or heard anything +since then to throw any light upon what became of him." +"It seems to me that you have been very shamefully treated," said +Holmes. +"Oh, no, sir He was too good and kind to leave me so. Why, all +the morning he was saying to me that, whatever happened, I was to +be true and that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to +separate us, I was always to remember that I was pledged to him, +and that he would claim his pledge sooner or later. It seemed +strange talk for a weddingmorning, but what has happened since +gives a meaning to it." +"Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is, then, that some +unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him?" +"Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he +would not have talked so. And then I think that what he foresaw +happened." +"But you have no notion as to what it could have been?" +"None." +"One more question. How did your mother take the matter?" +"She was angry, and said that I was never to speak of the matter +again." +"And your father? Did you tell him?" +"Yes and he seemed to think, with me, that something had +happened, and that I should hear of Hosmer again. As he said, +what interest could anyone have in bringing me to the doors of +the church, and then leaving me? Now, if he had borrowed my +money, or if he had married me and got my money settled on him, +there might be some reason, but Hosmer was very independent about +money and never would look at a shilling of mine. And yet, what +could have happened? And why could he not write? Oh, it drives me +halfmad to think of it, and I can't sleep a wink at night." She +pulled a little handkerchief out of her muff and began to sob +heavily into it. +"I shall glance into the case for you," said Holmes, rising, "and +I have no doubt that we shall reach some definite result. Let the +weight of the matter rest upon me now, and do not let your mind +dwell upon it further. Above all, try to let Mr. Hosmer Angel +vanish from your memory, as he has done from your life." +"Then you don't think I'll see him again?" +"I fear not." +"Then what has happened to him?" +"You will leave that question in my hands. I should like an +accurate description of him and any letters of his which you can +spare." +"I advertised for him in last Saturday's Chronicle," said she. +"Here is the slip and here are four letters from him." +"Thank you. And your address?" +"No. Lyon Place, Camberwell." +"Mr. Angel's address you never had, I understand. Where is your +father's place of business?" +"He travels for Westhouse Marbank, the great claret importers +of Fenchurch Street." +"Thank you. You have made your statement very clearly. You will +leave the papers here, and remember the advice which I have given +you. Let the whole incident be a sealed book, and do not allow it +to affect your life." +"You are very kind, Mr. Holmes, but I cannot do that. I shall be +true to Hosmer. He shall find me ready when he comes back." +For all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face, there was +something noble in the simple faith of our visitor which +compelled our respect. She laid her little bundle of papers upon +the table and went her way, with a promise to come again whenever +she might be summoned. +Sherlock Holmes sat silent for a few minutes with his fingertips +still pressed together, his legs stretched out in front of him, +and his gaze directed upward to the ceiling. Then he took down +from the rack the old and oily clay pipe, which was to him as a +counsellor, and, having lit it, he leaned back in his chair, with +the thick blue cloudwreaths spinning up from him, and a look of +infinite languor in his face. +"Quite an interesting study, that maiden," he observed. "I found +her more interesting than her little problem, which, by the way, +is rather a trite one. You will find parallel cases, if you +consult my index, in Andover in ', and there was something of +the sort at The Hague last year. Old as is the idea, however, +there were one or two details which were new to me. But the +maiden herself was most instructive." +"You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite +invisible to me," I remarked. +"Not invisible but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to +look, and so you missed all that was important. I can never bring +you to realise the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of +thumbnails, or the great issues that may hang from a bootlace. +Now, what did you gather from that woman's appearance? Describe +it." +"Well, she had a slatecoloured, broadbrimmed straw hat, with a +feather of a brickish red. Her jacket was black, with black beads +sewn upon it, and a fringe of little black jet ornaments. Her +dress was brown, rather darker than coffee colour, with a little +purple plush at the neck and sleeves. Her gloves were greyish and +were worn through at the right forefinger. Her boots I didn't +observe. She had small round, hanging gold earrings, and a +general air of being fairly welltodo in a vulgar, comfortable, +easygoing way." +Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled. +"'Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have +really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed +everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and +you have a quick eye for colour. Never trust to general +impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. My +first glance is always at a woman's sleeve. In a man it is +perhaps better first to take the knee of the trouser. As you +observe, this woman had plush upon her sleeves, which is a most +useful material for showing traces. The double line a little +above the wrist, where the typewritist presses against the table, +was beautifully defined. The sewingmachine, of the hand type, +leaves a similar mark, but only on the left arm, and on the side +of it farthest from the thumb, instead of being right across the +broadest part, as this was. I then glanced at her face, and, +observing the dint of a pincenez at either side of her nose, I +ventured a remark upon short sight and typewriting, which seemed +to surprise her." +"It surprised me." +"But, surely, it was obvious. I was then much surprised and +interested on glancing down to observe that, though the boots +which she was wearing were not unlike each other, they were +really odd ones the one having a slightly decorated toecap, and +the other a plain one. One was buttoned only in the two lower +buttons out of five, and the other at the first, third, and +fifth. Now, when you see that a young lady, otherwise neatly +dressed, has come away from home with odd boots, halfbuttoned, +it is no great deduction to say that she came away in a hurry." +"And what else?" I asked, keenly interested, as I always was, by +my friend's incisive reasoning. +"I noted, in passing, that she had written a note before leaving +home but after being fully dressed. You observed that her right +glove was torn at the forefinger, but you did not apparently see +that both glove and finger were stained with violet ink. She had +written in a hurry and dipped her pen too deep. It must have been +this morning, or the mark would not remain clear upon the finger. +All this is amusing, though rather elementary, but I must go back +to business, Watson. Would you mind reading me the advertised +description of Mr. Hosmer Angel?" +I held the little printed slip to the light. +"Missing," it said, "on the morning of the fourteenth, a gentleman +named Hosmer Angel. About five ft. seven in. in height +strongly built, sallow complexion, black hair, a little bald in +the centre, bushy, black sidewhiskers and moustache tinted +glasses, slight infirmity of speech. Was dressed, when last seen, +in black frockcoat faced with silk, black waistcoat, gold Albert +chain, and grey Harris tweed trousers, with brown gaiters over +elasticsided boots. Known to have been employed in an office in +Leadenhall Street. Anybody bringing" +"That will do," said Holmes. "As to the letters," he continued, +glancing over them, "they are very commonplace. Absolutely no +clue in them to Mr. Angel, save that he quotes Balzac once. There +is one remarkable point, however, which will no doubt strike +you." +"They are typewritten," I remarked. +"Not only that, but the signature is typewritten. Look at the +neat little 'Hosmer Angel' at the bottom. There is a date, you +see, but no superscription except Leadenhall Street, which is +rather vague. The point about the signature is very suggestive +in fact, we may call it conclusive." +"Of what?" +"My dear fellow, is it possible you do not see how strongly it +bears upon the case?" +"I cannot say that I do unless it were that he wished to be able +to deny his signature if an action for breach of promise were +instituted." +"No, that was not the point. However, I shall write two letters, +which should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the +other is to the young lady's stepfather, Mr. Windibank, asking +him whether he could meet us here at six o'clock tomorrow +evening. It is just as well that we should do business with the +male relatives. And now, Doctor, we can do nothing until the +answers to those letters come, so we may put our little problem +upon the shelf for the interim." +I had had so many reasons to believe in my friend's subtle powers +of reasoning and extraordinary energy in action that I felt that +he must have some solid grounds for the assured and easy +demeanour with which he treated the singular mystery which he had +been called upon to fathom. Once only had I known him to fail, in +the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler +photograph but when I looked back to the weird business of the +Sign of Four, and the extraordinary circumstances connected with +the Study in Scarlet, I felt that it would be a strange tangle +indeed which he could not unravel. +I left him then, still puffing at his black clay pipe, with the +conviction that when I came again on the next evening I would +find that he held in his hands all the clues which would lead up +to the identity of the disappearing bridegroom of Miss Mary +Sutherland. +A professional case of great gravity was engaging my own +attention at the time, and the whole of next day I was busy at +the bedside of the sufferer. It was not until close upon six +o'clock that I found myself free and was able to spring into a +hansom and drive to Baker Street, half afraid that I might be too +late to assist at the dnouement of the little mystery. I found +Sherlock Holmes alone, however, half asleep, with his long, thin +form curled up in the recesses of his armchair. A formidable +array of bottles and testtubes, with the pungent cleanly smell +of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent his day in the +chemical work which was so dear to him. +"Well, have you solved it?" I asked as I entered. +"Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta." +"No, no, the mystery" I cried. +"Oh, that I thought of the salt that I have been working upon. +There was never any mystery in the matter, though, as I said +yesterday, some of the details are of interest. The only drawback +is that there is no law, I fear, that can touch the scoundrel." +"Who was he, then, and what was his object in deserting Miss +Sutherland?" +The question was hardly out of my mouth, and Holmes had not yet +opened his lips to reply, when we heard a heavy footfall in the +passage and a tap at the door. +"This is the girl's stepfather, Mr. James Windibank," said +Holmes. "He has written to me to say that he would be here at +six. Come in" +The man who entered was a sturdy, middlesized fellow, some +thirty years of age, cleanshaven, and sallowskinned, with a +bland, insinuating manner, and a pair of wonderfully sharp and +penetrating grey eyes. He shot a questioning glance at each of +us, placed his shiny tophat upon the sideboard, and with a +slight bow sidled down into the nearest chair. +"Goodevening, Mr. James Windibank," said Holmes. "I think that +this typewritten letter is from you, in which you made an +appointment with me for six o'clock?" +"Yes, sir. I am afraid that I am a little late, but I am not +quite my own master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland +has troubled you about this little matter, for I think it is far +better not to wash linen of the sort in public. It was quite +against my wishes that she came, but she is a very excitable, +impulsive girl, as you may have noticed, and she is not easily +controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I +did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the +official police, but it is not pleasant to have a family +misfortune like this noised abroad. Besides, it is a useless +expense, for how could you possibly find this Hosmer Angel?" +"On the contrary," said Holmes quietly "I have every reason to +believe that I will succeed in discovering Mr. Hosmer Angel." +Mr. Windibank gave a violent start and dropped his gloves. "I am +delighted to hear it," he said. +"It is a curious thing," remarked Holmes, "that a typewriter has +really quite as much individuality as a man's handwriting. Unless +they are quite new, no two of them write exactly alike. Some +letters get more worn than others, and some wear only on one +side. Now, you remark in this note of yours, Mr. Windibank, that +in every case there is some little slurring over of the 'e,' and +a slight defect in the tail of the 'r.' There are fourteen other +characteristics, but those are the more obvious." +"We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, +and no doubt it is a little worn," our visitor answered, glancing +keenly at Holmes with his bright little eyes. +"And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, +Mr. Windibank," Holmes continued. "I think of writing another +little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its +relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some +little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come +from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not +only are the 'e's' slurred and the 'r's' tailless, but you will +observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen +other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well." +Mr. Windibank sprang out of his chair and picked up his hat. "I +cannot waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr. Holmes," +he said. "If you can catch the man, catch him, and let me know +when you have done it." +"Certainly," said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in +the door. "I let you know, then, that I have caught him" +"What where?" shouted Mr. Windibank, turning white to his lips +and glancing about him like a rat in a trap. +"Oh, it won't doreally it won't," said Holmes suavely. "There +is no possible getting out of it, Mr. Windibank. It is quite too +transparent, and it was a very bad compliment when you said that +it was impossible for me to solve so simple a question. That's +right Sit down and let us talk it over." +Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face and a +glitter of moisture on his brow. "Itit's not actionable," he +stammered. +"I am very much afraid that it is not. But between ourselves, +Windibank, it was as cruel and selfish and heartless a trick in a +petty way as ever came before me. Now, let me just run over the +course of events, and you will contradict me if I go wrong." +The man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon his +breast, like one who is utterly crushed. Holmes stuck his feet up +on the corner of the mantelpiece and, leaning back with his hands +in his pockets, began talking, rather to himself, as it seemed, +than to us. +"The man married a woman very much older than himself for her +money," said he, "and he enjoyed the use of the money of the +daughter as long as she lived with them. It was a considerable +sum, for people in their position, and the loss of it would have +made a serious difference. It was worth an effort to preserve it. +The daughter was of a good, amiable disposition, but affectionate +and warmhearted in her ways, so that it was evident that with +her fair personal advantages, and her little income, she would +not be allowed to remain single long. Now her marriage would +mean, of course, the loss of a hundred a year, so what does her +stepfather do to prevent it? He takes the obvious course of +keeping her at home and forbidding her to seek the company of +people of her own age. But soon he found that that would not +answer forever. She became restive, insisted upon her rights, and +finally announced her positive intention of going to a certain +ball. What does her clever stepfather do then? He conceives an +idea more creditable to his head than to his heart. With the +connivance and assistance of his wife he disguised himself, +covered those keen eyes with tinted glasses, masked the face with +a moustache and a pair of bushy whiskers, sunk that clear voice +into an insinuating whisper, and doubly secure on account of the +girl's short sight, he appears as Mr. Hosmer Angel, and keeps off +other lovers by making love himself." +"It was only a joke at first," groaned our visitor. "We never +thought that she would have been so carried away." +"Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was very +decidedly carried away, and, having quite made up her mind that +her stepfather was in France, the suspicion of treachery never +for an instant entered her mind. She was flattered by the +gentleman's attentions, and the effect was increased by the +loudly expressed admiration of her mother. Then Mr. Angel began +to call, for it was obvious that the matter should be pushed as +far as it would go if a real effect were to be produced. There +were meetings, and an engagement, which would finally secure the +girl's affections from turning towards anyone else. But the +deception could not be kept up forever. These pretended journeys +to France were rather cumbrous. The thing to do was clearly to +bring the business to an end in such a dramatic manner that it +would leave a permanent impression upon the young lady's mind and +prevent her from looking upon any other suitor for some time to +come. Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a Testament, and +hence also the allusions to a possibility of something happening +on the very morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished Miss +Sutherland to be so bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to +his fate, that for ten years to come, at any rate, she would not +listen to another man. As far as the church door he brought her, +and then, as he could go no farther, he conveniently vanished +away by the old trick of stepping in at one door of a +fourwheeler and out at the other. I think that was the chain of +events, Mr. Windibank" +Our visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes +had been talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold +sneer upon his pale face. +"It may be so, or it may not, Mr. Holmes," said he, "but if you +are so very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is +you who are breaking the law now, and not me. I have done nothing +actionable from the first, but as long as you keep that door +locked you lay yourself open to an action for assault and illegal +constraint." +"The law cannot, as you say, touch you," said Holmes, unlocking +and throwing open the door, "yet there never was a man who +deserved punishment more. If the young lady has a brother or a +friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders. By Jove" +he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon +the man's face, "it is not part of my duties to my client, but +here's a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat +myself to" He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he +could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps upon the stairs, +the heavy hall door banged, and from the window we could see Mr. +James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the road. +"There's a coldblooded scoundrel" said Holmes, laughing, as he +threw himself down into his chair once more. "That fellow will +rise from crime to crime until he does something very bad, and +ends on a gallows. The case has, in some respects, been not +entirely devoid of interest." +"I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning," I +remarked. +"Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr. +Hosmer Angel must have some strong object for his curious +conduct, and it was equally clear that the only man who really +profited by the incident, as far as we could see, was the +stepfather. Then the fact that the two men were never together, +but that the one always appeared when the other was away, was +suggestive. So were the tinted spectacles and the curious voice, +which both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers. My +suspicions were all confirmed by his peculiar action in +typewriting his signature, which, of course, inferred that his +handwriting was so familiar to her that she would recognise even +the smallest sample of it. You see all these isolated facts, +together with many minor ones, all pointed in the same +direction." +"And how did you verify them?" +"Having once spotted my man, it was easy to get corroboration. I +knew the firm for which this man worked. Having taken the printed +description. I eliminated everything from it which could be the +result of a disguisethe whiskers, the glasses, the voice, and I +sent it to the firm, with a request that they would inform me +whether it answered to the description of any of their +travellers. I had already noticed the peculiarities of the +typewriter, and I wrote to the man himself at his business +address asking him if he would come here. As I expected, his +reply was typewritten and revealed the same trivial but +characteristic defects. The same post brought me a letter from +Westhouse Marbank, of Fenchurch Street, to say that the +description tallied in every respect with that of their employ, +James Windibank. Voil tout" +"And Miss Sutherland?" +"If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old +Persian saying, 'There is danger for him who taketh the tiger +cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.' +There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much +knowledge of the world." +ADVENTURE IV. THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY +We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the +maid brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes and ran +in this way +"Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from +the west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. +Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect. +Leave Paddington by the ." +"What do you say, dear?" said my wife, looking across at me. +"Will you go?" +"I really don't know what to say. I have a fairly long list at +present." +"Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking +a little pale lately. I think that the change would do you good, +and you are always so interested in Mr. Sherlock Holmes' cases." +"I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained +through one of them," I answered. "But if I am to go, I must pack +at once, for I have only half an hour." +My experience of camp life in Afghanistan had at least had the +effect of making me a prompt and ready traveller. My wants were +few and simple, so that in less than the time stated I was in a +cab with my valise, rattling away to Paddington Station. Sherlock +Holmes was pacing up and down the platform, his tall, gaunt +figure made even gaunter and taller by his long grey +travellingcloak and closefitting cloth cap. +"It is really very good of you to come, Watson," said he. "It +makes a considerable difference to me, having someone with me on +whom I can thoroughly rely. Local aid is always either worthless +or else biassed. If you will keep the two corner seats I shall +get the tickets." +We had the carriage to ourselves save for an immense litter of +papers which Holmes had brought with him. Among these he rummaged +and read, with intervals of notetaking and of meditation, until +we were past Reading. Then he suddenly rolled them all into a +gigantic ball and tossed them up onto the rack. +"Have you heard anything of the case?" he asked. +"Not a word. I have not seen a paper for some days." +"The London press has not had very full accounts. I have just +been looking through all the recent papers in order to master the +particulars. It seems, from what I gather, to be one of those +simple cases which are so extremely difficult." +"That sounds a little paradoxical." +"But it is profoundly true. Singularity is almost invariably a +clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more +difficult it is to bring it home. In this case, however, they +have established a very serious case against the son of the +murdered man." +"It is a murder, then?" +"Well, it is conjectured to be so. I shall take nothing for +granted until I have the opportunity of looking personally into +it. I will explain the state of things to you, as far as I have +been able to understand it, in a very few words. +"Boscombe Valley is a country district not very far from Ross, in +Herefordshire. The largest landed proprietor in that part is a +Mr. John Turner, who made his money in Australia and returned +some years ago to the old country. One of the farms which he +held, that of Hatherley, was let to Mr. Charles McCarthy, who was +also an exAustralian. The men had known each other in the +colonies, so that it was not unnatural that when they came to +settle down they should do so as near each other as possible. +Turner was apparently the richer man, so McCarthy became his +tenant but still remained, it seems, upon terms of perfect +equality, as they were frequently together. McCarthy had one son, +a lad of eighteen, and Turner had an only daughter of the same +age, but neither of them had wives living. They appear to have +avoided the society of the neighbouring English families and to +have led retired lives, though both the McCarthys were fond of +sport and were frequently seen at the racemeetings of the +neighbourhood. McCarthy kept two servantsa man and a girl. +Turner had a considerable household, some halfdozen at the +least. That is as much as I have been able to gather about the +families. Now for the facts. +"On June rd, that is, on Monday last, McCarthy left his house at +Hatherley about three in the afternoon and walked down to the +Boscombe Pool, which is a small lake formed by the spreading out +of the stream which runs down the Boscombe Valley. He had been +out with his servingman in the morning at Ross, and he had told +the man that he must hurry, as he had an appointment of +importance to keep at three. From that appointment he never came +back alive. +"From Hatherley Farmhouse to the Boscombe Pool is a quarter of a +mile, and two people saw him as he passed over this ground. One +was an old woman, whose name is not mentioned, and the other was +William Crowder, a gamekeeper in the employ of Mr. Turner. Both +these witnesses depose that Mr. McCarthy was walking alone. The +gamekeeper adds that within a few minutes of his seeing Mr. +McCarthy pass he had seen his son, Mr. James McCarthy, going the +same way with a gun under his arm. To the best of his belief, the +father was actually in sight at the time, and the son was +following him. He thought no more of the matter until he heard in +the evening of the tragedy that had occurred. +"The two McCarthys were seen after the time when William Crowder, +the gamekeeper, lost sight of them. The Boscombe Pool is thickly +wooded round, with just a fringe of grass and of reeds round the +edge. A girl of fourteen, Patience Moran, who is the daughter of +the lodgekeeper of the Boscombe Valley estate, was in one of the +woods picking flowers. She states that while she was there she +saw, at the border of the wood and close by the lake, Mr. +McCarthy and his son, and that they appeared to be having a +violent quarrel. She heard Mr. McCarthy the elder using very +strong language to his son, and she saw the latter raise up his +hand as if to strike his father. She was so frightened by their +violence that she ran away and told her mother when she reached +home that she had left the two McCarthys quarrelling near +Boscombe Pool, and that she was afraid that they were going to +fight. She had hardly said the words when young Mr. McCarthy came +running up to the lodge to say that he had found his father dead +in the wood, and to ask for the help of the lodgekeeper. He was +much excited, without either his gun or his hat, and his right +hand and sleeve were observed to be stained with fresh blood. On +following him they found the dead body stretched out upon the +grass beside the pool. The head had been beaten in by repeated +blows of some heavy and blunt weapon. The injuries were such as +might very well have been inflicted by the buttend of his son's +gun, which was found lying on the grass within a few paces of the +body. Under these circumstances the young man was instantly +arrested, and a verdict of 'wilful murder' having been returned +at the inquest on Tuesday, he was on Wednesday brought before the +magistrates at Ross, who have referred the case to the next +Assizes. Those are the main facts of the case as they came out +before the coroner and the policecourt." +"I could hardly imagine a more damning case," I remarked. "If +ever circumstantial evidence pointed to a criminal it does so +here." +"Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing," answered Holmes +thoughtfully. "It may seem to point very straight to one thing, +but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it +pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something +entirely different. It must be confessed, however, that the case +looks exceedingly grave against the young man, and it is very +possible that he is indeed the culprit. There are several people +in the neighbourhood, however, and among them Miss Turner, the +daughter of the neighbouring landowner, who believe in his +innocence, and who have retained Lestrade, whom you may recollect +in connection with the Study in Scarlet, to work out the case in +his interest. Lestrade, being rather puzzled, has referred the +case to me, and hence it is that two middleaged gentlemen are +flying westward at fifty miles an hour instead of quietly +digesting their breakfasts at home." +"I am afraid," said I, "that the facts are so obvious that you +will find little credit to be gained out of this case." +"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact," he +answered, laughing. "Besides, we may chance to hit upon some +other obvious facts which may have been by no means obvious to +Mr. Lestrade. You know me too well to think that I am boasting +when I say that I shall either confirm or destroy his theory by +means which he is quite incapable of employing, or even of +understanding. To take the first example to hand, I very clearly +perceive that in your bedroom the window is upon the righthand +side, and yet I question whether Mr. Lestrade would have noted +even so selfevident a thing as that." +"How on earth" +"My dear fellow, I know you well. I know the military neatness +which characterises you. You shave every morning, and in this +season you shave by the sunlight but since your shaving is less +and less complete as we get farther back on the left side, until +it becomes positively slovenly as we get round the angle of the +jaw, it is surely very clear that that side is less illuminated +than the other. I could not imagine a man of your habits looking +at himself in an equal light and being satisfied with such a +result. I only quote this as a trivial example of observation and +inference. Therein lies my mtier, and it is just possible that +it may be of some service in the investigation which lies before +us. There are one or two minor points which were brought out in +the inquest, and which are worth considering." +"What are they?" +"It appears that his arrest did not take place at once, but after +the return to Hatherley Farm. On the inspector of constabulary +informing him that he was a prisoner, he remarked that he was not +surprised to hear it, and that it was no more than his deserts. +This observation of his had the natural effect of removing any +traces of doubt which might have remained in the minds of the +coroner's jury." +"It was a confession," I ejaculated. +"No, for it was followed by a protestation of innocence." +"Coming on the top of such a damning series of events, it was at +least a most suspicious remark." +"On the contrary," said Holmes, "it is the brightest rift which I +can at present see in the clouds. However innocent he might be, +he could not be such an absolute imbecile as not to see that the +circumstances were very black against him. Had he appeared +surprised at his own arrest, or feigned indignation at it, I +should have looked upon it as highly suspicious, because such +surprise or anger would not be natural under the circumstances, +and yet might appear to be the best policy to a scheming man. His +frank acceptance of the situation marks him as either an innocent +man, or else as a man of considerable selfrestraint and +firmness. As to his remark about his deserts, it was also not +unnatural if you consider that he stood beside the dead body of +his father, and that there is no doubt that he had that very day +so far forgotten his filial duty as to bandy words with him, and +even, according to the little girl whose evidence is so +important, to raise his hand as if to strike him. The +selfreproach and contrition which are displayed in his remark +appear to me to be the signs of a healthy mind rather than of a +guilty one." +I shook my head. "Many men have been hanged on far slighter +evidence," I remarked. +"So they have. And many men have been wrongfully hanged." +"What is the young man's own account of the matter?" +"It is, I am afraid, not very encouraging to his supporters, +though there are one or two points in it which are suggestive. +You will find it here, and may read it for yourself." +He picked out from his bundle a copy of the local Herefordshire +paper, and having turned down the sheet he pointed out the +paragraph in which the unfortunate young man had given his own +statement of what had occurred. I settled myself down in the +corner of the carriage and read it very carefully. It ran in this +way +"Mr. James McCarthy, the only son of the deceased, was then called +and gave evidence as follows 'I had been away from home for +three days at Bristol, and had only just returned upon the +morning of last Monday, the rd. My father was absent from home at +the time of my arrival, and I was informed by the maid that he +had driven over to Ross with John Cobb, the groom. Shortly after +my return I heard the wheels of his trap in the yard, and, +looking out of my window, I saw him get out and walk rapidly out +of the yard, though I was not aware in which direction he was +going. I then took my gun and strolled out in the direction of +the Boscombe Pool, with the intention of visiting the rabbit +warren which is upon the other side. On my way I saw William +Crowder, the gamekeeper, as he had stated in his evidence but +he is mistaken in thinking that I was following my father. I had +no idea that he was in front of me. When about a hundred yards +from the pool I heard a cry of "Cooee" which was a usual signal +between my father and myself. I then hurried forward, and found +him standing by the pool. He appeared to be much surprised at +seeing me and asked me rather roughly what I was doing there. A +conversation ensued which led to high words and almost to blows, +for my father was a man of a very violent temper. Seeing that his +passion was becoming ungovernable, I left him and returned +towards Hatherley Farm. I had not gone more than yards, +however, when I heard a hideous outcry behind me, which caused me +to run back again. I found my father expiring upon the ground, +with his head terribly injured. I dropped my gun and held him in +my arms, but he almost instantly expired. I knelt beside him for +some minutes, and then made my way to Mr. Turner's lodgekeeper, +his house being the nearest, to ask for assistance. I saw no one +near my father when I returned, and I have no idea how he came by +his injuries. He was not a popular man, being somewhat cold and +forbidding in his manners, but he had, as far as I know, no +active enemies. I know nothing further of the matter.' +"The Coroner Did your father make any statement to you before +he died? +"Witness He mumbled a few words, but I could only catch some +allusion to a rat. +"The Coroner What did you understand by that? +"Witness It conveyed no meaning to me. I thought that he was +delirious. +"The Coroner What was the point upon which you and your father +had this final quarrel? +"Witness I should prefer not to answer. +"The Coroner I am afraid that I must press it. +"Witness It is really impossible for me to tell you. I can +assure you that it has nothing to do with the sad tragedy which +followed. +"The Coroner That is for the court to decide. I need not point +out to you that your refusal to answer will prejudice your case +considerably in any future proceedings which may arise. +"Witness I must still refuse. +"The Coroner I understand that the cry of 'Cooee' was a common +signal between you and your father? +"Witness It was. +"The Coroner How was it, then, that he uttered it before he saw +you, and before he even knew that you had returned from Bristol? +"Witness with considerable confusion I do not know. +"A Juryman Did you see nothing which aroused your suspicions +when you returned on hearing the cry and found your father +fatally injured? +"Witness Nothing definite. +"The Coroner What do you mean? +"Witness I was so disturbed and excited as I rushed out into +the open, that I could think of nothing except of my father. Yet +I have a vague impression that as I ran forward something lay +upon the ground to the left of me. It seemed to me to be +something grey in colour, a coat of some sort, or a plaid perhaps. +When I rose from my father I looked round for it, but it was +gone. +"'Do you mean that it disappeared before you went for help?' +"'Yes, it was gone.' +"'You cannot say what it was?' +"'No, I had a feeling something was there.' +"'How far from the body?' +"'A dozen yards or so.' +"'And how far from the edge of the wood?' +"'About the same.' +"'Then if it was removed it was while you were within a dozen +yards of it?' +"'Yes, but with my back towards it.' +"This concluded the examination of the witness." +"I see," said I as I glanced down the column, "that the coroner +in his concluding remarks was rather severe upon young McCarthy. +He calls attention, and with reason, to the discrepancy about his +father having signalled to him before seeing him, also to his +refusal to give details of his conversation with his father, and +his singular account of his father's dying words. They are all, +as he remarks, very much against the son." +Holmes laughed softly to himself and stretched himself out upon +the cushioned seat. "Both you and the coroner have been at some +pains," said he, "to single out the very strongest points in the +young man's favour. Don't you see that you alternately give him +credit for having too much imagination and too little? Too +little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would +give him the sympathy of the jury too much, if he evolved from +his own inner consciousness anything so outr as a dying +reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth. No, +sir, I shall approach this case from the point of view that what +this young man says is true, and we shall see whither that +hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and +not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the +scene of action. We lunch at Swindon, and I see that we shall be +there in twenty minutes." +It was nearly four o'clock when we at last, after passing through +the beautiful Stroud Valley, and over the broad gleaming Severn, +found ourselves at the pretty little countrytown of Ross. A +lean, ferretlike man, furtive and slylooking, was waiting for +us upon the platform. In spite of the light brown dustcoat and +leatherleggings which he wore in deference to his rustic +surroundings, I had no difficulty in recognising Lestrade, of +Scotland Yard. With him we drove to the Hereford Arms where a +room had already been engaged for us. +"I have ordered a carriage," said Lestrade as we sat over a cup +of tea. "I knew your energetic nature, and that you would not be +happy until you had been on the scene of the crime." +"It was very nice and complimentary of you," Holmes answered. "It +is entirely a question of barometric pressure." +Lestrade looked startled. "I do not quite follow," he said. +"How is the glass? Twentynine, I see. No wind, and not a cloud +in the sky. I have a caseful of cigarettes here which need +smoking, and the sofa is very much superior to the usual country +hotel abomination. I do not think that it is probable that I +shall use the carriage tonight." +Lestrade laughed indulgently. "You have, no doubt, already formed +your conclusions from the newspapers," he said. "The case is as +plain as a pikestaff, and the more one goes into it the plainer +it becomes. Still, of course, one can't refuse a lady, and such a +very positive one, too. She has heard of you, and would have your +opinion, though I repeatedly told her that there was nothing +which you could do which I had not already done. Why, bless my +soul here is her carriage at the door." +He had hardly spoken before there rushed into the room one of the +most lovely young women that I have ever seen in my life. Her +violet eyes shining, her lips parted, a pink flush upon her +cheeks, all thought of her natural reserve lost in her +overpowering excitement and concern. +"Oh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes" she cried, glancing from one to the +other of us, and finally, with a woman's quick intuition, +fastening upon my companion, "I am so glad that you have come. I +have driven down to tell you so. I know that James didn't do it. +I know it, and I want you to start upon your work knowing it, +too. Never let yourself doubt upon that point. We have known each +other since we were little children, and I know his faults as no +one else does but he is too tenderhearted to hurt a fly. Such a +charge is absurd to anyone who really knows him." +"I hope we may clear him, Miss Turner," said Sherlock Holmes. +"You may rely upon my doing all that I can." +"But you have read the evidence. You have formed some conclusion? +Do you not see some loophole, some flaw? Do you not yourself +think that he is innocent?" +"I think that it is very probable." +"There, now" she cried, throwing back her head and looking +defiantly at Lestrade. "You hear He gives me hopes." +Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. "I am afraid that my colleague +has been a little quick in forming his conclusions," he said. +"But he is right. Oh I know that he is right. James never did +it. And about his quarrel with his father, I am sure that the +reason why he would not speak about it to the coroner was because +I was concerned in it." +"In what way?" asked Holmes. +"It is no time for me to hide anything. James and his father had +many disagreements about me. Mr. McCarthy was very anxious that +there should be a marriage between us. James and I have always +loved each other as brother and sister but of course he is young +and has seen very little of life yet, andandwell, he +naturally did not wish to do anything like that yet. So there +were quarrels, and this, I am sure, was one of them." +"And your father?" asked Holmes. "Was he in favour of such a +union?" +"No, he was averse to it also. No one but Mr. McCarthy was in +favour of it." A quick blush passed over her fresh young face as +Holmes shot one of his keen, questioning glances at her. +"Thank you for this information," said he. "May I see your father +if I call tomorrow?" +"I am afraid the doctor won't allow it." +"The doctor?" +"Yes, have you not heard? Poor father has never been strong for +years back, but this has broken him down completely. He has taken +to his bed, and Dr. Willows says that he is a wreck and that his +nervous system is shattered. Mr. McCarthy was the only man alive +who had known dad in the old days in Victoria." +"Ha In Victoria That is important." +"Yes, at the mines." +"Quite so at the goldmines, where, as I understand, Mr. Turner +made his money." +"Yes, certainly." +"Thank you, Miss Turner. You have been of material assistance to +me." +"You will tell me if you have any news tomorrow. No doubt you +will go to the prison to see James. Oh, if you do, Mr. Holmes, do +tell him that I know him to be innocent." +"I will, Miss Turner." +"I must go home now, for dad is very ill, and he misses me so if +I leave him. Goodbye, and God help you in your undertaking." She +hurried from the room as impulsively as she had entered, and we +heard the wheels of her carriage rattle off down the street. +"I am ashamed of you, Holmes," said Lestrade with dignity after a +few minutes' silence. "Why should you raise up hopes which you +are bound to disappoint? I am not overtender of heart, but I +call it cruel." +"I think that I see my way to clearing James McCarthy," said +Holmes. "Have you an order to see him in prison?" +"Yes, but only for you and me." +"Then I shall reconsider my resolution about going out. We have +still time to take a train to Hereford and see him tonight?" +"Ample." +"Then let us do so. Watson, I fear that you will find it very +slow, but I shall only be away a couple of hours." +I walked down to the station with them, and then wandered through +the streets of the little town, finally returning to the hotel, +where I lay upon the sofa and tried to interest myself in a +yellowbacked novel. The puny plot of the story was so thin, +however, when compared to the deep mystery through which we were +groping, and I found my attention wander so continually from the +action to the fact, that I at last flung it across the room and +gave myself up entirely to a consideration of the events of the +day. Supposing that this unhappy young man's story were +absolutely true, then what hellish thing, what absolutely +unforeseen and extraordinary calamity could have occurred between +the time when he parted from his father, and the moment when, +drawn back by his screams, he rushed into the glade? It was +something terrible and deadly. What could it be? Might not the +nature of the injuries reveal something to my medical instincts? +I rang the bell and called for the weekly county paper, which +contained a verbatim account of the inquest. In the surgeon's +deposition it was stated that the posterior third of the left +parietal bone and the left half of the occipital bone had been +shattered by a heavy blow from a blunt weapon. I marked the spot +upon my own head. Clearly such a blow must have been struck from +behind. That was to some extent in favour of the accused, as when +seen quarrelling he was face to face with his father. Still, it +did not go for very much, for the older man might have turned his +back before the blow fell. Still, it might be worth while to call +Holmes' attention to it. Then there was the peculiar dying +reference to a rat. What could that mean? It could not be +delirium. A man dying from a sudden blow does not commonly become +delirious. No, it was more likely to be an attempt to explain how +he met his fate. But what could it indicate? I cudgelled my +brains to find some possible explanation. And then the incident +of the grey cloth seen by young McCarthy. If that were true the +murderer must have dropped some part of his dress, presumably his +overcoat, in his flight, and must have had the hardihood to +return and to carry it away at the instant when the son was +kneeling with his back turned not a dozen paces off. What a +tissue of mysteries and improbabilities the whole thing was I +did not wonder at Lestrade's opinion, and yet I had so much faith +in Sherlock Holmes' insight that I could not lose hope as long +as every fresh fact seemed to strengthen his conviction of young +McCarthy's innocence. +It was late before Sherlock Holmes returned. He came back alone, +for Lestrade was staying in lodgings in the town. +"The glass still keeps very high," he remarked as he sat down. +"It is of importance that it should not rain before we are able +to go over the ground. On the other hand, a man should be at his +very best and keenest for such nice work as that, and I did not +wish to do it when fagged by a long journey. I have seen young +McCarthy." +"And what did you learn from him?" +"Nothing." +"Could he throw no light?" +"None at all. I was inclined to think at one time that he knew +who had done it and was screening him or her, but I am convinced +now that he is as puzzled as everyone else. He is not a very +quickwitted youth, though comely to look at and, I should think, +sound at heart." +"I cannot admire his taste," I remarked, "if it is indeed a fact +that he was averse to a marriage with so charming a young lady as +this Miss Turner." +"Ah, thereby hangs a rather painful tale. This fellow is madly, +insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was +only a lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away +five years at a boardingschool, what does the idiot do but get +into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a +registry office? No one knows a word of the matter, but you can +imagine how maddening it must be to him to be upbraided for not +doing what he would give his very eyes to do, but what he knows +to be absolutely impossible. It was sheer frenzy of this sort +which made him throw his hands up into the air when his father, +at their last interview, was goading him on to propose to Miss +Turner. On the other hand, he had no means of supporting himself, +and his father, who was by all accounts a very hard man, would +have thrown him over utterly had he known the truth. It was with +his barmaid wife that he had spent the last three days in +Bristol, and his father did not know where he was. Mark that +point. It is of importance. Good has come out of evil, however, +for the barmaid, finding from the papers that he is in serious +trouble and likely to be hanged, has thrown him over utterly and +has written to him to say that she has a husband already in the +Bermuda Dockyard, so that there is really no tie between them. I +think that that bit of news has consoled young McCarthy for all +that he has suffered." +"But if he is innocent, who has done it?" +"Ah who? I would call your attention very particularly to two +points. One is that the murdered man had an appointment with +someone at the pool, and that the someone could not have been his +son, for his son was away, and he did not know when he would +return. The second is that the murdered man was heard to cry +'Cooee' before he knew that his son had returned. Those are the +crucial points upon which the case depends. And now let us talk +about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall leave all +minor matters until tomorrow." +There was no rain, as Holmes had foretold, and the morning broke +bright and cloudless. At nine o'clock Lestrade called for us with +the carriage, and we set off for Hatherley Farm and the Boscombe +Pool. +"There is serious news this morning," Lestrade observed. "It is +said that Mr. Turner, of the Hall, is so ill that his life is +despaired of." +"An elderly man, I presume?" said Holmes. +"About sixty but his constitution has been shattered by his life +abroad, and he has been in failing health for some time. This +business has had a very bad effect upon him. He was an old friend +of McCarthy's, and, I may add, a great benefactor to him, for I +have learned that he gave him Hatherley Farm rent free." +"Indeed That is interesting," said Holmes. +"Oh, yes In a hundred other ways he has helped him. Everybody +about here speaks of his kindness to him." +"Really Does it not strike you as a little singular that this +McCarthy, who appears to have had little of his own, and to have +been under such obligations to Turner, should still talk of +marrying his son to Turner's daughter, who is, presumably, +heiress to the estate, and that in such a very cocksure manner, +as if it were merely a case of a proposal and all else would +follow? It is the more strange, since we know that Turner himself +was averse to the idea. The daughter told us as much. Do you not +deduce something from that?" +"We have got to the deductions and the inferences," said +Lestrade, winking at me. "I find it hard enough to tackle facts, +Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies." +"You are right," said Holmes demurely "you do find it very hard +to tackle the facts." +"Anyhow, I have grasped one fact which you seem to find it +difficult to get hold of," replied Lestrade with some warmth. +"And that is" +"That McCarthy senior met his death from McCarthy junior and that +all theories to the contrary are the merest moonshine." +"Well, moonshine is a brighter thing than fog," said Holmes, +laughing. "But I am very much mistaken if this is not Hatherley +Farm upon the left." +"Yes, that is it." It was a widespread, comfortablelooking +building, twostoried, slateroofed, with great yellow blotches +of lichen upon the grey walls. The drawn blinds and the smokeless +chimneys, however, gave it a stricken look, as though the weight +of this horror still lay heavy upon it. We called at the door, +when the maid, at Holmes' request, showed us the boots which her +master wore at the time of his death, and also a pair of the +son's, though not the pair which he had then had. Having measured +these very carefully from seven or eight different points, Holmes +desired to be led to the courtyard, from which we all followed +the winding track which led to Boscombe Pool. +Sherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent +as this. Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of +Baker Street would have failed to recognise him. His face flushed +and darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard black lines, +while his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. +His face was bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips +compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, +sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal +lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated +upon the matter before him that a question or remark fell +unheeded upon his ears, or, at the most, only provoked a quick, +impatient snarl in reply. Swiftly and silently he made his way +along the track which ran through the meadows, and so by way of +the woods to the Boscombe Pool. It was damp, marshy ground, as is +all that district, and there were marks of many feet, both upon +the path and amid the short grass which bounded it on either +side. Sometimes Holmes would hurry on, sometimes stop dead, and +once he made quite a little detour into the meadow. Lestrade and +I walked behind him, the detective indifferent and contemptuous, +while I watched my friend with the interest which sprang from the +conviction that every one of his actions was directed towards a +definite end. +The Boscombe Pool, which is a little reedgirt sheet of water +some fifty yards across, is situated at the boundary between the +Hatherley Farm and the private park of the wealthy Mr. Turner. +Above the woods which lined it upon the farther side we could see +the red, jutting pinnacles which marked the site of the rich +landowner's dwelling. On the Hatherley side of the pool the woods +grew very thick, and there was a narrow belt of sodden grass +twenty paces across between the edge of the trees and the reeds +which lined the lake. Lestrade showed us the exact spot at which +the body had been found, and, indeed, so moist was the ground, +that I could plainly see the traces which had been left by the +fall of the stricken man. To Holmes, as I could see by his eager +face and peering eyes, very many other things were to be read +upon the trampled grass. He ran round, like a dog who is picking +up a scent, and then turned upon my companion. +"What did you go into the pool for?" he asked. +"I fished about with a rake. I thought there might be some weapon +or other trace. But how on earth" +"Oh, tut, tut I have no time That left foot of yours with its +inward twist is all over the place. A mole could trace it, and +there it vanishes among the reeds. Oh, how simple it would all +have been had I been here before they came like a herd of buffalo +and wallowed all over it. Here is where the party with the +lodgekeeper came, and they have covered all tracks for six or +eight feet round the body. But here are three separate tracks of +the same feet." He drew out a lens and lay down upon his +waterproof to have a better view, talking all the time rather to +himself than to us. "These are young McCarthy's feet. Twice he +was walking, and once he ran swiftly, so that the soles are +deeply marked and the heels hardly visible. That bears out his +story. He ran when he saw his father on the ground. Then here are +the father's feet as he paced up and down. What is this, then? It +is the buttend of the gun as the son stood listening. And this? +Ha, ha What have we here? Tiptoes tiptoes Square, too, quite +unusual boots They come, they go, they come againof course +that was for the cloak. Now where did they come from?" He ran up +and down, sometimes losing, sometimes finding the track until we +were well within the edge of the wood and under the shadow of a +great beech, the largest tree in the neighbourhood. Holmes traced +his way to the farther side of this and lay down once more upon +his face with a little cry of satisfaction. For a long time he +remained there, turning over the leaves and dried sticks, +gathering up what seemed to me to be dust into an envelope and +examining with his lens not only the ground but even the bark of +the tree as far as he could reach. A jagged stone was lying among +the moss, and this also he carefully examined and retained. Then +he followed a pathway through the wood until he came to the +highroad, where all traces were lost. +"It has been a case of considerable interest," he remarked, +returning to his natural manner. "I fancy that this grey house on +the right must be the lodge. I think that I will go in and have a +word with Moran, and perhaps write a little note. Having done +that, we may drive back to our luncheon. You may walk to the cab, +and I shall be with you presently." +It was about ten minutes before we regained our cab and drove +back into Ross, Holmes still carrying with him the stone which he +had picked up in the wood. +"This may interest you, Lestrade," he remarked, holding it out. +"The murder was done with it." +"I see no marks." +"There are none." +"How do you know, then?" +"The grass was growing under it. It had only lain there a few +days. There was no sign of a place whence it had been taken. It +corresponds with the injuries. There is no sign of any other +weapon." +"And the murderer?" +"Is a tall man, lefthanded, limps with the right leg, wears +thicksoled shootingboots and a grey cloak, smokes Indian +cigars, uses a cigarholder, and carries a blunt penknife in his +pocket. There are several other indications, but these may be +enough to aid us in our search." +Lestrade laughed. "I am afraid that I am still a sceptic," he +said. "Theories are all very well, but we have to deal with a +hardheaded British jury." +"Nous verrons," answered Holmes calmly. "You work your own +method, and I shall work mine. I shall be busy this afternoon, +and shall probably return to London by the evening train." +"And leave your case unfinished?" +"No, finished." +"But the mystery?" +"It is solved." +"Who was the criminal, then?" +"The gentleman I describe." +"But who is he?" +"Surely it would not be difficult to find out. This is not such a +populous neighbourhood." +Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. "I am a practical man," he said, +"and I really cannot undertake to go about the country looking +for a lefthanded gentleman with a game leg. I should become the +laughingstock of Scotland Yard." +"All right," said Holmes quietly. "I have given you the chance. +Here are your lodgings. Goodbye. I shall drop you a line before +I leave." +Having left Lestrade at his rooms, we drove to our hotel, where +we found lunch upon the table. Holmes was silent and buried in +thought with a pained expression upon his face, as one who finds +himself in a perplexing position. +"Look here, Watson," he said when the cloth was cleared "just sit +down in this chair and let me preach to you for a little. I don't +know quite what to do, and I should value your advice. Light a +cigar and let me expound." +"Pray do so." +"Well, now, in considering this case there are two points about +young McCarthy's narrative which struck us both instantly, +although they impressed me in his favour and you against him. One +was the fact that his father should, according to his account, +cry 'Cooee' before seeing him. The other was his singular dying +reference to a rat. He mumbled several words, you understand, but +that was all that caught the son's ear. Now from this double +point our research must commence, and we will begin it by +presuming that what the lad says is absolutely true." +"What of this 'Cooee' then?" +"Well, obviously it could not have been meant for the son. The +son, as far as he knew, was in Bristol. It was mere chance that +he was within earshot. The 'Cooee' was meant to attract the +attention of whoever it was that he had the appointment with. But +'Cooee' is a distinctly Australian cry, and one which is used +between Australians. There is a strong presumption that the +person whom McCarthy expected to meet him at Boscombe Pool was +someone who had been in Australia." +"What of the rat, then?" +Sherlock Holmes took a folded paper from his pocket and flattened +it out on the table. "This is a map of the Colony of Victoria," +he said. "I wired to Bristol for it last night." He put his hand +over part of the map. "What do you read?" +"ARAT," I read. +"And now?" He raised his hand. +"BALLARAT." +"Quite so. That was the word the man uttered, and of which his +son only caught the last two syllables. He was trying to utter +the name of his murderer. So and so, of Ballarat." +"It is wonderful" I exclaimed. +"It is obvious. And now, you see, I had narrowed the field down +considerably. The possession of a grey garment was a third point +which, granting the son's statement to be correct, was a +certainty. We have come now out of mere vagueness to the definite +conception of an Australian from Ballarat with a grey cloak." +"Certainly." +"And one who was at home in the district, for the pool can only +be approached by the farm or by the estate, where strangers could +hardly wander." +"Quite so." +"Then comes our expedition of today. By an examination of the +ground I gained the trifling details which I gave to that +imbecile Lestrade, as to the personality of the criminal." +"But how did you gain them?" +"You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of +trifles." +"His height I know that you might roughly judge from the length +of his stride. His boots, too, might be told from their traces." +"Yes, they were peculiar boots." +"But his lameness?" +"The impression of his right foot was always less distinct than +his left. He put less weight upon it. Why? Because he limpedhe +was lame." +"But his lefthandedness." +"You were yourself struck by the nature of the injury as recorded +by the surgeon at the inquest. The blow was struck from +immediately behind, and yet was upon the left side. Now, how can +that be unless it were by a lefthanded man? He had stood behind +that tree during the interview between the father and son. He had +even smoked there. I found the ash of a cigar, which my special +knowledge of tobacco ashes enables me to pronounce as an Indian +cigar. I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and +written a little monograph on the ashes of different +varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco. Having found the +ash, I then looked round and discovered the stump among the moss +where he had tossed it. It was an Indian cigar, of the variety +which are rolled in Rotterdam." +"And the cigarholder?" +"I could see that the end had not been in his mouth. Therefore he +used a holder. The tip had been cut off, not bitten off, but the +cut was not a clean one, so I deduced a blunt penknife." +"Holmes," I said, "you have drawn a net round this man from which +he cannot escape, and you have saved an innocent human life as +truly as if you had cut the cord which was hanging him. I see the +direction in which all this points. The culprit is" +"Mr. John Turner," cried the hotel waiter, opening the door of +our sittingroom, and ushering in a visitor. +The man who entered was a strange and impressive figure. His +slow, limping step and bowed shoulders gave the appearance of +decrepitude, and yet his hard, deeplined, craggy features, and +his enormous limbs showed that he was possessed of unusual +strength of body and of character. His tangled beard, grizzled +hair, and outstanding, drooping eyebrows combined to give an air +of dignity and power to his appearance, but his face was of an +ashen white, while his lips and the corners of his nostrils were +tinged with a shade of blue. It was clear to me at a glance that +he was in the grip of some deadly and chronic disease. +"Pray sit down on the sofa," said Holmes gently. "You had my +note?" +"Yes, the lodgekeeper brought it up. You said that you wished to +see me here to avoid scandal." +"I thought people would talk if I went to the Hall." +"And why did you wish to see me?" He looked across at my +companion with despair in his weary eyes, as though his question +was already answered. +"Yes," said Holmes, answering the look rather than the words. "It +is so. I know all about McCarthy." +The old man sank his face in his hands. "God help me" he cried. +"But I would not have let the young man come to harm. I give you +my word that I would have spoken out if it went against him at +the Assizes." +"I am glad to hear you say so," said Holmes gravely. +"I would have spoken now had it not been for my dear girl. It +would break her heartit will break her heart when she hears +that I am arrested." +"It may not come to that," said Holmes. +"What?" +"I am no official agent. I understand that it was your daughter +who required my presence here, and I am acting in her interests. +Young McCarthy must be got off, however." +"I am a dying man," said old Turner. "I have had diabetes for +years. My doctor says it is a question whether I shall live a +month. Yet I would rather die under my own roof than in a gaol." +Holmes rose and sat down at the table with his pen in his hand +and a bundle of paper before him. "Just tell us the truth," he +said. "I shall jot down the facts. You will sign it, and Watson +here can witness it. Then I could produce your confession at the +last extremity to save young McCarthy. I promise you that I shall +not use it unless it is absolutely needed." +"It's as well," said the old man "it's a question whether I +shall live to the Assizes, so it matters little to me, but I +should wish to spare Alice the shock. And now I will make the +thing clear to you it has been a long time in the acting, but +will not take me long to tell. +"You didn't know this dead man, McCarthy. He was a devil +incarnate. I tell you that. God keep you out of the clutches of +such a man as he. His grip has been upon me these twenty years, +and he has blasted my life. I'll tell you first how I came to be +in his power. +"It was in the early ''s at the diggings. I was a young chap +then, hotblooded and reckless, ready to turn my hand at +anything I got among bad companions, took to drink, had no luck +with my claim, took to the bush, and in a word became what you +would call over here a highway robber. There were six of us, and +we had a wild, free life of it, sticking up a station from time +to time, or stopping the wagons on the road to the diggings. +Black Jack of Ballarat was the name I went under, and our party +is still remembered in the colony as the Ballarat Gang. +"One day a gold convoy came down from Ballarat to Melbourne, and +we lay in wait for it and attacked it. There were six troopers +and six of us, so it was a close thing, but we emptied four of +their saddles at the first volley. Three of our boys were killed, +however, before we got the swag. I put my pistol to the head of +the wagondriver, who was this very man McCarthy. I wish to the +Lord that I had shot him then, but I spared him, though I saw his +wicked little eyes fixed on my face, as though to remember every +feature. We got away with the gold, became wealthy men, and made +our way over to England without being suspected. There I parted +from my old pals and determined to settle down to a quiet and +respectable life. I bought this estate, which chanced to be in +the market, and I set myself to do a little good with my money, +to make up for the way in which I had earned it. I married, too, +and though my wife died young she left me my dear little Alice. +Even when she was just a baby her wee hand seemed to lead me down +the right path as nothing else had ever done. In a word, I turned +over a new leaf and did my best to make up for the past. All was +going well when McCarthy laid his grip upon me. +"I had gone up to town about an investment, and I met him in +Regent Street with hardly a coat to his back or a boot to his +foot. +"'Here we are, Jack,' says he, touching me on the arm 'we'll be +as good as a family to you. There's two of us, me and my son, and +you can have the keeping of us. If you don'tit's a fine, +lawabiding country is England, and there's always a policeman +within hail.' +"Well, down they came to the west country, there was no shaking +them off, and there they have lived rent free on my best land +ever since. There was no rest for me, no peace, no forgetfulness +turn where I would, there was his cunning, grinning face at my +elbow. It grew worse as Alice grew up, for he soon saw I was more +afraid of her knowing my past than of the police. Whatever he +wanted he must have, and whatever it was I gave him without +question, land, money, houses, until at last he asked a thing +which I could not give. He asked for Alice. +"His son, you see, had grown up, and so had my girl, and as I was +known to be in weak health, it seemed a fine stroke to him that +his lad should step into the whole property. But there I was +firm. I would not have his cursed stock mixed with mine not that +I had any dislike to the lad, but his blood was in him, and that +was enough. I stood firm. McCarthy threatened. I braved him to do +his worst. We were to meet at the pool midway between our houses +to talk it over. +"When I went down there I found him talking with his son, so I +smoked a cigar and waited behind a tree until he should be alone. +But as I listened to his talk all that was black and bitter in +me seemed to come uppermost. He was urging his son to marry my +daughter with as little regard for what she might think as if she +were a slut from off the streets. It drove me mad to think that I +and all that I held most dear should be in the power of such a +man as this. Could I not snap the bond? I was already a dying and +a desperate man. Though clear of mind and fairly strong of limb, +I knew that my own fate was sealed. But my memory and my girl +Both could be saved if I could but silence that foul tongue. I +did it, Mr. Holmes. I would do it again. Deeply as I have sinned, +I have led a life of martyrdom to atone for it. But that my girl +should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was more +than I could suffer. I struck him down with no more compunction +than if he had been some foul and venomous beast. His cry brought +back his son but I had gained the cover of the wood, though I +was forced to go back to fetch the cloak which I had dropped in +my flight. That is the true story, gentlemen, of all that +occurred." +"Well, it is not for me to judge you," said Holmes as the old man +signed the statement which had been drawn out. "I pray that we +may never be exposed to such a temptation." +"I pray not, sir. And what do you intend to do?" +"In view of your health, nothing. You are yourself aware that you +will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the +Assizes. I will keep your confession, and if McCarthy is +condemned I shall be forced to use it. If not, it shall never be +seen by mortal eye and your secret, whether you be alive or +dead, shall be safe with us." +"Farewell, then," said the old man solemnly. "Your own deathbeds, +when they come, will be the easier for the thought of the peace +which you have given to mine." Tottering and shaking in all his +giant frame, he stumbled slowly from the room. +"God help us" said Holmes after a long silence. "Why does fate +play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such +a case as this that I do not think of Baxter's words, and say, +'There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.'" +James McCarthy was acquitted at the Assizes on the strength of a +number of objections which had been drawn out by Holmes and +submitted to the defending counsel. Old Turner lived for seven +months after our interview, but he is now dead and there is +every prospect that the son and daughter may come to live happily +together in ignorance of the black cloud which rests upon their +past. +ADVENTURE V. THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS +When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes +cases between the years ' and ', I am faced by so many which +present strange and interesting features that it is no easy +matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, +have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have +not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which my friend +possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the object of +these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his +analytical skill, and would be, as narratives, beginnings without +an ending, while others have been but partially cleared up, and +have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture and +surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to +him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable +in its details and so startling in its results that I am tempted +to give some account of it in spite of the fact that there are +points in connection with it which never have been, and probably +never will be, entirely cleared up. +The year ' furnished us with a long series of cases of greater +or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my +headings under this one twelve months I find an account of the +adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant +Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a +furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the +British barque "Sophy Anderson", of the singular adventures of the +Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the +Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered, +Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man's watch, to +prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that +therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that timea +deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the +case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of +them present such singular features as the strange train of +circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe. +It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales +had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had +screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that +even here in the heart of great, handmade London we were forced +to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and +to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which +shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, like +untamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in, the storm grew +higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in +the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the +fireplace crossindexing his records of crime, while I at the +other was deep in one of Clark Russell's fine seastories until +the howl of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, +and the splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of +the sea waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother's, and for a +few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker +Street. +"Why," said I, glancing up at my companion, "that was surely the +bell. Who could come tonight? Some friend of yours, perhaps?" +"Except yourself I have none," he answered. "I do not encourage +visitors." +"A client, then?" +"If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out +on such a day and at such an hour. But I take it that it is more +likely to be some crony of the landlady's." +Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there +came a step in the passage and a tapping at the door. He +stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and +towards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit. +"Come in" said he. +The man who entered was young, some twoandtwenty at the +outside, wellgroomed and trimly clad, with something of +refinement and delicacy in his bearing. The streaming umbrella +which he held in his hand, and his long shining waterproof told +of the fierce weather through which he had come. He looked about +him anxiously in the glare of the lamp, and I could see that his +face was pale and his eyes heavy, like those of a man who is +weighed down with some great anxiety. +"I owe you an apology," he said, raising his golden pincenez to +his eyes. "I trust that I am not intruding. I fear that I have +brought some traces of the storm and rain into your snug +chamber." +"Give me your coat and umbrella," said Holmes. "They may rest +here on the hook and will be dry presently. You have come up from +the southwest, I see." +"Yes, from Horsham." +"That clay and chalk mixture which I see upon your toe caps is +quite distinctive." +"I have come for advice." +"That is easily got." +"And help." +"That is not always so easy." +"I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I heard from Major Prendergast +how you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal." +"Ah, of course. He was wrongfully accused of cheating at cards." +"He said that you could solve anything." +"He said too much." +"That you are never beaten." +"I have been beaten four timesthree times by men, and once by a +woman." +"But what is that compared with the number of your successes?" +"It is true that I have been generally successful." +"Then you may be so with me." +"I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me +with some details as to your case." +"It is no ordinary one." +"None of those which come to me are. I am the last court of +appeal." +"And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you +have ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of +events than those which have happened in my own family." +"You fill me with interest," said Holmes. "Pray give us the +essential facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards +question you as to those details which seem to me to be most +important." +The young man pulled his chair up and pushed his wet feet out +towards the blaze. +"My name," said he, "is John Openshaw, but my own affairs have, +as far as I can understand, little to do with this awful +business. It is a hereditary matter so in order to give you an +idea of the facts, I must go back to the commencement of the +affair. +"You must know that my grandfather had two sonsmy uncle Elias +and my father Joseph. My father had a small factory at Coventry, +which he enlarged at the time of the invention of bicycling. He +was a patentee of the Openshaw unbreakable tire, and his business +met with such success that he was able to sell it and to retire +upon a handsome competence. +"My uncle Elias emigrated to America when he was a young man and +became a planter in Florida, where he was reported to have done +very well. At the time of the war he fought in Jackson's army, +and afterwards under Hood, where he rose to be a colonel. When +Lee laid down his arms my uncle returned to his plantation, where +he remained for three or four years. About or he came +back to Europe and took a small estate in Sussex, near Horsham. +He had made a very considerable fortune in the States, and his +reason for leaving them was his aversion to the negroes, and his +dislike of the Republican policy in extending the franchise to +them. He was a singular man, fierce and quicktempered, very +foulmouthed when he was angry, and of a most retiring +disposition. During all the years that he lived at Horsham, I +doubt if ever he set foot in the town. He had a garden and two or +three fields round his house, and there he would take his +exercise, though very often for weeks on end he would never leave +his room. He drank a great deal of brandy and smoked very +heavily, but he would see no society and did not want any +friends, not even his own brother. +"He didn't mind me in fact, he took a fancy to me, for at the +time when he saw me first I was a youngster of twelve or so. This +would be in the year , after he had been eight or nine years +in England. He begged my father to let me live with him and he +was very kind to me in his way. When he was sober he used to be +fond of playing backgammon and draughts with me, and he would +make me his representative both with the servants and with the +tradespeople, so that by the time that I was sixteen I was quite +master of the house. I kept all the keys and could go where I +liked and do what I liked, so long as I did not disturb him in +his privacy. There was one singular exception, however, for he +had a single room, a lumberroom up among the attics, which was +invariably locked, and which he would never permit either me or +anyone else to enter. With a boy's curiosity I have peeped +through the keyhole, but I was never able to see more than such a +collection of old trunks and bundles as would be expected in such +a room. +"One dayit was in March, a letter with a foreign stamp +lay upon the table in front of the colonel's plate. It was not a +common thing for him to receive letters, for his bills were all +paid in ready money, and he had no friends of any sort. 'From +India' said he as he took it up, 'Pondicherry postmark What can +this be?' Opening it hurriedly, out there jumped five little +dried orange pips, which pattered down upon his plate. I began to +laugh at this, but the laugh was struck from my lips at the sight +of his face. His lip had fallen, his eyes were protruding, his +skin the colour of putty, and he glared at the envelope which he +still held in his trembling hand, 'K. K. K.' he shrieked, and +then, 'My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me' +"'What is it, uncle?' I cried. +"'Death,' said he, and rising from the table he retired to his +room, leaving me palpitating with horror. I took up the envelope +and saw scrawled in red ink upon the inner flap, just above the +gum, the letter K three times repeated. There was nothing else +save the five dried pips. What could be the reason of his +overpowering terror? I left the breakfasttable, and as I +ascended the stair I met him coming down with an old rusty key, +which must have belonged to the attic, in one hand, and a small +brass box, like a cashbox, in the other. +"'They may do what they like, but I'll checkmate them still,' +said he with an oath. 'Tell Mary that I shall want a fire in my +room today, and send down to Fordham, the Horsham lawyer.' +"I did as he ordered, and when the lawyer arrived I was asked to +step up to the room. The fire was burning brightly, and in the +grate there was a mass of black, fluffy ashes, as of burned +paper, while the brass box stood open and empty beside it. As I +glanced at the box I noticed, with a start, that upon the lid was +printed the treble K which I had read in the morning upon the +envelope. +"'I wish you, John,' said my uncle, 'to witness my will. I leave +my estate, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages, to +my brother, your father, whence it will, no doubt, descend to +you. If you can enjoy it in peace, well and good If you find you +cannot, take my advice, my boy, and leave it to your deadliest +enemy. I am sorry to give you such a twoedged thing, but I can't +say what turn things are going to take. Kindly sign the paper +where Mr. Fordham shows you.' +"I signed the paper as directed, and the lawyer took it away with +him. The singular incident made, as you may think, the deepest +impression upon me, and I pondered over it and turned it every +way in my mind without being able to make anything of it. Yet I +could not shake off the vague feeling of dread which it left +behind, though the sensation grew less keen as the weeks passed +and nothing happened to disturb the usual routine of our lives. I +could see a change in my uncle, however. He drank more than ever, +and he was less inclined for any sort of society. Most of his +time he would spend in his room, with the door locked upon the +inside, but sometimes he would emerge in a sort of drunken frenzy +and would burst out of the house and tear about the garden with a +revolver in his hand, screaming out that he was afraid of no man, +and that he was not to be cooped up, like a sheep in a pen, by +man or devil. When these hot fits were over, however, he would +rush tumultuously in at the door and lock and bar it behind him, +like a man who can brazen it out no longer against the terror +which lies at the roots of his soul. At such times I have seen +his face, even on a cold day, glisten with moisture, as though it +were new raised from a basin. +"Well, to come to an end of the matter, Mr. Holmes, and not to +abuse your patience, there came a night when he made one of those +drunken sallies from which he never came back. We found him, when +we went to search for him, face downward in a little +greenscummed pool, which lay at the foot of the garden. There +was no sign of any violence, and the water was but two feet deep, +so that the jury, having regard to his known eccentricity, +brought in a verdict of 'suicide.' But I, who knew how he winced +from the very thought of death, had much ado to persuade myself +that he had gone out of his way to meet it. The matter passed, +however, and my father entered into possession of the estate, and +of some , pounds, which lay to his credit at the bank." +"One moment," Holmes interposed, "your statement is, I foresee, +one of the most remarkable to which I have ever listened. Let me +have the date of the reception by your uncle of the letter, and +the date of his supposed suicide." +"The letter arrived on March , . His death was seven weeks +later, upon the night of May nd." +"Thank you. Pray proceed." +"When my father took over the Horsham property, he, at my +request, made a careful examination of the attic, which had been +always locked up. We found the brass box there, although its +contents had been destroyed. On the inside of the cover was a +paper label, with the initials of K. K. K. repeated upon it, and +'Letters, memoranda, receipts, and a register' written beneath. +These, we presume, indicated the nature of the papers which had +been destroyed by Colonel Openshaw. For the rest, there was +nothing of much importance in the attic save a great many +scattered papers and notebooks bearing upon my uncle's life in +America. Some of them were of the war time and showed that he had +done his duty well and had borne the repute of a brave soldier. +Others were of a date during the reconstruction of the Southern +states, and were mostly concerned with politics, for he had +evidently taken a strong part in opposing the carpetbag +politicians who had been sent down from the North. +"Well, it was the beginning of ' when my father came to live at +Horsham, and all went as well as possible with us until the +January of '. On the fourth day after the new year I heard my +father give a sharp cry of surprise as we sat together at the +breakfasttable. There he was, sitting with a newly opened +envelope in one hand and five dried orange pips in the +outstretched palm of the other one. He had always laughed at what +he called my cockandbull story about the colonel, but he looked +very scared and puzzled now that the same thing had come upon +himself. +"'Why, what on earth does this mean, John?' he stammered. +"My heart had turned to lead. 'It is K. K. K.,' said I. +"He looked inside the envelope. 'So it is,' he cried. 'Here are +the very letters. But what is this written above them?' +"'Put the papers on the sundial,' I read, peeping over his +shoulder. +"'What papers? What sundial?' he asked. +"'The sundial in the garden. There is no other,' said I 'but the +papers must be those that are destroyed.' +"'Pooh' said he, gripping hard at his courage. 'We are in a +civilised land here, and we can't have tomfoolery of this kind. +Where does the thing come from?' +"'From Dundee,' I answered, glancing at the postmark. +"'Some preposterous practical joke,' said he. 'What have I to do +with sundials and papers? I shall take no notice of such +nonsense.' +"'I should certainly speak to the police,' I said. +"'And be laughed at for my pains. Nothing of the sort.' +"'Then let me do so?' +"'No, I forbid you. I won't have a fuss made about such +nonsense.' +"It was in vain to argue with him, for he was a very obstinate +man. I went about, however, with a heart which was full of +forebodings. +"On the third day after the coming of the letter my father went +from home to visit an old friend of his, Major Freebody, who is +in command of one of the forts upon Portsdown Hill. I was glad +that he should go, for it seemed to me that he was farther from +danger when he was away from home. In that, however, I was in +error. Upon the second day of his absence I received a telegram +from the major, imploring me to come at once. My father had +fallen over one of the deep chalkpits which abound in the +neighbourhood, and was lying senseless, with a shattered skull. I +hurried to him, but he passed away without having ever recovered +his consciousness. He had, as it appears, been returning from +Fareham in the twilight, and as the country was unknown to him, +and the chalkpit unfenced, the jury had no hesitation in +bringing in a verdict of 'death from accidental causes.' +Carefully as I examined every fact connected with his death, I +was unable to find anything which could suggest the idea of +murder. There were no signs of violence, no footmarks, no +robbery, no record of strangers having been seen upon the roads. +And yet I need not tell you that my mind was far from at ease, +and that I was wellnigh certain that some foul plot had been +woven round him. +"In this sinister way I came into my inheritance. You will ask me +why I did not dispose of it? I answer, because I was well +convinced that our troubles were in some way dependent upon an +incident in my uncle's life, and that the danger would be as +pressing in one house as in another. +"It was in January, ', that my poor father met his end, and two +years and eight months have elapsed since then. During that time +I have lived happily at Horsham, and I had begun to hope that +this curse had passed away from the family, and that it had ended +with the last generation. I had begun to take comfort too soon, +however yesterday morning the blow fell in the very shape in +which it had come upon my father." +The young man took from his waistcoat a crumpled envelope, and +turning to the table he shook out upon it five little dried +orange pips. +"This is the envelope," he continued. "The postmark is +Londoneastern division. Within are the very words which were +upon my father's last message 'K. K. K.' and then 'Put the +papers on the sundial.'" +"What have you done?" asked Holmes. +"Nothing." +"Nothing?" +"To tell the truth"he sank his face into his thin, white +hands"I have felt helpless. I have felt like one of those poor +rabbits when the snake is writhing towards it. I seem to be in +the grasp of some resistless, inexorable evil, which no foresight +and no precautions can guard against." +"Tut tut" cried Sherlock Holmes. "You must act, man, or you are +lost. Nothing but energy can save you. This is no time for +despair." +"I have seen the police." +"Ah" +"But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that +the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all +practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really +accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with +the warnings." +Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. "Incredible +imbecility" he cried. +"They have, however, allowed me a policeman, who may remain in +the house with me." +"Has he come with you tonight?" +"No. His orders were to stay in the house." +Again Holmes raved in the air. +"Why did you come to me," he cried, "and, above all, why did you +not come at once?" +"I did not know. It was only today that I spoke to Major +Prendergast about my troubles and was advised by him to come to +you." +"It is really two days since you had the letter. We should have +acted before this. You have no further evidence, I suppose, than +that which you have placed before usno suggestive detail which +might help us?" +"There is one thing," said John Openshaw. He rummaged in his coat +pocket, and, drawing out a piece of discoloured, bluetinted +paper, he laid it out upon the table. "I have some remembrance," +said he, "that on the day when my uncle burned the papers I +observed that the small, unburned margins which lay amid the +ashes were of this particular colour. I found this single sheet +upon the floor of his room, and I am inclined to think that it +may be one of the papers which has, perhaps, fluttered out from +among the others, and in that way has escaped destruction. Beyond +the mention of pips, I do not see that it helps us much. I think +myself that it is a page from some private diary. The writing is +undoubtedly my uncle's." +Holmes moved the lamp, and we both bent over the sheet of paper, +which showed by its ragged edge that it had indeed been torn from +a book. It was headed, "March, ," and beneath were the +following enigmatical notices +"th. Hudson came. Same old platform. +"th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and +John Swain, of St. Augustine. +"th. McCauley cleared. +"th. John Swain cleared. +"th. Visited Paramore. All well." +"Thank you" said Holmes, folding up the paper and returning it +to our visitor. "And now you must on no account lose another +instant. We cannot spare time even to discuss what you have told +me. You must get home instantly and act." +"What shall I do?" +"There is but one thing to do. It must be done at once. You must +put this piece of paper which you have shown us into the brass +box which you have described. You must also put in a note to say +that all the other papers were burned by your uncle, and that +this is the only one which remains. You must assert that in such +words as will carry conviction with them. Having done this, you +must at once put the box out upon the sundial, as directed. Do +you understand?" +"Entirely." +"Do not think of revenge, or anything of the sort, at present. I +think that we may gain that by means of the law but we have our +web to weave, while theirs is already woven. The first +consideration is to remove the pressing danger which threatens +you. The second is to clear up the mystery and to punish the +guilty parties." +"I thank you," said the young man, rising and pulling on his +overcoat. "You have given me fresh life and hope. I shall +certainly do as you advise." +"Do not lose an instant. And, above all, take care of yourself in +the meanwhile, for I do not think that there can be a doubt that +you are threatened by a very real and imminent danger. How do you +go back?" +"By train from Waterloo." +"It is not yet nine. The streets will be crowded, so I trust that +you may be in safety. And yet you cannot guard yourself too +closely." +"I am armed." +"That is well. Tomorrow I shall set to work upon your case." +"I shall see you at Horsham, then?" +"No, your secret lies in London. It is there that I shall seek +it." +"Then I shall call upon you in a day, or in two days, with news +as to the box and the papers. I shall take your advice in every +particular." He shook hands with us and took his leave. Outside +the wind still screamed and the rain splashed and pattered +against the windows. This strange, wild story seemed to have come +to us from amid the mad elementsblown in upon us like a sheet +of seaweed in a galeand now to have been reabsorbed by them +once more. +Sherlock Holmes sat for some time in silence, with his head sunk +forward and his eyes bent upon the red glow of the fire. Then he +lit his pipe, and leaning back in his chair he watched the blue +smokerings as they chased each other up to the ceiling. +"I think, Watson," he remarked at last, "that of all our cases we +have had none more fantastic than this." +"Save, perhaps, the Sign of Four." +"Well, yes. Save, perhaps, that. And yet this John Openshaw seems +to me to be walking amid even greater perils than did the +Sholtos." +"But have you," I asked, "formed any definite conception as to +what these perils are?" +"There can be no question as to their nature," he answered. +"Then what are they? Who is this K. K. K., and why does he pursue +this unhappy family?" +Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the +arms of his chair, with his fingertips together. "The ideal +reasoner," he remarked, "would, when he had once been shown a +single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the +chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which +would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole +animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who +has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents +should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both +before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the +reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study +which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the +aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest +pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to +utilise all the facts which have come to his knowledge and this +in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all +knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and +encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so +impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge +which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have +endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly, you on one +occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my limits +in a very precise fashion." +"Yes," I answered, laughing. "It was a singular document. +Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I +remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the +mudstains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry +eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime +records unique, violinplayer, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and +selfpoisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the +main points of my analysis." +Holmes grinned at the last item. "Well," he said, "I say now, as +I said then, that a man should keep his little brainattic +stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the +rest he can put away in the lumberroom of his library, where he +can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a case as the one which +has been submitted to us tonight, we need certainly to muster +all our resources. Kindly hand me down the letter K of the +'American Encyclopaedia' which stands upon the shelf beside you. +Thank you. Now let us consider the situation and see what may be +deduced from it. In the first place, we may start with a strong +presumption that Colonel Openshaw had some very strong reason for +leaving America. Men at his time of life do not change all their +habits and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for +the lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love +of solitude in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of +someone or something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis +that it was fear of someone or something which drove him from +America. As to what it was he feared, we can only deduce that by +considering the formidable letters which were received by himself +and his successors. Did you remark the postmarks of those +letters?" +"The first was from Pondicherry, the second from Dundee, and the +third from London." +"From East London. What do you deduce from that?" +"They are all seaports. That the writer was on board of a ship." +"Excellent. We have already a clue. There can be no doubt that +the probabilitythe strong probabilityis that the writer was +on board of a ship. And now let us consider another point. In the +case of Pondicherry, seven weeks elapsed between the threat and +its fulfilment, in Dundee it was only some three or four days. +Does that suggest anything?" +"A greater distance to travel." +"But the letter had also a greater distance to come." +"Then I do not see the point." +"There is at least a presumption that the vessel in which the man +or men are is a sailingship. It looks as if they always send +their singular warning or token before them when starting upon +their mission. You see how quickly the deed followed the sign +when it came from Dundee. If they had come from Pondicherry in a +steamer they would have arrived almost as soon as their letter. +But, as a matter of fact, seven weeks elapsed. I think that those +seven weeks represented the difference between the mailboat which +brought the letter and the sailing vessel which brought the +writer." +"It is possible." +"More than that. It is probable. And now you see the deadly +urgency of this new case, and why I urged young Openshaw to +caution. The blow has always fallen at the end of the time which +it would take the senders to travel the distance. But this one +comes from London, and therefore we cannot count upon delay." +"Good God" I cried. "What can it mean, this relentless +persecution?" +"The papers which Openshaw carried are obviously of vital +importance to the person or persons in the sailingship. I think +that it is quite clear that there must be more than one of them. +A single man could not have carried out two deaths in such a way +as to deceive a coroner's jury. There must have been several in +it, and they must have been men of resource and determination. +Their papers they mean to have, be the holder of them who it may. +In this way you see K. K. K. ceases to be the initials of an +individual and becomes the badge of a society." +"But of what society?" +"Have you never" said Sherlock Holmes, bending forward and +sinking his voice"have you never heard of the Ku Klux Klan?" +"I never have." +Holmes turned over the leaves of the book upon his knee. "Here it +is," said he presently +"'Ku Klux Klan. A name derived from the fanciful resemblance to +the sound produced by cocking a rifle. This terrible secret +society was formed by some exConfederate soldiers in the +Southern states after the Civil War, and it rapidly formed local +branches in different parts of the country, notably in Tennessee, +Louisiana, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Its power was +used for political purposes, principally for the terrorising of +the negro voters and the murdering and driving from the country +of those who were opposed to its views. Its outrages were usually +preceded by a warning sent to the marked man in some fantastic +but generally recognised shapea sprig of oakleaves in some +parts, melon seeds or orange pips in others. On receiving this +the victim might either openly abjure his former ways, or might +fly from the country. If he braved the matter out, death would +unfailingly come upon him, and usually in some strange and +unforeseen manner. So perfect was the organisation of the +society, and so systematic its methods, that there is hardly a +case upon record where any man succeeded in braving it with +impunity, or in which any of its outrages were traced home to the +perpetrators. For some years the organisation flourished in spite +of the efforts of the United States government and of the better +classes of the community in the South. Eventually, in the year +, the movement rather suddenly collapsed, although there have +been sporadic outbreaks of the same sort since that date.' +"You will observe," said Holmes, laying down the volume, "that +the sudden breaking up of the society was coincident with the +disappearance of Openshaw from America with their papers. It may +well have been cause and effect. It is no wonder that he and his +family have some of the more implacable spirits upon their track. +You can understand that this register and diary may implicate +some of the first men in the South, and that there may be many +who will not sleep easy at night until it is recovered." +"Then the page we have seen" +"Is such as we might expect. It ran, if I remember right, 'sent +the pips to A, B, and C'that is, sent the society's warning to +them. Then there are successive entries that A and B cleared, or +left the country, and finally that C was visited, with, I fear, a +sinister result for C. Well, I think, Doctor, that we may let +some light into this dark place, and I believe that the only +chance young Openshaw has in the meantime is to do what I have +told him. There is nothing more to be said or to be done +tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for +half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable +ways of our fellowmen." +It had cleared in the morning, and the sun was shining with a +subdued brightness through the dim veil which hangs over the +great city. Sherlock Holmes was already at breakfast when I came +down. +"You will excuse me for not waiting for you," said he "I have, I +foresee, a very busy day before me in looking into this case of +young Openshaw's." +"What steps will you take?" I asked. +"It will very much depend upon the results of my first inquiries. +I may have to go down to Horsham, after all." +"You will not go there first?" +"No, I shall commence with the City. Just ring the bell and the +maid will bring up your coffee." +As I waited, I lifted the unopened newspaper from the table and +glanced my eye over it. It rested upon a heading which sent a +chill to my heart. +"Holmes," I cried, "you are too late." +"Ah" said he, laying down his cup, "I feared as much. How was it +done?" He spoke calmly, but I could see that he was deeply moved. +"My eye caught the name of Openshaw, and the heading 'Tragedy +Near Waterloo Bridge.' Here is the account +"Between nine and ten last night PoliceConstable Cook, of the H +Division, on duty near Waterloo Bridge, heard a cry for help and +a splash in the water. The night, however, was extremely dark and +stormy, so that, in spite of the help of several passersby, it +was quite impossible to effect a rescue. The alarm, however, was +given, and, by the aid of the waterpolice, the body was +eventually recovered. It proved to be that of a young gentleman +whose name, as it appears from an envelope which was found in his +pocket, was John Openshaw, and whose residence is near Horsham. +It is conjectured that he may have been hurrying down to catch +the last train from Waterloo Station, and that in his haste and +the extreme darkness he missed his path and walked over the edge +of one of the small landingplaces for river steamboats. The body +exhibited no traces of violence, and there can be no doubt that +the deceased had been the victim of an unfortunate accident, +which should have the effect of calling the attention of the +authorities to the condition of the riverside landingstages." +We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and +shaken than I had ever seen him. +"That hurts my pride, Watson," he said at last. "It is a petty +feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal +matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my +hand upon this gang. That he should come to me for help, and that +I should send him away to his death" He sprang from his chair +and paced about the room in uncontrollable agitation, with a +flush upon his sallow cheeks and a nervous clasping and +unclasping of his long thin hands. +"They must be cunning devils," he exclaimed at last. "How could +they have decoyed him down there? The Embankment is not on the +direct line to the station. The bridge, no doubt, was too +crowded, even on such a night, for their purpose. Well, Watson, +we shall see who will win in the long run. I am going out now" +"To the police?" +"No I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may +take the flies, but not before." +All day I was engaged in my professional work, and it was late in +the evening before I returned to Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes +had not come back yet. It was nearly ten o'clock before he +entered, looking pale and worn. He walked up to the sideboard, +and tearing a piece from the loaf he devoured it voraciously, +washing it down with a long draught of water. +"You are hungry," I remarked. +"Starving. It had escaped my memory. I have had nothing since +breakfast." +"Nothing?" +"Not a bite. I had no time to think of it." +"And how have you succeeded?" +"Well." +"You have a clue?" +"I have them in the hollow of my hand. Young Openshaw shall not +long remain unavenged. Why, Watson, let us put their own devilish +trademark upon them. It is well thought of" +"What do you mean?" +He took an orange from the cupboard, and tearing it to pieces he +squeezed out the pips upon the table. Of these he took five and +thrust them into an envelope. On the inside of the flap he wrote +"S. H. for J. O." Then he sealed it and addressed it to "Captain +James Calhoun, Barque 'Lone Star,' Savannah, Georgia." +"That will await him when he enters port," said he, chuckling. +"It may give him a sleepless night. He will find it as sure a +precursor of his fate as Openshaw did before him." +"And who is this Captain Calhoun?" +"The leader of the gang. I shall have the others, but he first." +"How did you trace it, then?" +He took a large sheet of paper from his pocket, all covered with +dates and names. +"I have spent the whole day," said he, "over Lloyd's registers +and files of the old papers, following the future career of every +vessel which touched at Pondicherry in January and February in +'. There were thirtysix ships of fair tonnage which were +reported there during those months. Of these, one, the 'Lone Star,' +instantly attracted my attention, since, although it was reported +as having cleared from London, the name is that which is given to +one of the states of the Union." +"Texas, I think." +"I was not and am not sure which but I knew that the ship must +have an American origin." +"What then?" +"I searched the Dundee records, and when I found that the barque +'Lone Star' was there in January, ', my suspicion became a +certainty. I then inquired as to the vessels which lay at present +in the port of London." +"Yes?" +"The 'Lone Star' had arrived here last week. I went down to the +Albert Dock and found that she had been taken down the river by +the early tide this morning, homeward bound to Savannah. I wired +to Gravesend and learned that she had passed some time ago, and +as the wind is easterly I have no doubt that she is now past the +Goodwins and not very far from the Isle of Wight." +"What will you do, then?" +"Oh, I have my hand upon him. He and the two mates, are as I +learn, the only nativeborn Americans in the ship. The others are +Finns and Germans. I know, also, that they were all three away +from the ship last night. I had it from the stevedore who has +been loading their cargo. By the time that their sailingship +reaches Savannah the mailboat will have carried this letter, and +the cable will have informed the police of Savannah that these +three gentlemen are badly wanted here upon a charge of murder." +There is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans, +and the murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the +orange pips which would show them that another, as cunning and as +resolute as themselves, was upon their track. Very long and very +severe were the equinoctial gales that year. We waited long for +news of the "Lone Star" of Savannah, but none ever reached us. We +did at last hear that somewhere far out in the Atlantic a +shattered sternpost of a boat was seen swinging in the trough +of a wave, with the letters "L. S." carved upon it, and that is +all which we shall ever know of the fate of the "Lone Star." +ADVENTURE VI. THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP +Isa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal +of the Theological College of St. George's, was much addicted to +opium. The habit grew upon him, as I understand, from some +foolish freak when he was at college for having read De +Quincey's description of his dreams and sensations, he had +drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the +same effects. He found, as so many more have done, that the +practice is easier to attain than to get rid of, and for many +years he continued to be a slave to the drug, an object of +mingled horror and pity to his friends and relatives. I can see +him now, with yellow, pasty face, drooping lids, and pinpoint +pupils, all huddled in a chair, the wreck and ruin of a noble +man. +One nightit was in June, 'there came a ring to my bell, +about the hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the +clock. I sat up in my chair, and my wife laid her needlework +down in her lap and made a little face of disappointment. +"A patient" said she. "You'll have to go out." +I groaned, for I was newly come back from a weary day. +We heard the door open, a few hurried words, and then quick steps +upon the linoleum. Our own door flew open, and a lady, clad in +some darkcoloured stuff, with a black veil, entered the room. +"You will excuse my calling so late," she began, and then, +suddenly losing her selfcontrol, she ran forward, threw her arms +about my wife's neck, and sobbed upon her shoulder. "Oh, I'm in +such trouble" she cried "I do so want a little help." +"Why," said my wife, pulling up her veil, "it is Kate Whitney. +How you startled me, Kate I had not an idea who you were when +you came in." +"I didn't know what to do, so I came straight to you." That was +always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds +to a lighthouse. +"It was very sweet of you to come. Now, you must have some wine +and water, and sit here comfortably and tell us all about it. Or +should you rather that I sent James off to bed?" +"Oh, no, no I want the doctor's advice and help, too. It's about +Isa. He has not been home for two days. I am so frightened about +him" +It was not the first time that she had spoken to us of her +husband's trouble, to me as a doctor, to my wife as an old friend +and school companion. We soothed and comforted her by such words +as we could find. Did she know where her husband was? Was it +possible that we could bring him back to her? +It seems that it was. She had the surest information that of late +he had, when the fit was on him, made use of an opium den in the +farthest east of the City. Hitherto his orgies had always been +confined to one day, and he had come back, twitching and +shattered, in the evening. But now the spell had been upon him +eightandforty hours, and he lay there, doubtless among the +dregs of the docks, breathing in the poison or sleeping off the +effects. There he was to be found, she was sure of it, at the Bar +of Gold, in Upper Swandam Lane. But what was she to do? How could +she, a young and timid woman, make her way into such a place and +pluck her husband out from among the ruffians who surrounded him? +There was the case, and of course there was but one way out of +it. Might I not escort her to this place? And then, as a second +thought, why should she come at all? I was Isa Whitney's medical +adviser, and as such I had influence over him. I could manage it +better if I were alone. I promised her on my word that I would +send him home in a cab within two hours if he were indeed at the +address which she had given me. And so in ten minutes I had left +my armchair and cheery sittingroom behind me, and was speeding +eastward in a hansom on a strange errand, as it seemed to me at +the time, though the future only could show how strange it was to +be. +But there was no great difficulty in the first stage of my +adventure. Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the +high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east +of London Bridge. Between a slopshop and a ginshop, approached +by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the +mouth of a cave, I found the den of which I was in search. +Ordering my cab to wait, I passed down the steps, worn hollow in +the centre by the ceaseless tread of drunken feet and by the +light of a flickering oillamp above the door I found the latch +and made my way into a long, low room, thick and heavy with the +brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the +forecastle of an emigrant ship. +Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying +in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads +thrown back, and chins pointing upward, with here and there a +dark, lacklustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the black +shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright, +now faint, as the burning poison waxed or waned in the bowls of +the metal pipes. The most lay silent, but some muttered to +themselves, and others talked together in a strange, low, +monotonous voice, their conversation coming in gushes, and then +suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his own +thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbour. At +the farther end was a small brazier of burning charcoal, beside +which on a threelegged wooden stool there sat a tall, thin old +man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and his elbows upon +his knees, staring into the fire. +As I entered, a sallow Malay attendant had hurried up with a pipe +for me and a supply of the drug, beckoning me to an empty berth. +"Thank you. I have not come to stay," said I. "There is a friend +of mine here, Mr. Isa Whitney, and I wish to speak with him." +There was a movement and an exclamation from my right, and +peering through the gloom, I saw Whitney, pale, haggard, and +unkempt, staring out at me. +"My God It's Watson," said he. He was in a pitiable state of +reaction, with every nerve in a twitter. "I say, Watson, what +o'clock is it?" +"Nearly eleven." +"Of what day?" +"Of Friday, June th." +"Good heavens I thought it was Wednesday. It is Wednesday. What +d'you want to frighten a chap for?" He sank his face onto his +arms and began to sob in a high treble key. +"I tell you that it is Friday, man. Your wife has been waiting +this two days for you. You should be ashamed of yourself" +"So I am. But you've got mixed, Watson, for I have only been here +a few hours, three pipes, four pipesI forget how many. But I'll +go home with you. I wouldn't frighten Katepoor little Kate. +Give me your hand Have you a cab?" +"Yes, I have one waiting." +"Then I shall go in it. But I must owe something. Find what I +owe, Watson. I am all off colour. I can do nothing for myself." +I walked down the narrow passage between the double row of +sleepers, holding my breath to keep out the vile, stupefying +fumes of the drug, and looking about for the manager. As I passed +the tall man who sat by the brazier I felt a sudden pluck at my +skirt, and a low voice whispered, "Walk past me, and then look +back at me." The words fell quite distinctly upon my ear. I +glanced down. They could only have come from the old man at my +side, and yet he sat now as absorbed as ever, very thin, very +wrinkled, bent with age, an opium pipe dangling down from between +his knees, as though it had dropped in sheer lassitude from his +fingers. I took two steps forward and looked back. It took all my +selfcontrol to prevent me from breaking out into a cry of +astonishment. He had turned his back so that none could see him +but I. His form had filled out, his wrinkles were gone, the dull +eyes had regained their fire, and there, sitting by the fire and +grinning at my surprise, was none other than Sherlock Holmes. He +made a slight motion to me to approach him, and instantly, as he +turned his face half round to the company once more, subsided +into a doddering, looselipped senility. +"Holmes" I whispered, "what on earth are you doing in this den?" +"As low as you can," he answered "I have excellent ears. If you +would have the great kindness to get rid of that sottish friend +of yours I should be exceedingly glad to have a little talk with +you." +"I have a cab outside." +"Then pray send him home in it. You may safely trust him, for he +appears to be too limp to get into any mischief. I should +recommend you also to send a note by the cabman to your wife to +say that you have thrown in your lot with me. If you will wait +outside, I shall be with you in five minutes." +It was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes' requests, for +they were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with +such a quiet air of mastery. I felt, however, that when Whitney +was once confined in the cab my mission was practically +accomplished and for the rest, I could not wish anything better +than to be associated with my friend in one of those singular +adventures which were the normal condition of his existence. In a +few minutes I had written my note, paid Whitney's bill, led him +out to the cab, and seen him driven through the darkness. In a +very short time a decrepit figure had emerged from the opium den, +and I was walking down the street with Sherlock Holmes. For two +streets he shuffled along with a bent back and an uncertain foot. +Then, glancing quickly round, he straightened himself out and +burst into a hearty fit of laughter. +"I suppose, Watson," said he, "that you imagine that I have added +opiumsmoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little +weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical +views." +"I was certainly surprised to find you there." +"But not more so than I to find you." +"I came to find a friend." +"And I to find an enemy." +"An enemy?" +"Yes one of my natural enemies, or, shall I say, my natural +prey. Briefly, Watson, I am in the midst of a very remarkable +inquiry, and I have hoped to find a clue in the incoherent +ramblings of these sots, as I have done before now. Had I been +recognised in that den my life would not have been worth an +hour's purchase for I have used it before now for my own +purposes, and the rascally Lascar who runs it has sworn to have +vengeance upon me. There is a trapdoor at the back of that +building, near the corner of Paul's Wharf, which could tell some +strange tales of what has passed through it upon the moonless +nights." +"What You do not mean bodies?" +"Ay, bodies, Watson. We should be rich men if we had pounds +for every poor devil who has been done to death in that den. It +is the vilest murdertrap on the whole riverside, and I fear that +Neville St. Clair has entered it never to leave it more. But our +trap should be here." He put his two forefingers between his +teeth and whistled shrillya signal which was answered by a +similar whistle from the distance, followed shortly by the rattle +of wheels and the clink of horses' hoofs. +"Now, Watson," said Holmes, as a tall dogcart dashed up through +the gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from +its side lanterns. "You'll come with me, won't you?" +"If I can be of use." +"Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use and a chronicler still +more so. My room at The Cedars is a doublebedded one." +"The Cedars?" +"Yes that is Mr. St. Clair's house. I am staying there while I +conduct the inquiry." +"Where is it, then?" +"Near Lee, in Kent. We have a sevenmile drive before us." +"But I am all in the dark." +"Of course you are. You'll know all about it presently. Jump up +here. All right, John we shall not need you. Here's half a +crown. Look out for me tomorrow, about eleven. Give her her +head. So long, then" +He flicked the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through +the endless succession of sombre and deserted streets, which +widened gradually, until we were flying across a broad +balustraded bridge, with the murky river flowing sluggishly +beneath us. Beyond lay another dull wilderness of bricks and +mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy, regular footfall of +the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some belated party of +revellers. A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the sky, and a +star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts of +the clouds. Holmes drove in silence, with his head sunk upon his +breast, and the air of a man who is lost in thought, while I sat +beside him, curious to learn what this new quest might be which +seemed to tax his powers so sorely, and yet afraid to break in +upon the current of his thoughts. We had driven several miles, +and were beginning to get to the fringe of the belt of suburban +villas, when he shook himself, shrugged his shoulders, and lit up +his pipe with the air of a man who has satisfied himself that he +is acting for the best. +"You have a grand gift of silence, Watson," said he. "It makes +you quite invaluable as a companion. 'Pon my word, it is a great +thing for me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are +not overpleasant. I was wondering what I should say to this dear +little woman tonight when she meets me at the door." +"You forget that I know nothing about it." +"I shall just have time to tell you the facts of the case before +we get to Lee. It seems absurdly simple, and yet, somehow I can +get nothing to go upon. There's plenty of thread, no doubt, but I +can't get the end of it into my hand. Now, I'll state the case +clearly and concisely to you, Watson, and maybe you can see a +spark where all is dark to me." +"Proceed, then." +"Some years agoto be definite, in May, there came to Lee +a gentleman, Neville St. Clair by name, who appeared to have +plenty of money. He took a large villa, laid out the grounds very +nicely, and lived generally in good style. By degrees he made +friends in the neighbourhood, and in he married the daughter +of a local brewer, by whom he now has two children. He had no +occupation, but was interested in several companies and went into +town as a rule in the morning, returning by the from Cannon +Street every night. Mr. St. Clair is now thirtyseven years of +age, is a man of temperate habits, a good husband, a very +affectionate father, and a man who is popular with all who know +him. I may add that his whole debts at the present moment, as far +as we have been able to ascertain, amount to pounds s., while +he has pounds standing to his credit in the Capital and +Counties Bank. There is no reason, therefore, to think that money +troubles have been weighing upon his mind. +"Last Monday Mr. Neville St. Clair went into town rather earlier +than usual, remarking before he started that he had two important +commissions to perform, and that he would bring his little boy +home a box of bricks. Now, by the merest chance, his wife +received a telegram upon this same Monday, very shortly after his +departure, to the effect that a small parcel of considerable +value which she had been expecting was waiting for her at the +offices of the Aberdeen Shipping Company. Now, if you are well up +in your London, you will know that the office of the company is +in Fresno Street, which branches out of Upper Swandam Lane, where +you found me tonight. Mrs. St. Clair had her lunch, started for +the City, did some shopping, proceeded to the company's office, +got her packet, and found herself at exactly walking through +Swandam Lane on her way back to the station. Have you followed me +so far?" +"It is very clear." +"If you remember, Monday was an exceedingly hot day, and Mrs. St. +Clair walked slowly, glancing about in the hope of seeing a cab, +as she did not like the neighbourhood in which she found herself. +While she was walking in this way down Swandam Lane, she suddenly +heard an ejaculation or cry, and was struck cold to see her +husband looking down at her and, as it seemed to her, beckoning +to her from a secondfloor window. The window was open, and she +distinctly saw his face, which she describes as being terribly +agitated. He waved his hands frantically to her, and then +vanished from the window so suddenly that it seemed to her that +he had been plucked back by some irresistible force from behind. +One singular point which struck her quick feminine eye was that +although he wore some dark coat, such as he had started to town +in, he had on neither collar nor necktie. +"Convinced that something was amiss with him, she rushed down the +stepsfor the house was none other than the opium den in which +you found me tonightand running through the front room she +attempted to ascend the stairs which led to the first floor. At +the foot of the stairs, however, she met this Lascar scoundrel of +whom I have spoken, who thrust her back and, aided by a Dane, who +acts as assistant there, pushed her out into the street. Filled +with the most maddening doubts and fears, she rushed down the +lane and, by rare goodfortune, met in Fresno Street a number of +constables with an inspector, all on their way to their beat. The +inspector and two men accompanied her back, and in spite of the +continued resistance of the proprietor, they made their way to +the room in which Mr. St. Clair had last been seen. There was no +sign of him there. In fact, in the whole of that floor there was +no one to be found save a crippled wretch of hideous aspect, who, +it seems, made his home there. Both he and the Lascar stoutly +swore that no one else had been in the front room during the +afternoon. So determined was their denial that the inspector was +staggered, and had almost come to believe that Mrs. St. Clair had +been deluded when, with a cry, she sprang at a small deal box +which lay upon the table and tore the lid from it. Out there fell +a cascade of children's bricks. It was the toy which he had +promised to bring home. +"This discovery, and the evident confusion which the cripple +showed, made the inspector realise that the matter was serious. +The rooms were carefully examined, and results all pointed to an +abominable crime. The front room was plainly furnished as a +sittingroom and led into a small bedroom, which looked out upon +the back of one of the wharves. Between the wharf and the bedroom +window is a narrow strip, which is dry at low tide but is covered +at high tide with at least four and a half feet of water. The +bedroom window was a broad one and opened from below. On +examination traces of blood were to be seen upon the windowsill, +and several scattered drops were visible upon the wooden floor of +the bedroom. Thrust away behind a curtain in the front room were +all the clothes of Mr. Neville St. Clair, with the exception of +his coat. His boots, his socks, his hat, and his watchall were +there. There were no signs of violence upon any of these +garments, and there were no other traces of Mr. Neville St. +Clair. Out of the window he must apparently have gone for no +other exit could be discovered, and the ominous bloodstains upon +the sill gave little promise that he could save himself by +swimming, for the tide was at its very highest at the moment of +the tragedy. +"And now as to the villains who seemed to be immediately +implicated in the matter. The Lascar was known to be a man of the +vilest antecedents, but as, by Mrs. St. Clair's story, he was +known to have been at the foot of the stair within a very few +seconds of her husband's appearance at the window, he could +hardly have been more than an accessory to the crime. His defence +was one of absolute ignorance, and he protested that he had no +knowledge as to the doings of Hugh Boone, his lodger, and that he +could not account in any way for the presence of the missing +gentleman's clothes. +"So much for the Lascar manager. Now for the sinister cripple who +lives upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was +certainly the last human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St. +Clair. His name is Hugh Boone, and his hideous face is one which +is familiar to every man who goes much to the City. He is a +professional beggar, though in order to avoid the police +regulations he pretends to a small trade in wax vestas. Some +little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the lefthand +side, there is, as you may have remarked, a small angle in the +wall. Here it is that this creature takes his daily seat, +crosslegged with his tiny stock of matches on his lap, and as he +is a piteous spectacle a small rain of charity descends into the +greasy leather cap which lies upon the pavement beside him. I +have watched the fellow more than once before ever I thought of +making his professional acquaintance, and I have been surprised +at the harvest which he has reaped in a short time. His +appearance, you see, is so remarkable that no one can pass him +without observing him. A shock of orange hair, a pale face +disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has +turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a +pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular +contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid +the common crowd of mendicants and so, too, does his wit, for he +is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be +thrown at him by the passersby. This is the man whom we now +learn to have been the lodger at the opium den, and to have been +the last man to see the gentleman of whom we are in quest." +"But a cripple" said I. "What could he have done singlehanded +against a man in the prime of life?" +"He is a cripple in the sense that he walks with a limp but in +other respects he appears to be a powerful and wellnurtured man. +Surely your medical experience would tell you, Watson, that +weakness in one limb is often compensated for by exceptional +strength in the others." +"Pray continue your narrative." +"Mrs. St. Clair had fainted at the sight of the blood upon the +window, and she was escorted home in a cab by the police, as her +presence could be of no help to them in their investigations. +Inspector Barton, who had charge of the case, made a very careful +examination of the premises, but without finding anything which +threw any light upon the matter. One mistake had been made in not +arresting Boone instantly, as he was allowed some few minutes +during which he might have communicated with his friend the +Lascar, but this fault was soon remedied, and he was seized and +searched, without anything being found which could incriminate +him. There were, it is true, some bloodstains upon his right +shirtsleeve, but he pointed to his ringfinger, which had been +cut near the nail, and explained that the bleeding came from +there, adding that he had been to the window not long before, and +that the stains which had been observed there came doubtless from +the same source. He denied strenuously having ever seen Mr. +Neville St. Clair and swore that the presence of the clothes in +his room was as much a mystery to him as to the police. As to +Mrs. St. Clair's assertion that she had actually seen her husband +at the window, he declared that she must have been either mad or +dreaming. He was removed, loudly protesting, to the +policestation, while the inspector remained upon the premises in +the hope that the ebbing tide might afford some fresh clue. +"And it did, though they hardly found upon the mudbank what they +had feared to find. It was Neville St. Clair's coat, and not +Neville St. Clair, which lay uncovered as the tide receded. And +what do you think they found in the pockets?" +"I cannot imagine." +"No, I don't think you would guess. Every pocket stuffed with +pennies and halfpennies pennies and halfpennies. It +was no wonder that it had not been swept away by the tide. But a +human body is a different matter. There is a fierce eddy between +the wharf and the house. It seemed likely enough that the +weighted coat had remained when the stripped body had been sucked +away into the river." +"But I understand that all the other clothes were found in the +room. Would the body be dressed in a coat alone?" +"No, sir, but the facts might be met speciously enough. Suppose +that this man Boone had thrust Neville St. Clair through the +window, there is no human eye which could have seen the deed. +What would he do then? It would of course instantly strike him +that he must get rid of the telltale garments. He would seize +the coat, then, and be in the act of throwing it out, when it +would occur to him that it would swim and not sink. He has little +time, for he has heard the scuffle downstairs when the wife tried +to force her way up, and perhaps he has already heard from his +Lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up the street. +There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret +hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he +stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the +pockets to make sure of the coat's sinking. He throws it out, and +would have done the same with the other garments had not he heard +the rush of steps below, and only just had time to close the +window when the police appeared." +"It certainly sounds feasible." +"Well, we will take it as a working hypothesis for want of a +better. Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the +station, but it could not be shown that there had ever before +been anything against him. He had for years been known as a +professional beggar, but his life appeared to have been a very +quiet and innocent one. There the matter stands at present, and +the questions which have to be solvedwhat Neville St. Clair was +doing in the opium den, what happened to him when there, where is +he now, and what Hugh Boone had to do with his disappearanceare +all as far from a solution as ever. I confess that I cannot +recall any case within my experience which looked at the first +glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties." +While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of +events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great +town until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and +we rattled along with a country hedge upon either side of us. +Just as he finished, however, we drove through two scattered +villages, where a few lights still glimmered in the windows. +"We are on the outskirts of Lee," said my companion. "We have +touched on three English counties in our short drive, starting in +Middlesex, passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent. +See that light among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside +that lamp sits a woman whose anxious ears have already, I have +little doubt, caught the clink of our horse's feet." +"But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?" I +asked. +"Because there are many inquiries which must be made out here. +Mrs. St. Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal, and +you may rest assured that she will have nothing but a welcome for +my friend and colleague. I hate to meet her, Watson, when I have +no news of her husband. Here we are. Whoa, there, whoa" +We had pulled up in front of a large villa which stood within its +own grounds. A stableboy had run out to the horse's head, and +springing down, I followed Holmes up the small, winding +graveldrive which led to the house. As we approached, the door +flew open, and a little blonde woman stood in the opening, clad +in some sort of light mousseline de soie, with a touch of fluffy +pink chiffon at her neck and wrists. She stood with her figure +outlined against the flood of light, one hand upon the door, one +halfraised in her eagerness, her body slightly bent, her head +and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a standing +question. +"Well?" she cried, "well?" And then, seeing that there were two +of us, she gave a cry of hope which sank into a groan as she saw +that my companion shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. +"No good news?" +"None." +"No bad?" +"No." +"Thank God for that. But come in. You must be weary, for you have +had a long day." +"This is my friend, Dr. Watson. He has been of most vital use to +me in several of my cases, and a lucky chance has made it +possible for me to bring him out and associate him with this +investigation." +"I am delighted to see you," said she, pressing my hand warmly. +"You will, I am sure, forgive anything that may be wanting in our +arrangements, when you consider the blow which has come so +suddenly upon us." +"My dear madam," said I, "I am an old campaigner, and if I were +not I can very well see that no apology is needed. If I can be of +any assistance, either to you or to my friend here, I shall be +indeed happy." +"Now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," said the lady as we entered a +welllit diningroom, upon the table of which a cold supper had +been laid out, "I should very much like to ask you one or two +plain questions, to which I beg that you will give a plain +answer." +"Certainly, madam." +"Do not trouble about my feelings. I am not hysterical, nor given +to fainting. I simply wish to hear your real, real opinion." +"Upon what point?" +"In your heart of hearts, do you think that Neville is alive?" +Sherlock Holmes seemed to be embarrassed by the question. +"Frankly, now" she repeated, standing upon the rug and looking +keenly down at him as he leaned back in a basketchair. +"Frankly, then, madam, I do not." +"You think that he is dead?" +"I do." +"Murdered?" +"I don't say that. Perhaps." +"And on what day did he meet his death?" +"On Monday." +"Then perhaps, Mr. Holmes, you will be good enough to explain how +it is that I have received a letter from him today." +Sherlock Holmes sprang out of his chair as if he had been +galvanised. +"What" he roared. +"Yes, today." She stood smiling, holding up a little slip of +paper in the air. +"May I see it?" +"Certainly." +He snatched it from her in his eagerness, and smoothing it out +upon the table he drew over the lamp and examined it intently. I +had left my chair and was gazing at it over his shoulder. The +envelope was a very coarse one and was stamped with the Gravesend +postmark and with the date of that very day, or rather of the day +before, for it was considerably after midnight. +"Coarse writing," murmured Holmes. "Surely this is not your +husband's writing, madam." +"No, but the enclosure is." +"I perceive also that whoever addressed the envelope had to go +and inquire as to the address." +"How can you tell that?" +"The name, you see, is in perfectly black ink, which has dried +itself. The rest is of the greyish colour, which shows that +blottingpaper has been used. If it had been written straight +off, and then blotted, none would be of a deep black shade. This +man has written the name, and there has then been a pause before +he wrote the address, which can only mean that he was not +familiar with it. It is, of course, a trifle, but there is +nothing so important as trifles. Let us now see the letter. Ha +there has been an enclosure here" +"Yes, there was a ring. His signetring." +"And you are sure that this is your husband's hand?" +"One of his hands." +"One?" +"His hand when he wrote hurriedly. It is very unlike his usual +writing, and yet I know it well." +"'Dearest do not be frightened. All will come well. There is a +huge error which it may take some little time to rectify. +Wait in patience.NEVILLE.' Written in pencil upon the flyleaf +of a book, octavo size, no watermark. Hum Posted today in +Gravesend by a man with a dirty thumb. Ha And the flap has been +gummed, if I am not very much in error, by a person who had been +chewing tobacco. And you have no doubt that it is your husband's +hand, madam?" +"None. Neville wrote those words." +"And they were posted today at Gravesend. Well, Mrs. St. Clair, +the clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the +danger is over." +"But he must be alive, Mr. Holmes." +"Unless this is a clever forgery to put us on the wrong scent. +The ring, after all, proves nothing. It may have been taken from +him." +"No, no it is, it is his very own writing" +"Very well. It may, however, have been written on Monday and only +posted today." +"That is possible." +"If so, much may have happened between." +"Oh, you must not discourage me, Mr. Holmes. I know that all is +well with him. There is so keen a sympathy between us that I +should know if evil came upon him. On the very day that I saw him +last he cut himself in the bedroom, and yet I in the diningroom +rushed upstairs instantly with the utmost certainty that +something had happened. Do you think that I would respond to such +a trifle and yet be ignorant of his death?" +"I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman +may be more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical +reasoner. And in this letter you certainly have a very strong +piece of evidence to corroborate your view. But if your husband +is alive and able to write letters, why should he remain away +from you?" +"I cannot imagine. It is unthinkable." +"And on Monday he made no remarks before leaving you?" +"No." +"And you were surprised to see him in Swandam Lane?" +"Very much so." +"Was the window open?" +"Yes." +"Then he might have called to you?" +"He might." +"He only, as I understand, gave an inarticulate cry?" +"Yes." +"A call for help, you thought?" +"Yes. He waved his hands." +"But it might have been a cry of surprise. Astonishment at the +unexpected sight of you might cause him to throw up his hands?" +"It is possible." +"And you thought he was pulled back?" +"He disappeared so suddenly." +"He might have leaped back. You did not see anyone else in the +room?" +"No, but this horrible man confessed to having been there, and +the Lascar was at the foot of the stairs." +"Quite so. Your husband, as far as you could see, had his +ordinary clothes on?" +"But without his collar or tie. I distinctly saw his bare +throat." +"Had he ever spoken of Swandam Lane?" +"Never." +"Had he ever showed any signs of having taken opium?" +"Never." +"Thank you, Mrs. St. Clair. Those are the principal points about +which I wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little +supper and then retire, for we may have a very busy day +tomorrow." +A large and comfortable doublebedded room had been placed at our +disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary +after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, +who, when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for +days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, +rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view +until he had either fathomed it or convinced himself that his +data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now +preparing for an allnight sitting. He took off his coat and +waistcoat, put on a large blue dressinggown, and then wandered +about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions from +the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of +Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself crosslegged, with +an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front +of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an +old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the +corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, +silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strongset +aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he +sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found +the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still +between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the room was +full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of +shag which I had seen upon the previous night. +"Awake, Watson?" he asked. +"Yes." +"Game for a morning drive?" +"Certainly." +"Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the +stableboy sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out." He +chuckled to himself as he spoke, his eyes twinkled, and he seemed +a different man to the sombre thinker of the previous night. +As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one +was stirring. It was twentyfive minutes past four. I had hardly +finished when Holmes returned with the news that the boy was +putting in the horse. +"I want to test a little theory of mine," said he, pulling on his +boots. "I think, Watson, that you are now standing in the +presence of one of the most absolute fools in Europe. I deserve +to be kicked from here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the +key of the affair now." +"And where is it?" I asked, smiling. +"In the bathroom," he answered. "Oh, yes, I am not joking," he +continued, seeing my look of incredulity. "I have just been +there, and I have taken it out, and I have got it in this +Gladstone bag. Come on, my boy, and we shall see whether it will +not fit the lock." +We made our way downstairs as quietly as possible, and out into +the bright morning sunshine. In the road stood our horse and +trap, with the halfclad stableboy waiting at the head. We both +sprang in, and away we dashed down the London Road. A few country +carts were stirring, bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, but +the lines of villas on either side were as silent and lifeless as +some city in a dream. +"It has been in some points a singular case," said Holmes, +flicking the horse on into a gallop. "I confess that I have been +as blind as a mole, but it is better to learn wisdom late than +never to learn it at all." +In town the earliest risers were just beginning to look sleepily +from their windows as we drove through the streets of the Surrey +side. Passing down the Waterloo Bridge Road we crossed over the +river, and dashing up Wellington Street wheeled sharply to the +right and found ourselves in Bow Street. Sherlock Holmes was well +known to the force, and the two constables at the door saluted +him. One of them held the horse's head while the other led us in. +"Who is on duty?" asked Holmes. +"Inspector Bradstreet, sir." +"Ah, Bradstreet, how are you?" A tall, stout official had come +down the stoneflagged passage, in a peaked cap and frogged +jacket. "I wish to have a quiet word with you, Bradstreet." +"Certainly, Mr. Holmes. Step into my room here." It was a small, +officelike room, with a huge ledger upon the table, and a +telephone projecting from the wall. The inspector sat down at his +desk. +"What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?" +"I called about that beggarman, Boonethe one who was charged +with being concerned in the disappearance of Mr. Neville St. +Clair, of Lee." +"Yes. He was brought up and remanded for further inquiries." +"So I heard. You have him here?" +"In the cells." +"Is he quiet?" +"Oh, he gives no trouble. But he is a dirty scoundrel." +"Dirty?" +"Yes, it is all we can do to make him wash his hands, and his +face is as black as a tinker's. Well, when once his case has been +settled, he will have a regular prison bath and I think, if you +saw him, you would agree with me that he needed it." +"I should like to see him very much." +"Would you? That is easily done. Come this way. You can leave +your bag." +"No, I think that I'll take it." +"Very good. Come this way, if you please." He led us down a +passage, opened a barred door, passed down a winding stair, and +brought us to a whitewashed corridor with a line of doors on each +side. +"The third on the right is his," said the inspector. "Here it +is" He quietly shot back a panel in the upper part of the door +and glanced through. +"He is asleep," said he. "You can see him very well." +We both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his +face towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and +heavily. He was a middlesized man, coarsely clad as became his +calling, with a coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his +tattered coat. He was, as the inspector had said, extremely +dirty, but the grime which covered his face could not conceal its +repulsive ugliness. A broad wheal from an old scar ran right +across it from eye to chin, and by its contraction had turned up +one side of the upper lip, so that three teeth were exposed in a +perpetual snarl. A shock of very bright red hair grew low over +his eyes and forehead. +"He's a beauty, isn't he?" said the inspector. +"He certainly needs a wash," remarked Holmes. "I had an idea that +he might, and I took the liberty of bringing the tools with me." +He opened the Gladstone bag as he spoke, and took out, to my +astonishment, a very large bathsponge. +"He he You are a funny one," chuckled the inspector. +"Now, if you will have the great goodness to open that door very +quietly, we will soon make him cut a much more respectable +figure." +"Well, I don't know why not," said the inspector. "He doesn't +look a credit to the Bow Street cells, does he?" He slipped his +key into the lock, and we all very quietly entered the cell. The +sleeper half turned, and then settled down once more into a deep +slumber. Holmes stooped to the waterjug, moistened his sponge, +and then rubbed it twice vigorously across and down the +prisoner's face. +"Let me introduce you," he shouted, "to Mr. Neville St. Clair, of +Lee, in the county of Kent." +Never in my life have I seen such a sight. The man's face peeled +off under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the +coarse brown tint Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had +seamed it across, and the twisted lip which had given the +repulsive sneer to the face A twitch brought away the tangled +red hair, and there, sitting up in his bed, was a pale, +sadfaced, refinedlooking man, blackhaired and smoothskinned, +rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy bewilderment. +Then suddenly realising the exposure, he broke into a scream and +threw himself down with his face to the pillow. +"Great heavens" cried the inspector, "it is, indeed, the missing +man. I know him from the photograph." +The prisoner turned with the reckless air of a man who abandons +himself to his destiny. "Be it so," said he. "And pray what am I +charged with?" +"With making away with Mr. Neville St. Oh, come, you can't be +charged with that unless they make a case of attempted suicide of +it," said the inspector with a grin. "Well, I have been +twentyseven years in the force, but this really takes the cake." +"If I am Mr. Neville St. Clair, then it is obvious that no crime +has been committed, and that, therefore, I am illegally +detained." +"No crime, but a very great error has been committed," said +Holmes. "You would have done better to have trusted you wife." +"It was not the wife it was the children," groaned the prisoner. +"God help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My +God What an exposure What can I do?" +Sherlock Holmes sat down beside him on the couch and patted him +kindly on the shoulder. +"If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up," said +he, "of course you can hardly avoid publicity. On the other hand, +if you convince the police authorities that there is no possible +case against you, I do not know that there is any reason that the +details should find their way into the papers. Inspector +Bradstreet would, I am sure, make notes upon anything which you +might tell us and submit it to the proper authorities. The case +would then never go into court at all." +"God bless you" cried the prisoner passionately. "I would have +endured imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left +my miserable secret as a family blot to my children. +"You are the first who have ever heard my story. My father was a +schoolmaster in Chesterfield, where I received an excellent +education. I travelled in my youth, took to the stage, and +finally became a reporter on an evening paper in London. One day +my editor wished to have a series of articles upon begging in the +metropolis, and I volunteered to supply them. There was the point +from which all my adventures started. It was only by trying +begging as an amateur that I could get the facts upon which to +base my articles. When an actor I had, of course, learned all the +secrets of making up, and had been famous in the greenroom for +my skill. I took advantage now of my attainments. I painted my +face, and to make myself as pitiable as possible I made a good +scar and fixed one side of my lip in a twist by the aid of a +small slip of fleshcoloured plaster. Then with a red head of +hair, and an appropriate dress, I took my station in the business +part of the city, ostensibly as a matchseller but really as a +beggar. For seven hours I plied my trade, and when I returned +home in the evening I found to my surprise that I had received no +less than s. d. +"I wrote my articles and thought little more of the matter until, +some time later, I backed a bill for a friend and had a writ +served upon me for pounds. I was at my wit's end where to get +the money, but a sudden idea came to me. I begged a fortnight's +grace from the creditor, asked for a holiday from my employers, +and spent the time in begging in the City under my disguise. In +ten days I had the money and had paid the debt. +"Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous +work at pounds a week when I knew that I could earn as much in +a day by smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on +the ground, and sitting still. It was a long fight between my +pride and the money, but the dollars won at last, and I threw up +reporting and sat day after day in the corner which I had first +chosen, inspiring pity by my ghastly face and filling my pockets +with coppers. Only one man knew my secret. He was the keeper of a +low den in which I used to lodge in Swandam Lane, where I could +every morning emerge as a squalid beggar and in the evenings +transform myself into a welldressed man about town. This fellow, +a Lascar, was well paid by me for his rooms, so that I knew that +my secret was safe in his possession. +"Well, very soon I found that I was saving considerable sums of +money. I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London +could earn pounds a yearwhich is less than my average +takingsbut I had exceptional advantages in my power of making +up, and also in a facility of repartee, which improved by +practice and made me quite a recognised character in the City. +All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me, +and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take pounds. +"As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the +country, and eventually married, without anyone having a +suspicion as to my real occupation. My dear wife knew that I had +business in the City. She little knew what. +"Last Monday I had finished for the day and was dressing in my +room above the opium den when I looked out of my window and saw, +to my horror and astonishment, that my wife was standing in the +street, with her eyes fixed full upon me. I gave a cry of +surprise, threw up my arms to cover my face, and, rushing to my +confidant, the Lascar, entreated him to prevent anyone from +coming up to me. I heard her voice downstairs, but I knew that +she could not ascend. Swiftly I threw off my clothes, pulled on +those of a beggar, and put on my pigments and wig. Even a wife's +eyes could not pierce so complete a disguise. But then it +occurred to me that there might be a search in the room, and that +the clothes might betray me. I threw open the window, reopening +by my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in +the bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which was +weighted by the coppers which I had just transferred to it from +the leather bag in which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of +the window, and it disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes +would have followed, but at that moment there was a rush of +constables up the stair, and a few minutes after I found, rather, +I confess, to my relief, that instead of being identified as Mr. +Neville St. Clair, I was arrested as his murderer. +"I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I +was determined to preserve my disguise as long as possible, and +hence my preference for a dirty face. Knowing that my wife would +be terribly anxious, I slipped off my ring and confided it to the +Lascar at a moment when no constable was watching me, together +with a hurried scrawl, telling her that she had no cause to +fear." +"That note only reached her yesterday," said Holmes. +"Good God What a week she must have spent" +"The police have watched this Lascar," said Inspector Bradstreet, +"and I can quite understand that he might find it difficult to +post a letter unobserved. Probably he handed it to some sailor +customer of his, who forgot all about it for some days." +"That was it," said Holmes, nodding approvingly "I have no doubt +of it. But have you never been prosecuted for begging?" +"Many times but what was a fine to me?" +"It must stop here, however," said Bradstreet. "If the police are +to hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone." +"I have sworn it by the most solemn oaths which a man can take." +"In that case I think that it is probable that no further steps +may be taken. But if you are found again, then all must come out. +I am sure, Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for +having cleared the matter up. I wish I knew how you reach your +results." +"I reached this one," said my friend, "by sitting upon five +pillows and consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if +we drive to Baker Street we shall just be in time for breakfast." +VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE +I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second +morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the +compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a +purple dressinggown, a piperack within his reach upon the +right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly +studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and +on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable +hardfelt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several +places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair +suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner for the +purpose of examination. +"You are engaged," said I "perhaps I interrupt you." +"Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss +my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one"he jerked his +thumb in the direction of the old hat"but there are points in +connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and +even of instruction." +I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his +crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows +were thick with the ice crystals. "I suppose," I remarked, "that, +homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to +itthat it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of +some mystery and the punishment of some crime." +"No, no. No crime," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. "Only one of +those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have +four million human beings all jostling each other within the +space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so +dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events +may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be +presented which may be striking and bizarre without being +criminal. We have already had experience of such." +"So much so," I remarked, "that of the last six cases which I +have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any +legal crime." +"Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler +papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the +adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt +that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. +You know Peterson, the commissionaire?" +"Yes." +"It is to him that this trophy belongs." +"It is his hat." +"No, no, he found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will +look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual +problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon +Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I +have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson's +fire. The facts are these about four o'clock on Christmas +morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was +returning from some small jollification and was making his way +homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in +the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and +carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder. As he reached the +corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger +and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the +man's hat, on which he raised his stick to defend himself and, +swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window behind him. +Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his +assailants but the man, shocked at having broken the window, and +seeing an officiallooking person in uniform rushing towards him, +dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the +labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham +Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the appearance of +Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of +battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this +battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose." +"Which surely he restored to their owner?" +"My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that 'For +Mrs. Henry Baker' was printed upon a small card which was tied to +the bird's left leg, and it is also true that the initials 'H. +B.' are legible upon the lining of this hat, but as there are +some thousands of Bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in +this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to any +one of them." +"What, then, did Peterson do?" +"He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning, +knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me. +The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs +that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it +should be eaten without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried +it off, therefore, to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose, +while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown gentleman who +lost his Christmas dinner." +"Did he not advertise?" +"No." +"Then, what clue could you have as to his identity?" +"Only as much as we can deduce." +"From his hat?" +"Precisely." +"But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered +felt?" +"Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather +yourself as to the individuality of the man who has worn this +article?" +I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather +ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round +shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of +red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker's +name but, as Holmes had remarked, the initials "H. B." were +scrawled upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a +hatsecurer, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was +cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places, +although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the +discoloured patches by smearing them with ink. +"I can see nothing," said I, handing it back to my friend. +"On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, +however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in +drawing your inferences." +"Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?" +He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective +fashion which was characteristic of him. "It is perhaps less +suggestive than it might have been," he remarked, "and yet there +are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others +which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That +the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the +face of it, and also that he was fairly welltodo within the +last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He +had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a +moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his +fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, +at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that +his wife has ceased to love him." +"My dear Holmes" +"He has, however, retained some degree of selfrespect," he +continued, disregarding my remonstrance. "He is a man who leads a +sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is +middleaged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the +last few days, and which he anoints with limecream. These are +the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, +by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid +on in his house." +"You are certainly joking, Holmes." +"Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you +these results, you are unable to see how they are attained?" +"I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I +am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that +this man was intellectual?" +For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right +over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. "It is +a question of cubic capacity," said he "a man with so large a +brain must have something in it." +"The decline of his fortunes, then?" +"This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge +came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the +band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could +afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no +hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world." +"Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the +foresight and the moral retrogression?" +Sherlock Holmes laughed. "Here is the foresight," said he putting +his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hatsecurer. +"They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a +sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his +way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see +that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace +it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, +which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other +hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the +felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not +entirely lost his selfrespect." +"Your reasoning is certainly plausible." +"The further points, that he is middleaged, that his hair is +grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses +limecream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the +lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of +hairends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all +appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of +limecream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey +dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, +showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while +the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the +wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in +the best of training." +"But his wifeyou said that she had ceased to love him." +"This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear +Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and +when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear +that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's +affection." +"But he might be a bachelor." +"Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peaceoffering to his +wife. Remember the card upon the bird's leg." +"You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce +that the gas is not laid on in his house?" +"One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance but when I +see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt +that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with +burning tallowwalks upstairs at night probably with his hat in +one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never +got tallowstains from a gasjet. Are you satisfied?" +"Well, it is very ingenious," said I, laughing "but since, as +you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm +done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a +waste of energy." +Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when the door flew +open, and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment +with flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with +astonishment. +"The goose, Mr. Holmes The goose, sir" he gasped. +"Eh? What of it, then? Has it returned to life and flapped off +through the kitchen window?" Holmes twisted himself round upon +the sofa to get a fairer view of the man's excited face. +"See here, sir See what my wife found in its crop" He held out +his hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a brilliantly +scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size, but +of such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric +point in the dark hollow of his hand. +Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. "By Jove, Peterson" said +he, "this is treasure trove indeed. I suppose you know what you +have got?" +"A diamond, sir? A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though +it were putty." +"It's more than a precious stone. It is the precious stone." +"Not the Countess of Morcar's blue carbuncle" I ejaculated. +"Precisely so. I ought to know its size and shape, seeing that I +have read the advertisement about it in The Times every day +lately. It is absolutely unique, and its value can only be +conjectured, but the reward offered of pounds is certainly +not within a twentieth part of the market price." +"A thousand pounds Great Lord of mercy" The commissionaire +plumped down into a chair and stared from one to the other of us. +"That is the reward, and I have reason to know that there are +sentimental considerations in the background which would induce +the Countess to part with half her fortune if she could but +recover the gem." +"It was lost, if I remember aright, at the Hotel Cosmopolitan," I +remarked. +"Precisely so, on December nd, just five days ago. John Horner, +a plumber, was accused of having abstracted it from the lady's +jewelcase. The evidence against him was so strong that the case +has been referred to the Assizes. I have some account of the +matter here, I believe." He rummaged amid his newspapers, +glancing over the dates, until at last he smoothed one out, +doubled it over, and read the following paragraph +"Hotel Cosmopolitan Jewel Robbery. John Horner, , plumber, was +brought up upon the charge of having upon the nd inst., +abstracted from the jewelcase of the Countess of Morcar the +valuable gem known as the blue carbuncle. James Ryder, +upperattendant at the hotel, gave his evidence to the effect +that he had shown Horner up to the dressingroom of the Countess +of Morcar upon the day of the robbery in order that he might +solder the second bar of the grate, which was loose. He had +remained with Horner some little time, but had finally been +called away. On returning, he found that Horner had disappeared, +that the bureau had been forced open, and that the small morocco +casket in which, as it afterwards transpired, the Countess was +accustomed to keep her jewel, was lying empty upon the +dressingtable. Ryder instantly gave the alarm, and Horner was +arrested the same evening but the stone could not be found +either upon his person or in his rooms. Catherine Cusack, maid to +the Countess, deposed to having heard Ryder's cry of dismay on +discovering the robbery, and to having rushed into the room, +where she found matters as described by the last witness. +Inspector Bradstreet, B division, gave evidence as to the arrest +of Horner, who struggled frantically, and protested his innocence +in the strongest terms. Evidence of a previous conviction for +robbery having been given against the prisoner, the magistrate +refused to deal summarily with the offence, but referred it to +the Assizes. Horner, who had shown signs of intense emotion +during the proceedings, fainted away at the conclusion and was +carried out of court." +"Hum So much for the policecourt," said Holmes thoughtfully, +tossing aside the paper. "The question for us now to solve is the +sequence of events leading from a rifled jewelcase at one end to +the crop of a goose in Tottenham Court Road at the other. You +see, Watson, our little deductions have suddenly assumed a much +more important and less innocent aspect. Here is the stone the +stone came from the goose, and the goose came from Mr. Henry +Baker, the gentleman with the bad hat and all the other +characteristics with which I have bored you. So now we must set +ourselves very seriously to finding this gentleman and +ascertaining what part he has played in this little mystery. To +do this, we must try the simplest means first, and these lie +undoubtedly in an advertisement in all the evening papers. If +this fail, I shall have recourse to other methods." +"What will you say?" +"Give me a pencil and that slip of paper. Now, then 'Found at +the corner of Goodge Street, a goose and a black felt hat. Mr. +Henry Baker can have the same by applying at this evening at +B, Baker Street.' That is clear and concise." +"Very. But will he see it?" +"Well, he is sure to keep an eye on the papers, since, to a poor +man, the loss was a heavy one. He was clearly so scared by his +mischance in breaking the window and by the approach of Peterson +that he thought of nothing but flight, but since then he must +have bitterly regretted the impulse which caused him to drop his +bird. Then, again, the introduction of his name will cause him to +see it, for everyone who knows him will direct his attention to +it. Here you are, Peterson, run down to the advertising agency +and have this put in the evening papers." +"In which, sir?" +"Oh, in the Globe, Star, Pall Mall, St. James's, Evening News, +Standard, Echo, and any others that occur to you." +"Very well, sir. And this stone?" +"Ah, yes, I shall keep the stone. Thank you. And, I say, +Peterson, just buy a goose on your way back and leave it here +with me, for we must have one to give to this gentleman in place +of the one which your family is now devouring." +When the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and +held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just +see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and +focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet +baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a +bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found +in the banks of the Amoy River in southern China and is remarkable +in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is +blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has +already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a +vitriolthrowing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about +for the sake of this fortygrain weight of crystallised charcoal. +Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the +gallows and the prison? I'll lock it up in my strong box now and +drop a line to the Countess to say that we have it." +"Do you think that this man Horner is innocent?" +"I cannot tell." +"Well, then, do you imagine that this other one, Henry Baker, had +anything to do with the matter?" +"It is, I think, much more likely that Henry Baker is an +absolutely innocent man, who had no idea that the bird which he +was carrying was of considerably more value than if it were made +of solid gold. That, however, I shall determine by a very simple +test if we have an answer to our advertisement." +"And you can do nothing until then?" +"Nothing." +"In that case I shall continue my professional round. But I shall +come back in the evening at the hour you have mentioned, for I +should like to see the solution of so tangled a business." +"Very glad to see you. I dine at seven. There is a woodcock, I +believe. By the way, in view of recent occurrences, perhaps I +ought to ask Mrs. Hudson to examine its crop." +I had been delayed at a case, and it was a little after halfpast +six when I found myself in Baker Street once more. As I +approached the house I saw a tall man in a Scotch bonnet with a +coat which was buttoned up to his chin waiting outside in the +bright semicircle which was thrown from the fanlight. Just as I +arrived the door was opened, and we were shown up together to +Holmes' room. +"Mr. Henry Baker, I believe," said he, rising from his armchair +and greeting his visitor with the easy air of geniality which he +could so readily assume. "Pray take this chair by the fire, Mr. +Baker. It is a cold night, and I observe that your circulation is +more adapted for summer than for winter. Ah, Watson, you have +just come at the right time. Is that your hat, Mr. Baker?" +"Yes, sir, that is undoubtedly my hat." +He was a large man with rounded shoulders, a massive head, and a +broad, intelligent face, sloping down to a pointed beard of +grizzled brown. A touch of red in nose and cheeks, with a slight +tremor of his extended hand, recalled Holmes' surmise as to his +habits. His rusty black frockcoat was buttoned right up in +front, with the collar turned up, and his lank wrists protruded +from his sleeves without a sign of cuff or shirt. He spoke in a +slow staccato fashion, choosing his words with care, and gave the +impression generally of a man of learning and letters who had had +illusage at the hands of fortune. +"We have retained these things for some days," said Holmes, +"because we expected to see an advertisement from you giving your +address. I am at a loss to know now why you did not advertise." +Our visitor gave a rather shamefaced laugh. "Shillings have not +been so plentiful with me as they once were," he remarked. "I had +no doubt that the gang of roughs who assaulted me had carried off +both my hat and the bird. I did not care to spend more money in a +hopeless attempt at recovering them." +"Very naturally. By the way, about the bird, we were compelled to +eat it." +"To eat it" Our visitor half rose from his chair in his +excitement. +"Yes, it would have been of no use to anyone had we not done so. +But I presume that this other goose upon the sideboard, which is +about the same weight and perfectly fresh, will answer your +purpose equally well?" +"Oh, certainly, certainly," answered Mr. Baker with a sigh of +relief. +"Of course, we still have the feathers, legs, crop, and so on of +your own bird, so if you wish" +The man burst into a hearty laugh. "They might be useful to me as +relics of my adventure," said he, "but beyond that I can hardly +see what use the disjecta membra of my late acquaintance are +going to be to me. No, sir, I think that, with your permission, I +will confine my attentions to the excellent bird which I perceive +upon the sideboard." +Sherlock Holmes glanced sharply across at me with a slight shrug +of his shoulders. +"There is your hat, then, and there your bird," said he. "By the +way, would it bore you to tell me where you got the other one +from? I am somewhat of a fowl fancier, and I have seldom seen a +better grown goose." +"Certainly, sir," said Baker, who had risen and tucked his newly +gained property under his arm. "There are a few of us who +frequent the Alpha Inn, near the Museumwe are to be found in +the Museum itself during the day, you understand. This year our +good host, Windigate by name, instituted a goose club, by which, +on consideration of some few pence every week, we were each to +receive a bird at Christmas. My pence were duly paid, and the +rest is familiar to you. I am much indebted to you, sir, for a +Scotch bonnet is fitted neither to my years nor my gravity." With +a comical pomposity of manner he bowed solemnly to both of us and +strode off upon his way. +"So much for Mr. Henry Baker," said Holmes when he had closed the +door behind him. "It is quite certain that he knows nothing +whatever about the matter. Are you hungry, Watson?" +"Not particularly." +"Then I suggest that we turn our dinner into a supper and follow +up this clue while it is still hot." +"By all means." +It was a bitter night, so we drew on our ulsters and wrapped +cravats about our throats. Outside, the stars were shining coldly +in a cloudless sky, and the breath of the passersby blew out +into smoke like so many pistol shots. Our footfalls rang out +crisply and loudly as we swung through the doctors' quarter, +Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and so through Wigmore Street into +Oxford Street. In a quarter of an hour we were in Bloomsbury at +the Alpha Inn, which is a small publichouse at the corner of one +of the streets which runs down into Holborn. Holmes pushed open +the door of the private bar and ordered two glasses of beer from +the ruddyfaced, whiteaproned landlord. +"Your beer should be excellent if it is as good as your geese," +said he. +"My geese" The man seemed surprised. +"Yes. I was speaking only half an hour ago to Mr. Henry Baker, +who was a member of your goose club." +"Ah yes, I see. But you see, sir, them's not our geese." +"Indeed Whose, then?" +"Well, I got the two dozen from a salesman in Covent Garden." +"Indeed? I know some of them. Which was it?" +"Breckinridge is his name." +"Ah I don't know him. Well, here's your good health landlord, +and prosperity to your house. Goodnight." +"Now for Mr. Breckinridge," he continued, buttoning up his coat +as we came out into the frosty air. "Remember, Watson that though +we have so homely a thing as a goose at one end of this chain, we +have at the other a man who will certainly get seven years' penal +servitude unless we can establish his innocence. It is possible +that our inquiry may but confirm his guilt but, in any case, we +have a line of investigation which has been missed by the police, +and which a singular chance has placed in our hands. Let us +follow it out to the bitter end. Faces to the south, then, and +quick march" +We passed across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a +zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest +stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor +a horseylooking man, with a sharp face and trim sidewhiskers was +helping a boy to put up the shutters. +"Goodevening. It's a cold night," said Holmes. +The salesman nodded and shot a questioning glance at my +companion. +"Sold out of geese, I see," continued Holmes, pointing at the +bare slabs of marble. +"Let you have five hundred tomorrow morning." +"That's no good." +"Well, there are some on the stall with the gasflare." +"Ah, but I was recommended to you." +"Who by?" +"The landlord of the Alpha." +"Oh, yes I sent him a couple of dozen." +"Fine birds they were, too. Now where did you get them from?" +To my surprise the question provoked a burst of anger from the +salesman. +"Now, then, mister," said he, with his head cocked and his arms +akimbo, "what are you driving at? Let's have it straight, now." +"It is straight enough. I should like to know who sold you the +geese which you supplied to the Alpha." +"Well then, I shan't tell you. So now" +"Oh, it is a matter of no importance but I don't know why you +should be so warm over such a trifle." +"Warm You'd be as warm, maybe, if you were as pestered as I am. +When I pay good money for a good article there should be an end +of the business but it's 'Where are the geese?' and 'Who did you +sell the geese to?' and 'What will you take for the geese?' One +would think they were the only geese in the world, to hear the +fuss that is made over them." +"Well, I have no connection with any other people who have been +making inquiries," said Holmes carelessly. "If you won't tell us +the bet is off, that is all. But I'm always ready to back my +opinion on a matter of fowls, and I have a fiver on it that the +bird I ate is country bred." +"Well, then, you've lost your fiver, for it's town bred," snapped +the salesman. +"It's nothing of the kind." +"I say it is." +"I don't believe it." +"D'you think you know more about fowls than I, who have handled +them ever since I was a nipper? I tell you, all those birds that +went to the Alpha were town bred." +"You'll never persuade me to believe that." +"Will you bet, then?" +"It's merely taking your money, for I know that I am right. But +I'll have a sovereign on with you, just to teach you not to be +obstinate." +The salesman chuckled grimly. "Bring me the books, Bill," said +he. +The small boy brought round a small thin volume and a great +greasybacked one, laying them out together beneath the hanging +lamp. +"Now then, Mr. Cocksure," said the salesman, "I thought that I +was out of geese, but before I finish you'll find that there is +still one left in my shop. You see this little book?" +"Well?" +"That's the list of the folk from whom I buy. D'you see? Well, +then, here on this page are the country folk, and the numbers +after their names are where their accounts are in the big ledger. +Now, then You see this other page in red ink? Well, that is a +list of my town suppliers. Now, look at that third name. Just +read it out to me." +"Mrs. Oakshott, , Brixton Road," read Holmes. +"Quite so. Now turn that up in the ledger." +Holmes turned to the page indicated. "Here you are, 'Mrs. +Oakshott, , Brixton Road, egg and poultry supplier.'" +"Now, then, what's the last entry?" +"'December nd. Twentyfour geese at s. d.'" +"Quite so. There you are. And underneath?" +"'Sold to Mr. Windigate of the Alpha, at s.'" +"What have you to say now?" +Sherlock Holmes looked deeply chagrined. He drew a sovereign from +his pocket and threw it down upon the slab, turning away with the +air of a man whose disgust is too deep for words. A few yards off +he stopped under a lamppost and laughed in the hearty, noiseless +fashion which was peculiar to him. +"When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the 'Pink 'un' +protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet," +said he. "I daresay that if I had put pounds down in front of +him, that man would not have given me such complete information +as was drawn from him by the idea that he was doing me on a +wager. Well, Watson, we are, I fancy, nearing the end of our +quest, and the only point which remains to be determined is +whether we should go on to this Mrs. Oakshott tonight, or +whether we should reserve it for tomorrow. It is clear from what +that surly fellow said that there are others besides ourselves +who are anxious about the matter, and I should" +His remarks were suddenly cut short by a loud hubbub which broke +out from the stall which we had just left. Turning round we saw a +little ratfaced fellow standing in the centre of the circle of +yellow light which was thrown by the swinging lamp, while +Breckinridge, the salesman, framed in the door of his stall, was +shaking his fists fiercely at the cringing figure. +"I've had enough of you and your geese," he shouted. "I wish you +were all at the devil together. If you come pestering me any more +with your silly talk I'll set the dog at you. You bring Mrs. +Oakshott here and I'll answer her, but what have you to do with +it? Did I buy the geese off you?" +"No but one of them was mine all the same," whined the little +man. +"Well, then, ask Mrs. Oakshott for it." +"She told me to ask you." +"Well, you can ask the King of Proosia, for all I care. I've had +enough of it. Get out of this" He rushed fiercely forward, and +the inquirer flitted away into the darkness. +"Ha this may save us a visit to Brixton Road," whispered Holmes. +"Come with me, and we will see what is to be made of this +fellow." Striding through the scattered knots of people who +lounged round the flaring stalls, my companion speedily overtook +the little man and touched him upon the shoulder. He sprang +round, and I could see in the gaslight that every vestige of +colour had been driven from his face. +"Who are you, then? What do you want?" he asked in a quavering +voice. +"You will excuse me," said Holmes blandly, "but I could not help +overhearing the questions which you put to the salesman just now. +I think that I could be of assistance to you." +"You? Who are you? How could you know anything of the matter?" +"My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other +people don't know." +"But you can know nothing of this?" +"Excuse me, I know everything of it. You are endeavouring to +trace some geese which were sold by Mrs. Oakshott, of Brixton +Road, to a salesman named Breckinridge, by him in turn to Mr. +Windigate, of the Alpha, and by him to his club, of which Mr. +Henry Baker is a member." +"Oh, sir, you are the very man whom I have longed to meet," cried +the little fellow with outstretched hands and quivering fingers. +"I can hardly explain to you how interested I am in this matter." +Sherlock Holmes hailed a fourwheeler which was passing. "In that +case we had better discuss it in a cosy room rather than in this +windswept marketplace," said he. "But pray tell me, before we +go farther, who it is that I have the pleasure of assisting." +The man hesitated for an instant. "My name is John Robinson," he +answered with a sidelong glance. +"No, no the real name," said Holmes sweetly. "It is always +awkward doing business with an alias." +A flush sprang to the white cheeks of the stranger. "Well then," +said he, "my real name is James Ryder." +"Precisely so. Head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. Pray +step into the cab, and I shall soon be able to tell you +everything which you would wish to know." +The little man stood glancing from one to the other of us with +halffrightened, halfhopeful eyes, as one who is not sure +whether he is on the verge of a windfall or of a catastrophe. +Then he stepped into the cab, and in half an hour we were back in +the sittingroom at Baker Street. Nothing had been said during +our drive, but the high, thin breathing of our new companion, and +the claspings and unclaspings of his hands, spoke of the nervous +tension within him. +"Here we are" said Holmes cheerily as we filed into the room. +"The fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You look cold, +Mr. Ryder. Pray take the basketchair. I will just put on my +slippers before we settle this little matter of yours. Now, then +You want to know what became of those geese?" +"Yes, sir." +"Or rather, I fancy, of that goose. It was one bird, I imagine in +which you were interestedwhite, with a black bar across the +tail." +Ryder quivered with emotion. "Oh, sir," he cried, "can you tell +me where it went to?" +"It came here." +"Here?" +"Yes, and a most remarkable bird it proved. I don't wonder that +you should take an interest in it. It laid an egg after it was +deadthe bonniest, brightest little blue egg that ever was seen. +I have it here in my museum." +Our visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the mantelpiece +with his right hand. Holmes unlocked his strongbox and held up +the blue carbuncle, which shone out like a star, with a cold, +brilliant, manypointed radiance. Ryder stood glaring with a +drawn face, uncertain whether to claim or to disown it. +"The game's up, Ryder," said Holmes quietly. "Hold up, man, or +you'll be into the fire Give him an arm back into his chair, +Watson. He's not got blood enough to go in for felony with +impunity. Give him a dash of brandy. So Now he looks a little +more human. What a shrimp it is, to be sure" +For a moment he had staggered and nearly fallen, but the brandy +brought a tinge of colour into his cheeks, and he sat staring +with frightened eyes at his accuser. +"I have almost every link in my hands, and all the proofs which I +could possibly need, so there is little which you need tell me. +Still, that little may as well be cleared up to make the case +complete. You had heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the +Countess of Morcar's?" +"It was Catherine Cusack who told me of it," said he in a +crackling voice. +"I seeher ladyship's waitingmaid. Well, the temptation of +sudden wealth so easily acquired was too much for you, as it has +been for better men before you but you were not very scrupulous +in the means you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the +making of a very pretty villain in you. You knew that this man +Horner, the plumber, had been concerned in some such matter +before, and that suspicion would rest the more readily upon him. +What did you do, then? You made some small job in my lady's +roomyou and your confederate Cusackand you managed that he +should be the man sent for. Then, when he had left, you rifled +the jewelcase, raised the alarm, and had this unfortunate man +arrested. You then" +Ryder threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my +companion's knees. "For God's sake, have mercy" he shrieked. +"Think of my father Of my mother It would break their hearts. I +never went wrong before I never will again. I swear it. I'll +swear it on a Bible. Oh, don't bring it into court For Christ's +sake, don't" +"Get back into your chair" said Holmes sternly. "It is very well +to cringe and crawl now, but you thought little enough of this +poor Horner in the dock for a crime of which he knew nothing." +"I will fly, Mr. Holmes. I will leave the country, sir. Then the +charge against him will break down." +"Hum We will talk about that. And now let us hear a true account +of the next act. How came the stone into the goose, and how came +the goose into the open market? Tell us the truth, for there lies +your only hope of safety." +Ryder passed his tongue over his parched lips. "I will tell you +it just as it happened, sir," said he. "When Horner had been +arrested, it seemed to me that it would be best for me to get +away with the stone at once, for I did not know at what moment +the police might not take it into their heads to search me and my +room. There was no place about the hotel where it would be safe. +I went out, as if on some commission, and I made for my sister's +house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and lived in Brixton +Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there +every man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a detective +and, for all that it was a cold night, the sweat was pouring down +my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister asked me +what was the matter, and why I was so pale but I told her that I +had been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I went +into the back yard and smoked a pipe and wondered what it would +be best to do. +"I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and +has just been serving his time in Pentonville. One day he had met +me, and fell into talk about the ways of thieves, and how they +could get rid of what they stole. I knew that he would be true to +me, for I knew one or two things about him so I made up my mind +to go right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my +confidence. He would show me how to turn the stone into money. +But how to get to him in safety? I thought of the agonies I had +gone through in coming from the hotel. I might at any moment be +seized and searched, and there would be the stone in my waistcoat +pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time and looking at +the geese which were waddling about round my feet, and suddenly +an idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the +best detective that ever lived. +"My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the +pick of her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she +was always as good as her word. I would take my goose now, and in +it I would carry my stone to Kilburn. There was a little shed in +the yard, and behind this I drove one of the birdsa fine big +one, white, with a barred tail. I caught it, and prying its bill +open, I thrust the stone down its throat as far as my finger +could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the stone pass +along its gullet and down into its crop. But the creature flapped +and struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the +matter. As I turned to speak to her the brute broke loose and +fluttered off among the others. +"'Whatever were you doing with that bird, Jem?' says she. +"'Well,' said I, 'you said you'd give me one for Christmas, and I +was feeling which was the fattest.' +"'Oh,' says she, 'we've set yours aside for youJem's bird, we +call it. It's the big white one over yonder. There's twentysix +of them, which makes one for you, and one for us, and two dozen +for the market.' +"'Thank you, Maggie,' says I 'but if it is all the same to you, +I'd rather have that one I was handling just now.' +"'The other is a good three pound heavier,' said she, 'and we +fattened it expressly for you.' +"'Never mind. I'll have the other, and I'll take it now,' said I. +"'Oh, just as you like,' said she, a little huffed. 'Which is it +you want, then?' +"'That white one with the barred tail, right in the middle of the +flock.' +"'Oh, very well. Kill it and take it with you.' +"Well, I did what she said, Mr. Holmes, and I carried the bird +all the way to Kilburn. I told my pal what I had done, for he was +a man that it was easy to tell a thing like that to. He laughed +until he choked, and we got a knife and opened the goose. My +heart turned to water, for there was no sign of the stone, and I +knew that some terrible mistake had occurred. I left the bird, +rushed back to my sister's, and hurried into the back yard. There +was not a bird to be seen there. +"'Where are they all, Maggie?' I cried. +"'Gone to the dealer's, Jem.' +"'Which dealer's?' +"'Breckinridge, of Covent Garden.' +"'But was there another with a barred tail?' I asked, 'the same +as the one I chose?' +"'Yes, Jem there were two barredtailed ones, and I could never +tell them apart.' +"Well, then, of course I saw it all, and I ran off as hard as my +feet would carry me to this man Breckinridge but he had sold the +lot at once, and not one word would he tell me as to where they +had gone. You heard him yourselves tonight. Well, he has always +answered me like that. My sister thinks that I am going mad. +Sometimes I think that I am myself. And nowand now I am myself +a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth for which +I sold my character. God help me God help me" He burst into +convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in his hands. +There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing and +by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes' fingertips upon the +edge of the table. Then my friend rose and threw open the door. +"Get out" said he. +"What, sir Oh, Heaven bless you" +"No more words. Get out" +And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon +the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running +footfalls from the street. +"After all, Watson," said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his +clay pipe, "I am not retained by the police to supply their +deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing +but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must +collapse. I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just +possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong +again he is too terribly frightened. Send him to gaol now, and +you make him a gaolbird for life. Besides, it is the season of +forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and +whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you +will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin +another investigation, in which, also a bird will be the chief +feature." +VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND +On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I +have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend +Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number +merely strange, but none commonplace for, working as he did +rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of +wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation +which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. +Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which +presented more singular features than that which was associated +with the wellknown Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. +The events in question occurred in the early days of my +association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors +in Baker Street. It is possible that I might have placed them +upon record before, but a promise of secrecy was made at the +time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by +the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given. It +is perhaps as well that the facts should now come to light, for I +have reasons to know that there are widespread rumours as to the +death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott which tend to make the matter even +more terrible than the truth. +It was early in April in the year ' that I woke one morning to +find Sherlock Holmes standing, fully dressed, by the side of my +bed. He was a late riser, as a rule, and as the clock on the +mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarterpast seven, I +blinked up at him in some surprise, and perhaps just a little +resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits. +"Very sorry to knock you up, Watson," said he, "but it's the +common lot this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she +retorted upon me, and I on you." +"What is it, thena fire?" +"No a client. It seems that a young lady has arrived in a +considerable state of excitement, who insists upon seeing me. She +is waiting now in the sittingroom. Now, when young ladies wander +about the metropolis at this hour of the morning, and knock +sleepy people up out of their beds, I presume that it is +something very pressing which they have to communicate. Should it +prove to be an interesting case, you would, I am sure, wish to +follow it from the outset. I thought, at any rate, that I should +call you and give you the chance." +"My dear fellow, I would not miss it for anything." +I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his +professional investigations, and in admiring the rapid +deductions, as swift as intuitions, and yet always founded on a +logical basis with which he unravelled the problems which were +submitted to him. I rapidly threw on my clothes and was ready in +a few minutes to accompany my friend down to the sittingroom. A +lady dressed in black and heavily veiled, who had been sitting in +the window, rose as we entered. +"Goodmorning, madam," said Holmes cheerily. "My name is Sherlock +Holmes. This is my intimate friend and associate, Dr. Watson, +before whom you can speak as freely as before myself. Ha I am +glad to see that Mrs. Hudson has had the good sense to light the +fire. Pray draw up to it, and I shall order you a cup of hot +coffee, for I observe that you are shivering." +"It is not cold which makes me shiver," said the woman in a low +voice, changing her seat as requested. +"What, then?" +"It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror." She raised her veil as +she spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a pitiable +state of agitation, her face all drawn and grey, with restless +frightened eyes, like those of some hunted animal. Her features +and figure were those of a woman of thirty, but her hair was shot +with premature grey, and her expression was weary and haggard. +Sherlock Holmes ran her over with one of his quick, +allcomprehensive glances. +"You must not fear," said he soothingly, bending forward and +patting her forearm. "We shall soon set matters right, I have no +doubt. You have come in by train this morning, I see." +"You know me, then?" +"No, but I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm +of your left glove. You must have started early, and yet you had +a good drive in a dogcart, along heavy roads, before you reached +the station." +The lady gave a violent start and stared in bewilderment at my +companion. +"There is no mystery, my dear madam," said he, smiling. "The left +arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less than seven +places. The marks are perfectly fresh. There is no vehicle save a +dogcart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you +sit on the lefthand side of the driver." +"Whatever your reasons may be, you are perfectly correct," said +she. "I started from home before six, reached Leatherhead at +twenty past, and came in by the first train to Waterloo. Sir, I +can stand this strain no longer I shall go mad if it continues. +I have no one to turn tonone, save only one, who cares for me, +and he, poor fellow, can be of little aid. I have heard of you, +Mr. Holmes I have heard of you from Mrs. Farintosh, whom you +helped in the hour of her sore need. It was from her that I had +your address. Oh, sir, do you not think that you could help me, +too, and at least throw a little light through the dense darkness +which surrounds me? At present it is out of my power to reward +you for your services, but in a month or six weeks I shall be +married, with the control of my own income, and then at least you +shall not find me ungrateful." +Holmes turned to his desk and, unlocking it, drew out a small +casebook, which he consulted. +"Farintosh," said he. "Ah yes, I recall the case it was +concerned with an opal tiara. I think it was before your time, +Watson. I can only say, madam, that I shall be happy to devote +the same care to your case as I did to that of your friend. As to +reward, my profession is its own reward but you are at liberty +to defray whatever expenses I may be put to, at the time which +suits you best. And now I beg that you will lay before us +everything that may help us in forming an opinion upon the +matter." +"Alas" replied our visitor, "the very horror of my situation +lies in the fact that my fears are so vague, and my suspicions +depend so entirely upon small points, which might seem trivial to +another, that even he to whom of all others I have a right to +look for help and advice looks upon all that I tell him about it +as the fancies of a nervous woman. He does not say so, but I can +read it from his soothing answers and averted eyes. But I have +heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold +wickedness of the human heart. You may advise me how to walk amid +the dangers which encompass me." +"I am all attention, madam." +"My name is Helen Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who +is the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in +England, the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of +Surrey." +Holmes nodded his head. "The name is familiar to me," said he. +"The family was at one time among the richest in England, and the +estates extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, +and Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however, four +successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, +and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the +days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, +and the twohundredyearold house, which is itself crushed under +a heavy mortgage. The last squire dragged out his existence +there, living the horrible life of an aristocratic pauper but +his only son, my stepfather, seeing that he must adapt himself to +the new conditions, obtained an advance from a relative, which +enabled him to take a medical degree and went out to Calcutta, +where, by his professional skill and his force of character, he +established a large practice. In a fit of anger, however, caused +by some robberies which had been perpetrated in the house, he +beat his native butler to death and narrowly escaped a capital +sentence. As it was, he suffered a long term of imprisonment and +afterwards returned to England a morose and disappointed man. +"When Dr. Roylott was in India he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner, +the young widow of MajorGeneral Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery. +My sister Julia and I were twins, and we were only two years old +at the time of my mother's remarriage. She had a considerable +sum of moneynot less than pounds a yearand this she +bequeathed to Dr. Roylott entirely while we resided with him, +with a provision that a certain annual sum should be allowed to +each of us in the event of our marriage. Shortly after our return +to England my mother diedshe was killed eight years ago in a +railway accident near Crewe. Dr. Roylott then abandoned his +attempts to establish himself in practice in London and took us +to live with him in the old ancestral house at Stoke Moran. The +money which my mother had left was enough for all our wants, and +there seemed to be no obstacle to our happiness. +"But a terrible change came over our stepfather about this time. +Instead of making friends and exchanging visits with our +neighbours, who had at first been overjoyed to see a Roylott of +Stoke Moran back in the old family seat, he shut himself up in +his house and seldom came out save to indulge in ferocious +quarrels with whoever might cross his path. Violence of temper +approaching to mania has been hereditary in the men of the +family, and in my stepfather's case it had, I believe, been +intensified by his long residence in the tropics. A series of +disgraceful brawls took place, two of which ended in the +policecourt, until at last he became the terror of the village, +and the folks would fly at his approach, for he is a man of +immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in his anger. +"Last week he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet into a +stream, and it was only by paying over all the money which I +could gather together that I was able to avert another public +exposure. He had no friends at all save the wandering gipsies, +and he would give these vagabonds leave to encamp upon the few +acres of bramblecovered land which represent the family estate, +and would accept in return the hospitality of their tents, +wandering away with them sometimes for weeks on end. He has a +passion also for Indian animals, which are sent over to him by a +correspondent, and he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon, +which wander freely over his grounds and are feared by the +villagers almost as much as their master. +"You can imagine from what I say that my poor sister Julia and I +had no great pleasure in our lives. No servant would stay with +us, and for a long time we did all the work of the house. She was +but thirty at the time of her death, and yet her hair had already +begun to whiten, even as mine has." +"Your sister is dead, then?" +"She died just two years ago, and it is of her death that I wish +to speak to you. You can understand that, living the life which I +have described, we were little likely to see anyone of our own +age and position. We had, however, an aunt, my mother's maiden +sister, Miss Honoria Westphail, who lives near Harrow, and we +were occasionally allowed to pay short visits at this lady's +house. Julia went there at Christmas two years ago, and met there +a halfpay major of marines, to whom she became engaged. My +stepfather learned of the engagement when my sister returned and +offered no objection to the marriage but within a fortnight of +the day which had been fixed for the wedding, the terrible event +occurred which has deprived me of my only companion." +Sherlock Holmes had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes +closed and his head sunk in a cushion, but he half opened his +lids now and glanced across at his visitor. +"Pray be precise as to details," said he. +"It is easy for me to be so, for every event of that dreadful +time is seared into my memory. The manorhouse is, as I have +already said, very old, and only one wing is now inhabited. The +bedrooms in this wing are on the ground floor, the sittingrooms +being in the central block of the buildings. Of these bedrooms +the first is Dr. Roylott's, the second my sister's, and the third +my own. There is no communication between them, but they all open +out into the same corridor. Do I make myself plain?" +"Perfectly so." +"The windows of the three rooms open out upon the lawn. That +fatal night Dr. Roylott had gone to his room early, though we +knew that he had not retired to rest, for my sister was troubled +by the smell of the strong Indian cigars which it was his custom +to smoke. She left her room, therefore, and came into mine, where +she sat for some time, chatting about her approaching wedding. At +eleven o'clock she rose to leave me, but she paused at the door +and looked back. +"'Tell me, Helen,' said she, 'have you ever heard anyone whistle +in the dead of the night?' +"'Never,' said I. +"'I suppose that you could not possibly whistle, yourself, in +your sleep?' +"'Certainly not. But why?' +"'Because during the last few nights I have always, about three +in the morning, heard a low, clear whistle. I am a light sleeper, +and it has awakened me. I cannot tell where it came fromperhaps +from the next room, perhaps from the lawn. I thought that I would +just ask you whether you had heard it.' +"'No, I have not. It must be those wretched gipsies in the +plantation.' +"'Very likely. And yet if it were on the lawn, I wonder that you +did not hear it also.' +"'Ah, but I sleep more heavily than you.' +"'Well, it is of no great consequence, at any rate.' She smiled +back at me, closed my door, and a few moments later I heard her +key turn in the lock." +"Indeed," said Holmes. "Was it your custom always to lock +yourselves in at night?" +"Always." +"And why?" +"I think that I mentioned to you that the doctor kept a cheetah +and a baboon. We had no feeling of security unless our doors were +locked." +"Quite so. Pray proceed with your statement." +"I could not sleep that night. A vague feeling of impending +misfortune impressed me. My sister and I, you will recollect, +were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two +souls which are so closely allied. It was a wild night. The wind +was howling outside, and the rain was beating and splashing +against the windows. Suddenly, amid all the hubbub of the gale, +there burst forth the wild scream of a terrified woman. I knew +that it was my sister's voice. I sprang from my bed, wrapped a +shawl round me, and rushed into the corridor. As I opened my door +I seemed to hear a low whistle, such as my sister described, and +a few moments later a clanging sound, as if a mass of metal had +fallen. As I ran down the passage, my sister's door was unlocked, +and revolved slowly upon its hinges. I stared at it +horrorstricken, not knowing what was about to issue from it. By +the light of the corridorlamp I saw my sister appear at the +opening, her face blanched with terror, her hands groping for +help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that of a +drunkard. I ran to her and threw my arms round her, but at that +moment her knees seemed to give way and she fell to the ground. +She writhed as one who is in terrible pain, and her limbs were +dreadfully convulsed. At first I thought that she had not +recognised me, but as I bent over her she suddenly shrieked out +in a voice which I shall never forget, 'Oh, my God Helen It was +the band The speckled band' There was something else which she +would fain have said, and she stabbed with her finger into the +air in the direction of the doctor's room, but a fresh convulsion +seized her and choked her words. I rushed out, calling loudly for +my stepfather, and I met him hastening from his room in his +dressinggown. When he reached my sister's side she was +unconscious, and though he poured brandy down her throat and sent +for medical aid from the village, all efforts were in vain, for +she slowly sank and died without having recovered her +consciousness. Such was the dreadful end of my beloved sister." +"One moment," said Holmes, "are you sure about this whistle and +metallic sound? Could you swear to it?" +"That was what the county coroner asked me at the inquiry. It is +my strong impression that I heard it, and yet, among the crash of +the gale and the creaking of an old house, I may possibly have +been deceived." +"Was your sister dressed?" +"No, she was in her nightdress. In her right hand was found the +charred stump of a match, and in her left a matchbox." +"Showing that she had struck a light and looked about her when +the alarm took place. That is important. And what conclusions did +the coroner come to?" +"He investigated the case with great care, for Dr. Roylott's +conduct had long been notorious in the county, but he was unable +to find any satisfactory cause of death. My evidence showed that +the door had been fastened upon the inner side, and the windows +were blocked by oldfashioned shutters with broad iron bars, +which were secured every night. The walls were carefully sounded, +and were shown to be quite solid all round, and the flooring was +also thoroughly examined, with the same result. The chimney is +wide, but is barred up by four large staples. It is certain, +therefore, that my sister was quite alone when she met her end. +Besides, there were no marks of any violence upon her." +"How about poison?" +"The doctors examined her for it, but without success." +"What do you think that this unfortunate lady died of, then?" +"It is my belief that she died of pure fear and nervous shock, +though what it was that frightened her I cannot imagine." +"Were there gipsies in the plantation at the time?" +"Yes, there are nearly always some there." +"Ah, and what did you gather from this allusion to a banda +speckled band?" +"Sometimes I have thought that it was merely the wild talk of +delirium, sometimes that it may have referred to some band of +people, perhaps to these very gipsies in the plantation. I do not +know whether the spotted handkerchiefs which so many of them wear +over their heads might have suggested the strange adjective which +she used." +Holmes shook his head like a man who is far from being satisfied. +"These are very deep waters," said he "pray go on with your +narrative." +"Two years have passed since then, and my life has been until +lately lonelier than ever. A month ago, however, a dear friend, +whom I have known for many years, has done me the honour to ask +my hand in marriage. His name is ArmitagePercy Armitagethe +second son of Mr. Armitage, of Crane Water, near Reading. My +stepfather has offered no opposition to the match, and we are to +be married in the course of the spring. Two days ago some repairs +were started in the west wing of the building, and my bedroom +wall has been pierced, so that I have had to move into the +chamber in which my sister died, and to sleep in the very bed in +which she slept. Imagine, then, my thrill of terror when last +night, as I lay awake, thinking over her terrible fate, I +suddenly heard in the silence of the night the low whistle which +had been the herald of her own death. I sprang up and lit the +lamp, but nothing was to be seen in the room. I was too shaken to +go to bed again, however, so I dressed, and as soon as it was +daylight I slipped down, got a dogcart at the Crown Inn, which +is opposite, and drove to Leatherhead, from whence I have come on +this morning with the one object of seeing you and asking your +advice." +"You have done wisely," said my friend. "But have you told me +all?" +"Yes, all." +"Miss Roylott, you have not. You are screening your stepfather." +"Why, what do you mean?" +For answer Holmes pushed back the frill of black lace which +fringed the hand that lay upon our visitor's knee. Five little +livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed +upon the white wrist. +"You have been cruelly used," said Holmes. +The lady coloured deeply and covered over her injured wrist. "He +is a hard man," she said, "and perhaps he hardly knows his own +strength." +There was a long silence, during which Holmes leaned his chin +upon his hands and stared into the crackling fire. +"This is a very deep business," he said at last. "There are a +thousand details which I should desire to know before I decide +upon our course of action. Yet we have not a moment to lose. If +we were to come to Stoke Moran today, would it be possible for +us to see over these rooms without the knowledge of your +stepfather?" +"As it happens, he spoke of coming into town today upon some +most important business. It is probable that he will be away all +day, and that there would be nothing to disturb you. We have a +housekeeper now, but she is old and foolish, and I could easily +get her out of the way." +"Excellent. You are not averse to this trip, Watson?" +"By no means." +"Then we shall both come. What are you going to do yourself?" +"I have one or two things which I would wish to do now that I am +in town. But I shall return by the twelve o'clock train, so as to +be there in time for your coming." +"And you may expect us early in the afternoon. I have myself some +small business matters to attend to. Will you not wait and +breakfast?" +"No, I must go. My heart is lightened already since I have +confided my trouble to you. I shall look forward to seeing you +again this afternoon." She dropped her thick black veil over her +face and glided from the room. +"And what do you think of it all, Watson?" asked Sherlock Holmes, +leaning back in his chair. +"It seems to me to be a most dark and sinister business." +"Dark enough and sinister enough." +"Yet if the lady is correct in saying that the flooring and walls +are sound, and that the door, window, and chimney are impassable, +then her sister must have been undoubtedly alone when she met her +mysterious end." +"What becomes, then, of these nocturnal whistles, and what of the +very peculiar words of the dying woman?" +"I cannot think." +"When you combine the ideas of whistles at night, the presence of +a band of gipsies who are on intimate terms with this old doctor, +the fact that we have every reason to believe that the doctor has +an interest in preventing his stepdaughter's marriage, the dying +allusion to a band, and, finally, the fact that Miss Helen Stoner +heard a metallic clang, which might have been caused by one of +those metal bars that secured the shutters falling back into its +place, I think that there is good ground to think that the +mystery may be cleared along those lines." +"But what, then, did the gipsies do?" +"I cannot imagine." +"I see many objections to any such theory." +"And so do I. It is precisely for that reason that we are going +to Stoke Moran this day. I want to see whether the objections are +fatal, or if they may be explained away. But what in the name of +the devil" +The ejaculation had been drawn from my companion by the fact that +our door had been suddenly dashed open, and that a huge man had +framed himself in the aperture. His costume was a peculiar +mixture of the professional and of the agricultural, having a +black tophat, a long frockcoat, and a pair of high gaiters, +with a huntingcrop swinging in his hand. So tall was he that his +hat actually brushed the cross bar of the doorway, and his +breadth seemed to span it across from side to side. A large face, +seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and +marked with every evil passion, was turned from one to the other +of us, while his deepset, bileshot eyes, and his high, thin, +fleshless nose, gave him somewhat the resemblance to a fierce old +bird of prey. +"Which of you is Holmes?" asked this apparition. +"My name, sir but you have the advantage of me," said my +companion quietly. +"I am Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran." +"Indeed, Doctor," said Holmes blandly. "Pray take a seat." +"I will do nothing of the kind. My stepdaughter has been here. I +have traced her. What has she been saying to you?" +"It is a little cold for the time of the year," said Holmes. +"What has she been saying to you?" screamed the old man +furiously. +"But I have heard that the crocuses promise well," continued my +companion imperturbably. +"Ha You put me off, do you?" said our new visitor, taking a step +forward and shaking his huntingcrop. "I know you, you scoundrel +I have heard of you before. You are Holmes, the meddler." +My friend smiled. +"Holmes, the busybody" +His smile broadened. +"Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jackinoffice" +Holmes chuckled heartily. "Your conversation is most +entertaining," said he. "When you go out close the door, for +there is a decided draught." +"I will go when I have said my say. Don't you dare to meddle with +my affairs. I know that Miss Stoner has been here. I traced her +I am a dangerous man to fall foul of See here." He stepped +swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with +his huge brown hands. +"See that you keep yourself out of my grip," he snarled, and +hurling the twisted poker into the fireplace he strode out of the +room. +"He seems a very amiable person," said Holmes, laughing. "I am +not quite so bulky, but if he had remained I might have shown him +that my grip was not much more feeble than his own." As he spoke +he picked up the steel poker and, with a sudden effort, +straightened it out again. +"Fancy his having the insolence to confound me with the official +detective force This incident gives zest to our investigation, +however, and I only trust that our little friend will not suffer +from her imprudence in allowing this brute to trace her. And now, +Watson, we shall order breakfast, and afterwards I shall walk +down to Doctors' Commons, where I hope to get some data which may +help us in this matter." +It was nearly one o'clock when Sherlock Holmes returned from his +excursion. He held in his hand a sheet of blue paper, scrawled +over with notes and figures. +"I have seen the will of the deceased wife," said he. "To +determine its exact meaning I have been obliged to work out the +present prices of the investments with which it is concerned. The +total income, which at the time of the wife's death was little +short of pounds, is now, through the fall in agricultural +prices, not more than pounds. Each daughter can claim an +income of pounds, in case of marriage. It is evident, +therefore, that if both girls had married, this beauty would have +had a mere pittance, while even one of them would cripple him to +a very serious extent. My morning's work has not been wasted, +since it has proved that he has the very strongest motives for +standing in the way of anything of the sort. And now, Watson, +this is too serious for dawdling, especially as the old man is +aware that we are interesting ourselves in his affairs so if you +are ready, we shall call a cab and drive to Waterloo. I should be +very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your +pocket. An Eley's No. is an excellent argument with gentlemen +who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a toothbrush +are, I think, all that we need." +At Waterloo we were fortunate in catching a train for +Leatherhead, where we hired a trap at the station inn and drove +for four or five miles through the lovely Surrey lanes. It was a +perfect day, with a bright sun and a few fleecy clouds in the +heavens. The trees and wayside hedges were just throwing out +their first green shoots, and the air was full of the pleasant +smell of the moist earth. To me at least there was a strange +contrast between the sweet promise of the spring and this +sinister quest upon which we were engaged. My companion sat in +the front of the trap, his arms folded, his hat pulled down over +his eyes, and his chin sunk upon his breast, buried in the +deepest thought. Suddenly, however, he started, tapped me on the +shoulder, and pointed over the meadows. +"Look there" said he. +A heavily timbered park stretched up in a gentle slope, +thickening into a grove at the highest point. From amid the +branches there jutted out the grey gables and high rooftree of a +very old mansion. +"Stoke Moran?" said he. +"Yes, sir, that be the house of Dr. Grimesby Roylott," remarked +the driver. +"There is some building going on there," said Holmes "that is +where we are going." +"There's the village," said the driver, pointing to a cluster of +roofs some distance to the left "but if you want to get to the +house, you'll find it shorter to get over this stile, and so by +the footpath over the fields. There it is, where the lady is +walking." +"And the lady, I fancy, is Miss Stoner," observed Holmes, shading +his eyes. "Yes, I think we had better do as you suggest." +We got off, paid our fare, and the trap rattled back on its way +to Leatherhead. +"I thought it as well," said Holmes as we climbed the stile, +"that this fellow should think we had come here as architects, or +on some definite business. It may stop his gossip. +Goodafternoon, Miss Stoner. You see that we have been as good as +our word." +Our client of the morning had hurried forward to meet us with a +face which spoke her joy. "I have been waiting so eagerly for +you," she cried, shaking hands with us warmly. "All has turned +out splendidly. Dr. Roylott has gone to town, and it is unlikely +that he will be back before evening." +"We have had the pleasure of making the doctor's acquaintance," +said Holmes, and in a few words he sketched out what had +occurred. Miss Stoner turned white to the lips as she listened. +"Good heavens" she cried, "he has followed me, then." +"So it appears." +"He is so cunning that I never know when I am safe from him. What +will he say when he returns?" +"He must guard himself, for he may find that there is someone +more cunning than himself upon his track. You must lock yourself +up from him tonight. If he is violent, we shall take you away to +your aunt's at Harrow. Now, we must make the best use of our +time, so kindly take us at once to the rooms which we are to +examine." +The building was of grey, lichenblotched stone, with a high +central portion and two curving wings, like the claws of a crab, +thrown out on each side. In one of these wings the windows were +broken and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partly +caved in, a picture of ruin. The central portion was in little +better repair, but the righthand block was comparatively modern, +and the blinds in the windows, with the blue smoke curling up +from the chimneys, showed that this was where the family resided. +Some scaffolding had been erected against the end wall, and the +stonework had been broken into, but there were no signs of any +workmen at the moment of our visit. Holmes walked slowly up and +down the illtrimmed lawn and examined with deep attention the +outsides of the windows. +"This, I take it, belongs to the room in which you used to sleep, +the centre one to your sister's, and the one next to the main +building to Dr. Roylott's chamber?" +"Exactly so. But I am now sleeping in the middle one." +"Pending the alterations, as I understand. By the way, there does +not seem to be any very pressing need for repairs at that end +wall." +"There were none. I believe that it was an excuse to move me from +my room." +"Ah that is suggestive. Now, on the other side of this narrow +wing runs the corridor from which these three rooms open. There +are windows in it, of course?" +"Yes, but very small ones. Too narrow for anyone to pass +through." +"As you both locked your doors at night, your rooms were +unapproachable from that side. Now, would you have the kindness +to go into your room and bar your shutters?" +Miss Stoner did so, and Holmes, after a careful examination +through the open window, endeavoured in every way to force the +shutter open, but without success. There was no slit through +which a knife could be passed to raise the bar. Then with his +lens he tested the hinges, but they were of solid iron, built +firmly into the massive masonry. "Hum" said he, scratching his +chin in some perplexity, "my theory certainly presents some +difficulties. No one could pass these shutters if they were +bolted. Well, we shall see if the inside throws any light upon +the matter." +A small side door led into the whitewashed corridor from which +the three bedrooms opened. Holmes refused to examine the third +chamber, so we passed at once to the second, that in which Miss +Stoner was now sleeping, and in which her sister had met with her +fate. It was a homely little room, with a low ceiling and a +gaping fireplace, after the fashion of old countryhouses. A +brown chest of drawers stood in one corner, a narrow +whitecounterpaned bed in another, and a dressingtable on the +lefthand side of the window. These articles, with two small +wickerwork chairs, made up all the furniture in the room save +for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The boards round and +the panelling of the walls were of brown, wormeaten oak, so old +and discoloured that it may have dated from the original building +of the house. Holmes drew one of the chairs into a corner and sat +silent, while his eyes travelled round and round and up and down, +taking in every detail of the apartment. +"Where does that bell communicate with?" he asked at last +pointing to a thick bellrope which hung down beside the bed, the +tassel actually lying upon the pillow. +"It goes to the housekeeper's room." +"It looks newer than the other things?" +"Yes, it was only put there a couple of years ago." +"Your sister asked for it, I suppose?" +"No, I never heard of her using it. We used always to get what we +wanted for ourselves." +"Indeed, it seemed unnecessary to put so nice a bellpull there. +You will excuse me for a few minutes while I satisfy myself as to +this floor." He threw himself down upon his face with his lens in +his hand and crawled swiftly backward and forward, examining +minutely the cracks between the boards. Then he did the same with +the woodwork with which the chamber was panelled. Finally he +walked over to the bed and spent some time in staring at it and +in running his eye up and down the wall. Finally he took the +bellrope in his hand and gave it a brisk tug. +"Why, it's a dummy," said he. +"Won't it ring?" +"No, it is not even attached to a wire. This is very interesting. +You can see now that it is fastened to a hook just above where +the little opening for the ventilator is." +"How very absurd I never noticed that before." +"Very strange" muttered Holmes, pulling at the rope. "There are +one or two very singular points about this room. For example, +what a fool a builder must be to open a ventilator into another +room, when, with the same trouble, he might have communicated +with the outside air" +"That is also quite modern," said the lady. +"Done about the same time as the bellrope?" remarked Holmes. +"Yes, there were several little changes carried out about that +time." +"They seem to have been of a most interesting characterdummy +bellropes, and ventilators which do not ventilate. With your +permission, Miss Stoner, we shall now carry our researches into +the inner apartment." +Dr. Grimesby Roylott's chamber was larger than that of his +stepdaughter, but was as plainly furnished. A campbed, a small +wooden shelf full of books, mostly of a technical character, an +armchair beside the bed, a plain wooden chair against the wall, a +round table, and a large iron safe were the principal things +which met the eye. Holmes walked slowly round and examined each +and all of them with the keenest interest. +"What's in here?" he asked, tapping the safe. +"My stepfather's business papers." +"Oh you have seen inside, then?" +"Only once, some years ago. I remember that it was full of +papers." +"There isn't a cat in it, for example?" +"No. What a strange idea" +"Well, look at this" He took up a small saucer of milk which +stood on the top of it. +"No we don't keep a cat. But there is a cheetah and a baboon." +"Ah, yes, of course Well, a cheetah is just a big cat, and yet a +saucer of milk does not go very far in satisfying its wants, I +daresay. There is one point which I should wish to determine." He +squatted down in front of the wooden chair and examined the seat +of it with the greatest attention. +"Thank you. That is quite settled," said he, rising and putting +his lens in his pocket. "Hullo Here is something interesting" +The object which had caught his eye was a small dog lash hung on +one corner of the bed. The lash, however, was curled upon itself +and tied so as to make a loop of whipcord. +"What do you make of that, Watson?" +"It's a common enough lash. But I don't know why it should be +tied." +"That is not quite so common, is it? Ah, me it's a wicked world, +and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst +of all. I think that I have seen enough now, Miss Stoner, and +with your permission we shall walk out upon the lawn." +I had never seen my friend's face so grim or his brow so dark as +it was when we turned from the scene of this investigation. We +had walked several times up and down the lawn, neither Miss +Stoner nor myself liking to break in upon his thoughts before he +roused himself from his reverie. +"It is very essential, Miss Stoner," said he, "that you should +absolutely follow my advice in every respect." +"I shall most certainly do so." +"The matter is too serious for any hesitation. Your life may +depend upon your compliance." +"I assure you that I am in your hands." +"In the first place, both my friend and I must spend the night in +your room." +Both Miss Stoner and I gazed at him in astonishment. +"Yes, it must be so. Let me explain. I believe that that is the +village inn over there?" +"Yes, that is the Crown." +"Very good. Your windows would be visible from there?" +"Certainly." +"You must confine yourself to your room, on pretence of a +headache, when your stepfather comes back. Then when you hear him +retire for the night, you must open the shutters of your window, +undo the hasp, put your lamp there as a signal to us, and then +withdraw quietly with everything which you are likely to want +into the room which you used to occupy. I have no doubt that, in +spite of the repairs, you could manage there for one night." +"Oh, yes, easily." +"The rest you will leave in our hands." +"But what will you do?" +"We shall spend the night in your room, and we shall investigate +the cause of this noise which has disturbed you." +"I believe, Mr. Holmes, that you have already made up your mind," +said Miss Stoner, laying her hand upon my companion's sleeve. +"Perhaps I have." +"Then, for pity's sake, tell me what was the cause of my sister's +death." +"I should prefer to have clearer proofs before I speak." +"You can at least tell me whether my own thought is correct, and +if she died from some sudden fright." +"No, I do not think so. I think that there was probably some more +tangible cause. And now, Miss Stoner, we must leave you for if +Dr. Roylott returned and saw us our journey would be in vain. +Goodbye, and be brave, for if you will do what I have told you, +you may rest assured that we shall soon drive away the dangers +that threaten you." +Sherlock Holmes and I had no difficulty in engaging a bedroom and +sittingroom at the Crown Inn. They were on the upper floor, and +from our window we could command a view of the avenue gate, and +of the inhabited wing of Stoke Moran Manor House. At dusk we saw +Dr. Grimesby Roylott drive past, his huge form looming up beside +the little figure of the lad who drove him. The boy had some +slight difficulty in undoing the heavy iron gates, and we heard +the hoarse roar of the doctor's voice and saw the fury with which +he shook his clinched fists at him. The trap drove on, and a few +minutes later we saw a sudden light spring up among the trees as +the lamp was lit in one of the sittingrooms. +"Do you know, Watson," said Holmes as we sat together in the +gathering darkness, "I have really some scruples as to taking you +tonight. There is a distinct element of danger." +"Can I be of assistance?" +"Your presence might be invaluable." +"Then I shall certainly come." +"It is very kind of you." +"You speak of danger. You have evidently seen more in these rooms +than was visible to me." +"No, but I fancy that I may have deduced a little more. I imagine +that you saw all that I did." +"I saw nothing remarkable save the bellrope, and what purpose +that could answer I confess is more than I can imagine." +"You saw the ventilator, too?" +"Yes, but I do not think that it is such a very unusual thing to +have a small opening between two rooms. It was so small that a +rat could hardly pass through." +"I knew that we should find a ventilator before ever we came to +Stoke Moran." +"My dear Holmes" +"Oh, yes, I did. You remember in her statement she said that her +sister could smell Dr. Roylott's cigar. Now, of course that +suggested at once that there must be a communication between the +two rooms. It could only be a small one, or it would have been +remarked upon at the coroner's inquiry. I deduced a ventilator." +"But what harm can there be in that?" +"Well, there is at least a curious coincidence of dates. A +ventilator is made, a cord is hung, and a lady who sleeps in the +bed dies. Does not that strike you?" +"I cannot as yet see any connection." +"Did you observe anything very peculiar about that bed?" +"No." +"It was clamped to the floor. Did you ever see a bed fastened +like that before?" +"I cannot say that I have." +"The lady could not move her bed. It must always be in the same +relative position to the ventilator and to the ropeor so we may +call it, since it was clearly never meant for a bellpull." +"Holmes," I cried, "I seem to see dimly what you are hinting at. +We are only just in time to prevent some subtle and horrible +crime." +"Subtle enough and horrible enough. When a doctor does go wrong +he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge. +Palmer and Pritchard were among the heads of their profession. +This man strikes even deeper, but I think, Watson, that we shall +be able to strike deeper still. But we shall have horrors enough +before the night is over for goodness' sake let us have a quiet +pipe and turn our minds for a few hours to something more +cheerful." +About nine o'clock the light among the trees was extinguished, +and all was dark in the direction of the Manor House. Two hours +passed slowly away, and then, suddenly, just at the stroke of +eleven, a single bright light shone out right in front of us. +"That is our signal," said Holmes, springing to his feet "it +comes from the middle window." +As we passed out he exchanged a few words with the landlord, +explaining that we were going on a late visit to an acquaintance, +and that it was possible that we might spend the night there. A +moment later we were out on the dark road, a chill wind blowing +in our faces, and one yellow light twinkling in front of us +through the gloom to guide us on our sombre errand. +There was little difficulty in entering the grounds, for +unrepaired breaches gaped in the old park wall. Making our way +among the trees, we reached the lawn, crossed it, and were about +to enter through the window when out from a clump of laurel +bushes there darted what seemed to be a hideous and distorted +child, who threw itself upon the grass with writhing limbs and +then ran swiftly across the lawn into the darkness. +"My God" I whispered "did you see it?" +Holmes was for the moment as startled as I. His hand closed like +a vice upon my wrist in his agitation. Then he broke into a low +laugh and put his lips to my ear. +"It is a nice household," he murmured. "That is the baboon." +I had forgotten the strange pets which the doctor affected. There +was a cheetah, too perhaps we might find it upon our shoulders +at any moment. I confess that I felt easier in my mind when, +after following Holmes' example and slipping off my shoes, I +found myself inside the bedroom. My companion noiselessly closed +the shutters, moved the lamp onto the table, and cast his eyes +round the room. All was as we had seen it in the daytime. Then +creeping up to me and making a trumpet of his hand, he whispered +into my ear again so gently that it was all that I could do to +distinguish the words +"The least sound would be fatal to our plans." +I nodded to show that I had heard. +"We must sit without light. He would see it through the +ventilator." +I nodded again. +"Do not go asleep your very life may depend upon it. Have your +pistol ready in case we should need it. I will sit on the side of +the bed, and you in that chair." +I took out my revolver and laid it on the corner of the table. +Holmes had brought up a long thin cane, and this he placed upon +the bed beside him. By it he laid the box of matches and the +stump of a candle. Then he turned down the lamp, and we were left +in darkness. +How shall I ever forget that dreadful vigil? I could not hear a +sound, not even the drawing of a breath, and yet I knew that my +companion sat openeyed, within a few feet of me, in the same +state of nervous tension in which I was myself. The shutters cut +off the least ray of light, and we waited in absolute darkness. +From outside came the occasional cry of a nightbird, and once at +our very window a long drawn catlike whine, which told us that +the cheetah was indeed at liberty. Far away we could hear the +deep tones of the parish clock, which boomed out every quarter of +an hour. How long they seemed, those quarters Twelve struck, and +one and two and three, and still we sat waiting silently for +whatever might befall. +Suddenly there was the momentary gleam of a light up in the +direction of the ventilator, which vanished immediately, but was +succeeded by a strong smell of burning oil and heated metal. +Someone in the next room had lit a darklantern. I heard a gentle +sound of movement, and then all was silent once more, though the +smell grew stronger. For half an hour I sat with straining ears. +Then suddenly another sound became audiblea very gentle, +soothing sound, like that of a small jet of steam escaping +continually from a kettle. The instant that we heard it, Holmes +sprang from the bed, struck a match, and lashed furiously with +his cane at the bellpull. +"You see it, Watson?" he yelled. "You see it?" +But I saw nothing. At the moment when Holmes struck the light I +heard a low, clear whistle, but the sudden glare flashing into my +weary eyes made it impossible for me to tell what it was at which +my friend lashed so savagely. I could, however, see that his face +was deadly pale and filled with horror and loathing. He had +ceased to strike and was gazing up at the ventilator when +suddenly there broke from the silence of the night the most +horrible cry to which I have ever listened. It swelled up louder +and louder, a hoarse yell of pain and fear and anger all mingled +in the one dreadful shriek. They say that away down in the +village, and even in the distant parsonage, that cry raised the +sleepers from their beds. It struck cold to our hearts, and I +stood gazing at Holmes, and he at me, until the last echoes of it +had died away into the silence from which it rose. +"What can it mean?" I gasped. +"It means that it is all over," Holmes answered. "And perhaps, +after all, it is for the best. Take your pistol, and we will +enter Dr. Roylott's room." +With a grave face he lit the lamp and led the way down the +corridor. Twice he struck at the chamber door without any reply +from within. Then he turned the handle and entered, I at his +heels, with the cocked pistol in my hand. +It was a singular sight which met our eyes. On the table stood a +darklantern with the shutter half open, throwing a brilliant +beam of light upon the iron safe, the door of which was ajar. +Beside this table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott +clad in a long grey dressinggown, his bare ankles protruding +beneath, and his feet thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers. +Across his lap lay the short stock with the long lash which we +had noticed during the day. His chin was cocked upward and his +eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the +ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow band, with +brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly round his +head. As we entered he made neither sound nor motion. +"The band the speckled band" whispered Holmes. +I took a step forward. In an instant his strange headgear began +to move, and there reared itself from among his hair the squat +diamondshaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent. +"It is a swamp adder" cried Holmes "the deadliest snake in +India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten. Violence +does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls +into the pit which he digs for another. Let us thrust this +creature back into its den, and we can then remove Miss Stoner to +some place of shelter and let the county police know what has +happened." +As he spoke he drew the dogwhip swiftly from the dead man's lap, +and throwing the noose round the reptile's neck he drew it from +its horrid perch and, carrying it at arm's length, threw it into +the iron safe, which he closed upon it. +Such are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of +Stoke Moran. It is not necessary that I should prolong a +narrative which has already run to too great a length by telling +how we broke the sad news to the terrified girl, how we conveyed +her by the morning train to the care of her good aunt at Harrow, +of how the slow process of official inquiry came to the +conclusion that the doctor met his fate while indiscreetly +playing with a dangerous pet. The little which I had yet to learn +of the case was told me by Sherlock Holmes as we travelled back +next day. +"I had," said he, "come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which +shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from +insufficient data. The presence of the gipsies, and the use of +the word 'band,' which was used by the poor girl, no doubt, to +explain the appearance which she had caught a hurried glimpse of +by the light of her match, were sufficient to put me upon an +entirely wrong scent. I can only claim the merit that I instantly +reconsidered my position when, however, it became clear to me +that whatever danger threatened an occupant of the room could not +come either from the window or the door. My attention was +speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to this +ventilator, and to the bellrope which hung down to the bed. The +discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to +the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was +there as a bridge for something passing through the hole and +coming to the bed. The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me, +and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the doctor was +furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I +was probably on the right track. The idea of using a form of +poison which could not possibly be discovered by any chemical +test was just such a one as would occur to a clever and ruthless +man who had had an Eastern training. The rapidity with which such +a poison would take effect would also, from his point of view, be +an advantage. It would be a sharpeyed coroner, indeed, who could +distinguish the two little dark punctures which would show where +the poison fangs had done their work. Then I thought of the +whistle. Of course he must recall the snake before the morning +light revealed it to the victim. He had trained it, probably by +the use of the milk which we saw, to return to him when summoned. +He would put it through this ventilator at the hour that he +thought best, with the certainty that it would crawl down the +rope and land on the bed. It might or might not bite the +occupant, perhaps she might escape every night for a week, but +sooner or later she must fall a victim. +"I had come to these conclusions before ever I had entered his +room. An inspection of his chair showed me that he had been in +the habit of standing on it, which of course would be necessary +in order that he should reach the ventilator. The sight of the +safe, the saucer of milk, and the loop of whipcord were enough to +finally dispel any doubts which may have remained. The metallic +clang heard by Miss Stoner was obviously caused by her stepfather +hastily closing the door of his safe upon its terrible occupant. +Having once made up my mind, you know the steps which I took in +order to put the matter to the proof. I heard the creature hiss +as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit the +light and attacked it." +"With the result of driving it through the ventilator." +"And also with the result of causing it to turn upon its master +at the other side. Some of the blows of my cane came home and +roused its snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person +it saw. In this way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. +Grimesby Roylott's death, and I cannot say that it is likely to +weigh very heavily upon my conscience." +IX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER'S THUMB +Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr. +Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy, +there were only two which I was the means of introducing to his +noticethat of Mr. Hatherley's thumb, and that of Colonel +Warburton's madness. Of these the latter may have afforded a +finer field for an acute and original observer, but the other was +so strange in its inception and so dramatic in its details that +it may be the more worthy of being placed upon record, even if it +gave my friend fewer openings for those deductive methods of +reasoning by which he achieved such remarkable results. The story +has, I believe, been told more than once in the newspapers, but, +like all such narratives, its effect is much less striking when +set forth en bloc in a single halfcolumn of print than when the +facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery clears +gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which leads +on to the complete truth. At the time the circumstances made a +deep impression upon me, and the lapse of two years has hardly +served to weaken the effect. +It was in the summer of ', not long after my marriage, that the +events occurred which I am now about to summarise. I had returned +to civil practice and had finally abandoned Holmes in his Baker +Street rooms, although I continually visited him and occasionally +even persuaded him to forgo his Bohemian habits so far as to come +and visit us. My practice had steadily increased, and as I +happened to live at no very great distance from Paddington +Station, I got a few patients from among the officials. One of +these, whom I had cured of a painful and lingering disease, was +never weary of advertising my virtues and of endeavouring to send +me on every sufferer over whom he might have any influence. +One morning, at a little before seven o'clock, I was awakened by +the maid tapping at the door to announce that two men had come +from Paddington and were waiting in the consultingroom. I +dressed hurriedly, for I knew by experience that railway cases +were seldom trivial, and hastened downstairs. As I descended, my +old ally, the guard, came out of the room and closed the door +tightly behind him. +"I've got him here," he whispered, jerking his thumb over his +shoulder "he's all right." +"What is it, then?" I asked, for his manner suggested that it was +some strange creature which he had caged up in my room. +"It's a new patient," he whispered. "I thought I'd bring him +round myself then he couldn't slip away. There he is, all safe +and sound. I must go now, Doctor I have my dooties, just the +same as you." And off he went, this trusty tout, without even +giving me time to thank him. +I entered my consultingroom and found a gentleman seated by the +table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed with a +soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of +his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all +over with bloodstains. He was young, not more than +fiveandtwenty, I should say, with a strong, masculine face but +he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who +was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his +strength of mind to control. +"I am sorry to knock you up so early, Doctor," said he, "but I +have had a very serious accident during the night. I came in by +train this morning, and on inquiring at Paddington as to where I +might find a doctor, a worthy fellow very kindly escorted me +here. I gave the maid a card, but I see that she has left it upon +the sidetable." +I took it up and glanced at it. "Mr. Victor Hatherley, hydraulic +engineer, A, Victoria Street rd floor." That was the name, +style, and abode of my morning visitor. "I regret that I have +kept you waiting," said I, sitting down in my librarychair. "You +are fresh from a night journey, I understand, which is in itself +a monotonous occupation." +"Oh, my night could not be called monotonous," said he, and +laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, +leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical +instincts rose up against that laugh. +"Stop it" I cried "pull yourself together" and I poured out +some water from a caraffe. +It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical +outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis +is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very +weary and palelooking. +"I have been making a fool of myself," he gasped. +"Not at all. Drink this." I dashed some brandy into the water, +and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks. +"That's better" said he. "And now, Doctor, perhaps you would +kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb +used to be." +He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even +my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four +protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the +thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from +the roots. +"Good heavens" I cried, "this is a terrible injury. It must have +bled considerably." +"Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must +have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that +it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very +tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig." +"Excellent You should have been a surgeon." +"It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own +province." +"This has been done," said I, examining the wound, "by a very +heavy and sharp instrument." +"A thing like a cleaver," said he. +"An accident, I presume?" +"By no means." +"What a murderous attack?" +"Very murderous indeed." +"You horrify me." +I sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered +it over with cotton wadding and carbolised bandages. He lay back +without wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time. +"How is that?" I asked when I had finished. +"Capital Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man. +I was very weak, but I have had a good deal to go through." +"Perhaps you had better not speak of the matter. It is evidently +trying to your nerves." +"Oh, no, not now. I shall have to tell my tale to the police +but, between ourselves, if it were not for the convincing +evidence of this wound of mine, I should be surprised if they +believed my statement, for it is a very extraordinary one, and I +have not much in the way of proof with which to back it up and, +even if they believe me, the clues which I can give them are so +vague that it is a question whether justice will be done." +"Ha" cried I, "if it is anything in the nature of a problem +which you desire to see solved, I should strongly recommend you +to come to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, before you go to the +official police." +"Oh, I have heard of that fellow," answered my visitor, "and I +should be very glad if he would take the matter up, though of +course I must use the official police as well. Would you give me +an introduction to him?" +"I'll do better. I'll take you round to him myself." +"I should be immensely obliged to you." +"We'll call a cab and go together. We shall just be in time to +have a little breakfast with him. Do you feel equal to it?" +"Yes I shall not feel easy until I have told my story." +"Then my servant will call a cab, and I shall be with you in an +instant." I rushed upstairs, explained the matter shortly to my +wife, and in five minutes was inside a hansom, driving with my +new acquaintance to Baker Street. +Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his +sittingroom in his dressinggown, reading the agony column of The +Times and smoking his beforebreakfast pipe, which was composed +of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day +before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the +mantelpiece. He received us in his quietly genial fashion, +ordered fresh rashers and eggs, and joined us in a hearty meal. +When it was concluded he settled our new acquaintance upon the +sofa, placed a pillow beneath his head, and laid a glass of +brandy and water within his reach. +"It is easy to see that your experience has been no common one, +Mr. Hatherley," said he. "Pray, lie down there and make yourself +absolutely at home. Tell us what you can, but stop when you are +tired and keep up your strength with a little stimulant." +"Thank you," said my patient. "but I have felt another man since +the doctor bandaged me, and I think that your breakfast has +completed the cure. I shall take up as little of your valuable +time as possible, so I shall start at once upon my peculiar +experiences." +Holmes sat in his big armchair with the weary, heavylidded +expression which veiled his keen and eager nature, while I sat +opposite to him, and we listened in silence to the strange story +which our visitor detailed to us. +"You must know," said he, "that I am an orphan and a bachelor, +residing alone in lodgings in London. By profession I am a +hydraulic engineer, and I have had considerable experience of my +work during the seven years that I was apprenticed to Venner +Matheson, the wellknown firm, of Greenwich. Two years ago, +having served my time, and having also come into a fair sum of +money through my poor father's death, I determined to start in +business for myself and took professional chambers in Victoria +Street. +"I suppose that everyone finds his first independent start in +business a dreary experience. To me it has been exceptionally so. +During two years I have had three consultations and one small +job, and that is absolutely all that my profession has brought +me. My gross takings amount to pounds s. Every day, from +nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, I waited in my +little den, until at last my heart began to sink, and I came to +believe that I should never have any practice at all. +"Yesterday, however, just as I was thinking of leaving the +office, my clerk entered to say there was a gentleman waiting who +wished to see me upon business. He brought up a card, too, with +the name of 'Colonel Lysander Stark' engraved upon it. Close at +his heels came the colonel himself, a man rather over the middle +size, but of an exceeding thinness. I do not think that I have +ever seen so thin a man. His whole face sharpened away into nose +and chin, and the skin of his cheeks was drawn quite tense over +his outstanding bones. Yet this emaciation seemed to be his +natural habit, and due to no disease, for his eye was bright, his +step brisk, and his bearing assured. He was plainly but neatly +dressed, and his age, I should judge, would be nearer forty than +thirty. +"'Mr. Hatherley?' said he, with something of a German accent. +'You have been recommended to me, Mr. Hatherley, as being a man +who is not only proficient in his profession but is also discreet +and capable of preserving a secret.' +"I bowed, feeling as flattered as any young man would at such an +address. 'May I ask who it was who gave me so good a character?' +"'Well, perhaps it is better that I should not tell you that just +at this moment. I have it from the same source that you are both +an orphan and a bachelor and are residing alone in London.' +"'That is quite correct,' I answered 'but you will excuse me if +I say that I cannot see how all this bears upon my professional +qualifications. I understand that it was on a professional matter +that you wished to speak to me?' +"'Undoubtedly so. But you will find that all I say is really to +the point. I have a professional commission for you, but absolute +secrecy is quite essentialabsolute secrecy, you understand, and +of course we may expect that more from a man who is alone than +from one who lives in the bosom of his family.' +"'If I promise to keep a secret,' said I, 'you may absolutely +depend upon my doing so.' +"He looked very hard at me as I spoke, and it seemed to me that I +had never seen so suspicious and questioning an eye. +"'Do you promise, then?' said he at last. +"'Yes, I promise.' +"'Absolute and complete silence before, during, and after? No +reference to the matter at all, either in word or writing?' +"'I have already given you my word.' +"'Very good.' He suddenly sprang up, and darting like lightning +across the room he flung open the door. The passage outside was +empty. +"'That's all right,' said he, coming back. 'I know that clerks are +sometimes curious as to their master's affairs. Now we can talk +in safety.' He drew up his chair very close to mine and began to +stare at me again with the same questioning and thoughtful look. +"A feeling of repulsion, and of something akin to fear had begun +to rise within me at the strange antics of this fleshless man. +Even my dread of losing a client could not restrain me from +showing my impatience. +"'I beg that you will state your business, sir,' said I 'my time +is of value.' Heaven forgive me for that last sentence, but the +words came to my lips. +"'How would fifty guineas for a night's work suit you?' he asked. +"'Most admirably.' +"'I say a night's work, but an hour's would be nearer the mark. I +simply want your opinion about a hydraulic stamping machine which +has got out of gear. If you show us what is wrong we shall soon +set it right ourselves. What do you think of such a commission as +that?' +"'The work appears to be light and the pay munificent.' +"'Precisely so. We shall want you to come tonight by the last +train.' +"'Where to?' +"'To Eyford, in Berkshire. It is a little place near the borders +of Oxfordshire, and within seven miles of Reading. There is a +train from Paddington which would bring you there at about +"'Very good.' +"'I shall come down in a carriage to meet you.' +"'There is a drive, then?' +"'Yes, our little place is quite out in the country. It is a good +seven miles from Eyford Station.' +"'Then we can hardly get there before midnight. I suppose there +would be no chance of a train back. I should be compelled to stop +the night.' +"'Yes, we could easily give you a shakedown.' +"'That is very awkward. Could I not come at some more convenient +hour?' +"'We have judged it best that you should come late. It is to +recompense you for any inconvenience that we are paying to you, a +young and unknown man, a fee which would buy an opinion from the +very heads of your profession. Still, of course, if you would +like to draw out of the business, there is plenty of time to do +so.' +"I thought of the fifty guineas, and of how very useful they +would be to me. 'Not at all,' said I, 'I shall be very happy to +accommodate myself to your wishes. I should like, however, to +understand a little more clearly what it is that you wish me to +do.' +"'Quite so. It is very natural that the pledge of secrecy which +we have exacted from you should have aroused your curiosity. I +have no wish to commit you to anything without your having it all +laid before you. I suppose that we are absolutely safe from +eavesdroppers?' +"'Entirely.' +"'Then the matter stands thus. You are probably aware that +fuller'searth is a valuable product, and that it is only found +in one or two places in England?' +"'I have heard so.' +"'Some little time ago I bought a small placea very small +placewithin ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to +discover that there was a deposit of fuller'searth in one of my +fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a +comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two +very much larger ones upon the right and leftboth of them, +however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were +absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was +quite as valuable as a goldmine. Naturally, it was to my +interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, +but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I +took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they +suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little +deposit and that in this way we should earn the money which would +enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been +doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we +erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already +explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the +subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it +once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our +little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts +came out, it would be goodbye to any chance of getting these +fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you +promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are +going to Eyford tonight. I hope that I make it all plain?' +"'I quite follow you,' said I. 'The only point which I could not +quite understand was what use you could make of a hydraulic press +in excavating fuller'searth, which, as I understand, is dug out +like gravel from a pit.' +"'Ah' said he carelessly, 'we have our own process. We compress +the earth into bricks, so as to remove them without revealing +what they are. But that is a mere detail. I have taken you fully +into my confidence now, Mr. Hatherley, and I have shown you how I +trust you.' He rose as he spoke. 'I shall expect you, then, at +Eyford at .' +"'I shall certainly be there.' +"'And not a word to a soul.' He looked at me with a last long, +questioning gaze, and then, pressing my hand in a cold, dank +grasp, he hurried from the room. +"Well, when I came to think it all over in cool blood I was very +much astonished, as you may both think, at this sudden commission +which had been intrusted to me. On the one hand, of course, I was +glad, for the fee was at least tenfold what I should have asked +had I set a price upon my own services, and it was possible that +this order might lead to other ones. On the other hand, the face +and manner of my patron had made an unpleasant impression upon +me, and I could not think that his explanation of the +fuller'searth was sufficient to explain the necessity for my +coming at midnight, and his extreme anxiety lest I should tell +anyone of my errand. However, I threw all fears to the winds, ate +a hearty supper, drove to Paddington, and started off, having +obeyed to the letter the injunction as to holding my tongue. +"At Reading I had to change not only my carriage but my station. +However, I was in time for the last train to Eyford, and I +reached the little dimlit station after eleven o'clock. I was the +only passenger who got out there, and there was no one upon the +platform save a single sleepy porter with a lantern. As I passed +out through the wicket gate, however, I found my acquaintance of +the morning waiting in the shadow upon the other side. Without a +word he grasped my arm and hurried me into a carriage, the door +of which was standing open. He drew up the windows on either +side, tapped on the woodwork, and away we went as fast as the +horse could go." +"One horse?" interjected Holmes. +"Yes, only one." +"Did you observe the colour?" +"Yes, I saw it by the sidelights when I was stepping into the +carriage. It was a chestnut." +"Tiredlooking or fresh?" +"Oh, fresh and glossy." +"Thank you. I am sorry to have interrupted you. Pray continue +your most interesting statement." +"Away we went then, and we drove for at least an hour. Colonel +Lysander Stark had said that it was only seven miles, but I +should think, from the rate that we seemed to go, and from the +time that we took, that it must have been nearer twelve. He sat +at my side in silence all the time, and I was aware, more than +once when I glanced in his direction, that he was looking at me +with great intensity. The country roads seem to be not very good +in that part of the world, for we lurched and jolted terribly. I +tried to look out of the windows to see something of where we +were, but they were made of frosted glass, and I could make out +nothing save the occasional bright blur of a passing light. Now +and then I hazarded some remark to break the monotony of the +journey, but the colonel answered only in monosyllables, and the +conversation soon flagged. At last, however, the bumping of the +road was exchanged for the crisp smoothness of a graveldrive, +and the carriage came to a stand. Colonel Lysander Stark sprang +out, and, as I followed after him, pulled me swiftly into a porch +which gaped in front of us. We stepped, as it were, right out of +the carriage and into the hall, so that I failed to catch the +most fleeting glance of the front of the house. The instant that +I had crossed the threshold the door slammed heavily behind us, +and I heard faintly the rattle of the wheels as the carriage +drove away. +"It was pitch dark inside the house, and the colonel fumbled +about looking for matches and muttering under his breath. +Suddenly a door opened at the other end of the passage, and a +long, golden bar of light shot out in our direction. It grew +broader, and a woman appeared with a lamp in her hand, which she +held above her head, pushing her face forward and peering at us. +I could see that she was pretty, and from the gloss with which +the light shone upon her dark dress I knew that it was a rich +material. She spoke a few words in a foreign tongue in a tone as +though asking a question, and when my companion answered in a +gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly +fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered +something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room +from whence she had come, he walked towards me again with the +lamp in his hand. +"'Perhaps you will have the kindness to wait in this room for a +few minutes,' said he, throwing open another door. It was a +quiet, little, plainly furnished room, with a round table in the +centre, on which several German books were scattered. Colonel +Stark laid down the lamp on the top of a harmonium beside the +door. 'I shall not keep you waiting an instant,' said he, and +vanished into the darkness. +"I glanced at the books upon the table, and in spite of my +ignorance of German I could see that two of them were treatises +on science, the others being volumes of poetry. Then I walked +across to the window, hoping that I might catch some glimpse of +the countryside, but an oak shutter, heavily barred, was folded +across it. It was a wonderfully silent house. There was an old +clock ticking loudly somewhere in the passage, but otherwise +everything was deadly still. A vague feeling of uneasiness began +to steal over me. Who were these German people, and what were +they doing living in this strange, outoftheway place? And +where was the place? I was ten miles or so from Eyford, that was +all I knew, but whether north, south, east, or west I had no +idea. For that matter, Reading, and possibly other large towns, +were within that radius, so the place might not be so secluded, +after all. Yet it was quite certain, from the absolute stillness, +that we were in the country. I paced up and down the room, +humming a tune under my breath to keep up my spirits and feeling +that I was thoroughly earning my fiftyguinea fee. +"Suddenly, without any preliminary sound in the midst of the +utter stillness, the door of my room swung slowly open. The woman +was standing in the aperture, the darkness of the hall behind +her, the yellow light from my lamp beating upon her eager and +beautiful face. I could see at a glance that she was sick with +fear, and the sight sent a chill to my own heart. She held up one +shaking finger to warn me to be silent, and she shot a few +whispered words of broken English at me, her eyes glancing back, +like those of a frightened horse, into the gloom behind her. +"'I would go,' said she, trying hard, as it seemed to me, to +speak calmly 'I would go. I should not stay here. There is no +good for you to do.' +"'But, madam,' said I, 'I have not yet done what I came for. I +cannot possibly leave until I have seen the machine.' +"'It is not worth your while to wait,' she went on. 'You can pass +through the door no one hinders.' And then, seeing that I smiled +and shook my head, she suddenly threw aside her constraint and +made a step forward, with her hands wrung together. 'For the love +of Heaven' she whispered, 'get away from here before it is too +late' +"But I am somewhat headstrong by nature, and the more ready to +engage in an affair when there is some obstacle in the way. I +thought of my fiftyguinea fee, of my wearisome journey, and of +the unpleasant night which seemed to be before me. Was it all to +go for nothing? Why should I slink away without having carried +out my commission, and without the payment which was my due? This +woman might, for all I knew, be a monomaniac. With a stout +bearing, therefore, though her manner had shaken me more than I +cared to confess, I still shook my head and declared my intention +of remaining where I was. She was about to renew her entreaties +when a door slammed overhead, and the sound of several footsteps +was heard upon the stairs. She listened for an instant, threw up +her hands with a despairing gesture, and vanished as suddenly and +as noiselessly as she had come. +"The newcomers were Colonel Lysander Stark and a short thick man +with a chinchilla beard growing out of the creases of his double +chin, who was introduced to me as Mr. Ferguson. +"'This is my secretary and manager,' said the colonel. 'By the +way, I was under the impression that I left this door shut just +now. I fear that you have felt the draught.' +"'On the contrary,' said I, 'I opened the door myself because I +felt the room to be a little close.' +"He shot one of his suspicious looks at me. 'Perhaps we had +better proceed to business, then,' said he. 'Mr. Ferguson and I +will take you up to see the machine.' +"'I had better put my hat on, I suppose.' +"'Oh, no, it is in the house.' +"'What, you dig fuller'searth in the house?' +"'No, no. This is only where we compress it. But never mind that. +All we wish you to do is to examine the machine and to let us +know what is wrong with it.' +"We went upstairs together, the colonel first with the lamp, the +fat manager and I behind him. It was a labyrinth of an old house, +with corridors, passages, narrow winding staircases, and little +low doors, the thresholds of which were hollowed out by the +generations who had crossed them. There were no carpets and no +signs of any furniture above the ground floor, while the plaster +was peeling off the walls, and the damp was breaking through in +green, unhealthy blotches. I tried to put on as unconcerned an +air as possible, but I had not forgotten the warnings of the +lady, even though I disregarded them, and I kept a keen eye upon +my two companions. Ferguson appeared to be a morose and silent +man, but I could see from the little that he said that he was at +least a fellowcountryman. +"Colonel Lysander Stark stopped at last before a low door, which +he unlocked. Within was a small, square room, in which the three +of us could hardly get at one time. Ferguson remained outside, +and the colonel ushered me in. +"'We are now,' said he, 'actually within the hydraulic press, and +it would be a particularly unpleasant thing for us if anyone were +to turn it on. The ceiling of this small chamber is really the +end of the descending piston, and it comes down with the force of +many tons upon this metal floor. There are small lateral columns +of water outside which receive the force, and which transmit and +multiply it in the manner which is familiar to you. The machine +goes readily enough, but there is some stiffness in the working +of it, and it has lost a little of its force. Perhaps you will +have the goodness to look it over and to show us how we can set +it right.' +"I took the lamp from him, and I examined the machine very +thoroughly. It was indeed a gigantic one, and capable of +exercising enormous pressure. When I passed outside, however, and +pressed down the levers which controlled it, I knew at once by +the whishing sound that there was a slight leakage, which allowed +a regurgitation of water through one of the side cylinders. An +examination showed that one of the indiarubber bands which was +round the head of a drivingrod had shrunk so as not quite to +fill the socket along which it worked. This was clearly the cause +of the loss of power, and I pointed it out to my companions, who +followed my remarks very carefully and asked several practical +questions as to how they should proceed to set it right. When I +had made it clear to them, I returned to the main chamber of the +machine and took a good look at it to satisfy my own curiosity. +It was obvious at a glance that the story of the fuller'searth +was the merest fabrication, for it would be absurd to suppose +that so powerful an engine could be designed for so inadequate a +purpose. The walls were of wood, but the floor consisted of a +large iron trough, and when I came to examine it I could see a +crust of metallic deposit all over it. I had stooped and was +scraping at this to see exactly what it was when I heard a +muttered exclamation in German and saw the cadaverous face of the +colonel looking down at me. +"'What are you doing there?' he asked. +"I felt angry at having been tricked by so elaborate a story as +that which he had told me. 'I was admiring your fuller'searth,' +said I 'I think that I should be better able to advise you as to +your machine if I knew what the exact purpose was for which it +was used.' +"The instant that I uttered the words I regretted the rashness of +my speech. His face set hard, and a baleful light sprang up in +his grey eyes. +"'Very well,' said he, 'you shall know all about the machine.' He +took a step backward, slammed the little door, and turned the key +in the lock. I rushed towards it and pulled at the handle, but it +was quite secure, and did not give in the least to my kicks and +shoves. 'Hullo' I yelled. 'Hullo Colonel Let me out' +"And then suddenly in the silence I heard a sound which sent my +heart into my mouth. It was the clank of the levers and the swish +of the leaking cylinder. He had set the engine at work. The lamp +still stood upon the floor where I had placed it when examining +the trough. By its light I saw that the black ceiling was coming +down upon me, slowly, jerkily, but, as none knew better than +myself, with a force which must within a minute grind me to a +shapeless pulp. I threw myself, screaming, against the door, and +dragged with my nails at the lock. I implored the colonel to let +me out, but the remorseless clanking of the levers drowned my +cries. The ceiling was only a foot or two above my head, and with +my hand upraised I could feel its hard, rough surface. Then it +flashed through my mind that the pain of my death would depend +very much upon the position in which I met it. If I lay on my +face the weight would come upon my spine, and I shuddered to +think of that dreadful snap. Easier the other way, perhaps and +yet, had I the nerve to lie and look up at that deadly black +shadow wavering down upon me? Already I was unable to stand +erect, when my eye caught something which brought a gush of hope +back to my heart. +"I have said that though the floor and ceiling were of iron, the +walls were of wood. As I gave a last hurried glance around, I saw +a thin line of yellow light between two of the boards, which +broadened and broadened as a small panel was pushed backward. For +an instant I could hardly believe that here was indeed a door +which led away from death. The next instant I threw myself +through, and lay halffainting upon the other side. The panel had +closed again behind me, but the crash of the lamp, and a few +moments afterwards the clang of the two slabs of metal, told me +how narrow had been my escape. +"I was recalled to myself by a frantic plucking at my wrist, and +I found myself lying upon the stone floor of a narrow corridor, +while a woman bent over me and tugged at me with her left hand, +while she held a candle in her right. It was the same good friend +whose warning I had so foolishly rejected. +"'Come come' she cried breathlessly. 'They will be here in a +moment. They will see that you are not there. Oh, do not waste +the soprecious time, but come' +"This time, at least, I did not scorn her advice. I staggered to +my feet and ran with her along the corridor and down a winding +stair. The latter led to another broad passage, and just as we +reached it we heard the sound of running feet and the shouting of +two voices, one answering the other from the floor on which we +were and from the one beneath. My guide stopped and looked about +her like one who is at her wit's end. Then she threw open a door +which led into a bedroom, through the window of which the moon +was shining brightly. +"'It is your only chance,' said she. 'It is high, but it may be +that you can jump it.' +"As she spoke a light sprang into view at the further end of the +passage, and I saw the lean figure of Colonel Lysander Stark +rushing forward with a lantern in one hand and a weapon like a +butcher's cleaver in the other. I rushed across the bedroom, +flung open the window, and looked out. How quiet and sweet and +wholesome the garden looked in the moonlight, and it could not be +more than thirty feet down. I clambered out upon the sill, but I +hesitated to jump until I should have heard what passed between +my saviour and the ruffian who pursued me. If she were illused, +then at any risks I was determined to go back to her assistance. +The thought had hardly flashed through my mind before he was at +the door, pushing his way past her but she threw her arms round +him and tried to hold him back. +"'Fritz Fritz' she cried in English, 'remember your promise +after the last time. You said it should not be again. He will be +silent Oh, he will be silent' +"'You are mad, Elise' he shouted, struggling to break away from +her. 'You will be the ruin of us. He has seen too much. Let me +pass, I say' He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the +window, cut at me with his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and +was hanging by the hands to the sill, when his blow fell. I was +conscious of a dull pain, my grip loosened, and I fell into the +garden below. +"I was shaken but not hurt by the fall so I picked myself up and +rushed off among the bushes as hard as I could run, for I +understood that I was far from being out of danger yet. Suddenly, +however, as I ran, a deadly dizziness and sickness came over me. +I glanced down at my hand, which was throbbing painfully, and +then, for the first time, saw that my thumb had been cut off and +that the blood was pouring from my wound. I endeavoured to tie my +handkerchief round it, but there came a sudden buzzing in my +ears, and next moment I fell in a dead faint among the +rosebushes. +"How long I remained unconscious I cannot tell. It must have been +a very long time, for the moon had sunk, and a bright morning was +breaking when I came to myself. My clothes were all sodden with +dew, and my coatsleeve was drenched with blood from my wounded +thumb. The smarting of it recalled in an instant all the +particulars of my night's adventure, and I sprang to my feet with +the feeling that I might hardly yet be safe from my pursuers. But +to my astonishment, when I came to look round me, neither house +nor garden were to be seen. I had been lying in an angle of the +hedge close by the highroad, and just a little lower down was a +long building, which proved, upon my approaching it, to be the +very station at which I had arrived upon the previous night. Were +it not for the ugly wound upon my hand, all that had passed +during those dreadful hours might have been an evil dream. +"Half dazed, I went into the station and asked about the morning +train. There would be one to Reading in less than an hour. The +same porter was on duty, I found, as had been there when I +arrived. I inquired of him whether he had ever heard of Colonel +Lysander Stark. The name was strange to him. Had he observed a +carriage the night before waiting for me? No, he had not. Was +there a policestation anywhere near? There was one about three +miles off. +"It was too far for me to go, weak and ill as I was. I determined +to wait until I got back to town before telling my story to the +police. It was a little past six when I arrived, so I went first +to have my wound dressed, and then the doctor was kind enough to +bring me along here. I put the case into your hands and shall do +exactly what you advise." +We both sat in silence for some little time after listening to +this extraordinary narrative. Then Sherlock Holmes pulled down +from the shelf one of the ponderous commonplace books in which he +placed his cuttings. +"Here is an advertisement which will interest you," said he. "It +appeared in all the papers about a year ago. Listen to this +'Lost, on the th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged +twentysix, a hydraulic engineer. Left his lodgings at ten +o'clock at night, and has not been heard of since. Was +dressed in,' etc., etc. Ha That represents the last time that +the colonel needed to have his machine overhauled, I fancy." +"Good heavens" cried my patient. "Then that explains what the +girl said." +"Undoubtedly. It is quite clear that the colonel was a cool and +desperate man, who was absolutely determined that nothing should +stand in the way of his little game, like those outandout +pirates who will leave no survivor from a captured ship. Well, +every moment now is precious, so if you feel equal to it we shall +go down to Scotland Yard at once as a preliminary to starting for +Eyford." +Some three hours or so afterwards we were all in the train +together, bound from Reading to the little Berkshire village. +There were Sherlock Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector +Bradstreet, of Scotland Yard, a plainclothes man, and myself. +Bradstreet had spread an ordnance map of the county out upon the +seat and was busy with his compasses drawing a circle with Eyford +for its centre. +"There you are," said he. "That circle is drawn at a radius of +ten miles from the village. The place we want must be somewhere +near that line. You said ten miles, I think, sir." +"It was an hour's good drive." +"And you think that they brought you back all that way when you +were unconscious?" +"They must have done so. I have a confused memory, too, of having +been lifted and conveyed somewhere." +"What I cannot understand," said I, "is why they should have +spared you when they found you lying fainting in the garden. +Perhaps the villain was softened by the woman's entreaties." +"I hardly think that likely. I never saw a more inexorable face +in my life." +"Oh, we shall soon clear up all that," said Bradstreet. "Well, I +have drawn my circle, and I only wish I knew at what point upon +it the folk that we are in search of are to be found." +"I think I could lay my finger on it," said Holmes quietly. +"Really, now" cried the inspector, "you have formed your +opinion Come, now, we shall see who agrees with you. I say it is +south, for the country is more deserted there." +"And I say east," said my patient. +"I am for west," remarked the plainclothes man. "There are +several quiet little villages up there." +"And I am for north," said I, "because there are no hills there, +and our friend says that he did not notice the carriage go up +any." +"Come," cried the inspector, laughing "it's a very pretty +diversity of opinion. We have boxed the compass among us. Who do +you give your casting vote to?" +"You are all wrong." +"But we can't all be." +"Oh, yes, you can. This is my point." He placed his finger in the +centre of the circle. "This is where we shall find them." +"But the twelvemile drive?" gasped Hatherley. +"Six out and six back. Nothing simpler. You say yourself that the +horse was fresh and glossy when you got in. How could it be that +if it had gone twelve miles over heavy roads?" +"Indeed, it is a likely ruse enough," observed Bradstreet +thoughtfully. "Of course there can be no doubt as to the nature +of this gang." +"None at all," said Holmes. "They are coiners on a large scale, +and have used the machine to form the amalgam which has taken the +place of silver." +"We have known for some time that a clever gang was at work," +said the inspector. "They have been turning out halfcrowns by +the thousand. We even traced them as far as Reading, but could +get no farther, for they had covered their traces in a way that +showed that they were very old hands. But now, thanks to this +lucky chance, I think that we have got them right enough." +But the inspector was mistaken, for those criminals were not +destined to fall into the hands of justice. As we rolled into +Eyford Station we saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed +up from behind a small clump of trees in the neighbourhood and +hung like an immense ostrich feather over the landscape. +"A house on fire?" asked Bradstreet as the train steamed off +again on its way. +"Yes, sir" said the stationmaster. +"When did it break out?" +"I hear that it was during the night, sir, but it has got worse, +and the whole place is in a blaze." +"Whose house is it?" +"Dr. Becher's." +"Tell me," broke in the engineer, "is Dr. Becher a German, very +thin, with a long, sharp nose?" +The stationmaster laughed heartily. "No, sir, Dr. Becher is an +Englishman, and there isn't a man in the parish who has a +betterlined waistcoat. But he has a gentleman staying with him, +a patient, as I understand, who is a foreigner, and he looks as +if a little good Berkshire beef would do him no harm." +The stationmaster had not finished his speech before we were all +hastening in the direction of the fire. The road topped a low +hill, and there was a great widespread whitewashed building in +front of us, spouting fire at every chink and window, while in +the garden in front three fireengines were vainly striving to +keep the flames under. +"That's it" cried Hatherley, in intense excitement. "There is +the graveldrive, and there are the rosebushes where I lay. That +second window is the one that I jumped from." +"Well, at least," said Holmes, "you have had your revenge upon +them. There can be no question that it was your oillamp which, +when it was crushed in the press, set fire to the wooden walls, +though no doubt they were too excited in the chase after you to +observe it at the time. Now keep your eyes open in this crowd for +your friends of last night, though I very much fear that they are +a good hundred miles off by now." +And Holmes' fears came to be realised, for from that day to this +no word has ever been heard either of the beautiful woman, the +sinister German, or the morose Englishman. Early that morning a +peasant had met a cart containing several people and some very +bulky boxes driving rapidly in the direction of Reading, but +there all traces of the fugitives disappeared, and even Holmes' +ingenuity failed ever to discover the least clue as to their +whereabouts. +The firemen had been much perturbed at the strange arrangements +which they had found within, and still more so by discovering a +newly severed human thumb upon a windowsill of the second floor. +About sunset, however, their efforts were at last successful, and +they subdued the flames, but not before the roof had fallen in, +and the whole place been reduced to such absolute ruin that, save +some twisted cylinders and iron piping, not a trace remained of +the machinery which had cost our unfortunate acquaintance so +dearly. Large masses of nickel and of tin were discovered stored +in an outhouse, but no coins were to be found, which may have +explained the presence of those bulky boxes which have been +already referred to. +How our hydraulic engineer had been conveyed from the garden to +the spot where he recovered his senses might have remained +forever a mystery were it not for the soft mould, which told us a +very plain tale. He had evidently been carried down by two +persons, one of whom had remarkably small feet and the other +unusually large ones. On the whole, it was most probable that the +silent Englishman, being less bold or less murderous than his +companion, had assisted the woman to bear the unconscious man out +of the way of danger. +"Well," said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return +once more to London, "it has been a pretty business for me I +have lost my thumb and I have lost a fiftyguinea fee, and what +have I gained?" +"Experience," said Holmes, laughing. "Indirectly it may be of +value, you know you have only to put it into words to gain the +reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your +existence." +X. THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR +The Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have +long ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles +in which the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have +eclipsed it, and their more piquant details have drawn the +gossips away from this fouryearold drama. As I have reason to +believe, however, that the full facts have never been revealed to +the general public, and as my friend Sherlock Holmes had a +considerable share in clearing the matter up, I feel that no +memoir of him would be complete without some little sketch of +this remarkable episode. +It was a few weeks before my own marriage, during the days when I +was still sharing rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, that he came +home from an afternoon stroll to find a letter on the table +waiting for him. I had remained indoors all day, for the weather +had taken a sudden turn to rain, with high autumnal winds, and +the Jezail bullet which I had brought back in one of my limbs as +a relic of my Afghan campaign throbbed with dull persistence. +With my body in one easychair and my legs upon another, I had +surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers until at last, +saturated with the news of the day, I tossed them all aside and +lay listless, watching the huge crest and monogram upon the +envelope upon the table and wondering lazily who my friend's +noble correspondent could be. +"Here is a very fashionable epistle," I remarked as he entered. +"Your morning letters, if I remember right, were from a +fishmonger and a tidewaiter." +"Yes, my correspondence has certainly the charm of variety," he +answered, smiling, "and the humbler are usually the more +interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social +summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie." +He broke the seal and glanced over the contents. +"Oh, come, it may prove to be something of interest, after all." +"Not social, then?" +"No, distinctly professional." +"And from a noble client?" +"One of the highest in England." +"My dear fellow, I congratulate you." +"I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my +client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his +case. It is just possible, however, that that also may not be +wanting in this new investigation. You have been reading the +papers diligently of late, have you not?" +"It looks like it," said I ruefully, pointing to a huge bundle in +the corner. "I have had nothing else to do." +"It is fortunate, for you will perhaps be able to post me up. I +read nothing except the criminal news and the agony column. The +latter is always instructive. But if you have followed recent +events so closely you must have read about Lord St. Simon and his +wedding?" +"Oh, yes, with the deepest interest." +"That is well. The letter which I hold in my hand is from Lord +St. Simon. I will read it to you, and in return you must turn +over these papers and let me have whatever bears upon the matter. +This is what he says +"'MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMESLord Backwater tells me that I +may place implicit reliance upon your judgment and discretion. I +have determined, therefore, to call upon you and to consult you +in reference to the very painful event which has occurred in +connection with my wedding. Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, is +acting already in the matter, but he assures me that he sees no +objection to your cooperation, and that he even thinks that +it might be of some assistance. I will call at four o'clock in +the afternoon, and, should you have any other engagement at that +time, I hope that you will postpone it, as this matter is of +paramount importance. Yours faithfully, ST. SIMON.' +"It is dated from Grosvenor Mansions, written with a quill pen, +and the noble lord has had the misfortune to get a smear of ink +upon the outer side of his right little finger," remarked Holmes +as he folded up the epistle. +"He says four o'clock. It is three now. He will be here in an +hour." +"Then I have just time, with your assistance, to get clear upon +the subject. Turn over those papers and arrange the extracts in +their order of time, while I take a glance as to who our client +is." He picked a redcovered volume from a line of books of +reference beside the mantelpiece. "Here he is," said he, sitting +down and flattening it out upon his knee. "'Lord Robert Walsingham +de Vere St. Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral.' Hum 'Arms +Azure, three caltrops in chief over a fess sable. Born in .' +He's fortyone years of age, which is mature for marriage. Was +UnderSecretary for the colonies in a late administration. The +Duke, his father, was at one time Secretary for Foreign Affairs. +They inherit Plantagenet blood by direct descent, and Tudor on +the distaff side. Ha Well, there is nothing very instructive in +all this. I think that I must turn to you Watson, for something +more solid." +"I have very little difficulty in finding what I want," said I, +"for the facts are quite recent, and the matter struck me as +remarkable. I feared to refer them to you, however, as I knew +that you had an inquiry on hand and that you disliked the +intrusion of other matters." +"Oh, you mean the little problem of the Grosvenor Square +furniture van. That is quite cleared up nowthough, indeed, it +was obvious from the first. Pray give me the results of your +newspaper selections." +"Here is the first notice which I can find. It is in the personal +column of the Morning Post, and dates, as you see, some weeks +back 'A marriage has been arranged,' it says, 'and will, if +rumour is correct, very shortly take place, between Lord Robert +St. Simon, second son of the Duke of Balmoral, and Miss Hatty +Doran, the only daughter of Aloysius Doran. Esq., of San +Francisco, Cal., U.S.A.' That is all." +"Terse and to the point," remarked Holmes, stretching his long, +thin legs towards the fire. +"There was a paragraph amplifying this in one of the society +papers of the same week. Ah, here it is 'There will soon be a +call for protection in the marriage market, for the present +freetrade principle appears to tell heavily against our home +product. One by one the management of the noble houses of Great +Britain is passing into the hands of our fair cousins from across +the Atlantic. An important addition has been made during the last +week to the list of the prizes which have been borne away by +these charming invaders. Lord St. Simon, who has shown himself +for over twenty years proof against the little god's arrows, has +now definitely announced his approaching marriage with Miss Hatty +Doran, the fascinating daughter of a California millionaire. Miss +Doran, whose graceful figure and striking face attracted much +attention at the Westbury House festivities, is an only child, +and it is currently reported that her dowry will run to +considerably over the six figures, with expectancies for the +future. As it is an open secret that the Duke of Balmoral has +been compelled to sell his pictures within the last few years, +and as Lord St. Simon has no property of his own save the small +estate of Birchmoor, it is obvious that the Californian heiress +is not the only gainer by an alliance which will enable her to +make the easy and common transition from a Republican lady to a +British peeress.'" +"Anything else?" asked Holmes, yawning. +"Oh, yes plenty. Then there is another note in the Morning Post +to say that the marriage would be an absolutely quiet one, that it +would be at St. George's, Hanover Square, that only half a dozen +intimate friends would be invited, and that the party would +return to the furnished house at Lancaster Gate which has been +taken by Mr. Aloysius Doran. Two days laterthat is, on +Wednesday lastthere is a curt announcement that the wedding had +taken place, and that the honeymoon would be passed at Lord +Backwater's place, near Petersfield. Those are all the notices +which appeared before the disappearance of the bride." +"Before the what?" asked Holmes with a start. +"The vanishing of the lady." +"When did she vanish, then?" +"At the wedding breakfast." +"Indeed. This is more interesting than it promised to be quite +dramatic, in fact." +"Yes it struck me as being a little out of the common." +"They often vanish before the ceremony, and occasionally during +the honeymoon but I cannot call to mind anything quite so prompt +as this. Pray let me have the details." +"I warn you that they are very incomplete." +"Perhaps we may make them less so." +"Such as they are, they are set forth in a single article of a +morning paper of yesterday, which I will read to you. It is +headed, 'Singular Occurrence at a Fashionable Wedding' +"'The family of Lord Robert St. Simon has been thrown into the +greatest consternation by the strange and painful episodes which +have taken place in connection with his wedding. The ceremony, as +shortly announced in the papers of yesterday, occurred on the +previous morning but it is only now that it has been possible to +confirm the strange rumours which have been so persistently +floating about. In spite of the attempts of the friends to hush +the matter up, so much public attention has now been drawn to it +that no good purpose can be served by affecting to disregard what +is a common subject for conversation. +"'The ceremony, which was performed at St. George's, Hanover +Square, was a very quiet one, no one being present save the +father of the bride, Mr. Aloysius Doran, the Duchess of Balmoral, +Lord Backwater, Lord Eustace and Lady Clara St. Simon the +younger brother and sister of the bridegroom, and Lady Alicia +Whittington. The whole party proceeded afterwards to the house of +Mr. Aloysius Doran, at Lancaster Gate, where breakfast had been +prepared. It appears that some little trouble was caused by a +woman, whose name has not been ascertained, who endeavoured to +force her way into the house after the bridal party, alleging +that she had some claim upon Lord St. Simon. It was only after a +painful and prolonged scene that she was ejected by the butler +and the footman. The bride, who had fortunately entered the house +before this unpleasant interruption, had sat down to breakfast +with the rest, when she complained of a sudden indisposition and +retired to her room. Her prolonged absence having caused some +comment, her father followed her, but learned from her maid that +she had only come up to her chamber for an instant, caught up an +ulster and bonnet, and hurried down to the passage. One of the +footmen declared that he had seen a lady leave the house thus +apparelled, but had refused to credit that it was his mistress, +believing her to be with the company. On ascertaining that his +daughter had disappeared, Mr. Aloysius Doran, in conjunction with +the bridegroom, instantly put themselves in communication with +the police, and very energetic inquiries are being made, which +will probably result in a speedy clearing up of this very +singular business. Up to a late hour last night, however, nothing +had transpired as to the whereabouts of the missing lady. There +are rumours of foul play in the matter, and it is said that the +police have caused the arrest of the woman who had caused the +original disturbance, in the belief that, from jealousy or some +other motive, she may have been concerned in the strange +disappearance of the bride.'" +"And is that all?" +"Only one little item in another of the morning papers, but it is +a suggestive one." +"And it is" +"That Miss Flora Millar, the lady who had caused the disturbance, +has actually been arrested. It appears that she was formerly a +danseuse at the Allegro, and that she has known the bridegroom +for some years. There are no further particulars, and the whole +case is in your hands nowso far as it has been set forth in the +public press." +"And an exceedingly interesting case it appears to be. I would +not have missed it for worlds. But there is a ring at the bell, +Watson, and as the clock makes it a few minutes after four, I +have no doubt that this will prove to be our noble client. Do not +dream of going, Watson, for I very much prefer having a witness, +if only as a check to my own memory." +"Lord Robert St. Simon," announced our pageboy, throwing open +the door. A gentleman entered, with a pleasant, cultured face, +highnosed and pale, with something perhaps of petulance about +the mouth, and with the steady, wellopened eye of a man whose +pleasant lot it had ever been to command and to be obeyed. His +manner was brisk, and yet his general appearance gave an undue +impression of age, for he had a slight forward stoop and a little +bend of the knees as he walked. His hair, too, as he swept off +his very curlybrimmed hat, was grizzled round the edges and thin +upon the top. As to his dress, it was careful to the verge of +foppishness, with high collar, black frockcoat, white waistcoat, +yellow gloves, patentleather shoes, and lightcoloured gaiters. +He advanced slowly into the room, turning his head from left to +right, and swinging in his right hand the cord which held his +golden eyeglasses. +"Goodday, Lord St. Simon," said Holmes, rising and bowing. "Pray +take the basketchair. This is my friend and colleague, Dr. +Watson. Draw up a little to the fire, and we will talk this +matter over." +"A most painful matter to me, as you can most readily imagine, +Mr. Holmes. I have been cut to the quick. I understand that you +have already managed several delicate cases of this sort, sir, +though I presume that they were hardly from the same class of +society." +"No, I am descending." +"I beg pardon." +"My last client of the sort was a king." +"Oh, really I had no idea. And which king?" +"The King of Scandinavia." +"What Had he lost his wife?" +"You can understand," said Holmes suavely, "that I extend to the +affairs of my other clients the same secrecy which I promise to +you in yours." +"Of course Very right very right I'm sure I beg pardon. As to +my own case, I am ready to give you any information which may +assist you in forming an opinion." +"Thank you. I have already learned all that is in the public +prints, nothing more. I presume that I may take it as correct +this article, for example, as to the disappearance of the bride." +Lord St. Simon glanced over it. "Yes, it is correct, as far as it +goes." +"But it needs a great deal of supplementing before anyone could +offer an opinion. I think that I may arrive at my facts most +directly by questioning you." +"Pray do so." +"When did you first meet Miss Hatty Doran?" +"In San Francisco, a year ago." +"You were travelling in the States?" +"Yes." +"Did you become engaged then?" +"No." +"But you were on a friendly footing?" +"I was amused by her society, and she could see that I was +amused." +"Her father is very rich?" +"He is said to be the richest man on the Pacific slope." +"And how did he make his money?" +"In mining. He had nothing a few years ago. Then he struck gold, +invested it, and came up by leaps and bounds." +"Now, what is your own impression as to the young lady'syour +wife's character?" +The nobleman swung his glasses a little faster and stared down +into the fire. "You see, Mr. Holmes," said he, "my wife was +twenty before her father became a rich man. During that time she +ran free in a mining camp and wandered through woods or +mountains, so that her education has come from Nature rather than +from the schoolmaster. She is what we call in England a tomboy, +with a strong nature, wild and free, unfettered by any sort of +traditions. She is impetuousvolcanic, I was about to say. She +is swift in making up her mind and fearless in carrying out her +resolutions. On the other hand, I would not have given her the +name which I have the honour to bear"he gave a little stately +cough"had not I thought her to be at bottom a noble woman. I +believe that she is capable of heroic selfsacrifice and that +anything dishonourable would be repugnant to her." +"Have you her photograph?" +"I brought this with me." He opened a locket and showed us the +full face of a very lovely woman. It was not a photograph but an +ivory miniature, and the artist had brought out the full effect +of the lustrous black hair, the large dark eyes, and the +exquisite mouth. Holmes gazed long and earnestly at it. Then he +closed the locket and handed it back to Lord St. Simon. +"The young lady came to London, then, and you renewed your +acquaintance?" +"Yes, her father brought her over for this last London season. I +met her several times, became engaged to her, and have now +married her." +"She brought, I understand, a considerable dowry?" +"A fair dowry. Not more than is usual in my family." +"And this, of course, remains to you, since the marriage is a +fait accompli?" +"I really have made no inquiries on the subject." +"Very naturally not. Did you see Miss Doran on the day before the +wedding?" +"Yes." +"Was she in good spirits?" +"Never better. She kept talking of what we should do in our +future lives." +"Indeed That is very interesting. And on the morning of the +wedding?" +"She was as bright as possibleat least until after the +ceremony." +"And did you observe any change in her then?" +"Well, to tell the truth, I saw then the first signs that I had +ever seen that her temper was just a little sharp. The incident +however, was too trivial to relate and can have no possible +bearing upon the case." +"Pray let us have it, for all that." +"Oh, it is childish. She dropped her bouquet as we went towards +the vestry. She was passing the front pew at the time, and it +fell over into the pew. There was a moment's delay, but the +gentleman in the pew handed it up to her again, and it did not +appear to be the worse for the fall. Yet when I spoke to her of +the matter, she answered me abruptly and in the carriage, on our +way home, she seemed absurdly agitated over this trifling cause." +"Indeed You say that there was a gentleman in the pew. Some of +the general public were present, then?" +"Oh, yes. It is impossible to exclude them when the church is +open." +"This gentleman was not one of your wife's friends?" +"No, no I call him a gentleman by courtesy, but he was quite a +commonlooking person. I hardly noticed his appearance. But +really I think that we are wandering rather far from the point." +"Lady St. Simon, then, returned from the wedding in a less +cheerful frame of mind than she had gone to it. What did she do +on reentering her father's house?" +"I saw her in conversation with her maid." +"And who is her maid?" +"Alice is her name. She is an American and came from California +with her." +"A confidential servant?" +"A little too much so. It seemed to me that her mistress allowed +her to take great liberties. Still, of course, in America they +look upon these things in a different way." +"How long did she speak to this Alice?" +"Oh, a few minutes. I had something else to think of." +"You did not overhear what they said?" +"Lady St. Simon said something about 'jumping a claim.' She was +accustomed to use slang of the kind. I have no idea what she +meant." +"American slang is very expressive sometimes. And what did your +wife do when she finished speaking to her maid?" +"She walked into the breakfastroom." +"On your arm?" +"No, alone. She was very independent in little matters like that. +Then, after we had sat down for ten minutes or so, she rose +hurriedly, muttered some words of apology, and left the room. She +never came back." +"But this maid, Alice, as I understand, deposes that she went to +her room, covered her bride's dress with a long ulster, put on a +bonnet, and went out." +"Quite so. And she was afterwards seen walking into Hyde Park in +company with Flora Millar, a woman who is now in custody, and who +had already made a disturbance at Mr. Doran's house that +morning." +"Ah, yes. I should like a few particulars as to this young lady, +and your relations to her." +Lord St. Simon shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. +"We have been on a friendly footing for some yearsI may say on +a very friendly footing. She used to be at the Allegro. I have +not treated her ungenerously, and she had no just cause of +complaint against me, but you know what women are, Mr. Holmes. +Flora was a dear little thing, but exceedingly hotheaded and +devotedly attached to me. She wrote me dreadful letters when she +heard that I was about to be married, and, to tell the truth, the +reason why I had the marriage celebrated so quietly was that I +feared lest there might be a scandal in the church. She came to +Mr. Doran's door just after we returned, and she endeavoured to +push her way in, uttering very abusive expressions towards my +wife, and even threatening her, but I had foreseen the +possibility of something of the sort, and I had two police +fellows there in private clothes, who soon pushed her out again. +She was quiet when she saw that there was no good in making a +row." +"Did your wife hear all this?" +"No, thank goodness, she did not." +"And she was seen walking with this very woman afterwards?" +"Yes. That is what Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, looks upon as +so serious. It is thought that Flora decoyed my wife out and laid +some terrible trap for her." +"Well, it is a possible supposition." +"You think so, too?" +"I did not say a probable one. But you do not yourself look upon +this as likely?" +"I do not think Flora would hurt a fly." +"Still, jealousy is a strange transformer of characters. Pray +what is your own theory as to what took place?" +"Well, really, I came to seek a theory, not to propound one. I +have given you all the facts. Since you ask me, however, I may +say that it has occurred to me as possible that the excitement of +this affair, the consciousness that she had made so immense a +social stride, had the effect of causing some little nervous +disturbance in my wife." +"In short, that she had become suddenly deranged?" +"Well, really, when I consider that she has turned her backI +will not say upon me, but upon so much that many have aspired to +without successI can hardly explain it in any other fashion." +"Well, certainly that is also a conceivable hypothesis," said +Holmes, smiling. "And now, Lord St. Simon, I think that I have +nearly all my data. May I ask whether you were seated at the +breakfasttable so that you could see out of the window?" +"We could see the other side of the road and the Park." +"Quite so. Then I do not think that I need to detain you longer. +I shall communicate with you." +"Should you be fortunate enough to solve this problem," said our +client, rising. +"I have solved it." +"Eh? What was that?" +"I say that I have solved it." +"Where, then, is my wife?" +"That is a detail which I shall speedily supply." +Lord St. Simon shook his head. "I am afraid that it will take +wiser heads than yours or mine," he remarked, and bowing in a +stately, oldfashioned manner he departed. +"It is very good of Lord St. Simon to honour my head by putting +it on a level with his own," said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. "I +think that I shall have a whisky and soda and a cigar after all +this crossquestioning. I had formed my conclusions as to the +case before our client came into the room." +"My dear Holmes" +"I have notes of several similar cases, though none, as I +remarked before, which were quite as prompt. My whole examination +served to turn my conjecture into a certainty. Circumstantial +evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a +trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example." +"But I have heard all that you have heard." +"Without, however, the knowledge of preexisting cases which +serves me so well. There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some +years back, and something on very much the same lines at Munich +the year after the FrancoPrussian War. It is one of these +casesbut, hullo, here is Lestrade Goodafternoon, Lestrade +You will find an extra tumbler upon the sideboard, and there are +cigars in the box." +The official detective was attired in a peajacket and cravat, +which gave him a decidedly nautical appearance, and he carried a +black canvas bag in his hand. With a short greeting he seated +himself and lit the cigar which had been offered to him. +"What's up, then?" asked Holmes with a twinkle in his eye. "You +look dissatisfied." +"And I feel dissatisfied. It is this infernal St. Simon marriage +case. I can make neither head nor tail of the business." +"Really You surprise me." +"Who ever heard of such a mixed affair? Every clue seems to slip +through my fingers. I have been at work upon it all day." +"And very wet it seems to have made you," said Holmes laying his +hand upon the arm of the peajacket. +"Yes, I have been dragging the Serpentine." +"In heaven's name, what for?" +"In search of the body of Lady St. Simon." +Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily. +"Have you dragged the basin of Trafalgar Square fountain?" he +asked. +"Why? What do you mean?" +"Because you have just as good a chance of finding this lady in +the one as in the other." +Lestrade shot an angry glance at my companion. "I suppose you +know all about it," he snarled. +"Well, I have only just heard the facts, but my mind is made up." +"Oh, indeed Then you think that the Serpentine plays no part in +the matter?" +"I think it very unlikely." +"Then perhaps you will kindly explain how it is that we found +this in it?" He opened his bag as he spoke, and tumbled onto the +floor a weddingdress of watered silk, a pair of white satin +shoes and a bride's wreath and veil, all discoloured and soaked +in water. "There," said he, putting a new weddingring upon the +top of the pile. "There is a little nut for you to crack, Master +Holmes." +"Oh, indeed" said my friend, blowing blue rings into the air. +"You dragged them from the Serpentine?" +"No. They were found floating near the margin by a parkkeeper. +They have been identified as her clothes, and it seemed to me +that if the clothes were there the body would not be far off." +"By the same brilliant reasoning, every man's body is to be found +in the neighbourhood of his wardrobe. And pray what did you hope +to arrive at through this?" +"At some evidence implicating Flora Millar in the disappearance." +"I am afraid that you will find it difficult." +"Are you, indeed, now?" cried Lestrade with some bitterness. "I +am afraid, Holmes, that you are not very practical with your +deductions and your inferences. You have made two blunders in as +many minutes. This dress does implicate Miss Flora Millar." +"And how?" +"In the dress is a pocket. In the pocket is a cardcase. In the +cardcase is a note. And here is the very note." He slapped it +down upon the table in front of him. "Listen to this 'You will +see me when all is ready. Come at once. F.H.M.' Now my theory all +along has been that Lady St. Simon was decoyed away by Flora +Millar, and that she, with confederates, no doubt, was +responsible for her disappearance. Here, signed with her +initials, is the very note which was no doubt quietly slipped +into her hand at the door and which lured her within their +reach." +"Very good, Lestrade," said Holmes, laughing. "You really are +very fine indeed. Let me see it." He took up the paper in a +listless way, but his attention instantly became riveted, and he +gave a little cry of satisfaction. "This is indeed important," +said he. +"Ha you find it so?" +"Extremely so. I congratulate you warmly." +Lestrade rose in his triumph and bent his head to look. "Why," he +shrieked, "you're looking at the wrong side" +"On the contrary, this is the right side." +"The right side? You're mad Here is the note written in pencil +over here." +"And over here is what appears to be the fragment of a hotel +bill, which interests me deeply." +"There's nothing in it. I looked at it before," said Lestrade. +"'Oct. th, rooms s., breakfast s. d., cocktail s., lunch s. +d., glass sherry, d.' I see nothing in that." +"Very likely not. It is most important, all the same. As to the +note, it is important also, or at least the initials are, so I +congratulate you again." +"I've wasted time enough," said Lestrade, rising. "I believe in +hard work and not in sitting by the fire spinning fine theories. +Goodday, Mr. Holmes, and we shall see which gets to the bottom +of the matter first." He gathered up the garments, thrust them +into the bag, and made for the door. +"Just one hint to you, Lestrade," drawled Holmes before his rival +vanished "I will tell you the true solution of the matter. Lady +St. Simon is a myth. There is not, and there never has been, any +such person." +Lestrade looked sadly at my companion. Then he turned to me, +tapped his forehead three times, shook his head solemnly, and +hurried away. +He had hardly shut the door behind him when Holmes rose to put on +his overcoat. "There is something in what the fellow says about +outdoor work," he remarked, "so I think, Watson, that I must +leave you to your papers for a little." +It was after five o'clock when Sherlock Holmes left me, but I had +no time to be lonely, for within an hour there arrived a +confectioner's man with a very large flat box. This he unpacked +with the help of a youth whom he had brought with him, and +presently, to my very great astonishment, a quite epicurean +little cold supper began to be laid out upon our humble +lodginghouse mahogany. There were a couple of brace of cold +woodcock, a pheasant, a pt de foie gras pie with a group of +ancient and cobwebby bottles. Having laid out all these luxuries, +my two visitors vanished away, like the genii of the Arabian +Nights, with no explanation save that the things had been paid +for and were ordered to this address. +Just before nine o'clock Sherlock Holmes stepped briskly into the +room. His features were gravely set, but there was a light in his +eye which made me think that he had not been disappointed in his +conclusions. +"They have laid the supper, then," he said, rubbing his hands. +"You seem to expect company. They have laid for five." +"Yes, I fancy we may have some company dropping in," said he. "I +am surprised that Lord St. Simon has not already arrived. Ha I +fancy that I hear his step now upon the stairs." +It was indeed our visitor of the afternoon who came bustling in, +dangling his glasses more vigorously than ever, and with a very +perturbed expression upon his aristocratic features. +"My messenger reached you, then?" asked Holmes. +"Yes, and I confess that the contents startled me beyond measure. +Have you good authority for what you say?" +"The best possible." +Lord St. Simon sank into a chair and passed his hand over his +forehead. +"What will the Duke say," he murmured, "when he hears that one of +the family has been subjected to such humiliation?" +"It is the purest accident. I cannot allow that there is any +humiliation." +"Ah, you look on these things from another standpoint." +"I fail to see that anyone is to blame. I can hardly see how the +lady could have acted otherwise, though her abrupt method of +doing it was undoubtedly to be regretted. Having no mother, she +had no one to advise her at such a crisis." +"It was a slight, sir, a public slight," said Lord St. Simon, +tapping his fingers upon the table. +"You must make allowance for this poor girl, placed in so +unprecedented a position." +"I will make no allowance. I am very angry indeed, and I have +been shamefully used." +"I think that I heard a ring," said Holmes. "Yes, there are steps +on the landing. If I cannot persuade you to take a lenient view +of the matter, Lord St. Simon, I have brought an advocate here +who may be more successful." He opened the door and ushered in a +lady and gentleman. "Lord St. Simon," said he "allow me to +introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hay Moulton. The lady, I +think, you have already met." +At the sight of these newcomers our client had sprung from his +seat and stood very erect, with his eyes cast down and his hand +thrust into the breast of his frockcoat, a picture of offended +dignity. The lady had taken a quick step forward and had held out +her hand to him, but he still refused to raise his eyes. It was +as well for his resolution, perhaps, for her pleading face was +one which it was hard to resist. +"You're angry, Robert," said she. "Well, I guess you have every +cause to be." +"Pray make no apology to me," said Lord St. Simon bitterly. +"Oh, yes, I know that I have treated you real bad and that I +should have spoken to you before I went but I was kind of +rattled, and from the time when I saw Frank here again I just +didn't know what I was doing or saying. I only wonder I didn't +fall down and do a faint right there before the altar." +"Perhaps, Mrs. Moulton, you would like my friend and me to leave +the room while you explain this matter?" +"If I may give an opinion," remarked the strange gentleman, +"we've had just a little too much secrecy over this business +already. For my part, I should like all Europe and America to +hear the rights of it." He was a small, wiry, sunburnt man, +cleanshaven, with a sharp face and alert manner. +"Then I'll tell our story right away," said the lady. "Frank here +and I met in ', in McQuire's camp, near the Rockies, where pa +was working a claim. We were engaged to each other, Frank and I +but then one day father struck a rich pocket and made a pile, +while poor Frank here had a claim that petered out and came to +nothing. The richer pa grew the poorer was Frank so at last pa +wouldn't hear of our engagement lasting any longer, and he took +me away to 'Frisco. Frank wouldn't throw up his hand, though so +he followed me there, and he saw me without pa knowing anything +about it. It would only have made him mad to know, so we just +fixed it all up for ourselves. Frank said that he would go and +make his pile, too, and never come back to claim me until he had +as much as pa. So then I promised to wait for him to the end of +time and pledged myself not to marry anyone else while he lived. +'Why shouldn't we be married right away, then,' said he, 'and +then I will feel sure of you and I won't claim to be your +husband until I come back?' Well, we talked it over, and he had +fixed it all up so nicely, with a clergyman all ready in waiting, +that we just did it right there and then Frank went off to seek +his fortune, and I went back to pa. +"The next I heard of Frank was that he was in Montana, and then +he went prospecting in Arizona, and then I heard of him from New +Mexico. After that came a long newspaper story about how a +miners' camp had been attacked by Apache Indians, and there was +my Frank's name among the killed. I fainted dead away, and I was +very sick for months after. Pa thought I had a decline and took +me to half the doctors in 'Frisco. Not a word of news came for a +year and more, so that I never doubted that Frank was really +dead. Then Lord St. Simon came to 'Frisco, and we came to London, +and a marriage was arranged, and pa was very pleased, but I felt +all the time that no man on this earth would ever take the place +in my heart that had been given to my poor Frank. +"Still, if I had married Lord St. Simon, of course I'd have done +my duty by him. We can't command our love, but we can our +actions. I went to the altar with him with the intention to make +him just as good a wife as it was in me to be. But you may +imagine what I felt when, just as I came to the altar rails, I +glanced back and saw Frank standing and looking at me out of the +first pew. I thought it was his ghost at first but when I looked +again there he was still, with a kind of question in his eyes, as +if to ask me whether I were glad or sorry to see him. I wonder I +didn't drop. I know that everything was turning round, and the +words of the clergyman were just like the buzz of a bee in my +ear. I didn't know what to do. Should I stop the service and make +a scene in the church? I glanced at him again, and he seemed to +know what I was thinking, for he raised his finger to his lips to +tell me to be still. Then I saw him scribble on a piece of paper, +and I knew that he was writing me a note. As I passed his pew on +the way out I dropped my bouquet over to him, and he slipped the +note into my hand when he returned me the flowers. It was only a +line asking me to join him when he made the sign to me to do so. +Of course I never doubted for a moment that my first duty was now +to him, and I determined to do just whatever he might direct. +"When I got back I told my maid, who had known him in California, +and had always been his friend. I ordered her to say nothing, but +to get a few things packed and my ulster ready. I know I ought to +have spoken to Lord St. Simon, but it was dreadful hard before +his mother and all those great people. I just made up my mind to +run away and explain afterwards. I hadn't been at the table ten +minutes before I saw Frank out of the window at the other side of +the road. He beckoned to me and then began walking into the Park. +I slipped out, put on my things, and followed him. Some woman +came talking something or other about Lord St. Simon to +meseemed to me from the little I heard as if he had a little +secret of his own before marriage alsobut I managed to get away +from her and soon overtook Frank. We got into a cab together, and +away we drove to some lodgings he had taken in Gordon Square, and +that was my true wedding after all those years of waiting. Frank +had been a prisoner among the Apaches, had escaped, came on to +'Frisco, found that I had given him up for dead and had gone to +England, followed me there, and had come upon me at last on the +very morning of my second wedding." +"I saw it in a paper," explained the American. "It gave the name +and the church but not where the lady lived." +"Then we had a talk as to what we should do, and Frank was all +for openness, but I was so ashamed of it all that I felt as if I +should like to vanish away and never see any of them againjust +sending a line to pa, perhaps, to show him that I was alive. It +was awful to me to think of all those lords and ladies sitting +round that breakfasttable and waiting for me to come back. So +Frank took my weddingclothes and things and made a bundle of +them, so that I should not be traced, and dropped them away +somewhere where no one could find them. It is likely that we +should have gone on to Paris tomorrow, only that this good +gentleman, Mr. Holmes, came round to us this evening, though how +he found us is more than I can think, and he showed us very +clearly and kindly that I was wrong and that Frank was right, and +that we should be putting ourselves in the wrong if we were so +secret. Then he offered to give us a chance of talking to Lord +St. Simon alone, and so we came right away round to his rooms at +once. Now, Robert, you have heard it all, and I am very sorry if +I have given you pain, and I hope that you do not think very +meanly of me." +Lord St. Simon had by no means relaxed his rigid attitude, but +had listened with a frowning brow and a compressed lip to this +long narrative. +"Excuse me," he said, "but it is not my custom to discuss my most +intimate personal affairs in this public manner." +"Then you won't forgive me? You won't shake hands before I go?" +"Oh, certainly, if it would give you any pleasure." He put out +his hand and coldly grasped that which she extended to him. +"I had hoped," suggested Holmes, "that you would have joined us +in a friendly supper." +"I think that there you ask a little too much," responded his +Lordship. "I may be forced to acquiesce in these recent +developments, but I can hardly be expected to make merry over +them. I think that with your permission I will now wish you all a +very goodnight." He included us all in a sweeping bow and +stalked out of the room. +"Then I trust that you at least will honour me with your +company," said Sherlock Holmes. "It is always a joy to meet an +American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the +folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in fargone +years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens +of the same worldwide country under a flag which shall be a +quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes." +"The case has been an interesting one," remarked Holmes when our +visitors had left us, "because it serves to show very clearly how +simple the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight +seems to be almost inexplicable. Nothing could be more natural +than the sequence of events as narrated by this lady, and nothing +stranger than the result when viewed, for instance, by Mr. +Lestrade of Scotland Yard." +"You were not yourself at fault at all, then?" +"From the first, two facts were very obvious to me, the one that +the lady had been quite willing to undergo the wedding ceremony, +the other that she had repented of it within a few minutes of +returning home. Obviously something had occurred during the +morning, then, to cause her to change her mind. What could that +something be? She could not have spoken to anyone when she was +out, for she had been in the company of the bridegroom. Had she +seen someone, then? If she had, it must be someone from America +because she had spent so short a time in this country that she +could hardly have allowed anyone to acquire so deep an influence +over her that the mere sight of him would induce her to change +her plans so completely. You see we have already arrived, by a +process of exclusion, at the idea that she might have seen an +American. Then who could this American be, and why should he +possess so much influence over her? It might be a lover it might +be a husband. Her young womanhood had, I knew, been spent in +rough scenes and under strange conditions. So far I had got +before I ever heard Lord St. Simon's narrative. When he told us +of a man in a pew, of the change in the bride's manner, of so +transparent a device for obtaining a note as the dropping of a +bouquet, of her resort to her confidential maid, and of her very +significant allusion to claimjumpingwhich in miners' parlance +means taking possession of that which another person has a prior +claim tothe whole situation became absolutely clear. She had +gone off with a man, and the man was either a lover or was a +previous husbandthe chances being in favour of the latter." +"And how in the world did you find them?" +"It might have been difficult, but friend Lestrade held +information in his hands the value of which he did not himself +know. The initials were, of course, of the highest importance, +but more valuable still was it to know that within a week he had +settled his bill at one of the most select London hotels." +"How did you deduce the select?" +"By the select prices. Eight shillings for a bed and eightpence +for a glass of sherry pointed to one of the most expensive +hotels. There are not many in London which charge at that rate. +In the second one which I visited in Northumberland Avenue, I +learned by an inspection of the book that Francis H. Moulton, an +American gentleman, had left only the day before, and on looking +over the entries against him, I came upon the very items which I +had seen in the duplicate bill. His letters were to be forwarded +to Gordon Square so thither I travelled, and being fortunate +enough to find the loving couple at home, I ventured to give them +some paternal advice and to point out to them that it would be +better in every way that they should make their position a little +clearer both to the general public and to Lord St. Simon in +particular. I invited them to meet him here, and, as you see, I +made him keep the appointment." +"But with no very good result," I remarked. "His conduct was +certainly not very gracious." +"Ah, Watson," said Holmes, smiling, "perhaps you would not be +very gracious either, if, after all the trouble of wooing and +wedding, you found yourself deprived in an instant of wife and of +fortune. I think that we may judge Lord St. Simon very mercifully +and thank our stars that we are never likely to find ourselves in +the same position. Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for +the only problem we have still to solve is how to while away +these bleak autumnal evenings." +XI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET +"Holmes," said I as I stood one morning in our bowwindow looking +down the street, "here is a madman coming along. It seems rather +sad that his relatives should allow him to come out alone." +My friend rose lazily from his armchair and stood with his hands +in the pockets of his dressinggown, looking over my shoulder. It +was a bright, crisp February morning, and the snow of the day +before still lay deep upon the ground, shimmering brightly in the +wintry sun. Down the centre of Baker Street it had been ploughed +into a brown crumbly band by the traffic, but at either side and +on the heapedup edges of the footpaths it still lay as white as +when it fell. The grey pavement had been cleaned and scraped, but +was still dangerously slippery, so that there were fewer +passengers than usual. Indeed, from the direction of the +Metropolitan Station no one was coming save the single gentleman +whose eccentric conduct had drawn my attention. +He was a man of about fifty, tall, portly, and imposing, with a +massive, strongly marked face and a commanding figure. He was +dressed in a sombre yet rich style, in black frockcoat, shining +hat, neat brown gaiters, and wellcut pearlgrey trousers. Yet +his actions were in absurd contrast to the dignity of his dress +and features, for he was running hard, with occasional little +springs, such as a weary man gives who is little accustomed to +set any tax upon his legs. As he ran he jerked his hands up and +down, waggled his head, and writhed his face into the most +extraordinary contortions. +"What on earth can be the matter with him?" I asked. "He is +looking up at the numbers of the houses." +"I believe that he is coming here," said Holmes, rubbing his +hands. +"Here?" +"Yes I rather think he is coming to consult me professionally. I +think that I recognise the symptoms. Ha did I not tell you?" As +he spoke, the man, puffing and blowing, rushed at our door and +pulled at our bell until the whole house resounded with the +clanging. +A few moments later he was in our room, still puffing, still +gesticulating, but with so fixed a look of grief and despair in +his eyes that our smiles were turned in an instant to horror and +pity. For a while he could not get his words out, but swayed his +body and plucked at his hair like one who has been driven to the +extreme limits of his reason. Then, suddenly springing to his +feet, he beat his head against the wall with such force that we +both rushed upon him and tore him away to the centre of the room. +Sherlock Holmes pushed him down into the easychair and, sitting +beside him, patted his hand and chatted with him in the easy, +soothing tones which he knew so well how to employ. +"You have come to me to tell your story, have you not?" said he. +"You are fatigued with your haste. Pray wait until you have +recovered yourself, and then I shall be most happy to look into +any little problem which you may submit to me." +The man sat for a minute or more with a heaving chest, fighting +against his emotion. Then he passed his handkerchief over his +brow, set his lips tight, and turned his face towards us. +"No doubt you think me mad?" said he. +"I see that you have had some great trouble," responded Holmes. +"God knows I havea trouble which is enough to unseat my +reason, so sudden and so terrible is it. Public disgrace I might +have faced, although I am a man whose character has never yet +borne a stain. Private affliction also is the lot of every man +but the two coming together, and in so frightful a form, have +been enough to shake my very soul. Besides, it is not I alone. +The very noblest in the land may suffer unless some way be found +out of this horrible affair." +"Pray compose yourself, sir," said Holmes, "and let me have a +clear account of who you are and what it is that has befallen +you." +"My name," answered our visitor, "is probably familiar to your +ears. I am Alexander Holder, of the banking firm of Holder +Stevenson, of Threadneedle Street." +The name was indeed well known to us as belonging to the senior +partner in the second largest private banking concern in the City +of London. What could have happened, then, to bring one of the +foremost citizens of London to this most pitiable pass? We +waited, all curiosity, until with another effort he braced +himself to tell his story. +"I feel that time is of value," said he "that is why I hastened +here when the police inspector suggested that I should secure +your cooperation. I came to Baker Street by the Underground and +hurried from there on foot, for the cabs go slowly through this +snow. That is why I was so out of breath, for I am a man who +takes very little exercise. I feel better now, and I will put the +facts before you as shortly and yet as clearly as I can. +"It is, of course, well known to you that in a successful banking +business as much depends upon our being able to find remunerative +investments for our funds as upon our increasing our connection +and the number of our depositors. One of our most lucrative means +of laying out money is in the shape of loans, where the security +is unimpeachable. We have done a good deal in this direction +during the last few years, and there are many noble families to +whom we have advanced large sums upon the security of their +pictures, libraries, or plate. +"Yesterday morning I was seated in my office at the bank when a +card was brought in to me by one of the clerks. I started when I +saw the name, for it was that of none other thanwell, perhaps +even to you I had better say no more than that it was a name +which is a household word all over the earthone of the highest, +noblest, most exalted names in England. I was overwhelmed by the +honour and attempted, when he entered, to say so, but he plunged +at once into business with the air of a man who wishes to hurry +quickly through a disagreeable task. +"'Mr. Holder,' said he, 'I have been informed that you are in the +habit of advancing money.' +"'The firm does so when the security is good.' I answered. +"'It is absolutely essential to me,' said he, 'that I should have +, pounds at once. I could, of course, borrow so trifling a +sum ten times over from my friends, but I much prefer to make it +a matter of business and to carry out that business myself. In my +position you can readily understand that it is unwise to place +one's self under obligations.' +"'For how long, may I ask, do you want this sum?' I asked. +"'Next Monday I have a large sum due to me, and I shall then most +certainly repay what you advance, with whatever interest you +think it right to charge. But it is very essential to me that the +money should be paid at once.' +"'I should be happy to advance it without further parley from my +own private purse,' said I, 'were it not that the strain would be +rather more than it could bear. If, on the other hand, I am to do +it in the name of the firm, then in justice to my partner I must +insist that, even in your case, every businesslike precaution +should be taken.' +"'I should much prefer to have it so,' said he, raising up a +square, black morocco case which he had laid beside his chair. +'You have doubtless heard of the Beryl Coronet?' +"'One of the most precious public possessions of the empire,' +said I. +"'Precisely.' He opened the case, and there, imbedded in soft, +fleshcoloured velvet, lay the magnificent piece of jewellery +which he had named. 'There are thirtynine enormous beryls,' said +he, 'and the price of the gold chasing is incalculable. The +lowest estimate would put the worth of the coronet at double the +sum which I have asked. I am prepared to leave it with you as my +security.' +"I took the precious case into my hands and looked in some +perplexity from it to my illustrious client. +"'You doubt its value?' he asked. +"'Not at all. I only doubt' +"'The propriety of my leaving it. You may set your mind at rest +about that. I should not dream of doing so were it not absolutely +certain that I should be able in four days to reclaim it. It is a +pure matter of form. Is the security sufficient?' +"'Ample.' +"'You understand, Mr. Holder, that I am giving you a strong proof +of the confidence which I have in you, founded upon all that I +have heard of you. I rely upon you not only to be discreet and to +refrain from all gossip upon the matter but, above all, to +preserve this coronet with every possible precaution because I +need not say that a great public scandal would be caused if any +harm were to befall it. Any injury to it would be almost as +serious as its complete loss, for there are no beryls in the +world to match these, and it would be impossible to replace them. +I leave it with you, however, with every confidence, and I shall +call for it in person on Monday morning.' +"Seeing that my client was anxious to leave, I said no more but, +calling for my cashier, I ordered him to pay over fifty +pound notes. When I was alone once more, however, with the +precious case lying upon the table in front of me, I could not +but think with some misgivings of the immense responsibility +which it entailed upon me. There could be no doubt that, as it +was a national possession, a horrible scandal would ensue if any +misfortune should occur to it. I already regretted having ever +consented to take charge of it. However, it was too late to alter +the matter now, so I locked it up in my private safe and turned +once more to my work. +"When evening came I felt that it would be an imprudence to leave +so precious a thing in the office behind me. Bankers' safes had +been forced before now, and why should not mine be? If so, how +terrible would be the position in which I should find myself I +determined, therefore, that for the next few days I would always +carry the case backward and forward with me, so that it might +never be really out of my reach. With this intention, I called a +cab and drove out to my house at Streatham, carrying the jewel +with me. I did not breathe freely until I had taken it upstairs +and locked it in the bureau of my dressingroom. +"And now a word as to my household, Mr. Holmes, for I wish you to +thoroughly understand the situation. My groom and my page sleep +out of the house, and may be set aside altogether. I have three +maidservants who have been with me a number of years and whose +absolute reliability is quite above suspicion. Another, Lucy +Parr, the second waitingmaid, has only been in my service a few +months. She came with an excellent character, however, and has +always given me satisfaction. She is a very pretty girl and has +attracted admirers who have occasionally hung about the place. +That is the only drawback which we have found to her, but we +believe her to be a thoroughly good girl in every way. +"So much for the servants. My family itself is so small that it +will not take me long to describe it. I am a widower and have an +only son, Arthur. He has been a disappointment to me, Mr. +Holmesa grievous disappointment. I have no doubt that I am +myself to blame. People tell me that I have spoiled him. Very +likely I have. When my dear wife died I felt that he was all I +had to love. I could not bear to see the smile fade even for a +moment from his face. I have never denied him a wish. Perhaps it +would have been better for both of us had I been sterner, but I +meant it for the best. +"It was naturally my intention that he should succeed me in my +business, but he was not of a business turn. He was wild, +wayward, and, to speak the truth, I could not trust him in the +handling of large sums of money. When he was young he became a +member of an aristocratic club, and there, having charming +manners, he was soon the intimate of a number of men with long +purses and expensive habits. He learned to play heavily at cards +and to squander money on the turf, until he had again and again +to come to me and implore me to give him an advance upon his +allowance, that he might settle his debts of honour. He tried +more than once to break away from the dangerous company which he +was keeping, but each time the influence of his friend, Sir +George Burnwell, was enough to draw him back again. +"And, indeed, I could not wonder that such a man as Sir George +Burnwell should gain an influence over him, for he has frequently +brought him to my house, and I have found myself that I could +hardly resist the fascination of his manner. He is older than +Arthur, a man of the world to his fingertips, one who had been +everywhere, seen everything, a brilliant talker, and a man of +great personal beauty. Yet when I think of him in cold blood, far +away from the glamour of his presence, I am convinced from his +cynical speech and the look which I have caught in his eyes that +he is one who should be deeply distrusted. So I think, and so, +too, thinks my little Mary, who has a woman's quick insight into +character. +"And now there is only she to be described. She is my niece but +when my brother died five years ago and left her alone in the +world I adopted her, and have looked upon her ever since as my +daughter. She is a sunbeam in my housesweet, loving, beautiful, +a wonderful manager and housekeeper, yet as tender and quiet and +gentle as a woman could be. She is my right hand. I do not know +what I could do without her. In only one matter has she ever gone +against my wishes. Twice my boy has asked her to marry him, for +he loves her devotedly, but each time she has refused him. I +think that if anyone could have drawn him into the right path it +would have been she, and that his marriage might have changed his +whole life but now, alas it is too lateforever too late +"Now, Mr. Holmes, you know the people who live under my roof, and +I shall continue with my miserable story. +"When we were taking coffee in the drawingroom that night after +dinner, I told Arthur and Mary my experience, and of the precious +treasure which we had under our roof, suppressing only the name +of my client. Lucy Parr, who had brought in the coffee, had, I am +sure, left the room but I cannot swear that the door was closed. +Mary and Arthur were much interested and wished to see the famous +coronet, but I thought it better not to disturb it. +"'Where have you put it?' asked Arthur. +"'In my own bureau.' +"'Well, I hope to goodness the house won't be burgled during the +night.' said he. +"'It is locked up,' I answered. +"'Oh, any old key will fit that bureau. When I was a youngster I +have opened it myself with the key of the boxroom cupboard.' +"He often had a wild way of talking, so that I thought little of +what he said. He followed me to my room, however, that night with +a very grave face. +"'Look here, dad,' said he with his eyes cast down, 'can you let +me have pounds?' +"'No, I cannot' I answered sharply. 'I have been far too +generous with you in money matters.' +"'You have been very kind,' said he, 'but I must have this money, +or else I can never show my face inside the club again.' +"'And a very good thing, too' I cried. +"'Yes, but you would not have me leave it a dishonoured man,' +said he. 'I could not bear the disgrace. I must raise the money +in some way, and if you will not let me have it, then I must try +other means.' +"I was very angry, for this was the third demand during the +month. 'You shall not have a farthing from me,' I cried, on which +he bowed and left the room without another word. +"When he was gone I unlocked my bureau, made sure that my +treasure was safe, and locked it again. Then I started to go +round the house to see that all was securea duty which I +usually leave to Mary but which I thought it well to perform +myself that night. As I came down the stairs I saw Mary herself +at the side window of the hall, which she closed and fastened as +I approached. +"'Tell me, dad,' said she, looking, I thought, a little +disturbed, 'did you give Lucy, the maid, leave to go out +tonight?' +"'Certainly not.' +"'She came in just now by the back door. I have no doubt that she +has only been to the side gate to see someone, but I think that +it is hardly safe and should be stopped.' +"'You must speak to her in the morning, or I will if you prefer +it. Are you sure that everything is fastened?' +"'Quite sure, dad.' +"'Then, goodnight.' I kissed her and went up to my bedroom +again, where I was soon asleep. +"I am endeavouring to tell you everything, Mr. Holmes, which may +have any bearing upon the case, but I beg that you will question +me upon any point which I do not make clear." +"On the contrary, your statement is singularly lucid." +"I come to a part of my story now in which I should wish to be +particularly so. I am not a very heavy sleeper, and the anxiety +in my mind tended, no doubt, to make me even less so than usual. +About two in the morning, then, I was awakened by some sound in +the house. It had ceased ere I was wide awake, but it had left an +impression behind it as though a window had gently closed +somewhere. I lay listening with all my ears. Suddenly, to my +horror, there was a distinct sound of footsteps moving softly in +the next room. I slipped out of bed, all palpitating with fear, +and peeped round the corner of my dressingroom door. +"'Arthur' I screamed, 'you villain you thief How dare you +touch that coronet?' +"The gas was half up, as I had left it, and my unhappy boy, +dressed only in his shirt and trousers, was standing beside the +light, holding the coronet in his hands. He appeared to be +wrenching at it, or bending it with all his strength. At my cry +he dropped it from his grasp and turned as pale as death. I +snatched it up and examined it. One of the gold corners, with +three of the beryls in it, was missing. +"'You blackguard' I shouted, beside myself with rage. 'You have +destroyed it You have dishonoured me forever Where are the +jewels which you have stolen?' +"'Stolen' he cried. +"'Yes, thief' I roared, shaking him by the shoulder. +"'There are none missing. There cannot be any missing,' said he. +"'There are three missing. And you know where they are. Must I +call you a liar as well as a thief? Did I not see you trying to +tear off another piece?' +"'You have called me names enough,' said he, 'I will not stand it +any longer. I shall not say another word about this business, +since you have chosen to insult me. I will leave your house in +the morning and make my own way in the world.' +"'You shall leave it in the hands of the police' I cried +halfmad with grief and rage. 'I shall have this matter probed to +the bottom.' +"'You shall learn nothing from me,' said he with a passion such +as I should not have thought was in his nature. 'If you choose to +call the police, let the police find what they can.' +"By this time the whole house was astir, for I had raised my +voice in my anger. Mary was the first to rush into my room, and, +at the sight of the coronet and of Arthur's face, she read the +whole story and, with a scream, fell down senseless on the +ground. I sent the housemaid for the police and put the +investigation into their hands at once. When the inspector and a +constable entered the house, Arthur, who had stood sullenly with +his arms folded, asked me whether it was my intention to charge +him with theft. I answered that it had ceased to be a private +matter, but had become a public one, since the ruined coronet was +national property. I was determined that the law should have its +way in everything. +"'At least,' said he, 'you will not have me arrested at once. It +would be to your advantage as well as mine if I might leave the +house for five minutes.' +"'That you may get away, or perhaps that you may conceal what you +have stolen,' said I. And then, realising the dreadful position +in which I was placed, I implored him to remember that not only +my honour but that of one who was far greater than I was at +stake and that he threatened to raise a scandal which would +convulse the nation. He might avert it all if he would but tell +me what he had done with the three missing stones. +"'You may as well face the matter,' said I 'you have been caught +in the act, and no confession could make your guilt more heinous. +If you but make such reparation as is in your power, by telling +us where the beryls are, all shall be forgiven and forgotten.' +"'Keep your forgiveness for those who ask for it,' he answered, +turning away from me with a sneer. I saw that he was too hardened +for any words of mine to influence him. There was but one way for +it. I called in the inspector and gave him into custody. A search +was made at once not only of his person but of his room and of +every portion of the house where he could possibly have concealed +the gems but no trace of them could be found, nor would the +wretched boy open his mouth for all our persuasions and our +threats. This morning he was removed to a cell, and I, after +going through all the police formalities, have hurried round to +you to implore you to use your skill in unravelling the matter. +The police have openly confessed that they can at present make +nothing of it. You may go to any expense which you think +necessary. I have already offered a reward of pounds. My +God, what shall I do I have lost my honour, my gems, and my son +in one night. Oh, what shall I do" +He put a hand on either side of his head and rocked himself to +and fro, droning to himself like a child whose grief has got +beyond words. +Sherlock Holmes sat silent for some few minutes, with his brows +knitted and his eyes fixed upon the fire. +"Do you receive much company?" he asked. +"None save my partner with his family and an occasional friend of +Arthur's. Sir George Burnwell has been several times lately. No +one else, I think." +"Do you go out much in society?" +"Arthur does. Mary and I stay at home. We neither of us care for +it." +"That is unusual in a young girl." +"She is of a quiet nature. Besides, she is not so very young. She +is fourandtwenty." +"This matter, from what you say, seems to have been a shock to +her also." +"Terrible She is even more affected than I." +"You have neither of you any doubt as to your son's guilt?" +"How can we have when I saw him with my own eyes with the coronet +in his hands." +"I hardly consider that a conclusive proof. Was the remainder of +the coronet at all injured?" +"Yes, it was twisted." +"Do you not think, then, that he might have been trying to +straighten it?" +"God bless you You are doing what you can for him and for me. +But it is too heavy a task. What was he doing there at all? If +his purpose were innocent, why did he not say so?" +"Precisely. And if it were guilty, why did he not invent a lie? +His silence appears to me to cut both ways. There are several +singular points about the case. What did the police think of the +noise which awoke you from your sleep?" +"They considered that it might be caused by Arthur's closing his +bedroom door." +"A likely story As if a man bent on felony would slam his door +so as to wake a household. What did they say, then, of the +disappearance of these gems?" +"They are still sounding the planking and probing the furniture +in the hope of finding them." +"Have they thought of looking outside the house?" +"Yes, they have shown extraordinary energy. The whole garden has +already been minutely examined." +"Now, my dear sir," said Holmes. "is it not obvious to you now +that this matter really strikes very much deeper than either you +or the police were at first inclined to think? It appeared to you +to be a simple case to me it seems exceedingly complex. Consider +what is involved by your theory. You suppose that your son came +down from his bed, went, at great risk, to your dressingroom, +opened your bureau, took out your coronet, broke off by main +force a small portion of it, went off to some other place, +concealed three gems out of the thirtynine, with such skill that +nobody can find them, and then returned with the other thirtysix +into the room in which he exposed himself to the greatest danger +of being discovered. I ask you now, is such a theory tenable?" +"But what other is there?" cried the banker with a gesture of +despair. "If his motives were innocent, why does he not explain +them?" +"It is our task to find that out," replied Holmes "so now, if +you please, Mr. Holder, we will set off for Streatham together, +and devote an hour to glancing a little more closely into +details." +My friend insisted upon my accompanying them in their expedition, +which I was eager enough to do, for my curiosity and sympathy +were deeply stirred by the story to which we had listened. I +confess that the guilt of the banker's son appeared to me to be +as obvious as it did to his unhappy father, but still I had such +faith in Holmes' judgment that I felt that there must be some +grounds for hope as long as he was dissatisfied with the accepted +explanation. He hardly spoke a word the whole way out to the +southern suburb, but sat with his chin upon his breast and his +hat drawn over his eyes, sunk in the deepest thought. Our client +appeared to have taken fresh heart at the little glimpse of hope +which had been presented to him, and he even broke into a +desultory chat with me over his business affairs. A short railway +journey and a shorter walk brought us to Fairbank, the modest +residence of the great financier. +Fairbank was a goodsized square house of white stone, standing +back a little from the road. A double carriagesweep, with a +snowclad lawn, stretched down in front to two large iron gates +which closed the entrance. On the right side was a small wooden +thicket, which led into a narrow path between two neat hedges +stretching from the road to the kitchen door, and forming the +tradesmen's entrance. On the left ran a lane which led to the +stables, and was not itself within the grounds at all, being a +public, though little used, thoroughfare. Holmes left us standing +at the door and walked slowly all round the house, across the +front, down the tradesmen's path, and so round by the garden +behind into the stable lane. So long was he that Mr. Holder and I +went into the diningroom and waited by the fire until he should +return. We were sitting there in silence when the door opened and +a young lady came in. She was rather above the middle height, +slim, with dark hair and eyes, which seemed the darker against +the absolute pallor of her skin. I do not think that I have ever +seen such deadly paleness in a woman's face. Her lips, too, were +bloodless, but her eyes were flushed with crying. As she swept +silently into the room she impressed me with a greater sense of +grief than the banker had done in the morning, and it was the +more striking in her as she was evidently a woman of strong +character, with immense capacity for selfrestraint. Disregarding +my presence, she went straight to her uncle and passed her hand +over his head with a sweet womanly caress. +"You have given orders that Arthur should be liberated, have you +not, dad?" she asked. +"No, no, my girl, the matter must be probed to the bottom." +"But I am so sure that he is innocent. You know what woman's +instincts are. I know that he has done no harm and that you will +be sorry for having acted so harshly." +"Why is he silent, then, if he is innocent?" +"Who knows? Perhaps because he was so angry that you should +suspect him." +"How could I help suspecting him, when I actually saw him with +the coronet in his hand?" +"Oh, but he had only picked it up to look at it. Oh, do, do take +my word for it that he is innocent. Let the matter drop and say +no more. It is so dreadful to think of our dear Arthur in +prison" +"I shall never let it drop until the gems are foundnever, Mary +Your affection for Arthur blinds you as to the awful consequences +to me. Far from hushing the thing up, I have brought a gentleman +down from London to inquire more deeply into it." +"This gentleman?" she asked, facing round to me. +"No, his friend. He wished us to leave him alone. He is round in +the stable lane now." +"The stable lane?" She raised her dark eyebrows. "What can he +hope to find there? Ah this, I suppose, is he. I trust, sir, +that you will succeed in proving, what I feel sure is the truth, +that my cousin Arthur is innocent of this crime." +"I fully share your opinion, and I trust, with you, that we may +prove it," returned Holmes, going back to the mat to knock the +snow from his shoes. "I believe I have the honour of addressing +Miss Mary Holder. Might I ask you a question or two?" +"Pray do, sir, if it may help to clear this horrible affair up." +"You heard nothing yourself last night?" +"Nothing, until my uncle here began to speak loudly. I heard +that, and I came down." +"You shut up the windows and doors the night before. Did you +fasten all the windows?" +"Yes." +"Were they all fastened this morning?" +"Yes." +"You have a maid who has a sweetheart? I think that you remarked +to your uncle last night that she had been out to see him?" +"Yes, and she was the girl who waited in the drawingroom, and +who may have heard uncle's remarks about the coronet." +"I see. You infer that she may have gone out to tell her +sweetheart, and that the two may have planned the robbery." +"But what is the good of all these vague theories," cried the +banker impatiently, "when I have told you that I saw Arthur with +the coronet in his hands?" +"Wait a little, Mr. Holder. We must come back to that. About this +girl, Miss Holder. You saw her return by the kitchen door, I +presume?" +"Yes when I went to see if the door was fastened for the night I +met her slipping in. I saw the man, too, in the gloom." +"Do you know him?" +"Oh, yes he is the greengrocer who brings our vegetables round. +His name is Francis Prosper." +"He stood," said Holmes, "to the left of the doorthat is to +say, farther up the path than is necessary to reach the door?" +"Yes, he did." +"And he is a man with a wooden leg?" +Something like fear sprang up in the young lady's expressive +black eyes. "Why, you are like a magician," said she. "How do you +know that?" She smiled, but there was no answering smile in +Holmes' thin, eager face. +"I should be very glad now to go upstairs," said he. "I shall +probably wish to go over the outside of the house again. Perhaps +I had better take a look at the lower windows before I go up." +He walked swiftly round from one to the other, pausing only at +the large one which looked from the hall onto the stable lane. +This he opened and made a very careful examination of the sill +with his powerful magnifying lens. "Now we shall go upstairs," +said he at last. +The banker's dressingroom was a plainly furnished little +chamber, with a grey carpet, a large bureau, and a long mirror. +Holmes went to the bureau first and looked hard at the lock. +"Which key was used to open it?" he asked. +"That which my son himself indicatedthat of the cupboard of the +lumberroom." +"Have you it here?" +"That is it on the dressingtable." +Sherlock Holmes took it up and opened the bureau. +"It is a noiseless lock," said he. "It is no wonder that it did +not wake you. This case, I presume, contains the coronet. We must +have a look at it." He opened the case, and taking out the diadem +he laid it upon the table. It was a magnificent specimen of the +jeweller's art, and the thirtysix stones were the finest that I +have ever seen. At one side of the coronet was a cracked edge, +where a corner holding three gems had been torn away. +"Now, Mr. Holder," said Holmes, "here is the corner which +corresponds to that which has been so unfortunately lost. Might I +beg that you will break it off." +The banker recoiled in horror. "I should not dream of trying," +said he. +"Then I will." Holmes suddenly bent his strength upon it, but +without result. "I feel it give a little," said he "but, though +I am exceptionally strong in the fingers, it would take me all my +time to break it. An ordinary man could not do it. Now, what do +you think would happen if I did break it, Mr. Holder? There would +be a noise like a pistol shot. Do you tell me that all this +happened within a few yards of your bed and that you heard +nothing of it?" +"I do not know what to think. It is all dark to me." +"But perhaps it may grow lighter as we go. What do you think, +Miss Holder?" +"I confess that I still share my uncle's perplexity." +"Your son had no shoes or slippers on when you saw him?" +"He had nothing on save only his trousers and shirt." +"Thank you. We have certainly been favoured with extraordinary +luck during this inquiry, and it will be entirely our own fault +if we do not succeed in clearing the matter up. With your +permission, Mr. Holder, I shall now continue my investigations +outside." +He went alone, at his own request, for he explained that any +unnecessary footmarks might make his task more difficult. For an +hour or more he was at work, returning at last with his feet +heavy with snow and his features as inscrutable as ever. +"I think that I have seen now all that there is to see, Mr. +Holder," said he "I can serve you best by returning to my +rooms." +"But the gems, Mr. Holmes. Where are they?" +"I cannot tell." +The banker wrung his hands. "I shall never see them again" he +cried. "And my son? You give me hopes?" +"My opinion is in no way altered." +"Then, for God's sake, what was this dark business which was +acted in my house last night?" +"If you can call upon me at my Baker Street rooms tomorrow +morning between nine and ten I shall be happy to do what I can to +make it clearer. I understand that you give me carte blanche to +act for you, provided only that I get back the gems, and that you +place no limit on the sum I may draw." +"I would give my fortune to have them back." +"Very good. I shall look into the matter between this and then. +Goodbye it is just possible that I may have to come over here +again before evening." +It was obvious to me that my companion's mind was now made up +about the case, although what his conclusions were was more than +I could even dimly imagine. Several times during our homeward +journey I endeavoured to sound him upon the point, but he always +glided away to some other topic, until at last I gave it over in +despair. It was not yet three when we found ourselves in our +rooms once more. He hurried to his chamber and was down again in +a few minutes dressed as a common loafer. With his collar turned +up, his shiny, seedy coat, his red cravat, and his worn boots, he +was a perfect sample of the class. +"I think that this should do," said he, glancing into the glass +above the fireplace. "I only wish that you could come with me, +Watson, but I fear that it won't do. I may be on the trail in +this matter, or I may be following a willo'thewisp, but I +shall soon know which it is. I hope that I may be back in a few +hours." He cut a slice of beef from the joint upon the sideboard, +sandwiched it between two rounds of bread, and thrusting this +rude meal into his pocket he started off upon his expedition. +I had just finished my tea when he returned, evidently in +excellent spirits, swinging an old elasticsided boot in his +hand. He chucked it down into a corner and helped himself to a +cup of tea. +"I only looked in as I passed," said he. "I am going right on." +"Where to?" +"Oh, to the other side of the West End. It may be some time +before I get back. Don't wait up for me in case I should be +late." +"How are you getting on?" +"Oh, so so. Nothing to complain of. I have been out to Streatham +since I saw you last, but I did not call at the house. It is a +very sweet little problem, and I would not have missed it for a +good deal. However, I must not sit gossiping here, but must get +these disreputable clothes off and return to my highly +respectable self." +I could see by his manner that he had stronger reasons for +satisfaction than his words alone would imply. His eyes twinkled, +and there was even a touch of colour upon his sallow cheeks. He +hastened upstairs, and a few minutes later I heard the slam of +the hall door, which told me that he was off once more upon his +congenial hunt. +I waited until midnight, but there was no sign of his return, so +I retired to my room. It was no uncommon thing for him to be away +for days and nights on end when he was hot upon a scent, so that +his lateness caused me no surprise. I do not know at what hour he +came in, but when I came down to breakfast in the morning there +he was with a cup of coffee in one hand and the paper in the +other, as fresh and trim as possible. +"You will excuse my beginning without you, Watson," said he, "but +you remember that our client has rather an early appointment this +morning." +"Why, it is after nine now," I answered. "I should not be +surprised if that were he. I thought I heard a ring." +It was, indeed, our friend the financier. I was shocked by the +change which had come over him, for his face which was naturally +of a broad and massive mould, was now pinched and fallen in, +while his hair seemed to me at least a shade whiter. He entered +with a weariness and lethargy which was even more painful than +his violence of the morning before, and he dropped heavily into +the armchair which I pushed forward for him. +"I do not know what I have done to be so severely tried," said +he. "Only two days ago I was a happy and prosperous man, without +a care in the world. Now I am left to a lonely and dishonoured +age. One sorrow comes close upon the heels of another. My niece, +Mary, has deserted me." +"Deserted you?" +"Yes. Her bed this morning had not been slept in, her room was +empty, and a note for me lay upon the hall table. I had said to +her last night, in sorrow and not in anger, that if she had +married my boy all might have been well with him. Perhaps it was +thoughtless of me to say so. It is to that remark that she refers +in this note +"'MY DEAREST UNCLEI feel that I have brought trouble upon you, +and that if I had acted differently this terrible misfortune +might never have occurred. I cannot, with this thought in my +mind, ever again be happy under your roof, and I feel that I must +leave you forever. Do not worry about my future, for that is +provided for and, above all, do not search for me, for it will +be fruitless labour and an illservice to me. In life or in +death, I am ever your loving,MARY.' +"What could she mean by that note, Mr. Holmes? Do you think it +points to suicide?" +"No, no, nothing of the kind. It is perhaps the best possible +solution. I trust, Mr. Holder, that you are nearing the end of +your troubles." +"Ha You say so You have heard something, Mr. Holmes you have +learned something Where are the gems?" +"You would not think pounds apiece an excessive sum for +them?" +"I would pay ten." +"That would be unnecessary. Three thousand will cover the matter. +And there is a little reward, I fancy. Have you your checkbook? +Here is a pen. Better make it out for pounds." +With a dazed face the banker made out the required check. Holmes +walked over to his desk, took out a little triangular piece of +gold with three gems in it, and threw it down upon the table. +With a shriek of joy our client clutched it up. +"You have it" he gasped. "I am saved I am saved" +The reaction of joy was as passionate as his grief had been, and +he hugged his recovered gems to his bosom. +"There is one other thing you owe, Mr. Holder," said Sherlock +Holmes rather sternly. +"Owe" He caught up a pen. "Name the sum, and I will pay it." +"No, the debt is not to me. You owe a very humble apology to that +noble lad, your son, who has carried himself in this matter as I +should be proud to see my own son do, should I ever chance to +have one." +"Then it was not Arthur who took them?" +"I told you yesterday, and I repeat today, that it was not." +"You are sure of it Then let us hurry to him at once to let him +know that the truth is known." +"He knows it already. When I had cleared it all up I had an +interview with him, and finding that he would not tell me the +story, I told it to him, on which he had to confess that I was +right and to add the very few details which were not yet quite +clear to me. Your news of this morning, however, may open his +lips." +"For heaven's sake, tell me, then, what is this extraordinary +mystery" +"I will do so, and I will show you the steps by which I reached +it. And let me say to you, first, that which it is hardest for me +to say and for you to hear there has been an understanding +between Sir George Burnwell and your niece Mary. They have now +fled together." +"My Mary? Impossible" +"It is unfortunately more than possible it is certain. Neither +you nor your son knew the true character of this man when you +admitted him into your family circle. He is one of the most +dangerous men in Englanda ruined gambler, an absolutely +desperate villain, a man without heart or conscience. Your niece +knew nothing of such men. When he breathed his vows to her, as he +had done to a hundred before her, she flattered herself that she +alone had touched his heart. The devil knows best what he said, +but at least she became his tool and was in the habit of seeing +him nearly every evening." +"I cannot, and I will not, believe it" cried the banker with an +ashen face. +"I will tell you, then, what occurred in your house last night. +Your niece, when you had, as she thought, gone to your room, +slipped down and talked to her lover through the window which +leads into the stable lane. His footmarks had pressed right +through the snow, so long had he stood there. She told him of the +coronet. His wicked lust for gold kindled at the news, and he +bent her to his will. I have no doubt that she loved you, but +there are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all +other loves, and I think that she must have been one. She had +hardly listened to his instructions when she saw you coming +downstairs, on which she closed the window rapidly and told you +about one of the servants' escapade with her woodenlegged lover, +which was all perfectly true. +"Your boy, Arthur, went to bed after his interview with you but +he slept badly on account of his uneasiness about his club debts. +In the middle of the night he heard a soft tread pass his door, +so he rose and, looking out, was surprised to see his cousin +walking very stealthily along the passage until she disappeared +into your dressingroom. Petrified with astonishment, the lad +slipped on some clothes and waited there in the dark to see what +would come of this strange affair. Presently she emerged from the +room again, and in the light of the passagelamp your son saw +that she carried the precious coronet in her hands. She passed +down the stairs, and he, thrilling with horror, ran along and +slipped behind the curtain near your door, whence he could see +what passed in the hall beneath. He saw her stealthily open the +window, hand out the coronet to someone in the gloom, and then +closing it once more hurry back to her room, passing quite close +to where he stood hid behind the curtain. +"As long as she was on the scene he could not take any action +without a horrible exposure of the woman whom he loved. But the +instant that she was gone he realised how crushing a misfortune +this would be for you, and how allimportant it was to set it +right. He rushed down, just as he was, in his bare feet, opened +the window, sprang out into the snow, and ran down the lane, +where he could see a dark figure in the moonlight. Sir George +Burnwell tried to get away, but Arthur caught him, and there was +a struggle between them, your lad tugging at one side of the +coronet, and his opponent at the other. In the scuffle, your son +struck Sir George and cut him over the eye. Then something +suddenly snapped, and your son, finding that he had the coronet +in his hands, rushed back, closed the window, ascended to your +room, and had just observed that the coronet had been twisted in +the struggle and was endeavouring to straighten it when you +appeared upon the scene." +"Is it possible?" gasped the banker. +"You then roused his anger by calling him names at a moment when +he felt that he had deserved your warmest thanks. He could not +explain the true state of affairs without betraying one who +certainly deserved little enough consideration at his hands. He +took the more chivalrous view, however, and preserved her +secret." +"And that was why she shrieked and fainted when she saw the +coronet," cried Mr. Holder. "Oh, my God what a blind fool I have +been And his asking to be allowed to go out for five minutes +The dear fellow wanted to see if the missing piece were at the +scene of the struggle. How cruelly I have misjudged him" +"When I arrived at the house," continued Holmes, "I at once went +very carefully round it to observe if there were any traces in +the snow which might help me. I knew that none had fallen since +the evening before, and also that there had been a strong frost +to preserve impressions. I passed along the tradesmen's path, but +found it all trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it, +however, at the far side of the kitchen door, a woman had stood +and talked with a man, whose round impressions on one side showed +that he had a wooden leg. I could even tell that they had been +disturbed, for the woman had run back swiftly to the door, as was +shown by the deep toe and light heel marks, while Woodenleg had +waited a little, and then had gone away. I thought at the time +that this might be the maid and her sweetheart, of whom you had +already spoken to me, and inquiry showed it was so. I passed +round the garden without seeing anything more than random tracks, +which I took to be the police but when I got into the stable +lane a very long and complex story was written in the snow in +front of me. +"There was a double line of tracks of a booted man, and a second +double line which I saw with delight belonged to a man with naked +feet. I was at once convinced from what you had told me that the +latter was your son. The first had walked both ways, but the +other had run swiftly, and as his tread was marked in places over +the depression of the boot, it was obvious that he had passed +after the other. I followed them up and found they led to the +hall window, where Boots had worn all the snow away while +waiting. Then I walked to the other end, which was a hundred +yards or more down the lane. I saw where Boots had faced round, +where the snow was cut up as though there had been a struggle, +and, finally, where a few drops of blood had fallen, to show me +that I was not mistaken. Boots had then run down the lane, and +another little smudge of blood showed that it was he who had been +hurt. When he came to the highroad at the other end, I found that +the pavement had been cleared, so there was an end to that clue. +"On entering the house, however, I examined, as you remember, the +sill and framework of the hall window with my lens, and I could +at once see that someone had passed out. I could distinguish the +outline of an instep where the wet foot had been placed in coming +in. I was then beginning to be able to form an opinion as to what +had occurred. A man had waited outside the window someone had +brought the gems the deed had been overseen by your son he had +pursued the thief had struggled with him they had each tugged +at the coronet, their united strength causing injuries which +neither alone could have effected. He had returned with the +prize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of his opponent. So +far I was clear. The question now was, who was the man and who +was it brought him the coronet? +"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the +impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the +truth. Now, I knew that it was not you who had brought it down, +so there only remained your niece and the maids. But if it were +the maids, why should your son allow himself to be accused in +their place? There could be no possible reason. As he loved his +cousin, however, there was an excellent explanation why he should +retain her secretthe more so as the secret was a disgraceful +one. When I remembered that you had seen her at that window, and +how she had fainted on seeing the coronet again, my conjecture +became a certainty. +"And who could it be who was her confederate? A lover evidently, +for who else could outweigh the love and gratitude which she must +feel to you? I knew that you went out little, and that your +circle of friends was a very limited one. But among them was Sir +George Burnwell. I had heard of him before as being a man of evil +reputation among women. It must have been he who wore those boots +and retained the missing gems. Even though he knew that Arthur +had discovered him, he might still flatter himself that he was +safe, for the lad could not say a word without compromising his +own family. +"Well, your own good sense will suggest what measures I took +next. I went in the shape of a loafer to Sir George's house, +managed to pick up an acquaintance with his valet, learned that +his master had cut his head the night before, and, finally, at +the expense of six shillings, made all sure by buying a pair of +his castoff shoes. With these I journeyed down to Streatham and +saw that they exactly fitted the tracks." +"I saw an illdressed vagabond in the lane yesterday evening," +said Mr. Holder. +"Precisely. It was I. I found that I had my man, so I came home +and changed my clothes. It was a delicate part which I had to +play then, for I saw that a prosecution must be avoided to avert +scandal, and I knew that so astute a villain would see that our +hands were tied in the matter. I went and saw him. At first, of +course, he denied everything. But when I gave him every +particular that had occurred, he tried to bluster and took down a +lifepreserver from the wall. I knew my man, however, and I +clapped a pistol to his head before he could strike. Then he +became a little more reasonable. I told him that we would give +him a price for the stones he held pounds apiece. That +brought out the first signs of grief that he had shown. 'Why, +dash it all' said he, 'I've let them go at six hundred for the +three' I soon managed to get the address of the receiver who had +them, on promising him that there would be no prosecution. Off I +set to him, and after much chaffering I got our stones at +pounds apiece. Then I looked in upon your son, told him that all +was right, and eventually got to my bed about two o'clock, after +what I may call a really hard day's work." +"A day which has saved England from a great public scandal," said +the banker, rising. "Sir, I cannot find words to thank you, but +you shall not find me ungrateful for what you have done. Your +skill has indeed exceeded all that I have heard of it. And now I +must fly to my dear boy to apologise to him for the wrong which I +have done him. As to what you tell me of poor Mary, it goes to my +very heart. Not even your skill can inform me where she is now." +"I think that we may safely say," returned Holmes, "that she is +wherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that +whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than +sufficient punishment." +XII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES +"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock +Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily +Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest +manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is +pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped +this truth that in these little records of our cases which you +have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, +occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much +to the many causes clbres and sensational trials in which I +have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been +trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those +faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made +my special province." +"And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved +from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my +records." +"You have erred, perhaps," he observed, taking up a glowing +cinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherrywood +pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a +disputatious rather than a meditative mood"you have erred +perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your +statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing +upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is +really the only notable feature about the thing." +"It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter," +I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism +which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my +friend's singular character. +"No, it is not selfishness or conceit," said he, answering, as +was his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. "If I claim full +justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thinga +thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it +is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should +dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of +lectures into a series of tales." +It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after +breakfast on either side of a cheery fire in the old room at +Baker Street. A thick fog rolled down between the lines of +duncoloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark, +shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit +and shone on the white cloth and glimmer of china and metal, for +the table had not been cleared yet. Sherlock Holmes had been +silent all the morning, dipping continuously into the +advertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last, +having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no very +sweet temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings. +"At the same time," he remarked after a pause, during which he +had sat puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire, +"you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of +these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself +in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense, +at all. The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the King +of Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, the +problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the +incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are +outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I +fear that you may have bordered on the trivial." +"The end may have been so," I answered, "but the methods I hold +to have been novel and of interest." +"Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant +public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a +compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of +analysis and deduction But, indeed, if you are trivial. I cannot +blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at +least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As +to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an +agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to +young ladies from boardingschools. I think that I have touched +bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my +zeropoint, I fancy. Read it" He tossed a crumpled letter across +to me. +It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and +ran thus +"DEAR MR. HOLMESI am very anxious to consult you as to whether +I should or should not accept a situation which has been offered +to me as governess. I shall call at halfpast ten tomorrow if I +do not inconvenience you. Yours faithfully, +"VIOLET HUNTER." +"Do you know the young lady?" I asked. +"Not I." +"It is halfpast ten now." +"Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring." +"It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You +remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to +be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. +It may be so in this case, also." +"Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved, +for here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question." +As he spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room. +She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, +freckled like a plover's egg, and with the brisk manner of a +woman who has had her own way to make in the world. +"You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure," said she, as my +companion rose to greet her, "but I have had a very strange +experience, and as I have no parents or relations of any sort +from whom I could ask advice, I thought that perhaps you would be +kind enough to tell me what I should do." +"Pray take a seat, Miss Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything +that I can to serve you." +I could see that Holmes was favourably impressed by the manner +and speech of his new client. He looked her over in his searching +fashion, and then composed himself, with his lids drooping and +his fingertips together, to listen to her story. +"I have been a governess for five years," said she, "in the +family of Colonel Spence Munro, but two months ago the colonel +received an appointment at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and took his +children over to America with him, so that I found myself without +a situation. I advertised, and I answered advertisements, but +without success. At last the little money which I had saved began +to run short, and I was at my wit's end as to what I should do. +"There is a wellknown agency for governesses in the West End +called Westaway's, and there I used to call about once a week in +order to see whether anything had turned up which might suit me. +Westaway was the name of the founder of the business, but it is +really managed by Miss Stoper. She sits in her own little office, +and the ladies who are seeking employment wait in an anteroom, +and are then shown in one by one, when she consults her ledgers +and sees whether she has anything which would suit them. +"Well, when I called last week I was shown into the little office +as usual, but I found that Miss Stoper was not alone. A +prodigiously stout man with a very smiling face and a great heavy +chin which rolled down in fold upon fold over his throat sat at +her elbow with a pair of glasses on his nose, looking very +earnestly at the ladies who entered. As I came in he gave quite a +jump in his chair and turned quickly to Miss Stoper. +"'That will do,' said he 'I could not ask for anything better. +Capital capital' He seemed quite enthusiastic and rubbed his +hands together in the most genial fashion. He was such a +comfortablelooking man that it was quite a pleasure to look at +him. +"'You are looking for a situation, miss?' he asked. +"'Yes, sir.' +"'As governess?' +"'Yes, sir.' +"'And what salary do you ask?' +"'I had pounds a month in my last place with Colonel Spence +Munro.' +"'Oh, tut, tut sweatingrank sweating' he cried, throwing his +fat hands out into the air like a man who is in a boiling +passion. 'How could anyone offer so pitiful a sum to a lady with +such attractions and accomplishments?' +"'My accomplishments, sir, may be less than you imagine,' said I. +'A little French, a little German, music, and drawing' +"'Tut, tut' he cried. 'This is all quite beside the question. +The point is, have you or have you not the bearing and deportment +of a lady? There it is in a nutshell. If you have not, you are +not fitted for the rearing of a child who may some day play a +considerable part in the history of the country. But if you have +why, then, how could any gentleman ask you to condescend to +accept anything under the three figures? Your salary with me, +madam, would commence at pounds a year.' +"You may imagine, Mr. Holmes, that to me, destitute as I was, +such an offer seemed almost too good to be true. The gentleman, +however, seeing perhaps the look of incredulity upon my face, +opened a pocketbook and took out a note. +"'It is also my custom,' said he, smiling in the most pleasant +fashion until his eyes were just two little shining slits amid +the white creases of his face, 'to advance to my young ladies +half their salary beforehand, so that they may meet any little +expenses of their journey and their wardrobe.' +"It seemed to me that I had never met so fascinating and so +thoughtful a man. As I was already in debt to my tradesmen, the +advance was a great convenience, and yet there was something +unnatural about the whole transaction which made me wish to know +a little more before I quite committed myself. +"'May I ask where you live, sir?' said I. +"'Hampshire. Charming rural place. The Copper Beeches, five miles +on the far side of Winchester. It is the most lovely country, my +dear young lady, and the dearest old countryhouse.' +"'And my duties, sir? I should be glad to know what they would +be.' +"'One childone dear little romper just six years old. Oh, if +you could see him killing cockroaches with a slipper Smack +smack smack Three gone before you could wink' He leaned back +in his chair and laughed his eyes into his head again. +"I was a little startled at the nature of the child's amusement, +but the father's laughter made me think that perhaps he was +joking. +"'My sole duties, then,' I asked, 'are to take charge of a single +child?' +"'No, no, not the sole, not the sole, my dear young lady,' he +cried. 'Your duty would be, as I am sure your good sense would +suggest, to obey any little commands my wife might give, provided +always that they were such commands as a lady might with +propriety obey. You see no difficulty, heh?' +"'I should be happy to make myself useful.' +"'Quite so. In dress now, for example. We are faddy people, you +knowfaddy but kindhearted. If you were asked to wear any dress +which we might give you, you would not object to our little whim. +Heh?' +"'No,' said I, considerably astonished at his words. +"'Or to sit here, or sit there, that would not be offensive to +you?' +"'Oh, no.' +"'Or to cut your hair quite short before you come to us?' +"I could hardly believe my ears. As you may observe, Mr. Holmes, +my hair is somewhat luxuriant, and of a rather peculiar tint of +chestnut. It has been considered artistic. I could not dream of +sacrificing it in this offhand fashion. +"'I am afraid that that is quite impossible,' said I. He had been +watching me eagerly out of his small eyes, and I could see a +shadow pass over his face as I spoke. +"'I am afraid that it is quite essential,' said he. 'It is a +little fancy of my wife's, and ladies' fancies, you know, madam, +ladies' fancies must be consulted. And so you won't cut your +hair?' +"'No, sir, I really could not,' I answered firmly. +"'Ah, very well then that quite settles the matter. It is a +pity, because in other respects you would really have done very +nicely. In that case, Miss Stoper, I had best inspect a few more +of your young ladies.' +"The manageress had sat all this while busy with her papers +without a word to either of us, but she glanced at me now with so +much annoyance upon her face that I could not help suspecting +that she had lost a handsome commission through my refusal. +"'Do you desire your name to be kept upon the books?' she asked. +"'If you please, Miss Stoper.' +"'Well, really, it seems rather useless, since you refuse the +most excellent offers in this fashion,' said she sharply. 'You +can hardly expect us to exert ourselves to find another such +opening for you. Goodday to you, Miss Hunter.' She struck a gong +upon the table, and I was shown out by the page. +"Well, Mr. Holmes, when I got back to my lodgings and found +little enough in the cupboard, and two or three bills upon the +table. I began to ask myself whether I had not done a very +foolish thing. After all, if these people had strange fads and +expected obedience on the most extraordinary matters, they were +at least ready to pay for their eccentricity. Very few +governesses in England are getting pounds a year. Besides, +what use was my hair to me? Many people are improved by wearing +it short and perhaps I should be among the number. Next day I was +inclined to think that I had made a mistake, and by the day after +I was sure of it. I had almost overcome my pride so far as to go +back to the agency and inquire whether the place was still open +when I received this letter from the gentleman himself. I have it +here and I will read it to you +"'The Copper Beeches, near Winchester. +"'DEAR MISS HUNTERMiss Stoper has very kindly given me your +address, and I write from here to ask you whether you have +reconsidered your decision. My wife is very anxious that you +should come, for she has been much attracted by my description of +you. We are willing to give pounds a quarter, or pounds a +year, so as to recompense you for any little inconvenience which +our fads may cause you. They are not very exacting, after all. My +wife is fond of a particular shade of electric blue and would +like you to wear such a dress indoors in the morning. You need +not, however, go to the expense of purchasing one, as we have one +belonging to my dear daughter Alice now in Philadelphia, which +would, I should think, fit you very well. Then, as to sitting +here or there, or amusing yourself in any manner indicated, that +need cause you no inconvenience. As regards your hair, it is no +doubt a pity, especially as I could not help remarking its beauty +during our short interview, but I am afraid that I must remain +firm upon this point, and I only hope that the increased salary +may recompense you for the loss. Your duties, as far as the child +is concerned, are very light. Now do try to come, and I shall +meet you with the dogcart at Winchester. Let me know your train. +Yours faithfully, JEPHRO RUCASTLE.' +"That is the letter which I have just received, Mr. Holmes, and +my mind is made up that I will accept it. I thought, however, +that before taking the final step I should like to submit the +whole matter to your consideration." +"Well, Miss Hunter, if your mind is made up, that settles the +question," said Holmes, smiling. +"But you would not advise me to refuse?" +"I confess that it is not the situation which I should like to +see a sister of mine apply for." +"What is the meaning of it all, Mr. Holmes?" +"Ah, I have no data. I cannot tell. Perhaps you have yourself +formed some opinion?" +"Well, there seems to me to be only one possible solution. Mr. +Rucastle seemed to be a very kind, goodnatured man. Is it not +possible that his wife is a lunatic, that he desires to keep the +matter quiet for fear she should be taken to an asylum, and that +he humours her fancies in every way in order to prevent an +outbreak?" +"That is a possible solutionin fact, as matters stand, it is +the most probable one. But in any case it does not seem to be a +nice household for a young lady." +"But the money, Mr. Holmes, the money" +"Well, yes, of course the pay is goodtoo good. That is what +makes me uneasy. Why should they give you pounds a year, when +they could have their pick for pounds? There must be some +strong reason behind." +"I thought that if I told you the circumstances you would +understand afterwards if I wanted your help. I should feel so +much stronger if I felt that you were at the back of me." +"Oh, you may carry that feeling away with you. I assure you that +your little problem promises to be the most interesting which has +come my way for some months. There is something distinctly novel +about some of the features. If you should find yourself in doubt +or in danger" +"Danger What danger do you foresee?" +Holmes shook his head gravely. "It would cease to be a danger if +we could define it," said he. "But at any time, day or night, a +telegram would bring me down to your help." +"That is enough." She rose briskly from her chair with the +anxiety all swept from her face. "I shall go down to Hampshire +quite easy in my mind now. I shall write to Mr. Rucastle at once, +sacrifice my poor hair tonight, and start for Winchester +tomorrow." With a few grateful words to Holmes she bade us both +goodnight and bustled off upon her way. +"At least," said I as we heard her quick, firm steps descending +the stairs, "she seems to be a young lady who is very well able +to take care of herself." +"And she would need to be," said Holmes gravely. "I am much +mistaken if we do not hear from her before many days are past." +It was not very long before my friend's prediction was fulfilled. +A fortnight went by, during which I frequently found my thoughts +turning in her direction and wondering what strange sidealley of +human experience this lonely woman had strayed into. The unusual +salary, the curious conditions, the light duties, all pointed to +something abnormal, though whether a fad or a plot, or whether +the man were a philanthropist or a villain, it was quite beyond +my powers to determine. As to Holmes, I observed that he sat +frequently for half an hour on end, with knitted brows and an +abstracted air, but he swept the matter away with a wave of his +hand when I mentioned it. "Data data data" he cried +impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay." And yet he would +always wind up by muttering that no sister of his should ever +have accepted such a situation. +The telegram which we eventually received came late one night +just as I was thinking of turning in and Holmes was settling down +to one of those allnight chemical researches which he frequently +indulged in, when I would leave him stooping over a retort and a +testtube at night and find him in the same position when I came +down to breakfast in the morning. He opened the yellow envelope, +and then, glancing at the message, threw it across to me. +"Just look up the trains in Bradshaw," said he, and turned back +to his chemical studies. +The summons was a brief and urgent one. +"Please be at the Black Swan Hotel at Winchester at midday +tomorrow," it said. "Do come I am at my wit's end. HUNTER." +"Will you come with me?" asked Holmes, glancing up. +"I should wish to." +"Just look it up, then." +"There is a train at halfpast nine," said I, glancing over my +Bradshaw. "It is due at Winchester at ." +"That will do very nicely. Then perhaps I had better postpone my +analysis of the acetones, as we may need to be at our best in the +morning." +By eleven o'clock the next day we were well upon our way to the +old English capital. Holmes had been buried in the morning papers +all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he +threw them down and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal +spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white +clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining +very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, +which set an edge to a man's energy. All over the countryside, +away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and +grey roofs of the farmsteadings peeped out from amid the light +green of the new foliage. +"Are they not fresh and beautiful?" I cried with all the +enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street. +But Holmes shook his head gravely. +"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of +a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with +reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered +houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, +and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their +isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed +there." +"Good heavens" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these +dear old homesteads?" +"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, +Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest +alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin +than does the smiling and beautiful countryside." +"You horrify me" +"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion +can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no +lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of +a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among +the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever +so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is +but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these +lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part +with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the +deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, +year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this +lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I +should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of +country which makes the danger. Still, it is clear that she is +not personally threatened." +"No. If she can come to Winchester to meet us she can get away." +"Quite so. She has her freedom." +"What CAN be the matter, then? Can you suggest no explanation?" +"I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would +cover the facts as far as we know them. But which of these is +correct can only be determined by the fresh information which we +shall no doubt find waiting for us. Well, there is the tower of +the cathedral, and we shall soon learn all that Miss Hunter has +to tell." +The Black Swan is an inn of repute in the High Street, at no +distance from the station, and there we found the young lady +waiting for us. She had engaged a sittingroom, and our lunch +awaited us upon the table. +"I am so delighted that you have come," she said earnestly. "It +is so very kind of you both but indeed I do not know what I +should do. Your advice will be altogether invaluable to me." +"Pray tell us what has happened to you." +"I will do so, and I must be quick, for I have promised Mr. +Rucastle to be back before three. I got his leave to come into +town this morning, though he little knew for what purpose." +"Let us have everything in its due order." Holmes thrust his long +thin legs out towards the fire and composed himself to listen. +"In the first place, I may say that I have met, on the whole, +with no actual illtreatment from Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle. It is +only fair to them to say that. But I cannot understand them, and +I am not easy in my mind about them." +"What can you not understand?" +"Their reasons for their conduct. But you shall have it all just +as it occurred. When I came down, Mr. Rucastle met me here and +drove me in his dogcart to the Copper Beeches. It is, as he +said, beautifully situated, but it is not beautiful in itself, +for it is a large square block of a house, whitewashed, but all +stained and streaked with damp and bad weather. There are grounds +round it, woods on three sides, and on the fourth a field which +slopes down to the Southampton highroad, which curves past about +a hundred yards from the front door. This ground in front belongs +to the house, but the woods all round are part of Lord +Southerton's preserves. A clump of copper beeches immediately in +front of the hall door has given its name to the place. +"I was driven over by my employer, who was as amiable as ever, +and was introduced by him that evening to his wife and the child. +There was no truth, Mr. Holmes, in the conjecture which seemed to +us to be probable in your rooms at Baker Street. Mrs. Rucastle is +not mad. I found her to be a silent, palefaced woman, much +younger than her husband, not more than thirty, I should think, +while he can hardly be less than fortyfive. From their +conversation I have gathered that they have been married about +seven years, that he was a widower, and that his only child by +the first wife was the daughter who has gone to Philadelphia. Mr. +Rucastle told me in private that the reason why she had left them +was that she had an unreasoning aversion to her stepmother. As +the daughter could not have been less than twenty, I can quite +imagine that her position must have been uncomfortable with her +father's young wife. +"Mrs. Rucastle seemed to me to be colourless in mind as well as +in feature. She impressed me neither favourably nor the reverse. +She was a nonentity. It was easy to see that she was passionately +devoted both to her husband and to her little son. Her light grey +eyes wandered continually from one to the other, noting every +little want and forestalling it if possible. He was kind to her +also in his bluff, boisterous fashion, and on the whole they +seemed to be a happy couple. And yet she had some secret sorrow, +this woman. She would often be lost in deep thought, with the +saddest look upon her face. More than once I have surprised her +in tears. I have thought sometimes that it was the disposition of +her child which weighed upon her mind, for I have never met so +utterly spoiled and so illnatured a little creature. He is small +for his age, with a head which is quite disproportionately large. +His whole life appears to be spent in an alternation between +savage fits of passion and gloomy intervals of sulking. Giving +pain to any creature weaker than himself seems to be his one idea +of amusement, and he shows quite remarkable talent in planning +the capture of mice, little birds, and insects. But I would +rather not talk about the creature, Mr. Holmes, and, indeed, he +has little to do with my story." +"I am glad of all details," remarked my friend, "whether they +seem to you to be relevant or not." +"I shall try not to miss anything of importance. The one +unpleasant thing about the house, which struck me at once, was +the appearance and conduct of the servants. There are only two, a +man and his wife. Toller, for that is his name, is a rough, +uncouth man, with grizzled hair and whiskers, and a perpetual +smell of drink. Twice since I have been with them he has been +quite drunk, and yet Mr. Rucastle seemed to take no notice of it. +His wife is a very tall and strong woman with a sour face, as +silent as Mrs. Rucastle and much less amiable. They are a most +unpleasant couple, but fortunately I spend most of my time in the +nursery and my own room, which are next to each other in one +corner of the building. +"For two days after my arrival at the Copper Beeches my life was +very quiet on the third, Mrs. Rucastle came down just after +breakfast and whispered something to her husband. +"'Oh, yes,' said he, turning to me, 'we are very much obliged to +you, Miss Hunter, for falling in with our whims so far as to cut +your hair. I assure you that it has not detracted in the tiniest +iota from your appearance. We shall now see how the electricblue +dress will become you. You will find it laid out upon the bed in +your room, and if you would be so good as to put it on we should +both be extremely obliged.' +"The dress which I found waiting for me was of a peculiar shade +of blue. It was of excellent material, a sort of beige, but it +bore unmistakable signs of having been worn before. It could not +have been a better fit if I had been measured for it. Both Mr. +and Mrs. Rucastle expressed a delight at the look of it, which +seemed quite exaggerated in its vehemence. They were waiting for +me in the drawingroom, which is a very large room, stretching +along the entire front of the house, with three long windows +reaching down to the floor. A chair had been placed close to the +central window, with its back turned towards it. In this I was +asked to sit, and then Mr. Rucastle, walking up and down on the +other side of the room, began to tell me a series of the funniest +stories that I have ever listened to. You cannot imagine how +comical he was, and I laughed until I was quite weary. Mrs. +Rucastle, however, who has evidently no sense of humour, never so +much as smiled, but sat with her hands in her lap, and a sad, +anxious look upon her face. After an hour or so, Mr. Rucastle +suddenly remarked that it was time to commence the duties of the +day, and that I might change my dress and go to little Edward in +the nursery. +"Two days later this same performance was gone through under +exactly similar circumstances. Again I changed my dress, again I +sat in the window, and again I laughed very heartily at the funny +stories of which my employer had an immense rpertoire, and which +he told inimitably. Then he handed me a yellowbacked novel, and +moving my chair a little sideways, that my own shadow might not +fall upon the page, he begged me to read aloud to him. I read for +about ten minutes, beginning in the heart of a chapter, and then +suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he ordered me to cease and +to change my dress. +"You can easily imagine, Mr. Holmes, how curious I became as to +what the meaning of this extraordinary performance could possibly +be. They were always very careful, I observed, to turn my face +away from the window, so that I became consumed with the desire +to see what was going on behind my back. At first it seemed to be +impossible, but I soon devised a means. My handmirror had been +broken, so a happy thought seized me, and I concealed a piece of +the glass in my handkerchief. On the next occasion, in the midst +of my laughter, I put my handkerchief up to my eyes, and was able +with a little management to see all that there was behind me. I +confess that I was disappointed. There was nothing. At least that +was my first impression. At the second glance, however, I +perceived that there was a man standing in the Southampton Road, +a small bearded man in a grey suit, who seemed to be looking in +my direction. The road is an important highway, and there are +usually people there. This man, however, was leaning against the +railings which bordered our field and was looking earnestly up. I +lowered my handkerchief and glanced at Mrs. Rucastle to find her +eyes fixed upon me with a most searching gaze. She said nothing, +but I am convinced that she had divined that I had a mirror in my +hand and had seen what was behind me. She rose at once. +"'Jephro,' said she, 'there is an impertinent fellow upon the +road there who stares up at Miss Hunter.' +"'No friend of yours, Miss Hunter?' he asked. +"'No, I know no one in these parts.' +"'Dear me How very impertinent Kindly turn round and motion to +him to go away.' +"'Surely it would be better to take no notice.' +"'No, no, we should have him loitering here always. Kindly turn +round and wave him away like that.' +"I did as I was told, and at the same instant Mrs. Rucastle drew +down the blind. That was a week ago, and from that time I have +not sat again in the window, nor have I worn the blue dress, nor +seen the man in the road." +"Pray continue," said Holmes. "Your narrative promises to be a +most interesting one." +"You will find it rather disconnected, I fear, and there may +prove to be little relation between the different incidents of +which I speak. On the very first day that I was at the Copper +Beeches, Mr. Rucastle took me to a small outhouse which stands +near the kitchen door. As we approached it I heard the sharp +rattling of a chain, and the sound as of a large animal moving +about. +"'Look in here' said Mr. Rucastle, showing me a slit between two +planks. 'Is he not a beauty?' +"I looked through and was conscious of two glowing eyes, and of a +vague figure huddled up in the darkness. +"'Don't be frightened,' said my employer, laughing at the start +which I had given. 'It's only Carlo, my mastiff. I call him mine, +but really old Toller, my groom, is the only man who can do +anything with him. We feed him once a day, and not too much then, +so that he is always as keen as mustard. Toller lets him loose +every night, and God help the trespasser whom he lays his fangs +upon. For goodness' sake don't you ever on any pretext set your +foot over the threshold at night, for it's as much as your life +is worth.' +"The warning was no idle one, for two nights later I happened to +look out of my bedroom window about two o'clock in the morning. +It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the lawn in front of the +house was silvered over and almost as bright as day. I was +standing, rapt in the peaceful beauty of the scene, when I was +aware that something was moving under the shadow of the copper +beeches. As it emerged into the moonshine I saw what it was. It +was a giant dog, as large as a calf, tawny tinted, with hanging +jowl, black muzzle, and huge projecting bones. It walked slowly +across the lawn and vanished into the shadow upon the other side. +That dreadful sentinel sent a chill to my heart which I do not +think that any burglar could have done. +"And now I have a very strange experience to tell you. I had, as +you know, cut off my hair in London, and I had placed it in a +great coil at the bottom of my trunk. One evening, after the +child was in bed, I began to amuse myself by examining the +furniture of my room and by rearranging my own little things. +There was an old chest of drawers in the room, the two upper ones +empty and open, the lower one locked. I had filled the first two +with my linen, and as I had still much to pack away I was +naturally annoyed at not having the use of the third drawer. It +struck me that it might have been fastened by a mere oversight, +so I took out my bunch of keys and tried to open it. The very +first key fitted to perfection, and I drew the drawer open. There +was only one thing in it, but I am sure that you would never +guess what it was. It was my coil of hair. +"I took it up and examined it. It was of the same peculiar tint, +and the same thickness. But then the impossibility of the thing +obtruded itself upon me. How could my hair have been locked in +the drawer? With trembling hands I undid my trunk, turned out the +contents, and drew from the bottom my own hair. I laid the two +tresses together, and I assure you that they were identical. Was +it not extraordinary? Puzzle as I would, I could make nothing at +all of what it meant. I returned the strange hair to the drawer, +and I said nothing of the matter to the Rucastles as I felt that +I had put myself in the wrong by opening a drawer which they had +locked. +"I am naturally observant, as you may have remarked, Mr. Holmes, +and I soon had a pretty good plan of the whole house in my head. +There was one wing, however, which appeared not to be inhabited +at all. A door which faced that which led into the quarters of +the Tollers opened into this suite, but it was invariably locked. +One day, however, as I ascended the stair, I met Mr. Rucastle +coming out through this door, his keys in his hand, and a look on +his face which made him a very different person to the round, +jovial man to whom I was accustomed. His cheeks were red, his +brow was all crinkled with anger, and the veins stood out at his +temples with passion. He locked the door and hurried past me +without a word or a look. +"This aroused my curiosity, so when I went out for a walk in the +grounds with my charge, I strolled round to the side from which I +could see the windows of this part of the house. There were four +of them in a row, three of which were simply dirty, while the +fourth was shuttered up. They were evidently all deserted. As I +strolled up and down, glancing at them occasionally, Mr. Rucastle +came out to me, looking as merry and jovial as ever. +"'Ah' said he, 'you must not think me rude if I passed you +without a word, my dear young lady. I was preoccupied with +business matters.' +"I assured him that I was not offended. 'By the way,' said I, +'you seem to have quite a suite of spare rooms up there, and one +of them has the shutters up.' +"He looked surprised and, as it seemed to me, a little startled +at my remark. +"'Photography is one of my hobbies,' said he. 'I have made my +dark room up there. But, dear me what an observant young lady we +have come upon. Who would have believed it? Who would have ever +believed it?' He spoke in a jesting tone, but there was no jest +in his eyes as he looked at me. I read suspicion there and +annoyance, but no jest. +"Well, Mr. Holmes, from the moment that I understood that there +was something about that suite of rooms which I was not to know, +I was all on fire to go over them. It was not mere curiosity, +though I have my share of that. It was more a feeling of dutya +feeling that some good might come from my penetrating to this +place. They talk of woman's instinct perhaps it was woman's +instinct which gave me that feeling. At any rate, it was there, +and I was keenly on the lookout for any chance to pass the +forbidden door. +"It was only yesterday that the chance came. I may tell you that, +besides Mr. Rucastle, both Toller and his wife find something to +do in these deserted rooms, and I once saw him carrying a large +black linen bag with him through the door. Recently he has been +drinking hard, and yesterday evening he was very drunk and when +I came upstairs there was the key in the door. I have no doubt at +all that he had left it there. Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle were both +downstairs, and the child was with them, so that I had an +admirable opportunity. I turned the key gently in the lock, +opened the door, and slipped through. +"There was a little passage in front of me, unpapered and +uncarpeted, which turned at a right angle at the farther end. +Round this corner were three doors in a line, the first and third +of which were open. They each led into an empty room, dusty and +cheerless, with two windows in the one and one in the other, so +thick with dirt that the evening light glimmered dimly through +them. The centre door was closed, and across the outside of it +had been fastened one of the broad bars of an iron bed, padlocked +at one end to a ring in the wall, and fastened at the other with +stout cord. The door itself was locked as well, and the key was +not there. This barricaded door corresponded clearly with the +shuttered window outside, and yet I could see by the glimmer from +beneath it that the room was not in darkness. Evidently there was +a skylight which let in light from above. As I stood in the +passage gazing at the sinister door and wondering what secret it +might veil, I suddenly heard the sound of steps within the room +and saw a shadow pass backward and forward against the little +slit of dim light which shone out from under the door. A mad, +unreasoning terror rose up in me at the sight, Mr. Holmes. My +overstrung nerves failed me suddenly, and I turned and ranran +as though some dreadful hand were behind me clutching at the +skirt of my dress. I rushed down the passage, through the door, +and straight into the arms of Mr. Rucastle, who was waiting +outside. +"'So,' said he, smiling, 'it was you, then. I thought that it +must be when I saw the door open.' +"'Oh, I am so frightened' I panted. +"'My dear young lady my dear young lady'you cannot think how +caressing and soothing his manner was'and what has frightened +you, my dear young lady?' +"But his voice was just a little too coaxing. He overdid it. I +was keenly on my guard against him. +"'I was foolish enough to go into the empty wing,' I answered. +'But it is so lonely and eerie in this dim light that I was +frightened and ran out again. Oh, it is so dreadfully still in +there' +"'Only that?' said he, looking at me keenly. +"'Why, what did you think?' I asked. +"'Why do you think that I lock this door?' +"'I am sure that I do not know.' +"'It is to keep people out who have no business there. Do you +see?' He was still smiling in the most amiable manner. +"'I am sure if I had known' +"'Well, then, you know now. And if you ever put your foot over +that threshold again'here in an instant the smile hardened into +a grin of rage, and he glared down at me with the face of a +demon'I'll throw you to the mastiff.' +"I was so terrified that I do not know what I did. I suppose that +I must have rushed past him into my room. I remember nothing +until I found myself lying on my bed trembling all over. Then I +thought of you, Mr. Holmes. I could not live there longer without +some advice. I was frightened of the house, of the man, of the +woman, of the servants, even of the child. They were all horrible +to me. If I could only bring you down all would be well. Of +course I might have fled from the house, but my curiosity was +almost as strong as my fears. My mind was soon made up. I would +send you a wire. I put on my hat and cloak, went down to the +office, which is about half a mile from the house, and then +returned, feeling very much easier. A horrible doubt came into my +mind as I approached the door lest the dog might be loose, but I +remembered that Toller had drunk himself into a state of +insensibility that evening, and I knew that he was the only one +in the household who had any influence with the savage creature, +or who would venture to set him free. I slipped in in safety and +lay awake half the night in my joy at the thought of seeing you. +I had no difficulty in getting leave to come into Winchester this +morning, but I must be back before three o'clock, for Mr. and +Mrs. Rucastle are going on a visit, and will be away all the +evening, so that I must look after the child. Now I have told you +all my adventures, Mr. Holmes, and I should be very glad if you +could tell me what it all means, and, above all, what I should +do." +Holmes and I had listened spellbound to this extraordinary story. +My friend rose now and paced up and down the room, his hands in +his pockets, and an expression of the most profound gravity upon +his face. +"Is Toller still drunk?" he asked. +"Yes. I heard his wife tell Mrs. Rucastle that she could do +nothing with him." +"That is well. And the Rucastles go out tonight?" +"Yes." +"Is there a cellar with a good strong lock?" +"Yes, the winecellar." +"You seem to me to have acted all through this matter like a very +brave and sensible girl, Miss Hunter. Do you think that you could +perform one more feat? I should not ask it of you if I did not +think you a quite exceptional woman." +"I will try. What is it?" +"We shall be at the Copper Beeches by seven o'clock, my friend +and I. The Rucastles will be gone by that time, and Toller will, +we hope, be incapable. There only remains Mrs. Toller, who might +give the alarm. If you could send her into the cellar on some +errand, and then turn the key upon her, you would facilitate +matters immensely." +"I will do it." +"Excellent We shall then look thoroughly into the affair. Of +course there is only one feasible explanation. You have been +brought there to personate someone, and the real person is +imprisoned in this chamber. That is obvious. As to who this +prisoner is, I have no doubt that it is the daughter, Miss Alice +Rucastle, if I remember right, who was said to have gone to +America. You were chosen, doubtless, as resembling her in height, +figure, and the colour of your hair. Hers had been cut off, very +possibly in some illness through which she has passed, and so, of +course, yours had to be sacrificed also. By a curious chance you +came upon her tresses. The man in the road was undoubtedly some +friend of herspossibly her fiancand no doubt, as you wore +the girl's dress and were so like her, he was convinced from your +laughter, whenever he saw you, and afterwards from your gesture, +that Miss Rucastle was perfectly happy, and that she no longer +desired his attentions. The dog is let loose at night to prevent +him from endeavouring to communicate with her. So much is fairly +clear. The most serious point in the case is the disposition of +the child." +"What on earth has that to do with it?" I ejaculated. +"My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining +light as to the tendencies of a child by the study of the +parents. Don't you see that the converse is equally valid. I have +frequently gained my first real insight into the character of +parents by studying their children. This child's disposition is +abnormally cruel, merely for cruelty's sake, and whether he +derives this from his smiling father, as I should suspect, or +from his mother, it bodes evil for the poor girl who is in their +power." +"I am sure that you are right, Mr. Holmes," cried our client. "A +thousand things come back to me which make me certain that you +have hit it. Oh, let us lose not an instant in bringing help to +this poor creature." +"We must be circumspect, for we are dealing with a very cunning +man. We can do nothing until seven o'clock. At that hour we shall +be with you, and it will not be long before we solve the +mystery." +We were as good as our word, for it was just seven when we +reached the Copper Beeches, having put up our trap at a wayside +publichouse. The group of trees, with their dark leaves shining +like burnished metal in the light of the setting sun, were +sufficient to mark the house even had Miss Hunter not been +standing smiling on the doorstep. +"Have you managed it?" asked Holmes. +A loud thudding noise came from somewhere downstairs. "That is +Mrs. Toller in the cellar," said she. "Her husband lies snoring +on the kitchen rug. Here are his keys, which are the duplicates +of Mr. Rucastle's." +"You have done well indeed" cried Holmes with enthusiasm. "Now +lead the way, and we shall soon see the end of this black +business." +We passed up the stair, unlocked the door, followed on down a +passage, and found ourselves in front of the barricade which Miss +Hunter had described. Holmes cut the cord and removed the +transverse bar. Then he tried the various keys in the lock, but +without success. No sound came from within, and at the silence +Holmes' face clouded over. +"I trust that we are not too late," said he. "I think, Miss +Hunter, that we had better go in without you. Now, Watson, put +your shoulder to it, and we shall see whether we cannot make our +way in." +It was an old rickety door and gave at once before our united +strength. Together we rushed into the room. It was empty. There +was no furniture save a little pallet bed, a small table, and a +basketful of linen. The skylight above was open, and the prisoner +gone. +"There has been some villainy here," said Holmes "this beauty +has guessed Miss Hunter's intentions and has carried his victim +off." +"But how?" +"Through the skylight. We shall soon see how he managed it." He +swung himself up onto the roof. "Ah, yes," he cried, "here's the +end of a long light ladder against the eaves. That is how he did +it." +"But it is impossible," said Miss Hunter "the ladder was not +there when the Rucastles went away." +"He has come back and done it. I tell you that he is a clever and +dangerous man. I should not be very much surprised if this were +he whose step I hear now upon the stair. I think, Watson, that it +would be as well for you to have your pistol ready." +The words were hardly out of his mouth before a man appeared at +the door of the room, a very fat and burly man, with a heavy +stick in his hand. Miss Hunter screamed and shrunk against the +wall at the sight of him, but Sherlock Holmes sprang forward and +confronted him. +"You villain" said he, "where's your daughter?" +The fat man cast his eyes round, and then up at the open +skylight. +"It is for me to ask you that," he shrieked, "you thieves Spies +and thieves I have caught you, have I? You are in my power. I'll +serve you" He turned and clattered down the stairs as hard as he +could go. +"He's gone for the dog" cried Miss Hunter. +"I have my revolver," said I. +"Better close the front door," cried Holmes, and we all rushed +down the stairs together. We had hardly reached the hall when we +heard the baying of a hound, and then a scream of agony, with a +horrible worrying sound which it was dreadful to listen to. An +elderly man with a red face and shaking limbs came staggering out +at a side door. +"My God" he cried. "Someone has loosed the dog. It's not been +fed for two days. Quick, quick, or it'll be too late" +Holmes and I rushed out and round the angle of the house, with +Toller hurrying behind us. There was the huge famished brute, its +black muzzle buried in Rucastle's throat, while he writhed and +screamed upon the ground. Running up, I blew its brains out, and +it fell over with its keen white teeth still meeting in the great +creases of his neck. With much labour we separated them and +carried him, living but horribly mangled, into the house. We laid +him upon the drawingroom sofa, and having dispatched the sobered +Toller to bear the news to his wife, I did what I could to +relieve his pain. We were all assembled round him when the door +opened, and a tall, gaunt woman entered the room. +"Mrs. Toller" cried Miss Hunter. +"Yes, miss. Mr. Rucastle let me out when he came back before he +went up to you. Ah, miss, it is a pity you didn't let me know +what you were planning, for I would have told you that your pains +were wasted." +"Ha" said Holmes, looking keenly at her. "It is clear that Mrs. +Toller knows more about this matter than anyone else." +"Yes, sir, I do, and I am ready enough to tell what I know." +"Then, pray, sit down, and let us hear it for there are several +points on which I must confess that I am still in the dark." +"I will soon make it clear to you," said she "and I'd have done +so before now if I could ha' got out from the cellar. If there's +policecourt business over this, you'll remember that I was the +one that stood your friend, and that I was Miss Alice's friend +too. +"She was never happy at home, Miss Alice wasn't, from the time +that her father married again. She was slighted like and had no +say in anything, but it never really became bad for her until +after she met Mr. Fowler at a friend's house. As well as I could +learn, Miss Alice had rights of her own by will, but she was so +quiet and patient, she was, that she never said a word about them +but just left everything in Mr. Rucastle's hands. He knew he was +safe with her but when there was a chance of a husband coming +forward, who would ask for all that the law would give him, then +her father thought it time to put a stop on it. He wanted her to +sign a paper, so that whether she married or not, he could use +her money. When she wouldn't do it, he kept on worrying her until +she got brainfever, and for six weeks was at death's door. Then +she got better at last, all worn to a shadow, and with her +beautiful hair cut off but that didn't make no change in her +young man, and he stuck to her as true as man could be." +"Ah," said Holmes, "I think that what you have been good enough +to tell us makes the matter fairly clear, and that I can deduce +all that remains. Mr. Rucastle then, I presume, took to this +system of imprisonment?" +"Yes, sir." +"And brought Miss Hunter down from London in order to get rid of +the disagreeable persistence of Mr. Fowler." +"That was it, sir." +"But Mr. Fowler being a persevering man, as a good seaman should +be, blockaded the house, and having met you succeeded by certain +arguments, metallic or otherwise, in convincing you that your +interests were the same as his." +"Mr. Fowler was a very kindspoken, freehanded gentleman," said +Mrs. Toller serenely. +"And in this way he managed that your good man should have no +want of drink, and that a ladder should be ready at the moment +when your master had gone out." +"You have it, sir, just as it happened." +"I am sure we owe you an apology, Mrs. Toller," said Holmes, "for +you have certainly cleared up everything which puzzled us. And +here comes the country surgeon and Mrs. Rucastle, so I think, +Watson, that we had best escort Miss Hunter back to Winchester, +as it seems to me that our locus standi now is rather a +questionable one." +And thus was solved the mystery of the sinister house with the +copper beeches in front of the door. Mr. Rucastle survived, but +was always a broken man, kept alive solely through the care of +his devoted wife. They still live with their old servants, who +probably know so much of Rucastle's past life that he finds it +difficult to part from them. Mr. Fowler and Miss Rucastle were +married, by special license, in Southampton the day after their +flight, and he is now the holder of a government appointment in +the island of Mauritius. As to Miss Violet Hunter, my friend +Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no further +interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one +of his problems, and she is now the head of a private school at +Walsall, where I believe that she has met with considerable success. + END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES +This file should be named advsh.txt or advsh.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, advsh.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, advsha.txt +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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The previous edition was update by Jose +Menendez. +THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER +BY +MARK TWAIN +Samuel Langhorne Clemens +P R E F A C E +MOST of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred one or +two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were +schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life Tom Sawyer also, but +not from an individualhe is a combination of the characteristics of +three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of +architecture. +The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children +and slaves in the West at the period of this storythat is to say, +thirty or forty years ago. +Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and +girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, +for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what +they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, +and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. +THE AUTHOR. +HARTFORD, . +T O M S A W Y E R +CHAPTER I +"TOM" +No answer. +"TOM" +No answer. +"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM" +No answer. +The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the +room then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or +never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy they were her +state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not +serviceshe could have seen through a pair of stovelids just as well. +She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but +still loud enough for the furniture to hear +"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll" +She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching +under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the +punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat. +"I never did see the beat of that boy" +She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the +tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. +So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and +shouted +"Youu TOM" +There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to +seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. +"There I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in +there?" +"Nothing." +"Nothing Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What IS that +truck?" +"I don't know, aunt." +"Well, I know. It's jamthat's what it is. Forty times I've said if +you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch." +The switch hovered in the airthe peril was desperate +"My Look behind you, aunt" +The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The +lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high boardfence, and +disappeared over it. +His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle +laugh. +"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks +enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old +fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, +as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, +and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how +long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he +can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down +again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, +and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile +the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for +us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but lawsame he's my +own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash +him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, +and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Wellawell, man +that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the +Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, +and [ Southwestern for "afternoon"] I'll just be obleeged to make him +work, tomorrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work +Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more +than he hates anything else, and I've GOT to do some of my duty by him, +or I'll be the ruination of the child." +Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home +barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw nextday's +wood and split the kindlings before supperat least he was there in +time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did threefourths of the +work. Tom's younger brother or rather halfbrother Sid was already +through with his part of the work picking up chips, for he was a +quiet boy, and had no adventurous, troublesome ways. +While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity +offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and +very deepfor she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like +many other simplehearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she +was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she +loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low +cunning. Said she +"Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?" +"Yes'm." +"Powerful warm, warn't it?" +"Yes'm." +"Didn't you want to go in aswimming, Tom?" +A bit of a scare shot through Toma touch of uncomfortable suspicion. +He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said +"No'mwell, not very much." +The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said +"But you ain't too warm now, though." And it flattered her to reflect +that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing +that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew +where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move +"Some of us pumped on our headsmine's damp yet. See?" +Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of +circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new +inspiration +"Tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to +pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket" +The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His +shirt collar was securely sewed. +"Bother Well, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hookey +and been aswimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of a +singed cat, as the saying isbetter'n you look. THIS time." +She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom +had stumbled into obedient conduct for once. +But Sidney said +"Well, now, if I didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread, +but it's black." +"Why, I did sew it with white Tom" +But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said +"Siddy, I'll lick you for that." +In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into +the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about themone needle +carried white thread and the other black. He said +"She'd never noticed if it hadn't been for Sid. Confound it sometimes +she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to +geeminy she'd stick to one or t'otherI can't keep the run of 'em. But +I bet you I'll lam Sid for that. I'll learn him" +He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very +well thoughand loathed him. +Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. +Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him +than a man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore +them down and drove them out of his mind for the timejust as men's +misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This +new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just +acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. +It consisted in a peculiar birdlike turn, a sort of liquid warble, +produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short +intervals in the midst of the musicthe reader probably remembers how +to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave +him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full +of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an +astronomer feels who has discovered a new planetno doubt, as far as +strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with +the boy, not the astronomer. +The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom +checked his whistle. A stranger was before hima boy a shade larger +than himself. A newcomer of any age or either sex was an impressive +curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy +was well dressed, toowell dressed on a weekday. This was simply +astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his closebuttoned blue cloth +roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes +onand it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of +ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom's vitals. The +more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his +nose at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed +to him to grow. Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other movedbut +only sidewise, in a circle they kept face to face and eye to eye all +the time. Finally Tom said +"I can lick you" +"I'd like to see you try it." +"Well, I can do it." +"No you can't, either." +"Yes I can." +"No you can't." +"I can." +"You can't." +"Can" +"Can't" +An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said +"What's your name?" +"'Tisn't any of your business, maybe." +"Well I 'low I'll MAKE it my business." +"Well why don't you?" +"If you say much, I will." +"MuchmuchMUCH. There now." +"Oh, you think you're mighty smart, DON'T you? I could lick you with +one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to." +"Well why don't you DO it? You SAY you can do it." +"Well I WILL, if you fool with me." +"Oh yesI've seen whole families in the same fix." +"Smarty You think you're SOME, now, DON'T you? Oh, what a hat" +"You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you to knock it +offand anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs." +"You're a liar" +"You're another." +"You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up." +"Awtake a walk" +"Sayif you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a +rock off'n your head." +"Oh, of COURSE you will." +"Well I WILL." +"Well why don't you DO it then? What do you keep SAYING you will for? +Why don't you DO it? It's because you're afraid." +"I AIN'T afraid." +"You are." +"I ain't." +"You are." +Another pause, and more eying and sidling around each other. Presently +they were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said +"Get away from here" +"Go away yourself" +"I won't." +"I won't either." +So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and +both shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with +hate. But neither could get an advantage. After struggling till both +were hot and flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution, +and Tom said +"You're a coward and a pup. I'll tell my big brother on you, and he +can thrash you with his little finger, and I'll make him do it, too." +"What do I care for your big brother? I've got a brother that's bigger +than he isand what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too." +[Both brothers were imaginary.] +"That's a lie." +"YOUR saying so don't make it so." +Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said +"I dare you to step over that, and I'll lick you till you can't stand +up. Anybody that'll take a dare will steal sheep." +The new boy stepped over promptly, and said +"Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it." +"Don't you crowd me now you better look out." +"Well, you SAID you'd do itwhy don't you do it?" +"By jingo for two cents I WILL do it." +The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out +with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys +were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats and +for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and +clothes, punched and scratched each other's nose, and covered +themselves with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and +through the fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, and +pounding him with his fists. "Holler 'nuff" said he. +The boy only struggled to free himself. He was cryingmainly from rage. +"Holler 'nuff"and the pounding went on. +At last the stranger got out a smothered "'Nuff" and Tom let him up +and said +"Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fooling with next +time." +The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing, +snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and +threatening what he would do to Tom the "next time he caught him out." +To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and +as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw +it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like +an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he +lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the +enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the +window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and called +Tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went +away but he said he "'lowed" to "lay" for that boy. +He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in +at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt +and when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn +his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in +its firmness. +CHAPTER II +SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and +fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart and if +the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in +every face and a spring in every step. The locusttrees were in bloom +and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond +the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far +enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting. +Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a +longhandled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and +a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board +fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a +burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost +plank repeated the operation did it again compared the insignificant +whitewashed streak with the farreaching continent of unwhitewashed +fence, and sat down on a treebox discouraged. Jim came skipping out at +the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from +the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but +now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at +the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there +waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, +fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only +a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of +water under an hourand even then somebody generally had to go after +him. Tom said +"Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some." +Jim shook his head and said +"Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis +water an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars +Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend +to my own businessshe 'lowed SHE'D 'tend to de whitewashin'." +"Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always +talks. Gimme the bucketI won't be gone only a a minute. SHE won't +ever know." +"Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n +me. 'Deed she would." +"SHE She never licks anybodywhacks 'em over the head with her +thimbleand who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but +talk don't hurtanyways it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you +a marvel. I'll give you a white alley" +Jim began to waver. +"White alley, Jim And it's a bully taw." +"My Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you But Mars Tom I's powerful +'fraid ole missis" +"And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe." +Jim was only humanthis attraction was too much for him. He put down +his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing +interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was +flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was +whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field +with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye. +But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had +planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys +would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and +they would make a world of fun of him for having to workthe very +thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and +examined itbits of toys, marbles, and trash enough to buy an +exchange of WORK, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an +hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his +pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark +and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him Nothing less than a +great, magnificent inspiration. +He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in +sight presentlythe very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been +dreading. Ben's gait was the hopskipandjumpproof enough that his +heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and +giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deeptoned +dingdongdong, dingdongdong, for he was personating a steamboat. As +he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned +far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious +pomp and circumstancefor he was personating the Big Missouri, and +considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and +captain and enginebells combined, so he had to imagine himself +standing on his own hurricanedeck giving the orders and executing them +"Stop her, sir Tingalingling" The headway ran almost out, and he +drew up slowly toward the sidewalk. +"Ship up to back Tingalingling" His arms straightened and +stiffened down his sides. +"Set her back on the stabboard Tingalingling Chow chchowwow +Chow" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circlesfor it was +representing a fortyfoot wheel. +"Let her go back on the labboard Tingalingling Chowchchowchow" +The left hand began to describe circles. +"Stop the stabboard Tingalingling Stop the labboard Come ahead +on the stabboard Stop her Let your outside turn over slow +Tingalingling Chowowow Get out that headline LIVELY now +Comeout with your springlinewhat're you about there Take a turn +round that stump with the bight of it Stand by that stage, nowlet her +go Done with the engines, sir Tingalingling SH'T S'H'T SH'T" +trying the gaugecocks. +Tom went on whitewashingpaid no attention to the steamboat. Ben +stared a moment and then said "HiYI YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you" +No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then +he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as +before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the +apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said +"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?" +Tom wheeled suddenly and said +"Why, it's you, Ben I warn't noticing." +"SayI'm going in aswimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of +course you'd druther WORKwouldn't you? Course you would" +Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said +"What do you call work?" +"Why, ain't THAT work?" +Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly +"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom +Sawyer." +"Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you LIKE it?" +The brush continued to move. +"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get +a chance to whitewash a fence every day?" +That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom +swept his brush daintily back and forthstepped back to note the +effectadded a touch here and therecriticised the effect againBen +watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more +absorbed. Presently he said +"Say, Tom, let ME whitewash a little." +Tom considered, was about to consent but he altered his mind +"NonoI reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's +awful particular about this fenceright here on the street, you know +but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and SHE wouldn't. Yes, +she's awful particular about this fence it's got to be done very +careful I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two +thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done." +"Nois that so? Oh come, nowlemme just try. Only just a littleI'd +let YOU, if you was me, Tom." +"Ben, I'd like to, honest injun but Aunt Pollywell, Jim wanted to +do it, but she wouldn't let him Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't +let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this +fence and anything was to happen to it" +"Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. SayI'll give +you the core of my apple." +"Well, hereNo, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard" +"I'll give you ALL of it" +Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his +heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in +the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, +dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more +innocents. There was no lack of material boys happened along every +little while they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time +Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for +a kite, in good repair and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in +for a dead rat and a string to swing it withand so on, and so on, +hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being +a poor povertystricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling +in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, +part of a jewsharp, a piece of blue bottleglass to look through, a +spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, +a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six +firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a +dogcollarbut no dogthe handle of a knife, four pieces of +orangepeel, and a dilapidated old window sash. +He had had a nice, good, idle time all the whileplenty of company +and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it If he hadn't run out +of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village. +Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He +had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing itnamely, +that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only +necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great +and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have +comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, +and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And +this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers +or performing on a treadmill is work, while rolling tenpins or +climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in +England who drive fourhorse passengercoaches twenty or thirty miles +on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them +considerable money but if they were offered wages for the service, +that would turn it into work and then they would resign. +The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place +in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to +report. +CHAPTER III +TOM presented himself before Aunt Polly, who was sitting by an open +window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bedroom, +breakfastroom, diningroom, and library, combined. The balmy summer +air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing murmur +of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her knitting +for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her lap. Her +spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had thought +that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at seeing him +place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. He said "Mayn't +I go and play now, aunt?" +"What, a'ready? How much have you done?" +"It's all done, aunt." +"Tom, don't lie to meI can't bear it." +"I ain't, aunt it IS all done." +Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see +for herself and she would have been content to find twenty per cent. +of Tom's statement true. When she found the entire fence whitewashed, +and not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even +a streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable. +She said +"Well, I never There's no getting round it, you can work when you're +a mind to, Tom." And then she diluted the compliment by adding, "But +it's powerful seldom you're a mind to, I'm bound to say. Well, go 'long +and play but mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you." +She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took +him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to +him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a +treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort. +And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he "hooked" a +doughnut. +Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway +that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and +the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a +hailstorm and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties +and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect, +and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general +thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at +peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his +black thread and getting him into trouble. +Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by +the back of his aunt's cowstable. He presently got safely beyond the +reach of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square +of the village, where two "military" companies of boys had met for +conflict, according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of +these armies, Joe Harper a bosom friend General of the other. These +two great commanders did not condescend to fight in personthat being +better suited to the still smaller frybut sat together on an eminence +and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through +aidesdecamp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and +hardfought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, +the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the +necessary battle appointed after which the armies fell into line and +marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone. +As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new +girl in the gardena lovely little blueeyed creature with yellow hair +plaited into two longtails, white summer frock and embroidered +pantalettes. The freshcrowned hero fell without firing a shot. A +certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a +memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction +he had regarded his passion as adoration and behold it was only a poor +little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her she had +confessed hardly a week ago he had been the happiest and the proudest +boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time +she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is +done. +He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she +had discovered him then he pretended he did not know she was present, +and began to "show off" in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to +win her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some +time but byandby, while he was in the midst of some dangerous +gymnastic performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl +was wending her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and +leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer. +She halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom +heaved a great sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face +lit up, right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment +before she disappeared. +The boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and +then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as if +he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction. +Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his +nose, with his head tilted far back and as he moved from side to side, +in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy finally +his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he +hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But +only for a minuteonly while he could button the flower inside his +jacket, next his heartor next his stomach, possibly, for he was not +much posted in anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway. +He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, "showing +off," as before but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom +comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some +window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode +home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions. +All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered +"what had got into the child." He took a good scolding about clodding +Sid, and did not seem to mind it in the least. He tried to steal sugar +under his aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said +"Aunt, you don't whack Sid when he takes it." +"Well, Sid don't torment a body the way you do. You'd be always into +that sugar if I warn't watching you." +Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his +immunity, reached for the sugarbowla sort of glorying over Tom which +was wellnigh unbearable. But Sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped +and broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even +controlled his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would +not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly +still till she asked who did the mischief and then he would tell, and +there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model +"catch it." He was so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold +himself when the old lady came back and stood above the wreck +discharging lightnings of wrath from over her spectacles. He said to +himself, "Now it's coming" And the next instant he was sprawling on +the floor The potent palm was uplifted to strike again when Tom cried +out +"Hold on, now, what 'er you belting ME for?Sid broke it" +Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But +when she got her tongue again, she only said +"Umf Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some +other audacious mischief when I wasn't around, like enough." +Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something +kind and loving but she judged that this would be construed into a +confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that. +So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart. +Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart +his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the +consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice +of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then, +through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured +himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching +one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and +die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured +himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and +his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how +her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back +her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more But he would lie +there cold and white and make no signa poor little sufferer, whose +griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos +of these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to +choke and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he +winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a +luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear +to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it +it was too sacred for such contact and so, presently, when his cousin +Mary danced in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an +agelong visit of one week to the country, he got up and moved in +clouds and darkness out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in +at the other. +He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought +desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the +river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and +contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, +that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without +undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought +of his flower. He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily +increased his dismal felicity. He wondered if she would pity him if she +knew? Would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms +around his neck and comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all +the hollow world? This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable +suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind and set it +up in new and varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he +rose up sighing and departed in the darkness. +About halfpast nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street +to where the Adored Unknown lived he paused a moment no sound fell +upon his listening ear a candle was casting a dull glow upon the +curtain of a secondstory window. Was the sacred presence there? He +climbed the fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till +he stood under that window he looked up at it long, and with emotion +then he laid him down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon +his back, with his hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor +wilted flower. And thus he would dieout in the cold world, with no +shelter over his homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the +deathdamps from his brow, no loving face to bend pityingly over him +when the great agony came. And thus SHE would see him when she looked +out upon the glad morning, and oh would she drop one little tear upon +his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright +young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down? +The window went up, a maidservant's discordant voice profaned the +holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains +The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz +as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound +as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the +fence and shot away in the gloom. +Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his +drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, Sid woke up but if he +had any dim idea of making any "references to allusions," he thought +better of it and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom's eye. +Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made +mental note of the omission. +CHAPTER IV +THE sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful +village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family +worship it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid +courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of +originality and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter +of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai. +Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to "get +his verses." Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his +energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the +Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter. +At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson, +but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human +thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary +took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through +the fog +"Blessed are theaa" +"Poor" +"Yespoor blessed are the pooraa" +"In spirit" +"In spirit blessed are the poor in spirit, for theythey" +"THEIRS" +"For THEIRS. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom +of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for theythey" +"Sh" +"For theya" +"S, H, A" +"For they S, HOh, I don't know what it is" +"SHALL" +"Oh, SHALL for they shallfor they shallaashall mournaa +blessed are they that shallthey thatathey that shall mourn, for +they shallashall WHAT? Why don't you tell me, Mary?what do you +want to be so mean for?" +"Oh, Tom, you poor thickheaded thing, I'm not teasing you. I wouldn't +do that. You must go and learn it again. Don't you be discouraged, Tom, +you'll manage itand if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice. +There, now, that's a good boy." +"All right What is it, Mary, tell me what it is." +"Never you mind, Tom. You know if I say it's nice, it is nice." +"You bet you that's so, Mary. All right, I'll tackle it again." +And he did "tackle it again"and under the double pressure of +curiosity and prospective gain he did it with such spirit that he +accomplished a shining success. Mary gave him a brandnew "Barlow" +knife worth twelve and a half cents and the convulsion of delight that +swept his system shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would +not cut anything, but it was a "sureenough" Barlow, and there was +inconceivable grandeur in thatthough where the Western boys ever got +the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its +injury is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. Tom +contrived to scarify the cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin +on the bureau, when he was called off to dress for Sundayschool. +Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went +outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there then he +dipped the soap in the water and laid it down turned up his sleeves +poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the +kitchen and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the +door. But Mary removed the towel and said +"Now ain't you ashamed, Tom. You mustn't be so bad. Water won't hurt +you." +Tom was a trifle disconcerted. The basin was refilled, and this time +he stood over it a little while, gathering resolution took in a big +breath and began. When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes +shut and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony +of suds and water was dripping from his face. But when he emerged from +the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped +short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask below and beyond this line +there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in +front and backward around his neck. Mary took him in hand, and when she +was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of +color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls +wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [He privately +smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his +hair close down to his head for he held curls to be effeminate, and +his own filled his life with bitterness.] Then Mary got out a suit of +his clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two yearsthey +were simply called his "other clothes"and so by that we know the +size of his wardrobe. The girl "put him to rights" after he had dressed +himself she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his +vast shirt collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned +him with his speckled straw hat. He now looked exceedingly improved and +uncomfortable. He was fully as uncomfortable as he looked for there +was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. He +hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted she +coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought them +out. He lost his temper and said he was always being made to do +everything he didn't want to do. But Mary said, persuasively +"Please, Tomthat's a good boy." +So he got into the shoes snarling. Mary was soon ready, and the three +children set out for Sundayschoola place that Tom hated with his +whole heart but Sid and Mary were fond of it. +Sabbathschool hours were from nine to halfpast ten and then church +service. Two of the children always remained for the sermon +voluntarily, and the other always remained toofor stronger reasons. +The church's highbacked, uncushioned pews would seat about three +hundred persons the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort +of pine board treebox on top of it for a steeple. At the door Tom +dropped back a step and accosted a Sundaydressed comrade +"Say, Billy, got a yaller ticket?" +"Yes." +"What'll you take for her?" +"What'll you give?" +"Piece of lickrish and a fishhook." +"Less see 'em." +Tom exhibited. They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands. +Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and +some small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. He waylaid other +boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten or +fifteen minutes longer. He entered the church, now, with a swarm of +clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started a +quarrel with the first boy that came handy. The teacher, a grave, +elderly man, interfered then turned his back a moment and Tom pulled a +boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy +turned around stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear +him say "Ouch" and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom's whole +class were of a patternrestless, noisy, and troublesome. When they +came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses +perfectly, but had to be prompted all along. However, they worried +through, and each got his rewardin small blue tickets, each with a +passage of Scripture on it each blue ticket was pay for two verses of +the recitation. Ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be +exchanged for it ten red tickets equalled a yellow one for ten yellow +tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible worth forty +cents in those easy times to the pupil. How many of my readers would +have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even +for a Dore Bible? And yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this wayit +was the patient work of two yearsand a boy of German parentage had +won four or five. He once recited three thousand verses without +stopping but the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and +he was little better than an idiot from that day fortha grievous +misfortune for the school, for on great occasions, before company, the +superintendent as Tom expressed it had always made this boy come out +and "spread himself." Only the older pupils managed to keep their +tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a Bible, and +so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy +circumstance the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for +that day that on the spot every scholar's heart was fired with a fresh +ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks. It is possible that Tom's +mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but +unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory +and the eclat that came with it. +In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with +a closed hymnbook in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its +leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sundayschool superintendent +makes his customary little speech, a hymnbook in the hand is as +necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer +who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert +though why, is a mystery for neither the hymnbook nor the sheet of +music is ever referred to by the sufferer. This superintendent was a +slim creature of thirtyfive, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair +he wore a stiff standingcollar whose upper edge almost reached his +ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his +moutha fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning +of the whole body when a side view was required his chin was propped +on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a banknote, +and had fringed ends his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the +fashion of the day, like sleighrunnersan effect patiently and +laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes +pressed against a wall for hours together. Mr. Walters was very earnest +of mien, and very sincere and honest at heart and he held sacred +things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly +matters, that unconsciously to himself his Sundayschool voice had +acquired a peculiar intonation which was wholly absent on weekdays. He +began after this fashion +"Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty +as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There +that is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see +one little girl who is looking out of the windowI am afraid she +thinks I am out there somewhereperhaps up in one of the trees making +a speech to the little birds. [Applausive titter.] I want to tell you +how good it makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces +assembled in a place like this, learning to do right and be good." And +so forth and so on. It is not necessary to set down the rest of the +oration. It was of a pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar +to us all. +The latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights +and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings +and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases +of isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary. But now every +sound ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of Mr. Walters' voice, and +the conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent +gratitude. +A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which +was more or less rarethe entrance of visitors lawyer Thatcher, +accompanied by a very feeble and aged man a fine, portly, middleaged +gentleman with irongray hair and a dignified lady who was doubtless +the latter's wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless +and full of chafings and repinings consciencesmitten, toohe could +not meet Amy Lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. But +when he saw this small newcomer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in +a moment. The next moment he was "showing off" with all his might +cuffing boys, pulling hair, making facesin a word, using every art +that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause. His +exaltation had but one alloythe memory of his humiliation in this +angel's gardenand that record in sand was fast washing out, under +the waves of happiness that were sweeping over it now. +The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr. +Walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. The +middleaged man turned out to be a prodigious personageno less a one +than the county judgealtogether the most august creation these +children had ever looked uponand they wondered what kind of material +he was made ofand they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half +afraid he might, too. He was from Constantinople, twelve miles awayso +he had travelled, and seen the worldthese very eyes had looked upon +the county courthousewhich was said to have a tin roof. The awe +which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence +and the ranks of staring eyes. This was the great Judge Thatcher, +brother of their own lawyer. Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to +be familiar with the great man and be envied by the school. It would +have been music to his soul to hear the whisperings +"Look at him, Jim He's a going up there. Saylook he's a going to +shake hands with himhe IS shaking hands with him By jings, don't you +wish you was Jeff?" +Mr. Walters fell to "showing off," with all sorts of official +bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, +discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a +target. The librarian "showed off"running hither and thither with his +arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that +insect authority delights in. The young lady teachers "showed off" +bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting +pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones +lovingly. The young gentlemen teachers "showed off" with small +scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to +disciplineand most of the teachers, of both sexes, found business up +at the library, by the pulpit and it was business that frequently had +to be done over again two or three times with much seeming vexation. +The little girls "showed off" in various ways, and the little boys +"showed off" with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads +and the murmur of scufflings. And above it all the great man sat and +beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself +in the sun of his own grandeurfor he was "showing off," too. +There was only one thing wanting to make Mr. Walters' ecstasy +complete, and that was a chance to deliver a Bibleprize and exhibit a +prodigy. Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough +he had been around among the star pupils inquiring. He would have given +worlds, now, to have that German lad back again with a sound mind. +And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward +with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and +demanded a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters +was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten +years. But there was no getting around ithere were the certified +checks, and they were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated +to a place with the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was +announced from headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the +decade, and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero +up to the judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to +gaze upon in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envybut +those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too +late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by +trading tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling +whitewashing privileges. These despised themselves, as being the dupes +of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass. +The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the +superintendent could pump up under the circumstances but it lacked +somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him +that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light, +perhaps it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two +thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premisesa dozen would +strain his capacity, without a doubt. +Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in +her facebut he wouldn't look. She wondered then she was just a grain +troubled next a dim suspicion came and wentcame again she watched +a furtive glance told her worldsand then her heart broke, and she was +jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. Tom +most of all she thought. +Tom was introduced to the Judge but his tongue was tied, his breath +would hardly come, his heart quakedpartly because of the awful +greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. He would +have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. The +Judge put his hand on Tom's head and called him a fine little man, and +asked him what his name was. The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out +"Tom." +"Oh, no, not Tomit is" +"Thomas." +"Ah, that's it. I thought there was more to it, maybe. That's very +well. But you've another one I daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't +you?" +"Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas," said Walters, "and say +sir. You mustn't forget your manners." +"Thomas Sawyersir." +"That's it That's a good boy. Fine boy. Fine, manly little fellow. +Two thousand verses is a great manyvery, very great many. And you +never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them for +knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world it's what +makes great men and good men you'll be a great man and a good man +yourself, some day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say, It's all +owing to the precious Sundayschool privileges of my boyhoodit's all +owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learnit's all owing to +the good superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and +gave me a beautiful Biblea splendid elegant Bibleto keep and have +it all for my own, alwaysit's all owing to right bringing up That is +what you will say, Thomasand you wouldn't take any money for those +two thousand versesno indeed you wouldn't. And now you wouldn't mind +telling me and this lady some of the things you've learnedno, I know +you wouldn'tfor we are proud of little boys that learn. Now, no +doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples. Won't you tell us +the names of the first two that were appointed?" +Tom was tugging at a buttonhole and looking sheepish. He blushed, +now, and his eyes fell. Mr. Walters' heart sank within him. He said to +himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest +questionwhy DID the Judge ask him? Yet he felt obliged to speak up +and say +"Answer the gentleman, Thomasdon't be afraid." +Tom still hung fire. +"Now I know you'll tell me," said the lady. "The names of the first +two disciples were" +"DAVID AND GOLIAH" +Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene. +CHAPTER V +ABOUT halfpast ten the cracked bell of the small church began to +ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. +The Sundayschool children distributed themselves about the house and +occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt +Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with herTom being placed +next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open +window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd +filed up the aisles the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better +days the mayor and his wifefor they had a mayor there, among other +unnecessaries the justice of the peace the widow Douglass, fair, +smart, and forty, a generous, goodhearted soul and welltodo, her +hill mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and +much the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg +could boast the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward lawyer +Riverson, the new notable from a distance next the belle of the +village, followed by a troop of lawnclad and ribbondecked young +heartbreakers then all the young clerks in town in a bodyfor they +had stood in the vestibule sucking their caneheads, a circling wall of +oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet +and last of all came the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful +care of his mother as if she were cut glass. He always brought his +mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. The boys all +hated him, he was so good. And besides, he had been "thrown up to them" +so much. His white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as +usual on Sundaysaccidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked +upon boys who had as snobs. +The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more, +to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the +church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the +choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered all +through service. There was once a church choir that was not illbred, +but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, +and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in +some foreign country. +The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in +a peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. +His voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached +a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost +word and then plunged down as if from a springboard +Shall I be carried toe the skies, on flow'ry BEDS of ease, +Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' BLOODY seas? +He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church "sociables" he was +always called upon to read poetry and when he was through, the ladies +would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps, +and "wall" their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, "Words +cannot express it it is too beautiful, TOO beautiful for this mortal +earth." +After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into +a bulletinboard, and read off "notices" of meetings and societies and +things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of +dooma queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities, +away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there is +to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. +And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went +into details it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the +church for the other churches of the village for the village itself +for the county for the State for the State officers for the United +States for the churches of the United States for Congress for the +President for the officers of the Government for poor sailors, tossed +by stormy seas for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of +European monarchies and Oriental despotisms for such as have the light +and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear +withal for the heathen in the far islands of the sea and closed with +a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace +and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a +grateful harvest of good. Amen. +There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat +down. The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, +he only endured itif he even did that much. He was restive all +through it he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously +for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the +clergyman's regular route over itand when a little trifle of new +matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature +resented it he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the +midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of +him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together, +embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that +it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread +of a neck was exposed to view scraping its wings with its hind legs +and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coattails going +through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly +safe. As indeed it was for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for +it they did not darehe believed his soul would be instantly destroyed +if he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. But with the +closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward and the +instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt +detected the act and made him let it go. +The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through +an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod +and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone +and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be +hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon after +church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew +anything else about the discourse. However, this time he was really +interested for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving +picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the +millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a +little child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of +the great spectacle were lost upon the boy he only thought of the +conspicuousness of the principal character before the onlooking +nations his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he +wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion. +Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. +Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was +a large black beetle with formidable jawsa "pinchbug," he called it. +It was in a percussioncap box. The first thing the beetle did was to +take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went +floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger +went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless +legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it but it was +safe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found +relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle +dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and +the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle +the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize walked +around it smelt at it from a safe distance walked around it again +grew bolder, and took a closer smell then lifted his lip and made a +gingerly snatch at it, just missing it made another, and another +began to enjoy the diversion subsided to his stomach with the beetle +between his paws, and continued his experiments grew weary at last, +and then indifferent and absentminded. His head nodded, and little by +little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There +was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a +couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring +spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind +fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked +foolish, and probably felt so but there was resentment in his heart, +too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a +wary attack on it again jumping at it from every point of a circle, +lighting with his forepaws within an inch of the creature, making even +closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his +ears flapped again. But he grew tired once more, after a while tried +to amuse himself with a fly but found no relief followed an ant +around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that +yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then +there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the +aisle the yelps continued, and so did the dog he crossed the house in +front of the altar he flew down the other aisle he crossed before the +doors he clamored up the homestretch his anguish grew with his +progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit +with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer +sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap he flung it +out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and +died in the distance. +By this time the whole church was redfaced and suffocating with +suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. The +discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all +possibility of impressiveness being at an end for even the gravest +sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of +unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pewback, as if the poor +parson had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to +the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction +pronounced. +Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there +was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of +variety in it. He had but one marring thought he was willing that the +dog should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright +in him to carry it off. +CHAPTER VI +MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found +him sobecause it began another week's slow suffering in school. He +generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening +holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much +more odious. +Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was +sick then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague +possibility. He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he +investigated again. This time he thought he could detect colicky +symptoms, and he began to encourage them with considerable hope. But +they soon grew feeble, and presently died wholly away. He reflected +further. Suddenly he discovered something. One of his upper front teeth +was loose. This was lucky he was about to begin to groan, as a +"starter," as he called it, when it occurred to him that if he came +into court with that argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that +would hurt. So he thought he would hold the tooth in reserve for the +present, and seek further. Nothing offered for some little time, and +then he remembered hearing the doctor tell about a certain thing that +laid up a patient for two or three weeks and threatened to make him +lose a finger. So the boy eagerly drew his sore toe from under the +sheet and held it up for inspection. But now he did not know the +necessary symptoms. However, it seemed well worth while to chance it, +so he fell to groaning with considerable spirit. +But Sid slept on unconscious. +Tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe. +No result from Sid. +Tom was panting with his exertions by this time. He took a rest and +then swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans. +Sid snored on. +Tom was aggravated. He said, "Sid, Sid" and shook him. This course +worked well, and Tom began to groan again. Sid yawned, stretched, then +brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at +Tom. Tom went on groaning. Sid said +"Tom Say, Tom" [No response.] "Here, Tom TOM What is the matter, +Tom?" And he shook him and looked in his face anxiously. +Tom moaned out +"Oh, don't, Sid. Don't joggle me." +"Why, what's the matter, Tom? I must call auntie." +"Nonever mind. It'll be over by and by, maybe. Don't call anybody." +"But I must DON'T groan so, Tom, it's awful. How long you been this +way?" +"Hours. Ouch Oh, don't stir so, Sid, you'll kill me." +"Tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? Oh, Tom, DON'T It makes my +flesh crawl to hear you. Tom, what is the matter?" +"I forgive you everything, Sid. [Groan.] Everything you've ever done +to me. When I'm gone" +"Oh, Tom, you ain't dying, are you? Don't, Tomoh, don't. Maybe" +"I forgive everybody, Sid. [Groan.] Tell 'em so, Sid. And Sid, you +give my windowsash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's +come to town, and tell her" +But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in +reality, now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his +groans had gathered quite a genuine tone. +Sid flew downstairs and said +"Oh, Aunt Polly, come Tom's dying" +"Dying" +"Yes'm. Don't waitcome quick" +"Rubbage I don't believe it" +But she fled upstairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels. +And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached +the bedside she gasped out +"You, Tom Tom, what's the matter with you?" +"Oh, auntie, I'm" +"What's the matter with youwhat is the matter with you, child?" +"Oh, auntie, my sore toe's mortified" +The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a +little, then did both together. This restored her and she said +"Tom, what a turn you did give me. Now you shut up that nonsense and +climb out of this." +The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a +little foolish, and he said +"Aunt Polly, it SEEMED mortified, and it hurt so I never minded my +tooth at all." +"Your tooth, indeed What's the matter with your tooth?" +"One of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful." +"There, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. Open your mouth. +Wellyour tooth IS loose, but you're not going to die about that. +Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen." +Tom said +"Oh, please, auntie, don't pull it out. It don't hurt any more. I wish +I may never stir if it does. Please don't, auntie. I don't want to stay +home from school." +"Oh, you don't, don't you? So all this row was because you thought +you'd get to stay home from school and go afishing? Tom, Tom, I love +you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart +with your outrageousness." By this time the dental instruments were +ready. The old lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom's tooth +with a loop and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the +chunk of fire and suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The +tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. +But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school +after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in +his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and +admirable way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the +exhibition and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of +fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly +without an adherent, and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and +he said with a disdain which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to +spit like Tom Sawyer but another boy said, "Sour grapes" and he +wandered away a dismantled hero. +Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry +Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and +dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless +and vulgar and badand because all their children admired him so, and +delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like +him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied +Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders +not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance. +Huckleberry was always dressed in the castoff clothes of fullgrown +men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat +was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim his coat, +when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons +far down the back but one suspender supported his trousers the seat +of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs +dragged in the dirt when not rolled up. +Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps +in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet he did not have to go to +school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody he could +go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it +suited him nobody forbade him to fight he could sit up as late as he +pleased he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring +and the last to resume leather in the fall he never had to wash, nor +put on clean clothes he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything +that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every +harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg. +Tom hailed the romantic outcast +"Hello, Huckleberry" +"Hello yourself, and see how you like it." +"What's that you got?" +"Dead cat." +"Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him?" +"Bought him off'n a boy." +"What did you give?" +"I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughterhouse." +"Where'd you get the blue ticket?" +"Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoopstick." +"Saywhat is dead cats good for, Huck?" +"Good for? Cure warts with." +"No Is that so? I know something that's better." +"I bet you don't. What is it?" +"Why, spunkwater." +"Spunkwater I wouldn't give a dern for spunkwater." +"You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?" +"No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did." +"Who told you so" +"Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny +told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and +the nigger told me. There now" +"Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I +don't know HIM. But I never see a nigger that WOULDN'T lie. Shucks Now +you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck." +"Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the +rainwater was." +"In the daytime?" +"Certainly." +"With his face to the stump?" +"Yes. Least I reckon so." +"Did he say anything?" +"I don't reckon he did. I don't know." +"Aha Talk about trying to cure warts with spunkwater such a blame +fool way as that Why, that ain't agoing to do any good. You got to go +all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a +spunkwater stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the +stump and jam your hand in and say +'Barleycorn, barleycorn, injunmeal shorts, +Spunkwater, spunkwater, swaller these warts,' +and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then +turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody. +Because if you speak the charm's busted." +"Well, that sounds like a good way but that ain't the way Bob Tanner +done." +"No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this +town and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work +spunkwater. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way, +Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many +warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean." +"Yes, bean's good. I've done that." +"Have you? What's your way?" +"You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some +blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and +dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of +the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece +that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to +fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the +wart, and pretty soon off she comes." +"Yes, that's it, Huckthat's it though when you're burying it if you +say 'Down bean off wart come no more to bother me' it's better. +That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and +most everywheres. But sayhow do you cure 'em with dead cats?" +"Why, you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long about +midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried and when it's +midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see +'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk +and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em +and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm +done with ye' That'll fetch ANY wart." +"Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?" +"No, but old Mother Hopkins told me." +"Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch." +"Say Why, Tom, I KNOW she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own +self. He come along one day, and he see she was awitching him, so he +took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. Well, that +very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a layin drunk, and broke +his arm." +"Why, that's awful. How did he know she was awitching him?" +"Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you +right stiddy, they're awitching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz +when they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer backards." +"Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?" +"Tonight. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Williams tonight." +"But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday night?" +"Why, how you talk How could their charms work till midnight?and +THEN it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I don't +reckon." +"I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?" +"Of courseif you ain't afeard." +"Afeard 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?" +"Yesand you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you kep' me +ameowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and says +'Dern that cat' and so I hove a brick through his windowbut don't +you tell." +"I won't. I couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me, +but I'll meow this time. Saywhat's that?" +"Nothing but a tick." +"Where'd you get him?" +"Out in the woods." +"What'll you take for him?" +"I don't know. I don't want to sell him." +"All right. It's a mighty small tick, anyway." +"Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm +satisfied with it. It's a good enough tick for me." +"Sho, there's ticks a plenty. I could have a thousand of 'em if I +wanted to." +"Well, why don't you? Becuz you know mighty well you can't. This is a +pretty early tick, I reckon. It's the first one I've seen this year." +"Say, HuckI'll give you my tooth for him." +"Less see it." +Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry +viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said +"Is it genuwyne?" +Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. +"Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade." +Tom enclosed the tick in the percussioncap box that had lately been +the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier +than before. +When Tom reached the little isolated frame schoolhouse, he strode in +briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed. +He hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with +businesslike alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great +splintbottom armchair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study. +The interruption roused him. +"Thomas Sawyer" +Tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble. +"Sir" +"Come up here. Now, sir, why are you late again, as usual?" +Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of +yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric +sympathy of love and by that form was THE ONLY VACANT PLACE on the +girls' side of the schoolhouse. He instantly said +"I STOPPED TO TALK WITH HUCKLEBERRY FINN" +The master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. The buzz of +study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his +mind. The master said +"Youyou did what?" +"Stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn." +There was no mistaking the words. +"Thomas Sawyer, this is the most astounding confession I have ever +listened to. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your +jacket." +The master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of +switches notably diminished. Then the order followed +"Now, sir, go and sit with the girls And let this be a warning to you." +The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but +in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe of +his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good +fortune. He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl +hitched herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks +and whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon +the long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book. +By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur +rose upon the dull air once more. Presently the boy began to steal +furtive glances at the girl. She observed it, "made a mouth" at him and +gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. When she +cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. She thrust it +away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less +animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it +remain. Tom scrawled on his slate, "Please take itI got more." The +girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. Now the boy began to draw +something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time +the girl refused to notice but her human curiosity presently began to +manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on, +apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of noncommittal attempt to +see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she +gave in and hesitatingly whispered +"Let me see it." +Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable +ends to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney. Then the +girl's interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot +everything else. When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then +whispered +"It's nicemake a man." +The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick. +He could have stepped over the house but the girl was not +hypercritical she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered +"It's a beautiful mannow make me coming along." +Tom drew an hourglass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and +armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. The girl said +"It's ever so niceI wish I could draw." +"It's easy," whispered Tom, "I'll learn you." +"Oh, will you? When?" +"At noon. Do you go home to dinner?" +"I'll stay if you will." +"Goodthat's a whack. What's your name?" +"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer." +"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me +Tom, will you?" +"Yes." +Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from +the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Tom +said +"Oh, it ain't anything." +"Yes it is." +"No it ain't. You don't want to see." +"Yes I do, indeed I do. Please let me." +"You'll tell." +"No I won'tdeed and deed and double deed won't." +"You won't tell anybody at all? Ever, as long as you live?" +"No, I won't ever tell ANYbody. Now let me." +"Oh, YOU don't want to see" +"Now that you treat me so, I WILL see." And she put her small hand +upon his and a little scuffle ensued, Tom pretending to resist in +earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were +revealed "I LOVE YOU." +"Oh, you bad thing" And she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened +and looked pleased, nevertheless. +Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his +ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that wise he was borne across the +house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles +from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few +awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a +word. But although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant. +As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but the +turmoil within him was too great. In turn he took his place in the +reading class and made a botch of it then in the geography class and +turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into +continents, till chaos was come again then in the spelling class, and +got "turned down," by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought +up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with +ostentation for months. +CHAPTER VII +THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his +ideas wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It +seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was +utterly dead. There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of +sleepy days. The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying +scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. +Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green +sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of +distance a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air no other +living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's +heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to +pass the dreary time. His hand wandered into his pocket and his face +lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know +it. Then furtively the percussioncap box came out. He released the +tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed +with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it +was premature for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned +him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. +Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and +now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an +instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn +friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a +pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. +The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were +interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of +the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the +middle of it from top to bottom. +"Now," said he, "as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and +I'll let him alone but if you let him get away and get on my side, +you're to leave him alone as long as I can keep him from crossing over." +"All right, go ahead start him up." +The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator. Joe +harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This +change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with +absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong, +the two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to +all things else. At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The +tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as +anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would +have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and Tom's fingers would be +twitching to begin, Joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep +possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was +too strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was +angry in a moment. Said he +"Tom, you let him alone." +"I only just want to stir him up a little, Joe." +"No, sir, it ain't fair you just let him alone." +"Blame it, I ain't going to stir him much." +"Let him alone, I tell you." +"I won't" +"You shallhe's on my side of the line." +"Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?" +"I don't care whose tick he ishe's on my side of the line, and you +sha'n't touch him." +"Well, I'll just bet I will, though. He's my tick and I'll do what I +blame please with him, or die" +A tremendous whack came down on Tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on +Joe's and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from +the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. The boys had been too +absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile +before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over +them. He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he +contributed his bit of variety to it. +When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and +whispered in her ear +"Put on your bonnet and let on you're going home and when you get to +the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the +lane and come back. I'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same +way." +So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with +another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and +when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they +sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil +and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising +house. When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking. +Tom was swimming in bliss. He said +"Do you love rats?" +"No I hate them" +"Well, I do, tooLIVE ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your +head with a string." +"No, I don't care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewinggum." +"Oh, I should say so I wish I had some now." +"Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it awhile, but you must give +it back to me." +That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their +legs against the bench in excess of contentment. +"Was you ever at a circus?" said Tom. +"Yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if I'm good." +"I been to the circus three or four timeslots of times. Church ain't +shucks to a circus. There's things going on at a circus all the time. +I'm going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up." +"Oh, are you That will be nice. They're so lovely, all spotted up." +"Yes, that's so. And they get slathers of moneymost a dollar a day, +Ben Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?" +"What's that?" +"Why, engaged to be married." +"No." +"Would you like to?" +"I reckon so. I don't know. What is it like?" +"Like? Why it ain't like anything. You only just tell a boy you won't +ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's +all. Anybody can do it." +"Kiss? What do you kiss for?" +"Why, that, you know, is towell, they always do that." +"Everybody?" +"Why, yes, everybody that's in love with each other. Do you remember +what I wrote on the slate?" +"Yeyes." +"What was it?" +"I sha'n't tell you." +"Shall I tell YOU?" +"Yeyesbut some other time." +"No, now." +"No, not nowtomorrow." +"Oh, no, NOW. Please, BeckyI'll whisper it, I'll whisper it ever so +easy." +Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm +about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth +close to her ear. And then he added +"Now you whisper it to mejust the same." +She resisted, for a while, and then said +"You turn your face away so you can't see, and then I will. But you +mustn't ever tell anybodyWILL you, Tom? Now you won't, WILL you?" +"No, indeed, indeed I won't. Now, Becky." +He turned his face away. She bent timidly around till her breath +stirred his curls and whispered, "Iloveyou" +Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches, +with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her +little white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and +pleaded +"Now, Becky, it's all doneall over but the kiss. Don't you be afraid +of thatit ain't anything at all. Please, Becky." And he tugged at her +apron and the hands. +By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop her face, all glowing +with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and +said +"Now it's all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain't +ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but +me, ever never and forever. Will you?" +"No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry +anybody but youand you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either." +"Certainly. Of course. That's PART of it. And always coming to school +or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't +anybody lookingand you choose me and I choose you at parties, because +that's the way you do when you're engaged." +"It's so nice. I never heard of it before." +"Oh, it's ever so gay Why, me and Amy Lawrence" +The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused. +"Oh, Tom Then I ain't the first you've ever been engaged to" +The child began to cry. Tom said +"Oh, don't cry, Becky, I don't care for her any more." +"Yes, you do, Tomyou know you do." +Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and +turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with +soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was +up, and he strode away and went outside. He stood about, restless and +uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping +she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began +to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle +with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and +entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with +her face to the wall. Tom's heart smote him. He went to her and stood a +moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly +"Becky, II don't care for anybody but you." +No replybut sobs. +"Becky"pleadingly. "Becky, won't you say something?" +More sobs. +Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an +andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said +"Please, Becky, won't you take it?" +She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over +the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently +Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door he was not in sight she +flew around to the playyard he was not there. Then she called +"Tom Come back, Tom" +She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions +but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid +herself and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she +had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross +of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers +about her to exchange sorrows with. +CHAPTER VIII +TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of +the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He +crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing +juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour +later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of +Cardiff Hill, and the schoolhouse was hardly distinguishable away off +in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless +way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading +oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring the dead noonday heat had +even stilled the songs of the birds nature lay in a trance that was +broken by no sound but the occasional faroff hammering of a +woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense +of loneliness the more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in +melancholy his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He +sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, +meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and +he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released it must be +very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and +ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the +grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve +about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sundayschool record he +could be willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl. +What had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world, and been +treated like a doglike a very dog. She would be sorry some daymaybe +when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY +But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one +constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift +insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned +his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went awayever +so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seasand never came +back any more How would she feel then The idea of being a clown +recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and +jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves +upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the +romantic. No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all +warworn and illustrious. Nobetter still, he would join the Indians, +and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the +trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come +back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and +prance into Sundayschool, some drowsy summer morning, with a +bloodcurdling warwhoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions +with unappeasable envy. But no, there was something gaudier even than +this. He would be a pirate That was it NOW his future lay plain +before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would +fill the world, and make people shudder How gloriously he would go +plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, blackhulled racer, the +Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore And at +the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village +and stalk into church, brown and weatherbeaten, in his black velvet +doublet and trunks, his great jackboots, his crimson sash, his belt +bristling with horsepistols, his crimerusted cutlass at his side, his +slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull +and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings, +"It's Tom Sawyer the Piratethe Black Avenger of the Spanish Main" +Yes, it was settled his career was determined. He would run away from +home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore +he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources +together. He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under +one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded +hollow. He put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively +"What hasn't come here, come What's here, stay here" +Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it +up and disclosed a shapely little treasurehouse whose bottom and sides +were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was boundless +He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said +"Well, that beats anything" +Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The +truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and +all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a +marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a +fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just +used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had +gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they +had been separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably +failed. Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. +He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its +failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several +times before, himself, but could never find the hidingplaces +afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided +that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he +would satisfy himself on that point so he searched around till he +found a small sandy spot with a little funnelshaped depression in it. +He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and +called +"Doodlebug, doodlebug, tell me what I want to know Doodlebug, +doodlebug, tell me what I want to know" +The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a +second and then darted under again in a fright. +"He dasn't tell So it WAS a witch that done it. I just knowed it." +He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he +gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have +the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a +patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to +his treasurehouse and carefully placed himself just as he had been +standing when he tossed the marble away then he took another marble +from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying +"Brother, go find your brother" +He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must +have fallen short or gone too far so he tried twice more. The last +repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each +other. +Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green +aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a +suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log, +disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and in +a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged, with +fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an +answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way +and that. He said cautiouslyto an imaginary company +"Hold, my merry men Keep hid till I blow." +Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom. +Tom called +"Hold Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?" +"Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou thatthat" +"Dares to hold such language," said Tom, promptingfor they talked +"by the book," from memory. +"Who art thou that dares to hold such language?" +"I, indeed I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know." +"Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute +with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee" +They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground, +struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful +combat, "two up and two down." Presently Tom said +"Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively" +So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. By and +by Tom shouted +"Fall fall Why don't you fall?" +"I sha'n't Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of +it." +"Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall that ain't the way it is in +the book. The book says, 'Then with one backhanded stroke he slew poor +Guy of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the +back." +There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received +the whack and fell. +"Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill YOU. That's fair." +"Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book." +"Well, it's blamed meanthat's all." +"Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and +lam me with a quarterstaff or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and +you be Robin Hood a little while and kill me." +This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then +Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to +bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe, +representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth, +gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, "Where this arrow +falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree." Then he +shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a +nettle and sprang up too gaily for a corpse. +The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off +grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern +civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. +They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than +President of the United States forever. +CHAPTER IX +AT halfpast nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual. +They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and +waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be +nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten This was despair. He +would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was +afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark. +Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little, +scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking +of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to +crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were +abroad. A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber. And +now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could +locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a deathwatch in the wall at +the bed's head made Tom shudderit meant that somebody's days were +numbered. Then the howl of a faroff dog rose on the night air, and was +answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an +agony. At last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity +begun he began to doze, in spite of himself the clock chimed eleven, +but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his +halfformed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a +neighboring window disturbed him. A cry of "Scat you devil" and the +crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt's woodshed +brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and +out of the window and creeping along the roof of the "ell" on all +fours. He "meow'd" with caution once or twice, as he went then jumped +to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. Huckleberry Finn +was there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the +gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall +grass of the graveyard. +It was a graveyard of the oldfashioned Western kind. It was on a +hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board +fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of +the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the +whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a +tombstone on the place roundtopped, wormeaten boards staggered over +the graves, leaning for support and finding none. "Sacred to the memory +of" SoandSo had been painted on them once, but it could no longer +have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light. +A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the +spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked +little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the +pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the +sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the +protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet +of the grave. +Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting +of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness. +Tom's reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said +in a whisper +"Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?" +Huckleberry whispered +"I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, AIN'T it?" +"I bet it is." +There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter +inwardly. Then Tom whispered +"Say, Huckydo you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?" +"O' course he does. Least his sperrit does." +Tom, after a pause +"I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm. +Everybody calls him Hoss." +"A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout theseyer dead +people, Tom." +This was a damper, and conversation died again. +Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said +"Sh" +"What is it, Tom?" And the two clung together with beating hearts. +"Sh There 'tis again Didn't you hear it?" +"I" +"There Now you hear it." +"Lord, Tom, they're coming They're coming, sure. What'll we do?" +"I dono. Think they'll see us?" +"Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't +come." +"Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't +doing any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us +at all." +"I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver." +"Listen" +The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled +sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard. +"Look See there" whispered Tom. "What is it?" +"It's devilfire. Oh, Tom, this is awful." +Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an +oldfashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable +little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a +shudder +"It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em Lordy, Tom, we're goners +Can you pray?" +"I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now +I lay me down to sleep, I'" +"Sh" +"What is it, Huck?" +"They're HUMANS One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's +voice." +"No'tain't so, is it?" +"I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to +notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likelyblamed old rip" +"All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here +they come again. Now they're hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot +They're p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o' them +voices it's Injun Joe." +"That's sothat murderin' halfbreed I'd druther they was devils a +dern sight. What kin they be up to?" +The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the +grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hidingplace. +"Here it is," said the third voice and the owner of it held the +lantern up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson. +Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a +couple of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open +the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came +and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so +close the boys could have touched him. +"Hurry, men" he said, in a low voice "the moon might come out at any +moment." +They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was +no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight +of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck +upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or +two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid +with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the +ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid +face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered +with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a +large springknife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then +said +"Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with +another five, or here she stays." +"That's the talk" said Injun Joe. +"Look here, what does this mean?" said the doctor. "You required your +pay in advance, and I've paid you." +"Yes, and you done more than that," said Injun Joe, approaching the +doctor, who was now standing. "Five years ago you drove me away from +your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to +eat, and you said I warn't there for any good and when I swore I'd get +even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for +a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for +nothing. And now I've GOT you, and you got to SETTLE, you know" +He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this +time. The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the +ground. Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed +"Here, now, don't you hit my pard" and the next moment he had +grappled with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and +main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels. +Injun Joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched +up Potter's knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and +round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the +doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams' +grave and felled Potter to the earth with itand in the same instant +the halfbreed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the +young man's breast. He reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him +with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the +dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in +the dark. +Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over +the two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately, +gave a long gasp or two and was still. The halfbreed muttered +"THAT score is settleddamn you." +Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in +Potter's open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three +fourfive minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His +hand closed upon the knife he raised it, glanced at it, and let it +fall, with a shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and +gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe's. +"Lord, how is this, Joe?" he said. +"It's a dirty business," said Joe, without moving. +"What did you do it for?" +"I I never done it" +"Look here That kind of talk won't wash." +Potter trembled and grew white. +"I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink tonight. But it's +in my head yetworse'n when we started here. I'm all in a muddle +can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, JoeHONEST, now, old +fellerdid I do it? Joe, I never meant to'pon my soul and honor, I +never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awfuland him +so young and promising." +"Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard +and you fell flat and then up you come, all reeling and staggering +like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched +you another awful clipand here you've laid, as dead as a wedge til +now." +"Oh, I didn't know what I was adoing. I wish I may die this minute if +I did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I +reckon. I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I've fought, but +never with weepons. They'll all say that. Joe, don't tell Say you +won't tell, Joethat's a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and +stood up for you, too. Don't you remember? You WON'T tell, WILL you, +Joe?" And the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid +murderer, and clasped his appealing hands. +"No, you've always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I +won't go back on you. There, now, that's as fair as a man can say." +"Oh, Joe, you're an angel. I'll bless you for this the longest day I +live." And Potter began to cry. +"Come, now, that's enough of that. This ain't any time for blubbering. +You be off yonder way and I'll go this. Move, now, and don't leave any +tracks behind you." +Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The +halfbreed stood looking after him. He muttered +"If he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he +had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so +far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by himself +chickenheart" +Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the +lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the +moon's. The stillness was complete again, too. +CHAPTER X +THE two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with +horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time, +apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump +that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them +catch their breath and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay +near the village, the barking of the aroused watchdogs seemed to give +wings to their feet. +"If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down" +whispered Tom, in short catches between breaths. "I can't stand it much +longer." +Huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed +their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it. +They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst +through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering +shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered +"Huckleberry, what do you reckon'll come of this?" +"If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging'll come of it." +"Do you though?" +"Why, I KNOW it, Tom." +Tom thought a while, then he said +"Who'll tell? We?" +"What are you talking about? S'pose something happened and Injun Joe +DIDN'T hang? Why, he'd kill us some time or other, just as dead sure as +we're a laying here." +"That's just what I was thinking to myself, Huck." +"If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he's fool enough. He's +generally drunk enough." +Tom said nothingwent on thinking. Presently he whispered +"Huck, Muff Potter don't know it. How can he tell?" +"What's the reason he don't know it?" +"Because he'd just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D'you reckon +he could see anything? D'you reckon he knowed anything?" +"By hokey, that's so, Tom" +"And besides, lookaheremaybe that whack done for HIM" +"No, 'taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him I could see that and +besides, he always has. Well, when pap's full, you might take and belt +him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. He says so, +his own self. So it's the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a +man was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him I dono." +After another reflective silence, Tom said +"Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?" +"Tom, we GOT to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn't +make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to +squeak 'bout this and they didn't hang him. Now, lookahere, Tom, less +take and swear to one anotherthat's what we got to doswear to keep +mum." +"I'm agreed. It's the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear +that we" +"Oh no, that wouldn't do for this. That's good enough for little +rubbishy common thingsspecially with gals, cuz THEY go back on you +anyway, and blab if they get in a huffbut there orter be writing +'bout a big thing like this. And blood." +Tom's whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and +awful the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping +with it. He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moonlight, +took a little fragment of "red keel" out of his pocket, got the moon on +his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow +downstroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up +the pressure on the upstrokes. [See next page.] +"Huck Finn and +Tom Sawyer swears +they will keep mum +about This and They +wish They may Drop +down dead in Their +Tracks if They ever +Tell and Rot." +Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing, +and the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel +and was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said +"Hold on Don't do that. A pin's brass. It might have verdigrease on +it." +"What's verdigrease?" +"It's p'ison. That's what it is. You just swaller some of it once +you'll see." +So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy +pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In +time, after many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the +ball of his little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to +make an H and an F, and the oath was complete. They buried the shingle +close to the wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and +the fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and +the key thrown away. +A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the +ruined building, now, but they did not notice it. +"Tom," whispered Huckleberry, "does this keep us from EVER telling +ALWAYS?" +"Of course it does. It don't make any difference WHAT happens, we got +to keep mum. We'd drop down deaddon't YOU know that?" +"Yes, I reckon that's so." +They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up +a long, lugubrious howl just outsidewithin ten feet of them. The boys +clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright. +"Which of us does he mean?" gasped Huckleberry. +"I donopeep through the crack. Quick" +"No, YOU, Tom" +"I can'tI can't DO it, Huck" +"Please, Tom. There 'tis again" +"Oh, lordy, I'm thankful" whispered Tom. "I know his voice. It's Bull +Harbison." +[ If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of +him as "Harbison's Bull," but a son or a dog of that name was "Bull +Harbison."] +"Oh, that's goodI tell you, Tom, I was most scared to death I'd a +bet anything it was a STRAY dog." +The dog howled again. The boys' hearts sank once more. +"Oh, my that ain't no Bull Harbison" whispered Huckleberry. "DO, Tom" +Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. His +whisper was hardly audible when he said +"Oh, Huck, IT S A STRAY DOG" +"Quick, Tom, quick Who does he mean?" +"Huck, he must mean us bothwe're right together." +"Oh, Tom, I reckon we're goners. I reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout +where I'LL go to. I been so wicked." +"Dad fetch it This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a +feller's told NOT to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I'd a tried +but no, I wouldn't, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay +I'll just WALLER in Sundayschools" And Tom began to snuffle a little. +"YOU bad" and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. "Consound it, Tom +Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'longside o' what I am. Oh, LORDY, lordy, +lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance." +Tom choked off and whispered +"Look, Hucky, look He's got his BACK to us" +Hucky looked, with joy in his heart. +"Well, he has, by jingoes Did he before?" +"Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought. Oh, this is bully, +you know. NOW who can he mean?" +The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears. +"Sh What's that?" he whispered. +"Sounds likelike hogs grunting. Noit's somebody snoring, Tom." +"That IS it Where 'bouts is it, Huck?" +"I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to +sleep there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he +just lifts things when HE snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever +coming back to this town any more." +The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more. +"Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?" +"I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe" +Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the +boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to +their heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealthily +down, the one behind the other. When they had got to within five steps +of the snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap. +The man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight. +It was Muff Potter. The boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes +too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They tiptoed +out, through the broken weatherboarding, and stopped at a little +distance to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on +the night air again They turned and saw the strange dog standing +within a few feet of where Potter was lying, and FACING Potter, with +his nose pointing heavenward. +"Oh, geeminy, it's HIM" exclaimed both boys, in a breath. +"Say, Tomthey say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller's +house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago and a whippoorwill +come in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening and +there ain't anybody dead there yet." +"Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't. Didn't Gracie Miller fall +in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?" +"Yes, but she ain't DEAD. And what's more, she's getting better, too." +"All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just as dead sure as Muff +Potter's a goner. That's what the niggers say, and they know all about +these kind of things, Huck." +Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom +window the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution, +and fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his +escapade. He was not aware that the gentlysnoring Sid was awake, and +had been so for an hour. +When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone. There was a late look in the +light, a late sense in the atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not +been calledpersecuted till he was up, as usual? The thought filled +him with bodings. Within five minutes he was dressed and downstairs, +feeling sore and drowsy. The family were still at table, but they had +finished breakfast. There was no voice of rebuke but there were +averted eyes there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a +chill to the culprit's heart. He sat down and tried to seem gay, but it +was uphill work it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into +silence and let his heart sink down to the depths. +After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom almost brightened in +the hope that he was going to be flogged but it was not so. His aunt +wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so +and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray +hairs with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any +more. This was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom's heart was +sorer now than his body. He cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised +to reform over and over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling +that he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a +feeble confidence. +He left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward Sid +and so the latter's prompt retreat through the back gate was +unnecessary. He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging, +along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before, with the air +of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to +trifles. Then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his +desk and his jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony +stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go. +His elbow was pressing against some hard substance. After a long time +he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with +a sigh. It was in a paper. He unrolled it. A long, lingering, colossal +sigh followed, and his heart broke. It was his brass andiron knob +This final feather broke the camel's back. +CHAPTER XI +CLOSE upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified +with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet undreamedof telegraph +the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to +house, with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course the +schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon the town would have +thought strangely of him if he had not. +A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been +recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potterso the story ran. +And it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter washing +himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock in the morning, and +that Potter had at once sneaked offsuspicious circumstances, +especially the washing which was not a habit with Potter. It was also +said that the town had been ransacked for this "murderer" the public +are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a +verdict, but that he could not be found. Horsemen had departed down +all the roads in every direction, and the Sheriff "was confident" that +he would be captured before night. +All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heartbreak +vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not a +thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful, +unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful place, +he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal +spectacle. It seemed to him an age since he was there before. Somebody +pinched his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then both +looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything +in their mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent upon the +grisly spectacle before them. +"Poor fellow" "Poor young fellow" "This ought to be a lesson to +grave robbers" "Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him" This +was the drift of remark and the minister said, "It was a judgment His +hand is here." +Now Tom shivered from head to heel for his eye fell upon the stolid +face of Injun Joe. At this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle, +and voices shouted, "It's him it's him he's coming himself" +"Who? Who?" from twenty voices. +"Muff Potter" +"Hallo, he's stoppedLook out, he's turning Don't let him get away" +People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't +trying to get awayhe only looked doubtful and perplexed. +"Infernal impudence" said a bystander "wanted to come and take a +quiet look at his work, I reckondidn't expect any company." +The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came through, +ostentatiously leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was +haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood +before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face +in his hands and burst into tears. +"I didn't do it, friends," he sobbed "'pon my word and honor I never +done it." +"Who's accused you?" shouted a voice. +This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked +around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe, +and exclaimed +"Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never" +"Is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him by the Sheriff. +Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to +the ground. Then he said +"Something told me 't if I didn't come back and get" He shuddered +then waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, "Tell +'em, Joe, tell 'emit ain't any use any more." +Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the +stonyhearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every +moment that the clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head, +and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed. And when he had +finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to +break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and +vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and +it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that. +"Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?" somebody +said. +"I couldn't help itI couldn't help it," Potter moaned. "I wanted to +run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." And he fell +to sobbing again. +Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes +afterward on the inquest, under oath and the boys, seeing that the +lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe +had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to them, the most +balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could +not take their fascinated eyes from his face. +They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when opportunity should +offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master. +Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a +wagon for removal and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd +that the wound bled a little The boys thought that this happy +circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction but they were +disappointed, for more than one villager remarked +"It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it." +Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as +much as a week after this and at breakfast one morning Sid said +"Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me +awake half the time." +Tom blanched and dropped his eyes. +"It's a bad sign," said Aunt Polly, gravely. "What you got on your +mind, Tom?" +"Nothing. Nothing 't I know of." But the boy's hand shook so that he +spilled his coffee. +"And you do talk such stuff," Sid said. "Last night you said, 'It's +blood, it's blood, that's what it is' You said that over and over. And +you said, 'Don't torment me soI'll tell' Tell WHAT? What is it +you'll tell?" +Everything was swimming before Tom. There is no telling what might +have happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's +face and she came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said +"Sho It's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night +myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it." +Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed +satisfied. Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could, +and after that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his +jaws every night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and +frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow +listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage +back to its place again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and +the toothache grew irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to +make anything out of Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself. +It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding +inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his +mind. Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries, +though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises +he noticed, too, that Tom never acted as a witnessand that was +strange and Sid did not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a +marked aversion to these inquests, and always avoided them when he +could. Sid marvelled, but said nothing. However, even inquests went out +of vogue at last, and ceased to torture Tom's conscience. +Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his +opportunity and went to the little grated jailwindow and smuggled such +small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. The +jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge +of the village, and no guards were afforded for it indeed, it was +seldom occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's +conscience. +The villagers had a strong desire to tarandfeather Injun Joe and +ride him on a rail, for bodysnatching, but so formidable was his +character that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead +in the matter, so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of +his inqueststatements with the fight, without confessing the +graverobbery that preceded it therefore it was deemed wisest not +to try the case in the courts at present. +CHAPTER XII +ONE of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret +troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest +itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had +struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to "whistle her down the +wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's +house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she +should die There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an +interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone there +was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat +there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to +try all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are +infatuated with patent medicines and all newfangled methods of +producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in +these things. When something fresh in this line came out she was in a +fever, right away, to try it not on herself, for she was never ailing, +but on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the +"Health" periodicals and phrenological frauds and the solemn ignorance +they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the "rot" they +contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up, +and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and +what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing to +wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her +healthjournals of the current month customarily upset everything they +had recommended the month before. She was as simplehearted and honest +as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered +together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed +with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with +"hell following after." But she never suspected that she was not an +angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the suffering +neighbors. +The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low condition was a +windfall to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him +up in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water then +she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to +then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets +till she sweated his soul clean and "the yellow stains of it came +through his pores"as Tom said. +Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy +and pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, +and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to +assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blisterplasters. She +calculated his capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every +day with quack curealls. +Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase +filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must +be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Painkiller for the first +time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with +gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water +treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Painkiller. She +gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the +result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again +for the "indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a +wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him. +Tom felt that it was time to wake up this sort of life might be +romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have +too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he +thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of +professing to be fond of Painkiller. He asked for it so often that he +became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself +and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no +misgivings to alloy her delight but since it was Tom, she watched the +bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, +but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a +crack in the sittingroom floor with it. +One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow +cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging +for a taste. Tom said +"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter." +But Peter signified that he did want it. +"You better make sure." +Peter was sure. +"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't +anything mean about me but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't +blame anybody but your own self." +Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the +Painkiller. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then +delivered a warwhoop and set off round and round the room, banging +against furniture, upsetting flowerpots, and making general havoc. +Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of +enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming +his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again +spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time +to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty +hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the +flowerpots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, +peering over her glasses Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter. +"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?" +"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy. +"Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?" +"Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly cats always act so when they're having +a good time." +"They do, do they?" There was something in the tone that made Tom +apprehensive. +"Yes'm. That is, I believe they do." +"You DO?" +"Yes'm." +The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized +by anxiety. Too late he divined her "drift." The handle of the telltale +teaspoon was visible under the bedvalance. Aunt Polly took it, held it +up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the +usual handlehis earand cracked his head soundly with her thimble. +"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?" +"I done it out of pity for himbecause he hadn't any aunt." +"Hadn't any auntyou numskull. What has that got to do with it?" +"Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt him out herself She'd a +roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a +human" +Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing +in a new light what was cruelty to a cat MIGHT be cruelty to a boy, +too. She began to soften she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little, +and she put her hand on Tom's head and said gently +"I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it DID do you good." +Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping +through his gravity. +"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. +It done HIM good, too. I never see him get around so since" +"Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you +try and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take +any more medicine." +Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange +thing had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late, +he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his +comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to +be looking everywhere but whither he really was lookingdown the road. +Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted he gazed +a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom +accosted him and "led up" warily to opportunities for remark about +Becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and +watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the +owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks +ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps he entered +the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock +passed in at the gate, and Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next +instant he was out, and "going on" like an Indian yelling, laughing, +chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing +handsprings, standing on his headdoing all the heroic things he could +conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if +Becky Thatcher was noticing. But she seemed to be unconscious of it +all she never looked. Could it be possible that she was not aware that +he was there? He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity came +warwhooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the +schoolhouse, broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every +direction, and fell sprawling, himself, under Becky's nose, almost +upsetting herand she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard +her say "Mf some people think they're mighty smartalways showing +off" +Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed +and crestfallen. +CHAPTER XIII +TOM'S mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a +forsaken, friendless boy, he said nobody loved him when they found +out what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry he had +tried to do right and get along, but they would not let him since +nothing would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so and let them +blame HIM for the consequenceswhy shouldn't they? What right had the +friendless to complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last he +would lead a life of crime. There was no choice. +By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and the bell for school to +"take up" tinkled faintly upon his ear. He sobbed, now, to think he +should never, never hear that old familiar sound any moreit was very +hard, but it was forced on him since he was driven out into the cold +world, he must submitbut he forgave them. Then the sobs came thick +and fast. +Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, Joe Harper +hardeyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his heart. +Plainly here were "two souls with but a single thought." Tom, wiping +his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about a +resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by +roaming abroad into the great world never to return and ended by +hoping that Joe would not forget him. +But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had just been +going to make of Tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. His +mother had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never +tasted and knew nothing about it was plain that she was tired of him +and wished him to go if she felt that way, there was nothing for him +to do but succumb he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having +driven her poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die. +As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to +stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death +relieved them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans. +Joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and +dying, some time, of cold and want and grief but after listening to +Tom, he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a +life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate. +Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi +River was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded +island, with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as +a rendezvous. It was not inhabited it lay far over toward the further +shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson's +Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a +matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted up Huckleberry +Finn, and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him he +was indifferent. They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on +the riverbank two miles above the village at the favorite hourwhich +was midnight. There was a small log raft there which they meant to +capture. Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he +could steal in the most dark and mysterious wayas became outlaws. And +before the afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet +glory of spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear +something." All who got this vague hint were cautioned to "be mum and +wait." +About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles, +and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the +meetingplace. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay +like an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the +quiet. Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. It was answered from under +the bluff. Tom whistled twice more these signals were answered in the +same way. Then a guarded voice said +"Who goes there?" +"Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names." +"Huck Finn the RedHanded, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas." Tom +had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature. +"'Tis well. Give the countersign." +Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to +the brooding night +"BLOOD" +Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it, +tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. There was +an easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it +lacked the advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate. +The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn +himself out with getting it there. Finn the RedHanded had stolen a +skillet and a quantity of halfcured leaf tobacco, and had also brought +a few corncobs to make pipes with. But none of the pirates smoked or +"chewed" but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it +would never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought +matches were hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire +smouldering upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went +stealthily thither and helped themselves to a chunk. They made an +imposing adventure of it, saying, "Hist" every now and then, and +suddenly halting with finger on lip moving with hands on imaginary +daggerhilts and giving orders in dismal whispers that if "the foe" +stirred, to "let him have it to the hilt," because "dead men tell no +tales." They knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the +village laying in stores or having a spree, but still that was no +excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way. +They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and +Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomybrowed, and with folded +arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper +"Luff, and bring her to the wind" +"Ayeaye, sir" +"Steady, steadyyyy" +"Steady it is, sir" +"Let her go off a point" +"Point it is, sir" +As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward midstream +it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for +"style," and were not intended to mean anything in particular. +"What sail's she carrying?" +"Courses, tops'ls, and flyingjib, sir." +"Send the r'yals up Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of ye +foretopmaststuns'l Lively, now" +"Ayeaye, sir" +"Shake out that maintogalans'l Sheets and braces NOW my hearties" +"Ayeaye, sir" +"Hellumaleehard a port Stand by to meet her when she comes Port, +port NOW, men With a will Steadyyy" +"Steady it is, sir" +The raft drew beyond the middle of the river the boys pointed her +head right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so +there was not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was +said during the next threequarters of an hour. Now the raft was +passing before the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed +where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of +stargemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening. +The Black Avenger stood still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon +the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing +"she" could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death +with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips. +It was but a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson's Island +beyond eyeshot of the village, and so he "looked his last" with a +broken and satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last, +too and they all looked so long that they came near letting the +current drift them out of the range of the island. But they discovered +the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. About two o'clock in +the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the +head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed +their freight. Part of the little raft's belongings consisted of an old +sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to +shelter their provisions but they themselves would sleep in the open +air in good weather, as became outlaws. +They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty +steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some +bacon in the fryingpan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone" +stock they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that +wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited +island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would +return to civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw +its ruddy glare upon the pillared treetrunks of their forest temple, +and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines. +When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of +corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, +filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they +would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting +campfire. +"AIN'T it gay?" said Joe. +"It's NUTS" said Tom. "What would the boys say if they could see us?" +"Say? Well, they'd just die to be herehey, Hucky" +"I reckon so," said Huckleberry "anyways, I'm suited. I don't want +nothing better'n this. I don't ever get enough to eat, gen'allyand +here they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so." +"It's just the life for me," said Tom. "You don't have to get up, +mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that +blame foolishness. You see a pirate don't have to do ANYTHING, Joe, +when he's ashore, but a hermit HE has to be praying considerable, and +then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way." +"Oh yes, that's so," said Joe, "but I hadn't thought much about it, +you know. I'd a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I've tried it." +"You see," said Tom, "people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like +they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And a +hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put +sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and" +"What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?" inquired Huck. +"I dono. But they've GOT to do it. Hermits always do. You'd have to do +that if you was a hermit." +"Dern'd if I would," said Huck. +"Well, what would you do?" +"I dono. But I wouldn't do that." +"Why, Huck, you'd HAVE to. How'd you get around it?" +"Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away." +"Run away Well, you WOULD be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You'd be +a disgrace." +The RedHanded made no response, being better employed. He had +finished gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded +it with tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a +cloud of fragrant smokehe was in the full bloom of luxurious +contentment. The other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and +secretly resolved to acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said +"What does pirates have to do?" +Tom said +"Oh, they have just a bully timetake ships and burn them, and get +the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's +ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the shipsmake +'em walk a plank." +"And they carry the women to the island," said Joe "they don't kill +the women." +"No," assented Tom, "they don't kill the womenthey're too noble. And +the women's always beautiful, too. +"And don't they wear the bulliest clothes Oh no All gold and silver +and di'monds," said Joe, with enthusiasm. +"Who?" said Huck. +"Why, the pirates." +Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly. +"I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a +regretful pathos in his voice "but I ain't got none but these." +But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough, +after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand +that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for +wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe. +Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the +eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the +RedHanded, and he slept the sleep of the consciencefree and the +weary. The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main +had more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers +inwardly, and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority +to make them kneel and recite aloud in truth, they had a mind not to +say them at all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as +that, lest they might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from +heaven. Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge +of sleepbut an intruder came, now, that would not "down." It was +conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing +wrong to run away and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then +the real torture came. They tried to argue it away by reminding +conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of +times but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin +plausibilities it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no +getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only +"hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain +simple stealingand there was a command against that in the Bible. So +they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, +their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing. +Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent +pirates fell peacefully to sleep. +CHAPTER XIV +WHEN Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and +rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the +cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in +the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred +not a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dewdrops +stood upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the +fire, and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe +and Huck still slept. +Now, far away in the woods a bird called another answered presently +the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray of +the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life +manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to +work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A little green worm came +crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting twothirds of his body into the air +from time to time and "sniffing around," then proceeding againfor he +was measuring, Tom said and when the worm approached him, of its own +accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling, +by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to +go elsewhere and when at last it considered a painful moment with its +curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and +began a journey over him, his whole heart was gladfor that meant that +he was going to have a new suit of clotheswithout the shadow of a +doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared, +from nowhere in particular, and went about their labors one struggled +manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms, +and lugged it straight up a treetrunk. A brown spotted ladybug +climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to +it and said, "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire, +your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it +which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was +credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its +simplicity more than once. A tumblebug came next, heaving sturdily at +its ball, and Tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs against +its body and pretend to be dead. The birds were fairly rioting by this +time. A catbird, the Northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head, +and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of +enjoyment then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and +stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one +side and eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity a gray squirrel +and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came skurrying along, sitting up at +intervals to inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had +probably never seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to +be afraid or not. All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now long +lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, +and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene. +Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with a +shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and +tumbling over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white +sandbar. They felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the +distance beyond the majestic waste of water. A vagrant current or a +slight rise in the river had carried off their raft, but this only +gratified them, since its going was something like burning the bridge +between them and civilization. +They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, gladhearted, and +ravenous and they soon had the campfire blazing up again. Huck found +a spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad +oak or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a +wildwood charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee. +While Joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to +hold on a minute they stepped to a promising nook in the riverbank +and threw in their lines almost immediately they had reward. Joe had +not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some +handsome bass, a couple of sunperch and a small catfishprovisions +enough for quite a family. They fried the fish with the bacon, and were +astonished for no fish had ever seemed so delicious before. They did +not know that the quicker a freshwater fish is on the fire after he is +caught the better he is and they reflected little upon what a sauce +openair sleeping, openair exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient +of hunger make, too. +They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while Huck had a smoke, +and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. They +tramped gayly along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush, +among solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the +ground with a drooping regalia of grapevines. Now and then they came +upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers. +They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but nothing to be +astonished at. They discovered that the island was about three miles +long and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to +was only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards +wide. They took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the +middle of the afternoon when they got back to camp. They were too +hungry to stop to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and +then threw themselves down in the shade to talk. But the talk soon +began to drag, and then died. The stillness, the solemnity that brooded +in the woods, and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the +spirits of the boys. They fell to thinking. A sort of undefined longing +crept upon them. This took dim shape, presentlyit was budding +homesickness. Even Finn the RedHanded was dreaming of his doorsteps +and empty hogsheads. But they were all ashamed of their weakness, and +none was brave enough to speak his thought. +For some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar +sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a +clock which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound +became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started, +glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude. +There was a long silence, profound and unbroken then a deep, sullen +boom came floating down out of the distance. +"What is it" exclaimed Joe, under his breath. +"I wonder," said Tom in a whisper. +"'Tain't thunder," said Huckleberry, in an awed tone, "becuz thunder" +"Hark" said Tom. "Listendon't talk." +They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom +troubled the solemn hush. +"Let's go and see." +They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town. +They parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. The +little steam ferryboat was about a mile below the village, drifting +with the current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people. There were +a great many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the +neighborhood of the ferryboat, but the boys could not determine what +the men in them were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst +from the ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud, +that same dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again. +"I know now" exclaimed Tom "somebody's drownded" +"That's it" said Huck "they done that last summer, when Bill Turner +got drownded they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes him +come up to the top. Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put +quicksilver in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody +that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop." +"Yes, I've heard about that," said Joe. "I wonder what makes the bread +do that." +"Oh, it ain't the bread, so much," said Tom "I reckon it's mostly +what they SAY over it before they start it out." +"But they don't say anything over it," said Huck. "I've seen 'em and +they don't." +"Well, that's funny," said Tom. "But maybe they say it to themselves. +Of COURSE they do. Anybody might know that." +The other boys agreed that there was reason in what Tom said, because +an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not be +expected to act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such +gravity. +"By jings, I wish I was over there, now," said Joe. +"I do too" said Huck "I'd give heaps to know who it is." +The boys still listened and watched. Presently a revealing thought +flashed through Tom's mind, and he exclaimed +"Boys, I know who's drowndedit's us" +They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a gorgeous triumph they +were missed they were mourned hearts were breaking on their account +tears were being shed accusing memories of unkindness to these poor +lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being +indulged and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole +town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety +was concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a pirate, after +all. +As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her accustomed +business and the skiffs disappeared. The pirates returned to camp. They +were jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious +trouble they were making. They caught fish, cooked supper and ate it, +and then fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying +about them and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their +account were gratifying to look uponfrom their point of view. But +when the shadows of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to +talk, and sat gazing into the fire, with their minds evidently +wandering elsewhere. The excitement was gone, now, and Tom and Joe +could not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home who were not +enjoying this fine frolic as much as they were. Misgivings came they +grew troubled and unhappy a sigh or two escaped, unawares. By and by +Joe timidly ventured upon a roundabout "feeler" as to how the others +might look upon a return to civilizationnot right now, but +Tom withered him with derision Huck, being uncommitted as yet, joined +in with Tom, and the waverer quickly "explained," and was glad to get +out of the scrape with as little taint of chickenhearted homesickness +clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny was effectually laid to +rest for the moment. +As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and presently to snore. Joe +followed next. Tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time, +watching the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on his knees, +and went searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung +by the campfire. He picked up and inspected several large +semicylinders of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose +two which seemed to suit him. Then he knelt by the fire and painfully +wrote something upon each of these with his "red keel" one he rolled up +and put in his jacket pocket, and the other he put in Joe's hat and +removed it to a little distance from the owner. And he also put into the +hat certain schoolboy treasures of almost inestimable valueamong them +a lump of chalk, an Indiarubber ball, three fishhooks, and one of that +kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough crystal." Then he tiptoed his +way cautiously among the trees till he felt that he was out of hearing, +and straightway broke into a keen run in the direction of the sandbar. +CHAPTER XV +A FEW minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading +toward the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was +halfway over the current would permit no more wading, now, so he +struck out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam +quartering upstream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he +had expected. However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along +till he found a low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his +jacket pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through +the woods, following the shore, with streaming garments. Shortly before +ten o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and +saw the ferryboat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank. +Everything was quiet under the blinking stars. He crept down the bank, +watching with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four +strokes and climbed into the skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's +stern. He laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting. +Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to "cast +off." A minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up, +against the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in +his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. At +the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and Tom +slipped overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards +downstream, out of danger of possible stragglers. +He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his +aunt's back fence. He climbed over, approached the "ell," and looked in +at the sittingroom window, for a light was burning there. There sat +Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother, grouped together, +talking. They were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the +door. Tom went to the door and began to softly lift the latch then he +pressed gently and the door yielded a crack he continued pushing +cautiously, and quaking every time it creaked, till he judged he might +squeeze through on his knees so he put his head through and began, +warily. +"What makes the candle blow so?" said Aunt Polly. Tom hurried up. +"Why, that door's open, I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of +strange things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid." +Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He lay and "breathed" +himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his +aunt's foot. +"But as I was saying," said Aunt Polly, "he warn't BAD, so to say +only mischEEvous. Only just giddy, and harumscarum, you know. He +warn't any more responsible than a colt. HE never meant any harm, and +he was the besthearted boy that ever was"and she began to cry. +"It was just so with my Joealways full of his devilment, and up to +every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he +could beand laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for taking +that cream, never once recollecting that I throwed it out myself +because it was sour, and I never to see him again in this world, never, +never, never, poor abused boy" And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her heart +would break. +"I hope Tom's better off where he is," said Sid, "but if he'd been +better in some ways" +"SID" Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not +see it. "Not a word against my Tom, now that he's gone God'll take +care of HIMnever you trouble YOURself, sir Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don't +know how to give him up I don't know how to give him up He was such a +comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most." +"The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken awayBlessed be the name of +the Lord But it's so hardOh, it's so hard Only last Saturday my +Joe busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him +sprawling. Little did I know then, how soonOh, if it was to do over +again I'd hug him and bless him for it." +"Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just +exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took +and filled the cat full of Painkiller, and I did think the cretur +would tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom's head +with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. But he's out of all his +troubles now. And the last words I ever heard him say was to reproach" +But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely +down. Tom was snuffling, now, himselfand more in pity of himself than +anybody else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word +for him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself +than ever before. Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's +grief to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with +joyand the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to +his nature, too, but he resisted and lay still. +He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was +conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim +then the small raft had been missed next, certain boys said the +missing lads had promised that the village should "hear something" +soon the wiseheads had "put this and that together" and decided that +the lads had gone off on that raft and would turn up at the next town +below, presently but toward noon the raft had been found, lodged +against the Missouri shore some five or six miles below the village +and then hope perished they must be drowned, else hunger would have +driven them home by nightfall if not sooner. It was believed that the +search for the bodies had been a fruitless effort merely because the +drowning must have occurred in midchannel, since the boys, being good +swimmers, would otherwise have escaped to shore. This was Wednesday +night. If the bodies continued missing until Sunday, all hope would be +given over, and the funerals would be preached on that morning. Tom +shuddered. +Mrs. Harper gave a sobbing goodnight and turned to go. Then with a +mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each +other's arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted. Aunt Polly +was tender far beyond her wont, in her goodnight to Sid and Mary. Sid +snuffled a bit and Mary went off crying with all her heart. +Aunt Polly knelt down and prayed for Tom so touchingly, so +appealingly, and with such measureless love in her words and her old +trembling voice, that he was weltering in tears again, long before she +was through. +He had to keep still long after she went to bed, for she kept making +brokenhearted ejaculations from time to time, tossing unrestfully, and +turning over. But at last she was still, only moaning a little in her +sleep. Now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside, shaded the +candlelight with his hand, and stood regarding her. His heart was full +of pity for her. He took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the +candle. But something occurred to him, and he lingered considering. His +face lighted with a happy solution of his thought he put the bark +hastily in his pocket. Then he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and +straightway made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him. +He threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found nobody at large +there, and walked boldly on board the boat, for he knew she was +tenantless except that there was a watchman, who always turned in and +slept like a graven image. He untied the skiff at the stern, slipped +into it, and was soon rowing cautiously upstream. When he had pulled a +mile above the village, he started quartering across and bent himself +stoutly to his work. He hit the landing on the other side neatly, for +this was a familiar bit of work to him. He was moved to capture the +skiff, arguing that it might be considered a ship and therefore +legitimate prey for a pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be +made for it and that might end in revelations. So he stepped ashore and +entered the woods. +He sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meanwhile to keep +awake, and then started warily down the homestretch. The night was far +spent. It was broad daylight before he found himself fairly abreast the +island bar. He rested again until the sun was well up and gilding the +great river with its splendor, and then he plunged into the stream. A +little later he paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp, and +heard Joe say +"No, Tom's trueblue, Huck, and he'll come back. He won't desert. He +knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and Tom's too proud for +that sort of thing. He's up to something or other. Now I wonder what?" +"Well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?" +"Pretty near, but not yet, Huck. The writing says they are if he ain't +back here to breakfast." +"Which he is" exclaimed Tom, with fine dramatic effect, stepping +grandly into camp. +A sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as +the boys set to work upon it, Tom recounted and adorned his +adventures. They were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the +tale was done. Then Tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till +noon, and the other pirates got ready to fish and explore. +CHAPTER XVI +AFTER dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the +bar. They went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a +soft place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands. +Sometimes they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They +were perfectly round white things a trifle smaller than an English +walnut. They had a famous friedegg feast that night, and another on +Friday morning. +After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and +chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until +they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal +water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their +legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. +And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each +other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with +averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and +struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all +went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, +sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time. +When they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the +dry, hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by +and by break for the water again and go through the original +performance once more. Finally it occurred to them that their naked +skin represented fleshcolored "tights" very fairly so they drew a +ring in the sand and had a circuswith three clowns in it, for none +would yield this proudest post to his neighbor. +Next they got their marbles and played "knucks" and "ringtaw" and +"keeps" till that amusement grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another +swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off +his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his +ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the +protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he +had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to +rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped into the "dumps," and fell +to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay +drowsing in the sun. Tom found himself writing "BECKY" in the sand with +his big toe he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his +weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless he could not help it. He +erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving +the other boys together and joining them. +But Joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so +homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay +very near the surface. Huck was melancholy, too. Tom was downhearted, +but tried hard not to show it. He had a secret which he was not ready +to tell, yet, but if this mutinous depression was not broken up soon, +he would have to bring it out. He said, with a great show of +cheerfulness +"I bet there's been pirates on this island before, boys. We'll explore +it again. They've hid treasures here somewhere. How'd you feel to light +on a rotten chest full of gold and silverhey?" +But it roused only faint enthusiasm, which faded out, with no reply. +Tom tried one or two other seductions but they failed, too. It was +discouraging work. Joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and looking +very gloomy. Finally he said +"Oh, boys, let's give it up. I want to go home. It's so lonesome." +"Oh no, Joe, you'll feel better by and by," said Tom. "Just think of +the fishing that's here." +"I don't care for fishing. I want to go home." +"But, Joe, there ain't such another swimmingplace anywhere." +"Swimming's no good. I don't seem to care for it, somehow, when there +ain't anybody to say I sha'n't go in. I mean to go home." +"Oh, shucks Baby You want to see your mother, I reckon." +"Yes, I DO want to see my motherand you would, too, if you had one. +I ain't any more baby than you are." And Joe snuffled a little. +"Well, we'll let the crybaby go home to his mother, won't we, Huck? +Poor thingdoes it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like +it here, don't you, Huck? We'll stay, won't we?" +Huck said, "Yes"without any heart in it. +"I'll never speak to you again as long as I live," said Joe, rising. +"There now" And he moved moodily away and began to dress himself. +"Who cares" said Tom. "Nobody wants you to. Go 'long home and get +laughed at. Oh, you're a nice pirate. Huck and me ain't crybabies. +We'll stay, won't we, Huck? Let him go if he wants to. I reckon we can +get along without him, per'aps." +But Tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed to see Joe go +sullenly on with his dressing. And then it was discomforting to see +Huck eying Joe's preparations so wistfully, and keeping up such an +ominous silence. Presently, without a parting word, Joe began to wade +off toward the Illinois shore. Tom's heart began to sink. He glanced at +Huck. Huck could not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. Then he said +"I want to go, too, Tom. It was getting so lonesome anyway, and now +it'll be worse. Let's us go, too, Tom." +"I won't You can all go, if you want to. I mean to stay." +"Tom, I better go." +"Well, go 'longwho's hendering you." +Huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. He said +"Tom, I wisht you'd come, too. Now you think it over. We'll wait for +you when we get to shore." +"Well, you'll wait a blame long time, that's all." +Huck started sorrowfully away, and Tom stood looking after him, with a +strong desire tugging at his heart to yield his pride and go along too. +He hoped the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on. It +suddenly dawned on Tom that it was become very lonely and still. He +made one final struggle with his pride, and then darted after his +comrades, yelling +"Wait Wait I want to tell you something" +They presently stopped and turned around. When he got to where they +were, he began unfolding his secret, and they listened moodily till at +last they saw the "point" he was driving at, and then they set up a +warwhoop of applause and said it was "splendid" and said if he had +told them at first, they wouldn't have started away. He made a plausible +excuse but his real reason had been the fear that not even the secret +would keep them with him any very great length of time, and so he had +meant to hold it in reserve as a last seduction. +The lads came gayly back and went at their sports again with a will, +chattering all the time about Tom's stupendous plan and admiring the +genius of it. After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to +learn to smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said he would like to +try, too. So Huck made pipes and filled them. These novices had never +smoked anything before but cigars made of grapevine, and they "bit" +the tongue, and were not considered manly anyway. +Now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff, +charily, and with slender confidence. The smoke had an unpleasant +taste, and they gagged a little, but Tom said +"Why, it's just as easy If I'd a knowed this was all, I'd a learnt +long ago." +"So would I," said Joe. "It's just nothing." +"Why, many a time I've looked at people smoking, and thought well I +wish I could do that but I never thought I could," said Tom. +"That's just the way with me, hain't it, Huck? You've heard me talk +just that wayhaven't you, Huck? I'll leave it to Huck if I haven't." +"Yesheaps of times," said Huck. +"Well, I have too," said Tom "oh, hundreds of times. Once down by the +slaughterhouse. Don't you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was there, and +Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it. Don't you remember, +Huck, 'bout me saying that?" +"Yes, that's so," said Huck. "That was the day after I lost a white +alley. No, 'twas the day before." +"ThereI told you so," said Tom. "Huck recollects it." +"I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day," said Joe. "I don't feel +sick." +"Neither do I," said Tom. "I could smoke it all day. But I bet you +Jeff Thatcher couldn't." +"Jeff Thatcher Why, he'd keel over just with two draws. Just let him +try it once. HE'D see" +"I bet he would. And Johnny MillerI wish could see Johnny Miller +tackle it once." +"Oh, don't I" said Joe. "Why, I bet you Johnny Miller couldn't any +more do this than nothing. Just one little snifter would fetch HIM." +"'Deed it would, Joe. SayI wish the boys could see us now." +"So do I." +"Sayboys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're +around, I'll come up to you and say, 'Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.' +And you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll +say, 'Yes, I got my OLD pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't +very good.' And I'll say, 'Oh, that's all right, if it's STRONG +enough.' And then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as +ca'm, and then just see 'em look" +"By jings, that'll be gay, Tom I wish it was NOW" +"So do I And when we tell 'em we learned when we was off pirating, +won't they wish they'd been along?" +"Oh, I reckon not I'll just BET they will" +So the talk ran on. But presently it began to flag a trifle, and grow +disjointed. The silences widened the expectoration marvellously +increased. Every pore inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting +fountain they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues +fast enough to prevent an inundation little overflowings down their +throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings +followed every time. Both boys were looking very pale and miserable, +now. Joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. Tom's followed. +Both fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might +and main. Joe said feebly +"I've lost my knife. I reckon I better go and find it." +Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance +"I'll help you. You go over that way and I'll hunt around by the +spring. No, you needn't come, Huckwe can find it." +So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour. Then he found it lonesome, +and went to find his comrades. They were wide apart in the woods, both +very pale, both fast asleep. But something informed him that if they +had had any trouble they had got rid of it. +They were not talkative at supper that night. They had a humble look, +and when Huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare +theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very wellsomething they +ate at dinner had disagreed with them. +About midnight Joe awoke, and called the boys. There was a brooding +oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. The boys +huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of +the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was +stifling. They sat still, intent and waiting. The solemn hush +continued. Beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in +the blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quivering glow that +vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. By and by +another came, a little stronger. Then another. Then a faint moan came +sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting +breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the Spirit +of the Night had gone by. There was a pause. Now a weird flash turned +night into day and showed every little grassblade, separate and +distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed three white, +startled faces, too. A deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling +down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A +sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the +flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. Another fierce glare lit up the +forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the treetops +right over the boys' heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick +gloom that followed. A few big raindrops fell pattering upon the +leaves. +"Quick boys, go for the tent" exclaimed Tom. +They sprang away, stumbling over roots and among vines in the dark, no +two plunging in the same direction. A furious blast roared through the +trees, making everything sing as it went. One blinding flash after +another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a +drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets +along the ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring +wind and the booming thunderblasts drowned their voices utterly. +However, one by one they straggled in at last and took shelter under +the tent, cold, scared, and streaming with water but to have company +in misery seemed something to be grateful for. They could not talk, the +old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises would have +allowed them. The tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the +sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast. +The boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and +bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that stood upon the riverbank. +Now the battle was at its highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of +lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in +cleancut and shadowless distinctness the bending trees, the billowy +river, white with foam, the driving spray of spumeflakes, the dim +outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the +drifting cloudrack and the slanting veil of rain. Every little while +some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger +growth and the unflagging thunderpeals came now in earsplitting +explosive bursts, keen and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. The storm +culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island +to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the treetops, blow it away, and +deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. It was a +wild night for homeless young heads to be out in. +But at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker +and weaker threatenings and grumblings, and peace resumed her sway. The +boys went back to camp, a good deal awed but they found there was +still something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the +shelter of their beds, was a ruin, now, blasted by the lightnings, and +they were not under it when the catastrophe happened. +Everything in camp was drenched, the campfire as well for they were +but heedless lads, like their generation, and had made no provision +against rain. Here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked through +and chilled. They were eloquent in their distress but they presently +discovered that the fire had eaten so far up under the great log it had +been built against where it curved upward and separated itself from +the ground, that a handbreadth or so of it had escaped wetting so +they patiently wrought until, with shreds and bark gathered from the +under sides of sheltered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. Then +they piled on great dead boughs till they had a roaring furnace, and +were gladhearted once more. They dried their boiled ham and had a +feast, and after that they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified +their midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a dry spot to +sleep on, anywhere around. +As the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over them, +and they went out on the sandbar and lay down to sleep. They got +scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. After +the meal they felt rusty, and stiffjointed, and a little homesick once +more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as +he could. But they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, +or anything. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray +of cheer. While it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. This +was to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a +change. They were attracted by this idea so it was not long before +they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like +so many zebrasall of them chiefs, of courseand then they went +tearing through the woods to attack an English settlement. +By and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon +each other from ambush with dreadful warwhoops, and killed and scalped +each other by thousands. It was a gory day. Consequently it was an +extremely satisfactory one. +They assembled in camp toward suppertime, hungry and happy but now a +difficulty arosehostile Indians could not break the bread of +hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple +impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There was no other +process that ever they had heard of. Two of the savages almost wished +they had remained pirates. However, there was no other way so with +such show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe +and took their whiff as it passed, in due form. +And behold, they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had +gained something they found that they could now smoke a little without +having to go and hunt for a lost knife they did not get sick enough to +be seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely to fool away this high +promise for lack of effort. No, they practised cautiously, after +supper, with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. +They were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would +have been in the scalping and skinning of the Six Nations. We will +leave them to smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use +for them at present. +CHAPTER XVII +BUT there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil +Saturday afternoon. The Harpers, and Aunt Polly's family, were being +put into mourning, with great grief and many tears. An unusual quiet +possessed the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all +conscience. The villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air, +and talked little but they sighed often. The Saturday holiday seemed a +burden to the children. They had no heart in their sports, and +gradually gave them up. +In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the +deserted schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found +nothing there to comfort her. She soliloquized +"Oh, if I only had a brass andironknob again But I haven't got +anything now to remember him by." And she choked back a little sob. +Presently she stopped, and said to herself +"It was right here. Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn't say +thatI wouldn't say it for the whole world. But he's gone now I'll +never, never, never see him any more." +This thought broke her down, and she wandered away, with tears rolling +down her cheeks. Then quite a group of boys and girlsplaymates of +Tom's and Joe'scame by, and stood looking over the paling fence and +talking in reverent tones of how Tom did soandso the last time they +saw him, and how Joe said this and that small trifle pregnant with +awful prophecy, as they could easily see nowand each speaker +pointed out the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and +then added something like "and I was astanding just sojust as I am +now, and as if you was himI was as close as thatand he smiled, just +this wayand then something seemed to go all over me, likeawful, you +knowand I never thought what it meant, of course, but I can see now" +Then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and +many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or +less tampered with by the witness and when it was ultimately decided +who DID see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them, +the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance, and +were gaped at and envied by all the rest. One poor chap, who had no +other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the +remembrance +"Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once." +But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that, +and so that cheapened the distinction too much. The group loitered +away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices. +When the Sundayschool hour was finished, the next morning, the bell +began to toll, instead of ringing in the usual way. It was a very still +Sabbath, and the mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing hush +that lay upon nature. The villagers began to gather, loitering a moment +in the vestibule to converse in whispers about the sad event. But there +was no whispering in the house only the funereal rustling of dresses +as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. None +could remember when the little church had been so full before. There +was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then Aunt Polly +entered, followed by Sid and Mary, and they by the Harper family, all +in deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well, +rose reverently and stood until the mourners were seated in the front +pew. There was another communing silence, broken at intervals by +muffled sobs, and then the minister spread his hands abroad and prayed. +A moving hymn was sung, and the text followed "I am the Resurrection +and the Life." +As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the +graces, the winning ways, and the rare promise of the lost lads that +every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in +remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them always +before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor +boys. The minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the +departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the +people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes +were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had +seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide. The +congregation became more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went on, +till at last the whole company broke down and joined the weeping +mourners in a chorus of anguished sobs, the preacher himself giving way +to his feelings, and crying in the pulpit. +There was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed a moment +later the church door creaked the minister raised his streaming eyes +above his handkerchief, and stood transfixed First one and then +another pair of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one +impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came +marching up the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of +drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear They had been hid in +the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon +Aunt Polly, Mary, and the Harpers threw themselves upon their restored +ones, smothered them with kisses and poured out thanksgivings, while +poor Huck stood abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what to +do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes. He wavered, and +started to slink away, but Tom seized him and said +"Aunt Polly, it ain't fair. Somebody's got to be glad to see Huck." +"And so they shall. I'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing" And +the loving attentions Aunt Polly lavished upon him were the one thing +capable of making him more uncomfortable than he was before. +Suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice "Praise God +from whom all blessings flowSINGand put your hearts in it" +And they did. Old Hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and +while it shook the rafters Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the +envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was +the proudest moment of his life. +As the "sold" congregation trooped out they said they would almost be +willing to be made ridiculous again to hear Old Hundred sung like that +once more. +Tom got more cuffs and kisses that dayaccording to Aunt Polly's +varying moodsthan he had earned before in a year and he hardly knew +which expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself. +CHAPTER XVIII +THAT was Tom's great secretthe scheme to return home with his +brother pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to +the Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six +miles below the village they had slept in the woods at the edge of the +town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and +alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a +chaos of invalided benches. +At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to +Tom, and very attentive to his wants. There was an unusual amount of +talk. In the course of it Aunt Polly said +"Well, I don't say it wasn't a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody +suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity +you could be so hardhearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come +over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give +me a hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off." +"Yes, you could have done that, Tom," said Mary "and I believe you +would if you had thought of it." +"Would you, Tom?" said Aunt Polly, her face lighting wistfully. "Say, +now, would you, if you'd thought of it?" +"Iwell, I don't know. 'Twould 'a' spoiled everything." +"Tom, I hoped you loved me that much," said Aunt Polly, with a grieved +tone that discomforted the boy. "It would have been something if you'd +cared enough to THINK of it, even if you didn't DO it." +"Now, auntie, that ain't any harm," pleaded Mary "it's only Tom's +giddy wayhe is always in such a rush that he never thinks of +anything." +"More's the pity. Sid would have thought. And Sid would have come and +DONE it, too. Tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late, and +wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so +little." +"Now, auntie, you know I do care for you," said Tom. +"I'd know it better if you acted more like it." +"I wish now I'd thought," said Tom, with a repentant tone "but I +dreamt about you, anyway. That's something, ain't it?" +"It ain't mucha cat does that muchbut it's better than nothing. +What did you dream?" +"Why, Wednesday night I dreamt that you was sitting over there by the +bed, and Sid was sitting by the woodbox, and Mary next to him." +"Well, so we did. So we always do. I'm glad your dreams could take +even that much trouble about us." +"And I dreamt that Joe Harper's mother was here." +"Why, she was here Did you dream any more?" +"Oh, lots. But it's so dim, now." +"Well, try to recollectcan't you?" +"Somehow it seems to me that the windthe wind blowed thethe" +"Try harder, Tom The wind did blow something. Come" +Tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then +said +"I've got it now I've got it now It blowed the candle" +"Mercy on us Go on, Tomgo on" +"And it seems to me that you said, 'Why, I believe that that door'" +"Go ON, Tom" +"Just let me study a momentjust a moment. Oh, yesyou said you +believed the door was open." +"As I'm sitting here, I did Didn't I, Mary Go on" +"And thenand thenwell I won't be certain, but it seems like as if +you made Sid go andand" +"Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom? What did I make him do?" +"You made himyouOh, you made him shut it." +"Well, for the land's sake I never heard the beat of that in all my +days Don't tell ME there ain't anything in dreams, any more. Sereny +Harper shall know of this before I'm an hour older. I'd like to see her +get around THIS with her rubbage 'bout superstition. Go on, Tom" +"Oh, it's all getting just as bright as day, now. Next you said I +warn't BAD, only mischeevous and harumscarum, and not any more +responsible thanthanI think it was a colt, or something." +"And so it was Well, goodness gracious Go on, Tom" +"And then you began to cry." +"So I did. So I did. Not the first time, neither. And then" +"Then Mrs. Harper she began to cry, and said Joe was just the same, +and she wished she hadn't whipped him for taking cream when she'd +throwed it out her own self" +"Tom The sperrit was upon you You was a prophesyingthat's what you +was doing Land alive, go on, Tom" +"Then Sid he saidhe said" +"I don't think I said anything," said Sid. +"Yes you did, Sid," said Mary. +"Shut your heads and let Tom go on What did he say, Tom?" +"He saidI THINK he said he hoped I was better off where I was gone +to, but if I'd been better sometimes" +"THERE, d'you hear that It was his very words" +"And you shut him up sharp." +"I lay I did There must 'a' been an angel there. There WAS an angel +there, somewheres" +"And Mrs. Harper told about Joe scaring her with a firecracker, and +you told about Peter and the Painkiller" +"Just as true as I live" +"And then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout dragging the river for +us, and 'bout having the funeral Sunday, and then you and old Miss +Harper hugged and cried, and she went." +"It happened just so It happened just so, as sure as I'm asitting in +these very tracks. Tom, you couldn't told it more like if you'd 'a' +seen it And then what? Go on, Tom" +"Then I thought you prayed for meand I could see you and hear every +word you said. And you went to bed, and I was so sorry that I took and +wrote on a piece of sycamore bark, 'We ain't deadwe are only off +being pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle and then you +looked so good, laying there asleep, that I thought I went and leaned +over and kissed you on the lips." +"Did you, Tom, DID you I just forgive you everything for that" And +she seized the boy in a crushing embrace that made him feel like the +guiltiest of villains. +"It was very kind, even though it was only adream," Sid soliloquized +just audibly. +"Shut up, Sid A body does just the same in a dream as he'd do if he +was awake. Here's a big Milum apple I've been saving for you, Tom, if +you was ever found againnow go 'long to school. I'm thankful to the +good God and Father of us all I've got you back, that's longsuffering +and merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though +goodness knows I'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His +blessings and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there's +few enough would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long +night comes. Go 'long Sid, Mary, Tomtake yourselves offyou've +hendered me long enough." +The children left for school, and the old lady to call on Mrs. Harper +and vanquish her realism with Tom's marvellous dream. Sid had better +judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the +house. It was this "Pretty thinas long a dream as that, without any +mistakes in it" +What a hero Tom was become, now He did not go skipping and prancing, +but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the +public eye was on him. And indeed it was he tried not to seem to see +the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food +and drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as +proud to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been the +drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie +into town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away +at all but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would +have given anything to have that swarthy suntanned skin of his, and his +glittering notoriety and Tom would not have parted with either for a +circus. +At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered +such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not +long in becoming insufferably "stuckup." They began to tell their +adventures to hungry listenersbut they only began it was not a thing +likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish +material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely +puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached. +Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory +was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished, +maybe she would be wanting to "make up." Well, let hershe should see +that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she +arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group +of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was +tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes, +pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter +when she made a capture but he noticed that she always made her +captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye +in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious +vanity that was in him and so, instead of winning him, it only "set +him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that +he knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved +irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and +wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more +particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp +pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. She tried to go away, but +her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She +said to a girl almost at Tom's elbowwith sham vivacity +"Why, Mary Austin you bad girl, why didn't you come to Sundayschool?" +"I did comedidn't you see me?" +"Why, no Did you? Where did you sit?" +"I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go. I saw YOU." +"Did you? Why, it's funny I didn't see you. I wanted to tell you about +the picnic." +"Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?" +"My ma's going to let me have one." +"Oh, goody I hope she'll let ME come." +"Well, she will. The picnic's for me. She'll let anybody come that I +want, and I want you." +"That's ever so nice. When is it going to be?" +"By and by. Maybe about vacation." +"Oh, won't it be fun You going to have all the girls and boys?" +"Yes, every one that's friends to meor wants to be" and she glanced +ever so furtively at Tom, but he talked right along to Amy Lawrence +about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the +great sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing within +three feet of it." +"Oh, may I come?" said Grace Miller. +"Yes." +"And me?" said Sally Rogers. +"Yes." +"And me, too?" said Susy Harper. "And Joe?" +"Yes." +And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged +for invitations but Tom and Amy. Then Tom turned coolly away, still +talking, and took Amy with him. Becky's lips trembled and the tears +came to her eyes she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on +chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of +everything else she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and +had what her sex call "a good cry." Then she sat moody, with wounded +pride, till the bell rang. She roused up, now, with a vindictive cast +in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what +SHE'D do. +At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant +selfsatisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate +her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden +falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind +the schoolhouse looking at a picturebook with Alfred Templeand so +absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book, +that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides. +Jealousy ran redhot through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for +throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He +called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He +wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked, +for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function. He +did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he +could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as +otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and +again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could +not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that +Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the +living. But she did see, nevertheless and she knew she was winning her +fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered. +Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had to +attend to things that must be done and time was fleeting. But in +vainthe girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, hang her, ain't I ever +going to get rid of her?" At last he must be attending to those +thingsand she said artlessly that she would be "around" when school +let out. And he hastened away, hating her for it. +"Any other boy" Tom thought, grating his teeth. "Any boy in the whole +town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is +aristocracy Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw +this town, mister, and I'll lick you again You just wait till I catch +you out I'll just take and" +And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy +pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. "Oh, you do, do you? You +holler 'nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you" And so the +imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction. +Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of +Amy's grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the +other distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but +as the minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph +began to cloud and she lost interest gravity and absentmindedness +followed, and then melancholy two or three times she pricked up her +ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope no Tom came. At last she +grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. When +poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept +exclaiming "Oh, here's a jolly one look at this" she lost patience +at last, and said, "Oh, don't bother me I don't care for them" and +burst into tears, and got up and walked away. +Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she +said +"Go away and leave me alone, can't you I hate you" +So the boy halted, wondering what he could have donefor she had said +she would look at pictures all through the nooningand she walked on, +crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was +humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truththe girl +had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom Sawyer. +He was far from hating Tom the less when this thought occurred to him. +He wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much +risk to himself. Tom's spellingbook fell under his eye. Here was his +opportunity. He gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and +poured ink upon the page. +Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act, +and moved on, without discovering herself. She started homeward, now, +intending to find Tom and tell him Tom would be thankful and their +troubles would be healed. Before she was half way home, however, she +had changed her mind. The thought of Tom's treatment of her when she +was talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with +shame. She resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged +spellingbook's account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain. +CHAPTER XIX +TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt +said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an +unpromising market +"Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive" +"Auntie, what have I done?" +"Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an +old softy, expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage +about that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that +you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I +don't know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It makes +me feel so bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make +such a fool of myself and never say a word." +This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had +seemed to Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked +mean and shabby now. He hung his head and could not think of anything +to say for a moment. Then he said +"Auntie, I wish I hadn't done itbut I didn't think." +"Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your own +selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from +Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could +think to fool me with a lie about a dream but you couldn't ever think +to pity us and save us from sorrow." +"Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn't mean to be mean. I +didn't, honest. And besides, I didn't come over here to laugh at you +that night." +"What did you come for, then?" +"It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got +drownded." +"Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this world if I could +believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never +didand I know it, Tom." +"Indeed and 'deed I did, auntieI wish I may never stir if I didn't." +"Oh, Tom, don't liedon't do it. It only makes things a hundred times +worse." +"It ain't a lie, auntie it's the truth. I wanted to keep you from +grievingthat was all that made me come." +"I'd give the whole world to believe thatit would cover up a power +of sins, Tom. I'd 'most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. But it +ain't reasonable because, why didn't you tell me, child?" +"Why, you see, when you got to talking about the funeral, I just got +all full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the church, and I +couldn't somehow bear to spoil it. So I just put the bark back in my +pocket and kept mum." +"What bark?" +"The bark I had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. I wish, now, +you'd waked up when I kissed youI do, honest." +The hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness +dawned in her eyes. +"DID you kiss me, Tom?" +"Why, yes, I did." +"Are you sure you did, Tom?" +"Why, yes, I did, auntiecertain sure." +"What did you kiss me for, Tom?" +"Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so sorry." +The words sounded like truth. The old lady could not hide a tremor in +her voice when she said +"Kiss me again, Tomand be off with you to school, now, and don't +bother me any more." +The moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin of a +jacket which Tom had gone pirating in. Then she stopped, with it in her +hand, and said to herself +"No, I don't dare. Poor boy, I reckon he's lied about itbut it's a +blessed, blessed lie, there's such a comfort come from it. I hope the +LordI KNOW the Lord will forgive him, because it was such +goodheartedness in him to tell it. But I don't want to find out it's a +lie. I won't look." +She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. Twice she put +out her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained. Once +more she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the +thought "It's a good lieit's a good lieI won't let it grieve me." +So she sought the jacket pocket. A moment later she was reading Tom's +piece of bark through flowing tears and saying "I could forgive the +boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins" +CHAPTER XX +THERE was something about Aunt Polly's manner, when she kissed Tom, +that swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy +again. He started to school and had the luck of coming upon Becky +Thatcher at the head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his +manner. Without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and said +"I acted mighty mean today, Becky, and I'm so sorry. I won't ever, +ever do that way again, as long as ever I liveplease make up, won't +you?" +The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face +"I'll thank you to keep yourself TO yourself, Mr. Thomas Sawyer. I'll +never speak to you again." +She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had not +even presence of mind enough to say "Who cares, Miss Smarty?" until the +right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a +fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the schoolyard wishing she were +a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently +encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She +hurled one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to +Becky, in her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to +"take in," she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured +spellingbook. If she had had any lingering notion of exposing Alfred +Temple, Tom's offensive fling had driven it entirely away. +Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself. +The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied +ambition. The darling of his desires was, to be a doctor, but poverty +had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village +schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and +absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. He kept +that book under lock and key. There was not an urchin in school but was +perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. Every boy +and girl had a theory about the nature of that book but no two +theories were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in +the case. Now, as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the +door, she noticed that the key was in the lock It was a precious +moment. She glanced around found herself alone, and the next instant +she had the book in her hands. The titlepageProfessor Somebody's +ANATOMYcarried no information to her mind so she began to turn the +leaves. She came at once upon a handsomely engraved and colored +frontispiecea human figure, stark naked. At that moment a shadow fell +on the page and Tom Sawyer stepped in at the door and caught a glimpse +of the picture. Becky snatched at the book to close it, and had the +hard luck to tear the pictured page half down the middle. She thrust +the volume into the desk, turned the key, and burst out crying with +shame and vexation. +"Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a +person and look at what they're looking at." +"How could I know you was looking at anything?" +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer you know you're +going to tell on me, and oh, what shall I do, what shall I do I'll be +whipped, and I never was whipped in school." +Then she stamped her little foot and said +"BE so mean if you want to I know something that's going to happen. +You just wait and you'll see Hateful, hateful, hateful"and she +flung out of the house with a new explosion of crying. +Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he said +to himself +"What a curious kind of a fool a girl is Never been licked in school +Shucks What's a licking That's just like a girlthey're so +thinskinned and chickenhearted. Well, of course I ain't going to tell +old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting +even on her, that ain't so mean but what of it? Old Dobbins will ask +who it was tore his book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do just the way +he always doesask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the +right girl he'll know it, without any telling. Girls' faces always tell +on them. They ain't got any backbone. She'll get licked. Well, it's a +kind of a tight place for Becky Thatcher, because there ain't any way +out of it." Tom conned the thing a moment longer, and then added "All +right, though she'd like to see me in just such a fixlet her sweat it +out" +Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. In a few moments +the master arrived and school "took in." Tom did not feel a strong +interest in his studies. Every time he stole a glance at the girls' +side of the room Becky's face troubled him. Considering all things, he +did not want to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. He +could get up no exultation that was really worthy the name. Presently +the spellingbook discovery was made, and Tom's mind was entirely full +of his own matters for a while after that. Becky roused up from her +lethargy of distress and showed good interest in the proceedings. She +did not expect that Tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he +spilt the ink on the book himself and she was right. The denial only +seemed to make the thing worse for Tom. Becky supposed she would be +glad of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she +found she was not certain. When the worst came to the worst, she had an +impulse to get up and tell on Alfred Temple, but she made an effort and +forced herself to keep stillbecause, said she to herself, "he'll tell +about me tearing the picture sure. I wouldn't say a word, not to save +his life" +Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all +brokenhearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly +upset the ink on the spellingbook himself, in some skylarking bouthe +had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck +to the denial from principle. +A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the air +was drowsy with the hum of study. By and by, Mr. Dobbins straightened +himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book, +but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. Most of the +pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched +his movements with intent eyes. Mr. Dobbins fingered his book absently +for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read +Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit +look as she did, with a gun levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot +his quarrel with her. Quicksomething must be done done in a flash, +too But the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his invention. +Goodhe had an inspiration He would run and snatch the book, spring +through the door and fly. But his resolution shook for one little +instant, and the chance was lostthe master opened the volume. If Tom +only had the wasted opportunity back again Too late. There was no help +for Becky now, he said. The next moment the master faced the school. +Every eye sank under his gaze. There was that in it which smote even +the innocent with fear. There was silence while one might count ten +the master was gathering his wrath. Then he spoke "Who tore this book?" +There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The stillness +continued the master searched face after face for signs of guilt. +"Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?" +A denial. Another pause. +"Joseph Harper, did you?" +Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the +slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of +boysconsidered a while, then turned to the girls +"Amy Lawrence?" +A shake of the head. +"Gracie Miller?" +The same sign. +"Susan Harper, did you do this?" +Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was trembling +from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of +the situation. +"Rebecca Thatcher" [Tom glanced at her faceit was white with terror] +"did you tearno, look me in the face" [her hands rose in appeal] +"did you tear this book?" +A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain. He sprang to his +feet and shouted"I done it" +The school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. Tom stood a +moment, to gather his dismembered faculties and when he stepped +forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the +adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed pay +enough for a hundred floggings. Inspired by the splendor of his own +act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flaying that even Mr. +Dobbins had ever administered and also received with indifference the +added cruelty of a command to remain two hours after school should be +dismissedfor he knew who would wait for him outside till his +captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as loss, either. +Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against Alfred Temple +for with shame and repentance Becky had told him all, not forgetting +her own treachery but even the longing for vengeance had to give way, +soon, to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last with Becky's +latest words lingering dreamily in his ear +"Tom, how COULD you be so noble" +CHAPTER XXI +VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew +severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a +good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule were seldom +idle nowat least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and +young ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins' +lashings were very vigorous ones, too for although he carried, under +his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle +age, and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great +day approached, all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface he +seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least +shortcomings. The consequence was, that the smaller boys spent their +days in terror and suffering and their nights in plotting revenge. They +threw away no opportunity to do the master a mischief. But he kept +ahead all the time. The retribution that followed every vengeful +success was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always retired from +the field badly worsted. At last they conspired together and hit upon a +plan that promised a dazzling victory. They swore in the signpainter's +boy, told him the scheme, and asked his help. He had his own reasons +for being delighted, for the master boarded in his father's family and +had given the boy ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go +on a visit to the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to +interfere with the plan the master always prepared himself for great +occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the signpainter's boy +said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on +Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his +chair then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried +away to school. +In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in +the evening the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with +wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in +his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him. +He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches on each side and +six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town +and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of +citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the +scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening rows of +small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort +rows of gawky big boys snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in +lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their +grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and +the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with +nonparticipating scholars. +The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly +recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the +stage," etc.accompanying himself with the painfully exact and +spasmodic gestures which a machine might have usedsupposing the +machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though +cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his +manufactured bow and retired. +A little shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc., +performed a compassioninspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and +sat down flushed and happy. +Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into +the unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death" +speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the +middle of it. A ghastly stagefright seized him, his legs quaked under +him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the +house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than +its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom +struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak +attempt at applause, but it died early. +"The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed also "The Assyrian Came +Down," and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises, +and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The +prime feature of the evening was in order, noworiginal "compositions" +by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of +the platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript tied with +dainty ribbon, and proceeded to read, with labored attention to +"expression" and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been +illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers before them, their +grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line +clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one "Memories of Other +Days" "Religion in History" "Dream Land" "The Advantages of +Culture" "Forms of Political Government Compared and Contrasted" +"Melancholy" "Filial Love" "Heart Longings," etc., etc. +A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted +melancholy another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine language" +another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words +and phrases until they were worn entirely out and a peculiarity that +conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable +sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one +of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brainracking effort +was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and +religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring +insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the +banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient +today it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps. +There is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel +obliged to close their compositions with a sermon and you will find +that the sermon of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in +the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But +enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable. +Let us return to the "Examination." The first composition that was +read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" Perhaps the reader can +endure an extract from it +"In the common walks of life, with what delightful +emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some +anticipated scene of festivity Imagination is busy +sketching rosetinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the +voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the +festive throng, 'the observed of all observers.' Her +graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling +through the mazes of the joyous dance her eye is +brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly. +"In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, +and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into +the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright +dreams. How fairylike does everything appear to +her enchanted vision Each new scene is more charming +than the last. But after a while she finds that +beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the +flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates +harshly upon her ear the ballroom has lost its +charms and with wasted health and imbittered heart, +she turns away with the conviction that earthly +pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul" +And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to +time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of "How +sweet" "How eloquent" "So true" etc., and after the thing had closed +with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic. +Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting" +paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two +stanzas of it will do +"A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA +"Alabama, goodbye I love thee well +But yet for a while do I leave thee now +Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell, +And burning recollections throng my brow +For I have wandered through thy flowery woods +Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream +Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods, +And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam. +"Yet shame I not to bear an o'erfull heart, +Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes +'Tis from no stranger land I now must part, +'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs. +Welcome and home were mine within this State, +Whose vales I leavewhose spires fade fast from me +And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete, +When, dear Alabama they turn cold on thee" +There were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem was +very satisfactory, nevertheless. +Next appeared a darkcomplexioned, blackeyed, blackhaired young +lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and +began to read in a measured, solemn tone +"A VISION +"Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the +throne on high not a single star quivered but +the deep intonations of the heavy thunder +constantly vibrated upon the ear whilst the +terrific lightning revelled in angry mood +through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming +to scorn the power exerted over its terror by +the illustrious Franklin Even the boisterous +winds unanimously came forth from their mystic +homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by +their aid the wildness of the scene. +"At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human +sympathy my very spirit sighed but instead thereof, +"'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter +and guideMy joy in grief, my second bliss +in joy,' came to my side. She moved like one of +those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks +of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a +queen of beauty unadorned save by her own +transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it +failed to make even a sound, and but for the +magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as +other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided +away unperceivedunsought. A strange sadness +rested upon her features, like icy tears upon +the robe of December, as she pointed to the +contending elements without, and bade me contemplate +the two beings presented." +This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with +a sermon so destructive of all hope to nonPresbyterians that it took +the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest +effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the +prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it +was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that +Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it. +It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in +which the word "beauteous" was overfondled, and human experience +referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average. +Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair +aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of +America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he +made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered +titter rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set +himself to right it. He sponged out lines and remade them but he only +distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. +He threw his entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not +to be put down by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon +him he imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued it +even manifestly increased. And well it might. There was a garret above, +pierced with a scuttle over his head and down through this scuttle +came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a string she had a rag +tied about her head and jaws to keep her from mewing as she slowly +descended she curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung +downward and clawed at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher +and higherthe cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's +headdown, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her +desperate claws, clung to it, and was snatched up into the garret in an +instant with her trophy still in her possession And how the light did +blaze abroad from the master's bald patefor the signpainter's boy +had GILDED it +That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come. +NOTEThe pretended "compositions" quoted in +this chapter are taken without alteration from a +volume entitled "Prose and Poetry, by a Western +Lady"but they are exactly and precisely after +the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much +happier than any mere imitations could be. +CHAPTER XXII +TOM joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by +the showy character of their "regalia." He promised to abstain from +smoking, chewing, and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he +found out a new thingnamely, that to promise not to do a thing is the +surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very +thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and +swear the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a +chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing +from the order. Fourth of July was coming but he soon gave that up +gave it up before he had worn his shackles over fortyeight hoursand +fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was +apparently on his deathbed and would have a big public funeral, since +he was so high an official. During three days Tom was deeply concerned +about the Judge's condition and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his +hopes ran highso high that he would venture to get out his regalia +and practise before the lookingglass. But the Judge had a most +discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the +mendand then convalescent. Tom was disgusted and felt a sense of +injury, too. He handed in his resignation at onceand that night the +Judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom resolved that he would never +trust a man like that again. +The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style calculated +to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy again, however +there was something in that. He could drink and swear, nowbut found +to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he could, +took the desire away, and the charm of it. +Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning +to hang a little heavily on his hands. +He attempted a diarybut nothing happened during three days, and so +he abandoned it. +The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a +sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were +happy for two days. +Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained +hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man in +the world as Tom supposed, Mr. Benton, an actual United States +Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointmentfor he was not +twentyfive feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it. +A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in +tents made of rag carpetingadmission, three pins for boys, two for +girlsand then circusing was abandoned. +A phrenologist and a mesmerizer cameand went again and left the +village duller and drearier than ever. +There were some boysandgirls' parties, but they were so few and so +delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder. +Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her +parents during vacationso there was no bright side to life anywhere. +The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very +cancer for permanency and pain. +Then came the measles. +During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its +happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got +upon his feet at last and moved feebly downtown, a melancholy change +had come over everything and every creature. There had been a +"revival," and everybody had "got religion," not only the adults, but +even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the +sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him +everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly +away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him +visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who +called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a +warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression +and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of +Huckleberry Finn and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his +heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all +the town was lost, forever and forever. +And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, +awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his +head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his +doom for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was +about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above +to the extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might +have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a +battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the +getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf +from under an insect like himself. +By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its +object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His +second was to waitfor there might not be any more storms. +The next day the doctors were back Tom had relapsed. The three weeks +he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad +at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how +lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted +listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a +juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her +victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a +stolen melon. Poor lads theylike Tomhad suffered a relapse. +CHAPTER XXIII +AT last the sleepy atmosphere was stirredand vigorously the murder +trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of village +talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to +the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and +fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his +hearing as "feelers" he did not see how he could be suspected of +knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be +comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold shiver +all the time. He took Huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him. +It would be some relief to unseal his tongue for a little while to +divide his burden of distress with another sufferer. Moreover, he +wanted to assure himself that Huck had remained discreet. +"Huck, have you ever told anybody aboutthat?" +"'Bout what?" +"You know what." +"Oh'course I haven't." +"Never a word?" +"Never a solitary word, so help me. What makes you ask?" +"Well, I was afeard." +"Why, Tom Sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found out. +YOU know that." +Tom felt more comfortable. After a pause +"Huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?" +"Get me to tell? Why, if I wanted that halfbreed devil to drownd me +they could get me to tell. They ain't no different way." +"Well, that's all right, then. I reckon we're safe as long as we keep +mum. But let's swear again, anyway. It's more surer." +"I'm agreed." +So they swore again with dread solemnities. +"What is the talk around, Huck? I've heard a power of it." +"Talk? Well, it's just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the +time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's I want to hide som'ers." +"That's just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he's a goner. +Don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?" +"Most alwaysmost always. He ain't no account but then he hain't +ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money +to get drunk onand loafs around considerable but lord, we all do +thatleastways most of uspreachers and such like. But he's kind of +goodhe give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two +and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck." +"Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my +line. I wish we could get him out of there." +"My we couldn't get him out, Tom. And besides, 'twouldn't do any +good they'd ketch him again." +"Yesso they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the +dickens when he never donethat." +"I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest looking +villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before." +"Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that if he +was to get free they'd lynch him." +"And they'd do it, too." +The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the +twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood +of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that +something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But +nothing happened there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in +this luckless captive. +The boys did as they had often done beforewent to the cell grating +and gave Potter some tobacco and matches. He was on the ground floor +and there were no guards. +His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences +beforeit cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and +treacherous to the last degree when Potter said +"You've been mighty good to me, boysbetter'n anybody else in this +town. And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says I, +'I used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the +good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and now they've +all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble but Tom don't, and Huck +don'tTHEY don't forget him, says I, 'and I don't forget them.' Well, +boys, I done an awful thingdrunk and crazy at the timethat's the +only way I account for itand now I got to swing for it, and it's +right. Right, and BEST, too, I reckonhope so, anyway. Well, we won't +talk about that. I don't want to make YOU feel bad you've befriended +me. But what I want to say, is, don't YOU ever get drunkthen you won't +ever get here. Stand a litter furder westsothat's it it's a prime +comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck of +trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. Good friendly +facesgood friendly faces. Git up on one another's backs and let me +touch 'em. That's it. Shake handsyourn'll come through the bars, but +mine's too big. Little hands, and weakbut they've helped Muff Potter +a power, and they'd help him more if they could." +Tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of +horrors. The next day and the day after, he hung about the courtroom, +drawn by an almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing himself +to stay out. Huck was having the same experience. They studiously +avoided each other. Each wandered away, from time to time, but the same +dismal fascination always brought them back presently. Tom kept his +ears open when idlers sauntered out of the courtroom, but invariably +heard distressing newsthe toils were closing more and more +relentlessly around poor Potter. At the end of the second day the +village talk was to the effect that Injun Joe's evidence stood firm and +unshaken, and that there was not the slightest question as to what the +jury's verdict would be. +Tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. He +was in a tremendous state of excitement. It was hours before he got to +sleep. All the village flocked to the courthouse the next morning, for +this was to be the great day. Both sexes were about equally represented +in the packed audience. After a long wait the jury filed in and took +their places shortly afterward, Potter, pale and haggard, timid and +hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated where all +the curious eyes could stare at him no less conspicuous was Injun Joe, +stolid as ever. There was another pause, and then the judge arrived and +the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. The usual whisperings +among the lawyers and gathering together of papers followed. These +details and accompanying delays worked up an atmosphere of preparation +that was as impressive as it was fascinating. +Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter +washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder +was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After some +further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said +"Take the witness." +The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when +his own counsel said +"I have no questions to ask him." +The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse. +Counsel for the prosecution said +"Take the witness." +"I have no questions to ask him," Potter's lawyer replied. +A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's +possession. +"Take the witness." +Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the audience +began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw away his +client's life without an effort? +Several witnesses deposed concerning Potter's guilty behavior when +brought to the scene of the murder. They were allowed to leave the +stand without being crossquestioned. +Every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the +graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well was +brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were crossexamined +by Potter's lawyer. The perplexity and dissatisfaction of the house +expressed itself in murmurs and provoked a reproof from the bench. +Counsel for the prosecution now said +"By the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we +have fastened this awful crime, beyond all possibility of question, +upon the unhappy prisoner at the bar. We rest our case here." +A groan escaped from poor Potter, and he put his face in his hands and +rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned in +the courtroom. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion +testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defence rose and said +"Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we +foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed +while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium +produced by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that +plea." [Then to the clerk] "Call Thomas Sawyer" +A puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even +excepting Potter's. Every eye fastened itself with wondering interest +upon Tom as he rose and took his place upon the stand. The boy looked +wild enough, for he was badly scared. The oath was administered. +"Thomas Sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of June, about the +hour of midnight?" +Tom glanced at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue failed him. The +audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. After a +few moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and +managed to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house +hear +"In the graveyard" +"A little bit louder, please. Don't be afraid. You were" +"In the graveyard." +A contemptuous smile flitted across Injun Joe's face. +"Were you anywhere near Horse Williams' grave?" +"Yes, sir." +"Speak upjust a trifle louder. How near were you?" +"Near as I am to you." +"Were you hidden, or not?" +"I was hid." +"Where?" +"Behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave." +Injun Joe gave a barely perceptible start. +"Any one with you?" +"Yes, sir. I went there with" +"Waitwait a moment. Never mind mentioning your companion's name. We +will produce him at the proper time. Did you carry anything there with +you." +Tom hesitated and looked confused. +"Speak out, my boydon't be diffident. The truth is always +respectable. What did you take there?" +"Only aadead cat." +There was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked. +"We will produce the skeleton of that cat. Now, my boy, tell us +everything that occurredtell it in your own waydon't skip anything, +and don't be afraid." +Tom beganhesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his subject his +words flowed more and more easily in a little while every sound ceased +but his own voice every eye fixed itself upon him with parted lips +and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of +time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. The strain upon +pent emotion reached its climax when the boy said +"and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell, +Injun Joe jumped with the knife and" +Crash Quick as lightning the halfbreed sprang for a window, tore his +way through all opposers, and was gone +CHAPTER XXIV +TOM was a glittering hero once morethe pet of the old, the envy of +the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village +paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be +President, yet, if he escaped hanging. +As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom +and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort +of conduct is to the world's credit therefore it is not well to find +fault with it. +Tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights +were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested all his dreams, and always +with doom in his eye. Hardly any temptation could persuade the boy to +stir abroad after nightfall. Poor Huck was in the same state of +wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the whole story to the lawyer +the night before the great day of the trial, and Huck was sore afraid +that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding +Injun Joe's flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court. +The poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of +that? Since Tom's harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the +lawyer's house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had been +sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, Huck's +confidence in the human race was wellnigh obliterated. +Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken but nightly +he wished he had sealed up his tongue. +Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured the +other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never could draw +a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse. +Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun +Joe was found. One of those omniscient and aweinspiring marvels, a +detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head, +looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of +that craft usually achieve. That is to say, he "found a clew." But you +can't hang a "clew" for murder, and so after that detective had got +through and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before. +The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened +weight of apprehension. +CHAPTER XXV +THERE comes a time in every rightlyconstructed boy's life when he has +a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This +desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe +Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers he had gone +fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the RedHanded. Huck +would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to +him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a +hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no +capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time +which is not money. "Where'll we dig?" said Huck. +"Oh, most anywhere." +"Why, is it hid all around?" +"No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck +sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a +limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight but +mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses." +"Who hides it?" +"Why, robbers, of coursewho'd you reckon? Sundayschool +sup'rintendents?" +"I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it I'd spend it and have +a good time." +"So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and +leave it there." +"Don't they come after it any more?" +"No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or +else they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty and by +and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the +marksa paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's +mostly signs and hy'roglyphics." +"HyroQwhich?" +"Hy'roglyphicspictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean +anything." +"Have you got one of them papers, Tom?" +"No." +"Well then, how you going to find the marks?" +"I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house or +on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. +Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again +some time and there's the old ha'nted house up the StillHouse branch, +and there's lots of deadlimb treesdead loads of 'em." +"Is it under all of them?" +"How you talk No" +"Then how you going to know which one to go for?" +"Go for all of 'em" +"Why, Tom, it'll take all summer." +"Well, what of that? Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred +dollars in it, all rusty and gray, or rotten chest full of di'monds. +How's that?" +Huck's eyes glowed. +"That's bully. Plenty bully enough for me. Just you gimme the hundred +dollars and I don't want no di'monds." +"All right. But I bet you I ain't going to throw off on di'monds. Some +of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiecethere ain't any, hardly, but's +worth six bits or a dollar." +"No Is that so?" +"Cert'nlyanybody'll tell you so. Hain't you ever seen one, Huck?" +"Not as I remember." +"Oh, kings have slathers of them." +"Well, I don' know no kings, Tom." +"I reckon you don't. But if you was to go to Europe you'd see a raft +of 'em hopping around." +"Do they hop?" +"Hop?your granny No" +"Well, what did you say they did, for?" +"Shucks, I only meant you'd SEE 'emnot hopping, of coursewhat do +they want to hop for?but I mean you'd just see 'emscattered around, +you know, in a kind of a general way. Like that old humpbacked Richard." +"Richard? What's his other name?" +"He didn't have any other name. Kings don't have any but a given name." +"No?" +"But they don't." +"Well, if they like it, Tom, all right but I don't want to be a king +and have only just a given name, like a nigger. But saywhere you +going to dig first?" +"Well, I don't know. S'pose we tackle that old deadlimb tree on the +hill t'other side of StillHouse branch?" +"I'm agreed." +So they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their +threemile tramp. They arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves +down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke. +"I like this," said Tom. +"So do I." +"Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your +share?" +"Well, I'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to +every circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a gay time." +"Well, ain't you going to save any of it?" +"Save it? What for?" +"Why, so as to have something to live on, by and by." +"Oh, that ain't any use. Pap would come back to thishyer town some +day and get his claws on it if I didn't hurry up, and I tell you he'd +clean it out pretty quick. What you going to do with yourn, Tom?" +"I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure'nough sword, and a red +necktie and a bull pup, and get married." +"Married" +"That's it." +"Tom, youwhy, you ain't in your right mind." +"Waityou'll see." +"Well, that's the foolishest thing you could do. Look at pap and my +mother. Fight Why, they used to fight all the time. I remember, mighty +well." +"That ain't anything. The girl I'm going to marry won't fight." +"Tom, I reckon they're all alike. They'll all comb a body. Now you +better think 'bout this awhile. I tell you you better. What's the name +of the gal?" +"It ain't a gal at allit's a girl." +"It's all the same, I reckon some says gal, some says girlboth's +right, like enough. Anyway, what's her name, Tom?" +"I'll tell you some timenot now." +"All rightthat'll do. Only if you get married I'll be more lonesomer +than ever." +"No you won't. You'll come and live with me. Now stir out of this and +we'll go to digging." +They worked and sweated for half an hour. No result. They toiled +another halfhour. Still no result. Huck said +"Do they always bury it as deep as this?" +"Sometimesnot always. Not generally. I reckon we haven't got the +right place." +So they chose a new spot and began again. The labor dragged a little, +but still they made progress. They pegged away in silence for some +time. Finally Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from +his brow with his sleeve, and said +"Where you going to dig next, after we get this one?" +"I reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on +Cardiff Hill back of the widow's." +"I reckon that'll be a good one. But won't the widow take it away from +us, Tom? It's on her land." +"SHE take it away Maybe she'd like to try it once. Whoever finds one +of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. It don't make any difference +whose land it's on." +That was satisfactory. The work went on. By and by Huck said +"Blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. What do you think?" +"It is mighty curious, Huck. I don't understand it. Sometimes witches +interfere. I reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now." +"Shucks Witches ain't got no power in the daytime." +"Well, that's so. I didn't think of that. Oh, I know what the matter +is What a blamed lot of fools we are You got to find out where the +shadow of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig" +"Then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing. Now +hang it all, we got to come back in the night. It's an awful long way. +Can you get out?" +"I bet I will. We've got to do it tonight, too, because if somebody +sees these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go +for it." +"Well, I'll come around and maow tonight." +"All right. Let's hide the tools in the bushes." +The boys were there that night, about the appointed time. They sat in +the shadow waiting. It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by +old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked +in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the +distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. The boys were +subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. By and by they judged +that twelve had come they marked where the shadow fell, and began to +dig. Their hopes commenced to rise. Their interest grew stronger, and +their industry kept pace with it. The hole deepened and still deepened, +but every time their hearts jumped to hear the pick strike upon +something, they only suffered a new disappointment. It was only a stone +or a chunk. At last Tom said +"It ain't any use, Huck, we're wrong again." +"Well, but we CAN'T be wrong. We spotted the shadder to a dot." +"I know it, but then there's another thing." +"What's that?". +"Why, we only guessed at the time. Like enough it was too late or too +early." +Huck dropped his shovel. +"That's it," said he. "That's the very trouble. We got to give this +one up. We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of +thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts +afluttering around so. I feel as if something's behind me all the time +and I'm afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's others in front +awaiting for a chance. I been creeping all over, ever since I got here." +"Well, I've been pretty much so, too, Huck. They most always put in a +dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out for it." +"Lordy" +"Yes, they do. I've always heard that." +"Tom, I don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. A +body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure." +"I don't like to stir 'em up, either. S'pose this one here was to +stick his skull out and say something" +"Don't Tom It's awful." +"Well, it just is. Huck, I don't feel comfortable a bit." +"Say, Tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else." +"All right, I reckon we better." +"What'll it be?" +Tom considered awhile and then said +"The ha'nted house. That's it" +"Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why, they're a dern sight +worse'n dead people. Dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't come +sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep over your +shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a ghost does. I +couldn't stand such a thing as that, Tomnobody could." +"Yes, but, Huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. They won't +hender us from digging there in the daytime." +"Well, that's so. But you know mighty well people don't go about that +ha'nted house in the day nor the night." +"Well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's been +murdered, anywaybut nothing's ever been seen around that house except +in the nightjust some blue lights slipping by the windowsno regular +ghosts." +"Well, where you see one of them blue lights flickering around, Tom, +you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. It stands to +reason. Becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em." +"Yes, that's so. But anyway they don't come around in the daytime, so +what's the use of our being afeard?" +"Well, all right. We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say sobut I +reckon it's taking chances." +They had started down the hill by this time. There in the middle of +the moonlit valley below them stood the "ha'nted" house, utterly +isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very +doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the windowsashes vacant, a +corner of the roof caved in. The boys gazed awhile, half expecting to +see a blue light flit past a window then talking in a low tone, as +befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck far off to the +right, to give the haunted house a wide berth, and took their way +homeward through the woods that adorned the rearward side of Cardiff +Hill. +CHAPTER XXVI +ABOUT noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree they had +come for their tools. Tom was impatient to go to the haunted house +Huck was measurably so, alsobut suddenly said +"Lookyhere, Tom, do you know what day it is?" +Tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted +his eyes with a startled look in them +"My I never once thought of it, Huck" +"Well, I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was +Friday." +"Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might 'a' got into an +awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday." +"MIGHT Better say we WOULD There's some lucky days, maybe, but +Friday ain't." +"Any fool knows that. I don't reckon YOU was the first that found it +out, Huck." +"Well, I never said I was, did I? And Friday ain't all, neither. I had +a rotten bad dream last nightdreampt about rats." +"No Sure sign of trouble. Did they fight?" +"No." +"Well, that's good, Huck. When they don't fight it's only a sign that +there's trouble around, you know. All we got to do is to look mighty +sharp and keep out of it. We'll drop this thing for today, and play. +Do you know Robin Hood, Huck?" +"No. Who's Robin Hood?" +"Why, he was one of the greatest men that was ever in Englandand the +best. He was a robber." +"Cracky, I wisht I was. Who did he rob?" +"Only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like. +But he never bothered the poor. He loved 'em. He always divided up with +'em perfectly square." +"Well, he must 'a' been a brick." +"I bet you he was, Huck. Oh, he was the noblest man that ever was. +They ain't any such men now, I can tell you. He could lick any man in +England, with one hand tied behind him and he could take his yew bow +and plug a tencent piece every time, a mile and a half." +"What's a YEW bow?" +"I don't know. It's some kind of a bow, of course. And if he hit that +dime only on the edge he would set down and cryand curse. But we'll +play Robin Hoodit's nobby fun. I'll learn you." +"I'm agreed." +So they played Robin Hood all the afternoon, now and then casting a +yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark about the +morrow's prospects and possibilities there. As the sun began to sink +into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long shadows of +the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of Cardiff +Hill. +On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again. +They had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little in +their last hole, not with great hope, but merely because Tom said there +were so many cases where people had given up a treasure after getting +down within six inches of it, and then somebody else had come along and +turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. The thing failed this +time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools and went away feeling +that they had not trifled with fortune, but had fulfilled all the +requirements that belong to the business of treasurehunting. +When they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and +grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun, +and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the +place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. Then they +crept to the door and took a trembling peep. They saw a weedgrown, +floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a +ruinous staircase and here, there, and everywhere hung ragged and +abandoned cobwebs. They presently entered, softly, with quickened +pulses, talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound, +and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat. +In a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the +place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own +boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look upstairs. +This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring +each other, and of course there could be but one resultthey threw +their tools into a corner and made the ascent. Up there were the same +signs of decay. In one corner they found a closet that promised +mystery, but the promise was a fraudthere was nothing in it. Their +courage was up now and well in hand. They were about to go down and +begin work when +"Sh" said Tom. +"What is it?" whispered Huck, blanching with fright. +"Sh... There... Hear it?" +"Yes... Oh, my Let's run" +"Keep still Don't you budge They're coming right toward the door." +The boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to +knotholes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear. +"They've stopped.... Nocoming.... Here they are. Don't whisper +another word, Huck. My goodness, I wish I was out of this" +Two men entered. Each boy said to himself "There's the old deaf and +dumb Spaniard that's been about town once or twice latelynever saw +t'other man before." +"T'other" was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant +in his face. The Spaniard was wrapped in a serape he had bushy white +whiskers long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore +green goggles. When they came in, "t'other" was talking in a low voice +they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their backs to the +wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. His manner became less +guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded +"No," said he, "I've thought it all over, and I don't like it. It's +dangerous." +"Dangerous" grunted the "deaf and dumb" Spaniardto the vast +surprise of the boys. "Milksop" +This voice made the boys gasp and quake. It was Injun Joe's There was +silence for some time. Then Joe said +"What's any more dangerous than that job up yonderbut nothing's come +of it." +"That's different. Away up the river so, and not another house about. +'Twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we didn't succeed." +"Well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the daytimeanybody +would suspicion us that saw us." +"I know that. But there warn't any other place as handy after that +fool of a job. I want to quit this shanty. I wanted to yesterday, only +it warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys +playing over there on the hill right in full view." +"Those infernal boys" quaked again under the inspiration of this +remark, and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was +Friday and concluded to wait a day. They wished in their hearts they +had waited a year. +The two men got out some food and made a luncheon. After a long and +thoughtful silence, Injun Joe said +"Look here, ladyou go back up the river where you belong. Wait there +till you hear from me. I'll take the chances on dropping into this town +just once more, for a look. We'll do that 'dangerous' job after I've +spied around a little and think things look well for it. Then for +Texas We'll leg it together" +This was satisfactory. Both men presently fell to yawning, and Injun +Joe said +"I'm dead for sleep It's your turn to watch." +He curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. His comrade +stirred him once or twice and he became quiet. Presently the watcher +began to nod his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to snore +now. +The boys drew a long, grateful breath. Tom whispered +"Now's our chancecome" +Huck said +"I can'tI'd die if they was to wake." +Tom urgedHuck held back. At last Tom rose slowly and softly, and +started alone. But the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak +from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. He +never made a second attempt. The boys lay there counting the dragging +moments till it seemed to them that time must be done and eternity +growing gray and then they were grateful to note that at last the sun +was setting. +Now one snore ceased. Injun Joe sat up, stared aroundsmiled grimly +upon his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his kneesstirred him +up with his foot and said +"Here YOU'RE a watchman, ain't you All right, thoughnothing's +happened." +"My have I been asleep?" +"Oh, partly, partly. Nearly time for us to be moving, pard. What'll we +do with what little swag we've got left?" +"I don't knowleave it here as we've always done, I reckon. No use to +take it away till we start south. Six hundred and fifty in silver's +something to carry." +"Wellall rightit won't matter to come here once more." +"Nobut I'd say come in the night as we used to doit's better." +"Yes but look here it may be a good while before I get the right +chance at that job accidents might happen 'tain't in such a very good +place we'll just regularly bury itand bury it deep." +"Good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down, +raised one of the rearward hearthstones and took out a bag that +jingled pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for +himself and as much for Injun Joe, and passed the bag to the latter, +who was on his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowieknife. +The boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant. +With gloating eyes they watched every movement. Luckthe splendor of +it was beyond all imagination Six hundred dollars was money enough to +make half a dozen boys rich Here was treasurehunting under the +happiest auspicesthere would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to +where to dig. They nudged each other every momenteloquent nudges and +easily understood, for they simply meant"Oh, but ain't you glad NOW +we're here" +Joe's knife struck upon something. +"Hello" said he. +"What is it?" said his comrade. +"Halfrotten plankno, it's a box, I believe. Herebear a hand and +we'll see what it's here for. Never mind, I've broke a hole." +He reached his hand in and drew it out +"Man, it's money" +The two men examined the handful of coins. They were gold. The boys +above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted. +Joe's comrade said +"We'll make quick work of this. There's an old rusty pick over amongst +the weeds in the corner the other side of the fireplaceI saw it a +minute ago." +He ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. Injun Joe took the pick, +looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to +himself, and then began to use it. The box was soon unearthed. It was +not very large it was iron bound and had been very strong before the +slow years had injured it. The men contemplated the treasure awhile in +blissful silence. +"Pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe. +"'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be around here one +summer," the stranger observed. +"I know it," said Injun Joe "and this looks like it, I should say." +"Now you won't need to do that job." +The halfbreed frowned. Said he +"You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing. 'Tain't +robbery altogetherit's REVENGE" and a wicked light flamed in his +eyes. "I'll need your help in it. When it's finishedthen Texas. Go +home to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me." +"Wellif you say so what'll we do with thisbury it again?" +"Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] NO by the great Sachem, no +[Profound distress overhead.] I'd nearly forgot. That pick had fresh +earth on it [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What +business has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth +on them? Who brought them hereand where are they gone? Have you heard +anybody?seen anybody? What bury it again and leave them to come and +see the ground disturbed? Not exactlynot exactly. We'll take it to my +den." +"Why, of course Might have thought of that before. You mean Number +One?" +"NoNumber Twounder the cross. The other place is badtoo common." +"All right. It's nearly dark enough to start." +Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously +peeping out. Presently he said +"Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be +upstairs?" +The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife, +halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The +boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came +creaking up the stairsthe intolerable distress of the situation woke +the stricken resolution of the ladsthey were about to spring for the +closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and Injun Joe landed +on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered +himself up cursing, and his comrade said +"Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up +there, let them STAY therewho cares? If they want to jump down, now, +and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes +and then let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my +opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and +took us for ghosts or devils or something. I'll bet they're running +yet." +Joe grumbled awhile then he agreed with his friend that what daylight +was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving. +Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening +twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box. +Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them +through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not they. +They were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take +the townward track over the hill. They did not talk much. They were too +much absorbed in hating themselveshating the ill luck that made them +take the spade and the pick there. But for that, Injun Joe never would +have suspected. He would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait +there till his "revenge" was satisfied, and then he would have had the +misfortune to find that money turn up missing. Bitter, bitter luck that +the tools were ever brought there +They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should come +to town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him +to "Number Two," wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought +occurred to Tom. +"Revenge? What if he means US, Huck" +"Oh, don't" said Huck, nearly fainting. +They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to +believe that he might possibly mean somebody elseat least that he +might at least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified. +Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger Company +would be a palpable improvement, he thought. +CHAPTER XXVII +THE adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom's dreams that night. +Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times it +wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and +wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay +in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he +noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far awaysomewhat as if +they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it +occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream There +was one very strong argument in favor of this ideanamely, that the +quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen +as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys +of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references +to "hundreds" and "thousands" were mere fanciful forms of speech, and +that no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed +for a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found +in actual money in any one's possession. If his notions of hidden +treasure had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a +handful of real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable +dollars. +But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer +under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found +himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a +dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch +a hurried breakfast and go and find Huck. Huck was sitting on the +gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and +looking very melancholy. Tom concluded to let Huck lead up to the +subject. If he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to +have been only a dream. +"Hello, Huck" +"Hello, yourself." +Silence, for a minute. +"Tom, if we'd 'a' left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a' got +the money. Oh, ain't it awful" +"'Tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream Somehow I most wish it was. +Dog'd if I don't, Huck." +"What ain't a dream?" +"Oh, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was." +"Dream If them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much dream +it was I've had dreams enough all nightwith that patcheyed Spanish +devil going for me all through 'emrot him" +"No, not rot him. FIND him Track the money" +"Tom, we'll never find him. A feller don't have only one chance for +such a pileand that one's lost. I'd feel mighty shaky if I was to see +him, anyway." +"Well, so'd I but I'd like to see him, anywayand track him outto +his Number Two." +"Number Twoyes, that's it. I been thinking 'bout that. But I can't +make nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?" +"I dono. It's too deep. Say, Huckmaybe it's the number of a house" +"Goody... No, Tom, that ain't it. If it is, it ain't in this +onehorse town. They ain't no numbers here." +"Well, that's so. Lemme think a minute. Hereit's the number of a +roomin a tavern, you know" +"Oh, that's the trick They ain't only two taverns. We can find out +quick." +"You stay here, Huck, till I come." +Tom was off at once. He did not care to have Huck's company in public +places. He was gone half an hour. He found that in the best tavern, No. + had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied. +In the less ostentatious house, No. was a mystery. The +tavernkeeper's young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he +never saw anybody go into it or come out of it except at night he did +not know any particular reason for this state of things had had some +little curiosity, but it was rather feeble had made the most of the +mystery by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was +"ha'nted" had noticed that there was a light in there the night before. +"That's what I've found out, Huck. I reckon that's the very No. +we're after." +"I reckon it is, Tom. Now what you going to do?" +"Lemme think." +Tom thought a long time. Then he said +"I'll tell you. The back door of that No. is the door that comes out +into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle trap +of a brick store. Now you get hold of all the doorkeys you can find, +and I'll nip all of auntie's, and the first dark night we'll go there +and try 'em. And mind you, keep a lookout for Injun Joe, because he +said he was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a +chance to get his revenge. If you see him, you just follow him and if +he don't go to that No. , that ain't the place." +"Lordy, I don't want to foller him by myself" +"Why, it'll be night, sure. He mightn't ever see youand if he did, +maybe he'd never think anything." +"Well, if it's pretty dark I reckon I'll track him. I donoI dono. +I'll try." +"You bet I'll follow him, if it's dark, Huck. Why, he might 'a' found +out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money." +"It's so, Tom, it's so. I'll foller him I will, by jingoes" +"Now you're TALKING Don't you ever weaken, Huck, and I won't." +CHAPTER XXVIII +THAT night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung +about the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the +alley at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody entered the +alley or left it nobody resembling the Spaniard entered or left the +tavern door. The night promised to be a fair one so Tom went home with +the understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on, +Huck was to come and "maow," whereupon he would slip out and try the +keys. But the night remained clear, and Huck closed his watch and +retired to bed in an empty sugar hogshead about twelve. +Tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. Also Wednesday. But Thursday +night promised better. Tom slipped out in good season with his aunt's +old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid the +lantern in Huck's sugar hogshead and the watch began. An hour before +midnight the tavern closed up and its lights the only ones +thereabouts were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had +entered or left the alley. Everything was auspicious. The blackness of +darkness reigned, the perfect stillness was interrupted only by +occasional mutterings of distant thunder. +Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the +towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern. +Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then there was a +season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck's spirits like a +mountain. He began to wish he could see a flash from the lanternit +would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that Tom was alive +yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely he must have +fainted maybe he was dead maybe his heart had burst under terror and +excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself drawing closer and +closer to the alley fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and +momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away +his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to +inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the +way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Tom came +tearing by him "Run" said he "run, for your life" +He needn't have repeated it once was enough Huck was making thirty +or forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys +never stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughterhouse +at the lower end of the village. Just as they got within its shelter +the storm burst and the rain poured down. As soon as Tom got his breath +he said +"Huck, it was awful I tried two of the keys, just as soft as I could +but they seemed to make such a power of racket that I couldn't hardly +get my breath I was so scared. They wouldn't turn in the lock, either. +Well, without noticing what I was doing, I took hold of the knob, and +open comes the door It warn't locked I hopped in, and shook off the +towel, and, GREAT CAESAR'S GHOST" +"Whatwhat'd you see, Tom?" +"Huck, I most stepped onto Injun Joe's hand" +"No" +"Yes He was lying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old +patch on his eye and his arms spread out." +"Lordy, what did you do? Did he wake up?" +"No, never budged. Drunk, I reckon. I just grabbed that towel and +started" +"I'd never 'a' thought of the towel, I bet" +"Well, I would. My aunt would make me mighty sick if I lost it." +"Say, Tom, did you see that box?" +"Huck, I didn't wait to look around. I didn't see the box, I didn't +see the cross. I didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the +floor by Injun Joe yes, I saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the +room. Don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?" +"How?" +"Why, it's ha'nted with whiskey Maybe ALL the Temperance Taverns have +got a ha'nted room, hey, Huck?" +"Well, I reckon maybe that's so. Who'd 'a' thought such a thing? But +say, Tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if Injun Joe's +drunk." +"It is, that You try it" +Huck shuddered. +"Well, noI reckon not." +"And I reckon not, Huck. Only one bottle alongside of Injun Joe ain't +enough. If there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and I'd do it." +There was a long pause for reflection, and then Tom said +"Lookyhere, Huck, less not try that thing any more till we know Injun +Joe's not in there. It's too scary. Now, if we watch every night, we'll +be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we'll +snatch that box quicker'n lightning." +"Well, I'm agreed. I'll watch the whole night long, and I'll do it +every night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job." +"All right, I will. All you got to do is to trot up Hooper Street a +block and maowand if I'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the window +and that'll fetch me." +"Agreed, and good as wheat" +"Now, Huck, the storm's over, and I'll go home. It'll begin to be +daylight in a couple of hours. You go back and watch that long, will +you?" +"I said I would, Tom, and I will. I'll ha'nt that tavern every night +for a year I'll sleep all day and I'll stand watch all night." +"That's all right. Now, where you going to sleep?" +"In Ben Rogers' hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's nigger man, +Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and +any time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can +spare it. That's a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don't +ever act as if I was above him. Sometime I've set right down and eat +WITH him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when +he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing." +"Well, if I don't want you in the daytime, I'll let you sleep. I won't +come bothering around. Any time you see something's up, in the night, +just skip right around and maow." +CHAPTER XXIX +THE first thing Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of news +Judge Thatcher's family had come back to town the night before. Both +Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a moment, +and Becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. He saw her and +they had an exhausting good time playing "hispy" and "gullykeeper" +with a crowd of their schoolmates. The day was completed and crowned +in a peculiarly satisfactory way Becky teased her mother to appoint +the next day for the longpromised and longdelayed picnic, and she +consented. The child's delight was boundless and Tom's not more +moderate. The invitations were sent out before sunset, and straightway +the young folks of the village were thrown into a fever of preparation +and pleasurable anticipation. Tom's excitement enabled him to keep +awake until a pretty late hour, and he had good hopes of hearing Huck's +"maow," and of having his treasure to astonish Becky and the picnickers +with, next day but he was disappointed. No signal came that night. +Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and +rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything +was ready for a start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar +the picnics with their presence. The children were considered safe +enough under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few +young gentlemen of twentythree or thereabouts. The old steam ferryboat +was chartered for the occasion presently the gay throng filed up the +main street laden with provisionbaskets. Sid was sick and had to miss +the fun Mary remained at home to entertain him. The last thing Mrs. +Thatcher said to Becky, was +"You'll not get back till late. Perhaps you'd better stay all night +with some of the girls that live near the ferrylanding, child." +"Then I'll stay with Susy Harper, mamma." +"Very well. And mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble." +Presently, as they tripped along, Tom said to Becky +"SayI'll tell you what we'll do. 'Stead of going to Joe Harper's +we'll climb right up the hill and stop at the Widow Douglas'. She'll +have icecream She has it most every daydead loads of it. And she'll +be awful glad to have us." +"Oh, that will be fun" +Then Becky reflected a moment and said +"But what will mamma say?" +"How'll she ever know?" +The girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly +"I reckon it's wrongbut" +"But shucks Your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? All she +wants is that you'll be safe and I bet you she'd 'a' said go there if +she'd 'a' thought of it. I know she would" +The Widow Douglas' splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. It and +Tom's persuasions presently carried the day. So it was decided to say +nothing anybody about the night's programme. Presently it occurred to +Tom that maybe Huck might come this very night and give the signal. The +thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. Still he +could not bear to give up the fun at Widow Douglas'. And why should he +give it up, he reasonedthe signal did not come the night before, so +why should it be any more likely to come tonight? The sure fun of the +evening outweighed the uncertain treasure and, boylike, he determined +to yield to the stronger inclination and not allow himself to think of +the box of money another time that day. +Three miles below town the ferryboat stopped at the mouth of a woody +hollow and tied up. The crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest +distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and +laughter. All the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone +through with, and byandby the rovers straggled back to camp fortified +with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things +began. After the feast there was a refreshing season of rest and chat +in the shade of spreading oaks. Byandby somebody shouted +"Who's ready for the cave?" +Everybody was. Bundles of candles were procured, and straightway there +was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the +hillsidean opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive oaken door +stood unbarred. Within was a small chamber, chilly as an icehouse, and +walled by Nature with solid limestone that was dewy with a cold sweat. +It was romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look +out upon the green valley shining in the sun. But the impressiveness of +the situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. The moment +a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it a +struggle and a gallant defence followed, but the candle was soon +knocked down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter +and a new chase. But all things have an end. Byandby the procession +went filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering +rank of lights dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their +point of junction sixty feet overhead. This main avenue was not more +than eight or ten feet wide. Every few steps other lofty and still +narrower crevices branched from it on either handfor McDougal's cave +was but a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and +out again and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days and +nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and +never find the end of the cave and that he might go down, and down, +and still down, into the earth, and it was just the samelabyrinth +under labyrinth, and no end to any of them. No man "knew" the cave. +That was an impossible thing. Most of the young men knew a portion of +it, and it was not customary to venture much beyond this known portion. +Tom Sawyer knew as much of the cave as any one. +The procession moved along the main avenue some threequarters of a +mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch +avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by +surprise at points where the corridors joined again. Parties were able +to elude each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond +the "known" ground. +Byandby, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth +of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow +drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of +the day. Then they were astonished to find that they had been taking no +note of time and that night was about at hand. The clanging bell had +been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of close to the day's +adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. When the ferryboat +with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for +the wasted time but the captain of the craft. +Huck was already upon his watch when the ferryboat's lights went +glinting past the wharf. He heard no noise on board, for the young +people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are nearly +tired to death. He wondered what boat it was, and why she did not stop +at the wharfand then he dropped her out of his mind and put his +attention upon his business. The night was growing cloudy and dark. Ten +o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered lights began +to wink out, all straggling footpassengers disappeared, the village +betook itself to its slumbers and left the small watcher alone with the +silence and the ghosts. Eleven o'clock came, and the tavern lights were +put out darkness everywhere, now. Huck waited what seemed a weary long +time, but nothing happened. His faith was weakening. Was there any use? +Was there really any use? Why not give it up and turn in? +A noise fell upon his ear. He was all attention in an instant. The +alley door closed softly. He sprang to the corner of the brick store. +The next moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to have +something under his arm. It must be that box So they were going to +remove the treasure. Why call Tom now? It would be absurdthe men +would get away with the box and never be found again. No, he would +stick to their wake and follow them he would trust to the darkness for +security from discovery. So communing with himself, Huck stepped out +and glided along behind the men, catlike, with bare feet, allowing +them to keep just far enough ahead not to be invisible. +They moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left +up a crossstreet. They went straight ahead, then, until they came to +the path that led up Cardiff Hill this they took. They passed by the +old Welshman's house, halfway up the hill, without hesitating, and +still climbed upward. Good, thought Huck, they will bury it in the old +quarry. But they never stopped at the quarry. They passed on, up the +summit. They plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach +bushes, and were at once hidden in the gloom. Huck closed up and +shortened his distance, now, for they would never be able to see him. +He trotted along awhile then slackened his pace, fearing he was +gaining too fast moved on a piece, then stopped altogether listened +no sound none, save that he seemed to hear the beating of his own +heart. The hooting of an owl came over the hillominous sound But no +footsteps. Heavens, was everything lost He was about to spring with +winged feet, when a man cleared his throat not four feet from him +Huck's heart shot into his throat, but he swallowed it again and then +he stood there shaking as if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at +once, and so weak that he thought he must surely fall to the ground. He +knew where he was. He knew he was within five steps of the stile +leading into Widow Douglas' grounds. Very well, he thought, let them +bury it there it won't be hard to find. +Now there was a voicea very low voiceInjun Joe's +"Damn her, maybe she's got companythere's lights, late as it is." +"I can't see any." +This was that stranger's voicethe stranger of the haunted house. A +deadly chill went to Huck's heartthis, then, was the "revenge" job +His thought was, to fly. Then he remembered that the Widow Douglas had +been kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to +murder her. He wished he dared venture to warn her but he knew he +didn't darethey might come and catch him. He thought all this and +more in the moment that elapsed between the stranger's remark and Injun +Joe's nextwhich was +"Because the bush is in your way. Nowthis waynow you see, don't +you?" +"Yes. Well, there IS company there, I reckon. Better give it up." +"Give it up, and I just leaving this country forever Give it up and +maybe never have another chance. I tell you again, as I've told you +before, I don't care for her swagyou may have it. But her husband was +rough on memany times he was rough on meand mainly he was the +justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain't all. +It ain't a millionth part of it He had me HORSEWHIPPEDhorsewhipped +in front of the jail, like a niggerwith all the town looking on +HORSEWHIPPEDdo you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But +I'll take it out of HER." +"Oh, don't kill her Don't do that" +"Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill HIM if he was +here but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't +kill herbosh you go for her looks. You slit her nostrilsyou notch +her ears like a sow" +"By God, that's" +"Keep your opinion to yourself It will be safest for you. I'll tie +her to the bed. If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? I'll not cry, +if she does. My friend, you'll help me in this thingfor MY sake +that's why you're hereI mightn't be able alone. If you flinch, I'll +kill you. Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll kill +herand then I reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this +business." +"Well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. The quicker the +betterI'm all in a shiver." +"Do it NOW? And company there? Look hereI'll get suspicious of you, +first thing you know. Nowe'll wait till the lights are outthere's +no hurry." +Huck felt that a silence was going to ensuea thing still more awful +than any amount of murderous talk so he held his breath and stepped +gingerly back planted his foot carefully and firmly, after balancing, +onelegged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over, first on one +side and then on the other. He took another step back, with the same +elaboration and the same risks then another and another, anda twig +snapped under his foot His breath stopped and he listened. There was +no soundthe stillness was perfect. His gratitude was measureless. Now +he turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushesturned +himself as carefully as if he were a shipand then stepped quickly but +cautiously along. When he emerged at the quarry he felt secure, and so +he picked up his nimble heels and flew. Down, down he sped, till he +reached the Welshman's. He banged at the door, and presently the heads +of the old man and his two stalwart sons were thrust from windows. +"What's the row there? Who's banging? What do you want?" +"Let me inquick I'll tell everything." +"Why, who are you?" +"Huckleberry Finnquick, let me in" +"Huckleberry Finn, indeed It ain't a name to open many doors, I +judge But let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble." +"Please don't ever tell I told you," were Huck's first words when he +got in. "Please don'tI'd be killed, surebut the widow's been good +friends to me sometimes, and I want to tellI WILL tell if you'll +promise you won't ever say it was me." +"By George, he HAS got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so" +exclaimed the old man "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad." +Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the +hill, and just entering the sumach path on tiptoe, their weapons in +their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great +bowlder and fell to listening. There was a lagging, anxious silence, +and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry. +Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the hill +as fast as his legs could carry him. +CHAPTER XXX +AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck +came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman's door. +The inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a +hairtrigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call +came from a window +"Who's there" +Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone +"Please let me in It's only Huck Finn" +"It's a name that can open this door night or day, ladand welcome" +These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the +pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing +word had ever been applied in his case before. The door was quickly +unlocked, and he entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his +brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves. +"Now, my boy, I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be +ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too +make yourself easy about that I and the boys hoped you'd turn up and +stop here last night." +"I was awful scared," said Huck, "and I run. I took out when the +pistols went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now becuz +I wanted to know about it, you know and I come before daylight becuz I +didn't want to run across them devils, even if they was dead." +"Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of itbut +there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they +ain't dead, ladwe are sorry enough for that. You see we knew right +where to put our hands on them, by your description so we crept along +on tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of themdark as a cellar +that sumach path wasand just then I found I was going to sneeze. It +was the meanest kind of luck I tried to keep it back, but no use +'twas bound to come, and it did come I was in the lead with my pistol +raised, and when the sneeze started those scoundrels arustling to get +out of the path, I sung out, 'Fire boys' and blazed away at the place +where the rustling was. So did the boys. But they were off in a jiffy, +those villains, and we after them, down through the woods. I judge we +never touched them. They fired a shot apiece as they started, but their +bullets whizzed by and didn't do us any harm. As soon as we lost the +sound of their feet we quit chasing, and went down and stirred up the +constables. They got a posse together, and went off to guard the river +bank, and as soon as it is light the sheriff and a gang are going to +beat up the woods. My boys will be with them presently. I wish we had +some sort of description of those rascals'twould help a good deal. +But you couldn't see what they were like, in the dark, lad, I suppose?" +"Oh yes I saw them downtown and follered them." +"Splendid Describe themdescribe them, my boy" +"One's the old deaf and dumb Spaniard that's ben around here once or +twice, and t'other's a meanlooking, ragged" +"That's enough, lad, we know the men Happened on them in the woods +back of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. Off with you, boys, +and tell the sheriffget your breakfast tomorrow morning" +The Welshman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room +Huck sprang up and exclaimed +"Oh, please don't tell ANYbody it was me that blowed on them Oh, +please" +"All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit of +what you did." +"Oh no, no Please don't tell" +When the young men were gone, the old Welshman said +"They won't telland I won't. But why don't you want it known?" +Huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too +much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he +knew anything against him for the whole worldhe would be killed for +knowing it, sure. +The old man promised secrecy once more, and said +"How did you come to follow these fellows, lad? Were they looking +suspicious?" +Huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. Then he said +"Well, you see, I'm a kind of a hard lot,least everybody says so, +and I don't see nothing agin itand sometimes I can't sleep much, on +account of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way +of doing. That was the way of it last night. I couldn't sleep, and so I +come along upstreet 'bout midnight, aturning it all over, and when I +got to that old shackly brick store by the Temperance Tavern, I backed +up agin the wall to have another think. Well, just then along comes +these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their +arm, and I reckoned they'd stole it. One was asmoking, and t'other one +wanted a light so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up +their faces and I see that the big one was the deaf and dumb Spaniard, +by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t'other one was a +rusty, raggedlooking devil." +"Could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?" +This staggered Huck for a moment. Then he said +"Well, I don't knowbut somehow it seems as if I did." +"Then they went on, and you" +"Follered 'emyes. That was it. I wanted to see what was upthey +sneaked along so. I dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the +dark and heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the Spaniard +swear he'd spile her looks just as I told you and your two" +"What The DEAF AND DUMB man said all that" +Huck had made another terrible mistake He was trying his best to keep +the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard might +be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in +spite of all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of his +scrape, but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after +blunder. Presently the Welshman said +"My boy, don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head +for all the world. NoI'd protect youI'd protect you. This Spaniard +is not deaf and dumb you've let that slip without intending it you +can't cover that up now. You know something about that Spaniard that +you want to keep dark. Now trust metell me what it is, and trust me +I won't betray you." +Huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent over +and whispered in his ear +"'Tain't a Spaniardit's Injun Joe" +The Welshman almost jumped out of his chair. In a moment he said +"It's all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and +slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because +white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun That's a +different matter altogether." +During breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man +said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going +to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for +marks of blood. They found none, but captured a bulky bundle of +"Of WHAT?" +If the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more +stunning suddenness from Huck's blanched lips. His eyes were staring +wide, now, and his breath suspendedwaiting for the answer. The +Welshman startedstared in returnthree secondsfive secondsten +then replied +"Of burglar's tools. Why, what's the MATTER with you?" +Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. The +Welshman eyed him gravely, curiouslyand presently said +"Yes, burglar's tools. That appears to relieve you a good deal. But +what did give you that turn? What were YOU expecting we'd found?" +Huck was in a close placethe inquiring eye was upon himhe would +have given anything for material for a plausible answernothing +suggested itselfthe inquiring eye was boring deeper and deepera +senseless reply offeredthere was no time to weigh it, so at a venture +he uttered itfeebly +"Sundayschool books, maybe." +Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud +and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, +and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in aman's pocket, +because it cut down the doctor's bill like everything. Then he added +"Poor old chap, you're white and jadedyou ain't well a bitno +wonder you're a little flighty and off your balance. But you'll come +out of it. Rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, I hope." +Huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such +a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel +brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the +talk at the widow's stile. He had only thought it was not the treasure, +howeverhe had not known that it wasn'tand so the suggestion of a +captured bundle was too much for his selfpossession. But on the whole +he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond +all question that that bundle was not THE bundle, and so his mind was +at rest and exceedingly comfortable. In fact, everything seemed to be +drifting just in the right direction, now the treasure must be still +in No. , the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and Tom +could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of +interruption. +Just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. Huck +jumped for a hidingplace, for he had no mind to be connected even +remotely with the late event. The Welshman admitted several ladies and +gentlemen, among them the Widow Douglas, and noticed that groups of +citizens were climbing up the hillto stare at the stile. So the news +had spread. The Welshman had to tell the story of the night to the +visitors. The widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken. +"Don't say a word about it, madam. There's another that you're more +beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allow +me to tell his name. We wouldn't have been there but for him." +Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled +the main matterbut the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals of +his visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he +refused to part with his secret. When all else had been learned, the +widow said +"I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that +noise. Why didn't you come and wake me?" +"We judged it warn't worth while. Those fellows warn't likely to come +againthey hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use of +waking you up and scaring you to death? My three negro men stood guard +at your house all the rest of the night. They've just come back." +More visitors came, and the story had to be told and retold for a +couple of hours more. +There was no Sabbathschool during dayschool vacation, but everybody +was early at church. The stirring event was well canvassed. News came +that not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. When the +sermon was finished, Judge Thatcher's wife dropped alongside of Mrs. +Harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said +"Is my Becky going to sleep all day? I just expected she would be +tired to death." +"Your Becky?" +"Yes," with a startled look"didn't she stay with you last night?" +"Why, no." +Mrs. Thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as Aunt Polly, +talking briskly with a friend, passed by. Aunt Polly said +"Goodmorning, Mrs. Thatcher. Goodmorning, Mrs. Harper. I've got a +boy that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom stayed at your house last +nightone of you. And now he's afraid to come to church. I've got to +settle with him." +Mrs. Thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever. +"He didn't stay with us," said Mrs. Harper, beginning to look uneasy. +A marked anxiety came into Aunt Polly's face. +"Joe Harper, have you seen my Tom this morning?" +"No'm." +"When did you see him last?" +Joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. The people had +stopped moving out of church. Whispers passed along, and a boding +uneasiness took possession of every countenance. Children were +anxiously questioned, and young teachers. They all said they had not +noticed whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferryboat on the +homeward trip it was dark no one thought of inquiring if any one was +missing. One young man finally blurted out his fear that they were +still in the cave Mrs. Thatcher swooned away. Aunt Polly fell to +crying and wringing her hands. +The alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to +street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and the +whole town was up The Cardiff Hill episode sank into instant +insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled, +skiffs were manned, the ferryboat ordered out, and before the horror +was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down highroad and +river toward the cave. +All the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. Many women +visited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. They +cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. All the +tedious night the town waited for news but when the morning dawned at +last, all the word that came was, "Send more candlesand send food." +Mrs. Thatcher was almost crazed and Aunt Polly, also. Judge Thatcher +sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but they +conveyed no real cheer. +The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered with +candlegrease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. He found Huck +still in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with +fever. The physicians were all at the cave, so the Widow Douglas came +and took charge of the patient. She said she would do her best by him, +because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the Lord's, +and nothing that was the Lord's was a thing to be neglected. The +Welshman said Huck had good spots in him, and the widow said +"You can depend on it. That's the Lord's mark. He don't leave it off. +He never does. Puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from his +hands." +Early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into the +village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. All the +news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern were +being ransacked that had never been visited before that every corner +and crevice was going to be thoroughly searched that wherever one +wandered through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flitting +hither and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistolshots sent +their hollow reverberations to the ear down the sombre aisles. In one +place, far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names +"BECKY TOM" had been found traced upon the rocky wall with +candlesmoke, and near at hand a greasesoiled bit of ribbon. Mrs. +Thatcher recognized the ribbon and cried over it. She said it was the +last relic she should ever have of her child and that no other memorial +of her could ever be so precious, because this one parted latest from +the living body before the awful death came. Some said that now and +then, in the cave, a faraway speck of light would glimmer, and then a +glorious shout would burst forth and a score of men go trooping down the +echoing aisleand then a sickening disappointment always followed the +children were not there it was only a searcher's light. +Three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, and +the village sank into a hopeless stupor. No one had heart for anything. +The accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of the +Temperance Tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered the +public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. In a lucid interval, Huck +feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally askeddimly +dreading the worstif anything had been discovered at the Temperance +Tavern since he had been ill. +"Yes," said the widow. +Huck started up in bed, wildeyed +"What? What was it?" +"Liquorand the place has been shut up. Lie down, childwhat a turn +you did give me" +"Only tell me just one thingonly just oneplease Was it Tom Sawyer +that found it?" +The widow burst into tears. "Hush, hush, child, hush I've told you +before, you must NOT talk. You are very, very sick" +Then nothing but liquor had been found there would have been a great +powwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone forevergone +forever But what could she be crying about? Curious that she should +cry. +These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck's mind, and under the +weariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself +"Therehe's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it Pity but somebody +could find Tom Sawyer Ah, there ain't many left, now, that's got hope +enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching." +CHAPTER XXXI +NOW to return to Tom and Becky's share in the picnic. They tripped +along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the +familiar wonders of the cavewonders dubbed with rather +overdescriptive names, such as "The DrawingRoom," "The Cathedral," +"Aladdin's Palace," and so on. Presently the hideandseek frolicking +began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion +began to grow a trifle wearisome then they wandered down a sinuous +avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled webwork of +names, dates, postoffice addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky +walls had been frescoed in candlesmoke. Still drifting along and +talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave +whose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an +overhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a +little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone +sediment with it, had, in the slowdragging ages, formed a laced and +ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his +small body behind it in order to illuminate it for Becky's +gratification. He found that it curtained a sort of steep natural +stairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once the +ambition to be a discoverer seized him. Becky responded to his call, +and they made a smokemark for future guidance, and started upon their +quest. They wound this way and that, far down into the secret depths of +the cave, made another mark, and branched off in search of novelties to +tell the upper world about. In one place they found a spacious cavern, +from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the +length and circumference of a man's leg they walked all about it, +wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous +passages that opened into it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching +spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering +crystals it was in the midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by +many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the joining of great +stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless +waterdrip of centuries. Under the roof vast knots of bats had packed +themselves together, thousands in a bunch the lights disturbed the +creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and +darting furiously at the candles. Tom knew their ways and the danger of +this sort of conduct. He seized Becky's hand and hurried her into the +first corridor that offered and none too soon, for a bat struck +Becky's light out with its wing while she was passing out of the +cavern. The bats chased the children a good distance but the fugitives +plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got rid of the +perilous things. Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which +stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows. +He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would be best +to sit down and rest awhile, first. Now, for the first time, the deep +stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the +children. Becky said +"Why, I didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any of +the others." +"Come to think, Becky, we are away down below themand I don't know +how far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn't +hear them here." +Becky grew apprehensive. +"I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom? We better start back." +"Yes, I reckon we better. P'raps we better." +"Can you find the way, Tom? It's all a mixedup crookedness to me." +"I reckon I could find itbut then the bats. If they put our candles +out it will be an awful fix. Let's try some other way, so as not to go +through there." +"Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would be so awful" and the +girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities. +They started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long +way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything +familiar about the look of it but they were all strange. Every time +Tom made an examination, Becky would watch his face for an encouraging +sign, and he would say cheerily +"Oh, it's all right. This ain't the one, but we'll come to it right +away" +But he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently +began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate +hope of finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was "all +right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words +had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, "All is lost" +Becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep +back the tears, but they would come. At last she said +"Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way We seem to get +worse and worse off all the time." +"Listen" said he. +Profound silence silence so deep that even their breathings were +conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the +empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that +resembled a ripple of mocking laughter. +"Oh, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid," said Becky. +"It is horrid, but I better, Becky they might hear us, you know," and +he shouted again. +The "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it +so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened +but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and +hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a certain +indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to Beckyhe +could not find his way back +"Oh, Tom, you didn't make any marks" +"Becky, I was such a fool Such a fool I never thought we might want +to come back NoI can't find the way. It's all mixed up." +"Tom, Tom, we're lost we're lost We never can get out of this awful +place Oh, why DID we ever leave the others" +She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom +was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. He +sat down by her and put his arms around her she buried her face in his +bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing +regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. Tom +begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell +to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable +situation this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope +again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he +would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than +she, she said. +So they moved on againaimlesslysimply at randomall they could do +was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of +revivingnot with any reason to back it, but only because it is its +nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age +and familiarity with failure. +Byandby Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out. This economy meant +so much Words were not needed. Becky understood, and her hope died +again. She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in +his pocketsyet he must economize. +Byandby, fatigue began to assert its claims the children tried to +pay attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time +was grown to be so precious, moving, in some direction, in any +direction, was at least progress and might bear fruit but to sit down +was to invite death and shorten its pursuit. +At last Becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat +down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends +there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light Becky cried, +and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his +encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like +sarcasms. Fatigue bore so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to +sleep. Tom was grateful. He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it +grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams and +byandby a smile dawned and rested there. The peaceful face reflected +somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts +wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. While he was deep in +his musings, Becky woke up with a breezy little laughbut it was +stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it. +"Oh, how COULD I sleep I wish I never, never had waked No No, I +don't, Tom Don't look so I won't say it again." +"I'm glad you've slept, Becky you'll feel rested, now, and we'll find +the way out." +"We can try, Tom but I've seen such a beautiful country in my dream. +I reckon we are going there." +"Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying." +They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They tried +to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was +that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not +be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after thisthey +could not tell how longTom said they must go softly and listen for +dripping waterthey must find a spring. They found one presently, and +Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly tired, yet Becky +said she thought she could go a little farther. She was surprised to +hear Tom dissent. She could not understand it. They sat down, and Tom +fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay. +Thought was soon busy nothing was said for some time. Then Becky broke +the silence +"Tom, I am so hungry" +Tom took something out of his pocket. +"Do you remember this?" said he. +Becky almost smiled. +"It's our weddingcake, Tom." +"YesI wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got." +"I saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, Tom, the way grownup +people do with weddingcakebut it'll be our" +She dropped the sentence where it was. Tom divided the cake and Becky +ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety. There was +abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. Byandby Becky +suggested that they move on again. Tom was silent a moment. Then he +said +"Becky, can you bear it if I tell you something?" +Becky's face paled, but she thought she could. +"Well, then, Becky, we must stay here, where there's water to drink. +That little piece is our last candle" +Becky gave loose to tears and wailings. Tom did what he could to +comfort her, but with little effect. At length Becky said +"Tom" +"Well, Becky?" +"They'll miss us and hunt for us" +"Yes, they will Certainly they will" +"Maybe they're hunting for us now, Tom." +"Why, I reckon maybe they are. I hope they are." +"When would they miss us, Tom?" +"When they get back to the boat, I reckon." +"Tom, it might be dark thenwould they notice we hadn't come?" +"I don't know. But anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as they +got home." +A frightened look in Becky's face brought Tom to his senses and he saw +that he had made a blunder. Becky was not to have gone home that night +The children became silent and thoughtful. In a moment a new burst of +grief from Becky showed Tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers +alsothat the Sabbath morning might be half spent before Mrs. Thatcher +discovered that Becky was not at Mrs. Harper's. +The children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched +it melt slowly and pitilessly away saw the half inch of wick stand +alone at last saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin +column of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and thenthe horror of +utter darkness reigned +How long afterward it was that Becky came to a slow consciousness that +she was crying in Tom's arms, neither could tell. All that they knew +was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of +a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more. Tom said +it might be Sunday, nowmaybe Monday. He tried to get Becky to talk, +but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. Tom said +that they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was +going on. He would shout and maybe some one would come. He tried it +but in the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he +tried it no more. +The hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives again. +A portion of Tom's half of the cake was left they divided and ate it. +But they seemed hungrier than before. The poor morsel of food only +whetted desire. +Byandby Tom said +"SH Did you hear that?" +Both held their breath and listened. There was a sound like the +faintest, faroff shout. Instantly Tom answered it, and leading Becky +by the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction. +Presently he listened again again the sound was heard, and apparently +a little nearer. +"It's them" said Tom "they're coming Come along, Beckywe're all +right now" +The joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. Their speed was +slow, however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be +guarded against. They shortly came to one and had to stop. It might be +three feet deep, it might be a hundredthere was no passing it at any +rate. Tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he could. +No bottom. They must stay there and wait until the searchers came. They +listened evidently the distant shoutings were growing more distant a +moment or two more and they had gone altogether. The heartsinking +misery of it Tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of no use. He +talked hopefully to Becky but an age of anxious waiting passed and no +sounds came again. +The children groped their way back to the spring. The weary time +dragged on they slept again, and awoke famished and woestricken. Tom +believed it must be Tuesday by this time. +Now an idea struck him. There were some side passages near at hand. It +would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight of the +heavy time in idleness. He took a kiteline from his pocket, tied it to +a projection, and he and Becky started, Tom in the lead, unwinding the +line as he groped along. At the end of twenty steps the corridor ended +in a "jumpingoff place." Tom got down on his knees and felt below, and +then as far around the corner as he could reach with his hands +conveniently he made an effort to stretch yet a little farther to the +right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding +a candle, appeared from behind a rock Tom lifted up a glorious shout, +and instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged toInjun +Joe's Tom was paralyzed he could not move. He was vastly gratified +the next moment, to see the "Spaniard" take to his heels and get +himself out of sight. Tom wondered that Joe had not recognized his +voice and come over and killed him for testifying in court. But the +echoes must have disguised the voice. Without doubt, that was it, he +reasoned. Tom's fright weakened every muscle in his body. He said to +himself that if he had strength enough to get back to the spring he +would stay there, and nothing should tempt him to run the risk of +meeting Injun Joe again. He was careful to keep from Becky what it was +he had seen. He told her he had only shouted "for luck." +But hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run. +Another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought +changes. The children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. Tom believed +that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Saturday, now, +and that the search had been given over. He proposed to explore another +passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all other terrors. But +Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be +roused. She said she would wait, now, where she was, and dieit would +not be long. She told Tom to go with the kiteline and explore if he +chose but she implored him to come back every little while and speak +to her and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he +would stay by her and hold her hand until all was over. +Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a +show of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the +cave then he took the kiteline in his hand and went groping down one +of the passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick +with bodings of coming doom. +CHAPTER XXXII +TUESDAY afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St. +Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public +prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private +prayer that had the petitioner's whole heart in it but still no good +news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the +quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain +the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a +great part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking to +hear her call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute +at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a moan. Aunt Polly had +drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost +white. The village went to its rest on Tuesday night, sad and forlorn. +Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village +bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic halfclad +people, who shouted, "Turn out turn out they're found they're +found" Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed +itself and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open +carriage drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its +homeward march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring +huzzah after huzzah +The village was illuminated nobody went to bed again it was the +greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first halfhour +a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house, seized +the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's hand, tried to +speak but couldn'tand drifted out raining tears all over the place. +Aunt Polly's happiness was complete, and Mrs. Thatcher's nearly so. It +would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched with +the great news to the cave should get the word to her husband. Tom lay +upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of +the wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it +withal and closed with a description of how he left Becky and went on +an exploring expedition how he followed two avenues as far as his +kiteline would reach how he followed a third to the fullest stretch of +the kiteline, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a faroff +speck that looked like daylight dropped the line and groped toward it, +pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole, and saw the broad +Mississippi rolling by And if it had only happened to be night he would +not have seen that speck of daylight and would not have explored that +passage any more He told how he went back for Becky and broke the good +news and she told him not to fret her with such stuff, for she was +tired, and knew she was going to die, and wanted to. He described how he +labored with her and convinced her and how she almost died for joy when +she had groped to where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight how +he pushed his way out at the hole and then helped her out how they sat +there and cried for gladness how some men came along in a skiff and Tom +hailed them and told them their situation and their famished condition +how the men didn't believe the wild tale at first, "because," said they, +"you are five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in" +then took them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them +rest till two or three hours after dark and then brought them home. +Before daydawn, Judge Thatcher and the handful of searchers with him +were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clews they had strung +behind them, and informed of the great news. +Three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to be +shaken off at once, as Tom and Becky soon discovered. They were +bedridden all of Wednesday and Thursday, and seemed to grow more and +more tired and worn, all the time. Tom got about, a little, on +Thursday, was downtown Friday, and nearly as whole as ever Saturday +but Becky did not leave her room until Sunday, and then she looked as +if she had passed through a wasting illness. +Tom learned of Huck's sickness and went to see him on Friday, but +could not be admitted to the bedroom neither could he on Saturday or +Sunday. He was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep still +about his adventure and introduce no exciting topic. The Widow Douglas +stayed by to see that he obeyed. At home Tom learned of the Cardiff +Hill event also that the "ragged man's" body had eventually been found +in the river near the ferrylanding he had been drowned while trying +to escape, perhaps. +About a fortnight after Tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to +visit Huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting +talk, and Tom had some that would interest him, he thought. Judge +Thatcher's house was on Tom's way, and he stopped to see Becky. The +Judge and some friends set Tom to talking, and some one asked him +ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. Tom said he +thought he wouldn't mind it. The Judge said +"Well, there are others just like you, Tom, I've not the least doubt. +But we have taken care of that. Nobody will get lost in that cave any +more." +"Why?" +"Because I had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago, +and triplelockedand I've got the keys." +Tom turned as white as a sheet. +"What's the matter, boy Here, run, somebody Fetch a glass of water" +The water was brought and thrown into Tom's face. +"Ah, now you're all right. What was the matter with you, Tom?" +"Oh, Judge, Injun Joe's in the cave" +CHAPTER XXXIII +WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiffloads of +men were on their way to McDougal's cave, and the ferryboat, well +filled with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that +bore Judge Thatcher. +When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in +the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground, +dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing +eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer +of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own +experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but +nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now, +which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated +before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day +he lifted his voice against this bloodyminded outcast. +Injun Joe's bowieknife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The +great foundationbeam of the door had been chipped and hacked through, +with tedious labor useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock +formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had +wrought no effect the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if +there had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been +useless still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away Injun Joe could +not have squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. So he had +only hacked that place in order to be doing somethingin order to pass +the weary timein order to employ his tortured faculties. Ordinarily +one could find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices +of this vestibule, left there by tourists but there were none now. The +prisoner had searched them out and eaten them. He had also contrived to +catch a few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their +claws. The poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at +hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages, +builded by the waterdrip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had +broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, +wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop +that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a +clockticka dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop +was falling when the Pyramids were new when Troy fell when the +foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified when the +Conqueror created the British empire when Columbus sailed when the +massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now it will still be +falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of +history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the +thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did +this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for +this flitting human insect's need? and has it another important object +to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No matter. It is many and +many a year since the hapless halfbreed scooped out the stone to catch +the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that +pathetic stone and that slowdropping water when he comes to see the +wonders of McDougal's cave. Injun Joe's cup stands first in the list of +the cavern's marvels even "Aladdin's Palace" cannot rival it. +Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave and people flocked +there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and +hamlets for seven miles around they brought their children, and all +sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as +satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the +hanging. +This funeral stopped the further growth of one thingthe petition to +the governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been largely +signed many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a +committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail +around the governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample +his duty under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five +citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself +there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names +to a pardonpetition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently +impaired and leaky waterworks. +The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have +an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure from the +Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he reckoned +there was one thing they had not told him that thing was what he +wanted to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said +"I know what it is. You got into No. and never found anything but +whiskey. Nobody told me it was you but I just knowed it must 'a' ben +you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey business and I knowed you +hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and +told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's always +told me we'd never get holt of that swag." +"Why, Huck, I never told on that tavernkeeper. YOU know his tavern +was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you +was to watch there that night?" +"Oh yes Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It was that very night that I +follered Injun Joe to the widder's." +"YOU followed him?" +"Yesbut you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him, +and I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it +hadn't ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right." +Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only +heard of the Welshman's part of it before. +"Well," said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question, +"whoever nipped the whiskey in No. , nipped the money, too, I reckon +anyways it's a goner for us, Tom." +"Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. " +"What" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "Tom, have you got on +the track of that money again?" +"Huck, it's in the cave" +Huck's eyes blazed. +"Say it again, Tom." +"The money's in the cave" +"Tomhonest injun, nowis it fun, or earnest?" +"Earnest, Huckjust as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go +in there with me and help get it out?" +"I bet I will I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not +get lost." +"Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the +world." +"Good as wheat What makes you think the money's" +"Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll +agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I +will, by jings." +"All rightit's a whiz. When do you say?" +"Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?" +"Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days, +now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tomleast I don't think I could." +"It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, +Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me +know about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the +skiff down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You +needn't ever turn your hand over." +"Less start right off, Tom." +"All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little +bag or two, and two or three kitestrings, and some of these +newfangled things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's +the time I wished I had some when I was in there before." +A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who +was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several miles +below "Cave Hollow," Tom said +"Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the +cave hollowno houses, no woodyards, bushes all alike. But do you see +that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's +one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now." +They landed. +"Now, Huck, where we're astanding you could touch that hole I got out +of with a fishingpole. See if you can find it." +Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly +marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said +"Here you are Look at it, Huck it's the snuggest hole in this +country. You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be +a robber, but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to +run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it +quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers inbecause of course +there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. +Tom Sawyer's Gangit sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?" +"Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?" +"Oh, most anybody. Waylay peoplethat's mostly the way." +"And kill them?" +"No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom." +"What's a ransom?" +"Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends and +after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them. +That's the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You shut up the +women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich, and +awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take +your hat off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers +you'll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and +after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and +after that you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd +turn right around and come back. It's so in all the books." +"Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate." +"Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and +circuses and all that." +By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom +in the lead. They toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel, +then made their spliced kitestrings fast and moved on. A few steps +brought them to the spring, and Tom felt a shudder quiver all through +him. He showed Huck the fragment of candlewick perched on a lump of +clay against the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched the +flame struggle and expire. +The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and +gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. They went on, and presently +entered and followed Tom's other corridor until they reached the +"jumpingoff place." The candles revealed the fact that it was not +really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet +high. Tom whispered +"Now I'll show you something, Huck." +He held his candle aloft and said +"Look as far around the corner as you can. Do you see that? Thereon +the big rock over yonderdone with candlesmoke." +"Tom, it's a CROSS" +"NOW where's your Number Two? 'UNDER THE CROSS,' hey? Right yonder's +where I saw Injun Joe poke up his candle, Huck" +Huck stared at the mystic sign awhile, and then said with a shaky voice +"Tom, less git out of here" +"What and leave the treasure?" +"Yesleave it. Injun Joe's ghost is round about there, certain." +"No it ain't, Huck, no it ain't. It would ha'nt the place where he +diedaway out at the mouth of the cavefive mile from here." +"No, Tom, it wouldn't. It would hang round the money. I know the ways +of ghosts, and so do you." +Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Misgivings gathered in his +mind. But presently an idea occurred to him +"Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves Injun Joe's +ghost ain't a going to come around where there's a cross" +The point was well taken. It had its effect. +"Tom, I didn't think of that. But that's so. It's luck for us, that +cross is. I reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box." +Tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended. +Huck followed. Four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the +great rock stood in. The boys examined three of them with no result. +They found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock, with +a pallet of blankets spread down in it also an old suspender, some +bacon rind, and the wellgnawed bones of two or three fowls. But there +was no moneybox. The lads searched and researched this place, but in +vain. Tom said +"He said UNDER the cross. Well, this comes nearest to being under the +cross. It can't be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on +the ground." +They searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged. +Huck could suggest nothing. Byandby Tom said +"Lookyhere, Huck, there's footprints and some candlegrease on the +clay about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. Now, +what's that for? I bet you the money IS under the rock. I'm going to +dig in the clay." +"That ain't no bad notion, Tom" said Huck with animation. +Tom's "real Barlow" was out at once, and he had not dug four inches +before he struck wood. +"Hey, Huckyou hear that?" +Huck began to dig and scratch now. Some boards were soon uncovered and +removed. They had concealed a natural chasm which led under the rock. +Tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he +could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. He proposed to +explore. He stooped and passed under the narrow way descended +gradually. He followed its winding course, first to the right, then to +the left, Huck at his heels. Tom turned a short curve, byandby, and +exclaimed +"My goodness, Huck, lookyhere" +It was the treasurebox, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern, +along with an empty powderkeg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two +or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish +well soaked with the waterdrip. +"Got it at last" said Huck, ploughing among the tarnished coins with +his hand. "My, but we're rich, Tom" +"Huck, I always reckoned we'd get it. It's just too good to believe, +but we HAVE got it, sure Saylet's not fool around here. Let's snake +it out. Lemme see if I can lift the box." +It weighed about fifty pounds. Tom could lift it, after an awkward +fashion, but could not carry it conveniently. +"I thought so," he said "THEY carried it like it was heavy, that day +at the ha'nted house. I noticed that. I reckon I was right to think of +fetching the little bags along." +The money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross +rock. +"Now less fetch the guns and things," said Huck. +"No, Huckleave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we +go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our +orgies there, too. It's an awful snug place for orgies." +"What orgies?" +"I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to +have them, too. Come along, Huck, we've been in here a long time. It's +getting late, I reckon. I'm hungry, too. We'll eat and smoke when we +get to the skiff." +They presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked warily +out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking in the +skiff. As the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got +under way. Tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting +cheerily with Huck, and landed shortly after dark. +"Now, Huck," said Tom, "we'll hide the money in the loft of the +widow's woodshed, and I'll come up in the morning and we'll count it +and divide, and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it +where it will be safe. Just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till +I run and hook Benny Taylor's little wagon I won't be gone a minute." +He disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two +small sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started +off, dragging his cargo behind him. When the boys reached the +Welshman's house, they stopped to rest. Just as they were about to move +on, the Welshman stepped out and said +"Hallo, who's that?" +"Huck and Tom Sawyer." +"Good Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting. +Herehurry up, trot aheadI'll haul the wagon for you. Why, it's not +as light as it might be. Got bricks in it?or old metal?" +"Old metal," said Tom. +"I judged so the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool +away more time hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the +foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work. But +that's human naturehurry along, hurry along" +The boys wanted to know what the hurry was about. +"Never mind you'll see, when we get to the Widow Douglas'." +Huck said with some apprehensionfor he was long used to being +falsely accused +"Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing." +The Welshman laughed. +"Well, I don't know, Huck, my boy. I don't know about that. Ain't you +and the widow good friends?" +"Yes. Well, she's ben good friends to me, anyway." +"All right, then. What do you want to be afraid for?" +This question was not entirely answered in Huck's slow mind before he +found himself pushed, along with Tom, into Mrs. Douglas' drawingroom. +Mr. Jones left the wagon near the door and followed. +The place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any +consequence in the village was there. The Thatchers were there, the +Harpers, the Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister, the editor, +and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. The widow +received the boys as heartily as any one could well receive two such +looking beings. They were covered with clay and candlegrease. Aunt +Polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head +at Tom. Nobody suffered half as much as the two boys did, however. Mr. +Jones said +"Tom wasn't at home, yet, so I gave him up but I stumbled on him and +Huck right at my door, and so I just brought them along in a hurry." +"And you did just right," said the widow. "Come with me, boys." +She took them to a bedchamber and said +"Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of clothes +shirts, socks, everything complete. They're Huck'sno, no thanks, +HuckMr. Jones bought one and I the other. But they'll fit both of you. +Get into them. We'll waitcome down when you are slicked up enough." +Then she left. +CHAPTER XXXIV +HUCK said "Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain't +high from the ground." +"Shucks what do you want to slope for?" +"Well, I ain't used to that kind of a crowd. I can't stand it. I ain't +going down there, Tom." +"Oh, bother It ain't anything. I don't mind it a bit. I'll take care +of you." +Sid appeared. +"Tom," said he, "auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon. +Mary got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting about +you. Sayain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?" +"Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist 'tend to your own business. What's all this +blowout about, anyway?" +"It's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. This time +it's for the Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they +helped her out of the other night. And sayI can tell you something, +if you want to know." +"Well, what?" +"Why, old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people +here tonight, but I overheard him tell auntie today about it, as a +secret, but I reckon it's not much of a secret now. Everybody knows +the widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. Mr. Jones was +bound Huck should be herecouldn't get along with his grand secret +without Huck, you know" +"Secret about what, Sid?" +"About Huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. I reckon Mr. Jones +was going to make a grand time over his surprise, but I bet you it will +drop pretty flat." +Sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way. +"Sid, was it you that told?" +"Oh, never mind who it was. SOMEBODY toldthat's enough." +"Sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and +that's you. If you had been in Huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down the +hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can't do any but mean +things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones. +Thereno thanks, as the widow says"and Tom cuffed Sid's ears and +helped him to the door with several kicks. "Now go and tell auntie if +you dareand tomorrow you'll catch it" +Some minutes later the widow's guests were at the suppertable, and a +dozen children were propped up at little sidetables in the same room, +after the fashion of that country and that day. At the proper time Mr. +Jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow for the +honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was +another person whose modesty +And so forth and so on. He sprung his secret about Huck's share in the +adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but the +surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and +effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. However, +the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many +compliments and so much gratitude upon Huck that he almost forgot the +nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely +intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze +and everybody's laudations. +The widow said she meant to give Huck a home under her roof and have +him educated and that when she could spare the money she would start +him in business in a modest way. Tom's chance was come. He said +"Huck don't need it. Huck's rich." +Nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept +back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. But +the silence was a little awkward. Tom broke it +"Huck's got money. Maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots of +it. Oh, you needn't smileI reckon I can show you. You just wait a +minute." +Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at each other with a +perplexed interestand inquiringly at Huck, who was tonguetied. +"Sid, what ails Tom?" said Aunt Polly. "Hewell, there ain't ever any +making of that boy out. I never" +Tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and Aunt Polly +did not finish her sentence. Tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon +the table and said +"Therewhat did I tell you? Half of it's Huck's and half of it's mine" +The spectacle took the general breath away. All gazed, nobody spoke +for a moment. Then there was a unanimous call for an explanation. Tom +said he could furnish it, and he did. The tale was long, but brimful of +interest. There was scarcely an interruption from any one to break the +charm of its flow. When he had finished, Mr. Jones said +"I thought I had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but it +don't amount to anything now. This one makes it sing mighty small, I'm +willing to allow." +The money was counted. The sum amounted to a little over twelve +thousand dollars. It was more than any one present had ever seen at one +time before, though several persons were there who were worth +considerably more than that in property. +CHAPTER XXXV +THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a +mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a +sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked +about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the +citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every +"haunted" house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was +dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for +hidden treasureand not by boys, but menpretty grave, unromantic +men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were +courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that +their remarks had possessed weight before but now their sayings were +treasured and repeated everything they did seemed somehow to be +regarded as remarkable they had evidently lost the power of doing and +saying commonplace things moreover, their past history was raked up +and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village +paper published biographical sketches of the boys. +The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six per cent., and Judge +Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had +an income, now, that was simply prodigiousa dollar for every weekday +in the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got +no, it was what he was promisedhe generally couldn't collect it. A +dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in +those old simple daysand clothe him and wash him, too, for that +matter. +Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no +commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When +Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her +whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved and when she pleaded +grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that +whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine +outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous liea lie that +was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to +breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about the hatchet Becky +thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he +walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight +off and told Tom about it. +Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some +day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the +National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school +in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or +both. +Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow +Douglas' protection introduced him into societyno, dragged him into +it, hurled him into itand his sufferings were almost more than he +could bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and +brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had +not one little spot or stain which he could press to his heart and know +for a friend. He had to eat with a knife and fork he had to use +napkin, cup, and plate he had to learn his book, he had to go to +church he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in +his mouth whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of +civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot. +He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up +missing. For fortyeight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in +great distress. The public were profoundly concerned they searched +high and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third +morning Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads +down behind the abandoned slaughterhouse, and in one of them he found +the refugee. Huck had slept there he had just breakfasted upon some +stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort, with +his pipe. He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of +rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and +happy. Tom routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing, +and urged him to go home. Huck's face lost its tranquil content, and +took a melancholy cast. He said +"Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work it don't +work, Tom. It ain't for me I ain't used to it. The widder's good to +me, and friendly but I can't stand them ways. She makes me get up just +at the same time every morning she makes me wash, they comb me all to +thunder she won't let me sleep in the woodshed I got to wear them +blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom they don't seem to any air +git through 'em, somehow and they're so rotten nice that I can't set +down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's I hain't slid on a +cellardoor forwell, it 'pears to be years I got to go to church and +sweat and sweatI hate them ornery sermons I can't ketch a fly in +there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by +a bell she goes to bed by a bell she gits up by a belleverything's +so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it." +"Well, everybody does that way, Huck." +"Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't +STAND it. It's awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easyI don't +take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go afishing I +got to ask to go in aswimmingdern'd if I hain't got to ask to do +everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfortI'd got +to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in +my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke she +wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor +scratch, before folks" [Then with a spasm of special irritation and +injury]"And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time I never see such a +woman I HAD to shove, TomI just had to. And besides, that school's +going to open, and I'd a had to go to itwell, I wouldn't stand THAT, +Tom. Looky here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's +just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and awishing you was dead +all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and +I ain't ever going to shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't ever got into +all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money now you just take +my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a tencenter sometimesnot +many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable +hard to gitand you go and beg off for me with the widder." +"Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair and besides if +you'll try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it." +"Like it Yesthe way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long +enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed +smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and +I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all just as we'd got guns, and a +cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to +come up and spile it all" +Tom saw his opportunity +"Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning +robber." +"No Oh, goodlicks are you in real deadwood earnest, Tom?" +"Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But Huck, we can't let you +into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know." +Huck's joy was quenched. +"Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?" +"Yes, but that's different. A robber is more hightoned than what a +pirate isas a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up +in the nobilitydukes and such." +"Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn't shet me +out, would you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, WOULD you, Tom?" +"Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I DON'T want tobut what would people +say? Why, they'd say, 'Mph Tom Sawyer's Gang pretty low characters in +it' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't." +Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally +he said +"Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if +I can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, Tom." +"All right, Huck, it's a whiz Come along, old chap, and I'll ask the +widow to let up on you a little, Huck." +"Will you, Tomnow will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of +the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd +through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?" +"Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together and have the initiation +tonight, maybe." +"Have the which?" +"Have the initiation." +"What's that?" +"It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's +secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and +all his family that hurts one of the gang." +"That's gaythat's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you." +"Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at +midnight, in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can finda ha'nted +house is the best, but they're all ripped up now." +"Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom." +"Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with +blood." +"Now, that's something LIKE Why, it's a million times bullier than +pirating. I'll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom and if I git to be +a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon +she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet." +CONCLUSION +SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a BOY, it +must stop here the story could not go much further without becoming +the history of a MAN. When one writes a novel about grown people, he +knows exactly where to stopthat is, with a marriage but when he +writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can. +Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are +prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the +story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they +turned out to be therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that +part of their lives at present. +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete +by Mark Twain Samuel Clemens + END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM SAWYER + This file should be named .txt or .zip +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in +http//www.gutenberg.net/// +Produced by David Widger. The previous edition was update by Jose +Menendez. +Updated editions will replace the previous onethe old editions +will be renamed. +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +and you can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Any suggested +changes to this etext should be based on comparison to that print +edition, and not to the new and later print editions. + START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ULYSSES +This etext was prepared by Col Choat colchoatyahoo.com.au. +Ulysses by James Joyce +I +STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of +lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, +ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He +held the bowl aloft and intoned +INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI. +Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely +Come up, Kinch Come up, you fearful jesuit +Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about +and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the +awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent +towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and +shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms +on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling +face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured +hair, grained and hued like pale oak. +Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered +the bowl smartly. +Back to barracks he said sternly. +He added in a preacher's tone +For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine body and soul and +blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A +little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all. +He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused +awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there +with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered +through the calm. +Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the +current, will you? +He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering +about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and +sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A +pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips. +The mockery of it he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek +He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, +laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily +halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he +propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and +lathered cheeks and neck. +Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on. +My name is absurd too Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a +Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We +must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty +quid? +He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried +Will he come? The jejune jesuit +Ceasing, he began to shave with care. +Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly. +Yes, my love? +How long is Haines going to stay in this tower? +Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder. +God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks +you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English Bursting with money +and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you +have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is +the best Kinch, the knifeblade. +He shaved warily over his chin. +He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is +his guncase? +A woful lunatic Mulligan said. Were you in a funk? +I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark +with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a +black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If +he stays on here I am off. +Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down +from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily. +Scutter he cried thickly. +He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper +pocket, said +Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor. +Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a +dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. +Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said +The bard's noserag A new art colour for our Irish poets snotgreen. +You can almost taste it, can't you? +He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair +oakpale hair stirring slightly. +God he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it a great sweet +mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. EPI OINOPA PONTON. +Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks I must teach you. You must read them in the +original. THALATTA THALATTA She is our great sweet mother. Come and +look. +Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked +down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of +Kingstown. +Our mighty mother Buck Mulligan said. +He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's +face. +The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't +let me have anything to do with you. +Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily. +You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked +you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of +your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for +her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you ... +He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant +smile curled his lips. +But a lovely mummer he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest +mummer of them all +He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously. +Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against +his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coatsleeve. +Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in +a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its +loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her +breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of +wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a +great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and +skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood +beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up +from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting. +Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade. +Ah, poor dogsbody he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and +a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks? +They fit well enough, Stephen answered. +Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip. +The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God +knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair +stripe, grey. You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You +look damn well when you're dressed. +Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey. +He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. +Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey +trousers. +He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the +smooth skin. +Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its +smokeblue mobile eyes. +That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says +you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General +paralysis of the insane +He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad +in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and +the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong +wellknit trunk. +Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard +Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a +crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face +for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too. +I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her +all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead +him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula. +Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes. +The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If +Wilde were only alive to see you +Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness +It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant. +Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him +round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had +thrust them. +It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God +knows you have more spirit than any of them. +Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The +cold steelpen. +Cracked lookingglass of a servant Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs +and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're +not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or +some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work +together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it. +Cranly's arm. His arm. +And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one +that knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up +your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring +down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive +Kempthorpe. +Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces +they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall +expire Break the news to her gently, Aubrey I shall die With slit +ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the +table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the +tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. I don't want +to be debagged Don't you play the giddy ox with me +Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf +gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on +the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms. +To ourselves ... new paganism ... omphalos. +Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him except at +night. +Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm +quite frank with you. What have you against me now? +They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the +water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly. +Do you wish me to tell you? he asked. +Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don't remember anything. +He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, +fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of +anxiety in his eyes. +Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said +Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's +death? +Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said +What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and +sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God? +You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across the landing to get +more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom. +She asked you who was in your room. +Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget. +You said, Stephen answered, O, IT'S ONLY DEDALUS WHOSE MOTHER IS +BEASTLY DEAD. +A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck +Mulligan's cheek. +Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that? +He shook his constraint from him nervously. +And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw +only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and +Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly +thing and nothing else. It simply doesn't matter. You wouldn't kneel down +to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because +you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it's injected the wrong +way. To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not +functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups +off the quilt. Humour her till it's over. You crossed her last wish in +death and yet you sulk with me because I don't whinge like some hired +mute from Lalouette's. Absurd I suppose I did say it. I didn't mean to +offend the memory of your mother. +He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping wounds +which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly +I am not thinking of the offence to my mother. +Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked. +Of the offence to me, Stephen answered. +Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel. +O, an impossible person he exclaimed. +He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, +gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew +dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt +the fever of his cheeks. +A voice within the tower called loudly +Are you up there, Mulligan? +I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered. +He turned towards Stephen and said +Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola, Kinch, +and come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers. +His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level +with the roof +Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the +moody brooding. +His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the +stairhead +AND NO MORE TURN ASIDE AND BROOD +UPON LOVE'S BITTER MYSTERY +FOR FERGUS RULES THE BRAZEN CARS. +Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the +stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of +water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the +dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the +harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words +shimmering on the dim tide. +A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in +deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song +I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door +was open she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to +her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, +Stephen love's bitter mystery. +Where now? +Her secrets old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a +gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny +window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the +pantomime of TURKO THE TERRIBLE and laughed with others when he sang +I AM THE BOY +THAT CAN ENJOY +INVISIBILITY. +Phantasmal mirth, folded away muskperfumed. +AND NO MORE TURN ASIDE AND BROOD. +Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his +brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had +approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, +roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely +fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's +shirts. +In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its +loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, +bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes. +Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me +alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured +face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on +their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. LILIATA RUTILANTIUM TE +CONFESSORUM TURMA CIRCUMDET IUBILANTIUM TE VIRGINUM CHORUS EXCIPIAT. +Ghoul Chewer of corpses +No, mother Let me be and let me live. +Kinch ahoy +Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the +staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, +heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words. +Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is +apologising for waking us last night. It's all right. +I'm coming, Stephen said, turning. +Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our +sakes. +His head disappeared and reappeared. +I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch +him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean. +I get paid this morning, Stephen said. +The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one. +If you want it, Stephen said. +Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a +glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns. +He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of +tune with a Cockney accent +O, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME, +DRINKING WHISKY, BEER AND WINE +ON CORONATION, +CORONATION DAY +O, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME +ON CORONATION DAY +Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone, +forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there +all day, forgotten friendship? +He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, +smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So +I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet +the same. A servant too. A server of a servant. +In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan's gowned form +moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its +yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor +from the high barbacans and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of +coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning. +We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you? +Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the +hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open +the inner doors. +Have you the key? a voice asked. +Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked +He howled, without looking up from the fire +Kinch +It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward. +The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set +ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, +looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down +to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he +carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down +heavily and sighed with relief. +I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when ... But, hush Not a +word more on that subject Kinch, wake up Bread, butter, honey. Haines, +come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. +Where's the sugar? O, jay, there's no milk. +Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from +the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet. +What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight. +We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There's a lemon in the +locker. +O, damn you and your Paris fads Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove +milk. +Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly +That woman is coming up with the milk. +The blessings of God on you Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his +chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I +can't go fumbling at the damned eggs. +He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, +saying +IN NOMINE PATRIS ET FILII ET SPIRITUS SANCTI. +Haines sat down to pour out the tea. +I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do +make strong tea, don't you? +Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's +wheedling voice +When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I +makes water I makes water. +By Jove, it is tea, Haines said. +Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling +SO I DO, MRS CAHILL, says she. BEGOB, MA'AM, says Mrs Cahill, GOD SEND +YOU DON'T MAKE THEM IN THE ONE POT. +He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled +on his knife. +That's folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines +of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of +Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind. +He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his +brows +Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of +in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads? +I doubt it, said Stephen gravely. +Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray? +I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the +Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann. +Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight. +Charming he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and +blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming +Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened +rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf +FOR OLD MARY ANN +SHE DOESN'T CARE A DAMN. +BUT, HISING UP HER PETTICOATS ... +He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned. +The doorway was darkened by an entering form. +The milk, sir +Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug. +An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow. +That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God. +To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure +Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker. +The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of +the collector of prepuces. +How much, sir? asked the old woman. +A quart, Stephen said. +He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white +milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a +tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a +messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. +Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her +toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed +about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old +woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an +immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common +cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, +whether he could not tell but scorned to beg her favour. +It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups. +Taste it, sir, she said. +He drank at her bidding. +If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat +loudly, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten +guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with +dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits. +Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked. +I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered. +Look at that now, she said. +Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice +that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman me she +slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is +of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's +likeness, the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be +silent with wondering unsteady eyes. +Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her. +Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines. +Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently. +Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you? +I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the +west, sir? +I am an Englishman, Haines answered. +He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish +in Ireland. +Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the +language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows. +Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill +us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am? +No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the +milkcan on her forearm and about to go. +Haines said to her +Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we? +Stephen filled again the three cups. +Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at +twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three +mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That's a +shilling and one and two is two and two, sir. +Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly +buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his +trouser pockets. +Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him, smiling. +Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick +rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his +fingers and cried +A miracle +He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying +Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give. +Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand. +We'll owe twopence, he said. +Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning, +sir. +She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender chant +HEART OF MY HEART, WERE IT MORE, +MORE WOULD BE LAID AT YOUR FEET. +He turned to Stephen and said +Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring +us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland +expects that every man this day will do his duty. +That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your +national library today. +Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said. +He turned to Stephen and asked blandly +Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch? +Then he said to Haines +The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month. +All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey +trickle over a slice of the loaf. +Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the +loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke +I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me. +Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. +Conscience. Yet here's a spot. +That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol +of Irish art is deuced good. +Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with warmth +of tone +Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines. +Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just +thinking of it when that poor old creature came in. +Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked. +Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the +hammock, said +I don't know, I'm sure. +He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen and +said with coarse vigour +You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for? +Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the +milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think. +I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along +with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes. +I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him. +Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm. +From me, Kinch, he said. +In a suddenly changed tone he added +To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they +are good for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let +us get out of the kip. +He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying +resignedly +Mulligan is stripped of his garments. +He emptied his pockets on to the table. +There's your snotrag, he said. +And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them, +chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and +rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, +we'll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green +boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I +contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of +his talking hands. +And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said. +Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the +doorway +Are you coming, you fellows? +I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out, +Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out with +grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow +And going forth he met Butterly. +Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out +and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and +locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket. +At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked +Did you bring the key? +I have it, Stephen said, preceding them. +He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy +bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses. +Down, sir How dare you, sir +Haines asked +Do you pay rent for this tower? +Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said. +To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder. +They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last +Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it? +Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on +the sea. But ours is the OMPHALOS. +What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen. +No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas Aquinas +and the fiftyfive reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I have +a few pints in me first. +He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his +primrose waistcoat +You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you? +It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer. +You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox? +Pooh Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes. +It's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is +Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own +father. +What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself? +Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in +loose laughter, said to Stephen's ear +O, shade of Kinch the elder Japhet in search of a father +We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is +rather long to tell. +Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands. +The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said. +I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower +and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. THAT BEETLES O'ER +HIS BASE INTO THE SEA, ISN'T IT? +Buck Mulligan turned suddenly. for an instant towards Stephen but did not +speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap +dusty mourning between their gay attires. +It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again. +Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. +The seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the +smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking +by the Muglins. +I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. +The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the +Father. +Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at +them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had +suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a +doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and began +to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice +I'M THE QUEEREST YOUNG FELLOW THAT EVER YOU HEARD. +MY MOTHER'S A JEW, MY FATHER'S A BIRD. +WITH JOSEPH THE JOINER I CANNOT AGREE. +SO HERE'S TO DISCIPLES AND CALVARY. +He held up a forefinger of warning. +IF ANYONE THINKS THAT I AMN'T DIVINE +HE'LL GET NO FREE DRINKS WHEN I'M MAKING THE WINE +BUT HAVE TO DRINK WATER AND WISH IT WERE PLAIN +THAT I MAKE WHEN THE WINE BECOMES WATER AGAIN. +He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward +to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or +wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted +GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE WRITE DOWN ALL I SAID +AND TELL TOM, DIEK AND HARRY I ROSE FROM THE DEAD. +WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE CANNOT FAIL ME TO FLY +AND OLIVET'S BREEZY ... GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE +He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his +winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind +that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries. +Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and +said +We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a +believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of +it somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner? +The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered. +O, Haines said, you have heard it before? +Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily. +You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the +narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a +personal God. +There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said. +Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green +stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it. +Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette. +Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his +sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang +it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk +towards Stephen in the shell of his hands. +Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or +you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a +personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose? +You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible +example of free thought. +He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. +Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My +familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen A wavering line along +the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants +that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him +the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes. +After all, Haines began ... +Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not +all unkind. +After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your +own master, it seems to me. +I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian. +Italian? Haines said. +A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me. +And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs. +Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean? +The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and +the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church. +Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke. +I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think +like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather +unfairly. It seems history is to blame. +The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph of +their brazen bells ET UNAM SANCTAM CATHOLICAM ET APOSTOLICAM ECCLESIAM +the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, +a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope +Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation and +behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and +menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry +Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, +warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the +Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle +African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own +Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. +Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind a +menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the +church, Michael's host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with +their lances and their shields. +Hear, hear Prolonged applause. ZUT NOM DE DIEU +Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines's voice said, and I feel as one. I +don't want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. +That's our national problem, I'm afraid, just now. +Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching businessman, boatman. +She's making for Bullock harbour. +The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain. +There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way +when the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today. +The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for +a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite. +Here I am. +They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on +a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A +young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his +green legs in the deep jelly of the water. +Is the brother with you, Malachi? +Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons. +Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young +thing down there. Photo girl he calls her. +Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure. +Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near +the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water +glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling +over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging +loincloth. +Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines +and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips +and breastbone. +Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of +rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army. +Ah, go to God Buck Mulligan said. +Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily? +Yes. +Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with +money. +Is she up the pole? +Better ask Seymour that. +Seymour a bleeding officer Buck Mulligan said. +He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying +tritely +Redheaded women buck like goats. +He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt. +My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the UBERMENSCH. Toothless Kinch +and I, the supermen. +He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his +clothes lay. +Are you going in here, Malachi? +Yes. Make room in the bed. +The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the +middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a +stone, smoking. +Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked. +Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast. +Stephen turned away. +I'm going, Mulligan, he said. +Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat. +Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped +clothes. +And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there. +Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck +Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly +He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake +Zarathustra. +His plump body plunged. +We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path +and smiling at wild Irish. +Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon. +The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve. +Good, Stephen said. +He walked along the upwardcurving path. +LILIATA RUTILANTIUM. +TURMA CIRCUMDET. +IUBILANTIUM TE VIRGINUM. +The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will +not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go. +A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning +the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a +seal's, far out on the water, round. +Usurper. +You, Cochrane, what city sent for him? +Tarentum, sir. +Very good. Well? +There was a battle, sir. +Very good. Where? +The boy's blank face asked the blank window. +Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as +memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of +excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling +masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then? +I forget the place, sir. B. C. +Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred +book. +Yes, sir. And he said ANOTHER VICTORY LIKE THAT AND WE ARE DONE FOR. +That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a +hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, +leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear. +You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus? +End of Pyrrhus, sir? +I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said. +Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus? +A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them +between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to +the tissue of his lips. A sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud +that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico road, Dalkey. +Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier. +All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at +his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more +loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay. +Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, +what is a pier. +A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A kind of a +bridge. Kingstown pier, sir. +Some laughed again mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench +whispered. Yes. They knew had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. +With envy he watched their faces Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes +their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering +in the struggle. +Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge. +The words troubled their gaze. +How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river. +For Haines's chapbook. Noone here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild +drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A +jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a +clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly +for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too +often heard, their land a pawnshop. +Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not +been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded +them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite +possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing +that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? +Weave, weaver of the wind. +Tell us a story, sir. +O, do, sir. A ghoststory. +Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book. +WEEP NO MORE, Comyn said. +Go on then, Talbot. +And the story, sir? +After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot. +A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of +his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text +WEEP NO MORE, WOFUL SHEPHERDS, WEEP NO MORE +FOR LYCIDAS, YOUR SORROW, IS NOT DEAD, +SUNK THOUGH HE BE BENEATH THE WATERY FLOOR ... +It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. +Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated +out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he +had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a +delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains +about me under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers and in +my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of +brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of +thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is the +soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent form of +forms. +Talbot repeated +THROUGH THE DEAR MIGHT OF HIM THAT WALKED THE WAVES, +THROUGH THE DEAR MIGHT ... +Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything. +What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward. +His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, +having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over +these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips +and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the +tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look +from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the church's +looms. Ay. +RIDDLE ME, RIDDLE ME, RANDY RO. +MY FATHER GAVE ME SEEDS TO SOW. +Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel. +Have I heard all? Stephen asked. +Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir. +Half day, sir. Thursday. +Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked. +They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. +Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling +gaily +A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir. +O, ask me, sir. +A hard one, sir. +This is the riddle, Stephen said +THE COCK CREW, +THE SKY WAS BLUE +THE BELLS IN HEAVEN +WERE STRIKING ELEVEN. +'TIS TIME FOR THIS POOR SOUL +TO GO TO HEAVEN. +What is that? +What, sir? +Again, sir. We didn't hear. +Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence +Cochrane said +What is it, sir? We give it up. +Stephen, his throat itching, answered +The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush. +He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries +echoed dismay. +A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called +Hockey +They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. +Quickly they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks +and clamour of their boots and tongues. +Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an +open copybook. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of +unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. +On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, +recent and damp as a snail's bed. +He held out his copybook. The word SUMS was written on the +headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature +with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent his name and seal. +Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to +you, sir. +Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility. +Do you understand how to do them now? he asked. +Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to +copy them off the board, sir. +Can you do them. yourself? Stephen asked. +No, sir. +Ugly and futile lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's +bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. +But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a +squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from +her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's +prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no +more the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of +rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled +underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven +and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, +with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the +earth, listened, scraped and scraped. +Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by +algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered +askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the +lumberroom the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field. +Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery +of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, +traverse, bow to partner so imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from +the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and +movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the +world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not +comprehend. +Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself? +Yes, sir. +In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a +word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue +of shame flickering behind his dull skin. AMOR MATRIS subjective and +objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him +and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands. +Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My +childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or +lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony +sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts secrets weary of their +tyranny tyrants, willing to be dethroned. +The sum was done. +It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up. +Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered. +He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his +copybook back to his bench. +You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as +he followed towards the door the boy's graceless form. +Yes, sir. +In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield. +Sargent +Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you. +He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the +scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams +and Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. +When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to +him. He turned his angry white moustache. +What is it now? he cried continually without listening. +Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen said. +Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore +order here. +And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice +cried sternly +What is the matter? What is it now? +Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides their many forms +closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed +head. +Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded +leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As +it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart +coins, base treasure of a bog and ever shall be. And snug in their +spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to +all the gentiles world without end. +A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his +rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table. +First, our little financial settlement, he said. +He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It +slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid +them carefully on the table. +Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away. +And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand +moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar whelks and money +cowries and leopard shells and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and +this, the scallop of saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, +hollow shells. +A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth. +Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand. +These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for +shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See. +He shot from it two crowns and two shillings. +Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right. +Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy +haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers. +No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it. +Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols +too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket symbols soiled by greed +and misery. +Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere +and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very +handy. +Answer something. +Mine would be often empty, Stephen said. +The same room and hour, the same wisdom and I the same. Three +times now. Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this +instant if I will. +Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't +know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I +have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? +PUT BUT MONEY IN THY PURSE. +Iago, Stephen murmured. +He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare. +He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, +but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do +you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an +Englishman's mouth? +The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay it seems +history is to blame on me and on my words, unhating. +That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets. +Ba Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He +tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail. +I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I PAID +MY WAY. +Good man, good man. +I PAID MY WAY. I NEVER BORROWED A SHILLING IN MY LIFE. Can you feel +that? I OWE NOTHING. Can you? +Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. +Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. +Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob +Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five +weeks' board. The lump I have is useless. +For the moment, no, Stephen answered. +Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox. +I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We +are a generous people but we must also be just. +I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy. +Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at +the shapely bulk of a man in tartan filibegs Albert Edward, prince of +Wales. +You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I +saw three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine +in '. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the +union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your +communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. +Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in +Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and +armed, the planters' covenant. The black north and true blue bible. +Croppies lie down. +Stephen sketched a brief gesture. +I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I +am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all +Irish, all kings' sons. +Alas, Stephen said. +PER VIAS RECTAS, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it +and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so. +LAL THE RAL THE RA +THE ROCKY ROAD TO DUBLIN. +A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John +Soft day, your honour ... Day ... Day ... Two topboots jog dangling +on to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy. +That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus, +with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press. +Sit down a moment. I have just to copy the end. +He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and +read off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter. +Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, THE DICTATES OF COMMON +SENSE. Just a moment. +He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his +elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard +slowly, sometimes blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error. +Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. +Framed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their +meek heads poised in air lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of +Westminster's Shotover, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, PRIX DE PARIS, +. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, +backing king's colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds. +Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this +allimportant question ... +Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among +the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and +reek of the canteen, over the motley slush. Fair Rebel Fair Rebel Even +money the favourite ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we +hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the +meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange. +Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle. +Again a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a +medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who +seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by +shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the +slain, a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts. +Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising. +He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up. +I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the +foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions +on the matter. +May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of LAISSEZ FAIRE +which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old +industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. +European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the +channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of +agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who +was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue. +I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on. +Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and +virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at +Murzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. +Courteous offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant +question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking +you for the hospitality of your columns. +I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the +next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be +cured. It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is +regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer +to come over here. I am trying to work up influence with the department. +Now I'm going to try publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, +by ... intrigues by ... backstairs influence by ... +He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke. +Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the +jews. In all the highest places her finance, her press. And they are the +signs of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's +vital strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure as we are +standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. +Old England is dying. +He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a +broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again. +Dying, he said again, if not dead by now. +THE HARLOT'S CRY FROM STREET TO STREET +SHALL WEAVE OLD ENGLAND'S WINDINGSHEET. +His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in +which he halted. +A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or +gentile, is he not? +They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see +the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the +earth to this day. +On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting +prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, +uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk +hats. Not theirs these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full +slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew +the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience +to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the +roadside plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew their years of +wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh. +Who has not? Stephen said. +What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked. +He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell +sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me. +History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. +From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle goal. +What if that nightmare gave you a back kick? +The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human +history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God. +Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying +That is God. +Hooray Ay Whrrwhee +What? Mr Deasy asked. +A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. +Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose +tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free. +I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and +many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no +better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years +the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers +to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke, prince of +Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but +not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will +fight for the right till the end. +FOR ULSTER WILL FIGHT +AND ULSTER WILL BE RIGHT. +Stephen raised the sheets in his hand. +Well, sir, he began ... +I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at +this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am +wrong. +A learner rather, Stephen said. +And here what will you learn more? +Mr Deasy shook his head. +Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great +teacher. +Stephen rustled the sheets again. +As regards these, he began. +Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them +published at once. +TELEGRAPH. IRISH HOMESTEAD. +I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors +slightly. +That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, +M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the +City Arms hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see +if you can get it into your two papers. What are they? +THE EVENING TELEGRAPH ... +That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to +answer that letter from my cousin. +Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. +Thank you. +Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like +to break a lance with you, old as I am. +Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back. +He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the +trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. +The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate +toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub +me a new name the bullockbefriending bard. +Mr Dedalus +Running after me. No more letters, I hope. +Just one moment. +Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate. +Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath. +I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of +being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? +No. And do you know why? +He frowned sternly on the bright air. +Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile. +Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly. +A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a +rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his +lifted arms waving to the air. +She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he +stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why. +On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung +spangles, dancing coins. +Ineluctable modality of the visible at least that if no more, thought +through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and +seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust +coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds in bodies. Then he +was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his +sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRO +DI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, +adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if +not a door. Shut your eyes and see. +Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and +shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A +very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six the +NACHEINANDER. Exactly and that is the ineluctable modality of the +audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus If I fell over a cliff that beetles +o'er his base, fell through the NEBENEINANDER ineluctably I am getting on +nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it they do. +My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, NEBENEINANDER. +Sounds solid made by the mallet of LOS DEMIURGOS. Am I walking into +eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea +money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'. +WON'T YOU COME TO SANDYMOUNT, +MADELINE THE MARE? +Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs +marching. No, agallop DELINE THE MARE. +Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I +open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. BASTA I will see if I can +see. +See now. There all the time without you and ever shall be, world +without end. +They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, +FRAUENZIMMER and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet +sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty +mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp +poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence +MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride +Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from +nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, +hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of +all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your +OMPHALOS. Hello Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha nought, +nought, one. +Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon Heva, naked Eve. She had +no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut +vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from +everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin. +Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the +man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her +breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the +ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A LEX ETERNA +stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son +are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring +his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred +heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last euthanasia. With +beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a +widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts. +Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, +waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds +of Mananaan. +I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half +twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile. +Yes, I must. +His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara's or not? My +consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother +Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt +Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell +us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the things I married into +De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, +the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers And skeweyed Walter +sirring his father, no less Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept and no +wonder, by Christ +I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage and wait. They take +me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage. +It's Stephen, sir. +Let him in. Let Stephen in. +A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me. +We thought you were someone else. +In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over +the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the +upper moiety. +Morrow, nephew. +He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the +eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and +common searches and a writ of DUCES TECUM. A bogoak frame over his bald +head Wilde's REQUIESCAT. The drone of his misleading whistle brings +Walter back. +Yes, sir? +Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she? +Bathing Crissie, sir. +Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love. +No, uncle Richie ... +Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky +Uncle Richie, really ... +Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down. +Walter squints vainly for a chair. +He has nothing to sit down on, sir. +He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair. +Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs +here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. +We have nothing in the house but backache pills. +ALL'ERTA +He drones bars of Ferrando's ARIA DI SORTITA. The grandest number, +Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen. +His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, +his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees. +This wind is sweeter. +Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry +you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of +them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's +library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For +whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his +kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the +moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine +faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas father, +furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff DESCENDE, +CALVE, UT NE AMPLIUS DECALVERIS. A garland of grey hair on his comminated +head see him me clambering down to the footpace DESCENDE, clutching a +monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll A choir gives back menace +and echo, assisting about the altar's horns, the snorted Latin of +jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat +with the fat of kidneys of wheat. +And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it. +Dringdring And two streets off another locking it into a pyx. +Dringadring And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own +cheek. Dringdring Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, +invincible doctor. A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his +brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second +bell the first bell in the transept he is lifting his and, rising, heard +now I am lifting their two bells he is kneeling twang in diphthong. +Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were +awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might +not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the +fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet +street. O SI, CERTO Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a +squaw. More tell me, more still On the top of the Howth tram alone +crying to the rain Naked women NAKED WOMEN What about that, eh? +What about what? What else were they invented for? +Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was +young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause +earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot Hray Noone +saw tell noone. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. +Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. +O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply +deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the +world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few +thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like +a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels +that one is at one with one who once ... +The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a +damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the +unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. +Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward +sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden +of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up, +stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel isle of +dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore at the land a maze of dark +cunning nets farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach +a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend wigwams of brown +steersmen and master mariners. Human shells. +He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going +there? Seems not. Noone about. He turned northeast and crossed the +firmer sand towards the Pigeonhouse. +QUI VOUS A MIS DANS CETTE FICHUE POSITION? +C'EST LE PIGEON, JOSEPH. +Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar +MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, +he lapped the sweet LAIT CHAUD with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face. +Lap, LAPIN. He hopes to win in the GROS LOTS. About the nature of women he +read in Michelet. But he must send me LA VIE DE JESUS by M. Leo Taxil. +Lent it to his friend. +C'EST TORDANT, VOUS SAVEZ. MOI, JE SUIS SOCIALISTE. JE NE CROIS PAS EN +L'EXISTENCE DE DIEU. FAUT PAS LE DIRE A MON PRE. +IL CROIT? +MON PERE, OUI. +SCHLUSS. He laps. +My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I +want puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other +devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know PHYSIQUES, CHIMIQUES ET +NATURELLES. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of MOU EN CIVET, fleshpots of +Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone +when I was in Paris BOUL' MICH', I used to. Yes, used to carry punched +tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere. +Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February the prisoner was +seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, +nose. LUI, C'EST MOI. You seem to have enjoyed yourself. +Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget a +dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door +of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. +ENCORE DEUX MINUTES. Look clock. Must get. FERME. Hired dog Shoot him +to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass +buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all +right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a +shake. O, that's all only all right. +You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after +fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt +from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing EUGE EUGE Pretending to speak +broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the +slimy pier at Newhaven. COMMENT? Rich booty you brought back LE TUTU, +five tattered numbers of PANTALON BLANC ET CULOTTE ROUGE a blue +French telegram, curiosity to show +Mother dying come home father. +The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't. +THEN HERE'S A HEALTH TO MULLIGAN'S AUNT +AND I'LL TELL YOU THE REASON WHY. +SHE ALWAYS KEPT THINGS DECENT IN +THE HANNIGAN FAMILEYE. +His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, +along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled +stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is +there, the slender trees, the lemon houses. +Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of +farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air. +Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed +housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne +and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth +CHAUSSONS of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the PUS of FLAN BRETON. +Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled +conquistadores. +Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through +fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his +white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. UN DEMI +SETIER A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at +his beck. IL EST IRLANDAIS. HOLLANDAIS? NON FROMAGE. DEUX IRLANDAIS, NOUS, +IRLANDE, VOUS SAVEZ AH, OUI She thought you wanted a cheese HOLLANDAIS. +Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a +fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his +postprandial. Well SLAINTE Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined +breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained +plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the +Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, +pimander, good shepherd of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes +our common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian +shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. +Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen +Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. VIEILLE OGRESSE with the DENTS +JAUNES. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, LA PATRIE, M. Millevoye, Felix +Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, BONNE A TOUT FAIRE, +who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. MOI FAIRE, she said, TOUS +LES MESSIEURS. Not this MONSIEUR, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a +most private thing. I wouldn't let my brother, not even my own brother, +most lascivious thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious +people. +The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose +tobaccoshreds catch fire a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw +facebones under his peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away, +authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms, +drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed, +wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here. +Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell +you. I'll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love +he prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls +of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward +in the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, +Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations, the +dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short +night in, rue de la Goutted'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the +gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her +outcast man, madame in rue GitleCoeur, canary and two buck lodgers. +Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and +undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a +job one time. MON FILS, soldier of France. I taught him to sing THE BOYS +OF KILKENNY ARE STOUT ROARING BLADES. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice +that. Old Kilkenny saint Canice, Strongbow's castle on the Nore. Goes +like this. O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand. +O, O THE BOYS OF +KILKENNY ... +Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he +them. Remembering thee, O Sion. +He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his +boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air +of seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, +am I? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking +soil. Turn back. +Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in +new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the +barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are +sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep +blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback +chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to +clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when this night comes. +A shut door of a silent tower, entombing theirblind bodies, the +panthersahib and his pointer. Call no answer. He lifted his feet up from +the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My +soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace the +path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting +flood. +The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get +back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the +sedge and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant +in a grike. +A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the +gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. UN COCHE ENSABLE Louis Veuillot called +Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted +here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats. +Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the +past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't get one bang on the ear. I'm the +bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my +steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman. +A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand. +Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be +master of others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther +away, walking shoreward across from the crested tide, figures, two. The +two maries. They have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see +you. No, the dog. He is running back to them. Who? +Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their +bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs +of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of +gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, +hobbling in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of +jerkined dwarfs, my people, with flayers' knives, running, scaling, +hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague and slaughters. Their +blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved among them on the frozen +Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke +to noone none to me. +The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my +enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. TERRIBILIA MEDITANS. +A primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you +pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders live their lives. The +Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's +false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and +Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All +kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved men from +drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked +Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of ... We don't +want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A +boat would be near, a lifebuoy. NATURLICH, put there for you. Would you or +would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. +They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. +I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my +face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see Who's behind me? Out +quickly, quickly Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, +sheeting the lows of sand quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under +my feet. I want his life still to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. +His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his death. I ... With him +together down ... I could not save her. Waters bitter death lost. +A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet. +Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing +on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made +off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a +lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He +turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field +tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide +he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted +barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his +feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, +from far, from farther out, waves and waves. +Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, +soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped +running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again +reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as +they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from +his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a +calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked +round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a +dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on +the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody Here lies poor +dogsbody's body. +Tatters Out of that, you mongrel +The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless +kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He +slunk back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he +lolloped, dawdled, smelt a rock. and from under a cocked hindleg pissed +against it. He trotted forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed +quick short at an unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His +hindpaws then scattered the sand then his forepaws dabbled and delved. +Something he buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand, +dabbling, delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand +again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in +spousebreach, vulturing the dead. +After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open +hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting +it. That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held +against my face. Smiled creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. +Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who. +Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued +feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick +muffler strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed the +ruffian and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and +shellgrit crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face hair trailed. +Behind her lord, his helpmate, bing awast to Romeville. When night hides +her body's flaws calling under her brown shawl from an archway where dogs +have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O'Loughlin's of +Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogues' rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping +dell A shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally's lane that +night the tanyard smells. +WHITE THY FAMBLES, RED THY GAN +AND THY QUARRONS DAINTY IS. +COUCH A HOGSHEAD WITH ME THEN. +IN THE DARKMANS CLIP AND KISS. +Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, FRATE PORCOSPINO. +Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him THY QUARRONS DAINTY +IS. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on +their girdles roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets. +Passing now. +A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I +am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming +sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, +trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her +wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, OINOPA PONTON, +a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign +calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, +ghostcandled. OMNIS CARO AD TE VENIET. He comes, pale vampire, through +storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's +kiss. +Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss. +No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth's kiss. +His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air mouth to her +moomb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, +unspeeched ooeeehah roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring +wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's +letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off. +Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and +scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library +counter. +His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till +the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness +shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with +his augur's rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, +unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. +I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. +Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever +anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere +to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil +of the temple out of his shovel hat veil of space with coloured emblems +hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat yes, that's right. +Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, +see now Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. +You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls do you not think? +Flutier. Our souls, shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, +a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more. +She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue +hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality +of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin +at Hodges Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet +books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through +the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with +a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, +Stevie a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders +and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, +PIUTTOSTO. Where are your wits? +Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch +me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. +Sad too. Touch, touch me. +He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the +scribbled note and pencil into a pock his hat. His hat down on his eyes. +That is Kevin Egan's movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. +ET VIDIT DEUS. ET ERANT VALDE BONA. Alo BONJOUR. Welcome as the flowers +in May. Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the +southing sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal +noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the +tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far. +AND NO MORE TURN ASIDE AND BROOD. +His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs, +NEBENEINANDER. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's +foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I +dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you +girl I knew in Paris. TIENS, QUEL PETIT PIED Staunch friend, a brother +soul Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. His arm Cranly's arm. He +now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all. +In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering +greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float +away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing, chafing against the +low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen a +fourworded wavespeech seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of +waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops +flop, slop, slap bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It +flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling. +Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly +and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water +swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day night by night +lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary and, whispered to, +they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, +awaiting the fullness of their times, DIEBUS AC NOCTIBUS INIURIAS PATIENS +INGEMISCIT. To no end gathered vainly then released, forthflowing, +wending back loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious +men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters. +Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he +said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose +drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising +saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. +There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery +floor. We have him. Easy now. +Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a +spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God +becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed +mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous +offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the +stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun. +A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths +known to man. Old Father Ocean. PRIX DE PARIS beware of imitations. Just +you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. +Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there? +Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, +LUCIFER, DICO, QUI NESCIT OCCASUM. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy +sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself. +He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still. +Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. +By the way next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the +glad new year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman +poet. GIA. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, +gentleman journalist. GIA. My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder. Feel. +That one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with +that money? That one. This. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I +wonder, or does it mean something perhaps? +My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up? +His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn't. Better buy one. +He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, +carefully. For the rest let look who will. +Behind. Perhaps there is someone. +He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through +the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the +crosstrees, homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship. +II +Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He +liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, +liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he +liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of +faintly scented urine. +Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting +her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the +kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel +a bit peckish. +The coals were reddening. +Another slice of bread and butter three, four right. She didn't like +her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the +hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its +spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly +round a leg of the table with tail on high. +Mkgnao +O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire. +The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the +table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my +head. Prr. +Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see +the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, +the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees. +Milk for the pussens, he said. +Mrkgnao the cat cried. +They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we +understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. +Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I +look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me. +Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the +chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens. +Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. +Mrkrgnao the cat said loudly. +She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively and +long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits +narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the +dresser, took the jug Hanlon's milkman had just filled for him, poured +warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor. +Gurrhr she cried, running to lap. +He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped +three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they +can't mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or +kind of feelers in the dark, perhaps. +He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with this +drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday not a good day either for a +mutton kidney at Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better +a pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped +slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To +lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced round him. +No. +On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by +the bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter +she likes in the morning. Still perhaps once in a way. +He said softly in the bare hall +I'm going round the corner. Be back in a minute. +And when he had heard his voice say it he added +You don't want anything for breakfast? +A sleepy soft grunt answered +Mn. +No. She didn't want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer, as +she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must +get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any +little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. +Ah yes of course. Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short +knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that +was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains +enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing. +His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and +his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps stickyback +pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. +The sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely Plasto's high +grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of +paper. Quite safe. +On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In +the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No +use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the +halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped +gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come +back anyhow. +He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number +seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George's church. Be a +warm day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black +conducts, reflects, refracts is it?, the heat. But I couldn't go in +that light suit. Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as +he walked in happy warmth. Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our +daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. +Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east early morning set off at +dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep +it up for ever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a strand, +strange land, come to a city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old +Tweedy's big moustaches, leaning on a long kind of a spear. Wander +through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of carpet +shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged, smoking a coiled +pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented with fennel, +sherbet. Dander along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet +him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among the pillars +priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the +evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches me from her +doorway. She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall +beyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet, colour of Molly's new +garters. Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of those instruments what do +you call them dulcimers. I pass. +Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read in the track +of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What +Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the FREEMAN leader a +homerule sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank +of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch that homerule sun +rising up in the northwest. +He approached Larry O'Rourke's. From the cellar grating floated up the +flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out +whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however just the end +of the city traffic. For instance M'Auley's down there n. g. as +position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular from +the cattlemarket to the quays value would go up like a shot. +Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an +ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he is, sure enough, my +bold Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the +aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off +to a tee with his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I'm going to tell +you? What's that, Mr O'Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians, they'd +only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the Japanese. +Stop and say a word about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor +Dignam, Mr O'Rourke. +Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the +doorway +Good day, Mr O'Rourke. +Good day to you. +Lovely weather, sir. +'Tis all that. +Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the county +Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, +they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then thin of the +competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without +passing a pub. Save it they can't. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three +and carry five. What is that, a bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On +the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the town +travellers. Square it you with the boss and we'll split the job, see? +How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels +of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint +Joseph's National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps +memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee +doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their +joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom. +He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, +polonies, black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened in +his mind, unsolved displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links, packed +with forcemeat, fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm +breath of cooked spicy pigs' blood. +A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish the last. He stood +by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the +items from a slip in her hand? Chapped washingsoda. And a pound and a +half of Denny's sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his +name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New blood. No followers +allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She +does whack it, by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack. +The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with +blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there like a stallfed heifer. +He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets the model farm at +Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter +sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, +blurred cattle cropping. He held the page from him interesting read it +nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A +young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket, the beasts lowing +in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in +hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a +ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their +hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his +will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt swinging, whack by +whack by whack. +The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime +sausages and made a red grimace. +Now, my miss, he said. +She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out. +Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you, +please? +Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went +slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the +morning. Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood +outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed +down his nose they never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails +too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of +disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For another a +constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles lane. They like them sizeable. +Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I'm lost in the wood. +Threepence, please. +His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket. +Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers' pocket and laid them on +the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc +by disc, into the till. +Thank you, sir. Another time. +A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze +after an instant. No better not another time. +Good morning, he said, moving away. +Good morning, sir. +No sign. Gone. What matter? +He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim +planters' company. To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish government +and plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and +construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You +pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with olives, +oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper oranges need artificial +irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your name entered +for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten down and the +balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse , Berlin, W. . +Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it. +He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered +olivetrees. Quiet long days pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in +jars, eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows +the taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons +too. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky +with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in Citron's +basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to +the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild +perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high prices too, +Moisel told me. Arbutus place Pleasants street pleasant old times. Must +be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way Spain, Gibraltar, +Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap +ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them barefoot in soiled +dungarees. There's whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn't see. Chap +you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like that Norwegian +captain's. Wonder if I'll meet him today. Watering cart. To provoke the +rain. On earth as it is in heaven. +A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far. +No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead +sea no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift those +waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it +raining down the cities of the plain Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead +names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the +oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's, clutching a +naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all +the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born +everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead an old +woman's the grey sunken cunt of the world. +Desolation. +Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned +into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins, +chilling his blood age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here +now. Yes, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of +the bed. Must begin again those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. +Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? +Valuation is only twentyeight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur +parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell +the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her +ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes. +Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim +sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a +girl with gold hair on the wind. +Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped and gathered +them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold hand. +Mrs Marion. +Poldy +Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm +yellow twilight towards her tousled head. +Who are the letters for? +He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly. +A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you. And a +letter for you. +He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of her +knees. +Do you want the blind up? +Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her +glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow. +That do? he asked, turning. +She was reading the card, propped on her elbow. +She got the things, she said. +He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly +with a snug sigh. +Hurry up with that tea, she said. I'm parched. +The kettle is boiling, he said. +But he delayed to clear the chair her striped petticoat, tossed soiled +linen and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed. +As he went down the kitchen stairs she called +Poldy +What? +Scald the teapot. +On the boil sure enough a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded and +rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the +kettle then to let the water flow in. Having set it to draw he took off +the kettle, crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump +of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed +hungrily against him. Give her too much meat she won't mouse. Say they +won't eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her +and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He +sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the chipped eggcup. +Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks +new tam Mr Coghlan lough Owel picnic young student Blazes Boylan's +seaside girls. +The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown +Derby, smiling. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Only five she was then. No, +wait four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of +folded brown paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring. +O, MILLY BLOOM, YOU ARE MY DARLING. +YOU ARE MY LOOKINGGLASS FROM NIGHT TO MORNING. +I'D RATHER HAVE YOU WITHOUT A FARTHING +THAN KATEY KEOGH WITH HER ASS AND GARDEN. +Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous +old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the +little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the +parlour. O, look what I found in professor Goodwin's hat All we laughed. +Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was. +He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over then fitted the +teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it? +Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it +upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle. +Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on +the chair by the bedhead. +What a time you were she said. +She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on +the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft +bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of +her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea +she poured. +A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act +of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread. +Who was the letter from? he asked. +Bold hand. Marion. +O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme. +What are you singing? +LA CI DAREM with J. C. Doyle, she said, and LOVE'S OLD SWEET SONG. +Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves +next day. Like foul flowerwater. +Would you like the window open a little? +She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking +What time is the funeral? +Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper. +Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled +drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a +stocking rumpled, shiny sole. +No that book. +Other stocking. Her petticoat. +It must have fell down, she said. +He felt here and there. VOGLIO E NON VORREI. Wonder if she pronounces +that right VOGLIO. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and +lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the +orangekeyed chamberpot. +Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to ask +you. +She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having +wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text +with the hairpin till she reached the word. +Met him what? he asked. +Here, she said. What does that mean? +He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail. +Metempsychosis? +Yes. Who's he when he's at home? +Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek from the Greek. That +means the transmigration of souls. +O, rocks she said. Tell us in plain words. +He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes. The +first night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the +smudged pages. RUBY THE PRIDE OF THE RING. Hello. Illustration. Fierce +Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. +Sheet kindly lent. THE MONSTER MAFFEI DESISTED AND FLUNG HIS VICTIM FROM +HIM WITH AN OATH. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at +Hengler's. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and +we'll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they +metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul +after he dies. Dignam's soul ... +Did you finish it? he asked. +Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the +first fellow all the time? +Never read it. Do you want another? +Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has. +She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways. +Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to +Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation that's the word. +Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body +after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we +all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other +planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past +lives. +The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Bette remind +her of the word metempsychosis. An example would be better. An example? +The BATH OF THE NYMPH over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of +PHOTO BITS Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk +in. Not unlike her with her hair down slimmer. Three and six I gave for +the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs +Greece and for instance all the people that lived then. +He turned the pages back. +Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They +used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for +instance. What they called nymphs, for example. +Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, +inhaling through her arched nostrils. +There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire? +The kidney he cried suddenly. +He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes +against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping +hastily down the stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot +up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the +fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. +Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the +scanty brown gravy trickle over it. +Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He +shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful +into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done +to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one +in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about some young +student and a picnic? He creased out the letter at his side, reading it +slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and +raising it to his mouth. +Dearest Papli +Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me +splendid. Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's +Iovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on +swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. +Will send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all +the beef to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with +a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to +yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs. +There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a +young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or +something are big swells and he sings Boylan's I was on the pop of +writing Blazes Boylan's song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly +Milly sends my best respects. I must now close with fondest love +Your fond daughter, MILLY. +P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby. M. +Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first +birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was +born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old +woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew from +the first poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She +knew at once. He would be eleven now if he had lived. +His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing. +Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL +Cafe about the bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look. +Saucebox. He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after +piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do +worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of cooler tea +to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter again twice. +O, well she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has +happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece +of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. +Vain very. +He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught her +in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was +given milk too long. On the ERIN'S KING that day round the Kish. Damned +old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the +wind with her hair. +ALL DIMPLED CHEEKS AND CURLS, +YOUR HEAD IT SIMPLY SWIRLS. +Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers' pockets, +jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. +Pier with lamps, summer evening, band, +THOSE GIRLS, THOSE GIRLS, +THOSE LOVELY SEASIDE GIRLS. +Milly too. Young kisses the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion. +Reading, lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, +braiding. +A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, +yes. Prevent. Useless can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen +too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips +kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman's lips. +Better where she is down there away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass +the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and +six return. Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or through +M'Coy. +The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper, +nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. +Wants to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. +Has the fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear +with her back to the fire too. +He felt heavy, full then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up, +undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him. +Miaow he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready. +Heaviness hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the +landing. +A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as +I'm. +In the tabledrawer he found an old number of TITBITS. He folded it under +his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft +bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed. +Listening, he heard her voice +Come, come, pussy. Come. +He went out through the backdoor into the garden stood to listen towards +the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid +was in the garden. Fine morning. +He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall. Make +a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure +the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil +like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The +hens in the next garden their droppings are very good top dressing. Best +of all though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those +oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. Dirty +cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner +there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their +drawbacks. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday. +He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the +peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don't remember that. Hallstand +too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago's +shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown +brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder +have I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox +there got away James Stephens, they say. O'Brien. +Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss. +Enthusiast. +He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to get +these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under +the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash +and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered +through a chink up at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his +countinghouse. Nobody. +Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over +on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a +bit. Our prize titbit MATCHAM'S MASTERSTROKE. Written by Mr Philip +Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a +column has been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three. +Three pounds, thirteen and six. +Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but +resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he +allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still +patiently that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not +too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah Costive. One +tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch +him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly +season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat +certainly. MATCHAM OFTEN THINKS OF THE MASTERSTROKE BY WHICH HE WON THE +LAUGHING WITCH WHO NOW. Begins and ends morally. HAND IN HAND. Smart. He +glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his water flow +quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received +payment of three pounds, thirteen and six. +Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for some +proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said +dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her +nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. .l. Did +Roberts pay you yet? .. What had Gretta Conroy on? .. What +possessed me to buy this comb? .. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A +speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot. +Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning +after the bazaar dance when May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the +hours. Explain that morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then +night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head +dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money. +Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell off his breath dancing. No use +humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of music that last night. The +mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her woollen +vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her eyes. It +wouldn't pan out somehow. +Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then black with daggers +and eyemasks. Poetical idea pink, then golden, then grey, then black. +Still, true to life also. Day then the night. +He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. Then +he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled back +the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the +air. +In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his +black trousers the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time +is the funeral? Better find out in the paper. +A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George's +church. They tolled the hour loud dark iron. +HEIGHO HEIGHO +HEIGHO HEIGHO +HEIGHO HEIGHO +Quarter to. There again the overtone following through the air, a third. +Poor Dignam +By lorries along sir John Rogerson's quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past +Windmill lane, Leask's the linseed crusher, the postal telegraph office. +Could have given that address too. And past the sailors' home. He turned +from the morning noises of the quayside and walked through Lime street. +By Brady's cottages a boy for the skins lolled, his bucket of offal +linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of eczema on +her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him +if he smokes he won't grow. O let him His life isn't such a bed of +roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da. Slack +hour won't be many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed the +frowning face of Bethel. El, yes house of Aleph, Beth. And past +Nichols' the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Corny +Kelleher bagged the job for O'Neill's. Singing with his eyes shut. Corny. +Met her once in the park. In the dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name +and address she then told with my tooraloom tooraloom tay. O, surely he +bagged it. Bury him cheap in a whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, +tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom. +In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental +Tea Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets choice blend, +finest quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom +Kernan. Couldn't ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still read +blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent his +right hand with slow grace over his brow and hair. Very warm morning. +Under their dropped lids his eyes found the tiny bow of the leather +headband inside his high grade ha. Just there. His right hand came down +into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card behind the +headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket. +So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and +hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved and read again choice +blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it +must be the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, +cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like +that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in DOLCE FAR NIENTE, not +doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to +quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air +feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. +Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the air. Walk on +roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and cowheel. Where was the chap I +saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on his +back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn't sink if you tried so +thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the +body in the water is equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the volume +is equal to the weight? It's a law something like that. Vance in High +school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. +Cracking curriculum. What is weight really when you say the weight? +Thirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling bodies per second +per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It's the force of +gravity of the earth is the weight. +He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with her +sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded FREEMAN +from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a baton and +tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg. Careless air +just drop in to see. Per second per second. Per second for every second +it means. From the curbstone he darted a keen glance through the door of +the postoffice. Too late box. Post here. Noone. In. +He handed the card through the brass grill. +Are there any letters for me? he asked. +While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting +poster with soldiers of all arms on parade and held the tip of his baton +against his nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer +probably. Went too far last time. +The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a +letter. He thanked her and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope. +Henry Flower Esq, +c/o P. O. Westland Row, +City. +Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket, +reviewing again the soldiers on parade. Where's old Tweedy's regiment? +Castoff soldier. There bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he's a +grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There he is royal Dublin fusiliers. Redcoats. +Too showy. That must be why the women go after them. Uniform. Easier to +enlist and drill. Maud Gonne's letter about taking them off O'Connell +street at night disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith's paper is on +the same tack now an army rotten with venereal disease overseas or +halfseasover empire. Half baked they look hypnotised like. Eyes front. +Mark time. Table able. Bed ed. The King's own. Never see him dressed up +as a fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes. +He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk as if +that would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger +felt its way under the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks. +Women will pay a lot of heed, I don't think. His fingers drew forth the +letter the letter and crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something +pinned on photo perhaps. Hair? No. +M'Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when +you. +Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to? +Hello, M'Coy. Nowhere in particular. +How's the body? +Fine. How are you? +Just keeping alive, M'Coy said. +His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect +Is there any ... no trouble I hope? I see you're ... +O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today. +To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time? +A photo it isn't. A badge maybe. +E ... eleven, Mr Bloom answered. +I must try to get out there, M'Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard it +last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy? +I know. +Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door +of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She stood +still, waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his +pockets for change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for +a day like this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her +hands in those patch pockets. Like that haughty creature at the polo +match. Women all for caste till you touch the spot. Handsome is and +handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The honourable Mrs and Brutus is +an honourable man. Possess her once take the starch out of her. +I was with Bob Doran, he's on one of his periodical bends, and what do +you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway's we were. +Doran Lyons in Conway's. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came +Hoppy. Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath +his vailed eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the +braided drums. Clearly I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight +perhaps. Talking of one thing or another. Lady's hand. Which side will +she get up? +And he said SAD THING ABOUT OUR POOR FRIEND PADDY WHAT PADDY? I said. +POOR LITTLE PADDY DIGNAM, he said. +Off to the country Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces +dangling. Wellturned foot. What is he foostering over that change for? +Sees me looking. Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two +strings to her bow. +WHY? I said. WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM? I said. +Proud rich silk stockings. +Yes, Mr Bloom said. +He moved a little to the side of M'Coy's talking head. Getting up in a +minute. +WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM? He said. HE'S DEAD, he said. And, faith, he +filled up. IS IT PADDY DIGNAM? I said. I couldn't believe it when I heard +it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it in the +Arch. YES, he said. HE'S GONE. HE DIED ON MONDAY, POOR FELLOW. Watch +Watch Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch +A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between. +Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and +the peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace +street hallway Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering the +display of. ESPRIT DE CORPS. Well, what are you gaping at? +Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone. +One of the best, M'Coy said. +The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich +gloved hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker the laceflare of her hat +in the sun flicker, flick. +Wife well, I suppose? M'Coy's changed voice said. +O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks. +He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly +WHAT IS HOME WITHOUT +PLUMTREE'S POTTED MEAT? +INCOMPLETE +WITH IT AN ABODE OF BLISS. +My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet. +Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I'm off that, thanks. +Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness. +My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the +Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth. +That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who's getting it up? +Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread and. +No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens. Dark lady +and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope. +LOVE'S +OLD +SWEET +SONG +COMES LOOVE'S OLD ... +It's a kind of a tour, don't you see, Mr Bloom said thoughtfully. +SWEEEET SONG. There's a committee formed. Part shares and part profits. +M'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble. +O, well, he said. That's good news. +He moved to go. +Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around. +Yes, Mr Bloom said. +Tell you what, M'Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral, +will you? I'd like to go but I mightn't be able, you see. There's a +drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself +would have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name if +I'm not there, will you? +I'll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That'll be all right. +Right, M'Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I'd go if I possibly +could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M'Coy will do. +That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly. +Didn't catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I'd like +my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped corners, +rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the +Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings of it from that +good day to this. +Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has just +got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its +way for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don't you know in +the same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would. Can't he hear +the difference? Think he's that way inclined a bit. Against my grain +somehow. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up +there doesn't get worse. Suppose she wouldn't let herself be vaccinated +again. Your wife and my wife. +Wonder is he pimping after me? +Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured +hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale Aromatic. Clery's Summer +Sale. No, he's going on straight. Hello. LEAH tonight. Mrs Bandmann +Palmer. Like to see her again in that. HAMLET she played last night. Male +impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide. Poor +papa How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in that. Outside the Adelphi in +London waited all the afternoon to get in. Year before I was born that +was sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What is this the right name is? By +Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was always talking about +where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts his fingers on +his face. +Nathan's voice His son's voice I hear the voice of Nathan who left his +father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his +father and left the God of his father. +Every word is so deep, Leopold. +Poor papa Poor man I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at his +face. That day O, dear O, dear Ffoo Well, perhaps it was best for +him. +Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the +hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn't met +that M'Coy fellow. +He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently champing +teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the sweet +oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses Damn all they +know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Too +full for words. Still they get their feed all right and their doss. +Gelded too a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between their +haunches. Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor brutes they +look. Still their neigh can be very irritating. +He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he +carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer. +He passed the cabman's shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies. All +weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. VOGLIO E +NON. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying +syllables as they pass. He hummed +LA CI DAREM LA MANO +LA LA LALA LA LA. +He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted +in the lee of the station wall. Noone. Meade's timberyard. Piled balks. +Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court +with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a +squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A +wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb +them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her. Open it. +And once I played marbles when I went to that old dame's school. She liked +mignonette. Mrs Ellis's. And Mr? He opened the letter within the +newspaper. +A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not +annoyed then? What does she say? +Dear Henry +I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry +you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am +awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called +you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me +what is the real meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home you +poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you. Please +tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the beautiful name you +have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you so often you have no +idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so +bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you +do not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you +naughty boy, if you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do +not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you +all. Goodbye now, naughty darling, I have such a bad headache. today. and +write BY RETURN to your longing +Martha +P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know. +He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell +and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it +because noone can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then +walking slowly forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and there +a word. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you +don't please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we +soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume. Having +read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it back in his +sidepocket. +Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder +did she wrote it herself. Doing the indignant a girl of good +family like me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the +rosary. Thank you not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running +round corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. +Narcotic. Go further next time. Naughty boy punish afraid of words, of +course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time. +Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it. +Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere +pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses +without thorns. +Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in +the Coombe, linked together in the rain. +O, MARY LOST THE PIN OF HER DRAWERS. +SHE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO +TO KEEP IT UP +TO KEEP IT UP. +It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day +typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife +use. Now could you make out a thing like that? +TO KEEP IT UP. +Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or +faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also +the two sluts in the Coombe would listen. +TO KEEP IT UP. +Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there +quiet dusk let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been, +strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper +fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in +the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the +trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her more and +more all. Then a sigh silence. Long long long rest. +Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly +in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, +sank in the dank air a white flutter, then all sank. +Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in +the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure +cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be +made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change +his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A +million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, +eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. +One and four into twenty fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of +barrels of porter. +What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same. +An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach. +Barrels bumped in his head dull porter slopped and churned inside. The +bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, +winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of +liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth. +He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the +porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again +behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy +for a pass to Mullingar. +Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee +S.J. on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the +conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. +The protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the +true religion. Save China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the +heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for +them. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy +with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown +of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks? +Conmee Martin Cunningham knows him distinguishedlooking. Sorry I +didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father +Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going +out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is +he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting +round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it +up like milk, I suppose. +The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, +pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere. +Something going on some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place +to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow +music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the +benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt +at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the +thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a +drop or two are they in water? off it and put it neatly into her mouth. +Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the +next one a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her +mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and +open your mouth. What? CORPUS body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. +Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it +only swallow it down. Rum idea eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals +cotton to it. +He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by +one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in +its corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We +ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and +there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to +melt in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth it's that sort of +bread unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel +happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's called. There's a big +idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First +communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, +same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure of that. Not +so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let off +steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of +oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep +near that confessionbox. Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms +of kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next year. +He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel +an instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace +affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn't know what to +do to. Bald spot behind. Letters on his back I.N.R.I? No I.H.S. +Molly told me one time I asked her. I have sinned or no I have suffered, +it is. And the other one? Iron nails ran in. +Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up +with a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be +here with a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing all the same on +the sly. Their character. That fellow that turned queen's evidence on the +invincibles he used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion +every morning. This very church. Peter Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I am +thinking of. Denis Carey. And just imagine that. Wife and six children +at home. And plotting that murder all the time. Those crawthumpers, +now that's a good name for them, there's always something shiftylooking +about them. They're not straight men of business either. O, no, she's +not here the flower no, no. By the way, did I tear up that envelope? +Yes under the bridge. +The priest was rinsing out the chalice then he tossed off the dregs +smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank +what they are used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage +Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale +aromatic. Doesn't give them any of it shew wine only the other. Cold +comfort. Pious fraud but quite right otherwise they'd have one old booser +worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer the whole +atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is. +Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music. +Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make +that instrument talk, the VIBRATO fifty pounds a year they say he had in +Gardiner street. Molly was in fine voice that day, the STABAT MATER of +Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan's sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, +but don't keep us all night over it. Music they wanted. Footdrill stopped. +Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice against that corner. +I could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the people looking up +QUIS EST HOMO. +Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante seven last +words. Mozart's twelfth mass GLORIA in that. Those old popes keen on +music, on art and statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for +example too. They had a gay old time while it lasted. Healthy too, +chanting, regular hours, then brew liqueurs. Benedictine. Green +Chartreuse. Still, having eunuchs in their choir that was coming it a bit +thick. What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to hear after their own +strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn't feel anything after. +Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh, don't they? Gluttons, tall, +long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One way out of it. +He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about +and bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom +glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up +at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their knees again and he +sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the altar, +holding the thing out from him, and he and the massboy answered each other +in Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began to read off a card +O God, our refuge and our strength ... +Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw +them the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass? +Glorious and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More +interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful +organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants +to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon in +their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I +schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look +down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. +Husband learn to his surprise. God's little joke. Then out she comes. +Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and +Holy Mary. Flowers, incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. +Salvation army blatant imitation. Reformed prostitute will address +the meeting. How I found the Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be +in Rome they work the whole show. And don't they rake in the money too? +Bequests also to the P.P. for the time being in his absolute discretion. +Masses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly with open doors. +Monasteries and convents. The priest in that Fermanagh will case in +the witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for everything. +Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of the +church they mapped out the whole theology of it. +The priest prayed +Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our +safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil may God restrain +him, we humbly pray and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the +power of God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked +spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. +The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The +women remained behind thanksgiving. +Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate +perhaps. Pay your Easter duty. +He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all +the time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a +whh just a whh fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. +Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me +before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He +passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the main door +into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the cold black marble bowl +while before him and behind two worshippers dipped furtive hands in the +low tide of holy water. Trams a car of Prescott's dyeworks a widow in +her weeds. Notice because I'm in mourning myself. He covered himself. How +goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. Better get that lotion made +up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in Lincoln place. +Chemists rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir. +Hamilton Long's, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot churchyard +near there. Visit some day. +He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the +other trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral +affair. O well, poor fellow, it's not his fault. When was it I got it made +up last? Wait. I changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it +must have been or the second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions +book. +The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he +seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher's stone. +The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. +Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character. +Living all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his +alabaster lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid. +Smell almost cure you like the dentist's doorbell. Doctor Whack. He ought +to physic himself a bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow that +picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be +careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test turns blue litmus +paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. +Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the pores or the +phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least expect it. Clever +of nature. +About a fortnight ago, sir? +Yes, Mr Bloom said. +He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the +dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your +aches and pains. +Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then +orangeflower water ... +It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax. +And white wax also, he said. +Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to +her eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my +cuffs. Those homely recipes are often the best strawberries for the +teeth nettles and rainwater oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. +Skinfood. One of the old queen's sons, duke of Albany was it? had only one +skin. Leopold, yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and pimples to make it +worse. But you want a perfume too. What perfume does your? PEAU D'ESPAGNE. +That orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. Pure +curd soap. Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage. +Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did it. Also I +think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water. +Combine business with pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then +all the day. Funeral be rather glum. +Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a +bottle? +No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I'll call later in the day and +I'll take one of these soaps. How much are they? +Fourpence, sir. +Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax. +I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny. +Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you +come back. +Good, Mr Bloom said. +He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, +the coolwrappered soap in his left hand. +At his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and hand said +Hello, Bloom. What's the best news? Is that today's? Show us a minute. +Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove Long cold upper lip. To +look younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am. +Bantam Lyons's yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants +a wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears' +soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling. +I want to see about that French horse that's running today, Bantam +Lyons said. Where the bugger is it? +He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar. +Barber's itch. Tight collar he'll lose his hair. Better leave him the +paper and get shut of him. +You can keep it, Mr Bloom said. +Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum +the second. +I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said. +Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly. +What's that? his sharp voice said. +I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away +that moment. +Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering then thrust the outspread +sheets back on Mr Bloom's arms. +I'll risk it, he said. Here, thanks. +He sped off towards Conway's corner. God speed scut. +Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the +soap in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of +it lately. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large +tender turkey. Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming +embezzling to gamble then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They +never come back. Fleshpots of Egypt. +He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you +of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He +eyed the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park cyclist doubled +up like a cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a +wheel. Then the spokes sports, sports, sports and the hub big college. +Something to catch the eye. +There's Hornblower standing at the porter's lodge. Keep him on +hands might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr +Hornblower? How do you do, sir? +Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather. +Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can't play it here. +Duck for six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the Kildare +street club with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line. +And the skulls we were acracking when M'Carthy took the floor. +Heatwave. Won't last. Always passing, the stream of life, which in the +stream of life we trace is dearer than them all. +Enjoy a bath now clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle +tepid stream. This is my body. +He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of +warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and +limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow +his navel, bud of flesh and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush +floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, +a languid floating flower. +Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking +carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Power stepped in after +him, curving his height with care. +Come on, Simon. +After you, Mr Bloom said. +Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying +Yes, yes. +Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom. +Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to +after him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He passed an arm +through the armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriagewindow at +the lowered blinds of the avenue. One dragged aside an old woman peeping. +Nose whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking her stars she was passed +over. Extraordinary the interest they take in a corpse. Glad to see us go +we give them such trouble coming. Job seems to suit them. Huggermugger in +corners. Slop about in slipperslappers for fear he'd wake. Then getting it +ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Pull it more +to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know who will touch you dead. +Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the nails and the hair. Keep a bit +in an envelope. Grows all the same after. Unclean job. +All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am +sitting on something hard. Ah, that soap in my hip pocket. Better shift +it out of that. Wait for an opportunity. +All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning then +nearer then horses' hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking +and swaying. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds +of the avenue passed and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. +At walking pace. +They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were +passing along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels +rattled rolling over the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook +rattling in the doorframes. +What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows. +Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street. +Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out. +That's a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died out. +All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by +passers. Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the smoother +road past Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in +mourning, a wide hat. +There's a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said. +Who is that? +Your son and heir. +Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across. +The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup +roadway before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, +swerving back to the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. +Mr Dedalus fell back, saying +Was that Mulligan cad with him? His FIDUS ACHATES +No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone. +Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the Goulding +faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of +dung, the wise child that knows her own father. +Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros the +bottleworks Dodder bridge. +Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he +calls the firm. His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was. +Waltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the +landlady's two hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night. +Beginning to tell on him now that backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing +his back. Thinks he'll cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they are. +About six hundred per cent profit. +He's in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a +contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks +all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make +it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his +aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I'll +tickle his catastrophe, believe you me. +He cried above the clatter of the wheels +I won't have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper's +son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Not likely. +He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power's +mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and beard, gravely shaking. +Noisy selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to +hand on. If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the +house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. +Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that +morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs +at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up. +She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a +touch, Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life begins. +Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside +her. I could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent. +Learn German too. +Are we late? Mr Power asked. +Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch. +Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping +Jupiter Ye gods and little fishes Still, she's a dear girl. Soon +be a woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes a woman +too. Life, life. +The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying. +Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said. +He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn't that squint troubling him. Do +you follow me? +He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away +crustcrumbs from under his thighs. +What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs? +Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power +said. +All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed +buttonless leather of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned +downward and said +Unless I'm greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin? +It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said. +Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet +quite clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. +Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly. +After all, he said, it's the most natural thing in the world. +Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak +of his beard gently. +Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He's behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes. +And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked. +At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said. +I met M'Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he'd try to come. +The carriage halted short. +What's wrong? +We're stopped. +Where are we? +Mr Bloom put his head out of the window. +The grand canal, he said. +Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never +got it. Poor children Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. +Shame really. Got off lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles. +Flaxseed tea. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don't +miss this chance. Dogs' home over there. Poor old Athos Be good to Athos, +Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey them in the grave. A +dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined away. Quiet brute. Old men's dogs +usually are. +A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of +shower spray dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a +colander. I thought it would. My boots were creaking I remember now. +The weather is changing, he said quietly. +A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said. +Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There's the sun again coming out. +Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, +hurled a mute curse at the sky. +It's as uncertain as a child's bottom, he said. +We're off again. +The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed +gently. Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard. +Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard taking +him off to his face. +O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear him, +Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of THE CROPPY BOY. +Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. HIS SINGING OF THAT SIMPLE +BALLAD, MARTIN, IS THE MOST TRENCHANT RENDERING I EVER HEARD IN THE WHOLE +COURSE OF MY EXPERIENCE. +Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He's dead nuts on that. And the +retrospective arrangement. +Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Martin Cunningham asked. +I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it? +In the paper this morning. +Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must +change for her. +No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on please. +Mr Bloom's glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the +deaths Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what +Peake is that? is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne's? no, Sexton, +Urbright. Inked characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper. +Thanks to the Little Flower. Sadly missed. To the inexpressible grief of +his. Aged after a long and tedious illness. Month's mind Quinlan. +On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy. +IT IS NOW A MONTH SINCE DEAR HENRY FLED +TO HIS HOME UP ABOVE IN THE SKY +WHILE HIS FAMILY WEEPS AND MOURNS HIS LOSS +HOPING SOME DAY TO MEET HIM ON HIGH. +I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in +the bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled. +Before my patience are exhausted. +National school. Meade's yard. The hazard. Only two there now. +Nodding. Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting +round with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised +their hats. +A pointsman's back straightened itself upright suddenly against a +tramway standard by Mr Bloom's window. Couldn't they invent something +automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow +would lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job +making the new invention? +Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a +crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law +perhaps. +They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the railway +bridge, past the Queen's theatre in silence. Hoardings Eugene Stratton, +Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Could I go to see LEAH tonight, I wonder. I said I. +Or the LILY OF KILLARNEY? Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful +change. Wet bright bills for next week. FUN ON THE BRISTOL. Martin +Cunningham could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or +two. As broad as it's long. +He's coming in the afternoon. Her songs. +Plasto's. Sir Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust. Who was he? +How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow +in salute. +He doesn't see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do? +Who? Mr Dedalus asked. +Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff. +Just that moment I was thinking. +Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the +white disc of a straw hat flashed reply spruce figure passed. +Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right +hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees? +Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes +feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just +looking at them well pared. And after thinking alone. Body getting a bit +softy. I would notice that from remembering. What causes that? I suppose +the skin can't contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. But the +shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of +the dance dressing. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind. +He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant +glance over their faces. +Mr Power asked +How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom? +O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It's a good +idea, you see ... +Are you going yourself? +Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the +county Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the +chief towns. What you lose on one you can make up on the other. +Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now. +Have you good artists? +Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we'll have all +topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in +fact. +And MADAME, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least. +Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and +clasped them. Smith O'Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. +Woman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage +wheeling by Farrell's statue united noiselessly their unresisting knees. +Oot a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his +mouth opening oot. +Four bootlaces for a penny. +Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume +street. Same house as Molly's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for +Waterford. Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning +too. Terrible comedown, poor wretch Kicked about like snuff at a wake. +O'Callaghan on his last legs. +And MADAME. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. +Doing her hair, humming. VOGLIO E NON VORREI. No. VORREI E NON. Looking +at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. MI TREMA UN POCO IL. +Beautiful on that TRE her voice is weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle. +There is a word throstle that expresses that. +His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's goodlooking face. Greyish +over the ears. MADAME smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way. +Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the +woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told +me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty +quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of +rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury's. Or the Moira, was it? +They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator's form. +Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power. +Of the tribe of Reuben, he said. +A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner +of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his spine. +In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said. +Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly +The devil break the hasp of your back +Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as +the carriage passed Gray's statue. +We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly. +His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. He caressed his beard, adding +Well, nearly all of us. +Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions' faces. +That's an awfully good one that's going the rounds about Reuben J and +the son. +About the boatman? Mr Power asked. +Yes. Isn't it awfully good? +What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn't hear it. +There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to send +him to the Isle of Man out of harm's way but when they were both ... +What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it? +Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried +to drown ... +Drown Barabbas Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did +Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils. +No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself ... +Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely +Reuben and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on their +way to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and +over the wall with him into the Liffey. +For God's sake Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead? +Dead Martin Cunningham cried. Not he A boatman got a pole and +fished him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the +father on the quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there. +Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is ... +And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for +saving his son's life. +A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power's hand. +O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin. +Isn't it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly. +One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily. +Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage. +Nelson's pillar. +Eight plums a penny Eight for a penny +We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said. +Mr Dedalus sighed. +Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a laugh. +Many a good one he told himself. +The Lord forgive me Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his +fingers. Poor Paddy I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and +he was in his usual health that I'd be driving after him like this. He's +gone from us. +As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went +very suddenly. +Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart. +He tapped his chest sadly. +Blazing face redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red +nose. Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent +colouring it. +Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension. +He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said. +The best death, Mr Bloom said. +Their wide open eyes looked at him. +No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep. +Noone spoke. +Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents, +temperance hotel, Falconer's railway guide, civil service college, Gill's, +catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At +night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father +Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart. +White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda +corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A +mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. +Dun for a nun. +Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child. +A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's +body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society +pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. +Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it's healthy it's from the mother. +If not from the man. Better luck next time. +Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It's well out of it. +The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle +his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns. +In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said. +But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life. +Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back. +The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added. +Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We +must take a charitable view of it. +They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said. +It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said. +Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham's +large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. +Like Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say. They have no +mercy on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They +used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it +wasn't broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the +riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of a +wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the +furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the +damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh. +Shoulder to the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that night +Dedalus told me he was in there. Drunk about the place and capering with +Martin's umbrella. +AND THEY CALL ME THE JEWEL OF ASIA, +OF ASIA, +THE GEISHA. +He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones. +That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The +room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through +the slats of the Venetian blind. The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy. +Boots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow +streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict +overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold. +No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns. +The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones. +We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said. +God grant he doesn't upset us on the road, Mr Power said. +I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow +in Germany. The Gordon Bennett. +Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith. +As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent +over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody +here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from SAUL. He's as bad +as old Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette The MATER +MISERICORDIAE. Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for +incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady's Hospice for the dying. +Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They look +terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the +spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student +that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He's gone over to the lyingin +hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other. The carriage +galloped round a corner stopped. +What's wrong now? +A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, +slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted +bony croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating +their fear. +Emigrants, Mr Power said. +Huuuh the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks. +Huuuh out of that +Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold +them about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for +old England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter +lost all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a +year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, +soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off the +train at Clonsilla. +The carriage moved on through the drove. +I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the +parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken in +trucks down to the boats. +Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite +right. They ought to. +Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, is to have +municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line +out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and +all. Don't you see what I mean? +O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon +diningroom. +A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added. +Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn't it be more +decent than galloping two abreast? +Well, there's something in that, Mr Dedalus granted. +And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn't have scenes like that when +the hearse capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin on to the road. +That was terrible, Mr Power's shocked face said, and the corpse fell +about the road. Terrible +First round Dunphy's, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup. +Praises be to God Martin Cunningham said piously. +Bom Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy +Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too +large for him. Red face grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up +now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides +decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. +With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all. +Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right. +Dunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. +A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up +here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. +Elixir of life. +But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in +the knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on +where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It +would be better to bury them in red a dark red. +In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse +trotted by, coming from the cemetery looks relieved. +Crossguns bridge the royal canal. +Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his +dropping barge, between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a +slacktethered horse. Aboard of the BUGABU. +Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated +on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of +reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, +Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle +down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the +auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row +me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping +out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing. +Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by lock to +Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown straw +hat, saluting Paddy Dignam. +They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now. +I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said. +Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said. +How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, I suppose? +Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear. +The carriage steered left for Finglas road. +The stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of +land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, +knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence +appealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and +sculptor. +Passed. +On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton's, an old tramp sat, +grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown +yawning boot. After life's journey. +Gloomy gardens then went by one by one gloomy houses. +Mr Power pointed. +That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house. +So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off. +Murdered his brother. Or so they said. +The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said. +Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That's the maxim of +the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent +person to be wrongfully condemned. +They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, +tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully +condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered. +They love reading about it. Man's head found in a garden. Her clothing +consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used. +Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed. +Murder will out. +Cramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way +without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once +with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen. +The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, +rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the +trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain +gestures on the air. +The felly harshed against the curbstone stopped. Martin +Cunningham put out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the +door open with his knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus +followed. +Change that soap now. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket +swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief +pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other +hand still held. +Paltry funeral coach and three carriages. It's all the same. +Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death. +Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. +Simnel cakes those are, stuck together cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. +Who ate them? Mourners coming out. +He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed, +Hynes walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and +took out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy. +Where is that child's funeral disappeared to? +A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, +dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a +granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted. +Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it +with his plume skeowways. Dull eye collar tight on his neck, pressing on +a bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out here every +day? Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for +the protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. +Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour. +Too many in the world. +Mourners came out through the gates woman and a girl. Leanjawed +harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with +dirt and tears, holding the woman's arm, looking up at her for a sign to +cry. Fish's face, bloodless and livid. +The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So +much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the +stiff then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed +with their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the brotherinlaw. +All walked after. +Martin Cunningham whispered +I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom. +What? Mr Power whispered. How so? +His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the +Queen's hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare. +Anniversary. +O God Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself? +He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes +followed towards the cardinal's mausoleum. Speaking. +Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked. +I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily mortgaged. +Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane. +How many children did he leave? +Five. Ned Lambert says he'll try to get one of the girls into Todd's. +A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children. +A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added. +Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed. +Has the laugh at him now. +He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had +outlived him. Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must +outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the +world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you'll soon follow +him. For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who +knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on +a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in +the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. +All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance. +Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It +never comes. One must go first alone, under the ground and lie no more +in her warm bed. +How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven't +seen you for a month of Sundays. +Never better. How are all in Cork's own town? +I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned +Lambert said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy. +And how is Dick, the solid man? +Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered. +By the holy Paul Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald? +Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said, +pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the +insurance is cleared up. +Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front? +Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife's brother. John Henry Menton is +behind. He put down his name for a quid. +I'll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought +to mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world. +How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what? +Many a good man's fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh. +They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood +behind the boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and +at the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy Was he +there when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment +and recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I owe three +shillings to O'Grady. Would he understand? The mutes bore the coffin into +the chapel. Which end is his head? +After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened +light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow +candles at its corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a +wreath at each fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners +knelt here and there in prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font +and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his +pocket and knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on +his left knee and, holding its brim, bent over piously. +A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through +a door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one +hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad's belly. +Who'll read the book? I, said the rook. +They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book +with a fluent croak. +Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. DOMINENAMINE. +Bully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe +betide anyone that looks crooked at him priest. Thou art Peter. Burst +sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him +like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn burst +sideways. +NON INTRES IN JUDICIUM CUM SERVO TUO, DOMINE. +Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem +mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. +Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in +the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad +too. What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of +the place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad +gas round the place. Butchers, for instance they get like raw beefsteaks. +Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh's +lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins +sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes blue. One +whiff of that and you're a doner. +My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That's better. +The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy's +bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and +shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you +were before you rested. It's all written down he has to do it. +ET NE NOS INDUCAS IN TENTATIONEM. +The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be +better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of +course ... +Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed +up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. +What harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a +fresh batch middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in +childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls +with little sparrows' breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing +over them all and shook water on top of them sleep. On Dignam now. +IN PARADISUM. +Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody. +Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something. +The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. +Corny Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted +the coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny +Kelleher gave one wreath to the boy and one to the brotherinlaw. All +followed them out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom came +last folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely at the +ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal wheels +ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt boots +followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres. +The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn't lilt here. +The O'Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him. +Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone. +He's at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O'. But his +heart is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon +Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I'll soon be stretched +beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes. +Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little +in his walk. Mr Power took his arm. +She's better where she is, he said kindly. +I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in +heaven if there is a heaven. +Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to +plod by. +Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely. +Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head. +The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can +do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place. +They covered their heads. +The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think? +Mr Kernan said with reproof. +Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret +eyes, secretsearching. Mason, I think not sure. Beside him again. We are +the last. In the same boat. Hope he'll say something else. +Mr Kernan added +The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more +impressive I must say. +Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another thing. +Mr Kernan said with solemnity +I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. That touches a man's inmost heart. +It does, Mr Bloom said. +Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two +with his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections. +Broken heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood +every day. One fine day it gets bunged up and there you are. Lots of +them lying around here lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps damn the +thing else. The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead. +That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves. Come forth, +Lazarus And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up Last day Then every +fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his +traps. Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in +a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure. +Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side. +Everything went off A, he said. What? +He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman's shoulders. With +your tooraloom tooraloom. +As it should be, Mr Kernan said. +What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said. +Mr Kernan assured him. +Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I +know his face. +Ned Lambert glanced back. +Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the +soprano. She's his wife. +O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven't seen her for some time. +he was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen seventeen +golden years ago, at Mat Dillon's in Roundtown. And a good armful she +was. +He looked behind through the others. +What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn't he in the stationery line? +I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls. +Ned Lambert smiled. +Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper. +In God's name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like +that for? She had plenty of game in her then. +Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads. +John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead. +The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among +the grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their +caps. +John O'Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend. +Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said +I am come to pay you another visit. +My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don't want your +custom at all. +Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin +Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his back. +Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe? +I did not, Martin Cunningham said. +They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The +caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in +a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. +They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy +evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for +Mulcahy from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing +about in the fog they found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt +out the name Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue +of Our Saviour the widow had got put up. +The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He +resumed +And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, NOT A BLOODY BIT LIKE THE +MAN, says he. THAT'S NOT MULCAHY, says he, WHOEVER DONE IT. +Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher, accepting +the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as he walked. +That's all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes. +I know, Hynes said. I know that. +To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It's pure goodheartedness +damn the thing else. +Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. All want to be on +good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O'Connell, real good sort. Keys +like Keyes's ad no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. HABEAS +CORPUS. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write +Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing +to Martha? Hope it's not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better +of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That's the first sign when the hairs +come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey. +Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. +Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might +thrill her first. Courting death ... Shades of night hovering here with +all the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards +yawn and Daniel O'Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used +to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big +giant in the dark. Will o' the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind +off it to conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a +ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I +have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. +Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish +graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young +widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of +pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. +Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the +starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to +do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway. +He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field +after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting +or kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above +ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground +must be oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too trim grass and +edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is. +Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies +growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens +are just over there. It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. +Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy. Every man +his price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable +for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor +and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and six. +With thanks. +I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, +nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot +quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy +kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of +them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are +go on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed +on feed on themselves. +But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply +swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little +seaside gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of +power seeing all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at life. +Cracking his jokes too warms the cockles of his heart. The one about the +bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven a.m. this morning. p.m. +closing time. Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the men +anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know what's in +fashion. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep out +the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers +in HAMLET. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke +about the dead for two years at least. DE MORTUIS NIL NISI PRIUS. Go out +of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. +Read your own obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second +wind. New lease of life. +How many haveyou for tomorrow? the caretaker asked. +Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven. +The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to +trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping +with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its +nose on the brink, looping the bands round it. +Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June. +He doesn't know who is here nor care. +Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh? +Now who is he I'd like to know? Now I'd give a trifle to know who he is. +Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his +lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to +sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only +man buries. No, ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say +Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every +Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it. +O, POOR ROBINSON CRUSOE +HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY DO SO? +Poor Dignam His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of +them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could +invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way. +Ay but they might object to be buried out of another fellow's. They're so +particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. +Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what +it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The +Irishman's house is his coffin. Embalming in catacombs, mummies the same +idea. +Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared +heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. +Death's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the +chapel, that I'll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen. +Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had +one like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was +once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of +mine turned by Mesias. Hello. It's dyed. His wife I forgot he's not +married or his landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him. +The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the +gravetrestles. They struggled up and out and all uncovered. Twenty. +Pause. +If we were all suddenly somebody else. +Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, +they say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away. +Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper. +The boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly +in the black open space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly +caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which will +go next. Well, it is a long rest. Feel no more. It's the moment you feel. +Must be damned unpleasant. Can't believe it at first. Mistake must be +someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I haven't yet. +Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering around you. Would +you like to see a priest? Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all you +hid all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his +lower eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the +soles of his feet yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the +floor since he's doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner's death showing +him a woman. Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of LUCIA. +SHALL I NEVERMORE BEHOLD THEE? Bam He expires. Gone at last. People +talk about you a bit forget you. Don't forget to pray for him. +Remember him in your prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then +they follow dropping into a hole, one after the other. +We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well +and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the +fire of purgatory. +Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do +when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy's warning. +Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma, +poor mamma, and little Rudy. +The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay +in on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. And if he was alive all +the time? Whew By jingo, that would be awful No, no he is dead, of +course. Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have +some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or +a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of +distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well +to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there's no. +The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. +The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had +enough of it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering +themselves without show. Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly +figure make its way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of +his ground, he traversed the dismal fields. +Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he +knows them all. No coming to me. +I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your +christian name? I'm not sure. +L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M'Coy's name too. +He asked me to. +Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the FREEMAN once. +So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne. +Good idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they +know. He died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few +ads. Charley, you're my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, +does no harm. I saw to that, M'Coy. Thanks, old chap much obliged. +Leave him under an obligation costs nothing. +And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was +over there in the ... +He looked around. +Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now? +M'Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don't know who he is. Is that +his name? +He moved away, looking about him. +No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes +Didn't hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of +all the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good +Lord, what became of him? +A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle spade. +O, excuse me +He stepped aside nimbly. +Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over. +A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their +spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath +against a corner the brotherinlaw his on a lump. The gravediggers put +on their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then +knocked the blades lightly on the turf clean. One bent to pluck from the +haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on with +shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead +another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord. The brotherinlaw, turning +away, placed something in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir +trouble. Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just. +The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths, +staying at whiles to read a name on a tomb. +Let us go round by the chief's grave, Hynes said. We have time. +Let us, Mr Power said. +They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr +Power's blank voice spoke +Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled +with stones. That one day he will come again. +Hynes shook his head. +Parnell will never come again, he said. He's there, all that was mortal +of him. Peace to his ashes. +Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, +crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast +eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on +some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does +anybody really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. +Then lump them together to save time. All souls' day. Twentyseventh I'll +be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He keeps it free of +weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his shears clipping. Near +death's door. Who passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it +of their own accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the bucket. +More interesting if they told you what they were. So and So, wheelwright. +I travelled for cork lino. I paid five shillings in the pound. Or a +woman's with her saucepan. I cooked good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country +churchyard it ought to be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas +Campbell. Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren's. +The great physician called him home. Well it's God's acre for them. +Nice country residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to +have a quiet smoke and read the CHURCH TIMES. Marriage ads they never +try to beautify. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. +Better value that for the money. Still, the flowers are more poetical. +The other gets rather tiresome, never withering. Expresses nothing. +Immortelles. +A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the +wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo Not a budge out of him. +Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder. +SillyMilly burying the little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a +daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the grave. +The Sacred Heart that is showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be +sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was +dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this +infliction? Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the basket of +fruit but he said no because they ought to have been afraid of the boy. +Apollo that was. +How many All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed. +As you are now so once were we. +Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, +the voice, yes gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it +in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather. +Kraahraark Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain +hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph +reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after +fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that died +when I was in Wisdom Hely's. +Rtststr A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop +He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. +There he goes. +An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the +pebbles. An old stager greatgrandfather he knows the ropes. The grey +alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. +Good hidingplace for treasure. +Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert +Emmet was buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? Making his rounds. +Tail gone now. +One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the +bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is +meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that +VOYAGES IN CHINA that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. +Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm. +Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime +feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. +Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water. +Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But +being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a +flying machine. Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let +down. Underground communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn't be +surprised. Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he's well dead. +Got wind of Dignam. They wouldn't care about the smell of it. Saltwhite +crumbling mush of corpse smell, taste like raw white turnips. +The gates glimmered in front still open. Back to the world again. +Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was +here was Mrs Sinico's funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And +even scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like that case I read +of to get at fresh buried females or even putrefied with running +gravesores. Give you the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after +death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will haunt you after +death. There is another world after death named hell. I do not like that +other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. +Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their maggoty beds. They +are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds warm fullblooded life. +Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely. +Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, solicitor, +commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office. +Mat Dillon's long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, +the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out +that evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke +of mine the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first +sight. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, laughing. +Fellow always like that, mortified if women are by. +Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably. +Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them. +They stopped. +Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing. +John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving. +There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also. John Henry Menton took +off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care on his +coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head again. +It's all right now, Martin Cunningham said. +John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment. +Thank you, he said shortly. +They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew +behind a few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law. +Martin could wind a sappyhead like that round his little finger, without +his seeing it. +Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. +Get the pull over him that way. +Thank you. How grand we are this morning +IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS +Before Nelson's pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started +for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure, +Palmerston Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines, +Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold's Cross. The hoarse Dublin +United Tramway Company's timekeeper bawled them off +Rathgar and Terenure +Come on, Sandymount Green +Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a +singledeck moved from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided +parallel. +Start, Palmerston Park +THE WEARER OF THE CROWN +Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and +polished. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion +mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received +loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured +and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery. +GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS +Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's +stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float +bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of +Prince's stores. +There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes. +Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to the +TELEGRAPH office. +The door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute +in a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out +with a roll of papers under his cape, a king's courier. +Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the +newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste. +I'll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square. +Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind +his ear, we can do him one. +Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I'll rub that in. +We. +WILLIAM BRAYDEN, +ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT +Red Murray touched Mr Bloom's arm with the shears and whispered +Brayden. +Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a +stately figure entered between the newsboards of the WEEKLY FREEMAN AND +NATIONAL PRESS and the FREEMAN'S JOURNAL AND NATIONAL PRESS. Dullthudding +Guinness's barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an +umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each +step back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus +says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, +neck. +Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered. +The door of Ruttledge's office whispered ee cree. They always build +one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out. +Our Saviour beardframed oval face talking in the dusk. Mary, +Martha. Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights Mario the tenor. +Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said. +Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our +Saviour. +Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his +heart. In MARTHA. +COOME THOU LOST ONE, +COOME THOU DEAR ONE +THE CROZIER AND THE PEN +His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely. +They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck. +A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter +and stepped off posthaste with a word +FREEMAN +Mr Bloom said slowly +Well, he is one of our saviours also. +A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he +passed in through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, +along the now reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation? +Thumping. Thumping. +He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn +packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards +Nannetti's reading closet. +Hynes here too account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump. +WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION +OF A MOST RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS +This morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. +Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His +machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand fermenting. +Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in. +HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT +Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown. +Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member +for College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was +worth. It's the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in +the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the +year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, +barony of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant to +statute showing return of number of mules and jennets exported from +Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story. +Uncle Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr +Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a +lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. +Shapely bathers on golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage +of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. +Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than the Irish. +The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump. +Now if he got paralysed there and noone knew how to stop them they'd +clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and back. +Monkeydoodle the whole thing. Want a cool head. +Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said. +Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him, they say. +The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the +sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over +the dirty glass screen. +Right thanks, Hynes said moving off. +Mr Bloom stood in his way. +If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, +pointing backward with his thumb. +Did you? Hynes asked. +Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him. +Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I'll tap him too. +He hurried on eagerly towards the FREEMAN'S JOURNAL. +Three bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint. +WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK +Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti's desk. +Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember? +Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded. +He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said. +The foreman moved his pencil towards it. +But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants +two keys at the top. +Hell of a racket they make. He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. +Maybe he understands what I. +The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, +began to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket. +Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top. +Let him take that in first. +Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the +foreman's sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the +obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of +it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels various +uses, thousand and one things. +Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew +swiftly on the scarred woodwork. +HOUSE OF KEYES +Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name. +Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on. +Better not teach him his own business. +You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top +in leaded the house of keys. You see? Do you think that's a good idea? +The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched +there quietly. +The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, +the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the +isle of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that? +I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that VOGLIO. But +then if he didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not. +We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design? +I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house +there too. I'll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a +little par calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass licensed +premises. Longfelt want. So on. +The foreman thought for an instant. +We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months' renewal. +A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it +silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching +the silent typesetters at their cases. +ORTHOGRAPHICAL +Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham +forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to +view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a +harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear +under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn't it? Cemetery put in of course on +account of the symmetry. +I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought +to have said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have +said. Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then. +Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its +flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost +human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. +That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its +own way. Sllt. +NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR +The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying +Wait. Where's the archbishop's letter? It's to be repeated in the +TELEGRAPH. Where's what's his name? +He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines. +Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox. +Ay. Where's Monks? +Monks +Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out. +Then I'll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you'll give it a +good place I know. +Monks +Yes, sir. +Three months' renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try +it anyhow. Rub in August good idea horseshow month. Ballsbridge. +Tourists over for the show. +A DAYFATHER +He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed, +spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must +have put through his hands in his time obituary notices, pubs' ads, +speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now. +Sober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I'd say. Wife a good cook +and washer. Daughter working the machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no +damn nonsense. +AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER +He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. +Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice +that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading +backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O +dear All that long business about that brought us out of the land of +Egypt and into the house of bondage ALLELUIA. SHEMA ISRAEL ADONAI ELOHENU. +No, that's the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob's sons. And then the +lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher. +And then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the +dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well. +Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life +is after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems +to see with his fingers. +Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on +to the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch +him out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron's +house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four. +ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP +He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over +those walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy +smell there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door +when I was there. +He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the +soap I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his +handkerchief he took out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the +hip pocket of his trousers. +What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still tram +something I forgot. Just to see before dressing. No. Here. No. +A sudden screech of laughter came from the EVENING TELEGRAPH office. Know +who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it is. +He entered softly. +ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA +The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to +the dusty windowpane. +Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert's +quizzing face, asked of it sourly +Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse? +Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on +OR AGAIN, NOTE THE MEANDERINGS OF SOME PURLING RILL AS IT BABBLES ON +ITS WAY, THO' QUARRELLING WITH THE STONY OBSTACLES, TO THE TUMBLING WATERS +OF NEPTUNE'S BLUE DOMAIN, 'MID MOSSY BANKS, FANNED BY GENTLEST ZEPHYRS, +PLAYED ON BY THE GLORIOUS SUNLIGHT OR 'NEATH THE SHADOWS CAST O'ER ITS +PENSIVE BOSOM BY THE OVERARCHING LEAFAGE OF THE GIANTS OF THE FOREST. What +about that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How's that +for high? +Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said. +Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating +THE PENSIVE BOSOM AND THE OVERARSING LEAFAGE. O boys O boys +And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again +on the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea. +That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don't want to +hear any more of the stuff. +He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and, +hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand. +High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I +see. Rather upsets a man's day, a funeral does. He has influence they say. +Old Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his +greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death written +this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first himself. +Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges Eyre +Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days. +Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia. +Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said. +What is it? Mr Bloom asked. +A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered +with pomp of tone. OUR LOVELY LAND. +SHORT BUT TO THE POINT +Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply. +Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an +accent on the whose. +Dan Dawson's land Mr Dedalus said. +Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked. +Ned Lambert nodded. +But listen to this, he said. +The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was +pushed in. +Excuse me, J. J. O'Molloy said, entering. +Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside. +I beg yours, he said. +Good day, Jack. +Come in. Come in. +Good day. +How are you, Dedalus? +Well. And yourself? +J. J. O'Molloy shook his head. +SAD +Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap. +That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What's in +the wind, I wonder. Money worry. +OR AGAIN IF WE BUT CLIMB THE SERRIED MOUNTAIN PEAKS. +You're looking extra. +Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O'Molloy asked, looking towards the +inner door. +Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He's in +his sanctum with Lenehan. +J. J. O'Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the +pink pages of the file. +Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts +of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and +T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve +like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the +EXPRESS with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on +the INDEPENDENT. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when +they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same +breath. Wouldn't know which to believe. One story good till you hear the +next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. +Hail fellow well met the next moment. +Ah, listen to this for God' sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. OR AGAIN IF WE +BUT CLIMB THE SERRIED MOUNTAIN PEAKS ... +Bombast the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated +windbag +PEAKS, Ned Lambert went on, TOWERING HIGH ON HIGH, TO BATHE OUR SOULS, +AS IT WERE ... +Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God Yes? Is he +taking anything for it? +AS 'TWERE, IN THE PEERLESS PANORAMA OF IRELAND'S PORTFOLIO, UNMATCHED, +DESPITE THEIR WELLPRAISED PROTOTYPES IN OTHER VAUNTED PRIZE REGIONS, FOR +VERY BEAUTY, OF BOSKY GROVE AND UNDULATING PLAIN AND LUSCIOUS PASTURELAND +OF VERNAL GREEN, STEEPED IN THE TRANSCENDENT TRANSLUCENT GLOW OF OUR MILD +MYSTERIOUS IRISH TWILIGHT ... +HIS NATIVE DORIC +The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet. +THAT MANTLES THE VISTA FAR AND WIDE AND WAIT TILL THE GLOWING ORB OF +THE MOON SHINE FORTH TO IRRADIATE HER SILVER EFFULGENCE ... +O Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and onions +That'll do, Ned. Life is too short. +He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy +moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers. +Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An +instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh's +unshaven blackspectacled face. +Doughy Daw he cried. +WHAT WETHERUP SAID +All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot +cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn't he? Why they call +him Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that +chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely. +Entertainments. Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get +a grip of them by the stomach. +The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, +crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes +stared about them and the harsh voice asked +What is it? +And here comes the sham squire himself professor MacHugh said grandly. +Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue the editor said in recognition. +Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink +after that. +Drink the editor cried. No drinks served before mass. +Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned. +Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor's blue eyes roved +towards Mr Bloom's face, shadowed by a smile. +Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked. +MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED +North Cork militia the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We +won every time North Cork and Spanish officers +Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at +his toecaps. +In Ohio the editor shouted. +So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed. +Passing out he whispered to J. J. O'Molloy +Incipient jigs. Sad case. +Ohio the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face. +My Ohio +A perfect cretic the professor said. Long, short and long. +O, HARP EOLIAN +He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking +off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant +unwashed teeth. +Bingbang, bangbang. +Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door. +Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad. +He went in. +What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming +to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder. +That'll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret. +Hello, Jack. That's all right. +Good day, Myles, J. J. O'Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip +limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today? +The telephone whirred inside. +Twentyeight ... No, twenty ... Double four ... Yes. +SPOT THE WINNER +Lenehan came out of the inner office with SPORT'S tissues. +Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O. +Madden up. +He tossed the tissues on to the table. +Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door +was flung open. +Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops. +Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing +urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the +steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air +blue scrawls and under the table came to earth. +It wasn't me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir. +Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There's a hurricane +blowing. +Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he +stooped twice. +Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat +Farrell shoved me, sir. +He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe. +Him, sir. +Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly. +He hustled the boy out and banged the door to. +J. J. O'Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking +Continued on page six, column four. +Yes, EVENING TELEGRAPH here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office. Is +the boss ...? Yes, TELEGRAPH ... To where? Aha Which auction rooms? ... +Aha I see ... Right. I'll catch him. +A COLLISION ENSUES +The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and +bumped against Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue. +PARDON, MONSIEUR, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and making +a grimace. +My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I'm in a +hurry. +Knee, Lenehan said. +He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee +The accumulation of the ANNO DOMINI. +Sorry, Mr Bloom said. +He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O'Molloy +slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a +mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the +doorsteps +WE ARE THE BOYS OF WEXFORD +WHO FOUGHT WITH HEART AND HAND. +EXIT BLOOM +I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk, Mr Bloom said, about this ad +of Keyes's. Want to fix it up. They tell me he's round there in Dillon's. +He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who, +leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand, +suddenly stretched forth an arm amply. +Begone he said. The world is before you. +Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out. +J. J. O'Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan's hand and read them, +blowing them apart gently, without comment. +He'll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his +blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after +him. +Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window. +A STREET CORTEGE +Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr +Bloom's wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a +tail of white bowknots. +Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said, and +you'll kick. O, my rib risible Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk. +Small nines. Steal upon larks. +He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding +feet past the fireplace to J. J. O'Molloy who placed the tissues in his +receiving hands. +What's that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two +gone? +Who? the professor said, turning. They're gone round to the Oval for a +drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night. +Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where's my hat? +He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket, +jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and +against the wood as he locked his desk drawer. +He's pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice. +Seems to be, J. J. O'Molloy said, taking out a cigarettecase in +murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most +matches? +THE CALUMET OF PEACE +He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan +promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J. J. +O'Molloy opened his case again and offered it. +THANKY VOUS, Lenehan said, helping himself. +The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow. +He declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh +'TWAS RANK AND FAME THAT TEMPTED THEE, +'TWAS EMPIRE CHARMED THY HEART. +The professor grinned, locking his long lips. +Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said. +He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him +with quick grace, said +Silence for my brandnew riddle +IMPERIUM ROMANUM, J. J. O'Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than +British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire. +Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling. +That's it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. +We haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell. +THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME +Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We +mustn't be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome, +imperial, imperious, imperative. +He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing +What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow but vile. Cloacae sewers. +The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said IT IS MEET TO BE +HERE. LET US BUILD AN ALTAR TO JEHOVAH. The Roman, like the Englishman who +follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his +foot on our shore he never set it only his cloacal obsession. He gazed +about him in his toga and he said IT IS MEET TO BE HERE. LET US CONSTRUCT +A WATERCLOSET. +Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient ancestors, +as we read in the first chapter of Guinness's, were partial to the running +stream. +They were nature's gentlemen, J. J. O'Molloy murmured. But we have +also Roman law. +And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded. +Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O'Molloy asked. +It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going +swimmingly ... +First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready? +Mr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in +from the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered. +ENTREZ, MES ENFANTS Lenehan cried. +I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by +Experience visits Notoriety. +How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your +governor is just gone. +Lenehan said to all +Silence What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder, +excogitate, reply. +Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and signature. +Who? the editor asked. +Bit torn off. +Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said. +That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken? +ON SWIFT SAIL FLAMING +FROM STORM AND SOUTH +HE COMES, PALE VAMPIRE, +MOUTH TO MY MOUTH. +Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their +shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned ...? +Bullockbefriending bard. +SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT +Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr +Garrett Deasy asked me to ... +O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The +bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth +disease and no mistake The night she threw the soup in the waiter's face +in the Star and Garter. Oho +A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of +Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. +Is he a widower? Stephen asked. +Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the +typescript. Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the +ramparts of Vienna. Don't you forget Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf +von Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian +fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes, +every time. Don't you forget that +The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O'Molloy said quietly, +turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job. +Professor MacHugh turned on him. +And if not? he said. +I'll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one +day ... +LOST CAUSES +NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED +We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us +is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal +to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I +speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim time +is money. Material domination. DOMINUS Lord Where is the spirituality? +Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek +KYRIE ELEISON +A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long +lips. +The Greek he said again. KYRIOS Shining word The vowels the Semite +and the Saxon know not. KYRIE The radiance of the intellect. I ought to +profess Greek, the language of the mind. KYRIE ELEISON The closetmaker +and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege +subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar +and of the empire of the spirit, not an IMPERIUM, that went under with the +Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled +by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. +Loyal to a lost cause. +He strode away from them towards the window. +They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they +always fell. +Boohoo Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in +the latter half of the MATINEE. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus +He whispered then near Stephen's ear +LENEHAN'S LIMERICK +THERE'S A PONDEROUS PUNDIT MACHUGH +WHO WEARS GOGGLES OF EBONY HUE. +AS HE MOSTLY SEES DOUBLE +TO WEAR THEM WHY TROUBLE? +I CAN'T SEE THE JOE MILLER. CAN YOU? +In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead. +Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket. +That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all +right. +Lenehan extended his hands in protest. +But my riddle he said. What opera is like a railwayline? +Opera? Mr O'Madden Burke's sphinx face reriddled. +Lenehan announced gladly +THE ROSE OF CASTILE. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee +He poked Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke +fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp. +Help he sighed. I feel a strong weakness. +Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling +tissues. +The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across +Stephen's and Mr O'Madden Burke's loose ties. +Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards. +Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O'Molloy said in quiet +mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you? +You look as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff. +OMNIUM GATHERUM +We were only thinking about it, Stephen said. +All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics ... +The turf, Lenehan put in. +Literature, the press. +If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of advertisement. +And Madam Bloom, Mr O'Madden Burke added. The vocal muse. Dublin's +prime favourite. +Lenehan gave a loud cough. +Ahem he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air I caught a +cold in the park. The gate was open. +YOU CAN DO IT +The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen's shoulder. +I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in +it. You can do it. I see it in your face. IN THE LEXICON OF YOUTH ... +See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer. +Foot and mouth disease the editor cried in scornful invective. Great +nationalist meeting in BorrisinOssory. All balls Bulldosing the public +Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. +Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy. +We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O'Madden Burke said. +Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare. +He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O'Molloy said. +THE GREAT GALLAHER +You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis. +Wait a minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when +he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, +that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his +mark? I'll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. +That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in +the Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose. I'll show you. +He pushed past them to the files. +Look at here, he said turning. The NEW YORK WORLD cabled for a special. +Remember that time? +Professor MacHugh nodded. +NEW YORK WORLD, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat. +Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Joe Brady and the +rest of them. Where SkintheGoat drove the car. Whole route, see? +SkintheGoat, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that +cabman's shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me. +You know Holohan? +Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said. +And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for +the corporation. A night watchman. +Stephen turned in surprise. +Gumley? he said. You don't say so? A friend of my father's, is it? +Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind +the stones, see they don't run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius +Gallaher do? I'll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have +you WEEKLY FREEMAN of March? Right. Have you got that? +He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point. +Take page four, advertisement for Bransome's coffee, let us say. Have +you got that? Right. +The telephone whirred. +A DISTANT VOICE +I'll answer it, the professor said, going. +B is parkgate. Good. +His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating. +T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon +gate. +The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock's wattles. An illstarched +dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his +waistcoat. +Hello? EVENING TELEGRAPH here ... Hello?... Who's there? ... +Yes ... Yes ... Yes. +F to P is the route SkintheGoat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore, +Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that? +X is Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street. +The professor came to the inner door. +Bloom is at the telephone, he said. +Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy's publichouse, +see? +CLEVER, VERY +Clever, Lenehan said. Very. +Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody +history. +Nightmare from which you will never awake. +I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the +besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and +myself. +Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing +Madam, I'm Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba. +History Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince's street was +there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an +advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg +up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the STAR. +Now he's got in with Blumenfeld. That's press. That's talent. Pyatt He +was all their daddies +The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the +brotherinlaw of Chris Callinan. +Hello? ... Are you there? ... Yes, he's here still. Come across +yourself. +Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried. +He flung the pages down. +Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke. +Very smart, Mr O'Madden Burke said. +Professor MacHugh came from the inner office. +Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers +were up before the recorder ... +O yes, J. J. O'Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home +through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone +last year and thought she'd buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be +a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or SkintheGoat. +Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine +They're only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said. +Psha Press and the bar Where have you a man now at the bar like those +fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O'Hagan. Eh? +Ah, bloody nonsense. Psha Only in the halfpenny place. +His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain. +Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did +you write it then? +RHYMES AND REASONS +Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? +Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes two men dressed +the same, looking the same, two by two. +. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .LA TUA PACE +. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .CHE PARLAR TI PIACE +. . . . .MENTREM CHE IL VENTO, COME FA, SI TACE. +He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in +russet, entwining, PER L'AER PERSO, in mauve, in purple, QUELLA PACIFICA +ORIAFIAMMA, gold of oriflamme, DI RIMIRAR FE PIU ARDENTI. But I old men, +penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night mouth south tomb womb. +Speak up for yourself, Mr O'Madden Burke said. +SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY ... +J. J. O'Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage. +My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false +construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the +third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with +you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and +Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, +Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery +guttersheet not to mention PADDY KELLY'S BUDGET, PUE'S OCCURRENCES and our +watchful friend THE SKIBBEREEN EAGLE. Why bring in a master of forensic +eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof. +LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE +Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his +face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established . Dr Lucas. +Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha +Well, J. J. O'Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example. +Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in +his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe. +He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only +for ... But no matter. +J. J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly +One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life +fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, +the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him. +AND IN THE PORCHES OF MINE EAR DID POUR. +By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the +other story, beast with two backs? +What was that? the professor asked. +ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM +He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O'Molloy said, of Roman justice +as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the LEX TALIONIS. And he cited +the Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican. +Ha. +A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence +Pause. J. J. O'Molloy took out his cigarettecase. +False lull. Something quite ordinary. +Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar. +I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that +it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, +that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives. +A POLISHED PERIOD +J. J. O'Molloy resumed, moulding his words +He said of it THAT STONY EFFIGY IN FROZEN MUSIC, HORNED AND TERRIBLE, +OF THE HUMAN FORM DIVINE, THAT ETERNAL SYMBOL OF WISDOM AND OF PROPHECY +WHICH, IF AUGHT THAT THE IMAGINATION OR THE HAND OF SCULPTOR HAS WROUGHT +IN MARBLE OF SOULTRANSFIGURED AND OF SOULTRANSFIGURING DESERVES TO LIVE, +DESERVES TO LIVE. +His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall. +Fine Myles Crawford said at once. +The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke said. +You like it? J. J. O'Molloy asked Stephen. +Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. +He took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O'Molloy offered his case to +Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his +trophy, saying +Muchibus thankibus. +A MAN OF HIGH MORALE +Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O'Molloy said to +Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush +poets A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a +nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer +that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about +planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling +A. E.'s leg. He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis. +Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he +say about me? Don't ask. +No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside. +Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever +heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical +society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had +spoken and the paper under debate was an essay new for those days, +advocating the revival of the Irish tongue. +He turned towards Myles Crawford and said +You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his +discourse. +He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O'Molloy said, rumour has it, on +the Trinity college estates commission. +He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child's +frock. Go on. Well? +It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, +full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not +say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the +new movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore +worthless. +He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an +outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and +ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus. +IMPROMPTU +In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O'Molloy +Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had +prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one +shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy +beard round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he +looked though he was not a dying man. +His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O'Molloy's towards +Stephen's face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed +linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. +Still seeking, he said +When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. +Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these. +He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more. +Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet. +He began +MR CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN GREAT WAS MY ADMIRATION IN LISTENING +TO THE REMARKS ADDRESSED TO THE YOUTH OF IRELAND A MOMENT SINCE BY MY +LEARNED FRIEND. IT SEEMED TO ME THAT I HAD BEEN TRANSPORTED INTO A COUNTRY +FAR AWAY FROM THIS COUNTRY, INTO AN AGE REMOTE FROM THIS AGE, THAT I STOOD +IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND THAT I WAS LISTENING TO THE SPEECH OF SOME HIGHPRIEST +OF THAT LAND ADDRESSED TO THE YOUTHFUL MOSES. +His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes +ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our +crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at +it yourself? +AND IT SEEMED TO ME THAT I HEARD THE VOICE OF THAT EGYPTIAN HIGHPRIEST +RAISED IN A TONE OF LIKE HAUGHTINESS AND LIKE PRIDE. I HEARD HIS WORDS AND +THEIR MEANING WAS REVEALED TO ME. +FROM THE FATHERS +It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are +corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were +good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you That's saint Augustine. +WHY WILL YOU JEWS NOT ACCEPT OUR CULTURE, OUR RELIGION AND OUR +LANGUAGE? YOU ARE A TRIBE OF NOMAD HERDSMEN WE ARE A MIGHTY PEOPLE. YOU +HAVE NO CITIES NOR NO WEALTH OUR CITIES ARE HIVES OF HUMANITY AND OUR +GALLEYS, TRIREME AND QUADRIREME, LADEN WITH ALL MANNER MERCHANDISE FURROW +THE WATERS OF THE KNOWN GLOBE. YOU HAVE BUT EMERGED FROM PRIMITIVE +CONDITIONS WE HAVE A LITERATURE, A PRIESTHOOD, AN AGELONG HISTORY AND A +POLITY. +Nile. +Child, man, effigy. +By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes a man +supple in combat stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone. +YOU PRAY TO A LOCAL AND OBSCURE IDOL OUR TEMPLES, MAJESTIC AND +MYSTERIOUS, ARE THE ABODES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS, OF HORUS AND AMMON RA. +YOURS SERFDOM, AWE AND HUMBLENESS OURS THUNDER AND THE SEAS. ISRAEL IS +WEAK AND FEW ARE HER CHILDREN EGYPT IS AN HOST AND TERRIBLE ARE HER ARMS. +VAGRANTS AND DAYLABOURERS ARE YOU CALLED THE WORLD TREMBLES AT OUR NAME. +A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it +boldly +BUT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HAD THE YOUTHFUL MOSES LISTENED TO AND +ACCEPTED THAT VIEW OF LIFE, HAD HE BOWED HIS HEAD AND BOWED HIS WILL AND +BOWED HIS SPIRIT BEFORE THAT ARROGANT ADMONITION HE WOULD NEVER HAVE +BROUGHT THE CHOSEN PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR HOUSE OF BONDAGE, NOR FOLLOWED THE +PILLAR OF THE CLOUD BY DAY. HE WOULD NEVER HAVE SPOKEN WITH THE ETERNAL +AMID LIGHTNINGS ON SINAI'S MOUNTAINTOP NOR EVER HAVE COME DOWN WITH THE +LIGHT OF INSPIRATION SHINING IN HIS COUNTENANCE AND BEARING IN HIS ARMS +THE TABLES OF THE LAW, GRAVEN IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE OUTLAW. +He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence. +OMINOUSFOR HIM +J. J. O'Molloy said not without regret +And yet he died without having entered the land of promise. +A suddenatthemomentthoughfromlingeringillness +oftenpreviouslyexpectorateddemise, Lenehan added. And with a +great future behind him. +The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and +pattering up the staircase. +That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted. Gone with the wind. +Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles of ears of porches. +The tribune's words, howled and scattered to the four winds. A people +sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all that ever +anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him me no more. +I have money. +Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I +suggest that the house do now adjourn? +You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr +O'Madden Burke asked. 'Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug, +metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry. +That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour +say ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which +particular boosing shed? ... My casting vote is Mooney's +He led the way, admonishing +We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, +we will not. By no manner of means. +Mr O'Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally's lunge of his +umbrella +Lay on, Macduff +Chip of the old block the editor cried, clapping Stephen on the +shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys? +He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets. +Foot and mouth. I know. That'll be all right. That'll go in. Where are +they? That's all right. +He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office. +LET US HOPE +J. J. O'Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen +I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment. +He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him. +Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn't it? It has +the prophetic vision. FUIT ILIUM The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this +world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today. +The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and +rushed out into the street, yelling +Racing special +Dublin. I have much, much to learn. +They turned to the left along Abbey street. +I have a vision too, Stephen said. +Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will +follow. +Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran +Racing special +DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN +Dubliners. +Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty +and fiftythree years in Fumbally's lane. +Where is that? the professor asked. +Off Blackpitts, Stephen said. +Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face +glistering tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records. +Quicker, darlint +On now. Dare it. Let there be life. +They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson's pillar. +They save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They +shake out the threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies with +the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in +coppers. They put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their +umbrellas for fear it may come on to rain. +Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said. +LIFE ON THE RAW +They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at +the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins, +proprietress ... They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at +the foot of Nelson's pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give +two threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to waddle +slowly up the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid +of the dark, panting, one asking the other have you the brawn, praising +God and the Blessed Virgin, threatening to come down, peeping at the +airslits. Glory be to God. They had no idea it was that high. +Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns +has the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady +who got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a +crubeen and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday. +Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can see +them. What's keeping our friend? +He turned. +A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in +all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them +Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, +talking with J. J. O'Molloy. +Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm. +He set off again to walk by Stephen's side. +RETURN OF BLOOM +Yes, he said. I see them. +Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the +offices of the IRISH CATHOLIC AND DUBLIN PENNY JOURNAL, called +Mr Crawford A moment +TELEGRAPH Racing special +What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace. +A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom's face +Terrible tragedy in Rathmines A child bit by a bellows +INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR +Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps, +puffing, and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes +just now. He'll give a renewal for two months, he says. After he'll see. +But he wants a par to call attention in the TELEGRAPH too, the Saturday +pink. And he wants it copied if it's not too late I told councillor +Nannetti from the KILKENNY PEOPLE. I can have access to it in the national +library. House of keys, don't you see? His name is Keyes. It's a play on +the name. But he practically promised he'd give the renewal. But he wants +just a little puff. What will I tell him, Mr Crawford? +K.M.A. +Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing out +his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable. +A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm. +Lenehan's yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is +that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him +today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck +somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown? +Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I +suppose it's worth a short par. He'd give the ad, I think. I'll tell +him ... +K.M.R.I.A. +He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his +shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him. +While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he strode +on jerkily. +RAISING THE WIND +NULLA BONA, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I'm up to +here. I've been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to +back a bill for me no later than last week. Sorry, Jack. You must take the +will for the deed. With a heart and a half if I could raise the wind +anyhow. +J. J. O'Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught +up on the others and walked abreast. +When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty +fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the +railings. +Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old +Dublin women on the top of Nelson's pillar. +SOME COLUMN +THAT'S WHAT WADDLER ONE SAID +That's new, Myles Crawford said. That's copy. Out for the waxies +Dargle. Two old trickies, what? +But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see the +roofs and argue about where the different churches are Rathmines' blue +dome, Adam and Eve's, saint Laurence O'Toole's. But it makes them giddy to +look so they pull up their skirts ... +THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES +Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We're in the +archdiocese here. +And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue +of the onehandled adulterer. +Onehandled adulterer the professor cried. I like that. I see the idea. +I see what you mean. +DAMES DONATE DUBLIN'S CITS SPEEDPILLS +VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF +It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too +tired to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between +them and eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with their +handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting +the plumstones slowly out between the railings. +He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr O'Madden +Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards Mooney's. +Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse. +SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE ON +PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS. ITHACANS +VOW PEN IS CHAMP. +You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of +Gorgias, the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were +bitterer against others or against himself. He was the son of a noble and +a bondwoman. And he wrote a book in which he took away the palm of beauty +from Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope. +Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich. +They made ready to cross O'Connell street. +HELLO THERE, CENTRAL +At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless +trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham, +Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and +Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines, +all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery +waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water floats with +rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn, rapidly. +WHAT?AND LIKEWISEWHERE? +But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the +plums? +VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. +SOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES. +Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to +reflect. Call it, let me see. Call it DEUS NOBIS HAEC OTIA FECIT. +No, Stephen said. I call it A PISGAH SIGHT OF PALESTINE OR THE PARABLE +OF THE PLUMS. +I see, the professor said. +He laughed richly. +I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land. We +gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O'Molloy. +HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY +J. J. O'Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and +held his peace. +I see, the professor said. +He halted on sir John Gray's pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson +through the meshes of his wry smile. +DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING +FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES, FLO +WANGLESYET CAN YOU BLAME THEM? +Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must +say. +Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty's +truth was known. +Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl +shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. +Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty +the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes white. +A sombre Y.M.C.A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet +fumes of Graham Lemon's, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr Bloom. +Heart to heart talks. +Bloo ... Me? No. +Blood of the Lamb. +His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All are +washed in the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen, +martyr, war, foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burntoffering, +druids' altars. Elijah is coming. Dr John Alexander Dowie restorer of the +church in Zion is coming. +IS COMING IS COMING IS COMING +ALL HEARTILY WELCOME. +Paying game. Torry and Alexander last year. Polygamy. His wife will +put the stopper on that. Where was that ad some Birmingham firm the +luminous crucifix. Our Saviour. Wake up in the dead of night and see him +on the wall, hanging. Pepper's ghost idea. Iron nails ran in. +Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for +instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the +pantry in the kitchen. Don't like all the smells in it waiting to rush +out. What was it she wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. Before +Rudy was born. The phosphorescence, that bluey greeny. Very good for the +brain. +From Butler's monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor's +walk. Dedalus' daughter there still outside Dillon's auctionrooms. Must be +selling off some old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from the father. +Lobbing about waiting for him. Home always breaks up when the mother +goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth every year almost. That's in their +theology or the priest won't give the poor woman the confession, the +absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear such an idea? Eat you +out of house and home. No families themselves to feed. Living on the fat +of the land. Their butteries and larders. I'd like to see them do the +black fast Yom Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for fear he'd +collapse on the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellows if you could +pick it out of her. Never pick it out of her. Like getting l.s.d. out of +him. Does himself well. No guests. All for number one. Watching his water. +Bring your own bread and butter. His reverence mum's the word. +Good Lord, that poor child's dress is in flitters. Underfed she looks +too. Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It's after they feel it. +Proof of the pudding. Undermines the constitution. +As he set foot on O'Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up +from the parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea air sours +it, I heard. Be interesting some day get a pass through Hancock to see the +brewery. Regular world in itself. Vats of porter wonderful. Rats get in +too. Drink themselves bloated as big as a collie floating. Dead drunk on +the porter. Drink till they puke again like christians. Imagine drinking +that Rats vats. Well, of course, if we knew all the things. +Looking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the gaunt +quaywalls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down? +Reuben J's son must have swallowed a good bellyful of that sewage. One and +eightpence too much. Hhhhm. It's the droll way he comes out with the +things. Knows how to tell a story too. +They wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait. +He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo +feet per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of +swells, floated under by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the +day I threw that stale cake out of the Erin's King picked it up in the +wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping. +THE HUNGRY FAMISHED GULL +FLAPS O'ER THE WATERS DULL. +That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has +no rhymes blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts. +Solemn. +HAMLET, I AM THY FATHER'S SPIRIT +DOOMED FOR A CERTAIN TIME TO WALK THE EARTH. +Two apples a penny Two for a penny +His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand. +Australians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels polishes them up +with a rag or a handkerchief. +Wait. Those poor birds. +He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury +cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down +into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from +their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel. +Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his +hands. They never expected that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh +they have, all seabirds, gulls, seagoose. Swans from Anna Liffey swim +down here sometimes to preen themselves. No accounting for tastes. +Wonder what kind is swanmeat. Robinson Crusoe had to live on them. +They wheeled flapping weakly. I'm not going to throw any more. +Penny quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot +and mouth disease too. If you cram a turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes +like that. Eat pig like pig. But then why is it that saltwater fish are +not salty? How is that? +His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at anchor +on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board. +KINO'S +TROUSERS +Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can +you own water really? It's always flowing in a stream, never the same, +which in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All kinds +of places are good for ads. That quack doctor for the clap used to be +stuck up in all the greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly confidential. +Dr Hy Franks. Didn't cost him a red like Maginni the dancing master self +advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or stick them up himself for +that matter on the q. t. running in to loosen a button. Flybynight. Just +the place too. POST NO BILLS. POST PILLS. Some chap with a dose +burning him. +If he ...? +O +Eh? +No ... No. +No, no. I don't believe it. He wouldn't surely? +No, no. +Mr Bloom moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about +that. After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time. +Fascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball's. Parallax. I never +exactly understood. There's a priest. Could ask him. Par it's Greek +parallel, parallax. Met him pike hoses she called it till I told her about +the transmigration. O rocks +Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballastoffice. She's +right after all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the +sound. She's not exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was +thinking. Still, I don't know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a base +barreltone voice. He has legs like barrels and you'd think he was singing +into a barrel. Now, isn't that wit. They used to call him big Ben. Not +half as witty as calling him base barreltone. Appetite like an albatross. +Get outside of a baron of beef. Powerful man he was at stowing away number +one Bass. Barrel of Bass. See? It all works out. +A procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched slowly towards +him along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like +that priest they are this morning we have sinned we have suffered. He +read the scarlet letters on their five tall white hats H. E. L. Y. S. +Wisdom Hely's. Y lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under his +foreboard, crammed it into his mouth and munched as he walked. Our staple +food. Three bob a day, walking along the gutters, street after street. +Just keep skin and bone together, bread and skilly. They are not Boyl +no, M Glade's men. Doesn't bring in any business either. I suggested +to him about a transparent showcart with two smart girls sitting +inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blottingpaper. I bet that +would have caught on. Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once. +Everyone dying to know what she's writing. Get twenty of them round you +if you stare at nothing. Have a finger in the pie. Women too. Curiosity. +Pillar of salt. Wouldn't have it of course because he didn't think +of it himself first. Or the inkbottle I suggested with a false stain +of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like Plumtree's potted under +the obituaries, cold meat department. You can't lick 'em. What? Our +envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can't stop, Robinson, +I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser KANSELL, +sold by Hely's Ltd, Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am. +Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla +convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her +small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. +Very hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. I disturbed her at her +devotions that morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world. +Our great day, she said. Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name +too caramel. She knew I, I think she knew by the way she. If she had +married she would have changed. I suppose they really were short of +money. Fried everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them. +My heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and +out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker's +daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire. +He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by. +Rover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year +Phil Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait was in Thom's. +Got the job in Wisdom Hely's year we married. Six years. Ten years ago +ninetyfour he died yes that's right the big fire at Arnott's. Val Dillon +was lord mayor. The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O'Reilly emptying the +port into his soup before the flag fell. Bobbob lapping it for the inner +alderman. Couldn't hear what the band played. For what we have already +received may the Lord make us. Milly was a kiddy then. Molly had that +elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored with selfcovered +buttons. She didn't like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore +choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old Goodwin's tall hat done up +with some sticky stuff. Flies' picnic too. Never put a dress on her back +like it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to +plump it out well. Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after her. +Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red +wallpaper. Dockrell's, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly's tubbing night. +American soap I bought elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny +she looked soaped all over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa's +daguerreotype atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste. +He walked along the curbstone. +Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was +always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in +Citron's saint Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is +getting. Pen ...? Of course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably. +Well, if he couldn't remember the dayfather's name that he sees every day. +Bartell d'Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home +after practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her that +song WINDS THAT BLOW FROM THE SOUTH. +Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting +on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin's concert in the supperroom +or oakroom of the Mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew +out of my hand against the High school railings. Lucky it didn't. Thing +like that spoils the effect of a night for her. Professor Goodwin linking +her in front. Shaky on his pins, poor old sot. His farewell concerts. +Positively last appearance on any stage. May be for months and may be for +never. Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner +of Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo Blew up all her skirts and +her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind. +Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces +of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the +mulled rum. Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the +busk of her stays white. +Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from +her. Always liked to let her self out. Sitting there after till near two +taking out her hairpins. Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy. +That was the night ... +O, Mr Bloom, how do you do? +O, how do you do, Mrs Breen? +No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven't seen her for ages. +In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily. Milly has a position down in +Mullingar, you know. +Go away Isn't that grand for her? +Yes. In a photographer's there. Getting on like a house on fire. How are +all your charges? +All on the baker's list, Mrs Breen said. +How many has she? No other in sight. +You're in black, I see. You have no ... +No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral. +Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who's dead, when and what did +he die of? Turn up like a bad penny. +O, dear me, Mrs Breen said. I hope it wasn't any near relation. +May as well get her sympathy. +Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite suddenly, +poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning. +YOUR FUNERAL'S TOMORROW +WHILE YOU'RE COMING THROUGH THE RYE. +DIDDLEDIDDLE DUMDUM +DIDDLEDIDDLE ... +Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen's womaneyes said melancholily. +Now that's quite enough about that. Just quietly husband. +And your lord and master? +Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn't lost them anyhow. +O, don't be talking she said. He's a caution to rattlesnakes. He's in +there now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me +heartscalded. Wait till I show you. +Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly +poured out from Harrison's. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr +Bloom's gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara +sugar, or they'd taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot +arab stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of +hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork +chained to the table. +Opening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin ought to have a +guard on those things. Stick it in a chap's eye in the tram. Rummaging. +Open. Money. Please take one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain. +Husband barging. Where's the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are +you feeding your little brother's family? Soiled handkerchief +medicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is she? ... +There must be a new moon out, she said. He's always bad then. Do you +know what he did last night? +Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him, wide +in alarm, yet smiling. +What? Mr Bloom asked. +Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me. +Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare. +Indiges. +Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs. +The ace of spades Mr Bloom said. +She took a folded postcard from her handbag. +Read that, she said. He got it this morning. +What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U.P.? +U.P. up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It's a great shame +for them whoever he is. +Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said. +She took back the card, sighing. +And now he's going round to Mr Menton's office. He's going to take an +action for ten thousand pounds, he says. +She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch. +Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen +its best days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque three old +grapes to take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty +dresser. Lines round her mouth. Only a year or so older than Molly. +See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex. +He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent. +Pungent mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I'm hungry too. Flakes of pastry +on the gusset of her dress daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek. +Rhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie Powell that +was. In Luke Doyle's long ago. Dolphin's Barn, the charades. U.P. up. +Change the subject. +Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Bloom asked. +Mina Purefoy? she said. +Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers' Club. Matcham often +thinks of the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act. +Yes. +I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She's in the lyingin +hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She's three days bad now. +O, Mr Bloom said. I'm sorry to hear that. +Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It's a very stiff +birth, the nurse told me. +O, Mr Bloom said. +His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in +compassion. Dth Dth +I'm sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing Three days That's terrible +for her. +Mrs Breen nodded. +She was taken bad on the Tuesday ... +Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her +Mind Let this man pass. +A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river staring with a +rapt gaze into the sunlight through a heavystringed glass. Tight as a +skullpiece a tiny hat gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a +stick and an umbrella dangled to his stride. +Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lampposts. Watch +Who is he if it's a fair question? Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty? +His name is Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr +Bloom said smiling. Watch +He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of these +days. +She broke off suddenly. +There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to +Molly, won't you? +I will, Mr Bloom said. +He watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts. Denis +Breen in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of Harrison's +hugging two heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old +times. He suffered her to overtake him without surprise and thrust his +dull grey beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he spoke earnestly. +Meshuggah. Off his chump. +Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the +tight skullpiece, the dangling stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two days. +Watch him Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And +that other old mosey lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have with +him. +U.P. up. I'll take my oath that's Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding. +Wrote it for a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Menton's +office. His oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods. +He passed the IRISH TIMES. There might be other answers Iying there. +Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their lunch +now. Clerk with the glasses there doesn't know me. O, leave them there to +simmer. Enough bother wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart +lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called you naughty +darling because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the +meaning. Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the +world. The way they spring those questions on you. And the other one +Lizzie Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with +the approval of the eminent poet A. E. Mr Geo. Russell. No time to do +her hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry. +Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now. +Cook and general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit +counter. Resp. girl R.C. wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork shop. +James Carlisle made that. Six and a half per cent dividend. Made a big +deal on Coates's shares. Ca' canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the +toady news. Our gracious and popular vicereine. Bought the IRISH FIELD +now. Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered after her confinement and rode +out with the Ward Union staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at +Rathoath. Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it +tender enough for them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. +Weightcarrying huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. +First to the meet and in at the death. Strong as a brood mare some of +those horsey women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss off a glass of +brandy neat while you'd say knife. That one at the Grosvenor this morning. +Up with her on the car wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate +put her mount to it. Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite. +Who is this she was like? O yes Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me +her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel. +Divorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of her +my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the +viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the +EXPRESS. Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I poured +on the plums thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a +few weeks after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery +work for her, thanks. +Poor Mrs Purefoy Methodist husband. Method in his madness. +Saffron bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A. +Eating with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his +muttonchop whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore's +cousin in Dublin Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals +he presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers marching along +bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one in a marketnet. The squallers. +Poor thing Then having to give the breast year after year all hours of +the night. Selfish those t.t's are. Dog in the manger. Only one lump of +sugar in my tea, if you please. +He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at +Rowe's? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the +Burton. Better. On my way. +He walked on past Bolton's Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot +to tap Tom Kernan. +Sss. Dth, dth, dth Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a +vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew +Dreadful simply Child's head too big forceps. Doubled up inside her +trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that +would. Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something +to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilight sleep idea queen Victoria +was given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old woman that lived in a shoe +she had so many children. Suppose he was consumptive. Time someone thought +about it instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the +silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on. They could easily have big +establishments whole thing quite painless out of all the taxes give every +child born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone five per cent is +a hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty decimal +system encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit +twentyone years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum more than +you think. +Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for +nothing. +Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and Mrs +Moisel. Mothers' meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then +returns. How flat they look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes. +Weight off their mind. Old Mrs Thornton was a jolly old soul. All +my babies, she said. The spoon of pap in her mouth before she fed +them. O, that's nyumnyum. Got her hand crushed by old Tom Wall's son. +His first bow to the public. Head like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr Murren. +People knocking them up at all hours. For God' sake, doctor. Wife in +her throes. Then keep them waiting months for their fee. To attendance +on your wife. No gratitude in people. Humane doctors, most of them. +Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of +pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I +pick the fellow in black. Here goes. Here's good luck. Must be thrilling +from the air. Apjohn, myself and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose +green playing the monkeys. Mackerel they called me. +A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in +Indian file. Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their +truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under their +belts. Policeman's lot is oft a happy one. They split up in groups and +scattered, saluting, towards their beats. Let out to graze. Best moment to +attack one in pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of others, +marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making for the station. +Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to receive +soup. +He crossed under Tommy Moore's roguish finger. They did right to +put him up over a urinal meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for +women. Running into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. THERE IS NOT IN +THIS WIDE WORLD A VALLEE. Great song of Julia Morkan's. Kept her voice up +to the very last. Pupil of Michael Balfe's, wasn't she? +He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack +Power could a tale unfold father a G man. If a fellow gave them trouble +being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can't +blame them after all with the job they have especially the young hornies. +That horsepoliceman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in +Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did His horse's hoofs +clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky I had the presence of mind to +dive into Manning's or I was souped. He did come a wallop, by George. +Must have cracked his skull on the cobblestones. I oughtn't to have got +myself swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their +mortarboards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon +who dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he's in Holles street +where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still. +All skedaddled. Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it +began. +Up the Boers +Three cheers for De Wet +We'll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree. +Silly billies mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. +The Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and +civil servants. War comes on into the army helterskelter same fellows +used to. Whether on the scaffold high. +Never know who you're talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey +Duff in his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the +gaff on the invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths +on to get in the know all the time drawing secret service pay from the +castle. Drop him like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are always +courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up +against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And +who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying +anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young +student fooling round her fat arms ironing. +Are those yours, Mary? +I don't wear such things ... Stop or I'll tell the missus on you. +Out half the night. +There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see. +Ah, gelong with your great times coming. +Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls. +James Stephens' idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so +that a fellow couldn't round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back +out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey's +daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the +Buckingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi. +You must have a certain fascination Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a +squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about our +lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company's tearoom. +Debating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government. +That the language question should take precedence of the economic +question. Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them +up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here's a good lump of thyme +seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease +before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with +the band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays +best sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us over +those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule sun +rising up in the northwest. +His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly, +shadowing Trinity's surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing, +outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same, day after day +squads of police marching out, back trams in, out. Those two loonies +mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed +groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second +somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes. +Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the +blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa. +Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too other +coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of +pavements, piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that. +Landlord never dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets +his notice to quit. They buy the place up with gold and still they +have all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn +away age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions. +Slaves Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble, +sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan's mushroom houses built of breeze. +Shelter, for the night. +Noone is anything. +This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy hate +this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed. +Provost's house. The reverend Dr Salmon tinned salmon. Well +tinned in there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn't live in it if they paid +me. Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum. +The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware +opposite in Walter Sexton's window by which John Howard Parnell passed, +unseeing. +There he is the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a +coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't +meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. Noone knows him. Must be a +corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal's +uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his +high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the +woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a +pain. Great man's brother his brother's brother. He'd look nice on the +city charger. Drop into the D.B.C. probably for his coffee, play chess +there. His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to +pass a remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That's the +fascination the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister +Mrs Dickinson driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright lik +surgeon M'Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for south Meath. +Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The patriot's +banquet. Eating orangepeels in the park. Simon Dedalus said when they put +him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the grave and lead +him out of the house of commons by the arm. +Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which +the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a +Scotch accent. The tentacles ... +They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and +bicycle. Young woman. +And there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence second time. +Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent +poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E. what +does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, +Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world +with a Scotch accent. Tentacles octopus. Something occult symbolism. +Holding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid gentleman +in literary work. +His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a +listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only +weggebobbles and fruit. Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that +cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it's healthier. +Windandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a +bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me +nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating +rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the +tap all night. +Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that so tasteless. +Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic. +Esthetes they are. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that kind of food you +see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical. For example one of +those policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts you couldn't squeeze +a line of poetry out of him. Don't know what poetry is even. Must be in a +certain mood. +THE DREAMY CLOUDY GULL +WAVES O'ER THE WATERS DULL. +He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of +Yeates and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old Harris's +and have a chat with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his +lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six +guineas. Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to +capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in the railway lost +property office. Astonishing the things people leave behind them in trains +and cloakrooms. What do they be thinking about? Women too. Incredible. +Last year travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer's daughter's ba +and hand it to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There's a +little watch up there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by. +His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can't see it. If you +imagine it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it. +He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right +hand at arm's length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes +completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun's disk. Must +be the focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interesting. +There was a lot of talk about those sunspots when we were in Lombard +street west. Looking up from the back garden. Terrific explosions they +are. There will be a total eclipse this year autumn some time. +Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It's +the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there +some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to +professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do to +man always feels complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman +proud to be descended from some king's mistress. His foremother. Lay it on +with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out +what you know you're not to what's parallax? Show this gentleman the +door. +Ah. +His hand fell to his side again. +Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning +about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas then +solid then world then cold then dead shell drifting around, frozen +rock, like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she +said. I believe there is. +He went on by la maison Claire. +Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly +there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview +moon. She was humming. The young May moon she's beaming, love. He +other side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm's laamp is gleaming, love. +Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes. +Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must. +Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court. +With a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here +middle of the day of Bob Doran's bottle shoulders. On his annual bend, +M Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or CHERCHEZ LA +FEMME. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the +rest of the year sober as a judge. +Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do +him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran +the Queen's. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his +harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How +time flies, eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, +drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against their breath. More +power, Pat. Coarse red fun for drunkards guffaw and smoke. Take off that +white hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp +that once did starve us all. +I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was. +She twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed. +Could never like it again after Rudy. Can't bring back time. Like holding +water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. +Would you? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? +Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the library. +Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin +prints, silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing +in the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings. +Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef +to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of +plumb. +He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers. +Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its +mouth a flood of bloodhued poplin lustrous blood. The huguenots brought +that here. LA CAUSA E SANTA Tara Tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara. +Must be washed in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara bom bom bom. +Pincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all +over the place. Needles in window curtains. +He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape nearly gone. Not today +anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps. +Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn't +like it. Women won't pick up pins. Say it cuts lo. +Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk +stockings. +Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all. +High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, +home and houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath +Netaim. Wealth of the world. +A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain +yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh +obscurely, he mutely craved to adore. +Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then. +He turned Combridge's corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds. +Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded in deep summer fields, +tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas, +creaking beds. +Jack, love +Darling +Kiss me, Reggy +My boy +Love +His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink +gripped his trembling breath pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the +animals feed. +Men, men, men. +Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables +calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy +food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced +young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New +set of microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round +him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his +plate halfmasticated gristle gums no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump +chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off +more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. +Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't O A bone That +last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at +Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something +galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow +it all however. +Roast beef and cabbage. +One stew. +Smells of men. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarette smoke, reek of +plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment. +His gorge rose. +Couldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat +all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing +the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on +that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the +plate, man Get out of this. +He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of +his nose. +Two stouts here. +One corned and cabbage. +That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life +depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat +from his three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born +with a silver knife in his mouth. That's witty, I think. Or no. Silver +means born rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost. +An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head +bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well +up it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, +elbows on table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift +across his stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something +with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un +thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith? +Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said +Not here. Don't see him. +Out. I hate dirty eaters. +He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne's. Stopgap. +Keep me going. Had a good breakfast. +Roast and mashed here. +Pint of stout. +Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff. +He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street. +Eat or be eaten. Kill Kill +Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting +down with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the +street. John Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother's +son don't talk of your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children +cabmen priests parsons fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury road, +Clyde road, artisans' dwellings, north Dublin union, lord mayor in his +gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. My plate's empty. After you +with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton's fountain. +Rub off the microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new +batch with his. Father O'Flynn would make hares of them all. Have rows +all the same. All for number one. Children fighting for the scrapings of +the pot. Want a souppot as big as the Phoenix park. Harpooning flitches +and hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel +TABLE D'HOTE she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose +thoughts you're chewing. Then who'd wash up all the plates and forks? +Might be all feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth getting worse and worse. +After all there's a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the +earth garlic of course it stinks after Italian organgrinders crisp of +onions mushrooms truffles. Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl. +Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split +their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble +and squeak. Butchers' buckets wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the +hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from +their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. +Top and lashers going out. Don't maul them pieces, young one. +Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed. +Insidious. Lick it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts. +Ah, I'm hungry. +He entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a +drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me +once. +What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff? +Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook. +Hello, Flynn. +How's things? +Tiptop ... Let me see. I'll take a glass of burgundy and ... let +me see. +Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? +Ham and his descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is +home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad +Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam's +potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too +salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour. +Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect. +THERE WAS A RIGHT ROYAL OLD NIGGER. WHO ATE OR SOMETHING THE SOMETHINGS OF +THE REVEREND MR MACTRIGGER. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what +concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle +find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what +they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war +depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. +Slaughter of innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full +after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese. +Have you a cheese sandwich? +Yes, sir. +Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of +burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom +Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that +cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the +devil the cooks. Devilled crab. +Wife well? +Quite well, thanks ... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you? +Yes, sir. +Nosey Flynn sipped his grog. +Doing any singing those times? +Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match. +Music. Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him. Does +no harm. Free ad. +She's engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard +perhaps. +No. O, that's the style. Who's getting it up? +The curate served. +How much is that? +Seven d., sir ... Thank you, sir. +Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. MR MACTRIGGER. Easier +than the dreamy creamy stuff. HIS FIVE HUNDRED WIVES. HAD THE TIME OF +THEIR LIVES. +Mustard, sir? +Thank you. +He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. THEIR LIVES. I have it. +IT GREW BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER. +Getting it up? he said. Well, it's like a company idea, you see. Part +shares and part profits. +Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket to +scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn't Blazes Boylan mixed +up in it? +A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Bloom's heart. +He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock +five minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet. +His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly, +longingly. +Wine. +He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to +speed it, set his wineglass delicately down. +Yes, he said. He's the organiser in point of fact. +No fear no brains. +Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal. +He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling me, over that +boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello +barracks. By God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he +was telling me ... +Hope that dewdrop doesn't come down into his glass. No, snuffled it +up. +For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God till +further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Blazes is a hairy +chap. +Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched +shirtsleeves, cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring's +blush. Whose smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete. +Too much fat on the parsnips. +And here's himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you give +us a good one for the Gold cup? +I'm off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on a +horse. +You're right there, Nosey Flynn said. +Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of +disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his +wine soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with +the chill off. +Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed. +Like the way it curves there. +I wouldn't do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined +many a man, the same horses. +Vintners' sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits +for consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose. +True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you're in the know. There's no +straight sport going now. Lenehan gets some good ones. He's giving +Sceptre today. Zinfandel's the favourite, lord Howard de Walden's, won at +Epsom. Morny Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one against +Saint Amant a fortnight before. +That so? Davy Byrne said ... +He went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash book, scanned +its pages. +I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a rare bit of +horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm, +Rothschild's filly, with wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap. +Bad luck to big Ben Dollard and his John O'Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay. +He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the flutes. +Ay, he said, sighing. +Mr Bloom, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey +numbskull. Will I tell him that horse Lenehan? He knows already. Better +let him forget. Go and lose more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down +again. Cold nose he'd have kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly +beards they like. Dogs' cold noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling +stomach's Skye terrier in the City Arms hotel. Molly fondling him in her +lap. O, the big doggybowwowsywowsy +Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment +mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I'm not thirsty. +Bath of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o'clock I can. +Six. Six. Time will be gone then. She ... +Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off +colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins sardines, gaudy +lobsters' claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of +shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the +French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing +in a thousand years. If you didn't know risky putting anything into your +mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. +Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on +the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice +cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial +irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters. Unsightly like +a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found them +out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on +the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this morning. Was he oysters +old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed no June has no ar no +oysters. But there are people like things high. Tainted game. Jugged +hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue +and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix +inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it no yes or +was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the scruff +off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course aristocrats, then the +others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw +pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the +sea to keep up the price. Cheap noone would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. +Hock in green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. +The ELITE. CREME DE LA CREME. They want special dishes to pretend +they're. Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the +flesh. Know me come eat with me. Royal sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the +butcher, right to venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the +half of a cow. Spread I saw down in the Master of the Rolls' kitchen +area. Whitehatted CHEF like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage A LA +DUCHESSE DE PARME. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you +can know what you've eaten. Too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it +myself. Dosing it with Edwards' desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for +them. Lobsters boiled alive. Do ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn't mind being +a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I +tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do +bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss Dubedat +lived in Killiney, I remember. DU, DE LA French. Still it's the same fish +perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out of making +money hand over fist finger in fishes' gills can't write his name on a +cheque think he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted. +Moooikill A Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty thousand +pounds. +Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck. +Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress +grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me +memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns +on Howth below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by +the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of +undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my +coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her +nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder Coolsoft with ointments her hand +touched me, caressed her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over +her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me +in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had +mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy I ate it joy. Young life, her +lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her +eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. +Noone. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, +dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I +lay on her, kissed her eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, +woman's breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. +Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed +my hair. Kissed, she kissed me. +Me. And me now. +Stuck, the flies buzzed. +His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab. Beauty +it curves curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno curves the +world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall, +naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don't care what man looks. All +to see. Never speaking. I mean to say to fellows like Flynn. Suppose she +did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first? Mortal Put you in +your proper place. Quaffing nectar at mess with gods golden dishes, all +ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we have, boiled mutton, carrots and +turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar imagine it drinking electricity gods' +food. Lovely forms of women sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. And we +stuffing food in one hole and out behind food, chyle, blood, dung, +earth, food have to feed it like stoking an engine. They have no. Never +looked. I'll look today. Keeper won't see. Bend down let something drop +see if she. +Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do +there to do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked, +to men too they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a +youth enjoyed her, to the yard. +When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his book +What is this he is? Isn't he in the insurance line? +He's out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for the +FREEMAN. +I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble? +Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why? +I noticed he was in mourning. +Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all at +home. You're right, by God. So he was. +I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a +gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their +minds. +It's not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before +yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan's +wife has in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home +to his better half. She's well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast. +And is he doing for the FREEMAN? Davy Byrne said. +Nosey Flynn pursed his lips. +He doesn't buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of +that. +How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book. +Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He +winked. +He's in the craft, he said. +Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said. +Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. He's +an excellent brother. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg +up. I was told that by awell, I won't say who. +Is that a fact? +O, it's a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you're +down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it. But they're as close as +damn it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it. +Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one +Iiiiiichaaaaaaach +There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find +out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and swore +her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint Legers of +Doneraile. +Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes +And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here and +I never once saw himyou know, over the line. +God Almighty couldn't make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips +off when the fun gets too hot. Didn't you see him look at his watch? Ah, +you weren't there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he +outs with the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he +does. +There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He's a safe man, I'd say. +He's not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He's been known to +put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Bloom +has his good points. But there's one thing he'll never do. +His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog. +I know, Davy Byrne said. +Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said. +Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed frowning, a +plaining hand on his claret waistcoat. +Day, Mr Byrne. +Day, gentlemen. +They paused at the counter. +Who's standing? Paddy Leonard asked. +I'm sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered. +Well, what'll it be? Paddy Leonard asked. +I'll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said. +How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God' sake? What's yours, +Tom? +How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping. +For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and hiccupped. +Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said. +Certainly, sir. +Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates. +Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I'm standing drinks to Cold +water and gingerpop Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg. +He has some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip. +Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked. +Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set before +him. +That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking. +Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said. +Tom Rochford nodded and drank. +Is it Zinfandel? +Say nothing Bantam Lyons winked. I'm going to plunge five bob on my +own. +Tell us if you're worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard +said. Who gave it to you? +Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting. +So long Nosey Flynn said. +The others turned. +That's the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered. +Prrwht Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we'll take two of +your small Jamesons after that and a ... +Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly. +Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby. +Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his teeth +smooth. Something green it would have to be spinach, say. Then with +those Rontgen rays searchlight you could. +At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the +cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks +having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom +coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move. +Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his? +Wasting time explaining it to Flynn's mouth. Lean people long mouths. +Ought to be a hall or a place where inventors could go in and invent +free. Course then you'd have all the cranks pestering. +He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the bars +DON GIOVANNI, A CENAR TECO +M'INVITASTI. +Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap in +the blues. Dutch courage. That KILKENNY PEOPLE in the national library +now I must. +Bare clean closestools waiting in the window of William Miller, plumber, +turned back his thoughts. They could and watch it all the way down, +swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the +body changing biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of +intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all the +time with his insides entrails on show. Science. +A CENAR TECO. +What does that TECO mean? Tonight perhaps. +DON GIOVANNI, THOU HAST ME INVITED +TO COME TO SUPPER TONIGHT, +THE RUM THE RUMDUM. +Doesn't go properly. +Keyes two months if I get Nannetti to. That'll be two pounds ten about +two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Prescott's dyeworks +van over there. If I get Billy Prescott's ad two fifteen. Five guineas +about. On the pig's back. +Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new +garters. +Today. Today. Not think. +Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, +Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside +girls. Against John Long's a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, +gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat +anything. +Mr Bloom turned at Gray's confectioner's window of unbought tarts and +passed the reverend Thomas Connellan's bookstore. WHY I LEFT THE CHURCH +OF ROME? BIRDS' NEST. Women run him. They say they used to give pauper +children soup to change to protestants in the time of the potato blight. +Society over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor jews. Same +bait. Why we left the church of Rome. +A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No +tram in sight. Wants to cross. +Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked. +The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He moved +his head uncertainly. +You're in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth street is opposite. +Do you want to cross? There's nothing in the way. +The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom's eye followed its +line and saw again the dyeworks' van drawn up before Drago's. Where I saw +his brillantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in John +Long's. Slaking his drouth. +There's a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it's not moving. I'll see you +across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street? +Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street. +Come, Mr Bloom said. +He touched the thin elbow gently then took the limp seeing hand to guide +it forward. +Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust what +you tell them. Pass a common remark. +The rain kept off. +No answer. +Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different +for him. Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child's hand, his hand. Like +Milly's was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if he +has a name. Van. Keep his cane clear of the horse's legs tired drudge +get his doze. That's right. Clear. Behind a bull in front of a horse. +Thanks, sir. +Knows I'm a man. Voice. +Right now? First turn to the left. +The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing his +cane back, feeling again. +Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone +tweed. Poor young fellow How on earth did he know that van was there? +Must have felt it. See things in their forehead perhaps kind of sense of +volume. Weight or size of it, something blacker than the dark. Wonder +would he feel it if something was removed. Feel a gap. Queer idea of +Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. Could he walk +in a beeline if he hadn't that cane? Bloodless pious face like a fellow +going in to be a priest. +Penrose That was that chap's name. +Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers. +Tune pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a +deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say. +Of course the other senses are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People +ought to help. Workbasket I could buy for Molly's birthday. Hates sewing. +Might take an objection. Dark men they call them. +Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, bunched +together. Each street different smell. Each person too. Then the spring, +the summer smells. Tastes? They say you can't taste wines with your eyes +shut or a cold in the head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no +pleasure. +And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl +passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have them +all on. Must be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his mind's eye. +The voice, temperatures when he touches her with his fingers must almost +see the lines, the curves. His hands on her hair, for instance. Say it +was black, for instance. Good. We call it black. Then passing over her +white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling of white. +Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two +shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here +too. Wait. Think over it. +With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above +his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt +the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The +belly is the smoothest. Noone about. There he goes into Frederick +street. Perhaps to Levenston's dancing academy piano. Might be settling +my braces. +Walking by Doran's publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat and +trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his +belly. But I know it's whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to see. +He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to. +Poor fellow Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he +have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born +that way? All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and +drowned in New York. Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration for +sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pike hoses. Dear, +dear, dear. Pity, of course but somehow you can't cotton on to them +someway. +Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons' hall. Solemn as Troy. +After his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a +magnum. Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school. +I sentenced him to ten years. I suppose he'd turn up his nose at that +stuff I drank. Vintage wine for them, the year marked on a dusty bottle. +Has his own ideas of justice in the recorder's court. Wellmeaning old +man. Police chargesheets crammed with cases get their percentage +manufacturing crime. Sends them to the rightabout. The devil on +moneylenders. Gave Reuben J. a great strawcalling. Now he's really what +they call a dirty jew. Power those judges have. Crusty old topers in +wigs. Bear with a sore paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul. +Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. +Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. THE +MESSIAH was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out +there Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a +leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate. +Mr Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library. +Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is. +His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved to +the right. +Is it? Almost certain. Won't look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too heady. +Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Get on. +Making for the museum gate with long windy steps he lifted his eyes. +Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not following me? +Didn't see me perhaps. Light in his eyes. +The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues +quiet there. Safe in a minute. +No. Didn't see me. After two. Just at the gate. +My heart +His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir Thomas +Deane was the Greek architecture. +Look for something I. +His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded Agendath +Netaim. Where did I? +Busy looking. +He thrust back quick Agendath. +Afternoon she said. +I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. FREEMAN. +Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. Where? +Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart. +His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap +lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap there I yes. Gate. +Safe +Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred +And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of WILHELM MEISTER. A +great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul taking arms against +a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in real life. +He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step +backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor. +A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a +noiseless beck. +Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful +ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always +feels that Goethe's judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis. +Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the door +he gave his large ear all to the attendant's words heard them and was +gone. +Two left. +Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes +before his death. +Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked with +elder's gall, to write PARADISE LOST at your dictation? THE SORROWS OF +SATAN he calls it. +Smile. Smile Cranly's smile. +FIRST HE TICKLED HER +THEN HE PATTED HER +THEN HE PASSED THE FEMALE CATHETER. +FOR HE WAS A MEDICAL +JOLLY OLD MEDI ... +I feel you would need one more for HAMLET. Seven is dear to the mystic +mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them. +Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought the +face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed low +a sizar's laugh of Trinity unanswered. +ORCHESTRAL SATAN, WEEPING MANY A ROOD +TEARS SUCH AS ANGELS WEEP. +ED EGLI AVEA DEL CUL FATTO TROMBETTA. +He holds my follies hostage. +Cranly's eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed +Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house. And +one more to hail him AVE, RABBI the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of +the glen he cooees for them. My soul's youth I gave him, night by night. +God speed. Good hunting. +Mulligan has my telegram. +Folly. Persist. +Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a +figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though +I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry. +All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his +shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex. +Clergymen's discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to +us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work +of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave +Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words +of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's +world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for +schoolboys. +A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike +me +The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely. +Aristotle was once Plato's schoolboy. +And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. One +can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm. +He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face. +Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the heavenly +man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who suffers in +us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon the altar. I +am the sacrificial butter. +Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, the Name +Ineffable, in heaven hight K.H., their master, whose identity is no +secret to adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to +see if they can help. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, +born of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the plane of +buddhi. The life esoteric is not for ordinary person. O.P. must work off +bad karma first. Mrs Cooper Oakley once glimpsed our very illustrious +sister H.P.B.'s elemental. +O, fie Out on't PFUITEUFEL You naughtn't to look, missus, so you +naughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her elemental. +Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with grace +a notebook, new, large, clean, bright. +That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet's musings about +the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and +undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato's. +John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth +Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle +with Plato. +Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his +commonwealth? +Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. +Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God noise in the street very +peripatetic. Space what you damn well have to see. Through spaces +smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after Blake's +buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. +Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past. +Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague. +Haines is gone, he said. +Is he? +I was showing him Jubainville's book. He's quite enthusiastic, don't +you know, about Hyde's LOVESONGS OF CONNACHT. I couldn't bring him in to +hear the discussion. He's gone to Gill's to buy it. +BOUND THEE FORTH, MY BOOKLET, QUICK +TO GREET THE CALLOUS PUBLIC. +WRIT, I WEEN, 'TWAS NOT MY WISH +IN LEAN UNLOVELY ENGLISH. +The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined. +We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green +twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea. +People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of +Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the +world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the +hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living +mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the +sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower +of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is revealed only to the +poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians. +From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen. +Mallarme, don't you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose +poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about HAMLET. +He says IL SE PROMENE, LISANT AU LIVRE DE LUIMEME, don't you know, +READING THE BOOK OF HIMSELF. He describes HAMLET given in a French town, +don't you know, a provincial town. They advertised it. +His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air. +HAMLET +OU +LE DISTRAIT +PIECE DE SHAKESPEARE +He repeated to John Eglinton's newgathered frown +PIECE DE SHAKESPEARE, don't you know. It's so French. The French point +of view. HAMLET OU ... +The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended. +John Eglinton laughed. +Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but +distressingly shortsighted in some matters. +Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder. +A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not for +nothing was he a butcher's son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting +in his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one. Our Father +who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The +bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration +camp sung by Mr Swinburne. +Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar. +WHELPS AND DAMS OF MURDEROUS FOES WHOM NONE +BUT WE HAD SPARED ... +Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea. +He will have it that HAMLET is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr +Best's behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh +creep. +LIST LIST O LIST +My flesh hears him creeping, hears. +IF THOU DIDST EVER ... +What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded +into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of +manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris +lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from LIMBO PATRUM, returning to +the world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet? +John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge. +Lifted. +It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a +swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the +bankside. The bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden. +Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the +groundlings. +Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices. +Shakespeare has left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by +the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen +chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has +other thoughts. +Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me +The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the +castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the +ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who +has studied HAMLET all the years of his life which were not vanity in +order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, +the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, +calling him by a name +HAMLET, I AM THY FATHER'S SPIRIT, +bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, +young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died +in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever. +Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in +the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words +to his own son's name had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been +prince Hamlet's twin, is it possible, I want to know, or probable that +he did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises you +are the dispossessed son I am the murdered father your mother is the +guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway? +But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began +impatiently. +Art thou there, truepenny? +Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean +when we read the poetry of KING LEAR what is it to us how the poet lived? +As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has +said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's +drinking, the poet's debts. We have KING LEAR and it is immortal. +Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed. +FLOW OVER THEM WITH YOUR WAVES AND WITH YOUR WATERS, MANANAAN, +MANANAAN MACLIR ... +How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry? +Marry, I wanted it. +Take thou this noble. +Go to You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's +daughter. Agenbite of inwit. +Do you intend to pay it back? +O, yes. +When? Now? +Well ... No. +When, then? +I paid my way. I paid my way. +Steady on. He's from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe +it. +Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got +pound. +Buzz. Buzz. +But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under +everchanging forms. +I that sinned and prayed and fasted. +A child Conmee saved from pandies. +I, I and I. I. +A.E.I.O.U. +Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? +John Eglinton's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for +ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born. +She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She +saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore +his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed +when he lay on his deathbed. +Mother's deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this +world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. LILIATA +RUTILANTIUM. +I wept alone. +John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp. +The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got +out of it as quickly and as best he could. +Bosh Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His +errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. +Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, +softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous. +A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of +discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn +from Xanthippe? +Dialectic, Stephen answered and from his mother how to bring thoughts +into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto ABSIT NOMEN, +Socratididion's Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But +neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the +archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock. +But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem +to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her. +His look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to chide +them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though +maligned. +He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory. +He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling +THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME. If the earthquake did not time it we should +know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the +studded bridle and her blue windows. That memory, VENUS AND ADONIS, lay +in the bedchamber of every lightoflove in London. Is Katharine the +shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think +the writer of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in +the back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire +to lie withal? Good he left her and gained the world of men. But his +boywomen are the women of a boy. Their life, thought, speech are lent +them by males. He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others +have their will Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the +comether on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over +the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is +a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger +than herself. +And my turn? When? +Come +Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly, +brightly. +He murmured then with blond delight for all +BETWEEN THE ACRES OF THE RYE +THESE PRETTY COUNTRYFOLK WOULD LIE. +Paris the wellpleased pleaser. +A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its +cooperative watch. +I am afraid I am due at the HOMESTEAD. +Whither away? Exploitable ground. +Are you going? John Eglinton's active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you +at Moore's tonight? Piper is coming. +Piper Mr Best piped. Is Piper back? +Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper. +I don't know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get away +in time. +Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. ISIS UNVEILED. Their Pali book we tried +to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec +logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The +faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout +him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the +eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh +under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of +souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail. +IN QUINTESSENTIAL TRIVIALITY +FOR YEARS IN THIS FLESHCASE A SHESOUL DWELT. +They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said, +friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a +sheaf of our younger poets' verses. We are all looking forward anxiously. +Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted, +shone. +See this. Remember. +Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his +ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two +index fingers. Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in +virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one +hat is one hat. +Listen. +Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part. +Longworth will give it a good puff in the EXPRESS. O, will he? I liked +Colum's DROVER. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you think +he has genius really? Yeats admired his line AS IN WILD EARTH A GRECIAN +VASE. Did he? I hope you'll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is +coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss Mitchell's +joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn's wild oats? Awfully +clever, isn't it? They remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our +national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man +for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron +kilt? O'Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue. And +his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are +becoming important, it seems. +Cordelia. CORDOGLIO. Lir's loneliest daughter. +Nookshotten. Now your best French polish. +Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be +so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman ... +O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much +correspondence. +I understand, Stephen said. Thanks. +God ild you. The pigs' paper. Bullockbefriending. +Synge has promised me an article for DANA too. Are we going to be read? I +feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you will +come round tonight. Bring Starkey. +Stephen sat down. +The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask said +Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating. +He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a +chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low +Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet? +Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light? +Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been +first a sundering. +Yes. +Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks, from +hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he won +to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully +tapsters' wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body +that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves +falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow grave and unforgiven. +Yes. So you think ... +The door closed behind the outgoer. +Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and +brooding air. +A vestal's lamp. +Here he ponders things that were not what Caesar would have lived to do +had he believed the soothsayer what might have been possibilities of +the possible as possible things not known what name Achilles bore when +he lived among women. +Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words. +Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice +of that Egyptian highpriest. IN PAINTED CHAMBERS LOADED WITH TILEBOOKS. +They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still but an itch of +death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak +their will. +Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most +enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so +much. Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest. +But HAMLET is so personal, isn't it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a kind of +private paper, don't you know, of his private life. I mean, I don't care +a button, don't you know, who is killed or who is guilty ... +He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his defiance. +His private papers in the original. TA AN BAD AR AN TIR. TAIM IN MO +SHAGART. Put beurla on it, littlejohn. +Quoth littlejohn Eglinton +I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I +may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare +is Hamlet you have a stern task before you. +Bear with me. +Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under +wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E QUANDO VEDE L'UOMO L'ATTOSCA. Messer +Brunetto, I thank thee for the word. +As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from +day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave +and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was +when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time +after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the +unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the +mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am +and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the +sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection +from that which then I shall be. +Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile. +Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness +might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from +the son. +Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son. +That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing. +John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow. +If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug +in the market. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired +so much breathe another spirit. +The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed. +There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a +sundering. +Said that. +If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over +the hell of time of KING LEAR, OTHELLO, HAMLET, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, +look to see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a +man, shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles, +prince of Tyre? +Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded. +A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina. +The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant +quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead +to the town. +Good Bacon gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats. Cypherjugglers +going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town, good masters? +Mummed in names A. E., eon Magee, John Eglinton. East of the sun, west +of the moon TIR NA NOG. Booted the twain and staved. +HOW MANY MILES TO DUBLIN? +THREE SCORE AND TEN, SIR. +WILL WE BE THERE BY CANDLELIGHT? +Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing +period. +Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his +name is, say of it? +Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita, +that which was lost. What was lost is given back to him his daughter's +child. MY DEAREST WIFE, Pericles says, WAS LIKE THIS MAID. Will any man +love the daughter if he has not loved the mother? +The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L'ART D'ETRE GRAND +Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added, +another image? +Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all men. +Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus ... +His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of +all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The +images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them +grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself. +The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope. +I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the +public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George +Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on +Shakespeare in the SATURDAY REVIEW were surely brilliant. Oddly enough he +too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets. +The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own that if +the poet must be rejected such a rejection would seem more in harmony +withwhat shall I say?our notions of what ought not to have been. +Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk's egg, prize +of their fray. +He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam? Dost +love thy man? +That may be too, Stephen said. There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr +Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you +will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a BUONAROBA, a +bay where all men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a +lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord of language and had made +himself a coistrel gentleman and he had written ROMEO AND JULIET. Why? +Belief in himself has been untimely killed. He was overborne in a +cornfield first ryefield, I should say and he will never be a victor in +his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game of laugh and lie down. +Assumed dongiovannism will not save him. No later undoing will undo the +first undoing. The tusk of the boar has wounded him there where love lies +ableeding. If the shrew is worsted yet there remains to her woman's +invisible weapon. There is, I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh +driving him into a new passion, a darker shadow of the first, darkening +even his own understanding of himself. A like fate awaits him and the two +rages commingle in a whirlpool. +They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour. +The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the +porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot +know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls +with that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with +two backs that urged it King Hamlet's ghost could not know of were he not +endowed with knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech his lean +unlovely English is always turned elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and +ravished, what he would but would not, go with him from Lucrece's +bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole +cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to +hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss +is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished personality, +untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he has revealed. His +beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore's rocks +or what you will, the sea's voice, a voice heard only in the heart of him +who is the substance of his shadow, the son consubstantial with the +father. +Amen was responded from the doorway. +Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? +ENTR'ACTE. +A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forward, then +blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram. +You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he asked +of Stephen. +Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble. +They make him welcome. WAS DU VERLACHST WIRST DU NOCH DIENEN. +Brood of mockers Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most. +He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself, +Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends, +stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on +crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven +and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His +Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead +when all the quick shall be dead already. +Glooria in excelsis Deo. +He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers Bells with bells with bells +aquiring. +Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion. +Mr Mulligan, I'll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of +Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented. +He smiled on all sides equally. +Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled +Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name. +A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features. +To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like +Synge. +Mr Best turned to him. +Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He'll see you after at +the D. B. C. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's LOVESONGS OF CONNACHT. +I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here? +The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired +perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played +Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining +held that the prince was a woman. Has noone made him out to be an +Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He swears +His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. +The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde's, Mr Best said, +lifting his brilliant notebook. That PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. where he proves +that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues. +For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked. +Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H. who am I? +I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of +course it's all paradox, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the +colour, but it's so typical the way he works it out. It's the very +essence of Wilde, don't you know. The light touch. +His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame +essence of Wilde. +You're darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's +ducats. +How much did I spend? O, a few shillings. +For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry. +Wit. You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks in. +Lineaments of gratified desire. +There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime +send them. Yea, turtledove her. +Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in's kiss. +Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The +mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious. +They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness. +Buck Mulligan's again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head +wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile +lips read, smiling with new delight. +Telegram he said. Wonderful inspiration Telegram A papal bull +He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully +THE SENTIMENTALIST IS HE WHO WOULD ENJOY WITHOUT INCURRING THE IMMENSE +DEBTORSHIP FOR A THING DONE. Signed Dedalus. Where did you launch it +from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt +is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram Malachi +Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer O, you +priestified Kinchite +Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a +querulous brogue +It's what I'm telling you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were, +Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. 'Twas murmur we did +for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and he limp with +leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's +sitting civil waiting for pints apiece. +He wailed +And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your +conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the +drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful. +Stephen laughed. +Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down. +The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard +you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to murder +you. +Me Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature. +Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping +ceiling. +Murder you he laughed. +Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of +lights in rue SaintAndredesArts. In words of words for words, +palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, +brandishing a winebottle. C'EST VENDREDI SAINT Murthering Irish. His +image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i'the forest. +Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar. +... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his +DIARY OF MASTER WILLIAM SILENCE has found the hunting terms ... Yes? What +is it? +There's a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and +offering a card. From the FREEMAN. He wants to see the files of the +KILKENNY PEOPLE for last year. +Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman? ... +He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked, +asked, creaked, asked +Is he? ... O, there +Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked +with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most +honest broadbrim. +This gentleman? FREEMAN'S JOURNAL? KILKENNY PEOPLE? To be sure. Good +day, sir. KILKENNY ... We have certainly ... +A patient silhouette waited, listening. +All the leading provincial ... NORTHERN WHIG, CORK EXAMINER, +ENNISCORTHY GUARDIAN, ... Will you please? ... Evans, conduct this +gentleman ... If you just follow the atten ... Or, please allow me ... +This way ... Please, sir ... +Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing +dark figure following his hasty heels. +The door closed. +The sheeny Buck Mulligan cried. +He jumped up and snatched the card. +What's his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom. +He rattled on +Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the +museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that +has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her. +LIFE OF LIFE, THY LIPS ENKINDLE. +Suddenly he turned to Stephen +He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker +than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. +Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins THE GOD PURSUING THE +MAIDEN HID. +We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's approval. We +begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at +all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome. +Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty +from Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in +whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty +years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary +equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His +art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the art +of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of +roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, +when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his back including a +pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough +to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial +love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. +You know Manningham's story of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage +to her bed after she had seen him in RICHARD III and how Shakespeare, +overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns +and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the capon's +blankets WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR CAME BEFORE RICHARD III. And the gay +lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, lady +Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the +punks of the bankside, a penny a time. +Cours la Reine. ENCORE VINGT SOUS. NOUS FERONS DE PETITES COCHONNERIES. +MINETTE? TU VEUX? +The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of oxford's mother +with her cup of canary for any cockcanary. +Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed +Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock +And Harry of six wives' daughter. And other lady friends from neighbour +seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those twenty years +what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the +diamond panes? +Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, +he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's +eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in +a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness. +Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton's desk sharply. +Whom do you suspect? he challenged. +Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice +spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove. +Love that dare not speak its name. +As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a +lord. +Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them. +It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all +other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the +stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a +shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two +deeds are rank in that ghost's mind a broken vow and the dullbrained +yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband's brother. Sweet +Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer, twice a wooer. +Stephen turned boldly in his chair. +The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you +deny that in the fifth scene of HAMLET he has branded her with infamy +tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years +between the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those +women saw their men down and under Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her poor +dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the first +to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her sons, +Susan, her husband too, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use +granddaddy's words, wed her second, having killed her first. +O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in royal +London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her father's +shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has +commended her to posterity. +He faced their silence. +To whom thus Eglinton +You mean the will. +But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists. +She was entitled to her widow's dower +At common law. His legal knowledge was great +Our judges tell us. +Him Satan fleers, +Mocker +And therefore he left out her name +From the first draft but he did not leave out +The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters, +For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford +And in London. And therefore when he was urged, +As I believe, to name her +He left her his +Secondbest +Bed. +PUNKT. +Leftherhis +Secondbest +Leftherhis +Bestabed +Secabest +Leftabed. +Woa +AMPLIUS. IN SOCIETATE HUMANA HOC EST MAXIME NECESSARIUM UT SIT AMICITIA +INTER MULTOS. +Saint Thomas, Stephen began ... +ORA PRO NOBIS, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair. +There he keened a wailing rune. +POGUE MAHONE ACUSHLA MACHREE It's destroyed we are from this day +It's destroyed we are surely +All smiled their smiles. +Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy +reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different +from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his +wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the +love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some +stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with +avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage. Accusations +are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of the +jews for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter bound their +affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old +Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly +to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold +tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife. +No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his manservant +or his maidservant or his jackass. +Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned. +Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently. +Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed. +The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will's +widow, is the will to die. +REQUIESCAT Stephen prayed. +WHAT OF ALL THE WILL TO DO? +IT HAS VANISHED LONG AGO ... +She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled +queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a +motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. +In old age she takes up with gospellers one stayed with her at New Place +and drank a quart of sack the town council paid for but in which bed he +slept it skills not to ask and heard she had a soul. She read or had +read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the MERRY WIVES and, loosing +her nightly waters on the jordan, she thought over HOOKS AND EYES FOR +BELIEVERS' BREECHES and THE MOST SPIRITUAL SNUFFBOX TO MAKE THE MOST +DEVOUT SOULS SNEEZE. Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of +inwit remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping +for its god. +History shows that to be true, INQUIT EGLINTONUS CHRONOLOLOGOS. The +ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man's +worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that +Russell is right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should say +that only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. +I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation. +Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping +with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it +him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman +to see you. Me? Says he's your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter +Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a +buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, +a wand of wilding in his hand. +Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower. +Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I +touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is +attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me. +A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary +evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father's death. +If you hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with +thirtyfive years of life, NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN DI NOSTRA VITA, with fifty +of experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you +must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The +corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it +rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that +mystical estate upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the first and +last man who felt himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of +conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an +apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that +mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung +to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably +because founded, like the world, macro and microcosm, upon the void. Upon +incertitude, upon unlikelihood. AMOR MATRIS, subjective and objective +genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal +fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he +any son? +What the hell are you driving at? +I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons. +AMPLIUS. ADHUC. ITERUM. POSTEA. +Are you condemned to do this? +They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal +annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, +hardly record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic +sisters, loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, +jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son unborn mars +beauty born, he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a +new male his growth is his father's decline, his youth his father's +envy, his friend his father's enemy. +In rue MonsieurlePrince I thought it. +What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut. +Am I a father? If I were? +Shrunken uncertain hand. +Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the +field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of +Aquin, with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well if the +father who has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father +be a son? When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the +same name in the comedy of errors wrote HAMLET he was not the father of +his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the +father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of +his unborn grandson who, by the same token, never was born, for nature, +as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection. +Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly +glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine. +Flatter. Rarely. But flatter. +Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with +child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena A play The +play's the thing Let me parturiate +He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands. +As for his family, Stephen said, his mother's name lives in the forest +of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in +CORIOLANUS. His boyson's death is the deathscene of young Arthur in KING +JOHN. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in +THE TEMPEST, in PERICLES, in WINTER'S TALE are we know. Who Cleopatra, +fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is +another member of his family who is recorded. +The plot thickens, John Eglinton said. +The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with +haste, quake, quack. +Door closed. Cell. Day. +They list. Three. They. +I you he they. +Come, mess. +STEPHEN He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his +old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer +one time mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up +in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage +filled Gilbert's soul. He is nowhere but an Edmund and a Richard are +recorded in the works of sweet William. +MAGEEGLINJOHN Names What's in a name? +BEST That is my name, Richard, don't you know. I hope you are going to +say a good word for Richard, don't you know, for my sake. +Laughter +BUCKMULLIGAN PIANO, DIMINUENDO +Then outspoke medical Dick +To his comrade medical Davy ... +STEPHEN In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, +Richard Crookback, Edmund in KING LEAR, two bear the wicked uncles' +names. Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother +Edmund lay dying in Southwark. +BEST I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don't want Richard, my +name ... +Laughter +QUAKERLYSTER A TEMPO But he that filches from me my good name ... +STEPHEN STRINGENDO He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, +in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set +his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the +sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like John o'Gaunt his name is +dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend +sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than +his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What's in a name? That +is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are +told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, rose at his birth. It shone +by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the night, and by +night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation +which is the signature of his initial among the stars. His eyes watched +it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he walked by the +slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from Shottery and from her +arms. +Both satisfied. I too. +Don't tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched. +And from her arms. +Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you? +Read the skies. AUTONTIMORUMENOS. BOUS STEPHANOUMENOS. Where's your +configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D SUA DONNA. +GIA DI LUI. GELINDO RISOLVE DI NON AMARE S. D. +What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a +celestial phenomenon? +A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day. +What more's to speak? +Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots. +STEPHANOS, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of +my feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too. +You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name +is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour. +Me, Magee and Mulligan. +Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? +NewhavenDieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. +PATER, AIT. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing be. +Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say +That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know, we +find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers +Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don't you know, the fairytales. The third +brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize. +Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best. +The quaker librarian springhalted near. +I should like to know, he said, which brother you ... I understand you +to suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers ... But +perhaps I am anticipating? +He caught himself in the act looked at all refrained. +An attendant from the doorway called +Mr Lyster Father Dineen wants ... +O, Father Dineen Directly. +Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone. +John Eglinton touched the foil. +Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and +Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn't you? +In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and +nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A +brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella. +Lapwing. +Where is your brother? Apothecaries' hall. My whetstone. Him, then +Cranly, Mulligan now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They +mock to try you. Act. Be acted on. +Lapwing. +I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink. +On. +You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he +took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others? +Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed +Ann what's in a name?, woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow. +Richard the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered. +The other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his +kings Richard is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare's reverence, +the angel of the world. Why is the underplot of KING LEAR in which Edmund +figures lifted out of Sidney's ARCADIA and spatchcocked on to a Celtic +legend older than history? +That was Will's way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now +combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith. +QUE VOULEZVOUS? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and +makes Ulysses quote Aristotle. +Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the +usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare, +what the poor are not, always with him. The note of banishment, +banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly +from THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA onward till Prospero breaks his staff, +buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles +itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats +itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats +itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter +Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it was +the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his +will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are +those of my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original +sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between +the lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone +under which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. +Beauty and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite variety +everywhere in the world he has created, in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, twice +in AS YOU LIKE IT, in THE TEMPEST, in HAMLET, in MEASURE FOR MEASUREand +in all the other plays which I have not read. +He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage. +Judge Eglinton summed up. +The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is +all in all. +He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five. +All in all. In CYMBELINE, in OTHELLO he is bawd and cuckold. He acts and +is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jose he kills the +real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly +willing that the moor in him shall suffer. +Cuckoo Cuckoo Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear +Dark dome received, reverbed. +And what a character is Iago undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed. +When all is said Dumas FILS or is it Dumas PERE? is right. After God +Shakespeare has created most. +Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after +a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has +always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life +ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is +ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet PERE and Hamlet FILS. A king and a +prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered +and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, +sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be +divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it prosperous Prospero, +the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and nuncle Richie, +the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers +go. Strong curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in his +world within as possible. Maeterlinck says IF SOCRATES LEAVE HIS HOUSE +TODAY HE WILL FIND THE SAGE SEATED ON HIS DOORSTEP. IF JUDAS GO FORTH +TONIGHT IT IS TO JUDAS HIS STEPS WILL TEND. Every life is many days, +day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, +old men, young men, wives, widows, brothersinlove, but always meeting +ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it +badly He gave us light first and the sun two days later, the lord of +things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call DIO BOIA, +hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, +and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, +foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an +androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself. +EUREKA Buck Mulligan cried. EUREKA +Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton's +desk. +May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi. +He began to scribble on a slip of paper. +Take some slips from the counter going out. +Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall +live. The rest shall keep as they are. +He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor. +Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his +variorum edition of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. +You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have +brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your +own theory? +No, Stephen said promptly. +Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a +dialogue, don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote. +John Eclecticon doubly smiled. +Well, in that case, he said, I don't see why you should expect payment +for it since you don't believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is some +mystery in HAMLET but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met +in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the secret +is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to visit the present +duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor wrote the plays. +It will come as a surprise to his grace. But he believes his theory. +I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help +me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? EGOMEN. Who to unbelieve? Other +chap. +You are the only contributor to DANA who asks for pieces of silver. Then +I don't know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an article +on economics. +Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics. +For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview. +Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing and +then gravely said, honeying malice +I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper +Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the SUMMA CONTRA +GENTILES in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, +the coalquay whore. +He broke away. +Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds. +Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts +and offals. +Stephen rose. +Life is many days. This will end. +We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. NOTRE AMI Moore says +Malachi Mulligan must be there. +Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama. +Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of +Ireland. I'll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk +straight? +Laughing, he ... +Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment. +Lubber ... +Stephen followed a lubber ... +One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After. +His lub back I followed. I gall his kibe. +Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a +wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering +daylight of no thought. +What have I learned? Of them? Of me? +Walk like Haines now. +The constant readers' room. In the readers' book Cashel Boyle +O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item was +Hamlet mad? The quaker's pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk. +O please do, sir ... I shall be most pleased ... +Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself, selfnodding +A pleased bottom. +The turnstile. +Is that? ... Blueribboned hat ... Idly writing ... What? Looked? ... +The curving balustrade smoothsliding Mincius. +Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling +JOHN EGLINTON, MY JO, JOHN, +WHY WON'T YOU WED A WIFE? +He spluttered to the air +O, the chinless Chinaman Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their +playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players are creating a new +art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre I smell +the pubic sweat of monks. +He spat blank. +Forgot any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. +And left the FEMME DE TRENTE ANS. And why no other children born? And his +first child a girl? +Afterwit. Go back. +The dour recluse still there he has his cake and the douce youngling, +minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair. +Eh ... I just eh ... wanted ... I forgot ... he ... +Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson were there ... +Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling +I HARDLY HEAR THE PURLIEU CRY +OR A TOMMY TALK AS I PASS ONE BY +BEFORE MY THOUGHTS BEGIN TO RUN +ON F. M'CURDY ATKINSON, +THE SAME THAT HAD THE WOODEN LEG +AND THAT FILIBUSTERING FILIBEG +THAT NEVER DARED TO SLAKE HIS DROUTH, +MAGEE THAT HAD THE CHINLESS MOUTH. +BEING AFRAID TO MARRY ON EARTH +THEY MASTURBATED FOR ALL THEY WERE WORTH. +Jest on. Know thyself. +Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt. +Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing +black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black. +A laugh tripped over his lips. +Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old +hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit She gets you a job on +the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn't you do +the Yeats touch? +He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms +The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. +One thinks of Homer. +He stopped at the stairfoot. +I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly. +The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men's +morrice with caps of indices. +In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet +EVERYMAN HIS OWN WIFE +OR +A HONEYMOON IN THE HAND +A NATIONAL IMMORALITY IN THREE ORGASMS +BY +BALLOCKY MULLIGAN +He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen, saying +The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen. +He read, MARCATO +Characters +TODY TOSTOFF a ruined Pole +CRAB a bushranger +MEDICAL DICK +and two birds with one stone +MEDICAL DAVY +MOTHER GROGAN a watercarrier +FRESH NELLY +and +ROSALIE the coalquay whore. +He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen +and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men +O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift +their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, +multicoloured, multitudinous vomit +The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted +them. +About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside. +Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house +today, if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time +must come to, ineluctably. +My will his will that fronts me. Seas between. +A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting. +Good day again, Buck Mulligan said. +The portico. +Here I watched the birds for augury. Aengus of the birds. They go, +they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots +after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see. +The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. Did you +see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient +mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad. +Manner of Oxenford. +Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge. +A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the +gateway, under portcullis barbs. +They followed. +Offend me still. Speak on. +Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail +from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw +of softness softly were blown. +Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline hierophantic +from wide earth an altar. +LAUD WE THE GODS +AND LET OUR CROOKED SMOKES CLIMB TO THEIR NOSTRILS +FROM OUR BLESS'D ALTARS. +The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S.J. reset his smooth +watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to +three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy's name again? +Dignam. Yes. VERE DIGNUM ET IUSTUM EST. Brother Swan was the person to +see. Mr Cunningham's letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good practical +catholic useful at mission time. +A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his +crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the +sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very +reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his +purse held, he knew, one silver crown. +Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for +long, of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by +cannonballs, ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal +Wolsey's words IF I HAD SERVED MY GOD AS I HAVE SERVED MY KING HE WOULD +NOT HAVE ABANDONED ME IN MY OLD DAYS. He walked by the treeshade of +sunnywinking leaves and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy +M.P. +Very well, indeed, father. And you, father? +Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton +probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at +Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that. +And Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house was still sitting, to be +sure it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful indeed. Yes, it was very +probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to preach. O, +yes a very great success. A wonderful man really. +Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy +M.P. Iooking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy +M.P. Yes, he would certainly call. +Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy. +Father Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took leave, at the +jet beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again, in +going. He had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste. +Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father +Bernard Vaughan's droll eyes and cockney voice. +Pilate Wy don't you old back that owlin mob? +A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in. +his way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the +Irish. Of good family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not? +O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial. +Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of +Mountjoy square. Yes they were from Belvedere. The little house. Aha. +And were they good boys at school? O. That was very good now. And what +was his name? Jack Sohan. And his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other +little man? His name was Brunny Lynam. O, that was a very nice name to +have. +Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to Master Brunny Lynam +and pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street. +But mind you don't post yourself into the box, little man, he said. +The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed +O, sir. +Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said. +Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee's +letter to father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox. +Father Conmee smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy +square east. +Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing c, in silk hat, slate +frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender trousers, +canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking with grave deportment +most respectfully took the curbstone as he passed lady Maxwell at the +corner of Dignam's court. +Was that not Mrs M'Guinness? +Mrs M'Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from +the farther footpath along which she sailed. And Father Conmee smiled and +saluted. How did she do? +A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to +think that she was a pawnbroker Well, now Such a ... what should he +say? ... such a queenly mien. +Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the +shutup free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Greene B.A. will D.V. +speak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on him to say a +few words. But one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They acted +according to their lights. +Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North +Circular road. It was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an +important thoroughfare. Surely, there ought to be. +A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All +raised untidy caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly. +Christian brother boys. +Father Conmee smelt incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint +Joseph's church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females. Father +Conmee raised his hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous but occasionally +they were also badtempered. +Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift +nobleman. And now it was an office or something. +Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was +saluted by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop. +Father Conmee saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours +that came from baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed +Grogan's the Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a +dreadful catastrophe in New York. In America those things were +continually happening. Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared. +Still, an act of perfect contrition. +Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin's publichouse against the +window of which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and +were saluted. +Father Conmee passed H. J. O'Neill's funeral establishment where +Corny Kelleher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of +hay. A constable on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee +saluted the constable. In Youkstetter's, the porkbutcher's, Father Conmee +observed pig's puddings, white and black and red, lie neatly curled in +tubes. +Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a +turfbarge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty +straw seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above +him. It was idyllic and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of the +Creator who had made turf to be in bogs whence men might dig it out and +bring it to town and hamlet to make fires in the houses of poor people. +On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S.J. of saint +Francis Xavier's church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward +bound tram. +Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley +C. C. of saint Agatha's church, north William street, on to Newcomen +bridge. +At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound +tram for he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island. +Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked +with care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a +sixpence and five pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm into his +purse. Passing the ivy church he reflected that the ticket inspector +usually made his visit when one had carelessly thrown away the ticket. +The solemnity of the occupants of the car seemed to Father Conmee +excessive for a journey so short and cheap. Father Conmee liked cheerful +decorum. +It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father +Conmee had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father +Conmee supposed. A tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman +with the glasses. She raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, +tiptapping her small gloved fist on her opening mouth and smiled tinily, +sweetly. +Father Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived also +that the awkward man at the other side of her was sitting on the edge of +the seat. +Father Conmee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty in the +mouth of the awkward old man who had the shaky head. +At Annesley bridge the tram halted and, when it was about to go, an +old woman rose suddenly from her place to alight. The conductor pulled +the bellstrap to stay the car for her. She passed out with her basket and +a marketnet and Father Conmee saw the conductor help her and net and +basket down and Father Conmee thought that, as she had nearly passed +the end of the penny fare, she was one of those good souls who had always +to be told twice BLESS YOU, MY CHILD, that they have been absolved, PRAY +FOR ME. But they had so many worries in life, so many cares, poor +creatures. +From the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grimaced with thick niggerlips at +Father Conmee. +Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow +men and of his sermon on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African mission +and of the propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and brown +and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last +hour came like a thief in the night. That book by the Belgian jesuit, LE +NOMBRE DES ELUS, seemed to Father Conmee a reasonable plea. Those were +millions of human souls created by God in His Own likeness to whom the +faith had not D.V. been brought. But they were God's souls, created by +God. It seemed to Father Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, a +waste, if one might say. +At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the +conductor and saluted in his turn. +The Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmee, road and +name. The joybells were ringing in gay Malahide. Lord Talbot de Malahide, +immediate hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and the seas adjoining. +Then came the call to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day. +Those were old worldish days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old times +in the barony. +Father Conmee, walking, thought of his little book OLD TIMES IN THE +BARONY and of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and of +Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere. +A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough +Ennel, Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the +evening, not startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth? +Not the jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not +committed adultery fully, EIACULATIO SEMINIS INTER VAS NATURALE MULIERIS, +with her husband's brother? She would half confess if she had not all +sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her husband's brother. +Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed +however for man's race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not +our ways. +Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was +humane and honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he +smiled at smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full +fruit clusters. And the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to +noble, were impalmed by Don John Conmee. +It was a charming day. +The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages, +curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of +small white clouds going slowly down the wind. MOUTONNER, the French +said. A just and homely word. +Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning +clouds over Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble +of Clongowes field. He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the +cries of the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening. +He was their rector his reign was mild. +Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary out. +An ivory bookmark told him the page. +Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell had come. +Father Conmee read in secret PATER and AVE and crossed his breast. +DEUS IN ADIUTORIUM. +He walked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading till +he came to RES in BEATI IMMACULATI PRINCIPIUM VERBORUM TUORUM VERITAS +IN ETERNUM OMNIA INDICIA IUSTITIAE TUAE. +A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came +a young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. The young man +raised his cap abruptly the young woman abruptly bent and with slow care +detached from her light skirt a clinging twig. +Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page of his +breviary. SIN PRINCIPES PERSECUTI SUNT ME GRATIS ET A VERBIS TUIS +FORMIDAVIT COR MEUM. +Corny Kelleher closed his long daybook and glanced with his +drooping eye at a pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He pulled himself +erect, went to it and, spinning it on its axle, viewed its shape and brass +furnishings. Chewing his blade of hay he laid the coffinlid by and came to +the doorway. There he tilted his hatbrim to give shade to his eyes and +leaned against the doorcase, looking idly out. +Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on +Newcomen bridge. +Corny Kelleher locked his largefooted boots and gazed, his hat +downtilted, chewing his blade of hay. +Constable C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day. +That's a fine day, Mr Kelleher. +Ay, Corny Kelleher said. +It's very close, the constable said. +Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth +while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a +coin. +What's the best news? he asked. +I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with bated +breath. +A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell's corner, +skirting Rabaiotti's icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street. +Towards Larry O'Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled +unamiably +FOR ENGLAND ... +He swung himself violently forward past Katey and Boody Dedalus, +halted and growled +HOME AND BEAUTY. +J. J. O'Molloy's white careworn face was told that Mr Lambert was +in the warehouse with a visitor. +A stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse and dropped +it into the cap held out to her. The sailor grumbled thanks, glanced +sourly at the unheeding windows, sank his head and swung himself forward +four strides. +He halted and growled angrily +FOR ENGLAND ... +Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him, +gaping at his stump with their yellowslobbered mouths. +He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head +towards a window and bayed deeply +HOME AND BEAUTY. +The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased. +The blind of the window was drawn aside. A card UNFURNISHED APARTMENTS +slipped from the sash and fell. A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, +held forth from a white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps. A woman's +hand flung forth a coin over the area railings. It fell on the path. +One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the +minstrel's cap, saying +There, sir. +Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the closesteaming +kitchen. +Did you put in the books? Boody asked. +Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling +suds twice with her potstick and wiped her brow. +They wouldn't give anything on them, she said. +Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his thinsocked +ankles tickled by stubble. +Where did you try? Boody asked. +M'Guinness's. +Boody stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table. +Bad cess to her big face she cried. +Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes. +What's in the pot? she asked. +Shirts, Maggy said. +Boody cried angrily +Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat? +Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked +And what's in this? +A heavy fume gushed in answer. +Peasoup, Maggy said. +Where did you get it? Katey asked. +Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said. +The lacquey rang his bell. +Barang +Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily +Give us it here. +Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Katey, +sitting opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her mouth +random crumbs +A good job we have that much. Where's Dilly? +Gone to meet father, Maggy said. +Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added +Our father who art not in heaven. +Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey's bowl, exclaimed +Boody For shame +A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down +the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed +around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, +between the Customhouse old dock and George's quay. +The blond girl in Thornton's bedded the wicker basket with rustling +fibre. Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper +and a small jar. +Put these in first, will you? he said. +Yes, sir, the blond girl said. And the fruit on top. +That'll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said. +She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe +shamefaced peaches. +Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the +fruitsmelling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red +tomatoes, sniffing smells. +H. E. L. Y.'S filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane, +plodding towards their goal. +He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch +from his fob and held it at its chain's length. +Can you send them by tram? Now? +A darkbacked figure under Merchants' arch scanned books on the +hawker's cart. +Certainly, sir. Is it in the city? +O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. Ten minutes. +The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil. +Will you write the address, sir? +Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her. +Send it at once, will you? he said. It's for an invalid. +Yes, sir. I will, sir. +Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers' pocket. +What's the damage? he asked. +The blond girl's slim fingers reckoned the fruits. +Blazes Boylan looked into the cut of her blouse. A young pullet. He +took a red carnation from the tall stemglass. +This for me? he asked gallantly. +The blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, with his tie +a bit crooked, blushing. +Yes, sir, she said. +Bending archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing peaches. +Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk of the +red flower between his smiling teeth. +May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked roguishly. +MA Almidano Artifoni said. +He gazed over Stephen's shoulder at Goldsmith's knobby poll. +Two carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore, +gripping the handrests. Palefaces. Men's arms frankly round their stunted +forms. They looked from Trinity to the blind columned porch of the bank +of Ireland where pigeons roocoocooed. +ANCH'IO HO AVUTO DI QUESTE IDEE, Almidano Artifoni said, QUAND' ERO +GIOVINE COME LEI. EPPOI MI SONO CONVINTO CHE IL MONDO E UNA BESTIA. +PECCATO. PERCHE LA SUA VOCE ... SAREBBE UN CESPITE DI RENDITA, VIA. +INVECE, LEI SI SACRIFICA. +SACRIFIZIO INCRUENTO, Stephen said smiling, swaying his ashplant in slow +swingswong from its midpoint, lightly. +SPERIAMO, the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. MA, DIA RETTA A +ME. CI RIFLETTA. +By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram +unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a band. +CI RIFLETTERO, Stephen said, glancing down the solid trouserleg. +MA, SUL SERIO, EH? Almidano Artifoni said. +His heavy hand took Stephen's firmly. Human eyes. They gazed +curiously an instant and turned quickly towards a Dalkey tram. +ECCOLO, Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. VENGA A TROVARMI E CI +PENSI. ADDIO, CARO. +ARRIVEDERLA, MAESTRO, Stephen said, raising his hat when his hand was +freed. E GRAZIE. +DI CHE? Almidano Artifoni said. SCUSI, EH? TANTE BELLE COSE +Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal, +trotted on stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted, +signalling in vain among the rout of barekneed gillies smuggling +implements of music through Trinity gates. +Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of THE WOMAN IN WHITE +far back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her +typewriter. +Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Marion? +Change it and get another by Mary Cecil Haye. +The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled +them six. +Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard + June . +Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny's corner and +the slab where Wolfe Tone's statue was not, eeled themselves turning +H. E. L. Y.'S and plodded back as they had come. +Then she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, +and, listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and capital +esses. Mustard hair and dauby cheeks. She's not nicelooking, is she? The +way she's holding up her bit of a skirt. Wonder will that fellow be at the +band tonight. If I could get that dressmaker to make a concertina skirt +like Susy Nagle's. They kick out grand. Shannon and all the boatclub +swells never took his eyes off her. Hope to goodness he won't keep me here +till seven. +The telephone rang rudely by her ear. +Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring them up after five. Only +those two, sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, sir. Then I can go +after six if you're not back. A quarter after. Yes, sir. Twentyseven and +six. I'll tell him. Yes one, seven, six. +She scribbled three figures on an envelope. +Mr Boylan Hello That gentleman from SPORT was in looking for you. +Mr Lenehan, yes. He said he'll be in the Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes, +sir. I'll ring them up after five. +Two pink faces turned in the flare of the tiny torch. +Who's that? Ned Lambert asked. Is that Crotty? +Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied groping for foothold. +Hello, Jack, is that yourself? Ned Lambert said, raising in salute his +pliant lath among the flickering arches. Come on. Mind your steps there. +The vesta in the clergyman's uplifted hand consumed itself in a long soft +flame and was let fall. At their feet its red speck died and mouldy air +closed round them. +How interesting a refined accent said in the gloom. +Yes, sir, Ned Lambert said heartily. We are standing in the historic +council chamber of saint Mary's abbey where silken Thomas proclaimed +himself a rebel in . This is the most historic spot in all Dublin. +O'Madden Burke is going to write something about it one of these days. The +old bank of Ireland was over the way till the time of the union and the +original jews' temple was here too before they built their synagogue over +in Adelaide road. You were never here before, Jack, were you? +No, Ned. +He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent said, if my +memory serves me. The mansion of the Kildares was in Thomas court. +That's right, Ned Lambert said. That's quite right, sir. +If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to allow +me perhaps ... +Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever you like. I'll +get those bags cleared away from the windows. You can take it from here or +from here. +In the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his lath the piled +seedbags and points of vantage on the floor. +From a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard. +I'm deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I won't trespass on +your valuable time ... +You're welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. Drop in whenever you like. Next +week, say. Can you see? +Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to have met you. +Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered. +He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away +among the pillars. With J. J. O'Molloy he came forth slowly into Mary's +abbey where draymen were loading floats with sacks of carob and palmnut +meal, O'Connor, Wexford. +He stood to read the card in his hand. +The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address Saint +Michael's, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He's writing a book about the +Fitzgeralds he told me. He's well up in history, faith. +The young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a +clinging twig. +I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J. J. O'Molloy said. +Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air. +God he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare +after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I'M BLOODY SORRY +I DID IT, says he, BUT I DECLARE TO GOD I THOUGHT THE ARCHBISHOP WAS +INSIDE. He mightn't like it, though. What? God, I'll tell him anyhow. +That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of +them, the Geraldines. +The horses he passed started nervously under their slack harness. He +slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him and cried +Woa, sonny +He turned to J. J. O'Molloy and asked +Well, Jack. What is it? What's the trouble? Wait awhile. Hold hard. +With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an +instant, sneezed loudly. +Chow he said. Blast you +The dust from those sacks, J. J. O'Molloy said politely. +No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a ... cold night before ... blast +your soul ... night before last ... and there was a hell of a lot of +draught ... +He held his handkerchief ready for the coming ... +I was ... Glasnevin this morning ... poor little ... what do you call +him ... Chow ... Mother of Moses +Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against his +claret waistcoat. +See? he said. Say it's turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On. +He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, wobbled +a while, ceased, ogling them six. +Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the +consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carrying +the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the +admiralty division of king's bench to the court of appeal an elderly +female with false teeth smiling incredulously and a black silk skirt of +great amplitude. +See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here Turns Over. +The impact. Leverage, see? +He showed them the rising column of disks on the right. +Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late can +see what turn is on and what turns are over. +See? Tom Rochford said. +He slid in a disk for himself and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle, stop +four. Turn Now On. +I'll see him now in the Ormond, Lenehan said, and sound him. One good +turn deserves another. +Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I'm Boylan with impatience. +Goodnight, M'Coy said abruptly. When you two begin +Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it. +But how does it work here, Tommy? he asked. +Tooraloo, Lenehan said. See you later. +He followed M'Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court. +He's a hero, he said simply. +I know, M'Coy said. The drain, you mean. +Drain? Lenehan said. It was down a manhole. +They passed Dan Lowry's musichall where Marie Kendall, charming +soubrette, smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile. +Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall +Lenehan showed M'Coy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes +like a bloody gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it, half +choked with sewer gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky's vest +and all, with the rope round him. And be damned but he got the rope round +the poor devil and the two were hauled up. +The act of a hero, he said. +At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past +them for Jervis street. +This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam's to +see Sceptre's starting price. What's the time by your gold watch and +chain? +M'Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses' sombre office, then at +O'Neill's clock. +After three, he said. Who's riding her? +O. Madden, Lenehan said. And a game filly she is. +While he waited in Temple bar M'Coy dodged a banana peel with +gentle pushes of his toe from the path to the gutter. Fellow might damn +easy get a nasty fall there coming along tight in the dark. +The gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the viceregal +cavalcade. +Even money, Lenehan said returning. I knocked against Bantam Lyons in +there going to back a bloody horse someone gave him that hasn't an +earthly. Through here. +They went up the steps and under Merchants' arch. A darkbacked +figure scanned books on the hawker's cart. +There he is, Lenehan said. +Wonder what he's buying, M'Coy said, glancing behind. +LEOPOLDO OR THE BLOOM IS ON THE RYE, Lenehan said. +He's dead nuts on sales, M'Coy said. I was with him one day and he +bought a book from an old one in Liffey street for two bob. There were +fine plates in it worth double the money, the stars and the moon and +comets with long tails. Astronomy it was about. +Lenehan laughed. +I'll tell you a damn good one about comets' tails, he said. Come over in +the sun. +They crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay by +the riverwall. +Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan's, late +Fehrenbach's, carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks. +There was a long spread out at Glencree reformatory, Lenehan said +eagerly. The annual dinner, you know. Boiled shirt affair. The lord mayor +was there, Val Dillon it was, and sir Charles Cameron and Dan Dawson +spoke and there was music. Bartell d'Arcy sang and Benjamin Dollard ... +I know, M'Coy broke in. My missus sang there once. +Did she? Lenehan said. +A card UNFURNISHED APARTMENTS reappeared on the windowsash of +number Eccles street. +He checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy laugh. +But wait till I tell you, he said. Delahunt of Camden street had the +catering and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. Bloom and the wife were +there. Lashings of stuff we put up port wine and sherry and curacao to +which we did ample justice. Fast and furious it was. After liquids came +solids. Cold joints galore and mince pies ... +I know, M'Coy said. The year the missus was there ... +Lenehan linked his arm warmly. +But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after all +the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the +morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter's +night on the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one +side of the car and I was with the wife on the other. We started singing +glees and duets LO, THE EARLY BEAM OF MORNING. She was well primed with a +good load of Delahunt's port under her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody +car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell's delights She has a fine +pair, God bless her. Like that. +He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning +I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time. Know +what I mean? +His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in +delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips. +The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She's a gamey +mare and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the comets +in the heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey the great bear and +Hercules and the dragon, and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was +lost, so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she +spotted a weeny weeshy one miles away. AND WHAT STAR IS THAT, POLDY? says +she. By God, she had Bloom cornered. THAT ONE, IS IT? says Chris Callinan, +SURE THAT'S ONLY WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL A PINPRICK. By God, he wasn't far +wide of the mark. +Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft +laughter. +I'm weak, he gasped. +M'Coy's white face smiled about it at instants and grew grave. +Lenehan walked on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his +hindhead rapidly. He glanced sideways in the sunlight at M'Coy. +He's a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. He's not one +of your common or garden ... you know ... There's a touch of the artist +about old Bloom. +Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of THE AWFUL DISCLOSURES OF MARIA +MONK, then of Aristotle's MASTERPIECE. Crooked botched print. Plates +infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered +cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the world. All +butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute +somewhere. Mrs Purefoy. +He laid both books aside and glanced at the third TALES OF THE GHETTO +by Leopold von Sacher Masoch. +That I had, he said, pushing it by. +The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter. +Them are two good ones, he said. +Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined +mouth. He bent to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against +his unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain. +On O'Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment +and gay apparel of Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing c. +Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. FAIR TYRANTS by James Lovebirch. +Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes. +He opened it. Thought so. +A woman's voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen the man. +No she wouldn't like that much. Got her it once. +He read the other title SWEETS OF SIN. More in her line. Let us see. +He read where his finger opened. +ALL THE DOLLARBILLS HER HUSBAND GAVE HER WERE SPENT IN THE STORES ON +WONDROUS GOWNS AND COSTLIEST FRILLIES. FOR HIM FOR RAOUL +Yes. This. Here. Try. +HER MOUTH GLUED ON HIS IN A LUSCIOUS VOLUPTUOUS KISS WHILE HIS HANDS +FELT FOR THE OPULENT CURVES INSIDE HER DESHABILLE. +Yes. Take this. The end. +YOU ARE LATE, HE SPOKE HOARSELY, EYING HER WITH A SUSPICIOUS GLARE. +THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN THREW OFF HER SABLETRIMMED WRAP, DISPLAYING HER +QUEENLY SHOULDERS AND HEAVING EMBONPOINT. AN IMPERCEPTIBLE SMILE PLAYED +ROUND HER PERFECT LIPS AS SHE TURNED TO HIM CALMLY. +Mr Bloom read again THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN. +Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded +amply amid rumpled clothes whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils +arched themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments FOR HIM FOR +RAOUL. Armpits' oniony sweat. Fishgluey slime HER HEAVING EMBONPOINT. +Feel Press Crushed Sulphur dung of lions +Young Young +An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of +chancery, king's bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in the +lord chancellor's court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty +division the summons, exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns +versus the owners of the barque Mona, in the court of appeal reservation +of judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean Accident and Guarantee +Corporation. +Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy +curtains. The shopman's uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven +reddened face, coughing. He raked his throat rudely, puked phlegm on the +floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it, and +bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired. +Mr Bloom beheld it. +Mastering his troubled breath, he said +I'll take this one. +The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum. +SWEETS OF SIN, he said, tapping on it. That's a good one. +The lacquey by the door of Dillon's auctionrooms shook his handbell +twice again and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the cabinet. +Dilly Dedalus, loitering by the curbstone, heard the beats of the bell, +the cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely curtains. +Five shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling new at two guineas. Any advance on +five shillings? Going for five shillings. +The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it +Barang +Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint. +J. A. Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. Gahan, their stretched +necks wagging, negotiated the curve by the College library. +Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams's +row. He halted near his daughter. +It's time for you, she said. +Stand up straight for the love of the lord Jesus, Mr Dedalus said. Are +you trying to imitate your uncle John, the cornetplayer, head upon +shoulder? Melancholy God +Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands on them +and held them back. +Stand up straight, girl, he said. You'll get curvature of the spine. +Do you know what you look like? +He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his +shoulders and dropping his underjaw. +Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking at you. +Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache. +Did you get any money? Dilly asked. +Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is noone in Dublin +would lend me fourpence. +You got some, Dilly said, looking in his eyes. +How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue in his cheek. +Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly +along James's street. +I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house now? +I was not, then, Mr Dedalus said, smiling. Was it the little nuns +taught you to be so saucy? Here. +He handed her a shilling. +See if you can do anything with that, he said. +I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than that. +Wait awhile, Mr Dedalus said threateningly. You're like the rest of +them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother +died. But wait awhile. You'll all get a short shrift and a long day from +me. Low blackguardism I'm going to get rid of you. Wouldn't care if I +was stretched out stiff. He's dead. The man upstairs is dead. +He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and pulled his coat. +Well, what is it? he said, stopping. +The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs. +Barang +Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning on him. +The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his bell +but feebly +Bang +Mr Dedalus stared at him. +Watch him, he said. It's instructive. I wonder will he allow us to talk. +You got more than that, father, Dilly said. +I'm going to show you a little trick, Mr Dedalus said. I'll leave you +all where Jesus left the jews. Look, there's all I have. I got two +shillings from Jack Power and I spent twopence for a shave for the +funeral. +He drew forth a handful of copper coins, nervously. +Can't you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said. +Mr Dedalus thought and nodded. +I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O'Connell +street. I'll try this one now. +You're very funny, Dilly said, grinning. +Here, Mr Dedalus said, handing her two pennies. Get a glass of milk for +yourself and a bun or a something. I'll be home shortly. +He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on. +The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, out +of Parkgate. +I'm sure you have another shilling, Dilly said. +The lacquey banged loudly. +Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a +pursing mincing mouth gently +The little nuns Nice little things O, sure they wouldn't do anything +O, sure they wouldn't really Is it little sister Monica +From the sundial towards James's gate walked Mr Kernan, pleased with the +order he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson, boldly along James's street, +past Shackleton's offices. Got round him all right. How do you do, Mr +Crimmins? First rate, sir. I was afraid you might be up in your other +establishment in Pimlico. How are things going? Just keeping alive. +Lovely weather we're having. Yes, indeed. Good for the country. Those +farmers are always grumbling. I'll just take a thimbleful of your best +gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that +General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible A thousand casualties. And +heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal +thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion. Most +scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose +all burst. What I can't understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a +boat like that ... Now, you're talking straight, Mr Crimmins. You know +why? Palm oil. Is that a fact? Without a doubt. Well now, look at that. +And America they say is the land of the free. I thought we were bad here. +I smiled at him. AMERICA, I said quietly, just like that. WHAT IS IT? THE +SWEEPINGS OF EVERY COUNTRY INCLUDING OUR OWN. ISN'T THAT TRUE? That's a +fact. +Graft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there's money going there's +always someone to pick it up. +Saw him looking at my frockcoat. Dress does it. Nothing like a dressy +appearance. Bowls them over. +Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things? +Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping. +Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter +Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson +street. Well worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it. Never built +under three guineas. Fits me down to the ground. Some Kildare street club +toff had it probably. John Mulligan, the manager of the Hibernian bank, +gave me a very sharp eye yesterday on Carlisle bridge as if he remembered +me. +Aham Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight of the road. +Gentleman. And now, Mr Crimmins, may we have the honour of your custom +again, sir. The cup that cheers but not inebriates, as the old saying has +it. +North wall and sir John Rogerson's quay, with hulls and anchorchains, +sailing westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, rocked on the +ferrywash, Elijah is coming. +Mr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, of course. +Grizzled moustache. Returned Indian officer. Bravely he bore his stumpy +body forward on spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that Ned +Lambert's brother over the way, Sam? What? Yes. He's as like it as damn +it. No. The windscreen of that motorcar in the sun there. Just a flash +like that. Damn like him. +Aham Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath. Good +drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his +fat strut. +Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope. Dogs +licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant's wife drove by +in her noddy. +Bad times those were. Well, well. Over and done with. Great topers too. +Fourbottle men. +Let me see. Is he buried in saint Michan's? Or no, there was a midnight +burial in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret door in the wall. +Dignam is there now. Went out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn down +here. Make a detour. +Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling street by the +corner of Guinness's visitors' waitingroom. Outside the Dublin Distillers +Company's stores an outside car without fare or jarvey stood, the reins +knotted to the wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some Tipperary bosthoon +endangering the lives of the citizens. Runaway horse. +Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in John Henry +Menton's office, led his wife over O'Connell bridge, bound for the office +of Messrs Collis and Ward. +Mr Kernan approached Island street. +Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those +reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now +in a kind of retrospective arrangement. Gaming at Daly's. No cardsharping +then. One of those fellows got his hand nailed to the table by a dagger. +Somewhere here lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped from major Sirr. Stables +behind Moira house. +Damn good gin that was. +Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that +sham squire, with his violet gloves gave him away. Course they were on +the wrong side. They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is +Ingram. They were gentlemen. Ben Dollard does sing that ballad +touchingly. Masterly rendition. +AT THE SIEGE OF ROSS DID MY FATHER FALL. +A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders leaping, +leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades. +Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily. +His Excellency Too bad Just missed that by a hair. Damn it What a +pity +Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary's fingers +prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust +darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull +coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and +winedark stones. +Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights +shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their +brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them. +She dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A sailorman, +rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and seafed +silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her hips, +on her gross belly flapping a ruby egg. +Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned it +and held it at the point of his Moses' beard. Grandfather ape gloating on +a stolen hoard. +And you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The brainsick words +of sophists Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat +standing from everlasting to everlasting. +Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through +Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded tired umbrella, one +with a midwife's bag in which eleven cockles rolled. +The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the +powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop Throb always +without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I +between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. +Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me +you who can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I say Not yet awhile. A +look around. +Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You say +right, sir. A Monday morning, 'twas so, indeed. +Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against his +shoulderblade. In Clohissey's window a faded print of Heenan boxing +Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood round the +roped prizering. The heavyweights in tight loincloths proposed gently +each to other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing heroes' hearts. +He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart. +Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence. +Tattered pages. THE IRISH BEEKEEPER. LIFE AND MIRACLES OF THE CURE' OF +ARS. POCKET GUIDE TO KILLARNEY. +I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. STEPHANO DEDALO, ALUMNO +OPTIMO, PALMAM FERENTI. +Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the hamlet of +Donnycarney, murmuring vespers. +Binding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of Moses. +Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages read and read. +Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for +white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this. Say the +following talisman three times with hands folded +SE EL YILO NEBRAKADA FEMININUM AMOR ME SOLO SANKTUS AMEN. +Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter +Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot's +charms, as mumbling Joachim's. Down, baldynoddle, or we'll wool your +wool. +What are you doing here, Stephen? +Dilly's high shoulders and shabby dress. +Shut the book quick. Don't let see. +What are you doing? Stephen said. +A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It +glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her of +Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck +bracelet, Dan Kelly's token. NEBRAKADA FEMININUM. +What have you there? Stephen asked. +I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing +nervously. Is it any good? +My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring. +Shadow of my mind. +He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal's French primer. +What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French? +She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips. +Show no surprise. Quite natural. +Here, Stephen said. It's all right. Mind Maggy doesn't pawn it on you. +I suppose all my books are gone. +Some, Dilly said. We had to. +She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will +drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, +my heart, my soul. Salt green death. +We. +Agenbite of inwit. Inwit's agenbite. +Misery Misery +Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things? +Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping. +They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter's. Father Cowley +brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand. +What's the best news? Mr Dedalus said. +Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I'm barricaded up, Simon, with +two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance. +Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it? +O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance. +With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked. +The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I'm just +waiting for Ben Dollard. He's going to say a word to long John to get him +to take those two men off. All I want is a little time. +He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in +his neck. +I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben He's always +doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard +He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant. +There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets. +Ben Dollard's loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops crossed +the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them at an +amble, scratching actively behind his coattails. +As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted +Hold that fellow with the bad trousers. +Hold him now, Ben Dollard said. +Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben Dollard's +figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered +sneeringly +That's a pretty garment, isn't it, for a summer's day? +Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I +threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw. +He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy clothes from +points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying +They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow. +Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to +God he's not paid yet. +And how is that BASSO PROFONDO, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked. +Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring, glassyeyed, +strode past the Kildare street club. +Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter's mouth, gave forth a +deep note. +Aw he said. +That's the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone. +What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What? +He turned to both. +That'll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also. +The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint +Mary's abbey past James and Charles Kennedy's, rectifiers, attended by +Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of +hurdles. +Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward, +his joyful fingers in the air. +Come along with me to the subsheriff's office, he said. I want to show +you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He's a cross between Lobengula +and Lynchehaun. He's well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John +Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall +if I don't ... Wait awhile ... We're on the right lay, Bob, believe you +me. +For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously. +Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button +of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the +heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright. +What few days? he boomed. Hasn't your landlord distrained for rent? +He has, Father Cowley said. +Then our friend's writ is not worth the paper it's printed on, Ben +Dollard said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the +particulars. Windsor avenue. Love is the name? +That's right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He's a minister +in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that? +You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put that +writ where Jacko put the nuts. +He led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk. +Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his +glasses on his coatfront, following them. +The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they passed +out of the Castleyard gate. +The policeman touched his forehead. +God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily. +He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on +towards Lord Edward street. +Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head, appeared above +the crossblind of the Ormond hotel. +Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father +Conmee and laid the whole case before him. +You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward. +Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not. +John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them +quickly down Cork hill. +On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, hailed +Alderman Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon ascending. +The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street. +Look here, Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the MAIL +office. I see Bloom put his name down for five shillings. +Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put down the +five shillings too. +Without a second word either, Mr Power said. +Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added. +John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes. +I'll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted, elegantly. +They went down Parliament street. +There's Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh's. +Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes. +Outside LA MAISON CLAIRE Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney's brotherin +law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties. +John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin Cunningham took the +elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit, who walked +uncertainly, with hasty steps past Micky Anderson's watches. +The assistant town clerk's corns are giving him some trouble, John Wyse +Nolan told Mr Power. +They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh's winerooms. The +empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Martin Cunningham, +speaking always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Henry did not +glance. +And long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan said, as large as +life. +The tall form of long John Fanning filled the doorway where he stood. +Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted and +greeted. +Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large Henry Clay +decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all their +faces. +Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he +said with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk. +Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said pettishly, +about their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to +know, to keep order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the macebearer +laid up with asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no quorum +even, and Hutchinson, the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little Lorcan +Sherlock doing LOCUM TENENS for him. Damned Irish language, language of +our forefathers. +Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips. +Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to the +assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan held his +peace. +What Dignam was that? long John Fanning asked. +Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot. +O, my corns he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness' sake till +I sit down somewhere. Uff Ooo Mind +Testily he made room for himself beside long John Fanning's flank and +passed in and up the stairs. +Come on up, Martin Cunningham said to the subsheriff. I don't think you +knew him or perhaps you did, though. +With John Wyse Nolan Mr Power followed them in. +Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart back of long +John Fanning ascending towards long John Fanning in the mirror. +Rather lowsized. Dignam of Menton's office that was, Martin Cunningham +said. +Long John Fanning could not remember him. +Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air. +What's that? Martin Cunningham said. +All turned where they stood. John Wyse Nolan came down again. From the +cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament street, +harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went past +before his cool unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders, +leaping leaders, rode outriders. +What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went on up the staircase. +The lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland, John Wyse +Nolan answered from the stairfoot. +As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered behind +his Panama to Haines +Parnell's brother. There in the corner. +They chose a small table near the window, opposite a longfaced man +whose beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard. +Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his seat. +Yes, Mulligan said. That's John Howard, his brother, our city marshal. +John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey +claw went up again to his forehead whereat it rested. An instant after, +under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and +fell once more upon a working corner. +I'll take a MELANGE, Haines said to the waitress. +Two MELANGES, Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some scones and butter +and some cakes as well. +When she had gone he said, laughing +We call it D.B.C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but you missed +Dedalus on HAMLET. +Haines opened his newbought book. +I'm sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds +that have lost their balance. +The onelegged sailor growled at the area of Nelson street +ENGLAND EXPECTS ... +Buck Mulligan's primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter. +You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance. Wandering +Aengus I call him. +I am sure he has an IDEE FIXE, Haines said, pinching his chin +thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. Now I am speculating what it would +be likely to be. Such persons always have. +Buck Mulligan bent across the table gravely. +They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never +capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white +death and the ruddy birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet. +The joy of creation ... +Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly. I see. I tackled him +this morning on belief. There was something on his mind, I saw. It's +rather interesting because professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an +interesting point out of that. +Buck Mulligan's watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He helped her +to unload her tray. +He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said, amid +the cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of +retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea. Does he +write anything for your movement? +He sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the whipped +cream. Buck Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter +over its smoking pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily. +Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going to write something +in ten years. +Seems a long way off, Haines said, thoughtfully lifting his spoon. +Still, I shouldn't wonder if he did after all. +He tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup. +This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance. +I don't want to be imposed on. +Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of +ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping +street past Benson's ferry, and by the threemasted schooner ROSEVEAN from +Bridgwater with bricks. +Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell's yard. +Behind him Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, with +stickumbrelladustcoat dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith's +house and, crossing, walked along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a +blind stripling tapped his way by the wall of College park. +Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as +Mr Lewis Werner's cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along +Merrion square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling. +At the corner of Wilde's house he halted, frowned at Elijah's name +announced on the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of +duke's lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth +bared he muttered +COACTUS VOLUI. +He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word. +As he strode past Mr Bloom's dental windows the sway of his +dustcoat brushed rudely from its angle a slender tapping cane and swept +onwards, having buffeted a thewless body. The blind stripling turned his +sickly face after the striding form. +God's curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are You're blinder nor +I am, you bitch's bastard +Opposite Ruggy O'Donohoe's Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, +pawing the pound and a half of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's, porksteaks he +had been sent for, went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too +blooming dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and +Mrs MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and +sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney brought from +Tunney's. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake, jawing the +whole blooming time and sighing. +After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress +milliner, stopped him. He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to +their pelts and putting up their props. From the sidemirrors two mourning +Masters Dignam gaped silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin's pet lamb, will meet +sergeantmajor Bennett, the Portobello bruiser, for a purse of fifty +sovereigns. Gob, that'd be a good pucking match to see. Myler Keogh, +that's the chap sparring out to him with the green sash. Two bar entrance, +soldiers half price. I could easy do a bunk on ma. Master Dignam on his +left turned as he turned. That's me in mourning. When is it? May the +twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned to the right +and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap awry, his collar sticking +up. Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, he saw the image of Marie Kendall, +charming soubrette, beside the two puckers. One of them mots that do be in +the packets of fags Stoer smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of +him for one time he found out. +Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The best pucker +going for strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow +would knock you into the middle of next week, man. But the best pucker +for science was Jem Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out of +him, dodging and all. +In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff's mouth +and a swell pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk was +telling him and grinning all the time. +No Sandymount tram. +Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to +his other hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The +blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end +to it. He met schoolboys with satchels. I'm not going tomorrow either, +stay away till Monday. He met other schoolboys. Do they notice I'm in +mourning? Uncle Barney said he'd get it into the paper tonight. Then +they'll all see it in the paper and read my name printed and pa's name. +His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a +fly walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was when they were +screwing the screws into the coffin and the bumps when they were bringing +it downstairs. +Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling +the men how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and +heavylooking. How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing +on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney's for +to boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never see him +again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He told me to be a +good son to ma. I couldn't hear the other things he said but I saw his +tongue and his teeth trying to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, +my father. I hope he's in purgatory now because he went to confession to +Father Conroy on Saturday night. +William Humble, earl of Dudley, and lady Dudley, accompanied by +lieutenantcolonel Heseltine, drove out after luncheon from the viceregal +lodge. In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de +Courcy and the honourable Gerald Ward A.D.C. in attendance. +The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix park saluted +by obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the +northern quays. The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through +the metropolis. At Bloody bridge Mr Thomas Kernan beyond the river +greeted him vainly from afar Between Queen's and Whitworth bridges lord +Dudley's viceregal carriages passed and were unsaluted by Mr Dudley +White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran quay outside Mrs M. E. White's, +the pawnbroker's, at the corner of Arran street west stroking his nose +with his forefinger, undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough +more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot +through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus. In the +porch of Four Courts Richie Goulding with the costbag of Goulding, +Collis and Ward saw him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the +doorstep of the office of Reuben J Dodd, solicitor, agent for the +Patriotic Insurance Company, an elderly female about to enter changed +her plan and retracing her steps by King's windows smiled credulously +on the representative of His Majesty. From its sluice in Wood quay +wall under Tom Devan's office Poddle river hung out in fealty a tongue +of liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel, gold by +bronze, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head watched and admired. +On Ormond quay Mr Simon Dedalus, steering his way from the greenhouse +for the subsheriff's office, stood still in midstreet and brought his +hat low. His Excellency graciously returned Mr Dedalus' greeting. From +Cahill's corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M.A., made obeisance +unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant +had held of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan bridge Lenehan and M'Coy, +taking leave of each other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger +Greene's office and Dollard's big red printinghouse Gerty MacDowell, +carrying the Catesby's cork lino letters for her father who was laid up, +knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant but she couldn't see +what Her Excellency had on because the tram and Spring's big yellow +furniture van had to stop in front of her on account of its being the lord +lieutenant. Beyond Lundy Foot's from the shaded door of Kavanagh's +winerooms John Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the lord +lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland. The Right Honourable +William Humble, earl of Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed Micky Anderson's +all times ticking watches and Henry and James's wax smartsuited +freshcheeked models, the gentleman Henry, DERNIER CRI James. Over against +Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn watched the approach of the +cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the eyes of lady Dudley fixed on him, +took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his claret waistcoat and +doffed his cap to her. A charming SOUBRETTE, great Marie Kendall, with +dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from her poster upon William +Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and +also upon the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the +D. B. C. Buck Mulligan gaily, and Haines gravely, gazed down on the +viceregal equipage over the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms +darkened the chessboard whereon John Howard Parnell looked intently. In +Fownes's street Dilly Dedalus, straining her sight upward from +Chardenal's first French primer, saw sunshades spanned and wheelspokes +spinning in the glare. John Henry Menton, filling the doorway of +Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat gold +hunter watch not looked at in his fat left hand not feeling it. Where the +foreleg of King Billy's horse pawed the air Mrs Breen plucked her +hastening husband back from under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted +in his ear the tidings. Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left +breast and saluted the second carriage. The honourable Gerald Ward A.D.C., +agreeably surprised, made haste to reply. At Ponsonby's corner a jaded +white flagon H. halted and four tallhatted white flagons halted behind +him, E.L.Y'S, while outriders pranced past and carriages. Opposite +Pigott's music warerooms Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing c, +gaily apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy and unobserved. +By the provost's wall came jauntily Blazes Boylan, stepping in tan shoes +and socks with skyblue clocks to the refrain of MY GIRL'S A YORKSHIRE +GIRL. +Blazes Boylan presented to the leaders' skyblue frontlets and high +action a skyblue tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a suit +of indigo serge. His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute but he +offered to the three ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and the red +flower between his lips. As they drove along Nassau street His Excellency +drew the attention of his bowing consort to the programme of music which +was being discoursed in College park. Unseen brazen highland laddies +blared and drumthumped after the CORTEGE +BUT THOUGH SHE'S A FACTORY LASS +AND WEARS NO FANCY CLOTHES. +BARAABUM. +YET I'VE A SORT OF A +YORKSHIRE RELISH FOR +MY LITTLE YORKSHIRE ROSE. +BARAABUM. +Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green, H. +Shrift, T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F. Stevenson, +C. Adderly and W. C. Huggard, started in pursuit. Striding past Finn's +hotel Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a +fierce eyeglass across the carriages at the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in +the window of the AustroHungarian viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street +by Trinity's postern a loyal king's man, Hornblower, touched his tallyho +cap. As the glossy horses pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick +Aloysius Dignam, waiting, saw salutes being given to the gent with the +topper and raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by +porksteak paper. His collar too sprang up. The viceroy, on his way to +inaugurate the Mirus bazaar in aid of funds for Mercer's hospital, +drove with his following towards Lower Mount street. He passed a blind +stripling opposite Broadbent's. In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a +brown macintosh, eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the +viceroy's path. At the Royal Canal bridge, from his hoarding, Mr Eugene +Stratton, his blub lips agrin, bade all comers welcome to Pembroke +township. At Haddington road corner two sanded women halted themselves, +an umbrella and a bag in which eleven cockles rolled to view with wonder +the lord mayor and lady mayoress without his golden chain. On +Northumberland and Lansdowne roads His Excellency acknowledged punctually +salutes from rare male walkers, the salute of two small schoolboys at the +garden gate of the house said to have been admired by the late queen when +visiting the Irish capital with her husband, the prince consort, in +and the salute of Almidano Artifoni's sturdy trousers swallowed by a +closing door. +Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing Imperthnthn thnthnthn. +Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. +Horrid And gold flushed more. +A husky fifenote blew. +Blew. Blue bloom is on the. +Goldpinnacled hair. +A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile. +Trilling, trilling Idolores. +Peep Who's in the ... peepofgold? +Tink cried to bronze in pity. +And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call. +Decoy. Soft word. But look the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping +answer. +O rose Castile. The morn is breaking. +Jingle jingle jaunted jingling. +Coin rang. Clock clacked. +Avowal. SONNEZ. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. LA +CLOCHE Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye +Jingle. Bloo. +Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War War The tympanum. +A sail A veil awave upon the waves. +Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now. +Horn. Hawhorn. +When first he saw. Alas +Full tup. Full throb. +Warbling. Ah, lure Alluring. +Martha Come +Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap. +Goodgod henev erheard inall. +Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up. +A moonlit nightcall far, far. +I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming. +Listen +The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, and for other, +plash and silent roar. +Pearls when she. Liszt's rhapsodies. Hissss. +You don't? +Did not no, no believe Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra. +Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do. +Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee. +But wait +Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore. +Naminedamine. Preacher is he +All gone. All fallen. +Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair. +Amen He gnashed in fury. +Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding. +Bronzelydia by Minagold. +By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom. +One rapped, one tapped, with a carra, with a cock. +Pray for him Pray, good people +His gouty fingers nakkering. +Big Benaben. Big Benben. +Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone. +Pwee Little wind piped wee. +True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your +tschink with tschunk. +Fff Oo +Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs? +Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl. +Then not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt. +Done. +Begin +Bronze by gold, miss Douce's head by miss Kennedy's head, over the +crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing +steel. +Is that her? asked miss Kennedy. +Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and EAU DE NIL. +Exquisite contrast, miss Kennedy said. +When all agog miss Douce said eagerly +Look at the fellow in the tall silk. +Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly. +In the second carriage, miss Douce's wet lips said, laughing in the sun. +He's looking. Mind till I see. +She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face +against the pane in a halo of hurried breath. +Her wet lips tittered +He's killed looking back. +She laughed +O wept Aren't men frightful idiots? +With sadness. +Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair +behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair. +Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear. +It's them has the fine times, sadly then she said. +A man. +Bloowho went by by Moulang's pipes bearing in his breast the sweets +of sin, by Wine's antiques, in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by +Carroll's dusky battered plate, for Raoul. +The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For them +unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering china. And +There's your teas, he said. +Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an +upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low. +What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked. +Find out, miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint. +Your BEAU, is it? +A haughty bronze replied +I'll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your +impertinent insolence. +Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she +threatened as he had come. +Bloom. +On her flower frowning miss Douce said +Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn't conduct himself I'll +wring his ear for him a yard long. +Ladylike in exquisite contrast. +Take no notice, miss Kennedy rejoined. +She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered +under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, +waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black +satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and two and +seven. +Yes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear, +hoofs ring from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel. +Am I awfully sunburnt? +Miss bronze unbloused her neck. +No, said miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try the borax with +the cherry laurel water? +Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror +gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their midst +a shell. +And leave it to my hands, she said. +Try it with the glycerine, miss Kennedy advised. +Bidding her neck and hands adieu miss Douce +Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked that old +fogey in Boyd's for something for my skin. +Miss Kennedy, pouring now a fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed +O, don't remind me of him for mercy' sake +But wait till I tell you, miss Douce entreated. +Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both two +ears with little fingers. +No, don't, she cried. +I won't listen, she cried. +But Bloom? +Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey's tone +For your what? says he. +Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak but said, but +prayed again +Don't let me think of him or I'll expire. The hideous old wretch That +night in the Antient Concert Rooms. +She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped, sweet tea. +Here he was, miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head three quarters, +ruffling her nosewings. Hufa Hufa +Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from miss Kennedy's throat. Miss +Douce huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered imperthnthn like +a snout in quest. +O shrieking, miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget his goggle eye? +Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting +And your other eye +Bloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner's name. Why do I always +think Figather? Gathering figs, I think. And Prosper Lore's huguenot name. +By Bassi's blessed virgins Bloom's dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white +under, come to me. God they believe she is or goddess. Those today. I +could not see. That fellow spoke. A student. After with Dedalus' son. He +might be Mulligan. All comely virgins. That brings those rakes of fellows +in her white. +By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets. +Of sin. +In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce with +Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, +to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each +other, high piercing notes. +Ah, panting, sighing, sighing, ah, fordone, their mirth died down. +Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and +gigglegiggled. Miss Douce, bending over the teatray, ruffled again her +nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping, her +fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered +out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with +choking, crying +O greasy eyes Imagine being married to a man like that she cried. With +his bit of beard +Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, +delight, joy, indignation. +Married to the greasy nose she yelled. +Shrill, with deep laughter, after, gold after bronze, they urged each +each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold, goldbronze, +shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter. And then laughed more. Greasy I +knows. Exhausted, breathless, their shaken heads they laid, braided and +pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed O, +panting, sweating O, all breathless. +Married to Bloom, to greaseabloom. +O saints above miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I wished +I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet. +O, miss Douce miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing +And flushed yet more you horrid, more goldenly. +By Cantwell's offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi's virgins, bright +of their oils. Nannetti's father hawked those things about, wheedling at +doors as I. Religion pays. Must see him for that par. Eat first. I want. +Not yet. At four, she said. Time ever passing. Clockhands turning. On. +Where eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five +guineas with those ads. The violet silk petticoats. Not yet. The sweets +of sin. +Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled. +Into their bar strolled Mr Dedalus. Chips, picking chips off one of his +rocky thumbnails. Chips. He strolled. +O, welcome back, miss Douce. +He held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays? +Tiptop. +He hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor. +Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying out on the strand +all day. +Bronze whiteness. +That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Dedalus told her and pressed +her hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple males. +Miss Douce of satin douced her arm away. +O go away she said. You're very simple, I don't think. +He was. +Well now I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the cradle they christened +me simple Simon. +You must have been a doaty, miss Douce made answer. And what did the +doctor order today? +Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think I'll trouble you +for some fresh water and a half glass of whisky. +Jingle. +With the greatest alacrity, miss Douce agreed. +With grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and +Cochrane's she turned herself. With grace she tapped a measure of gold +whisky from her crystal keg. Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr Dedalus +brought pouch and pipe. Alacrity she served. He blew through the flue two +husky fifenotes. +By Jove, he mused, I often wanted to see the Mourne mountains. Must be +a great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening comes at last, +they say. Yes. Yes. +Yes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into +the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute. +None nought said nothing. Yes. +Gaily miss Douce polished a tumbler, trilling +O, IDOLORES, QUEEN OF THE EASTERN SEAS +Was Mr Lidwell in today? +In came Lenehan. Round him peered Lenehan. Mr Bloom reached Essex bridge. +Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex. To Martha I must write. Buy paper. +Daly's. Girl there civil. Bloom. Old Bloom. Blue bloom is on the rye. +He was in at lunchtime, miss Douce said. +Lenehan came forward. +Was Mr Boylan looking for me? +He asked. She answered +Miss Kennedy, was Mr Boylan in while I was upstairs? +She asked. Miss voice of Kennedy answered, a second teacup poised, +her gaze upon a page +No. He was not. +Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard, not seen, read on. Lenehan round the +sandwichbell wound his round body round. +Peep Who's in the corner? +No glance of Kennedy rewarding him he yet made overtures. To mind +her stops. To read only the black ones round o and crooked ess. +Jingle jaunty jingle. +Girlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She took no +notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, plappering flatly +Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork Will you put your +bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone? +He droned in vain. Miss Douce turned to her tea aside. +He sighed aside +Ah me O my +He greeted Mr Dedalus and got a nod. +Greetings from the famous son of a famous father. +Who may he be? Mr Dedalus asked. +Lenehan opened most genial arms. Who? +Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Stephen, the youthful bard. +Dry. +Mr Dedalus, famous father, laid by his dry filled pipe. +I see, he said. I didn't recognise him for the moment. I hear he is +keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately? +He had. +I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Lenehan. In +Mooney's EN VILLE and in Mooney's SUR MER. He had received the rhino for +the labour of his muse. +He smiled at bronze's teabathed lips, at listening lips and eyes +The ELITE of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous pundit, Hugh +MacHugh, Dublin's most brilliant scribe and editor and that minstrel boy +of the wild wet west who is known by the euphonious appellation of the +O'Madden Burke. +After an interval Mr Dedalus raised his grog and +That must have been highly diverting, said he. I see. +He see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. Set down +his glass. +He looked towards the saloon door. +I see you have moved the piano. +The tuner was in today, miss Douce replied, tuning it for the smoking +concert and I never heard such an exquisite player. +Is that a fact? +Didn't he, miss Kennedy? The real classical, you know. And blind too, +poor fellow. Not twenty I'm sure he was. +Is that a fact? Mr Dedalus said. +He drank and strayed away. +So sad to look at his face, miss Douce condoled. +God's curse on bitch's bastard. +Tink to her pity cried a diner's bell. To the door of the bar and +diningroom came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat, waiter of +Ormond. Lager for diner. Lager without alacrity she served. +With patience Lenehan waited for Boylan with impatience, for +jinglejaunty blazes boy. +Upholding the lid he who? gazed in the coffin coffin? at the +oblique triple piano wires. He pressed the same who pressed +indulgently her hand, soft pedalling, a triple of keys to see the +thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall in action. +Two sheets cream vellum paper one reserve two envelopes when I was +in Wisdom Hely's wise Bloom in Daly's Henry Flower bought. Are you not +happy in your home? Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means +something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. +Respectable girl meet after mass. Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed +on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke +mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming lovelorn. For some man. +For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a +jaunting car. It is. Again. Third time. Coincidence. +Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond +quay. Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. Out. +Twopence, sir, the shopgirl dared to say. +Aha ... I was forgetting ... Excuse ... +And four. +At four she. Winsomely she on Bloohimwhom smiled. Bloo smi qui +go. Ternoon. Think you're the only pebble on the beach? Does that to all. +For men. +In drowsy silence gold bent on her page. +From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork the +tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now +poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly +and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call. +Pat paid for diner's popcorked bottle and over tumbler, tray and +popcorked bottle ere he went he whispered, bald and bothered, with Miss +Douce. +THE BRIGHT STARS FADE ... +A voiceless song sang from within, singing +... THE MORN IS BREAKING. +A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive +hands. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsichording, +called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy morn, of youth, of love's +leavetaking, life's, love's morn. +THE DEWDROPS PEARL ... +Lenehan's lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy. +But look this way, he said, rose of Castile. +Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped. +She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile fretted, forlorn, +dreamily rose. +Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her. +She answered, slighting +Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies. +Like lady, ladylike. +Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he +strode. Yes, gold from anear by bronze from afar. Lenehan heard and knew +and hailed him +See the conquering hero comes. +Between the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, +unconquered hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on warm. Black wary +hecat walked towards Richie Goulding's legal bag, lifted aloft, saluting. +AND I FROM THEE ... +I heard you were round, said Blazes Boylan. +He touched to fair miss Kennedy a rim of his slanted straw. She +smiled on him. But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening for him her +richer hair, a bosom and a rose. +Smart Boylan bespoke potions. +What's your cry? Glass of bitter? Glass of bitter, please, and a sloegin +for me. Wire in yet? +Not yet. At four she. Who said four? +Cowley's red lugs and bulging apple in the door of the sheriff's office. +Avoid. Goulding a chance. What is he doing in the Ormond? Car waiting. +Wait. +Hello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In here. What, +Ormond? Best value in Dublin. Is that so? Diningroom. Sit tight there. +See, not be seen. I think I'll join you. Come on. Richie led on. Bloom +followed bag. Dinner fit for a prince. +Miss Douce reached high to take a flagon, stretching her satin arm, +her bust, that all but burst, so high. +O O jerked Lenehan, gasping at each stretch. O +But easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph. +Why don't you grow? asked Blazes Boylan. +Shebronze, dealing from her oblique jar thick syrupy liquor for his +lips, looked as it flowed flower in his coat who gave him?, and +syrupped with her voice +Fine goods in small parcels. +That is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe. +Here's fortune, Blazes said. +He pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang. +Hold on, said Lenehan, till I ... +Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale. +Sceptre will win in a canter, he said. +I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking and drinking. Not on my own, you +know. Fancy of a friend of mine. +Lenehan still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at miss Douce's +lips that all but hummed, not shut, the oceansong her lips had trilled. +Idolores. The eastern seas. +Clock whirred. Miss Kennedy passed their way flower, wonder who +gave, bearing away teatray. Clock clacked. +Miss Douce took Boylan's coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It +clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the till +and hummed and handed coins in change. Look to the west. A clack. For me. +What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four? +O'clock. +Lenehan, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming, +tugged Blazes Boylan's elbowsleeve. +Let's hear the time, he said. +The bag of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered +tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table +near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not +come whet appetite. I couldn't do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited. +Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure's skyblue bow and eyes. +Go on, pressed Lenehan. There's noone. He never heard. +... TO FLORA'S LIPS DID HIE. +High, a high note pealed in the treble clear. +Bronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose sought +Blazes Boylan's flower and eyes. +Please, please. +He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal. +I COULD NOT LEAVE THEE ... +Afterwits, miss Douce promised coyly. +No, now, urged Lenehan. SONNEZLACLOCHE O do There's noone. +She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. Two +kindling faces watched her bend. +Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord, +and lost and found it, faltering. +Go on Do SONNEZ +Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted +them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes. +SONNEZ +Smack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter +smackwarm against her smackable a woman's warmhosed thigh. +LA CLOCHE cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No sawdust there. +She smilesmirked supercilious wept aren't men?, but, lightward +gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan. +You're the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said. +Boylan, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drank off his chalice +tiny, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His spellbound eyes went +after, after her gliding head as it went down the bar by mirrors, gilded +arch for ginger ale, hock and claret glasses shimmering, a spiky shell, +where it concerted, mirrored, bronze with sunnier bronze. +Yes, bronze from anearby. +... SWEETHEART, GOODBYE +I'm off, said Boylan with impatience. +He slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change. +Wait a shake, begged Lenehan, drinking quickly. I wanted to tell you. +Tom Rochford ... +Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going. +Lenehan gulped to go. +Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I'm coming. +He followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly by the +threshold, saluting forms, a bulky with a slender. +How do you do, Mr Dollard? +Eh? How do? How do? Ben Dollard's vague bass answered, turning an +instant from Father Cowley's woe. He won't give you any trouble, Bob. Alf +Bergan will speak to the long fellow. We'll put a barleystraw in that +Judas Iscariot's ear this time. +Sighing Mr Dedalus came through the saloon, a finger soothing an +eyelid. +Hoho, we will, Ben Dollard yodled jollily. Come on, Simon. Give us a +ditty. We heard the piano. +Bald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders. Power for Richie. +And Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His corns. Four now. +How warm this black is. Course nerves a bit. Refracts is it? heat. Let +me see. Cider. Yes, bottle of cider. +What's that? Mr Dedalus said. I was only vamping, man. +Come on, come on, Ben Dollard called. Begone dull care. Come, Bob. +He ambled Dollard, bulky slops, before them hold that fellow with +the hold him now into the saloon. He plumped him Dollard on the stool. +His gouty paws plumped chords. Plumped, stopped abrupt. +Bald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered, he +wanted Power and cider. Bronze by the window, watched, bronze from +afar. +Jingle a tinkle jaunted. +Bloom heard a jing, a little sound. He's off. Light sob of breath Bloom +sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He's gone. Jingle. Hear. +Love and War, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. God be with old times. +Miss Douce's brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind, +smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive who knows?, smitten the smiting +light, she lowered the dropblind with a sliding cord. She drew down +pensive why did he go so quick when I? about her bronze, over the bar +where bald stood by sister gold, inexquisite contrast, contrast +inexquisite nonexquisite, slow cool dim seagreen sliding depth of shadow, +EAU DE NIL. +Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father Cowley reminded +them. There was a slight difference of opinion between himself and the +Collard grand. +There was. +A symposium all his own, Mr Dedalus said. The devil wouldn't stop him. +He was a crotchety old fellow in the primary stage of drink. +God, do you remember? Ben bulky Dollard said, turning from the +punished keyboard. And by Japers I had no wedding garment. +They laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. No wedding +garment. +Our friend Bloom turned in handy that night, Mr Dedalus said. Where's +my pipe, by the way? +He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat carried +two diners' drinks, Richie and Poldy. And Father Cowley laughed again. +I saved the situation, Ben, I think. +You did, averred Ben Dollard. I remember those tight trousers too. That +was a brilliant idea, Bob. +Father Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He saved the +situa. Tight trou. Brilliant ide. +I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the piano in +the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration and who +was it gave me the wheeze she was doing the other business? Do you +remember? We had to search all Holles street to find them till the chap in +Keogh's gave us the number. Remember? Ben remembered, his broad visage +wondering. +By God, she had some luxurious operacloaks and things there. +Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand. +Merrion square style. Balldresses, by God, and court dresses. He +wouldn't take any money either. What? Any God's quantity of cocked hats +and boleros and trunkhose. What? +Ay, ay, Mr Dedalus nodded. Mrs Marion Bloom has left off clothes of all +descriptions. +Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding tyres. +Liver and bacon. Steak and kidney pie. Right, sir. Right, Pat. +Mrs Marion. Met him pike hoses. Smell of burn. Of Paul de Kock. Nice +name he. +What's this her name was? A buxom lassy. Marion ... +Tweedy. +Yes. Is she alive? +And kicking. +She was a daughter of ... +Daughter of the regiment. +Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor. +Mr Dedalus struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after +Irish? I don't know, faith. Is she, Simon? +Puff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling. +Buccinator muscle is ... What? ... Bit rusty ... O, she is ... My +Irish Molly, O. +He puffed a pungent plumy blast. +From the rock of Gibraltar... all the way. +They pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, bronze by +maraschino, thoughtful all two. Mina Kennedy, Lismore terrace, +Drumcondra with Idolores, a queen, Dolores, silent. +Pat served, uncovered dishes. Leopold cut liverslices. As said before he +ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods' roes while +Richie Goulding, Collis, Ward ate steak and kidney, steak then kidney, +bite by bite of pie he ate Bloom ate they ate. +Bloom with Goulding, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit for princes. +By Bachelor's walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in sun +in heat, mare's glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres +sprawled, warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you +the? Horn. Have you the? Haw haw horn. +Over their voices Dollard bassooned attack, booming over bombarding +chords +WHEN LOVE ABSORBS MY ARDENT SOUL ... +Roll of Bensoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery roofpanes. +War War cried Father Cowley. You're the warrior. +So I am, Ben Warrior laughed. I was thinking of your landlord. Love or +money. +He stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his blunder huge. +Sure, you'd burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said +through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours. +In bearded abundant laughter Dollard shook upon the keyboard. He +would. +Not to mention another membrane, Father Cowley added. Half time, +Ben. AMOROSO MA NON TROPPO. Let me there. +Miss Kennedy served two gentlemen with tankards of cool stout. She +passed a remark. It was indeed, first gentleman said, beautiful weather. +They drank cool stout. Did she know where the lord lieutenant was going? +And heard steelhoofs ringhoof ring. No, she couldn't say. But it would be +in the paper. O, she need not trouble. No trouble. She waved about her +outspread INDEPENDENT, searching, the lord lieutenant, her pinnacles of +hair slowmoving, lord lieuten. Too much trouble, first gentleman said. O, +not in the least. Way he looked that. Lord lieutenant. Gold by bronze +heard iron steel. +............ MY ARDENT SOUL +I CARE NOT FOROR THE MORROW. +In liver gravy Bloom mashed mashed potatoes. Love and War +someone is. Ben Dollard's famous. Night he ran round to us to borrow a +dress suit for that concert. Trousers tight as a drum on him. Musical +porkers. Molly did laugh when he went out. Threw herself back across the +bed, screaming, kicking. With all his belongings on show. O saints above, +I'm drenched O, the women in the front row O, I never laughed so many +Well, of course that's what gives him the base barreltone. For instance +eunuchs. Wonder who's playing. Nice touch. Must be Cowley. Musical. +Knows whatever note you play. Bad breath he has, poor chap. Stopped. +Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor, George +Lidwell, gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. She gave her moist +a lady's hand to his firm clasp. Afternoon. Yes, she was back. To the +old dingdong again. +Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell. +George Lidwell, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand. +Bloom ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap in the +Burton, gummy with gristle. Noone here Goulding and I. Clean tables, +flowers, mitres of napkins. Pat to and fro. Bald Pat. Nothing to do. Best +value in Dub. +Piano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one together, +mutual understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping fiddles, eye on the +bowend, sawing the cello, remind you of toothache. Her high long snore. +Night we were in the box. Trombone under blowing like a grampus, +between the acts, other brass chap unscrewing, emptying spittle. +Conductor's legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy. Do right to hide +them. +Jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty. +Only the harp. Lovely. Gold glowering light. Girl touched it. Poop of +a lovely. Gravy's rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin. The harp that +once or twice. Cool hands. Ben Howth, the rhododendrons. We are their +harps. I. He. Old. Young. +Ah, I couldn't, man, Mr Dedalus said, shy, listless. +Strongly. +Go on, blast you Ben Dollard growled. Get it out in bits. +M'APPARI, Simon, Father Cowley said. +Down stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, his long +arms outheld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. Softly he +sang to a dusty seascape there A LAST FAREWELL. A headland, a ship, a +sail upon the billows. Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave upon the +wind upon the headland, wind around her. +Cowley sang +M'APPARI TUTT'AMOR +IL MIO SGUARDO L'INCONTR ... +She waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil, to one departing, dear one, to +wind, love, speeding sail, return. +Go on, Simon. +Ah, sure, my dancing days are done, Ben ... Well ... +Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting, +touched the obedient keys. +No, Simon, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original. One flat. +The keys, obedient, rose higher, told, faltered, confessed, confused. +Up stage strode Father Cowley. +Here, Simon, I'll accompany you, he said. Get up. +By Graham Lemon's pineapple rock, by Elvery's elephant jingly +jogged. Steak, kidney, liver, mashed, at meat fit for princes sat princes +Bloom and Goulding. Princes at meat they raised and drank, Power and +cider. +Most beautiful tenor air ever written, Richie said SONNAMBULA. He +heard Joe Maas sing that one night. Ah, what M'Guckin Yes. In his way. +Choirboy style. Maas was the boy. Massboy. A lyrical tenor if you like. +Never forget it. Never. +Tenderly Bloom over liverless bacon saw the tightened features strain. +Backache he. Bright's bright eye. Next item on the programme. Paying the +piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth a guinea a box. Stave it off awhile. +Sings too DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN. Appropriate. Kidney pie. Sweets to +the. Not making much hand of it. Best value in. Characteristic of him. +Power. Particular about his drink. Flaw in the glass, fresh Vartry water. +Fecking matches from counters to save. Then squander a sovereign in dribs +and drabs. And when he's wanted not a farthing. Screwed refusing to pay +his fare. Curious types. +Never would Richie forget that night. As long as he lived never. In +the gods of the old Royal with little Peake. And when the first note. +Speech paused on Richie's lips. +Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all. +Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good +memory. +Which air is that? asked Leopold Bloom. +ALL IS LOST NOW. +Richie cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet banshee murmured +all. A thrush. A throstle. His breath, birdsweet, good teeth he's +proud of, fluted with plaintive woe. Is lost. Rich sound. Two notes in one +there. Blackbird I heard in the hawthorn valley. Taking my motives he +twined and turned them. All most too new call is lost in all. Echo. How +sweet the answer. How is that done? All lost now. Mournful he whistled. +Fall, surrender, lost. +Bloom bent leopold ear, turning a fringe of doyley down under the +vase. Order. Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep she went to him. +Innocence in the moon. Brave. Don't know their danger. Still hold her +back. Call name. Touch water. Jingle jaunty. Too late. She longed to go. +That's why. Woman. As easy stop the sea. Yes all is lost. +A beautiful air, said Bloom lost Leopold. I know it well. +Never in all his life had Richie Goulding. +He knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter. Wise +child that knows her father, Dedalus said. Me? +Bloom askance over liverless saw. Face of the all is lost. Rollicking +Richie once. Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. Napkinring in his eye. +Now begging letters he sends his son with. Crosseyed Walter sir I did sir. +Wouldn't trouble only I was expecting some money. Apologise. +Piano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. Tuned probably. +Stopped again. +Dollard and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out with it. +With it, Simon. +It, Simon. +Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your kind +solicitations. +It, Simon. +I have no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall endeavour +to sing to you of a heart bowed down. +By the sandwichbell in screening shadow Lydia, her bronze and rose, +a lady's grace, gave and withheld as in cool glaucous EAU DE NIL Mina +to tankards two her pinnacles of gold. +The harping chords of prelude closed. A chord, longdrawn, expectant, +drew a voice away. +WHEN FIRST I SAW THAT FORM ENDEARING ... +Richie turned. +Si Dedalus' voice, he said. +Braintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling that flow +endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Bloom signed to +Pat, bald Pat is a waiter hard of hearing, to set ajar the door of the +bar. The door of the bar. So. That will do. Pat, waiter, waited, waiting +to hear, for he was hard of hear by the door. +SORROW FROM ME SEEMED TO DEPART. +Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves +in murmur, like no voice of strings or reeds or whatdoyoucallthem +dulcimers touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each +his remembered lives. Good, good to hear sorrow from them each seemed to +from both depart when first they heard. When first they saw, lost Richie +Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn't expect it in the +least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word. +Love that is singing love's old sweet song. Bloom unwound slowly +the elastic band of his packet. Love's old sweet SONNEZ LA gold. Bloom +wound a skein round four forkfingers, stretched it, relaxed, and wound it +round his troubled double, fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast. +FULL OF HOPE AND ALL DELIGHTED ... +Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at +his feet. When will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. He +can't sing for tall hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him. +What perfume does your wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look +at mirror always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How do you? +I do well. There? What? Or? Phial of cachous, kissing comfits, in her +satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent. +Alas the voice rose, sighing, changed loud, full, shining, proud. +BUT ALAS, 'TWAS IDLE DREAMING ... +Glorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. Silly man +Could have made oceans of money. Singing wrong words. Wore out his +wife now sings. But hard to tell. Only the two themselves. If he doesn't +break down. Keep a trot for the avenue. His hands and feet sing too. +Drink. Nerves overstrung. Must be abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind soup +stock, sage, raw eggs, half pint of cream. For creamy dreamy. +Tenderness it welled slow, swelling, full it throbbed. That's the chat. +Ha, give Take Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect. +Words? Music? No it's what's behind. +Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded. +Bloom. Flood of warm jamjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in +music out, in desire, dark to lick flow invading. Tipping her tepping her +tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the +feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o'er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, +flow, joygush, tupthrob. Now Language of love. +... RAY OF HOPE IS ... +Beaming. Lydia for Lidwell squeak scarcely hear so ladylike the muse +unsqueaked a ray of hopk. +MARTHA it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel's song. Lovely +name you have. Can't write. Accept my little pres. Play on her +heartstrings pursestrings too. She's a. I called you naughty boy. Still +the name Martha. How strange Today. +The voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It sang again to +Richie Poldy Lydia Lidwell also sang to Pat open mouth ear waiting to +wait. How first he saw that form endearing, how sorrow seemed to part, +how look, form, word charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Bloom's heart. +Wish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the barber in +Drago's always looked my face when I spoke his face in the glass. Still +hear it better here than in the bar though farther. +EACH GRACEFUL LOOK ... +First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon's in Terenure. Yellow, +black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After her. +Fate. +Round and round slow. Quick round. We two. All looked. Halt. Down she +sat. All ousted looked. Lips laughing. Yellow knees. +CHARMED MY EYE ... +Singing. WAITING she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of perfume +of what perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I saw, both full, throat +warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy +eyes. Under a peartree alone patio this hour in old Madrid one side in +shadow Dolores shedolores. At me. Luring. Ah, alluring. +MARTHA AH, MARTHA +Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant +to love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In cry +of lionel loneliness that she should know, must martha feel. For only her +he waited. Where? Here there try there here all try where. Somewhere. +COOME, THOU LOST ONE +COOME, THOU DEAR ONE +Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, chestnote, return +COME +It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb +it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long +long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, +crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the etherial bosom, +high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about +the all, the endlessnessnessness ... +TO ME +Siopold +Consumed. +Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me, to him, to +her, you too, me, us. +Bravo Clapclap. Good man, Simon. Clappyclapclap. Encore +Clapclipclap clap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon Clapclopclap. Encore, +enclap, said, cried, clapped all, Ben Dollard, Lydia Douce, George +Lidwell, Pat, Mina Kennedy, two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, +first gent with tank and bronze miss Douce and gold MJiss Mina. +Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, said before. +Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio onehandled Nelson, +reverend father Theobald Mathew, jaunted, as said before just now. Atrot, +in heat, heatseated. CLOCHE. SONNEZ LA. CLOCHE. SONNEZ LA. Slower the mare +went up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for Boylan, +blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan, joggled the mare. +An afterclang of Cowley's chords closed, died on the air made richer. +And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom his cider +drank, Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would partake of +two more tankards if she did not mind. Miss Kennedy smirked, disserving, +coral lips, at first, at second. She did not mind. +Seven days in jail, Ben Dollard said, on bread and water. Then you'd +sing, Simon, like a garden thrush. +Lionel Simon, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. Mina +Kennedy served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan strutted in. Lydia, +admired, admired. But Bloom sang dumb. +Admiring. +Richie, admiring, descanted on that man's glorious voice. He +remembered one night long ago. Never forget that night. Si sang 'TWAS +RANK AND FAME in Ned Lambert's 'twas. Good God he never heard in all his +life a note like that he never did THEN FALSE ONE WE HAD BETTER PART so +clear so God he never heard SINCE LOVE LIVES NOT a clinking voice lives +not ask Lambert he can tell you too. +Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the +night, Si in Ned Lambert's, Dedalus house, sang 'TWAS RANK AND FAME. +He, Mr Bloom, listened while he, Richie Goulding, told him, Mr +Bloom, of the night he, Richie, heard him, Si Dedalus, sing 'TWAS RANK AND +FAME in his, Ned Lambert's, house. +Brothersinlaw relations. We never speak as we pass by. Rift in the +lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The +night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more +than all others. +That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It's in the silence after +you feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air. +Bloom ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers plucked +the slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzz, it twanged. While +Goulding talked of Barraclough's voice production, while Tom Kernan, +harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement talked to listening +Father Cowley, who played a voluntary, who nodded as he played. While +big Ben Dollard talked with Simon Dedalus, lighting, who nodded as he +smoked, who smoked. +Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom stretched his +string. Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other lure them on. +Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head. Outtohelloutofthat. +Human life. Dignam. Ugh, that rat's tail wriggling Five bob I gave. +CORPUS PARADISUM. Corncrake croaker belly like a poisoned pup. Gone. +They sing. Forgotten. I too And one day she with. Leave her get tired. +Suffer then. Snivel. Big spanishy eyes goggling at nothing. Her +wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair un comb'd. +Yet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are you not +happy in your? Twang. It snapped. +Jingle into Dorset street. +Miss Douce withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased. +Don't make half so free, said she, till we are better acquainted. +George Lidwell told her really and truly but she did not believe. +First gentleman told Mina that was so. She asked him was that so. +And second tankard told her so. That that was so. +Miss Douce, miss Lydia, did not believe miss Kennedy, Mina, did not +believe George Lidwell, no miss Dou did not the first, the first gent +with the tank believe, no, no did not, miss Kenn Lidlydiawell the +tank. +Better write it here. Quills in the postoffice chewed and twisted. +Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He +went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat. +Yes, Mr Bloom said, teasing the curling catgut line. It certainly is. +Few lines will do. My present. All that Italian florid music is. Who is +this wrote? Know the name you know better. Take out sheet notepaper, +envelope unconcerned. It's so characteristic. +Grandest number in the whole opera, Goulding said. +It is, Bloom said. +Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two +divided by half is twice one. Vibrations chords those are. One plus two +plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find +out this equal to that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn't see my +mourning. Callous all for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think +you're listening to the etherial. But suppose you said it like Martha, +seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on +account of the sounds it is. +Instance he's playing now. Improvising. Might be what you like, till +you hear the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. Begin all right then hear +chords a bit off feel lost a bit. In and out of sacks, over barrels, +through wirefences, obstacle race. Time makes the tune. Question of mood +you're in. Still always nice to hear. Except scales up and down, girls +learning. Two together nextdoor neighbours. Ought to invent dummy pianos +for that. BLUMENLIED I bought for her. The name. Playing it slow, a girl, +night I came home, the girl. Door of the stables near Cecilia street. +Milly no taste. Queer because we both, I mean. +Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite +flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went. +It was the only language Mr Dedalus said to Ben. He heard them as a +boy in Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing their barcaroles. +Queenstown harbour full of Italian ships. Walking, you know, Ben, in the +moonlight with those earthquake hats. Blending their voices. God, such +music, Ben. Heard as a boy. Cross Ringabella haven mooncarole. +Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that cooed +a moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar, replying. +Down the edge of his FREEMAN baton ranged Bloom's, your other eye, +scanning for where did I see that. Callan, Coleman, Dignam Patrick. +Heigho Heigho Fawcett. Aha Just I was looking ... +Hope he's not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his FREEMAN. +Can't see now. Remember write Greek ees. Bloom dipped, Bloo mur dear +sir. Dear Henry wrote dear Mady. Got your lett and flow. Hell did I put? +Some pock or oth. It is utterl imposs. Underline IMPOSS. To write today. +Bore this. Bored Bloom tambourined gently with I am just reflecting +fingers on flat pad Pat brought. +On. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accep my poor litt pres +enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. Two about here. Penny the +gulls. Elijah is com. Seven Davy Byrne's. Is eight about. Say half a +crown. My poor little pres p. o. two and six. Write me a long. Do you +despise? Jingle, have you the? So excited. Why do you call me naught? +You naughty too? O, Mairy lost the string of her. Bye for today. Yes, yes, +will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other. Other world she +wrote. My patience are exhaust. To keep it up. You must believe. Believe. +The tank. It. Is. True. +Folly am I writing? Husbands don't. That's marriage does, their +wives. Because I'm away from. Suppose. But how? She must. Keep young. +If she found out. Card in my high grade ha. No, not tell all. Useless +pain. If they don't see. Woman. Sauce for the gander. +A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James of +number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young +gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by +George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and +wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one +Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and +jingled. By Dlugacz' porkshop bright tubes of Agendath trotted a +gallantbuttocked mare. +Answering an ad? keen Richie's eyes asked Bloom. +Yes, Mr Bloom said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I expect. +Bloom mur best references. But Henry wrote it will excite me. You +know how. In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better add postscript. What is he +playing now? Improvising. Intermezzo. P. S. The rum tum tum. How will +you pun? You punish me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I want +to. Know. O. Course if I didn't I wouldn't ask. La la la ree. Trails off +there sad in minor. Why minor sad? Sign H. They like sad tail at end. +P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel so sad today. La ree. So lonely. Dee. +He blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy out of +paper. Murmured Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, limited. Henry wrote +Miss Martha Clifford +c/o P. O. +Dolphin's Barn Lane +Dublin +Blot over the other so he can't read. There. Right. Idea prize titbit. +Something detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of guinea +per col. Matcham often thinks the laughing witch. Poor Mrs Purefoy. U. P +up. +Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms. +Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not to be. +Wisdom while you wait. +In Gerard's rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. One life is +all. One body. Do. But do. +Done anyhow. Postal order, stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk +now. Enough. Barney Kiernan's I promised to meet them. Dislike that job. +House of mourning. Walk. Pat Doesn't hear. Deaf beetle he is. +Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat Doesn't. Settling those napkins. +Lot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind on him then he'd +be two. Wish they'd sing more. Keep my mind off. +Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of +his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He +waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits +while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. +Hee hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait. +Douce now. Douce Lydia. Bronze and rose. +She had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at the lovely +shell she brought. +To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding +seahorn that he, George Lidwell, solicitor, might hear. +Listen she bade him. +Under Tom Kernan's ginhot words the accompanist wove music slow. +Authentic fact. How Walter Bapty lost his voice. Well, sir, the husband +took him by the throat. SCOUNDREL, said he, YOU'LL SING NO MORE LOVESONGS. +He did, faith, sir Tom. Bob Cowley wove. Tenors get wom. Cowley lay back. +Ah, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear He heard. +Wonderful. She held it to her own. And through the sifted light pale gold +in contrast glided. To hear. +Tap. +Bloom through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard +more faintly that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for +other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, a silent roar. +Bronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened. +Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside. +Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream first +make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion mustn't forget. Fever +near her mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over shell with +seaweed. Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? And Turks the +mouth, why? Her eyes over the sheet. Yashmak. Find the way in. A cave. No +admittance except on business. +The sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood it is. Souse +in the ear sometimes. Well, it's a sea. Corpuscle islands. +Wonderful really. So distinct. Again. George Lidwell held its murmur, +hearing then laid it by, gently. +What are the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled. +Charming, seasmiling and unanswering Lydia on Lidwell smiled. +Tap. +By Larry O'Rourke's, by Larry, bold Larry O', Boylan swayed and +Boylan turned. +From the forsaken shell miss Mina glided to her tankards waiting. +No, she was not so lonely archly miss Douce's head let Mr Lidwell know. +Walks in the moonlight by the sea. No, not alone. With whom? She nobly +answered with a gentleman friend. +Bob Cowley's twinkling fingers in the treble played again. The +landlord has the prior. A little time. Long John. Big Ben. Lightly he +played a light bright tinkling measure for tripping ladies, arch and +smiling, and for their gallants, gentlemen friends. One one, one, one, +one, one two, one, three, four. +Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattlemarket, +cocks, hens don't crow, snakes hissss. There's music everywhere. +Ruttledge's door ee creaking. No, that's noise. Minuet of DON GIOVANNI +he's playing now. Court dresses of all descriptions in castle chambers +dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving faces eating +dockleaves. Nice that is. Look look, look, look, look, look you +look at us. +That's joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other +joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you +are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she began to lilt. Then +know. +M'Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk. +Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage +men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open. +Molly in QUIS EST HOMO Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want +a woman who can deliver the goods. +Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boylan socks +skyblue clocks came light to earth. +O, look we are so Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on +that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is. +Tinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. Because the acoustics, the +resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal to the law +of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt's, Hungarian, gipsyeyed. +Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddleiddle addleaddle ooddleooddle. Hissss. Now. +Maybe now. Before. +One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul +de Kock with a loud proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock. +Cockcock. +Tap. +QUI SDEGNO, Ben, said Father Cowley. +No, Ben, Tom Kernan interfered. THE CROPPY BOY. Our native Doric. +Ay do, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. Good men and true. +Do, do, they begged in one. +I'll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did not stay. +To me. How much? +What key? Six sharps? +F sharp major, Ben Dollard said. +Bob Cowley's outstretched talons griped the black deepsounding chords. +Must go prince Bloom told Richie prince. No, Richie said. Yes, must. +Got money somewhere. He's on for a razzle backache spree. Much? He +seehears lipspeech. One and nine. Penny for yourself. Here. Give him +twopence tip. Deaf, bothered. But perhaps he has wife and family waiting, +waiting Patty come home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait. +But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of +the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic. +The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth's fatigue made grave approach +and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called on good men +and true. The priest he sought. With him would he speak a word. +Tap. +Ben Dollard's voice. Base barreltone. Doing his level best to say it. +Croak of vast manless moonless womoonless marsh. Other comedown. Big +ships' chandler's business he did once. Remember rosiny ropes, ships' +lanterns. Failed to the tune of ten thousand pounds. Now in the Iveagh +home. Cubicle number so and so. Number one Bass did that for him. +The priest's at home. A false priest's servant bade him welcome. Step +in. The holy father. With bows a traitor servant. Curlycues of chords. +Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their +days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die. +The voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth had +entered a lonely hall, told them how solemn fell his footsteps there, told +them the gloomy chamber, the vested priest sitting to shrive. +Decent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he'll win in ANSWERS, poets' +picture puzzle. We hand you crisp five pound note. Bird sitting hatching +in a nest. Lay of the last minstrel he thought it was. See blank tee what +domestic animal? Tee dash ar most courageous mariner. Good voice he has +still. No eunuch yet with all his belongings. +Listen. Bloom listened. Richie Goulding listened. And by the door +deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened. The chords harped slower. +The voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished, tremulous. +Ben's contrite beard confessed. IN NOMINE DOMINI, in God's name he knelt. +He beat his hand upon his breast, confessing MEA CULPA. +Latin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the +communion corpus for those women. Chap in the mortuary, coffin or +coffey, CORPUSNOMINE. Wonder where that rat is by now. Scrape. +Tap. +They listened. Tankards and miss Kennedy. George Lidwell, eyelid +well expressive, fullbusted satin. Kernan. Si. +The sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since Easter he had +cursed three times. You bitch's bast. And once at masstime he had gone to +play. Once by the churchyard he had passed and for his mother's rest he +had not prayed. A boy. A croppy boy. +Bronze, listening, by the beerpull gazed far away. Soulfully. Doesn't +half know I'm. Molly great dab at seeing anyone looking. +Bronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side of her face? +They always know. Knock at the door. Last tip to titivate. +Cockcarracarra. +What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattlesnakes. +Night Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of Persia liked that +best. Remind him of home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain too. +Custom his country perhaps. That's music too. Not as bad as it sounds. +Tootling. Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses helpless, +gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile +music hath jaws. Woodwind like Goodwin's name. +She looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore lowcut, belongings on +show. Clove her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a +question. Told her what Spinoza says in that book of poor papa's. +Hypnotised, listening. Eyes like that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle +staring down into her with his operaglass for all he was worth. Beauty +of music you must hear twice. Nature woman half a look. God made the +country man the tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy. O rocks +All gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey all his +brothers fell. To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, he would. Last of +his name and race. +I too. Last of my race. Milly young student. Well, my fault perhaps. +No son. Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still? +He bore no hate. +Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old. Big Ben his voice +unfolded. Great voice Richie Goulding said, a flush struggling in his +pale, to Bloom soon old. But when was young? +Ireland comes now. My country above the king. She listens. Who +fears to speak of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. Looked enough. +BLESS ME, FATHER, Dollard the croppy cried. BLESS ME AND LET ME GO. +Tap. +Bloom looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill on eighteen bob a +week. Fellows shell out the dibs. Want to keep your weathereye open. Those +girls, those lovely. By the sad sea waves. Chorusgirl's romance. Letters +read out for breach of promise. From Chickabiddy's owny Mumpsypum. +Laughter in court. Henry. I never signed it. The lovely name you. +Low sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The false priest +rustling soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. They know it all by +heart. The thrill they itch for. Yeoman cap. +Tap. Tap. +Thrilled she listened, bending in sympathy to hear. +Blank face. Virgin should say or fingered only. Write something on +it page. If not what becomes of them? Decline, despair. Keeps them young. +Even admire themselves. See. Play on her. Lip blow. Body of white woman, +a flute alive. Blow gentle. Loud. Three holes, all women. Goddess I didn't +see. They want it. Not too much polite. That's why he gets them. Gold in +your pocket, brass in your face. Say something. Make her hear. With look +to look. Songs without words. Molly, that hurdygurdy boy. She knew he +meant the monkey was sick. Or because so like the Spanish. Understand +animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of nature. +Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What? +Will? You? I. Want. You. To. +With hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed, swelling in apoplectic +bitch's bastard. A good thought, boy, to come. One hour's your time to +live, your last. +Tap. Tap. +Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs that want +to, dying to, die. For all things dying, for all things born. Poor Mrs +Purefoy. Hope she's over. Because their wombs. +A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes, +calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On yonder +river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom's wave her heaving embon red +rose rose slowly sank red rose. Heartbeats her breath breath that is +life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair. +But look. The bright stars fade. O rose Castile. The morn. Ha. +Lidwell. For him then not for. Infatuated. I like that? See her +from here though. Popped corks, splashes of beerfroth, stacks of empties. +On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand, lightly, plumply, leave +it to my hands. All lost in pity for croppy. Fro, to to, fro over the +polished knob she knows his eyes, my eyes, her eyes her thumb and finger +passed in pity passed, reposed and, gently touching, then slid so +smoothly, slowly down, a cool firm white enamel baton protruding through +their sliding ring. +With a cock with a carra. +Tap. Tap. Tap. +I hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing. +The chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be. Get out before +the end. Thanks, that was heavenly. Where's my hat. Pass by her. Can +leave that Freeman. Letter I have. Suppose she were the? No. Walk, +walk, walk. Like Cashel Boylo Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice Tisntdall +Farrell. Waaaaaaalk. +Well, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O'er ryehigh blue. +Ow. Bloom stood up. Soap feeling rather sticky behind. Must have +sweated music. That lotion, remember. Well, so long. High grade. Card +inside. Yes. +By deaf Pat in the doorway straining ear Bloom passed. +At Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was his body +laid. Dolor O, he dolores The voice of the mournful chanter called to +dolorous prayer. +By rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, by empties, +by popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes and maidenhair, bronze and +faint gold in deepseashadow, went Bloom, soft Bloom, I feel so lonely +Bloom. +Tap. Tap. Tap. +Pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard. You who hear in peace. Breathe +a prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. He was the croppy boy. +Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the Ormond +hallway heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping, their boots +all treading, boots not the boots the boy. General chorus off for a swill +to wash it down. Glad I avoided. +Come on, Ben, Simon Dedalus cried. By God, you're as good as ever you +were. +Better, said Tomgin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition of that ballad, +upon my soul and honour It is. +Lablache, said Father Cowley. +Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed and all +big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering castagnettes +in the air. +Big Benaben Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben. +Rrr. +And deepmoved all, Simon trumping compassion from foghorn nose, +all laughing they brought him forth, Ben Dollard, in right good cheer. +You're looking rubicund, George Lidwell said. +Miss Douce composed her rose to wait. +Ben machree, said Mr Dedalus, clapping Ben's fat back shoulderblade. +Fit as a fiddle only he has a lot of adipose tissue concealed about his +person. +Rrrrrrrsss. +Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled. +Richie rift in the lute alone sat Goulding, Collis, Ward. Uncertainly +he waited. Unpaid Pat too. +Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. +Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankard one. +Mr Dollard, they murmured low. +Dollard, murmured tankard. +Tank one believed miss Kenn when she that doll he was she doll +the tank. +He murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar to him, +that is to say. That was to say he had heard the name of. Dollard, was it? +Dollard, yes. +Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that song lovely, +murmured Mina. Mr Dollard. And THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER was a lovely +song. Mina loved that song. Tankard loved the song that Mina. +'Tis the last rose of summer dollard left bloom felt wind wound round +inside. +Gassy thing that cider binding too. Wait. Postoffice near Reuben J's +one and eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge round by Greek street. Wish +I hadn't promised to meet. Freer in air. Music. Gets on your nerves. +Beerpull. Her hand that rocks the cradle rules the. Ben Howth. That rules +the world. +Far. Far. Far. Far. +Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. +Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter for +Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike hoses +went Poldy on. +Tap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tapping, tap by tap. +Cowley, he stuns himself with it kind of drunkenness. Better give +way only half way the way of a man with a maid. Instance enthusiasts. All +ears. Not lose a demisemiquaver. Eyes shut. Head nodding in time. Dotty. +You daren't budge. Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking shop. +Fiddlefaddle about notes. +All a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops because you +never know exac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old Glynn fifty quid a year. +Queer up there in the cockloft, alone, with stops and locks and keys. +Seated all day at the organ. Maunder on for hours, talking to himself or +the other fellow blowing the bellows. Growl angry, then shriek cursing +want to have wadding or something in his no don't she cried, then all of +a soft sudden wee little wee little pipy wind. +Pwee A wee little wind piped eeee. In Bloom's little wee. +Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning with fetched pipe. I was with him +this morning at poor little Paddy Dignam's ... +Ay, the Lord have mercy on him. +By the bye there's a tuningfork in there on the ... +Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. +The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked. +O, that must be the tuner, Lydia said to Simonlionel first I saw, forgot +it when he was here. +Blind he was she told George Lidwell second I saw. And played so +exquisitely, treat to hear. Exquisite contrast bronzelid, minagold. +Shout Ben Dollard shouted, pouring. Sing out +'lldo cried Father Cowley. +Rrrrrr. +I feel I want ... +Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap +Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine. +Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely, last +sardine of summer. Bloom alone. +Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice. +Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. +Bloom went by Barry's. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker if I +had. Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. Counted them. Litigation. +Love one another. Piles of parchment. Messrs Pick and Pocket have power +of attorney. Goulding, Collis, Ward. +But for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His vocation +Mickey Rooney's band. Wonder how it first struck him. Sitting at home +after pig's cheek and cabbage nursing it in the armchair. Rehearsing his +band part. Pom. Pompedy. Jolly for the wife. Asses' skins. Welt them +through life, then wallop after death. Pom. Wallop. Seems to be what you +call yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate. +Tap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane came taptaptapping +by Daly's window where a mermaid hair all streaming but he couldn't see +blew whiffs of a mermaid blind couldn't, mermaid, coolest whiff of all. +Instruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. Even +comb and tissuepaper you can knock a tune out of. Molly in her shift in +Lombard street west, hair down. I suppose each kind of trade made its own, +don't you see? Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you the? CLOCHE. SONNEZ LA. +Shepherd his pipe. Pwee little wee. Policeman a whistle. Locks and keys +Sweep Four o'clock's all's well Sleep All is lost now. Drum? Pompedy. +Wait. I know. Towncrier, bumbailiff. Long John. Waken the dead. Pom. +Dignam. Poor little NOMINEDOMINE. Pom. It is music. I mean of course it's +all pom pom pom very much what they call DA CAPO. Still you can hear. As +we march, we march along, march along. Pom. +I must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question of +custom shah of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. All the same he must +have been a bit of a natural not to see it was a yeoman cap. Muffled up. +Wonder who was that chap at the grave in the brown macin. O, the whore +of the lane +A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in the +day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that form +endearing? Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. Horn. Who +had the? Heehaw shesaw. Off her beat here. What is she? Hope she. Psst +Any chance of your wash. Knew Molly. Had me decked. Stout lady does be +with you in the brown costume. Put you off your stroke, that. Appointment +we made knowing we'd never, well hardly ever. Too dear too near to home +sweet home. Sees me, does she? Looks a fright in the day. Face like dip. +Damn her. O, well, she has to live like the rest. Look in here. +In Lionel Marks's antique saleshop window haughty Henry Lionel +Leopold dear Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold Bloom envisaged +battered candlesticks melodeon oozing maggoty blowbags. Bargain six bob. +Might learn to play. Cheap. Let her pass. Course everything is dear if +you don't want it. That's what good salesman is. Make you buy what he +wants to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor he shaved me with. Wanted +to charge me for the edge he gave it. She's passing now. Six bob. +Must be the cider or perhaps the burgund. +Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their clinking +glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Lydia's tempting +last rose of summer, rose of Castile. First Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a +fifth Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob Cowley, Kernan and big Ben Dollard. +Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall. +Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks's window. Robert +Emmet's last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is. +True men like you men. +Ay, ay, Ben. +Will lift your glass with us. +They lifted. +Tschink. Tschunk. +Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze. He +saw not gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor George nor tanks nor +Richie nor Pat. Hee hee hee hee. He did not see. +Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. WHEN MY COUNTRY +TAKES HER PLACE AMONG. +Prrprr. +Must be the bur. +Fff Oo. Rrpr. +NATIONS OF THE EARTH. Noone behind. She's passed. THEN AND NOT TILL +THEN. Tram kran kran kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm +sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. LET MY EPITAPH BE. Kraaaaaa. +WRITTEN. I HAVE. +Pprrpffrrppffff. +DONE. +I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D. M. P. at the +corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along +and he near drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have +the weight of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter +only Joe Hynes. +Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see that bloody +chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush? +Soot's luck, says Joe. Who's the old ballocks you were talking to? +Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I'm on two minds not to give that +fellow in charge for obstructing the thoroughfare with his brooms and +ladders. +What are you doing round those parts? says Joe. +Devil a much, says I. There's a bloody big foxy thief beyond by the +garrison church at the corner of Chicken laneold Troy was just giving +me a wrinkle about himlifted any God's quantity of tea and sugar to pay +three bob a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a +hopofmythumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there near Heytesbury +street. +Circumcised? says Joe. +Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Geraghty. I'm +hanging on to his taw now for the past fortnight and I can't get a penny +out of him. +That the lay you're on now? says Joe. +Ay, says I. How are the mighty fallen Collector of bad and doubtful +debts. But that's the most notorious bloody robber you'd meet in a day's +walk and the face on him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. TELL +HIM, says he, I DARE HIM, says he, AND I DOUBLEDARE HIM TO SEND YOU ROUND +HERE AGAIN OR IF HE DOES, says he, I'LL HAVE HIM SUMMONSED UP BEFORE THE +COURT, SO I WILL, FOR TRADING WITHOUT A LICENCE. And he after stuffing +himself till he's fit to burst. Jesus, I had to laugh at the little jewy +getting his shirt out. HE DRINK ME MY TEAS. HE EAT ME MY SUGARS. BECAUSE +HE NO PAY ME MY MONEYS? +For nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of Saint +Kevin's parade in the city of Dublin, Wood quay ward, merchant, +hereinafter called the vendor, and sold and delivered to Michael E. +Geraghty, esquire, of Arbour hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay +ward, gentleman, hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet, five pounds +avoirdupois of first choice tea at three shillings and no pence per pound +avoirdupois and three stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at +threepence per pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said +vendor of one pound five shillings and sixpence sterling for value +received which amount shall be paid by said purchaser to said vendor in +weekly instalments every seven calendar days of three shillings and no +pence sterling and the said nonperishable goods shall not be pawned or +pledged or sold or otherwise alienated by the said purchaser but shall be +and remain and be held to be the sole and exclusive property of the said +vendor to be disposed of at his good will and pleasure until the said +amount shall have been duly paid by the said purchaser to the said vendor +in the manner herein set forth as this day hereby agreed between the said +vendor, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the one part and +the said purchaser, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the +other part. +Are you a strict t.t.? says Joe. +Not taking anything between drinks, says I. +What about paying our respects to our friend? says Joe. +Who? says I. Sure, he's out in John of God's off his head, poor man. +Drinking his own stuff? says Joe. +Ay, says I. Whisky and water on the brain. +Come around to Barney Kiernan's, says Joe. I want to see the citizen. +Barney mavourneen's be it, says I. Anything strange or wonderful, Joe? +Not a word, says Joe. I was up at that meeting in the City Arms. +What was that, Joe? says I. +Cattle traders, says Joe, about the foot and mouth disease. I want to +give the citizen the hard word about it. +So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the back of the +courthouse talking of one thing or another. Decent fellow Joe when he has +it but sure like that he never has it. Jesus, I couldn't get over that +bloody foxy Geraghty, the daylight robber. For trading without a licence, +says he. +In Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy Michan. There +rises a watchtower beheld of men afar. There sleep the mighty dead as in +life they slept, warriors and princes of high renown. A pleasant land it +is in sooth of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport the gurnard, +the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock, the grilse, +the dab, the brill, the flounder, the pollock, the mixed coarse fish +generally and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom too numerous to be +enumerated. In the mild breezes of the west and of the east the lofty +trees wave in different directions their firstclass foliage, the wafty +sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planetree, the eugenic +eucalyptus and other ornaments of the arboreal world with which that +region is thoroughly well supplied. Lovely maidens sit in close proximity +to the roots of the lovely trees singing the most lovely songs while they +play with all kinds of lovely objects as for example golden ingots, +silvery fishes, crans of herrings, drafts of eels, codlings, creels of +fingerlings, purple seagems and playful insects. And heroes voyage from +afar to woo them, from Eblana to Slievemargy, the peerless princes of +unfettered Munster and of Connacht the just and of smooth sleek Leinster +and of Cruahan's land and of Armagh the splendid and of the noble district +of Boyle, princes, the sons of kings. +And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering roof is seen by +mariners who traverse the extensive sea in barks built expressly for that +purpose, and thither come all herds and fatlings and firstfruits of that +land for O'Connell Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain descended +from chieftains. Thither the extremely large wains bring foison of the +fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach, pineapple chunks, +Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes, drums of figs, drills of Swedes, +spherical potatoes and tallies of iridescent kale, York and Savoy, and +trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets of mushrooms and +custard marrows and fat vetches and bere and rape and red green yellow +brown russet sweet big bitter ripe pomellated apples and chips of +strawberries and sieves of gooseberries, pulpy and pelurious, and +strawberries fit for princes and raspberries from their canes. +I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out here, Geraghty, +you notorious bloody hill and dale robber +And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and +flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium +steers and roaring mares and polled calves and longwoods and storesheep +and Cuffe's prime springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the +various different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus +heifers and polly bulllocks of immaculate pedigree together with prime +premiated milchcows and beeves and there is ever heard a trampling, +cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling, grunting, +champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from +pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales +of Thomond, from the M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly +Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of +the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance of milk and +butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of +lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great hundreds, various in +size, the agate with this dun. +So we turned into Barney Kiernan's and there, sure enough, was the citizen +up in the corner having a great confab with himself and that bloody +mangy mongrel, Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would drop +in the way of drink. +There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his cruiskeen lawn and his +load of papers, working for the cause. +The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give you the creeps. Be +a corporal work of mercy if someone would take the life of that +bloody dog. I'm told for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off a +constabulary man in Santry that came round one time with a blue paper +about a licence. +Stand and deliver, says he. +That's all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here. +Pass, friends, says he. +Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he +What's your opinion of the times? +Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob, Joe was equal to +the occasion. +I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his hand down his +fork. +So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he says +Foreign wars is the cause of it. +And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket +It's the Russians wish to tyrannise. +Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I. I've a thirst on me I +wouldn't sell for half a crown. +Give it a name, citizen, says Joe. +Wine of the country, says he. +What's yours? says Joe. +Ditto MacAnaspey, says I. +Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how's the old heart, citizen? says he. +Never better, A CHARA, says he. What Garry? Are we going to win? Eh? +And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck +and, by Jesus, he near throttled him. +The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower +was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed +redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed +longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced +sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and +his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of +his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in +hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse ULEX EUROPEUS. The +widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, +were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the +fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and +a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized +cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals +from the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the +loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered +rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still +loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble. +He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to the +knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a girdle of +plaited straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly +stitched with gut. His nether extremities were encased in high Balbriggan +buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet being shod with brogues of salted +cowhide laced with the windpipe of the same beast. From his girdle hung a +row of seastones which jangled at every movement of his portentous frame +and on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of +many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred +battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the ardri Malachi, Art +MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick +Sarsfield, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan +O'Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M'Cracken, +Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village +Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, +Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, +Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last +of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castile, the Man for Galway, The Man that +Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who +Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, +Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas +Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of +Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick +W. Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio +Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, +Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick +Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the +Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, +Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker, Herodotus, Jack the +Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor +of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro +Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare. A +couched spear of acuminated granite rested by him while at his feet +reposed a savage animal of the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps +announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by +hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master repressed from time +to time by tranquilising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of +paleolithic stone. +So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob +the sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid O, as true as +I'm telling you. A goodlooking sovereign. +And there's more where that came from, says he. +Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I. +Sweat of my brow, says Joe. 'Twas the prudent member gave me the wheeze. +I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane and +Greek street with his cod's eye counting up all the guts of the fish. +Who comes through Michan's land, bedight in sable armour? O'Bloom, +the son of Rory it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory's son he +of the prudent soul. +For the old woman of Prince's street, says the citizen, the subsidised +organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And look at this +blasted rag, says he. Look at this, says he. THE IRISH INDEPENDENT, if you +please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman's friend. Listen to the +births and deaths in the IRISH ALL FOR IRELAND INDEPENDENT, and I'll thank +you and the marriages. +And he starts reading them out +Gordon, Barnfield crescent, Exeter Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne's on +Sea the wife of William T Redmayne of a son. How's that, eh? Wright and +Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the late +George Alfred Gillett, Clapham road, Stockwell, Playwood and +Ridsdale at Saint Jude's, Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean +of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London Carr, Stoke +Newington, of gastritis and heart disease Cockburn, at the Moat house, +Chepstow ... +I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience. +Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of David Dimsey, late of the admiralty Miller, +Tottenham, aged eightyfive Welsh, June , at Canning street, +Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How's that for a national press, eh, my brown +son How's that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber? +Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God they had +the start of us. Drink that, citizen. +I will, says he, honourable person. +Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form. +Ah Ow Don't be talking I was blue mouldy for the want of that +pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a +click. +And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came +swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth and behind him +there passed an elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred +scrolls of law and with him his lady wife a dame of peerless lineage, +fairest of her race. +Little Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid behind Barney's +snug, squeezed up with the laughing. And who was sitting up there in the +corner that I hadn't seen snoring drunk blind to the world only Bob Doran. +I didn't know what was up and Alf kept making signs out of the door. And +begob what was it only that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen in his +bathslippers with two bloody big books tucked under his oxter and the wife +hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched woman, trotting like a poodle. I +thought Alf would split. +Look at him, says he. Breen. He's traipsing all round Dublin with a +postcard someone sent him with U. p up on it to take a li ... +And he doubled up. +Take a what? says I. +Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds. +O hell says I. +The bloody mongrel began to growl that'd put the fear of God in you +seeing something was up but the citizen gave him a kick in the ribs. +BI I DHO HUSHT, says he. +Who? says Joe. +Breen, says Alf. He was in John Henry Menton's and then he went round +to Collis and Ward's and then Tom Rochford met him and sent him round +to the subsheriff's for a lark. O God, I've a pain laughing. U. p up. The +long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now the bloody old +lunatic is gone round to Green street to look for a G man. +When is long John going to hang that fellow in Mountjoy? says Joe. +Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf Bergan? +Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry, give us a +pony. That bloody old fool Ten thousand pounds. You should have seen long +John's eye. U. p ... +And he started laughing. +Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that Bergan? +Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf. +Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal +cup full of the foamy ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh +and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of +deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass +and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and +bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their +toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat. +Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner born, +that nectarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him that +thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in beauty akin to the immortals. +But he, the young chief of the O'Bergan's, could ill brook to be outdone +in generous deeds but gave therefor with gracious gesture a testoon +of costliest bronze. Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork was seen the +image of a queen of regal port, scion of the house of Brunswick, Victoria +her name, Her Most Excellent Majesty, by grace of God of the United +Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions beyond +the sea, queen, defender of the faith, Empress of India, even she, who +bore rule, a victress over many peoples, the wellbeloved, for they knew +and loved her from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, the +pale, the dark, the ruddy and the ethiop. +What's that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, prowling up and +down outside? +What's that? says Joe. +Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking about hanging, +I'll show you something you never saw. Hangmen's letters. Look at here. +So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out of his pocket. +Are you codding? says I. +Honest injun, says Alf. Read them. +So Joe took up the letters. +Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. +So I saw there was going to be a bit of a dust Bob's a queer chap +when the porter's up in him so says I just to make talk +How's Willy Murray those times, Alf? +I don't know, says Alf I saw him just now in Capel street with Paddy +Dignam. Only I was running after that ... +You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With who? +With Dignam, says Alf. +Is it Paddy? says Joe. +Yes, says Alf. Why? +Don't you know he's dead? says Joe. +Paddy Dignam dead says Alf. +Ay, says Joe. +Sure I'm after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, as plain as a +pikestaff. +Who's dead? says Bob Doran. +You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us and harm. +What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five ... What? ... And Willy Murray +with him, the two of them there near whatdoyoucallhim's ... What? +Dignam dead? +What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who's talking about... ? +Dead says Alf. He's no more dead than you are. +Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning +anyhow. +Paddy? says Alf. +Ay, says Joe. He paid the debt of nature, God be merciful to him. +Good Christ says Alf. +Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted. +In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by +tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing +luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of the +etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic +rays from the crown of the head and face. Communication was effected +through the pituitary body and also by means of the orangefiery and +scarlet rays emanating from the sacral region and solar plexus. Questioned +by his earthname as to his whereabouts in the heavenworld he stated that +he was now on the path of pr l ya or return but was still submitted to +trial at the hands of certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower astral +levels. In reply to a question as to his first sensations in the great +divide beyond he stated that previously he had seen as in a glass darkly +but that those who had passed over had summit possibilities of atmic +development opened up to them. Interrogated as to whether life there +resembled our experience in the flesh he stated that he had heard from +more favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes were equipped +with every modern home comfort such as talafana, alavatar, hatakalda, +wataklasat and that the highest adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy +of the very purest nature. Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was +brought and evidently afforded relief. Asked if he had any message +for the living he exhorted all who were still at the wrong side of Maya +to acknowledge the true path for it was reported in devanic circles that +Mars and Jupiter were out for mischief on the eastern angle where the +ram has power. It was then queried whether there were any special +desires on the part of the defunct and the reply was WE GREET YOU, +FRIENDS OF EARTH, WHO ARE STILL IN THE BODY. MIND C. K. DOESN'T PILE IT +ON. It was ascertained that the reference was to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, +manager of Messrs H. J. O'Neill's popular funeral establishment, a +personal friend of the defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying +out of the interment arrangements. Before departing he requested that it +should be told to his dear son Patsy that the other boot which he had been +looking for was at present under the commode in the return room and that +the pair should be sent to Cullen's to be soled only as the heels were +still good. He stated that this had greatly perturbed his peace of mind in +the other region and earnestly requested that his desire should be made +known. +Assurances were given that the matter would be attended to and it was +intimated that this had given satisfaction. +He is gone from mortal haunts O'Dignam, sun of our morning. Fleet +was his foot on the bracken Patrick of the beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with +your wind and wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind. +There he is again, says the citizen, staring out. +Who? says I. +Bloom, says he. He's on point duty up and down there for the last ten +minutes. +And, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then slidder off again. +Little Alf was knocked bawways. Faith, he was. +Good Christ says he. I could have sworn it was him. +And says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his poll, lowest +blackguard in Dublin when he's under the influence +Who said Christ is good? +I beg your parsnips, says Alf. +Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away poor little Willy +Dignam? +Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He's over all his troubles. +But Bob Doran shouts out of him. +He's a bloody ruffian, I say, to take away poor little Willy Dignam. +Terry came down and tipped him the wink to keep quiet, that they +didn't want that kind of talk in a respectable licensed premises. And Bob +Doran starts doing the weeps about Paddy Dignam, true as you're there. +The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest character. +The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat. +Fitter for him go home to the little sleepwalking bitch he married, +Mooney, the bumbailiff's daughter, mother kept a kip in Hardwicke street, +that used to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons told me that +was stopping there at two in the morning without a stitch on her, exposing +her person, open to all comers, fair field and no favour. +The noblest, the truest, says he. And he's gone, poor little Willy, poor +little Paddy Dignam. +And mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the extinction of that +beam of heaven. +Old Garryowen started growling again at Bloom that was skeezing +round the door. +Come in, come on, he won't eat you, says the citizen. +So Bloom slopes in with his cod's eye on the dog and he asks Terry +was Martin Cunningham there. +O, Christ M'Keown, says Joe, reading one of the letters. Listen to this, +will you? +And he starts reading out one. + HUNTER STREET, LIVERPOOL. +TO THE HIGH SHERIFF OF DUBLIN, DUBLIN. +HONOURED SIR I BEG TO OFFER MY SERVICES IN THE ABOVEMENTIONED PAINFUL +CASE I HANGED JOE GANN IN BOOTLE JAIL ON THE OF FEBUARY AND I +HANGED ... +Show us, Joe, says I. +... PRIVATE ARTHUR CHACE FOR FOWL MURDER OF JESSIE TILSIT IN +PENTONVILLE PRISON AND I WAS ASSISTANT WHEN ... +Jesus, says I. +... BILLINGTON EXECUTED THE AWFUL MURDERER TOAD SMITH ... +The citizen made a grab at the letter. +Hold hard, says Joe, I HAVE A SPECIAL NACK OF PUTTING THE NOOSE ONCE IN +HE CAN'T GET OUT HOPING TO BE FAVOURED I REMAIN, HONOURED SIR, MY TERMS IS +FIVE GINNEES. +H. RUMBOLD, +MASTER BARBER. +And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen. +And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says he, take them +to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says he, what will you have? +So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he wouldn't +and he couldn't and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said +well he'd just take a cigar. Gob, he's a prudent member and no mistake. +Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe. +And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card +with a black border round it. +They're all barbers, says he, from the black country that would hang +their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses. +And he was telling us there's two fellows waiting below to pull his +heels down when he gets the drop and choke him properly and then they +chop up the rope after and sell the bits for a few bob a skull. +In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their +deadly coil they grasp yea, and therein they lead to Erebus whatsoever +wight hath done a deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so +saith the Lord. +So they started talking about capital punishment and of course Bloom +comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the +business and the old dog smelling him all the time I'm told those jewies +does have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I don't +know what all deterrent effect and so forth and so on. +There's one thing it hasn't a deterrent effect on, says Alf. +What's that? says Joe. +The poor bugger's tool that's being hanged, says Alf. +That so? says Joe. +God's truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in +Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when +they cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like a +poker. +Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said. +That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It's only a natural +phenomenon, don't you see, because on account of the ... +And then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and +science and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon. +The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft +tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of +the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, +according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated +to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus +of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic +pores of the CORPORA CAVERNOSA to rapidly dilate in such a way as to +instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human +anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which +has been denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards +philoprogenitive erection IN ARTICULO MORTIS PER DIMINUTIONEM CAPITIS. +So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word and +he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard and +the men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with +him about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the +cause by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, that and +the other. Talking about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so +he ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffing and sneezing all round the place +and scratching his scabs. And round he goes to Bob Doran that was +standing Alf a half one sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob +Doran starts doing the bloody fool with him +Give us the paw Give the paw, doggy Good old doggy Give the paw +here Give us the paw +Arrah, bloody end to the paw he'd paw and Alf trying to keep him +from tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he +talking all kinds of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred +dog and intelligent dog give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping +a few bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacobs' tin he told Terry +to bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his tongue hanging +out of him a yard long for more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody +mongrel. +And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point, the +brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and Robert +Emmet and die for your country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara +Curran and she's far from the land. And Bloom, of course, with his +knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face. Phenomenon +The fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a +ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the CITY ARMS pisser Burke told +me there was an old one there with a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and +Bloom trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing +bezique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat +of a Friday because the old one was always thumping her craw and taking +the lout out for a walk. And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and, +by the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought him home as drunk +as a boiled owl and he said he did it to teach him the evils of alcohol +and by herrings, if the three women didn't near roast him, it's a queer +story, the old one, Bloom's wife and Mrs O'Dowd that kept the hotel. +Jesus, I had to laugh at pisser Burke taking them off chewing the fat. +And Bloom with his BUT DON'T YOU SEE? and BUT ON THE OTHER HAND. And sure, +more be token, the lout I'm told was in Power's after, the blender's, +round in Cope street going home footless in a cab five times in the week +after drinking his way through all the samples in the bloody +establishment. Phenomenon +The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and +glaring at Bloom. +Ay, ay, says Joe. +You don't grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is ... +SINN FEIN says the citizen. SINN FEIN AMHAIN The friends we love are +by our side and the foes we hate before us. +The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far +and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the +gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums +punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening +claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the +ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its +supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain +poured down from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared heads +of the assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five +hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police +superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in +the vast throng for whom the York street brass and reed band whiled away +the intervening time by admirably rendering on their blackdraped +instruments the matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by +Speranza's plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered +charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins of +whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was caused +by the favourite Dublin streetsingers Lnhn and Mllgn who sang THE +NIGHT BEFORE LARRY WAS STRETCHED in their usual mirthprovoking fashion. +Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among +lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for +real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned +pennies. The children of the Male and Female Foundling Hospital who +thronged the windows overlooking the scene were delighted with this +unexpected addition to the day's entertainment and a word of praise is due +to the Little Sisters of the Poor for their excellent idea of affording +the poor fatherless and motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. +The viceregal houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was +chaperoned by Their Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the +grandstand while the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends +of the Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite. +The delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore +Bacibaci Beninobenone the semiparalysed DOYEN of the party who had +to be assisted to his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane, +Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitepatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire +Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von +SchwanzenbadHodenthaler, Countess Marha Viraga Kisaszony Putrapesthi, +Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh +Rahat Lokum Effendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y +Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, +Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, +Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, +Borus Hupinkoff, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans ChuechliSteuerli, +Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocent +generalhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. +All the delegates without exception expressed themselves in the +strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless +barbarity which they had been called upon to witness. An animated +altercation in which all took part ensued among the F. O. T. E. I. +as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct +date of the birth of Ireland's patron saint. In the course of the +argument cannonballs, scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, +meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig +iron were resorted to and blows were freely exchanged. The baby +policeman, Constable MacFadden, summoned by special courier from +Booterstown, quickly restored order and with lightning promptitude +proposed the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally honourable for +both contending parties. The readywitted ninefooter's suggestion at once +appealed to all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was +heartily congratulated by all the F.O.T.E.I., several of whom were +bleeding profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having been extricated +from underneath the presidential armchair, it was explained by his legal +adviser Avvocato Pagamimi that the various articles secreted in his +thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by him during the affray from the +pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of bringing them to their +senses. The objects which included several hundred ladies' and +gentlemen's gold and silver watches were promptly restored to their +rightful owners and general harmony reigned supreme. +Quietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless +morning dress and wearing his favourite flower, the GLADIOLUS CRUENTUS. +He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so +many have tried unsuccessfully to imitateshort, painstaking yet withal +so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman +was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the +viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the +even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of +cries, HOCH, BANZAI, ELJEN, ZIVIO, CHINCHIN, POLLA KRONIA, HIPHIP, VIVE, +ALLAH, amid which the ringing EVVIVA of the delegate of the land of song +a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the +eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers was easily +distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o'clock. The signal for prayer +was then promptly given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were +bared, the commendatore's patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the +possession of his family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by +his medical adviser in attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who +administered the last comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when +about to pay the death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a pool +of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and offered up to the +throne of grace fervent prayers of supplication. Hand by the block stood +the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in a +tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which +his eyes glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal he +tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it upon his +brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of +sheep which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary +office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the +quartering knife, the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances +specially supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round +and Sons, Sheffield, a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of the +duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc when successfully +extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined to receive the most +precious blood of the most precious victim. The housesteward of the +amalgamated cats' and dogs' home was in attendance to convey these +vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an +excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and onions, +done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had +been considerately provided by the authorities for the consumption +of the central figure of the tragedy who was in capital spirits +when prepared for death and evinced the keenest interest in the +proceedings from beginning to end but he, with an abnegation rare +in these our times, rose nobly to the occasion and expressed the +dying wish immediately acceded to that the meal should be +divided in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and indigent +roomkeepers' association as a token of his regard and esteem. The NEC and +NON PLUS ULTRA of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst +her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon +the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for +her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a loving embrace murmuring +fondly SHEILA, MY OWN. Encouraged by this use of her christian name she +kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of his person which the +decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. She swore to him +as they mingled the salt streams of their tears that she would ever +cherish his memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who went to +his death with a song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling +match in Clonturk park. She brought back to his recollection the happy +days of blissful childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when they +had indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the +dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, +including the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That +monster audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome +with grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of +tears burst from their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, +touched to the inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least +affected being the aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of +the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary, +were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe to say +that there was not a dry eye in that record assemblage. A most +romantic incident occurred when a handsome young Oxford graduate, +noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, +presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree, +solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to +name the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the +audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion +in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch, a timely and generous +act which evoked a fresh outburst of emotion and when the gallant +young Oxonian the bearer, by the way, of one of the most timehonoured +names in Albion's history placed on the finger of his blushing FIANCEE +an expensive engagement ring with emeralds set in the form of a +fourleaved shamrock the excitement knew no bounds. Nay, even the stern +provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel TomkinMaxwell ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, +who presided on the sad occasion, he who had blown a considerable number +of sepoys from the cannonmouth without flinching, could not now restrain +his natural emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive +tear and was overheard, by those privileged burghers who happened to be +in his immediate ENTOURAGE, to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone +God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it +makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I +thinks of my old mashtub what's waiting for me down Limehouse way. +So then the citizen begins talking about the Irish language and the +corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak +their own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for +a quid and Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that +he cadged off of Joe and talking about the Gaelic league and the +antitreating league and drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating +is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let you pour all manner of drink +down his throat till the Lord would call him before you'd ever +see the froth of his pint. And one night I went in with a fellow +into one of their musical evenings, song and dance about she could +get up on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay and there was a fellow +with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him in Irish and a lot +of colleen bawns going about with temperance beverages and selling medals +and oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh +entertainment, don't be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. And then +an old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all the gougers +shuffling their feet to the tune the old cow died of. And one or two sky +pilots having an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, +hitting below the belt. +So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was empty +starts mousing around by Joe and me. I'd train him by kindness, so I +would, if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again where +it wouldn't blind him. +Afraid he'll bite you? says the citizen, jeering. +No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost. +So he calls the old dog over. +What's on you, Garry? says he. +Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in Irish and +the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera. +Such growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone that +has nothing better to do ought to write a letter PRO BONO PUBLICO to the +papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that. Growling and +grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the +hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws. +All those who are interested in the spread of human culture among +the lower animals and their name is legion should make a point of not +missing the really marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the +famous old Irish red setter wolfdog formerly known by the SOBRIQUET of +Garryowen and recently rechristened by his large circle of friends and +acquaintances Owen Garry. The exhibition, which is the result of years of +training by kindness and a carefully thoughtout dietary system, comprises, +among other achievements, the recitation of verse. Our greatest living +phonetic expert wild horses shall not drag it from us has left no stone +unturned in his efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has +found it bears a STRIKING resemblance the italics are ours to the ranns +of ancient Celtic bards. We are not speaking so much of those delightful +lovesongs with which the writer who conceals his identity under the +graceful pseudonym of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the +bookloving world but rather as a contributor D. O. C. points out in an +interesting communication published by an evening contemporary of the +harsher and more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions +of the famous Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say nothing of a more +modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a +specimen which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar +whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though +we believe that our readers will find the topical allusion rather +more than an indication. The metrical system of the canine original, +which recalls the intricate alliterative and isosyllabic rules of +the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our +readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps +it should be added that the effect is greatly increased if Owen's +verse be spoken somewhat slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive +of suppressed rancour. +THE CURSE OF MY CURSES +SEVEN DAYS EVERY DAY +AND SEVEN DRY THURSDAYS +ON YOU, BARNEY KIERNAN, +HAS NO SUP OF WATER +TO COOL MY COURAGE, +AND MY GUTS RED ROARING +AFTER LOWRY'S LIGHTS. +So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you could +hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe asked him would he have +another. +I will, says he, A CHARA, to show there's no ill feeling. +Gob, he's not as green as he's cabbagelooking. Arsing around from +one pub to another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap's dog +and getting fed up by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for +man and beast. And says Joe +Could you make a hole in another pint? +Could a swim duck? says I. +Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won't have anything in the +way of liquid refreshment? says he. +Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet +Martin Cunningham, don't you see, about this insurance of poor Dignam's. +Martin asked me to go to the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn't +serve any notice of the assignment on the company at the time and +nominally under the act the mortgagee can't recover on the policy. +Holy Wars, says Joe, laughing, that's a good one if old Shylock is +landed. So the wife comes out top dog, what? +Well, that's a point, says Bloom, for the wife's admirers. +Whose admirers? says Joe. +The wife's advisers, I mean, says Bloom. +Then he starts all confused mucking it up about mortgagor under the act +like the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and for the benefit of +the wife and that a trust is created but on the other hand that Dignam +owed Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow contested the +mortgagee's right till he near had the head of me addled with his +mortgagor under the act. He was bloody safe he wasn't run in himself under +the act that time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in court. +Selling bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal Hungarian privileged +lottery. True as you're there. O, commend me to an israelite Royal and +privileged Hungarian robbery. +So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs +Dignam he was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the +funeral and to tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said that +there was never a truer, a finer than poor little Willy that's dead to tell +her. Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom's hand doing the +tragic to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You're a rogue and I'm +another. +Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however +slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, +as I hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to request of +you this favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve +let the sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness. +No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which +actuate your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust +to me consoled by the reflection that, though the errand be one of +sorrow, this proof of your confidence sweetens in some measure the +bitterness of the cup. +Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart, I +feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the +expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose +poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of +speech. +And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five +o'clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby, +A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing +time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter +out of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph +Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion, and he serving mass in +Adam and Eve's when he was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new +testament, and the old testament, and hugging and smugging. And the two +shawls killed with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody +fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls +screeching laughing at one another. HOW IS YOUR TESTAMENT? HAVE YOU +GOT AN OLD TESTAMENT? Only Paddy was passing there, I tell you what. +Then see him of a Sunday with his little concubine of a wife, and +she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel with her patent boots +on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady. +Jack Mooney's sister. And the old prostitute of a mother +procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told +him if he didn't patch up the pot, Jesus, he'd kick the shite out of him. +So Terry brought the three pints. +Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen. +SLAN LEAT, says he. +Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen. +Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want a +small fortune to keep him in drinks. +Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Joe. +Friend of yours, says Alf. +Nannan? says Joe. The mimber? +I won't mention any names, says Alf. +I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting now with William +Field, M. P., the cattle traders. +Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of all +countries and the idol of his own. +So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease and +the cattle traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen sending +them all to the rightabout and Bloom coming out with his sheepdip for the +scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the guaranteed remedy +for timber tongue. Because he was up one time in a knacker's yard. +Walking about with his book and pencil here's my head and my heels are +coming till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the boot for giving lip to a +grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother how to milk ducks. +Pisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of +tears some times with Mrs O'Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches +of fat all over her. Couldn't loosen her farting strings but old cod's eye +was waltzing around her showing her how to do it. What's your programme +today? Ay. Humane methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts +say and the best known remedy that doesn't cause pain to the animal and +on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he'd have a soft hand under a +hen. +Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs +for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook. +Then comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes +her fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. +Anyhow, says Joe, Field and Nannetti are going over tonight to London +to ask about it on the floor of the house of commons. +Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I wanted to see him, +as it happens. +Well, he's going off by the mailboat, says Joe, tonight. +That's too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only Mr Field +is going. I couldn't phone. No. You're sure? +Nannan's going too, says Joe. The league told him to ask a question +tomorrow about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish games in the +park. What do you think of that, citizen? THE SLUAGH NA HEIREANN. +Mr Cowe Conacre Multifarnham. Nat. Arising out of the question of my +honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right +honourable gentleman whether the government has issued orders that these +animals shall be slaughtered though no medical evidence is forthcoming as +to their pathological condition? +Mr Allfours Tamoshant. Con. Honourable members are already in +possession of the evidence produced before a committee of the whole house. +I feel I cannot usefully add anything to that. The answer to the +honourable member's question is in the affirmative. +Mr Orelli O'Reilly Montenotte. Nat. Have similar orders been issued for +the slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the +Phoenix park? +Mr Allfours The answer is in the negative. +Mr Cowe Conacre Has the right honourable gentleman's famous +Mitchelstown telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the Treasury +bench? O O +Mr Allfours I must have notice of that question. +Mr Staylewit Buncombe. Ind. Don't hesitate to shoot. +Ironical opposition cheers. +The speaker Order Order +The house rises. Cheers. +There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he +is sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens. The champion of +all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best throw, +citizen? +NA BACLEIS, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time +I was as good as the next fellow anyhow. +Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better. +Is that really a fact? says Alf. +Yes, says Bloom. That's well known. Did you not know that? +So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn +tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and +building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had +to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent +exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a +straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom LOOK AT, BLOOM. +DO YOU SEE THAT STRAW? THAT'S A STRAW. Declare to my aunt he'd talk +about it for an hour so he would and talk steady. +A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of BRIAN +O'CIARNAIN'S in SRAID NA BRETAINE BHEAG, under the auspices of SLUAGH NA +HEIREANN, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of +physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and +ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The venerable president +of the noble order was in the chair and the attendance was of large +dimensions. After an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent +oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most interesting and +instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence +ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the ancient +games and sports of our ancient Panceltic forefathers. The +wellknown and highly respected worker in the cause of our old +tongue, Mr Joseph M'Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for +the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, +practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the +best traditions of manly strength and prowess handed down to us from +ancient ages. L. Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and +hisses, having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman brought the +discussion to a close, in response to repeated requests and hearty +plaudits from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy +rendering of the immortal Thomas Osborne Davis' evergreen verses happily +too familiar to need recalling here A NATION ONCE AGAIN in the execution +of which the veteran patriot champion may be said without fear of +contradiction to have fairly excelled himself. The Irish CarusoGaribaldi +was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were heard to the +greatest advantage in the timehonoured anthem sung as only our citizen +can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, which by its superquality +greatly enhanced his already international reputation, was vociferously +applauded by the large audience among which were to be noticed many +prominent members of the clergy as well as representatives of the press +and the bar and the other learned professions. The proceedings then +terminated. +Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William Delany, S. J., +L. L. D. the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D. the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, +C. S. Sp. the rev. T. Waters, C. C. the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P. the +rev. P. J. Cleary, O. S. F. the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P. the very rev. +Fr. Nicholas, O. S. F. C. the very rev. B. Gorman, O. D. C. the rev. T. +Maher, S. J. the very rev. James Murphy, S. J. the rev. John Lavery, +V. F. the very rev. William Doherty, D. D. the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M. +the rev. T. Brangan, O. S. A. the rev. J. Flavin, C. C. the rev. M. A. +Hackett, C. C. the rev. W. Hurley, C. C. the rt rev. Mgr M'Manus, +V. G. the rev. B. R. Slattery, O. M. I. the very rev. M. D. Scally, P. +P. the rev. F. T. Purcell, O. P. the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, +P. P. the rev. J. Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke, +etc., etc. +Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that KeoghBennett +match? +No, says Joe. +I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf. +Who? Blazes? says Joe. +And says Bloom +What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training the +eye. +Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run up +the odds and he swatting all the time. +We know him, says the citizen. The traitor's son. We know what put +English gold in his pocket. +True for you, says Joe. +And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the +blood, asking Alf +Now, don't you think, Bergan? +Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was only a +bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See the +little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave +him one last puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made him puke +what he never ate. +It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were +scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handicapped +as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin's pet lamb made up for it by +superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a +gruelling for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had +tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh +had been receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman +putting in some neat work on the pet's nose, and Myler came on +looking groggy. The soldier got to business, leading off with a +powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting +out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. The redcoat +ducked but the Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being +a fine one. The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got +his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler +punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took +his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and when the bell +went came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the +fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and the best man +for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The +referee twice cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was tricky +and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies +during which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely +from his opponent's mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and +landed a terrific left to Battling Bennett's stomach, flooring him flat. +It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello +bruiser was being counted out when Bennett's second Ole Pfotts Wettstein +threw in the towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the frenzied +cheers of the public who broke through the ringropes and fairly mobbed him +with delight. +He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he's running +a concert tour now up in the north. +He is, says Joe. Isn't he? +Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That's quite true. Yes, a kind of summer tour, +you see. Just a holiday. +Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn't she? says Joe. +My wife? says Bloom. She's singing, yes. I think it will be a success +too. +He's an excellent man to organise. Excellent. +Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the cocoanut +and absence of hair on the animal's chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the +flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger's son off Island bridge that +sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers. Old +Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Boylan. You what? +The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That's the bucko that'll +organise her, take my tip. 'Twixt me and you Caddareesh. +Pride of Calpe's rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. +There grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. +The gardens of Alameda knew her step the garths of olives knew and +bowed. The chaste spouse of Leopold is she Marion of the bountiful +bosoms. +And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O'Molloy's, a comely hero +of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty's counsel learned in +the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of Lambert. +Hello, Ned. +Hello, Alf. +Hello, Jack. +Hello, Joe. +God save you, says the citizen. +Save you kindly, says J. J. What'll it be, Ned? +Half one, says Ned. +So J. J. ordered the drinks. +Were you round at the court? says Joe. +Yes, says J. J. He'll square that, Ned, says he. +Hope so, says Ned. +Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list +and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs's. +Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their +eye, adrinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders. +Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where noone would +know him in the private office when I was there with Pisser releasing his +boots out of the pop. What's your name, sir? Dunne, says he. Ay, and done +says I. Gob, he'll come home by weeping cross one of those days, I'm +thinking. +Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there? says Alf. U. p up. +Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective. +Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to address the court only +Corny Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting examined +first. +Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I'd give anything to hear +him before a judge and jury. +Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and nothing +but the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson. +Me? says Alf. Don't cast your nasturtiums on my character. +Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in evidence +against you. +Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not +COMPOS MENTIS. U. p up. +COMPOS your eye says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he's balmy? +Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on +with a shoehorn. +Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment +for publishing it in the eyes of the law. +Ha ha, Alf, says Joe. +Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife. +Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half and +half. +How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he ... +Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that's neither fish nor +flesh. +Nor good red herring, says Joe. +That what's I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what that +is. +Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on +account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the +old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody +povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him, +bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she married +him because a cousin of his old fellow's was pewopener to the pope. +Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney's moustaches, the +signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal Zouave to the Holy +Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell +us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and +he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world. +And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be +sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my +opinion an action might lie. +Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink +our pints in peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself. +Well, good health, Jack, says Ned. +Good health, Ned, says J. J. +There he is again, says Joe. +Where? says Alf. +And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his +oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking +in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a +secondhand coffin. +How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe. +Remanded, says J. J. +One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James +Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying +he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green +in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled +them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own +kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or +something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the +holy Moses he was stuck for two quid. +Who tried the case? says Joe. +Recorder, says Ned. +Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes. +Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears +of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll dissolve in +tears on the bench. +Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the dock +the other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones, for the +corporation there near Butt bridge. +And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry +A most scandalous thing This poor hardworking man How many +children? Ten, did you say? +Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid. +And the wife with typhoid fever Scandalous Leave the court +immediately, sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you, +sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order A poor hardworking +industrious man I dismiss the case. +And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in +the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, +the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first +quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the +halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, +gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury +in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the +first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will +propounded and final testamentary disposition IN RE the real and +personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, +versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the +solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he +sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law of the +brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in +and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high +sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the +tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of +the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of +Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of +the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of +Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good +men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that +they should well and truly try and true deliverance make in the +issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at +the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God +and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and +they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do +His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from +their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in +consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot +and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against +him for he was a malefactor. +Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland +filling the country with bugs. +So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe, telling +him he needn't trouble about that little matter till the first but if he +would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by +this and by that he'd do the devil and all. +Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have +repetition. That's the whole secret. +Rely on me, says Joe. +Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We +want no more strangers in our house. +O, I'm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It's just that +Keyes, you see. +Consider that done, says Joe. +Very kind of you, says Bloom. +The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We +brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon +robbers here. +Decree NISI, says J. J. +And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a +spider's web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling +after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite and +when. +A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that's what's the cause of all our +misfortunes. +And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the POLICE GAZETTE +with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint. +Give us a squint at her, says I. +And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry +borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts. +Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago +contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. +Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for +her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in +time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor. +O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is +There's hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off of +that one, what? +So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a +face on him as long as a late breakfast. +Well, says the citizen, what's the latest from the scene of action? What +did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide about +the Irish language? +O'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the +puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that +which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city, +second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due +prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel +whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into honour +among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael. +It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal +Sassenachs and their PATOIS. +So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story was good till +you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy, putting your +blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a +nation, and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and +their colonies and their civilisation. +Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them The +curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged +sons of whores' gets No music and no art and no literature worthy of the +name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of +bastards' ghosts. +The European family, says J. J. ... +They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan +of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere in +Europe except in a CABINET D'AISANCE. +And says John Wyse +Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. +And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo +CONSPUEZ LES ANGLAIS PERFIDE ALBION +He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands +the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan LAMH +DEARG ABU, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous +heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the +deathless gods. +What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had +lost a bob and found a tanner. +Gold cup, says he. +Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry. +THROWAWAY, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest +nowhere. +And Bass's mare? says Terry. +Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid on +my tip SCEPTRE for himself and a lady friend. +I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on ZINFANDEL that Mr Flynn gave +me. Lord Howard de Walden's. +Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. THROWAWAY, +says he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name +is SCEPTRE. +So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was +anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck +with his mangy snout up. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard. +Not there, my child, says he. +Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the +other dog. +And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom +sticking in an odd word. +Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't +see the beam in their own. +RAIMEIS, says the citizen. There's noone as blind as the fellow that +won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing +twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, +our lost tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in +the whole world And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time +of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim +and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass +down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since +Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory +raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in +the whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that came through the +pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with +gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read +Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, +Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed +horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering +to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters. What do the +yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? +And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon they won't deepen with millions +of acres of marsh and bog to make us all die of consumption? +As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland +with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land. +Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was +reading a report of lord Castletown's ... +Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain +elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the +trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of +Eire, O. +Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan. +The fashionable international world attended EN MASSE this afternoon +at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief +ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine +Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, +Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs +Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss +Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche +Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla +Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa +San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss +Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty DeweyMosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs +Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs +Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their +presence. The bride who was given away by her father, the M'Conifer of +the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green +mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a +yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued +fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn +bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, +sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a +dainty MOTIF of plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and +repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form of heron +feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor presided at the +organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to the prescribed +numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking arrangement +of WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE at the conclusion of the service. On +leaving the church of Saint Fiacre IN HORTO after the papal +blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire +of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, +hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse +Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest. +And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with +Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were +pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway. +And will again, says Joe. +And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the +citizen, clapping his thigh. our harbours that are empty will be full +again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of +Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with a fleet +of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan O'Reillys and the +O'Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with +the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the +first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to +the fore, none of your Henry Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag afloat, +the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue +field, the three sons of Milesius. +And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like +a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody +life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled +multitude in Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Molly +Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the +holding of an evicted tenant. +Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have? +An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion. +Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry Are you asleep? +Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir. +Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead +of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to +crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down +like a bull at a gate. And another one BLACK BEAST BURNED IN OMAHA, GA. +A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a Sambo strung +up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought +to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to make sure +of their job. +But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at bay? +I'll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is. +Read the revelations that's going on in the papers about flogging on the +training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself DISGUSTED +ONE. +So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew +of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the +parson with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad +brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a +gun. +A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John +Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on the +breech. +And says John Wyse +'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. +Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long +cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad +till he yells meila murder. +That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the +earth. +The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on +the face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs +and cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about of drudges +and whipped serfs. +On which the sun never rises, says Joe. +And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The +unfortunate yahoos believe it. +They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth, +and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast, +born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, +flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again +from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend till further +orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid. +But, says Bloom, isn't discipline the same everywhere. I mean wouldn't +it be the same here if you put force against force? +Didn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his +last gasp he'd try to downface you that dying was living. +We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater +Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the +black . Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid +low by the batteringram and the TIMES rubbed its hands and told the +whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as +redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the +Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full of +crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they +drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the +coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the +land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no +cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan. +Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was ... +We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since the +poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at +Killala. +Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us +against the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the +broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild +geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan in +Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa. +But what did we ever get for it? +The French says the citizen. Set of dancing masters Do you know what +it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren't they +trying to make an ENTENTE CORDIALE now at Tay Pay's dinnerparty with +perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were. +CONSPUEZ LES FRANCAIS, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer. +And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven't we had +enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from George the +elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that's dead? +Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old one +with the winkers on her, blind drunk in her royal palace every night of +God, old Vic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her +up body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by the whiskers +and singing him old bits of songs about EHREN ON THE RHINE and come where +the boose is cheaper. +Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now. +Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There's a bloody sight more pox +than pax about that boyo. Edward GuelphWettin +And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests and +bishops of Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in His Satanic Majesty's +racing colours and sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys +rode. The earl of Dublin, no less. +They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says little +Alf. +And says J. J. +Considerations of space influenced their lordships' decision. +Will you try another, citizen? says Joe. +Yes, sir, says he. I will. +You? says Joe. +Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow never grow less. +Repeat that dose, says Joe. +Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with +his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about. +Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it. +Perpetuating national hatred among nations. +But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse. +Yes, says Bloom. +What is it? says John Wyse. +A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same +place. +By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm +living in the same place for the past five years. +So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to +muck out of it +Or also living in different places. +That covers my case, says Joe. +What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen. +Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland. +The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, +gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner. +After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief to +swab himself dry. +Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand and repeat +after me the following words. +The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish +facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og +MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully +produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the +legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can +distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each +of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North +American puma a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it +said in passing, a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The +scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths +and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, +are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the +Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago +in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, +the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, +Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of +Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company Limited, Lough Neagh's banks, +the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun's +hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch +house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, +Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, +Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college +refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of +Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street +Warehouse, Fingal's Caveall these moving scenes are still there for us +today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have +passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time. +Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which? +That's mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman. +And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted. +Also now. This very moment. This very instant. +Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar. +Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs +to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold by +auction in Morocco like slaves or cattle. +Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen. +I'm talking about injustice, says Bloom. +Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men. +That's an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old +lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a +sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And +then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as +limp as a wet rag. +But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not +life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's +the very opposite of that that is really life. +What? says Alf. +Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says he +to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is there. +If he comes just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment. +Who's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning. +A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love. +Well, says John Wyse. Isn't that what we're told. Love your neighbour. +That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love, +moya He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet. +Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable A +loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. +M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. +Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the +ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the +brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her +Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love +a certain person. And this person loves that other person because +everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody. +Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power, citizen. +Hurrah, there, says Joe. +The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the citizen. +And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle. +We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket. +What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women +and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text GOD IS LOVE +pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible Did you read that skit in +the UNITED IRISHMAN today about that Zulu chief that's visiting England? +What's that? says Joe. +So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts +reading out +A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was presented +yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, +Lord Walkup of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt +thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in his +dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion +of which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, +freely translated by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias +Praisegod Barebones, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and +emphasised the cordial relations existing between Abeakuta and the +British empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest +possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God +and the secret of England's greatness, graciously presented to him by +the white chief woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal +dedication from the august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a +lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast BLACK AND WHITE from the +skull of his immediate predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, +surnamed Forty Warts, after which he visited the chief factory of +Cottonopolis and signed his mark in the visitors' book, subsequently +executing a charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the course of which he +swallowed several knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the girl +hands. +Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn't doubt her. Wonder did he put that +bible to the same use as I would. +Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful land +the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly. +Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse. +No, says the citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only +initialled P. +And a very good initial too, says Joe. +That's how it's worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag. +Well, says J. J., if they're any worse than those Belgians in the Congo +Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man what's this +his name is? +Casement, says the citizen. He's an Irishman. +Yes, that's the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and flogging +the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can out of +them. +I know where he's gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers. +Who? says I. +Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on +THROWAWAY and he's gone to gather in the shekels. +Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a horse +in anger in his life? +That's where he's gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam Lyons going to back +that horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave him the tip. +Bet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He's the only +man in Dublin has it. A dark horse. +He's a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe. +Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out. +There you are, says Terry. +Goodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort. So I just went round the back of +the yard to pumpship and begob hundred shillings to five while I was +letting off my THROWAWAY twenty to letting off my load gob says I to +myself I knew he was uneasy in his two pints off of Joe and one in +Slattery's off in his mind to get off the mark to hundred shillings is +five quid and when they were in the dark horse pisser Burke +was telling me card party and letting on the child was sick gob, must +have done about a gallon flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube +SHE'S BETTER or SHE'S ow all a plan so he could vamoose with the +pool if he won or Jesus, full up I was trading without a licence ow +Ireland my nation says he hoik phthook never be up to those +bloody there's the last of it Jerusalem ah cuckoos. +So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse +saying it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his +paper all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes +off of the government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk +about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that puts +the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show. Give us +a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody +mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old fellow before him +perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that +poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the country with +his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms. Any +amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No security. +Gob, he's like Lanty MacHale's goat that'd go a piece of the road with +every one. +Well, it's a fact, says John Wyse. And there's the man now that'll tell +you all about it, Martin Cunningham. +Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack Power +with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of the +collector general's, an orangeman Blackburn does have on the registration +and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the country at the +king's expense. +Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their +palfreys. +Ho, varlet cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the party. +Saucy knave To us +So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice. +Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him with his tabard. +Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow. +Bestir thyself, sirrah cried he who had knocked. Look to our steeds. +And for ourselves give us of your best for ifaith we need it. +Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare +larder. I know not what to offer your lordships. +How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant +countenance, So servest thou the king's messengers, master Taptun? +An instantaneous change overspread the landlord's visage. +Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king's +messengers God shield His Majesty you shall not want for aught. The +king's friends God bless His Majesty shall not go afasting in my house +I warrant me. +Then about cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty trencherman +by his aspect. Hast aught to give us? +Mine host bowed again as he made answer +What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of +venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog's bacon, a boar's head +with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of +old Rhenish? +Gadzooks cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios +Aha cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare +larder, quotha 'Tis a merry rogue. +So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom. +Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and orphans. +Isn't that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling the citizen about +Bloom and the Sinn Fein? +That's so, says Martin. Or so they allege. +Who made those allegations? says Alf. +I, says Joe. I'm the alligator. +And after all, says John Wyse, why can't a jew love his country like the +next fellow? +Why not? says J. J., when he's quite sure which country it is. +Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the hell +is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton. +Who is Junius? says J. J. +We don't want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian. +He's a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and it was he +drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system. We know that in +the castle. +Isn't he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power. +Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was Virag, the +father's name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deedpoll, the father +did. +That's the new Messiah for Ireland says the citizen. Island of saints +and sages +Well, they're still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. For that +matter so are we. +Yes, says J. J., and every male that's born they think it may be their +Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe, till +he knows if he's a father or a mother. +Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan. +O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom before that son of his +that died was born. I met him one day in the south city markets buying a +tin of Neave's food six weeks before the wife was delivered. +EN VENTRE SA MERE, says J. J. +Do you call that a man? says the citizen. +I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe. +Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Jack Power. +And who does he suspect? says the citizen. +Gob, there's many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed +middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a month +with headache like a totty with her courses. Do you know what I'm telling +you? It'd be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like of that and +throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so it would. Then +sloping off with his five quid without putting up a pint of stuff like a +man. Give us your blessing. Not as much as would blind your eye. +Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is he? We can't wait. +A wolf in sheep's clothing, says the citizen. That's what he is. Virag +from Hungary Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God. +Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned. +Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and S. +You, Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry. +Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar and convert us, +says the citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our +shores. +Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is my +prayer. +Amen, says the citizen. +And I'm sure He will, says Joe. +And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with acolytes, +thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons, +the blessed company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians +and monks and friars the monks of Benedict of Spoleto, Carthusians and +Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans, Oratorians and Vallombrosans, +and the friars of Augustine, Brigittines, Premonstratensians, Servi, +Trinitarians, and the children of Peter Nolasco and therewith from Carmel +mount the children of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop and by Teresa of +Avila, calced and other and friars, brown and grey, sons of poor Francis, +capuchins, cordeliers, minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara +and the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent +and the monks of S. Wolstan and Ignatius his children and the +confraternity of the christian brothers led by the reverend brother +Edmund Ignatius Rice. And after came all saints and martyrs, +virgins and confessors S. Cyr and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the +Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix +de Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen Protomartyr and +S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S. Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S. +Vulmar and S. Richard and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin of Todi +and S. Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. +Denis and S. Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S. Terence and +S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous +and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S. +Synonymous and S. Laurence O'Toole and S. James of Dingle and +Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Celestine and S. +Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S. +Fachtna and S. Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and S. +Fiacre and S. John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Ives of +Brittany and S. Michan and S. HermanJoseph and the three patrons of +holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka and S. John +Berchmans and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and Bonifacius and S. Bride +and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S. Jarlath of Tuam and S. +Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun and Brother Aloysius Pacificus and +Brother Louis Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and S. +Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. Brigid and S. +Attracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita and S. Marion Calpensis and the +Blessed Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica +and S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. And all came with nimbi and +aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive +crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of their +efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, +bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, +lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles, +stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, +stags' horns, watertight boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax +candles, aspergills, unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson's +Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little Britain street +chanting the introit in EPIPHANIA DOMINI which beginneth SURGE, +ILLUMINARE and thereafter most sweetly the gradual OMNES which saith +DE SABA VENIENT they did divers wonders such as casting out devils, +raising the dead to life, multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the +blind, discovering various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting +and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and prophesying. And last, beneath +a canopy of cloth of gold came the reverend Father O'Flynn attended by +Malachi and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached the appointed +place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, , and little +Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed for +the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the +celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioned windows and the +groynes and the vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments +and the cornices and the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas +and sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed that God +might bless that house as he had blessed the house of Abraham and Isaac +and Jacob and make the angels of His light to inhabit therein. And +entering he blessed the viands and the beverages and the company of all +the blessed answered his prayers. +ADIUTORIUM NOSTRUM IN NOMINE DOMINI. +QUI FECIT COELUM ET TERRAM. +DOMINUS VOBISCUM. +ET CUM SPIRITU TUO. +And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave thanks and he +prayed and they all with him prayed +DEUS, CUIUS VERBO SANCTIFICANTUR OMNIA, BENEDICTIONEM TUAM EFFUNDE SUPER +CREATURAS ISTAS ET PRAESTA UT QUISQUIS EIS SECUNDUM LEGEM ET VOLUNTATEM +TUAM CUM GRATIARUM ACTIONE USUS FUERIT PER INVOCATIONEM SANCTISSIMI +NOMINIS TUI CORPORIS SANITATEM ET ANIMAE TUTELAM TE AUCTORE PERCIPIAT PER +CHRISTUM DOMINUM NOSTRUM. +And so say all of us, says Jack. +Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford. +Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter for fish. +I was just looking around to see who the happy thought would strike +when be damned but in he comes again letting on to be in a hell of a +hurry. +I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you. I hope I'm +not ... +No, says Martin, we're ready. +Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver. +Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear There's +a jew for you All for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to +five. +Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, +Beg your pardon, says he. +Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking blue. Come along now. +Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of him. It's a +secret. +And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl. +Bye bye all, says Martin. +And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power and Crofton or +whatever you call him and him in the middle of them letting on to be all +at sea and up with them on the bloody jaunting car. +Off with you, says +Martin to the jarvey. +The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop +the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off forward +with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew +nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble +bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright when +he fashions about the heart of his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each +one is sister to another and he binds them all with an outer ring and +giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a hosting or contend +for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and set them, those +willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a +circle of their foam and the bark clave the waves. +But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the +citizen getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the +dropsy, and he cursing the curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle +in Irish, spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf round +him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him. +Let me alone, says he. +And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he +bawls out of him +Three cheers for Israel +Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for Christ' +sake and don't be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus, there's +always some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder about +bloody nothing. Gob, it'd turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would. +And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and Martin +telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and Alf and +Joe at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews and the +loafers calling for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down +on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over his eye +starts singing IF THE MAN IN THE MOON WAS A JEW, JEW, JEW and a slut +shouts out of her +Eh, mister Your fly is open, mister +And says he +Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. +And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God. +He had no father, says Martin. That'll do now. Drive ahead. +Whose God? says the citizen. +Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew +like me. +Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop. +By Jesus, says he, I'll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy +name. +By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here. +Stop Stop says Joe. +A large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances from +the metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in their thousands to bid +farewell to Nagyasagos uram Lipoti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander +Thom's, printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his departure for the +distant clime of SzazharminczbrojugulyasDugulas Meadow of +Murmuring Waters. The ceremony which went off with great ECLAT was +characterised by the most affecting cordiality. An illuminated scroll of +ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was presented to the +distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section of the +community and was accompanied by the gift of a silver casket, tastefully +executed in the style of ancient Celtic ornament, a work which reflects +every credit on the makers, Messrs Jacob AGUS Jacob. The departing guest +was the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of those who were present +being visibly moved when the select orchestra of Irish pipes struck up the +wellknown strains of COME BACK TO ERIN, followed immediately by RAKOCZSY'S +MARCH. Tarbarrels and bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four +seas on the summits of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock Mountain, Sugarloaf, +Bray Head, the mountains of Mourne, the Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and +Sperrin peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills, the reeks +of M Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh and Slieve Bloom. Amid +cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering cheers from a big +muster of henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills, the +mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted by a final floral +tribute from the representatives of the fair sex who were present in large +numbers while, as it proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of +barges, the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were dipped in +salute as were also those of the electrical power station at the +Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light. VISSZONTLATASRA, KEDVES BARATON +VISSZONTLATASRA Gone but not forgotten. +Gob, the devil wouldn't stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin +anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and he +shouting like a stuck pig, as good as any bloody play in the Queen's royal +theatre +Where is he till I murder him? +And Ned and J. J. paralysed with the laughing. +Bloody wars, says I, I'll be in for the last gospel. +But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag's head round the +other way and off with him. +Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop +Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of God the sun +was in his eyes or he'd have left him for dead. Gob, he near sent it +into the county Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old mongrel +after the car like bloody hell and all the populace shouting and laughing +and the old tinbox clattering along the street. +The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The +observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth +grade of Mercalli's scale, and there is no record extant of a similar +seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of , the +year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have +been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn's Quay +ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres, +two roods and one square pole or perch. All the lordly residences in +the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble +edifice itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important +legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath +which it is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive. +From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves +were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic +character. An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much +respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a silk +umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials, crest, coat of arms +and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter +sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered +by search parties in remote parts of the island respectively, the former +on the third basaltic ridge of the giant's causeway, the latter embedded +to the extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen +bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they +observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through +the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed +southwest by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being +hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the +sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a +special MISSA PRO DEFUNCTIS shall be celebrated simultaneously by +the ordinaries of each and every cathedral church of all the episcopal +dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of +the souls of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly called +away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of DEBRIS, human remains +etc has been entrusted to Messrs Michael Meade and Son, Great +Brunswick street, and Messrs T. and C. Martin, , , and North +Wall, assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall's light +infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral, the +right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson, K. G., +K. P., K. T., P. C., K. C. B., M. P, J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., +M. F. H., M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. G., F. T. C. D., +F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I. +You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob, if he got that +lottery ticket on the side of his poll he'd remember the gold cup, +he would so, but begob the citizen would have been lagged for assault +and battery and Joe for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life +by furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O, Jesus, he did. +And he let a volley of oaths after him. +Did I kill him, says he, or what? +And he shouting to the bloody dog +After him, Garry After him, boy +And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old +sheepsface on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his +lugs back for all he was bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb. +Hundred to five Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise you. +When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they +beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld +Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having +raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they +durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling +ELIJAH ELIJAH And He answered with a main cry ABBA ADONAI And they +beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend +to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over +Donohoe's in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel. +The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious +embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all +too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud +promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on +the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the +quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the stillness the +voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the +stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea. +The three girl friends were seated on the rocks, enjoying the evening +scene and the air which was fresh but not too chilly. Many a time and oft +were they wont to come there to that favourite nook to have a cosy chat +beside the sparkling waves and discuss matters feminine, Cissy Caffrey and +Edy Boardman with the baby in the pushcar and Tommy and Jacky +Caffrey, two little curlyheaded boys, dressed in sailor suits with caps to +match and the name H.M.S. Belleisle printed on both. For Tommy and +Jacky Caffrey were twins, scarce four years old and very noisy and spoiled +twins sometimes but for all that darling little fellows with bright merry +faces and endearing ways about them. They were dabbling in the sand with +their spades and buckets, building castles as children do, or playing with +their big coloured ball, happy as the day was long. And Edy Boardman was +rocking the chubby baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young +gentleman fairly chuckled with delight. He was but eleven months and nine +days old and, though still a tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp his +first babyish words. Cissy Caffrey bent over to him to tease his fat +little plucks and the dainty dimple in his chin. +Now, baby, Cissy Caffrey said. Say out big, big. I want a drink of +water. +And baby prattled after her +A jink a jink a jawbo. +Cissy Caffrey cuddled the wee chap for she was awfully fond of children, +so patient with little sufferers and Tommy Caffrey could never be got to +take his castor oil unless it was Cissy Caffrey that held his nose and +promised him the scatty heel of the loaf or brown bread with golden syrup +on. What a persuasive power that girl had But to be sure baby Boardman +was as good as gold, a perfect little dote in his new fancy bib. None of +your spoilt beauties, Flora MacFlimsy sort, was Cissy Caffrey. +A truerhearted lass never drew the breath of life, always with a laugh in +her gipsylike eyes and a frolicsome word on her cherryripe red lips, a +girl lovable in the extreme. And Edy Boardman laughed too at the quaint +language of little brother. +But just then there was a slight altercation between Master Tommy +and Master Jacky. Boys will be boys and our two twins were no exception +to this golden rule. The apple of discord was a certain castle of sand +which Master Jacky had built and Master Tommy would have it right go wrong +that it was to be architecturally improved by a frontdoor like the +Martello tower had. But if Master Tommy was headstrong Master Jacky was +selfwilled too and, true to the maxim that every little Irishman's house +is his castle, he fell upon his hated rival and to such purpose that the +wouldbe assailant came to grief and alas to relate the coveted castle +too. Needless to say the cries of discomfited Master Tommy drew the +attention of the girl friends. +Come here, Tommy, his sister called imperatively. At once And you, +Jacky, for shame to throw poor Tommy in the dirty sand. Wait till I catch +you for that. +His eyes misty with unshed tears Master Tommy came at her call for +their big sister's word was law with the twins. And in a sad plight he was +too after his misadventure. His little mano'war top and unmentionables +were full of sand but Cissy was a past mistress in the art of smoothing +over life's tiny troubles and very quickly not one speck of sand was +to be seen on his smart little suit. Still the blue eyes were glistening +with hot tears that would well up so she kissed away the hurtness and +shook her hand at Master Jacky the culprit and said if she was near +him she wouldn't be far from him, her eyes dancing in admonition. +Nasty bold Jacky she cried. +She put an arm round the little mariner and coaxed winningly +What's your name? Butter and cream? +Tell us who is your sweetheart, spoke Edy Boardman. Is Cissy your +sweetheart? +Nao, tearful Tommy said. +Is Edy Boardman your sweetheart? Cissy queried. +Nao, Tommy said. +I know, Edy Boardman said none too amiably with an arch glance from +her shortsighted eyes. I know who is Tommy's sweetheart. Gerty is +Tommy's sweetheart. +Nao, Tommy said on the verge of tears. +Cissy's quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she whispered +to Edy Boardman to take him there behind the pushcar where the +gentleman couldn't see and to mind he didn't wet his new tan shoes. +But who was Gerty? +Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in +thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a +specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see. She was +pronounced beautiful by all who knew her though, as folks often said, she +was more a Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her figure was slight and graceful, +inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she had been taking of +late had done her a world of good much better than the Widow Welch's +female pills and she was much better of those discharges she used to get +and that tired feeling. The waxen pallor of her face was almost spiritual +in its ivorylike purity though her rosebud mouth was a genuine Cupid's +bow, Greekly perfect. Her hands were of finely veined alabaster +with tapering fingers and as white as lemonjuice and queen of ointments +could make them though it was not true that she used to wear kid gloves +in bed or take a milk footbath either. Bertha Supple told that once +to Edy Boardman, a deliberate lie, when she was black out at daggers +drawn with Gerty the girl chums had of course their little tiffs +from time to time like the rest of mortals and she told her not to +let on whatever she did that it was her that told her or she'd never +speak to her again. No. Honour where honour is due. There was an +innate refinement, a languid queenly HAUTEUR about Gerty which +was unmistakably evidenced in her delicate hands and higharched instep. +Had kind fate but willed her to be born a gentlewoman of high degree in +her own right and had she only received the benefit of a good education +Gerty MacDowell might easily have held her own beside any lady in the +land and have seen herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and +patrician suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs +to her. Mayhap it was this, the love that might have been, that lent to +her softlyfeatured face at whiles a look, tense with suppressed meaning, +that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the beautiful eyes, a charm +few could resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery? Gerty's were of +the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark expressive +brows. Time was when those brows were not so silkily seductive. It was +Madame Vera Verity, directress of the Woman Beautiful page of the Princess +Novelette, who had first advised her to try eyebrowleine which gave that +haunting expression to the eyes, so becoming in leaders of fashion, and +she had never regretted it. Then there was blushing scientifically cured +and how to be tall increase your height and you have a beautiful face but +your nose? That would suit Mrs Dignam because she had a button one. But +Gerty's crowning glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. It was dark brown +with a natural wave in it. She had cut it that very morning on account +of the new moon and it nestled about her pretty head in a profusion of +luxuriant clusters and pared her nails too, Thursday for wealth. And just +now at Edy's words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest +rosebloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish +shyness that of a surety God's fair land of Ireland did not hold +her equal. +For an instant she was silent with rather sad downcast eyes. She was +about to retort but something checked the words on her tongue. Inclination +prompted her to speak out dignity told her to be silent. The pretty lips +pouted awhile but then she glanced up and broke out into a joyous little +laugh which had in it all the freshness of a young May morning. She knew +right well, noone better, what made squinty Edy say that because of him +cooling in his attentions when it was simply a lovers' quarrel. As per +usual somebody's nose was out of joint about the boy that had the bicycle +off the London bridge road always riding up and down in front of her +window. Only now his father kept him in in the evenings studying +hard to get an exhibition in the intermediate that was on and he was +going to go to Trinity college to study for a doctor when he left +the high school like his brother W. E. Wylie who was racing in the +bicycle races in Trinity college university. Little recked he perhaps +for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart sometimes, +piercing to the core. Yet he was young and perchance he might +learn to love her in time. They were protestants in his family +and of course Gerty knew Who came first and after Him the Blessed +Virgin and then Saint Joseph. But he was undeniably handsome with an +exquisite nose and he was what he looked, every inch a gentleman, the +shape of his head too at the back without his cap on that she would know +anywhere something off the common and the way he turned the bicycle at +the lamp with his hands off the bars and also the nice perfume of those +good cigarettes and besides they were both of a size too he and she and +that was why Edy Boardman thought she was so frightfully clever because +he didn't go and ride up and down in front of her bit of a garden. +Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary of +Dame Fashion for she felt that there was just a might that he might be +out. A neat blouse of electric blue selftinted by dolly dyes because it +was expected in the LADY'S PICTORIAL that electric blue would be worn +with a smart vee opening down to the division and kerchief pocket +in which she always kept a piece of cottonwool scented with her +favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled the sit and a +navy threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful +figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat of +wideleaved nigger straw contrast trimmed with an underbrim of eggblue +chenille and at the side a butterfly bow of silk to tone. All Tuesday +week afternoon she was hunting to match that chenille but at last +she found what she wanted at Clery's summer sales, the very it, slightly +shopsoiled but you would never notice, seven fingers two and a penny. She +did it up all by herself and what joy was hers when she tried it on then, +smiling at the lovely reflection which the mirror gave back to her +And when she put it on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew that that +would take the shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes were the +newest thing in footwear Edy Boardman prided herself that she was very +PETITE but she never had a foot like Gerty MacDowell, a five, and never +would ash, oak or elm with patent toecaps and just one smart buckle over +her higharched instep. Her wellturned ankle displayed its perfect +proportions beneath her skirt and just the proper amount and no more of +her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with highspliced heels and wide +garter tops. As for undies they were Gerty's chief care and who that knows +the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen though Gerty would +never see seventeen again can find it in his heart to blame her? She had +four dinky sets with awfully pretty stitchery, three garments and +nighties extra, and each set slotted with different coloured ribbons, +rosepink, pale blue, mauve and peagreen, and she aired them herself +and blued them when they came home from the wash and ironed them +and she had a brickbat to keep the iron on because she wouldn't trust +those washerwomen as far as she'd see them scorching the things. +She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her own +colour and lucky too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere +on her because the green she wore that day week brought grief because +his father brought him in to study for the intermediate exhibition +and because she thought perhaps he might be out because when she was +dressing that morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out +and that was for luck and lovers' meeting if you put those things on +inside out or if they got untied that he was thinking about you so long +as it wasn't of a Friday. +And yet and yet That strained look on her face A gnawing sorrow is +there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give worlds +to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving way to +tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her pentup feelingsthough not +too much because she knew how to cry nicely before the mirror. You are +lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light of evening falls upon a face +infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty MacDowell yearns in vain. Yes, she had +known from the very first that her daydream of a marriage has been +arranged and the weddingbells ringing for Mrs Reggy Wylie T. C. D. +because the one who married the elder brother would be Mrs Wylie and in +the fashionable intelligence Mrs Gertrude Wylie was wearing a sumptuous +confection of grey trimmed with expensive blue fox was not to be. He was +too young to understand. He would not believe in love, a woman's +birthright. The night of the party long ago in Stoer's he was still in +short trousers when they were alone and he stole an arm round her waist +she went white to the very lips. He called her little one in a strangely +husky voice and snatched a half kiss the first but it was only the end +of her nose and then he hastened from the room with a remark about +refreshments. Impetuous fellow Strength of character had never been Reggy +Wylie's strong point and he who would woo and win Gerty MacDowell must be +a man among men. But waiting, always waiting to be asked and it was leap +year too and would soon be over. No prince charming is her beau ideal to +lay a rare and wondrous love at her feet but rather a manly man with a +strong quiet face who had not found his ideal, perhaps his hair slightly +flecked with grey, and who would understand, take her in his sheltering +arms, strain her to him in all the strength of his deep passionate nature +and comfort her with a long long kiss. It would be like heaven. For such +a one she yearns this balmy summer eve. With all the heart of her she +longs to be his only, his affianced bride for riches for poor, in sickness +in health, till death us two part, from this to this day forward. +And while Edy Boardman was with little Tommy behind the pushcar she was +just thinking would the day ever come when she could call herself his +little wife to be. Then they could talk about her till they went blue in +the face, Bertha Supple too, and Edy, little spitfire, because she would +be twentytwo in November. She would care for him with creature comforts +too for Gerty was womanly wise and knew that a mere man liked that +feeling of hominess. Her griddlecakes done to a goldenbrown hue and +queen Ann's pudding of delightful creaminess had won golden opinions from +all because she had a lucky hand also for lighting a fire, dredge in the +fine selfraising flour and always stir in the same direction, then cream +the milk and sugar and whisk well the white of eggs though she didn't like +the eating part when there were any people that made her shy and often she +wondered why you couldn't eat something poetical like violets or roses and +they would have a beautifully appointed drawingroom with pictures and +engravings and the photograph of grandpapa Giltrap's lovely dog +Garryowen that almost talked it was so human and chintz covers for the +chairs and that silver toastrack in Clery's summer jumble sales like they +have in rich houses. He would be tall with broad shoulders she had always +admired tall men for a husband with glistening white teeth under his +carefully trimmed sweeping moustache and they would go on the continent +for their honeymoon three wonderful weeks and then, when they settled +down in a nice snug and cosy little homely house, every morning they +would both have brekky, simple but perfectly served, for their own two +selves and before he went out to business he would give his dear little +wifey a good hearty hug and gaze for a moment deep down into her eyes. +Edy Boardman asked Tommy Caffrey was he done and he said yes so +then she buttoned up his little knickerbockers for him and told him to run +off and play with Jacky and to be good now and not to fight. But Tommy +said he wanted the ball and Edy told him no that baby was playing with the +ball and if he took it there'd be wigs on the green but Tommy said it was +his ball and he wanted his ball and he pranced on the ground, if you +please. The temper of him O, he was a man already was little Tommy +Caffrey since he was out of pinnies. Edy told him no, no and to be off now +with him and she told Cissy Caffrey not to give in to him. +You're not my sister, naughty Tommy said. It's my ball. +But Cissy Caffrey told baby Boardman to look up, look up high at her +finger and she snatched the ball quickly and threw it along the sand and +Tommy after it in full career, having won the day. +Anything for a quiet life, laughed Ciss. +And she tickled tiny tot's two cheeks to make him forget and played here's +the lord mayor, here's his two horses, here's his gingerbread carriage +and here he walks in, chinchopper, chinchopper, chinchopper chin. But Edy +got as cross as two sticks about him getting his own way like that from +everyone always petting him. +I'd like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I won't say. +On the beeoteetom, laughed Cissy merrily. +Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Cissy +saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she'd be ashamed of her +life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said she was sure +the gentleman opposite heard what she said. But not a pin cared Ciss. +Let him she said with a pert toss of her head and a piquant tilt of her +nose. Give it to him too on the same place as quick as I'd look at him. +Madcap Ciss with her golliwog curls. You had to laugh at her +sometimes. For instance when she asked you would you have some more +Chinese tea and jaspberry ram and when she drew the jugs too and the men's +faces on her nails with red ink make you split your sides or when she +wanted to go where you know she said she wanted to run and pay a visit to +the Miss White. That was just like Cissycums. O, and will you ever forget +her the evening she dressed up in her father's suit and hat and the burned +cork moustache and walked down Tritonville road, smoking a cigarette. +There was none to come up to her for fun. But she was sincerity itself, +one of the bravest and truest hearts heaven ever made, not one of your +twofaced things, too sweet to be wholesome. +And then there came out upon the air the sound of voices and the +pealing anthem of the organ. It was the men's temperance retreat conducted +by the missioner, the reverend John Hughes S. J., rosary, sermon and +benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. They were there gathered +together without distinction of social class and a most edifying +spectacle it was to see in that simple fane beside the waves, +after the storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of +the immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, +beseeching her to intercede for them, the old familiar words, +holy Mary, holy virgin of virgins. How sad to poor Gerty's ears +Had her father only avoided the clutches of the demon drink, by +taking the pledge or those powders the drink habit cured in Pearson's +Weekly, she might now be rolling in her carriage, second to none. Over and +over had she told herself that as she mused by the dying embers in a brown +study without the lamp because she hated two lights or oftentimes gazing +out of the window dreamily by the hour at the rain falling on the rusty +bucket, thinking. But that vile decoction which has ruined so many hearths +and homes had cist its shadow over her childhood days. Nay, she had even +witnessed in the home circle deeds of violence caused by intemperance and +had seen her own father, a prey to the fumes of intoxication, forget +himself completely for if there was one thing of all things that Gerty +knew it was that the man who lifts his hand to a woman save in the way of +kindness, deserves to be branded as the lowest of the low. +And still the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most powerful, +Virgin most merciful. And Gerty, rapt in thought, scarce saw or heard her +companions or the twins at their boyish gambols or the gentleman off +Sandymount green that Cissy Caffrey called the man that was so like +himself passing along the strand taking a short walk. You never saw him +any way screwed but still and for all that she would not like him for a +father because he was too old or something or on account of his face it +was a palpable case of Doctor Fell or his carbuncly nose with the pimples +on it and his sandy moustache a bit white under his nose. Poor father +With all his faults she loved him still when he sang TELL ME, MARY, HOW TO +WOO THEE or MY LOVE AND COTTAGE NEAR ROCHELLE and they had stewed cockles +and lettuce with Lazenby's salad dressing for supper and when he sang THE +MOON HATH RAISED with Mr Dignam that died suddenly and was buried, God +have mercy on him, from a stroke. Her mother's birthday that was and +Charley was home on his holidays and Tom and Mr Dignam and Mrs and +Patsy and Freddy Dignam and they were to have had a group taken. +Noone would have thought the end was so near. Now he was laid to rest. +And her mother said to him to let that be a warning to him for the rest of +his days and he couldn't even go to the funeral on account of the gout and +she had to go into town to bring him the letters and samples from his +office about Catesby's cork lino, artistic, standard designs, fit for a +palace, gives tiptop wear and always bright and cheery in the home. +A sterling good daughter was Gerty just like a second mother in the house, +a ministering angel too with a little heart worth its weight in gold. +And when her mother had those raging splitting headaches who was it +rubbed the menthol cone on her forehead but Gerty though she didn't like +her mother's taking pinches of snuff and that was the only single thing +they ever had words about, taking snuff. Everyone thought the world of her +for her gentle ways. It was Gerty who turned off the gas at the main every +night and it was Gerty who tacked up on the wall of that place where she +never forgot every fortnight the chlorate of lime Mr Tunney the grocer's +christmas almanac, the picture of halcyon days where a young gentleman in +the costume they used to wear then with a threecornered hat was offering a +bunch of flowers to his ladylove with oldtime chivalry through her lattice +window. You could see there was a story behind it. The colours were done +something lovely. She was in a soft clinging white in a studied attitude +and the gentleman was in chocolate and he looked a thorough aristocrat. +She often looked at them dreamily when she went there for a certain +purpose and felt her own arms that were white and soft just like hers with +the sleeves back and thought about those times because she had found out +in Walker's pronouncing dictionary that belonged to grandpapa Giltrap +about the halcyon days what they meant. +The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly fashion till at +last Master Jacky who was really as bold as brass there was no getting +behind that deliberately kicked the ball as hard as ever he could down +towards the seaweedy rocks. Needless to say poor Tommy was not slow to +voice his dismay but luckily the gentleman in black who was sitting there +by himself came gallantly to the rescue and intercepted the ball. Our two +champions claimed their plaything with lusty cries and to avoid trouble +Cissy Caffrey called to the gentleman to throw it to her please. The +gentleman aimed the ball once or twice and then threw it up the strand +towards Cissy Caffrey but it rolled down the slope and stopped right under +Gerty's skirt near the little pool by the rock. The twins clamoured again +for it and Cissy told her to kick it away and let them fight for it so +Gerty drew back her foot but she wished their stupid ball hadn't come +rolling down to her and she gave a kick but she missed and Edy and Cissy +laughed. +If you fail try again, Edy Boardman said. +Gerty smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept into her +pretty cheek but she was determined to let them see so she just lifted her +skirt a little but just enough and took good aim and gave the ball a jolly +good kick and it went ever so far and the two twins after it down towards +the shingle. Pure jealousy of course it was nothing else to draw attention +on account of the gentleman opposite looking. She felt the warm flush, a +danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell, surging and flaming into her +cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged glances of the most casual but +now under the brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him and the face +that met her gaze there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed +to her the saddest she had ever seen. +Through the open window of the church the fragrant incense was wafted and +with it the fragrant names of her who was conceived without stain of +original sin, spiritual vessel, pray for us, honourable vessel, pray for +us, vessel of singular devotion, pray for us, mystical rose. And careworn +hearts were there and toilers for their daily bread and many who had erred +and wandered, their eyes wet with contrition but for all that bright with +hope for the reverend father Father Hughes had told them what the great +saint Bernard said in his famous prayer of Mary, the most pious Virgin's +intercessory power that it was not recorded in any age that those who +implored her powerful protection were ever abandoned by her. +The twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles of +childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. Cissy Caffrey played with +baby Boardman till he crowed with glee, clapping baby hands in air. Peep +she cried behind the hood of the pushcar and Edy asked where was Cissy +gone and then Cissy popped up her head and cried ah and, my word, +didn't the little chap enjoy that And then she told him to say papa. +Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa. +And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for +eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of health, +a perfect little bunch of love, and he would certainly turn out to be +something great, they said. +Haja ja ja haja. +Cissy wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and wanted him to sit +up properly and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap she cried out, +holy saint Denis, that he was possing wet and to double the half blanket +the other way under him. Of course his infant majesty was most +obstreperous at such toilet formalities and he let everyone know it +Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa. +And two great big lovely big tears coursing down his cheeks. It was all no +use soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and telling him about the +geegee and where was the puffpuff but Ciss, always readywitted, gave him +in his mouth the teat of the suckingbottle and the young heathen was +quickly appeased. +Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out of +that and not get on her nerves, no hour to be out, and the little brats +of twins. She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the paintings +that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such +a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out, the evening and the +clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and to hear the music like +that and the perfume of those incense they burned in the church like a +kind of waft. And while she gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her +he was looking at, and there was meaning in his look. His eyes burned into +her as though they would search her through and through, read her very +soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you trust +them? People were so queer. She could see at once by his dark eyes and his +pale intellectual face that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she +had of Martin Harvey, the matinee idol, only for the moustache which she +preferred because she wasn't stagestruck like Winny Rippingham that +wanted they two to always dress the same on account of a play but she +could not see whether he had an aquiline nose or a slightly RETROUSSE from +where he was sitting. He was in deep mourning, she could see that, and the +story of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. She would have given +worlds to know what it was. He was looking up so intently, so still, and +he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright steel buckles +of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down. +She was glad that something told her to put on the transparent stockings +thinking Reggy Wylie might be out but that was far away. Here was that of +which she had so often dreamed. It was he who mattered and there was joy +on her face because she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he +was like noone else. The very heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her +dreamhusband, because she knew on the instant it was him. If he had +suffered, more sinned against than sinning, or even, even, if he had been +himself a sinner, a wicked man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant +or methodist she could convert him easily if he truly loved her. There +were wounds that wanted healing with heartbalm. She was a womanly woman +not like other flighty girls unfeminine he had known, those cyclists +showing off what they hadn't got and she just yearned to know all, to +forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget +the memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently, like a +real man, crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his ownest girlie, +for herself alone. +Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. ORA PRO NOBIS. Well +has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can +never be lost or cast away and fitly is she too a haven of refuge for the +afflicted because of the seven dolours which transpierced her own heart. +Gerty could picture the whole scene in the church, the stained glass +windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue banners of the +blessed Virgin's sodality and Father Conroy was helping Canon O'Hanlon at +the altar, carrying things in and out with his eyes cast down. He looked +almost a saint and his confessionbox was so quiet and clean and dark and +his hands were just like white wax and if ever she became a Dominican nun +in their white habit perhaps he might come to the convent for the novena +of Saint Dominic. He told her that time when she told him about that in +confession, crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could see, +not to be troubled because that was only the voice of nature and we were +all subject to nature's laws, he said, in this life and that that was no +sin because that came from the nature of woman instituted by God, he said, +and that Our Blessed Lady herself said to the archangel Gabriel be it done +unto me according to Thy Word. He was so kind and holy and often and often +she thought and thought could she work a ruched teacosy with embroidered +floral design for him as a present or a clock but they had a clock she +noticed on the mantelpiece white and gold with a canarybird that came out +of a little house to tell the time the day she went there about the +flowers for the forty hours' adoration because it was hard to know what +sort of a present to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of +Dublin or some place. +The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Jacky +threw the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little +monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them +a good hiding for themselves to keep them in their places, the both of +them. And Cissy and Edy shouted after them to come back because they +were afraid the tide might come in on them and be drowned. +Jacky Tommy +Not they What a great notion they had So Cissy said it was the very +last time she'd ever bring them out. She jumped up and called them and she +ran down the slope past him, tossing her hair behind her which had a good +enough colour if there had been more of it but with all the thingamerry +she was always rubbing into it she couldn't get it to grow long because it +wasn't natural so she could just go and throw her hat at it. She ran +with long gandery strides it was a wonder she didn't rip up her skirt at +the side that was too tight on her because there was a lot of the tomboy +about Cissy Caffrey and she was a forward piece whenever she thought +she had a good opportunity to show and just because she was a good runner +she ran like that so that he could see all the end of her petticoat +running and her skinny shanks up as far as possible. It would have +served her just right if she had tripped up over something accidentally +on purpose with her high crooked French heels on her to make her look +tall and got a fine tumble. TABLEAU That would have been a very charming +expose for a gentleman like that to witness. +Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all saints, +they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father Conroy handed +the thurible to Canon O'Hanlon and he put in the incense and censed the +Blessed Sacrament and Cissy Caffrey caught the two twins and she was +itching to give them a ringing good clip on the ear but she didn't because +she thought he might be watching but she never made a bigger mistake in +all her life because Gerty could see without looking that he never +took his eyes off of her and then Canon O'Hanlon handed the thurible +back to Father Conroy and knelt down looking up at the Blessed Sacrament +and the choir began to sing the TANTUM ERGO and she just swung her foot +in and out in time as the music rose and fell to the TANTUMER GOSA +CRAMEN TUM. Three and eleven she paid for those stockings in Sparrow's +of George's street on the Tuesday, no the Monday before Easter and there +wasn't a brack on them and that was what he was looking at, transparent, +and not at her insignificant ones that had neither shape nor form +the cheek of her because he had eyes in his head to see the difference +for himself. +Cissy came up along the strand with the two twins and their ball with +her hat anyhow on her to one side after her run and she did look a streel +tugging the two kids along with the flimsy blouse she bought only a +fortnight before like a rag on her back and a bit of her petticoat hanging +like a caricature. Gerty just took off her hat for a moment to settle her +hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown tresses was never seen on +a girl's shouldersa radiant little vision, in sooth, almost maddening in +its sweetness. You would have to travel many a long mile before you found +a head of hair the like of that. She could almost see the swift answering +flash of admiration in his eyes that set her tingling in every nerve. +She put on her hat so that she could see from underneath the brim and +swung her buckled shoe faster for her breath caught as she caught the +expression in his eyes. He was eying her as a snake eyes its prey. Her +woman's instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him and at the +thought a burning scarlet swept from throat to brow till the lovely colour +of her face became a glorious rose. +Edy Boardman was noticing it too because she was squinting at Gerty, +half smiling, with her specs like an old maid, pretending to nurse the +baby. Irritable little gnat she was and always would be and that was why +noone could get on with her poking her nose into what was no concern of +hers. And she said to Gerty +A penny for your thoughts. +What? replied Gerty with a smile reinforced by the whitest of teeth. +I was only wondering was it late. +Because she wished to goodness they'd take the snottynosed twins and their +babby home to the mischief out of that so that was why she just gave a +gentle hint about its being late. And when Cissy came up Edy asked her the +time and Miss Cissy, as glib as you like, said it was half past kissing +time, time to kiss again. But Edy wanted to know because they were told to +be in early. +Wait, said Cissy, I'll run ask my uncle Peter over there what's the time +by his conundrum. +So over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his +hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to play with his +watchchain, looking up at the church. Passionate nature though he was +Gerty could see that he had enormous control over himself. One moment he +had been there, fascinated by a loveliness that made him gaze, and the +next moment it was the quiet gravefaced gentleman, selfcontrol expressed +in every line of his distinguishedlooking figure. +Cissy said to excuse her would he mind please telling her what was the +right time and Gerty could see him taking out his watch, listening to it +and looking up and clearing his throat and he said he was very sorry his +watch was stopped but he thought it must be after eight because the sun +was set. His voice had a cultured ring in it and though he spoke in +measured accents there was a suspicion of a quiver in the mellow tones. +Cissy said thanks and came back with her tongue out and said uncle said +his waterworks were out of order. +Then they sang the second verse of the TANTUM ERGO and Canon +O'Hanlon got up again and censed the Blessed Sacrament and knelt down and +he told Father Conroy that one of the candles was just going to set fire +to the flowers and Father Conroy got up and settled it all right and she +could see the gentleman winding his watch and listening to the works and +she swung her leg more in and out in time. It was getting darker but he +could see and he was looking all the time that he was winding the watch or +whatever he was doing to it and then he put it back and put his hands back +into his pockets. She felt a kind of a sensation rushing all over her and +she knew by the feel of her scalp and that irritation against her stays +that that thing must be coming on because the last time too was when she +clipped her hair on account of the moon. His dark eyes fixed themselves +on her again drinking in her every contour, literally worshipping at her +shrine. If ever there was undisguised admiration in a man's passionate +gaze it was there plain to be seen on that man's face. It is for you, +Gertrude MacDowell, and you know it. +Edy began to get ready to go and it was high time for her and Gerty +noticed that that little hint she gave had had the desired effect because +it was a long way along the strand to where there was the place to push up +the pushcar and Cissy took off the twins' caps and tidied their hair to +make herself attractive of course and Canon O'Hanlon stood up with his +cope poking up at his neck and Father Conroy handed him the card to read +off and he read out PANEM DE COELO PRAESTITISTI EIS and Edy and Cissy were +talking about the time all the time and asking her but Gerty could pay +them back in their own coin and she just answered with scathing politeness +when Edy asked her was she heartbroken about her best boy throwing her +over. Gerty winced sharply. A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that +spoke volumes of scorn immeasurable. It hurtO yes, it cut deep because +Edy had her own quiet way of saying things like that she knew would wound +like the confounded little cat she was. Gerty's lips parted swiftly to +frame the word but she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, +so slim, so flawless, so beautifully moulded it seemed one an artist +might have dreamed of. She had loved him better than he knew. +Lighthearted deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never +understand what he had meant to her and for an instant there was +in the blue eyes a quick stinging of tears. Their eyes were +probing her mercilessly but with a brave effort she sparkled back in +sympathy as she glanced at her new conquest for them to see. +O, responded Gerty, quick as lightning, laughing, and the proud head +flashed up. I can throw my cap at who I like because it's leap year. +Her words rang out crystalclear, more musical than the cooing of the +ringdove, but they cut the silence icily. There was that in her young +voice that told that she was not a one to be lightly trifled with. +As for Mr Reggy with his swank and his bit of money she could just +chuck him aside as if he was so much filth and never again would she +cast as much as a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard +into a dozen pieces. And if ever after he dared to presume she +could give him one look of measured scorn that would make him +shrivel up on the spot. Miss puny little Edy's countenance fell to +no slight extent and Gerty could see by her looking as black as +thunder that she was simply in a towering rage though she hid it, the +little kinnatt, because that shaft had struck home for her petty jealousy +and they both knew that she was something aloof, apart, in another sphere, +that she was not of them and never would be and there was somebody else +too that knew it and saw it so they could put that in their pipe +and smoke it. +Edy straightened up baby Boardman to get ready to go and Cissy +tucked in the ball and the spades and buckets and it was high time too +because the sandman was on his way for Master Boardman junior. And +Cissy told him too that billy winks was coming and that baby was to go +deedaw and baby looked just too ducky, laughing up out of his gleeful +eyes, and Cissy poked him like that out of fun in his wee fat tummy and +baby, without as much as by your leave, sent up his compliments to all +and sundry on to his brandnew dribbling bib. +O my Puddeny pie protested Ciss. He has his bib destroyed. +The slight CONTRETEMPS claimed her attention but in two twos she set +that little matter to rights. +Gerty stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous cough and +Edy asked what and she was just going to tell her to catch it while it was +flying but she was ever ladylike in her deportment so she simply passed it +off with consummate tact by saying that that was the benediction because +just then the bell rang out from the steeple over the quiet seashore +because Canon O'Hanlon was up on the altar with the veil that Father +Conroy put round his shoulders giving the benediction with the Blessed +Sacrament in his hands. +How moving the scene there in the gathering twilight, the last glimpse of +Erin, the touching chime of those evening bells and at the same time a bat +flew forth from the ivied belfry through the dusk, hither, thither, with a +tiny lost cry. And she could see far away the lights of the lighthouses so +picturesque she would have loved to do with a box of paints because it was +easier than to make a man and soon the lamplighter would be going his +rounds past the presbyterian church grounds and along by shady +Tritonville avenue where the couples walked and lighting the lamp near her +window where Reggy Wylie used to turn his freewheel like she read in that +book THE LAMPLIGHTER by Miss Cummins, author of MABEL VAUGHAN and +other tales. For Gerty had her dreams that noone knew of. She loved to +read poetry and when she got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely +confession album with the coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she +laid it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did not err +on the side of luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean. It was there +she kept her girlish treasure trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her +child of Mary badge, the whiterose scent, the eyebrowleine, her +alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to change when her things came +home from the wash and there were some beautiful thoughts written +in it in violet ink that she bought in Hely's of Dame Street for +she felt that she too could write poetry if she could only express +herself like that poem that appealed to her so deeply that she had +copied out of the newspaper she found one evening round the potherbs. ART +THOU REAL, MY IDEAL? it was called by Louis J Walsh, Magherafelt, and +after there was something about TWILIGHT, WILT THOU EVER? and ofttimes +the beauty of poetry, so sad in its transient loveliness, had misted +her eyes with silent tears for she felt that the years were slipping +by for her, one by one, and but for that one shortcoming she knew she +need fear no competition and that was an accident coming down Dalkey +hill and she always tried to conceal it. But it must end, she felt. +If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no holding +back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would make the great +sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his thoughts. Dearer than +the whole world would she be to him and gild his days with happiness. +There was the allimportant question and she was dying to know was he a +married man or a widower who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the +nobleman with the foreign name from the land of song had to have her put +into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But even ifwhat then? Would it +make a very great difference? From everything in the least indelicate her +finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, +the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went +with the soldiers and coarse men with no respect for a girl's honour, +degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no not +that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister +without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big +ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he was in mourning for from the days +beyond recall. She thought she understood. She would try to understand +him because men were so different. The old love was waiting, waiting +with little white hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes. Heart +of mine She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart +that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world +for her for love was the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what +might she would be wild, untrammelled, free. +Canon O'Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle +and genuflected and the choir sang LAUDATE DOMINUM OMNES GENTES and +then he locked the tabernacle door because the benediction was over and +Father Conroy handed him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked wasn't +she coming but Jacky Caffrey called out +O, look, Cissy +And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw it too over +the trees beside the church, blue and then green and purple. +It's fireworks, Cissy Caffrey said. +And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the +church, helterskelter, Edy with the pushcar with baby Boardman in it and +Cissy holding Tommy and Jacky by the hand so they wouldn't fall running. +Come on, Gerty, Cissy called. It's the bazaar fireworks. +But Gerty was adamant. She had no intention of being at their beck and +call. If they could run like rossies she could sit so she said she could +see from where she was. The eyes that were fastened upon her set +her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, +and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion +silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they were left +alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he +could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of +inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working +and a tremour went over her. She leaned back far to look up where +the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not +to fall back looking up and there was noone to see only him and +her when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, +supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting +of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew too about the passion +of men like that, hotblooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead +secret and made her swear she'd never about the gentleman lodger that was +staying with them out of the Congested Districts Board that had pictures +cut out of papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers and she said he +used to do something not very nice that you could imagine sometimes in +the bed. But this was altogether different from a thing like that +because there was all the difference because she could almost feel +him draw her face to his and the first quick hot touch of his +handsome lips. Besides there was absolution so long as you didn't +do the other thing before being married and there ought to be +women priests that would understand without your telling out and +Cissy Caffrey too sometimes had that dreamy kind of dreamy look +in her eyes so that she too, my dear, and Winny Rippingham so mad +about actors' photographs and besides it was on account of that other +thing coming on the way it did. +And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she leaned back +and the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent and they +all saw it and they all shouted to look, look, there it was and she leaned +back ever so far to see the fireworks and something queer was flying +through the air, a soft thing, to and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman +candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, +they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher +and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, +high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, +an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other +things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, +better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, +on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then +it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in +every limb from being bent so far back that he had a full view +high up above her knee where noone ever not even on the swing or wading +and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way +like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment +half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen +looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him +chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his +lips laid on her white brow, the cry of a young girl's love, a little +strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. +And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind blank and O then the Roman +candle burst and it was like a sigh of O and everyone cried O O in +raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and +they shed and ah they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, +O so lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft +Then all melted away dewily in the grey air all was silent. Ah She +glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of +piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl +He was leaning back against the rock behind. Leopold Bloom for it is he +stands silent, with bowed head before those young guileless eyes. What a +brute he had been At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called to him +and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he had been +He of all men But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes, +for him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and +wandered. Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their +secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to +know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through the evening +to and fro and little bats don't tell. +Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to show +what a great person she was and then she cried +Gerty Gerty We're going. Come on. We can see from farther up. +Gerty had an idea, one of love's little ruses. She slipped a hand into +her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of course +without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he's too far to. +She rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they would meet again, +there, and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her dream of +yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls met in a +last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full of a +strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face. She half +smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged on +tears, and then they parted. +Slowly, without looking back she went down the uneven strand to +Cissy, to Edy to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was +darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and slippy +seaweed. She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but +with care and very slowly becausebecause Gerty MacDowell was ... +Tight boots? No. She's lame O +Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl That's why she's left +on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by +the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a woman. +But makes them polite. Glad I didn't know it when she was on show. Hot +little devil all the same. I wouldn't mind. Curiosity like a nun or a +negress or a girl with glasses. That squinty one is delicate. Near her +monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish. I have such a bad headache +today. Where did I put the letter? Yes, all right. All kinds of crazy +longings. Licking pennies. Girl in Tranquilla convent that nun told +me liked to smell rock oil. Virgins go mad in the end I suppose. +Sister? How many women in Dublin have it today? Martha, she. Something +in the air. That's the moon. But then why don't all women menstruate +at the same time with the same moon, I mean? Depends on the time +they were born I suppose. Or all start scratch then get out of step. +Sometimes Molly and Milly together. Anyhow I got the best of that. +Damned glad I didn't do it in the bath this morning over her silly +I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning. +That gouger M'Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife +engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small +mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves. +Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of offices. +Reserve better. Don't want it they throw it at you. Catch em alive, O. +Pity they can't see themselves. A dream of wellfilled hose. Where was +that? Ah, yes. Mutoscope pictures in Capel street for men only. Peeping +Tom. Willy's hat and what the girls did with it. Do they snapshot +those girls or is it all a fake? LINGERIE does it. Felt for the +curves inside her DESHABILLE. Excites them also when they're. I'm all +clean come and dirty me. And they like dressing one another for the +sacrifice. Milly delighted with Molly's new blouse. At first. +Put them all on to take them all off. Molly. Why I bought her the violet +garters. Us too the tie he wore, his lovely socks and turnedup trousers. +He wore a pair of gaiters the night that first we met. His lovely +shirt was shining beneath his what? of jet. Say a woman loses a charm with +every pin she takes out. Pinned together. O, Mairy lost the pin of her. +Dressed up to the nines for somebody. Fashion part of their charm. Just +changes when you're on the track of the secret. Except the east Mary, +Martha now as then. No reasonable offer refused. She wasn't in a hurry +either. Always off to a fellow when they are. They never forget an +appointment. Out on spec probably. They believe in chance because like +themselves. And the others inclined to give her an odd dig. Girl friends +at school, arms round each other's necks or with ten fingers locked, +kissing and whispering secrets about nothing in the convent garden. Nuns +with whitewashed faces, cool coifs and their rosaries going up and down, +vindictive too for what they can't get. Barbed wire. Be sure now and write +to me. And I'll write to you. Now won't you? Molly and Josie Powell. Till +Mr Right comes along, then meet once in a blue moon. TABLEAU O, look +who it is for the love of God How are you at all? What have you been +doing with yourself? Kiss and delighted to, kiss, to see you. Picking +holes in each other's appearance. You're looking splendid. Sister souls. +Showing their teeth at one another. How many have you left? Wouldn't lend +each other a pinch of salt. +Ah +Devils they are when that's coming on them. Dark devilish appearance. +Molly often told me feel things a ton weight. Scratch the sole of +my foot. O that way O, that's exquisite Feel it myself too. Good to rest +once in a way. Wonder if it's bad to go with them then. Safe in one way. +Turns milk, makes fiddlestrings snap. Something about withering plants I +read in a garden. Besides they say if the flower withers she wears she's a +flirt. All are. Daresay she felt . When you feel like that you often meet +what you feel. Liked me or what? Dress they look at. Always know a fellow +courting collars and cuffs. Well cocks and lions do the same and stags. +Same time might prefer a tie undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I +when I was? No. Gently does it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark +and never tell. Saw something in me. Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am +than some poet chap with bearsgrease plastery hair, lovelock over his +dexter optic. To aid gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my +appearance my age. Didn't let her see me in profile. Still, you +never know. Pretty girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty and the +beast. Besides I can't be so if Molly. Took off her hat to show +her hair. Wide brim. Bought to hide her face, meeting someone might +know her, bend down or carry a bunch of flowers to smell. Hair +strong in rut. Ten bob I got for Molly's combings when we were on +the rocks in Holles street. Why not? Suppose he gave her money. +Why not? All a prejudice. She's worth ten, fifteen, more, a pound. What? I +think so. All that for nothing. Bold hand Mrs Marion. Did I forget to +write address on that letter like the postcard I sent to Flynn? And the +day I went to Drimmie's without a necktie. Wrangle with Molly it was put +me off. No, I remember. Richie Goulding he's another. Weighs on his mind. +Funny my watch stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use +to clean. Could do it myself. Save. Was that just when he, she? +O, he did. Into her. She did. Done. +Ah +Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord, that little +limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. Aftereffect not pleasant. +Still you have to get rid of it someway. They don't care. Complimented +perhaps. Go home to nicey bread and milky and say night prayers with the +kiddies. Well, aren't they? See her as she is spoil all. Must have the +stage setting, the rouge, costume, position, music. The name too. AMOURS +of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle, Maud Branscombe. Curtain up. +Moonlight silver effulgence. Maiden discovered with pensive bosom. Little +sweetheart come and kiss me. Still, I feel. The strength it gives a man. +That's the secret of it. Good job I let off there behind the wall coming +out of Dignam's. Cider that was. Otherwise I couldn't have. Makes you want +to sing after. LACAUS ESANT TARATARA. Suppose I spoke to her. What about? +Bad plan however if you don't know how to end the conversation. Ask them a +question they ask you another. Good idea if you're stuck. Gain time. But +then you're in a cart. Wonderful of course if you say good evening, and +you see she's on for it good evening. O but the dark evening in the +Appian way I nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew Girl in +Meath street that night. All the dirty things I made her say. All wrong of +course. My arks she called it. It's so hard to find one who. Aho If you +don't answer when they solicit must be horrible for them till they harden. +And kissed my hand when I gave her the extra two shillings. Parrots. Press +the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn't called me sir. O, her +mouth in the dark And you a married man with a single girl That's what +they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman. Or even hear of it. +Different with me. Glad to get away from other chap's wife. Eating off his +cold plate. Chap in the Burton today spitting back gumchewed gristle. +French letter still in my pocketbook. Cause of half the trouble. But might +happen sometime, I don't think. Come in, all is prepared. I dreamt. What? +Worst is beginning. How they change the venue when it's not what they +like. Ask you do you like mushrooms because she once knew a gentleman +who. Or ask you what someone was going to say when he changed his +mind and stopped. Yet if I went the whole hog, say I want to, something +like that. Because I did. She too. Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to +want something awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must +have been thinking of someone else all the time. What harm? Must since she +came to the use of reason, he, he and he. First kiss does the trick. The +propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by +their eye, on the sly. First thoughts are best. Remember that till their +dying day. Molly, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the Moorish wall +beside the gardens. Fifteen she told me. But her breasts were developed. +Fell asleep then. After Glencree dinner that was when we drove home. +Featherbed mountain. Gnashing her teeth in sleep. Lord mayor had his eye +on her too. Val Dillon. Apoplectic. +There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks. +Up like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they must be, +waiting for something to happen. Want to be grownups. Dressing in +mother's clothes. Time enough, understand all the ways of the world. And +the dark one with the mop head and the nigger mouth. I knew she could +whistle. Mouth made for that. Like Molly. Why that highclass whore in +Jammet's wore her veil only to her nose. Would you mind, please, telling +me the right time? I'll tell you the right time up a dark lane. Say prunes +and prisms forty times every morning, cure for fat lips. Caressing the +little boy too. Onlookers see most of the game. Of course they understand +birds, animals, babies. In their line. +Didn't look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn't give that +satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls. Fine +eyes she had, clear. It's the white of the eye brings that out not so much +the pupil. Did she know what I? Course. Like a cat sitting beyond a dog's +jump. Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high school drawing a +picture of Venus with all his belongings on show. Call that innocence? +Poor idiot His wife has her work cut out for her. Never see them sit +on a bench marked WET PAINT. Eyes all over them. Look under the bed +for what's not there. Longing to get the fright of their lives. +Sharp as needles they are. When I said to Molly the man at the corner +of Cuffe street was goodlooking, thought she might like, twigged at +once he had a false arm. Had, too. Where do they get that? Typist +going up Roger Greene's stairs two at a time to show her understandings. +Handed down from father to, mother to daughter, I mean. Bred in the +bone. Milly for example drying her handkerchief on the mirror to +save the ironing. Best place for an ad to catch a woman's eye on a +mirror. And when I sent her for Molly's Paisley shawl to Prescott's +by the way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking +Clever little minx. I never told her. Neat way she carries parcels +too. Attract men, small thing like that. Holding up her hand, shaking it, +to let the blood flow back when it was red. Who did you learn that from? +Nobody. Something the nurse taught me. O, don't they know Three years +old she was in front of Molly's dressingtable, just before we left Lombard +street west. Me have a nice pace. Mullingar. Who knows? Ways of the +world. Young student. Straight on her pins anyway not like the other. +Still she was game. Lord, I am wet. Devil you are. Swell of her calf. +Transparent stockings, stretched to breaking point. Not like that frump +today. A. E. Rumpled stockings. Or the one in Grafton street. White. Wow +Beef to the heel. +A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads +and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy and Jacky ran out to see +and Edy after with the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of the +rocks. Will she? Watch Watch See Looked round. She smelt an onion. +Darling, I saw, your. I saw all. +Lord +Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan's, Dignam's. For +this relief much thanks. In HAMLET, that is. Lord It was all things +combined. Excitement. When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of my +tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He's right. Might have made a worse +fool of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I will tell +you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It couldn't be? No, +Gerty they called her. Might be false name however like my name and the +address Dolphin's barn a blind. +HER MAIDEN NAME WAS JEMINA BROWN +AND SHE LIVED WITH HER MOTHER IN IRISHTOWN. +Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush. +Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if it +understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw +anything straight at school. Crooked as a ram's horn. Sad however because +it lasts only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping and papa's +pants will soon fit Willy and fuller's earth for the baby when they hold +him out to do ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them out of harm's +way. Nature. Washing child, washing corpse. Dignam. Children's hands +always round them. Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even closed at first, +sour milk in their swaddles and tainted curds. Oughtn't to have given +that child an empty teat to suck. Fill it up with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, +Purefoy. Must call to the hospital. Wonder is nurse Callan there still. +She used to look over some nights when Molly was in the Coffee Palace. +That young doctor O'Hare I noticed her brushing his coat. And Mrs Breen +and Mrs Dignam once like that too, marriageable. Worst of all at night +Mrs Duggan told me in the City Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of +pub off him like a polecat. Have that in your nose in the dark, +whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning was I drunk last +night? Bad policy however to fault the husband. Chickens come +home to roost. They stick by one another like glue. Maybe the +women's fault also. That's where Molly can knock spots off them. It's the +blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the figure. Hands felt for the +opulent. Just compare for instance those others. Wife locked up at home, +skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to introduce my. Then they trot you out +some kind of a nondescript, wouldn't know what to call her. Always see a +fellow's weak point in his wife. Still there's destiny in it, falling in +love. Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs +if some woman didn't take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, +height of a shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he +matched them. Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes +one. Or old rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and +repent in December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin +is not back. Better detach. +Ow +Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and +the short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch. +Wristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic +influence between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I +suppose, at once. Cat's away, the mice will play. I remember looking in +Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism. Earth +for instance pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement. And +time, well that's the time the movement takes. Then if one thing stopped +the whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it's all arranged. +Magnetic needle tells you what's going on in the sun, the stars. Little +piece of steel iron. When you hold out the fork. Come. Come. Tip. Woman +and man that is. Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up and look and suggest +and let you see and see more and defy you if you're a man to see that and, +like a sneeze coming, legs, look, look and if you have any guts in you. +Tip. Have to let fly. +Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before +third person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her +underjaw stuck out, head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and +spurs at the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard street +west. Fine voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did. +Like flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in +the paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time doing it scraped +her slipper on the floor so they wouldn't hear. But lots of them can't +kick the beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general +all round over me and half down my back. +Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That's her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I +leave you this to think of me when I'm far away on the pillow. What is it? +Heliotrope? No. Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She'd like scent of that +kind. Sweet and cheap soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her, +with a little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the +dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She was +wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good +conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there's some connection. For +instance if you go into a cellar where it's dark. Mysterious thing too. +Why did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself, slow +but sure. Suppose it's ever so many millions of tiny grains blown across. +Yes, it is. Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this morning, smell +them leagues off. Tell you what it is. It's like a fine fine veil or web +they have all over the skin, fine like what do you call it gossamer, and +they're always spinning it out of them, fine as anything, like rainbow +colours without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes off. Vamp of +her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers little kick, taking them off. +Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff in her shift on +the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too. Reminds me of +strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really. There or the armpits +or under the neck. Because you get it out of all holes and corners. +Hyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or something. Muskrat. +Bag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years. Dogs at +each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. Hm. +Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that way. +We're the same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have their +period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on. Like +what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof Please keep off the grass. +Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves long +John had on his desk the other day. Breath? What you eat and drink gives +that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because priests +that are supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like flies +round treacle. Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The tree +of forbidden priest. O, father, will you? Let me be the first to. +That diffuses itself all through the body, permeates. Source of life. +And it's extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let me. +Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his +waistcoat. Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that's the soap. +O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. +Never went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that +hag this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could +mention Meagher's just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph. +Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he'll have. Call tomorrow. How much do +I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving +credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellows run up +a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into +somewhere else. +Here's this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went +as far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out had +a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper walk +a mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government sit. Walk +after him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today. Still you +learn something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as women don't +mock what matter? That's the way to find out. Ask yourself who is he now. +THE MYSTERY MAN ON THE BEACH, prize titbit story by Mr Leopold Bloom. +Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And that fellow today at the +graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his kismet however. Healthy +perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must be some +somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body feels the atmosphere. Old +Betty's joints are on the rack. Mother Shipton's prophecy that is about +ships around they fly in the twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal +reader. And distant hills seem coming nigh. +Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or +they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of the +dark. Also glowworms, cyclists lightingup time. Jewels diamonds flash +better. Women. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt you. +Better now of course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through the +small guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob against. +Scowl or smile. Pardon Not at all. Best time to spray plants too in the +shade after the sun. Some light still. Red rays are longest. Roygbiv +Vance taught us red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. +A star I see. Venus? Can't tell yet. Two. When three it's night. Were +those nightclouds there all the time? Looks like a phantom ship. No. +Wait. Trees are they? An optical illusion. Mirage. Land of the setting +sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast. My native land, +goodnight. +Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white +fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his way +up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold, sore on +the mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the position. +Like to be that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don't know how nice +you looked. I begin to like them at that age. Green apples. Grab at all +that offer. Suppose it's the only time we cross legs, seated. Also the +library today those girl graduates. Happy chairs under them. But it's +the evening influence. They feel all that. Open like flowers, know +their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, +avenues under the lamps. Nightstock in Mat Dillon's garden where I kissed +her shoulder. Wish I had a full length oilpainting of her then. June +that was too I wooed. The year returns. History repeats itself. +Ye crags and peaks I'm with you once again. Life, love, voyage round +your own little world. And now? Sad about her lame of course but must +be on your guard not to feel too much pity. They take advantage. +All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The +rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums, and I the +plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change +that's all. Lovers yum yum. +Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out +of me, little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it +comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the +same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new +under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin's Barn. Are you not happy in your? +Naughty darling. At Dolphin's barn charades in Luke Doyle's house. Mat +Dillon and his bevy of daughters Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty. +Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the old major, +partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only +child. So it returns. Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest +way round is the shortest way home. And just when he and she. Circus horse +walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip tear in Henny Doyle's +overcoat. Van breadvan delivering. Winkle cockles and periwinkles. Then +I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. +Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed. +Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty from the dew. +Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I'm a tree, +so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you could be +changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes. +Funny little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely. +Hanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him out, I +suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray for us. +And pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition. Same +thing with ads. Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there's the light +in the priest's house. Their frugal meal. Remember about the mistake +in the valuation when I was in Thom's. Twentyeight it is. Two houses +they have. Gabriel Conroy's brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder why +they come out at night like mice. They're a mixed breed. Birds are +like hopping mice. What frightens them, light or noise? Better sit still. +All instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of the end of a +jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny +hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white. +Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example +like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to +stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the +staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with three +colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the CITY ARMS +with the letter em on her forehead. Body fifty different colours. Howth +a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That's how that wise man what's his +name with the burning glass. Then the heather goes on fire. It can't be +tourists' matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry rub together in the wind +and light. Or broken bottles in the furze act as a burning glass in the +sun. Archimedes. I have it My memory's not so bad. +Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects? That bee last week +got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be the +one bit me, come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what they say. +Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve they have to fly over +the ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms, telegraph wires. +Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of oceangoing steamers +floundering along in the dark, lowing out like seacows. FAUGH A BALLAGH +Out of that, bloody curse to you Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief +sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow. +Married too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere. +No ends really because it's round. Wife in every port they say. She has a +good job if she minds it till Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he +does. Smelling the tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they +do. The anchor's weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal +on him for luck. Well. And the tephilim no what's this they call it poor +papa's father had on his door to touch. That brought us out of the land +of Egypt and into the house of bondage. Something in all those +superstitions because when you go out never know what dangers. Hanging +on to a plank or astride of a beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, +gulping salt water, and that's the last of his nibs till the sharks +catch hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick? +Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid, +crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones' locker, moon looking down so +peaceful. Not my fault, old cockalorum. +A last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search +of funds for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of +violet but one white stars. They floated, fell they faded. The shepherd's +hour the hour of folding hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his +everwelcome double knock, went the nine o'clock postman, the +glowworm's lamp at his belt gleaming here and there through the laurel +hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted lintstock lit the lamp at +Leahy's terrace. By screens of lighted windows, by equal gardens a shrill +voice went crying, wailing EVENING TELEGRAPH, STOP PRESS EDITION RESULT +OF THE GOLD CUP RACE and from the door of Dignam's house a boy ran out +and called. Twittering the bat flew here, flew there. Far out over the +sands the coming surf crept, grey. Howth settled for slumber, tired of +long days, of yumyum rhododendrons he was old and felt gladly the night +breeze lift, ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye +unsleeping, deep and slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on +Kish bank the anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom. +Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish +Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and breeches +buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin's +King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the zoo. Filthy trip. +Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking overboard to feed the +herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in their faces. Milly, +no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing. Don't know what death +is at that age. And then their stomachs clean. But being lost they fear. +When we hid behind the tree at Crumlin. I didn't want to. Mamma Mamma +Babes in the wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up +in the air to catch them. I'll murder you. Is it only half fun? +Or children playing battle. Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at +each other. Sometimes they go off. Poor kids Only troubles wildfire +and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got her for that. After getting better +asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has. What do they love? +Another themselves? But the morning she chased her with the umbrella. +Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking. Little hand +it was now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when you +touch. Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I +remember. Made me laugh to see. Little paps to begin with. Left one +is more sensitive, I think. Mine too. Nearer the heart? Padding +themselves out if fat is in fashion. Her growing pains at night, calling, +wakening me. Frightened she was when her nature came on her first. +Poor child Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood. +Gibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista. O'Hara's tower. The seabirds +screaming. Old Barbary ape that gobbled all his family. Sundown, +gunfire for the men to cross the lines. Looking out over the sea she +told me. Evening like this, but clear, no clouds. I always thought I'd +marry a lord or a rich gentleman coming with a private yacht. BUENAS +NOCHES, SENORITA. EL HOMBRE AMA LA MUCHACHA HERMOSA. Why me? Because +you were so foreign from the others. +Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you +dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for LEAH, +LILY OF KILLARNEY. No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital to see. +Hope she's over. Long day I've had. Martha, the bath, funeral, house of +Keyes, museum with those goddesses, Dedalus' song. Then that bawler in +Barney Kiernan's. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters what I said about +his God made him wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and +laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in company. Afraid to be +alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round. +Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for Israel. +Three cheers for the sisterinlaw he hawked about, three fangs in her +mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea. +The sister of the wife of the wild man of Borneo has just come to town. +Imagine that in the early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as +Morris said when he kissed the cow. But Dignam's put the boots on it. +Houses of mourning so depressing because you never know. Anyhow she +wants the money. Must call to those Scottish Widows as I promised. Strange +name. Takes it for granted we're going to pop off first. That widow +on Monday was it outside Cramer's that looked at me. Buried the poor +husband but progressing favourably on the premium. Her widow's mite. +Well? What do you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along. +Widower I hate to see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O'Connor wife and five +children poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good +matronly woman in a porkpie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, platter +face and a large apron. Ladies' grey flannelette bloomers, three shillings +a pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved, loved for ever, they say. +Ugly no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we +die. See him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played the +trick. U. p up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop often noticed. +Curse seems to dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She +had red slippers on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does? Would +I like her in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti's gone. Mailboat. +Near Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes's. Work Hynes and +Crawford. Petticoats for Molly. She has something to put in them. What's +that? Might be money. +Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He +brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can't read. Better go. +Better. I'm tired to move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and +pebbles. Who could count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with +story of a treasure in it, thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children +always want to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on the waters. +What's this? Bit of stick. +O Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come +here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. +Murderers do. Will I? +Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write +a message for her. Might remain. What? +I. +Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide comes +here. Saw a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark mirror, +breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and letters. O, +those transparent Besides they don't know. What is the meaning of that +other world. I called you naughty boy because I do not like. +AM. A. +No room. Let it go. +Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand. +Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here. +Except Guinness's barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by +design. +He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck. +Now if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn't. Chance. +We'll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me +feel so young. +Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long +gone.. Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast. +I won't go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a +moment. Won't sleep, though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat +again. No harm in him. Just a few. +O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me +do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met +him pike hoses frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair heave +under embon SENORITA young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan Winkle +red slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail end +Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in +her next her next. +A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr +Bloom with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed. +Just for a few +CUCKOO +CUCKOO +CUCKOO. +The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest's house cooed where Canon +O'Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. were +taking tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup +and talking about +CUCKOO +CUCKOO +CUCKOO. +Because it was a little canarybird that came out of its little house to +tell the time that Gerty MacDowell noticed the time she was there because +she was as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Gerty MacDowell, +and she noticed at once that that foreign gentleman that was sitting on +the rocks looking was +CUCKOO +CUCKOO +CUCKOO. +Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. +Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send +us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us +bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. +Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa +Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive +concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals +with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most +in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's +ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general +consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior +splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than +by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its +solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if +it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of +omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything +of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior +splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on +the contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive that as +no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves +every most just citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his +semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past been by the nation +excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar excellence +accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the +honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that thither of profundity +that that one was audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to +rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be than to +oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and +promise which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with +diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever +irrevocably enjoined? +It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians relate, +among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature admirable admired, +the art of medicine shall have been highly honoured. Not to speak of +hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their greatest +doctors, the O'Shiels, the O'Hickeys, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down +the divers methods by which the sick and the relapsed found again health +whether the malady had been the trembling withering or loose boyconnell +flux. Certainly in every public work which in it anything of gravity +contains preparation should be with importance commensurate and therefore +a plan was by them adopted whether by having preconsidered or as the +maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which the +discrepant opinions of subsequent inquirers are not up to the present +congrued to render manifest whereby maternity was so far from all +accident possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that +all hardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for the +copiously opulent but also for her who not being sufficiently moneyed +scarcely and often not even scarcely could subsist valiantly and for an +inconsiderable emolument was provided. +To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be +molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent +mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received eternity +gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the case was so +hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward carrying desire immense +among all one another was impelling on of her to be received into that +domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely in being seen but also +even in being related worthy of being praised that they her by +anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them suddenly to be about to +be cherished had been begun she felt +Before born bliss babe had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever +in that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives +attended with wholesome food reposeful, cleanest swaddles as though +forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set but to this no less +of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are pertaining +to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting spectacles in +various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together with images, +divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct females is to +tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair +home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and reproductitive, it is come +by her thereto to lie in, her term up. +Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night's +oncoming. Of Israel's folk was that man that on earth wandering far had +fared. Stark ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house. +Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming +mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so +God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers tway there walk, white sisters in +ward sleepless. Smarts they still, sickness soothing in twelve moons +thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne holding +wariest ward. +In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mildhearted eft +rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping +lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin. Full she drad that God the +Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's +rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under +her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's house. +Loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow +he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land +and seafloor nine years had long outwandered. Once her in townhithe +meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with +good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face, hers, so young +then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word +winning. +As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared. +Glad after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor +tidings sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him answered that +O'Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word to hear that him +so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing death for +friend so young, algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. She +said that he had a fair sweet death through God His goodness with +masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and sick men's oil to his limbs. The +man then right earnest asked the nun of which death the dead man was died +and the nun answered him and said that he was died in Mona Island through +bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she prayed to God the +Allruthful to have his dear soul in his undeathliness. He heard her sad +words, in held hat sad staring. So stood they there both awhile in wanhope +sorrowing one with other. +Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the +dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked +forth from his mother's womb so naked shall he wend him at the last for to +go as he came. +The man that was come in to the house then spoke to the +nursingwoman and he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there +in childbed. The nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman +was in throes now full three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth +to bear but that now in a little it would be. She said thereto that she +had seen many births of women but never was none so hard as was that +woman's birth. Then she set it all forth to him for because she knew the +man that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened to her +words for he felt with wonder women's woe in the travail that they have of +motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a fair face for +any man to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Nine +twelve bloodflows chiding her childless. +And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there +nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there +came against the place as they stood a young learningknight yclept Dixon. +And the traveller Leopold was couth to him sithen it had happed that they +had had ado each with other in the house of misericord where this +learningknight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be healed +for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a horrible and +dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a salve of +volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that +he should go in to that castle for to make merry with them that were +there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for +he was a man of cautels and a subtile. Also the lady was of his avis and +repreved the learningknight though she trowed well that the traveller had +said thing that was false for his subtility. But the learningknight would +not hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have him in aught contrarious to +his list and he said how it was a marvellous castle. And the traveller +Leopold went into the castle for to rest him for a space being sore of +limb after many marches environing in divers lands and sometime venery. +And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of +Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they +durst not move more for enchantment. And on this board were frightful +swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out +of white flames that they fix then in the horns of buffalos and stags that +there abound marvellously. And there were vessels that are wrought by +magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath +that he blases in to them like to bubbles. And full fair cheer and rich +was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there +was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay +strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this +be possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these +fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because +of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olivepress. +And also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make +a compost out of fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of +certain angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like +to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine +themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of +these serpents they brew out a brewage like to mead. +And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp +thereto the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe +Leopold did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in +amity for he never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and +anon full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour glass and his +neighbour nist not of this wile. And he sat down in that castle with them +for to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty God. +This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at +the reverence of Jesu our alther liege Lord to leave their wassailing for +there was above one quick with child, a gentle dame, whose time hied fast. +Sir Leopold heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that +it was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he, that it be not +come or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he was ware and saw a +franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the table that was older than any +of the tother and for that they both were knights virtuous in the one +emprise and eke by cause that he was elder he spoke to him full gently. +But, said he, or it be long too she will bring forth by God His bounty and +have joy of her childing for she hath waited marvellous long. And the +franklin that had drunken said, Expecting each moment to be her next. +Also he took the cup that stood tofore him for him needed never none +asking nor desiring of him to drink and, Now drink, said he, fully +delectably, and he quaffed as far as he might to their both's health +for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And sir Leopold +that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and +that was the meekest man and the kindest that ever laid husbandly +hand under hen and that was the very truest knight of the world +one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in +the cup. Woman's woe with wonder pondering. +Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent to be +drunken an they might. There was a sort of scholars along either side the +board, that is to wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary Merciable's with +other his fellows Lynch and Madden, scholars of medicine, and the franklin +that hight Lenehan and one from Alba Longa, one Crotthers, and young +Stephen that had mien of a frere that was at head of the board and +Costello that men clepen Punch Costello all long of a mastery of him +erewhile gested and of all them, reserved young Stephen, he was the most +drunken that demanded still of more mead and beside the meek sir +Leopold. But on young Malachi they waited for that he promised to +have come and such as intended to no goodness said how he had broke +his avow. And sir Leopold sat with them for he bore fast friendship +to sir Simon and to this his son young Stephen and for that his languor +becalmed him there after longest wanderings insomuch as they feasted +him for that time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red him, love led +on with will to wander, loth to leave. +For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns each gen +other as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden maintaining that +put such case it were hard the wife to die for so it had fallen out a +matter of some year agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne's house that +now was trespassed out of this world and the self night next before her +death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her case. And +they said farther she should live because in the beginning, they said, +the woman should bring forth in pain and wherefore they that were of this +imagination affirmed how young Madden had said truth for he had +conscience to let her die. And not few and of these was young Lynch were +in doubt that the world was now right evil governed as it was never other +howbeit the mean people believed it otherwise but the law nor his judges +did provide no remedy. A redress God grant. This was scant said but all +cried with one acclaim nay, by our Virgin Mother, the wife should live +and the babe to die. In colour whereof they waxed hot upon that head what +with argument and what for their drinking but the franklin Lenehan was +prompt each when to pour them ale so that at the least way mirth might +not lack. Then young Madden showed all the whole affair and said how that +she was dead and how for holy religion sake by rede of palmer and +bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her +goodman husband would not let her death whereby they were all wondrous +grieved. To whom young Stephen had these words following Murmur, sirs, +is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, +the one in limbo gloom, the other in purgefire. But, gramercy, what of +those Godpossibled souls that we nightly impossibilise, which is the sin +against the Holy Ghost, Very God, Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he +said, our lust is brief. We are means to those small creatures within us +and nature has other ends than we. Then said Dixon junior to Punch +Costello wist he what ends. But he had overmuch drunken and the best word +he could have of him was that he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she +were or wife or maid or leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of +his spleen of lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young +Malachi's praise of that beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he +cometh by his horn, the other all this while, pricked forward with their +jibes wherewith they did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint +Foutinus his engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay +in man to do. Thereat laughed they all right jocundly only young Stephen +and sir Leopold which never durst laugh too open by reason of a strange +humour which he would not bewray and also for that he rued for her that +bare whoso she might be or wheresoever. Then spake young Stephen orgulous +of mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom, of law of canons, +of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of +brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius +saith, by the influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or +an she lie with a woman which her man has but lain with, EFFECTU SECUTO, +or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of Averroes and +Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the second month a human +soul was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for +God's greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a dam to +bear beastly should die by canon for so saith he that holdeth the +fisherman's seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy church +for all ages founded. All they bachelors then asked of sir Leopold would +he in like case so jeopard her person as risk life to save life. A +wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, +he said dissembling, as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who +had ever loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing also +with his experience of so seldomseen an accident it was good for that +mother Church belike at one blow had birth and death pence and in such +sort deliverly he scaped their questions. That is truth, pardy, said +Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant word. Which hearing young Stephen was a +marvellous glad man and he averred that he who stealeth from the poor +lendeth to the Lord for he was of a wild manner when he was drunken and +that he was now in that taking it appeared eftsoons. +But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had +pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and +as he was minded of his good lady Marion that had borne him an only +manchild which on his eleventh day on live had died and no man of art +could save so dark is destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart for +that evil hap and for his burial did him on a fair corselet of lamb's +wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish utterly and lie +akeled for it was then about the midst of the winter and now Sir +Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an heir looked upon him his +friend's son and was shut up in sorrow for his forepassed happiness and +as sad as he was that him failed a son of such gentle courage for all +accounted him of real parts so grieved he also in no less measure for +young Stephen for that he lived riotously with those wastrels and +murdered his goods with whores. +About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that stood empty so +as there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not shadowed their +approach from him that still plied it very busily who, praying for the +intentions of the sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge the vicar +of Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now drink we, quod he, +of this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not indeed parcel of my +body but my soul's bodiment. Leave ye fraction of bread to them that live +by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for any want for this will comfort +more than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he showed them +glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of two +pound nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song which he writ. +They all admired to see the foresaid riches in such dearth of money as +was herebefore. His words were then these as followeth Know all men, he +said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. What means this? Desire's +wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a +rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now. In woman's womb word is made +flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the +word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation. OMNIS CARO AD TE +VENIET. No question but her name is puissant who aventried the dear corse +of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and mother most +venerable and Bernardus saith aptly that She hath an OMNIPOTENTIAM +DEIPARAE SUPPLICEM, that is to wit, an almightiness of petition because +she is the second Eve and she won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that +other, our grandam, which we are linked up with by successive anastomosis +of navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and generation, for a penny +pippin. But here is the matter now. Or she knew him, that second I say, +and was but creature of her creature, VERGINE MADRE, FIGLIA DI TUO +FIGLIO, or she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or +ignorancy with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Jack built and +with Joseph the joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy +marriages, PARCEQUE M. LEO TAXIL NOUS A DIT QUE QUI L'AVAIT MISE DANS +CETTE FICHUE POSITION C'ETAIT LE SACRE PIGEON, VENTRE DE DIEU ENTWEDER +transubstantiality ODER consubstantiality but in no case +subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon it for a very scurvy word. A +pregnancy without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, a body without +blemish, a belly without bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour +worship. With will will we withstand, withsay. +Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and would +sing a bawdy catch STABOO STABELLA about a wench that was put in pod of a +jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did straightways now attack THE +FIRST THREE MONTHS SHE WAS NOT WELL, STABOO, when here nurse Quigley from +the door angerly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was it not meet as +she remembered them being her mind was to have all orderly against lord +Andrew came for because she was jealous that no gasteful turmoil might +shorten the honour of her guard. It was an ancient and a sad matron of a +sedate look and christian walking, in habit dun beseeming her megrims and +wrinkled visage, nor did her hortative want of it effect for +incontinently Punch Costello was of them all embraided and they reclaimed +the churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with menace of +blandishments others whiles they all chode with him, a murrain seize the +dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in +peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou +dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up his drunken drool out of that +like a curse of God ape, the good sir Leopold that had for his cognisance +the flower of quiet, margerain gentle, advising also the time's occasion +as most sacred and most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne's house rest +should reign. +To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary in +Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen what was the reason why he +had not cided to take friar's vows and he answered him obedience in the +womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master +Lenehan at this made return that he had heard of those nefarious deeds +and how, as he heard hereof counted, he had besmirched the lily virtue of +a confiding female which was corruption of minors and they all +intershowed it too, waxing merry and toasting to his fathership. But he +said very entirely it was clean contrary to their suppose for he was the +eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the more and they +rehearsed to him his curious rite of wedlock for the disrobing and +deflowering of spouses, as the priests use in Madagascar island, she to +be in guise of white and saffron, her groom in white and grain, with +burning of nard and tapers, on a bridebed while clerks sung kyries and +the anthem UT NOVETUR SEXUS OMNIS CORPORIS MYSTERIUM till she was there +unmaided. He gave them then a much admirable hymen minim by those +delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is +in their MAID'S TRAGEDY that was writ for a like twining of lovers TO +BED, TO BED was the burden of it to be played with accompanable concent +upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative +suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the +paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial +communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, +young sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my troth, +of such a mingling much might come. Young Stephen said indeed to his best +remembrance they had but the one doxy between them and she of the stews +to make shift with in delights amorous for life ran very high in those +days and the custom of the country approved with it. Greater love than +this, he said, no man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend. +Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, saith +Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the +university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to whom mankind was +more beholden. Bring a stranger within thy tower it will go hard but thou +wilt have the secondbest bed. ORATE, FRATRES, PRO MEMETIPSO. And all the +people shall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy generations and thy days of +old, how thou settedst little by me and by my word and broughtedst in a +stranger to my gates to commit fornication in my sight and to wax fat and +kick like Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou sinned against my light and hast +made me, thy lord, to be the slave of servants. Return, return, Clan +Milly forget me not, O Milesian. Why hast thou done this abomination +before me that thou didst spurn me for a merchant of jalaps and didst +deny me to the Roman and to the Indian of dark speech with whom thy +daughters did lie luxuriously? Look forth now, my people, upon the land +of behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo and from Pisgah and from the +Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. But thou hast +suckled me with a bitter milk my moon and my sun thou hast quenched for +ever. And thou hast left me alone for ever in the dark ways of my +bitterness and with a kiss of ashes hast thou kissed my mouth. This +tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to say, hath not been illumined +by the wit of the septuagint nor so much as mentioned for the Orient from +on high Which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was foraneous. +Assuefaction minorates atrocities as Tully saith of his darling Stoics +and Hamlet his father showeth the prince no blister of combustion. The +adiaphane in the noon of life is an Egypt's plague which in the nights of +prenativity and postmortemity is their most proper UBI and QUOMODO. And +as the ends and ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure +with their inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance +which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive +metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is +agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters +draw us into life we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, +die over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among +bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles at last the cavity of a mountain, +an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the +ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what +processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to +Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we would backward see from +what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched his +whenceness. +Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly ETIENNE CHANSON but he loudly +bid them, lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast majestic +longstablished vault, the crystal palace of the Creator, all in applepie +order, a penny for him who finds the pea. +BEHOLD THE MANSION REARED BY DEDAL JACK +SEE THE MALT STORED IN MANY A REFLUENT SACK, +IN THE PROUD CIRQUE OF JACKJOHN'S BIVOUAC. +A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on +left Thor thundered in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm +that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and +witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. And +he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed wan as they might all +mark and shrank together and his pitch that was before so haught uplift +was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart shook within the +cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some +mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which +Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a +blow on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old +Nobodaddy was in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not +lag behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he +crouched in Horne's hall. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a +heart of any grace for it thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens +so that Master Madden, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his +ribs upon that crack of doom and Master Bloom, at the braggart's side, +spoke to him calming words to slumber his great fear, advertising how it +was no other thing but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of +fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the +order of a natural phenomenon. +But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for he +had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be +done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the +other? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But +could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the +bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed no for Grace was not +there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the +god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, +he could not but hear unless he had plugged him up the tube Understanding +which he had not done. For through that tube he saw that he was in the +land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one day die as he was like +the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest +and pass away? By no means would he though he must nor would he make more +shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them +to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is +called BelieveonMe, that is the land of promise which behoves to the +king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no +birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as +believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had +pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with +a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird +intheHand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her +flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither +and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly +that she had him in her grot which is named TwointheBush or, by some +learned, Carnal Concupiscence. +This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of +Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore Birdin +theHand which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil +they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For +regarding BelieveonMe they said it was nought else but notion and they +could conceive no thought of it for, first, TwointheBush whither she +ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on +which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and +Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul +plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative +had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take +no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of +this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their +blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False +Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. +Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice +of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift +his arm up and spill their souls for their abuses and their spillings +done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly +biddeth. +So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and +after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a +fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields +athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too. +Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle +this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds +all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag +and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for +aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the +land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as +said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish +swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise +poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten +of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of +shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men +making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk +skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place, +Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles +street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair +or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over +against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door that is to sit with Mr +Healy the lawyer upon the college lands Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's +gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the writer's that was a +papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite chanced against Alec. +Bannon in a cut bob which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green +that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and +Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in +the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being +stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a +skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while +poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of +Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling +fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots +fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and +Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, be +having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red +slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken +to be for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through +pleading her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her +term, the midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a +bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath +very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they +say, but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, +and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth +and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand +in the king's bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the +sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off +Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt +he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear. +In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much +increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall +come for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac and I hear that Mr +Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the +Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette to have three things in all but +this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet +sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no +telling how. +With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter +was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him for +he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it but on +Stephen's persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit near +by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went +for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women, horseflesh +or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes +and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns +with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, +waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with +a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of +whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his +ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of +broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he +could always bring himself off with his tongue, some randy quip he had +from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of them would burst their +sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry +or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank that was his name, 'tis all about +Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go +hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it. +There's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly +he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed +wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief +design of his embassy as he was sharpset. MORT AUX VACHES, says Frank +then in the French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper +that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman +too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a +headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and +the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the +mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was +more familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his +volumes. One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, +then nought would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he +was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the romany folk, +kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids' linen +or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat +has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to his father +the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him. What, +says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift +of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning +going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad, +says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers, +greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been some years before actuary for +Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock +and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I +question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose or the timber +tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely told him no such +matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler +thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor +Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two +of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, +plain dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles +with a bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, +says Mr Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an +English chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull +that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder +of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr +Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a +plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had +horns galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out +of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and +rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains. +What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas +that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who +were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my +cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and +with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the +blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him +a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to +this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in +his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long +holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four +fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word And they dressed +him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and +ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over +with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road +with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he +could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of +the faithful for so they called him was grown so heavy that he could +scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels +brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was +full he would rear up on his hind uarters to show their ladyships a +mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language and they all +after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer +nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself for that was +the only colour to his mind and there was a board put up on a hillock in +the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying By the Lord +Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, +if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of +Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful +of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half the +countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by +lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr +Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in +the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and +I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, +says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one +evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt +to go to dinner after winning a boatrace he had spade oars for himself +but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with +pitchforks he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and +on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found +sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion +bull of the Romans, BOS BOVUM, which is good bog Latin for boss of the +show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a +cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it +out again told them all his new name. Then, with the water running off +him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his +grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he +could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he +copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he +filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his fancy, the +side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In +short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse +and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of +the island seeing no help was toward, as the ungrate women were all of +one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of +chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang +their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head +between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly +Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their +bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the +occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that +rollicking chanty +POPE PETER'S BUT A PISSABED. +A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT. +Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway +as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend +whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, +who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a +cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil +enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a +project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched +on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards +which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend +printed in fair italics MR MALACHI MULLIGAN. FERTILISER AND INCUBATOR. +LAMBAY ISLAND. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw +from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir +Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself +to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, +let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it +smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as +standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating upon +his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a +consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the +prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal +vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the +prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities +acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch +defrauded of its dearest pledges and to reflect upon so many agreeable +females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their +flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly +bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might +multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of +their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he +assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient which he +concluded due to a suppression of latent heat, having advised with +certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had +resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island +from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much +in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a +national fertilising farm to be named OMPHALOS with an obelisk hewn and +erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman +services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever +who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the +functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take +a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent +lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm +persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his +nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of +savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter +prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled +and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies. +After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr +Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had +shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for +all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr +Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. +His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and +won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, +asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to +Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an apt +quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to +him a sound and tasteful support of his contention TALIS AC TANTA +DEPRAVATIO HUJUS SECULI, O QUIRITES, UT MATRESFAMILIARUM NOSTRAE LASCIVAS +CUJUSLIBET SEMIVIRI LIBICI TITILLATIONES TESTIBUS PONDEROSIS ATQUE +EXCELSIS ERECTIONIBUS CENTURIONUM ROMANORUM MAGNOPERE ANTEPONUNT, while +for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal +kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest +glade, the farmyard drake and duck. +Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man +of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with +animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics +while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had +advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a +passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his +nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom +were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a +civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional +assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, +though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there +about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting +condition, poor body, from woman's woe and here he fetched a deep sigh +to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the +table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient +ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic +gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the +noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer +Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely +below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother +Grogan the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a +trollop There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a +conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into +the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the +same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber. +Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little +fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion +with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient +point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the +obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a +questioning poise of the head a whole century of polite breeding had not +achieved so nice a gesture to which was united an equivalent but +contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever +done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. MAIS BIEN SUR, +noble stranger, said he cheerily, ET MILLE COMPLIMENTS. That you may and +very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity. +But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a +cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it +in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers +above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With +these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent +draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out +popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very picture which he +had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those +features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but +beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her +dainty tucker and her new coquette cap a gift for her feastday as she +told me prettily in such an artless disorder, of so melting a +tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by +generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an +enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in +all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days Thrice happy +will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh +of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the +locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent +Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal +must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free +and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the +heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, +sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our +sublunary joys. Maledicity he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that +foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along I could weep to +think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of +us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his +forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a +MARCHAND DE CAPOTES, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as +snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, +tut cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that +most accomplished traveller I have just cracked a half bottle AVEC LUI +in a circle of the best wits of the town, is my authority that in Cape +Horn, VENTRE BICHE, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the +stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, SANS BLAGUE, +has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to +another world. Pooh A LIVRE cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are +dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is +worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear +Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she +would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me +blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to +snap her words but giddy butterflies, dame Nature, by the divine +blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household +word that IL Y A DEUX CHOSES for which the innocence of our original +garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, +nay, the only garment. The first, said she and here my pretty +philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently +tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear, the first is a bath +... But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse +which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge. +Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while +all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and, +having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a +profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a party +of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not +less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the +most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of +ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A +monstrous fine bit of cowflesh I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you. +What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud, immensely so, said Mr +Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice. +Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin. As I +look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any +time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in +the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest +squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body Drat the man Bless me, +I'm all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father +Cantekissem, that you are May this pot of four half choke me, cried +Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady what's got a +white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young surgeon, however, +rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just +then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had +been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was +ENCEINTE which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given +birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who, +without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling +profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest +power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need +were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble +exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious +incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such +an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the +astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can +befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought I shudder to think of +the future of a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown and +where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of +Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present +on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all +and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design +which would have been effected nor would he have received more than his +bare deserts had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a +horrid imprecation for he swore a round hand that he was as good a son +of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was +always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most +particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to +a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on +with a loving heart. +To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of +some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits +of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The +young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown +children the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly +understood and not often nice their testiness and outrageous MOTS were +such that his intellects resiled from nor were they scrupulously +sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits +spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome +language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a +cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and +thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the world, which the +dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as +to put him in thought of that missing link of creation's chain +desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for more than the +middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through the thousand +vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a man +of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all motions of a +rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution, +foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds +jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To +those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy a +habit of mind which he never did hold with to them he would concede +neither to bear the name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding +while for such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there +remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to +beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel +with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the +gruntlings of the severe, is ever as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer +expresses it for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to +pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when +she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's +words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be +owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so +auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the +mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being. +Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express +his notion of the thing, his opinion who ought not perchance to express +one was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not +to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement +since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy +young blade said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation or +at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I must +acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a +resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again +today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a +request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him +hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, +I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old +bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to +praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young blade +held with his former view that another than her conjugial had been the +man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy virtuous or an itinerant +vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular, communed the +guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis +possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting +theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere +acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of +time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art +which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further +added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress +them for I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh +together. +But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron, has +this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to +civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal +polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? +During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with +his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to +discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a tenant at will +while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he +forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from +being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if +report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from +candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of +a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her virtue +but if he challenges attention there as it was indeed highly his +interest not to have done then be it so. Unhappy woman, she has been too +long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to +his objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of the +desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety, +who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit +intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of +society Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary angel, +it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian In the question +of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's +hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort +couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes +him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies +fallow for the want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty +is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense +his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore +to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist +better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is the +repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd +suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected +and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at +his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve +and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more +temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that +comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative. +The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial +usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior +medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation +that an heir had been born, When he had betaken himself to the women's +apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the +presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members +of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the +delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and +hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the +simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier, +broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr +Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain. +The moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness +which seemed the only bond of union among tempers so divergent. Every +phase of the situation was successively eviscerated the prenatal +repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, posthumity with +respect to the father and, that rarer form, with respect to the mother, +the fratricidal case known as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by +the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of +the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king's bounty +touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or +dissimulated, the acardiac FOETUS IN FOETU and aprosopia due to a +congestion, the agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen cited by Mr +Candidate Mulligan in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary +knobs along the medial line so that as he said one ear could hear what +the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the +prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure +on the vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid as +exemplified in the actual case with consequent peril of sepsis to the +matrix, artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the +womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of +the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that +distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers STURZGEBURT, +the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births +conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parentsin a +word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in +his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest +problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much +animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as +the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest, by her +movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and the injunction +upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and ineffectually +entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person which long +usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of +harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark +and portwine stain were alleged by one as a PRIMA FACIE and natural +hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded the case of Madame Grissel +Steevens was not forgotten or doghaired infants occasionally born. The +hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and +worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged +in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent +to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views, +with such heat as almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation +between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own +avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur which the +genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages of +his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was immediate but +shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an +allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which +none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest +object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a heated +argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch +regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of +one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent +was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor +Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by +preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was +invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as +some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man +to put asunder what God has joined. +But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the +scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in +the recess appeared ... Haines Which of us did not feel his flesh creep +He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a +phial marked POISON. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all +faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I anticipated some such +reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history +is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how +I am punished The inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance +is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered +thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and +himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and +Ireland's, is in this life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. +Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language he recited some, laudanum +he raised the phial to his lips, camping out. In vain His spectre +stalks me. Dope is my only hope ... Ah Destruction The black panther +With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later +his head appeared in the door opposite and said Meet me at Westland Row +station at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of +the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring The +vendetta of Mananaun The sage repeated LEX TALIONIS. The sentimentalist +is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a +thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was +unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name was Childs. The +black panther was himself the ghost of his own father. He drank drugs to +obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely house by the +graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The spider pitches her +web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on +it. It is haunted. Murderer's ground. +What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the +chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the +merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her +mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud +of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest +substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is young +Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a +mirror hey, presto, he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is +seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house +in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him +bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's +thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first +hard hat ah, that was a day, already on the road, a fullfledged +traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented +handkerchief not for show only, his case of bright trinketware alas a +thing now of the past and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or +that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a +budding virgin, shyly acknowledging but the heart? tell me his studied +baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark eyes and +oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission to the +head of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the +paternal ingle a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating, reading +through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month +before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young +knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist. +Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can +say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night +in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together +she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a +bare shilling and her luckpenny, together they hear the heavy tread of +the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie +Bridie Kelly He will never forget the name, ever remember the night +first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, +the willer with the willed, and in an instant FIAT light shall flood +the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas +done buthold Back It must not be In terror the poor girl flees away +through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She +dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and memory +solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from +theeand in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to +be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph. +The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence silence that is the +infinite of space and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions +of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight +ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her +dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her mother with +ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms are they, +yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a +supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad +phantoms all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls +and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the +highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the +ghosts of beasts. Huuh Hark Huuh Parallax stalks behind and goads +them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and +yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come +trooping to the sunken sea, LACUS MORTIS. Ominous revengeful zodiacal +host They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the +trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter and +crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning +multitude, murderers of the sun. +Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible +gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent +grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own +magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder +of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the +daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, +Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now +arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, +shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it +gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it +streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents +of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, +writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a myriad +metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled sign upon +the forehead of Taurus. +Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at +school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades, +Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the +past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them +into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my +call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard, +am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a +coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, +Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and +greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. +All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring +forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. I heartily +wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent Lenehan said, laying a hand on +the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He could not leave his mother an +orphan. The young man's face grew dark. All could see how hard it was for +him to be reminded of his promise and of his recent loss. He would have +withdrawn from the feast had not the noise of voices allayed the smart. +Madden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider's name +Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh +off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with O. Madden up. She was leading +the field. All hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain +herself. She waved her scarf and cried Huzzah Sceptre wins But in the +straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse +Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis +was silent her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But +her lover consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which +lay some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell one only. A +whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and +three today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the +boisterous buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us +bear it as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless Poor Sceptre he +said with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this +hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you +remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today, Vincent +said. How young she was and radiant Lalage were scarce fair beside her +in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the right name of +it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom the air drooped with +their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In the sunny +patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of those buns +with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his booth near +the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm with which I +held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed too close. +A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but today she was free, +blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then. Her posies tool Mad +romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in +your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field. +Conmee himself He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier +book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to +keep the page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, +feigning to reprove a slight disorder in her dress a slip of underwood +clung there for the very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she +glanced at her lovely echo in that little mirror she carries. But he had +been kind. In going by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, +Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of +his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar +Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the +scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His +soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision +as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to +the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? +Theosophos told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence +Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of +the moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha +of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these were +therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second +constellation. +However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him +being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was. +entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the +case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above was going +on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation was +as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured +the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong +shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring +hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co +at BurtononTrent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others +right opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to +attract anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was +simply and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known +to himself, which put quite an altogether different complexion on the +proceedings, after the moment before's observations about boyhood days +and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own +which the other two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. +Eventually, however, both their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn +on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he +involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took +hold of the neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the +fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it +out with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of +attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about +the place. +The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the +course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The +debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the +loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne's house had never beheld +an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of +that establishment ever listened to a language so encyclopaedic. A +gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at the foot of the +table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs +of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to him, was Lynch whose +countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature +wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the +eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid repose the squat form +of Madden. The chair of the resident indeed stood vacant before the +hearth but on either flank of it the figure of Bannon in explorer's kit +of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the +primrose elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St John +Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a +refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the +convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of +him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the +hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and +combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose +steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation +could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the +inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come. +It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted +transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus' Div. Scep. contentions would +appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to +accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated, +deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in the +street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain +them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some questions which +science cannot answerat presentsuch as the first problem submitted by +Mr L. Bloom Pubb. Canv. regarding the future determination of sex. Must +we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary the +postmenstrual period, assert others is responsible for the birth of +males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the +differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine, +such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and +Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation +one of nature's favourite devices between the NISUS FORMATIVUS of the +nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, +SUCCUBITUS FELIX of the passive element. The other problem raised by the +same inquirer is scarcely less vital infant mortality. It is interesting +because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but +we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan Hyg. et Eug. Doc. blames +the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract +adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk +in dust. These factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles offered +by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of all +denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic +cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors +and unfructified duennasthese, he said, were accountable for any and +every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, +would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely +good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive pictures, +plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as Venus and +Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all these little +attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition to pass +the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers Disc. +Bacc. attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma in the case +of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to +marital discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, +private or official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the +practice of criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. +Although the former we are thinking of neglect is undoubtedly only too +true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the +peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to +look into it the wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off +so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our human +shortcomings which often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious +suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch Bacc. Arith. that both +natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, +tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, +everything, in fine, in nature's vast workshop from the extinction of +some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which +beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet +unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of +normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly +looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood though other +children of the same marriage do not must certainly, in the poet's +words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and +cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths +are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous +germs have taken up their residence modern science has conclusively +shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal tend to +disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an arrangement +which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings notably the +maternal, is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial +to the race in general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest. +Mr S. Dedalus' Div. Scep. remark or should it be called an +interruption? that an omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, +digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with +pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous +females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not +to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find +gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as +nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above +alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately +acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this +morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening +bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from +an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that +staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed +victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly +dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom +Pubb. Canv. which took place in the commons' hall of the National +Maternity Hospital, , and Holles street, of which, as is well +known, Dr A. Horne Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I. is the able and +popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once +a woman has let the cat into the bag an esthete's allusion, presumably, +to one of the most complicated and marvellous of all nature's processes +the act of sexual congress she must let it out again or give it life, as +he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own, was the telling +rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the less effective for the moderate +and measured tone in which it was delivered. +Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a +happy ACCOUCHEMENT. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and +doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had +manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was +very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are +happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently +look at her as she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that +longing hunger for baby fingers a pretty sight it is to see, in the +first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of +thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes +behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady +there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's +clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now you and I may +whisper it and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of +years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of +the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, +faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the +roses With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God +How beautiful now across the mist of years But their children are +grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary +Alice, Frederick Albert if he had lived, Mamy, Budgy Victoria +Frances, Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy called +after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford +and Candahar and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever +there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be +christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr +Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time +wags on but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break +from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your +pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you +may it be the distant day and dout the light whereby you read in the +Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so with a tranquil heart to +bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You too have +fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my +hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant +There are sins or let us call them as the world calls them evil +memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart +but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, +let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that +they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call +them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most +various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp +soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or +at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult +over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not +for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous +vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful. +The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of +that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied +trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an +unhealthiness, a FLAIR, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages +itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so +natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there as some +thought with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft +May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and +white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real +interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or +collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder +about that grey urn where the water moves at times in thoughtful +irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and +their darker friend with I know not what of arresting in her pose then, +Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear, +bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool +ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey blossomtime but +there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are +gathered and hutched is standing on the urn secured by that circle of +girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young man does now +with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of the danger but must needs +glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the PIAZZETTA +giving upon the flowerclose with a faint shadow of remoteness or of +reproach ALLES VERGANGLICHE in her glad look. +Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that +antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their +faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of +custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant +watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long +ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with +preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, +compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field +and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an +instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the +thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the +transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the +word. +Burke's outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail +of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual +Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, +Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of +lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the +hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news +of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. +The door It is open? Ha They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's +race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their +ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out an +oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind +word to happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor +Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has +told its tale in that washedout pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of +motherwit helping, he whispers close in going Madam, when comes the +storkbird for thee? +The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence +celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny COELUM. God's +air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe +it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty +deed and no botch Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring +none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. +Astounding In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which +thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her +Serve Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all +Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping +under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots not +thine in the countinghouse? Head up For every newbegotten thou shalt +gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy +Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog +is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee He is a mule, a dead +gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. +Copulation without population No, say I Herod's slaughter of the +innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile +cohabitation Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding She is a hoary +pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, +bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious +attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and +trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music Twenty +years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will +and would and wait and neverdo. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, +and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith +Zarathustra? DEINE KUH TRUBSAL MELKEST DU. NUN TRINKST DU DIE SUSSE MILCH +DES EUTERS. See it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an +udderful Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of +those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, +such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, +the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but +her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich +bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch Pap PER DEAM PARTULAM ET PERTUNDAM +NUNC EST BIBENDUM +All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides. +Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo. +Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones +and ole clo? Sorra one o' me knows. Hurrah there, Dix Forward to the +ribbon counter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken +minister coming out of the maternity hospal BENEDICAT VOS OMNIPOTENS +DEUS, PATER ET FILIUS. A make, mister. The Denzille lane boys. Hell, +blast ye Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. +Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee +samee dis bunch. EN AVANT, MES ENFANTS Fire away number one on the gun. +Burke's Burke's Thence they advanced five parasangs. Slattery's mounted +foot. Where's that bleeding awfur? Parson Steve, apostates' creed No, +no, Mulligan Abaft there Shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock. +Chuckingout time. Mullee What's on you? MA MERE M'A MARIEE. British +Beatitudes RETAMPLATAN DIGIDI BOUMBOUM. Ayes have it. To be printed and +bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf covers of +pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come out of +Ireland my time. SILENTIUM Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest +canteen and there annex liquor stores. March Tramp, tramp, tramp, the +boys are atitudes parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs +battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, +beef, trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. +Thunderation Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops +boosebox. Halt Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my +tootsies You hurt? Most amazingly sorry +Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare +misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week +gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the UBERMENSCH. Dittoh. Five number +ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's caudle. Stimulate +the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when +the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? CARAMBA Have an eggnog or a prairie +oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. +Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a +boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near +the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a +dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None +of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. +Same here. Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven, +nine. Fine Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to +rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving +eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud +again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi +polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your +corporosity sagaciating O K? How's the squaws and papooses? Womanbody +after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours +the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi Spit in your own eye, boss +Mummer's wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical +jesuit Aunty mine's writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray +goodygood Malachi. +Hurroo Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw +Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot +boil My tipple. MERCI. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. +Don't stain my brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of peppe, you there. +Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every +cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. LES PETITES FEMMES. Bold bad +girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding +Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had +left but the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machree, macruiskeen. +Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. EX +Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like, +seeing as how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He've got the chink +AD LIB. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come +right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar +and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash +here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de cutest colour coon +down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We're nae tha fou. +Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you. +'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam, +two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn Have a glint, do. +Gum, I'm jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a +railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castile. Rows of +cast. Police Some HO for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers. +Gemini. He's going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O, +cheese it Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner +today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen +Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire +big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form +hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal +diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the +harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O +lust our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. +Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our +Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. +Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her +spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers +if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I +ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah. +Through yerd our lord, Amen. +You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy +drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of +most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate +one expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, +landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut +and come again. Right. Boniface Absinthe the lot. NOS OMNES BIBERIMUS +VIRIDUM TOXICUM DIABOLUS CAPIAT POSTERIORIA NOSTRIA. Closingtime, gents. +Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges +ads. Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide. +BONSOIR LA COMPAGNIE. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and +Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. +Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help yung man hoose frend +tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown of his hed night. +Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the +bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this +child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust +syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time, +gents Who wander through the world. Health all A LA VOTRE +Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at +his wearables. By mighty What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by +James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the +Richmond? Rawthere Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. +Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a +prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all +forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh +of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies. +Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o' yourn passed in his checks? +Ludamassy Pore piccaninnies Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg +Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black +bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like +since I was born. TIENS, TIENS, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. +O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay +you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle +fire, inyah Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any +Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward, woozy +wobblers Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this night +ever tremendously conserve. +Your attention We're nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The +least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable +regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook. +Hark Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap Pflaap Blaze on. There she goes. +Brigade Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up Pflaap Tally ho. You not +come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap +Lynch Hey? Sign on long o' me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for +Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is. +Righto, any old time. LAETABUNTUR IN CUBILIBUS SUIS. You coming long? +Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush Sinned +against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to +judge the world by fire. Pflaap UT IMPLERENTUR SCRIPTURAE. Strike up a +ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. +Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? +Elijah is coming Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you +winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences Come on, you dog +gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed +fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage Come on, you triple +extract of infamy Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's +yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. +The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He's on the +square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing +yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll need +to rise precious early you sinner there, if you want to diddle the +Almighty God. Pflaaaap Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in +it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on. +THE MABBOT STREET ENTRANCE OF NIGHTTOWN, BEFORE WHICH STRETCHES AN +UNCOBBLED TRAMSIDING SET WITH SKELETON TRACKS, RED AND GREEN WILLO'THE +WISPS AND DANGER SIGNALS. ROWS OF GRIMY HOUSES WITH GAPING DOORS. RARE +LAMPS WITH FAINT RAINBOW FINS. ROUND RABAIOTTI'S HALTED ICE GONDOLA +STUNTED MEN AND WOMEN SQUABBLE. THEY GRAB WAFERS BETWEEN WHICH ARE WEDGED +LUMPS OF CORAL AND COPPER SNOW. SUCKING, THEY SCATTER SLOWLY. CHILDREN. +THE SWANCOMB OF THE GONDOLA, HIGHREARED, FORGES ON THROUGH THE MURK, +WHITE AND BLUE UNDER A LIGHTHOUSE. WHISTLES CALL AND ANSWER. +THE CALLS Wait, my love, and I'll be with you. +THE ANSWERS Round behind the stable. +A DEAFMUTE IDIOT WITH GOGGLE EYES, HIS SHAPELESS MOUTH DRIBBLING, JERKS +PAST, SHAKEN IN SAINT VITUS' DANCE. A CHAIN OF CHILDREN 'S HANDS +IMPRISONS HIM. +THE CHILDREN Kithogue Salute +THE IDIOT LIFTS A PALSIED LEFT ARM AND GURGLES Grhahute +THE CHILDREN Where's the great light? +THE IDIOT GOBBING Ghaghahest. +THEY RELEASE HIM. HE JERKS ON. A PIGMY WOMAN SWINGS ON A ROPE SLUNG +BETWEEN TWO RAILINGS, COUNTING. A FORM SPRAWLED AGAINST A DUSTBIN AND +MUFFLED BY ITS ARM AND HAT SNORES, GROANS, GRINDING GROWLING TEETH, AND +SNORES AGAIN. ON A STEP A GNOME TOTTING AMONG A RUBBISHTIP CROUCHES TO +SHOULDER A SACK OF RAGS AND BONES. A CRONE STANDING BY WITH A SMOKY +OILLAMP RAMS HER LAST BOTTLE IN THE MAW OF HIS SACK. HE HEAVES HIS BOOTY, +TUGS ASKEW HIS PEAKED CAP AND HOBBLES OFF MUTELY. THE CRONE MAKES BACK +FOR HER LAIR, SWAYING HER LAMP. A BANDY CHILD, ASQUAT ON THE DOORSTEP +WITH A PAPER SHUTTLECOCK, CRAWLS SIDLING AFTER HER IN SPURTS, CLUTCHES +HER SKIRT, SCRAMBLES UP. A DRUNKEN NAVVY GRIPS WITH BOTH HANDS THE +RAILINGS OF AN AREA, LURCHING HEAVILY. AT A COMER TWO NIGHT WATCH IN +SHOULDERCAPES, THEIR HANDS UPON THEIR STAFFHOLSTERS, LOOM TALL. A PLATE +CRASHES A WOMAN SCREAMS A CHILD WAILS. OATHS OF A MAN ROAR, MUTTER, +CEASE. FIGURES WANDER, LURK, PEER FROM WARRENS. IN A ROOM LIT BY A CANDLE +STUCK IN A BOTTLENECK A SLUT COMBS OUT THE TATTS FROM THE HAIR OF A +SCROFULOUS CHILD. CISSY CAFFREY'S VOICE, STILL YOUNG, SINGS SHRILL FROM A +LANE. +CISSY CAFFREY +I GAVE IT TO MOLLY +BECAUSE SHE WAS JOLLY, +THE LEG OF THE DUCK, +THE LEG OF THE DUCK. +PRIVATE CARR AND PRIVATE COMPTON, SWAGGERSTICKS TIGHT IN THEIR OXTERS, +AS THEY MARCH UNSTEADILY RIGHTABOUTFACE AND BURST TOGETHER FROM THEIR +MOUTHS A VOLLEYED FART. LAUGHTER OF MEN FROM THE LANE. A HOARSE VIRAGO +RETORTS. +THE VIRAGO Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl. +CISSY CAFFREY More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. SHE +SINGS +I GAVE IT TO NELLY +TO STICK IN HER BELLY, +THE LEG OF THE DUCK, +THE LEG OF THE DUCK. +PRIVATE CARR AND PRIVATE COMPTON TURN AND COUNTERRETORT, THEIR TUNICS +BLOODBRIGHT IN A LAMPGLOW, BLACK SOCKETS OF CAPS ON THEIR BLOND CROPPED +POLLS. STEPHEN DEDALUS AND LYNCH PASS THROUGH THE CROWD CLOSE TO THE +REDCOATS. +PRIVATE COMPTON JERKS HIS FINGER Way for the parson. +PRIVATE CARR TURNS AND CALLS What ho, parson +CISSY CAFFREY HER VOICE SOARING HIGHER +SHE HAS IT, SHE GOT IT, +WHEREVER SHE PUT IT, +THE LEG OF THE DUCK. +STEPHEN, FLOURISHING THE ASHPLANT IN HIS LEFT HAND, CHANTS WITH JOY THE +INTROIT FOR PASCHAL TIME. LYNCH, HIS JOCKEYCAP LOW ON HIS BROW, ATTENDS +HIM, A SNEER OF DISCONTENT WRINKLING HIS FACE. +STEPHEN VIDI AQUAM EGREDIENTEM DE TEMPLO A LATERE DEXTRO. ALLELUIA. +THE FAMISHED SNAGGLETUSKS OF AN ELDERLY BAWD PROTRUDE FROM A DOORWAY. +THE BAWD HER VOICE WHISPERING HUSKILY Sst Come here till I tell you. +Maidenhead inside. Sst +STEPHEN ALTIUS ALIQUANTULUM ET OMNES AD QUOS PERVENIT AQUA ISTA. +THE BAWD SPITS IN THEIR TRAIL HER JET OF VENOM Trinity medicals. +Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence. +EDY BOARDMAN, SNIFFLING, CROUCHED WITH BERTHA SUPPLE, DRAWS HER SHAWL +ACROSS HER NOSTRILS. +EDY BOARDMAN BICKERING And says the one I seen you up Faithful place +with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed +hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen +me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her +Stag that one is Stubborn as a mule And her walking with two fellows +the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant. +STEPHEN TRIUMPHALITER SALVI FACTI SUNT. +HE FLOURISHES HIS ASHPLANT, SHIVERING THE LAMP IMAGE, SHATTERING LIGHT +OVER THE WORLD. A LIVER AND WHITE SPANIEL ON THE PROWL SLINKS AFTER HIM, +GROWLING. LYNCH SCARES IT WITH A KICK. +LYNCH So that? +STEPHEN LOOKS BEHIND So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a +universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay +sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm. +LYNCH Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street +STEPHEN We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the +allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love. +LYNCH Ba +STEPHEN Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? +This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold +my stick. +LYNCH Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going? +STEPHEN Lecherous lynx, TO LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, Georgina Johnson, +AD DEAM QUI LAETIFICAT IUVENTUTEM MEAM. +STEPHEN THRUSTS THE ASHPLANT ON HIM AND SLOWLY HOLDS OUT HIS HANDS, HIS +HEAD GOING BACK TILL BOTH HANDS ARE A SPAN FROM HIS BREAST, DOWN TURNED, +IN PLANES INTERSECTING, THE FINGERS ABOUT TO PART, THE LEFT BEING +HIGHER. +LYNCH Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. +Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk. +THEY PASS. TOMMY CAFFREY SCRAMBLES TO A GASLAMP AND, CLASPING, CLIMBS IN +SPASMS. FROM THE TOP SPUR HE SLIDES DOWN. JACKY CAFFREY CLASPS TO CLIMB. +THE NAVVY LURCHES AGAINST THE LAMP. THE TWINS SCUTTLE OFF IN THE DARK. +THE NAVVY, SWAYING, PRESSES A FOREFINGER AGAINST A WING OF HIS NOSE AND +EJECTS FROM THE FARTHER NOSTRIL A LONG LIQUID JET OF SNOT. SHOULDERING +THE LAMP HE STAGGERS AWAY THROUGH THE CROWD WITH HIS FLARING CRESSET. +SNAKES OF RIVER FOG CREEP SLOWLY. FROM DRAINS, CLEFTS, CESSPOOLS, MIDDENS +ARISE ON ALL SIDES STAGNANT FUMES. A GLOW LEAPS IN THE SOUTH BEYOND THE +SEAWARD REACHES OF THE RIVER. THE NAVVY, STAGGERING FORWARD, CLEAVES THE +CROWD AND LURCHES TOWARDS THE TRAMSIDING ON THE FARTHER SIDE UNDER THE +RAILWAY BRIDGE BLOOM APPEARS, FLUSHED, PANTING, CRAMMING BREAD AND +CHOCOLATE INTO A SIDEPOCKET. FROM GILLEN'S HAIRDRESSER'S WINDOW A +COMPOSITE PORTRAIT SHOWS HIM GALLANT NELSON'S IMAGE. A CONCAVE MIRROR AT +THE SIDE PRESENTS TO HIM LOVELORN LONGLOST LUGUBRU BOOLOOHOOM. GRAVE +GLADSTONE SEES HIM LEVEL, BLOOM FOR BLOOM. HE PASSES, STRUCK BY THE STARE +OF TRUCULENT WELLINGTON, BUT IN THE CONVEX MIRROR GRIN UNSTRUCK THE +BONHAM EYES AND FATCHUCK CHEEKCHOPS OF JOLLYPOLDY THE RIXDIX DOLDY. +AT ANTONIO PABAIOTTI'S DOOR BLOOM HALTS, SWEATED UNDER THE BRIGHT +ARCLAMP. HE DISAPPEARS. IN A MOMENT HE REAPPEARS AND HURRIES ON. +BLOOM Fish and taters. N. g. Ah +HE DISAPPEARS INTO OLHAUSEN'S, THE PORKBUTCHER'S, UNDER THE DOWNCOMING +ROLLSHUTTER. A FEW MOMENTS LATER HE EMERGES FROM UNDER THE SHUTTER, +PUFFING POLDY, BLOWING BLOOHOOM. IN EACH HAND HE HOLDS A PARCEL, ONE +CONTAINING A LUKEWARM PIG'S CRUBEEN, THE OTHER A COLD SHEEP'S TROTTER, +SPRINKLED WITH WHOLEPEPPER. HE GASPS, STANDING UPRIGHT. THEN BENDING TO +ONE SIDE HE PRESSES A PARCEL AGAINST HIS RIBS AND GROANS. +BLOOM Stitch in my side. Why did I run? +HE TAKES BREATH WITH CARE AND GOES FORWARD SLOWLY TOWARDS THE LAMPSET +SIDING. THE GLOW LEAPS AGAIN. +BLOOM What is that? A flasher? Searchlight. +HE STANDS AT CORMACK'S CORNER, WATCHING +BLOOM AURORA BOREALIS or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. +South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're +safe. HE HUMS CHEERFULLY London's burning, London's burning On fire, +on fire HE CATCHES SIGHT OF THE NAVVY LURCHING THROUGH THE CROWD AT THE +FARTHER SIDE OF TALBOT STREET I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross +here. +HE DARTS TO CROSS THE ROAD. URCHINS SHOUT. +THE URCHINS Mind out, mister TWO CYCLISTS, WITH LIGHTED PAPER LANTERNS +ASWING, SWIM BY HIM, GRAZING HIM, THEIR BELLS RATTLING +THE BELLS Haltyaltyaltyall. +BLOOM HALTS ERECT, STUNG BY A SPASM Ow +HE LOOKS ROUND, DARTS FORWARD SUDDENLY. THROUGH RISING FOG A DRAGON +SANDSTREWER, TRAVELLING AT CAUTION, SLEWS HEAVILY DOWN UPON HIM, ITS HUGE +RED HEADLIGHT WINKING, ITS TROLLEY HISSING ON THE WIRE. THE MOTORMAN +BANGS HIS FOOTGONG. +THE GONG Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo. +THE BRAKE CRACKS VIOLENTLY. BLOOM, RAISING A POLICEMAN'S WHITEGLOVED +HAND, BLUNDERS STIFFLEGGED OUT OF THE TRACK. THE MOTORMAN, THROWN +FORWARD, PUGNOSED, ON THE GUIDEWHEEL, YELLS AS HE SLIDES PAST OVER CHAINS +AND KEYS. +THE MOTORMAN Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick? +BLOOM BLOOM TRICKLEAPS TO THE CURBSTONE AND HALTS AGAIN. HE BRUSHES A +MUDFLAKE FROM HIS CHEEK WITH A PARCELLED HAND. No thoroughfare. Close +shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again. +On the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential. +HE FEELS HIS TROUSER POCKET Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in +track or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off +my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. +Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might +be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style +of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in +jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of +luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. HE CLOSES HIS EYES +AN INSTANT Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other. +Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow +A SINISTER FIGURE LEANS ON PLAITED LEGS AGAINST O'BEIRNE'S WALL, A +VISAGE UNKNOWN, INJECTED WITH DARK MERCURY. FROM UNDER A WIDELEAVED +SOMBRERO THE FIGURE REGARDS HIM WITH EVIL EYE. +BLOOM BUENAS NOCHES, SENORITA BLANCA. QUE CALLE ES ESTA? +THE FIGURE IMPASSIVE, RAISES A SIGNAL ARM Password. SRAID MABBOT. +BLOOM Haha. MERCI. Esperanto. SLAN LEATH. HE MUTTERS Gaelic league +spy, sent by that fireeater. +HE STEPS FORWARD. A SACKSHOULDERED RAGMAN BARS HIS PATH. HE STEPS LEFT, +RAGSACKMAN LEFT. +BLOOM I beg. HE SWERVES, SIDLES, STEPASIDE, SLIPS PAST AND ON. +BLOOM Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by +the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost +my way and contributed to the columns of the IRISH CYCLIST the letter +headed IN DARKEST STEPASIDE. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and +bones at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. +Wash off his sins of the world. +JACKY CAFFREY, HUNTED BY TOMMY CAFFREY, RUNS FULL TILT AGAINST BLOOM. +BLOOM O +SHOCKED, ON WEAK HAMS, HE HALTS. TOMMY AND JACKY VANISH THERE, THERE. +BLOOM PATS WITH PARCELLED HANDS WATCH FOBPOCKET, BOOKPOCKET, PURSEPOKET, +SWEETS OF SIN, POTATO SOAP. +BLOOM Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch +your purse. +THE RETRIEVER APPROACHES SNIFFING, NOSE TO THE GROUND. A SPRAWLED FORM +SNEEZES. A STOOPED BEARDED FIGURE APPEARS GARBED IN THE LONG CAFTAN OF AN +ELDER IN ZION AND A SMOKINGCAP WITH MAGENTA TASSELS. HORNED SPECTACLES +HANG DOWN AT THE WINGS OF THE NOSE. YELLOW POISON STREAKS ARE ON THE +DRAWN FACE. +RUDOLPH Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with +drunken goy ever. So you catch no money. +BLOOM HIDES THE CRUBEEN AND TROTTER BEHIND HIS BACK AND, CRESTFALLEN, +FEELS WARM AND COLD FEETMEAT JA, ICH WEISS, PAPACHI. +RUDOLPH What you making down this place? Have you no soul? WITH FEEBLE +VULTURE TALONS HE FEELS THE SILENT FACE OF BLOOM Are you not my son +Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who +left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and +Jacob? +BLOOM WITH PRECAUTION I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left +of him. +RUDOLPH SEVERELY One night they bring you home drunk as dog after +spend your good money. What you call them running chaps? +BLOOM IN YOUTH'S SMART BLUE OXFORD SUIT WITH WHITE VESTSLIPS, +NARROWSHOULDERED, IN BROWN ALPINE HAT, WEARING GENT'S STERLING SILVER +WATERBURY KEYLESS WATCH AND DOUBLE CURB ALBERT WITH SEAL ATTACHED, ONE +SIDE OF HIM COATED WITH STIFFENING MUD Harriers, father. Only that once. +RUDOLPH Once Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make +you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps. +BLOOM WEAKLY They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped. +RUDOLPH WITH CONTEMPT GOIM NACHEZ Nice spectacles for your poor +mother +BLOOM Mamma +ELLEN BLOOM IN PANTOMIME DAME'S STRINGED MOBCAP, WIDOW TWANKEY'S +CRINOLINE AND BUSTLE, BLOUSE WITH MUTTONLEG SLEEVES BUTTONED BEHIND, GREY +MITTENS AND CAMEO BROOCH, HER PLAITED HAIR IN A CRISPINE NET, APPEARS +OVER THE STAIRCASE BANISTERS, A SLANTED CANDLESTICK IN HER HAND, AND +CRIES OUT IN SHRILL ALARM O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to +him My smelling salts SHE HAULS UP A REEF OF SKIRT AND RANSACKS THE +POUCH OF HER STRIPED BLAY PETTICOAT. A PHIAL, AN AGNUS DEI, A SHRIVELLED +POTATO AND A CELLULOID DOLL FALL OUT Sacred Heart of Mary, where were +you at all at all? +BLOOM, MUMBLING, HIS EYES DOWNCAST, BEGINS TO BESTOW HIS PARCELS IN HIS +FILLED POCKETS BUT DESISTS, MUTTERING. +A VOICE SHARPLY Poldy +BLOOM Who? HE DUCKS AND WARDS OFF A BLOW CLUMSILY At your service. +HE LOOKS UP. BESIDE HER MIRAGE OF DATEPALMS A HANDSOME WOMAN IN TURKISH +COSTUME STANDS BEFORE HIM. OPULENT CURVES FILL OUT HER SCARLET TROUSERS +AND JACKET, SLASHED WITH GOLD. A WIDE YELLOW CUMMERBUND GIRDLES HER. A +WHITE YASHMAK, VIOLET IN THE NIGHT, COVERS HER FACE, LEAVING FREE ONLY +HER LARGE DARK EYES AND RAVEN HAIR. +BLOOM Molly +MARION Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to +me. SATIRICALLY Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long? +BLOOM SHIFTS FROM FOOT TO FOOT No, no. Not the least little bit. +HE BREATHES IN DEEP AGITATION, SWALLOWING GULPS OF AIR, QUESTIONS, +HOPES, CRUBEENS FOR HER SUPPER, THINGS TO TELL HER, EXCUSE, DESIRE, +SPELLBOUND. A COIN GLEAMS ON HER FOREHEAD. ON HER FEET ARE JEWELLED +TOERINGS. HER ANKLES ARE LINKED BY A SLENDER FETTERCHAIN. BESIDE HER A +CAMEL, HOODED WITH A TURRETING TURBAN, WAITS. A SILK LADDER OF +INNUMERABLE RUNGS CLIMBS TO HIS BOBBING HOWDAH. HE AMBLES NEAR WITH +DISGRUNTLED HINDQUARTERS. FIERCELY SHE SLAPS HIS HAUNCH, HER GOLDCURB +WRISTBANGLES ANGRILING, SCOLDING HIM IN MOORISH. +MARION Nebrakada Femininum +THE CAMEL, LIFTING A FORELEG, PLUCKS FROM A TREE A LARGE MANGO FRUIT, +OFFERS IT TO HIS MISTRESS, BLINKING, IN HIS CLOVEN HOOF, THEN DROOPS HIS +HEAD AND, GRUNTING, WITH UPLIFTED NECK, FUMBLES TO KNEEL. BLOOM STOOPS +HIS BACK FOR LEAPFROG. +BLOOM I can give you ... I mean as your business menagerer ... Mrs +Marion ... if you ... +MARION So you notice some change? HER HANDS PASSING SLOWLY OVER HER +TRINKETED STOMACHER, A SLOW FRIENDLY MOCKERY IN HER EYES O Poldy, Poldy, +you are a poor old stick in the mud Go and see life. See the wide world. +BLOOM I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower +water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. +HE PATS DIVERS POCKETS This moving kidney. Ah +HE POINTS TO THE SOUTH, THEN TO THE EAST. A CAKE OF NEW CLEAN LEMON SOAP +ARISES, DIFFUSING LIGHT AND PERFUME. +THE SOAP +We're a capital couple are Bloom and I. +He brightens the earth. I polish the sky. +THE FRECKLED FACE OF SWENY, THE DRUGGIST, APPEARS IN THE DISC OF THE +SOAPSUN. +SWENY Three and a penny, please. +BLOOM Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe. +MARION SOFTLY Poldy +BLOOM Yes, ma'am? +MARION TI TREMA UN POCO IL CUORE? +IN DISDAIN SHE SAUNTERS AWAY, PLUMP AS A PAMPERED POUTER PIGEON, HUMMING +THE DUET FROM Don Giovanni. +BLOOM Are you sure about that VOGLIO? I mean the pronunciati ... +HE FOLLOWS, FOLLOWED BY THE SNIFFING TERRIER. THE ELDERLY BAWD SEIZES +HIS SLEEVE, THE BRISTLES OF HER CHINMOLE GLITTERING. +THE BAWD Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. +Fifteen. There's noone in it only her old father that's dead drunk. +SHE POINTS. IN THE GAP OF HER DARK DEN FURTIVE, RAINBEDRAGGLED, BRIDIE +KELLY STANDS. +BRIDIE Hatch street. Any good in your mind? +WITH A SQUEAK SHE FLAPS HER BAT SHAWL AND RUNS. A BURLY ROUGH PURSUES +WITH BOOTED STRIDES. HE STUMBLES ON THE STEPS, RECOVERS, PLUNGES INTO +GLOOM. WEAK SQUEAKS OF LAUGHTER ARE HEARD, WEAKER. +THE BAWD HER WOLFEYES SHINING He's getting his pleasure. You won't get +a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before +the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch. +LEERING, GERTY MACDOWELL LIMPS FORWARD. SHE DRAWS FROM BEHIND, OGLING, +AND SHOWS COYLY HER BLOODIED CLOUT. +GERTY With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. SHE MURMURS You did +that. I hate you. +BLOOM I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you. +THE BAWD Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman +false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take +the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you. +GERTY TO BLOOM When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. SHE +PAWS HIS SLEEVE, SLOBBERING Dirty married man I love you for doing that +to me. +SHE GLIDES AWAY CROOKEDLY. MRS BREEN IN MAN'S FRIEZE OVERCOAT WITH LOOSE +BELLOWS POCKETS, STANDS IN THE CAUSEWAY, HER ROGUISH EYES WIDEOPEN, +SMILING IN ALL HER HERBIVOROUS BUCKTEETH. +MRS BREEN Mr ... +BLOOM COUGHS GRAVELY Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter +dated the sixteenth instant ... +MRS BREEN Mr Bloom You down here in the haunts of sin I caught you +nicely Scamp +BLOOM HURRIEDLY Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me? +Don't give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I. +You're looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having +this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting +quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary ... +MRS BREEN HOLDS UP A FINGER Now, don't tell a big fib I know somebody +won't like that. O just wait till I see Molly SLILY Account for +yourself this very sminute or woe betide you +BLOOM LOOKS BEHIND She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The +exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello +black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the +Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter. +TOM AND SAM BOHEE, COLOURED COONS IN WHITE DUCK SUITS, SCARLET SOCKS, +UPSTARCHED SAMBO CHOKERS AND LARGE SCARLET ASTERS IN THEIR BUTTONHOLES, +LEAP OUT. EACH HAS HIS BANJO SLUNG. THEIR PALER SMALLER NEGROID HANDS +JINGLE THE TWINGTWANG WIRES. FLASHING WHITE KAFFIR EYES AND TUSKS THEY +RATTLE THROUGH A BREAKDOWN IN CLUMSY CLOGS, TWINGING, SINGING, BACK TO +BACK, TOE HEEL, HEEL TOE, WITH SMACKFATCLACKING NIGGER LIPS. +TOM AND SAM +There's someone in the house with Dina +There's someone in the house, I know, +There's someone in the house with Dina +Playing on the old banjo. +THEY WHISK BLACK MASKS FROM RAW BABBY FACES THEN, CHUCKLING, CHORTLING, +TRUMMING, TWANGING, THEY DIDDLE DIDDLE CAKEWALK DANCE AWAY. +BLOOM WITH A SOUR TENDERISH SMILE A little frivol, shall we, if you +are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a +fraction of a second? +MRS BREEN SCREAMS GAILY O, you ruck You ought to see yourself +BLOOM For old sake' sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage +mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner +for you. GLOOMILY 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle. +MRS BREEN Glory Alice, you do look a holy show Killing simply. SHE +PUTS OUT HER HAND INQUISITIVELY What are you hiding behind your back? +Tell us, there's a dear. +BLOOM SEIZES HER WRIST WITH HIS FREE HAND Josie Powell that was, +prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by Do you remember, harking back +in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's +housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the +pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuffbox? +MRS BREEN You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation +and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies. +BLOOM SQUIRE OF DAMES, IN DINNER JACKET WITH WATEREDSILK FACINGS, BLUE +MASONIC BADGE IN HIS BUTTONHOLE, BLACK BOW AND MOTHEROFPEARL STUDS, A +PRISMATIC CHAMPAGNE GLASS TILTED IN HIS HAND Ladies and gentlemen, I +give you Ireland, home and beauty. +MRS BREEN The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song. +BLOOM MEANINGFULLY DROPPING HIS VOICE I confess I'm teapot with +curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little teapot +at present. +MRS BREEN GUSHINGLY Tremendously teapot London's teapot and I'm +simply teapot all over me SHE RUBS SIDES WITH HIM After the parlour +mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase +ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company. +BLOOM WEARING A PURPLE NAPOLEON HAT WITH AN AMBER HALFMOON, HIS FINGERS +AND THUMB PASSING SLOWLY DOWN TO HER SOFT MOIST MEATY PALM WHICH SHE +SURRENDERS GENTLY The witching hour of night. I took the splinter out of +this hand, carefully, slowly. TENDERLY, AS HE SLIPS ON HER FINGER A RUBY +RING LA CI DAREM LA MANO. +MRS BREEN IN A ONEPIECE EVENING FROCK EXECUTED IN MOONLIGHT BLUE, A +TINSEL SYLPH'S DIADEM ON HER BROW WITH HER DANCECARD FALLEN BESIDE HER +MOONBLUE SATIN SLIPPER, CURVES HER PALM SOFTLY, BREATHING QUICKLY VOGLIO +E NON. You're hot You're scalding The left hand nearest the heart. +BLOOM When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the +beast. I can never forgive you for that. HIS CLENCHED FIST AT HIS BROW +Think what it means. All you meant to me then. HOARSELY Woman, it's +breaking me +DENIS BREEN, WHITETALLHATTED, WITH WISDOM HELY'S SANDWICH BOARDS, +SHUFFLES PAST THEM IN CARPET SLIPPERS, HIS DULL BEARD THRUST OUT, +MUTTERING TO RIGHT AND LEFT. LITTLE ALF BERGAN, CLOAKED IN THE PALL OF +THE ACE OF SPADES, DOGS HIM TO LEFT AND RIGHT, DOUBLED IN LAUGHTER. +ALF BERGAN POINTS JEERING AT THE SANDWICHBOARDS U. p Up. +MRS BREEN TO BLOOM High jinks below stairs. SHE GIVES HIM THE GLAD +EYE Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to. +BLOOM SHOCKED Molly's best friend Could you? +MRS BREEN HER PULPY TONGUE BETWEEN HER LIPS, OFFERS A PIGEON KISS +Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there? +BLOOM OFFHANDEDLY Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted +meat is incomplete. I was at LEAH. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant +exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling +good place round there for pigs' feet. Feel. +RICHIE GOULDING, THREE LADIES' HATS PINNED ON HIS HEAD, APPEARS WEIGHTED +TO ONE SIDE BY THE BLACK LEGAL BAG OF COLLIS AND WARD ON WHICH A SKULL +AND CROSSBONES ARE PAINTED IN WHITE LIMEWASH. HE OPENS IT AND SHOWS IT +FULL OF POLONIES, KIPPERED HERRINGS, FINDON HADDIES AND TIGHTPACKED +PILLS. +RICHIE Best value in Dub. +BALD PAT, BOTHERED BEETLE, STANDS ON THE CURBSTONE, FOLDING HIS NAPKIN, +WAITING TO WAIT. +PAT ADVANCES WITH A TILTED DISH OF SPILLSPILLING GRAVY Steak and +kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait. +RICHIE Goodgod. Inev erate inall ... +WITH HANGING HEAD HE MARCHES DOGGEDLY FORWARD. THE NAVVY, LURCHING BY, +GORES HIM WITH HIS FLAMING PRONGHORN. +RICHIE WITH A CRY OF PAIN, HIS HAND TO HIS BACK Ah Bright's Lights +BLOOM POINTS TO THE NAVVY A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate +stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament. +MRS BREEN Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and +bull story. +BLOOM I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. +But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular reason. +MRS BREEN ALL AGOG O, not for worlds. +BLOOM Let's walk on. Shall us? +MRS BREEN Let's. +THE BAWD MAKES AN UNHEEDED SIGN. BLOOM WALKS ON WITH MRS BREEN. THE +TERRIER FOLLOWS, WHINING PITEOUSLY, WAGGING HIS TAIL. +THE BAWD Jewman's melt +BLOOM IN AN OATMEAL SPORTING SUIT, A SPRIG OF WOODBINE IN THE LAPEL, +TONY BUFF SHIRT, SHEPHERD'S PLAID SAINT ANDREW'S CROSS SCARFTIE, WHITE +SPATS, FAWN DUSTCOAT ON HIS ARM, TAWNY RED BROGUES, FIELDGLASSES IN +BANDOLIER AND A GREY BILLYCOCK HAT Do you remember a long long time, +years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was +weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it? +MRS BREEN IN SMART SAXE TAILORMADE, WHITE VELOURS HAT AND SPIDER VEIL +Leopardstown. +BLOOM I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three +year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old +fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and +you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that +Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and +eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what +you like she did it on purpose ... +MRS BREEN She did, of course, the cat Don't tell me Nice adviser +BLOOM Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky +little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on +you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity +to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a +heart the size of a fullstop. +MRS BREEN SQUEEZES HIS ARM, SIMPERS Naughty cruel I was +BLOOM LOW, SECRETLY, EVER MORE RAPIDLY And Molly was eating a sandwich +of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though +she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She +was ... +MRS BREEN Too ... +BLOOM Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly +were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, +the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses +was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I +ever heard or read or knew or came across ... +MRS BREEN EAGERLY Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. +SHE FADES FROM HIS SIDE. FOLLOWED BY THE WHINING DOG HE WALKS ON TOWARDS +HELLSGATES. IN AN ARCHWAY A STANDING WOMAN, BENT FORWARD, HER FEET APART, +PISSES COWILY. OUTSIDE A SHUTTERED PUB A BUNCH OF LOITERERS LISTEN TO A +TALE WHICH THEIR BROKENSNOUTED GAFFER RASPS OUT WITH RAUCOUS HUMOUR. AN +ARMLESS PAIR OF THEM FLOP WRESTLING, GROWLING, IN MAIMED SODDEN +PLAYFIGHT. +THE GAFFER CROUCHES, HIS VOICE TWISTED IN HIS SNOUT And when Cairns +came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing +it into only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the +shavings for Derwan's plasterers. +THE LOITERERS GUFFAW WITH CLEFT PALATES O jays +THEIR PAINTSPECKLED HATS WAG. SPATTERED WITH SIZE AND LIME OF THEIR +LODGES THEY FRISK LIMBLESSLY ABOUT HIM. +BLOOM Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad +daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman. +THE LOITERERS Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the +men's porter. +BLOOM PASSES. CHEAP WHORES, SINGLY, COUPLED, SHAWLED, DISHEVELLED, CALL +FROM LANES, DOORS, CORNERS. +THE WHORES +Are you going far, queer fellow? +How's your middle leg? +Got a match on you? +Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you. +HE PLODGES THROUGH THEIR SUMP TOWARDS THE LIGHTED STREET BEYOND. FROM A +BULGE OF WINDOW CURTAINS A GRAMOPHONE REARS A BATTERED BRAZEN TRUNK. IN +THE SHADOW A SHEBEENKEEPER HAGGLES WITH THE NAVVY AND THE TWO REDCOATS. +THE NAVVY BELCHING Where's the bloody house? +THE SHEBEENKEEPER Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable +woman. +THE NAVVY GRIPPING THE TWO REDCOATS, STAGGERS FORWARD WITH THEM Come +on, you British army +PRIVATE CARR BEHIND HIS BACK He aint half balmy. +PRIVATE COMPTON LAUGHS What ho +PRIVATE CARR TO THE NAVVY Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for +Carr. Just Carr. +THE NAVVY SHOUTS +We are the boys. Of Wexford. +PRIVATE COMPTON Say What price the sergeantmajor? +PRIVATE CARR Bennett? He's my pal. I love old Bennett. +THE NAVVY SHOUTS +The galling chain. +And free our native land. +HE STAGGERS FORWARD, DRAGGING THEM WITH HIM. BLOOM STOPS, AT FAULT. THE +DOG APPROACHES, HIS TONGUE OUTLOLLING, PANTING +BLOOM Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are +gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland +row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with +engine behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night +or collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following +him for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs +Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll +lose that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. +What do ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with +that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. +Can't always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day +two minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet +only went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. +What was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper. +HE GAZES AHEAD, READING ON THE WALL A SCRAWLED CHALK LEGEND Wet Dream +AND A PHALLIC DESIGN. Odd Molly drawing on the frosted carriagepane at +Kingstown. What's that like? GAUDY DOLLWOMEN LOLL IN THE LIGHTED +DOORWAYS, IN WINDOW EMBRASURES, SMOKING BIRDSEYE CIGARETTES. THE ODOUR OF +THE SICKSWEET WEED FLOATS TOWARDS HIM IN SLOW ROUND OVALLING WREATHS. +THE WREATHS Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin. +BLOOM My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get +all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much. +THE RETRIEVER DRIVES A COLD SNIVELLING MUZZLE AGAINST HIS HAND, WAGGING +HIS TAIL. Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better +speak to him first. Like women they like RENCONTRES. Stinks like a +polecat. CHACUN SON GOUT. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain in his +movements. Good fellow Fido Good fellow Garryowen THE WOLFDOG +SPRAWLS ON HIS BACK, WRIGGLING OBSCENELY WITH BEGGING PAWS, HIS LONG +BLACK TONGUE LOLLING OUT. Influence of his surroundings. Give and have +done with it. Provided nobody. CALLING ENCOURAGING WORDS HE SHAMBLES +BACK WITH A FURTIVE POACHER'S TREAD, DOGGED BY THE SETTER INTO A DARK +STALESTUNK CORNER. HE UNROLLS ONE PARCEL AND GOES TO DUMP THE CRUBEEN +SOFTLY BUT HOLDS BACK AND FEELS THE TROTTER. Sizeable for threepence. +But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort. Why? Smaller +from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six. +WITH REGRET HE LETS THE UNROLLED CRUBEEN AND TROTTER SLIDE. THE MASTIFF +MAULS THE BUNDLE CLUMSILY AND GLUTS HIMSELF WITH GROWLING GREED, +CRUNCHING THE BONES. TWO RAINCAPED WATCH APPROACH, SILENT, VIGILANT. THEY +MURMUR TOGETHER. +THE WATCH Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom. +EACH LAYS HAND ON BLOOM'S SHOULDER. +FIRST WATCH Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance. +BLOOM STAMMERS I am doing good to others. +A COVEY OF GULLS, STORM PETRELS, RISES HUNGRILY FROM LIFFEY SLIME WITH +BANBURY CAKES IN THEIR BEAKS. +THE GULLS Kaw kave kankury kake. +BLOOM The friend of man. Trained by kindness. +HE POINTS. BOB DORAN, TOPPLING FROM A HIGH BARSTOOL, SWAYS OVER THE +MUNCHING SPANIEL. +BOB DORAN Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw. +THE BULLDOG GROWLS, HIS SCRUFF STANDING, A GOBBET OF PIG'S KNUCKLE +BETWEEN HIS MOLARS THROUGH WHICH RABID SCUMSPITTLE DRIBBLES. BOB DORAN +FILLS SILENTLY INTO AN AREA. +SECOND WATCH Prevention of cruelty to animals. +BLOOM ENTHUSIASTICALLY A noble work I scolded that tramdriver on +Harold's cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. +Bad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. +All tales of circus life are highly demoralising. +SIGNOR MAFFEI, PASSIONPALE, IN LIONTAMER'S COSTUME WITH DIAMOND STUDS IN +HIS SHIRTFRONT, STEPS FORWARD, HOLDING A CIRCUS PAPERHOOP, A CURLING +CARRIAGEWHIP AND A REVOLVER WITH WHICH HE COVERS THE GORGING BOARHOUND. +SIGNOR MAFFEI WITH A SINISTER SMILE Ladies and gentlemen, my educated +greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent +spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. +Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no +matter how fractious, even LEO FEROX there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot +crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of +Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. HE GLARES I possess the Indian sign. The +glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers. WITH A BEWITCHING +SMILE I now introduce Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring. +FIRST WATCH Come. Name and address. +BLOOM I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes HE TAKES OFF HIS HIGH +GRADE HAT, SALUTING Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have heard of +von Blum Pasha. Umpteen millions. DONNERWETTER Owns half Austria. Egypt. +Cousin. +FIRST WATCH Proof. +A CARD FALLS FROM INSIDE THE LEATHER HEADBAND OF BLOOM'S HAT. +BLOOM IN RED FEZ, CADI'S DRESS COAT WITH BROAD GREEN SASH, WEARING A +FALSE BADGE OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR, PICKS UP THE CARD HASTILY AND OFFERS +IT Allow me. My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors Messrs +John Henry Menton, Bachelor's Walk. +FIRST WATCH READS Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching +and besetting. +SECOND WATCH An alibi. You are cautioned. +BLOOM PRODUCES FROM HIS HEARTPOCKET A CRUMPLED YELLOW FLOWER This is +the flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name. +PLAUSIBLY You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Bloom. The change of +name. Virag. HE MURMURS PRIVATELY AND CONFIDENTIALLY We are engaged you +see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement. HE SHOULDERS THE +SECOND WATCH GENTLY Dash it all. It's a way we gallants have in the +navy. Uniform that does it. HE TURNS GRAVELY TO THE FIRST WATCH Still, +of course, you do get your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in some evening and +have a glass of old Burgundy. TO THE SECOND WATCH GAILY I'll introduce +you, inspector. She's game. Do it in the shake of a lamb's tail. +A DARK MERCURIALISED FACE APPEARS, LEADING A VEILED FIGURE. +THE DARK MERCURY The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of +the army. +MARTHA THICKVEILED, A CRIMSON HALTER ROUND HER NECK, A COPY OF THE +Irish Times IN HER HAND, IN TONE OF REPROACH, POINTING Henry Leopold +Lionel, thou lost one Clear my name. +FIRST WATCH STERNLY Come to the station. +BLOOM SCARED, HATS HIMSELF, STEPS BACK, THEN, PLUCKING AT HIS HEART AND +LIFTING HIS RIGHT FOREARM ON THE SQUARE, HE GIVES THE SIGN AND DUEGUARD +OF FELLOWCRAFT No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken +identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs +fratricide case. We medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I +am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine +wrongfully condemned. +MARTHA SOBBING BEHIND HER VEIL Breach of promise. My real name is +Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my +brother, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt. +BLOOM BEHIND HIS HAND She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. HE +MURMURS VAGUELY THE PASS OF EPHRAIM Shitbroleeth. +SECOND WATCH TEARS IN HIS EYES, TO BLOOM You ought to be thoroughly +well ashamed of yourself. +BLOOM Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a +man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable +married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My +wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant +upstanding gentleman, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, +one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his +majority for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift. +FIRST WATCH Regiment. +BLOOM TURNS TO THE GALLERY The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the +earth, known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up +there among you. The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan police, +guardians of our homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as +physique, in the service of our sovereign. +A VOICE Turncoat Up the Boers Who booed Joe Chamberlain? +BLOOM HIS HAND ON THE SHOULDER OF THE FIRST WATCH My old dad too was a +J. P. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the +colours for king and country in the absentminded war under general Gough +in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned +in dispatches. I did all a white man could. WITH QUIET FEELING Jim +Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank. +FIRST WATCH Profession or trade. +BLOOM Well, I follow a literary occupation, authorjournalist. In fact +we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the +inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected +with the British and Irish press. If you ring up ... +MYLES CRAWFORD STRIDES OUT JERKILY, A QUILL BETWEEN HIS TEETH. HIS +SCARLET BEAK BLAZES WITHIN THE AUREOLE OF HIS STRAW HAT. HE DANGLES A +HANK OF SPANISH ONIONS IN ONE HAND AND HOLDS WITH THE OTHER HAND A +TELEPHONE RECEIVER NOZZLE TO HIS EAR. +MYLES CRAWFORD HIS COCK'S WATTLES WAGGING Hello, seventyseven +eightfour. Hello. FREEMAN'S URINAL and WEEKLY ARSEWIPE here. Paralyse +Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom? +MR PHILIP BEAUFOY, PALEFACED, STANDS IN THE WITNESSBOX, IN ACCURATE +MORNING DRESS, OUTBREAST POCKET WITH PEAK OF HANDKERCHIEF SHOWING, +CREASED LAVENDER TROUSERS AND PATENT BOOTS. HE CARRIES A LARGE PORTFOLIO +LABELLED Matcham's Masterstrokes. +BEAUFOY DRAWLS No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it. I +don't see it that's all. No born gentleman, noone with the most +rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly +loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak +masquerading as a litterateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most +inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really +gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath +suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which +your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the +kingdom. +BLOOM MURMURS WITH HANGDOG MEEKNESS GLUM That bit about the laughing +witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ... +BEAUFOY HIS LIP UPCURLED, SMILES SUPERCILIOUSLY ON THE COURT You funny +ass, you You're too beastly awfully weird for words I don't think you +need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary +agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall +receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of +pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has +not even been to a university. +BLOOM INDISTINCTLY University of life. Bad art. +BEAUFOY SHOUTS It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness +of the man HE EXTENDS HIS PORTFOLIO We have here damning evidence, the +CORPUS DELICTI, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the +hallmark of the beast. +A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY +Moses, Moses, king of the jews, +Wiped his arse in the Daily News. +BLOOM BRAVELY Overdrawn. +BEAUFOY You low cad You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you +rotter TO THE COURT Why, look at the man's private life Leading a +quadruple existence Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be +mentioned in mixed society The archconspirator of the age +BLOOM TO THE COURT And he, a bachelor, how ... +FIRST WATCH The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll. +THE CRIER Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid +MARY DRISCOLL, A SLIPSHOD SERVANT GIRL, APPROACHES. SHE HAS A BUCKET ON +THE CROOK OF HER ARM AND A SCOURINGBRUSH IN HER HAND. +SECOND WATCH Another Are you of the unfortunate class? +MARY DRISCOLL INDIGNANTLY I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable +character and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six +pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and I had to leave owing to +his carryings on. +FIRST WATCH What do you tax him with? +MARY DRISCOLL He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself +as poor as I am. +BLOOM IN HOUSEJACKET OF RIPPLECLOTH, FLANNEL TROUSERS, HEELLESS +SLIPPERS, UNSHAVEN, HIS HAIR RUMPLED SOFTLY I treated you white. I gave +you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously +I took your part when you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in +all things. Play cricket. +MARY DRISCOLL EXCITEDLY As God is looking down on me this night if +ever I laid a hand to them oysters +FIRST WATCH The offence complained of? Did something happen? +MARY DRISCOLL He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour, +when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety +pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he +interfered twict with my clothing. +BLOOM She counterassaulted. +MARY DRISCOLL SCORNFULLY I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so +I had. I remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked keep it +quiet. +GENERAL LAUGHTER. +GEORGE FOTTRELL CLERK OF THE CROWN AND PEACE, RESONANTLY Order in +court The accused will now make a bogus statement. +BLOOM, PLEADING NOT GUILTY AND HOLDING A FULLBLOWN WATERLILY, BEGINS A +LONG UNINTELLIGIBLE SPEECH. THEY WOULD HEAR WHAT COUNSEL HAD TO SAY IN +HIS STIRRING ADDRESS TO THE GRAND JURY. HE WAS DOWN AND OUT BUT, THOUGH +BRANDED AS A BLACK SHEEP, IF HE MIGHT SAY SO, HE MEANT TO REFORM, TO +RETRIEVE THE MEMORY OF THE PAST IN A PURELY SISTERLY WAY AND RETURN TO +NATURE AS A PURELY DOMESTIC ANIMAL. A SEVENMONTHS' CHILD, HE HAD BEEN +CAREFULLY BROUGHT UP AND NURTURED BY AN AGED BEDRIDDEN PARENT. THERE +MIGHT HAVE BEEN LAPSES OF AN ERRING FATHER BUT HE WANTED TO TURN OVER A +NEW LEAF AND NOW, WHEN AT LONG LAST IN SIGHT OF THE WHIPPING POST, TO +LEAD A HOMELY LIFE IN THE EVENING OF HIS DAYS, PERMEATED BY THE +AFFECTIONATE SURROUNDINGS OF THE HEAVING BOSOM OF THE FAMILY. AN +ACCLIMATISED BRITISHER, HE HAD SEEN THAT SUMMER EVE FROM THE FOOTPLATE OF +AN ENGINE CAB OF THE LOOP LINE RAILWAY COMPANY WHILE THE RAIN REFRAINED +FROM FALLING GLIMPSES, AS IT WERE, THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF LOVEFUL +HOUSEHOLDS IN DUBLIN CITY AND URBAN DISTRICT OF SCENES TRULY RURAL OF +HAPPINESS OF THE BETTER LAND WITH DOCKRELL'S WALLPAPER AT ONE AND +NINEPENCE A DOZEN, INNOCENT BRITISHBORN BAIRNS LISPING PRAYERS TO THE +SACRED INFANT, YOUTHFUL SCHOLARS GRAPPLING WITH THEIR PENSUMS OR MODEL +YOUNG LADIES PLAYING ON THE PIANOFORTE OR ANON ALL WITH FERVOUR RECITING +THE FAMILY ROSARY ROUND THE CRACKLING YULELOG WHILE IN THE BOREENS AND +GREEN LANES THE COLLEENS WITH THEIR SWAINS STROLLED WHAT TIMES THE +STRAINS OF THE ORGANTONED MELODEON BRITANNIA METALBOUND WITH FOUR ACTING +STOPS AND TWELVEFOLD BELLOWS, A SACRIFICE, GREATEST BARGAIN EVER... +RENEWED LAUGHTER. HE MUMBLES INCOHERENTLY. REPORTERS COMPLAIN THAT THEY +CANNOT HEAR. +LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND WITHOUT LOOKING UP FROM THEIR NOTEBOOKS Loosen +his boots. +PROFESSOR MACHUGH FROM THE PRESSTABLE, COUGHS AND CALLS Cough it up, +man. Get it out in bits. +THE CROSSEXAMINATION PROCEEDS RE BLOOM AND THE BUCKET. A LARGE BUCKET. +BLOOM HIMSELF. BOWEL TROUBLE. IN BEAVER STREET GRIPE, YES. QUITE BAD. A +PLASTERER'S BUCKET. BY WALKING STIFFLEGGED. SUFFERED UNTOLD MISERY. +DEADLY AGONY. ABOUT NOON. LOVE OR BURGUNDY. YES, SOME SPINACH. CRUCIAL +MOMENT. HE DID NOT LOOK IN THE BUCKET NOBODY. RATHER A MESS. NOT +COMPLETELY. A Titbits BACK NUMBER. +UPROAR AND CATCALLS. BLOOM IN A TORN FROCKCOAT STAINED WITH WHITEWASH, +DINGED SILK HAT SIDEWAYS ON HIS HEAD, A STRIP OF STICKINGPLASTER ACROSS +HIS NOSE, TALKS INAUDIBLY. +J. J. O'MOLLOY IN BARRISTER'S GREY WIG AND STUFFGOWN, SPEAKING WITH A +VOICE OF PAINED PROTEST This is no place for indecent levity at the +expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a +beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My +client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a +stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up +misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by +hallucination, such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence being +quite permitted in my client's native place, the land of the Pharaoh. +PRIMA FACIE, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally +knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of by +Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I would deal +in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck and +somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he could a +tale unfoldone of the strangest that have ever been narrated between +the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from +cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian +extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact. +BLOOM BAREFOOT, PIGEONBREASTED, IN LASCAR'S VEST AND TROUSERS, +APOLOGETIC TOES TURNED IN, OPENS HIS TINY MOLE'S EYES AND LOOKS ABOUT HIM +DAZEDLY, PASSING A SLOW HAND ACROSS HIS FOREHEAD. THEN HE HITCHES HIS +BELT SAILOR FASHION AND WITH A SHRUG OF ORIENTAL OBEISANCE SALUTES THE +COURT, POINTING ONE THUMB HEAVENWARD. Him makee velly muchee fine night. +HE BEGINS TO LILT SIMPLY +Li li poo lil chile +Blingee pigfoot evly night +Payee two shilly ... +HE IS HOWLED DOWN. +J. J. O'MOLLOY HOTLY TO THE POPULACE This is a lonehand fight. By +Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this +fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has +superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically, +without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused was +not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered with. +The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own +daughter. BLOOM TAKES J. J. O'MOLLOY'S HAND AND RAISES IT TO HIS LIPS. +I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden +hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client, +an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to do +anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or cast a +stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible +for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her. He wants to go +straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know. He is down on his luck +at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive property at Agendath +Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown. TO +BLOOM I suggest that you will do the handsome thing. +BLOOM A penny in the pound. +THE IMAGE OF THE LAKE OF KINNERETH WITH BLURRED CATTLE CROPPING IN +SILVER HAZE IS PROJECTED ON THE WALL. MOSES DLUGACZ, FERRETEYED ALBINO, +IN BLUE DUNGAREES, STANDS UP IN THE GALLERY, HOLDING IN EACH HAND AN +ORANGE CITRON AND A PORK KIDNEY. +DLUGACZ HOARSELY Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.. +J. J. O'MOLLOY STEPS ON TO A LOW PLINTH AND HOLDS THE LAPEL OF HIS COAT +WITH SOLEMNITY. HIS FACE LENGTHENS, GROWS PALE AND BEARDED, WITH SUNKEN +EYES, THE BLOTCHES OF PHTHISIS AND HECTIC CHEEKBONES OF JOHN F. TAYLOR. +HE APPLIES HIS HANDKERCHIEF TO HIS MOUTH AND SCRUTINISES THE GALLOPING +TIDE OF ROSEPINK BLOOD. +J.J.O'MOLLOY ALMOST VOICELESSLY Excuse me. I am suffering from a +severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. +HE ASSUMES THE AVINE HEAD, FOXY MOUSTACHE AND PROBOSCIDAL ELOQUENCE OF +SEYMOUR BUSHE. When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that +the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of +soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar +the sacred benefit of the doubt. A PAPER WITH SOMETHING WRITTEN ON IT IS +HANDED INTO COURT. +BLOOM IN COURT DRESS Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman. +Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex lord +mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest ... +Queens of Dublin society. CARELESSLY I was just chatting this afternoon +at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, +astronomer royal at the levee. Sir Bob, I said ... +MRS YELVERTON BARRY IN LOWCORSAGED OPAL BALLDRESS AND ELBOWLENGTH IVORY +GLOVES, WEARING A SABLETRIMMED BRICKQUILTED DOLMAN, A COMB OF BRILLIANTS +AND PANACHE OF OSPREY IN HER HAIR Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an +anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North +Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He +said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box +of the THEATRE ROYAL at a command performance of LA CIGALE. I deeply +inflamed him, he said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct +myself at half past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He +offered to send me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de +Kock, entitled THE GIRL WITH THE THREE PAIRS OF STAYS. +MRS BELLINGHAM IN CAP AND SEAL CONEY MANTLE, WRAPPED UP TO THE NOSE, +STEPS OUT OF HER BROUGHAM AND SCANS THROUGH TORTOISESHELL QUIZZING +GLASSES WHICH SHE TAKES FROM INSIDE HER HUGE OPOSSUM MUFF Also to me. +Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my +carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the +cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and +the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a +bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had +it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information that it +was ablossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase +of the model farm. +MRS YELVERTON BARRY Shame on him +A CROWD OF SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS SURGES FORWARD +THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS SCREAMING Stop thief Hurrah there, +Bluebeard Three cheers for Ikey Mo +SECOND WATCH PRODUCES HANDCUFFS Here are the darbies. +MRS BELLINGHAM He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome +compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my +frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself +as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate +proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery +and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a +buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether +extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and +eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he +said, he could conjure up. He urged me stating that he felt it his +mission in life to urge me to defile the marriage bed, to commit +adultery at the earliest possible opportunity. +THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS IN AMAZON COSTUME, HARD HAT, +JACKBOOTS COCKSPURRED, VERMILION WAISTCOAT, FAWN MUSKETEER GAUNTLETS WITH +BRAIDED DRUMS, LONG TRAIN HELD UP AND HUNTING CROP WITH WHICH SHE STRIKES +HER WELT CONSTANTLY Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the +Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My +eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the +Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob CENTAUR. This +plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in +double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on +Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a +partially nude senorita, frail and lovely his wife, as he solemnly +assured me, taken by him from nature, practising illicit intercourse +with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do +likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored +me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he +richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious +horsewhipping. +MRS BELLINGHAM Me too. +MRS YELVERTON BARRY Me too. +SEVERAL HIGHLY RESPECTABLE DUBLIN LADIES HOLD UP IMPROPER LETTERS +RECEIVED FROM BLOOM. +THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS STAMPS HER JINGLING SPURS IN A SUDDEN +PAROXYSM OF FURY I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the +pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive. +BLOOM HIS EYES CLOSING, QUAILS EXPECTANTLY Here? HE SQUIRMS Again +HE PANTS CRINGING I love the danger. +THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS Very much so I'll make it hot for +you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that. +MRS BELLINGHAM Tan his breech well, the upstart Write the stars and +stripes on it +MRS YELVERTON BARRY Disgraceful There's no excuse for him A married +man +BLOOM All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling +glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation. +THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS LAUGHS DERISIVELY O, did you, my +fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your +life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained +for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury. +MRS BELLINGHAM SHAKES HER MUFF AND QUIZZINGGLASSES VINDICTIVELY Make +him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch +of his life. The cato'ninetails. Geld him. Vivisect him. +BLOOM SHUDDERING, SHRINKING, JOINS HIS HANDS WITH HANGDOG MIEN O +cold O shivery It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. +Let me off this once. HE OFFERS THE OTHER CHEEK +MRS YELVERTON BARRY SEVERELY Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys +He should be soundly trounced +THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS UNBUTTONING HER GAUNTLET VIOLENTLY +I'll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped To +dare address me I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I'll +dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. SHE +SWISHES HER HUNTINGCROP SAVAGELY IN THE AIR Take down his trousers +without loss of time. Come here, sir Quick Ready? +BLOOM TREMBLING, BEGINNING TO OBEY The weather has been so warm. +DAVY STEPHENS, RINGLETTED, PASSES WITH A BEVY OF BAREFOOT NEWSBOYS. +DAVY STEPHENS MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART and EVENING TELEGRAPH with +Saint Patrick's Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the +cuckolds in Dublin. +THE VERY REVEREND CANON O'HANLON IN CLOTH OF GOLD COPE ELEVATES AND +EXPOSES A MARBLE TIMEPIECE. BEFORE HIM FATHER CONROY AND THE REVEREND +JOHN HUGHES S.J. BEND LOW. +THE TIMEPIECE UNPORTALLING +Cuckoo. +Cuckoo. +Cuckoo. +THE BRASS QUOITS OF A BED ARE HEARD TO JINGLE. +THE QUOITS Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag. +A PANEL OF FOG ROLLS BACK RAPIDLY, REVEALING RAPIDLY IN THE JURYBOX THE +FACES OF MARTIN CUNNINGHAM, FOREMAN, SILKHATTED, JACK POWER, SIMON +DEDALUS, TOM KERNAN, NED LAMBERT, JOHN HENRY MENTON MYLES CRAWFORD, +LENEHAN, PADDY LEONARD, NOSEY FLYNN, M'COY AND THE FEATURELESS FACE OF A +NAMELESS ONE. +THE NAMELESS ONE Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her. +THE JURORS ALL THEIR HEADS TURNED TO HIS VOICE Really? +THE NAMELESS ONE SNARLS Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five. +THE JURORS ALL THEIR HEADS LOWERED IN ASSENT Most of us thought as +much. +FIRST WATCH He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted Jack +the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward. +SECOND WATCH AWED, WHISPERS And in black. A mormon. Anarchist. +THE CRIER LOUDLY Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a +wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public +nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of +assizes the most honourable ... +HIS HONOUR, SIR FREDERICK FALKINER, RECORDER OF DUBLIN, IN JUDICIAL GARB +OF GREY STONE RISES FROM THE BENCH, STONEBEARDED. HE BEARS IN HIS ARMS AN +UMBRELLA SCEPTRE. FROM HIS FOREHEAD ARISE STARKLY THE MOSAIC RAMSHORNS. +THE RECORDER I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid +Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous HE DONS THE BLACK CAP Let him +be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained +in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be +hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or +may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. A BLACK SKULLCAP +DESCENDS UPON HIS HEAD. +THE SUBSHERIFF LONG JOHN FANNING APPEARS, SMOKING A PUNGENT HENRY CLAY. +LONG JOHN FANNING SCOWLS AND CALLS WITH RICH ROLLING UTTERANCE Who'll +hang Judas Iscariot? +H. RUMBOLD, MASTER BARBER, IN A BLOODCOLOURED JERKIN AND TANNER'S APRON, +A ROPE COILED OVER HIS SHOULDER, MOUNTS THE BLOCK. A LIFE PRESERVER AND A +NAILSTUDDED BLUDGEON ARE STUCK IN HIS BELT. HE RUBS GRIMLY HIS GRAPPLING +HANDS, KNOBBED WITH KNUCKLEDUSTERS. +RUMBOLD TO THE RECORDER WITH SINISTER FAMILIARITY Hanging Harry, your +Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing. +THE BELLS OF GEORGE'S CHURCH TOLL SLOWLY, LOUD DARK IRON. +THE BELLS Heigho Heigho +BLOOM DESPERATELY Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. +Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. BREATHLESSLY Pelvic +basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. OVERCOME WITH EMOTION I left the +precincts. HE TURNS TO A FIGURE IN THE CROWD, APPEALING Hynes, may I +speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want +a little more ... +HYNES COLDLY You are a perfect stranger. +SECOND WATCH POINTS TO THE CORNER The bomb is here. +FIRST WATCH Infernal machine with a time fuse. +BLOOM No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral. +FIRST WATCH DRAWS HIS TRUNCHEON Liar +THE BEAGLE LIFTS HIS SNOUT, SHOWING THE GREY SCORBUTIC FACE OF PADDY +DIGNAM. HE HAS GNAWED ALL. HE EXHALES A PUTRID CARCASEFED BREATH. HE +GROWS TO HUMAN SIZE AND SHAPE. HIS DACHSHUND COAT BECOMES A BROWN +MORTUARY HABIT. HIS GREEN EYE FLASHES BLOODSHOT. HALF OF ONE EAR, ALL THE +NOSE AND BOTH THUMBS ARE GHOULEATEN. +PADDY DIGNAM IN A HOLLOW VOICE It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor +Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from +natural causes. +HE LIFTS HIS MUTILATED ASHEN FACE MOONWARDS AND BAYS LUGUBRIOUSLY. +BLOOM IN TRIUMPH You hear? +PADDY DIGNAM Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list +BLOOM The voice is the voice of Esau. +SECOND WATCH BLESSES HIMSELF How is that possible? +FIRST WATCH It is not in the penny catechism. +PADDY DIGNAM By metempsychosis. Spooks. +A VOICE O rocks. +PADDY DIGNAM EARNESTLY Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, +solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of Bachelor's Walk. +Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The +poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that +bottle of sherry. HE LOOKS ROUND HIM A lamp. I must satisfy an animal +need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me. +THE PORTLY FIGURE OF JOHN O'CONNELL, CARETAKER, STANDS FORTH, HOLDING A +BUNCH OF KEYS TIED WITH CRAPE. BESIDE HIM STANDS FATHER COFFEY, CHAPLAIN, +TOADBELLIED, WRYNECKED, IN A SURPLICE AND BANDANNA NIGHTCAP, HOLDING +SLEEPILY A STAFF TWISTED POPPIES. +FATHER COFFEY YAWNS, THEN CHANTS WITH A HOARSE CROAK Namine. Jacobs. +Vobiscuits. Amen. +JOHN O'CONNELL FOGHORNS STORMILY THROUGH HIS MEGAPHONE Dignam, Patrick +T, deceased. +PADDY DIGNAM WITH PRICKED UP EARS, WINCES Overtones. HE WRIGGLES +FORWARD AND PLACES AN EAR TO THE GROUND My master's voice +JOHN O'CONNELL Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. +Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one. +PADDY DIGNAM LISTENS WITH VISIBLE EFFORT, THINKING, HIS TAIL +STIFFPOINTCD, HIS EARS COCKED. +PADDY DIGNAM Pray for the repose of his soul. +HE WORMS DOWN THROUGH A COALHOLE, HIS BROWN HABIT TRAILING ITS TETHER +OVER RATTLING PEBBLES. AFTER HIM TODDLES AN OBESE GRANDFATHER RAT ON +FUNGUS TURTLE PAWS UNDER A GREY CARAPACE. DIGNAM'S VOICE, MUFFLED, IS +HEARD BAYING UNDER GROUND Dignam's dead and gone below. TOM ROCHFORD, +ROBINREDBREASTED, IN CAP AND BREECHES, JUMPS FROM HIS TWOCOLUMNED +MACHINE. +TOM ROCHFORD A HAND TO HIS BREASTBONE, BOWS Reuben J. A florin I find +him. HE FIXES THE MANHOLE WITH A RESOLUTE STARE My turn now on. Follow +me up to Carlow. +HE EXECUTES A DAREDEVIL SALMON LEAP IN THE AIR AND IS ENGULFED IN THE +COALHOLE. TWO DISCS ON THE COLUMNS WOBBLE, EYES OF NOUGHT. ALL RECEDES. +BLOOM PLODGES FORWARD AGAIN THROUGH THE SUMP. KISSES CHIRP AMID THE RIFTS +OF FOG A PIANO SOUNDS. HE STANDS BEFORE A LIGHTED HOUSE, LISTENING. THE +KISSES, WINGING FROM THEIR BOWERS FLY ABOUT HIM, TWITTERING, WARBLING, +COOING. +THE KISSES WARBLING Leo TWITTERING Icky licky micky sticky for Leo +COOING Coo coocoo Yummyyum, Womwom WARBLING Big comebig Pirouette +Leopopold TWITTERING Leeolee WARBLING O Leo +THEY RUSTLE, FLUTTER UPON HIS GARMENTS, ALIGHT, BRIGHT GIDDY FLECKS, +SILVERY SEQUINS. +BLOOM A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here. +ZOE HIGGINS, A YOUNG WHORE IN A SAPPHIRE SLIP, CLOSED WITH THREE BRONZE +BUCKLES, A SLIM BLACK VELVET FILLET ROUND HER THROAT, NODS, TRIPS DOWN +THE STEPS AND ACCOSTS HIM. +ZOE Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend. +BLOOM Is this Mrs Mack's? +ZOE No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse. +Mother Slipperslapper. FAMILIARLY She's on the job herself tonight with +the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son +in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today. SUSPICIOUSLY +You're not his father, are you? +BLOOM Not I +ZOE You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight? +HIS SKIN, ALERT, FEELS HER FINGERTIPS APPROACH. A HAND GLIDES OVER HIS +LEFT THIGH. +ZOE How's the nuts? +BLOOM Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. One +in a million my tailor, Mesias, says. +ZOE IN SUDDEN ALARM You've a hard chancre. +BLOOM Not likely. +ZOE I feel it. +HER HAND SLIDES INTO HIS LEFT TROUSER POCKET AND BRINGS OUT A HARD BLACK +SHRIVELLED POTATO. SHE REGARDS IT AND BLOOM WITH DUMB MOIST LIPS. +BLOOM A talisman. Heirloom. +ZOE For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh? +SHE PUTS THE POTATO GREEDILY INTO A POCKET THEN LINKS HIS ARM, CUDDLING +HIM WITH SUPPLE WARMTH. HE SMILES UNEASILY. SLOWLY, NOTE BY NOTE, +ORIENTAL MUSIC IS PLAYED. HE GAZES IN THE TAWNY CRYSTAL OF HER EYES, +RINGED WITH KOHOL. HIS SMILE SOFTENS. +ZOE You'll know me the next time. +BLOOM FORLORNLY I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to ... +GAZELLES ARE LEAPING, FEEDING ON THE MOUNTAINS. NEAR ARE LAKES. ROUND +THEIR SHORES FILE SHADOWS BLACK OF CEDARGROVES. AROMA RISES, A STRONG +HAIRGROWTH OF RESIN. IT BURNS, THE ORIENT, A SKY OF SAPPHIRE, CLEFT BY +THE BRONZE FLIGHT OF EAGLES. UNDER IT LIES THE WOMANCITY NUDE, WHITE, +STILL, COOL, IN LUXURY. A FOUNTAIN MURMURS AMONG DAMASK ROSES. MAMMOTH +ROSES MURMUR OF SCARLET WINEGRAPES. A WINE OF SHAME, LUST, BLOOD EXUDES, +STRANGELY MURMURING. +ZOE MURMURING SINGSONG WITH THE MUSIC, HER ODALISK LIPS LUSCIOUSLY +SMEARED WITH SALVE OF SWINEFAT AND ROSEWATER SCHORACH ANI WENOWACH, +BENOITH HIERUSHALOIM. +BLOOM FASCINATED I thought you were of good stock by your accent. +ZOE And you know what thought did? +SHE BITES HIS EAR GENTLY WITH LITTLE GOLDSTOPPED TEETH, SENDING ON HIM A +CLOYING BREATH OF STALE GARLIC. THE ROSES DRAW APART, DISCLOSE A +SEPULCHRE OF THE GOLD OF KINGS AND THEIR MOULDERING BONES. +BLOOM DRAWS BACK, MECHANICALLY CARESSING HER RIGHT BUB WITH A FLAT +AWKWARD HAND Are you a Dublin girl? +ZOE CATCHES A STRAY HAIR DEFTLY AND TWISTS IT TO HER COIL No bloody +fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot? +BLOOM AS BEFORE Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish +device. LEWDLY The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of +rank weed. +ZOE Go on. Make a stump speech out of it. +BLOOM IN WORKMAN'S CORDUROY OVERALLS, BLACK GANSY WITH RED FLOATING TIE +AND APACHE CAP Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh brought from +the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence +by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will +understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison a hundred years +before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. +Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life +MIDNIGHT CHIMES FROM DISTANT STEEPLES. +THE CHIMES Turn again, Leopold Lord mayor of Dublin +BLOOM IN ALDERMAN'S GOWN AND CHAIN Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, +Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from the +cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my +programme. CUI BONO? But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom +ship of finance ... +AN ELECTOR Three times three for our future chief magistrate +THE AURORA BOREALIS OF THE TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION LEAPS. +THE TORCHBEARERS Hooray +SEVERAL WELLKNOWN BURGESSES, CITY MAGNATES AND FREEMEN OF THE CITY SHAKE +HANDS WITH BLOOM AND CONGRATULATE HIM. TIMOTHY HARRINGTON, LATE THRICE +LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN, IMPOSING IN MAYORAL SCARLET, GOLD CHAIN AND WHITE +SILK TIE, CONFERS WITH COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK, LOCUM TENENS. THEY NOD +VIGOROUSLY IN AGREEMENT. +LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON IN SCARLET ROBE WITH MACE, GOLD MAYORAL +CHAIN AND LARGE WHITE SILK SCARF That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech be +printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was +born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare +hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated +Boulevard Bloom. +COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK Carried unanimously. +BLOOM IMPASSIONEDLY These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they +recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines +is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, +supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous +hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted +labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain +stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf +and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev ... +PROLONGED APPLAUSE. VENETIAN MASTS, MAYPOLES AND FESTAL ARCHES SPRING +UP. A STREAMER BEARING THE LEGENDS Cead Mile Failte AND Mah Ttob Melek +Israel SPANS THE STREET. ALL THE WINDOWS ARE THRONGED WITH SIGHTSEERS, +CHIEFLY LADIES. ALONG THE ROUTE THE REGIMENTS OF THE ROYAL DUBLIN +FUSILIERS, THE KING'S OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS, THE CAMERON HIGHLANDERS AND +THE WELSH FUSILIERS STANDING TO ATTENTION, KEEP BACK THE CROWD. BOYS FROM +HIGH SCHOOL ARE PERCHED ON THE LAMPPOSTS, TELEGRAPH POLES, WINDOWSILLS, +CORNICES, GUTTERS, CHIMNEYPOTS, RAILINGS, RAINSPOUTS, WHISTLING AND +CHEERING THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD APPEARS. A FIFE AND DRUM BAND IS HEARD +IN THE DISTANCE PLAYING THE KOL NIDRE. THE BEATERS APPROACH WITH IMPERIAL +EAGLES HOISTED, TRAILING BANNERS AND WAVING ORIENTAL PALMS. THE +CHRYSELEPHANTINE PAPAL STANDARD RISES HIGH, SURROUNDED BY PENNONS OF THE +CIVIC FLAG. THE VAN OF THE PROCESSION APPEARS HEADED BY JOHN HOWARD +PARNELL, CITY MARSHAL, IN A CHESSBOARD TABARD, THE ATHLONE POURSUIVANT +AND ULSTER KING OF ARMS. THEY ARE FOLLOWED BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOSEPH +HUTCHINSON, LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN, HIS LORDSHIP THE LORD MAYOR OF CORK, +THEIR WORSHIPS THE MAYORS OF LIMERICK, GALWAY, SLIGO AND WATERFORD, +TWENTYEIGHT IRISH REPRESENTATIVE PEERS, SIRDARS, GRANDEES AND MAHARAJAHS +BEARING THE CLOTH OF ESTATE, THE DUBLIN METROPOLITAN FIRE BRIGADE, THE +CHAPTER OF THE SAINTS OF FINANCE IN THEIR PLUTOCRATIC ORDER OF +PRECEDENCE, THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR, HIS EMINENCE MICHAEL CARDINAL +LOGUE, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH, PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND, HIS GRACE, THE MOST +REVEREND DR WILLIAM ALEXANDER, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH, PRIMATE OF ALL +IRELAND, THE CHIEF RABBI, THE PRESBYTERIAN MODERATOR, THE HEADS OF THE +BAPTIST, ANABAPTIST, METHODIST AND MORAVIAN CHAPELS AND THE HONORARY +SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. AFTER THEM MARCH THE GUILDS AND +TRADES AND TRAINBANDS WITH FLYING COLOURS COOPERS, BIRD FANCIERS, +MILLWRIGHTS, NEWSPAPER CANVASSERS, LAW SCRIVENERS, MASSEURS, VINTNERS, +TRUSSMAKERS, CHIMNEYSWEEPS, LARD REFINERS, TABINET AND POPLIN WEAVERS, +FARRIERS, ITALIAN WAREHOUSEMEN, CHURCH DECORATORS, BOOTJACK +MANUFACTURERS, UNDERTAKERS, SILK MERCERS, LAPIDARIES, SALESMASTERS, +CORKCUTTERS, ASSESSORS OF FIRE LOSSES, DYERS AND CLEANERS, EXPORT +BOTTLERS, FELLMONGERS, TICKETWRITERS, HERALDIC SEAL ENGRAVERS, HORSE +REPOSITORY HANDS, BULLION BROKERS, CRICKET AND ARCHERY OUTFITTERS, +RIDDLEMAKERS, EGG AND POTATO FACTORS, HOSIERS AND GLOVERS, PLUMBING +CONTRACTORS. AFTER THEM MARCH GENTLEMEN OF THE BEDCHAMBER, BLACK ROD, +DEPUTY GARTER, GOLD STICK, THE MASTER OF HORSE, THE LORD GREAT +CHAMBERLAIN, THE EARL MARSHAL, THE HIGH CONSTABLE CARRYING THE SWORD OF +STATE, SAINT STEPHEN'S IRON CROWN, THE CHALICE AND BIBLE. FOUR BUGLERS ON +FOOT BLOW A SENNET. BEEFEATERS REPLY, WINDING CLARIONS OF WELCOME. UNDER +AN ARCH OF TRIUMPH BLOOM APPEARS, BAREHEADED, IN A CRIMSON VELVET MANTLE +TRIMMED WITH ERMINE, BEARING SAINT EDWARD'S STAFF THE ORB AND SCEPTRE +WITH THE DOVE, THE CURTANA. HE IS SEATED ON A MILKWHITE HORSE WITH LONG +FLOWING CRIMSON TAIL, RICHLY CAPARISONED, WITH GOLDEN HEADSTALL. WILD +EXCITEMENT. THE LADIES FROM THEIR BALCONIES THROW DOWN ROSEPETALS. THE +AIR IS PERFUMED WITH ESSENCES. THE MEN CHEER. BLOOM'S BOYS RUN AMID THE +BYSTANDERS WITH BRANCHES OF HAWTHORN AND WRENBUSHES. +BLOOM'S BOYS +The wren, the wren, +The king of all birds, +Saint Stephen's his day +Was caught in the furze. +A BLACKSMITH MURMURS For the honour of God And is that Bloom? He +scarcely looks thirtyone. +A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest +reformer. Hats off +ALL UNCOVER THEIR HEADS. WOMEN WHISPER EAGERLY. +A MILLIONAIRESS RICHLY Isn't he simply wonderful? +A NOBLEWOMAN NOBLY All that man has seen +A FEMINIST MASCULINELY And done +A BELLHANGER A classic face He has the forehead of a thinker. +BLOOM'S WEATHER. A SUNBURST APPEARS IN THE NORTHWEST. +THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR I here present your undoubted emperor +president and kingchairman, the most serene and potent and very puissant +ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First +ALL God save Leopold the First +BLOOM IN DALMATIC AND PURPLE MANTLE, TO THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR, +WITH DIGNITY Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. +WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH IN PURPLE STOCK AND SHOVEL HAT Will you +to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in +Ireland and territories thereunto belonging? +BLOOM PLACING HIS RIGHT HAND ON HIS TESTICLES, SWEARS So may the +Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do. +MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH POURS A CRUSE OF HAIROIL OVER BLOOM'S +HEAD GAUDIUM MAGNUM ANNUNTIO VOBIS. HABEMUS CARNEFICEM. Leopold, +Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed +BLOOM ASSUMES A MANTLE OF CLOTH OF GOLD AND PUTS ON A RUBY RING. HE +ASCENDS AND STANDS ON THE STONE OF DESTINY. THE REPRESENTATIVE PEERS PUT +ON AT THE SAME TIME THEIR TWENTYEIGHT CROWNS. JOYBELLS RING IN CHRIST +CHURCH, SAINT PATRICK'S, GEORGE'S AND GAY MALAHIDE. MIRUS BAZAAR +FIREWORKS GO UP FROM ALL SIDES WITH SYMBOLICAL PHALLOPYROTECHNIC DESIGNS. +THE PEERS DO HOMAGE, ONE BY ONE, APPROACHING AND GENUFLECTING. +THE PEERS I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly +worship. +BLOOM HOLDS UP HIS RIGHT HAND ON WHICH SPARKLES THE KOHINOOR DIAMOND. +HIS PALFREY NEIGHS. IMMEDIATE SILENCE. WIRELESS INTERCONTINENTAL AND +INTERPLANETARY TRANSMITTERS ARE SET FOR RECEPTION OF MESSAGE. +BLOOM My subjects We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix +hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our +former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, +the splendour of night. +THE FORMER MORGANATIC SPOUSE OF BLOOM IS HASTILY REMOVED IN THE BLACK +MARIA. THE PRINCESS SELENE, IN MOONBLUE ROBES, A SILVER CRESCENT ON HER +HEAD, DESCENDS FROM A SEDAN CHAIR, BORNE BY TWO GIANTS. AN OUTBURST OF +CHEERING. +JOHN HOWARD PARNELL RAISES THE ROYAL STANDARD Illustrious Bloom +Successor to my famous brother +BLOOM EMBRACES JOHN HOWARD PARNELL We thank you from our heart, John, +for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our +common ancestors. +THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY IS PRESENTED TO HIM EMBODIED IN A CHARTER. THE +KEYS OF DUBLIN, CROSSED ON A CRIMSON CUSHION, ARE GIVEN TO HIM. HE SHOWS +ALL THAT HE IS WEARING GREEN SOCKS. +TOM KERNAN You deserve it, your honour. +BLOOM On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at +Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with +telling effect. Half a league onward They charge All is lost now Do we +yield? No We drive them headlong Lo We charge Deploying to the left +our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their +warcry BONAFIDE SABAOTH, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man. +THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS Hear Hear +JOHN WYSE NOLAN There's the man that got away James Stephens. +A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY Bravo +AN OLD RESIDENT You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you +are. +AN APPLEWOMAN He's a man like Ireland wants. +BLOOM My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell +you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall +ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem +in the Nova Hibernia of the future. +THIRTYTWO WORKMEN, WEARING ROSETTES, FROM ALL THE COUNTIES OF IRELAND, +UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF DERWAN THE BUILDER, CONSTRUCT THE NEW BLOOMUSALEM. +IT IS A COLOSSAL EDIFICE WITH CRYSTAL ROOF, BUILT IN THE SHAPE OF A HUGE +PORK KIDNEY, CONTAINING FORTY THOUSAND ROOMS. IN THE COURSE OF ITS +EXTENSION SEVERAL BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS ARE DEMOLISHED. GOVERNMENT +OFFICES ARE TEMPORARILY TRANSFERRED TO RAILWAY SHEDS. NUMEROUS HOUSES ARE +RAZED TO THE GROUND. THE INHABITANTS ARE LODGED IN BARRELS AND BOXES, ALL +MARKED IN RED WITH THE LETTERS L. B. SEVERAL PAUPERS FILL FROM A LADDER. +A PART OF THE WALLS OF DUBLIN, CROWDED WITH LOYAL SIGHTSEERS, COLLAPSES. +THE SIGHTSEERS DYING MORITURI TE SALUTANT. THEY DIE +A MAN IN A BROWN MACINTOSH SPRINGS UP THROUGH A TRAPDOOR. HE POINTS AN +ELONGATED FINGER AT BLOOM. +THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH Don't you believe a word he says. That man is +Leopold M'Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins. +BLOOM Shoot him Dog of a christian So much for M'Intosh +A CANNONSHOT. THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH DISAPPEARS. BLOOM WITH HIS +SCEPTRE STRIKES DOWN POPPIES. THE INSTANTANEOUS DEATHS OF MANY POWERFUL +ENEMIES, GRAZIERS, MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, MEMBERS OF STANDING COMMITTEES, +ARE REPORTED. BLOOM'S BODYGUARD DISTRIBUTE MAUNDY MONEY, COMMEMORATION +MEDALS, LOAVES AND FISHES, TEMPERANCE BADGES, EXPENSIVE HENRY CLAY +CIGARS, FREE COWBONES FOR SOUP, RUBBER PRESERVATIVES IN SEALED ENVELOPES +TIED WITH GOLD THREAD, BUTTER SCOTCH, PINEAPPLE ROCK, billets doux IN THE +FORM OF COCKED HATS, READYMADE SUITS, PORRINGERS OF TOAD IN THE HOLE, +BOTTLES OF JEYES' FLUID, PURCHASE STAMPS, DAYS' INDULGENCES, SPURIOUS +COINS, DAIRYFED PORK SAUSAGES, THEATRE PASSES, SEASON TICKETS AVAILABLE +FOR ALL TRAMLINES, COUPONS OF THE ROYAL AND PRIVILEGED HUNGARIAN LOTTERY, +PENNY DINNER COUNTERS, CHEAP REPRINTS OF THE WORLD'S TWELVE WORST BOOKS +FROGGY AND FRITZ POLITIC, CARE OF THE BABY INFANTILIC, MEALS FOR +/ CULINIC, WAS JESUS A SUN MYTH? HISTORIC, EXPEL THAT PAIN MEDIC, +INFANT'S COMPENDIUM OF THE UNIVERSE COSMIC, LET'S ALL CHORTLE +HILARIC, CANVASSER'S VADE MECUM JOURNALIC, LOVELETTERS OF MOTHER +ASSISTANT EROTIC, WHO'S WHO IN SPACE ASTRIC, SONGS THAT REACHED OUR +HEART MELODIC, PENNYWISE'S WAY TO WEALTH PARSIMONIC. A GENERAL RUSH +AND SCRAMBLE. WOMEN PRESS FORWARD TO TOUCH THE HEM OF BLOOM'S ROBE. THE +LADY GWENDOLEN DUBEDAT BURSTS THROUGH THE THRONG, LEAPS ON HIS HORSE AND +KISSES HIM ON BOTH CHEEKS AMID GREAT ACCLAMATION. A MAGNESIUM FLASHLIGHT +PHOTOGRAPH IS TAKEN. BABES AND SUCKLINGS ARE HELD UP. +THE WOMEN Little father Little father +THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS +Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, +Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone. +BLOOM, BENDING DOWN, POKES BABY BOARDMAN GENTLY IN THE STOMACH. +BABY BOARDMAN HICCUPS, CURDLED MILK FLOWING FROM HIS MOUTH Hajajaja. +BLOOM SHAKING HANDS WITH A BLIND STRIPLING My more than Brother +PLACING HIS ARMS ROUND THE SHOULDERS OF AN OLD COUPLE Dear old friends +HE PLAYS PUSSY FOURCORNERS WITH RAGGED BOYS AND GIRLS Peep Bopeep HE +WHEELS TWINS IN A PERAMBULATOR Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? HE +PERFORMS JUGGLER'S TRICKS, DRAWS RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO +AND VIOLET SILK HANDKERCHIEFS FROM HIS MOUTH Roygbiv. feet per +second. HE CONSOLES A WIDOW Absence makes the heart grow younger. HE +DANCES THE HIGHLAND FLING WITH GROTESQUE ANTICS Leg it, ye devils HE +KISSES THE BEDSORES OF A PALSIED VETERAN Honourable wounds HE TRIPS UP +A FIT POLICEMAN U. p up. U. p up. HE WHISPERS IN THE EAR OF A +BLUSHING WAITRESS AND LAUGHS KINDLY Ah, naughty, naughty HE EATS A RAW +TURNIP OFFERED HIM BY MAURICE BUTTERLY, FARMER Fine Splendid HE +REFUSES TO ACCEPT THREE SHILLINGS OFFERED HIM BY JOSEPH HYNES, +JOURNALIST My dear fellow, not at all HE GIVES HIS COAT TO A BEGGAR +Please accept. HE TAKES PART IN A STOMACH RACE WITH ELDERLY MALE AND +FEMALE CRIPPLES Come on, boys Wriggle it, girls +THE CITIZEN CHOKED WITH EMOTION, BRUSHES ASIDE A TEAR IN HIS EMERALD +MUFFLER May the good God bless him +THE RAMS' HORNS SOUND FOR SILENCE. THE STANDARD OF ZION IS HOISTED. +BLOOM UNCLOAKS IMPRESSIVELY, REVEALING OBESITY, UNROLLS A PAPER AND +READS SOLEMNLY Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom +Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim +Meshuggah Talith. +AN OFFICIAL TRANSLATION IS READ BY JIMMY HENRY, ASSISTANT TOWN CLERK. +JIMMY HENRY The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic +Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal +advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. +Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal +Era. +PADDY LEONARD What am I to do about my rates and taxes? +BLOOM Pay them, my friend. +PADDY LEONARD Thank you. +NOSEY FLYNN Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance? +BLOOM OBDURATELY Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are +bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five +pounds. +J. J. O'MOLLOY A Daniel did I say? Nay A Peter O'Brien +NOSEY FLYNN Where do I draw the five pounds? +PISSER BURKE For bladder trouble? +BLOOM +ACID. NIT. HYDROCHLOR. DIL., minims +TINCT. NUX VOM., minims +EXTR. TARAXEL. IIQ., minims. +AQ. DIS. TER IN DIE. +CHRIS CALLINAN What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of +Aldebaran? +BLOOM Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II. +JOE HYNES Why aren't you in uniform? +BLOOM When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the +Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours? +BEN DOLLARD Pansies? +BLOOM Embellish beautify suburban gardens. +BEN DOLLARD When twins arrive? +BLOOM Father pater, dad starts thinking. +LARRY O'ROURKE An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember me, +sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen of +stout for the missus. +BLOOM COLDLY You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no +presents. +CROFTON This is indeed a festivity. +BLOOM SOLEMNLY You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament. +ALEXANDER KEYES When will we have our own house of keys? +BLOOM I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten +commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile. +Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. +Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and +night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy +must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, +bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal +brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. +Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay +state. +O'MADDEN BURKE Free fox in a free henroost. +DAVY BYRNE YAWNING Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach +BLOOM Mixed races and mixed marriage. +LENEHAN What about mixed bathing? +BLOOM EXPLAINS TO THOSE NEAR HIM HIS SCHEMES FOR SOCIAL REGENERATION. +ALL AGREE WITH HIM. THE KEEPER OF THE KILDARE STREET MUSEUM APPEARS, +DRAGGING A LORRY ON WHICH ARE THE SHAKING STATUES OF SEVERAL NAKED +GODDESSES, VENUS CALLIPYGE, VENUS PANDEMOS, VENUS METEMPSYCHOSIS, AND +PLASTER FIGURES, ALSO NAKED, REPRESENTING THE NEW NINE MUSES, COMMERCE, +OPERATIC MUSIC, AMOR, PUBLICITY, MANUFACTURE, LIBERTY OF SPEECH, PLURAL +VOTING, GASTRONOMY, PRIVATE HYGIENE, SEASIDE CONCERT ENTERTAINMENTS, +PAINLESS OBSTETRICS AND ASTRONOMY FOR THE PEOPLE. +FATHER FARLEY He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian +seeking to overthrow our holy faith. +MRS RIORDAN TEARS UP HER WILL I'm disappointed in you You bad man +MOTHER GROGAN REMOVES HER BOOT TO THROW IT AT BLOOM You beast You +abominable person +NOSEY FLYNN Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs. +BLOOM WITH ROLLICKING HUMOUR +I vowed that I never would leave her, +She turned out a cruel deceiver. +With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. +HOPPY HOLOHAN Good old Bloom There's nobody like him after all. +PADDY LEONARD Stage Irishman +BLOOM What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of +Casteele. LAUGHTER. +LENEHAN Plagiarist Down with Bloom +THE VEILED SIBYL ENTHUSIASTICALLY I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it. I +believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest +man on earth. +BLOOM WINKS AT THE BYSTANDERS I bet she's a bonny lassie. +THEODORE PUREFOY IN FISHINGCAP AND OILSKIN JACKET He employs a +mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature. +THE VEILED SIBYL STABS HERSELF My hero god SHE DIES +MANY MOST ATTRACTIVE AND ENTHUSIASTIC WOMEN ALSO COMMIT SUICIDE BY +STABBING, DROWNING, DRINKING PRUSSIC ACID, ACONITE, ARSENIC, OPENING +THEIR VEINS, REFUSING FOOD, CASTING THEMSELVES UNDER STEAMROLLERS, FROM +THE TOP OF NELSON'S PILLAR, INTO THE GREAT VAT OF GUINNESS'S BREWERY, +ASPHYXIATING THEMSELVES BY PLACING THEIR HEADS IN GASOVENS, HANGING +THEMSELVES IN STYLISH GARTERS, LEAPING FROM WINDOWS OF DIFFERENT +STOREYS. +ALEXANDER J DOWIE VIOLENTLY Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the +man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. +A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes +gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of +the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with +infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of +the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake +faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban +THE MOB Lynch him Roast him He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox +MOTHER GROGAN THROWS HER BOOT AT BLOOM. SEVERAL SHOPKEEPERS FROM UPPER +AND LOWER DORSET STREET THROW OBJECTS OF LITTLE OR NO COMMERCIAL VALUE, +HAMBONES, CONDENSED MILK TINS, UNSALEABLE CABBAGE, STALE BREAD, SHEEP'S +TAILS, ODD PIECES OF FAT. +BLOOM EXCITEDLY This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By +heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow It was my brother Henry. He +is my double. He lives in number Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper, +has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, SGENL INN BAN BATA COISDE +GAN CAPALL. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, +to give medical testimony on my behalf. +DR MULLIGAN IN MOTOR JERKIN, GREEN MOTORGOGGLES ON HIS BROW Dr Bloom +is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private +asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is +present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have +been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of +chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely +bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed +rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has +temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against +than sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application +of the acid test to anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I +declare him to be VIRGO INTACTA. +BLOOM HOLDS HIS HIGH GRADE HAT OVER HIS GENITAL ORGANS. +DR MADDEN Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming +generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in +spirits of wine in the national teratological museum. +DR CROTTHERS I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. +Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent. +DR PUNCH COSTELLO The FETOR JUDAICUS is most perceptible. +DR DIXON READS A BILL OF HEALTH Professor Bloom is a finished example +of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have +found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the +whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense. He has written a +really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the +Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is +practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw +litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears +a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges +himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass +misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a +very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most +sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is +about to have a baby. +GENERAL COMMOTION AND COMPASSION. WOMEN FAINT. A WEALTHY AMERICAN MAKES +A STREET COLLECTION FOR BLOOM. GOLD AND SILVER COINS, BLANK CHEQUES, +BANKNOTES, JEWELS, TREASURY BONDS, MATURING BILLS OF EXCHANGE, I. O. U'S, +WEDDING RINGS, WATCHCHAINS, LOCKETS, NECKLACES AND BRACELETS ARE RAPIDLY +COLLECTED. +BLOOM O, I so want to be a mother. +MRS THORNTON IN NURSETENDER'S GOWN Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be +soon over it. Tight, dear. +BLOOM EMBRACES HER TIGHTLY AND BEARS EIGHT MALE YELLOW AND WHITE +CHILDREN. THEY APPEAR ON A REDCARPETED STAIRCASE ADORNED WITH EXPENSIVE +PLANTS. ALL THE OCTUPLETS ARE HANDSOME, WITH VALUABLE METALLIC FACES, +WELLMADE, RESPECTABLY DRESSED AND WELLCONDUCTED, SPEAKING FIVE MODERN +LANGUAGES FLUENTLY AND INTERESTED IN VARIOUS ARTS AND SCIENCES. EACH HAS +HIS NAME PRINTED IN LEGIBLE LETTERS ON HIS SHIRTFRONT NASODORO, +GOLDFINGER, CHRYSOSTOMOS, MAINDOREE, SILVERSMILE, SILBERSELBER, +VIFARGENT, PANARGYROS. THEY ARE IMMEDIATELY APPOINTED TO POSITIONS OF +HIGH PUBLIC TRUST IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AS MANAGING DIRECTORS OF +BANKS, TRAFFIC MANAGERS OF RAILWAYS, CHAIRMEN OF LIMITED LIABILITY +COMPANIES, VICECHAIRMEN OF HOTEL SYNDICATES. +A VOICE Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David? +BLOOM DARKLY You have said it. +BROTHER BUZZ Then perform a miracle like Father Charles. +BANTAM LYONS Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger. +BLOOM WALKS ON A NET, COVERS HIS LEFT EYE WITH HIS LEFT EAR, PASSES +THROUGH SEVERAL WALLS, CLIMBS NELSON'S PILLAR, HANGS FROM THE TOP LEDGE +BY HIS EYELIDS, EATS TWELVE DOZEN OYSTERS SHELLS INCLUDED, HEALS +SEVERAL SUFFERERS FROM KING'S EVIL, CONTRACTS HIS FACE SO AS TO RESEMBLE +MANY HISTORICAL PERSONAGES, LORD BEACONSFIELD, LORD BYRON, WAT TYLER, +MOSES OF EGYPT, MOSES MAIMONIDES, MOSES MENDELSSOHN, HENRY IRVING, RIP +VAN WINKLE, KOSSUTH, JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, BARON LEOPOLD ROTHSCHILD, +ROBINSON CRUSOE, SHERLOCK HOLMES, PASTEUR, TURNS EACH FOOT SIMULTANEOUSLY +IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS, BIDS THE TIDE TURN BACK, ECLIPSES THE SUN BY +EXTENDING HIS LITTLE FINGER. +BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO IN PAPAL ZOUAVE'S UNIFORM, STEEL CUIRASSES AS +BREASTPLATE, ARMPLATES, THIGHPLATES, LEGPLATES, LARGE PROFANE MOUSTACHES +AND BROWN PAPER MITRE LEOPOLDI AUTEM GENERATIO. Moses begat Noah and +Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat +Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and +Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat +MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and +Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli +and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy +Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell Magnus and +O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat ben Maimun and ben +Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor +begat JonesSmith and JonesSmith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich +begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme +begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom ET +VOCABITUR NOMEN EIUS EMMANUEL. +A DEADHAND WRITES ON THE WALL Bloom is a cod. +CRAB IN BUSHRANGER'S KIT What did you do in the cattlecreep behind +Kilbarrack? +A FEMALE INFANT SHAKES A RATTLE And under Ballybough bridge? +A HOLLYBUSH And in the devil's glen? +BLOOM BLUSHES FURIOUSLY ALL OVER FROM FRONS TO NATES, THREE TEARS +FILLING FROM HIS LEFT EYE Spare my past. +THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS IN BODYCOATS, KNEEBREECHES, WITH DONNYBROOK +FAIR SHILLELAGHS Sjambok him +BLOOM WITH ASSES' EARS SEATS HIMSELF IN THE PILLORY WITH CROSSED ARMS, +HIS FEET PROTRUDING. HE WHISTLES Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. ARTANE +ORPHANS, JOINING HANDS, CAPER ROUND HIM. GIRLS OF THE PRISON GATE +MISSION, JOINING HANDS, CAPER ROUND IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. +THE ARTANE ORPHANS +You hig, you hog, you dirty dog +You think the ladies love you +THE PRISON GATE GIRLS +If you see Kay +Tell him he may +See you in tea +Tell him from me. +HORNBLOWER IN EPHOD AND HUNTINGCAP, ANNOUNCES And he shall carry the +sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and +to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, +all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham. +ALL THE PEOPLE CAST SOFT PANTOMIME STONES AT BLOOM. MANY BONAFIDE +TRAVELLERS AND OWNERLESS DOGS COME NEAR HIM AND DEFILE HIM. MASTIANSKY +AND CITRON APPROACH IN GABERDINES, WEARING LONG EARLOCKS. THEY WAG THEIR +BEARDS AT BLOOM. +MASTIANSKY AND CITRON Belial Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah +Abulafia Recant +GEORGE R MESIAS, BLOOM'S TAILOR, APPEARS, A TAILOR'S GOOSE UNDER HIS +ARM, PRESENTING A BILL +MESIAS To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. +BLOOM RUBS HIS HANDS CHEERFULLY Just like old times. Poor Bloom +REUBEN J DODD, BLACKBEARDED ISCARIOT, BAD SHEPHERD, BEARING ON HIS +SHOULDERS THE DROWNED CORPSE OF HIS SON, APPROACHES THE PILLORY. +REUBEN J WHISPERS HOARSELY The squeak is out. A split is gone for the +flatties. Nip the first rattler. +THE FIRE BRIGADE Pflaap +BROTHER BUZZ INVESTS BLOOM IN A YELLOW HABIT WITH EMBROIDERY OF PAINTED +FLAMES AND HIGH POINTED HAT. HE PLACES A BAG OF GUNPOWDER ROUND HIS NECK +AND HANDS HIM OVER TO THE CIVIL POWER, SAYING Forgive him his +trespasses. +LIEUTENANT MYERS OF THE DUBLIN FIRE BRIGADE BY GENERAL REQUEST SETS FIRE +TO BLOOM. LAMENTATIONS. +THE CITIZEN Thank heaven +BLOOM IN A SEAMLESS GARMENT MARKED I. H. S. STANDS UPRIGHT AMID PHOENIX +FLAMES Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin. +HE EXHIBITS TO DUBLIN REPORTERS TRACES OF BURNING. THE DAUGHTERS OF +ERIN, IN BLACK GARMENTS, WITH LARGE PRAYERBOOKS AND LONG LIGHTED CANDLES +IN THEIR HANDS, KNEEL DOWN AND PRAY. +THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN +Kidney of Bloom, pray for us +Flower of the Bath, pray for us +Mentor of Menton, pray for us +Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us +Charitable Mason, pray for us +Wandering Soap, pray for us +Sweets of Sin, pray for us +Music without Words, pray for us +Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us +Friend of all Frillies, pray for us +Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us +Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us. +A CHOIR OF SIX HUNDRED VOICES, CONDUCTED BY VINCENT O'BRIEN, SINGS THE +CHORUS FROM HANDEL'S MESSIAH ALLELUIA FOR THE LORD GOD OMNIPOTENT +REIGNETH, ACCOMPANIED ON THE ORGAN BY JOSEPH GLYNN. BLOOM BECOMES MUTE, +SHRUNKEN, CARBONISED. +ZOE Talk away till you're black in the face. +BLOOM IN CAUBEEN WITH CLAY PIPE STUCK IN THE BAND, DUSTY BROGUES, AN +EMIGRANT'S RED HANDKERCHIEF BUNDLE IN HIS HAND, LEADING A BLACK BOGOAK +PIG BY A SUGAUN, WITH A SMILE IN HIS EYE Let me be going now, woman of +the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father +and mother of a bating. WITH A TEAR IN HIS EYE All insanity. +Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not +to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. HE +GAZES FAR AWAY MOURNFULLY I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The +blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. HE BREATHES SOFTLY No +more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell. +ZOE STIFFLY, HER FINGER IN HER NECKFILLET Honest? Till the next time. +SHE SNEERS Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too +quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts +BLOOM BITTERLY Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle. I'm +sick of it. Let everything rip. +ZOE IN SUDDEN SULKS I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding +whore a chance. +BLOOM REPENTANTLY I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. +Where are you from? London? +ZOE GLIBLY Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I'm Yorkshire +born. SHE HOLDS HIS HAND WHICH IS FEELING FOR HER NIPPLE I say, Tommy +Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time? +Ten shillings? +BLOOM SMILES, NODS SLOWLY More, houri, more. +ZOE And more's mother? SHE PATS HIM OFFHANDEDLY WITH VELVET PAWS Are +you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll peel +off. +BLOOM FEELING HIS OCCIPUT DUBIOUSLY WITH THE UNPARALLELED EMBARRASSMENT +OF A HARASSED PEDLAR GAUGING THE SYMMETRY OF HER PEELED PEARS Somebody +would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster. +EARNESTLY You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you. +ZOE FLATTERED What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. SHE +PATS HIM Come. +BLOOM Laughing witch The hand that rocks the cradle. +ZOE Babby +BLOOM IN BABYLINEN AND PELISSE, BIGHEADED, WITH A CAUL OF DARK HAIR, +FIXES BIG EYES ON HER FLUID SLIP AND COUNTS ITS BRONZE BUCKLES WITH A +CHUBBY FINGER, HIS MOIST TONGUE LOLLING AND LISPING One two tlee tlee +tlwo tlone. +THE BUCKLES Love me. Love me not. Love me. +ZOE Silent means consent. WITH LITTLE PARTED TALONS SHE CAPTURES HIS +HAND, HER FOREFINGER GIVING TO HIS PALM THE PASSTOUCH OF SECRET MONITOR, +LURING HIM TO DOOM. Hot hands cold gizzard. +HE HESITATES AMID SCENTS, MUSIC, TEMPTATIONS. SHE LEADS HIM TOWARDS THE +STEPS, DRAWING HIM BY THE ODOUR OF HER ARMPITS, THE VICE OF HER PAINTED +EYES, THE RUSTLE OF HER SLIP IN WHOSE SINUOUS FOLDS LURKS THE LION REEK +OF ALL THE MALE BRUTES THAT HAVE POSSESSED HER. +THE MALE BRUTES EXHALING SULPHUR OF RUT AND DUNG AND RAMPING IN THEIR +LOOSEBOX, FAINTLY ROARING, THEIR DRUGGED HEADS SWAYING TO AND FRO Good +ZOE AND BLOOM REACH THE DOORWAY WHERE TWO SISTER WHORES ARE SEATED. THEY +EXAMINE HIM CURIOUSLY FROM UNDER THEIR PENCILLED BROWS AND SMILE TO HIS +HASTY BOW. HE TRIPS AWKWARDLY. +ZOE HER LUCKY HAND INSTANTLY SAVING HIM Hoopsa Don't fall upstairs. +BLOOM The just man falls seven times. HE STANDS ASIDE AT THE THRESHOLD +After you is good manners. +ZOE Ladies first, gentlemen after. +SHE CROSSES THE THRESHOLD. HE HESITATES. SHE TURNS AND, HOLDING OUT HER +HANDS, DRAWS HIM OVER. HE HOPS. ON THE ANTLERED RACK OF THE HALL HANG A +MAN 'S HAT AND WATERPROOF. BLOOM UNCOVERS HIMSELF BUT, SEEING THEM, +FROWNS, THEN SMILES, PREOCCUPIED. A DOOR ON THE RETURN LANDING IS FLUNG +OPEN. A MAN IN PURPLE SHIRT AND GREY TROUSERS, BROWNSOCKED, PASSES WITH +AN APE'S GAIT, HIS BALD HEAD AND GOATEE BEARD UPHELD, HUGGING A FULL +WATERJUGJAR, HIS TWOTAILED BLACK BRACES DANGLING AT HEELS. AVERTING HIS +FACE QUICKLY BLOOM BENDS TO EXAMINE ON THE HALLTABLE THE SPANIEL EYES OF +A RUNNING FOX THEN, HIS LIFTED HEAD SNIFFING, FOLLOWS ZOE INTO THE +MUSICROOM. A SHADE OF MAUVE TISSUEPAPER DIMS THE LIGHT OF THE CHANDELIER. +ROUND AND ROUND A MOTH FLIES, COLLIDING, ESCAPING. THE FLOOR IS COVERED +WITH AN OILCLOTH MOSAIC OF JADE AND AZURE AND CINNABAR RHOMBOIDS. +FOOTMARKS ARE STAMPED OVER IT IN ALL SENSES, HEEL TO HEEL, HEEL TO +HOLLOW, TOE TO TOE, FEET LOCKED, A MORRIS OF SHUFFLING FEET WITHOUT BODY +PHANTOMS, ALL IN A SCRIMMAGE HIGGLEDYPIGGLEDY. THE WALLS ARE TAPESTRIED +WITH A PAPER OF YEWFRONDS AND CLEAR GLADES. IN THE GRATE IS SPREAD A +SCREEN OF PEACOCK FEATHERS. LYNCH SQUATS CROSSLEGGED ON THE HEARTHRUG OF +MATTED HAIR, HIS CAP BACK TO THE FRONT. WITH A WAND HE BEATS TIME SLOWLY. +KITTY RICKETTS, A BONY PALLID WHORE IN NAVY COSTUME, DOESKIN GLOVES +ROLLED BACK FROM A CORAL WRISTLET, A CHAIN PURSE IN HER HAND, SITS +PERCHED ON THE EDGE OF THE TABLE SWINGING HER LEG AND GLANCING AT HERSELF +IN THE GILT MIRROR OVER THE MANTELPIECE. A TAG OF HER CORSETLACE HANGS +SLIGHTLY BELOW HER JACKET. LYNCH INDICATES MOCKINGLY THE COUPLE AT THE +PIANO. +KITTY COUGHS BEHIND HER HAND She's a bit imbecillic. SHE SIGNS WITH A +WAGGLING FOREFINGER Blemblem. LYNCH LIFTS UP HER SKIRT AND WHITE +PETTICOAT WITH HIS WAND SHE SETTLES THEM DOWN QUICKLY. Respect yourself. +SHE HICCUPS, THEN BENDS QUICKLY HER SAILOR HAT UNDER WHICH HER HAIR +GLOWS, RED WITH HENNA O, excuse +ZOE More limelight, Charley. SHE GOES TO THE CHANDELIER AND TURNS THE +GAS FULL COCK +KITTY PEERS AT THE GASJET What ails it tonight? +LYNCH DEEPLY Enter a ghost and hobgoblins. +ZOE Clap on the back for Zoe. +THE WAND IN LYNCH'S HAND FLASHES A BRASS POKER. STEPHEN STANDS AT THE +PIANOLA ON WHICH SPRAWL HIS HAT AND ASHPLANT. WITH TWO FINGERS HE REPEATS +ONCE MORE THE SERIES OF EMPTY FIFTHS. FLORRY TALBOT, A BLOND FEEBLE +GOOSEFAT WHORE IN A TATTERDEMALION GOWN OF MILDEWED STRAWBERRY, LOLLS +SPREADEAGLE IN THE SOFACORNER, HER LIMP FOREARM PENDENT OVER THE BOLSTER, +LISTENING. A HEAVY STYE DROOPS OVER HER SLEEPY EYELID. +KITTY HICCUPS AGAIN WITH A KICK OF HER HORSED FOOT O, excuse +ZOE PROMPTLY Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift. +KITTY RICKETTS BENDS HER HEAD. HER BOA UNCOILS, SLIDES, GLIDES OVER HER +SHOULDER, BACK, ARM, CHAIR TO THE GROUND. LYNCH LIFTS THE CURLED +CATERPILLAR ON HIS WAND. SHE SNAKES HER NECK, NESTLING. STEPHEN GLANCES +BEHIND AT THE SQUATTED FIGURE WITH ITS CAP BACK TO THE FRONT. +STEPHEN As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto +Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an +old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate COELA ENARRANT GLORIAM DOMINI. It +is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and +mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's +that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the +stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his almightiness. +MAIS NOM DE NOM, that is another pair of trousers. JETEZ LA GOURME. FAUT +QUE JEUNESSE SE PASSE. HE STOPS, POINTS AT LYNCH'S CAP, SMILES, LAUGHS +Which side is your knowledge bump? +THE CAP WITH SATURNINE SPLEEN Bah It is because it is. Woman's +reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of +life. Bah +STEPHEN You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. +How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone +THE CAP Bah +STEPHEN Here's another for you. HE FROWNS The reason is because the +fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible +interval which ... +THE CAP Which? Finish. You can't. +STEPHEN WITH AN EFFORT Interval which. Is the greatest possible +ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which. +THE CAP Which? +OUTSIDE THE GRAMOPHONE BEGINS TO BLARE The Holy City. +STEPHEN ABRUPTLY What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse +not itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having +itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait +a second. Damn that fellow's noise in the street. Self which it itself +was ineluctably preconditioned to become. ECCO +LYNCH WITH A MOCKING WHINNY OF LAUGHTER GRINS AT BLOOM AND ZOE HIGGINS +What a learned speech, eh? +ZOE BRISKLY God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten. +WITH OBESE STUPIDITY FLORRY TALBOT REGARDS STEPHEN. +FLORRY They say the last day is coming this summer. +KITTY No +ZOE EXPLODES IN LAUGHTER Great unjust God +FLORRY OFFENDED Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my +foot's tickling. +RAGGED BAREFOOT NEWSBOYS, JOGGING A WAGTAIL KITE, PATTER PAST, YELLING. +THE NEWSBOYS Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea +serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist. +STEPHEN TURNS AND SEES BLOOM. +STEPHEN A time, times and half a time. +REUBEN I ANTICHRIST, WANDERING JEW, A CLUTCHING HAND OPEN ON HIS SPINE, +STUMPS FORWARD. ACROSS HIS LOINS IS SLUNG A PILGRIM'S WALLET FROM WHICH +PROTRUDE PROMISSORY NOTES AND DISHONOURED BILLS. ALOFT OVER HIS SHOULDER +HE BEARS A LONG BOATPOLE FROM THE HOOK OF WHICH THE SODDEN HUDDLED MASS +OF HIS ONLY SON, SAVED FROM LIFFEY WATERS, HANGS FROM THE SLACK OF ITS +BREECHES. A HOBGOBLIN IN THE IMAGE OF PUNCH COSTELLO, HIPSHOT, +CROOKBACKED, HYDROCEPHALIC, PROGNATHIC WITH RECEDING FOREHEAD AND ALLY +SLOPER NOSE, TUMBLES IN SOMERSAULTS THROUGH THE GATHERING DARKNESS. +ALL What? +THE HOBGOBLIN HIS JAWS CHATTERING, CAPERS TO AND FRO, GOGGLING HIS +EYES, SQUEAKING, KANGAROOHOPPING WITH OUTSTRETCHED CLUTCHING ARMS, THEN +ALL AT ONCE THRUSTS HIS LIPLESS FACE THROUGH THE FORK OF HIS THIGHS IL +VIENT C'EST MOI L'HOMME QUI RIT L'HOMME PRIMIGENE HE WHIRLS ROUND +AND ROUND WITH DERVISH HOWLS SIEURS ET DAMES, FAITES VOS JEUX HE +CROUCHES JUGGLING. TINY ROULETTE PLANETS FLY FROM HIS HANDS. LES JEUX +SONT FAITS THE PLANETS RUSH TOGETHER, UTTERING CREPITANT CRACKS RIEN +VA PLUS THE PLANETS, BUOYANT BALLOONS, SAIL SWOLLEN UP AND AWAY. HE +SPRINGS OFF INTO VACUUM. +FLORRY SINKING INTO TORPOR, CROSSING HERSELF SECRETLY The end of the +world +A FEMALE TEPID EFFLUVIUM LEAKS OUT FROM HER. NEBULOUS OBSCURITY OCCUPIES +SPACE. THROUGH THE DRIFTING FOG WITHOUT THE GRAMOPHONE BLARES OVER COUGHS +AND FEETSHUFFLING. +THE GRAMOPHONE Jerusalem +Open your gates and sing +Hosanna ... +A ROCKET RUSHES UP THE SKY AND BURSTS. A WHITE STAR FILLS FROM IT, +PROCLAIMING THE CONSUMMATION OF ALL THINGS AND SECOND COMING OF ELIJAH. +ALONG AN INFINITE INVISIBLE TIGHTROPE TAUT FROM ZENITH TO NADIR THE END +OF THE WORLD, A TWOHEADED OCTOPUS IN GILLIE'S KILTS, BUSBY AND TARTAN +FILIBEGS, WHIRLS THROUGH THE MURK, HEAD OVER HEELS, IN THE FORM OF THE +THREE LEGS OF MAN. +THE END OF THE WORLD WITH A SCOTCH ACCENT Wha'll dance the keel row, +the keel row, the keel row? +OVER THE POSSING DRIFT AND CHOKING BREATHCOUGHS, ELIJAH'S VOICE, HARSH +AS A CORNCRAKE'S, JARS ON HIGH. PERSPIRING IN A LOOSE LAWN SURPLICE WITH +FUNNEL SLEEVES HE IS SEEN, VERGERFACED, ABOVE A ROSTRUM ABOUT WHICH THE +BANNER OF OLD GLORY IS DRAPED. HE THUMPS THE PARAPET. +ELIJAH No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, +Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut. +Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's time is +.. Tell mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you play a slick +ace. Join on right here. Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop +run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the second +advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, +Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to you to +sense that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on +the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the +higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. +Are you all in this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, +congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got +me? It's a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the +whole pie with jam in. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. It is +immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know and I am some +vibrator. Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie +and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? O. K. Seventyseven west +sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me up by sunphone any old +time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. HE SHOUTS Now then our glory song. +All join heartily in the singing. Encore HE SINGS Jeru ... +THE GRAMOPHONE DROWNING HIS VOICE Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh ... THE +DISC RASPS GRATINGLY AGAINST THE NEEDLE +THE THREE WHORES COVERING THEIR EARS, SQUAWK Ahhkkk +ELIJAH IN ROLLEDUP SHIRTSLEEVES, BLACK IN THE FACE, SHOUTS AT THE TOP +OF HIS VOICE, HIS ARMS UPLIFTED Big Brother up there, Mr President, you +hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe +strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins and +Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them. Certainly seems to me I don't +never see no wusser scared female than the way you been, Miss Florry, +just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come long and help me save +our sisters dear. HE WINKS AT HIS AUDIENCE Our Mr President, he twig +the whole lot and he aint saying nothing. +KITTYKATE I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did +on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the +brown scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a +working plumber was my ruination when I was pure. +ZOEFANNY I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it. +FLORRYTERESA It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of +Hennessy's three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the +bed. +STEPHEN In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end. +Blessed be the eight beatitudes. +THE BEATITUDES, DIXON, MADDEN, CROTTHERS, COSTELLO, LENEHAN, BANNON, +MULLIGAN AND LYNCH IN WHITE SURGICAL STUDENTS' GOWNS, FOUR ABREAST, +GOOSESTEPPING, TRAMP FIST PAST IN NOISY MARCHING +THE BEATITUDES INCOHERENTLY Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum +buggerum bishop. +LYSTER IN QUAKERGREY KNEEBREECHES AND BROADBRIMMED HAT, SAYS +DISCREETLY He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the +light. +HE CORANTOS BY. BEST ENTERS IN HAIRDRESSER'S ATTIRE, SHINILY LAUNDERED, +HIS LOCKS IN CURLPAPERS. HE LEADS JOHN EGLINTON WHO WEARS A MANDARIN'S +KIMONO OF NANKEEN YELLOW, LIZARDLETTERED, AND A HIGH PAGODA HAT. +BEST SMILING, LIFTS THE HAT AND DISPLAYS A SHAVEN POLL FROM THE CROWN +OF WHICH BRISTLES A PIGTAIL TOUPEE TIED WITH AN ORANGE TOPKNOT I was +just beautifying him, don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know, +Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. +JOHN EGLINTON PRODUCES A GREENCAPPED DARK LANTERN AND FLASHES IT +TOWARDS A CORNER WITH CARPING ACCENT Esthetics and cosmetics are for +the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee +wants the facts and means to get them. +IN THE CONE OF THE SEARCHLIGHT BEHIND THE COALSCUTTLE, OLLAVE, HOLYEYED, +THE BEARDED FIGURE OF MANANAUN MACLIR BROODS, CHIN ON KNEES. HE RISES +SLOWLY. A COLD SEAWIND BLOWS FROM HIS DRUID MOUTH. ABOUT HIS HEAD WRITHE +EELS AND ELVERS. HE IS ENCRUSTED WITH WEEDS AND SHELLS. HIS RIGHT HAND +HOLDS A BICYCLE PUMP. HIS LEFT HAND GRASPS A HUGE CRAYFISH BY ITS TWO +TALONS. +MANANAUN MACLIR WITH A VOICE OF WAVES Aum Hek Wal Ak Lub Mor Ma +White yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. WITH A +VOICE OF WHISTLING SEAWIND Punarjanam patsypunjaub I won't have my leg +pulled. It has been said by one beware the left, the cult of Shakti. +WITH A CRY OF STORMBIRDS Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father HE SMITES +WITH HIS BICYCLE PUMP THE CRAYFISH IN HIS LEFT HAND. ON ITS COOPERATIVE +DIAL GLOW THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC. HE WAILS WITH THE VEHEMENCE OF +THE OCEAN. Aum Baum Pyjaum I am the light of the homestead I am the +dreamery creamery butter. +A SKELETON JUDASHAND STRANGLES THE LIGHT. THE GREEN LIGHT WANES TO +MAUVE. THE GASJET WAILS WHISTLING. +THE GASJET Pooah Pfuiiiiiii +ZOE RUNS TO THE CHANDELIER AND, CROOKING HER LEG, ADJUSTS THE MANTLE. +ZOE Who has a fag as I'm here? +LYNCH TOSSING A CIGARETTE ON TO THE TABLE Here. +ZOE HER HEAD PERCHED ASIDE IN MOCK PRIDE Is that the way to hand the +POT to a lady? SHE STRETCHES UP TO LIGHT THE CIGARETTE OVER THE FLAME, +TWIRLING IT SLOWLY, SHOWING THE BROWN TUFTS OF HER ARMPITS. LYNCH WITH +HIS POKER LIFTS BOLDLY A SIDE OF HER SLIP. BARE FROM HER GARTERS UP HER +FLESH APPEARS UNDER THE SAPPHIRE A NIXIE'S GREEN. SHE PUFFS CALMLY AT HER +CIGARETTE. Can you see the beautyspot of my behind? +LYNCH I'm not looking +ZOE MAKES SHEEP'S EYES No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you +suck a lemon? +SQUINTING IN MOCK SHAME SHE GLANCES WITH SIDELONG MEANING AT BLOOM, THEN +TWISTS ROUND TOWARDS HIM, PULLING HER SLIP FREE OF THE POKER. BLUE FLUID +AGAIN FLOWS OVER HER FLESH. BLOOM STANDS, SMILING DESIROUSLY, TWIRLING +HIS THUMBS. KITTY RICKETTS LICKS HER MIDDLE FINGER WITH HER SPITTLE AND, +GAZING IN THE MIRROR, SMOOTHS BOTH EYEBROWS. LIPOTI VIRAG, +BASILICOGRAMMATE, CHUTES RAPIDLY DOWN THROUGH THE CHIMNEYFLUE AND STRUTS +TWO STEPS TO THE LEFT ON GAWKY PINK STILTS. HE IS SAUSAGED INTO SEVERAL +OVERCOATS AND WEARS A BROWN MACINTOSH UNDER WHICH HE HOLDS A ROLL OF +PARCHMENT. IN HIS LEFT EYE FLASHES THE MONOCLE OF CASHEL BOYLE O'CONNOR +FITZMAURICE TISDALL FARRELL. ON HIS HEAD IS PERCHED AN EGYPTIAN PSHENT. +TWO QUILLS PROJECT OVER HIS EARS. +VIRAG HEELS TOGETHER, BOWS My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. +HE COUGHS THOUGHTFULLY, DRILY Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence +hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is +not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular +devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good. +BLOOM Granpapachi. But ... +VIRAG Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and +coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of +gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I +should opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always +understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of +lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a +word. Hippogriff. Am I right? +BLOOM She is rather lean. +VIRAG NOT UNPLEASANTLY Absolutely Well observed and those pannier +pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest +bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull +has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the +attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you +can wear today. Parallax WITH A NERVOUS TWITCH OF HIS HEAD Did you +hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax +BLOOM AN ELBOW RESTING IN A HAND, A FOREFINGER AGAINST HIS CHEEK She +seems sad. +VIRAG CYNICALLY, HIS WEASEL TEETH BARED YELLOW, DRAWS DOWN HIS LEFT EYE +WITH A FINGER AND BARKS HOARSELY Hoax Beware of the flapper and bogus +mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by +Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. MORE GENIALLY +Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item number three. There +is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe the mass of oxygenated +vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she bumps The ugly duckling of +the party, longcasted and deep in keel. +BLOOM REGRETFULLY When you come out without your gun. +VIRAG We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money, +take your choice. How happy could you be with either ... +BLOOM With ...? +VIRAG HIS TONGUE UPCURLING Lyum Look. Her beam is broad. She is +coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in weight +of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two +protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the +noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional +protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, +which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts are +the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an +elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin +swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief +existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits +your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in it. +Lycopodium. HIS THROAT TWITCHES Slapbang There he goes again. +BLOOM The stye I dislike. +VIRAG ARCHES HIS EYEBROWS Contact with a goldring, they say. +ARGUMENTUM AD FEMINAM, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the +consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve's sovereign +remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. HE TWITCHES It is a funny +sound. HE COUGHS ENCOURAGINGLY But possibly it is only a wart. I +presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that +head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. +BLOOM REFLECTING Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This +searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of +accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said ... +VIRAG SEVERELY, HIS NOSE HARDHUMPED, HIS SIDE EYE WINKING Stop +twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. +Exercise your mnemotechnic. LA CAUSA E SANTA. Tara. Tara. ASIDE He will +surely remember. +BLOOM Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over +parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand +cures. Mnemo? +VIRAG EXCITEDLY I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. HE TAPS HIS +PARCHMENTROLL ENERGETICALLY This book tells you how to act with all +descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, +melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about +amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with +horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar +and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike +women in male habiliments? WITH A DRY SNIGGER You intended to devote an +entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer months +of to square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate From the +sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or +stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those +complicated combinations, camiknickers? HE CROWS DERISIVELY +Keekeereekee +BLOOM SURVEYS UNCERTAINLY THE THREE WHORES THEN GAZES AT THE VEILED +MAUVE LIGHT, HEARING THE EVERFLYING MOTH. +BLOOM I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence +this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is +will then morrow as now was be past yester. +VIRAG PROMPTS IN A PIG'S WHISPER Insects of the day spend their brief +existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly +pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal +region. Pretty Poll HIS YELLOW PARROTBEAK GABBLES NASALLY They had a +proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five +hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract +friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. +Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may +resume. We were very pleased, we others. HE COUGHS AND, BENDING HIS +BROW, RUBS HIS NOSE THOUGHTFULLY WITH A SCOOPING HAND You shall find +that these night insects follow the light. An illusion for remember their +complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the seventeenth +book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L.B. +says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again +whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun. +Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley he blows into Bloom's +ear Buzz +BLOOM Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self +then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I ... +VIRAG HIS FACE IMPASSIVE, LAUGHS IN A RICH FEMININE KEY Splendid +Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. HE GOBBLES +GLUTTONOUSLY WITH TURKEY WATTLES Bubbly jock Bubbly jock Where are we? +Open Sesame Cometh forth HE UNROLLS HIS PARCHMENT RAPIDLY AND READS, +HIS GLOWWORM'S NOSE RUNNING BACKWARDS OVER THE LETTERS WHICH HE CLAWS +Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters will shortly +be upon us. I'm the best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and +the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous +porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. +Though they stink yet they sting. HE WAGS HIS HEAD WITH CACKLING +RAILLERY Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. HE SNEEZES Amen +BLOOM ABSENTLY Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open +sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve +and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my +idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through +miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those +bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis. +VIRAG HIS MOUTH PROJECTED IN HARD WRINKLES, EYES STONILY FORLORNLY +CLOSED, PSALMS IN OUTLANDISH MONOTONE That the cows with their those +distended udders that they have been the the known ... +BLOOM I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. HE REPEATS +Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their +teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. PROFOUNDLY Instinct rules +the world. In life. In death. +VIRAG HEAD ASKEW, ARCHES HIS BACK AND HUNCHED WINGSHOULDERS, PEERS AT +THE MOTH OUT OF BLEAR BULGED EYES, POINTS A HORNING CLAW AND CRIES Who's +moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald. +O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon +not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass +tablenumpkin? HE MEWS Puss puss puss puss HE SIGHS, DRAWS BACK AND +STARES SIDEWAYS DOWN WITH DROPPING UNDERJAW Well, well. He doth rest +anon. he snaps his jaws suddenly on the air +THE MOTH +I'm a tiny tiny thing +Ever flying in the spring +Round and round a ringaring. +Long ago I was a king +Now I do this kind of thing +On the wing, on the wing +Bing +HE RUSHES AGAINST THE MAUVE SHADE, FLAPPING NOISILY Pretty pretty +pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats. +FROM LEFT UPPER ENTRANCE WITH TWO GLIDING STEPS HENRY FLOWER COMES +FORWARD TO LEFT FRONT CENTRE. HE WEARS A DARK MANTLE AND DROOPING PLUMED +SOMBRERO. HE CARRIES A SILVERSTRINGED INLAID DULCIMER AND A LONGSTEMMED +BAMBOO JACOB'S PIPE, ITS CLAY BOWL FASHIONED AS A FEMALE HEAD. HE WEARS +DARK VELVET HOSE AND SILVERBUCKLED PUMPS. HE HAS THE ROMANTIC SAVIOUR'S +FACE WITH FLOWING LOCKS, THIN BEARD AND MOUSTACHE. HIS SPINDLELEGS AND +SPARROW FEET ARE THOSE OF THE TENOR MARIO, PRINCE OF CANDIA. HE SETTLES +DOWN HIS GOFFERED RUFFS AND MOISTENS HIS LIPS WITH A PASSAGE OF HIS +AMOROUS TONGUE. +HENRY IN A LOW DULCET VOICE, TOUCHING THE STRINGS OF HIS GUITAR There +is a flower that bloometh. +VIRAG TRUCULENT, HIS JOWL SET, STARES AT THE LAMP. GRAVE BLOOM REGARDS +ZOE'S NECK. HENRY GALLANT TURNS WITH PENDANT DEWLAP TO THE PIANO. +STEPHEN TO HIMSELF Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my +belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. +Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old +Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep +impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially +drunk, by the way. HE TOUCHES THE KEYS AGAIN Minor chord comes now. +Yes. Not much however. +ALMIDANO ARTIFONI HOLDS OUT A BATONROLL OF MUSIC WITH VIGOROUS +MOUSTACHEWORK. +ARTIFONI CI RIFLETTA. LEI ROVINA TUTTO. +FLORRY Sing us something. Love's old sweet song. +STEPHEN No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the +letter about the lute? +FLORRY SMIRKING The bird that can sing and won't sing. +THE SIAMESE TWINS, PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER, TWO OXFORD DONS WITH +LAWNMOWERS, APPEAR IN THE WINDOW EMBRASURE. BOTH ARE MASKED WITH MATTHEW +ARNOLD'S FACE. +PHILIP SOBER Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the +buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you +got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en +ville, Mooney's sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, +Burke's. Eh? I am watching you. +PHILIP DRUNK IMPATIENTLY Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell I paid my way. If +I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who +was it told me his name? HIS LAWNMOWER BEGINS TO PURR Aha, yes. ZOE MOU +SAS AGAPO. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his +card I have somewhere. Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, +hold on, Swinburne, was it, no? +FLORRY And the song? +STEPHEN Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. +FLORRY Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once. +STEPHEN Out of it now. TO HIMSELF Clever. +PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER THEIR LAWNMOWERS PURRING WITH A RIGADOON +OF GRASSHALMS Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the +book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. +Keep in condition. Do like us. +ZOE There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of +business with his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to +him. I know you've a Roman collar. +VIRAG Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. HARSHLY, HIS +PUPILS WAXING To hell with the pope Nothing new under the sun. I am the +Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the +church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. +Flipperty Jippert. HE WRIGGLES Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt +of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after +man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers +herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, +the stiff one. HE CRIES COACTUS VOLUI. Then giddy woman will run about. +Strong man grapses woman's wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now +fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. HE CHASES HIS TAIL Piffpaff +Popo HE STOPS, SNEEZES Pchp HE WORRIES HIS BUTT Prrrrrht +LYNCH I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for +shooting a bishop. +ZOE SPOUTS WALRUS SMOKE THROUGH HER NOSTRILS He couldn't get a +connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush. +BLOOM Poor man +ZOE LIGHTLY Only for what happened him. +BLOOM How? +VIRAG A DIABOLIC RICTUS OF BLACK LUMINOSITY CONTRACTING HIS VISAGE, +CRANES HIS SCRAGGY NECK FORWARD. HE LIFTS A MOONCALF NOZZLE AND HOWLS. +VERFLUCHTE GOIM He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig +God He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the +pope's bastard. HE LEANS OUT ON TORTURED FOREPAWS, ELBOWS BENT RIGID, +HIS EYE AGONISING IN HIS FLAT SKULLNECK AND YELPS OVER THE MUTE WORLD A +son of a whore. Apocalypse. +KITTY And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from +Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow +and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all +subscribed for the funeral. +PHILIP DRUNK GRAVELY QUI VOUS A MIS DANS CETTE FICHUE POSITION, +PHILIPPE? +PHILIP SOBER GAILY C'ETAIT LE SACRE PIGEON, PHILIPPE. +KITTY UNPINS HER HAT AND SETS IT DOWN CALMLY, PATTING HER HENNA HAIR. +AND A PRETTIER, A DAINTIER HEAD OF WINSOME CURLS WAS NEVER SEEN ON A +WHORE'S SHOULDERS. LYNCH PUTS ON HER HAT. SHE WHIPS IT OFF. +LYNCH LAUGHS And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated +anthropoid apes. +FLORRY NODS Locomotor ataxy. +ZOE GAILY O, my dictionary. +LYNCH Three wise virgins. +VIRAG AGUESHAKEN, PROFUSE YELLOW SPAWN FOAMING OVER HIS BONY EPILEPTIC +LIPS She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman +centurion, polluted her with his genitories. HE STICKS OUT A FLICKERING +PHOSPHORESCENT SCORPION TONGUE, HIS HAND ON HIS FORK Messiah He burst +her tympanum. WITH GIBBERING BABOON'S CRIES HE JERKS HIS HIPS IN THE +CYNICAL SPASM Hik Hek Hak Hok Huk Kok Kuk +BEN JUMBO DOLLARD, RUBICUND, MUSCLEBOUND, HAIRYNOSTRILLED, HUGEBEARDED, +CABBAGEEARED, SHAGGYCHESTED, SHOCKMANED, FAT PAPPED, STANDS FORTH, HIS +LOINS AND GENITALS TIGHTENED INTO A PAIR OF BLACK BATHING BAGSLOPS. +BEN DOLLARD NAKKERING CASTANET BONES IN HIS HUGE PADDED PAWS, YODELS +JOVIALLY IN BASE BARRELTONE When love absorbs my ardent soul. +THE VIRGINS NURSE CALLAN AND NURSE QUIGLEY BURST THROUGH THE RINGKEEPERS +AND THE ROPES AND MOB HIM WITH OPEN ARMS. +THE VIRGINS GUSHINGLY Big Ben Ben my Chree +A VOICE Hold that fellow with the bad breeches. +BEN DOLLARD SMITES HIS THIGH IN ABUNDANT LAUGHTER Hold him now. +HENRY CARESSING ON HIS BREAST A SEVERED FEMALE HEAD, MURMURS Thine +heart, mine love. HE PLUCKS HIS LUTESTRINGS When first I saw ... +VIRAG SLOUGHING HIS SKINS, HIS MULTITUDINOUS PLUMAGE MOULTING Rats +HE YAWNS, SHOWING A COALBLACK THROAT, AND CLOSES HIS JAWS BY AN UPWARD +PUSH OF HIS PARCHMENTROLL After having said which I took my departure. +Farewell. Fare thee well. DRECK +HENRY FLOWER COMBS HIS MOUSTACHE AND BEARD RAPIDLY WITH A POCKETCOMB AND +GIVES A COW'S LICK TO HIS HAIR. STEERED BY HIS RAPIER, HE GLIDES TO THE +DOOR, HIS WILD HARP SLUNG BEHIND HIM. VIRAG REACHES THE DOOR IN TWO +UNGAINLY STILTHOPS, HIS TAIL COCKED, AND DEFTLY CLAPS SIDEWAYS ON THE +WALL A PUSYELLOW FLYBILL, BUTTING IT WITH HIS HEAD. +THE FLYBILL K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. +HENRY All is lost now. +VIRAG UNSCREWS HIS HEAD IN A TRICE AND HOLDS IT UNDER HIS ARM. +VIRAG'S HEAD Quack +EXEUNT SEVERALLY. +STEPHEN OVER HIS SHOULDER TO ZOE You would have preferred the fighting +parson who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog +sage, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet. +LYNCH All one and the same God to her. +STEPHEN DEVOUTLY And sovereign Lord of all things. +FLORRY TO STEPHEN I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk. +LYNCH He is. A cardinal's son. +STEPHEN Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw. +HIS EMINENCE SIMON STEPHEN CARDINAL DEDALUS, PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND, +APPEARS IN THE DOORWAY, DRESSED IN RED SOUTANE, SANDALS AND SOCKS. SEVEN +DWARF SIMIAN ACOLYTES, ALSO IN RED, CARDINAL SINS, UPHOLD HIS TRAIN, +PEEPING UNDER IT. HE WEARS A BATTERED SILK HAT SIDEWAYS ON HIS HEAD. HIS +THUMBS ARE STUCK IN HIS ARMPITS AND HIS PALMS OUTSPREAD. ROUND HIS NECK +HANGS A ROSARY OF CORKS ENDING ON HIS BREAST IN A CORKSCREW CROSS. +RELEASING HIS THUMBS, HE INVOKES GRACE FROM ON HIGH WITH LARGE WAVE +GESTURES AND PROCLAIMS WITH BLOATED POMP +THE CARDINAL +Conservio lies captured +He lies in the lowest dungeon +With manacles and chains around his limbs +Weighing upwards of three tons. +HE LOOKS AT ALL FOR A MOMENT, HIS RIGHT EYE CLOSED TIGHT, HIS LEFT CHEEK +PUFFED OUT. THEN, UNABLE TO REPRESS HIS MERRIMENT, HE ROCKS TO AND FRO, +ARMS AKIMBO, AND SINGS WITH BROAD ROLLICKING HUMOUR +O, the poor little fellow +Hihihihihis legs they were yellow +He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake +But some bloody savage +To graize his white cabbage +He murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake. +A MULTITUDE OF MIDGES SWARMS WHITE OVER HIS ROBE. HE SCRATCHES HIMSELF +WITH CROSSED ARMS AT HIS RIBS, GRIMACING, AND EXCLAIMS +I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to +Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd +walk me off the face of the bloody globe. +HIS HEAD ASLANT HE BLESSES CURTLY WITH FORE AND MIDDLE FINGERS, IMPARTS +THE EASTER KISS AND DOUBLESHUFFLES OFF COMICALLY, SWAYING HIS HAT FROM +SIDE TO SIDE, SHRINKING QUICKLY TO THE SIZE OF HIS TRAINBEARERS. THE +DWARF ACOLYTES, GIGGLING, PEEPING, NUDGING, OGLING, EASTERKISSING, ZIGZAG +BEHIND HIM. HIS VOICE IS HEARD MELLOW FROM AFAR, MERCIFUL MALE, +MELODIOUS +Shall carry my heart to thee, +Shall carry my heart to thee, +And the breath of the balmy night +Shall carry my heart to thee +THE TRICK DOORHANDLE TURNS. +THE DOORHANDLE Theeee +ZOE The devil is in that door. +A MALE FORM PASSES DOWN THE CREAKING STAIRCASE AND IS HEARD TAKING THE +WATERPROOF AND HAT FROM THE RACK. BLOOM STARTS FORWARD INVOLUNTARILY AND, +HALF CLOSING THE DOOR AS HE PASSES, TAKES THE CHOCOLATE FROM HIS POCKET +AND OFFERS IT NERVOUSLY TO ZOE. +ZOE SNIFFS HIS HAIR BRISKLY Hmmm Thank your mother for the rabbits. +I'm very fond of what I like. +BLOOM HEARING A MALE VOICE IN TALK WITH THE WHORES ON THE DOORSTEP, +PRICKS HIS EARS If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double +event? +ZOE TEARS OPEN THE SILVERFOIL Fingers was made before forks. SHE +BREAKS OFF AND NIBBLES A PIECE GIVES A PIECE TO KITTY RICKETTS AND THEN +TURNS KITTENISHLY TO LYNCH No objection to French lozenges? HE NODS. +SHE TAUNTS HIM. Have it now or wait till you get it? HE OPENS HIS +MOUTH, HIS HEAD COCKED. SHE WHIRLS THE PRIZE IN LEFT CIRCLE. HIS HEAD +FOLLOWS. SHE WHIRLS IT BACK IN RIGHT CIRCLE. HE EYES HER. Catch +SHE TOSSES A PIECE. WITH AN ADROIT SNAP HE CATCHES IT AND BITES IT +THROUGH WITH A CRACK. +KITTY CHEWING The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely +ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. +The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still. +BLOOM IN SVENGALI'S FUR OVERCOAT, WITH FOLDED ARMS AND NAPOLEONIC +FORELOCK, FROWNS IN VENTRILOQUIAL EXORCISM WITH PIERCING EAGLE GLANCE +TOWARDS THE DOOR. THEN RIGID WITH LEFT FOOT ADVANCED HE MAKES A SWIFT +PASS WITH IMPELLING FINGERS AND GIVES THE SIGN OF PAST MASTER, DRAWING +HIS RIGHT ARM DOWNWARDS FROM HIS LEFT SHOULDER. Go, go, go, I conjure +you, whoever you are +A MALE COUGH AND TREAD ARE HEARD PASSING THROUGH THE MIST OUTSIDE. +BLOOM'S FEATURES RELAX. HE PLACES A HAND IN HIS WAISTCOAT, POSING CALMLY. +ZOE OFFERS HIM CHOCOLATE. +BLOOM SOLEMNLY Thanks. +ZOE Do as you're bid. Here +A FIRM HEELCLACKING TREAD IS HEARD ON THE STAIRS. +BLOOM TAKES THE CHOCOLATE Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But I +bought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red +influences lupus. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This +black makes me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. HE EATS Influence +taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That +priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews. +THE DOOR OPENS. BELLA COHEN, A MASSIVE WHOREMISTRESS, ENTERS. SHE IS +DRESSED IN A THREEQUARTER IVORY GOWN, FRINGED ROUND THE HEM WITH +TASSELLED SELVEDGE, AND COOLS HERSELF FLIRTING A BLACK HORN FAN LIKE +MINNIE HAUCK IN Carmen. ON HER LEFT HAND ARE WEDDING AND KEEPER RINGS. +HER EYES ARE DEEPLY CARBONED. SHE HAS A SPROUTING MOUSTACHE. HER OLIVE +FACE IS HEAVY, SLIGHTLY SWEATED AND FULLNOSED WITH ORANGETAINTED +NOSTRILS. SHE HAS LARGE PENDANT BERYL EARDROPS. +BELLA My word I'm all of a mucksweat. +SHE GLANCES ROUND HER AT THE COUPLES. THEN HER EYES REST ON BLOOM WITH +HARD INSISTENCE. HER LARGE FAN WINNOWS WIND TOWARDS HER HEATED FACENECK +AND EMBONPOINT. HER FALCON EYES GLITTER. +THE FAN FLIRTING QUICKLY, THEN SLOWLY Married, I see. +BLOOM Yes. Partly, I have mislaid ... +THE FAN HALF OPENING, THEN CLOSING And the missus is master. Petticoat +government. +BLOOM LOOKS DOWN WITH A SHEEPISH GRIN That is so. +THE FAN FOLDING TOGETHER, RESTS AGAINST HER LEFT EARDROP Have you +forgotten me? +BLOOM Yes. Yo. +THE FAN FOLDED AKIMBO AGAINST HER WAIST Is me her was you dreamed +before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now +we? +BELLA APPROACHES, GENTLY TAPPING WITH THE FAN. +BLOOM WINCING Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women +love. +THE FAN TAPPING We have met. You are mine. It is fate. +BLOOM COWED Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination. +I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an +unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box +of the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a +right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the +law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in +my left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, +was a regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of +tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David +and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A +dog's spittle as you probably ... HE WINCES Ah +RICHIE GOULDING BAGWEIGHTED, PASSES THE DOOR Mocking is catch. Best +value in Dub. Fit for a prince's. Liver and kidney. +THE FAN TAPPING All things end. Be mine. Now, +BLOOM UNDECIDED All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. +Rain, exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of +life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause. +THE FAN POINTS DOWNWARDS SLOWLY You may. +BLOOM LOOKS DOWNWARDS AND PERCEIVES HER UNFASTENED BOOTLACE We are +observed. +THE FAN POINTS DOWNWARDS QUICKLY You must. +BLOOM WITH DESIRE, WITH RELUCTANCE I can make a true black knot. +Learned when I served my time and worked the mail order line for +Kellett's. Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. +I knelt once before today. Ah +BELLA RAISES HER GOWN SLIGHTLY AND, STEADYING HER POSE, LIFTS TO THE +EDGE OF A CHAIR A PLUMP BUSKINED HOOF AND A FULL PASTERN, SILKSOCKED. +BLOOM, STIFFLEGGED, AGING, BENDS OVER HER HOOF AND WITH GENTLE FINGERS +DRAWS OUT AND IN HER LACES. +BLOOM MURMURS LOVINGLY To be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's +young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up +crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so +incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model +Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb +toe, as worn in Paris. +THE HOOF Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight. +BLOOM CROSSLACING Too tight? +THE HOOF If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you. +BLOOM Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar +dance. Bad luck. Hook in wrong tache of her ... person you mentioned. +That night she met ... Now +HE KNOTS THE LACE. BELLA PLACES HER FOOT ON THE FLOOR. BLOOM RAISES HIS +HEAD. HER HEAVY FACE, HER EYES STRIKE HIM IN MIDBROW. HIS EYES GROW DULL, +DARKER AND POUCHED, HIS NOSE THICKENS. +BLOOM MUMBLES Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen, ... +BELLO WITH A HARD BASILISK STARE, IN A BARITONE VOICE Hound of +dishonour +BLOOM INFATUATED Empress +BELLO HIS HEAVY CHEEKCHOPS SAGGING Adorer of the adulterous rump +BLOOM PLAINTIVELY Hugeness +BELLO Dungdevourer +BLOOM WITH SINEWS SEMIFLEXED Magmagnificence +BELLO Down HE TAPS HER ON THE SHOULDER WITH HIS FAN Incline feet +forward Slide left foot one pace back You will fall. You are falling. +On the hands down +BLOOM HER EYES UPTURNED IN THE SIGN OF ADMIRATION, CLOSING, YAPS +Truffles +WITH A PIERCING EPILEPTIC CRY SHE SINKS ON ALL FOURS, GRUNTING, +SNUFFLING, ROOTING AT HIS FEET THEN LIES, SHAMMING DEAD, WITH EYES SHUT +TIGHT, TREMBLING EYELIDS, BOWED UPON THE GROUND IN THE ATTITUDE OF MOST +EXCELLENT MASTER. +BELLO WITH BOBBED HAIR, PURPLE GILLS, FIT MOUSTACHE RINGS ROUND HIS +SHAVEN MOUTH, IN MOUNTAINEER'S PUTTEES, GREEN SILVERBUTTONED COAT, SPORT +SKIRT AND ALPINE HAT WITH MOORCOCK'S FEATHER, HIS HANDS STUCK DEEP IN HIS +BREECHES POCKETS, PLACES HIS HEEL ON HER NECK AND GRINDS IT IN +Footstool Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of +your despot's glorious heels so glistening in their proud erectness. +BLOOM ENTHRALLED, BLEATS I promise never to disobey. +BELLO LAUGHS LOUDLY Holy smoke You little know what's in store for +you. I'm the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in I'll bet +Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I +dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be +inflicted in gym costume. +BLOOM CREEPS UNDER THE SOFA AND PEERS OUT THROUGH THE FRINGE. +ZOE WIDENING HER SLIP TO SCREEN HER She's not here. +BLOOM CLOSING HER EYES She's not here. +FLORRY HIDING HER WITH HER GOWN She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll +be good, sir. +KITTY Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir. +BELLO COAXINGLY Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, +just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. +BLOOM PUTS OUT HER TIMID HEAD There's a good girly now. BELLO GRABS +HER HAIR VIOLENTLY AND DRAGS HER FORWARD I only want to correct you for +your own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so +gently, pet. Begin to get ready. +BLOOM FAINTING Don't tear my ... +BELLO SAVAGELY The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging +hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian +slave of old. You're in for it this time I'll make you remember me for +the balance of your natural life. HIS FOREHEAD VEINS SWOLLEN, HIS FACE +CONGESTED I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my +thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of +Guinness's porter. HE BELCHES And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange +cigar while I read the LICENSED VICTUALLER'S GAZETTE. Very possibly I +shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice +of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like +sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. HE +TWISTS HER ARM. BLOOM SQUEALS, TURNING TURTLE. +BLOOM Don't be cruel, nurse Don't +BELLO TWISTING Another +BLOOM SCREAMS O, it's hell itself Every nerve in my body aches like +mad +BELLO SHOUTS Good, by the rumping jumping general That's the best bit +of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you +HE SLAPS HER FACE +BLOOM WHIMPERS You're after hitting me. I'll tell ... +BELLO Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him. +ZOE Yes. Walk on him I will. +FLORRY I will. Don't be greedy. +KITTY No, me. Lend him to me. +THE BROTHEL COOK, MRS KEOGH, WRINKLED, GREYBEARDED, IN A GREASY BIB, +MEN'S GREY AND GREEN SOCKS AND BROGUES, FLOURSMEARED, A ROLLINGPIN STUCK +WITH RAW PASTRY IN HER BARE RED ARM AND HAND, APPEARS AT THE DOOR. +MRS KEOGH FEROCIOUSLY Can I help? THEY HOLD AND PINION BLOOM. +BELLO SQUATS WITH A GRUNT ON BLOOM'S UPTURNED FACE, PUFFING CIGARSMOKE, +NURSING A FAT LEG I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the +Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen +three quaffers. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and +Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that +Goddamned outsider THROWAWAY at twenty to one. HE QUENCHES HIS CIGAR +ANGRILY ON BLOOM'S EAR Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray? +BLOOM GOADED, BUTTOCKSMOTHERED O O Monsters Cruel one +BELLO Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never +prayed before. HE THRUSTS OUT A FIGGED FIST AND FOUL CIGAR Here, kiss +that. Both. Kiss. HE THROWS A LEG ASTRIDE AND, PRESSING WITH HORSEMAN'S +KNEES, CALLS IN A HARD VOICE Gee up A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll +ride him for the Eclipse stakes. HE BENDS SIDEWAYS AND SQUEEZES HIS +MOUNT'S TESTICLES ROUGHLY, SHOUTING Ho Off we pop I'll nurse you in +proper fashion. HE HORSERIDES COCKHORSE, LEAPING IN THE SADDLE The lady +goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman +goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop. +FLORRY PULLS AT BELLO Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked +before you. +ZOE PULLING AT FLORRY Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, +suckeress? +BLOOM STIFLING Can't. +BELLO Well, I'm not. Wait. HE HOLDS IN HIS BREATH Curse it. Here. This +bung's about burst. HE UNCORKS HIMSELF BEHIND THEN, CONTORTING HIS +FEATURES, FARTS LOUDLY Take that HE RECORKS HIMSELF Yes, by Jingo, +sixteen three quarters. +BLOOM A SWEAT BREAKING OUT OVER HIM Not man. HE SNIFFS Woman. +BELLO STANDS UP No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has +come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing +under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male +garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously +rustling over head and shoulders. And quickly too +BLOOM SHRINKS Silk, mistress said O crinkly scrapy Must I tiptouch +it with my nails? +BELLO POINTS TO HIS WHORES As they are now so will you be, wigged, +singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape +measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel +force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to +the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, +plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty +two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my +houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for +Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little +chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of +lace round your bare knees will remind you ... +BLOOM A CHARMING SOUBRETTE WITH DAUBY CHEEKS, MUSTARD HAIR AND LARGE +MALE HANDS AND NOSE, LEERING MOUTH I tried her things on only twice, a +small prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save +the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift. +BELLO JEERS Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off +coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your +unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh? +Ho ho I have to laugh That secondhand black operatop shift and short +trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs +Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh? +BLOOM Miriam. Black. Demimondaine. +BELLO GUFFAWS Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this You were a +nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay +swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated +by lieutenant SmytheSmythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor +Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury +of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity +wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, +dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. HE GUFFAWS AGAIN Christ, wouldn't it +make a Siamese cat laugh? +BLOOM HER HANDS AND FEATURES WORKING It was Gerald converted me to be +a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play +VICE VERSA. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's +stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. +Cult of the beautiful. +BELLO WITH WICKED GLEE Beautiful Give us a breather When you took +your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the +smoothworn throne. +BLOOM Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. EARNESTLY +And really it's better the position ... because often I used to wet ... +BELLO STERNLY No insubordination The sawdust is there in the corner +for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir +I'll teach you to behave like a jinkleman If I catch a trace on your +swaddles. Aha By the ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The +sins of your past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds. +THE SINS OF THE PAST IN A MEDLEY OF VOICES He went through a form of +clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black +church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an +address in D'Olier street while he presented himself indecently to the +instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a +nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary +outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote +pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered +males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass +night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how +much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a +nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty +harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order? +BELLO WHISTLES LOUDLY Say What was the most revolting piece of +obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out Be +candid for once. +MUTE INHUMAN FACES THRONG FORWARD, LEERING, VANISHING, GIBBERING, +BOOLOOHOOM. POLDY KOCK, BOOTLACES A PENNY CASSIDY'S HAG, BLIND STRIPLING, +LARRY RHINOCEROS, THE GIRL, THE WOMAN, THE WHORE, THE OTHER, THE ... +BLOOM Don't ask me Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought +the half of the ... I swear on my sacred oath ... +BELLO PEREMPTORILY Answer. Repugnant wretch I insist on knowing. Tell +me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of +poetry, quick, quick, quick Where? How? What time? With how many? I give +you just three seconds. One Two Thr ... +BLOOM DOCILE, GURGLES I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant +BELLO IMPERIOUSLY O, get out, you skunk Hold your tongue Speak when +you're spoken to. +BLOOM BOWS Master Mistress Mantamer +HE LIFTS HIS ARMS. HIS BANGLE BRACELETS FILL. +BELLO SATIRICALLY By day you will souse and bat our smelling +underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines +with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be +nice? HE PLACES A RUBY RING ON HER FINGER And there now With this ring +I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress. +BLOOM Thank you, mistress. +BELLO You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in +the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. +Ay, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. +Drink me piping hot. Hop You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you +on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, +with the hairbrush. You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night +your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves +newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such +favours knights of old laid down their lives. HE CHUCKLES My boys will +be no end charmed to see you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when +they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction +in gilded heels. First I'll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the +turf named Charles Alberta Marsh I was in bed with him just now and +another gentleman out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office is on the +lookout for a maid of all work at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. +Droop shoulders. What offers? HE POINTS For that lot. Trained by owner +to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. HE BARES HIS ARM AND PLUNGES IT +ELBOWDEEP IN BLOOM'S VULVA There's fine depth for you What, boys? That +give you a hardon? HE SHOVES HIS ARM IN A BIDDER'S FACE Here wet the +deck and wipe it round +A BIDDER A florin. +DILLON'S LACQUEY RINGS HIS HANDBELL. +THE LACQUEY Barang +A VOICE One and eightpence too much. +CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean. +BELLO GIVES A RAP WITH HIS GAVEL Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap +at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points. Handle +him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had +only my gold piercer here And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons +a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk +record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa my +jewel Beg up Whoa HE BRANDS HIS INITIAL C ON BLOOM'S CROUP So +Warranted Cohen What advance on two bob, gentlemen? +A DARKVISAGED MAN IN DISGUISED ACCENT Hoondert punt sterlink. +VOICES SUBDUED For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid. +BELLO GAILY Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short +skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a +potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long +straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts +of the BLASE man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch +Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs +fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination +to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices. +BLOOM BENDS HIS BLUSHING FACE INTO HIS ARMPIT AND SIMPERS WITH +FOREFINGER IN MOUTH O, I know what you're hinting at now +BELLO What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? HE STOOPS +AND, PEERING, POKES WITH HIS FAN RUDELY UNDER THE FAT SUET FOLDS OF +BLOOM'S HAUNCHES Up Up Manx cat What have we here? Where's your curly +teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. +It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a +bucket or sell your pump. LOUDLY Can you do a man's job? +BLOOM Eccles street ... +BELLO SARCASTICALLY I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but +there's a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay +young fellow He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, +you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over +it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly +to belly, bubs to breast He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has +sticking out of him behind like a furzebush Wait for nine months, my +lad Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts +already That makes you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? HE SPITS IN +CONTEMPT Spittoon +BLOOM I was indecently treated, I ... Inform the police. Hundred pounds. +Unmentionable. I ... +BELLO Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your +drizzle. +BLOOM To drive me mad Moll I forgot Forgive Moll ... We ... Still +BELLO RUTHLESSLY No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will +since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. +Return and see. +OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW CALLS OVER THE WOLD. +SLEEPY HOLLOW Rip van Wink Rip van Winkle +BLOOM IN TATTERED MOCASSINS WITH A RUSTY FOWLINGPIECE, TIPTOEING, +FINGERTIPPING, HIS HAGGARD BONY BEARDED FACE PEERING THROUGH THE DIAMOND +PANES, CRIES OUT I see her It's she The first night at Mat Dillon's +But that dress, the green And her hair is dyed gold and he ... +BELLO LAUGHS MOCKINGLY That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar +student. +MILLY BLOOM, FAIRHAIRED, GREENVESTED, SLIMSANDALLED, HER BLUE SCARF IN +THE SEAWIND SIMPLY SWIRLING, BREAKS FROM THE ARMS OF HER LOVER AND CALLS, +HER YOUNG EYES WONDERWIDE. +MILLY My It's Papli But, O Papli, how old you've grown +BELLO Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, +aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and +his menfriends are living there in clover. The CUCKOOS' REST Why not? +How many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, +exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? +Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the +goose, my gander O. +BLOOM They ... I ... +BELLO CUTTINGLY Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you +bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find +the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you +carried home in the rain for art for art' sake. They will violate the +secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of +astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten +shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's. +BLOOM Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. +I will prove ... +A VOICE Swear +BLOOM CLENCHES HIS FISTS AND CRAWLS FORWARD, A BOWIEKNIFE BETWEEN HIS +TEETH. +BELLO As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your +secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You +are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean. +BLOOM Justice All Ireland versus one Has nobody ...? HE BITES HIS +THUMB +BELLO Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace +about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to +hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have If you have +none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it We'll bury you in our +shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my +stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a +crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the +buggers' names were, suffocated in the one cesspool. HE EXPLODES IN A +LOUD PHLEGMY LAUGH We'll manure you, Mr Flower HE PIPES SCOFFINGLY +Byby, Poldy Byby, Papli +BLOOM CLASPS HIS HEAD My willpower Memory I have sinned I have suff +HE WEEPS TEARLESSLY +BELLO SNEERS Crybabby Crocodile tears +BLOOM, BROKEN, CLOSELY VEILED FOR THE SACRIFICE, SOBS, HIS FACE TO THE +EARTH. THE PASSING BELL IS HEARD. DARKSHAWLED FIGURES OF THE CIRCUMCISED, +IN SACKCLOTH AND ASHES, STAND BY THE WAILING WALL. M. SHULOMOWITZ, JOSEPH +GOLDWATER, MOSES HERZOG, HARRIS ROSENBERG, M. MOISEL, J. CITRON, MINNIE +WATCHMAN, P. MASTIANSKY, THE REVEREND LEOPOLD ABRAMOVITZ, CHAZEN. WITH +SWAYING ARMS THEY WAIL IN PNEUMA OVER THE RECREANT BLOOM. +THE CIRCUMCISED IN DARK GUTTURAL CHANT AS THEY CAST DEAD SEA FRUIT UPON +HIM, NO FLOWERS SHEMA ISRAEL ADONAI ELOHENU ADONAI ECHAD. +VOICES SIGHING So he's gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard +of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes. +FROM THE SUTTEE PYRE THE FLAME OF GUM CAMPHIRE ASCENDS. THE PALL OF +INCENSE SMOKE SCREENS AND DISPERSES. OUT OF HER OAKFRAME A NYMPH WITH +HAIR UNBOUND, LIGHTLY CLAD IN TEABROWN ARTCOLOURS, DESCENDS FROM HER +GROTTO AND PASSING UNDER INTERLACING YEWS STANDS OVER BLOOM. +THE YEWS THEIR LEAVES WHISPERING Sister. Our sister. Ssh +THE NYMPH SOFTLY Mortal KINDLY Nay, dost not weepest +BLOOM CRAWLS JELLILY FORWARD UNDER THE BOUGHS, STREAKED BY SUNLIGHT, +WITH DIGNITY This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of +habit. +THE NYMPH Mortal You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster +picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in +fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical +act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt +of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to +disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, +proprietary articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured +gentleman. Useful hints to the married. +BLOOM LIFTS A TURTLE HEAD TOWARDS HER LAP We have met before. On +another star. +THE NYMPH SADLY Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the +aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited +testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust +developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo. +BLOOM You mean PHOTO BITS? +THE NYMPH I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me +above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four +places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame. +BLOOM HUMBLY KISSES HER LONG HAIR Your classic curves, beautiful +immortal, I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, +almost to pray. +THE NYMPH During dark nights I heard your praise. +BLOOM QUICKLY Yes, yes. You mean that I ... Sleep reveals the worst +side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or +rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there +is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, +incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. +HE SIGHS 'Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage. +THE NYMPH HER FINGERS IN HER EARS And words. They are not in my +dictionary. +BLOOM You understood them? +THE YEWS Ssh +THE NYMPH COVERS HER FACE WITH HER HANDS What have I not seen in that +chamber? What must my eyes look down on? +BLOOM APOLOGETICALLY I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with +care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago. +THE NYMPH BENDS HER HEAD Worse, worse +BLOOM REFLECTS PRECAUTIOUSLY That antiquated commode. It wasn't her +weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after +weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed +utensil which has only one handle. +THE SOUND OF A WATERFALL IS HEARD IN BRIGHT CASCADE. +THE WATERFALL +Poulaphouca Poulaphouca +Poulaphouca Poulaphouca. +THE YEWS MINGLING THEIR BOUGHS Listen. Whisper. She is right, our +sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous +summer days. +JOHN WYSE NOLAN IN THE BACKGROUND, IN IRISH NATIONAL FORESTER'S +UNIFORM, DOFFS HIS PLUMED HAT Prosper Give shade on languorous days, +trees of Ireland +THE YEWS MURMURING Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School +excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade? +BLOOM SCARED High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of +faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram. +THE ECHO Sham +BLOOM PIGEONBREASTED, BOTTLESHOULDERED, PADDED, IN NONDESCRIPT JUVENILE +GREY AND BLACK STRIPED SUIT, TOO SMALL FOR HIM, WHITE TENNIS SHOES, +BORDERED STOCKINGS WITH TURNOVER TOPS AND A RED SCHOOLCAP WITH BADGE I +was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, +the mingling odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng +penned tight on the old Royal stairs for they love crushes, instinct of +the herd, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice, even a +pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that +summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days. +HALCYON DAYS, HIGH SCHOOL BOYS IN BLUE AND WHITE FOOTBALL JERSEYS AND +SHORTS, MASTER DONALD TURNBULL, MASTER ABRAHAM CHATTERTON, MASTER OWEN +GOLDBERG, MASTER JACK MEREDITH, MASTER PERCY APJOHN, STAND IN A CLEARING +OF THE TREES AND SHOUT TO MASTER LEOPOLD BLOOM. +THE HALCYON DAYS Mackerel Live us again. Hurray THEY CHEER +BLOOM HOBBLEDEHOY, WARMGLOVED, MAMMAMUFFLERED, STARRED WITH SPENT +SNOWBALLS, STRUGGLES TO RISE Again I feel sixteen What a lark Let's +ring all the bells in Montague street. HE CHEERS FEEBLY Hurray for the +High School +THE ECHO Fool +THE YEWS RUSTLING She is right, our sister. Whisper. WHISPERED KISSES +ARE HEARD IN ALL THE WOOD. FACES OF HAMADRYADS PEEP OUT FROM THE BOLES +AND AMONG THE LEAVES AND BREAK, BLOSSOMING INTO BLOOM. Who profaned our +silent shade? +THE NYMPH COYLY, THROUGH PARTING FINGERS There? In the open air? +THE YEWS SWEEPING DOWNWARD Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward. +THE WATERFALL +Poulaphouca Poulaphouca +Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca. +THE NYMPH WITH WIDE FINGERS O, infamy +BLOOM I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the +forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. +Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, +I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's +operaglasses The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto +bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their +crooked tree and I ... A saint couldn't resist it. The demon possessed +me. Besides, who saw? +STAGGERING BOB, A WHITEPOLLED CALF, THRUSTS A RUMINATING HEAD WITH HUMID +NOSTRILS THROUGH THE FOLIAGE. +STAGGERING BOB LARGE TEARDROPS ROLLING FROM HIS PROMINENT EYES, +SNIVELS Me. Me see. +BLOOM Simply satisfying a need I ... WITH PATHOS No girl would when I +went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play ... +HIGH ON BEN HOWTH THROUGH RHODODENDRONS A NANNYGOAT PASSES, +PLUMPUDDERED, BUTTYTAILED, DROPPING CURRANTS. +THE NANNYGOAT BLEATS Megeggaggegg Nannannanny +BLOOM HATLESS, FLUSHED, COVERED WITH BURRS OF THISTLEDOWN AND +GORSESPINE Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. HE GAZES +INTENTLY DOWNWARDS ON THE WATER Thirtytwo head over heels per second. +Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of government +printer's clerk. THROUGH SILVERSILENT SUMMER AIR THE DUMMY OF BLOOM, +ROLLED IN A MUMMY, ROLLS ROTEATINGLY FROM THE LION'S HEAD CLIFF INTO THE +PURPLE WAITING WATERS. +THE DUMMYMUMMY Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg +FAR OUT IN THE BAY BETWEEN BAILEY AND KISH LIGHTS THE Erin's King SAILS, +SENDING A BROADENING PLUME OF COALSMOKE FROM HER FUNNEL TOWARDS THE +LAND. +COUNCILLOR NANNETII ALONE ON DECK, IN DARK ALPACA, YELLOWKITEFACED, HIS +HAND IN HIS WAISTCOAT OPENING, DECLAIMS When my country takes her place +among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph +be written. I have ... +BLOOM Done. Prff +THE NYMPH LOFTILY We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a +place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat +electric light. SHE ARCHES HER BODY IN LASCIVIOUS CRISPATION, PLACING +HER FOREFINGER IN HER MOUTH Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then +could you ...? +BLOOM PAWING THE HEATHER ABJECTLY O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas +too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a +tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's +syringe, the ladies' friend. +THE NYMPH In my presence. The powderpuff. SHE BLUSHES AND MAKES A KNEE +And the rest +BLOOM DEJECTED Yes. PECCAVI I have paid homage on that living altar +where the back changes name. WITH SUDDEN FERVOUR For why should the +dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules ...? +FIGURES WIND SERPENTING IN SLOW WOODLAND PATTERN AROUND THE TREESTEMS, +COOEEING +THE VOICE OF KITTY IN THE THICKET Show us one of them cushions. +THE VOICE OF FLORRY Here. +A GROUSE WINGS CLUMSILY THROUGH THE UNDERWOOD. +THE VOICE OF LYNCH IN THE THICKET Whew Piping hot +THE VOICE OF ZOE FROM THE THICKET Came from a hot place. +THE VOICE OF VIRAG A BIRDCHIEF, BLUESTREAKED AND FEATHERED IN WAR +PANOPLY WITH HIS ASSEGAI, STRIDING THROUGH A CRACKLING CANEBRAKE OVER +BEECHMAST AND ACORNS Hot Hot Ware Sitting Bull +BLOOM It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit +where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to +grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted +white sateen coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full. +THE WATERFALL +Phillaphulla Poulaphouca +Poulaphouca Poulaphouca. +THE YEWS Ssh Sister, speak +THE NYMPH EYELESS, IN NUN'S WHITE HABIT, COIF AND HUGEWINGED WIMPLE, +SOFTLY, WITH REMOTE EYES Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount +Carmel. The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. SHE +RECLINES HER HEAD, SIGHING Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull +waves o'er the waters dull. +BLOOM HALF RISES. HIS BACK TROUSERBUTTON SNAPS. +THE BUTTON Bip +TWO SLUTS OF THE COOMBE DANCE RAINILY BY, SHAWLED, YELLING FLATLY. +THE SLUTS +O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers +He didn't know what to do, +To keep it up, +To keep it up. +BLOOM COLDLY You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were +only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but +willing like an ass pissing. +THE YEWS THEIR SILVERFOIL OF LEAVES PRECIPITATING, THEIR SKINNY ARMS +AGING AND SWAYING Deciduously +THE NYMPH her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit +Sacrilege To attempt my virtue A LARGE MOIST STAIN APPEARS ON HER +ROBE Sully my innocence You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure +woman. SHE CLUTCHES AGAIN IN HER ROBE Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more +lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. SHE DRAWS A PONIARD AND, CLAD IN THE +SHEATHMAIL OF AN ELECTED KNIGHT OF NINE, STRIKES AT HIS LOINS Nekum +BLOOM STARTS UP, SEIZES HER HAND Hoy Nebrakada Cat o' nine lives +Fair play, madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do +you lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? HE CLUTCHES +HER VEIL A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the +spoutless statue of the watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh +Reynard? +THE NYMPH WITH A CRY FLEES FROM HIM UNVEILED, HER PLASTER CAST +CRACKING, A CLOUD OF STENCH ESCAPING FROM THE CRACKS Poli ... +BLOOM CALLS AFTER HER As if you didn't get it on the double +yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. +Your strength our weakness. What's our studfee? What will you pay on the +nail? You fee mendancers on the Riviera, I read. THE FLEEING NYMPH +RAISES A KEEN Eh? I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. +And would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool +someone else, not me. HE SNIFFS Rut. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease. +THE FIGURE OF BELLA COHEN STANDS BEFORE HIM. +BELLA You'll know me the next time. +BLOOM COMPOSED, REGARDS HER Passee. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in +the tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night would +benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are +as vapid as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions +of your other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller. +BELLA CONTEMPTUOUSLY You're not game, in fact. HER SOWCUNT BARKS +Fbhracht +BLOOM CONTEMPTUOUSLY Clean your nailless middle finger first, your +bully's cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay +and wipe yourself. +BELLA I know you, canvasser Dead cod +BLOOM I saw him, kipkeeper Pox and gleet vendor +BELLA TURNS TO THE PIANO Which of you was playing the dead march from +SAUL? +ZOE Me. Mind your cornflowers. SHE DARTS TO THE PIANO AND BANGS CHORDS +ON IT WITH CROSSED ARMS The cat's ramble through the slag. SHE GLANCES +BACK Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? SHE DARTS BACK TO THE TABLE +What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own. +KITTY, DISCONCERTED, COATS HER TEETH WITH THE SILVER PAPER. BLOOM +APPROACHES ZOE. +BLOOM GENTLY Give me back that potato, will you? +ZOE Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing. +BLOOM WITH FEELING It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mamma. +ZOE +Give a thing and take it back +God'll ask you where is that +You'll say you don't know +God'll send you down below. +BLOOM There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it. +STEPHEN To have or not to have that is the question. +ZOE Here. SHE HAULS UP A REEF OF HER SLIP, REVEALING HER BARE THIGH, +AND UNROLLS THE POTATO FROM THE TOP OF HER STOCKING Those that hides +knows where to find. +BELLA FROWNS Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash +that piano. Who's paying here? +SHE GOES TO THE PIANOLA. STEPHEN FUMBLES IN HIS POCKET AND, TAKING OUT A +BANKNOTE BY ITS CORNER, HANDS IT TO HER. +STEPHEN WITH EXAGGERATED POLITENESS This silken purse I made out of +the sow's ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. HE +INDICATES VAGUELY LYNCH AND BLOOM We are all in the same sweepstake, +Kinch and Lynch. DANS CE BORDEL OU TENONS NOSTRE ETAT. +LYNCH CALLS FROM THE HEARTH Dedalus Give her your blessing for me. +STEPHEN HANDS BELLA A COIN Gold. She has it. +BELLA LOOKS AT THE MONEY, THEN AT STEPHEN, THEN AT ZOE, FLORRY AND +KITTY Do you want three girls? It's ten shillings here. +STEPHEN DELIGHTEDLY A hundred thousand apologies. HE FUMBLES AGAIN +AND TAKES OUT AND HANDS HER TWO CROWNS Permit, BREVI MANU, my sight is +somewhat troubled. +BELLA GOES TO THE TABLE TO COUNT THE MONEY WHILE STEPHEN TALKS TO +HIMSELF IN MONOSYLLABLES. ZOE BENDS OVER THE TABLE. KITTY LEANS OVER +ZOE'S NECK. LYNCH GETS UP, RIGHTS HIS CAP AND, CLASPING KITTY'S WAIST, +ADDS HIS HEAD TO THE GROUP. +FLORRY STRIVES HEAVILY TO RISE Ow My foot's asleep. SHE LIMPS OVER +TO THE TABLE. BLOOM APPROACHES. +BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM CHATTERING AND SQUABBLING The +gentleman ... ten shillings ... paying for the three ... allow me a +moment ... this gentleman pays separate ... who's touching it? ... ow +... mind who you're pinching ... are you staying the night or a short +time?... who did?... you're a liar, excuse me ... the gentleman paid down +like a gentleman ... drink ... it's long after eleven. +STEPHEN AT THE PIANOLA, MAKING A GESTURE OF ABHORRENCE No bottles +What, eleven? A riddle +ZOE LIFTING UP HER PETTIGOWN AND FOLDING A HALF SOVEREIGN INTO THE TOP +OF HER STOCKING Hard earned on the flat of my back. +LYNCH LIFTING KITTY FROM THE TABLE Come +KITTY Wait. SHE CLUTCHES THE TWO CROWNS +FLORRY And me? +LYNCH Hoopla HE LIFTS HER, CARRIES HER AND BUMPS HER DOWN ON THE +SOFA. +STEPHEN +The fox crew, the cocks flew, +The bells in heaven +Were striking eleven. +'Tis time for her poor soul +To get out of heaven. +BLOOM QUIETLY LAYS A HALF SOVEREIGN ON THE TABLE BETWEEN BELLA AND +FLORRY So. Allow me. HE TAKES UP THE POUNDNOTE Three times ten. We're +square. +BELLA ADMIRINGLY You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you. +ZOE POINTS Him? Deep as a drawwell. LYNCH BENDS KITTY BACK OVER THE +SOFA AND KISSES HER. BLOOM GOES WITH THE POUNDNOTE TO STEPHEN. +BLOOM This is yours. +STEPHEN How is that? LES DISTRAIT or absentminded beggar. HE FUMBLES +AGAIN IN HIS POCKET AND DRAWS OUT A HANDFUL OF COINS. AN OBJECT FILLS. +That fell. +BLOOM STOOPING, PICKS UP AND HANDS A BOX OF MATCHES This. +STEPHEN Lucifer. Thanks. +BLOOM QUIETLY You had better hand over that cash to me to take care +of. Why pay more? +STEPHEN HANDS HIM ALL HIS COINS Be just before you are generous. +BLOOM I will but is it wise? HE COUNTS One, seven, eleven, and five. +Six. Eleven. I don't answer for what you may have lost. +STEPHEN Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next +Lessing says. Thirsty fox. HE LAUGHS LOUDLY Burying his grandmother. +Probably he killed her. +BLOOM That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say. +STEPHEN Doesn't matter a rambling damn. +BLOOM No, but ... +STEPHEN COMES TO THE TABLE Cigarette, please. LYNCH TOSSES A +CIGARETTE FROM THE SOFA TO THE TABLE And so Georgina Johnson is dead and +married. A CIGARETTE APPEARS ON THE TABLE. STEPHEN LOOKS AT IT Wonder. +Parlour magic. Married. Hm. HE STRIKES A MATCH AND PROCEEDS TO LIGHT THE +CIGARETTE WITH ENIGMATIC MELANCHOLY +LYNCH WATCHING HIM You would have a better chance of lighting it if +you held the match nearer. +STEPHEN BRINGS THE MATCH NEAR HIS EYE Lynx eye. Must get glasses. +Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. +HE DRAWS THE MATCH AWAY. IT GOES OUT. Brain thinks. Near far. +Ineluctable modality of the visible. HE FROWNS MYSTERIOUSLY Hm. Sphinx. +The beast that has twobacks at midnight. Married. +ZOE It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with +him. +FLORRY NODS Mr Lambe from London. +STEPHEN Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world. +LYNCH EMBRACING KITTY ON THE SOFA, CHANTS DEEPLY DONA NOBIS PACEM. +THE CIGARETTE SLIPS FROM STEPHEN 'S FINGERS. BLOOM PICKS IT UP AND +THROWS IT IN THE GRATE. +BLOOM Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. TO ZOE You have +nothing? +ZOE Is he hungry? +STEPHEN EXTENDS HIS HAND TO HER SMILING AND CHANTS TO THE AIR OF THE +BLOODOATH IN THE Dusk of the Gods +Hangende Hunger, +Fragende Frau, +Macht uns alle kaputt. +ZOE TRAGICALLY Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet SHE TAKES HIS HAND +Blue eyes beauty I'll read your hand. SHE POINTS TO HIS FOREHEAD No +wit, no wrinkles. SHE COUNTS Two, three, Mars, that's courage. STEPHEN +SHAKES HIS HEAD No kid. +LYNCH Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake. +TO ZOE Who taught you palmistry? +ZOE TURNS Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. TO STEPHEN I see it in +your face. The eye, like that. SHE FROWNS WITH LOWERED HEAD +LYNCH LAUGHING, SLAPS KITTY BEHIND TWICE Like that. Pandybat. +TWICE LOUDLY A PANDYBAT CRACKS, THE COFFIN OF THE PIANOLA FLIES OPEN, +THE BALD LITTLE ROUND JACKINTHEBOX HEAD OF FATHER DOLAN SPRINGS UP. +FATHER DOLAN Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little +schemer. See it in your eye. +MILD, BENIGN, RECTORIAL, REPROVING, THE HEAD OF DON JOHN CONMEE RISES +FROM THE PIANOLA COFFIN. +DON JOHN CONMEE Now, Father Dolan Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very +good little boy +ZOE EXAMINING STEPHEN'S PALM Woman's hand. +STEPHEN MURMURS Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His +handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock. +ZOE What day were you born? +STEPHEN Thursday. Today. +ZOE Thursday's child has far to go. SHE TRACES LINES ON HIS HAND Line +of fate. Influential friends. +FLORRY POINTING Imagination. +ZOE Mount of the moon. You'll meet with a ... SHE PEERS AT HIS HANDS +ABRUPTLY I won't tell you what's not good for you. Or do you want to +know? +BLOOM DETACHES HER FINGERS AND OFFERS HIS PALM More harm than good. +Here. Read mine. +BELLA Show. SHE TURNS UP BLOOM'S HAND I thought so. Knobby knuckles +for the women. +ZOE PEERING AT BLOOM'S PALM Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry +money. +BLOOM Wrong. +ZOE QUICKLY O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That +wrong? +BLACK LIZ, A HUGE ROOSTER HATCHING IN A CHALKED CIRCLE, RISES, STRETCHES +HER WINGS AND CLUCKS. +BLACK LIZ Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook. +SHE SIDLES FROM HER NEWLAID EGG AND WADDLES OFF +BLOOM POINTS TO HIS HAND That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut +it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen. +ZOE I see, says the blind man. Tell us news. +STEPHEN See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago +he was twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Twentytwo +years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. HE WINCES Hurt my hand +somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money? +ZOE WHISPERS TO FLORRY. THEY GIGGLE. BLOOM RELEASES HIS HAND AND WRITES +IDLY ON THE TABLE IN BACKHAND, PENCILLING SLOW CURVES. +FLORRY What? +A HACKNEYCAR, NUMBER THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTYFOUR, WITH A +GALLANTBUTTOCKED MARE, DRIVEN BY JAMES BARTON, HARMONY AVENUE, +DONNYBROOK, TROTS PAST. BLAZES BOYLAN AND LENEHAN SPRAWL SWAYING ON THE +SIDESEATS. THE ORMOND BOOTS CROUCHES BEHIND ON THE AXLE. SADLY OVER THE +CROSSBLIND LYDIA DOUCE AND MINA KENNEDY GAZE. +THE BOOTS JOGGING, MOCKS THEM WITH THUMB AND WRIGGLING WORMFINGERS Haw +haw have you the horn? +BRONZE BY GOLD THEY WHISPER. +ZOE TO FLORRY Whisper. +THEY WHISPER AGAIN +OVER THE WELL OF THE CAR BLAZES BOYLAN LEANS, HIS BOATER STRAW SET +SIDEWAYS, A RED FLOWER IN HIS MOUTH. LENEHAN IN YACHTSMAN'S CAP AND WHITE +SHOES OFFICIOUSLY DETACHES A LONG HAIR FROM BLAZES BOYLAN'S COAT +SHOULDER. +LENEHAN Ho What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a +few quims? +BOYLAN SEATED, SMILES Plucking a turkey. +LENEHAN A good night's work. +BOYLAN HOLDING UP FOUR THICK BLUNTUNGULATED FINGERS, WINKS Blazes +Kate Up to sample or your money back. HE HOLDS OUT A FOREFINGER Smell +that. +LENEHAN SMELLS GLEEFULLY Ah Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah +ZOE AND FLORRY LAUGH TOGETHER Ha ha ha ha. +BOYLAN JUMPS SURELY FROM THE CAR AND CALLS LOUDLY FOR ALL TO HEAR +Hello, Bloom Mrs Bloom dressed yet? +BLOOM IN FLUNKEY'S PRUNE PLUSH COAT AND KNEEBREECHES, BUFF STOCKINGS +AND POWDERED WIG I'm afraid not, sir. The last articles ... +BOYLAN TOSSES HIM SIXPENCE Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. HE +HANGS HIS HAT SMARTLY ON A PEG OF BLOOM'S ANTLERED HEAD Show me in. I +have a little private business with your wife, you understand? +BLOOM Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir. +MARION He ought to feel himself highly honoured. SHE PLOPS SPLASHING +OUT OF THE WATER Raoul darling, come and dry me. I'm in my pelt. Only my +new hat and a carriage sponge. +BOYLAN A MERRY TWINKLE IN HIS EYE Topping +BELLA What? What is it? +ZOE WHISPERS TO HER. +MARION Let him look, the pishogue Pimp And scourge himself I'll write +to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise +weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and +stamped receipt. +BOYLAN clasps himself Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer. +he strides off on stiff cavalry legs +BELLA LAUGHING Ho ho ho ho. +BOYLAN TO BLOOM, OVER HIS SHOULDER You can apply your eye to the +keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times. +BLOOM Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness +the deed and take a snapshot? HE HOLDS OUT AN OINTMENT JAR Vaseline, +sir? Orangeflower ...? Lukewarm water ...? +KITTY FROM THE SOFA Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What. +FLORRY WHISPERS TO HER. WHISPERING LOVEWORDS MURMUR, LIPLAPPING LOUDLY, +POPPYSMIC PLOPSLOP. +MINA KENNEDY HER EYES UPTURNED O, it must be like the scent of +geraniums and lovely peaches O, he simply idolises every bit of her +Stuck together Covered with kisses +LYDIA DOUCE HER MOUTH OPENING Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the +room doing it Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New +York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream. +KITTY LAUGHING Hee hee hee. +BOYLAN'S VOICE SWEETLY, HOARSELY, IN THE PIT OF HIS STOMACH Ah +Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht +MARION'S VOICE HOARSELY, SWEETLY, RISING TO HER THROAT O +Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck? +BLOOM HIS EYES WILDLY DILATED, CLASPS HIMSELF Show Hide Show Plough +her More Shoot +BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY Ho ho Ha ha Hee hee +LYNCH POINTS The mirror up to nature. HE LAUGHS Hu hu hu hu hu +STEPHEN AND BLOOM GAZE IN THE MIRROR. THE FACE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, +BEARDLESS, APPEARS THERE, RIGID IN FACIAL PARALYSIS, CROWNED BY THE +REFLECTION OF THE REINDEER ANTLERED HATRACK IN THE HALL. +SHAKESPEARE IN DIGNIFIED VENTRILOQUY 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the +vacant mind. TO BLOOM Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. +Gaze. HE CROWS WITH A BLACK CAPON'S LAUGH Iagogo How my Oldfellow +chokit his Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo +BLOOM SMILES YELLOWLY AT THE THREE WHORES When will I hear the joke? +ZOE Before you're twice married and once a widower. +BLOOM Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements +were taken next the skin after his death ... +MRS DIGNAM, WIDOW WOMAN, HER SNUBNOSE AND CHEEKS FLUSHED WITH DEATHTALK, +TEARS AND TUNNEY'S TAWNY SHERRY, HURRIES BY IN HER WEEDS, HER BONNET +AWRY, ROUGING AND POWDERING HER CHEEKS, LIPS AND NOSE, A PEN CHIVVYING +HER BROOD OF CYGNETS. BENEATH HER SKIRT APPEAR HER LATE HUSBAND'S +EVERYDAY TROUSERS AND TURNEDUP BOOTS, LARGE EIGHTS. SHE HOLDS A SCOTTISH +WIDOWS' INSURANCE POLICY AND A LARGE MARQUEE UMBRELLA UNDER WHICH HER +BROOD RUN WITH HER, PATSY HOPPING ON ONE SHOD FOOT, HIS COLLAR LOOSE, A +HANK OF PORKSTEAKS DANGLING, FREDDY WHIMPERING, SUSY WITH A CRYING COD'S +MOUTH, ALICE STRUGGLING WITH THE BABY. SHE CUFFS THEM ON, HER STREAMERS +FLAUNTING ALOFT. +FREDDY Ah, ma, you're dragging me along +SUSY Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over +SHAKESPEARE WITH PARALYTIC RAGE Weda seca whokilla farst. +THE FACE OF MARTIN CUNNINGHAM, BEARDED, REFEATURES SHAKESPEARE'S +BEARDLESS FACE. THE MARQUEE UMBRELLA SWAYS DRUNKENLY, THE CHILDREN RUN +ASIDE. UNDER THE UMBRELLA APPEARS MRS CUNNINGHAM IN MERRY WIDOW HAT AND +KIMONO GOWN. SHE GLIDES SIDLING AND BOWING, TWIRLING JAPANESILY. +MRS CUNNINGHAM SINGS +And they call me the jewel of Asia +MARTIN CUNNINGHAM GAZES ON HER, IMPASSIVE Immense Most bloody awful +demirep +STEPHEN ET EXALTABUNTUR CORNUA IUSTI. Queens lay with prize bulls. +Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first +confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of +the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was open. +BELLA None of that here. Come to the wrong shop. +LYNCH Let him alone. He's back from Paris. +ZOE RUNS TO STEPHEN AND LINKS HIM O go on Give us some parleyvoo. +STEPHEN CLAPS HAT ON HEAD AND LEAPS OVER TO THE FIREPLACE WHERE HE +STANDS WITH SHRUGGED SHOULDERS, FINNY HANDS OUTSPREAD, A PAINTED SMILE ON +HIS FACE. +LYNCH POMMELLING ON THE SOFA Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm. +STEPHEN GABBLES WITH MARIONETTE JERKS Thousand places of entertainment +to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other +things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very +eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses +like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra +foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how +much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters +very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with +mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly +shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world. +All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud +to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with DESSOUS TROUBLANTS. +HE CLACKS HIS TONGUE LOUDLY HO, LA LA CE PIF QU'IL A +LYNCH VIVE LE VAMPIRE +THE WHORES Bravo Parleyvoo +STEPHEN GRIMACING WITH HEAD BACK, LAUGHS LOUDLY, CLAPPING HIMSELF +Great success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles +big damn ruffians. DEMIMONDAINES nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds +very amiable costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they +moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? HE POINTS ABOUT HIM WITH +GROTESQUE GESTURES WHICH LYNCH AND THE WHORES REPLY TO Caoutchouc statue +woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic +the kiss five ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see in mirror every +positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act +awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the +belly PIECE DE SHAKESPEARE. +BELLA CLAPPING HER BELLY SINKS BACK ON THE SOFA, WITH A SHOUT OF +LAUGHTER An omelette on the ... Ho ho ho ho ... omelette on the ... +STEPHEN MINCINGLY I love you, sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue +for DOUBLE ENTENTE CORDIALE. O yes, MON LOUP. How much cost? Waterloo. +Watercloset. HE CEASES SUDDENLY AND HOLDS UP A FOREFINGER +BELLA LAUGHING Omelette ... +THE WHORES LAUGHING Encore Encore +STEPHEN Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon. +ZOE Go abroad and love a foreign lady. +LYNCH Across the world for a wife. +FLORRY Dreams goes by contraries. +STEPHEN EXTENDS HIS ARMS It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine +avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet +spread? +BLOOM APPROACHING STEPHEN Look ... +STEPHEN No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without +end. HE CRIES PATER Free +BLOOM I say, look ... +STEPHEN Break my spirit, will he? O MERDE ALORS HE CRIES, HIS VULTURE +TALONS SHARPENED Hola Hillyho +SIMON DEDALUS' VOICE HILLOES IN ANSWER, SOMEWHAT SLEEPY BUT READY. +SIMON That's all right. HE SWOOPS UNCERTAINLY THROUGH THE AIR, +WHEELING, UTTERING CRIES OF HEARTENING, ON STRONG PONDEROUS BUZZARD +WINGS Ho, boy Are you going to win? Hoop Pschatt Stable with those +halfcastes. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up Keep +our flag flying An eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed. +Ulster king at arms Haihoop HE MAKES THE BEAGLE'S CALL, GIVING TONGUE +Bulbul Burblblburblbl Hai, boy +THE FRONDS AND SPACES OF THE WALLPAPER FILE RAPIDLY ACROSS COUNTRY. A +STOUT FOX, DRAWN FROM COVERT, BRUSH POINTED, HAVING BURIED HIS +GRANDMOTHER, RUNS SWIFT FOR THE OPEN, BRIGHTEYED, SEEKING BADGER EARTH, +UNDER THE LEAVES. THE PACK OF STAGHOUNDS FOLLOWS, NOSE TO THE GROUND, +SNIFFING THEIR QUARRY, BEAGLEBAYING, BURBLBRBLING TO BE BLOODED. WARD +UNION HUNTSMEN AND HUNTSWOMEN LIVE WITH THEM, HOT FOR A KILL. FROM SIX +MILE POINT, FLATHOUSE, NINE MILE STONE FOLLOW THE FOOTPEOPLE WITH KNOTTY +STICKS, HAYFORKS, SALMONGAFFS, LASSOS, FLOCKMASTERS WITH STOCKWHIPS, +BEARBAITERS WITH TOMTOMS, TOREADORS WITH BULLSWORDS, GREYNEGROES WAVING +TORCHES. THE CROWD BAWLS OF DICERS, CROWN AND ANCHOR PLAYERS, +THIMBLERIGGERS, BROADSMEN. CROWS AND TOUTS, HOARSE BOOKIES IN HIGH WIZARD +HATS CLAMOUR DEAFENINGLY. +THE CROWD +Card of the races. Racing card +Ten to one the field +Tommy on the clay here Tommy on the clay +Ten to one bar one Ten to one bar one +Try your luck on Spinning Jenny +Ten to one bar one +Sell the monkey, boys Sell the monkey +I'll give ten to one +Ten to one bar one +A DARK HORSE, RIDERLESS, BOLTS LIKE A PHANTOM PAST THE WINNINGPOST, HIS +MANE MOONFOAMING, HIS EYEBALLS STARS. THE FIELD FOLLOWS, A BUNCH OF +BUCKING MOUNTS. SKELETON HORSES, SCEPTRE, MAXIMUM THE SECOND, ZINFANDEL, +THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER'S SHOTOVER, REPULSE, THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT'S +CEYLON, PRIX DE PARIS. DWARFS RIDE THEM, RUSTYARMOURED, LEAPING, LEAPING +IN THEIR, IN THEIR SADDLES. LAST IN A DRIZZLE OF RAIN ON A BROKENWINDED +ISABELLE NAG, COCK OF THE NORTH, THE FAVOURITE, HONEY CAP, GREEN JACKET, +ORANGE SLEEVES, GARRETT DEASY UP, GRIPPING THE REINS, A HOCKEYSTICK AT +THE READY. HIS NAG ON SPAVINED WHITEGAITERED FEET JOGS ALONG THE ROCKY +ROAD. +THE ORANGE LODGES JEERING Get down and push, mister. Last lap You'll +be home the night +GARRETT DEASY BOLT UPRIGHT, HIS NAILSCRAPED FACE PLASTERED WITH +POSTAGESTAMPS, BRANDISHES HIS HOCKEYSTICK, HIS BLUE EYES FLASHING IN THE +PRISM OF THE CHANDELIER AS HIS MOUNT LOPES BY AT SCHOOLING GALLOP +PER VIAS RECTAS +A YOKE OF BUCKETS LEOPARDS ALL OVER HIM AND HIS REARING NAG A TORRENT OF +MUTTON BROTH WITH DANCING COINS OF CARROTS, BARLEY, ONIONS, TURNIPS, +POTATOES. +THE GREEN LODGES Soft day, sir John Soft day, your honour +PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY PASS BENEATH THE +WINDOWS, SINGING IN DISCORD. +STEPHEN Hark Our friend noise in the street. +ZOE HOLDS UP HER HAND Stop +PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY +Yet I've a sort a +Yorkshire relish for ... +ZOE That's me. SHE CLAPS HER HANDS Dance Dance SHE RUNS TO THE +PIANOLA Who has twopence? +BLOOM Who'll ...? +LYNCH HANDING HER COINS Here. +STEPHEN CRACKING HIS FINGERS IMPATIENTLY Quick Quick Where's my +augur's rod? HE RUNS TO THE PIANO AND TAKES HIS ASHPLANT, BEATING HIS +FOOT IN TRIPUDIUM +ZOE TURNS THE DRUMHANDLE There. +SHE DROPS TWO PENNIES IN THE SLOT. GOLD, PINK AND VIOLET LIGHTS START +FORTH. THE DRUM TURNS PURRING IN LOW HESITATION WALTZ. PROFESSOR GOODWIN, +IN A BOWKNOTTED PERIWIG, IN COURT DRESS, WEARING A STAINED INVERNESS +CAPE, BENT IN TWO FROM INCREDIBLE AGE, TOTTERS ACROSS THE ROOM, HIS HANDS +FLUTTERING. HE SITS TINILY ON THE PIANOSTOOL AND LIFTS AND BEATS HANDLESS +STICKS OF ARMS ON THE KEYBOARD, NODDING WITH DAMSEL'S GRACE, HIS BOWKNOT +BOBBING +ZOE TWIRLS ROUND HERSELF, HEELTAPPING Dance. Anybody here for there? +Who'll dance? Clear the table. +THE PIANOLA WITH CHANGING LIGHTS PLAYS IN WALTZ TIME THE PRELUDE OF My +Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. STEPHEN THROWS HIS ASHPLANT ON THE TABLE AND +SEIZES ZOE ROUND THE WAIST. FLORRY AND BELLA PUSH THE TABLE TOWARDS THE +FIREPLACE. STEPHEN, ARMING ZOE WITH EXAGGERATED GRACE, BEGINS TO WALTZ +HER ROUND THE ROOM. BLOOM STANDS ASIDE. HER SLEEVE FILLING FROM GRACING +ARMS REVEALS A WHITE FLESHFLOWER OF VACCINATION. BETWEEN THE CURTAINS +PROFESSOR MAGINNI INSERTS A LEG ON THE TOEPOINT OF WHICH SPINS A SILK +HAT. WITH A DEFT KICK HE SENDS IT SPINNING TO HIS CROWN AND JAUNTYHATTED +SKATES IN. HE WEARS A SLATE FROCKCOAT WITH CLARET SILK LAPELS, A GORGET +OF CREAM TULLE, A GREEN LOWCUT WAISTCOAT, STOCK COLLAR WITH WHITE +KERCHIEF, TIGHT LAVENDER TROUSERS, PATENT PUMPS AND CANARY GLOVES. IN HIS +BUTTONHOLE IS AN IMMENSE DAHLIA. HE TWIRLS IN REVERSED DIRECTIONS A +CLOUDED CANE, THEN WEDGES IT TIGHT IN HIS OXTER. HE PLACES A HAND LIGHTLY +ON HIS BREASTBONE, BOWS, AND FONDLES HIS FLOWER AND BUTTONS. +MAGINNI The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with +Madam Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. Fancy dress balls arranged. +Deportment. The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me My terpsichorean +abilities. HE MINUETS FORWARD THREE PACES ON TRIPPING BEE'S FEET TOUT +LE MONDE EN AVANT REVERENCE TOUT LE MONDE EN PLACE +THE PRELUDE CEASES. PROFESSOR GOODWIN, BEATING VAGUE ARMS SHRIVELS, +SINKS, HIS LIVE CAPE FILLING ABOUT THE STOOL. THE AIR IN FIRMER WALTZ +TIME SOUNDS. STEPHEN AND ZOE CIRCLE FREELY. THE LIGHTS CHANGE, GLOW, FIDE +GOLD ROSY VIOLET. +THE PIANOLA +Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, +Sweethearts they'd left behind ... +FROM A CORNER THE MORNING HOURS RUN OUT, GOLDHAIRED, SLIMSANDALLED, IN +GIRLISH BLUE, WASPWAISTED, WITH INNOCENT HANDS. NIMBLY THEY DANCE, +TWIRLING THEIR SKIPPING ROPES. THE HOURS OF NOON FOLLOW IN AMBER GOLD. +LAUGHING, LINKED, HIGH HAIRCOMBS FLASHING, THEY CATCH THE SUN IN MOCKING +MIRRORS, LIFTING THEIR ARMS. +MAGINNI CLIPCLAPS GLOVESILENT HANDS CARRE AVANT DEUX Breathe evenly +BALANCE +THE MORNING AND NOON HOURS WALTZ IN THEIR PLACES, TURNING, ADVANCING TO +EACH OTHER, SHAPING THEIR CURVES, BOWING VISAVIS. CAVALIERS BEHIND THEM +ARCH AND SUSPEND THEIR ARMS, WITH HANDS DESCENDING TO, TOUCHING, RISING +FROM THEIR SHOULDERS. +HOURS You may touch my. +CAVALIERS May I touch your? +HOURS O, but lightly +CAVALIERS O, so lightly +THE PIANOLA +My little shy little lass has a waist. +ZOE AND STEPHEN TURN BOLDLY WITH LOOSER SWING. THE TWILIGHT HOURS +ADVANCE FROM LONG LANDSHADOWS, DISPERSED, LAGGING, LANGUIDEYED, THEIR +CHEEKS DELICATE WITH CIPRIA AND FALSE FAINT BLOOM. THEY ARE IN GREY GAUZE +WITH DARK BAT SLEEVES THAT FLUTTER IN THE LAND BREEZE. +MAGINNI AVANT HUIT TRAVERSE SALUT COURS DE MAINS CROISE +THE NIGHT HOURS, ONE BY ONE, STEAL TO THE LAST PLACE. MORNING, NOON AND +TWILIGHT HOURS RETREAT BEFORE THEM. THEY ARE MASKED, WITH DAGGERED HAIR +AND BRACELETS OF DULL BELLS. WEARY THEY CURCHYCURCHY UNDER VEILS. +THE BRACELETS Heigho Heigho +ZOE TWIRLING, HER HAND TO HER BROW O +MAGINNI LES TIROIRS CHAINE DE DAMES LA CORBEILLE DOS A DOS +ARABESQUING WEARILY THEY WEAVE A PATTERN ON THE FLOOR, WEAVING, +UNWEAVING, CURTSEYING, TWIRLING, SIMPLY SWIRLING. +ZOE I'm giddy +SHE FREES HERSELF, DROOPS ON A CHAIR. STEPHEN SEIZES FLORRY AND TURNS +WITH HER. +MAGINNI BOULANGERE LES RONDS LES PONTS CHEVAUX DE BOIS ESCARGOTS +TWINING, RECEDING, WITH INTERCHANGING HANDS THE NIGHT HOURS LINK EACH +EACH WITH ARCHING ARMS IN A MOSAIC OF MOVEMENTS. STEPHEN AND FLORRY TURN +CUMBROUSLY. +MAGINNI DANSEZ AVEC VOS DAMES CHANGEZ DE DAMES DONNEZ LE PETIT BOUQUET +A VOTRE DAME REMERCIEZ +THE PIANOLA +Best, best of all, +Baraabum +KITTY JUMPS UP O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus +bazaar +SHE RUNS TO STEPHEN. HE LEAVES FLORRY BRUSQUELY AND SEIZES KITTY. A +SCREAMING BITTERN'S HARSH HIGH WHISTLE SHRIEKS. GROANGROUSEGURGLING +TOFT'S CUMBERSOME WHIRLIGIG TURNS SLOWLY THE ROOM RIGHT ROUNDABOUT THE +ROOM. +THE PIANOLA +My girl's a Yorkshire girl. +ZOE +Yorkshire through and through. +Come on all +SHE SEIZES FLORRY AND WALTZES HER. +STEPHEN PAS SEUL +HE WHEELS KITTY INTO LYNCH'S ARMS, SNATCHES UP HIS ASHPLANT FROM THE +TABLE AND TAKES THE FLOOR. ALL WHEEL WHIRL WALTZ TWIRL. BLOOMBELLA +KITTYLYNCH FLORRYZOE JUJUBY WOMEN. STEPHEN WITH HAT ASHPLANT FROGSPLITS +IN MIDDLE HIGHKICKS WITH SKYKICKING MOUTH SHUT HAND CLASP PART UNDER +THIGH. WITH CLANG TINKLE BOOMHAMMER TALLYHO HORNBLOWER BLUE GREEN YELLOW +FLASHES TOFT'S CUMBERSOME TURNS WITH HOBBYHORSE RIDERS FROM GILDED SNAKES +DANGLED, BOWELS FANDANGO LEAPING SPURN SOIL FOOT AND FALL AGAIN. +THE PIANOLA +Though she's a factory lass +And wears no fancy clothes. +CLOSECLUTCHED SWIFT SWIFTER WITH GLAREBLAREFLARE SCUDDING THEY +SCOOTLOOTSHOOT LUMBERING BY. BARAABUM +TUTTI Encore Bis Bravo Encore +SIMON Think of your mother's people +STEPHEN Dance of death. +BANG FRESH BARANG BANG OF LACQUEY'S BELL, HORSE, NAG, STEER, PIGLINGS, +CONMEE ON CHRISTASS, LAME CRUTCH AND LEG SAILOR IN COCKBOAT ARMFOLDED +ROPEPULLING HITCHING STAMP HORNPIPE THROUGH AND THROUGH. BARAABUM ON +NAGS HOGS BELLHORSES GADARENE SWINE CORNY IN COFFIN STEEL SHARK STONE +ONEHANDLED NELSON TWO TRICKIES FRAUENZIMMER PLUMSTAINED FROM PRAM FILLING +BAWLING GUM HE'S A CHAMPION. FUSEBLUE PEER FROM BARREL REV. EVENSONG LOVE +ON HACKNEY JAUNT BLAZES BLIND CODDOUBLED BICYCLERS DILLY WITH SNOWCAKE NO +FANCY CLOTHES. THEN IN LAST SWITCHBACK LUMBERING UP AND DOWN BUMP MASHTUB +SORT OF VICEROY AND REINE RELISH FOR TUBLUMBER BUMPSHIRE ROSE. BARAABUM +THE COUPLES FALL ASIDE. STEPHEN WHIRLS GIDDILY. ROOM WHIRLS BACK. EYES +CLOSED HE TOTTERS. RED RAILS FLY SPACEWARDS. STARS ALL AROUND SUNS TURN +ROUNDABOUT. BRIGHT MIDGES DANCE ON WALLS. HE STOPS DEAD. +STEPHEN Ho +STEPHEN'S MOTHER, EMACIATED, RISES STARK THROUGH THE FLOOR, IN LEPER +GREY WITH A WREATH OF FADED ORANGEBLOSSOMS AND A TORN BRIDAL VEIL, HER +FACE WORN AND NOSELESS, GREEN WITH GRAVEMOULD. HER HAIR IS SCANT AND +LANK. SHE FIXES HER BLUECIRCLED HOLLOW EYESOCKETS ON STEPHEN AND OPENS +HER TOOTHLESS MOUTH UTTERING A SILENT WORD. A CHOIR OF VIRGINS AND +CONFESSORS SING VOICELESSLY. +THE CHOIR +Liliata rutilantium te confessorum ... +Iubilantium te virginum ... +FROM THE TOP OF A TOWER BUCK MULLIGAN, IN PARTICOLOURED JESTER'S DRESS +OF PUCE AND YELLOW AND CLOWN'S CAP WITH CURLING BELL, STANDS GAPING AT +HER, A SMOKING BUTTERED SPLIT SCONE IN HIS HAND. +BUCK MULLIGAN She's beastly dead. The pity of it Mulligan meets the +afflicted mother. HE UPTURNS HIS EYES Mercurial Malachi +THE MOTHER WITH THE SUBTLE SMILE OF DEATH'S MADNESS I was once the +beautiful May Goulding. I am dead. +STEPHEN HORRORSTRUCK Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is +this? +BUCK MULLIGAN SHAKES HIS CURLING CAPBELL The mockery of it Kinch +dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. TEARS OF MOLTEN +BUTTER FALL FROM HIS EYES ON TO THE SCONE Our great sweet mother EPI +OINOPA PONTON. +THE MOTHER COMES NEARER, BREATHING UPON HIM SOFTLY HER BREATH OF WETTED +ASHES All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the world. +You too. Time will come. +STEPHEN CHOKING WITH FRIGHT, REMORSE AND HORROR They say I killed you, +mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny. +THE MOTHER A GREEN RILL OF BILE TRICKLING FROM A SIDE OF HER MOUTH You +sang that song to me. LOVE'S BITTER MYSTERY. +STEPHEN EAGERLY Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word +known to all men. +THE MOTHER Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey +with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the +strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the +Ursuline manual and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen. +STEPHEN The ghoul Hyena +THE MOTHER I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that +boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved +you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb. +ZOE FANNING HERSELF WITH THE GRATE FAN I'm melting +FLORRY POINTS TO STEPHEN Look He's white. +BLOOM GOES TO THE WINDOW TO OPEN IT MORE Giddy. +THE MOTHER WITH SMOULDERING EYES Repent O, the fire of hell +STEPHEN PANTING His noncorrosive sublimate The corpsechewer Raw head +and bloody bones. +THE MOTHER HER FACE DRAWING NEAR AND NEARER, SENDING OUT AN ASHEN +BREATH Beware SHE RAISES HER BLACKENED WITHERED RIGHT ARM SLOWLY +TOWARDS STEPHEN'S BREAST WITH OUTSTRETCHED FINGER Beware God's hand A +GREEN CRAB WITH MALIGNANT RED EYES STICKS DEEP ITS GRINNING CLAWS IN +STEPHEN'S HEART. +STEPHEN STRANGLED WITH RAGE Shite HIS FEATURES GROW DRAWN GREY AND +OLD +BLOOM AT THE WINDOW What? +STEPHEN AH NON, PAR EXEMPLE The intellectual imagination With me all +or not at all. NON SERVIAM +FLORRY Give him some cold water. Wait. SHE RUSHES OUT +THE MOTHER WRINGS HER HANDS SLOWLY, MOANING DESPERATELY O Sacred Heart +of Jesus, have mercy on him Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart +STEPHEN No No No Break my spirit, all of you, if you can I'll bring +you all to heel +THE MOTHER IN THE AGONY OF HER DEATHRATTLE Have mercy on Stephen, +Lord, for my sake Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, +grief and agony on Mount Calvary. +STEPHEN NOTHUNG +HE LIFTS HIS ASHPLANT HIGH WITH BOTH HANDS AND SMASHES THE CHANDELIER. +TIME'S LIVID FINAL FLAME LEAPS AND, IN THE FOLLOWING DARKNESS, RUIN OF +ALL SPACE, SHATTERED GLASS AND TOPPLING MASONRY. +THE GASJET Pwfungg +BLOOM Stop +LYNCH RUSHES FORWARD AND SEIZES STEPHEN'S HAND Here Hold on Don't +run amok +BELLA Police +STEPHEN, ABANDONING HIS ASHPLANT, HIS HEAD AND ARMS THROWN BACK STARK, +BEATS THE GROUND AND FLIES FROM THE ROOM, PAST THE WHORES AT THE DOOR. +BELLA SCREAMS After him +THE TWO WHORES RUSH TO THE HALLDOOR. LYNCH AND KITTY AND ZOE STAMPEDE +FROM THE ROOM. THEY TALK EXCITEDLY. BLOOM FOLLOWS, RETURNS. +THE WHORES JAMMED IN THE DOORWAY, POINTING Down there. +ZOE POINTING There. There's something up. +BELLA Who pays for the lamp? SHE SEIZES BLOOM'S COATTAIL Here, you +were with him. The lamp's broken. +BLOOM RUSHES TO THE HALL, RUSHES BACK What lamp, woman? +A WHORE He tore his coat. +BELLA HER EYES HARD WITH ANGER AND CUPIDITY, POINTS Who's to pay for +that? Ten shillings. You're a witness. +BLOOM SNATCHES UP STEPHEN'S ASHPLANT Me? Ten shillings? Haven't you +lifted enough off him? Didn't he ...? +BELLA LOUDLY Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel. A ten +shilling house. +BLOOM HIS HEAD UNDER THE LAMP, PULLS THE CHAIN. PULING, THE GASJET +LIGHTS UP A CRUSHED MAUVE PURPLE SHADE. HE RAISES THE ASHPLANT. Only the +chimney's broken. Here is all he ... +BELLA SHRINKS BACK AND SCREAMS Jesus Don't +BLOOM WARDING OFF A BLOW To show you how he hit the paper. There's not +sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings +FLORRY WITH A GLASS OF WATER, ENTERS Where is he? +BELLA Do you want me to call the police? +BLOOM O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he's a Trinity student. +Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. HE MAKES A +MASONIC SIGN Know what I mean? Nephew of the vicechancellor. You don't +want a scandal. +BELLA ANGRILY Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces +and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I'll +charge him Disgrace him, I will SHE SHOUTS Zoe Zoe +BLOOM URGENTLY And if it were your own son in Oxford? WARNINGLY I +know. +BELLA ALMOST SPEECHLESS Who are. Incog +ZOE IN THE DOORWAY There's a row on. +BLOOM What? Where? HE THROWS A SHILLING ON THE TABLE AND STARTS That's +for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air. +HE HURRIES OUT THROUGH THE HALL. THE WHORES POINT. FLORRY FOLLOWS, +SPILLING WATER FROM HER TILTED TUMBLER. ON THE DOORSTEP ALL THE WHORES +CLUSTERED TALK VOLUBLY, POINTING TO THE RIGHT WHERE THE FOG HAS CLEARED +OFF. FROM THE LEFT ARRIVES A JINGLING HACKNEY CAR. IT SLOWS TO IN FRONT +OF THE HOUSE. BLOOM AT THE HALLDOOR PERCEIVES CORNY KELLEHER WHO IS ABOUT +TO DISMOUNT FROM THE CAR WITH TWO SILENT LECHERS. HE AVERTS HIS FACE. +BELLA FROM WITHIN THE HALL URGES ON HER WHORES. THEY BLOW ICKYLICKYSTICKY +YUMYUM KISSES. CORNY KELLEHER REPLIES WITH A GHASTLY LEWD SMILE. THE +SILENT LECHERS TURN TO PAY THE JARVEY. ZOE AND KITTY STILL POINT RIGHT. +BLOOM, PARTING THEM SWIFTLY, DRAWS HIS CALIPH'S HOOD AND PONCHO AND +HURRIES DOWN THE STEPS WITH SIDEWAYS FACE. INCOG HAROUN AL RASCHID HE +FLITS BEHIND THE SILENT LECHERS AND HASTENS ON BY THE RAILINGS WITH FLEET +STEP OF A PARD STREWING THE DRAG BEHIND HIM, TORN ENVELOPES DRENCHED IN +ANISEED. THE ASHPLANT MARKS HIS STRIDE. A PACK OF BLOODHOUNDS, LED BY +HORNBLOWER OF TRINITY BRANDISHING A DOGWHIP IN TALLYHO CAP AND AN OLD +PAIR OF GREY TROUSERS, FOLLOW FROM FIR, PICKING UP THE SCENT, NEARER, +BAYING, PANTING, AT FAULT, BREAKING AWAY, THROWING THEIR TONGUES, BITING +HIS HEELS, LEAPING AT HIS TAIL. HE WALKS, RUNS, ZIGZAGS, GALLOPS, LUGS +LAID BACK. HE IS PELTED WITH GRAVEL, CABBAGESTUMPS, BISCUITBOXES, EGGS, +POTATOES, DEAD CODFISH, WOMAN'S SLIPPERSLAPPERS. AFTER HIM FRESHFOUND THE +HUE AND CRY ZIGZAG GALLOPS IN HOT PURSUIT OF FOLLOW MY LEADER C, +C, NIGHT WATCH, JOHN HENRY MENTON, WISDOM HELY, V. B. DILLON, COUNCILLOR +NANNETTI, ALEXANDER KEYES, LARRY O'ROURKE, JOE CUFFE MRS O'DOWD, PISSER +BURKE, THE NAMELESS ONE, MRS RIORDAN, THE CITIZEN, GARRYOWEN, +WHODOYOUCALLHIM, STRANGEFACE, FELLOWTHATSOLIKE, SAWHIMBEFORE, +CHAPWITHAWEN, CHRIS CALLINAN, SIR CHARLES CAMERON, BENJAMIN DOLLARD, +LENEHAN, BARTELL D'ARCY, JOE HYNES, RED MURRAY, EDITOR BRAYDEN, T. M. +HEALY, MR JUSTICE FITZGIBBON, JOHN HOWARD PARNELL, THE REVEREND TINNED +SALMON, PROFESSOR JOLY, MRS BREEN, DENIS BREEN, THEODORE PUREFOY, MINA +PUREFOY, THE WESTLAND ROW POSTMISTRESS, C. P. M'COY, FRIEND OF LYONS, +HOPPY HOLOHAN, MANINTHESTREET, OTHERMANINTHESTREET, FOOTBALLBOOTS, +PUGNOSED DRIVER, RICH PROTESTANT LADY, DAVY BYRNE, MRS ELLEN M'GUINNESS, +MRS JOE GALLAHER, GEORGE LIDWELL, JIMMY HENRY ON CORNS, SUPERINTENDENT +LARACY, FATHER COWLEY, CROFTON OUT OF THE COLLECTORGENERAL'S, DAN +DAWSON, DENTAL SURGEON BLOOM WITH TWEEZERS, MRS BOB DORAN, MRS KENNEFICK, +MRS WYSE NOLAN, JOHN WYSE NOLAN, +HANDSOMEMARRIEDWOMANRUBBEDAGAINSTWIDEBEHINDINCLONSKEATRAM, THE BOOKSELLER +OF Sweets Of Sin, MISS DUBEDATANDSHEDIDBEDAD, MESDAMES GERALD AND +STANISLAUS MORAN OF ROEBUCK, THE MANAGING CLERK OF DRIMMIE'S, WETHERUP, +COLONEL HAYES, MASTIANSKY, CITRON, PENROSE, AARON FIGATNER, MOSES HERZOG, +MICHAEL E GERAGHTY, INSPECTOR TROY, MRS GALBRAITH, THE CONSTABLE OFF +ECCLES STREET CORNER, OLD DOCTOR BRADY WITH STETHOSCOPE, THE MYSTERY MAN +ON THE BEACH, A RETRIEVER, MRS MIRIAM DANDRADE AND ALL HER LOVERS. +THE HUE AND CRY HELTERSKELTERPELTERWELTER He's Bloom Stop Bloom +Stopabloom Stopperrobber Hi Hi Stophim on the corner +AT THE CORNER OF BEAVER STREET BENEATH THE SCAFFOLDING BLOOM PANTING +STOPS ON THE FRINGE OF THE NOISY QUARRELLING KNOT, A LOT NOT KNOWING A +JOT WHAT HI HI ROW AND WRANGLE ROUND THE WHOWHAT BRAWLALTOGETHER. +STEPHEN WITH ELABORATE GESTURES, BREATHING DEEPLY AND SLOWLY You are +my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of +Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory. +PRIVATE CARR TO CISSY CAFFREY Was he insulting you? +STEPHEN Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive. +VOICES No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen's. +What's up? Soldier and civilian. +CISSY CAFFREY I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to +doyou know, and the young man run up behind me. But I'm faithful to the +man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore. +STEPHEN CATCHES SIGHT OF LYNCH'S AND KITTY'S HEADS Hail, Sisyphus. HE +POINTS TO HIMSELF AND THE OTHERS Poetic. Uropoetic. +VOICES Shes faithfultheman. +CISSY CAFFREY Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend. +PRIVATE COMPTON He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him +one, Harry. +PRIVATE CARR TO CISSY Was he insulting you while me and him was having +a piss? +LORD TENNYSON GENTLEMAN POET IN UNION JACK BLAZER AND CRICKET FLANNELS, +BAREHEADED, FLOWINGBEARDED Theirs not to reason why. +PRIVATE COMPTON Biff him, Harry. +STEPHEN TO PRIVATE COMPTON I don't know your name but you are quite +right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their +shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole. +CISSY CAFFREY TO THE CROWD No, I was with the privates. +STEPHEN AMIABLY Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every +lady for example ... +PRIVATE CARR HIS CAP AWRY, ADVANCES TO STEPHEN Say, how would it be, +governor, if I was to bash in your jaw? +STEPHEN LOOKS UP TO THE SKY How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of +selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. HE WAVES HIS HAND Hand hurts +me slightly. ENFIN CE SONT VOS OIGNONS. TO CISSY CAFFREY Some trouble +is on here. What is it precisely? +DOLLY GRAY FROM HER BALCONY WAVES HER HANDKERCHIEF, GIVING THE SIGN OF +THE HEROINE OF JERICHO Rahab. Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly. +Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you. +THE SOLDIERS TURN THEIR SWIMMING EYES. +BLOOM ELBOWING THROUGH THE CROWD, PLUCKS STEPHEN'S SLEEVE VIGOROUSLY +Come now, professor, that carman is waiting. +STEPHEN TURNS Eh? HE DISENGAGES HIMSELF Why should I not speak to +him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? HE +POINTS HIS FINGER I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. +Retaining the perpendicular. +HE STAGGERS A PACE BACK +BLOOM PROPPING HIM Retain your own. +STEPHEN LAUGHS EMPTILY My centre of gravity is displaced. I have +forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for +life is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar +and the king of England, have invented arbitration. HE TAPS HIS BROW +But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king. +BIDDY THE CLAP Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor +out of the college. +CUNTY KATE I did. I heard that. +BIDDY THE CLAP He expresses himself with such marked refinement of +phraseology. +CUNTY KATE Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite +trenchancy. +PRIVATE CARR PULLS HIMSELF FREE AND COMES FORWARD What's that you're +saying about my king? +EDWARD THE SEVENTH APPEARS IN AN ARCHWAY. HE WARS A WHITE JERSEY ON +WHICH AN IMAGE OF THE SACRED HEART IS STITCHED WITH THE INSIGNIA OF +GARTER AND THISTLE, GOLDEN FLEECE, ELEPHANT OF DENMARK, SKINNER'S AND +PROBYN'S HORSE, LINCOLN'S INN BENCHER AND ANCIENT AND HONOURABLE +ARTILLERY COMPANY OF MASSACHUSETTS. HE SUCKS A RED JUJUBE. HE IS ROBED AS +A GRAND ELECT PERFECT AND SUBLIME MASON WITH TROWEL AND APRON, MARKED +made in Germany. IN HIS LEFT HAND HE HOLDS A PLASTERER'S BUCKET ON WHICH +IS PRINTED Defense d'uriner. A ROAR OF WELCOME GREETS HIM. +EDWARD THE SEVENTH SLOWLY, SOLEMNLY BUT INDISTINCTLY Peace, perfect +peace. For identification, bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. HE TURNS TO +HIS SUBJECTS We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we +heartily wish both men the best of good luck. Mahak makar a bak. +HE SHAKES HANDS WITH PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON, STEPHEN, BLOOM AND +LYNCH. GENERAL APPLAUSE. EDWARD THE SEVENTH LIFTS HIS BUCKET GRACIOUSLY +IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT. +PRIVATE CARR TO STEPHEN Say it again. +STEPHEN NERVOUS, FRIENDLY, PULLS HIMSELF UP I understand your point of +view though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of +patent medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the +point. You die for your country. Suppose. HE PLACES HIS ARM ON PRIVATE +CARR'S SLEEVE Not that I wish it for you. But I say Let my country die +for me. Up to the present it has done so. I didn't want it to die. Damn +death. Long live life +EDWARD THE SEVENTH LEVITATES OVER HEAPS OF SLAIN, IN THE GARB AND WITH +THE HALO OF JOKING JESUS, A WHITE JUJUBE IN HIS PHOSPHORESCENT FACE +My methods are new and are causing surprise. +To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes. +STEPHEN Kings and unicorns HE FILLS BACK A PACE Come somewhere and +we'll ... What was that girl saying? ... +PRIVATE COMPTON Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one +into Jerry. +BLOOM TO THE PRIVATES, SOFTLY He doesn't know what he's saying. Taken +a little more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know +him. He's a gentleman, a poet. It's all right. +STEPHEN NODS, SMILING AND LAUGHING Gentleman, patriot, scholar and +judge of impostors. +PRIVATE CARR I don't give a bugger who he is. +PRIVATE COMPTON We don't give a bugger who he is. +STEPHEN I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull. +KEVIN EGAN OF PARIS IN BLACK SPANISH TASSELLED SHIRT AND PEEPO'DAY +BOY'S HAT SIGNS TO STEPHEN. +KEVIN EGAN H'lo BONJOUR The VIEILLE OGRESSE with the DENTS JAUNES. +PATRICE EGAN PEEPS FROM BEHIND, HIS RABBITFACE NIBBLING A QUINCE LEAF. +PATRICE SOCIALISTE +DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY IN MEDIEVAL HAUBERK, TWO +WILD GEESE VOLANT ON HIS HELM, WITH NOBLE INDIGNATION POINTS A MAILED +HAND AGAINST THE PRIVATES Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand +porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy +BLOOM TO STEPHEN Come home. You'll get into trouble. +STEPHEN SWAYING I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence. +BIDDY THE CLAP One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage. +THE VIRAGO Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone. +THE BAWD The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers Up +King Edward +A ROUGH LAUGHS Ay Hands up to De Wet. +THE CITIZEN WITH A HUGE EMERALD MUFFLER AND SHILLELAGH, CALLS +May the God above +Send down a dove +With teeth as sharp as razors +To slit the throats +Of the English dogs +That hanged our Irish leaders. +THE CROPPY BOY THE ROPENOOSE ROUND HIS NECK, GRIPES IN HIS ISSUING +BOWELS WITH BOTH HANDS +I bear no hate to a living thing, +But I love my country beyond the king. +RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER ACCOMPANIED BY TWO BLACKMASKED ASSISTANTS, +ADVANCES WITH GLADSTONE BAG WHICH HE OPENS Ladies and gents, cleaver +purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered +the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the +unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing +arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the +gallows. +HE JERKS THE ROPE. THE ASSISTANTS LEAP AT THE VICTIM'S LEGS AND DRAG HIM +DOWNWARD, GRUNTING THE CROPPY BOY'S TONGUE PROTRUDES VIOLENTLY. +THE CROPPY BOY +Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest. +HE GIVES UP THE GHOST. A VIOLENT ERECTION OF THE HANGED SENDS GOUTS OF +SPERM SPOUTING THROUGH HIS DEATHCLOTHES ON TO THE COBBLESTONES. MRS +BELLINGHAM, MRS YELVERTON BARRY AND THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS +RUSH FORWARD WITH THEIR HANDKERCHIEFS TO SOP IT UP. +RUMBOLD I'm near it myself. HE UNDOES THE NOOSE Rope which hanged the +awful rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal Highness. HE +PLUNGES HIS HEAD INTO THE GAPING BELLY OF THE HANGED AND DRAWS OUT HIS +HEAD AGAIN CLOTTED WITH COILED AND SMOKING ENTRAILS My painful duty has +now been done. God save the king +EDWARD THE SEVENTH DANCES SLOWLY, SOLEMNLY, RATTLING HIS BUCKET, AND +SINGS WITH SOFT CONTENTMENT +On coronation day, on coronation day, +O, won't we have a merry time, +Drinking whisky, beer and wine +PRIVATE CARR Here. What are you saying about my king? +STEPHEN THROWS UP HIS HANDS O, this is too monotonous Nothing. He +wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some +brutish empire of his. Money I haven't. HE SEARCHES HIS POCKETS VAGUELY +GAVE IT TO SOMEONE. +PRIVATE CARR Who wants your bleeding money? +STEPHEN TRIES TO MOVE OFF Will someone tell me where I am least likely +to meet these necessary evils? CA SE VOIT AUSSI A PARIS. Not that I ... +But, by Saint Patrick ... +THE WOMEN'S HEADS COALESCE. OLD GUMMY GRANNY IN SUGARLOAF HAT APPEARS +SEATED ON A TOADSTOOL, THE DEATHFLOWER OF THE POTATO BLIGHT ON HER +BREAST. +STEPHEN Aha I know you, gammer Hamlet, revenge The old sow that eats +her farrow +OLD GUMMY GRANNY ROCKING TO AND FRO Ireland's sweetheart, the king of +Spain's daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them +SHE KEENS WITH BANSHEE WOE Ochone Ochone Silk of the kine SHE +WAILS You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand? +STEPHEN How do I stand you? The hat trick Where's the third person of +the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow. +CISSY CAFFREY SHRILL Stop them from fighting +A ROUGH Our men retreated. +PRIVATE CARR TUGGING AT HIS BELT I'll wring the neck of any fucker +says a word against my fucking king. +BLOOM TERRIFIED He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding. +THE CITIZEN ERIN GO BRAGH +MAJOR TWEEDY AND THE CITIZEN EXHIBIT TO EACH OTHER MEDALS, DECORATIONS, +TROPHIES OF WAR, WOUNDS. BOTH SALUTE WITH FIERCE HOSTILITY. +PRIVATE COMPTON Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proboer. +STEPHEN Did I? When? +BLOOM TO THE REDCOATS We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile +troops. Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our +monarch. +THE NAVVY STAGGERING PAST O, yes O God, yes O, make the kwawr a +krowawr O Bo +CASQUED HALBERDIERS IN ARMOUR THRUST FORWARD A PENTICE OF GUTTED +SPEARPOINTS. MAJOR TWEEDY, MOUSTACHED LIKE TURKO THE TERRIBLE, IN +BEARSKIN CAP WITH HACKLEPLUME AND ACCOUTREMENTS, WITH EPAULETTES, GILT +CHEVRONS AND SABRETACHES, HIS BREAST BRIGHT WITH MEDALS, TOES THE LINE. +HE GIVES THE PILGRIM WARRIOR'S SIGN OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. +MAJOR TWEEDY GROWLS GRUFFLY Rorke's Drift Up, guards, and at them +Mahar shalal hashbaz. +PRIVATE CARR I'll do him in. +PRIVATE COMPTON WAVES THE CROWD BACK Fair play, here. Make a bleeding +butcher's shop of the bugger. +MASSED BANDS BLARE Garryowen AND God save the king. +CISSY CAFFREY They're going to fight. For me +CUNTY KATE The brave and the fair. +BIDDY THE CLAP Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best. +CUNTY KATE BLUSHING DEEPLY Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry +saint George for me +STEPHEN +The harlot's cry from street to street +Shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet. +PRIVATE CARR LOOSENING HIS BELT, SHOUTS I'll wring the neck of any +fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king. +BLOOM SHAKES CISSY CAFFREY'S SHOULDERS Speak, you Are you struck +dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, +sacred lifegiver +CISSY CAFFREY ALARMED, SEIZES PRIVATE CARR'S SLEEVE Amn't I with you? +Amn't I your girl? Cissy's your girl. SHE CRIES Police +STEPHEN ECSTATICALLY, TO CISSY CAFFREY +White thy fambles, red thy gan +And thy quarrons dainty is. +VOICES Police +DISTANT VOICES Dublin's burning Dublin's burning On fire, on fire +BRIMSTONE FIRES SPRING UP. DENSE CLOUDS ROLL PAST. HEAVY GATLING GUNS +BOOM. PANDEMONIUM. TROOPS DEPLOY. GALLOP OF HOOFS. ARTILLERY. HOARSE +COMMANDS. BELLS CLANG. BACKERS SHOUT. DRUNKARDS BAWL. WHORES SCREECH. +FOGHORNS HOOT. CRIES OF VALOUR. SHRIEKS OF DYING. PIKES CLASH ON +CUIRASSES. THIEVES ROB THE SLAIN. BIRDS OF PREY, WINGING FROM THE SEA, +RISING FROM MARSHLANDS, SWOOPING FROM EYRIES, HOVER SCREAMING, GANNETS, +CORMORANTS, VULTURES, GOSHAWKS, CLIMBING WOODCOCKS, PEREGRINES, MERLINS, +BLACKGROUSE, SEA EAGLES, GULLS, ALBATROSSES, BARNACLE GEESE. THE MIDNIGHT +SUN IS DARKENED. THE EARTH TREMBLES. THE DEAD OF DUBLIN FROM PROSPECT AND +MOUNT JEROME IN WHITE SHEEPSKIN OVERCOATS AND BLACK GOATFELL CLOAKS ARISE +AND APPEAR TO MANY. A CHASM OPENS WITH A NOISELESS YAWN. TOM ROCHFORD, +WINNER, IN ATHLETE'S SINGLET AND BREECHES, ARRIVES AT THE HEAD OF THE +NATIONAL HURDLE HANDICAP AND LEAPS INTO THE VOID. HE IS FOLLOWED BY A +RACE OF RUNNERS AND LEAPERS. IN WILD ATTITUDES THEY SPRING FROM THE +BRINK. THEIR BODIES PLUNGE. FACTORY LASSES WITH FANCY CLOTHES TOSS REDHOT +YORKSHIRE BARAABOMBS. SOCIETY LADIES LIFT THEIR SKIRTS ABOVE THEIR HEADS +TO PROTECT THEMSELVES. LAUGHING WITCHES IN RED CUTTY SARKS RIDE THROUGH +THE AIR ON BROOMSTICKS. QUAKERLYSTER PLASTERS BLISTERS. IT RAINS DRAGONS' +TEETH. ARMED HEROES SPRING UP FROM FURROWS. THEY EXCHANGE IN AMITY THE +PASS OF KNIGHTS OF THE RED CROSS AND FIGHT DUELS WITH CAVALRY SABRES +WOLFE TONE AGAINST HENRY GRATTAN, SMITH O'BRIEN AGAINST DANIEL O'CONNELL, +MICHAEL DAVITT AGAINST ISAAC BUTT, JUSTIN M'CARTHY AGAINST PARNELL, +ARTHUR GRIFFITH AGAINST JOHN REDMOND, JOHN O'LEARY AGAINST LEAR O'JOHNNY, +LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD AGAINST LORD GERALD FITZEDWARD, THE O'DONOGHUE OF +THE GLENS AGAINST THE GLENS OF THE O'DONOGHUE. ON AN EMINENCE, THE CENTRE +OF THE EARTH, RISES THE FELDALTAR OF SAINT BARBARA. BLACK CANDLES RISE +FROM ITS GOSPEL AND EPISTLE HORNS. FROM THE HIGH BARBACANS OF THE TOWER +TWO SHAFTS OF LIGHT FALL ON THE SMOKEPALLED ALTARSTONE. ON THE ALTARSTONE +MRS MINA PUREFOY, GODDESS OF UNREASON, LIES, NAKED, FETTERED, A CHALICE +RESTING ON HER SWOLLEN BELLY. FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN IN A LACE PETTICOAT +AND REVERSED CHASUBLE, HIS TWO LEFT FEET BACK TO THE FRONT, CELEBRATES +CAMP MASS. THE REVEREND MR HUGH C HAINES LOVE M. A. IN A PLAIN CASSOCK +AND MORTARBOARD, HIS HEAD AND COLLAR BACK TO THE FRONT, HOLDS OVER THE +CELEBRANT'S HEAD AN OPEN UMBRELLA. +FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN INTROIBO AD ALTARE DIABOLI. +THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE To the devil which hath made glad my young +days. +FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN TAKES FROM THE CHALICE AND ELEVATES A +BLOODDRIPPING HOST CORPUS MEUM. +THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE RAISES HIGH BEHIND THE CELEBRANT'S +PETTICOAT, REVEALING HIS GREY BARE HAIRY BUTTOCKS BETWEEN WHICH A CARROT +IS STUCK My body. +THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, +Aiulella +FROM ON HIGH THE VOICE OF ADONAI CALLS. +ADONAI Dooooooooooog +THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent +reigneth +FROM ON HIGH THE VOICE OF ADONAI CALLS. +ADONAI Goooooooooood +IN STRIDENT DISCORD PEASANTS AND TOWNSMEN OF ORANGE AND GREEN FACTIONS +SING Kick the Pope AND Daily, daily sing to Mary. +PRIVATE CARR WITH FEROCIOUS ARTICULATION I'll do him in, so help me +fucking Christ I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking +windpipe +OLD GUMMY GRANNY THRUSTS A DAGGER TOWARDS STEPHEN'S HAND Remove him, +acushla. At . a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. +SHE PRAYS O good God, take him +THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY. +BLOOM RUNS TO LYNCH Can't you get him away? +LYNCH He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty TO BLOOM Get +him away, you. He won't listen to me. +HE DRAGS KITTY AWAY. +STEPHEN POINTS EXIT JUDAS. ET LAQUEO SE SUSPENDIT. +BLOOM RUNS TO STEPHEN Come along with me now before worse happens. +Here's your stick. +STEPHEN Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason. +CISSY CAFFREY PULLING PRIVATE CARR Come on, you're boosed. He insulted +me but I forgive him. SHOUTING IN HIS EAR I forgive him for insulting +me. +BLOOM OVER STEPHEN'S SHOULDER Yes, go. You see he's incapable. +PRIVATE CARR BREAKS LOOSE I'll insult him. +HE RUSHES TOWARDS STEPHEN, FIST OUTSTRETCHED, AND STRIKES HIM IN THE +FACE. STEPHEN TOTTERS, COLLAPSES, FALLS, STUNNED. HE LIES PRONE, HIS FACE +TO THE SKY, HIS HAT ROLLING TO THE WALL. BLOOM FOLLOWS AND PICKS IT UP. +MAJOR TWEEDY LOUDLY Carbine in bucket Cease fire Salute +THE RETRIEVER BARKING FURIOUSLY Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute. +THE CROWD Let him up Don't strike him when he's down Air Who? The +soldier hit him. He's a professor. Is he hurted? Don't manhandle him +He's fainted +A HAG What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the +influence. Let them go and fight the Boers +THE BAWD Listen to who's talking Hasn't the soldier a right to go with +his girl? He gave him the coward's blow. +THEY GRAB AT EACH OTHER'S HAIR, CLAW AT EACH OTHER AND SPIT +THE RETRIEVER BARKING Wow wow wow. +BLOOM SHOVES THEM BACK, LOUDLY Get back, stand back +PRIVATE COMPTON TUGGING HIS COMRADE Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here's +the cops +TWO RAINCAPED WATCH, TALL, STAND IN THE GROUP. +FIRST WATCH What's wrong here? +PRIVATE COMPTON We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And +assaulted my chum. THE RETRIEVER BARKS Who owns the bleeding tyke? +CISSY CAFFREY WITH EXPECTATION Is he bleeding +A MAN RISING FROM HIS KNEES No. Gone off. He'll come to all right. +BLOOM GLANCES SHARPLY AT THE MAN Leave him to me. I can easily ... +SECOND WATCH Who are you? Do you know him? +PRIVATE CARR LURCHES TOWARDS THE WATCH He insulted my lady friend. +BLOOM ANGRILY You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. +Constable, take his regimental number. +SECOND WATCH I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty. +PRIVATE COMPTON PULLING HIS COMRADE Here, bugger off Harry. Or +Bennett'll shove you in the lockup. +PRIVATE CARR STAGGERING AS HE IS PULLED AWAY God fuck old Bennett. +He's a whitearsed bugger. I don't give a shit for him. +FIRST WATCH TAKES OUT HIS NOTEBOOK What's his name? +BLOOM PEERING OVER THE CROWD I just see a car there. If you give me a +hand a second, sergeant ... +FIRST WATCH Name and address. +CORNY KELLEKER, WEEPERS ROUND HIS HAT, A DEATH WREATH IN HIS HAND, +APPEARS AMONG THE BYSTANDERS. +BLOOM QUICKLY O, the very man HE WHISPERS Simon Dedalus' son. A bit +sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back. +SECOND WATCH Night, Mr Kelleher. +CORNY KELLEHER TO THE WATCH, WITH DRAWLING EYE That's all right. I +know him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. HE LAUGHS Twenty +to one. Do you follow me? +FIRST WATCH TURNS TO THE CROWD Here, what are you all gaping at? Move +on out of that. +THE CROWD DISPERSES SLOWLY, MUTTERING, DOWN THE LANE. +CORNY KELLEHER Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. HE +LAUGHS, SHAKING HIS HEAD We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. +What? Eh, what? +FIRST WATCH LAUGHS I suppose so. +CORNY KELLEHER NUDGES THE SECOND WATCH Come and wipe your name off the +slate. HE LILTS, WAGGING HIS HEAD With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom +tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me? +SECOND WATCH GENIALLY Ah, sure we were too. +CORNY KELLEHER WINKING Boys will be boys. I've a car round there. +SECOND WATCH All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night. +CORNY KELLEHER I'll see to that. +BLOOM SHAKES HANDS WITH BOTH OF THE WATCH IN TURN Thank you very much, +gentlemen. Thank you. HE MUMBLES CONFIDENTIALLY We don't want any +scandal, you understand. Father is a wellknown highly respected citizen. +Just a little wild oats, you understand. +FIRST WATCH O. I understand, sir. +SECOND WATCH That's all right, sir. +FIRST WATCH It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report +it at the station. +BLOOM NODS RAPIDLY Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty. +SECOND WATCH It's our duty. +CORNY KELLEHER Good night, men. +THE WATCH SALUTING TOGETHER Night, gentlemen. THEY MOVE OFF WITH SLOW +HEAVY TREAD +BLOOM BLOWS Providential you came on the scene. You have a car? ... +CORNY KELLEHER LAUGHS, POINTING HIS THUMB OVER HIS RIGHT SHOULDER TO +THE CAR BROUGHT UP AGAINST THE SCAFFOLDING Two commercials that were +standing fizz in Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid +on the race. Drowning his grief. And were on for a go with the jolly +girls. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown. +BLOOM I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to ... +CORNY KELLEHER LAUGHS Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. +No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. HE +LAUGHS AGAIN AND LEERS WITH LACKLUSTRE EYE Thanks be to God we have it +in the house, what, eh, do you follow me? Hah, hah, hah +BLOOM TRIES TO LAUGH He, he, he Yes. Matter of fact I was just +visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him poor +fellow, he's laid up for the past week and we had a liquor together and +I was just making my way home ... +THE HORSE NEIGHS. +THE HORSE Hohohohohohoh Hohohohome +CORNY KELLEHER Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we +left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got +off to see. HE LAUGHS Sober hearsedrivers a speciality. Will I give him +a lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what? +BLOOM No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop. +STEPHEN, PRONE, BREATHES TO THE STARS. CORNY KELLEHER, ASQUINT, DRAWLS +AT THE HORSE. BLOOM, IN GLOOM, LOOMS DOWN. +CORNY KELLEHER SCRATCHES HIS NAPE Sandycove HE BENDS DOWN AND CALLS +TO STEPHEN Eh HE CALLS AGAIN Eh He's covered with shavings anyhow. +Take care they didn't lift anything off him. +BLOOM No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick. +CORNY KELLEHER Ah, well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll +shove along. HE LAUGHS I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the +dead. Safe home +THE HORSE NEIGHS Hohohohohome. +BLOOM Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few ... +CORNY KELLEHER RETURNS TO THE OUTSIDE CAR AND MOUNTS IT. THE HORSE +HARNESS JINGLES. +CORNY KELLEHER FROM THE CAR, STANDING Night. +BLOOM Night. +THE JARVEY CHUCKS THE REINS AND RAISES HIS WHIP ENCOURAGINGLY. THE CAR +AND HORSE BACK SLOWLY, AWKWARDLY, AND TURN. CORNY KELLEHER ON THE +SIDESEAT SWAYS HIS HEAD TO AND FRO IN SIGN OF MIRTH AT BLOOM'S PLIGHT. +THE JARVEY JOINS IN THE MUTE PANTOMIMIC MERRIMENT NODDING FROM THE +FARTHER SEAT. BLOOM SHAKES HIS HEAD IN MUTE MIRTHFUL REPLY. WITH THUMB +AND PALM CORNY KELLEHER REASSURES THAT THE TWO BOBBIES WILL ALLOW THE +SLEEP TO CONTINUE FOR WHAT ELSE IS TO BE DONE. WITH A SLOW NOD BLOOM +CONVEYS HIS GRATITUDE AS THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT STEPHEN NEEDS. THE CAR +JINGLES TOORALOOM ROUND THE CORNER OF THE TOORALOOM LANE. CORNY KELLEHER +AGAIN REASSURALOOMS WITH HIS HAND. BLOOM WITH HIS HAND ASSURALOOMS CORNY +KELLEHER THAT HE IS REASSURALOOMTAY. THE TINKLING HOOFS AND JINGLING +HARNESS GROW FAINTER WITH THEIR TOORALOOLOO LOOLOO LAY. BLOOM, HOLDING IN +HIS HAND STEPHEN'S HAT, FESTOONED WITH SHAVINGS, AND ASHPLANT, STANDS +IRRESOLUTE. THEN HE BENDS TO HIM AND SHAKES HIM BY THE SHOULDER. +BLOOM Eh Ho THERE IS NO ANSWER HE BENDS AGAIN Mr Dedalus THERE IS +NO ANSWER The name if you call. Somnambulist. HE BENDS AGAIN AND +HESITATING, BRINGS HIS MOUTH NEAR THE FACE OF THE PROSTRATE FORM +Stephen THERE IS NO ANSWER. HE CALLS AGAIN. Stephen +STEPHEN GROANS Who? Black panther. Vampire. HE SIGHS AND STRETCHES +HIMSELF, THEN MURMURS THICKLY WITH PROLONGED VOWELS +Who ... drive... Fergus now +And pierce ... wood's woven shade? ... +HE TURNS ON HIS LEFT SIDE, SIGHING, DOUBLING HIMSELF TOGETHER. +BLOOM Poetry. Well educated. Pity. HE BENDS AGAIN AND UNDOES THE +BUTTONS OF STEPHEN'S WAISTCOAT To breathe. HE BRUSHES THE WOODSHAVINGS +FROM STEPHEN'S CLOTHES WITH LIGHT HAND AND FINGERS One pound seven. Not +hurt anyhow. HE LISTENS What? +STEPHEN MURMURS +... shadows ... the woods +... white breast... dim sea. +HE STRETCHES OUT HIS ARMS, SIGHS AGAIN AND CURLS HIS BODY. BLOOM, +HOLDING THE HAT AND ASHPLANT, STANDS ERECT. A DOG BARKS IN THE DISTANCE. +BLOOM TIGHTENS AND LOOSENS HIS GRIP ON THE ASHPLANT. HE LOOKS DOWN ON +STEPHEN'S FACE AND FORM. +BLOOM COMMUNES WITH THE NIGHT Face reminds me of his poor mother. In +the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A +girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him. HE MURMURS ... swear that +I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or +arts ... HE MURMURS ... in the rough sands of the sea ... a cabletow's +length from the shore ... where the tide ebbs ... and flows ... +SILENT, THOUGHTFUL, ALERT HE STANDS ON GUARD, HIS FINGERS AT HIS LIPS IN +THE ATTITUDE OF SECRET MASTER. AGAINST THE DARK WALL A FIGURE APPEARS +SLOWLY, A FAIRY BOY OF ELEVEN, A CHANGELING, KIDNAPPED, DRESSED IN AN +ETON SUIT WITH GLASS SHOES AND A LITTLE BRONZE HELMET, HOLDING A BOOK IN +HIS HAND. HE READS FROM RIGHT TO LEFT INAUDIBLY, SMILING, KISSING THE +PAGE. +BLOOM WONDERSTRUCK, CALLS INAUDIBLY Rudy +RUDY GAZES, UNSEEING, INTO BLOOM'S EYES AND GOES ON READING, KISSING, +SMILING. HE HAS A DELICATE MAUVE FACE. ON HIS SUIT HE HAS DIAMOND AND +RUBY BUTTONS. IN HIS FREE LEFT HAND HE HOLDS A SLIM IVORY CANE WITH A +VIOLET BOWKNOT. A WHITE LAMBKIN PEEPS OUT OF HIS WAISTCOAT POCKET. +III +Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the +shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up +generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed. His +Stephen's mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit +unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom +in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry water +available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit upon an +expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's +shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt bridge +where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda +or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was +rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to +take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means +during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was +rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to +get a conveyance of some description which would answer in their then +condition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly Stephen, always +assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly after a few +such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his having forgotten to take +up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in +the shaving line, they both walked together along Beaver street or, more +properly, lane as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid +atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where +they made tracks to the left from thence debouching into Amiens street +round by the corner of Dan Bergin's. But as he confidently anticipated +there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen except +a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree, +outside the North Star hotel and there was no symptom of its budging a +quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a professional +whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding +his arms arched over his head, twice. +This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently +there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it +which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett's and the +Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the +direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped +by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to +vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons though, entering +thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the +mischance. So as neither of them were particularly pressed for time, as +it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it cleared up after the +recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by where +the empty vehicle was waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so +happened a Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happened to be +returning and the elder man recounted to his companion A PROPOS of the +incident his own truly miraculous escape of some little while back. They +passed the main entrance of the Great Northern railway station, the +starting point for Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at +that late hour and passing the backdoor of the morgue a not very +enticing locality, not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at +night ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into +Store street, famous for its C division police station. Between this +point and the high at present unlit warehouses of Beresford place Stephen +thought to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird's the stonecutter's in +his mind somehow in Talbot place, first turning on the right, while the +other who was acting as his FIDUS ACHATES inhaled with internal +satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite +close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily +bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most +indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where +is fancy bread, at Rourke's the baker's it is said. +EN ROUTE to his taciturn and, not to put too fine a point on it, not yet +perfectly sober companion Mr Bloom who at all events was in complete +possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober, +spoke a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame +and swell mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while though not +as a habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for +young fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired drinking +habits under the influence of liquor unless you knew a little jiujitsu +for every contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back could +administer a nasty kick if you didn't look out. Highly providential was +the appearance on the scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully +unconscious but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour +the finis might have been that he might have been a candidate for the +accident ward or, failing that, the bridewell and an appearance in the +court next day before Mr Tobias or, he being the solicitor rather, old +Wall, he meant to say, or Mahony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when +it got bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of +those policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous +in the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or +two in the A division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole +through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet +parts of the city, Pembroke road for example, the guardians of the law +were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to protect +the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping soldiers +with firearms or sidearms of any description liable to go off at any time +which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians should by any +chance they fall out over anything. You frittered away your time, he very +sensibly maintained, and health and also character besides which, the +squandermania of the thing, fast women of the DEMIMONDE ran away with a +lot of l.s.d. into the bargain and the greatest danger of all was who you +got drunk with though, touching the much vexed question of stimulants, he +relished a glass of choice old wine in season as both nourishing and +bloodmaking and possessing aperient virtues notably a good burgundy +which he was a staunch believer in still never beyond a certain point +where he invariably drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round +to say nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others practically. +Most of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his +pubhunting CONFRERES but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part +of his brother medicos under all the circs. +And that one was Judas, Stephen said, who up to then had said nothing +whatsoever of any kind. +Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back +of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge where a brazier +of coke burning in front of a sentrybox or something like one attracted +their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no +special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the +light emanating from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure +of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began +to remember that this had happened or had been mentioned as having +happened before but it cost him no small effort before he remembered that +he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend of his father's, Gumley. To +avoid a meeting he drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge. +Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said. +A figure of middle height on the prowl evidently under the arches saluted +again, calling +NIGHT +Stephen of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the +compliment. Mr Bloom actuated by motives of inherent delicacy inasmuch as +he always believed in minding his own business moved off but nevertheless +remained on the QUI VIVE with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish +in the least. Though unusual in the Dublin area he knew that it was not +by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on +to be abroad waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by +placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot outside the city +proper, famished loiterers of the Thames embankment category they might +be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever +boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's notice, your money or +your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garrotted. +Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though +he was not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley's breath +redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley some called him and his +genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of inspector +Corley of the G division, lately deceased, who had married a certain +Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather Patrick +Michael Corley of New Ross had married the widow of a publican there +whose maiden name had been Katherine also Talbot. Rumour had it though +not proved that she descended from the house of the lords Talbot de +Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its +kind and well worth seeing, her mother or aunt or some relative, a woman, +as the tale went, of extreme beauty, had enjoyed the distinction of being +in service in the washkitchen. This therefore was the reason why the +still comparatively young though dissolute man who now addressed Stephen +was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley. +Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell. +Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had +all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called him to +Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other +uncalledfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to +tell him where on God's earth he could get something, anything at all, to +do. No, it was the daughter of the mother in the washkitchen that was +fostersister to the heir of the house or else they were connected through +the mother in some way, both occurrences happening at the same time if +the whole thing wasn't a complete fabrication from start to finish. +Anyhow he was all in. +I wouldn't ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows +I'm on the rocks. +There'll be a job tomorrow or next day, Stephen told him, in a boys' +school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garrett Deasy. Try it. You may +mention my name. +Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I was +never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. I got stuck +twice in the junior at the christian brothers. +I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him. +Corley at the first gooff was inclined to suspect it was something to do +with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart +off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs +Maloney's, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but +M'Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in +Winetavern street which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed +of friar Bacon for a bob. He was starving too though he hadn't said a +word about it. +Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it still +Stephen's feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew that +Corley's brandnew rigmarole on a par with the others was hardly deserving +of much credence. However HAUD IGNARUS MALORUM MISERIS SUCCURRERE DISCO +etcetera as the Latin poet remarks especially as luck would have it he +got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which +was the date of the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of the +wherewithal was demolished. But the cream of the joke was nothing would +get it out of Corley's head that he was living in affluence and hadn't a +thing to do but hand out the needful. Whereas. He put his hand in a +pocket anyhow not with the idea of finding any food there but thinking he +might lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might +endeavour at all events and get sufficient to eat but the result was in +the negative for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken +biscuits were all the result of his investigation. He tried his hardest +to recollect for the moment whether he had lost as well he might have or +left because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much +the reverse in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a +thorough search though he tried to recollect. About biscuits he dimly +remembered. Who now exactly gave them he wondered or where was or did he +buy. However in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the +dark were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out. +Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him. +And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen anyhow lent him +one of them. +Thanks, Corley answered, you're a gentleman. I'll pay you back one +time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in +Camden street with Boylan, the billsticker. You might put in a good word +for us to get me taken on there. I'd carry a sandwichboard only the girl +in the office told me they're full up for the next three weeks, man. God, +you've to book ahead, man, you'd think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don't +give a shite anyway so long as I get a job, even as a crossing sweeper. +Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after the two and six +he got he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky +that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's, +bookkeeper there that used to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara +and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow he was lagged +the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and disorderly and +refusing to go with the constable. +Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the +cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation +watchman's sentrybox who evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was +having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own +private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time +now and then at Stephen's anything but immaculately attired interlocutor +as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though where he was +not in a position to truthfully state nor had he the remotest idea when. +Being a levelheaded individual who could give points to not a few in +point of shrewd observation he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat +and slouchy wearing apparel generally testifying to a chronic +impecuniosity. Palpably he was one of his hangerson but for the matter of +that it was merely a question of one preying on his nextdoor neighbour +all round, in every deep, so to put it, a deeper depth and for the matter +of that if the man in the street chanced to be in the dock himself penal +servitude with or without the option of a fine would be a very rara avis +altogether. In any case he had a consummate amount of cool assurance +intercepting people at that hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick +that was certainly. +The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom who, with his +practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the +blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said, +laughingly, Stephen, that is +He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named +Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman. +At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr +Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the +direction of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana, +moored alongside Customhouse quay and quite possibly out of repair, +whereupon he observed evasively +Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it +his face was familiar to me. But, leaving that for the moment, how much +did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive? +Half a crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep +somewhere. +Needs Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the +intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he +invariably does. Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to +his deeds. But, talking about things in general, where, added he with a +smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of the +question. And even supposing you did you won't get in after what occurred +at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I don't mean +to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you +leave your father's house? +To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer. +I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom +diplomatically returned, today in fact, or to be strictly accurate, on +yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of +conversation that he had moved. +I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly. +Why? +A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects than +one and a born RACONTEUR if ever there was one. He takes great pride, +quite legitimate, out of you. You could go back perhaps, he hasarded, +still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when +it was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and that +English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third +companion, were patently trying as if the whole bally station belonged to +them to give Stephen the slip in the confusion, which they did. +There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, such as it +was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his +family hearth the last time he saw it with his sister Dilly sitting by +the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell +cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he +could drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings +they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and +Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells +and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in +accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on +the days commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember days or +something like that. +No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust in +that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr +Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher and friend if I were in your shoes. He +knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he +never realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you +didn't notice as much as I did. But it wouldn't occasion me the least +surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in +your drink for some ulterior object. +He understood however from all he heard that Dr Mulligan was a versatile +allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was rapidly +coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade fair +to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as a tony +medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services in addition +to which professional status his rescue of that man from certain drowning +by artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or +Malahide was it?, was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed +which he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a +loss to fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he +put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple. +Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking +your brains, he ventured to throw o.ut. +The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by +friendliness which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression of +features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact on the +problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled to judge by +two or three lowspirited remarks he let drop or the other way about saw +through the affair and for some reason or other best known to himself +allowed matters to more or less. Grinding poverty did have that effect +and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities though he +possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet. +Adjacent to the men's public urinal they perceived an icecream car round +which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting +rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly +animated way, there being some little differences between the parties. +PUTTANA MADONNA, CHE CI DIA I QUATTRINI HO RAGIONE? CULO ROTTO +INTENDIAMOCI. MEZZO SOVRANO PIU ... +DICE LUI, PERO +MEZZO. +FARABUTTO MORTACCI SUI +MA ASCOLTA CINQUE LA TESTA PIU ... +Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious +wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been +before, the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints +anent the keeper of it said to be the once famous SkintheGoat +Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for the actual +facts which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few +moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet corner +only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection +of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the genus HOMO +already there engaged in eating and drinking diversified by conversation +for whom they seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity. +Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest to +break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape +of solid food, say, a roll of some description. +Accordingly his first act was with characteristic SANGFROID to order +these commodities quietly. The HOI POLLOI of jarvies or stevedores or +whatever they were after a cursory examination turned their eyes +apparently dissatisfied, away though one redbearded bibulous individual +portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor probably, still stared for +some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the +floor. Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having +just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute, though, to be +sure, rather in a quandary over VOGLIO, remarked to his PROTEGE in an +audible tone of voice A PROPOS of the battle royal in the street which +was still raging fast and furious +A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write +your poetry in that language? BELLA POETRIA It is so melodious and full. +BELLADONNA. VOGLIO. +Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, suffering from +lassitude generally, replied +To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money. +Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the +inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were +absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds +it. +The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this TETEATETE put a boiling +swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a +rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed. After which he +beat a retreat to his counter, Mr Bloom determining to have a good square +look at him later on so as not to appear to. For which reason he +encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by +surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be +called coffee gradually nearer him. +Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time, +like names. Cicero, Podmore. Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle. +Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name? +Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name +was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across. +The redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers boarded +Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely by +asking +And what might your name be? +Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion's boot but +Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure from an unexpected +quarter, answered +Dedalus. +The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather +bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands and +water. +You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length. +I've heard of him, Stephen said. +Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently +eavesdropping too. +He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same +way and nodding. All Irish. +All too Irish, Stephen rejoined. +As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole business +and he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor +of his own accord turned to the other occupants of the shelter with the +remark +I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his +shoulder. The lefthand dead shot. +Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures +being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain. +Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles. +Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims. +He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then he +screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night +with an unprepossessing cast of countenance. +Pom he then shouted once. +The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there +being still a further egg. +Pom he shouted twice. +Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding +bloodthirstily +BUFFALO BILL SHOOTS TO KILL, +NEVER MISSED NOR HE NEVER WILL. +A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness' sake just felt like +asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley. +Beg pardon, the sailor said. +Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth. +Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic +influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He +toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in +Stockholm. +Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively. +Murphy's my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe. +Know where that is? +Queenstown harbour, Stephen replied. +That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's +where I hails from. I belongs there. That's where I hails from. My little +woman's down there. She's waiting for me, I know. FOR ENGLAND, HOME AND +BEAUTY. She's my own true wife I haven't seen for seven years now, +sailing about. +Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene, the homecoming to +the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, a rainy +night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of +stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden +and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a +favourite and most trying declamation piece by the way of poor John Casey +and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way. Never about the runaway +wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the +window Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and +the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his +affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and make a fresh +start. There she sits, a grasswidow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes +me dead, rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or +Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in +shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Broo The +wind Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, POST MORTEM child. With a high +ro and a randy ro and my galloping tearing tandy, O Bow to the +inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted +husband D B Murphy. +The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one of +the jarvies with the request +You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you? +The jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper took a die of +plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object was +passed from hand to hand. +Thank you, the sailor said. +He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with some slow +stammers, proceeded +We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster ROSEVEAN from +Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon. +There's my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S. +In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket +and handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded document. +You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked, +leaning on the counter. +Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I've circumnavigated +a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and +North America and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I +seen icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the +Dardanelles under Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that ever scuttled +a ship. I seen Russia. GOSPODI POMILYOU. That's how the Russians prays. +You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey. +Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer +things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor +same as I chew that quid. +He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his +teeth, bit ferociously +Khaan Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and +the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me. +He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket which seemed to +be in its way a species of repository and pushed it along the table. The +printed matter on it stated CHOZA DE INDIOS. BENI, BOLIVIA. +All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage +women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, +sleeping amid a swarm of infants there must have been quite a score of +them outside some primitive shanties of osier. +Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like +breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more +children. +See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver +raw. +His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns for +several minutes if not more. +Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally. +Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying +Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass. +Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the +card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran as +follows TARJETA POSTAL, SENOR A BOUDIN, GALERIA BECCHE, SANTIAGO, CHILE. +There was no message evidently, as he took particular notice. Though not +an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated or the eggsniping +transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the LazarilloDon +Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in MARITANA on which occasion the +former's ball passed through the latter's hat having detected a +discrepancy between his name assuming he was the person he represented +himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the +compass on the strict q.t. somewhere and the fictitious addressee of the +missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our friend's BONA FIDES +nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to +one day realise some Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via +long sea not to say that he had ever travelled extensively to any great +extent but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he +had consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead +which was his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work a +pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up +with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it did +come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd's heart it was not so +dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside considering the fare +to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six, there and back. +The trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone and be in +every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose liver was +out of order, seeing the different places along the route, Plymouth, +Falmouth, Southampton and so on culminating in an instructive tour of the +sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern Babylon where +doubtless he would see the greatest improvement, tower, abbey, wealth of +Park lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing just struck him as a +by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze around on the spot to see +about trying to make arrangements about a concert tour of summer music +embracing the most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate with mixed bathing +and firstrate hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so +on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots, +which might prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and +corner scratch company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C P M'Coy +type lend me your valise and I'll post you the ticket. No, something top +notch, an all star Irish caste, the TweedyFlower grand opera company +with his own legal consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to +the Elster Grimes and MoodyManners, perfectly simple matter and he was +quite sanguine of success, providing puffs in the local papers could be +managed by some fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the +indispensable wires and thus combine business with pleasure. But who? +That was the rub. Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a +great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to +keep pace with the times APROPOS of the FishguardRosslare route which, +it was mooted, was once more on the TAPIS in the circumlocution +departments with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of +effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there +certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the +public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co. +It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no +small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the +system really needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry +pounds was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead +of being always and ever cooped up since my old stickinthemud took me +for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more humdrum +months of it and merited a radical change of VENUE after the grind of +city life in the summertime for choice when dame Nature is at her +spectacular best constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There +were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home island, +delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of +attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around +Dublin and its picturesque environs even, Poulaphouca to which there was +a steamtram, but also farther away from the madding crowd in Wicklow, +rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly +wheelmen so long as it didn't come down, and in the wilds of Donegal +where if report spoke true the COUP D'OEIL was exceedingly grand though +the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that the influx of +visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering the signal +benefits to be derived from it while Howth with its historic associations +and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O'Malley, George IV, rhododendrons +several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt with all sorts +and conditions of men especially in the spring when young men's fancy, +though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the cliffs by design +or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being only +about three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar. Because of course +uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely in its infancy, so to +speak, and the accommodation left much to be desired. Interesting to +fathom it seemed to him from a motive of curiosity, pure and simple, was +whether it was the traffic that created the route or viceversa or the two +sides in fact. He turned back the other side of the card, picture, and +passed it along to Stephen. +I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had +little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened and +every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a house, +another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the +chinks does. +Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces the +globetrotter went on, adhering to his adventures. +And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his +back. Knife like that. +Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in +keeping with his character and held it in the striking position. +In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers. Fellow +hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. PREPARE TO MEET YOUR +GOD, says he. Chuk It went into his back up to the butt. +His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their further +questions even should they by any chance want to. +That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable +STILETTO. +After which harrowing DENOUEMENT sufficient to appal the stoutest he +snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in +his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket. +They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in +the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the +park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them +using knives. +At this remark passed obviously in the spirit of WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS +Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both instinctively +exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly ENTRE +NOUS variety however, towards where SkintheGoat, ALIAS the keeper, not +turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His +inscrutable face which was really a work of art, a perfect study in +itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn't +understand one jot of what was going on. Funny, very +There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading in fits and +starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the +natives CHOZA DE, another the seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he +was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly +recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as +yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the land +troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively +speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was +just turned fifteen. +Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers. +The request being complied with he clawed them up with a scrape. +Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired. +The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay or +no. +Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he +had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but +he failed to do so, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the sawdust, +and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn. +What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the +boats? +Our SOIDISANT sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before answering +I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships. +Salt junk all the time. +Tired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that he was not +likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, +fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the +globe, suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it +covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what +it meant to rule the waves. On more than one occasion, a dozen at the +lowest, near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a superannuated +old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the not particularly +redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at it and it at him, +dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And +it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out the secret +for himself, floundering up and down the antipodes and all that sort of +thing and over and under, well, not exactly under, tempting the fates. +And the odds were twenty to nil there was really no secret about it at +all. Nevertheless, without going into the MINUTIAE of the business, the +eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the +natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in +the face of providence though it merely went to show how people usually +contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell +idea and the lottery and insurance which were run on identically the same +lines so that for that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a +highly laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where +living inland or seaside, as the case might be, having it brought home to +them like that should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and +coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid +the elements whatever the season when duty called IRELAND EXPECTS THAT +EVERY MAN and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the +wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to +capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had +experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather. +There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog, himself +a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as gentleman's +valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on me and he gave +me an oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job, shaving and +brushup. I hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny, run off to sea +and his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where he could be +drawing easy money. +What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the side, +bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away from +the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy getup and +a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage. +Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny? +He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it. +The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow shirt +with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was to be +seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink intended to represent an +anchor. +There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, sure as nuts. I +must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects to. +I hate those buggers. Suck your blood dry, they does. +Seeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged his +shirt more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the +mariner's hope and rest they had a full view of the figure and a young +man's sideface looking frowningly rather. +Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were Iying +becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the +name of Antonio, done that. There he is himself, a Greek. +Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor. +That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the. Someway +in his. Squeezing or. +See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And +there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his +fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn. +And in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did +actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the +unreserved admiration of everybody including SkintheGoat, who this time +stretched over. +Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's gone +too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay. +He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression +of before. +Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said. +And what's the number for? loafer number two queried. +Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor. +Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time with +some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the direction of +the questioner about the number. Ate. A Greek he was. +And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged +end +AS BAD AS OLD ANTONIO, +FOR HE LEFT ME ON MY OWNIO. +The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat +peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on her +own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom, +scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment flusterfied +but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink sheet of the +Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had laid aside, he +picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though why pink. His +reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round the door the +same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on Ormond +quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the lane who knew the lady +in the brown costume does be with you Mrs B. and begged the chance of +his washing. Also why washing which seemed rather vague than not, your +washing. Still candour compelled him to admit he had washed his wife's +undergarments when soiled in Holles street and women would and did too a +man's similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking ink +hers were, that is if they really loved him, that is to say, love me, +love my dirty shirt. Still just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired +the female's room more than her company so it came as a genuine relief +when the keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off. Round the side +of the Evening Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face +round the side of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing +that she was not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the +group of gazers round skipper Murphy's nautical chest and then there was +no more of her. +The gunboat, the keeper said. +It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking, how +a wretched creature like that from the Lock hospital reeking with disease +can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober senses, if +he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature Of course I +suppose some man is ultimately responsible for her condition. Still no +matter what the cause is from ... +Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely remarking +In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a +roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy +the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap. +The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a prude, +said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a stop +to INSTANTER to say that women of that stamp quite apart from any +oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject, a necessary evil, w ere not +licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing, he +could truthfully state, he, as a PATERFAMILIAS, was a stalwart advocate +of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a policy of the sort, +he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would confer a lasting boon +on everybody concerned. +You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe +in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such, as +distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup. I +believe in that myself because it has been explained by competent men as +the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have such +inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you? +Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try +and concentrate and remember before he could say +They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and +therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for the +possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I can +hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other +practical jokes, CORRUPTIO PER SE and CORRUPTIO PER ACCIDENS both being +excluded by court etiquette. +Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the +mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he +felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly rejoining +Simple? I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant +you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a blue +moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for instance +to invent those rays Rontgen did or the telescope like Edison, though I +believe it was before his time Galileo was the man, I mean, and the same +applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural phenomenon +such as electricity but it's a horse of quite another colour to say you +believe in the existence of a supernatural God. +O that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several +of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial +evidence. +On this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they +were both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference in +their respective ages, clashed. +Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his +original point with a smile of unbelief. I'm not so sure about that. +That's a matter for everyman's opinion and, without dragging in the +sectarian side of the business, I beg to differ with you IN TOTO there. +My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were genuine +forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it's the big +question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them like +HAMLET and Bacon, as, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely better +than I, of course I needn't tell you. Can't you drink that coffee, by the +way? Let me stir it. And take a piece of that bun. It's like one of our +skipper's bricks disguised. Still noone can give what he hasn't got. Try +a bit. +Couldn't, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the +moment refusing to dictate further. +Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to stir +or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with something +approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance and +lucrative work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or +nay did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they were in +run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic evenings +and useful lectures admittance free by qualified men for the lower +orders. On the other hand he had a distinct and painful recollection they +paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently associated +with it at one time, a very modest remuneration indeed for her +pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to believe, was to do +good and net a profit, there being no competition to speak of. Sulphate +of copper poison SO or something in some dried peas he remembered +reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn't remember when +it was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical inspection, of all eatables +seemed to him more than ever necessary which possibly accounted for the +vogue of Dr Tibble's ViCocoa on account of the medical analysis +involved. +Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being +stirred. +Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug +from the brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and +took a sip of the offending beverage. +Still it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid +food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but +regular meals as the SINE QUA NON for any kind of proper work, mental or +manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man. +Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by taking away that +knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history. +Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article, +a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman or +antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was the least +conspicuous point about it. +Our mutual friend's stories are like himself, Mr Bloom APROPOS of +knives remarked to his CONFIDANTE SOTTO VOCE. Do you think they are +genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and +lie like old boots. Look at him. +Yet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was full +of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it was +quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire +fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent probability +in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate gospel. +He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and +Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a +wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, +there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail +delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate +such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He +might even have done for his man supposing it was his own case he told, +as people often did about others, namely, that he killed him himself and +had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say +nothing of the Antonio personage no relation to the dramatic personage +of identical name who sprang from the pen of our national poet who +expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. On the +other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness because +meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting +news from abroad would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean +seas to draw the long bow about the schooner HESPERUS and etcetera. And +when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't +probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows +coined about him. +Mind you, I'm not saying that it's all a pure invention, he resumed. +Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants, though +that is rather a far cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the midget +queen. In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as +they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn't straighten their legs +if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, +indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews or whatever +you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from +sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as gods. There's an +example again of simple souls. +However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures who +reminded him a bit of Ludwig, ALIAS Ledwidge, when he occupied the boards +of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the management in the +FLYING DUTCHMAN, a stupendous success, and his host of admirers came in +large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him though ships of any +sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually fell a bit flat as +also did trains there was nothing intrinsically incompatible about it, +he conceded. On the contrary that stab in the back touch was quite in +keeping with those italianos though candidly he was none the less free to +admit those icecreamers and friers in the fish way not to mention the +chip potato variety and so forth over in little Italy there near the +Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too +given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline +persuasion of others at night so as to have a good old succulent tuckin +with garlic DE RIGUEUR off him or her next day on the quiet and, he +added, on the cheap. +Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like +that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own +hands and give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they +carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My +wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she could +actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in +technically Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite +dark, regular brunette, black. I for one certainly believe climate +accounts for character. That's why I asked you if you wrote your poetry +in Italian. +The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very +passionate about ten shillings. ROBERTO RUBA ROBA SUA. +Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed. +Then, Stephen said staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown +listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles +triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso +Mastino. +It's in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the +blood of the sun. Coincidence I just happened to be in the Kildare street +museum today, shortly prior to our meeting if I can so call it, and I +was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid proportions +of hips, bosom. You simply don't knock against those kind of women here. +An exception here and there. Handsome yes, pretty in a way you find but +what I'm talking about is the female form. Besides they have so little +taste in dress, most of them, which greatly enhances a woman's natural +beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled stockings, it may be, possibly +is, a foible of mine but still it's a thing I simply hate to see. +Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and then the +others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, goo +collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course had +his own say to say. He had doubled the cape a few odd times and weathered +a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all those perils +of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him or words to +that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him. +So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt's rock, wreck +of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for the +moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry Campbell +remembered it PALME on Booterstown strand. That was the talk of the town +that year Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original verse of +distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish TIMES, breakers running +over her and crowds and crowds on the shore in commotion petrified with +horror. Then someone said something about the case of the S. S. LADY +CAIRNS of Swansea run into by the MONA which was on an opposite tack in +rather muggyish weather and lost with all hands on deck. No aid was +given. Her master, the MONA'S, said he was afraid his collision bulkhead +would give way. She had no water, it appears, in her hold. +At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him to +unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat. +Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour who was just +gently dropping off into a peaceful doze. +He made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door, +stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore +due left. While he was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom who +noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship's rum +sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his +burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or unscrew and, +applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig out of +it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had a shrewd +suspicion that the old stager went out on a manoeuvre after the +counterattraction in the shape of a female who however had disappeared to +all intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, when duly +refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gaping up at the piers and girders +of the Loop line rather out of his depth as of course it was all +radically altered since his last visit and greatly improved. Some person +or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected by the +cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but after a brief +space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor, evidently +giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the noise of his +bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the ground where it +apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped anyway for new +foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly disturbed in his +sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of the corporation +stones who, though now broken down and fast breaking up, was none other +in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now practically on the parish +rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all human probability from +dictates of humanity knowing him before shifted about and shuffled in his +box before composing his limbs again in to the arms of Morpheus, a truly +amazing piece of hard lines in its most virulent form on a fellow most +respectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts all his +life who came in for a cool pounds a year at one time which of course +the doublebarrelled ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. +And there he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the +town tolerably pink without a beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be +told and it pointed only once more a moral when he might quite easily be +in a large way of business ifa big if, howeverhe had contrived to +cure himself of his particular partiality. +All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping, +coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the same +thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra basin, +the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there only no +ships ever called. +There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently AU +FAIT. +What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only +rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr +Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he advised +them, how much palmoil the British government gave him for that day's +work, Captain John Lever of the Lever Line. +Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his +private potation and the rest of his exertions. +That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words +growled in wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or other +in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom's sharp ears heard him then expectorate +the plug probably which it was, so that he must have lodged it for the +time being in his fist while he did the drinking and making water jobs +and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in question. Anyhow in he +rolled after his successful libationCUMpotation, introducing an +atmosphere of drink into the SOIREE, boisterously trolling, like a +veritable son of a seacook +THE BISCUITS WAS AS HARD AS BRASS +AND THE BEEF AS SALT AS LOT'S WIFE'S ARSE. +O, JOHNNY LEVER +JOHNNY LEVER, O +After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene +and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form +provided. SkintheGoat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to +grind, was airing his grievances in a forciblefeeble philippic anent the +natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he described +in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face +of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large +quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every year, ten +millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of it by +England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose +always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot more surplus +steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly became general and +all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish +soil, he stated, and there was that colonel Everard down there in Navan +growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like of Irish bacon? +But a day of reckoning, he stated CRESCENDO with no uncertain voice, +thoroughly monopolising all the conversation, was in store for mighty +England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would +be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were +going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the +beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already and her +downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them +about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his +auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention by +showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman +was stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for +Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons. +Silence all round marked the termination of his FINALE. The impervious +navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed. +Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit +peeved in response to the foregoing truism. +To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper concurred +but nevertheless held to his main view. +Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately +interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and +generals we've got? Tell me that. +The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial +blemishes apart. +That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic +peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins? +While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added +he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman +worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few +irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to +the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as +they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows. +From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was +rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, +pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was +fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, +unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather +concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with +the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the +coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time went +on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say +on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to +the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to +try to make the most of both countries even though poles apart. Another +little interesting point, the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in +common parlance, reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for +England as against her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene +between the pair of them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or +have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the other, obviously +bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence +trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student +of the human soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And +as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all, +he B. couldn't help feeling and most properly it was better to give +people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether +and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private +life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a +Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence or king's now like +Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from +that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, +though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom +in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it while +inwardly remaining what he was a certain kind of admiration for a man +who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his +political convictions though, personally, he would never be a party to +any such thing, off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south, +have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently, after some words +passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky +mortal he having had the pair watched, inflicted fatal injuries on his +adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial LIAISON by plunging +his knife into her, until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin +theGoat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage +and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush +which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin +on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our +friend, the pseudo Skintheetcetera, he had transparently outlived his +welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. +Like actresses, always farewell positively last performance then come up +smiling again. Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no +economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the +shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever +got rid of some l s d. in the course of his perambulations round the +docks in the congenial atmosphere of the OLD IRELAND tavern, come back to +Erin and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the +same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually +silenced the offender. +He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the +whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and in +a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain facts in +the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his +family like me though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft +answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone +saw. Am I not right? +He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at +the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to +glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly. +EX QUIBUS, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four +eyes conversing, CHRISTUS or Bloom his name is or after all any other, +SECUNDUM CARNEM. +Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of +the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right +and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though +every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government +it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to +boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I resent +violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything +or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. +It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they +live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so +to speak. +Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen +assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market. +Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was +overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of thing. +You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of +conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely ... +All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad +blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously +supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely +a question of the money question which was at the back of everything +greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop. +They accuse, remarked he audibly. +He turned away from the others who probably and spoke nearer to, so as +the others in case they. +Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of +ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would +you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the +inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an +uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer for, +imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They +are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any +because you know the standard works on the subject and then orthodox as +you are. But in the economic, not touching religion, domain the priest +spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead +America. Turks. It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd +go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better, at least +so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p's raise the wind on false +pretences. I'm, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as +that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see +everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes PRO RATA having a +comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in +the neighbourhood of pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at +stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier +intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's +worth. I call that patriotism. UBI PATRIA, as we learned a smattering of +in our classical days in ALMA MATER, VITA BENE. Where you can live well, +the sense is, if you work. +Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this +synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. +He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those +crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours of +different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath +or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say +the words the voice he heard said, if you work. +Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work. +The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person who +owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all must +work, have to, together. +I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest +possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the +thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. +That's work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of +you, after all the money expended on your education you are entitled to +recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right +to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has. +What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is +equally important. +You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may +be important because I belong to the FAUBOURG SAINT PATRICE called +Ireland for short. +I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated. +But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important +because it belongs to me. +What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under +some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter +portion. What was it you ...? +Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of +coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding +We can't change the country. Let us change the subject. +At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down +but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put +on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was +clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy +spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way foreign to his +sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached the utmost +importance had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been +familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the +young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some +consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more +especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw +much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of +cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of +premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance there +was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably +connected though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries among whose +other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody +all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit +of brown paper a fact. And then the usual DENOUEMENT after the fun had +gone on fast and furious he got landed into hot water and had to be +spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from +John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under +section two of the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those +subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged for reasons which will occur +to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting two and two together, +six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so +forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the +seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life +the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the +upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of +the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and +crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a +number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by +nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on +though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was +except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another +it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who +like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must, +trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a +genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his +and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal +islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental. +However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others +who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of +their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir. +For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even +to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could not +exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad having +in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of +someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection +would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation, as such, was, he +felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which +was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt of the +here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of +events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in +especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, divers, +scavengers etc., were very much under the microscope lately. To improve +the shining hour he wondered whether he might meet with anything +approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing +suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove as he fully +intended doing at the rate of one guinea per column. MY EXPERIENCES, let +us say, IN A CABMAN'S SHELTER. +The pink edition extra sporting of the TELEGRAPH tell a graphic lie lay, +as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling +again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the +preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was +addressed A. Boudin find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over +the respective captions which came under his special province the +allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a +start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du +Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle, Tokio. +Lovemaking in Irish, pounds damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration +Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup. +Victory of outsider THROWAWAY recalls Derby of ' when Capt. Marshall's +dark horse SIR HUGO captured the blue ribband at long odds. New York +disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr +Patrick Dignam. +So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. which, he +reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address anyway. +THIS MORNING Hynes put it in of course THE REMAINS OF THE LATE MR +PATRICK DIGNAM WERE REMOVED FROM HIS RESIDENCE, NO NEWBRIDGE AVENUE, +SANDYMOUNT, FOR INTERMENT IN GLASNEVIN. THE DECEASED GENTLEMAN WAS A MOST +POPULAR AND GENIAL PERSONALITY IN CITY LIFE AND HIS DEMISE AFTER A BRIEF +ILLNESS CAME AS A GREAT SHOCK TO CITIZENS OF ALL CLASSES BY WHOM HE IS +DEEPLY REGRETTED. THE OBSEQUIES, AT WHICH MANY FRIENDS OF THE DECEASED +WERE PRESENT, WERE CARRIED OUT certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge +from Corny BY MESSRS H. J. O'NEILL AND SON, NORTH STRAND ROAD. THE +MOURNERS INCLUDED PATK. DIGNAM SON, BERNARD CORRIGAN BROTHERINLAW, +JNO. HENRY MENTON, SOLR, MARTIN CUNNINGHAM, JOHN POWER, .EATONDPH / +ADOR DORADOR DOURADORA must be where he called Monks the dayfather about +Keyes's ad THOMAS KERNAN, SIMON DEDALUS, STEPHEN DEDALUS B. ,., EDW. J. +LAMBERT, CORNELIUS T. KELLEHER, JOSEPH M'C HYNES, L. BOOM, CP M'COY, +M'LNTOSH AND SEVERAL OTHERS. +Nettled not a little by L. BOOM as it incorrectly stated and the line +of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and +Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their +total absence to say nothing of M'Intosh L. Boom pointed it out to his +companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not +forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints. +Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom +jaw would let him, in? Text open thy mouth and put thy foot in it. +It is. Really, Mr Bloom said though first he fancied he alluded to the +archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could be +no possible connection overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit +flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing to. There. +While the other was reading it on page two Boom to give him for the +nonce his new misnomer whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and +starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his +side. Value sovs with sovs in specie added. For entire colts +and fillies. Mr F. Alexander's THROWAWAY, b. h. by RIGHTAWAY, yrs, st + lbs W. Lane , lord Howard de Walden's ZINFANDEL M. Cannon z, Mr W. +Bass's SCEPTRE . Betting to on ZINFANDEL, to THROWAWAY off. +SCEPTRE a shade heavier, to on ZINFANDEL, to THROWAWAY off. +THROWAWAY and ZINFANDEL stood close order. It was anybody's race then the +rank outsider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating lord Howard de +Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly SCEPTRE on a / mile +course. Winner trained by Braime so that Lenehan's version of the +business was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. + sovs with in specie. Also ran J de Bremond's French horse +Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any +minute MAXIMUM II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking +damages. Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his +impetuosity to get left. Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that +sort of thing though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn't much +reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork +it reduced itself to eventually. +There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Bloom, said. +Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said. +One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read +RETURN OF PARNELL. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in +that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was +killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a +time after committee room no until he was his old self again with no +one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down +on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his +senses. Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they +brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer +general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on. +All the same Bloom properly so dubbed was rather surprised at their +memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and not +singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it was +twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow of +truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly +inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his +death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his +various different political arrangements were nearing completion or +whether it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change +his boots and clothesafter a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to +consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually +died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or +quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of +their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted with his movements even +before there was absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were +decidedly of the ALICE, WHERE ART THOU order even prior to his starting +to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart so the remark which +emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of possibility. +Naturally then it would prey on his mind as a born leader of men which +undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate +five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So and So +who, though they weren't even a patch on the former man, ruled the roost +after their redeeming features were very few and far between. It +certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay, and then +seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual +mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back. +That haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the understudy in the title +ROLE how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke +up the type in the INSUPPRESSIBLE or was it UNITED IRELAND, a privilege +he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat +when it was knocked off and he said THANK YOU, excited as he undoubtedly +was under his frigid exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure +mentioned between the cup and the lip what's bred in the bone. Still as +regards return. You were a lucky dog if they didn't set the terrier at +you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, +Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then, number one, you came up +against the man in possession and had to produce your credentials like +the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, BELLA was +the boat's name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down +in as the evidence went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian +ink, lord Bellew was it, as he might very easily have picked up the +details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with +the description given, introduce himself with EXCUSE ME, MY NAME IS SO +AND SO or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom +said to the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage +under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land +first. +That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor +commented. She put the first nail in his coffin. +Fine lump of a woman all the same, the SOIDISANT townclerk Henry +Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man's thighs. I +seen her picture in a barber's. The husband was a captain or an officer. +Ay, SkintheGoat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one. +This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair +amount of laughter among his ENTOURAGE. As regards Bloom he, without the +faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door +and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary +interest at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made +public with the usual affectionate letters that passed between them full +of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic till nature intervened +and an attachment sprang up between them till bit by bit matters came to +a climax and the matter became the talk of the town till the staggering +blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed, however, +who were resolved upon encompassing his downfall though the thing was +public property all along though not to anything like the sensational +extent that it subsequently blossomed into. Since their names were +coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite, where was the +particular necessity to proclaim it to the rank and file from the +housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared her bedroom which came +out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed court +literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to +having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of +scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder +in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion, a fact +the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined shoals of +money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was simply a +case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing in common +between them beyond the name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, +strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and +forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's +smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, +cropped up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in +the case, exist between married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of +theirs absolutely if he regarded her with affection, carried away by a +wave of folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly augmented +obviously by gifts of a high order, as compared with the other military +supernumerary that is who was just the usual everyday FAREWELL, MY +GALLANT CAPTAIN kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the lth +hussars to be accurate and inflammable doubtless the fallen leader, +that is, not the other in his own peculiar way which she of course, +woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame which +he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the gospel as +a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his beloved evicted tenants +for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts of the country by +taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that exceeded their most +sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his matrimonial goose, +thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in the same way as the +fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind of +arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then coming back was the +worst thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel +out of place as things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected, +Irishtown strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of +years looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside +on the north side. North or south, however, it was just the wellknown +case of hot passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a +vengeance and just bore out the very thing he was saying as she also was +Spanish or half so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate +abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds. +Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to +Stephen, about blood and the sun. And, if I don't greatly mistake she was +Spanish too. +The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or +other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and +the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and +so many. +Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any +means, I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it +was as she lived there. So, Spain. +Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket SWEETS OF, which reminded him by +the by of that Cap l street library book out of date, he took out his +pocketbook and, turning over the various contents it contained rapidly +finally he. +Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded +photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type? +Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large +sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she +was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously +low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than +vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth, standing +near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which was IN OLD +MADRID, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her +the lady's eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile about +something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's +premier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic +execution. +Mrs Bloom, my wife the PRIMA DONNA Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom +indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like her +then. +Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his +legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major +Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a +singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered +barely sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in +expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a +lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage in +that getup. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for the +ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt, being +a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in general +developmentally because, as it so happened, no later than that afternoon +he had seen those Grecian statues, perfectly developed as works of +art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original, shoulders, +back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes, puritanisme, it does though +Saint Joseph's sovereign thievery alors Bandez Figne toi trop. Whereas +no photo could because it simply wasn't art in a word. +The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's good +example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak for +itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the beauty for +himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the +camera could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional +etiquette so. Though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet +wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine after storm. +And he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit like a kind +of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. +Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased +by opulent curves, none the worse for wear however, and looked away +thoughtfully with the intention of not further increasing the other's +possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry of heaving EMBONPOINT. +In fact the slight soiling was only an added charm like the case of linen +slightly soiled, good as new, much better in fact with the starch out. +Suppose she was gone when he? I looked for the lamp which she told me +came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because he then +recollected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby +with met him pike hoses SIC in it which must have fell down +sufficiently appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies +to Lindley Murray. +The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, DISTINGUE +and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the bunch though +you wouldn't think he had it in him yet you would. Besides he said the +picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was though at the +moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of +makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur +with the usual splash page of gutterpress about the same old matrimonial +tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage +favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole +business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between +the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye was told in +court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising +expressions leaving no loophole to show that they openly cohabited two or +three times a week at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when +the thing ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the +decree NISI and the King's proctor tries to show cause why and, he +failing to quash it, NISI was made absolute. But as for that the two +misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in one another, could +safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did till the matter was +put in the hands of a solicitor who filed a petition for the party +wronged in due course. He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being close to +Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when the thing occurred on the +historic FRACAS when the fallen leader's, who notoriously stuck to his +guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle of adultery, +leader's trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen or possibly +even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the +INSUPPRESSIBLE or no it was UNITED IRELAND a by no means by the by +appropriate appellative and broke up the typecases with hammers or +something like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the +facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation +reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a +radically altered man he was still a commanding figure though carelessly +garbed as usual with that look of settled purpose which went a long way +with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture +that their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which +she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot +times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a +nasty prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course congregated +lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a +grave character. His hat Parnell's a silk one was inadvertently knocked +off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who picked it +up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to +him and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity who panting +and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time +all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the country he, as a +matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than +anything else, what's bred in the bone instilled into him in infancy at +his mother's knee in the shape of knowing what good form was came out at +once because he turned round to the donor and thanked him with perfect +APLOMB, saying THANK YOU, SIR, though in a very different tone of voice +from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set +to rights earlier in the course of the day, history repeating itself with +a difference, after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him +alone in his glory after the grim task of having committed his remains to +the grave. +On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes +of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing +immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the +wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case +for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate +husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from +the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial +moment in a loving position locked in one another's arms, drawing +attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic +rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master +upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not receive his +visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter +and let bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes though possibly with +her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time as quite possibly there +were several others. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed +and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either that man or men +in the plural were always hanging around on the waiting list about a +lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world and they got on +fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her +duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little +flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with +improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, +the cause of many LIAISONS between still attractive married women getting +on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases +of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt. +It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of +brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time +with profligate women who might present him with a nice dose to last him +his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take +unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim +ladies' society was a CONDITIO SINE QUA NON though he had the gravest +possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Stephen about +Miss Ferguson who was very possibly the particular lodestar who brought +him down to Irishtown so early in the morning, as to whether he would +find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the +company of smirking misses without a penny to their names bi or triweekly +with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking out +leading up to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him +house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, +was really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out +with attracted the elder man who was several years the other's senior or +like his father but something substantial he certainly ought to eat even +were it only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, +failing that, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled. +At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired +though unwrinkled face. +Some time yesterday, Stephen said. +Yesterday exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow +Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve +The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself. +Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected. Though +they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow +was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train +of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of +years previously when he had been a QUASI aspirant to parliamentary +honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect +which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself he had a sneaking +regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the evicted tenants +question, then at its first inception, bulked largely in people's mind +though, it goes without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his +faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold +water, he at the outset in principle at all events was in thorough +sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the trend of modern opinion +a partiality, however, which, realising his mistake, he was subsequently +partially cured of and even was twitted with going a step farther than +Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one time inculcated as a +backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo +put upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend at the gathering of +the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, though often considerably +misunderstood and the least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, +departed from his customary habit to give him metaphorically one in the +gizzard though, so far as politics themselves were concerned, he was only +too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda and +displays of mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed as +a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the +fittest, in a word. +Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, +it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit +risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue somebody +having a temper of her own sometimes and spoil the hash altogether as on +the night he misguidedly brought home a dog breed unknown with a lame +paw not that the cases were either identical or the reverse though he +had hurt his hand too to Ontario Terrace as he very distinctly +remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the other hand it was +altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove +suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which of the two +alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail +himself to the full of the opportunity, all things considered. His +initial impression was he was a shade standoffish or not over effusive +but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn't what you call jump +at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried him was he didn't +know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did entertain +the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he +would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if found +suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing for the +nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shakedown for the +night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a pillow at +least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast on a trivet he +failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in that always with the +proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made +because that merry old soul, the grasswidower in question who appeared to +be glued to the spot, didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his +way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some +sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff +street lower would be the best clue to that equivocal character's +whereabouts for a few days to come, alternately racking their feelings +the mermaids' with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the +tropical calculated to freeze the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling +their largesized charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the +accompaniment of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about +himself for as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and +address, as Mr Algebra remarks PASSIM. At the same time he inwardly +chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about +his god being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but +what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable +point too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they +appeared to imagine he came from CarrickonShannon or somewhereabouts in +the county Sligo. +I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while +prudently pocketing her photo, as it's rather stuffy here you just come +home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the +vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I'll just +pay this lot. +The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain +sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper +of the shanty who didn't seem to. +Yes, that's the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the matter of that +Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less. +All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his B's busy brain, +education the genuine article, literature, journalism, prize titbits, +up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed with +hydros and seaside theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with +the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other things, no +necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from the housetops +about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he +more than suspected he had his father's voice to bank his hopes on which +it was quite on the cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way +no harm, to trail the conversation in the direction of that particular +red herring just to. +The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former +viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers' association dinner +in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this +thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who appeared +to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony MacDonnell +had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge or words to that effect. +To which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered why. +Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner +put in, manifesting some natural impatience. +And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed. +The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles which +he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears. +Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk +queried. +Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a +bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen +portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading. +Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the dark, +manner of speaking. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENT was my favourite and +RED AS A ROSE IS SHE. +Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what, +found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a +hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which time +completely regardless of Ire the keeper was intensely occupied +loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched +him as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were +sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, +that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial +remark. +To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first to +rise from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first and +foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for the +occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host +as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not +looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a grand +total of fourpence the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four +coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans, he having previously +spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in +unmistakable figures, coffee d, confectionery do, and honestly well +worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark. +Come, he counselled to close the SEANCE. +Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the shelter +or shanty together and the ELITE society of oilskin and company whom +nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their DOLCE FAR NIENTE. +Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out, paused at +the, for a moment, the door. +One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of the +moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside +down, on the tables in cafes. To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom +replied without a moment's hesitation, saying straight off +To sweep the floor in the morning. +So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time +apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye, +his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night +air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on +his pins. +It will the air do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a +moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. Come. +It's not far. Lean on me. +Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on +accordingly. +Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange kind +of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all +that. +Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the +municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes +wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming of fresh +fields and pastures new. And APROPOS of coffin of stones the analogy was +not at all bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of +seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the time of +the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame +evicted tenants he had put in their holdings. +So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Bloom, +as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks arm +in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand +in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first +gooff but the music of Mercadante's HUGUENOTS, Meyerbeer's SEVEN LAST +WORDS ON THE CROSS and Mozart's TWELFTH MASS he simply revelled in, the +GLORIA in that being, to his mind, the acme of first class music as such, +literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat. He infinitely +preferred the sacred music of the catholic church to anything the +opposite shop could offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey +hymns or BID ME TO LIVE AND I WILL LIVE THY PROTESTANT TO BE. He also +yielded to none in his admiration of Rossini's STABAT MATER, a work +simply abounding in immortal numbers, in which his wife, Madam Marion +Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable sensation, he might safely say, greatly +adding to her other laureis and putting the others totally in the shade, +in the jesuit fathers' church in upper Gardiner street, the sacred +edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, or +VIRTUOSI rather. There was the unanimous opinion that there was none to +come up to her and suffice it to say in a place of worship for music of a +sacred character there was a generally voiced desire for an encore. On +the whole though favouring preferably light opera of the DON GIOVANNI +description and MARTHA, a gem in its line, he had a PENCHANT, though with +only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school such as +Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about +the old favourites, he mentioned PAR EXCELLENCE Lionel's air in MARTHA, +M'APPARI, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be more +accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips +of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, +in fact, which made all the others take a back seat. Stephen, in reply to +a politely put query, said he didn't sing it but launched out into +praises of Shakespeare's songs, at least of in or about that period, the +lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane near Gerard the herbalist, who +ANNO LUDENDO HAUSI, DOULANDUS, an instrument he was contemplating +purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B. did not quite recall though +the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby +and son with their DUX and COMES conceits and Byrd William who played +the virginals, he said, in the Queen's chapel or anywhere else he found +them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull. +On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond +the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground, +brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not +perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive +guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political +celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a +striking coincidence. +By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, Bloom, +who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other's sleeve +gently, jocosely remarking +Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller. +They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth +anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite +near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh +because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a +taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the +lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a +good poor brute he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he wisely +reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might +crop up. He was just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of a horse, +without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take +that mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy +horror to face. But it was no animal's fault in particular if he was +built that way like the camel, ship of the desert, distilling grapes into +potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them all could be caged or trained, +nothing beyond the art of man barring the bees. Whale with a harpoon +hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke, +chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my eagle eye. These timely +reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind somewhat +distracted from Stephen's words while the ship of the street was +manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old. +What's this I was saying? Ah, yes My wife, he intimated, plunging IN +MEDIAS RES, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your +acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind. +He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen, +image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome +blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after as +he was perhaps not that way built. +Still, supposing he had his father's gift as he more than suspected, it +opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries, +concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general. +Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air YOUTH HERE HAS END +by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come +from. Even more he liked an old German song of JOHANNES JEEP about the +clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled +Bloom a bit +VON DER SIRENEN LISTIGKEIT +TUN DIE POETEN DICHTEN. +These opening bars he sang and translated EXTEMPORE. Bloom, nodding, said +he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means which he +did. +A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons, +which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily, +if properly handled by some recognised authority on voice production such +as Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain, command its +own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate +possessor in the near future an ENTREE into fashionable houses in the +best residential quarters of financial magnates in a large way of +business and titled people where with his university degree of B. A. a +huge ad in its way and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the +good impression he would infallibly score a distinct success, being +blessed with brains which also could be utilised for the purpose and +other requisites, if his clothes were properly attended to so as to the +better worm his way into their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in +society's sartorial niceties, hardly understood how a little thing like +that could militate against you. It was in fact only a matter of months +and he could easily foresee him participating in their musical and +artistic CONVERSAZIONES during the festivities of the Christmas season, +for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and +being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he +happened to know, were on recordin fact, without giving the show away, +he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have. Added to +which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be +sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he +parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily +embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of +time. But a step in the required direction it was beyond yea or nay and +both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in +the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a +cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, though +taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, +different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue as +it would be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual +hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan +St Austell and Hilton St Just and their GENUS OMNE. Yes, beyond a shadow +of a doubt he could with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital +opening to make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's +esteem where he could command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a +grand concert for the patrons of the King street house, given a backerup, +if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so to speak, a big IF, +however, with some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable +procrastination which often tripped up a too much feted prince of good +fellows. And it need not detract from the other by one iota as, being his +own master, he would have heaps of time to practise literature in his +spare moments when desirous of so doing without its clashing with his +vocal career or containing anything derogatory whatsoever as it was a +matter for himself alone. In fact, he had the ball at his feet and that +was the very reason why the other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose +for smelling a rat of any sort, hung on to him at all. +The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he +purposed Bloom did, without anyway prying into his private affairs on +the FOOLS STEP IN WHERE ANGELS principle, advising him to sever his +connection with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone +to disparage and even to a slight extent with some hilarious pretext when +not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call it which in +Bloom's humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a person's +character, no pun intended. +The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted and, +rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on +the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking +globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a full +crupper he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he or she had +ended, patient in his scythed car. +Side by side Bloom, profiting by the CONTRETEMPS, with Stephen passed +through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping over +a strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen +singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad. +UND ALLE SCHIFFE BRUCKEN. +The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely +watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black, one +full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, TO BE MARRIED BY FATHER +MAHER. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again continuing +their TETEATETE which, of course, he was utterly out of about sirens +enemies of man's reason, mingled with a number of other topics of the +same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind while the man in +the sweeper car or you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in +any case couldn't possibly hear because they were too far simply sat in +his seat near the end of lower Gardiner street AND LOOKED AFTER THEIR +LOWBACKED CAR. +What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning? +Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they +followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and +Mountjoy square, west then, at reduced pace, each bearing left, +Gardiner's place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner of +Temple street then, at reduced pace with interruptions of halt, bearing +right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place. Approaching, +disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the circus before +George's church diametrically, the chord in any circle being less than +the arc which it subtends. +Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary? +Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman, +prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and +glowlamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed +corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church, +ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers, the +study of medicine, the past day, the maleficent influence of the +presabbath, Stephen's collapse. +Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their respective +like and unlike reactions to experience? +Both were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference to +plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner +of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both +indurated by early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of +heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many orthodox +religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the +alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual +magnetism. +Were their views on some points divergent? +Stephen dissented openly from Bloom's views on the importance of dietary +and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen's views on +the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature. Bloom +assented covertly to Stephen's rectification of the anachronism involved +in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to +christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Potitus, +son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the year in the reign of +Leary to the year or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt died + A.D., suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty and +interred at Rossnaree. The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric +inanition and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees of +adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental exertion and +the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing atmosphere, Stephen +attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud perceived by both +from two different points of observation Sandycove and Dublin at first +no bigger than a woman's hand. +Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative? +The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining +paraheliotropic trees. +Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in +the past? +In with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public +thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard's corner and Leonard's +corner and Synge street and Synge street and Bloomfield avenue. +In with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against the wall +between Gibraltar villa and Bloomfield house in Crumlin, barony of +Uppercross. In occasionally with casual acquaintances and +prospective purchasers on doorsteps, in front parlours, in third class +railway carriages of suburban lines. In frequently with major Brian +Tweedy and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy, together and separately on +the lounge in Matthew Dillon's house in Roundtown. Once in and once +in with Julius Juda Mastiansky, on both occasions in the parlour +of his Bloom's house in Lombard street, west. +What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates , , +, , , , did Bloom make before their arrival at their +destination? +He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual +development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction +of the converse domain of interindividual relations. +As in what ways? +From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received +existence with existence he was with any as any with any from existence +to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived. +What act did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination? +At the housesteps of the th Of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number + Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket +of his trousers to obtain his latchkey. +Was it there? +It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on +the day but one preceding. +Why was he doubly irritated? +Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded +himself twice not to forget. +What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly respectively +and inadvertently, keyless couple? +To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock. +Bloom's decision? +A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the area +railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at the lower +union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its length of +five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten inches of the +area pavement and allowed his body to move freely in space by separating +himself from the railings and crouching in preparation for the impact of +the fall. +Did he fall? +By his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in avoirdupois +measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical +selfweighing in the premises of Francis Froedman, pharmaceutical chemist +of Frederick street, north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to +wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year one thousand nine +hundred and four of the christian era jewish era five thousand six +hundred and sixtyfour, mohammadan era one thousand three hundred and +twentytwo, golden number , epact , solar cycle , dominical letters C +B, Roman indiction , Julian period , MCMIV. +Did he rise uninjured by concussion? +Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by +the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at +its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its +fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent +scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal +gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he +reduced to quiescent candescence and lit finally a portable candle. +What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive? +Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent +kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of CP, a man lighting a +candle of CP, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man +leaving the kitchen holding a candle. +Did the man reappear elsewhere? +After a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible +through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the +halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space +of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his candle. +Did Stephen obey his sign? +Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and followed +softly along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted +candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a +turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of Bloom's +house. +What did Bloom do? +He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its +flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen +with its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary, +knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped +sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram +coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and +M'Donald of D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting points of +paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential +energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements +to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air. +Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think? +Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two, +had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the +college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county +of Kildare of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his +first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street of his +godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia +Morkan at Usher's Island of his aunt Sara, wife of Richie Richard +Goulding, in the kitchen of their lodgings at Clanbrassil street of +his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of number twelve +North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis Xavier + of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics' theatre of +university College, Stephen's Green, north of his sister Dilly +Delia in his father's house in Cabra. +What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the +fire towards the opposite wall? +Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope, +stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the +chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded +unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies' +grey hose with Lisle suspender tops and feet in their habitual position +clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer extremities and the +third at their point of junction. +What did Bloom see on the range? +On the right smaller hob a blue enamelled saucepan on the left +larger hob a black iron kettle. +What did Bloom do at the range? +He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle +to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it +flow. +Did it flow? +Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of + million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of +filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant +cost of pounds per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of +the Downs and Callowhill to the acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a +distance of statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving +tanks, by a gradient of feet to the city boundary at Eustace bridge, +upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and daily supply +of / million gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the +overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks +engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of the waterworks +committee had prohibited the use of municipal water for purposes other +than those of consumption envisaging the possibility of recourse being +had to the impotable water of the Grand and Royal canals as in +particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding their ration +of gallons per day per pauper supplied through a inch meter, had +been convicted of a wastage of , gallons per night by a reading of +their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the corporation, Mr +Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another +section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound. +What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, +returning to the range, admire? +Its universality its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in +seeking its own level its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's +projection its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific +exceeding fathoms the restlessness of its waves and surface +particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard the independence +of its units the variability of states of sea its hydrostatic +quiescence in calm its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides +its subsidence after devastation its sterility in the circumpolar +icecaps, arctic and antarctic its climatic and commercial significance +its preponderance of to over the dry land of the globe its +indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region +below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn the multisecular stability +of its primeval basin its luteofulvous bed its capacity to dissolve and +hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of the +most precious metals its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its +persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and +downwardtending promontories its alluvial deposits its weight and +volume and density its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns +its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones +its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and +confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic +currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses its violence in +seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, +freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, +cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts its +vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve its secrecy in springs and +latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and +exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, +saturation of air, distillation of dew the simplicity of its +composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part +of oxygen its healing virtues its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead +Sea its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate +dams, leaks on shipboard its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst +and fire, nourishing vegetation its infallibility as paradigm and +paragon its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, +hail its strength in rigid hydrants its variety of forms in loughs and +bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and +archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and +arms of sea its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes its docility +in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power +stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills its utility in canals, +rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks its potentiality +derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to +level its submarine fauna and flora anacoustic, photophobe, +numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe its ubiquity +as constituting percent of the human body the noxiousness of its +effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, +stagnant pools in the waning moon. +Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he +return to the stillflowing tap? +To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of Barrington's +lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered, bought thirteen hours +previously for fourpence and still unpaid for, in fresh cold +neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in a long +redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller. +What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom's offer? +That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by +submersion in cold water, his last bath having taken place in the month +of October of the preceding year, disliking the aqueous substances of +glass and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and language. +What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and +prophylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a +preliminary wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with rapid +splashing of the face and neck and thoracic and epigastric region in case +of sea or river bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most sensitive to +cold being the nape, stomach and thenar or sole of foot? +The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius. +What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress? +Dietary concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric +energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the +lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed. +Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest? +Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and +recuperation. +What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the +agency of fire? +The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of +ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was +communicated from the faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral masses +of bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the foliated +fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn derived their +vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat radiant, +transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous ether. Heat +convected, a mode of motion developed by such combustion, was +constantly and increasingly conveyed from the source of calorification to +the liquid contained in the vessel, being radiated through the uneven +unpolished dark surface of the metal iron, in part reflected, in part +absorbed, in part transmitted, gradually raising the temperature of the +water from normal to boiling point, a rise in temperature expressible as +the result of an expenditure of thermal units needed to raise pound +of water from degrees to degrees Fahrenheit. +What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature? +A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at +both sides simultaneously. +For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so boiled? +To shave himself. +What advantages attended shaving by night? +A softer beard a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from +shave to shave in its agglutinated lather a softer skin if unexpectedly +encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours +quiet reflections upon the course of the day a cleaner sensation when +awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and +perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman's double knock, a paper +read, reread while lathering, relathering the same spot, a shock, a +shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought might +cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster with +precision cut and humected and applied adhered which was to be done. +Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noise? +Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine +feminine passive active hand. +What quality did it his hand possess but with what counteracting +influence? +The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human +blood even when the end justified the means, preferring, in their natural +order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic surgery. +What lay under exposure on the lower, middle and upper shelves of the +kitchen dresser, opened by Bloom? +On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal +breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a +moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer of Crown Derby, four white +goldrimmed eggcups, an open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly copper, +and a phial of aromatic violet comfits. On the middle shelf a chipped +eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four conglomerated black +olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtree's potted meat, an +oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one Jersey pear, a +halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co's white invalid port, half +disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue paper, a packet of Epps's +soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne Lynch's choice tea at / per lb in a +crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical canister containing the best +crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one, the larger, Spanish, entire, +the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented surface and more +redolent, a jar of Irish Model Dairy's cream, a jug of brown crockery +containing a naggin and a quarter of soured adulterated milk, converted +by heat into water, acidulous serum and semisolidified curds, which added +to the quantity subtracted for Mr Bloom's and Mrs Fleming's breakfasts, +made one imperial pint, the total quantity originally delivered, two +cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish containing a slice of fresh +ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of jamjars empty of various +sizes and proveniences. +What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser? +Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets, +numbered , . +What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow? +Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction, preindicative +of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official and definitive +result of which he had read in the EVENING TELEGRAPH, late pink edition, +in the cabman's shelter, at Butt bridge. +Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected, been +received by him? +In Bernard Kiernan's licensed premises , and little Britain street +in David Byrne's licensed premises, Duke street in O'Connell street +lower, outside Graham Lemon's when a dark man had placed in his hand a +throwaway subsequently thrown away, advertising Elijah, restorer of the +church in Zion in Lincoln place outside the premises of F. W. Sweny and +Co Limited, dispensing chemists, when, when Frederick M. Bantam Lyons +had rapidly and successively requested, perused and restituted the copy +of the current issue of the FREEMAN'S JOURNAL AND NATIONAL PRESS which he +had been about to throw away subsequently thrown away, he had proceeded +towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, Leinster +street, with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and +bearing in his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language of +prediction. +What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations? +The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event +followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the +electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by +failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding +originally from a successful interpretation. +His mood? +He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he +was satisfied. +What satisfied him? +To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to +others. Light to the gentiles. +How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile? +He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps's +soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed +on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the +prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity +prescribed. +What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his +guest? +Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation +Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Millicent Milly, he +substituted a cup identical with that of his guest and served +extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself the +viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his wife Marion +Molly. +Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of +hospitality? +His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he accepted +them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps's massproduct, +the creature cocoa. +Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but suppressed, +reserving them for another and for himself on future occasions to +complete the act begun? +The reparation of a fissure of the length of / inches in the right +side of his guest's jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four lady's +handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be in a presentable condition. +Who drank more quickly? +Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation and taking, +from the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which a steady +flow of heat was conducted, three sips to his opponent's one, six to two, +nine to three. +What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act? +Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was +engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived from +literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had +applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the +solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life. +Had he found their solution? +In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages, +aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text, +the answers not bearing in all points. +What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him, +potential poet, at the age of in on the occasion of the offering +of three prizes of /, / and / respectively for competition by the +SHAMROCK, a weekly newspaper? +AN AMBITION TO SQUINT +AT MY VERSES IN PRINT +MAKES ME HOPE THAT FOR THESE YOU'LL FIND ROOM. +IF YOU SO CONDESCEND +THEN PLEASE PLACE AT THE END +THE NAME OF YOURS TRULY, L. BLOOM. +Did he find four separating forces between his temporary guest and him? +Name, age, race, creed. +What anagrams had he made on his name in youth? +Leopold Bloom +Ellpodbomool +Molldopeloob +Bollopedoom +Old Ollebo, M. P. +What acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had he kinetic +poet sent to Miss Marion Molly Tweedy on the February ? +POETS OFT HAVE SUNG IN RHYME +OF MUSIC SWEET THEIR PRAISE DIVINE. +LET THEM HYMN IT NINE TIMES NINE. +DEARER FAR THAN SONG OR WINE. +YOU ARE MINE. THE WORLD IS MINE. +What had prevented him from completing a topical song music by R. G. +Johnston on the events of the past, or fixtures for the actual, years, +entitled IF BRIAN BORU COULD BUT COME BACK AND SEE OLD DUBLIN NOW, +commissioned by Michael Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, , , , + South King street, and to be introduced into the sixth scene, the +valley of diamonds, of the second edition January of the grand +annual Christmas pantomime SINBAD THE SAILOR produced by R Shelton +December , written by Greenleaf Whittier, scenery by George A. +Jackson and Cecil Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan under the +personal supervision of Mrs Michael Gunn, ballets by Jessie Noir, +harlequinade by Thomas Otto and sung by Nelly Bouverist, principal girl? +Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest, +the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria born , acceded + and the posticipated opening of the new municipal fish market +secondly, apprehension of opposition from extreme circles on the +questions of the respective visits of Their Royal Highnesses the duke and +duchess of York real and of His Majesty King Brian Boru imaginary +thirdly, a conflict between professional etiquette and professional +emulation concerning the recent erections of the Grand Lyric Hall on +Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal in Hawkins street fourthly, distraction +resultant from compassion for Nelly Bouverist's nonintellectual, non +political, nontopical expression of countenance and concupiscence caused +by Nelly Bouverist's revelations of white articles of nonintellectual, +nonpolitical, nontopical underclothing while she Nelly Bouverist was +in the articles fifthly, the difficulties of the selection of +appropriate music and humorous allusions from EVERYBODY'S BOOK OF JOKES + pages and a laugh in every one sixthly, the rhymes, homophonous +and cacophonous, associated with the names of the new lord mayor, Daniel +Tallon, the new high sheriff, Thomas Pile and the new solicitorgeneral, +Dunbar Plunket Barton. +What relation existed between their ages? + years before in when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen +was . years after in when Stephen would be of Bloom's present +age Bloom would be . In when Bloom would be and Stephen +their ages initially in the ratio of to would be as / to +/, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as +arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in +had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then +when Stephen was Bloom would be and in when Stephen would be +, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be while in when Stephen +would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of Bloom, being +years alive having been born in the year , would have surpassed by +years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, years, while, +if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the +year A.D., Bloomwould have been obliged to have been alive , +years, having been obliged to have been born in the year , B.C. +What events might nullify these calculations? +The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a new +era or calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent +extermination of the human species, inevitable but impredictable. +How many previous encounters proved their preexisting acquaintance? +Two. The first in the lilacgarden of Matthew Dillon's house, Medina +Villa, Kimmage road, Roundtown, in , in the company of Stephen's +mother, Stephen being then of the age of and reluctant to give his hand +in salutation. The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin's hotel on a rainy +Sunday in the January of , in the company of Stephen's father and +Stephen's granduncle, Stephen being then years older. +Did Bloom accept the invitation to dinner given then by the son and +afterwards seconded by the father? +Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative +gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined. +Did their conversation on the subject of these reminiscences reveal a +third connecting link between them? +Mrs Riordan Dante, a widow of independent means, had resided in the +house of Stephen's parents from September to December and +had also resided during the years , and in the City Arms +Hotel owned by Elizabeth O'Dowd of Prussia street where, during parts +of the years and , she had been a constant informant of Bloom +who resided also in the same hotel, being at that time a clerk in the +employment of Joseph Cuffe of Smithfield for the superintendence of +sales in the adjacent Dublin Cattle market on the North Circular road. +Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy for her? +He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow +of independent, if limited, means, in her convalescent bathchair with +slow revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular +road opposite Mr Gavin Low's place of business where she had remained for +a certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular fieldglasses +unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster bicycles equipped with +inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages, tandems, private and hired +landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes passing from the city to the +Phoenix Park and vice versa. +Why could he then support that his vigil with the greater equanimity? +Because in middle youth he had often sat observing through a rondel of +bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with continual +changes of the thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadrupeds, +velocipedes, vehicles, passing slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round +and round the rim of a round and round precipitous globe. +What distinct different memories had each of her now eight years +deceased? +The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her +suppositious wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient catarrhal +deafness the younger, her lamp of colza oil before the statue of the +Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for Charles Stewart +Parnell and for Michael Davitt, her tissue papers. +Were there no means still remaining to him to achieve the rejuvenation +which these reminiscences divulged to a younger companion rendered the +more desirable? +The indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subsequently +abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow's PHYSICAL STRENGTH AND HOW TO +OBTAIN IT which, designed particularly for commercial men engaged in +sedentary occupations, were to be made with mental concentration in front +of a mirror so as to bring into play the various families of muscles and +produce successively a pleasant rigidity, a more pleasant relaxation and +the most pleasant repristination of juvenile agility. +Had any special agility been his in earlier youth? +Though ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength and the full +circle gyration beyond his courage yet as a High school scholar he had +excelled in his stable and protracted execution of the half lever +movement on the parallel bars in consequence of his abnormally developed +abdominal muscles. +Did either openly allude to their racial difference? +Neither. +What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom's thoughts +about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom and about Stephen's thoughts about +Bloom's thoughts about Stephen? +He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew +that he knew that he was not. +What, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective +parentages? +Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag subsequently +Rudolph Bloom of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan, London and Dublin +and of Ellen Higgins, second daughter of Julius Higgins born Karoly and +Fanny Higgins born Hegarty. Stephen, eldest surviving male +consubstantial heir of Simon Dedalus of Cork and Dublin and of Mary, +daughter of Richard and Christina Goulding born Grier. +Had Bloom and Stephen been baptised, and where and by whom, cleric or +layman? +Bloom three times, by the reverend Mr Gilmer Johnston M. A., alone, in +the protestant church of Saint Nicholas Without, Coombe, by James +O'Connor, Philip Gilligan and James Fitzpatrick, together, under a pump +in the village of Swords, and by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., in +the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar. Stephen once by the reverend +Charles Malone C. C., alone, in the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar. +Did they find their educational careers similar? +Substituting Stephen for Bloom Stoom would have passed successively +through a dame's school and the high school. Substituting Bloom for +Stephen Blephen would have passed successively through the preparatory, +junior, middle and senior grades of the intermediate and through the +matriculation, first arts, second arts and arts degree courses of the +royal university. +Why did Bloom refrain from stating that he had frequented the university +of life? +Because of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this observation had +or had not been already made by him to Stephen or by Stephen to him. +What two temperaments did they individually represent? +The scientific. The artistic. +What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency was towards +applied, rather than towards pure, science? +Certain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when reclining in a +state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his +appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once +revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting +telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water +siphon, the canal lock with winch and sluice, the suction pump. +Were these inventions principally intended for an improved scheme of +kindergarten? +Yes, rendering obsolete popguns, elastic airbladders, games of hazard, +catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the +twelve constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature +mechanical orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to +correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap playing balls, historically +costumed dolls. +What also stimulated him in his cogitations? +The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A. James, the +former by his d bazaar at George's street, south, the latter at his +/d shop and world's fancy fair and waxwork exhibition at Henry +street, admission d, children d and the infinite possibilities +hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in +triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility divined, +horizontally of maximum legibility deciphered and of magnetising +efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to convince, to +decide. +Such as? +K. II. Kino's / Trousers. House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes. +Such as not? +Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you receive +gratis pair of our special noncompo boots, guaranteed candle power. +Address Barclay and Cook, Talbot street. +Bacilikil Insect Powder. Veribest Boot Blacking. Uwantit Combined +pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, nailfile and pipecleaner. +Such as never? +What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat? +Incomplete. +With it an abode of bliss. +Manufactured by George Plumtree, Merchants' quay, Dublin, put up in +oz pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P., Rotunda +Ward, Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and anniversaries +of deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree in a meatpot, +registered trade mark. Beware of imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Moutpat. +Plamtroo. +Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that originality, +though producing its own reward, does not invariably conduce to success? +His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn by +a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be seated +engaged in writing. +What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen? +Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark +corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She +sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On +solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. +Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He +seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads. +Solitary. +What? +In sloping, upright and backhands Queen's Hotel, Queen's Hotel, Queen's +Hotel. Queen's Ho... +What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom? +The Queen's Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph Bloom Rudolf +Virag died on the evening of the June , at some hour unstated, in +consequence of an overdose of monkshood aconite selfadministered in the +form of a neuralgic liniment composed of parts of aconite liniment to I +of chloroform liniment purchased by him at . a.m. on the morning of + June at the medical hall of Francis Dennehy, Church street, +Ennis after having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at +. p.m. on the afternoon of June a new boater straw hat, extra +smart after having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at +the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin aforesaid, at the general +drapery store of James Cullen, Main street, Ennis. +Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or +intuition? +Coincidence. +Did he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see? +He preferred himself to see another's face and listen to another's words +by which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament +relieved. +Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to him, +described by the narrator as A PISGAH SIGHT OF PALESTINE OR THE PARABLE +OF THE PLUMS? +It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but existent by +implication, to which add essays on various subjects or moral apothegms +e.g. MY FAVOURITE HERO OR PROCRASTINATION IS THE THIEF OF TIME composed +during schoolyears, seemed to him to contain in itself and in conjunction +with the personal equation certain possibilities of financial, social, +personal and sexual success, whether specially collected and selected as +model pedagogic themes of cent per cent merit for the use of +preparatory and junior grade students or contributed in printed form, +following the precedent of Philip Beaufoy or Doctor Dick or Heblon's +STUDIES IN BLUE, to a publication of certified circulation and solvency +or employed verbally as intellectual stimulation for sympathetic +auditors, tacitly appreciative of successful narrative and confidently +augurative of successful achievement, during the increasingly longer +nights gradually following the summer solstice on the day but three +following, videlicet, Tuesday, June S. Aloysius Gonzaga, sunrise +. a.m., sunset . p.m. +Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other frequently +engaged his mind? +What to do with our wives. +What had been his hypothetical singular solutions? +Parlour games dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, cup and ball, +nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts, +chess or backgammon embroidery, darning or knitting for the policeaided +clothing society musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano and flute, +guitar and piano legal scrivenery or envelope addressing biweekly +visits to variety entertainments commercial activity as pleasantly +commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress in a cool dairy +shop or warm cigar divan the clandestine satisfaction of erotic +irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically +controlled social visits, at regular infrequent prevented intervals and +with regular frequent preventive superintendence, to and from female +acquaintances of recognised respectability in the vicinity courses of +evening instruction specially designed to render liberal instruction +agreeable. +What instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined him +in favour of the lastmentioned ninth solution? +In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of paper +with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and Irish and +Hebrew characters. She had interrogated constantly at varying intervals +as to the correct method of writing the capital initial of the name of a +city in Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political complications, +internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating the addenda of +bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After completion of +laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of +calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of +copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign +origin she interpreted phonetically or by false analogy or by both +metempsychosis met him pike hoses, ALIAS a mendacious person mentioned +in sacred scripture. +What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these and +such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things? +The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all balances, +proved true by construction. The counterbalance of her proficiency of +judgment regarding one person, proved true by experiment. +How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative ignorance? +Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a +certain page by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily, latent +knowledge by open ridicule in her presence of some absent other's +ignorant lapse. +With what success had he attempted direct instruction? +She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with interest +comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater difficulty +remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremembered, rerepeated +with error. +What system had proved more effective? +Indirect suggestion implicating selfinterest. +Example? +She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she +disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought new +hat with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat. +Accepting the analogy implied in his guest's parable which examples of +postexilic eminence did he adduce? +Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, author +of MORE NEBUKIM Guide of the Perplexed and Moses Mendelssohn of such +eminence that from Moses of Egypt to Moses Mendelssohn there arose +none like Moses Maimonides. +What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom concerning a fourth +seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, mentioned, with permission, by +Stephen? +That the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philosopher, +name uncertain. +Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a +selected or rejected race mentioned? +Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn composer, Baruch Spinoza philosopher, +Mendoza pugilist, Ferdinand Lassalle reformer, duellist. +What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish +languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts +by guest to host and by host to guest? +By Stephen SUIL, SUIL, SUIL ARUN, SUIL GO SIOCAIR AGUS SUIL GO CUIN +walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care. +By Bloom KIFELOCH, HARIMON RAKATEJCH M'BAAD L'ZAMATEJCH thy temple amid +thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate. +How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both languages made +in substantiation of the oral comparison? +By juxtaposition. On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior +literary style, entituled SWEETS OF SIN produced by Bloom and so +manipulated that its front cover carne in contact with the surface of the +table with a pencil supplied by Stephen Stephen wrote the Irish +characters for gee, eh, dee, em, simple and modified, and Bloom in turn +wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and in the absence of +mem a substituted qoph, explaining their arithmetical values as ordinal +and cardinal numbers, videlicet , , , and . +Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the +extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical? +Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence and +syntax and practically excluding vocabulary. +What points of contact existed between these languages and between the +peoples who spoke them? +The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and +servile letters in both languages their antiquity, both having been +taught on the plain of Shinar years after the deluge in the seminary +instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel, +and ascendant of Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland their +archaeological, genealogical, hagiographical, exegetical, homiletic, +toponomastic, historical and religious literatures comprising the works +of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud Mischna and Ghemara, Massor, +Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote, Garland of Howth, +Book of Kells their dispersal, persecution, survival and revival the +isolation of their synagogical and ecclesiastical rites in ghetto S. +Mary's Abbey and masshouse Adam and Eve's tavern the proscription of +their national costumes in penal laws and jewish dress acts the +restoration in Chanah David of Zion and the possibility of Irish +political autonomy or devolution. +What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that multiple, +ethnically irreducible consummation? +KOLOD BALEJWAW PNIMAH +NEFESCH, JEHUDI, HOMIJAH. +Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich? +In consequence of defective mnemotechnic. +How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency? +By a periphrastic version of the general text. +In what common study did their mutual reflections merge? +The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic +hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of +modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions +Semitic and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing Celtic. Did the +guest comply with his host's request? +Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters. +What was Stephen's auditive sensation? +He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation of +the past. +What was Bloom's visual sensation? +He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a future. +What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional +quasisensations of concealed identities? +Visually, Stephen's The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by +Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as +leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair. Auditively, Bloom's The +traditional accent of the ecstasy of catastrophe. +What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with what +exemplars? +In the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist exemplars, the very +reverend John Conmee S. J., the reverend T. Salmon, D. D., provost of +Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish +exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C., Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage modern +or Shakespearean exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian Osmond Tearle +died , exponent of Shakespeare. +Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a strange +legend on an allied theme? +Reassuringly, their place, where none could hear them talk, being +secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for subsolid +residual sediment of a mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus cream +plus cocoa, having been consumed. +Recite the first major part of this chanted legend. +LITTLE HARRY HUGHES AND HIS SCHOOLFELLOWS ALL +WENT OUT FOR TO PLAY BALL. +AND THE VERY FIRST BALL LITTLE HARRY HUGHES PLAYED +HE DROVE IT O'ER THE JEW'S GARDEN WALL. +AND THE VERY SECOND BALL LITTLE HARRY HUGHES PLAYED +HE BROKE THE JEW'S WINDOWS ALL. +How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part? +With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew he heard with pleasure and saw the +unbroken kitchen window. +Recite the second part minor of the legend. +THEN OUT THERE CAME THE JEW'S DAUGHTER +AND SHE ALL DRESSED IN GREEN. +"COME BACK, COME BACK, YOU PRETTY LITTLE BOY, +AND PLAY YOUR BALL AGAIN." +"I CAN'T COME BACK AND I WON'T COME BACK +WITHOUT MY SCHOOLFELLOWS ALL. +FOR IF MY MASTER HE DID HEAR +HE'D MAKE IT A SORRY BALL." +SHE TOOK HIM BY THE LILYWHITE HAND +AND LED HIM ALONG THE HALL +UNTIL SHE LED HIM TO A ROOM +WHERE NONE COULD HEAR HIM CALL. +SHE TOOK A PENKNIFE OUT OF HER POCKET +AND CUT OFF HIS LITTLE HEAD. +AND NOW HE'LL PLAY HIS BALL NO MORE +FOR HE LIES AMONG THE DEAD. +How did the father of Millicent receive this second part? +With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew's +daughter, all dressed in green. +Condense Stephen's commentary. +One of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once by +inadvertence twice by design he challenges his destiny. It comes when he +is abandoned and challenges him reluctant and, as an apparition of hope +and youth, holds him unresisting. It leads him to a strange habitation, +to a secret infidel apartment, and there, implacable, immolates him, +consenting. +Why was the host victim predestined sad? +He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him +should by him not be told. +Why was the host reluctant, unresisting still? +In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy. +Why was the host secret infidel silent? +He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder the +incitations of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the +propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of +opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of +atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism, +hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism. +From which if any of these mental or physical disorders was he not +totally immune? +From hypnotic suggestion once, waking, he had not recognised his +sleeping apartment more than once, waking, he had been for an indefinite +time incapable of moving or uttering sounds. From somnambulism once, +sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and crawled in the direction of a +heatless fire and, having attained its destination, there, curled, +unheated, in night attire had lain, sleeping. +Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself in any member +of his family? +Twice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Millicent +Milly at the ages of and years had uttered in sleep an exclamation +of terror and had replied to the interrogations of two figures in night +attire with a vacant mute expression. +What other infantile memories had he of her? + June . A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and +lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks her +moneybox counted his three free moneypenny buttons, one, tloo, tlee a +doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away blond, born of two dark, she had +blond ancestry, remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau, Austrian +army, proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvey, British navy. +What endemic characteristics were present? +Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct line +of lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant intervals +to more distant intervals to its most distant intervals. +What memories had he of her adolescence? +She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke's lawn, +entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to make and +take away her photographic image objection not stated. On the South +Circular road in the company of Elsa Potter, followed by an individual of +sinister aspect, she went half way down Stamer street and turned abruptly +back reason of change not stated. On the vigil of the th anniversary +of her birth she wrote a letter from Mullingar, county Westmeath, making +a brief allusion to a local student faculty and year not stated. +Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him? +Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped. +What second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him similarly, +if differently? +A temporary departure of his cat. +Why similarly, why differently? +Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new male +Mullingar student or of a healing herb valerian. Differently, because +of different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the habitation. +In other respects were their differences similar? +In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in +unexpectedness. +As? +Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon it for +her cf neckarching cat. Moreover, on the free surface of the lake in +Stephen's green amid inverted reflections of trees her uncommented spit, +describing concentric circles of waterrings, indicated by the constancy +of its permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish cf +mousewatching cat. +Again, in order to remember the date, combatants, issue and consequences +of a famous military engagement she pulled a plait of her hair cf +earwashing cat. Furthermore, silly Milly, she dreamed of having had an +unspoken unremembered conversation with a horse whose name had been +Joseph to whom which she had offered a tumblerful of lemonade which it +he had appeared to have accepted cf hearthdreaming cat. Hence, in +passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness, +their differences were similar. +In what way had he utilised gifts an owl, a clock, given as +matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her? +As object lessons to explain the nature and habits of oviparous +animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of +vision, the secular process of imbalsamation the principle of the +pendulum, exemplified in bob, wheelgear and regulator, the translation in +terms of human or social regulation of the various positions of clockwise +moveable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of the recurrence +per hour of an instant in each hour when the longer and the shorter +indicator were at the same angle of inclination, VIDELICET, / +minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical progression. +In what manners did she reciprocate? +She remembered on the th anniversary of his birth she presented to him +a breakfast moustachecup of imitation Crown Derby porcelain ware. She +provided at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases had been +made by him not for her she showed herself attentive to his necessities, +anticipating his desires. She admired a natural phenomenon having been +explained by him to her she expressed the immediate desire to possess +without gradual acquisition a fraction of his science, the moiety, the +quarter, a thousandth part. +What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnambulist, make +to Stephen, noctambulist? +To pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday proper and +Friday normal on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately +above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of +his host and hostess. +What various advantages would or might have resulted from a prolongation +of such an extemporisation? +For the guest security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the host +rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the hostess +disintegration of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian +pronunciation. +Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and a +hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent +eventuality of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew's +daughter? +Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother through +daughter. +To what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest +return a monosyllabic negative answer? +If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at Sydney +Parade railway station, October . +What inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed by the +host? +A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the interment +of Mrs Mary Dedalus born Goulding, June , vigil of the +anniversary of the decease of Rudolph Bloom born Virag. +Was the proposal of asylum accepted? +Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined. +What exchange of money took place between host and guest? +The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money +, one pound seven shillings sterling, advanced by the latter to +the former. +What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified, +declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed? +To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place the +residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal instruction, +place the residence of the instructress. To inaugurate a series of static +semistatic and peripatetic intellectual dialogues, places the residence +of both speakers if both speakers were resident in the same place, the +Ship hotel and tavern, Lower Abbey street W. and E. Connery, +proprietors, the National Library of Ireland, Kildare street, the +National Maternity Hospital, , and Holles street, a public +garden, the vicinity of a place of worship, a conjunction of two or more +public thoroughfares, the point of bisection of a right line drawn +between their residences if both speakers were resident in different +places. +What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these mutually +selfexcluding propositions? +The irreparability of the past once at a performance of Albert Hengler's +circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive particoloured +clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring to a place in +the auditorium where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had publicly +declared to an exhilarated audience that he Bloom was his the clown's +papa. The imprevidibility of the future once in the summer of he +Bloom had marked a florin / with three notches on the milled edge +and tendered it m payment of an account due to and received by J. and T. +Davy, family grocers, Charlemont Mall, Grand Canal, for circulation on +the waters of civic finance, for possible, circuitous or direct, return. +Was the clown Bloom's son? +No. +Had Bloom's coin returned? +Never. +Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him? +Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to +amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and +international animosity. +He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating +these conditions? +There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct +from human law, as integral parts of the human whole the necessity of +destruction to procure alimentary sustenance the painful character of +the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and +death the monotonous menstruation of simian and particularly human +females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause inevitable +accidents at sea, in mines and factories certain very painful maladies +and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital +criminality, decimating epidemics catastrophic cataclysms which make +terror the basis of human mentality seismic upheavals the epicentres of +which are located in densely populated regions the fact of vital growth, +through convulsions of metamorphosis, from infancy through maturity to +decay. +Why did he desist from speculation? +Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other +more acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena +to be removed. +Did Stephen participate in his dejection? +He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding +syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational +reagent between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the +incertitude of the void. +Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom? +Not verbally. Substantially. +What comforted his misapprehension? +That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from +the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void. +In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the exodus +from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation effected? +Lighted Candle in Stick borne by +BLOOM +Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by +STEPHEN +With what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm? +The th, MODUS PEREGRINUS IN EXITU ISRAEL DE EGYPTO DOMUS JACOB DE +POPULO BARBARO. +What did each do at the door of egress? +Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his head. +For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress? +For a cat. +What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, +emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere +of the house into the penumbra of the garden? +The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit. +With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his +companion of various constellations? +Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster of the moon invisible in +incipient lunation, approaching perigee of the infinite lattiginous +scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an +observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft ft +deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth of Sirius +alpha in Canis Maior lightyears ,,,, miles distant +and in volume times the dimension of our planet of Arcturus of the +precession of equinoxes of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and +nebula in which of our solar systems could be contained of moribund +and of nascent new stars such as Nova in of our system plunging +towards the constellation of Hercules of the parallax or parallactic +drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from +immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with +which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a +parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity. +Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast? +Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the +earth of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in +cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of +microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa of the incalculable +trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by +cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead of the universe of +human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes +of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its +universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible +in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever +diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried +far enough, nought nowhere was never reached. +Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result? +Because some years previously in when occupied with the problem of +the quadrature of the circle he had learned of .the existence of a number +computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of +so many places, e.g., the th power of the th power of , that, the +result having been obtained, closely printed volumes of pages +each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have to be +requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its printed +integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds +of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, +the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing +succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic +elaboration of any power of any of its powers. +Did he find the problems of the inhabitability of the planets and their +satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and +moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution? +Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism, +normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of tons, when +elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere +suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as the +line of demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was approximated +from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo, when proposing +this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a working hypothesis +which could not be proved impossible that a more adaptable and +differently anatomically constructed race of beings might subsist +otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian +or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an apogean +humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite differences +resulting similar to the whole and to one another would probably there as +here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to vanities, to vanities +of vanities and to all that is vanity. +And the problem of possible redemption? +The minor was proved by the major. +Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered? +The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality white, +yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar their degrees of brilliancy their +magnitudes revealed up to and including the th their positions the +waggoner's star Walsingham way the chariot of David the annular +cinctures of Saturn the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns the +interdependent gyrations of double suns the independent synchronous +discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel, +Galle the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of +distances and squares of times of revolution the almost infinite +compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and +reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion the sidereal origin of +meteoric stones the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth +of the younger astroscopist the annual recurrence of meteoric showers +about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence martyr, lo August the +monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon in her arms +the posited influence of celestial on human bodies the appearance of a +star st magnitude of exceeding brilliancy dominating by night and day +a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation in +incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns about the period of the birth of +William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent neversetting +constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star nd magnitude of similar +origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and disappeared +from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about the period of +the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of presumably similar +origin which had effectively or presumably appeared in and disappeared +from the constellation of Andromeda about the period of the birth of +Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the constellation of Auriga some years +after the birth and death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in and from other +constellations some years before or after the birth or death of other +persons the attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from +immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity +of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, +persistence of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of +human beings. +His Bloom's logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing +for possible error? +That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a +heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the +known to the unknown an infinity renderable equally finite by the +suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of +different magnitudes a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, +remobilised in air a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a +present before its probable spectators had entered actual present +existence. +Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle? +Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the +delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection +invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the +satellite of their planet. +Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological +influences upon sublunary disasters? +It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the +nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to +verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy the lake of dreams, the +sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity. +What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and +woman? +Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian +generations her nocturnal predominance her satellitic dependence her +luminary reflection her constancy under all her phases, rising and +setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning the forced +invariability of her aspect her indeterminate response to inaffirmative +interrogation her potency over effluent and refluent waters her power +to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to +incite to and aid delinquency the tranquil inscrutability of her visage +the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent +propinquity her omens of tempest and of calm the stimulation of her +light, her motion and her presence the admonition of her craters, her +arid seas, her silence her splendour, when visible her attraction, when +invisible. +What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom's, who attracted Stephen's, +gaze? +In the second storey rere of his Bloom's house the light of a +paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller +blind supplied by Frank O'Hara, window blind, curtain pole and revolving +shutter manufacturer, Aungier street. +How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his +wife Marion Molly Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp? +With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations with subdued +affection and admiration with description with impediment with +suggestion. +Both then were silent? +Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal +flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces. +Were they indefinitely inactive? +At Stephen's suggestion, at Bloom's instigation both, first Stephen, then +Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs of +micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition, +their gazes, first Bloom's, then Stephen's, elevated to the projected +luminous and semiluminous shadow. +Similarly? +The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations +were dissimilar Bloom's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of +the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter, who in his ultimate year +at High School had been capable of attaining the point of greatest +altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, +scholars Stephen's higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of +the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption an insistent +vesical pressure. +What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the +invisible audible collateral organ of the other? +To Bloom the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reactivity, +dimension, sanitariness, pilosity. +To Stephen the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised +I January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain from +unnecessary servile work and the problem as to whether the divine +prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic +church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of +the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine +excrescences as hair and toenails. +What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed? +A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament +from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the Tress +of Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo. +How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal +departer? +By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an +unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and +turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple, +pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing +an aperture for free egress and free ingress. +How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation? +Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its +base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and +forming any angle less than the sum of two right angles. +What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of their +respectively centrifugal and centripetal hands? +The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the bells +in the church of Saint George. +What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard? +By Stephen +LILIATA RUTILANTIUM. TURMA CIRCUMDET. +IUBILANTIUM TE VIRGINUM. CHORUS EXCIPIAT. +By Bloom +HEIGHO, HEIGHO, +HEIGHO, HEIGHO. +Where were the several members of the company which with Bloom that day +at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south to +Glasnevin in the north? +Martin Cunningham in bed, Jack Power in bed, Simon Dedalus in bed, +Ned Lambert in bed, Tom Kernan in bed, Joe Hynes in bed, John Henry +Menton in bed, Bernard Corrigan in bed, Patsy Dignam in bed, Paddy +Dignam in the grave. +Alone, what did Bloom hear? +The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth, the +double vibration of a jew's harp in the resonant lane. +Alone, what did Bloom feel? +The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing point +or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Reaumur the incipient +intimations of proximate dawn. +Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind +him? +Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct Percy +Apjohn killed in action, Modder River, Philip Gilligan phthisis, +Jervis Street hospital, Matthew F. Kane accidental drowning, Dublin +Bay, Philip Moisel pyemia, Heytesbury street, Michael Hart phthisis, +Mater Misericordiae hospital, Patrick Dignam apoplexy, Sandymount. +What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain? +The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, the +apparition of a new solar disk. +Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena? +Once, in , after a protracted performance of charades in the house of +Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of the +diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction of +Mizrach, the east. +He remembered the initial paraphenomena? +More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at +various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer, the +visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the first +golden limb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon. +Did he remain? +With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering +the passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed the +candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front room, +hallfloor, and reentered. +What suddenly arrested his ingress? +The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into +contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible +fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in +consequence of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered. +Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of +furniture. +A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite the +door to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union Jack an alteration +which he had frequently intended to execute the blue and white checker +inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the door in the +place vacated by the prune plush sofa the walnut sideboard a projecting +angle of which had momentarily arrested his ingress had been moved from +its position beside the door to a more advantageous but more perilous +position in front of the door two chairs had been moved from right and +left of the ingleside to the position originally occupied by the blue and +white checker inlaid majolicatopped table. +Describe them. +One a squat stuffed easychair, with stout arms extended and back slanted +to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an irregular +fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply upholstered +seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing discolouration. The other a +slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane curves, placed directly opposite +the former, its frame from top to seat and from seat to base being +varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle of white plaited +rush. +What significances attached to these two chairs? +Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of circumstantial +evidence, of testimonial supermanence. +What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard? +A vertical piano Cadby with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin +supporting a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves and an emerald ashtray +containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two +discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in the +key of G natural for voice and piano of LOVE'S OLD SWEET SONG words by +G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam Antoinette +Sterling open at the last page with the final indications AD LIBITUM, +FORTE, pedal, ANIMATO, sustained pedal, RITIRANDO, close. +With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these objects? +With strain, elevating a candlestick with pain, feeling on his right +temple a contused tumescence with attention, focussing his gaze on a +large dull passive and a slender bright active with solicitation, +bending and downturning the upturned rugfringe with amusement, +remembering Dr Malachi Mulligan's scheme of colour containing the +gradation of green with pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent act +and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility the +consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual +discolouration. +His next proceeding? +From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black +diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on a +small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the +mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus +illustrated entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined it +superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the +candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the +latter reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin +of the candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to +facilitate total combustion. +What followed this operation? +The truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a +vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense. +What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the +mantelpiece? +A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of . +a.m. on the March , matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon a dwarf +tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial +gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of +Alderman John Hooper. +What interchanges of looks took place between these three objects and +Bloom? +In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the +dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before the +mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear +melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom while +Bloom with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassionated gaze +regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle. +What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his +attention? +The image of a solitary ipsorelative mutable aliorelative man. +Why solitary ipsorelative? +BROTHERS AND SISTERS HAD HE NONE. +YET THAT MAN'S FATHER WAS HIS GRANDFATHER'S SON. +Why mutable aliorelative? +From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatrix. From +maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal +procreator. +What final visual impression was communicated to him by the mirror? +The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly arranged +and not in the order of their common letters with scintillating titles on +the two bookshelves opposite. +Catalogue these books. +THOM'S DUBLIN POST OFFICE DIRECTORY, . +Denis Florence M'Carthy's POETICAL WORKS copper beechleaf bookmark +at p. . +Shakespeare's WORKS dark crimson morocco, goldtooled. +THE USEFUL READY RECKONER brown cloth. +THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT OF CHARLES II red cloth, tooled +binding. +THE CHILD'S GUIDE blue cloth. +The Beauties of Killarney wrappers. +WHEN WE WERE BOYS by William O'Brien M. P. green cloth, slightly faded, +envelope bookmark at p. . +THOUGHTS FROM SPINOZA maroon leather. +THE STORY OF THE HEAVENS by Sir Robert Ball blue cloth. +Ellis's THREE TRIPS TO MADAGASCAR brown cloth, title obliterated. +THE STARKMUNRO LETTERS by A. Conan Doyle, property of the City of +Dublin Public Library, Capel street, lent May Whitsun Eve +, due June , days overdue black cloth binding, bearing +white letternumber ticket. +VOYAGES IN CHINA by "Viator" recovered with brown paper, red ink title. +PHILOSOPHY OF THE TALMUD sewn pamphlet. +Lockhart's LIFE OF NAPOLEON cover wanting, marginal annotations, +minimising victories, aggrandising defeats of the protagonist. +SOLL UND HABEN by Gustav Freytag black boards, Gothic characters, +cigarette coupon bookmark at p. . +Hozier's HISTORY OF THE RUSSOTURKISH WAR brown cloth, a volumes, with +gummed label, Garrison Library, Governor's Parade, Gibraltar, on verso +of cover. +LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD IN IRELAND by William Allingham second edition, +green cloth, gilt trefoil design, previous owner's name on recto of +flyleaf erased. +A HANDBOOK OF ASTRONOMY cover, brown leather, detached, S plates, +antique letterpress long primer, author's footnotes nonpareil, marginal +clues brevier, captions small pica. +THE HIDDEN LIFE OF CHRIST black boards. +IN THE TRACK OF THE SUN yellow cloth, titlepage missing, recurrent title +intestation. +PHYSICAL STRENGTH AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT by Eugen Sandow red cloth. +SHORT BUT YET PLAIN ELEMENTS OF GEOMETRY written in French by F. Ignat. +Pardies and rendered into English by John Harris D. D. London, +printed for R. Knaplock at the Bifhop's Head, MDCCXI, with dedicatory +epiftle to his worthy friend Charles Cox, efquire, Member of +Parliament for the burgh of Southwark and having ink calligraphed +statement on the flyleaf certifying that the book was the property of +Michael Gallagher, dated this th day of May and requefting the +perfon who should find it, if the book should be loft or go aftray, +to reftore it to Michael Gallagher, carpenter, Dufery Gate, +Ennifcorthy, county Wicklow, the fineft place in the world. +What reflections occupied his mind during the process of reversion of the +inverted volumes? +The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its +place the deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females the +incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella +inclined in a closestool the insecurity of hiding any secret document +behind, beneath or between the pages of a book. +Which volume was the largest in bulk? +Hozier's HISTORY OF THE RUSSOTURKISH WAR. +What among other data did the second volume of the work in question +contain? +The name of a decisive battle forgotten, frequently remembered by a +decisive officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy remembered. +Why, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the work in question? +Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic secondly, because after an +interval of amnesia, when, seated at the central table, about to consult +the work in question, he remembered by mnemotechnic the name of the +military engagement, Plevna. +What caused him consolation in his sitting posture? +The candour, nudity, pose, tranquility, youth, grace, sex, counsel of a +statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus purchased +by auction from P. A. Wren, Bachelor's Walk. +What caused him irritation in his sitting posture? Inhibitory pressure of +collar size and waistcoat buttons, two articles of clothing +superfluous in the costume of mature males and inelastic to alterations +of mass by expansion. +How was the irritation allayed? +He removed his collar, with contained black necktie and collapsible stud, +from his neck to a position on the left of the table. He unbuttoned +successively in reversed direction waistcoat, trousers, shirt and vest +along the medial line of irregular incrispated black hairs extending in +triangular convergence from the pelvic basin over the circumference of +the abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along the medial line of nodes to +the intersection of the sixth pectoral vertebrae, thence produced both +ways at right angles and terminating in circles described about two +equidistant points, right and left, on the summits of the mammary +prominences. He unbraced successively each of six minus one braced +trouser buttons, arranged in pairs, of which one incomplete. +What involuntary actions followed? +He compressed between fingers the flesh circumjacent to a cicatrice in +the left infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting from a sting +inflicted weeks and days previously May by a bee. He +scratched imprecisely with his right hand, though insensible of +prurition, various points and surfaces of his partly exposed, wholly +abluted skin. He inserted his left hand into the left lower pocket of his +waistcoat and extracted and replaced a silver coin I shilling, placed +there presumably on the occasion October of the interment of +Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade. +Compile the budget for June . +DEBIT CREDIT +Lsd Lsd + Pork kidney Cash in Hand + Copy FREEMAN'S JOURNAL Commission recd FREEMAN'S JOURNAL + Bath And Gratification Loan Stephen Dedalus +Tramfare + In Memoriam +Patrick Dignam + Banbury cakes + Lunch + Renewal fee for book + Packet Notepaper +and Envelopes + Dinner +and Gratification +I Postal Order +and Stamp +Tramfare + Pig's Foot + Sheep's Trotter + Cake Fry's +Plain Chocolate + Square Soda Bread + Coffee and Bun +Loan Stephen Dedalus +refunded +BALANCE +Did the process of divestiture continue? +Sensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he extended his +foot to one side and observed the creases, protuberances and salient +points caused by foot pressure in the course of walking repeatedly in +several different directions, then, inclined, he disnoded the laceknots, +unhooked and loosened the laces, took off each of his two boots for the +second time, detached the partially moistened right sock through the fore +part of which the nail of his great toe had again effracted, raised his +right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic sock suspender, took off +his right sock, placed his unclothed right foot on the margin of the seat +of his chair, picked at and gently lacerated the protruding part of the +great toenail, raised the part lacerated to his nostrils and inhaled the +odour of the quick, then, with satisfaction, threw away the lacerated +ungual fragment. +Why with satisfaction? +Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other +ungual fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs +Ellis's juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief +genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation. +In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambitions +now coalesced? +Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough English, +or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient number of +acres, roods and perches, statute land measure valuation pounds, of +grazing turbary surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage +drive nor, on the other hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa, +described as RUS IN URBE or QUI SI SANA, but to purchase by private +treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped storey dwellinghouse of +southerly aspect, surmounted by vane and lightning conductor, connected +with the earth, with porch covered by parasitic plants ivy or Virginia +creeper, halldoor, olive green, with smart carriage finish and neat +doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at eaves and gable, rising, +if possible, upon a gentle eminence with agreeable prospect from balcony +with stone pillar parapet over unoccupied and unoccupyable interjacent +pastures and standing in or acres of its own ground, at such a +distance from the nearest public thoroughfare as to render its +houselights visible at night above and through a quickset hornbeam hedge +of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not less than statute mile +from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time limit of not more +than minutes from tram or train line e.g., Dundrum, south, or Sutton, +north, both localities equally reported by trial to resemble the +terrestrial poles in being favourable climates for phthisical subjects, +the premises to be held under feefarm grant, lease years, the +messuage to consist of drawingroom with baywindow lancets, +thermometer affixed, sittingroom, bedrooms, servants' rooms, tiled +kitchen with close range and scullery, lounge hall fitted with linen +wallpresses, fumed oak sectional bookcase containing the Encyclopaedia +Britannica and New Century Dictionary, transverse obsolete medieval and +oriental weapons, dinner gong, alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite +automatic telephone receiver with adjacent directory, handtufted +Axminster carpet with cream ground and trellis border, loo table with +pillar and claw legs, hearth with massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel +chronometer clock, guaranteed timekeeper with cathedral chime, barometer +with hygrographic chart, comfortable lounge settees and corner fitments, +upholstered in ruby plush with good springing and sunk centre, three +banner Japanese screen and cuspidors club style, rich winecoloured +leather, gloss renewable with a minimum of labour by use of linseed oil +and vinegar and pyramidically prismatic central chandelier lustre, +bentwood perch with fingertame parrot expurgated language, embossed +mural paper at / per dozen with transverse swags of carmine floral +design and top crown frieze, staircase, three continuous flights at +successive right angles, of varnished cleargrained oak, treads and +risers, newel, balusters and handrail, with steppedup panel dado, dressed +with camphorated wax bathroom, hot and cold supply, reclining and +shower water closet on mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane oblong +window, tipup seat, bracket lamp, brass tierod and brace, armrests, +footstool and artistic oleograph on inner face of door ditto, plain +servants' apartments with separate sanitary and hygienic necessaries for +cook, general and betweenmaid salary, rising by biennial unearned +increments of pounds, with comprehensive fidelity insurance, annual +bonus pound and retiring allowance based on the system after +years' service, pantry, buttery, larder, refrigerator, outoffices, coal +and wood cellarage with winebin still and sparkling vintages for +distinguished guests, if entertained to dinner evening dress, carbon +monoxide gas supply throughout. +What additional attractions might the grounds contain? +As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass summerhouse +with tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical manner, a rockery +with waterspray, a beehive arranged on humane principles, oval flowerbeds +in rectangular grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of scarlet and +chrome tulips, blue scillas, crocuses, polyanthus, sweet William, sweet +pea, lily of the valley bulbs obtainable from sir James W. Mackey +Limited wholesale and retail seed and bulb merchants and nurserymen, +agents for chemical manures, Sackville street, upper, an orchard, +kitchen garden and vinery protected against illegal trespassers by +glasstopped mural enclosures, a lumbershed with padlock for various +inventoried implements. +As? +Eeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone, +clodcrusher, swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, tooth rake, +washing clogs, haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot, brush, hoe +and so on. +What improvements might be subsequently introduced? +A rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, hammocks +lady's and gentleman's, a sundial shaded and sheltered by laburnum or +lilac trees, an exotically harmonically accorded Japanese tinkle gatebell +affixed to left lateral gatepost, a capacious waterbutt, a lawnmower with +side delivery and grassbox, a lawnsprinkler with hydraulic hose. +What facilities of transit were desirable? +When citybound frequent connection by train or tram from their respective +intermediate station or terminal. When countrybound velocipedes, a +chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar attached, or +draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart phaeton with good +working solidungular cob roan gelding, h. +What might be the name of this erigible or erected residence? +Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold's. Flowerville. +Could Bloom of Eccles street foresee Bloom of Flowerville? +In loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price /, and useful +garden boots with elastic gussets and wateringcan, planting aligned young +firtrees, syringing, pruning, staking, sowing hayseed, trundling a +weedladen wheelbarrow without excessive fatigue at sunset amid the scent +of newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying wisdom, achieving +longevity. +What syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously possible? +Snapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore relative +to various amatory and superstitious practices, contemplation of the +celestial constellations. +What lighter recreations? +Outdoor garden and fieldwork, cycling on level macadamised causeways +ascents of moderately high hills, natation in secluded fresh water and +unmolested river boating in secure wherry or light curricle with kedge +anchor on reaches free from weirs and rapids period of estivation, +vespertinal perambulation or equestrian circumprocession with inspection +of sterile landscape and contrastingly agreeable cottagers' fires of +smoking peat turves period of hibernation. Indoor discussion in tepid +security of unsolved historical and criminal problems lecture of +unexpurgated exotic erotic masterpieces house carpentry with toolbox +containing hammer, awl nails, screws, tintacks, gimlet, tweezers, +bullnose plane and turnscrew. Might he become a gentleman farmer of field +produce and live stock? +Not impossibly, with or stripper cows, pike of upland hay and +requisite farming implements, e.g., an endtoend churn, a turnip pulper +etc. +What would be his civic functions and social status among the county +families and landed gentry? +Arranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical order, that of +gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and at the zenith of his +career, resident magistrate or justice of the peace with a family crest +and coat of arms and appropriate classical motto SEMPER PARATUS, duly +recorded in the court directory Bloom, Leopold P., M. P., P. C., K. P., +L. L. D. HONORIS CAUSA, Bloomville, Dundrum and mentioned in court and +fashionable intelligence Mr and Mrs Leopold Bloom have left Kingstown +for England. +What course of action did he outline for himself in such capacity? +A course that lay between undue clemency and excessive rigour the +dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary classes, incessantly +rearranged in terms of greater and lesser social inequality, of unbiassed +homogeneous indisputable justice, tempered with mitigants of the widest +possible latitude but exactable to the uttermost farthing with +confiscation of estate, real and personal, to the crown. Loyal to the +highest constituted power in the land, actuated by an innate love of +rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance of public order, the +repression of many abuses though not of all simultaneously every measure +of reform or retrenchment being a preliminary solution to be contained by +fluxion in the final solution, the upholding of the letter of the law +common, statute and law merchant against all traversers in covin and +trespassers acting in contravention of bylaws and regulations, all +resuscitators by trespass and petty larceny of kindlings of venville +rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund instigators of international +persecution, all perpetuators of international animosities, all menial +molestors of domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of +domestic connubiality. +Prove that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth. +To Master Percy Apjohn at High School in he had divulged his +disbelief in the tenets of the Irish protestant church to which his +father Rudolf Virag later Rudolph Bloom had been converted from the +Israelitic faith and communion in by the Society for promoting +Christianity among the jews subsequently abjured by him in favour of +Roman catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to his matrimony in +. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade in during a juvenile +friendship terminated by the premature emigration of the former he had +advocated during nocturnal perambulations the political theory of +colonial e.g. Canadian expansion and the evolutionary theories of +Charles Darwin, expounded in THE DESCENT OF MAN and THE ORIGIN OF +SPECIES. In he had publicly expressed his adherence to the +collective and national economic programme advocated by James Fintan +Lalor, John Fisher Murray, John Mitchel, J. F. X. O'Brien and others, the +agrarian policy of Michael Davitt, the constitutional agitation of +Charles Stewart Parnell M. P. for Cork City, the programme of peace, +retrenchment and reform of William Ewart Gladstone M. P. for Midlothian, +N. B. and, in support of his political convictions, had climbed up into +a secure position amid the ramifications of a tree on Northumberland road +to see the entrance February into the capital of a demonstrative +torchlight procession of , torchbearers, divided into trade +corporations, bearing torches in escort of the marquess of Ripon and +honest John Morley. +How much and how did he propose to pay for this country residence? +As per prospectus of the Industrious Foreign Acclimatised Nationalised +Friendly Stateaided Building Society incorporated , a maximum of +pounds per annum, being / of an assured income, derived from giltedged +securities, representing at percent simple interest on capital of +pounds estimate of price at years' purchase, of which to be paid +on acquisition and the balance in the form of annual rent, viz. +pounds plus / percent interest on the same, repayable quarterly in +equal annual instalments until extinction by amortisation of loan +advanced for purchase within a period of years, amounting to an annual +rental of pounds, headrent included, the titledeeds to remain in +possession of the lender or lenders with a saving clause envisaging +forced sale, foreclosure and mutual compensation in the event of +protracted failure to pay the terms assigned, otherwise the messuage to +become the absolute property of the tenant occupier upon expiry of the +period of years stipulated. +What rapid but insecure means to opulence might facilitate immediate +purchase? +A private wireless telegraph which would transmit by dot and dash system +the result of a national equine handicap flat or steeplechase of I or +more miles and furlongs won by an outsider at odds of to at hr m +p.m. at Ascot Greenwich time, the message being received and available +for betting purposes in Dublin at . p.m. Dunsink time. The +unexpected discovery of an object of great monetary value precious +stone, valuable adhesive or impressed postage stamps schilling, mauve, +imperforate, Hamburg, pence, rose, blue paper, perforate, Great +Britain, franc, stone, official, rouletted, diagonal surcharge, +Luxemburg, , antique dynastical ring, unique relic in unusual +repositories or by unusual means from the air dropped by an eagle in +flight, by fire amid the carbonised remains of an incendiated edifice, +in the sea amid flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict, on earth in the +gizzard of a comestible fowl. A Spanish prisoner's donation of a distant +treasure of valuables or specie or bullion lodged with a solvent banking +corporation loo years previously at percent compound interest of the +collective worth of ,, pounds stg five million pounds sterling. +A contract with an inconsiderate contractee for the delivery of +consignments of some given commodity in consideration of cash payment on +delivery per delivery at the initial rate of /d to be increased +constantly in the geometrical progression of /d, /d, d, d, d, +d, s d, s d to terms. A prepared scheme based on a study of the +laws of probability to break the bank at Monte Carlo. A solution of the +secular problem of the quadrature of the circle, government premium +,, pounds sterling. +Was vast wealth acquirable through industrial channels? +The reclamation of dunams of waste arenary soil, proposed in the +prospectus of Agendath Netaim, Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. , by the +cultivation of orange plantations and melonfields and reafforestation. +The utilisation of waste paper, fells of sewer rodents, human excrement +possessing chemical properties, in view of the vast production of the +first, vast number of the second and immense quantity of the third, every +normal human being of average vitality and appetite producing annually, +cancelling byproducts of water, a sum total of lbs. mixed animal and +vegetable diet, to be multiplied by ,,, the total population of +Ireland according to census returns of . +Were there schemes of wider scope? +A scheme to be formulated and submitted for approval to the harbour +commissioners for the exploitation of white coal hydraulic power, +obtained by hydroelectric plant at peak of tide at Dublin bar or at head +of water at Poulaphouca or Powerscourt or catchment basins of main +streams for the economic production of , W. H. P. of electricity. A +scheme to enclose the peninsular delta of the North Bull at Dollymount +and erect on the space of the foreland, used for golf links and rifle +ranges, an asphalted esplanade with casinos, booths, shooting galleries, +hotels, boardinghouses, readingrooms, establishments for mixed bathing. A +scheme for the use of dogvans and goatvans for the delivery of early +morning milk. A scheme for the development of Irish tourist traffic in +and around Dublin by means of petrolpropelled riverboats, plying in the +fluvial fairway between Island bridge and Ringsend, charabancs, narrow +gauge local railways, and pleasure steamers for coastwise navigation +/ per person per day, guide trilingual included. A scheme for the +repristination of passenger and goods traffics over Irish waterways, when +freed from weedbeds. A scheme to connect by tramline the Cattle Market +North Circular road and Prussia street with the quays Sheriff street, +lower, and East Wall, parallel with the Link line railway laid in +conjunction with the Great Southern and Western railway line between the +cattle park, Liffey junction, and terminus of Midland Great Western +Railway to North Wall, in proximity to the terminal stations or +Dublin branches of Great Central Railway, Midland Railway of England, +City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway +Company, Dublin and Glasgow Steam Packet Company, Glasgow, Dublin and +Londonderry Steam Packet Company Laird line, British and Irish Steam +Packet Company, Dublin and Morecambe Steamers, London and North Western +Railway Company, Dublin Port and Docks Board Landing Sheds and transit +sheds of Palgrave, Murphy and Company, steamship owners, agents for +steamers from Mediterranean, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Holland +and for Liverpool Underwriters' Association, the cost of acquired rolling +stock for animal transport and of additional mileage operated by the +Dublin United Tramways Company, limited, to be covered by graziers' fees. +Positing what protasis would the contraction for such several schemes +become a natural and necessary apodosis? +Given a guarantee equal to the sum sought, the support, by deed of gift +and transfer vouchers during donor's lifetime or by bequest after donor's +painless extinction, of eminent financiers Blum Pasha, Rothschild +Guggenheim, Hirsch, Montefiore, Morgan, Rockefeller possessing fortunes +in figures, amassed during a successful life, and joining capital with +opportunity the thing required was done. +What eventuality would render him independent of such wealth? +The independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible ore. +For what reason did he meditate on schemes so difficult of realisation? +It was one of his axioms that similar meditations or the automatic +relation to himself of a narrative concerning himself or tranquil +recollection of the past when practised habitually before retiring for +the night alleviated fatigue and produced as a result sound repose and +renovated vitality. +His justifications? +As a physicist he had learned that of the years of complete human life +at least /, viz. years are passed in sleep. As a philosopher he knew +that at the termination of any allotted life only an infinitesimal part +of any person's desires has been realised. As a physiologist he believed +in the artificial placation of malignant agencies chiefly operative +during somnolence. +What did he fear? +The committal of homicide or suicide during sleep by an aberration of the +light of reason, the incommensurable categorical intelligence situated in +the cerebral convolutions. +What were habitually his final meditations? +Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder, +a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its +simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision +and congruous with the velocity of modern life. +What did the first drawer unlocked contain? +A Vere Foster's handwriting copybook, property of Milly Millicent +Bloom, certain pages of which bore diagram drawings, marked PAPLI, which +showed a large globular head with hairs erect, eyes in profile, the +trunk full front with large buttons, triangular foot fading +photographs of queen Alexandra of England and of Maud Branscombe, actress +and professional beauty a Yuletide card, bearing on it a pictorial +representation of a parasitic plant, the legend MIZPAH, the date Xmas +, the name of the senders from Mr Mrs M. Comerford, the versicle +MAY THIS YULETIDE BRING TO THEE, JOY AND PEACE AND WELCOME GLEE a butt +of red partly liquefied sealing wax, obtained from the stores department +of Messrs Hely's, Ltd., , , and Dame street a box containing the +remainder of a gross of gilt "J" pennibs, obtained from same department +of same firm an old sandglass which rolled containing sand which rolled +a sealed prophecy never unsealed written by Leopold Bloom in +concerning the consequences of the passing into law of William Ewart +Gladstone's Home Rule bill of never passed into law a bazaar +ticket, no , of S. Kevin's Charity Fair, price d, prizes an +infantile epistle, dated, small em monday, reading capital pee Papli +comma capital aitch How are you note of interrogation capital eye I am +very well full stop new paragraph signature with flourishes capital em +Milly no stop a cameo brooch, property of Ellen Bloom born Higgins, +deceased a cameo scarfpin, property of Rudolph Bloom born Virag, +deceased typewritten letters, addressee, Henry Flower, c/o. P. O. +Westland Row, addresser, Martha Clifford, c/o. P. O. Dolphin's Barn the +transliterated name and address of the addresser of the letters in +reversed alphabetic boustrophedonic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram +vowels suppressed N. IGS./WI. UU. OX/W. OKS. MH/Y. IM a press cutting +from an English weekly periodical MODERN SOCIETY, subject corporal +chastisement in girls' schools a pink ribbon which had festooned an +Easter egg in the year two partly uncoiled rubber preservatives +with reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box , P. O., Charing +Cross, London, W. C. pack of dozen creamlaid envelopes and +feintruled notepaper, watermarked, now reduced by some assorted +AustrianHungarian coins coupons of the Royal and Privileged Hungarian +Lottery a lowpower magnifying glass erotic photocards showing a +buccal coition between nude senorita rere presentation, superior +position and nude torero fore presentation, inferior position b anal +violation by male religious fully clothed, eyes abject of female +religious partly clothed, eyes direct, purchased by post from Box , +P. O., Charing Cross, London, W. C. a press cutting of recipe for +renovation of old tan boots a Id adhesive stamp, lavender, of the reign +of Queen Victoria a chart of the measurements of Leopold Bloom compiled +before, during and after months' consecutive use of SandowWhiteley's +pulley exerciser men's /, athlete's / viz. chest in and / +in, biceps in and in, forearm / in and in, thigh in and +in, calf in and in prospectus of The Wonderworker, the world's +greatest remedy for rectal complaints, direct from Wonderworker, Coventry +House, South Place, London E C, addressed erroneously to Mrs L. Bloom +with brief accompanying note commencing erroneously Dear Madam. +Quote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed advantages for +this thaumaturgic remedy. +It heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in breaking +wind, assists nature in the most formidable way, insuring instant relief +in discharge of gases, keeping parts clean and free natural action, an +initial outlay of / making a new man of you and life worth living. +Ladies find Wonderworker especially useful, a pleasant surprise when they +note delightful result like a cool drink of fresh spring water on a +sultry summer's day. Recommend it to your lady and gentlemen friends, +lasts a lifetime. Insert long round end. Wonderworker. +Were there testimonials? +Numerous. From clergyman, British naval officer, wellknown author, city +man, hospital nurse, lady, mother of five, absentminded beggar. +How did absentminded beggar's concluding testimonial conclude? +What a pity the government did not supply our men with wonderworkers +during the South African campaign What a relief it would have been +What object did Bloom add to this collection of objects? +A th typewritten letter received by Henry Flower let H. F. be L. B. +from Martha Clifford find M. C.. +What pleasant reflection accompanied this action? +The reflection that, apart from the letter in question, his magnetic +face, form and address had been favourably received during the course of +the preceding day by a wife Mrs Josephine Breen, born Josie Powell, a +nurse, Miss Callan Christian name unknown, a maid, Gertrude Gerty, +family name unknown. +What possibility suggested itself? +The possibility of exercising virile power of fascination in the not +immediate future after an expensive repast in a private apartment in the +company of an elegant courtesan, of corporal beauty, moderately +mercenary, variously instructed, a lady by origin. +What did the nd drawer contain? +Documents the birth certificate of Leopold Paula Bloom an endowment +assurance policy of pounds in the Scottish Widows' Assurance Society, +intestated Millicent Milly Bloom, coming into force at years as with +profit policy of pounds, // and pounds at years or +death, years or death and death, respectively, or with profit policy +paidup of // together with cash payment of //, at option a +bank passbook issued by the Ulster Bank, College Green branch showing +statement of a/c for halfyear ending December , balance in +depositor's favour // eighteen pounds, fourteen shillings and +sixpence, sterling, net personalty certificate of possession of +pounds, Canadian percent inscribed government stock free of stamp +duty dockets of the Catholic Cemeteries' Glasnevin Committee, +relative to a graveplot purchased a local press cutting concerning +change of name by deedpoll. +Quote the textual terms of this notice. +I, Rudolph Virag, now resident at no Clanbrassil street, Dublin, +formerly of Szombathely in the kingdom of Hungary, hereby give notice +that I have assumed and intend henceforth upon all occasions and at all +times to be known by the name of Rudolph Bloom. +What other objects relative to Rudolph Bloom born Virag were in the nd +drawer? +An indistinct daguerreotype of Rudolf Virag and his father Leopold Virag +executed in the year in the portrait atelier of their respectively +st and nd cousin, Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar, Hungary. An ancient +haggadah book in which a pair of hornrimmed convex spectacles inserted +marked the passage of thanksgiving in the ritual prayers for Pessach +Passover a photocard of the Queen's Hotel, Ennis, proprietor, Rudolph +Bloom an envelope addressed TO MY DEAR SON LEOPOLD. +What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five whole words +evoke? +Tomorrow will be a week that I received... it is no use Leopold to be ... +with your dear mother ... that is not more to stand ... to her ... all +for me is out ... be kind to Athos, Leopold ... my dear son ... always +... of me ... DAS HERZ ... GOTT ... DEIN ... +What reminiscences of a human subject suffering from progressive +melancholia did these objects evoke in Bloom? +An old man, widower, unkempt of hair, in bed, with head covered, sighing +an infirm dog, Athos aconite, resorted to by increasing doses of grains +and scruples as a palliative of recrudescent neuralgia the face in death +of a septuagenarian, suicide by poison. +Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse? +Because in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect certain +beliefs and practices. +As? +The prohibition of the use of fleshmeat and milk at one meal the +hebdomadary symposium of incoordinately abstract, perfervidly concrete +mercantile coexreligionist excompatriots the circumcision of male +infants the supernatural character of Judaic scripture the ineffability +of the tetragrammaton the sanctity of the sabbath. +How did these beliefs and practices now appear to him? +Not more rational than they had then appeared, not less rational than +other beliefs and practices now appeared. +What first reminiscence had he of Rudolph Bloom deceased? +Rudolph Bloom deceased narrated to his son Leopold Bloom aged a +retrospective arrangement of migrations and settlements in and between +Dublin, London, Florence, Milan, Vienna, Budapest, Szombathely with +statements of satisfaction his grandfather having seen Maria Theresia, +empress of Austria, queen of Hungary, with commercial advice having +taken care of pence, the pounds having taken care of themselves. Leopold +Bloom aged had accompanied these narrations by constant consultation +of a geographical map of Europe political and by suggestions for the +establishment of affiliated business premises in the various centres +mentioned. +Had time equally but differently obliterated the memory of these +migrations in narrator and listener? +In narrator by the access of years and in consequence of the use of +narcotic toxin in listener by the access of years and in consequence of +the action of distraction upon vicarious experiences. +What idiosyncracies of the narrator were concomitant products of amnesia? +Occasionally he ate without having previously removed his hat. +Occasionally he drank voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool from an +inclined plate. Occasionally he removed from his lips the traces of food +by means of a lacerated envelope or other accessible fragment of paper. +What two phenomena of senescence were more frequent? +The myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent upon +repletion. +What object offered partial consolation for these reminiscences? +The endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate of the +possession of scrip. +Reduce Bloom by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune, from which +these supports protected him, and by elimination of all positive values +to a negligible negative irrational unreal quantity. +Successively, in descending helotic order Poverty that of the outdoor +hawker of imitation jewellery, the dun for the recovery of bad and +doubtful debts, the poor rate and deputy cess collector. Mendicancy that +of the fraudulent bankrupt with negligible assets paying s. d. in the +pound, sandwichman, distributor of throwaways, nocturnal vagrant, +insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind stripling, superannuated +bailiffs man, marfeast, lickplate, spoilsport, pickthank, eccentric +public laughingstock seated on bench of public park under discarded +perforated umbrella. Destitution the inmate of Old Man's House Royal +Hospital Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson's Hospital for reduced but +respectable men permanently disabled by gout or want of sight. Nadir of +misery the aged impotent disfranchised ratesupported moribund lunatic +pauper. +With which attendant indignities? +The unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females, the +contempt of muscular males, the acceptance of fragments of bread, the +simulated ignorance of casual acquaintances, the latration of +illegitimate unlicensed vagabond dogs, the infantile discharge of +decomposed vegetable missiles, worth little or nothing, nothing or less +than nothing. +By what could such a situation be precluded? +By decease change of state by departure change of place. +Which preferably? +The latter, by the line of least resistance. +What considerations rendered departure not entirely undesirable? +Constant cohabitation impeding mutual toleration of personal defects. The +habit of independent purchase increasingly cultivated. The necessity to +counteract by impermanent sojourn the permanence of arrest. +What considerations rendered departure not irrational? +The parties concerned, uniting, had increased and multiplied, which being +done, offspring produced and educed to maturity, the parties, if not +disunited were obliged to reunite for increase and multiplication, which +was absurd, to form by reunion the original couple of uniting parties, +which was impossible. +What considerations rendered departure desirable? +The attractive character of certain localities in Ireland and abroad, as +represented in general geographical maps of polychrome design or in +special ordnance survey charts by employment of scale numerals and +hachures. +In Ireland? +The cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough Neagh with +submerged petrified city, the Giant's Causeway, Fort Camden and Fort +Carlisle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary, the islands of Aran, the pastures +of royal Meath, Brigid's elm in Kildare, the Queen's Island shipyard in +Belfast, the Salmon Leap, the lakes of Killarney. +Abroad? +Ceylon with spicegardens supplying tea to Thomas Kernan, agent for +Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, Mincing Lane, London, E. C., Dame street, +Dublin, Jerusalem, the holy city with mosque of Omar and gate of +Damascus, goal of aspiration, the straits of Gibraltar the unique +birthplace of Marion Tweedy, the Parthenon containing statues of nude +Grecian divinities, the Wall street money market which controlled +international finance, the Plaza de Toros at La Linea, Spain where +O'Hara of the Camerons had slain the bull, Niagara over which no human +being had passed with impunity, the land of the Eskimos eaters of +soap, the forbidden country of Thibet from which no traveller returns, +the bay of Naples to see which was to die, the Dead Sea. +Under what guidance, following what signs? +At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of +intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Maior produced +and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse of the rightangled +triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the line alpha +delta of Ursa Maior. On land, meridional, a bispherical moon, revealed in +imperfect varying phases of lunation through the posterior interstice of +the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose negligent perambulating +female, a pillar of the cloud by day. +What public advertisement would divulge the occultation of the departed? + pounds reward, lost, stolen or strayed from his residence Eccles +street, missing gent about , answering to the name of Bloom, Leopold +Poldy, height ft / inches, full build, olive complexion, may have +since grown a beard, when last seen was wearing a black suit. Above sum +will be paid for information leading to his discovery. +What universal binomial denominations would be his as entity and +nonentity? +Assumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman. +What tributes his? +Honour and gifts of strangers, the friends of Everyman. A nymph immortal, +beauty, the bride of Noman. +Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear? +Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary +orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, +astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing +from land to land, among peoples, amid events. Somewhere imperceptibly he +would hear and somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey the summons of +recall. Whence, disappearing from the constellation of the Northern Crown +he would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the constellation of +Cassiopeia and after incalculable eons of peregrination return an +estranged avenger, a wreaker of justice on malefactors, a dark crusader, +a sleeper awakened, with financial resources by supposition surpassing +those of Rothschild or the silver king. +What would render such return irrational? +An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through +reversible space and an exodus and return in space through irreversible +time. +What play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure undesirable? +The lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory the obscurity of the +night, rendering invisible the uncertainty of thoroughfares, rendering +perilous the necessity for repose, obviating movement the proximity of +an occupied bed, obviating research the anticipation of warmth human +tempered with coolness linen, obviating desire and rendering desirable +the statue of Narcissus, sound without echo, desired desire. +What advantages were possessed by an occupied, as distinct from an +unoccupied bed? +The removal of nocturnal solitude, the superior quality of human mature +female to inhuman hotwaterjar calefaction, the stimulation of +matutinal contact, the economy of mangling done on the premises in the +case of trousers accurately folded and placed lengthwise between the +spring mattress striped and the woollen mattress biscuit section. +What past consecutive causes, before rising preapprehended, of +accumulated fatigue did Bloom, before rising, silently recapitulate? +The preparation of breakfast burnt offering intestinal congestion and +premeditative defecation holy of holies the bath rite of John the +funeral rite of Samuel the advertisement of Alexander Keyes Urim and +Thummim the unsubstantial lunch rite of Melchisedek the visit to +museum and national library holy place the bookhunt along Bedford row, +Merchants' Arch, Wellington Quay Simchath Torah the music in the +Ormond Hotel Shira Shirim the altercation with a truculent troglodyte +in Bernard Kiernan's premises holocaust a blank period of time +including a cardrive, a visit to a house of mourning, a leavetaking +wilderness the eroticism produced by feminine exhibitionism rite of +Onan the prolonged delivery of Mrs Mina Purefoy heave offering the +visit to the disorderly house of Mrs Bella Cohen, Tyrone street, lower +and subsequent brawl and chance medley in Beaver street Armageddon +nocturnal perambulation to and from the cabman's shelter, Butt Bridge +atonement. +What selfimposed enigma did Bloom about to rise in order to go so as to +conclude lest he should not conclude involuntarily apprehend? +The cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack emitted by +the insentient material of a strainveined timber table. +What selfinvolved enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering multicoloured +multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily apprehending, not +comprehend? +Who was M'Intosh? +What selfevident enigma pondered with desultory constancy during years +did Bloom now, having effected natural obscurity by the extinction of +artificial light, silently suddenly comprehend? +Where was Moses when the candle went out? +What imperfections in a perfect day did Bloom, walking, charged with +collected articles of recently disvested male wearing apparel, silently, +successively, enumerate? +A provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement to obtain a +certain quantity of tea from Thomas Kernan agent for Pulbrook, Robertson +and Co, Dame Street, Dublin, and Mincing Lane, London E. C. to +certify the presence or absence of posterior rectal orifice in the case +of Hellenic female divinities to obtain admission gratuitous or paid +to the performance of Leah by Mrs Bandmann Palmer at the Gaiety Theatre, +, , , South King street. +What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, silently recall? +The face of her father, the late Major Brian Cooper Tweedy, Royal Dublin +Fusiliers, of Gibraltar and Rehoboth, Dolphin's Barn. +What recurrent impressions of the same were possible by hypothesis? +Retreating, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, +with constant uniform acceleration, along parallel lines meeting at +infinity, if produced along parallel lines, reproduced from infinity, +with constant uniform retardation, at the terminus of the Great Northern +Railway, Amiens street, returning. +What miscellaneous effects of female personal wearing apparel were +perceived by him? +A pair of new inodorous halfsilk black ladies' hose, a pair of new violet +garters, a pair of outsize ladies' drawers of India mull, cut on generous +lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti's Turkish cigarettes +and containing a long bright steel safety pin, folded curvilinear, a +camisole of batiste with thin lace border, an accordion underskirt of +blue silk moirette, all these objects being disposed irregularly on the +top of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened, having capped corners, +with multicoloured labels, initialled on its fore side in white lettering +B. C. T. Brian Cooper Tweedy. +What impersonal objects were perceived? +A commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square cretonne cutting, +apple design, on which rested a lady's black straw hat. Orangekeyed ware, +bought of Henry Price, basket, fancy goods, chinaware and ironmongery +manufacturer, , , Moore street, disposed irregularly on the +washstand and floor and consisting of basin, soapdish and brushtray on +the washstand, together, pitcher and night article on the floor, +separate. +Bloom's acts? +He deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed his remaining +articles of clothing, took from beneath the bolster at the head of the +bed a folded long white nightshirt, inserted his head and arms into the +proper apertures of the nightshirt, removed a pillow from the head to the +foot of the bed, prepared the bedlinen accordingly and entered the bed. +How? +With circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode his own or not +his own with solicitude, the snakespiral springs of the mattress being +old, the brass quoits and pendent viper radii loose and tremulous under +stress and strain prudently, as entering a lair or ambush of lust or +adders lightly, the less to disturb reverently, the bed of conception +and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of breach of marriage, of +sleep and of death. +What did his limbs, when gradually extended, encounter? +New clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form, +female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some crumbs, +some flakes of potted meat, recooked, which he removed. +If he had smiled why would he have smiled? +To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to +enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if +the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, +last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor +alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity. +What preceding series? +Assuming Mulvey to be the first term of his series, Penrose, Bartell +d'Arcy, professor Goodwin, Julius Mastiansky, John Henry Menton, Father +Bernard Corrigan, a farmer at the Royal Dublin Society's Horse Show, +Maggot O'Reilly, Matthew Dillon, Valentine Blake Dillon Lord Mayor of +Dublin, Christopher Callinan, Lenehan, an Italian organgrinder, an +unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre, Benjamin Dollard, Simon Dedalus, +Andrew Pisser Burke, Joseph Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman John Hooper, +Dr Francis Brady, Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a bootblack at the +General Post Office, Hugh E. Blazes Boylan and so each and so on to no +last term. +What were his reflections concerning the last member of this series and +late occupant of the bed? +Reflections on his vigour a bounder, corporal proportion a +billsticker, commercial ability a bester, impressionability a +boaster. +Why for the observer impressionability in addition to vigour, corporal +proportion and commercial ability? +Because he had observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding +members of the same series the same concupiscence, inflammably +transmitted, first with alarm, then with understanding, then with desire, +finally with fatigue, with alternating symptoms of epicene comprehension +and apprehension. +With what antagonistic sentiments were his subsequent reflections +affected? +Envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity. +Envy? +Of a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted for the +superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic piston +and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of a +constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental +female organism, passive but not obtuse. +Jealousy? +Because a nature full and volatile in its free state, was alternately the +agent and reagent of attraction. Because attraction between agents and +reagents at all instants varied, with inverse proportion of increase +and decrease, with incessant circular extension and radial reentrance. +Because the controlled contemplation of the fluctuation of attraction +produced, if desired, a fluctuation of pleasure. +Abnegation? +In virtue of a acquaintance initiated in September in the +establishment of George Mesias, merchant tailor and outfitter, Eden +Quay, b hospitality extended and received in kind, reciprocated and +reappropriated in person, c comparative youth subject to impulses of +ambition and magnanimity, colleagual altruism and amorous egoism, d +extraracial attraction, intraracial inhibition, supraracial prerogative, +e an imminent provincial musical tour, common current expenses, net +proceeds divided. +Equanimity? +As as natural as any and every natural act of a nature expressed or +understood executed in natured nature by natural creatures in accordance +with his, her and their natured natures, of dissimilar similarity. As not +so calamitous as a cataclysmic annihilation of the planet in consequence +of a collision with a dark sun. As less reprehensible than theft, highway +robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money under false +pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, +betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, +criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, +mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of +unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, +poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, +criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. As not +more abnormal than all other parallel processes of adaptation to altered +conditions of existence, resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium between +the bodily organism and its attendant circumstances, foods, beverages, +acquired habits, indulged inclinations, significant disease. As more than +inevitable, irreparable. +Why more abnegation than jealousy, less envy than equanimity? +From outrage matrimony to outrage adultery there arose nought but +outrage copulation yet the matrimonial violator of the matrimonially +violated had not been outraged by the adulterous violator of the +adulterously violated. +What retribution, if any? +Assassination, never, as two wrongs did not make one right. Duel by +combat, no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical artifice automatic +bed or individual testimony concealed ocular witnesses, not yet. Suit +for damages by legal influence or simulation of assault with evidence of +injuries sustained selfinflicted, not impossibly. Hushmoney by moral +influence possibly. If any, positively, connivance, introduction of +emulation material, a prosperous rival agency of publicity moral, a +successful rival agent of intimacy, depreciation, alienation, +humiliation, separation protecting the one separated from the other, +protecting the separator from both. +By what reflections did he, a conscious reactor against the void of +incertitude, justify to himself his sentiments? +The preordained frangibility of the hymen the presupposed intangibility +of the thing in itself the incongruity and disproportion between the +selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done and the +selfabbreviating relaxation of the thing done the fallaciously inferred +debility of the female the muscularity of the male the variations of +ethical codes the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving +no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition parsed as +masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct +feminine object from the active voice into its correlative aorist +preterite proposition parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and +quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past participle with complementary +masculine agent in the passive voice the continued product of +seminators by generation the continual production of semen by +distillation the futility of triumph or protest or vindication the +inanity of extolled virtue the lethargy of nescient matter the apathy +of the stars. +In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and +reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge? +Satisfaction at the ubiquity in eastern and western terrestrial +hemispheres, in all habitable lands and islands explored or unexplored +the land of the midnight sun, the islands of the blessed, the isles of +Greece, the land of promise, of adipose anterior and posterior female +hemispheres, redolent of milk and honey and of excretory sanguine and +seminal warmth, reminiscent of secular families of curves of amplitude, +insusceptible of moods of impression or of contrarieties of expression, +expressive of mute immutable mature animality. +The visible signs of antesatisfaction? +An approximate erection a solicitous adversion a gradual elevation a +tentative revelation a silent contemplation. +Then? +He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each +plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure +prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation. +The visible signs of postsatisfaction? +A silent contemplation a tentative velation a gradual abasement a +solicitous aversion a proximate erection. +What followed this silent action? +Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excitation, +catechetical interrogation. +With what modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation? +Negative he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence between +Martha Clifford and Henry Flower, the public altercation at, in and in +the vicinity of the licensed premises of Bernard Kiernan and Co, Limited, +, and Little Britain street, the erotic provocation and response +thereto caused by the exhibitionism of Gertrude Gerty, surname unknown. +Positive he included mention of a performance by Mrs Bandmann Palmer of +LEAH at the Gaiety Theatre, , , , South King street, an +invitation to supper at Wynn's Murphy's Hotel, , and Lower +Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous pornographical tendency entituled +SWEETS OF SIN, anonymous author a gentleman of fashion, a temporary +concussion caused by a falsely calculated movement in the course of a +postcenal gymnastic display, the victim since completely recovered +being Stephen Dedalus, professor and author, eldest surviving son of +Simon Dedalus, of no fixed occupation, an aeronautical feat executed by +him narrator in the presence of a witness, the professor and author +aforesaid, with promptitude of decision and gymnastic flexibility. +Was the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications? +Absolutely. +Which event or person emerged as the salient point of his narration? +Stephen Dedalus, professor and author. +What limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal rights were +perceived by listener and narrator concerning themselves during the +course of this intermittent and increasingly more laconic narration? +By the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage had been +celebrated calendar month after the th anniversary of her birth +September , viz. October, and consummated on the same date with +female issue born June , having been anticipatorily consummated on +the lo September of the same year and complete carnal intercourse, with +ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ, having last taken +place weeks previous, viz. November , to the birth on +December of second and only male issue, deceased January , +aged days, there remained a period of years, months and days +during which carnal intercourse had been incomplete, without ejaculation +of semen within the natural female organ. By the narrator a limitation of +activity, mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete mental intercourse +between himself and the listener had not taken place since the +consummation of puberty, indicated by catamenic hemorrhage, of the female +issue of narrator and listener, September , there remained a +period of months and day during which, in consequence of a +preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension between the +consummated females listener and issue, complete corporal liberty of +action had been circumscribed. +How? +By various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the masculine +destination whither, the place where, the time at which, the duration for +which, the object with which in the case of temporary absences, projected +or effected. +What moved visibly above the listener's and the narrator's invisible +thoughts? +The upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series of +concentric circles of varying gradations of light and shadow. +In what directions did listener and narrator lie? +Listener, S. E. by E. Narrator, N. W. by W. on the rd parallel of +latitude, N., and th meridian of longitude, W. at an angle of +degrees to the terrestrial equator. +In what state of rest or motion? +At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being each +and both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by the +proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of +neverchanging space. +In what posture? +Listener reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, right leg +extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the +attitude of GeaTellus, fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed. Narrator +reclined laterally, left, with right and left legs flexed, the index +finger and thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge of the nose, in +the attitude depicted in a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn, the +childman weary, the manchild in the womb. +Womb? Weary? +He rests. He has travelled. +With? +Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad +the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the +Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer +and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and +Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer. +When? +Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's +egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the +Brightdayler. +Where? +Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his +breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the CITY ARMS hotel when he +used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness +to make himself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he +thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for +masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid +to lay out d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she +had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end +of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the +women were her sort down on bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody +wanted her to wear them I suppose she was pious because no man would look +at her twice I hope Ill never be like her a wonder she didnt want us to +cover our faces but she was a welleducated woman certainly and her gabby +talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to +get shut of her and her dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up +under my petticoats especially then still I like that in him polite to +old women like that and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of +nothing but not always if ever he got anything really serious the matter +with him its much better for them to go into a hospital where everything +is clean but I suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and +then wed have a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying +there till they throw him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has +shes as much a nun as Im not yes because theyre so weak and puling when +theyre sick they want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think +it was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he +sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day I +wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones she +could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans +bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying on +account of her to never see thy face again though he looked more like a +man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father was the same besides I +hate bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor paring his +corns afraid hed get bloodpoisoning but if it was a thing I was sick then +wed see what attention only of course the woman hides it not to give all +the trouble they do yes he came somewhere Im sure by his appetite anyway +love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her so either it was one +of those night women if it was down there he was really and the hotel +story he made up a pack of lies to hide it planning it Hynes kept me who +did I meet ah yes I met do you remember Menton and who else who let me +see that big babbyface I saw him and he not long married flirting with a +young girl at Pooles Myriorama and turned my back on him when he slinked +out looking quite conscious what harm but he had the impudence to make up +to me one time well done to him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all +the big stupoes I ever met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate +having a long wrangle in bed or else if its not that its some little +bitch or other he got in with somewhere or picked up on the sly if they +only knew him as well as I do yes because the day before yesterday he was +scribbling something a letter when I came into the front room to show him +Dignams death in the paper as if something told me and he covered it up +with the blottingpaper pretending to be thinking about business so very +probably that was it to somebody who thinks she has a softy in him +because all men get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to +forty he is now so as to wheedle any money she can out of him no fool +like an old fool and then the usual kissing my bottom was to hide it not +that I care two straws now who he does it with or knew before that way +though Id like to find out so long as I dont have the two of them under +my nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in Ontario terrace +padding out her false bottom to excite him bad enough to get the smell of +those painted women off him once or twice I had a suspicion by getting +him to come near me when I found the long hair on his coat without that +one when I went into the kitchen pretending he was drinking water woman +is not enough for them it was all his fault of course ruining servants +then proposing that she could eat at our table on Christmas day if you +please O no thank you not in my house stealing my potatoes and the +oysters / per doz going out to see her aunt if you please common +robbery so it was but I was sure he had something on with that one it +takes me to find out a thing like that he said you have no proof it was +her proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told her what I +thought of her suggesting me to go out to be alone with her I wouldnt +lower myself to spy on them the garters I found in her room the Friday +she was out that was enough for me a little bit too much her face swelled +up on her with temper when I gave her her weeks notice I saw to that +better do without them altogether do out the rooms myself quicker only +for the damn cooking and throwing out the dirt I gave it to him anyhow +either she or me leaves the house I couldnt even touch him if I thought +he was with a dirty barefaced liar and sloven like that one denying it up +to my face and singing about the place in the W C too because she knew +she was too well off yes because he couldnt possibly do without it that +long so he must do it somewhere and the last time he came on my bottom +when was it the night Boylan gave my hand a great squeeze going along by +the Tolka in my hand there steals another I just pressed the back of his +like that with my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May moon shes +beaming love because he has an idea about him and me hes not such a fool +he said Im dining out and going to the Gaiety though Im not going to give +him the satisfaction in any case God knows hes a change in a way not to +be always and ever wearing the same old hat unless I paid some +nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young boy would like +me Id confuse him a little alone with him if we were Id let him see my +garters the new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I +know what boys feel with that down on their cheek doing that frigging +drawing out the thing by the hour question and answer would you do this +that and the other with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would because +I told him about some dean or bishop was sitting beside me in the jews +temples gardens when I was knitting that woollen thing a stranger to +Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and he tired me +out with statues encouraging him making him worse than he is who is in +your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who is it tell me his name +who tell me who the german Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of him +can you feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never will he ought +to give it up now at this age of his life simply ruination for any woman +and no satisfaction in it pretending to like it till he comes and then +finish it off myself anyway and it makes your lips pale anyhow its done +now once and for all with all the talk of the world about it people make +its only the first time after that its just the ordinary do it and think +no more about it why cant you kiss a man without going and marrying him +first you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so nice all +over you you cant help yourself I wish some man or other would take me +sometime when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a +kiss long and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that +confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and +what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but +whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes +rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom +right out and have done with it what has that got to do with it and did +you whatever way he put it I forget no father and I always think of the +real father what did he want to know for when I already confessed it to +God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist always I wouldnt mind feeling +it neither would he Id say by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder +did he know me in the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of +course hed never turn or let on still his eyes were red when his father +died theyre lost for a woman of course must be terrible when a man cries +let alone them Id like to be embraced by one in his vestments and the +smell of incense off him like the pope besides theres no danger with a +priest if youre married hes too careful about himself then give something +to H H the pope for a penance I wonder was he satisfied with me one thing +I didnt like his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall +though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose he was thinking +of his fathers I wonder is he awake thinking of me or dreaming am I in it +who gave him that flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of drink +not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their +bills up with some liqueur Id like to sip those richlooking green and +yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera +hats I tasted once with my finger dipped out of that American that had +the squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do to keep +himself from falling asleep after the last time after we took the port +and potted meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt lovely and +tired myself and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I popped +straight into bed till that thunder woke me up God be merciful to us I +thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish us when I blessed +myself and said a Hail Mary like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar as +if the world was coming to an end and then they come and tell you theres +no God what could you do if it was running and rushing about nothing only +make an act of contrition the candle I lit that evening in Whitefriars +street chapel for the month of May see it brought its luck though hed +scoff if he heard because he never goes to church mass or meeting he says +your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesnt know +what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp because he must have come + or times with that tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I +thought the vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst +though his nose is not so big after I took off all my things with the +blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming and combing it like +iron or some kind of a thick crowbar standing all the time he must have +eaten oysters I think a few dozen he was in great singing voice no I +never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of that to make you +feel full up he must have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making +us like that with a big hole in the middle of us or like a Stallion +driving it up into you because thats all they want out of you with that +determined vicious look in his eye I had to halfshut my eyes still he +hasnt such a tremendous amount of spunk in him when I made him pull out +and do it on me considering how big it is so much the better in case any +of it wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in me +nice invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if +someone gave them a touch of it themselves theyd know what I went through +with Milly nobody would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina Purefoys +husband give us a swing out of your whiskers filling her up with a child +or twins once a year as regular as the clock always with a smell of +children off her the one they called budgers or something like a nigger +with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the last time I +was there a squad of them falling over one another and bawling you +couldnt hear your ears supposed to be healthy not satisfied till they +have us swollen out like elephants or I dont know what supposing I risked +having another not off him though still if he was married Im sure hed +have a fine strong child but I dont know Poldy has more spunk in him yes +thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it was meeting Josie Powell and the +funeral and thinking about me and Boylan set him off well he can think +what he likes now if thatll do him any good I know they were spooning a +bit when I came on the scene he was dancing and sitting out with her the +night of Georgina Simpsons housewarming and then he wanted to ram it down +my neck it was on account of not liking to see her a wallflower that was +why we had the standup row over politics he began it not me when he said +about Our Lord being a carpenter at last he made me cry of course a woman +is so sensitive about everything I was fuming with myself after for +giving in only for I knew he was gone on me and the first socialist he +said He was he annoyed me so much I couldnt put him into a temper still +he knows a lot of mixedup things especially about the body and the inside +I often wanted to study up that myself what we have inside us in that +family physician I could always hear his voice talking when the room was +crowded and watch him after that I pretended I had a coolness on with her +over him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side whenever he +asked who are you going to and I said over to Floey and he made me the +present of Byron's poems and the three pairs of gloves so that finished +that I could quite easily get him to make it up any time I know how Id +even supposing he got in with her again and was going out to see her +somewhere Id know if he refused to eat the onions I know plenty of ways +ask him to tuck down the collar of my blouse or touch him with my veil +and gloves on going out I kiss then would send them all spinning however +alright well see then let him go to her she of course would only be too +delighted to pretend shes mad in love with him that I wouldnt so much +mind Id just go to her and ask her do you love him and look her square in +the eyes she couldnt fool me but he might imagine he was and make a +declaration to her with his plabbery kind of a manner like he did to me +though I had the devils own job to get it out of him though I liked him +for that it showed he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the asking he +was on the pop of asking me too the night in the kitchen I was rolling +the potato cake theres something I want to say to you only for I put him +off letting on I was in a temper with my hands and arms full of pasty +flour in any case I let out too much the night before talking of dreams +so I didnt want to let him know more than was good for him she used to be +always embracing me Josie whenever he was there meaning him of course +glauming me over and when I said I washed up and down as far as possible +asking me and did you wash possible the women are always egging on to +that putting it on thick when hes there they know by his sly eye blinking +a bit putting on the indifferent when they come out with something the +kind he is what spoils him I dont wonder in the least because he was very +handsome at that time trying to look like Lord Byron I said I liked +though he was too beautiful for a man and he was a little before we got +engaged afterwards though she didnt like it so much the day I was in fits +of laughing with the giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins falling +out one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always in great +humour she said yes because it grigged her because she knew what it meant +because I used to tell her a good bit of what went on between us not all +but just enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault she didnt +darken the door much after we were married I wonder what shes got like +now after living with that dotty husband of hers she had her face +beginning to look drawn and run down the last time I saw her she must +have been just after a row with him because I saw on the moment she was +edging to draw down a conversation about husbands and talk about him to +run him down what was it she told me O yes that sometimes he used to go +to bed with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him just imagine +having to get into bed with a thing like that that might murder you any +moment what a man well its not the one way everyone goes mad Poldy anyhow +whatever he does always wipes his feet on the mat when he comes in wet or +shine and always blacks his own boots too and he always takes off his hat +when he comes up in the street like then and now hes going about in his +slippers to look for pounds for a postcard U p up O sweetheart May +wouldnt a thing like that simply bore you stiff to extinction actually +too stupid even to take his boots off now what could you make of a man +like that Id rather die times over than marry another of their sex of +course hed never find another woman like me to put up with him the way I +do know me come sleep with me yes and he knows that too at the bottom of +his heart take that Mrs Maybrick that poisoned her husband for what I +wonder in love with some other man yes it was found out on her wasnt she +the downright villain to go and do a thing like that of course some men +can be dreadfully aggravating drive you mad and always the worst word in +the world what do they ask us to marry them for if were so bad as all +that comes to yes because they cant get on without us white Arsenic she +put in his tea off flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it that if I +asked him hed say its from the Greek leave us as wise as we were before +she must have been madly in love with the other fellow to run the chance +of being hanged O she didnt care if that was her nature what could she do +besides theyre not brutes enough to go and hang a woman surely are they +theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of my foot he +noticed at once even before he was introduced when I was in the D B C +with Poldy laughing and trying to listen I was waggling my foot we both +ordered teas and plain bread and butter I saw him looking with his two +old maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the girl where it was what +do I care with it dropping out of me and that black closed breeches he +made me buy takes you half an hour to let them down wetting all myself +always with some brandnew fad every other week such a long one I did I +forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind that I never got after some +robber of a woman and he wanted me to put it in the Irish times lost in +the ladies lavatory D B C Dame street finder return to Mrs Marion Bloom +and I saw his eyes on my feet going out through the turning door he was +looking when I looked back and I went there for tea days after in the +hope but he wasnt now how did that excite him because I was crossing them +when we were in the other room first he meant the shoes that are too +tight to walk in my hand is nice like that if I only had a ring with the +stone for my month a nice aquamarine Ill stick him for one and a gold +bracelet I dont like my foot so much still I made him spend once with my +foot the night after Goodwins botchup of a concert so cold and windy it +was well we had that rum in the house to mull and the fire wasnt black +out when he asked to take off my stockings lying on the hearthrug in +Lombard street west and another time it was my muddy boots hed like me to +walk in all the horses dung I could find but of course hes not natural +like the rest of the world that I what did he say I could give points +in to Katty Lanner and beat her what does that mean I asked him I +forget what he said because the stoppress edition just passed and the man +with the curly hair in the Lucan dairy thats so polite I think I saw his +face before somewhere I noticed him when I was tasting the butter so I +took my time Bartell dArcy too that he used to make fun of when he +commenced kissing me on the choir stairs after I sang Gounods AVE MARIA +what are we waiting for O my heart kiss me straight on the brow and part +which is my brown part he was pretty hot for all his tinny voice too my +low notes he was always raving about if you can believe him I liked the +way he used his mouth singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do that +there in a place like that I dont see anything so terrible about it Ill +tell him about that some day not now and surprise him ay and Ill take him +there and show him the very place too we did it so now there you are like +it or lump it he thinks nothing can happen without him knowing he hadnt +an idea about my mother till we were engaged otherwise hed never have got +me so cheap as he did he was times worse himself anyhow begging me to +give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the evening coming along +Kenilworth square he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had to take +it off asking me questions is it permitted to enquire the shape of my +bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of me when I saw +him slip it into his pocket of course hes mad on the subject of drawers +thats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced things on the +bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels even when Milly and +I were out with him at the open air fete that one in the cream muslin +standing right against the sun so he could see every atom she had on when +he saw me from behind following in the rain I saw him before he saw me +however standing at the corner of the Harolds cross road with a new +raincoat on him with the muffler in the Zingari colours to show off his +complexion and the brown hat looking slyboots as usual what was he doing +there where hed no business they can go and get whatever they like from +anything at all with a skirt on it and were not to ask any questions but +they want to know where were you where are you going I could feel him +coming along skulking after me his eyes on my neck he had been keeping +away from the house he felt it was getting too warm for him so I +halfturned and stopped then he pestered me to say yes till I took off my +glove slowly watching him he said my openwork sleeves were too cold for +the rain anything for an excuse to put his hand anear me drawers drawers +the whole blessed time till I promised to give him the pair off my doll +to carry about in his waistcoat pocket O MARIA SANTISIMA he did look a +big fool dreeping in the rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry +to look at them and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on +with the sunray pleats that there was nobody he said hed kneel down in +the wet if I didnt so persevering he would too and ruin his new raincoat +you never know what freak theyd take alone with you theyre so savage for +it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched his trousers +outside the way I used to Gardner after with my ring hand to keep him +from doing worse where it was too public I was dying to find out was he +circumcised he was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do +everything too quick take all the pleasure out of it and father waiting +all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my purse in the +butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver then he wrote me that +letter with all those words in it how could he have the face to any woman +after his company manners making it so awkward after when we met asking +me have I offended you with my eyelids down of course he saw I wasnt he +had a few brains not like that other fool Henny Doyle he was always +breaking or tearing something in the charades I hate an unlucky man and +if I knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form sake dont +understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it used to +be written up with a picture of a womans on that wall in Gibraltar with +that word I couldnt find anywhere only for children seeing it too young +then writing every morning a letter sometimes twice a day I liked the way +he made love then he knew the way to take a woman when he sent me the +big poppies because mine was the th then I wrote the night he kissed my +heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it simply it makes you feel +like nothing on earth but he never knew how to embrace well like Gardner +I hope hell come on Monday as he said at the same time four I hate people +who come at all hours answer the door you think its the vegetables then +its somebody and you all undressed or the door of the filthy sloppy +kitchen blows open the day old frostyface Goodwin called about the +concert in Lombard street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed +with boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im a fright +yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was impossible to be more +respectful nobody to say youre out you have to peep out through the blind +like the messengerboy today I thought it was a putoff first him sending +the port and the peaches first and I was just beginning to yawn with +nerves thinking he was trying to make a fool of me when I knew his +tattarrattat at the door he must have been a bit late because it was l/ +after when I saw the Dedalus girls coming from school I never know +the time even that watch he gave me never seems to go properly Id want to +get it looked after when I threw the penny to that lame sailor for +England home and beauty when I was whistling there is a charming girl I +love and I hadnt even put on my clean shift or powdered myself or a thing +then this day week were to go to Belfast just as well he has to go to +Ennis his fathers anniversary the th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did +suppose our rooms at the hotel were beside each other and any fooling +went on in the new bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother me with +him in the next room or perhaps some protestant clergyman with a cough +knocking on the wall then hed never believe the next day we didnt do +something its all very well a husband but you cant fool a lover after me +telling him we never did anything of course he didnt believe me no its +better hes going where he is besides something always happens with him +the time going to the Mallow concert at Maryborough ordering boiling soup +for the two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the platform with +the soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of it hadnt he the nerve and +the waiter after him making a holy show of us screeching and confusion +for the engine to start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two +gentlemen in the rd class carriage said he was quite right so he was too +hes so pigheaded sometimes when he gets a thing into his head a good job +he was able to open the carriage door with his knife or theyd have taken +us on to Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge on him O I love +jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I wonder will he +take a st class for me he might want to do it in the train by tipping +the guard well O I suppose therell be the usual idiots of men gaping at +us with their eyes as stupid as ever they can possibly be that was an +exceptional man that common workman that left us alone in the carriage +that day going to Howth Id like to find out something about him l or +tunnels perhaps then you have to look out of the window all the nicer +then coming back suppose I never came back what would they say eloped +with him that gets you on on the stage the last concert I sang at where +its over a year ago when was it St Teresas hall Clarendon St little chits +of missies they have now singing Kathleen Kearney and her like on account +of father being in the army and my singing the absentminded beggar and +wearing a brooch for Lord Roberts when I had the map of it all and Poldy +not Irish enough was it him managed it this time I wouldnt put it past +him like he got me on to sing in the STABAT MATER by going around saying +he was putting Lead Kindly Light to music I put him up to that till the +jesuits found out he was a freemason thumping the piano lead Thou me on +copied from some old opera yes and he was going about with some of them +Sinner Fein lately or whatever they call themselves talking his usual +trash and nonsense he says that little man he showed me without the neck +is very intelligent the coming man Griffiths is he well he doesnt look it +thats all I can say still it must have been him he knew there was a +boycott I hate the mention of their politics after the war that Pretoria +and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where Gardner lieut Stanley G th Bn nd +East Lancs Rgt of enteric fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and just +the right height over me Im sure he was brave too he said I was lovely +the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal lock my Irish beauty he was +pale with excitement about going away or wed be seen from the road he +couldnt stand properly and I so hot as I never felt they could have made +their peace in the beginning or old oom Paul and the rest of the other +old Krugers go and fight it out between them instead of dragging on for +years killing any finelooking men there were with their fever if he was +even decently shot it wouldnt have been so bad I love to see a regiment +pass in review the first time I saw the Spanish cavalry at La Roque it +was lovely after looking across the bay from Algeciras all the lights of +the rock like fireflies or those sham battles on the acres the Black +Watch with their kilts in time at the march past the th hussars the +prince of Wales own or the lancers O the lancers theyre grand or the +Dublins that won Tugela his father made his money over selling the horses +for the cavalry well he could buy me a nice present up in Belfast after +what I gave him theyve lovely linen up there or one of those nice kimono +things I must buy a mothball like I had before to keep in the drawer with +them it would be exciting going round with him shopping buying those +things in a new city better leave this ring behind want to keep turning +and turning to get it over the knuckle there or they might bell it round +the town in their papers or tell the police on me but theyd think were +married O let them all go and smother themselves for the fat lot I care +he has plenty of money and hes not a marrying man so somebody better get +it out of him if I could find out whether he likes me I looked a bit +washy of course when I looked close in the handglass powdering a mirror +never gives you the expression besides scrooching down on me like that +all the time with his big hipbones hes heavy too with his hairy chest for +this heat always having to lie down for them better for him put it into +me from behind the way Mrs Mastiansky told me her husband made her like +the dogs do it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she could and he +so quiet and mild with his tingating cither can you ever be up to men the +way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue suit he had on and stylish +tie and socks with the skyblue silk things on them hes certainly well off +I know by the cut his clothes have and his heavy watch but he was like a +perfect devil for a few minutes after he came back with the stoppress +tearing up the tickets and swearing blazes because he lost quid he +said he lost over that outsider that won and half he put on for me on +account of Lenehans tip cursing him to the lowest pits that sponger he +was making free with me after the Glencree dinner coming back that long +joult over the featherbed mountain after the lord Mayor looking at me +with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that big heathen I first noticed him at +dessert when I was cracking the nuts with my teeth I wished I could have +picked every morsel of that chicken out of my fingers it was so tasty and +browned and as tender as anything only for I didnt want to eat everything +on my plate those forks and fishslicers were hallmarked silver too I wish +I had some I could easily have slipped a couple into my muff when I was +playing with them then always hanging out of them for money in a +restaurant for the bit you put down your throat we have to be thankful +for our mangy cup of tea itself as a great compliment to be noticed the +way the world is divided in any case if its going to go on I want at +least two other good chemises for one thing and but I dont know what kind +of drawers he likes none at all I think didnt he say yes and half the +girls in Gibraltar never wore them either naked as God made them that +Andalusian singing her Manola she didnt make much secret of what she +hadnt yes and the second pair of silkette stockings is laddered after one +days wear I could have brought them back to Lewers this morning and +kicked up a row and made that one change them only not to upset myself +and run the risk of walking into him and ruining the whole thing and one +of those kidfitting corsets Id want advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman +with elastic gores on the hips he saved the one I have but thats no good +what did they say they give a delightful figure line / obviating that +unsightly broad appearance across the lower back to reduce flesh my belly +is a bit too big Ill have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I +getting too fond of it the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a +pancake he makes his money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel +he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to palm +off as claret that he couldnt get anyone to drink God spare his spit for +fear hed die of the drouth or I must do a few breathing exercises I +wonder is that antifat any good might overdo it the thin ones are not so +much the fashion now garters that much I have the violet pair I wore +today thats all he bought me out of the cheque he got on the first O no +there was the face lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my +skin like new I told him over and over again get that made up in the same +place and dont forget it God only knows whether he did after all I said +to him Ill know by the bottle anyway if not I suppose Ill only have to +wash in my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that opoponax +and violet I thought it was beginning to look coarse or old a bit the +skin underneath is much finer where it peeled off there on my finger +after the burn its a pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry +handkerchiefs about / in all sure you cant get on in this world without +style all going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it around I tell +you in fine style I always want to throw a handful of tea into the pot +measuring and mincing if I buy a pair of old brogues itself do you like +those new shoes yes how much were they Ive no clothes at all the brown +costume and the skirt and jacket and the one at the cleaners whats that +for any woman cutting up this old hat and patching up the other the men +wont look at you and women try to walk on you because they know youve no +man then with all the things getting dearer every day for the years +more I have of life up to no Im what am I at all Ill be in +September will I what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith shes much older +than me I saw her when I was out last week her beautys on the wane she +was a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down to her waist +tossing it back like that like Kitty OShea in Grantham street st thing I +did every morning to look across see her combing it as if she loved it +and was full of it pity I only got to know her the day before we left and +that Mrs Langtry the jersey lily the prince of Wales was in love with I +suppose hes like the first man going the roads only for the name of a +king theyre all made the one way only a black mans Id like to try a +beauty up to what was she there was some funny story about the jealous +old husband what was it at all and an oyster knife he went no he made her +wear a kind of a tin thing round her and the prince of Wales yes he had +the oyster knife cant be true a thing like that like some of those books +he brings me the works of Master Francois Somebody supposed to be a +priest about a child born out of her ear because her bumgut fell out a +nice word for any priest to write and her ae as if any fool wouldnt +know what that meant I hate that pretending of all things with that old +blackguards face on him anybody can see its not true and that Ruby and +Fair Tyrants he brought me that twice I remember when I came to page +the part about where she hangs him up out of a hook with a cord +flagellate sure theres nothing for a woman in that all invention made up +about he drinking the champagne out of her slipper after the ball was +over like the infant Jesus in the crib at Inchicore in the Blessed +Virgins arms sure no woman could have a child that big taken out of her +and I thought first it came out of her side because how could she go to +the chamber when she wanted to and she a rich lady of course she felt +honoured H R H he was in Gibraltar the year I was born I bet he found +lilies there too where he planted the tree he planted more than that in +his time he might have planted me too if hed come a bit sooner then I +wouldnt be here as I am he ought to chuck that Freeman with the paltry +few shillings he knocks out of it and go into an office or something +where hed get regular pay or a bank where they could put him up on a +throne to count the money all the day of course he prefers plottering +about the house so you cant stir with him any side whats your programme +today I wish hed even smoke a pipe like father to get the smell of a man +or pretending to be mooching about for advertisements when he could have +been in Mr Cuffes still only for what he did then sending me to try and +patch it up I could have got him promoted there to be the manager he gave +me a great mirada once or twice first he was as stiff as the mischief +really and truly Mrs Bloom only I felt rotten simply with the old +rubbishy dress that I lost the leads out of the tails with no cut in it +but theyre coming into fashion again I bought it simply to please him I +knew it was no good by the finish pity I changed my mind of going to Todd +and Bums as I said and not Lees it was just like the shop itself rummage +sale a lot of trash I hate those rich shops get on your nerves nothing +kills me altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a womans +dress and cooking mathering everything he can scour off the shelves into +it if I went by his advices every blessed hat I put on does that suit me +yes take that thats alright the one like a weddingcake standing up miles +off my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming down on my +backside on pins and needles about the shopgirl in that place in Grafton +street I had the misfortune to bring him into and she as insolent as ever +she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid were giving you too much +trouble what shes there for but I stared it out of her yes he was awfully +stiff and no wonder but he changed the second time he looked Poldy +pigheaded as usual like the soup but I could see him looking very hard at +my chest when he stood up to open the door for me it was nice of him to +show me out in any case Im extremely sorry Mrs Bloom believe me without +making it too marked the first time after him being insulted and me being +supposed to be his wife I just half smiled I know my chest was out that +way at the door when he said Im extremely sorry and Im sure you were +yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so long he +made me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this one anyhow +stiff the nipple gets for the least thing Ill get him to keep that up and +Ill take those eggs beaten up with marsala fatten them out for him what +are all those veins and things curious the way its made the same in +case of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty placed up there like +those statues in the museum one of them pretending to hide it with her +hand are they so beautiful of course compared with what a man looks like +with his two bags full and his other thing hanging down out of him or +sticking up at you like a hatrack no wonder they hide it with a +cabbageleaf that disgusting Cameron highlander behind the meat market or +that other wretch with the red head behind the tree where the statue of +the fish used to be when I was passing pretending he was pissing standing +out for me to see it with his babyclothes up to one side the Queens own +they were a nice lot its well the Surreys relieved them theyre always +trying to show it to you every time nearly I passed outside the mens +greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just to try some fellow or +other trying to catch my eye as if it was I of the wonders of the world +O and the stink of those rotten places the night coming home with Poldy +after the Comerfords party oranges and lemonade to make you feel nice and +watery I went into r of them it was so biting cold I couldnt keep it when +was that the canal was frozen yes it was a few months after a pity a +couple of the Camerons werent there to see me squatting in the mens place +meadero I tried to draw a picture of it before I tore it up like a +sausage or something I wonder theyre not afraid going about of getting a +kick or a bang of something there the woman is beauty of course thats +admitted when he said I could pose for a picture naked to some rich +fellow in Holles street when he lost the job in Helys and I was selling +the clothes and strumming in the coffee palace would I be like that bath +of the nymph with my hair down yes only shes younger or Im a little like +that dirty bitch in that Spanish photo he has nymphs used they go about +like that I asked him about her and that word met something with hoses in +it and he came out with some jawbreakers about the incarnation he never +can explain a thing simply the way a body can understand then he goes and +burns the bottom out of the pan all for his Kidney this one not so much +theres the mark of his teeth still where he tried to bite the nipple I +had to scream out arent they fearful trying to hurt you I had a great +breast of milk with Milly enough for two what was the reason of that he +said I could have got a pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled out the +morning that delicate looking student that stopped in no with the +Citrons Penrose nearly caught me washing through the window only for I +snapped up the towel to my face that was his studenting hurt me they used +to weaning her till he got doctor Brady to give me the belladonna +prescription I had to get him to suck them they were so hard he said it +was sweeter and thicker than cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea +well hes beyond everything I declare somebody ought to put him in the +budget if I only could remember the I half of the things and write a book +out of it the works of Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin +much an hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind of a big +infant I had at me they want everything in their mouth all the pleasure +those men get out of a woman I can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch +myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come +again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it when he +made me spend the nd time tickling me behind with his finger I was +coming for about minutes with my legs round him I had to hug him after +O Lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything +at all only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain who knows the +way hed take it you want to feel your way with a man theyre not all like +him thank God some of them want you to be so nice about it I noticed the +contrast he does it and doesnt talk I gave my eyes that look with my hair +a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue between my lips up to him the +savage brute Thursday Friday one Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant +wait till Monday +frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those engines +have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of +them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor men that +have to be out all the night from their wives and families in those +roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I burned the half of those +old Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things like that lying about hes +getting very careless and threw the rest of them up in the W C Ill get +him to cut them tomorrow for me instead of having them there for the next +year to get a few pence for them have him asking wheres last Januarys +paper and all those old overcoats I bundled out of the hall making the +place hotter than it is that rain was lovely and refreshing just after my +beauty sleep I thought it was going to get like Gibraltar my goodness the +heat there before the levanter came on black as night and the glare of +the rock standing up in it like a big giant compared with their Rock +mountain they think is so great with the red sentries here and there the +poplars and they all whitehot and the smell of the rainwater in those +tanks watching the sun all the time weltering down on you faded all that +lovely frock fathers friend Mrs Stanhope sent me from the B Marche paris +what a shame my dearest Doggerina she wrote on it she was very nice whats +this her other name was just a p c to tell you I sent the little present +have just had a jolly warm bath and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it +wogger she called him wogger wd give anything to be back in Gib and hear +you sing Waiting and in old Madrid Concone is the name of those exercises +he bought me one of those new some word I couldnt make out shawls amusing +things but tear for the least thing still there lovely I think dont you +will always think of the lovely teas we had together scrumptious currant +scones and raspberry wafers I adore well now dearest Doggerina be sure +and write soon kind she left out regards to your father also captain +Grove with love yrs affly Hester x x x x x she didnt look a bit married +just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was awfully fond +of me when he held down the wire with his foot for me to step over at the +bullfight at La Linea when that matador Gomez was given the bulls ear +these clothes we have to wear whoever invented them expecting you to walk +up Killiney hill then for example at that picnic all staysed up you cant +do a blessed thing in them in a crowd run or jump out of the way thats +why I was afraid when that other ferocious old Bull began to charge the +banderilleros with the sashes and the things in their hats and the +brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the women were as bad in their +nice white mantillas ripping all the whole insides out of those poor +horses I never heard of such a thing in all my life yes he used to break +his heart at me taking off the dog barking in bell lane poor brute and it +sick what became of them ever I suppose theyre dead long ago the of +them its like all through a mist makes you feel so old I made the scones +of course I had everything all to myself then a girl Hester we used to +compare our hair mine was thicker than hers she showed me how to settle +it at the back when I put it up and whats this else how to make a knot on +a thread with the one hand we were like cousins what age was I then the +night of the storm I slept in her bed she had her arms round me then we +were fighting in the morning with the pillow what fun he was watching me +whenever he got an opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade when +I was with father and captain Grove I looked up at the church first and +then at the windows then down and our eyes met I felt something go +through me like all needles my eyes were dancing I remember after when I +looked at myself in the glass hardly recognised myself the change he was +attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald intelligent +looking disappointed and gay at the same time he was like Thomas in the +shadow of Ashlydyat I had a splendid skin from the sun and the excitement +like a rose I didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been nice on +account of her but I could have stopped it in time she gave me the +Moonstone to read that was the first I read of Wilkie Collins East Lynne +I read and the shadow of Ashlydyat Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by that +other woman I lent him afterwards with Mulveys photo in it so as he see I +wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram Molly bawn she gave me by Mrs +Hungerford on account of the name I dont like books with a Molly in them +like that one he brought me about the one from Flanders a whore always +shoplifting anything she could cloth and stuff and yards of it O this +blanket is too heavy on me thats better I havent even one decent +nightdress this thing gets all rolled under me besides him and his +fooling thats better I used to be weltering then in the heat my shift +drenched with the sweat stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the chair +when I stood up they were so fattish and firm when I got up on the sofa +cushions to see with my clothes up and the bugs tons of them at night and +the mosquito nets I couldnt read a line Lord how long ago it seems +centuries of course they never came back and she didnt put her address +right on it either she may have noticed her wogger people were always +going away and we never I remember that day with the waves and the boats +with their high heads rocking and the smell of ship those Officers +uniforms on shore leave made me seasick he didnt say anything he was very +serious I had the high buttoned boots on and my skirt was blowing she +kissed me six or seven times didnt I cry yes I believe I did or near it +my lips were taittering when I said goodbye she had a Gorgeous wrap of +some special kind of blue colour on her for the voyage made very +peculiarly to one side like and it was extremely pretty it got as dull as +the devil after they went I was almost planning to run away mad out of it +somewhere were never easy where we are father or aunt or marriage waiting +always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me waiting nor speeeed his flying +feet their damn guns bursting and booming all over the shop especially +the Queens birthday and throwing everything down in all directions if you +didnt open the windows when general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did +supposed to be some great fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the +consul that was there from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in +mourning for the son then the same old bugles for reveille in the morning +and drums rolling and the unfortunate poor devils of soldiers walking +about with messtins smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews +in their jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and gunfire for +the men to cross the lines and the warden marching with his keys to lock +the gates and the bagpipes and only captain Groves and father talking +about Rorkes drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at +Khartoum lighting their pipes for them everytime they went out drunken +old devil with his grog on the windowsill catch him leaving any of it +picking his nose trying to think of some other dirty story to tell up in +a corner but he never forgot himself when I was there sending me out of +the room on some blind excuse paying his compliments the Bushmills whisky +talking of course but hed do the same to the next woman that came along I +suppose he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like years not a +letter from a living soul except the odd few I posted to myself with bits +of paper in them so bored sometimes I could fight with my nails listening +to that old Arab with the one eye and his heass of an instrument singing +his heah heah aheah all my compriments on your hotchapotch of your heass +as bad as now with the hands hanging off me looking out of the window if +there was a nice fellow even in the opposite house that medical in Holles +street the nurse was after when I put on my gloves and hat at the window +to show I was going out not a notion what I meant arent they thick never +understand what you say even youd want to print it up on a big poster for +them not even if you shake hands twice with the left he didnt recognise +me either when I half frowned at him outside Westland row chapel where +does their great intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter they +have it all in their tail if you ask me those country gougers up in the +City Arms intelligence they had a damn sight less than the bulls and cows +they were selling the meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying +to swindle me with the wrong bill he took out of his hat what a pair of +paws and pots and pans and kettles to mend any broken bottles for a poor +man today and no visitors or post ever except his cheques or some +advertisement like that wonderworker they sent him addressed dear Madam +only his letter and the card from Milly this morning see she wrote a +letter to him who did I get the last letter from O Mrs Dwenn now what +possessed her to write from Canada after so many years to know the recipe +I had for pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say she was +married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I hear with a villa +and eight rooms her father was an awfully nice man he was near seventy +always goodhumoured well now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie theres the +piannyer that was a solid silver coffee service he had too on the +mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate people that have always +their poor story to tell everybody has their own troubles that poor Nancy +Blake died a month ago of acute neumonia well I didnt know her so well as +all that she was Floeys friend more than mine poor Nancy its a bother +having to answer he always tells me the wrong things and no stops to say +like making a speech your sad bereavement symphathy I always make that +mistake and newphew with double yous in I hope hell write me a longer +letter the next time if its a thing he really likes me O thanks be to the +great God I got somebody to give me what I badly wanted to put some heart +up into me youve no chances at all in this place like you used long ago I +wish somebody would write me a loveletter his wasnt much and I told him +he could write what he liked yours ever Hugh Boylan in old Madrid stuff +silly women believe love is sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I +suppose thered be some truth in it true or no it fills up your whole day +and life always something to think about every moment and see it all +round you like a new world I could write the answer in bed to let him +imagine me short just a few words not those long crossed letters Atty +Dillon used to write to the fellow that was something in the four courts +that jilted her after out of the ladies letterwriter when I told her to +say a few simple words he could twist how he liked not acting with +precipat precip itancy with equal candour the greatest earthly happiness +answer to a gentlemans proposal affirmatively my goodness theres nothing +else its all very fine for them but as for being a woman as soon as youre +old they might as well throw you out in the bottom of the ashpit. +Mulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning and Mrs Rubio +brought it in with the coffee she stood there standing when I asked her +to hand me and I pointing at them I couldnt think of the word a hairpin +to open it with ah horquilla disobliging old thing and it staring her in +the face with her switch of false hair on her and vain about her +appearance ugly as she was near or a her face a mass of wrinkles +with all her religion domineering because she never could get over the +Atlantic fleet coming in half the ships of the world and the Union Jack +flying with all her carabineros because drunken English sailors took +all the rock from them and because I didnt run into mass often enough in +Santa Maria to please her with her shawl up on her except when there was +a marriage on with all her miracles of the saints and her black blessed +virgin with the silver dress and the sun dancing times on Easter Sunday +morning and when the priest was going by with the bell bringing the +vatican to the dying blessing herself for his Majestad an admirer he +signed it I near jumped out of my skin I wanted to pick him up when I saw +him following me along the Calle Real in the shop window then he tipped +me just in passing but I never thought hed write making an appointment I +had it inside my petticoat bodice all day reading it up in every hole and +corner while father was up at the drill instructing to find out by the +handwriting or the language of stamps singing I remember shall I wear a +white rose and I wanted to put on the old stupid clock to near the time +he was the first man kissed me under the Moorish wall my sweetheart when +a boy it never entered my head what kissing meant till he put his tongue +in my mouth his mouth was sweetlike young I put my knee up to him a few +times to learn the way what did I tell him I was engaged for for fun to +the son of a Spanish nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he +believed me that I was to be married to him in years time theres many a +true word spoken in jest there is a flower that bloometh a few things I +told him true about myself just for him to be imagining the Spanish girls +he didnt like I suppose one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited he +crushed all the flowers on my bosom he brought me he couldnt count the +pesetas and the perragordas till I taught him Cappoquin he came from he +said on the black water but it was too short then the day before he left +May yes it was May when the infant king of Spain was born Im always like +that in the spring Id like a new fellow every year up on the tiptop under +the rockgun near OHaras tower I told him it was struck by lightning and +all about the old Barbary apes they sent to Clapham without a tail +careering all over the show on each others back Mrs Rubio said she was a +regular old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of Inces farm and +throw stones at you if you went anear he was looking at me I had that +white blouse on open in the front to encourage him as much as I could +without too openly they were just beginning to be plump I said I was +tired we lay over the firtree cove a wild place I suppose it must be the +highest rock in existence the galleries and casemates and those frightful +rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever they call them +hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots Im sure thats the +way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa when they die the ships +out far like chips that was the Malta boat passing yes the sea and the +sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever he caressed them +outside they love doing that its the roundness there I was leaning over +him with my white ricestraw hat to take the newness out of it the left +side of my face the best my blouse open for his last day transparent kind +of shirt he had I could see his chest pink he wanted to touch mine with +his for a moment but I wouldnt lee him he was awfully put out first for +fear you never know consumption or leave me with a child embarazada that +old servant Ines told me that one drop even if it got into you at all +after I tried with the Banana but I was afraid it might break and get +lost up in me somewhere because they once took something down out of a +woman that was up there for years covered with limesalts theyre all mad +to get in there where they come out of youd think they could never go far +enough up and then theyre done with you in a way till the next time yes +because theres a wonderful feeling there so tender all the time how did +we finish it off yes O yes I pulled him off into my handkerchief +pretending not to be excited but I opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch +me inside my petticoat because I had a skirt opening up the side I +tormented the life out of him first tickling him I loved rousing that dog +in the hotel rrrsssstt awokwokawok his eyes shut and a bird flying below +us he was shy all the same I liked him like that moaning I made him blush +a little when I got over him that way when I unbuttoned him and took his +out and drew back the skin it had a kind of eye in it theyre all Buttons +men down the middle on the wrong side of them Molly darling he called me +what was his name Jack Joe Harry Mulvey was it yes I think a lieutenant +he was rather fair he had a laughing kind of a voice so I went round to +the whatyoucallit everything was whatyoucallit moustache had he he said +hed come back Lord its just like yesterday to me and if I was married hed +do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him block me now +flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a captain or admiral its nearly +years if I said firtree cove he would if he came up behind me and put his +hands over my eyes to guess who I might recognise him hes young still +about perhaps hes married some girl on the black water and is quite +changed they all do they havent half the character a woman has she little +knows what I did with her beloved husband before he ever dreamt of her in +broad daylight too in the sight of the whole world you might say they +could have put an article about it in the Chronicle I was a bit wild +after when I blew out the old bag the biscuits were in from Benady Bros +and exploded it Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and pigeons screaming +coming back the same way that we went over middle hill round by the old +guardhouse and the jews burialplace pretending to read out the Hebrew on +them I wanted to fire his pistol he said he hadnt one he didnt know what +to make of me with his peak cap on that he always wore crooked as often +as I settled it straight H M S Calypso swinging my hat that old Bishop +that spoke off the altar his long preach about womans higher functions +about girls now riding the bicycle and wearing peak caps and the new +woman bloomers God send him sense and me more money I suppose theyre +called after him I never thought that would be my name Bloom when I used +to write it in print to see how it looked on a visiting card or +practising for the butcher and oblige M Bloom youre looking blooming +Josie used to say after I married him well its better than Breen or +Briggs does brig or those awful names with bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom +or some other kind of a bottom Mulvey I wouldnt go mad about either or +suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan my mother whoever she was might have +given me a nicer name the Lord knows after the lovely one she had Lunita +Laredo the fun we had running along Williss road to Europa point twisting +in and out all round the other side of Jersey they were shaking and +dancing about in my blouse like Millys little ones now when she runs up +the stairs I loved looking down at them I was jumping up at the pepper +trees and the white poplars pulling the leaves off and throwing them at +him he went to India he was to write the voyages those men have to make +to the ends of the world and back its the least they might get a squeeze +or two at a woman while they can going out to be drowned or blown up +somewhere I went up Windmill hill to the flats that Sunday morning with +captain Rubios that was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed +have one or two from on board I wore that frock from the B Marche paris +and the coral necklace the straits shining I could see over to Morocco +almost the bay of Tangier white and the Atlas mountain with snow on it +and the straits like a river so clear Harry Molly darling I was thinking +of him on the sea all the time after at mass when my petticoat began to +slip down at the elevation weeks and weeks I kept the handkerchief under +my pillow for the smell of him there was no decent perfume to be got in +that Gibraltar only that cheap peau despagne that faded and left a stink +on you more than anything else I wanted to give him a memento he gave me +that clumsy Claddagh ring for luck that I gave Gardner going to south +Africa where those Boers killed him with their war and fever but they +were well beaten all the same as if it brought its bad luck with it like +an opal or pearl still it must have been pure carrot gold because it +was very heavy but what could you get in a place like that the sandfrog +shower from Africa and that derelict ship that came up to the harbour +Marie the Marie whatyoucallit no he hadnt a moustache that was Gardner +yes I can see his face cleanshaven Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that +train again weeping tone once in the dear deaead days beyondre call close +my eyes breath my lips forward kiss sad look eyes open piano ere oer the +world the mists began I hate that istsbeg comes loves sweet +sooooooooooong Ill let that out full when I get in front of the +footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her lot of squealers Miss This Miss +That Miss Theother lot of sparrowfarts skitting around talking about +politics they know as much about as my backside anything in the world to +make themselves someway interesting Irish homemade beauties soldiers +daughter am I ay and whose are you bootmakers and publicans I beg your +pardon coach I thought you were a wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off +their feet if ever they got a chance of walking down the Alameda on an +officers arm like me on the bandnight my eyes flash my bust that they +havent passion God help their poor head I knew more about men and life +when I was I S than theyll all know at they dont know how to sing a +song like that Gardner said no man could look at my mouth and teeth +smiling like that and not think of it I was afraid he mightnt like my +accent first he so English all father left me in spite of his stamps Ive +my mothers eyes and figure anyhow he always said theyre so snotty about +themselves some of those cads he wasnt a bit like that he was dead gone +on my lips let them get a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a +daughter like mine or see if they can excite a swell with money that can +pick and choose whoever he wants like Boylan to do it or times locked +in each others arms or the voice either I could have been a prima donna +only I married him comes looooves old deep down chin back not too much +make it double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore about the moated +grange at twilight and vaunted rooms yes Ill sing Winds that blow from +the south that he gave after the choirstairs performance Ill change that +lace on my black dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes by God Ill get +that big fan mended make them burst with envy my hole is itching me +always when I think of him I feel I want to I feel some wind in me better +go easy not wake him have him at it again slobbering after washing every +bit of myself back belly and sides if we had even a bath itself or my own +room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself with his cold feet on +me give us room even to let a fart God or do the least thing better yes +hold them like that a bit on my side piano quietly sweeeee theres that +train far away pianissimo eeeee one more song +that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free who knows if that +pork chop I took with my cup of tea after was quite good with the heat I +couldnt smell anything off it Im sure that queerlooking man in the +porkbutchers is a great rogue I hope that lamp is not smoking fill my +nose up with smuts better than having him leaving the gas on all night I +couldnt rest easy in my bed in Gibraltar even getting up to see why am I +so damned nervous about that though I like it in the winter its more +company O Lord it was rotten cold too that winter when I was only about +ten was I yes I had the big doll with all the funny clothes dressing her +up and undressing that icy wind skeeting across from those mountains the +something Nevada sierra nevada standing at the fire with the little bit +of a short shift I had up to heat myself I loved dancing about in it then +make a race back into bed Im sure that fellow opposite used to be there +the whole time watching with the lights out in the summer and I in my +skin hopping around I used to love myself then stripped at the washstand +dabbing and creaming only when it came to the chamber performance I put +out the light too so then there were of us goodbye to my sleep for this +night anyhow I hope hes not going to get in with those medicals leading +him astray to imagine hes young again coming in at in the morning it +must be if not more still he had the manners not to wake me what do they +find to gabber about all night squandering money and getting drunker and +drunker couldnt they drink water then he starts giving us his orders for +eggs and tea and Findon haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have +him sitting up like the king of the country pumping the wrong end of the +spoon up and down in his egg wherever he learned that from and I love to +hear him falling up the stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the +tray and then play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own sake +I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking and lecking +but I hate their claws I wonder do they see anything that we cant staring +like that when she sits at the top of the stairs so long and listening as +I wait always what a robber too that lovely fresh place I bought I think +Ill get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will with some +blancmange with black currant jam like long ago not those lb pots of +mixed plum and apple from the London and Newcastle Williams and Woods +goes twice as far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes Ill get a +nice piece of cod Im always getting enough for forgetting anyway Im +sick of that everlasting butchers meat from Buckleys loin chops and leg +beef and rib steak and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck the very name is +enough or a picnic suppose we all gave / each and or let him pay it and +invite some other woman for him who Mrs Fleming and drove out to the +furry glen or the strawberry beds wed have him examining all the horses +toenails first like he does with the letters no not with Boylan there yes +with some cold veal and ham mixed sandwiches there are little houses down +at the bottom of the banks there on purpose but its as hot as blazes he +says not a bank holiday anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes +out for the day Whit Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that bee bit +him better the seaside but Id never again in this life get into a boat +with him after him at Bray telling the boatman he knew how to row if +anyone asked could he ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes +then it came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and the +weight all down my side telling me pull the right reins now pull the left +and the tide all swamping in floods in through the bottom and his oar +slipping out of the stirrup its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim +of course me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his +flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off him before all +the people and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was black +and blue do him all the good in the world only for that longnosed chap I +dont know who he is with that other beauty Burke out of the City Arms +hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always where he wasnt +wanted if there was a row on youd vomit a better face there was no love +lost between us thats consolation I wonder what kind is that book he +brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other Mr de Kock +I suppose the people gave him that nickname going about with his tube +from one woman to another I couldnt even change my new white shoes all +ruined with the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather all blowy +and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because the smell of the sea +excited me of course the sardines and the bream in Catalan bay round the +back of the rock they were fine all silver in the fishermens baskets old +Luigi near a hundred they said came from Genoa and the tall old chap with +the earrings I dont like a man you have to climb up to to get at I +suppose theyre all dead and rotten long ago besides I dont like being +alone in this big barracks of a place at night I suppose Ill have to put +up with it I never brought a bit of salt in even when we moved in the +confusion musical academy he was going to make on the first floor +drawingroom with a brassplate or Blooms private hotel he suggested go and +ruin himself altogether the way his father did down in Ennis like all the +things he told father he was going to do and me but I saw through him +telling me all the lovely places we could go for the honeymoon Venice by +moonlight with the gondolas and the lake of Como he had a picture cut out +of some paper of and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I said whatever I +liked he was going to do immediately if not sooner will you be my man +will you carry my can he ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim +for all the plans he invents then leaving us here all day youd never know +what old beggar at the door for a crust with his long story might be a +tramp and put his foot in the way to prevent me shutting it like that +picture of that hardened criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly news +years in jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for her money +imagine his poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a face youd run +miles away from I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and +windows to make sure but its worse again being locked up like in a prison +or a madhouse they ought to be all shot or the cat of nine tails a big +brute like that that would attack a poor old woman to murder her in her +bed Id cut them off him so I would not that hed be much use still better +than nothing the night I was sure I heard burglars in the kitchen and he +went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if he was looking for +a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out of his wits making as much +noise as he possibly could for the burglars benefit there isnt much to +steal indeed the Lord knows still its the feeling especially now with +Milly away such an idea for him to send the girl down there to learn to +take photographs on account of his grandfather instead of sending her to +Skerrys academy where shed have to learn not like me getting all IS at +school only hed do a thing like that all the same on account of me and +Boylan thats why he did it Im certain the way he plots and plans +everything out I couldnt turn round with her in the place lately unless I +bolted the door first gave me the fidgets coming in without knocking +first when I put the chair against the door just as I was washing myself +there below with the glove get on your nerves then doing the loglady all +day put her in a glasscase with two at a time to look at her if he knew +she broke off the hand off that little gimcrack statue with her roughness +and carelessness before she left that I got that little Italian boy to +mend so that you cant see the join for shillings wouldnt even teem the +potatoes for you of course shes right not to ruin her hands I noticed he +was always talking to her lately at the table explaining things in the +paper and she pretending to understand sly of course that comes from his +side of the house he cant say I pretend things can he Im too honest as a +matter of fact and helping her into her coat but if there was anything +wrong with her its me shed tell not him I suppose he thinks Im finished +out and laid on the shelf well Im not no nor anything like it well see +well see now shes well on for flirting too with Tom Devans two sons +imitating me whistling with those romps of Murray girls calling for her +can Milly come out please shes in great demand to pick what they can out +of her round in Nelson street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as +well he sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds wanting +to go on the skatingrink and smoking their cigarettes through their nose +I smelt it off her dress when I was biting off the thread of the button I +sewed on to the bottom of her jacket she couldnt hide much from me I tell +you only I oughtnt to have stitched it and it on her it brings a parting +and the last plumpudding too split in halves see it comes out no matter +what they say her tongue is a bit too long for my taste your blouse is +open too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle blackbottom and I +had to tell her not to cock her legs up like that on show on the +windowsill before all the people passing they all look at her like me +when I was her age of course any old rag looks well on you then a great +touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way in the Theatre royal take +your foot away out of that I hate people touching me afraid of her life +Id crush her skirt with the pleats a lot of that touching must go on in +theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to wiggle up to +you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the +last time Ill ever go there to be squashed like that for any Trilby or +her barebum every two minutes tipping me there and looking away hes a bit +daft I think I saw him after trying to get near two stylishdressed ladies +outside Switzers window at the same little game I recognised him on the +moment the face and everything but he didnt remember me yes and she didnt +even want me to kiss her at the Broadstone going away well I hope shell +get someone to dance attendance on her the way I did when she was down +with the mumps and her glands swollen wheres this and wheres that of +course she cant feel anything deep yet I never came properly till I was +what or so it went into the wrong place always only the usual girls +nonsense and giggling that Conny Connolly writing to her in white ink on +black paper sealed with sealingwax though she clapped when the curtain +came down because he looked so handsome then we had Martin Harvey for +breakfast dinner and supper I thought to myself afterwards it must be +real love if a man gives up his life for her that way for nothing I +suppose there are a few men like that left its hard to believe in it +though unless it really happened to me the majority of them with not a +particle of love in their natures to find two people like that nowadays +full up of each other that would feel the same way as you do theyre +usually a bit foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer +to go and poison himself after her still poor old man I suppose he felt +lost shes always making love to my things too the few old rags I have +wanting to put her hair up at I S my powder too only ruin her skin on her +shes time enough for that all her life after of course shes restless +knowing shes pretty with her lips so red a pity they wont stay that way I +was too but theres no use going to the fair with the thing answering me +like a fishwoman when I asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes the +day we met Mrs Joe Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended not +to see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we werent grand enough +till I gave her damn fine cracks across the ear for herself take that +now for answering me like that and that for your impudence she had me +that exasperated of course contradicting I was badtempered too because +how was it there was a weed in the tea or I didnt sleep the night before +cheese I ate was it and I told her over and over again not to leave +knives crossed like that because she has nobody to command her as she +said herself well if he doesnt correct her faith I will that was the last +time she turned on the teartap I was just like that myself they darent +order me about the place its his fault of course having the two of us +slaving here instead of getting in a woman long ago am I ever going to +have a proper servant again of course then shed see him coming Id have to +let her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that old Mrs +Fleming you have to be walking round after her putting the things into +her hands sneezing and farting into the pots well of course shes old she +cant help it a good job I found that rotten old smelly dishcloth that got +lost behind the dresser I knew there was something and opened the area +window to let out the smell bringing in his friends to entertain them +like the night he walked home with a dog if you please that might have +been mad especially Simon Dedalus son his father such a criticiser with +his glasses up with his tall hat on him at the cricket match and a great +big hole in his sock one thing laughing at the other and his son that got +all those prizes for whatever he won them in the intermediate imagine +climbing over the railings if anybody saw him that knew us I wonder he +didnt tear a big hole in his grand funeral trousers as if the one nature +gave wasnt enough for anybody hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen +now is he right in his head I ask pity it wasnt washing day my old pair +of drawers might have been hanging up too on the line on exhibition for +all hed ever care with the ironmould mark the stupid old bundle burned on +them he might think was something else and she never even rendered down +the fat I told her and now shes going such as she was on account of her +paralysed husband getting worse theres always something wrong with them +disease or they have to go under an operation or if its not that its +drink and he beats her Ill have to hunt around again for someone every +day I get up theres some new thing on sweet God sweet God well when Im +stretched out dead in my grave I suppose Ill have some peace I want to +get up a minute if Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me +yes now wouldnt that afflict you of course all the poking and rooting and +ploughing he had up in me now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday +wouldnt that pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some men do +God knows theres always something wrong with us days every or weeks +usual monthly auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came on me +like that the one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave +him to see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety something he did +about insurance for him in Drimmies I was fit to be tied though I wouldnt +give in with that gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his +glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and his soul +thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled the best I could all +in a swamp leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it out +then to the last tag I wont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry +supposed to be a fast play about adultery that idiot in the gallery +hissing the woman adulteress he shouted I suppose he went and had a woman +in the next lane running round all the back ways after to make up for it +I wish he had what I had then hed boo I bet the cat itself is better off +than us have we too much blood up in us or what O patience above its +pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me pregnant as big as +he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets I just put on I suppose the +clean linen I wore brought it on too damn it damn it and they always want +to see a stain on the bed to know youre a virgin for them all thats +troubling them theyre such fools too you could be a widow or divorced +times over a daub of red ink would do or blackberry juice no thats too +purply O Jamesy let me up out of this pooh sweets of sin whoever +suggested that business for women what between clothes and cooking and +children this damned old bed too jingling like the dickens I suppose they +could hear us away over the other side of the park till I suggested to +put the quilt on the floor with the pillow under my bottom I wonder is it +nicer in the day I think it is easy I think Ill cut all this hair off me +there scalding me I might look like a young girl wouldnt he get the great +suckin the next time he turned up my clothes on me Id give anything to +see his face wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its +breaking under me after that old commode I wonder was I too heavy sitting +on his knee I made him sit on the easychair purposely when I took off +only my blouse and skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he +oughtnt to be he never felt me I hope my breath was sweet after those +kissing comfits easy God I remember one time I could scout it out +straight whistling like a man almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope theyre +bubbles on it for a wad of money from some fellow Ill have to perfume it +in the morning dont forget I bet he never saw a better pair of thighs +than that look how white they are the smoothest place is right there +between this bit here how soft like a peach easy God I wouldnt mind being +a man and get up on a lovely woman O Lord what a row youre making like +the jersey lily easy easy O how the waters come down at Lahore +who knows is there anything the matter with my insides or have I +something growing in me getting that thing like that every week when was +it last I Whit Monday yes its only about weeks I ought to go to the +doctor only it would be like before I married him when I had that white +thing coming from me and Floey made me go to that dry old stick Dr +Collins for womens diseases on Pembroke road your vagina he called it I +suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting round +those rich ones off Stephens green running up to him for every little +fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina theyve money of course so +theyre all right I wouldnt marry him not if he was the last man in the +world besides theres something queer about their children always smelling +around those filthy bitches all sides asking me if what I did had an +offensive odour what did he want me to do but the one thing gold maybe +what a question if I smathered it all over his wrinkly old face for him +with all my compriments I suppose hed know then and could you pass it +easily pass what I thought he was talking about the rock of Gibraltar the +way he put it thats a very nice invention too by the way only I like +letting myself down after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull +the chain then to flush it nice cool pins and needles still theres +something in it I suppose I always used to know by Millys when she was a +child whether she had worms or not still all the same paying him for that +how much is that doctor one guinea please and asking me had I frequent +omissions where do those old fellows get all the words they have +omissions with his shortsighted eyes on me cocked sideways I wouldnt +trust him too far to give me chloroform or God knows what else still I +liked him when he sat down to write the thing out frowning so severe his +nose intelligent like that you be damned you lying strap O anything no +matter who except an idiot he was clever enough to spot that of course +that was all thinking of him and his mad crazy letters my Precious one +everything connected with your glorious Body everything underlined that +comes from it is a thing of beauty and of joy for ever something he got +out of some nonsensical book that he had me always at myself and +times a day sometimes and I said I hadnt are you sure O yes I said I am +quite sure in a way that shut him up I knew what was coming next only +natural weakness it was he excited me I dont know how the first night +ever we met when I was living in Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at one +another for about minutes as if we met somewhere I suppose on account +of my being jewess looking after my mother he used to amuse me the things +he said with the half sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he +was going to stand for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the born fool to +believe all his blather about home rule and the land league sending me +that long strool of a song out of the Huguenots to sing in French to be +more classy O beau pays de la Touraine that I never even sang once +explaining and rigmaroling about religion and persecution he wont let you +enjoy anything naturally then might he as a great favour the very st +opportunity he got a chance in Brighton square running into my bedroom +pretending the ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk +and sulphur soap I used to use and the gelatine still round it O I +laughed myself sick at him that day I better not make an alnight sitting +on this affair they ought to make chambers a natural size so that a woman +could sit on it properly he kneels down to do it I suppose there isnt in +all creation another man with the habits he has look at the way hes +sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he without a hard bolster its +well he doesnt kick or he might knock out all my teeth breathing with his +hand on his nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet Sunday +in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a pinafore lying on his +side on his hand with his ten toes sticking out that he said was a bigger +religion than the jews and Our Lords both put together all over Asia +imitating him as hes always imitating everybody I suppose he used to +sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big square feet up in his wifes +mouth damn this stinking thing anyway wheres this those napkins are ah +yes I know I hope the old press doesnt creak ah I knew it would hes +sleeping hard had a good time somewhere still she must have given him +great value for his money of course he has to pay for it from her O this +nuisance of a thing I hope theyll have something better for us in the +other world tying ourselves up God help us thats all right for tonight +now the lumpy old jingly bed always reminds me of old Cohen I suppose he +scratched himself in it often enough and he thinks father bought it from +Lord Napier that I used to admire when I was a little girl because I told +him easy piano O I like my bed God here we are as bad as ever after +years how many houses were we in at all Raymond terrace and Ontario +terrace and Lombard street and Holles street and he goes about whistling +every time were on the run again his huguenots or the frogs march +pretending to help the men with our sticks of furniture and then the +City Arms hotel worse and worse says Warden Daly that charming place on +the landing always somebody inside praying then leaving all their stinks +after them always know who was in there last every time were just getting +on right something happens or he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys +and Mr Cuffes and Drimmies either hes going to be run into prison over +his old lottery tickets that was to be all our salvations or he goes and +gives impudence well have him coming home with the sack soon out of the +Freeman too like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or the +freemasons then well see if the little man he showed me dribbling along +in the wet all by himself round by Coadys lane will give him much +consolation that he says is so capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed +judging by the sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait theres Georges +church bells wait quarters the hour l wait oclock well thats a nice +hour of the night for him to be coming home at to anybody climbing down +into the area if anybody saw him Ill knock him off that little habit +tomorrow first Ill look at his shirt to see or Ill see if he has that +French letter still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont know +deceitful men all their pockets arent enough for their lies then why +should we tell them even if its the truth they dont believe you then +tucked up in bed like those babies in the Aristocrats Masterpiece he +brought me another time as if we hadnt enough of that in real life +without some old Aristocrat or whatever his name is disgusting you more +with those rotten pictures children with two heads and no legs thats the +kind of villainy theyre always dreaming about with not another thing in +their empty heads they ought to get slow poison the half of them then tea +and toast for him buttered on both sides and newlaid eggs I suppose Im +nothing any more when I wouldnt let him lick me in Holles street one +night man man tyrant as ever for the one thing he slept on the floor half +the night naked the way the jews used when somebody dies belonged to them +and wouldnt eat any breakfast or speak a word wanting to be petted so I +thought I stood out enough for one time and let him he does it all wrong +too thinking only of his own pleasure his tongue is too flat or I dont +know what he forgets that wethen I dont Ill make him do it again if he +doesnt mind himself and lock him down to sleep in the coalcellar with the +blackbeetles I wonder was it her Josie off her head with my castoffs hes +such a born liar too no hed never have the courage with a married woman +thats why he wants me and Boylan though as for her Denis as she calls him +that forlornlooking spectacle you couldnt call him a husband yes its some +little bitch hes got in with even when I was with him with Milly at the +College races that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on the top of his +nob let us into by the back way he was throwing his sheeps eyes at those +two doing skirt duty up and down I tried to wink at him first no use of +course and thats the way his money goes this is the fruits of Mr Paddy +Dignam yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral in the paper +Boylan brought in if they saw a real officers funeral thatd be something +reversed arms muffled drums the poor horse walking behind in black L Boom +and Tom Kernan that drunken little barrelly man that bit his tongue off +falling down the mens W C drunk in some place or other and Martin +Cunningham and the two Dedaluses and Fanny MCoys husband white head of +cabbage skinny thing with a turn in her eye trying to sing my songs shed +want to be born all over again and her old green dress with the lowneck +as she cant attract them any other way like dabbling on a rainy day I see +it all now plainly and they call that friendship killing and then burying +one another and they all with their wives and families at home more +especially Jack Power keeping that barmaid he does of course his wife is +always sick or going to be sick or just getting better of it and hes a +goodlooking man still though hes getting a bit grey over the ears theyre +a nice lot all of them well theyre not going to get my husband again into +their clutches if I can help it making fun of him then behind his back I +know well when he goes on with his idiotics because he has sense enough +not to squander every penny piece he earns down their gullets and looks +after his wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all the same +Im sorry in a way for him what are his wife and children going to do +unless he was insured comical little teetotum always stuck up in some pub +corner and her or her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you please come home +her widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre awfully becoming +though if youre goodlooking what men wasnt he yes he was at the Glencree +dinner and Ben Dollard base barreltone the night he borrowed the +swallowtail to sing out of in Holles street squeezed and squashed into +them and grinning all over his big Dolly face like a wellwhipped childs +botty didnt he look a balmy ballocks sure enough that must have been a +spectacle on the stage imagine paying / in the preserved seats for that +to see him trotting off in his trowlers and Simon Dedalus too he was +always turning up half screwed singing the second verse first the old +love is the new was one of his so sweetly sang the maiden on the hawthorn +bough he was always on for flirtyfying too when I sang Maritana with him +at Freddy Mayers private opera he had a delicious glorious voice Phoebe +dearest goodbye sweetheart SWEETheart he always sang it not like Bartell +Darcy sweet tart goodbye of course he had the gift of the voice so there +was no art in it all over you like a warm showerbath O Maritana wildwood +flower we sang splendidly though it was a bit too high for my register +even transposed and he was married at the time to May Goulding but then +hed say or do something to knock the good out of it hes a widower now I +wonder what sort is his son he says hes an author and going to be a +university professor of Italian and Im to take lessons what is he driving +at now showing him my photo its not good of me I ought to have got it +taken in drapery that never looks out of fashion still I look young in it +I wonder he didnt make him a present of it altogether and me too after +all why not I saw him driving down to the Kingsbridge station with his +father and mother I was in mourning thats years ago now yes hed be +though what was the good in going into mourning for what was neither one +thing nor the other the first cry was enough for me I heard the +deathwatch too ticking in the wall of course he insisted hed go into +mourning for the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time he was an +innocent boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord Fauntleroy suit +and curly hair like a prince on the stage when I saw him at Mat Dillons +he liked me too I remember they all do wait by God yes wait yes hold on +he was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck union with a +young stranger neither dark nor fair you met before I thought it meant +him but hes no chicken nor a stranger either besides my face was turned +the other way what was the th card after that the of spades for a +journey by land then there was a letter on its way and scandals too the +queens and the of diamonds for a rise in society yes wait it all came +out and red s for new garments look at that and didnt I dream +something too yes there was something about poetry in it I hope he hasnt +long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or standing up like a red Indian +what do they go about like that for only getting themselves and their +poetry laughed at I always liked poetry when I was a girl first I thought +he was a poet like lord Byron and not an ounce of it in his composition I +thought he was quite different I wonder is he too young hes about wait +I was married Milly is yesterday what age was he then at Dillons + or about I suppose hes or more Im not too old for him if hes +or I hope hes not that stuckup university student sort no otherwise he +wouldnt go sitting down in the old kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa +and talking of course he pretended to understand it all probably he told +him he was out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor I hope +hes not a professor like Goodwin was he was a potent professor of John +Jameson they all write about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he +wont find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar where +poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully +coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point +the guitar that fellow played was so expressive will I ever go back there +again all new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that for him +theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as darkly bright as +loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves young star itll be a +change the Lord knows to have an intelligent person to talk to about +yourself not always listening to him and Billy Prescotts ad and Keyess ad +and Tom the Devils ad then if anything goes wrong in their business we +have to suffer Im sure hes very distinguished Id like to meet a man like +that God not those other ruck besides hes young those fine young men I +could see down in Margate strand bathingplace from the side of the rock +standing up in the sun naked like a God or something and then plunging +into the sea with them why arent all men like that thered be some +consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could +look at him all day long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for +you to listen theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I wanted +to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock there so simple I wouldnt +mind taking him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking you +to suck it so clean and white he looks with his boyish face I would too +in / a minute even if some of it went down what its only like gruel or +the dew theres no danger besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs +of men I suppose never dream of washing it from I years end to the other +the most of them only thats what gives the women the moustaches Im sure +itll be grand if I can only get in with a handsome young poet at my age +Ill throw them the st thing in the morning till I see if the wishcard +comes out or Ill try pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out Ill +read and study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew who +he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all women are the same +and I can teach him the other part Ill make him feel all over him till he +half faints under me then hell write about me lover and mistress publicly +too with our photographs in all the papers when he becomes famous O but +then what am I going to do about him though +no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no +nothing in his nature slapping us behind like that on my bottom because I +didnt call him Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a cabbage +thats what you get for not keeping them in their proper place pulling off +his shoes and trousers there on the chair before me so barefaced without +even asking permission and standing out that vulgar way in the half of a +shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a butcher or those old +hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of course hes right enough in his +way to pass the time as a joke sure you might as well be in bed with what +with a lion God Im sure hed have something better to say for himself an +old Lion would O well I suppose its because they were so plump and +tempting in my short petticoat he couldnt resist they excite myself +sometimes its well for men all the amount of pleasure they get off a +womans body were so round and white for them always I wished I was one +myself for a change just to try with that thing they have swelling up on +you so hard and at the same time so soft when you touch it my uncle John +has a thing long I heard those cornerboys saying passing the comer of +Marrowbone lane my aunt Mary has a thing hairy because it was dark and +they knew a girl was passing it didnt make me blush why should it either +its only nature and he puts his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy +etcetera and turns out to be you put the handle in a sweepingbrush men +again all over they can pick and choose what they please a married woman +or a fast widow or a girl for their different tastes like those houses +round behind Irish street no but were to be always chained up theyre not +going to be chaining me up no damn fear once I start I tell you for their +stupid husbands jealousy why cant we all remain friends over it instead +of quarrelling her husband found it out what they did together well +naturally and if he did can he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he +does and then he going to the other mad extreme about the wife in Fair +Tyrants of course the man never even casts a nd thought on the husband +or wife either its the woman he wants and he gets her what else were we +given all those desires for Id like to know I cant help it if Im young +still can I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my time +living with him so cold never embracing me except sometimes when hes +asleep the wrong end of me not knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd +kiss a womans bottom Id throw my hat at him after that hed kiss anything +unnatural where we havent I atom of any kind of expression in us all of +us the same lumps of lard before ever Id do that to a man pfooh the +dirty brutes the mere thought is enough I kiss the feet of you senorita +theres some sense in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did what a +madman nobody understands his cracked ideas but me still of course a +woman wants to be embraced times a day almost to make her look young +no matter by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody if the +fellow you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I was thinking would +I go around by the quays there some dark evening where nobodyd know me +and pick up a sailor off the sea thatd be hot on for it and not care a +pin whose I was only do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of those +wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp pitched near the +Bloomfield laundry to try and steal our things if they could I only sent +mine there a few times for the name model laundry sending me back over +and over some old ones odd stockings that blackguardlooking fellow with +the fine eyes peeling a switch attack me in the dark and ride me up +against the wall without a word or a murderer anybody what they do +themselves the fine gentlemen in their silk hats that K C lives up +somewhere this way coming out of Hardwicke lane the night he gave us the +fish supper on account of winning over the boxing match of course it was +for me he gave it I knew him by his gaiters and the walk and when I +turned round a minute after just to see there was a woman after coming +out of it too some filthy prostitute then he goes home to his wife after +that only I suppose the half of those sailors are rotten again with +disease O move over your big carcass out of that for the love of Mike +listen to him the winds that waft my sighs to thee so well he may sleep +and sigh the great Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he knew how he came +out on the cards this morning hed have something to sigh for a dark man +in some perplexity between s too in prison for Lord knows what he does +that I dont know and Im to be slooching around down in the kitchen to get +his lordship his breakfast while hes rolled up like a mummy will I indeed +did you ever see me running Id just like to see myself at it show them +attention and they treat you like dirt I dont care what anybody says itd +be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it you +wouldnt see women going and killing one another and slaughtering when do +you ever see women rolling around drunk like they do or gambling every +penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she +does she knows where to stop sure they wouldnt be in the world at all +only for us they dont know what it is to be a woman and a mother how +could they where would they all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to +look after them what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now +out at night away from his books and studies and not living at home on +account of the usual rowy house I suppose well its a poor case that those +that have a fine son like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not +able to make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was watching +the two dogs up in her behind in the middle of the naked street that +disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to have buried him in that +little woolly jacket I knitted crying as I was but give it to some poor +child but I knew well Id never have another our st death too it was we +were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into the glooms +about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the +time it was somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around the +city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother +wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps still +its a lovely hour so silent I used to love coming home after dances the +air of the night they have friends they can talk to weve none either he +wants what he wont get or its some woman ready to stick her knife in you +I hate that in women no wonder they treat us the way they do we are a +dreadful lot of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have makes us +so snappy Im not like that he could easy have slept in there on the sofa +in the other room I suppose he was as shy as a boy he being so young +hardly of me in the next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah +what harm Dedalus I wonder its like those names in Gibraltar Delapaz +Delagracia they had the devils queer names there father Vilaplana of +Santa Maria that gave me the rosary Rosales y OReilly in the Calle las +Siete Revueltas and Pisimbo and Mrs Opisso in Governor street O what a +name Id go and drown myself in the first river if I had a name like her O +my and all the bits of streets Paradise ramp and Bedlam ramp and Rodgers +ramp and Crutchetts ramp and the devils gap steps well small blame to me +if I am a harumscarum I know I am a bit I declare to God I dont feel a +day older than then I wonder could I get my tongue round any of the +Spanish como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten +it all I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any +person place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel cantankerous +Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the questions in it all upside down the +two ways I always knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish +and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant what a pity +he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired and wanted a good +sleep badly I could have brought him in his breakfast in bed with a bit +of toast so long as I didnt do it on the knife for bad luck or if the +woman was going her rounds with the watercress and something nice and +tasty there are a few olives in the kitchen he might like I never could +bear the look of them in Abrines I could do the criada the room looks all +right since I changed it the other way you see something was telling me +all the time Id have to introduce myself not knowing me from Adam very +funny wouldnt it Im his wife or pretend we were in Spain with him half +awake without a Gods notion where he is dos huevos estrellados senor Lord +the cracked things come into my head sometimes itd be great fun supposing +he stayed with us why not theres the room upstairs empty and Millys bed +in the back room he could do his writing and studies at the table in +there for all the scribbling he does at it and if he wants to read in bed +in the morning like me as hes making the breakfast for I he can make it +for Im sure Im not going to take in lodgers off the street for him if +he takes a gesabo of a house like this Id love to have a long talk with +an intelligent welleducated person Id have to get a nice pair of red +slippers like those Turks with the fez used to sell or yellow and a nice +semitransparent morning gown that I badly want or a peachblossom dressing +jacket like the one long ago in Walpoles only / or / Ill just give +him one more chance Ill get up early in the morning Im sick of Cohens old +bed in any case I might go over to the markets to see all the vegetables +and cabbages and tomatoes and carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits +all coming in lovely and fresh who knows whod be the st man Id meet +theyre out looking for it in the morning Mamy Dillon used to say they are +and the night too that was her massgoing Id love a big juicy pear now to +melt in your mouth like when I used to be in the longing way then Ill +throw him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to make +his mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream too I know what Ill do +Ill go about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then mi fa +pieta Masetto then Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son piu +forte Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good eyeful out +of that to make his micky stand for him Ill let him know if thats what he +wanted that his wife is I s l o fucked yes and damn well fucked too up to +my neck nearly not by him or times handrunning theres the mark of his +spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to even iron it out that ought +to satisfy him if you dont believe me feel my belly unless I made him +stand there and put him into me Ive a mind to tell him every scrap and +make him do it out in front of me serve him right its all his own fault +if I am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery said O much about it if +thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of tears God knows its not +much doesnt everybody only they hide it I suppose thats what a woman is +supposed to be there for or He wouldnt have made us the way He did so +attractive to men then if he wants to kiss my bottom Ill drag open my +drawers and bulge it right out in his face as large as life he can stick +his tongue miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then Ill tell +him I want LI or perhaps / Ill tell him I want to buy underclothes +then if he gives me that well he wont be too bad I dont want to soak it +all out of him like other women do I could often have written out a fine +cheque for myself and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a few +times he forgot to lock it up besides he wont spend it Ill let him do it +off on me behind provided he doesnt smear all my good drawers O I suppose +that cant be helped Ill do the indifferent l or questions Ill know by +the answers when hes like that he cant keep a thing back I know every +turn in him Ill tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words +smellrump or lick my shit or the first mad thing comes into my head then +Ill suggest about yes O wait now sonny my turn is coming Ill be quite gay +and friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a thing +pfooh you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry were such a mixture of plum +and apple no Ill have to wear the old things so much the better itll be +more pointed hell never know whether he did it or not there thats good +enough for you any old thing at all then Ill wipe him off me just like a +business his omission then Ill go out Ill have him eying up at the +ceiling where is she gone now make him want me thats the only way a +quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in +China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns +ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except +an odd priest or two for his night office or the alarmclock next door at +cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze +off what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars +the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was +like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and +try again so as I can get up early Ill go to Lambes there beside +Findlaters and get them to send us some flowers to put about the place in +case he brings him home tomorrow today I mean no no Fridays an unlucky +day first I want to do the place up someway the dust grows in it I think +while Im asleep then we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him +first I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I +wear a white rose or those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a +rich big shop at /d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them +and the pinky sugar d a couple of lbs of those a nice plant for the +middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them +not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in +roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then +the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields +of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going +about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers +all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the +ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no +God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why +dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever +they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then +they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre +afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well +who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that +made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they +might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for +you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head +in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to +me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was +leapyear like now yes years ago my God after that long kiss I near +lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are +flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life +and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I +saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get +round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he +asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the +sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey +and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the +sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they +called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with +the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish +girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in +the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who +else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all +clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep +and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and +the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of +years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like +kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with +the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her +lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the +castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman +going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and +the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and +the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets +and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the +jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was +a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the +Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me +under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then +I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I +yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes +and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and +his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. +TriesteZurichParis +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ulysses, by James Joyce + END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ULYSSES +This file should be named ulyss.txt or ulyss.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our 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If you +don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are +payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois +Benedictine College" within the days following each +date you prepare or were legally required to prepare +your annual or equivalent periodic tax return. +WHAT IF YOU WANT TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Illinois Benedictine College". +This "Small Print" by Charles B. Kramer, Attorney +Internet .compuserve.com TEL +ENDTHE SMALL PRINT FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTSVer...END +WALDEN ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE +Contents +WALDEN +. Economy +. Where I Lived, and What I Lived For +. Reading +. Sounds +. Solitude +. Visitors +. The BeanField +. The Village +. The Ponds +. Baker Farm +. Higher Laws +. Brute Neighbors +. HouseWarming +. Inhabitants and Winter Visitors +. Winter Animals +. The Pond in Winter +. Spring +. Conclusion +On the Duty of Civil Disobedience +Economy +When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I +lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house +which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, +Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. +I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner +in civilized life again. +I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my +readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my +townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call +impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, +but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. +Some have asked what I got to eat if I did not feel lonesome if I +was not afraid and the like. Others have been curious to learn +what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes and +some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. +I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular +interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these +questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is +omitted in this it will be retained that, in respect to egotism, +is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, +after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not +talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as +well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness +of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, +first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not +merely what he has heard of other men's lives some such account as +he would send to his kindred from a distant land for if he has +lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps +these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As +for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply +to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the +coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. +I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese +and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to +live in New England something about your condition, especially your +outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what +it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether +it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal +in Concord and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the +inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand +remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to +four fires and looking in the face of the sun or hanging suspended, +with their heads downward, over flames or looking at the heavens +over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume +their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but +liquids can pass into the stomach" or dwelling, chained for life, +at the foot of a tree or measuring with their bodies, like +caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires or standing on one leg on +the tops of pillars even these forms of conscious penance are +hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily +witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison +with those which my neighbors have undertaken for they were only +twelve, and had an end but I could never see that these men slew or +captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend +Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as +soon as one head is crushed, two spring up. +I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have +inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools for these +are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been +born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have +seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who +made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, +when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they +begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got +to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get +on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met +wellnigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the +road of life, pushing before it a barn seventyfive feet by forty, +its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, +tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot The portionless, who +struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it +labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh. +But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is +soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly +called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, +laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves +break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find +when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that +Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads +behind them +Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, +Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati. +Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way, +"From thence our kind hardhearted is, enduring pain and care, +Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are." +So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the +stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell. +Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere +ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and +superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be +plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy +and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not +leisure for a true integrity day by day he cannot afford to sustain +the manliest relations to men his labor would be depreciated in the +market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he +remember well his ignorance which his growth requires who has +so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him +gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we +judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on +fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we +do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. +Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are +sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that +some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners +which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are +fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to +spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. +It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, +for my sight has been whetted by experience always on the limits, +trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very +ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, +for some of their coins were made of brass still living, and dying, +and buried by this other's brass always promising to pay, promising +to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent seeking to curry +favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not stateprison +offenses lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a +nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and +vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you +make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import +his groceries for him making yourselves sick, that you may lay up +something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old +chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in +the brick bank no matter where, no matter how much or how little. +I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost +say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of +servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle +masters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have a +Southern overseer it is worse to have a Northern one but worst of +all when you are the slavedriver of yourself. Talk of a divinity +in man Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by +day or night does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty +to fodder and water his horses What is his destiny to him compared +with the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire +Makeastir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers +and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor +divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a +fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared +with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it +is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. +Selfemancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and +imagination what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? +Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions +against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their +fates As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. +The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called +resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you +go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the +bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious +despair is concealed even under what are called the games and +amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes +after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do +desperate things. +When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the +chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of +life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode +of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly +think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures +remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up +our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can +be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence +passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, +mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would +sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you +cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, +and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, +perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire agoing new people +put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe +with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase +is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor +as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may +almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute +value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice +to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and +their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, +as they must believe and it may be that they have some faith left +which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they +were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet +to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from +my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me +anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great +extent untried by me but it does not avail me that they have tried +it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to +reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about. +One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food +solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with" and so he +religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with +the raw material of bones walking all the while he talks behind his +oxen, which, with vegetablemade bones, jerk him and his lumbering +plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really +necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, +which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are +entirely unknown. +The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone +over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and +all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise +Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees and +the Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into your +neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without +trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." Hippocrates has +even left directions how we should cut our nails that is, even with +the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly +the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the +variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's +capacities have never been measured nor are we to judge of what he +can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have +been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who +shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?" +We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests as, for +instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once +a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would +have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I +hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles +What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the +universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment Nature +and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who +shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater +miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for +an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour +ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology I +know of no reading of another's experience so startling and +informing as this would be. +The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my +soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be +my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? +You may say the wisest thing you can, old man you who have lived +seventy years, not without honor of a kind I hear an irresistible +voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons +the enterprises of another like stranded vessels. +I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. +We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow +elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our +strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a wellnigh +incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance +of what work we do and yet how much is not done by us or, what if +we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are determined not to live +by faith if we can avoid it all the day long on the alert, at night +we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to +uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to +live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. +This is the only way, we say but there are as many ways as there +can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to +contemplate but it is a miracle which is taking place every +instant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and +that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." +When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to +his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their +lives on that basis. +Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and +anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is +necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. It would be +some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the +midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the +gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain +them or even to look over the old daybooks of the merchants, to +see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what +they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the +improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential +laws of man's existence as our skeletons, probably, are not to be +distinguished from those of our ancestors. +By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that +man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from +long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, +whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to +do without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but one +necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few +inches of palatable grass, with water to drink unless he seeks the +Shelter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. None of the brute +creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries of +life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed +under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel for +not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true +problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has +invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food and possibly +from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the +consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity +to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second +nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our +own internal heat but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, +with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery +properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the +inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were +well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, +these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his +great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing +such a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked +with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it +impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the +intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man's +body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal +combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. +The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and +death take place when this is too rapid or for want of fuel, or +from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the +vital heat is not to be confounded with fire but so much for +analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the +expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, +animal heat for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps +up the fire within us and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food +or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without +Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus +generated and absorbed. +The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to +keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only +with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which +are our nightclothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to +prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of +grass and leaves at the end of its burrow The poor man is wont to +complain that this is a cold world and to cold, no less physical +than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The +summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian +life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary the sun +is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its +rays while Food generally is more various, and more easily +obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. +At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own +experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a +wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and +access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be +obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other +side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote +themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may +live that is, keep comfortably warm and die in New England at +last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, +but unnaturally hot as I implied before, they are cooked, of course +a la mode. +Most of the luxuries, and many of the socalled comforts of +life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the +elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the +wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. +The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were +a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so +rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that +we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more +modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an +impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground +of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the +fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, +or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not +philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once +admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle +thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to +live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, +magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of +life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great +scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtierlike success, not +kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, +practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the +progenitors of a noble race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? +What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which +enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of +it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even +in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, +warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and +not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men? +When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have +described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the +same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, +finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and +hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which +are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain +the superfluities and that is, to adventure on life now, his +vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, +is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it +may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man +rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the +same proportion into the heavens above? for the nobler plants are +valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far +from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, +which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they +have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this +purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season. +I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, +who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and +perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the +richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they +live if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed nor to +those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the +present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and +enthusiasm of lovers and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this +number I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever +circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not +but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly +complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they +might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically +and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their +duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most +terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but +know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their +own golden or silver fetters. +If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life +in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who +are somewhat acquainted with its actual history it would certainly +astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some +of the enterprises which I have cherished. +In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been +anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too +to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, +which is precisely the present moment to toe that line. You will +pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than +in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from +its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and +never paint "No Admittance" on my gate. +I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am +still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken +concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they +answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the +tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, +and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them +themselves. +To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if +possible, Nature herself How many mornings, summer and winter, +before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been +about mine No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning +from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, +or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted +the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last +importance only to be present at it. +So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, +trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express +I wellnigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into +the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had concerned either +of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in +the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times watching +from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new +arrival or waiting at evening on the hilltops for the sky to fall, +that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, +mannawise, would dissolve again in the sun. +For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide +circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk +of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only +my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their +own reward. +For many years I was selfappointed inspector of snowstorms and +rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully surveyor, if not of +highways, then of forest paths and all acrosslot routes, keeping +them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where +the public heel had testified to their utility. +I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a +faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences and I +have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm +though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a +particular field today that was none of my business. I have +watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettletree, +the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow +violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons. +In short, I went on thus for a long time I may say it without +boasting, faithfully minding my business, till it became more and +more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the +list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate +allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, +I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less +paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that. +Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the +house of a wellknown lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to +buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the +reply. "What" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do +you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors +so well off that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by +some magic, wealth and standing followed he had said to himself +I will go into business I will weave baskets it is a thing which I +can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have +done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He +had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth +the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it +was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while +to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but +I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the +less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and +instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my +baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling +them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one +kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the +others? +Finding that my fellowcitizens were not likely to offer me any +room in the court house, or any curacy or living anywhere else, but +I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever +to the woods, where I was better known. I determined to go into +business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using +such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going to +Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to +transact some private business with the fewest obstacles to be +hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, +a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as +foolish. +I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits they +are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial +Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem +harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as +the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine +timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will +be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person to +be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter to buy and +sell and keep the accounts to read every letter received, and write +or read every letter sent to superintend the discharge of imports +night and day to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same +time often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey +shore to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the +horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise to keep up a +steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and +exorbitant market to keep yourself informed of the state of the +markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the +tendencies of trade and civilization taking advantage of the +results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all +improvements in navigation charts to be studied, the position of +reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and +ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of +some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have +reached a friendly pier there is the untold fate of La Prouse +universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all +great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, +from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day in fine, account of +stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a +labor to task the faculties of a man such problems of profit and +loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, +as demand a universal knowledge. +I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for +business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade +it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge it +is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled +though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It +is said that a floodtide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the +Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. +As this business was to be entered into without the usual +capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that +will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be +obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of +the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and +a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true +utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of +clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this +state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of +any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding +to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though +made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know +the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than +wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments +become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the +wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such +delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our +bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a +patch in his clothes yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, +commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched +clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is +not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I +sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this Who could +wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave +as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if +they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town +with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an +accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended but if a +similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no +help for it for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but +what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and +breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing +shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a +cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I +recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more +weatherbeaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that +barked at every stranger who approached his master's premises with +clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an +interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if +they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, +tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the +most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous +travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as +Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing +other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the +authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where ... +people are judged of by their clothes." Even in our democratic New +England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its +manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor +almost universal respect. But they yield such respect, numerous as +they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to +them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you +may call endless a woman's dress, at least, is never done. +A man who has at length found something to do will not need to +get a new suit to do it in for him the old will do, that has lain +dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will +serve a hero longer than they have served his valet if a hero +ever has a valet bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make +them do. Only they who go to soires and legislative balls must +have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. +But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship +God in, they will do will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes +his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive +elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some +poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or +shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all +enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of +clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made +to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old +clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to +do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a +new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so +conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like +new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new +wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, +must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds +to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the +caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion +for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise +we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably +cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind. +We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous +plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful +clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our +life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury +our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, +or cortex but our shirts are our liber, or true bark, which cannot +be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe +that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the +shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay +his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects +so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, +like the old philosopher, walk out the gate emptyhanded without +anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as +three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really +to suit customers while a thick coat can be bought for five +dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two +dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat +for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixtytwo and a half +cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so +poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not +be found wise men to do him reverence? +When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress +tells me gravely, "They do not make them so now," not emphasizing +the "They" at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as +the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply +because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so +rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment +absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that +I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree +of consanguinity They are related to me, and what authority they +may have in an affair which affects me so nearly and, finally, I am +inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more +emphasis of the "they" "It is true, they did not make them so +recently, but they do now." Of what use this measuring of me if she +does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, +as it were a peg to bang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, +nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with +full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, +and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of +getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the +help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press +first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would +not soon get upon their legs again and then there would be some one +in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg +deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these +things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will +not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a +mummy. +On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing +has in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At +present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked +sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a +little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's +masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but +follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume +of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the +King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is +pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and +the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and +consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a +fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. +When the soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as +purple. +The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns +keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they +may discover the particular figure which this generation requires +today. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely +whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more +or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the +other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the +lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. +Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is +called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is +skindeep and unalterable. +I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by +which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is +becoming every day more like that of the English and it cannot be +wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the +principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, +but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long +run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should +fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. +As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary +of life, though there are instances of men having done without it +for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says +that "the Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he +puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on +the snow ... in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of +one exposed to it in any woollen clothing." He had seen them asleep +thus. Yet he adds, "They are not hardier than other people." But, +probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the +convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which +phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house +more than of the family though these must be extremely partial and +occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our +thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of +the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in +the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In +the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a +row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so +many times they had camped. Man was not made so large limbed and +robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space +such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors but +though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by +daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the +torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had +not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam +and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other +clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of +warmth, then the warmth of the affections. +We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, +some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. +Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to +stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as +horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the +interest with which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or any +approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion, +any portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in +us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark +and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of +boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what +it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more +senses than we think. From the hearth the field is a great +distance. It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of +our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the +celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a +roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, +nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots. +However, if one designs to construct a dwellinghouse, it +behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all +he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a +museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. +Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have +seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton +cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I +thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the +wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom +left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more +than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I +used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three +wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night and it +suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a +one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to +admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and +hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul +be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a +despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, +and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or +houselord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to +pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have +frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. +Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but +it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and +hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here +almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their +hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the +Massachusetts Colony, writing in , says, "The best of their +houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, +slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and +made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they +are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make +of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but +not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred +feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their +wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses." He +adds that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with +wellwrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various +utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect +of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved +by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in +a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours and +every family owned one, or its apartment in one. +In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the +best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants but I think +that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the +air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages +their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half +the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where +civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a +shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an +annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable +summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but +now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to +insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but +it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so +little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot +afford to own it nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to +hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax, the poor +civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the +savage's. An annual rent of from twentyfive to a hundred dollars +these are the country rates entitles him to the benefit of the +improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and +paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper +pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But +how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so +commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, +is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real +advance in the condition of man and I think that it is, though +only the wise improve their advantages it must be shown that it +has produced better dwellings without making them more costly and +the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is +required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An +average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred +dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years +of the laborer's life, even if he is not encumbered with a family +estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar a +day, for if some receive more, others receive less so that he +must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam +will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is +but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to +exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms? +It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of +holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the +future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the +defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to +bury himself. Nevertheless this points to an important distinction +between the civilized man and the savage and, no doubt, they have +designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized +people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a +great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the +race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at +present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to +secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. +What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or +that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth +are set on edge? +"As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any +more to use this proverb in Israel. +"Behold all souls are mine as the soul of the father, so also +the soul of the son is mine the soul that sinneth, it shall die." +When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at +least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most +part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that +they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they +have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money +and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses +but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the +encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the +farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found +to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On +applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot +at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. +If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the +bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for +his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point +to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has +been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even +ninetyseven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the +farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says +pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine +pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, +because it is inconvenient that is, it is the moral character that +breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, +and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed +in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense +than they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the +springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns +its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of +famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with eclat +annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were +suent. +The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood +by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his +shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill +he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and +independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. +This is the reason he is poor and for a similar reason we are all +poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by +luxuries. As Chapman sings, +"The false society of men +for earthly greatness +All heavenly comforts rarefies to air." +And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer +but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I +understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the +house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by +which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided" and it may still +be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are +often imprisoned rather than housed in them and the bad +neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or +two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, +have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move +into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only +death will set them free. +Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire +the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has +been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who +are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy +to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits +are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater +part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, +why should he have a better dwelling than the former? +But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found +that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward +circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. +The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of +another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the +almshouse and "silent poor." The myriads who built the pyramids to +be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were +not decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice +of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a +wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the +usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large +body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. +I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know +this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which +everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in +civilization where I see in my daily walks human beings living in +sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, +without any visible, often imaginable, woodpile, and the forms of +both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of +shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their +limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at +that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this +generation are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, +is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, +which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you to +Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on +the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of +the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other +savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized +man. Yet I have no doubt that that people's rulers are as wise as +the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what +squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now +to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple +exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of +the South. But to confine myself to those who are said to be in +moderate circumstances. +Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and +are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they +think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if +one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for +him, or, gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or cap of woodchuck +skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him +a crown It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and +luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not +afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these +things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the +respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the +necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of +superfluous glowshoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for +empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as +simple as the Arab's or the Indian's? When I think of the +benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers +from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind +any retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture. +Or what if I were to allow would it not be a singular allowance? +that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab's, in +proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors At +present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good +housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and +not leave her morning's work undone. Morning work By the blushes +of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work +in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I +was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when +the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out +the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? +I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the +grass, unless where man has broken ground. +It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which +the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best +houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume +him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender +mercies he would soon be completely emasculated. I think that in +the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on +safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these to +become no better than a modern drawingroom, with its divans, and +ottomans, and sunshades, and a hundred other oriental things, which +we are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem and +the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan +should be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather sit on a +pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet +cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free +circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion +train and breathe a malaria all the way. +The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive +ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a +sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he +contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in +this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the +plains, or climbing the mountaintops. But lo men have become the +tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits +when he was hungry is become a farmer and he who stood under a tree +for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, +but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have +adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. +We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a +family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's +struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our +art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher +state to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village +for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for +our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for +it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to +receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our +houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal +economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give +way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the +mantelpiece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and +honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this +socalled rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not +get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it, my +attention being wholly occupied with the jump for I remember that +the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is +that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared +twentyfive feet on level ground. Without factitious support, man +is sure to come to earth again beyond that distance. The first +question which I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great +impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninetyseven +who fail, or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and +then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental. +The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before +we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be +stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping +and beautiful living be laid for a foundation now, a taste for the +beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house +and no housekeeper. +Old Johnson, in his "WonderWorking Providence," speaking of the +first settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us +that "they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter +under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they +make a smoky fire against the earth, at the highest side." They did +not "provide them houses," says he, "till the earth, by the Lord's +blessing, brought forth bread to feed them," and the first year's +crop was so light that "they were forced to cut their bread very +thin for a long season." The secretary of the Province of New +Netherland, writing in Dutch, in , for the information of those +who wished to take up land there, states more particularly that +"those in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no +means to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig a +square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as +long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with +wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or +something else to prevent the caving in of the earth floor this +cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a +roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, +so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire +families for two, three, and four years, it being understood that +partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the +size of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, +in the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first +dwellinghouses in this fashion for two reasons firstly, in order +not to waste time in building, and not to want food the next season +secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom they +brought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three or +four years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, they +built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several +thousands." +In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of +prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more +pressing wants first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied +now? When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxurious +dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet +adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our +spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten. +Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in the +rudest periods but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where +they come in contact with our lives, like the tenement of the +shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas I have been inside +one or two of them, and know what they are lined with. +Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live +in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to +accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention +and industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, +boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily +obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient +quantities, or even welltempered clay or flat stones. I speak +understandingly on this subject, for I have made myself acquainted +with it both theoretically and practically. With a little more wit +we might use these materials so as to become richer than the richest +now are, and make our civilization a blessing. The civilized man is +a more experienced and wiser savage. But to make haste to my own +experiment. +Near the end of March, , I borrowed an axe and went down to +the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my +house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in +their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without +borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit +your fellowmen to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner +of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the +apple of his eye but I returned it sharper than I received it. It +was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, +through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in +the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in +the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, +and it was all darkcolored and saturated with water. There were +some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there +but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way +home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy +atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the +lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year +with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of +man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that +had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had +come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with +a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pondhole in order to +swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay +on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed +there, or more than a quarter of an hour perhaps because he had not +yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for +a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive +condition but if they should feel the influence of the spring of +springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and +more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty +mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and +inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the st of April +it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, +which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the +pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog. +So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also +studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many +communicable or scholarlike thoughts, singing to myself, +Men say they know many things +But lo they have taken wings +The arts and sciences, +And a thousand appliances +The wind that blows +Is all that any body knows. +I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on +two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, +leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight +and much stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully +mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by +this time. My days in the woods were not very long ones yet I +usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read the +newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green +pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some +of their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of +pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the +pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become better +acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted +by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips +which I had made. +By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but +rather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the +raising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins, an +Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James +Collins' shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I +called to see it he was not at home. I walked about the outside, at +first unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. It +was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much +else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it +were a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though a good +deal warped and made brittle by the sun. Doorsill there was none, +but a perennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C. +came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The hens +were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor +for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and +there a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to +show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the +board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the +cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own words, they +were "good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good +window" of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed +out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, +an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, +giltframed lookingglass, and a patent new coffeemill nailed to an +oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James +had in the meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and +twentyfive cents tonight, he to vacate at five tomorrow morning, +selling to nobody else meanwhile I to take possession at six. It +were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain +indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent and +fuel. This he assured me was the only encumbrance. At six I passed +him and his family on the road. One large bundle held their all +bed, coffeemill, lookingglass, hens all but the cat she took +to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, +trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last. +I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, +and removed it to the pondside by small cartloads, spreading the +boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. +One early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodland +path. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor +Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred +the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and +spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the +time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, +at the devastation there being a dearth of work, as he said. He +was there to represent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly +insignificant event one with the removal of the gods of Troy. +I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, +where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach +and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet +square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze +in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned but +the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. +It was but two hours' work. I took particular pleasure in this +breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the +earth for an equable temperature. Under the most splendid house in +the city is still to be found the cellar where they store their +roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared +posterity remark its dent in the earth. The house is still but a +sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow. +At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my +acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for +neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my +house. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers +than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of +loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the th +of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were +carefully featheredged and lapped, so that it was perfectly +impervious to rain, but before boarding I laid the foundation of a +chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill +from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in +the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my +cooking in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in the +morning which mode I still think is in some respects more +convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before +my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat +under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that +way. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but +little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my +holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact +answered the same purpose as the Iliad. +It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately +than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a +window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance +never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for +it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same +fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's +building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their +dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and +families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be +universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so +engaged? But alas we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their +eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller +with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign +the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does +architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I +never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and +natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the +community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a +man it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. +Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it +finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me but it is +not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my +thinking for myself. +True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have +heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making +architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence +a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps +from his point of view, but only a little better than the common +dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at +the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a core +of truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, might +have an almond or caraway seed in it though I hold that almonds +are most wholesome without the sugar and not how the inhabitant, +the indweller, might build truly within and without, and let the +ornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man ever +supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin +merely that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shellfish +its mothero'pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of +Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the +style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its +shell nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the +precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it +out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me +to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the +rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of +architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from +within outward, out of the necessities and character of the +indweller, who is the only builder out of some unconscious +truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the +appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined +to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of +life. The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the +painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and +cottages of the poor commonly it is the life of the inhabitants +whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces +merely, which makes them picturesque and equally interesting will +be the citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and +as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining +after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion of +architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale +would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the +substantials. They can do without architecture who have no olives +nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the +ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles +spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our +churches do? So are made the belleslettres and the beauxarts and +their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few +sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed +upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, +he slanted them and daubed it but the spirit having departed out of +the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin the +architecture of the grave and "carpenter" is but another name for +"coffinmaker." One man says, in his despair or indifference to +life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your +house that color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house? +Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure be +must have Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint your +house your own complexion let it turn pale or blush for you. An +enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture When you +have got my ornaments ready, I will wear them. +Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my +house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and +sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I was +obliged to straighten with a plane. +I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide +by fifteen long, and eightfeet posts, with a garret and a closet, a +large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and +a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the +usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, +all of which was done by myself, was as follows and I give the +details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses +cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various +materials which compose them +Boards .......................... ., mostly shanty boards. +Refuse shingles for roof sides ... . +Laths ............................ . +Two secondhand windows +with glass .................... . +One thousand old brick ........... . +Two casks of lime ................ . That was high. +Hair ............................. . More than I needed. +Mantletree iron ................. . +Nails ............................ . +Hinges and screws ................ . +Latch ............................ . +Chalk ............................ . +Transportation ................... . I carried a good part +on my back. +In all ...................... . +These are all the materials, excepting the timber, stones, and +sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small +woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after +building the house. +I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main +street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me +as much and will cost me no more than my present one. +I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can +obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent +which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is +becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for +myself and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the +truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy +chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for +which I am as sorry as any man I will breathe freely and stretch +myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and +physical system and I am resolved that I will not through humility +become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word +for the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student's +room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars +each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building +thirtytwo side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers +the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a +residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had +more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be +needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, +but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great +measure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires at +Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great +a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both +sides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are never +the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is +an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable +education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of +his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a +college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, +and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to +its extreme a principle which should never be followed but with +circumspection to call in a contractor who makes this a subject +of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actually +to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said +to be fitting themselves for it and for these oversights successive +generations have to pay. I think that it would be better than this, +for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to +lay the foundation themselves. The student who secures his coveted +leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor +necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, +defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure +fruitful. "But," says one, "you do not mean that the students +should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?" I do +not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think a +good deal like that I mean that they should not play life, or study +it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, +but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths +better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of +living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as +mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and +sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which +is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where +anything is professed and practised but the art of life to +survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with +his natural eye to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is +made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned to discover new +satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to +what vagabond he is a satellite himself or to be devoured by the +monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters +in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end +of a month the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore +which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary +for this or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy +at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers' +penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his +fingers?... To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college +that I had studied navigation why, if I had taken one turn down +the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student +studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of +living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely +professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is +reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt +irretrievably. +As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements" +there is an illusion about them there is not always a positive +advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last +for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. +Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our +attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an +unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive +at as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste +to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas but Maine and +Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is +in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to +a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end +of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if +the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are +eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some +weeks nearer to the New but perchance the first news that will leak +through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the +Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose +horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important +messages he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eating +locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a +peck of corn to mill. +One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up money you love +to travel you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg today and see +the country." But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the +swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, +Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty +miles the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's wages. I +remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very +road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night I have +travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the +meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time +tomorrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a +job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working +here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached +round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you and as for +seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should +have to cut your acquaintance altogether. +Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and +with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is +long. To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind +is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have +an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint +stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in +next to no time, and for nothing but though a crowd rushes to the +depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard" when the smoke is +blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few +are riding, but the rest are run over and it will be called, and +will be, "A melancholy accident." No doubt they can ride at last +who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, +but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to +travel by that time. This spending of the best part of one's life +earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the +least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to +India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to +England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret +at once. "What" exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all +the shanties in the land, "is not this railroad which we have built +a good thing?" Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you +might have done worse but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that +you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt. +Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve +dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my +unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and +sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with +potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven +acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the +preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One +farmer said that it was "good for nothing but to raise cheeping +squirrels on." I put no manure whatever on this land, not being the +owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much +again, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got out several cords +of stumps in plowing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time, +and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable +through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there. +The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, +and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder of my +fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the plowing, +though I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first season +were, for implements, seed, work, etc., .. The seed corn was +given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you plant +more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen +bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow +corn and turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income +from the farm was +Deducting the outgoes ............ . +There are left .................. . +beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was +made of the value of . the amount on hand much more than +balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things +considered, that is, considering the importance of a man's soul and +of today, notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, +nay, partly even because of its transient character, I believe that +that was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year. +The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land +which I required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the +experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many +celebrated works on husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if +one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and +raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient +quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to +cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to +spade up that than to use oxen to plow it, and to select a fresh +spot from time to time than to manure the old, and he could do all +his necessary farm work as it were with his left hand at odd hours +in the summer and thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, or +cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak impartially on this +point, and as one not interested in the success or failure of the +present economical and social arrangements. I was more independent +than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or +farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very +crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than they +already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I +should have been nearly as well off as before. +I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds +as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. +Men and oxen exchange work but if we consider necessary work only, +the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is +so much the larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work +in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boy's play. Certainly no +nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of +philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of +animals. True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a +nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there +should be. However, I should never have broken a horse or bull and +taken him to board for any work he might do for me, for fear I +should become a horseman or a herdsman merely and if society seems +to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one man's +gain is not another's loss, and that the stableboy has equal cause +with his master to be satisfied? Granted that some public works +would not have been constructed without this aid, and let man share +the glory of such with the ox and horse does it follow that he +could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in that +case? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but +luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable +that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other +words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only works +for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works for +the animal without him. Though we have many substantial houses of +brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by +the degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is +said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses +hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings but +there are very few halls for free worship or free speech in this +county. It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by +their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to +commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the BhagvatGeeta +than all the ruins of the East Towers and temples are the luxury +of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the +bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor +is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling +extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In Arcadia, +when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations are +possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of +themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if +equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One +piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high +as the moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of +Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall +that bounds an honest man's field than a hundredgated Thebes that +has wandered farther from the true end of life. The religion and +civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid +temples but what you might call Christianity does not. Most of the +stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself +alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them +so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough +to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, +whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the +Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent +some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the +religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all +the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the +United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring +is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. Mr. +Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his +Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to +Dobson Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to +look down on it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your high +towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who +undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he +said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle but I think that +I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. Many +are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East to +know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in +those days did not build them who were above such trifling. But +to proceed with my statistics. +By surveying, carpentry, and daylabor of various other kinds in +the village in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades as fingers, +I had earned .. The expense of food for eight months, namely, +from July th to March st, the time when these estimates were made, +though I lived there more than two years not counting potatoes, a +little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor +considering the value of what was on hand at the last date was +Rice .................... . / +Molasses ................. . Cheapest form of the +saccharine. +Rye meal ................. . / +Indian meal .............. . / Cheaper than rye. +Pork ..................... . +All experiments which failed +Flour .................... . Costs more than Indian meal, +both money and trouble. +Sugar .................... . +Lard ..................... . +Apples ................... . +Dried apple .............. . +Sweet potatoes ........... . +One pumpkin .............. . +One watermelon ........... . +Salt ..................... . +Yes, I did eat ., all told but I should not thus unblushingly +publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were +equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no +better in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish +for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck +which ravaged my beanfield effect his transmigration, as a +Tartar would say and devour him, partly for experiment's sake +but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a +musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good +practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready +dressed by the village butcher. +Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, +though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to +Oil and some household utensils ........ . +So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and +mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and +their bills have not yet been received and these are all and more +than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part +of the world were +House ................................. . +Farm one year ........................... . +Food eight months ....................... . +Clothing, etc., eight months ............ ./ +Oil, etc., eight months ................. . +In all ............................ ./ +I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to +get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold +Earned by daylabor .................... . +In all ............................ ., +which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of +. / on the one side this being very nearly the means with +which I started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred and +on the other, beside the leisure and independence and health thus +secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy +it. +These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive +they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain +value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some +account. It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone +cost me in money about twentyseven cents a week. It was, for +nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, +potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt and my +drink, water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who +love so well the philosophy of India. To meet the objections of +some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out +occasionally, as I always had done, and I trust shall have +opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my +domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I have stated, +a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative +statement like this. +I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost +incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in +this latitude that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, +and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory +dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of +purslane Portulaca oleracea which I gathered in my cornfield, +boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness of +the trivial name. And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, +in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of +ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even +the little variety which I used was a yielding to the demands of +appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass that +they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of +luxuries and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his +life because he took to drinking water only. +The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather +from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not +venture to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a +wellstocked larder. +Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine +hoecakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or +the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house but it +was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor, I tried flour +also but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most +convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little +amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, +tending and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching +eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had +to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I +kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. I made a +study of the ancient and indispensable art of breadmaking, +consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive +days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the +wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and +refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies +through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, +taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations +thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff +of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus +which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like +the vestal fire some precious bottleful, I suppose, first brought +over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its +influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows +over the land this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from +the village, till at length one morning I forgot the rules, and +scalded my yeast by which accident I discovered that even this was +not indispensable for my discoveries were not by the synthetic +but analytic process and I have gladly omitted it since, though +most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread +without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy +decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential +ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the +land of the living and I am glad to escape the trivialness of +carrying a bottleful in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and +discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more +respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other +can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I +put any salsoda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would +seem that I made it according to the recipe which Marcus Porcius +Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. "Panem depsticium sic +facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium +indito, aquae paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene +subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu." Which I take to mean, +"Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put +the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it +thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it +under a cover," that is, in a baking kettle. Not a word about +leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, +owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a +month. +Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs +in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and +fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and +independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold +in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly +used by any. For the most part the farmer gives to his cattle and +hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at +least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I saw +that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, +for the former will grow on the poorest land, and the latter does +not require the best, and grind them in a handmill, and so do +without rice and pork and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I +found by experiment that I could make a very good molasses either of +pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few +maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were growing +I could use various substitutes beside those which I have named. +"For," as the Forefathers sang, +"we can make liquor to sweeten our lips +Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnuttree chips." +Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this +might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did +without it altogether, I should probably drink the less water. I do +not learn that the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it. +Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was +concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get +clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a +farmer's family thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in +man for I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great +and memorable as that from the man to the farmer and in a new +country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not +permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same +price for which the land I cultivated was sold namely, eight +dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I +enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it. +There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me +such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food +alone and to strike at the root of the matter at once for the +root is faith I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on +board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand +much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to bear of +experiments of this kind being tried as that a young man tried for +a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth +for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. +The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old +women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in +mills, may be alarmed. +My furniture, part of which I made myself and the rest cost +me nothing of which I have not rendered an account consisted of a +bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a lookingglass three inches in +diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a +fryingpan, a dipper, a washbowl, two knives and forks, three +plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a +japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That +is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best +in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture +Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture +warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see +his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the +light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty +boxes? That is Spaulding's furniture. I could never tell from +inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a socalled rich man +or a poor one the owner always seemed povertystricken. Indeed, +the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load +looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties and if +one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what +do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuvioe at +last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave +this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were +buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough +country where our lines are cast without dragging them dragging +his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The +muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder man has +lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead set "Sir, if I may +be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?" If you are a seer, +whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much +that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his kitchen +furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not burn, and +he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway he can. +I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a +knothole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot +follow him. I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig, +compactlooking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of +his "furniture," as whether it is insured or not. "But what shall I +do with my furniture?" My gay butterfly is entangled in a +spider's web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to have +any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in +somebody's barn. I look upon England today as an old gentleman who +is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has +accumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to +burn great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. Throw away +the first three at least. It would surpass the powers of a well man +nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise +a sick one to lay down his bed and run. When I have met an +immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all +looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his +neck I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because +he had all that to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will +take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. +But perchance it would be wisest never to put one's paw into it. +I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for +curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and +I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk +nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade +my carpet and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still +better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has +provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping. +A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within +the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I +declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. +It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. +Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's +effects, for his life had not been ineffectual +"The evil that men do lives after them." +As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to +accumulate in his father's day. Among the rest was a dried +tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and +other dust holes, these things were not burned instead of a +bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or +increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, +bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and +dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they +will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust. +The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be +profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the +semblance of casting their slough annually they have the idea of +the thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not be +well if we were to celebrate such a "busk," or "feast of first +fruits," as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the +Mucclasse Indians? "When a town celebrates the busk," says he, +"having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, +pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all +their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and +cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town of their filth, +which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they +cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After +having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in +the town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the +gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general +amnesty is proclaimed all malefactors may return to their town." +"On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood +together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every +habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame." +They then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing +for three days, "and the four following days they receive visits and +rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like +manner purified and prepared themselves." +The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of +every fiftytwo years, in the belief that it was time for the world +to come to an end. +I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the +dictionary defines it, "outward and visible sign of an inward and +spiritual grace," than this, and I have no doubt that they were +originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they +have no Biblical record of the revelation. +For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the +labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a +year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my +winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for +study. I have thoroughly tried schoolkeeping, and found that my +expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my +income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and +believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did +not teach for the good of my fellowmen, but simply for a +livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade but I found that +it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I +should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid +that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. +When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a +living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends +being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and +seriously of picking huckleberries that surely I could do, and its +small profits might suffice for my greatest skill has been to +want but little so little capital it required, so little +distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my +acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I +contemplated this occupation as most like theirs ranging the hills +all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter +carelessly dispose of them so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I +also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens +to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the +city, by haycart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses +everything it handles and though you trade in messages from heaven, +the whole curse of trade attaches to the business. +As I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my +freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish +to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or +delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just +yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire +these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I +relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are "industrious," and appear +to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out +of worse mischief to such I have at present nothing to say. Those +who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, +I might advise to work twice as hard as they do work till they +pay for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found +that the occupation of a daylaborer was the most independent of +any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year +to support one. The laborer's day ends with the going down of the +sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, +independent of his labor but his employer, who speculates from +month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the +other. +In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to +maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, +if we will live simply and wisely as the pursuits of the simpler +nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not +necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his +brow, unless he sweats easier than I do. +One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, +told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the +means. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any +account for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have +found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many +different persons in the world as possible but I would have each +one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his +father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead. The youth may +build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that +which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical +point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave +keeps the polestar in his eye but that is sufficient guidance for +all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable +period, but we would preserve the true course. +Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer still +for a thousand, as a large house is not proportionally more +expensive than a small one, since one roof may cover, one cellar +underlie, and one wall separate several apartments. But for my +part, I preferred the solitary dwelling. Moreover, it will commonly +be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convince another of +the advantage of the common wall and when you have done this, the +common partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that +other may prove a bad neighbor, and also not keep his side in +repair. The only cooperation which is commonly possible is +exceedingly partial and superficial and what little true +cooperation there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony +inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will cooperate with equal +faith everywhere if he has not faith, he will continue to live like +the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To +cooperate in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get +our living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men +should travel together over the world, the one without money, +earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow, +the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to +see that they could not long be companions or cooperate, since one +would not operate at all. They would part at the first interesting +crisis in their adventures. Above all, as I have implied, the man +who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must +wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they +get off. +But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen +say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in +philanthropic enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a sense +of duty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasure also. There +are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake +the support of some poor family in the town and if I had nothing to +do for the devil finds employment for the idle I might try my +hand at some such pastime as that. However, when I have thought to +indulge myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an +obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as +comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as +to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly +preferred to remain poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted +in so many ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at +least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must +have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As for +Doinggood, that is one of the professions which are full. +Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am +satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I +should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular +calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the +universe from annihilation and I believe that a like but infinitely +greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I +would not stand between any man and his genius and to him who does +this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, +I would say, Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it +is most likely they will. +I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one no doubt +many of my readers would make a similar defence. At doing something +I will not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good I +do not hesitate to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire +but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. What good I +do, in the common sense of that word, must be aside from my main +path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Men say, +practically, Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming +mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go +about doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, I +should say rather, Set about being good. As if the sun should stop +when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star +of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin Goodfellow, +peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting +meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing +his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that +no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the meanwhile +too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it good, or +rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going about +him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly birth +by his beneficence, had the sun's chariot but one day, and drove out +of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the lower +streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and dried +up every spring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length +Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the +sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year. +There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness +tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a +certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious +design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry +and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which +fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are +suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me +some of its virus mingled with my blood. No in this case I +would rather suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man +to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if +I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever +fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as +much. Philanthropy is not love for one's fellowman in the broadest +sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in +his way, and has his reward but, comparatively speaking, what are a +hundred Howards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our +best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of +a philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any +good to me, or the like of me. +The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned +at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. +Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they +were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer +and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less +persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not +care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new +fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did. +Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it +be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, +spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We +make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold +and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his +taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he +will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy +Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged +clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more +fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped +into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip off +three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to +the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and +that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered +him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he +needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a +greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole +slopshop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of +evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who +bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing +the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives +in vain to relieve. It is the pious slavebreeder devoting the +proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday's liberty for the +rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in +their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed +themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income +in charity maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with +it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is +this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, +or to the remissness of the officers of justice? +Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently +appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated and it is our +selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day +here in Concord, praised a fellowtownsman to me, because, as he +said, he was kind to the poor meaning himself. The kind uncles and +aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers +and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of +learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, +literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, +Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, +whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a +place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They +were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood +and cant of this. The last were not England's best men and women +only, perhaps, her best philanthropists. +I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to +philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives +and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man's +uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and +leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea +for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by +quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man that some fragrance +be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our +intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, +but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he +is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. +The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance +of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. +We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and +ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread +by contagion. From what southern plains comes up the voice of +wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would +send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would +redeem? If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his +functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even for that is the +seat of sympathy he forthwith sets about reforming the world. +Being a microcosm himself, he discovers and it is a true +discovery, and he is the man to make it that the world has been +eating green apples to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a +great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the +children of men will nibble before it is ripe and straightway his +drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimau and the Patagonian, and +embraces the populous Indian and Chinese villages and thus, by a +few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the meanwhile +using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his +dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its +cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its +crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. I never +dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never +knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself. +I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy +with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of +God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come +to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his +generous companions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing +against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, that is a +penalty which reformed tobaccochewers have to pay though there are +things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against. If you +should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let +your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth +knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. Take your +time, and set about some free labor. +Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the +saints. Our hymnbooks resound with a melodious cursing of God and +enduring Him forever. One would say that even the prophets and +redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of +man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible +satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God. +All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn +it may appear all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does +me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it. +If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic, +magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and well as +Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, +and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an +overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of +the world. +I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of +Shiraz, that "they asked a wise man, saying Of the many celebrated +trees which the Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they +call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no +fruit what mystery is there in this? He replied, Each has its +appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of +which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and +withered to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being +always flourishing and of this nature are the azads, or religious +independents. Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory for +the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after +the race of caliphs is extinct if thy hand has plenty, be liberal +as the date tree but if it affords nothing to give away, be an +azad, or free man, like the cypress." +COMPLEMENTAL VERSES +The Pretensions of Poverty +Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch, +To claim a station in the firmament +Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub, +Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue +In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, +With roots and potherbs where thy right hand, +Tearing those humane passions from the mind, +Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, +Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, +And, Gorgonlike, turns active men to stone. +We not require the dull society +Of your necessitated temperance, +Or that unnatural stupidity +That knows nor joy nor sorrow nor your forc'd +Falsely exalted passive fortitude +Above the active. This low abject brood, +That fix their seats in mediocrity, +Become your servile minds but we advance +Such virtues only as admit excess, +Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, +Allseeing prudence, magnanimity +That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue +For which antiquity hath left no name, +But patterns only, such as Hercules, +Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell +And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere, +Study to know but what those worthies were. +T. CAREW +Where I Lived, and What I Lived For +At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider +every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed +the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In +imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were +to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer's +premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, +took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my +mind even put a higher price on it took everything but a deed of +it took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk +cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew +when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This +experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of realestate +broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the +landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a +sedes, a seat? better if a country seat. I discovered many a +site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might +have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village +was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said and there I +did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life saw how I could +let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring +come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may +place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An +afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, woodlot, and +pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to +stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to +the best advantage and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a +man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can +afford to let alone. +My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of +several farms the refusal was all I wanted but I never got my +fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to +actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had +begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a +wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with but before the owner gave me +a deed of it, his wife every man has such a wife changed her +mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release +him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and +it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten +cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, +I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried +it far enough or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for +just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a +present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and +materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a +rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the +landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded +without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes, +"I am monarch of all I survey, +My right there is none to dispute." +I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most +valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he +had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for +many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable +kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed +it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed +milk. +The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were its +complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a +mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a +broad field its bounding on the river, which the owner said +protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was +nothing to me the gray color and ruinous state of the house and +barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between +me and the last occupant the hollow and lichencovered apple trees, +nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have but +above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up +the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red +maples, through which I heard the housedog bark. I was in haste to +buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, +cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young +birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made +any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready +to carry it on like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders I +never heard what compensation he received for that and do all +those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might +pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it for I knew all +the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I +wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out +as I have said. +All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large +scale I have always cultivated a garden was, that I had had my +seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no +doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad and when +at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. +But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible +live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether +you are committed to a farm or the county jail. +Old Cato, whose "De Re Rustica" is my "Cultivator," says and +the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage +"When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not +to buy greedily nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not +think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the +more it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall not buy +greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried +in it first, that it may please me the more at last. +The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose +to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience +of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an +ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the +morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. +When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to +spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on +Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, , my house was not +finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, +without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, +weatherstained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at +night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and +window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the +morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied +that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my +imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this +auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain +which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered +cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might +trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were +such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken +strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning +wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted but few +are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth +everywhere. +The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a +boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions +in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret but the +boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of +time. With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some +progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly +clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the +builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I +did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere +within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within +doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. +The Harivansa says, "An abode without birds is like a meat without +seasoning." Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly +neighbor to the birds not by having imprisoned one, but having +caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those +which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those +smaller and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or +rarely, serenade a villager the wood thrush, the veery, the +scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many +others. +I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a +half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in +the midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and +about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord +Battle Ground but I was so low in the woods that the opposite +shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my +most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on +the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a +mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as +the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, +and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth +reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were +stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the +breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to +hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides +of mountains. +This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals +of a gentle rainstorm in August, when, both air and water being +perfectly still, but the sky overcast, midafternoon had all the +serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard +from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at +such a time and the clear portion of the air above it being, +shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and +reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more +important. From a hilltop near by, where the wood had been +recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the +pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore +there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other +suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded +valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and +over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the +horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could +catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more +distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those trueblue coins from +heaven's own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in +other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or +beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water +in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One +value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you +see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important +as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from +this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I +distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, +like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like +a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of +interverting water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt +was but dry land. +Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did +not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture enough +for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which the opposite +shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the +steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all the roving families +of men. "There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy +freely a vast horizon" said Damodara, when his herds required new +and larger pastures. +Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those +parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most +attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed +nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable +places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, +behind the constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far from noise and +disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in +such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the +universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near +to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was +really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had +left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest +neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was +that part of creation where I had squatted +"There was a shepherd that did live, +And held his thoughts as high +As were the mounts whereon his flocks +Did hourly feed him by." +What should we think of the shepherd's life if his flocks always +wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts? +Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal +simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have +been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up +early and bathed in the pond that was a religious exercise, and one +of the best things which I did. They say that characters were +engraven on the bathing tub of King Tchingthang to this effect +"Renew thyself completely each day do it again, and again, and +forever again." I can understand that. Morning brings back the +heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito +making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at +earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I +could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's +requiem itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own +wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it a +standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and +fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable +season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least +somnolence in us and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes +which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be +expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not +awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some +servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and +aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial +music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air +to a higher life than we fell asleep from and thus the darkness +bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. +That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, +more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has +despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. +After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or +its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries +again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should +say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The +Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and +art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date +from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the +children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose +elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a +perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the +attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there +is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. +Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have +not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they +had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed +something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor but +only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual +exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. +To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was +quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? +We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by +mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which +does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more +encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate +his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to +paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a +few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and +paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which +morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the +highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its +details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and +critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry +information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how +this might be done. +I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to +front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn +what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I +had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is +so dear nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite +necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of +life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all +that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive +life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it +proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of +it, and publish its meanness to the world or if it were sublime, to +know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in +my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange +uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have +somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to +"glorify God and enjoy him forever." +Still we live meanly, like ants though the fable tells us that +we were long ago changed into men like pygmies we fight with +cranes it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best +virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. +Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need +to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add +his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, +simplicity I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a +hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and +keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this +chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and +quicksands and thousandandone items to be allowed for, that a man +has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not +make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great +calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of +three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one instead of a +hundred dishes, five and reduce other things in proportion. Our +life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its +boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you +how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its +socalled internal improvements, which, by the way are all external +and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown +establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own +traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation +and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land and the +only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and +more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It +lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have +commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride +thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not but +whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little +uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and +devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our +lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads +are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay +at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not +ride on the railroad it rides upon us. Did you ever think what +those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, +an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they +are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They +are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is +laid down and run over so that, if some have the pleasure of riding +on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when +they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary +sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop +the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an +exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every +five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it +is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again. +Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are +determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a +stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches +today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven't any of any +consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly +keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the +parish bellrope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, +there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, +notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so +many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, +but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save +property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much +more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did +not set it on fire or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, +if that is done as handsomely yes, even if it were the parish +church itself. Hardly a man takes a halfhour's nap after dinner, +but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news?" +as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give +directions to be waked every halfhour, doubtless for no other +purpose and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. +After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. +"Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on +this globe" and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man +has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River never +dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave +of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself. +For my part, I could easily do without the postoffice. I think +that there are very few important communications made through it. +To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters +in my life I wrote this some years ago that were worth the +postage. The pennypost is, commonly, an institution through which +you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so +often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any +memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or +murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel +wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the +Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers +in the winter we never need read of another. One is enough. If +you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad +instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is +called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over +their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was +such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn +the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of +plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the +pressure news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a +twelvemonth, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. +As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos +and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to +time in the right proportions they may have changed the names a +little since I saw the papers and serve up a bullfight when +other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give +us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as +the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the +newspapers and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of +news from that quarter was the revolution of and if you have +learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need +attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely +pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the +newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French +revolution not excepted. +What news how much more important to know what that is which +was never old "Kieouheyu great dignitary of the state of Wei +sent a man to Khoungtseu to know his news. Khoungtseu caused the +messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms +What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect My +master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot +come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher +remarked What a worthy messenger What a worthy messenger" The +preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day +of rest at the end of the week for Sunday is the fit conclusion +of an illspent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new +one with this one other draggletail of a sermon, should shout +with thundering voice, "Pause Avast Why so seeming fast, but +deadly slow?" +Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while +reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, +and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with +such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian +Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and +has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. +When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and +worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty +fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This +is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and +slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish +and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which +still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play +life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who +fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by +experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that +"there was a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his +native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to +maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous +race with which he lived. One of his father's ministers having +discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception +of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. +So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances +in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth +is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to +be Brahme." I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this +mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the +surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a +man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where, +think you, would the "Milldam" go to? If he should give us an +account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize +the place in his description. Look at a meetinghouse, or a +courthouse, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwellinghouse, and say what +that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to +pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the +outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and +after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and +sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and +here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never +be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to +apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual +instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The +universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions +whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us +spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never +yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at +least could accomplish it. +Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be +thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that +falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, +gently and without perturbation let company come and let company +go, let the bells ring and the children cry determined to make a +day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let +us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool +called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this +danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With +unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another +way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it +whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why +should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. +Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward +through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, +and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, +through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, +through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and +religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we +can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake and then begin, +having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place +where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamppost safely, +or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future +ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had +gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to +face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, +as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you +through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your +mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we +are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel +cold in the extremities if we are alive, let us go about our +business. +Time is but the stream I go afishing in. I drink at it but +while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. +Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink +deeper fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I +cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I +have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was +born. The intellect is a cleaver it discerns and rifts its way +into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with +my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all +my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my +head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout +and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through +these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts +so by the diviningrod and thin rising vapors I judge and here I +will begin to mine. +Reading +With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, +all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for +certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In +accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a +family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal but in +dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor +accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner +of the veil from the statue of the divinity and still the trembling +robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, +since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that +now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe no time +has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we +really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, +nor future. +My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to +serious reading, than a university and though I was beyond the +range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come +within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, +whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely +copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mr +Udd, "Being seated, to run through the region of the +spiritual world I have had this advantage in books. To be +intoxicated by a single glass of wine I have experienced this +pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." I +kept Homer's Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked +at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at +first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same +time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the +prospect of such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books +of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me +ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that I lived. +The student may read Homer or AEschylus in the Greek without +danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in +some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to +their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of +our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate +times and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and +line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of +what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and +fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring +us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as +solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and +curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and +costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, +which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be +perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the +farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. +Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length +make way for more modern and practical studies but the adventurous +student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be +written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics +but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles +which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern +inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well +omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to +read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that +will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the +day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, +the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books +must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. +It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that +nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval +between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and +the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a +tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it +unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the +maturity and experience of that if that is our mother tongue, this +is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too +significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in +order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and +Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident +of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages for +these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but +in the select language of literature. They had not learned the +nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which +they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead +a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of +Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their +own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then +first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from +that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and +Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few +scholars read, and a few scholars only are still reading it. +However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of +eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or +above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars +is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may +read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. +They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous +breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to +be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a +transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who +can hear him but the writer, whose more equable life is his +occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd +which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of +mankind, to all in any age who can understand him. +No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his +expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of +relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more +universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest +to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not +only be read but actually breathed from all human lips not be +represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the +breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought +becomes a modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have imparted +to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a +maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own +serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them +against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of +the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. +Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on +the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to +plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common +sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and +irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or +emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and +perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his +coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of +wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still +higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is +sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and +insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense +by the pains which be takes to secure for his children that +intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels and thus it is +that he becomes the founder of a family. +Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the +language in which they were written must have a very imperfect +knowledge of the history of the human race for it is remarkable +that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern +tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a +transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor +AEschylus, nor Virgil even works as refined, as solidly done, and +as beautiful almost as the morning itself for later writers, say +what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the +elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary +labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never +knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the +learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and +appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics +which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic +but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still +further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas +and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, +and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited +their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may +hope to scale heaven at last. +The works of the great poets have never yet been read by +mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been +read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not +astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry +convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep +accounts and not be cheated in trade but of reading as a noble +intellectual exercise they know little or nothing yet this only is +reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and +suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to +stand on tiptoe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours +to. +I think that having learned our letters we should read the best +that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our ababs, and +words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on +the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied +if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the +wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives +vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy +reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating +Library entitled "Little Reading," which I thought referred to a +town of that name which I had not been to. There are those who, +like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even +after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer +nothing to be wasted. If others are the machines to provide this +provender, they are the machines to read it. They read the nine +thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as +none had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true +love run smooth at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get +up again and go on how some poor unfortunate got up on to a +steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry and +then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings +the bell for all the world to come together and hear, O dear how he +did get down again For my part, I think that they had better +metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man +weathercocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, +and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and not come +down at all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next time +the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meetinghouse +burn down. "The Skip of the TipToeHop, a Romance of the Middle +Ages, by the celebrated author of "TittleTolTan,' to appear in +monthly parts a great rush don't all come together." All this +they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and +with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no +sharpening, just as some little fouryearold bencher his twocent +giltcovered edition of Cinderella without any improvement, that +I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more +skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness +of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general +deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This +sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure +wheat or ryeandIndian in almost every oven, and finds a surer +market. +The best books are not read even by those who are called good +readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this +town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very +good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and +spell. Even the collegebred and socalled liberally educated men +here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the +English classics and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the +ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will +know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become +acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who +takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, +but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth and +when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this +world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. +This is about as much as the collegebred generally do or aspire to +do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has +just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will +find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he +comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose +praises are familiar even to the socalled illiterate he will find +nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, +there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has +mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally +mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and +has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader and as +for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town +can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation +but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go +considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar but here are +golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and +whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of +and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers +and classbooks, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and +storybooks, which are for boys and beginners and our reading, our +conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only +of pygmies and manikins. +I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord +soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I +hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my +townsman and I never saw him my next neighbor and I never heard +him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually +is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie +on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and +lowlived and illiterate and in this respect I confess I do not +make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my +townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who +has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. +We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by +first knowing how good they were. We are a race of titmen, and +soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns +of the daily paper. +It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There +are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we +could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the +morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on +the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in +his life from the reading of a book The book exists for us, +perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The +at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These +same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their +turn occurred to all the wise men not one has been omitted and +each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and +his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The +solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has +had his second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is +driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by +his faith, may think it is not true but Zoroaster, thousands of +years ago, travelled the same road and had the same experience but +he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors +accordingly, and is even said to have invented and established +worship among men. Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and +through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus +Christ himself, and let "our church" go by the board. +We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century and are making +the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this +village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my +townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance +either of us. We need to be provoked goaded like oxen, as we +are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common +schools, schools for infants only but excepting the halfstarved +Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library +suggested by the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on +almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental +aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not +leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is +time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants +the fellows of universities, with leisure if they are, indeed, so +well off to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. +Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? +Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under +the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to +us? Alas what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we +are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. +In this country, the village should in some respects take the place +of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine +arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and +refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and +traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money +for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. +This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a townhouse, +thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on +living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred +years. The one hundred and twentyfive dollars annually subscribed +for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum +raised in the town. If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why +should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century +offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we +will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the +best newspaper in the world at once? not be sucking the pap of +"neutral family" papers, or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New +England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, +and we will see if they know anything. Why should we leave it to +Harper Brothers and Redding Co. to select our reading? As the +nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever +conduces to his culture genius learning wit books +paintings statuary music philosophical instruments, and the +like so let the village do not stop short at a pedagogue, a +parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our +Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock +with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our +institutions and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more +flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's. New England +can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and +board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is +the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble +villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the +river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the +darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us. +Sounds +But while we are confined to books, though the most select and +classic, and read only particular written languages, which are +themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of +forgetting the language which all things and events speak without +metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, +but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will +be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No +method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever +on the alert. What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, +no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most +admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking +always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student +merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk +on into futurity. +I did not read books the first summer I hoed beans. Nay, I +often did better than this. There were times when I could not +afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, +whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. +Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I +sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, +amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude +and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless +through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or +the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was +reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in +the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would +have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much +over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals +mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most +part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to +light some work of mine it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, +and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the +birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the +sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had +I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my +nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any +heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the +ticking of a clock for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is +said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one +word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward +for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing +day." This was sheer idleness to my fellowtownsmen, no doubt but +if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should +not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in +himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly +reprove his indolence. +I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those +who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the +theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never +ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an +end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating +our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we +should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely +enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every +hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I +rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, +bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, +and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom +scrubbed it clean and white and by the time the villagers had +broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to +allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost +uninterupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out +on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my +threelegged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen +and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to +get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was +sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat +there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, +and hear the free wind blow on them so much more interesting most +familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits +on the next bough, lifeeverlasting grows under the table, and +blackberry vines run round its legs pine cones, chestnut burs, and +strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the +way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, +chairs, and bedsteads because they once stood in their midst. +My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of +the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and +hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow +footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, +blackberry, and lifeeverlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub +oaks and sand cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May, +the sand cherry Cerasus pumila adorned the sides of the path with +its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its +short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with goodsized +and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. +I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely +palatable. The sumach Rhus glabra grew luxuriantly about the +house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and +growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate +tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large +buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which +had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into +graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter and +sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow and +tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly +fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air +stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses +of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, +gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their +weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs. +As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling +about my clearing the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by two and +threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pine +boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air a fish hawk +dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish a mink +steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the +shore the sedge is bending under the weight of the reedbirds +flitting hither and thither and for the last halfhour I have heard +the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like +the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the +country. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as +I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, but +ere long ran away and came home again, quite down at the heel and +homesick. He had never seen such a dull and outoftheway place +the folks were all gone off why, you couldn't even hear the +whistle I doubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts now +"In truth, our village has become a butt +For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er +Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is Concord." +The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods +south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its +causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The +men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, +bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and +apparently they take me for an employee and so I am. I too would +fain be a trackrepairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth. +The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and +winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some +farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are +arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country +traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, they +shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard +sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your +groceries, country your rations, countrymen Nor is there any man +so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here's +your pay for them screams the countryman's whistle timber like +long batteringrams going twenty miles an hour against the city's +walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavyladen that +dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the +country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills +are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up +comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth up comes the silk, down +goes the woollen up come the books, but down goes the wit that +writes them. +When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with +planetary motion or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows +not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever +revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning +curve with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in +golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have +seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light as +if this traveling demigod, this cloudcompeller, would ere long take +the sunset sky for the livery of his train when I hear the iron +horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the +earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils +what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the +new Mythology I don't know, it seems as if the earth had got a race +now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made the +elements their servants for noble ends If the cloud that hangs +over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as +beneficent as that which floats over the farmer's fields, then the +elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their +errands and be their escort. +I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling +that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. +Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and +higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals +the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a +celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the +earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the iron horse +was up early this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the +mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened +thus early to put the vital heat in him and get him off. If the +enterprise were as innocent as it is early If the snow lies deep, +they strap on his snowshoes, and, with the giant plow, plow a furrow +from the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a +following drillbarrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floating +merchandise in the country for seed. All day the firesteed flies +over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am +awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some +remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and +snow and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to +start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or +perchance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the +superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool +his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the +enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and +unwearied +Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where +once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart +these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants +this moment stopping at some brilliant stationhouse in town or +city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal +Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the +cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with +such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so +far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one +wellconducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men +improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? +Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the +stageoffice? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of +the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has +wrought that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, +once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, +are on hand when the bell rings. To do things "railroad fashion" is +now the byword and it is worth the while to be warned so often and +so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no +stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, +in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never +turns aside. Let that be the name of your engine. Men are +advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be +shot toward particular points of the compass yet it interferes with +no man's business, and the children go to school on the other track. +We live the steadier for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of +Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your own +is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then. +What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. +It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men +every day go about their business with more or less courage and +content, doing more even than they suspect, and perchance better +employed than they could have consciously devised. I am less +affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front +line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the +men who inhabit the snowplow for their winter quarters who have not +merely the threeo'clockinthemorning courage, which Bonaparte +thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so +early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of +their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the Great Snow, +perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, I bear +the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their +chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without +long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England northeast +snowstorm, and I behold the plowmen covered with snow and rime, +their heads peering, above the mouldboard which is turning down +other than daisies and the nests of field mice, like bowlders of the +Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe. +Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, +adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods +withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental +experiments, and hence its singular success. I am refreshed and +expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the +stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf +to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, +and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. +I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the +palmleaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next +summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunny +bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This carload of torn sails is +more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into +paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the history +of the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They +are proofsheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from +the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, +risen four dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was +split up pine, spruce, cedar first, second, third, and fourth +qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and +moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which +will get far among the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in +bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest condition to which +cotton and linen descend, the final result of dress of patterns +which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in Milwaukee, as +those splendid articles, English, French, or American prints, +ginghams, muslins, etc., gathered from all quarters both of fashion +and poverty, going to become paper of one color or a few shades +only, on which, forsooth, will be written tales of real life, high +and low, and founded on fact This closed car smells of salt fish, +the strong New England and commercial scent, reminding me of the +Grand Banks and the fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, +thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and +putting, the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you +may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the +teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun, wind, and rain +behind it and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it +up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last +his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal, +vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, +and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent +dunfish for a Saturday's dinner. Next Spanish hides, with the +tails still preserving their twist and the angle of elevation they +had when the oxen that wore them were careering over the pampas of +the Spanish Main a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost +hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices. I confess, +that practically speaking, when I have learned a man's real +disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse +in this state of existence. As the Orientals say, "A cur's tail may +be warmed, and pressed, and bound round with ligatures, and after a +twelve years' labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its +natural form." The only effectual cure for such inveteracies as +these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe is what +is usually done with them, and then they will stay put and stick. +Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directed to John Smith, +Cuttingsville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who +imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands +over his bulkhead and thinks of the last arrivals on the coast, how +they may affect the price for him, telling his customers this +moment, as he has told them twenty times before this morning, that +he expects some by the next train of prime quality. It is +advertised in the Cuttingsville Times. +While these things go up other things come down. Warned by the +whizzing sound, I look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn +on far northern hills, which has winged its way over the Green +Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the +township within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it +going +"to be the mast +Of some great ammiral." +And hark here comes the cattletrain bearing the cattle of a +thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cowyards in the air, +drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their +flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves +blown from the mountains by the September gales. The air is filled +with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as +if a pastoral valley were going by. When the old bellwether at the +head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and +the little hills like lambs. A carload of drovers, too, in the +midst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone, but +still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of office. +But their dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to them they are +quite thrown out they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them +barking behind the Peterboro' Hills, or panting up the western slope +of the Green Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their +vocation, too, is gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below par +now. They will slink back to their kennels in disgrace, or +perchance run wild and strike a league with the wolf and the fox. +So is your pastoral life whirled past and away. But the bell rings, +and I must get off the track and let the cars go by +What's the railroad to me? +I never go to see +Where it ends. +It fills a few hollows, +And makes banks for the swallows, +It sets the sand ablowing, +And the blackberries agrowing, +but I cross it like a cartpath in the woods. I will not have my +eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing. +Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with +them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am +more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, +my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a +carriage or team along the distant highway. +Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, +Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, +sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the +wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound +acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the +horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard +at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, +a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening +atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by +the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in this case a +melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with +every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which +the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to +vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein +is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what +was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood +the same trivial words and notes sung by a woodnymph. +At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon beyond +the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at first I would mistake +it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom I was sometimes +serenaded, who might be straying over hill and dale but soon I was +not unpleasantly disappointed when it was prolonged into the cheap +and natural music of the cow. I do not mean to be satirical, but to +express my appreciation of those youths' singing, when I state that +I perceived clearly that it was akin to the music of the cow, and +they were at length one articulation of Nature. +Regularly at halfpast seven, in one part of the summer, after +the evening train had gone by, the whippoorwills chanted their +vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the +ridgepole of the house. They would begin to sing almost with as +much precision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular time, +referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. I had a rare +opportunity to become acquainted with their habits. Sometimes I +heard four or five at once in different parts of the wood, by +accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that I +distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that +singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web, only +proportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round +me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when +probably I was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout the +night, and were again as musical as ever just before and about dawn. +When other birds are still, the screech owls take up the strain, +like mourning women their ancient ululu. Their dismal scream is +truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags It is no honest and blunt +tuwhit tuwho of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn +graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers +remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the +infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful +responses, trilled along the woodside reminding me sometimes of +music and singing birds as if it were the dark and tearful side of +music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are the +spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls +that once in human shape nightwalked the earth and did the deeds of +darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or +threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a +new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our +common dwelling. Ohoooo that I never had been borrrrn +sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the +restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then +that I never had been borrrrn echoes another on the farther +side with tremulous sincerity, and borrrrn comes faintly +from far in the Lincoln woods. +I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand you could +fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as if she meant by +this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir the dying moans +of a human being some poor weak relic of mortality who has left +hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on +entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling +melodiousness I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I +try to imitate it expressive of a mind which has reached the +gelatinous, mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy and +courageous thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane +howlings. But now one answers from far woods in a strain made +really melodious by distance Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo and indeed +for the most part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether +heard by day or night, summer or winter. +I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and +maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps +and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and +undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent +the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day +the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the +single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks +circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and +the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath but now a more dismal and +fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to +express the meaning of Nature there. +Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of wagons over +bridges a sound heard farther than almost any other at night +the baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of some +disconsolate cow in a distant barnyard. In the meanwhile all the +shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of +ancient winebibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to +sing a catch in their Stygian lake if the Walden nymphs will +pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there +are frogs there who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of +their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and +solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, +and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet +intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere +saturation and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, +with his chin upon a heartleaf, which serves for a napkin to his +drooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of +the once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the +ejaculation trrroonk, trrroonk, trrroonk and straightway +comes over the water from some distant cove the same password +repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to +his mark and when this observance has made the circuit of the +shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, +trrroonk and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least +distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no +mistake and then the howl goes round again and again, until the sun +disperses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not under the +pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and pausing for +a reply. +I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cockcrowing from +my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while to keep +a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of +this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of +any bird's, and if they could be naturalized without being +domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our +woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the +owl and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses +when their lords' clarions rested No wonder that man added this +bird to his tame stock to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. +To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, +their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, +clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the +feebler notes of other birds think of it It would put nations +on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and +earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably +healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign bird's note is celebrated +by the poets of all countries along with the notes of their native +songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more +indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his +lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the +Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his voice but its shrill sound +never roused me from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, +pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of +domestic sounds neither the churn, nor the spinningwheel, nor even +the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children +crying, to comfort one. An oldfashioned man would have lost his +senses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for +they were starved out, or rather were never baited in only +squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whippoorwill on the +ridgepole, a blue jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or +woodchuck under the house, a screech owl or a cat owl behind it, a +flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to +bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild +plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow +nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard but unfenced nature +reaching up to your very sills. A young forest growing up under +your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through +into your cellar sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against +the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the +house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale a +pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house for +fuel. Instead of no path to the frontyard gate in the Great Snow +no gate no frontyard and no path to the civilized world. +Solitude +This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, +and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a +strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the +stony shore of the pond in my shirtsleeves, though it is cool as +well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, +all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump +to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne +on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the +fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath yet, +like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small +waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the +smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still +blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some +creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never +complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey +now the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods +without fear. They are Nature's watchmen links which connect the +days of animated life. +When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there +and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of +evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. +They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the +forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave, +either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, +woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always +tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended +twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what +sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a +flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as +far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering +odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the +passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent +of his pipe. +There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is +never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, +nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by +us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. +For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square +miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by +men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible +from any place but the hilltops within half a mile of my own. I +have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself a distant view of +the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the +fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most +part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as +much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun +and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night +there was never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door, +more than if I were the first or last man unless it were in the +spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish +for pouts they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond of +their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness but they +soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left "the world to +darkness and to me," and the black kernel of the night was never +profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe that men are +generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are +all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. +Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the +most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural +object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. +There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst +of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a +storm but it was AEolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. +Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar +sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that +nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters +my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and +melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, +it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so +long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the +potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on +the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. +Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I +were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I +am conscious of as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands +which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. +I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I +have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of +solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the +woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man +was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was +something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a +slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In +the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was +suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in +the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around +my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once +like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of +human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them +since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy +and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence +of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed +to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me +and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no +place could ever be strange to me again. +"Mourning untimely consumes the sad +Few are their days in the land of the living, +Beautiful daughter of Toscar." +Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rainstorms in +the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon +as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and +pelting when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which +many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those +driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the +maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the +deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all +entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy +thundershower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the +pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove +from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches +wide, as you would groove a walkingstick. I passed it again the +other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that +mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless +bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men +frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down +there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and +nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such This whole +earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, +think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, +the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? +Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This +which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. +What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows +and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs +can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want +most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the +postoffice, the barroom, the meetinghouse, the schoolhouse, the +grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, +but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our +experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near +the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary +with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will +dig his cellar.... I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who +has accumulated what is called "a handsome property" though I +never got a fair view of it on the Walden road, driving a pair of +cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to +give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very +sure I liked it passably well I was not joking. And so I went home +to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the +mud to Brighton or Brighttown which place he would reach some +time in the morning. +Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes +indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is +always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For +the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to +make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our +distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions +their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being +executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with +whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are. +"How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of +Heaven and of Earth" +"We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them we seek to +hear them, and we do not hear them identified with the substance of +things, they cannot be separated from them." +"They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify +their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to +offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean +of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our +left, on our right they environ us on all sides." +We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little +interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips +a little while under these circumstances have our own thoughts to +cheer us? Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as an +abandoned orphan it must of necessity have neighbors." +With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a +conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and +their consequences and all things, good and bad, go by us like a +torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the +driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I +may be affected by a theatrical exhibition on the other hand, I may +not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much +more. I only know myself as a human entity the scene, so to speak, +of thoughts and affections and am sensible of a certain doubleness +by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However +intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism +of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but +spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is +no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of +life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, +a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This +doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. +I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. +To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and +dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that +was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more +lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our +chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be +where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that +intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent +student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as +solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in +the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel +lonesome, because he is employed but when he comes home at night he +cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but +must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as he +thinks, remunerate himself for his day's solitude and hence he +wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and +most of the day without ennui and "the blues" but he does not +realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in +his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in +turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, +though it may be a more condensed form of it. +Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, +not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We +meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of +that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a +certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this +frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. +We meet at the postoffice, and at the sociable, and about the +fireside every night we live thick and are in each other's way, and +stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect +for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all +important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a +factory never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better +if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. +The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him. +I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and +exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by +the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his +diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be +real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we +may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural +society, and come to know that we are never alone. +I have a great deal of company in my house especially in the +morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that +some one may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely +than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond +itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has +not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of +its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there +sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone +but the devil, he is far from being alone he sees a great deal of +company he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or +dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horsefly, +or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a +weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April +shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. +I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the +snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler +and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, +and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods who tells me stories +of old time and of new eternity and between us we manage to pass a +cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, +even without apples or cider a most wise and humorous friend, +whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe +or Whalley and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where +he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, +invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to +stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables for +she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back +farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every +fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents +occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who +delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all +her children yet. +The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature of sun +and wind and rain, of summer and winter such health, such cheer, +they afford forever and such sympathy have they ever with our race, +that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, +and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and +the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any +man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have +intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable +mould myself? +What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? +Not my or thy greatgrandfather's, but our greatgrandmother +Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has +kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, +and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, +instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron +and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow +blackschooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry +bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning +air If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, +why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for +the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to +morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite +till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples +long ere that and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no +worshipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herbdoctor +AEsculapius, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent +in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the serpent +sometimes drinks but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, who was +the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of +restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. She was probably the +only thoroughly soundconditioned, healthy, and robust young lady +that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring. +Visitors +I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough +to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any fullblooded +man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might +possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the barroom, if my +business called me thither. +I had three chairs in my house one for solitude, two for +friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and +unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but +they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising +how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had +twentyfive or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my +roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come +very near to one another. Many of our houses, both public and +private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls +and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of +peace, appear to be extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They +are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin +which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons +before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come +creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, +which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement. +One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, +the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest +when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room +for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two +before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have +overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last +and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it +may plow out again through the side of his head. Also, our +sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the +interval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and +natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between +them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to +a companion on the opposite side. In my house we were so near that +we could not begin to hear we could not speak low enough to be +heard as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that +they break each other's undulations. If we are merely loquacious +and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, +cheek by jowl, and feel each other's breath but if we speak +reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all +animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we +would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which +is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, +but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each +other's voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for +the convenience of those who are hard of hearing but there are many +fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. As the +conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we +gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall +in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough. +My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for +company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood +behind my house. Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests +came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and +dusted the furniture and kept the things in order. +If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal, and it +was no interruption to conversation to be stirring a hastypudding, +or watching the rising and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, +in the meanwhile. But if twenty came and sat in my house there was +nothing said about dinner, though there might be bread enough for +two, more than if eating were a forsaken habit but we naturally +practised abstinence and this was never felt to be an offence +against hospitality, but the most proper and considerate course. +The waste and decay of physical life, which so often needs repair, +seemed miraculously retarded in such a case, and the vital vigor +stood its ground. I could entertain thus a thousand as well as +twenty and if any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my +house when they found me at home, they may depend upon it that I +sympathized with them at least. So easy is it, though many +housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the +place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners +you give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from +frequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by +the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very +polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I think I +shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the +motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser which one of my visitors +inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for a card +"Arrived there, the little house they fill, +Ne looke for entertainment where none was +Rest is their feast, and all things at their will +The noblest mind the best contentment has." +When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth Colony, went +with a companion on a visit of ceremony to Massasoit on foot through +the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well +received by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day. +When the night arrived, to quote their own words "He laid us on +the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the +other, it being only planks laid a foot from the ground and a thin +mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed +by and upon us so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of +our journey." At one o'clock the next day Massasoit "brought two +fishes that he had shot," about thrice as big as a bream. "These +being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them +the most eat of them. This meal only we had in two nights and a +day and had not one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our +journey fasting." Fearing that they would be lightheaded for want +of food and also sleep, owing to "the savages' barbarous singing, +for they use to sing themselves asleep," and that they might get +home while they had strength to travel, they departed. As for +lodging, it is true they were but poorly entertained, though what +they found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor but +as far as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indians could +have done better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they were +wiser than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to +their guests so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing +about it. Another time when Winslow visited them, it being a season +of plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect. +As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had more +visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period in my +life I mean that I had some. I met several there under more +favorable circumstances than I could anywhere else. But fewer came +to see me on trivial business. In this respect, my company was +winnowed by my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so far +within the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of society +empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs were concerned, +only the finest sediment was deposited around me. Beside, there +were wafted to me evidences of unexplored and uncultivated +continents on the other side. +Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or +Paphlagonian man he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am +sorry I cannot print it here a Canadian, a woodchopper and +postmaker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last +supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has heard of +Homer, and, "if it were not for books," would "not know what to do +rainy days," though perhaps he has not read one wholly through for +many rainy seasons. Some priest who could pronounce the Greek +itself taught him to read his verse in the Testament in his native +parish far away and now I must translate to him, while he holds the +book, Achilles' reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance. +"Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?" +"Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia? +They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor, +And Peleus lives, son of AEacus, among the Myrmidons, +Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve." +He says, "That's good." He has a great bundle of white oak bark +under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. "I +suppose there's no harm in going after such a thing today," says +he. To him Homer was a great writer, though what his writing was +about he did not know. A more simple and natural man it would be +hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombre moral hue +over the world, seemed to have hardly any existance for him. He was +about twentyeight years old, and had left Canada and his father's +house a dozen years before to work in the States, and earn money to +buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. He was cast +in the coarsest mould a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully +carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and dull +sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with expression. +He wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy woolcolored greatcoat, and +cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying +his dinner to his work a couple of miles past my house for he +chopped all summer in a tin pail cold meats, often cold +woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dangled by a string +from his belt and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came along +early, crossing my beanfield, though without anxiety or haste to +get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit. He wasn't agoing to hurt +himself. He didn't care if he only earned his board. Frequently he +would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught a +woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to dress it and +leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, after +deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in +the pond safely till nightfall loving to dwell long upon these +themes. He would say, as he went by in the morning, "How thick the +pigeons are If working every day were not my trade, I could get +all the meat I should want by huntingpigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, +partridges by gosh I could get all I should want for a week in +one day." +He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and +ornaments in his art. He cut his trees level and close to the +ground, that the sprouts which came up afterward might be more +vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps and instead of +leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he would pare it +away to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off with +your hand at last. +He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so +happy withal a well of good humor and contentment which overflowed +at his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at +his work in the woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with a +laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Canadian +French, though he spoke English as well. When I approached him he +would suspend his work, and with halfsuppressed mirth lie along the +trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner +bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed and +talked. Such an exuberance of animal spirits had he that he +sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground with laughter at +anything which made him think and tickled him. Looking round upon +the trees he would exclaim "By George I can enjoy myself well +enough here chopping I want no better sport." Sometimes, when at +leisure, he amused himself all day in the woods with a pocket +pistol, firing salutes to himself at regular intervals as he walked. +In the winter he had a fire by which at noon he warmed his coffee in +a kettle and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner the chickadees +would sometimes come round and alight on his arm and peck at the +potato in his fingers and he said that he "liked to have the little +fellers about him." +In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical +endurance and contentment he was cousin to the pine and the rock. I +asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night, after working +all day and he answered, with a sincere and serious look, +"Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life." But the intellectual and +what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. +He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in +which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil +is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the +degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but +kept a child. When Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and +contentment for his portion, and propped him on every side with +reverence and reliance, that he might live out his threescore years +and ten a child. He was so genuine and unsophisticated that no +introduction would serve to introduce him, more than if you +introduced a woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to find him out +as you did. He would not play any part. Men paid him wages for +work, and so helped to feed and clothe him but he never exchanged +opinions with them. He was so simply and naturally humble if he +can be called humble who never aspires that humility was no +distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it. Wiser men +were demigods to him. If you told him that such a one was coming, +he did as if he thought that anything so grand would expect nothing +of himself, but take all the responsibility on itself, and let him +be forgotten still. He never heard the sound of praise. He +particularly reverenced the writer and the preacher. Their +performances were miracles. When I told him that I wrote +considerably, he thought for a long time that it was merely the +handwriting which I meant, for he could write a remarkably good hand +himself. I sometimes found the name of his native parish handsomely +written in the snow by the highway, with the proper French accent, +and knew that he had passed. I asked him if he ever wished to write +his thoughts. He said that he had read and written letters for +those who could not, but he never tried to write thoughts no, he +could not, he could not tell what to put first, it would kill him, +and then there was spelling to be attended to at the same time +I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked him if +he did not want the world to be changed but he answered with a +chuckle of surprise in his Canadian accent, not knowing that the +question had ever been entertained before, "No, I like it well +enough." It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to +have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing +of things in general yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had +not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as +Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him +of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told me +that when he met him sauntering through the village in his small +closefitting cap, and whistling to himself, he reminded him of a +prince in disguise. +His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which last +he was considerably expert. The former was a sort of cyclopaedia to +him, which he supposed to contain an abstract of human knowledge, as +indeed it does to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him on +the various reforms of the day, and he never failed to look at them +in the most simple and practical light. He had never heard of such +things before. Could he do without factories? I asked. He had +worn the homemade Vermont gray, he said, and that was good. Could +he dispense with tea and coffee? Did this country afford any +beverage beside water? He had soaked hemlock leaves in water and +drank it, and thought that was better than water in warm weather. +When I asked him if he could do without money, he showed the +convenience of money in such a way as to suggest and coincide with +the most philosophical accounts of the origin of this institution, +and the very derivation of the word pecunia. If an ox were his +property, and he wished to get needles and thread at the store, he +thought it would be inconvenient and impossible soon to go on +mortgaging some portion of the creature each time to that amount. +He could defend many institutions better than any philosopher, +because, in describing them as they concerned him, he gave the true +reason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to +him any other. At another time, hearing Plato's definition of a man +a biped without feathers and that one exhibited a cock plucked +and called it Plato's man, he thought it an important difference +that the knees bent the wrong way. He would sometimes exclaim, "How +I love to talk By George, I could talk all day" I asked him +once, when I had not seen him for many months, if he had got a new +idea this summer. "Good Lord" said he, "a man that has to work +as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do +well. May be the man you hoe with is inclined to race then, by +gorry, your mind must be there you think of weeds." He would +sometimes ask me first on such occasions, if I had made any +improvement. One winter day I asked him if he was always satisfied +with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the +priest without, and some higher motive for living. "Satisfied" +said he "some men are satisfied with one thing, and some with +another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied +to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table, +by George" Yet I never, by any manoeuvring, could get him to take +the spiritual view of things the highest that he appeared to +conceive of was a simple expediency, such as you might expect an +animal to appreciate and this, practically, is true of most men. +If I suggested any improvement in his mode of life, he merely +answered, without expressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet +he thoroughly believed in honesty and the like virtues. +There was a certain positive originality, however slight, to be +detected in him, and I occasionally observed that he was thinking +for himself and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare +that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it, and it amounted +to the reorigination of many of the institutions of society. +Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express himself +distinctly, he always had a presentable thought behind. Yet his +thinking was so primitive and immersed in his animal life, that, +though more promising than a merely learned man's, it rarely ripened +to anything which can be reported. He suggested that there might be +men of genius in the lowest grades of life, however permanently +humble and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do not +pretend to see at all who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was +thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy. +Many a traveller came out of his way to see me and the inside of +my house, and, as an excuse for calling, asked for a glass of water. +I told them that I drank at the pond, and pointed thither, offering +to lend them a dipper. Far off as I lived, I was not exempted from +the annual visitation which occurs, methinks, about the first of +April, when everybody is on the move and I had my share of good +luck, though there were some curious specimens among my visitors. +Halfwitted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me but +I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had, and make +their confessions to me in such cases making wit the theme of our +conversation and so was compensated. Indeed, I found some of them +to be wiser than the socalled overseers of the poor and selectmen +of the town, and thought it was time that the tables were turned. +With respect to wit, I learned that there was not much difference +between the half and the whole. One day, in particular, an +inoffensive, simpleminded pauper, whom with others I had often seen +used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in the fields +to keep cattle and himself from straying, visited me, and expressed +a wish to live as I did. He told me, with the utmost simplicity and +truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is +called humility, that he was "deficient in intellect." These were +his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed the Lord cared +as much for him as for another. "I have always been so," said he, +"from my childhood I never had much mind I was not like other +children I am weak in the head. It was the Lord's will, I +suppose." And there he was to prove the truth of his words. He was +a metaphysical puzzle to me. I have rarely met a fellowman on such +promising ground it was so simple and sincere and so true all +that he said. And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared to +humble himself was he exalted. I did not know at first but it was +the result of a wise policy. It seemed that from such a basis of +truth and frankness as the poor weakheaded pauper had laid, our +intercourse might go forward to something better than the +intercourse of sages. +I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among the +town's poor, but who should be who are among the world's poor, at +any rate guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, but to your +hospitalality who earnestly wish to be helped, and preface their +appeal with the information that they are resolved, for one thing, +never to help themselves. I require of a visitor that he be not +actually starving, though he may have the very best appetite in the +world, however he got it. Objects of charity are not guests. Men +who did not know when their visit had terminated, though I went +about my business again, answering them from greater and greater +remoteness. Men of almost every degree of wit called on me in the +migrating season. Some who had more wits than they knew what to do +with runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from time +to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds +abaying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as +to say, +"O Christian, will you send me back? +One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to forward +toward the north star. Men of one idea, like a hen with one +chicken, and that a duckling men of a thousand ideas, and unkempt +heads, like those hens which are made to take charge of a hundred +chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost in every +morning's dew and become frizzled and mangy in consequence men +of ideas instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede that made +you crawl all over. One man proposed a book in which visitors +should write their names, as at the White Mountains but, alas I +have too good a memory to make that necessary. +I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my visitors. +Girls and boys and young women generally seemed glad to be in the +woods. They looked in the pond and at the flowers, and improved +their time. Men of business, even farmers, thought only of solitude +and employment, and of the great distance at which I dwelt from +something or other and though they said that they loved a ramble in +the woods occasionally, it was obvious that they did not. Restless +committed men, whose time was an taken up in getting a living or +keeping it ministers who spoke of God as if they enjoyed a monopoly +of the subject, who could not bear all kinds of opinions doctors, +lawyers, uneasy housekeepers who pried into my cupboard and bed when +I was out how came Mrs. to know that my sheets were not as +clean as hers? young men who had ceased to be young, and had +concluded that it was safest to follow the beaten track of the +professions all these generally said that it was not possible to +do so much good in my position. Ay there was the rub. The old and +infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most of +sickness, and sudden accident and death to them life seemed full of +danger what danger is there if you don't think of any? and +they thought that a prudent man would carefully select the safest +position, where Dr. B. might be on hand at a moment's warning. To +them the village was literally a community, a league for mutual +defence, and you would suppose that they would not go +ahuckleberrying without a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if +a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the +danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is +deadandalive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. +Finally, there were the selfstyled reformers, the greatest bores of +all, who thought that I was forever singing, +This is the house that I built +This is the man that lives in the house that I built +but they did not know that the third line was, +These are the folks that worry the man +That lives in the house that I built. +I did not fear the henharriers, for I kept no chickens but I +feared the menharriers rather. +I had more cheering visitors than the last. Children come +aberrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning walk in clean +shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philosophers in short, all +honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for freedom's sake, and +really left the village behind, I was ready to greet with +"Welcome, Englishmen welcome, Englishmen" for I had had +communication with that race. +The BeanField +Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, +was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the +earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the +ground indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the +meaning of this so steady and selfrespecting, this small Herculean +labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many +more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got +strength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven +knows. This was my curious labor all summer to make this portion +of the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, +blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and +pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of +beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I +have an eye to them and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad +leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water +this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for +the most part is lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, +and most of all woodchucks. The last have nibbled for me a quarter +of an acre clean. But what right had I to oust johnswort and the +rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the +remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet +new foes. +When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought +from Boston to this my native town, through these very woods and +this field, to the pond. It is one of the oldest scenes stamped on +my memory. And now tonight my flute has waked the echoes over that +very water. The pines still stand here older than I or, if some +have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their stumps, and a new +growth is rising all around, preparing another aspect for new infant +eyes. Almost the same johnswort springs from the same perennial +root in this pasture, and even I have at length helped to clothe +that fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, and one of the results +of my presence and influence is seen in these bean leaves, corn +blades, and potato vines. +I planted about two acres and a half of upland and as it was +only about fifteen years since the land was cleared, and I myself +had got out two or three cords of stumps, I did not give it any +manure but in the course of the summer it appeared by the +arrowheads which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nation had +anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men came +to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted the soil +for this very crop. +Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or +the sun had got above the shrub oaks, while all the dew was on, +though the farmers warned me against it I would advise you to do +all your work if possible while the dew is on I began to level +the ranks of haughty weeds in my beanfield and throw dust upon +their heads. Early in the morning I worked barefooted, dabbling +like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling sand, but later in +the day the sun blistered my feet. There the sun lighted me to hoe +beans, pacing slowly backward and forward over that yellow gravelly +upland, between the long green rows, fifteen rods, the one end +terminating in a shrub oak copse where I could rest in the shade, +the other in a blackberry field where the green berries deepened +their tints by the time I had made another bout. Removing the +weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this +weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer +thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and +piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass +this was my daily work. As I had little aid from horses or +cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I +was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than +usual. But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of +drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a +constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a +classic result. A very agricola laboriosus was I to travellers +bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where +they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins +loosely hanging in festoons I the homestaying, laborious native of +the soil. But soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought. +It was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance on +either side of the road, so they made the most of it and sometimes +the man in the field heard more of travellers' gossip and comment +than was meant for his ear "Beans so late peas so late" for I +continued to plant when others had begun to hoe the ministerial +husbandman had not suspected it. "Corn, my boy, for fodder corn +for fodder." "Does he live there?" asks the black bonnet of the +gray coat and the hardfeatured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin +to inquire what you are doing where he sees no manure in the furrow, +and recommends a little chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it +may be ashes or plaster. But here were two acres and a half of +furrows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands to draw it there +being an aversion to other carts and horses and chip dirt far +away. Fellowtravellers as they rattled by compared it aloud with +the fields which they had passed, so that I came to know how I stood +in the agricultural world. This was one field not in Mr. Coleman's +report. And, by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which +nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? The +crop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated, +the silicates and the potash but in all dells and pondholes in the +woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only +unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between +wild and cultivated fields as some states are civilized, and others +halfcivilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, +though not in a bad sense, a halfcultivated field. They were beans +cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I +cultivated, and my hoe played the Rans des Vaches for them. +Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brown +thrasher or red mavis, as some love to call him all the +morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer's +field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed, he +cries "Drop it, drop it cover it up, cover it up pull it +up, pull it up, pull it up." But this was not corn, and so it was +safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, +his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have +to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or +plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire +faith. +As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I +disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years +lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and +hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. They lay +mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of +having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also +bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators +of the soil. When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music +echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my +labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no +longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans and I remembered +with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances +who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk +circled overhead in the sunny afternoons for I sometimes made a +day of it like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling +from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were +rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope +remained small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the +ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have +found them graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the +pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens such +kindredship is in nature. The hawk is aerial brother of the wave +which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect airinflated +wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or +sometimes I watched a pair of henhawks circling high in the sky, +alternately soaring and descending, approaching, and leaving one +another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I +was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, +with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste or from +under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and +outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet +our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and +sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the +inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers. +On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like +popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionally +penetrate thus far. To me, away there in my beanfield at the other +end of the town, the big guns sounded as if a puffball had burst +and when there was a military turnout of which I was ignorant, I +have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching +and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out +there soon, either scarlatina or cankerrash, until at length some +more favorable puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up the +Wayland road, brought me information of the "trainers." It seemed +by the distant hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and that the +neighbors, according to Virgil's advice, by a faint tintinnabulum +upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were endeavoring +to call them down into the hive again. And when the sound died +quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes +told no tale, I knew that they had got the last drone of them all +safely into the Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent +on the honey with which it was smeared. +I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts and of +our fatherland were in such safe keeping and as I turned to my +hoeing again I was filled with an inexpressible confidence, and +pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in the future. +When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if all +the village was a vast bellows and all the buildings expanded and +collapsed alternately with a din. But sometimes it was a really +noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the trumpet +that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a +good relish for why should we always stand for trifles? and +looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry +upon. These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and +reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight +tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm tree tops which overhang the +village. This was one of the great days though the sky had from my +clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, +and I saw no difference in it. +It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I +cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and +harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling them the +last was the hardest of all I might add eating, for I did taste. +I was determined to know beans. When they were growing, I used to +hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and commonly spent +the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate and +curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds it +will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little +iteration in the labor disturbing their delicate organizations so +ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, +levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating +another. That's Roman wormwood that's pigweed that's sorrel +that's pipergrass have at him, chop him up, turn his roots +upward to the sun, don't let him have a fibre in the shade, if you +do he'll turn himself t' other side up and be as green as a leek in +two days. A long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those +Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the +beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the +ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. +Many a lusty crest waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above +his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust. +Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to the +fine arts in Boston or Rome, and others to contemplation in India, +and others to trade in London or New York, I thus, with the other +farmers of New England, devoted to husbandry. Not that I wanted +beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are +concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them +for rice but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only for +the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parablemaker one day. +It was on the whole a rare amusement, which, continued too long, +might have become a dissipation. Though I gave them no manure, and +did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusualy well as far as I +went, and was paid for it in the end, "there being in truth," as +Evelyn says, "no compost or laetation whatsoever comparable to this +continual motion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the +spade." "The earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a +certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or +virtue call it either which gives it life, and is the logic of all +the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us all dungings and +other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this +improvement." Moreover, this being one of those "wornout and +exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath," had perchance, as +Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" from the +air. I harvested twelve bushels of beans. +But to be more particular, for it is complained that Mr. Coleman +has reported chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen farmers, +my outgoes were, +For a hoe ................................... . +Plowing, harrowing, and furrowing ............ . Too much. +Beans for seed ............................... . +Potatoes for seed ............................ . +Peas for seed ................................ . +Turnip seed .................................. . +White line for crow fence .................... . +Horse cultivator and boy three hours ......... . +Horse and cart to get crop ................... . +In all .................................. . +My income was patrem familias vendacem, non emacem esse +oportet, from +Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold .. . +Five " large potatoes ..................... . +Nine " small .............................. . +Grass ........................................... . +Stalks .......................................... . +In all .................................... . +Leaving a pecuniary profit, +as I have elsewhere said, of .............. . +This is the result of my experience in raising beans Plant the +common small white bush bean about the first of June, in rows three +feet by eighteen inches apart, being careful to select fresh round +and unmixed seed. First look out for worms, and supply vacancies by +planting anew. Then look out for woodchucks, if it is an exposed +place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost +clean as they go and again, when the young tendrils make their +appearance, they have notice of it, and will shear them off with +both buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. But above +all harvest as early as possible, if you would escape frosts and +have a fair and salable crop you may save much loss by this means. +This further experience also I gained I said to myself, I will +not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but +such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, +simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not +grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain +me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops. Alas I +said this to myself but now another summer is gone, and another, +and another, and I am obliged to say to you, Reader, that the seeds +which I planted, if indeed they were the seeds of those virtues, +were wormeaten or had lost their vitality, and so did not come up. +Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or +timid. This generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each +new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago and taught the +first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it. I saw an old +man the other day, to my astonishment, making the holes with a hoe +for the seventieth time at least, and not for himself to lie down +in But why should not the New Englander try new adventures, and +not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and +his orchards raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves +so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about +a new generation of men? We should really be fed and cheered if +when we met a man we were sure to see that some of the qualities +which I have named, which we all prize more than those other +productions, but which are for the most part broadcast and floating +in the air, had taken root and grown in him. Here comes such a +subtile and ineffable quality, for instance, as truth or justice, +though the slightest amount or new variety of it, along the road. +Our ambassadors should be instructed to send home such seeds as +these, and Congress help to distribute them over all the land. We +should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never +cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there +were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not +meet thus in haste. Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem +not to have time they are busy about their beans. We would not +deal with a man thus plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a +staff between his work, not as a mushroom, but partially risen out +of the earth, something more than erect, like swallows alighted and +walking on the ground +"And as he spake, his wings would now and then +Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again " +so that we should suspect that we might be conversing with an angel. +Bread may not always nourish us but it always does us good, it even +takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, +when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man +or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy. +Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry +was once a sacred art but it is pursued with irreverent haste and +heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large +crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, +not excepting our cattleshows and socalled Thanksgivings, by which +the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is +reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast +which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial +Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and +selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, +of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring +property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded +with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature +but as a robber. Cato says that the profits of agriculture are +particularly pious or just maximeque pius quaestus, and according +to Varro the old Romans "called the same earth Mother and Ceres, and +thought that they who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, and +that they alone were left of the race of King Saturn." +We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated +fields and on the prairies and forests without distinction. They +all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but a +small part of the glorious picture which he beholds in his daily +course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a +garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and +heat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What though I +value the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the fall of the +year? This broad field which I have looked at so long looks not to +me as the principal cultivator, but away from me to influences more +genial to it, which water and make it green. These beans have +results which are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for +woodchucks partly? The ear of wheat in Latin spica, obsoletely +speca, from spe, hope should not be the only hope of the +husbandman its kernel or grain granum from gerendo, bearing is +not all that it bears. How, then, can our harvest fail? Shall I +not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the +granary of the birds? It matters little comparatively whether the +fields fill the farmer's barns. The true husbandman will cease from +anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will +bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every +day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and +sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also. +The Village +After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, I +usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves +for a stint, and washed the dust of labor from my person, or +smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, and for the +afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled to the +village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on +there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to +newspaper, and which, taken in homoeopathic doses, was really as +refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of +frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so +I walked in the village to see the men and boys instead of the wind +among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my +house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows under the +grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of +busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairiedogs, each +sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's +to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits. The +village appeared to me a great news room and on one side, to +support it, as once at Redding Company's on State Street, they +kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. Some +have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the +news, and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in +public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper +through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it +only producing numbness and insensibility to pain otherwise it +would often be painful to bear without affecting the +consciousness. I hardly ever failed, when I rambled through the +village, to see a row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder +sunning themselves, with their bodies inclined forward and their +eyes glancing along the line this way and that, from time to time, +with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with +their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. +They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. +These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely +digested or cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more +delicate hoppers within doors. I observed that the vitals of the +village were the grocery, the barroom, the postoffice, and the +bank and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a +big gun, and a fireengine, at convenient places and the houses +were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and +fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the +gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. +Of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head of the line, +where they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at +him, paid the highest prices for their places and the few +straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line +began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or turn aside +into cowpaths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window +tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him some to catch +him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar some by +the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller's and others by +the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker, +or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible standing +invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company +expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully +from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without +deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the +gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus, +who, "loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned +the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger." Sometimes I +bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not +stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a +fence. I was even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses, +where I was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and +very last sieveful of news what had subsided, the prospects of +war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together +much longer I was let out through the rear avenues, and so +escaped to the woods again. +It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch +myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, +and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a +bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in +the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches +with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the +helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had +many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as I sailed." I was never +cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some +severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, +than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening +between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, +where there was no cartpath, to feel with my feet the faint track +which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees +which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, +not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, +invariably, in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus +late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my +eyes could not see, dreaming and absentminded all the way, until I +was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not +been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought +that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should +forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without +assistance. Several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into +evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to +the cartpath in the rear of the house, and then point out to him +the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be +guided rather by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I +directed thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in the +pond. They lived about a mile off through the woods, and were quite +used to the route. A day or two after one of them told me that they +wandered about the greater part of the night, close by their own +premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which time, +as there had been several heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the +leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have +heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the +darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the +saying is. Some who live in the outskirts, having come to town +ashopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the +night and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile +out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not +knowing when they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well +as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in +a snowstorm, even by day, one will come out upon a wellknown road +and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. +Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot +recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were +a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is +infinitely greater. In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, +though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain wellknown +beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still +carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape and not +till we are completely lost, or turned round for a man needs only +to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost +do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every +man has to learn the points of compass again as often as be awakes, +whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in +other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find +ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our +relations. +One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to +the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put +into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax +to, or recognize the authority of, the State which buys and sells +men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its +senatehouse. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. +But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their +dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to +their desperate oddfellow society. It is true, I might have +resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" +against society but I preferred that society should run "amok" +against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released +the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in +season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was +never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I +had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even +a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door +night or day, though I was to be absent several days not even when +the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my +house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of +soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, +the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the +curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, +and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of +every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious +inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but +one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly +gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this +time. I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I +then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place +only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient +while others have not enough. The Pope's Homers would soon get +properly distributed. +"Nec bella fuerunt, +Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes." +"Nor wars did men molest, +When only beechen bowls were in request." +"You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ +punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The +virtues of a superior man are like the wind the virtues of a common +man are like the grass I the grass, when the wind passes over it, +bends." +The Ponds +Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and +worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward +than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the +town, "to fresh woods and pastures new," or, while the sun was +setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair +Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The fruits do not +yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who +raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet +few take that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, +ask the cowboy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose +that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A +huckleberry never reaches Boston they have not been known there +since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential +part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the +market cart, and they become mere provender. As long as Eternal +Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported +thither from the country's hills. +Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined +some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond since +morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, +after practising various kinds of philosophy, had concluded +commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient +sect of Coenobites. There was one older man, an excellent fisher +and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon +my house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen and +I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange his +lines. Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end +of the boat, and I at the other but not many words passed between +us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally +hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. +Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far +more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech. +When, as was commonly the case, I had none to commune with, I used +to raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my +boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating +sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild +beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and +hillside. +In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, +and saw the perch, which I seem to have charmed, hovering around me, +and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed +with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond +adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a +companion, and, making a fire close to the water's edge, which we +thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms +strung on a thread, and when we had done, far in the night, threw +the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, coming +down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were +suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, +we took our way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my +home by the shore. +Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had +all retired, I have returned to the woods, and, partly with a view +to the next day's dinner, spent the hours of midnight fishing from a +boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from +time to time, the creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand. +These experiences were very memorable and valuable to me anchored +in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, +surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, +dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and +communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes +which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging +sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night +breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative +of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull uncertain +blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. At length +you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned pout squeaking +and squirming to the upper air. It was very queer, especially in +dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal +themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to +interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It seemed as if +I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward +into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two +fishes as it were with one hook. +The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very +beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern +one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore yet this +pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a +particular description. It is a clear and deep green well, half a +mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, and +contains about sixtyone and a half acres a perennial spring in the +midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet +except by the clouds and evaporation. The surrounding hills rise +abruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, +though on the southeast and east they attain to about one hundred +and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a +third of a mile. They are exclusively woodland. All our Concord +waters have two colors at least one when viewed at a distance, and +another, more proper, close at hand. The first depends more on the +light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they +appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a +great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are +sometimes of a dark slatecolor. The sea, however, is said to be +blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the +atmosphere. I have seen our river, when, the landscape being +covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass. +Some consider blue "to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or +solid." But, looking directly down into our waters from a boat, +they are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue at one +time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying +between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. +Viewed from a hilltop it reflects the color of the sky but near at +hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the +sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark +green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a +hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have referred +this to the reflection of the verdure but it is equally green there +against the railroad sandbank, and in the spring, before the leaves +are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue +mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris. +This is that portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being +warmed by the heat of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also +transmitted through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal +about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when +much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves +may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more +light mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker +blue than the sky itself and at such a time, being on its surface, +and looking with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have +discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered +or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the +sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite +sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison. It +is a vitreous greenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches of +the winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. +Yet a single glass of its water held up to the light is as colorless +as an equal quantity of air. It is well known that a large plate of +glass will have a green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its +"body," but a small piece of the same will be colorless. How large +a body of Walden water would be required to reflect a green tint I +have never proved. The water of our river is black or a very dark +brown to one looking directly down on it, and, like that of most +ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge +but this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the +bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more unnatural, +which, as the limbs are magnified and distorted withal, produces a +monstrous effect, making fit studies for a Michael Angelo. +The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be +discerned at the depth of twentyfive or thirty feet. Paddling over +it, you may see, many feet beneath the surface, the schools of perch +and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the former easily +distinguished by their transverse bars, and you think that they must +be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter, +many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the ice in +order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my axe back on +to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid +four or five rods directly into one of the holes, where the water +was twentyfive feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice +and looked through the hole, until I saw the axe a little on one +side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently swaying +to and fro with the pulse of the pond and there it might have stood +erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, +if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it +with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch +which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a +slipnoose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it down +carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a +line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out again. +The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones +like pavingstones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is +so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water +over your head and were it not for its remarkable transparency, +that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the +opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, +and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in +it and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently +overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny +does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or +white, but only a few small heartleaves and potamogetons, and +perhaps a watertarget or two all which however a bather might not +perceive and these plants are clean and bright like the element +they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the water, and +then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where +there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the +leaves which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and +a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in midwinter. +We have one other pond just like this, White Pond, in Nine Acre +Corner, about two and a half miles westerly but, though I am +acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this +centre I do not know a third of this pure and welllike character. +Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathomed +it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as +ever. Not an intermitting spring Perhaps on that spring morning +when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in +existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain +accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads +of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such +pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to rise and +fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they +now wear, and obtained a patent of Heaven to be the only Walden Pond +in the world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many +unremembered nations' literatures this has been the Castalian +Fountain? or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age? It is +a gem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet. +Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some +trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to detect +encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down +on the shore, a narrow shelflike path in the steep hillside, +alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the +water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the +feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly +trodden by the present occupants of the land. This is particularly +distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just +after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white +line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a +mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable +close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white +type altorelievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which will one +day be built here may still preserve some trace of this. +The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and +within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to +know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, +though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can +remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at +least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow +sandbar running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which +I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main +shore, about the year , which it has not been possible to do for +twentyfive years and, on the other hand, my friends used to listen +with incredulity when I told them, that a few years later I was +accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, +fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was long +since converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for +two years, and now, in the summer of ', is just five feet higher +than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and +fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a difference of +level, at the outside, of six or seven feet and yet the water shed +by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this +overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. +This same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable +that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to +require many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise +and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years +hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it. +Flint's Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance +occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate +ponds also, sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their +greatest height at the same time with the latter. The same is true, +as far as my observation goes, of White Pond. +This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use +at least the water standing at this great height for a year or +more, though it makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the +shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edge since the last +rise pitch pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others and, +falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore for, unlike many ponds +and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is +cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side of the pond next my +house a row of pitch pines, fifteen feet high, has been killed and +tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their +encroachments and their size indicates how many years have elapsed +since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond +asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the +trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of +the lake, on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to +time. When the water is at its height, the alders, willows, and +maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots several feet long from +all sides of their stems in the water, and to the height of three or +four feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves and +I have known the high blueberry bushes about the shore, which +commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these +circumstances. +Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly +paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition the oldest +people tell me that they heard it in their youth that anciently +the Indians were holding a powwow upon a hill here, which rose as +high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and +they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one +of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus +engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, +named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been +conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its +side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, +that once there was no pond here, and now there is one and this +Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of +that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well +when he first came here with his diviningrod, saw a thin vapor +rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and +he concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still +think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the +waves on these hills but I observe that the surrounding hills are +remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been +obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut +nearest the pond and, moreover, there are most stones where the +shore is most abrupt so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a +mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived +from that of some English locality Saffron Walden, for instance +one might suppose that it was called originally Walledin Pond. +The pond was my well ready dug. For four months in the year its +water is as cold as it is pure at all times and I think that it is +then as good as any, if not the best, in the town. In the winter, +all water which is exposed to the air is colder than springs and +wells which are protected from it. The temperature of the pond +water which had stood in the room where I sat from five o'clock in +the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of March, , the +thermometer having been up to x or x some of the time, owing +partly to the sun on the roof, was x, or one degree colder than +the water of one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn. +The temperature of the Boiling Spring the same day was x, or the +warmest of any water tried, though it is the coldest that I know of +in summer, when, beside, shallow and stagnant surface water is not +mingled with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm +as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. +In the warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, +where it became cool in the night, and remained so during the day +though I also resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It was as +good when a week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of +the pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer by the shore of a +pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade +of his camp to be independent of the luxury of ice. +There have been caught in Walden pickerel, one weighing seven +pounds to say nothing of another which carried off a reel with +great velocity, which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds +because he did not see him perch and pouts, some of each weighing +over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach Leuciscus pulchellus, a +very few breams, and a couple of eels, one weighing four pounds I +am thus particular because the weight of a fish is commonly its only +title to fame, and these are the only eels I have heard of here +also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish some five inches +long, with silvery sides and a greenish back, somewhat dacelike in +its character, which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to +fable. Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish. Its +pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast. I have seen at +one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three different +kinds a long and shallow one, steelcolored, most like those caught +in the river a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and +remarkably deep, which is the most common here and another, +goldencolored, and shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides +with small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint +bloodred ones, very much like a trout. The specific name +reticulatus would not apply to this it should be guttatus rather. +These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their size +promises. The shiners, pouts, and perch also, and indeed all the +fishes which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and +firmerfleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, as the +water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished from them. +Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties of some of +them. There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a few +mussels in it muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, and +occasionally a travelling mudturtle visits it. Sometimes, when I +pushed off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mudturtle +which had secreted himself under the boat in the night. Ducks and +geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the whitebellied swallows +Hirundo bicolor skim over it, and the peetweets Totanus +macularius "teeter" along its stony shores all summer. I have +sometimes disturbed a fish hawk sitting on a white pine over the +water but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wind of a gull, +like Fair Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are +all the animals of consequence which frequent it now. +You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy +eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also +in some other parts of the pond, some circular heaps half a dozen +feet in diameter by a foot in height, consisting of small stones +less than a hen's egg in size, where all around is bare sand. At +first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them on the ice +for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the +bottom but they are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh +for that. They are similar to those found in rivers but as there +are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know not by what fish they could +be made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. These lend a +pleasing mystery to the bottom. +The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have in +my mind's eye the western, indented with deep bays, the bolder +northern, and the beautifully scalloped southern shore, where +successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves +between. The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so +distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake +amid hills which rise from the water's edge for the water in which +it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, +but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable boundary +to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there, as +where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field abuts on it. +The trees have ample room to expand on the water side, and each +sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction. There +Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just +gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. +There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. The water laves the +shore as it did a thousand years ago. +A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. +It is earth's eye looking into which the beholder measures the +depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are +the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and +cliffs around are its overhanging brows. +Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, +in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite +shoreline indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, "the +glassy surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks like +a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and +gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of +the atmosphere from another. You would think that you could walk +dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim +over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below this +line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over +the pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to +defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for +they are equally bright and if, between the two, you survey its +surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where +the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its whole +extent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginable +sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have +said, a swallow skims so low as to touch it. It may be that in the +distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, +and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it +strikes the water sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed or +here and there, perhaps, is a thistledown floating on its surface, +which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like molten +glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and +beautiful like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a +yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by an +invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From a +hilltop you can see a fish leap in almost any part for not a +pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it +manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is +wonderful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised +this piscine murder will out and from my distant perch I +distinguish the circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods +in diameter. You can even detect a waterbug Gyrinus ceaselessly +progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off for +they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded +by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without +rippling it perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated +there are no skaters nor waterbugs on it, but apparently, in calm +days, they leave their havens and adventurously glide forth from the +shore by short impulses till they completely cover it. It is a +soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all +the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on +such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling +circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible +surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great expanse +there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away +and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling +circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap +or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling +dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of +its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its +breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are +undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake Again +the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig +and stone and cobweb sparkles now at midafternoon as when covered +with dew in a spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect +produces a flash of light and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo +In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect +forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if +fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so +large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky +water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. +It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will +never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs no storms, +no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh a mirror in which all +impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy +brush this the light dustcloth which retains no breath that +is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above +its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still. +A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is +continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is +intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the +grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. +I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of +light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We +shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and +mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. +The skaters and waterbugs finally disappear in the latter part +of October, when the severe frosts have come and then and in +November, usually, in a calm day, there is absolutely nothing to +ripple the surface. One November afternoon, in the calm at the end +of a rainstorm of several days' duration, when the sky was still +completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I observed that +the pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to +distinguish its surface though it no longer reflected the bright +tints of October, but the sombre November colors of the surrounding +hills. Though I passed over it as gently as possible, the slight +undulations produced by my boat extended almost as far as I could +see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the reflections. But, as I was +looking over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint +glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts +might be collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so +smooth, betrayed where a spring welled up from the bottom. Paddling +gently to one of these places, I was surprised to find myself +surrounded by myriads of small perch, about five inches long, of a +rich bronze color in the green water, sporting there, and constantly +rising to the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on +it. In such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting +the clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, +and their swimming impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as +if they were a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my level +on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them. +There were many such schools in the pond, apparently improving the +short season before winter would draw an icy shutter over their +broad skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if +a slight breeze struck it, or a few raindrops fell there. When I +approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden splash +and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a +brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. At length +the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and +the perch leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a +hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface. +Even as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some dimples +on the surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, +the air being fun of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars +and row homeward already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though +I felt none on my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But +suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, +which the noise of my oars had seared into the depths, and I saw +their schools dimly disappearing so I spent a dry afternoon after +all. +An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years +ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells me that in +those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other +waterfowl, and that there were many eagles about it. He came here +afishing, and used an old log canoe which he found on the shore. +It was made of two white pine logs dug out and pinned together, and +was cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy, but lasted a +great many years before it became waterlogged and perhaps sank to +the bottom. He did not know whose it was it belonged to the pond. +He used to make a cable for his anchor of strips of hickory bark +tied together. An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before +the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at the +bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating +up to the shore but when you went toward it, it would go back into +deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log +canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the same material +but more graceful construction, which perchance had first been a +tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to +float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. +I remember that when I first looked into these depths there were +many large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which +had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last +cutting, when wood was cheaper but now they have mostly +disappeared. +When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely +surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its +coves grapevines had run over the trees next the water and formed +bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its +shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, +as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an +amphitheatre for some land of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many +an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr +willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back +across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was +aroused by the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore +my fates had impelled me to days when idleness was the most +attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen +away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day for +I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and +spent them lavishly nor do I regret that I did not waste more of +them in the workshop or the teacher's desk. But since I left those +shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now +for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of +the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. +My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you +expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down? +Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, +and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and the villagers, who +scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to the pond to bathe +or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which should be as sacred +as the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their +dishes with to earn their Walden by the turning of a cock or +drawing of a plug That devilish Iron Horse, whose earrending +neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring +with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on +Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, +introduced by mercenary Greeks Where is the country's champion, +the Moore of Moore Hill, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an +avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? +Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden +wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been +likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers +have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have +built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its +border, and the icemen have skimmed it once, it is itself +unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on all the +change is in me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after +all its ripples. It is perennially young, and I may stand and see a +swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its surface as of +yore. It struck me again tonight, as if I had not seen it almost +daily for more than twenty years Why, here is Walden, the same +woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago where a forest +was cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as +lustily as ever the same thought is welling up to its surface that +was then it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its +Maker, ay, and it may be to me. It is the work of a brave man +surely, in whom there was no guile He rounded this water with his +hand, deepened and clarified it in his thought, and in his will +bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face that it is visited by +the same reflection and I can almost say, Walden, is it you? +It is no dream of mine, +To ornament a line +I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven +Than I live to Walden even. +I am its stony shore, +And the breeze that passes o'er +In the hollow of my hand +Are its water and its sand, +And its deepest resort +Lies high in my thought. +The cars never pause to look at it yet I fancy that the +engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers who have a +season ticket and see it often, are better men for the sight. The +engineer does not forget at night, or his nature does not, that he +has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at least during +the day. Though seen but once, it helps to wash out State Street +and the engine's soot. One proposes that it be called "God's Drop." +I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it +is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, +which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that +quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River, +which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some +other geological period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, +which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by +living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so +long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret +that the comparatively impure waters of Flint's Pond should be +mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in +the ocean wave? +Flint's, or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest lake and inland +sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It is much larger, being +said to contain one hundred and ninetyseven acres, and is more +fertile in fish but it is comparatively shallow, and not remarkably +pure. A walk through the woods thither was often my recreation. It +was worth the while, if only to feel the wind blow on your cheek +freely, and see the waves run, and remember the life of mariners. I +went achestnutting there in the fall, on windy days, when the nuts +were dropping into the water and were washed to my feet and one +day, as I crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh spray blowing in my +face, I came upon the mouldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone, +and hardly more than the impression of its flat bottom left amid the +rushes yet its model was sharply defined, as if it were a large +decayed pad, with its veins. It was as impressive a wreck as one +could imagine on the seashore, and had as good a moral. It is by +this time mere vegetable mould and undistinguishable pond shore, +through which rushes and flags have pushed up. I used to admire the +ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of this pond, +made firm and hard to the feet of the wader by the pressure of the +water, and the rushes which grew in Indian file, in waving lines, +corresponding to these marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves had +planted them. There also I have found, in considerable quantities, +curious balls, composed apparently of fine grass or roots, of +pipewort perhaps, from half an inch to four inches in diameter, and +perfectly spherical. These wash back and forth in shallow water on +a sandy bottom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are +either solid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At first +you would say that they were formed by the action of the waves, like +a pebble yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials, +half an inch long, and they are produced only at one season of the +year. Moreover, the waves, I suspect, do not so much construct as +wear down a material which has already acquired consistency. They +preserve their form when dry for an indefinite period. +Flint's Pond Such is the poverty of our nomenclature. What +right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this +sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his +name to it? Some skinflint, who loved better the reflecting +surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own +brazen face who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as +trespassers his fingers grown into crooked and bony talons from the +long habit of grasping harpylike so it is not named for me. I +go not there to see him nor to hear of him who never saw it, who +never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who +never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He had made it. +Rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild +fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by +its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is +interwoven with its own not from him who could show no title to it +but the deed which a likeminded neighbor or legislature gave him +him who thought only of its money value whose presence perchance +cursed all the shores who exhausted the land around it, and would +fain have exhausted the waters within it who regretted only that it +was not English hay or cranberry meadow there was nothing to +redeem it, forsooth, in his eyes and would have drained and sold +it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was +no privilege to him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his +farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, +who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for +him who goes to market for his god as it is on whose farm nothing +grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, +whose trees no fruits, but dollars who loves not the beauty of his +fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to +dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. Farmers are +respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor +poor farmers. A model farm where the house stands like a fungus in +a muckheap, chambers for men horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and +uncleansed, all contiguous to one another Stocked with men A +great greasespot, redolent of manures and buttermilk Under a high +state of cultivation, being manured with the hearts and brains of +men As if you were to raise your potatoes in the churchyard Such +is a model farm. +No, no if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named +after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. Let our +lakes receive as true names at least as the Icarian Sea, where +"still the shore" a "brave attempt resounds." +Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint's Fair +Haven, an expansion of Concord River, said to contain some seventy +acres, is a mile southwest and White Pond, of about forty acres, is +a mile and a half beyond Fair Haven. This is my lake country. +These, with Concord River, are my water privileges and night and +day, year in year out, they grind such grist as I carry to them. +Since the woodcutters, and the railroad, and I myself have +profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, if not the most +beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is White Pond +a poor name from its commonness, whether derived from the remarkable +purity of its waters or the color of its sands. In these as in +other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. They are so +much alike that you would say they must be connected under ground. +It has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the same hue. As +at Walden, in sultry dogday weather, looking down through the woods +on some of its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection +from the bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty bluishgreen +or glaucous color. Many years since I used to go there to collect +the sand by cartloads, to make sandpaper with, and I have continued +to visit it ever since. One who frequents it proposes to call it +Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow Pine Lake, from the +following circumstance. About fifteen years ago you could see the +top of a pitch pine, of the kind called yellow pine hereabouts, +though it is not a distinct species, projecting above the surface in +deep water, many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by some +that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive forest +that formerly stood there. I find that even so long ago as , in +a "Topographical Description of the Town of Concord," by one of its +citizens, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical +Society, the author, after speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds, +"In the middle of the latter may be seen, when the water is very +low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the place where it now +stands, although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the +water the top of this tree is broken off, and at that place +measures fourteen inches in diameter." In the spring of ' I +talked with the man who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told +me that it was he who got out this tree ten or fifteen years before. +As near as he could remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from +the shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was in +the winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had +resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neighbors, he +would take out the old yellow pine. He sawed a channel in the ice +toward the shore, and hauled it over and along and out on to the ice +with oxen but, before he had gone far in his work, he was surprised +to find that it was wrong end upward, with the stumps of the +branches pointing down, and the small end firmly fastened in the +sandy bottom. It was about a foot in diameter at the big end, and +he had expected to get a good sawlog, but it was so rotten as to be +fit only for fuel, if for that. He had some of it in his shed then. +There were marks of an axe and of woodpeckers on the butt. He +thought that it might have been a dead tree on the shore, but was +finally blown over into the pond, and after the top had become +waterlogged, while the buttend was still dry and light, had +drifted out and sunk wrong end up. His father, eighty years old, +could not remember when it was not there. Several pretty large logs +may still be seen lying on the bottom, where, owing to the +undulation of the surface, they look like huge water snakes in +motion. +This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is +little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the white lily, which +requires mud, or the common sweet flag, the blue flag Iris +versicolor grows thinly in the pure water, rising from the stony +bottom all around the shore, where it is visited by hummingbirds in +June and the color both of its bluish blades and its flowers and +especially their reflections, is in singular harmony with the +glaucous water. +White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the +earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed, and +small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off +by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors but +being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors +forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. +They are too pure to have a market value they contain no muck. How +much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than +our characters, are they We never learned meanness of them. How +much fairer than the pool before the farmers door, in which his +ducks swim Hither the clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human +inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and +their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or +maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She +flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk +of heaven ye disgrace earth. +Baker Farm +Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or +like fleets at sea, fullrigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with +light, so soft and green and shady that the Druids would have +forsaken their oaks to worship in them or to the cedar wood beyond +Flint's Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, +spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the +creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit or to +swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white +spruce trees, and toadstools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover +the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like +butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles where the swamppink and +dogwood grow, the red alderberry glows like eyes of imps, the +waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds, and the +wild holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their +beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild +forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on +some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds +which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the middle +of some pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on a +hilltop such as the black birch, of which we have some handsome +specimens two feet in diameter its cousin, the yellow birch, with +its loose golden vest, perfumed like the first the beech, which has +so neat a bole and beautifully lichenpainted, perfect in all its +details, of which, excepting scattered specimens, I know but one +small grove of sizable trees left in the township, supposed by some +to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with +beechnuts near by it is worth the while to see the silver grain +sparkle when you split this wood the bass the hornbeam the Celtis +occidentalis, or false elm, of which we have but one wellgrown +some taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect +hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst of the +woods and many others I could mention. These were the shrines I +visited both summer and winter. +Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow's +arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the +grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through +colored crystal. It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a +short while, I lived like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it +might have tinged my employments and life. As I walked on the +railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my +shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who +visited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen before him had +no halo about them, that it was only natives that were so +distinguished. Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, +after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his +confinement in the castle of St. Angelo a resplendent light appeared +over the shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was +in Italy or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the +grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon to +which I have referred, which is especially observed in the morning, +but also at other times, and even by moonlight. Though a constant +one, it is not commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable +imagination like Cellini's, it would be basis enough for +superstition. Beside, he tells us that he showed it to very few. +But are they not indeed distinguished who are conscious that they +are regarded at all? +I set out one afternoon to go afishing to Fair Haven, through +the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. My way led +through Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of the Baker Farm, that retreat +of which a poet has since sung, beginning, +"Thy entry is a pleasant field, +Which some mossy fruit trees yield +Partly to a ruddy brook, +By gliding musquash undertook, +And mercurial trout, +Darting about." +I thought of living there before I went to Walden. I "hooked" the +apples, leaped the brook, and scared the musquash and the trout. It +was one of those afternoons which seem indefinitely long before one, +in which many events may happen, a large portion of our natural +life, though it was already half spent when I started. By the way +there came up a shower, which compelled me to stand half an hour +under a pine, piling boughs over my head, and wearing my +handkerchief for a shed and when at length I had made one cast over +the pickerelweed, standing up to my middle in water, I found myself +suddenly in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder began to rumble +with such emphasis that I could do no more than listen to it. The +gods must be proud, thought I, with such forked flashes to rout a +poor unarmed fisherman. So I made haste for shelter to the nearest +hut, which stood half a mile from any road, but so much the nearer +to the pond, and had long been uninhabited +"And here a poet builded, +In the completed years, +For behold a trivial cabin +That to destruction steers." +So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now John Field, +an Irishman, and his wife, and several children, from the +broadfaced boy who assisted his father at his work, and now came +running by his side from the bog to escape the rain, to the +wrinkled, sibyllike, coneheaded infant that sat upon its father's +knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in +the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with +the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was the last of a noble +line, and the hope and cynosure of the world, instead of John +Field's poor starveling brat. There we sat together under that part +of the roof which leaked the least, while it showered and thundered +without. I had sat there many times of old before the ship was +built that floated his family to America. An honest, hardworking, +but shiftless man plainly was John Field and his wife, she too was +brave to cook so many successive dinners in the recesses of that +lofty stove with round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking +to improve her condition one day with the never absent mop in one +hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere. The chickens, +which had also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the +room like members of the family, too humanized, methought, to roast +well. They stood and looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe +significantly. Meanwhile my host told me his story, how hard he +worked "bogging" for a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with +a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre and the use of +the land with manure for one year, and his little broadfaced son +worked cheerfully at his father's side the while, not knowing how +poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him with my +experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and +that I too, who came afishing here, and looked like a loafer, was +getting my living like himself that I lived in a tight, light, and +clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a +ruin as his commonly amounts to and how, if he chose, he might in a +month or two build himself a palace of his own that I did not use +tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did +not have to work to get them again, as I did not work hard, I did +not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food but +as he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he +had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had +to eat hard again to repair the waste of his system and so it was +as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for +he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain and yet he +had rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get +tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is +that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life +as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not +endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other +superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the +use of such things. For I purposely talked to him as if he were a +philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all the +meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the +consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves. A man will not +need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture. +But alas the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be +undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he +worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout +clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light +shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he +might think that I was dressed like a gentleman which, however, was +not the case, and in an hour or two, without labor, but as a +recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many fish as I should +want for two days, or earn enough money to support me a week. If he +and his family would live simply, they might all go ahuckleberrying +in the summer for their amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and +his wife stared with arms akimbo, and both appeared to be wondering +if they had capital enough to begin such a course with, or +arithmetic enough to carry it through. It was sailing by dead +reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their port +so therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after their +fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to +split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it +in detail thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle +a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage +living, John Field, alas without arithmetic, and failing so. +"Do you ever fish?" I asked. "Oh yes, I catch a mess now and +then when I am lying by good perch I catch. "What's your bait?" +"I catch shiners with fishworms, and bait the perch with them." +"You'd better go now, John," said his wife, with glistening and +hopeful face but John demurred. +The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern woods +promised a fair evening so I took my departure. When I had got +without I asked for a drink, hoping to get a sight of the well +bottom, to complete my survey of the premises but there, alas are +shallows and quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket +irrecoverable. Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected, +water was seemingly distilled, and after consultation and long delay +passed out to the thirsty one not yet suffered to cool, not yet +to settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought so, shutting +my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed +undercurrent, I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I +could. I am not squeamish in such cases when manners are concerned. +As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain, bending my +steps again to the pond, my haste to catch pickerel, wading in +retired meadows, in sloughs and bogholes, in forlorn and savage +places, appeared for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to +school and college but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening +west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint tinkling +sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed air, from I know not +what quarter, my Good Genius seemed to say Go fish and hunt far +and wide day by day farther and wider and rest thee by many +brooks and hearthsides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in +the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and +seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the +night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields +than these, no worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild +according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which will +never become English bay. Let the thunder rumble what if it +threaten ruin to farmers' crops? That is not its errand to thee. +Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. +Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the +land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are +where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like +serfs. +O Baker Farm +"Landscape where the richest element +Is a little sunshine innocent." ... +"No one runs to revel +On thy railfenced lea." ... +"Debate with no man hast thou, +With questions art never perplexed, +As tame at the first sight as now, +In thy plain russet gabardine dressed." ... +"Come ye who love, +And ye who hate, +Children of the Holy Dove, +And Guy Faux of the state, +And hang conspiracies +From the tough rafters of the trees" +Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or +street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines +because it breathes its own breath over again their shadows, +morning and evening, reach farther than their daily steps. We +should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and +discoveries every day, with new experience and character. +Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out +John Field, with altered mind, letting go "bogging" ere this sunset. +But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while I was +catching a fair string, and he said it was his luck but when we +changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field +I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it +thinking to live by some derivative oldcountry mode in this +primitive new country to catch perch with shiners. It is good +bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a +poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor +life, his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this +world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bogtrotting +feet get talaria to their heels. +Higher Laws +As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, +trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a +woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of +savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him +raw not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he +represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I +found myself ranging the woods, like a halfstarved hound, with a +strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might +devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The +wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in +myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is +named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a +primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love +the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that +are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take +rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps +I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my +closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and +detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should +have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and +others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar +sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable +mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than +philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She +is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the +prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri +and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. +He who is only a traveller learns things at secondhand and by the +halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science +reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, +for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience. +They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements, +because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not +play so many games as they do in England, for here the more +primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like +have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England +boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowlingpiece between the +ages of ten and fourteen and his hunting and fishing grounds were +not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were +more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder, then, that +he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change +is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an +increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest +friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society. +Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my +fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of +necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might +conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my +philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for +I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I +went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than others, but I did +not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity +the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As for fowling, during +the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was +studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I +confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of +studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer +attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, +I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the +objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if +equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these and when +some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether +they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes remembering that +it was one of the best parts of my education make them hunters, +though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, +so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or +any vegetable wilderness hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus +far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who +"yave not of the text a pulled hen +That saith that hunters ben not holy men." +There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, +when the hunters are the "best men," as the Algonquins called them. +We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun he is no more +humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my +answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, +trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the +thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which +holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its +extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my +sympathies do not always make the usual philanthropic distinctions. +Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to the forest, and +the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a +hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better +life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or +naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fishpole behind. The +mass of men are still and always young in this respect. In some +countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might +make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd. +I have been surprised to consider that the only obvious employment, +except woodchopping, icecutting, or the like business, which ever +to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole halfday any of +my fellowcitizens, whether fathers or children of the town, with +just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did not think that +they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a long +string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond +all the while. They might go there a thousand times before the +sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose +pure but no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all +the while. The Governor and his Council faintly remember the pond, +for they went afishing there when they were boys but now they are +too old and dignified to go afishing, and so they know it no more +forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the +legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of +hooks to be used there but they know nothing about the hook of +hooks with which to angle for the pond itself, impaling the +legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized communities, the +embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development. +I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish +without falling a little in selfrespect. I have tried it again and +again. I have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain +instinct for it, which revives from time to time, but always when I +have done I feel that it would have been better if I had not fished. +I think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are +the first streaks of morning. There is unquestionably this instinct +in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation yet with every +year I am less a fisherman, though without more humanity or even +wisdom at present I am no fisherman at all. But I see that if I +were to live in a wilderness I should again be tempted to become a +fisher and hunter in earnest. Beside, there is something +essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and I began to +see where housework commences, and whence the endeavor, which costs +so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appearance each day, to keep +the house sweet and free from all ill odors and sights. Having been +my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for +whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually +complete experience. The practical objection to animal food in my +case was its uncleanness and besides, when I had caught and cleaned +and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me +essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more +than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done +as well, with less trouble and filth. Like many of my +contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal food, or +tea, or coffee, etc. not so much because of any ill effects which I +had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to my +imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of +experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live +low and fare hard in many respects and though I never did so, I +went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every man +who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties +in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from +animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a significant +fact, stated by entomologists I find it in Kirby and Spence +that "some insects in their perfect state, though furnished with +organs of feeding, make no use of them" and they lay it down as "a +general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less +than in that of larvae. The voracious caterpillar when transformed +into a butterfly ... and the gluttonous maggot when become a fly" +content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet +liquid. The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly still +represents the larva. This is the tidbit which tempts his +insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the larva state +and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy +or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them. +It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as +will not offend the imagination but this, I think, is to be fed +when we feed the body they should both sit down at the same table. +Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not +make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest +pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will +poison you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. +Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands +precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is +every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise +we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men +and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made. It +may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to +flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach +that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a +great measure, by preying on other animals but this is a miserable +way as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering +lambs, may learn and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his +race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and +wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt +that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual +improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage +tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact +with the more civilized. +If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his +genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or +even insanity, it may lead him and yet that way, as he grows more +resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured +objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over +the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his +genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, +yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be +regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. +If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and +life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweetscented herbs, is more +elastic, more starry, more immortal that is your success. All +nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to +bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from +being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon +forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most +astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The +true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and +indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little +stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. +Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish I could +sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. +I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I +prefer the natural sky to an opiumeater's heaven. I would fain +keep sober always and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I +believe that water is the only drink for a wise man wine is not so +noble a liquor and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a +cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea Ah, how +low I fall when I am tempted by them Even music may be +intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and +Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who +does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I have +found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long +continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. +But to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less +particular in these respects. I carry less religion to the table, +ask no blessing not because I am wiser than I was, but, I am +obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted, +with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these +questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. +My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far +from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the +Ved refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in the +Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not +bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it and even in +their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has +remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to "the time of +distress." +Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from +his food in which appetite had no share? I have been thrilled to +think that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross sense of +taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that some +berries which I had eaten on a hillside had fed my genius. "The +soul not being mistress of herself," says Thsengtseu, "one looks, +and one does not see one listens, and one does not hear one eats, +and one does not know the savor of food." He who distinguishes the +true savor of his food can never be a glutton he who does not +cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to his brownbread crust with +as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that +food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite +with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, +but the devotion to sensual savors when that which is eaten is not +a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but +food for the worms that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for +mudturtles, muskrats, and other such savage tidbits, the fine lady +indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for sardines +from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the millpond, she +to her preservepot. The wonder is how they, how you and I, can +live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking. +Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an +instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only +investment that never fails. In the music of the harp which +trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills +us. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universe's +Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is +all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows +indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are +forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr +for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who +does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the +charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way +off, is heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our +lives. +We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion +as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and +perhaps cannot be wholly expelled like the worms which, even in +life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from +it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain +health of its own that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day +I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and +tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor +distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means +than temperance and purity. "That in which men differ from brute +beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable the common +herd lose it very soon superior men preserve it carefully." Who +knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? +If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek +him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over the external +senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be +indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit +can for the time pervade and control every member and function of +the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality +into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are +loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent +invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man and +what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but +various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the +channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our +impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the +animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being +established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on +account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I +fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the +divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to +some extent, our very life is our disgrace. +"How happy's he who hath due place assigned +To his beasts and disafforested his mind +Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast, +And is not ass himself to all the rest +Else man not only is the herd of swine, +But he's those devils too which did incline +Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse." +All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms all purity is +one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or +sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see +a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist +he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the +reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at +another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is +chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know +it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We +speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion +come wisdom and purity from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the +student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person +is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun +shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you +would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it +be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she +must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are +not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are +not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed +heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke +him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites +merely. +I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the +subject I care not how obscene my words are but because I +cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse +freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about +another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the +necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some +countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by +law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however +offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, +cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is +mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things +trifles. +Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the +god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by +hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and +our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness +begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or +sensuality to imbrute them. +John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard +day's work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. +Having bathed, he sat down to recreate his intellectual man. It +was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were +apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his +thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that +sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work but +the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in his +head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against his +will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more than the +scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes +of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from +that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which +slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the +village, and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him +Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a +glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle +over other fields than these. But how to come out of this +condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of +was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his +body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect. +Brute Neighbors +Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the +village to my house from the other side of the town, and the +catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating +of it. +Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard +so much as a locust over the sweetfern these three hours. The +pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts no flutter from them. +Was that a farmer's noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods +just now? The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and +Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so? He that does not +eat need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who would +live there where a body can never think for the barking of Bose? +And oh, the housekeeping to keep bright the devil's doorknobs, and +scour his tubs this bright day Better not keep a house. Say, some +hollow tree and then for morning calls and dinnerparties Only a +woodpecker tapping. Oh, they swarm the sun is too warm there they +are born too far into life for me. I have water from the spring, +and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf. Hark I hear a rustling +of the leaves. Is it some illfed village hound yielding to the +instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these +woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes on apace my +sumachs and sweetbriers tremble. Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do +you like the world today? +Poet. See those clouds how they hang That's the greatest +thing I have seen today. There's nothing like it in old paintings, +nothing like it in foreign lands unless when we were off the +coast of Spain. That's a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I +have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go +afishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only +trade I have learned. Come, let's along. +Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone. I +will go with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a serious +meditation. I think that I am near the end of it. Leave me alone, +then, for a while. But that we may not be delayed, you shall be +digging the bait meanwhile. Angleworms are rarely to be met with in +these parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure the race +is nearly extinct. The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to +that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen and +this you may have all to yourself today. I would advise you to set +in the spade down yonder among the groundnuts, where you see the +johnswort waving. I think that I may warrant you one worm to every +three sods you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the +grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it +will not be unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait to be +very nearly as the squares of the distances. +Hermit alone. Let me see where was I? Methinks I was nearly +in this frame of mind the world lay about at this angle. Shall I +go to heaven or afishing? If I should soon bring this meditation +to an end, would another so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I +was as near being resolved into the essence of things as ever I was +in my life. I fear my thoughts will not come back to me. If it +would do any good, I would whistle for them. When they make us an +offer, is it wise to say, We will think of it? My thoughts have +left no track, and I cannot find the path again. What was it that I +was thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I will just try these +three sentences of Confutsee they may fetch that state about again. +I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. +There never is but one opportunity of a kind. +Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just +thirteen whole ones, beside several which are imperfect or +undersized but they will do for the smaller fry they do not cover +up the hook so much. Those village worms are quite too large a +shiner may make a meal off one without finding the skewer. +Hermit. Well, then, let's be off. Shall we to the Concord? +There's good sport there if the water be not too high. +Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? +Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors as if +nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that +Pilpay Co. have put animals to their best use, for they are all +beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our +thoughts. +The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which +are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native +kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished +naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of +these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the +second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly +at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had +never seen a man before and it soon became quite familiar, and +would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend +the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it +resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on +the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and +round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the +latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it and when at +last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it +came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its +face and paws, like a fly, and walked away. +A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a +pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge Tetrao +umbellus, which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, +from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and +calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself +the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, +at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, +and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a +traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the +whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and +mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, +without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes +roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you +cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The +young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, +and mind only their mother's directions given from a distance, nor +will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. You +may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, +without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such +a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and +their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So +perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the +leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found +with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. +They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly +developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult +yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very +memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest +not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by +experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is +coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another +such a gem. The traveller does not often look into such a limpid +well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at +such a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some +prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves +which they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a hen +they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they +never hear the mother's call which gathers them again. These were +my hens and chickens. +It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though +secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the +neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. How retired the +otter manages to live here He grows to be four feet long, as big +as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of +him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house +is built, and probably still heard their whinnering at night. +Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after +planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was +the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under Brister's +Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was through a +succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch pines, +into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and +shaded spot, under a spreading white pine, there was yet a clean, +firm sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of +clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, +and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, +when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the woodcock led her +brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down +the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath but at last, spying me, +she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and +nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings and +legs, to attract my attention, and get off her young, who would +already have taken up their march, with faint, wiry peep, single +file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard the peep of the +young when I could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle +doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the +soft white pines over my head or the red squirrel, coursing down +the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive. You +only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods +that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. +I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day +when I went out to my woodpile, or rather my pile of stumps, I +observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly +half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. +Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled +and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was +surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, +that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of +ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two +red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all +the hills and vales in my woodyard, and the ground was already +strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only +battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battlefield I ever +trod while the battle was raging internecine war the red +republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the +other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet +without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought +so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each +other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at +noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. +The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his +adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never +for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, +having already caused the other to go by the board while the +stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on +looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. +They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested +the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their +battlecry was "Conquer or die." In the meanwhile there came along +a single red ant on the hillside of this valley, evidently full of +excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken +part in the battle probably the latter, for he had lost none of his +limbs whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or +upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his +wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He +saw this unequal combat from afar for the blacks were nearly +twice the size of the red he drew near with rapid pace till be +stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants then, +watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and +commenced his operations near the root of his right fore leg, +leaving the foe to select among his own members and so there were +three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been +invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should +not have wondered by this time to find that they had their +respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing +their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the +dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had +been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And +certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at +least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's +comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for +the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage +it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight Two killed on the +patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded Why here every ant +was a Buttrick "Fire for God's sake fire" and thousands +shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling +there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as +much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a threepenny tax on their +tea and the results of this battle will be as important and +memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker +Hill, at least. +I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly +described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it +under a tumbler on my windowsill, in order to see the issue. +Holding a microscope to the firstmentioned red ant, I saw that, +though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg of his enemy, +having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn +away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black +warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to +pierce and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with +ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour +longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier +had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still +living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly +trophies at his saddlebow, still apparently as firmly fastened as +ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without +feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many +other wounds, to divest himself of them which at length, after half +an hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off +over the windowsill in that crippled state. Whether he finally +survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some +Hotel des Invalides, I do not know but I thought that his industry +would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was +victorious, nor the cause of the war but I felt for the rest of +that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by +witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle +before my door. +Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been +celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber +is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. +"AEneas Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial +account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small +species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "this action was +fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of +Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole, +history of the battle with the greatest fidelity." A similar +engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, +in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried +the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant +enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the +expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The +battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five +years before the passage of Webster's FugitiveSlave Bill. +Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mudturtle in a +victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without +the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox +burrows and woodchucks' holes led perchance by some slight cur +which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural +terror in its denizens now far behind his guide, barking like a +canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for +scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, +imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of the +jerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along +the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from +home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, +which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the +woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more +native there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I +met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they +all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely +spitting at me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was +what was called a "winged cat" in one of the farmhouses in Lincoln +nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her in +June, , she was gone ahunting in the woods, as was her wont I +am not sure whether it was a male or female, and so use the more +common pronoun, but her mistress told me that she came into the +neighborhood a little more than a year before, in April, and was +finally taken into their house that she was of a dark brownishgray +color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a +large bushy tail like a fox that in the winter the fur grew thick +and flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten or twelve +inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, +the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the spring +these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her "wings," +which I keep still. There is no appearance of a membrane about +them. Some thought it was part flying squirrel or some other wild +animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, +prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and +domestic cat. This would have been the right kind of cat for me to +keep, if I had kept any for why should not a poet's cat be winged +as well as his horse? +In the fall the loon Colymbus glacialis came, as usual, to +moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild +laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the +Milldam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two +and three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and +spyglasses. They come rustling through the woods like autumn +leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on +this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be +omnipresent if he dive here he must come up there. But now the +kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the +surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though +his foes sweep the pond with spyglasses, and make the woods resound +with their discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, +taking sides with all waterfowl, and our sportsmen must beat a +retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too +often successful. When I went to get a pail of water early in the +morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove +within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in +order to see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be completely +lost, so that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till the +latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for him on the +surface. He commonly went off in a rain. +As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October +afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, +like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a +loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a +few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. +I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up I was +nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the +direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came +to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval +and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than +before. He manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half +a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, +turning his head this way and that, he cooly surveyed the water and +the land, and apparently chose his course so that he might come up +where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest +distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up +his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at once to +the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it. While +he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine +his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth +surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your +adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is +to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he +would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having +apparently passed directly under the boat. So longwinded was he +and so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would +immediately plunge again, nevertheless and then no wit could divine +where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be +speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit +the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons +have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the +surface, with hooks set for trout though Walden is deeper than +that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor +from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools Yet he +appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, +and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he +approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and +instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest +on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate +where he would rise for again and again, when I was straining my +eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his +unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after displaying so much +cunning, did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by +that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough betray him? He +was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the +splash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But +after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and +swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how +serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the +surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual +note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a +waterfowl but occasionally, when he had balked me most +successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a longdrawn +unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird as +when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. +This was his looning perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard +here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he +laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. +Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth +that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. +His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of +the water were all against him. At length having come up fifty rods +off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the +god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the +east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty +rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon +answered, and his god was angry with me and so I left him +disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface. +For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and +veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman tricks +which they will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. +When compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round +and over the pond at a considerable height, from which they could +easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the +sky and, when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they +would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to +a distant part which was left free but what beside safety they got +by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love +its water for the same reason that I do. +HouseWarming +In October I went agraping to the river meadows, and loaded +myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance +than for food. There, too, I admired, though I did not gather, the +cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly +and red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the +smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel +and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and +New York destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of +Nature there. So butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the +prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. The +barberry's brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes merely but +I collected a small store of wild apples for coddling, which the +proprietor and travellers had overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe +I laid up half a bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that +season to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln they +now sleep their long sleep under the railroad with a bag on my +shoulder, and a stick to open burs with in my hand, for I did not +always wait for the frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud +reproofs of the red squirrels and the jays, whose halfconsumed nuts +I sometimes stole, for the burs which they had selected were sure to +contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and shook the trees. +They grew also behind my house, and one large tree, which almost +overshadowed it, was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented the +whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays got most of its +fruit the last coming in flocks early in the morning and picking +the nuts out of the burs before they fell, I relinquished these +trees to them and visited the more distant woods composed wholly of +chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute +for bread. Many other substitutes might, perhaps, be found. +Digging one day for fishworms, I discovered the groundnut Apios +tuberosa on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of +fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had ever dug and +eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had not dreamed it. I had +often since seen its crumpled red velvety blossom supported by the +stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same. +Cultivation has wellnigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish taste, +much like that of a frostbitten potato, and I found it better +boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint promise of +Nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at some +future period. In these days of fatted cattle and waving +grainfields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian +tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine but +let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious +English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and +without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed +of corn to the great cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest, +whence he is said to have brought it but the now almost +exterminated groundnut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of +frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient +importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian +Ceres or Minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it and +when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string of +nuts may be represented on our works of art. +Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three +small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white +stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next +the water. Ah, many a tale their color told And gradually from +week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired +itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the +manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished +by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the +walls. +The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in October, as to winter +quarters, and settled on my windows within and on the walls +overhead, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. Each morning, +when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, but I did +not trouble myself much to get rid of them I even felt complimented +by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter. They never +molested me seriously, though they bedded with me and they +gradually disappeared, into what crevices I do not know, avoiding +winter and unspeakable cold. +Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter quarters in +November, I used to resort to the northeast side of Walden, which +the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and the stony shore, +made the fireside of the pond it is so much pleasanter and +wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an +artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers +which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left. +When I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. My bricks, +being secondhand ones, required to be cleaned with a trowel, so +that I learned more than usual of the qualities of bricks and +trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old, and was said to be +still growing harder but this is one of those sayings which men +love to repeat whether they are true or not. Such sayings +themselves grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would +take many blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them. +Many of the villages of Mesopotamia are built of secondhand bricks +of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the +cement on them is older and probably harder still. However that may +be, I was struck by the peculiar toughness of the steel which bore +so many violent blows without being worn out. As my bricks had been +in a chimney before, though I did not read the name of +Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out its many fireplace bricks as I +could find, to save work and waste, and I filled the spaces between +the bricks about the fireplace with stones from the pond shore, and +also made my mortar with the white sand from the same place. I +lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the +house. Indeed, I worked so deliberately, that though I commenced at +the ground in the morning, a course of bricks raised a few inches +above the floor served for my pillow at night yet I did not get a +stiff neck for it that I remember my stiff neck is of older date. +I took a poet to board for a fortnight about those times, which +caused me to be put to it for room. He brought his own knife, +though I had two, and we used to scour them by thrusting them into +the earth. He shared with me the labors of cooking. I was pleased +to see my work rising so square and solid by degrees, and reflected, +that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated to endure a long +time. The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, +standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens +even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its +importance and independence are apparent. This was toward the end +of summer. It was now November. +The north wind had already begun to cool the pond, though it +took many weeks of steady blowing to accomplish it, it is so deep. +When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, +the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous +chinks between the boards. Yet I passed some cheerful evenings in +that cool and airy apartment, surrounded by the rough brown boards +full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high overhead. My house +never pleased my eye so much after it was plastered, though I was +obliged to confess that it was more comfortable. Should not every +apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some +obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening +about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and +imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive +furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I +began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. I had got a couple +of old firedogs to keep the wood from the hearth, and it did me +good to see the soot form on the back of the chimney which I had +built, and I poked the fire with more right and more satisfaction +than usual. My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an +echo in it but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and +remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were +concentrated in one room it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and +keepingroom and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or +servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato +says, the master of a family patremfamilias must have in his +rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat +caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, +"an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to +expect hard times it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and +glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts +of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a +jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. +I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing +in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread +work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, +substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with +bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over +one's head useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and +queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done +reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping +over the sill a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch +upon a pole to see the roof where some may live in the fireplace, +some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end +of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the +spiders, if they choose a house which you have got into when you +have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over where the +weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without +further journey such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a +tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and +nothing for housekeeping where you can see all the treasures of +the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man +should use at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, +and garret where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a +ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, +and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the +oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils +are the chief ornaments where the washing is not put out, nor the +fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to +move from off the trapdoor, when the cook would descend into the +cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath +you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest +as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at +the back without seeing some of its inhabitants where to be a guest +is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be +carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular +cell, and told to make yourself at home there in solitary +confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, +but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his +alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest +distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a +design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's +premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not +aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my +old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I +have described, if I were going their way but backing out of a +modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am +caught in one. +It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose +all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at +such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are +necessarily so far fetched, through slides and dumbwaiters, as it +were in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and +workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, +commonly. As if only the savage dwelt near enough to Nature and +Truth to borrow a trope from them. How can the scholar, who dwells +away in the North West Territory or the Isle of Man, tell what is +parliamentary in the kitchen? +However, only one or two of my guests were ever bold enough to +stay and eat a hastypudding with me but when they saw that crisis +approaching they beat a hasty retreat rather, as if it would shake +the house to its foundations. Nevertheless, it stood through a +great many hastypuddings. +I did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I brought over +some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from the opposite +shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyance which would have +tempted me to go much farther if necessary. My house had in the +meanwhile been shingled down to the ground on every side. In +lathing I was pleased to be able to send home each nail with a +single blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer the +plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly. I remembered +the story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine clothes, was wont to +lounge about the village once, giving advice to workmen. Venturing +one day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, +seized a plasterer's board, and having loaded his trowel without +mishap, with a complacent look toward the lathing overhead, made a +bold gesture thitherward and straightway, to his complete +discomfiture, received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. I +admired anew the economy and convenience of plastering, which so +effectually shuts out the cold and takes a handsome finish, and I +learned the various casualties to which the plasterer is liable. I +was surprised to see how thirsty the bricks were which drank up all +the moisture in my plaster before I had smoothed it, and how many +pailfuls of water it takes to christen a new hearth. I had the +previous winter made a small quantity of lime by burning the shells +of the Unio fluviatilis, which our river affords, for the sake of +the experiment so that I knew where my materials came from. I +might have got good limestone within a mile or two and burned it +myself, if I had cared to do so. +The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the shadiest and +shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before the general +freezing. The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, +being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity +that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow for +you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater +insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your +leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a +glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth then. There are +many furrows in the sand where some creature has travelled about and +doubled on its tracks and, for wrecks, it is strewn with the cases +of caddisworms made of minute grains of white quartz. Perhaps +these have creased it, for you find some of their cases in the +furrows, though they are deep and broad for them to make. But the +ice itself is the object of most interest, though you must improve +the earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine it closely the +morning after it freezes, you find that the greater part of the +bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are against its +under surface, and that more are continually rising from the bottom +while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and dark, that is, you +see the water through it. These bubbles are from an eightieth to an +eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see +your face reflected in them through the ice. There may be thirty or +forty of them to a square inch. There are also already within the +ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, +sharp cones with the apex upward or oftener, if the ice is quite +fresh, minute spherical bubbles one directly above another, like a +string of beads. But these within the ice are not so numerous nor +obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to cast on stones to try +the strength of the ice, and those which broke through carried in +air with them, which formed very large and conspicuous white bubbles +beneath. One day when I came to the same place fortyeight hours +afterward, I found that those large bubbles were still perfect, +though an inch more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by +the seam in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had been +very warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, +showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, but +opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly +stronger than before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under +this heat and run together, and lost their regularity they were no +longer one directly over another, but often like silvery coins +poured from a bag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes, as if +occupying slight cleavages. The beauty of the ice was gone, and it +was too late to study the bottom. Being curious to know what +position my great bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, I +broke out a cake containing a middling sized one, and turned it +bottom upward. The new ice had formed around and under the bubble, +so that it was included between the two ices. It was wholly in the +lower ice, but close against the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps +slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep +by four inches in diameter and I was surprised to find that +directly under the bubble the ice was melted with great regularity +in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five eighths of +an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there between the +water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch thick and in many +places the small bubbles in this partition had burst out downward, +and probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, +which were a foot in diameter. I inferred that the infinite number +of minute bubbles which I had first seen against the under surface +of the ice were now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its +degree, had operated like a burningglass on the ice beneath to melt +and rot it. These are the little airguns which contribute to make +the ice crack and whoop. +At length the winter set in good earnest, just as I had finished +plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had +not had permission to do so till then. Night after night the geese +came lumbering in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, +even after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight in +Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward Fair Haven, bound +for Mexico. Several times, when returning from the village at ten +or eleven o'clock at night, I heard the tread of a flock of geese, +or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pondhole behind +my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or +quack of their leader as they hurried off. In Walden froze +entirely over for the first time on the night of the d of +December, Flint's and other shallower ponds and the river having +been frozen ten days or more in ', the th in ', about the +st and in ', about the th of December in ', the th of +January in ', the st of December. The snow had already covered +the ground since the th of November, and surrounded me suddenly +with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, +and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within +my breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead +wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or +sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An +old forest fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for +me. I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god +Terminus. How much more interesting an event is that man's supper +who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, +steal, the fuel to cook it with His bread and meat are sweet. +There are enough fagots and waste wood of all kinds in the forests +of most of our towns to support many fires, but which at present +warm none, and, some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. +There was also the driftwood of the pond. In the course of the +summer I had discovered a raft of pitch pine logs with the bark on, +pinned together by the Irish when the railroad was built. This I +hauled up partly on the shore. After soaking two years and then +lying high six months it was perfectly sound, though waterlogged +past drying. I amused myself one winter day with sliding this +piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with +one end of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on +the ice or I tied several logs together with a birch withe, and +then, with a longer birch or alder which had a book at the end, +dragged them across. Though completely waterlogged and almost as +heavy as lead, they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire +nay, I thought that they burned better for the soaking, as if the +pitch, being confined by the water, burned longer, as in a lamp. +Gilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, says +that "the encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences +thus raised on the borders of the forest," were "considered as great +nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under +the name of purprestures, as tending ad terrorem ferarum ad +nocumentum forestae, etc.," to the frightening of the game and the +detriment of the forest. But I was interested in the preservation +of the venison and the vert more than the hunters or woodchoppers, +and as much as though I had been the Lord Warden himself and if any +part was burned, though I burned it myself by accident, I grieved +with a grief that lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that +of the proprietors nay, I grieved when it was cut down by the +proprietors themselves. I would that our farmers when they cut down +a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they +came to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove lucum +conlucare, that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. +The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or +goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, +my family, and children, etc. +It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in +this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and +universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and +inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to +us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their +bows of it, we make our gunstocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty +years ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and +Philadelphia "nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best +wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more +than three hundred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance +of three hundred miles by cultivated plains." In this town the +price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how +much higher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics +and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, +are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for +the privilege of gleaning after the woodchopper. It is now many +years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the +materials of the arts the New Englander and the New Hollander, the +Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and +Harry Gill in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, +the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from +the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do +without them. +Every man looks at his woodpile with a kind of affection. I +love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to +remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody +claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of +the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my +beanfield. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed +me twice once while I was splitting them, and again when they +were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for +the axe, I was advised to get the village blacksmith to "jump" it +but I jumped him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into +it, made it do. If it was dull, it was at least hung true. +A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is +interesting to remember how much of this food for fire is still +concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous years I had often +gone prospecting over some bare hillside, where a pitch pine wood +had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. They are almost +indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will +still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all become +vegetable mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming +a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant from the +heart. With axe and shovel you explore this mine, and follow the +marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a +vein of gold, deep into the earth. But commonly I kindled my fire +with the dry leaves of the forest, which I had stored up in my shed +before the snow came. Green hickory finely split makes the +woodchopper's kindlings, when he has a camp in the woods. Once in a +while I got a little of this. When the villagers were lighting +their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to the various +wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky streamer from my +chimney, that I was awake. +Lightwinged Smoke, Icarian bird, +Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, +Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, +Circling above the hamlets as thy nest +Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form +Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts +By night starveiling, and by day +Darkening the light and blotting out the sun +Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, +And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. +Hard green wood just cut, though I used but little of that, +answered my purpose better than any other. I sometimes left a good +fire when I went to take a walk in a winter afternoon and when I +returned, three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive and +glowing. My house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if I +had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire that +lived there and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy. One +day, however, as I was splitting wood, I thought that I would just +look in at the window and see if the house was not on fire it was +the only time I remember to have been particularly anxious on this +score so I looked and saw that a spark had caught my bed, and I +went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place as big as my +hand. But my house occupied so sunny and sheltered a position, and +its roof was so low, that I could afford to let the fire go out in +the middle of almost any winter day. +The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and +making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and +of brown paper for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth +as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so +careful to secure them. Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming +to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. The animal merely makes a +bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place but man, +having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, +and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in +which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain +a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows +even admit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day. Thus he +goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the +fine arts. Though, when I had been exposed to the rudest blasts a +long time, my whole body began to grow torpid, when I reached the +genial atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my faculties and +prolonged my life. But the most luxuriously housed has little to +boast of in this respect, nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate +how the human race may be at last destroyed. It would be easy to +cut their threads any time with a little sharper blast from the +north. We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows but a +little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's +existence on the globe. +The next winter I used a small cookingstove for economy, since +I did not own the forest but it did not keep fire so well as the +open fireplace. Cooking was then, for the most part, no longer a +poetic, but merely a chemic process. It will soon be forgotten, in +these days of stoves, that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, +after the Indian fashion. The stove not only took up room and +scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if I had +lost a companion. You can always see a face in the fire. The +laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies his thoughts of the +dross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day. +But I could no longer sit and look into the fire, and the pertinent +words of a poet recurred to me with new force. +"Never, bright flame, may be denied to me +Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. +What but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright? +What but my fortunes sunk so low in night? +Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, +Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all? +Was thy existence then too fanciful +For our life's common light, who are so dull? +Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold +With our congenial souls? secrets too bold? +Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit +Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit, +Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire +Warms feet and hands nor does to more aspire +By whose compact utilitarian heap +The present may sit down and go to sleep, +Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked, +And with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked." +Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors +I weathered some merry snowstorms, and spent some cheerful +winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirled wildly +without, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. For many weeks +I met no one in my walks but those who came occasionally to cut wood +and sled it to the village. The elements, however, abetted me in +making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when I had +once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where +they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, +and so not only made a my bed for my feet, but in the night their +dark line was my guide. For human society I was obliged to conjure +up the former occupants of these woods. Within the memory of many +of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with +the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it +were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and +dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than +now. In some places, within my own remembrance, the pines would +scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and children who +were compelled to go this way to Lincoln alone and on foot did it +with fear, and often ran a good part of the distance. Though mainly +but a humble route to neighboring villages, or for the woodman's +team, it once amused the traveller more than now by its variety, and +lingered longer in his memory. Where now firm open fields stretch +from the village to the woods, it then ran through a maple swamp on +a foundation of logs, the remnants of which, doubtless, still +underlie the present dusty highway, from the Stratton, now the +AlmsHouse Farm, to Brister's Hill. +East of my beanfield, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, +slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, +who built his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in +Walden Woods Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say +that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little +patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old +and need them but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. +He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. +Cato's halfobliterated cellarhole still remains, though known to +few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It is +now filled with the smooth sumach Rhus glabra, and one of the +earliest species of goldenrod Solidago stricta grows there +luxuriantly. +Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town, +Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, where she spun linen +for the townsfolk, making the Walden Woods ring with her shrill +singing, for she had a loud and notable voice. At length, in the +war of , her dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers, +prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and hens +were all burned up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat +inhumane. One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he +passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself over her +gurgling pot "Ye are all bones, bones" I have seen bricks amid +the oak copse there. +Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister's Hill, lived +Brister Freeman, "a handy Negro," slave of Squire Cummings once +there where grow still the apple trees which Brister planted and +tended large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish +to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln +buryingground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of +some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord +where he is styled "Sippio Brister" Scipio Africanus he had some +title to be called "a man of color," as if he were discolored. +It also told me, with staring emphasis, when he died which was but +an indirect way of informing me that he ever lived. With him dwelt +Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly +large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night, +such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since. +Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the +woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratton family whose +orchard once covered all the slope of Brister's Hill, but was long +since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old +roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty village tree. +Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed's location, on the other +side of the way, just on the edge of the wood ground famous for the +pranks of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has +acted a prominent and astounding part in our New England life, and +deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have his +biography written one day who first comes in the guise of a friend +or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family +NewEngland Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies +enacted here let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend +an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious +tradition says that once a tavern stood the well the same, which +tempered the traveller's beverage and refreshed his steed. Here +then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and went +their ways again. +Breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had +long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on +fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. +I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself +over Davenant's "Gondibert," that winter that I labored with a +lethargy which, by the way, I never knew whether to regard as a +family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, +and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to +keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt +to read Chalmers' collection of English poetry without skipping. It +fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the +bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led +by a straggling troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for +I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods +we who had run to fires before barn, shop, or dwellinghouse, +or all together. "It's Baker's barn," cried one. "It is the Codman +place," affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the +wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted "Concord to the +rescue" Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, +bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance +Company, who was bound to go however far and ever and anon the +engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure and rearmost of all, +as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave +the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the +evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the +crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, +and realized, alas that we were there. The very nearness of the +fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frogpond +on to it but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so +worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, +expressed our sentiments through speakingtrumpets, or in lower tone +referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, +including Bascom's shop, and, between ourselves, we thought that, +were we there in season with our "tub," and a full frogpond by, we +could turn that threatened last and universal one into another +flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief returned +to sleep and "Gondibert." But as for "Gondibert," I would except +that passage in the preface about wit being the soul's powder +"but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to +powder." +It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the +following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at +this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered the only survivor +of the family that I know, the heir of both its virtues and its +vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on his +stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering +cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been +working far off in the river meadows all day, and had improved the +first moments that he could call his own to visit the home of his +fathers and his youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides and +points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was +some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones, +where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. +The house being gone, he looked at what there was left. He was +soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence, implied, and showed +me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered +up which, thank Heaven, could never be burned and he groped long +about the wall to find the wellsweep which his father had cut and +mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had +been fastened to the heavy end all that he could now cling to +to convince me that it was no common "rider." I felt it, and still +remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a +family. +Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes +by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse. +But to return toward Lincoln. +Farther in the woods than any of these, where the road +approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, and +furnished his townsmen with earthenware, and left descendants to +succeed him. Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the +land by sufferance while they lived and there often the sheriff +came in vain to collect the taxes, and "attached a chip," for form's +sake, as I have read in his accounts, there being nothing else that +he could lay his hands on. One day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, +a man who was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse +against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the younger. He had +long ago bought a potter's wheel of him, and wished to know what had +become of him. I had read of the potter's clay and wheel in +Scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use were +not such as had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on +trees like gourds somewhere, and I was pleased to hear that so +fictile an art was ever practiced in my neighborhood. +The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irishman, +Hugh Quoil if I have spelt his name with coil enough, who occupied +Wyman's tenement Col. Quoil, he was called. Rumor said that he +had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he had lived I should have made +him fight his battles over again. His trade here was that of a +ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena Quoil came to Walden Woods. +All I know of him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like one who +had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you +could well attend to. He wore a greatcoat in midsummer, being +affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of +carmine. He died in the road at the foot of Brister's Hill shortly +after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a +neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades +avoided it as "an unlucky castle," I visited it. There lay his old +clothes curled up by use, as if they were himself, upon his raised +plank bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl +broken at the fountain. The last could never have been the symbol +of his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had heard of +Brister's Spring, he had never seen it and soiled cards, kings of +diamonds, spades, and hearts, were scattered over the floor. One +black chicken which the administrator could not catch, black as +night and as silent, not even croaking, awaiting Reynard, still went +to roost in the next apartment. In the rear there was the dim +outline of a garden, which had been planted but had never received +its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking fits, though it +was now harvest time. It was overrun with Roman wormwood and +beggarticks, which last stuck to my clothes for all fruit. The +skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the +house, a trophy of his last Waterloo but no warm cap or mittens +would he want more. +Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, +with buried cellar stones, and strawberries, raspberries, +thimbleberries, hazelbushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny +sward there some pitch pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the +chimney nook, and a sweetscented black birch, perhaps, waves where +the doorstone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible, where once +a spring oozed now dry and tearless grass or it was covered deep +not to be discovered till some late day with a flat stone +under the sod, when the last of the race departed. What a sorrowful +act must that be the covering up of wells coincident with the +opening of wells of tears. These cellar dents, like deserted fox +burrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were the stir +and bustle of human life, and "fate, free will, foreknowledge +absolute," in some form and dialect or other were by turns +discussed. But all I can learn of their conclusions amounts to just +this, that "Cato and Brister pulled wool" which is about as +edifying as the history of more famous schools of philosophy. +Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and +lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweetscented flowers +each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller planted and +tended once by children's hands, in frontyard plots now standing +by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to newrising +forests the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. +Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two +eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house +and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house +itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and +orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a +halfcentury after they had grown up and died blossoming as fair, +and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still +tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors. +But this small village, germ of something more, why did it fail +while Concord keeps its ground? Were there no natural advantages +no water privileges, forsooth? Ay, the deep Walden Pond and cool +Brister's Spring privilege to drink long and healthy draughts at +these, all unimproved by these men but to dilute their glass. They +were universally a thirsty race. Might not the basket, +stablebroom, matmaking, cornparching, linenspinning, and pottery +business have thrived here, making the wilderness to blossom like +the rose, and a numerous posterity have inherited the land of their +fathers? The sterile soil would at least have been proof against a +lowland degeneracy. Alas how little does the memory of these +human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape Again, +perhaps, Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my house +raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet. +I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I +occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient +city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil +is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary +the earth itself will be destroyed. With such reminiscences I +repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep. +At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay +deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight +at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle +and poultry which are said to have survived for a long time buried +in drifts, even without food or like that early settler's family in +the town of Sutton, in this State, whose cottage was completely +covered by the great snow of when he was absent, and an Indian +found it only by the hole which the chimney's breath made in the +drift, and so relieved the family. But no friendly Indian concerned +himself about me nor needed he, for the master of the house was at +home. The Great Snow How cheerful it is to hear of When the +farmers could not get to the woods and swamps with their teams, and +were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their houses, and, +when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in the swamps, ten feet +from the ground, as it appeared the next spring. +In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to +my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by a +meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. For a +week of even weather I took exactly the same number of steps, and of +the same length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and with +the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracks to such +routine the winter reduces us yet often they were filled with +heaven's own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, +or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten +miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech +tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines +when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so +sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir trees wading +to the tops of the highest hills when the show was nearly two feet +deep on a level, and shaking down another snowstorm on my head at +every step or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my +hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters. +One afternoon I amused myself by watching a barred owl Strix +nebulosa sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white pine, +close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of +him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my +feet, but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he would +stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes +wide but their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too +felt a slumberous influence after watching him half an hour, as he +sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the +cat. There was only a narrow slit left between their lids, by which +be preserved a pennisular relation to me thus, with halfshut eyes, +looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, +vague object or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on +some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and +sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having his +dreams disturbed and when he launched himself off and flapped +through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected breadth, I +could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the +pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by +sight, feeling his twilight way, as it were, with his sensitive +pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace await the +dawning of his day. +As I walked over the long causeway made for the railroad through +the meadows, I encountered many a blustering and nipping wind, for +nowhere has it freer play and when the frost had smitten me on one +cheek, heathen as I was, I turned to it the other also. Nor was it +much better by the carriage road from Brister's Hill. For I came to +town still, like a friendly Indian, when the contents of the broad +open fields were all piled up between the walls of the Walden road, +and half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last +traveller. And when I returned new drifts would have formed, +through which I floundered, where the busy northwest wind had been +depositing the powdery snow round a sharp angle in the road, and not +a rabbit's track, nor even the fine print, the small type, of a +meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed to find, even in +midwinter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass and the +skunkcabbage still put forth with perennial verdure, and some +hardier bird occasionally awaited the return of spring. +Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned from my +walk at evening I crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper leading +from my door, and found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my +house filled with the odor of his pipe. Or on a Sunday afternoon, +if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made +by the step of a longheaded farmer, who from far through the woods +sought my house, to have a social "crack" one of the few of his +vocation who are "men on their farms" who donned a frock instead of +a professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of +church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barnyard. We +talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about large fires in +cold, bracing weather, with clear heads and when other dessert +failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have +long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are +commonly empty. +The one who came from farthest to my lodge, through deepest +snows and most dismal tempests, was a poet. A farmer, a hunter, a +soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted but nothing +can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict +his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, +even when doctors sleep. We made that small house ring with +boisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of much sober talk, +making amends then to Walden vale for the long silences. Broadway +was still and deserted in comparison. At suitable intervals there +were regular salutes of laughter, which might have been referred +indifferently to the lastuttered or the forthcoming jest. We made +many a "bran new" theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which +combined the advantages of conviviality with the clearheadedness +which philosophy requires. +I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there +was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the +village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp +through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. +One of the last of the philosophers Connecticut gave him to the +world he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares, his +brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, +bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think +that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words +and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men +are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed +as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But though +comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected +by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will +come to him for advice. +"How blind that cannot see serenity" +A true friend of man almost the only friend of human progress. An +Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience +and faith making plain the image engraven in men's bodies, the God +of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments. With his +hospitable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and +scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly +some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep a +caravansary on the world's highway, where philosophers of all +nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed, +"Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have +leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road." He is +perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance +to know the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered +and talked, and effectually put the world behind us for he was +pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way +we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met +together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A +bluerobed man, whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which +reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die Nature +cannot spare him. +Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and +whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish +grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded so gently and reverently, or we +pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not +scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came +and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western +sky, and the mothero'pearl flocks which sometimes form and +dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a +fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which +earth offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker Great Expecter +to converse with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment. Ah +such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I +have spoken of we three it expanded and racked my little +house I should not dare to say how many pounds' weight there was +above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch it opened its +seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to +stop the consequent leak but I had enough of that kind of oakum +already picked. +There was one other with whom I had "solid seasons," long to be +remembered, at his house in the village, and who looked in upon me +from time to time but I had no more for society there. +There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected the Visitor who +never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, "The householder is to remain +at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or +longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest." I often +performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a +whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the +town. +Winter Animals +When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new +and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces +of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's Pond, +after it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and +skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I +could think of nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up +around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not +remember to have stood before and the fishermen, at an +indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their +wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or Esquimaux, or in misty weather +loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether they were +giants or pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in +Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing no house +between my own hut and the lecture room. In Goose Pond, which lay +in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high +above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. +Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only +shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where I could walk +freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere +and the villagers were confined to their streets. There, far from +the village street, and except at very long intervals, from the +jingle of sleighbells, I slid and skated, as in a vast mooseyard +well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with +snow or bristling with icicles. +For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard +the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far +such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a +suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and +quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it +was making it. I seldom opened my door in a winter evening without +hearing it Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo, sounded sonorously, and the +first three syllables accented somewhat like how der do or +sometimes hoo, hoo only. One night in the beginning of winter, +before the pond froze over, about nine o'clock, I was startled by +the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the +sound of their wings like a tempest in the woods as they flew low +over my house. They passed over the pond toward Fair Haven, +seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their commodore +honking all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable +catowl from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice +I ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular +intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this +intruder from Hudson's Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and +volume of voice in a native, and boohoo him out of Concord horizon. +What do you mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night +consecrated to me? Do you think I am ever caught napping at such an +hour, and that I have not got lungs and a larynx as well as +yourself? Boohoo, boohoo, boohoo It was one of the most +thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had a +discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such +as these plains never saw nor heard. +I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great +bedfellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its +bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had +dreams or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, +as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning +would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third +of an inch wide. +Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snowcrust, +in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking +raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some +anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs +outright and run freely in the streets for if we take the ages into +our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes +as well as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, +still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. +Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked +a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated. +Usually the red squirrel Sciurus Hudsonius waked me in the +dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, +as if sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the +winter I threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had +not got ripe, on to the snowcrust by my door, and was amused by +watching the motions of the various animals which were baited by it. +In the twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly and made a +hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels came and went, and +afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. One would +approach at first warily through the shrub oaks, running over the +snowcrust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a +few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making +inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as if it were for a wager, +and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half +a rod at a time and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous +expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the +universe were eyed on him for all the motions of a squirrel, even +in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as +much as those of a dancing girl wasting more time in delay and +circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance +I never saw one walk and then suddenly, before you could say +Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch pine, winding +up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and +talking to all the universe at the same time for no reason that I +could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect. At length +he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, frisk about +in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the topmost stick of my +woodpile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and +there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to +time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the halfnaked cobs +about till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his +food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was +held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless +grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a +ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had +life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one, +or be off now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in +the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in +a forenoon till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one, +considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he +would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by +the same zigzag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with +it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making +its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being +determined to put it through at any rate a singularly frivolous +and whimsical fellow and so he would get off with it to where he +lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty +rods distant, and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the +woods in various directions. +At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were heard +long before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of +a mile off, and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from +tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the +squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch pine bough, they +attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too big for +their throats and chokes them and after great labor they disgorge +it, and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows +with their bills. They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much +respect for them but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to +work as if they were taking what was their own. +Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up +the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig and, +placing them under their claws, hammered away at them with their +little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were +sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A little flock of +these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out of my woodpile, or the +crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the +tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day +day, or more rarely, in springlike days, a wiry summery phebe +from the woodside. They were so familiar that at length one +alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at +the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my +shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I +felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I +should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels +also grew at last to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped +upon my shoe, when that was the nearest way. +When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the +end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and +about my woodpile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and +evening to feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the +partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the +dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the +sunbeams like golden dust, for this brave bird is not to be scared +by winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, +"sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it remains +concealed for a day or two." I used to start them in the open land +also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to "bud" the +wild apple trees. They will come regularly every evening to +particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, +and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. I +am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is Nature's +own bird which lives on buds and diet drink. +In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I +sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with +hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, +and the note of the huntinghorn at intervals, proving that man was +in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on +to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their +Actaeon. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning with a +single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their +inn. They tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the +frozen earth he would be safe, or if be would run in a straight line +away no foxhound could overtake him but, having left his pursuers +far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up, and when +he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await +him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and +then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that water +will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox +pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered +with shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the +same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the +scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, +and circle round my house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, +as if afflicted by a species of madness, so that nothing could +divert them from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall upon +the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake everything +else for this. One day a man came to my hut from Lexington to +inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been +hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser +for all I told him, for every time I attempted to answer his +questions he interrupted me by asking, "What do you do here?" He +had lost a dog, but found a man. +One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe +in Walden once every year when the water was warmest, and at such +times looked in upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun +one afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood and as he +walked the Wayland road he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and +ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as +thought leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet +had not touched him. Some way behind came an old hound and her +three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and +disappeared again in the woods. Late in the afternoon, as he was +resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of +the hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox and on +they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding +nearer and nearer, now from Well Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. +For a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet +to a hunter's ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the +solemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed +by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the +round, leaving his pursuers far behind and, leaping upon a rock +amid the woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the +hunter. For a moment compassion restrained the latter's arm but +that was a shortlived mood, and as quick as thought can follow +thought his piece was levelled, and whang the fox, rolling over +the rock, lay dead on the ground. The hunter still kept his place +and listened to the hounds. Still on they came, and now the near +woods resounded through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. +At length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to the ground, +and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock +but, spying the dead fox, she suddenly ceased her hounding as if +struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round him in +silence and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, +were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came +forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They +waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush +a while, and at length turned off into the woods again. That +evening a Weston squire came to the Concord hunter's cottage to +inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week they had been +hunting on their own account from Weston woods. The Concord hunter +told him what he knew and offered him the skin but the other +declined it and departed. He did not find his hounds that night, +but the next day learned that they had crossed the river and put up +at a farmhouse for the night, whence, having been well fed, they +took their departure early in the morning. +The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who +used to hunt bears on Fair Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins +for rum in Concord village who told him, even, that he had seen a +moose there. Nutting had a famous foxhound named Burgoyne he +pronounced it Bugine which my informant used to borrow. In the +"Wast Book" of an old trader of this town, who was also a captain, +townclerk, and representative, I find the following entry. Jan. +th, , "John Melven Cr. by Grey Fox " they are not +now found here and in his ledger, Feb, th, , Hezekiah Stratton +has credit "by / a Catt skin " of course, a wildcat, for +Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war, and would not have +got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit is given for +deerskins also, and they were daily sold. One man still preserves +the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and +another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle +was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew +here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by +the roadside and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, if +my memory serves me, than any huntinghorn. +At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds +in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my +way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had +passed. +Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There +were scores of pitch pines around my house, from one to four inches +in diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the previous winter a +Norwegian winter for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they +were obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with their other +diet. These trees were alive and apparently flourishing at +midsummer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completely +girdled but after another winter such were without exception dead. +It is remarkable that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole +pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it +but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are +wont to grow up densely. +The hares Lepus Americanus were very familiar. One had her +form under my house all winter, separated from me only by the +flooring, and she startled me each morning by her hasty departure +when I began to stir thump, thump, thump, striking her head +against the floor timbers in her hurry. They used to come round my +door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which I had thrown out, +and were so nearly the color of the ground that they could hardly be +distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight I alternately +lost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my window. +When I opened my door in the evening, off they would go with a +squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One +evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling +with fear, yet unwilling to move a poor wee thing, lean and bony, +with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It +looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, +but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and +unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scud +with an elastic spring over the snowcrust, straightening its body +and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest between +me and itself the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the +dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. Such +then was its nature. Lepus, levipes, lightfoot, some think. +What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are +among the most simple and indigenous animal products ancient and +venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times of the +very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to +the ground and to one another it is either winged or it is +legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a +rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be +expected as rustling leaves. The partridge and the rabbit are still +sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions +occur. If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which +spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerous +than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does not support +a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and around every swamp may +be seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and +horsehair snares, which some cowboy tends. +The Pond in Winter +After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some +question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to +answer in my sleep, as what how when where? But there was +dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad +windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. +I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow +lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope +of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward +Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She +has long ago taken her resolution. "O Prince, our eyes contemplate +with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied +spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of +this glorious creation but day comes to reveal to us this great +work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether." +Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in +search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy +night it needed a diviningrod to find it. Every winter the liquid +and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every +breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the +depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the +heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, +and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the +marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes +dormant for three months or more. Standing on the snowcovered +plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through +a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my +feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of +the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of +ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer +there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight +sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the +inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads. +Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men +come with fishingreels and slender lunch, and let down their fine +lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch wild men, +who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities +than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns +together in parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat +their luncheon in stout fearnaughts on the dry oak leaves on the +shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial. +They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less +than they have done. The things which they practice are said not +yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch +for bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into a summer pond, +as if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew where she had +retreated. How, pray, did he get these in midwinter? Oh, he got +worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caught +them. His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of +the naturalist penetrate himself a subject for the naturalist. The +latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of +insects the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and +moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking +trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature +carried out in him. The perch swallows the grubworm, the pickerel +swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel and so +all the chinks in the scale of being are filled. +When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes +amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted. +He would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in +the ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance +from the shore, and having fastened the end of the line to a stick +to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over +a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry +oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a +bite. These alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as +you walked half way round the pond. +Ah, the pickerel of Walden when I see them lying on the ice, or +in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little +hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, +as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, +even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They +possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates +them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose +fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like the +pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky but they +have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and +precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei +or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all +over and all through are themselves small Waldens in the animal +kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here +that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling +teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, +this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its +kind in any market it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. +Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery +ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of +heaven. +As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden +Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in +', with compass and chain and sounding line. There have been many +stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, +which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable +how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without +taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two such Bottomless +Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. Many have believed that +Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. Some +who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through +the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into the bargain, +and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in +their breasts, have seen vast holes "into which a load of hay might +be driven," if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source +of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. +Others have gone down from the village with a "fiftysix" and a +wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom for +while the "fiftysix" was resting by the way, they were paying out +the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable +capacity for marvellousness. But I can assure my readers that +Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though +at an unusual, depth. I fathomed it easily with a codline and a +stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately +when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder +before the water got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was +exactly one hundred and two feet to which may be added the five +feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This +is a remarkable depth for so small an area yet not an inch of it +can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? +Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this +pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the +infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless. +A factoryowner, hearing what depth I had found, thought that it +could not be true, for, judging from his acquaintance with dams, +sand would not lie at so steep an angle. But the deepest ponds are +not so deep in proportion to their area as most suppose, and, if +drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys. They are not like +cups between the hills for this one, which is so unusually deep for +its area, appears in a vertical section through its centre not +deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, emptied, would leave a +meadow no more hollow than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who +is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so +correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he +describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms deep, +four miles in breadth," and about fifty miles long, surrounded by +mountains, observes, "If we could have seen it immediately after the +diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it, +before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have +appeared +"So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low +Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, +Capacious bed of waters." +But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we apply these +proportions to Walden, which, as we have seen, appears already in a +vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will appear four +times as shallow. So much for the increased horrors of the chasm of +Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley with its +stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a "horrid chasm," from +which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and +the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting +inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the +shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no +subsequent elevation of the plain have been necessary to conceal +their history. But it is easiest, as they who work on the highways +know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower. The amount +of it is, the imagination give it the least license, dives deeper +and soars higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the +ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with its +breadth. +As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the +bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors +which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general +regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level +than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. +In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not +vary more than one foot in thirty rods and generally, near the +middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in +any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are +accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy +ponds like this, but the effect of water under these circumstances +is to level all inequalities. The regularity of the bottom and its +conformity to the shores and the range of the neighboring hills were +so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the +soundings quite across the pond, and its direction could be +determined by observing the opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, and +plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel. +When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an inch, +and put down the soundings, more than a hundred in all, I observed +this remarkable coincidence. Having noticed that the number +indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the centre of the +map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and +found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected +the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth, +notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the outline of +the pond far from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were +got by measuring into the coves and I said to myself, Who knows but +this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as +of a pond or puddle? Is not this the rule also for the height of +mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? We know that a hill +is not highest at its narrowest part. +Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were +observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water +within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within +the land not only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin +or independent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the +course of the bar. Every harbor on the seacoast, also, has its bar +at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider +compared with its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared +with that in the basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of the +cove, and the character of the surrounding shore, and you have +almost elements enough to make out a formula for all cases. +In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this experience, +at the deepest point in a pond, by observing the outlines of a +surface and the character of its shores alone, I made a plan of +White Pond, which contains about fortyone acres, and, like this, +has no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet and as the +line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth, +where two opposite capes approached each other and two opposite bays +receded, I ventured to mark a point a short distance from the latter +line, but still on the line of greatest length, as the deepest. The +deepest part was found to be within one hundred feet of this, still +farther in the direction to which I had inclined, and was only one +foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of course, a stream running +through, or an island in the pond, would make the problem much more +complicated. +If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, +or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the +particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and +our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or +irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements +in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly +confined to those instances which we detect but the harmony which +results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but +really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more +wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to +the traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has +an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. +Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its +entireness. +What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It +is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only +guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but +draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a +man's particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves +and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of +his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend +and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and +concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances, +an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his +bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth in him. But a low and +smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold +projecting brow falls off to and indicates a corresponding depth of +thought. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every cove, +or particular inclination each is our harbor for a season, in which +we are detained and partially landlocked. These inclinations are +not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are +determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of +elevation. When this bar is gradually increased by storms, tides, +or currents, or there is a subsidence of the waters, so that it +reaches to the surface, that which was at first but an inclination +in the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes an individual +lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures its own +conditions changes, perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet +sea, dead sea, or a marsh. At the advent of each individual into +this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the +surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poor navigators that our +thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless +coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or +steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of +science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural +currents concur to individualize them. +As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered any +but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, with a +thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for where the +water flows into the pond it will probably be coldest in summer and +warmest in winter. When the icemen were at work here in ', the +cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected by those who were +stacking them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by side +with the rest and the cutters thus discovered that the ice over a +small space was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which +made them think that there was an inlet there. They also showed me +in another place what they thought was a "leachhole," through which +the pond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing +me out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under ten +feet of water but I think that I can warrant the pond not to need +soldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has suggested, +that if such a "leachhole" should be found, its connection with the +meadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying some, colored +powder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then putting a +strainer over the spring in the meadow, which would catch some of +the particles carried through by the current. +While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen inches thick, +undulated under a slight wind like water. It is well known that a +level cannot be used on ice. At one rod from the shore its greatest +fluctuation, when observed by means of a level on land directed +toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an inch, +though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. It was +probably greater in the middle. Who knows but if our instruments +were delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of +the earth? When two legs of my level were on the shore and the +third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a +rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a +difference of several feet on a tree across the pond. When I began +to cut holes for sounding there were three or four inches of water +on the ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far but the +water began immediately to run into these holes, and continued to +run for two days in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every +side, and contributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface +of the pond for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated the +ice. This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship +to let the water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, +and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is +beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like +a spider's web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the +channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre. +Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I +saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the +other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside. +While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and +solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to +cool his summer drink impressively, even pathetically, wise, to +foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January wearing a +thick coat and mittens when so many things are not provided for. +It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool +his summer drink in the next. He cuts and saws the solid pond, +unroofs the house of fishes, and carts off their very element and +air, held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood, through the +favoring winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer +there. It looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is drawn +through the streets. These icecutters are a merry race, full of +jest and sport, and when I went among them they were wont to invite +me to saw pitfashion with them, I standing underneath. +In the winter of ' there came a hundred men of Hyperborean +extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many carloads +of ungainlylooking farming tools sleds, plows, drillbarrows, +turfknives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a +doublepointed pikestaff, such as is not described in the +NewEngland Farmer or the Cultivator. I did not know whether they +had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain +recently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that +they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was +deep and had lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman +farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, +which, as I understood, amounted to half a million already but in +order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the +only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a +hard winter. They went to work at once, plowing, barrowing, +rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on +making this a model farm but when I was looking sharp to see what +kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my +side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a +peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water for it +was a very springy soil indeed all the terra firma there was +and haul it away on sleds, and then I guessed that they must be +cutting peat in a bog. So they came and went every day, with a +peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to some point of the +polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a flock of arctic +snowbirds. But sometimes Squaw Walden had her revenge, and a hired +man, walking behind his team, slipped through a crack in the ground +down toward Tartarus, and he who was so brave before suddenly became +but the ninth part of a man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was +glad to take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there was +some virtue in a stove or sometimes the frozen soil took a piece of +steel out of a plowshare, or a plow got set in the furrow and had to +be cut out. +To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers, +came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided it +into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and +these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an +ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, +worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of +flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if +they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the +clouds. They told me that in a good day they could get out a +thousand tons, which was the yield of about one acre. Deep ruts and +"cradleholes" were worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the +passage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses invariably +ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets. They +stacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirtyfive feet +high on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay between +the outside layers to exclude the air for when the wind, though +never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavities, +leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and finally +topple it down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort or +Valhalla but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the +crevices, and this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked +like a venerable mossgrown and hoary ruin, built of azuretinted +marble, the abode of Winter, that old man we see in the almanac +his shanty, as if he had a design to estivate with us. They +calculated that not twentyfive per cent of this would reach its +destination, and that two or three per cent would be wasted in the +cars. However, a still greater part of this heap had a different +destiny from what was intended for, either because the ice was +found not to keep so well as was expected, containing more air than +usual, or for some other reason, it never got to market. This heap, +made in the winter of ' and estimated to contain ten thousand +tons, was finally covered with hay and boards and though it was +unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off, the rest +remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next +winter, and was not quite melted till September, . Thus the +pond recovered the greater part. +Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green +tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell +it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of +some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great +cakes slips from the iceman's sled into the village street, and +lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to +all passers. I have noticed that a portion of Walden which in the +state of water was green will often, when frozen, appear from the +same point of view blue. So the hollows about this pond will, +sometimes, in the winter, be filled with a greenish water somewhat +like its own, but the next day will have frozen blue. Perhaps the +blue color of water and ice is due to the light and air they +contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is an +interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had +some in the icehouses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as +good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, +but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is +the difference between the affections and the intellect. +Thus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work +like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the +implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of +the almanac and as often as I looked out I was reminded of the +fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and +the like and now they are all gone, and in thirty days more, +probably, I shall look from the same window on the pure seagreen +Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending +up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a +man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon +laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher +in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in +the waves, where lately a hundred men securely labored. +Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston +and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my +well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and +cosmogonal philosophy of the BhagvatGeeta, since whose composition +years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our +modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial and I doubt +if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of +existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay +down the book and go to my well for water, and lo there I meet the +servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who +still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells +at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his +servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it +were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is +mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it +is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the +Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate +and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic +gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander +only heard the names. +Spring +The opening of large tracts by the icecutters commonly causes a +pond to break up earlier for the water, agitated by the wind, even +in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not +the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new +garment to take the place of the old. This pond never breaks up so +soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its +greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or +wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a +winter, not excepting that of ', which gave the ponds so severe +a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten +days later than Flint's Pond and Fair Haven, beginning to melt on +the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. +It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress +of the season, being least affected by transient changes of +temperature. A severe cold of a few days duration in March may very +much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature +of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust +into the middle of Walden on the th of March, , stood at x, +or freezing point near the shore at x in the middle of Flint's +Pond, the same day, at x at a dozen rods from the shore, in +shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at x. This difference of +three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep water +and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great +proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break +up so much sooner than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was +at this time several inches thinner than in the middle. In +midwinter the middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest +there. So, also, every one who has waded about the shores of the +pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is +close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a +little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near +the bottom. In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through +the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes +through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom +in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under +side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more +directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which +it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is +completely honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single +spring rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake +begins to rot or "comb," that is, assume the appearance of +honeycomb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right +angles with what was the water surface. Where there is a rock or a +log rising near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and +is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected heat and I have +been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a +shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and +so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the +bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain +in the middle of the winter melts off the snowice from Walden, and +leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a +strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about +the shores, created by this reflected heat. Also, as I have said, +the bubbles themselves within the ice operate as burningglasses to +melt the ice beneath. +The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a +small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water +is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be +made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more +rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The +night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and +fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the +ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a +cold night, February th, , having gone to Flint's Pond to +spend the day, I noticed with surprise, that when I struck the ice +with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods +around, or as if I had struck on a tight drumhead. The pond began +to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of +the sun's rays slanted upon it from over the hills it stretched +itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing +tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. It took a short +siesta at noon, and boomed once more toward night, as the sun was +withdrawing his influence. In the right stage of the weather a pond +fires its evening gun with great regularity. But in the middle of +the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic, +it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes and +muskrats could not then have been stunned by a blow on it. The +fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes +and prevents their biting. The pond does not thunder every evening, +and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering but though I +may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. Who would have +suspected so large and cold and thickskinned a thing to be so +sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when +it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is +all alive and covered with papillae. The largest pond is as +sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its +tube. +One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should +have leisure and opportunity to see the Spring come in. The ice in +the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and I can set my heel +in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually +melting the snow the days have grown sensibly longer and I see how +I shall get through the winter without adding to my woodpile, for +large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the +first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving +bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now +nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter +quarters. On the th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, +song sparrow, and redwing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. +As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the +water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it +was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the +middle was merely honeycombed and saturated with water, so that you +could put your foot through it when six inches thick but by the +next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it +would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited +away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it +disappeared entirely. In Walden was first completely open on +the st of April in ', the th of March in ', the th of +April in ', the th of March in ', the th of April in ', +the d of March in ', about the th of April. +Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and +ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to +us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days +come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with +a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were +rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going +out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the +earth. One old man, who has been a close observer of Nature, and +seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she +had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to +lay her keel who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire +more of natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah +told me and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of +Nature's operations, for I thought that there were no secrets +between them that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and +thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. There was +ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone out of the river, and +he dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to +Fair Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most +part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he was +surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any +ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the +pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to +await them. The ice was melted for three or four rods from the +shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy +bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely +that some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there +about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but +singularly grand and impressive, unlike anything he had ever heard, +gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal +and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him +all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to +settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up in haste and +excited but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the +ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and +the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore +at first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving up +and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height +before it came to a standstill. +At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, and warm +winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, +dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and +white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his +way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling +rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter +which they are bearing off. +Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms +which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a +deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the +village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale, though +the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have +been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material +was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors, +commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the +spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to +flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the +snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. +Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, +exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of +currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the +forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot +or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the +laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens or you +are reminded of coral, of leopard's paws or birds' feet, of brains +or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly +grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in +bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical +than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves +destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to +future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave +with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades of +the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different +iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing +mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out +flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their +semicylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad, +running together as they are more moist, till they form an almost +flat sand, still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you +can trace the original forms of vegetation till at length, in the +water itself, they are converted into banks, like those formed off +the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the +ripple marks on the bottom. +The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is +sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy +rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce +of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its +springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side +the inert bank for the sun acts on one side first and on the +other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected +as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist +who made the world and me had come to where he was still at work, +sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh +designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the +globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass +as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands +an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth +expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea +inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant +by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, +whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a +word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of +fat jnai, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing +jiais, globus, lobe, globe also lap, flap, and many other words +externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and +dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b +single lobed, or B, double lobed, with the liquid l behind it +pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the guttural g adds to the +meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds +are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the +lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The +very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes +winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, +as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of waterplants have +impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one +leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening +earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils. +When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the +morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again +into a myriad of others. You here see perchance how bloodvessels +are formed. If you look closely you observe that first there pushes +forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a +droplike point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly +and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as +the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey +the law to which the most inert also yields, separates from the +latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within +that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like +lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and +ever and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly +yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best +material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel. +Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which the +water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer +soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What +is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is +but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent +from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body +would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the +hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be +regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria, on the side of the +head, with its lobe or drop. The lip labium, from labor ? +laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a +manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger +drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide +from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by +the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a +thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller the lobes are the +fingers of the leaf and as many lobes as it has, in so many +directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial +influences would have caused it to flow yet farther. +Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle +of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but +patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic +for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon +is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of +vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, +and there is no end to the heaps of liver, lights, and bowels, as if +the globe were turned wrong side outward but this suggests at least +that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. +This is the frost coming out of the ground this is Spring. It +precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular +poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and +indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her +swaddlingclothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. +Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing +inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag +of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The +earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum +like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and +antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, +which precede flowers and fruit not a fossil earth, but a living +earth compared with whose great central life all animal and +vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our +exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them +into the most beautiful moulds you can they will never excite me +like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only +it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands +of the potter. +Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain +and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a +dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or +migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion +is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the +other but breaks in pieces. +When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days +had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first +tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately +beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the +winter lifeeverlasting, goldenrods, pinweeds, and graceful wild +grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than in summer +even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then even cottongrass, +cattails, mulleins, johnswort, hardhack, meadowsweet, and other +strongstemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain +the earliest birds decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature +wears. I am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaflike +top of the woolgrass it brings back the summer to our winter +memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which, +in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to types already in +the mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style, older +than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of Winter are +suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We +are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous +tyrant but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of +Summer. +At the approach of spring the red squirrels got under my house, +two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing, +and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal +pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard and when I +stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and +respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No, you +don't chickaree chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my +arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain +of invective that was irresistible. +The first sparrow of spring The year beginning with younger +hope than ever The faint silvery warblings heard over the +partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, +and the redwing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they +fell What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, +and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to +the spring. The marsh hawk, sailing low over the meadow, is already +seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of +melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in +the ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire +"et primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata" as if +the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun not +yellow but green is the color of its flame the symbol of +perpetual youth, the grassblade, like a long green ribbon, streams +from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon +pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year's hay with the +fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the +ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing days +of June, when the rills are dry, the grassblades are their +channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial +green stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter +supply. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts +forth its green blade to eternity. +Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along +the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. +A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a +song sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore olit, olit, +olit chip, chip, chip, che char che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too +is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in +the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but +more regular It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but +transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But +the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it +reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this +ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full +of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, +and of the sands on its shore a silvery sheen as from the scales +of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the +contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive +again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said. +The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, +from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a +memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly +instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, +though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still +overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked +out the window, and lo where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay +the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in a summer +evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, though none +was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remote +horizon. I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for +many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for +many a thousand more the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. +O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day If I +could ever find the twig he sits upon I mean he I mean the twig. +This at least is not the Turdus migratorius. The pitch pines and +shrub oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly +resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more +erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the +rain. I knew that it would not rain any more. You may tell by +looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very woodpile, +whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was +startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like +weary travellers getting in late from Southern lakes, and indulging +at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing +at my door, I could bear the rush of their wings when, driving +toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed +clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the +door, and passed my first spring night in the woods. +In the morning I watched the geese from the door through the +mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large +and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for +their amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up +with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and +when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twentynine +of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk +from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in +muddier pools. A "plump" of ducks rose at the same time and took +the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins. +For a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of some +solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and +still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they +could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express +in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over +my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so +many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were +peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white +men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among +the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song +and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, +to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the +equilibrium of nature. +As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in +of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the +realization of the Golden Age. +"Eurus ad Auroram Nabathaeaque regna recessit, +Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis." +"The EastWind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathean kingdom, +And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays. +Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things, +The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed +Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high +Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven." +A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So +our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should +be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of +every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the +influence of the slightest dew that falls on it and did not spend +our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we +call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already +spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. +Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, +the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence +we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your +neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and +merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world but the +sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the +world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how it is +exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the +new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, +and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere +of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for +expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a newborn +instinct, and for a short hour the south hillside echoes to no +vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst +from his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh +as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his +Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors why +the judge does not dismis his case why the preacher does not +dismiss his congregation It is because they do not obey the hint +which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers +to all. +"A return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and +beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love +of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the +primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been +felled. In like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a +day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again +from developing themselves and destroys them. +"After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times +from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening +does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening +does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man +does not differ much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature +of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never +possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and +natural sentiments of man?" +"The Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger +Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude. +Punishment and fear were not nor were threatening words read +On suspended brass nor did the suppliant crowd fear +The words of their judge but were safe without an avenger. +Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended +To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world, +And mortals knew no shores but their own. +There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm +Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed." +On the th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the +river near the NineAcreCorner bridge, standing on the quaking +grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular +rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play +with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and +graceful hawk, like a nighthawk, alternately soaring like a ripple +and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the under side of +its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the +pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and +what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. The +Merlin it seemed to me it might be called but I care not for its +name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did +not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, +but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air mounting +again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and +beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then +recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot +on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the universe +sporting there alone and to need none but the morning and the +ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the +earth lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its +kindred, and its father in the heavens? The tenant of the air, it +seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the +crevice of a crag or was its native nest made in the angle of a +cloud, woven of the rainbow's trimmings and the sunset sky, and +lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry +now some cliffy cloud. +Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright +cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. Ah I have +penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring +day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow +root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so +pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had +been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no +stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a +light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy +victory, then? +Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the +unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic +of wildness to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and +the meadowhen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe to smell the +whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl +builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the +ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn +all things, we require that all things be mysterious and +unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and +unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of +nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, +vast and titanic features, the seacoast with its wrecks, the +wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the +thundercloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces +freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some +life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we +observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and +disheartens us, and deriving health and strength from the repast. +There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which +compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night +when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong +appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for +this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads +can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one +another that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out +of existence like pulp tadpoles which herons gobble up, and +tortoises and toads run over in the road and that sometimes it has +rained flesh and blood With the liability to accident, we must see +how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a +wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous +after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable +ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be +stereotyped. +Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just +putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a +brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy +days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly +on the hillsides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I +saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I +heard the whippoorwill, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood +pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood thrush +long before. The phoebe had already come once more and looked in at +my door and window, to see if my house was cavernlike enough for +her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if +she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The +sulphurlike pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and the +stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have +collected a barrelful. This is the "sulphur showers" we bear of. +Even in Calidas' drama of Sacontala, we read of "rills dyed yellow +with the golden dust of the lotus." And so the seasons went rolling +on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass. +Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed and the +second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September th, +Conclusion +To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and +scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buckeye does +not grow in New England, and the mockingbird is rarely heard here. +The wild goose is more of a cosmopolite than we he breaks his fast +in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the +night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps +pace with the seasons cropping the pastures of the Colorado only +till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet +we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled +up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our +fates decided. If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot +go to Tierra del Fuego this summer but you may go to the land of +infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than our views of +it. +Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like +curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors +picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our +correspondent. Our voyaging is only greatcircle sailing, and the +doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to +southern Africa to chase the giraffe but surely that is not the +game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes +if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport but I +trust it would be nobler game to shoot one's self. +"Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find +A thousand regions in your mind +Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be +Expert in homecosmography." +What does Africa what does the West stand for? Is not our own +interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the +coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, +or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around this continent, +that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern +mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should +be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself +is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark and Frobisher, of +your own streams and oceans explore your own higher latitudes +with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be +necessary and pile the empty cans skyhigh for a sign. Were +preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a +Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new +channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a +realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty +state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who +have no selfrespect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They +love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with +the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a +maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that SouthSea +Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an +indirect recognition of the fact that there are continents and seas +in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet +unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles +through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with +five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the +private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone. +"Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. +Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae." +Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. +I have more of God, they more of the road. +It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in +Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may +perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at +last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave +Coast, all front on this private sea but no bark from them has +ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct +way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform +to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all +travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to +dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old +philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and +the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards +that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, +which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct +toward a wornout China or Japan, but leads on direct, a tangent to +this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, +and at last earth down too. +It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery "to ascertain +what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one's self +in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society." He +declared that "a soldier who fights in the ranks does not require +half so much courage as a footpad" "that honor and religion have +never stood in the way of a wellconsidered and a firm resolve." +This was manly, as the world goes and yet it was idle, if not +desperate. A saner man would have found himself often enough "in +formal opposition" to what are deemed "the most sacred laws of +society," through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have +tested his resolution without going out of his way. It is not for a +man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain +himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to +the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a +just government, if he should chance to meet with such. +I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps +it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not +spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and +insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track +for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a +path from my door to the pondside and though it is five or six +years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I +fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it +open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet +of men and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and +dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of +tradition and conformity I did not wish to take a cabin passage, +but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for +there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not +wish to go below now. +I learned this, at least, by my experiment that if one advances +confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live +the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success +unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will +pass an invisible boundary new, universal, and more liberal laws +will begin to establish themselves around and within him or the old +laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal +sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of +beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the +universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be +solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have +built castles in the air, your work need not be lost that is where +they should be. Now put the foundations under them. +It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that +you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor +toadstools grow so. As if that were important, and there were not +enough to understand you without them. As if Nature could support +but one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as +quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, and hush and whoa, +which Bright can understand, were the best English. As if there +were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression +may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the +narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the +truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance it depends on +how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures +in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks +over the pail, leaps the cowyard fence, and runs after her calf, in +milking time. I desire to speak somewhere without bounds like a +man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments for I am +convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation +of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared +then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? In view +of the future or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined +in front, our outlines dim and misty on that side as our shadows +reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. The volatile +truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the +residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated its +literal monument alone remains. The words which express our faith +and piety are not definite yet they are significant and fragrant +like frankincense to superior natures. +Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise +that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men +asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to +class those who are onceandahalfwitted with the halfwitted, +because we appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some would +find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough. +"They pretend," as I hear, "that the verses of Kabir have four +different senses illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric +doctrine of the Vedas" but in this part of the world it is +considered a ground for complaint if a man's writings admit of more +than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the +potatorot, will not any endeavor to cure the brainrot, which +prevails so much more widely and fatally? +I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, but I should +be proud if no more fatal fault were found with my pages on this +score than was found with the Walden ice. Southern customers +objected to its blue color, which is the evidence of its purity, as +if it were muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white, +but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like the mists which +envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond. +Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns +generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or +even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A +living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang +himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the +biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and +endeavor to be what he was made. +Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such +desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his +companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let +him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. +It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree +or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition +of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality +which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain +reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over +ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at +the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not? +There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to +strive after perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a +staff. Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an +ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to +himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do +nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to the forest for +wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable +material and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his +friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and +died, but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose +and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his +knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise with +Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance +because he could not overcome him. Before he had found a stock in +all respects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he +sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick. Before he had given it +the proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and +with the point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that +race in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the time he had +smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the polestar +and ere he had put on the ferule and the head adorned with precious +stones, Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I +stay to mention these things? When the finishing stroke was put to +his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished +artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made +a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair +proportions in which, though the old cities and dynasties had +passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places. +And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, +that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an +illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a +single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame +the tinder of a mortal brain. The material was pure, and his art +was pure how could the result be other than wonderful? +No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at +last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we +are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infinity +of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and +hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult +to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that +is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is +better than makebelieve. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the +gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," +said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they +take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten. +However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it +and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks +poorest when you are richest. The faultfinder will find faults +even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps +have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. +The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as +brightly as from the rich man's abode the snow melts before its +door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live +as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. +The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives +of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without +misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the +town but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting +themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. +Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble +yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn +the old return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell +your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not +want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my +days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I +had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said "From an army of +three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in +disorder from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take +away his thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to +subject yourself to many influences to be played on it is all +dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. +The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo +creation widens to our view." We are often reminded that if there +were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be +the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are +restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and +newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most +significant and vital experiences you are compelled to deal with +the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is +life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from +being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity +on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money +is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. +I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was +poured a little alloy of bellmetal. Often, in the repose of my +midday, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from +without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell +me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what +notabilities they met at the dinnertable but I am no more +interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. +The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners +chiefly but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They +tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the +Hon. Mr. of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and +fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their courtyard +like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings not walk +in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to +walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may not to live +in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but +stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men +celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and +hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of +the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to +gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts +me not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less not +suppose a case, but take the case that is to travel the only path I +can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no +satisfaction to commerce to spring an arch before I have got a solid +foundation. Let us not play at kittlybenders. There is a solid +bottom everywhere. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the +swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. +But presently the traveller's horse sank in up to the girths, and he +observed to the boy, "I thought you said that this bog had a hard +bottom." "So it has," answered the latter, "but you have not got +half way to it yet." So it is with the bogs and quicksands of +society but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, +said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be +one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and +plastering such a deed would keep me awake nights. Give me a +hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Do not depend on the +putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can +wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction a +work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will +help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another +rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. +Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat +at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and +obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not and I went +away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as +cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze +them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the +vintage but I thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a +more glorious vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy. +The style, the house and grounds and "entertainment" pass for +nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his +hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There +was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His +manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on +him. +How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty +virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were to +begin the day with longsuffering, and hire a man to hoe his +potatoes and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian +meekness and charity with goodness aforethought Consider the China +pride and stagnant selfcomplacency of mankind. This generation +inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an +illustrious line and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, +thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and +science and literature with satisfaction. There are the Records of +the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of Great Men +It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue. "Yes, we have +done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never die" +that is, as long as we can remember them. The learned societies and +great men of Assyria where are they? What youthful philosophers +and experimentalists we are There is not one of my readers who has +yet lived a whole human life. These may be but the spring months in +the life of the race. If we have had the sevenyears' itch, we have +not seen the seventeenyear locust yet in Concord. We are +acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most +have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many +above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep +nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an +established order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we +are ambitious spirits As I stand over the insect crawling amid the +pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself +from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble +thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its +benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am +reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over +me the human insect. +There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet +we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of +sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. +There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden +of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the +ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. +It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, +and that the United States are a firstrate power. We do not +believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float +the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his +mind. Who knows what sort of seventeenyear locust will next come +out of the ground? The government of the world I live in was not +framed, like that of Britain, in afterdinner conversations over the +wine. +The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this +year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched +uplands even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out +all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see +far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before +science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story +which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful +bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of appletree +wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first +in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts from an egg +deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared +by counting the annual layers beyond it which was heard gnawing out +for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who +does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality +strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and +winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many +concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, +deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, +which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its +wellseasoned tomb heard perchance gnawing out now for years by +the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board +may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and +handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last +I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this but +such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can +never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness +to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more +day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. +ON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE +I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which +governs least" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly +and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which +also I believe, "That government is best which governs not at +all" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of +government which they will have. Government is at best but an +expedient but most governments are usually, and all governments are +sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought +against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve +to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing +government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing +government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the +people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be +abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness +the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals +using the standing government as their tool for, in the outset, the +people would not have consented to this measure. +This American government what is it but a tradition, though a +recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, +but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the +vitality and force of a single living man for a single man can bend +it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people +themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this for the +people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its +din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. +Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even +impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we +must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any +enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. +It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It +does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has +done all that has been accomplished and it would have done somewhat +more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For +government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in +letting one another alone and, as has been said, when it is most +expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and +commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage +to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually +putting in their way and, if one were to judge these men wholly by +the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, +they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous +persons who put obstructions on the railroads. +But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who +call themselves nogovernment men, I ask for, not at once no +government, but at once a better government. Let every man make +known what kind of government would command his respect, and that +will be one step toward obtaining it. +After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in +the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long +period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be +in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but +because they are physically the strongest. But a government in +which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, +even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in +which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but +conscience? in which majorities decide only those questions to +which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever +for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the +legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we +should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to +cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only +obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what +I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no +conscience but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation +with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just and, by +means of their respect for it, even the welldisposed are daily made +the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue +respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, +captain, corporal, privates, powdermonkeys, and all, marching in +admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, +ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very +steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. +They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are +concerned they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? +Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of +some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a +marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it +can make a man with its black arts a mere shadow and reminiscence +of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one +may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it +may be +"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, +As his corse to the rampart we hurried +Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot +O'er the grave where our hero we buried." +The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as +machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the +militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases +there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral +sense but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and +stones and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve +the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw +or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses +and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good +citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, +ministers, and officeholders, serve the state chiefly with their +heads and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as +likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very +few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and +men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily +resist it for the most part and they are commonly treated as +enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will +not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," +but leave that office to his dust at least +"I am too highborn to be propertied, +To be a secondary at control, +Or useful servingman and instrument +To any sovereign state throughout the world." +He who gives himself entirely to his fellowmen appears to them +useless and selfish but he who gives himself partially to them is +pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist. +How does it become a man to behave toward this American +government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be +associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that +political organization as my government which is the slave's +government also. +All men recognize the right of revolution that is, the right to +refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its +tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost +all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they +think, in the Revolution of '. If one were to tell me that this +was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities +brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an +ado about it, for I can do without them. All machines have their +friction and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the +evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But +when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and +robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any +longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation +which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a +whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, +and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for +honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the +more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, +but ours is the invading army. +Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his +chapter on the "Duty of Submission to Civil Government," resolves +all civil obligation into expediency and he proceeds to say that +"so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, +so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed +without public inconveniency, it is the will of God... that the +established government be obeyed, and no longer.... This principle +being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance +is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and +grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of +redressing it on the other." Of this, he says, every man shall +judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated +those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which +a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it +may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must +restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, +would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a +case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to +make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people. +In their practice, nations agree with Paley but does any one +think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present +crisis? +"A drab of state, a clotho'silver slut, +To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt." +Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are +not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred +thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in +commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not +prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. +I quarrel not with faroff foes, but with those who, near at home, +cooperate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without +whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that +the mass of men are unprepared but improvement is slow, because the +few are not materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so +important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some +absolute goodness somewhere for that will leaven the whole lump. +There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the +war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them who, +esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down +with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what +to do, and do nothing who even postpone the question of freedom to +the question of freetrade, and quietly read the pricescurrent +along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may +be, fall asleep over them both. What is the pricecurrent of an +honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and +sometimes they petition but they do nothing in earnest and with +effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the +evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give +only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the +right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninetynine +patrons of virtue to one virtuous man but it is easier to deal +with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian +of it. +All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, +with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, +with moral questions and betting naturally accompanies it. The +character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, +as I think right but I am not vitally concerned that that right +should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its +obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even +voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing +to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will +not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail +through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in +the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote +for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are +indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left +to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. +Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his +own freedom by his vote. +I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, +for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly +of editors, and men who are politicians by profession but I think, +what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what +decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his +wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some +independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country +who do not attend conventions? But no I find that the respectable +man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and +despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair +of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as +the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available +for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth +than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may +have been bought. Oh for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor +says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand +through Our statistics are at fault the population has been +returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand +miles in this country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any +inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into +an Odd Fellow one who may be known by the development of his +organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and +cheerful selfreliance whose first and chief concern, on coming +into the world, is to see that the almshouses are in good repair +and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a +fund for the support of the widows and orphans that may be who, in +short ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance +company, which has promised to bury him decently. +It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself +to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong he may +still properly have other concerns to engage him but it is his +duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no +thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote +myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at +least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's +shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his +contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I +have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them +order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to +march to Mexico see if I would go" and yet these very men have +each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by +their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who +refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to +sustain the unjust government which makes the war is applauded by +those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught +as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to +scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off +sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil +Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our +own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference +and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite +unnecessary to that life which we have made. +The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most +disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which +the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most +likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character +and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and +support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so +frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are +petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the +requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it +themselves the union between themselves and the State and +refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in +the same relation to the State, that the State does to the Union? +And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the +Union, which have prevented them from resisting the State? +How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and +enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he +is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your +neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are +cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with +petitioning him to pay you your due but you take effectual steps at +once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated +again. Action from principle the perception and the performance +of right changes things and relations it is essentially +revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. +It not only divides states and churches, it divides families ay, it +divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the +divine. +Unjust laws exist shall we be content to obey them, or shall we +endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or +shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a +government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have +persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they +should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is +the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the +evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and +provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why +does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage +its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do +better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, +and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington +and Franklin rebels? +One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its +authority was the only offence never contemplated by government +else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and +proportionate, penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but +once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a +period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the +discretion of those who placed him there but if he should steal +ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to +go at large again. +If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the +machine of government, let it go, let it go perchance it will wear +smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has +a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for +itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be +worse than the evil but if it is of such a nature that it requires +you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the +law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What +I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to +the wrong which I condemn. +As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for +remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much +time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend +to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place +to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not +everything to do, but something and because he cannot do +everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. +It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the +Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me and if they +should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this +case the State has provided no way its very Constitution is the +evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory +but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the +only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is an change for +the better, like birth and death which convulse the body. +I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves +Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, +both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, +and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they +suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough +if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. +Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a +majority of one already. +I meet this American government, or its representative, the +State government, directly, and face to face, once a year no more +in the person of its taxgatherer this is the only mode in which +a man situated as I am necessarily meets it and it then says +distinctly, Recognize me and the simplest, the most effectual, and, +in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of +treating with it on this head, of expressing your little +satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. My civil +neighbor, the taxgatherer, is the very man I have to deal with +for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel +and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. +How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an officer of the +government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he +shall treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor +and welldisposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, +and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness +without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding +with his action? I know this well, that if one thousand, if one +hundred, if ten men whom I could name if ten honest men only +ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to +hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and +be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition +of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning +may seem to be what is once well done is done forever. But we love +better to talk about it that we say is our mission. Reform keeps +many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. If my +esteemed neighbor, the State's ambassador, who will devote his days +to the settlement of the question of human rights in the Council +Chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, +were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State which is +so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister though at +present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the +ground of a quarrel with her the Legislature would not wholly +waive the subject the following winter. +Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place +for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only +place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less +desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out +of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out +by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the +Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs +of his race, should find them on that separate, but more free and +honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with +her, but against her the only house in a slave State in which a +free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence +would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of +the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they +do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much +more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has +experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a +strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is +powerless while it conforms to the majority it is not even a +minority then but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole +weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or +give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to +choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their taxbills this +year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be +to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed +innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable +revolution, if any such is possible. If the taxgatherer, or any +other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I +do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your +office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer +has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But +even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed +when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real +manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting +death. I see this blood flowing now. +I have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather +than the seizure of his goods though both will serve the same +purpose because they who assert the purest right, and +consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have +not spent much time in accumulating property. To such the State +renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to +appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by +special labor with their hands. If there were one who lived wholly +without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand +it of him. But the rich man not to make any invidious comparison +is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. +Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue for money +comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him and +it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many +questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer while the +only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how +to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. +The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are +called the "means" are increased. The best thing a man can do for +his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those +schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the +Herodians according to their condition. "Show me the +tributemoney," said he and one took a penny out of his pocket +if you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which +he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the +State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar's government, then +pay him back some of his own when he demands it "Render therefore +to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God those things which are +God's" leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which +for they did not wish to know. +When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive +that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of +the question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long +and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the +protection of the existing government, and they dread the +consequences to their property and families of disobedience to it. +For my own part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the +protection of the State. But, if I deny the authority of the State +when it presents its taxbill, it will soon take and waste all my +property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is +hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at +the same time comfortably in outward respects. It will not be worth +the while to accumulate property that would be sure to go again. +You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and +eat that soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon +yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many +affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all +respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said, +"If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and +misery are subjects of shame if a state is not governed by the +principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame." +No until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to +me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or +until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful +enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and +her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense +to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to +obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case. +Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the Church, and +commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman +whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. "Pay," it +said, "or be locked up in the jail." I declined to pay. But, +unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the +schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the +priest the schoolmaster for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but +I supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the +lyceum should not present its taxbill, and have the State to back +its demand, as well as the Church. However, at the request of the +selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in +writing "Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, +do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society +which I have not joined." This I gave to the town clerk and he has +it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be +regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on +me since though it said that it must adhere to its original +presumption that time. If I had known how to name them, I should +then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never +signed on to but I did not know where to find a complete list. +I have paid no polltax for six years. I was put into a jail +once on this account, for one night and, as I stood considering the +walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and +iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I +could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution +which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be +locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that +this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to +avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a +wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more +difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be +as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the +walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I +alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know +how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In +every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder for they +thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that +stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they +locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again +without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was +dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish +my body just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against +whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State +was halfwitted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver +spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I +lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it. +Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, +intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not +armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical +strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own +fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a +multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. +They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being +forced to have this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life +were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, "Your +money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money? +It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do I cannot help +that. It must help itself do as I do. It is not worth the while +to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working +of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I +perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the +one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey +their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, +till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant +cannot live according to its nature, it dies and so a man. +The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The +prisoners in their shirtsleeves were enjoying a chat and the +evening air in the doorway, when I entered. But the jailer said, +"Come, boys, it is time to lock up" and so they dispersed, and I +heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. +My roommate was introduced to me by the jailer as "a firstrate +fellow and a clever man." When the door was locked, he showed me +where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms +were whitewashed once a month and this one, at least, was the +whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment +in the town. He naturally wanted to know where I came from, and +what brought me there and, when I had told him, I asked him in my +turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of +course and, as the world goes, I believe he was. "Why," said he, +"they accuse me of burning a barn but I never did it." As near as +I could discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, +and smoked his pipe there and so a barn was burnt. He had the +reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three months +waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much +longer but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got +his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated. +He occupied one window, and I the other and I saw that if one +stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out the +window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and +examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate +had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various occupants +of that room for I found that even here there was a history and a +gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. +Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are +composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not +published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were +composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to +escape, who avenged themselves by singing them. +I pumped my fellowprisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should +never see him again but at length he showed me which was my bed, +and left me to blow out the lamp. +It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never +expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me +that I never had heard the townclock strike before, nor the evening +sounds of the village for we slept with the windows open, which +were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the +light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine +stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They +were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was +an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said +in the kitchen of the adjacent villageinn a wholly new and rare +experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was +fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before. +This is one of its peculiar institutions for it is a shire town. I +began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about. +In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the +door, in small oblongsquare tin pans, made to fit, and holding a +pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they +called for the vessels again, I was green enough to return what +bread I had left but my comrade seized it, and said that I should +lay that up for lunch or dinner. Soon after he was let out to work +at haying in a neighboring field, whither he went every day, and +would not be back till noon so he bade me goodday, saying that he +doubted if he should see me again. +When I came out of prison for some one interfered, and paid +that tax I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on +the common, such as he observed who went in a youth and emerged a +tottering and grayheaded man and yet a change had to my eyes come +over the scene the town, and State, and country greater than +any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the +State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom +I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends that their +friendship was for summer weather only that they did not greatly +propose to do right that they were a distinct race from me by their +prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are that +in their sacrifices to humanity, they ran no risks, not even to +their property that after all they were not so noble but they +treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain +outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular +straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. +This may be to judge my neighbors harshly for I believe that many +of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail +in their village. +It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor +came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking +through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating +of a jail window, "How do ye do?" My neighbors did not thus salute +me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had +returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to +the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out +the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put +on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to +put themselves under my conduct and in half an hour for the +horse was soon tackled was in the midst of a huckleberry field, +on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was +nowhere to be seen. +This is the whole history of "My Prisons." +I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as +desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject +and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my +fellowcountrymen now. It is for no particular item in the taxbill +that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the +State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not +care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a +man or a musket to shoot one with the dollar is innocent but I +am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I +quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will +still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual +in such cases. +If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy +with the State, they do but what they have already done in their own +case, or rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the +State requires. If they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the +individual taxed, to save his property, or prevent his going to +jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let +their private feelings interfere with the public good. +This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too +much on his guard in such a case, lest his action be biased by +obstinacy or an undue regard for the opinions of men. Let him see +that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour. +I think sometimes, Why, this people mean well they are only +ignorant they would do better if they knew how why give your +neighbors this pain to treat you as they are not inclined to? But I +think, again, This is no reason why I should do as they do, or +permit others to suffer much greater pain of a different kind. +Again, I sometimes say to myself, When many millions of men, without +heat, without illwill, without personal feeling of any kind, demand +of you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their +constitution, of retracting or altering their present demand, and +without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to any other +millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force? You +do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus +obstinately you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. +You do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I +regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, +and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many +millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see +that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the +Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I +put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire +or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I +could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men +as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in +some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and +I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should +endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the +will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between +resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can +resist this with some effect but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to +change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts. +I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish +to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as +better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse +for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to +conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this +head and each year, as the taxgatherer comes round, I find myself +disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State +governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for +conformity. +"We must affect our country as our parents, +And if at any time we alienate +Our love or industry from doing it honor, +We must respect effects and teach the soul +Matter of conscience and religion, +And not desire of rule or benefit." +I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work +of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better a +patriot than my fellowcountrymen. Seen from a lower point of view, +the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good the law and the +courts are very respectable even this State and this American +government are, in many respects, very admirable and rare things, +to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them but +seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have +described them seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall +say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of +at all? +However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall +bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments +that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is +thoughtfree, fancyfree, imaginationfree, that which is not never +for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers +cannot fatally interrupt him. +I know that most men think differently from myself but those +whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or +kindred subjects, content me as little as any. Statesmen and +legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never +distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but +have no restingplace without it. They may be men of a certain +experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious +and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them but all +their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. +They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and +expediency. Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot +speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those +legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing +government but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, +he never once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene +and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of +his mind's range and hospitality. Yet, compared with the cheap +professions of most reformers, and the still cheaper wisdom and +eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only +sensible and valuable words, and we thank Heaven for him. +Comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, +practical. Still, his quality is not wisdom, but prudence. The +lawyer's truth is not truth, but consistency or a consistent +expediency. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not +concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with +wrongdoing. He well deserves to be called, as he has been called, +the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows to be +given by him but defensive ones. He is not a leader, but a +follower. His leaders are the men of '. "I have never made an +effort," he says, "and never propose to make an effort I have never +countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to +disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which the various +States came into the Union." Still thinking of the sanction which +the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, "Because it was a part +of the original compact let it stand." Notwithstanding his +special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact out of +its merely political relations, and behold it as it lies absolutely +to be disposed of by the intellect what, for instance, it +behooves a man to do here in America today with regard to slavery, +but ventures, or is driven, to make some such desperate answer as +the following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a +private man from which what new and singular code of social +duties might be inferred? "The manner," says he, "in which the +governments of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it +is for their own consideration, under their responsibility to their +constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and +justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from +a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, have nothing whatever to +do with it. They have never received any encouragement from me, and +they never will." +They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up +its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the +Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility but +they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that +pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage +toward its fountainhead. +No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. +They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, +politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand but the speaker has +not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the +muchvexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own +sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it +may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative +value of freetrade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a +nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble +questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufacturers and +agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators +in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable +experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would +not long retain her rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred +years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament +has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and +practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds +on the science of legislation? +The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit +to for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better +than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so +well is still an impure one to be strictly just, it must have +the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right +over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress +from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a +democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. +Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the +individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we +know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not +possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing +the rights of man? There will never be a really free and +enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual +as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and +authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself +with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all +men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor which +even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few +were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by +it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellowmen. A +State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as +fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect +and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere +seen. -- cgit v1.3.1